Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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Chess came from India during the early

Middle Ages. Its pieces were adapted

for a more European style of warfare

without exotic elephants, camels, or

viziers. Chess was treasured by knights,

but anyone could play chess. A tavern

had a simple set made of bone, while

the bishop’s palace had a ﬁ ne set of

silver or carved ivory. Either way, chess

remained the dominant board game for

centuries. (Paul Lacroix, Moeurs, Usage

et Costumes au Moyen Age et a l’Epoque

de la Renaissance , 1878)

Expensive royal chess sets could have pieces carved from jet or ivory or

cast in silver or brass. Common chess sets used in taverns and homes had

less expensive pieces. Some were made of bone; a slice of limb bone, with

its marrow hollowed out, had a hole where a carved bone head could be

inserted. The body could be carved and engraved with decorations to help

distinguish it from the other pieces. Chess pieces could also be carved from

wood or antlers.

The most popular games, after chess, were a set played on a board that

connected spaces with diagonal lines. They are shown in many paintings,

but the rules are unclear. The object of merrills, also called morris, was to

line up pieces and capture others. Three men’s morris was played on a board

with nine holes or indentations. Players moved three pieces around, trying

to block each other while lining up three in a row. Nine men’s morris used a

larger board with three squares, each inside the larger, connected with lines;

players used nine pieces and tried to capture each other’s pieces. Fox and

geese formed a board shaped like a cross made out of smaller merrills boards.

One player had a fox, and the other had a ﬂ ock of geese. The geese tried to

box in the fox, and the fox tried to capture geese by jumping over them.

Backgammon is one of a group of games played on a board marked with

pointed spaces along two sides of board, leaving the middle open. The

games were generally called tables and used markers and dice. Full game sets

have been excavated at castles and towns, and, as even more evidence of the

game’s popularity, the board layout was found scratched onto the sides of

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some cofﬁ ns. Perhaps the game was played on the boards when they were

just lumber, or perhaps gravediggers played the game while waiting.

Athletic Games and Contests

Another class of games used balls, just as in modern times. The balls

varied in size, but only a few medieval balls have survived. They were made

of a few pieces of leather stitched together, like modern baseballs. Four

football-shaped wedges, or a long strip and two circles, could make a rea-

sonable sphere. They were stuffed with moss, the springiest substance avail-

able before rubber was imported. Larger balls must have been made of

similar construction and materials.

Villages often competed against each other in ball games similar to soc-

cer. They may have used sticks, like ﬁ eld hockey, or they may have been

kicking games. In late medieval English, such ball games are called camp-

ing, developed from an Anglo-Saxon word for ﬁ ghting.

Boules was a game in which medium-sized wooden balls rolled across

a lawn similar to croquet or bowling. Most often, there was a stake as a

target, and competitors tried to hit the stake while knocking away others’

balls. Quoits, a throwing game similar to horseshoes, was another popu-

lar village green game. As in boules, the quoit (a horseshoe or stone) was

tossed to hit a target.

Tennis was introduced in the late Middle Ages. It was a development

of shuttlecock, an older form of badminton. A shuttlecock has a weighted

end and a feathered end for drag, and it ﬂ ies through the air from net to

net. Medieval tennis seems to have been played against a wall, like hand-

ball. As the newest game, it was a favorite of royalty into the Renaissance.

Golf was developed as a sport in Scotland by the end of the Middle Ages. It

was called goff. The earlier name for games like this was bittlestick, which

meant a stick with a club on the end. Early golf courses must have taken

advantage of the natural lay of the land and were probably very rough.

Wrestling was very popular among the common folk. Wrestling matches

drew large crowds, and, at some fairs and festivals, wrestlers competed for

serious prizes, like livestock. Wrestling required no special equipment or

training and could be practiced easily among the peasantry. In one style of

wrestling, the wrestlers wore scarves around their neck and shoulders and

began the match by holding each other’s scarf. Using this cloth for lever-

age, they tried to throw each other to the ground. Another style required

the winner to throw the loser to the ground on a three-point landing.

Wrestling could also be in pairs, with one on the other’s shoulders. The top

wrestlers tried to throw each other off their partners.

