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Charlemagne or Charles the Great, numbered Charles I, was the King of the Franks from 768, the King of the Lombards from 774, and the Emperor of the Romans from 800. During the Early Middle Ages, he united the majority of western and central Europe.

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Charlemagne's Early Years

Charlemagne-sometimes referred to as Charles the Great-was born around 742, the son of Bertrada of Laon (d.783) and Pepin the Short (d.768), who became king of the Franks in 751.

Charlemagne's exact birthplace is unknown, although historians have suggested Liege in present-day Belgium and Aachen in modern-day Germany as possible locations. Similarly, little is known about the future ruler's childhood and education, although as an adult, he displayed a talent for languages and could speak Latin and understand Greek, among other languages.

Did you know? Charlemagne served as a source of inspiration for such leaders as Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) and Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), who had visions of ruling a unified Europe.

After Pepin's death in 768, the Frankish kingdom was divided between Charlemagne and his younger brother Carloman. The brothers had a strained relationship; however, with Carloman's death in 771, a 24-year-old Charlemagne became the sole ruler of the Franks.

Charlemagne Expands his Christian Empire

Once in power, Charlemagne sought to unite all the Germanic peoples into one kingdom, and convert his subjects to Christianity. In order to carry out this mission, he spent the majority of his reign engaged in military campaigns. Soon after becoming king, he conquered the Lombards (in present-day northern Italy), the Avars (in modern-day Austria and Hungary) and Bavaria, among others.

Charlemagne waged a bloody, three decades-long series of battles against the Saxons, a Germanic tribe of pagans, and earned a reputation for ruthlessness. In 782 at the Massacre of Verden, Charlemagne reportedly ordered the slaughter of some 4,500 Saxons. He eventually forced the Saxons to convert to Christianity, and declared that anyone who didn't get baptized or follow other Christian traditions be put to death.

Charlemagne's Family

In his personal life, Charlemagne had multiple wives and mistresses and perhaps as many as 18 children. He was reportedly a devoted father, who encouraged his children's education. He allegedly loved his daughters so much that he prohibited them from marrying while he was alive.

Einhard, a Frankish scholar and contemporary of Charlemagne, wrote a biography of the emperor after his death. In the work, titled "Vita Karoli Magni (Life of Charles the Great)," he described Charlemagne as "broad and strong in the form of his body and exceptionally tall without, however, exceeding an appropriate measure...His appearance was impressive whether he was sitting or standing despite having a neck that was fat and too short, and a large belly."

Holy Roman Emperor

In his role as a zealous defender of Christianity, Charlemagne gave money and land to the Christian church and protected the popes. As a way to acknowledge Charlemagne's power and reinforce his relationship with the church, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Romans and first ruler of the vast Holy Roman Empire on December 25, 800, at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

As Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne proved to be a talented diplomat and able administrator of the vast area he controlled. He promoted education and encouraged the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of renewed emphasis on scholarship and culture.

Charlemagne also instituted economic and religious reforms, and was a driving force behind the Carolingian minuscule, a standardized form of writing that later became a basis for modern European printed alphabets.

Carolingian Empire

Charlemagne ruled from a number of cities and palaces throughout the Carolingian Empire, but spent significant time in Aachen. His palace there included a school, for which he recruited the best teachers in the land.

In addition to learning, Charlemagne was interested in athletic pursuits. Known to be highly energetic, he enjoyed hunting, horseback riding and swimming. Aachen held particular appeal for him due to its therapeutic warm springs.

He was also no stranger to elegant indulgence: According to Einhard, "On great feast-days Charles made use of embroidered clothes, and shoes bedecked with precious stones. His cloak was fastened by a golden buckle, and he appeared crowned with a diadem of gold and gems."

Charlemagne's Death and Succession

Einhard wrote that Charlemagne was in good health until the final four years of his life, when he often suffered from fevers and acquired a limp. However, as the biographer notes, "Even at this time...he followed his own counsel rather than the advice of the doctors, whom he very nearly hated, because they advised him to give up roasted meat, which he loved, and to restrict himself to boiled meat instead."

In 813, Charlemagne crowned his son Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine, as co-emperor. Louis became sole emperor when Charlemagne died in January 814 at the age of 72, ending his reign of more than four decades. At the time of his death, his empire encompassed much of Western Europe.

Charlemagne was buried at the cathedral in Aachen. In the ensuing decades, his empire was divided up among his heirs, and by the late 800s, it had dissolved.

Nevertheless, Charlemagne became a legendary figure endowed with mythical qualities. In 1165, under Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Charlemagne was canonized for political reasons; however, the Catholic Church today does not recognize his sainthood.

Charlemagne's Skull

Years after his burial in Aachen, authorities believe that pieces of Charlemagne's skull and some of his bones were exhumed for placement in church reliquaries throughout Europe. Most of his skeleton, however, is believed to have stayed at his cathedral in Aachen.

In 2014, researchers determined that Charlemagne's skull and other bones in Aachen were indeed the remains of a singularly tall, large man who died in his 70s and had bony deposits in the knee and heel bones, giving credence to the story of Charlemagne's limp. The top of the skull remains visible in an ornate golden bust securely housed in the cathedral.

Sword of Charlemagne

Another remnant from Charlemagne's reign has achieved near-mythic status: La Joyeuse, or "the Joyous," a medieval sword, is believed by some authorities to be the sword Charlemagne carried into battle.

Armory experts debate whether the sword - a 38-inch weapon with a gold hilt - is actually the sword of Charlemagne, or a later creation that was used primarily for ceremonies. Currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris, the sword had been used for the coronations of French kings since Philip the Bold was crowned in 1270.

Sources

Charlemagne lived on. Route Charlemagne Aachen.
Charlemagne in Aachen 2014. Medieval Histories.
Charlemagne's Bones Are Likely Authentic, Scientists Say. LiveScience.com.
The Sword of Charlemagne. MyArmoury.com.

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Charlemagne: Facts, Empire & Holy Roman Emperor - HISTORY

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Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, was a medieval king who established a vast Carolingian empire and was eventually crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope.

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Chivalry, or the chivalric code, is an informal and varying code of conduct developed between 1170 and 1220. It was associated with the medieval Christian institution of knighthood; knights' and gentlemen's behaviours were governed by chivalrous social codes.

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In the 21st century, the word chivalry evokes a kind of old-fashioned male respect for women. But during the Middle Ages, the code was established for much grittier reasons.

At a time of routine military violence with massive civilian casualties, chivalry was an effort to set ground rules for knightly behavior. While these rules sometimes dictated generous treatment of the less-fortunate and less-powerful, they were focused mainly on protecting the interests of elites.

The development of chivalry went hand-in-hand with the rise of knights-heavily armored, mounted warriors from elite backgrounds-starting around the time of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The word chivalry itself comes from the Medieval Latin caballarius, meaning horseman.

In the middle of the 11th century, the knight was not a particularly honorable figure.

"He's a hired thug," says Jennifer Goodman Wollock, a professor of medieval studies at Texas A&M University who has written two books about chivalry. "He's got horses. He's got armor. He's like a heavy tank."

Knights Were Heavily Armed and Prone to Violence

These warriors were commanded by warlords and rewarded with land, or with license to plunder the villages where they did battle, looting, raping and burning as they went.

"In the early Middle Ages, church councils were praying to be delivered from knights," Wollock says. "What develops as you get into the late 11th, 12th century is a sense that knights have to have a professional code if they're going to be respected and respectable."

There was never a firm consensus on what it meant to be a good knight. The most common values found in rules that commanders created for knights revolved around the practical needs of a military force: bravery in battle and loyalty to one's lord and companions.

"You've got all these people who are very prone to violence, heavily armed," says Kelly Gibson, a medieval historian at the University of Dallas and editor of Vengeance in Medieval Europe. "You've got to find some way to get them to get along."

The Chivalrous Knight Appears in Romantic Fiction

Still, Wollock argues that chivalry did go well beyond the simple need for a disciplined military. Particularly in romantic literature of the time-some of it written expressly for young noblemen who were being trained for knighthood. Knights were presented as pious, generous and merciful.

"To be a great knight, you ought to have consideration of civilians, for women," Wollock says. "The greatest knights are inspired by the love of some lady out there and want to impress her and win her love by doing great deeds."

Of course, it's hard to know how much of an impression these stories-generally written not by knights themselves but by clergymen or poets-made on young warriors. Richard Kaeuper, a historian at the university of Rochester and author of several books on medieval chivalry, argues that, while knights generally considered themselves honorable and pious, they didn't necessarily follow religious leaders' rules.

Kaeuper points to the example of the Fourth Crusade, called by Pope Innocent III in 1202 to seize Jerusalem from its Muslim rulers. Instead, the holy knights ended up sacking the great Christian city of Constantinople.

"The pope said, 'Don't do that.' But what's he going to do, excommunicate the whole crusade army?" Kaeuper says.

A Code for the Noble Class Only

On the flip side, Wollock says, chivalric culture encouraged knights to develop their own sense of morality rather than simply relying on church authorities. That led some of them to question the slaughter of Muslims during the crusades.

Yet even when knights did follow a code of chivalry as they understood it, these ideas about honor and good behavior focused mostly on concern for the noble class that knights were part of, often at the expense of the poor.

"There's a lot of courtesy-you want to be able to speak well to ladies, defend ladies," Wollock says. "Ordinary women, shepherdesses, are just rather like for sport."

Kaeuper says few medieval texts describing chivalry warned against burning or looting towns or raping common women. That style of warfare was still endemic during the Hundred Years' War of the 14th and 15th centuries, when England and France fought each other, laying waste to the countryside.

"In a way it's like mafia tactics: 'You think the king of France can protect you? He can't. Our king would protect you,'" Kaeuper says.

Kaeuper argues that our current understanding of chivalry as a code of proper masculine behavior, particularly in relation to women, has little to do with real knights in the Middle Ages. Rather, he argues, European neo-romantics in the late 19th century adapted the word to define ideal male behavior.

As for the actual effects of chivalry in the Middle Ages, Gibson says it's just hard to tell how much a strong focus on honor truly reined in knights' aggression.

"I think they were pretty destructive," she says, "even with this code.

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Chivalry Was Established to Keep Thuggish, Medieval Knights in Check | HISTORY

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Knights in the Middle Ages were heavily-armed and prone to violence.

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Common law, also called Anglo-American law, the body of customary law, based upon judicial decisions and embodied in reports of decided cases, that has been administered by the common-law courts of England since the Middle Ages.

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The dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.

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Feudalism was the system in 10th-13th century European medieval societies where a social hierarchy was established based on local administrative control and the distribution of land into units (fiefs). A landowner (lord) gave a fief, along with a promise of military and legal protection, in return for a payment of some kind from the person who received it (vassal).

The payment of the vassal to the lord typically came in the form of feudal service which could mean military service or the regular payment of produce or money. Both lord and vassal were freemen and the term feudalism is not generally applied to the relationship between the unfree peasantry (serfs or villeins) and the person of higher social rank on whose land they laboured.

Problems of Definition

Although the term 'feudalism' and 'feudal society' are commonly used in history texts, scholars have never agreed on precisely what those terms mean. The terms were applied to European medieval society from the 16th century onwards and subsequently to societies elsewhere, notably in the Zhou period of China (1046-256 BCE) and Edo period of Japan (1603-1868). The term feudalism was not used by the people who lived in the Middle Ages. Neither can the feudal system, once defined, be applied uniformly across different European states as there were variations in laws and customs in different geographical areas and in different centuries. As a consequence, many historians beleive that the term feudalism is only of limited use in understanding medieval societies.

The Oxford English Dictionary has as concise a definition for feudalism as anywhere while still including its various levels of application:

The dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labour, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.

Origins of Feudalism

The word 'feudalism' derives from the medieval Latin terms feudalis, meaning fee, and feodum, meaning fief. The fee signified the land given (the fief) as a payment for regular military service. The system had its roots in the Roman manorial system (in which workers were compensated with protection while living on large estates) and in the 8th century kingdom of the Franks where a king gave out land for life ( benefice) to reward loyal nobles and receive service in return. The feudal system proper became widespread in Western Europe from the 11th century onwards, largely thanks to the Normans as their rulers carved up and dished out lands wherever their armies conquered.

The vassal received any income from the land, had authority over its inhabitants & could pass the same rights on to his heirs.

Lords & Vassals

Starting from the top of society's pyramid, the monarch - a good example is William the Conqueror (r. 1066-1087) who considered all the lands of England as his personal property - could give a parcel of land (of no fixed size) to a noble who, in return, would be that monarch's vassal, that is he would promise loyalty and service when required. Thus, a personal bond was created. The most common and needed service was military service. Military obligations included fighting in that monarch's army or protecting assets of the Crown such as castles. In some cases, a money payment (known as scutage), which the monarch then used to pay mercenary soldiers, might be offered instead of military service. The vassal received any income from the land, had authority over its inhabitants and could pass the same rights on to his heirs.

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The nobles who had received land, often called suzerain vassals, could have much more than they either needed or could manage themselves and so they often sub-let parts of it to tenant vassals. Once again, the person was given the right to use and profit from this land and in return, in one form or another, then owed a service to the landowner. This service could again take the form of military service (typical in the case of a knight) or, as tenants might be of a lower social class (but still be freemen) and they might not have had the necessary military skills or equipment, more usually they offered a percentage of their revenue from the land they rented (either in money or produce) or, later in the Middle Ages, made a fixed payment of rent. There were also irregular special fees to be paid to the lord such as when his eldest daughter married or his son was knighted.

The arrangement which created a vassal was known as 'homage' as they often knelt before their particular feudal lord and swore an oath of loyalty, for which, in return, they not only received the land but also their lord's protection if and when required. The promise of protection was no small matter in times of war, when there were frequent raids from hostile neighbouring states, and when there was a perpetual danger of general banditry. Protection also came in the form of legal support and representation if a vassal found himself in a civil or church court. A tenant usually handed down their tenancy to their heir although it was sometimes possible to sell the right of tenancy to a third party, provided the lord who owned the land agreed.

Another type of relationship in feudal societies, especially in medieval Germany and France, involved the allod, an inalienable property, i.e. one that could not be taken back. Holders of an allodstill owed some form of allegiance to a superior local lord but the relationship was not based on land ownership and so that allegiance was harder to enforce.

The feudal system perpetuated itself as a status quo because the control of land required the ability to perform military service & land was required to fund military service.

The feudal system perpetuated itself as a status quo because the control of land required the ability to perform military service and, because of the costs involved (of weapons, armour and horses), land was required to fund military service. Thus there was a perpetual divide between the landed aristocracy (monarchs, lords, and some tenants) and those who worked the land for them who could be free or unfree labourers. Unfree labourers were serfs, also known as villeins, who were at the bottom of the social pyramid and who made up the vast majority of the population. The peasantry worked, without pay, on the land owned or rented by others to produce food for themselves and, just as importantly, food and profit for their masters. They were often treated as little more than slaves and could not leave the estate on which they lived and worked. The term feudalism, however, is generally applied by modern historians only to the relationship between lords and vassals, and not the peasantry. Rather, the relationship between serf and landowner or tenant is referred to as the manorial system after the most common unit of land, the 'manor'.

