How does feudalism function

From being merely landowners, estate owners became local lords. The new German kings did not maintain large professional armies, as the Romans had done, but continued to use the tribal levies. Under this system, German tribal nobles, who had been invested with some of these estates theoretically a third of all land in conquered territories was given to the new German invaders , had to bring themselves and their warriors to the royal standard at the start of a campaign.

At the same time the old tribal warrior, fighting on foot, became the mounted warrior, who was a much more expensive military asset. This led to the sub-infeudation of the larger estates as these mounted warriors received grants of land from which to support themselves.

Originally they were formed of single village communities, but over time, as pieces of land were given away here and acquired there, many manors came to be scattered through several neighboring villages; the corollary of this was that villages were often divided amongst more than one manor.

This lord could be a secular lord like a knight or a baron, or an ecclesiastical lord like a bishop, church or monastery. Whoever or whatever the lord was, he or it had control over the land and people of the manor. The great hall at Penshurst Place, Kent, built in the mid 14th century.

These usually involving working on his demesne land for a set number of days per week, and giving him gifts in kind or money on certain days. It also varied over time, as a lord took more land into his demesne, or divided demesne land amongst his serfs and free peasants. Costumes of slaves or serfs, from the sixth to the twelfth centuries collected by H.

Manors usually attempted to be as self-sufficient as possible. The work of making and repairing equipment, for example, was carried out as far as practicable within the manor. Towns were few and far between, and transporting goods to and from them was slow and expensive, so self-sufficiency was a sensible aim.

It is common in school text books for feudalism to be depicted as a pyramid — and we have done the same here. However, it should be borne in mind that feudalism could give rise to fiendish complexity; spaghetti might represent it better. We have seen how the original manors covered singe villages, but often came later to be scattered over several. As in this case, most complexities arose after fief-holding had become hereditary. For example, a vassal of one lord might marry the heiress of the vassal of another lord, thus acquiring obligations to a different lord.

What happened if these lords became enemies? This was not an unusual situation. The most famous case is probably that of the dukes of Burgundy, who in the 15th century held lands from both the king of France and the emperor of Germany , who were hereditary rivals. Things could get more complicated still. The counts of Anjou, vassals of the king of France , acquired by marriage, inheritance and a good bit of skulduggery several surrounding fiefs including of Aquitaine and Normandy.

They thus came to rule more of France than his nominal superior, the king — and this was before he inherited the throne of England as king Henry II reigned Fiefs and manors were essentially blocks of land from which income could be drawn, in the form of a share in the labor of the peasantry, or in the produce of the soil, or of money revenue from these.

It was a system for a rural economy. This made sense when, in the centuries after the fall of Rome, towns were few and far between, and those which did still exist were tiny. The inhabitants of towns did not fit neatly into the feudal scheme of things. Many early towns were located in areas between manors. They formed no part of any fief and were answerable directly to the king. Other towns grew up within existing fiefs. In either case, it was quite impossible for a king to a great lord to deal with each individual within a town, so they dealt with towns as whole communities — which in practice meant dealing with the leaders of the towns.

It followed from this that, in internal matters, towns were able to run their own affair s with a comparatively free hand, and that townsmen, as individuals, were free of feudal obligations. Famously, if a serf arrived in a town and was able to stay there for a year and a day without being caught and sent back to his manor, he became a free citizen of that town.

If the medieval economy expanded and towns became wealthier, their leaders were able to bargain with their superiors, whether king or lords, for more autonomy. Large towns and cities thus came to run their own affairs with minimal interference from kings and other rulers.

The revenue they contributed to the royal and feudal coffers effectively purchased their autonomy. In England and France, the key cities of London and Paris were treated with great respect by their kings, while smaller cities enjoyed a high degree of freedom from royal or feudal interference.

The cities of Spain gained the right to govern themselves, and those of central Italy which were part of the Papal States owed only loose obedience to the pope a duty which they frequently ignored. In parts of Europe, many cities became effectively independent states in their own right. In Germany , even fairly minor towns gained a large measure of independence due to the problems the Holy Roman emperors had in imposing their will across their realms.

