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The Axe and the Oath: Ordinary Life in the Middle Ages
In The Axe and the Oath , one of the world's leading medieval historians presents a compelling picture of daily life in the Middle Ages as it was experienced by ordinary people. Writing for general readers, Robert Fossier vividly describes how these vulnerable people confronted life, from birth to death, including childhood, marriage, work, sex, food, illness, religion, and the natural world. While most histories of the period focus on the ideas and actions of the few who wielded power and stress how different medieval people were from us, Fossier concentrates on the other nine-tenths of humanity in the period and concludes that "medieval man is us.?Drawing on a broad range of evidence, Fossier describes how medieval men and women encountered, coped with, and understood the basic material facts of their lives. We learn how people related to agriculture, animals, the weather, the forest, and the sea; how they used alcohol and drugs; and how they buried their dead. But The Axe and the Oath is about much more than simply the material demands of life. We also learn how ordinary people experienced the social, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of medieval life, from memory and imagination to writing and the Church. The result is a sweeping new vision of the Middle Ages that will entertain and enlighten readers.
400 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 4, 2007
63 people are currently reading
560 people want to read
About the author
Lydia G. Cochrane
36 books1 followerLydia G. Cochrane has translated numerous books for the University of Chicago Press and other publishers. She specialises in work on the Middle Ages.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
February 22, 2011
This book has been translated into English from the original French and so I don't know who to blame, the author or the translator, but it is not written for the every day person to understand and/or enjoy. It is more like someone's published doctoral thesis or else it was written by the person you try to avoid at any social gathering. Dry, dull, useless big words to convey small meanings, and self important are the first thoughts that come to mind when I think of this book. Next time my teenagers get in trouble, I won't take away their cell phones or ipods, I'm going to make them read this book all the way through before they can leave their rooms. They'll be middle-aged and past rebellion by the time they are finished and what a vocab they'll have!
July 16, 2013
Before I started this book, I read a lot of reviews that claimed it was dense, rambling, incoherent, or otherwise incomprehensible. After finishing the book, I'm a little bewildered as to how so many people came to this conclusion. I am certainly no scholar, having only recently become interested in medieval history out of my own natural curiosity. I'm not even that well-educated in a formal sense, having only two years of community college under my belt. Yet, I found the book to be entirely readable. With the exception of a few words requiring a trip to the dictionary, the author's conversational tone and frankness about the subject were quite enjoyable. His task is a very admirable, if exceedingly difficult one; to discern the thoughts, feelings, habits, and environments of people who were themselves illiterate and mostly considered unworthy of comment by the elite of their day. The author makes no secret of the fact that when investigating the lives of these common people, some speculation is necessary. I think, perhaps, these speculative branches of thought are what have turned many readers off. In our schools we are taught to think in a linear, narrative manner. How unfortunate that reality is neither linear nor narrative, and defies understanding by the common public school graduate.
August 23, 2018
No está mal pero no me gustó el estilo del autor. La distribución de los temas es un tanto confusa, salta de un tema al otro sin orden aparente; recién al final me di cuenta de que intentaba hacer algo así como una historia desde que las personas nacen hasta que mueren. Además, se contradice en varias partes: por ejemplo, dice que las personas muy pobres no podían permitirse las telas porque eran muy caras, y que los enterraban desnudos; más adelante dice lo contrario, y que a todo el mundo lo enterraban al menos tapado con una tela o manta. O que se va a centrar más en la gente común que en los poderosos, pero luego se la pasa hablando de ellos debido a que como los más humildes no sabían leer ni escribir, no hay registros escritos.
Además, por falta de esos registros, el 90% del tiempo se la pasa hablando de los siglos XIV y XV, como mucho retrocede hasta el XII, con menciones muy esporádicas de sucesos anteriores. Luego dice que categorizar a la Edad Media con un solo enfoque es difícil ya que abarca mil años. Meh.
