Question

What were challenges that artisans faced in medieval life/middle ages

Answer 1

violence (crimes), plague, famine, heresy (no freedom of speech, it could be dangerous to let important people know your opinion) and sometimes bad weather conditions could be bad for their buildings

Answer 2

What is an artisan? Traditionally, historians answered this question simply, saying that artisans were members of guilds, skilled men who fashioned artifacts with their hands and tools in autonomous workshops without the aid of powered machinery—the classic hand-craftsmen. Now, in the light of recent research, our answer is more complex. Historians now broaden the definition and place artisans on a spectrum with apprentices and journeymen working for wages or piece rates at one end, and at the other entrepreneurial masters, almost indistinguishable from merchants, no longer working primarily with their hands, spending most of their time wholesaling products or managing their enterprises. Moreover, the boundaries at each end of the spectrum were porous, with men and, notably, women, sliding into and out of what we think of as artisan activity. The definition of artisan has also become more complex in another way, for traditional institutional and economic frameworks are no longer sufficient to analyze important aspects of the experience of the groups of people—men and women—we label "artisans." Not every such person belonged to a guild (few women did in their own right), nor were tanners (as they would be the first to tell us) simply men or women who happened to cure leather, or shoemakers simply men or women who happened to make footwear. In other words, an adequate definition of artisan must also grasp the sense that these men and women had of themselves and that others had of them.