by Brian Fagan
CHAPTER 2
“The Mantle of the Poor”
Most pleasant farms have obliterated all traces of what was once dreary and dangerous wastes; cultivated fields have subdued forests; flocks and birds have expelled wild beasts; sandy deserts are sown . . . and where once was hardly solitary cottages, there are now large cities.
—Tertullian, De Anima (second century A.D.)1
THE PLOWBOY CRACKS HIS GOAD AGAINST his oxen’s flanks in the gloom of early morning. The beasts lower their heads and strain at the harness ropes, their hooves churning the glutinous soil that glistens in the wet. At the rear, the plowman, ankle deep in mud, grasps the handles of the wheeled plow, pressing down, guiding the blade into the heavy soil. He gasps with the effort, presses down again, then lifts as the moldboard laboriously turns aside a deep furrow. Slowly the plow moves ahead along the narrow strip, following a course parallel to the furrows plowed the day before. The blade stops and starts as it slides, then balks in the clumped earth. The boy shivers in the cold as he shouts and prods the oxen to keep them moving ahead.
By late afternoon, the plowing for the day is done. The plowboy dismantles the plow and leads the oxen back to the village. He fills their manger with hay and carries out the fresh dung for later use as fertilizer. Tomorrow, the plowing will begin again, the yoking of the beasts, the assembling of the plow, the laboring across the fields.
This harsh routine played out for centuries, from England and Scandinavia to the south of France, from Spain to central Europe. A thousand years ago, Europe was a rural continent, a place of growing towns and burgeoning cities, but still a place where most people survived off subsistence agriculture and the margins between hunger and plenty were thin. Good harvests meant everything to the countryside, and it was in the countryside that the greatest impact of the warm centuries came to be felt. Each village, each town, lived from season to season. The contrast between summer and winter was stronger then. Precious summer months were full of light and wide, sunny skies, a time of warmth, planting, then harvest. These were the days of exuberance and festivals, of comparative plenty. Winters were dark and cold, with short days and muted colors, the fields bare, trees without green foliage. The season of darkness passed without electric light or gas flames, lit at best by flickering candles and warmed only by smoky fires and the great hearths in the palaces and castles of the nobility. People slept huddled together for warmth. A warm robe and a comfortable bed were prized luxuries. The warm centuries brought significant relief from the stark contrasts of the seasons. They also stimulated population growth and violence.
VIOLENCE WAS A fact of life in medieval Europe and an integral part of politics.2 Assassinations, betrayals, fleeting alliances, and brutal military campaigns were part and parcel of existence for the elite and the privileged. Knights and the more powerful members of society placed great emphasis on displays of courage and power. Jousts tested individual bravery and prowess with the lance. Confrontations between rival landowners did not necessarily involve vast casualty lists. Often they were a way of defining territorial and political boundaries, of assessing the limits of authority and establishing who could exploit whom. Some of the campaigns were virtually ritual displays. In a time of generally good harvests, at least small-scale warfare erupted somewhere most summers.
Strong forces of disunity made it hard to forge larger political entities. Francia, the kingdom of France, was little more than an abstract concept during the early eleventh century, a series of self-governing entities that engaged in constant and often bitter rivalry. In France, royal authority extended only to the lands the king could tax and exploit. The early Capetian kings, whose dynasty began in 987, ruled not by birthright but because of their individual abilities. They created an ideology that proclaimed they were chosen by God, and they spent most of the eleventh and twelfth centuries bringing their rivals—barons and rich landowners with their strongly fortified castles—into submission. They did so in part in the name of the Church, whose churches and monasteries were favorite targets for predatory lords.
The point and counterpoint of violence ebbed and flowed during the warm centuries. The lay lords, episcopal princes, and religious communities that controlled the lush countryside, with its vineyards, plentiful harvests, and large flocks, were attractive targets for brigands and ambitious landowners intent on annexation. Few villages and small towns had much protection against marauders at a time when economic activity and rural populations were expanding rapidly. Some parts of France, such as Brittany, were in shambles from vicious strife driven by greedy neighbors who cast covetous eyes on high-yielding agricultural land. Only the western, Celtic-speaking regions escaped invasion, for they were far from fertile, with most of the population concentrated in fishing villages along the coast.
