# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Quizizz - The world's most engaging learning platform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find and create gamified quizzes, lessons, presentations, and flashcards for students, employees, and everyone else. Get started for free!

# data[].attributes.headline
Feudalism and Manor Life 17.3 assestment 

# data[].attributes.subject
Feudalism and Manor Life 17.3 assestment 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Feudalism and Manor Life 17.3 assestment 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Western Europe had no countries. Numerous tribes fought for domination over territories, but there were no central governments or national armies. The Frankish tribes established control over vast territories, and one Frankish king, Charlemagne (Charles the Great) ruled a large chunk of Europe -- from northern Spain and Italy through France, Germany and Poland. To control such a large territory, Charlemagne instituted a feudal system of government. In feudalism, the king owned all of the land.

The king granted fiefs (portions of land) to nobles (lords or barons) in return for loyalty, protection and service. The king could also grant fiefs to vassals (knights) in exchange for military service. Many knights were professional warriors who served in the lord's army. In return, the lord provided the knight with lodging, food, armor, weapons, horses and money. Peasants, or serfs, farmed the land and provided the vassal or lord with wealth in the form of food and products. The peasants were bound to the land, so it was in the vassal's interest to protect them from invaders. Fiefs -- and the obligation to serve the king -- were inherited by the eldest son of the ruling nobleman.

Feudalism allowed large territories to be governed in the absence of a central government. Each lord or vassal raised an army to defend his fief and to serve the king as needed. One drawback to this system was that the nobles were very powerful because they controlled the armies. In fact, nobles often warred amongst themselves over territories.

Feudalism did offer a means for a person to advance himself within society through military service and knighthood. Knights were members of the gentry in that they held a place in society above the peasants, but they weren't necessarily members of the noble ruling classes or royalty. Knighthood was not an inherited position -- it had to be earned. So, it was an appealing means for a younger son of a lord to advance himself. A knight could make a fortune either by a grant of land from a king or by being a paid professional in service to a lord.

The path to knighthood started when a boy was very young -- official training usually began around age 7 . In the next section, we'll learn about how boys became knights.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Western Europe had no countries. Numerous tribes fought for domination over territories, but there were no central governments or national armies. The Frankish tribes established control over vast territories, and one Frankish king, Charlemagne (Charles the Great) ruled a large chunk of Europe -- from northern Spain and Italy through France, Germany and Poland.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Western Europe had no countries. Numerous tribes fought for domination over territories, but there were no central governments or national armies. The Frankish tribes established control over vast territories, and one Frankish king, Charlemagne (Charles the Great) ruled a large chunk of Europe -- from northern Spain and Italy through France, Germany and Poland. To control such a large territory, Charlemagne instituted a feudal system of government. In feudalism, the king owned all of the land.

The king granted fiefs (portions of land) to nobles (lords or barons) in return for loyalty, protection and service. The king could also grant fiefs to vassals (knights) in exchange for military service. Many knights were professional warriors who served in the lord's army. In return, the lord provided the knight with lodging, food, armor, weapons, horses and money. Peasants, or serfs, farmed the land and provided the vassal or lord with wealth in the form of food and products. The peasants were bound to the land, so it was in the vassal's interest to protect them from invaders. Fiefs -- and the obligation to serve the king -- were inherited by the eldest son of the ruling nobleman.

Feudalism allowed large territories to be governed in the absence of a central government. Each lord or vassal raised an army to defend his fief and to serve the king as needed. One drawback to this system was that the nobles were very powerful because they controlled the armies. In fact, nobles often warred amongst themselves over territories.

Feudalism did offer a means for a person to advance himself within society through military service and knighthood. Knights were members of the gentry in that they held a place in society above the peasants, but they weren't necessarily members of the noble ruling classes or royalty. Knighthood was not an inherited position -- it had to be earned. So, it was an appealing means for a younger son of a lord to advance himself. A knight could make a fortune either by a grant of land from a king or by being a paid professional in service to a lord.

The path to knighthood started when a boy was very young -- official training usually began around age 7 . In the next section, we'll learn about how boys became knights.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Western Europe had no countries. Numerous tribes fought for domination over territories, but there were no central governments or national armies. The Frankish tribes established control over vast territories, and one Frankish king, Charlemagne (Charles the Great) ruled a large chunk of Europe -- from northern Spain and Italy through France, Germany and Poland.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article was most recently revised and updated by

Vassal, in feudal society, one invested with a fief in return for services to an overlord. Some vassals did not have fiefs and lived at their lord's court as his household knights. Certain vassals who held their fiefs directly from the crown were tenants in chief and formed the most important feudal group, the barons. A fief held by tenants of these tenants in chief was called an arriere-fief, and, when the king summoned the whole feudal host, he was said to summon the ban et arriere-ban. There were female vassals as well; their husbands fulfilled their wives' services.

Under the feudal contract, the lord had the duty to provide the fief for his vassal, to protect him, and to do him justice in his court. In return, the lord had the right to demand the services attached to the fief (military, judicial, administrative) and a right to various "incomes" known as feudal incidents. Examples of incidents are relief, a tax paid when a fief was transferred to an heir or alienated by the vassal, and scutage, a tax paid in lieu of military service. Arbitrary arrangements were gradually replaced by a system of fixed dues on occasions limited by custom.

The vassal owed fealty to his lord. A breach of this duty was a felony, regarded as so heinous an offense that in England all serious crimes, even those that had nothing to do with feudalism proper, came to be called felonies, since, in a way, they were breaches of the fealty owed to the king as guardian of the public peace and order.

The vassals' rights over the fiefs grew larger and larger in course of time, and soon fiefs became hereditary in the sense that investiture could not be withheld from an heir who was willing to do homage. The rules of inheritance tended to safeguard an undivided fief and preferred the eldest among the sons ( primogeniture). This principle was far from absolute; under pressure from younger sons, parts of an inheritance might be set apart for them in compensation ( see appanage). Vassals also acquired the right to alienate their fiefs, with the proviso, first, of the lord's consent and, later, on payment of a certain tax. Similarly, they obtained the right to subinfeudate-that is, to become lords themselves by granting parts of their fiefs to vassals of their own. If a vassal died without heir or committed a felony, his fief went back to the lord ( see escheat).

Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. Subscribe today

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Zeidan, Assistant Editor.

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

Italy: The kingdom of Italy

...military dependents) became vassi ("vassals"), and minor judicial officials were henceforth called scabini, as their counterparts were called north of the Alps. As in Francia, the church acquired greater political importance, for the Carolingians in Italy used bishops in their central and local administrations almost as much as they...

Spain: Society, economy, and culture

As vassals holding fiefs of the count of Barcelona, the Catalan nobles owed him military and court service, and they often had vassals of their own. In the western states, royal vassals usually held land in full ownership rather than in fief. As vassals of the...

history of the Low Countries: Social classes

...bound to the king as vassals and rewarded by fiefs ( beneficia). Next were the freemen ( liberi, ingenui), bound to the king by an oath of allegiance and traditionally under an obligation to serve in the army and in the law courts. A freeman's Wergeld- the sum that had to be paid...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
vassal | Definition, Middle Ages, History, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Vassal, one invested with a fief in return for services to an overlord in a feudal society. Under the feudal contract, the lord had the duty to provide the fief for his vassal, to protect him, and to do him justice in his court.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Rules of vassals The vassals would give the knights land in reward for hard work. Feudal system demanded that vassals agree to pay their respects to the lords in ceremony. The ceremony is about creating a bond between the vassals and their lord. *Manor System And Serfs* The

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Elizabeth A.R. Brown Emerita Professor of History, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Feudalism | Definition, Examples, History, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
feudalism, also called feudal system or feudality, French féodalité, historiographic construct designating the social, economic, and political conditions in western Europe during the early Middle Ages, the long stretch of time between the 5th and 12th centuries. Feudalism and the related term feuda…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Three-Field System

A key component of the Manor System, the three-field system was a method of crop rotation designed to maximize the amount of food the manor produced. The fields were used for different purposes and were rotated each year. The rotation allowed the fields to regain nutrients needed for crops to grow.

