Aula 2. material on line Fundamen. Cult. Lit. Ling. Inglesa

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Aula 2 – Feudalism, Knights and Pilgrimages
 Objetivos: Discuss the central idea of Feudalism;
2. understand the importance of the Magna Carta;
3. analyze the foundation of Parliament;
4. describe the figure of the knight;
5. recognize the cultural elements of The Canterbury Tales.
How was England ruled by the Normans?
To understand the issues of Feudalism, we have to understand the events which happened before. When William the Conqueror became king, things did not go well during his coronation. When people shouted ‘God Save the King’ the Norman guards at Westminster Abbey thought they were going to attack William. In their fear they set fire to nearby houses and the coronation ceremony ended in disorder.
How did the Norman army behave?
The Norman Conquest did not last for too long. However these were troubled times. Anglo-Saxons promoted continuing revolutions against the Normans. Until 1070, every year new rebellions occurred. As a consequence, the Norman army, though small, marched from village to village; destroying places that they could not control. 
It was a true army of occupation for at least twenty years. In the north, between Durham and York, not a single house was left standing, and it took a century for the north to recover.
Could the Saxons keep their land? Few Saxons lords kept their lands and those who did belonged to a small group that had accepted William immediately. The other lords lost everything. By 1086 there were only two great landlords and only two bishops were Saxons. The Norman nobles owned the lands and after each after each suppressed rebellion there was more land to give away, William’s army included Norman and French land seekers. Over 4,000 Saxon landlords were replaced by 200 Normans ones.
How was the land distributed? The way William ruled the land made him an outstanding example for kings in continental Europe. William gave parts of the land to his captain as a reward. They had small separate pieces of land in different parts of the country so that no noble could easily try to gather his fighting men to rebel against the king. Only larger estates given were the ones along the troublesome borders with wales and Scotland. At the same time he kept enough land for himself to ensure he was much stronger than his nobles.
Half of the farmland of England was given to Norman nobles, a quarter to the Church, and kept a fifth himself. The king kept the Saxon system of sheriffs, and used these as a mediator to the local nobles. As a result England was different from the rest of Europe because it had one powerful family, instead of a large number of powerful nobles. William, and the kings after him, thought of England as their personal property.
What did Feudalism mean?
The word 'feudalism' comes from the French word feu, which the Normans used to refer to land held in return for duty or service to a lord. The holding of the land  was the basis of feudal society and its main purpose was economic. The central idea was that all land was owned by the king but it was held by others, called 'vassals', in return for services and goods.
Large estates were given by the king to his main nobles in return for a promise to serve him in war for up to forty days.. Part of the produce of the land had to be given to the king. The greater nobles gave part of their lands to lesser nobles, knights, and other ´freeman´. Some freeman paid for the land by doing military service, while others paid rent. The noble kept 'serfs' to work on his own land. These were not free to leave the estate, and were often little better than slaves.
What were the two basic principles to feudalism?
The first one was that every man had a lord and the second was that every lord had land. The king was connected through this 'chain' of people to the lowest man in the country. At each level a man had to promise loyalty and service to his lord.
This promise was generally made with the lord sitting on his chair and his vassal kneeling before him, his hands placed between those of his lord. This was called 'homage', and has remained part of the coronation ceremony of British kings and queens until now. On the other hand, each lord had responsibilities to his vassals. He had to give them land and protection.
What happened when a noble died?
The king could benefit from the death of a noble. The noble’s son usually took over his estate but he had to receive permission from the king and make a special payment. If he was a child, the king would often take the produce of the estate until the boy was old enough to look after the estate himself.
What happened when a noble died?
By 1086, the king sent a team of people all through England to make a complete economic survey. His men asked all kinds of questions at each settlement: How much land was there? Who owned it? How much was it worth? How many families, ploughs and sheep were there? The survey was most unpopular with the people, because they felt they could not escape from its findings. Information was gathered and kept in a Book called ‘Doomsday’. The book still exists, and gives us an extraordinary amount of information about England at this time.
What replaced the idea of Nationalism in the early Middle Ages?
William controlled two large areas: Normandy, which was given to him by his father, and England, which was won in war. Both were personal possessions and it did not matter to the rulers that the ordinary people of one place were English while those of another were French.
To William the important difference between them was that as duke of Normandy he had to recognize the king of France as his lord, whereas in England he was king with no lord above him.
What happened when William died in 1087?
