Chapter Summary

Sixteenth-century society varied from one region to another and from one social class to another. There was no typical European. The long-delayed population recovery from the Black Death transformed European society.

Villages varied in size from one hundred families in western Europe to twenty families in eastern Europe. Peasants made up the majority of the European population and were recruited by the state and aristocracy for labor and military service. Much of the income from the village went to the payment of taxes, rents, and tithes. Agricultural productivity was precarious. Crops barely sufficed to supply the agricultural village. Winter, crop diseases, and changes in weather were likely to result in food shortages. Peasant housing was crude, often consisting of a single long hall with a fireplace for heat and a single window to the outside world. Housing was shared during bad weather with animals. Peasant personal property was limited—a chest, a table, a bedstead, some pots and utensils. Peasant life was controlled by the agricultural seasons. In northern Europe, the primary organization of land was the three-field rotation in which winter wheat, spring crops, and fallow were alternated. Wheat was the commercial crop, while the peasants consumed bread made of the less valuable rye and barley. In the Mediterranean climatic region, a two-field rotation remained the rule. Grain crops were supplemented by Mediterranean luxury products—olives and grapes. In mountainous areas throughout Europe, animal husbandry was practiced. Sheep were the most common domesticated animal. In wooded areas, pigs were kept. The most common draught animal was the ox, bred in great numbers in eastern Europe. Most land was owned by the state, the Church, or the aristocracy. In western Europe, peasant land ownership was more common than in eastern Europe. In contrast, labor service as a condition of land tenure was much more common in the east than in the west. In general, western European peasants had greater social and economic mobility than their eastern counterparts. Within any village, there were variations in wealth and social status among the peasantry.

If nature defined agricultural life, city life was an environment of human invention. Guilds continued to regulate the conditions of labor, as they did in the Middle Ages. Towns were more market-oriented than rural villages. Labor was exchanged for a greater variety of goods than in the countryside, although abject poverty remained a problem. Urban occupations were varied. In smaller towns the market in food items dominated exchange. Women often were prevalent in these trades. Smaller towns tended to be semi-agricultural with fields farmed by urban citizens. In larger towns, there was a greater variety of occupations. Wholesale merchants controlled the major crafts and markets, while individual households supplied unskilled labor. Crafts in larger towns were concentrated in specific quarters rather than spread randomly throughout the urban space. Even in larger towns, some tasks—midwifery, prostitution, and wet-nursing—were reserved for women. Most citizens survived by periodic employment as unskilled laborers. Domestic service was a common occupation. Towns survived on the basis of a regular supply of foodstuffs. To insure it, some towns owned agricultural lands. Grain was often stored in municipal warehouses, and urban councils strictly controlled food prices.

The catalyst for economic change was population growth throughout Europe. Cities tended to increase in population more rapidly than rural regions. Initially the population increase spurred economic growth. With more available labor, lands abandoned during the Black Death were brought back into cultivation. Agricultural productivity increased. Greater supplies of foodstuffs supported larger urban populations, which in turn increased the supply of manufactured goods. Increased population pressure eventually forced extension of the agricultural system to lands less fertile and to areas formerly reserved for animal husbandry. In some cases, actual colonization of the wilderness took place to meet the insatiable demand for foodstuffs. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the economic situation deteriorated. Crafts in the towns reached their labor saturation point. Guilds began to limit new admissions, and wages generally fell as the supply of workers increased. The decline in wages was more traumatic because of contemporary inflation. The so-called Price Revolution was the result of two events: the importation of vast quantities of bullion discovered in the New World and the widespread practice of debasing coinage. The impact of the Price Revolution was enormous. Grain prices climbed faster than those for manufactured goods, putting tremendous pressure on urban councils to hold the line on food prices. Those who held long-term contracts for rents suffered, while those who received payment in kind profited. Peasants who depended on the value of their labor for supplemental income were made destitute. In peasant communities, the social distinctions between those who owned land and those who did not became more pronounced. In eastern Europe, where peasant land ownership was uncommon, the aristocracy used the situation to further bind the peasantry in servitude. In the west, landless vagrants with little hope of employment wandered from village to village.

Sixteenth-century social life was stratified. People identified themselves with a particular group, rather than as individuals. The rapid economic change of the sixteenth century challenged the traditional social organization of Europe.

Sixteenth-century society consisted of an interlocking set of hierarchies—within the nobility, crafts, urban government, even the household. Status largely determined one’s position in the hierarchy. Social conventions dictating courtesy between various groups, manners of dress, and titles all were symbols of status. All things and people had a specific place in the hierarchy, a concept represented by the Great Chain of Being and reinforced in the political metaphor of the Body Politic. Status, according to the social theories of the day, was static.

