Social History
Structures
In modern times we talk about social structure in terms of classes. In the U.S., for example, we talk about class almost exclusively in terms of money. The Marxist definition of class is in terms of control over the means of production. We are so accustomed to thinking about class in terms of money, we take it for a universal and eternal truth.
This is not, however, a useful way to think about past societies. In the period we are studying, the word "class" was rarely used when discussing social position; instead, they used words like "estate" and "order" and "condition". We will understand this society better if we begin by using the same vocabulary they did.
At its most fundamental, estate was a function of birth: one was born noble or common. Noble status could be acquired during a lifetime, and it could even be lost, but this dod not change the original fact of one's birth. True, people in our own time can be born into money, but that's an external possession, whereas being noble or common was an inherent condition. It was, as the saying goes, "in the blood."
The Orders
In the Middle Ages, writers spoke of three orders: nobles, commoners, and clergy. Society was never that simple, nor did people think it was so, but these were divisions nearly everyone agreed upon, and this tripartite division is significant and useful. We can see it reflected in the political order, in the Estates General of France, for example: one assembly each for nobles, clergy and commoners. Moreover, elaborations on this simple scheme tended to be a matter not of deviating from it but of elaborating upon it.
So, for example, the clergy had its own divisions: pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, monks, etc. The nobility had its divisions: emperor, kings, upper and lower nobility, etc. The tripartite division is least useful with the common folk, for we have one division to encompass ninety percent of the population. The cities, in particular, had their own social order, but even in the villages we find divisions that are significant.
Even the literature of the day is little help with sorting out divisions among common folk. There are lists of estates of seven, a dozen, or even more categories, but they mostly give added granularity at the top. Thus, we might see categories for judges, doctors, professors, and so on, with the great bulk of the population still lumped under laborares — those who work.
On Social Mobility
Everyone knows that people were born into their station in life and could not change it; social mobility — the ability, even the right, to move up in life — is one of the clear benefits of modern life. Like many things that "everyone knows," though, this is wrong.
Social mobility did exist in pre-modern times. Indeed, I'd argue it's modern society that lacks social mobility. We cannot change our estate because there aren't any estates. Everyone is middle class; the only option open is to make more money, which confers wealth but not status. In modern society, the only thing that confers real status is fame. At the other end of the social scale, we have the divide between the homeless and the rest of society.
In pre-modern times there were many classes — many estates, that is — and it was entirely possible to move between them. In some cases, movement was relatively common, while in others it was difficult and rare.
Social Order in the Nobility
Royalty
Without doubt the most exclusive estate was royalty. In many kingdoms this was regarded as strictly a matter of blood. France was an extreme embodiment of this principle, mainly because for over three centuries a single family — the Capetians — ruled the kingdom. By the time the house of Capet failed to produce a direct heir, the principle of royal blood had been well established; indeed, it had acquired its own mythology.
Yet, the non-royal could become royal, at least in other countries. In some kingdoms (e.g., Bohemia), the king was elected. It also happened that sometimes kings were overthrown. The usurper would, where he could, claim ancestral ties to the royal line, as did Henry Tudor. But sometimes he had no claim other than power, as with Henry Bolingbroke or Gustavus Vasa.
So, even the most exclusive club in Europe saw the occasional newcomer. It was extremely difficult to fall out of this club. And survive, that is. Some managed it, though (e.g., Christian II of Denmark).
Nobility
The estate of being noble was much less restrictive. Not that it was easy! Nobility was inherited, a characteristic of blood like with race horses. The outward signs of nobility, though, were the sorts of things that tended to require wealth: land, horses, swords and armor, military service, hunting and feasting, manors and castles. So, while being noble was not necessarily tied to wealth (and certainly didn't cause wealth), living nobly certainly required it, and every noble was expected to live according to his station. It could happen, therefore, that a nobleman might lose everything — estates, horses, armor, servants — and be all but indistinguishable from neighborhood peasants. His noble status still exempted him from certain taxes and entitled him to a certain local respect. But if his children all married commoners, and their children did likewise, noble status might be lost over time.
This didn't happen often, though, because of social mobility in the other direction. A merchant in a nearby town might have a daughter willing to marry the son of a noble, and the noble might be willing for such a match if he were encountering hard times. The marriage would not in itself confer noble status on the mrechant nor even on the daughter, but if the son were also the heir to the noble title, then the merchant could hope for grandchildren who could sport a title, and could hope further that the third generation might even be accepted at court and in society.
