Bread, Fire, and the Castle: Medieval Life in 1340

Medieval Life in 1340: A Peasant Family in the Alps

"Before the Black Death, before the great wars, there was simply one family’s struggle to survive until spring."

Exilles, Upper Susa Valley, January 1340
In January 1340, snow arrived before dawn and continued falling long after night had settled over the mountains. This was not the delicate kind of snow that rests on rooftops like a veil. It was heavy, relentless snow, driven by the wind against the walls, piling up along the eaves, burying the paths and gradually erasing the footprints left the day before. Exilles seemed to shrink into the mountain itself. The small settlement, squeezed between the slopes of the Upper Susa Valley, lived in the shadow of the great fortress built upon the rock. The castle dominated the passage as if it had been placed there not only to watch over men, horses, and merchandise, but also to remind everyone that, in this narrow Alpine gorge, someone stood above everyone else.
The Montgenèvre road, which climbed toward the lands beyond the mountains and Provence, was one of the reasons this settlement existed. Armed men, merchants, travelers, pack animals, and news from distant places passed along it. In summer, the road brought movement. In winter, it often brought little more than silence.
The castle, however, remained.
In 1339, just one year before the events of this story, a description already recorded the complexity of its structure: walls, towers, service buildings, storehouses, stables, and defensive spaces capable of sheltering inhabitants and their animals in times of danger. It was more than a lord’s residence. It was a fortress guarding a major route. And for the poor people living below it, it was also the permanent presence of a power that did not need to appear every day to make itself felt.
At the lower end of the settlement, where snow had been trampled into frozen mud, stood a small dwelling much like the others. Its walls were built of irregular stones mixed with earth and plant material. Timber supported part of the structure, and stone slabs—lose, the flat stones characteristic of Alpine buildings—protected the roof. It was not a house in the way we imagine one today. It was shelter: a place to sleep, cook, store their few possessions, protect the animals, and wait for winter to end.
Peire, thirty-one years old, lived there. In the records of a time when names did not yet follow the rules of modern civil registries, he might have appeared as Peire, son of Arnaut, or Peire of Exilles. Those who knew him needed no more than his name to recognize him.
Peire was married to Auda, who was twenty-nine. They had a seven-year-old boy, Guilhem, and a four-year-old girl, Alix. Auda’s mother, Ysabel, a fifty-five-year-old widow, also lived with them. Fifty-five did not necessarily mean old age, but in a world of disease, accidents, physical labor, irregular nutrition, and early deaths, a woman of that age had already lived through a considerable portion of her life.
Ysabel’s body was bent not only by age but by years of work. Her hands were rough and cracked, carrying the memory of countless winters. After her husband’s death, she had little choice but to join her daughter’s household. She brought no dowry, land, or money. She brought only two things: experience and hands still able to work. In that world, these were forms of wealth.
There was little room inside the small dwelling. The family slept on dry straw spread over a crude wooden frame. A fire burned in the center of the room or beside one of the walls, depending on the arrangement of the house, while smoke escaped through an imperfect opening. The air was heavy. It smelled of smoke, wool, leather, straw, food, sweat, and animals.
Winter forced the poor to accept conditions that might have seemed unbearable in another season. A small goat stayed inside the shelter for part of the night. A few birds had their place against the wall. When the cold became particularly severe, animals were kept as close to the family as the layout allowed. This was not a universal feature of Alpine houses—arrangements for people and animals varied considerably from region to region—but shared shelter was a known solution in rural and mountainous environments, especially during the harshest months.
For Peire, however, the animals meant more than warmth or companionship. A goat meant milk. A hen meant eggs. A pig, if a family had one, could provide food for weeks. Losing an animal in winter was not simply an emotional loss. It meant that part of the family’s survival had been torn from its hands.
Cold was an enemy, but hunger was worse. Peire understood the difference well. Cold could be fought with fire, straw, wool, hides, and closeness. Hunger obeyed none of these things.
Winter had begun long before January. During the summer, Peire had cut grass and helped gather hay. Auda had worked in the garden and in the small cultivated plots, in addition to caring for the children, the animals, and the household. Ysabel knew the secrets of preserving whatever could be saved: drying, salting, storing, and rationing.
