The feudal system was a system that divided people into different classes due to their wealth. There were three types of peasants: Slaves, who could be bought and sold, serfs, who had no rights politically, and freeman, who had a few rights and sometimes owned small shares of land. The Middle Ages was a very dark and difficult time for many people because of the creation of the dreaded feudal system.

Each class in society needed land and had obligations listing what one had to do to ensure their security of land('Manorialism'). The vast majority of the feudalist government system in the Middle Ages in Europe were made up of peasants. These nobles and lords would in turn have vassals (servants) work the land in exchange for a place to live. The manor system was an element of feudal society in the Middle Ages characterized by the legal and economic power of the lord of a manor. The contract between lord and vassal was called a FIEF. NOBLES AND LAND A powerful lord could grant land to a vassal. A lord granted a vassal land in exchange for loyalty, military assistance and other services. The king owned all the land and would distribute lots of land to nobles and lords in exchange of military protection. FEUDALism Feudalism is the political and social system of the Middle Ages.

Despite feudalistic societies occurring in other parts of the world, European feudalism of the Medieval Ages remain the common model of the feudal society.īasically, Feudalism was the system of land and obligation('Manorialism'). The system of the feudalism of Europe in the Middle Ages spread to all parts of Europe until the 14th century ('Feudalism'). The next level of feudal society was made up of nobles. Peasants who rented land or worked for pay. A piece of land, sometimes called a fief. A social system in which status is ranked, and power is concentrated in the higher ranks. In return for their loyalty, they received land and protection. The system of political organization during the middle ages in which the lord owned the land and all the others served him. The next level of feudal society was made up of knights. The word feudalism comes from the Latin word feodum, for 'fief,' and a German word meaning 'cow,'generalized to indicate valuable and movable property and land ('Feudalism'). Peasants or freeman were skilled workers who paid rent, they could leave the manor whenever they wished. This hierarchy was crucial to the systems of feudalism and manorialism.įeudalism controlled the political, economic and military system of the middle ages. 1200 CE, freemen thereafter expanded as a social category, absorbing all of the former serfs by the end of the Middle Ages (ca. on the continent was an outgrowth of the entrenchment of medieval feudalism. There was a hierarchy of power in society, with the King at the highest levels. In sharp contrast to the modal mid-19th-century British liberal, Freeman. Denmark’s society ran on two systems during the high middle ages: the system of feudalism and manorialism('Feudalism').Īs mentioned on the previous page, Denmark used to be a Monarchy.

Freeman in feudalism in the middle ages