Material and Social Life in the Middle Ages201about which little is known. They were probably as ef-
fective as the nostrums advocated by learned doctors.
Survival still depended upon good luck, heredity, and
the recuperative powers of the patient.
All of these things affected the distribution of
population. Medieval people were younger and had
far shorter working lives than their modern counter-
parts. Their reproductive lifetimes were also shorter.
For people of mature years (aged thirty to fifty), men
may have outnumbered women, primarily because so
many women died in childbirth. At the same time,
population levels were more closely related to epi-
demics and to fluctuations in the food supply than
they have been since the industrial revolution. The
doubling of the European population between the
eleventh and the thirteenth centuries was a direct con-
sequence of increased agricultural production, but be-
cause that increase was proportionate, nutrition did
not improve. Instead, population densities, though
still low by modern standards, had begun by the end
of the thirteenth century to push against the limits of
available land. Events would prove that when produc-
tion and population were so closely balanced, epi-
demic disease or a series of failed harvests could serve
as a corrective to demographic growth.
The Rural Upper Classes
Knightly families made up only a small part of Europe’s
population. Most villages had no lord in residence, but
such was the legal and economic power of the feudal
class that the castle or manor house cast a figurative
shadow over the entire countryside.
The symbol of feudal authority, the castle under-
went an architectural metamorphosis during the
eleventh and twelfth centuries. Kings and the greater
vassals had always tried to build in stone. As society’s
wealth increased, the practice was extended to rela-
tively modest structures. Wooden palisades gave way to
stone curtains with towers spaced at regular intervals on
the Roman model. The keep, or central stronghold,
became more liveable, if not luxurious. Windows, side
aisles, and even fireplaces were added to the hall. Sepa-
rate kitchens and chapels became commonplace, while
private chambers were built for the use of the lord and
his immediate family. This tended to remove them from
the life of the hall and introduced the revolutionary
idea of personal privacy. In politically secure areas,
stone manor houses were built on the same model with-
out troubling about walls. Setting the hall above a
raised ground floor and entering it by a staircase was
protection enough.
These developments reflected a basic change, not
only in the function of the castle, but also in the feudal
class as a whole. With the passing of the great raids,
society no longer needed the protection of the knights
and the purely military function of the castles was min-
imized. Castle building declined at the end of the
twelfth century. Its revival, at the beginning of the
thirteenth century, was primarily a response to grow-
ing social unrest (see illustration 11.2). Some struc-
tures, such as the great Welsh castles of Edward I, were
intended to hold territory newly annexed by an ex-
panding monarchy. Both purposes involved an element
of political theater. The castles built to protect country
gentlemen against their tenants, like those built to
overawe the Welsh, were stronger and more sophisti-
cated than any attack that was likely to be made
against them (see illustration 11.3).Illustration 11.2
The Moat and Gatehouse of the Bishop’s Palace, Wells,
England.The fortifications were built in 1340 to protect the
bishop from his tenants.