The first field would be planted with winter crops such as rye and wheat. The second field would be planted with spring crops such as peas and beans. And the third field would lie fallow, meaning nothing was planted in it that year, allowing the field to rest.

Mill

Located within the manor would often be a mill used to grind wheat and other grains to make flour. The mill was located along a stream or river because they ran on water power (picture an old-fashioned water wheel). As the wheel turned, the grain was ground by large stones.

Manor House

The Manor House was a large, elaborate house where the Lord and his family lived. Sometimes this was an actual castle! The bigger the manor house was and the more powerful the Lord, the more protection it offered against threats and other invasions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A key component of the Manor System, the three-field system was a method of crop rotation designed to maximize the amount of food the manor produced. The fields were used for different purposes and were rotated each year. The rotation allowed the fields to regain nutrients needed for crops to grow.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As the Western Roman Empire collapsed, landholders gradually transitioned from outright slavery to serfdom, a system in which unfree laborers were tied to the land.

The late Roman Empire led big farms to convert themselves into self-sufficient estates, due to a trade crisis and labor shortage.

Tenant farmer status became hereditary, as the result of changes in Roman labor law that tried to freeze existing social structures in place.

As the Western Roman Empire collapsed, landholders gradually transitioned from outright slavery to serfdom, a system in which unfree laborers were tied to the land.

In the absence of powerful regional authorities after the collapse of the Carolingian Empire in 888, local manorial lords held sway in Western Europe, collecting rents and labor from unfree serfs and tenant farmers.

What is feudalism?

Let's imagine that you're a poor European farmer in the Middle Ages. Here's the political situation: you don't own the land you live on. It's rented from a baron or a duke. You and your neighbors share a plow between you, and you combine your oxen into teams to till the soil together. There's not much social mobility: your parents and grandparents before you worked this same land. You don't even have the legal right to leave the property, without the permission of your landlord. You're a serf, in a feudal economy.

The term feudal is a tricky one, because few scholars can quite agree on what it means these days. Seventeenth-century historians and lawyers who studied the Middle Ages decided to give a common name to the diverse landowner-tenant arrangements that existed in northwest Europe during the Middle Ages, starting with the collapse of Charlemagne's empire in the late ninth century and declining after the Black Plague and the Peasant Revolt in the fourteenth century. Though these arrangements could range widely in style, they were lumped together under the label of feudalism, from the Medieval Latin term feudum referring to a landed estate. Medieval economies were largely based around the operations of those landed estates. Modern historians dispute whether or not it's useful to lump together the management of these estates in that way. Rather than diving into the arguments of how to organize this history, let's discuss some common threads about those estates. For our purposes, the important thing is that those lands were cultivated with a combination of free and unfree labor-let's talk about how that came to be.

The closest Europe came to operating under one system of landowner agreements was in the late eighth and early ninth century CE. Charlemagne established counties and appointed counts to rule regions of his domain. But, in the wake of his death, his empire dissolved. Counts who had received lands from the court of Charlemagne began to consolidate their own local power, exerting control over the people who lived on their lands. They owed allegiance to the Church and to the kingdoms that guaranteed their claims of land ownership, but each medieval lord established their own particular set of rules. If you were to travel through early medieval Europe, you would find yourself in a hundred petty kingdoms, each with its own manor or landed estate, each one with its manorial court.

The land of these manors was tilled by unfree agricultural workers, or serfs. To discover exactly what a serf is, we'll need to move back in history a bit and visit late Imperial Rome.

The origins of serfdom in Rome

Slavery was foundational to the Roman economy: enslaved people tilled the fields, cleaned homes, quarried-extracted-rocks and salt, and sometimes served as accountants for wealthy Romans. Enormous estates grew valuable crops like olives and grapes; these estates required many enslaved people to run.

