Chapter 10: Life in Villages and Cities of the High Middle Ages

Village Life

Slavery, Serfdom, and Upward Mobility

Honorius lumps together everyone who worked the land, but in fact there were many levels of peasants ranging from outright slaves to free but poor peasants to very rich farmers.
The number of slaves who worked the land declined steadily in the High Middle Ages, and those who remained tended to live with wealthier peasant families or with lords.
Most serfs worked small plots of land; in addition, all serfs were required to provide a certain number of days of labor a week— more in planting and harvest seasons— on a lord’s land.
Serfdom was a hereditary condition. A person born a serf was likely to die a serf, though many serfs did secure their freedom.
As money became more widely available, some serfs bought their freedom.

The Manor

Most peasants, free and serf, lived in family groups in small villages.
One or more villages and the land surrounding them made up a manor controlled by a noble lord or a church official such as a bishop, abbot, or abbess.
The arable land of the manor was divided between the lord and the peasantry, with the lord’s portion known as the demesne, or home farm.
Lords generally appointed officials to oversee the legal and business operations of their manors, collect taxes and fees, and handle disputes.
Manors did not represent the only form of medieval rural economy.
In parts of Germany and the Netherlands and in much of southern France, free independent farmers owned land outright, free of rents and service obligations.

Work

The peasants’ work was typically divided according to gender.
Men cleared new land, plowed, and cared for large animals; women cared for small animals, spun yarn, and prepared food.
Once children were able to walk, they helped their parents in the hundreds of chores that had to be done.
Small children collected eggs if the family had chickens or gathered twigs and sticks for firewood.
In many parts of Europe, medieval farmers employed the open-field system, a pattern that differs sharply from modern farming practices.
Meteorologists think that a slow but steady retreat of polar ice occurred between the ninth and eleventh centuries, and Europe experienced a significant warming trend from 1050 to 1300.
The mild winters and dry summers that resulted helped increase agricultural output throughout Europe, particularly in the north.
The tenth and eleventh centuries also witnessed a number of agricultural improvements, especially in the development of mechanisms that replaced or aided human labor.
Another change, which came in the early twelfth century, was a significant increase in the production of iron.
Much of this was used for weapons and armor, but it also filled a growing demand in agriculture.
In central and northern Europe, peasants made increasing use of heavy wheeled iron plows pulled by teams of oxen to break up the rich, clay-filled soil common there, and agricultural productivity increased.
Further technological improvements allowed horses to be used for plowing as well as oxen.
By modern standards, medieval agricultural yields were very low, but there was striking improvement between the fifth and the thirteenth centuries.
Some researchers believe that it was during the High Middle Ages that Western women began to outlive men.
Improved opportunities also encouraged people to marry somewhat earlier, which meant larger families and further population growth.

Home Life

In western and central Europe, villages were generally made up of small houses for individual families.
Households consisted of a married couple, their children (including stepchildren), and perhaps one or two other relatives.
The size and quality of peasants’ houses varied according to their relative prosperity, which usually depended on the amount of land held.
Every house had a small garden and an outbuilding. Onions, garlic, turnips, and carrots were grown and stored through the winter.
The diet of people with access to a river, lake, or stream would be supplemented with fish, which could be eaten fresh or preserved by salting.
Medieval households were not self-sufficient but bought cloth, metal, leather goods, and even some food in village markets.
The steady rise in population between the mid-eleventh and fourteenth centuries was primarily the result of warmer climate, increased food supply, and a reduction of violence with growing political stability, rather than dramatic changes in health care.
Beginning in the twelfth century in England, France, and Italy, the clergy, noble men and women, and newly rich merchants also established institutions to care for the sick or for those who could not take care of themselves.

Childbirth and Child Abandonment

The most dangerous period of life for any person, peasant or noble, was infancy and early childhood.
Childbirth was dangerous for mothers as well as infants.
Village women helped one another through childbirth, and women who were more capable acquired midwifery skills.
Many infants were abandoned by parents or guardians, who left their children somewhere, sold them, or legally gave authority over them to some other person or institution.
Donating a child to a monastery was common among the poor until about the year 1000, but less common in the next three hundred years, which saw relative prosperity for peasants.
Monasteries provided noble younger sons and daughters with career opportunities, and their being thus disposed of removed them as contenders for family land.

