Download FEUDALISM AND MANORIALISM

World History 1
Medieval Europe
Reading 4 (FEUDALISM AND MANORIALISM)
The Fall of Rome in the West led to the collapse of the European economy, as noted above. Gold virtually
disappeared from circulation, and the amount of silver still circulating was insufficient to stimulate a
revival of trade or to satisfy the basic needs of consumers. Means had to be invented to survive in a world
without money.
a. FEUDALISM
In the absence of money, relationships between individuals became critically important. Trade
necessitated barter, the trade of goods deemed equivalent in value. Warlords in control of large estates
needed soldiers to guard them and hired them with land rather than with money. Soldiers commonly
received small estates of their own, portions of the lord’s domain, which they had a vested interest in
protecting and perhaps extending through armed conflict. The hiring of a soldier (or vassal) became a
highly formalized affair called “commendation,” in which the Lord commonly placed a clod of earth from
the estate in the vassal’s hand, and the vassal pledged his loyalty and service. Each had specific
obligations to the other, and certain restrictions prevented one from imposing on the other. Some vassals
were granted particularly large estates, which they were free to bestow on vassals of their own. If a great
lord wished to assemble an army for a raid on his neighbors or to lead on crusade, he typically called upon
his chief vassals, who in turn called upon their vassals, and in short order a sizable army could be
gathered. This system of inter-personal, social and political obligations is called feudalism. It was gradually
adopted in Europe as money became ever scarcer and seems to have been widespread across the
continent by the 800’s AD. It weakened and gradually disappeared in the late medieval age as trade,
commerce, and the reintroduction of a moneyed economy reappeared. One sign of the weakening of the
feudal bond was the appearance of a new practice called “scutage” (“shield money”). Vassals who owed
military service to their lords began paying them to hire mercenaries in their place. The personal bond
was thus displaced by the exchange of money, and interpersonal relationships became more remote and
impersonal, as they largely remain today.
b. MANORIALISM
Vassals received land in lieu of money for their services to a lord. The land granted to a vassal was
extensive or modest depending upon his rank and importance, but it generally consisted of cultivated
farmland, a house, farm buildings, livestock, tenant farmers called serfs, quarters for the serfs, and
perhaps a pond, river, or bit of forest with wild game. It supplied a vassal with his basic necessities. A
medieval farm of this type was called a “manor,” and “manorialism” was the basic economic institution of
medieval Europe, an informal system of scattered farms aiming for the most part at self-sufficiency but
perhaps supplemented on occasion by goods from nearby farms or more distant sources.
c. ECCLESIASTICAL FEUDALISM AND MANORIALISM
Medieval feudalism and manorialism were practiced within ecclesiastical as well as secular society. The
chief lord of the Catholic Church, the lord of all Christendom, was the reigning pope in Rome. His chief
vassals, presiding over large tracts of church land, were called archbishops. (The word “bishop” is Old
English and is a Germanic corruption of Greek “episcopus” meaning “overseer.” “Arch-“ is also derived
from Greek, meaning “chief,” so an “archbishop” was a “chief overseer," in essence one of a pope's chief
vassals.) Archbishops created their own vassals called bishops and gave them control of large tracts of
their own territory. An archbishop's domain was called an "archbishopric" or "archdiocese." A bishop's
territory was called a “diocese” or “see.” Each diocese was further divided into parishes run by parish
priests who served the faithful from local churches. The Church could not pay these senior clerics
(churchmen) with money, so they conferred church lands (working farms) upon them, just as within the
secular feudal order. This ecclesiastical feudal system also weakened and eventually collapsed under the
pressure of a reviving moneyed economy in the late medieval age and early Renaissance.