The medevial peasent was not living the Life of Riley (compared to modern 'wage slaves' in liberal democracies).

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

This paper may be of interest to this thread: https://www.academia.edu/18607544/AN...OUND_YEAR_1000

I based myself mainly on what I recall from Chris Wickham's "The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000" and Thomas Bisson's "The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government". Personally I'm more interested in the transition from Empire to medieval kingdoms (Heather, Halsell, Goffart, to name a few). Those early kingdoms were not feudal and I've seen no indications that at any point after feudalism was conceived of and implemented as a "system of government". The parceling up of the King's domain, especially at the smallest level (barons) was not a part of a deliberate policy. Exactly the opposite. It came about through

violations of the King's peace that were left partly or wholly unremedied. It seems paradoxical to qualify the violation of extant law and erosion of rights as a system of government.

Have you read Jennifer Davis's Charlemagne's Practice of Empire? What you mention here she goes into in-depth in how ad-hoc the Carolingian administration was and how this led to it breaking up and the empowerment of smaller landholders.

But you are right, one need only to look at the Ostrogothic "Kingdom" of Theodoric II, which like Odoacer before him was just part of the Roman Empire under a slightly different administrative model defined by the terms of a treaty, which is that espoused in Goffart's work on Hospitalitas.

[conon394]

Compared to the industrial age, yes. Compared to the middle ages, nope.

I see no evidence for assertion.

[Sir Adrian]

A simple google search should find you all the evidence you need. Agriculture work is not year-round and work on the lord's estate was variable but never more than 150 days per year.

In 1987 the average american worked 1949 hours per year. This has decreased today to 1801. In the 1200s an English peasant worked 1550 to 1650 hours per year.

[conon394]

A simple google search should find you all the evidence you need. Agriculture work is not year-round and work on the lord's estate was variable but never more than 150 days per year.

And after that is all what paid holidays? Really so just ignore my post entirely??? Please than do your simple search and post the links for this idealized 150 day work year.

I not BSing in little line - to the left - I really did have 15 chickens, 2 horses (and 2 more boarded) and 2 of my own pigs (and 4 more for somebody else) when I typed that in. So know what keeping them did not just magically involve them take half the year off and stop being work for me. Put in purposes of this discussion - on my 49 acres not my lords the work never ended.

I am ignoring maybe another 10-15 (there were handshake property lines all around going back generations) acres that was the cliff side of the property. On paper that would make me a double Virgator... but Eastern Washington is dry land agriculture that it tough to match to Sussex. Given sub irrigation from the springs and decent soil really I could put 6-12 acres of the land into a medieval crop rotation aiming at wheat the high number would be risky. The rest would have to be pasture and thus I need really goats not sheep maybe the odd pig. The acres I ignored would be the real golden goose. Timber not endless but some old growth because its a pain to get to and a lot small growth. But something you have to harvest carefully for cash and not waste it.

But you see again my work would never end and it does not show in the manor log because either I did my bit and/or paid off the rest in cash so I could be back working my land.

In the 1200s an English peasant worked 1550 to 1650 hours per year.

Ha no just nope - source.

[Prodromos]

A simple google search should find you all the evidence you need. Agriculture work is not year-round and work on the lord's estate was variable but never more than 150 days per year.

In 1987 the average american worked 1949 hours per year. This has decreased today to 1801. In the 1200s an English peasant worked 1550 to 1650 hours per year.

Conon already addressed this in the OP. The claim that medieval peasants worked only 150 days a year comes from Juliet Shor, who based it on an unpublished(?) 1986 paper by Gregory Clark. But Clark himself no longer believes the 150 day estimate and now puts it at 250-300 days per year.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

And after the work for the lords the peasants had to work for the Church to pay the 10th.

And the peasants had to maintain the roads of their lords, make baskets, ropes for their lords. All Things which came on top of their agricultural duties to their lords.

[conon394]

And after the work for the lords the peasants had to work for the Church to pay the 10th.

And the peasants had to maintain the roads of their lords, make baskets, ropes for their lords. All Things which came on top of their agricultural duties to their lords.

Well that is really the devil in the detail. On the one hand you have easily retrieved average hours worked for various types of workers and their paid leave and unpaid leave from say 1945 onward for the modern 'west'. But the job of comparing that to medieval peasant (and in my OP specifically one from England) is really really hard. Particularity when you try to than derive an individuals works hours out of family data.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

@Conon: I'm on your side.

From a podcast on Deutschlandfunk:

Working hours in the past and today


The high number of holidays in the Middle Ages is deceptive

Were you less diligent in the past? The high number of up to 80 holidays in the Middle Ages is deceptive: On the one hand, Sundays were included. In addition, farmers, for example, also worked on these days, says the economic historian Thomas Ertl

...

2000 hours a year, earlier than today


That looks like a lot of work. In fact, however, according to Thomas Ertl, self-employed farmers used to work about the same amount as they do today: around 2000 hours a year, including forced labour.
"That's also a number that roughly applies to self-employed people in other professions in Germany today," explains Thomas Ertl. "This is a measure that does not differ significantly from the workload of self-employed people in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period."
What could lead to the assumption that fewer people worked than today is the large number of public holidays: there were up to 80 including Sundays.
"Yes. In theory, that was the case,” says Thonas Ertl. “But that only applies to a very limited extent. On the one hand, self-employed craftsmen and farmers were always able to work on these days if they wanted to. And on the other hand, through violations of the holiday rest and also through exceptions, we see that people in certain professions did work on these days.
Most people in the Middle Ages were self-employed farmers, who were often dependent on their lords and therefore "unfree", but were able to manage for themselves to a considerable extent. The comparatively few employees, for whom sunrise and sunset marked the beginning and end of the working day, took their free time.
"There were staggered fines, i.e. catalogs of penalties for people who came too late," says Thomas Ertl. “An hour late, two hours late, some days not showing up at all. This means that the legal texts suggest an enormous amount of working time, which in reality has certainly not been implemented one-to-one.”