Finalmente, hay grandes baches donde dice que no va a hablar de tal o cual cosa porque es muy conocido, y la mayoría de los ejemplos que usa se limitan a Francia. Por momentos parece que está más ocupado en mostrar sus propias hipótesis y lo gran historiador que es (con frases del tipo "yo, a diferencia del resto, creo que blah blah blah...").
Me quedó la sensación de haber leído un montón y no haber aprendido nada nuevo. Una pena.
Además, por falta de esos registros, el 90% del tiempo se la pasa hablando de los siglos XIV y XV, como mucho retrocede hasta el XII, con menciones muy esporádicas de sucesos anteriores. Luego dice que categorizar a la Edad Media con un solo enfoque es difícil ya que abarca mil años. Meh.
Finalmente, hay grandes baches donde dice que no va a hablar de tal o cual cosa porque es muy conocido, y la mayoría de los ejemplos que usa se limitan a Francia. Por momentos parece que está más ocupado en mostrar sus propias hipótesis y lo gran historiador que es (con frases del tipo "yo, a diferencia del resto, creo que blah blah blah...").
Me quedó la sensación de haber leído un montón y no haber aprendido nada nuevo. Una pena.
February 16, 2017
I cannot believe I wasted £14.95 on this book. I stopped reading at page 5 because I couldn't stand his tone. Fossier is very pretentious and talks down to the reader. He is incredibly misanthropic, and though I was quite willing to hang up my personal views at the door as requested, this text is deeply ideological from the start, so I was not willing to entertain such blatent hypocrisy. He cites no sources, making this text a very expensive paperweight and not much else. With respect to this, there are a lot of assertions made in the first few pages that I can provide sources in opposition to - the fact that he doesn't provide any sources convinces me that this is simply a pp. 384 op-ed by a man so arrogant that he feels a lifetime in academia gives you a Midas touch. Unfortunately Monsieur Fossier, it does not, and to be taken seriously you have to follow the same procedures that everyone else does.
February 26, 2011
The book reads as a pompous graduate student’s final thesis, the student determined to be as dry and boring as possible to impress the dry and boring masters of the universe, those university dons whose lives begin and end with their dry conclusions, and God forbid anyone admit that history can be fun!
Oh no, this is very serious business, and very serious business has no right having a sense of humor or even a sense of being human. And anyone who ever laughed at human foibles that pop up over and over in the time stream, whoever made a joke comparing current presidents with long dead kings, is banned form their world. I mean, obviously, someone can’t have a sense of humor and brain, right?
Fossier’s voice oozes with contempt for the reader, talking down to all of us as being so dim for not knowing everything he knows. He praises the medieval time period at the expense of the present, constantly ridiculing not only other historians but all modern viewpoints and practices – completely losing all objectivity in the process. He gives a broad view of the Middle Ages– and gives us no sense of the actual people in it, because he is so busy pontificating.
He is, in short, a French history professor. To quote a historical fiction story about modern knight templars:
“French historians suck the life’s blood out of history. In the name of socio-economic analysis, they achieve the impossible: they make sex, war, and murder dull.”
February 5, 2021
Though written in formal language, Fossier shows us fascinating sides of ordinary life in the Middle Ages, including women working salt pans and what happens to the stillborn. A full blog post considers the best of his ideas http://www.jesswells.com/blog/posts/3...
A few gems:
• The fire or hearth went from outside the house to inside sometime between 900-1100 AD.
• Last rites could be given by laypeople, even criminals, during the Black Death and early Middle Ages.
• Children who died without last rights or were stillborn were buried under the threshold of the home to prevent demons from seizing it and turning it into a changeling.
• Women worked salt marshes and salt pans in fishing villages, hard physical work to produce the salt required to preserve food.
• Churchman San Bernardino of Sienna maintained that a fetus less than 40 days old could be aborted for reasons of health or poverty. Herbal abortion recipes were well known.
• Wine was not kept from one season to the next. It was either consumed or destroyed.
