Unit 2 - Social Inequality in Feudal Europe Flashcards
What was a manor? Where did its servile peasantry first originate?
The Manor: The economically (relatively) self-contained estate of the feudal lord, whose peasant tenants formed a community (variously) subject to his personal authority. Here, peasant farmers enjoyed customary (and, later, legally recognized) rights to occupancy of the soil, but on the condition that a certain portion of their labour or its produce went to their lords, the nominal suzereigns (the term owners is inappropriate) of the land. Typically, a manor would comprise a lord’s own farm or demesne and peasants’ holdings, which they held by some form of tenancy from the lord of the manor, and which they would cultivate within the framework of the village community.
What were the principal economic and political differences between Bloch’s first and second feudal ages?
The first age was characterized by:
-a sparsity of population and the virtual collapse of most towns
-disintegration of central political authority, and the emergence -of territorial aristocracies supported by military retainers
-settlement for mutual security in villages, “aggregations in
which people lived cheek by jowl . . . separated by empty spaces” (Bloch 1966: 61), which were usually under the protection of feudal lords
low productivity of land and labour within agriculture
poor communications and dangerous travel
a cataclysmic decline in trade and the circulation of money
Whereas the second age was characterized by:
Increased population
buildings of cities
Greater estates
And ended with a crisis and breakdown through the black plague killing off many and making peasants more valuable
What were the main causes and consequences of the fourteenth to fifteenth century “general crisis” of feudalism? Why was the outcome different for different parts of Europe?
The shortage of labor from the black death made the peasants more valuable
Define each of the following terms. fief vassal homage serfdom tenancies three estates
Fief: A heritable property handed down from a lord to a vassal
Vassal: a holder of land by feudal tenure on conditions of homage and allegiance.
Homage: Acknowledgment of feudal allegiance
Serfdom: The life of servitude many peasants took on during feudalism
Tenancies: The right to use the land in exchange for services for one kind or another
Three estates: clergy, nobility, and people—“those who pray, those who fight, those who work”—a model that underpinned, among many other things, different rights in law, or the divisions of medieval parliaments
What are rent, profits of jurisdiction, and servile dues? How do these differ, and who paid which?
Rent was the obligation attached to tenancy of land—what, in other words, peasants owed their lords as tenants. Rent took three main forms:
- direct labour services on the lord’s demesne, an obligation to work a stipulated number of days per year
- rent in kind, or a portion of the crops produced within the peasant’s own holding
- rent in cash (far less common until later in the medieval period)
Profits of jurisdiction were the proceeds the lord derived from exercise of his juridical powers or ban—what, in other words, peasants owed to their lords as subjects. These again took various forms. A lord might legally oblige peasants living under his jurisdiction—even peasants who were not his own tenants—to grind their corn in his mill, bake their bread in his oven, or use his olive- or wine-press, all at a price (banalités). Or he might impose other fines, fees, or tolls, exploiting his judicial powers to licence a variety of peasant transactions, from the sale of animals to marriage. He might even impose various taxes, known as tallage. It has been estimated that by the twelfth century, over half of the revenues of the aristocracy came not from rents, whether in labour, kind, or cash, but from profits of jurisdiction and tallage. This development was aided by the devolution of jurisdictional powers discussed by Hilton (which Duby sees as the key to his tenth-to-eleventh-century “feudal revolution”). This underlines the centrality of feudal lords’ command over authoritative resources—the means of political control in a society—to feudal surplus extraction.
Servile dues were further, and usually heavy, obligations attached to serfdom in the strict sense—what, in other words, those peasants who were personally unfree owed their lords as a consequence of their personal status of servility. These often included heavier labour services (and, in the later Middle Ages, a requirement to perform labour services became widely seen as one criterion of unfreedom). Major tests of servile status were lack of freedom to marry without the lord’s permission and payment of a marriage fee known as merchet; the lord’s right to exact a death duty, or heriot, often the best animal or piece of furniture; and the liability to pay chevage, an annual head-tax. In addition, serfs were not free to move, buy, sell and bequeath goods, dispose of their own labour, or enter holy orders—and these disabilities were recognized in law. Finally, and critically, serfs were not under the jurisdiction of the public courts, but were subject to the personal jurisdiction of their lords. This became, during the second feudal age, the most widely adopted test and definition of serfdom.
