What was europe like during the middle ages

This is a transcript from the video series The Foundations of Western Civilization. Watch it now, Wondrium. Evidence for this is qualitative, not quantitative.

In earlier times, historians look at other kinds of evidence and try to assess the general direction in which all of that evidence points. Certain indicators lend clues to this expansion. Wherever we have evidence of family size, families appear to be larger. It does not appear that more babies are being born, but rather that more of them are surviving and people were living longer.

There was no plague or significant famine throughout this period. Generally speaking, this was a period of warm, dry climate through much of Europe, when enormous amounts of new land were brought under cultivation.

People did not bring new land under cultivation for no reason. There were mouths to feed and diets improved. More and more land was given over to crops that were rich in iron and protein so that people were simply eating better.

They were healthier; they could do more work; they were more productive; they lived longer—the population curve marched upward due to these gains. Learn more about why Sumer became one of the two foundations of Western civilization.

A second element of the growth and expansion of Europe in this period is technological innovation and dissemination. The medieval period, on the other hand, was one that was fairly rich in technological innovation. Stereotypes contribute to the idea of the Middle Ages as the Dark Ages, as having descended from the heights of classical antiquity. The clearest indicator we have of medieval technology, of its application and its connection to this population increase, is in the realm of cereal production, where medieval farmers vastly expanded it.

But how? They laid down most of the fundamental ways: By getting maximum cereal production out of the soil, before the advent of modern chemical fertilizers.

This has been the greatest change in modern times, not anything else—not even, for example, the use of motor-driven tractors. How did medieval people increase cereal production, thus making it possible to feed a larger population?

It was through greater use of horses as draft animals. A horse is significantly more efficient than an ox. He does more work for the same amount of food, perhaps even a little bit less. He is stronger, thus larger fields can be plowed, or fields can be plowed more times, and the soil can be turned more carefully.

A horse requires very different harnessing than an ox, and so we see, from about the year or a little after, the proliferation of the horse collar. Learn more about the differences between Egypt and Mesopotamia. New harnessing was required. The hooves of horses are particularly sensitive, and therefore they had to be shod. This virtually universalized the use of horseshoes in Europe. Certain other things have to develop, as horse harnessing and the use of horses as draft animals increases.

The new heavy, wheeled plow, with an iron plowshare, fits into this picture as well. This type of plow appears to be an invention of the Slavic world and came into Western Europe in the Carolingian period. It was used on large estates: On the estates of the Carolingian family and the greatest churches and monasteries. The heavy, wheeled plow played a significant role in changing how farming was conducted. Once again, using horses to pull it allowed more work to be completed. The heavy, wheeled plow was able to turn the soil, which aerates it.

This new plow with its iron plowshare also called for a greater proliferation of iron in this society leading to more smithing. We can see connections between the use of the plow, the advantages that it brought, and then some of the requirements that flowed from its development.

Watermills were widely used in the 11th century. In some parts of northern Europe, for example, in the Low Countries windmills were used, but watermills were fairly common.

Understandably terrified about the mysterious disease, some people of the Middle Ages believed the plague was a divine punishment for sin. Others turned on their neighbors, purging people they believed to be heretics. Thousands of Jews were murdered between and , while others fled to less populated areas of Eastern Europe. Today, scientists know the plague was caused by a bacillus called Yersina pestis , which travels through the air and can also be contracted through the bite of an infected flea.

Landless peasants known as serfs did most of the work on the fiefs: They planted and harvested crops and gave most of the produce to the landowner. In exchange for their labor, they were allowed to live on the land. They were also promised protection in case of enemy invasion. During the 11th century, however, feudal life began to change. Agricultural innovations such as the heavy plow and three-field crop rotation made farming more efficient and productive, so fewer farm workers were needed—but thanks to the expanded and improved food supply, the population grew.

As a result, more and more people were drawn to towns and cities. Meanwhile, the Crusades had expanded trade routes to the East and given Europeans a taste for imported goods such as wine, olive oil and luxurious textiles. As the commercial economy developed, port cities in particular thrived.

By , there were some 15 cities in Europe with a population of more than 50, In these cities, a new era was born: the Renaissance. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.

