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6 THE THREE ORDERS

Socio-Economic -Political changes in Western Europe
(Between the 9 th 16 th centuries)

Medieval Era

• The term ‘medieval era’ refers to the period in European history between the 5th and the 15 th
centuries.

THREE ORDERS

A bishop stated, ‘Here below, some pray, others fight, still others work...’

First Order Clergy (Priests )

Second Order Nobility (Nobles )
Third Order Peasantry (Peasants)
Fourth Order? Towns and townspeople

Feudalism

 The economic,legal,political and social relationships existed in Europe in the medieval era

 Feudalism is a German word ‘feud’, which means ‘a piece of land’

 Feudalism originated in France later spread in entire Europe.

 Social organisation centred on the control of land.

 In an economic sense, feudalism refers to a kind of agricultural production which is based on

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the relationship between lords and peasants.

 The peasants cultivated their own land as well as that of the lord.

 The peasants performed labour services for the lords

 Lords in exchange provided military protection to peasants

 Lords also had judicial control over peasants.

 Its features were derived from both imperial Roman traditions and German customs

Marc Bloch (1886 –1944)

• Marc Bloch was a French historian and Sociologist

• He is the author of 'The Feudal Society'

• Feudal Society is a work bout European, particularly French, society between 900 and 1300

• Marc Bloch emphasised the importance of geography in shaping human history

• He was shot by the Nazis in the Second World War.

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France

➔ Gaul was old name of France

➔ Gaul was a province of the Roman Empire

➔ The Franks, a Germanic tribe, gave their name to Gaul, making it ‘France’.

➔ From the 6th century, this region was a kingdom ruled by Frankish/French kings

➔ In 800 the Pope Leo III gave King Charlemagne the title of ‘Holy Roman Emperor’.

➔ The Patriarch (head of the Eastern Church)in Constantinople, had a similar relationship with
the Byzantine emperor.

➔ The island of England–Scotland was conquered by William 1 a duke from the French province of
Normandy in 11 th century

England

➔ The Angles and Saxons, from central Europe, had settled in England in the sixth century.

➔ The country’s name, England, is a variant of ‘Angle- land’.

➔ In the 11 th century, William I, the Duke of Normandy , crossed the English Channel and
defeated the Saxon king of England.
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➔ William I distributed land it to 180 Norman nobles who had migrated with him

➔ Feudalism developed in England from the 11 th century.

➔ The present Queen of England is descended from William I

The First Order: The Clergy(priests)

Medieval Catholic Church :features

1 The Catholic Church had its own laws

2 The Church owned lands
3 Church collected Taxes 1/10 share (tithe)
4 Head of Church was the Pope.
5 Pop lived in Rome.
6 villages had their own church

Feudal customs copied by Church.

1. The act of kneeling while praying,with hands clasped and head bowed.(vows of knight)
2. The use of the term ‘lord’ for God.
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Priest

1. Priests have their own lands

2. Women, Serfs and the physically challenged could not become priests.

3. Men who became priests could not marry.

4. Bishops were the religious nobility.

5. The bishops had vast estates, and lived in grand palace

Monks

1. Monks were deeply religious people

2. They chose to live isolated lives unlike priests

3. Men became monks and women nuns

4. Like priests, monks and nuns did not marry.

5. They lived in religious communities called abbeys or monasteries, in places far from human
habitation.

6. There were separate abbeys for men and women.

7. Monks took vows to remain in the abbey for the rest of their lives and to spend their time in
prayer, study and manual labour, like farming.
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Monasteries or abbeys

➔ The word ‘monastery’ is derived from the Greek word ‘monos’, meaning someone who lives alone

➔ ‘Abbey’ is derived from the Syriac abba, meaning father.

➔ An Abbey is governed by Abbot or an Abbess

➔ Two well-known monasteries were established by

▪ St Benedict in Italy in 529
▪ William I of Aquitaine in Burgundy(Cluny) in 910.

➔ In Benedictine monasteries, there was a manuscript with 73 chapters of rules which were
followed by monks for many centuries

➔ Monasteries grew to communities often of several hundred, with large buildings and landed
estates, with attached schools or colleges and hospitals.

➔ Hildegard was an Abbess and gifted musician,contributed to develop community singing of

prayers in church.

➔ Friars : groups of monks chose to move from place to place, preaching to the people and living
on charity

Decline of values and purposes of Monasteries (14 th

century)

➔ William Langland English wrote poem, Piers Plowman (c.1360-70), narrating luxury of the lives
of some monks.

