Material and Social Life in the Middle Ages207church or festive occasions (see document 11.3). Both
were washed when possible. Workday garments were
worn until they fell apart. Children, once they were out
of swaddling clothes, dressed like their parents.
Village society was stratified by wealth instead of
by social class. The wealthier peasants held tenements
or other lands on secure contracts. Such properties
were often larger than they could work themselves, and
they either sublet portions of their property to others
or hired laborers as needed. They were more likely
than poorer peasants to own draft animals and to graze
livestock on the village common. If they were careful in
planning their marriages or were able to form a business
relationship with the lord or his steward they could be-
come as wealthy as minor nobles. Their families tended
to be larger than those of the poor and their houses
were often substantial.
Perhaps the largest group in any community were
smallholders whose land was insufficient to support
their families, but who supplemented their earnings by
leasing additional fields, practicing a trade, or engaging
in occasional labor in return for food or wages. They
usually had their own house and garden, and they might
keep poultry or a hog. Below them on the economic
scale were landless laborers whose situation was often
precarious. Numbering perhaps a quarter of the commu-
nity, they were dependent upon charity in hard times
and sometimes resorted to petty theft. Small-scale pil-
fering was a common income supplement for other
classes as well. Slavery, though still common in the cities
of southern Europe, disappeared in the north and in
rural areas during the twelfth century.
Social movement was extremely limited. The evo-
lution of nobility as a social ideal opened an unbridge-
able gap between the peasantry and those who bore
arms. Wealthier peasants were sometimes able to place
one of their children in the church, but even in this, the
most egalitarian of medieval institutions, humble birth
was a grave barrier to advancement. Within the narrow
world of the village, wealth and social status could be
increased through careful management, good marriage
strategies, and luck. Over time, many families and a few
individuals did so, but the pinnacle of ambition re-
mained a place on the manorial court, control of a mill,
or an appointment as one of the lord’s stewards. Gener-
ally, the medieval villager had no choice other than to
accept the status into which he or she had been born.
To do otherwise would not only have been fruitless, it
also would have run counter to the most cherished prej-
udices of an age in which stability was a paramount so-
cial goal.
Though stratified by wealth, the medieval village
was a powerful, tightly knit social organism whose sur-
vival into modern times testifies to its adaptability. In
size, it typically numbered between 250 and 500 inhab-
itants, with smaller villages being the more common.
Many of its inhabitants were interrelated. However, the
ecclesiastical prohibition against marrying one’s rela-
tives worked steadily against the pressures of isolation
and an endemic distrust of strangers. People identified
strongly with their village and tended to see it for whatDOCUMENT 11.3
A Peasant Family in the Fields
The following exerpt from Peres the Plowman’s Crede,a
long English poem by William Langland (c. 1330–c. 1400),
provides a heartbreaking glimpse of peasant life.And as I went by the way, weeping for sorrow
I saw a poor man o’er the plow bending,
His coat was of a cloth that cary was called
His hood was full of holes and his hair seen
through it.
With his shoes so worn and patched very thick
His toes pushed through as the fields he trod.
His hose o’erhung his gaiters all about
And he dragged in the mud as the plow he
followed.
Two mittens had he, skimpy, made of rags,
The fingers uncovered and coated with mud.
This poor creature, beslimed in the mud almost to
the ankle,
Four oxen before him, that feeble had become,
One might count the ribs, so pitiful they were.
Beside him his wife, with a long goad.
In a cutted skirt, cutted full high;
Wrapped in a winnowing sheet, to guard her from
weather,
Barefoot on bare ice, so that the blood flowed.
And at the field’s end lay a little basket
And therein a little child, covered in rags,
And twins of two years old upon another side.
And they all sang a song that was sorrow to hear,
They all cried a cry, a note full of woe—
The poor man sighed sore, and said “Children
be still!”
Langland, William. Peres the Ploughman’s Crede,trans.
D. Resnick. In L. F. Schaefer et al., eds., The Shaping of West-
ern Civilization.New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970.