Consequences & Effects

The consequence of the feudal system was the creation of very localised groups of communities which owed loyalty to a specific local lord who exercised absolute authority in his domain. As fiefs were often hereditary, a permanent class divide was established between those who had land and those who rented it. The system was often weighted in favour of the sovereign as when a noble died without an heir, his estate went back to the monarch to either keep for themselves or to redistribute to another noble. Monarchs could distribute land for political purposes, fragmenting a noble's holdings or distancing him from the court. It also became difficult to keep track of who owned what which led to such controls as Domesday Book of 1087.

Additional effects were the presence of vassals in the local courts which deliberated on cases involving the estates of their lords. Thus, there could be a clear conflict of interest and lack of impartiality, even if the more serious criminal cases were referred to the courts of the Crown.

In addition, the system of feudal relationships could create serious unrest. Sometimes a monarch might insist on active military service because of a war but nobles might also refuse, as happened to King John of England in 1215 and the Barons' Revolt which led to the signing of the Magna Carta. In 1215, and in subsequent revolts in the 13th century, the barons were acting collectively for their own interests which was a direct threat to the entire system of feudalism, based as it was upon single lords and vassals working out their own private arrangements. Military service was reduced to fixed terms, typically 40 days in England, in an effort to reduce the burden on nobles so that they did not leave their lands unattended for too long. However, 40 days was not usually enough to see out a campaign and so a monarch was obliged to pay mercenaries, dealing another blow to the tradition of feudalism and vassalage.

Decline of Feudalism

Medieval feudalism was essentially based on the relationship of reciprocal aid between lord and vassal but as that system became more complex over time, so this relationship weakened. Lords came to own multiple estates and vassals could be tenants of various parcels of land so that loyalties became confused and even conflicting with people choosing to honour the relationship that suited their own needs best.

Another blow to the system came from sudden population declines caused by wars and plagues, particularly the Black Death (which peaked between 1347-1352), and by peasant revolts (most famously in England in 1381). Such crises caused a chronic shortage of labour and the abandonment of estates because there was no one to work them. The growth of large towns and cities also saw labour leave the countryside to find a better future and the new jobs available there.

By the 13th century, the increase in commerce and the greater use of coinage changed the way the feudal system worked. Money allowed feudal lords to pay their sovereign instead of performing military service; the monarch's use of mercenaries then meant military service, and thus the barons themselves became less important to the defence of the realm. Conversely, a monarch could now distribute money instead of land in his system of rewards. A rich merchant class developed with no ties of loyalty to anyone except their sovereign, their suppliers and their customers. Even serfs could sometimes buy their freedom and escape the circumstances into which they were born. All of these factors conspired to weaken the feudal system based on land ownership and service even if feudalism would continue beyond the medieval period in some forms and in some places.

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Feudalism was the system in 10th-13th century European medieval societies where a social hierarchy was established based on local administrative control and the distribution of land into units (fiefs). A landowner (lord) gave a fief, along with a promise of military and legal protection, in return for a payment of some kind from the person who received it (vassal).

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A feudal contract was an exchange of pledges established by custom and tradition that created the economic and political relationship between lords and vassals, or lesser lords. It was based on an exchange of land for loyalty and military service.

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Henry II was King of France from 31 March 1547 until his death in 1559. The second son of Francis I, he became Dauphin of France upon the death of his elder brother Francis III, Duke of Brittany, in 1536.

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Henry II, also called (until 1547) Duke (duc) d'Orléans, (born March 31, 1519, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, France-died July 10, 1559, Paris), king of France from 1547 to 1559, a competent administrator who was also a vigorous suppressor of Protestants within his kingdom.

The second son of Francis I and Claude of France, Henry was sent with his brother Francis, the dauphin, as a hostage to Spain in 1526 and did not return to France until 1530, after the conclusion of the Peace of Cambrai. When the dauphin died in 1536, Henry became heir to the throne. Strong differences between Henry and his father were accentuated by the rivalry between Henry's mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and the king's, Anne, Duchess d'Étampes, as well as by Henry's continuing support of the constable Anne de Montmorency, who had lost favour with the crown. Henry's reputation has suffered by contrast with his father's brilliance, and his melancholy made his character unsympathetic. Although he continued many of his father's policies, he dismissed many of his father's ministers and raised Montmorency and the house of Guise to favour.

Upon his accession, Henry undertook administrative reforms. The functions of the different sections of the king's council became more specialized; the commissaries sent into the provinces "to exercise the king's orders" were the forerunners of the intendants; and intermediary tribunals were established between the local justices and the parlements (high courts). In foreign affairs Henry continued his father's warfare against the Holy Roman emperor Charles V. He signed the Treaty of Chambord in 1552 with the German Protestant princes, promising them troops and subsidies; in return, they agreed to France's taking the bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. Though Henry made a truce with Charles in 1556, war was soon resumed when a French expedition was sent into Italy under François, Duke de Guise (1557). The Spanish in the Netherlands, however, besieged the town of Saint-Quentin in Picardy, and Montmorency was defeated in an attempt to relieve it. After Guise had somewhat improved the situation by taking Calais, Guînes, and Thionville, the financial difficulties of both France and Spain and Henry's desire to fight Protestantism in France led to the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559).

A bigoted Roman Catholic, Henry was rigorous in the repression of Protestantism, which was approaching the zenith of its power in France. In 1547 he created the Chambre Ardente in the Parlement of Paris for trying heretics. His Edict of Écouen (1559) laid the ground for systematic persecution of the Protestants.

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The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis was to be cemented by the marriages of Henry's daughter Elizabeth and his sister Margaret to Philip II of Spain and to Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, respectively. In a tournament during the festivities, Henry was hit in the head by a lance of Gabriel, Count de Montgomery, captain of the Scottish guard, and died 10 days later. He left four sons by his marriage to Catherine de Médicis: the future kings Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III and François, Duke d'Alençon and later Duke d'Anjou. In addition to Elizabeth, he had other daughters by Catherine-Margaret, who married Henry of Navarre (the future Henry IV), and Claude, who married Charles III the Great, Duke of Lorraine. One of his natural children was Diane de France, who was legitimatized.

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

France: Military and financial organization

In 1551 Henry II added a treasurer general; from 1577 the bureaux des finances, new supervisory bodies composed of a collector general and a number of treasurers, made their appearance in each généralité....

Protestantism: Calvinism in France

Henry II, the son of Francis, intensified repression, particularly when France and Spain made peace in 1559 and thus were free to devote attention to the suppression of heresy at home. The persecution of the Huguenots, as the Protestants came to be called in France,...

...the Hôtel des Tournelles, which Henry II had had enlarged and beautified by Philibert Delorme in 1550. Great nobles, such as the dukes of Guise and Lorraine, followed the king and had palaces built in the vicinity. When Henry II was killed in a joust on the rue Saint-Antoine in...

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Henry II, king of France from 1547 to 1559, a competent administrator who was also a vigorous suppressor of Protestants within his kingdom.

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The Justinian Code was the foundation for the Byzantine legal system for nearly nine hundred years. The served its purpose and brought law and order back to the Byzantines. Even though the Page 3 Byzantine Empire would be finished off by the Ottoman Empire the Justinian Codes influence had spread to most of Europe.

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The Justinian Code or Corpus Juris Civilis (Corpus of Civil Law) was a major reform of Byzantine law created by Emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565 CE) in 528-9 CE. Aiming to clarify and update the old Roman laws, eradicate inconsistencies and speed up legal processes, the collection of imperial edicts and expert opinions covered all manner of topics from punishments for specific crimes to marriage and the inheritance of property. Not only used as a basis for Byzantine law for over 900 years, the laws therein continue to influence many western legal systems to this day.

A New Law Code

In February 528 CE Justinian I assembled a group of ten legal experts and 39 scribes to reassess Byzantine law and compile a new collective legislative code. It was a truly Herculean task which involved studying hundreds of documents and Latin Roman laws dating back to the early Roman Republic of the west, deciding which were no longer relevant, which should be maintained, and which needed some adapting. The old system relied on such diverse traditional sources of Byzantine law as the Codex Gregorianus (imperial edicts from 196 to 284 CE), Codex Hermogenianus (mostly imperial edicts of Diocletian, r. 284-305 CE), and Codex Theodosianus (issued in 438 CE and containing edicts dating back to Constantine I, r. 306-337 CE).

From over 2000 books & three million lines of legal text, a new comprehensive & consistent body of laws was produced.

Many of the laws within the older works were repetitive, contradictory or simply did not meet the requirements of a society which had since moved on from earlier Roman times. From over 2000 books and three million lines of legal text, a new comprehensive and consistent body of laws had to be thrashed out and distilled and then better organised into subjects and themes. As a result, Justinian would achieve his multiple aims of making the laws clearer for all, reducing the number of cases brought before the courts (many were based on misunderstandings and a misinterpretation of what actually was the law), and increasing the speed with which legal cases were dealt with. Justinian may also have been motivated by a desire to outdo the famed legal achievements of Theodosius II (r. 402-450 CE), and this he undoubtedly did achieve. Finally, a new and consistent law code would help in Justinian's plan to expand the Byzantine Empire into new territories and bring those societies under the jurisdiction of Roman law.

Content

The commission to update Byzantine law was led by the great legal expert Tribonian who had already served as of the Great Palace of Constantinople, the highest legal position in the empire. The first part of the Corpus Juris Civilis was completed in April 529 CE, and two more parts were added in the following year. The work superseded all previous legal documents and records of any kind. To add to these, Justinian himself issued decrees, and thus the Justinian Code was eventually made up of four main parts:

Codex Justinianus - the Codex, issued in 529 CE, was a collection of 12 books containing 4,562 imperial edicts from the time of Hadrian (r. 117-138 CE) to Justinian I himself, organised by theme and all correctly attributed to the emperor who had made them and with a date. Interestingly, the first book deals with ecclesiastical topics whereas in the older codexes this was dealt with last - an indicator of how Christianity had become more entrenched in Byzantine culture by the 6th century CE.

Digestum (or Pandectae) - the Digest (or Pandects), issued in December 533 CE, was a compendium of legal opinions by celebrated Roman jurists of the past, which could be cited by claimants and defenders in court. It was also designed to be of use to practising judges. These words of wisdom were all edited, reduced and assembled into 50 books (instead of the previous 1,500) and all organised by subject. The works of the prolific 2nd-3rd century CE lawyer and writer Ulpian (aka Domitius Ulpianus) were especially popular with Justinian's legal team, and these make up 40% of the Digest.

Institutiones - the Institutes, also issued in December 533 CE, was a sort of handbook of the Codex and Digestum for law students to better understand and apply them. It was compiled by Trebonian and two other experts, Theophilos and Dorotheos.

Novellae Constitutiones - the Novels (or New Laws) was a collection of the imperial edicts made by Justinian between 534 and 565 CE, the final year of his reign. Instead of Latin, as used previously (and still used in the other three parts), Greek was mostly used in these new edicts, the common language of the Byzantine Empire.

The laws within this huge body of work (still around 1 million words) dealt with every aspect of life and society in Byzantium. There are matters regarding the constitution, the powers of the emperor, the duties of high-ranking officials, and the sources of law. There are matters of private law and criminal law with punishments listed for specific crimes, as well as coverage of administrative affairs and issues related to tax, local government, the civil service, and the military. As with previous Roman law, a particular concern was the relations between individuals such as contracts, marriage, divorce, property ownership, inheritance, and succession. Finally, ecclesiastical matters were given much greater prominence in a departure from previous law codes.

The Novels, in particular, addressed the social changes that Byzantine society had undergone and its evolution away from the Roman society of Constantine's days. Thus the rights of such groups as women, slaves, and children were improved. Further, it was now established, for the first time in Roman law, that the emperor was the single legitimate source of law.

Justinian's Code was itself revised within a few years to reflect recent legislation and reissued in December 534 CE (it is this version which exists today). To prevent any future confusion as to what was what, all commentaries on the Code were banned. The Code was studied by students of law in the fifth year of their studies. As a consequence, gradually most of the Codex was translated into Greek by the end of the 6th century CE. Justinian's Code was also introduced into the recently reconquered Italy (in 554 CE), but it was relatively neglected there until the 11th century CE when it was incorporated into the medieval Corpus Iuris Civils using Latin instead of Greek. Parts of North Africa also used the Code until the Arab expansion of the 7th century CE.

Roman & then Byzantine laws were, above all, rational, precise & comprehensive.

Legacy

The body of laws created by Justinian and his experts, in one form or another, lasted for almost a millennium until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 CE. New Byzantine laws were, of course, added to it over the centuries as each emperor issued their own edicts and society evolved. Leo VI (r. 886-912 CE), for example, famously produced another collection of Byzantine edicts and had everything translated into Greek as next to nobody understood Latin anymore (few ordinary people would have even in Justinian's day).

The Corpus Juris Civilis may have failed in Justinian's aim to aid his imperial ambitions but, as it became a fundamental element of any higher education across Europe from the 11th century CE and has become the basis for many legal systems ever since, perhaps he did, in the end, achieve something of a lasting cultural domination. The Code is a monument to rival his other great achievement, the Hagia Sophia of Constantinople. Roman and then Byzantine laws were, above all, rational, precise and comprehensive, and it is these qualities which have greatly influenced many of the national and international laws by which we live today. As the historian J. H. Rosser notes:

The Corpus Juris Civilis not only preserved Roman law but provided the basis of law for emerging European nations. Its influence on western civilization is probably greater than any other book, except, of course, the Bible. (101)

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The Justinian Code or Corpus Juris Civilis (Corpus of Civil Law) was a major reform of Byzantine law created by Emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565 CE) in 528-9 CE. Aiming to clarify and update the old Roman laws, eradicate inconsistencies and speed up legal processes, the collection of imperial edicts and expert opinions covered all manner of topics from punishments for specific crimes to marriage and the inheritance of property.

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A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. The background of knighthood can be traced back to the Greek hippeis and Roman eques of classical antiquity.

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knight, French chevalier, German Ritter, now a title of honour bestowed for a variety of services, as in the British system of nobility and peerage, but originally in the European Middle Ages a formally professed cavalryman.

The first medieval knights were professional cavalry warriors, some of whom were vassals holding lands as fiefs from the lords in whose armies they served, while others were not enfeoffed with land. ( See also knight service.) The process of entering knighthood often became formalized. A youth destined for the profession of arms might from the age of 7 or so serve his father as a page before joining the household of his father's suzerain, perhaps at the age of 12, for more advanced instruction not only in military subjects but also in the ways of the world. During this period of his apprenticeship he would be known as a damoiseau (literally "lordling"), or varlet, or valet (German: Knappe), until he followed his patron on a campaign as his shield bearer, écuyer, or esquire, or as the bearer of his weapons (armiger). When he was adjudged proficient and the money was forthcoming for the purchase of his knightly equipment, he would be dubbed knight. The ceremonial of dubbing varied considerably: it might be highly elaborate on a great feast day or on a royal occasion; or it could be simply performed on the battlefield; and the dubbing knight might use any appropriate formula that he liked. A common element, however, was the use of the flat of a sword blade for a touch on the shoulder-i.e., the accolade of knighthood as it survives in modern times.

