Did Being a Medieval Peasant Suck?
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- You may have seen internet articles and videos along the lines of "did medieval peasants have more vacation than you?" or "are you working harder than a medieval peasant?" Well, let's break down some of the reasons why you may or may not have it worse than your average serf.
And what exactly is a serf?
And why are some of them un-free?
And is someone who is un-free a slave?
Medieval peasants weren't slaves, but there were certainly some similarities between slavery and serfdom, so let's have a look at the life and times and legal rights and freedoms of medieval peasants, check out some interesting Welsh history and Welsh words you may not know, and figure out what their lives might have been like compared to yours!
As long as your demesne or feudal lord allows you to use the internet connection on your bonded villein land. This doesn't apply to freemen, obviously.
Recommended reading:
Matthew Frank Stevens, "The Economy of Medieval Wales 1067-1536"
Michael Hicks, "Bastard Feudalism"
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the thing that really gets me about the 'you have less days off than medieval peasants' thing is that it assumes all livestock somehow magically know it's a saints day and just stop needing food/water/to be found if lost/help with birthing/etc etc'. not to mention babies and children, sick people, and everyone else who needs someone to care for them. like it being a national holiday puts everything that isn't the able bodied adults into some kind of magical stasis.
Very true, I work with horses and friends and family are still surprised when I have to go to work on Christmas (unless it falls on my day off), until I remind them that, unfortunately, the horses can't refill their own haynets or muck out their own stables!
As I understand it most of the holidays were geared around times when there was likely to be less work in the fields.
Even in modern times, the long summer school holidays was to allow schoolchildren to help their parents in the fields during the busy summer time.
Also, that so many holidays were at times when days were shorter, and nobody would be out in the fields working in the dark, so they can be indoors drinking themselves silly.
As an American one thing we don't tend to think about is that we had peasantry well into the 20th century. We just called them "sharecroppers" to feel better about ourselves. A lot of sharecroppers (most of whom had ancestors that were enslaved or were formerly enslaved themselves) were in predatory contracts with the land owners and they couldn't grow their own food, they had to sell everything and then buy overpriced, unhealthy, over-salted preserved food. Technically if they got enough money they could move away... but that was rarely possible. Just something to put our discussions of medieval peasantry into perspective.
One thing I like about not being a medieval peasant is that I didn’t die in childbirth and instead had C-section and then furthermore did not die of a massive infection after having major abdominal surgery. So there’s that. Oh and there were painkillers for all of it.
I'm very happy to not have died giving birth to twins, as well. I had my first kid in a "natural, unassisted labor" for the twins I was like: "all the drugs, please. Make sure to cut right there so I never get pregnant again, doc."
Hard same! My daughter and I wouldn't have made it either🎉
Just the fact, that you had no control whatsoever about if or when you got pregnant, is enough for me 😬
(well, you could become a nun or something, I guess)
There were painkillers and antiseptics in the middle ages also. They did not view such things with a modern lens, but they understood which herbs and plants could relieve pain and which plant extracts could help reduce the chance of infection. True, that the 'science' was far less exact, and fine tuning the dosage with totally natural ingredients is far more difficult (especially when you did not know exactly which ingredient in the plant might do the work.
In many ways it was during the transition between medieval herbal medicine and the modern scientific medicine that a lot of the worst happened as people scoffed at the accumulated experience of local herbalists while not yet having developed the modern scientific replacement. Bear in mind that even most modern drugs (at least throughout the 20th century) were based on plant or other natural substances that we learnt how to manufacture in purer forms and learnt how to provide more precise dosages.
This is not even a factoid, it's a fact about servs in Italy: in Central Italy especially, there was a form of serfdom called "mezzadria", which involved you working your lord's land in exchange for housing and *in theory* half of the produce. But since the lord was in charge of doing the math on the produce, and peasants were intentionally (and occasionally violently) prevented from learning how to read and count, the supposed "half" was never actually an half. Now the real jawdropping fact: the mezzadria was legal in Italy until the 1990s. In 1964 we had a law which forbid the registration of new mezzadria contracts but didn't end the existing ones. My father was born a "mezzadro" and when he was 10 he and his family were kicked out of the house where they lived because my great-grandfather was adamant that his little nephew had to go to school against the will of the landlord (in this cas a landlady, actually). And sure enough, one merry day this led to them realising they had been scammed all along on the "half produce" math. But when they went to confront the owner, they were just kicked out. It was 1963, one year before the new law.
Wow 🤯 It's remarkable how unmodern many parts of the "modern" world were and still are, despite the progress of technology etc!!
That extreme power imbalance is what I find most challenging about the feudal system? Exploitation and abuse by the church and nobles were just too easy, because of the educational differential, extremely constrained choices of the peasantry, and vastly unequal legal power they held.
Even though some serfs did get basic military training so they could fight for their lord, the nobles had the market cornered on destriers, armour, good swords, and effective defensive architecture, so even if they were abusive, the peasants didn't have a lot of options for recourse or communal action. Sometimes the church would mediate via moral suasion on their behalf, but in other circumstances, the religious authorities were the ones doing the exploiting. A very tough life, really - esp. for women...
