The Middle Ages

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Have a question…or two–

I’m in a “discussion” with an Atheist about the Middle Ages and the generally bad rap it gets from “Academe” and pop culture, especially when compared to the 20th century. He’s throwing all of the usual stuff at me, most of which I can handle.

The subject of serfdom came up though. I don’t know much about it. I know that slavery was pretty much dead in Europe in the Middle Ages (until resurrected during the “Enlightenment”), but when did Serfdom end? How prevalent was it in Europe during the Middle Ages? Did the Church do anything to curtail or abolish it? I know that it lasted in Eastern Europe, particularly Russia, well into the 19th century, but what about Western, Catholic Europe? I don’t trust anything regarding this on Wikipedia.

Also, what’s the name and the author’s name of the book about how the Catholic Church saved/created Western Civilization. Can’t remember. I want to point this guy to it.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
MarkR said:
Have a question…or two–

I’m in a “discussion” with an Atheist about the Middle Ages and the generally bad rap it gets from “Academe” and pop culture, especially when compared to the 20th century. He’s throwing all of the usual stuff at me, most of which I can handle.

The subject of serfdom came up though. I don’t know much about it. I know that slavery was pretty much dead in Europe in the Middle Ages (until resurrected during the “Enlightenment”), but when did Serfdom end? How prevalent was it in Europe during the Middle Ages? Did the Church do anything to curtail or abolish it? I know that it lasted in Eastern Europe, particularly Russia, well into the 19th century, but what about Western, Catholic Europe? I don’t trust anything regarding this on Wikipedia.

Also, what’s the name and the author’s name of the book about how the Catholic Church saved/created Western Civilization. Can’t remember. I want to point this guy to it.

Any help would be appreciated.
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I thought serfdom was a uniquely Russian institution. It was abolished in 1861 by Tsar Alexander II.
 
Pax Christi!

Serfdom (the peasant is tied to the land, as are the peasant’s descendants, usually) gradually fizzled over time. More so in the West, and wherever cities were on the rise.

How the Irish Saved Civilization by Cahill (no surprise!) might be the book you have in mind.

God bless.
 
Christ, who never condemned slavery, left it to His followers to discover gradually that slavery as an institution was inconsistent with following Him. So real Catholics believe what the Church teaches and endeavour to live that teaching, but should seek to know what may be further clarified by research and discussion, and what may be refuted. So what denotes real slavery and how that has or has not been imposed, versus serfdom and servitude (penal, indentured and of those captured in a just war), can be clarified.

In, *Development or Reversal?, *the late Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., in First Things, October 2005 – debunks the often preconceived conclusions over slavery and the Church.

“Slavery was practiced by almost every known society until modern times. Throughout the biblical era, Noonan shows, slavery was taken as a given, although the Israelites practiced rather mild forms of slavery and did not permanently enslave their compatriots. Jesus, though he repeatedly denounced sin as a kind of moral slavery, said not a word against slavery as a social institution. Nor did the writers of the New Testament. Peter and Paul exhort slaves to be obedient to their masters. Paul urges Philemon to treat his converted slave Onesimus as a brother in Christ. While discreetly suggesting that he manumit Onesimus, he does not say that Philemon is morally obliged to free Onesimus and any other slaves he may have had.

“Serfdom did not involve the humiliation and brutality people today ordinarily associate with slavery. Moral theologians recognized that slaves, unlike mere chattels, had certain rights even against their masters, who no longer had over them the power of life and death, as had been the case in pagan antiquity.

“For St. Thomas, slaves (servi) had the right to food, sleep, marriage, and the rearing of their children. Provision had also to be made for them to fulfil their religious duties, and they were to be treated with benevolence.”
 
Serfdom was a political and economic byproduct of feudalism. Lords owned land, giving parcels to vassals (fifes) to maintain. The serfs wereally the peasants on the land who owed homage to the vassals, who in turn owed homage to the lord, who in turn owed homage to the monarch. The serfs worked the land, and the Lord’s protected the realm. At least that was the ideal scenario. It derives from the warrior-priest-peasant distinction that is seen over and over again.
 
Serfdom was never unique to Russia, although they were last to get rid of it.

Although slavery in the peasant form of serfdom was rife in the Middle Ages, they were no different in this sense than all of preceding human history.

ICXC NIKA
 
Thomas Woods - How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

I also recommend Those Terrible Middle Ages by Regine Pernoud. (well, anything by Regine Pernoud).
 
Abu said:
Christ, who never condemned slavery, left it to His followers to discover gradually that slavery as an institution was inconsistent with following Him. So real Catholics believe what the Church teaches and endeavour to live that teaching, but should seek to know what may be further clarified by research and discussion, and what may be refuted. So what denotes real slavery and how that has or has not been imposed, versus serfdom and servitude (penal, indentured and of those captured in a just war), can be clarified.