During this era, America became The Iron Age was a period in human history that started between B. During the Iron Age, people across much of Europe, Asia and parts of Africa began making tools and weapons from iron and The Bronze Age marked the first time humans started to work with metal. Bronze tools and weapons soon replaced earlier stone versions. Humans made many technological advances during the The Stone Age marks a period of prehistory in which humans used primitive stone tools.

The serfs — those unfree peasants tied to a particular fief on an hereditary basis — had to provide the lord of the manor with various kinds of service. Many manors, especially in England and northern Europe, practiced the open-field system of farming, in which two or three huge fields were divided into strips, with each peasant family farming several strips scattered around the fields.

These were distributed so that each would get a fair share of the good and bad land. Major activities such as sowing, ploughing and harvesting were carried out jointly by the entire community. Medieval villages were small by modern standards, usually numbering fewer than a couple of hundred people.

Each village would have had its own church, which by the 12th century would usually have been built of stone. This was where the villagers stored one tenth of all the grain they grew, as their tax to the church. In many villages a manor house would also have stood nearby. A minority of peasants were not serfs, but free. They paid a rent in money or kind for the right to farm a piece of land, but otherwise they were at liberty to live their lives as and where they wished.

They could move to another village if they wanted, or to a town; they could even buy and sell land. If they owned some fields outright perhaps having bought them from the lord they did not even have to pay rent for them. Reconstruction of an early medieval peasant village Reproduced under Creative Commons 3. Compared to today, towns were scarce in Medieval Europe, and those that did exist were tiny. Medieval towns were usually smaller than those in classical antiquity.

In or a town with inhabitants was considered large. Only a few towns and cities in Europe had more than 10,, and those with more than 50, were very rare: even the city of Rome, the most important city on western Europe , only had around 30, London, by far the largest city in England, is estimated to have had 10, inhabitants in , though four hundred years later it was probably nearer 75, The biggest concentrations of large towns in Medieval Europe were in Flanders modern-day Belgium and Holland , and much more so in north Italy.

In these regions, and particularly in the latter, cities such as Milan, Florence, Genoa and Venice, or in the Low Countries Bruges and Ghent, dominated the territory around them in a way which was unknown in the rest of Europe.

As time went by, and the population of Europe increased, trade and industry expanded and new towns appeared. These often grew up where a powerful lord gave a village permission to have a market: the market attracted trade, trade attracted merchants, craftsmen and workers arrived, and soon a small town was emerging.

Alternatively, the presence of a castle, and the demands its inhabitants had for food, cloth and many other goods, caused the nearby village to grow into a town. As these villages were often granted permission by the lord to hold markets, so that the goods he and his household required were more readily available, this would have acted as a boost to town growth. To modern eyes, many medieval towns would not just have been small, they would also have seemed almost rural.

Although many towns were surrounded by walls, much of the area within the walls was given over to grazing land and fields.

Farm animals could be seen roaming here and there. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of towns regarded themselves as quite different from and superior to country folk. They had a much greater level of freedom than most peasants, and lived under the authority of their own leaders — magistrates and members of the town councils — rather than of feudal lords.

Institutions of great importance in medieval towns were the guild. This was an association of merchants or craftsmen in the same trade. In many towns, membership of a guild conferred citizenship of the town upon a person. As trade expanded in the middle and high medieval periods, the merchant classes grew in number, wealth and influence. From being humble traders in tiny towns in about CE, in status roughly on a par with craftsmen, they evolved into merchants living in grand town houses with many servants.

Their business interests could span many countries, even beyond Europe. Many were able to pass on their wealth to their sons, and came to form an hereditary patrician elite, able to deal with dukes and counts on equal terms. Meanwhile, humbler craftsmen were unable to keep pace; they were still able to maintain themselves in economic independence, and had a respected place in urban society, but they were falling behind the merchants. As for the lower orders in the towns, they found themselves increasingly frozen out of opportunities to better themselves.

As merchants and even master craftsmen grew in wealth, more money was needed to join their ranks; and whereas in earlier times a poor townsmen could hope to rise to be a master of a workshop or trading enterprise, this became more and more difficult as the guilds came under the sway of small groups of wealthy masters.

An urban proletariat began to appear in many towns, made up of poor laborers, as hereditary in their lowly status as the patricians were in their high estate. These divisions inevitably bore fruit in class tensions, often violent. These became more marked in towns and cities throughout Europe in the later Middle Ages.

