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Speaker 1: Oh, lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world

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Speaker 1: history examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome.

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Speaker 1: This is half our history Secrets of the Medieval World.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Last episode, we dove head

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Speaker 1: first into Renaissance life. Now let's talk about life on

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Speaker 1: the farm. Today Chris dives into feudalism and how it operated.

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Speaker 1: He also talks about how people during this time made

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Speaker 1: some extra cash and the innovations that made the agricultural

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Speaker 1: revolution possible. Here's Chris. So this is one of those

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Speaker 1: topics where we really start to look at what life

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Speaker 1: was like for the everyday person, you know, eighty percent

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Speaker 1: of the population. Although we should say that when we

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Speaker 1: were talking about monks and nuns in monasteries and convents

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Speaker 1: and the prior topic, that most of those people were

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Speaker 1: peasants or they were there was no middle class, but

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Speaker 1: the functional equivalent of what you and I would call

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Speaker 1: blue collar people. So feudalism is a structure makes us

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Speaker 1: think of triangle of a hierarchy, and that's true. But

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Speaker 1: the important thing to remember is that feudalism affected the

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Speaker 1: bottom portion of that pyramid. It was eighty percent of

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Speaker 1: the population. So you and me in this world. Feudalism

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Speaker 1: is a topic that historians have been arguing about for

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Speaker 1: about one hundred and fifty years, and in the last

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Speaker 1: twenty or thirty years there's been this very vibrant discussion

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Speaker 1: among medieval historians as to whether or not there was

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Speaker 1: even something called feudalism. And it was a very complex structure.

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Speaker 1: And yes there was something called feudalism, but there was

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Speaker 1: no monolithic manual. You know, you didn't open up a

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Speaker 1: manual and it said here, this is how feudalism must

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Speaker 1: work in all places and at all times. There were

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Speaker 1: lots of customs, there were lots of local variations over

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Speaker 1: one set system. But what I'd like to present to

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Speaker 1: you is kind of a rubric or a skeleton. Most

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Speaker 1: feudal systems in most places worked something like this on

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Speaker 1: that pyramid structure. We have to remember fundamentally that what

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Speaker 1: we're talking about is the countryside. This is a rural structure. Now,

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Speaker 1: some of these rural communities, while I have a castle

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Speaker 1: connected to them eventually, but those are still towns. They're

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Speaker 1: in no way cities. As we're going to discuss in

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Speaker 1: the next topic. This is a rural structure, a decentralized structure.

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Speaker 1: Now at the beginning of feudalism, at the very top

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Speaker 1: of that pyramid, we're dealing with the upper classes mostly absolutely,

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Speaker 1: there's no question about that. And we're dealing with very,

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Speaker 1: very large portions of land. The smallest of one of

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Speaker 1: these portions of land would be several hundred acres. The

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Speaker 1: largest of them might be as big as a large

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Speaker 1: county in your state nowadays, and that holding, that piece

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Speaker 1: of land was called a feudom or a thief, a

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Speaker 1: landholding with all the property that was on it, all

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Speaker 1: of the buildings which is immovable property, and all of

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Speaker 1: the movable property, which are instruments, wheelbarrows, animals, and yes,

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Speaker 1: we must say people. People who are legally free but

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Speaker 1: tied to the land some kind of in between idea.

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Speaker 1: They're called serfs, which is normally translated as slaves. And

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Speaker 1: though they had certain legal rights, they couldn't up and

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Speaker 1: move on their own without paying a penalty. So let's

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Speaker 1: look at kind of three levels. The tiny, tiny, tiny

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Speaker 1: point of that pyramid level one little bit underneath that

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Speaker 1: level two, and then eighty percent of that pyramid level

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Speaker 1: three level one the top of that pyramid. That's where

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Speaker 1: you're going to find a lord and aristocrat, a knight

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Speaker 1: who is a vassal of a king or a duke

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Speaker 1: or account, and that vassal receives land of feudom in

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Speaker 1: exchange for military service, and that military service was actually contracted.

