Section summary HIST RY

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LIFE AND DEATH
IN MEDIEVAL TIMES
LEARNING INTENTIONS
At the end of this section you will be able to answer the following questions:
• What were the Middle Ages?
• What was life like in the countryside in the Middle Ages?
• How was law and order kept?
• What was it like to live in a medieval castle?
• What was it like to live in a medieval town?
• Why was religion so important in the Middle Ages?
• What was the Black Death?

WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE IN A MEDIEVAL VILLAGE?

What were the Middle Ages?
• The time from about ad 500 to about 1500 is called the Middle Ages or the medieval
period. It is the time between the end of the Roman Empire and what we call modern
times.
• Nine out of ten people lived in the countryside and worked on the land. The
population of Europe was 25 to 30 million in the early Middle Ages but growing after
1000 to perhaps 100 million.
• When the Roman Empire broke up in the fifth century there was no central
government and no single currency in Europe. Roads and towns fell into ruins. Bandits
and outlaws attacked people, so travel and trade became very difficult.
• People looked to local lords to protect them and the lords became very powerful.
Gradually they set up the feudal system.
• The Feudal System is how land was owned and society was organised in the Middle
Ages.
1 The king owned all the land. But he could not control or farm it all himself so he
gave some to his followers.
2 The king’s followers were called his vassals.
3 The lords gave some of their land to their knights in return for their loyalty.
4 Peasants farmed the land. There were two types of peasants: serfs and freemen.

What was life like in the countryside in the Middle Ages?

• Most people lived in small villages and farms owned by the local lord or knight. These
were called manors. Most peasants were serfs. They belonged to the lord and farmed
his land.
• A peasant’s house usually had one room. It was made of wattle and daub. Families
cooked and slept in the same room.
• Peasants made their own clothes. They were made of linen or wool.
• Peasants rarely ate meat. Bread and cheese were their usual diet.
• Some of their pastimes are still popular today, such as noughts and crosses, draughts,
wrestling and carol singing.

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 Section summary HIST RY

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How was law and order kept?
• The lord appointed a bailiff to oversee the village for him. The bailiff made sure the
peasants paid rents and taxes. He also looked after law and order.
• The most common punishment for small crimes was a fine.
• Another punishment was to put people in the stocks. Their legs and sometimes
hands were locked between planks of wood. A pillory was like the stocks, but it held
the head and hands.
• A thief could have his hand cut off.
• A ducking stool was used to punish women who made trouble. They were tied to a
chair and lowered into the water, again and again.
• Really serious criminals like murderers or traitors were hanged.
• Witches could be hanged, and sometimes burned to death.
• People were not put in prison. The local castle had dungeons, but these were only
used for soldiers who were captured in a war.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO LIVE IN A MEDIEVAL CASTLE?

• As soon as a lord got land from his king, he built a castle on it. He needed it to defend
himself and his people from enemies.
• The first castles were called motte and bailey castles. They were made of wood.
• Later stone castle were built with ramparts , battlements and turrets.
• Often the enemy surrounded the castle and stopped anyone going in or out. This was
called laying a siege
• There were many ways to attack a castle:
–– A battering ram was used to pound the gate.
–– Giant catapults to hurl huge boulders or fireballs over the walls.
–– A giant crossbow called a ballista to fire large arrows.
–– Siege towers ( enclosed ladders); to get near and scale the walls.
–– Tunnels were dug under the walls, hoping they would collapse.

Inside the castle ...

• The keep was a large square tower inside the castle walls where the lord’s family lived.
• The great hall took up the entire ground floor On the top floor were the lord’s private
rooms including the solar.
• Up to the 1300s, most lords could barely read or write. They had no need to, because
they kept a priest to do that for them.
• Rich people ate a lot of meat. In the castle there were usually two meals a day. Dinner
was at noon and supper was at about 4pm. One meal might include duck, rabbit,
hare, pork, boar, lamb and birds.
• Rich men wore long tunics. Shoes were made of leather and were pointed. The long
toes were stuffed with horsehair. Women wore long dresses usually made of wool,
Crusaders coming back from the Holy Land also brought silk. The headdress was
called a wimple.

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• Favourite pastimes for rich people were hawking and tournaments.
• Tournaments were mock battles fought by knights. They could fight in teams
(melées). Or one knight could fight against another (jousting).
• At night people often listened to minstrels singing and watched jesters doing tricks
• In medieval times, the main role of a woman was to marry and have children. A
noblewoman did not marry for love. Her parents arranged her marriage like a business
contract. They would give her a dowry.
• Medieval women learned spinning and weaving, needlework, music and embroidery
so that they could make beautiful tapestries. They also learned how to run a large
household and how to use herbs to cure illnesses. When the lord was away his wife
had to look after and defend the castle.

