CHAPTER THREE

Food Security, Safety,

and Crises
philip sl avin

Late medieval Europe was essentially a rural society, with the majority of
the population living and working on land, either as free or unfree peasants
and landholders. At the same time, European society underwent a signifi-
cant process of urbanization, chiefly from about 1100 onward. The degree
of urbanization was, naturally, different in every region. Thus, by about
1300, only about 15 percent of Englishmen lived in towns. The figures for
Germany were lower and only a meager proportion of Scandinavians were
town-dwellers. On the other hand, the Low Countries, Southern France,
Italy, and Spain, were much more urbanized. Some towns were truly gar-
gantuan by pre-Industrial standards. Thus, the population of Paris may
have approached 160,000 people in 1300. The figures for Venice, Genoa,
Milan, and Florence were high also, in the area of 100,000 each. In the
Low Countries, Bruges and Ghent may have housed between fifty and sixty
thousand inhabitants each. London was home to some seventy thousand
during that period.1 These were, however, exceptions, and in the major-
ity of cases, an average medieval town had anywhere between 1,000 and
10,000 inhabitants. The nonagricultural occupations of urban dwellers
meant that food, and chiefly grain provisioning, was an everyday issue in

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 64 FOOD SECURITY, SAFETY, AND CRISES

medieval towns. A steady food supply and distribution depended on strong

ties between the town and the countryside, and on a good collaboration
between rural producers and urban distributors. However, food produc-
tion and distribution was equally a quotidian problem in the countryside.
Despite a certain agricultural progress in some regions, medieval peasants
were entirely dependent on the vagaries of weather. Rainy or dry years
meant lower crop yields, which affected not only humans but also domestic
animals. Institutional interferences, such as sudden taxation or compulsory
sales of grain, known as purveyance, contributed further to food crises.
Animal murrains could lead to scarcity of dairy- and meat-based products,
and, in the case of oxen, to losses of the main plowing force.
The issue of food security and crisis, both in towns and the countryside,
was never as sensitive and challenging as in the late Middle Ages, and es-
pecially in the fourteenth century. It was a century of several environmen-
tal, biological, economic, and institutional shocks that had a deep impact on
the process of food production and consumption. After some 100 years of
relatively warm temperatures, we witness the first signs of weather deterio-
ration around 1290, culminating between 1314 and 1317, when excessive
rainfall and low temperatures depressed crop yields all over northern Europe,
from Poland to Scandinavia. Arguably, some 10–15 percent of the northern
European population perished in the famine of 1314–1322.2 To be sure, this
famine was not the only instance of a harsh environmental crisis. In northern
Europe in general, and England in particular, bad weather and low crop yields
are reported in 1339 and 1349–1351 (the Black Death years), 1437–1438,
1457, 1472, and 1476–1477.3 The rest of the continent experienced a series of
bad years, too. Languedoc was devastated by recurrent grain failures between
1302–1310, 1329–1351, 1368–1376, 1419–1421, 1456–1459, 1471–1474,
and 1480–1483.4 Tuscany had its own famine between 1367 and 1374.5 The
western Mediterranean, chiefly Catalonia, Valencia, and Sicily, coped with a
disastrous starvation between 1374 and 1376, and then again in 1383.6 In
some cases, the harvest failures were caused by an excess or lack of precipita-
tion, while in other cases they were brought about by temperature anomalies.
At the same time, Europe was hit by two major pestilences: the Great
Cattle Plague of 1315–1321 and the Black Death of 1347–1352. The cat-
tle panzootic, most likely rinderpest, ravaged virtually all of northern and
eastern Europe.7 In England, the disease claimed some 65 percent of its

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bovine beasts.8 Although no comparable statistics are available for other

parts of Europe, we may speculate that figures may have been similar else-
where, judging from hysterical rhetoric of contemporary chroniclers. Some
thirty years later, another mysterious pathogen arrived in Europe, killing
at least 40 percent of its population, while in some places the figures were
undoubtedly higher.9 The first attack was followed by further outbreaks
from 1361 until the early fifteenth century.
To make things even worse, however, much of Europe was involved in
ongoing warfare. Between 1296 and 1328 England conducted a violent war
against Scotland, while trying simultaneously to crush Irish and Welsh revolts
in 1315. England was also involved in war with France, from 1294 to 1303,
in 1324, and most famously the Hundred Years’ War from 1337 to 1453.
Although formally it was a war between England and France, virtually all of
Europe was involved, whether directly or indirectly. At the same time, we wit-
ness chaotic warfare in the German Empire: both civil strife and never-ending
Guelph-Ghibelline Italian wars. In Italy proper, there was a series of conflicts
between the two leading mercantile city-states, Venice and Genoa, over trade-
monopoly and control in the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. These
took place chiefly in 1291–1299, 1350–1355, and 1378–1381. Between
1375 and 1378, no fewer than eight Italian city-states were involved in a
war known as the War of the Eight Saints. From 1282 onward, the western
Mediterranean was ravaged by several armed conflicts, commencing with
the Wars of the Sicilian Vespers. Both Christian and Muslim parts of Spain
suffered from recurring Berber invasions from 1275 on. The Catalan merce-
naries ravaged parts of Greece during their ill-fated crusade of 1303–1312.
Other parts of the once-glorious Byzantine Empire were plundered and con-
quered by the Ottoman Turks until the eventual fall of Constantinople in
1453 and Trebizond in 1461. Warfare of this scale had not been seen since
Carolingian times. The impact of war on the food crisis of the fourteenth
century is an intriguing, yet under-studied topic, inviting meticulous research.

