Terry, of course, is best known along with compatriots John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, and Eric Idle as a member of the famed comedy group Monty Python's Flying Circus.

But yes, Terry was awarded a Doctorate of Letters (DLitt) honoris causa from the University of Glasgow. This was not only for his contributions to film and television but also "in recognition of his academic research about medieval history and literature".

In 2004 Terry wrote, produced, and presented the series Medieval Lives aired on the BBC. In the separate programs we learn about the times of Medieval Europe based on the characters of The Peasant, The Monk, The Damsel, The Minstrel, The Knight, The Philosopher, The Outlaw, and The King.

Of course as is de rigueur today, a large part of the shows are given over to debunking widely held conceptions of the time. For instance, we learn there were some well-to-do peasants whose lives were not all that bad. The monks were often wealthy and lived lives of considerable pleasure. Women were scarcely damsels in distress but could be independent land owners and influential in politics. Not all knights were chivalrous and you wouldn't hear minstrels singing about Courtly Love which was an institution that didn't really exist. Medieval alchemists were often men of wide learning who paved the way to modern science. Outlaws were not like Robin Hood and instead robbed from anyone and gave to themselves while the sheriffs were busy executives trying to enforce the laws. And some of the kings that we've been taught were good were actually pretty rotten and other kings with bad press were not that bad - or perhaps they were not quite that bad.

For instance, Richard I, the good king of the Robin Hood tales and who led the Christian armies on the Third Crusade, wasn't that great a king. Certainly not for the English. Instead his reputation has been puffed up to make King John, his brother and successor, look bad.

In fact, Richard was scarcely even English. Although he was born in Oxford, he spent most of his time in continental Europe and drained his English lands of their money to pay for the Crusade which accomplished absolutely nothing. Then Richard drained the country even more to pay for his ransom when on his return home he was taken prisoner by King Leopold of Austria. Leopold demanded £100,000 which was eight years England's National Income.

But sometimes the academic opinion retains the tradition. The original picture of Richard III was of a horrible king who would murder his young nephews. But today there are people who now say Richard III was actually a quite good king and his reputation as the murderer of his young nephews was later propaganda to make the Tudor kings and queens look good. It was invented, the Richard Champions say, to justify Henry Earl of Richmond - who became Henry VII and founded the Tudor Dynasty - taking over the kingship for which he had no claim.

However, the Richard-Was-A-Good-Chap position has not found ground with most professional historians. Although perhaps the evidence may not be sufficient to warrant conviction in a modern court, most academics point out that Richard had both means and opportunity to murder the Young Princes. He certainly had the motive since his nephews had a better claim to the English throne than he did.

More to the point the murdering of relatives who were competitors for the crown was pretty much the way all medieval monarchs operated, a practice that continued well into the Renaissance. Even Elizabeth I, widely regarded as one of the greatest and most benevolent of English monarchs, kept her cousin, Mary Stuart the Queen of the Scots, prisoner for 25 years and then had her executed for fear she might claim the English throne.

Another part of medieval life that Terry didn't mention was how a real medieval castle could depart from the modern conception. Today castles are pictured as massive stone structures with elegant tapestries and richly adorned rooms filled with fancy furniture and huge roaring fireplaces for a maximum of comfort. The inhabitants were attended by multitudes of servants who waited on the pleasure of the royal family.

Instead real castles were cold and drafty and dirty. Floors were covered with straw that was replaced infrequently and quickly attracted bugs, rats, and mice. Rooms for bathing were virtually unknown and for other necessary activities there were rooms that served as "houses of easement" and constructed so the tangible products dropped outside the walls leaving tale-tale streaks along the castle walls.

But what surprises many fledgling medievalists is that castles were virtually non-existent in England until 1066 when the Normans from France invaded the country. They were constructed to help the new king, William the Conquerer, and his friends control the populace who were not always happy being ruled by invaders who not only came from another country but didn't even speak their language.

The earliest castles were wooden structures of the type called motte and bailey. Typically they were no more than a central wooden tower built on a hill that was surrounded by a wooden palisade. Inside the fence the castle's owner could put in whatever peripheral structures he might need.

The motte is where we get the word "moat" meaning an (often) water-filled ditch surrounding the castle. However, the motte - pronounced MAHT - was not the ditch, but the hill. The mottes were often man-made and it was digging out the dirt to pile up to make the hill was what produced the ditch encircling the castle.

A man-made hill could not bear a great weight and so the tower - called the keep - was not only wood but fairly small. It served mainly as a watch tower and an emergency refuge. Instead the owner of the castle usually lived with his family in a large "manor" house outside the castle in a village where the serfs and craftsmen also lived.