...

Arbeitszeit früher und heute - Die hohe Anzahl von Feiertagen im Mittelalter trügt | deutschlandfunkkultur.de

I guess its romantic nostalgia to say in the MA people had less work.

Personally i think the opposite is true.

Think alone how much work time agricultural and artsanal machines are saving.

[Prodromos]

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic:

Tudor and Stuart Englishmen were, by our standards, exceedingly liable to pain, sickness and premature death. Even among the nobility, whose chances are likely to have been better than those of other classes, the life expectation at birth of boys born in the third quarter of the seventeenth century was 29.6 years. Today it would be around 70. A third of these aristocratic infants died before the age of five, while the level of mortality among those who lived to be adults closely resembled that of India in the last decade of the nineteenth century… But contemporaries did not need elaborate demographic investigations to tell them that life was short, and that the odds were against any individual living out his full span. ‘We shall find more who have died within thirty or thirty-five years of age than passed it,’ remarked a writer in 1635. Even those who survived could anticipate a lifetime of intermittent pain. Literary sources suggest that many persons suffered chronically from some ailment or other, and this impression is confirmed by inferences from what is known of contemporary diet.

The food supply was always precarious and throughout the period the fate of the annual harvest remained crucial. The meagre evidence available suggests that the yield-ratio on seed corn may have doubled between 1500 and 1660, but so did the population. About one harvest in six seems to have been a total failure, and mortality could soar when times of dearth coincided with (or perhaps occasioned) large-scale epidemics.

Rich and poor alike were victims of the infections generated by the lack of hygiene, ignorance of antiseptics and absence of effective sanitation. Epidemics accounted for thirty per cent of reported deaths in seventeenth-century London. There were periodic waves of influenza, typhus, dysentery and, in the seventeenth century, smallpox, a disease which the contemporary physician Thomas Sydenham assumed would sooner or later attack most people.

Drink, for example, was built into the fabric of social life. It played a part in nearly every public and private ceremony, every commercial bargain, every craft ritual, every private occasion of mourning or rejoicing. At fairs and markets, which remained exempt until 1874 from ordinary licensing restrictions, the consumption could be enormous.

[…]

Alcohol was thus an essential narcotic which anaesthetized men against the strains of contemporary life. Drunkenness broke down social distinctions, and brought a temporary mood of optimism to the desperate… The poor took to drink to blot out some of the horror in their lives. Alcohol flowed freely at times of plague: ‘I have myself seen,’ recalled a preacher in 1638, ‘when the Bills [of Mortality] were at the highest, even bearers who had little respite from carrying dead corpses to their graves and many others of the like rank go reeling in the streets.’

[Heathen Hammer]

Arbeitszeit früher und heute - Die hohe Anzahl von Feiertagen im Mittelalter trügt | deutschlandfunkkultur.de

I guess its romantic nostalgia to say in the MA people had less work.

I guess its faulty reasoning to counter peer-reviewed academic study that was cited in my original post on this topic with podcast on a state-owned radio.

[conon394]

I guess its faulty reasoning to counter peer-reviewed academic study that was cited in my original post on this topic with podcast on a state-owned radio.

To which peer reviewed academic study are you pointing at please. I don't recall you citing any as such directly so provided post link or number and thread reference. The actual source you mean.

In any case you attempt at being dismissive has wee problem , yes a pod cast but one by this guy
'Thomas Ertl appointed professor of the high and late Middle Ages at FMI'

https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e...fung_ertl.html

... is not the just one by dudes in a dorm in undergraduate school.

------


Oh and meant to post this

Soooo... your whole argument rests on two main premises:
1) Medieval people living shorter on average (due to infant mortality which was an unfortunate reality until more or less recent medical/technological discoveries which can't really be attributed to shortcomings or benefits of the "system" in either case of Middle Ages or Modernity);
2) Period sources being "wrong" - which, again, can be applied to modern sources fluffing over the benefits of modernity as well.

With that in mind, I don't really see where Schor is so "wrong", since both of your counter-arguments rely on a faulty premise that ignores swaths of context, be it odd way of estimating average lifespan by including infant mortality or giving benefit of the doubt to modern sources as opposed to period ones.

So you reply relies in not actually reading anything I wrote?

1) Medieval people living shorter on average (due to infant mortality which was an unfortunate reality until more or less recent medical/technological discoveries which can't really be attributed to shortcomings or benefits of the "system" in either case of Middle Ages or Modernity)

Well on the latter they very much can be attributed to modern world. But in any the simple fact remains a simple fact the The Medieval English Peasant did not live a more, relaxed, less 'worked' life than the average resident of a modern OECD democracy.