SECURING FOOD SUPPLY: LAND

AND ANIMAL RESOURCES

Before dealing with food crises proper, let us pose a question: Where did
food come from? Late medieval society was by no means uniform, and each

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 66 FOOD SECURITY, SAFETY, AND CRISES

social stratum had to rely on different sources and channels of food pro-
visioning—each source corresponding to socioeconomic possibilities and
limits. Landlords, both greater and smaller, would rely on rural estates com-
prised of manors, the single most important source of agricultural produc-
tion. Naturally, these estates in general and manors in particular varied a
great deal in their size and scale. In 1314 Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester,
died in possession of 161 manors, covering just under 19,000 acres. They
stretched from Ireland to East Anglia and were worth £6,840.10 De Clare
was a clear exception, and very few individual magnates could boast about
estates of a similar magnitude. In the majority of cases, a lay landlord would
have held less than 500 acres.11 Petty landlords of lower social status held
just one or two manors. Corporate lords—ecclesiastical or collegial
institutions—and bishops were another important class of landowners.
Again, the size of their holdings varied according to their social standing and
prestige. Thus, Westminster Abbey circa 1300, patronized by the king, had
more than fifty manors comprising 14,500 acres. The Bishop of Winchester
held some sixty manors with 13,000 acres around the same time. By the
end of the thirteenth century, the Abbey of St. Martin of Tournai controlled
thirty-seven manors, spread across 12,500 acres.12 The Great Hospital of
Norwich, on the other hand, owned only six manors, rendering around 500
quarters of grain a year (a quarter is equal to 28 pounds).13
What were the arable and pastoral limits of the demesne? To a large de-
gree, these were determined by regional geological and climatic factors. For
instance, the relatively fertile soils and mild climate of East Anglia were better
suited for intensive spring cropping and cattle farming than, say, the acidic
soils and high rainfall of Northern English counties, which were biased to-
ward extensive oat growing and sheep husbandry. These factors, in turn,
dictated the allocation of the available land resources for different purposes.
To a large degree they also shaped the structure and composition of regional
diets. For instance, in Norfolk some 50 percent of the total arable land was
sown with barley, while in northern counties lords allocated large portions of
their arable to oats and barley was cultivated on a very limited scale. There
was a clear dichotomy between barley-ale and oat-ale counties. Similarly,
northern England, Scotland, Wales, the Alps, and parts of Scandinavia prac-
ticed pastoral-oriented regimes, which inevitably resulted in a higher intake
of dairy products and beef than other parts of England and the Continent.

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In the hills of Catalonia, cattle rearing was practically nonexistent. Instead,

local peasants relied on sheep and swine husbandry. It is hardly surprising,
then, that pork and mutton were the predominant kinds of meat there.
How much could a lord extract from his demesne? Again, the scale of
food provisioning varied from community to community. Around 1300,
Norwich Cathedral Priory—home to some 300 people (including 60 monks
and about 240 servants and laborers)—received around 2,800 quarters of
wheat and malted barley per annum from its landed demesnes. This fig-
ure represented approximately one-half of the total grain harvest on the
demesnes. The total grain supply exceeded the actual dietary needs of the
priory by at least 35 percent. In other words, the Norwich Priory authori-
ties could extract much more than they needed, not counting the surplus
sold at markets. Grain products were only a part of the daily ration of the
Norwich monks, constituting about 55–60 percent of the monks’ total ca-
loric intake. The remainder came in the form of non-farinaceous products—
mostly dairy, fish, and meat. With some exceptions, the priory relied here
on local markets, rather than on direct supply from the demesnes.14 After
all, these were perishable products, requiring rapid transportation and con-
sumption. Moreover, an average size of demesne livestock was insufficient
to sustain a large monastic household for an entire year.
Direct management was not the only form of demesne exploitation.
From the thirteenth century onwards, there was an increasing tendency to
farm out the demesne to better-off peasants. Thus, in 1289 the count of
Namur (present-day Belgium) retained sixteen demesne manors, while nine
further manors were leased out.15 Between 1290 and 1325, the authorities
of Durham Cathedral Priory were farming out fourteen demesnes, keeping
only eight in hand.16 In the 1330s, Norwich Cathedral Priory leased out
three of its Norfolk manors.17 As a result, the lords came to rely increas-
ingly on local markets to buy food supplies. At Norwich Cathedral Priory,
between the 1280s and the 1370s, about 80 percent of the total grain sup-
ply came from the demesne, while the remaining 20 percent was purchased
at local markets, chiefly at or around Norwich.18 It was not until after the
Black Death, however, that the disintegration of the demesne was in full
force, both in England and parts of the Continent.19
As far as the individual peasant families are concerned, their holdings
were naturally much smaller than those of their seigniorial counterparts.

