The influence of nature on certain aspects of social and political life in Russia. How did peasants live in the Middle Ages? History of peasants
Modern people have the vaguest idea of how peasants lived in the Middle Ages. This is not surprising, because life and customs in the villages have changed a lot over these centuries.
The emergence of feudal dependence
The term “Middle Ages” is most applicable to because it was here that all those phenomena that are strongly associated with ideas about the Middle Ages took place. These are castles, knights and much more. The peasants had their own place in this society, which remained virtually unchanged for several centuries.
At the turn of the 8th and 9th centuries. in the Frankish state (it united France, Germany and most of Italy) there was a revolution in relations around land ownership. A feudal system emerged, which was the basis of medieval society.
Kings (holders of supreme power) relied on the support of the army. For their service, those close to the monarch received large amounts of land. Over time, a whole class of wealthy feudal lords appeared who had vast territories within the state. The peasants who lived on these lands became their property.
The meaning of the church
Another major owner of the land was the church. Monastic plots could cover many square kilometers. How did peasants live in the Middle Ages on such lands? They received a small personal allotment, and in exchange for this they had to work for a certain number of days on the owner’s territory. It was economic coercion. It affected almost all European countries except Scandinavia.
The church played a big role in the enslavement and dispossession of village residents. The life of peasants was easily regulated by spiritual authorities. Commoners were instilled with the idea that resigned work for the church or the transfer of land to it would later affect what would happen to a person after death in heaven.
Impoverishment of the peasants
The existing feudal land tenure ruined the peasants, almost all of them lived in noticeable poverty. This was due to several phenomena. Due to regular military service and work for the feudal lord, the peasants were cut off from their own land and had practically no time to work on it. In addition, a variety of taxes from the state fell on their shoulders. Medieval society was based on unfair prejudices. For example, peasants were subject to the highest court fines for misdemeanors and violations of laws.
The villagers were deprived of their own land, but were never driven from it. Subsistence farming was then the only way to survive and earn money. Therefore, the feudal lords offered landless peasants to take land from them in exchange for numerous obligations, which are described above.
precarious
The main mechanism of the emergence of the European was precarity. This was the name of the agreement that was concluded between the feudal lord and the poor landless peasant. In exchange for owning an allotment, the plowman was obliged to either pay quitrents or perform regular corvée work. and its inhabitants were often entirely bound to the feudal lord by a contract of precaria (literally, "transferred by request"). Use could be given for several years or even for life.
If at first the peasant found himself only in land dependence on the feudal lord or the church, then over time, due to impoverishment, he also lost his personal freedom. This process of enslavement was a consequence of the difficult economic situation experienced by the medieval village and its inhabitants.
The power of large landowners
A poor man who was unable to pay the entire debt to the feudal lord fell into bondage to the creditor and actually turned into a slave. In general, this led to large land holdings absorbing small ones. This process was also facilitated by the growth of the political influence of the feudal lords. Thanks to the large concentration of resources, they became independent from the king and could do whatever they wanted on their land, regardless of the laws. The more the middle peasants became dependent on the feudal lords, the more the power of the latter grew.
The way peasants lived in the Middle Ages often also depended on justice. This type of power also ended up in the hands of feudal lords (on their land). The king could declare the immunity of a particularly influential duke, so as not to enter into conflict with him. Privileged feudal lords could judge their peasants (in other words, their property) without regard to the central government.
Immunity also gave the right to a major owner to personally collect all monetary receipts going to the crown treasury (court fines, taxes and other levies). The feudal lord also became the leader of the militia of peasants and soldiers, which gathered during the war.
The immunity granted by the king was only a formalization of the system of which feudal land tenure was a part. Large property owners held their privileges long before receiving permission from the king. Immunity only gave legitimacy to the order under which the peasants lived.
Patrimony
Before the revolution in land relations took place, the main economic unit of Western Europe was the rural community. They were also called stamps. The communities lived freely, but at the turn of the 8th and 9th centuries they became a thing of the past. In their place came the estates of large feudal lords, to whom serf communities were subordinate.
They could be very different in their structure, depending on the region. For example, in the north of France large fiefdoms were common, which included several villages. In the southern provinces of the common Frankish state, medieval society in the village lived in small fiefdoms, which could be limited to a dozen households. This division into European regions was preserved and lasted until the abandonment of the feudal system.
Patrimony structure
The classic estate was divided into two parts. The first of these was the master's domain, where peasants worked on strictly defined days, serving their service. The second part included the households of rural residents, because of which they became dependent on the feudal lord.
