What was the Lord's relation with his people in Medieval Europe?

[Sulfurion Blackfyre]

I always see in movies, games, books, whatever, that Lords just sit there in their castle, not caring about their peasants or subjects, and sometimes torturing them as they please, and not seriously giving a crap about their welfare.

So how was it? Did the average knight, lord, landowner, whatever actually care? Did they do stuff in purpose to improve their lands or for them it was just a source of money, food, warriors and prestige and peasants were just tools that could be expendable as they wished.

Also, I've recently read that people in Middle Ages were not that filthy, and it wasn't all of that "plague, war, crime, famine everywhere" and that it wasn't also just a period of total ignorance.

[Dr. Oza]

many feudal lords saw themselves as responsible for their people

like if there was a famine, they would feed them etc

but many did not care and just exploited their people

depended on your lord, most exploited

Also, I've recently read that people in Middle Ages were not that filthy, and it wasn't all of that "plague, war, crime, famine everywhere" and that it wasn't also just a period of total ignorance.

if ur talking about europe, yes it was

in the middle east, and spain (andalus), and china it was nice and cool

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Lawl, generalizations abound.

You were likely to live a short life of hard labour. Moreso in Iberia, above anything - the only places where peasants had freedom were Switzerland and Scandinavia, which never implemented Serfdom. Italy, too had urban "freedom", although not in the countryside.

In the Middle East, given anything, you would probably get your skull bashed by Mongols or foreign slavers once in awhile. When the Turks came, the native Arabic population just cowered under an oppression and a decline of epic proportions, if we are talking about the later Middle Ages here.

[René Artois]

It really depends where you were, as the feudal system differed between the european countries, and when you look at, because towards the end of the middle ages the number of peasants was declining, and the number of freedmen (e.g. professionals) was rising.

[Watchman]

Like with just about everything, "it depends". Already with the specific time and place being discussed, as the details varied wildly with both.

But for the most part, the relationship between the lord and his tenants was a symbiotic one; the lord and his soldiers provided protection, law enforcement and general peace, order and authority in return of taxes by which they not only supported themselves but also maintained the military capabilities on which the relationship was based on in the first place.
And sensible lords did not screw over their peasants; those folks were in a very concrete sense the very foundation of their wealth and power, and capricious violence only directly cut into the bottom line and thus weakened the lord in question. (Conversely, brutalising the opponent's peasants and wrecking the countryside was SOP economic warfare when you couldn't capture territory.)

Gets more complicated with particularly powerful nobles who held vast estates usually rather widely scattered, and by necessity left the management of most to various functionaries (senesalchs? can't recall the title ATM). Obviously there the direct contact and mutual dependency between the lord and the subject was missing, and his overall economic position so strong occasional dents to the bottom line would not even be noticed - and of course the proxy adminstrators themselves could get up to all kinds of mischief too, though how long they could get away with it if their boss did not approve is another question. (Complaining to someone higher in the feudal chain - that is, the proxy's boss or the lord's lord, in principle all the way up to the relevant monarch - *was* usually an option even for serfs, though it might be difficult to effect in practice and might not be heeded... or the abusive lord's superior might be sympathetic but plain lack the means to do much; those fortress networks worked just as well against an irate feudal superior as against "foreign" invaders, after all.)

Still, having to slaughter your cash-cow peasants when putting down a revolt stemming from bad treatment was so obviously detrimental to a feudal lord's own fortunes that most reasonably smart and sane ones preferred to keep good relations.
This is not to say that the peasants' obligations to their lords couldn't be quite onerous anyway of course, but there's a major difference between heavy taxes (and such) and straight-out wanton cruelty.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Seneschals and Bailiffs. Also Sheriffs.

[konny]

Seneschals and Bailiffs. Also Sheriffs.

In Germany this would have been the Vogt, even though he usually was a local lord himself.

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Concerning warfare: There was a constant state of war in the Middle Ages, but the majority of these conflicts would have been feuds between local petty lords. While these often had devasting effects for the theatre in question, this theatre usually was limited to the one or two counties the fighting was about.

Exceptions would have been western France where the constant conflict between the Capetians and Angevines, that went on for nearly 400 years, caused some grand scale devastations. This would also have been the only conflict in Western Europe that could be addressed as "clash of empires". Other regions that saw serious devastions by grant scale raids would have been the border regions, like eastern Germany, northern England and Spain. Then we had some "civil wars", in particular in 12th to early 13th Century England and Germany, and later southern Italy, with the same desastrous effects.

But in general the anarchic situation seemed to not have had serious negative effects and the population was constantly booming between the 11th Century and the mid 14th Century, when the plague hit western Europe. This one indeed was fatal, and the population numbers in many regions in Europe did not recover until industrialization.