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Although it has recently been estimated that at least eighteen acres per
peasant family was sufficient to avoid subsistence crisis, the sources reveal
that in reality the majority of peasant households held less than that.20 In
some cases, there were families getting by on less than an acre of arable
land. Our knowledge of the scale and composition of the peasant sector is
very scarce, deriving mostly from taxation records, manorial surveys, and
tithe accounts. A recent study on tithe records from late medieval England
reveals that the levels of peasant productivity, crop structure, and crop
yields were similar to those within the demesne sector.21
Calorific requirements differed from class to class, and from community
to community. Thus, an average male English peasant in 1300 would con-
sume approximately 2,900 kcals on a daily basis,22 and it is unlikely that
this figure was much different in 1600. The aristocrats demanded a much
larger intake, whether consumed entirely or partially. Thus, at Westminster
Abbey and Norwich Cathedral Priory, an average monk would be offered
a plate of well over 6,000 kcals on a nonfasting day.23 Even assuming that
only some 45–55 percent were actually consumed, we still arrive at aston-
ishingly high caloric figures. Lay aristocracy would similarly consume large
portions of food: evidence from Provence suggests that the average noble
consumed about 4,500 kcals daily.24 In other words, it would require signifi-
cantly more acres and bushels per capita to feed a noble than a peasant. This
is hardly surprising. First, a peasant household had much less grain-produc-
ing land resources available to satisfy its dietary needs. Second, the very idea
of conspicuous consumption, in terms of scale and preference of food, was
deeply embedded into the social and cultural values and norms of late medi-
eval aristocracy. The ability to recruit large amounts of foodstuffs—whether
by direct exploitation or purchase—was an important conspicuous feature
of higher strata, distinguishing them from people and communities of lower
standing. It is only natural, then, that the main victims of food crises were
the poor masses: rustics and especially townsfolk, whose access to food sup-
plies was more limited than their rural counterparts.

RIDERS ON THE STORM: CROP FAILURES,

PESTILENCE, AND WARFARE

Let us begin with the most obvious reason for food crises: crop failures.
Recently, some scholars spoke of ecological and biological vagaries as the

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single most important factor in shaping and determining agricultural trends

in the late medieval period.25 As we have seen, there was a long list of crop
failures in different parts of Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
However, the single worst crisis of them all was the Great Famine of 1314–
1322. The degree to which northern European society was overcome by
the agrarian crisis is well illustrated by English sources. During the famine
years of 1314–1317, crop yields were on average forty percent below their
average levels in normal—that is, nonfamine—years. Winter grains, namely
winter wheat and rye, seem to have suffered much worse than their spring
counterparts. In 1316 the mean yields (number of grains harvested per seed
planted) were 2.20:1.00 for wheat, 2.45:1.00 for rye, 1.90:1.00 for oats,
and 2.60:1.00 for barley (compared with 3.75:1.00, 4.00:1.00, 2.80:1.00,
and 3.50:1.00, respectively, in noncrisis years).26 It is unclear how bad grain
yields in other parts of northern Europe were; the yield levels were by no
means uniform in different regions in normal years. The yields were
undoubtedly very low in Poland and Scandinavia, perhaps as low as AQ1
2.00:1.00.27 In southern Germany the yields seem to have been higher,
standing at around 6.00:1.00 for spelt and rye and 5.00:1.00 for oats and
barley.28 In the Duchy of Artois and the Ile-de-France region, on the other
hand, a farmer could expect his harvest to be ten times higher than the
seed.29 With the exception of the Black Death (1348–1351) and the disas-
trous years of 1437–1439, the Great Famine years mark the lowest point in
the history of crop yields in the late Middle Ages. The crop statistics from
England indicate that its population was in a state of subsistence crisis. The
figures are supported by widespread cries of contemporary chroniclers from
different countries and regions. There were a number of local famines in
northern Europe over the course of the sixteenth century. None of them are
comparable in proportion and impact to the famine of 1595–1603, which
ravaged all the way from Muscovy in the east to Ireland in the west. The di-
saster of 1595–1603 resulted directly from a series of failed harvests, as did
the Great Famine of 1314–1322. In England, there were four back-to-back
harvest failures from 1594–1597, bringing about a rise in grain prices and
lowering real wages to an abysmally low point.30 In addition to worsening
standards of living, England’s population was also decimated by starvation
in 1597–1598.
Some Catalan evidence illustrates the Mediterranean crop failures dur-
ing the 1370s. An example from Sitges Castle in Catalonia is particularly

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 70 FOOD SECURITY, SAFETY, AND CRISES

revealing. Between 1354 and 1410, barley yields were between 10.00:1.00
and 15.00:1.00; wheat yields stood at just below 10.00:1.00; and fava
bean yields averaged 7.00:1.00. During the famine years of 1374–1375 the
yields were indeed considerably lower, but they did not fall below 8.00:1.00
for barley, and 5.00:1.00 for wheat. It was fava beans that were performing
badly, and they stood just above 1.00:1.00.31 In other words, the severity of
the crisis must have been different from place to place.
The most immediate market consequence of grain failures was a
steep rise in grain prices. In England, crop prices—especially wheat—
skyrocketed during the famine years of 1315 and 1316. During the
fiscal year 1314–1315, wheat was selling, on average, for 12 pence a
bushel (compared with 7.5 pence between 1312 and 1314). In 1315–
1316, the prices stood at 22 pence, while in 1316–1317 they rose to 24
pence a bushel.32 The lack of solar activity also created a catastrophic
dearth of salt, the price of which soared to an unprecedented level. In
1315–1316 a quarter of salt cost 13 shillings, although it fell to about
11 shillings the year after (compared with just 3 shillings a quarter in
the 1300s and 1310s). Speculation flourished all over the place. Thus,
in 1316 in London, a bushel of wheat was selling for 60 pence, while at
Leicester some speculators managed to sell wheat for 66 pence a bushel.
In 1315–1316, a quarter of salt could be sold for as much as 40 shillings
a quarter.33 Princely attempts to impose price controls seem to have been
unsuccessful. In England, Edward II issued two writs in 1315 and 1317,
which fixed livestock and ale prices. In addition, he exhorted hoarders to
sell their grain livestock and encouraged traders and landlords to market
their produce at distant markets.34
Another exogenous or biological factor creating food shortage—often
in conjunction with weather anomalies and famine—was disease of pan-
demic or panzootic proportions. The fourteenth century experienced two
major outbreaks of pestilence, the Great Cattle Plague (most likely rinder-
pest) and the Black Death.
The cattle pestilence of the 1310s was by no means the first and only
animal disease of panzootic proportions. Various references to animal
(chiefly cattle) mortality are found in medieval chronicles. However, the
thirteenth century is the first time period for which we have solid statistical
data that allows us to reconstruct the extent and impact of these diseases.

