A LORDLY CHAMBER

The long, all-purpose hall that often provided the complete basic structure of the home of a manorial lord, and that comprised the main communal living area of a baron's castle, was at first the locus of all domestic activity: cooking and eating, entertaining and sleeping. As complex social hierarchies developed, interiors became increasingly elaborate: Wooden screens, first erected to bar drafts from open doorways, became permanent features, often surmounted by galleries from which musicians played to an assembled company; the master's table was elevated on a low platform, sometimes framed by tapestries or dramatically illuminated by an arched window, and his gold and silver dishes were displayed in a specially constructed cabinet. But although every feature of the hall— including wall paintings, decorative tracery in the windows, and soaring timber roofs— enhanced its owner's prestige, eventually his desire for comfort and privacy outgrew the confines of a single chamber. Separate kitchens and bedrooms were built, leaving the hall for pomp and ceremony.

While minstrels play trumpets and a sackbut, a cupbearer serves his lord at table in this fifteenth-century Flemish painting. Elaborate ritual governed the setting of the table and the serving of food: Salt, an expensive commodity, was the first item to be placed upon the tablecloth, and fanfares annoupced the appearance of each course, which was placed before diners in strict order of rank.

A chestnut-timbered roof soars sixty feet high above the great hall of Penshurst Place in southeast England, home in the fourteenth century to Sir John de Pul-teney. The life-size carved wooden figures at the foot of each main roof brace represent the peasants who worked the surrounding estate. At the rear of the hall, a minstrels' gallery is built over screens around the servants' entrances. In the foreground, logs are arranged over a central octagonal hearth— the most effective means of heating this 2,000-square-foot room.

Beyond and were fiercely suspicious of anyone who came from it. The only way of life they understood was the communal life of the village. Not one of them was rich enough to own a plow as well as an ox or a horse, but among them they could find both a plow and a team of animals to pull it. The one way in which they were able to grow enough grain to feed the whole village was by working the land together, with each providing whatever he could, even if it was only labor. Apart from labor, bread and produce were almost their only currency. They had little money and little need for it. The herdsman who watched over their livestock on the common pastures might be paid in loaves of bread; the miller took a share of the grain as payment; and on the occasions when they needed a craftsman to mend their tools or wagons, they paid him with a chicken and a few eggs.

Besides these routine expenses, the peasants were required to contribute a tenth of their produce or income to the local church. This tax, known as the tithe, was used to provide a living for the priest—who was himself generally a peasant appointed by the lord of the manor—to maintain the church building, and for the relief of the poor. In many parishes additional fees were charged for baptisms, weddings, and funeral services. Of necessity priests were often ruthless in their enforcement of the tithe, although the fourteenth-century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote of a priest who "much disliked extorting tithe or fee." Such reluctance was understandable, for in the small, intimate community of the village it was in no one's interest that relations between individuals turn sour.

The village church was far more than a place of assembly for weekly worship or the rites of marriage or death. Many churches were constructed at least in part as places of refuge, where the whole village could shelter; their towers provided useful vantage points from which to warn of approaching danger. The cemetery outside each church building linked the villagers to their past, giving them a sure sense of local roots. And the annual cycle of religious festivals celebrated in the church— Christmas, Candlemas, Easter, Pentecost, and numerous saints' days—marked the rhythm of the villagers' lives, echoing the parallel cycle of the seasons and their associated agricultural activities.

It was by these religious festivals that villagers told the passing of time: Events in the recent past or near future would be dated by their coincidence with or proximity to a particular saint's day or festival. Few knew the exact year according to the Christian chronology, and even literate men and women living in the manor houses tended to reckon the years in terms of the monarch's reign. The hours of the day were calculated by the position of the sun or by a sundial on the church tower.