Warfare fed on food surpluses—on the ability of ambitious lords to feed their armies and to finance the construction of the stone castles that served as staging posts and bases for suppressing rebellion. Control over rich farmlands and their harvests was achieved by political marriages and by brute force. Nevertheless, some regions, such as Normandy in the north, with its dairy farms and plentiful harvests, achieved considerable stability. The Duchy of Burgundy boasted fertile lands, small farms, and larger estates; it was notably prosperous during the warm centuries, thanks especially to a burgeoning wine trade that satisfied thirsts as far away as northern Spain and England.
With rapid population growth and a growing volume of long-distance trade, shifting rivalries and alliances between great lords marked the political landscape. In what is now France, the quest for power ultimately revolved around the rich agricultural potential of the north. The warm centuries brought abundant harvests to a region known for its grain, fruit, and wine. Ample, well-watered pastureland brought massive increases in flock populations and much higher wool production. Nonfood crops, such as flax for linen and woad for dye, took up even more agricultural land. The extensive woodlands of the north offered pasturage for pigs, but were also heavily exploited for lumber, for firewood, and for charcoal used in iron production. The chronic warfare of the day stimulated craft industries in weapons manufacture and armor fabrication, while the same skills could produce axes, plowshares, and other implements of tillage in peacetime. But princely rivalries, destructive to village life and disruptive of agricultural production, prevented a spectacular economic transformation.
Warfare was endemic in the warm centuries, but gradually the Capetian kings asserted their authority and forged a true kingdom out of chaos. King Philip II Augustus made Paris the capital of France in 1194. Normandy was annexed in 1204; by 1249, most of southern France was under royal control. Thanks to clever administration, the elites of conquered lands developed a vested interest in the success of the kingdom, the crown being the icon of French unity. Thus, the warm centuries, with their dependable harvests that stimulated both trade and warfare, also witnessed the beginnings of modern Europe.
EUROPE OVERFLOWED WITH energy during the warm centuries. The art historian Kenneth Clark puts it well: “It was like a Russian spring. In every branch of life—action, philosophy, organization, technology— there was an extraordinary outpouring of energy and intensification of existence.”3 The deeds of monarchs and princes meant little to most Europeans, whether free or enslaved, the latter perhaps some 10 percent of the population in some areas. Europe was a rural continent at the beginning of the warm centuries: most people’s lives revolved around the hamlet, the village, and the endless routine of planting and harvest. Despite high infant and child mortality, numerous deaths in childbirth, frequent epidemics, and occasional, persistent famines, population soared. Between the year 1000 and the outbreak of the Black Death in 1347, the population of the continent rose from about 35 million to about 80 million people.4 What is now France had about 5 million inhabitants in the year 1000, as many as 19 million by 1350. Italy’s numbers rose from 5 million to about 10 million, England’s from around 2 million to about 5 mil
lion. Such growth occurred throughout Europe, albeit at different rates, with as many as half a million people living in Norway by 1300, where arable lands were in short supply owing to a relatively brief growing season. Rapid population growth during centuries with relatively favorable climatic conditions but a finite supply of good agricultural land led to an inconspicuous but widening gap between an expanding population to be fed and a shrinking area of land to feed it. The figures for England alone are daunting. In 1000, an area of some 8.5 million arable acres (3.4 million hectares) under cereals and other crops fed as many as 2.5 million people. After three centuries of population growth during long periods of good farming conditions, an expanded acreage of 11.5 million (4.6 million hectares), much of it carved out of marginal agricultural land, had trouble feeding 5 million.5 These statistics may be misleading, for some manors engaged in intensive agriculture, especially those supplying growing cities or the grain trade. But rapid population growth, fueled in part by favorable climatic conditions, created challenging problems for the subsistence farmer.
