I am wondering if my perception of the life in the middle ages is skewed by all the historical fiction and podcasts I consumed or if there really never was a chance to life a peaceful life for the average peasant or merchant.
For example I am currently listening to the podcast "History of Byzantium" and in the 7th and 8th century there were apparently yearly raids on Anatolia by the arabs. Or 9th Century Holy Roman Empire with raids from the hungarians and in other places you got vikings raids and general war between rulers.
So I do wonder, was life just incredibly insecure and did every farmer eventually just experience violence, be at risk to be killed or be enslaved, or could you expect to life a whole life without ever experiencing such traumatic things.
There is always more to say, but u/PartyMoses offered a response to pretty much this question in a thread that appeared here a few days ago, and you might like to check out that answer while you wait for fresh replies to your query:
How brutal was the daily life in the middle ages in terms of random violence?
It's worth adding an addendum that addresses the thorny question of how exactly we might know. I looked into this problem here a few years ago in the course of addressing a claim published in The Atlantic that the murder rate ran at 12% in the medieval period. It probably won't surprise you to learn that there is little to actually back this idea up, but working out exactly how the claim came to be made turned out to be an eye-opening process: