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A Look into Medieval Homes

medievalists.net

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Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#31

Post by ekianjo »

bartvk wrote: post #16
romanhn wrote: post #7

The couple warming up their genitals by the fire was a rather unexpected detail in an otherwise mundane early 15th century painting (and one I'm surprised did not warrant a mention). I suppose it was a mundane act indeed.

Good catch. I think that's where one major artery lays (femoral artery, if I searched correctly). I am not a back sleeper but I was advised to put a hot water bottle between my legs, to stay warm when camping in the winter. Apparently that was already well-known in medieval times.

Still used in winter in cold places.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#32

Post by germinalphrase »

null_object wrote: post #21
guntherhermann wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think your comment falls into the “it was unadulterated hell being a peasant”-trap that I was referring to You might be reading my comment as if that were the case, but I assure you that my thoughts are not that. Humans adapt to any situation, that's why we are the superior species, we are the world's greatest adapters. Peasant life wasn't misery all the time, but there was FAR MORE misery on a FAR GREATER scale…

> full of pedantic tripe like that. Ah here was me thinking this was an uncontroversial and enjoyable discussion on HN. Anyways. Once again, just to underline what I wrote before - my comment wasn’t supposed to suggest that there was a golden age of Elysian harmony in the pastoral landscape of Europe, somehow superior to the ‘terrible’ existence we have now, with our hospitals, antibiotics, electronic gadgets, space…

Perhaps we should all be required to live for some period of time in the cold, hungry, dark pre-modern world such that we can return to modernity and be appropriately enthused.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#33

Post by automatic6131 »

ricardobayes wrote: post #26
guntherhermann wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The life of a peasant was one of serfdom, watching too many of your children die before their 4th birthday. The wheat you grew you had to mill in a landlord's mill and they collected a tax from it. There was no light in the evenings because tallow or other wax was far too expensive so when it got dark there were limited things to do. Floors were covered in rushes instead of carpet and were host to bugs. True medicine…

It's interesting to look at feudal tax rates. It varied between countries but the concept of "thirteenth" seems to be common, based on what I see it used to be between 2% and 10% of "revenue". I wonder when did we normalize 40-60% taxation. Seems we made a wrong turn somewhere. Perhaps our convenient modern life wouldn't be sustainable on such low taxes, but maybe it would - looking at Monaco or Dubai firmly at 0%.

>I wonder when did we normalize 40-60% taxation

It's generally common, these days, to blame everything that isn't perfect on the state. Pandemic? State must sort it out. Bad parents? State. Interpersonal violence? State. Crime? State. Infrastructure needed? State. Children are hungry? State.

For better or ill (and I'd say better) 40% taxation is here to stay, since we have all become left wing, now.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#34

Post by zozbot234 »

ricardobayes wrote: post #26
guntherhermann wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The life of a peasant was one of serfdom, watching too many of your children die before their 4th birthday. The wheat you grew you had to mill in a landlord's mill and they collected a tax from it. There was no light in the evenings because tallow or other wax was far too expensive so when it got dark there were limited things to do. Floors were covered in rushes instead of carpet and were host to bugs. True medicine…

It's interesting to look at feudal tax rates. It varied between countries but the concept of "thirteenth" seems to be common, based on what I see it used to be between 2% and 10% of "revenue". I wonder when did we normalize 40-60% taxation. Seems we made a wrong turn somewhere. Perhaps our convenient modern life wouldn't be sustainable on such low taxes, but maybe it would - looking at Monaco or Dubai firmly at 0%.

A direct outcome of the growth of the administrative and regulatory state throughout the 20th century. High government spending must always be balanced by high taxes, an increase in the national debt, or both.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#35

Post by qwytw »

HEmanZ wrote: post #28
null_object wrote: post #2

Setting aside the problem (mentioned in the article) that these images were produced for an aristocratic class, and possibly don’t accurately describe the reality of a peasant’s home, then what’s most striking is how decorative the interiors are: patterned floors, painted walls, and neat carpentry. I’ve read the theory that the life of peasants in the Middle Ages was demonized and made to sound dystopian to encourage…

I think you’re right, peasant life wasn’t so dystopian through the Middle Ages, and it seems to get a bad rap. Peasants didn’t have modern freedoms but they were not chattel slaves. They had a lot of free time and for much of history had a lot of land-per-person. Humans with free time and space, even if they are economically poor, carve out interesting and non-dystopian lives for themselves. I know explicit propagand…

> Russian peasants their lives were miserable

They were miserable though. The conditions of Russian peasants were much closer to chattel slavery than many of those who lived during the late middle ages in Western Europe. In fact the relative conditions of serfs in Russia (and Eastern Europe in general) got progressively worse during the 15-18th centuries as the conditions at the same time as they were gradually improving in the west.

