In modern life, bedtime can be any time. People work at all hours of the day and night. Electricity makes it possible to turn the night into day. That simply was not possible until the early 20th century. In ancient times, through the middle ages and into the nineteenth century, people were restricted to working during the day, and making light by using fire and a source of fuel.
Cooking fires and camp fires provide a little light, but most lighting before electricity was by candle or oil lamp. Candles and oil lamps use similar technology to create light. A wick is burned to actually make the fire that provides the light, but the wick burns slowly because it soaks up the actual fuel for the light. In an oil lamp that fuel is a liquid and stored in the lamp. In a candle the fuel is solid (until heated by the flame) and so it does not need a container. Often candles would be placed in a holder in case it dripped and to make it easier to move.
What types of oils are hard enough to make candles? Beeswax is solid at room temperature, but when heated is a flammable liquid that smells delicious. However most medieval houses did not use beeswax candles because beeswax was more valuable as a food, as a sealant, and many other ways. If a family was lucky they might be able to mix some beeswax into their candles to make them smell better and to make them more solid. Bayberry is a European plant that, if you boil the berries you can extract some sweet smelling wax. But the vast majority of ancient and medieval candles were made with rendered animal fat or lard. It may not have smelled nice but it provided a steady light source.
Oil lamps could burn liquid oils so there was a little more variety and a little more availability. A medieval family was much more likely to have a lamp than they were to light their homes solely with candles. Olive oil was used in lamps in ancient Greece and Rome and in the Middle East. Oil from the rapeseed plant (now called canola oil) was used, as well as mustard seed oil, and any other plant derivative that you can squeeze oil from. Fish oil was also a source of light, though smellier than the other options, fish were plentiful in the northern climates where olives were not. Lard could also be used in lamps, and often was.
The first big breakthrough in lighting technology was the widespread use of whale oil in lamps in the 17th and 18th century. The oil rendered from the blubbler or fat of the whale was also used in cosmetics and perfumes, it could be hardened into candles, used as a lubricant on machines, some of it was even edible, and was eaten along with the whale meat.
Kerosene, a derivative of crude oil replaced whale oil after the civil war. By the end of the nineteenth century "Oil" lamps were burning Alcohol, turpentine, and kerosene and would continue until electricity made other forms of lighting obsolete.
So when thinking the renaissance, remember it was a dark place, quite literally!
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