![]() Certainly there were famines in the Middle Ages and these were numerous. It is also an error to imagine that famine was endemic in the Middle Ages. But no documents permit one to suppose that this happened frequently. It is possible that during certain periods of exceptional distress - for instance at the time of the Anglo-French wars that marked the end of the Middle Ages when the horrors of plague were added to those of war and when mercenaries ravaged a country whose defenses were no longer organized - acorn flour may have served as a substitute. The peasant often collected acorns, but it was not because he liked them himself, but because he fed his pigs on them. ![]() But that has always been the case, for at that time herbe meant anything that grew above the soil - cabbage, spinach, lettuce, leeks, beets, etc., and racine meant everything that grew below: carrots, turnips, radishes, etc. It is true that in France in the Middle Ages men ate herbes and racine - (herbs and roots). The error arose largely from a misinterpretation of terms then in use. Even then, those famines were generally localized and of short duration.įrom the description of the basic table fare – bread and wine – presented below, one can see that the life of the great and small in the Middle Ages was good, certainly not the picture portrayed by modern revolutionary propaganda.Ī legend that dies hard has made of the common man in the Middle Ages an everlasting starveling, so that one wonders how a race that was supposedly under-nourished for eight centuries and which was, besides, ravaged periodically by wars, famines and epidemics, ever managed to survive and, in addition, to produce passably vigorous descendants. Thus, when the people of a certain area were instead eating rye bread, they would say that they suffered famine. It was not the total absence of food, as we consider it today, but the lack of wheat or corn bread. To negate this falsehood, historian Regine Pernoud points that until the end of the Middle Ages famine was conceived differently. ![]() It is commonly held that the Middle Ages was one long period of constant hunger and famine. The Middle Ages - Medieval Famines, Bread & Wine by Hugh O'Reilly ![]()
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