What were the factors that came together to make life hell on earth for Medieval peasants?

>implying medieval peasants were the only people who ever experienced plague, crop failure and shitty monarchs

and why do you think they believe that?

I'd take medieval peasant life over industrial-revolution era english factory worker life no problem. You wouldn't get to see the world or anything but you'd have a nice, rounded existence. And I imagine that in a time before tv, the internet or even literacy they would have spent A LOT of time fucking.

So life back then was no different from today

Huh? Do you live in the third world or something? We haven't had a plague here in decades, the last time we had what you might call a famine was over 80 fucking years ago.

>I'd take medieval peasant life over industrial-revolution era english factory worker life no problem.

So why do you suppose all those peasants flocked to factory jobs when they became available? Why do you suppose that pattern continues even today in China, etc?

>and why do you think they believe that?
Because its a trope that ill informed uneducated historians first made which has stuck because its what people expect.

It isn't as back as every historical drama figure being equipped in biker leather though.
Leather armour needs to stop it wasn't a thing much. Especially when they opt for leather shit when we know full well exactly what they wore.

This is "The Musketeers" by the BBC, set in the 17th Century.

I will now post actual 17th century common fashion of a musketeer

Rural people flocked to cities thinking its their escape and path to wealth, it isn't and they ended up on the streets or in a horrific unending job

>Because its a trope that ill informed uneducated historians first made which has stuck because its what people expect.

So what superior education do you have on the subject?

>mass urbanization didn't start hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution

>Rural people flocked to cities thinking its their escape and path to wealth, it isn't and they ended up on the streets or in a horrific unending job

[citation needed]

How dependent was the average peasant on a successful harvest?

Well I'm studying history at university but aside from that you only have to open any basic history book and you'll immediately get a wealth of knowledge which hollywood and TV seem to incapable of finding.

At least open a fucking osprey book to see how people looked instead of inventing your weird muddy faced bdsm leather gimp suit armour with studs all over it.

Every single country with high levels of poverty today is your citation. This is literally how favelas/slums occur. This is high school geography...

>implying that isn't just more evidence you're wrong

They could manage a few unsuccessful harvests without starvation, due to the very low population density, but if they piled up or if a harvest were a complete loss, it would be a major issue.

I thought so: you've got nothing. Chinese factory workers work hard, but the jobs are incredibly hard to get and the workers ate grateful to have them, because being a peasant is so much worse.

>just read a book lol

Ok, so you're a freshman history major and you're basing it on nothing.

>I thought so: you've got nothing.
What you mean is you're ignoring what i just said.
No one cares about your specific, highly regulated case in the 21st century. I am talking about the general trend of urban poverty and what creates it. What creates it are rural folk flocking to cities, not finding the work they sought, and then overbreeding.

Me? What did I say? I'm not the one you were talking to, I just commented.

Urbanization sucked, dude, make no mistake. You think famines were bad in Medieval times, in the 1600's millions of people died with every famine. Urbanization was faciliated by the massive wage rises from the black plague causing a labor shortage, and people setting up their own businesses, but after having tons of kids for successive generations, the wealth of many families (which might not have been much to begin with, just enough to get a trade going) rapidly attenuated, and many families were prostitutes and street beggars to get by.

What? What the fuck is wrong with reading a book. I am not telling you read a book, i am telling TV and film producers to read a book, because if they read a book then we'd have period dramas in accurate clothing and armour rather than the fucked up mess we have now.

Quit being an asinine prick.

>"look at every country"
>"but not THAT one lol"

ok chum

You actually proved my point anyway by saying Chinese farmers flock to cities for jobs rather than farming, which is what i originally said. The difference is they don't all get jobs and then they end up stick in a city, poor and in poverty. So he probably was better off farming.

Well done

Specifically what books have you read on the subject of what life was like for medieval peasants?

Gesta Normannorum Ducum, Roger of Hoveden, Assize of Clarendon, Assize of Northampton, Inquest of Sheriffs 1170, Dialogus de Scaccario, Assize of Arms 1181
Well those are just some primary sources from the 12th century. They give a good indication of peasant life if you read between the lines. Primary sources are much better than secondary sources. Regardless you can stop your high and mighty air, we don't have to read volumes upon volumes of books to know that medieval people like all people would like bright clothing and didn't allow mud to sit on their faces.

Seems like your story has changed quite a bit. I thought industrial work was worse than being a peasant?

Religion, mainly. Christianity had crashed the plane of pagan wisdom with no survivors, and then proceeded to impose divine right of kings and say everything fun was a sin. Technology deteriorated as people were more concerned with making sure God didn't smite them, than they were with making their world better.