The labor of peasants was also necessarily used in the manor's estate, which, as a rule, was the center of the estate and the master's allotment. It included a house and a yard, on which there were various outbuildings, vegetable gardens, orchards, and vineyards (if the climate permitted). The master's artisans also worked here, without whom the landowner also could not do. The estate also often had mills and a church. All this was considered the property of the feudal lord. What peasants owned in the Middle Ages was located on their plots, which could be located interspersed with the landowner's plots.
Dependent rural workers had to work on the feudal lord's plots using their own equipment, and also bring their livestock here. Real slaves were used less often (this social stratum was much smaller in number).
The arable plots of the peasants were adjacent to each other. They had to use a common area for grazing livestock (this tradition remained with the time of the free community). The life of such a collective was regulated with the help of a village gathering. It was presided over by the headman, who was elected by the feudal lord.
Features of subsistence farming
This was due to the low development of production forces in the village. In addition, in the village there was no division of labor between artisans and peasants, which could have increased its productivity. That is, craft and household work appeared as a by-product of agriculture.
Dependent peasants and artisans provided the feudal lord with various clothes, shoes, and necessary equipment. What was produced on the estate was mostly used at the owner's court and rarely became the personal property of the serfs.
Peasant trade
The lack of circulation of goods slowed down trade. Nevertheless, it is incorrect to say that it did not exist at all, and the peasants did not participate in it. There were markets, fairs, and money circulation. However, all this did not in any way affect the life of the village and estate. The peasants had no means of independent subsistence, and feeble trade could not help them pay off the feudal lords.
With the proceeds from trade, the villagers bought what they could not produce on their own. The feudal lords acquired salt, weapons, and also rare luxury items that merchants from overseas countries could bring. Villagers did not participate in such transactions. That is, trade satisfied only the interests and needs of the narrow elite of society who had extra money.
Peasant protest
The way peasants lived in the Middle Ages depended on the size of the quitrent that was paid to the feudal lord. Most often it was given in kind. It could be grain, flour, beer, wine, poultry, eggs or crafts.
The deprivation of the remaining property caused protest from the peasantry. It could be expressed in various forms. For example, villagers fled from their oppressors or even staged mass riots. Peasant uprisings suffered defeats each time due to spontaneity, fragmentation and disorganization. At the same time, even they led to the fact that the feudal lords tried to fix the size of duties in order to stop their growth, as well as increase discontent among the serfs.
Refusal of feudal relations
The history of peasants in the Middle Ages is a constant confrontation with large landowners with varying success. These relations appeared in Europe on the ruins of ancient society, where classical slavery generally reigned, especially pronounced in the Roman Empire.
The abandonment of the feudal system and the enslavement of peasants occurred in modern times. It was facilitated by the development of the economy (primarily light industry), the industrial revolution and the outflow of population to the cities. Also, at the turn of the Middle Ages and the Modern Age, humanistic sentiments prevailed in Europe, which put individual freedom at the forefront of everything else.
Life in the taiga zone requires a person to exert extra-hard work, endurance and hardening. Even the poorest person in this climate should have a warm sheepskin coat and live in a heated house. Nutrition in the cold climate of the taiga cannot be completely vegetarian; it requires high-calorie foods. But there are few good pasture lands in the taiga, and they are confined almost exclusively to the floodplains of rivers and lakes. And they were primarily intended for agricultural development. The soils of the forests - podzolic and sod-podzolic - are not very fertile. The harvest did not make it possible to live off agriculture, therefore. Along with agriculture, the taiga peasant also had to engage in fishing and hunting. In the summer, they hunted upland game (large taiga birds), collected mushrooms, berries, wild garlic and onions, and engaged in beekeeping (collecting honey from wild forest bees). In the fall, they harvested meat and prepared for the new hunting season.
Hunting taiga animals is very dangerous. Everyone knows what a threat the bear, considered the owner of the taiga, poses to humans. Less known, but no less dangerous, is hunting elk. It’s not for nothing that there is a saying in the taiga: “Go to a bear and make a bed, go to a elk and make boards (on a coffin”). But the spoils were worth the risk.
The type of estate, the appearance of the residential part of the house and outbuildings in the yard, the layout of the interior space, the furnishing of the house - all this was determined by natural and climatic conditions.
The main support in taiga life was the forest. He gave everything: fuel, building material, provided hunting, brought mushrooms, edible wild herbs, fruits and berries. A house was built from the forest, a well was built using a wooden frame. Northern wooded areas with cold winters were characterized by wooden log houses with a hanging underground or hut, protecting the living space from the frozen ground. Gable roofs (to prevent snow from accumulating) were covered with planks or shingles, and wooden window frames were customarily decorated with carved ornaments. A three-chamber layout prevailed - a canopy, a cage or a renka (in which the family's household property was stored, and married couples lived in the summer) and a living space with a Russian stove. In general, the stove was an important element in the Russian hut. First, a heater stove, later an adobe stove, without a chimney (“black”), was replaced by a Russian stove with a chimney (“white”).
