I just saw a meme, that I want to believe is true but I need to verify first. The meme goes "Medieval peasants worked only about 150 days in a year. The Church believed it was important to keep them happy with frequent, mandatory holidays."
If this is true, what exactly were those holidays? I figure Sunday is a given... but that only accounts for 56 days off in a year... are weekends included in this? I'd love to know more.
Before other responses come in, you might be interested in my response to an almost identical question with this additional entry focusing more on a number of medieval holidays.