Because the seasonal tasks were the same every year, and because only a major public or private event—a plague epidemic, perhaps, or a drought or the death of a family member—distinguished any one year from all the others, time was perceived as cyclical rather than linear or progressive. Few people were aware of any differences or improvements in the physical conditions of their lives compared with those of their grandparents—and indeed, over a span of just two or three generations, any such differences were minimal. But from the eleventh century, changes were in fact occurring at a rate far faster than in the previous 500 years.

First of all these developments involved agriculture: Large areas of forest and wasteland were cleared and sown with crops or turned into pastures; heavy iron plows that could dig deep through the richest soil were introduced, and productivity increased still further as farmers discovered that their new soil need lie fallow for only

The head of John the Baptist, made from painted and gilded alabaster, forms the central motif of a private fifteenth-century English altarpiece standing just sixteen inches high. A ubiquitous presence in medieval life, Christianity provided a focus for all artistic and intellectual endeavor: Figures and episodes from the Scriptures were the almost exclusive subject matter of artists and sculptors, and from craftsmen and manuscript illuminators wealthy patrons commissioned reliquaries, Psalters, and books of hours—anthologies of devotional literature—as aids to meditation. From the thirteenth century, the clicking of rosary beads increasingly accompanied the private recitation of prayers.

One year in every three instead of every other year. In some regions farmers also learned to rotate their crops, planting a winter crop such as wheat or rye in one field and a spring crop such as beans or barley in another. The peasants' diet still comprised chiefly bread and vegetables occasionally enlivened by cheese, eggs, or meat, but food supplies gradually became more reliable. Commercial expansion increased the amount of money in circulation, and some landlords began to collect their rent in cash rather than produce and to pay wages for labor on their land. A determined serf might even be able to earn enough money to buy his freedom and a small plot of land, and to build a sturdy two-room dwelling. Eventually, as market towns became ever more prosperous, and as a class of merchants trading in surplus produce slowly emerged, the ties of manor and parish would be loosened still further.

At the top of the feudal structure were the barons, whose power was based on the

Land worked by the peasants. At the beginning of the twelfth century, the homes of even the greatest landlords were hardly impressive: Most of the castles built by the barons throughout Europe to house their men-at-arms and guard their estates were simply earth mounds surmounted by wooden towers and surrounded by ditches and stockades. But during the course of the next two centuries the barons became rich enough to replace the perishable and inflammable wood with impenetrable stone. In many castles the central building was transformed into a massive tall tower known as a keep, with walls that were often several yards thick. In the walls of the ground-floor storehouse and the guardroom above it the windows were narrow slits through which an archer could shoot his arrows. On the second floor, where it was more difficult for an assailant to break in, larger windows admitted light to the great hall that rose through the rest of the building. In small towers at the corners of the keep.

The common feature uniting these disparate furnishings—a French tapestry dated 1506 depicting ladies embroidering in a flowery meadow, a fifteenth-century table with liftoff top and collapsible legs, and a sturdy sixteenth-century oak coffer—is their portability. When a medieval nobleman moved from one castle or manor to another, he took his household with him: furniture, linens, pots and pans, and musical instruments as well as squires, grooms, cooks, and other servants. The contingent could comprise more than a hundred people, together with strings of packhorses. Reaching its destination, the household brought the hubbub of human occupation into buildings that for much of the year might be bare-walled shells cared for by a skeleton staff.

Circular staircases wound up to galleries and bedchambers. Outside the keep the stockade became a high stone wall joining the towers that watched every approach, and within this wall were stables, an armory, and a blacksmith's forge.

The households living within a castle became larger as landowners themselves became richer. By the fifteenth century many of the most powerful noblemen in Europe were attended by more than a hundred followers, and only the humblest of the followers were peasants. The steward, the chamberlain, the treasurer, the keeper of the wardrobe, and even the yeomen of the wine cellar and the pantry all came from landowning families and regarded themselves as the social equals of knights. It was considered an honor to wear clothes embroidered with the coat of arms of a great lord, and serving in his household was one of the ways in which the younger sons of knights could earn enough to buy land of their own.

