Medieval Peasants Worked Fewer Hours Than Modern Americans

29. An Average Modern American Works Hundreds of Hours More Per Year Than a Medieval Peasant

On long workdays, we might comfort ourselves with the thought that least we don’t have it as bad as medieval workers. No, sir, at least we are not like our peasant ancestors who toiled steadily from dawn to dusk, or medieval artisans who began work at sunup, and kept at it past sunset and well into the night with candlelight. We could console ourselves thus, but we would be wrong. Long hours and the frantic rat race are a feature of the modern era and its innovative linkage of work to a regular schedule and the clock. Before that, people did not work very long hours, life’s tempo was slow, and the pace of work was relaxed.

Our ancestors might not have been rich, and they lacked many of the creature comforts we take for granted, but one thing they had more than we do is free time. For example, an average American in 1987 worked 1949 hours annually. By 2015, that figure had dipped to 1811 hours a year. An improvement, but still nearly 200 hours more than a thirteenth-century adult male English peasant, who worked an average of 1620 hours annually. A typical medieval workday stretched from dawn to dusk, and the labor could be backbreaking, but there were many breaks for breakfast, lunch, an afternoon nap, and dinner. There might also be mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshment breaks. After a harvest, peasants might enjoy up to eight weeks off of slack times. And that is without counting all the holidays and religious feast days.

28. We Might Work Longer Hours Than Medieval Peasants, But at Least We Don’t Have it as Bad as Nineteenth-Century Workers Who Put in Twice as Many Hours as Us

James Pilkington, a Bishop of Durham, complained thus about all the breaks taken by peasants: “The laboring man will take his rest long in the morning; a good piece of the day is spent afore he come at his work; then he must have his breakfast, though he have not earned it at his accustomed hour, or else there is grudging and murmuring; when the clock smiteth, he will cast down his burden in the midway, and whatsoever he is in hand with, he will leave it as it is, though many times it is marred afore he come again; he may not lose his meat, what danger soever the work is in. At noon he must have his sleeping time, then his bever in the afternoon, which spendeth a great part of the day;

and when his hour cometh at night, at the first stroke of the clock he casteth down his tools, leaveth his work, in what need or case soever the work standeth.” Between slack time and holidays, a medieval peasant might get away with working only 150 days in a good harvest year. By contrast, an American worker would be lucky to get 8 vacation days in a year, as the US “continues to be the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacations”. Although we work more hours than medieval peasants, at least we don’t have it as bad as nineteenth-century American workers, who put in around 3650 hours annually. That is more than double the 2021 American worker’s average of 1757 hours a year.

27. The Medieval Scandinavian Magic Mumbo That Accidentally Produced Forged Steel

In the Iron Age, Scandinavians only had access to bog iron – an impure and soft metal. That put them at a disadvantage against neighbors who were armed and armored with better iron. However, Scandinavian religious beliefs unwittingly led them to forge an early version of steel swords. That gave them a literal edge over their opponents. Scandinavians believed that to mix the bones of killed animals with the iron used in forging swords was to imbue the resultant weapon with the spirit – and strength – of that animal. That was mumbo jumbo, but the swords that emerged were pretty strong, nonetheless. It was not because of spirituality, however, but science.

When Scandinavians mixed sacrificial bones with iron, the swords made from that did not possess any spiritual powers. However, what they did not realize was that the bones, like any organic matter, contained carbon, and if you mix carbon with iron you get a rudimentary form of steel. When they burned bones alongside their low-quality bog iron, Scandinavian smiths unwittingly produced bone coal – similar to how burning wood produces charcoal. When modern researchers mixed bone coal with bog iron to forge swords, they discovered that the process significantly improved the sword. Carbon from the bones penetrated up to three millimeters deep into the bog iron, which resulted in a significantly stronger weapon.

26. People Traveled Widely in the Middle Ages

We often hear and read that, medieval people seldom traveled far from where they were born. That is true, especially in the case of peasants and those who lived in the countryside. However, that was not unique to the Middle Ages. The same could be said for the majority of people throughout most of history, both before and after the medieval era, and until relatively recently in the modern era. That should not be taken to mean that medieval people never traveled: many of them did.