White Sea coast: winter here is cold, windy, winter nights are long. In winter there is a lot of snow. Summer is cool, but summer days are long and nights are short. Here they say: “The dawn catches up with the dawn.” There is taiga all around, so the houses are made of logs. The windows of the house face south, west and east. In winter, sunlight must enter the house, because the days are so short. So the windows “catch” the sun’s rays. The windows of the house are high above the ground, firstly, there is a lot of snow, and secondly, the house has a high underground floor where livestock live in the cold winter. The yard is covered, otherwise it will snow over the winter.
For the northern part of Russia, the valley type of settlement: villages, usually small, are located along the valleys of rivers and lakes. On watersheds with rugged terrain and in areas remote from major roads and rivers, villages with freely built courtyards, without a definite plan, predominated, i.e., a disorderly layout of villages.
And in the steppe, rural settlements are villages, stretched, as a rule, along rivers and swamps, because summer is dry and it is important to live near water. Fertile soils - chernozems - allow you to get a rich harvest and make it possible to feed many people.
The roads in the forest are very winding; they go around thickets, rubble, and swamps. It will be even longer to walk in a straight line through the forest - you will suffer through thickets and hillocks, and you may even end up in a swamp. Dense thickets of spruce forest with windbreaks are easier to get around, easier to cover and a hill. We also have sayings like this: “Only crows fly straight,” “You can’t break through a wall with your forehead,” and “A smart person won’t go up a mountain, a smart person will go around a mountain.”
The image of the Russian North is created mainly by forest - local residents have long had a saying: “7 gates to heaven, but everything is forest” and water. This force has inspired people to create with its beauty:
Not for nothing in such latitudes
Match the space and the people
Doesn't honor any distance as distant
He is all your native expanse,
Broad-shouldered hero.
With a soul like yourself, wide!
Climatic conditions had a huge impact on the formation of ancient Russian clothing. The harsh and cold climate - long winters, relatively cool summers - led to the appearance of closed warm clothes. The main types of fabrics produced were linen fabrics (from coarse canvas to the finest linens) and homespun coarse wool - homespun wool. It’s not for nothing that there is a proverb: “Promoted to all ranks, they were placed on the throne” - linen was worn by all classes, from peasants to royalty, for there is no fabric, as they say now, more hygienic than linen.
Apparently, in the eyes of our ancestors, no shirt could compare with a linen one, and there is nothing to be surprised about. In winter, linen fabric warms well, and in summer it keeps the body cool. Traditional medicine experts say: that linen clothing protects human health.
Traditional food: hot liquid dishes that warm a person from the inside in winter, cereal dishes, bread. Rye bread once predominated. Rye is a crop that produces high yields on acidic and podzolic soils. And in the forest-steppe and steppe zones, wheat was grown, because it is more demanding of heat and fertility.
This is how natural conditions influence the life of the Russian people in many ways.
The mentality of the people is an integral part of the national culture. The study of folk mentality is necessary to understand the relationship between nature, history, culture and society in a certain territory.
Studying the mentality of the Russian people helps to find the right approaches to understanding many problems in the context of socio-economic and internal political construction, and to foresee in general terms the future of our Motherland.
Man is part of the geographical environment and depends on it. As a prologue to the study of this dependence, I cite the words of M. A. Sholokhov: “Severe, untouched, wild - the sea and the stone chaos of the mountains. Nothing superfluous, nothing artificial and people match nature. On the working person - fisherman, peasant, this nature has imposed the seal of chaste restraint.
Having studied the laws of nature in detail, we will be able to understand the patterns of human behavior and his character.
I. A. Ilyin: “Russia brought us face to face with nature, harsh and exciting, with cold winters and hot summers, with a hopeless autumn and a stormy, passionate spring. She plunged us into these fluctuations, forced us to live with all her power and depth. This is how contradictory the Russian character is."
S. N. Bulgakov wrote that the continental climate (temperature amplitude in Oymyakon reaches 104 * C) is probably to blame for the fact that the Russian character is so contradictory, the thirst for absolute freedom and slave obedience, religiosity and atheism - these properties are incomprehensible to Europeans , create an aura of mystery in Russia. For us ourselves, Russia remains an unsolved mystery. F. I. Tyutchev said about Russia:
You can't understand Russia with your mind,
A common arshin cannot be measured,
She will become special -
You can only believe in Russia.
The severity of our climate also greatly affected the mentality of the Russian people. Living in a territory where winter lasts about six months, Russians have developed enormous willpower and perseverance in the struggle for survival in a cold climate. Low temperatures for most of the year also affected the temperament of the nation. Russians are more melancholy and slower than Western Europeans. They have to conserve and accumulate their energy necessary to fight the cold.
