Labeur and Paresse: Ideological Representations of Medieval Peasant Labor

Abstract

Images of peasants laboring in medieval Calendar cycles are here contrasted not only with images of the pastimes of the aristocracy, but with images of the idle peasant. This makes clear the ideological function within later medieval society of the Calendar cycle. In particular, the negative images of the peasants in the Tres Riches Heures of Jean, Duc de Berry, are argued to embody a shift in attitude, which has a historical context in the economic and social crises of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.