Making a Living in the Middle Ages

Making a Living in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Christopher Dyer
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300167075
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
Dramatic social and economic change during the middle ages altered the lives of the people of Britain in far-reaching ways, from the structure of their families to the ways they made their livings. In this masterly book, preeminent medieval historian Christopher Dyer presents a fresh view of the British economy from the ninth to the sixteenth century and a vivid new account of medieval life. He begins his volume with the formation of towns and villages in the ninth and tenth centuries and ends with the inflation, population rise, and colonial expansion of the sixteenth century. This is a book about ideas and attitudes as well as the material world, and Dyer shows how people regarded the economy and responded to economic change. He examines the growth of towns, the clearing of lands, the Great Famine, the Black Death, and the upheavals of the fifteenth century through the eyes of those who experienced them. He also explores the dilemmas and decisions of those who were making a living in a changing world—from peasants, artisans, and wage earners to barons and monks. Drawing on archaeological and landscape evidence along with more conventional archives and records, the author offers here an engaging survey of British medieval economic history unrivaled in breadth and clarity.

Making a Living in the Middle Ages

Making a Living in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Christopher Dyer
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300167075
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

Get Book Here

Book Description
Dramatic social and economic change during the middle ages altered the lives of the people of Britain in far-reaching ways, from the structure of their families to the ways they made their livings. In this masterly book, preeminent medieval historian Christopher Dyer presents a fresh view of the British economy from the ninth to the sixteenth century and a vivid new account of medieval life. He begins his volume with the formation of towns and villages in the ninth and tenth centuries and ends with the inflation, population rise, and colonial expansion of the sixteenth century. This is a book about ideas and attitudes as well as the material world, and Dyer shows how people regarded the economy and responded to economic change. He examines the growth of towns, the clearing of lands, the Great Famine, the Black Death, and the upheavals of the fifteenth century through the eyes of those who experienced them. He also explores the dilemmas and decisions of those who were making a living in a changing world—from peasants, artisans, and wage earners to barons and monks. Drawing on archaeological and landscape evidence along with more conventional archives and records, the author offers here an engaging survey of British medieval economic history unrivaled in breadth and clarity.

Life in a Medieval City

Life in a Medieval City PDF Author: Frances Gies
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062016679
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
From acclaimed historians Frances and Joseph Gies comes the reissue of their classic book on day-to-day life in medieval cities, which was a source for George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series. Evoking every aspect of city life in the Middle Ages, Life in a Medieval City depicts in detail what it was like to live in a prosperous city of Northwest Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The year is 1250 CE and the city is Troyes, capital of the county of Champagne and site of two of the cycle Champagne Fairs—the “Hot Fair” in August and the “Cold Fair” in December. European civilization has emerged from the Dark Ages and is in the midst of a commercial revolution. Merchants and money men from all over Europe gather at Troyes to buy, sell, borrow, and lend, creating a bustling market center typical of the feudal era. As the Gieses take us through the day-to-day life of burghers, we learn the customs and habits of lords and serfs, how financial transactions were conducted, how medieval cities were governed, and what life was really like for a wide range of people. For serious students of the medieval era and anyone wishing to learn more about this fascinating period, Life in a Medieval City remains a timeless work of popular medieval scholarship.

Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages

Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages PDF Author: Christopher Dyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521272155
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Between 1200 and 1520 medieval English society went through a series of upheavals: this was an age of war, pestilence and rebellion. This book explores the realities of life of the people who lived through those stirring times. It looks in turn at aristocrats, peasants, townsmen, wage-earners and paupers, and examines how they obtained their incomes and how they spent them. This revised edition (1998) includes a substantial new concluding chapter and an updated bibliography.