Pilgrimages to holy sites, for example, were popular back then. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales revolves around pilgrims en route from London to Saint Becket’s shrine at Canterbury Cathedral. That was a relatively short holy quest. Other pilgrimages took the pious to holy sites hundreds or even thousands of miles away from home. Traders also traveled far and wide to buy, sell, and transport high-value goods. The medieval long-distance trade economy featured among other things amber and furs from the Baltic, spices from India transported through the Middle East, and silks from China.

25. The Great Medieval Arab Poet

Strong resolves come in proportion to men of determination,
and noble deeds come in proportion to magnanimous men.
Little things are deemed great by little minds,
while grave calamities pale into insignificance in the eyes of the great.

-Al Mutanabbi – excerpt from panegyric to a patron.

Abu al Tayib Ahmad ibn Hussayn, better known as Mutanabbi (915 – 965) is the most influential and prominent Arab poet, and his verse is widespread and proverbial throughout the Arab world. Most of his work was odes to patrons, but he was an egomaniac who managed to turn a significant portion of his panegyrics into odes to himself, his talent, and his courage. However, he crafted it with such consummate skill and artistry that he is commonly deemed to have attained a pinnacle unequaled in the Arabic language before or since. As seen below, he led quite an adventurous life.

24. A Teenage Would-Be Prophet

Al Mutanabbi exhibited a precocious talent for verse that won him a scholarship and free education. When he was a child, the Qarmatians, a heretical cult that combined Zoroastrianism and Islam, began to pillage the Middle East, and he joined them in his teens. When he was seventeen years old, Al Mutanabbi claimed to be a Nabi, or prophet, and led a Qarmatian revolt in Syria. The rebellion was suppressed, and its teenage leader was captured and locked up until he recanted two years later. The Nabi claim earned him the derisory nickname Al Mutanabbi, or “would-be prophet”, by which he is known to history.

After his release in 935, he became a wandering poet, and traveled around the region’s courts to compose poems in praise of their rulers in exchange for patronage. Poems that praise patrons in exchange for patronage have a long history that cuts across cultures. From Ancient Sumer through Ancient Greece and Persia, and among the Anglo Saxons, Arabs, Vikings and others, bards and poets sang and recited for supper. But when they sought richer fare, the surest ticket was to compose something that flattered a wealthy and powerful figure.

23. An Attempt to Live Up to His Boasts Got This Poet Killed

Al Mutanabbi was often handsomely rewarded by the patrons whom he praised with gifts of cash. His greatest hope, however, was to get appointed a governor. He impressed as an unsurpassed poet but did not impress as a potential governor because his personality was prickly and his excessive pride annoyed many. Such traits, combined with the dramatics that often go hand in hand with creative genius, gave his patrons pause, and his ambitions of ruling a province were never fulfilled. The flip side of Al Mutanabbi’s praise was his propensity to compose a devastating verse to insult those who rubbed him wrong.

Those whom he dissed were typically rival courtiers who competed with him for a patron’s attention. Sometimes their numbers included patrons who failed to reward Al Mutanabbi as richly as he thought he deserved. Such insulting poetry got him killed in 965, when one of the victims of his verse waylaid him near Baghdad. Outnumbered, he sought to flee, but when the pursuers derisively recited some of Al Mutanabbi’s bold lines, in which he boasted of his courage, he was stung into turning around to live up to his verse, and was killed in the fight that followed.

22. The Medieval Nobles Who Drowned in a Latrine

The Holy Roman Empire was “neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire”, as Voltaire once quipped. In the twelfth century, however, it was at least an empire. Back then, it was a bewildering patchwork of territories ruled by rival nobles and clergy who were often at each other’s throats. Counts who ruled one area had to watch their backs against neighboring archbishops, who in turn dreaded the machinations of nearby landgraves (the German equivalent of English dukes) with designs on the church’s lands. Unsurprisingly, that unholy jumble of territories and rulers was a recipe for endemic conflict.

