Rural life is fundamental to the understanding of medieval society, since so many more people lived in villages than in castles or cities. But the understanding of the life of medieval peasantry is obscured by both sources and the prejudice of more recent times. Not all peasants were serfs, and not all serfs were peasants. By 800 A.D., the growing economy of the Carolingian world had produced dramatic changes in both rural settlement patterns and the lives of the people who inhabited them. At the same time, on the fringes of Carolingian Europe (the northwestern Balkans, Scandinavia, northeastern Spain, parts of Italy) a substantial number of people continued to live without any direct connection with the rolling engines of early medieval economy. By 1100 A.D., however, the picture had changed radically. The expansion of agriculture that had its beginnings shortly before or after A.D. 1000 was responsible for a significant alteration of the landscape. One of the great accomplishments of the tenth and eleventh centuries was land clearance. Nevertheless, famines were a relatively common phenomenon of medieval rural life. In the early eleventh century, a Benedictine monk named Radulfus Glaber wrote with a note of fatalism: "Some time later a famine began to ravage the whole earth, and death threatened almost all the human race." Despite the constant threat of disaster, the rural population of Europe grew steadily from the tenth century onward. And with that came the new challenges to which the technological innovations of the period were supposed to respond. The tenth and eleventh century were a time when social mobility was possible despite a general prejudice against anyone of low rank who would try to reach too high a position. Medieval writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were not kind to peasants and the shifting economies of the fourteenth century did not help improve the image of peasants in medieval sources. In the words of Froissart, the chronicler of the Hundred Years War, the peasants were "mischievious people who assembled without a captain or armor, robbed, burnt and slew all the gentlement that they could lay hand on." And John Ball, the priest who led the English peasant revolt of 1381, was even sharper: "When Eve delved and Adam span, who was then the gentleman?" Some historians have argued that such revolts represent a systemic "crisis of feudalism," others that they were spontaneous uprisings. This course will focus upon the history of medieval rural life and of peasants, more specifically, upon the cultural, economic, and political changes taking place two to three centuries on both sides of A.D. 1000. Through reading and discussion of such concepts as manorialism, corvée, manumission, gender, and power, we will hopefully come to some understanding of the experience of rural life in the Middle Ages.
As this is a graduate level course, I assume that everyone enrolled has a basic familiarity with the resources available in the library and is willing to use foreign language sources when appropriate. I also assume that everyone knows the mechanics of researching and writing a scholarly paper. By this, I mean the proper use and acknowledgment of sources as well as the fundamentals of compositions, (English) grammar, and spelling.
The format of this course will be reading- and discussion-oriented. In lieu of written examinations, I will require a brief (3-5 page) essay on the readings each week, due in class on the day that they are to be discussed. You are also to complete a substantial research paper on a relevant topic. After we finish with the core set of required readings, I will expect you to locate and read sources on your own, then come to class prepared to discuss them. I have found this to be the most effective way to learn about a topic which is best examined through case studies.
Requirements for the course include attendance at class
meetings,
participation in class discussion, and the timely completion of all
assignments.
Locate and read two articles (or one in a foreign language) on rural parish churches or Church attitudes towards peasants.
Locate and read one book on medieval heresy.
Locate and read one book on the archaeology and/or history of medieval peasants outside western Europe.