Medieval Society Quotes

In the tenth century the old Batavian and later Roman forms have faded away.

Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.

When you look at the original 'Paradise Lost' film, you see three kids who can't defend themselves, being persecuted in a medieval way - witchcraft, satanic worship. It was kind of primitive.

Medieval justice was a quaint thing.

When fiefs inspired military service, it is easily discerned why females could not inherit them; but the reason is at an end.

… the keenest observer of William the Conqueror's Norman robbers and Saxon swineherds would have failed to foretell the great dominant race which has come from them by free growth and good culture.

When learning was monopolized by the monks in the Middle Ages, people specialized only in warfare and statecraft. And even these were not altogether free from the scholastic influence.

If it were a real effort to live in the Middle Ages, your life would be one perpetual prevarication.

The stability of medieval society depended on the fixity of all of its parts, as that of modern society is on their mobility.

The society of Christendom and especially of Western Christendom up to the explosion, which we call the Reformation, had been a society of owners: a Proprietarial Society. It was one in which there remained strong bonds between one class and another, and in which there was a hierarchy of superior and inferior, but not, in the main, a distinction between a restricted body of possessors and a main body of destitute at the mercy of the possessors, such as our society has become.

everyone who was able built a castle; so that the poor people were worn out with the toil of these buildings, and the whole kingdom was covered with castles.

Under the old philosophy which had governed the high Middle Ages things had been everywhere towards a condition of Society in which property was well distributed throughout the community, and thus the family rendered independent.

At the end of the Middle Ages, nobody would ever have expected the monasteries to vanish from the scene within a generation - yet they did. Change does happen.

The ultimate binding element in the medieval order was subordination to the divine will and its earthly representatives, notably the pope.

I went and looked at one of these great cathedrals one day, and I was blown away by it. From there I became interested in how cathedrals were built, and from there I became interested in the society that built the medieval cathedral. It occurred to me at some point that the story of the building of a cathedral could be a great popular novel.

The serfs of princes, nobles, ministerials, and churches shall no be admitted to our cities

There was nothing medieval people liked better, or did better, than sorting out and tidying up. Of all our modern inventions I suspect that they would most have admired the card index.

The institution of chivalry forms one of the most remarkable features in the history of the Middle Ages.

Since early middle ages when people generally taking away the barbarity of their like, were pretty content. Although it was all an illicit contentment, what with the slave systems all over the world, in England especially, the peasants and the master, etc. People were incredibly content.

The Normans came over, lance in hand, burning and trampling down every thing before them, and cutting off the Saxon dynasty and the Saxon nobles at the edge of the sword; but the right of petition remained untouched.

The intolerance of the Middle, and even later, Ages, is a fact all too familiar to every one.

During the Middle Ages, Jews were members of a semi-independent polity within a larger polity.

Because in the feudal system of that period at least 80% of people lived in villages, so it's very simple to get a cross-section of society in a single village. You get the microcosm of the social macrocosm.

What baron or squire Or knight of the shire Lives half so well as a holy friar.