As knighthood evolved, a Christian ideal of knightly behaviour and chivalry came to be accepted, involving respect for the church, protection of the poor and the weak, loyalty to one's feudal or military superiors, and preservation of personal honour.
(Read Sir Walter Scott's 1824 Britannica essay on chivalry.)
The nearest that the ideal ever came to realization, however, was in the Crusades, which, from the end of the 11th century, brought the knights of Christian Europe together in a common enterprise under the auspices of the church. Knights dubbed at Christ's tomb were known as knights of the Holy Sepulchre. During the Crusades the first orders of knights came into being: the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem (later the Knights of Malta), the Order of the Temple of Solomon ( Templars), and, rather later, the Order of St. Lazarus, which had a special duty of protecting leper hospitals. These were truly international and of an expressly religious nature both in their purpose and in their form, with celibacy for their members and a hierarchical structure (grand master; "pillars" of lands, or provincial masters; grand priors; commanders; knights) resembling that of the church itself. But it was not long before their religious aim gave place to political activity as the orders grew in numbers and in wealth.

At the same time, crusading orders with a rather more national bias came into being. In Spain, for the struggle against the Muslims there or for the protection of pilgrims, the Orders of Calatrava and of Alcántara and Santiago (St. James) were founded in Castile between 1156 and 1171; Portugal had the Order of Avís, founded about the same time; but Aragon's Order of Montesa (1317) and Portugal's Order of Christ were not founded until after the dissolution of the Templars. The greatest order of German knights was the Teutonic Order. These "national" crusading orders followed a course of worldly aggrandizement like that of the international orders; but the crusades in Europe that they undertook, no less than the international enterprises in Palestine, would long attract individual knights from abroad or from outside their ranks.

Between the end of the 11th century and the middle of the 13th, a change took place in the relationship of knighthood to feudalism. The feudal host, whose knights were enfeoffed landholders obliged to give 40 days' service per year normally, had been adequate for defense and for service within a kingdom; but it was scarcely appropriate for the now more frequent long-distance expeditions of the time, whether crusades or sustained invasions such as those launched in the Anglo-French wars. The result was twofold: on the one hand, the kings often resorted to distraint of knighthood, that is, to compelling holders of land above a certain value to come and be dubbed knights; on the other hand, the armies came to be composed more and more largely of mercenary soldiers, with the knights, who had once formed the main body of the combatants, reduced to a minority-as it were to a class of officers.

The gradual demise of the Crusades, the disastrous defeats of knightly armies by foot soldiers and bowmen, the development of artillery, the steady erosion of feudalism by the royal power in favour of centralized monarchy-all these factors spelled the disintegration of traditional knighthood in the 14th and 15th centuries. Knighthood lost its martial purpose and, by the 16th century, had been reduced to an honorific status that sovereigns could bestow as they pleased. It became a fashion of modish elegance for the sophisticated nobles of a prince's entourage.

A great number of secular knightly orders were established from the late Middle Ages onward: for example (to name but a few), The Most Noble Order of the Garter, Order of the Golden Fleece, The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, The Most Ancient Most Noble Order of the Thistle, and The Most Honourable Order of the Bath. These honours were reserved for persons of the highest distinction in the nobility or in government service or, more generally, for persons distinguished in various professions and arts. In the United Kingdom, knighthood is today the only title still conferred by a ceremony in which sovereign and subject both take part personally. In its modern form the subject kneels and the sovereign touches him or her with a drawn sword (usually a sword of state) first on the right shoulder, then on the left. The male knight uses the prefix Sir before his personal name; the female knight the prefix Dame.

See also Bath, The Most Honourable Order of the; British Empire, The Most Excellent Order of the; Chrysanthemum, Order of the; Companions of Honour, Order of the; Garter, The Most Noble Order of the; Golden Fleece, Order of the; Knights of Malta; Legion of Honour, Order of the; Merit, Order of; Paulownia Sun, Order of the; Pour le Mérite; Rising Sun, Order of the; Royal Victorian Order; Saint Michael and Saint George, The Most Distinguished Order of; Templar; Thistle, The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the.

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Knight, now a title of honor bestowed for a variety of services, but originally in the European Middle Ages a formally professed cavalryman. The first medieval knights were professional cavalry warriors, some of whom were vassals holding lands as fiefs from the lords in whose armies they served.

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Magna Carta, which means 'The Great Charter', is one of the most important documents in history as it established the principle that everyone is subject to the law, even the king, and guarantees the rights of individuals, the right to justice and the right to a fair trial.

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By 1215, thanks to years of unsuccessful foreign policies and heavy taxation demands, England's King John was facing down a possible rebellion by the country's powerful barons. Under duress, he agreed to a charter of liberties known as the Magna Carta (or Great Charter) that would place him and all of England's future sovereigns within a rule of law. Though it was not initially successful, the document was reissued (with alterations) in 1216, 1217 and 1225, and eventually served as the foundation for the English system of common law. Later generations of Englishmen would celebrate the Magna Carta as a symbol of freedom from oppression, as would the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, who in 1776 looked to the charter as a historical precedent for asserting their liberty from the English crown.

Background and Context

John (the youngest son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine) was not the first English king to grant concessions to his citizens in the form of a charter, though he was the first one to do so under threat of civil war. Upon taking the throne in 1100, Henry I had issued a Coronation Charter in which he promised to limit taxation and confiscation of church revenues, among other abuses of power. But he went on to ignore these precepts, and the barons lacked the power to enforce them. They later gained more leverage, however, as a result of the English crown's need to fund the Crusades and pay a ransom for John's brother and predecessor, Richard I (known as Richard the Lionheart), who was taken prisoner by Emperor Henry VI of Germany during the Third Crusade.

Did you know? Today, memorials stand at Runnymede to commemorate the site's connection to freedom, justice and liberty. In addition to the John F. Kennedy Memorial, Britain's tribute to the 35th U.S. president, a rotunda built by the American Bar Association stands as "a tribute to Magna Carta, symbol of freedom under law."

In 1199, when Richard died without leaving an heir, John was forced to contend with a rival for succession in the form of his nephew Arthur (the young son of John's deceased brother Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany). After a war with King Philip II of France, who supported Arthur, John was able to consolidate power. He immediately angered many former supporters with his cruel treatment of prisoners (including Arthur, who was probably murdered on John's orders). By 1206, John's renewed war with France had caused him to lose the duchies of Normandy and Anjou, among other territories.

Who Signed the Magna Carta and Why?

A feud with Pope Innocent III, beginning in 1208, further damaged John's prestige, and he became the first English sovereign to suffer the punishment of excommunication (later meted out to Henry VIII and Elizabeth I). After another embarrassing military defeat by France in 1213, John attempted to refill his coffers-and rebuild his reputation-by demanding scutage (money paid in lieu of military service) from the barons who had not joined him on the battlefield. By this time, Stephen Langton, whom the pope had named as archbishop of Canterbury over John's initial opposition, was able to channel baronial unrest and put increasing pressure on the king for concessions.

With negotiations stalled early in 1215, civil war broke out, and the rebels-led by baron Robert FitzWalter, John's longtime adversary-gained control of London. Forced into a corner, John yielded, and on June 15, 1215, at Runnymede (located beside the River Thames, now in the county of Surrey), he accepted the terms included in a document called the Articles of the Barons. Four days later, after further modifications, the king and the barons issued a formal version of the document, which would become known as the Magna Carta. Intended as a peace treaty, the charter failed in his goals, as civil war broke out within three months.

After John's death in 1216, advisors to his nine-year-old son and successor, Henry III, reissued the Magna Carta with some of its most controversial clauses taken out, thus averting further conflict. The document was reissued again in 1217 and once again in 1225 (in return for a grant of taxation to the king). Each subsequent issue of the Magna Carta followed that "final" 1225 version.

What Did the Magna Carta Do?

Written in Latin, the Magna Carta (or Great Charter) was effectively the first written constitution in European history. Of its 63 clauses, many concerned the various property rights of barons and other powerful citizens, suggesting the limited intentions of the framers. The benefits of the charter were for centuries reserved for only the elite classes, while the majority of English citizens still lacked a voice in government. In the 17th century, however, two defining acts of English legislation-the Petition of Right (1628) and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679)-referred to Clause 39, which states that "no free man shall be...imprisoned or disseised [dispossessed]... except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land." Clause 40 ("To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice") also had dramatic implications for future legal systems in Britain and America.

In 1776, rebellious American colonists looked to the Magna Carta as a model for their demands of liberty from the English crown on the eve of the American Revolution. Its legacy is especially evident in the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution, and nowhere more so than in the Fifth Amendment ("Nor shall any persons be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law"), which echoes Clause 39. Many state constitutions also include ideas and phrases that can be traced directly to the historic document.

Where Is the Original Magna Carta?

Four original copies of the Magna Carta of 1215 exist today: one in Lincoln Cathedral, one in Salisbury Cathedral, and two in the British Museum.

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By 1215, thanks to years of unsuccessful foreign policies and heavy taxation demands, England's King John was facing down a possible rebellion by the country's powerful barons. Under duress, he agreed to a charter of liberties known as the Magna Carta (or Great Charter) that would place him and all of England's future sovereigns within a rule of law.

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A manor is the basic unit of manorialism, which became the dominant economic system during parts of the European Middle Ages. It defined the relationship between the lord of the manor, and serfs and free peasants who worked various plots of land.

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A manor is the basic unit of manorialism, which became the dominant economic system during parts of the European Middle Ages. It defined the relationship between the lord of the manor, and serfs and free peasants who worked various plots of land. In English law, Welsh law and Irish law, the lord held an estate in land (land title) which included the right to hold a manorial court. The court had jurisdiction over most of those who lived within the lands of the manor.

The smallest unit of land under the feudal system (which defined the military and legal relationships between nobles) is the fee (or fief), on which the manor became established through the process of time. In modern terms, the manor could be thought of as the "business" which the lord establishes on the fief, which is the area of land they have been granted. The manor is nevertheless often described as the basic feudal unit of land tenure and is historically connected with the territorial divisions of the march, county, hundred, parish and township.

The legal theory of the origin of manors refers them to a grant from the crown of a fee from the monarch's allodial lands, as stated in the following extract from Perkins's Treatise on the laws of England:

"The beginning of a manor was when the king gave a thousand acres of land, or greater or lesser parcel of land, unto one of his subjects and his heirs, which tenure is knight service at the least. And the donee did perhaps build a mansion house upon parcel of the same land, and of 20 acres, parcel of that which remained, or of a greater or lesser parcel, before the statute of Quia emptores did enfeoff a stranger to hold of him and his heirs to plough 10 acres of land, parcel of that which remained in his possession, and did enfeoff another of another parcel thereof to go to war with him against the Scots etc., and so by continuance of time made a manor".

It is still as the jurist Sir Joshua Williams terms it, a "fundamental rule" that all lands were originally derived from the crown and that the monarch is lord paramount mediate or immediate of all the land in the realm. A manor then arises when the holder of a parcel so granted or supposed to have been granted by the crown, and who is termed in relation thereto the lord of the manor, has in turn granted portions thereof to others who stand to him in the relation of tenants. Of the portion reserved by the lord for his own use, termed the demesne, part was occupied by villeins, with the duty of cultivating the rest for the lord's use. These were originally tenants at will and in a state of semi- serfdom but they became in course of time the copyhold tenants of the later law. It is of the essence of copyhold that it should be regulated by the custom of the manor, as evidenced in the manorial roll produced by the manorial court. Manors cannot be created at the present day because manorial courts cannot be established with any legal jurisdiction. Scriven stated:

"Length of time being of the very essence of a manor, such things as receive their perfection by the continuance of time come not within the compass of the king's prerogative"

Effect of Quia Emptores

The effect of the statute of Quia Emptores (1290) was to make the creation of manors henceforward impossible, inasmuch as it enacted "that upon all sales and feoffments of land the feoffee shall hold the same, not of his immediate feoffor, but of the chief lord of the fee of whom such feoffor himself held it". The statute did not apply to a tenant-in-chief of the king, who might have alienated his land under a license. Accordingly, it is assumed that all existing manors are "of a date prior to the statute of Quia Emptores except perhaps some which may have been created by the king's tenants-in-chief with license from the crown". When a great baron had granted out smaller manors to others, the seignory of the superior baron was frequently termed an honour.

All land was differentiated by its legal status and by physical characteristics. The basic forms of tenure were: Freehold, Copyhold, Customary Freehold and Leasehold. The legal status of land in England and Wales has been simplified such that only Freehold and Leasehold land remains (although, since 2002, a new category, Commonhold, also exists). In Ireland (Northern and Republic), only Freehold and Leasehold land remain.

Demesne divided into:

deer park, where the high and rare honour of a royal licence to empark had been obtained, usually restricted to great nobles or to the king's favoured courtiers, which enabled the lord to de-bar entry into the emparked area to other hunters, including to the king himself, who was accustomed to hunt several dozen square miles at a time with hundreds of hunt followers when on royal progresses around his kingdom. Horsemen would surround such large area in a funnel shape and all deer enclosed within would be systematically driven into large nets at the mouth of the funnel, to be slaughtered and later cooked and eaten by the king's huge retinue. Thus the lord of the manor would be able to enclose the licensed area by casting up an earthbank and hedge or a stone wall, both to preserve his own deer captive within, safe from predation and to prevent entry by others. Such arrangements frequently caused disputes amongst neighbouring lords and the annals record many instances of deliberate break-ins and breaking down of hedges for the purpose of exercising purported hunting-rights.

pleasure garden, a later development.

manor farm, home farm or barton, land retained "in-hand" by the lord of the manor, without sub-tenant and exploited for his own direct benefit by his own paid servants or manorial workforce, being chiefly, until later centuries, tenants-at-will (those with no tenancy rights) or those whose copyhold tenancies stipulated so many days per month or year to be worked on the demesne.

Village, a settlement where most of the tenants lived, originally the villeins, tenants of the lord. The villa was the centre of the manor in Roman Britain.

Cotts (or cottages) scattered individual small farmsteads occupied by the cottars, a superior class of tenants.

Courthouse, in which manorial courts were held where a non-resident lord had no manor house and thus no great hall in which such business could be transacted by his steward. This was a common arrangement as many absentee lords held multiple manors and resided on only one permanently, or commuted between only two or three.

Church land, the land on which was built the parish church. Originally part of the demesne land. Many surviving early mediaeval deeds record donations of land by lords to a local priory, perhaps one founded by their ancestors, for the purpose of establishing a parish church on. Sometimes an existing church was given by the lord to some favoured priory. Parish churches were built and established by the original lords of each manor, in consultation with the bishop, out of self-interest, next to their manor houses, as being close to an institution which was believed to have direct access to an all-powerful god was clearly advantageous, perhaps even deemed essential for prosperity. Naves were added to the original buildings (which then became chancels) as parishioners began to require access also, usually built and maintained at the expense of the parishioners. Many such churches were built in time immemorial or pre-historic Celtic or later Anglo-Saxon times, thus the process of their establishment is not recorded. The Norman Conquest of 1066 obtained for King William ready-made and fully staffed "going concern" manors, income-producing businesses, and parish churches which had been established for centuries.

Manorial chapels (or "manorial aisles") were built onto the sides of chancels of parish churches as the lord's household expanded, for the seating of the lord and his household at mass. He was thus seated in a private area out of direct view of his tenants occupying the nave, with its own private external entrance, and was near the high altar, the holiest place in the church, and was able to view the priest elevating the host, the holiest part of the mass, through a squint let into the intervening wall, if any. He and his family were buried under the floor of the manorial chapel, in dedicated vaults or under individual ledger stones, or in the chancel nearer the high altar itself, the position of greatest honour being to the immediate north of the high altar, a position frequently occupied by founder's tombs and their effigies or monuments. From the 17th century, the lord's family erected their mural monuments on the walls of the manorial chapel. The lords were responsible for the building costs and for financing the maintenance of the fabric of the manorial chapel.

