4. Vacation Time and Vibrant Colors Did Not Make the Medieval Era a Great Time to Be Alive
The fact that medieval peasants worked fewer hours than us and had more holidays, or that the medieval world was a vibrantly colorful one, does not mean that the Middle Ages were a great time to be alive. They were not, especially for commoners in feudal Europe. There, society was divided into de facto castes or layers, with the peasants, serfs, and other manual workers – the overwhelming majority of the population – at the bottom. They were ruthlessly exploited by those in higher layers up the medieval structure, who benefitted from the commoners’ labor, in exchange for “protection”. There was a twist, though: the protection offered by members of the upper castes was often from fellow upper caste members.
Although those in the upper social layers were not as screwed as the commoners at the bottom, life was no bed roses for them either. Violence was rife across all classes. Even if we discount deaths in wars or dealt by knights in rampages against peasants, the homicide rate was 50 times greater in medieval Europe than in the modern EU. Put another way, Europeans were 50 times more murderous back then than they are today. However, as seen below, it was not violence, but diseases, that did the most to keep life expectancy low. High mortality rates, especially in childhood, kept the average life expectancy around 35, give or take a few years.