Gothic cathedrals, illuminated manuscripts, ethereal woodwork— the material achievements of the High Middle Ages all depended on abundant food surpluses produced by the anonymous labor of subsistence farmers. These food surpluses generated wealth and money for wages to pay artisans and nonfarmers, as well as the means to honor the Lord. When harvests were abundant and life was good, both noble and commoner gave thanks and endowed God with lavish gifts, lest he unleash his wrath in the form of plague, war, and famine. In lean years, the gifts dried up and cathedral building slowed. Despite years of good harvests, the realities of plenty and hunger define the warm centuries when medieval Europe prospered and became the precursor of a continent of sovereign states.
TORRENTIAL RAIN TURNING to sleet lashes the village, turning muddy paths into small rivers. Savage gusts of wind tear limbs from the bare trees. The relentless gale shrieks through hedgerows and over thatched roofs, tumbling gray clouds across the sky, shredding the wood smoke that seeps from chimney and rooftop. No one is in the open. The cluster of dwellings seems to hug the ground, cowering from the squalls. Inside, the roar of the storm is muted, but one can barely see for the choking smoke from the hearth that hovers above the beams. Powerful scents assault the nostrils—cow dung, human sweat, decaying food, excrement. Everyone huddles silently by the warmth, wrapped in sheepskins and leggings. Cattle shift restlessly in the byre at one end of the house. Human and beast alike are waiting for a break in the storm.
Even in the warmest of decades, the climate of medieval Europe was one of sharp extremes. Weeks of snow, epochal winter storms, powerful tempest-driven surges in the North Sea, long summer droughts: subsistence farming was a challenging enterprise in even the warmest of years. With unpredictable temperatures and rainfall, medieval farmers were conservative at the best of times, just as their counterparts in developing areas are today. When one lives with the specter of hunger, one tends to hedge one’s bets. Innovation of any kind can wither on the vine when faced by the cautious opposition of public opinion. Consensus in subsistence communities—based, as it so often is, on collective experience over many years—is the bedrock of survival. This made the selection of dates for planting and harvests for cereals, vines, and other crops a matter of careful deliberation, even in warmer times when crop yields tended to be higher. Rising population densities and generally favorable climatic conditions seriously challenged the conservatism of medieval farmers. Major innovations in agricultural methods took hold very widely during the warm centuries in the face of land shortages and more mouths to feed.
The milder winters, warm summers, and longer growing seasons of the Medieval Warm Period were a powerful catalyst for steady population growth, fueled by good harvests. As rural populations rose, so the demand for light, well-drained, and easily cultivable soils exceeded the supply. The soft earth of such land could be scratched effectively with the lightweight ard, a plow design unchanged since pre-Roman times a thousand years earlier. The ard is basically a scratch plow that cuts a shallow furrow through the soil but doesn’t turn the sod. Medieval farmers used oxen to pull their ards, or, if they had no animals, a husband-and-wife team would plow, the one pulling, the other guiding the shoe. As long as the soils were relatively light, the ard was a simple way of furrowing a field; it had been in common use for at least four thousand years.
But ards had serious limitations. They were much less effective in heavier, more clayey conditions, where the topsoil was much harder to turn over, especially in dry periods, when the soil baked hard. Prolonged dry spells like those of the warm centuries militated against easy plowing. As the demand for arable land accelerated, so farmers moved on to these damp and often densely wooded soils, which were potentially productive but difficult to cultivate.6 Fortunately, a new design of plow appeared during the seventh century or thereabouts, just in time for the warm centuries and more effective in heavier soils. The moldboard plow had sharp blades, which cut the soil, and angled moldboards to turn it over, burying weeds and turning up the nutrients. Teams of oxen usually dragged these plows until someone on the Continent developed a horse harness with a rigid collar that rested on the shoulders. Once horses could be used, they provided four- or fivefold the pulling power of oxen. Horses also plowed twice as fast, but a team of four of them, or eight oxen, was an expensive proposition for a single plow, although viable for religious houses and manor estates. Village farmers solved the problem by pooling their beasts during plowing season. Even with oxen, plowing was brutal dawn-till-dusk work.
