by Will Durant
Despite a thousand guild and municipal statutes and penalties, medieval craftsmen often deceived purchasers with shoddy products, false measures, and crafty substitutes. Some bakers stole small portions of dough under their customers’ eyes by means of a trap door in the kneading board; cheap cloths were secretly put in the place of better cloths promised and paid for; inferior leather was “doctored” to look like the best;67 stones were concealed in sacks of hay or wool sold by weight;68 the meat packers of Norwich were accused of “buying measly pigs, and making from them sausages and puddings unfit for human bodies.”69 Berthold of Regensburg (c. 12 20) described the different forms of cheating used in the various trades, and the tricks played upon country folk by merchants at the fairs.70 Writers and preachers condemned the pursuit of wealth, but a medieval German proverb said, “All things obey money”; and some medieval moralists judged the lust for gain stronger than the urge of sex.71 Knightly honor was often real in feudalism; but the thirteenth century was apparently as materialistic as any epoch in history. These examples of chicanery are drawn from a great area and time; though such instances were numerous they were presumably exceptional; they do not warrant any larger conclusion than that men were no better in the Age of Faith than in our age of doubt, and that in all ages law and morality have barely succeeded in maintaining social order against the innate individualism of men never intended by nature to be law-abiding citizens.
Most states made grave theft a capital crime, and the Church excommunicated brigands; even so, theft and robbery were common, from pickpockets in the streets to robber barons on the Rhine. Hungry mercenaries, fugitive criminals, ruined knights made roads unsafe; and city streets after dark saw many a brawl, robbery, rape, and murder.72 Coroners’ records from thirteenth-century Merrie England show “a proportion of manslaughters which would be considered scandalous in modern times”;73 murders were almost twice as numerous as deaths by accident; and the guilty were seldom caught.74 The Church labored patiently to repress feudal wars, but her modest measure of success was won by diverting men and pugnacity to the Crusades, which were, in one aspect, imperialistic wars for territory and trade. Once at war, Christians were no gentler to the defeated, no more loyal to pledges and treaties, than the warriors of other faiths and times.
Cruelty and brutality were apparently more frequent in the Middle Ages than in any civilization before our own. The barbarians did not at once cease to be barbarians when they became Christians. Noble lords and ladies buffeted their servants, and one another. Criminal law was brutally severe, but failed to suppress brutality and crime. The wheel, the caldron of burning oil, the stake, burning alive, flaying, tearing the limbs apart with wild animals, were often used as penalties. Anglo-Saxon law punished a female slave convicted of theft by making each of eighty female slaves pay a fine, bring three faggots, and burn her to death.75 In the wars of central Italy in the late thirteenth century, says the chronicle of the contemporary Italian monk Salimbene, prisoners were treated with a barbarity that in our youth would have been incredible:
For some men’s heads they bound with a cord and lever, and strained it with such force that their eyes started from their sockets and fell upon their cheeks; others they bound by the right or left thumb only, and thus lifted the whole weight of their bodies from the ground; others again they racked with yet more foul and horrible torments which I blush to relate; others … they would seat with hands bound behind their backs, and laid under their feet a pot of live coals… or they bound their hands and legs together round a spit (as a lamb is carried to the butcher), and kept them thus hanging all day long, without food or drink; or again, with a rough piece of wood they would rub and grate their shins until the bare bone appeared, which was a misery and sore pity even to behold.76