Feuds flared up all the time, and Emperors of the Holy Roman and those who subbed could do little to prevent them. So the next best option was to try to at least keep the conflicts from getting out of control. In 1184, one feud between Archbishop Conrad I of Mainz and Landgrave Ludwig III of Thuringia threatened to destabilize the empire – beyond its usual level of instability. So King Heinrich VI called a meeting at the city of Erfurt to try and hash things out. The medieval peace conference was prematurely and tragicomically cut short when dozens of aristocrats and clergymen drowned to death in liquid excrement.

21. Unfortunate Last Words

King Heinrich VI invited key nobles and clergy from across the Holy Roman Empire to meet for a peace conference at the city of Erfurt. Dozens of bigwigs answered his call, and on July 25^th, 1184, the bigwigs were brought together at a meeting room in Erfurt’s Church of Saint Peter. Their numbers included Count Heinrich I of Schwarzburg, who was often given to emphasizing his determination to do something by stating: “If I fail, so may I die in excrement!”

Beneath the church meeting room where the empire’s greatest assembled in all their finery, was the monks’ latrine. Unfortunately for the attendees, the room was not as structurally sound as they had assumed. No sooner had the meeting begun than the supporting beams that held the floor gave way, and the glittering gathering plummeted into the liquid excrement below. Dozens drowned to death in the fecal pool, or were killed by the collapsed structure. They included Count Heinrich I, who met his end just as he had often said: drowned in excrement.

20. Castles Dominated the Medieval Landscape

Castles dominated settled landscapes throughout much of medieval Eurasia until gunpowder made them obsolete. Although they are best known as defensive structures that sheltered those within from more powerful foes without, castles also served offensive purposes: they provided a base from which raids could be launched. They were not completely impervious, however. If attackers were numerous enough, determined, and willing to pay the butcher’s bill, they might storm castle walls, batter their gates, or breach their fortifications. More often, if a castle was particularly formidable, enemies preferred to besiege them.

It took time, but if the besiegers had time, a castle cut off from resupply would eventually get starved into surrender. Sieges were often coupled with attempts to tunnel beneath and undermine a castle’s walls from below. At its core, a castle’s strength depended on location – often on high ground – high walls, strong gates, and a surrounding moat filled with water when possible. To further maximize their defensive capacity, castle builders often incorporated ingenious innovations into their designs, to make storming them as dangerous and unpleasant as possible. One of the nastier design features was murder holes.

19. The Aptly Named Murder Holes

Murder holes, as their name indicates, were intended to, literally, murder people. Passageways through castle walls – often behind the main gate – would have holes up above. Through those openings, defenders could stab attackers below with spears, riddle them with arrows or crossbow bolts, or pour unpleasant things on them, such as boiling water, heated sand, or quicklime. Contrary to common perception, hot oil was almost never poured over attackers. Oil was expensive, and besieged defenders cut off from resupply were more likely to hoard, rather than throw away, such a precious commodity.

Castles were also defended by machicolations: openings in the corbels, or the parts that stuck out from the top of walls. As with murder holes, stones, hot water, heated sand, quicklime, and other unpleasant things could be dropped from machicolations on enemies at the base of the wall. Machicolations originated in the Middle East, and their designs were brought back to Europe by Crusaders. By the thirteenth century, their use was widespread in the West, especially in France. While larger castles featured traditional machicolations all around the walls and towers, a variant known as the box machicolation became widespread in smaller fortresses, especially atop the castle’s gates.

18. Treachery Was the Quickest Way to Capture a Medieval Castle

Treachery was the quickest and most efficient way to seize a castle: attackers often induced somebody within the walls to help them sneak in and capture the place. Second quickest way was to storm a castle’s walls with attackers who used ladders and siege towers. However, that was often hazardous, and cost dearly – often prohibitively dearly – in attackers’ lives. One alternative was to try and batter down the walls, either from a distance with catapults and trebuchets, or up close with battering rams. Catapults had been deployed since ancient times against castles and city walls. They used tension or torsion to slowly build up and store energy in a device, before they rapidly released the stored energy via an arm that flung a rock at a targeted wall.

In the later medieval era, catapult technology took a leap forward with the development of trebuchets – the most effective weapon against castle and city walls until the arrival of gunpowder. Traditional catapults relied on torsion or tension to store energy prior to release. By contrast, trebuchets relied on gravity: a heavy weight on one side of a pivot, with a long arm from which a stone was flung on the other side. Trebuchets were faster and easier to construct, and did not use relatively expensive materials like the pricey elastic ropes needed for torsion catapults.