Even so, no poor family could store enough food to forget the fear of spring. Everyone knew that the last sacks of grain had to be managed carefully. A little extra food each day meant one less week of provisions at the end of the season. Grain was counted almost as carefully as coins. When bread grew scarce, soup, roots, mixed grains, milk, dried herbs, and anything else that could fill a stomach became more important.
Medieval peasant life was not simply a matter of farming. It was a constant struggle to bring together land, livestock, firewood, water, food preservation, and labor.
That morning, Peire awoke before the others. Not because he owned a clock. Not because a bell had summoned him. He awoke because his body had learned to recognize the hour through the cold, his own breathing, the silence, and necessity.
The fire had dwindled. Little wood remained. Peire lay still for a few moments, listening to the wind striking the house. Auda slept beside him. A little farther away, Guilhem was curled beneath a wool covering. Alix slept next to her mother. Ysabel breathed slowly.
Peire reached out and felt the cold air. Then he rose.
There was no choice. Work was waiting. Even in winter. Even with snow. Even when the earth seemed dead.
In those mountains, the lord did not disappear when snow covered the fields. The castle still needed firewood, animals to be fed, paths to be maintained, walls to be repaired, goods to be transported, and men available for the services demanded of them.
Exilles belonged to the Dauphiné. The highest authority was Humbert II of Viennois, Dauphin of Viennois, who had succeeded his brother Guigues VIII in 1333. Humbert II did not live in that little house. Nor did he ordinarily reside in Exilles. Lordship was exercised through a chain of authorities, officials, and castellan officers. An order could come from far away and still reach a peasant’s doorstep.
That was one of the great mysteries of the medieval world: men who had never seen their ruler’s face could spend their entire lives obeying the consequences of decisions he had made.
Peire knew this reality well. He did not consider himself a slave. He had his children. He had his small dwelling. He owned a few tools. He cultivated what he was permitted to cultivate and raised his animals. Yet he also knew that his life did not entirely belong to him. There were dues, obligations, days of labor, and communal duties.
The inhabitants of Alpine communities in the Dauphiné had already acquired certain liberties and rights that distinguished their situation from absolute serfdom. Even so, political and economic dependence was real, and a lord’s authority could weigh heavily on fundamental decisions.
Peire remembered particularly well the day he had asked permission to marry Auda. She was not from Exilles. She came from a neighboring village. Today, a marriage between two young people from nearby communities might seem to be a matter for the families and the Church alone. In that world, however, the obligations imposed by lordship could deeply affect the lives of dependent people.
Peire had needed to present his request, explain where the woman came from, identify her parents, and clarify her circumstances. He had waited. He had worried. Only after obtaining the necessary authorization could he bring Auda into his home.
Perhaps no one had thought about love that day. Or perhaps love had existed precisely in what no document recorded: Peire’s determination to marry the woman he wanted, Auda’s waiting, the fears of both families, and the hope of building a life together.
Poor people loved, too. They simply had less room to allow love to challenge their circumstances.
Auda never asked her husband whether he loved the castle. She knew he did not. She also knew that he respected it—not out of admiration, but out of necessity. A man dependent on a lord’s land learned early to distinguish between respect, fear, and prudence.
Peire was no rebel. Neither was he submissive at heart. He was prudent, and prudence was a form of survival.
After feeding the animals, he went outside. In some places, the snow reached almost to his knees. Guilhem wanted to follow him, but Peire told him to stay home.
“Not yet, son. One day you will come with me. But today, stay with your mother.”
Guilhem watched his father disappear into the whiteness. He was seven years old and already knew the word work. He did not yet know the word future. To him, the future meant whatever would happen after his father returned.
Peire walked toward the area where other men were beginning their tasks. Some carried firewood. Others cleared sections of the paths. There were services connected with the lord’s domain and the needs of the fortress. The construction and maintenance of Exilles’s defensive structures had involved the labor of local mountain people, including compulsory work obligations known as corvées, as historical references to the fortress indicate.
That day, Peire was expected to help transport timber.
