Life in a Medieval Village

by Frances Gies

  When sermons were delivered, either by parish priest or friar, they followed an elaborate formula. The preacher announced his Scriptural text (thema), then commenced with the antethema, usually a prayer and invocation, or “bidding prayer,” like the following (for the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin):

  Almighty God, to whose power and goodness infinite all creatures are subject, at the beseeching of thy glorious mother, gracious lady, and of all thy saints, help our feebleness with thy power, our ignorance with thy wisdom, our frailty with thine sufficient goodness, that we may receive here thine help and grace continual, and finally everlasting bliss. To which bliss thou took this blessed lady this day as to her eternal felicity. Amen.43

  The theme was then repeated, followed by an introduction which might begin with an “authority,” quoted from the Bible or from a Church Father, or a message for the particular occasion or audience, or an attention-getting “exemplum,” an illustrative story (“Examples move men more than precepts,” advised St. Gregory). The story might be merely “something strange, subtle and curious,” or a terrifying tale about devils, death-bed scenes, and the torments of hell. Sources abounded: fable, chronicle, epic, romance. One story that must have had a particular appeal to peasant women began, “I find in the chronicles that there was once a worthy woman who had hated a poor woman more than seven years.” When the “worthy woman” went to church on Easter Day, the priest refused to give her communion unless she forgave her enemy. The woman reluctantly gave lip service to the act of forgiveness, “for the shame of the world more than for awe of God,” and so that she could have her communion.

  Then, when service was done…the neighbors came unto this worthy woman’s house with presents to cheer her, and thanked God highly that they were accorded. But then this wretched woman said, “Do you think I forgave this woman her trespass with my heart as I did with my mouth? Nay! Then I pray God that I never take up this rush at my foot.” Then she stooped down to take it up, and the devil strangled her even there. Wherefore ye that make any love-days [peace agreements] look that they be made without any feigning, and let the heart and the tongue accord in them.44

  The body of the sermon was usually divided into three sections: an exposition on three vices, or symbolic meanings of the Trinity, or symbolic features of some familiar object—a castle, a chess game, a flower, the human face.

  The sermon ended with a flourish, sometimes a smooth peroration, merely summing up the text and discourse, sometimes, especially if the congregation had dozed, a rousing hellfire diatribe. The priest might compare the agony of a sinner in hell with being rolled a mile in a barrel lined with red-hot nails. Devils were favorite descriptive subjects, with their faces “burned and black.” One devil was so horrible that “a man would not for all the world look on him once.” Hell rang with the “horrible roaring of devils, and weeping, and gnashing of teeth, and wailing of damned men, crying, ‘Woe, woe, woe, how great is this darkness!’” If one of them longed for sweetmeats and drink, he got “no sweetness, nor delicacy, hut fire and brimstone…If one of them would give a thousand pounds for one drop of water, he gets none…There shall be flies that bite their flesh, and their clothing shall be worms…and in short, there are all manner of torments in all the five senses, and above all there is the pain of damnation: pain of privation of the bliss of heaven, which is a pain of all pains…Think on these pains; and I trust to God that they shall steer thee to renounce thy drunken living!”45

  Sometimes the closing peroration pictured the Last Judgment and the doom that preceded it: fifteen days of terrible portents, tidal waves and the sea turning to blood, earthquakes, fires, tempests, fading stars, yawning graves, men driven mad by fear, followed by the accounting from which no man could escape, by bribes, or influence, or worldly power, “for if thou shall be found in any deadly sin, though Our Lady and all the saints of heaven pray for thee, they shall not be heard.”46

  Or the preacher might close by reminding his congregation of their mortality. “These young people think,” cried one preacher, “that they shall never die, especially before they are old!…They say, ‘I am young yet. When I grow old I will amend.’” Such persons were reminded to “Go to the burials of thy father and mother; and such shalt thou be, be ye ever so fair, ever so wise, ever so strong, ever so gay, ever so light.” Death was the inevitable end, and none too far off. Man’s earthly being was in fact insignificant and not very comely: “What is man but a stinking slime, and after that a sack full of dung, and at the last, meat for worms?”47

  Even without sermons, the medieval parishioner was reminded of his fate by the paintings decorating the church walls, only a few of which have survived.* In these murals often over the chancel arch, a symbolic gateway between this world and the next, Christ sat in stern judgment, graves sprang open, and naked sinners tumbled into the gaping mouth of a beast with great pointed fangs, or, chained together, into the claws of demons.

