Medieval Problem Solving
INTRO (10)
history is not fiction; don’t want to split hairs
verisimilitude paradox: As readers, we can accept unrealistic circumstances far more than we can
accept unrealistic characters. We don’t want characters that act like we do. We want characters
that act like we would in their circumstances. Spider-riders.
historian and imaginer: infuriating when they’re stupid. Kingdom of Heaven vs. LotR.
our behaviors don’t make sense in fantasy world; break immersion. Pratchett. Often use ours b/c no
sense of alternatives.
Comparative problem solving:
us,
refugee camp,
fantasy.
Medieval: variations:
geographical
chron. (1000-1500, regime of goods spreads downward), oranges. Setting in 1600s-1700s?
class (peasant (wealth), arist, city).
Devil’s in the details; not that it has to be this way, but that other solutions imply other circs.
3 ideas:
work=muscles; logistical problems, retinue
personal networks or not at all; no alternative to favoritism and patronage.;
what do we mean by “intolerable”?; medicine
HOUSING: (15)
Walls
Walls not sturdy: completely rebuilt houses every 20 years. Wattle-and-daub.
Half-buried houses; not labor effective once there are roof-trees: enough height, 6 feet, not 10 feet.
Average house has 3 cubicles. Some houses had a loft, but that doesn’t mean an extra story.
During the 1200s, began having stone foundations, but that was usually just a few rows with wattle-anddaub built on top of it.
Roof
Roof is strongest part. Roofing material depends on locale (tiles, slate, thatch) so no local variation.
Seems boring, but if roof slates, means there is a quarry nearby.
Refugee camps: people make strong roofs and such walls as they can.
Morrowind: the shells of giant snails as houses
Internal
No chimney in Europe until 12th century.
Windows are problematic.
Cattle kept inside; provides warmth.
Bed partners is routine (even for Erasmus. Even for John Adams: body-heat).
Drains in floors.
(work=muscle vs. intolerable?)
What are the implications of this construction?
Implication: no hammocks? Because poles not driven deep enough?
Implication: jail was not used as a punishment, but if you want to hold someone until trial, don’t put
them in a house. Used manor house if needed, most likely used the castle, which would be one per
county.
Breaking and entering is just that.
Variations: What matters is who builds house, not who lives in it; aristocratic landlords sometimes
provided house as part of parcel of land. Urban landlords too. Also, wealthier peasants. Shack could be
10 shillings; three-bay long-house could be 40-60 shillings. Aristocractic landlords paid 40-140 shillings
for tenant houses. Urban landlords paid maybe 100 shillings to build rentals. A two-story craftsman’s
house ran 200-300 shillings. A house with a courtyard, 1800 shillings.1
Nobility: Even for nobility, slow move to lots of rooms for specific purposes. Only in 1200s that
nobility begin to eat separate from their households, and etiquette writers criticize it.
Cities: Same shift from timber frame to stone foundations with timber frame. Wealthy merchants, etc.
stone houses. Multiple stories. 3-4 in center of town; shop on ground level. Hall and chamber. 15th c.,
servants chamber and family chamber.2 Some landlords built terraces of rowhouses, just like today.
15x15ft.
13th c.; two monasteries in London had their own external water supply. Then piped to a conduit. Basel
has dozens of public fountains. 1478: candle maker dug through cellar to tap pipes; made them run low;
paraded through the street dripping wet from a model conduit on his head. 3
Location, location, location:
Located in community personal networks nucleated vs. non-nucleated villages. Not individual pioneers:
18th-19th There are hermits in King Arthur, but they’re holy men; it’s hardcore to live really by yourself.
And even “hermit” monks had quite a bit of contact. Shepherds spent a lot of time really by themselves.
And people thought they could do weather magic.
TRAVEL (10)
Mobility: cartage (work=muscle),
regional markets,
nobility
Navigation
(personal networks). ask someone. No written signs. Not sure when: Ben Franklin still @sign of Blue
Ball. Just as easy to find a person as a building.
Even in nucleated villages, houses face whichever way they want.
No overland maps. There were text guides that gave directions; a mile in the mountains is a shorter
objective distance than a mile over the plains.
many roads named after distant direction: Jerusalem: Jaffa Gate.
Even foreign travel doesn’t have exploration per se: merchant communities and chained trade.