It was not heroic work. No songs would be written about it. No chronicler would record his name. One man cut. Another carried. A third cleared the way. Hands cracked. Leather boots stiffened. Snow worked its way through clothing. By noon, no one could be certain whether half the day had passed or only a few hours. When the sun appeared, it offered little warmth. When the mountains hid it, the cold seemed to rise from the ground.
As the men worked, the castle remained above them. Large, dark, motionless.
Peire looked toward its walls and thought that the place had enough stone to outlast many generations. Perhaps he would not. Perhaps Auda would not. Guilhem might. Alix might. The stones would survive them all.
The thought frightened him. It meant that the life of a poor man could pass like smoke escaping through a hole in the roof. One moment it was there. The next, it had disappeared.
Back at the house, Auda looked after the children. Alix had begun to cough. It was not a serious cough, but any illness in a poor household brought anxiety. Auda moved the girl closer to the fire and covered her shoulders. Ysabel prepared a hot drink with whatever they had: herbs, water, anything that might soothe the child’s throat.
There was no doctor at the door. No pharmacy. No promise of a cure. There was experience, faith, and an attempt to help.
Religion reached into every part of their existence. God was not distant, like an abstract theological idea. God was present in bread, illness, childbirth, death, the fear of storms, the harvest, a relative’s journey, and the church bell. Medieval Christianity offered explanations for suffering that everyday life could not explain.
Auda prayed because not praying would have been almost impossible. Ysabel prayed because she had already buried her husband. Peire prayed because he needed to believe that the work of his hands would not end in silence. Guilhem prayed because he had learned from his mother. And Alix, too young to understand theology, folded her hands because she saw everyone else doing the same.
At night, the family gathered around the fire. Dinner was simple. There was no abundance. The bread had to last. The soup had to feed five people. The little milk they had needed to be shared.
Peire returned exhausted. He sat down and removed his boots. Auda looked at his hands.
“They’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing.”
She did not answer. She knew it was something. There was simply nothing she could do about it.
The silence in that household was made of things that could not be repaired.
Guilhem asked his father whether he might one day have an animal of his own. Peire looked at him.
“If God wills it.”
That was how people spoke about the future: “If God wills it.”
There were no career plans. No schools waiting for poor children. No certainty that Guilhem would be better off than his father. Perhaps he would be a peasant. Perhaps a shepherd. Perhaps an artisan’s helper. Perhaps a soldier. Perhaps he would die before reaching twenty.
The future of a peasant child was a snow-covered road: only the first few steps could be seen.
Auda asked Peire whether the snow would continue.
“Perhaps it will stop tomorrow.”
“And after that?”
“After that, we’ll have to work.”
Ysabel smiled without humor.
“That’s what comes after. Work.”
Peire looked at her. The old widow was fifty-five and understood the truth of that sentence better than anyone. In her youth, perhaps she had dreamed. Then she had married, had children, worked, and buried her husband. Now she helped her daughter. The world had taught her that life rarely asked what a person wanted. Almost always, it asked only what a person could endure.
Night came early. Yet we must imagine the medieval sky carefully. It would be inaccurate to say that the sun necessarily set at three in the afternoon: Exilles’s latitude would not produce that astronomical sunset. But in a narrow Alpine valley, the mountains could block direct sunlight long before the actual sunset, and the hours of useful daylight were few in winter.
Without electric lighting, night had a presence that has almost disappeared from modern life. The family depended on the fire, small flames, and very limited sources of light. It was natural for domestic activity to end early.
The custom known in many medieval and later sources as the “first and second sleep” belongs to this world of long nights, although it cannot be claimed that everyone slept in precisely this way. After the meal, they spoke little. Auda checked on the children. Ysabel tended the fire. Peire added another piece of wood. The family could not afford to waste fuel. The wood burning that night had been cut through hard work and needed to last.
The first sleep came early. There was no reason to stay awake simply to contemplate the darkness. Their bodies were tired. The house was cold. They lay close to one another, covered with wool, straw, and coarse cloth. Sleep was a temporary escape from the world.
But hours later, something changed.