In Flanders , the cities of Ghent, Bruges and Ypres became self-governing city-states, only nominally subject to the local count. In northern Italy, the wealth of leading towns such as Venice, Genoa, Milan and Florence made them amongst some of the most powerful states in Europe. It can be seen from this description of the feudal system that at heart of it was a system of relationships between lords and their vassals, with rights and duties on both sides.

It followed from this that medieval lords did not have dictatorial powers over their vassal. Indeed, embedded in the system of western European feudalism was the principle that a lord could not tax his subjects without their consent. The key to rulers gaining the consent of their leading subjects was to seek their advice: to bring them in on his thinking, listen to their anxieties, and adapt his policies accordingly. Indeed, as we have seen, one of the duties of a vassal to his lord was to provide him with counsel; and vassals regarded this duty as one of their most cherished privileges, that their lord should consult with them on important matters.

Each lord had his council of vassals, which provided the forum for such consultation. One of the key principles that underlay this development was the idea that one person could speak for many. This meant not only communicating their views but committing them to action such as paying a tax.

Given the responsibility of this role, it was important that the representative should be someone who commanded the confidence of the majority of those whom he represented. The notion of electing representatives by majority vote thus took hold, and so developed a practice which would lie at the heart of modern democracy. In the centuries after , the economy of western Europe expanded vastly , along with its population.

Coinage increasingly came in to circulation, and a money economy gained ground. In these circumstances, the shortcomings of feudalism as a way of raising troops became glaringly obvious. The expanding economies of their kingdoms enabled kings often in consultation with representative assemblies to raise taxes and pay for armies of full-time professional soldiers.

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Kris Hirst is an archaeologist with 30 years of field experience. Her work has appeared in scholarly publications such as Archaeology Online and Science. Twitter Twitter. Updated December 13, Key Takeaways: Feudalism Feudalism is a form of political organization with three distinct social classes: king, nobles, and peasants. In a feudal society, status is based on land ownership.

In Europe, the practice of feudalism ended after the Black Plague decimated the population. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format.

The obligations and corresponding rights between lord and vassal concerning the fief formed the basis of the feudal relationship. Feudalism, in its various forms, usually emerged as a result of the decentralization of an empire, especially in the Carolingian empires, which lacked the bureaucratic infrastructure necessary to support cavalry without the ability to allocate land to these mounted troops. Mounted soldiers began to secure a system of hereditary rule over their allocated land, and their power over the territory came to encompass the social, political, judicial, and economic spheres.

Many societies in the Middle Ages were characterized by feudal organizations, including England, which was the most structured feudal society, France, Italy, Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and Portugal. Each of these territories developed feudalism in unique ways, and the way we understand feudalism as a unified concept today is in large part due to critiques after its dissolution. Karl Marx theorized feudalism as a pre-capitalist society, characterized by the power of the ruling class the aristocracy in their control of arable land, leading to a class society based upon the exploitation of the peasants who farm these lands, typically under serfdom and principally by means of labour, produce, and money rents.

While modern writers such as Marx point out the negative qualities of feudalism, the French historian Marc Bloch contends that peasants were an integral part of the feudal relationship: while the vassals performed military service in exchange for the fief, the peasants performed physical labour in return for protection, thereby gaining some benefit despite their limited freedom. Feudalism was thus a complex social and economic system defined by inherited ranks, each of which possessed inherent social and economic privileges and obligations.

Feudalism allowed societies in the Middle Ages to retain a relatively stable political structure even as the centralized power of empires and kingdoms began to dissolve. Feudalism in 12th-century England was among the better structured and established systems in Europe at the time. Below the king in the feudal pyramid was a tenant-in-chief generally in the form of a baron or knight , who was a vassal of the king. Holding from the tenant-in-chief was a mesne tenant—generally a knight or baron who was sometimes a tenant-in-chief in their capacity as holder of other fiefs.

Below the mesne tenant, further mesne tenants could hold from each other in series. Before a lord could grant land a fief to someone, he had to make that person a vassal. This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony, which was composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty.