What were the factors that came together to make life hell on earth for Medieval peasants?
>>1204317
It wasn't hell on earth, that's an exaggeration.
It wasn't exactly a great life either but it was alright, Church sunday, farm all summer, chill all winter, parties and festivals quite a few times a year.
>>1204321
this
the life of medieval peasants was pretty similar to just about every other agricultural lifestyle throughout history except they had slightly more advanced farming techniques.
The only reason why the life of medieval peasants is seen as so bad is because of revolutionary and enlightenment thinkers trying to distance themselves from their agrarian roots and so presented them as backwards, dirty, brutalized idiots.
>>1204332
well said
Plague, famine, incessant warfare and conscription ... Servitude, illiteracy, religious dogma and superstition
>>1204332
>The only reason why the life of medieval peasants is seen as so bad is because of revolutionary and enlightenment thinkers trying to distance themselves from their agrarian roots and so presented them as backwards, dirty, brutalized idiots.
No its almost entirely the result of hollywood portraying them as dumb inbreeds with dirt on their faces
>>1204357
Which is itself just a second-hand villification of rural Americans, especially southerners.
Everything is three steps from the Civil War with Hollywood. I shit you not
>>1204332
The fourteenth century was a calamitous century. Apocalyptic plague taking out half the population, crop failures, a vain monarchs exhausting the people left alive through taxation for war
>>1204317
I'd take medieval peasant life over industrial-revolution era english factory worker life no problem. You wouldn't get to see the world or anything but you'd have a nice, rounded existence. And I imagine that in a time before tv, the internet or even literacy they would have spent A LOT of time fucking.
>>1204356
So life back then was no different from today
>>1204865
Huh? Do you live in the third world or something? We haven't had a plague here in decades, the last time we had what you might call a famine was over 80 fucking years ago.
>>1204676
>I'd take medieval peasant life over industrial-revolution era english factory worker life no problem.
So why do you suppose all those peasants flocked to factory jobs when they became available? Why do you suppose that pattern continues even today in China, etc?
>>1204569
>and why do you think they believe that?
Because its a trope that ill informed uneducated historians first made which has stuck because its what people expect.
It isn't as back as every historical drama figure being equipped in biker leather though.
Leather armour needs to stop it wasn't a thing much. Especially when they opt for leather shit when we know full well exactly what they wore.
This is "The Musketeers" by the BBC, set in the 17th Century.
I will now post actual 17th century common fashion of a musketeer
>>1204892
>>1204888
Rural people flocked to cities thinking its their escape and path to wealth, it isn't and they ended up on the streets or in a horrific unending job
>>1204892
>Because its a trope that ill informed uneducated historians first made which has stuck because its what people expect.
So what superior education do you have on the subject?
>>1204888
>mass urbanization didn't start hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution
>>1204896
>Rural people flocked to cities thinking its their escape and path to wealth, it isn't and they ended up on the streets or in a horrific unending job
[citation needed]
How dependent was the average peasant on a successful harvest?
>>1204898
Well I'm studying history at university but aside from that you only have to open any basic history book and you'll immediately get a wealth of knowledge which hollywood and TV seem to incapable of finding.
At least open a fucking osprey book to see how people looked instead of inventing your weird muddy faced bdsm leather gimp suit armour with studs all over it.
>>1204903
Every single country with high levels of poverty today is your citation. This is literally how favelas/slums occur. This is high school geography...
>>1204899
>implying that isn't just more evidence you're wrong
>>1204906
They could manage a few unsuccessful harvests without starvation, due to the very low population density, but if they piled up or if a harvest were a complete loss, it would be a major issue.
>>1204910
I thought so: you've got nothing. Chinese factory workers work hard, but the jobs are incredibly hard to get and the workers ate grateful to have them, because being a peasant is so much worse.
>>1204907
>just read a book lol
Ok, so you're a freshman history major and you're basing it on nothing.
>>1204919
>I thought so: you've got nothing.
What you mean is you're ignoring what i just said.
No one cares about your specific, highly regulated case in the 21st century. I am talking about the general trend of urban poverty and what creates it. What creates it are rural folk flocking to cities, not finding the work they sought, and then overbreeding.
>>1204912
Me? What did I say? I'm not the one you were talking to, I just commented.
Urbanization sucked, dude, make no mistake. You think famines were bad in Medieval times, in the 1600's millions of people died with every famine. Urbanization was faciliated by the massive wage rises from the black plague causing a labor shortage, and people setting up their own businesses, but after having tons of kids for successive generations, the wealth of many families (which might not have been much to begin with, just enough to get a trade going) rapidly attenuated, and many families were prostitutes and street beggars to get by.
