Argue like a medieval Irish monk

18:22David Musgrove:But the fundamental kind of advice to just check where you're coming from and how are you acting towards others and how are you responding to other people that it ultimately says more about you than it does about them.

18:36Elizabeth Boyle:Yeah, that's a very wise sentiment, isn't it? And just on that prattling Irishman, I mean, I presume that's just a very nice translation. It's a very redolent translation, isn't it? But I mean, again, that speaks to social media.

18:50David Musgrove:Yeah, absolutely. I'd say it's a very clever... So that poem was translated by a scholar, Professor Liam Branagh, and it's a very clever translation. The adjective that's used is skælach, and so it's sort of just full of stories. You know, someone who's got so much to say and so much to tell, and it's saying, you know, don't be that. but it is again you know we live in a space where everyone wants their own voice to be heard at the expense of maybe listening to to others and it's a sort of sound bit of advice to to sometimes concede that we don't all necessarily need to give our opinion about something especially if we're not informed and that it's maybe more valuable to listen to the opinion of someone who is informed

19:30Elizabeth Boyle:on any given issue okay so that's that's that goes that humility aspect uh as much as anything else i good.

20:07David Musgrove:I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

20:15Elizabeth Boyle:Botox, autobotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness.

20:46Elizabeth Boyle:Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

21:00David Musgrove:Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

21:07Elizabeth Boyle:With summer coming to an end, you're going to be spending more time indoors. Get your home ready and save up to 50 % off custom window treatments during the Labor Day mega sale at Blinds.com. From room darkening to light filtering shades, finding the perfect fit is easy. Get free samples, expert design help, and professional measure and install services. Or DIY with confidence and support every step of the way. Shop up to 50 % off site-wide plus huge savings on doorbusters right now during the Labor Day mega sale at blinds.com. But then I suppose also this sense of trying to condense an argument, particularly for social media today.

21:44Elizabeth Boyle:Obviously, you need to try and condense an argument. You've only got a certain number of characters perhaps to explain something or to put across your view. So that does lead to this question of really polarised views because the moment you condense, The moment you simplify, the moment it becomes quite hard to get to the nuance. How do you imagine, and obviously this is a ridiculous question, but how do you imagine a medieval Irish monk would have contended with having to try and construct their arguments in the limited characters of a social media environment?

22:13David Musgrove:Well, I'd hope they would use the limited characters to simply link to a longer form article that gives more nuance and more context. So that's my ideal Irish monk on, you know, blue sky or whatever. But I think, you know, they're also going to be holding on to an idea that they have a truth and it's a religious truth. And there's a nice thing in the Apgatakrava, the first text we were talking about, where it talks about, you know, as a lantern raises its light in a dark house, so truth rises in the midst of faith in a person's heart. So, you know, there's this very, I suppose, faith-based idea of what truth is.

22:56David Musgrove:And arguably, even though, you know, people today, whether they are or aren't religious, their appeal to truth is often equally faith-based, even if it's a sort of secular faith or a faith about political views or what side of a political debate you're on or whatever. that appeal that there's something in your heart that's going to tell you what's true is something that I think people still very much feel today.

23:21Elizabeth Boyle:Just sticking a little bit longer on social media, and I realise again, this is ridiculous, so stop me, but I was just thinking about Godwin's Law, this idea that any online discussion will eventually boil down to somebody talking about Hitler or the Nazis. And then that's taken further to assume that if you are that person, you've essentially lost the argument because you've kind of run out of road and your argument is invalid. Obviously, they didn't have access to Hitler and the Nazis in medieval Ireland, but would there have been any sort of similar kind of thing where, you know, basically you kind of get to a point where you start talking about that, you've run out of road.

23:54Elizabeth Boyle:As you said, this is all done in a Christian context. There was, you know, Christianity was much more central to life than it is today. So presumably, the devil would always come into these conversations if you started saying, oh, you know, that's just the devil speaking, would that be a Godwin's Law equivalent?

24:11David Musgrove:I think calling someone a pagan is probably the Godwin's Law equivalent. Pagan, a heretic, a schismatic, they have all sorts of things that the minute you descend to saying it's heresy or paganism, that's probably the medieval version of Godwin's Law, I would say.

24:26Elizabeth Boyle:Another thing that often happens on social media is mansplaining, is this sense that a man comes along and explains something to a woman in a patronising fashion. When we chatted before in the last podcast, you said something, I think it was like something like 90 % of the medieval Irish literary canon is where we know an authorship is from men, which obviously leaves a very small amount from women. Were women able to engage in sort of argument and debate as far as you can tell?

24:55David Musgrove:Yeah, so yeah, I think the rough estimate that I gave last time was in excess of 97 % of the literature is where we can see an author is going to be written by men. And indeed, we see that, you know, in the poems of Myle Frigter, the only role of women in that poem is a temptation that's going to lead him away from the correct moral path, you know, and there's repeated statements that he should steer clear of women and not be having sex and so on. But in reality, we clearly have instances in medieval Ireland of women who are able to put forward their view and to sort of have a role in creating change or have a role in patronising religious institutions, giving donations.