• Houses of prostitution were kept by the Church, noted here and detailed in my first book, A Herstory of Prostitution in Western Europe by Jess Wells. Herstory of Prostitution in Western Europe: https://www.amazon.com/Herstory-Prost...
A few gems:
• The fire or hearth went from outside the house to inside sometime between 900-1100 AD.
• Last rites could be given by laypeople, even criminals, during the Black Death and early Middle Ages.
• Children who died without last rights or were stillborn were buried under the threshold of the home to prevent demons from seizing it and turning it into a changeling.
• Women worked salt marshes and salt pans in fishing villages, hard physical work to produce the salt required to preserve food.
• Churchman San Bernardino of Sienna maintained that a fetus less than 40 days old could be aborted for reasons of health or poverty. Herbal abortion recipes were well known.
• Wine was not kept from one season to the next. It was either consumed or destroyed.
• Houses of prostitution were kept by the Church, noted here and detailed in my first book, A Herstory of Prostitution in Western Europe by Jess Wells. Herstory of Prostitution in Western Europe: https://www.amazon.com/Herstory-Prost...
January 25, 2011
I really liked this book. It was not overly scholarly, but had so much interesting detail, that I truly felt able to connect with times long past. The Axe and the Oath put a very clear picture in my mind of what life was like circa 1100-1450. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Medieval life.
February 5, 2017
Un buen libro, bastante aceptable.
Fundamentalmente nos habla de la Edad Media y de cómo debía ser la vida de la gente común, aunque es cierto que muchas veces es necesario recurrir a cómo vivían los nobles y altos estratos del clero para poder extrapolar. Creo que arroja bastante luz y es interesante si te interesa el tema.
Fundamentalmente nos habla de la Edad Media y de cómo debía ser la vida de la gente común, aunque es cierto que muchas veces es necesario recurrir a cómo vivían los nobles y altos estratos del clero para poder extrapolar. Creo que arroja bastante luz y es interesante si te interesa el tema.
January 30, 2014
A bit dry but very useful.
August 13, 2016
Je suis pas un historien mais j'ai trouvé ce livre vraiment intéressant. C'est pas l'historie qu'on a étudié a l'école. C'est fort plus intéressant.
October 30, 2019
Very French writing style, otherwise excellent
December 28, 2019
Чи не найважча книга за цей рік, але вона дала багато цікавих ідей щодо Середньовіччя і напрямків, куди копати далі.
Забагато авторських відступів(
Забагато авторських відступів(
November 7, 2024
I'm giving this three stars, which means, "All right if you like that sort of thing".
I got flashbacks, reading this, to my readings of all those French public intellectuals, like Derrida, Serres, Foucault. It is written in that very discursive French academic style (as translated into English, natch), where you're sometimes not sure what they're on about, or if you've missed a memo, or completely misunderstood the point of the book.
"Ordinary life in the Middle Ages" does come through, in a fashion, but this does not read like a straightforward history book. Frustratingly, there is no index, so you can't go looking up "clothing" or "fashion", say, and zero in on that stuff. Neither is there a bibliography, nor any footnotes. The whole thing is one long essay or commentary, giving an expert opinion on something, which might be to do with the subject of interest.
Hard to tell, because that discursive French academic style is really in a conversation with itself. You get the feeling you're listening in to an argument between academics on the nature of knowledge and things like how we know what we know and what even is knowledge and what do we mean by words like "ordinary" and "life"? But you don't know which academics, because they are unnamed (best way of dissing a colleague) and there's no bibliography…
The central point is that, for a 1000 years, there were really three types of people. The nobility, about whom we know a good deal, for fairly obvious reasons; and the clergy, who were the ones recording everything and in charge of the flow of information; and the rest – the artisans and farmers, and peasants, the merchants and craftspeople – about whom we know very little because they were beneath the notice of the other two groups.