➔ Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales which had comic portraits of a nun, a monk and a
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friar

The Church and Society

✔ Christmas (Christ’s birth) and Easter (the crucifixion of Christ and his rising from the dead)
became important dates from the fourth century.

✔ Christmas celebrated on December 25

✔ Easter date was not a fixed one, because it replaced an older festival to celebrate the coming of
spring after a long winter, dated by the lunar calendar.

✔ Traditionally, on that day, people of each village used to make a tour of their village lands.

✔ With the coming of Christianity, they continued to do this, but they called the village the ‘parish’
(the area under the supervision of one priest).

✔ Overworked peasants welcomed ‘holy days’/holidays because they were not expected to work
then.

✔ These days were meant for prayer, but people usually spent a good part of them having fun and
feasting.

✔ Pilgrimage was an important part of a Christian’s life, and many people went on long journeys
to shrines of martyrs or to big churches.
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The second order:Nobility

➔ The second order is nobles/nobility

➔ The nobility were big land owners

➔ The noble enjoyed a privileged status.

➔ He could raise troops called ‘feudal levies’.

➔ The lord held his own courts of justice

➔ He could mint his own money.

➔ He was the lord of all the people settled on his land.

➔ ‘lord’ was derived from a word meaning one who provided bread

➔ He owned vast tracts of land

➔ His land contained his own dwellings, his private fields and pasture and the homes and fields of
his tenant-peasants.

➔ His house was called a manor.

➔ His private lands were cultivated by peasants

➔ Peasants acted as foot-soldiers in battle when required, in addition.

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Vassal

➔ vassal is a person regarded as having a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch.

➔ The obligations often included military support and mutual protection, in exchange for
certain privileges, usually including land held as a tenant or fief

Vassalage system

➔ The king is top in vassalage system

➔ The nobles/land owners are vassals of King

➔ The peasants are vassals of nobles/land owners

➔ A nobleman accepted the king as his seigneur (senior)

➔ They made a mutual promise: the seigneur/lord would protect the vassal, who would be
loyal to him.

➔ This relationship involved elaborate rituals and exchange of vows taken on the Bible in a
church.

➔ At this ceremony, the vassal received a written charter or a staff or even a clod of earth as
a symbol of the land that was being given to him by his master.

The Manorial Estate

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➢ A noble/lord had his own manor-house.

➢ He also controlled hundreds of villages

➢ A manorial estate contain

✔ 12 to 60 families

✔ Everything needed for daily life was found .

✔ Women spun and wove fabric

✔ Children worked in the lord’s wine-presses.

✔ Woodlands and forests where the lords hunted.

✔ Pastures where his cattle and his horses grazed.

✔ A church

✔ A castle for defence.

✔ Bigger castles as a residence for a knight’s family.

➢ The manor not completely self-sufficient

➢ Salt, millstones , metalware rich furnishings, musical instruments and ornaments had to be
obtained from outside

The Knights

✔ A knight was a professional cavalry soldier in the Middle Ages

✔ They were linked to the lords, just as the lords were linked to the king.

✔ The lord gave the knight a piece of land (called ‘fief’) and promised to protect it.

✔ The fief could be inherited.

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✔ The knight received around 1,000 and 2,000 acres land including a house for the knight and his
family, a church and other establishments to house his dependants, besides a watermill and a
wine-press.

✔ In exchange, the knight paid his lord a regular fee and promised to fight for him in war.

✔ Knights spent time each day fencing and practising

✔ A knight might serve more than one lord, but his foremost loyalty was to his own lord.

✔ Minstrels travelled from manor to manor, singing songs which told stories – partly historical,
partly invented – about brave kings and knights.

✔ Many manors had a narrow balcony above the large hall where the people of the manor
gathered for meals.

✔ This was the minstrels’ gallery, from where singers entertained nobles while they feasted.

The Third Order: Peasants, Free and Unfree

➔ Peasantry was vast majority people

➔ Two kinds of peasants

Free peasants and Serfs .

1 Free peasants
1 Held their farms as tenants of the lord.
2 Had to render military service (at least forty days every year)
3 Work free for lord (more than 3 days in a week)
4 Do other unpaid labour services, like digging ditches, gathering
firewood, building fences and repairing roads and buildings.
5 Women and children-helped in the fields, spun thread, wove cloth,
made candles and pressed grapes to prepare wine for the lord’s use.
6 There was one direct tax called ‘taille’ that kings imposed on
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peasants

2 serfs
1 Serfs cultivated plots of land belonged to the lord
2 Much of the produce from this had to be given to the lord
3 Serfs received no wages
4 Serfs could not leave the estate without the lord’s
permission
4 serfs could use only their lord’s mill to grind their flour, his
oven to bake their bread, and his wine- presses to distil wine
and beer.
5 The lord could decide whom a serf should marry

