Is this self-parody or do some people seriously believe that their jobs are harder than it was to be a medieval peasant?
Fewer
Hardly know er
They must of done it on accident
Your right
I did low effort gpt 😉
The claim that medieval peasants worked only 150 days a year and had many holidays off is partially true but oversimplified. The reality is more complex and depends on time period, location, and economic conditions. Here’s a breakdown of the historical evidence:
- Medieval Work Schedules & Holidays
Church Holidays: The Catholic Church mandated numerous feast days (e.g., Christmas, Easter, saints’ days) when labor was restricted. Estimates suggest 80–100 holidays per year in some places, but enforcement varied.
Sunday Rest: Work was generally prohibited on Sundays, adding about 52 non-working days.
Seasonal Workload: Agricultural work was highly seasonal. Planting and harvest times were extremely labor-intensive, while winter months involved less fieldwork but still required tasks like repairing tools, feeding animals, and processing food.
- The 150-Day Work Year Claim
Some economic historians estimate that medieval peasants worked fewer days annually than modern industrial workers. However, 150 days seems too low, as it assumes every feast day and Sunday was fully work-free, which was not always the case.
Many peasants supplemented their farming with additional work (e.g., weaving, milling, carpentry) during “off” periods.
- Hardships & Work Conditions
While feast days provided breaks, peasant life was physically demanding. Workdays could be long (often from sunrise to sunset).
Hunger, disease, and social obligations (such as corvée labor—unpaid work for the lord) made life challenging.
Despite rest periods, subsistence farming meant that food shortages and unpredictable weather could quickly lead to hardship.
Conclusion
The idea that medieval peasants had an easy work schedule with extensive holidays is partly true in the sense that they had more frequent breaks than modern 9-to-5 workers. However, their work was far more physically demanding, they faced food insecurity, and their “off days” didn’t always mean leisure. The claim of a 150-day work year is likely exaggerated but does reflect the fact that medieval societies structured work differently from modern capitalism.
Historia Civilis did a very good and very concise (~25 minute) breakdown of work/free time of labour through the ages:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo
One of capitalism’s most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil…
TLDW: we used to be paid by the day, not by the hour, and we would do a little more in summer and lot less in winter and still be paid the same. Moreover, employers used to incentivise employees to work by providing free food and sometimes free lodging.
He’s got some issues with his sources on this video (one is a secondary source from the 1840s for example). I want his claims to be true but take the info with a grain of salt.
One thing that tends to get left out is that peasants had a lot of work to do at home. Washing and repairing clothes, maintaining tools, cooking and preserving food, etc all had to be done by hand.
Moreover, employers used to incentivise employees to work by providing free food and sometimes free lodging. [In exchange for labor]
Yes, the historical name for providing free food and shelter in exchange for a person’s coerced labor is slavery, though sometimes the ruling class dresses it up in laws and calls it serfdom or indentured servitude.
If “providing free food and shelter in exchange for a person’s coerced labor is slavery”, then isn’t providing currency in exchange for a person’s coerced labor slavery?
Yes, wage slavery. /j
I know this post is bullshit but I still want to kill the rich.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo
It seems that it isn’t. Medieval peasants had between 41% to 51% of the year off work. This was the norm for societies going back to the stone age. Clocks, mechanical lights, and authoritarian capitalists fucked that up in the last 4 centuries, and 2 centuries respectively.
I think its important to want to eat them for the correct reasons, and not out of misinformed/misguided anger.
Don’t kill them, tax them.
Lol, funny because true. We are all so angry about the exploitation.
Where exactly people worked 150 days a year? Why would religious authorities even have power over secular authorities, this sounds like complete nonsense or extreme cherry picking.
Update:
In 1986 economist Gregory Clark wrote a working paper that (according to citers) contained this estimate. It doesn’t appear he published it, but it got cited. He actually did for real publish a new paper in 2018 raising that number up to an estimate of 250-300 days.
250 days would be 5 days a week 50 weeks a year, so seems similar to modern schedules.
Where exactly people worked 150 days a year?
Probably nowhere. They had eventually 80 days off per year (holidays) – including Sundays. Additionally craftsmen and farmers (but probably not peasants) worked also on the ‘free’ days.
https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/arbeitszeit-frueher-und-heute-die-hohe-anzahl-von-100.html (in German)
Yeah, I’ve looked it up, thank you.
Why would religious authorities even have power over secular authorities
Because secular authorities didn’t exist in medieval Europe? (/¯ ಠ_ಠ)/¯
R-r-right, and the monarchs were part of the clergy or head of church (except eastern roman empire ofc)?
Well apart from kings or nobility or landowners or city authorities, town authorities…
Were you thinking of in terms of a king acting by the grace of God or something? Because there definitely were secular authorities in the typical sense.
All of those needed to play ball with the church. Let me remind you of all that pope and counterpope business, all the religious wars in Europe, the Crusades, excommunications as power moves, the church as landouners, etc.
Secular means separation of church and state. That didn’t exist in medieval Europe. Otherwise, the enlightenment wouldn’t have been necessary.
Of course there wasn’t really much to do outside of the farming season though, so I bet those 150 work days were something like 20h long during lambing, ploughing, sewing and harvest seasons
As someone that lived and worked in a rural agrarian village in West Africa, that’s very likely just counting planting to harvest, so part of the picture only.
Still, that’s 150 days of often backbreaking physical labor starting before sunup. No weekends, no sick days, no annual leave. Weather dictates your schedule without care, and the margins for underperforming can literally mean starving. You can still so a great job and too much or too little rain means you’re fucked.
It doesn’t account for all the cottage industry and daily hustle to simply make ends meet. All the days spent trying to trade what you grew for a diverse diet.
It’s not an idyllic life. It’s a hard life that many people try to escape at the first chance they get.
Better have some off-season income though. Couldn’t store enough food and you can’t afford to feed your family otherwise, fuck you. Bad winter? fuck you. Crops blighted? fuck you. Unable to work due to injury? fuck you.
Don’t forget to pay your tribute, peasant, and don’t you dare go hunting or foraging on the king’s land.
Things were far from perfect, but there were solidarity inside the family (which was bigger than out nuclear families) and class solidarity in the community.
And peasants did legally hunt, they couldn’t everywhere, but it was a common practice.
I bet the church feels so stupid now
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