There's been a lot of ink spilt on when the medieval period ends and the early modern period begins, which can get in the way of the simple truth: it happened in 1450.
Replies
Never before in the field of bluesky were so many historians hurt so badly by so few characters
aug 29, 2025, 1:20 am • 1 0 • view
How about 1485, when a Welsh usurper seized the English throne?
aug 27, 2025, 11:42 am • 7 0 • view
Them’s fighting words John.
aug 27, 2025, 8:23 am • 8 0 • view
Can't see what's controversial there! Started 1450, ended 1750, handing over the baton to modernity, reason, and much worse paintings for some reason
aug 27, 2025, 10:28 am • 22 1 • view
aug 27, 2025, 11:07 am • 15 0 • view
Hey everyone, it's another round number fetishist.
aug 27, 2025, 1:10 pm • 0 0 • view
As an early modernist working on Spain, I can happily confirm that it clearly happened in 1492
aug 27, 2025, 11:27 am • 18 0 • view
Columbus, the fall of Grenada and the Expulsion of the Jews! What more could you ask for?
aug 27, 2025, 1:11 pm • 4 0 • view
This cheap attempt to create beef between academic areas will not work. *grabs popcorn, eagerly reads replies* Damn it.
aug 27, 2025, 7:23 am • 13 0 • view
God, you’re so good at this. Take it on tour at various faculty meetings.
aug 27, 2025, 1:24 pm • 1 0 • view
It would date from the fall of the Roman Empire, wouldn’t it? So 1922.
aug 27, 2025, 9:40 pm • 1 0 • view
Day and time or you're not a REAL historian. 😁
aug 27, 2025, 6:38 am • 24 0 • view
25th of March baby, happy new year
aug 27, 2025, 6:39 am • 58 0 • view
Perfect. Up there with the day the Ice Age ended.
aug 27, 2025, 2:44 pm • 1 0 • view
Nope, 19th of July - coincidentally, same day Galway was liberated from the Indians.
aug 27, 2025, 10:09 am • 1 0 • view
25th March is just another day to let off fireworks.
aug 27, 2025, 7:15 am • 3 0 • view
Yeah but how come 100 Hundred Years War ending *and* Fall Of Constantinople in 1453 unless everyone knew it was a big deadline like Y2K or the end of 3G networks.
aug 27, 2025, 9:45 am • 12 0 • view
Picking the final date for the 100 years way is very much like naming a Dinosaur at 4.59pm on a Friday - looking at you Argentinosaurs.
aug 27, 2025, 10:34 am • 5 0 • view
Yeah but it didn't go to extra time
aug 27, 2025, 11:17 am • 2 0 • view
aug 27, 2025, 4:23 pm • 1 0 • view
I like to round to centuries for the big periods, in which case gotta go with 1500. If we're snapping to events, gotta be 1453, no?
aug 28, 2025, 12:17 am • 0 0 • view
1536-40?
aug 27, 2025, 3:18 pm • 0 0 • view
I always think of ‘early modern’ as beginning when I was born, i.e. 1950.
aug 27, 2025, 7:38 am • 19 0 • view
Ha!
aug 27, 2025, 7:39 am • 3 0 • view
That’s when it all seemed to kick off.
aug 27, 2025, 7:40 am • 6 0 • view
Is that when they started to wash?
aug 27, 2025, 9:11 am • 11 0 • view
No, we have to wait for Van Leeuwenhoek and the invention of the microscope.
aug 27, 2025, 2:21 pm • 2 0 • view
Nah, the early modern period began when people *stopped* washing and began to wipe themselves down with linen instead.
aug 27, 2025, 2:41 pm • 1 0 • view
Early modern is when they invented colour history and they didn't have to go around in shades of drab all the time. Easily confused with being constantly dirty though!
aug 27, 2025, 9:26 am • 15 1 • view
1453.
aug 27, 2025, 1:42 pm • 7 0 • view
1517. Maybe 1563. Or 1492. Did I mention that periodization is hot, stinking garbage?
aug 27, 2025, 4:23 pm • 3 0 • view
Spengler would like a word..
aug 27, 2025, 1:32 pm • 2 0 • view
I hold that it's about 2 pm on 30 January 1649 (in England ), and about a century earlier in Wales, but I accept that's a minority view.
aug 27, 2025, 7:25 am • 80 0 • view
Wait why
aug 27, 2025, 9:25 am • 3 0 • view
In jest - mostly - if you regard the Civil War as just another baronial revolt (which you can sort of make a case for), it sort of makes sense: the difference being that the deposed king was executed in public as a criminal, rather than disposed of quietly, in private. Wales, much more clear cut.
aug 27, 2025, 9:49 am • 11 0 • view
aug 27, 2025, 10:21 am • 6 0 • view
And this is an entirely correct response.
aug 27, 2025, 10:32 am • 6 0 • view
Had this exact same ... 'discussion' with someone in a very hot field at the weekend, while dressed entirely in wool 😂
aug 27, 2025, 10:48 am • 4 0 • view
In the beer tent?
aug 27, 2025, 10:56 am • 0 0 • view
No, worse – on the march!
aug 27, 2025, 10:57 am • 0 0 • view
I had such bad 'pikeman's crotch' once, that I stayed in my tent whimpering all evening.
aug 27, 2025, 11:08 am • 1 0 • view
Worcester?
aug 27, 2025, 11:05 am • 0 0 • view
Yep. Still scraping the dust off everything.
aug 27, 2025, 11:44 am • 0 0 • view
I have every sympathy with you on that! I am not being entirely serious as you might have gathered (but not entirely flippant, either). We really shouldn't take this sort of thing dogmatically, especially while wearing wool in full sunshine.