How was the process of succession then?
William Rufus died in a hunting accident in 1100, shot dead by an arrow.
Henry was crowned king instead of Robert who was coming back to Normandy from the Holy Land.
Robert became very angry and prepared to invade but it took him a year to organize an army,
The Norman nobles in England had to choose between Henry and Robert.
They chose Robert because he was in London, with the crown already on his head.
Robert´s invasion was a failure and he accepted payment to return to Normandy.
In 1106 Henry invaded Normandy and captured Robert. Normandy and England were reunited under one ruler.
In 1120 Henry´s only son was drowned at sea. After fifteen years Henry accepted her daughter, Matilda, would follow him. Henry had married Matilda to another great noble in France, Geoffrey Plantagenet. He hoped the family lands would be made larger by this marriage.
He made all the nobles promise to accept Matilda when he died,. But then Henry himself quarreled publicly with Matilda´s husband, and died soon after. There were two possible heirs to Henry: Matilda who was in Anjou and 
Henry´s nephew, Stephen of Blois, who was in Bologne. Stephen raced to England to claim the crown.
The nobles chose Stephen, who seems to have been good at fighting but little else. Matilda invaded England four years later.
What was the Magna Carta?
The Magna Carta, the Great Charter, was an important symbol of political freedom. The king promised all ‘freeman’ protection from his officers, and the right to a fair and legal trial. 
At that time most people were not free, and were serfs or experimented a different intermediate social status, such as artisans. Hundreds of years later, Magna Carta was used by Parliament to protect itself from a powerful king.
In fact, Magna Carta gave no real freedom to the majority of people in England. The nobles who obliged King John to sign it did not defend people’s freedom: they wanted to prevent John from going beyond his rights as feudal lord.
Was Magna Carta a clear sign of the collapse of English Feudalism?
We have some reasons to believe so. First, feudal society was based on links between lord and vassal and at Runnymede the nobles were not acting as vassals but as a class. Secondly, theyestablished a committee of twenty-four lords to make sure John would keep his promises. That was not a ‘feudal’ thing to do. Last, the nobles were acting in co-operation with the merchant class of towns. There were other signs that feudalism was changing.
When the king went to war, the nobles refused to fight more than forty days. The king had to pay soldiers to fight for him. At the same time, lords preferred their vassals to pay them in money rather in services. Vassals were gradually beginning to change into tenants. Feudalism, the use of the land in return for service, was beginning to weaken. But it took three hundred years to disappear completely.
How was the foundation of the English Parliament?
King John signed Magna Carta under pressure and it quickly became clear that he was not going to keep the agreement. The nobles rebelled and pushed John out of the southeast. But John died and Civil War was avoided.
Henry II was nine and he was controlled during sixteen years by the powerful nobles, and tied by the Magna Carta. At the age of twenty-five, he could rule by himself. Henry’s heavy spending to support wars in favor of the pope in Sicily and France and his foreigners advisers upset the nobles. Once again they acted as a class and under the leadership of Simon de Montfort, took over the government and elected a council of nobles.
De Montfort  called it a parliament, or parlement, a French word meaning a ‘discussion meeting’. The nobles were supported by towns, which wished to be free of Henry’s heavy taxes.
The Foundantions to a Future Parliament
King Henry III, the son of King John, began his reign in 1216. At first, he consulted with a small Council of important Lords, who were usually always around him. Later, Henry began the practice of summoning an expanded group of Lords from the entire kingdom. Known as a Great Council, it included the major land-owning barons, other nobles, and the archbishops and bishops of the Catholic Church, the state religion.
The king’s judges and top government officials also attended. Henry summoned about 50 Lords to a Great Council when he needed their advice and consent for such things as going to war, changing the law, or levying a new tax.The Great Council Lords looked upon their advice and consent as both a duty to the king and a right that he was bound to honor.
When he died, Edward I brought together the first real parliament. Several kings had made arrangements for taxation but Edward I was the first to create a ‘representative institution’ which could provide the money he needed. This institution became the House of Commons. Different from the House of Lords, it contained a mixture of ‘gentry' (knights and other wealth ‘freeman’ from the shires) and merchants from the towns.
These were the two broad classes of people who produced and controlled England’s wealth. In 1275 the ‘commoners’ became unwilling representatives of their local community. They did not want to give their money to the king. This, rather than Magna Carta, was the beginning of the idea that there should not be ‘no taxation without representation’, later claimed by the American colonists of the eighteenth century.
