Family
Bennett’s constant references to Cecilia in the context of her kin
emphasize the central role that family played during the Middle Ages. Not
only was family the basic unit of social organization, but it was also the
most significant determinant of an individual’s path in life. Since a
person’s social standing was primarily determined by birth, his or her
destiny depended entirely on the family into which he or she was born.
Cecilia’s wealthy parents enabled her to succeed by providing her with the
capital to purchase her first parcels of land; by nourishing her better than
other families could nurture their own children; and by acquainting her with
Brigstock and Stanion’s more important citizens. Cecilia was especially
fortunate to have the parents she did, since custom did not require peasants
to provide for anyone but their first-born sons. In this light, family is an
even more powerful force in an individual’s life: it is the economic and
social wellspring from which an individual emerges and the basic network
through which an individual comes into contact with others.
Those Who Work, Those Who Pray, Those Who Fight
The mantra “those who work, those who pray, those who fight” appears
in various forms throughout A Medieval Life and clearly
shows the social order of the Middle Ages. From an early age, Cecilia put
the people around her into three categories: the peasants, who labored for
the benefit of others; the clergy, who tended to the salvation of others’
souls; and the knights, who provided protection. This system of
stratification was a solid, absolute law of existence, and people were
expected to follow it as if God had ordained it. Indeed, in many cases the
clergy did offer this tripartite scheme as divinely inspired, explaining
that the three orders were interdependent and that each order worked for the
other two orders’ benefit. In practice, the social harmony engendered by
this system of social organization was fallacious because peasants were
deemed of lesser value than the other two orders. This inequality led to the
exploitation of peasant labor by the ruling classes. This tripartite idea
reinforced a peasant’s understanding of him- or herself as one whom God put
upon the earth to work.
The Number Three
Aspects of medieval life are often neatly divisible into three parts,
and people probably considered the number three to have magical
significance. Cecilia’s world is nearly entirely divided in threes: the
social order consisted of three parts; the main political establishments
entailed three overlapping institutions (village, parish, and manor); and
there were three main economic markets (land, labor, and trade). The root of
this fascination with three probably comes from the Bible, in which the
number three is fraught with special meaning. The clergy surely employed
this reasoning when relaying the Three Orders to the peasants, perhaps
arguing that the organization of clergy, elite, and peasants was as natural
as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The peasants demonstrated that they
absorbed the weight of this concept when they devised a three-field system
of farming, in which peasants rotated crops among three fields each year. If
anything, this phenomenon suggests that the people of the Middle Ages tended
to live in keen observation of and conformity to ritual and religious
teachings.