Glebe, land donated in fee at some time by a previous lord of the manor to the rectory for support of the rector (parson or parish priest). Each succeeding rector thus became effectively the life tenant. In addition to the produce from the glebe, the rector was entitled to tithes from the manor as a whole, in general one-tenth of all agricultural produce, due annually from all tenants of the manor, frequently delivered before the specified due date into the tithe barn, a large structure within the manor.

Common land, by convention open land, over which the lord, certain manorial tenants, and other parishioners held shared rights. For example, grazing rights or a right of estovers (taking wood).

Woodland, in which tenants might have the right to pannage (feeding swine on acorns).

Corn-mill, usually situated by a stream and driven by water power, at which tenants were obliged to grind their corn into flour, thus providing a further revenue stream for the lord, who had a captive customer base. They were thus forbidden from grinding at the mill within any other manor.

Freehold. Such "free-tenants" or "free men" had a duty to attend and sit as jury on the lord's manorial court, presided over by himself, or if an absentee lord, by his steward. Apparently not subject to the jurisdiction of the manorial court. Disputes between a lord and his freeholders were held in the county court, presided over by the Sheriff of the county.

Copyhold, the text of which tenancy agreement was recorded only in the manorial roll, which therefore had to be consulted in case of dispute. Subject to the jurisdiction of the manorial court.

Customary Freehold (between the two)

Leasehold (granted for a term, usually one of years or a number of lives not exceeding three, or the longer of either period); the Reversion (also known as Reversionary Freehold Interest or Freehold Reversion), at the end of the term or in case of escheat or forfeiture, is the prospective property of the lord of the manor.

Differentiated by physical character

Arable, ploughed land used to grow crops.

Waste, economically unproductive land.

Pasture, grassland used for grazing livestock in the summer.

Meadow, grassland set aside for making hay for winter fodder.

Closes, small enclosed fields closed-off by the erection of earth-banks, hedges or stone wall boundaries, used for example to house ewes with their lambs requiring close observation, and for rotational pasture management, reducing parasite infestation and keeping grass fresh.

Marsh, a possible source of reed for thatching of roofs.

Woodland, an essential fuel and building resource. Also used for pannage.

Furze, a highly flammable fuel resource used by the lower tenants.

Fallow, land resting within the cycle of crop rotation agriculture.

Fishpond, for inland manors, used to breed and store fish such as carp for eating on Fridays when the eating of meat was prohibited by religious custom.

Quarry, a source of building stone and of lime for burning to create mortar and fertiliser.

A manor was akin to the modern firm or business or other going concern. It was a productive unit, which required physical capital, in the form of land, buildings, equipment and draught animals such as ploughing oxen and labour in the form of direction, day-to-day management and a workforce. It was further similar in that its ownership could be transferred, with the necessary "licence to alienate" having been obtained from the overlord, as can the ownership of a modern company. The administration was self-contained and the new lord needed only to collect its net revenues to form his return on investment. The direction was ultimately provided by the manorial court, presided over by the lord's personal steward, whose members included the freehold tenants of the manor. The court itself appointed most of the lower manorial officers, which included the following:

Bailiff, in charge of supervising the cultivation of the manor.

Reeve, an overseer.

Ditch Reeve, responsible for maintaining drainage ditches.

The efficiency, productivity and thus profitability of a manor, therefore, depended on a mixture of qualities and interaction of location, micro-climate, natural resources, soil type, direction and labour. It was in the interest of all dwellers within the manor, to a greater or lesser degree, that it should be successful.

The manorial court had wide legal jurisdiction over the inhabitants of the manor, sometimes with the right to administer capital punishment, if the lord had obtained from the king the right of holding a court leet. Much of the law was specific to a particular manor, as developed by "custom of the manor" and as interpreted by the manorial court. Rights of appeal existed to the hundred court and the county court beyond that over which presided the county's sheriff.

A free manor was an autonomous area, outside the jurisdiction, law and administrative control of the surrounding territory.

Every person who lived in medieval England was regarded as a member of a manor and was under the jurisdiction of a manorial court, unless a citizen of a borough (in certain generally urban towns), or a cleric, or a lord of the manor himself, or (failing sons) an heiress lady of the manor herself, who were subject to the primary jurisdiction of the king's court, if a tenant-in-chief, or of the county court, if a mesne (intermediate) lord. It was not permissible for a man to migrate from the manor of his birth except by arrangement with its authorities. The manor was typically, via its vestry, also the source of a needy family's charitable relief, which was at the discretion of the manorial court, according to the custom of each manor. An alien within a manor would not, therefore, be automatically entitled to any relief or protection (such as parish constables) offered by the lord to prevent crime. Merchants and travellers were in general only safe in travelling with costly hired protection or with protection in place from a local sheriff, particularly in remote and sparsely populated areas. Even in 1822, the book Rural Rides refers to frequent instances of robbery in rural areas.

Residents of a manor

Any parish which is among the bulk formed in the medieval period (whether town or village, but not in old cores of cities) tended to share its name with the manor (which may or may not exist today). Such non-borough parishes have clerical jurisdiction over the same geographic territory over which the Lord had jurisdiction through his manorial court.

The parish generally came into existence after the establishment of the manor, following the building of a church by the Lord of the Manor for the use of himself and his tenants, perhaps in consultation with the bishop within whose clerical jurisdiction the manor was situated. He gave permanently the parish church some of his land, the revenues from which thus were to support the priest and the maintenance of the church building. The lord of the manor retained the advowson, that is the right to select and appoint the parish priest, yet the parish was governed by the diocese within which it was situated, which also granted it the tithes to which it was legally entitled, which was a tax of one tenth of the produce of the manor. Outlying parts of many manors over time were forcibly lost by judgment or attainder by the sovereign, exchanged between neighbouring lords or sold to pay debts, and thus would change owner, but would almost never change parish.

As, over time, a manor's lands could grow and shrink (they could extend over several different parishes), many manors became virtually worthless and lost any pretence of having a lord or became entirely subsumed by another. Others could arise by the principal lord's special grant, approved by the sovereign of subinfeudation.

Bennett, H.S., Life on the English Manor, Cambridge, 1937

Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th Edition, Volume 15, pp. 496-497, "Manor". Some text from this source now in the public domain is contained in this article.

Jerrold, D., Introduction to the History of England, 1949 (Source for Everyman's Encyclopaedia, 5th Edition, vol. 8, "Manor")

Lewis, C. P., 'The Invention of the Manor in Norman England', in Bates, David, Anglo-Norman Studies 34: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2011, Boydell & Bewer, 2012, pp. 123-150. ISBN 9781846159718

Vinogradoff, Sir P., Growth of the Manor, 1951

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A manor is the basic unit of manorialism, which became the dominant economic system during parts of the European Middle Ages. It defined the relationship between the lord of the manor, and serfs and free peasants who worked various plots of land.

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Manorialism, also called manorial system, seignorialism, or seignorial system, political, economic, and social system by which the peasants of medieval Europe were rendered dependent on their land and on their lord.

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Manorialism, also known as the Manorial System, may be defined as the system in Medieval Europe where rural society was arranged around a manor house or castle on an estate. The smallest units of these estates were also called manors. Within the estates, free and unfree labourers (serfs or villeins) worked the land of the landowner (or its tenant) in return for protection and the right to work a separate piece of land for their own basic needs. The hub of the community was the manor or castle - the estate owner's private residence and place of communal gatherings for purposes of administration, legal matters and entertainment. Regulations, customs and traditions varied from one estate to another and over time, but the system of manorialism persisted throughout most of the Middle Ages. Manorialism is not to be confused with feudalism which generally refers to the lord and vassal relationship between different levels of the aristocracy where land was exchanged for military service.

Origins

The idea of people of different social levels living together on a single estate for mutual benefit goes back to Roman times when countryside villas produced foodstuffs on their surrounding land. As the Roman Empire declined and foreign raids and invasions became more common, the security of living together in a protected place had distinct advantages. When this system was adopted on estates which the Frankish kings gave out to reward loyal nobles in the 8th century CE, medieval manorialism was born in Europe. The Frankish kings distributed parcels of land, known as benefices, in order to receive military service in return. Likewise, the lord of an estate gave the right to live and work on his land to the peasantry in return for their labour service. Peasants were either free or unfree, the latter category evolving from the slaves of the old Roman Empire. Manorialism, which already existed in some form under the Anglo- Saxons, became more developed and widespread in England following the Norman Conquest of 1066 CE.

A manor estate might cover as little as a few hundred acres, which was just about enough land to meet the needs of those who lived on it.

From the mid-11th century CE the system of feudalism spread across Western Europe where a lord-and-vassal relationship developed: lords gave the right to use and keep an income from a portion of their land to a vassal who promised military service in return. In the same manner, a vassal could then give a part of his land to another person in return for service which could be military or payment of goods in kind or even rent. Thus a hierarchy developed as land was parcelled out into ever smaller pieces with a tenant at each level. The smallest unit was the manor (also the name of its principle residential building). A manor estate might cover as little as a few hundred acres, which was just about enough land to meet the needs of those who lived on it, but the majority of manors were really more like small villages. Manors could be owned by the monarch, aristocrats or the church, and the very rich could own several hundred manors, collectively known as an 'honour'.

The Manor

Manors or large country houses (called villae or curtes in medieval continental Europe), have been built since villages started to be formed in the Neolithic period. As centres of a communal life, such buildings eventually evolved into the private residences that landowners built on their estates for their own use and in order to provide such spaces as the Great Hall where feasts, audiences with the peasantry and local courts of justice could be held.

The estates of the richer nobles had their own castle (which could protect several manor estates owned by an individual) but, in time, the greater comfort of a smaller building purpose-built for domestic use became fashionable - the manor. Those landowners without the means or permission to build an expensive stone castle could always make their manor as near to one as possible in terms of defensive features. Thus, manors could be fortified with sections of stone walls, crenellations, wall walks and sometimes a moat, while semi-fortified manors had only some of these features (or had them without a proper license). In most cases then, the estate owner was able to make good on their promise of physical protection for those who lived and worked on the immediate lands around them.

The manor estate, besides a manor and/or castle, might also include a small river or stream running through it, a church, mill, barns and an area of woodlands. The land of the estate was divided into two main parts. The first part was the demesne (domain) which was reserved for the exclusive exploitation of the landowner. Typically, the demesne was 35-40% of the total land on the estate. The second part was the land the dependent tenants lived and worked on for their own daily needs (mansus), typically around 12 acres (5 hectares) per family. The labourers on the estate farmed that land reserved for their use as well as the demesne.

The relations between an estate's members were determined by the unique customs & traditions of that community with the lord of the manor presiding at its head.

The estate was almost entirely economically self-sufficient, with only things like iron, millstones and salt being brought in from outside. Consequently, there was not very much official or commercial contact with the outside world and its community became similarly self-contained (but not isolated). The relations between its members, besides being governed by the distant law of the crown, were more specifically determined by the unique customs and traditions of that community with the lord of the manor presiding at its head. Naturally, there was some physical contact between the labourers of different estates but such customs as a fine for the daughter of a serf marrying a person from outside the estate are a testimony to the perceived necessity for a lord to protect the labour - both present and future - at his disposal.

Serfs

Serfs made up around 75% of the medieval population. They were not slaves but they had, or their ancestors had, given up the right of free movement and payment for their labour. They had done this in order to live, produce food and have the physical and legal protection of a local lord. The serfs worked the demesne land of their lord two or three days each week, more during busy periods like harvest time. It was sometimes possible for a serf to send a family member (providing they were physically able) to perform the labour on the demesne in their place. On the other days, serfs could farm that land given to them for their own family's needs.

Serfs could not usually leave the estate on which they worked but the flip side was that they also had a right to live on it which gave them both physical protection and sustenance - a lord, no matter how rapacious, would not benefit from starving the labourers who worked his own lands. A serf inherited the status of their parents, although, in the case of a mixed marriage (between free and unfree labourers), the child usually inherited the status of the father. A landowner could sell one of his serfs but the right for sale was that of labour, not direct ownership of the person as in slavery. Theoretically, the personal property of a serf and his simple thatched house of mud and straw all belonged to the landowner but this was unlikely to have been enforced or to have had any relevance in practical terms. Aside from payment of a regular percentage of the foodstuffs produced on their own land, a serf was obliged to pay fines and certain customary fees to their lord such as on the marriage of the lord's eldest daughter, or at the death of a serf in the form of an inheritance tax paid by the serf's heir.

Serfs did get to live it up a little once a year when, by tradition, they were invited to the manor on Christmas day for a meal. Unfortunately, they had to bring along their own plates and firewood, and of course, all the food had been produced by themselves anyway, but it was at least a chance to see how the other half lived and relieve the drearieness of a country winter.

Free Labourers

A minority of labourers on an estate were not serfs but freemen. Their situation was not vastly different from the serfs' in economic terms although they could (but not always) own freehold land (i.e. they were permanent owners) and they were not subject to the fees and restrictions that a serf was. Free labourers often paid rent instead of giving labour to work their lord's demesne, which was typically paid in produce form their own land. The land they could call their own was usually small and so it was often necessary for these peasants to hire out their labour to supplement their income. Free labourers might also be permitted, with their lord's consent, to sell their tenancy to a third party. Only about one-fifth of the free peasantry had enough land (around 20 acres minimum) to produce a surplus beyond their own family's needs and they often did not have the best land for agriculture (the lord had that). Their lot was a precarious one and a single bad harvest or lengthy illness could mean a free labourer was obliged to become a serf.

Cottagers

Another type of peasant was the cottager or cotter who could be free or unfree and who owned little or no land of their own but rented a cottage. They usually performed odd-jobs as needed, helping on manor estates with such tasks as threshing, sheep-shearing, collecting hay or simply digging and weeding.

Manor Courts

The manor had its own court run by the lord or his steward. In England, such a court, held in the great hall of a castle or manor, was known as a hallmote or halimote. Disputes between members of the manor estate on such things as the right to use particular areas of land like woodlands or peat lands (but not disputes between the lord and an individual peasant) were dealt with here, as well as the fines imposed on the estate workers and any criminal matters. Serious crimes such as murder were judged in the courts of the Crown. The hallmote may have been biased toward the landowner but there were higher courts to appeal to and records show that the peasantry, acting collectively, could bring cases against a landowner.

Decline in Manorialism

The systems of both feudalism and manorialism were weakened by several developments in the late Middle Ages. One particular blow came from the sudden population declines caused by wars and plagues, particularly the Black Death (which peaked between 1347-1352 CE). Another frequent risk to everyone's livelihood was crop failures. Such crises caused a chronic shortage of labour and the abandonment of estates because there was no one to work them. The growth of large towns and cities also saw labour leave the countryside to find a better future and the new jobs available there working for the new and wealthy merchant class.

Those serfs who remained on estates gradually increased their political power by acting collectively in village communities which began to hold their own courts and which acted as a counterweight to those of the landed gentry. There were sometimes serious revolts by the peasantry against their masters. The years 1227 CE in the northern Low Countries, 1230 CE on the lower Weser in northern Germany and 1315 CE in the Swiss Alps, all witnessed violent peasant armies getting the better of those involving aristocratic knights, and a major but unsuccessful rebellion, the Peasants' Revolt, occurred in England in 1381 CE.

