The medieval time was marked by many Famine S in Western Europe and the fear of the famine marked the imaginary Westerner. " Plague, famine and war, deliver us, Seigneur" was well a prayer which was to mark all the medieval time. During medieval famines was the recourse to the policy of assistance and charity.
As Fernand Braudel notices it: “The centuries during, the famine returns with such an insistence that it is incorporated in the biological mode of the men, it is a structure of their daily life”
The famine unequally touches the noble populations, clerks and being often safe from this threat. Another distinction, space this time, the famines are less to fear in city that in rural environment. Two great periods can for this reason be proposed, the Early middle ages and XIVe and XVe centuries.

Early middle ages

The chronicles contain many occurrences of famine to the Early middle ages, thus in 585, Gregoire de Tours note for the whole of Gaulle, qu'" there was this year a serious famine in all Gaulle… It there of much which, not having at all flour, ate grasses and died because they swelled… ".
These famines can be read like “paroxysmic demonstrations of a chronic and generalized Sous-alimentation”.

XIVe and XVe century

The famines which know the Occident at the end of the Middle Ages result from a well studied structural crisis. They can result from the crises of dearness, the political disturbances or from disorganization of the economy due to the Black Death.

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