All competitive sports were played during the Middle Ages: races for run-

ning and jumping, shooting and ﬁ ghting competitions, and competitions

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for throwing objects, like shotput or javelin. There were games of marks-

manship, particularly for archery but also for knife throwing. Archery prac-

tice was mandated in England in some eras so the citizenry could ﬁ ght in

militias if needed. Even without the mandate, many practiced archery for

hunting or for competitive sport.

Apprentices liked to play at war games, imitating knights in war and tour-

naments. With wooden swords and shields, they organized large engage-

ments on public land outside cities. Some of these battles were fought so

ﬁ ercely that participants were badly injured or died, and city governments

tried to stop them. While boys in training for knighthood played at tour-

naments as serious training using the ofﬁ cial practice targets called quin-

tains, common boys could devise games to imitate them. Riding wheeled

wooden horses pulled by friends, on another boy’s shoulders, or in boats,

they aimed lances at targets.

The young knights and squires in the camp of a 15th-century tournament could

spend their free time training and showing off with a quintain. The quintain shown

here is an unusually elaborate one, since it is made in the shape of a knight. It was

able to turn and swing its target out of the way as the rider struck it. Many were

designed so that an improper blow brought the quintain’s other arm swinging around

with a rope, sand bag, or stick to hit the rider’s head or back. (Steven Wynn/

iStockphoto)

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As the climate cooled in the 14th century and more rivers froze, young

people skated on the ice. Their skates were made from carved horse bones

with holes drilled to help tie them on. Skaters pushed themselves along

with iron-tipped sticks instead of lifting their feet as modern skaters do.

Children’s Toys

The spinning top was a child’s toy in the Middle Ages; it is attested in

different places and times and may have been universal. Some had a groove

in the side to pull a string and whip it into spinning, while others were spun

with the ﬁ ngers. There are engravings that show children playing games of

bowling, croquet, and marbles. Early marbles were cherry stones and nuts;

children also found or made balls of brick, stone, and clay.

Dolls were called poppets in most European languages. They were made

of clay, wood, and cloth. Late medieval dolls were manufactured and sold,

not only made at home, but early dolls must certainly have been home pro-

ductions. Like today’s dolls, some may have been babies and some grown

women in clothes. Later dolls, manufactured for wealthy children, seem to

have portrayed grown women in period clothing; there are a few images of

them in paintings and engravings.

Archeological digs have turned up a few metal soldiers—knights on

horseback—clearly molded by a smith. Some English princes had toy cas-

tles; young Richard II even had a pair of cannons. By the 15th century, the

children of wealthy merchants probably also had pewter or lead soldiers.

Other simple toys and games available in all places and times were used

by medieval children. They had rope swings on trees, and they built sand

and mud castles and towns. Paintings show some children with toy horses—

sticks with horses’ heads and reins. There were some early kites, shaped like

wind socks, in the late Middle Ages. Children also played games of hide and

seek and tag. Hoodman blind tag involved turning a child’s hood, the uni-

versal hat of the Middle Ages, around so that it covered his face.

See also: Babies, Holidays, Taverns and Inns, Tournaments.

Further Reading

Diehl, Daniel, and Mark Donnelly. Medieval Celebrations. Mechanicsburg, PA:

Stackpole Books, 2001.

Egan, Geoff. The Medieval Household: Daily Living c. 1150–c. 1450. Woodbridge,

UK: Boydell Press, 2010.

Lindahl, Carl, John McNamara, and John Lindow, eds. Medieval Folklore: An En-

cyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs. Westport, CT: Green-

wood Press, 2000.

Newman, Paul. Growing Up in the Middle Ages. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Pub-

lishers, 2007.

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Orme, Nicholas. Medieval Children. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

2001.

Parlett, David. Oxford History of Board Games. New York: Oxford University Press,

1999.

Reeves, Compton. Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1998.

Singman, Jeffrey. Daily Life in Medieval Europe. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,

1999.

Yalom, Marilyn. Birth of the Chess Queen: A History. New York: Harper Perennial,

2005.

Garbage. See Latrines and Garbage

Gardens

Medieval gardens are a favorite theme in art. We see them in book illustra-

tions, wall paintings, and tapestries. Tapestries, especially, showed ﬂ ow-

ers in such realistic depictions that naturalists can identify them as speciﬁ c

native and imported species. Gardens were encouraged and respected by

the church, since they were images of both the original Garden of Eden

and of heaven. Gardens symbolized man’s success in taming nature and

bringing back the original glory of Eden. Monasteries always had gardens,

sometimes with pools and fountains like castle pleasure gardens. Monastic

gardens were quiet, peaceful places of work and contemplation—images of

heaven in a world full of noise and danger.

