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Did Being a Medieval Peasant Suck?
The Welsh Viking | 9 April 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkeJYl6RGFg
6:20 Do I get this right? The aillt represents c. 50 % of the population, and he grew only c. 25 % of the land for himself?
This would imply one of two things:
- he ate 1/3 of the average non-aillt, at least in tilled produce
- or he gave off lots and needed to get things back from above to eat his fill.
9:57 Unless two manorial lords had an agreement.
Your daughter marries off on manor X.
Someone else's daughter on manor X marries someone on your manor.
In such cases, they might give you permission.
11:21 Do these restrictions for the "alltud" come from some of the old men (like Cunedda) who were nicknamed "gwledig"?
That would be another reason to consider "gwledig" = nationalist.
See link in email I sent you.
17:40 Thank you for the clarification.
Things like the Good Friday procession in Malmö or the Our Lady's Immaculate Conception, procession with candles in snowstorm around St. Nicolas du Chardonnet — yes.
Going to Ibiza to lie on the beach — no.
The upshot is, either way, you had more days when not doing your customary work, when you had sth else to think of than growing what you grow or sewing what you sew on normal days.
That were not drafted by the productivity mill.
17:58 No, you do not have to do everything on the farm as usual on a holy day.
Feed your livestock, yes.
Get them behind ploughs, huge no.
The agriculture was labour intensive, but it was also "decentralised" in a way modern agriculture isn't. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip once visited a farm in Canada. It grew wheat for 1000 persons. A farm in the Middle Ages, more like, say, 9 farmers with families grew wheat for 10 persons with families, the lord of the manor being both a part of that tenth, and key in selling the wheat to other parts of that tenth. For wine production less so, since it was in large part a thing you could also export, notably parts of Europe could grow no Mass wine of their own. But for basic food production, this holds fairly well. So, no, unlike a Swedish farmer in the mid 1950's or 60's I heard of, the Medieval farmer was not obliged to grow food on Holy Days.
He was obliged to feed his livestock, but that counts as an act of mercy or hospitality and was therefore OK.
18:08 Yes it does mean one had better labour conditions.
On a Holy Day.
If someone tried to force you to work (apart from feeding farm animals) that someone was very likely to be excommunicated or publically humiliated on orders of the Church.
If you think it would have been needed for purely economic reasons, even on your own command, you are confusing the economic conditions of centralised farming with industrialism with those of very decentralised and very pre-industrial farming in the Middle Ages. Get real. They weren't driving tractors around to make up for farm boys drafted to World War I in Medieval Wales.
It was also the Catholic Church that helped to end slavery in the Frankish Kingdom by 680. I think England received that reform in 1066, with the Normans, or perhaps some delay. But Germany, France, Countries between, it was not a thing any more. Queen Bathildis took the initiative, and the Catholic Church not only supported her, but also canonised her as a saint.
18:49 Rent or labour on the demesne.
1 day a week, later even just 1 day a month on the lord's demesne, out of a labour mainly spent on his own allotment.
The statistic is taken from
LA VIE EN FRANCE AU MOYEN AGE
COMTE SUZANNE Edité par Culture plus, 1982
https://www.abebooks.fr/VIE-FRANCE-AU-MOYEN-AGE-COMTE/31372494032/bd
Wales may have been harsher.
I cited the number on a post where I commented:
A work day was typically 12 hours including pauses, which would often be longer than the modern lunch pause and two coffee breaks.
52 * 12 = 624 hours spent on working for someone else.
Later, the work days were reduced to three days in four weeks and even 1 day a month.
12 * 12 = 144 hours per year.
Note, this is not the total of work hours, overall, it's the total corresponding to 559 hours rather than to the part spent working for oneself.
How much would the peasant have been working in total, including pruning his own orchard and picking his own berries (not modern strawberries)? Well, 60 hours (including lunch breaks and other pauses) per week at a medium week of five days a week.
60 * 52 = 3120 hours.
But he would normally have a wife, the parents of one of the couple, more than one child, say three, so divide that by 7 ... 3120 / 7 = 446 hours overall = less than the present 629 hours per year.
So, 446 hours in medium per family member, though it's possible the peasant would have taken on a larger part of the 3120 hours himself. But, only 624, later 144 hours, for someone else
19:40 In the time of the Three Musqueteers, duelling was seen as a noble thing.
In the time of knights and villeins, it was seen as a villeinous thing. Taking revenge in physical blows (with or without sharp arms) for an insult to one's reputation, well, in the Middle Ages, it was the serfs who did that kind of stuff. Probably could involve some wifebeating as well. The knight maybe did have some reasons to look down on his serfs.