I am a farmer, and grew up a farmer's daughter. We still only get to have holidays *after* the work is done! Christmas is always a nice breakfast followed by the farm jobs (as minimal as we can get away with, and as quick as possible) before we can start thinking about Christmas dinner!
Also I just came in from a bad lambing and this is helping me feel better, thank you!
as one of your domain lords, I order you to have another cup of tea!
AS YOU COMMAND, MIGHTY LIEGE
In Denmark, we also had the thing of not being allowed to move outside your parish. We called it Stavnsbåndet (“home bound”) and it wasn’t lessened until Strueense in the 1770s (the guy from A Royal Affair). It meant that you couldn’t move around, was subject to conscription in wars, and you also had to have been confirmed in church to have a job or trade.
In Sweden too, later on in history if you moved to a new village you'd have to present a certificate to the pastor. My kid's ggg-grandfather was a Swede who settled in NE England in the 1870s. We still have his inflyttning certificate (rough translation - certificate of good conduct,) signed by the pastor. Long after he'd moved to England he was still included in the census of his home village.
The "fewer days off than a medieval peasant" thing was only ever intended to refer to working class people from the USA specifically, to make a point about how the US views progress and modernity.
The Wikipedia page "List of minimum annual leave by country" has the USA's number of days at zero, so I don't think it's entirely without validity. If people have been using it to refer to Western Europe, or using it to woobify the Middle Ages in general, they've just taken it wildly off track.
It reminds me of how pirates often financially compensated crew members who'd become disabled. The point of mentioning that in mainstream or political spaces is to note that many governments are behaving worse than pirates, not to suggest that pirates were great.
Well done on completely missing the point. Medieval peasants did not get days off. None. Holy days are not days off.
@@adaddinsane Well done on completely missing the point of my reply, then trying to make it my problem.
Anyone notice the folks in the painting ’airing out’ (hotting up?) their netherbits? And the sneaky guy on the right? 🤣😂🤣
It’s one of my fave artworks just for how casually they do it lol😂
First things first, why isn't "Its Nuanced!" on a t-shirt yet?
When it comes to being a Medieval peasant or serf and such like I think we can all agree that being very poor in any age sucks quite a bit, but just like not everyone was nobility, not everyone was a charity case either, just like how with Viking Age not everyone was a raider/warrior, someone's gotta being growing the food! But this is a topic I think deserves a lot more attention, particularly in the reenactment community; 'dare to be common' may not be glamourous but as Uncle Iroh once said "There is nothing wrong with a life of peace and prosperity."
It is interesting to note how similar the Indian ‘caste systems’ were to Greco-Roman and European ‘class systems’.
Along with prohibitions on foreigners.
IMO if there’s a large heritable component to your class then it is better described as a caste system.
But the biggest difference is that in ancient Rome the patricians were both the political and priestly class while medieval Europe priesthood was not heritable even if they might’ve mostly been aristocrats.
In India priesthood was the strictly heritable which IMO allowed the system to continue much longer.
If your family doesn’t have to die in wars and famines then you can accumulate wealth and power over millennia.
Which is exactly what we see.
The class system was carried into the Church. For younger sons and daughters of higher families it was a way of avoiding downward mobility. To join the religious orders for these, money changed hands. The higher the family, the more likely they would avoid being a novice for years and be promoted to Abbott/Abbess of the new place their family founded. This also gave the same families political clout. Its no coincidence that the first two Medici popes were cousins brought up together, with one pope separating them, or that they had two further popes.
Trades would be passed parent to child for the convenience of existing tools and cheap labour. But it wasn't guaranteed as more farmers and brewers were needed than say furniture makers.
tbh there is a heritable component to class in modern day UK at least. If you're poor you're more likely to stay poor throughout your life, unless you got lucky on youtube or something.
@@faequeenapril6921 you forgot that they unironically still have an aristocracy - The House of Lords and the Monarchy
"Times is 'ard, but not as 'ard as that other bloke." - The eternal comfort of the underclasses, that someone else has it slightly less crappy than you do. Pass the cold gravel.
"Feasting doesn't mean you have the day off, it just means that you get drunk after you've finished." Sounds good to me!
"I have healthcare. I have vitamins. I have a job that I love." God bless the USA... 😢
Sweden in the medieval period... again, when and where 😉
But generally, there were nobles, but Feudalism never really got a good hold on most of the country. From the old times, farms and villages were mostly self reliant, and there wasnt much the nobility could offer that would warrant them charging taxes from the peasantry. And when they built forts to hold the tax man (fogden) they tended to get burnt down in peasant rebellions. The church were instrumental in bringing the peasantry to heel, as they built up the bureaucracy and divided the country into segments that could be governed. It was also easier to make the peasant pay tax to the crown when they were already paying their tenth to the church. Some bishops even became tax men for the crown.
But generally... the swedish peasantry was an armed bunch with a love for rebelling.
A lady in our group took her name from the Bodmin Manumissions; Arganteilin. A slave who was freed in 942 and was noted as a harpist so it's possible her manumission was coming about from the status improvement which is interesting.
The Welsh Viking, more like the Nuanced Viking
I'm here for the Nuances!
