The System of Feudalism

 Origins and History of Feudalism

  

   Following the collapse of Roman administration, and the gradual decline of Roman infrastructure in Western Europe an ever increasing number of people began migrating from the urban areas of the empire to the countryside resulting in a transition from a central, urban Roman Empire, to a primarily rural and decentralized Europe. This meant that people now living in small communities had to produce most of what they needed on a daily basis within their own community as they could no longer rely on trade or assistance from the state. This came due to a gradual decline in trade and transportation owing to the increasing instability of the empire, and the frequent wars both civil and otherwise that were fought within its borders. This led to the development of the manor system which revolved around a lord who owned the land upon which others lived and worked. The peasants who rented this land, and the serfs tied to it all contributed goods and services to the lord, and in exchange received protection, a judicial and administrative services, and infrastructure from them. The serfs for their part were tied to the land more directly and unlike peasants could not leave if they so chose, they were almost exclusively agricultural workers unlike peasants who could also provide skilled labor, and in addition to being obligated to pay tithes to their lord on whose land they worked, they were also obligated to spend some portion of their time each year working the lord's fields along with their own. In this manner the average Medieval community could be, more or less, self-sufficient, not being overly reliant on trade or assistance from a central government or outside trade. This system would largely endure until a combination of a labor shortage in the aftermath of the plague which allowed peasants to re-negotiate their leases, and the wars of religion making people more amenable to a strong central state combined to replace feudalism with the absolute monarchies associated with the Age of Empire and monarchs began to centralize power, reign in their nobility, and to have final say on vassalage contracts.

How Feudal Systems Worked

    The feudal system worked based off systems of loyalty and vassalage, which constructed a sort or societal pyramid which placed laborers at the bottom, the lower nobility above them, and an increasingly small and more important series of nobles above them going all the way to the monarch at the very top, encompassing everyone in society apart from the clergy who were separate from this system. There was also a great deal of variety in the wealth and occupational status of those within the lower tiers as a farmer, stonemason, and a wealthy merchant would all still be considered of the peasantry due to their lack of land and title. Even the retinues of lords were considered amongst the peasantry if they did not own land, and though they possessed some privileges they were loyal to their lord and their lord alone, and spoke with his authority rather than with any of their own like a landed knight would. The nobility for their part were not expected to work for a living, and derived their wealth from their subjects and vassals who worked on and leased their land. These nobles would often practice something called subinfeudation in which the nobility would grant land and titles from their own land to local leaders, who would then grant land and titles from their land and so on creating a chain of power going all the way from the king and the upper nobility, to the lower nobility and their knights and retainers. This land would be given out in exchange for oaths of loyalty and vassalage made to the lord who granted them, and the expectation that these vassals would support their lord financially, militarily, and politically. 

Why Feudalism?

    Feudalism as a system worked primarily because it was so decentralized and allowed for communities to essentially support themselves with very little outside assistance, and because the system of vassalage created alternate bases of power somewhat independent from the monarchy. Due to the large travel times between settlements and and subinfeudation power became spread amongst so many nobles that monarchs for most of the Middle Ages were playing a balancing act to stay in power, balancing their ambitions and the needs of the state with the ambitions and needs of powerful nobles. This balancing act was important due to the fact that many nobles were not directly accountable to the king and were capable of raising their own armies and warring against both each other and him, though the oaths of loyalty and the vassalage system was supposed to prevent this from escalating to war with one's own lord. This system born out of necessity in following the collapse of Rome spread power among so many local rulers that it was not until the 16th and 17th centuries that power began to truly become centralized again as Europe urbanized once more, and even then the absolute monarchs of this era still retained the nobility at least nominally. This change did not really take effect until the combination of growing urban centers, a labor shortage due to plague deaths, resentment towards the nobility, and the wars of religion such as the 30 Years war made people more inclined to support a central government, allowing the king to rely on a burgeoning 'middle class" from which he could derive power separate from the nobility.

Why is this Relevant?

    

    All of this is relevant for our purposes as the relationship between members of the Medieval nobility is frequently relevant to the main conflict of many of the works written during the Middle Ages. This was for good reason, it was the system of governance everyone was familiar with, and it played a major part in the lives of those who were literate who would have been overwhelmingly of the nobility or the clergy. Furthermore, since Medieval literature would have been written on vellum and transcribed by hand, it would have been very expensive meaning that most texts were available only to the wealthy. All of this coupled with the human infatuation with those in positions of wealth, power, and authority and the tendency to romanticize the lives of these people led to the ideas of vassalage, and the relationships between nobles and between nobles and their subjects and retainers play a major part in many stories. In addition to this many of the writers of the time would have been patronized by a particular noble, and so would be writing to the sensibilities of their patron, though this is not always the case, and many stories were still written for the common man, but these tended to be transmitted orally. Many pieces of literature such as songs, poems, plays, or otherwise would be preformed in public places for the entertainment of those who could not read them, and so some elements of popular culture among the peasantry do make it into these stories. With all this considered the ideas surrounding and realities of Feudalism are central to many Medieval stories as it was the status quo of the world these writers and their audiences lived in and understanding this system contributes to a greater understanding of the actions, and motivations of many of the characters in Medieval stories that may seem alien to us today. These people would also have been expected to act a certain way according to what social strata they belonged to and were often written to act according to the idealized view of how nobles and their underlings should act, or in a satirical manner embodying many stereotypes and criticisms of these groups.

Sources

Krowke, Andre. The Age of Absolutism (17-18th Century).

"Famine and Death in Medieval England." https://www.europenowjournal.org/2018/09/04/famine-and-dearth-in-medieval-england/.

Netchev, Simeon. "The Feudal Society in Medieval Europe." World History Encyclopedia, 16 Mar. 2022, https://www.worldhistory.org/image/15424/the-feudal-society-in-medieval-europe/.

Sengupta, Ramprasad. "Technology and Social Dynamics: Feudalism and Its Decline." Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 10 no. 38, 1975, pp. 1504-10. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4537392. Accessed 11 Sept. 2024.

Stephenson, Carl. "The Origin and Significance of Feudalism." The American Historical Review, vol. 46, no. 4, 1941, pp. 788-812. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1841824. Accessed 11 Sept. 2024.