Without True Leisure There Is No Culture

The Medieval Year: Ninth Day before the Kalends of February

The Medieval Year, a regular 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. You’ll find helpful background information in these posts:

• The first installment of The Medieval Year

• How to read a medieval calendar

• Understanding the signs of the zodiac and their importance in medieval life

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Let’s briefly look back at some of the monthly medieval labors that we’ve had the opportunity to enjoy thus far.

July (Harvesting Grain):

August (Threshing Grain):

September (the Wine Harvest):

October (Sowing Winter Grains):

November (Fattening the Hogs):

December (Converting the Hogs into Ham and Sausage):

What all these scenes suggest is that the labors of the month are truly laborious. Cutting wheat stalks with a sickle, beating the sheaves with a flail, stomping on grapes for hours and days on end, dragging heavy, bloody carcasses around—this is hard, even exhausting, work. When we get to January, however, the trend shifts, and what we find in the manuscripts is a rather different sort of “labor.”