Medieval man bore suffering bravely, and perhaps with less sensitivity than the men of Western Europe would show today. In all classes men and women were hearty and sensual; their festivals were feasts of drinking, gambling, dancing, and sexual relaxation; their jokes were of a candor hardly rivaled today;77 their speech was freer, their oaths vaster and more numerous.78 Hardly a man in France, says Joinville, could open his mouth without mentioning the Devil.79 The medieval stomach was stronger than ours, and bore without flinching the most Rabelaisian details; the nuns in Chaucer listen unperturbed to the scatology of the Miller’s Tale; and the chronicle of the good monk Salimbene is at times untranslatably physical.80 Taverns were numerous, and some, in modern style, supplied “tarts” with ale.81 The Church tried to close the taverns on Sundays, with small success.82 Occasional drunkenness was the prerogative of every class. A visitor to Lübeck found some patrician ladies in a wine cellar, drinking hard under their veils.83 At Cologne there was a society that met to drink wine, and took for its motto, Bibite cum hilaritate; but it imposed upon its members strict rules for moderation in conduct and modesty in speech.84
The medieval man, like any other, was a thoroughly human mixture of lust and romance, humility and egotism, cruelty and tenderness, piety and greed. Those same men and women who drank and cursed so heartily were capable of touching kindnesses and a thousand charities. Cats and dogs were pets then as now; dogs were trained to lead the blind;85 and knights developed an attachment for their horses, falcons, and dogs. The administration of charity reached new heights in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Individuals, guilds, governments, and the Church shared in relieving the unfortunate. Almsgiving was universal. Men hopeful of paradise left charitable bequests. Rich men dowered poor girls, fed scores of the poor daily, and hundreds on major festivals. At many baronial gates doles of food were distributed thrice weekly to all who asked.86 Nearly every great lady felt it a social, if not a moral, necessity, to share in the administration of charity. Roger Bacon, in the thirteenth century, advocated a state fund for the relief of poverty, sickness, and old age;87 but most of this work was left to the Church. In one aspect the Church was a continent-wide organization for charitable aid. Gregory the Great, Charlemagne, and others required that one fourth of the tithes collected by any parish should be applied to succor the poor and the infirm;88 it was so done for a time; but the expropriation of parish revenues by lay and ecclesiastical superiors disrupted this parochial administration in the twelfth century, and the work fell more than ever upon bishops, monks, nuns, and popes. All nuns but a few human sinners devoted themselves to education, nursing, and charity; their ever-widening ministrations are among the brightest and most heartening features of medieval and modern history. Monasteries, supplied by gifts and alms and ecclesiastical revenues, fed the poor, tended the sick, ransomed prisoners. Thousands of monks taught the young, cared for orphans, or served in hospitals. The great abbey of Cluny atoned for its wealth by an ample distribution of alms. The popes did what they could to help the poor of Rome, and continued in their own way the ancient imperial dole.
Despite all this charity, begging flourished. Hospitals and almshouses tried to provide food and lodging for all applicants; soon the gates were surrounded by the halt, the decrepit, the maimed, the blind, and ragged vagabonds who went from “spital to spital, prowling and poaching for lumps of bread and meat.”89 Mendicancy reached in medieval Christendom and Islam a scope and pertinacity unequaled today except in the poorest areas of the Far East.
VI. MEDIEVAL DRESS
Who were the people of medieval Europe? We cannot divide them into “races”; they were all of the “white race” except the Negro slaves. But what a baffling unclassifiable variety of men! Greeks of Byzantium and Hellas, the half-Greek Italians of southern Italy, the Greco-Moorish-Jewish population of Sicily, the Romans, Umbrians, Tuscans, Lombards, Genoese, Venetians of Italy—all so diverse that each at once betrayed his origin by dress and coiffure and speech; the Berbers, Arabs, Jews, and Christians of Spain; the Gascons, Provencals, Burgundians, Parisians, Normans, of France; the Flemings, Walloons, and Dutch of the Lowlands; the Celtic, Anglian, Saxon, Danish, Norman stocks in England; the Celts of Wales, Ir
eland, and Scotland; the Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes; the hundred tribes of Germany; the Finns and Magyars and Bulgars; the Slavs of Poland, Bohemia, the Baltic States, the Balkans, and Russia: here was such a farrago of bloods and types and noses and beards and dress that no one description could fit their proud diversity.