Stone castles came later. They had to be built on stable ground, either flat ground or on a naturally occurring hill But if stone was abundant, a motte could be constructed using dirt with stone rubble for better support for a stone keep.

Of course, a stone keep looked more formidable to a besieging army, and then as now stone structures carry more prestige than wood. So sometimes the castle owner would fake it. With the right texture and decoration, a wood surface can be disguised as stone and no less a personage than George Washington built Mount Vernon out of wood but with a faux pierre overlay. George used long pine boards which were grooved and carved to look like blocks of stone. The walls were then painted but before the paint dried the workers threw sand onto the surface. This technique is known as rustication and even close up Mount Vernon looks like it's made of stone.

Another item of medieval history that Terry could have pointed out is that actual battles were rare. If you tote up the important battles in Medieval Europe you'll find only a handful: The Battle of Hastings (1066), the Battle of Bouvines (1214), the Battle of Agincourt (1415), and the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485). Of course, Hastings marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon Period and the Battle of Bosworth Field is often cited as the end of the Medieval Era and the start of the English Renaissance.¹

Instead many so-called battles were not. They might have been skirmishes, yes, sieges, indeed, and pillaging, certainly. The truth is pitched battles between full armies were rare. Instead as one historian pointed out, going to war in the Middle Ages was rarely to overthrow your opponent. Instead war was like going on strike in later times. A war was to exert pressure on your enemy to come to terms for some real or perceived grievance. So an army would ride into a village and steal the livestock and crops, burn the houses, and kill the peasants.

Of course, sometimes fighting between knights was unavoidable but these were scarcely battles. When attacking a village there might be some sparring with the local garrison - as what happened at Le Mans before Richard the Lionheart (played by Anthony Hopkins in The Lion in Winter) began pursing his dad, Henry II (played by Peter O'Toole). Richard's purpose, though, was not to overthrow his dad but just to make him promise to make Richard the next king. True, Richard would often besiege an enemy's castle - his last siege was at Chalus-Chabron in 1199 - but Richard only fought actual battles in the Middle East while he was on the Crusade. His father, although considered one of the most important English kings, never fought in a real battle in his entire life.

Unfortunately, attacking a town might bring in horses, livestock, and grain, but it wouldn't provide the ready, the moolah, or the boodle the soldiers expected. So once the pillaging of the village was done, the knights would head to the nearest monastery and steal all the gold and silver the monks had on hand. Robbing monasteries was pretty much par for the war and was the way that Henry's namesake oldest son - called Henry The Young King - got the cash to pay his soldiers when he was trying to convince his dad to give him more land and money.

One thing Terry did was to point out the irony that medieval monks took vows of silence and poverty when they had so much money. The wealth of the monasteries was legendary and the subject of many a jibe and sneer even during the Middle Ages as was the monks' pastime of taking recreation with the fair damsels in the nearest village. Finally in 1536 Henry VIII began decreeing that the monasteries were to be disbanded and their money and land would be his. Today one of biggest tourist attractions in England are the ruins of the monasteries that were forced into abandonment by this most famous, if not the most loved, of English kings.

Naturally Terry presented the series with much wit and humor. However there was no program specifically about the humor of the Middle Ages. Yes, people in the Middle Ages liked a good joke, and there were joke books written and circulated.

The most famous joke book from the Middle Ages was the Liber Facetiarum by Poggio Bracciolini who lived between 1380 to 1459. Over the years there have been many editions of Poggio's book and we can be sure the jokes were terribly funny.

Of course, a lot of time the jokes were just about everyday life:

 A gentleman who was on his travels took lodging in an inn, where there was set before him a supper consisting for the most part of a scanty salad and some watered wine. After the wretched repast, the traveller called for the doctor, saying that he wished to pay him.
 The host came forward and said, "Sir, you are wasting your time looking for a doctor in this village."
 The gentleman replied: "It seems that you do not know yourself. I am going to pay you as a doctor, and not as a host, for you have given me a supper fit only for a sick man. Here is your fee!"

And another was:

 A man from Florence went to Rome to buy a horse. The dealer's price was 25 ducats and the Florentine said he would pay 15 ducats down and then pay him the balance later. The dealer said that was fine and the next day he saw the Florentine and asked for the rest of the money. "We should keep our bargain", the Florentine said. "We agreed I would be your debtor. But if I paid you I would not longer be in your debt."

Poggio, it should be noted, was from Florence.

As you might expect, jokes involving celebrities were also fair game.

 Lorenzo de' Medici was asked by Ugolino Martelli why he had got up so late in the morning. In return, Lorenzo asked the other what he had done early in the morning. And when Ugolino told him of certain light and foolish things he had done, Lorenzo replied, "What I was dreaming, then, was worth more than all you were doing."