17. Medieval Attackers Took to Tunnels to Bring Down Castle Walls

A downside of trebuchets is that their ranges were shorter than those of torsion catapults. However, trebuchets made up for that with consistency. Torsion catapults were not consistent, because factors such as rope dampness or loss of elasticity caused the impact ranges to vary. Trebuchets by contrast relied on the constants of gravity and a fixed weight for energy. Once ranged in, they would continue to hit the same spot if given the same weight projectile. Besiegers also dug tunnels to defeat castles and other fortifications. Tunneling was particularly effective against walls that were not built atop solid rock.

Besiegers would dig beneath the walls either to bypass them and allow attackers to emerge on the other side inside the castle, or to undermine and collapse its walls. When they wanted to undermine the walls, besiegers tunneled until they got beneath the foundations of a wall section. As they excavated a space beneath the foundation, they would use temporary wooden props to keep the walls up. Once a sufficiently large space was dug beneath the walls, the besiegers would burn the props, causing them to collapse, along with the section of wall above them. The defenders, always on the lookout for such attempts, often dug counter tunnels in an attempt to intercept and destroy the underground attackers.

16. The Medieval Killers Who Terrorized the Middle East

Long before modern Islamic radicals, there was the medieval Order of Assassins, a politico-religious cult led by a shadowy figure known as “The Old Man of the Mountain”. The first European account of the group was written in 1167 by a Spanish rabbi, Benjamin of Tudela, who described a shadowy sect, hidden in mountain fortresses, and terrifyingly ruthless. For decades afterward, travelers and Crusaders brought back to Europe sensational tales that titillated and terrified, of expert murderers, thoroughly trained since childhood in the arts of deceit and stealth.

So dedicated were those killers to their leader, the accounts went on, that they were more than eager to sacrifice their lives in order to carry out his slightest whims. Despised as heretics by most fellow Muslims, relatively few, and geographically dispersed, the Assassins nonetheless punched far above their weight. The order and its highly indoctrinated, even fanatical, killers wielded considerable power and influence throughout the Middle East, and managed to terrorize the region for generations in the Middle Ages.

Also Read: Deadliest Assassin Groups in History.

15. The Origins of a Murderous Sect

The origins of the Order of Assassins can be traced back to the Sunni-Shiite split in Islam. For much of the medieval era, there had been a rough balance of power between Islam’s two main branches. The less numerous Shiites were championed by the smaller but rising Fatimid Caliphate based in Egypt, while the more numerous Sunnis were led by the waning Abbasid Caliphate in Iraq. That balance was upset when the Seljuk Turks, who had recently adopted Sunni Islam, fell upon the Fatimids with all the zeal of the recently converted and broke their power between 1056 – 1060.

The Fatimids, defeated militarily in the field of battle, responded with clandestine warfare and turned to assassination as a political tool against the Sunni leadership. The architect of that campaign was Sheikh Hassan al Sabah (1034 – 1124), a shadowy and exotic Islamic scholar who led a radical Shiite faction, the Nizari Ismailis, and founded the Assassins cult. He grew up in Rayy, Persia, a city noted at the time for a tradition and history of radical Islamic thought. There, he swore allegiance to the Fatimid Caliph in Cairo, and dedicated his life to the Nizari Ismaiíli cause.

14. Medieval Killers Who Broke From Their Masters and Went Into the Murder Business on Their Own Hook

In 1090, with financial support from the Fatimids, Sheikh Hassan al Sabbah seized Alamout Castle in the mountains south of the Caspian Sea in Persia. From that base, he expanded his sway and established a series of remote mountain fortresses in the highlands of Persia and Syria. That earned him the moniker of Old Man of the Mountain, a title that was passed on to his successors. From those holdfasts, he sent suicide squads of killers known as fida’is (“self sacrificers”) against prominent leaders throughout the Middle East.

Initially, the deadly campaign hewed to the goals of the Assassins’ Fatimid sponsors, and the targets were prominent Sunni opponents of the Fatimids. However, the Assassins soon asserted their independence. Although they retained a degree of Fatimid financial support, they began to kill on their own hook in order to further their own agenda and goals. The result was nearly two centuries of terror, during which the fear of Assassins was an ever-present concern for medieval Middle Eastern leaders and prominent figures of all faiths and denominations thereof.