Gardens were both functional and formal. Practical vegetable gardens

were everywhere, and they may not have been considered in the same way

as the pleasure gardens of the wealthy. On the other hand, even pleasure

gardens grew useful herbs or vegetables. Particularly in castles and in cities,

gardens had to be carefully planned and cultivated to make the most of the

limited outdoor space. Flower gardens became symbolic of the aristocratic

ladies who owned or walked in them.

Kinds of Gardens

A garden could be called a hortus, a herbarium, a gardinum, a vergier, or

an herber . The deﬁ nition of a garden, as opposed to a farm ﬁ eld, was that

the garden’s soil was dug up by a spade, rather than a plow. Gardens and

ﬁ elds were taxed differently, so this was a legal distinction.

The yard around a peasant’s hut, called a close, was usually a small farm,

even in the cramped space of a village. It was enclosed with a hedge, if pos-

sible. It did not have a pleasure garden, but it provided some outdoor space

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for children, and it was the wandering zone for chickens and pigs. A peas-

ant’s close grew beans or peas, and many tried to have a fruit or nut tree.

Aristocratic or monastic gardens were more specialized. The ideal gar-

dens pictured in manuscript paintings are generally square and are laid out

in an orderly way. They are enclosed with a hedge or a thick fence. Useful

herbs are grown in one half, and aromatic herbs and ﬂ owers in another,

with a section of lawn. The section with lawn has seats and shade trees and

perhaps a vine arbor. By the 14th and 15th centuries, formal gardens at

castles and manor houses were elaborate and luxurious. Many had reﬂ ect-

ing pools or artiﬁ cial fountains at the center, and paths led walkers around

the ﬂ owers and trees. Seats or even tables stood near the pool or fountain

so people could carry their books or needlework outside.

The ﬁ rst requirement of a real garden was its wall. The garden was an

artiﬁ cial place; it was not wild, and the more artiﬁ cial it was, the more it

was a garden, in medieval eyes. The best garden wall was made of stone,

and, within a castle, stone walls were very likely. More common garden

walls were made of poles lashed into a trellis of squares or diamonds, often

with vines growing over them. Fences were also commonly made of wattle:

vertical poles with pliant branches woven between them. Occasionally, a

wall could be made of wide wooden paling, like a modern picket fence, but

wood was expensive during the Middle Ages.

A wall might even enclose and tame a wild place; great palaces and man-

ors had pleasure parks, which were tame forests. In these small parks that

bordered the castle or manor, trees were planted in rows. No dangerous ani-

mals were permitted; harts, hares, and squirrels lived by artiﬁ cial ﬁ shponds.

The pleasure park was a safe place for ladies to walk and observe nature.

Paths and bridges might even lead to a summer house. A royal park could

house a menagerie in cages or within separate walls.

For pleasure parks, the natural fencing method of Northern Europe

was the hedge. Young trees could be split and bent, and then thorns were

permitted to grow thickly around them. Over a period of years, a living

fence was created without much work expended. The farmer growing the

hedge could entwine the branches together to make the hedge thicker.

Some hedges were so thick that even small animals could not get through

them. The next most common fencing method was a ditch, deep and wide

enough to discourage animals from crossing it. The dirt piled up on one

side, making the ditch even steeper.

Every practical or wild place could have its pleasure garden equivalent

with the addition of a protective wall. Small vineyards could be turned into

pleasure gardens with the grape vines trained over arched lattices to form

cool walking tunnels. Herb and vegetable gardens, planted to maximize

beauty rather than quantity of food, could also be pleasure grounds. Large

gardens and parks could include a wildﬂ ower mead. Some paintings and

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tapestries depict green lawns covered with many kinds of small ﬂ owers: dai-

sies, violets, speedwell, periwinkle, and strawberry. Anything wild could be

brought into a walled garden and made tame: ferns, cattails and bulrushes,

irises, and columbine.