The Germans, by a millennium of migrations and conquests, had made their type prevail in the upper classes of all Western Europe except central and southern Italy, and Spain. The blond type was so definitely admired in hair and eyes that St. Bernard struggled through an entire sermon to reconcile with this preference the “I am black but beautiful” of the Song of Songs. The ideal knight was to be tall and blond and bearded; the ideal woman in epic and romance was slender and graceful, with blue eyes and long blond or golden hair. The long hair of the Franks gave place, in the upper classes of the ninth century, to heads closely cropped in back, with only a cap of hair on the top; and beards disappeared among the European gentry in the twelfth century. The male peasantry, however, continued to wear long and unclean beards, and hair so ample that it was sometimes gathered in braids.90 In England all classes kept long hair, and the male beaux of the thirteenth century dyed their hair, curled it with irons, and bound it with ribbons.91 In the same land and century the married ladies tied up their hair in a net of golden thread, while highborn lasses let it fall down their backs, with sometimes a curl falling demurely over each shoulder upon the breast.92
The West Europeans of the Middle Ages were more abundantly and attractively dressed than before or since; and the men often excelled the women in splendor and color of costume. In the fifth century the loose toga and tunic of the Roman fought a losing war with the breeches and belt of the Gaul; the colder climate and military occupations of the North required tighter and thicker clothing than had been suggested by the warmth and ease of the South; and a revolution in dress followed the transfer of power across the Alps. The common man wore close-fitting pantaloons and tunic or blouse, both of leather or strong cloth; at the belt hung knife, purse, keys, sometimes the worker’s tools; over the shoulders was flung a cloak or cape; on the head a cap or hat of wool or felt or skins; on the legs long stockings; and on the feet high leather shoes curled up at the toe to forestall stubbing. Toward the end of the Middle Ages the hose grew longer till they reached the hips and evolved into the uncomfortable trousers that modern man has substituted, as a perennial penance, for the hair shirt of the medieval saint. Nearly all garments were of wool except some of skin or leather among peasants or hunters; nearly all were spun, woven, cut, and sewed at home; but the rich had professional tailors, known in England as “scissors.” Buttons, occasionally used in antiquity, were avoided before the thirteenth century, and then appeared as functionless ornaments; hence the phrase “not worth a button.”93 In the twelfth century the tight Germanic costume was overlaid in both sexes with a girdled gown.
The rich embellished these basic garments in a hundred fancy ways. Hems and necklines were trimmed with fur; silk, satin, or velvet replaced linen or wool when the weather allowed; a velvet cap covered the head, and shoes of colored cloth followed closely the form of the feet. The finest furs came from Russia; the choicest was ermine, made from white weasel; barons were known to mortgage their lands to buy ermine for their wives. The rich wore drawers of fine white linen; hose often colored, usually of wool, sometimes of silk; a shirt of white linen, with flaunty collar and cuffs; over this a tunic; and over all, in cold or rainy weather, a mantle or cape or chaperon—a cape with a cowl that could be drawn up over the head. Some caps were made with a flat square top; these mortiers or “mortar-boards” were affected in the later Middle Ages by lawyers and doctors, and survive in our college dignities. Dandies wore gloves in any weather, and (complained the monk Ordericus Vitalis) “swept the dusty ground with the prodigal trains of their mantles and robes.”94
Jewelry was displayed by men not only on the person but on the clothing—cap, robe, shoes. Some garments were embroidered with sacred or profane texts in pearls;95 some were trimmed with gold or silver lace, some wore cloth of gold. Kings had to distinguish themselves with extra finery: Edward the Confessor wore a robe resplendently embroidered with gold by his accomplished wife Edgitha, and Charles the Bold of Burgundy wore a robe of state so thickly inlaid with precious stones that it was valued at 200,000 ducats ($1,082,000). All but the poor wore rings; and every man of any account had a signet ring bearing his personal seal; a mark made with this seal was accepted as his personal signature.
Dress was an index of status or wealth; each class protested against the imitation of its raiment by the class below it; and sumptuary laws were vainly passed—as in France in 1294 and 1306—seeking to regulate a citizen’s expenditure on wardrobe according to his fortune and his class. The retainers, or dependent knights, of a great lord wore, at formal functions, robes presented to them by him and dyed in his favorite or distinctive color; such robes were called livery (livrée) because the lord delivered them twice a year. Good medieval garments, however, were made to last a lifetime, and some were carefully bequeathed by will.
Wellborn ladies wore a long linen chemise; over this a fur-trimmed pelisson or robe reaching to the feet; over this a bliaut or blouse worn loose in dishabille, but tightly laced against the coming of company; for all fine ladies longed for slenderness. They might also wear jeweled girdles, a silken purse, and chamois-skin gloves. Often they wore flowers in their hair, or bound it with fillets of jeweled silk. Some ladies aroused the clergy, and doubtless worried their husbands, by wearing tall conical hats adorned with horns; at one time a woman without horns was subject to unbearable ridicule.96 In the later Middle Ages high heels became the fashion. Moralists complained that women found frequent occasions to raise their robes an inch or two to show trim ankles and dainty shoes; female legs, however, were a private and costly revelation. Dante denounced the ladies of Florence for public décolleté that “showed the bosom and the breasts.”97 The dress of ladies at tournaments furnished an exciting topic for clergymen; and cardinals legislated on the length of women’s robes. When the clergy decreed veils as vital to morality, the women “caused their veils to be made of fine muslin and silk inwoven with gold, wherein they showed ten times fairer than before, and drew beholders’ eyes all the more to wantonness.”98 The monk Guyot of Provins complained that women used so much paint on their faces that none was left to color the icons in the churches; he warned them that when they wore false hair, or applied poultices of mashed beans and mares’ milk to their faces to improve their complexion, they were adding centuries to their durance in purgatory.99 Berthold of Regensburg, about 1220, berated women with vain eloquence:
Ye women, ye have bowels of compassion, and ye go to church more readily than the men … and many of you would be saved but for this one snare: … in order that ye may compass men’s praise ye spend all your labor on your garments…. Many of you pay as much to the seamstress as the cost of the cloth itself; it must have shields on the shoulders, it must be flounced and tucked all round the hem. It is not enough for you to show your pride in your very buttonholes; you must also send your feet to hell by special torments…. Ye busy yourselves with your veils: ye twitch them hither, ye twitch them thither; ye gild them here and there with gold thread, and spend thereon all your trouble. Ye will spend a good six months’ work on a single veil, which is sinful great travail—and all that men may praise your dress: “Ah, God! how fair! Was ever so fair a garment?” “How, Brother Berthold” (you say), “we do it only for the goodman’s sake, that he may gaze the less on other women.” No, believe me, if thy goodman be a good man indeed he would far rather behold thy chaste conversation than thy outward adorning…. Ye men might put an end to this, and fight against it doughtily; first with good words; and if they are still obdurate step valiantly in … tear it from her head, even though four or ten hairs should come with it, and cast it into the fire! Do thus not thrice or four times only; and presently she will forbear.100
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Sometimes the women took such preaching to heart, and—two centuries before Savonarola—cast their veils and ornaments into the fire.101 Fortunately, such repentance was brief and rare.
VII. IN THE HOME
There was not much comfort in a medieval home. Windows were few, and seldom glazed; wooden shutters closed them against glare or cold. Heating was by one or more fireplaces; drafts came in from a hundred cracks in the walls, and made high-backed chairs a boon. In winter it was common to wear warm hats and furs indoors. Furniture was scanty but well made. Chairs were few, and usually had no backs; but sometimes they were elegantly carved, engraved with armorial bearings, and inlaid with precious stones. Most seats were cut into the masonry walls, or built upon chests in alcoves. Carpets were unusual before the thirteenth century. Italy and Spain had them; and when Eleanor of Castile went to England in 1254 as the bride of the future Edward I, her servants covered the floors of her apartment at Westminster with carpets after the Spanish custom—which then spread through England. Ordinary floors were strewn with rushes or straw, making some houses so malodorous that the parish priest refused to visit them. Walls might be hung with tapestries, partly as ornaments, partly to hinder drafts, partly to divide the great hall of the house into smaller rooms. Homes in Italy and Provence, still remembering Roman luxuries, were more comfortable and sanitary than those of the North. The homes of German bourgeois, in the thirteenth century, had water piped into the kitchen from wells.102