The most nobly born of all the servants were often the youngest—the pages, some of whom were no more than eight years old. The pages were the sons and in many cases the heirs of other barons, and within the walls of a castle they had tutors experienced in every skill that a nobleman needed. They learned riding and hunting from the knights lodged at the castle, reading and writing from a grammar master, and dancing and manners from the ladies. And in carving meat, serving wine, and generally waiting on the baron's every whim, they learned a measure of humility. In the same way, barons and the richer knights sent their daughters to other men's castles to learn the domestic and social accomplishments required of a wellborn wife. In most great castles there was a group of young ladies who sat demurely in the hall at dinner, danced before guests, and slept in the one well-guarded dormitory.

The castle's day began at dawn with mass in the chapel for all the household. After a breakfast of bread, fruit, and wine, the knights spent the morning hunting or practicing military skills. Two or three mornings a week the pages might watch or ride with them; on the other mornings they sat with the grammar master. Meanwhile the cooks and their staff prepared the dinner, which was usually served well before noon. With so many mouths to feed and so little ventilation, a castle's kitchen could be as hot as a blacksmith's forge. In the summer the boys who turned the roasting joints on spits often stood naked before the fire.

For dinner—the most important event of the day—the entire household dressed in finery. Clothes were a sign of rank: They were dyed in bright colors that were forbidden to the peasantry and were made of the costliest cloth the wearer could afford. A gentleman's costume always fitted tightly, to show that he was a man who might at any moment have to don a coat of mail or armor.

In the eleventh century, clothes were much the same as they had been during the previous 600 years: Women wore long, shapeless dresses, and men wore woolen tunics and trousers covered with cross-gartering. But the Crusades, beginning at the end of the eleventh century, introduced to the European aristocracy luxurious Oriental silks, damasks, and other fabrics. Soon the men's tunics and trousers were replaced by the doublet, which had buttons down the front and which itself was to change in style and shape over the course of time. Many doublets were embroidered with heraldic designs, and when hose were worn with different colors on each leg, the doublet was often made with the same two colors on opposite sides. The overgarment worn on top of the doublet also became subject to frequent changes of fashion: In the fifteenth century, for example, tailors slashed its sleeves to reveal underneath the contrasting colors of the doublet. For women, changes in the shape

Sheep are led out to graze and a woman milks a cow while another churns butter in this sixteenth-century Flemish manuscript illustration. The accommodation of animals and people alike consisted of thatched, timberframed buildings with walls of dried mud and rough plaster; in northern Europe only the rich could afford dwellings of more durable stone. When villages were abandoned—sometimes because of a change from crop growing to sheep farming, and subsequent eviction by landlords—all visible trace of their presence often quickly disappeared from the landscape.

And cut of their long gowns were usually more subtle, and the most conspicuous variations were in their often exuberant headgear. Sometimes gold and jeweled tiaras were in fashion, and there were times when the most extravagant ladies sprinkled their hair with gold dust. In Italy, where blond hair was the most admired, ladies sat out in the sun for days on end to bleach it and then wore hats with no crowns to them.

The midday dinner for which the household assembled was served on long, cloth-covered tables running the entire length of the hall. At one end, at a right angle to the other tables, the baron's table stood on a raised platform. His gold-and-silver goblets and plates were displayed on a separate table at the side; the goblets from which he and his guests actually drank were usually made out of pewter, while the plates were often flat pieces of wood, known as trenchers, or else large slices of bread that soaked up the sauces and were then thrown to the hounds. Spoons were the only cutlery to be found on the table; forks were not used until the sixteenth century, and the baron's guests were expected to bring their own knives.

