Feudalism

thumb|Investiture of a knight (miniature from the statutes of the Order of the Knot, founded in 1352 by [[Louis I of Naples)]] thumb|Orava Castle in Slovakia. Medieval castles are a traditional symbol of a feudal society. Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of various customs and systems that flourished in medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.

thumb|286x286px|The House of Lords is the upper legislature of the [[Parliament of the United Kingdom and is filled with members that are selected from the aristocracy (both hereditary titleholders and those ennobled only for their individual lives).]] Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy. It is normally appointed by and ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm with many exclusive functions and characteristics. The characteristics associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non

thumb|The French prince du sang Louis II de Bourbon with his son. He was a great warrior and a rebel. He triumphed at the [[battle of Rocroi against the Habsburgs and saved the kingdom of his cousin Louis XIV, then four years old. This forged his legendary status and the beginning of the reversal of the balance of power in Europe. The day after Rocroi's victory, he became the new Alexander. The prince's center of gravity was transferred from Paris to Chantilly where he indulged his passions and cultivated a court life, in a sort of anti-Versailles. Under his impetus and the king's first archit

ruler in Mongol and Turkic cultures, variously describing kings, princes, and governors

Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and above sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ranked below grand dukes and above or below princes, depending on the country or specific title. The title comes from French duc, itself from the Latin dux, 'leader', a term used in republican Rome to refer to a military commander without an official rank, and later coming to mean the leading military commander of a province. In most countries, the word d

thumb|upright=1.5|Young women offer berries to visitors to their izba home, 1909. Those who had been serfs among the Russian peasantry were officially emancipated in 1861. Photograph by [[Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky.]] A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants existed: non-free slaves, semi-free serfs, and free tenants. Peasants might hold title to land outright (fee simple), or by any of several forms

An emirate is a territory ruled by an emir, a title used by monarchs or high officeholders in the Muslim world. From a historical point of view, an emirate is a political-religious unit smaller than a caliphate. It can be considered equivalent to a principality in non-Muslim contexts.

Serfdom was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery. It developed during late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century and became the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism and similar systems.

thumb|A vassal swears the oath of fealty before Frederick I, Elector Palatine|Count Palatine Frederick I of the Palatinate.

French historian (1886–1944)

A fief (; ) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form of feudal allegiance, services or payments. The fees were often lands, land revenue or revenue-producing real property like a watermill, held in feudal land tenure: these are typically known as fiefs or fiefdoms. However, not only land but anything of value could be held in fee, including governmental office, rights of exploitation such as hunting, fishing or felling tre

association of persons in feudal Europe who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular area

Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or are entitled to courtesy titles. The collective "Lords" can refer to a group or body of peers.

broad orders of social hierarchy

thumb|A procession of high-ranking Assyrian officials followed by tribute bearers from Urartu. From Khorsabad, Iraq, c. 710 BCE. Iraq Museum thumb|Objects in the "Apadana" reliefs at Persepolis: armlets, bowls, and [[amphorae with griffin handles are given as tribute.]]

thumb|upright|Count Carl Gustaf Mannerheim (naturalist)|Carl Gustaf Mannerheim (1797–1854), the [[governor of the Vyborg Province, entomologist and the grandfather of Baron C. G. E. Mannerheim.]] Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. Especially in earlier medieval periods the term often implied not only a certain status, but also that the count had specific responsibilities or offices. The etymologically related English term "county" denoted the territories

ruling title used by certain historical monarchs

right|thumb|300px|An example of a charter (Magna Carta). A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the recipient admits a limited (or inferior) status within the relationship, and it is within that sense that charters were historically granted, and it is that sense which is retained in modern usage of the term. In early medieval Britain, charters transferred land from donors to recipients.

Manorialism, also known as seigneurialism, the manor system or manorial system, was the method of land ownership (or "tenure") in parts of Europe, notably France and later England, during the Middle Ages. Its defining features included a large, sometimes fortified manor house or castle in which the lord of the manor and his dependents lived and administered a rural estate, and a population of labourers or serfs who worked the surrounding land to support themselves and the lord. These labourers fulfilled their obligations with labour time or in-kind produce at first, and later by cash payment a

fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised earthwork

Allod, deriving from Frankish alōd meaning "full ownership" (from al "full, whole" and ōd "property, possession"; Medieval Latin allod or allodium), also known as allodial land was, in medieval and early modern European feudal law, a form of property ownership where the owner had full and absolute title. The allodial landowner, also known as an allodiary or hereditary lord, had the right to alienate the property, which was almost always land, a city plot, or an estate, and owed no feudal duties to any other person in respect of it.

young male servant

A castellan, or constable, was the governor of a castle in medieval Europe. Its surrounding territory was referred to as the castellany.

thumb|Page from a Rosh Hashanah prayerbook with Hebrew (melekh) in large red text. Malik (; ; ; variously Romanized Mallik, Melik, Malka, Malek, Maleek, Malick, Mallick, Melekh) is the Semitic term translating to "king", recorded in East Semitic and Arabic, and as M-L-K in Northwest Semitic during the Late Bronze Age (e.g. Aramaic, Canaanite, Hebrew).

medieval oath of allegiance

An ', sometimes simply advocate, (German, ), or ' (French, ) was a type of medieval office holder, particularly important in the Holy Roman Empire, who was delegated some of the powers and functions of a major feudal lord, or for an institution such as an abbey. They typically had responsibility for the "comital" functions which defined the office of early medieval "counts", such as taxation, recruitment of militias, and maintaining law and order. This type of office could apply to specific agricultural lands, villages, castles, and even cities. In some regions, advocates came to be governors

thumb|upright|The Accolade (Leighton)|The Accolade (1901), by [[Edmund Leighton]]

concept that nobility confers social responsibilities

Neo-feudalism or new feudalism is a theorized contemporary rebirth of policies of governance, economy, and public life, reminiscent of those which were present in many feudal societies. Such aspects include, but are not limited to: Unequal rights and legal protections for common people and for nobility, dominance of societies by a small and powerful elite, a lack of social mobility, and relations of lordship and serfdom between the elite and the people, where the former are rich and the latter poor.