Popular Religion

Christian Life in Medieval Villages

For Christians the village church was the center of community life— social, political, and economic, as well as religious— with the parish priest in charge of a host of activities.
Although church law placed the priest under the bishop’s authority, the manorial lord appointed the priest.
Rural priests were peasants and often worked in the fields with the people during the week.
In everyday life people engaged in rituals and used language heavy with religious symbolism.
Before planting, the village priest customarily went out and sprinkled the fields with water, symbolizing refreshment and life.
The signs and symbols of Christianity were visible everywhere, but so, people believed, was the Devil, who lured them to evil deeds.
In some medieval images and literature, the Devil is portrayed as black, an identification that shaped Western racial attitudes.

Saints and Sacraments

Along with days marking events in the life of Jesus, the Christian calendar was filled with saints’ days.
Veneration of the saints had been an important tool of Christian conversion since late antiquity, and the cult of the saints was a central feature of popular culture in the Middle Ages.
In the later Middle Ages popular hagiographies— biographies of saints based on myths, legends, and popular stories— attributed specialized functions to the saints.
Since the early days of Christianity, individuals whose exemplary virtue was proved by miracles had been venerated by laypeople.
Church officials in Rome insisted that they had the exclusive right to determine sainthood, but ordinary people continued to declare people saints.
The Virgin Mary, Christ’s mother, was the most important saint. In the eleventh century theologians began to emphasize Mary’s spiritual motherhood of all Christians.
Along with the veneration of saints, sacraments were an important part of religious practice.
Twelfth-century theologians expanded on Saint Augustine’s understanding of sacraments and created an entire sacramental system.

Muslims and Jews

The centrality of Christian ceremonies to daily life for most Europeans meant that those who did not participate were clearly marked as outsiders.
Many Muslims left Spain as the Christian “reconquest” proceeded and left Sicily when this became a Christian realm, but others converted.
Islam was geographically limited in medieval Europe, but by the late tenth century Jews could be found in many areas, often brought in from other areas as clients of rulers to help with finance.
Jews could supply other Jews with goods and services, but rulers and city leaders increasingly restricted their trade with Christians to banking and moneylending.
Jews were expelled from England and later from France.
However, Jews continued to live in the independent cities of the Holy Roman Empire and Italy, and some migrated eastward into new towns that were being established in Slavic areas.

Rituals of Marriage and Birth

Increasing suspicion and hostility marked relations between religious groups throughout the Middle Ages, but there were also important similarities in the ways Christians, Jews, and Muslims understood and experienced their religions.
Christian weddings might be held in the village church or at the church door, though among welltodo families the ceremony took place in the house of the bride or bridegroom.
A priest’s blessing was often sought, though it was not essential to the marriage.
In all three faiths, the wedding ceremony was followed by a wedding party that often included secular rituals.
The friends and family members had generally been part of the discussions, negotiations, and activities leading up to the marriage; marriage united two families and was far too important to leave up to two people alone.
Most brides hoped to be pregnant soon after the wedding.
Christian women hoping for children said special prayers to the Virgin Mary or her mother, Anne.
Muslim and Jewish women wore small cases with sacred verses or asked for blessings from religious leaders.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all required women to remain separate from the community for a short time after childbirth and often had special ceremonies welcoming them back once this period was over.
Religious ceremonies also welcomed children into the community.
Among Christian families, infants were baptized soon after they were born to ensure that they could enter Heaven
Within Judaism, a boy was circumcised by a religious official and given his name in a ceremony in his eighth day of life.

Death and the Afterlife

Death was similarly marked by religious ceremonies, and among Europeans of all faiths, death did not sever family obligations and connections.
Once the person had died, the body was washed and dressed in special clothing— or a sack of plain cloth— and buried within a day or two.
During the High Middle Ages, learned theologians increasingly emphasized the idea of purgatory, the place where souls on their way to Heaven went after death to make amends for their earthly sins.
Souls in purgatory did not wander the earth, but they could still benefit from earthly activities; memorial masses, prayers, and donations made in their names could shorten their time in purgatory.
The living also had obligations to the dead among Muslims and Jews.
In both groups, deceased people were buried quickly, and special prayers were said by mourners and family members.
Muslims fasted on behalf of the dead and maintained a brief period of official mourning.
Jews observed specified periods of mourning during which the normal activities of daily life were curtailed