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Speaker 1: There was an oath of fealty where the lord sat

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Speaker 1: in a chair and the aristocrat or the knight knelt

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Speaker 1: before and placed his hands together like this pledging his fealty,

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Speaker 1: and the king or the duke or the count would

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Speaker 1: place his hands around those kind of praying hands as

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Speaker 1: a representation of his protection. And this occurs in religious

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Speaker 1: taking of vows as well, the person taking the vow

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Speaker 1: and then the religious superior. Happens today in ordinations in

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Speaker 1: certain religious communities. And so when you get these feudal documents,

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Speaker 1: these oades of fealty, what do they say? It says

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Speaker 1: that military service is usually capped at forty days a year,

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Speaker 1: and that the person promises to fight in an offensive effort,

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Speaker 1: but not a conquering effort. If you can figure out

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Speaker 1: the difference between those two, I'd like you to explain

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Speaker 1: it to me. So if a king wants to kind

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Speaker 1: of expand the territory for the good of his people,

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Speaker 1: that seems to be okay. But if he wants to

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Speaker 1: expand the territory because he wants more money, that doesn't

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Speaker 1: seem to be okay. How you can extend separate those two,

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Speaker 1: I must tell you is beyond me. In addition to

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Speaker 1: military service, the lord or the aristocrat or the knight

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Speaker 1: has to give advice or counsel or assistance. We find

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Speaker 1: all of these words in these contracts. We've talked about

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Speaker 1: the military help, but also justice. So if a case

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Speaker 1: has to be heard and the king needs advisors or

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Speaker 1: a jury, you show up money. He can say, hey,

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Speaker 1: I need money to build a castle. I need money

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Speaker 1: to buy supplies. I need money to raise a ransom

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Speaker 1: because I've been captured, or my son was captured, or

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Speaker 1: my daughter is being sold. If you will in a

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Speaker 1: dynastic marriage and I need money for the dowry, or

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Speaker 1: a king is coming and I have to throw a

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Speaker 1: big party, I have to give hospitality. That's level one,

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Speaker 1: level two. A little bit below that is a tenant

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Speaker 1: who is in turn a vassal of the lord. And

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Speaker 1: these are in the documents as the vassi dominici, the

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Speaker 1: vassals of the lord. You had the big feudum. A

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Speaker 1: piece of that feudum is called a beneficium or a benefice.

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Speaker 1: It could be a job, it could be an office.

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Speaker 1: It was usually property. And so when you got that lands,

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Speaker 1: you became the governor and the judge over the peasants

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Speaker 1: on that land. But you didn't show up, you didn't

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Speaker 1: live there. You were an absentee landlord. You get called

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Speaker 1: the gentry over time in some documents, particularly in England

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Speaker 1: and in Ireland. What do you do? You appoint a

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Speaker 1: steward or a bailiff and you say, hey, you're in charge.

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Speaker 1: You run the show. You're the supervisor or the overseer.

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Speaker 1: Who were they overseeing us? Level three most of that

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Speaker 1: pyramid the peasant farmers old serfs free but tied to

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Speaker 1: the land, part of the sale, part of the benefice,

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Speaker 1: part of the oath of fealty. And you can say

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Speaker 1: nothing as to whether or not you want to be

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Speaker 1: part of that deal. Eighty percent of the population and

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Speaker 1: seventy five of your income was tied to farming. You

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Speaker 1: didn't have daily contact with this gentry. You had daily

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Speaker 1: contact with a steward or a bayliff. If you've read

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Speaker 1: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the stewards and the bailiffs bad guys.

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Speaker 1: They were taking graft and taking bribes, and the peasants

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Speaker 1: did not want to interact with these people. I guess

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Speaker 1: a bad example of that would be the sheriff of Nottingham.

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Speaker 1: If you really exist in existed in robin Hood, there's

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Speaker 1: an example of somebody who's overbearing, who's telling you what

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Speaker 1: to do, and if you don't like the way, it

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Speaker 1: is too bad. So what you want to do is

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Speaker 1: police yourselves. In theory, those peasant farmers were under everybody

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Speaker 1: else in that pyramid. So let's go to the top again.

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Speaker 1: A king, a duke or account underneath him, an aristocrat

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Speaker 1: underneath him, a bailiff or a steward, and then you.