The harsh Russian winters have had a strong impact on the traditions of Russian hospitality. To deny a traveler shelter in winter in our conditions means dooming him to a cold death. Therefore, hospitality was perceived by Russians as a self-evident duty. The severity and stinginess of nature taught Russian people to be patient and obedient. But even more important was the persistent, continuous struggle with harsh nature. Russians had to engage in all kinds of crafts. This explains the practical orientation of their mind, dexterity and rationality. Rationalism, a prudent and pragmatic approach to life does not always help Great Russians, since the wayward climate sometimes deceives even the most modest expectations. And, having become accustomed to these deceptions, our man sometimes headlong prefers the most hopeless solution, contrasting the caprice of nature with the caprice of his own courage. V. O. Klyuchevsky called this tendency to tease happiness, to play with luck, “the Great Russian avos.” It is not for nothing that the proverbs arose: “Perhaps, yes, I suppose, they are brothers, both are lying” and “Avoska is a good guy; he will either help you out or teach you.”
Living in such unpredictable conditions, when the result of labor depends on the vagaries of nature, is possible only with inexhaustible optimism. In the ranking of national character traits, this quality is in first place for Russians. 51% of Russian respondents declared themselves optimists, and only 3% declared themselves pessimists. In the rest of Europe, constancy and preference for stability won among the qualities.
A Russian person needs to cherish a clear working day. This forces our peasant to rush to work hard in order to do a lot in a short time. No people in Europe are capable of such hard work for a short time. We even have a proverb: “A summer day feeds the year.” Such hard work is perhaps only characteristic of Russians. This is how climate influences the Russian mentality in many ways. The landscape has no less influence. Great Russia, with its forests and swampy swamps, presented the settler at every step with a thousand small dangers, difficulties and troubles, among which he had to find himself, with which he had to constantly fight. The proverb: “Don’t poke your nose into water without knowing the ford” also speaks of the caution of Russian people, to which nature has taught them.
The originality of Russian nature, its whims and unpredictability was reflected in the Russian mind, in the manner of its thinking. Everyday irregularities and accidents taught him to discuss the path traveled more than to think about the future, to look back more than to look forward. He learned to notice consequences more than to set goals. This skill is what we call hindsight. Such a well-known proverb as: “A Russian man is strong in hindsight” confirms this.
The beautiful Russian nature and the flatness of Russian landscapes have accustomed the people to contemplation. According to V. O. Klyuchevsky, “Our life, our art, our faith are in contemplation. But from excessive contemplation, souls become dreamy, lazy, weak-willed, and unhardworking.” Prudence, observation, thoughtfulness, concentration, contemplation - these are the qualities that were nurtured in the Russian soul by Russian landscapes.
But it will be interesting to analyze not only the positive traits of the Russian people, but also the negative ones. The power of the shire over the Russian soul also gives rise to a whole series of Russian “disadvantages.” Associated with this is Russian laziness, carelessness, lack of initiative, and a poorly developed sense of responsibility.
Russian laziness, it is called Oblomovism, is widespread in all strata of the people. We are lazy to do work that is not strictly necessary. Oblomovism is partially expressed in inaccuracy and being late (to work, to the theater, to business meetings).
Seeing the infinity of their expanses, Russian people consider these riches to be endless and do not take care of them. this creates mismanagement in our mentality. It seems to us that we have a lot of everything. And, further, in his work “About Russia” Ilyin writes: “From the feeling that our wealth is abundant and generous, a certain spiritual kindness is poured into us, a certain unlimited, affectionate good nature, calmness, openness of soul, sociability. There is enough for everyone and the Lord will send more ". This is where the roots of Russian generosity lie.
The “natural” calmness, good nature and generosity of the Russians amazingly coincided with the dogmas of Christian morality. Humility in the Russian people and from the church. Christian morality, which for centuries supported the entire Russian statehood, greatly influenced the people's character. Orthodoxy has fostered in Great Russians spirituality, all-encouraging love, responsiveness, sacrifice, and kindness. The unity of Church and state, the feeling of being not only a subject of the country, but also a part of a huge cultural community, has fostered extraordinary patriotism among Russians, reaching the point of sacrificial heroism.
A comprehensive geographical analysis of the ethnocultural and natural environment today makes it possible to reveal the most important features of the mentality of any people and to trace the stages and factors of its formation.
Conclusion
In my work, I analyzed the diversity of character traits of Russian people and found out that this is directly related to geographical conditions. Naturally, as in the character of any people, it has both positive and negative qualities.