Towns and Economic Revival

The Rise of Towns

Medieval towns began in many different ways.
Some were fortifications erected as a response to ninth-century invasions; the peasants from the surrounding countryside moved within the walls when their area was attacked.
Other towns grew up around great cathedrals and monasteries whose schools drew students from distant areas.
Regardless of their origins, medieval towns had a few common characteristics.
Each town had a marketplace, and most had a mint for the coining of money. The town also had a court to settle disputes.
No matter where people congregated, they settled on someone’s land and had to secure permission to live there from the king, count, abbot, or bishop.
The growing towns of medieval Europe slowly gained legal and political rights, including the rights to hold municipal courts, select the mayor and other municipal officials, and tax residents and visitors.
In addition to working for the independence of the towns, townspeople tried to acquire liberties for themselves.
In the Middle Ages the word liberties meant special privileges.
Towns developed throughout much of Europe, but the concentration of the textile industry led to the growth of many towns in the Low Countries.

Merchant and Craft Guilds

The merchants, who were influential in winning towns’ independence from feudal lords, also used their power and wealth to control life within the city walls.
The merchants of a town joined together to form a merchant guild that prohibited nonmembers from trading in the town.
While most towns were initially established as trading centers, they quickly became centers of production as well.
Peasants looking for better opportunities moved to towns— either with their lord’s approval or without it— providing both workers and mouths to feed.
Like merchants, producers recognized that organizing would bring benefits, and beginning in the twelfth century in many cities they formed craft guilds that regulated most aspects of production.
Each guild set the pattern by which members were trained and the length of the training period.
When the apprenticeship was finished, a young artisan spent several years as a journeyman, working in the shop of a master artisan.
Most guilds allowed a master’s widow to continue operating a shop for a set period of time after her husband’s death, for they recognized that she had the necessary skills and experience.
Both craft and merchant guilds were not only economic organizations, but also systems of social support.

The Revival of Long-Distance Trade

The growth of towns went hand in hand with a revival of trade as artisans and craftsmen manufactured goods for both local and foreign consumption.
In the late eleventh century the Italian cities, especially Venice, led the West in trade in general and completely dominated trade with the East.
Two circumstances help explain the lead Venice and these Flemish towns gained in long-distance trade.
Both areas enjoyed a high degree of peace and political stability.
From the late eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, Europe enjoyed a steadily expanding volume of international trade.
Increased trade also led to a higher standard of living.
Contact with Eastern civilizations introduced Europeans to eating utensils, and table manners improved.

Business Procedures

The economic surge of the High Middle Ages led merchants to invent new business procedures.
Beginning in Italy, merchants formalized their agreements with new types of contracts, including temporary contracts for land and sea trading ventures and permanent partnerships termed compagnie.
The ventures of the German Hanseatic League illustrate these new business procedures.
The Hanseatic League (often called simply the Hansa) was a mercantile association of towns.
The dramatic increase in trade ran into two serious difficulties in medieval Europe.
One was the problem of minting money.
Despite investment in mining operations to increase the production of metals, the amount of gold, silver, and copper available for coins was not adequate for the increased flow of commerce.
The second problem was a moral and theological one.
Church doctrine frowned on lending money at interest, termed usury.
The stigma attached to lending money was in many ways attached to all the activities of a merchant.
Medieval people were uneasy about a person making a profit merely from the investment of money rather than labor, skill, and time.

The Commercial Revolution

Changes in business procedures, combined with the growth in trade, led to a transformation of the European economy often called the commercial revolution by historians, who see it as the beginning of the modern capitalist economy.
Part of this capitalist spirit was a new attitude toward time. Country people needed only approximate times— dawn, noon, sunset— for their work.
Monasteries needed more precise times to call monks together for the recitation of the Divine Office.
The commercial revolution created a great deal of new wealth, which did not escape the attention of kings and other rulers.
Wealth could be taxed, and through taxation kings could create strong and centralized states.
Even so, merchants and business people did not run medieval communities other than in central and northern Italy and in the county of Flanders.
The commercial changes of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries did, however, lay the economic foundations for the development of urban life and culture.

