Відео

I try to keep it light.

Good question, but I have never seen any floor plans or discussion of these attic rooms in the literature.

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Thank you so much!

Apparently it has a wonderful binding quality. Plus there is a never-ending supply of it.

@@historywaitsfornoone2784 I guess, if it works well why not

Actually, I don't know for certain. I suspect they were in some stage of whiteness depending on how often their owners would clean or white-wash them. White was a fairly easy to obtain and cheap color, and even they knew it reflected sunlight and kept houses cooler inside (doubtless from generations of trial and error). Wealthier households would paint the interior walls of course, the mega-wealthy would pictorial murals, the less wealthy simply in solid colors (red was apparently quite common, as it was another cheap color; the Greeks and Romans also considered Reds, Oranges, and Yellows "hot" colors as they associated them with the colors of the interior walls of their cool houses). I'll note your question and try to answer it in a forthcoming video on Roman and Greek Color choices.

Thanks!

Yes, you are correct. I didn't feel the need to include all that is this was originally written for my Medieval Civ. class, not my Medieval England class, and was really just meant to be a generic overall introduction to students most of whom know virtually nothing about medieval commerce.

It was meant to be simplistic. This is just a quick, simple, introduction for a Medieval Civ. class, for students who know very little about the medieval economy (some of them know very little even about modern banking, much less that medieval people had banks), but should know something. A more detailed discussion is in the works.

I didn't touch it.

Hmmm, not sure why I didn't say it, but the lay brethren who did the cooking, cleaning, serving dinner, etc. for the Carthusian "hermits" or "anchorites" would be conversi. The conversi are, let's say, pseudo- or quasi- monks. They follow the Rule (whichever one it is) of the order and abbey to which they are attached, but they haven't taken any vows. Nor are they novices or tertiaries. I'm not entirely sure when or why these first appeared, but for the conversi the promise is doubtless stocking up points to either get them into Heaven, or spend less time in Purgatory. For the monks, well, it is doubtless skirting if not downright ignoring the rules on manual labor, allowing them to do other things which may or may not satisfy their Rule (i.e., write, farm, pray, party), and this way they don't have to pay servants.

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Yes, it did. Many of these fees carried over and we still use them today, even though we may call them by different names.

Living in a village or town and walking out to the fields every day was and is common around the world, mostly it was thought just too dangerous to live on your own isolated homestead. The American and Canadian (and a few other places) are real anomalies in that sense. I was like you when I first started looking into ag history, but if you look at where villages are sited, they're pretty close to each other, remarkably so in our terms. As to wells, I think that probably depended on the soil and local water supply, i.e., if the town was foolishly sited on very hard rock, probably no individual wells. Athens, for example, only had one communal well at the base of the acropolis. But if the soil was more amenable to digging (I'm not sure I'd call it "drilling"), they might. As to subsidence, I never thought about that, I'm not an engineer, its a good point. At some point I have to revise all of these, and I'll put that on my list for a revision. As to pit toilets, yes, only once or twice a year. This was and in many places still is quite common. Not that ancient/medieval people, or people living in less developed areas are slobs, or don't care about cleanliness (though generally speaking their ideas of hygiene are a bit different than our own), but smelliness was fairly common. If you're living with farm animals in your compound, and they're shitting all over the place, dogs and horses and donkeys and pigs are roaming the town streets and dropping loads everywhere (not all towns had sewers), people wipe with their left hand, the stench is just omnipresent---but if you're living in it, you probably don't notice it. I don't know where you live, but I have had occasion to live on a farm for a bit, a dairy farm. When you entered the barn area with the cows and cowshit everywhere, the stench was horrendous---but after a few minutes you didn't even notice it anymore. The only way you'd notice it again is when you leave the "zone" for a bit, then come back in.

Yes, there are problems. I have to revise all of them at some point.

@@historywaitsfornoone2784 It was very informative nonetheless. It helped me build my medieval fictional story into more details. thanks for the vid🙏

Thanks!

No, it was interesting. I think a separate video on these establishments would be a good idea, along with a revision of this one. Thanks!

Could be. I got my numbers from Christopher Dyer's studies. Most pigs were just allowed to roam free in the local woods (they must have been branded or something else how would anyone know whose pigs were whose?) or in the village as all the sources indicate they would be rounded up in November or December for a bit of fattening before slaughter (hence ham for the holidays).