13. From Hashish to Assassin

The Assassins were fanatically loyal to their leader, the Sheikh known as The Old Man of the Mountain. On one occasion, to impress a visitor with his followers’ dedication, he ordered some of them to jump to their deaths from a castle wall, and others to fatally stab themselves. They instantly obeyed. Such dedication was the end of the result of one of history’s most innovative recruitment and indoctrination strategies, whose end result was Assassins convinced that their Sheikh held the keys to paradise. Potential recruits would be summoned to an Assassin fortress, where they would be housed in bare cells, and attend daily religious lectures and education. Gradually, it would be hinted that Sheikh Hassan al Sabah or his successors held the keys to paradise.

Then, one day the more promising of the young men would be drugged and plied with hashish, which earned the group the Arabic name “Hashashin” – which was rendered into “Assassins” by Europeans. When the recruit came to, high on hashish, he awoke to find himself amidst carefully landscaped orchard gardens, through which clear streams meandered between rows of vines heavy with grapes, and trees ripe with fruit. Cute animals such as lambs and tame deer frolicked about. Peacocks wandered around, and ruffled and spread their gorgeous tails. Brightly colored birds flitted through the branches above, and trilled and filled the air with their songs.

12. Innovative Medieval Recruitment Tactics

Amid the breathtaking surroundings of Assassin pleasure gardens were breathtakingly beautiful women, there to seduce the recruit, cater to his physical desires, and satisfy his… lusty whims. They plied the youth with wine, kept him high on hash, and fed him delicacies that most recruits never knew existed let alone tasted. The temptresses would convince the besotted young man that he was in paradise, and that his seductresses were the houris promised those who made it into heaven. Then, after days in which he wallowed in delights and indulged in heavenly pleasures, the young man would be drugged senseless once more, and removed from the gardens.

He would awake to find himself back in his bare cell and austere surroundings, and informed that he had been in paradise, sent there by the grace of the Old Man of the Mountain, who held the keys to heaven. The recruit would then be told that he could return to paradise, provided that he died while killing the Sheikh’s enemies. It proved highly effective: suicide squads of horny young fanatics, high on hash and desperate to die while killing the cult’s enemies, descended from the Assassins’ mountain holdfasts to terrorize the Middle East.

11. The Order of Assassins’ Killers Were Highly Trained

The Order of Assassins’ first victim of note was Nizam al Mulk, a Grand Vizier who had held absolute power in the Seljuk Empire for two decades years before the Assassins got him in 1092. During their centuries of operations, the cult’s suicide squads killed many prominent Middle Eastern figures. Their numbers included numerous sultans, viziers, generals, Crusader higher-ups such as a King of Jerusalem, and at least two Caliphs. In his youth, King Edward I of England was grievously wounded and barely survived an attack from an Assassin who snuck into the royal tent when Edward was on Crusade.

Modern suicide bombers are crude human instruments of terror who typically need little more by way of tactical skill other than the ability to press a detonator. By contrast, the medieval Order of Assassins’ suicide hitmen were carefully selected and well trained in combat and disguises. Aside from the requisite physical fitness, they had to be swift on the uptake, well-read, intelligent, patient, calculating, and cold. They also needed to possess no small degree of charisma in order to infiltrate their opponents’ defenses and to gain access to and come within striking distance of their target.

10. When it Came to Violent Propaganda, the Medieval Assassins Were Quote Modern

The Assassins can be described as early believers in and practitioners of “propaganda of the deed”, a modern concept of direct action meant to serve as an example and serve as a catalyst for possible revolution. Whenever possible, they were not content to simply murder their victims. Instead, the Assassins sought to kill them in a dramatic and public manner as possible. Especially when it came to targets who had enveloped themselves in the heaviest layers of protective security. By public killings in front of as many horrified witnesses as possible, they aimed to advertise their cult’s reach. To strike fear into the hearts of important men, the Assassins fostered the perception that those whom they targeted were dead men walking, no matter the precautions taken.

