by Steve Marshall

Created on: August 03, 2008

One of the many meanings that I came across for the word peasant, said that it meant, a son of the soil. And this description is an apt one for describing a peasant from the middle ages. I will be referring to the typical European peasant life here, as peasant life in China for instance, would be described somewhat differently.

European life in the middle ages was mostly confined to living your complete life within a village. In the village, there existed a class structure, that consisted roughly of two classes. One was the lower peasant class, and the other class was the nobleman, the lord, or the priest.

The peasants were the labour for the village, the real and direct farmers of the land. But they never owned the land. It was a strange enough role that they played. They were likened unto slaves, but were not really slaves. They were free, in a way, without being really free. Each village had its lord of the manor. Manorialism was a system used for owning land, and organising society, and the economy of the times. The peasants had to obtain permission from this lord, before they could leave the village, make any significant transactions, or purchases, and even to get married.

Manors were small holdings of around 1000 to 2000 acres. Every nobleman had at least one manor. The greater, or more prestigiously powerful, the noble, the more manors he would own. The king himself depended on these many manors supplying the food for his own large court, and everyone attached to it.

The peasants were not allowed to fish or to hunt, and punishment was severe. They could be put into stocks even for petty crimes, or misdemeanours. A stock was a device that held the person shackled firmly in a fixed position, where he was then open to ridicule, and other forms of public abuse, and humiliation. Hence our term of expression these days, a laughing stock.

The lords and priests were the upper crusts of the society. Each peasant family was required to pay taxes to the Lord, and a percentage, usually ten percent, was required to be given as a tithe, to the church. The upper class thus never really laboured much at all manually, and lived off the work, or hard labour performed by the peasant for him.

The farming peasant did it all, sowing, harvesting, fertilising and soil preparation. Their harvest paid for everything, from their right to use the land, to their taxes, and tithes to the church. Only the rare excess harvest, during a good year could be sold for profit, or stored for their

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