The nearly fifty-year Imperial Crisis in the third century CE led to civil war, economic collapse, and a breakdown of trade across the Roman Empire. This meant a temporary end to long-distance trade of wine and olive oil. As imperial expansion slowed, fewer prisoners of war and kidnapped children were enslaved, and the elites who ran estate farms had to search elsewhere for low-cost labor. Without a centralized economy to lean on, the estates had to become self-sufficient, producing food and crafts without outside aid.

As city economies crumbled, lower-class plebeians from the city immigrated to the countryside and entered into a new kind of labor agreement with the landholders. Neither entirely enslaved nor truly free, these former city-dwellers were called coloni. Coloni were sharecropper farmers. They didn't own their land; they rented it from a landowner in exchange for a portion of the harvest produced in their fields. As this labor system emerged, Roman emperors created laws that bound the coloni to the land and made their status hereditary-it passed from parent to child. Coloni could marry, but they couldn't marry non- coloni. They could not leave the land to which they were assigned. They could not file suit against their landlords.

This system, and these restrictions, would eventually become known as serfdom. Similar systems emerged independently throughout several different societies.

What factors led to Roman plebeians moving from the city to the countryside?

Slavery and serfdom

There are important distinctions between slavery and serfdom. Slavery describes a system in which a person can be bought and sold as property; enslaved people were not considered human beings with rights. Take a look at a translation of this early medieval law from Bavaria, a region now part of Germany: "A sale once completed should not be altered, unless a defect is found which the vendor has concealed, in the slave or horse or any other livestock sold...: for animals have defects which a vendor can sometimes conceal."

Classifying enslaved people as livestock was typical at the time this law was written; enslaved people were not deemed to be people. Serfs, however, were legally people-though they had far fewer rights than free peasants (poor farmers of low social status). Serfs' movements were constrained, their property rights were limited, and they owed rents of all sorts to their landlords.

Serfdom in Western Europe

As Germanic peoples overtook the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century and beyond, many imperial institutions began to crumble. Competing powers and interests destroyed traditional trade routes between parts of the Roman Empire. Elites, whether through skill in combat or other political power, controlled the land and the people who lived on it. The Roman estate farms did not disappear, but the land changed hands and purposes. Landowners switched from growing grapes and olives for export to producing grain and animals for survival.

Like the Roman coloni before them, medieval peasants or serfs could own property and marry, but there were restrictions on their rights. Under a rule known as merchet or formariage, a serf had to pay a fee in order to marry outside their lord's domain, as they were depriving him of a labor source by leaving. "If [a serf] died childless", writes historian Barbara Tuchman, "his house, tools, and any possessions reverted to the lord under the right of morte-main [from dead hands], on theory that they had only been lent to the serf for his labor in life."

Although serfs could technically own property, what were some restrictions on this rule?

Tenant farmers-that is, people who didn't own the land they worked-owed some kind of payment to their landlords. This could be a portion of the harvest, days of labor in the lord's own fields-called the demesne-or money. The amount and type of payment was not influenced by market forces; it was coercive, or forced. There was no standard rent in the Middle Ages, and tenant farmers had few ways to contest the rent demanded of them. The lord of the manor-who set the terms of the rent agreement-was also usually the local legal authority. A moral economy-where cultural or political intervention limits market prices or freedom of contract-was enforced by the teachings of the church. This system ensured that the lord had the right to rule and that the poor farmers were entitled to his protection. Prices were established by a sense of what was just. There were, for example, biblical prohibitions against charging interest that were enforced during this period. When the shared values of the community were broken, the peasants rejected the system and revolted. As Will Durant writes in The Story of Civilization, "the community itself was therefore the chief source of law. The baron or king might give commands, but these were not laws; and if he exacted more than custom sanctioned he would be frustrated by universal resistance."

