Feudalism is the notion that there is a hierarchical relationship between different groups in a society exchanging labour and services to sustain a political power structure cementing the king on the top of the feudal prism. It was an idea proposed by the French historian François-Louis Ganshof in 1944 and is certainly without a doubt the most influential political-scientific theory to influence political thinking on the middle ages. This idea, I believe, to be very much a key pillar of medical societies foundations, and therefore I have written my blog around this notion to explore medieval society. Although no contemporary every explicitly called their system of government feudal, it was in essence seemingly accepted through custom, rigidly dividing society into three orders.
Three Orders: The Church, Nobility and Peasantry.
Those who pray, those who fight and those who work. And this social division allows the nobility to rule over the peasantry as they control the land, and thus the food, therefore attaining political power. In this sense power truly lies locally in the nobility, and not the king as imagined. The king does have a stewardship role over the realm and its foreign policy, but he also has spiritual role as God's anointed ruler. This power struggle is what makes the feudal age so interesting and why I have dedicated this blog to it.
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