What was the social structure of the times?

Answer 1

The society was separated into Church and secular, each with its own hierarchies.

In the beginning of medieval times, the Church was mostly, but not all, based in Rome. In later times, after 1054, the Roman Church had divided into Roman Catholic, based in Rome and headed by a Pope, and the Eastern Orthodox, headed by the Patriarch of Constantinople.

The Church was divided functionally into the ordinary clergy, who are referred to as secular because they minister to the needs of secular people, and the monastics, who are referred to as regular because they are regulated by monastic rules.

The secular clergy are ordered as follows, from the highest rank down:

Pope in Rome or Patriarch of Constantinople

Cardinals (Roman Church), archbishops who could elect a new pope

Archbishops (Roman Church), senior bishops

Bishops, heads of dioceses, which consisted of geographical groups of churches

Priests of local churches

Deacons, lower order in local churches

The regular clergy are ordered as follows, again top down:

Pope or Patriarch

Grand Master, heads of monastic order, which could be worldwide in scope

Abbots, heads of local monasteries

Monks, who were the members of monasteries

Novices, training to become monks

The secular people also each had a place in a social hierarchy. The social hierarchy, from the top down, was as follows:

Monarch, who could be emperor, king, prince, or duke, but was independent

Nobility

Freemen

Serfs

Slaves

A king could be a vassal of an emperor, and so was not always an independent monarch. Similarly, princes and dukes were usually vassals to kings or emperors. The English nobility consisted of the following, from the top down:

King or Queen

Prince or Princess

Archduke or Archduchess

Duke or Duchess

Marquess or Marchioness

Earl or Countess

Viscount or Viscountess

Baron or Baroness

Baronet or Baronetess (not in medieval times)

Knight or Dame (not hereditary in England)

Esquire (not always nobility)

Continental nobility was the same but with different spellings, except that the continental equivalent of an earl is a count.

Freemen were not all middle class. The highest levels of the free were such people as prosperous businessmen. These people were not of inconsiderable stature. One family that is very well known even today, for example, was the Medici banking family, which later became nobility. The Hanseatic League rivalled nations in importance, and its merchants, who were not nobility, rivalled the nobility in their areas in importance.

The lowest levels of freemen were hardly above the serfs. They included small craftsmen, such as bakers, potters, or smiths. Indeed, at the lowest level of the free were Travellers, who are sometimes now rather inaccurately referred to as Gypsies, and included the least of the itinerant musicians, jugglers, and tinkers.

Serfs were not slaves, but were not free to leave the land they worked on. They had a set of fixed mutual obligations with their lords. They provided the lords with parts of the fruits of their labor, and the lords protected them and provided them with a place to live and work. The serfs had rights, and one of these rights was a right to live on the land they occupied; if the land was sold, the new owner was not allowed to evict them and replace them with someone else.

Slaves existed or not, depending on the country. The tendency during the middle ages was to free slaves. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, but could have been based on the acceptance of Christianity, because the Old Testament laws do not permit keeping believers in bondage for longer than seven years.