Peire opened his eyes. The house was almost completely dark. The fire had become embers. For a few moments, he did not know whether it was midnight or later. He listened to the others breathing. He heard the wind. Slowly, he rose.
Auda woke, too.
“What time is it?” she asked.
Peire smiled.
“Who knows?”
There was no clock. There was only the night.
This interval between the first and second sleep is one of the most fascinating features of preindustrial life. Historical sources record references to a first sleep, followed by a period of wakefulness, and then a second sleep until morning. During that interval, some people prayed, reflected, tended the fire, talked, performed small household tasks, or simply lay quietly. It would be wrong to imagine a universal rule or to claim that every peasant in Exilles followed this pattern. Nevertheless, segmented sleep has sufficient textual evidence to be included cautiously in a historical reconstruction.
Peire added a piece of wood to the fire. Auda sat up. Ysabel had awakened, too.
“I dreamed about my husband,” she said.
No one asked what he had done in the dream.
At that hour, dreams could be remembered and discussed with an intensity that might seem strange today. There was little else to do. They could not wander through the village. The Alpine night was dangerous. Without street lighting, darkness turned every path into a risk.
That interval might therefore be used for simple things: praying, talking, tending the fire, checking on a child, nursing a baby, doing a small task, or remembering someone who had died.
Auda prayed. Peire watched the embers. Ysabel spoke of her husband.
For a few minutes, the three of them forgot the castle. They forgot the lord. They forgot the cold, the debt, the grain, and the work waiting for them the next day. There was only a small family gathered in the darkness.
Then they returned to their second sleep.
And morning came slowly.
First came an almost imperceptible change in the sky. Then light reached the upper slopes of the mountains. Finally, the village began to recover its shapes: the rooftops, the walls, the tower, the road, the smoke, the world.
Guilhem woke first. He went to the door and opened it a little. The cold entered like a blade.
“Father!” he shouted.
Peire was already awake.
“What is it?”
“The snow is higher!”
Peire came closer and looked outside. It was true. Another night had covered Exilles. Another night had added weight to the rooftops. Another night had erased the tracks.
Peire took a deep breath.
“Then we’ll have to work harder.”
Guilhem did not understand the gravity of that sentence. One day, he would.
Life would not change simply because he wished it to. It would change only when something greater than his own will imposed itself upon it. Perhaps a bad harvest. Perhaps an illness. Perhaps a war. Perhaps an opportunity. Perhaps a death. Perhaps a marriage. Perhaps a road.
That morning, however, he was only a seven-year-old boy looking at the snow.
Peire placed a hand on his shoulder.
“You’ll learn everything I know.”
Guilhem looked up.
“So I can be like you?”
His father took a moment to answer.
“No. So you can survive.”
The words remained between them. Perhaps they were the closest thing to an inheritance Peire could offer.
Over the following days, the family carried on. Peire worked. Auda worked. Ysabel worked. The children helped as much as they could. Snow was cleared from the paths. Animals were fed. The little food was counted. Firewood was rationed. Hands continued to crack. The castle remained above them. The church bell continued to mark the hours they could not measure in any other way.
And, as happened with so many poor families, life continued without anyone writing about it.
But that winter, Peire began to understand something. Poverty was not simply the absence of money. It was the absence of choice. It was waking up knowing that someone might demand your labor. It was depending on the harvest, the snow, an animal, illness, and the will of those who held greater power. It was knowing that a marriage might require permission, that land could carry obligations, and that a journey to another village might mean leaving behind everything familiar.
Yet poverty was also something else. It was the ability to turn almost nothing into something.
A handful of grain became soup. A piece of wool became protection. A log became warmth. A goat became milk. An old piece of cloth became a blanket. A prayer became courage. And five people crowded into a small house managed, for one more night, to remain together.
That was how the winter of 1340 passed in Exilles. Not as a great battle. Not as a story about kings. Not as a knightly adventure. It passed over poor houses as great events in history often pass over those who rarely appear in books: leaving deep marks on people whose names are almost never remembered.
Peire did not know that, a few years later, the world he knew would be struck by a catastrophe no one in that small house could imagine. The great plague had not yet reached Italy in 1340. The devastating European pandemic would arrive in the West beginning in 1347–1348.
