Tag Archives: peasants

Stupid Things Modern People Do

Posted on March 2, 2012 | 5 Comments

How many times have you heard someone scoff at the ignorant things that people in the past used to do?  A lot, right?  Now many times have you found yourself feeling smug because you can take a shower while those nasty Medieval peasants never bathed (which is a lie, by the way)?  A lot of people think that we in the Modern Age are the smartest and savviest people ever.  But I have a feeling that if someone from a bygone era could take a peek into our world they would shake their heads at some of the truly insane things that we all do.

Here are my top choices for the mind-numbingly stupid things that modern people do:

1.  We buy water.  The bottled water industry makes billions of dollars a year.  While one could argue that it’s important to have pure drinking water and that a lot of people throughout history haven’t had access to this basic necessity, does that really justify paying a dollar or more for a bottle of water?  Taps abound everywhere.  Modern tap water is much cleaner than anything people of the past had available to them.  And that’s even before we run it through a filter.  But here we are, repeatedly paying big money for “special” water in a bottle.  And guess what?  Most of the time that water comes from a tap somewhere else.

How ridiculous is it that we turn up our noses at free water and dig deep in our purses to buy someone else’s water?

2.  We sit in one place all day.  Not necessarily by choice, but we do.  I do at least.  Throughout most of human history people have spent their day moving.  Whether that was working in the fields or marching as an army or taking care of household tasks, people moved.  The wealthiest of people may have spent long stretches of time sitting at a dinner table or in a parlor having tea, but they still went for walks and moved around from engagement to engagement.

Here in the modern world so very many of us spent at least 8 hours a day in Cubeville.  Our office chairs get butt-grooves.  If we do get up it’s usually only to walk as far as the printer or the bathroom or the water-cooler (which someone has paid for).  Those who do find some time to move throughout the day pay money to go to special places with machinery that helps us use our muscles.  An entire multi-billion dollar fitness industry has risen up to compensate for the fact that we are evolving into banana slugs.

3.  We voluntarily ingest chemicals.  Seriously, have you ever read the label on some of your favorite foods?  I have a package of Girl Scout cookies sitting right next to me.  Some of the ingredients include thiamine mononitrate, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, and annatto color.  I don’t even want to know what’s in the Big Mac I had last week.  I read an article a while back that talked about how the McRib sandwich includes some of the same ingredients as those used in yoga mats.

Not only that, naturally produced and minimally processed foods, the kind people have eaten for millennia, are next to impossible to find and really expensive when you do find them.  Most of us are completely unaware of what parts of the cow we’re eating.  And don’t get me started on the contents of hot dogs, yummy as they are.  We’ve come a long way from that delicious Medieval peasant pottage that was a staple of historic diet.

We’re paying the price for it too.  Obesity is a problem like it never has been.  What we’ve accomplished in modern, curative medicine for acute conditions we’ve totally lost in everyday health and wellbeing.

4.  We don’t talk to people.  At least not directly.  I’m as guilty as the next modern person of chatting for hours online and sending emails to my friends instead of picking up the phone.  Or visiting.  But back in the day not only was visiting a major social activity, communities would gather in the center of town or in people’s houses for real, live interaction with their neighbors.  The tradition of oral storytelling has been replaced by more sitting, in front of the TV this time, and making music together, dancing, and conversation have become increasingly rare art forms.

Not surprisingly then, cases of anxiety, depression, and mental illness have been on a measured rise throughout the 20th and into the 21st century.  Numerous studies have shown that the less time you spend interacting in person with other people the greater your chances for depression.  And who’s to say that we won’t lose our ability to interact with each other at all?

5.  We buy stuff with money we don’t have.  Guess how the Great Depression of the 1930s started?  It started because throughout the wild days of the 1920s people were buying stocks and things on margin.  That means that they were “buying” them with the idea that when the stocks turned a profit that profit would be used to buy the original stock.  And then the bottom fell out.  History repeated itself in 2007, although no one wants to admit it.

But guess what?  The same thing happens every day.  I’m as guilty of it as the next person.  Although I don’t have as much credit card debt as the average American, if for some reason my credit card company decided I had to pay them back immediately, I wouldn’t be able to do it.  Multiply that by millions and suddenly you realize that our entire economic system is built on nothing.

