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The manor was the basic unit of rural life in medieval Europe, and the peasantry was the largest social class of medieval society. The vast majority of the medieval population — perhaps 85 to 90 percent — lived in the countryside, and their lives were organized around the rhythms of the agricultural year, the obligations of the feudal system, and the calendar of the Christian Church. The High Middle Ages (c. 1000–1300) witnessed a dramatic improvement in the conditions of peasant life, driven by the agricultural revolution, the growth of population, and the expansion of settlement into new lands. Yet the life of the peasant was still one of hard labor, limited horizons, and vulnerability to the vagaries of weather, disease, and political conflict.
This cluster explores manor life and peasant society in the High Middle Ages. The articles in the related long-tail pages provide deeper examinations of specific aspects of the topic.
Georges Duby’s “Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West” (1968) is the landmark social-history treatment of the manorial order. Marc Bloch, in the third part of “Feudal Society” (1939–40), is still the indispensable English-language synthesis. The page below uses the manorial court rolls of eastern England and the polyptyques (estate surveys) of the northern French abbeys as its primary material, with both modern accounts as the framing.
The Organization of the Manor
The manor was an estate that belonged to a lord and consisted of one or more villages, the surrounding fields and woods, and the peasants who worked them. The manor was not a single building or a single property; it was a legal and economic unit that included a variety of resources and a variety of people. The lord’s demesne was the portion of the land that the lord kept for his own use, and it was worked by the labor services of the peasants. The peasant holdings were the strips of land that were allocated to individual families, and they were worked by the peasants themselves. The common land — pasture, woodland, meadow, and waste — was used by all the tenants of the manor.
The fields of the manor were typically divided into two or three large fields, each of which was divided into many small strips that were scattered across the field. This open-field system was a way of distributing the good and poor land of the manor fairly among the tenants, and it required a high degree of cooperation among the peasants. The sowing, plowing, and harvesting of the fields were organized by the manor court, and the rotation of crops between the fields was a matter of collective decision.
The lord’s demesne typically occupied a significant portion of the manor’s land. In the early Middle Ages, the demesne was often the larger part of the manor, and the peasant holdings were a small fraction of the total. By the High Middle Ages, the demesne had often been reduced, and the peasant holdings occupied a larger share. The labor services required of the peasants — typically two, three, or four days a week, with additional services at the busiest seasons — were a major burden on the peasant household.
The lord of the manor was usually a member of the aristocracy — a great lord, a knight, or a member of the gentry. The lord exercised jurisdiction over the manor through the manor court, which was presided over by the lord or his steward. The court dealt with disputes among the tenants, with the enforcement of the customary law of the manor, and with the regulation of the common land. The court was also the occasion for the payment of customary dues — the tithes, the grain rents, the labor services — that the peasants owed to the lord.
The Peasantry
The peasantry of medieval Europe was not a uniform class. It included a wide range of people, from the wealthy franklins of the English countryside, who held substantial holdings and could afford to ride to hounds, to the cottars and landless laborers who had only a small garden and a single cow. The legal status of the peasant also varied: the free peasant held his land in return for a mix of cash rent, labor service, and customary dues; the unfree peasant — the serf — was bound to the manor in a more personal sense.
The serf could not leave the manor without the lord’s permission, could not marry outside the manor without paying a fine, and could not have his children follow careers of their own. He was required to perform the labor services and to pay the customary dues that were part of the obligations of the manor. Yet the serf was not a slave: he could not be bought and sold, he could not be dispossessed of his holding except by the judgment of the manor court, and he had the protection of the customary law of the manor.
The free peasant — the villein of the technical English sense, the homo francus of the French — held his land in return for a different set of obligations. He typically owed a cash rent and a smaller amount of labor service than the serf, and he had a greater degree of personal freedom. He could leave the manor, marry outside, and have his children follow careers of their own. Yet the distinction between the free peasant and the unfree was often blurred in practice, and many serfs accumulated customary rights that made them effectively indistinguishable from free tenants.
The wealth of the peasant household varied enormously. The wealthier peasants — those who held larger holdings, who had access to common land, and who had a variety of animals — lived in relative comfort. The poorer peasants — those who held small holdings, who had few animals, and who relied on wage labor — lived on the edge of subsistence. The landless laborers — the cottars and bordars who had only a small garden — were the poorest of the rural population, and they were the most vulnerable to the vicissitudes of weather, disease, and economic downturn.
The Peasant Household
The peasant household was the basic unit of production and consumption in the medieval countryside. The household typically consisted of the nuclear family — the parents and their children — together with the grandparents, the unmarried siblings, and the servants who might live with them. The household was both a unit of production and a unit of consumption: the members worked together in the fields, in the household economy, and in the various tasks of the rural life.
