Material and Social Life in the Middle Ages205Medieval Society: The Village
In the High Middle Ages, 90 percent of all Europeans
lived in villages and engaged directly in agriculture.
They were not exclusively occupied with farming;
many people had special skills that brought in supple-
mentary income. Most communities could boast
millers, carpenters, brewers, seamstresses, harness mak-
ers, blacksmiths, midwives, and other specialists, but
these people also worked in the fields as needed and
frequently held land in their own right. The wealthier
peasants were more likely to have a trade than were
their poorer neighbors, for a trade required skills as well
as a substantial investment in tools or equipment.
The physical environment of medieval villages var-
ied widely. The heart of a larger village was the parish
church, which by the twelfth century was almost al-
ways of masonry construction. Timber churches contin-
ued to survive in northwest England, parts of Germany,
and Scandinavia, but their numbers were declining.
Lords frequently built or improved village churches as
an act of piety and to increase their family’s prestige.
Some of them were, and are, architectural gems. Their
cost was borne ultimately by the peasants in the form
of dues and tithes, but the church was at least a form of
expenditure that the villagers could enjoy. It was usually
the only substantial building in the community unless
the lord maintained a residence there.
The character of domestic architecture was deter-
mined by the availability of building materials and by
the structure of families. In southern Europe, where
timber had been scarce since biblical times, brick or
stone construction was the rule. Peasant houses were
sometimes large, having been expanded at various times
to accommodate an increase in family size. If the family
subsequently grew smaller, the permanence of the
building materials often precluded the demolition of all
or part of the house. This helps to explain why
Mediterranean villages often appear larger today than
their census figures indicate. It may also have encour-
aged the formation of extended families by making free
space available to newly married couples.
Thanks to their sturdy construction, many commu-
nities in Spain, Italy, and southern France have changed
little since the Middle Ages. Existing knowledge of
northern villages is the product of painstaking archeo-
logical reconstruction. The use of wattle and daub (in-
terwoven twigs or rushes covered by mud) or other
impermanent materials meant that peasant housing in
England, northern France, the Low Countries, and
north Germany was often good only for a generation or
two. Entire villages sometimes moved to a different lo-
cation for reasons of health or economic advantage,
leaving nothing behind but rubble and the outlines of
their foundations.
In the days of Charlemagne, many houses were
made of solid wood or logs, a practice that became pro-
hibitively expensive with the passage of time (see docu-
ment 11.2). By the end of the eleventh century, a house
in a northern village was typically framed in wood and
composed of bays or sections added together, usually in
a linear pattern (see illustration 11.5). Bays could be
built or torn down as needed because the walls were so
flimsy that thieves sometimes broke through them
rather than bothering with the door. Such homes were
inexpensive. Newlyweds had little difficulty in setting
up a place of their own, and people often had cottages
built for them in their old age to separate them from
their grown children. Though some houses had lofts or
attics, true second stories were rare. Windows were few,
small, and covered with wooden shutters, while chim-
neys were introduced only at the end of the Middle
Ages. At the center of the house was a raised hearth,
the smoke from which typically exited through a hole
in the thatched roof. Most people went to bed at night-
fall and rose at dawn. Interior lighting was available in
the form of candles if a family could afford them. As
the floors were of swept earth covered with straw or
rushes, the danger of fire was ever present.
In these circumstances, cleanliness was as hard to
achieve as safety. The interior of a peasant home was
inevitably dark and smoky. Though the marks of vigor-
ously wielded medieval brooms are still visible in ar-
chaeological digs, housekeeping inevitably fell below
modern standards. This was in part because people
lived in close proximity with their livestock. Most peas-
ant homes, north or south, possessed a yard or garden
and even outbuildings. Animals were often housed in a
separate bay or in an unused room of the house. In one-
room cottages, livestock might share the living space
with humans.
The yard, croft, or close was an integral part of the
family’s living space. It was basically a walled or fenced-
in working area in which children and animals wan-
dered at will, and great efforts were made to prevent its
disorder from invading the sleeping quarters. Drainage
ditches and thresholds were the best defense, but
muddy feet and wandering livestock were an inevitable
part of the farmer’s world. Dusting, however, was not.
Most homes contained no furniture beyond the pallets
on which people slept; their blankets, which were
sometimes used as wraps in winter; and their cooking