Middle Ages Details/Research

[MalevolentReverie]

Hello All,

Thinking about writing a story set in the good ol' middle ages and wondered if there was anyone on here seeing this interested in helping me out with correct time period details to make my story believable? If that matches your description and you're willing, feel free to send me a PM. Would be much appreciated!!

 

[LWulf]

The Middle Ages lasted from 476CE to 1453CE. Each century being marginally different from each other, yet differences occurred. Locations also present different details. Would you care to be more specific?

Where? When?

 

[MalevolentReverie]

I suppose 12th to 14th then. In England, Scotland and Ireland.

 

[haventdonethat]

I suppose 12th to 14th then. In England, Scotland and Ireland.

Ken Follett has written a few novels that take place in middle age England.
The details about daily life are quite accurate, he must have had some good researchers.
No comment about the novels

 

[Maeven_quinn]

Studied Latin in high school and know a bit more about medieval scholars than most. Yay!

There was a youtube guy... “Shadiversity” that had an interesting video on the evolution of medieval armor, by century. I thought it was cool. Can’t speak for its accuracy.

 

[SteelPoint]

Latin is at the clerical margins. If it's the language of medieval England the OP's after, then correct observation implies either Middle (i.e. pre-Shakespearean) English for the 95% of "common folk" or Old French for the ruling classes.

Let's be honest - authors' concern for "correct time period details" often tends to wane rapidly when faced with the actual reality of language evolution. They think that period dress and the occasional allusion to swords and sundials make up for it!

 

[LWulf]

more later...

You're not asking for a little...
So, you are looking for years 1100CE to 1400CE, and the "United Kingdom", including Ireland, and Scotland. That period is called (today) the High Middle Ages.

History prior to:
100 years before, the Duke of Normandy (aka William the Conqueror) had led an army of Bretons, Normans, Flemish, and French to invade and occupy England. Noteworthy to mention as those remained which affected the regional dialects. William also brought French feudalism to England. Broadly defined, feudalism was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labor.

• Normans is taken from Norsemen, or Northmen, who were invited to coexist with the French on the coastal region of France to stem future invasions by Vikings (their own people).
• Flemish are Germanic people from Belgium.
• Bretons are a Celtic people who lived in Brittany, to the west of France (which was later annexed in the 1500's into France and remains to this day). However, they originated from southwest England and emigrated out during the Anglo-Saxon invasion starting in 410CE. Those Celts being early local inhabitants who themselves were Roman-Celtic. Brittonic (spoken by Bretons) is closer to Cornish, and distantly to Welsh.

Scotland, was known as the Kingdom of Alba until 1286. That being the combination of Anglo-saxon and local "Picts." "Scots" is a Latin and Greek term for Irish Gaels who raided and settled Roman-Celtic England. In Gaelic, "Rìoghachd na h-Alba" means "Kingdom of Scotland." Before it became the Kingdom of Alba, it was a Gaelic kingdom called Dál Riata. Not much is known about Scotland prior to the Normans invasion.

Health:
Big event of that time period was The Black Death which hit England and Ireland in 1348-1349, and Scotland by 1350. However, illnesses like tuberculosis, sweating sickness, smallpox, dysentery, typhoid, influenza, mumps and gastrointestinal infections could and did kill. The Great Famine of the early 14th century was particularly bad: climate change led to much colder than average temperatures in Europe the 'Little Ice Age'.

The seventh year after [the Black Death] began, it came to England and first began in the towns and ports joining on the seacoasts, in Dorsetshire, where, as in other counties, it made the country quite void of inhabitants so that there were almost none left alive.
... But at length it came to Gloucester, yea even to Oxford and to London, and finally it spread over all England and so wasted the people that scarce the tenth person of any sort was left alive.
Geoffrey the Baker, Chronicon Angliae​

I can't remember when it was, but in England (as well as most of Europe), there was scant amount of fresh drinking water. This trouble occurred because they would allow the effluent field of septic systems to be located too close to their water wells. The knowledge came latently, and allowed sickness after sickness to occur before people knew what to do to counter the effect. However, the production of beer used a purification process which allowed people to drink without fear of sickness, so even children were permitted to drink beer at an early age. (This fear of drinking water extended into the colony period for England, as colonists preferred imported beer from England opposed to fresh water from wells in the colonies).

Climate:
The "Little Ice Age" started in the 1300's after a period called the "Medieval Warming Period" (about 950CE to 1250CE). While not a true ice age, it was a term used to refer to a "cooling period" for the world in general (that lasted until the late 1800's/early 1900's).

Religion:
The principle religion is what today is called Roman Catholic. The only other "permitted" religion of the region was Jewish (Ashkenazi), as William the Conqueror extended to them to settle in England, however they were not permitted to distribute their religion. I believe it was simply referred to as Christianity until the Great Schism of 1054, which divided into what is now the Roman Catholic Church, and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. There was another Schism from 1378 to 1417 called the Western Schism, but this didn't last long, unlike the earlier Schism in 1054.

Architecture:
Romanesque architecture which was prevalent from 6th to 11th century, evolved into Gothic architecture until the 16th century (which was succeeded by Renaissance architecture).
Romanesque architecture is distinguished by massive quality thick walls, round arches, sturdy piers, groin vaults, large towers, and decorative arcades. However, Romanesque architecture can only grow so large. With the advent of the flying buttress, buildings could be enlarged to grander sizes, by having a cantilevered support system from outside of the building.
Gothic is also characterized by rib vaults, stained glass, and a "rose window." Gothic Architecture was most notably used for churches and cathedrals.

Higher Education:
Medieval learning was based on the seven liberal arts. The quadrivium (four) were mathematically based, comprising arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy, but these were much less popular than the linguistic trivium (three) of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, which led to further study in theology, philosophy, medicine, and law. The main demand for higher education was within the church, and the majority of students were clergy, as were their teachers.

In the eleventh century the Crusades helped to recover lost ancient knowledge. Western scholars came to realize that Islamic intellectuals had a storehouse of ancient learning wider than their own.

European economics and politics slowly began to develop, and the growth in trade and government administration saw an increased need for literate and numerate scholars. The survival of ancient texts in Western monasteries had made them the focal points of medieval learning. The cathedral schools, especially those in capital cities or at pivotal trade routes, began to grow with the slow rise of trade and economic stability. These became centers for copying the new texts recovered from the East. While originally intended for religious study, various reforms made these schools accept secular students as well. As student numbers climbed, these centers of learning gradually evolved into universities.

Medieval universities also ushered in the concept of fraternities, however, contrary to modern American fraternities, these all used Roman alphabet designations. Ever since the development of orders of Catholic sisters and nuns in the Middle Ages, it is not always the case that fraternities were limited to male members. There are mixed male and female fraternities and fraternal orders, as well as wholly female religious orders and societies. "Confraternities" had their beginnings in the early Middle Ages, and developed rapidly from the end of the twelfth century. The main object and duty of these societies were the practice of piety and works of charity, (and later in history, became the basis for Greek fraternities and sororities in universities).

 

[Maeven_quinn]

Latin is at the clerical margins. If it's the language of medieval England the OP's after, then correct observation implies either Middle (i.e. pre-Shakespearean) English for the 95% of "common folk" or Old French for the ruling classes.

Let's be honest - authors' concern for "correct time period details" often tends to wane rapidly when faced with the actual reality of language evolution. They think that period dress and the occasional allusion to swords and sundials make up for it!

You know what you reminded me off just now? A book called “the Wake.” It was written in first person narration in psuedo-old English. It’s the story of an Anglo-Saxon land owner whose world goes to shit in 1066. He joins a weregild after the Normans destroy his farm and send his wifman to heofan.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I would add a few things to LWulf’s excellent summary.

The Roman Empire had brought some modicum of civilization and universality all around the Mediterranean. Each area had its own systems, language, laws and customs, but Roman law and culture were firmly overlaid on top of that. Communications were good and the movement of people and goods probably not bettered until the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s. There was a measure of law and order. Christianity was essentially universal towards the end, with some holdouts.

