12th Century Life

Daily life in the 12th Century.

This set of articles is intended to be a scholarly (i.e. reference your sources) guide to the daily particulars of life in an interesting historical century, particularly in the area of England and France, because these are easier to research. The chief aim is to describe the daily aspects of life (when you ate, how you went shopping, how much it cost, what you did for fun, etc.), rather than the grand historical events (although some of these will be needed to be linked to as background).

12th Century Topics

Money

• coins
• monetary units
• significance and use of purses
• taxes
• foreign coin
• prices - worth of goods

Shopping

• shops
• markets
• fairs
• what to sell?

Food

• meal times
• common ingredients
• for the poor
• for the rich
• recipes

Sanitation

• sewers, or lack thereof
• garderobes
• bathing
• female hygiene
• food hygene

Clothing

• fabrics
• clothing styles
• fashion
• accessories
• tailors

Entertainment

• music
  • troubadours
• poetry
• theatre
• drinking (incorporating drinks,taverns, drinking games)
• a friend for the night
• Games

Education

• universities
• apprenticeships

Religion

• the church

Travel

• overland (by Road)
• oversea (by boat)
• crusades
• pilgrimages
• foreign places
• duties and customs

History

• 12th Century
• English Monarchs
  • Henry I Beauclerc (1100-35)
  • King Stephen (1135-54)
  • Empress Matilda (1141)
  • Henry II (1154-89)
  • Richard I the Lionheart (1189-99)
  • John Lackland (1199-1216)
• crusades

Medicine

• medicine
• birth
• death and cemeteries
• hospitals

Crafts

(As in what specialist tradesmen do)

• guilds
• names for specialist craftsmen

Reading

• Basic General Books on 12th Century Life (a good place to start)
• References cited in above articles
• Specialist Books on Aspects of 12th Century Life
• Links to good web resources
• Novels set in this period
• 12th Century texts (translations) that are fun to read