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MEDIEVAL FAMINE Agriculture during the medieval time was a very complex system. The weather played a major role in the harvest. A week of unpleasant rain in May, followed by an abnormal cold, humid summer might have thrown off the summer harvest, resulting in a shortfall of food. Due to a surplus left over from the previous harvest, no one went hungry. But after a couple of bad harvests, the surplus began to run out. This happened in Europe in 1044.
The Famine reared its ugly head, in part, caused by years of unfavorable harvest and inadequate crops, but it was also complicated by a plague that seemed to thrive on human starvation. By 1043, northwest Europe was in disruption. Food prices which had been high in 1042, remained high, especially in Belgium. No doubt the high price of food was a result of the poor harvests from both the 1042 winter and summer crops.
From Waverly in England and Angers in France, to St. Gall in Switzerland and Gembloux in Belgium, reports of famine, disease, and death circulated. No relief came in the summer of 1043. In France and Germany, there were reports of a terribly wet and stormy summer.
An entry from Swabia, a province in south-central Germany, best summed up the situation: The entire summer almost changed to winter by winds and rains, a great lack of grain and wine came about. (LeRoy 27) These rains must have been particularly harsh. The wind and rain pounding away at the growing summer crop lowered not only yields but quality as well. Almost all of the summer labors were adversely effected. No doubt the rains barraged the grazing cattle as well. If Emperor Henry III and his court had played ice hockey, December would have been a glorious month indeed; there was ice everywhere.
From December in 1043, to March of 1044, the great ice froze northwestern Europe. This spelled disaster for the medieval population; it was the final disaster in a procession of calamities. For four months, for all purposes, the ground was too frozen to plow for the spring planting. And the winter crop, which had been planted in October of 1043, was devastated. Although snow insulates a crop from the cold, it does so only up to a certain degree. Gauging by the chroniclers harsh and snowy entries for 1044, the winter must have been exceptionally brutal for the people and their agricultural cycle. (Flohn 95) The plague among animals took the form of hoof-and-mouth disease; the wet summer of 1043 had made for an excellent incubating condition.
Like any disease, it would take time for foot-and-mouth to reach mentionable proportions, probably close to six months. This would place mention of the outbreak in the winter of 1044, which is in fact the time when chroniclers mention the plague among animals. (Tierney 154) As the animals suffered, the severity of the winter frosted over the grape buds, splitting the vines, and destroying the harvest for 1044. With the destruction of the vines, there was also destruction of other fruits of the earth. In 1044, the harvest of grains, fruits, and vegetables was a disaster. And so by the middle of 1044, as he let his horse graze off the dead, Famine, with a bottle of starvation to keep him company, settled in northwestern Europe. The successive cold and wet summer of 1043 and the harsh, snowy winter of 1044 had been the culminating events to a tragic series of circumstances.
Because the conditions had been corrected, these two climatic events had worked together to wreck four harvests in a row (1042 winter crop, 1043 summer and winter crops, and 1044 summer crop). With little to no surplus from the previous years (1042 summer crop had been very poor), these excessive and successive shortfalls in 1043 and 1044 lead to general starvation across northwestern Europe. Though it appears that the summer of 1044 was climatically uneventful, famine did not rest. There might have been a slight reprieve in the fall of 1044 as the peasant farmers administered the wrecked summer crop; surely, they saved some food, perhaps a few months worth. But, like the good weather, it was only temporary. (LeRoy 75) The winter of 1045 was cold in north northwestern Europe.
The cold probably had effects similar to the great ice of 1044. The winter wheat and rye crop were small and of poor quality; the plowing and sowing of the summer oat, barley, and vegetable crops were, at the very least, impaired. And the harvest reaped was weak. Because of the cold, mice and other mammals were hard pressed to find shelter. Surely, all the plants and animals struggled to survive during the winter of 1045. Reports of famine continued throughout northwestern Europe.
The now- empty city of Verdun, was almost returned to waste (Arnold 138) by famine, and the people who remained prayed to God for deliverance. Oddly enough, there were no famine reports in England; but at the very least, shortages of food most certainly continued throughout England in 1045. (Arnold 139) A year later, however, in England Famine was eating up the headlines. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle read: after Candlemas [February 2 ], came the severe winter, with frost and snow, and with all kinds of bad weather, so that there was no man alive who could remember so severe a winter as that was, bot through mortality of men and murrain of cattle; both birds and fishes perished through the great cold and hunger. (Arnold 141) Just as in 1044, a brutal winter wrecked the already battered agricultural cycle. Both the 1045 winter crop and the 1046 summer crop were devastated in England. Although there is no way of telling exactly how cold the winter was, the chronicler did make special mention of how birds and fish died from the cold (and hunger too).
But judging from the harsh winter, the agricultural harvests of 1046 must not have been good, at least not in north northwestern Europe. (LeRoy 85) By 1046, many chroniclers stopped using the word famine, but why. For three years, famine had effectively worked to cut back the number of mouths to feed, perhaps increasing the death rate from 30 in 1, 000 to 80 or even 90 in 1, 000 per year. Across northwestern Europe, with each year of famine, an excess of five per cent or more of the population died from the effects of starvation and disease. Using 1044 as a base year with one-hundred per cent population, and assuming a five per cent excess population decrease per year, by the beginning of 1046, the population of northwest Europe had dropped to roughly eighty-five per cent of what it had been. (Once famine reaches its climax, the more it kills in one year, the less it kills in the next, and the quicker it runs its course. ) Famine was still in Europe; it was just killing fewer people.
There is also another reason why the chroniclers probably didnt use the word famine. Being relatively at the top of the medieval social ladder, they would have been among the first to climb out of famines bottle of starvation. Because they themselves were out of harms way, they might have felt that famine was over. For the poor, the biggest part of society, famine most certainly continued; famine was climbing down the social ladder in 1046. (Boissonnade 215) 1047 paralleled 1046. Across northwestern Europe, winter was terrible.
Throughout Germany, France, and Belgium, as well as in England too, the chroniclers made mention of a snow so great that it broke down trees. In England, the great snow fell on the calends of January, which remained until the feast of St. Patrick [March 17 ]. (Arnold 145) A chronicler in Wales wrote, that to the south, the land was deserted by its inhabitants. This probably indicates that people had fled their land due to the strength of the ongoing famine. Deaths were reported across England, and famine was even reported in Scotland. Across the English Channel, the poor weather patterns remained in Europe.
Shortfalls and hunger certainly continued across northwestern Europe, but widespread famine was coming to an end. In 1048, there was no mention of terrible weather, but nor was there mention of especially good weather. (LeRoy 96) By the last few years of the decade, famine was indeed leaving northwestern Europe. Exactly when famine left for good, however, is unclear. Just as famine arrived to different parts of Europe spontaneously, spreading until it had engulfed all of Europe, relief from famine spread gradually also. In 1049, the winter was icy. Like 1048, there was no explicit mention of shortage or starvation, but neither was there mention of surplus.
In 1051, the year was noted as a rainy one in Belgium. In 1052, however, there were the first reports of good harvests at Augsburg and in Bavaria. And again in 1053, for a second straight year, there were reports of good harvests. Widespread famine had departed. (Gottfried 103) In Germany and across northwestern Europe, the disaster of famine had faded away by the early 1050 s. Medieval agriculture and society, which had laid on its side for nearly a decade, had finally been corrected. But like General Douglas MacArthur withdrawing from Corregidor, Famine probably uttered the same words as he too withdrew: I shall return. (Devlin 19) The specter of Famine riding off into the sunset was a vision, even though Starvation was to reappear soon enough.
Arnold, David J. Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Boissonnade, P. Life And Work in Medieval Europe: The Evolution of Medieval Economy from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Century.
New York, NY: Harper &# 038; Row, 1964. Devlin, Gerald M. Back To Corregidor America Retakes the Rock. New York: St. Martins Press, 1992. Flohn, Herman, and Fantechi, Roberto.
The Climate of Europe: Past, Present, and Future: Natural and Man-induced Climatic Changes: A European Perspective. Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co. , 1984. Gottfried, Robert S.
The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe. New York: The Free Press, 1983 Le Roy, Laurie, Emmanuel. Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. Tierney, Brian, and Painter, Sidney.
Western Europe in the Middle Ages 300 - 1475. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 198 Thesis Statement: The Famine reared its ugly head, in part, caused by years of unfavorable harvest and inadequate crops, but it was also complicated by a plague that seemed to thrive on human starvation. I. Introduction A.
People B. Nature II. 1043 A. High food prices B. Famine spread C. Bad What
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Research essay sample on Medieval Europe Social Ladder