Finally, the increase in the use of coinage in the late Middle Ages meant that many serfs made a payment to their lord instead of labour, or paid a fee to be absolved from some of the labour expected of them, or even bought their freedom. Across Europe, all of these factors conspired to weaken the traditional set up of unfree labourers being tied to the land and working for the rich so that by the end of the 14th century CE, more agricultural labour was done by paid workers than unpaid serfs.

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Manorialism, also known as the Manorial System, may be defined as the system in Medieval Europe where rural society was arranged around a manor house or castle on an estate. The smallest units of these estates were also called manors.

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A member of a religious community of men typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

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A monk (, from Greek: μοναχός, monachos, "single, solitary" via Latin monachus) is a man who is a member of a religious order and lives in a monastery. A monk usually lives his life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many religions and in philosophy.

The Greek word for "monk" may be applied to men or women. In English, however, "monk" is applied mainly to men, while nun is typically used for female monastics.

Although the term monachos is of Christian origin, in the English language monk tends to be used loosely also for both male and female ascetics from other religious or philosophical backgrounds.[citation needed ] However, being generic, it is not interchangeable with terms that denote particular kinds of monk, such as cenobite, hermit, anchorite, hesychast, or solitary.

Traditions of Christian monasticism exist in major Christian denominations, with religious orders being present in Catholicism, Lutheranism, Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Reformed Christianity (Calvinism), Anglicanism and Methodism. Indian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, also have monastic traditions as well.

In Theravada Buddhism, is the term for monk. Their disciplinary code is called the patimokkha, which is part of the larger . They live lives of mendicancy, and go on a morning almsround ( Pali: pindapata) every day. The local people give food for the monks to eat, though the monks are not permitted to positively ask for anything. The monks live in monasteries, and have an important function in traditional Asian society. Young boys can be ordained as samaneras. Both bhikkhus and samaneras eat only in the morning, and are not supposed to lead a luxurious life. Their rules forbid the use of money, although this rule is nowadays not kept by all monks. The monks are part of the , the third of the Triple Gem of Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha.

In Mahayana Buddhism, the term 'Sangha' strictly speaking refers to those who have achieved certain levels of understanding. They are therefore called 'community of the excellent ones' ( Standard Tibetan: mchog kyi tshogs); however, these in turn need not be monks (i.e., hold such vows). Several Mahayana orders accept female practitioners as monks, instead of using the normal title of "nun", and they are considered equal to male ascetics in all respects.

The Bhikkhus are only allowed 4 items (other than their robes): a razor, a needle, an alms bowl and a water strainer. [citation needed ]

In Vajrayana Buddhism, monkhood is part of the system of 'vows of individual liberation'; these vows are taken in order to develop one's own personal ethical discipline. The monks and nuns form the (ordinary) sangha. As for the Vajrayana vows of individual liberation, there are four steps: A lay person may take the 5 vows called 'approaching virtue' (in Tibetan ' genyen' < dge snyan>). The next step is to enter the monastic way of life (Tib. rabjung) which includes wearing monk's or nun's robes. After that, one can become a 'novice' (Pali , Tib. getshül); the last and final step is to take all vows of the 'fully ordained monk' ( gelong). This term 'gelong' (Tib. < dge long>, in the female form gelongma) is the translation of Skt. bikshu (for women bikshuni) which is the equivalent of the Pali term ; is the word used in Theravada Buddhism (Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand).

Buddhist monks performing ceremony in Hangzhou, China

Chinese Buddhist monks have been traditionally and stereotypically linked with the practice of the Chinese martial arts or Kung fu, and monks are frequently important characters in martial arts films. This association is focused around the Shaolin Monastery. The Buddhist monk Bodhidharma, traditionally credited as the founder of Zen Buddhism in China, is also claimed to have introduced Kalaripayattu (which later evolved into Kung Fu) to the country. This latter claim has however been a source of much controversy (see Bodhidharma, the martial arts, and the disputed India connection). One more feature about the Chinese Buddhist monks is that they practice the burning marks on their scalp, finger or part of the skin on their anterior side of the forearm with incense as a sign of ordination.

In Thailand and Burma, it is common for boys to spend some time living as a monk in a monastery. Most stay for only a few years and then leave, but a number continue on in the ascetic life for the rest of their lives.

In Mongolia during the 1920s, there were about 110,000 monks, including children, who made up about one-third of the male population, many of whom were killed in the purges of Choibalsan.

Investiture of Saint Benedict, scene from the fresco cycle on the life of St. Benedict in Monte Oliveto Maggiore

Within Catholicism, a monk is a member of a religious order who lives a communal life in a monastery under a monastic rule of life. Benedict of Nursia, (480-543 or 547 AD) is considered to be the originator of western monasticism. Benedict's rule, is the foundation for the Benedictines and all of its reform groups such as the Cistercians and the Trappists. Benedict founded the great Monte Cassino in 529.

The cloisters of Moissac Abbey in France

Benedict pointed out in his rule stability, conversion of life and obedience as promises. Obedience calls for the monk to obey Christ, as represented by the superior person of the monastery, which is an abbot or a prior. Conversion of life means, generally, that the monk converts himself to the way of a monk, which is death to self and to the world and life to God and to his work. A monk is to be an instrument of God's work. Stability entails that the monk commit himself to the monastery for the remainder of his life, and so, upon death, will be buried at its cemetery. The vow of stability (stabilitas loci) is unique to Benedictines.

The solemn vows in other religious orders were eventually established as vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Poverty requires that they renounce any ownership of property or assets, except for items that were allowed to them by their superior (such as a habit, books etc.), and to live meekly, sharing whatever they might have with the poor. Chastity requires that since they were willing to dedicate their lives to God, they sacrificed the love between men and women and stay either virginal or chaste.

To become a monk, one first must be accepted by a community as a postulant. During the time of postulancy the man lives at the monastery to test his vocation, to get to know the community and the community to get to know him. If the postulant and the community agree that the postulant should become a novice, he is received as such. At this time he is usually given the habit and a religious name. Both the community and the novice evaluate further whether the man is called to become a monk and he begins to participate more fully in the life of the community. As a postulant and novice, the man is free to leave the community at any time or the institute can dismiss him. Following the novitiate, which must last at least one canonical year (but not longer than two years) in the community of the novitiate the novice may profess first vows, if he is accepted to do so. After a few years (usually three) the monk makes solemn vows, which are binding for life.

The monastic life generally consists of prayer in the form of the Liturgy of the Hours (also known as the Divine Office, reading of the divine scriptures (lectio divina) and labor. Among most religious orders, monks live in simple, austere rooms called cells and come together daily to celebrate and to recite the Liturgy of the Hours and the Mass. Usually, the monks take their meals together in the refectory. Many communities have a period of silence lasting from evening until the next morning and some others restrict talking to only when it is necessary for the monks to perform their work and during weekly recreation.

Monks who have been or will be ordained into Holy Orders as priests or deacons were traditionally referred to as "choir monks". Those monks who are not ordained into Holy Orders are referred to as lay brothers. In most monastic communities today, little distinction exists between the lay brothers and the choir monks, as they all have the obligation to celebrate the entire Divine Office daily in choir. However, historically, the roles of the two groups of monks within the monastery differed. The work of the choir monks was considered to be prayer, chanting the hours of the Divine Office , whereas the lay brothers provided for the material needs of the community by growing food, preparing meals, maintaining the monastery and the grounds. This distinction arose historically because generally those monks who could read Latin typically became choir monks, while those monks who were illiterate or could not read Latin became lay brothers. The lay brothers would instead recite at least some of the liturgical hours prayers such as the Lord's Prayer or the Hail Mary. Since the Second Vatican Council, the distinction between choir monks and lay brothers has been deemphasized, as the council allowed the Liturgy of the Hours to be celebrated in the vernacular language, effectively opening participation to all of the monks.

Within western monasticism, it is important to differentiate between monks and friars. Monks generally live a contemplative life of prayer confined within a monastery while friars usually engage in an active ministry of service to the outside community. The monastic orders include all Benedictines (the Order of Saint Benedict and its later reforms including the Cistercians and the Trappists) and the Carthusians, who live according to their own statutes. Orders of friars include the mendicant orders (primarily Order of Friars Minor, Capuchins, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustinians). Although the canons regular (such as the Norbertines) and the clerics regular (such as the Jesuits) live in community, they are neither monks nor friars as they are characterized by their clerical state and not by any monastic vows.

Loccum Abbey and Amelungsborn Abbey have the longest traditions as Lutheran monasteries; after the Reformation, many monasteries and convents were received into the Lutheran Church and continued religious life, existing to this day.

Since the 19th and 20th century, there has been a renewal in the monastic life among Lutheranism. Lutheran religious orders in the Franciscan, Benedictine and other traditions exist, with some Lutheran monasteries having third orders and accepting oblates.

In American Lutheran traditions, "The Congregation of the Servants of Christ" was established at St. Augustine's House in Oxford, Michigan, in 1958 when some other men joined Father Arthur Kreinheder in observing the monastic life and offices of prayer. These men and others came and went over the years. The community has always remained small; at times the only member was Father Arthur. During the 35 years of its existence over 25 men tested their vocations to monastic life by living at the house for some time, from a few months to many years, but at Father Arthur's death in 1989 only one permanent resident remained. At the beginning of 2006, there was 2 permanent professed members and 2 long-term guests. Strong ties remain with this community and their brothers in Sweden ( Östanbäck monastery) and in Germany ( Priory of St. Wigbert).

There is also the Order of Lutheran Franciscans, a religious community of friars and sisters within the tradition of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Monastic life in England came to an abrupt end when King Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church and made himself the head of the Church of England. He initiated the Dissolution of the Monasteries, during which all of the monasteries within England were destroyed. A large number of monks were executed. Others fled to continental European monasteries where they were able to continue their monastic life.

Shortly after the beginning of the Anglo-Catholic Movement in the Church of England, there was felt to be a need for a restoration of the monastic life. In the 1840s, the then Anglican priest and future Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman established a community of men at Littlemore near Oxford. From then on, there have been established many communities of monks, friars and other religious communities for men in the Anglican Communion. There are Anglican Benedictines, Franciscans, Cistercians, and in the Episcopal Church in the United States, Dominicans. There are also uniquely Anglican monastic orders such as the Society of Saint John the Evangelist and the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield.

Some Anglican religious communities are contemplative, some active, but a distinguishing feature of the monastic life among Anglicans is that most practice the so-called "mixed life". Anglican monks recite the Divine Office in choir daily, either the full eight services of the Breviary or the four offices found in the Book of Common Prayer and celebrate the Eucharist daily. Many orders take on external works such as service to the poor, giving religious retreats, or other active ministries within their immediate communities. Like Catholic monks, Anglican monks also take the monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

In the early 20th century when the Oxford Movement was at its height, the Anglican Communion had hundreds[citation needed ] of orders and communities and thousands of religious followers. However, since the 1960s there has been a sharp falling off in the numbers of religious in many parts of the Anglican Communion. Many once large and international communities have been reduced to a single convent or monastery composed of elderly men or women. In the last few decades of the 20th century, novices have for most communities been few and far between. Some orders and communities have already become extinct.

There are however, still several thousand Anglican monks working today in approximately 200 communities around the world. The most surprising growth has been in the Melanesian countries of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. The Melanesian Brotherhood, founded at Tabalia, Guadalcanal, in 1925 by Ini Kopuria, is now the largest Anglican community in the world with over 450 brothers in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and the United Kingdom.

The Saint Brigid of Kildare Monastery is a double monastery of the United Methodist Church rooted in the Benedictine tradition, being located in Collegeville, Minnesota. Besides monastic orders, the Order of Saint Luke is a dispersed religious order within Methodism, though being ecumenical, it accepts believers of other Christian denominations.

The Emmanuel Sisters is a convent of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon that was founded by Magdaline Marie Handy. These nuns are engaged in prayer, teaching, and healthcare.

Monastery of St. Dionysius on Mount Athos.

In Eastern Orthodoxy, monasticism holds a very special and important place: "Angels are a light for monks, monks are a light for laymen" ( St. John Klimakos). Eastern Orthodox monastics separate themselves from the world in order to pray unceasingly for the world. They do not, in general, have as their primary purpose the running of social services, but instead are concerned with attaining theosis, or union with God. However, care for the poor and needy has always been an obligation of monasticism,[citation needed ] so not all monasteries are "cloistered". The level of contact will vary from community to community. Hermits, on the other hand, have little or no contact with the outside world.

Eastern Orthodox monasticism does not have religious orders as are found in the West, nor do they have Rules in the same sense as the Rule of St. Benedict. Rather, Eastern monastics study and draw inspiration from the writings of the Desert Fathers as well as other Church Fathers; probably the most influential of which are the Greater Asketikon and Lesser Asketikon of St. Basil the Great and the Philokalia, which was compiled by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. Hesychasm is of primary importance in the ascetical theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

General view of Holy Trinity-Makaryev Monastery, on the Volga River in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia.

Monk near [Saint Petersburg, Soviet Union (c., 1931) by a traveler DeCou, Branson cs].[17]

Most communities are self-supporting, and the monastic's daily life is usually divided into three parts: (a) communal worship in the catholicon (the monastery's main church); (b) hard manual labour; and (c) private prayer, spiritual study, and rest when necessary. Meals are usually taken in common in a sizable dining hall known as a trapeza (refectory), at elongated refectory tables. Food is usually simple and is eaten in silence while one of the brethren reads aloud from the spiritual writings of the Holy Fathers. The monastic lifestyle takes a great deal of serious commitment. Within the cenobitic community, all monks conform to a common way of living based on the traditions of that particular monastery. In struggling to attain this conformity, the monastic comes to realize his own shortcomings and is guided by his spiritual father in how to deal honestly with them. For this same reason, bishops are almost always chosen from the ranks of monks.

Eastern monasticism is found in three distinct forms: anchoritic (a solitary living in isolation), cenobitic (a community living and worshiping together under the direct rule of an abbot or abbess), and the "middle way" between the two, known as the skete (a community of individuals living separately but in close proximity to one another, who come together only on Sundays and feast days, working and praying the rest of the time in solitude, but under the direction of an elder). One normally enters a cenobitic community first, and only after testing and spiritual growth would one go on to the skete or, for the most advanced, become a solitary anchorite. However, one is not necessarily expected to join a skete or become a solitary; most monastics remain in the cenobium the whole of their lives.

In general, Eastern Orthodox monastics have little or no contact with the outside world, including their own families. The purpose of the monastic life is union with God, the means is through leaving the world (i.e., the life of the passions). After tonsure, Eastern Orthodox monks and nuns are never permitted to cut their hair. The hair of the head and the beard remain uncut as a symbol of the vows they have taken, reminiscent of the Nazarites from the Old Testament. The tonsure of monks is the token of a consecrated life, and symbolizes the cutting off of their self-will.

The Great Schema worn by Orthodox monks and nuns of the most advanced degree

The process of becoming a monk is intentionally slow, as the vows taken are considered to entail a lifelong commitment to God, and are not to be entered into lightly. In Eastern Orthodox monasticism, after the completion of the novitiate there are three ranks of monasticism. There is only one monastic habit in the Eastern Orthodox Church (with certain slight regional variations), and it is the same for both monks and nuns. Each successive grade is given a portion of the habit, the full habit being worn only by those in the highest grade, known for that reason as the "Great Schema", or "Great Habit".

The various profession rites are normally performed by the Abbot, but if the abbot has not been ordained a priest, or if the monastic community is a convent, a hieromonk will perform the service. The abbot or hieromonk who performs a tonsure must be of at least the rank he is tonsuring into. In other words, only a hieromonk who has been tonsured into the Great Schema may himself tonsure a Schemamonk. A bishop, however, may tonsure into any rank, regardless of his own.