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Speaker 1: So technically you have a lot of bosses to take

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Speaker 1: care of, but in reality you're living your life and

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Speaker 1: you're dealing with the steward or the bailiff. What did

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Speaker 1: you have to give in return for living and farming?

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Speaker 1: You had to pay rent and you had to pay fees. Now,

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Speaker 1: normally the rent for your property and the fees were

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Speaker 1: not money. It was not a capital relationship. It was

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Speaker 1: a Bartner relationship, and this is laid out in the documents.

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Speaker 1: Once again, you might have to give a percentage of

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Speaker 1: the fish that you catch, a percentage of the cheeses

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Speaker 1: that you make. Now, this is largely self patrolled, right,

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Speaker 1: because who's gonna know if you caught one hundred fish

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Speaker 1: or fifty fish. And quite frankly, the steward of the

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Speaker 1: bayliff just wants his ten. So if the contract says ten,

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Speaker 1: you can get two hundred. Just give him the ten.

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Speaker 1: That's usually the way it worked. You also had to

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Speaker 1: provide three days of labor every week on your boss's fields,

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Speaker 1: which were call the domain or his roads or his bridges. Now,

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Speaker 1: let's break this down. You have seven days in a week.

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Speaker 1: You're not working on Sunday. You have six days in

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Speaker 1: a week. Three of those days, half of your time,

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Speaker 1: you have to work on somebody else's property. You also

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Speaker 1: don't work on feast days in the church, and those

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Speaker 1: feast days don't count for the three days. So you

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Speaker 1: can see that less than half of the time you're

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Speaker 1: working for yourself. This is not gonna work very well.

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Speaker 1: You're gonna need extra money, and how does that extra

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Speaker 1: money come That extra money comes from, and that's not

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Speaker 1: your bosses. So let's talk about farming. What's sometimes called

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Speaker 1: the monorial system or the senorial system. This is the

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Speaker 1: way a medieval farm in this early period before about

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Speaker 1: nine hundred is laid out all of this land and

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Speaker 1: you're only farming half of it at any one time.

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Speaker 1: That is really inefficient. Now, there's not a lot of

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Speaker 1: science here, but they did understand that if you keep

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Speaker 1: planting the same crop in the same place as the

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Speaker 1: years go by, you are yield is getting smaller, quantity

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Speaker 1: going down and the quality of the crop is going down.

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Speaker 1: There's something wrong. So they simply rotated. One year, I'll

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Speaker 1: plant here, one year I lay fallow here. It's a

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Speaker 1: very very inefficient system. Within that system, you have some

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Speaker 1: left dovers, So you plow down one line and you

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Speaker 1: turn your horse or your ox around, and as you

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Speaker 1: do that, because you're being very inefficient and you can't

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Speaker 1: do it line by line, a strip or a stripe

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Speaker 1: or a book as it's sometimes called, is created, and

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Speaker 1: that balk is now free. So every single surf, which

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Speaker 1: would be a man, his wife, his family, would get

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Speaker 1: a couple of those books, but again you might get

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Speaker 1: two over there and seven over there and three over there.

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Speaker 1: Very inefficient for you to carry stuff all over the place.

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Speaker 1: And in addition to those strips or stripes, you'd have

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Speaker 1: your own little vegetable gardens. You have your house and

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Speaker 1: your own little vegetable garden. What comes up in British

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Speaker 1: sources as you're toft and your croft, and so what

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Speaker 1: do you do in the winter, Because you've got two

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Speaker 1: growing seasons. Right spring you plant it rose, in the

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Speaker 1: summer you harvest, and then usually you have another little

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Speaker 1: quick harvest in the winter. You got something called winter wheat,

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Speaker 1: whatever you can get out of it. And then the

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Speaker 1: winter comes. Can't do anything in the winter outside. So

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Speaker 1: what do you do in the winter. You repair your

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Speaker 1: tools and your instruments, and you work in your cottage.

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Speaker 1: If you have a computer at your home in a

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Speaker 1: study and you do a little work on the side

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Speaker 1: as a freelancer, we call that your cottage industry. Well,

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Speaker 1: this is where the phrase comes from, what did you

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Speaker 1: do in your cottage in the winter. We can't say

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Speaker 1: what did you do in the spring or the summer

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Speaker 1: or the fall at night? Because you work all day.

