World History

Unit 3: The World in Transition

Chapter 10: The Rise of the Middle Ages

Mon, Nov 11, 2013

21. Tue, Nov 12, 2013

Having trained largely as a mediaevalist myself (DrMcM) I find a lot of things to grumble about in this chapter. Some of them are given as grumbles, but some are fairly fundamental to understanding the material.

One of the most notable of Clovis' achievements was his conversion. Though the book does not really go into the details, we think that you're probably capable of handling them: the noteworthy and distinguishing feature here is that he converted to Catholic Christianity (Trinitarian) rather than to the Arianism that was much more widely characteristic of the Germanic tribes. In this sense, most modern self-identified Christians adhere to the Catholic Trinitarian model; there are a few Arian groups (followers of the bishop Arius — having nothing to do with Aryans [i.e., Indo-Europeans] — who believed that Jesus was not God).

The description of the lives of "ordinary people" on p. 233 is frankly ludicrous. A quick examination of records will indicate that the model proposed here is silly. A forty-year old man was not considered very old. Yes, life expectancy was on the average about thirty years. But one needs to see those figures in context. In a society where medical and sanitary conditions might claim the lives of 50-60% of children under the age of five, the average lifespan was obviously lower. Nevertheless, once one made it to adulthood, a person might plausibly be expected to live 60-70 years, barring death by violence — not very different from our standards today. One can verify this by simply looking at the lifespans of known figures during the Middle Ages — kings, philosophers, poets, and so on: anyone whose dates are known. As today, some died younger, but many made it to a ripe old age, and to do so was not considered freakish.

Feudalism in many ways defies modern classification. It was at once a political system, an economic system, and a social system defining relationships and patterns of loyalty and obligation across all strata of society. One can distinguish those different elements from here, but only provisionally. It is important to realize that to those who took part in it, they were not separate but unified into a seamless whole. The earliest origins of feudalism as an economic model probably come from the old Roman latifundia of the second century B.C. Large land-holdings — more territory that could be plausibly farmed by a farmer and his family — invariably entail the need to employ workers (either hirelings or slaves) from outside, or else something like this model of land-holding. Though susceptible to many abuses, the tenant-farmer model in some ways has more in common with the old single-owner farm than larger industrial concerns.

Interestingly, one of the concepts that is more or less central to western capitalism is the notion of land ownership. Under feudalism this would be radically lessened: in general, people saw themselves as holding rather than owning land. Your textbook gives a reasonably good summary of the nature of the feudal relationship, but it doesn't perhaps explore a few of the second-order implications. Here are a few other points:

• Land was granted in return for specific services, not blanket alliance or loyalty. It was possible to hold land from multiple lords: if they were to come into conflict, it would be entirely possible to supply a certain specified number of knights to each of them without being considered disloyal by either one. (Do we have anything like this today?)
• There was no absolute status as lord or vassal. It was entirely possible (even if not terribly common) for two people to hold land from each other.
• Despite the book's claim, the full flowering of feudalism, in which knight-service was the most basic "coin" of exchange, defining the obligations of the vassal, was not really possible until the knight became a characteristic entity. This actually didn't happen until sometime in the eleventh century. There is a sequence of basically technological improvements that made this possible. We'll talk about this in class, but consider what kinds of things they might be.
• Much of the book's definition and description of knights is taken from fiction and the movies. Feel free to disregard it.
• The book characterizes the peasants as hardworking. Do we really know that they were? If it was like any other age of human history, it seems likely that some were and some were not.

Here are some specific questions to look at and consider. The text probably doesn't offer anything like adequate answers to them, but we think they're interesting, and we'll pursue them in class:

• How do the institutions and the forms of the church project themselves onto the structures of society as a whole? What models of community are outlined in early Christianity and Germanic tribal culture find an expression in the wider world?
• What are the underlying notions behind feudalism? What does it mean to those who participate in it?
• Most models of society in the Middle Ages depended fundamentally on notions of personal, rather than institutional loyalty. It's not the same thing to be loyal to an institution (country, school, corporation, or the like) as to be loyal to a person. How would that change your perspective on the world? Which is stronger? Why?

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