Download Background Information on Society During the LMP

Student’s name: ___________________
Period: _______
Date: _____________________
Mr. Cleon M. McLean
Department of English
Ontario High School
1
A Cursory Note on Society1 in the Late Medieval Period
The Three Orders of People:
Oratores, bellatores, laborares: this translates as "those who pray", "those who fight", and "those
who work".
The Upper Class
This was actually a fairly fluid social group, mainly because the fortunes of war and marriage
tended to bring families up and cast them down in a surprisingly short period of time. While
certain great families persisted, where we are able to gather specific information we see that
it was not unusual for a family to last for only three generations; that is, for the family to
hold high office, or to keep the same large estates. The only place where high status nobility
might be formally recognized and defined was in the Parliament of England, the Estates of
France, Germany and certain other countries. These institutions all developed after 1300 and
so belong only to the late Middle Ages. Before that, the upper nobility were simply those
who were the big-shots at the time. In general, if you see someone designated as a duke or
earl or count, then they were in the upper nobility. Even though they might not be rich or
have much political power, they still held high social status.
Middle Class
Merchants were organized into guilds. Even here, there was a world of difference between
those who bought and sold locally, and those who dealt in regional or international markets.
Cultural functions: Contributed as a guild to the local churches; sponsored religious
festivals, and performed charitable acts such as visiting the sick and prisoners. Wealthier
guilds built chapels. Political Power: Most of those on the city council were from the
patriciate. In many cities, the council was legally restricted to the nobly-born, who also
served as diplomats and ambassadors on behalf of their city. Social Power: They dictated
fashion and conduct. They often formed clubs.
Knightly Ethics
To be chivalrous literally meant to behave as a horseman, which is to say as a knight. There
are some characteristics that we can identify as belonging to chivalry. Stated very generally,
the knightly ethic in earlier centuries was rough-and-ready. It dealt mainly with how one
behaved on the battlefield. The knightly code included such values as courtesy, glory, honor,
liberality, loyalty, and prowess. It is also important to recognize that these values applied only
to the noble knights, and that the ethics were intended to govern relationships between
knights, and had nothing at all to say about relations of knights with commoners.
The Clergy
Although legally and socially the clergy was a separate order, they naturally interacted with
the rest of society. Indeed, except for the monks, that was their specific charge—to act as
pastors, shepherds to Christians. At the level of the ordinary individual, this meant above all
1
Information from http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/westciv/medsoc/
Student’s name: ___________________
Period: _______
Date: _____________________
Mr. Cleon M. McLean
Department of English
Ontario High School
2
else administering the sacraments. From the baptism ceremony to last rites, the sacraments
(which settled upon seven in number only late in the Middle Ages) were the chief points of
formal contact between the clergy and lay society. Most folks did not go to church every
Sunday but attended only on certain feast days. A good many attended only once a year, at
Easter. This meant that years could go by in which a local priest and his parishoner never
spoke with one another. Still less would an ordinary person come into contact with a bishop
or a monk.
Serfdom
Slavery was widespread in the late Roman Empire, although manumission had freed many.
Slavery persisted right through the Middle Ages, but it was rare and was largely confined to
the use of household slaves. Agricultural slavery belongs to the Empire, not to the Middle
Ages. The serf is a medieval invention. The word servus meant slave during the Empire, but is
also applied in the Middle Ages to a serf. The status of a serf was better than that of slave,
for a serf was not chattel—no one owned him. But he was in various ways tied to a plot of
land, and the land was owned by someone else. A serf was a peasant—a farmer, usually, but
the village blacksmith and miller were often also serfs. They were bound to the place and
could not leave without the lord's permission. They also owed work to the lord; normally,
they were expected to farm the lords estates as well as their own, owed in addition some
portion of their own harvest to the lord, and were further required to perform other labor
services upon demand.
General Information2
There wasn't much social mobility, but really ambitious commoners could make their way in
the world, and perhaps a fortune as well, by entering the service of a noble family. Many
commoners joined the clergy, another way of "entering service." While this prevented them
from marrying, an intelligent and hard working peasant could still make his mark as a cleric.
And many did, in the process helping their non-clerical kinfolk get a boost up the social
ladder. The universities and royal government were full of these folks. The nobility liked the
well educated clerics in positions of power, because these commoners were not likely to start
a competing dynasty. The able commoner was beholden to his noble lord, and the
arrangement was well liked by the aristocrats.
Only a small part of the population lived in the cities and towns, most of which were quite
small. Nearly ninety percent of the population was farmers. Some of these owned their land,
but most were either serfs or rented from landlords. Living conditions for these farmers (or
"peasants," if you wish) varied considerably. Many, but not all, lived from hand to mouth in
wood hovels. This marginal lifestyle was not by choice. The common people knew that life
could be better. But several centuries of uncharacteristically mild weather had caused a
population explosion in Europe. More land was brought under cultivation and increasingly
this new land was marginal as far as farming went. The excess population (and a lot more
besides) was taken care of when the Bubonic Plague paid a visit to Europe in the 1340s.
2
From http://www.hyw.com/Books/History/Medieval.htm