Five Things Medieval People Would Hate About the Modern World
Danièle Cybulskie
1. Our Oversharing
While I imagine mobile phones being embraced quickly, I do think the idea would be mystifying at first, and not just because they look like magic. After the initial enthusiasm, I can easily imagine a medieval person asking, “But who do you actually need to talk to right away, all the time?” Because of the pace of distance communication in the Middle Ages, people didn’t communicate as much trivial information as we do to as many people as we do across the astounding distances that we do. Undoubtedly, they’d welcome the chance to immediately communicate transportation mishaps (“My horse just blew a shoe…”) and medical emergencies, but I imagine it would take some time to adjust to the idea of sharing every thought (and meal) with the world.
2. Our Work Schedules
Medieval people worked hard for a living, but between Sundays, and the many, many saints’ days and religious feasts, medieval people actually got more official holidays than modern people do. Also, when it got too dark to work outside, outside work stopped. For modern people, connectivity has made it all too easy to work well past the hours we’re paid to work, while frantically squeezing in domestic chores. It might be hard to explain to a medieval visitor why we are still working so hard when our technology should be giving us more free time. Medieval people could well think we’re nuts.
3. Our Memories
A medieval person dropped into our century would be stunned by the amount of information we have access to – it’s one of this century’s greatest achievements. However, he or she would also be stunned to know how little we remember any of it. In the Middle Ages, students got their degrees by listening, remembering, and putting together long arguments based on what they’d learned, while students today may not remember their class schedules because they’re programmed into their phones. Modern people can depend on having the ability to look up what we need when we need it, so we don’t feel pressure to remember as much, but it’s very likely that a medieval time traveler might see this as a failing of ours.
4. Our Lack of Privacy
Medieval lives were very structured by rules put forth by the clergy and secular authorities; rules that were meant to control all sorts of public and private behaviours. It’s safe to say that medieval people comfortably ignored many of these rules – as long as they felt they weren’t going to get caught. The sheer number of cameras being pointed at modern people all day, every day would probably be tremendously unnerving to a medieval visitor (or anyone travelling from the past, for that matter), not to mention the power of a quick Google search to find out more than you ever needed to know about anything or anyone in less than a second. (I might just take bets on how quickly a medieval person might Google his/her ex, though.)
Modern people love, love, love statistics. We especially love statistics that involve ourselves. It would probably take quite a long time to explain to a medieval person why we need wearable technology that measures our steps, our sleep, and even our – ahem – bedroom activities. If we feel tired, they’d probably say, we already know we didn’t sleep well; if we have excess weight, we aren’t exercising enough; if we spend that much energy in the bedroom… well, isn’t any time spent at those activities a good thing? I’m not sure “because it’s cool” would be enough to convince a medieval person that they should take home a FitBit, but you just never know.
While there is so much about modern life that would be appealing to a medieval visitor (antibiotics might be first on the list), it would be pretty presumptuous to think that they would immediately jump at the chance to stay in the twenty-first century. We are so much the same as these ancestors of ours, and yet we are so very different in myriad ways. Before we dismiss their time period as being a terrible place to live, it’s worth taking a minute to see our own time through their eyes.
Those who pray, those who work, those who fight
Cleric, Knight and Workman representing the three classes – from British Library Ms Sloane 2435, f.85 ‘
When people first start learning about the Middle Ages, one of the first concepts they are told was that medieval society was divided into three groups – those who pray, such as priests and monks; those who work, like farmers; and those who fight, the warrior class. How did this idea get started and what does it actually mean?
It seems that our first reference to the idea of three orders comes from a curious source – an Old English translation of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. This work was written by King Alfred the Great (probably with a team of scholars to help him) in the late-ninth century, and he often included his own commentary. It is here that you can find this statement:
I wished for tools and resources for
the task that I was commanded to accomplish, which was that I should
virtuously and worthily guide and direct the authority which was
entrusted to me. You know of course that no-one can make known any
skill, nor direct and guide any enterprise, without tools and resources;
a man cannot work on any enterprise without resources. In the case of
the king, the resources and tools with which to rule are that he have
his land fully manned; he must have praying men, fighting men and
working men. You know also that without these tools no king may make his
ability known. Another aspect of his resources is that he must have the
means of support for his tools, the three classes of men.
In his article, “The ‘Three Orders’ of society in Anglo-Saxon
England” Timothy Powell explains some of the thinking behind this
statement:
Alfred’s formula is
descriptive rather than prescriptive. He is not instructing the three
orders in their duties, he is doing the reverse; he is meditating on his
own duty to the effect that it is incumbent upon the king to ensure the
three orders have the wherewithal they need to fulfil their functions.
Alfred does not dwell on the theme; he mentions it as an aside. The
point of the passage is not social commentary but a reflection on how
he, King Alfred, should exercise his talents to ensure that his memory
not be forgotten.
