How valuable or expensive were candles in medieval times?

by LimesLemonsOranges

In some shows, they appear to be treated as a luxury. In an old collection of Robin Hood tales I read, the King of England once prayed to St. Thomas for Robin to miss in the royal archery competition and offered 4 loads (bundles? Bushels?) of “fat candles” for the priory of such and such if he did.

Other times, I see or read a castle being fully lit with candles on every surface, and that seems unlikely if they’re a luxury.

Moreover, in a world before electric lighting, any work being done after dark would need candles, so they must have been fairly common.

What’s the verdict?

y_sengaku

I summarized some surroundings on medieval liturgical candles of bee wax in later medieval Sweden before in: Were candles a purely cottage industry in the middle ages?, but I'm not 100% sure to what extent these conditions were the same across Europe (at least there seemed to have been candle maker guilds for animal tallow candles in more urbanized parts of Europe).

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Some very basic summarized points of the linked post are:

  • There were actually two kind of wax in medieval (pre-Reformation) Europe: While animal tallow were widely used also in secular buildings, the church used candles made of bee wax exclusively. These two kind of wax must had a bit different chemical traits like melting points as well as smells, but I have not unfortunately read any relevant primary texts or secondary literature that discuss which traits of bee wax (or candles of bee wax) was favored by medieval churchmen.
  • Bee wax was certainly luxury, and it occupied considerable part of the total purchase of individual local (parish) churches as well as more rich churches like cathedral in 15th century Sweden.
  • Account records from late medieval Sweden almost exclusively mention the purchase of bee wax itself. neither candles made of bee wax nor animal tallow. It means that the clergy probably made candles by themselves or by their own servants.