Night 2
But people did go out, and they did so despite the warnings of the Churches and city councils. Come dusk, bells were rung, horns were blown, and drums were beaten; city gates were shut, drawbridges raised, and stragglers forced to scurry home to light candles and tend the hearth. In medieval France, and throughout Europe, strict curfews were imposed. Around eight or nine in the evening, a bell sounded to indicate the Couvre-feu, or putting out of fires, from which the word 'curfew' derives.
To make the night even less hospitable, city officials saw to it that chains and logs blocked off major thoroughfares, and that crimes committed after curfew met with stiff penalties. When a woman of Siena was found guilty of assault in 1342, her punishment was halved because she had attacked a man, then doubled because she had hit him in his home, and then doubled again because the infraction had occurred at night. In some Swedish cities, a robbery committed after the curfew bell warranted the death penalty. In many European jurisdictions, killing a house breaker was legal if the crime occurred at night but not after sunrise.
...............................................A good night's sleep for people in pre-industrial society was, at best, a long shot. There may not have been car alarms, ambulance sirens, or pneumatic drills, but there were watchmen shouting, bells ringing, dogs howling, mice scampering, roofs leaking, timbers shrinking, and chamber pots smelling. Most people slept on straw pallets or rough mats, or perhaps shared a cot with two or three siblings, along with fleas, lice, and bugs. Chronic fatigue was the norm, and sleep was valued in ways that we probably can't imagine. What rouses us from our own dogmatic slumbers, however, is Ekirch's assertion that "until the close of the early modern era, Western Europeans on most evenings experienced two major intervals of sleep bridged by up to an hour or more of wakefulness." People, evidently, awoke after midnight and, instead of tossing and turning, they regularly got up to talk, study, pray, and do chores.
To make the night even less hospitable, city officials saw to it that chains and logs blocked off major thoroughfares, and that crimes committed after curfew met with stiff penalties. When a woman of Siena was found guilty of assault in 1342, her punishment was halved because she had attacked a man, then doubled because she had hit him in his home, and then doubled again because the infraction had occurred at night. In some Swedish cities, a robbery committed after the curfew bell warranted the death penalty. In many European jurisdictions, killing a house breaker was legal if the crime occurred at night but not after sunrise.
...............................................A good night's sleep for people in pre-industrial society was, at best, a long shot. There may not have been car alarms, ambulance sirens, or pneumatic drills, but there were watchmen shouting, bells ringing, dogs howling, mice scampering, roofs leaking, timbers shrinking, and chamber pots smelling. Most people slept on straw pallets or rough mats, or perhaps shared a cot with two or three siblings, along with fleas, lice, and bugs. Chronic fatigue was the norm, and sleep was valued in ways that we probably can't imagine. What rouses us from our own dogmatic slumbers, however, is Ekirch's assertion that "until the close of the early modern era, Western Europeans on most evenings experienced two major intervals of sleep bridged by up to an hour or more of wakefulness." People, evidently, awoke after midnight and, instead of tossing and turning, they regularly got up to talk, study, pray, and do chores.
posted by corewell at 7:22 PM
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