20:23 You are describing the Deformation in Sweden.
But probably it could have precursors, like it certainly had inspiration, in Lubeck, which was HRE.
Nobles who liked to pretend the grants their ancestors had given the Church were sth they had been tricked out of. And you bet the Deformation made things worse for the poor.
England pioneered the system with workhouses. No, you couldn't roam freely and beg. Yes, you could go to a certain place and have food and shelter, not necessarily with your family members. If you still had an able body (not all poverty being due to invalidism), you were forced to work in the place (hence the name) and people were sent to beg in the surroundings, not for themselves, but for the work house. Started in Elizabethan times, meaning the Tudor one, not the Windsor one.
So, while the landlords got more means of harrassing people to be their work force, they also got more lands from the Deformation.
21:13 Just checked; Ellis Peters is, thankfully, not Ken Follett.
21:48 Taxation in Sweden around the time of the Deformation. Excluding cities.
1) Grundskatt, instituted by the king who ran the Deformation, was c. 5 % of the annual income. I say "c." because it was the same each year. But basically, it was supposed for a normal year to be 5 %.
2) Tithes were basically paid to the Church prior to the Deformation. They were calculated on each agricultural income, as ten %. For smaller incomes, like milk (paid as cheese) or berries or herbs, it all went to the parish priest. For the main harvest, wheat or rye, it was divided as follows:
1/3 to the parish priest.
2/9 each to his bishop, to the Church as an institution, to the poor.
What the Deformation changed was that the 2/3 not to the parish priest came under royal administration, Church affairs were suddenly under state tutelage.
"so medieval peasants have poor 21:54 diets it's mostly grain-based"
Whose Medieval diet was not mostly grain-based?
And legume based (peas, onions) and apple based?
People in the castle probably do eat more meat, proteine for building muscles. But there is proteine in peas too. But people in the monastery probably have a poorer diet than lots of others, if not all the poorest peasants.
The other things you enumerate are not about your situation in the moment, they are about your means of changing state. Something which burghers, knighs and clergymen were not too keen on either.
23:02 Do you understand instrumental music?
The Latin Mass could certainly be not sung on other occasions, but when people were required to come, Sundays and Feasts of obligation, it was sung. The cadences of Gregorian and other Church music are so good, that laws actually had to ban secular musicians from imitating them, which as a by-product pushed them to seek other cadences and found the Major-Minor tonality.
So, sitting at Latin Mass for an hour was at least going to a concert, which you didn't momentarily pay for.
On top of that, while you didn't understand the words of each sentence said in Latin, you could pick out various words in the "ordinary" (the recurrent parts) and had been told what they meant, perhaps in perfect literal translation (like "repos éternel done à cil" for "dona eis requiem aeternam"), so you would understand those parts.
On top of that, the parts that didn't recur next Sunday, but were proper to each Sunday or Feast Day, (hence "proper of the Mass"), while the reading and the Gospel need not be translated word for word, but the Gospel needed to be explained in the popular language.
23:40 I think the guys who have decided I ought to reevaluate what I think of the Middle Ages, may be the guys who have imposed on me not to enjoy the perks of being an author published in commercial form, on paper, which in my case means, I am remaining homeless, and I am arguably lots less well off than a Medieval Peasant.
So, if you would want to change that, given your charitable hope, how about starting to interact with me and giving me some visibility as a writer?
24:36 I do not have all my teeth.
I have eaten more sugar per day than most these days, and in the Middle Ages, sugar was not even a thing. Getting your teeth clogged with dental calculus was a thing, but losing them to caries wasn't. It became so in Tudor times. Especially directly among the rich.
24:44 So the peasant is supposed to have had a diet poor in vitamins?
Which ones were lacking?
25:16 In Sweden, thraldom was abolished in 1351. Villeins never existed.
In the Thirty Years' War, there were attempts by nobles who had seen how things were done in Germany to reduce peasants to something closer to villein status. Didn't work.
"I'm pretty 25:27 glad that I'm not a medieval peasant day 25:29 to day 25:31 because I don't really like only having 25:35 one pair of Underpants and that would be 25:37 hard for me"
I definitely would prefer Medieval Ecclesiastical law over some more recent legislations. And power systems.
Where do you get "only one pair of underpants" from?
Update:
Medieval Food for non-nobles, Holy Roman Empire focus:
Essen im Mittelalter: Bauernspeise
Geschichtsfenster | 16. Februar 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyOf3DKZaFs
Ein Ernährungsberater aus dem Mittelalter
Geschichtsfenster | 23. Februar 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4yzHgQ1m-E
It obviously helps if you know German. Or know someone else who does.
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