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Unfortunately, continental sources provide little information about the

pestilence and its consequences, and as a result we have to rely on insu-
lar sources. In England proper, the Cattle Plague was followed by at least
two more major outbreaks of viral animal diseases within the span of fifty
years. In 1269–1270 there was an outbreak of porcine mortality, while be-
tween 1315 and 1317 many goat and sheep flocks were decimated. The im-
pact of these diseases on changes in food consumption patterns is yet to be
studied, and a meticulous analysis is likely to render some exciting results.
The panzootic of the 1310s may have originated on the steppes of
Mongolia around 1288. Arriving in Central Europe around 1314, it spread
westward toward northern France (1317–1318), the Low Countries (1318),
Denmark (1318), England (1319), Wales (1320), and Ireland (1321).35 In
England and Wales alone the pathogen claimed some 65 percent of the local
bovids. This colossal figure meant that the English lords and peasants were
deprived of their single most important plowing force, as well as some vital
sources of protein and fertilizing agents. As one contemporary chronicler
stated, there were so few oxen left alive that men had to plough together
with horses.36 This inability to recruit sufficient plowing force compelled
some lords to contract the arable portion of their demesne. Thus, the total
arable of Winchester Bishopric fell from some 8,881 acres in 1319 to 8,181
acres in 1326.37 Similar contraction is found on some other manors.
England also experienced a disastrous crop failure in 1321, which may
have been a combination of bad weather and oxen shortage. Overall, com-
posite grain yields were about 30 percent below their normal level. Barley
yields were particularly low. However, since the crop failures were created
by both inclement weather and scarcity of plowing power, the cattle pesti-
lence alone should not be blamed as the primary harbinger of agricultural
disaster in that year. In any event, grain prices remained high until 1326.
Since grain was the single most important food component in the pre-
industrial era, it is no wonder that the lords and their bailiffs did their best
to replenish their oxen stock as swiftly as possible. By 1332, oxen stock
amounted to 80 percent of pre-1319 levels. This, however, came at the price
of a slow restocking of dairy and beef cattle. This selective restocking policy
had a profound effect on the dairy produce sector. During the years of pes-
tilence (1319–1320) the overall levels of milk production per cow fell dras-
tically from about 130 to 40 gallons per year, as some Winchester Bishopric

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accounts reveal.38 Once the panzootic was over, an average productivity per
cow increased, exceeding its pre-1319 levels. This can be partially ascribed
to improvements in cattle nutrition, with an increased ratio of pasture to
beast. At the same time, however, this could not compensate for massive
cattle losses from the murrain. The demographic recovery of cows was
slow; it did not begin until the early 1330s, and it was not until the Black
Death that the replenishment was more or less complete.39 Furthermore,
between 1325 and 1327, some manors experienced yet another outbreak
of bovine disease, apparently different in nature from the panzootic of
1319–1320. It was characterized by physical debilitation, abortion, failed
calving, and termination of milk production. Cattle eventually recovered
and returned to fields and dairy-houses. Overall, the death rates were low,
and in the majority of cases the animals recovered after a prolonged period
of the disease. At the same time, however, milk production fell further. The
overall decline in the dairy sector meant that less protein was available
for human consumption. This fact is reflected in some diet accounts. At
Martham (Norfolk), a daily allowance of dairy products fell from about
0.66 to 0.24 gallons per harvest worker between 1320 and 1321.40
The post-1319 human malnourishment, caused by cattle scarcity
and a decreased intake of dairy and beef products—and, thus, protein
nutrients—must have weakened the human population and made it more
susceptible to various pathogens and diseases. The link between the cattle
pestilence of 1319–1320 and the human mortality of 1348–1351 is yet
to be studied in a detail. What is truly intriguing, however, is that both
pestilences had similar effects on food production and supply. It has often
been assumed that the Black Death led immediately to the improvement in
living standards of the peasantry, with the drastic alteration in the labor
to land ratio. This view, however, has recently been revisited and called
into question: real wages did not rise, in fact, until around 1376.41 Equally
important is that the Black Death years also saw a series of disastrous
crop failures. Arguably, these had little to do with the scarcity of work-
ing hands, for the availability of labor force is not an indicator of harvest
success or failure. Instead, the crop failures of 1349–1351 were caused by
bad weather, which accompanied the pestilence. In England, crop yields
were about 35 percent below their average level during these years.42 In
other words, these catastrophic years witnessed both dearth of food and