Peasants and lower class folks of bygone eras might have been considered poor by modern standards, they didn’t have as much stuff as we do, but they also didn’t live under a mountain of credit card debt.  I would hypothesize that if all of the debts we’ve rung up to sustain our modern lifestyles was suddenly called in, we’d be in much worse shape than the peasants of a thousand years ago.

I think I’ve proven my point.  We might think that we’re modern, enlightened people, but at the same time we’ve trapped ourselves in a lot of really silly or unhealthy behavior.  There is no historical precedent for some of the nim-nod things we do.

Of course, it makes me wonder what kind of face-palm inducing activities people will be involved with in a hundred years or so.  Whatever those things may be, you can bet they’ll be looking back on the people of today and calling us ignoramuses.

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Medieval Monday: Medieval Technology – Part Two: Farmville

Posted on February 27, 2012 | 5 Comments

One of the biggest misunderstandings in history is that the Middle Ages were a time of ignorance and deprivation, a time when life was nasty, brutish, and short.  The assumption is that because higher learning was restricted to monasteries, because civilization was more spread out, and because the Church was the greatest unifying factor in Europe that people were dirty and stupid.  The truth couldn’t be further from this.

The Middle Ages was, in fact, a time of discovery and advancement on many levels.  One of the reasons why people write it off as the “Dark Ages” is because so many of the advancements, especially in the early part of the Middle Ages, were rural and agrarian.  But because the common man isn’t as flashy as philosophers and scientists in huge urban centers they don’t get as much attention.  Without the quiet, steady advancement of agricultural technology, though, the big cities with their fancy architecture and science can’t grow and function.

The Roman Empire was very good at urban and military technology, but it wasn’t as good at the basics of rural technology.  The huge Roman plantations, or latifundia, were owned by a few wealthy citizens and run by legions of slaves.  Honestly, that’s not the most efficient system.  Slaves have no vested interest in their jobs or the land that they work.  The Romans also failed to take advantage of a few simple technological advances, from more effective horse harnesses to more efficient plows, that were available to them.

The first and perhaps best advancement in rural Medieval Europe, one that laid the groundwork for all the rest, was simply the feudal system.  No longer was the land worked by slaves.  As central Roman power broke down and barbarian tribes took over the countryside of Europe, manors owned by local lords, made up of small farms worked by peasants and serfs became the order of the day.  The beauty of the feudal system was that peasants worked a certain amount of hours and days on their lord’s land as service to him, but they also worked land for themselves.  And when someone has even a small sense of ownership over their land, their livelihood, and their life it inspires them with a whole different level of motivation to advance and produce.

The most important technological advancement of the early Middle Ages was the introduction of the horse as the go-to draft animal.  In Roman times oxen were used to plow fields and horses were ridden or used to pull chariots at most.  And yeah, this worked okay, but oxen were slow and the throat-and-girth harness used for horses choked the poor animals if they tried to pull anything larger than a chariot.

Then voila!  The padded horse collar was introduced from China by way of trade routes.  The padded horse collar sat much lower on a horse’s neck and pressed against their breastbone instead of their throat.  This allowed them to pull four times the weight of the old style harness.  Add to that the introduction of the iron horseshoe and suddenly Medieval farms had an animal that could pull a heavy plow longer distances at a faster speed.  This, of course, meant that more land could be cleared and cultivated.  Did the Romans have access to this Chinese technology.  Yes, they did.  Did they take advantage of it?  Nope.  Their loss.

The heavy plow went hand-in-hand with this advancement in agricultural technology.  To greatly over-simplify the tool, a heavy plow involved a metal-reinforced plowshare mounted on wheels so that it could be raised or lowered to suit the land being plowed which was attached to a harness for multiple animals.  A slightly later Medieval invention was the addition of a harrow, which broke up the clods of dirt churned up by the plowshare.  This was important because the whole process could be done at once instead of requiring someone else to come along and break up the clods.

The heavy plow was particularly important further north in Europe, where the dirt was more dense, and in previously forested areas that had been recently cleared.  Now add the newly effective horses to a better, stronger plow and suddenly you have vast areas of the landscape of Europe that were able to be cleared, settled, and farmed.  And of course more agricultural production means more food, and more food means greater health and a population increase.

But wait!  There’s more!

