How did a girl got married in the Middle Ages

Marriage was probably the worst thing that could happen to women in the past till at least two centuries ago. During the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, or even in the modern centuries, marriage was often a reason for crying and grief. Until early in the 20th century in some countries, there was a great sobbing coming from the bride on the day of her wedding.

Why was marriage so bad?
Because:

• ninety percent of the time, there was no love involved (the percent represents my personal estimate);
• because the husband basically owned the wife, and he had the right to apply coercions if he felt it was right; in other words, he could beat up his wife at will;
• because the wife couldn't get a divorce;
• because a woman had no right whatsoever unless she was rich and there was money involved.

Girl inspecting a Hope Chest. 1929, author Poul Friis Nybo.
U.S. public domain
from Wiki Commons

So, how did the couples get married?
First, marriages were based on interests and wealth. If a woman owned some land, cattle, or goods to put her above the peasant class, she could expect a husband with a similar status or wealth. But if she were Cinderella with a golden heart and a super-model overall appearance but was too poor, her parents may give her to an old, rich, and mean bachelor for a few bucks. That’s bad, to begin with!

Second, somebody else was choosing her husband, usually her parents, not because they didn’t love their daughter but because they followed the local traditions, like everybody. They would choose whatever was best for her and for them from among the suitors. Sometimes, midwives paired a bride with a groom and negotiated a contract. Those middle persons (or shall I call them marriage agents?) would come to the bride’s house to propose a groom, and then they would say what was expected of the bride to bring into the marriage. She’ll bring what is called a dowry, often composed of household items and personal pieces of clothing. Wealthy families would even give land, money, cattle, and other goods, including real estate, especially if they had little or no pretenders.


Third, once married, the woman stayed married. No way around it. If she couldn’t take it anymore, the only option was to run away, hoping that the mean husband wouldn’t find her and bring you back, in which case she not only endured increased beating from her significant other but public opprobrium as well. When a girl married, she had to move to her husband’s house. Usually, he was still living with his parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and other relatives. There was a whole new world, waiting for the new wife to start cooking, cleaning, working the farm, taking care of the kids, and performing other tasks that were assigned by her mother-in-law.

Maybe the worst thing was that the boy she liked was still in the village and married to someone else he didn’t care about.

So, was there a wedding?
When their kids got married, most wealthy families put up a public announcement and a small party not to celebrate the event but to show off their social status. Also, much thought was put into the gifts given to the newlyweds by their godparents or local lord protector. However, marriage into a poor family often went quiet, the event being reported only to the church, which kept a record, and to close relatives. In some cases, not even the church knew. It wasn’t until the Reformation that the church started to ask for a formal ceremony in front of a minister.

Then, after the wedding, what?
Simple! The woman took her dowry chest and moved away from home. From now on, she was on her own. If she made it through the marriage, as most couples did, then she did the same for her children as her parents had done for her. And the cycle started over again—and it didn’t stop until the 20th century!

The soldier of the late Middle Ages and what he wore in the battle

The medieval soldier, as we know him from movies and illustrated books, doesn’t always match reality. The armored knight was, indeed, a fact of the Crusades and other wars of the early Middle Ages. But by the late 14th century, the knight, usually a noble, found something else to do than go to war. He then hired somebody else to do the job. So, most former peasants forced to fight for their masters were now paid to do so. As they didn’t have much money to pay for a heavy iron outfit, which, anyway, was very inconvenient in combat, he made himself a lightweight suit with matching accessories.

the glaive

The soldier of the late Middle Ages wore a quilted jacket made from multilayered canvas.
The head was covered with a sallet helmet. This helmet had a peak in the back to protect the neck and a front visor lowered only in battle to protect the face and eyes.

He wore a sheepskin mitten, and over it, he wore a mitten gauntlet made out of iron to protect the hands and wrists, though these things limited the movement. The jacket also had metal reinforcements on the elbows and along the arms. The rich knights were still wearing light-protecting armor over the jack. The common soldier wore leather boots that usually only lasted about three months because of the long marches on foot that a medieval warrior had to endure. (He would walk at least 10 km or 6 miles daily.)

As part of his load, a medieval soldier had weapons and gears.
The most used weapon was a pole known as a glaive, made of two parts: a long wood stick and a long metal knife connected at the end of the stick. A soldier fought most of his battles with this pole that he used for stabbing, poking, or knocking the enemies aside at arm's length. Sometimes, he used a sword for one-to-one fights. The soldier would work the sword with his right hand while on his left he would keep a buckler used to deflect bows and hit an opponent in the face!

