![]() ![]() Very few people in Europe could read or write. Only a small number of men had enough money to go to university. The reason universities had an important influence was that learning took place there. Universities were also important social institutions at the time. ![]() Priests also told people that they could make sure of a place in Heaven if they did not break these rules. People were punished severely for breaking these rules. The teachings of the Church were based on very strict rules. Almost everyone in Europe belonged to the Catholic Church and believed in God and the devil. The Church taught people that life on earth was not important. It influenced what people believed about the world. The Church owned land, and people had to pay some of their wages as taxes to the Church. At its head was the Pope, who lived in the Vatican City in Rome. The Roman Catholic Church was a very rich and powerful social institution in Europe. People’s religious beliefs were more important to them than the country that they lived in. They believed in sea monsters and that strange and weird people lived in other parts of the world. Most Europeans believed that the world was flat and that is was dangerous to sail close to the edge. At the time that the other empires you read about in this section were at their height, Europe was quite isolated from the rest of the world, and was divided into many small states.Įuropeans were ignorant of the rest of the world. The Middle Ages in Europe are the years between about 410 AD and 1500 AD. In Europe this was the middle ages period. Glossary Feudal Society: The stage of society that preceded capitalism, during which a small elite (the aristocracy) demanded recompense from a peasantry in exchange for military protection. ![]() This usage doesn’t usually refer to the actual structural complexities of feudalism, but rather is intended to draw a comparison based on how unequal and unjust such systems were.The Middle Ages in Europe, a feudal society While such systems essentially no longer exist, the term feudal system is still often heard in political discourse as a negative term for unfair forms of government. At the bottom of the hierarchy were farmers and merchants. Japan operated under a feudal system from the 1100s to the 1800s under powerful military leaders called shoguns, whose vassals, called daimyo, controlled armies of samurai. And they were required to get the lord’s permission to do just about anything, including getting married or traveling off of the land.įeudalism wasn’t limited to medieval Europe. Serfs were not free to work elsewhere or go wherever they pleased-if the land passed from one owner to another, the serfs were then required to work the land for that new owner. Working the land (doing the actual farming) at the very bottom of the hierarchy were peasants called serfs. Their tenants, called vassals, swore loyalty to the lord and provided military service (yes, knights in shining armor). At the top of the hierarchy in the feudal system was a king, who traditionally owned all land and granted it directly to noblemen, known as lords, who held hereditary rights to it. The word feudalism may call to mind images of lowly peasants toiling for haughty nobles, but the relationships in such systems were more complex than that. ![]() The term feudal system was introduced much later, in the 1700s, by scholars studying the complex legal and political relationships of the Middle Ages. But they didn’t call it a feudal system at the time. The feudal system developed in Europe when the decline of the Roman Empire led to a fragmentation of power, which in turn allowed wealthy landowners to strengthen their control over the people living on their land. ![]()
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