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still-incomprehensible human mortality. Unlike the 1314–1322 crisis, how-

ever, the crop failures of 1349–1351 do not seem to have created famine
in England and elsewhere: the total aggregate produce within the agrarian
sector was undoubtedly sufficient to feed the survivors.
The connection between famine and human pestilence is perhaps too
obvious. Malnourished and weakened humans tend to become easy vic-
tims of various pathogens. Although the main wave of the Black Death
occurred between 1347 and 1351, its recurrent outbreaks continued on a
smaller scale until at least the 1720s. However plague was by no means the
only type of contagious disease in late medieval and early modern Europe.
Contagious diseases included outbreaks of smallpox, influenza (from about
1580 onward), and typhus. In some instances, these epidemics broke out in
the course of or shortly after a period of mass starvation. The outbreak of
human mortality—perhaps from typhus—in England in 1587–1588 seems
to have been directly connected to failed harvests and subsequent famine
in those years.43 In Spain the recurrent attacks of plague often went hand
in hand with starvation, as in 1506–1507, 1528–1530, and 1596–1602.44
Many more examples could be added here.
Warfare was also a decisive factory in food supply disruption. As men-
tioned above, the fourteenth century saw an unprecedented rise in military
conflicts between two or more political entities. Warfare tends to have some
negative effects on various economic sectors, including protective coinage
debasement; public debts; excessive taxation; new tolls; asset plundering;
bans of exports and contraction of international trade; and shrinkage and
destruction of labor. All these impacts would inevitably lead to some form
of food crisis. Between 1275 and 1306, Edward I of England imposed no
fewer than thirteen taxes on movables (practically all property apart from
buildings) on their lay subjects.45 In addition, he attempted to lay taxes on
the clergy between 1294 and 1297.46 The main purpose of this taxation
was to finance his multifrontal warfare and pay off his cumulative debts.
It was, naturally, the peasantry that suffered the most from the royal fiscal
demands.47 At the same time, however, there is clear evidence that higher
echelons were also affected. Between 1294 and 1298 the monks of the
Canterbury cathedral priory had to cut their annual expenditure on wine
from about £127 to £20.48 Similarly, during the recurrent Scottish raids into
Northern England, the authorities of Bolton Priory spent only 29 shillings

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and 3 shillings, 4 pence on wine in 1316–1317 and 1317–1318, respec-

tively, compared with 20 pounds, 12 shillings a year between 1301–1312
and 1315–1316. Similarly, the Bolton monks had to decrease their annual
expenditure on various foodstuffs from some £100 in 1311–1314 to about
£57 in 1315–1318.49
Taxation was only one burden imposed by the royal authorities. In
England, the king administrated yet another demanding institution, known
as purveyance. In essence, purveyance meant forced sales of provisions for
exceedingly lowered prices to supply the king’s armies. This institution be-
came fully developed by the days of Edward I’s reign (1272–1307), espe-
cially during the Welsh Campaign of 1277–1282. The scale of provisioning
varied from year to year and from county to county. For instance, dur-
ing the Welsh Campaign, Edward relied mainly on the bordering counties,
as well as the March of Wales and the Lordship of Ireland. In 1296, at
the height of the war over Gascony, Edward ordered as many as 100,000
quarters of grain to be collected from his subjects all over the country (in
reality, he managed to obtain only 63 percent of the required amount).
The royal demands seem to have been somewhat fairer during the opening
stages of the Hundred Years’ War, in the late 1330s and the early 1340s. In
1336–1337, merely 1,150 quarters of wheat were taken from east and mid-
land counties. Between 1337 and 1338, nine southern counties supplied
Edward III’s armies with some 2,100 quarters of wheat and oats. In the
north, about 2,000 quarters of wheat were provisioned to the English gar-
risons at Newcastle and Berwick-upon-Tweed between 1338 and 1341.50
Purveyance was especially burdensome during the widespread food short-
age and starvation of the famine years, which also coincided with the
Scottish War of Independence and the domestic conflict between Edward II
and Thomas, earl of Lancaster, in 1321–1322. Thus, in the disastrous year
of 1316, Berwick-upon-Tweed was purveyed no less than five times, with
victuals arriving from as far as Southampton and the Channel. While there
is no doubt that the forced appropriation of victuals was profitable for
Berwick-upon-Tweed’s populace and garrisons, it also increased starvation
elsewhere in the country. The situation got even worse with the outbreak
of the cattle plague in 1319. As one chronicle stated, all cattle driven to
the Siege of Berwick-upon-Tweed in August that year, died “all at sud-
den.”51 From Berwick-upon-Tweed, the pathogen penetrated into Scotland

