SEVEN: FEUDALISM, MANORIALISM, THE THREE ORDERS

Back to the idea of gestation and gestation taking place in secret. It is difficult to actually identify the exact occurrences, but what we do know is that out of the old and rotting something new can emerge. Think of fertilizing a flower bed. Consider the garbage we put on the compost heap to help plants grow. So, we see Medieval culture growing out of the seed bed which is also the death bed of the ancient world.

I want to talk a bit about the two systems, feudalism and manorialism. I think understanding them is going to help you understand a great deal about Medieval society.  They are the political and economic systems of the Middle Ages. When we think of law we think of law of the land. We have separate laws for cities, counties, state, and nation. But, the fact that I live in this town does not mean that I am not under state law or federal law. So at least theoretically, we think of law as an overall umbrella which governs all of us no matter where we live. There are different levels of law from the local to the national. But there are certainly no places where law does not exist, where the Constitution does not hold, except possibly for some tribal lands which are exempt from some of our state laws.

Imagine Europe as a geographic area and Europe no longer having any kind of overall law. Law depended entirely on the little islands of communities which had grown up during the period of lawlessness so that every place had its own laws. That is where the term outlaw comes from. An individual is actually an outlaw if he or she leaves the protection, and protection is more important there than having to abide by certain rules, of the particular community. This made travel extremely hazardous during the Middle Ages because as soon as you left a town or a village or a manor you found yourself literally in outlaw territory. There were individuals who would prey on travelers and who would do so without fear of reprisals because there was nobody there to enforce the law. Which also meant that if you did travel you better travel with weapons. You needed to be able to defend yourself against the onslaughts of those who were outside those civilized areas.

Europe during this time had become completely decentralized. Who was the law giver and the law enforcer in these little communities would depend upon the lord. The lord was generally a noble person, either secular or ecclesiastical. Either way, there had to be somebody who would hear cases and who would determine the law of the land, and the law of the land was local.

The economic system of the Middle Ages, at least in central and northern Europe tended to be equally localized. The typical manor consisted of a village and a manor house, the domicile of the lord. There was little privacy during the Middle Ages. The whole idea of privacy is something which is a luxury of much later times. During the Middle Ages you would have everything from child-begetting to childbirth taking place in some common room with crowds staring on. There were generally no individual beds. People would all sleep together. The lord of the manor might have his own room.

Almost everybody in the village was bound to the soil, even though there might be a few so called free individuals. The only advantage of being free was that if you wanted to leave the village you could, and if you wanted your daughter to marry somebody somewhere else you had the right to make her marry that man without having to ask permission of the lord to do so. The vast majority of the population were not only bound to the soil but also bound to the lord in all of their other relationships. So, people were not free to leave the land because the work needed to be done. They were not free to marry. They were not even free to force their children to marry whomever they wanted them to marry. This affected the common people, the vast majority of the population.

During that time the so called three orders developed. The first is the clergy. The second is the nobility. The third is the commoners. You will find those three orders in existence until around the time of the French Revolution. In some places even beyond. Clergy, nobility, and the commoners. They were known as the ones who pray, the ones who fight, and the ones who work. The ones who prayed were the clergy, and the clergy in turn was separated into the ruling clergy such as bishops, and the parish clergy, such as the priests who would take care of the people in their parishes. There is a fascinating split between the two because the bishops generally were drawn from the nobility. The parish clergy generally was drawn from the commoners, which means that there was quite a bit of friction even back then between the bishops and parish priests. This kind of friction came to a head when around the year 1100 the bishops began to try to enforce the unpopular rule of clerical celibacy.

AD 500-AD 1650] [ONE] [TWO] [THREE] [FOUR] [FIVE] [SIX] [SEVEN] [EIGHT] [Untitled]

Posted 28 August 2000
Last revised: 00-09-08
Text and images copyright © Ingrid Shafer 2000