Lords of the manor were not always nobility. Many estates in England were monasteries, for example. In an accounting from a thirteenth-century English abbey, a serf named Hugh Miller paid three kinds of rent: monetary, labor, and rent in the form of food. Each year, Miller paid three shillings and a penny-approximately $266 today. He worked the abbot's land three days a week, except for one week at Christmas, one at Easter, and one at a summer festival. In addition to money and labor, Miller owed the abbot one bushel of wheat, 18 sheaves of oats, three hens, and a rooster each year, with an additional five eggs owed for Easter.

Why serfdom?

Given all this, what benefit was there in serfdom? Why would a serf tolerate these practices?

Without the peace guaranteed by Charlemagne's unified rule, the serfs needed a lord's protection. In the absence of a strong centralized government, the threat of violence lurked everywhere: from bandits and the armed bands of other warlords. In exchange for tending a lord's demesne, a serf could expect the lord's private army to protect them. The lords needed the serfs, too; labor shortages caused by war and disease limited the available workforce in Western Europe. This is part of why the terms of serfdom constrained a peasant's rights to resettle-it maintained a labor pool for the lordly class. While the terms of these agreements could vary widely, as they were derived from a variety of sources-"barbarian" codes of the Germanic kingdoms, Church law, and Roman property ordinances-some labor practices were relatively standard.

The unfree farming that elite landlords oversaw sustained the military units that protected their estates, and the people who worked and lived on them. The wealth generated by these feudal estates powered the Crusades, and, following the Black Death and the Peasant Revolt, would begin to concentrate in the peasant class. This would lead to artisan specialization, the growth of cities, and a desire for goods from far-off places. Those factors together would lead to the rise of guild economies, the Renaissance, and the colonial voyages of discovery.

What was the relationship between serfs and lords, broadly? Why did lords need serfs?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Serfdom in Europe (article) | Khan Academy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The lives of women in the Middle Ages were determined by the Church and the aristocracy. The medieval Church provided people with the 'big picture' of the meaning of life and one's place in it; the aristocracy ensured that everyone stayed in their respective places through the feudal system of government which divided society into three classes: clergy, nobility, and serfs.

Women's place in the clergy was restricted to the nunnery. Noble women's positions were dictated by how much land they brought to marriage because land equaled power; therefore the quality of life and opportunities for autonomy could vary significantly among the upper class. Women of the lowest class actually had more freedom of expression than the other two because life was uniformly difficult for the serfs - male or female - and women worked alongside men in the fields and in the medieval guilds as equals or near-equals.

Women's rights and opportunities in the Middle Ages were not uniform, however, even though those of the lower class had the least amount of variation. Scholars divide the Middle Ages into three periods:

Early Middle Ages - 476-1000 CE

High Middle Ages - 1000-1300 CE

Late Middle Ages - 1300-1500 CE

The rights of women from the earliest era through the last grew significantly owing largely to two distinct factors: the increasing popularity of the Cult of the Virgin Mary and the development of the concepts of courtly love and chivalry. Women's status and opportunities would also expand after the outbreak of the Black Death pandemic of 1347-1352 CE which killed so many that women were allowed to assume ownership an operation of their late husband's businesses. Women's rights would reach their apex in the Late Middle Ages at which time more restrictions were implemented by the patriarchal system primarily because women's social positions threatened the status quo.

Changing Attitudes Toward Women

The Cult of the Virgin Mary was not new to the Middle Ages. Mary had been declared the Mother of God by the Church in 431 CE at the Third Ecumenical Council. Mary's high standing, however, did little to elevate women's status in society. The Church both demonized and elevated women through the dichotomy of the biblical tale of Eve - who caused humanity's fall from grace in the Garden of Eden - and that of the Virgin Mary whose son was believed to have redeemed that fall. Women were simultaneously considered the source of all the ills of the world and the means of that world's redemption through the birth of Jesus Christ.

Sign up for our free weekly email newsletter!

The view of women as either evil temptresses or virginal goddesses left no middle ground for a reasoned perception.

