The First Order: The Clergy The Catholic Church had its own laws, owned lands given to it by rulers, and could levy taxes. It was thus a very powerful institution which did not depend on the king. At the head of the western Church was the Pope. He lived in Rome.
The Christians in Europe were guided by bishops and clerics – who constituted the first ‘order’. Most villages had their own church, where people assembled every Sunday to listen to the sermon by the priest and to pray together. ‘If my dear lord is slain, his fate I’ll share, If he is hanged, then hang me by his side. If to the stake he goes, with him I’ll burn; And if he’s drowned, then let me drown with him.’ – Doon de Mayence, a thirteenth-century French poem (to be sung) recounting the adventures of knights.
ACTIVITY Discuss social hierarchies based on different criteria: occupation, language, wealth, education. Compare medieval France with Mesopotamia and the Roman Empire. T HE T HREE O RDERS T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY Everyone could not become a priest. Serfs were banned, as were the physically challenged.
Women could not become priests. Men who became priests could not marry. Bishops were the religious nobility. Like lords who owned vast landed estates, the bishops also had the use of vast estates, and lived in grand palaces.
The Church was entitled to a tenth share of whatever the peasants produced from their land over the course of the year, called a ‘tithe’. Money also came in the form of endowments made by the rich for their own welfare and the welfare of their deceased relatives in the afterlife. Some of the important ceremonies conducted by the Church copied formal customs of the feudal elite. The act of kneeling while praying, with hands clasped and head bowed, was an exact replica of the way in which a knight conducted himself while taking vows of loyalty to his lord.
Similarly, the use of the term ‘lord’ for God was another example of feudal culture that found its way into the practices of the Church. Thus, the religious and the lay worlds of feudalism shared many customs and symbols.