Urban Life

City Life

Walls surrounded almost all medieval towns and cities, and constant repair of these walls was usually the town’s greatest expense.
Gates pierced the walls, and visitors waited at the gates to gain entrance to the town.
Most streets in a medieval town were marketplaces as much as passages for transit.
Some selling took place not in the open air but in the craftsman’s home.
A window or door in the home opened onto the street and displayed the finished products made within to attract passersby.
Most medieval cities developed with little planning. As the population increased, space became increasingly limited.
Air and water pollution presented serious problems.
People of all sorts, from beggars to wealthy merchants, regularly rubbed shoulders in the narrow streets and alleys of crowded medieval cities.
In the later Middle Ages many cities attempted to make clothing distinctions a matter of law as well as of habit.
City councils passed sumptuary laws that regulated the value of clothing and jewelry that people of different social groups could wear.
Some of these laws called for marking certain individuals as members of groups not fully acceptable in urban society.

Servants and the Poor

Many urban houses were larger than the tiny village dwellings, so families took in domestic servants.
A less wealthy household employed one woman who assisted in all aspects of running the household; a wealthier one employed a large staff of male and female servants with specific duties.
Along with live-in servants, many households hired outside workers to do specific tasks.
These workers laundered clothing and household linens, cared for children or invalids, repaired houses and walls, and carried messages or packages around the city or the surrounding countryside.
Illegal activities offered another way for people to support themselves.
They stole merchandise from houses, wagons, and storage facilities, fencing it to pawnbrokers or taking it to the next town to sell.
Cities also drew in orphans, blind people, and the elderly, who resorted to begging for food and money.

Popular Entertainment

Games and sports were common forms of entertainment and relaxation.
There were wrestling matches and games akin to modern football, rugby, stickball, and soccer in which balls were kicked, hit, and thrown.
Religious and family celebrations also meant dancing, which the church also had little success banning or regulating.
Men and women danced in lines toward a specific object, such as a tree or a maypole, or in circles, groups, or pairs with specific step patterns.
Musicians playing string or percussion instruments often sang as well, and people sang without instrumental accompaniment on festive occasions or while working.

Medieval Universities

Origins

In the early Middle Ages, monasteries and cathedral schools had offered most of the available formal instruction.
Monastery schools were small, but cathedral schools, run by the bishop and his clergy in bustling cities, gradually grew larger.
The first European universities appeared in Italy in Bologna, where the specialty was law, and Salerno, where the specialty was medicine.

Legal and Medical Training

The growth of the University of Bologna coincided with a revival of interest in Roman law during the investiture controversy.
Irnerius and other teachers at Bologna taught law as an organic whole related to the society it regulated, an all-inclusive system based on logical principles that could be applied to difficult practical situations.
Canon law was also shaped by the reinvigoration of Roman law, and canon lawyers in ever-greater numbers were hired by church officials or became prominent church officials themselves.
Jewish scholars also produced elaborate commentaries on law and religious tradition.
Professional medical training began at Salerno. Individuals there, such as Constantine the African (1020?– 1087)— who was a convert from Islam and later a Benedictine monk— began to translate medical works out of Arabic.
Medical studies at Salerno were based on classical ideas, particularly those of Hippocrates and Aristotle.
These ideas spread throughout Europe from Salerno and became the basis of training for physicians at other universities

Theology and Philosophy

Law and medicine were important academic disciplines in the Middle Ages, but theology was “the queen of sciences” because it involved the study of God, who made all knowledge possible.
University professors (a term first used in the fourteenth century) were known as “schoolmen” or Scholastics
The Scholastic approach rested on the recovery of classical philosophical texts.
Ancient Greek and Arabic texts entered Europe in the early twelfth century by way of Islamic intellectual centers at Baghdad, Córdoba, and Toledo.
One of the young men drawn to Paris was Peter Abelard (1079–1142), the son of a minor Breton knight.
Abelard’s reputation for brilliance drew the attention of one of the cathedral canons, Fulbert, who hired Abelard to tutor his intelligent niece Heloise.
The relationship between teacher and pupil passed beyond the intellectual.
The two became leaders of their communities— Abelard an abbot and Heloise a prioress— but they never saw each other again, though they wrote letters, which have become examples of the new self-awareness of the period.
In the thirteenth century Scholastics devoted an enormous amount of time to collecting and organizing knowledge on all topics.
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225– 1274), a Dominican friar and professor at Paris, produced the most famous of these collections, the Summa Theologica, a summation of Christian ideas on a vast number of theological questions, including the nature of God and Christ, moral principles, and the role of the sacraments.
In these, he investigated the branch of philosophy called epistemology, which is concerned with how a person knows something.
In all these works, Aquinas stressed the power of human reason to demonstrate many basic Christian principles, including the existence of God.