Rome didn’t die all at once. Rather, it crumbled from the outside in. Eventually, it split in two. The eastern part, centred around Constantinople (now Istanbul), lasted until 1453. The western part was overrun by successive waves of barbarians, fell into civil war. It’s actual borders, as opposed to theoretical ones, kept contracting. The final date is often given as 476 CE, but cases can be made for others. There wasn’t in any case much left by then.

Starvation, disease and war resulted in a serious population loss. The city of Rome, for instance, fell from about 1,000,000 at the time of Christ to maybe 5% of that 500 years later.

It’s difficult to come up with valid generalizations thereafter, for things varied almost everywhere. However:

Communications became nonexistent. Travel was slow, dangerous and expensive. (You used local or did without.) Luxuries were almost unknown. Black pepper, for instance, had to come thousands of miles overland from the Far East and was very literally worth its weight in gold. Few people ever travelled 20 miles from their birthplace.

Learning became unsustainable and such texts as had survived were lost to fires, insects and time; while some would eventually be recovered a millennium later from Arabic translations and while some survived in isolated monasteries in backwaters like Ireland, literacy was for 1,000 years limited mainly to the priesthood. With learning died medicine, advanced agriculture and law.

Individual strongmen and warlords had seized control of this area and that, maintained what they held by force of arms and supported themselves by taxing (usually in kind and labour) the peasants. Theoretically, the peasants benefitted by their lord holding courts, maintaining the local church, running a mill and protecting them from from raiders and such, but it was a pretty one-way deal. Over time, much of the peasantry became tied to the land in serfdom, half a step up from actual slavery.

The ex-warlords-now-nobility reinforced their hold with alliances. You held title to your land by swearing allegiance or fealty to a more powerful lord, with an obligation to support him militarily when necessary. He in turn swore fealty to somebody more powerful... Feudalism was clumsy, but worked, kindasorta.

What we would now call the middle class was essentially nonexistent early on. It would gradually grow, usually centred around merchants and artisans in towns and cities. This was the beginning of an eventual transition from a land-based economy to an capitalistic activity-based one.

The life of a peasant was, as somebody put it, short, brutal and nasty and few lived to see old age. They had essentially no rights, although egregious conduct by one’s feudal overlord might - might - eventually be overturned. Eventually. Work hours were sunup until sunrise and life was hard for both sexes. They married early, had kids early and died early. They owed taxes and a set period of labour each year to their lord, often spent working his fields or repairing his roads.

Medicine, such as it was, was provided by local monasteries and wise women. Diet was bland and there wasn’t much meat. A family would all sleep in one vermin-infested room, usually on straw on the floor. Even the nobility had to share their beds with family and visitors. Usually there was no fireplace, but a hole high up allowed smoke from the fires to exit, eventually. Sanitation was as bad as one can imagine. There’s a great scene from A Lion in Winter, showing Peter O’Toole as King Henry II of England getting out of bed, wrapping himself in a bearskin to stay warm and having to break ice in a basin to wash his face. That was the king. Dentistry was done by barbers pulling rotten teeth.

Most boys followed their father’s living. In towns, some began to be apprenticed to merchants and artisans. In the absence of other references, old people were cherished as fonts of practical knowledge.

Women generally had pretty low status and either married or became nuns. Some did much better, of course, but those were notable exceptions. Marriage, particularly for the nobility, had relatively little to do with love. Marriage brought alliances, money and land (dowries) and produced heirs to maintain family fortune and name, so parents chose their kids’ mates carefully. Love came later, hopefully.

Any social safety net came from your family. Big families were the ideal, but infant mortality was high. A woman would spend most of her adult life pregnant and see only two or three of her children reach adulthood. Bastardy was more than a mere word; illegitimacy denied a person many rights, eg the right to join a trade guild.

The Church was enormously influential and became richer with the passing years. Somebody worried about their soul might give a local church or abbey property in return for a priest or brother saying regular prayers for them. Property accumulated, bringing yet more influence to the Church. The clergy was generally not subject to the courts of the nobility or crown, being tried in ecclesiastical courts instead. Family land generally going to first-born sons, abbots and bishops were often if not generally junior sons of noble families. Non-noble clergy generally (not always) got stalled at the village level and their lives were not luxurious. Superstition was endemic and most people were extremely devout. The Church ran the only hospitals, kept records, did charity and, before Gutenberg, was the only source of books. The Pope grew in temporal power as times passed, becoming a political authority as well as a religious one.

