Serfs

What's a serf?  What's a peasant?  Given that pretty much everybody of western European ancestry is descended from peasants, this is something that it seems we'd like to know.

A "peasant" just means a country person, a farmer, someone engaged in agriculture.  The most common medieval term was rusticus (which you don't need to know Latin to interpret).  They worked extremely hard (as of course modern farmers do as well), but not all of them were serfs.

A serf (servus) was someone who was legally unfree, although exactly what this status entailed varied widely.  The term servus had been the term in Roman law for slaves, but medieval serfs were not slaves.  Slavery had died out in western Europe by the eighth century.  Serfs could not be bought and sold because they were not property, and killing a serf was murder just as was killing a free person.  They were not even usually referred to with the term servus.  More common were such terms as mancipius, collibertus, famulus, hospes, or colonus.  Because different regions might use different terms, it is nearly impossible to say what was the distinction between these different terms.

Mancipius suggests someone seized in the hand, collibertus someone with only partial liberty,  famulus someone who served the family, hospes someone who came from elsewhere, colonus someone who was supposed to open up new lands, but all we can say for sure is that medieval scribes knew what they meant and we're left trying to figure it out from context.

As legally unfree, a serf (of whatever variety) was not supposed to be able to enter the church--though some did--and was not supposed to be able to give testimony in court--though again, some did.  They were supposed to defer to their lord-of-the-body (as the person whose serf they were was called) in marriage and inheritance, because servile status was hereditary.

In some places, a serf was supposed to come before his lord once a year with a rope around his neck and some pennies on his head.  Serfs usually had to pay a fine if they married someone who was not a serf of the same lord.  And sometimes serfs had to pay an inheritance tax (called mainmort) if they weren't living at home when their parents died and wanted to take up their parents' house and land.

Serfs owed the same mix of rents as free peasants who had landlords--a combination of money, produce, and "work days" in which they worked in the lord's fields.  On the average, serfs had heavier labor dues (more work days) than free peasants, but they were not subject to arbitrary payments.  That is, the lords could not just demand whatever they wanted and get away with it.

A lot of serfs had both a lord-of-the-body and a separate landlord from whom they rented some additional land.  In addition, serfs, like everyone else in a region, were subject to the regional count and the diocesan bishop.  This helped, because they could play one off against another, complaining with heart-rending cries to count or bishop if someone tried to demand something of them not approved by tradition.  Peasants (including serfs) had nothing like the freedoms we now take for granted, but they still had agency, the ability to take charge of their own lives.

Serfdom essentially disappeared in France in the early twelfth century.  Understandably, serfs found the ritual with the rope and the pennies very humiliating, and many bought their way out--their lords were willing to take a large lump sum in return for never again receiving the pennies, whose value became less and less all the time.  Some forgot (or "forgot") that they were serfs, since in many respects they were indistinguishable from other peasants.  Other just ran away to lose themselves in the rapidly growing cities.

In England and Germany, however, serfdom lingered much longer than in France.  Christian Spain started having serfdom for the first time in the thirteenth century.  Russia acquired serfs for the first time at the end of the Middle Ages.

Interestingly, mainmort, the inheritance tax for those heirs not living at home with their parents, lasted for at least a century after serfdom had disappeared in France.  Eventually most peasants bought their way out of it.

© C. Dale Brittain 2019

For medieval peasants and so much more, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.

Valentine's Day

It's Valentine's Day, time to talk about love.

Okay, Valentine's Day is not medieval.  (For one thing, the Middle Ages did not have chocolate--shocking, I know.  Nor did they have printed cards nor cut flowers imported from foreign countries.)

An early Christian martyr named Valentinus, probably put to death under the (pagan) Roman emperor Aurelian in the third century, became an official saint in the fifth century, with his feast day February 14.  (There are actually several early martyrs named Valentine or Valentinus, and they sort of got blended together.)  But he got no more special attention than any other second-tier saint.

His day had no connection to romantic love for the next millennium.  The earliest connection that can be found dates to the late fourteenth century, when the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer said that birds chose mates on Saint Valentine's Day.  (Several other people said so too at about the time; it may have been a folk-saying.)  England at this time was still using the Julian calendar, so in terms of the season February 14 was more like what we'd call late February than mid-February.  The date Chaucer chose doesn't seem to have had much to do with the original martyred saint, anymore than the swallows coming back to Capistrano (California) on Saint Joseph's day, as they are supposed to do every year, creates a connection between Joseph and swallows.

