What Occurred During The Middle Ages

A lord would grant land to another noble in exchange for protection and military services. This grant was called a fief. Those who received fiefs were called vassals. Within the fief, the vassal was the highest authority. Fiefs could be various seizes. Some were single estates just big enough for a knight and his family. Others were large, as big as an entire country or province.

In two stories there is a code that knights follow. Chivalry is the code that they follow. The code says that a knight should be a brave warrior, a good christian, and selflessly fighting for justice. The knights are supposed to fight for their king and queen. In the stories Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and from Morte d’Arthur they show the idea about chivalry.

The feudal system began to decline after the Black Death struck Europe in the late 1340’s. The feudal system joined politics and grouped together the social classes of that period. It began with the “relationship between two freemen (men who are not serfs), a lord and his vassal. Vassal derived from a Celtic word for servant, but in feudal terms vassal meant a free person who put himself under the protection of a lord and for whom he rendered loyal military aid.” This relationship was mutually beneficial at first, but throughout the development of the system, great restrictions were endured.

There are many misunderstandings with the word chivalry, one of them being that the knight never actually swore an oath of chivalry until later in the middle ages. Chivalry was a word that was created by French-speaking English nobility, during the medieval period. The word originates from the French word cheval meaning horse, and the French word Knecht meant knight, by putting the two words together, we get the word chevalier which meant horseman. During the early medieval ages, a knight was known as a chevalerie which meant horseman. Then the lords, who ruled over the

     An act of chivalry is described as the qualifications or character of the ideal knight. Knights were expected to uphold this code of conduct. In the English literature Le Morte d?Arthur, French for ?The Death of Arthur?, by Sir Thomas Malory, the characters display acts of chivalry from beginning to end. Though the code of chivalry contains many qualities or acts, nevertheless bravery, loyalty, and courtly love are demonstrated more throughout this literature.

Chivalry is the type of thing that would be great to have in our society but I don’t believe that it exists too much anymore in the world today. Let me break down here some of the chivalry rules compared with the actions of the people of the current world.

The decline of the western part of the old Roman Empire left Europe without the laws and protection the empire had provided. The vacuum was filled by the creation of a feudal hierarchy. In this hierarchy, the serf, or peasant, was protected by the lord of the manor, who, in turn, owed allegiance to and was protected by a higher overlord. And so the system went, ending eventually with the king. The strong protected the weak, but they did so at a high price. In return for payments of money, food, labor, or military allegiance, overlords granted the fief, or feudum – a hereditary right to use land – to their vassals. At the bottom was the serf, a peasant who

• Class system, those that were upper class or a minister received better land and status in community.

These were concerned with the passing of land over to the son in a noble family. If the noble holding land died before his son had reached maturity, then the King claimed 'wardship'. This effectively made him guardian of the heir and his lands. When a ward came of age, Henry could demand a 'livery' payment, which was a large sum of money paid to allow the transfer of lands to its new, rightful owner. Similarly, even if the mature son of the noble was to receive the family's estate in due course when his time came, then a 'relief' payment had to

In years of King Arthur and the round table, the knights lived by a code. This code was called the Code of Chivalry. Knights abided by these rules and were punished both physically but socially if they broke one. Today, this code can be translated into modern day unspoken rules.

Feudalism was a contrasting system dealing with political and military relationships existing among members of the higher social class, Kings, Lords and other owners of large lands in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. The Feudal system started by the granting of fiefs, chiefly in the form of land and labor, in return the lord would receive political and

During the ninth century, the land that was granted to a vassal was now known as a fief. After owning the land for a while, many vassals would possess the power to exercise rights of jurisdiction or political and legal authority within their fiefs. When the Carolingian political system began to fall, because of numerous invasions and internal differences, various powerful lords arose. Now it was the people’s job to keep order, they could no longer depend on the government. Since number of lords substantially increased, the number of vassals multiplied also. This abundant increase brought about the development of subinfeudation. This is where fief-holding became complicated. Vassals of a king might also have vassals who might owe them military service for land that was granted to them. These vassals sometimes also had other vassals under them who might only have enough land to provide their equipment. Even though this system brought about greater and lesser landowners, this relationship was still honorable. Since this was a willing relationship between free men, it was not based on servitude. This

Monarchs owned the land and he would divide the land that he did not need up between the men who were called lords in return for loyalty to him in times of war. The lords enlisted soldiers who were called knights to be the fighting force in these wars. The lowest people in the feudal system were called peasants; these people farmed the land to provide food and provided other services for the kingdom in exchange for protection.

age old practice of feudalism. The calling of the Estates-General was another change in the

The feudal system of the time operated on the premise of peasants or serfs, and thanes, or lords. The lords owned the land, and the peasants worked on it. In turn, they received the protection