He also had many knives, from military daggers to eating knives. The medieval soldier also carried wooden bowls for eating and some wooden silverware. He had a small purse or belt bag where he kept some personal belongings and probably some money.

Because a soldier from the late Middle Ages was always on the go, his luggage was as light as it could be. There was no room for stacking food or other items. He usually ate on the road, mostly by stealing from the households he sacked. If he stole some other goods, those were given to the commander. He drank a lot of wine and beer as it was cleaner than water. This soldier was a brave man who fought many battles year-round.

The European Middle Ages Social Hierarchy

The Middle Ages

The boss of the my boss is my boss

Like today, some people lived better than others in the Middle Ages. In fact, very few had a better life than the rest of them. It was all based on wealth (like today). But unlike today, when basically everybody could get rich with proper attitude, tools, and luck, in the Middle Ages, one should have been born into a wealthy family. Access to power and money was limited to a few people. The social hierarchy of the Middle Ages was very different from our contemporary hierarchy and was based on the amount of land someone owned.
Here is the simplified social tree:

The King
He was the head of the state, the boss of everybody else, had the most power, and was the richest of them all. His mom and dad were usually kings and queens, too, and the same was true about Grandpa and Grandma.
Some kings were better than others, and a few of them declared themselves Emperors, which is a bigger, fatter king who ruled over more than one nation.
The king was the boss of the barons, the lords, and the peasants. Sometimes, in some places, they were the boss of the bishops, too.

The Bishops
These people were chosen from within the church. They were once priests but advanced to administrative positions. It looks like they are mainly remembered as tax collectors, which, like today, nobody likes. They ruled over dioceses and were the bosses of all the priests and monasteries within a diocese. They were very rich, and often, they grew powerful and influential.

The Barons
Barons were people who received a tenure, or fief, from their boss, the King. At first, they were knights, and the King gave them a piece of land as a reward for their bravery in a battle. Then, they ruled over that piece of land, acquiring all the agricultural products, selling them, and making money. If one was raised to the noble rank of baron, then their children would be barons, too.
Over the centuries, some barons grew so powerful that they didn’t want to work for the kings anymore and made their own state so they could, too, be bosses.

The Lords
The Lords were people who rented land from the barons (who were given land by the king). So, barons were the lords’ bosses. A baron could be the boss of many lords.
The lords had the peasants work the land for them. They were not as rich as the barons, and many of them lived a simple life, but they had a better social status than the peasants. And they could advance to be barons if they did well in battles and killed a lot of enemies.

The peasants
The peasants were the lower people in the European Middle Ages hierarchy. They made up the majority of people. They lived a simple life, and they worked hard for their bosses, who were the lords. In exchange for their hard work, they usually got bread and beer. They had a very small piece of land that the lord had given them so they could have some other food besides bread and beer. The son of a peasant was a peasant, too, and there was no chance that such a son would, someday, advance to a lord position.

So, between or within these social classes, there were other positions held by people chosen within that respective class. These positions were mainly administrative jobs with little or no influence over the system.

Historians have a name for this European Middle Age Hierarchy: it is the cold Feudal System Or Feudalism, where a feud is a piece of land given to somebody in exchange for some sort of service. The Feudalism system of the Middle Ages is, though, more complex, and I may describe it in other articles.

Medicine in the Middle Ages| A list of healing herbs

How did the people of medieval Europe live without health insurance, hospitals, clinics, and other forms of health care that are available to us today?

 
Well, most people suffered in silence; some may haven't even known they were sick, as many diseases were diagnosed later. Or if they knew, it was more likely an acute pain that they could not take it anymore.

The most common form of treatment was the medicine administered to them by doctors (who had studied some classic Greek and Roman medicines) or, in small and remote communities, by other healers. There were physicians, barbers, surgeons, itinerary surgeons (traveling from place to place and offering their services to the wounded), healers (people without any formal training but a lot of hands-on experience in working with medicines), and apothecaries (the pharmacists of today).

The majority of medicines available in the Middle Ages  were obtained from plants, herbs, and spices that were simmered, boiled, minced, and mixed with other ingredients to make a medicine that was mainly drunk, eaten, and occasionally inhaled.