​@@historywaitsfornoone2784 Thanks for replying, Prof: I've a high regard for Dyer, but he can sometimes be a bit cavalier with numbers (beware his generous urbanisation rates especially - though they're the result of his low threshold for inclusion rather than miscounting, a caveat too often overlooked in the retelling). It's frustrating that our numbers for people and livestock aren't as secure as those for arable acreage, though we're fortunate to have as much as we do. Sheep seem particularly hard to count, perhaps the reason we're advised to do it mentally to send ourselves to sleep: as late as 1800 we've estimates ranging from 12m to 24-25m, though the higher number comes closer to an annual turnover than a point estimate of live animals; when a clearer picture emerges in the 1860s we've 19m (plus 3m in Wales and 7m in Scotland), though now with huge wool imports on top of that in place of the net export of the middle ages. But numbers even for cattle are all over the place before the first reliable return of 4m or so. Yes, I've often wondered how people knew which animal belonged to which farmer. I've always assumed that larger stock were slaughtered toward midwinter because it the only time you might hope to keep such a quantity of meat in edible condition for more than a couple of days. Imagine trying to fight off the flies in August, let alone the smell: no wonder even a king's response to a situation might be to "Run away!"

@@davepx1 thanks for the info on Dyer, I hadn't hear of that criticism before. I also used a number of other articles on the Great Bovine Plague, but they may have been based on Dyer too. Well, that's what "revised videos" are for.

​@@historywaitsfornoone2784 Oh, I didn't mean to be too critical - as I said, I too find him a worthwhile source - rather I just wanted to indicate the range of uncertainty (though the sheep & pig slaughter rates still seem low). Re-reading Dyer and Wrigley, I can live with 15m sheep c.1300 (Wrigley's preference), but I still doubt that the peak year's wool export can't be relied on as representative or that domestic consumption accounted for as many as 8m fleeces as Dyer's higher total suggests (Allen however seems to concur with Dyer's 20m). Dyer's numbers for what Campbell terms "incrontrovertible" towns are quite sensible: the issue there is that he also counts anywhere with a market, greatly adding to the number - which is valid enough in itself, but too often you find the resulting high rates compared with other figures based on higher thresholds, giving the erroneous impression of either a disproportionate English lead or later stagnation. I meant to ask, does the cattle number include oxen? The wording suggests not, but the number looks like ploughbeasts are counted too, which would explain the higher total though then we'd have fewer cows as a proportion.

@@davepx1 I'm not sure about the oxen; I wrote the lecture on which this was based probably 10 years ago.

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Good question, I'm not entirely certain. I believe so, but I can't swear to it.

Thanks!

Unfortunately I don't remember, I've used them for years in my class lectures before I made any videos.

It is. I did my M.A. Thesis on Medieval Serfs and Manorial Law. What in particular are you unsure about?

That is often why new orders or new houses were founded, as monks upset when laxity took over their monastery decided to leave and start anew. Many became monks (or nuns) for the wrong reasons---some saw it as an easier lifestyle, some were younger sons or daughters stuck in their by parents who thought to have their sons rise up to be abbots and turn abbey lands over to their families, or to avoid expensive dowries for daughters, some were disabled vets (knights) who had little land of their own, some were relatives foisted on the monks without corresponding means to support them (lots and lots of complaints from abbots and abbesses about this), etc. And if they elected the right abbot or abbess (the monks or nuns chose their own leaders)---party city! There are innumerable complaints, sermons, writings, etc. about this sad state throughout the Middle Ages.

Thanks!

As I recall a number of works by Christopher Dyer has loads of such information. Sylvia Thrupp's work on the merchant guilds of medieval London also has quite a lot of material, though it is a bit older, and not quite as up to date as Dyer.

Yes, that's a great idea. Actually, in the works is one on just anchorites, and another is getting ready to begin the beguines.

Thanks, I'll look out for it.

The problem stems from my sources. But that's a great suggestion for a revised video.

Thanks!

Thank you!

Thanks! Check our my other medieval history videos too.

That I did not know. Even though I went to law school, and practiced for a number of years, and my specialty is medieval English law, I still get confused over which court did what in medieval England. I suppose someday I should investigate the courts on the Continent, but I hesitate because if I'm having trouble with these English courts, how will I deal with these other courts?

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I'm working on them. Now that this semester is coming to an end, I hope to get most of those for Rome and Athens done over the summer.

Well, over the course of time manor were broken up (as were the peasant holdings, whether villein or franklin) due to inheritance, sale, donations (mostly to some local monastery, friary, nunnery, hospital, church, shrine, etc.), dowry (and sometimes dower), lease, mortgage, failure to pay back a loan, forfeiture (failure to perform required duties and obligations, sometimes for being on the wrong side of a rebellion, civil war, or private war, especially before the appearance of the concept of liege lordship), and sometimes simply because of the failure of the line of descent. P. D. Harvey's study of _The Peasant Land Market in Medieval England_ (1984) is the place to start on that subject, with a number of book-length and article studies by a number of historians since then. There are a number of studies on the different monasteries and their changes in landholding in this period, such as that by Barbara Harvey on Westminster Abbey. A recent article by Brooks, Bell, and Killick, " A reappraisal of the freehold property market in late medieval England" would be another great place to start. You can find it here: centaur.reading.ac.uk/83824/9/reappraisal_of_the_freehold_property_market_in_late_medieval_england.pdf