It is, working 16 hours a day is more than a peasant would do, and its not at his own pace, and can be much harder, but they want the money, and the prospect of wealth and advancement. What's not to understand here.

The "pagan beliefs survived alongside Christianity for centuries in rural areas" thing is just a myth right?

Pagan superstitions, not pagan wisdom.

Go back to your wicca general, /x/phile

>pagan
>wisdom

>It's wrong but I won't explain why
>Just take my word for it guiz

Reminder that for catholic peasants 1 in 3 days was a holiday.

Reminder that you have to work more than they did.

IT DEPENDED ON THE TIME AND REGION

CONTEXT REEEEEEEEEEEEE

t. Medieval Studies major

I have something they lack

What is the worse medieval meme:

Peasants were, across all time periods and regions, shit-stained oppressed subhumans who bathed in their own piss and were literally too stupid to do anything beyond grunt and growl for conversation

or

every knight, across all time periods and regions, raped 6 million women and children a day and burned down villages at the drop of a hat before also raping the livestock

>I judge the world objectively by my subjective standards, no man is stronger than I, no man is more equipped than I
>Even though I live in the most comfortable age ever known and am probably posting from a wealthy country where the greatest concern might be where the next meal comes from I will consider myself the standard of living for all time
>all who I deign beneath me had bad lives and they obviously didn't like it because I in my all infinite wisdom have lived both their life and mine, theirs mentally by thinking for 11 minutes, and I have determined their life is objectively worse

This is one of 'those' threads again.
Part of me wishes the Enlightenment never happened, no one is any happier...

I'll go with

>le ebil Vikings maymay

God forbid someone do as everyone else does

WE RAPED THE HORSES AND RODE OFF ON THEIR WOMEN!

Only communists hate the Middle Ages.

>conscription
>in the Middle Ages

Mass conscription is a modern phenomenom, and only began with the French Revolution. Unless you were unlucky enough to live on the path of an English chevauchee, intra-Christian warfare wouldn't hurt you as a peasant.

Muslim raids were another thing, but that is okay to you, isn't it?

Actually it's based on Soviet propaganda against Kulaks. Remember that the people behind Hollywood is the same people that perpretated the Holodomor.

>divine right of kings
>in the Middle Ages

The theory of "divine rights of kings" was a 17th century political philosophy that was used by absolute monarchs to justify the expansion of central power.

It has nothing to do with the Middle Ages.

Peasants fled to towns to earn their freedom,after one year in a town they became a freeman

>The theory of "divine rights of kings" was a 17th century political philosophy
The remote origins of the theory are rooted in the medieval idea that God had bestowed earthly power on the king, just as God had given spiritual power and authority to the church, centering on the pope. The immediate author of the theory was Jean Bodin,who based it on the interpretation of Roman law.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings

I don't see your point, Jean Bodin lived after the Middle Ages.

Of course, you can see the roots of this idea in Ghibelline political thought such as Marsilius of Padua's "Defensor pacis", but the adoption of absolute monarchy justified by the divine rights of kings would only happen in Western Europe after the end of the Middle Ages. To say otherwise is historical illiteracy.

To say it is a seventeenth century is the height of ignorance, considering that was the time period of the Glorious revolution,where doctrine of Divine Right of Kings ceased to have influence

And at the same time, the shortage of labor caused by the black death allowed peasants to leverage much greater freedom and influence for themselves because those that survived were in much higher demand

Them nobles ain't gonna work the land themselves and if you wanted the peasants to do it, you had to make it worth their while. It turned out to be a good thing for the little guy, after they stopped dying wholesale.

13th century peasants enjoyed a greater life than 18th century peasants.

Only in England. In France, the reaction against the expansion of power by the central monarchy failed and the theory of "divine rights" maintained influence well into the 18th century.

Besides, that may be forgotten now, but English rebels in the 17th century justified much of their reaction against absolute monarchy on medieval conceptions of kingship, exemplified in the Magna Carta, which itself was seen as a codification of liberties which supposedly went back to the Anglo-Saxon period of kings like Alfred the Great.