The head of the household was usually the father, but the mother played a major role in the management of the household economy, the care of the children, the preparation of food, and the production of cloth. The division of labor within the household was based on gender and age: the men worked in the fields, the women worked in the household, the children helped with both, and the grandparents and elderly relatives contributed what they could.
The marriage of the peasant children was a major event in the life of the household. The age of marriage was relatively late — typically in the mid-twenties for men and the early twenties for women — because a young couple needed to accumulate the resources to set up a new household. The consent of the parents was usually required, and the gift of a small piece of land, a few animals, and a dowry of household goods was the typical inheritance of a young couple.
The household economy was a complex system of production, exchange, and consumption. The peasant household produced most of what it needed for food, clothing, and shelter, and it exchanged the surplus for the things it could not produce: iron tools, salt, perhaps the services of a blacksmith, and the various goods that came from the towns. The monetary economy penetrated the countryside slowly, and many transactions were still conducted in kind — in labor, in produce, in services — well into the period.
The Diet of the Peasantry
The diet of the peasantry was varied and improved significantly over the period. The staples were bread, porridge, peas and beans, cheese, and the various products of the kitchen garden. Meat was relatively rare, and the consumption of meat was largely confined to the feast days of the Church calendar and to the aristocratic households. Fish was an important source of protein, especially on the fast days of Friday, Saturday, and Lent, when the consumption of meat was forbidden.
The drinks of the peasant household were dominated by ale and cider. Ale was the common drink of the northern European peasant, made from barley, oats, or wheat and flavored with herbs and spices. Cider was the common drink of the western and southern European peasant, made from apples. Wine was largely confined to the Mediterranean and to the upper classes. Water was often polluted and unsafe, and the consumption of ale and cider was the normal way of taking in liquid.
The feast days of the Church calendar were the major occasions for special food and drink. The Christmas feast featured roasted meats, pies, and the Yule log; the Easter feast featured lamb, eggs, and special breads; the harvest feast featured the products of the new harvest. The peasant household would slaughter a pig in the autumn, salt the meat for the winter, and use the various parts of the animal for different purposes. The smoked and salted pork, the sausages, the bacon, and the lard were important sources of protein and fat throughout the year.
The diet of the peasantry was nutritionally adequate but monotonous. The bread was coarse and dark, made from rye, barley, or oats rather than wheat. The porridge was similarly coarse. The vegetables were limited to what could be grown in the kitchen garden. The fruit was limited to what could be gathered in the wild or grown locally. The meat was limited to the feast days and to the more prosperous households. Yet the diet was sufficient to support a growing population, and the average height of the medieval peasant may have been similar to the average height of the early modern European.
The Material Conditions of Peasant Life
The material conditions of peasant life improved significantly over the period. The houses of the eleventh-century peasant were often of one or two rooms, with a thatched roof, an earth floor, and a central hearth for cooking and heating. By the thirteenth century, the peasant houses of many regions had improved considerably, with stone or timber-framed walls, tile or slate roofs, and multiple rooms. The furniture remained simple — a few tables, benches, stools, chests, and beds — but the quality of the construction was generally better than in the early Middle Ages.
The clothing of the peasant was simple but improved over the period. The men wore a tunic or smock of wool or linen, with breeches and leggings; the women wore a shift of linen, with a gown or kirtle of wool. The clothing was typically home-made, with the wool from the household’s own sheep, the flax from the household’s own garden, and the spinning and weaving done by the women of the household. The dyeing of the cloth — with woad for blue, madder for red, weld for yellow — was one of the few sources of color in the peasant’s wardrobe.
The heating of the peasant house was by the central hearth — an open fire in the middle of the main room, with the smoke escaping through a hole in the roof. The candle of tallow or beeswax was the typical source of light, and the rushlight — a strip of rush dipped in tallow — was the cheapest form of lighting. The glass window was a luxury, and most peasant houses had only shutters or holes in the wall to admit the light.
The standard of living of the peasantry improved over the period. Real wages rose as population grew and labor became scarce, and the diversity of the diet increased as new crops and new sources of food became available. The diversity of goods in the peasant household increased as trade expanded and as the markets of the towns reached deeper into the countryside. The literacy of the peasantry remained low — perhaps 5 to 10 percent of the male peasantry could read — but the standard of comfort in the peasant household was higher at the end of the High Middle Ages than at the beginning.
Sources
Principal sources used in this article:
- Marc Bloch, Feudal Society (1961), pt. 3.
Further reading:
- Georges Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West (Arnold, 1968).
For a recent single-volume synthesis with full scholarly apparatus, see the relevant chapter of Barbara H. Rosenwein, A Short History of the Middle Ages (University of Toronto Press, 2014).