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Speaker 1: You work from sun up to sundown. A great history

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Speaker 1: of the Middle Ages was called a world lit only

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Speaker 1: by fire, right, because when it's dark you have to

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Speaker 1: go to bed. Candles will only give you so much light,

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Speaker 1: and so you really can't work after work in the spring,

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Speaker 1: the summer and the fall. What you have to do

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Speaker 1: is you have to take advantage of the winter. So

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Speaker 1: after you've repaired your tools and stuff, in other words,

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Speaker 1: you've done the material needs for somebody else's income, he

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Speaker 1: did some for yourself. You might card wool, you might

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Speaker 1: create clothes, you might finish clothes, which is a little

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Speaker 1: bit of dying or putting buttons on things in some decoration,

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Speaker 1: and maybe you would make about a quarter of your income,

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Speaker 1: pretty small scale from that for your own usage and

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Speaker 1: to sell. We're going to take a quick break. But

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Speaker 1: when we come back, life for women on the farm

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Speaker 1: and spoiler, it wasn't as depressing as you might think.

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Speaker 1: What was life like among us in that village. It

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Speaker 1: was very self regulating because, as I said before, you

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Speaker 1: want to stay away from that steward or that bailiff.

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Speaker 1: Think again of the Sheriff of Nottingham, right, not a

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Speaker 1: good guy and so you want to regulate your own community.

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Speaker 1: This is going to become very important as government grows,

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Speaker 1: and when I talk about guilds in the next topic,

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Speaker 1: there's a tradition of self policing that's going to move

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Speaker 1: from the feudal countryside to the gothic city. So one

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Speaker 1: example of self regulating is that all must heed the

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Speaker 1: Huan cry. The Huan cry, a famous phrase is when

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Speaker 1: somebody's stolen something and somebody else follow Tom, he's got

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Speaker 1: my sheep. Whatever you're doing, you have to drop what

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Speaker 1: you're doing and start running. And if you don't, you're

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Speaker 1: an accomplice. You're complicit. Everybody thinks you're working with Tom.

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Speaker 1: And the reason you do that is because if something

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Speaker 1: is stolen from one, something is stolen from all, especially

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Speaker 1: if it's a piece of communal property like a plow,

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Speaker 1: like a knife, like a sheaf. And so you police

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Speaker 1: yourself so the bailiff wouldn't get involved. You used common

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Speaker 1: areas together and you represented your concerns to the bayliff.

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Speaker 1: You organized yourselves and you said, hey, he's going to

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Speaker 1: be the spokesman for us. So there's a nice self

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Speaker 1: government tradition that's growing here now. Right away, you might

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Speaker 1: be thinking, well, is this socialism? Is this communism? These

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Speaker 1: are all later words. It's more along the lines. If

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Speaker 1: you've ever been among an Amish or a Quaker community,

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Speaker 1: where people hold things in common and help each other

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Speaker 1: the famous Amish barn raising, this is the kind of

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Speaker 1: thing you should be thinking of now. One of the

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Speaker 1: really interesting things within the feudal system is that we

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Speaker 1: look upon the system when we say, wow, it's so rigid,

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Speaker 1: it's so structured, and we've already seen that there were

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Speaker 1: lots of local customs, and we think, wow, this is

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Speaker 1: very misogynist, this is very patriarchal, this is very top down. Well, yes,

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Speaker 1: we don't have examples of women pledging odes of fealty,

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Speaker 1: even though a nun basically pledges an oath of fealty

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Speaker 1: to her abbess. But women had relative rights in this system,

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Speaker 1: and we have the documents to tell us that, for instance,

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Speaker 1: women worked in the fields among the men. And the

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Speaker 1: interesting thing is when they received compensation, sometime in the

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Speaker 1: form of wages, but more often in the form of kind. Right,

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Speaker 1: we're talking about goods in kind. They received equal compensation.

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Speaker 1: Now that blows your mind, right, you think of equal

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Speaker 1: compensation men and women. You think of the nineteen sixties

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Speaker 1: sexual revolution, although all studies show nowadays that women are

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Speaker 1: still making only seventy five cents or eighty cents on

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Speaker 1: the dollar for the same job that a man makes.