Thus did the merely wealthy also become noble. There was a lot of this sort of movement in the later Middle Ages and into the early modern period. This was, however, not the only upward path available to men of means.
A king could ennoble anyone. Probably the best known examples are of kings rewarding commoners who performed some heroic deed on the field of battle, but also possible was a reward for some kind of civil service. In addition, kings could simply sell titles. It took a surprisingly long time for them to catch on to this technique, but once learned they took too it with enthusiasm. In the 16th and 17th centuries, kings sold titles literally by the thousands; sold so many, in fact, that they actually made up whole new titles just so they could sell those too. They even levied surcharges; for example, the paulette in France was a payment made regularly (every nine years, under Louis XIII) that allowed the holder of the title to bequeath it to a designated heir. The selling of titles became so common in France that an entirely new order of nobility, the noblesse de la robe emerged.
Evidence of social mobility in and out of the nobility can be found in other countries as well. In England we see it in the emergence of the gentry. These were landowners without noble title, to begin with anyway, who had the right to serve in Parliament. Analogous in the other direction were the caballeros of Spain. These were men who had noble title, but the terrible inflation of the 16th century ruined many of them, leaving them with a title but nothing else. They found employment as mercenaries in the service of others, or as bandits, or simply as farmers doing their own labor on someone else's land. Something similar developed in Germany as well.
Social Order in the Clergy
Clergy
Movement in and out of the noble classes could happen, but it was not common. Movement among other social orders was much more common. Certainly the widest avenue to social change was the Church. Simply by taking clerical vows, one instantly changed one's social position. A member of the clergy was exempt from most local courts, being instead under the authority of the bishop. He was exempted from many lay taxes and was exempt from military service as well. He might be respected or he might be resented, wealthy or poor, but no one in society viewed him as being the same.
Within the Church, the possibilities for advancement were boundless. A poor man, even a simple artisan or farmer, might rise to become a bishop or cardinal or even pope. The Church had its own educational and patronage system. In the lay world, perhaps only the opportunities of art could compare.
Most positions of influence and power were of course held by members of families that were influential and powerful. The point I wish to make here is that the stereotype of no social mobility is simply wrong. It did exist and the Church was one major avenue.
Social Order in the Common Folk
Laborares
What about the rest of society? There were still avenues open. By the end of the Middle Ages, probably the most important one was education. A university degree could enter a commoner into a career in law. With skill and good fortune, that person might become a jurist, and judges had a very high social standing. The same is true for doctors. Medicine, law and theology were pretty much the only degrees offered throughout our period. If a successful family could not hope to marry nobly, it could at least send a son to a university.
Beyond that there wasn't much. Wealth could indeed make a person locally important. In the village, for example, families with more land and money typically were the village leaders. But they were socially in the same class as all the other peasants.
The same is true in towns. A successful baker might become quite wealthy and own several shops, but he was still a baker. His wealth might mean he was all but guaranteed a position within his guild, but all his money raised his social standing not one jot.
Note should be taken here of degrees of freedom. Serfdom was largely gone from Western Europe by 1500, but where it did exist it was an important social distinction. A free man always had social standing higher than the unfree man. The degree to which vestiges of serfdom attached to a person, to that degree he stood on a lower social rung.
Social Order in the Countryside
We used to view the countryside as a place filled with little villages, each of which was a self-contained community of peasants working the land in common, worshiping in common, celebrating in common. In the last couple of generations, historians have found that the reality was much more complex. There was room, even in the village, for hierarchy.
In the first place, there were different ways of living in the countryside. There plenty of villages that were pretty close to the stereotype: common pasture, interleaving fields, houses grouped around a village green. There were plenty of other villages, though, that were more dispersed, with different economic and social dynamics. There were, moreover, people living beyond any village: shepherds, woodcutters, miners, vagabonds. There were people who moved in and out of villages: day or seasonal laborers, peddlars, itinerant preachers. There were, in addition, people in the village who did not live by farming: smiths and other craftsmen, for example, or the village vicar. Finally, there were people who left the village for significant periods of time: young men and women, for example, who went to the city to work until they could earn enough money to marry.
All that is merely to say that the economics of the countryside were complex (and were becoming more complex, during our period), and that this surely meant a more complex social structure. Even leaving that aside, though, we can see layers or perhaps more accurately circles of influence within the village. Age brought status, of course, and "village elders" could have authority that was formal or informal. There were, besides, a number of offices that could be held by villagers, their authority deriving from either the local noble or from a central authority. For example, once the State began raising armies on a large scale, villages might be made responsible for providing a certain number of men. In some places this was done by a government official who came into town and signed up villagers, but in other places some locals might be empanelled to do this chore. Something similar happened with taxes. One perhaps surprising effect of the increasing power of the central government, then, was to give new power to local elites.