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proper.52 One may argue that it was high nutritional requirements of the
English soldier that made purveyance especially challenging. According to
two early fourteenth-century victualling schedules, an average soldier was
to be offered a daily plate worth of approximately 5,500 kcal, an exceed-
ingly high figure when compared to dietary requirements of other coun-
tries’ soldiers.53 Such a figure was enough to sustain a male peasant for
two days.
Food plundering was another issue associated with warfare and fam-
ine. Following the English defeat at Bannockburn in 1314, Scottish ma-
rauders gave much trouble to lords and peasants in Northern England. In
June 1315 they attacked at Bearpark (county Durham). Having sacked a
local manor house, the marauders seized a large animal booty, including
60 horses and 180 cows.54 Between 1312 and 1322 the town of Durham
was raided five times. Its granaries were burnt.55 Similarly, the Scots dis-
rupted the food supply of Bolton Priory, one of many victims of the ongoing
warfare. In 1318–1319 the raiders laid waste to Halton, one of the priory’s
manors, plundering ten quarters of wheat, over two quarters of barley,
nearly eight quarters of beans, seven quarters of oats, and thirty quarters of
malt. In addition, they carried away forty-three oxen.56 In September 1319
the Scots raided Bolton itself during the harvest season. Faced with inse-
curity, the Bolton community fled to Skipton Castle in 1322 and dispersed
several years later. Judging from the surviving tithe accounts, the Scottish
raids wreaked much havoc upon the peasant produce and food supply.
At Billingham (Durham), the overall level of grain production within the
peasant sector amounted to less than half its 1304 level in 1315, 1320, and
1323. A similar situation prevailed elsewhere in the region and beyond.57
Thus, between 1410 and 1450, there was a pronounced decline in tithe
receipts in English-occupied Normandy, which suffered much from plun-
der of food supplies, destruction of mills and granaries, depopulation and
arbitrary taxation.58 During the war between Peter IV the Ceremonious of
Aragon and his nemesis, James IV of Mallorca in 1374–1375, food short-
ages occurred at the town of Perpignan, which suffered a great deal from
recurrent attacks of James’s soldiers.59 In 1368, during Louis of Anjou’s
invasion of the domain of Joan of Naples, much damage was done to the
Languedoc countryside—which was already undergoing difficult times as-
sociated with famine and plague.60 Between 1370 and 1383 there were

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 76 FOOD SECURITY, SAFETY, AND CRISES

several recurrent mercenary raids in and around Siena, resulting in harvest

destruction and plundering of the grain supply. Again, these raids took
place in difficult times, when the Sienese already had to cope with starva-
tion, pestilence, and economic downturn.61
Apart from field fighting and raids, however, sieges played an enormous
role in late-medieval warfare. The lengths of sieges varied from war to war,
but they often tended to create conditions of food pressure and scarcity
regardless of their duration. These famines could be either local—confined
to one castle’s garrison—or regional (or collective), inflicted upon an entire
urban community. When the Scots besieged Sterling Castle, forty English
guards were forced to starve.62 During the Siege of Orléans (1428–1429),
on the other hand, the entire local population, approaching perhaps
30,000 inhabitants, was affected by the food scarcity created by the Anglo-
Burgundian circumvallations.63
Ongoing warfare, alongside with failed harvests, also gave a rise to un-
precedented levels of grain speculation and black marketing. Black mar-
kets seem to have been particularly widespread in areas affected by war.
Berwick-upon-Tweed-upon-Tweed, an epicenter of political and military
tensions between the English and the Scots, is just one such example.64
The situation was equally bad on the Continent, as many chroniclers and
legal documents attest. In the midst of the Umbrian famine of 1328–1330,
following Louis the Bavarian’s attack, one witnesses complaints against
grain speculators based in and around Perugia.65 As we have seen already,
princely attempts to fix price ceilings proved to be unsuccessful. Speculation
flourished during the late-sixteenth-century European famine. In England,
Elizabeth I issued the Book of Orders (1586–1587 and 1594), which at-
tempted to control the situation and kept grain trade as local as possible.
It established an effective system of poor relief and forbade shipments of
grain out of the country. In addition, Elizabeth appointed special officials,
who were put in charge of supervising the supply of grain to local markets
and regulated grain prices.66
Another effect created by ongoing military activities was widespread
disruption of food trade. One natural reaction of governments at war is
to ban exports or any form of trade with an enemy state. Thus, in July
1374, the Avignon Papacy forbade its Italian subjects to export grain to
Florence.67 During the conflict between Peter IV of Aragon and James IV of

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 PHILIP SLAVIN 77

Majorca, the former passed several grain export bans in order to ensure a
steady victual supply to his subjects, both armed and unarmed. In addition,
he ordered his Catalan subjects to provision some fortified areas with their
grain supply.68
The late medieval food crisis was created by a combination of adverse
factors affecting and complementing each other. Famine, pestilence, and
war—the Horsemen of the Apocalypse—were an everyday reality. Perhaps
one of the most striking facts about these horsemen is that they did not
appear in a consecutive order. Instead, they acted in a confusing and vi-
cious cycle. In some cases, famine could strike before pestilence. Thus, the
crop failures of 1315–1317, in destroying animal fodder, contributed to
the cattle pestilence of 1319–1320. The murrain, killing some 65 percent
of cows, left humans deprived of vital protein sources. In this case, it was
pestilence that came before famine. War, too, could strike either before or
after famine. For instance, John Hawkwood prepared to attack Florence
in the spring of 1375, after the city was attacked by famine. On the other
hand, the widespread starvation in Normandy during the later phases of
the Hundred Years’ War was a product of mercenaries’ raids; here, war
preceded famine. Nor did the disasters operate in isolation from each other.
In some cases at least, they seem to have acted conjointly, as a three-headed
hydra. Thus, in 1316 England was devastated by sheep murrain, warfare,
and disastrous harvests. In 1319–1320 the country was attacked by cattle
pestilence and war. The year 1349 saw human mortality, crop failures, and
warfare. Between 1374 and 1376 Catalonia was visited by both famine
and war.

