Donn has an excellent website that includes a section on the Middle Ages. View a Powerpoint presentation on Feudalism. These changes in society would lead to the Renaissance-the rebirth of Europe and the beginning of modern history.ĭownload this lesson as Microsoft Word file or as an Adobe Acrobat file. The introduction of gunpowder and long-range cannons made knights fighting with swords on horseback an outdated form of warfare that was expensive to train and support.Īt about the same time, cities were growing in population for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire. A terrible disease called the Black Death claimed the lives of millions of Europeans in the fourteenth century, so in many places there were not enough peasants to farm the vast estates. During the Middle Ages, Western Europe built a new civilization based on. In medieval Europe, rural life was governed by a system scholars call feudalism. The following is a chart showing the structure of the feudal system. The feudal system proved impractical by the end of the Middle Ages. For centuries, a person’s life was all but guaranteed to be exactly like their parents’ lives. A serf who lived on the manor of a Lord was likely the descendant of a peasant who had served the ancestor of that Lord. There was very little social mobility, or chance to move upward in status during the Middle Ages. Lords often forced families to pay a tax when a member of their household died to compensate for the manor’s loss of labor. Serfs were encouraged to have many children because a small family might not have enough daylight hours to tend their family plot after their work in the Lord’s fields was complete. Serfs were not allowed to marry without permission from the Lord the family of a serf would have to turn over additional crops when someone wanted to marry and leave the manor. Feudalism was a land-based system, which made it a more logical choice of government during the Middle Ages when the economic system was weak and bartering was heavily used. Feudal society is a military hierarchy in which a ruler or lord. The Protestant Church was powerful in Europe. A dynasty was one family in power for a long time. The king had barons because he was unable to control all the land. The lord was the most powerful person in the Feudal System. The lord owned the land and everything in it. In exchange, serfs were required to work a particular number of days on the lord’s personal fields. Feudalism was the medieval model of government predating the birth of the modern nation-state. Middle Ages government was based on the Feudal System. The Lord provided the serf and his family a safe place to live and land to grow food.

Serfs could not be sold as slaves, but they could not leave their manor without permission from the Lord.

Middle ages feudalism chart