And in general the the MEP did not even bat above the average that occasionally a pre fossil fuel society managed like say Classical Athens, Rome first 2 centuries of the empire or 8^th century AD Egypt. I grant the absoultly external surprise of the black death briefly flirted with gains for the less than 1% but the system was lockstep to suppress that. Thus unlike my examples there was no endogenous effort to create that situation.

2) Period sources being "wrong" - which, again, can be applied to modern sources fluffing over the benefits of modernity as well

I don't believe I ever said period sources were 'wrong' please elaborate. I suggested your links were to research that was using period sources vastly out of context and I hope charitably unintentionally to reach a poor conclusion. Although in many cases so bad as to only be understood to be willful misrepresentation.

I am in fact all in favor of the period sources since they unambiguously show the MEP did not in fact have more leisure time then the average person working in OECD nation in the current era.

With that in mind, I don't really see where Schor is so "wrong", since both of your counter-arguments rely on a faulty premise that ignores swaths of context, be it odd way of estimating average lifespan by including infant mortality or giving benefit of the doubt to modern sources as opposed to period ones.

Err Infant mortality is hardly the only mortality difference between your life span and the MEP. And in any case I provided comparisons based on having lived past infancy and early childhood and the MEP still has a shorter life span.


“ swaths of context” err what?

"Benefit of the doubt to modern sources" when did I do that?

Schor is so "wrong"

Schor is wrong. Period. She used data deceptively and selectively and manipulatively. No honest reading of the data she presents supports her conclusion about the MEP.

Be honest and just admit you were rambling and picked out some online sources w/o ever reading them.

[Heathen Hammer]

Um, what? You literally created this thread in response to Schor's study being posted.
As I said, my stance is pretty clear:
1) Average shorter life-span is due to infant mortality being included into the estimations.
2) Possibility of period sources being inaccurate isn't an argument in on itself.

Schor is wrong. Period. She used data deceptively and selectively and manipulatively. No honest reading of the data she presents supports her conclusion about the MEP.

And you have to post, you know, evidence for that. Which you posted, well, none of.

[conon394]

1) Average shorter life-span is due to infant mortality being included into the estimations.

I addressed that already by using life expectancy at mid 20s and 30.

And you have to post, you know, evidence for that. Which you posted, well, none of.

I did in fact. I posted the relative chapter Schor's work. Her work is deeply flawed.

First it is not 'peer reviewed' that is the process of submitting something to an academic refereed journal. That is not the standard of an academic book.

As I said I cited the relevant chapter of her book and the table that is the center of this myth in 2 different available forms. Either via Google book or the link I posted

https://sites.middlebury.edu/greattr...can-Chpt-3.pdf

Which provides four data points:

1. 1620 hours/yr AD 1200
2. 1440 hours/yr AD 1300
3. 2309 hours/yr AD ?????
4. 1980 hours/yr AD 1600

I addressed these all in the OP. But apparently it was too long for you.

Of course only data points 1 and 2 are really important for this conversation. They are the only ones that provided a lower hr/yr number for the MEP than either her 2 modern US and UK data points or the OECD numbers your link provides for the US and UK now.
[OECD link https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm]

At this point its worth noting had she titled the book the overworked industrial worker of the Gilded age in the US and Britain she would have had a viable argument even ignoring her mendacity and selectivity in data handling around the MEP.

In any case I will re address all 4 again and try to keep it simple for you.

1.

This point the number most oft cited out of the book is is based on an unpublished work. Not a primary source. Now in general using an unpublished PhD dissertation or paper is generally considered at best rude. More important it would be passed in the context of "I cite A and B and also C an unpublished dissertation by so and so". You are just tossing in a data point that is not easily verified to create a stronger argument. But critically this dissertation would be expected to have been an approved one and simply something the author never turned into a paper or a book. In other words if you either contact the author or have access to the particular institution that issued and archived the dissertation you can read it and or presumably have the author say yep I stand by that conclusion - it does exist as PhD level work approved by peers after rigorous examination.

That is not case here. In fact Schor cites only the unpublished work. Moreover it is no unpublished PhD Thesis, it is not even a Masters Thesis unpublished but pre-Masters level work unpublished. That alone would amount to a suggestion willful fraud was being done. But in fact it is a work the author does not include in his CV (Link in OP above). It is a figure the author's actual published work refutes (again see OP) and it is work that the author when contacted publicly said was not his view and inaccurate (note 7 above).

The data point cannot stand and should not be cited. And its a secondary work.

2.

The paper by Nora Ritchie nee Kenyon. I can't help feel the choice to cite the women under a married name in an out of print collection of papers over the original work under her maiden name easily available in JSTOR was not intentional. Since as I discussed in the OP Schor has cherry picked a number which Ms Nora Kenyon explicitly states cannot be taken as a work year of days. Again a secondary work.

3.

Why bother since even Schor's editor can't keep straight the source for the data being talked about and at this point I suspect academic chicanery anyway. But let us move on I guess we will come back to the number for three since it is mislabeled as the Medieval miner farmer (from Mendip) and really hours worked are 1980 per year which is data supposedly for four.

Again I fully addressed this in the OP. But this time at least Schor had decency to actually directly cite an easily found paper. But in terms of data as I noted across two tables the author has potentially 18 entries for days worked per year. Of those 10 are farmer/miners and 8 are 'professional miners'. 18 data potential data points only 4 are filled. Only one for the f/m and three for the p/m. So hey it's Schor let's see some more underhand academic dealing shall we I think so?