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Speaker 1: And here we have in the Middle Ages women working

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Speaker 1: side by side with the men as their partners, as

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Speaker 1: equal partners. If a woman's husband died and she owned

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Speaker 1: the land, she actually got to take control of the land.

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Speaker 1: Now I shouldn't say owned the land and the sense

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Speaker 1: of her name as on a contract, but she's the

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Speaker 1: one who's making the decisions on her balk or stripe

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Speaker 1: for her family. What will we plant and when will

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Speaker 1: we plant it? And what kind of cottage industry will

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Speaker 1: we have. You have as many female brewers as you

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Speaker 1: have male brewers, because brewing is essentially cooking. And this

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Speaker 1: is something interesting because when you see brewing move from

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Speaker 1: the countryside to the city in cities, you have as

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Speaker 1: many female brewers as male brewers. Even in guilds. And

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Speaker 1: a woman had the right to speak for herself in

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Speaker 1: a court of a manner. So if a steward or

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Speaker 1: a bailiff made a charge against a woman, she had

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Speaker 1: the legal right to stand up and defend herself in

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Speaker 1: her own voice. Not something we expect to find in

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Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, but it's right there in the records. Now,

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Speaker 1: how do we go from this feudal system to this

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Speaker 1: gothic city landscape? When you are so inefficient in producing food,

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Speaker 1: you've got to somehow go from a subsistence economy to

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Speaker 1: a surplus economy. A subsistence economy what I make, I eat,

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Speaker 1: and I only have enough to leftover to get me

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Speaker 1: through the winter. A surplus economy, I have leftovers not

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Speaker 1: only for myself for the winter, but that I can sell. Well.

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Speaker 1: I've got to increase my production in order to do that.

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Speaker 1: And if I don't do that, if there is no

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Speaker 1: surplus food, you can never have a city. Because nowadays

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Speaker 1: you're thinking about breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and you're gonna

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Speaker 1: go out and you're either gonna buy prepared food or

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Speaker 1: you're gonna cook food. But the food that you're gonna

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Speaker 1: cook has been slaughtered by something else. Nobody says I

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Speaker 1: want to gla a milk and takes a pail and

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Speaker 1: goes out back anymore. And so people in cities have

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Speaker 1: to have a surplus agriculture somewhere nearby that gets brought

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Speaker 1: into the city. And this was replicated in history as well.

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Speaker 1: The city of Rome in the ancient world had a

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Speaker 1: million people that bought food, mostly prepared food. They basically

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Speaker 1: had diners in ancient Rome. How does that happen? This

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Speaker 1: agricultural revolution again, how can you have a revolution in

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Speaker 1: a dark age? Because it wasn't a dark age. That's

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Speaker 1: why around nine hundred people begin tinkering. They say, hey,

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Speaker 1: we're not making enough money, so we need to tinker

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Speaker 1: with what we're doing. And they go from a two

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Speaker 1: field system to a three field system. They take that

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Speaker 1: field where they were allowing fifty percent of the land

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Speaker 1: to go fallow useless, and they say, let's cut this up.

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Speaker 1: Let's cut this pie, not in two but in three.

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Speaker 1: And so we're going to use sixty six percent of

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Speaker 1: our land, not fifty percent of our land. And lo

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Speaker 1: and behold, that produces a lot more food, twenty five

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Speaker 1: percent more food. So what do they start to do.

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Speaker 1: They start to move their fields around. They plant this

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Speaker 1: and that in these two fields and let the third

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Speaker 1: go fallow. And then they swap, and then they swap.

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Speaker 1: This was all experimentation by the way, that was done

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Speaker 1: in monasteries and convents by people who had to be subsistent.

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Speaker 1: And as the monasteries grew, they needed to make more food,

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Speaker 1: and so they tinkered and they figured out how to

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Speaker 1: do it while they worked, and for them, working was prayer, spirituality.