The old system of farming involved a two field system.  One year one field would be planted while the other was left fallow and the next year the second field would be planted while the first one was left to rest.  This changed with the introduction of the three field system.  Our good buddy Charlemagne is credited with coming up with this idea.  Land was divided into three fields.  Field one was planted in the Fall with winter wheat, rye, and other crops that grew in the colder part of the year.  In the Spring the second field was planted with crops like peas, lentils, and beans.  The third field was left fallow.  Each year the fields were rotated.  This meant two things.  First, more land could be in production at any given time.  Second, a greater variety of crops were able to be planted leading to a greater variety in the diet of Medieval people.  It was a win-win situation.

One other thing to mention is the introduction of the scythe.  Yes, the scythe was a Medieval invention.  More than just the tool of the Grim Reaper, it enabled farmers to harvest their crops much faster and with less manpower wasted than the handheld tools used before.  Which, once again, meant higher yield and greater abundance for the people of the Middle Ages.

So to recap, the dawn of the Middle Ages brought with it a closer sense of ownership of the land.  That, in turn, lead to a motivation on the part of lords and peasants alike to bring in the latest and most effective technology available.  Food was produced on a local, personal level instead of being something that you went to the market to buy like in Rome, like today.  The adoption of technology that had been hanging around unimplemented lead to the clearing of land and greater production and variety, which lead to healthier people and more of them.

I personally think that the reason these kinds of remarkable advances have been ignored by history is because they are so basic and quite literally dirty.  Farming isn’t glamorous work, but without it, without food, everything else falls apart.  Also, the things that enabled revolutionary advances in the Middle Ages are yesterday’s news to people today.  Modern people tend to forget that the simplest of things, things that we take for granted now, changed life drastically at the time they were invented.

So don’t knock Medieval agricultural technology!  It was the backbone on which an avalanche of even greater technological inventions came to be.  But more about that next week.

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Medieval Monday – Feasts and Holidays

Posted on November 21, 2011 | 5 Comments

As we enter into the Christmas season here in the West, marked especially by Thanksgiving and, let’s face it, Black Friday here in the U.S., I wanted to take a look at the holidays and feasts in the Medieval world.  As I mentioned when talking about the peasant diet, peasants generally only ate meat on feast days.  But what were those days?

Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised.  Not really.  I kind of guessed where the Medieval feasts came from.  My research has only proven it.  Try as the Medieval Church might to maintain its monopoly on all aspects of people’s lives in the Middle Ages, the official holidays tell a slightly different story.  You’ll probably be able to guess it by the end.

Let’s start closest to where we are right now in the year.

That's my kind of Yule log!

Christmas  –  Christmas in the Middle Ages was slightly different from the holiday we celebrate here in the 21st century.  It started at sundown on the night of the Winter Solstice, generally December 21st, with the lighting of the Yule log.  This represented light coming into the world at the darkest time.  That Light was celebrated on December 25th as the birth of Jesus.  The holiday of Christmas would then continue for two weeks until the Feast of the Epiphany, also known as Twelfth Night.  That’s where we get the Twelve Days of Christmas.  Even in the Middle Ages this was a time of gift-giving.  The lord of the manor would give gifts of food and clothing and treats to his vassals and the vassals would give token gifts back.  Everyone got two weeks off from their regular duties and responsibilities.  My guess is that this is where the tradition of Boxing Day originate, although one day as opposed to two weeks is sort of a raw deal.  I would like an automatic two weeks off from work myself.

Candlemas  –  Candlemas is perhaps the oldest documented Christian holiday, although it is not one of the more important ones on the liturgical calendar.  It takes place 40 days after Christmas, on February 2nd and was a feast to celebrate the presentation of the infant  Jesus at the Temple.  This is the end of the Epiphany season.  It is also celebrated as the Purification of the Virgin Mary.  If that sounds familiar it’s probably because it resembles another, older holiday.  In the Celtic calendar this holiday was called Imbolc.  It was the feast of St. Brigid and very much identified as a woman’s holiday.  Among other things, in the Middle Ages this is a time when candles were blessed at the church and the time when cattle were removed from grazing in the fields so planting could begin.  My favorite tidbit about Candlemas is that Christmas decorations were traditionally not taken down until the eve of Candlemas.  So everyone out there who procrastinates taking down your Christmas decorations, you can say that you’re just waiting until Candlemas to do it.