  A major function of the parish priest was that of instructing his parishioners. It was up to him to teach the children the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave, and the Ten Commandments. William of Pagula recommended that the priest give not only religious instruction but practical advice: telling mothers to nurse their own children, not to let them smother in bed or tie them in their cradles or leave them unattended; advising against usury and magic arts; giving counsel on sexual morality and marriage. Marriage was a topic well worth discussion, William pointed out: a horse, an ass, an ox, or a dog could be tried out before it was bought, but a wife had to be taken on trust. A poor wife was difficult to support; living with a rich one was misery. Was it better to marry a beautiful wife or an ugly one? On the one hand, it was hard to keep a wife that other men were pursuing, on the other it was irksome to have one that no one else wanted; but on balance an ugly wife brought less misery.48

  The priest’s instruction of adults came largely through confession, in which he not only examined the penitent’s morals but his religious knowledge:

  Believest thou in Father and Son and Holy Ghost…

  Three persons in Trinity,

  And in God (swear thou to me)?

  That God’s son mankind took

  In maid Mary (as saith the Book),

  And of that maid was born:

  Believest thou this?…

  And in Christ’s passion

  And in His resurrection…?

  That He shall come with wounds red

  To judge the quick and the dead,

  And that we each one…

  Shall rise at the day of Doom And be ready when he come…?49

  The manuals coached the priest to interrogate the penitent about his behavior: “Have you done any sorcery to get women to lie with you?” “Have you ever plighted your troth and broken it?” “Have you spent Sunday in shooting, wrestling, and other play, or going to the ale house?” “Have you stolen anything or been at any robbing?” “Have you found anything and kept it?” “Have you borrowed anything and not returned it?” “Have you ever claimed any good deed of charity that was another man’s doing?” “Have you been slow to teach your godchildren Pater Noster and Creed?” “Have you come late to church?” “Have you without devotion heard any sermon?” “Have you been glad in your heart when your neighbor came to harm, and grieved when he had good fortune?” “Have you eaten with such greed that you cast it up again?” “Have you sinned in lechery?” “If your children are shrews, have you taught them good manners?” “Have you destroyed grain or grass or other things that are sown? Are you wont to ride through grain when you could go to one side?”50

  The penitent must confess his sins completely and without reservation. If he killed a man, he must say who it was, where, and why. If he “sinned in lechery,” he must not give the name of his partner, but he should tell whether she was married or single, or a nun, where the sin was committed, and how often, and whether it was on a holy day. The penance should fit the sin, light for a light sin, heavy
for a heavy, but never too heavy for the penitent to perform, lest he ignore it and be worse off than if he had not gone to confession. “Better a light penance to send a man to purgatory,” wrote John Myrc, “than a too heavy penance to send him to hell.” Even more sagely, a woman’s penance must be such that her husband would not know about it, lest it cause friction between them.51

  Above all, the priest must teach by example. His preaching was worth little if he lived an evil life. The sins he was especially warned against indicate those he was most likely to fall into. He should be chaste; he should be true; he should be mild in word and deed. “Drunkenness and gluttony, pride and sloth and envy, all these thou must put away.” The priest must forsake taverns, trading, wrestling and shooting, hawking, hunting, and dancing. “Markets and fairs I thee forbid.” He must wear “honest clothes,” and not knightly “basinet and baldric.” His beard and crown must be shaven. He must be hospitable to rich and poor. And finally,

  Turn thine eye that thou not see

  The cursed world’s vanity.

