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Journal Entry 3

2/22/2015

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In the year of our Lord Feb 7, 800.  Days just seem to grind on.  It is now winter and some snow has fallen.  Though my days are difficult, I am thankful for the protection my knight and my noble provides me.  I work hard to do my best with my job because I know that the Lord will reward me in Heaven.  Below I will share with you the details of  my daily life.
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My type of clothing.
First, I will talk about what I look like.  I wear a dress made of a very cheap woolen material because I can afford hardly anything.  I fasten the dress around my waist with a belt.  I usually wear a thick woolen shawl when it is cold and ocassionally, mittens.  Now, my daily life.  I wake up at dawn, and in the summer, I can wake up as early as 3 am.  I then have to wake up my two children.  For breakfast, I eat either bread or pottage, a mixture of soupy grains and oats.  I am the blacksmith of the manor.  I spend my days working with metal to make weapons and armor for the knight.  My husband is a farmer, so he spends his days out working in the fields.  My children also have things to do.  They are six and eight years old. For most of the day, they help my husband in the fields and in their free time they play with the few toys they have.  My children make me enjoy my day more because I love them very much and they remind me that I should be a good mother and person to go to heaven.
I depend on other people on the manor, also.  For example, I rely on the farmers for food, the miller for bread, the barber for pulling out teeth, limbs, and cutting hair, and of course the knight for protection.   Now, I can discuss some things that are a bit more lighthearted.  In these difficult times, it is hard to find things to enjoy, but I still can go to events such as tournaments.  In tournaments, people compete in many different activities, such as archery, axe throwing, and knights jousting.  Watching these activities is entertaining for peasants like me.  Then, later in the day, I do other things.  For lunch and dinner, I usually eat the same thing - I take a dried mixture of pottage and then pour beer into it.  It doesn’t taste the best, but it’s what I can afford.


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Two knights jousting.
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A peasant's house that is better than mine.
Going later in the day, my lifestyle does not get much better.  I hardly ever take showers - only about twice a year.  However, the nobles bathe once a week!  I am quite jealous of their luxury.  Then, I go to bed at around 10 o’clock at night.  I sleep on a bed made of hay, which is bad because insects are always crawling around me and biting me, but it is good because hay is more comfortable than some other materials, for instance, wood.  Now that I’ve shared with you a regular day in my life, I should discuss some things I wish I could change about my lifestyle.  It would be better if I had a better house, clothes, and pay.  Also, I wish I could change the amount of time I have to work, because every day, I work for a very long time, which gets tiring.  This is my day, as you can see, peasant life is not the best.
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Journal Entry 2

2/12/2015

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In the year of our Lord, 700.  I need to keep this diary up.  Much has happened since I last wrote. But before I get to all the details I want to explain to you how my village is run.  Long ago my great ancestor Tiberius told of a kingdom in which all those who lived in the kingdom had a say in how it was run.  This is not the case now.  Here I will describe how life on this manor and all manors work.  


First, our form of government is called Feudalism.  The way feudalism functions is a person who is higher in social class gives land and protection to a person of lower social class in exchange for their work and loyalty. I live on a manor, which is run by a noble, Princess Milicient. On the manor, I make metal goods and weapons and armor for the knights.  All of the people on the manor help each other in different ways.  I help my knight and my noble by giving them food and metal goods.  My knight helps me by giving me protection.  My noble helped me by letting me stay on her land and giving peasants like me laws and structure.
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The pyramid of feudalism.
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An example of a manor.
Everyone in the manor has something to do because we all depend on each other to make things work.  We all have different jobs that benefit us and others.  The manor depends on me for supplies made out of metal and even my knight’s armor and weapons.  I depend on the farmers for food.  I get my food from them and my husband, who is a peasant as well.  I also depend on the knight for protection and the noble to keep things structured.
Even though many things work well, some things are very different in the manor.  My home is very small and it is made out of straw and mud.  It’s so small it can’t even be compared to the size of my lord’s castle.  But still, I live on this manor because I need a place where I have protection and resources.  If I were to leave the manor, I would be devastated and I would try to get into another manor as fast as possible.
Some of the rules in feudalism are absolutely unfair and I don't like them at all.  The 1/10 rule is a tax where peasants like me have to give one tenth of our pay and goods to the person above us in social rank in our manor.  It impacts me pretty negatively and it annoys me because I have to do so much work but then I don’t even get all of the credit for it.  I work so much harder than the noble here but they are still much richer than I'll ever be.  As a peasant, I hardly have any rights and I don’t like the ways laws affect people like me.  I’m so low on the social hierarchy and it makes me upset sometimes about how poor my living conditions are.  I don't understand how it could be perceived as a good idea to make some people so rich that they don't know what to do with all of their money and then have some people who can hardly pay for bare necessities.  I feel like the nobility on this manor don't even want to help peasants like me because we're so disgusting and low to them, but they wouldn't understand how hard life is for us.
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Peasants farming on a manor.
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Continuing Tiberius's Diary

2/3/2015

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In the year of our Lord, March 15, 550

Last week my father passed from this world to heaven.  While his death still haunts my dreams, I decided to go through his most precious belongings.  I cannot bear to live with so many reminders of his life.  As I was sorting through his storage chest, I came across an old book.  The pages were yellowed with age and written in a language of which  I knew not.  I took the book to the local priest.  He knew the words on the pages as ancient Latin, a language reserved for The Holy Bible.  The priest translated the words and to my surprise it belonged to an ancestor of mine whom departed this life nearly 100 years ago.  I decided to keep the diary and record the events of my life. This is my first entry....



My name is Avelina, and I am a peasant.  I am an artisan, a blacksmith to be exact.  I was in Rome, and my family and I knew we had to get out of Rome and get to safety.  We kept walking northwest from Rome to reach the north part of Rome, and then we kept walking north to get to Germany.  It was a hard and rough journey.  We got to Frankfurt, Germany.  We wanted to live there together, but as peasants, we have virtually no rights, so we were torn apart and sent to work for different manors.  I live on a manor.  The other peasant living here is Marie.  Our knight is Sir John.  The noble we live with Lady Millicent.  The castle I live by is on top of a mountain.  This is a good thing because it would be very hard and take a long time for invaders to climb up the mountain and try to attack.  This makes the location of it safer.  
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The castle I live by.
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My manor's coat of arms.
The manor I live at has its own coat of arms.  We need this to show who we are because most people can't read.  The coat of arms is my lord’s.  It says “Rex Autem Super Omni,” which means “The King Over All”.  It has the color gold on it, which symbolizes generosity and elevation of the mind.  It has a unicorn on it, which symbolizes extreme courage, virtue, and strength.  It also has a rose on it, which symbolizes grace and beauty, love, and desire.  Also, it depicts a a daisy, which symbolizes gentleness and innocence.  Finally, it shows a comet, which isn’t clearly symbolized, but it seems to show virtuosity, beauty and strength.
My life right now is quite difficult right now.  All I do is work, and hardly any of it pays off, anyway.  I'm assuming I just became a peasant like so many other people because I was considered too weak to have a higher position.  I miss my family.  I hope to one day work hard enough and visit them.  There are so many things about this peasant life that make me want to stop living, but just the thought of heaven and working for a great life makes me think positively.
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Depiction of people at a manor.
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    I'm Athena and I'm 12 years old and in 7th grade.  I love dancing and playing piano.

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