Also, the peculiarities of life and everyday life of the Russian people are associated with natural conditions. I found out the influence of climatic conditions on the type of settlement, the structure of housing, the formation of clothing and food of Russian people, as well as the meaning of many Russian proverbs and sayings. And most importantly, it showed a reflection of the real world through the cultural environment of people, i.e. it fulfilled its task.
Medieval Europe was very different from modern civilization: its territory was covered with forests and swamps, and people settled in spaces where they could cut down trees, drain swamps and engage in agriculture. How did peasants live in the Middle Ages, what did they eat and do?
Middle Ages and the era of feudalism
The history of the Middle Ages covers the period from the 5th to the beginning of the 16th century, until the advent of the modern era, and refers mainly to the countries of Western Europe. This period is characterized by specific features of life: the feudal system of relationships between landowners and peasants, the existence of lords and vassals, the dominant role of the church in the life of the entire population.
One of the main features of the history of the Middle Ages in Europe is the existence of feudalism, a special socio-economic structure and method of production.
As a result of internecine wars, crusades and other military actions, kings gave their vassals lands on which they built estates or castles. As a rule, the entire land was donated along with the people living on it.
Dependence of peasants on feudal lords
The rich lord received ownership of all the lands surrounding the castle, on which villages with peasants were located. Almost everything that peasants did in the Middle Ages was taxed. Poor people, cultivating their land and his, paid the lord not only tribute, but also for the use of various devices for processing the crop: ovens, mills, presses for crushing grapes. They paid the tax in natural products: grain, honey, wine.
All peasants were highly dependent on their feudal lord; they practically worked for him as slave labor, eating what was left after growing the crop, most of which was given to their master and the church.
Wars periodically occurred between the vassals, during which the peasants asked for the protection of their master, for which they were forced to give him their allotment, and in the future they became completely dependent on him.
Division of peasants into groups
To understand how peasants lived in the Middle Ages, you need to understand the relationship between the feudal lord and the poor residents who lived in villages in the areas adjacent to the castle and cultivated plots of land.
The tools of peasant labor in the fields in the Middle Ages were primitive. The poorest harrowed the ground with a log, others with a harrow. Later, scythes and pitchforks made of iron appeared, as well as shovels, axes and rakes. From the 9th century, heavy wheeled plows began to be used in the fields, and plows were used on light soils. Sickles and threshing chains were used for harvesting.
All tools of labor in the Middle Ages remained unchanged for many centuries, because the peasants did not have the money to purchase new ones, and their feudal lords were not interested in improving working conditions, they were only concerned about getting a large harvest with minimal costs.
Peasant discontent
The history of the Middle Ages is characterized by constant confrontation between large landowners, as well as feudal relations between rich lords and the impoverished peasantry. This situation was formed on the ruins of ancient society, in which slavery existed, which clearly manifested itself during the era of the Roman Empire.
The rather difficult conditions of how peasants lived in the Middle Ages, the deprivation of their land plots and property, often caused protests, which were expressed in various forms. Some desperate people fled from their masters, others staged massive riots. The rebellious peasants almost always suffered defeat due to disorganization and spontaneity. After such riots, the feudal lords sought to fix the size of duties in order to stop their endless growth and reduce the discontent of the poor people.
The end of the Middle Ages and the slave life of peasants
As the economy grew and manufacturing emerged towards the end of the Middle Ages, the industrial revolution occurred, and many village residents began to move to cities. Among the poor population and representatives of other classes, humanistic views began to prevail, which considered personal freedom for each person an important goal.
As the feudal system was abandoned, an era called the New Time came, in which there was no longer any place for outdated relationships between peasants and their lords.
The life of peasants in the Middle Ages was harsh, full of hardships and trials. Heavy taxes, devastating wars and crop failures often deprived the peasant of the most necessary things and forced him to think only about survival. Just 400 years ago, in the richest country in Europe - France - travelers came across villages whose inhabitants were dressed in dirty rags, lived in half-dugouts, holes dug in the ground, and were so wild that in response to questions they could not utter a single articulate word. It is not surprising that in the Middle Ages the view of the peasant as half-animal, half-devil was widespread; the words "villan", "villania", denoting rural residents, meant at the same time "rudeness, ignorance, bestiality."
There is no need to think that all peasants in medieval Europe were like devils or ragamuffins. No, many peasants had gold coins and elegant clothes hidden in their chests, which they wore on holidays; the peasants knew how to have fun at village weddings, when beer and wine flowed like a river and everyone was eaten up in a whole series of half-starved days. The peasants were shrewd and cunning, they clearly saw the advantages and disadvantages of those people whom they had to encounter in their simple lives: a knight, a merchant, a priest, a judge. If the feudal lords looked at the peasants as devils crawling out of hellish holes, then the peasants paid their lords in the same coin: a knight rushing through the sown fields with a pack of hunting dogs, shedding someone else’s blood and living off someone else’s labor, seemed to them not a person, but a demon.
