The Right Ordering of Society: Community

structure of soc. + attempts made to regulate it (1000 - 1215)

en the religious men and women (monks, nuns, priests, bishops, the papacy) and the 'laity', or 'secular' people who lived outside of clerical orders. Some at the time advanced, and consequently some medievalists have pushed, a further threefold division, between those who work (laboratores), those who pray (oratores) and those who fight (bellatores). This means, roughly, that we should ostensibly see medieval people as divided between peasants, clergy, and knights.

But what happened when these categories broke down - when priests started behaving like secular men, when labourers started fighting, and when knights wanted to obtain the spiritual benefits of clerical life? During the period considered here, the papacy, in c. 1000 being a weak institution barely in control of the city of Rome itself, cast itself as the regulator of the structuring of society, dealing with the problems of priests marrying their parishioners, of knights and lords seeking to interfere in the running of churches, and of social mobility (viewed with great suspicion in the Middle Ages). Under several great reformist popes (Gregory VII, Urban II, Calixtus II, Innocent III), the papacy elevated itself into an institution which claimed suzerainty over pretty much all aspects of Christian society. The names for this period in the scholarship are many - Gregorian reform, papal monarchy, the Investiture Controversy - but the phenomenon speaks to a central concern about the structuring of medieval life, and so is foundational for our course.

At the heart of medieval society was the idea of community.

This operated at several different levels. Perhaps the majority of people were tied to the land, either legally in the case of serfs (unfree peasants), or because they were reliant on the status and protection which their neighbours, kin, family, and even their lord provided. Nobles and knights also considered themselves part of a community - the community of the king's vassals, members of the council, 'peers of the realm', and so on. The church, too, was considered a family, with 'brothers', 'sisters', and 'fathers' being more than just conventional terms of address. These communities were all not only forms of mutual support, and groupings of legal responsibilities, but also sites of exploitation, oppression, and intimidation. Religious men and women who wished to escape their secular surroundings, and 'flee from the world', could join adoptive community/family settings - monastic houses, where they would form a unit, tightly sealed from the outside world, where all could be devoted to God. Community, and the purity of the community, was a central concern of many medieval people, and the period covered by this topic saw a new emphasis on the regulation of these communities - their distinctiveness, and the legitimacy of their rules.

flashcard 1: types people = 3 ‘orders’

Why focus on types?

Indiv. personhood less of a thing - people feel into broad categories accord. to their sort.

Why? People consid. largely as equal only in theological sense, but in terms of their bodies & existences, NOT equal

Blood & lineage large determiner in who you are

• individuality doens’t come around unitl 18thC liberalism (check)

• souls equal BUT bodies (flesh & blood) not

flashcard 2: what 3 ‘orders’ were people split into?