The Medieval Year: Fourth Day before the Nones of October, AD 1224

A plowman, two horses, three sowers, and one really nice medieval hat.

The Medieval Year, a weekly feature of the Via Mediaevalis newsletter, gives us an opportunity to appreciate calendrical artwork from the Middle Ages, reflect on the basic tasks and rhythms of medieval life, and follow the medieval year as we make our way through the modern year. Please refer to the first post in this series for more background information!

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It’s October in medieval Europe, and though there is still plenty of delightful weather to be had, the chill mornings and fresh midday air are an unmistakable sign that summer has ended and winter is en route. If human nature were something other than what it is, autumn could be a time simply to rejoice in the mild temperatures and gradually diminishing workload. But as the poets have observed, humans are rarely content for long, and we’re more apt to yearn for something new or worry about troubles ahead than to cherish whatever measure of happiness we have right now.

For when as day the heaven doth adorn,
I wish that night the noyous day would end:
and when as night hath us of light forlorn,
I wish that day would shortly reascend. (Edmund Spenser, Amoretti)

Carl Jung expressed the idea in memorable fashion; though not a poet, he knew an awful lot about the human psyche:

The foremost of all illusions is that anything can ever satisfy anybody. That illusion stands behind all that is unendurable in life.

So there’s really no hope for autumn. Sometimes, it’s simply too short:

And after summer evermore succeeds
Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold;
So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet. (Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI)

No mention of autumn—hot summer goes directly to “barren winter,” and before we know it, we’re uncomfortable again and well stocked with foul weather to complain about.

Other times, it’s too long, and all those “playing holidays” from heat and cold lose their savor:

If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work,
But when they seldom come, they wished-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. (Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV)

Winter will come soon enough—with its windes blast, weder strong, and wel michel wrong—but in the meantime, there is plowing, sowing, and winemaking to be done, along with a few weeks at least of clear skies, warm days, cozy nights, and good cheer. Nathaniel Hawthorne had some good advice for a month as fine and lovely as October:

This is our golden time. Tarnish it not by any pensive shadow of the mind, for it may be that nothing of futurity will be brighter than the mere remembrance of what is now passing. (The Maypole of Merry Mount)

So did Spenser:

Sorrow not need be hastened on:
For he will come without calling anon.
While times endure of tranquility,
Use we freely our felicity. (The Shepheardes Calender)

And so did the greatest Poet of them all:

Be not anxious for the morrow,
for the morrow shall be anxious for itself:
sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.

The October labors overlap with the September labors. As I indicated above, the illustrations attached to October calendars mainly depict the continuation of the vintage (harvesting grapes and making wine) or the planting of winter grain, which involves plowing the soil and sowing the seed. I think we spent enough time with the vineyard and the winepress in September, so today let’s enjoy a few plowing and sowing scenes, and next week we’ll look at something different that appears occasionally in the October labors.

Let’s start with the plowman, who is busy preparing the ground for whoever will be broadcasting the seed:

That’s a big field for one plow, one man, and two horses. Even a swain as stout as this one has every reason to be a little bent over after a long day of plowing, and the horses look tired too. He walks through the soil barefoot, which is unusual for a medieval laborer, and I’m not sure what happened to his clothes, which also are unusually ragged. He won’t have any trouble sleeping tonight, though. That’s what one of the peasant farmers in eastern Europe told me: it’s better to live in the country—you work hard, and you sleep well.

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Next we have a delightful, autumn-hued fellow who has come to do the sowing. He needs a name—this painting is from France, early sixteenth century, so we’ll give him one of the most common names of that time and place: Pierre.

The image is unpretentious as a work of art, to be sure, but don’t you have the urge to just reach out and shake this guy’s hand? He’s so well-dressed, with such a pleasant and affable face. Why can’t I dress like that? Why can’t I wear a hat like that? No wonder Montaigne said that fashion is “some kind of madness.” If other men want to wear jeans and T-shirts, or slacks and polo shirts, fine. I want to dress like Pierre.

Probably the most common first name in late-medieval central France was Jehan, an older spelling of Jean. That’s the name we’ll give to this bonhomme, who appears in a late-fifteenth-century Parisian manuscript:

Though apparently a bit more careworn than Pierre, Jehan is also handsomely attired. Note the similarity in their overtunics and handy seed-sowing aprons. This illustration is both vibrant and soothing, with clear detail in the foreground and some lovely, impressionistic brushwork in the background.

Finally, we have Guillaume, also from late-medieval France. Notice how the artist has conveyed the motion of his sowing hand through the arc-shaped stream of seeds falling to the earth.

He looks a bit lonely out there in the plowland, with what appears to be an expansive wilderness behind him, but he probably has some friends and family members nearby. In any case, he’s not afraid to be alone with his thoughts for a while. He instinctively quiets his mind, and feels in his body the rhythms and textures and subtle energies of Creation. He knows how to read and ponder the divine words written in the Book of Nature. And perhaps he even has learned to pray amidst the soft sounds and simple labors of the field—to set his eyes on the earth, raise his mind to the heavens, and find the treasure that the psalmist found:

O God, thy thoughts, how dear to me,
how vast in their totality:
I count them, they are more than the sand;
I wake—and I am still with thee.