![]() ![]() This last was very important for what it led on to (see below, Representative Government). He also had a duty to provide his lord with advice. If he had only been given one knight’s fee, he would either undertake the service himself or (if old or frail) send a substitute.Ī vassals was also obliged to provide his lord with money from time to time – for example, when the lord’s son came of age, or the lord’s daughter got married, or if the lord was captured in battle and needed ransoming (quite a common occurrence – a soldier would far prefer to take an enemy prisoner than kill him, as a defeated opponent was worth a lot more alive than dead). So, if a vassal had been granted a fief worth 40 knight’s fees (a very large fief), he would be obliged to furnish his lord with 40 knights for 40 days a year. A knight’s fee was normal the smallest fiefs, a sufficient amount of land to support one knight – enough land, in other words, to support a warrior and his very expensive war-horses, armor and weapons, plus his family and servants (including at least one servant to aid him while on campaign). ![]() This would depend on the amount of land involved, which was calculated in multiples of knight’s fees. The services the vassal owed the lord commonly entailed military service for a set amount of time each year (40 days was normal). In brief, a fief was a piece of property which a person was given on condition that he (and occasionally she) performed certain services to the one who gave it.Ī person who received a fief was a vassal of the one who had given him the fief, who was his lord. In the agrarian society of medieval Europe, a fief was usually a specified parcel of land. ![]() The word “feudal” derives from the word fief. As a shorthand, feudalism will do as well as any other. However, the alternative is to get bogged down in detailed descriptions and qualifications which risk overwhelming all but specialist medievalists. They regard it as inadequate in describing an extraordinarily complex situation. Each class in society needed land and had obligations listing what one had to do to ensure their security of land("Manorialism").Not all historians like the term. These nobles and lords would in turn have vassals (servants) work the land in exchange for a place to live. The king owned all the land and would distribute lots of land to nobles and lords in exchange of military protection. Despite feudalistic societies occurring in other parts of the world, European feudalism of the Medieval Ages remain the common model of the feudal society.īasically, Feudalism was the system of land and obligation("Manorialism"). The system of the feudalism of Europe in the Middle Ages spread to all parts of Europe until the 14th century ("Feudalism"). The word feudalism comes from the Latin word feodum, for "fief," and a German word meaning "cow,"generalized to indicate valuable and movable property and land ("Feudalism"). This hierarchy was crucial to the systems of feudalism and manorialism.įeudalism controlled the political, economic and military system of the middle ages. There was a hierarchy of power in society, with the King at the highest levels. Denmark’s society ran on two systems during the high middle ages: the system of feudalism and manorialism("Feudalism").Īs mentioned on the previous page, Denmark used to be a Monarchy. ![]()
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