1.3: 1.3 Medieval Politics

The feudal system flourished in the High Middle Ages, and consisted of a rigidly hierarchical social and political system in which one’s vocation was largely determined by birth, landowning, and making war.

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One of the traditional rights, and a vital factor in the lives of peasants, were the commons: lands not officially controlled by anyone that all people had a right to use. The commons provided firewood, grazing land, and limited trapping of small animals, collectively serving as a vital “safety net” for peasants living on the edge of subsistence. Access to the commons was based on traditional, centuries-old agreements that governed the interactions between different social classes. After the Middle Ages, landowning nobles would start to convert these lands to cash-producing farms.

The kingdoms of Europe were barely unified. In many cases, kings were simply the most powerful nobles, men who extracted pledges of loyalty from their subjects but whose actual authority was limited to their personal lands. Likewise, leaders were largely itinerant, moving from place to place all year long. These trips were critical, ensuring that their powerful vassals would stay loyal to them. A vassal ignored for too long could, and generally did, simply stop acknowledging the lordship of his king. Those patterns started to change during the High Middle Ages, and the first two kingdoms to show real signs of centralization were France and England.

In France, a series of kings named Philip (I through IV) ruled from 1060 to 1314, building a strong administrative apparatus complete with royal judges who were directly beholden to the crown. The kings ruled the region around Paris (called the Île-de-France, meaning the "island of France"), but had little influence beyond. Philip IV managed to seize almost complete control of the French Church, defying papal authority. He also proved incredibly shrewd at creating new taxes and in attacking and seizing the lands and holdings of groups like the French Jewish community and the Knights Templar.

In England, the decedents of William the Conqueror were effective in creating a relatively stable political system. All land was legally the king’s, and his nobles received their lands as “fiefs,” essentially loans from the crown that had to be renewed for payments on the death of a landholder before it could be inherited. Henry II (r. 1154 – 1189) created a system of royal sheriffs to enforce his will, created circuit courts that traveled around the land hearing cases, and created a grand jury system that allowed people to be tried by their peers.

In 1215, a less competent king named John signed the Magna Carta (“great charter”) with the English nobility. This document formally acknowledged the feudal privileges of the nobility, towns, and clergy. The center principle: even the king had to respect the law. Thereafter, English kings began to call the Parliament, a meeting of the Church, nobles, and well-off commoners, in order to get authorization and money for their wars.