18 agriculture
innocence, purity, and ignorance. That of childhood, ages
seven to 14, was a moment of malleability, openness,
physical development, and awakening religious feelings.
The era of adolescence, ages 14 to 21, was a time of tur-
moil and sexual awakening in which one faced crucial
choices between the temptations of the flesh and the
spirit. That of youth, ages 21 to 35, was an era devoted to
career, childbearing, and public responsibility. That of
adulthood, ages 35 to 50, was a period of physical and
emotional maturity. Old age, from 50 to 70, was a period
of physical decay and cynicism. Finally, that of decrepi-
tude, ages 70 until death, was viewed as a time of grow-
ing senility, bitterness, and fear of approaching death.
The later Middle Ages saw efforts to elaborate under-
standing of the life cycle. Those reflecting on aging linked
other themes to it such as the attainments of salvation,
learning, and the acquisition of virtue. This growing body
of ideas on the traits of the various ages, their parallels in
the natural world, and their place within the plan of salva-
tion was reflected in art and literature.
See alsoCHILDHOOD.
Further reading:J. A. Burrow, The Ages of Man: A
Study in Medieval Writing and Thought(Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986); Michael Goodich, From Birth to
Old Age: The Human Life Cycle in Medieval Thought:
1250–1350(London: University Press of America, 1989);
Michael Goodich, “Ages of Life,” EMA, 1.23; Georges
Minois, History of Old Age: From Antiquity to the Renais-
sance(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989);
Elizabeth L. Sears, The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpreta-
tions of the Life Cycle(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1986); Shulamith Shahar, Growing Old in the
Middle Ages(London: Routledge, 1977).
agriculture Agricultural activity was the heart of the
medieval economy and was closely tied to political and
social structures of the medieval state. There is a funda-
mental difference between western European agriculture
and that of the Byzantine and Muslim worlds. Roman and
similar technology and structures persisted everywhere
for centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. The
absence of slaves led to the development of new agrarian
techniques. In the Byzantine Empire the great estates,
belonging to the aristocracy and the church, continued to
be administered much as the old Roman estates or lati-
fundiawere. They were based on slave labor or something
similar to it and produced a variety of crops primarily for
urban and commercial markets for money. Outside the
great estates an important class of free peasants cultivated
their own plots of land in the Balkans and Anatolia. By
the beginning of the eighth century, this class had gained
enough power numerically and economically to win legal
status.
The establishment of the Arab caliphate in the sev-
enth century fostered a new concept of agriculture in the
Muslim lands. The Arab conquerors settled in cities and
engaged in trade. The cultivation of the land was left to
the conquered populations, which continued in their tra-
ditional ways of life and practice. This division explains
why the countryside was Islamized so slowly. Landown-
ers, however, were compelled either to become Muslims
or to leave. Possession of land was allowed only to Mus-
lims. The peasants had to pay taxes to the state and to the
landowners. As in the Byzantine Empire, Muslim agricul-
ture was based on commercial considerations.
Unlike in these agrarian societies, western European
agriculture faced a growing shortage of laborers and
slaves from the third century. Free peasants were bound
to the land and compelled to work on the estates of the
aristocracy to provide food for the expanding army. New
techniques of field management, in which one-third of
the land was left fallow each year, helped to solve the
problem of the shortage of workers. Another technologi-
cal innovation was the watermill. This agrarian economy
lost much of its commercial character, as most of the
produce was consumed on the estates, and a certain
amount was transported to the much shrunken urban
market.EVOLUTION IN TECHNIQUES
In the 10th to 12th centuries, the diet of Europeans was
centered on cereals. Agricultural techniques primarily
focused on grain crops. The wooden tools used were
multipurpose and also served for kitchen, gardening, or
industrial crops. Iron remained rare and expensive,
though its use was more common after the 10th century.
The spade with a wooden core partly covered in iron
and the hoe were used before the swing-plow that broke
the soil and the plow that turned over the ground. In
the early Middle Ages, the latter was heavy and needed
numerous oxen and wheels. It was simplified in the 13th
century, losing its wheels and becoming more manage-
able. These plows were adapted to different types of soil.
Harvesting was done with a sickle, the grain cut high or
low according to the amount of straw needed. These
technical changes were less important to the evolution of
agriculture than the expansion of cultivated areas and the
intensified and more productive work extracted from
peasant families.
The landlords of the Middle Ages favored labor car-
ried out under peasant tenure. Entrusted to a conjugal
family with men and women working in the fields, a
tenurial relationship became the usual form of agricul-
tural arrangement. Seigniorial equipment was provided,
with specific fees charged for the use of the mill, the
oven, and the press. The multiplication of these family
groups facilitated unprecedented expansion of the culti-
vated area into forests, marshes, and swamps.
To lessen the risks of a bad harvest, to ensure the
feeding of the peasants, and to respond to seigniorial
demands, a more varied planting became common. Wheat