Does she mention the P/M average is by her calculation would be 2581 hr/yr. Nope. But sure using just the 1 number out of 10 for f/m she gets 1980 hr/yr for the farmer/minor. Except she kinda ignores the author of the paper who is explicit on the farmer part. That is on average the they held ~5+ acres as free or as a villein and thus also probably had some share of the commons (and even cotters likely had more commons than their small 'owned' land would imply). Thus their mining work was done during slack times of maintaining their agricultural holding and obligations to a lord.

So sorry not the idealized life of leisure again. And again a secondary source.

4.

Or is it 3. Schor's editor can't decide...But here we have the author's estimate of 2/3 of a year days worked and 9.5 hours per day. and its 2309 hrs. Aside from the fact I would not trust Schor at this point to tell me which way the north star points, it is higher than any modern figure she provides or that you Heathen Hammer have vaguely cited. And its a not even a secondary source at this point. Its Napkin math.

So at no point have I dismissed primary sources. I am simply pointing out Schor's use of secondary sources is being very charitable very poor, but frankly in reality willfully dishonest. Nothing in her book supports the ideal the MEP worked less hours per year than the modern 'Overworked American'

[Heathen Hammer]

Err, you posted an incoherent wall of text, but I'll bite:
1) The comparison is pretty clear. Calling it "wrong" and then just saying a bunch of negative buzzwords without establishing why this is the case, is just gainsaying.
2) if you accusing study of cherry-picking, then it wouldn't be hard to point out what was left out from same sources. You have not.
3) If her study is part of some sinister academic conspiracy to besmirch the wonderous fruits of our modern progressive society that you are alluding too, wouldn't it be hard to provide a study that would address that or suggest the opposite?
All in all, it seems like your posts express a negative emotional response to Schor's conclusion, but you are struggling with backing that response up with even a logically coherent counter-argument, even the guy that posted the link to that silly podcast run by German government did at least make a more energetic attempt at that.

[conon394]

I not sure that drivel deserves a reply.

Err, you posted an incoherent wall of text

I did do exactly what you asked requires and it more than writing unsubstantiated accusations sorry you have read a bit of text

1) The comparison is pretty clear. Calling it "wrong" and then just saying a bunch of negative buzzwords without establishing why this is the case, is just gainsaying.

I established exactly why she is wrong. You used more buzzwords in that short statement than I have at all.

How is it a buzzword to point out and source that Schor cites unpublished sub masters work as fact that the author repudiated in public? This bother you not at all - the needed links are in the OP

2) if you accusing study of cherry-picking, then it wouldn't be hard to point out what was left out from same sources. You have not.

My goddess why am I wasting my time. I have now done so twice with links and extensive text and quotes. At this point I can only imagine since it takes you just a few seconds to knock off your BS reply you are enjoying that I will do it again and you are wasting time I could be putting some useful productive use and that makes you cheerful.

I pointed out twice the 1440 hours figure is cherry picking the author of the paper makes it clear is simply a wage contract and not some actual average amount of work a peasant might do. Shor is ignoring the source she is citing. Read the damn paper yourself. I cut out the text and provided page number s it at JSTOR. Schor is twisting the meaning of the passage.

I pointed out twice the Mining number from Mendip is cherry picking. Shor ignores the much longer hours of Professional minors who were not also farmers. And Ignores that she is reporting only hours mining and not the hours the farmers spent on either their free holding or their villein acreage and not also what hours were do to the manor lord. That is both cherry picking a willfully dishonest. The reference is there in my post and the relevant page numbers. If you are too lazy to get a free JSTOR account I can't help you.

If her study is part of some sinister academic conspiracy to besmirch the wonderous fruits of our modern progressive society that you are alluding too, wouldn't it be hard to provide a study that would address that or suggest the opposite?

Err I simply said she was wrong you are the one who deals in conspiracy thinking and I umm did in the OP

Kitsikopoulos, Harry. “Standards of Living and Capital Formation in Pre-Plague England: A Peasant Budget Model.” The Economic History Review 53, no. 2 (2000): 237–61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2598697.

And see also note 3 in the OP.

Also where have I dismissed primary sources an accusation you have supported.

[Heathen Hammer]

I already addressed the claims you made in OP multiple times.
Let's see the only coherent part of your post that actually addresses the work cited:

I pointed out twice the 1440 hours figure is cherry picking the author of the paper makes it clear is simply a wage contract and not some actual average amount of work a peasant might do.

And to make a counter-argument out of that, you need to prove that there was additional work time beyond the one outlined in the work contract... which you have not.

[conon394]

And to make a counter-argument out of that, you need to prove that there was additional work time beyond the one outlined in the work contract... which you have not.

I don't have to the cited author of the paper already did that. As I cited more than once.

What Schor is doing would comparable to finding the contract I signed with the independent contractor who installed my wood floors and carpet and than suggest that term and compensation was that average of work and compensation for all flooring contractors across a century of time in the US from 1900 - 2000

You can't construct a century average of one single data point - one single legal dispute. A sample size of N =1 with N-1 is well you know not worth the ink you used to cite it.

Nor do I need to work hard when data point one already clearly demonstrates Schor as dishonest or lazy and stupid or just incompetent in her foray into medieval history. That is QED. Its you if you want salvage her after point one who needs to supply more data.

Also you have yet to contradict my citing of sources of Kitsikopoulos or Clark or even the actual simple text of Blanchard.

