Medieval workers often wanted to work longer so as to make more money, whereas their bosses wanted to limit the amount of goods they produced so as to drive up the prices.
Kitap: House of Lilies
Fleur de Lys
fleur-de-lys, or three-petalled lily, first became clearly associated with the Capetian dynasty. Louis VI had his coins stamped with the device, a model followed by his son. The symbol was an old one, traceable to the Carolingians and possibly also to the Merovingians, but it had a new and useful relevance in the middle decades of the twelfth century when the dynasty’s power began to flourish in earnest. The flower, whose three petals evoked the Trinity, was also a symbol associated with the Virgin Mary, queen of Heaven, whose cult expanded enormously in the twelfth century. Emblematic of both historic and heavenly monarchy, the lily thus encapsulated the Capetians’ claims about their right to rule France not only by right of blood but also through divine favour.
Knighthood Doğuşu
Kings and knights are now both so emblematic of the Middle Ages that it is hard to imagine that at this time the knight–king combination was a relatively novel one. In 1098, when seventeen-year-old Louis received his arms, knighthood had only been a respectable status synonymous with nobility in northern France for a few decades. Before that, a knight was just a soldier of no particular background, valued, but also vilified, for the violent work he did. But as raising armies in the eleventh century came to require great princes to reward their soldiers (these knights) with land, and the knights and their commanders began to view this land as family property, the knights’ bloodlines took on a new importance. No longer disreputable, low-born men whose company stained the reputation of their associates, by the late eleventh century knights were welcomed at court and admired for their exploits. Knighthood began to seem integral to noble identity, not inimical to it.
Fransa’da Feodalitenin Doğuşu
Charlemagne, who reigned from 768 to 814, combined his astonishing record of military conquest with a knack for innovative governmental experimentation that has shaped European political life down to the present day. Since he could not personally govern the diverse sprawl of territories that he had annexed to Francia, he adopted the long-standing division of the realm into regions each ruled by a nobleman called a count (from the Latin word comes, meaning a trustworthy companion). Charlemagne’s counts were supervised by men sent out to keep them accountable, and they could be reassigned or recalled in case of rebellion or ineptitude. But, as time went on and the empire lost coherence under Charlemagne’s successors, ‘counties’ tended to become inherited possessions belonging to great aristocratic families who ruled them quasi-independently.