Powell goes on to note that if you look carefully enough,
you can find similar statements emerging around the same time in
continental Europe. Two abbots from Auxerre – Haymo (d.866) and his
successor Heiric (d. circa 883) mention the idea. The latter, in a work
he addressed to King Charles the Bald, offers this explanation:
While some wage war and
others till the soil, you are that third order whose members he has
appointed to a private duty, so that the less encumbered you are with
worldly things, the more you are able to devote yourselves to the duties
of his service. As the others endure on your behalf the hard conditions
of war and toil, so you are beholden to them, continuing steadfastly to
give them the unfailing service of your prayers and office.
Following these writings, you do not find other references
to the three orders until around the turn of the millennium. The best
known of these comes from Ælfric of Eynsham (c.955-c.1010), one of the
most important scholars of the Angl0-Saxon age. In a work dealing with
the lives of saints, he makes this observation:
Know, however, that in
this world three orders are established. These are laboratores,
oratores, bellatores. Laboratores are those that labour for our
sustenance. Oratores are those who intercede for us with God. Bellatores
are those who protect our towns and defend our soil against the
invading army. Now the farmer labours for our food and the warrior must
fight against our enemies and the servant of God must continually pray
for us and fight spiritually against the unseen foes. It is therefore a
mighty fight the monks wage against the unseen devils who plot against
us while men of this world fight with worldly weapons against earthly
foes. Now earthly warriors should not compel the servants of God to
earthly warfare away from the spiritual war, because their service is
greater, the unseen enemies are greater than the seen, and it is a great
hurt that they forsake the Lord’s service and divert to the worldly
warfare that is not their concern.
The main point of this paragraph, according to Powell, is
that those who pray should not involve themselves in military matters.
“Ælfric does mention the roles played by the other two orders and the
function of the bellatores is highlighted insofar as it conflicts with
that of the oratores,” Powell explains. “But Ælfric is not interested in
describing societal arrangements for their own sake. There is no
explicit suggestion of hierarchy. It is actually important for the point
Ælfric is trying to make that each of the three orders is understood to
be fulfilling its own indispensable role and to be bound to the other
two orders by mutual (though mutually exclusive) service. However, the
king is not mentioned and neither is the well-being of the kingdom. The
three orders are simply described as ‘established’.”
Ælfric also mentions this idea on other occasions, but the
concept was taken further by one of his contemporaries (and a man he
exchanged letters with), Wulfstan, Archbishop of York (d.1023). His
interest examined it from a more political point of view, detailing how
the three orders made society function. In his work the Institutes of Polity, he writes:
Every just throne that stands fully
as it should stands on three pillars: first, those who pray; second
those who labour; and third, those who fight. Those who pray are clergy,
who must serve God and fervently plead for all people day and night.
Those who labour are the workers who must toil for that by which the
entire community may live. Those who fight are the warriors who must
protect the land by waging war with weapons. On these three pillars must
each throne rightly stand in a Christian polity. If any of them weaken,
immediately the throne will tremble; and if any of them fracture, then
the throne will crumble to pieces, and that will bring the people all to
ruin. Therefore, they are to be diligently steadied, strengthened, and
reinforced with God’s wise teachings and with just worldly law; in that
way they will bring last guidance to the people. And what I say is true:
if Christian faith weakens the kingdom will soon fall; and if injustice
is exalted anywhere in the land or evil customs anywhere too eagerly
embraced, the people will be brought entirely to ruin. Instead, one must
do what is need to suppress injustice and exalt the law of God; that
may be of need before God and the world. Amen.
Around the same time, the idea of three orders was re-emerging in
France. Bishop Adalbero of Laon, writing around the year 1020, gives
this explanation for a world divided into three orders:
The community of the faithful is a
single body, but the condition of society is threefold in order. For
human law distinguishes two classes. Nobles and serfs, indeed, are not
governed by the same ordinance…. The former are the warriors and the
protectors of the churches. They are the defenders of the people, of
both great and small, in short, of everyone, and at the same time they
ensure their own safety. The other class is that of the serfs. This
luckless breed possesses nothing except at the cost of its own labour.
Who could, reckoning with an abacus, add up the sum of the cares with
which the peasants are occupied, of their journeys on foot, of their
hard labours? The serfs provide money, clothes, and food, for the rest;
no free man could exist without serfs. Is there a task to be done? Does
anyone want to put himself out? We see kings and prelates make
themselves the serfs of their serfs; the master, who claims to feed his
serf, is fed by him. And the serf never sees an end to his tears and his
sighs. God’s house, which we think of as one, is thus divided into
three; some pray, others fight, and yet others work. The three groups,
which coexist, cannot bear to be separated; the services rendered by one
are a precondition for the labours of the two others; each in his turn
takes it upon himself to relieve the whole. Thus the threefold assembly
is none the less united, and it is thus that law has been able to
triumph, and that the world has been able to enjoy peace.
During the eleventh and twelfth other medieval scholars would add to
this idea, and it gradually became a more solidified ideal, especially
in France, where the three-estate system lasted until the French
Revolution. Many historians, such as Georges Duby, have written
extensively about the concept and how it moulded medieval society. Even
today, the idea of ‘Those who pray, those who work, those who fight’
remains one of the lasting notions of what we think the Middle Ages was
like.