February 14 continued just as one more day for the next several centuries.  Probably its biggest claim to fame was the Saint Valentine's Day massacre of a whole lot of Protestant nobles by the Catholics in the sixteenth century in Paris.

But in the eighteenth century, probably inspired by Chaucer and the birds, people started seeing the date as one connected to romantic love.  In England, claims were made that the feast had something to do with the Roman (pagan) fertility celebration of Lupercalia, which was held in February.  An actual Christian martyr of course would have had nothing to do with something like this, but it seemed like an excellent (if fake) tradition.  Soon stories were added that the martyr Valentinus had sent a thank-you note for the excellent care his jailer's daughter gave him (before his execution) and signed it "love from your Valentine."  Other stories claimed he was persecuted because he was performing Christian weddings (there actually were no "Christian weddings" in the third century, but that's a separate issue).

In the nineteenth century, exchanging printed cards became common, and by the late twentieth century one was supposed to give one's beloved a card, candy, and flowers, and maybe go out to dinner.  Both the restaurant industry and the candy industry thought this was a great plan, to say nothing of Hallmark Cards and the florists.  One now had something to put on the candy shelf after taking off the stale Christmas candy, because it is still way too early for the Easter candy.  Valentine's Day celebration has now gotten so ubiquitous that people without a "special someone" are counseled how to deal with the unavoidable despair of the day.

In honor of the day (and not in despair), I will note the one book I've written that can be called a romance, "The Sign of the Rose."  It's a retelling (and expansion) of a story originally written around 1200.  (Hey! we're back to the Middle Ages.)

A medieval "romance" wasn't quite what we mean by the term.  It was a story full of adventure and twists and turns, but it focused more on personal interactions than did the epics (and very few people died).  In addition, there tended to be a lot more women in these stories.  "The Sign of the Rose" follows in that tradition, with sword fights, betrayal, a feisty heroine who saves the day, and true love.  It's available both as an ebook (on all major platforms) and in paperback.  Here's the Amazon link.

© C. Dale Brittain 2019

For more on medieval literature and so much more, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.

Baseball in the Middle Ages

With the Super Bowl behind us, football is over for the season, so it's time to think about baseball!  Pitchers and catchers will soon be reporting for spring training.

But what, you say, are you doing posting about baseball in a blog about the Middle Ages?  Wasn't the sport invented in the nineteenth century in the US?  Short answer, no.

Games where you hit a ball with a bat and run around bases have a long history, indeed going back to the Middle Ages.  In England school children still play "rounders," what Americans would call a simple version of baseball, and what is probably fairly close to the medieval game.  Both modern baseball (and softball in its various versions) and modern cricket are derived from this game.

The baseball Hall of Fame is now in Cooperstown, NY because legend has it that Abner Doubleday, who later was a hero of the Civil War, first laid out the baseball diamond and created the rules of the game there in the 1830s.  The Hall of Fame itself now says that this is not even vaguely true.  There are references to games of "base-ball" (sometimes bass-ball or baste-ball) being played in the American colonies in the eighteenth century, and all the variant versions of games played with bat and ball did not really settle down to become modern baseball until the twentieth century.

The rules of modern baseball are derived ultimately from rules written by Alexander Cartwright in the 1840s in New York City; he has a lot better claim to being "father of baseball" than Abner Doubleday, who may never even have visited Cooperstown.  During the American Civil War the soldiers of North and South sometimes played baseball rather than trying to kill each other, and the first professional teams were established once the war was over.

And the Middle Ages had baseball!  There is a book of simple Latin, intended for novices in the monastery, that describes activities the boys might be doing.  It was written in a semi-humorous way to try to engage the readers (and teach them Latin).  Among other things it describes the boys horsing around until they see the master approaching.  "He is coming, quick quiet down, he is almost here, look studious, he is at the door!"

And one of the things it describes is what looks a lot like baseball.  After being drilled on their conjugations, the novices would go outside, with their master, for a little exercise.  He would pitch, and they would try to hit the ball and race around the bases.  Life as a boy being trained as a novice monk would have been tough by our standards, but at least the monks realized that boys needed to run around outside, and sometimes the monks even had a sense of humor.

© C. Dale Brittain 2019

For more on medieval entertainment and so much more, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.

Medieval shoes

We take shoes for granted.  Work shoes, dress shoes, shoes for fancy occasions, beach sandals:  off to the store, try on a few pairs, and there we are.  Shoes come in so many shapes and styles that there is even a museum in Toronto (the Bata museum) dedicated to shoes.  The well-to-do are mocked for owning too many pairs of shoes--Imelda Marcos supposedly had hundreds of pairs.  Most shoes today are assembled in third-world countries, and a great many are made of man-made components.

