10 Inhumane Practices of the Middle Ages (It’s Worse Than You Think)

Imagine that in a single day your skull could be built up, your skin burned, your body poisoned, and in the evening you might end up as entertainment for a cheering crowd. In the Middle Ages, this was not an exception, but everyday life. Justice meant fire, medicine meant torture. Hunger meant eating everything your body could tolerate.

What did people really have to suffer just to survive? Medieval medicine. Think about it for a moment. Do you fall off your horse, or faint in church, or scream all night from a headache that feels like fire? Your family calls the city doctor, you hope for help. But a man comes in with a metal drill and a knife. He sees your struggling body, shrugs his shoulders, and says something like:

“Too much pressure in your head, we’ll open it up.”

And before you even have a chance to object, two men are holding your shoulders firmly. Another person grabs your jaw and the surgeon places the tool directly against your skull. No anesthesia, no painkillers, no mercy. The drill scrapes, your bone grinds, and you feel every terrifying second as it rotates and cuts a round hole right into your head.

Today this is called trepanation. Medieval surgeons called it repairing you. Archaeologists in Spain have found skulls with these clean, circular holes and new bone growth around them. What proof do you have that some people actually survived this nightmare? Many bled to death or later died from infection because nobody knows what germs are.

It is simply believed that their bodily fluids are out of balance. Therefore, the alternative treatment is bloodletting. Fever, bloodletting. Sad, bloodletting. Too tired, bloodletting. A barber-surgeon ties off an arm, cuts open a vein, and lets the blood flow into a bowl. If they have leeches, all the better. They stick three hungry ones to your skin and wait.

Even kings had to accept it. Do you too? No one escapes the knife, the blade, or the worm-like leeches. Today, people make jokes about bad doctors. In the Middle Ages, people prayed that the doctor would not kill them faster than the disease. Now imagine this. After all this suffering, you might still end up in court and have to hold a red-hot iron to prove your innocence.

Medieval justice. Imagine this. Your neighbor accuses you of stealing a chicken, or you get into an argument with a fake nobleman, or someone simply doesn’t like your face. Suddenly, the city wants to test your honesty. They take out a thick iron bar, heat it until it glows orange, and place it on a wooden table.

The whole village gathers. Children climb on fences just to see who screams first. The priest is standing next to a referee. The judge says:

“Record this. Take three steps. This is a trial by ordeal. No lawyers, no evidence, just fire.”

You bend over, your heart in your chest, and you reach for the glowing metal. It burns into your skin. You feel the heat tearing your flesh. You drop it, stumble back, and everyone watches as your hand swells and blisters. They bandage your hand. Then they send you home and tell you to wait three days. Everyone whispers about you. People stare at your door, wondering if your wound will rot or heal. Three days later, they remove the bandage.

If your hand looks clean, you’re free. If it looks infected, blistered, or worse, you’re guilty. God speaks the truth. People really died because of this. During the First Crusade, Peter Bartholomew tries to prove he’s honest by walking through fire. He burns himself so badly that he dies days later, and people say, his death proved he had lied.

This whole system has been working for centuries. Europe uses it everywhere. In England, France, Germany. It was only changed when the Church forbade priests from assisting in these rituals. Too many innocent people burn themselves for no reason. Imagine living in a world where your fate depends on how quickly your burns heal.

Now imagine this: the same crowds who witness these rituals also watch executions as if they were weekend entertainment. Public executions, a festival where the main event is someone’s death. That’s what public executions were like in the Middle Ages. On market day, you don’t just buy bread and meat.

Sometimes you bring the whole family to watch an execution by hanging or burning. In the middle of the city, a stake is erected.

Sometimes it’s just a simple rope, sometimes a large pyre for burning at the stake. For traitors or serious crimes, it becomes especially gruesome. The person is dragged through the city, half-suffocated, then slashed open and their organs ripped out. Their heads are chopped off and nailed to the city gate. A true story. David ap Gruffydd, a Welsh prince, rebels against the king.

He is hanged, dismembered, and his body parts are sent throughout England as a warning. The crowd roars. Children eat cake and watch. Vendors call out their snacks. Preachers shout about sinners. People watch every second as if it were their favorite TV show. Sometimes the person fighting for their life cries or prays.

Sometimes they say nothing, and that silence is louder than a scream. It’s not just about punishment; it’s about showing everyone, follow the rules. The fear lingers in people’s minds for weeks. There’s no way to forget it. The show changes, but the memory is seared into your mind. Now, if you think a public execution is bad, wait until you hear what some lords claim to be able to do on their wedding night.

