… is from page 557 of Will Durant’s 1950 volume, The Age of Faith; here Durant writes about the typical medieval peasant:
He shared in the social life of the village, but had no cultural interests. He could not read; a literate serf would have been an offense to his illiterate lord. He was ignorant of everything but farming, and not too skilled in that. His manners were rough and hearty, perhaps gross; in this turmoil of European history he had to survive by being a good animal, and he managed it. He was greedy because poor, cruel because fearful, violent because repressed, churlish because treated as a churl. He was the mainstay of the church, but he had more superstition than religion.
But this peasant was a locavore whose food (when such was available, as it frequently was not) was organic!