It is generally accepted that it was the feudal lord who was the main enemy of the medieval peasant. The relationship between them was indeed complicated. The villagers more than once rose up to fight against their masters. They killed the lords, robbed and set fire to their castles, captured fields, forests and meadows. The largest of these uprisings were the Jacquerie (1358) in France, and the uprisings led by Wat Tyler (1381) and the Ket brothers (1549) in England. One of the most important events in the history of Germany was the Peasants' War of 1525.
Such formidable outbursts of peasant discontent were rare. They happened most often when life in the villages became truly unbearable due to the atrocities of soldiers, royal officials or the attack of feudal lords on the rights of peasants. Usually the villagers knew how to get along with their masters; Both of them lived according to ancient, ancient customs, which provided for almost all possible disputes and disagreements.
Peasants were divided into three large groups: free, land dependent and personally dependent. There were relatively few free peasants; they did not recognize the authority of any lord over themselves, considering themselves free subjects of the king. They paid taxes only to the king and wanted to be tried only by the royal court. Free peasants often sat on former "nobody's" lands; these could be cleared forest glades, drained swamps, or lands reclaimed from the Moors (in Spain).
A land-dependent peasant was also considered free by law, but he sat on land belonging to the feudal lord. The taxes that he paid to the lord were considered as payment not “from a person”, but “from the land” that he uses. In most cases, such a peasant could leave his piece of land and leave the lord - most often no one would hold him back, but he basically had nowhere to go.
Finally, the personally dependent peasant could not leave his master when he wanted to. He belonged body and soul to his lord, was his serf, that is, a person attached to the lord by a lifelong and indissoluble bond. The personal dependence of the peasant was expressed in humiliating customs and rituals, showing the superiority of the master over the mob. The serfs were obliged to perform corvée for the lord - to work in his fields. Corvée was very difficult, although many of the duties of serfs seem quite harmless to us today: for example, the custom of giving the lord a goose for Christmas, and a basket of eggs for Easter. However, when the patience of the peasants came to an end and they took up pitchforks and axes, the rebels demanded, along with the abolition of corvée, the abolition of these duties, which humiliated their human dignity.
By the end of the Middle Ages there were not so many serf peasants left in Western Europe. Peasants were freed from serfdom by free city-communes, monasteries and kings. Many feudal lords also understood that it was wiser to build relationships with peasants on a mutually beneficial basis, without oppressing them excessively. Only extreme need and the impoverishment of European chivalry after 1500 forced the feudal lords of some European countries to launch a desperate attack on the peasants. The goal of this offensive was to restore serfdom, the “second edition of serfdom,” but in most cases the feudal lords had to be content with driving peasants off the land, seizing pastures and forests, and restoring some ancient customs. The peasants of Western Europe responded to the onslaught of the feudal lords with a series of formidable uprisings and forced their masters to retreat.
The main enemies of the peasants in the Middle Ages were not feudal lords, but hunger, war and disease. Hunger was a constant companion of the villagers. Once every 2-3 years there was always a shortage of crops in the fields, and once every 7-8 years the village was visited by real famine, when people ate grass and tree bark, scattered in all directions, begging. Part of the village population died out in such years; It was especially hard for children and the elderly. But even in fruitful years, the peasant’s table was not bursting with food - his food consisted mainly of vegetables and bread. Residents of Italian villages took lunch with them to the field, which most often consisted of a loaf of bread, a slice of cheese and a couple of onions. Peasants did not eat meat every week. But in the fall, carts loaded with sausages and hams, wheels of cheese and barrels of good wine pulled from the villages to the city markets and to the castles of the feudal lords. The Swiss shepherds had a rather cruel, from our point of view, custom: the family sent their teenage son alone to the mountains to herd goats for the whole summer. They didn’t give him any food from home (only sometimes the compassionate mother, secretly from his father, slipped a piece of flatbread into his son’s bosom for the first days). The boy drank goat's milk for several months, ate wild honey, mushrooms and generally everything that he could find edible in the alpine meadows. Those who survived under these conditions became such big men after a few years that all the kings of Europe sought to fill their guards exclusively with the Swiss. The period from 1100 to 1300 was probably the brightest in the life of the European peasantry. The peasants plowed more and more land, used various technical innovations in cultivating fields, and learned gardening, horticulture and viticulture. There was enough food for everyone, and the population of Europe was rapidly increasing. Peasants who could not find anything to do in the countryside went to the cities and engaged in trade and crafts there. But by 1300, the possibilities for developing the peasant economy were exhausted - there was no more undeveloped land, old fields were depleted, cities increasingly closed their gates to uninvited strangers. It became increasingly difficult to feed themselves, and the peasants, weakened by poor nutrition and periodic hunger, became the first victims of infectious diseases. The plague epidemics that tormented Europe from 1350 to 1700 showed that the population had reached its limit and could no longer increase.