  Thus this world thou must despise

  And holy virtues have in vise [view].52

  9

  VILLAGE JUSTICE

  TWICE OR MORE EACH YEAR THE VILLAGERS gathered for the hallmote: hall, meaning manor house, and mote, meeting. The records of this legal body provide unique insights into the relationship between lord and village community, and at the same time demonstrate the frictions and stresses of everyday village life.

  The hallmote was the lord’s manorial court, presided over by his steward, and transacting primarily the lord’s business: collecting merchet, heriot, entry fees, and other manorial dues, enforcing labor services, electing manorial officers, granting seisin (legal possession) to heirs and receiving fealty from them, and providing the lord with substantial profits from its fines and confiscations.

  Yet the principal actors in the hallmote were villagers, who in effect served as prosecutor, legal authority, witnesses, and judge. Much of the court’s business had nothing to do with the lord, but was concerned with interaction among the villagers. Finally, the hallmote’s proceedings were ruled not by the lord’s will but by the ancient and powerful body of tradition known as the custom of the manor.

  The hallmote, furthermore, was a legislative as well as a judicial body, promulgating the bylaws that governed field, meadow, pasture, and woods from Michaelmas to Michaelmas, sending the men to work and the animals to graze in strict concert, stipulating who should harvest, who should glean, when, and for how long. Surviving Elton court rolls record no bylaw enactments, only references to infractions of existing bylaws, but elsewhere they are recorded as enacted by the “community,” the “homage,” the “tenants,” or the “neighbors.” The lord is rarely mentioned in their framing, though the security of his demesne cultivation was a primary object.1

  A fragmentary document records the itinerary of the Ramsey Abbey steward for the twenty-three manorial courts of early 1294. Holding court first at Ramsey itself on Thursday, January 7, he rode to the nearest manors—Broughton, Wistow, Ripton, Stukeley, and Gidding—reaching Elton on January 16, a Saturday. Thence he proceeded to Weston on Monday the eighteenth, finished off the Huntingdonshire manors, rode south to Therfield in Hertfordshire, then turned back northeast and held court in the Ramsey manors of Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, the last session falling on February 19. Nine of the courts required a second day’s sitting, the others were all concluded in a day.2

  A hallmote held in January pretty surely met inside the manor house. In warmer seasons courts often met in the open air, that of St. Albans assembling under an ancient ash tree.3 The hall must have been crowded and noisy, with all the villeins gathered, reinforced by a few freeholders whose charters stipulated suit, or whose grandfathers had owed it. Though the steward presided, he did not act as judge. Rather, he lent the authority of the abbot to the judgment rendered by the jury. These twelve (sometimes six or nine) jurati, sworn men, whose oath extended to periods between court sessions, could be fined substantial sums for “concealment,” not bringing cases to court, and for “bad answering and false presentment,” as happened to Elton jurors on several occasions.4 They collected and presented evidence, along with the appropriate law, the custom of the manor and the village bylaws. In modern parlance, it was a grand jury, and in fact was sometimes so called, but the commoner term was jury of presentment. The jury’s verdict was recorded as, “It is found by the jurors that…”, “The jurors say that…”, or “And they say that…”, followed by the facts of the case and concluding, “Therefore…” and the assessment of fine and damages. The jury’s findings received the backing not only of the lord’s steward but of the assembled villagers. Their concurrence was usually expressed tacitly, but on certain occasions actively, when plaintiff or defendant or both “put themselves upon the consideration of the whole court.” In such a case, the village’s assent was inscribed in the court record as villata dicit (the village says), or coram toto halimoto (in the presence of the whole hallmote), or per totum halimotum (by the whole hallmote). In either case, the endorsement of the jury’s findings by the assembly at large was of utmost importance.5

  Sometimes either a plaintiff or a defendant or both asked for an inquest by a special panel, paying for the privilege. Whatever nuances of favor or knowledgeability a litigant hoped to get from one group or the other of his fellow villagers, his fate was nearly always, for better or for worse, in the hands of people who knew him, knew his adversary, knew the circumstances of the case, knew the relevant law and custom, and had talked it over among themselves.