> By the industrial revolution it may really have been dystopian in much of Europe.

I think the lives of people living in the country side who owned some lands (or tenancy) at least improved during the industrial revolution. Farmers in western Europe were increasingly focused on less labor intense cash crops or husbandry (as grain imports from Eastern Europe increased) which meant that there was demand for labor (forcing many to move into the crowded cities). Those who remained to a large degree were left with a bigger slice of the 'pie' compared to their ancestors.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#36

Post by _a_a_a_ »

germinalphrase wrote: post #32
null_object wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> full of pedantic tripe like that. Ah here was me thinking this was an uncontroversial and enjoyable discussion on HN. Anyways. Once again, just to underline what I wrote before - my comment wasn’t supposed to suggest that there was a golden age of Elysian harmony in the pastoral landscape of Europe, somehow superior to the ‘terrible’ existence we have now, with our hospitals, antibiotics, electronic gadgets, space…

Perhaps we should all be required to live for some period of time in the cold, hungry, dark pre-modern world such that we can return to modernity and be appropriately enthused.

I consider that a damn good suggestion

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#37

Post by _a_a_a_ »

Retric wrote: post #22
guntherhermann wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The life of a peasant was one of serfdom, watching too many of your children die before their 4th birthday. The wheat you grew you had to mill in a landlord's mill and they collected a tax from it. There was no light in the evenings because tallow or other wax was far too expensive so when it got dark there were limited things to do. Floors were covered in rushes instead of carpet and were host to bugs. True medicine…

Light in peasant houses didn’t use candles but rush dipped in fat or tallow. Rushlights took minimal effort to create and rush was basically free. Candles where more consistent and significantly longer lasting though vastly more expensive, while rushlights where plenty useful and cheap. The major cost was you could also eat the fat, but an hour of light every night would cost you something like 1% of the calories you…

> was they lacked productive work most of the year.

I'm surprised. Do you have a good source for this?

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#38

Post by kiliantics »

null_object wrote: post #12
guntherhermann wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The life of a peasant was one of serfdom, watching too many of your children die before their 4th birthday. The wheat you grew you had to mill in a landlord's mill and they collected a tax from it. There was no light in the evenings because tallow or other wax was far too expensive so when it got dark there were limited things to do. Floors were covered in rushes instead of carpet and were host to bugs. True medicine…

I think you gravely misunderstood my comment, I’m certainly not harking back to some romantic ideal of pre-industrial Arcadia. If you were an under-nourished worker, living in the rat-like polluted conditions of an Industrial Revolution town in Northern England (for instance), constantly breathing sulfurous fumes, suffering cholera epidemics, seeing the whole town and all the countryside around it blackened by the as…

I live in NYC, "greatest city in the world," and I encounter rats almost daily. Almost every apartment here will have a cockroach problem at some point. And since most of the city is a food desert, it takes pretty serious determination to eat a balanced diet, and usually at quite a cost.

So, notwithstanding all the negative points mentioned in this thread, I agree there are still many aspects of medieval peasant life that I wish we would aim for in today's world. There are even quite a few so-called modern "conveniences" that I would happily give up for them. I wish the things around me in my life were made of stone and wood and clay and durable textiles, rather than synthetic, disposable materials, shoddily assembled for a quick buck.

I think, just as you claim this false medieval story was told to industrial society, there is absolutely a concerted effort today to paint our current world as so much rosier than it is in comparison to other past living conditions. The idea in Better Angels of Our Nature and other such revisionist and cherry picked arguments seem like they could only be made to keep us pacified.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#39

Post by reidjs »

tragomaskhalos wrote: post #17

The style of art from that period tends to show human figures at a much larger scale than their environment - I remember a picture showing a siege in which the attacking army could almost have stepped over the walls! I'm sure there are interesting reasons behind this, but it does have the unfortunate effect of making it very difficult to discern how big these dwellings actually were.

I have a pet theory that this relates to how on social media picture sharing apps, in general, low effort selfies tend to get more engagement than beautiful landscape photography.

People like looking at other people, and people especially like looking at themselves

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#40

Post by bjelkeman-again »

germinalphrase wrote: post #32
null_object wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> full of pedantic tripe like that. Ah here was me thinking this was an uncontroversial and enjoyable discussion on HN. Anyways. Once again, just to underline what I wrote before - my comment wasn’t supposed to suggest that there was a golden age of Elysian harmony in the pastoral landscape of Europe, somehow superior to the ‘terrible’ existence we have now, with our hospitals, antibiotics, electronic gadgets, space…

Perhaps we should all be required to live for some period of time in the cold, hungry, dark pre-modern world such that we can return to modernity and be appropriately enthused.

For me it has been enough visiting subsistence farmers. I really don’t want to live like that, and have spent a decade trying to help at some useful scale.
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