WOMEN'S WORLD IN THE MIDDLE AGES

There is a distinctive feminine type we recognize at once as medieval. We see her face, her figure, in stone and wood in innumerable churches. We see her in miniatures and tapestries. Not until the fifteenth century does she begin to make a few shy appearances in the nude, in the role of Eve or as a saint undergoing martyrdom.

The ideal medieval woman was small and slim. Her breasts were high, small, and firm; her skin pearly white. She was extremely trim and well coordinated, with every fold and layer of her clothing carefully adjusted, her hair confined under a headdress. She seems to have favored a particular posture – weight slightly forward, knees slightly bent. She certainly was not taught to stand tall, to hold up her shoulders, to draw in her abdominal muscles, or to move provocatively. Her body language implied rather a certain meekness and vulnerability.

Ideally, her face was small, smooth, and symmetrical as a child’s. A high and rounded forehead was admired. Again, this was a child-like characteristic and perhaps referred back to a specific racial type. At any rate, one sees such foreheads often in Gothic stone carvings, in men and angels as well as in women. For those who did not have such high-domed brows, the effect could be partly achieved by concealing all her hair under a tight headband. Women also plucked and shaved their temples to produce that ovoid line.

The fashionable clothing of the time – tight bodices, drooping sleeves, and towering headdresses – greatly restricted movement. In spite of this, medieval ladies managed to take considerable exercise – walking, dancing, riding, and romping in such innocent sports as blindman’s buff. They maintained their slenderness by eating sparingly. Moreover, the religious life of ladies called for a good deal of fasting. Thus, piety and slimness went together. Strict observation of religious practices was part of aristocratic manners. Nevertheless, a good deal of this was merely for show. Girls who were too devout were headed for the cloister.

Etiquette prescribed the right way to act in church – one was to look straight ahead, keep one’s eyes cast down, and one’s thought presumably directed toward one’s salvation. For social life, something less austere was wanted, but even there, demeanor was highly controlled. The love poems of Charles d’Orléans draw a picture of the perfect jeune fille of the time: “Fresh beauty, greatly rich in youth; laughing expression, loving features; pleasant of tongue, governed by good sense; womanly bearing in a well-made, sweet body.”

Ideals of this sort belonged to the upper classes. The peasantry, ruled by different necessities, had a different view of what constituted the ideal woman. Of course, a pretty face and a pleasant disposition would not have gone unappreciated among rustics also. The folk tales that reveal so much of the psychic life of medieval common people repeatedly sound the theme of the good and beautiful peasant girl who is elevated to the nobility. But sturdiness and industry counted for more than social graces. Thus, Jeanne d’Arc said, as proof of her honest character, that she was a first-class spinner.

A mature peasant woman was a pretty earthy creature with few sexual inhibitions and a sharp sense of the value of a penny. She did not seem to care much what she looked like. Heavy work, coarse food, and close quarters gave little encouragement to female narcissism. On the other hand, the peasant woman, as her husband’s helper, was pretty much his equal. She was often the dominant figure in the family. Again, we know this from folk tales with a gallery of strong woman characters.

The bourgeois woman, as she ascended to the higher levels of her class, modeled herself increasingly on women of the nobility. Yet there were significant distinctions between them in style and outlook. Aristocratic artifices, refinements, and subtleties ran counter to the bourgeois spirit.

The Ménagier certainly was not one to lose sight of his middling station. He constantly cautions his young wife on this point. He does not want her socializing with “great lords.” He hopes that she will imitate the good, honest women of his own class. Nevertheless, he cannot himself resist aping his betters to some extent. After all, doing things right means following the usages of the best circles of society. And he has married somewhat above himself; his bridge is a girl indulged and used to idleness quite on the aristocratic pattern. It is our good fortune that he felt obliged to write down everything she had to know about her future duties.

As the wife of a prosperous bourgeois, she was not expected to do the housework, but only to supervise her servants. Even here, she could count on help. The Ménagier had a Master Jehan who acted as steward, did the shopping, and hired, fired, and directed men servants. There was also an elderly housekeeper, Dame Agnes, who belonged to the order of the Beguines.

Although there was no lack of people eager for jobs, servants were hard to manage. Those who came for a single day, like porters, wheel-barrow men, and agricultural laborers, tended to be independent and short-tempered. At pay time, they often broke out into shouting and foul language. The prosperous man had an instinctive mistrust of the lower classes. “For if they were without fault, they would be mistresses and not servants, and of the men I say the same,” declared the Ménagier. Here, at the end of the fourteenth century, we already have the convictions that underlay the so-called Protestant ethic.

Still, with good examples and no laxity, and if assigned enough work so that they could fill the day and honestly earn their wages, servants could be taught decent behavior. The saying went that he who had good servants had peace and he who had grumblers laid up sorrow for himself. Before domestics were hired, careful inquiries were made of their previous masters. Their parents’ names and their birthplace were written down so that the arm of the law could reach them if they committed theft. Maidservants between fifteen and twenty had to be specially supervised. They were given a sleeping room near the mistress’s, with no window through which they could slip out at night or receive visitors. They were taught how to extinguish their bedtime candle properly, by blowing it out or snuffing the flame with two fingers, not with their skirts. Back home, these country girls had neither candles nor nightshirts.

The closing of the house for the night was an important ceremony and the heavy keys a symbol of the housewife’s rule. The mistress inspected the wines to be sure none disappeared during the night. She gave the servants their instructions for morning and saw that the hearth fires were banked with ashes.

The household woke early. In the country, morning was announced by the rooster’s crowing. In town, the bell of the nearest church pealed for prime. Servants were up quickly and at their morning duties – fires had to be started, water drawn, stable cleaned, horses fed, the street around the entrance swept. The maids dusted the hallway, beat out cushions and mats. In the course of the day, they would work their way all around the house, cleaning every room. They made up beds with the help of a bed staff, a stout club for smoothing the heavy linen sheets. They had twig brooms and sponges, pails, water, and sand. Crude soap could be made from ashes and lye for hard-to-clean places.

One aspect of housekeeping was time-consuming and frustrating. This was the fight against vermin. Fleas lurked in the folds of woolen clothes and in the bedding. The multiplicity of prescriptions against them indicates that there was no definitive way to get rid of them. White woolen cloths were spread to attract the fleas: The black specks could then be seen, caught, and destroyed. Alder leaves strewn in the bedroom were also said to attract the insects. The airing and beating of textiles were major tasks for the maidservants. In better homes, a small room was provided, a garde-robe, where all the family textiles could be stored and presumably sealed away from infestation.

Woolen clothes were infrequently cleaned, but then the quality of the wool was so good that such clothes largely resisted soil. Grease spots could be removed with various homemade cleansers – fuller’s earth and ashes, wet feathers, warm wine mixed with ox gall. An excellent cleanser was verjuice, which was fresh grape juice prevented from turning by the addition of salt. In the fall, when the grapes were first pressed, a great cleaning of woolens took place. Clothes lasted a lifetime and were listed in inventories upon a person’s death.

Cookbooks were just beginning to appear in the latter part of the fourteenth century. The recipes included the Ménagier’s book are particularly interesting because they represent the eating patterns of an average household. We have to study them a bit, finding our way through the terminology that makes medieval cooking sound rather ferocious. But the brouets are only stews, and the porrays, classified as white, green, and black, are vegetable purées. Many of the dishes would have been entirely to our tastes, and, in fact, are still part of classic French cookery. We would certainly like medieval desserts – figs, grapes, pears, cherries, nuts, candied orange peel, cookies, and crepes. Even the archaic sounding frumenty turns out to be that old New England specialty, Indian pudding – though it uses wheat or barley instead of the still unknown cornmeal. The preserves of pears, peaches, and quince were made with honey rather than sugar, but sound delightful. Hippocras is nothing but mulled wine. Sweetened with honey or, for fancier occasions, with sugar and spiked with cinnamon and cloves, hippocras obviously served the need for something more stimulating than the ordinary wine that was taken with every meal. Distilled liquors were as yet unknown, although the Ménagier tells how to make an interesting meal by setting honey to ferment with beer.

On the other hand, the Ménagier gives certain recipes we, at first, cannot understand. The dishes strike us as difficult to prepare and digest and uses an odd mixture of spices. It has been suggested that the spices were needed to cover up the taste of tainted meat. But there is no reason to think the meat would have been tainted. Animals were slaughtered daily, and there is evidence that the meat trade could estimate daily demand with great accuracy. Nor were the spices covering up the taste of salt, for the recipes in question are usually for fresh meat or fish. The flavor must have been appreciated on its own merits. In fact, the mixture of pepper, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves yields what we now call curry powder. What the medieval French were eating were curries. The bourgeois wife spent a good while in the morning dressing. Though she had no full-length looking glass, only a polished brass plaque in which she could see her face, she was highly aware of her appearance.

Fashions were changing with great rapidity by the mid-fourteenth century, especially in regard to headdresses and the cut of sleeves. New fabrics, colors, and weaves were making their appearance. These were first taken up by the nobility, but very soon the middle-class woman was asking for the same. Upon the classic base of chemise (undershift), blanchet (white blouse, a bit of which would show around the neckline), cote (a long sleeved, close-bodiced dress), and surcote (a wide cloak open at the front and cinched in with a broad belt), all kinds of variations could be played. Belts became articles of vanity – they were embroidered, made of precious fabrics like brocade or velvet, ornamented with silver-gilt beads, and hung with a purse or some jeweled ornament. The surcote developed great width and length. It sometimes even had a train and was edged with fur. In this form, it was called the houppelande. The simple white scarf used by countrywomen to keep their hair in place during heavy work had been elaborated into the wimple. Of very fine linen or silk voile, the wimple surrounded the face and went under the chin. To drape it becomingly took a great deal of art and time. Most aristocratic of all was the hennin, a tall, conical headdress which had a wire framework for support.

Priests denounced such excesses of dress in their sermons. The bourgeois husband, too, preferred to have his wife dress discreetly without novelties that would cause talk, especially among his female relatives. It was a favorite notion that many a good man had been ruined by his wife’s extravagance. However, the wise bourgeois recognized that his wife’s clothing and general demeanor were a reflection on his own status. Ever sensitive on this point, he could be brought round to approving new purchases.

Churchgoing was an important duty of the wife. Since she might be the only one who had time for it, her devoutness served for the whole household. She said a quick prayer in French upon awakening; as soon as she was dressed, her destination was the church. Her deportment, as she walked, was prescribed, as was correct behavior in church. She was not to be distracted, but to choose a quiet spot before a favorite chapel, and holding her head upright and keeping her lips ever moving, to say the right prayers for the day. To help with this, the Books of Hours were much in demand. The requirements of worship had become so complicated that the average person could hardly cope with them. The answer was a private prayer book, with the prayers arranged according to the canonical hours. The book would also include a calendar as a guide to feast and saints’ days, short readings from the Gospels, and so on.

Besides her spiritual life, her supervisory functions, and social contacts with relatives and guests, the bourgeois woman had another great resource – her garden. The garden was not large and was rather formally arranged, with square or rectangular beds edged with bricks. In the city, the whole was enclosed by a brick wall, in the country by a wattle fence. The flowers in the garden were violets, pinks, peonies, lilies, and roses. There was also a selection of vegetables, but these were by no means paramount. More room was allotted to the herbs – those used in cooking, those used in simple medicinal preparations, and those from which fragrant waters were made for laving the hands after meals. The garden also contained berry bushes and espaliered fruit trees.

The bourgeois wife’s other great interest was, of course, her children. But here we are faced with a paucity of material. The Ménagier, so eager to give instruction on every aspect of the household, has not a word to say on child care.

This was the realm of women. They passed on to each other whatever was known on the subject. It was not very much, and infant mortality was high. The causes of death in so tiny a creature were hard to pin down. One writer stated that most babies died because their mothers, taking them into their beds, unwittingly crushed them during the night. He had observed, however, that God in His grace had given an infant special gifts: to know and love the person who nourished it with her milk; to give the appearance of joy and love toward those who played with it. As a result, those who brought up a child loved it and instinctively had pity on it. That last point was very necessary, because children were so dirty and bothersome when they were small and so bad and capricious when they were bigger that no one would want to look after them otherwise.

There were bad children who were lost to God’s grace because of their sins and those of their forebears. All children should take the Lord Jesus for their example; he had been so humble and obedient to his blessed Mother and her husband Joseph. Nor could one say that children were good or bad because God had made them that way. They were not like the beasts or the birds, but had free will, at least once they were ten years old.

Those who looked after children loved them increasingly as they grew. But that was dangerous. Children must not be allowed to have their will when little; they must be corrected just as a twig should be bent while tender. A parent should not show a child too great a love, for that would make the child proud and embolden it to be bad. A child should first be chastised by words, then by the birch, then by prison. Few children died because of too much severity, but many because of too much indulgence.

That, at any rate, was one theory of child rearing. The books that propounded it were written by men, not women. These men were often clerics who not only had had no experience with family life, but were also basically opposed to it. We must remember that theology was by no means sympathetic to children or to the broader spectrum of family feeling. The deep pessimism that was one strain of religion looked dourly upon women and what they stood for. The cry of a child was the lamentation of a soul condemned to live in a world of evil. It was not through the taking of wives, the begetting and raising of children, that fallen humankind could reach salvation, but through prayer, penitence, and gifts to the Church. That was official doctrine. It was believed and yet it was not believed. The ascetic element of Christianity was forever in conflict with people’s earthy, corporeal nature.

Yet the Church had also provided a whole department, as it were, to take care of family needs. This was headed by the figure of Mary. More churches were dedicated to Notre Dame (“Our Lady”) than to all the saints combined. Every church had a Mary chapel, and this was the most protected, the most sacred of all, situated in the center of the apse directly behind the altar. The south portal of any cathedral belonged to Mary, and the south window of the transept. The figure of the slight and smiling young mother, of stone or polychromed wood, holding the Holy Infant, was as prominent as the crucifix in every church. There were some Mary statues that were wonderworkers, and people came from great distances to pray before them. Certainly, women could see that she was on their side. They turned to her daily and in every emergency. If barren, they prayed to her for children. If pregnant, they prayed for a safe delivery. And when they had a child, they prayed to her for its health and safety.

Children’s lives were frailer than they are now. What the nineteenth century called the diseases of childhood – smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria – were endemic. In the south, there was malaria and typhoid. In addition, there were all those dysenteries and fevers whose causes even now we can’t identify – “bugs,” we say – but whose effects on a poorly nourished infant were far more drastic than today. Breastfeeding conferred some natural immunity, but this did not extend beyond weaning, nor was it proof against many types of infection. Certain herbs were known to be good – to tighten the bowels or draw out fevers. In country districts, where vestiges of paganism hung on, there were spells – nonsense syllables that sounded vaguely Latin – and ceremonies performed at a sacred tree or spring. But on the whole, mothers did not want to entrust their children to the dark powers. They turned to the Blessed Virgin. And if Mary failed them in this, they did not believe the less in her. She would at least look out for their dead children in paradise.

The age had an immense resignation in the face of death. More important than saving a life was assuring a soul a place in heaven. But this did not mean that a dead child was not mourned. A few hints in sermons illuminate an area of medieval psychic life that otherwise lies in darkness. A dream is reported in which a dead child appears to its mother and shows a wet shroud. It begs the mother not to weep any longer so that the shroud may dry. This dream is recorded in a number of variations – a dead child appears in one dream as a full-grown man, but afflicted with a limp. When the mother asks why he is limping, the dream brings forth a watering can from beneath his cloak and says it is full of the tears the mother has shed all these years, and he is condemned to carry this heavy thing around. The mother hastily promises that she will weep no more but devote herself to good works. Dreams of this sort stand for countless others. Nor was the pain of losing a child felt exclusively by women. Louis XI would never again wear the clothes he had on or use the horse he was riding when the news came to him of a newborn son’s death. He even ordered that part of the forest cut down in which he had been riding when the news reached him. He was, to be sure, a king, who could give his emotions full play. But we must not think that people were indifferent to the deaths of their children.