COPING WITH FOOD CRISES

What were different strategies that starving populations employed to sur-

vive the severe food crises in late medieval Europe? Naturally, human re-
sponses to food crises varied from place to place and from community to
community, depending on the magnitude of a disaster, on the one hand,
and on the financial and social possibilities of each individual and com-
munity, on the other. Thus, the experience of the monks of Glastonbury
Abbey, who controlled about fifty demesnes, was undoubtedly different
from that of a peasant community of Billingham (Durham), which was

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 78 FOOD SECURITY, SAFETY, AND CRISES

devastated by crop failures, cattle plague, and warfare at the same time. Let
us consider less-immune social echelons first.
Deprived of grain, their main staple, desperate victims of famine had
to turn to alternative and sometimes repugnant comestibles. It is obvious
that townspeople were doing worse than their rustic counterparts. After
all, on the countryside one could draw upon woodland produce, such as
acorns, berries, nuts and fungi, which must have grown in abundance dur-
ing the continual summer rainfall in 1315 and 1316. It should also be kept
in mind that nuts and acorns have a relatively high caloric content. Grain
storage and hoarding was also a commonplace practice among medieval
rustics.69 The situation seems to have been worse in towns, which depended
on a steady food supply from rural hinterlands. In urban Catalonia many
people had to feed on pine nuts, chestnuts, and acorns during the disas-
trous years of 1374–1376.70 In northern Europe, people ate horses, dogs,
cats, mice, pigeon dung, and other repulsive consumables.71 Warfare—
chiefly sieges—could create similar conditions. One chronicler relates
how the English garrisons guarding Sterling Castle were reduced to mis-
erable diet conditions during the Scottish siege of 1303. These forty men
were forced to eat horses, dogs, and mice, among other things.72 During the
Russian famine of 1601–1603, which coincided with the infamous “Times
of Trouble,” peasant masses were reported to have eaten horseflesh, dogs,
cats, grass, hay, roots, and bark.73
Some contemporary chroniclers report that one of the results of the cat-
tle plague was a widespread consumption of contagious carrions, a practice
forbidden by all Abrahamic religions. The Chronicon de Lanercost stated
that humans ate from dead cattle and, “by God’s ordinance, suffered no ill
consequences.”74 The chronicler’s recollection is confirmed by several other
sources. Some manorial accounts reveal that carcasses of diseased animals
were sold for reduced prices.75 Around the same time, the London authori-
ties issued a ban on sales of diseased flesh.76 In other words, it is plausible
that there were instances of carrion consumption by humans, despite reli-
gious precepts. In a sense, this phenomenon can be regarded as an extreme
human reaction to food shortage, akin to cannibalism, as practiced in the
years of severe famines.
Several narrative sources speak about instances of cannibalism in
England, Ireland, the Baltic lands, Poland, and East Germany. Cannibalism

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 PHILIP SLAVIN 79

was associated with both eating of corpses and the devouring of infants and
children. This phenomenon was reported in both towns and the country-
side.77 Cannibalism seems to have been mainly restricted to human groups
and communities that were particularly under pressure. Thus, instances of
human flesh consumption are reported in Ireland, which was devastated
by both famine and war in 1315.78 According to one English chronicler,
cannibalism flourished in local prisons among inmates.79 Interestingly, can-
nibalism is not mentioned in Spanish sources from the famine years of
1374–1376.80 During the Russian famine of 1601–1603, instances of can-
nibalism (including consumption of grave-dug corpses) were mentioned by
contemporary chroniclers.81 Cannibalism, however, was not the only social
deviance recorded by the sources. In addition, instances of prostitution are
mentioned. Thus, in Catalonia and Valencia beautiful women gave them-
selves to anyone for a piece of bread.82
In some instances, the poor could seek help from more powerful elements
of the society, who practiced extensive charitable activities during famine
years. Alms, whether in coins or food, were distributed by both religious
and lay lords. A soup kitchen was established in 1315 at the Cistercian
Abbey of Aduard, near Groningen (in the present-day Netherlands), which
offered vegetables cooked in a large pot for the starving poor.83 Poor relief
was generously offered at the Great Hospital of Norwich around the fam-
ine years.84 Robert de Lincoln, a wealthy London citizen, ordered that each
of 2,000 poor Londoners should receive one penny from his funds.85 Some
manorial accounts from England indicate that lords distributed grain and
coins among their tenants.86 The authorities of Norwich Cathedral Priory
augmented the number of bread loaves to be distributed among prisoners
incarcerated at Norwich Castle during the famine years.87 The Pia Almoina
hospitals of Catalonia conducted large-scale money distribution among the
local poor during the severe famine of 1374–1376.88 At the same time,
however, it should be noted that some hospitals suffered from the dep-
redations of the famine. In England alone, over 100 hospitals and other
religious institutions placed themselves under royal protection in order to
survive the disaster.89 What differentiates these charitable activities from
early modern poor relief is the fact that they were organized and provided
by the church, rather than the state. The first Poor Laws in England were
codified between 1587 and 1598 as a state response to the food crises

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 80 FOOD SECURITY, SAFETY, AND CRISES

of 1587–1588 and the 1590s. Continental Europe remained well behind

England, and a well-defined system of state welfare did not develop until
the Industrial Revolution.
Bolton Priory, situated on the relatively infertile soils of the Yorkshire
Dales, was a monastic community of middling social and financial status.
The disasters of the crop failures, cattle pestilence, and frequent Scottish
raids reduced the brethren into poverty. In 1316 and 1317 the Bolton
household could secure only 285 and 208 quarters of wheat per annum,
respectively. This was in contrast with some 509 quarters acquired annu-
ally between 1311 and 1315. This reduction in grain supply had to do
with the impoverished priory’s inability to take up the slack by increas-
ing grain purchases.90 As a result, the Bolton brethren, along with many
other communities and households across the country, were forced to con-
sume less farinaceous products. The brethren increased their share of pork
consumption, leaving very few live pigs in stock.91 They had to cut back
their expenditure on wine. In 1316–1317 and 1317–1318 they spent only
29 shillings and 3 shillings, 4 pence a year, respectively, compared with the
annual expenditure of 20 pounds, 12 shillings between 1301–1302 and
1315–1316.92 Another strategy employed by the Bolton community was
grain acquisition by means of natural exchange. In 1317 the Bolton Priory
authorities exchanged eighteen quarters of oats for six quarters of wheat.93
This was a fair trade-in, with the price ratio of oats to wheat approximately
3:1 during the famine years.
What about better-off social strata? Clearly, people of higher standing
did not suffer nearly as much as starving rustics and townsmen, or impov-
erished religious communities. In some cases, individuals and communi-
ties managed to secure a steady supply of grain to their houses. Norwich
Cathedral Priory, one of many such examples, relied on two main channels of
food supply: rural demesnes and local markets. Between 1314 and 1316 the
authorities of Norwich Priory received 809 quarters of wheat, which actually
exceeded 797 quarters acquired annually between 1310 and 1314. It should
be noted, however, that the priory authorities had to augment the share of
grain purchases, since their manors were unable to provision them with a suf-
ficient wheat and malt supply. Thus, in 1316 the Priory purchased 300 quar-
ters of wheat, compared with 189 quarters in 1314 and merely 21 quarters in
1311.94 In other words, the food crisis was hardly felt at Norwich Priory.

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 PHILIP SLAVIN 81

The contrast in fate of the two monastic houses, so different in their net
wealth and financial possibilities, indicates that food crises indeed discrimi-
nated between various social strata. While some better-off individuals and
communities were able to ensure a steady supply of grain, notwithstand-
ing crop failures, grain shortage and high prices, poorer elements were de-
prived of their access to food supplies. This echoes with the now-classical
theory of food entitlement, propagated and developed by Amartya Sen.95
In essence, Sen contended that starvation is created not as much by food
shortage per se, as by unequal access to the available food supplies. The
wealthier elements recruit their financial potential to purchase surpluses
originally intended for the poorer echelons. The case of the Norwich and
Bolton communities reveals that some food crises, initially associated with
environmental shocks such as weather anomalies and crop failures, were
intensified by institutional factors.

CONCLUSIONS

There is little doubt that food security and stability was an everyday issue
in the late medieval and early modern periods. However, it has never been
as acute as in the fourteenth century. This was a unique period of food cri-
sis, lasting for several generations and ravaging European communities. As
our sources indicate, the Great European Famine of 1314–1322 could have
been perhaps the worst food crisis in the pre-Industrial West. This is not
to say that there were no harsh subsistence crises preceding the fourteenth
century. In 792–793 and then again in 805–806, the Carolingian Empire
experienced some sort of subsistence crisis. Between 1032 and 1034 there
seems to have been a harsh famine in France, which inflicted much suf-
fering upon the local population. In 1094–1095, on the eve of the First
Crusade, there was a disastrous drought in the Low Countries and France,
which prompted some rustics to leave their houses and, perhaps unconsci-
entiously, get involved into the nascent crusading movement.96 But these
were isolated and relatively regional outbreaks of famine, not accompanied
by devastating pestilences and warfare on a pan-continental level. Although
they certainly created food crisis, the extent, duration and, consequently,
impact of the latter was of much humbler proportions when compared to
the fourteenth-century crisis.

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 82 FOOD SECURITY, SAFETY, AND CRISES

A combination of ecological and institutional factors brought about

disruption of peaceful food production and supply in the late medieval pe-
riod. The disruption had a profound impact on European society. It should
be understood, however, that food crisis here does not necessarily mean
famine—that is, “extreme and general scarcity of food, in a town, country.”
Instead, food crisis is defined as the loss of individual and collective abil-
ity to secure access to food supplies by the majority of a given population.
Following the catastrophic crop failures of 1315–1317, there certainly was
general starvation in northern Europe. But it was not created solely by crop
failure and food scarcity. Institutional factors, such as manorialism and
warfare, played a considerable role by intensifying and finishing what the
ecological factors began. It is hardly surprising, then, that it was rustics and
poorer townspeople—the vast majority of the population—who seem to
have suffered the most. Exposed to weather vagaries, failed crops, animal
murrains, produce extraction, and arbitrary taxation, they had less ability
to overcome the crises and maintain their households than their lords or
better-off neighbors. As William Jordan has aptly closed his now-classical
study of the Great Famine, “they are the poor who are with us always.”97

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 AUTHOR QUERY

AQ1. “The yields were undoubtedly very low in Poland and Scandinavia,”
We had asked you to clarify whether these ratios refer to crisis years or
normal years and you replied: “I guess I’ll have to ask the author.” Please
review and make revisions to this section if necessary.

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