At this time, the European peasantry was entering a difficult period in its history. Dangers come from all sides: in addition to the usual threat of famine, there are also diseases, the greed of royal tax collectors, and attempts at enslavement by the local feudal lord. The villager has to be extremely careful if he wants to survive in these new conditions. It’s good to have few hungry mouths in the house, which is why peasants of the late Middle Ages got married late and had children late. In France in the XVI-XVII centuries. There was such a custom: a son could bring a bride to his parents’ house only when his father or mother was no longer alive. Two families could not sit on the same plot of land - the harvest was barely enough for one couple with its offspring.
The caution of the peasants was manifested not only in planning their family life. Peasants, for example, were distrustful of the market and preferred to produce the things they needed themselves rather than buy them. From their point of view, they were certainly right, because price surges and the tricks of urban merchants made the peasants too dependent and risky on market affairs. Only in the most developed areas of Europe - Northern Italy, the Netherlands, lands on the Rhine, near cities such as London and Paris - have peasants been living since the 13th century. actively traded agricultural products in the markets and bought the handicrafts they needed there. In most other regions of Western Europe, rural residents until the 18th century. produced everything they needed on their own farms; They came to the markets only occasionally to pay the rent to the lord with the proceeds.
Before the emergence of large capitalist enterprises that produced cheap and high-quality clothing, shoes, and household items, the development of capitalism in Europe had little impact on peasants living in the outbacks of France, Spain or Germany. He wore homemade wooden shoes, homespun clothes, illuminated his home with a torch, and often made dishes and furniture himself. These home craft skills, long preserved among the peasants, began in the 16th century. used by European entrepreneurs. Guild regulations often prohibited the establishment of new industries in cities; then rich merchants distributed raw materials for processing (for example, combing yarn) to residents of surrounding villages for a small fee. The contribution of peasants to the development of early European industry was considerable, and we are only now beginning to truly appreciate it.
Despite the fact that they had to do business with city merchants, willy-nilly, the peasants were wary not only of the market and the merchant, but also of the city as a whole. Most often, the peasant was interested only in the events that took place in his native village, and even in two or three neighboring villages. During the Peasants' War in Germany, detachments of villagers each acted in the territory of their own small district, thinking little about the situation of their neighbors. As soon as the troops of the feudal lords hid behind the nearest forest, the peasants felt safe, laid down their arms and returned to their peaceful pursuits.
The life of a peasant was almost independent of the events taking place in the “big world” - the crusades, changes of rulers on the throne, disputes between learned theologians. It was much more influenced by the annual changes that occurred in nature - the change of seasons, rains and frosts, deaths and offspring of livestock. The peasant’s circle of human contacts was small and limited to a dozen or two familiar faces, but constant communication with nature gave the villager a rich experience of emotional experiences and relationships with the world. Many of the peasants subtly felt the charm of the Christian faith and pondered intensely about the relationship between man and God. The peasant was not at all a stupid and illiterate idiot, as he was portrayed by his contemporaries and some historians many centuries later.
For a long time, the Middle Ages treated the peasant with disdain, as if not wanting to notice him. Wall paintings and book illustrations of the 13th-14th centuries. Peasants are rarely depicted. But if artists draw them, then they must be at work. The peasants are clean and neatly dressed; their faces are more like the thin, pale faces of monks; lined up, the peasants gracefully swing their hoes or flails to thresh grain. Of course, these are not real peasants with faces weathered from constant work in the air and clumsy fingers, but rather their symbols, pleasing to the eye. European painting has noticed the real peasant since about 1500: Albrecht Durer and Pieter Bruegel (nicknamed “The Peasant”) begin to depict peasants as they are: with rough, half-animal faces, dressed in baggy, ridiculous outfits. The favorite subject of Bruegel and Dürer is peasant dances, wild, similar to bear trampling. Of course, there is a lot of mockery and contempt in these drawings and engravings, but there is something else in them. The charm of energy and enormous vitality emanating from the peasants could not leave the artists indifferent. The best minds of Europe begin to think about the fate of those people who supported on their shoulders a brilliant society of knights, professors and artists: not only jesters entertaining the public, but also writers and preachers begin to speak the language of peasants. Saying goodbye to the Middle Ages, European culture for the last time showed us a peasant who was not at all bent over at work - in the drawings of Albrecht Durer we see peasants dancing, secretly talking about something with each other, and armed peasants.