End of Feudalism: Causes

1 Environmental changes affected agricultural life

2 Change in Land use affected agriculture
3 New agricultural technology created surplus and this led to development of trade and cities
4 Peasant revolt against revival of feudalism
5 Kings strengthened their power by gun and suppressed feudal lords

How feudal society transformed gradualy? or

Factors Affecting Social and Economic Relations

There are 3 factors affected Feudalism and led to the transformation

1 The environment
2 The Land use
3 New agricultural technology

1 The Environment

➔ The environmental factor in Europe From the 5 th to the 10th centuries reduced yields from
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agriculture

➔ Cold climate and long winters led to increased forest land and decreased cultivable land

➔ From the 11th century, Europe entered a warm phase which longer growing season and the soil.

➔ Cultivable area expanded.

➔ This affected on feudalism

2 Land Use

➔ Initially, agricultural technology was very primitive and enormous manual labour was required.

Crop Rotation Method/two field system

➔ Their crop rotation method was not effective.

➔ The land was divided in half, one field was planted in autumn with winter wheat, while the
other field was left fallow.

➔ Rye was planted on this piece of fallow land the next year while the other half was put to fallow.

➔ This led to soil deterioration, malnutrition,famines and life became difficult for the poor.

➔ The peasants were forced to bring under cultivation all the land in the manorial estate

➔ They spent more time cultivating their own fields

➔ They kept much of the product of that labour for themselves.

➔ They also avoided performing unpaid extra services.

➔ They came into conflict with the lords over pasture and forest lands

➔ They saw these lands as resources to be used by the whole community, while the lords treated
these as their private property
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➔ So land using methods posed a threat to feudal structures

3 New Agricultural Technology

➔ By the 11 th century, Instead of the wooden ploughs, cultivators began using heavy iron-tipped
ploughs and mould-boards.

➔ These ploughs could dig much deeper and the mould-boards turned the topsoil properly.

➔ With this the nutrients from the soil were better utilised.

➔ The methods of harnessing animals to the plough improved.

➔ Instead of the neck-harness, the shoulder-harness came into use.

➔ This enabled animals to exert greater power.

➔ Horses were now better shod, with iron horseshoes, which prevented foot decay.

➔ Water-powered and wind- powered mills were set up all over Europe for purposes like milling
corn and pressing grapes.

Three Field system

➔ Switch from a two-field to a three-field system.

➔ Peasants could use a field two years out of three if they planted it with one crop in autumn and
a different crop in spring a year and a half later.

➔ The First field with wheat or rye in autumn for human consumption.

➔ The second field used in spring to raise peas, beans and lentils for human use, and oats and
barley for the horses.

➔ The third field lay fallow.

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➔ Each year they rotated the use among the three fields.

Results of New Agricultural Technology

➔ Increase in the amount of food produced from each unit of land.

➔ Food availability doubled.

➔ The greater use of plants like peas and beans meant more vegetable proteins in the diet of the
average European and a better source of fodder for their animals.

➔ For cultivators, it meant better opportunities.

➔ They could now produce more food from less land.

➔ The average size of a peasant’s farm shrank from about 100 acres to 20 to 30 acres by the
thirteenth century.

➔ This gave the peasants time for other activities.

➔ Therefore the initiative was taken by the lords.

➔ Peasants set up small forges and smithies in the villages, where iron-tipped ploughs and
horseshoes were made and repaired cheaply.

➔ From the 11 th century, the personal bonds that had been the basis of feudalism were
weakening

➔ Economic transactions becoming money based.

➔ Lords found it convenient to ask for rent in cash, not services

➔ Cultivators were selling their crops for money (instead of exchanging them for other goods) to
traders

➔ The increasing use of money began to influence prices, which became higher in times of poor
harvests.

➔ In England, agricultural prices doubled between the 1270s and the 1320s

A Fourth Order? New Towns and Townspeople

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➔ Expansion in agriculture led to growth in population, trade and towns.

➔ From roughly 42 million in 1000, Europe’s population stood at 62 million around 1200 and 73
million in 1300.

➔ By the 13 th century, an average European could expect to live 10 years longer than in the eighth
century.

➔ Women and girls had shorter lifespans compared to men because the latter ate better food.

➔ Peasants who had surplus grain to sell needed a place where they could set up a selling centre
and where they could buy tools and cloth.

➔ This led to the growth of periodic fairs and small marketing centres

➔ This gradually developed town-like features – a town square, a church, roads where merchants
built shops and homes, an office where those who governed the town could meet.

