The Good and the Bad Example, or Making Use of le Petit Peuple in Late Medieval Central Europe

1During the middle ages the lower orders of the society (le petit peuple), their behavior and actions, generally held no interest, as we know, for members of those groups of society who were the regular producers of the written narratives and of the literary or visual «texts» which serve as our sources. This is particularly true with regard to the nondeviant actions of the lower classes. Interest in them was raised by:

1. extraordinary or unbelievable phenomena happening in their lives;
2. their negative actions which contradicted the social order and potentially threatened stability;
3. their function as good examples or as models for other members of society.

2A perception of the petit peuple (lower orders) who followed the conventions and norms of their communities and of the social system in an accepted way, without attracting attention, seems to have been missing. Apparently they were not worth speaking of or describing. Therefore, when members of the lower orders turn up in the sources, they were never «neutral». All those mentioned displayed signs of exceptionality. Through this exceptionality, they became interesting objects. It was as such objects that they found their way into the written and visual evidence.

3These general observations are particularly pertinent and important for research into the daily life of the late Middle Ages and its routine and repetitive aspects. The discourse about the lower orders, or certain of their representative members, followed particular patterns that reflected specific aspects or specific reasons for interest in them. This article is intended to offer an analysis of these phenomena, with emphasis on Central European narrative sources, literary evidence and images, particularly from Austria and Southern Germany. The regularity of discourse will be of special importance.

4The petit peuple were good objects for mediating the astonishing, the unbelievable, the incomprehensible. At times the reference to them appears to be on the same level as some of the well-known evidence from chronicles concerning, for instance, two-headed and eight-legged calves1. The Continuatio Mellicensis2 reports, for the year 1498, that a woman gave premature birth when she passed a gallows on which she saw hanging a scoundrel. As a result, the child was born as if tied with a rope around its neck. Another woman, while pregnant, regularly contemplated a statue representing the Christ in Despair on the Mount of Olives. The child to whom she gave birth had his hands raised in prayer. A third pregnant woman greatly admired a bishop’s precious robes. When her baby was born, he bore the insignia of a bishop on his body3. But not all the stories of astonishing or remarkable events involving the lower classes were similarly highly unbelievable. It could be enough to mention, in the same source from Melk about the year 1455, the story of two girls drowned while bathing in the Danube4.

5Direct critique and negative evaluation of members of a lower social group are found in various urban sources concerning journeymen specifically and, concerning peasants, in literary evidences and other didactic and visual material.

6Journeymen had a rather unfavorable reputation. In particular, urban normative sources and court records represent them as being closely connected with any kind of criminality, especially scuffles, fights and other forms of violence5. They were perceived as young, uncontrolled and violent, or at least such was the image built to describe them. A murder of his sleeping master committed by a baker’s journeyman found a place in the Nuremberg yearbooks for the year l4536. Other sensational stories about journeymen’s sinful lives also reflect the negative image constructed of them. A journeyman or servant and two women came to an innkeeper in the small Bavarian town of Schärding7 and asked for food. The latter reminded them that it was Saint Mark’s day, a fast day to be observed against sudden death. They ignored the reminder, ate, and all three died immediately. This story was important and extraordinary enough to be included in the Nuremberg yearbooks for 1452, where it was called a great miracle8.

7Urban sources regularly mention journeymen as actors in noteworthy events even if the situation did not involve sinful behavior. In 1431, a child fell into the Perlach River, and a glassmaker’s journeyman jumped into the water to help9. He drowned, but the child was able to get out of the river alive. We see in these stories a mixture of the criminal and the remarkable which seems to be connected with general patterns of perception of this particular social group. It is clear that they were often assigned, either directly or indirectly, the function of serving as strange negative examples.

8The satirical-didactic use of peasants as «bad examples» is well-known and well-researched. There, the main aspect is the construction of an image demonstrating their attempts to leave their proper position in the social order, for instance by trying unsuccessfully to become knights. This phenomenon has been studied exhaustively10. We possess a large amount of evidence in literary sources, particularly from the South German and Austrian areas, and from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries11. With the regular use of topoi and stereotypes, such peasants were often portrayed satirically and humorously as an indirect warning against the results of trying to leave God-given, correct and adequate position attributed in society to each person12. Changes in outer appearance made with the help of costume, food, behaviour and gesture signify and reveal the rustics’ attempts ro rise in the social hierarchy; so do the chaotic aspects depicted in satirizing critiques of peasant festivities, especially in the early sixteenth century woodcuts and prints which have been thoroughly analyzed by Keith Moxey13.

