IMAGES OF EVERYDAY LIFE
Life in a Medieval Town
MOST URBAN RESIDENTSwere merchants involved in
trade and artisans who manufactured a wide variety of
products. Master craftspeople had their workshops in the
ground-level rooms of their houses. In the illustration
directly above, two well-dressed burghers are touring the
shopping districts of a French town. Tailors, furriers, a
barber, and a grocer (from left to right) are visible at work in
their shops. Butchers were usually restricted to districts of
the town that were downstream and downwind from where
most people lived due to the smells from the waste products,
many of which were often pitched into a nearby stream.
Guild regulations forbade butchers from selling the meat of
dogs, cats, and horses, and butchering places were routinely
inspected to ensure that no spoiled meat was sold. The
illustration at the top right above shows a medieval butcher
shop in an Italian town. Although butchers wore aprons,
they were relatively small, extending only below the waist,
because medieval butchers were skilled individuals who
wasted little of the animals they butchered. Even the blood
was collected carefully in order to make a kind of sausage
called blood pudding. Because violence was often a feature of
medieval life, criminals, if apprehended, were punished
quickly and severely, and public executions were considered a
deterrent to crime. As one can surmise from the illustration
at the right, executions were also a form of entertainment.Bibliothe`que de l’Arsenal, Paris//Snark/Art Resource, NY
Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna//Alinari/The Bridgeman Art LibraryªBritish Library Board/Robana/Art Resource, NY210 Chapter 9The Recovery and Growth of European Society in the High Middle AgesCopyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
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