Middle Age and FEUDALISM

• Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of

the legal, economic, military, and cultural customs that flourished in
Medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries.
• Feudalism was the medieval model of government predating the birth
of the modern nation-state. Feudal society is a military hierarchy in
which a ruler or lord offers mounted fighters a fief (medieval
beneficium), a unit of land to control in exchange for a military
service.
• The hierarchies were formed up of 4 main parts: Monarchs,
Lords/Ladies (Nobles), Knights, and Peasants/Serfs. Each of the levels
depended on each other on their everyday lives.
• To raise an army, and ensure that they could control the area, the
monarch would grant fiefs of land to nobles. In exchange for the land,
the noble pledged loyalty to the monarch and promised to fight for the
lord when called.
• The King was in complete control under the feudal system (at least
nominally). He owned all the land in the country and decided to whom
he would lease land. He therefore typically allowed tenants he could
trust to lease land from him.
• Lords and Knights - The lords ran the local manors. They also were
the king's knights and could be called into battle at any moment by
their Baron. The lords owned everything on their land including the
peasants, crops, and village. Most of the people living in the Middle
Ages were peasants.
• The Lords provided safety and protection from outside threats and
the serfs or peasants provided labor to run the manor. How did the
manor provide protection? The Lords were usually also military
leaders.
 Origins of Feudalism

• The word 'feudalism' derives from the medieval Latin terms feudalis,
meaning fee, and feodum, meaning fief. The fee signified the land
given (the fief) as a payment for regular military service. The system
had its roots in the Roman manorial system (in which workers were
compensated with protection while living on large estates) and in the
8th century kingdom of the Franks where a king gave out land for life
(benefice) to reward loyal nobles and receive service in return. The
feudal system proper became widespread in Western Europe from
the 11th century onwards, largely thanks to the Normans as their
rulers carved up and dished out lands wherever their armies
conquered.
• Lords & Vassals
• Starting from the top of society's pyramid, the monarch – a good example is
William the Conqueror (r. 1066-1087) who considered all the lands of England
as his personal property – could give a parcel of land (of no fixed size) to a
noble who, in return, would be that monarch's vassal, that is he would
promise loyalty and service when required. Thus, a personal bond was
created. The most common and needed service was military service. Military
obligations included fighting in that monarch's army or protecting assets of the
Crown such as castles. In some cases, a money payment (known as scutage),
which the monarch then used to pay mercenary soldiers, might be offered
instead of military service. The vassal received any income from the land, had
authority over its inhabitants and could pass the same rights on to his heirs.
• The nobles who had received land, often called suzerain vassals, could have
much more than they either needed or could manage themselves and so
they often sub-let parts of it to tenant vassals. Once again, the person was
given the right to use and profit from this land and in return, in one form or
another, then owed a service to the landowner. This service could again
take the form of military service (typical in the case of a knight) or, as
tenants might be of a lower social class (but still be freemen) and they
might not have had the necessary military skills or equipment, more usually
they offered a percentage of their revenue from the land they rented
(either in money or produce) or, later in the Middle Ages, made a fixed
payment of rent. There were also irregular special fees to be paid to the
lord such as when his eldest daughter married or his son was knighted.
• The feudal system perpetuated itself as a status quo because the
control of land required the ability to perform military service and,
because of the costs involved (of weapons, armour and horses), land
was required to fund military service. Thus there was a perpetual
divide between the landed aristocracy (monarchs, lords, and some
tenants) and those who worked the land for them who could be free
or unfree labourers. Unfree labourers were serfs, also known as
villeins, who were at the bottom of the social pyramid and who made
up the vast majority of the population.
• The peasantry worked, without pay, on the land owned or rented by
others to produce food for themselves and, just as importantly, food
and profit for their masters. They were often treated as little more
than slaves and could not leave the estate on which they lived and
worked. The term feudalism, however, is generally applied by modern
historians only to the relationship between lords and vassals, and not
the peasantry. Rather, the relationship between serf and landowner
or tenant is referred to as the manorial system after the most
common unit of land, the 'manor'.
The consequence of the feudal system was the creation of very
localised groups of communities which owed loyalty to a specific local
lord who exercised absolute authority in his domain. As fiefs were often
hereditary, a permanent class divide was established between those
who had land and those who rented it. The system was often weighted
in favour of the sovereign as when a noble died without an heir, his
estate went back to the monarch to either keep for themselves or to
redistribute to another noble. Monarchs could distribute land for
political purposes, fragmenting a noble's holdings or distancing him
from the court.
• In addition, the system of feudal relationships could create serious unrest.
Sometimes a monarch might insist on active military service because of a war
but nobles might also refuse, as happened to King John of England in 1215 and
the Barons' Revolt which led to the signing of the Magna Carta. In 1215, and in
subsequent revolts in the 13th century, the barons were acting collectively for
their own interests which was a direct threat to the entire system of
feudalism, based as it was upon single lords and vassals working out their own
private arrangements. Military service was reduced to fixed terms, typically 40
days in England, in an effort to reduce the burden on nobles so that they did
not leave their lands unattended for too long. However, 40 days was not
usually enough to see out a campaign and so a monarch was obliged to pay
mercenaries, dealing another blow to the tradition of feudalism and vassalage.