Medieval shoes, as you will doubtless have guessed if you've been reading this blog, were different.  For starters, one did not pop into the shoe store, decide you liked a style, try on both the 9 and the 9 1/2 to see what fit best, and buy a pair.  Shoes were individually made to fit your feet.  Interestingly, however, there wasn't the left shoe and the right shoe.  Instead there were shoes, that might be tweaked until both left and right feet were accommodated.

Shoes were made of leather because there was no plastic and no rubber (at least no rubber in western Europe--rubber comes from southeast Asia).  Light slippers might be fabric with a leather sole, and sandals could be made of fibers (like vines), but leather was the norm.  If someone wanted a new pair of shoes, he or she would go to the shoemaker, who would measure their feet, discuss the style, and decide which shoe last was closest to the buyer's feet.  The shoes would then be made by hand.

Shoes came in several different styles, depending on time, place, and purpose.  The basic shoe was a piece of leather that was cut the right shape to wrap around the foot and was held in place by wide laces going up the leg.  Warmer regions saw a lot of sandals, often made from plant material; some were slip-ons, others had a thong that went between the toes, like a modern flip-flop.  Knights wore riding boots, generally shorter than the modern riding boot.

Not surprisingly, shoes were expensive by our standards.  Peasants needed shoes for the winter, but during the summer they might go permanently barefoot.   (Very conservative Amish communities follow the same pattern today.)  Note the farmer plowing barefoot in the image below.  They would of course have to be very careful not to step on a nail and potentially get tetanus and die.

Even the wealthy had few different pairs of shoes, both because they were expensive and because it took a while to get a new pair.  Because they were made for one's feet, they generally fit just right, so why get more than you needed?

But shoes then, as now, were influenced by fashion.  Periodically a fashion for very long, pointed toes would seize the aristocracy.  In the extreme version, the points were so long that they were drawn up to the knees and tied.  These shoes were hard to walk in, but that wasn't the point.  The long, curling toes still survive in stereotyped images of court jesters.

© C. Dale Brittain 2019

For more on medieval clothing and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.

More bawdy plays

In an earlier post I discussed some bawdy plays put on in the late Middle Ages.  There's been enough interest in the topic that I thought I'd share a couple more.

As I noted earlier, the same band of traveling players might put on religious ("mystery") plays and bawdy plays.  Whatever the audience wanted!  Both men and women appeared in these plays, and the women were uniformly agreed to be loose women and harlots--all the more reason to go see them.  (By Shakespeare's time, women's roles were played by boys, to try to decrease the harlot factor.)

In one play with a strong heroine, three friends all desire the same married lady, who has no interest in any of them.  When each one comes to her house in turn to beg to become her lover, she concocts a cunning plan.  She tells each that, because her husband is so jealous, they will have to come to an assignation with her in disguise--but don't tell your friends about the disguise!  She dresses one as a priest, one as a dead man (we'd say zombie), and one as the devil.  She tells them all to meet her one hour after sunset in the graveyard.  Each makes her a generous gift in anticipation of what they hope will happen.  Now of course she doesn't show up, but they all do, each makes out the other two through the dimness and is terrified.  Hilarity ensues, and they all race off, never to proposition her again.

What I'm calling bawdy plays did not always involve sex (though a lot of them did).  Some just mocked people, both the powerful and the weak.  These plays were definitely not concerned that they might appear insensitive.

In one play that mocked the uneducated, a country boy who has been a servant to a priest decides he wants to be a priest himself.  He travels to the University, presents his letter of introduction (which he is incapable of reading himself), and announces he is ready for the entrance exam.  But he falls down on the first question, which is supposed to show knowledge of French literature. "In the epic, The Four Sons of Aymo, what is the name of the father?"  (This is a twelfth-century epic about Aymo's sons having an extended conflict with Charlemagne.)  The answer should be as obvious as "Who is buried in Grant's tomb?" but our poor hero just can't answer it.

A number of these plays have been translated into modern English, suitable for performance, by Jody Enders, in The Farce of the Fart and Other Ribaldries (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).  (Enders has done such things as substitute modern topical references and catch-phrases for Old French ones, to get the modern audience a similar experience to the original.)

© C. Dale Brittain 2019

For more on medieval entertainment and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.

Lapis lazuli

Medieval artists loved brilliant blue.  Stained glass windows included exquisite blue glass (due to trace amounts of copper and other minerals), and manuscript illustrations (called illumination) often included bright blue color.  The Madonna, for example, was routinely shown dressed in blue.

The problem for manuscript illumination was getting a pigment that would make that brilliant blue.  The only way they could do it at that time was to use lapis lazuli, a mineral mined in just one area of Afghanistan.  When ground up, this mineral would produce a color called ultramarine.  It was highly sought after in western Europe, meaning it had to be traded over several thousand miles.

Obviously this was far too expensive to use in other than very small amounts.  Clothing, for example, even expensive luxury clothing, could not be colored ultramarine.  Instead the best medieval people could manage for their clothes was indigo, dark blue, which could be made from certain plants.

Even though lapis lazuli was as valuable as gold, it was extremely desirable.  Recently archaeological excavations at a former nunnery at Dalheim, in Germany, has discovered miniscule traces of lapis lazuli on the teeth of a woman's skeleton.  (Her teeth actually look pretty good--no cavities!)

It is quite clear where the traces came from.  The nunnery, like most religious houses, copied and illuminated books.  Religious books would have luxurious illustrations that required bright blue.  An eleventh-century nun worked on a book's illustrations, doubtless bending close over the very small image she was creating, and kept licking her brush to give it a narrow point as she delicately painted the blue bits.  Tiny flecks of lapis lazuli became embedded in the plaque on her teeth, where she would not have noticed them (the modern archaeologists looked at her teeth with a microscope).

The nunnery of Dalheim and its manuscripts were destroyed long ago, probably during the Thirty Years War in the sixteenth century.  The foundations of its small church and the skeletons in its cemetery are about all that remain.  It is indicative of how little we know about the Middle Ages, in spite of everyone's best efforts.

This case also is suggestive of the activities of medieval women.  It used to be thought that all women, even nuns, were passive and uneducated, and that all art and writing was done by men.  This is now known to be false, and the example of the eleventh-century nun (it's pretty easy to tell if a skeleton is a man or a woman) is a further indication of the artistry of medieval women.  It's too bad that we will never now be able to see the manuscript she was working on.

The discovery of the flecks of blue on the skeletal teeth was carried out as part of the larger project Science of the Human Past.  Here's the link to a news article about the discovery.

(For any readers just starting to look at my blog now, I've put in links above to a lot of other entries you may find of interest.)

© C. Dale Brittain 2019

For more on medieval nuns, art, and so much more, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.

More medieval recipes

A little while ago I blogged about medieval recipes.  There's been enough interest that I've decided to add some more.  Note that these are not all everyday recipes; many instead are dishes for great feasts in great households, and measurements are extremely free form by modern standards.  For example, they usually didn't bother mentioning salt, because of course you would salt your dish.  But it's fun to see how medieval tastes differed from ours, and how medieval cooks tried to be imaginative with what we would consider a limited choice of ingredients.

Fava beans with herbs
Take some fava beans and use hot water to skin them, the same as you would with almonds.  Add some good broth and boil them long enough to be cooked properly.  Add some parsley and chopped mint and a little salted meat and boil together.  This should be a nice shade of green.  You can also make this dish with peas but do not skin them with hot water.

Chicken stew
Boil up your chickens and save the broth.  Cut up the chickens and cook the meat in lard.  Pound together the meat, the chickens' livers, some almonds, and a little broth.  Boil it with ginger, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and grain of paradise [another kind of pepper].  Add a little vinegar.  Serve the meat in bowls, with the broth poured over it.
[medieval people preferred capons for dishes like this--a capon is a rooster castrated when young, so it grew up large but tender]

King Manfred's meat pie
Take chicken gizzards and livers and add pork belly.  Chop it all up with a knife.  Add pepper.  Fry it all up in a deep pan.  Let it cool and add eggs.  Meanwhile make a crust, and put the mixture in.  Bake it gently until done.


Stuffed eggs
Hard boil eggs and cut them in half.  Take out the yolks and mix with marjoram, saffron, and cloves.  For every 8 eggs, also mix in one beaten raw egg.  Mash in a little cheese.  Fry the eggs in pork fat and eat with verjuice.
[verjuice was made from partially fermented grape juice and crushed grape seeds boiled together]

A good source for medieval recipes is Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, by Odile Redon, Françoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi (University of Chicago Press, 1998).

© C. Dale Brittain 2019

For more on medieval food, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.