Accordingly, women were at once denied the same social status as men while legally being recognized as a man's partner, helpmate and, under certain conditions, even his equal. The view of women as either evil temptresses or virginal goddesses left no middle ground for a reasoned perception of woman-as-individual. In the Early Middle Ages, the woman-as-temptress model prevailed as clergy emphasized Eve's role in the fall of man. From the 12th century CE during the High Middle Ages onwards to the end, the Cult of Mary was more popular and so the perception of women improved.

Even so, women were still collectively demonized even at the height of the cult's popularity for failing to mirror the Virgin Mary's perfection. Women were certainly seen in a better light than they had been previously but this did not mean the clergy, aristocracy, or males in general were interested in seeing them elevated above their supposed God-given place as made clear in the Bible in such passages as I Corinthians 11:3 where it states that man is the head of the woman or I Timothy 2:11-15 which makes clear that women are subordinate to men and Eve was the first sinner. Women were therefore always linked to Eve while, at the same time, they were elevated by association with Mary. Scholar Eileen Power comments:

In considering the characteristic medieval ideas about woman, it is important to know not only what the ideas themselves were but also what were the sources from which they spring. The expressed opinion of any age depends on the persons and the classes who happen to articulate it; and for this reason alone it often represents the views of a small but vocal minority. In the early Middle Ages, what passed for contemporary opinion came from two sources - the Church and the aristocracy. (9)

Power goes on to point out that these two sources - the one celibate and the other regarding women as an 'ornamental asset' - were the least qualified to write on women. In spite of the 'official' view of women as second-class citizens found in these sources - especially sermons and other ecclesiastical works - household records, legal documents, guild records, and other documents show that women throughout most of the Middle Ages made a living in the same trades as men, frequently took over a business following their husband's death, and were valued merchants, artists, and artisans.

Women's Rights

Throughout the Middle Ages, lower-class women were bakers, brewers, milkmaids, barmaids, artisans, weavers and, primarily, tenant farmers who worked alongside their husbands and children in the fields. The feudal system dictated that the land belonged to the lord, who rented it to his tenants - the serfs - who were bound to that land. The lord controlled every aspect of the serf's life and this extended to a man's wife and daughters.

The lord decided who a girl would marry, not the girl's father, because the daughter of a serf was essentially property of the lord just as her father and mother were. Once the girl was married, her husband controlled her interests and was responsible for her behavior and, for this reason, women are not mentioned as often as men in legal matters in the Early Middle Ages. The woman's husband would be sued if a woman transgressed, not the woman herself. The woman's job was to take care of the home, help her husband at his work, and produce children. Power writes, "the great majority of women lived and died wholly unrecorded as they labored in the field, the farm, and the home" (Loyn, 346).

The hierarchy of medieval society was rigidly maintained, and one very rarely rose above the station one was born into. There was no middle class and the only hope for a woman to better her situation, without marrying, was to enter a nunnery. It is possible, as some scholars have suggested, that there were women who chose this route in hopes of education, but if so they were largely disappointed.

Priests, for the most part, saw no benefit in literate nuns. Even Ende (10th century CE), the famous female manuscript illuminator from Spain, was most likely illiterate. Nuns learned their prayers and devotions by memory, not from books, although it is thought that many young women of means learned to read from the popular devotional work known as the Book of Hours.

Legal & Economic Status

An emphasis on trade during the High Middle Ages provided greater opportunity for women. During this period, in Spain and France initially, the middle class began to emerge as merchants amassed enough wealth to be able to influence political matters. The medieval guild had a great deal to do with the emergence of the middle class and also was responsible for increased rights and responsibilities for women.

Higher-class women had more mobility but were still expected to remain in their socially accepted niche.

Women of the new bourgeoisie could work with their husbands and fathers in a given trade and frequently succeeded the male as head of the business upon his death. Woman-as-cheap-labor was a concept already well-established through the feudal system and was perpetuated by the guild system because women were legal non-entities and so could be paid less than a man. At the same time, many women during this period appear in legal documents as having been fined for various trespasses instead of their husbands, a significant departure from the precedent of the Early Middle Ages.