25:39David Musgrove:We can see that, for example, the abbesses of the Church of Kildare have very powerful political roles. And indeed, one of the early 8th century Irish law texts describes describes the abbesses of Kildare as women who can turn back the streams of war, which suggests that they have a role in negotiation, political negotiation and peace talks and treaties and so on. So clearly there is a role for women to even de-escalate violence and put forward the side of peace when things seem to be getting out of hand. But we have to look much harder to find those women in the medieval Irish sources because the mansplaining is thick over a lot of the remaining sources and you have to look harder for the voices of women.

26:27David Musgrove:But when you find them, they do seem to have the possibility of holding quite politically influential roles. That's interesting.

26:34Elizabeth Boyle:And actually just talking about the secular position, that invites me to move on to that area a bit. So we talked about the texts we've talked about are very much in a monastic sort of religious environment. Presumably, we don't know so much about how secular figures, particularly secular figures of power, might have engaged in argument and how whether they would have wanted to sort of de-escalate if they did get into an argument with a competitor or whether they would have just naturally thought, well, the thing to do is to have a fight. How would they have sort of positioned that, do you think?

27:05David Musgrove:We have certainly a lot of evidence for extensive violence between and within kingdoms during the Middle Ages. But that being said, you know, I mentioned at the beginning this kind of genre of advice to kings type literature. and it certainly emphasizes the importance of treaties and negotiation and the role of the king in upholding a treaty and keeping his people safe and not engaging in gratuitous violence and gratuitous warfare and so on. There's very much a strong strand of thinking about just war and just violence and kings avoiding any warfare or violence that's seen as unjust. And the role of the king in upholding the law.

27:54David Musgrove:I mean, that's absolutely key in medieval Ireland, that it's the duty of the king to ensure that the law is administered in his kingdom and that people do not behave outside or against the law. So there's definitely procedures sort of baked into early Irish society that are at least trying to de-escalate violence and uphold the value of, as I say, maintaining treaties and having negotiations and so on. But quite a lot of that influence is coming from the church that is seeking to not only de-escalate violence, but also, interestingly, in early Irish law, there's an early 8th century piece of legislation called Kain Aravnan, which also originated out of Iona as well, which seeks to impose extraordinarily heavy penalties on anyone who injures a non-combatant during times of warfare.

28:49David Musgrove:So women, children, clerics, and so on. And it's clearly attempting to establish something akin to the rules of international law in terms of warfare and the treatment of non-combatants. So there's a lot of pressure coming from the church in general to, as I say, de-escalate violence and to ensure that justice has a role to play in the sort of ongoing relations between and within kingdoms.

29:17Elizabeth Boyle:You've mentioned Iona a couple of times. Just for our international listeners, we might not be aware of what Iona is. If you ever want to find a way to reduce your anger, then going to Iona, this beautiful island off the coast of Scotland, with this long monastic history, would be a great place to go. because, you know, I think it's one of the most peaceful places I've ever been. Maybe it was a particularly nice day. I think it was a very nice sunny day when I went there. But it feels like there's an environment where you might want to go to, which would sort of reduce your anger. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about Iona?

29:50David Musgrove:Yeah, I mean, Iona nowadays feels like somewhere that's sort of isolated geographically because, you know, in being in the Western Isles and, as you say, we think of it as being now maybe part of Scotland. But actually back in the 7th, 8th centuries, it was at the heart of a very kind of busy seaway. It was within the territory of the Kingdom of Dalriada, which extended from the Irish mainland across into the west of Scotland on the mainland. And we would have had to envisage a kind of traffic of people travelling between the places. And in fact, some of the literature that was written on Iona, including the biography of its founder, St.

30:32David Musgrove:Columba, shows people traveling from here, there and everywhere and passing through Iona on their way between the islands of Britain and Ireland. So it can now seem very peaceful and, as I say, somewhat isolated. But actually, in the Middle Ages, it was at the heart of this kind of constant sea traffic between the two islands. And so much so that the population of Iona would sometimes have to go to rather more distant or isolated islands in order to get that kind of peace and quiet and contemplative life that they might have been hoping for. Because Iona was a bit of a hub, really.

31:08Elizabeth Boyle:I realised the moment I said that, that you would correct me on my sensation of peacefulness there. Now look, I need to sort of move to a wrap up. I wonder, what do you think would really have stuck in the craw of a medieval Irish person if they witnessed the approach to debate and argument we have today? What would have made them think, oh, they're getting this all wrong, these people in the 21st century?