I do not need to prove anything when one of Schor's four sources is a exercise of academic dishonesty and another her own note pad calculation that invalidates the assertion that MEP worked less than a modern American. If you want save something out of the obvious cherry picking of the other two points that are flatly contradicted by the source material be my guest but I have no need to do it for you.

Again to reiterate

you need to prove that there was additional work time beyond the one outlined in the work contract

Given that manifestly none of the other data points are real or do not support the thesis that the MEP worked less than the the modern 'overworked American' it is fact you have to show that one point picked out of one paper, whose author manifestly argues that it is not a norm nor a usual overall working year can be used to argue it is the norm for a whole century of wage labor by the MEP.

To make it clear:

Point 1. Is outright academic fraud.
Point 4. Is the author's made up number that in fact does support the ideal the modern American is overworked in comparison.
Point 2. Is the singular data point you now seem to hanging your hat on.
Point 3. Is again essentially fraudulent. Again it is a singular data point but in this case an easily referenced secondary source and it refutes Schor's use of that data point.

But to wit Schor takes a single data point from one mine in England and presents it as "Farmer Miner 1400-1600 England"

That is at best breath taking Bull S.

In other words it would be as if you had hours worked for Accountants/Day Care workers across 10 data points (year entries) and ~150 years and than with only the hours worked as an Accountant in one of those year entries (and one city only) and suggested you had a number for all 2 job Accountant/Other work for 150 years (and presenting just the Accountant work as a total ignoring the other). Even in the one year Schor cites she cites only one mine in all of England and one type of mine and one village.



You could just admit you read none of relevant work and like quasi trolling and really have no answer.

I already addressed the claims you made in OP multiple times.

No you have not in any way shape or form. Nor have you indicated where I was dismissive of any primary source something you have claimed. Nor have you actually cited directly any period primary sources for your claims.

[Heathen Hammer]

That's now what I asked about. Now the part that your whole argument in this thread relies upon is:

Given that manifestly none of the other data points are real

Based on... what?
Schor cites existing documents form that era. You have neither cited documents from same era that would contradict her, instead you are just saying that "they aren't real".

That aside, just a quick keyword search yields that Schor's conclusion is pretty universal among modern historians:
https://medium.com/lessons-from-hist...r-22dfa72a77cb
https://historycollection.com/mediev...-americans/30/
https://thehistoryace.com/the-amount...rked-per-week/
Ritchie's estimations, for example, confirm what Schor said.

[conon394]

Well that is just grand all that huffing an puffing about me ignoring/dismissing period sources and or claiming Schor being peer reviewed... than... This a startling rejoinder of 4 web links that only one of which is a secondary source and one you clearly did not read and rgw others are collectively circular and based on Schor and/or just false in their interpretation. I am shocked to the point of defeat – or not.

Based on... what?
Schor cites existing documents form that era. You have neither cited documents from same era that would contradict her, instead you are just saying that "they aren't real".

No in fact Schor is not citing period documents she is citing secondary sources. The Authors of those secondary sources are in fact using period data. But that is the key problem with Schor's work she is plucking out data points and explicitly using them contra to the conclusions of the authors of the sources she is using. She offers no argument for this, no evidence that authors conclusions were incorrect, nor is she addressing the fact none the secondary sources attempt to do what she wants. Worse for her oft cited numbers she is in any of the 3 numbers that float around the internet in links such as yours using a single data point, not an average, not a survey - but a single data point as a norm for a whole century or more. That alone is reason to reject her conclusions – if you can call them that.

Anyway your links

2^nd Is unimportant since its just a link to the 1st. - really?

4^th link now since the only one that is of import.

Ritchie's estimations

She makes no estimations (at least not of the type she is being mis-used as supposedly making) . Nothing in her work confirms Schor's abuse of her work in question. Most importantly Kenyon never claims to to be providing any measure of the average amount of work a year the MEP peasant did. The point of work is survey the judicial proceeding surrounding the attempts to enforce Statutes on Labourers in one country in England (Essex) in a very narrow time frame specifically “Essex inquiry held before the Justices of the King's Bench at Brentwood in 1389 (November 5)” (pg 430). Its important to note Kenyon is explicit that Essex is exceptional in that if both near London and near the international cloth industry of East Anglia. It was one county she points out, one generation after the black death and a hot bed of wage labor pushing aside the old Manorial system. The 120 days so call calculation is not really hers being the last of several judgments by the courts for violation of wage and price limits in the Statutes on Labourers. (pg 432 -433). The formulation of a judgment being thus

“one of them received "20S. and dinner i.e., 10s. by
extortion" and another of them "16s. and dinner i.e., 6s. by ex-
tortion."'

In other words it was the courts trying to take the traditional wage and nature of service and value of things like in kind payment (beer, wheat, dinner) and try as ascertain what they considered 'extortion' the actual difference from the going short term labor rate. Kenyon elaborates this means the traditional daily rate of pay was in this particular case (only) judged to 1d per day and so they should only have earned 10s for 120 days they worked. However that says nothing about how much they actually worked in a year. Just what there particular contract should have been valued at in the traditional way And thus...

Ritchie's estimations, for example, confirm what Schor said.

That is funny HH, quite funny. As I have pointed out multiple times If you actually read the paper this is a cherry picking use of one data point citing a singular instance of one labor contract.

