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Medieval Villagers And How They Connect To Feudalism

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My topic for my research paper is about Serfs, more specifically farmers and how they connect to feudalism. Farmers are Medieval peasants that provide agricultural work for their manor. Feudalism is the Medieval way of governing, it starts with a king and works it way down to the peasants. Each level of the system is important to one another an other and they rely on each other to work together to provide a working kingdom. Farming connects to Feudalism because they have the important job of providing food and other materials to their Manor and relying on protection from their peers in return. Farming is a large and important part of Feudalism, they provide food, clothing, and other materials for the manor to live off of on and trade with …show more content…

It was a religious belief written by Greek and Roman philosophers Plato and Aristotle, the basic idea of the Great Chain of Being is that everything in the universe, starting with God all the way down through people, animals, plants, and even rocks were in an unchangeable position. This meant that you were created the way you were because that’s the way that God wanted it to be. There was a system that people invented based off the Great Chain of Being, which was called Feudalism. The most important thing to remember about Feudalism is that, even though it was in many ways not fair, it was really a system of interdependence, meaning that every layer of society depended on every other layer of the society. According to the Great Chain, some of the people such as Vassals, Lords, and Monarchs are always going to be better than other people such as the Serfs and Freemen. With all the power and wealth they had, the Church was able to control the chaos that the lower classes (Serfs) had been causing, by convincing them that’s the way God had wanted it to be by using the idea of The Great Chain of Being. This is how the five levels of feudalism were created, the Monarch was ruler of the land because that’s what god said that’s how it should be, then lord is the lord because that’s what god said it was going to be like that and so on. The church did other things like this such as telling the peasants …show more content…

The Feudalism consisted of contracts or feudal oaths to gain each other's loyalty and respect. The point of the oaths and agreements was to gain the loyalty of many people who would help run the kingdom to break down all the work until it becomes manageable. The loyalty was an extremely important concept of the feudal oaths because it was how everyone gained their trust. An important part of the oaths is “It is right that those who promise us unbroken faith should be placed under our protection”(Biel). Meaning that whoever promises their loyalty and service to their lord the lord will provide their protection for them. Oaths became very important to the feudal economy. The way that the Feudalistic Economy worked is that everyone will give back to their community and get something in return for it. This starts with the Monarch or owner of the land. The Monarch will find a lord, the Monarch will give his lord a parcel of land to manage. Since the Monarch gave his lord a piece of the land he will receive the lord's loyalty and attendance to the Manors on the land that the lord was given. The lord will find a vassal or knight, the lord will give the vassal a place to live on his land, in return the Vassal will give his lord his loyalty, protection, and military service. The lord will hire many other vassals so that he will have a strong army to protect

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