9The peasantry as a social class, however, was generally used as an object that could function in two ways, either as a bad or a good example. The positive model was based not only on a by-gone period, as one of the various types of the well-known medieval laudatio temporis acti, although this stereotype also appears14. But the positive model of peasants mainly showed that all the rest of society were dependent on them and their work. The peasants constituted one of the fundamental elements of the medieval social order. Thus they were able to present a good example for all other members of society.

10But the object «peasant» might also been used simultaneously as both a good and a bad example15. In those cases, his importance lay in the possibility that he could be used advantageously as a didactic object with both positive and negative connotations, to be perceived and understood clearly by everyone. The peasant was good enough to mediate messages, models, motivations or warnings. Whether the attitude to him was positive or negative did not really matter. If it was feasible that the argument would succeed and the didactic purpose be achieved, it was clearly profitable to use the peasant as good and bad example. It was the example and its success that counted, not the peasant. For example, around 1450, the Nuremberg poet Hans Rosenpluet wrote a «Peasant’s Praise» and a «Peasant’s Blame"16. He dealt with the «... noble and pious peasant... you noble countryman... nobody can do without you». At the same time, he emphasized that «... for the last thirty years no right peasant has been born... all of them would like to be masters».

11If we look at the surviving literary, narrative or visual sources and the patterns or stereotypes that they use, the negative didactic predominate, often expressed in entertaining, humorous and satirical examples, but they were certainly not the only ones to be used. Positive examples also exist. They may be found in visual sources17. The images of the «Labors of the Months» cycle of wall-paintings (after 1400) in the Torre Aquila of the episcopal Castello de Buonconsiglio in the Upper Italian town of Trento have often been used to illustrate and analyze late medieval peasant life and work, as for instance haymaking (ill. 1), harvesting grain, or sowing and harrowing (ill.2) etc. In this cycle, the work of the peasants is always shown in connection with the work and pastimes of the nobility18 (ill.3). In the context of the place where the pictures were painted, of those who saw them, and of their probable function, we may conclude that what was shown was an ideal of agricultural work and rustic life. This hypothesis is supported by the outer appearance of the peasants depicted: their dress, their way of work, their gender distribution etc. Everything is being done at the right time, in the right way, by the right people with the right outer appearance.

12This correctness is seemingly supplemented by the right and fitting behaviour and actions of the nobility depicted (ill.3). This then led to the right life of the community and region (i.e., the bishopric of Trento) generally. Therefore, the wall-paintings appear to have been an obvious and typical instance of the well-known representations of buon governo19. The peasants were an indispensable part of this «Good Government» and a positive example.

13In another type of «Labors of the Months» cycle, particularly in the more «private» space of manuscript-illustrations, we might be confronted with peasants affording a bad example. In such an instance20, grain harvest and arboriculture (ill. 4) were again done in the right way and at the right time, but not by the right people. The peasants who do the work are not as they should be. They do not wear working clothes of knee-length tunics and simple shoes, but doublets, tight hose and pointed footwear. Their hair is long and curly. This would have been the «correct» appearance for young noblemen or their servants21, but never for peasants. This then once again uses peasants in a satiric way, as a negative example.

14A further instance is a South Tyrolean altarpiece from the beginning of the sixteenth century (ill. 5). A peasant coming from the grain harvest is surprised by the Last Judgment. He can be recognized by his straw hat and the products of his work as gleaner. He is on his way in the direction to heaven, but he wears a doublet, tight hose, a codpiece and fashionable duckbill shoes, certainly not the peasant’s working dress that would give him the correct outer appearance. It is understandable, therefore, that the devil grabs him with his claws to take him to hell.

15The example of the «Labors of the Month» from Trento has shown the peasants as an important part of society in order to visualize the buon governo in the bishopric and in the good life of the community. This use of the members of the lower orders as an indispensable part of society as a whole represents another aspect to which we may have access in our sources. Some of the best examples of this are to be found in reports of miracles. Particularly in the late middle ages, such accounts and the images based on them show a trend to manifest and prove that the power and miracles of saints could affect each and every member of medieval society. Any sickness could be healed, any problem solved, any person helped. This «anything to anybody»-construction22 had to be presented to the public, and it needed both the great and the humble members of society. An example of this kind can be found in the «Virgin of Mariazell» in Styria23. She healed the sickness of Margrave Henry of Moravia and his wife (ill. 6); she protected burghers and merchants in danger; she helped the groom who had fallen from the ladder in a stable (ill. 7); she saved another groom into whose body a snake had crawled (ill. 8). Members both of the elites and of the lower orders were «needed» to mediate manifest the general power and success of the saint and the pilgrimage.

16The above-mentioned function of the peasantry as one of the foundations of medieval society may be seen yet again in the fairly frequent mention of them as the suffering ones and as those who had to endure manifold hardships. The frequent mention of their sufferings and the manifold hardships that they had to endure may be found in the evidence of chronicles dealing with war and violence. There, peasants and rural areas were regularly introduced and used to describe the disastrous consequences of war: the suffering caused peasants by the destruction of their villages and fields, the basis of their work and means of life24. In these texts also their fundamental role was highlighted; they represented the suffering population as a whole.

17In addition, the poor and humble were sometimes mentioned when members of the upper classes had to deal with problems in their own life. A situation could arise in which some of the elite became quasi-members of the more disadvantaged groups, or saw themselves as such. The lower classes and their material culture were used to show negative developments in elite culture. In the Buck von den Wienern by Michael Beheim from the second half of the fifteenth century, we find a description of the disorders that had arisen between the emperor and the Viennese in the sixties of that century. The burghers besieged the imperial castle, and the food supply was affected. In the same source, we meet for the year 1462 a story about the three-year-old Maximilian (later to be the emperor Maximilian I), son of emperor Frederick III. The only food that could be offered to him was barley and peas, both of which he disliked. He wanted meat, but it was not available. One day he was served peas again, and in evident indignation he sent them back: [...] dy spais wer im nit eben, / man solcz den veinden geben [...] («... this food was not proper for him, it should be given to the enemies... »)25.

18The food described – barley and peas – was obviously perceived as nutrition for the lower orders, the peasants, therefore not fit for the son of the emperor. It was, however, good enough as nutrition for enemies.

19In a necrology of the Benedictine monastery of the Scots in Vienna, we come across an entry for the second half of the fifteenth century, which refers to the donation of some money to be used, among other things, to provide bread and meat for the poor26. An addition to this entry states that the money would now be used for the monastic community, because the monks were also paupers in the Lord. As in the previous example, the material culture of the poor was evoked, but in neither case did this mean that either the monks or the little Maximilian perceived themselves as actual members of the lower classes of society.

20A number of patterns may be recognized in which the petit peuple (the poor, the lower orders) were represented in the narrative, literary and visual sources of late medieval Central Europe. Mentioned here are only some examples of the use made of various such groups by our sources, with regard to the specific kinds of aspects presented and of their construction. According to the typical pattern, the lower orders were not perceived or utilized neutrally, but rather as provoking wonder in some way. They were the good and the bad ones, and they offered positive or negative examples, models to be followed and/or condemned. They functioned as objects that were seen, on the one hand, as part of one’s own society and, on the other, as representatives of obvious «otherness». Through the various forms that their «otherness» took, they became interesting and made their way into our written and visual sources «texts».

Ill. 1 - Haymaking by “ideal” peasants

Ill. 2 - Sowing and harrowing by “ideal” peasants

Ill. 3 - Milking and production of butter and cheese by “ideal” peasant women; pastimes of “ideal” members of the nobility

Ill. 4 - Arboriculture by “wrong” peasants

Ill. 5 - “Wrong” peasant grabbed by a devil at the Last Judgement

Ill. 6 - Healing of Margrave Henry of Moravia and his wife by the Virgin of Mariazell

Ill. 7 - Rescue by the Virgin of Mariazell of a groom who had fallen from a ladder

Ill. 8 - Rescue by the Virgin of Mariazell of a groom from a snake that had crawled into his body