Serf

You have chosen to marry a fellow farmer like yourself, you live outside the city of Avignon, France, the Pope lives there right now instead of Rome. While the city is nearby we live on our Manor ruled by our "Lord".

Life is hard, your "lord" has high taxes and is cruel, but luckily your husband cares for you and respects you enough that he listens to your opinion. You work the fields everyday and at night cook what food you have for your family, and clean the house. You are a highly devote Christian and you do what your priest tells you because you fervently desire to get to heaven, however you have some concerns as you have a six children, two of which die at birth and a third that dies of some infection, why did that happen? Do they go to heaven because your priest says you have to be baptized. In addition your priest himself demands your family and friends pay a "tithe" or "alms" to help the church, which adds to your confusion as your priest tells you things but doesn't follow them himself. He says we should be humble and minimize our desires, but he eats more than three families together and has the best clothes and best house. Our "lord" has changed several times, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst, we worry though about our "lords" son taking over as he is very cruel person and beats up serfs for fun, my husband himself was whipped by him because he felt he looked at him disrespectfully.

Sometimes our Lord holds a tournament, it is so amazing to watch, the knights "Joust" each other on horses and fight with swords, spears, and other weapons, it's so much fun to watch. We prayed our thanks for the joyful day.

We met a traveling merchant today which was interesting, he had something called books with him, they looked like the bible our priest reads to us but they were about different things, how interesting it would be to be able to see what was inside them, but our priest told us they were sinful things and temptations from the devil, I prayed hard to be forgiven for my desire to see what was inside them.

Rumour has just come to the town that some kind of sickness is travelling the world killing everyone. Our priest tells us it's God's Wrath, and that as long as we are devout Christians we have nothing to fear, we pray every night.

Today was very exciting and scary, our priest discovered a witch amongst us, she was arrested and found guilty, they tied her to a big pole in the ground, and set kindling all around her, dumped oil on it, and set it afire. She screamed she was innocent until she died, but our priest told us that was the devil inside her attempting to fool us, and tempting us with evil. We prayed extra long that night.

Rumour from the Merchants said the English are invading, I don't know where England is or who these English are but we have heard terrible stories about them and their bows. Someone said WE may be called upon to fight, We'll be praying even harder tonight.

Today we saw something Amazing, a priest came to town telling us about these evil devil worshippers in the holy land who are tormenting Christians and destroying places Jesus went. He tells us that God has spoken to the Pope asking for people to go to this land and free it from these evil people. If we go and die on this "Crusade" all our sins are forgiven and we go straight to heaven. My Husband wants to go and help our "Lord" who while gray is still able to fight. What do I tell my husband? Our kids are old enough to make their own decisions, so we no longer have to worry about them, but do we leave everything behind for who knows how long, possibly forever? What do I advise my husband.


 * ~ Go on Crusade ||~ Stay at Home ||
 * The crusades were a series of holy wars waged by Christian Europe "against" the Muslims in the "Holy Land" which is an area in Palestine where Jerusalem is. They were a dramatic failure but changed Europe, and the people who went on them forever. || Those who went on crusade in many cases never returned, either they died or ended up somewhere else. Those that returned brought back amazing idea's and things that began to change the world. In addition, the Black death is spreading, Kings are growing in power which is slowing eroding at feudalism, and a sense of Nationalism is building making people think of themselves as French or English, which mixed with the power of kings, is leading to war amongst the newly formed countries of Europe. ||

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