The Holy Days of Harvest

Centuries of agrarian experience by European peasants and yeoman farmers led to adroit adaptations to the typically harsh conditions of life on the land. They learned to survive during the long continental winters through hard work and carefully arranged field operations suited to local conditions. Changes in the winds, soil textures and available moisture, and myriad other aspects of nature informed their management decisions throughout the year. The earth’s fertility meant life, perpetuation of family, and community wellbeing. The center of existence came to be the village church where people gathered weekly in the presence of an altar representing the axis mundi of heaven, earth, and the underworld. Here priests and pastors mediated a secure grace-filled dimension from past to future with hallowed reference to good soil and sowers, gleaners and reapers, and “fields white for harvest.”

Archibald Hartruck, A Harvest Festival in the Cotswolds
Boxwell Church on a manor formerly owned by Sir Walter Raleigh
The Sphere (London, September 21, 1901)

Medieval literature is rich with subjects of agricultural association derived from biblical texts, early church documentary accounts, and regional folklore. St. John the Baptist has been venerated at various times of the year as Herald of the Harvest, and since the Middle Ages on Midsummer Day—June 24, in part because of the metaphorical significance of his prophetic call for repentance before the baptism of Jesus: “His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12). The holy days of the medieval harvest season reaffirmed the cycle of the Jewish agrarian calendar although these commemorations typically took place three to four months later with the cooler climates and later harvests of northern Europe.

The patron saint of harvesters and peasants, St. Isidore the Farmer (c. 1070-1130), was curiously honored less because of his agricultural diligence than his attention to prayer and worship even when interrupting field operations on his master’s estate in Spain. But St. Isidore, who is often portrayed in paintings and sculpture with a sickle fastened beneath his belt, remained steadfast in religious observations and his crops flourished. His wife, St. Maria Torriba (d. 1175), was also canonized for the miraculous provision of grain after she shared their few precious seeds with the needy and foraging birds.

Medieval European Harvest Holy Days and Festivals

June 24: St. John the Baptist’s Day—Feast of St. John, Herald of the Harvest (Midsummer Day)

August 1: Lammas Day (Loaf Mass)—Feast of First Fruits and Blessing of the Fields, ceremonial beginning of harvest

September 24: St. Rusticus Day—Feast of the Ingathering, traditional “Harvest-Home” celebrations (Autumnal Equinox)

September 29: Michaelmas—Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, ceremonial end of harvest and the farm year

November 11: Martinmas—Feast of St. Martin, general thanksgiving, end of fall wheat seeding, beginning of winter

Climate Change — Back in the Day

We’re still trying to figure out the climate patterns after an unusually hard winter of 2019 that brought record snowfall to our part of the world, following by virtually no precipitation this past winter. Back in the day when the fortunes of harvest meant the difference between a local population’s prospect of plenty or privation for an entire year, an atmosphere of intense anticipation stirred across the countryside as summer beckoned. For the small tenant farmers of medieval times, several acres the harvest required the labor of all able-bodied family members from older children to adults. On the manorial estates of England and France, workers could number more than 200 so the harvest could be completed within the few prime weeks of summer between the kernel’s full ripeness and risk of damage from sprout or threat of rotting. Forces of nature that had brought forth bounty in the fields could also conspire to ruin crops in late summer with shattering hail, incessant rain, or felling winds, torching entire fields by lightning, or with a plague of all-consuming locusts. Fasts and feasts of the medieval church followed a sacred rhythm of agrarian wholeness represented by a liturgical calendar in recognition of parishioners’ reliance upon divine sustenance and protection from forces beyond mortal control.

Johann Hans, Celebration of the Harvest Festival in Ulm (1817), Lithograph, 9 ½ x 13 ¼ inches; Columbia Heritage Collection

Ulm’s grand medieval Ulmer Münster church and Münsterplatz are depicted in an early nineteenth century print that indicates the vulnerability and devotion of the populace in the wake of the 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). The Northern Hemisphere’s subsequent “Year without a Summer” with recurrent rains and cooler temperatures led to the catastrophic crop failures and famine in central Europe. With the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and return of the climate to more normal conditions by 1817, city folk and farmers alike gave thanks and renewed harvest celebrations  throughout the land. In Frankfurt Pastor Gerhard Friederich led worshippers in a grand July Erntedankefest with prayers and hymns; Johann Hans’s Celebration of the Harvest Festival in Ulm depicts a similar event in that southern German city with verse about the calamity:

It was a sad year, a year of sorrow.

The poor spoke with tears every morning:

“Where do I find bread for my children today?”

The joy had been veiled, hidden.

Wherever one went, it was still and deathly.

“Oh open your heart, Mother Earth,” we begged,

“That we may be helped!”

And see, a beautiful day has come,

Joyous laughter has returned to all.