A few years back I read the book, _A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, c. 1295-1344_ by Judith M. Bennett, which is a good, short introductory work on medieval history suitable for laypeople and undergrads. I was surprised to learn that, at least in the manor of Brigstock between the years 1295 and 1344, peasants could have a fair bit of power over one another. As I said it's been a few years, so I may have the details wrong, but I believe Bennet mentions a family of relatively well-off peasants who leased numerous plots of land and paid poorer members of the community to work those lands for them. But she also notes that the fortunes of the peasantry are fickle, as not a generation later the descendants of this family seem to no longer lease so much land or be able to pay others to work their lands for them.
I'm also vaguely aware of the Paston family, who start out in the earliest records of the family as socially mobile peasants somewhere in the English countryside and within a couple generations end up as minor gentry/one of them was knighted all during the Wars of the Roses period. I'm assuming the Paston family origins are similar to the wealthy peasant family of Brigstock a century-and-a-half earlier.
You mentioned about the tenure of a villain, and there is no question that in a good year a freeman had far more opportunities than a villain, but how was it is a bad year, in maybe a year with famine. With greater opportunities often come greater risks, so how were the relative risks of a villain and a freeman?
I loved the Cadfael books. In one, he went on a pilgrimage to Treffynnon to visit the well, I grew up there. It was lovely knowing all the areas he was travelling, 😊.
Like deployed 👍
on the one hand, the biggest ongoing problems in my life have been homelessness and lack of healthcare, so serfdom doesn't necessarily sound *that* bad to me. on the other hand, I'm a queer Jew, so actually yeah it really does sound pretty bad after all.
I'm so sorry to hear that life is so hard for you. :(
It really sucks that people still have to deal with these things even though we could easily feed, house and medically care for everybody, if the political will was there.
Just here to advocate for "Nuance Viking" merch again 🤓
I second the motion lol
Thank you one of your best videos.
You might be interested in the unique form of of medieval life that existed in the village where I live. I am from the Breton village of La Feuillée which was founded by the Knights of St Jean , Hospitaliers. They had a system known as the "Quévaise" where poor undeveloed land was given to peasents for them to clear and put it into production. The families had to except the total control and law of the commander (lord?) who exacted a heavy price of the products produce. The benefit for the farming family is that they were protected for life by the Hospitaliers,not being able to be evicted as long as they remained on the alloted plot of land. One odd conditions
was that on the death of the male farmer, his land and possesions would pass tothe youngest son. I supose that this would mean that the older syblings would need to set up on a new plot and clear yey more rubbish land.
I don't know if you are familier with this sytem, thaught it might be of interest to you.
Cordialement
Ian
YAAAAY CADFAEL MENTION \o/
The Cadfael tv series was my gateway into loving Wales and Welsh culture and history and language and I've always wondered how it and the books hold up to historical scrutiny. Very nice to hear that it has at least your seal of approval; I was thinking about it the whole video.
One of my history teachers said that, for most of human history, people were basically one failed harvest from starvation.
Anyway, I need hearing aids. Antibiotics are nice, too. The right to vote, own property, etc. as a woman? Yes, good stuff.. So... Nope.
Yet again, I watched a video from this channel & added to my reading list. The Cadfael books look good. 😊👍
I already knew the basics of peasant life, but there were lots of interesting details in this, like there being so many part-time farmers in medieval Paris. You wonder if as well as working land in or next to the city some returned to their families' villages to help out with the farm work at busy times of year (e.g. harvest). It would seem to be a logical way to deal with the differing demands for labour at different points of the agricultural calendar if some people went a plied a trade in a city when they weren't needed for farm work. There's still a lot of seasonal work in the agricultural sector today.
great video as always! i remember learning about serfs vs free peasants in my medieval history papers at uni. love these entertaining educational history videos! it's funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same- my grandmothers family were farm workers renting land from a landlord in aberdeenshire, and they often got moved around the county as well
Jimmy, Ellis Peters also writes as Edith Pargeter, under that name she wrote the Heaven Tree trilogy. I read it as a teen in the 70s and its stayed with me. Younger son of a noble family gets apprenticed to a stone mason and works on Notre Dame, Paris. That's what informed my understanding of mediaeval life. I should read it again, I can't recall a lot of the details. Must be getting old or something.
Sir Derek was the perfect Brother Cafael!
I do not think I would flourish in a feudal lifestyle. My hobbies include reading, voting, owning property, and not dying of sepsis after my twelfth child.
Liked. Shared. Commented. Up the algorithm!
"Medieval Woman: Village Life in the Middle Ages" is an interesting book about what an average year could have been like for a fictional peasant woman and her family
Being born wealthy may give you more status (and one should not undervalue the importance of status), but it does not give you more freedom. You were still a baby making machine for your family, with little choice as to which family you would be making babies for.
I'm actually currently rereading the Cadfael books for the third time. It's such an amazing series of books and Ellis Peters did such a great job of creating the time and place it's set in. Currently on book 5 'The Leper of Saint Giles'
I don't mind a bit of work. But by golly I love some creature comforts. And modern plumbing. Fresh undies, good plumbing in and out, I wouldn't trade that for a bit of land. Now back to my constant work.
I’m lucky to have survived my birth, so even being born, say, 15 years earlier might have killed me. The thing is that I might have been able to lead an okay life in a smaller village rather than our current society where I’m dependant on society’s mercy, since I can’t work in a way that capitalism finds worth paying for. In this regard, I’m on the level of a workhouse worker, as I am dependant on someone else’s charity for my survival. At least I’m not locked up at Bedlam or similar places , which would probably have been my fate otherwise in history.