How was the system of classes in England?
England was special because the House of Commons contained a mixture of gentry belonging to the feudal ruling class and merchants and freemen. The co-operation of these groups, through the House of Commons, became important to Britain’s later political and social development. After the death of Edward, for 150 years the agreement of the Commons became necessary for the making of all statutes and all special taxation additional to regular taxes.
How can we describe the figure of the knight?
The knight, together with the King, was the most representative figure in Medieval Times. His image evokes qualities such as unconditional bravery, honor and idealization of someone who is able to abandon his desires to favor his principles. 
Knights’ value resided on their ability with arms, physical strength, courage, honor and loyalty towards his lord. In the 12th century, these elements mixed with Christian principles to form a code of knights.
The social classes in The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer is often called “the father of English literature” and to him goes the honor of being the first great English humorist and realist. He was born in London into the home of a successful wine importer who was able to place his young son s a page in a household associated with the court of King Edward III.Chaucer ties his collection of tales by having his story tellers travel together on the then familiar London-Canterbury route of pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas à Becket, who was martyred four years earlier at the hands of Henry II. It was the custom throughout Europe in those days for members of all classes to travel to religious shrines to seek miraculous cures, to gain remission of their sins, or to satisfy the wanderlust in their hearts. In England the pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral, site of this splendid shrine, was the most popular. Chaucer´s characters represent a cross section of medieval society and include three important groups: feudal, ecclesiastical, and urban. The characters who are members of the feudal system are related to the land; these are the knight, the Squire, the Yeoman, the Franklin, the Reeve and the Plowman. Those in the ecclesiastical order represent individuals belonging to the medieval church: the Parson, the Summoner, the Monk, the Prioress, the Friar, the Pardoner, and the Clerk. The other pilgrims are professional and mercantile laymen, who reside in the ever-increasing English towns of Chaucer´s day: the Physician, the Lawyer, the Manciple, the Merchant, the Shipman, the Tradesmen, the Cook, the Clothmaker (the wife of Bath), and the Innkeeper., Although Chaucer does not attempt to individualize all the characters in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, his pilgrims become real human beings seemingly on a real pilgrimage:
 Excerpts from THE PROLOGUE 
Byfel that, in that sesoun on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At night was come into the hostelrie
Wel nyne and twenty in a compaiye,
Of sundry folk, by aventure i-falle
In felaweschipe, and pilgrims were thei alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde,Tradução do PRÓLOGO
Naquele tempo, um dia aconteceu
Que em Southwrk, no Tabardo, achando-me eu
Pronto a seguir em peregrinação
A Cantuária, todo devoção
Vieram essa noite à hospedaria
Bem vinte e nove numa companhia
De pessoas diversa, que os destinos
Reuniram, por serem peregrinos
Buscando o mesmo fim de igual maneira
Through his pilgrims Chaucer gives far more than an unforgettable group of character sketches and a collection of stories. He uses the pilgrims to comment subtly but powerfully on the social problems of his time. His native tolerance and sense of humor helped him to understand men and the forces that motivated them. He realized that the disorders and confusions of the age in which he lived marked the decline of the Age of Chivalry, and the beginning of a new era- an era in which the lot of the common man was improving, the merchant class was prospering, and a Parliament was functioning. Chaucer looked upon this new order and found it good. This optimism colors the mood of Chaucer´s pilgrims as they set forth to Canterbury.
Exercícios:
1 - Choose the option which best suits the sentence below: Feudalism refers to: land held in return for duty or service to a lord
2 - What contributed for the foundation of the English Parliament? The fact that King John did not feel like keeping the agreement which had been sealed in Magna Carta.
3 - What was the importance of Roman Catholic Church monks to the Anglo-Saxon world? They were not only responsible for the increase of local trade, leading to human and cultural development, but also, as they were basicallythe only ones who could read and write, they registered important social and political facts which occurred at the time.
4 - The relationship between the king and his main nobles involved: large states given in return to serve the king in war
5 - What were the two basic principles of Feudalism?The first principal was connected to the fact that every man had a lord and the second one was related to the idea that every lord had land.
6 - By the time the Normans invaded and conquered England, their civilization was far more organized than that of the Anglo-Saxons. Its foundation was the feudal system. During Feudalism...(Choose the alternative that correctly complets this sentence)
All the land was owned by the King but it was held by others, in return for goods and services.