Of course, political jokes were popular and some even had a bit of a more modern slant:

 In the same war which the Florentines waged with Pope Gregory X, he followed different factions, now adhering to one, now to the other. Being asked by some why, he switched sides so often: "Because," he said, "I cannot lie on the same side too long."

What is surprising is how many of the jokes were rather harsh jabs at the clergy particularly since for most of his life Poggio worked for the Pope. One of his jokes was:

 On the day that Angelus was made a Roman Cardinal by Pope Eugene, a certain Lawrence, a civil priest, returned home, cheerful, applauding, and all bursting into laughter and joy. When the neighbors asked him what the news had made him so happy and cheerful. "Well," he said, "it is I am in great hope that after madmen and lunatics have been made cardinals, and given that Angelotus is crazier than I am, I will also be soon appointed as a cardinal."

Some were even more pithy:

 The worst men in the world live in Rome, and worse than the others are the priests, and the worst of the priests they make cardinals, and the worst of all the cardinals is made Pope.

But there are a few tales where the priests are shown some sympathy.

 There is a town in our mountains in which many people from various places had gathered for the festival of St. Stephen. A priest was going to deliver a sermon to the people. As it was a late hour of the day, the priests were hungry and feared the sermon would be a long one, and all of them went to the pulpit and urged the priest to keep the sermon short. He listened to their urgings and as he usually does he gave an introduction to the sermon
 "My brothers," he said, "last year, when you were standing in this place, I was speaking about the sanctity of the life and miracles of this Saint of ours, but I did not omit anything that I heard about him and or what was written in the Sacred Books, all of which I believe you keep in memory. But since then, I understood that he had done nothing new. So just make the Sign of the Cross, give your confession, and depart." And so he left.

What strikes the reader is how many of the jokes deal with topics that stray from Traditional Family Values. For instance, Poggio included the rather daring tale:

 A lady, a citizen of our city and most reputable person, was asked by a messenger if she had no letter to send to her husband who was in foreign lands acting as ambassador of the Republic.
 "How", she said, "can I write, if my husband has taken the pen away with him and has left the ink-pot empty?"

There are also a surprising number of jokes about dalliances between the local ladies with the clergy:

 A young peasant became suspicious of the visits of the parish priest to his home while he had been out hunting for his donkey who had wandered off. So one day rather than go out to look for the donkey he hid under the bed. The priest arrived and the peasant soon heard sounds of vigorous activity above his head. When the tumblings finally ceased he heard the priest say the experience let him see whole world before him. The peasant then called out from beneath the bed "Can you tell me where my lost donkey is?"

Poggio wrote the original jokes in Latin and Latin editions are available for the armchair Medievalist who wants to compare the original with modern and often free translations. It should be no surprise that variants of the jokes have survived down to modern times. The joke that Poggio titled "De Guilhelmo Qui Habebat Priapeam Supellectilem Formosam" has a similar theme to the folk tales Vance Randolph heard in the Ozarks in the 1940's and 50's that he called "He Had Three Sizes" and "The Double Action Sailor".

Terry began performing comedy while he was a student at Oxford and after graduation he began appearing in the television "sketch" comedy series Twice a Fortnight and The Complete and Utter History of Britain. But it's as a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus that he gained his international fame. One of his most famous sketches was as the member of the Spanish Inquisition ("No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!") who wore a World War I leather flying helmet (a "Biggles" helmet). But he also assumed the role as the naked organist that showed up at the beginning of the shows in the third season.

After all, his fans say you can never see enough of Terry Jones.

References and Further Reading

Terry Jones's Medieval Lives, BBC, 2004.

"Monty Python Star, Terry Jones, Awarded Honorary Degree, University of Glasgow, June 21, 2013.

Richard the Lionheart, John Gillingham, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978.

The Lion in Winter, James Goldman, Screenplay, Dell Publishing, 1968.

Life in the UK Test: Study Guide 2023: The Essential Study Guide for the British Citizenship Test, Red Squirrel Publishing.

"Renaissance", Encyclopedia Britannica.

Liber facetiarum, Intratext.

The Facetiae of Giovanni Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, Bernhardt Hurwood (Editor and Translator), Award Books, 1968.

The Facetiae or Jacose Tales of Poggio, Volumes I and II, Poggio Bracciolini, Bernhardt Hurwood (Editor and Translator), 1879.

The Facetiae of Poggio and Other Medieval Story Tellers, Poggio Bracciolini, Edward Storer (Editor and Translator), Broadway Translation, George Routledge and Sons, E. P. Dutton and Company, 1928.

Pissing in the Snow and Other Ozark Folktales, Vance Randolph, University of Illinois Press, 1976.