A Short History of the Middle Ages Fourth Edition

The key to tenth- and eleventh-century society was personal dependency. This took

many forms. Of the three traditional “orders” recognized by writers in the ninth

through eleventh centuries—those who pray (the oratores), those who fight (the

bellatores), and those who work (the laboratores)—the top two were free. The pray-

ers (the monks) and the fighters (the nobles and their lower-class counterparts, the

knights) participated in prestigious kinds of subordination, whether as vassals, lords,

or both. Indeed, they were usually both: a typical warrior was lord of several vassals

and the vassal of another lord. Monasteries normally had vassals to fight for them,

while their abbots in turn were vassals of a king or other lord. At the low end of the

social scale, poor vassals looked to their lords to feed, clothe, house, and arm them.

At the upper end, vassals looked to their lords to enrich them with still more fiefs.

Some women were vassals, and some were lords (or, rather, “ladies,” the female

version). Many upper-class laywomen participated in the society of warriors and

monks as wives and mothers of vassals and lords and as landowners in their own

right. Others entered convents and became oratores themselves. Through its abbess

or a man standing in for her, a convent was itself often the “lord” of vassals.

Vassalage was voluntary and public. In some areas, it was marked by a

ceremony: the vassal-to-be knelt and, placing his hands between the hands of his

lord, said, “I promise to be your man.” This act, known as “homage,” was followed

by the promise of “fealty”—fidelity, trust, and service—which the vassal swore with

his hand on relics or a Bible. Then the vassal and the lord kissed. In an age when

many people could not read, a public moment such as this represented a visual and

verbal contract, binding the vassal and lord together with mutual obligations to help

each other. On the other hand, these obligations were rarely spelled out, and a lord

with many vassals, or a vassal with many lords, needed to satisfy numerous

conflicting claims. “I am a loser only because of my loyalty to you,” Hugh of

Lusignan told his lord, William of Aquitaine, after his expectations for reward were

continually disappointed.^7

Lords and Peasants

At the lowest end of the social scale were those who worked: the peasants. In many

regions of Europe, as power fell into the hands of local rulers, the distinction between

“free” and “unfree” peasants began to blur; many peasants simply became “serfs,”

dependents of lords. This was a heavy dependency, without prestige or honor. It was

hereditary rather than voluntary: no serf did homage or fealty to his lord; no serf and

lord kissed each other.