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labor The concept of labor during the Middle Ages was
based on the idea that labor was the activity through
which people used their abilities to produce or help pro-
duce what was useful to the common good of society.
However, at the same time labor itself was deemed for the
most part a demeaning but necessary activity and was
associated with debasing work in the field or was done
under distress and pain, as a punishment for SIN.
In the early Middle Ages as cities and city life
declined, the number of urban artisans became much
smaller and was clustered around the courts of the rulers
that had replaced the Roman administration. Agricultural
work and almost all productive labor were linked with
slavery. The warrior and ecclesiastical elite did not do it.
The monastic rule of Saint BENEDICTcalled for manual
labor as part of the regular regime of a monastery, but this
was understood as a remedy for laziness, and a chastise-
ment produced by the stain of original sin on all souls.
During the 11th and 12th centuries, these ideas
began to change. In the countryside, as agricultural labor-
ers were equipped with better tools, and better methods
for working recently cleared lands, they became more
productive. The increased demand for labor allowed
them to improve their working conditions and negotiate
less demeaning and forced servitude. In the developing
towns such as BRUGES,GHENT, and even FLORENCE, and
with an economic revolution, the number of artisans
and industrial workers grew; workers became better
organized in GUILDSand were sometimes able, with con-
siderable struggle, to improve their working conditions
and political and social status.
As these economic and social conditions changed,
ideas about work or labor evolved. An ideal society
should give a fair part of the produce of their labor back

to all those who toiled. In the 12th century, the CISTER-

CIANSrehabilitated manual labor as the worthy work of

God. In the towns and in the new UNIVERSITIES, those

who made their living by their art and their labor (intel-

lectuals and merchants as much as manual workers)

could hardly be placed among the mass of field laborers.

In the 12th century, in his Didascalicon,HUGHof Saint-

Victor rediscovered an old theory that distinguished

between the seven so-called mechanical arts, lesser repli-

cas of the LIBERAL ARTS.

During the catastrophes of the 14th and 15th cen-

turies, as demographic decline made laborers more rare

and costly, work became better appreciated as contribut-

ing to the well-being or common good of all. Laziness

among the able-bodied became shameful and sinful. At

the same time governments tried to regulate working

conditions and wages more strongly to favor the owners

of productive enterprises. Work was recognized to pro-

duce wealth or value, so controlling those who supported

the material lives of nobles, upper-class townspeople, and

clergy became all the more important. Moralists empha-

sized the honorable work of Joseph as a model. They also

endorsed the appreciation of work well done as part of

being a just Christian.

See also LAITY; PEASANTRY; SOCIAL STATUS AND

STRUCTURE.

Further reading:Judith M. Bennett, eds., Sisters and

Workers in the Middle Ages(Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1989); Steven Epstein, Wage Labor and

Guilds in Medieval Europe (Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, 1991); Allen J. Frantzen and Dou-

glas Moffat, eds., The Work of Work: Servitude, Slavery, and

Labor in Medieval England (Glasgow: Cruithne Press,

1994); George Ovitt, The Restoration of Perfection: Labor