That January, Peire, Auda, Guilhem, Alix, and Ysabel still lived in a world they believed they understood. They did not know what was coming. This ignorance matters to the story: while they worried about snow, firewood, food, work, and the power of the castle, a tremendous transformation still lay hidden in the future.
This is, ultimately, a story about people who almost never appear in the great books of history. They were not kings, knights, or powerful lords. They were men, women, and children who rose early, worked with their hands, obeyed those above them, raised animals, endured winter, buried their dead, and waited for the next spring. Their names may never have reached us. Yet people like them sustained the small Alpine communities that crossed the Middle Ages, generation after generation.
That is why this story is historical fiction, but not fantasy. Where documents exist, they guide the narrative. Where the evidence cannot tell us exactly what happened, imagination tries to fill the silence without contradicting what is known about the place, the period, and the conditions of life. The goal is not to persuade readers that Peire and his family actually existed, but to allow them, for a few pages, to imagine with respect and humanity what it might have been like to live through a winter in Exilles in 1340.

Author’s Note

This work is historical fiction set in Exilles, in the Upper Susa Valley of Piedmont, in January 1340. The characters—Peire, Auda, Guilhem, Alix, and Ysabel—are fictional, as are the particular events described in their family’s life. I have nevertheless tried to place them within the historical, social, economic, religious, and geographical conditions that genuinely characterized Exilles and the Alpine communities of the fourteenth century.
Exilles was not chosen at random. Located in a narrow section of the Upper Susa Valley, beside the ancient route that crossed the Alps through the Montgenèvre Pass toward France and Provence, the settlement was far more important than its small size might suggest. Its castle was a true passage fortress, designed to control the strategic road, defend the territory, and monitor the movement of people and goods. A description dating from 1339, just one year before the period in which this story takes place, already reveals a complex fortified structure with walls, towers, service buildings, stables, ovens, a cistern, and a chapel. Readers should therefore not imagine the medieval Castle of Exilles simply as the comfortable palace of a nobleman living in luxury. It was, above all, a military and strategic installation.
Another important point concerns the term “serf.” It is used in the story to help modern readers understand the dependent position in which many medieval peasants lived. However, it is important not to equate that status automatically with slavery. A dependent peasant in the fourteenth century was not simply the personal property of a lord. In many parts of Europe, including northern Italy and the Alpine territories, legal circumstances varied considerably. Some people owed dues, compulsory labor, payments in produce, restrictions on movement, or obedience to a lord’s jurisdiction, while certain communities possessed specific rights and privileges. The reality was far more complex than the popular image of a man chained to the land.
In Exilles and the surrounding Dauphiné, Alpine communities already possessed their own traditions and rights. This does not mean that they were free in the modern sense of the word. Lordship remained a powerful presence and could interfere with important aspects of daily life. Labor, access to land and forests, economic obligations, the movement of goods, road maintenance, and other duties could place peasants under considerable pressure. This is the context in which Peire and Auda’s circumstances should be understood.
The identity of the castle’s lord also requires clarification. In 1340, Exilles was part of the Dauphiné, whose highest authority was Humbert II of Viennois, the last independent Dauphin, who ruled from 1333 to 1349. This does not mean that Humbert II personally lived at the Castle of Exilles. The day-to-day administration of the fortress and its territory was carried out by officials and the castellan. Since I have not found sufficiently reliable documentation to identify by name the castellan who was at Exilles specifically in January 1340, I chose not to invent a historical figure and present him as real. In the story, he remains simply the castellan.
The names require a further note. In the fourteenth century, personal identification did not always follow the modern system of a given name and a stable hereditary surname. A man might be identified by his first name, his father’s name, his place of origin, or a nickname. Hereditary surnames already existed in many parts of Europe, but their use and stability varied greatly according to region and social status. The names used in this story are intended to reflect the linguistic environment of the medieval Alps without pretending that a poor family in Exilles necessarily had a fixed surname in the modern sense.
