chapter 1

• • During the Middle Ages, European society was organized into a system called feudalism
• • Feudalism is a form of hierarchy
• In a hierarchy, people are ranked one above another according to their importance
• • In the feudal system, people were born into a certain level and were expected to stay at that level for their entire lives
• The king or queen ruled all of society and distributed the land
• knights: Were the warriors of medieval life and protected the land from rival towns and lords
• nobilities: Powerful land owners. They held all the land and power in feudal society even though they only made up about 10% of the population
• peasants: Most of the people in the middle ages were peasants they worked the land and had to turn over a portion of what they produced. peasants had no control over their lives and could never leave their position in the hierarchy
• • Other names for commoners were: serfs, freemen, peasants 
• Most commoners in the Middle Ages worked the land as farmer and were not allowed to leave the manor without the lords permission
• A manor is a piece of land (sometimes called a fief ) that was used for farming.
• • Most Medieval towns were crowded, dirty and rat infested, but they also offered new opportunities and offered a chance to move up in society. 
• Guilds were cooperative organizations that controlled the prices of goods, set standards of quality and decided who would be admitted to the craft as an apprentice. Guild members followed lots of rules that had to do with their specific jobs.
• The people who worked in guilds were called apprentice, journeymen, master
• • Women in Medieval times had different rights depending on whether they were from the commoner class or part of the nobility. Nobel women had less rights than common women because their marriages were arranged for the families economic or political gain.
• These 2 things caused the feudal system to break down:

  1. peasants revolt
  2. black death
• 1. peasants revolt: Peasants from both sides decided to join forces and started revolting against the Nobility because of the high rents and taxes they were forced to pay in order to finance the war, and their own lives which they were supposed to give up in order to fight
• 1. black death: all the peasants died and there was no one to work on the fields, and workers were in short supply making them valuable. so the nobles went bankrupt, then the peasants had more options so the feudal system broke down
• The Black Death caused severe labor shortage and many nobles went bankrupt. As a result, many serfs were released from their bonds to their lords. Many people also thought the Black Death had been sent by god as a punishment.
• • Religion was very important during the Middle Ages. People believed that with the help of the church they would be able to reach heaven. the church would have strongly reinforced this belief that was very much a part of the Middle ages worldview.
• After the Plague, shopkeepers, merchants and business people in the towns became more dependent on time because they needed to know how long they worked for. As towns changed and more and more peasants left the manor to work in towns, money came into use more and more.
• • When a new social structure began emerging, with just a upper class, middle class and lower class, sumptuary laws were introduced to control how people spent their money and to try to save the upper class
• The end of the Middle Ages led to the renaissance, which was a period of great creativity in the arts and sciences, architecture and lit
• the new social system was based on how much money people made
• The Black Death made some people question their faith. They believed their prayers and other attempts to please God had not worked because people everywhere kept dying. They felt God had abandoned them. As a result, people began to take a more critical attitude toward the Church. They also knew that the Church was a wealthy institution; it owned one third of all the land in Europe and continued to collect large amounts of money from tithes. Some people speculated that the Church was more interested in luxurious living than in spiritual values and began to stray away from the Christian life
• People during the Middle Ages revolved their lives around doing what was asked of them on earth, in order to get into heaven, where they would be rewarded. In this way, the Church heavily controlled the people
• Everyone had to pay a tithe (a portion of crops or percentage of earnings paid to the Church) to the Church. As a result of this, the Church became extremely wealthy and powerful in Europe, and was one of the main landowners. Belonging to the 

  Church and celebrating Christian festivals helped to give people a sense of community, while fuelling the Church’s desire for money.
• Society became less rigid with the rise of towns.
• People became focused on material possessions and displaying their wealth through clothing, furniture, decorations, and meals.
• Urban people had the opportunity to move up in social levels through acquiring wealth and skills.
• The power and social position of the wealthy merchants and middle class were based on money rather than land ownership.
• • sumptuary laws: laws that controlled consumption or how people spent their money – they restricted what people of different classes could wear (put in place by the upper class Nobles who didn’t want this new middle class catching up to them)
• • society was organized in a very strict system called the Feudal Hierarchy – a 

    system of ranking people according to their social class
• people were born into a certain level and could not advance (no social mobility)
•  society was run by the church and wealthy Lords or Nobles