The right of the first night. There’s an old story that terrifies peasants. It’s said that if you marry, the lord can demand to sleep with the bride before you. The so-called right of the first night. Historians say today that there was no real law for it. But that doesn’t mean people could sleep soundly.

The threat felt real when you were powerless. Here’s what actually happened. The lords have all the power. Want to get married? Then you pay the lord a fee called merchet. Your wedding needs his blessing, or it won’t happen. In some places, lords force wives on themselves or use their status to intimidate families. No one can stop them.

When a lord decides to take what he wants, most people stay silent. People pretend they saw nothing. Stories from this time show how real this fear is. An old book tells of Gerald of Aurillac, a lord who orders a woman to be brought to his bed. At the last second, he changes his mind, and everyone calls it a miracle.

This is considered sacred because it is so common for lords to abuse their wives that it is expected. As a bride, a new life begins filled with fear. If the lord shows interest in you, no one in your village can help you. The mere rumor is enough to make young couples nervous for the rest of their lives. But the problems don’t end in the bedroom.

Even a bathroom brings its own nightmares, and not for the reasons you would expect. Medieval sewage systems. Forget clean bathrooms. Imagine living in a town where the sidewalk is the toilet. In medieval towns, you wake up, grab your chamber pot, and empty the contents of the previous night directly out the window.

People shout to warn everyone below. But if you’re not quick enough, you’ll be doused with other people’s urine and feces. There are no proper drains. When it rains, the streets turn into rivers of mud. This isn’t just about people; horses, pigs, and chickens all roam the alleys, leaving their droppings everywhere. Slaughterhouses dump animal entrails in the street.

Butchers pour blood directly into the gutter. Some houses have underground cesspools, but these fill up so quickly that gong farmers crawl down at night to shovel out the thickest, most disgusting soup imaginable. People actually die from this. In London, a man named Richard the Raker fell through a rotten toilet seat and literally drowned in sewage.

Such stench and squalor spread like wildfire. You can smell a city before you see it. If you think this only affects poor people, you’re wrong. Even rich people have to deal with stench, only with more privacy and deeper pits. The whole city is a living cesspool, and nobody understands anything about germs.

Filth becomes the background noise of life. But if you think the filth on the streets is a nightmare, wait until you see what happens to women every time a baby is born. Medieval childbirth. Imagine knowing that every pregnancy could kill you, or your baby, or both. For women in the Middle Ages, giving birth feels like playing Russian roulette.

There are no hospitals. There are no proper doctors for women, only midwives and prayers to saints. No antibiotics, no clean instruments, no painkillers. The numbers are brutal. About three out of ten babies die before their first birthday. Half of all children never reach adulthood. Even queens and princesses lose children. King Edward of England and his wife have 16 children, but most don’t survive.

For mothers, the situation is just as dire. If labor stalls or the bleeding becomes too heavy, there’s nothing anyone can do. People tie holy relics to the bed. They chant prayers and hope for a miracle. Some families don’t name their baby for weeks, fearing they’ll have to bury it again soon after.

Midwives use anything they can find, sometimes even a fungus called ergot, to speed up labor, though it can be poisonous. Infections are rampant. A single cut or dirty hand, and within days, fever sets in. Husbands often bury one wife after another just to keep the family alive. Behind every front door, there are stories of women screaming in pain and babies who never took their first breath.

If you survive, you’re seen as lucky, not just strong. And when the harvest fails, the luck disappears. Hunger makes people even more desperate. And that’s the next horror. Medieval famine. In 1315, it rained for months across Europe. Crops rotted in the fields, and entire villages ran out of grain before winter even began. Chroniclers wrote that the summer never warmed up, and people stared at empty barns, wondering how much longer they could last.

Hunger changes all the rules. It changes people, too. What would you do if your children cried all night because their stomachs were on fire? Food prices are rising so fast that even farmers can no longer afford grain. Bread is stretched with bark, leaves, or crushed beans. Many chew boiled leather from old shoes.

Some dig up roots until their hands split open. Some search the roadside for dead animals, hoping there’s something left to scrape off. You hear stories of people eating rats and dogs. Then the stories get even darker. Chroniclers report that in 1317, people, in their desperation, opened graves. Another danger grows in the bread.

