Feudalism
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 individual who accepted this land became a vassal,
and the man who granted the land become known as his liege
or his lord. The deal was often sealed by swearing
oaths on the Bible or on the relics of saints. Often this
military service amounted to forty days' service each year
in times of peace or indefinite service in times of war, but
the actual terms of service and duties varied considerably
on a case-by-case basis. Factors such as the quality of land,
the skill of the fighter, local custom, and the financial
status of the liege lord always played a part. For instance,
in the late medieval period, this military service was often
abandoned in preference for cash payment, or agreement to
provide a certain number of men-at-arms or mounted knights
for the lord's use.
In the late medieval period, the fiefdom
often became hereditary, and the son of a knight or lesser
nobleman would inherit the land and the military duties from
his father upon the father's death. Feudalism had two enormous
effects on medieval society.
(1) First, feudalism discouraged
unified government. Individual lords would divide their
lands into smaller and smaller sections to give to lesser
rulers and knights. These lesser noblemen in turn would
subdivide their own lands into even smaller fiefs to give
to even less important nobles and knights. Each knight would
swear his oath of fealty (loyalty) to the one who
have him the land, which was not necessarily the king or
higher noblemen. Feudal government was always an arrangement
between individuals, not between nation-states and citizens.
It meant that, while individual barons, dukes, and earls
might be loyal in theory to the king or centralized noble
family, there was no strong legal tradition to prevent them
from declaring war on each other. The bonds of loyalty often
grew so entangled that a single knight might find himself
owing allegiance to two different dukes or barons who were
at war with each other. There was no sense of loyalty to
a geographic area or a particular race, only a loyalty to
a person, which would terminate upon that person's death.
(2) Second, feudalism discouraged
trade and economic growth. The land was worked by peasant
farmers called serfs, who were tied to individual
plots of land and forbidden to move or change occupations
without the permission of their lord. The feudal lord might
claim one-third to one-half of their produce in taxes and
fees, and the serfs owed him a set number of days each year
in which they would work the lord's fields in exchange for
the right to work their own lands. Often, they were required
to grind their grain in the lord's mill, and bake all their
bread in the lords' oven, and to use roads and bridges the
lord had built. Each time they did this, of course, they
would have to pay him a toll or a fee of some sort. They
were, however, forbidden to set up their own roads, bridges,
mills, and ovens--the lord had a legal monopoly and would
milk it for all it was worth. In exchange for other hefty
fees, various peasants might set up a commune (a
cooperative government amongst themselves), or pay the lord
for the right to try their own court cases by juries. Other
ambitious communities might pool their resources and purchase
a charter, a legal document that gave the inhabitants
of a town or village certain economic freedoms to buy and
sell their own land or produce. In practice, these occurences
were often economic necessities, but in theory, these freedoms
were generous gifts given by the lord to his former serfs
in exchange for various financial considerations.
In theory, the entire medieval community
would be divided into three groups: bellatores
(the noblemen who fought), labores (the agricultural
laborers who grew the food), and oratores (the
clergy who prayed and attended to spiritual matters).This
is an old idea in medieval political theory. In Britain,
we can see examples of it as far back as Anglo-Latin treatises
like Wulfstan's Institutes of Polity and "An Estate Memorandum:
Duties and Perquisites." In actuality, this simple tripartite
division known as the Three
Estates of Feudalism proved unworkable, and the necessity
of skilled craftsmen, merchants, and other occupations was
quite visible
in spite of the theoretical model espoused in sermons and
political treatises. We can see remnants of the "Three
Estates" ideology in poets like Langland and Chaucer.
Langland, for instance, writes diatribes against the
breakdown
of the old theoretical order in the Vox Clamantis and
the Confessio Amantis; likewise, the ordering of
Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales suggests in some ways that Chaucer
organizes the pilgrims according to social rank, but this
order is disrupted by the bawdy Miller.