Assassin killer squads usually studied the routines of a targeted leader, then lay in wait for him at a heavily attended public event, such as a festival or Friday prayers at the mosque. At a signal given at an opportune moment, they would leap into action to stab and slash their victim, while shouting the name of their cult’s leader and whatever offense the victim had given. Stories also abound of Assassin sleepers who diligently worked their way for years up the ranks and into the inner circle of a given court, where they would patiently await instructions that might take decades to arrive, if ever. In some instances, a victim would discover in the final moments of his life that one or more of his bodyguards were Assassin cultists.

9. A Cult That Turned Intimidation Into an Art Form

Murder was not the Assassins’ only go-to tactic. It was always an option, but they often resorted to intimidation instead. One example is that of the Seljuk Sultan Sanjar, who had rebuffed ambassadors from the cult. He changed his mind after he woke up one morning to find a note pinned to the ground near his bed by a dagger. It informed him that if the Assassins wished him ill, the dagger stuck into the hard ground could have easily been stuck into his soft breast instead. As a result, peace reigned between Seljuks and Assassins for decades. The Old Man of the Mountain was paid protection money, face-savingly described as a “pension”, and was permitted to collect tolls from travelers who passed near his fortresses.

Another whom the Assassins intimidated was Sultan Saladin, leader of the revived Islamic resistance against the Crusades. After he recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, Saladin went after the Assassins, who had murdered his predecessor, and sought to end the cult once and for all. However, while encamped near their holdfasts in the mountains of northern Syria, he awoke in his tent one morning to discover that the Assassins had bypassed all his bodyguards and layers of protection. They left a menacing letter pinned to his pillow by a poisoned dagger, that advised the sultan that they could kill him whenever and wherever they wanted. Saladin turned his army around, abandoned the campaign, and sent officials to negotiate an understanding with the current Old Man of the Mountain. Via such means, grudging live-and-let-live relationships were developed between the Assassins and the region’s powers.

8. The Perfect Assassins Killers

The Order of Assassins was finally broken by the Mongols under Hulagu, when they overran the region in the 1250s. Unlike the local powers whom the cult had intimidated for generations, the Mongols were largely immune from the murderous sect’s methods. The Steppe warriors were an alien people from far away, with no connections to the region. Mongol leaders were not surrounded by Middle Eastern courtiers, but by their own kind, and dwelled not at court in fixed palaces, but in armed and highly mobile camps in which strangers conspicuously stood out.

That negated the cult’s tactics of patient infiltration and blending in, which had worked so well in a region they knew and whose peoples they understood. Such methods were useless against the Mongols, whom the Assassins neither knew nor understood, and whose ranks they had neither the means nor time to infiltrate. The Mongols appeared too suddenly, acted too swiftly, and were too alien for the Assassins to get a handle on them or work out viable strategies and tactics to get to their leadership. The Mongols’ bloodthirstiness, savagery, speed of action and reaction, and lack of interest in negotiations, simply went beyond anything that the Assassins had ever experienced.

7. The Bloody End of Frightful Murderers

In the runup to their invasion of the Middle East, the Mongols began to attack and seize Assassin fortresses in 1253. As a preliminary to his conquest of the region, Hulagu took a detour in 1256 to storm the cult’s strongholds in Persia. He captured the last Old Man of the Mountain and forced him to order the other Assassin fortresses in Persia to surrender. Forty of them, including the cult’s main fortress of Alamout Castle, did so, and the Mongols razed them to the ground. Hulagu then sent the Old Man of the Mountain in chains to the Grand Khan in Mongolia, who had him executed. The Mongols then slaughtered all whom they could lay their hands on of the Nizari cult to which the Assassins belonged, along with their families.

It was a thorough genocide that broke the Assassins’ power once and for all, and reduced them, according to a contemporary historian, to “but a tale on men’s lips and a tradition in the world”. Remnants of the Assassins survived in Syria, which lay outside the Mongols’ control, until the Egyptian Mamelukes first reduced them to vassalage in the 1260s, and finally forced them to surrender their last fortresses in 1273. They were suffered to live and kept on retainer as contract killers, but their independence was forever gone. In that final iteration of contract killers, the steadily dwindling cult existed for a few decades more and survived into the following century before it vanished forever into the mists of history.

