HOW PEASANTS LIVED

6.1 The commoners’ or workers’ estate

Peasants in fiefdoms constituted the majority of the third estate. There were two types of commoners:

• Villeins were free people who could live where they wanted and even leave the fiefdom.

• Serfs were people who could not leave the dependent holding, which they farmed and were tied to. They transmitted their condition to their children by inheritance. They did, however, have some personal property and the lord, who owed them protection and justice, could not beat them, kill them or sell them as slaves.

6.2 The life of peasants

Agricultural tasks and other complementary activities were carried out with the participation of the entire peasant family.

• The men performed the heavier agricultural tasks, such as ploughing, reaping or cutting down trees. Some of them also practised certain trades, such as carpenters, brick masons, bakers and blacksmiths.

• The women helped in agricultural tasks, such as planting and harvesting crops and grapes. They performed domestic chores and took care of the children, they spun and they wove. Some also worked as maids, washerwomen or day labourers.

• Children took care of the easier chores. At the age of four, they would begin to help with the household chores, looking for firewood or taking care of the domestic animals. At age 14, having reached the age of majority, they began to do agricultural work.

The daily life of peasants was very hard. They worked from dawn to dusk with primitive tools that provided low yields. In addition, they had to pay taxes to their feudal lord for working the land and for using certain facilities of the fiefdom, such as the mill, the oven and the press. They worked for free on the demesne and in the lord’s house, and had to pay a tithe to the Church: one-tenth of their harvests and livestock.

6.3 Clothing and diet

Clothing was normally produced by the peasant women using coarsely woven and undyed brownish coloured wool. Each person had one garment which was worn throughout the year. Their diet was scarce and monotonous. 70 % consisted of poor grain bread, such as rye, millet or oats, complemented with vegetable stews, vegetables, milk and eggs. Meat was eaten only on rare occasions such as Christmas and certain holidays. It consisted of poultry and pig from the slaughtering which took place in November or December.

Both or

Hygiene in the Middle Ages

Hygiene was poor and people only washed the visible parts of the body: their hands and face.

With these scarce hygienic conditions the spread of lice, fleas, and bedbugs was very common. A common remedy used to get rid of these pests was to put the infested person inside a barrel, it was thought that the lack of light and air killed the bugs.

6.4 The village and its houses

Villages were inhabited by people who were dependents of the same feudal lord. They were built on land cleared in the forest by the peasants. To do so, once the location had been chosen, the trees were burnt, the burnt logs were cut down, the fields were ploughed and the houses were built. The surroundings of the village provided certain resources. The forest provided pasture for the livestock, small game, wood to build houses, firewood for cooking and fruit to round out the meagre diet. Marshes and rivers offered reeds, rushes and fish. The houses of the villages were very modest. Walls were built with local materials, (wood, clay or stone). Roofs were made of straw and floors of rammed earth. They had one or two rooms, often without windows, and little furniture: a bench, several straw beds, a few clay cooking pots, and wooden bowls and jugs.

Skills progress

Working with concepts

1 Define these concepts: villein, serf and tithe

Assessing historical developments

2 Why was the life of a peasant so hard? What differences can you see when comparing it to the life of present-day farmers?

Handling images

Associative analysis

3 Using the illustration and the text, explain how a peasant village looked like, which tasks they did and what tools they used.

4 Describe what the houses were like: materials, distribution and furniture