thumb|300px|Conjectural map of a feudal Manorialism|manor. The mustard-coloured areas are part of the demesne, the hatched areas part of the [[glebe. The manor house, residence of the lord and location of the manorial court, can be seen in the mid-southern part of the manor.]]

defended outer enclosure of a castle

tenant farmers in the late Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages

thumb|400px|Scroll from Säckingen Abbey from 1310, written in [[Middle High German.]] An urbarium (, English: urbarium, also rental or rent-roll, , , , ), is a register of fief ownership and includes the rights and benefits that the fief holder has over his serfs and peasants. It is an important economic and legal source of medieval and early modern feudalism.

thumb|Relief depicting Eachi and Amir Hassan II of the [[Proshian dynasty, . The Proshyans were Nakharars for the Zakarids in historical Armenia during the 13th-14th centuries. Astvatsatsin Spitakavor Monastery, Vayots Dzor, Hermitage Museum, inv. No. AR-619.]] Nakharar ( naxarar, from Parthian naxvadār "holder of the primacy") was a hereditary title of the highest order given to houses of the ancient and medieval Armenian nobility.

The precarium (plural precaria)—or precaria (plural precariae) in the feminine form—is a form of land tenure in which a petitioner (grantee) receives a property for a specific amount of time without any change of ownership. The precarium is thus a free gift made on request (or precarius, whence "prayer") and can be revoked. The grantor can reclaim the land and evict the grantee at any time, and the grantee's hold on the land is said to be "precarious". (The adjectival form "precarial" is also used.) The precarium arose in the late Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages it became a legal fiction, and

Sahib or Saheb () is a term of address originating from Arabic (). As a loanword, Sahib has passed into several languages, including Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Crimean Tatar, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Pashto, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Rohingya and Somali. During medieval times, it was used either as an official title or an honorific. Now, in South and Central Asia, it is almost exclusively used to give respect to someone higher or lower. The honorific has largely been replaced with sir. In the Tibeto-Burman language of Mizo, it is shortened as sâp, ref

An oath of fealty, from the Latin '''''' (faithfulness), is a pledge of allegiance of one person to another.

legal document establishing a municipality

Makhzen (, , ) is the governing institution in Morocco and in pre-1957 Tunisia, centered on the monarch and consisting of royal notables, top-ranking military personnel, landowners, security service bosses, civil servants and other well-connected members of the establishment. The term "Makhzen" is also popularly used in Morocco as a word meaning "State" or "Government".

formulaic and constitutional phrase

Church built on private ground by a feudal lord

thumb|1707 map of the castellania of Lille, established in [[1039.]] A castellania was the smallest administrative subdivision of land in medieval Malta, Poland, Hungary and the Netherlands, signifying the territory over which the master of a castle exercised his ordinary rights. At its centre was the castle, the most important place in the castellania, administered by a castellan (castellanus in Latin). In south-eastern France from the 11th century onwards such a subdivision was called a castellania, a châtellenie or a mandement (from the Latin mandamentum) and covered the administrative, mil

A lordship is a territory held by a lord. It was a landed estate that served as the lowest administrative and judicial unit in rural areas. It originated as a unit under the feudal system during the Middle Ages. In a lordship, the functions of economic and legal management are assigned to a lord, who, at the same time, is not endowed with indispensable rights and duties of the sovereign. A Lordship in its essence is clearly different from the fief and, along with the allod, is one of the ways to exercise the right.

Banalités or banalities (; from ban) were, until the end of the Ancien Régime in various parts of Europe, rights linked to the exercise of lordship or public authority that imposed the compulsory use of designated facilities. The institution is most extensively documented in France, but comparable forms existed elsewhere in Europe under different legal traditions and terminology.

dishes eaten by peasants

description of households in midieval times

A villein is a class of serf tied to the land under the feudal system. As part of the contract with the lord of the manor, they were expected to spend some of their time working on the lord's fields in return for land. Villeins existed under a number of legal restrictions that differentiated them from freemen, and could not leave without his lord's permission. Generally, villeins held their status not by birth but by the land they held, and it was also possible for them to gain manumission from their lords. The villeinage system largely died out in England in 1500, with some forms of villeinag

A churl (Old High German ), in its earliest Old English (Anglo-Saxon) meaning, was simply "a man" or more particularly a "free man", but the word soon came to mean "a non-servile peasant", still spelled , and denoting the lowest rank of freemen. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it later came to mean the opposite of nobility and royalty, "a common person". Says Chadwick:

formal ceremony of the Medieval period to create a bond between a lord and his vassal

Category:21st-century neologisms Category:Economics neologisms Category:Feudalism Category:Internet-related controversies Category:Political neologisms

split of a feudal state into smaller states

type of human settlement

In political theory, refeudalization is the process of recovering the political mechanisms and relationships that used to define feudalism. Because the term "feudalism" is slightly ambiguous, "refeudalization" is ambiguous, too.

obligations in a feudal system

type of duchy

In English law, subinfeudation is the practice by which tenants, holding land under the king or other superior lord, carved out new and distinct tenures in their turn by sub-letting or alienating a part of their lands.

The '''''' was a feudal right stipulating that a lord or monarch inherited the property of someone considered to be an outsider, or in , upon their death, as if they lived under servile conditions.

1486 decree by King Ferdinand setting aside medieval constraints on serfs.