Formal gardens were laid out in careful, symmetrical geometry. Monastic

buildings were laid out in enclosed patterns that provided space for small

formal gardens of different sorts. The garth was a small lawn enclosed by a

cloister; it often included some seats and maybe a tree, but it did not grow

ﬂ owers or herbs. The monks kept its grass green and cut neatly. Another

enclosure was the herb garden. Monasteries also grew quantities of simple

vegetables, such as onions and cabbage, for their own use and for feeding

the poor.

Within the larger wall of the monastery, but outside the cloisters, was a

small orchard that often doubled as the cemetery. Cemeteries in monastery

grounds also grew ﬂ owers or had ﬁ shponds. Monks were very conscious

of the need for beauty to give rest to the soul, and they thought about the

symbolism of the grounds. Monasteries also grew ﬂ owers and decorative

plants for seasonal decoration needs. Ivy and holly were used at Christmas,

branches were used as palms on Palm Sunday, white lilies and red roses

stood for the purity and blood of martyrs on their feast days, and general

ﬂ owers were used for festivals.

Monasteries had inﬁ rmary gardens, as did many castles and manors.

Monasteries were hospitals and nursing homes for the incurably sick and

aged. Additionally, in many monasteries, monks were bled at regular in-

tervals in the interests of general health care. An inﬁ rmary garden grew

mallow, an aid to blood coagulation. It also grew the opium poppy and

some poisonous plants that could be used in medicinal blends: mandrake,

hemlock, and henbane. Other medicinal herbs, including comfrey, fever-

few, yarrow, plantain, pimpernel, and mouse-ear, were also grown. The

inﬁ rmary garden, like the garth and the vegetable garden, was organized

in careful squares and included benches for elderly and sick monks to rest in

the sunshine.

Pleasure gardens at castles, palaces, and manors were carefully laid out

for beauty, shade, and rest. The most common medieval name for these

small, formal gardens was herber. They were like outdoor rooms. Areas of

trimmed green grass were highly prized; thick green turf was considered

very restful and beautiful.

One popular feature was to grow vines over an arbor that formed a tun-

nel or wall. Roses also grew in arbors. An arbor provided shade and broke

up the garden into smaller spaces. Some of these spaces were devoted to

particular types of ﬂ owers or herbs, while others were set aside for lawn

games like bowling. A medieval herber used its small area to provide a max-

imum sense of privacy and space. Paths of gravel, sand, paving stone, or

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brick led from one area to another and created visual designs. Sometimes

paths were edged with low walls or ﬂ owering plants.

All pleasure gardens had benches, called banques in French, and some-

times a banquet was served with trestle tables by the banque . The benches

were not always simple benches; they could have two or three sides, shaped

like an L or a U, and were called an exedra. This type of bench made it easier

to set a trestle table in the midst of the company using it. Some benches were

called banks and may have been artiﬁ cially built banks, as along streams. By

laying turf in layers, gardeners could create seats. Some seats built of stone

appear to have grown grass and ﬂ owers on top.

An idealized medieval garden served as the setting for the allegorical poem “Le

Roman de la Rose.” In this illustration, all elements of a successful aristocratic

pleasure garden are present. Walls subdivide the garden into more private quarters,

linked by gates. A quiet green lawn and benches make the central fountain the perfect

place for ladies and gentlemen to gather. The fountain’s overﬂ ow becomes a stream

ﬂ owing through the garden; this ideal stream even has a barred conduit that suggests

a need to keep ladies’ lapdogs from straying. Fruit trees and ﬂ owers make the pleasure

garden into a useful garden, as well. In a real garden of this type, the castle cook

would get the garden’s apples and peaches for desserts. (The British Library/

StockphotoPro)

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Many gardens had reﬂ ecting ponds, and some had fountains. One reason

for a garden to have a pond was if the builders who had constructed wattle

and daub buildings at the site had excavated a clay pit. Clay construction

formed many garden ponds, especially in England, where the heavy clay

soil lent itself well to retaining water. Pools and ﬁ shponds were more com-

mon in Northern Europe, but fountains were built in the gardens of the

aristocracy.

Fountains were most common in the hot climates of the Mediterranean,

in Spain and Italy. There, many well-to-do families kept fountains in their

courtyards and loggias. The early medieval palace gardens in Cordoba, Spain,

were ﬁ lled with pools and fountains, copying the garden styles of Persia. An

ideal Persian-style fountain had a spout that bubbled or forced water into the

air, a moving sheet of smooth water, and a still reﬂ ecting basin. Fountains

cooled the air, and their noise masked the sound of conversation. Sculptors

who designed fountains typically covered them with symbolism; the water

came from women representing the Seven Graces or fell into a basin sup-

ported on the backs of royal lions, or the pedestal and basin were covered

with heraldic or civic designs. A few Italian cities began to use fountains in

public squares as a decorative means of providing public water.