Daily Life in the Middle Ages

Daily Life in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Paul B. Newman
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786450525
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Although life in the Middle Ages was not as comfortable and safe as it is for most people in industrialized countries today, the term "Dark Ages" is highly misleading. The era was not so primitive and crude as depictions in film and literature would suggest. Even during the worst years of the centuries immediately following the fall of Rome, the legacy of that civilization survived. This book covers diet, cooking, housing, building, clothing, hygiene, games and other pastimes, fighting and healing in medieval times. The reader will find numerous misperceptions corrected. The book also includes a comprehensive bibliography and a listing of collections of medieval art and artifacts and related sites across the United States and Canada so that readers in North America can see for themselves some of the matters discussed in the book. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages PDF Author: Jeffrey L. Singman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781454909057
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
We consider the Middle Ages barbaric, yet the period furnished some of our most enduring icons, including King Arthur's Round Table, knights in shining armor, and the idealized noblewoman. In this vivid history of the time, the medieval world comes to life in all its rich daily experience. Find out what people's beds were like, how often they washed, what they wore, what they cooked, how they worked, how they entertained themselves, how they wed, and what life was like in a medieval village, castle, or monastery. Contemporary artworks and documents further illuminate this fascinating historical era.

A Brief History of Life in the Middle Ages

A Brief History of Life in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Martyn Whittock
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472107667
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Using wide-ranging evidence, Martyn Whittock shines a light on Britain in the Middle Ages, bringing it vividly to life in this fascinating new portrait that brings together the everyday and the extraordinary. Thus we glimpse 11th-century rural society through a conversation between a ploughman and his master. The life of Dick Whittington illuminates the rise of the urban elite. The stories of Roger 'the Raker' who drowned in his own sewage, a 'merman' imprisoned in Orford Castle and the sufferings of the Jews of Bristol reveal the extraordinary diversity of medieval society. Through these characters and events - and using the latest discoveries and research - the dynamic and engaging panorama of medieval England is revealed.

Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages

Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Patrick J. Geary
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501721631
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Whereas modern societies tend to banish the dead from the world of the living, medieval men and women accorded them a vital role in the community. The saints counted most prominently as potential intercessors before God, but the ordinary dead as well were called upon to aid the living, and even to participate in the negotiation of political disputes. In this book, the distinguished medievalist Patrick J. Geary shows how exploring the complex relations between the living and dead can broaden our understanding of the political, economic, and cultural history of medieval Europe. Geary has brought together for this volume twelve of his most influential essays. They address such topics as the development of saints' cults and of the concept of sacred space; the integration of saints' cults into the lives of ordinary people; patterns of relic circulation; and the role of the dead in negotiating the claims and counterclaims of various interest groups. Also included are two case studies of communities that enlisted new patron saints to solve their problems. Throughout, Geary demonstrates that, by reading actions, artifacts, and rituals on an equal footing with texts, we can better grasp the otherness of past societies.

Ghosts in the Middle Ages

Ghosts in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Jean-Claude Schmitt
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226738871
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
In this fascinating study, Schmitt examines the significance of the widespread belief in ghosts during the Middle Ages and traces the imaginative, political, and religious contexts of these everyday haunts. Ghosts were pitiful or terrifying, usually solitary, creatures who arose from their tombs to haunt their friends and relatives. Including numerous color illustrations of ghosts and their trappings, this book presents a unique and intriguing look at medieval culture. 28 color plates.

Everyday Life in Medieval England

Everyday Life in Medieval England PDF Author: Christopher Dyer
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826419828
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Everyday Life in Medieval England captures the day-to-day experience of people in the middle ages - the houses and settlements in which they lived, the food they ate, their getting and spending - and their social relationships. The picture that emerges is of great variety, of constant change, of movement and of enterprise. Many people were downtrodden and miserably poor, but they struggled against their circumstances, resisting oppressive authorities, to build their own way of life and to improve their material conditions. The ordinary men and women of the middle ages appear throughout. Everyday life in Medieval England is an outstanding contribution to both national and local history.

Life in a Medieval Village

Life in a Medieval Village PDF Author: Frances Gies
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062016687
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The reissue of Joseph and Frances Gies’s classic bestseller on life in medieval villages. This new reissue of Life in a Medieval Village, by respected historians Joseph and Frances Gies, paints a lively, convincing portrait of rural people at work and at play in the Middle Ages. Focusing on the village of Elton, in the English East Midlands, the Gieses detail the agricultural advances that made communal living possible, explain what domestic life was like for serf and lord alike, and describe the central role of the church in maintaining social harmony. Though the main focus is on Elton, c. 1300, the Gieses supply enlightening historical context on the origin, development, and decline of the European village, itself an invention of the Middle Ages. Meticulously researched, Life in a Medieval Village is a remarkable account that illustrates the captivating world of the Middle Ages and demonstrates what it was like to live during a fascinating—and often misunderstood—era.