What was life like in the middle ages

The estimated population of Europe grew from 35 to 80 million between and , but the exact causes remain unclear; improved agricultural techniques, the decline of slaveholding, a warmer climate, and the lack of invasion have all been suggested.

Many were no longer settled in isolated farms but had gathered into small communities, usually known as manors or villages. These peasants were often subject to noble overlords and owed them rents and other services, in a system known as manorialism. There remained a few free peasants throughout this period and beyond, with more of them in the regions of southern Europe than in the north. The practice of assarting, or bringing new lands into production by offering incentives to the peasants who settled them, also contributed to the expansion of population.

Castles began to be constructed in the 9th and 10th centuries in response to the disorder of the time, and provided protection from invaders and rival lords. They were initially built of wood, then of stone. Once castles were built, towns built up around them.

A major factor in the development of towns included Viking invasions during the early Middle Ages, which led to villages erecting walls and fortifying their positions. Following this, great medieval walled cities were constructed with homes, shops, and churches contained within the walls. York, England, which prospered during much of the later medieval era, is famed for its medieval walls and bars gates , and has the most extensive medieval city walls remaining in England today.

The practice of sending children away to act as servants was more common in towns than in the countryside. The inhabitants of towns largely made their livelihoods as merchants or artisans, and this activity was strictly controlled by guilds.

The members of these guilds would employ young people—primarily boys—as apprentices, to learn the craft and later take position as guild members themselves. York city and walls. View of the city looking northeast from the city wall. The spires of York Minster are visible in the background. Medieval villages consisted mostly of peasant farmers, with the structure comprised of houses, barns, sheds, and animal pens clustered around the center of the village.

Beyond this, the village was surrounded by plowed fields and pastures. For peasants, daily medieval life revolved around an agrarian calendar, with the majority of time spent working the land and trying to grow enough food to survive another year.

Church feasts marked sowing and reaping days and occasions when peasant and lord could rest from their labors. Peasants that lived on a manor by the castle were assigned strips of land to plant and harvest. They typically planted rye, oats, peas, and barley, and harvested crops with a scythe, sickle, or reaper. Each peasant family had its own strips of land; however, the peasants worked cooperatively on tasks such as plowing and haying.

They were also expected to build roads, clear forests, and work on other tasks as determined by the lord. The houses of medieval peasants were of poor quality compared to modern houses. The floor was normally earthen, and there was very little ventilation and few sources of light in the form of windows.

In addition to the human inhabitants, a number of livestock animals would also reside in the house. Towards the end of the medieval period, however, conditions generally improved. Peasant houses became larger in size, and it became more common to have two rooms, and even a second floor.

Comfort was not always found even in the rich houses. Heating was always a problem with stone floors, ceilings, and walls. This was called jousting. There were also tourneys fights between teams. Tournaments often lasted four days. Two days were for jousting, one was for tourneys and one was for archery competitions. Children from noble families saw little of their parents. When they were very young nurses looked after them.

When they were about 7 they were sent to live with another noble household. Boys became pages and had to wait on lords and ladies. They also learned to fight. At 14 a boy became a squire and at 21 a knight. Girls learned the skills they needed to run a household. In upper-class families, young men and women did not normally choose their own marriage partners.

Their parents arranged their marriage for them. Children from poor families might have more choice about who they married but by the time they were about 7 or 8 they had to start helping their parents by doing simple jobs such as chasing away birds when crops had been sown or helping to weave wool. Children were expected to help the family earn a living as soon as they were able. Most people in the Middle Ages lived in small villages of 20 or 30 families. The land was divided into 3 huge fields.

Each year 2 were sown with crops while one was left fallow unused to allow it to recover. Each peasant had some strips of land in each field. Most peasants owned only one ox so they had to join with other families to obtain the team of oxen needed to pull a plow.

After plowing the land was sown. Men sowed grain and women planted peas and beans. Most peasants also owned a few cows, goats, and sheep. Cows and goats gave milk and cheese. Most peasants also kept chickens for eggs. They also kept pigs. Peasants were allowed to graze their livestock on common land. In the autumn they let their pigs roam in the woods to eat acorns and beechnuts. However, they did not have enough food to keep many animals throughout the winter. Most of the livestock was slaughtered in autumn and the meat was salted to preserve it.

However, life in the Middle Ages was not all hard work. People were allowed to rest on Holy days from which we get our word holiday. During them, poor people danced and wrestled. They also played a very rough form of football. There were no rules so broken limbs and other injuries were common. A bear was chained to a post and dogs were trained to attack it.

Gambling was also common. Norman knights wore chain mail, armor made of iron rings joined together. In the 14th-century chain mail was replaced by plate armor.

Metal plates were attached to each part of the body. Norman knights carried kite-shaped shields. Later in the middle Ages shields became smaller. The Normans built wooden forts called motte and bailey castles. An artificial mound of earth was created, called a motte and the living quarters were built on top.

Below was a walled yard called a bailey where food and animals were stored. The whole thing was sometimes protected by a moat. However, these early wooden forts were vulnerable to fire and later castles were built of stone. In the center was a stone tower called a keep where the inhabitants lived.

Surrounding it was a curtain wall. However, even if attackers breached the curtain wall the defenders could retreat into the keep and continue to hold out.

The weakest part of a castle was its gate but there were ways of strengthening it. A building called a gatehouse was built.

