Essay On The Middle Ages

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Of all the periods of time periods of history, the Middle Ages seems to be one of the most interesting. The Middle Ages is the time of imagination, it is the time of knights, of queens and kings, and castles. For many, the Middle Ages is a make-believe world filled with adventure, a time when men were heroes and princesses rich and fair. This, of course, is a romanticized depiction of the era. Let us not forget about the silent majority, the greater part of the medieval community, the peasants.
In the Middle Ages, there was a definite structure in society. You were born into a class of people stayed in that class for life. Working hard did not change your position in the social tree. Your whole way of living was determined for you. After the rank of king, the following classes was the nobles, the knights, the clergy ,the market men, and the peasants.( Northeastern Educational Television of Ohio)
Peasants in the Middle Ages had extremely difficult lives. The life of a peasant was anything but easy. They faced many hardships and struggles. At the end of the day they were just a regular people; going on day by day trying to survive. In the Middle Ages, three kinds of peasants existed: the serfs, slaves and the freemen (The MeadowHaven Group). Even within the low class level of people during this time, it seems classism has made its footprint.
A peasant's "social and economic status determined what food he ate" (Singman 159-160). Whatever food a peasant was able to grow was the food his family would eat. The majority of food grown included wheat, beans and corn (Gilberts para. 6). The most common food in a peasant's meal was bread. The bread eaten by peasants was extremely coarse and dark and was made up of barley, oats or rye (Jord...

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...their own land without paying the tax. In most cases only the rich survived, this meant that the peasant could not work for them anymore. They had to work for themselves but they could also hire the surviving peasants but the peasants would not have done that without a cost. They must be paid, this helped to put the feudal system to an end. The Black Death also guided the surviving peasants in their choice to refuse to go into serfdom, killing off more of the feudal system. There had also been many wars raging, wiping out many nations (INTERNET).
In conclusion the Lords, Bishops, Noblemen and other high classed people began to fall after the Black Death. This destroyed the deal they had with their peasants. The peasants demanded payment. If a form of payment was not received the peasants left. And they did just that. Ending the line of peasants in The Middle Ages.

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