The medieval view of commoners

[Vellos]

A few notes:
1. As has been mentioned, it is odd that the game says adventurers are "owned." Outlaws obviously are "out of law," though perhaps still nominally "owned," but freemen are free, as in not owned. Game text should change for freemen.

2. Second, this is a bunch of nonsense about nobles viewing peasants as akin to hunting dogs. Serfs were not owned, they were indebted. You can sell a hunting dog, you can't sell a serf (despite numerous prohibitions on various permutations of slavery by the Catholic church, slavery was never completely stamped out in the Medieval west: but it was not the norm). Moreover, BM tends to take its feudal model from, as far as I can tell, England and France, mostly. Well, English and French peasants were the free-est in Europe, by and large (and Italy is a completely different animal). "Owned" serfs becomes more conceivable if we are discussing, say, the Byzantine Empire... but even then, it's not entirely appropriate. Serfs are bondsmen, not slaves, not property, not chattel.

3. Regarding inequality, obviously serfs are not equal. However, it's not that serfs are some kind of sub-person. It's just that being a serf is their place. The primary offense of an upstart peasant is not that he's aspiring "above his blood" (I am curious if anyone here has any primary source reference to bloodlines being so astonishingly significant?). It's that he was aspiring above his station. Medieval societies are filial, heritable societies. Your dad was a noble, so you're a noble. Your dad was a peasant, so you're a peasant. Your dad was a merchant, or a smith, or a cobbler, or whatever, so that's what you are. Serfs are farmers. Poor and indebted, but they have a place, a role in the Great Chain of Being, a place in the Mind of God. And that place is in the fields darn it! In sum, to suggest that serfs should be treated as equal is preposterous from a Medieval perspective, but not because of some kind of race-consciousness among "pure-blooded" nobles. It's because Medieval society was one of rather rigid, established, immobile social order: everyone and everything had a place and a purpose. The primary barrier to understanding this for moderns is not understanding "How could medievals be so racist?" but understanding "How could medievals be so teleological?"

4. Regarding ennobling, it was semi-frequent. My own ancestors were commoners in northern England conscripted to fight the Scots. Their liege-lord was killed in combat (archers; stray arrow), and my (commoner) ancestor assumed command, and was granted knighthood after the battle (in some part because the knight who died had no immediate heir, and the Brits won, so they wanted to give land to loyal people). Admittedly that was in the 1300's, so it's somewhat later. But, it did happen.

There's my thoughts on it. I think the first 2 are the most significant/relevant.

[Shizzle]

That was very interesting, thanks :)

[Vellos]

Apparently some people think this is worthwhile stuff.

For anybody wanting to know more, I think it's worth clarifying a few things:
1. Wikipedia is not 100% reliable. It says serfdom arose from Roman slave agriculture. That is semi-true. Italy and Spain was were the epicenters of the latifundia, the large slave estates, but NOT the epicenters of feudalism, which were England and France. Serfdom is a mixed institution with origins in both Roman society, which did include agricultural slavery but was certainly not exclusively that, and also "Barbarian" societies. Moreover, early feudalism's centers were strictly divergent from old Roman centers; the archaeological record is jumbled and discontinuous. Hence "Dark Ages."

2. Serf does indeed linguistically derive from a latin word meaning slave, but the Roman Catholic Church explicitly forbade the enslavement of Christians. Most serfs (and wikipedia gets this right) were technically villeins, bondsmen. Serfs were not, as far as I am aware, chattel, and so to describe serfs in general as "owned" is not properly true. This is not to say that serfs had abundant freedoms and lived jolly lives, certainly not, but to characterize them as similar to slaves is nonsense. ESPECIALLY adventurers who the GAME calls "freemen." If they are freemen, then they are FREE MEN. Not nobles of course, not equals, rather odd, and probably a class-threat, but certainly not some kind of slave revolt.

[Ender]

This was very interesting to read. A lot of people in game could probably benefit from this kind of thinking when it comes to the common folk.