See her discussion on pg 433. which ends with

"At Thaxted[2] (At about the same time- my note) a virgater had worked I37 days in winter and summer and 38 during the harvest, on a basis of a 5-day week" That being time owed the lord Not including paid labor or work on their own acreage. Note the term explicitly used by Kenyon is 'virgater'
this is man who had 30 of his own acres to work. I don't think he had a robot to the work do you?

"By the time of Walter of Henley [3] it may be remarked that 308 days was the normal annual total for an agricultural labourer"

Schor is not citing some average of examples from period sources that she herself collected. But picking one number out of a discussion in a secondary work by Nora Kenyon (an actual peer reviewed work) and twisting it to imply the opposite of what the paper concludes. Moreover lacking any other source Schor can in no way suggest that one data point is a norm for causal labor over an entire century. But let me be clear Kenyon never does that and she 'calculates' no such conclusion. Any one using such a turn a phrase is clearly simply regurgitating Schor and can be thus dismissed.

More importantly the Kanyon's paper is explicit wages and prices were rising. So while our wage laborer was gleaning more wages he/she was loosing to cost just as rapidity. The real thing of value they were getting was being called vagrants or casual labor. So they were not bound to their manor or county. That was in fact the thing they were seeking as she notes that the same men tuned down a traditional contract of less money, but use of the ploughs and oxen and wheat and more food – the in kind worth of which was a better deal but was essentially meant staying tied to the manor.

3^rd link is pretty bad

“Economic historians (nice assertion of plural where are the other historians?) such as Nora Ritchie calculated that medieval peasants would only work up to 120 days a year due to fluctuations in the farming seasons and church sanctioned holidays. During these farming days the medieval peasant could expect to work from sun up to sun down. “

She did not. Her paper explicitly is not making that conclusion and subsequent it cites evidence that the cited instance cannot construed so in that way. Nor does she ever conflate nominal church holidays into the that reference. Your source is flatly incorrect. And like Schor attempting to willfully twist the simple text of the paper.

“There was an hour break for breakfast, hour break for lunch, a one to two hour break at noon for a nap, and another hour break for dinner. (page 445-455 of linked source) “

A religious polemic/set of prayers and letters and discussions from 200 hundred years after the actual data the Nora Kenyon is citing. Sorry that is not credible evidence in any way shape or form and even than the document does not speak to hours worked per year. Or provide any evidence on which to construct any such. Its simply a rant by a bishop about lazy lower class people in the middle of a religions discussion about the book of Nehemiah . Really So you are going to cite an evangelical sermon today about lazy American workers and tell me it has anything to with the working habits of farmer settlers in Kentucky 200 years ago?

“The amount of daylight hours in Europe during the peak of summer is around 16 hours a day. If we assume that it took a peasant an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening to get ready and stow tools then that’s 14 hours a day of work.

Out of these 14 hours a day that are left the average medieval peasant would get nearly 5 hours of church mandated breaks per day. This brings the total amount of work down to around 9 hours during the peak of the farming season.
This means that medieval peasants worked around 9 hours a day 120 days a year. This comes out to a grand total of around 1,080 hours per year or about 20 hours per week.”

This is complete nonsense and is in fact refuted by the sources I cited. Kitsikopoulos above and Clark note 3 above and Blanchard and Kenyon above (page 433)

“ 5 hours of church mandated breaks per day”

Breaks were not church mandated but contract and manor tradition based. Church holidays were at best a day off. But that not quite what you think. Being mandated to not work and not meet your duty to lord but to attend a church holiday that you had to pay for is not exactly living large. There is reason the were ecclesiastical courts fining peasants for working on holidays and and a reason peasants disliked enforced pay to play church holidays. The cited such above in the OP.

1st Link

"A Medieval adult male in the UK worked 1,620"

Unsourced properly but obviously just citing Schor's academic fraud of using unpublished work by an author who is publicly on record repudiating its use in the way Schor attempts. I have nothing more to say about this link its invalid with that quote. That really should be end of story of the use of that number - period no matter how many people keep citing just because Schor can publish anything she wants in a book.

So you managed 3 not peer reviewed papers rather just web sites (which is funny since you criticized Morticia Iunia Bruti for citing a pod cast which was at least by an associate professor in medieval history) and Nora Kenyon's paper which you in fact did not read. You are not really putting much effort into this are you.

modern historians

You got one sort maybe Historian in there with what amounts to MA and two abstracts on history none of which is medieval history. And his use of Nora Kenyon suggests he best stay away and keep away since is simply parattoing the ill use Schor does.

----------


And yet you will say I need to add something but I have mind you and you have yet to address:

Kitsikopoulos, Harry. “Standards of Living and Capital Formation in Pre-Plague England: A Peasant Budget Model.” The Economic History Review 53, no. 2 (2000): 237–61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2598697.
[A free JSTOR sign up will get access.]

Or your own citation Ritchie's at page 433ff

Or either of

Clark, G. (2018), Growth or stagnation? Farming in England, 1200–1800. The Economic History Review, 71: 55-81. https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12528


[8.]Blanchard, Ian. “The Miner and the Agricultural Community in Late Medieval England.” The Agricultural History Review 20, no. 2 (1972): 93–106. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40273487.

[conon394]

Addendum to the above so as not to be accused producing a wall of text. I've tried to cite where Schor's work is available online for the relevant argument via google book (in pieces at google) and finding a pdf of chapter three. Alas only now did I remember to check Amazon's 'Look Inside and realize with some careful keyword searching I could get to the notes that I have not been able to read.

