Medevil Famine Essay Research Paper MEDIEVAL FAMINE

Medevil Famine Essay, Research Paper

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. O

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