>>1204923
What? What the fuck is wrong with reading a book. I am not telling you read a book, i am telling TV and film producers to read a book, because if they read a book then we'd have period dramas in accurate clothing and armour rather than the fucked up mess we have now.
Quit being an asinine prick.
>>1204925
>"look at every country"
>"but not THAT one lol"
ok chum
>>1204936
You actually proved my point anyway by saying Chinese farmers flock to cities for jobs rather than farming, which is what i originally said. The difference is they don't all get jobs and then they end up stick in a city, poor and in poverty. So he probably was better off farming.
Well done
>>1204931
Specifically what books have you read on the subject of what life was like for medieval peasants?
>>1204941
Gesta Normannorum Ducum, Roger of Hoveden, Assize of Clarendon, Assize of Northampton, Inquest of Sheriffs 1170, Dialogus de Scaccario, Assize of Arms 1181
Well those are just some primary sources from the 12th century. They give a good indication of peasant life if you read between the lines. Primary sources are much better than secondary sources. Regardless you can stop your high and mighty air, we don't have to read volumes upon volumes of books to know that medieval people like all people would like bright clothing and didn't allow mud to sit on their faces.
>>1204940
Seems like your story has changed quite a bit. I thought industrial work was worse than being a peasant?
Religion, mainly. Christianity had crashed the plane of pagan wisdom with no survivors, and then proceeded to impose divine right of kings and say everything fun was a sin. Technology deteriorated as people were more concerned with making sure God didn't smite them, than they were with making their world better.
>>1204960
It is, working 16 hours a day is more than a peasant would do, and its not at his own pace, and can be much harder, but they want the money, and the prospect of wealth and advancement. What's not to understand here.
>>1204961
The "pagan beliefs survived alongside Christianity for centuries in rural areas" thing is just a myth right?
>>1204969
Pagan superstitions, not pagan wisdom.
>>1204961
Go back to your wicca general, /x/phile
>>1204972
>pagan
>wisdom
>>1204423
>It's wrong but I won't explain why
>Just take my word for it guiz
Reminder that for catholic peasants 1 in 3 days was a holiday.
Reminder that you have to work more than they did.
>>1204356
IT DEPENDED ON THE TIME AND REGION
CONTEXT REEEEEEEEEEEEE
t. Medieval Studies major
>>1205725
I have something they lack
What is the worse medieval meme:
Peasants were, across all time periods and regions, shit-stained oppressed subhumans who bathed in their own piss and were literally too stupid to do anything beyond grunt and growl for conversation
or
every knight, across all time periods and regions, raped 6 million women and children a day and burned down villages at the drop of a hat before also raping the livestock
>>1204317
>I judge the world objectively by my subjective standards, no man is stronger than I, no man is more equipped than I
>Even though I live in the most comfortable age ever known and am probably posting from a wealthy country where the greatest concern might be where the next meal comes from I will consider myself the standard of living for all time
>all who I deign beneath me had bad lives and they obviously didn't like it because I in my all infinite wisdom have lived both their life and mine, theirs mentally by thinking for 11 minutes, and I have determined their life is objectively worse
This is one of 'those' threads again.
Part of me wishes the Enlightenment never happened, no one is any happier...
>>1207703
I'll go with
>le ebil Vikings maymay
God forbid someone do as everyone else does
>>1207703
WE RAPED THE HORSES AND RODE OFF ON THEIR WOMEN!
Only communists hate the Middle Ages.
>>1204356
>conscription
>in the Middle Ages
Mass conscription is a modern phenomenom, and only began with the French Revolution. Unless you were unlucky enough to live on the path of an English chevauchee, intra-Christian warfare wouldn't hurt you as a peasant.
Muslim raids were another thing, but that is okay to you, isn't it?
>>1204359
Actually it's based on Soviet propaganda against Kulaks. Remember that the people behind Hollywood is the same people that perpretated the Holodomor.
>>1204961
>divine right of kings
>in the Middle Ages
The theory of "divine rights of kings" was a 17th century political philosophy that was used by absolute monarchs to justify the expansion of central power.
It has nothing to do with the Middle Ages.