University Students

The influx of students eager for learning, together with dedicated and imaginative teachers, created the atmosphere in which universities grew.
University students were generally considered to be lower-level members of the clergy— this was termed being in “minor orders”— so any students accused of legal infractions were tried in church, rather than in city, courts.
Though university classes were not especially expensive, the many years that a university education required meant that the sons of peasants or artisans could rarely attend, unless they could find wealthy patrons who would pay their expenses.
Students did not spend all their time preparing for their degrees.
Much information about medieval students concerns what we might call “extracurricular” activities.

Literature and Architecture

Vernacular Literature and Drama

Latin was the language used in university education, scholarly writing, and works of literature.
In the High Middle Ages, some authors departed from tradition and began to write in their local dialect, that is, in the everyday language of their region, which linguistic historians call the vernacular.
This new vernacular literature gradually transformed some local dialects into literary languages, such as French, German, Italian, and English, while other local dialects, such as Breton and Bavarian, remained (and remain to this day) means of oral communication.
Facilitating this vernacular writing was a technological advance.
By the thirteenth century techniques of making paper from old linen cloth and rags began to spread from Spain, where they had been developed by the Arabs, providing a much cheaper material on which to write than parchment or vellum.
Stories and songs in the vernacular were composed and performed at the courts of nobles and rulers.
In Germany and most of northern Europe, the audiences favored stories and songs recounting the great deeds of warrior heroes.
In southern Europe, especially in Provence in southern France, poets who called themselves troubadours wrote and sang lyric verses celebrating love, desire, beauty, and gallantry.
The songs of the troubadours were widely imitated in Italy, England, and Germany, so they spurred the development of vernacular literature there as well.
Drama, derived from the church’s liturgy, emerged as a distinct art form during the High Middle Ages.
By combining comical farce based on ordinary life with serious religious scenes, plays gave ordinary people an opportunity to identify with religious figures and think about their faith.

Churches and Cathedrals

The development of secular vernacular literature focusing on human concerns did not mean any lessening of the importance of religion in medieval people’s lives.
People also wanted permanent visible representations of their piety, and both church and city leaders wanted physical symbols of their wealth and power.
These aims found their outlet in the building of tens of thousands of churches, chapels, abbeys, and, most spectacularly, cathedrals in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
A cathedral is the church of a bishop and the administrative headquarters of a diocese.
Most of the churches in the early Middle Ages had been built primarily of wood, which meant they were susceptible to fire.
Builders adapted Roman-style rounded barrel vaults made of stone for the ceiling; this use of Roman forms led the style to be labeled Romanesque.
The next architectural style was Gothic, so named by later Renaissance architects who thought that only the uncouth Goths could have invented such a disunified style.
Extraordinary amounts of money were needed to build these houses of worship.
The economic growth of the period meant that merchants, nobles, and the church could afford the costs of this unparalleled building boom.
Since cathedrals were symbols of civic pride, towns competed to build the largest and most splendid church.
In 1163 the citizens of Paris began Notre Dame Cathedral, planning it to reach the height of 114 feet from the floor to the ceiling at the highest point inside.
Stained glass beautifully reflects the creative energy of the High Middle Ages.
It is both an integral part of Gothic architecture and a distinct form of visual art.
Once at least part of a cathedral had been built, the building began to be used for religious services.
Town residents gathered for masses, baptisms, funerals, and saint’s day services, and also used it for guild meetings and other secular purposes
The frenzy to create the most magnificent Gothic cathedrals eventually came to an end.
Begun in 1247, the cathedral in Beauvais reached a height of 157 feet in the interior, exceeding all others.
Unfortunately, the weight imposed on the vaults was too great, and the building collapsed in 1284.
The collapse was viewed as an aberration, for countless other cathedrals were in various stages of completion at the same time, and none of them fell.