Similar here.
Same probably, since my mom is Rhesus negative and had a miscarriage before me. I'm Rhesus positive, so without the medication, I might not have survived pregnancy or might have been born with severe defects.
And then I developed some health problems during my youth and live off disability now.
The way a non-historian (like me) looks at history is often more indicative of what their life is like and likely their ideology. That’s why education like on this channel is so important.
In a comment on another video I argued that the many ahistorical depictions of Vikings aren’t a big deal to me but it has to be clear is where the inspiration comes from. History is so hugely important in forming identity and in that way it is often mythologized and used to give legitimacy to (often right wing) ideas.
In this case my thoughts went to the view on history by laymen like me because I was inclined to fall into the romanticization of peasant life as compared to life under Capitalism. I still believe that some aspects of Medieval life likely lead to better mental health, viewed from my own mentally ill perspective but I have to be honest about the projection taking place.
(Basically I believe that the ability and necessity to understand and control the tools that sustain one’s life as well as the relationships within one’s community lead to more clarity than the highly intertwined yet impersonal societies of today. Argh, sometimes my mastery of [the English] language hits its limits… Maybe because I’m not that smart or at least uneducated on the subject. Whatever; in short, less alienation)
I'm with you on the subject of mental health, up to a point. I think the lack of fast-paced distractions, and a daily routine of repetitive and often physically demanding manual labour would have provided fewer triggers for people on the autism spectrum or ADHD, and a few other conditions that are worsened by modern city life and sensory overload. People would have been better aligned with their circadian rhythms as well. However, some conditions would have been more difficult to live with in the middle ages, not just because there was no treatment, but also because of stigmatization. People who were seen as "mad" were often marginalized and abused, experimented on by members of the clergy because they were probably possessed, and generally treated as less than human.
@@kathilisi3019Absolutely, the Middle Ages surely were a time where being anything but „normal“ was hell.
And while what I said may be true to some extent, at least half the population was oppressed by default in most societies which must have caused its own kind of issues that got better now.
Coming to think of it… The intense fear of god and not understanding what we see as harmless illnesses at all probably was as bad as it sounds and maybe a little stressful.
You could try growing carrots in 20L buckets, on your sunny parking spot.
"Sunny" in Wales! LOL
Two words: infant mortality
The Cadfael books are so good! The 90's TV series is great too, highly recommend.
If I was born as a medieval peasant I would probably be dead, because there was no penicillin or sterile scalpels. 😅
Thanks for the perspective. Wishing you some tenure and flowers planted just for enjoyment in the future.
Any time I get wistful for simpler times as a medieval peasant, I remind myself of migraines and the hell I would endure sans ibuprofen...
Great video - Thank you.
No, a medieval peasant did absolutly NOT have a better time than me. I get enough to eat and a refrigerator, I have medicare and as a female I am still an independent citizen... We had no peasants; I am Australian, but my fathers fathers were Welsh, so you know more than I do about that.
Love the Ellis Peters books, Brother Cadfael, so good!
Clean running water is a huge plus.
And let's not, especially as women, forget washing machines.
First! What do I win?! Bolt of wool? Worm porridge? Maybe some room temperature ale?
Re: Cadfael, I wholeheartedly endorse. And if you know any antivaxxors the author has a note explaining why vaccines are necessary and needed
There was a saying in poland "city air makes you free" because of the serfs who moved to the cities to becolome free :D
Same in German…
In Ireland too, money didn't mean much at all until the Norman & English invasions, & even then it wasn't used much outside of the Pale until the English conquest. The economy was mostly based around barter & trade. Why carry around a bag full of metal when you could get eggs from your neighbor in exchange for some milk? Additionally, under Brehon law, there were several different levels of peasant, each with differing amounts of rights & privileges. One of those rights was the amount of butter you'd receive from your king or clan chief when he redistributed produce, which gave rise to the phrase "He butters his bread on both sides" to describe a fancy/wealthy/posh person.
I would make a really rubbish medieval peasant housewife. I love my washer and dryer, thankyouverymuch, and I will go on strike if my dishwasher is taken from me.
I'm also happy i had the opportunity to move away from my home place, and find a husband to my liking from another part of the country, because most of the guys i grew up with... not really my cup of tea. Speaking of tea, I love chocolate, and can't imagine living in a world without it.
So, modern times it is!
Excuse me, while I find my nalbinding project. I have to make a pair of mittens for my niece before she moves away this autumn.
There is always the chance for you and your family’s fortunes to change because of hail, drought, war, influenza, childbirth, climate change, world politics, local strife. It could be swift or slow- but never did we, or do we, have any real control over our lives. Now we think we do. However-In the blink of an eye a bomb , a greedy producer, or shortsighted politician can cause our fortunes to change and we can find ourselves living in circumstances we thought we’d outgrow a thousand years ago.
That is the reason we should study history.
Very true!