Being a peasant was fucking awful

The rise of stone castles made it almost impossible for peasants to retaliate against castellans who, during the early middle ages, were little more than raiders who claimed all territory within a day's horse ride of their castle. They would extort everyone who lived on it and demanded that everyone address them as lord (dominus) and pay them banal and seigneurial dues. Banal lordship imposed new regulations and taxes on peasants that were unprecedented, requiring them to pay their lord for necessities such as the right to mill grain, bake bread, press grapes into wine, etc. They had to pay fines for things like their house burning down or their wives committing adultery. The worst tax was the tallage, which was an arbitrary amount of tribute that the castellan could demand at any time. Castellans employed knights to force the peasants to pay these ridiculous fines, and they were more than happy to torch peasants' fruit trees, injure their livestock, and slap the shit out of them in order to get it. Constant fights between castellans meant that peasant families frequently had to give up one of their sons to be fodder for their lord's levy. Knights and bandits would raid free peasants until they were forced to run to the local lord for protection and enserf themselves. County legal courts, where peasants could sue, disappeared and the word of the local castellan became the law. In eastern Europe, where the Slavic peasants were mostly illiterate and semi-pagan, things were even worse because the clergy wouldn't protect them. Oh and don't forget all the major wars where armies stole as many crops as they could carry and burned the rest.

Read more, watch less television

to add, shit didn't begin to improve for most of them until the 13th century with reurbanization, deforestation, and monetarization which allowed peasants to escape to cities, move to new arable land, and to accumulate wealth over several years with which they could buy their freedom. All of these forced castellans to treat their peasants better and even enter into contracts with them to ensure that they wouldn't leave their demesnes.

Improved anti-knight weapons and labor shortages from the plague also helped the lot of them later on

You know, what he said has a certain amount of truth to it.

Hunter gatherer > early farmer

Name me some shows or movies that depict these things because I can't.

All of this was taken from my lecture notes from a class taught by a renowned medieval history professor.

Eh...the post is really not. "People had to do unthinkable things like bake bread and farm, and to pay taxes, but it sucked because they also had to become knights and fight robbers."

Peasant life wasn't that exciting.

Also, in England, no one called someone a lord or majesty until the 1500s, and by then, feudalism was almost non existent in England.

Try reading something before posting.
Feudalism was better for the peasants. Alexis de Tocqueville is a good place to start. At least as a feudal peasant, you had something, even if it was just a farm.

You know what 19th century poor people had? Nothing at all. The people who had once been the "evil feudal lords" now became the businessmen who couldn't give a shit about the poor.

I wasn't disagreeing that 13th century peasants would have had a better life that 18th century.

>"People had to do unthinkable things like bake bread and farm, and to pay taxes, but it sucked because they also had to become knights and fight robbers."

Your lack of reading comprehension is astounding.

Read some sources from the time period. Chivalric romances and clerical documents alike depict peasants as ugly and discourteous, and either dumb as a post or cruelly mischievous.

idiot

All right

>He was no longer their ruler, and had no reasons for conciliating, or aiding, or guiding them, while, on the other hand, he did not share their burdens, and consequently felt no sympathy for sufferings which did not afflict him, or for wrongs to which he was a stranger. Though they had ceased to be his subjects, he had not become their fellow-citizen. The position is without parallel in history. What I have said of the nobility applies equally to rich landowners in general. Centralization stripped the rural districts of their rich and enlightened inhabitants.We have seen already how the middle classes deserted the country parts and took refuge in cities. The peasant, then, was widely separated from the upper classes of society. He was kept aloof from all who could help or guide him. The higher his fellows [155] rose in influence and station, the more they avoided him. He seemed to have been picked out of the whole nation, and set aside.See, now, what became of this forsaken class, over which no one tried to tyrannize, but which no one tried to aid or enlighten.The weightiest of the feudal burdens had certainly been lightened or removed, but they had been succeeded by others perhaps even more oppressive. Peasants were relieved from many grievances which had afflicted their ancestors, but they endured sufferings which the latter had never known.

> Chivalric romances and clerical documents alike depict peasants as ugly and discourteous, and either dumb as a post or cruelly mischievous.
From the 13th century?

oh, look, an ideologue.

>You know what 19th century poor people had?
Freedom,For the majority of the poor serfs, it was like slavery in antiquity.

Oh look, one of the most respected political thinkers on the French Revolution and early American democracy*

fixed that for you

>19th century lower class
>freedom
HAHAHAHAHA

"Renowned medieval history professor" means nothing in a time when all of this information is accessible with the click of a mouse.

There's a lot of bad info in that post though

You limp dicked faggots have no idea how backbreaking fieldwork is.
You think it's just like your shitty "back to nature" veggie garden that you have in your backyard.
I swear history is dying thanks to retards like you who have no concept of the real world or the notion of context.
You have places that practice pre-industrial farming to this day. They're called third world shit-holes for a reason you out of touch mongoloids.

>peasants did backbreaking labor for 18 hours a day

Is it true that the biggest killer was dirty drinking water. I have seen before that the arrival of tea was the biggest factor in allowing for a population explosion in cities. The boiling of the water plus something in the tea itself killed the pathogens.

Searching that quote brings up this, which seems to indicate he's talking about the 17th century. Where did you pull it from?