Some fountains were located at natural springs and were just decorative

spouts and tubs to collect the spring water. Others were powered by an

unseen raised reservoir, and pipes conducted the pressurized water to the

fountain. The higher the reservoir, the higher the water could spout into

the air. Pumps had not been invented yet, so one problem with keeping a

grand fountain was that the cistern had to be ﬁ lled. Filling it manually, un-

less the water came from a tall aqueduct, was the only means. During the

15th century, Italian engineers designed treadmills to lift a series of buckets

from a water source on the ground up as high as the fountain reservoirs.

This machine was still muscle powered, so the fountain’s operation de-

pended on a staff of servants.

Vegetable gardens could be found at most houses that had any land be-

cause getting enough to eat was a constant occupation in the Middle Ages.

Many vegetables do not require much space. In any city lot with some

outdoor space, a garden was a high priority. While the poorest lived in

ﬂ ats without any other land but the street, the middle and upper classes of

medieval cities gardened. Their city gardens were not usually as luxurious

as castle and manor gardens, but they separated the small pleasure garden

from the kitchen garden and grew ﬂ owers as well as cabbage. As the prac-

tice of gardening increased, some tradesmen began to cater to urban gar-

deners. They sold seeds and seedlings for common vegetables. Others sold

grafted fruit trees.

Orchards on country manors were also enclosed, as possible. The easiest

way to enclose an orchard was to dig a ditch; the ditch served to discourage

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some animals from entering, but it was also a clear visual boundary. Or-

chards were protected property, and owners sued others for taking their

fruit. Apples, pears, and cherries were the top three fruit trees. Chestnuts,

walnuts, and almonds were the most popular nut trees. Many lesser fruit

trees could be found in private orchards all over Europe: peach, quince,

mulberry, plum, apricot, medlar, and ﬁ g.

Planting an orchard was a real investment in the future, and it required

specialized gardening skills. Trees had to be planted 15–20 feet apart. Not

only were they pruned, but also, in the spring, the soil was scraped back

above the roots and fresh soil added. Orchard gardening was a specialized

trade that included grafting, transplanting, and treating diseases.

Medieval Plants

We have detailed records, both written and pictorial, to tell us what sorts

of plants medieval gardeners could grow. We know that plants later im-

ported from the Americas were not yet grown in Europe, including toma-

toes, potatoes, and maize. Similarly, although most medieval plants are still

known and familiar today, some have lost popularity and are rarely grown.

It isn’t always possible to identify medieval herbs and ﬂ owers as modern

variants since some gardening records use folk names whose meanings have

been lost. Charlemagne’s edict for what must be grown in gardens on his

estates provides a good starting list; he mandated 80 plants, including roses

and lilies, and including also many Mediterranean herbs he wanted to see

established in France. Later gardeners wrote books discussing how to grow

plants, how to use them, and even how to lay out a garden with them. The

15th-century French classic Le Menagier de Paris outlines the most useful

plants for a city wife to grow for her home.

Practical vegetables were herbs for ﬂ avoring, leaf crops, root crops, and

legumes. The most commonly grown plants were ﬂ avoring for other dishes:

onions, leeks, shallots, hyssop, garlic, and parsley. Every country residence,

no matter how poor, grew onions, garlic, or parsley. These herbs took up

little space and were the ﬁ rst choice for urban gardens.

Medieval gardens commonly grew cabbage, lettuce, spinach, and cole-

wort (similar to kale). Cabbage was a loose-leaf variety, not the tight round

heads of modern supermarkets, and lettuce was dark, small, and often bit-

ter, not sweet like modern iceberg lettuce. Root crops included roots still

used today, such as radishes, turnips, and beets, but carrots were not or-

ange. Carrots were purple or white, very similar to beets and parsnips. Le-

gumes were lentils, broad beans (now known as fava beans), and peas. Peas

included other types of beans, now called navy beans, kidney beans, and so

on. They were dried for year-round storage.