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dang....I just got re-routed...
costermonger - dictionary - fruit seller
costermonger - dictionary - fruit seller
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What would your occupation be in 1200 AD?
- Thread starter tedwca
- Start date
Some misconceptions about Medieval life need correction here. Firstly, bathing was a regular habit throughout the Middle Ages. Most towns and villages had communal bath houses, just as the Romans did. Generally, the sexes bathed separately but not always and not everywhere. It did vary. The regular bathing was frowned upon by the Church as somehow sinful and the clergy did not engage in it, but the lay folk did up until the appearance of syphilis. It was thought that syphilis was passed by bathing, a belief that the Church encouraged. That pretty much ended regular bathing for most people as only the very wealthy could afford the hewated water for a private bath.
Shaving was an off and on thing during the Middle Ages. At the time of the Norman Invasion of England in 1066 and for some time thereafter, the Normans were clean shaven while the Anglo-Saxons of the period wore droopy moustaches with shaved chins. Beards came in, IIRC, during the late 12th Century and then went out in the early 14th Century. One thing that made the Knights Templar stand out was that they never shaved their beards or even cut them very short. Please understand that these shaving comments applied only to those who could afford barbers to shave them or high grade steel implements and mirrors with which to shave themselves and even they did not usually shave more than once every several days.
Meat was heavily salted for preservation and heavily spiced, if you could afford meat, to cover the flavor of the rot in it. Water was almost never drunk by itself, but was mixed with wine or ale. People had discovered that doing this led to less stomach troubles, although they had no idea why. Even children were fed light ales. A typical breakfast for almost all classes was bread, cheese, and ale. If there was some meat left from the previous day's dinner, you might eat some of it as well. Dinner was held at about 4:00PM or so and there was no lunch. Workers in the fields might take a break for ale and bread, but that would be it. Dinners in the castle or in a wealthy man's house were elaborate affairs with several courses and with elaborate rituals of courtesy. These rituals began among the nobility but were copied by those who were upwardly mobile and upward mobility did, indeed, exist in the Medieval period. Even a serf could be legally freed if he could escape to a chartered town and live there for a year and a day without being caught. There were other ways. A serf who wanted to become a tin miner in Devonshire or Cornwall could be free if he stayed at it for a year and a day as tin mining was a royal property and nobody was allowed to interfere with it.
Well, enough social history for one post.
Shaving was an off and on thing during the Middle Ages. At the time of the Norman Invasion of England in 1066 and for some time thereafter, the Normans were clean shaven while the Anglo-Saxons of the period wore droopy moustaches with shaved chins. Beards came in, IIRC, during the late 12th Century and then went out in the early 14th Century. One thing that made the Knights Templar stand out was that they never shaved their beards or even cut them very short. Please understand that these shaving comments applied only to those who could afford barbers to shave them or high grade steel implements and mirrors with which to shave themselves and even they did not usually shave more than once every several days.
Meat was heavily salted for preservation and heavily spiced, if you could afford meat, to cover the flavor of the rot in it. Water was almost never drunk by itself, but was mixed with wine or ale. People had discovered that doing this led to less stomach troubles, although they had no idea why. Even children were fed light ales. A typical breakfast for almost all classes was bread, cheese, and ale. If there was some meat left from the previous day's dinner, you might eat some of it as well. Dinner was held at about 4:00PM or so and there was no lunch. Workers in the fields might take a break for ale and bread, but that would be it. Dinners in the castle or in a wealthy man's house were elaborate affairs with several courses and with elaborate rituals of courtesy. These rituals began among the nobility but were copied by those who were upwardly mobile and upward mobility did, indeed, exist in the Medieval period. Even a serf could be legally freed if he could escape to a chartered town and live there for a year and a day without being caught. There were other ways. A serf who wanted to become a tin miner in Devonshire or Cornwall could be free if he stayed at it for a year and a day as tin mining was a royal property and nobody was allowed to interfere with it.
Well, enough social history for one post.
Oh, and Esav and his people were generally considered the personal property of the various kings, to be treated or mistreated however these kings wished. There is a fascinating series of novels about the Jews in Paris in the mid-12th Century and their problems and concerns, including the question of those who had been forced into conversion at the time of the pogroms during the First Crusade about thirty to forty years before the setting of the novels. They are by Sharan Newman and I have found them not only to be accurate in their history but, from what my research has told me, their portrayal of the situation of the Jews of the time. They are also very good novels all on their own. They are the "Catherine Levendeur Mysteries" and do not confuse them with Newman's other novels about Guinevere, as those are nowhere near as good.