Property ownership in Medieval Europe

In England you never 'owned' the land, and you still don't[1]. When I was living in England, as the 'freehold owner' of the house I held it 'in socage of the Queen'.

Depends very much on the country. In Sweden, the majority of the population was free farmers who owned their own land. The nobility as such - there was no feudal system - consisted merely of wealthy farmers who owned more land than the others. There was not much of any urban centres at all.

Edited by Styrbiorn - 26-Jan-2007 at 04:06

I don't know the legal system was reliable enough to be debated in Medieval times. The powerful and wealthy owned the land, gave some to peasants as a rent, and get as much profit as possible before simply confisicating the land for someone else to rent. Even if some kind of legal system existed, many peasants were victimized since they could not read the laws written and cannot defend himself... and even if he did, he's most likely to be killed by the landlords' personal armies. Such thing continued until Napoleon wrote Civil Code, which was more enforced and was fair law compared to the darks times of Medieval Age... where their true sickening history is overshadowed by knights in shiny armor.

Originally posted by King John Pekau I truely hope that your post was written in jest. I do not mean to belittle you but you couldn't be further from the actual truth. In the Medieval period the legal system in places was reliable enough to be debated. For instance in England there definetly was enough of a legal system to be debated. There were certain protections - at least in England - that were built into these legal systems to protect the lesser men; such protections can be seen in the institution of distraint. This institution is dealt with in great deal in John Hudson's book "Land, Law, and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England." You don't give the medieval commoner much credit. It's amusing that you end your post with a romanticized version of the Medieval Age. A true historian of the time would know that there is more to the history and LEGAL HISTORY of the time than knights in shiny armour.

Originally posted by pekau Originally posted by King John Pekau I truely hope that your post was written in jest. I do not mean to belittle you but you couldn't be further from the actual truth. In the Medieval period the legal system in places was reliable enough to be debated. For instance in England there definetly was enough of a legal system to be debated. There were certain protections - at least in England - that were built into these legal systems to protect the lesser men; such protections can be seen in the institution of distraint. This institution is dealt with in great deal in John Hudson's book "Land, Law, and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England." You don't give the medieval commoner much credit. It's amusing that you end your post with a romanticized version of the Medieval Age. A true historian of the time would know that there is more to the history and LEGAL HISTORY of the time than knights in shiny armour.   Once again, I fell for popular misconception for Medieval Age's 'Dark Age'. My sincere apology, King John. I think it was the history exam that brainwashed me.   I agree that legal system in Britian was fairly well enforced. Although I can't be still sure about it in Eastern Europe. Is it?

What countries do you mean when you say Eastern Europe? France? Russia? All of them is Eastern from the Brit Isles.

Edited by Raider - 07-Feb-2007 at 03:40

The 13th century is sometimes referred to "the century of the lawyer" by medieval historians.

Legal matters were sizzling hot in the high middle ages. What you had was a patchwork of at times hard to reconcile legal traditions: Roman law, the canonic law of the church, and various Germanic legal traditions (lthe laws of the Salian Franks etc.) The situation absolutely cried out for legal professionals to beat out the dents for a smoother running of adminstration.

This was a mjor factor in the rise of medieval universities, especially in Italy. They were often primarily law schools, churning out legal professionals for the chruch and secular princes alike. Every ruler at the time recognised the need to have a killer legal team attached to their court. And Bologna was the place that produced most of the talent.

Several of the most powerful popes, Innocent III for instance, were graduates of the university of Bologna. So was Peiro della Vigna, the "logthete" and right hand man of emperor Fredrick II Hohenstaufen.

Well, even today you don't really own land totally free without any obligations. That would entail an allodial title, and only sovereign entities (read: countries) can claim that right. The freest kind of ownership you can have is fee simple, where you have most rights over the land but the state retains some like taxation, police power, eminent domain, etc.

"Socage" in Britain now differs from fee-simple only in a few formalities. Back then in the Middle Ages, though, it differed a lot. For example, in legal terms the lord giving you land in socage is entitled to a rent as well as taxes. This rent is usually waived or ceremonial in modern socage arrangements, but it was real in the Middle Ages. You would have paid rent and tax back then--but only if the lord had the bureaucratic machinery to assess and collect the taxes. Most of the time it was the tax that didn't get collected in the Middle Ages. Just the reverse of the situation today. ;)

And that's just scratching the surface. We've talked only about socage. Don't let me prattle on about chivalric tenure, serjeanty, ecclesiastical tenure (frankalmoin?), and the like.

BTW, I've written an amateur essay on the subject, focused on Medieval England. It's meant for use by fiction writers so it's not really a good scholarly work, but it might be a good start for casual researchers:

http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/255493.html


Edited by Hyarmendacil - 15-Feb-2007 at 14:04

Originally posted by Raider Originally posted by pekau Originally posted by King John Pekau I truely hope that your post was written in jest. I do not mean to belittle you but you couldn't be further from the actual truth. In the Medieval period the legal system in places was reliable enough to be debated. For instance in England there definetly was enough of a legal system to be debated. There were certain protections - at least in England - that were built into these legal systems to protect the lesser men; such protections can be seen in the institution of distraint. This institution is dealt with in great deal in John Hudson's book "Land, Law, and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England." You don't give the medieval commoner much credit. It's amusing that you end your post with a romanticized version of the Medieval Age. A true historian of the time would know that there is more to the history and LEGAL HISTORY of the time than knights in shiny armour.   Once again, I fell for popular misconception for Medieval Age's 'Dark Age'. My sincere apology, King John. I think it was the history exam that brainwashed me.   I agree that legal system in Britian was fairly well enforced. Although I can't be still sure about it in Eastern Europe. Is it? What countries do you mean when you say Eastern Europe? France? Russia? All of them is Eastern from the Brit Isles.

In some instances in the Frankish Kingdom there are documents of individual small land owners selling their private, and rather small plots of land to a noble, monastery, church, etc... in order to attain the protection of food rations during famines, those records indicate that there were even in feudal areas landowners who were independent, and had power of property over their lands. How many or how vast these holdings were is a matter of debate, it is hard to determine such things, especially when really mostly documents that survive would be of the individuals accepting serfdom or some other sort of relationship to a manor.