It would also be misleading to describe the inhabitants of Exilles simply as “Lombards.” The region belonged to an Alpine world of considerable cultural and linguistic diversity. Exilles lay within the historical sphere of the Dauphiné and had strong Alpine and Occitan characteristics. Local language and identity cannot be reduced to the modern national categories of “Italian,” “French,” or “Lombard.” Applying those labels automatically to the fourteenth century can create a misleading picture of the past. People understood themselves through their communities, family ties, territories, and relationships with those who held power, within a political world very different from the nation-states that would emerge centuries later. Like others in their region, the inhabitants belonged to an Alpine population whose local speech formed part of the Occitan world.
The descriptions of cold and winter also deserve explanation. Exilles lies in a high, narrow Alpine valley surrounded by mountains. Snow and cold were real elements of everyday life. The absence of electric lighting—and the fact that candles were often an unaffordable luxury for poor families—gave darkness a significance very different from the one it has today. A poor household depended mainly on daylight and, after nightfall, on fire, small flames, and other extremely limited sources of light. Domestic life could therefore end much earlier than we are accustomed to imagining.
This is the context for the so-called “first and second sleep.” Historical documentation indicates that a divided sleep pattern was known in the preindustrial world: people might sleep for several hours, awaken in the middle of the night, remain awake for a while, and then return to sleep until morning. During this interval, they might pray, talk, tend the fire, perform small household tasks, or simply rest quietly. It would be incorrect, however, to claim that every medieval person slept this way every night. The evidence does not support turning the first and second sleep into a universal rule. In this story, it is presented as a possible, historically documented practice incorporated cautiously into the life of a family during the long winter nights.
The presence of animals inside or near rural dwellings should also be understood in light of the material conditions of the period. In Alpine environments, protecting animals during the harshest part of winter was essential. A goat, a cow, a few birds, or other livestock represented food, milk, eggs, labor, and wealth. Keeping animals close to people was therefore not necessarily a matter of comfort or hygiene according to modern standards; it was often a survival strategy.
The family’s food has likewise been deliberately portrayed without abundance. For many poor peasants, surviving the winter meant carefully managing whatever had been produced or stored during the previous seasons. Grain, bread, milk, vegetables, roots, herbs, dried foods, and what livestock could provide formed an important part of the diet. The challenge was not simply to “have food,” but to make it last until spring allowed more plentiful production to resume.
Religion also occupied a very different place from the one it holds for much of contemporary society. For these people, faith was not necessarily an activity reserved for a particular day of the week. It was connected to birth, marriage, illness, death, harvests, journeys, weather, and the uncertainties of existence. Praying for a child’s health or for survival through winter belonged to a way of understanding the world in which the sacred and everyday life were deeply intertwined.
Finally, there is a historical reason for choosing the year 1340. The story is deliberately set a few years before the Black Death reached Europe beginning in 1347 and Italy in 1348. Peire, Auda, their children, and Ysabel therefore live in a world that has not yet experienced that great demographic rupture. They do not know what lies ahead. This ignorance is essential to the narrative: while they worry about snow, firewood, food, labor, and the castle’s authority, an enormous transformation remains hidden in the future.
Readers who wish to explore the historical background can also read my article The Black Death of 1348, published on the A Emigração Vêneta portal. It offers further context for the epidemic that would transform European society only a few years after the winter imagined here.
Ultimately, this is a story about people who rarely appear in the great books of history. They were not kings, knights, or powerful lords. They were men, women, and children who rose early, worked with their hands, obeyed those above them, raised animals, endured winter, buried their dead, and waited for the next spring. Their names may never have reached us. But people like them sustained the small Alpine communities that endured throughout the Middle Ages, generation after generation.
That is why this story is fiction, but not fantasy. Where documents exist, they guide the narrative. Where the evidence cannot tell us exactly what happened, imagination attempts to fill the silence without contradicting what is known about the place, the period, and the conditions of life. The goal is not to persuade readers that Peire and his family existed, but to allow them, for a few pages, to imagine with respect and humanity what it might have been like to live through a winter in Exilles in 1340.

Dr. Luiz Carlos B. Piazzetta
Author and researcher of Italian immigration and family history