So knowledge about "ordinary life" is elusive and allusive. We glean, we infer, we guess, based on the very little evidence there is. And then came the printing press, and everything changed. And almost everything after the printing press is beyond the scope of this book.
It's fairly entertaining. Not so much hard to read as hard to pin down. I think a lot of the paragraphs are ridiculously long, and the few bits of knowledge this book imparts are often buried in the middle of them. You'll find a passage on beds and bedding, or – yes – what people wore in the workshop and what it was made of (though not necessarily in the same chapter).
Anyway, this book makes you work, and it feels like work, and it doesn't really point you anywhere because it lacks that bibliography and there's no easy way of looking things up because there's no index. Even the chapter titles are telling a story that is always just out of reach.
I got flashbacks, reading this, to my readings of all those French public intellectuals, like Derrida, Serres, Foucault. It is written in that very discursive French academic style (as translated into English, natch), where you're sometimes not sure what they're on about, or if you've missed a memo, or completely misunderstood the point of the book.
"Ordinary life in the Middle Ages" does come through, in a fashion, but this does not read like a straightforward history book. Frustratingly, there is no index, so you can't go looking up "clothing" or "fashion", say, and zero in on that stuff. Neither is there a bibliography, nor any footnotes. The whole thing is one long essay or commentary, giving an expert opinion on something, which might be to do with the subject of interest.
Hard to tell, because that discursive French academic style is really in a conversation with itself. You get the feeling you're listening in to an argument between academics on the nature of knowledge and things like how we know what we know and what even is knowledge and what do we mean by words like "ordinary" and "life"? But you don't know which academics, because they are unnamed (best way of dissing a colleague) and there's no bibliography…
The central point is that, for a 1000 years, there were really three types of people. The nobility, about whom we know a good deal, for fairly obvious reasons; and the clergy, who were the ones recording everything and in charge of the flow of information; and the rest – the artisans and farmers, and peasants, the merchants and craftspeople – about whom we know very little because they were beneath the notice of the other two groups.
So knowledge about "ordinary life" is elusive and allusive. We glean, we infer, we guess, based on the very little evidence there is. And then came the printing press, and everything changed. And almost everything after the printing press is beyond the scope of this book.
It's fairly entertaining. Not so much hard to read as hard to pin down. I think a lot of the paragraphs are ridiculously long, and the few bits of knowledge this book imparts are often buried in the middle of them. You'll find a passage on beds and bedding, or – yes – what people wore in the workshop and what it was made of (though not necessarily in the same chapter).
Anyway, this book makes you work, and it feels like work, and it doesn't really point you anywhere because it lacks that bibliography and there's no easy way of looking things up because there's no index. Even the chapter titles are telling a story that is always just out of reach.
April 19, 2019
Se numește Evul Mediu, sau epoca medievală, acea perioadă de timp din istoria Europei care s-a petrecut între secolele al V-lea și al XV-lea. Speranța de viață era scăzută, erau probleme cu igiena generală, cu centralizarea puterii și cu războaiele între clase. Iar din cauza faptului că alfabetizarea încă nu era la ea acasă și internetul nu apăruse, informațiile care ne-au parvenit din acea perioadă sunt fragmentare și specioase.
Autorul, profesor și istoric francez specializat în istoria medievală occidentală, are la activ câteva opere care tratează subiecte medievale, își cunoaște și stăpânește bine meseria, dar din păcate nu este un scriitor prea plăcut de citit. Probabil i-am putea scuza din oficiu stilul pedant pe care îl folosește de la prima la ultima copertă (datorită profesiei profesorale), dar "filozofeala" sa aparent fără scop, lipsa unui obiectiv coerent, a unui punct final care trebuie demonstrat precum și stilul amorțit și uscat nu-l ajută deloc la capitolul popularitate. De asemenea, informațiile pe care le furnizează cititorului par cumva obținute cu zgârcenie, oferite mai mult de nevoie, ca să nu mai spun că majoritatea se referă doar la arealul francez (o zonă indiscutabil importantă pe harta Europei medievale, dar insignifiantă atunci când se vorbește despre universalitatea omului evului mediu). În concluzie, această carte pare mai mult o colecție de esee sau teze de licență (pentru un doctorat în istorie consider cam puțină istorie și cam multă digresiune) scrise de cineva care a vrut musai să-și impresioneze audiența spunându-le practic că nimic nu e nou sub soare.