They are particularity useful to examine Schor's use of Nora Kenyon's work.

Now as I noted in and cited in the above post Kenyon is clear she does not say that 120 day figure should seen as some of norm or an average for what a MEP worked in total in a year in the time and place she is discussing. She explicitly rejects that ideal. Moreover she than cites a manorial record for the days a virgator (1.) owed the manner per year (in Essex at the same time period). that being 137 days which of course does not included the working ~30 acres of the man's own plot. But left at that you could I suppose try argue away the specific use of the virgator but her next data point citing Henley for a 308 day work year makes it clear her intent. And that is not the one Schor suggests.

Thus note 8 (page 190) is very useful.

First Schor cites 120 day figure in isolation. Then adds the virgator's 137 days a year number and concludes peasants are lazy and only work the minimum hours to sustain apparently some poor life they aspire too. She makes no attempt to justify taking what is clearly only the days a virgator owed his manor vs what her really works. Schor than fails to address the third point of evidence for over 300 days working and does not directly address Kenyon's explicit stalemate the 120 days is not some aver or idealized or typical work year in days. She than buttresses this by referencing the Clark's unpublished pre – masters work (2), Although she inserts in between her original discussion of Kenyon and her point to the Virgator number which is confusing and misleading. In any case the citation cannot stand as evidence.

Schor than vaguely cites the page before the 120 hour day reference (in Kenyon) by adding her fantastical assertion that this might be a backward bending supply curve in action. But the fact is around the discussion Kenyon makes very clear the dynamic in action was not lazy peasants who just worked enough to make to equal what granddad make in 300 days in 120 because wages were better. But peasants who very much wanted the short term contracts they could get so that they could move to better ones or different jobs. Also short multiple contracts allowed to be a laborer or vagrant and thus free to move to other counties – not tied down in place. Another point made by Clark day/week labor in cash across multiple counties is a lot harder for the tax man to account for.

Round two on the 120 days

Its helpful Kenyon includes an appendix of the court case she is examining at the end of her paper. She does note she has dropped clerical errors. That is obvious duplicates. She also attempts no emendations so anything she could not read she did not offer a fix for and its not included.

Next it is worth noting the the cases with both contract data and the amount the jury deemed - extortion (that is above the the 'traditional' manorial rate - at least that assumption we are working with because that is the one Kenyon made but it is not clear in the period source data) and the fines are very much a minority of the data. Nor is there any note as to what the jury thought in making its findings. Moreover like a lot historians Kenyon is faced with some records that simply make no sense.

With those notes it is easy to demonstrate the problems with taking 120 hours as a norm

First however lets be refresh on what the Kenyon 120 days are again. The cited case

“In the hundred of Barstable ten common labourers from East Tilbury,
Mucking, Ramsden, Horndon, and Laindon " refused to serve except by the day,
taking each of them from diverse men at Orsett and elsewhere in the
hundred 2d. and dinner in the years 10 to 13 Richard II. [I386-89] ";
and of the above ten men it was further stated that in 12 Richard II [I388-89]
one of them received "20s. and dinner-i.e., 10s. by
extortion" and another of them 16s. and dinner-i.e., 6s. by extortion."'


“If 1d. a day was the statutory maximum it would appear
that 120 days was considered a normal amount of work for a casual
labourer, giving a maximum limit of 10s. for the year. 120 days,
however, seems a very small proportion of the year for a man to work,
but the jurors must have been calculating on the conditions of casual
employment of a normal manorial organization in which the majority
of the work was still done by customary tenant”


Now there is actually a lot to unpack in this. First the workers wanted to work by the day and did so for some extended period of time. But the achieved the very thing Kenyon notes they wanted that is they controlled their labor on a daily basis. If the next land owner down offered better wages tomorrow they could take that job. Kenyon's 'IF' is important she speculation the court jury is trying to apply the traditional manor rate for a day laborer of 1d per day to the sum of the wages actual received and calculate an extortion amount. She chooses to ignore the with dinner since she is clearly doing back of napkin calculations and as noted immediately rejects the conclusion that 120 days is the only amount worked. But it important to note that 1d per day in the traditional payment system was w/o dinner. Adding food or food and beer to the day wage normally had meant less cash (see Clark and McComb 1. below first link). But in any case Kenyon is ignoring that. Thus 16s with 6s judged extortion results in 10s and thus by 1d a day 120d worked by the individual.

Fine. Did I mention the appendix because there are cases of 'labors' cited that have both the wage rate and the amount deemed extorted. Thus it is possible to check days worked for labors given the assumption of 1d a day and ignoring food, dinner, beer, ale additions and see if we produce a 120 days worked consistently.

Oh before I do, did mention Schor was cherry picking because in fact in Kenyon's appendix we have records for not just common laborers but:

Common Laborers (employed by the day) Winter/Summer and Harvest
Common Laborers (employed by the Year or Half Year)
Servents
Ploughmen
Carters
Harvest Workers
Carpenters
Tilers
Thatchers
Victuallers

On a quick count well over 160 data points. So yes if somebody tells me they picked one example out of over 160 and that just from one of ten categories of workers for a single county in England in a very narrow range around 1389 and a county deemed explicitly to be not typical and they can turn that into “Casual Labor” 14^th century England. I rather call BS on that. Same goes for the rubbish 'History Ace' put on the net. I also have to say Schor's change of the legal term Common Laborer to 'casual ' labor seems I dunno a bit forced and perhaps misleading.