  The court’s record was kept by the steward’s clerk, on a long strip of parchment about eight inches wide, its segments stitched end to end. At its top he inscribed the place and date: “Aylingtone, on the day of St. Clement the Pope in the 12th year of W[illiam] the Abbot”—in other words, Elton, November 23, 1279. Less accomplished than the clerk of the accounts, he left a record in not very elegant Latin, with many errors in syntax and employing numerous abbreviations. In the left margin he noted the category of case, the judgment, and the amount of the fine. At the end of the record of each court he totaled the fines, exactly as the clerk of the accounts did at the end of the reeve’s demesne account. Whatever else the court was, it was part of the lord’s business enterprise. By the late thirteenth century, the court records were carefully preserved and often consulted for precedents.6

  The court’s appearance, whether indoors or out, was informal, the crowd of villagers standing before the seated steward and clerk, but court procedure was formal and order strictly enforced. At St. Albans in 1253 a man was fined for cursing the twelve jurors, and many cases are recorded of punishment meted out for false accusations against officials and jurors, for abuse of opposing litigants, and for making a disturbance: “Fecerunt strepitum, in curia garrulando” (“they made a racket, talking much in court”).7 In Elton in 1307, John son of John Abovebrook, haled into court for a debt of 32 pence owed to Robert of Teyngton, failed to make good his promise to pay, and the following year was again cited, but “immediately in contempt of the court withdrew without finding pledges.” The court ordered that the 32 pence be levied from him, and that he be fined a stiff 40 pence for his behavior. “And afterwards he came and made fine for 40 pence…and…he will be obedient henceforth to the lord and to his neighbors.”8

  A fourteenth-century manual for the instruction of novice stewards called The Court Baron (another name for the manorial court) prescribes a formality of procedure amounting to ritual. It pictures the clerk commencing by reading aloud a model presentment, a charge of battery done by a villager against an outsider:

  Sir steward, Henry of Combe, who is here [pointing], complains of Stephen Carpenter, who is there [pointing], that as he was going his way in the peace of God and in the peace of the lord through this vill which is within the surety of your franchise, at such an hour on such a day in the last year, there came this Stephen Carpenter a
nd encountered him in such a place [naming it], and assailed him with evil words which were undeserved, insomuch that he called him thief and lawless man and whatever other names seemed good to him except only his right name, and told him that he was spying from house to house the secrets of the good folk of the vill in order that he might come another time by night with his fellows to break [into] their houses and carry off their goods larcenously as a felon; whereupon this Henry answered him civilly and said that he was good and lawful in all things and that [Stephen] was talking at random; whereupon the said Stephen was enraged and snatched his staff of holly out of his hand and gave it to him about his head and across his shoulders and his loins and elsewhere all over his body as he thought fit and then went off. This trespass did the said Stephen wrongfully and against reason and against the peace of the lord and of you, who are charged to guard and maintain the peace, to his damage 20 shillings and shame a half-mark.9

  The accused then answered the charge with as nice a regard for the proper formula as the clerk had shown, taking each accusation in order:

  Tort and force and all that is against the peace of God and the peace of the lord and of you, who are charged to guard and maintain the peace, and his [Henry’s] damages of 20 shillings and shame of a half-mark and every penny of it, Stephen defends, who is here, and all manner of evil words against Henry of Combe, who is there, and against his suit and all that he surmises against him, that never he called him thief nor gave him evil word, nor surmised evil slander against him, nor with staff of holly nor other staff beat him across the head or shoulders or loins or any part of his body as he surmises; and that this is true, he is ready to acquit himself in all such wise as this court shall award that acquit himself he ought.10