22:54 one small correction: go and STAND in a medieval church. Though don't quote me on this please, as this is something I heard from a friar, I don't have a better source: benches were introduced after the Reformation, first in Protestant churches. (I imagine that they were drawing people away from the Catholic church with their promise of comfort during the service 😂)
Floors, stools, kneelers, cushions, cloaks, to be honest almost every depiction we have of interior preaching that we can interpret as being a church has people sitting in various ways! Brother Friar may need to consult the works of some of his late brethren ;)
Also, the idea that Protestantism is the comfy denomination is an extremely bold take!
@@TheWelshViking hmmm... I´m not so sure this all sitting facilities were for everyone. For the rich, or very old, or the sick, maybe. And for the church "nobility". But for the "common peasant" - not so really. In the orthodox church there are stools only for those afore-mentioned still today. Now I need to check how it was in the catholic church in the medieval time. Hello, rabbit hole, I´m comming! (that´s something else you would never could enjoy as a medieval peasant; you had to stay put and do your task).
@@stancalung5186 please post the results of your research, I can't really do this right now but I want to so badly! 😆
@TheWelshViking thanks for making that point! I wonder, however, how much of the mass was one allowed to sit through. I'm a practicing Catholic. Nowadays we're supposed to stand or kneel for most of the mass. (I've been to Lutheran services too and they, on the other hand, sit through almost the whole thing - I'd definitely say that at least nowadays, Lutheran services are more comfortable!) In the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, which was adopted by the Church in the 16th c., there's even less sitting in proportion as the mass itself is longer. On the other hand, the priest and the altar servers are facing away from the congregation, so you're on your own when it comes to gestures 😉 It's hard to tell how it was before that because there wasn't one universal rite, so it must've depended on where one was from...
The lack of benches or pews could be a logistical practicality. I don't know huge amounts about the structure of the medieval Catholic Mass, but in the present day, the congregation is required to stand or kneel for a a good portion of the time. If there are not kneelers then you may stand for the portions that you are supposed to kneel (rather than kneeling on the floor, although some people do tend to kneel anyway, but they often use their coat as padding). Benches or pews are useful for the parts that you are permitted to sit, but they take up a great deal of space. And, if you happen to go to Catholic Mass at Christmas and Easter, when many, many more people attend than on a typical Sunday, people are often in overflow rooms (side chapels or the basement) and/or standing in the back and the side aisles. If there were no pews or benches (or only a few reserved for people who have difficulty standing), yes, you'd have to stand, but then everyone could be in the main body of the church.
@@elisabethmontegna5412 I know that one year the church I grew up in declared that for Easter were weren't going to kneel, we were going to stay standing, because that had been done back in (I don't remember the era). So I'm sure that standing was more common in some eras. On the other hand, kneeling on the floor, without kneelers, isn't actually that bad if you're reasonably able-bodied. (I have bad knees and actually find it easier than using a kneeler). So just having a little cushion would be plenty for most people, which they could have brought just like a stool or other seat.
A few centuries late to be medieval, but re: the Church owning vast chunks of land: a single institute, Trinity Church Wall Street, was granted a vast chunk of the southern tip of Manhattan Island way back in the early 1700s. They've sold off most of it over the centuries, but today they still own 14 acres or so of the most valuable real estate on earth.
0:52 Something something anarcho-syndicalist commune something...
6:34 Bugger
Funny parallel to recent events: in the wake of the Black Death, the cost of living rose, but the peasantry remained in pretty much the same situations they'd always have. Worse still, in England at least, there were laws put in place to further restrict the movement of peasants which is one of the things that led to the Peasants Revolt. Obviously, it's not quite the same, but there are some parallels to post-pandemic Britain that are worth noting.
"They grew flowers because they are nice to look at"
they also smell a lot better than the medieval city
I love the etymology I learn on these vids!
It’s a complex system, for sure. Well discussed.
I'm not sure how similar it is to the medieval system, but my ancestor first came to South Carolina in the USA as a "Bond Servant" in 1727, which as I understand it could either mean a slave like servant for a period of several years or possibly a deported convict. Either way I enjoyed your video. Thanks
Ah, yes! Indentured servitude was a punishment common until the 19th century! Generally it was for a predetermined period but how interesting to have that information on your ancestors
Not just a punishment though. In most cases you can view it as a very unfair "loan" you pay off by working, to pay back the cost of the crossing to the States, and they would slap on some years for food and board, and I guess a couple more just because they could.
I had an ancestor that was brought from Keppoch, Scotland to the US colonies. He was a Jacobite fighting against the English Hanoverian king. He was a war prisoner -- "sold" at the docks in Baltimore MD to work on a plantation in North Carolina, where my mother's family is from (some similarities to Outlander series). He fought under Lord Ramsey (I believe) at the battle of Preston. He did eventually obtain freedom -- easier than those that were brought from Africa.
If I'm your lord then I need you come come and help me dig my allotment 😅
That's an order, serf.
I’ve been living within the bounds of a city for a few years. Dig yer own!
If I'd been born even 200 years ago, no matter the social stratum I was born to, I still would've been an infant mortality statistic, so I'd rather keep the modern healthcare lmao. Funny tho how all these "thought experiments" or whatever always assume everyone's grown to healthy adulthood as the starting point.
Me too, asthma would've done me in during infancy. A short medieval life for me.