Ergot-infected rye causes burning pain, hallucinations, and blackened limbs. People call it Saint Anthony’s Fire. Entire villages tremble and scream at night because of the poisoned grain. No one understands why. People blame demons, saints, or the weather. Death tolls are rising in France, England, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Some areas are losing 10% of their population in just two years. Families are selling everything for a handful of oats. Some are selling themselves into servitude just to survive another week. Hunger is turning neighbors into rivals and strangers into threats. Now imagine this: if a father tries to escape the famine by fleeing his village, his body still legally belongs to the landowner.

Serfdom. In medieval Europe, many newborns were already bound to someone else’s land. Being a serf meant that the land beneath your feet determined your entire future. You grow up tilling the same land your parents and grandparents had tilled. Leaving the estate without permission was against the law, so people knew from a young age that running away carried real danger.

Daily life revolves around duties. You plow the lord’s fields several days a week. You repair fences, dig ditches, haul timber, and help with the harvest, which one is never allowed to keep. A serf must pay taxes in the form of grain, eggs, or labor. Some estates demand a fee if a daughter marries a man from outside the estate.

Others demand a fee for illegitimate children. These rules dictate almost every decision. And the lord of the manor has the final say. Court records throughout England and France contain entries of escaped serfs. Judges list names, ages, and estates and order the sheriffs to retrieve them. Many are caught within weeks.

Some hide in towns long enough to blend in with the population, since the laws in some towns release anyone who stays for a full year. But to survive that long requires luck and the help of strangers willing to risk punishment. Wives have fears, too. A lord can prevent a marriage or impose fines that plunge the family into debt for years.

In times of war or famine, the workload increases so much that even one’s own body becomes part of the estate’s emergency plan. People accept this because they have no power to defend themselves. And then comes the danger that grows when people look different, speak strangely, or behave outside the rules.

Something that turns fear into fire for thousands of victims. Witch burnings. People are always looking for someone to blame. In medieval Europe, this quickly becomes dangerous. By the end of the 14th century, ordinary people whispered about witches, about anyone who was different or plagued by bad luck. Perhaps a widow’s cows kept dying.

Perhaps a girl knew how to heal cuts with plants. Sometimes, people simply said something inappropriate. Once suspicion arises, it spreads like wildfire. In 1390, Jehane de Brigue, who lived near Paris, had a reputation for finding lost things. The wrong neighbor pointed the finger at her. She was brought to trial and burned alive by the court for witchcraft.

Such stories are not uncommon. Records show dozens of early witch trials before the great witch hunt even began. People used the law to control all those who don’t fit their mold. In 1431, a French teenager, Joan of Arc, stood in chains. Her crime was hearing the voices of saints and fighting for her country.

Churchmen interrogated her for months, twisting her every word. They called her a witch because she wore armor and wore her hair short. Ten thousand people watched as she was burned at the stake. Years later, she was declared innocent, but to the real Joan, that no longer mattered. Witch hunts are fueled by gossip, fear, and the need to blame someone when things go wrong.

If the harvest fails or a child dies, villagers look for a scapegoat. The punishments are harsh and swift. People can lose everything for being different. So, while fear reigns in the courtyard and the fire consumes the innocent, another kind of danger plays out in broad daylight, where even a champion can die before the eyes of the crowd.

Medieval tournaments. Sport brings people together, but in the Middle Ages, it means armor to mount their jousts and sharpen their lances. Imagine cheering on your favorite knight, knowing he may never rise again. Tournaments began in the 12th century as wild mock battles with huge crowds, dozens of men on horseback, and a prize for the last one standing.

Sometimes 80 or more combatants died in a tournament, like the bloody melee recorded in Germany. These weren’t just random knights. In 1559, King Henry II of France was preparing for a tournament for Rome and glory. The lance of his opponent shattered, and a splinter flew into Henry’s eye and lodged deep in his brain.

The king died after days of agony. All of France mourned, and the nobility began to think about this sport. The tournament is the focus of attention, but the audience wants more: violence, spectacle, and raw power. People bet on who will survive and who will be carried off the field. Worst of all, children watch, hoping to be next in the saddle to sit.

Blood stains the sand, but the game goes on. To achieve glory, you must risk everything. Right before the eyes of friends, rivals, and kings. Some say these games unite a kingdom. Others wonder how many mothers go home without their sons. Death goes hand in hand every season. Yet, a swift death in the arena sounds almost merciful compared to ordinary life in the Middle Ages.