Easter  –  Easter was perhaps the biggest holy day in the Middle Ages.  And to tell you the truth, the celebration of Easter hasn’t changed all that much.  It was preceded by Lent, and involved the liturgical celebrations of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.  It represented the Passion of Christ and His Resurrection.  And in the Middle Ages it was also a time for giving gifts.  Peasants on the manor would gift their lords with eggs, and in return the lords would give gifts of food and clothing and the like again, just like Christmas.

Pentecost  –  Pentecost was another celebrated but not super important holiday in the Middle Ages.  It took place 7 weeks after Easter to mark the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus’ disciples.  It was also known as Whit Sunday and was important to the liturgical calendar.

May Day  –  Falling in and around the celebrations of Easter and Pentecost was May Day.  This was more of a secular holiday, one that was important to the planting seasons.  It was held on May 1st and marked the beginning of summer, of fertile fields and the end of lean days.  People got a little wild around May Day.  There were all sorts of traditional celebrations, like dancing around a maypole, Morris dancing, the selection of May Queen.  It was definitely the Merry Month of May.  Of course all of this celebration and merriment came from the older celebrations of Beltane, Walpurgis Night, and the Roman festival of Flora.  The Medieval Church tried to pass it all off as the Feasts of St. Philip & St. James, but really this was a time that was all about fertility and life.  I have a feeling that if you were a Medieval peasant this would be the big holiday to look forward to every year.

Midsummer  –  Here’s another one the Medieval Church tried to morph into something else.  Midsummer, specifically June 24th, was made into the holy day of The Nativity of St. John the Baptist, seeing as John the Baptist was supposed to be six months older than Jesus and as everyone knows Jesus’ birthday is December 25th.  Outside of the Church this was another largely rural holiday, celebrated with bonfires and feasting on or around the Solstice.  It was also traditionally the time when Healers and Wise Women would pick calendula and other medicinal herbs in the light of the full moon.  The healing powers of those herbs was thought to be more potent if they were picked at midnight at the summer solstice.  This was an especially important holiday in Scandinavian countries, where bonfires would be lit on the beaches to chase away evil spirits

Lammas  –  The festival of Lammas, also known as St. Peter’s Day in the Church’s calendar was held on August 1st.  This was the festival of the first harvest.  The first wheat crops of the season were usually ready around this day.  Every able-bodied peasant man and woman would turn out for the harvest, helping in the fields.  Then the bread made from the first wheat harvested would be given to the lord of the manor and to the Church.  The harvest and the crops would then be blessed by the local priest.  This was also known as the Feast of the First Fruits, and in a largely agrarian and more than a little superstitious society it was one of the more important holidays of the year.  It was also known in the Celtic calendar Lughnasadh.

Michaelmas  –  I don’t know about you, but being a big History nut I’d always heard about Michaelmas and wondered what it was because we don’t celebrate it anymore.  Well, Michaelmas is on September 29th.  It is a celebration of the autumnal equinox.  In the Medieval Church it was known as the  Feast of St. Michael, dragon-slayer extraordinaire.  Most importantly to the rural peasant calendar, this was the day that a reeve was chosen from among the peasants on manors.  The Reeve was the people’s representative on the mannor.  He was in charge of the day-to-day affairs of the people but still under the steward administratively.

And finally, we’re back around to…

All Saint’s Day  –  All Saint’s Day, or All Soul’s Day, was actually celebrated as a liturgical holiday way early in the Spring back in the very, very early days of the Christian Church.  But as the Christian Church spread throughout Europe it was moved to November 1st.  Why?  Well, see, there was this other holiday already in place at the same time, but it wasn’t necessarily approved by the Christians working hard to convert the Pagans.  So All Saint’s Day was moved in an effort to supplant the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Roman festival of Lemuria.  These celebrations were to mark the end of harvest and the beginning of the dark, dormant time of the year.  Bonfires were lit to chase away evil spirits.  People and livestock would walk between two bonfires for purification and protection.