The lowest class of the serfs and the upper-class noble women continued to live more or less as women had before them and both were tied to the land in one way or another. Power writes:

Among the nobility, marriage was a critical factor in the transmission of land and fiefs and was arranged by families with great care, often with little consideration for the preferences of the parties involved, one or both of whom might be children. Only in periods and places where women had personal rights over land did they exercise much independence. (Loyn, 346)

Higher-class women had more mobility but were still expected to remain in their socially accepted niche and perform the duties associated with that position. Exceptions to this rule in the Early Middle Ages are notable because they were so rare: Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians (r. 911-918 CE) who led Mercia's resistance against Viking raids and ruled her kingdom after her husband's death or the theologian St. Hilda of Whitby (c. 614-680 CE) who founded the famous monastery of Whitby in Northumbria. Other famous women of this time were Clotilde (475-545 CE), wife of Clovis, king of the Franks who converted her husband to Christianity; Theodora (497-548 CE), wife of the emperor Justinian of the Byzantine Empire who was equal to her husband in influence, and Brunhilda of Austrasia (r. 567-613 CE) who ruled her country as sole monarch.

Depiction & Involvement in Art

By the time of the High Middle Ages, when the Cult of the Virgin Mary was increasing in popularity, more noble women were exercising power and some to such an extent as to significantly change their culture's perception of women. Two of the most powerful women of this era were Eleanor of Aquitaine (l. c. 1122-1204 CE) and her daughter Marie de Champagne (l. 1145-1198 CE). Eleanor was one of the most powerful political figures - male or female - in the Middle Ages as a whole. She was the wife of Louis VII of France (r. 1137-1180 CE) from 1137 CE until the marriage's annulment in 1152 CE when she married Henry II of England (r. 1154-1189 CE). Eleanor took part in the Second Crusade along with her ladies-in-waiting, managed her own estates and finances, and was an important patron of the arts, especially of romantic literature.

Scholars continue to debate Eleanor's role in the development of the concept of courtly love and the chivalric code, but there is no doubt that many of the major French authors of the best-known works on this subject (such a Wace, Andreas Cappelanus, Bernart de Ventadorn) enjoyed her patronage. Her daughter Marie is said to have either helped her mother develop these concepts at Poitiers or was inspired by her mother's earlier efforts to establish the so-called 'courts of love' at her estate in southern France.

The courts of love were allegedly convened to discuss matters relating to romantic love and relationships between men and women. Among the topics discussed and debated was whether romantic love could exist in marriage (it was decided it could not) and which was worse: to lose a lover to death or infidelity (infidelity was considered worse because the lover took not only the future but also the memories of the past). Marie was the patroness of one of the greatest writers of the Middle Ages, Chretien de Troyes, whose Arthurian Romances popularized the concept of courtly love and chivalry.

Previously, a woman was the possession of a man and his inferior; the romantic poetry of the 12th century reversed this paradigm by encouraging the elevation of women who were to be protected and served by a refined and sophisticated gentleman - the chivalric knight. These works had a dramatic effect upon the aristocracy of medieval Europe as scholar Norman Cantor observes:

By making feminine qualities heroic, the romantic poets enhanced the dignity of woman and made her a being with distinctive and valuable qualities. (348)

Eleanor and Marie were both associated with the medieval religious heresy of Catharism which revered a goddess of wisdom (Sophia) and departed from orthodox Catholicism on a number of significant points. It has therefore been suggested that the romantic poetry of courtly love was actually created as a kind of "scripture" for adherents of the sect who would otherwise have been persecuted by the Church. The great lady who appears in the poems under various names is Sophia and the devoted knight who serves her is the Cathar. This claim, while supported by considerable evidence, is still challenged by many modern-day scholars and far from universally accepted.

Whether the poems were religious allegories or simple entertainment, they combined with the economic and social climate of the High Middle Ages to endow upper-class and middle-class women with greater respect and more equality. Women had always had the responsibility of taking over their husband's financial affairs after his death or when he was called away to transact some business or go to war but this practice becomes more prevalent during the High Middle Ages.

