Terry Jones gets back at the Renaissance
“The main reason I wanted to make Medieval Lives was to get my own back on the Renaissance. It’s not that the Renaissance has ever done me any harm personally, you understand. It’s just that I’m sick of the way people’s eyes light up when they start talking about the Renaissance. I’m sick of the way art critics tend to say: ‘Aaaah! The Renaissance!’ with that deeply self-satisfied air of someone who is at last getting down to the Real Thing. And I’m sick to death of that ridiculous assumption that that before the Renaissance human beings had no sense of individuality.”
So begins Terry Jones’ explanation of why he made the TV series Medieval Lives. Jones was a Python, yes, but he’s also a “renowned scholar of medieval literature and history” who has a gift for making history not dry and boring, but funny and interesting. If you haven’t yet seen Medieval Lives, check it out.
The thought of one of the Pythons as a “renowned scholar” seems amusing at first, but then they were a well-educated bunch. I know I probably picked up a lot of tidbits of information as I laughed at their antics. In fact the first time I ever heard of the Spanish Inquisition was probably on a Monty Python episode. (Not that I was expecting it…)