Men were in total charge in 8th century Francia. Male priests, bishops, and the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church dominated everyone. Husbands and fathers owned their wives and children. They could sell, trade, beat, or kill their wives and children without even being arrested. Especially in upper classes and richer families, girls were often “given” in marriage for some advantage to their fathers who gave a dowry of land, animals, or money to the groom’s father.

When a girl’s father found no takers, she could become a nun, if he presented a dowry to the convent. A smart, popular nun might be chosen abbess and rule over thousands of people. Some monasteries were co-ed, with nuns and monks living as brothers and sisters. An abbess had authority over all of them, men included, and managed a large estate. She judged whether a miraculous event was a true miracle or not, collected taxes and tithes, and saw to the copying of Bibles in the abbey’s scriptorium, which means writing place.

A woman whose father had no dowry to give could marry whom she pleased if her lover would take her without a dowry. She might make her living by spinning or by serving in a manor house.

Suppose you have a husband but he is killed or taken hostage in one of Charlemagne’s many wars, or cannot earn or produce enough to support the family? He may make you a stand-up loom that takes little space in your tiny house, a loom like the one Rotaida wove on in Rotaida and the Runestone. You’d use your every free moment to weave or spin

Though priests try their best to limit men to one wife each, some have several. The Church does not recognize any marriage not sanctified in a church wedding.

That rule does not apply to the priest’s woman and her children, since the pope expects priests to be celibate and turns a blind eye to such partnerships. Even some popes had children. The king is not subject to the priest, nor bishop, only to the Pope. (Charlemagne had four legitimate wives in succession whom he married in church. Two died, two he divorced. He had four or five Frankish common law wives after his last queen died.)

All your children are born at home, delivered by a midwife and baptized at once in case the baby dies. If no priest arrives in time, the midwife has to baptize the baby, saying, “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” so the baby’s soul will go to heaven. If she says a word out of order, that baptism doesn’t count with God. Then the parents believe their baby will go to hell. If it lives, they will ask the priest to baptize the little one properly.

You and your children spin extra thread and weave extra cloth, or raise more chickens. You trade your spare eggs, thread, or cloth in the market for things you can’t make—wooden bowls and cups, a dagger to cut your meat and defend yourself, wool for spinning, herbs from the herbwife to treat the family’s ills, and rough lumps of salt to flavor your porridge and stews.

In harvest time, you work in the field cutting handfuls of grain stems with sickles. Rye grows as a weed throughout the field. You cut both grains together.

Men bundle cut grain into sheaves and tie them. You and other women stack the sheaves to dry. Later, you help load dry sheaves onto a wagon, or carry them on your back to the threshing floor, beat them with hinged flails, and winnow the grains by tossing them up from flat baskets. Wind carries the chaff away. The rye and wheat that you harvested and threshed together are ground and baked into “mesclin” bread.

    Only very rich people and royalty can eat wheat bread with no rye mixed in.