So.  Did you notice the obvious connection of these Medieval Feast and Holy Days?  Strangely enough, Christmas, Easter, Midsummer, and Michaelmas all take place on or around Solstices and Equinoxes.  Candlemas, May Day, Lammas, and All Saint’s Day were all celebrated at the quarter-points of the year, directly between the other major holidays.  Folks, these were all blatantly Pagan holidays.  Their origins were in a time when humanity lived by the cycles of the year and the land, not dates set by the story of Jesus.  In fact, no one at the time that these “holy days” were developed had any clue when Jesus was born within the calendar of the year.  Yes, the Christian holy days were shuffled around to coincide with already existent Pagan holy days so that evangelization and conversion of the masses wouldn’t interfere too much with what were already deeply ingrained agrarian religions.

Granted, I’m sure the people of the Middle Ages would have balked if you were to tell them that what they were celebrating were holy days of “the old ways”, seeing as the Medieval Church was so ingrained in their way of life.  But then again, maybe not.  The old Pagan religions and the new Christian faith were, in fact, blended together.  Christianity did not wipe out and replace old ways.  But don’t tell that to the Medieval people.

So here we are about to celebrate Thanksgiving in America.  Ah yes.  You can tell this is a typically American holiday because it has no basis whatsoever in ancient tradition, no tie to any long-standing religious holiday, and no correlation to the phases of the moon.  How very modern of us!

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Medieval Monday – Occupy Medieval Europe!

Posted on October 31, 2011 | 4 Comments

As I mentioned last week, if you ever get a chance to travel back in time, DO NOT go to the 14th century!  If you were a noble you would have run into the mess that was the Hundred Years War between England and France.  The “flower of chivalry” was lost in one of the costliest wars in history.  But if you were a peasant you would have run into an entirely different set of problems.  And I’m not just talking about the Black Death here.

For the lower classes the 14th century was a time of drastic changes.  Change is good, yes, especially if you’re a peasant, but it comes at a price.  Attitudes were changing and with them life as the common man knew it.  But not everyone liked the changes.

The century before trouble began was one of prosperity and plenty.  People were doing well.  The weather was good, trade was increasing due to increased contact with the East, and everyone had enough.  The population grew as people could afford to have larger families.  But then the tipping point was reached.  Agrarian technology couldn’t keep up with the increased population.  There were widespread shortages.  These shortages were aggravated by several years of bad weather and poor harvests.  The overall temperature of Europe dropped suddenly by several degrees in the early 1300s (possibly because of a massive volcano that erupted in Indonesia, spitting ash into the sky that blanketed the Earth’s atmosphere for years).  England reported massive floods of Biblical proportion that wiped out crops.  There were also a series of plagues that effected livestock long before the Black Death killed off the human population.  It just wasn’t good.

These were all conditions that effected the common man.  Well, they effected everyone, but the blow fell much harder on the peasants.  Not only could they not feed themselves, they couldn’t feed their lords.  The lords needed not only food but the revenue from their lands so that they could keep up their lifestyle.  A fully outfitted warhorse, for example, cost more than a peasant made in a year.  So when the land wasn’t producing the lords and Parliament taxed the people to make up the difference.  Only the people didn’t have anything to give.  Yes, this is the era in which the Robin Hood legend first came into being.

And then the Black Death swooped in and made everything that much more miserable.  Vast numbers of people died.  Suddenly the equation was changed.  Things were still bad for the nobility.  They were still fighting a costly war, their lands still weren’t producing the amount they needed to keep up their lifestyle, and suddenly they didn’t have the manpower on their lands to make things work.  Entire villages and manors were wiped out or abandoned.  Records of the time in England indicated that hundreds of parishes just ceased to be after the catastrophe.

But if you were a peasant and you survived this was your lucky day.  Labor was in high demand.  If you were a laborer, especially a laborer with a skill, you were suddenly the most popular person in Europe.  Mobility amongst the peasants reached an all-time high.  And I’m talking in both senses of the word.  It’s funny how you can look at the laws that were passed in any given time period and judge what was really going on.  Parliament in England tried time and time again to pass laws limiting the amount of money peasants could earn for various jobs.  They tried but failed.  It is estimated that the wage of the common man tripled in the years after the Black Death.  Landowners were so desperate for workers that they would pay anything.  There were many other laws passed prohibiting peasants from leaving their hereditary estates and court records of the time are filled with cases of laborers being arrested and returned to their lord.