Autorul, profesor și istoric francez specializat în istoria medievală occidentală, are la activ câteva opere care tratează subiecte medievale, își cunoaște și stăpânește bine meseria, dar din păcate nu este un scriitor prea plăcut de citit. Probabil i-am putea scuza din oficiu stilul pedant pe care îl folosește de la prima la ultima copertă (datorită profesiei profesorale), dar "filozofeala" sa aparent fără scop, lipsa unui obiectiv coerent, a unui punct final care trebuie demonstrat precum și stilul amorțit și uscat nu-l ajută deloc la capitolul popularitate. De asemenea, informațiile pe care le furnizează cititorului par cumva obținute cu zgârcenie, oferite mai mult de nevoie, ca să nu mai spun că majoritatea se referă doar la arealul francez (o zonă indiscutabil importantă pe harta Europei medievale, dar insignifiantă atunci când se vorbește despre universalitatea omului evului mediu). În concluzie, această carte pare mai mult o colecție de esee sau teze de licență (pentru un doctorat în istorie consider cam puțină istorie și cam multă digresiune) scrise de cineva care a vrut musai să-și impresioneze audiența spunându-le practic că nimic nu e nou sub soare.
November 16, 2022
I, a history lover, was aroused already by the name and theme of this book. I must, however, admit that R. Fossier's The Axe and the Oath didn't live up to my expectations. The first half of this book tries to make light of the metaphysical, unconscious and deep of the medieval man. I found this part underwhelming because of its feeling of anarchy. The author touched on many topics in a chaotic order and left them open. On the other hand this part brought important details about "medieval mentality" (a term scrutinized by the author himself for its vast vagueness).
The second part about medieval man's external world completed the picture, altough certain aspects of this completion I am doubtful of; to me the author doesn't fully grasp the Church and theology, which he views as a mere tool for the medieval world. His description of Christianity does seem to me to subscribe to the known phrase "Religion is the opium of the masses", a phrase many might agree with, but which to me distorts the picture of the Middle Ages.
In the end I find this book well written and captivating.
The second part about medieval man's external world completed the picture, altough certain aspects of this completion I am doubtful of; to me the author doesn't fully grasp the Church and theology, which he views as a mere tool for the medieval world. His description of Christianity does seem to me to subscribe to the known phrase "Religion is the opium of the masses", a phrase many might agree with, but which to me distorts the picture of the Middle Ages.
In the end I find this book well written and captivating.
May 8, 2018
The author uses the results of iconography and archaeology to reconstruct common life and beliefs during the Middle Ages. It is so complete that you can rely on this book if you want to divine how to build a house as the medievals did, or to prepare a table of feast as the medievals did. You learn about their beliefs and perceptions regarding family, nature, and divinity. Furthermore I felt the writing had that same diction as Umberto Eco's, enchanting and fabulist. I stuck with this book half due to the musicality of the author's language.
June 15, 2023
Bardzo przyjemnie napisana książka, ale mam wrażenie że gdyby podzielić ją na trzy równe części: początek, środek i koniec, to środek można by spokojnie pominąć, przeczytać bardzo ciekawy początek i nieco mniej interesujący koniec i w zasadzie wiedza czytelnika nie ucierpiałaby nadto. Niestety środek jest dość oczywisty, jak sam autor wielokrotnie powtarzał. Dużo faktów z tamtej części książki przeniknęły już do popkultury/gier tak bardzo, że nie ma potrzeby o tym pisać. Przynajmniej ja bardzo się nudziłem czytając o tym. Reszta jest bardzo ciekawa.
