Feudal Europe: May the Odds be Ever in Your Favor!

7.6 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of Medieval Europe.

Objective: Tributes of 2019 will be able to differentiate between the roles and responsibilities of the four main social classes in European feudal society.

Today's Handout

Step 1 | DO NOW:

• Take out homework & fill out agenda
• Define loyalty in your own words. 
• Describe a situation, either from your own experience or from the news, in which someone’s loyalty was extremely important to the situation.

Step 2 | MAKING CONNECTIONS:

Just as loyalty can be important today among friends and family, in business, and in politics, promises of loyalty once helped to hold European society together after the chaotic fall of the Roman Empire. By creating a system based on relationships where people held responsibilities to one another in order to survive, western Europeans hoped to create political order and a stable form of leadership, as well as providing local protection and security from outside threats. This is the feudal system.

Step 3 | VOCABULARY REVIEW:

Step 4 | ESSENTIAL QUESTION: 
How well did feudalism establish order in Europe in the Middle Ages? 

Let's find out! 

As of today, you are all members of European society during the 11th century. During this time, people were born into different classes. Serfs were peasants who did not have the freedom to leave their lords’ land without permission, in fact they had to work the land and do whatever the Lord needed. Lord's controlled the land given to them by monarchs in exchange for crops and supporting them in times of war. Knights protected the Lord's land. This land was called a manor because on it was everything you could ever need: farmland, animals, homes, a church. Knights protected the manors and and the people on them in exchange for food to eat and land of their own. 

Much like being born into a class that you did not choose, each of you will be assigned your role from a lottery. Some will be serfs, some will be knights, some will be lords... and one lucky boy or girl, will be the monarch.

May the odds be ever in your favor! 

Step 5 | DEBRIEFING OUR FEUDAL SYSTEM:

1. How did it feel to be a monarch? A lord? A knight? A serf? 
2. In what ways were the lords, knights, and serfs interdependent? 
3. Do you think loyalty oaths were necessary? What do you think would happen if someone broke a loyalty oath? 
4. What are the benefits of this type of society? The challenges or drawbacks? 
5. How well did feudalism establish order in Europe in the Middle Ages?