I replied earlier that I would have died in childbirth, but I forgot that I had very bad pneumonia when I was a toddler (requiring a hospital stay and oxygen and the whole nine yards), so, yeah, I wouldn't have even made it past that point.
Same here, I would've been one of the many kids who never made it past age 5. Thank you antibiotics
Huh, yeah I'd forgotten that I had red fever and went into convulsions as a baby, so I maybe wouldn't have even made it to the asthma, retinal detachment and ovarian cyst later in life!
"life was easier for medieval peasants"
Where? When?
We are talking about 1,000 years of history.
Are the lives of people from 1024 to 2024 similar enough to say anything conclusive about the life of any class of people at those times? Probably not. So why 500 to 1,500 (exact years may be debated) would?
Thank God we now have coinage and no longer need food!
Having lived in unsettled curcumstances since 2019, I love the medieval peasants' security, but the limitations on individual thought & action would quickly drive md insane, I'm sure.
I am currently re-reading the Brother Cadfael books. Yes, they are excellent. (Try to read novels by people whose day job is historian.) I don't have any good tidbits about medieval peasants. My family has lived in the US for 3 or more generations. Likely there were some medieval peasants in my family tree, but as near as I can tell, they all were eager to embrace the new life.
Thank you for this video, I love British medieval history and I Love Cadfael stories, I learned quite a bit from that but was still at a loss to Welsh history, your video has cleared up confusions I had so thank you but one thing what is Conryth, I’m probably spelling it incorrectly, it’s a welsh word I don’t understand. Is it a village, or land? I don’t know.
I go to the pub religiously.
My understanding of freedom in a city after a year and a day was if you ran away from your land and didn't get caught you were free. Paying for your freedom meant the year and a day time didn't apply to you.
The word mercenary meant anyone who worked for money not just a soldier, so a thatcher or anyone who moved around for work was a mercenary.
Thanks Jimmy.
I had no idea movement geographically could result in movement socially! So cool!
If I had been a mediaeval peasant I would have died in my teens from appendicitis! And if I had miraculously survived that, I would have died having my first child!
I was just about to say that I would have died of sepsis before I was six months old; I was born with an inguinal hernia. If you plopped me in there right now I might be okay because I know how to sew by hand and embroider.
I'm sure that, from a lot of people's perspective, the life of a medieval peasant would look better on a surface level. Trust you to bring the nuance to that idea!
I am glad you worked in some clothing there at the end with the pants comment.
Great video as always dude! (Are we ever gonna get a bookshelf tour video someday?)
This was very informative, and, of course, nuanced. Thank you 😊
What are your thoughts on shows like the Tudor Farm series? I thought that showed very nicely just how much more tiring manual labour would have been in those times, and also that farm work involved a lot of waiting for things to grow, so those religious holidays were useful both to pass the time in periods where the farm required less labour, and to take a break from intense physical activity. Yes, you might be required to go to church to listen to Latin mass, or take part in a religious tradition like a procession of some sort, but it might still be a welcome change from tilling fields or cutting down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring.
Does anyone know about a surf being called a "Grom" ? It is noted in 'The Estates of Crowland Abbey, a study in manorial organisation’, by Frances M. Page. Page remarks that in 1232 William le Grom changed his name to 'le Warde' as he wanted to break away from being a landless surf to the lord Abbot like all his ancestors were "from time immemorial".
Almost certainly a Middle English form of the word we now know as "groom," which typically referred to specific sorts of servants, but the details of what ME words mean vary a lot from place to place so it would take multiple documents from the same time and place to figure out what it meant there and then.
@@teucer915 Thanks for this, it ties in with my current research.
I'm from West Lancashire, which it seems was pretty much just a massive, boggy marsh for most of the early-mid medieval period. There's really not much evidence of how people actually lived available, but I'm going to guess that unless you really liked subsisting on eels or harvesting reeds for thatching, it probably wasn't the best life you could have as a peasant. At least it was boggy enough that the Mercian and Northumbrian armies probably didn't bother you too often. Swings and roundabouts!
I wouldn't have survived childhood without modern medicine anyway, so it's entirely academic for me!
I suppose so much depended on how decent your Lord/Abbott was, if he was a right bastard your life probably sucked.
Love a bit of nuance, me. Love the Cadfael books,have them all and re read periodically
Ellis Peter's had a pretty good grasp of the history and the Welsh stuff, I'd say.
Sorry, Jimmy, no real medieval stuff here, Australia innit!The Aboriginal people were hunter/gatherers who gathered wild grains, plants etc and stored/cached stuff for later.
Loved this, thank you, always glad to find out etymology of words
Take care, sorry you don't have land, hope you have pot plants at least❤❤
I very much appreciate living in this time.
So subsistence farming with no modern tools; except sometimes you also had a boss that meddled in your personal life, controlled the police, conscripted you to war, you can't leave the immediate surrounding area, you can't quit except in very specific circumstances, and you had to pay him super high taxes...
Also he could fire you from life...
I mean, they couldn’t just kill you with impunity. That was very much not ok. But yes.
Police? Oh dear. Murder is still murder.