Novice ( Church Slavonic: Poslushnik), lit. "one under obedience"- Those wishing to join a monastery begin their lives as novices. After coming to the monastery and living as a guest for not less than three days, the revered abbot or abbess may bless the candidate to become a novice. There is no formal ceremony for the clothing of a novice, he or she simply receives permission to wear the clothing of a novice. In the Eastern monastic tradition, novices may or may not dress in the black inner cassock (Greek: Anterion, Eisorasson; Church Slavonic: Podriasnik) and wear the soft monastic hat (Greek: , Church Slavonic: Skufia), depending on the tradition of the local community, and in accordance to the abbot's directives. The inner-cassock and the skoufos are the first part of the Eastern Orthodox monastic habit. In some communities, the novice also wears the leather belt. He is also given a prayer rope and instructed in the use of the Jesus Prayer. If a novice chooses to leave during the period of the novitiate, no penalty is incurred. He may also be asked to leave at any time if his behaviour does not conform to the monastic life, or if the superior discerns that he is not called to monasticism. When the abbot or abbess deems the novice ready, he is asked if he wishes to join the monastery. Some, out of humility, will choose to remain novices all their lives. Every stage of the monastic life must be entered into voluntarily.

Rassophore (Church Slavonic: Ryassofor), lit. "Robe-bearer"- If the novice continues on to become a monk, he is clothed in the first degree of monasticism at a formal service known as the Tonsure. Although there are no formal vows made at this point, the candidate is normally required to affirm his commitment to persevere in the monastic life. The abbot will then perform the tonsure, cutting a small amount of hair from four spots on the head, forming a cross. He is then given the outer cassock (Greek: Rasson, Exorasson, or Mandorasson; Church Slavonic: Ryassa)-an outer robe with wide sleeves, something like the cowl used in the West, but without a hood-from which the name of Rassophore derives. He is also given a brimless hat with a veil, known as a klobuk, and a leather belt is fastened around his waist. His habit is usually black (an archaic synonym for "monk" was Russian: чернец, chernets, 'black one'; the female equivalent is Russian: черница, monastic name. Although the Rassophore does not make formal vows, he is still morally obligated to continue in the monastic estate for the rest of his life. Some will remain Rassophores permanently, without going on to the higher degrees. chernitsa), signifying that he is now dead to the world, and he receives a new

Stavrophore (Church Slavonic: Krestonosets), lit. "Cross-bearer"-The next level for Eastern monastics takes place some years after the first tonsure when the abbot feels the monk has reached an appropriate level of discipline, dedication, and humility. This degree is also known as the Little Schema, and is considered to be a "betrothal" to the Great Schema. At this stage, the monk makes formal vows of stability, chastity, obedience and poverty. Then he is tonsured and clothed in the habit, which in addition to that worn by the Rassophore, includes the paramandyas (Church Slavonic: paraman), a piece of square cloth worn on the back, embroidered with the instruments of the Passion (see picture above), and connected by ties to a wooden cross worn over the heart. The paramandyas represents the yoke of Christ. Because of this addition he is now called Stavrophore, or Cross-bearer. He is also given a wooden hand cross (or "profession cross"), which he should keep in his icon corner, and a beeswax candle, symbolic of monastic vigilance the sacrificing of himself for God. He will be buried holding the cross, and the candle will be burned at his funeral. In the Slavic practice, the Stavrophore also wears the monastic mantle. The rasson (outer robe) worn by the Stavrophore is more ample than that worn by the Rassophore. The abbot increases the Stavrophore monk's prayer rule, allows a more strict personal ascetic practice, and gives the monk more responsibility.

Great Schema (Greek: Megaloschemos, Church Slavonic: Skhimnik)-Monks whose abbot feels they have reached a high level of spiritual excellence reach the final stage, called the Great Schema. The tonsure of a Schemamonk follows the same format as the Stavrophore, and he makes the same vows and is tonsured in the same manner. But in addition to all the garments worn by the Stavrophore, he is given the Analavos (Church Slavonic: Analav) which is the article of monastic vesture emblematic of the Great Schema. For this reason, the analavos itself is sometimes called the "Great Schema". The analavos comes down in the front and the back, somewhat like the scapular in Western monasticism, although the two garments are probably not related. It is often intricately embroidered with the instruments of the Passion and the Trisagion (the angelic hymn). The Greek form does not have a hood, the Slavic form has a hood and lappets on the shoulders, so that the garment forms a large cross covering the monk's shoulders, chest, and back. Another piece added is the Polystavrion or "Many Crosses", which consists of a cord with a number of small crosses plaited into it. The polystavrion forms a yoke around the monk and serves to hold the analavos in place, and reminds the monastic that he is bound to Christ and that his arms are no longer fit for worldly activities, but that he must labor only for the Kingdom of Heaven. Among the Greeks, the mantle is added at this stage. The paramandyas of the Megaloschemos is larger than that of the Stavrophore, and if he wears the klobuk, it is of a distinctive thimble shape, called a koukoulion, the veil of which is usually embroidered with crosses. In some monastic traditions the Great Schema is only given to monks and nuns on their death bed, while in others they may be elevated after as little as 25 years of service.

Eastern Orthodox monks are addressed as "father" even if they are not priests; but when conversing among themselves, monks will often address one another as "Brother". Novices are always referred to as "Brother". Among the Greeks, old monks are often called Gheronda, or "Elder", out of respect for their dedication. In the Slavic tradition, the title of Elder (Church Slavonic: ) is normally reserved for those who are of an advanced spiritual life, and who serve as guides to others.

For the Eastern Orthodox, "mother" is the correct term for nuns who have been tonsured Stavrophore or higher. Novices and Rassophores are addressed as "sister". Nuns live identical ascetic lives to their male counterparts and are therefore also called monachai (the feminine plural of monachos), and their community is likewise called a monastery.

Many (but not all) Eastern Orthodox seminaries are attached to monasteries, combining academic preparation for ordination with participation in the community's life of prayer, and hopefully benefiting from the example and wise counsel of the monks. Bishops are required by the sacred canons of the Eastern Orthodox Church to be chosen from among the monastic clergy. The requirement is specifically that they be monastics, not simply celibate (see clerical celibacy). Monks who have been ordained to the priesthood are called hieromonks (priest-monks); monks who have been ordained to the diaconate are called hierodeacons (deacon-monks). A Schemamonk who is a priest is called a Hieroschemamonk. Most monks are not ordained; a community will normally only present as many candidates for ordination to the bishop as the liturgical needs of the community require.

Hinduism has many monastic orders, including the Dashanami Sampradaya ( lit. 'Tradition of Ten Names') orders established by Adi Shankara as well as Vaishnava orders.

Madhvaacharya ( Madhvacharya), the Dwaita philosopher, established ashta matha (Eight Monasteries). He appointed a monk (called swamiji or swamigalu in local parlance) for each matha or monastery who has the right to worship Madhvacharya's murti of Lord Krishna by rotation. Each matha's swamiji gets a chance to worship after fourteen years. This ritual is called and has been used also outside his sampradaya, e.g. in Gaudiya Vaisnava Radharamana temple in Vrindavan.

Similar in appearance to Buddhist monks, brahmacari monks from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness ( ISKCON), or Hare Krishnas as they are popularly known, are the best known Vaishnava monks outside India. They are a common sight in many places around the world. Their appearance-simple saffron , shaved head with , neckbeads and markings-and social customs () date back many thousands of years to the Vedic era with its varnasrama society. This social scheme includes both monastic and lay stages meant for various persons in various stages of life according to their characteristics () and work ().

ISKCON started as a predominantly monastic group but nowadays the majority of members live as lay persons. Many of them, however, spent some time as monks. New persons joining ISKCON as full-time members (living in its centers) first undergo a three-month training, which includes learning the basics of brahmacari (monastic) life. After that they can decide if they prefer to continue as monks or as married Grihasthas.

Brahmacari older than 50 years (per ISKCON rule) can become . , a life of full dedication to spiritual pursuits, is the highest stage of life in the varnasrama society. It is permanent and one cannot give it up. A Sannyasi is given the title Swami. Older grihastha with grown-up children are traditionally expected to accept vanaprastha (celibate retired) life.

The role of monastic orders in Indian and now also Western society has to some extent been adapted over the years in accordance with ever-changing social structures.

One of the most intense forms of Asceticism can be found in Jainism, one of the world's oldest religions. Jainism encourages fasting, yoga practices, meditation in difficult postures, and other austerities. According to Jains, one's highest goal should be attaining Nirvana or Moksha (i.e., liberation from samsara, the cycle of birth and rebirth). For this, a soul has to be without attachment or self-indulgence. This can be achieved only by the monks and nuns who take five great vows: of non-violence, of truth, of non-stealing, of non-possession and of celibacy.

Acharya Vidyasagar, a possessionless and detached Digambara Jain monk

Most of the austerities and ascetic practices can be traced back to Vardhaman Mahavira, the twenty-fourth "fordmaker" or Tirthankara. The Acaranga Sutra, or Book of Good Conduct, is a sacred book within Jainism that discusses the ascetic code of conduct. Other texts that provide insight into conduct of ascetics include Yogashastra by Acharya Hemachandra and Niyamasara by Acharya Kundakunda. Other illustrious Jain works on ascetic conduct are Oghanijjutti, Pindanijjutti, Cheda Sutta, and Nisiha Suttafee. Full Jain monk in either Svetambara or Digambara tradition can belong to one of these ranks:

Acharya: leader of the order

Upadhyaya: a learned monk, who both teaches and studies himself

Muni: an ordinary monk

These three are mentioned is the three lines of the Namokar Mantra. In the Digambara tradition, a junior monk can be a:

Ailak: they use one piece of cloth

Kshullak: they may use two pieces of cloth

The Svetambar Terapanthi sect has a new rank of junior monks who are called samana. The nuns are called Aryikas in Digambar tradition and Sadhvi in the Svetambar tradition.

Per the Jain vows, the monks and nuns renounce all relations and possessions. Jain ascetics practice complete non-violence. Ahimsa is the first and foremost vow of a Jain ascetic. They do not hurt any living being, be it an insect or a human. They carry a special broom to sweep away any insects that may cross their path. Some Jain monks wear a cloth over the mouth to prevent accidental harm to airborne germs and insects. They also do not use electricity as it involves violence. Furthermore, they do not use any devices or machines.

As they are without possession and attachment, they travel from city to city, often crossing forests and deserts, and always barefoot. Jain ascetics do not stay in a single place for more than two months to prevent themselves from becoming attached to any location. However, during four months of monsoon (rainy season) known as chaturmaas, they continue to stay in a single place to avoid killing the life forms that thrive during the rains. Jain monks and nuns practice complete celibacy. They do not touch or share a sitting platform with a person of opposite sex.

Jain ascetics follow a strict vegetarian diet without root vegetables. Shvetambara monks do not cook food but solicit alms from householders. Digambara monks have only a single meal a day. Neither group will beg for food, but a Jain ascetic may accept a meal from a householder, provided that the latter is pure of mind and body and offers the food of his own volition and in the prescribed manner. During such an encounter, the monk remains standing and eats only a measured amount. Fasting (i.e., abstinence from food and sometimes water) is a routine feature of Jain asceticism. Fasts last for a day or longer, up to a month. Some monks avoid (or limit) medicine or hospitalization due to their careful attention to body.

White-clothed Acharya Kalaka

Other austerities include meditation in seated or standing posture near river banks in the cold wind, or meditation atop hills and mountains, especially at noon when the sun is at its fiercest. Such austerities are undertaken according to the physical and mental limits of the individual ascetic. Jain ascetics are (almost) completely without possessions. Some Jains (Shvetambara monks and nuns) own only unstitched white robes (an upper and lower garment) and a bowl used for eating and collecting alms. Male Digambara monks do not wear any clothes and carry nothing with them except a soft broom made of shed peacock feathers (pinchi) and eat from their hands. They sleep on the floor without blankets and sit on special wooden platforms.

Every day is spent either in study of scriptures or meditation or teaching to lay people. They stand aloof from worldly matters. Many Jain ascetics take a final vow of Santhara or Sallekhana (i.e., a peaceful and detached death where medicines, food, and water are abandoned). This is done when death is imminent or when a monk feels that he is unable to adhere to his vows on account of advanced age or terminal disease.

Quotes on ascetic practices from the Acharanga Sutra as Hermann Jacobi translated it:

A monk or a nun wandering from village to village should look forward for four cubits, and seeing animals they should move on by walking on his toes or heels or the sides of his feet. If there be some bypath, they should choose it, and not go straight on; then they may circumspectly wander from village to village.

I shall become a Sramana who owns no house, no property, no sons, no cattle, who eats what others give him; I shall commit no sinful action; Master, I renounce to accept anything that has not been given.' Having taken such vows, (a mendicant) should not, on entering a village or scot-free town, &c., take himself, or induce others to take, or allow others to take, what has not been given.

1. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert. "μοναχός". A Greek-English Lexicon.

2. ^ "Monk, n.1", OED Online (3rd ed.), Oxford University Press, March 2018

3. ^ "monk noun (1)". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary.

4. "^ Mongolia - Buddhism". Library of Congress Country Studies.

5. ^ Thurston, Herbert. "Monk." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 10. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 12 March 2023 This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.

6. ^ Concerning the disciple of those to be received as brethren in The Rule of Saint Benedict, LVIII

7. ^ CIC can. 653 §1

8. ^ CIC can. 648, §2,3

9. ^ "Kloster Ebstorf". Medieval Histories. 8 August 2014. The monastery is mentioned for the first time in 1197. It belongs to the group of so-called Lüneklöstern (monasteries of Lüne), which became Lutheran convents following the Protestant Reformation. [...] It is currently one of several Lutheran convents maintained by the Monastic Chamber of Hanover (Klosterkammer Hannover), an institution of the former Kingdom of Hanover founded by its Prince-Regent, later King George IV of the United Kingdom, in 1818, in order to manage and preserve the estates of Lutheran convents.

10. ^ "Ev. Oblates of St. Benedict". Lutheran Campus Ministry at WVU.

11. ^ "Order of Saint Benedict". Archived from the original on 2011-07-26.

12. ^ The Lonely Lutheran Monk, TIME Magazine (March 1, 1963). Retrieved 13-01-10.

13. ^ "Staugustineshouse.org".

14. ^ The founding of the Anglican Cistercian Association is fully reported here.

15. ^ Patricia Lefevere (21 February 2003). Methodist woman founds monastery. National Catholic Reporter. St. Brigid's oblate group has grown to 16 members since the dedication of the monastery on St. Brigid's feast in 2000. Besides Stamps, it counts another 13 United Methodists, one Catholic and one Disciples of Christ member. The ages of group members range from 23 to 82. One-third of them are men; half are ordained. The community continues to grow.

16. ^ a Boyce, Sandy (26 July 2014). "A focus on Emmanuel Sisters, Cameroon". Diakonia. b

17. ^ DeCou, Branson. "Saint Petersburg: portrait of a monk, near Leningrad". digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu.