Often it was approached by a drawbridge over a moat. Gatehouses usually had an iron grid called a portcullis that could be raised or lowered vertically. Behind the portcullis was a covered passageway running through the gatehouse. Sometimes there was a second portcullis at the other end of the passageway. If you got past the drawbridge and the first portcullis you would have to fight your way to the second portcullis and the defenders would not make it easy for you.

In the roof were holes through which the defenders could drop stones or pour boiling liquids. Around the curtain wall were arrow slits called embrasures. Furthermore, the tops of the castle walls often had overhangs. In them were openings through which boiling liquids could be poured or stones could be dropped. They were called machicolations. However, attackers could use a variety of siege weapons.

The simplest was a battering ram. The users were protected by a wooden shed but the defenders might set it on fire. To climb the walls you could use ladders but that was dangerous as the defenders could push them over. Attackers might use a wooden siege tower on wheels. Inside it were ladders for soldiers to climb. At the top was a drawbridge. When it was lowered the attackers could swarm over the castle walls. Attackers could also use a kind of crane called a tenelon to get over the wall.

On the end of a long wooden arm was a basket containing soldiers. The basket could be swung over the castle walls. The attackers could also hurl missiles. A Medieval catapult was powered by a twisted rope. The rope was twisted tighter and tighter then released, firing a stone. Another siege weapon in the Middle Ages was called a trebuchet.

It worked by a counterweight. It was a kind of see-saw with a huge weight at one end and a sling containing a missile at the other. Attackers could also tunnel under the castle walls. The tunnels were supported by wooden props. When ready they were covered in animal fat and burned.

The tunnels would collapse and hopefully so would the walls. However, in the 14th century warfare was changed by the longbow. Longbows were not new archaeologists have found examples thousands of years old. However, in the 14th century, the English learned to use the longbow in a new way. They were used that way at Hastings. However, in the 14th century, the English devised a new tactic of having dismounted knights to protect the archers and allowing the enemy to charge.

The enemy cavalry was decimated by volleys of arrows. The longbow was used to win decisive victories at Crecy , Poitiers , and Agincourt An archer could shoot an arrow every 5 or 6 seconds. He could shoot an arrow accurately up to meters. An arrow could penetrate armor at 90 meters. The one disadvantage of the longbow was that it took years to learn to use one properly. In the Middle Ages roads were no more than dirt tracks that turned to mud in winter.

Men traveled on horseback if they could afford a horse! Ladies traveled in wagons covered in painted cloth. They looked pretty but they must have been very uncomfortable on bumpy roads as they had no springs.

Worse, travel in the Middle Ages was very slow. A horseman could only travel 50 or 60 kilometers a day. Some goods were carried by packhorses horses with bags loaded on their sides and peasants pulled along two-wheeled carts full of hay and straw. However, whenever they could people traveled by water. It was faster and more comfortable than traveling by land. It was also much cheaper to send goods by water than by land.

Some goods were taken by ship from one part of the English coast to another. This was known as the coastal trade. The main type of ship in the Middle Ages was called a cog. It had only one sail. Furthermore in the early Middle Ages ships did not have rudders. The rudder was invented at the end of the 13th century.

In the Middle Ages, people believed they would gain favor with God if they went on long journeys called pilgrimages to visit shrines. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales about a group of pilgrims who go to Canterbury to visit the burial place of Thomas Becket.

In fact, archaeological analysis shows that average heights have changed little over the past 1, years. From the 10th century through to the 19th-century, the average height did not shift more than a few centimetres from about cm for women, and cm for men. Averages are skewed by the very high mortality rates in periods of epidemic disease, such as the Black Death of and by the high incidence of childhood mortality.

In fact, sources provide many examples of village elders in their eighties, able to reminisce about the profound social changes since their childhood. Listen to Hannah Skoda tackle some common misconceptions about the middle ages, from irrational peasants to mindless violence:. When they were involved in protests, they did so strategically, and knowingly evoked important documents about their ancient rights like the Domesday Book of As for their more general acumen, many peasants were able to draw effectively on strategic and quite sophisticated rationales about how to manage their agricultural concerns.

And the surviving legal evidence right across Europe demonstrates that peasants knew how to engage with legal systems and courts to their advantage — whether in disputes with neighbours, with their husbands and wives, or indeed their overlords. Whilst many medieval towns probably did stink, people were certainly bothered about this. More and more recent scholarly work has focused on the efforts to keep medieval towns clean and healthy , particularly in the late medieval period.

While we might often see or read portrayals of urban filth and squalor, there was an enormous amount of regulation about such matters as dumping sewage in the streets or allowing animals to roam free.

Codes of chivalry provided ways to glorify violence, but at the same time tried to channel and contain it. Whilst medieval people loved fantastical stories about monstrous peoples in far-off lands, most were perhaps surprisingly well-informed about the world beyond their home.

This was partly because travel was very common in the Middle Ages: pilgrimages, trade and commerce, and diplomacy all meant that there was a lot of moving around. And did medieval people all think the world was flat? Actually, most understood that the world was spherical. This is perhaps the most glaring misconception of all.

Whilst it may not always be to our taste, medieval life was imbued with wit and humour. There was an appetite for jokes, ranging from the subtle and sophisticated to the obscene and bawdy. Sometimes the surviving evidence is material. Another merchant from the Netherlands wrote a witty line to explain that he had to begin a new sheet of parchment in his accounts because his cat had urinated on the page.

Funny stories were also ubiquitous, as people loved to be entertained.