Money gave power, of course, and in the countryside this mainly meant land. Another trend in our period is the emergence of a discernible class of wealthy peasants. These were men whose legal status was exactly the same as the other villagers, but whose wealth brought them certain advantages. They would lend to poorer villagers. They could afford to keep livestock and tools that also might be lent. They hired day laborers to work their fields. They might even have their own cottagers or sharecroppers. Some could send their sons to school, and some managed to marry well and join the ranks of the lower nobility.
Social Order in the Towns
At the top of the social order were the patricians. This term is a generic term used by historians—the actual word used varied by language and even by town. These were a group of families, almost never formally defined or delimited, who "ran" the city. They held public offices more often than the other families, though never exclusively. They were usually, but not always, wealthy. They were the "better sort" (sometimes actually called that—meliores—in the sources), the fat cats, the big shots. Everyone knew who they were. They generally weren't noble, but many longed to arrange a noble marriage. They aped the dress and habits of the nobles, who deeply resented it.
Below the patricians were the respectable citizens. These were shopkeepers and artisans who held citizenship and who worked in a respectable trade. If your trade had a seat on the city council, so much the better. It didn't matter what level of wealth you had; it was the trade and the citizenship that gave you respectability and a social position inherently superior to non-citizens and to the lower sorts.
Among the lower sorts were those who held citizenship (or not) but who worked in lesser trades. These were the day laborers, carters, and members of "dishonorable" trades such as ragseller, tinker, gravedigger, and so on. Jews fell into the "dishonorable" category as well.
The citizenship divide was a significant one, not only in social but also in political and legal terms. Citizens stood higher than non-citizens, though an important man from another city could bring his status with him (a visiting professor, for example, or a rich merchant). And townsmen (citizens plus non-citizen residents) all stood at a higher social position than peasants.
On Hereditary Professions
Another thing everyone knows is that if your father was a shoemaker then you would become a shoemaker. Not so. A little bit of thought will show this cannot be true. If a father has three sons and one business, can all three be shoemakers?
It is certainly true that at least one son tended to succeed the father in the business. If, indeed, the shoemaker had a son; otherwise, the business might pass to a nephew or to a son-in-law. Other sons also tended to become shoemakers, not least because the father had lots of contacts in the business and so it was easiest to apprentice the boys out as shoemakers.
A particular boy might show other interests, though. A father could apprentice a boy into any trade. Moreover, people could and did change jobs. This is, for example, how the printing trade boomed in the 16th century; they weren't all sons of printers!
Sources of Status
We think it's all about money, but even in our society that doesn't cover all sources of status (e.g., celebrity), and it's downright misleading to consider social standing in pre-modern solely from the viewpoint of wealth. So, if it's not all about money, then what?
We've already spoken about one: blood. Nobility, which automatically raises one above the common herd, was inherited and could be acquired in no other way. This ran deep and was believed by all social classes. The strength of this belief can be see in our word "vulgar", which comes from the Latin vulgus, which simply means "common crowd".
On the other hand, you ought not think that the perception was held uncritically. A little rhyme appeared in the late Middle Ages, often quoted in textbooks:
When Adam delved and Eve span [i.e., spun cloth]
Who then was the gentleman?
That is to say, back in the Garden of Eden, which all recognized as a time of perfection, there were obviously no nobles. An ominous observation, made all the more ominous in that the rhyme normally appears in connection with peasant revolts.
Still, while many resented nobility, few doubted that the estate existed and that the condition was hereditary. "Blood will tell" was a saying repeated well beyond the halls of the aristocrats. Countless fairy tales have a prince or princess in disguise whose nobility can nevertheless be recognized—even if the nobly-born were raised by commoners. Blood will tell.
A second source of status, in some ways more permanent, was land. Any amount of wealth might be had and yet no status gained by it. Land, however modest, always conferred status. Even after the revolutions of the 18th century, how were voting rights defined? By ownership of property. In the time we are studying, the first thing a successful merchant did with surplus cash was to buy land. Land meant stability. Land gave respectability. It usually had both privileges and duties attached to it. And all knew that it was a necesssary prerequisite to social advancement, in the village, city or court.
