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Mind your manners! Yes, my lord. To civilize is to Christianize!
I work and I pay, I pray and I pay, I die and I pay. God wills it! Rich
and poor alike in the Middle Ages were controlled by five specific
institutions: the code of chivalry, the feudal system, Charlemagne, the
manorial system and the Catholic Church. To encounter them was inevitable,
to avoid them: impossible!
Firstly, the code of chivalry was a code of behaviour for the upper
class embodying all the qualities and characteristics of the ideal or
perfect knight. He should be bold and brave, yet gentle, considerate, wise
and courteous. Obviously, this perfect knight did not exist but gave
people an icon to which they might aspire. This code of chivalry also
included small acts of kindness and generosity to bind the men in the upper
ranks of society by ties of property as well as loyalty. This way, men
could rely on one another and feel a more firm sense of security and
peacefulness.
Similarly, the feudal system was created early in the Dark Ages to
secure a sense of safety among the upper class. The feudal system involved
the granting of land or a fief by a lord to his vassal. The lords and
vassals were exclusively the very wealthy and powerful with the king as the
highest lord and the knight as the lowest vassal. The main purpose of the
feudal system was to provide fighting men who could ensure protection.
Feudalism was the first emergence of organized government in the Dark Ages.
Charlemagne was a born leader and a talented general, but also a
man so convinced of the value of religion and education that he made a
genuine attempt to revive the spiritual and cultural life in the Middle
Ages. Charlemagne was a brilliant administrator by carefully selecting
powerful Germanic nobles to help him and by creating the missi dominici. He
was an ingenious educator creating a standard curriculum involving the
quadrivium and trivium then putting them to practice in the schools he
built and rebuilt. Also, he saved, preserved and copied as much classical
information as possible. Finally, he was a brave ...
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