Western Civilization - History Of European Society

Material and Social Life in the Middle Ages213

centuries profoundly altered the behavior and self-
image of the upper classes. The lives of peasants
changed more slowly. Without mass communication to
inform them of changes in learning or fashion, they re-
mained immersed in the demands of an agricultural rou-
tine that was much the same in the eighteenth century
as it had been five hundred years earlier. The castle, in
other words, was eventually transformed, but the vil-
lage remained largely intact until industrialization al-
tered the material conditions on which it was based.
For some, conditions may have grown worse with
the passage of time. The lives of most Europeans in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries were simple and, by
modern standards, hard, but society was more secure
than it had been for many centuries. Wars were either
limited or far away, and famines were rare. The activi-

ties of ordinary men and women, like the great intellec-

tual and architectural triumphs of the age, reveal a cer-

tain confidence in the world’s predictability and a

willingness to build for the future. Yet society in the

later thirteenth century was beginning to show signs of

stress. There seemed to be too many people. They still

ate, but poverty and landlessness were increasing.

Wealthy people began to build moats around their

houses to protect them from their neighbors, while

moralists lamented the passing of a golden age. The fol-

lowing century would show that the moralists were in a

sense correct: The relative balance of social and eco-

nomic forces that characterized the High Middle Ages

was giving way to conditions that people of all classes

would find profoundly troubling.

Illustration 11.6

A Cadaver Effigy of Sir John Go-

lafre (d. 1442) at Fyfield Church, Eng-

land.Another fully clad effigy of Sir

John appears on the bier immediately

above the cadaver effigy pictured here.