The Year 1000 What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium

by Lacey, Robert; Danziger, Danny

• ISBN13: 9780316511575
• ISBN10: 0316511579
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-04-01
• Publisher: Back Bay Books

Summary

"August was the month when flies started to become a problem, buzzing round the dung heaps in the corner of every farmyard and hovering over the open cesspits of human refuse that were located outside every house."Although daily dangers were many, housing uncomfortable, and the dominant smells unpleasant indeed, life in England at the turn of the previous millennium was not at all bad, write journalists Lacey and Danziger. "If you were to meet an Englishman in the year 1000," they continue, "the first thing that would strike you would be how tall he was--very much the size of anyone alive today." The Anglo-Saxons were not only tall, but also generally well fed and healthy, more so than many Britons only a few generations ago. Writing in a breezy, often humorous style, Lacey and Danziger draw on the medieval Julius Work Calendar, a document detailing everyday life around A.D. 1000, to reconstruct the spirit and reality of the era. Light though their touch is, they've done their homework, and they take the reader on a well-documented and enjoyable month-by-month tour through a single year, touching on such matters as religious belief, superstition, medicine, cuisine, agriculture, and politics, as well as contemporary ideas of the self and society. Readers should find the authors' discussions of famine and plague a refreshing break from present-day millennial worries, and a very stimulating introduction to medieval English history. --Gregory McNamee

Table of Contents

The Julius Work Calendar The Wonder of Survival	3	(4)
January For All the Saints	7	(16)
February Welcome to Engla-lond	23	(14)
March Heads for Food	37	(14)
April Feasting	51	(14)
May Wealth and Wool	65	(18)
June Life in Town	83	(16)
July The Hungry Gap	99	(16)
August Remedies	115	(16)
September Pagans and Pannage	131	(16)
October War Games	147	(14)
November Females and the Price of Fondling	161	(16)
December The End of Things, or a New Beginning?	177	(16)
The English Spirit	193	(10)
Acknowledgements	203	(4)
Bibliography	207	(8)
Source Notes	215	(6)
Index	221