6. The Medieval World Was Not as Drab as It Is Depicted in Movies and TV

If we go by Hollywood’s and TV’s depiction of the medieval world, then we would have to conclude that life back then must have been pretty drab. Just about everybody is shown clad in dull brown clothes, occasionally broken by a bit of black thrown into the mix. Buildings are either plain brown wood for the lower classes’ dwellings or unadorned stone grey for the castles of the aristocratic elites or the churches and cathedrals of the usually brown-clad clergy.

However, the reality is that people back in the Middle Ages did not restrict themselves to shades of brown and black. Instead, they tried to get as colorful as they could whenever possible. People in the medieval era liked to take a paint brush to anything that couldn’t move and liked to pack as many colors into their wardrobe as possible. Those with means would decorate their walls with vibrant tapestries and frescoes, and their clothes would often have splashes of color by way of trim, or they might be brightly dyed.

5. Churches in the Middle Ages Were Riots of Color

In movies, medieval castles and churches are typically depicted as structures made of unadorned plain stone. In reality, however, people in the Middle Ages went for vibrant – even garish – colors when it came to buildings. New cathedrals, for example, were riots of color when they were inaugurated. Walls, saints, and even gargoyles were coated in the brightest paints available. Over the years, however, the paint faded. Then, as tastes evolved – and budgets diminished – repainting in the original vibrant colors was done with less and less frequency.

Eventually, such repainting was abandoned all together. Because of that, what we see of medieval churches and cathedrals that have survived into the modern era is that they are usually plain and unadorned. We are mistaken, however, when we assume that how those buildings look today is how they looked back in the Middle Ages. For example, the left side of the above photo is of the entrance of the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Amiens in France as it looks today. The right is a laser projection of how it would have looked in the medieval era, based on paint residue in its pores.

4. Vacation Time and Vibrant Colors Did Not Make the Medieval Era a Great Time to Be Alive

The fact that medieval peasants worked fewer hours than us and had more holidays, or that the medieval world was a vibrantly colorful one, does not mean that the Middle Ages were a great time to be alive. They were not, especially for commoners in feudal Europe. There, society was divided into de facto castes or layers, with the peasants, serfs, and other manual workers – the overwhelming majority of the population – at the bottom. They were ruthlessly exploited by those in higher layers up the medieval structure, who benefitted from the commoners’ labor, in exchange for “protection”. There was a twist, though: the protection offered by members of the upper castes was often from fellow upper caste members.

Although those in the upper social layers were not as screwed as the commoners at the bottom, life was no bed roses for them either. Violence was rife across all classes. Even if we discount deaths in wars or dealt by knights in rampages against peasants, the homicide rate was 50 times greater in medieval Europe than in the modern EU. Put another way, Europeans were 50 times more murderous back then than they are today. However, as seen below, it was not violence, but diseases, that did the most to keep life expectancy low. High mortality rates, especially in childhood, kept the average life expectancy around 35, give or take a few years.

3. Leprosy Was Common in the Middle Ages

The medieval world was rife with contagious diseases, and cities were especially vulnerable. Between poor sanitation, lack of adequate hygiene, and overcrowding, urban dwellers were most at risk from contagions than swept through with the speed of prairie grass fires. Such health risk factors made the medieval era one of history’s most dangerous periods, especially for city people. Add mediocre standards of medical care and knowledge, and it is no surprise that life expectancy back then was abysmally low. Among the worst diseases was leprosy, which devastated sufferers’ health as well as their social status. A little misunderstood disease even today, leprosy carried a huge stigma in the Middle Ages.

Lepers were shunned and cast not just out of cities, but from even the smallest hamlets. The stigma did not end with death, but carried through into the afterlife, as lepers were denied burial alongside non-lepers. Mostly thanks to Leviticus 13:44-46, which reads: “He is leprous, he is unclean. The priest shall pronounce him unclean; the disease is on his head. The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, “Unclean, unclean.” He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.”