I'd be interested to know an approximation of how many hrs/week a peasant worked compared to us. I could see it going both ways, honestly. That might be hard to compare though, since I think there's a difference between the way we view work we get paid for, necessary house work, and leisure time vs. the way a medieval peasant would have seen it. There's our 9-5 (or in my case, 8-5) which is obviously work, but then doing laundry isn't my paying job, but I still consider it work, whereas my sewing and mending is technically still work, but I find it more enjoyable so I count it as leisure time. Many people enjoy tending their vegetable gardens, which is technically farming, but they might consider it leisure.
I'm just curious how a medieval peasant would have understood the difference between work and leisure compared to us. Like use, I imagine it would have been different from person to person.
Look at the hours that a market gardener puts in now, and then subtract the modern equipment :)
A medieval peasant works the fields as long as there's light enough to see by. If you lived closer to the equator you work more hours than someone less close. In winter the fields are barren and the excess animals have been slaughtered so one does only the inside work, maintenance, and trading.
thats something that people today forget to account for, that housework and raising kids is also work. So we work a lot of the time, but we do have a lot of free time because we can choose not to do that housework until another day. An interesting tid bit is that in modern day hunter gatherer societies, people usually worked for 4-10 hours a day and that included the obvious hunting and gathering but also housework and raising children. So while we have a lot of freedoms now (besides the ability to just move to another country) we do work more than a typical hunter gatherer if you factor in everything else like cooking, cleaning, mending clothes, washing clothes etc etc.
… if we’re the domain lords, does that mean we could force you to observe some obscure holiday? Or do we need to found a church for that?
No! "Nuance" isn't allowed on the internet!!!!
Read a translation of Johannes Butsbach's autobiographx basically with me mates from the 14th c. after the Hussite wars an' it he basically goed on tae describe how everything's shit in Bohemia from his perspective as a German whose parents gave him tae some Czech student-begger an' paied the fella tae take a proper care of the wee Johann after which he gets promptly bullied at every bleedin corner.
It's a wonder that the lot of 'em survived on begging though.
Annwyl Jimmy,
Many royal money making c12th century) pre-charter markets in England were established by runaway slaves, villeins etc. These could be on the boundaries of manors particularly crossroads and river crossings.
Dafydd sospan ap Dyfnaint
Medieval Norway was a safe place without any villains. Since there have never been any villages in Norway, we've never had any villeins.
No way would I survive as a medieval peasant. Besides the lack of healthcare, my chosen profession (typist) didn’t exist, though I think I’d make a passable scribe.
Maybe some metalwork affinity care of granddad (blacksmith) might give me slightly better employment prospects.
Very interesting! Thank you!
Thanks... I'll take my free-ish from religion life
Did peasants in medieval Early to High Medieval Europe have similarly difficult lives to peasants in China at the time or did they have more liberties given how wealthy China was?
Dont get me wrong, i wouldnt want to be a pesant but i think it would be quite nice to have a bit of land that i could cultivate and grow food on, but its probably not feasible with the length of workdays nowadays
I have a partition of a community garden and it's a buttload of work.
To be fair, the soil is very poor, but even if it was better it would be hard to feed oneself. You need several people putting in quite a lot of time (and on a larger plot) in order to achieve a sensible productivity.
I could not survive on that plot alone but I could also not work more land.
Oh, but if you want to grow a bit of stuff yourself, I can recommend the following:
1. A blueberry bush in a large tub of slightly acidic soil (they sell it for azaleas and rhododendron). You don't have to do much with it, just rejuvenate it by pruning in winter and give it some specialized fertilizer in spring.
2. Bush beans in a tub or balcony box. If you have a little piece of actual land or a raised bed that would be even better. Bush beans are smallish, have high yields and can be frozen very easily. Wonderful vegetable to stock up for winter.
3. A potato bin. There are different ways of doing it, but the main idea is to grow potatoes in a high container and either use the sides of the container to let the plants grow out or fill the container over time to "draw" the plants higher. Google can tell you more. The benefit of this method is that you can get more tubers per square meter than with conventional methods.
4. Raspberry bush in a tub. Raspberry plants also have a pretty good yield per rod, so I imagine you can grow them on a smaller space too. There are two types, some that bear fruit in June and July and then stop, and some that start in August and then will continue to flower and fruit until it gets too cold for the fruits to ripen.
5. Garlic can also be grown relatively easily. And because we usually don't use tons of it, even a balcony box with four or five garlic plants should give you a good result.
6. Zucchini plant in a tub. It needs a bit of space, but it will make fruit after fruit. Needs enough water, though.
7. Tomatoes and/or peppers in a tub. Bush tomatoes with small fruit are not very large but will give you aromatic fruit and usually quite a lot of them. There are other tomatoes that become higher and then need some support or they'll fall over. You have to experiment a little to find a sort that is suitable for your space.
Pepper plants also remain small, even more so when they are pepperoni or chilis. Even bell pepper plants are relatively small, but bell peppers take ages until they bear fruit. I would only recommend them in sunnier and warmer climates. Ideally when you can put them somewhere warmish over winter and cultivate them over several years.
The high rent in cities is still true today. I can not afford to live in the city I work in but as part of my contract I get free travel so I am grateful for that.
this entirely depends on the country and city, here in sweden many cities have municipal housing companies that have absurdly low rent, with the caveat that there's a very limited supply and you have to sit in a queue for 3 years to have a shot at getting to rent an apartment.