Ive avoided referring to the commoners on my characters as sub-human entities for as long as I've mentioned them though I've noticed people doing it before. I usually figured that while they were below most of my characters they were still humans and deserved some measure of basic respect (Though there are exceptions on some of my characters that went both ways).

[egamma]

Can both sides of this discussion provide reliable links (not wikipedia, although I recommend looking at the bibliography at the bottom of the relevant questions)?

This could lead to game-wide adjustments in the treatment of commoners, so I want to be very, very sure that we have our facts straight.

[De-Legro]

Can both sides of this discussion provide reliable links (not wikipedia, although I recommend looking at the bibliography at the bottom of the relevant questions)?

This could lead to game-wide adjustments in the treatment of commoners, so I want to be very, very sure that we have our facts straight.

ONLY if we assume the way we treat commoners know is supposed to be 100% based on historical evidence. Personally I've always gone with the "Tom would like to see it this way" approach.

[Bedwyr]

ONLY if we assume the way we treat commoners know is supposed to be 100% based on historical evidence. Personally I've always gone with the "Tom would like to see it this way" approach.

Tom generally knows more about this stuff than most BM players do, but he has been amenable to changes (or, at least, not come down on people who behaved differently) when you present him with historical evidence.  General rule of thumb for something out of the ordinary is if you can present two (properly cited) historical instances of something, that's good enough to justify it.

I personally think it would be awesome to have some realms have slaves working the fields, others with more standard villeins, still others with lease-holder farmers, and have wars start because the slave-holders don't like that the people next door let their farmers lease the land.

[egamma]

Tom generally knows more about this stuff than most BM players do, but he has been amenable to changes (or, at least, not come down on people who behaved differently) when you present him with historical evidence.  General rule of thumb for something out of the ordinary is if you can present two (properly cited) historical instances of something, that's good enough to justify it.

I personally think it would be awesome to have some realms have slaves working the fields, others with more standard villeins, still others with lease-holder farmers, and have wars start because the slave-holders don't like that the people next door let their farmers lease the land.

That's exactly what I'd love to see--not that one viewpoint is "right", but that the various realms can have a list of 2-4 views of peasants to pick from.

[Vellos]

Tom generally knows more about this stuff than most BM players do, but he has been amenable to changes (or, at least, not come down on people who behaved differently) when you present him with historical evidence.  General rule of thumb for something out of the ordinary is if you can present two (properly cited) historical instances of something, that's good enough to justify it.

I personally think it would be awesome to have some realms have slaves working the fields, others with more standard villeins, still others with lease-holder farmers, and have wars start because the slave-holders don't like that the people next door let their farmers lease the land.

I 100% agree. If you take all of the Medieval "world," including the Muslim east, Moorish Spain, Novgorod, etc, there is a huge diversity of "peasant."

I may be a while on source; I have two papers that need writing. However, I will find sources eventually.

[Longmane]

I've suddenly become very interested in this discussion, and though would like put it down to "humanitarian reasons" ie caring about the welfare of the poor commoners, the fact of the matter is I like the idea put forward by Bedwyr that we could find reasons for war in it somewhere, and  by god you can never have enough of them  ;)

http://historymedren.about.com/library/weekly/aa012698.htm
Chains
Slavery in the Middle Ages
When the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, slavery, which had been such an integral part of the empire's economy, began to evolve into serfdom (an integral part of a feudal economy). Much attention is focused on the serf; his plight was not much better than the slave's had been, the primary difference being that he was bound to the land instead of to an individual owner, and could not be sold to another estate.
But slavery didn't go away.
In the earliest part of the middle ages, slaves could be found in many societies, among them the Cymry in Wales and the Anglo-Saxons in England. The Slavs of central Europe were often captured and sold into slavery, usually by rival Slavonic tribes. Moors were known to keep slaves and believed that to set a slave free was an act of great piety. Christians also owned, bought and sold slaves, as evidenced by the following:

When the Bishop of Le Mans transferred a large estate to the Abbey of St. Vincent in 572, ten slaves went with it.

In the seventh century, the wealthy Saint Eloi bought British and Saxon slaves in batches of 50 and 100 so that he could set them free.

A transaction between Ermedruda of Milan and a gentleman by the name of Totone recorded in 725 the price of 12 new gold solidi for a slave boy (referred to as "it" in the record). 12 solidi was much less than the cost of a horse.

In the early ninth century, the Abbey of St. Germain des Prés listed 25 of their 278 householders as slaves.

Pope Gregory XI excommunicated the Florentines in the fourteenth century, and ordered them enslaved wherever taken.

In 1488, King Ferdinand sent 100 Moorish slaves to Pope Innocent VIII, who presented them as gifts to his cardinals and other court notables.

Women slaves taken after the fall of Capua in 1501 were put up for sale in Rome.

The ethics of the Catholic Church concerning slavery throughout the middle ages seems difficult to comprehend today. While the Church succeeded in protecting the rights and well-being of slaves, no attempt was made to outlaw the institution. Why?
One reason is economic. Slavery had been the basis of a sound economy for centuries in Rome, and it declined as serfdom slowly rose. However, it rose again when the Black Death swept Europe, dramatically reducing the population of serfs and creating a need for more forced labor.
Another reason is that slavery had been a fact of life for centuries, as well. Abolishing something so deeply entrenched in society -- all society -- would be about as likely as abolishing the use of horses for transportation.
Then there is the Christian philosophy itself. Christianity had spread like wildfire partly because it offered life after death in paradise with a Heavenly Father. Yes, life was terrible, injustice was everywhere, disease killed indiscriminately and the good died young while the evil thrived. Life on earth simply wasn't fair. But life after death was ultimately fair: the good were rewarded in Heaven and the evil were punished in Hell. This philosophy could sometimes lead to a laissez-faire attitude toward social injustice, although, as in the case of good Saint Eloi, certainly not always. And Christianity did indeed have an ameliorating effect on slavery.
Perhaps the world-view of the medieval mind can explain a great deal. Freedom and liberty are fundamental rights in twentieth-century western civilization. Upward mobility is a possibility for everyone in America today.
What could such concepts mean to any member of such a highly-structured society as Europe in the middle ages? Each individual was born into a particular class, and that class -- whether it was the powerful nobility or the largely impotent peasantry -- offered limited options and strongly-ingrained duties. Men could become knights like their fathers (or farmers like their fathers, or craftsmen like their fathers) or join the Church as monks or priests. Women could marry and become the property of their husbands instead of the property of their fathers, or they could become nuns. Occasionally, an accident of birth or an extraordinary will would help someone deviate from the course medieval society had set, but these were notable exceptions.
One way or another, medieval society had a way of keeping its people in chains.

[Longmane]

my apologies, as intended post that in two smaller parts ;D

[egamma]

We're more interested in serfdom--that post is about slavery.

[Vellos]

Notably, all the "Early" slavery accounts are of either non-Christians, or Christians setting slaves free: enslavement of Christians I am pretty sure was prohibited by the high middle ages, and most serfs were Christians, and foreigners were not extremely common in the medieval period (highly localized society).

Later accounts, after 1400 or so, don't really apply to BM, IMHO.

Only these two seem really significant:
A transaction between Ermedruda of Milan and a gentleman by the name of Totone recorded in 725 the price of 12 new gold solidi for a slave boy (referred to as "it" in the record). 12 solidi was much less than the cost of a horse.

In the early ninth century, the Abbey of St. Germain des Prés listed 25 of their 278 householders as slaves.

Probably, I will get around to research on this in.... a week. Maybe two.

[Haerthorne]

Slavery was in evidence in medieval Europe around to the 11th century, mostly in the mediterraneum and east from Germany. There are stories where German noble ladies would be captured in raids by Magyar's and sold as slaves, eventually finding their way back to be sold in Germany.

[Tom]

Always remember that peasants in BM serve as a pure backdrop. They are what creates the food and gold, and what you need to keep marginally happy, but that's about it.

In fact, I think we do have too many peasant uprisings, but I don't have the time to fix it right now. My current vision is that they should be rare events, but when they happen, they require considerable resources to put down, not the "ok, hold court twice and send in a bureaucrat" approach of today.