Things improved, but gradually.

 

[LWulf]

Utensils:

• Spoons were rarely used, but were usually wooden. If you were wealthy then silver spoons were available. Silver and rushes for basket weaving were common in South East England. I believe copper was was more readily available in Ireland, but supposedly, where there is copper, there is gold, but if there was copper in Ireland, then maybe that's where King Midas got it, and he got it all.
• Forks didn't get developed until the 1600's, and those were two tine forks used to hold meat still as you carved it. It wasn't for eating. It isn't that they couldn't design forks, but they couldn't temper the forks hard enough not to bend while using them.
• Knives, if they were available, they would only be one, and it was shared by a whole family. I'm not sure what they did at an inn.
• "Plates" were normally wooden and more commonly could be interchangeably used as bowls. I can't remember when ceramic plates became standard fare. I know that while they could kiln bake them so they weren't porous from thousands of years ago, it took a long time before they developed glazes so tableware could be hygienic.

Most people used their hands to eat.

Preparing for meals:
Medieval people were very religious and prayer was an integral part of the day. A prayer would certainly always be said before any meal even when eating at home. Hands were always washed both before and after a meal. Even people with little in the way of tableware were conscious of basic hygiene and good manners. Mothers have, after all, changed very little over the course of time and always sought to instill the best manners she can in her offspring.

If you were highborn, then a washing bowl was brought before you at the table.

Clothing:
As was the case up until about the mid-nineteen hundreds, most people had two pair of clothing: work clothes and Sunday best. I believe your work clothes were washed on Sunday, while you wore your Sunday best, and the Sunday best were washed later in the week.
Clothing mostly consisted of a length of cloth that was folded over, the "sleeves" and sides sewn closed, and a hole for the head was cut on the area folded over. This was the tunic that most wore from ancient times and hung down to about mid-thigh. A slit was cut down the chest of the head-hole so the head could fit through it better.

Women likewise wore the same style of garment (called a "tunic" by some, though other names were also used). The length could be longer, about mid calf, or longer. Longer could allow you to fold up the garment and tuck it into your belt which would allow you to carry various items like a pouch. If the garment had a train, they could tuck that up over their head.
Remember, no pockets.
It wasn't uncommon for people to have small pouches tied to their belts to carry money or the odd tool. Otherwise, most tools were simply inserted into the belt.

Both sexes sometimes would cut slits up the sides to allow freer movement. Both sexes tunics were made of wool, but men's were usually coarser, and not as brightly colored. Men could have the tunic longer than mid-thigh, and could do as women did to carry objects, or pull it up above the belt and allow it to gather.

Blue was the common color for women's garments. Other colors were unusual, but not unknown: pale yellow, green, and a light shade of red or orange could all be made from less-expensive dyes. All these colors would fade in time; dyes that stayed fast over the years were too expensive for the average laborer. Men's tunics could be made from "beige" (undyed wool) or "frieze" (coarse wool with a heavy nap) as well as more finely woven wool. Undyed wool was sometimes brown or gray.

Men that were day laborers might have sleeveless tunics.

Undergarments:
Nobody knows what people before the 1300's wore under their tunics as there were no depictions showing this. However In the 1300's, it became the fashion for people to wear shifts, or under-tunics, that had longer sleeves and lower hemlines than their tunics, and therefore were plainly visible in drawings and paintings. Usually, among the working classes, these shifts would be woven from hemp and would remain undyed; after many wearings and washings, they would soften up and lighten in color.

Footwear:
It was not at all uncommon for peasants to go about barefoot, especially in warmer weather. But in cooler weather and for work in the fields, fairly simple leather shoes were regularly worn. One of the most common styles was an ankle-high boot that laced up the front. Later styles were closed by a single strap and buckle. Shoes were known to have had wooden soles, but it was just as likely for soles to be constructed of thick or multi-layered leather. Felt was also used in shoes and slippers. Most shoes and boots had rounded toes; some shoes worn by the working class might have somewhat pointed toes, but workers didn't wear the extreme pointy styles that were at times the fashion of the upper classes.

