How to measure time in a medieval world?

[Spectrum]

I am writing a fantasy story set in a medieval-style world. I am pondering the following problem: How did you measure time in the real-life medieval world? I mean, not days and years, but hours and minutes and seconds.

What kinds of clocks were available, and how widespread were they? And what concepts and units of time would be used in daily speech, especially by the uneducated?

The obvious thing to do is to use hours and minutes and seconds just like we do, but would this be appropriate? Would the uneducated populace have an understanding of such concepts and be able to reckon them (approximately, of course)?

Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, for instance, uses "bells" and "heartbeats" instead of minutes and hours, which is kind of cool.

(Of course, I know that it's my world and I can do whatever the Hell I want, but I prefer my world to be well-researched and consistent with the real world in most aspects unless there is a good reason for it to be different.)

Thanks.

 

[dwndrgn]

Bells comes from the old practice of measuring the hours by the church bells. Other than that, I don't believe any reliable clocks were in use, definitely not for the common people. Sunup and sundown was just about it.

 

[The Ace]

The bells would be timed by marked candles or hourglasses, but, by and large, time would be by the position of the sun.

 

[mosaix]

Sundial?

 

[The Ace]

Cheers Mosaix, I'd forgotten that one. Only if you're rich, though.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Cheers Mosaix, I'd forgotten that one. Only if you're rich, though.

It depends on what you mean by rich, Ace. A sundial would be beyond the means of a peasant, certainly, but a moderately prosperous merchant or craftsman could have afforded one. And there were sundials in towns -- on the sides of buildings, or above doorways -- which might be read by anyone passing by.

Also around the 1300's there began to be clock towers in some of the larger towns, and very beautiful and complex those clocks were, too.

So really, Spectrum, it depends on which part of the medieval period you are interested in.

Generally speaking, life moved at a different pace, and most of the time measuring by minutes and seconds would have been irrelevant anyway. For someone working the land, sunrise, noon, sundown pretty much covered it. In churchs and monasteries they had the canonical hours, which were hours of prayer and divided the day into nine (rarely equal) parts. Anyone who lived close to a church or who had resident clergy (for instance in a castle) would be aware of those hours passing as the bells rang, and they might use the canonical hours to commence their own prayers or other activities; additionally, it gave a sense of order and rhythm to their day. But typically people went about their tasks until they were completed (or the light failed), they did things when they needed to be done; so they weren't ruled by the clock, even when there was one.

 

[The Ace]

Thanks TE, that was actually the point I was trying to make, the bit about not really bothering with time itself.

 

[Nik]

Candles in eg religious orders.

Sand-glass aboard ship.

Sundial could be as simple as a stick and a few scratches. IIRC, there were even *pocket* sun-dials and moon-dials.

Um, before modern sextants and 'shooting the sun', there were eye-ball navigation / optical astronomy stuff going back to the Sumerians etc who named the ecliptic's dozen constellations.

( And, yes, polar wobble etc has long-since rendered those designations obsolete-- so *Phaw!* to modern 'Astrologers' and their ilk ;- )

Marked staffs and cross-pieces and weighted strings, engraved, nested brass disks that resembled circular slide-rules etc etc.

Oh, and do NOT forget the Antikythera whatsit.

Antikythera mechanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Soggyfox]

Peasant Clock = sun up, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, sundown, night.

 

[areader]

I was fascinated to read about town clocks that didn't have minute hands: just an hour hand...to the next hour, past the hour...figures : ) .

 

[JonCG]

Waterclocks were used by the Egyptians several centuries BC and simple weight-driven clocks had appeared in Europe by the very late 1200s/early 1300s, with spring-driven clocks appearing in the 1500s... Harun al Raschid, caliph of Baghad, is meant to have sent the Frankish emperor Charlemagne a clock in the year 801, and the Chinese had functioning clock towers around the year 1000.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The Greeks had water clocks, too.

But the main point is that while there were plenty of time-keeping devices invented before and during the Middle Ages, during the Medieval period a clock would have been, for most people, purely a novelty item of no practical daily use.

Of course, just like other conveniences, the more people have them, the more they come to depend on them, and pretty soon everyone has to have one. That wasn't yet the situation with clocks in the Middle Ages. They didn't rule peoples lives or their thinking the way they did now.

Which does, indeed, make for some interesting vocabulary questions if you are trying to make your characters' internal and external dialogue reflect that sort of world view.

For the books I'm working on now, I've divided the day into several periods based on the quality of the light -- noë (brightening, dawn), érien (brilliance, noon), yffarian (waning light, afternoon), anoë (twilight, evening), anerüi (absence of light, midnight), and malanëos (utter darkness, the time between midnight and dawn). Having done so, I've found there aren't so many opportunities as I would have thought to work those designations in naturally, but I hope and believe that what I have done adds a bit of atmosphere.

 

[Spectrum]

Thanks for the replies, guys. So, to my question of what concepts and units of time people would know, the answer seems to be "not much".

So really, Spectrum, it depends on which part of the medieval period you are interested in.

Well, I want "Sentinels of Mith" (my series) to have something of a "dark age" feel, so I guess it would mostly resemble... I don't know, maybe 900 or 1000 CE. (There have been periods of higher technology in the past, though, with a number of cataclysmic wars each bombing the world some centuries back. So artifacts of higher technology might exist.)

I've read a little about clocks on Wikipedia, and I think I will have sundials and hourglasses and maybe the occasional water clock. In a major town there will probably be at least a few sundials (on churches and castles and the like), and a few scholars and clergymen will own hourglasses.

The specific situation I have in mind right now is this: The Rissitics are laying siege to the city of Cicora. A small group of agents have infiltrated the city, among them two mages. The mages will conjure daemons to wreak havoc inside the city, and then, when the soldiers are occupied fighting the daemons, the Rissitic fleet will attack. The conjuration ritual takes some time to complete, so my thought is that the mages are to commence the ritual at sundown, and then the fleet attacks half an hour after sundown or so.

I guess I will give each party and hourglass measuring half an hour (or whatever) and use that.

 

[bruno-1012]

Just remember that with an hourglass of 30 minutes duration it must be turned each time, even at night.

This would lead to some discrepancy between measurements even in the one town. One person takes 3 seconds to turn it, another 2 seconds etc.

Are they sufficiently accurate for detailed measurements?

Also you should know that in the UK standardised time didn't become established until the late 19th century when 'railway time' was made the same at all stations (How else was a timetable going to work). After that the local clocks were all set to this time and standardisation occurred.

Before that it didn't matter if towns and cities had markedly different time keeping as it took you so long to get between each.

 

[Fatimus]

I think it's safe to say anyone in a fantasy world will know the below times just naturally.
-Early morning (6:00 am)
-Morning (9:00 am)
-High noon (12:00)
-Afternoon (3:00 pm)
-Evening (6:00 pm)
-Night (9:00 pm)
-Midnight (12:00)
-Before dawn (3:00 am)

If we want to time something we can usually keep track of minutes, but when it gets to hours humans tend to have trouble keeping specific.

 

[Spectrum]

Just remember that with an hourglass of 30 minutes duration it must be turned each time, even at night.

Yeah, but in this particular case, each party can just turn their hourglass when the sun goes down.