One of the most enduring ideas of what the Medieval period was like is summed up by the phrase in the title of this post. Many medieval thinkers, from King Alfred the Great onwards, described their society as being divided into three groups or classes of people, seen as three pillars that supported a well-functioning civilisation.

Those who work.

The first of these groups, and by far the largest (probably comprising somewhere in the region of 90% of the population, at least), was those who work – in Latin, the language of medieval scholars, “Laboratores” – from which we get the word labourers. Now a “labourer” in medieval England normally meant someone who did unskilled work of some kind for another, such as lugging heavy bits of stone around a Castle building site. For much of the Middle Ages, prices for goods were derived from the labourer’s standard wage of 1 penny per day. But the social class of “laboratores” goes way beyond the role of labourers and encompasses the largest of Medieval social classes – the so called “peasants”.

Most people have a clear conception of what a Medieval peasant was like, but the truth of the matter is a little different. Peasants was not a word used in Medieval England, where such people were instead referred to by a variety of terms depending on their precise social class. At the lower end of the scale were villeins, cottars and bordars. These people were bound to the land they were born on, unable to move away from their home village or get married without the permission of their Lord. They were compelled by law to work on their Lord’s fields for at least 40 days per year, and paid much of the food they grew on their farms to their Lord as rent for the homes they lived in.

The places villeins lived in were of course known as “villages”. Less pleasantly, villein is also the source of the modern word “villain” – people higher up the social scale could be very rude about the lower orders, with insults like “churlish” also originally referring to people of the peasant classes.

But not all peasants lived lives lacking in freedom. Higher up the social scale were freemen and freewomen, sometimes known as “franklins” or “yeomen”. These people were still peasant farmers, but usually owned their own land or paid cash rent to their lords rather than toiling for them. These people were proud of their status but were not free of obligations. Being free in Medieval England meant being eligible for military service, and all free people by law had to own and maintain their own weapons and armour and be ready to turn out to serve in the King’s armies. It is from these people that English medieval armies drew most of their foot-soldiers, including the famous Longbowmen who won so many famous victories like Crécy and Agincourt.

Those who work also incorporated the people dwelling in towns, like Newcastle. Known as Burgesses, these people were also legally free from any feudal obligations to great Lords, but paid tax and service to the Crown. The growing towns in the Medieval period were home to merchants, shopkeepers and craftsmen, divided into innumerable Guilds that regulated their work and pay. Newcastle had guilds of mariners, coopers, butchers, bakers, millers, tanners, smiths and many, many more trades.

Those who fight

This second grouping tells us a lot about Medieval society. Those who fight does not refer to the labouring folk called up to form the bulk of Medieval armies, but rather to the people at the very top of the heap – the Knights, Lords and Kings of the realm. Despite their grand and elegant lifestyles, people never lost sight of the fact that the main role of a knight or king remained that of a soldier and warlord.

Kings were expected to lead their armies into battle personally, and the kings who were most respected in the Medieval world were those who were courageous and competent warriors. Richard the Lionheart was one of the most popular and renowned of English kings throughout the Middle Ages, famous for his exploits in the Crusades. The fact that he was only in England, the country he was supposed to be ruling, for about six months of his reign didn’t seem to matter much to the Medieval mind, and neither did the fact that when he was ruling the country, his main goal was to extract as much tax as possible from the people to pay for his endless wars.

Knights too initially started out purely as warriors – in most European languages, the word for a “knight” is exactly the same as the word for cavalry soldier, and knights were simply soldiers who could afford the expensive armour and horses needed to serve in such a role. As a result of this excessive focus on warfare, early medieval society could be incredibly violent and turbulent, with warfare between different noble lords and their gangs of knights devastating the countryside. Gradually though, knights were encouraged to emulate the heroes of chivalrous romance stories and protect the weak and helpless rather than burning their houses and churches down. At about the same time, many knights began to amass more land and wealth, and settled down to work as administrators, judges and lawyers as much as they did as warriors.

Nevertheless, their military role never totally vanished, and throughout the Medieval period the standard “soldier” by whom an armies strength was measured was the fully armoured and mounted knight or man-at-arms.

Those who pray

The importance of the third “pillar” to Medieval society cannot be overstated. Today we think of prayer as a pretty weak substitute for real action, but to the Medieval mind prayer was powerful enough to move mountains, and the stories of miracle working saints could have been reeled off by everyone from the highest king to the lowliest peasant. In a time when life was harsh and often cruel, belief in God and the power of the Church gave people a sense of justice and stability. The Church was also a powerful landowner, with the various Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots and of course the Prince Bishop of Durham owning over a third of the total land in the Kingdom of England. Many peasants laboured on land owned not by any knight or lord but by the Church itself. The Church also united the many warring European kingdoms, as all earthly Kings technically owed obedience to the Pope. If Kings argued, they would often appeal to the Papacy to mediate their arguments before (or after) resorting to outright warfare.

To people who believed strongly in the Christian religion, as most people in Medieval times did, this third group, those who pray, also provided innumerable valuable services. They held mass, took confession from sinners, blessed marriages and farmer’s fields so that they were fruitful, carried out funeral services and prayed for the souls of the dead. In addition to these spiritual services, the Church also had a very concrete role in Medieval society. Most scholars were Churchmen or women, so the tasks of educating society fell to them. In fact, the word “clerk” referring to anyone who wrote or undertook administrative tasks for a living is derived from “cleric”, and most people fulfilling these roles in society were in holy orders in one way or another. Monasteries also ran hospitals which cared for the sick and poor, while parish priests collected tithes of 10% of the village’s crops which were stored in tithe barns to be shared out in the event of a shortage or famine. In this way the Church provided a sort of “social security” system for Medieval people.

Finally, Medieval people imagined that God’s favour was vital to the prosperity of the people – if God was pleased with people, the Kingdom would prosper, but “if Christian faith weakens the kingdom will soon fall; and if injustice is exalted anywhere in the land or evil customs anywhere too eagerly embraced, the people will be brought entirely to ruin*.” Thus it was vitally important work for the health of the Kingdom to pray, and pray hard!

In reality this threefold division is too simplistic a way to sum up medieval society, but it gives us a valuable insight into the way that people living at the time viewed their world and their place within it. It’s the medieval way of thinking about things like social class or social responsibility, subjects which still exercise our minds today, as we try to make sense of the world we live in and how society can be made to work to everyone’s benefit.