As towns grew in population, they became more and more crowded. Streets were very narrow, as well as being noisy and dirty. People threw their waste including human waste out of their windows to the street below. In many streets an open sewer flowed down the middle. Conditions were thus appallingly unhealthy. Disease was a constant threat. Houses were made of flimsy, flammable materials and danger of fire was never far away.

Crime in medieval towns was far higher than in modern inner cities. All told, the death rate was frighteningly high. There were two kinds of clergy: secular and regular. Broadly speaking, the secular clergy were the priests who served in the churches and cathedrals in towns and villages; the regular clergy were the monks, nuns and lay brothers and sisters who lived in monasteries or belonged to religious orders of wandering friars.

Whether secular or regular, from the 11th century onwards all clergy were required to live celibate lives, taking no wives and having no children. It was believed that only in this way could they be free from the cares and snares of the world, and able to serve God most effectively.

The clergy were the most educated members of society — in the early Middle Ages, well-nigh the only educated members. They could be found in a wide range of roles: parish priests in towns and villages, wandering preachers, school teachers and university lecturers, doctors and nurses, government officials, politicians and courtiers, household chaplains to great men, and so on.

Their status varied enormously, from the village priest, barely able to read and write and hardly better-off than his parishioners, to men who lived in palaces, were surrounded by large retinues, and enjoyed the wealth and status on a par with the greatest in the land.

Indeed, one of their number, the pope , held an office at least as respected as that kings and emperors. Another group of people who could be seen in many towns but seldom in the countryside across Europe were Jews, who had spread around Europe since Roman times. They often became wealthy, but their position in society was always precarious.

The reason why they were mostly confined to towns and cities was that in most places they were not allowed to own or rent land. In the urban economy, however, the Jews played a key role.

Lending money for profit was forbidden to Christians by the Church; however, Jews were allowed by their own religion to lend on interest to non-Jews. In the early part of the Middle Ages, therefore, moneylending became a near-monopoly for them. Some Jews became very rich — and as such, of course, attracted widespread envy. In fact, Jews came to be seen as extortionate moneylenders, and this, added to the fact that they were a group of outsiders who had not integrated with the rest of society, led to their being the object of widespread fear and distrust.

They were easy targets when things went wrong — in time of plague, for example, Jews were often accused of poisoning wells and other crimes, and anti-Jewish pogroms could all too easily occur. Also, when rulers found themselves in dire need of money as medieval kings did frequently one of their common expedients was to squeeze the Jewish community.

The rest of society could mostly be relied on to stand by when this happened. On several occasions all Jews were expelled from various kingdoms — England in , France in and Spain in Every medieval community had its paupers and beggars.

These were often people unable to work through physical or mental disability, or widows and orphans left without any means of support. In villages, they were cared for by the other villagers, by the parish priest and the lord of the manor. In towns this responsibility fell to the monasteries, which not only functioned as places of prayer and worship but as sources of welfare and healthcare. For all people, there was nothing like the same privacy that we have come to expect in our own lives.

Poorer families would live and eat together in single-room cottages, at night all sleeping in the one bed. In wealthier families, the owners of a house would share their house with servants and workers. Even in aristocratic households, the family itself might only have a few rooms to itself, with the main sections of the house shared with a host of retainers and servants.

For the majority of people, including young children, working hours were long — all the hours of daylight were barely enough to get though the tasks needing doing to ensure survival. They did not have the labour-saving devices that we have today; almost everything had to be done by muscle power human or animal.

Women were legally subject to men though one would not necessarily have believed that from the work of medieval writers such as Boccaccio and Chaucer, who give pen portraits of assertive and powerful women. In poorer families, they worked alongside their menfolk in field and workshop, as well as doing household chores — cooking, washing, cleaning, making clothes, grinding corn, making beer and so on.

In fact, economic and household work was not demarcated as it is today, as all tasks were to do with ensuring they and their families were properly fed, watered and clothed. In aristocratic circles the women wove, spun, and managed the domestic side of the household. In circumstances where the men were away or otherwise unable to manage affairs, the lady of the household took charge of everything — including, on more than one occasion, leading the defense of a castle against attack.

Nuns of course lived lived lives largely free from male domination, and could rise to be Abbesses of their communities, holding positions of wide respect and great responsibility. Children took on adult roles at a young age. The High Middle Ages was a period of tremendous expansion of population. 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.