. Though directly implicated in the rise or fall of some of the great civilizations of the past, climate had only an indirect effect on public affairs in medieval France. Its primary significance lay in the fact that it directly touched the lives of ordinary people. Despite the reappearance of cities and urban life during the later Middle Ages, the vast majority of those living in medieval France continued to be peasants, the producers of the food and fiber essential for maintaining themselves and everyone else. More than any other environmental factor, climate provides the limits within which agriculture can be practiced. The patterns of temperature, precipitation, and wind direction and velocity that constitute climate play a ma-jor role in determining what can be planted and when, as well as how much emphasis can be placed on livestock.
As it does today, France during the Middle Ages straddled three climatic zones. The mildest, known as the Mediterranean climate, encompassed the Mediterranean coastal lowland and the lower Rhône Valley. Here, mist and moisture from the Atlantic alternated with dry winds from the Sahara to form cool, damp winters and hot, dry summers. This pattern supported an agricultural complex of wheat or barley, planted in a winter cycle, supplemented by olives and vines, the classic Mediterranean triad. Because of the annual summer drought, the primary livestock were sheep and goats, taken from lowland winter pastures to highland summer pastures in an ancient pattern known as transhumance. At the other extreme were scattered locations in the high Alps and Pyrénées that experienced a northern or Alpine climate. With snow on the ground for much of the year and only short, cool summers, the possibilities for agriculture were limited to the grazing of cattle, sheep, and goats, supplemented by limited production of rye and oats in favored locations.
The remainder and by far the greatest proportion of France lay within the temperate zone, so called because it experienced extremes neither of temperature nor of precipitation. Not only could peasants in this zone practice a traditional agricultural complex of summer crops and heavy dependence on cattle, from the 9th century onward they added a winter planting cycle as well. Because soils over much of this zone were heavier and thicker with a higher organic content than was found in the Mediterranean zone, new agricultural implements were necessary to put them into production effectively. The development of the moldboard plow by the 9th century helped to make the temperate region of France one of the richest agricultural regions of Europe by the high Middle Ages.
Though the gross features of climate during the Middle Ages were not significantly different from those today, there were some variations over the period that seriously affected the production of food and fiber. These variations can be grouped as follows: 400 to 750, cool and wet; 750 to 1200, warm and dry; 1200 to 1350, cool and wet; and 1350 to 1550, warmer but continued wet. Variations in precipitation usually affected agriculture more directly than did temperature variations. Too much precipitation might reduce the harvest in temperate Europe, while drier conditions might have the same effect in Mediterranean Europe. Indeed, one of the best-documented harvest failures to strike temperate Europe occurred in 1315, a year that saw much higher than average precipitation in northern France and surrounding areas.
Alexandre, Pierre. Le climat en Europe au moyen âge: contribution a l’histoire des variations climatiques de 1000 à 1425, d’après les sources narratives de l’Europe occidentale. Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1987.
Lamb, Hubert H.Climate: Present, Past and Future. 2 vols. London: Methuen, 1977, Vol. 2: Climatic History and the Future, pp. 423–73.
Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000, trans. Barbara Bray. Garden City: Doubleday, 1971.
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