European society was supposedly divided into two status groups—nobles and commoners. Nobility implied certain privileges, notably the title granted and the right to bear a coat of arms. The nobility also possessed political rights. Members of the nobility were, by their status, eligible for high office in the state and customarily summoned to representative institutions. Nobles also held economic advantages over commoners. In most cases, the nobility paid no taxes, a significant exclusion. In return for their favored status, nobles were expected to serve as military commanders. By the sixteenth century, the professionalization of warfare limited the military role of the nobility, but accentuated their administrative function. Between the nobility and the commoners, a new group without clear status was emerging. In function, it differed little from the nobility, although it did not enjoy either title or privilege. Urban elites tended to be members of this group. Some of the wealthiest and most powerful townsmen successfully transferred themselves to the lower levels of the nobility. In the countryside, those who were able to obtain greater quantities of land in the course of the sixteenth century clearly separated themselves from the class of agricultural laborers from which they sprang. This group is often referred to as the gentry. Even among the commoners, there were clear hierarchies of status usually related in rural villages to ownership of land or freedom from labor service. In towns status was connected to citizenship.

The expansion of the state and the creation of new wealth unrelated to noble status placed stress on the European social system. In the long run, the hierarchies of social status were inevitably changed. On the positive side, noble titles increased as the population growth required more people eligible to govern. Employment in the state offered opportunities for wealth and advancement. For some, the Price Revolution proved to be a windfall. On the negative side, the population explosion dramatically increased the numbers of destitute. The burden of care of the poor fell on local communities. When the ability of local charities to care for the poor was exhausted, the state intervened. In many cases, the state was more concerned with the problem of controlling vagrancy than in alleviating the plight of the poor. Imprisonment and corporal punishments were imposed on vagrants.

Changes in social organization led to conflict between the orders. Peasant revolts, although often moderate in purpose and well organized, were brutally suppressed. Many peasant revolts were in response to changes in the agricultural system imposed by surges and recessions in the economy. Protection of woodlands and enclosure of open fields for commercial agriculture provoked strong peasant responses. Both had deleterious effects on the small landholder. Peasant revolts broke out in Hungary in 1514, England in 1549, and Germany in 1525. The German revolt, although disowned by Martin Luther, combined an assault on both the secular and ecclesiastical nobility. Peasants objected to changes taking place in agricultural villages and demanded freedom from serfdom. Their desire for stability contradicted the volatile economy of the sixteenth century.

Despite the revolutionary nature of sixteenth-century political and economic developments, there was continuity in private life. Strongest ties remained to family and local community.

Family was at the foundation of private life. In western Europe, the nuclear family was most common. In eastern Europe, the nuclear family was also prevalent, although extended households were more common than in the west. Kinship ties bound the family to other groups within rural communities. The family also stressed the relationship between past generations and the present. Among the nobility this tendency was more pronounced in the forms of inheritance and coats of arms, but it also existed in the transfer of land from one peasant generation to the next. The individual household was also an economic unit, with all members contributing their labor to its welfare. Households were subject to the authority of the adult parents. The husband was titular head, but children and servants were responsible to both husband and wife. Despite population growth, the size of the typical family remained small. Infant mortality and relatively late age of marriage for women depressed the birth rate. Women endured many pregnancies during their lives. The economic role of women within the household was varied. Wives prepared food, kept domestic animals, educated children and provided primary child care, made clothing, and cleaned. In towns women might add the tasks of selling goods and directing domestics. Men performed more public duties—the primary agricultural tasks, the construction of farm equipment, performance of owed labor services, and participation in the political life of the village. Marriage was the normal social condition for both men and women.

Households existed within a community structure, either rural or urban. Communities were organized by the secular and ecclesiastical lords. Rural lords established conditions of labor and land usage. The village church was both a spiritual and social center, a focal point for holidays and celebrations. Communities expressed their social solidarity by ceremonial activities in which all members of the village participated. In rural villages, priests led residents in annual perambulations of the lands. In towns, ceremonial processions were more formal and reflected the greater social stratification of urban life. Weddings were significant ceremonies for the entire community. Marriages bound families—and often wealth—together. They marked the admission of a new household to the community. Because property and community approval were involved, weddings were public affairs. Other festivals were associated with the passage of stages of the agricultural cycle. Festivals released community members from labor and presented opportunities to resolve community squabbles. Festivals also offered the chance for the social hierarchy of the community to be placed on public display.

Despite the print revolution, most Europeans remained illiterate. The common man’s sense of the world around him was individual and experiential, not scientific. Not surprisingly, sixteenth-century society was imbued with the magical. Magical solutions abounded for medical problems, changes in the weather, disastrous harvests, and for prediction of future events. Use of magical powers for evil was considered witchcraft. Consultation with the black powers of evil spirits and the devil, himself, brought the repressive powers of the churches into play. Prosecutions for witchcraft became common in the sixteenth century. Women were most often the objects of prosecutions for witchcraft.