Knights
It took thirteen years of training for a boy to become a knight. There were three stages:
• The page: When a lord’s son was seven years old, his father sent him to another castle
to be a page.
• The squire: When the boy was fourteen years old, he became a squire. He learned to
fight on horseback.
• The knight: When the squire was twenty-one years old, he became a knight. The
ceremony at which that happened was called dubbing. The squire then swore to
uphold the code of chivalry. That was a promise to be loyal to God, to protect women
and children, and never to run away in a battle. Then his lord touched him on the
shoulder with his sword and said ‘Arise, Sir Knight’.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO LIVE IN A MEDIEVAL TOWN?

• Most towns in Europe had fewer than 1,000 people.
• When you came near a town the first thing you could see were the huge high walls.
You could only enter the town through one of the gates.
• Strangers were stopped and asked their business. Anyone who wanted to sell goods
in the town had to pay a toll. At sunset the gates were closed and not opened again
until dawn.
• Only the main street of a town was paved with stones or wooden planks. It was often
called High Street.
• Other streets were narrow lanes that became very muddy after rain..
• The highlight of the year was the annual fair. It could last up to three weeks and was
held on the fair green outside the town..
• At sunset, church bells rang out to mark the arrival of the curfew. That meant that all
fires and candles in the town had to be put out. The word curfew means ‘cover the
fire’.
• People seldom washed and they all had fleas. Many suffered from skin diseases such
as leprosy.

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• A charter was a legal document in which the king agreed to let a town run its own
affairs. Under the charter, the citizens could elect a council or corporation to run their
town.
• The craftspeople made the things that people needed.. Many of the first surnames
came from the names of crafts that people did. For example, Robert the smith became
known as Robert Smith.
• Every craftsperson who worked in a town had to belong to a guild. There was a bakers’
guild, a carpenters’ guild and so on. Each guild regulated its trade.
• We know there were many craftswomen. But as time went on guilds began to exclude
female members
• A boy who wanted to practise a craft went through three stages:
–– At twelve, the boy became an apprentice.
–– The journeyman: After seven years the apprentice became a journeyman. Now
he was paid for his work. He could leave his old master and travel around, looking
for better wages
–– The master: To become a master craftsman a journeyman had to produce a
‘masterpiece’. Then he could have his own workshop and sell his goods in the
town.

WHY WAS RELIGION SO IMPORTANT IN THE MIDDLE AGES?

• In the Middle Ages religion was important to people. They could not imagine a world
without God.
• Nearly everyone in Europe was Christian.
• The leader of the Church in Western Europe was the pope, who lived in Rome.
• At local level, the Church was divided into parishes and dioceses. The parish priest
ran the parish and the bishop ran the diocese.
• Between 1347 and 1350 a terrible plague raged in Europe. People turned to the
Church for help but they could do nothing. It wiped out nearly one-third of the
population. Historians later gave this plague the name the Black Death.
• People did not know what caused the disease and some thought that it was God’s
punishment for their sins

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Influence of church
• The Christian church had a huge influence on Europe. One of the ways we can see this
is in the thousands of churches they built.
–– There were two main styles of church building- Romanesque and later Gothic.
• Monasteries were very important in Europe. They were communities of men or
women who wanted to devote their lives to God. They lived in buildings called
monasteries or convents.
–– They followed strict rules. They had to pray regularly, fast and obey the abbot or
the abbess who was the head of the monastery (or abbey, as it was sometimes
called).
–– There were different orders of monks and nuns such as Benedictines and Poor
Clares.
–– The monks in the monasteries were some of the few people in the Middle Ages
who knew how to read and write. They provided education to the rest of the
world. The monks also wrote books and recorded events.
–– Monasteries were used as inns and hospitals, and poor people often went there
for help. Boys and sometimes girls were educated in monasteries.
–– Monks made their own furniture, clothes and growing their food. They even made
their own beer! They trained many boys and girls in their skills.
• When a boy joined a monastery he was called a novice. He had to learn the rules and
see if the life suited him.
• He then took solemn vows. These were promises of poverty (he must not own
anything), chastity (he must not marry) and obedience (he must do what the abbot
told him).
• Then his hair was cut in a tonsure. This was a bald patch in the middle of his head. It
showed that a man was a monk.
• The Rule of St Benedict, which most monasteries followed, laid down a strict timetable
for the monks.
• The day began with matins at 3am and finished with compline at 8pm
• The abbot or Abbess was head of the monastery and was elected by the monks.
–– When he was away on business his place was taken by the prior.
–– The almoner looked after the poor when they visited.
–– The infirmarian looked after the sick and kept a record of the herbs used in the
monastery.
–– The librarian looked after the library.
–– The hosteller looked after travellers.
• Around 1200, a different kind of monk appeared. They were called friars. Friars
travelled from place to place, working with the poor. One group of friars was called
the Franciscans after its founder, St Francis of Assisi. Other groups were called
Dominicans and Augustinians.

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