aug 27, 2025, 10:50 am • 3 0 • view
I'm a soundly 'Three Kingdoms' man, but even then you've got to explain a fair deal. John Rees' recent book on the 'Fiery Spirits' is a good other side to Adamson's 'Noble Revolt', a revolution from above AND below.
aug 27, 2025, 11:45 am • 0 0 • view
But yes, once you start trying to create clear lines between things you realise the ground is made of sand...
aug 27, 2025, 11:46 am • 4 0 • view
This is it. And what makes doing/reading about history interesting and worthwhile, hopefully. The sense that any question has probably been asked before and that, depending on available evidence and our position, answers can change. This is allowed, and healthy.
aug 27, 2025, 12:04 pm • 3 0 • view
Good GIF, too.
aug 27, 2025, 10:33 am • 2 0 • view
So does that mean Wales would have entered modernity before England?
aug 27, 2025, 9:50 am • 1 0 • view
Maybe, depending on what you think 'modernity' is. Removing the status of Welsh law and the customs of the March (along with that area's legal independence), along with realigning the landholding of huge areas ends something that's established in stages from c.1000. Let's call that the Middle Ages.
aug 27, 2025, 9:55 am • 3 0 • view
Anyway, what I'm really getting at is that, in Wales, the *entire country* (for want of a better word), goes from being private property, in one way or another, to a regular part of the kingdom of England in under a decade. That's genuinely new.
aug 27, 2025, 9:58 am • 3 0 • view
But Henry VIII? Absolutely a medieval monarch. Just with a lot of surviving paperwork. Edward VI? Discuss. Ditto Mary and Elizabeth. James I/VI would have been quite offended, I suspect!
aug 27, 2025, 9:56 am • 1 0 • view
📌
aug 27, 2025, 4:49 pm • 0 0 • view
Simply, the entire legal status, basis and structures of government and legal system was harmonised and brought in line with England at the same tome as the monasteries (really important landholders in Wales and its March), were dissolved so between 1536 and 1542. Genuinely revolutionary.
aug 27, 2025, 9:51 am • 9 0 • view
But I am - as a medievalist - mostly taking the mickey out of such arbitrary definitions. You can place these boundaries where you want for whatever reasons you like.
aug 27, 2025, 9:52 am • 11 0 • view
Then the Middle Ages ended in 2130 with the invention of time travel
aug 27, 2025, 9:57 am • 6 0 • view
we won't know until after we get there.
aug 27, 2025, 1:18 pm • 0 0 • view
If you like! The longer I work as a historian, the less inclined I am to get hung up on periodisation.
aug 27, 2025, 9:59 am • 2 0 • view
This is one of the questions I regularly put to my survey students on exams.
aug 27, 2025, 10:22 am • 4 0 • view
It's a really useful (if annoying), question. And a great mental exercise.
aug 27, 2025, 10:33 am • 2 0 • view
Owing to a considerable gap in hiring and expertise in our department, it's very rare that I get 1789 as a response...
aug 27, 2025, 3:17 pm • 0 0 • view
In art history I think it’s about 1620 in England, which is pretty much exactly when I start to lose interest
aug 27, 2025, 10:53 am • 48 1 • view
The last day of 1599 11:59:59. I'm never sure if it's the old or new calendar. I always kind of fudge the issue unless I need to be serious.
aug 27, 2025, 11:55 am • 3 0 • view
How is there a cartoon for this discourse? I love it! (Leave it to Kate! Hahaha!)
aug 27, 2025, 5:27 pm • 2 0 • view
(Who is on here btw - katebeaton.bsky.social)
aug 27, 2025, 7:33 pm • 3 0 • view
Just found her after posting!
aug 27, 2025, 8:58 pm • 1 0 • view
I love this.
aug 27, 2025, 12:10 pm • 1 0 • view
This is how I feel when people talk about “revolutionary” AI technology
aug 27, 2025, 11:28 am • 17 0 • view
Haha
aug 27, 2025, 12:29 pm • 4 0 • view
My understanding is that Ireland, the world and Henry VIII were medieval until the exact moment that modernity was birthed by Henry VIII having himself declared king of Ireland. Certainly this is what all the books say.
aug 27, 2025, 11:35 am • 10 0 • view
Its start coincides with the idea of diabolical witchcraft coming to prominence. Coincidence?
aug 27, 2025, 12:10 pm • 3 0 • view
1453 to be precise
aug 27, 2025, 8:24 am • 6 0 • view
No, that's when the Middle Ages *began*. As is very widely understood, the Middle Ages are what comes after the Romans.
aug 27, 2025, 9:01 am • 14 0 • view
No, your middle ages begin a little after 40, whether you’re Roman or not.
aug 27, 2025, 12:04 pm • 7 0 • view
No, because that was the Fall of Constantinople and thus the end of the world. I won’t be taking questions.
aug 27, 2025, 11:33 am • 5 0 • view
The end of civilisation and the birth of modernity. Discuss.
aug 27, 2025, 11:42 am • 3 0 • view
Fair enough. I think this deserves to be debated at length on TikTok.
aug 27, 2025, 11:44 am • 3 0 • view
Yes, in England in 1450 everyone stopped singing Sumer Is Icumen In and then couldn’t sing anything at all until Henry VIII wrote Greensleeves.
aug 27, 2025, 12:04 pm • 18 1 • view
😆
aug 27, 2025, 4:46 pm • 1 0 • view
When the royalties go to royalty.
aug 28, 2025, 12:03 pm • 1 0 • view