Anyway lets look as some data from Common Labors from both the first 2 categories. Using the 1d per day math after subtracting a adjudged extortion and ignoring food (or any other in kind payment)

First the easy ones the Year/half year contracts because they have a sum
[also just to note clearly here the two in text individuals do produce 120 days but at a divergent 20 and 16 (both with dinner) for that time} Also be clear these are still cash contracts not manorial obligations

Walden 13s 4d (for the ½ year). By extortion 6s 8d.
Thus 80d at 1d a day so 80 days for a half year . Annualized 160 days.

Markstey 26s [maybe dinner*] (for 2 years) By extortion 20s
Thus 80d at 1d a day so 72 days over two years. Annualized 36 days.
Alternatively the extortion is against two years of the contract
Thus 384d at 1d per day so 192 days per year

Laindon 16s and dinner (The year) By extortion 6s
Thus 120d at 1d per day so 120 day for the year

East Horden 20s and dinner (The year) By extortion 20s
Thus 120d at 1d per day so 120 day for the year

Clavering 20s (The year). By extortion 20s
Thus 120d at 1d per day so 120 day for the year

Now I hear you say ahh ha look he shot himself in the neck 120 days 5 out of 7 examples. Trust me I'm not worried because we have not got to the day contracts yet. First there are a total of 22 cases in this category so and the ones Kenyon cites in text (makes 24 but those those are workers by the day so t belong in the next group In other words 3 out of 22 is not impressive.

The day contracts are tricky. The court uses a formula of Winter/Summer and than also Harvest. Its clear the Harvest was a premium pay point in many cases but there is no annotation to say how many days any of those periods had.

To make this point

Arkesden has three harvest only entries for (2 years)
4d w/food and drink By extortion 12d (odd the its recorded as 12d and not 1s)
4d w/food and drink By extortion 2s
4d w/food and drink By extortion 3s 4d
[And from Harvest Workers – Reaping Arkesden 4d w/food (only one year) By extortion 2s]

Tell me you glean any work days out of that? I suppose you could try to use the Virgator manor contract cited in the paper of 137 days with 38 eight of that for harvest

Given we have no days worked data to work from we have a problem. There are 34 total entries for Common Labor work by the day. Of those ther 10 which have a single wage for Summer/Winter and Harvest. Thus they can be subject to Kenyon's quick math. Lets look at three examples

[1] Elsenham 2d w/food and drink. By extortion 2s
[2] Wendon 4d and dinner (2 years). By extortion 2s
[3] Stransted 4d (2 years) By extortion 6s and 8d

Oh no now we have a problem none of that adds up... Of course again we have no indication of if the extortion for a multi year work is meant per year or in total. Also what did the poor sod in Stransted do - pee in the jury's oatmeal

Elsenham. If the 120 days is what Schor's 'casual ' labor worked then with the napkin math of Kenyon in her example (that she rejects) is 120 days is 120d. The extortion number found by the jury should normalize whatever was earned to 1d per day. A 2s penalty = 24d. So if our MEP common labor knocks off at 120 days in case [1] 240d -24 d is 216d left. Hmm that not right. In case [2] 120 days makes no sense at all. 960 d – 2s (24d) is 936d. Divide that by 2 and you get 468d. Either they were working more than 120 days or the jury was not using 1d per day as a rule to base the extortion on.

Suffice to say the math becomes even more convoluted for the poor sod in Stransted. We now face the perplexing case of why or why not meals were worked into the calculation. But in any case the extortion working on 120 days does normalize to a realistic number. Essentially we are left the 440d per year that cannot fit into the 120 day ideal. Either the man worked more or juries were not machine like assuming 1d per day.

[4.] Wicking 5d and dinner (6 years) By extortion 20s
Again let see how the 120 a year model works 3600d -240d. 3360d. but that should only be 600 d

[8] Colchester 4d and dinner (5 years) By extortion 100s
Umm clearly there is more at work the simple 120 calculation can explain. The by extortion number is not against some constant 1d per in either 4 or 8 and its not the same between either one.

One final point even though the apparent judgment of extorted amount is 5 time as large in Colchester as Wicking the penalty is the same 2s. One can't help suspect neither man will have been deterred from their wage demands. And no that was not some maximum statute limit. For a a One year extortion amount in East Horndon a man was fined 3s and 4d against just 10 s of judged extortion. Clearly the jury were playing each case as they chose and were not bound by some dogma or enforced guidance.

There is no basis for citing Kenyon for an average 120 days worked by the MEP or even the MEP as common Laborer only and certainly no fantastical claim of a backward bending supply curve for labor to be had.




* Kenyon explicitly said she was not including anything that was not clear there is no note for why she put a question mark on this entry

[1.] Note she explicitly uses virgator – not half or quarter virgator or 'yard land' holding (something like maybe 20-25 acres) or cotter. This is not a turn of speech but a formal definition in a manorial ledger. And in any case all amounts to a person with personal land and commons (and potentially leased land) to work for themselves.

[2.] The point besides my link above with explicit rejection of the work see here where he puts work days at maybe 200 at the lowest but rather argues for 250/275 to near 300

https://repec.cepr.org/repec/cpr/ceprdp/DP16847.pdf

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/do...TGxFKYwvTBe9ig

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10.../50512257X.pdf

next a deep dive in the use and abuse of the peasant miner source paper.