➔ In other places, towns grew around large castles, bishops’ estates, or large churches.

➔ Towns offered the prospect of paid work and freedom from the lord’s control, for young people
from peasant families.

➔ ‘Town air makes free’ was a popular saying.

➔ If a serf could stay for one year and one day without his lord discovering him, he would become a
free man.

➔ Many people in towns were free peasants or escaped serfs who provided unskilled labour.

➔ Shopkeepers and merchants were numerous.

➔ Later there was need for individuals with specialised skills, like bankers and lawyers.

➔ The bigger towns had populations of about 30,000.

Guild
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➔ Guild is an association of craftsmen or traders in the town

➔ Each craft or industry in the town was organised in to a guild

➔ Guild controlled the quality of the product, its price and its sale.

➔ The ‘guild-hall’ was a feature of every town; it was a building for ceremonial functions, and
where the heads of all the guilds met formally.

Cathedral-towns

 Cathedrals are large Churches built in France

 Rich merchants donated money for cathedrals

 Cathedrals were built of stone, and took many years to complete.

 Cathedrals became centres of pilgrimage.

 Small towns developed around them.

 Cathedrals were designed so that the priest’s voice could be heard clearly within the hall

 Singing by monks could sound beautiful

 The chiming bells calling people to prayer could be heard over a great distance.

 Stained glass was used for windows.

 During the day the sunlight would make them radiant for people inside the cathedral

 After sunset the light of candles would make them visible to people outside.

 The stained glass windows narrated the stories in the Bible through pictures, which illiterate
people could ‘read’
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The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century in Feudal Europe

➔ By the early fourteenth century, Europe’s economic expansion slowed down.

➔ This was due to three factors.

1. Change in climate
2. Decline of trade
3. Plague

➔ Warm summers in Northern Europe,Storms and oceanic flooding led shortage of cultivable land

➔ The shortage of pasturage reduced the number of cattle.

➔ Famines hit Europe between 1315 and 1317

➔ Massive cattle deaths in the 1320s

➔ Shortfall in the output of silver mines in Austria and Serbia

➔ Trade was hit by a severe shortage of metal money

➔ Western Europe,was hit by the bubonic plague infection (the‘Black Death’)between 1347 and
1350.

➔ Rats in ships from distant countries carried plague to European ports.

➔ 20 per cent of the people of the whole of Europe died.

➔ Some places death as much as 40 per cent of the population

➔ The population of Europe, 73 million in 1300, stood reduced to 45 million in 1400.

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Social Unrest or peasant revolt against feudalism

➔ As a result of 14 th century crisis income of lords reduced

➔ Agricultural prices came down
➔ Wages of labourers increased.
➔ Lords tried to give up the money-contracts
➔ They tried to revive labour-services.
➔ Peasants revolted against revival of feudalism
◦ In 1323, in Flanders,
◦ in 1358 in France,
◦ in 1381 in England.
➔ Though the lords succeeded in crushing the revolts, the peasants ensured that the feudal
privileges of earlier days could not be reinvented

Political Change in Feudal Europe

New Monarchy in Europe

France Louis XI
Austria Maximilian
England Henry VII
Spain Isabelle and Ferdinand

➔ In the 15 th and 16 th centuries, as feudalism declining kings strengthened their power.

➔ The resistance of the aristocracies crumbled in the face of the gun power of the kings.

➔ These kings known as ‘the new monarchs’.

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➔ These kings started organising

◦ Standing armies
◦ A permanent bureaucracy
◦ National taxation
◦ Overseas expansion by Spain and Portugal, began to play a role in Europe’s expansion
overseas

➔ In England, rebellions occurred and were put down in 1497, 1536, 1547, 1549 and 1553.

➔ In France, Louis XI (1461-83) had to wage a long struggle against dukes and princes.

➔ Royal absolutism has been called a modified form of feudalism.

Is the later history of France and England was to be shaped by modified

form of feudalism

France

➔ Louis XIII of France, in 1614, summoned French assembly, known as the Estates-General (with
three houses to represent the three estates/orders – clergy, nobility, and the rest).

➔ After this, it was not summoned till 1789, because the kings did not want to share power with
the three orders.

England
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➔ In England the Anglo-Saxons had a Great Council, which the king had to consult before
imposing any tax.

➔ This developed into what was called the Parliament, which consisted of the House of Lords, the
members of which were the lords and the clergy, and the House of Commons, representing
towns and rural areas.

➔ King Charles I ruled for 11 years (1629–40) without calling Parliament.

➔ A section of Parliament decided to go to war Charles I , and later executed him and established
a republic.