As with undergarments, it's difficult to determine when stockings came into common use. Women probably didn't wear stockings any higher than the knee; they didn't have to since their dresses were so long. But men, whose tunics were shorter and who were unlikely to have heard of trousers, let alone wear them, often wore hose up to the thighs.

Outerwear:
For men who worked outdoors, an additional protective garment would usually be worn in cold or rainy weather. This could be a simple sleeveless cape or a coat with sleeves. In the earlier Middle Ages, men wore fur capes and cloaks, but there was a general view among medieval people that fur was worn only by savages, and its use went out of vogue for all but garment linings for quite some time.

Medieval folk could manufacture fabric that resisted water, at least to a degree. This could be done by fulling wool during the manufacturing process, or by waxing the garment once it was complete. Waxing was known to be done in England, but seldom elsewhere due to the scarcity and expense of wax. If wool was made without the stringent cleansing of professional manufacturing, it would retain some of the sheep's lanolin and would, therefore, be naturally somewhat water-resistant.

Most women worked indoors and didn't often have need of a protective outer garment. When they went out in cold weather, they might wear a simple shawl, or cape. This last was a fur-lined coat or jacket; the modest means of peasants and poor laborers limited the fur to cheaper varieties, such as goat or cat.

Aprons:
Many jobs required protective gear to keep the laborer's everyday wear clean enough to wear every day. The most common protective garment was the apron.

Men would wear an apron whenever they performed a task that could cause a mess: filling barrels, butchering animals, mixing paint. Usually, the apron was a simple square or rectangular piece of cloth, often linen and sometimes hemp, which the wearer would tie around his waist by its corners. Men usually didn't wear their aprons until it was necessary and removed them when their messy tasks were done.

Most chores that occupied the peasant housewife's time were potentially messy; cooking, cleaning, gardening, drawing water from the well, changing diapers. Thus, women typically wore aprons throughout the day. A woman's apron often fell to her feet and sometimes covered her torso as well as her skirt. So common was the apron that it eventually became a standard part of the peasant woman's costume. Aprons were undyed hemp or linen.

Nightwear:
On cooler nights, people could wear shifts to bed, possibly even the same ones they'd worn that day under their clothes. During warmer nights, they might have slept naked.

 

[yukonnights]

But where's the info on the good bits? I'm wondering how it was to have sex with unwashed bodies, bad teeth and bad breath, dirty bedding, no birth control pills — you know, the good ole day and the stuff we all long for

 

[LWulf]

The OP has signed in twice since I started posting info. It seems there's a lack of interest, which makes my enthusiasm for offering aid, for this job where I'm getting paid donkey squat; go through the floor.

 

[haventdonethat]

The OP has signed in twice since I started posting info. It seems there's a lack of interest, which makes my enthusiasm for offering aid, for this job where I'm getting paid donkey squat; go through the floor.

I keep coming back to this post although I have no interest in the story theme. It is your history lessons that draw me back.
Well done!

 

[shewantsmore]

Well the story would need to be based in Europe anyway

 

[Oz_John]

The OP has signed in twice since I started posting info. It seems there's a lack of interest, which makes my enthusiasm for offering aid, for this job where I'm getting paid donkey squat; go through the floor.

I just stumbled on this, and found your explanations fascinating.

 

[Carnevil9]

Well I'm middle aged, and I can tell you all about it: my gut is expanding, my hairline is receding, my joints are crackling, and I always feel like I need a nap. But I still like big tits!

PS - and I'm also enjoying LWulf's excellent posts. Good job!

 

[vanmyers86]

Fascinating thread! Thanks to everyone who has contributed.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is a terrific novel about a time traveler who goes back to the days of the Black Death. Worth a look, but it did make me cry the first time I read it.

 

[LWulf]

Michael Crighton wrote an interesting story about time travelers that go back in time during the 100 years war, called "Timeline." Crighton writes fiction, but uses very real research to show how plausible fiction sometimes is.

