by Jeb Smith
During the Middle Ages, far more people owned enough land to provide for themselves than in modern times. The society encouraged self-sufficiency. Hilaire Belloc wrote, “Every action of medieval society…was directed towards the establishment of a state in which men should be economically free through the possession of capital and of land.”
Medieval and tribal society was similar to a distributist society, where wealth and ownership were spread out and self-sufficiency was widespread. Families, not corporations or factories, controlled industry, crafts, and trades. They were free, not wage laborers.
Hereditary Inheritance
In Roman times the senators, the government, and its allies handed out various holdings, titles, and places of power to friends, lasting only the lifetime of the recipient. The power returned to the powerful giver after their death. Further, these aristocrats were allowed to remove any tenant from their holdings. But when lands were given over generations, the power was spread long term, decentralizing it from a few power holders. The holders then parceled it out in even smaller portions to vassals who did the same, ensuring the decentralization of power for future generations.
Hereditary inheritance also prevented the powerful from choosing loyal followers or buying them by distributing titles and lands, thus also preventing large monolithic power-building. An Emperor or king could no longer keep power among only those loyal to him; instead, he now had to earn loyalty as consent came into play. Further, inheritance ensured the safety and long-term production of the person receiving the gift. This encouraged the decentralization of power, offering more people and families a piece of the pie with long-term incentives of passing benefits to their descendants, which over time created power blocs able to challenge central authority. Its result was the opposite of keeping people from power; it multiplied those who came into power.
Feudalism
After the internal failures of the Western Roman Empire led to its demise, cities were abandoned, roads were unkempt, trade diminished, and governance was eradicated. The Vikings, Hungarians, and Muslims launched frequent and large-scale invasions, and in response, feudalism established safe havens to maintain law and order.
Weak, distant kings could not protect their people from quick raids, like those of the Vikings, who would come through with devastating force and be gone before a central power could react. So local knights and lords (especially on horseback) became the powers in Europe, the masses flocking to the best warriors who offered the most protection.
These local powers were needed to be able to respond quickly to raids. People sought out local warriors and aristocrats who could offer them land and protection. With the cities fallen, numerous poor, hungry, desperate urbanites abandoned them. The manorial system and the gaining of a fief (a gift of land) provided a life-saving situation for the vulnerable masses. In return they owed their lord (the fief giver) obligations from food to money to equipment or horses. This allowed the lord time and material to improve his armor and skill to become the world’s leading soldier and protect his vassals from raiders. But he also gained vassals to fight in his service, offering even better protection to the formerly poor landless peasants and providing stability, law, and order.
Knights and lords sprang up all over Europe, gaining military power while centralized rule decayed. The people were much more willing to make their arrangements with a local lord and protector than with an unknown distant senate or emperor who could not protect them.
Other times land was not gifted but taken by the vassal. Powerful vassals would renounce their fief back to their lord, only to then claim it as their own through force. Other times, land gifted to loyal subjects by a king eventually became autonomous as central power withdrew and weakened. Generations later, their descendants acted as if the long-deceased overlord had never given the land, and even used their power to challenge the king’s current successor. They treated the land as if it were their own, untouched by a distant and feeble king.
Over time, feudalism weakened kings and empowered vassals; many became powerful lords. The gap between the richest in the Roman world, the senators and emperors, and the lowest level of society, the numerous slaves, was significantly reduced.
Both peasants and serfs owned “free” and “shared” land within the manor system and even serfs passed their lands on to their children. In England, the average 12th-century peasant in the manor system owned around 30 acres, while serfs owned around five; yet it was not rare for a serf to own 30 acres.
Feudalism and the manorial system helped spread land ownership to a much more significant percentage of the population—many who had lived in cities now owned enough land to provide for their family. Feudalism and Christianity elevated slaves to serfs and free peasants. It lowered the influential Roman senators, and more and more people became aristocrats while reducing the most powerful rulers.
Professor and historian Philip Daileader said, “Feudalism had something to offer all parties involved. But, it didn’t work equally to the advantage of both groups. From the beginning feudalism tended to work to the advantage of vassals and to the detriment of lords.” Everything worked for their betterment and against kings who increasingly had to give out lands and gifts to keep lords on their side (strengthening the lesser lords and diminishing the kings). It had a powerful effect on achieving equality!!! Contrary to popular conception, feudalism brought the mighty low and elevated the lowly.
Conclusion
Feudalism and hereditary inheritance spread landownership out to a great extent. Central powers parceled out land to their vassals, who did so with their vassals, just as manor lords did with peasants and serfs. It was not a purely distributist society, but it was much closer than modern society.
There was far more equality under feudalism than in modern capitalistic and socialistic societies. As capitalism replaced feudalism, people could purchase land to own free of obligations, and increasingly a smaller percentage of the population owned more and more money, power, and land. The feudal hierarchy had a democratic effect on society unachieved in the modern or ancient world. It elevated everyone except for the central powers.
The feudal hierarchy is often portrayed as triangular because kings and great landowners were the most powerful, but when placed in practice, the opposite occurred. It strengthened the bottom of the triangle, allowed more at the bottom to rise, and brought low the highest rungs. If ever there was a “democratic” system against the oligarchs – it was feudalism.
The Church also underwent a move towards centralization after the medieval period. In the Middle Ages, the Pope only controlled a small section in Italy and was more a symbolic figurehead rather than a powerful monarch of the Church that he became. The Church’s actual authority was the local bishops, parish priests, and influential saints. Large sections of Catholic Europe largely ignored or were not impacted by a distant Pope.
Practical Distributism 