July 5, 2020
Grata lectura sobre la vida cotidiana en la baja Edad Media. Teniendo en cuenta la documentación existente, el autor presenta sus conclusiones sobre varios temas de transcendencia en este periodo tan oscuro y convulso. Se centra sobre todo en la gente de Francia y alrededores. Como es obvio, casi la mitad del libro se basa en el cristianismo y sus efectos y consecuencias para los habitantes. Recomendado para los amantes de la historia.
August 16, 2021
El libro está a medio camino entre un ensayo y un libro de difusión científica.
Aporta muchos datos, muy relevantes y esclarecedores de la edad Media.
El problema es que la lectura se me hizo muy pesada, quizás por la forma de escritura (el propio autor se reconoce influenciado por los usos académicos) como también por la estructura del libro.
Sin embargo, si tiene la paciencia, recomiendo su lectura.
Aporta muchos datos, muy relevantes y esclarecedores de la edad Media.
El problema es que la lectura se me hizo muy pesada, quizás por la forma de escritura (el propio autor se reconoce influenciado por los usos académicos) como también por la estructura del libro.
Sin embargo, si tiene la paciencia, recomiendo su lectura.
August 2, 2022
El libro al nivel informativo está buenísimo. Lleno mis expectativas sobre las costumbres que tenía la gente en la edad media tanto los menos favorecidos cómo los que más tenían y me abrió los ojos con muchos estereotipos que tenía sobre el tema. Lo malo del libro es que es poco ameno y cuesta leerlo pero el tema es bastante interesante y con este perspectiva se logra mantener el interés para terminarlo.
June 6, 2020
Un buen libro para acercarte a las costumbres y el pensamiento de la gente corriente de la Edad Media. Sin ser tampoco una maravilla, sí que al menos entretiene y da respuesta a muchas preguntas que cualquiera de nosotros, en nuestro tiempo, podemos hacernos respecto a esa gente de siglos atrás. Te gustará si te atrae mínimamente este período de la historia.
March 27, 2021
Unreadable. I assume the translation is faithful to the author’s style, which is padded with “clever” phrasings that just get in the way of the discussion. I could go on, but the book’s not worth the time. I am very disappointed, as I really wanted to read this book, and tried repeatedly to plow thru it. After a while, I just gave up.
August 3, 2022
Un repaso a las costumbres, sensaciones, creencias y demases de la gente (especialmente la "gente común") de la larguísima Edad Media. Puede llegar a sentirse algo desordenado, ya que es difícil poder contar la historia de personas durante un milenio completo (con todos los cambios de costumbres que conlleva esa cantidad de alos), pero no aburre para nada. Ideal para curiosos no expertos.
October 13, 2022
Tiene muchísima información y puedes hacerte una idea (más que una idea) de cómo era la sociedad de la Edad Media, pero tengo que reconocer que a momentos se hace un poco tedioso. He leído obras más cortas y amenas que dicen más o menos lo mismo. De todas formas, no hay que quitarle el mérito: es una investigación profunda y muy trabajada.
February 25, 2024
Fina studija o životu u srednjem vijeku, no, kao što i sam autor nekoliko puta priznaje, digresije su ga mnogo puta odvlačile sa teme, pa mi je to donekle otežalo čitanje. Ipak, ima dosta zanimljivih podataka.
July 6, 2024
Muy general; lectura a veces pesada; trata aspectos Historia social y vida cotidiana; peca de poco profundo y de abarcar muchos ámbitos; se puede llegar a hacer lento y largo; no hay línea cronológica de continuidad; buen libro de curiosidades sin más como valoración final.
November 22, 2017
Highly unreadable. The author writes uses as much obfuscated language as possible.
May 24, 2021
2.5 really.
September 5, 2022
Fantastic…a lifetime of Medieval study summed up in one book. Very enjoyable.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews