Feudalism

Feudalism was the predominant economic and political system in Europe during the Middle Ages. In the feudal system, all land was owned by the monarch, who kept a portion for the crown and allocated the rest to the nobility and the church. The higher nobles pledged allegiance to the monarch in exchange for the territory received and in turn distributed their allocated lands among the lesser nobility and serfs. The lesser nobility, such as knights, were pledged to provide military service to their monarch and to serve their direct lords, but they still had rights and could acquire wealth. Serfs, however, had few rights and were obliged to provide the nobility with labor, supplies, and services in exchange for protection.

Background

The feudal system was based partly on Roman law and partly on the customs of the Germanic tribes that invaded the Roman Empire sometime around the fourth century CE. Before then, landowners owned slaves or employed laborers tasked with farming their lands. As the struggling Roman Empire increased taxes, those who were unable to pay often began working for wealthier landowners in exchange for assistance meeting their financial obligations. Over time, the poorer farmers became tied to the land they farmed, and the landowners for whom they worked gained more formal power over them. Slaves, too, became legally tied to the land they tilled and could be exchanged as part of the land. Similar processes were legislated in different areas. Public lands were at times granted to military veterans and indentured servants, who had to pay for them in services rendered. In time, even the urban centers turned to a system in which the artisans became a servile class under the wealthy landowners.

These were the systems evolving in the Roman Empire when the Germanic tribes invaded. The tribes had their own traditional organizations, though not as systematized as the Romans’, and the traditional form of feudalism arose out of a combination of the existing structures. As a system, feudalism shaped the social, political, and economic conditions in western Europe from the fifth century to the beginning of the Renaissance.

Overview

According to many scholars, feudalism can be described as a system in which the king, in representation of the state, parcels land out to individuals. In exchange, these individuals, the country’s nobles, serve as members of the court and provide military assistance to the monarch when needed. Military service was especially important to members of the lower nobility, as it provided them with an opportunity to distinguish themselves and perhaps improve their standing politically or as landowners. The feudal state, then, worked by connecting land ownership to governmental work and military service. The states were held together by the idea of vassalage to a personal chief, in the Germanic tribal model, rather than by any notion of nationalism or nation. The underpinnings of the system, however, were based on Roman law.

Feudalism also established a system in which each landowner had the right and obligation to supervise the serfs who worked the land. This often entailed collecting taxes and ensuring that the serfs fulfilled their duties to the landowner and to the realm. Thus feudalism presented a pyramidal structure in which the monarch ruled the landowners, each of whom had authority over a specific area and its people. The power of a landowner was typically based on that noble’s political status and amount of land owned. However, the nobility did not retain all control over the serfs. The monarch traditionally judged the more important criminal and civil cases, and the serfs usually enjoyed traditional rights to public lands and had some rights of redress against their overlords in cases of grave injustice. Landowners owed their serfs protection in the event of war or other catastrophe.

The church also held an important place in the feudal system. It had the power to grant lands and even to have its own vassals and army. As a religious body, it also had significant social and political status and often had privileges that the nobility did not. At the same time, it confirmed the monarch’s claim to power, thus legitimizing the feudal system with its support.

Despite the cohesiveness provided by the church and the feudal system, the medieval era was marked by near-constant strife. In time, some groups of nobles began to claim the right of full judiciary and taxation powers, mint their own coinage, and attempt to become autonomous and separate from their monarchs. In other cases, serfs seeking more rights rebelled against their overlords, sparking further conflict. Historians provide many reasons for the long decline of feudalism, including the rise of a strong middle class, the decimation of the European population by the Black Death, and the development of new ways of raising professional armies independent of the nobility. Feudalism largely disappeared in western Europe upon the rise of the great nation-states at the beginning of the Renaissance. The system remained in effect in some regions of eastern Europe for several centuries but was ultimately abolished there as well.

Bibliography

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Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society. Trans. L. A. Manyon. 1962. Fwd. Geoffrey Koziol. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print.

Padrino, Mercedes. Feudalism and Village Life in the Middle Ages. Pleasantville: World Almanac Lib., 2006. Print.

Poly, Jeanne-Pierre, and Eric Bournazel. The Feudal Transformation, 900–1200. Trans. Caroline Higgitt. New York: Holmes, 1991. Print.

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