Medieval Peasants had More Days off Than the Average American Worker

Was life on the manor better than we think?

We love to compliment ourselves on how efficient we are in the modern world. Thanks to all our technological advances, people don’t have to work as hard as they used to.

We congratulate ourselves on our forty-hour workweeks spent largely in climate-controlled offices with cushy chairs and ergonomically correct desks. As the icing on the cake, for a week every year, we get to ditch the office, courtesy of our generous vacation time and do whatever the heck we want. We revel in the joy of living in such a leisurely era and thank the work gods we no longer have to deal with 70–80 hour work weeks.

We certainly are lucky we don’t have to deal with those long hours. However, there’s something we miss when we gloat about how easy we have it.

Those 70–80 hour work weeks were a product of the industrial revolution. Eight-hour workdays weren’t actually new and innovative. They were a return to something old. Something they had way back in the medieval period.

How was the Medieval Workweek different?

Well, for one thing, a person didn’t have to work every day. Three days was the average a peasant labored for his…