Miniatures show the child occupying an important place in the family constellation. The Holy Family, in its modest but pleasant surroundings, was a favorite theme for Books of Hours. Nativities were equally well loved. Again and again, we see the stable and the Mother with the Child in her lap, admired by a solemn Joseph. Family happiness was here given its sanctification. Another favorite theme was the birth of John the Baptist. Here the circumstances depicted are more normal – there is no manger, no ox nor ass. Saint Elizabeth is lying in a decent bed and is being looked after by a number of capable women. The drama of a lying in was clearly felt, for this was one of the crucial moments of a woman’s life. Many would not come through it.

No one will claim that the Middle Ages took a scientific view of child development. Nevertheless, there was a good deal of traditional wisdom and a treasury of instinctive response. The interaction of mother and child, with its remarkable bearing on the child’s well-being, was understood.

It was not yet a matter of course for the upper classes to employ a wet nurse. This was still a question of personal choice, with many noblewomen and even queens preferring to nurse their children. It had probably been noted that a child fared better under its mother’s care. But still another element, that of pride of blood, entered in. A story from one of the romances so popular with noble readers makes the point plain.

Never did Countess Yde, who was so good and fair suffer that one of her three sons, for any cause whatsoever, should be suckled by waiting-woman or damosel; all three were suckled at her own breast. One day the lady went to hear mass at her chapel, and commended her three sons to one of her maidens. One of the three, awakening, wailed sore and howled; wherefore the maiden called a damosel and bade her suckle the child... The Countess came back and called the maiden: “Tell me, now wherefore this child has wetted his chin?” “My lady, he awoke but now; sore and loud were his cries, and I bade a damosel give him of her milk.” When the Countess heard this, all her heart shook; for the pain that she had, she fell upon a seat; sore gasped her heart under her breast; and when she would have spoken, she called herself a poor leper. Swiftly she flew, all trembling with rage, and caught her child under her arms... her face was black as coal with the wrath that seethed within... There on a mighty table she bade them spread out a purple quilt, and hold the child: there she rolled him and caught him by the shoulders, that he delayed not to give up the milk which he had sucked. Yet ever after were his deeds and his renown less, even to the day of his death.

There is a fine aristocratic passion in this scene. Then, as now, each class brought up its children in its own image. The babies of the nobility were dressed like little princelings. We have the list of clothes ordered by Louis d’Orléans for his year-and-a-half-old son. The child was furnished with a long surcoat of green damask trimmed with squirrel fur at the neck and wrists, a tunic of fine vermilion cloth similarly trimmed, two vermilion caps, two pairs of woolen hose, and two little doublets of Reims linen. No less than eighteen pairs of shoes, made by the royal shoemaker, were provided over the year.

A young noble’s education was a sustained and serious business. It began with Latin grammar and went on to the other six liberal arts. A young noble read what classical authors were known at the time and the writers of his own epoch. He developed an elegant handwriting.

Successful bourgeois also felt the need for liberal arts and sent their children to the cathedral schools, where Latin grammar was taught. The more intellectually inclined went from there to the universities, eventually specializing in theology, law, or medicine. Even peasant boys, or those from the artisan class who showed an aptitude for study, could find their way to a university. But what they countered there was only a form of technical schooling opening the way to one of the learned professions. By far the larger number of such students never made it to the end, for university studies were a terribly long grind, carried on under chaotic conditions. Many would drop out and find some lowly position requiring literacy.

The ordinary peasant did not learn to read or write. Artisans underwent only vocational training as apprentices to their trade. But we must not imagine that the absence of regularized education left an enormous void. There was a great deal of oral culture – telling of tales and singing of songs. Churches provided images and concepts to fill the mind and nourish the imagination. Miracle plays, under the auspices of church and guild, gave entertainment to the audience and a chance for self expression to the actors. People would gather by the hundreds to hear a preacher.

The coming of printing was to change all this, adding a new dimension to society. There was gain, and there was loss.

By Richard Winston in "Life in the Middle Ages", Horizon, New York, 2016, excerpts pp.90-101. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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