The movie wasn't well received by many, but I liked both the book (first) and movie.

 

[Feral_Intelligence]

The OP has signed in twice since I started posting info. It seems there's a lack of interest, which makes my enthusiasm for offering aid, for this job where I'm getting paid donkey squat; go through the floor.

I appreciated your efforts.

 

[CastillianKnight]

Too many Victorian stereotypes together in such a little space.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Too many Victorian stereotypes together in such a little space.

OK, now that's helpful.

What of the above comments is a 'Victorian stereotype', as opposed to an accurate portrayal?

 

[LWulf]

OK, now that's helpful.

What of the above comments is a 'Victorian stereotype', as opposed to an accurate portrayal?

Perhaps he meant the Victorian era rewrote history? I don't know, but Victoria came ~450 years after the high middle ages. Let's see if there was a Victoria back then too.

Willie, Willie, ** Harry, Stee,
Harry, Dick, John, Harry three;
One, two, three Neds, Richard two ****
Harrys four, five, six... then who?
Edwards four, five, Dick the bad,
Harrys (twain), Ned six (the lad);
Mary, Bessie, James you ken...
Then Charlie, Charlie, James again...
Will and Mary, Anna Gloria,
Georges four, Will four, Victoria;
Edward seven next, and then
Came George the fifth in nineteen ten;
Ned the eighth soon abdicated
Then George six was coronated;
After which Elizabeth
And that's all folks until her death.​

** marks the beginning of the 1100's
**** marks the end of the 1300's
(The rest is just me showing off the Mnemonic)
The full names are as follows:

William the II died in 1100ce House of Norman
(Harry) Henry I died in 1135ce House of Norman
(Stee) Stephen died in 1154ce House of Norman
(Harry) Henry II died in 1189ce House of Plantagenet
(Dick) Richard I died in 1199ce House of Plantagenet
(John) John died in 1216ce House of Plantagenet
(Harry Three) Henry III died in 1272ce House of Plantagenet
(one two three Neds);
Edward I died in 1307ce House of Plantagenet
Edward II died in 1327ce House of Plantagenet
Edward the III died in 1377ce House of Plantagenet
(Richard two) Richard II held the crown until 1399ce, House of Plantagenet
but the end of the high middle ages ended in about 1375ce, followed by the late middle ages.

The Plantagenet's also were the Houses of York and Lancaster, but all under the family of Plantagenet. York and Lancaster houses were started for the younger siblings of the Plantagenet Family.

So, nope, no Victoria's during that age.

Edward III started the 100 years war in 1337ce (actually it was three wars with truces between) and ended during the rule of Edward IV. Significant, because by the end, the Plantagenet House lost all (save Calais) of it's ancestral family properties in France. This led to the War of the Roses (again, outside the High Middle Ages).

Prior to the hundred years war, the aristocracy spoke French (from the time of William the conqueror). After the beginning of the Hundred years war, around 1362ce (?) English became the official language of England, but vestiges of French remained, for instance, Marquess is a title in England, held by a man. In French, it's equivalent title is Marquis. However, in English, words ending in -ess (eg: Mistr-ess, seamstr-ess, etc) are titular roles held by women.

 

[ElectricBlue]

But where's the info on the good bits? I'm wondering how it was to have sex with unwashed bodies, bad teeth and bad breath, dirty bedding, no birth control pills — you know, the good ole day and the stuff we all long for

Shameless self promotion - a short period within the Dark Ages is comprehensively covered in my The Dark Chronicles, my take on the Arthurian myth.

How did I know what went on? I made stuff up, obviously.

For the price of entry you get several priestesses/witches, a shambolic wizard/magickian (yours truly doing a very long cameo), a couple of kings, several lords and princes, a queen or two, a warrior princess, a betraying son, several bawdy wenches and a number of sturdy men. Plus horses, lots of horses. And rain, quite a bit of rain. Blood. There's blood. In fact, there's quite a bit of blood. Not for the squeamish, really. All told as only EB can tell it: slowly. All 103,000 words of slownosity.