2. The Holy Fire Sickness

Holy Fire, also known as Saint Anthony’s Fire, was one of the more colorfully named medieval diseases. It was named after the monks of the Order of Saint Anthony, who was particularly successful in the treatment of those struck by the disease. Modern medicine, not given to colorful names, knows it as ergotism. Quaint name aside, it was a horrible illness whose victims suffered greatly. Caused by fungus that grows on moldy grains, especially rye, Saint Anthony’s Fire produced swelling, redness, and gangrene in the unfortunates afflicted with it.

A ninth-century text described it as: “a great plague of swollen blisters consumed the people by a loathsome rot, so that their limbs were loosened and fell off before death”. Sufferers often hallucinated, and sometimes imagined that they were in a fight with the Devil. As the disease progressed, convulsions occurred, extremities began to rot, and ears, fingers, toes, and even arms and legs, began to fall off. In 944, about 40,000 died from an outbreak in France. As a contemporary put it: “The afflicted thronged to the churches and invoked the saints. The cries of those in pain and the shedding of burned-up limbs alike excited pity; the stench of rotten flesh was unbearable”.

1. The Sickness That Struck the Rich

In the late medieval era, a new disease is known as the “sweating sickness” suddenly emerged, first in England, and from there, it spread to continental Europe. A mysterious illness, the sweating sickness struck in epidemic waves over a seven-decade period, then vanished just as suddenly as it had emerged. Little if anything is known about the incubation period, but when the symptoms cropped up, they and their consequences were sudden and usually devastating: death frequently occurred within just a few hours.

Initial symptoms included a sense of dread, followed by shivering, headaches, giddiness, exhaustion, nausea, and severe pains in the neck, back, shoulders, and limbs. Then came the symptom that gave the disease its name: copious sweat. That was often accompanied by abdominal pains and delirium. Severe symptoms typically lasted for 15 to 21 hours, and often culminated in a coma or death. Unusual among medieval illnesses – or illnesses of any age, for that matter – the sweating sickness disproportionately struck the upper classes. Today, various theories ascribe the mysterious disease to hantavirus, influenza, typhus, or botulism. However, there is no definitive answer yet as to just what the sweating sickness might have been.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

History Collection – The Intriguing Past Times of Peasants in the Middle Ages

Big Think – Vikings Unwittingly Made Their Blades Stronger by Trying to Imbue Them With Spirits

Brown, Reginald Allen – English Castles (1976)

Medium – Medieval Peasants had More Days off Than the Average American Worker

Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today’s

Fool – Here’s How Many Hours the Average American Works Per Year

Buzzfeed – 16 Strange and Surprising Facts About Medieval England

Daftary, Farhad – The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismailis (1995)

DeVries, Kelly – Military Medieval Technology (1992)

Encyclopedia Britannica – Al Mutanabbi

Encyclopedia Britannica – Who Were the Assassins?

Fortweekly, The, April, 2018 – Curio #1: The Erfurt Latrinensturz

History Collection – These Medieval Food Habits Changed the Way Food is Eaten Today

History Extra – 10 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About the Middle Ages

History Today – Americans Actually Work Way Harder Than Medieval Peasants

Hodgson, Marshall Goodwin Simms – The Secret Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizari Ismaílis Against the Islamic World (2005)

Inside Arabia – Al Mutanabbi and the Arrogance Within

Ivanov, Vladimir – Alamut and Lamasar – Two Medieval Ismaiíli Strongholds in Iran, an Archaeological Study (1960)

Lewis, Bernard – The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (2013)

Liddiard, Robert – Castles in Context: Power, Symbolism, and Landscape, 1066 to 1500 (2005)

Medieval Chronicles – Castle Murder Holes

MIT Project on Mathematics and Computation – Pre Industrial Workers Had a Shorter Workweek Than Today’s

New York Times, October 23^rd, 1994 – Historical Study of Homicide and Cities Surprises the Experts

Pinker, Steven – The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011)

Ranker – All the Afflictions You Might Have if You Lived in a Medieval City

Science Daily – Trebuchet

Setton, Kenneth M., et al (eds.) – A History of the Crusades, Volume I: The First Hundred Years: The Ismailites and the Assassins (1969)

Tradition in Action – A World of Brilliant Colors

Vintage News – Modern American Works Longer Hours With Less Vacation Than Medieval Peasant

Wikipedia – Sweating Sickness