If there is teleportation, how accessible is it?
Infrastructure.
Village pub was often someone’s house who’d made ale that week. No inn in many villages.
hospitality; alms for pilgrims. preferential treatment. hostels one day apart.
were inns at destinations.
routes not roads; often by sea. cabotage. vs. monsoon. vs. atlantic.
FOOD (15)
Supply
grain, but multiple types of grain. Introduction of legumes (lentils, peas).
Barley a fodder crop, also very poor. in 12th-13th, 75% of peasant calories were grain as gruel.4
1
Dyer, Standards of Living... 205.
Thrupp, Merchant Class of Medieval London...134.
3
Thrupp, 137.
4
Grenville Astill and John Langdon, ed. Medieval Farming and Technology (New York: Brill, 1997), Georges Comet,
“Technology and Agricultural Expansion in the Middle Ages: The Example of France North of the Loire,”15.
2
Crop yields were 4:1. 10:1 in 18th, 20:1 in 20th.5
Solving problems of growing grain was mostly handled by the village as a whole (personal networks);
individual property, but still had to decide how to divide it, etc. Draining of wetlands has been called
“perhaps one of the greatest achievements of medieval technology”6
In pre-Grimm fairy tales, whenever someone gets a wish, they always wish for food first.7 What is
intolerable?
How do you solve the problem of only local, regional food?
Preservation
What is the best way to preserve meat and fish? keep it alive. Not all slaughtered on Nov.11. Kept on the
hoof through the winter. Sometimes also bought from butchers. One account, 10 of 17 cattle slaughtered
in autumn, the rest other months. 50 of 81 sheep slaughtered after autumn shearing. Fish often taken
from ponds.8
Import
What is culturally worth importing? Important. Oranges: medieval, orangeries, Laura Ingalls. In
Eberron, spellshards are the new beaver pelt.
Bibliography from today’s talk:
Jason Goodwin, The Janissary Tree.
Mystery novel set in 19th century Istanbul.
Ross Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, a Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century (University of
California Press, 2005 (first edition was 1985?)
In addition to Marco Polo (whom Hillary mentioned as a famous traveler’s account), this is another
account that has been steadily gaining in prominence recently. Dunn’s book is a biography; parts of the
original text of Ibn Battuta’s book are available in some older translations and online.
Steven Justice. Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381. University of California Press, 1994.
Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others. Routledge, 2005.
5
Dyer, 127.
Christopher Dyer, “Medieval Farming and Technology: Conclusion”, 296.
7
Darnton.
8
Dyer
6
Medieval Problem-Solving: Helpful Books
Barbara Hanawalt. The Ties That Bound: Peasant families in medieval England. Oxford University
Press, 1986.
Gives detailed information about peasant life. It has chapters on how time was spent throughout the day
and at different times of year, how age and sex influenced people’s activities, how houses were built and
land was bought and sold, etc. Available at Hennepin County Libraries, St. Paul Public Library.
Frances Gies and Joseph Gies. Life in a Medieval Village. Harper & Row, 1990.
The Gies family has written several books; all of them are very good historical scholarship drawing on
academic work, but they are written to be accessible and also with an emphasis on individual experience
rather than abstract concepts. Available at Hennepin County Libraries, St. Paul Public Library.
C.M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Medieval England.
This book uses household account books to compare everyone from relatively poor knights up to the
richest nobles in England. It has a lot of great information on how the “mini-corporation” that was a
great household worked. Available at Hennepin County Libraries.
Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 1989.
This book has very detailed information on what aristocracy, peasants, and city-residents could afford
and how they spent their money, c. 1200-1520. It’s a detailed book for reference, but maybe dense for
just reading straight through.
Olivia Remie Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, trade, and travel
in late antiquity and the middle ages (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
This book is about the system of hostel/warehouses called funduqs or fondacos in the Mediterranean. It
has a large-scale historical argument, but it also has lots of details about how travelling and lodging
worked.
Margaret Scott, Medieval Dress and Fashion (British Library, 2007).
Beautifully illustrated and goes into detail about how garments were affected by new developments in
trade, new fastenings, etc. Available at Hennepin County Libraries.
This image shows how medieval
underwear worked until about 1300.
Whatever famous historical event you
can bring to mind: they weren’t
wearing any pants. They were,
however, wearing a hat.