18. ^ Frank William Iklé et al. "A History of Asia", page ?. Allyn and Bacon, 1964

19. Anne Vallely (2002) ^ Guardians of the Transcendent: An Ethnography of a Jain Ascetic Community. University of Toronto Press

20. ^ Jacobi, Hermann (1884). Jaina Sutras, Part I - via Sacred-texts.com.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Monk". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

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A monk (, from Greek: μοναχός, monachos, "single, solitary" via Latin monachus) is a man who is a member of a religious order and lives in a monastery. A monk usually lives his life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many religions and in philosophy.

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A nun is a member of a religious community of women, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery. Communities of nuns exist in numerous religious traditions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Jainism, and Taoism.

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A nun is a member of a religious community (usually a woman) who commits to a life of faith, poverty, and chastity. Although most people associate nuns with the Christian or Catholic religion, other religions such as Buddhism, Judaism, and Taoism also have similar communities of religious women.

Nuns join orders or congregations - these are usually 'sects' within a religion. Different orders abide by different rules and have different expectations for their members. Generally, a nun's daily duties could involve praying, maintaining their church's facilities, and committing charitable acts.

How To Become A Nun

Becoming a nun is a difficult process that requires a lot of time and sacrifice. The process itself varies from order to order. Some orders have very strict requirements about who can or cannot become a nun. For example, certain Christian and Buddhist congregations require their nuns to be single, without children, and without debt.

Once you commit to an order, you'll undergo 'training' where you learn more about the faith, live with the other nuns in the order, and progress through different vows until you become a full-fledged nun. The whole process usually takes years.

What Is The Difference Between A Nun And A Sister?

A lot of people use the terms 'nun' and 'sister' interchangeably. This is because a lot of nuns go by 'Sister [Name]'. But there's actually a major difference between the two.

The term 'nun' is applied to women who have taken serious, solemn vows to live a simple life in a convent or monastery. Their lives are dedicated to prayer and religious study. Sisters, on the other hand, take vows which are much simpler. Also, sisters mostly focus on 'works of mercy' like charity, outreach, and evangelism.

Are There Different Types Of Nuns?

Yes, there are several different kinds of nuns. First, nuns are divided by religion - Christianity (specifically Catholicism), Buddhism, and other religions may have their own nun communities.

Second, nuns within a faith are further divided into 'orders', such as the Order of Saint Benedict, Order of Saint Clare, or the Sisters of Charity. While orders may share a general religion, each may approach the faith from a different perspective or with a different focus.

What Do The Different Styles Of Nuns' Habits Mean?

Nuns typically wear a religious 'habit' or clothing that distinguishes them as members of a specific order. These usually look like long robes or tunics plus a headpiece to cover the hair. Nuns' 'uniforms' can come in a variety of colours - black and white attire is the most common, but colourful habits also exist, like in the case of the aptly-named 'Pink Sisters' or Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters.

With a bit of knowledge and a close enough eye, you can tell which order a nun belongs to (and, in some cases, if she's a novitiate or full nun) based on the habit they wear.

What Do Nuns Wear Under Their Habit?

Some nuns, especially those that live in colder climates, may wear regular clothing under their habits. Others may only wear a t-shirt and shorts. In hotter countries, nuns may even just wear underwear.

Nun Rules You Must Follow

Since orders can determine their own guidelines, there's no single set of rules that all nuns must follow. Below are just a few of the most common restrictions nuns (especially within the Christian tradition) have to follow:

You must take a vow of chastity, which means you cannot get married or have sexual/romantic relationships.

You must take a vow of poverty, which means you must live a simple life. In most cases, this means giving up your personal possessions (and any sense of 'ownership') and share what you have with your community. Nuns do not get paid, either; anything you earn (even from outside work) goes back to your order, unless otherwise permitted.

You must take a vow of obedience, which means you commit to following the faith and your religious leaders.

You may be required to take a vow of silence.

You must wear modest clothing when not wearing your nun's habit.

Catholic nuns, as decreed by Pope Francis, are not allowed to use smartphones or social media.

You cannot become a nun if you have been previously married. Your marriage needs to be annulled (not 'divorced') first.

Where Do Nuns Live? Where Do They Go After Retirement?

Nuns who have taken solemn vows tend to live in cloistered communities, like in a convent or monastery. This way, they are separated from society and can commit to a religious life without distraction.

Nuns generally spend their entire lives in their convent. 'Retired' nuns may choose to stay in their order (some orders have retirement lodging just for this purpose), or they may live in an outside retirement home or with their families.

What Happens If A Nun Breaks Her Vows? Or Gets Pregnant?

Technically, a nun can break her vows and/or leave the order whenever she wants. There are also plenty of opportunities to 'drop out' of becoming a nun, such as when you're in the earlier stages and you've only taken your 'temporary vows'.

Unfortunately, the process of breaking your vows is a long and complicated one. If you do not follow that process (which involves dispensation from a bishop or other leader), it's considered a sin or betrayal of the faith. Nuns who break the three main vows (chastity, obedience, poverty) may be dismissed from their community

The Nun Life

Becoming a nun is a major life decision you shouldn't take lightly - after all, it involves giving up the world you know for a lifetime of devotion, prayer, and celibacy. It's definitely not for everyone, and only a special kind of person would be able to make that commitment.

RELATED: BREAKING: Justin Bieber weeps onstage at Hillsong Church during emotional confession

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Nun Rules: 11 Things You Didn't Know About Nuns

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Unless you're a Catholic or you watch a lot of horror films, you probably don't encounter nuns in your day-to-day life. Most people don't know that nuns have to follow a very strict set of rules - here are those rules, plus a few other facts about nunhood.

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In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries.

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An agricultural laborer bound under the feudal system to work on his lord's estate.

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Serfdom, condition in medieval Europe in which a tenant farmer was bound to a hereditary plot of land and to the will of his landlord. The vast majority of serfs in medieval Europe obtained their subsistence by cultivating a plot of land that was owned by a lord. This was the essential feature differentiating serfs from slaves, who were bought and sold without reference to a plot of land. The serf provided his own food and clothing from his own productive efforts. A substantial proportion of the grain the serf grew on his holding had to be given to his lord. The lord could also compel the serf to cultivate that portion of the lord's land that was not held by other tenants (called demesne land). The serf also had to use his lord's grain mills and no others.

The British Library (Public Domain)

The essential additional mark of serfdom was the lack of many of the personal liberties that were held by freedmen. Chief among these was the serf's lack of freedom of movement; he could not permanently leave his holding or his village without his lord's permission. Neither could the serf marry, change his occupation, or dispose of his property without his lord's permission. He was bound to his designated plot of land and could be transferred along with that land to a new lord. Serfs were often harshly treated and had little legal redress against the actions of their lords. A serf could become a freedman only through manumission, enfranchisement, or escape.

From as early as the 2nd century ce, many of the large, privately held estates in the Roman Empire that had been worked by gangs of slaves were gradually broken up into peasant holdings. These peasants of the late Roman Empire, many of whom were descendants of slaves, came to depend on larger landowners and other important persons for protection from state tax collectors and, later, from barbarian invaders and oppressive neighbours. Some of these coloni, as the dependent peasants were called, may have taken up holdings granted them by a proprietor, or they may have surrendered their own lands to him in return for such protection. In any case, it became a practice for the dependent peasant to swear fealty to a proprietor, thus becoming bound to that lord.

The main problem with the coloni was that of preventing them from leaving the land they had agreed to cultivate as tenant farmers. The solution was to legally bind them to their holdings. Accordingly, a legal code established by the Roman emperor Constantine in 332 demanded labour services to be paid to the lord by the coloni. Although the coloni were legally free, the conditions of fealty required them to cultivate their lord's untenanted lands as well as their leased plot. This not only tied them to their holdings but also made their social status essentially servile, since the exaction of labour services required the landlord's agents to exercise discipline over the coloni. The threat, or the exercise, of this discipline was recognized as one of the clearest signs of a man's personal subjection.

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By the 6th century the servi, or serfs, as the servile peasants came to be called, were treated as an inferior element in society. Serfs subsequently became a major class in the small, decentralized polities that characterized most of Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the initial reconstitution of feudal monarchies, duchies, and counties in the 12th century.

By the 14th century, economic conditions in western Europe were favourable to the replacement of serfs by a free peasantry. The growth of the power of central and regional governments permitted the enforcement of peasant-landlord contracts without the need for peasant servility, and the final abandonment of labour services on demesnes removed the need for the direct exercise of labour discipline on the peasantry. The drastic population decline in Europe after 1350 as a result of the Black Death left much arable land uncultivated and also created an acute labour shortage, both economically favourable events for the peasantry. And finally, the endemic peasant uprisings in western Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries also forced more favourable terms of peasant tenure. Although the new peasants were not necessarily better off economically than were their servile forebears, they had increased personal liberties and were no longer entirely subject to the will of the lords whose lands they worked.

This favourable evolution was not shared by the peasants of eastern Europe. Peasant conditions there in the 14th century do not seem to have been worse than those of the west, and in some ways they were better, because the colonization of forestlands in eastern Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, and Hungary had led to the establishment of many free-peasant communities. But a combination of political and economic circumstances reversed these developments. The chief reason was that the wars that devastated eastern Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries tended to increase the power of the nobility at the expense of the central governments. In eastern Germany, Prussia, Poland, and Russia, this development coincided with an increased demand for grain from western Europe. To profit from this demand, nobles and other landlords took back peasant holdings, expanded their own cultivation, and made heavy demands for peasant labour services. Peasant status from eastern Germany to Muscovy consequently deteriorated sharply. Not until the late 18th century were the peasants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire freed from serfdom, thus recovering their freedom of movement and marriage and the right to learn a profession according to personal choice. The serfs of Russia were not given their personal freedom and their own allotments of land until Alexander II's Edict of Emancipation of 1861.

Throughout Chinese history, land-bound peasants were considered freemen in law but depended entirely upon the landowner for subsistence. In this system of serfdom, peasants could be traded, punished without due process of law, and made to pay tribute to the lord with labour. All serfs were freed, however, upon the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

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Serfdom, condition in medieval Europe in which a tenant farmer was bound to a hereditary plot of land and to the will of his landlord. The majority of serfs in medieval Europe obtained their subsistence by cultivating a plot of land that was owned by a lord. Learn more about serfdom here.

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The Black Death was the deadliest pandemic recorded in human history. The Black Death resulted in the deaths of up to 75–200 million people in Eurasia and North Africa, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. Plague, the disease, was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis'.

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The disastrous mortal disease known as the Black Death spread across Europe in the years 1346-53. The frightening name, however, only came several centuries after its visitation (and was probably a mistranslation of the Latin word 'atra' meaning both 'terrible' and 'black)'. Chronicles and letters from the time describe the terror wrought by the illness. In Florence, the great Renaissance poet Petrarch was sure that they would not be believed: 'O happy posterity, who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable.' A Florentine chronicler relates that,

All the citizens did little else except to carry dead bodies to be buried [...] At every church they dug deep pits down to the water-table; and thus those who were poor who died during the night were bundled up quickly and thrown into the pit. In the morning when a large number of bodies were found in the pit, they took some earth and shovelled it down on top of them; and later others were placed on top of them and then another layer of earth, just as one makes lasagne with layers of pasta and cheese.

The accounts are remarkably similar. The chronicler Agnolo di Tura 'the Fat' relates from his Tuscan home town that

... in many places in Siena great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead [...] And there were also those who were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs dragged them forth and devoured many bodies throughout the city.

The tragedy was extraordinary. In the course of just a few months, 60 per cent of Florence's population died from the plague, and probably the same proportion in Siena. In addition to the bald statistics, we come across profound personal tragedies: Petrarch lost to the Black Death his beloved Laura to whom he wrote his famous love poems; Di Tura tells us that 'I [...] buried my five children with my own hands'.

The Black Death was an epidemic of bubonic plague, a disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis that circulates among wild rodents where they live in great numbers and density. Such an area is called a 'plague focus' or a 'plague reservoir'. Plague among humans arises when rodents in human habitation, normally black rats, become infected. The black rat, also called the 'house rat' and the 'ship rat', likes to live close to people, the very quality that makes it dangerous (in contrast, the brown or grey rat prefers to keep its distance in sewers and cellars). Normally, it takes ten to fourteen days before plague has killed off most of a contaminated rat colony, making it difficult for great numbers of fleas gathered on the remaining, but soon- dying, rats to find new hosts. After three days of fasting, hungry rat fleas turn on humans. From the bite site, the contagion drains to a lymph node that consequently swells to form a painful bubo, most often in the groin, on the thigh, in an armpit or on the neck. Hence the name bubonic plague. The infection takes three-five days to incubate in people before they fall ill, and another three-five days before, in 80 per cent of the cases, the victims die. Thus, from the introduction of plague contagion among rats in a human community it takes, on average, twenty-three days before the first person dies.

When, for instance, a stranger called Andrew Hogson died from plague on his arrival in Penrith in 1597, and the next plague case followed twenty-two days later, this corresponded to the first phase of the development of an epidemic of bubonic plague. And Hobson was, of course, not the only fugitive from a plague-stricken town or area arriving in various communities in the region with infective rat fleas in their clothing or luggage. This pattern of spread is called 'spread by leaps' or 'metastatic spread'. Thus, plague soon broke out in other urban and rural centres, from where the disease spread into the villages and townships of the surrounding districts by a similar process of leaps.

In order to become an epidemic the disease must be spread to other rat colonies in the locality and transmitted to inhabitants in the same way. It took some time for people to recognize that a terrible epidemic was breaking out among them and for chroniclers to note this. The timescale varies: in the countryside it took about forty days for realisation to dawn; in most towns with a few thousand inhabitants, six to seven weeks; in the cities with over 10,000 inhabitants, about seven weeks, and in the few metropolises with over 100,000 inhabitants, as much as eight weeks.

Plague bacteria can break out of the buboes and be carried by the blood stream to the lungs and cause a variant of plague that is spread by contaminated droplets from the cough of patients (pneumonic plague). However, contrary to what is sometimes believed, this form is not contracted easily, spreads normally only episodically or incidentally and constitutes therefore normally only a small fraction of plague cases. It now appears clear that human fleas and lice did not contribute to the spread, at least not significantly. The bloodstream of humans is not invaded by plague bacteria from the buboes, or people die with so few bacteria in the blood that bloodsucking human parasites become insufficiently infected to become infective and spread the disease: the blood of plague-infected rats contains 500-1,000 times more bacteria per unit of measurement than the blood of plague-infected humans.

Importantly, plague was spread considerable distances by rat fleas on ships. Infected ship rats would die, but their fleas would often survive and find new rat hosts wherever they landed. Unlike human fleas, rat fleas are adapted to riding with their hosts; they readily also infest clothing of people entering affected houses and ride with them to other houses or localities. This gives plague epidemics a peculiar rhythm and pace of development and a characteristic pattern of dissemination. The fact that plague is transmitted by rat fleas means plague is a disease of the warmer seasons, disappearing during the winter, or at least lose most of their powers of spread. The peculiar seasonal pattern of plague has been observed everywhere and is a systematic feature also of the spread of the Black Death. In the plague history of Norway from the Black Death 1348-49 to the last outbreaks in 1654, comprising over thirty waves of plague, there was never a winter epidemic of plague. Plague is very different from airborne contagious diseases, which are spread directly between people by droplets: these thrive in cold weather.

This conspicuous feature constitutes proof that the Black Death and plague in general is an insect-borne disease. Cambridge historian John Hatcher has noted that there is 'a remarkable transformation in the seasonal pattern of mortality in England after 1348': whilst before the Black Death the heaviest mortality was in the winter months, in the following century it was heaviest in the period from late July to late September. He points out that this strongly indicates that the 'transformation was caused by the virulence of bubonic plague'.

