Daily Life During The Reformation (14 page)

Village weddings that were once accompanied by drums,
bugles, and crowds of noisy people having a good time as they escorted
newlyweds home were beginning to be toned down by city ordinances to just a few
members of the family. The old, obscene, riotously enjoyable merriment of the
past had no place in solemn Christian ceremony.

Albrecht Durer,
Peasant
Couple Dancing
.

PATRICIANS AND BURGHERS

Wealthy families sat on the councils of most towns and had
a firm grasp on all administrative offices, made all decisions, using and
distributing finances as they saw fit. Guild and other taxes were exacted, but
as guilds grew and urban populations rose, the town patricians found themselves
confronted with increasing opposition. The burgeoning burgher class
incorporating well-to-do middle class citizens felt their increasing wealth
justified a claim to some rights of control over town administration and began
demanding seats on the town assembly.

They felt the clergy had failed to uphold its religious
duties. The opulence and laziness of Church officials aroused much ill will,
and the burghers demanded an end to the clergy’s privilege of freedom from
taxation as well as a reduction in their number.

URBAN WORKERS

Most urban workers were unskilled labor and hence not
organized into guilds. Some were petty retailers such as fishmongers, rag and
bone men, carters, unskilled construction workers, and the like.

Service trades were always a possible occupation for a
young urban man and included many professions from doctor, teacher, barber, and
notary to bathhouse keeper. These groups also formed guilds, but there was no
masterpiece to produce. In some places, examinations were required, however.
Special service trades might offer opportunities in some areas that were not
found in others; for example, some cities had licensed tour guides.

A trade depression, changes in fashion, or an invention
rendering traditional work methods obsolete could bring destitution to city
workers and to specialized communities such as the silk weavers.

Peasant Wedding. Pieter Bruegel
the Elder, 1568. This painting depicts a peasant wedding scene. The feast is
held in a barn. The bride is seated in the center under the canopy. Flatcakes
are being brought in on a door that is off its hinges.

PEASANT WEDDINGS AND RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS

Outside of the cities, life took on a different aspect when
the dreary, monotonous routine life in the villages was interrupted for
religious holidays or at marriages when the entire village would turn out to
partake in the festivities.

While the pipers played, they danced in the streets or
nearby fields. More wealthy peasants treated the festivities with great
generosity, spending a good portion of their income to entertain the locals. On
these occasions, coarse manners and heavy drinking were normal. While the
peasant consumed about a gallon of beer or wine per day, at weddings he went
well beyond this.

The marriage event was not unlike a church holiday that was
celebrated in a robust and irreverent manner with prodigious drinking that
often alarmed the clergy. By the sixteenth century, some 20 saints’ days were
observed each year involving religious festivities. Romping around the village
dressed in an array of costumes often made up of household utensils such as
pots and pans, beer barrel armor, tub hats, egg shell necklaces, ladles, and
other implements and accompanied by flutes, horns, and barking dogs, the din
was deafening, giving much delight, especially to the children. The threat of
danger was ever present, however, and men always carried knives or swords.

TIME AND WEATHER

The day for most rural dwellers within the Holy Roman
Empire, and indeed in most of Europe, was regulated by natural sunlight and by
the rhythm of the seasons. Artificial light from lamps was expensive, so oil
for lamps was carefully rationed. Men and women in both city and village worked
long days in summer and less in winter. By the sixteenth century, most cities
and small towns had a municipal clock that chimed the hours. These were
welcomed by the Church so that religious offices could be carried out at
approximately the correct time.

In divided communities of both Protestants and Catholics,
thorny problems arose over who would control the bell tower and ring it at the
appropriate time. Mass-produced calendars had been available since the
invention of printing, and these listed feast days, fairs, and phases of the
moon and were extremely popular at all social levels. But much confusion arose
over the changeover from the Roman Julian calendar, which was not so accurate,
to the Gregorian calendar that was more precise. According to the Romans, the
solar year had 365 and one-quarter days, and to counter this, a day was added
every four years to correspond to the seasons. These calculations, however,
were slightly off in the measurement of the solar year because a day was lost
every century. By the end of the sixteenth century, the calendar was 11 days
off with these computations, and on the day of the switch to the more precise
Gregorian calendar, October 4 became October 15. Most Catholic countries
adopted the pope’s new timetable immediately. Protestant countries were furious
at what they saw as the arrogance of the Vatican in its attempt to further its
influence even more and refused to adjust to it for the next century. Much
confusion ensued; a traveler leaving a Catholic city on January 1, on a two-day
journey, might arrive in a Protestant city on December 21 of the previous year.
Another reason Protestants objected to the new calendar was because it showed
Catholic religious days not appreciated in Protestant households.