See, in Medieval Europe before the 14th century you, as a peasant, were tied to your land.  The system of serfdom said that you belonged to your lord like any other cow or sheep.  You didn’t have the legal right to move if your lord didn’t want you to.  And you owed your lord labor on his land.  But throughout the High Middle Ages, the 12th and 13th centuries, things had been so good that the rules were relaxed.  People moved a little and as fortunes rose so did the practice of serfs paying a fee to their lords instead of working the land themselves.  This became so common that by the 14th century, when labor was scarce and lords went back to demanding that their serfs stay right where they were and work their land free of charge, well, the newly empowered peasantry were not happy.  Not at all.

The situation worse in England than elsewhere in Europe.  In 1381 it came to a head.  Parliament had voted to issue a poll tax on the people directly.  This was the third such tax within a handful of years, only this one was triple the amount of the previous ones.  Parliament knew no one was going to like it and skipped out to Northampton from London to avoid the inevitable wrath the move would cause.  And it did cause wrath.  All across England peasants revolted, especially in the southern shires.  The south of England was on edge already from French invasions and rumors of French invasions due to the Hundred Years War.  Within a short time the peasants rose up in a full-scale revolt.

The leader of this peasant revolt was a man by the name of Wat Tyler.  Wat Tyler rallied his fellow common man under the idea that all men were created in God’s image and that no one was better than anyone else.  Therefore it was unjust for laborers to be taxed to a greater degree or to serve the upper classes without pay.  And yes, folks, this was the 14th century, not 1776, not 1917.  Wat Tyler gathered his supporters from across England and they marched on London.  Occupy London, 1381.  For three days in July they protested in the streets, raging, rightfully so, that 1% of the population of England controlled 99% of the wealth even though it was the peasants who made that wealth possible.

As you can imagine, it didn’t end well for Wat Tyler.  He was personally run-through by the Mayor of London.  The men who had come to London to support him were either killed or severely punished.  However, the end result would have made Wat proud.  The poll tax was dropped and the House of Commons was spurred to support legislation that would require the crown to live off of its own income instead of taxing the peasants any time they needed money.  It was a long way from modern equality, but it was a start.

The Death of Wat Tyler

On a grander scale, this was the end of the feudal system.  The hierarchy of the Middle Ages could no longer be strictly enforced.  Sure, there were laws and taxes and a lot of lords who were mighty upset about the state of things and it would take time to completely abolish serfdom, but the lower classes had seen how much power they had and would never again truly submit to the old order.

Of course the peasantry wasn’t the only segment of Medieval Society undergoing radical change in the 14th century.  Next week I’ll talk about the craziness that happened to the Church, how the seat of Papal authority was suddenly not Rome, and the days when there was not one, not two, but three Popes all claiming to be THE ONE.

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Medieval Monday – A Day in YOUR Life

Posted on August 29, 2011 | 9 Comments

Good morning, medieval peasant!  Rise and shine!  The sun is rising and it’s time for you to get to work.  You roll out of bed, which you share with your spouse, yawn and stretch, and trudge across the room to wake your three children.  Your house has just one bedroom that everyone shares, but you don’t mind.  It’s a step up from the one-room, windowless house of your grandparents.  Your family enjoys average prosperity so your house has two rooms and a shed out back for the animals (which do NOT live with you in the winter now because you’re not on the very bottom rung of peasantry anymore).  Your cousin, however, has done very well for himself over the years and his house has separate rooms for parents and children, boys and girls, AND it’s two-stories tall!  Someday, you think, someday we’ll be that prosperous too!

You wander out to your main room to fix breakfast: a lovely bit of bread, some cheese, maybe an onion or turnip from your back garden, all washed down with some milk or, of course, ale.  You gotta love that ale!  You drink it with every meal.  You’ve heard a rumor that in the monastery down the road each brother is given an allowance of three gallons of ale a day.  How’s that for monastic life!  With breakfast washed down and lunch of pottage made with cabbage and seasonal vegetables yet to come, you might head out to the fields, whether you’re a man or a woman, or go to work at your trade if you happen to be a carpenter, dyer, weaver, tanner, or something along those lines.  Whatever your father and his father and his father’s father did, that’s what you do.  Or if you are a tradesman but don’t have work at the moment you might look for a job in the fields as a day-laborer.  If you’re a woman you might see if the lord in his manor house needs cleaning or other household work done.  Some people hundreds of years from now might mistakenly call you a servant if you do this, but you and your medieval lord both understand this is a temporary assignment.

