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The medieval Church was an institution where social mobility was most likely achieved up to a certain level (generally to that of vicar general or abbot/abbess for commoners). Typically, only nobility were appointed to the highest church positions (bishops, archbishops, heads of religious orders, etc.), although low nobility could aspire to the ...
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs 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.
Feudalism in Europe emerged in the Early Middle Ages, based on Roman clientship and the Germanic social hierarchy of lords and retainers. It obliged the feudatory to render personal services to the lord. These included e.g. holding his stirrup, joining him on festive occasions and service as a cupbearer at the banquet table.
During the Middle Ages, in England, as in most of Europe, the feudal system was the dominant social and economic system. Under the feudal system, the monarch would grant land to the monarch’s loyal subjects in exchange for the subject’s loyalty and military service when called by the monarch.
Under the English feudal system, the person of the king (asserting his allodial right) was the only absolute "owner" of land. All nobles, knights and other tenants, termed vassals, merely "held" land from the king, who was thus at the top of the "feudal pyramid".
Edo society was a feudal society with strict social stratification, customs, and regulations intended to promote political stability. The Emperor of Japan and the kuge were the official ruling class of Japan but had no power.
Anderson's work examines the rise of centralized monarchical states in Western Europe from the 16th to 18th centuries, analyzing them as a reorganized system for preserving the ruling power of the feudal nobility class amid changing economic and social conditions marking the transition away from feudalism towards capitalism. These absolutist ...
Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800, Oxford University Press. Early Medieval History Archived 2 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine page, Clio History Journal, Dickson College, Australian Capital Territory. Glimpses of the dark ages: Or, Sketches of the social condition of Europe, from the fifth to the twelfth ...