What is meant by relations of personal dependency? What forms did these assume within the feudal aristocracy, and between lords and peasants?
For him, it was precisely because peasants were not economically dependent on lords that relations of personal dependency were so central to feudal stratification. Given peasants’ effective possession of the key means of production, it was only by subordinating them to a personal lordship that lords could extract surpluses out of the peasant economy at all. In his own words, where,
the direct labourer remains the “possessor” of the means of production . . . necessary for the production of his own means of subsistence, the property relationship must simultaneously appear as a direct relation of lordship and servitude. . . . Under such conditions the surplus-labour for the nominal owner of the land can only be extorted from them by other than economic pressure, whatever the form assumed may be. . . . Thus, conditions of personal dependence are requisite, a lack of personal freedom . . . and being tied to the soil as its accessory, bondage in the true sense of the word. (Marx 1894: 790, 791)
Briefly outline the pattern of stratification internal to medieval peasant communities. Is it feudal in origin or nature?
Kings-nobility/clergy-peasants/serfs/people
This stratification was largely hereditary and reflected the ages of the time.
Because of the lack of central authority this pattern of stratification made clusters of sovereign controls with tight hierarchies to deal with the chaos of the time.
Compare and contrast the lord/peasant relation with the relation of employer and employee in modern society. How do these differ with regard to possession of means of production, and the social statuses and identities of the parties?
While both the lord and the employer are the authority to the peasant/employee and the peasant/employee produce the majority of the labor or work that the higher ups live off of, these categorizations are different in many respects.
For one, lords had control over the peasants entire lives they were the peasants sovereign and controlled the peasants law, their decision to marriage, among other personal choices.
The employers control the employees work environments and their labor however employees have much less control over the rest of the employees lives. Finally, with regards to the means of production while both authorities own the means of production the lords look over it through means of attending to the land where the modern employer usually has the more recent concept of ownership over the means of production
What is serfdom? What were its origins, and in what ways did it change between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries?
The origins of serfdom were mixed. Some serfs were former slaves, domiciled on erstwhile demesnes (which were no longer viable to farm commercially) by their masters; others were once-free peasants forcibly reduced to servile status. Servile status became hereditary, and here the personal character of feudal dependency is at its starkest. Serfs and their children were bound in perpetuity to their individual lord. Unlike the free tenant, a serf could not enter into, or break, obligations of tenancy voluntarily. Hilton estimates that by the end of the thirteenth century, in most of Western Europe, between one-half and two-thirds of peasant tenures were regarded as servile.
From this sketch, it is clear that medieval peasants were variously subordinated to their lords as tenants, subjects, and serfs. Surpluses flowed from the one class to the other by a variety of routes, and while almost all peasants were exploited, the extent of their exploitation varied considerably according to whether or not they were free or serfs. Within any one manor, a lord might have both free and servile tenants. In many cases, a lord might also derive profits of jurisdiction from peasants who were not his own tenants, whether free or unfree. This further complicates the picture of medieval society, and reliable data on who fell into which social category at any given point is hard to come by. However, it is clear that as feudalism was consolidated, peasants (whether or not they were legally free) were in practice made ever-more subordinate to their lords, and burdens that once fell only on serfs were gradually extended to free tenants, as well. In turn, possession of a tenancy that carried such burdens (above all, merchet, heriot, chevage, and subordination to the personal jurisdiction of the lord) was taken as proof of servile status in the eyes of the law. Thus villein tenure, the most common form of peasant tenure in medieval England, was regarded by the courts as legally free in the eleventh century, but unfree by the end of the thirteenth.
How and why might feudal stratification be seen as based on command of authoritative rather than allocative resources?
Because distribution of resources was distributed based on heirarchy and rank rather then resembling allocation based on needs
