A Cultural History of Work in the Medieval Age (The Cultural Histories Series) by Valerie L. Garver

Author:Valerie L. Garver [Garver, Valerie L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2020-09-16T22:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 6.1 Two men threshing a sheaf with flails. Luttrell Psalter, c. 1325–35. London, British Library, Add. 42130, folio 74v. Wikimedia Commons.

Meanwhile, the fields were “gleaned” by people who picked up remnants of the crop left after the main processes. Often these were local poor, and this opportunity to gather remnants was considered a form of charitable relief. The harvested field could then be turned to pasture, with the shepherds and herders potentially moving in to the area while tending to their animals. This movement modified over a longer period of time because the fields were rotated for different uses over seasons and years, creating multiyear oscillations in the use of landscape and attendant movement of workers. A commonly held approach was the three-course system, using some fields to grow grains, others for legumes or other supplementary crops, and leaving more fallow, and rotating the fields’ uses to maximize the extraction of resources from the soil. Of course, there were variations on this scheme, depending on regional conditions and specialization. As a study of Flanders indicates, however, more fragmentary systems could be used on the ground than these neat theoretical divisions of the landscape might at first suggest.38 Yet, despite the lack of European-wide clarity, the general principle should hold that harvest mobility within the landscape reflected local cropping practices, which were significantly determined by geography and climate, as well as different farming methods. Variability, not unity, was the hallmark of medieval farming and associated labor movements.

That is not to say there were no parallels across Europe. In general, the main late summer harvest was undoubtedly a time of great worker mobility, where competition for wages could create problems for employers struggling to keep their employees on task. The window for harvesting was relatively small and needed to be completed as soon as the crop was ready because a single ill-timed storm could do severe damage. Moreover, the grains needed to be picked before they became too ripe, in which case the harvesting dislodged too much grain prior to threshing, leading to a loss in productive quantity. As such, harvest workers were often in a better position than usual to earn good wages and work in fair conditions over this crucial period. In the early sixteenth century a major royal English works program ran into persistent trouble with workers absconding from service to get better wages at harvest time, and such problems were most likely quite common in earlier periods.39 A study of the diet of medieval peasants suggests that the consumption of increasingly bigger and better meals by harvest workers over the later Middle Ages highlights the importance of these workers within the rural economy and probably hints at the competitive nature of working conditions.40 The essence of their work was mobile, so their opportunities for bargaining or simply leaving for another employer were concomitantly high.

At the other end of the agricultural cycle, several months prior to harvest, various operations also moved workers on the landscape. Plowing the soil

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