13. The Modern Rat Race and its Medieval Version
We might comfort ourselves on tedious workdays with the thought that least we don’t have it as bad as medieval workers. No, sir, at least we are not like old-timey peasants who toiled 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 working off of misreported facts. The frantic rat race with its long hours is 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.
People in the Middle Ages were not wealthy, and they lacked many comforts we take for granted. However, one thing they had more than us is free time. For example, an average American in 1987 worked 1949 hours per year. That figure went down to 1811 hours annually by 2015. An improvement, but still nearly 200 hours more than a thirteenth-century adult male English peasant, who worked an average of 1620 hours per year. A typical medieval workday stretched from dawn to dusk, and the labor could be backbreaking. However, 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 of slack time. Then there were all the holidays and religious feast days.
