How Feast Days Were Celebrated in the Middle Ages

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Aside from going to Mass and resting from work, what was involved in feast days in the Middle Ages? Would there have been a communal celebration (like a literal feast)? Would the clergy have done anything particular during or outside of the Mass? Would there have been particular foods that would have been eaten?
 
Chereek said:
Would there have been a communal celebration (like a literal feast)?
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Yes, and usually a festival - Jousting, a market, performers.
Chereek said:
Would the clergy have done anything particular during or outside of the Mass?
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Other than it being solemn Mass and likely solemn Vespers, etc, I wouldn’t think so.
Chereek said:
Would there have been particular foods that would have been eaten?
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Yes, depending on the feast day. For example, goose was a typical meal for the feast of St. Michael (Michaelmas)
 
It would have been awesome to be alive to experience like the 12th century in Scandinavia… (Well… Provided you were clergy or nobility. It would bite to be one of the majority peasants…)

This historical recreation of a 15th century Mass gets me so nostalgic:

 
This is pre-Tridentine, I believe… Closer to the Dominican rite than Trent
 
Yeah it is. Some info:

"Five hundred years ago, the universe seemed much more understandable than it does for us. All of existence was framed by a number of ceremonies and behavioral patterns which were a matter of course for people at the time. And the most important of them was the Holy Mass - that ring of charged words and actions which surround the central mystery in the Christian faith: That Jesus becomes man anew in the creatures of bread and wine.

"We have reconstructed a High Mass from 500 years ago in an ordinary Swedish parish church, namely in Endre Church, one mile east of Visby in Gotland. We imagined ourselves to be participating in this high mass on an autumn Sunday in the middle of the 15th century. It is local people who are participating in clothes typical for the time, and we have tried as much as possible to reconstruct [something to do with (worship) services] in the Diocese of Linköping at that time - since Gotland belonged to that diocese.

"The service is conducted in an incomprehensible language, a language incomprehensible to the people: Latin. Because church services at the time were not considered a medium for communicating information, except for silent prayers. Just as one cannot describe what is fascinating about a melody or a sight, one shouldn’t be able to understand or describe the central mystery of the universe. The congregation waits for the central moment, when the bread and wine shall be transformed into the body and blood of Christ.

"The priest was helped by a chorister, perhaps the [experienced?] youth whom [his soul has discovered?] and who with time would be sent to Linköping in order to attend the cathedral school. Songs, mostly from the Bible, were sung by the local cantor. We don’t know exactly how the music went in the medieval churches. Maybe Endre Church had a specific order which required a qualified cantor like the one we shall see here.

"The Sunday service began when the priest sprinkled Holy Water on the congregation. This was to remind them that they had become members of the Christian church through baptism. The Holy Water would drive away all the powers of evil.

“Let us now place ourselves in the Middle Ages. Let us try to grasp the atmosphere in a normal Swedish parish church, in a time where man still believed himself cast out into an empty, cold existence, when Europe was still unified, and when the central mystery around which everything revolved was that Jesus Christ, had become man, had died, and risen again for all.”
 
In the german speaking area in medieval times, making short pilgrimages was very common. As most peasants weren´t able to leave their farms for more than one or two days, they visited chruches and shrines in the nearer area. You have had such destinations in the near of every small town and even on the plain land, most are today lost or not visited (much) anymore.
It was also far more common to fast in those times, and we have in many european regions special festival costumes for different feasts, sometimes in accordance with the colours of the liturgies.
 
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It would have been awesome until you got a toothache :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
 
They used the church feast days more than they used the calendar. Such and such happened on the eve of the feast of St. Martin, or whatever. And it got a little confusing with the moveable feasts like Corpus Christi which is dependent on Easter.
 
ChristMyLife said:
Twas a more simpler time.
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With the War of the Roses in England, the Great Western Schism in western Europe, the reconquista on the Iberian peninsula and the Turks on the march in Greece, I’d say it was a pretty complex time in European history.
 
Blockquote
Yes, and usually a festival - Jousting, a market, performers.
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Would the clergy have joined the crowd at all during those?
Blockquote Yes, depending on the feast day. For example, goose was a typical meal for the feast of St. Michael (Michaelmas)
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So weird question: any idea what might have been eaten on the feast of St. Ailbe, an Irish saint? If not him specifically, are there any special foods eaten on the feast days of other Irish saints?
 
Chereek said:
Would the clergy have joined the crowd at all during those?
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Mendicants, certainly.
Diocecesean clerics during this time could be a little more worldly and standoffish.
Chereek said:
any idea what might have been eaten on the feast of St. Ailbe, an Irish saint? If not him specifically, are there any special foods eaten on the feast days of other Irish saints?
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No idea. I’d look into his feast specifically if I were you.
 
There was a lot of feast days in Middle Age. 1/3 days are holidays.
There was also abstinence for meet (and carnal) during Lent and other days to prepare some feasts.
Between 100 and 200 days were days of fasting.
 
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It would’ve been a horrible time to live.

Life was hard, Survival was a day to day event.

There’s a reason they’re also called The Dark Ages.

Jim
 
twf said:
Interesting word choice: nostalgic. Yes, I too remember the 15th century well…brings back many a memory ;).
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Is there a word to describe a nostalgic-like intense longing for a thing you never personally experienced ?

Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong century and some music makes my heart ache.
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong century
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Me too, I wish I were born in the future century when we’ll all get to live to 200 years old in perfect health…

But going back? No way! Life in the Middle Ages was nasty, brutish and short. No antibiotics. Wars galore. Bubonic plague. No sanitation. Undrinkable water. Life expectancy, 50ish. No thanks!

I’ll gladly take the reconstituted 19th century Solesmes plainchant, as performed today, over the original.
 
Really?
From what I’ve read, life expectancy actually rose from the fall of Rome into the so-called ‘dark ages’

Scholasticism thrived in monasteries that were growing, the foundations of the greatest cathedrals of Europe were laid…

 
Maximilian75 said:
Really?
From what I’ve read, life expectancy actually rose from the fall of Rome into the so-called ‘dark ages’

Scholasticism thrived in monasteries that were growing, the foundations of the greatest cathedrals of Europe were laid…
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Yes. Funny, but when I hear Dark Ages, it´s clearly the late geometric era in ancient greece between the 12th and the 8th century BC. And the term is generally more used because the lack of sources in a certain era than because of so called “bad dark times”.
Migration era was hard, the middle ages were better when it comes to life expectation and living conditions. It was really bad in the early modern time, after several plagues where specialists died on all fields (and their wisdon with them) and the thirty years war has done the rest.
But in general, it´s more a question of “where” than “when”. I would rather lived in 5th century constantinople than in 12th century north of the alps.
 
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