For a well-to-do burgher, the day began with prayers at dawn. Then, braced by a draught of wine, he hurried off to work. Business took him on a familiar circuit of town—to the docks and the market to see to his merchandise, to the guildhall and the tavern to gossip about prices. He returned home for his first meal of the day at 10 a m., and again for his supper at 6 p. m., and he ate his way through enormous repasts—including such fare as eels, roasts, black pudding, lark pastry, larded milk. His wife, besides preparing the food, kept house, managed the servants, tended the children and still found time to "have roses to grow. . . and make chaplets and dance and sing." Around 9 p. m. the members of the household turned in. With shutters bolted, they went to sleep "well bedded in white sheets. . . well covered with good furs, and assuaged with other joys and amusements."
IN A TAVERN, tipplers are plied with drinks hy the innkeeper, fancifully depicted in his cellar. Official ale tasters visited the taverns to approve the quality of each new brew. Many inns serving bad ale were closed down.
IN A COMFORTABLE HOMF. an ailing burgher (opposite) takes a nap while his meal is prepared hy bis wife, at the fire, and her servant. A rich man's home might have such luxuries as carpets and glass windowpanes.
A LEPROSY VICTIM aims with a cripple, souruis his rattle
To warn of his approach. The wandering lepers were admitted to most towns hut were compelled to buy any object they touched.
A GLOOMY ALLEY poses health threats which were suffered in ignorance by its medieval tenants. Here—and in every cold, damp, malodorous street—respiratory diseases took an unrelenting toll.
THE PLAGUE DEAD receive a hasty mass burial at Tournai, in what is now Belgium, in 1349. The dread bubonic plague, knozon in its time as the Black Death, carried off about one quarter of Europe’s population in seven years.
World History
