CLIO History Journal
January 1000
January 1000
A summary of the first chapter, 'January', of 'The Year 1000' by Robert Lacey & Danny Danziger (1999)
(put together by the High Middle Ages class at Dickson College, Semester 2, 2012).
1. Health (Jordan, George)
In regards to health as discussed in the book “The Year 1000”, the people from this period were overall
healthier than the next generations. This is due to a “simple, wholesome diet” (p. 9) which was the only
possible diet for the majority of the population, who lived in the countryside. As proof of this,
excavations of bones and remains have shown people to be as tall as in modern times, although the life
expectancy was as short as 40-50 years. Over the next few centuries, the overall health of the populace
degenerated due to overcrowding, overpopulation and industrialisation. This, too, is shown through
skeletal evidence, as the people were “increasingly frail and unhealthy” (p. 10) in the lead up to the Black
Death.
2a. Religion - Sainthood (Sam, Donovan)
When we think of monks today we think of monks who have dedicated their life to a god and religion but
back then they were much more than that. The concept of sainthood was very important to Christianity in
medieval life, capable of commanding a level of fame and importance far more enduring that of kings. A
saint was a devout person of note with an inspiring story to their name and who, after their death, was
deemed to be responsible for the occurrence of miracles within the community. Their tales could carry
you through the day and their bones and relics were told to be responsible for manifestations of divine
providence, resulting in their place of burial becoming a location for pilgrimage. Aelfric, a renowned
teacher of Wessex, recorded that “Within ten days, two hundred men were healed, and so many within
twelve months, that no man count them,” in response to the mass healing above the resting place of St.
Swithin in Winchester. These miracles and stories provided an important message to the people of the
age, one that said “You are not alone.”
2b. Religion - Paganism (William, Eugene)
Paganism in the year 1000 went hand in hand with religion and christianity. Good and evil were
personified with pagan ideals for example the book states that Jack Frost represented mischief and was
seen as akin to the devil. Elves, fairies and trolls inhabbited the minds of commonfolk and were more or
less the reverse of saints, who were seen as the good counteracting the evil “The Church had its own army
of spirits” as it is referred to as in the book. Infact the Saints were held in such high regard that the
manner in which they were revered resembled that of paganism.
3a. Calendar - Debates about the timing of Easter (Liam mostly, minimal Brodie)
Easter was a much debated topic when they where making up the calender that we have today. This was
because Easter was a common event between multiple religions, and with each religion trying to create its
own calender, the date that Easter fell was different amongst the religions. The two major groups that
debated on Easter where the Christians and the Jews. It says that Christ was crucified during the feast of
Passover, this event timing is calculated with the Jewish system which is based 29 and a half day lunar
cycle. But this system could not line up with the 365 ¼ – day rotation of the seasons which was based on
the annual cycle of the sun.
“Such was the confusion in those day... that Easter was sometimes kept twice in one year, so that when
the king had ended Lent and was keeping Easter, the queen and her attendants were still fasting and
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CLIO History Journal
January 1000
keeping Palm Sunday.” (Danziger and Lacey, 1999, pp. 12)
The Irish had worked out a successful system that juggled a the sun and the moon but the English
Christians viewed it with disdain. The Irish separatism from the rest of the church on this matter lead to a
convention to resolve the matter. The result of this convention was that the Irish had to convert back to
the original system. This decision lead to Bede creating the system of dating that resolved the argument
once and for all.
3b. Calendar - The year of the birth of Christ (Lauren and Tanner)
The year of the birth of Christ is extremely important to the Westernised calendar, as it determines when
the AD era begins. Dionysius Exiguss came up with the concept of the year one being the birth of Christ.
The year immediately before this was one BC. Wether from mathematical ignorance or design, he did not
include year 0. It is also believed that because the Romans did not have the numeral 0, and this is the
reason Dionysius did not include it.
The Subject of year one is highly debatable as the year Dionysius claims to be the year one, is actually
four years after Herod the Great’s death, who memorably had a lot to do with the birth of Jesus Christ,
which means that Christ was most likely born in 4 BC or earlier. Bede detected this error in Dionysius’
proposed year one AD, but he felt that a year years of inaccuracy mattered less than the concept of dating
history according to the birth of Christ. When Bede wrote ‘The Ecclesiastical History of the English
People’ in 731AD, he used the Anno Domini system and this is how it became well known among the
people of the era.
3c. Debate about the first day of the year (Rhiannon, Sarah)
The beginning of the Julian calendar sparked debates about the timing of many significant events.
