This doesn't account for the work they had to do at home. They had their own food to harvest, animals to tend to, clothes to make and the materials to make those clothes didn't fall out of the sky. They had to chop firewood, mend the home, cook the food from scratch. Their mandatory holidays weren't spent pursuing a hobby, traveling, playing games or consuming entertainment. Those days off just meant they could do all the work they needed to do at home instead of doing all the church's work on top of their own.
Another way to phrase it:
As our personal workloads were reduced, that free time was commandeered by our employers
Peasants' work was dominantly agricultural, with some required contribution to maintenance of lands and structures around their manor.
Each peasant worked either a family lot, or an open field directly managed by the manor.
They may have worked at home for mending clothes and other simple tasks, but very little was a private responsibility.
Days not committed to work could be spent for games and festivals. There were no private hobbies, but public life was quite rich.
They worked for their Lord, and in return could live there and be subsistence farmers. And the late middle ages had taxes on everything.
Want to mill your wheat? Use the lords mill. Bake bread? Lords ovens. Also pay your tithe, and more taxes due to the war of course.
Enjoy your holiday, but you'll still have to work your own field, milk the goats, gather firewood (no cutting trees from the lords forest though), fetch and boil water, mend the roof, put food away for winter, etc etc. But enjoy only working for rent every other day.
Everyone is talking about this like it didn't vary from century to century, or country to country.
The stat refers specifically to England in the 14th century and only covers work done for the landlord (mostly field work, which was hard labour, sometimes extremely long hours).
What work would you understand as not being for the landlord, and what is your source describing the balance of work versus rest throughout the day?
Did the fourteen century mark a great change from the thirteenth, or were conditions largely the same throughout the general era?
Did the fourteen century mark a great change from the thirteenth, or were conditions largely the same throughout the general era?
Massively different. The 14th century saw the death of over half the population by Plague, and then another 20%. That meant a HUGE labour shortage, higher wages by a large amount and "unhappy" landowners and the immediate end of the 100 year war with France. It also hugely increased mobility for peasants, since the receiving nobility would happily accept them (despite technically being allowed to).
It resulted in the Peasants revolt in the 1380s which saw the tower of London sacked before it was suppressed. So landowners had a lot of reasons to keep the peasants at least moderately happy.
So the late 14th century Britain was basically a worker paradise compared to the rest of the middle ages. But only because a good 75% of the population died from disease and famine in the decades before.
@unfreeradical sorry, I can't cite any sources. I read around this subject the first time I saw this meme, because I was curious as the people who are usually cited as doing less total work than us are hunter-gatherers.
Here are a couple of pages about types of peasant, work, etc.
If you're saying this because you disagree and have sources of your own to recommend, please do as I'm always open to learning more.
Jokes on you, I’m underemployed.
Fewer. Fewer holidays. Mad about it all the same.
This made me think of Historia Civilis' video about work.
You say holidays but I am imagining prayer and activities that keep the church in power :/
What did they do the rest of the time?
Play games. Sing and dance.
Imbibe.
Ogle the strapping lads and buxom maidens.
Take care of gramps, while listening to stories about the good old days, when the soil was so soft the fields virtually plowed themselves, lords properly honored the labor of their surfs, and knights actually helped their ladies mount a horse, and could even buy a whole suit of armor for less than five times their annual earnings.
What would you do?
Mostly work at home.
Most peasants didn't own the fields they were working to feed their own household. Instead, they leased them from the local lord, who owned most of the land.
(This seems to be the core difference between "peasants" and " freemen" - the latter owned their own land.)
I'm exchange, they were called in to work the lord's fields as well as their leased "home plot".
As far as I know, this statistic only refers to the "holidays" where the lord was not allowed to call in their land-tenants to work. They still had to work to maintain their own household as needed.
This doesn't mean that people had to work on the lord's fields all day on all non-holidays, it was just an upper limit. The exact amount was probably codified in local laws / the lease agreement.
It also doesn't mean that people had to work all the time even on holidays - just enough to get their shit done. Some days were even explicit "no work at all" holidays or half-days, were peeps where expected to show up at church instead.
And the amount of work needed generally varied wildly with the seasons - harvest season was crunch time, winter was slow season. It also varied depending on the exact location (agriculture in the Mediterranean was different than in Scotland) and on the available technology.
I think you overestimate the power of the church on everyday life.
We are also taxed way more.
Do you have a source on that? Those peasants were basically owned by their land lord.
If you can't afford to quit your job, whether because of a mortgage, health insurance, or whatever...you're basically owned by your employer too. They just have fewer responsibilities toward you.
Yes, school is my source. Of course this is an oversimplification and incomparable situation, but in essence they paid much less.
Capitalism feels like mass-produced, highly-automated, technologically-advanced feudalism.
And manipulated in more sinister ways! Fun!
And we live twice as long. That's both good and bad, I guess.
In terms of tax burden, it is unequivocally bad.
