Case Study: Peasants, Trade, and Cities
The lives of peasants throughout medieval Europe were extremely difficult. Although the specific characteristics of peasant life varied based on region, in general, medieval peasants lived in an agrarian society. Feudalism defined the social structure of medieval Europe from roughly the tenth century to the fifteenth century, situating peasants on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Under feudalism, peasants lived in a state of serfdom, a condition that essentially turned them into rural slaves. The rigid and cruel medieval system of law and order that accompanied feudalism succeeded as a tool for social control and largely prevented peasant resistance or rebellion. Feudalism declined steadily throughout the medieval period and was nearly extinct in Western Europe by the Renaissance. This was due in part to the demographic catastrophe in Europe that occurred as a result of the Black Death and the increasing indignation among peasants regarding increasingly severe tax policies.
Guiding Question:
How did the changes that occurred in the late Middle Ages bring about the end of feudalism? |
Topics for Discussion:
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Sources:
Source 1: Manchester, William: A World Lit Only by Fire. Excerpt A Peasant's Dwelling
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A Peasant's Dwelling
The building was large for it was more than a dwelling. Beneath its sagging roof were a pigpen, a henhouse, cattle sheds, corncribs, straw and hay, and last and least, the family's apartment, actually a single room whose walls and timbers were coated with soot. According to Erasmus, who examined such huts, "almost all the floors are of clay and rushes from the marshes, so carelessly renewed that the foundation sometime remains for twenty years, harboring, there below, spittle and vomit and wine of dogs and men, beer...remnants of fishes, and other filth unnamable. Hence, with the change of weather, a vapor exhales which in my judgment is far from wholesome." The centerpiece of the room was a gigantic bedstead, piled high with straw pallets, all seething — with vermin. Everyone slept there, regardless of age or gender—grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren, and hens and pigs—and if a couple chose to enjoy intimacy, the others were aware of every movement. In summer they could even watch. If a stranger was staying the night, hospitality required that he be invited to make "one more" on the familial mattress. This was true even if the head of the household was away, on say, a pilgrimage. If this led to goings-on, and the husband returned to discover his wife with child, her readiest reply was that during the night, while she was sleeping, she had been visited by an incubus. Theologians had confirmed that such monsters existed and that it was their demonic mission to impregnate lonely women lost in slumber. Of course, when unmarried girls found themselves with child and told the same tale, they met with more skepticism. If this familial situation seems primitive, it should be borne in mind that these were prosperous peasants. Not all their neighbors were so lucky. Some lived in tiny cabins of crossed laths stuffed with grass and straw, inadequately shielded from rain, snow, and wind. They lacked even a chimney; smoke from the cabin's fire left through a small hole in the thatched roof—where, unsurprisingly, fires frequently broke out. These homes were without glass windows or shutters; in a storm, or in frigid weather, openings in the walls could only be stuffed with straw, rags—whatever was handy. Such families envied those enjoying greater comfort, and most of all they coveted their beds. They themselves slept on thin straw pallets covered by ragged blankets. Some were without blankets. Some didn't even have pallets. |
Source 3: Manchester, William: A World Lit Only by Fire, Excerpt Food and Fashion
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Peasant Food and Drink
To avoid eating in the dark, there were only two meals a day—"dinner" at 10 A.M. and "supper" at 5 P.M.—but bountiful harvests meant tables which were full. Although meat was rare in Europe there were often huge pork sausages, and always enormous rolls of black bread (white bread was the prerogative of the upper classes) and endless courses of soup or porridge: cabbage, watercress, and cheese soups; "dried peas and bacon water," "poor man's soup" from odds and ends, and during Lent, of course, fish soup. Every meal was washed down with large amounts of beer or ale. "Small beer" was the traditional drink, though after crusaders return from the East many preferred "spiced beer." The per capita consumption of beer in medieval England was a gallon of beer a day—even for nuns and eight year-old children. Sir John Fortescue observed that the English "drink no water, unless at certain times upon religious score, or by way of doing penance." Fashions To be sure, certain fashions were shared by all. Styles had changed since Greece and Rome shimmered in their glory; then garments were wrapped on; now all classes put them on and fastened them. Most clothing—except the leather gauntlets and leggings of hunters, and the crude animal skins worn by the very poor—was now woven of wool. (Since few Europeans possessed a change of clothes, the same outfit was worn daily; as a consequence, skin diseases were astonishingly prevalent.) But there was no mistaking the distinctions between the priest in his vestments; the toiler in his dirty cloth tunic, loose trousers, and heavy boots; and the aristocrat with his jewelry, his hairdress, and his extravagant finery. Every knight wore a signet ring, and wearing fur was as much a sign of knighthood as wearing a sword or carrying a falcon. Indeed, in some European states it was illegal for anyone not nobly born to adorn himself with fur. |
Source 4: Terry Jones Medieval Life's: Peasants
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Source 7: Medieval Law
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Dating from Roman times as ius primae noctis and known to manorial and feudal law by the French term droit de seigneur, the lord of a manor in some European regions could enjoy "right of first night" with the bride of a newly married serf. The serf then redeemed his wife by the payment of a customary fee. While the first night practice itself fell into disuse by the High Middle Ages, the custom of the fee payment survived in Bavaria until the eighteenth century.
Feudal law reflected a special reverence for landed property and for all that God had provided to aid in land use. In his Medieval Village, G.G. Coulton tells of a German code that protected trees used as supports for the dams build to prevent flooding of tilled fields. Should one remove the bark from such a tree the prescribed punishment was the have "his belly ripped up, and his bowels shall be taken and wound around the harm he has done." Trial by combat survived in practice until the thirteenth century and, in theory, for several centuries after that. Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) and the Fourth Lateran Council forbade trails by combat in 1216, and shortly afterward the rulers of most lands began to enforce prohibitions against this formula for resolving civil or criminal disputes. H.C. Lea, in his Superstition and Force, supplies one of the more startling examples of trail by combat, which we must understand was a test of honesty—God sided with the innocent party by giving a sign—and which also had the collateral benefit of resolution, to prevent the blood feud. In 1127, a knight named Guy was accused by another knight, Hermann, as having been an accomplice in the assassination of Charles the Good of Flanders; when Guy denied the charges, Hermann demanded proof of his innocence by judicial combat. The two fought for hours and, according to a line from an off-color limerick, tore up trees, shrubs, and flowers. Eventually they were both without horse and weapon and hence resorted to wrestling. In the ferocity of the fight Hermann tore Guy's testicles from his body, thus proving his charge. God had given a sign, and Guy quickly died. Even branding was known to medieval law, and as a punishment for a variety of crimes it lasted into the seventeenth century. Brands were a painful and lasting advertisement of what crimes lay in an individual's past. For perjury and blasphemy piercing the tongue with a hot iron was a common punishment, while in England one might find a scar on a convict's forehead that was made up of the letters S.O.S. –sewer of sedition. |