An ard in its most refined form (top) and a simple swing plow with moldboard (bottom).
Horses and wheeled plows came into widespread use at about the same time as the three-field crop rotation system, which first appeared on monastic lands in northeastern France during the ninth century and spread gradually throughout Europe. Originally, a village would have had half its fields under cultivation at one time. Now the villagers cultivated two thirds, with only one field in three lying fallow. Three-field systems produced more grain and fodder for animals, better nutrition, larger families, and more draft animals—provided there were enough people to carry out the extra work of planting and harvest, also more plows, harnesses, and yokes, and other equipment that required carpenters and blacksmiths, wheelwrights and other specialists.
The three-field system involved planting one field with winter wheat, barley, or rye. A second field came into use in spring with oats, chickpeas, peas, lentils, or broad beans. The third field remained fallow. The three-field system spread labor requirements more evenly over the year, and provided oats for feeding horses. Legumes, such as peas and beans, fixed nitrogen in the soil and maintained its fertility, so one could keep more animals. The risk of famine was significantly reduced, while additional manure fertilized the soil. As protein intake rose, so nutrition and health improved and the population grew. Most important of all, crop surpluses increased considerably, both because of warmer climatic conditions and better harvests and because of more intensive farming.
Crop yields from medieval village farming were low. Here the pace of innovation was slowest. But they were much higher in some regions, notably in the Low Countries and northern France, as well as in parts of southeastern and eastern England, where manors and farms supplied growing urban markets or ships carrying grain overseas. Intensive mixed farming on some fourteenth-century estates in Norfolk produced yields as high as 15 to 25 bushels an acre (5.28 to 8.8 hectoliters) or more, yields normally associated with the intensive and highly efficient farming methods introduced to England in the eighteenth century.7 These kinds of mixed farming estates combined agriculture with cattle and especially sheep farming, producing yields two thirds greater than those from well-managed manor lands in places like Winchester in southern England. The reason for this productivity isn’t hard to find: the need to feed growing urban populations in towns and cities.
THE NUMBER OF towns increased exponentially bet
ween 1000 and 1400. In central Europe alone, fifteen hundred new towns appeared from the eleventh century up to 1250, and a further fifty more in the following half century. Towns varied enormously in size, some being little more than large villages, others communities of two thousand to three thousand people. All medieval towns were more densely settled than villages. There were more artisans, too, people practicing specialized trades: blacksmiths, potters, weavers, wheelwrights, and many others. Every town had a regular market; no town could have survived without one. Some even had mints, for town markets were based not on barter but on coinage. There were sometimes imposing public buildings, such as large churches and market halls, as well as other structures. Above all, towns were bustling places where there were “traffic jams.” William Chester Jordan lists some of the causes in medieval Southwark outside London: “The hustle and bustle of ox carts jostling against carriages, long lines of wagons bringing fruits and vegetables, raw materials and finished goods to markets, artisans’ shops and warehouses, and the seemingly endless cavalcade of mounted men and women bearing messages, coming to shop, visit or attend meetings and clamoring at others on the street to make way.” He adds: “No traffic jams, no town.”8
At first, the towns were politically weak compared with the lords of the countryside, who often controlled them. Their agents vied with the clergy for political control, but eventually merchants and the commercial sector assumed increasing power and influence thanks to an explosion in trading activity of all kinds. In an era before good roads, most goods traveled up and down rivers and canals and along seacoasts. Such trade went back to before Roman times. By the ninth century, King Charlemagne controlled important trade routes across the North Sea. The Meuse, the Scheldt, and the Rhine penetrated the heart of Europe and reached the coast in low-lying Flanders, where growing trading towns like Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres soon became crowded, prosperous cities. Other major entrepôts developed in addition to ancient centers like London or Paris: Southampton in southern England, sheltered by the Isle of Wight; Dieppe, a center of wine trade and of the herring fishery; and places like Bergen, with its cod warehouses, and Rostock on the Baltic, with its connections to the Vistula River and Eurasia.