31:30David Musgrove:I think perhaps more than anything, a failure to really listen. I think that is something that comes across in a lot of these advice texts that listen first, speak second, I think is definitely something that runs through all of these threads. But also this idea that knowledge is a lifelong endeavour and it takes time to learn things. We live in this fast-paced world where this week everyone's an expert on the Strait of Hormuz and last week we were all experts on whatever was the leading news story then. But actually to really know anything about anything takes a lifetime. And that's what these texts also depict is a lifetime of learning, of reflection, of self-correction, of recognising when you've got something wrong.

32:24David Musgrove:And so I think they would tell us all to just slow down a little bit. We don't need to go at the pace that social media tries to get us to go at. So slow down, read, listen, think, think, do I really think what I think I think? And be open to changing your own mind about things too.

32:45Elizabeth Boyle:And just one other thing in terms of like the current social media environment, there's some people who've criticized the American president recently for impolite language, for using quite strong languages in his social media posts. Is there anything about sort of politic language, about using words judiciously that we might take from the medieval Irish?

33:04David Musgrove:Oh, absolutely, because the medieval Irish believed that words had real power, that violent words had the capacity to do real violence, and that words reveal truth, that truth is revealed through words and through language. So I think medieval Irish people would be absolutely appalled by some of the language that's used today, but also they ultimately believe that everyone will be judged by actions. And I think actions and being on the side of justice and wisdom and truth, yeah, President Trump might have a tough time when his moment of judgment comes. Maybe.

33:49Elizabeth Boyle:Now, look, to conclude, I wonder, and this is going to get a bit personal, so say if you don't want to, but do you ever actively employ the wisdom of these early medieval Irish writers that you've studied in your day-to-day? Do you ever find yourself, you know, if you're in a particularly lively academic debate or arguments, do you think, I need to channel the alphabet of devotion here.

34:11David Musgrove:Absolutely, I do. I mean, I have no religious belief at all myself, so I have to scrape away all of the kind of monastic stuff and the certain moralistic things about people's private lives and what have you. But when it comes down to it, I think I, or at least I hope I have, become better over the years at employing some of this kind of wisdom about listening and not just sort of charging off with my very strong, ill-found kind of opinion or whatever. So I think there is good advice in there. I've certainly tried to be less arrogant, less prideful, and more reflective. But maybe that's just about getting old.

34:51David Musgrove:Maybe that's less about medieval Irish literature and more just something that happens as you age. Brilliant.

34:56Elizabeth Boyle:So I think listen, don't leap in, be humble, use your language carefully. Those are the main things I'm getting. Have I missed anything else from our list of medieval Irish wisdom? Read. Read a lot. That's the... Read books. Read books. Read books. Not AI.

35:13David Musgrove:Not AI. Not social media. Read books.

35:17Elizabeth Boyle:Well, Lizzie Elizabeth Boyle, thank you very much for that. A fascinating insight into the art of arguing like a medieval Irish monk, I suppose, would be a reasonable way of talking about it. And to remind everyone, if you want more on this, then there's that podcast from a few years ago on History Extra Archive And of course, your book, Fierce Appetites, is an absolute belter. I said in the podcast before, it was one of the best books I'd read. And I stand by that. I've read quite a few more in the intervening few years, but I find it a particularly powerful, interesting read. And I came back to it, of course, before chatting to you.

35:50Elizabeth Boyle:And it remains a fascinating and powerful read. So I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone to get a sense of how medieval people felt and reacted to the world. And now maybe to think about how we should react to the world today. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Do let me know what you think and do check out my substack at historyextralifelessons.substack.com and let me know at lifelessonsathistoryextra.com if you have any comments on this life lesson, whether you employed the advice in your day-to-day and if you have an idea for a future life lesson from history that I could investigate.

36:35Elizabeth Boyle:With summer coming to an end, you're going to be spending more time indoors. Get your home ready and save up to 50 % off custom window treatments during the Labor Day Mega Sale at Blinds.com. From room darkening to light filtering shades, finding the perfect fit is easy. Get free samples, expert design help, and professional measure and install services. Or DIY with confidence and support every step of the way. Shop up to 50 % off site-wide plus huge savings on doorbusters right now during the Labor Day mega sale at Blinds.com. Fall is the perfect time to refresh and reorganize your space. At the Home Depot, find power tools and tool sets starting at$50 to help tackle DIY projects, home updates, and more.

37:18Elizabeth Boyle:Whether you're drilling brackets to support new shelving or sharpening your hedge trimmer blade with an angle grinder, The Home Depot has the tools you need to check projects off your list. Shop Labor Day savings at The Home Depot and gear up for fall projects with the right tools to keep your projects moving.

37:36David Musgrove:Cozy season is ahead and you'll be spending way more time inside. Is your home ready? Don't worry. With Wayfair, you can upgrade your space without breaking the bank. Score up to 70 % off during their Labor Day clearance on furniture, area rugs, mattresses and more. Plus, surprise flash deals you can't miss.

37:54Elizabeth Boyle:Whether it's one room or the whole house, Wayfair has pieces for every style and budget. Shop Wayfair's Labor Day clearance now through September 7th at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home.