The Clock and the Camshaft by John W. Farrell

Author:John W. Farrell
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Prometheus
Published: 2020-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

Indeed, using medieval England as one example, the responsibility for roadbuilding and highway maintenance seems to have fallen on the shoulders of the property owners (often monasteries and manors) who lived closest to the roads. But, using another example, in the port city of Valencia in Spain, basic and quite onerous duties were, by custom, assigned to the frontalers, whose property fronted on public roads and lands. Only very late in the Middle Ages did civic authorities and kings set aside funds and make edicts regarding the maintenance and construction of better roads and bridges.

In spite of this handicap, we know that millions of people throughout the Middle Ages traveled—and often traveled far—on foot, and not only for pilgrimages to the cathedrals that were becoming legendary. There was another component.

It is perhaps difficult to appreciate the effect that the long dirt and gravel roads of the medieval countryside had on the people who lived closest to them, especially now when many of us own a car or can access public transportation. Modern people in the developed world do not need to walk very far to any destination anymore. It’s hard to see anything romantic about interstate highways (although some American poets and writers have created something of their own romance around the long roads of the American Midwest).

In his book, Inventing the Middle Ages, Norman F. Cantor touched on this aspect of medieval social life, which was uniquely captured in the novels of a fellow medievalist, J. R. R. Tolkien, perhaps best known for his Lord of the Rings book series. Although not a fan of the fantastical aspect of the stories that made them worldwide bestsellers, Cantor noted how Tolkien dramatized the circumstances and conditions of long journeys undertaken by ordinary people on foot without escort or the convenience of the horses and carriages that the aristocratic classes could depend upon.

This kind of distant journeying by obscure people over long distances, for one reason or another, we know from stray references, was a much more common occurrence at all times in the Middles Ages, but especially after 1100, than we might a priori predict from the kind of primitive transportation system the medievals had access to. People of modest social status in surprising numbers traveled long distances, mostly on foot. This is a strange fact of medieval life, and [ The Lord of the Rings] is centered on this event. Tolkien convinces us that the way this happened was that some local village leader got it into his head that he had to do something to help or save his people, something had to be carried a very long distance, some contact vaguely imagined had to be made, and off the person and two or three companions went on their incredibly long, footsore journey. These journeys were rarely documented for us in the Middle Ages and almost never in detail. Tolkien, by imagining such a journey, has graphically re-created an important but poorly understood facet of medieval social life.17

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