A medievalist writes about myths of the Middle Ages, such as bathing, the Dark Ages, cats, and life expectancy.
HN commenters link it to correct common beliefs about medieval life, such as bathing habits and cats, and for the history of the term "doctor".
A recent weblog post going over the history of this starting back in ~1200:
> However, the term “doctor” wasn’t usually used to speak about those who subsequently went on to work with patients in the field of medicine. Why? Well, the term “doctor” comes from the Latin verb “docere” meaning to teach. So, if you were called a medical doctor it meant that you were teaching at Salerno, not that you were out in the field actually doing the stuff you were trained to do.
> The people who got trained at Salerno, took their degree, and went out into the world to practice medicine needed a title which made it clear that they were not university professors, but university trained, so that people knew what their job was. And they had one – they were called physicians.
[…]
> In English the term “doctor” didn’t start being used to address people with medical degrees until the seventeenth century, and it began more particularly in Scotland. Funnily, the use of the term was meant to confirm respect to the doctor confirming that, yes, they were very smart indeed. Yes, that’s right – they were as smart as all the people with PhDs, bless them.[8] The medical people were trying to catch up with the humanities people because everyone knew that it’s really hard to get a PhD and it confers authority. This took off because everyone post-enlightenment absolutely loves to crank themselves about how important Science is, or whatever. The fact remains however, that it is a relatively new…
Not explicitly mentioned in the article, but alluded by the sexually-suggestive title, is the fact that St. Hildegard is not solely recognised by the Catholic Church for her extraordinary sanctity and heroic virtues, she is also lionized and sexualized by the LGBT community as a historical Queer Icon, including favorable modern comparisons to the likes of Janelle Monáe.
https://queersaints.wordpress.com/3-saints-and-sinners-in-the-medieval-church/queer-mystics/hildegard-of-bingen-d-1179/
https://going-medieval.com/2018/06/05/considering-bad-motherfuckers-hildegard-of-bingen-and-janelle-monae/
https://nihilobstat.info/2020/06/19/the-headache-of-st-hildegard-of-bingen/
The dark ages simply refers to the loss of texts. There are few surviving texts from that period, so it is “dark”. Later the term was re-branded to mean “bad time when no new science was done” but that’s a viewpoint that doesn’t fit the facts.
Source (a very enjoyable read at that!): https://going-medieval.com/2017/05/26/theres-no-such-thing-as-the-dark-ages-but-ok/
Rites were in latin yes. But sermons were generally in vernacular. Otherwise there would be little engagement between priest and his parish during the mass.
The somewhat, odd, obsession of some Old-Catholic sects with latin is notable but not entirely orthodox.
Some info on the subject: https://going-medieval.com/2020/09/04/on-sermons-and-the-vernacular/
The article I quoted (by someone who calls herself a doctor and a medieval historian, but I have no way of checking her credentials) contradicts yours: https://going-medieval.com/2017/05/26/theres-no-such-thing-as-the-dark-ages-but-ok/
Of course, I don't claim to be an expert myself and can't readily judge which of the two articles is more accurate.
In fact, maybe they bathed TOO much: https://going-medieval.com/2019/08/02/i-assure-you-medieval-people-bathed/
But they also gave us soap, there's that.