Im not really religious but thats because I enjoy studying the world, but back in the day the standard way to do that was study the word of God, and im really into helping others so id probably end up in the Church, or try to
In some places, if a serf ran away and remained uncaptured for a year and a day, they were free.
Mostly if they stayed in a town or city during that time, yes. Jimmy mentions that in the video.
Great video
Hawddamor gyfaill, diolch am y fideo addysgiadol ;)
Love your videos!
every once in awhile, i just stop and thank goodness for my modern life.
Whenever we talk about medieval serfs, I’m always reminded of how that same legal status lasted into the NINETEENTH century in Russia.
And then it kinda was reborn there again as kolhoz system that lasted about half of 20th century. My grandparents had to work on an assigned piece of land and to provide this and that amount of crops/eggs/etc to the state. And they weren't paid for their work. And they were prohibited to sell stuff, but still needed money for some things, like medicine or school books. My grandmother tells me sometimes how she, as a teen girl, travelled to a city in another region to sell some of their cabbage, because she wouldn't be recognised there. AND they had no right to move from their kolhoz up until later in the century....
I mean, to a certain extent, it still exists today...
And the Jim Crow era until the 20th century in America.
And well into the 20th century in America (as sharecroppers, most of whom were descendants of enslaved people).
So, I'm Jewish. There were a lot of basic rights that a mediaeval peasant would have that I wouldn't have.
With my various hobbies that all tend ot the historical, I'm constantly told I was born in the wrong century... I counter it with things like, "Thanks, but no, I prefer corrective eyewear, antibiotics, vaccinations and birth control. And you know, some bodily autonomy and the right to vote while female."
Yeah, I probably would adore the homestead life where I'm gardening and harvesting and preserving and spinning and weaving and sewing and doing carpentry and meadmaking and armourmaking, but yeah. Teeth. And health care. And I might be blind in one eye by now if not for laser eye surgery, though still can't see further than a foot without corrective eyewear. And that's if the ovarian cyst hadn't killed me. Oh, and late onset asthma as a result of an infection that maybe antibiotics helped. *edit also had scarlet fever as a baby, that mighta made me an infant mortality statistic right there...
Yeah, for all its faults, modern health care, please.
"Do you think you'd do okay as a medieval peasant?"
* laughs in chronically ill *
THANK YOU for debunking this less holidays than a medieval peasant-nonsense! It's been bugging me for years. Your cows don't know that it's St. Crispin's day, they still want to be milked and you have less time to do it because you have to attend a mandatory religious service. The experience of a medieval holy day is more reminiscent of your boss ordering you to attend some bullshit mandatory motivational workshop during your workday, while you're still expected to get the same amount of work done. It doesn't mean you get to lay on a meadow flipping the finger at your landlord and going "Sorry boss, today is the holy day of the martyrdom of the venerable St. Crispin, dig yer own latrine!"
Exactly-some farm jobs simply couldn’t (and still can’t) be put off for another day! Having livestock (whether bred for meat/wool/milk or kept as working animals) isn’t a job where you can take a day off.
Here in Romania, being a medieval peasant sucked, big time. Especially in Wallachia (south) and Moldavia (East).
First, there were a whole bunch of invaders who raided villages and took slaves, and that was the refrain of life throughout early and high medieval times.
Although many also settled there, and became part of the local population.
In late medieval period, things stabilized a little, but still sucked.
Most peasants had to work for themselves, for their local lord and/or church, and also pay taxes to the ruler of the country (called a voievode, or a prince), AND to pay for the tribute to the Ottomans.
And that's where things get complicated: rulers were appointed by the High Porte (Ottoman government).
Often, for that to happen, he had to pay a lot in bribes.
Even if he didn't, he had to at least promise an increase of tribute.
So, on top of the regular taxes, peasants had to pay extra taxes for the tribute to the Ottomans, and of course the voievode wanted to become rich as well, so extra taxes for that.
On top of that, there was the "blood tax" - the devşirme - the Ottoman practice of forcibly recruiting soldiers and bureaucrats from among the children of their Balkan Christian subjects and raising them in the religion of Islam.
Of course, the voievode couldn't tax the nobility too much, or they might raise against him (and they actually had their own small armies - retinues of professional warriors), so basically all the taxes went to the peasantry.
Since usually the prince didn't have a personal army, he had to hire mercenaries - which means more money taken from the peasantry.
But wait, there's more: Akinji - irregular unpaid horsemen militia, subsisting on plunder. They regularly raided the border villages, even during peace time. In the East, the tartars fulfilled the same function. Some of that plunder were people taken as slaves.
And, of course, there were various wars fought in the region, which means extra taxes, people taken as levy, villages raided and fields destroyed (sometimes by locals, under a scorched earth strategy).
Transylvania was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, and had the Carpathian Mountains as border, so in late medieval times (after the mongol raids subsided), things were not as bad as in Wallachia and Moldavia. Still bad, though.
17:25 I'm an Anglican priest in Wales, I'm pretty certain I don't observe as many Holy Days as a medieval peasant. Few people realise that the late May bank holiday is actually Pentecost Monday on a fixed date.
Depends on where you ask. Here in The Netherlands we call it Pinksteren (the Dutch word for Pentecost) and it's a national holiday that is still religiously observed in many parts of the country.