Such literary knowledge as survived was mostly confined to the priests, and under the monastic and feudal systems that prevailed the bulk of the people were kept in ignorance and subjection.
Building was devoted almost exclusively to fortresses and churches, the domestic conditions being extremely crude as compared with earlier periods, though Eastern luxury must have been known and experienced by the alien adventurers to the Byzantine courts.
This was a period of reversion to comparative barbaric taste by people indifferent to refinement and luxurious environment, to whom, however, personal adornment would appeal in the form of jewellery and sumptuous attire.
No. 49. Romanesque, south door Kilpeck Church, Herefordshire.
Domestic arrangements were simple in the extreme. The dwellings of the well-to-do in England, similarly to those of the Scandinavians, consisted principally of a barn-like hall. The centre of the hall was occupied by a long table, and at one end raised on a platform or dais another table was placed in the opposite direction. At the latter sat the most important members of the household, while the lower part was reserved for retainers and servants. Heavy chairs and settles were used at the upper table, and benches or forms at the lower.
Walls, when covered at all, were adorned with hangings, but then only at the dais end of the hall. Fireplaces in the modern sense were not known. The fire was built on the floor, and the smoke allowed to escape as best it might.
Arrangements for sleeping were no more complex than those for dining. Beds were provided only for persons of distinction, and were placed in recesses screened off from the hall by curtains or shutters. They were, in fact, little more than wooden boxes, with sacks of straw to serve as mattresses.
Later, bedsteads were used of massive construction, which on occasions of journeying were placed on wheels, forming a sort of coach or carriage ironically termed whirlicots, in which the aged and infirm were transported.