“Confusion remained as to what day was the true beginning of the Christian year” (Lacey, Danzinger,
1999, p.15). While some favoured a Christian approach, others preferred the Roman consular date.
Some people said the first day of the year should have been December 25th because of its significance in
the Christian faith. “Bede took it for granted that the year should begin with the birth of Christ himself”
(Lacey, Danzinger, 1999, p.15). Logically they thought maybe the first day of the year should be March
25th, nine months prior to the birth of Jesus Christ when the story of Jesus began.
However, Samuel Pepys favoured the Roman consular date of January 1, which the Romans considered
“New years Day”.
3d. The A.D. System (Lydia, Tessa)
The Anno Domini dating system was created by scholar Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century, to
number the years used in the Julian Calendar. He had remarked “how inappropriate it was for the church
to rely upon the Pagan calendar of the Romans, particularly since its years dated back to the great
persecution of the Christians...” (Lacey & Danzinger, p 14), and so he created his own calendar. The AD
System was based around the year of conception or birth of Jesus, with AD counting the years from this
event. There was no year zero, however, AD immediately followed 1 BC, thus this presents an error,
missing one whole year. Furthermore, the year that was selected by Dionysius for Christ’s birth was four
years after the actual event. Theoretically, Jesus would have been born in 4 BC. The Venerable Bede did
detect the error in the calculations of Dionysius however felt that “the few years of inaccuracy mattered
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CLIO History Journal
January 1000
less than the dazzling concept of dating history according to the ‘Years of Grace’” (Lacey & Danzinger, p
15). Bede popularised the AD System in England through his work De Temporum Ratione (725 AD) and
again in The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731 AD). Eventually the scribes of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle used Bede’s system, and it remains the system that we use today.
4. Agriculture (Stephen & Teig)
In Year 1000, agriculture was fundamental to the development, growth and way of life for the people of
the time. Not only did it provide all of the food, but it was also the backbone of the economy at the time.
The ox-drawn plough of the time, to us, looks to be a sluggish, inefficient piece of mechanics, however,
at the time, it was absolute cutting-edge technology, vastly superior to many of the alternatives from
around the world.
The picture shows how the men and the oxen worked together; One man would hold the plough steady,
whilst the other man encourages the oxen to walk forward, pulling the plough. A third man would walk
behind the plough, sowing the seeds that would grow into the food that would provide the area with the
sustenance to survive, for “the ploughman feeds us all” (Aelfric, quoted in Lacey and Danziger, The Year
1000, 1999).
5. Clothing (Zeb, Aaron)
In the year one thousand, clothing much like life was quite simple. Clothing and fashion were not a focal
point of point of life, like in other eras such as the renaissance. People’s lifestyles were much different as
demographically, nine out of ten people lived in an agricultural setting (Lacey R, Danziger D, 1999, the
year 1000, pg. 9.). Clothing mostly consisted of “sack like tunics with leggings,” with the element of
colour coming in the form of vegetable based dyes (Lacey R, Danziger D, 1999, the year 1000, pg. 10.).
Leggings were usually combined with wool to keep warm. These colours usually came from the stronger
coloured vegetables with the dominant colours being reds, greens and yellows. Clothes were even further
simplified as buttons had not yet been invented and clasps and thongs were still used to fasten clothing.
So, as clothes were not a focal point of life for many, this in turn meant that they were simplified and
disregarded by the majority of the people in the middle ages.
6. Scholarship (Elly, Nicola)
Dionysius Exiguus was a sixth-century scholar who made the assertion that a calendar dating from the
birth of Christ would be more appropriate for the church than the current Roman pagan calendar that was
being used by Christians. In 725 the Venerable Bede, a Tyneside monk who is hailed as ‘the great
chronicler of the times’ was responsible for the popularisation of the Anno Domini system (Anno Domini
meaning in the year of the Lord) in England through his work ‘On the reckoning of time’, that was based
on Dionysius’s idea. Even though Bede recognised that Dionysius’s dating was most probably inaccurate,
as the birth of Christ in the reign of the infamous King Herrod was recorded 4 or more years before,
“Bede ... evidently felt that the few years of inaccuracy mattered less than the dazzling concept of dating
history according to the “Years of Grace”, the era of Christs reign on Earth” (Lacey, Danziger, 1999,
p.15). At the end of the next century the scribes of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the Anno Domini system
to record English history which demonstrates just how successful Bede’s widespread introduction of the
Anno Domini system to England was.
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