 
Here is a list of herbs, spices, and other plants used in curing (see Daily life in the Middle Ages by Paul B. Newman, p 261):

Hippocrates, greek physician,
 (cca 460 - 370 BCE)

Rosemary                      
sage
marjoram
mint
dill
squill
pimpinella
henbane
betony
pennyroyal
cumin
cardamon
ginger
cloves
rhubarb
lettuce
and seeds of various trees

Other healing solutions included some unusual matters like pig dung for nosebleeds or raven droppings for toothaches. The variety of materials used for healing in medieval Europe is both surprising and intriguing, reflecting the creativity and resourcefulness of the healers of the time.

Mercury(that today we know is harmful for the human body) was also used in the preparation of some medicines, as well as gold or some dust gathered from Egyptian mummies. These medicines were very expensive and so only available to the very rich people, highlighting the stark inequality in healthcare access in medieval Europe.

Beer in the Middle Ages

This is the interior of an old inn in Bucharest, Romania.
It is called "Caru cu bere" which may translate
as "The Beer Wagon"
Photo by Baloo69 on Wikimedia Commons
 may translate as

Today, we think of beer mainly as an alcoholic beverage that’s consumed as a drink and gets you in trouble if you don’t know when to stop. But back in the day, people used beer for extended purposes and for other reasons then just entertaining around a football game.

Back in the day, they even made beer soup for the entire family; parents, grandparents, and kids were fed with beer soup.
Beer Soup Medieval Recipe (When beer was served for breakfast and beer bellies were well respected)  This is an article I wrote last summer for Hubpages. It is a short history of beer mainly with the purpose of introducing an old beer soup recipe.

Today I want to speak about beer as a drink in the Middle Ages.
Now, we may think that centuries ago, the best drink for most people was water. And this is partially true. But we do not know that a better drink for our ancestors was beer. And it was quite common among people of all conditions and ages.

One reason they consumed beer was that the water was often impure, posing a health hazard. In this regard, beer was far healthier. The fermentation process of the grains destroys most of the harmful bacteria and other germs that may contaminate the water, so beer was a far more hygienic drink.

Beer was brewed by everyone. The earliest people we know today that they made this drink were Egyptians, some 2000 years B.C. It is said that Greeks and Romans liked wine, though they, too, knew how to make beer.

In the Middle Ages, beer was made at home by housewives, sold at taverns to customers, and in large commercial enterprises for mass consumption. It was so popular that it became the drink of the “common man,” with the largest consumption in German Countries, the Low Countries, and England. It was even a method of payment for workers.

Beer also had its rules and regulations in cities and monasteries, where monks got beer at strict ratios. In London, they had to limit how much water you could draw from a well or spring. (Because they would dry out the wells). In fact, some historians have said that, for the countries mentioned above, there was one brewery for every one hundred people. In this condition, it is no wonder that the municipality of London found them dangerous for the public water supplies.

Beer was not the only drink, though. They also made wine, especially in Greece, Italy, Spain, France, and other eastern and central European countries. With all these drinks, medieval people did not give up on water. But this may be my next subject.

Preserving food for later use or transportation

Sea salt harvest - France
Rolf Süssbrich -own work

Salting was one of the most used methods of preserving food in the past, before freezers and fridges. Salt was a very popular item and everybody needed it in quite large quantities.

Sea salt was obtained by flooding specially constructed fields near a sea. The water evaporated, and salt (with grit and other impurities) was at the bottom. This salt was cheap to obtain and cheap to sell and could be produced at large scales.

More pure salt was obtained from natural springs that run through salt deposits in the ground. A series of pipes was set to capture the water of such springs. Then, the water was boiled in huge kettles until evaporation, leaving a better salt behind. The third way to get salt was by digging it in salt mines.

Salt was used to preserve meats and fish, cheese, and butter.

Fruits were dehydrated on large wooden surfaces, often placed outside, under direct sun, and indoors, in a room with opened windows to allow air to circulate. They dried grapes, apricots, apples, dates, figs, pears, peaches, and many other fruits. Some fruits were coated with sugar and dried again.  Some vegetables, like beans, peas, and lentils, were harvested already dried; others, especially the root vegetables, and potatoes, were stored in a cool, dry place and sometimes buried in sand in a sheltered place. They also dried all the herbs used in cooking (or healing practices).

They also used brine (a mixture of salt and water) to preserve the texture of meat. The meat or fish was sunken in brine and left until consumption. The same mixture was used to preserve the cheese. Many vegetables were also pickled in the same way.