***

Another very characteristic feature of the Black Death and plague epidemics in general, both in the past and in the great outbreaks in the early twentieth century, reflects their basis in rats and rat fleas: much higher proportions of inhabitants contract plague and die from it in the countryside than in urban centres. In the case of English plague history, this feature has been underlined by Oxford historian Paul Slack. When around 90 per cent of the population lived in the countryside, only a disease with this property combined with extreme lethal powers could cause the exceptional mortality of the Black Death and of many later plague epidemics. All diseases spread by cross-infection between humans, on the contrary, gain increasing powers of spread with increasing density of population and cause highest mortality rates in urban centres.

Lastly it could be mentioned that scholars have succeeded in extracting genetic evidence of the causal agent of bubonic plague, the DNA-code of Yersinia pestis, from several plague burials in French cemeteries from the period 1348-1590.

It used to be thought that the Black Death originated in China, but new research shows that it began in the spring of 1346 in the steppe region, where a plague reservoir stretches from the north-western shores of the Caspian Sea into southern Russia. People occasionally contract plague there even today. Two contemporary chroniclers identify the estuary of the river Don where it flows into the Sea of Azov as the area of the original outbreak, but this could be mere hearsay, and it is possible that it started elsewhere, perhaps in the area of the estuary of the river Volga on the Caspian Sea. At the time, this area was under the rule of the Mongol khanate of the Golden Horde. Some decades earlier the Mongol khanate had converted to Islam and the presence of Christians, or trade with them, was no longer tolerated. As a result the Silk Road caravan routes between China and Europe were cut off. For the same reason the Black Death did not spread from the east through Russia towards western Europe, but stopped abruptly on the Mongol border with the Russian principalities. As a result, Russia which might have become the Black Death's first European conquest, in fact was its last, and was invaded by the disease not from the east but from the west.

The epidemic in fact began with an attack that the Mongols launched on the Italian merchants' last trading station in the region, Kaffa (today Feodosiya) in the Crimea. In the autumn of 1346, plague broke out among the besiegers and from them penetrated into the town. When spring arrived, the Italians fled on their ships. And the Black Death slipped unnoticed on board and sailed with them.

***

The extent of the contagious power of the Black Death has been almost mystifying. The central explanation lies within characteristic features of medieval society in a dynamic phase of modernisation heralding the transformation from a medieval to early modern European society. Early industrial market-economic and capitalistic developments had advanced more than is often assumed, especially in northern Italy and Flanders. New, larger types of ship carried great quantities of goods over extensive trade networks that linked Venice and Genoa with Constantinople and the Crimea, Alexandria and Tunis, London and Bruges. In London and Bruges the Italian trading system was linked to the busy shipping lines of the German Hanseatic League in the Nordic countries and the Baltic area, with large broad-bellied ships called cogs. This system for long-distance trade was supplemented by a web of lively short and medium-distance trade that bound together populations all over the Old World.

The strong increase in population in Europe in the High Middle Ages (1050-1300) meant that the prevailing agricultural technology was inadequate for further expansion. To accommodate the growth, forests were cleared and mountain villages settled wherever it was possible for people to eke out a living. People had to opt for a more one-sided husbandry, particularly in animals, to create a surplus that could be traded for staples such as salt and iron, grain or flour. These settlements operated within a busy trading network running from coasts to mountain villages. And with tradesmen and goods, contagious diseases reached even the most remote and isolated hamlets.

In this early phase of modernisation, Europe was also on the way to 'the golden age of bacteria', when there was a great increase in epidemic diseases caused by increases in population density and in trade and transport while knowledge of the nature of epidemics, and therefore the ability to organise efficient countermeasures to them, was still minimal. Most people believed plague and mass illness to be a punishment from God for their sins. They responded with religious penitential acts aimed at tempering the Lord's wrath, or with passivity and fatalism: it was a sin to try to avoid God's will.

Much new can be said on the Black Death's patterns of territorial spread. Of particular importance was the sudden appearance of the plague over vast distances, due to its rapid transportation by ship. Ships travelled at an average speed of around 40km a day which today seems quite slow. However, this speed meant that the Black Death easily moved 600km in a fortnight by ship: spreading, in contemporary terms, with astonishing speed and unpredictability. By land, the average spread was much slower: up to 2km per day along the busiest highways or roads and about 0.6km per day along secondary lines of communication.

As already noted, the pace of spread slowed strongly during the winter and stopped completely in mountain areas such as the Alps and the northerly parts of Europe. Yet, the Black Death often rapidly established two or more fronts and conquered countries by advancing from various quarters.

Italian ships from Kaffa arrived in Constantinople in May 1347 with the Black Death on board. The epidemic broke loose in early July. In North Africa and the Middle East, it started around September 1st, having arrived in Alexandria with ship transport from Constantinople. Its spread from Constantinople to European Mediterranean commercial hubs also started in the autumn of 1347. It reached Marseilles by about the second week of September, probably with a ship from the city. Then the Italian merchants appear to have left Constantinople several months later and arrived in their home towns of Genoa and Venice with plague on board, some time in November. On their way home, ships from Genoa also contaminated Florence's seaport city of Pisa. The spread out of Pisa is characterized by a number of metastatic leaps. These great commercial cities also functioned as bridgeheads from where the disease conquered Europe.

In Mediterranean Europe, Marseilles functioned as the first great centre of spread. The relatively rapid advance both northwards up the Rhône valley to Lyons and south-westwards along the coasts towards Spain - in chilly months with relatively little shipping activity - is striking. As early as March 1348, both Lyon's and Spain's Mediterranean coasts were under attack.

En route to Spain, the Black Death also struck out from the city of Narbonne north-westwards along the main road to the commercial centre of Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast, which by the end of March had become a critical new centre of spread. Around April 20th, a ship from Bordeaux must have arrived in La Coruña in northwestern Spain; a couple of weeks later another ship from there let loose the plague in Navarre in northeastern Spain. Thus, two northern plague fronts were opened less than two months after the disease had invaded southern Spain.

Another plague ship sailed from Bordeaux, northwards to Rouen in Normandy where it arrived at the end of April. There, in June, a further plague front moved westwards towards Brittany, south-eastwards towards Paris and northwards in the direction of the Low Countries.

Yet another ship bearing plague left Bordeaux a few weeks later and arrived around May 8th, in the southern English town of Melcombe Regis, part of present-day Weymouth in Dorset: the epidemic broke out shortly before June 24th. The significance of ships in the rapid transmission of contagion is underscored by the fact that at the time the Black Death landed in Weymouth it was still in an early phase in Italy. From Weymouth, the Black Death spread not only inland, but also in new metastatic leaps by ships, which in some cases must have travelled earlier than the recognized outbreaks of the epidemic: Bristol was contaminated in June, as were the coastal towns of the Pale in Ireland; London was contaminated in early August since the epidemic outbreak drew comment at the end of September. Commercial seaport towns like Colchester and Harwich must have been contaminated at about the same time. From these the Black Death spread inland. It is now also clear that the whole of England was conquered in the course of 1349 because, in the late autumn of 1348, ship transport opened a northern front in England for the Black Death, apparently in Grimsby.

***

The early arrival of the Black Death in England and the rapid spread to its southeastern regions shaped much of the pattern of spread in Northern Europe. The plague must have arrived in Oslo in the autumn of 1348, and must have come with a ship from south-eastern England, which had lively commercial contacts with Norway. The outbreak of the Black Death in Norway took place before the disease had managed to penetrate southern Germany, again illustrating the great importance of transportation by ship and the relative slowness of spread by land. The outbreak in Oslo was soon stopped by the advent of winter weather, but it broke out again in the early spring. Soon it spread out of Oslo along the main roads inland and on both sides of the Oslofjord. Another independent introduction of contagion occurred in early July 1349 in the town of Bergen; it arrived in a ship from England, probably from King's Lynn. The opening of the second plague front was the reason that all Norway could be conquered in the course of 1349. It disappeared completely with the advent of winter, the last victims died at the turn of the year.

The early dissemination of the Black Death to Oslo, which prepared the ground for a full outbreak in early spring, had great significance for the pace and pattern of the Black Death's further conquest of Northern Europe. Again ship transport played a crucial role, this time primarily by Hanseatic ships fleeing homewards from their trading station in Oslo with goods acquired during the winter. On their way the seaport of Halmstad close to the Sound was apparently contaminated in early July. This was the starting point for the plague's conquest of Denmark and Sweden, which was followed by several other independent introductions of plague contagion later; by the end of 1350 most of these territories had been ravaged.

However, the voyage homewards to the Hanseatic cities on the Baltic Sea had started significantly earlier. The outbreak of the Black Death in the Prussian town of Elbing (today the Polish town of Elblag) on August 24th, 1349, was a new milestone in the history of the Black Death. A ship that left Oslo at the beginning of June would probably sail through the Sound around June 20th and reach Elbing in the second half of July, in time to unleash an epidemic outbreak around August 24th. Other ships that returned at the end of the shipping season in the autumn from the trading stations in Oslo or Bergen, brought the Black Death to a number of other Hanseatic cities both on the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. The advent of winter stopped the outbreaks initially as had happened elsewhere, but contagion was spread with goods to commercial towns and cities deep into northern Germany. In the spring of 1350, a northern German plague front was formed that spread southwards and met the plague front which in the summer of 1349 had formed in southern Germany with importation of contagion from Austria and Switzerland.

***

Napoleon did not succeed in conquering Russia. Hitler did not succeed. But the Black Death did. It entered the territory of the city state of Novgorod in the late autumn of 1351 and reached the town of Pskov just before the winter set in and temporarily suppressed the epidemic; thus the full outbreak did not start until the early spring of 1352. In Novgorod itself, the Black Death broke out in mid-August. In 1353, Moscow was ravaged, and the disease also reached the border with the Golden Horde, this time from the west, where it petered out. Poland was invaded by epidemic forces coming both from Elbing and from the northern German plague front and, apparently, from the south by contagion coming across the border from Slovakia via Hungary.

Iceland and Finland are the only regions that, we know with certainty, avoided the Black Death because they had tiny populations with minimal contact abroad. It seems unlikely that any other region was so lucky.

How many people were affected? Knowledge of general mortality is crucial to all discussions of the social and historical impact of the plague. Studies of mortality among ordinary populations are far more useful, therefore, than studies of special social groups, whether monastic communities, parish priests or social elites. Because around 90 per cent of Europe's population lived in the countryside, rural studies of mortality are much more important than urban ones.

Researchers generally used to agree that the Black Death swept away 20-30 per cent of Europe's population. However, up to 1960 there were only a few studies of mortality among ordinary people, so the basis for this assessment was weak. From 1960, a great number of mortality studies from various parts of Europe were published. These have been collated and it is now clear that the earlier estimates of mortality need to be doubled. No suitable sources for the study of mortality have been found in the Muslim countries that were ravaged.

The mortality data available reflects the special nature of medieval registrations of populations. In a couple of cases, the sources are real censuses recording all members of the population, including women and children. However, most of the sources are tax registers and manorial registers recording households in the form of the names of the householders. Some registers aimed at recording all households, also the poor and destitute classes who did not pay taxes or rents, but the majority recorded only householders who paid tax to the town or land rent to the lord of the manor. This means that they overwhelmingly registered the better-off adult men of the population, who for reasons of age, gender and economic status had lower mortality rates in plague epidemics than the general population. According to the extant complete registers of all households, the rent or tax-paying classes constituted about half the population both in the towns and in the countryside, the other half were too poor. Registers that yield information on both halves of the populations indicate that mortality among the poor was 5-6 per cent higher. This means that in the majority of cases when registers only record the better-off half of the adult male population, mortality among the adult male population as a whole can be deduced by adding 2.5-3 per cent.

Another fact to consider is that in households where the householder survived, other members often died. For various reasons women and children suffer higher incidence of mortality from plague than adult men. A couple of censuses produced by city states in Tuscany in order to establish the need for grain or salt are still extant. They show that the households were, on average, reduced in the countryside from 4.5 to 4 persons and in urban centres from 4 to 3.5 persons. All medieval sources that permit the study of the size and composition of households among the ordinary population produce similar data, from Italy in southern Europe to England in the west and Norway in northern Europe. This means that the mortality among the registered households as a whole was 11-12.5 per cent higher than among the registered householders.

Detailed study of the mortality data available points to two conspicuous features in relation to the mortality caused by the Black Death: namely the extreme level of mortality caused by the Black Death, and the remarkable similarity or consistency of the level of mortality, from Spain in southern Europe to England in north-western Europe. The data is sufficiently widespread and numerous to make it likely that the Black Death swept away around 60 per cent of Europe's population. It is generally assumed that the size of Europe's population at the time was around 80 million. This implies that that around 50 million people died in the Black Death. This is a truly mind-boggling statistic. It overshadows the horrors of the Second World War, and is twice the number murdered by Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union. As a proportion of the population that lost their lives, the Black Death caused unrivalled mortality.

This dramatic fall in Europe's population became a lasting and characteristic feature of late medieval society, as subsequent plague epidemics swept away all tendencies of population growth. Inevitably it had an enormous impact on European society and greatly affected the dynamics of change and development from the medieval to Early Modern period. A historical turning point, as well as a vast human tragedy, the Black Death of 1346-53 is unparalleled in human history.

Ole J. Benedictow is Emeritus Professor of History at the Universtiy of Oslo, Norway.

Further Reading:

The Black Death, 1346-1353. The Complete History (Boydell & Brewer, 2004)

Ole J. Benedictow, 'Plague in the Late Medieval Nordic Countries', Epidemiological Studies (1996)

M.W. Dols,The Black Death in the Middle East (Princeton, 1970)

J. Hatcher,Plague, Population and the English Economy 1348-1530 (Basingstoke, 1977)

J. Hatcher 'England in the Aftermath of the Black Death' (Past & Present, 1994)

L.F. Hirst, The Conquest of Plague (Oxford, 1953).

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The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe Ever

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Ole J Benedictow calculated that the Black Death, or bubonic plague, killed 50 million people in the 14th century - or 60 per cent of Europe's entire population.

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Feudal Contract

+50% Production toward Ancient, Classical, Medieval and Renaissance era melee, ranged and anti-cavalry units.

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Feudal Contract is a Military Policy Card in Civilization VI.

This Military Policy practically replaces Agoge. Use it as you would the previous one: to accelerate construction of next-gen units, such as Crossbowmen and Musketmen.

Sometimes you will have already amassed a big enough army in the first two eras. In this case you won't need Feudal Contract that much, as all you will actually need to do is upgrade your existing units.

For commoners not serfs nor indentured servants, villeins - not to be confused with "villains," although that may be mere terminology - were the vassals enjoying a feudal contract with a manor lord. They were legally free but subject to the lord's authority. Under the feudal contract, the lord had the duty to provide a fief for his villein, to protect him, and to provide justice in the king's court for him. In return, the lord demanded fealty and the right to services attached to the contract (military, labor, taxes, and such). To violate the oath of fealty was a felony, like a breach of contract but with stiffer penalties.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Back to the list of Policy Cards Feudal Contract is a Military Policy Card in Civilization VI. This Military Policy practically replaces Agoge. Use it as you would the previous one: to accelerate construction of next-gen units, such as Crossbowmen and Musketmen. Sometimes you will have already amassed a big enough army in the first two eras.