Old log house covered with shingles Mazanka, outskirts
The way of life of the peasants also changed very slowly. The working day still began early: in the summer at sunrise, and in the winter long before dawn. The basis of rural life was the peasant household, which consisted (with a few exceptions) of a large family, where parents lived under the same roof with married and unmarried sons and unmarried daughters.
The larger the yard, the easier it was for him to cope in the short four to six month period allotted by the nature of the middle zone for field work. Such a yard contained more livestock and could cultivate more land. The cohesion of the economy was based on joint labor under the leadership of the head of the family.
Peasant buildings consisted of a small and low-height wooden hut (commonly called “huts”), a barn, a cattle barn, a cellar, a threshing floor and a bathhouse. Not everyone had the latter. Bathhouses were often heated in turns with neighbors.
The huts were made from logs; in forest areas the roofs were covered with shingles, and in the rest, more often with straw, which was the cause of frequent fires. In these places they were devastating due to the fact that the peasants did not have gardens or trees around their houses, as in the southern regions of the Chernigov province. Therefore, the fire spread quickly from building to building.
In the districts of the Bryansk region, which then belonged to the Chernigov province, one could find mud huts - a type of house characteristic of Little Russia. They had a pipe, but no floors. The walls of such a house consisted of a wooden frame (thin branches) or mud brick and were coated with clay on both the outside and inside, and then covered with lime.
Throughout the 19th century, most peasant dwellings continued to lack stoves with chimneys. It was not only, and not even so much, the complexity of their manufacture.
S. Vinogradov. In the hut.
A.G. Venetsianov. Barn floor
Many peasants were convinced that a “black” or chicken hut (without a chimney) was drier than a white one (with a chimney). In the “black” hut, a window was cut at the top to allow smoke to escape. Additionally, when the stove was lit, a door or window was opened. The influx of fresh air cleared the atmosphere of the cramped dwelling, which contained not only a large peasant family, but also often a calf or lambs, which had to be kept warm for some time after birth. However, the walls of such huts and people’s clothes were constantly covered with soot.
The interior decoration of the hut was not very diverse. Opposite the door, in one corner there was a stove, in the other there was a chest or box, above which there were shelves with dishes. The stove was rarely made of brick because of its high cost. More often it was made from clay, making a vault on wooden hoops, which were then burned after drying. Several dozen baked bricks were used only on the surface of the roof to lay out the pipe.
In the eastern corner opposite from the stove there are images and a table. A platform was made along the wall from the stove, which served instead of a bed, and benches were located along the remaining walls. The floor was rarely plank, but more often earthen. The stove, with or without a chimney, was made in such a way that there was always a warm place on which several people could fit. This was necessary to dry clothes and warm people who were forced to spend the whole day in the cold and slush.
However, all family members gathered in the hut only in the coldest winter time. In the summer, the men spent the night in the field with horses, in the fall, until severe cold, while threshing continued, on the threshing floor, under the barn.
In addition to the hut, the peasant yard had unheated cages or barns. Fabrics, clothes, wool were stored here; self-spinning wheels, as well as food supplies and bread. Before the onset of winter cold, married family members or unmarried daughters lived here. The number of cages depended on wealth and the presence of young families. Many peasants stored dry grain and potatoes in special earthen pits.
Sheds or sheds for livestock were most often built without high costs of materials: from thin logs and even in the form of a fence with a large number of holes. Livestock feed was placed along the wall and served as bedding at the same time. Pigs were rarely housed in separate rooms and simply wandered around the yard; chickens were kept in the hallway, attics and huts. Waterfowl ducks and geese were more often bred in those villages and villages that stood near lakes and rivers.
In terms of food, the peasants were content with what was produced on their own farm. On weekdays, food was seasoned with lard or milk, and for holidays there was ham or sausage, chicken, pig or lamb. Chaff was added to flour to make bread. In the spring, many peasants ate sorrel and other greens, boiling them in beet brine or seasoning them with kvass. A soup called “kulesh” was prepared from flour. At that time, only wealthy peasants baked bread.
According to the description left, peasant clothes were also still made at home. For men, the main part of it is a zipun (caftan) made of homemade cloth up to the knees, a shirt made of homemade canvas, felt skullcaps on the head, and in winter, lambskin hats with ears and a cloth top.
Women's clothing was made from the same material, but differed in a special cut. When going outside, they put on a wide cloth jacket (scroll), under which a fur coat was worn in winter. Scrolls were predominantly white. Women also wore poneva, that is, a piece of colored woolen fabric with a canvas apron. Long fur coats were rare. On ordinary days the head was tied with a canvas scarf, and on holidays - with a colored one.