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medieval society: the 3 orders - Coggle Diagram
medieval society: the 3 orders
orders or 'estates'
clergy , those who prayed
in many respects, these strata of society overlapped, as members of the clergy often came from noble families
peasants; those who worked
at the bottom
born on the manor of a lord and were bound to him as serfs
in exchange for a place to live and the means to grow their own food, they would provide the lord a percentage of their harvest.
serfdom meant that they might be subject to a number of taxes
many things that we consider basic individual rights today -like get married- would have been subject to their lord's approval
nobles, those who fought
at the top of social order
they lived on manors
they had vassals, lower nobles who had sworn loyalty to them, in exchange for protection, vassals promised to fight on the lord's behalf as knights and grant him a certain number of days of military service per year
in the 14 century , when the Black Death , killed more than a third of population
there began to be some real upward mobility in the third order
urban and merchant life become vital
many commoners, achieved levels of wealth that had previously been only possibile for the nobilty
at the same time, many nobles found themselves rich in titles but poor in cash
canterbury tales
Geoffrey Chaucers' masterpiece
provides a vivid portrait of this changing society and descriptions of this new upwardly mobile merchant class