Social Hierarchy

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Social Hierarchy

Rewards of Fighting . Medieval social stratification derived initially directly from the earliest means of survival of European medieval peoples—migratory warfare—when most of the land’s resources were the rewards of fighting. The warrior most fearsome in battle, frequently identified as the king, was as well the most powerful in peacetime. It was he to whom the winnings of battle were attributed and from whom any redistribution of them would come. The victorious Frank Charles Martel was ostensibly the first to create the relationship of vassalage whereby fighters loyal to a leader in past battles were bound by oath and a benefice or gift to provide future services in the same leader’s wars. To his action can also be attributed the giving of a new social authority to the warrior class.

Warrior-Vassal System . Beginning in the mid eighth century the warrior-vassal system brought a specific societal order to Europe, based as it were on “employment.” Warriors in service of a landowning lord in the highest social position, his vassals, were deemed of next highest social rank. The peasants were considered of lesser station because they worked for the vassals who were off fighting. A hierarchy of nobility established itself, those commanding very large territories assuming the more prestigious titles of count or duke. A second rank of nobles, those sub-infeudated to a vassal, having medium-sized or small properties as their fiefs, were far more numerous.

Crusades . In 1096 the First Crusade set forth, with the armies of Frankish, Flemish, and Norman knights, to capture Nicaea in 1097, Antioch in 1098, and Jerusalem in 1099 and to establish on the conquered land what would become the four Christian kingdoms of Jerusalem, Antioch, Edessa, and Tripoli. As successful as the Crusades had been, by 1187 the Muslims had recaptured Jerusalem—a city the Christians never reclaimed—and it was apparent that they had truly dealt a devastating blow to the nobility of the time. Before the Crusades, weak kings could not require the local nobility to stay in check, but with the death of so many nobles in the battles of the Crusades, kings gained enough power to place themselves securely at the top of the social strata.

Position of Power . Medieval nobility had more than small successes, nonetheless, in keeping high social rank even with a king heading feudal society. In France, although a king united the country into a monarchy, a host of greater and lesser nobles flourished beneath him, ranging from dukes to counts to viscounts and barons. As a precautionary measure, however, most kings remained wary of the nobility, and some sent out their most loyal vassals to prevent feudal nobles from building castles to use as

strongholds to increase their power at the expense of the king.

Noble Trends . In a larger sense, most nobles held onto their feudal rights and the medieval monarchy failed to assert itself fully. The knightly calling and military prowess had not fallen out of favor with the noble class, and the code of chivalry became even more complicated and rarefied from the twelfth century on. Recruitment into knightly ranks changed little; from 1065 on, young European noblemen were quite generally being taught horsemanship and chivalry. Later, medieval nobility sensed enough of the shift in power to be uneasy in the new autocratic environment but also to realize that they did not choose to be assimilated into the new urban social configuration of merchants, artisans, and free townsmen. After the establishment in England of the Great Council by the Magna Carta of 1215 and the French king’s excessive taxation of the Champagne fairs that destroyed their importance, medieval kings and nobles nonetheless spent most of their time sharing administration with the new merchant class. Although the best trained and most noble among the knightly class continued to play a part in political and military leadership, during the fourteenth century the increasing use of hired soldiers and the introduction of gunpowder decreased the demand for them in their classic feudal role.

Religious Society . Medieval social stratification created a special place for those who had chosen the religious vocation. There was, however, tension between the regular, or monastic, and the secular clergy, such that the life of the monk usually ranked higher in social esteem for its perceived greater holiness. The secular clergy, from bishops to parish priests, while presumed chaste, were perceived to be far less poor, otherworldly, and self-denying and were hence less revered in the eyes of the contemporary public. In fact this was in reverse of the legal organization of the church institution, which determined the secular clergy as the first order, with bishops frequently having administrative authority over monastic houses, and the regular clergy as the second. A group of laity, though far below the two other ranks of this social stratification, became identified as a third religious order, comprised of lay brethren or sisters who worked within the monastic community.

Secular Church . Throughout the Middle Ages, both the regular and the secular clerical church institutions differentiated themselves markedly from the rest of medieval social structure. Secular church hierarchy, which began at the bottom with the parish priest, included most prominently bishops and the Pope. In 800 Pope Leo III appointed the first Holy Roman Emperor. The title was intended to set one king, the one the papacy chose, above all other kings in western Europe, and to offer to the Pope an alliance with an authority of the secular world of almost equal social and political rank to his own. Despite the title, or perhaps because of it, Holy Roman Emperors never succeeded in breaking the power of local lords, even as the feudal system broke down, and it proved to be disappointing in that regard to the papacy’s designs for a new Christian Roman Empire in Europe. Even more challenging to papal authority, however was the rivalry that established itself between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope himself, particularly over the appointment of bishops. It took the Concordat of Worms, instituted in 1122, to force the European kings to accept that the rank of emperor had less authority, even temporal authority, than the papacy.