What did the feudal social order look like?
Probably not like you think (e.g., this modern and composite image of a social pyramid). 1/5
Probably not like you think (e.g., this modern and composite image of a social pyramid). 1/5
In 1992, the German medievalist historian Hartmut Boockmann pub'd an essay complaining about the feudal pyramids he saw everywhere in German school textbooks. They were inaccurate, he argued.
So he sketched out some alternative visualizations of medieval society. 2/5
So he sketched out some alternative visualizations of medieval society. 2/5
His counter-images were cellular models viewed from above, and they had nothing to do with fixed & stable hierarchies or horizontal strata. Boockmann's point was that medieval society was structured around many households w various privileges, not as a unified state. 3/5
His counter-images were complicated, but accd to Boockmann that was the point: "If the world back then were so clearly ordered as in the pyramid depictions, ...the public monopoly of violence [ie, state sovereignty] would have been created well before the modern age." 4/5
Boockmann wanted to depict a medieval world that was completely different from our own modern social order, a world consisting of messy stateless spaces.
In my research into social pyramids, I can confirm that hierarchical class society is a modern & contingent thing. 5/5
In my research into social pyramids, I can confirm that hierarchical class society is a modern & contingent thing. 5/5