[Dr. Oza]

In the Middle East, given anything, you would probably get your skull bashed by Mongols or foreign slavers once in awhile. When the Turks came, the native Arabic population just cowered under an oppression and a decline of epic proportions, if we are talking about the later Middle Ages here.

first of all, as per the generalization, yes it was so , but i didnt care enough to provide a detailed answer

anyway

what are you talking about?, in the middle ages, 700-1400 , the middle east and muslim spain were the most advanced lands on earth , yes the mongols messed things up in the 1200s, but aside from baghdad, it never spread, and the mongols brought their own culture and more interaction with china, which really ended up helping europeans more than anything

and the turks didnt oppress the arabs, in turkish rule after the seljuks, there was no diffrentiation, they heavily recruited locals into government and military, and further stimulated learning and hygiene

u sir seem to have no idea

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

first of all, as per the generalization, yes it was so , but i didnt care enough to provide a detailed answer

anyway

what are you talking about?, in the middle ages, 700-1400 , the middle east and muslim spain were the most advanced lands on earth , yes the mongols messed things up in the 1200s, but aside from baghdad, it never spread, and the mongols brought their own culture and more interaction with china, which really ended up helping europeans more than anything

and the turks didnt oppress the arabs, in turkish rule after the seljuks, there was no diffrentiation, they heavily recruited locals into government and military, and further stimulated learning and hygiene

u sir seem to have no idea

Clearly, then, the fact that an alien Mamluk State of tyrants or even earlier - with Alp Arslan and the Seljuks - essentially submitted the entire Arab population and their states to the tyranny of military despots is irrelevant, or maybe just for you. The Seljuk times were of genuine decline, and less said about the Mamluks the better!

The disintegration of the Arab world was already ongoing long before the Mongols came, and it has not just political symptoms, although these are the most latent and clear.

[Argeus the Paladin]

I believe once every so often there would exist a lord on Fire Emblem level of nobility. Once every so often.

[Dr. Oza]

Clearly, then, the fact that an alien Mamluk State of tyrants or even earlier - with Alp Arslan and the Seljuks - essentially submitted the entire Arab population and their states to the tyranny of military despots is irrelevant, or maybe just for you. The Seljuk times were of genuine decline, and less said about the Mamluks the better!

The disintegration of the Arab world was already ongoing long before the Mongols came, and it has not just political symptoms, although these are the most latent and clear.

because of course western europe was a hotspot of democracy and freedoms rite? in the middle ages...

all rulers were despots in those days, what are you trying to say

at least the seljuks, mameluks, ottomans, abbasids and other muslim rulers provided freedom of religion and very lenient towards other peoples... can you say the same for the reconquista?

[lordoftheT]

because of course western europe was a hotspot of democracy and freedoms rite? in the middle ages...

all rulers were despots in those days, what are you trying to say

at least the seljuks, mameluks, ottomans, abbasids and other muslim rulers provided freedom of religion and very lenient towards other peoples... can you say the same for the reconquista?

You seem to believe that since he says that there were times that life in the Middle East, Iberia, and North Africa could be bad at times that means he feels Europe was a paradise. The fact is both places would have had their good times and bad times particularly in a period as long as the middle ages.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

because of course western europe was a hotspot of democracy and freedoms rite? in the middle ages...

all rulers were despots in those days, what are you trying to say

at least the seljuks, mameluks, ottomans, abbasids and other muslim rulers provided freedom of religion and very lenient towards other peoples... can you say the same for the reconquista?

It's very different, and of course, I'm not talking about a "freedom-tyranny" compass, but simply from a point of view of legitimacy and nationality.

The Turks were long considered barbaric by the Arabs, ever since the ninth century. The Abbassid Caliph in Baghdad was the genuine Arabic ruler, yet later on more and more the native Arab population had to subject itself to foreign rulers, aka "tyranny". This happened with the overthrow of the Ayyubid dynasty in Egypt, and earlier on the subjection of the Abbassids to the growing power of the Seljuks, who were indeed far more unrefined and far more despotic in their rule.

The come the Mongols. Afterwards, there's no more mention of the Islamic world as a center of culture and civilization, at least within its core historical parts. The periphery, like Constantinople, remained civilized for far longer... BUT needless to say it wasn't even Arabic to start with.

[Watchman]

Note, though, that in much of the Middle East Arabs were a foreign-invader ruling strata too... when they now actually even were; I got the impression the ruling strata was within a few generations of the Conquest thoroughly intermarried with older-established elite classes.

If you ask me, Islamic civilisation more or less died in the successive waves of steppe-nomad invasions. The Turks already did quite a bit of damage by basically completely fragmenting the Middle East politically, and almost as soon as they'd started really learning the "civilised" ways of their subjects the Mongols came and pretty much torched everything. From more or less that period onwards all the realms that rose in the region were basically military dicatorships (or in any case, moreso than was normal by period standards) that by and large were quite good at the business of warfare (for obvious reasons) but culturally and intellectually stagnant if not outright sterile.

[Dr. Oza]

It's very different, and of course, I'm not talking about a "freedom-tyranny" compass, but simply from a point of view of legitimacy and nationality.

