The Medievalists' "F-Word": Feudalism
Send us a text “Feudalism” was once accepted by academic and popular historians alike as a defining, if not the defining, feature of medieval society. For military historians, the High Middle Ages, the period from around 1050 to 1300, was once the Age of the Feudal Knight. This is no longer the case. If academic historians use it at all in their writings or classrooms, it is usually to dismiss it. For most medieval historians, feudalism has joined Viking horned helmets and “the right of the f...