The dishes were many and rich. Beef, mutton, pork, swan, and peacock were served together. Duck, pheasant, and chicken were combined with stuffings of egg yolks, currants, mace, cinnamon, and cloves. Small birds such as sparrows and starlings were served in heavily spiced stews. And there were often one or two novelties, such as a pie with live birds in it or a huge sugary confection fashioned to represent a heraldic or legendary scene. The dishes were served by a procession of servants, first to the baron's high table and then to the other diners in order of rank.

The formality and ceremony of the daily regimen in a castle could be daunting for a young knight who had known nothing but the simpler life of the manor house or an army camp. In many kingdoms, books were written to advise both knights and pages on every detail of dignified behavior at a court or among ladies, and the authors knew from experience that they often had to begin from scratch: Don't eat with your knife, don't fondle the dogs under the table, don't lick your plate, don't butter your bread with your thumb, and don't clean your teeth with the tablecloth.

In southern Europe a siesta followed dinner, and then—as everywhere—hunting and training in martial sports continued until supper, which was usually served around sunset. Supper was a lighter meal than dinner, but there were still several kinds of meat, and when it was over, the evening's entertainment began. The household sat until bedtime listening to a traveling storyteller or reciter of verses, or watching acrobats, jugglers, or trained animals. If there were no professionals available, the household amused itself, the ladies playing chess or checkers while the men played dice. Light flickered from the fire in the open hearth, from torches made of resinous twigs, and from guttering candles of animal fat. In the countryside beyond the castle walls, the surrounding villages were already wrapped in darkness.

A nineteenth-century English hymnist encapsulated the apparently unchanging verities of the feudal system:

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

Cod made them, high and lowly.

And order'd their estate.

The privileged life of the nobleman's castle was vulnerable to the depredations of war, but for generations the wealth of the nobles cocooned them from the effects of new social and economic forces in society. For the peasants and serfs likewise, wholly at the beck and call of their masters, the conditions of their lives must have

This reconstruction of the facade and interior of a peasant's cottage illustrates one distinctive method of building with timber: arching beams, or crocks, serve as structural supports for both roof and walls. Crocks could support a dwelling up to thirty feet wide, but few crock-framed buildings were erected after the sixteenth century. The upper stories that were increasingly demanded could more easily be built using the box-frame type of construction shown on the opposite page.

Seemed God-given and unalterable. In the houses of the manorial lords, too, change was slow to take effect; but it was in these homes, midway along the social spectrum of the feudal system and supplied with gradually increasing comforts, that forms of domestic life developed that would be familiar to later ages.

Many manors were supervised by stewards on behalf of barons or bishops; and there were some, often the best managed, that belonged to monasteries. But often the manor was held by a knight, who lived on the edge of the village in the only house that was larger than those of the peasants and the priest. At the start of the eleventh century, in the parts of northern Europe that had been settled by Saxons and Vikings, the lord of the manor's home was commonly a long, wooden-framed hall divided into

Separate sections for his animals, his servants, and his family. Such halls lacked light and were often filled with smoke, but were the scenes of frequent feasting. The Saxons in particular were famous for their hospitality. After the Normans had conquered the Saxon kingdom of England in 1066, the Norman chronicler William of Malmesbury recorded their habits disdainfully. "The custom of drinking together was universal," he wrote, "the night as well as the day being passed in this pursuit. They spent great sums on it while living in small and contemptible homes, unlike the French and Normans, who live at a moderate rate in large and splendid buildings."

In fact the type of house that knights inhabited in France and southern Europe, and that the Normans were about to introduce into England, was neither large nor splendid, being little more than a bigger and better-built version of a peasant's house. Surrounded by a stockade and sometimes by a moat, it often comprised just one large room. Even in the few stone houses that were built on two floors, the ground floor was used only for storage and stabling, and the hall above was reached by an external wooden staircase that could be knocked down if the house was attacked.

