Athens

AnswerThe government was based on feudalism, which basically is the exchange of land for military services and loyalty, between a knight and a lord. MoreAn important form of government of the Middle Ages is called feudalism. It is a system relying on manorial estates based on mutual support and loyalty by the king, who granted the estates, and the nobility, who received them in exchange for loyalty and support. The higher nobility awarded land to lesser nobility in the same way, and a feudal pyramid of support was formed. Feudalism is associated with a relatively weak central government, and so the power is spread out or decentralized.

The feudal monarchies were complicated enough that more should be said of them. Some of them, such as England's, were limited by the fact that they had parliaments. Another limitation, which was very important because it was connected to the relations between England and France, is that the monarch of a country could also be a vassal of the monarch of another country. The English king was independent as far as his lands in England went, but he was also a vassal of the king of France. His English army could be raised for England, but his French counties and duchies theoretically would be called up to support the King of France. It hardly ever worked as planned, and was messy.

Feudal monarchies were also limited to some degree by the Church. The pope could excommunicate a monarch, and release all of the people who had oaths or treaties with that monarch from their obligations. Henry II of England, John Lackland, Emperor Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire were among those who were excommunicated. Frederick II was prepared by having hired a group of Muslim bodyguards who did not care for the pope. But the effect was that limitations were placed on government from outside, and the nature of the limitations was only predictable based on the fact that they came from a Christian leader.

Some feudal monarchies had elected leaders. The kings of Scotland were elected by clan chiefs, through much of the Middle Ages, and the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire were elected by a council of four members of the nobility, who inherited their places on the council, and the bishops of three specific dioceses. This did not effect the structure of the feudal pyramid, but it did have an effect on how it was run.

There were other kinds of government in the Middle Ages besides feudal monarchy.

There were monarchies that were not feudal in nature. The manorial system, serfdom, and a feudal hierarchy based on land were not universal, but were primarily a system of Western Europe. They did not exist in parts of the far north, and feudalism had a separate nature in the East. Ireland was only feudal in those areas controlled directly by the English, and was more tribal elsewhere. Serfs had also been pretty much gone by the end of the Middle Ages in many places, such as England and Scotland. And, in fact, there were a number of small countries such as those in Spain, Wales, and others, where the full feudal pyramid was unnecessary, so a monarchy could have a strong central government instead of the weak central government that typified feudalism.

Another type of government was the republic, which varied from one place to another. A republic might have been run by a council of merchants or guild masters, or it might have been run by a council of representatives who were elected by qualified voters. Republics existed as cities within the Holy Roman Empire, and also as independent nations, such as Venice and Genoa. In the North, the Hanseatic League was made up of a group of cities both within and outside of the Holy Roman Empire, and they had their own military.

There were towns and cities called communes (commune meaning "walled together"), which might have been republican, but also might have had a government that was a sort of blend of feudal and republican features. Since the individual communes developed their own systems independently, they were different from one another. But it would be possible, for example, to have a city in which military treaties were drawn up and the defense was directed by a feudal lord, but those were the limit of his responsibilities, and the rest of the government was in the hands of a group of merchants.

Another republican government that was particularly interesting was that of Iceland. The government was run by a council that is sometimes referred to as a parliament, but differs quite a lot from most parliaments. Seats in the council were inherited or purchased.

It is probably best also to consider the history of government in the Middle Ages. The Germanic tribes that settled in the Roman Empire had their own laws, which were carefully memorized by judges, and customs. The development of government in Western Eurpoe was largely a matter of reconciling Roman law with Germanic law. In Spain, for example, the Visigoths enforced Roman law on the local Spanish population they had conquered, and Germanic law on Visigoths. They enforced a strict separation of the two, and did not allow marriages between members of the separate populations for a long time. In Gaul, the Franks ruled part of the country according to Frankish law, and part according to Roman. Eventually, these systems were combined into new legal codes, and larger, more unified, countries formed. France and the Holy Roman Empire were the eventual products of this development, and it was also imported to a large degree in other places such as England.

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