A major factor in the lives of the peasants in the Holy
Roman Empire and all over Europe was the weather. Famines of catastrophic
proportions were always just around the corner. Harvest was an anxious time. A
severe hail storm, intense frost, or heavy rain and flooding could reduce the
yield to a fraction of what was required to maintain a family. Sometimes deep
snow came early, and harvest and transportation of the crop were hampered.
During the growing season, wheat, barley, vines, and other crops were always in
danger of a disastrous turn in the weather.

Drought, too, could be a major cause of crop failure as
rivers, streams, and wells dried up. Over a prolonged period of time, a chronic
shortage of water left the farmer helpless and desperate. It was often the
weather that left families starving, eating roots and boiled bark, and, unable
to pay their taxes, losing their homes. From property holder to landless
laborer was often an anomaly of the weather. In bad times, droves of miserable
humanity would shuffle to the church for a handout of a piece of bread or to a
larger city to seek work or beg on the streets.

Women and men working together
in the fields at harvest time.
Roxburghe Ballads
. Charles Hindley, ed.
(1874) vol. ii, 182.

TAXES AND THE LAW

The nobility and the clergy paid no taxes. The bulk of the
burden, therefore, fell as usual on the peasants. Princes often attempted to
force freer peasants into a state of near slavery through tax increases and the
introduction of Roman Civil law, more conducive to their desire for power since
it reduced all lands to private ownership and eliminated the feudal concept of
land as a trust between lord and peasant with the concomitant rights and
obligations. In adhering to the remnants of the Roman law code, they not only
heightened their wealth and position within the empire (through the
confiscation of property and revenues) but also their dominion over their
subjects.

Peasants could do little more than passively resist. Even
then, the prince now had absolute control and could punish them in any manner
he wished. Blinding or chopping off of fingers were common enough practices for
disobedience. Until Thomas Munzer and other religious radicals like him
rejected the legitimizing factors of ancient law and sought Godly law as a
means to rouse the people, uprisings remained isolated, unsupported, and easily
quelled.

Some ecclesiastics exploited their subjects as ruthlessly
as the regional princes. The Catholic Church used the authority of religion to
extort money from the people. In addition to the sale of indulgences, they
fabricated miracles, set up prayer houses, and directly taxed the population.

WOMEN

Within the Holy Roman Empire, as elsewhere, women had no
political voice, were not permitted to vote, and were not to serve on governing
bodies. Exceptions might be widows from noble families who controlled land
while their sons were still under age.

The average life span was 30 years for men and 24 for
women, and anyone who reached 40 was considered old. Women bore an average of
six or seven children, many of whom did not survive. Of those who did, 45
percent would die before the age of 12. About 10 percent of the men would never
marry, and around 12 percent of the women found themselves shut up in convents,
often unwillingly. Apart from marriage or religious orders, there were few
places in respectable society for a single woman.

7 - ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND

TUDOR ENGLAND

The
upper and middle classes in England became better off under the Tudors, the
royal house that ruled England throughout the sixteenth century. This was an
age of England’s growing naval strength, exploration, and increasing commerce,
and after about 1525, population numbers began to increase, while production
rose more slowly. Nobles and the upper middle classes invested money in land
and the economy and generally grew wealthier as gold and silver entered the
country from trade and piracy. A price revolution that first hit Spain as
riches flowed in from the New World now caught up with England as costs
increased fivefold during the century.

Wage laborers, farm hands, and other members of the lower
echelons, however, became worse off as wage increases failed to keep up with
the rising cost of living, and real earnings declined. In today’s parlance,
inflation was rampant, and people on fixed incomes or set wages suffered. Even
an impecunious nobleman, whose livelihood depended on fixed rents, might find
himself hard-pressed and have to sell off some property. By the end of the
century, in poor, remote parts of the country, many people living on starvation
wages died from hunger.