Such was the lot of the ordinary man or woman. Whether in Britain or Brittany, Essex or Aachen, a common assumption is that the everyday lives of ordinary medieval people were fairly homogeneous \u2013 that their status, wealth, health, diet and, yes, clothing was largely the same across much of the continent. Yet even a brief look at records and chronicles from that period \u2013 which, of course, covers a vast timespan \u2013 gives the lie to that idea.<\/p>\n
Take the denizens of Ruislip, now a district in west London. In 1246, it was a small farming community in Middlesex. Here lived Roise, the miller\u2019s wife; Nicholas Brakespear, a freeholder who flouted the local authorities\u2019 orders; and Hugh Tree, whose flock kept getting into the lord\u2019s garden. If you wandered through 13th-century Ruislip, you might also meet brewers such as Alice, the widow of Salvage; or Agnotta, the amica (\u201cfriend\u201d, or mistress) of the shepherd.<\/p>\n
- Read more | Social mobility in the Middle Ages: could medieval people improve their station?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
Some locals were richer than others. One, Roger Hamo, was sufficiently wealthy that he could afford to pay 20 shillings for a jury of 12 local men to investigate his rights to a plot of land claimed by another man, Gilbert Bisuthe. The authorities\u2019 specification that some peasants, such as Nicholas Brakespear, were freeholders implies that others were tenants or serfs. Some people got along, but others got caught up in disputes \u2013 take William Slipper and the Widow Druet, for example, who argued over a hedge boundary between their properties.<\/p>\n
We know about the lives of these people because they were mentioned in the court records of Bec Abbey in Normandy, which was the lord of Ruislip\u2019s manor. A document prepared by officials records information about justice administered to inhabitants of the manor on \u201cTuesday after Ascension Day [22 May]\u201d 1246, including Roise, Nicholas, Agnotta and the others.<\/p>\n
Today they would all be lumped together as \u201cpeasants\u201d \u2013 though this snapshot of one community at one moment in time reveals that generic label encompassed a range of people with quite different statuses and life experiences. Apart from the fascinating stories of its various inhabitants, then, Ruislip\u2019s records tell us something important about medieval peasants: that their lives could be surprisingly varied.<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>A detail from the c1225\u201350 Lewis Psalter showing peasants brewing ale. (Photo by Free Library of Philadelphia)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Two visualisations of medieval peasants<\/h3>\n
All this should warn us against generalising about medieval peasants \u2013 yet, unfortunately, this is a warning that we, in the modern world, have failed to heed. In fact, so strong has been this urge to package our ancestors into stereotypes that we have fallen into the trap of visualising medieval peasant life in two ways.<\/p>\n
There is the \u201cnegative\u201d vision, that peasants in medieval Europe (our stereotypes tend to derive from the Latin Christian west) lived short, miserable lives. In this depiction, they were not only afflicted by the widespread disease and lack of hygiene that we associate with all pre-modern people, but were also violently oppressed by a greedy clergy and nobility.<\/p>\n
Other modern imaginations have drawn a different picture: of a utopian conception of contented medieval peasants liberated from the constraints of constant regimented work, with autonomy for them selves and their communities.<\/p>\n
- Read more | The surprisingly modern Middle Ages<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
Such views are based largely on depictions of ordinary people on television and film. Most films set in the Middle Ages treat peasants as mere window dressing: a powerless, servile mass. Extras with dirt on their faces pose in crowd scenes while the real protagonists \u2013 royals, nobles and clergy \u2013 drive the plot forward. Where peasants have a role, it is often because they have joined a noble, military milieu: Milla Jovovich\u2019s titular character in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc<\/em> (1999), for example, or Heath Ledger\u2019s fictional peasant turned-jouster in A Knight\u2019s Tale<\/em> (2001).<\/p>\n
Even more commonly, peasants are nameless and incompetent, reinforcing their inferiority to high-ranking main characters. Thus in Kingdom of Heaven<\/em> (2005), the crusading nobleman Balian of Ibelin, played by Orlando Bloom, teaches starving Levantine peasants how to irrigate their lands \u2013 in reality, that technology had already existed in the Middle East for thousands of years.<\/p>\n
Where peasants have a role, it is often because they have joined a noble, military milieu… more commonly, they are nameless and incompetent, reinforcing their inferiority to high-ranking main characters <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
A few films have, by contrast, portrayed peasants as heroic freedom fighters in a good-versus-evil struggle with corrupt overlords. Take Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves<\/em> (1991), or Braveheart<\/em> (1995), which depicts the main protagonist, William Wallace<\/a> (Mel Gibson), as a \u201ccommoner\u201d and a man of the people; in fact, he was a member of the lower nobility. There is little room for nuance in such narratives: they are binary affairs pitting the masses against the aristocracy without intermediate social gradations.<\/p>\n
In Braveheart<\/em>, for instance, even the Scottish nobles ostensibly on Wallace\u2019s side betray him, whereas the common folk rally around his cause. Such stories really reflect an abiding modern concern \u2013 inequalities between distant, dishonest elites and down-to-earth \u201cordinary people\u201d \u2013 but also contribute to the romanticisation of medieval peasants.<\/p>\n
Comedies have perhaps come closest to reflecting on the place of peasants in medieval society itself. Consider the 1975 classic film Monty Python and the Holy Grail<\/em>, specifically the exchange between King Arthur<\/a> (Graham Chapman) and two peasants (Michael Palin, seen below, and Terry Jones). The peasants\u2019 assertion that they are \u201can anarcho-syndicalist commune\u201d is partly a satire of modern leftist organisations. However, the reaction of Palin\u2019s character when Arthur seizes him and tries to silence him \u2013 \u201cNow we see the violence inherent in the system!\u201d \u2013 is the most trenchant summary of lord-peasant relations in modern cinema.<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Michael Palin plays a peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (1975)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Peasants as violent, superstitious, backward and servile<\/h3>\n
Like most stereotypes, modern views of peasant life are not entirely baseless. However, they tell us more about ourselves as modern inhabitants of an industrial civilisation than they do about the Middle Ages. Since the Enlightenment<\/a>, people in the \u201cwest\u201d have tended to view themselves as superior to all who came before.<\/p>\n
In that respect, the \u201cmedieval\u201d functions as the antithesis of all that we flatter ourselves as being. We regard ourselves as civilised, rational, technologically advanced, free and egalitarian. By contrast, \u201cmedieval people\u201d \u2013 above all, peasants \u2013 must have been violent, superstitious, backward and servile.<\/p>\n
The opposite fantasy \u2013 that medieval peasants lived idyllic lives \u2013 is rooted in the alienation many modern people have felt since the Industrial Revolution<\/a>. To such people, the Middle Ages represent a romantic alternative to the corruption of modernity: it was a time when people lived more authentic lives, were more in touch with nature, and enjoyed stronger communities, undisrupted by the frenetic demands of modern capitalism.<\/p>\n
- Read more | The surprisingly modern Middle Ages<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
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