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Speaker 1: It's tied into this. It's an interesting connection. Now think

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Speaker 1: about it. Think about your own life. If you skip lunch,

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Speaker 1: you start to get a little bit lagging around four o'clock,

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Speaker 1: you start to get a headache if you don't have

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Speaker 1: that cup of coffee in the morning. With more food

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Speaker 1: and better food, when you eat better, let's face it,

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Speaker 1: you feel better. If you have better nutrition, you have

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Speaker 1: a longer life. Women, particularly if their health is better,

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Speaker 1: they will survive childbirth at a higher rate. Childbirth is

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Speaker 1: greeted with utter fear in this period because in some places,

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Speaker 1: if the records are true, a woman might have a

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Speaker 1: one in three chance of surviving childbirth, let alone the

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Speaker 1: child's chances. But if a woman is in better nutrition

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Speaker 1: even today, the chances of her surviving childbirth and having

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Speaker 1: a healthy baby that survives what they called infancy, which

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Speaker 1: was ten years, then you're going to have a bigger population,

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Speaker 1: so better nutrition, longer life. We find people getting married earlier.

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Speaker 1: If women are getting married earlier, they have a few

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Speaker 1: more years of sorry to put it in the terms fertility,

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Speaker 1: because they're healthier. They're having more children and healthier children.

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Speaker 1: So the death rate declines, the infant mortality rate declines,

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Speaker 1: your population grows, and because you're getting more efficient on

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Speaker 1: the farm, all of those people don't have to work

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Speaker 1: to produce food anymore. How are you getting more efficient

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Speaker 1: on the farm? Better farming technology. Nailed horse shoes. Can

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Speaker 1: you imagine that there weren't nailed horseshoes by before eight

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Speaker 1: or nine hundred? Absolutely true. Better harnessing. We used to

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Speaker 1: put a harness on a horse or an ox that

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Speaker 1: went across the neck or the chest. Now think about that,

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Speaker 1: if somebody puts a harness across your neck or your chests.

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Speaker 1: To take your backpack and put it across your neck

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Speaker 1: or your chest, you're not going to be breathing all

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Speaker 1: that well, you're gonna get tired, you're not going to

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Speaker 1: be able to pull as heavy of a load. But

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Speaker 1: if you take your backpack and you put the straps

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Speaker 1: over your shoulders, and in fact, if you strap it

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Speaker 1: cross your waist as well. You can distribute the weight better,

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Speaker 1: you can go farther. And so what we did with

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Speaker 1: our ox and our horses is we put a shoulder yoke.

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Speaker 1: That picture you've all seen of a shoulder yoke, and

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Speaker 1: that takes the pressure off of where you're breathing and

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Speaker 1: puts it on your shoulders. Your shoulders are stronger than

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Speaker 1: your chest, and so these animals can be controlled better.

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Speaker 1: They can turn in a tighter way at the end

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Speaker 1: of a line. So you're plowing your field much more efficiently.

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Speaker 1: Not only are you using two thirds as opposed to half,

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Speaker 1: but your lines, your furrows are closer together, and your

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Speaker 1: yield just starts going through the roof. We have a

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Speaker 1: better use of more efficient water wheels, wind mills, saw mills.

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Speaker 1: This all has to be seen as technology. You know,

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Speaker 1: we live our lives with iPhones and iPads and all

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Speaker 1: of this other stuff, and we see that as technology,

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Speaker 1: and it is. But the wheel whenever somebody invented the

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Speaker 1: wheel back in caveman times, was a huge innovation. These

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Speaker 1: small innovations nailed horseshoes, shoulder yokes, water wheels, windmills, and sawmills.

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Speaker 1: Move us from a subsistence economy to a surplus economy.

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Speaker 1: So this larger, healthier population can now move to the cities.

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Speaker 1: It's in the cities where you have larger populations where

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Speaker 1: you can buy food that folks can now take place

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Speaker 1: in a different sort of revolution, a commercial revolution. But

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Speaker 1: without a commercial revolution, you couldn't have an agricultural revolution.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of Half Hour History

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Speaker 1: Secrets of the Medieval World. Next time, we're taking a

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Speaker 1: field trip into the medieval cities fun make sure your

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Speaker 1: permission slips are signed. Half Hour History Secrets of the

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Speaker 1: Medieval World from One Day University is a production of

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Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts and a School of Humans. If you're enjoying

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