The Turks were long considered barbaric by the Arabs, ever since the ninth century. The Abbassid Caliph in Baghdad was the genuine Arabic ruler, yet later on more and more the native Arab population had to subject itself to foreign rulers, aka "tyranny". This happened with the overthrow of the Ayyubid dynasty in Egypt, and earlier on the subjection of the Abbassids to the growing power of the Seljuks, who were indeed far more unrefined and far more despotic in their rule.

The come the Mongols. Afterwards, there's no more mention of the Islamic world as a center of culture and civilization, at least within its core historical parts. The periphery, like Constantinople, remained civilized for far longer... BUT needless to say it wasn't even Arabic to start with.

not at all, there was no arab identity back then, most people identified as muslims or not, where have you read that the abbasids hated the seljuks, sure they were essentially overthrown, but they did not identify them as tyrannical

why are you identifying the middle east and islam as "arab",

and also, the seljuks were hardly tyrannical, they promote based on skill, not religion or ethnicity, arabs, persians, christians, and jews all achieved vizier status, can you tell me of similar occurings in europe?

after the mongols, andalus still remained a center of civilization

and the post-mongol regimes in the area, such as the ilkhanids, ak-koyunlar, beyaz-koyunlar all had substantial intellectual and cultural development

and constantinople when it was taken by the ottomans, became another center of islamic civilization, to the point that, ottomans introduced such things as organized and official armies, coffee drinking and cafes, military march music, many orchestra instruments, captured when the army retreated from vienna and more...

and during the period from 700-1200, islamic civilizations from asia to europe (spain) were THE most advanced nations on earth

i am not attempting to glorify them, but it does sadden me when the entire contributions of a civilization are demoted merely because of modern day connotations of islam and the middle-east

may i also ask a source for your very rigid claims

[Trey]

not at all, there was no arab identity back then

Don't do this please.

[numerosdecimus]

I may taking a risk at perhaps slightly oversimplifying things but a Lord's relationship with it's servants ("subalterns?", is this word correct?) would vary from lord to lord and in fact the personal mentality and up bringing of each would be a decisive factor.

Take for instance Portugal in the 1470's. The country was divided into several feudal provinces, in fact the country was divided in such a way that one could say that the lord's there were rulers of the country, not the king. At this point there was a tendency to create an extremely closed social circle between the high nobility, greatly disconnected from the reality of the kingdom, both locally in each province but also at a national level. Extrenal debt was high to the point that the right to collect taxes was handed over to a private group (instead off the state), crops were poor, resulting in a high importation rate of cereal and local taxes were high. Adding this is also the amassing of substancial amounts of troops in the main provinces which belong to the main contenders to the throne, creating an even more volatile situation when it came to sovereignty of the king as the ruler of the entire kingdom.

But semi-directly related to this also comes to upbringing factor, for instance, the main contenders to the throne such as the Duke of Viseu and the Duke of Bragança didn't have much of a "big picture" perspective of things when it came to the future of the nation as one, sure they knew how to survive and take advantage of it, as shown with the letters they sent to castile by requesting the queen of Castile for support to overthrow the young king D. João II and absorving the country into Castilian control and/or possibly facturing the country into several small provinces, where latter on they would have either been given greater positions of power in the Castilian court or in the Portuguese territory as a whole. In this aspect pretty much every lord is pragmatical concerning it, it's part of the dangerous game that is politics, and so they shouldn't be criticised from a political point of view.

However the aspect absent from these men that also defines their behaviour both at issues that affected the entire kingdom (and it's future) and at more local issues such as tax collection, justice, protection of local population is their altruism or impartial sence of duty, altruism/sence of duty can be growth with the correct education and/or learning by example during their parent's rule, it's absence could perhaps give a clue as to their upbringing, or eprhaps even they are familiarized with this concept but voluntarely choose to rejected as they acquired a very restrict and only self-beneficial way of thinking life, knowing it gives them the best chances at survival.

However, in my opinion, I can more or less safely say that while not restricted to this condition it is very common with most altruistic learders with a broad view of things and their impact on the long term that leads to a time of prosperity (using the word in a very general meaning) or a period of noticable growth.

The example of this comes from the young king D. João II which was forced to eliminaate the nobility not by his own iniciative but by last resort against the high nobility's attempts to assassinate him, and also by the administrative choices he made during his reign. This period is normally remembered as a period of important economical and territorial growth for Portugal, during which a more conscious leadership was rullig the country.

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Innevitably this example I've provided is also shapped by my opinion, however I've come to this personal conclusion by present example as well, as the political situation in Portugal (without speciffying any further to avoid any discussion about it) somewhat reminds me of this, and I'm not speaking concerning any political party in speciffic but as the functioning of the entire parlamentary democratic system as a whole.

[jo the greek]

They were all a huge family while the lord had sex with his people wifes lol

something like Nip Tuck

[garudamon11]

in medieval times im sure the poorer classes had alot more freedom in middle east than in europe

[jo the greek]

in medieval times im sure the poorer classes had alot more freedom in middle east than in europe

Lol Medieval apologists will hate you