Monty Python and The Incredibly Inaccurate Yet Hilarious Rendition of The Middle Ages

Before this class, I had heard of Monty Python and The Holy Grail but never seen it. It is now among my favorite movies. It's hilarious, and entertaining, however not at all historically accurate. Long before even finishing the movie, I had plenty of material to write this post. Monty Python and The Holy Grail is a tale of King Arthur of Britain, and several knights (referred to as The Knights of The Round Table) and their quest to find the Holy Grail. Along the way, they encounter many quests, including The Black Knight, a three-headed giant, The Knights Who Say (insert annoying word/phrase here) that are in desperate need of some shrubbery, The Castle Anthrax, and a handful of rude Frenchmen. This story allegedly takes place in the 10th century, "932 AD," as stated in the film.

This movie, like most others about the Middle Ages, really accentuates the horror and gore of the Middle Ages. In the beginning of the movie, a man was wandering through a village hollering, "Bring out your dead!" And the people of the village crawled out of baskets that were lying in the street, and brought their dead (and by dead, I mean their family members who had died that week) to the man who threw them on a platform. One villager brought out a man whom he was trying to pass off as dead, but he was very much still alive. The man who was collecting the bodies knocked him over the head with a club, and threw him in with the rest. This would never actually have happened.

The first problem King Arthur and The Knights of The Round Table encounter is The Black Knight. Really, nothing happens here except the knight is persistent on not letting any one pass, so much so that he is willing to fight after losing both arms and a leg. Hopefully I don't have to tell you how inaccurate that is. Here, what I saw that was problematic as far as historical accuracy, was The Black Knight's armor. His helmet was large and cylinder-shaped. (Picture included below) This was not at all what a knights gear would have looked like in the Middle Ages. They also used a mace to fight in some scenes, which while those were medieval, they weren't used until the 12th century, nearly 200 years after this story. Castles were also mentioned frequently, and those weren't popularized until the 11th century.

Finally, I noticed in one scene, (my favorite scene actually) King Arthur comes upon a witch trial. Three men thrusted a woman up on a platform, dressed as a stereotypical "witch," but then they do admit that they dressed her that way. Through a series of questions conducted, it was decided that a witch burns because she is made of wood, and wood floats, so if the woman weighed the same as a duck than she must be a witch. (I know, right?) While this was all well and humorous, witch trials didn't even happen until much much later, around the 1600's.

Don't lose hope in Monty Python yet, though! Okay, well maybe you can, but some of the aspects in the movie were based off real, true things. For example, in one scene, a song is sung about how one of the Knights of The Round table was so brave that he wasn't afraid to die even the most awful, excruciating death. This reflects beliefs that were real in the time period that the braver a knight was, the better. Another thing that was loosely accurate in the movie, was we were shown a flash of a monastery at one point, and the monks appeared to be chanting, which is also something that might have actually happened, monks often chanted what was called a Gregorian chant. In the same breath, though, they are hitting themselves over the head with planks of wood, which was significantly less likely. The Monks were indeed disciplined but, according to our Bennett book, they wouldn't waste time hitting themselves over the head when they could be reading, working in the fields, or copying manuscripts. While Monty Python is an amazing movie that I insist everyone watches- if you're looking for historical accuracy, well, keep looking.

Bennett, Judith M. Medieval Europe: a Short History. McGraw-Hill, 2011.

Gilliam, Terry, et al. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment, 2002.