A third source of status, increasingly important in early modern times, was office. Europe was filled with offices, awash in titles. One thinks most immediately of noble titles—duke, count, earl, margrave—and these multiplied steadily as kings learned how to invent new titles and to sell them to eager buyers. The market for these was insatiable, not only because the human desire for status is insatiable, but also because, like land, a title brought with it privileges such as tax exemptions and access to legal loopholes. The English title of baronet was invented in the 16th century and positively boomed in the 17th. Similar titles were sold in France and Germany.
Courtly, noble titles were not the only sort of offices to which one could aspire. Cities were hip-deep in public offices, commissions and committees. Every guild had its officers, as did the religious confraternities. In all these, office meant status and access to the levers of influence, by which one could (and indeed was expected to) bestow benefits on one's kindred. Even in the village we can often find local organizations, from village council to militia officer to local sheriff.
Then there was the status derived from occupation or calling. The most obvious was the Church, which itself had a vast array of offices and a whole complex of positions of varying status. But I speak here more directly to jobs.
Certain occupations gave one instant status, regardless of birth. University professor was one. Physician was another, and judge another. In the workaday world, certain occupations had a higher status, deriving from the quality of their clientele (e.g., goldsmith) or from the traditional influence of their guild (e.g., silk workers in Florence). Conversely, some trades brought an automatic low status; for example, retail trades like fishmonger, trades that dealt with carcasses or blood (e.g., tanner), or dealt in used rather than new goods (e.g., cobbler or tinker). In general, the finer work had higher status (baker over miller, joiner over carpenter), and urban trades stood higher than rural ones. Note that again fairy tales give us a confirming picture. Who is the poorest of the poor? The shepherd, the woodcutter, the cottager. If you want to emphasize how fall the young prince has fallen, you put him with one of those.
The reader will no doubt discern that wealth is not unrelated to these sources of social status. One must have money to buy land; the goldsmith requires a substantial capital investment. But wealth had a more interesting relationship with status. Wealth was required to retain status more than to attain it. Wealth was as much a consequence of status as it was a cause.
That wealth could result from elevated social standing is perhaps too evident to need explanation. Besides the obvious advantages of tax exemptions, legal privilege, and actual income (e.g., from holding a certain office), there were the benefits of connections in higher social circles.
The cost of status, though, may need a bit more explanation. One was required, social expectations being quite unforgiving, to live "according to one's station." This burden weighed first and most heavily upon the nobility, many of whom had what we would call a fixed income. As prices became increasingly unstable in the 16th century (earlier in some places, later in others), this brought many a noble family to fiscal ruin. The number of impoverished nobles grew so great that the figure became a stereotype: living in town or court off handouts and flummery, or as a mercenary, or even as a poor knight working his fields like a common peasant. The Spanish nobility suffered severely; Don Quixote was a nobleman, but his house was modest and he had no land to speak of. Cervantes' readers would have recognized Quixote at once.
More commonly, though, people in all walks of life tended to become dependent on their governmental positions. They weren't quite the wage earners of modern times, but they could do no more than live off their income, supplemented maybe by some meagre rent. The ministers of the new Protestant churches were one such new class. The university professor wasn't new, but beginning in the 1400s the number of universities skyrocketed. Many in the legal profession were public employees; so many so in France that the "gentry" class was called the noblesse de la robe after the juridical robes they were entitled to wear (regardless of whether they were actual serving judges). These sorts became fiercely protective of their privileges, for this paltry title or that minor office might bring with it an income or exemption that was all that stood between the holder and ruin.
Summation
This picture of the social order can be applied across about four or five centuries, from 1200 to 1700, though certainly not without adjustments for time and place. It is, it seems to me, a far richer and more interesting picture than the Marxist portrait with its stark landscape of aristocrats and bourgeois and peasant, and far more interesting than the simplistic cartoon of capitalism: upper class, middle class, lower class. It's a picture filled with nuance and contradiction, but in the end all that matters is that it is a better way to understand the people and society under study.
The reader is asked to note that my "picture" is not in truth a picture. It certainly isn't a pyramid. Rather it's a series of sketches, of views under different light and from different angles. There cannot be a single picture. We have to approach the social history of Europe with this essay as a kind of background music, a framing shot, a theme against which the specifics—16th century Augsburg, Renaissance Florence, Restoration England—are played out. Ultimately the society of each time must be understood in its own terms and by its own standards—a task made all the more challenging in that the people of the time were no better at understanding and describing themselves than we are for our own society. The definitions and illustrations offered here are not intended as a conclusion but as an introduction.