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A Look into Medieval Homes

medievalists.net

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Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#41

Post by tee_0 »

kiliantics wrote: post #38
null_object wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They had to make laws preventing peasants wearing aristocratic clothing. Yeah peasants experienced brutal conditions but the upper class did as well by modern standards. It’s scary to think that the beast of societal dogma could even spoil history as well as everything else.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#42

Post by Aunche »

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…

You're assuming that factory workers are stupid and incapable of judging living conditions on their own. The fact is that millions of people voluntarily moved thousands of miles away from their families and hometowns to a country where they can't even speak the language, just so that they can work in a factory. That is not a decision that they make lightly. The fact that they had to work for long hours and shitty conditions is evidence not evidence that they made poor decisions, but that their supposedly idyllic country life was that much worse.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#43

Post by Retric »

_a_a_a_ wrote: post #37
Retric wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2589850

To be clear work never ended and got really intense for part of the year, but productive labor was limited by raw materials, transportation issues etc.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#44

Post by Aunche »

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…

Life as a peasant was fine until it was not. If a flood or drought wiped out your crops, you were completely screwed. You might be able to get by with rationing or foraging, but you'd have to start over the next year weaker and demoralized. As populations grew, it becoming increasingly riskier to live off the land, which is why they moved to the cities where they can earn money that you can save in the case of an emergency.

You live in an age of excess, where you can always fall back on the welfare of others, so you can't imagine working 12 hour days in shitty conditions, but this is not the case for people who moved from hundreds, if not thousands of miles away to work in a factory. For them, an extra hour of work is an extra hour of security. The fact that billions of people made this move is evidence that rural life was that bad. Dismissing these incredibly thoughtful decisions as the result of capitalist propaganda completely dismisses their agency.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#45

Post by ricardobayes »

HEmanZ wrote: post #29
ricardobayes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

Idk what country you’re paying 40-60% tax in. I make very good money in the US and I don’t pay close to that. Using the US as an example, most people pay an effective tax rate of 20%. This is equivalent to a peasant getting a 10% tax and their 10% tithe to the church, so it’s not far off. Basically we’ve moved redistribution/welfare from the control of the church to the state. In medieval times these were effectively…

Lots, in Europe. Top brackets which are really easy to reach in most cases - think 50-60k per annum: Austria 55% Denmark 55% France 52% Sweden 53% And so on...

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#46

Post by ricardobayes »

automatic6131 wrote: post #33
ricardobayes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, there's a "slight" difference between taxing 10% vs 50%, so I guess it's kind of okay to demand some things in return.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#47

Post by PeterisP »

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%.

The rate of taxation depends on what is the maximum possible rate, what is the available surplus that can be extracted while still enabling the workers to survive and 'reinvest' in things that affect productivity.

In earlier times a farming community of e.g. 20 farmer families simply did not produce enough surplus to feed 20 other families; if someone would tax them half of their harvest, then they would starve, eat their seed grain and breeding animals, and there would be nothing to tax next year. A 10% tax was probably the limit of what could be sustained long-term.

On the other hand, as people become more productive, it became possible to devote a larger share of that production to goals beyond the survival needs of the household.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#48

Post by mountainb »

guntherhermann wrote: post #10
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…

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…

Aristos also covered floor with rushes and other scented herbs. Serfdom generally didn’t exist in the West unless you are using the term over broadly.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#49

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

It depends what you’re trying to say.

Showing the home of a typical HN poster would be very different than many working poor in the United States.

The transition from craft work to industrial production and assembly changed many aspects of life. My home is an urban single family detached house built in 1924 as a partially finished home that could be adapted by the owner to be a two family or you could finish the bedrooms upstairs. We did some research and the first owners of the home worked for the phone company. So not a super expensive home then, but there is still custom craftwork masonry, good trim carpentry (custom built-ins, custom millwork, etc). Today those tradespeople don’t exist. To a 1920s middle class person, a modern high end home would look unfinished in comparison.

Re: A Look into Medieval Homes

#50

Post by Spooky23 »

Aunche wrote: post #44
null_object wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Life as a peasant was fine until it was not. If a flood or drought wiped out your crops, you were completely screwed. You might be able to get by with rationing or foraging, but you'd have to start over the next year weaker and demoralized. As populations grew, it becoming increasingly riskier to live off the land, which is why they moved to the cities where they can earn money that you can save in the case of an eme…

They didn’t necessarily choose anything. As the feudal system broke down, those peasants were released from the land. (ie kicked out)
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