Like everyone else in the village, the lord of the manor, his family, and his servants all ate and slept together in the same room. Their furniture was better than that of the peasants: The trestle table was sturdier, there might be a chair at one end for the master, and there were benches on either side instead of stools. There was also one large bed in which, unlike the peasants, the lord and his lady slept naked, and there was a pole wedged into the wall on which they hung their clothes. The major difference between a lord's and a peasant's house was that hounds were the only animals with which the lord shared his living quarters. Livestock was sheltered in a room below or elsewhere in the stockade.

One of the first improvements to appear in manorial houses all over Europe was the wood - or stone-seated latrine, which was built into a wall at one end of the hall. Most had a shaft that carried their contents down through the wall to a cesspool, but a few simply protruded far enough to allow waste to fall outside the house. Toward the end of the twelfth century, in a first attempt to create a degree of privacy for their sleeping area, many lords installed leather curtains or wooden screens, which could be pulled out in the evening to cut off one end of the hall. And then, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, a few took the next step and built houses with separate rooms, a hall and a chamber.

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries some lords of the manor built towers with rooms on several floors, while others built wings on either end of their halls, adding chapels, parlors, guest chambers, storage rooms for their wine, and pantries for their bread. To minimize the danger of fire, the kitchen often comprised a separate building; over its open hearths broths and stews simmered in cauldrons, joints and poultry roasted on turning spits, and bread was baked in a wood-heated oven. When the lord and household dined, the food was carried into the hall along a covered walkway and through a passage between storerooms. Since this meant that the door was constantly opening and shutting, screens were used again to stop the draft from blowing smoke from the central hearth onto the high table, where the master and his family sat. At first the screens were movable, but by the fourteenth century they had become permanent architectural features of the halls, many decorated with elaborate carvings in their heavy wood, and some with galleries above them for minstrels who sang to the household in the evenings.

By the end of the fifteenth century many screens were purely ornamental, for the

A fifteenth-century English stained-glass roundel from a series illustrating the months of the year depicts a February scene: a man warming his bare hands and feet at an open fire.

Problem of billowing smoke had been eliminated by installing carved stone fireplaces, not only in the hall but also in all the important chambers. Tall brick or stone chimneys boastfully proclaimed their presence above the rooftops. The manor house had grown up. Lodgings for guests and senior servants, kitchens, stables, and a gatehouse reached out to enclose a courtyard in front of the hall. Windows became larger and moats were generally dispensed with, as most parts of Europe had become more peaceful and the need for fortifications had diminished.

The floors of bedchambers were still strewn with rushes, but their walls were now brightly painted with heraldic designs or scenes from legends or the Scriptures. In rich houses the lower parts of the walls were paneled in wood and the upper parts were hung with tapestries. And as always in the bedchamber, the most imposing and elaborate item of furniture was the bed itself. Since the twelfth century beds had been surrounded by curtains, which were suspended either from the ceiling or from lopg poles protruding from the wall. In the thirteenth century, beds acquired canopies, followed soon afterward by feather mattresses, linen sheets, and silk counterpanes. By the fifteenth century, there were many different designs, particularly in France, where the most popular type was shaped like a sofa with high wooden panels around three sides. At the end of the century, the most fashionable bed was the new Venetian fourposter, with slender columns rising at each corner to support the canopy.

A few of the finest bedchambers had their own latrines, but most were equipped only with portable commodes. When a member of the family or a guest took a bath, servants had to fill clay jars with water, heat them over the fire in the kitchen, and carry them up to the bedchamber; there the jars were emptied into round wooden tubs, sometimes lined with cloth padding or containing a stool for the occupant to sit on. Only the wealthiest palaces could boast separate bathrooms, and few of these had hot and cold running water, even though the simple technology was available. As early as 1351, King Edward III of England built a bathroom in his palace at Westminster with two large bronze taps above the bath, one fed by a tank of cold water and the other by a hot tank with a fire burning beneath it.

An inventory of the bedchamber of Sir John Fastolf, a landowner in eastern England, listed some of the items with which the rich could afford to surround their slumbers in the fifteenth century: