Larger towns and cities would not only attract visitors from a broader region, but these larger settlements would draw in craftsmen from viable trade, and witness the establishment of guilds. While they posed as a consistent center of trade, market fairs would pop up during vital growing seasons, pulling in villagers, traveling merchants, and others of seasonal visitors until the fair had ended. It was the benefits of trading in the market. The biggest attractor to these towns, however, was not religious pilgimage. This sometimes meant meandering streets with irregular width, which required frequent maintained, lest they decay over time. Often, the streets following these structures were forced to adapt to the mound, hillside, river-bank, or landscape feature which the structure settled on. Some of the largest towns in England were cathedral cities (Canterbury, York, Bath, Lincoln, etc), which were often the site of pilgrimage. Medium and large towns would typically spawn either from continued growth, or around a larger structure such as a castle, monastery, or similar. The smallest could have a chapel at its center, a warehouse, a mill, or a pub or tavern which doubled as a town hall. These budding towns often grew around central structure of some kind. However, the places where people congregated were often religious centers which benefited from geography which allowed stable construction and access to natural resources. Most people within medieval Europe lived outside of the boundaries of towns as village peasants. In truth, medieval towns were few and far between. Together, readers witness a collage of the spiritual, the mundane, the fortunes and misfortunes of each soul embarking upon this journey. What follows is a series of unique views of life within the era which take on various genres romances, old legends, mystical fables, and allegorical tales. In this work, thirty individuals meet at the Tabard Inn, and decide to engage in a storytelling contest as they travel on their pilgrimage, each characters story depicting a unique view of life in this era stylized in various genres. One of the best pieces of literature that captures different walks of life is Canterbury Tales by Geoffery Chaucer. Yet, regardless of shade, there are certain aspects that overlap into the full range of colors. In any case, your world is colored to the shade of your station. You might be a lords or nobles personal messenger, a knight answering the call of war, clergyman, prioress, miller, blacksmith, scholarly clerk, noble… too many to count. You may be a traveling merchant who is used to using the main roads, and witnessing town life in various corners of the countryside. You may be a peasant tilling the fields daily for a local lord, and treking to town once a few months, or once a year to offer goods to market. In the high middle ages, much like today, your experience of the world was highly dependent on your role in society. However, let me just skim the surface and bring you into this environment. Naturally, there’s so many fine details, so many nooks to see, so many cracks to fill in. Also, this article does not cover all aspects of medieval life, and is more focused on the emergence of towns and cities. Also, the sources for this overview come from Western European examples. Many of these things may be familiar to you, but theres rarely an opportunity where a writer, world-builder, historian, or other enthusiast doesn’t enjoy an immersive dive into this environment.Ī few disclaimers: This article does not cover castle life or the ongoings of royal courts. Today, I’d like to talk about the emergence of towns and cities, what medieval life looked like to someone living in that era, and pull some inspiration from it. While this time is rife with mythology about dragons, grand kingdoms, wizardry, and magic, one thing that sometimes get overlooked are the day to day details of what life in this era is like, including details on it’s various hubs of civilization, from villages to cities. There’s never only one thing that characterizes fantasy, but as we’ve seen, most of these stories are cast in the backdrop of the European high medieval era, or some variation of it.
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