A brine mixture with wine, vinegar, spices, and seeds was most often used for pickling.
The wine was also combined with sugar and turned into syrup for preserving fruits.

The oil preservation method was widely used for packing olives. Animal fat was used to preserve cooked meats. Fried or roasted meat was immersed in liquid animal fat and preserved until ready for a meal. Sometimes, instead of fat, they used gelatin obtained by boiling hooves and feet from animals.  

People mainly preserved food for later consumption. Winter was especially hard since no vegetable could grow. The fruits and vegetable were picked and dried at the end of the season. The roots were collected at maturity and sored in dark, cool and dry places. Meats were preserved mainly at the end of fall, when most cattle were slaughter. Pigs were sacrificed even later when the people exhausted the fodder.

People also preserved food to prevent it from spoiling during transportation. As roads developed, more and more goods were traded between different parts of a country or between continents. Spices and exotic fruits came to Europe, and later, coffee and tea were introduced.

Country side diet in the Middle Ages (aprox. 1000 to 1300)

Medieval farmers, paying the "Urbar."

In the Middle Ages, royalty,  nobility, churches, and monasteries owned most of the European land. Very few other individuals owned a little piece of land, like chevaliers or craftsmen.  The rest of the people were considered lucky to have a little cottage to sleep overnight. They were serfs who belonged to a noble and were allowed to work the noble’s land. They would receive food in exchange for their work, which extended all day. That was their paycheck. The food they got was only enough to survive.

Today, it is very difficult to reconstruct the life of a peasant in the Middle Ages. If there are plenty of records for the upper classes, historians have to dig deep for information about the serfs. The documents that they can find are tax records, donations, wills, household inventories, or funeral banquets. One of these documents shows us that in 1268, in the domain of Beaumont-le-Roger, in France, a couple would receive one large and two smaller breads, 2.5 a gallon of wine, 250 gr. of meat or eggs, and a bushel of peas. And this pay was considered high.

These serfs were populating the rural areas, and they accounted for the majority of a country's (or kingdom's) population. Around the house, they were given a small piece of land, like a regular backyard today, where they were allowed to do whatever they wished.  Almost all families were growing some kind of animals and birds and cultivating a small garden.  They usually had pigs, goats, sheep, and a few chickens or geese. For everything they grew or raised, they had to pay taxes to the landlord in the form of produce they got: eggs from birds, meat, wool, and milk from animals.

Their diet was very dull compared to modern eating habits. The base of a daily meal was the bread. Often made by secondary cereals like barley, rye, spelt, or a mixture of grain. Today, we would consider this type of bread healthy compared with the withe bread, but long ago, it wasn’t as easy to process cereals (and deplete them of all the good nutrients). The bread of peasants was very dark in color. The lighter the color of bread, the higher the social status.

The other product in their daily diet was wine. Grapes are easy to grow in good soil, and the wine-making process is an old discovery. In the Middle Ages, having a winery was so common that everybody knew how to make wine. Remember, peasants got wine in exchange for their labor. If they owned a small piece of land, they would cultivate some grapes, too. This habit has survived to this day in Europe, and we can still find many family farms that cultivate grapes to make wine. So, wine was popular and was consumed by everybody in the family, like beer.

Meat was another important part of the Middle Ages diet. People got the meat either as pay for work or from their own small backyard. Sometimes, they hunted small game, but hunting big game was mostly a privilege of the nobles. The meat was consumed mostly fresh and sometimes was salted and smoked to be preserved over the winter. Again, the ratio of meat was very small, and most days, it was not even part of the meal. Along with meat, as a product of the sustainable small economy, cheese, milk, and eggs were used.

Vegetables were largely consumed. The little backyard of a cottage that belonged to a peasant had a garden where women, children, and elderly folks who lived in the house would cultivate legumes, greens, and vegetables such as cabbage, onion, garlic, turnips, a variety of beans and peas, leeks, spinach, squash, etc. From the wild, they would complement with mushrooms, asparagus, watercress, and a few aromatic herbs like basil, fennel, marjoram, or thyme.   

These folks in the Middle Ages were completely dependent on the weather for their survival. If the year was bad (too dry or too wet) and the cereal crop was compromised, then they could face famine. Between 1000 and 1300, four major food crises affected Europe (1005-6, 1032-33, 1195-97, 1224-26). However, the human species survived to this day and writes stories like this one on the Internet!