Dante: The Central Man of All the World | Page 4

for
four cents, a chisel for one cent. The average daily wage of a
woolworker was about thirty-six cents. In view of the high purchasing
power of money in Dante's age, the fact that he borrowed at least seven

hundred and fifty seven and a half golden florins, a debt that was not
paid until after his death, leads one to think that he must have been
regarded by his contemporaries as prodigal in the use of money. His
financial difficulties must have given him an uneasy conscience for he
insists repeatedly on the wickedness of prodigality. In fact he makes the
abuse of money on the part either of a miser or of a spendthrift a sin
against the social order punishable according to the gravity of the
offence in Hell or Purgatory.
To return to the matter of prices in Dante's day. In England a goose
could be bought for two and a half pence. A stall-fed ox commanded
twenty-four shillings while his fellow brought up on grass was sold for
sixteen shillings. A fat hog, two years old,--and this is interesting to us
who pay seventy-five cents a pound for bacon--a fat hog two years old
cost only three shillings four pence and a fat sheep shorn, one shilling
and two pence. A gallon of oysters was purchasable for two pence, a
dozen of the best soles for three pence. A yard of broadcloth cost only
one shilling one pence, a pair of shoes four pence. These figures of
English money are taken from an act of Edward III of England who
was born seven years after Dante's death. Parliamentarian enactment
under the same king fixed a table of wages.
For a day's work at haymaking or weeding of corn, for instance, a
woman got one penny. For mowing an acre of grass or threshing a
quarter of wheat a man was paid four pence. The reaper received also
four pence for his day's labor. Eight hours constituted a working day.
The people of the Middle Ages not only had the Saturday half-holiday
but they enjoyed release from work on nearly forty vigils of feast days
during the year. That they were as well off, e.g. as the unskilled laborer
of our day, who demands from four to eight dollars a day as a wage, is
evident from the fact that while he has to pay forty cents a pound for
mutton, the workman of Edward the Third's day earned enough in four
days to buy a whole sheep and a gallon of ale. So plentiful was meat in
England that it was the ordinary diet of the poor. A preamble of an act
of Parliament of the fourteenth century in specifying beef, pork, mutton
and veal declares that these are "the food of the poorer sort." (The
Thirteenth, the Greatest of Centuries, p. 479.)

Speaking of live-stock leads to the observation that the people of
Dante's time for the most part lived in the country. Cities had not yet
become magnets. London is supposed to have had a population of
twenty-five thousand, York ten thousand four hundred, Canterbury,
four thousand seven hundred, Florence, in the year 1300, according to
Villani, a contemporary of Dante, had "ninety thousand enjoying the
rights of citizenship. Of rich Grandi, there were fifteen hundred.
Strangers passing through the city numbered about two thousand. In the
elementary schools were eight thousand to ten thousand children."
(Staley's Guilds of Florence, p. 555.)
The means of travel and communication, of course, were few and
difficult. The roads were bad and dangerous. In France, Germany and
Italy there were so many forms of government, dukedoms, baronies,
marquisates, signories, city republics, each with its own custom
regulations, not to speak of each having its own coinage and language,
that travelers encountered obstacles almost at every step. For the most
part, journeys had to be made afoot and a degree of safety was attained
only if the traveler joined a large trade caravan, a pilgrimage or a
governmental expedition. Night often found the party far from a
hospice or inn and so they were obliged for shelter to camp on the
highway or in the fields. Necessarily the traveler was subjected to
innumerable privations and sufferings.
I have not been able to get accurate information as to the exact length
of time required to make a trip, say from London to Paris--a distance
covered the other day by an aeroplane in eighty minutes. But, the
"Consuetudines" of the Hereford Cathedral, England, afford us some
data upon which to base the conclusion that six weeks were necessary
for such a trip, allowing another week for religious purposes. The
"Consuetudines" after specifying that no canon of the cathedral was to
make more than one pilgrimage beyond the seas in his lifetime,