Okay, hold on, you say.  How come I’m a peasant?  How do you know that’s what I would be doing if I lived in the Middle Ages?  Hey, I’m just telling you like it is.  In the Middle Ages 90% of the population of Europe were peasants.  Odds were that you would be too.  Medieval Europe was agrarian and local.  Sure, there were cities, but they were few and far between.  Rural life was what it was all about.  Last week I talked about manorialism.  Well here it is.  Manors, the villages and fields surrounding a lord’s estate and administrated by him, were the essence of medieval life.

So let’s get back to what your day would look like.

Contrary to shockingly inaccurate modern belief, your status as peasant didn’t mean you were dirt-poor, dispossessed, and on the verge of being squashed by a lord who owned you, body and soul.  There was as much variation amongst the peasant class as there is in the middle class of the twenty-first century.  Some peasants were pitiful and little more than slaves.  Some were wealthy and loaned their lords or the church cash in hard times.  A lot depended on the region where you lived and the grander economics of the time.  And the weather.  Oh my gosh, the weather decided everything.  Too much or two little rain could set everyone back years.  But for the sake of argument I’m putting you smack in the middle of the peasantry.

So there you are, working in the field, building things, dying things, weaving things, generally being useful and producing the food and goods necessary for survival.  Why are you doing this?  Because Wal-Mart hasn’t been invented yet.  Trade in the Middle Ages was a fraction of what it is today.  It was hard enough to ship goods from one village to another, let alone through big cities and off to exotic foreign locales.  Most peasants rarely ventured more than 25 miles away from their home village in their lifetime.  So everything that you needed to sustain yourself, your family, and your community had to be made locally.

Of course, this wasn’t all that bad.  I’ve made you an average peasant and I’m also putting you in an average village during an average time.  You’ve got enough to eat.  The grains and other staples you grow in the fields are enough to sustain both you and your lord year-round.  The vegetables you grow in your back garden are enough to feed your family.  You can get nuts in the forest next to your fields and fruit seasonally.  In fact, this is what you eat most of the time.  Sure, you have some chickens, a couple of pigs, sheep and maybe some cows.  That wealthy cousin of yours even has a few horses to help with the plowing.  But you save meat for special occasions only, Christmas, Easter, Michaelmas, Candlemas.  The lord might eat meat more frequently, but for all intents and purposes you’re a vegetarian.  You have no idea that this is good for your health.  So is all that exercise you’re getting through work.  In fact, since you made it past childhood you’re pretty damn fit.

You have three children, that’s about average.  Of course there were a couple that died in infancy or early childhood.  That couldn’t be helped.  Either they got sick or there was an accident or they never really were healthy to begin with.  It happens.  It’s sad, but common.  Even healthy adults die before their time in your world.  I mean, married women spend an awful lot of time pregnant and still have to work while in that state.  Childbirth is always risky.  Men have their dangers too.  When there’s nothing to do but drink in the winter after everything is harvested but planting hasn’t begun yet it’s amazing how many silly accidents happen.  You had a brother who was in his cups when he wandered out into the woods in the dead of winter and was found frozen and mauled the next day.  Not that uncommon really.  Same with pub brawls and on the job accidents.  Must be all that ale.

Plus there are opportunities for bettering yourself.  You can work hard and save up, passing your wealth down to your children, for example.  But you could also send your children off to a nearby monastery.  A generation or so back your ancestors saved up enough to buy their way out of serfdom.  Happens all the time.  Or if you’re really ambitious and up for a little adventure you could join the intrepid groups who are draining the fens, cutting down forests, or reclaiming marshland to build new settlements.  Colonists aren’t just a post-1492 invention, you know.

So there you have it.  That’s what your life would have looked like in the Middle Ages.  It really isn’t a bad life after all.  You’ve got your family around you and you know you can depend on them in times of crisis.  You are fiercely loyal to and identified with your village community.  You know your place in the world, something not many of your twenty-first century brethren can necessarily say.  Life is simple but satisfying for the most part.

“What about your life, Merry?  Are you down here working in the fields with us?”  Nope.  Not me!  Because my family, the Gyllenhaals, were nobility.  We can trace our family tree back to 788!  So no, I wouldn’t have been a peasant.  I would have been a land-owning noble.

But more about that next week….

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