Women's lives in the Late Middle Ages continued along the lines of this same paradigm with, once again, the upper and lower classes remaining fairly steady and the middle class experiencing the most dramatic changes. Even so, the new model of women as individuals of value gained increasing momentum, which resulted in more upper-class women expressing themselves in literary and religious works.

The most dramatic departure from the old paradigm is exemplified in the great French-Italian author Christine de Pizan (also known as Christine de Pisan, l. 1364-1430 CE). Born in Venice, Pizan moved to Paris when her scholarly father was appointed astrologer at the court of Charles V (1364-1380 CE). According to Pizan's own works, her father encouraged her literary interests while her mother felt she should restrict herself to 'women's work' such as learning to spin and weave cloth. Left with no means of supporting her family after both her father and husband died, Pizan turned to writing, becoming the first female professional writer in European history.

This paradigm extended to the church, which had denied women access to education, through the lives and works of such notable authors as Julian of Norwich (l. 1342-1416 CE), Catherine of Sienna (1347-1380 CE), and St. Therese d'Avila (l.1515-1582 CE), among others.

Role in Society

While women in abbeys, nunneries, and at court in the Late Middle Ages were finding new freedom in expression and greater acceptance among men, women of the bourgeoisie were facing renewed restrictions. Women in guilds in the Late Middle Ages found less and less work as guilds began to deny them membership and male co-workers made their lives more difficult. Women were still paid less than men and so it was more profitable overall for a shop to hire a female rather than a male. As this practice became more common, men were threatened by loss of work and retaliated; guilds increasingly were restricted to men.

It is unclear whether more women entered nunneries during this period but it is known that nuns were illuminating manuscripts as early as the 10th century CE, there were female scribes by at least 1274 CE, and more women seem to have been involved in book production in the 14th century CE than before. Female religious orders seem to have remained stable, but a new order, the Beguines, started in the 13th century CE in France, quickly gained a significant number of adherents.

The Beguines were all devoted women who lived lives of poverty, good works, and charity but were not nuns and could leave the group whenever they chose to. These women took care of each other and the surrounding community through the manufacture of goods and by providing services and so were able to get around the new strictures of the guilds and live life according to their own values without having to marry or join a religious order.

Married women of the middle-class in the High Middle Ages routinely took care of their husband's business accounts and took over after his death. This practice became more widespread following the Black Death pandemic of 1347-1352 CE when women regularly operated their late husband's or son's business, gained title to their lands, and had greater autonomy than before. Noble women, who had been expected to manage their husband's estate and vassals when he was called away on business or to war, now became solely responsible for operations and transactions following the death of their husband and sons.

Conclusion

Women in medieval times were not the passive victims of the religious and political patriarchy, no matter how often that claim is repeated. Women frequently found ways around the obstacles placed in their path or forged new paths when a challenge proved too great. They took over their husband's businesses and ran them successfully, continued to work in guilds, or even formed their own guilds as the textile guilds of Italy attest.

The Church, while upholding and encouraging the understanding that women were of less value than men, made some important concessions in recognizing the value of women like the authors mentioned above and, equally important, ruling that women were individuals of value and not just a man's possession. In Denmark, in the 12th century CE, the church ruled that rape was a crime against a woman and not - as had previously been held - a crime only against her father or husband. Even so, women's success and advances in the Late Middle Ages could not overturn the status quo supported by the patriarchy of the Church and aristocracy. Further restrictions were placed on women even as society entered the more enlightened era of the Renaissance.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The lives of women in the Middle Ages were determined by the Church and the aristocracy. The medieval Church provided people with the 'big picture' of the meaning of life and one's place in it; the aristocracy ensured that everyone stayed in their respective places through the feudal system of government which divided society into three classes: clergy, nobility, and serfs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Serfs and manorialism  | World History | Khan Academy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Manorialism and Feudalism in the Middle Ages