>>1204963
Peasants fled to towns to earn their freedom,after one year in a town they became a freeman
>>1207869
>The theory of "divine rights of kings" was a 17th century political philosophy
The remote origins of the theory are rooted in the medieval idea that God had bestowed earthly power on the king, just as God had given spiritual power and authority to the church, centering on the pope. The immediate author of the theory was Jean Bodin,who based it on the interpretation of Roman law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings
>>1207893
I don't see your point, Jean Bodin lived after the Middle Ages.
Of course, you can see the roots of this idea in Ghibelline political thought such as Marsilius of Padua's "Defensor pacis", but the adoption of absolute monarchy justified by the divine rights of kings would only happen in Western Europe after the end of the Middle Ages. To say otherwise is historical illiteracy.
>>1207911
To say it is a seventeenth century is the height of ignorance, considering that was the time period of the Glorious revolution,where doctrine of Divine Right of Kings ceased to have influence
>>1204412
And at the same time, the shortage of labor caused by the black death allowed peasants to leverage much greater freedom and influence for themselves because those that survived were in much higher demand
Them nobles ain't gonna work the land themselves and if you wanted the peasants to do it, you had to make it worth their while. It turned out to be a good thing for the little guy, after they stopped dying wholesale.
13th century peasants enjoyed a greater life than 18th century peasants.
>>1207949
Only in England. In France, the reaction against the expansion of power by the central monarchy failed and the theory of "divine rights" maintained influence well into the 18th century.
Besides, that may be forgotten now, but English rebels in the 17th century justified much of their reaction against absolute monarchy on medieval conceptions of kingship, exemplified in the Magna Carta, which itself was seen as a codification of liberties which supposedly went back to the Anglo-Saxon period of kings like Alfred the Great.
![2ca42c922ff4f07e200f171e49743eb4[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Fc6SFsv.jpg "2ca42c922ff4f07e200f171e49743eb4[1].jpg")
>>1204317
>>1204332
>>1204321
Being a peasant was fucking awful
The rise of stone castles made it almost impossible for peasants to retaliate against castellans who, during the early middle ages, were little more than raiders who claimed all territory within a day's horse ride of their castle. They would extort everyone who lived on it and demanded that everyone address them as lord (dominus) and pay them banal and seigneurial dues. Banal lordship imposed new regulations and taxes on peasants that were unprecedented, requiring them to pay their lord for necessities such as the right to mill grain, bake bread, press grapes into wine, etc. They had to pay fines for things like their house burning down or their wives committing adultery. The worst tax was the tallage, which was an arbitrary amount of tribute that the castellan could demand at any time. Castellans employed knights to force the peasants to pay these ridiculous fines, and they were more than happy to torch peasants' fruit trees, injure their livestock, and slap the shit out of them in order to get it. Constant fights between castellans meant that peasant families frequently had to give up one of their sons to be fodder for their lord's levy. Knights and bandits would raid free peasants until they were forced to run to the local lord for protection and enserf themselves. County legal courts, where peasants could sue, disappeared and the word of the local castellan became the law. In eastern Europe, where the Slavic peasants were mostly illiterate and semi-pagan, things were even worse because the clergy wouldn't protect them. Oh and don't forget all the major wars where armies stole as many crops as they could carry and burned the rest.
>>1208299
Read more, watch less television
>>1208299
to add, shit didn't begin to improve for most of them until the 13th century with reurbanization, deforestation, and monetarization which allowed peasants to escape to cities, move to new arable land, and to accumulate wealth over several years with which they could buy their freedom. All of these forced castellans to treat their peasants better and even enter into contracts with them to ensure that they wouldn't leave their demesnes.
Improved anti-knight weapons and labor shortages from the plague also helped the lot of them later on
>>1208307
You know, what he said has a certain amount of truth to it.
>>1207954
Hunter gatherer > early farmer
>>1208307
Name me some shows or movies that depict these things because I can't.
All of this was taken from my lecture notes from a class taught by a renowned medieval history professor.
>>1208332
Eh...the post is really not. "People had to do unthinkable things like bake bread and farm, and to pay taxes, but it sucked because they also had to become knights and fight robbers."
Peasant life wasn't that exciting.
Also, in England, no one called someone a lord or majesty until the 1500s, and by then, feudalism was almost non existent in England.
>>1208341
Try reading something before posting.
Feudalism was better for the peasants. Alexis de Tocqueville is a good place to start. At least as a feudal peasant, you had something, even if it was just a farm.
You know what 19th century poor people had? Nothing at all. The people who had once been the "evil feudal lords" now became the businessmen who couldn't give a shit about the poor.
>>1208355
I wasn't disagreeing that 13th century peasants would have had a better life that 18th century.
>>1208355
>"People had to do unthinkable things like bake bread and farm, and to pay taxes, but it sucked because they also had to become knights and fight robbers."
Your lack of reading comprehension is astounding.
>>1204357
Read some sources from the time period. Chivalric romances and clerical documents alike depict peasants as ugly and discourteous, and either dumb as a post or cruelly mischievous.
>>1208307
idiot
>>1208353
All right
>He was no longer their ruler, and had no reasons for conciliating, or aiding, or guiding them, while, on the other hand, he did not share their burdens, and consequently felt no sympathy for sufferings which did not afflict him, or for wrongs to which he was a stranger. Though they had ceased to be his subjects, he had not become their fellow-citizen. The position is without parallel in history. What I have said of the nobility applies equally to rich landowners in general. Centralization stripped the rural districts of their rich and enlightened inhabitants.We have seen already how the middle classes deserted the country parts and took refuge in cities. The peasant, then, was widely separated from the upper classes of society. He was kept aloof from all who could help or guide him. The higher his fellows [155] rose in influence and station, the more they avoided him. He seemed to have been picked out of the whole nation, and set aside.See, now, what became of this forsaken class, over which no one tried to tyrannize, but which no one tried to aid or enlighten.The weightiest of the feudal burdens had certainly been lightened or removed, but they had been succeeded by others perhaps even more oppressive. Peasants were relieved from many grievances which had afflicted their ancestors, but they endured sufferings which the latter had never known.
>>1208383
> Chivalric romances and clerical documents alike depict peasants as ugly and discourteous, and either dumb as a post or cruelly mischievous.
From the 13th century?
>>1208392
oh, look, an ideologue.
>>1208355
>You know what 19th century poor people had?
Freedom,For the majority of the poor serfs, it was like slavery in antiquity.
>>1208353
"Renowned medieval history professor" means nothing in a time when all of this information is accessible with the click of a mouse.
There's a lot of bad info in that post though
You limp dicked faggots have no idea how backbreaking fieldwork is.
You think it's just like your shitty "back to nature" veggie garden that you have in your backyard.
I swear history is dying thanks to retards like you who have no concept of the real world or the notion of context.
You have places that practice pre-industrial farming to this day. They're called third world shit-holes for a reason you out of touch mongoloids.
>>1208441
>peasants did backbreaking labor for 18 hours a day
Is it true that the biggest killer was dirty drinking water. I have seen before that the arrival of tea was the biggest factor in allowing for a population explosion in cities. The boiling of the water plus something in the tea itself killed the pathogens.
>>1208392
Searching that quote brings up this, which seems to indicate he's talking about the 17th century. Where did you pull it from?
>>1208441
Do you think a hunter gatherer lifestyle would be superior to pre-industrial farming?
And I mean in relatively productive region, not where it's restricted to these days.
>>1204356
>Warfare and conscription
Any lord using peasants would be laughed out of his claim and any lord doing such would face a revolt. It was the unspoken contract that the peasants worked the land and the Lord and his nobles would protect them.
>>1208428
Most people don't even know where to look. An expert in the field is incredibly useful for navigating it and picking up the important bits, unless you have unlimited time to read dozens of books.
Feel free to correct my post. I'm mostly talking about the early and high middle ages, things definitely improved during the 13th century before temporarily dipping again during the Hundred Years War.
>>1208299
>The rise of stone castles made it almost impossible for peasants to retaliate against castellans who, during the early middle ages, were little more than raiders who claimed all territory within a day's horse ride of their castle. They would extort everyone who lived on it and demanded that everyone address them as lord (dominus) and pay them banal and seigneurial dues. Banal lordship imposed new regulations and taxes on peasants that were unprecedented, requiring them to pay their lord for necessities such as the right to mill grain, bake bread, press grapes into wine, etc. They had to pay fines for things like their house burning down or their wives committing adultery. The worst tax was the tallage, which was an arbitrary amount of tribute that the castellan could demand at any time. Castellans employed knights to force the peasants to pay these ridiculous fines, and they were more than happy to torch peasants' fruit trees, injure their livestock, and slap the shit out of them in order to get it. Constant fights between castellans meant that peasant families frequently had to give up one of their sons to be fodder for their lord's levy. Knights and bandits would raid free peasants until they were forced to run to the local lord for protection and enserf themselves. County legal courts, where peasants could sue, disappeared and the word of the local castellan became the law. In eastern Europe, where the Slavic peasants were mostly illiterate and semi-pagan, things were even worse because the clergy wouldn't protect them. Oh and don't forget all the major wars where armies stole as many crops as they could carry and burned the rest.
Citation! Actual examples, not shitty generalizations.
>>1208578
I don't know where to find them in English, but these theories come from Georges Duby's work "La Société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise" and the works of other Annales school medievalists such as Pierre Bonassie's "La Catalogne du milieu du Xe à la fin du XIe siècle," Jean François Lemarignier's "Structure monastiques et structures politiques dans la France," and Bournazel's "La mutation feodale."
If you have jstor or some other research engine use the terms "Feudal revolution" or "feudal transformation" and see where that takes you.
>>1208578
oh shoot here you go
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjDhayvkP_MAhWIFx4KHdq7CUgQFgghMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.history.ucsb.edu%2Farchived%2Fcourses%2Ftempdownload.php%3Fattach_id%3D6554&usg=AFQjCNFIlb80KwQTmicKWAoYe_vv5Suemg&bvm=bv.123325700,d.dmo
should be a nice intro to the topic
>>1204321
This. Plus if you were a man you might get a chance to go to war and get some sick loot in return for walking around shitting yourself with 20,000 other guys.
Now, you want to talk about a shit life, I'd much rather be a medieval peasant than a peasant anytime between the 16th-19th centuries.
>>1208326
>anti-knight weapons
Kek.
How truthful is Terry Jones Medieval Lives?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg3YDN5gTX0
Keep in mind it IS the Big Black C and Terry is the kind of historian who pushes that every knight was a rapist and serial killer.
>>1208441
whatever, back to the fields, peasant.
In 12th century Poland serfs had to work 2 days/week for their landlord, in 18th century it was 6
>>1208307
What TV show did he learn all those medieval legal/fiscal terms from?
>>1209292
Interesting, what's your source?
>>1208441
Third Worlders are on Industrial-tier quotas, dicktard.
Totally not the same as their premodern counterparts.
>>1208424
>Oh look, one of the most respected political thinkers on the French Revolution and early American democracy*
Also an ideologue. The two things aren't mutually exclusive. Plenty of respected thinkers had absolute meme-tier understandings of history that they used to justify their positions.
>>1208981
People in this thread honestly think this is a bad life.
>>1209631
The status of LGBT people was miserable! How can you say it was a good life when LGBTQ folks were still enslaved by Christian morality!
>>1209712
how much would the church care if some nobody was engaging in gay sex or something like that? Serious question by the way
>>1209712
>Christian
>morality
>>1210106
well gay sex was a sin and pretty sure it stil is ( and for good reasons)
but thoughts were ok
I wonder how was it in monasteries and other church institutions, everyone of the same gender...
>>1208868
You would be last in line for getting loot. You'd be behind knights, squires, captains, and mercenaries who were all professionals and expected to come back from campaigning with something in their pockets.
The best way for getting money from war was ransoming enemies who'd surrendered, but I don't think peasants were allowed to take hostages (or at least not valuable ones).
>>1208299
Knights ain't shit lmao
>>1210106
They cared less than you think. When you read medieval accounts theres always someone accused or rumoured to be a buttfucker, and people who blatantly are and have been caught doing it, yet they're not strung up and hung for some reason. I'm guessing the knights and nobles were better at getting away with it or people cared less about them.
>>1204317
19th century Historians
French revolutionary propagandists
Anyone who had a fight with the catholic church.
>>1210713
>19th century Historians
could be because the social structures still existed, so they thought that it was always like that
even though 19th century was a hell on earth for more people than ever
>>1204892
The worst thing about the leather-fetishism in the costume-dept. if various production companies, is that it looks so goddamn boring. "The Three Musketeers" from the 1970s got the costumes more right.
>>1208937
>>1210664
"now my troubles are going to have trouble with me"
>>1204317
Life wasn't a hell on earth. It was just a crazy cycle of total labor and work for half the year, then total leisure and nothing but time the other half.
People played, loved, drew dicks on stuff, fought, learned, invented, and everything else we do today. Kind of hard to imagine, but we really have not changed that much as a species. Only how much we understand the world around us has.
>>1207849
Why do americans take pride in not taking out any vacation? What's the point of earning money if you can't have the time to enjoy it?
>>1209292
>>1209365
>12th century Poles worked 6.5hrs. a day
>18th century Poles worked 20.5hrs. a day