Do you think a hunter gatherer lifestyle would be superior to pre-industrial farming?

And I mean in relatively productive region, not where it's restricted to these days.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Regime_and_the_Revolution

When someone couldn't believe the pre-modern industrialized society might have been a little worse than the feudal society

>Warfare and conscription
Any lord using peasants would be laughed out of his claim and any lord doing such would face a revolt. It was the unspoken contract that the peasants worked the land and the Lord and his nobles would protect them.

Most people don't even know where to look. An expert in the field is incredibly useful for navigating it and picking up the important bits, unless you have unlimited time to read dozens of books.

Feel free to correct my post. I'm mostly talking about the early and high middle ages, things definitely improved during the 13th century before temporarily dipping again during the Hundred Years War.

...okay, so what does that quote about 17th century France have to do with

>The rise of stone castles made it almost impossible for peasants to retaliate against castellans who, during the early middle ages, were little more than raiders who claimed all territory within a day's horse ride of their castle. They would extort everyone who lived on it and demanded that everyone address them as lord (dominus) and pay them banal and seigneurial dues. Banal lordship imposed new regulations and taxes on peasants that were unprecedented, requiring them to pay their lord for necessities such as the right to mill grain, bake bread, press grapes into wine, etc. They had to pay fines for things like their house burning down or their wives committing adultery. The worst tax was the tallage, which was an arbitrary amount of tribute that the castellan could demand at any time. Castellans employed knights to force the peasants to pay these ridiculous fines, and they were more than happy to torch peasants' fruit trees, injure their livestock, and slap the shit out of them in order to get it. Constant fights between castellans meant that peasant families frequently had to give up one of their sons to be fodder for their lord's levy. Knights and bandits would raid free peasants until they were forced to run to the local lord for protection and enserf themselves. County legal courts, where peasants could sue, disappeared and the word of the local castellan became the law. In eastern Europe, where the Slavic peasants were mostly illiterate and semi-pagan, things were even worse because the clergy wouldn't protect them. Oh and don't forget all the major wars where armies stole as many crops as they could carry and burned the rest.
Citation! Actual examples, not shitty generalizations.

I don't know where to find them in English, but these theories come from Georges Duby's work "La Société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise" and the works of other Annales school medievalists such as Pierre Bonassie's "La Catalogne du milieu du Xe à la fin du XIe siècle," Jean François Lemarignier's "Structure monastiques et structures politiques dans la France," and Bournazel's "La mutation feodale."

If you have jstor or some other research engine use the terms "Feudal revolution" or "feudal transformation" and see where that takes you.

oh shoot here you go

google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjDhayvkP_MAhWIFx4KHdq7CUgQFgghMAA&url=http://www.history.ucsb.edu/archived/courses/tempdownload.php?attach_id=6554&usg=AFQjCNFIlb80KwQTmicKWAoYe_vv5Suemg&bvm=bv.123325700,d.dmo

should be a nice intro to the topic

This. Plus if you were a man you might get a chance to go to war and get some sick loot in return for walking around shitting yourself with 20,000 other guys.

Now, you want to talk about a shit life, I'd much rather be a medieval peasant than a peasant anytime between the 16th-19th centuries.

>anti-knight weapons

Kek.

How truthful is Terry Jones Medieval Lives?

youtube.com/watch?v=Yg3YDN5gTX0

Keep in mind it IS the Big Black C and Terry is the kind of historian who pushes that every knight was a rapist and serial killer.

whatever, back to the fields, peasant.

In 12th century Poland serfs had to work 2 days/week for their landlord, in 18th century it was 6

What TV show did he learn all those medieval legal/fiscal terms from?

Interesting, what's your source?

Third Worlders are on Industrial-tier quotas, dicktard.

Totally not the same as their premodern counterparts.

>Oh look, one of the most respected political thinkers on the French Revolution and early American democracy*
Also an ideologue. The two things aren't mutually exclusive. Plenty of respected thinkers had absolute meme-tier understandings of history that they used to justify their positions.

People in this thread honestly think this is a bad life.

The status of LGBT people was miserable! How can you say it was a good life when LGBTQ folks were still enslaved by Christian morality!

how much would the church care if some nobody was engaging in gay sex or something like that? Serious question by the way

>Christian
>morality

well gay sex was a sin and pretty sure it stil is ( and for good reasons)
but thoughts were ok
I wonder how was it in monasteries and other church institutions, everyone of the same gender...

You would be last in line for getting loot. You'd be behind knights, squires, captains, and mercenaries who were all professionals and expected to come back from campaigning with something in their pockets.

The best way for getting money from war was ransoming enemies who'd surrendered, but I don't think peasants were allowed to take hostages (or at least not valuable ones).