In, *Development or Reversal?, *the late Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., in First Things, October 2005 – debunks the often preconceived conclusions over slavery and the Church.

“Slavery was practiced by almost every known society until modern times. Throughout the biblical era, Noonan shows, slavery was taken as a given, although the Israelites practiced rather mild forms of slavery and did not permanently enslave their compatriots. Jesus, though he repeatedly denounced sin as a kind of moral slavery, said not a word against slavery as a social institution. Nor did the writers of the New Testament. Peter and Paul exhort slaves to be obedient to their masters. Paul urges Philemon to treat his converted slave Onesimus as a brother in Christ. While discreetly suggesting that he manumit Onesimus, he does not say that Philemon is morally obliged to free Onesimus and any other slaves he may have had.

“Serfdom did not involve the humiliation and brutality people today ordinarily associate with slavery. Moral theologians recognized that slaves, unlike mere chattels, had certain rights even against their masters, who no longer had over them the power of life and death, as had been the case in pagan antiquity.

“For St. Thomas, slaves (servi) had the right to food, sleep, marriage, and the rearing of their children. Provision had also to be made for them to fulfil their religious duties, and they were to be treated with benevolence.”
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Let’s see how it would work if you followed God:

First (considering servants were part of the family unit essentially) They would have living arrangements equal to the family (Not a shack, that doesn’t compute with God)

They would eat at the same level of food as the family

They would have at least 1 day off

They would not be overworked

They would be cared for medically to the same level as the family

They could leave but would be making a choice to leave the same way you can leave a job but then be unemployed… (no unemployment checks though, gotta go take down a gazelle to eat lol)

(Now in the days before McDonald’s and SS disability checks, what would a farm society of ancient people do with the wayward? well they would need a family to work for)

Now who here receives the same food, accommodation, medical care and work schedule as their CEO?

The reason why slavery fell out is because forced slavery is clearly not God consistent (ie: not allowed to leave)

The rest of the rules no one followed making the entire thing bad

and IF you did follow the rules? well it is literally cheaper to higher a minimum wage worker than to have a servant under Christian values.
 
The nonsense of calling serfdom and servitude “slavery” is also debunked by Dr Rodney Stark who refers to those historians who claim that “nothing happened other than a linguistic shift in which the word ‘slave’ was replaced by the word ‘serf’ ”, as “playing word games. Serfs were not chattels; they had had rights and a substantial degree of discretion. They married who they wished, and their families were not subject to sale or dispersal. They paid rent and thus controlled their own time and the pace of their work…sets of mutual obligations were the fundamental nature of feudalism.

In the seventh century, “Clovis II, king of the Franks, married his British slave Bathilda (who) used her position to mount a campaign against the slave trade and to redeem those in slavery.” She was declared a saint by the Church.

“Slavery ended in medieval Europe only because the Church extended its sacraments to all slaves and then managed to impose a ban on the enslavement of Christians (and of Jews).
The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Ransom House, 2005, p 27-30].

U.S. Economist, Stanford University professor, and Hoover Institute Senior Fellow, African Thomas Sowell, in Black Rednecks & White Liberals, in an essay titled The Real History of Slavery, declares:
“Slavery is almost as old as humanity, and as widespread as the globe. The Islamic world was notorious for its slave trade. Slavs were notoriously slaves. In fact the word “slave” comes from slav. Arabs and North Africans enslaved Europeans, Europeans enslaved other Europeans, Africans enslaved other Africans. Everyone enslaved someone. It was all the rage. While slavery was common to all civilizations, as well as to peoples considered uncivilized, only one civilization developed a moral revulsion against it, very late in its history — Western civilization…”

“The reason? The teaching of the Catholic Church from the beginning came to be believed widely as true.”
 
GEddie said:
Serfdom was never unique to Russia, although they were last to get rid of it.

Although slavery in the peasant form of serfdom was rife in the Middle Ages, they were no different in this sense than all of preceding human history.

ICXC NIKA
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I don’t know about that, but I do remember reading that the English yeoman farmer was more free (as far as the rights accorded to him through English common law) than the French peasant, who was in turn more free than the Russian serf, who was for all intents and purposes a slave.
 
Yeomen weren’t serfs. They were commoners that owed their own land. There were English serfs.
 
The reason there was serfdom in the first place was the Fall of the Roman Empire. Basically civilization collapsed in on itself. Learning was lost and technology was lost. The barbarians streamed into what was left of the Empire. Serfdom was what protected the little man from barbarian brutality. The noble would protect the serf utilizing his castle and men-at-arms in exchange for work. It may not have been the ideal situation but it was the best considering the circumstances. Obviously there were abuses, but the Church set up laws to protect the serfs. The serfs got a day off every feast day (and there are many feast days in the Church calendar). Do we have it a lot better than they did? Of course, but the world was falling apart, infrastructure was falling apart and knowledge was falling apart.
 
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