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Western Society and the Developing...
Summary
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As trade declined throughout the West, people migrated from cities to farmlands. New types of relationships between landowners and peasants emerged, including serfdom (in which peasants gave up claims to the land they worked in exchange for protection by a powerful landholder), the manorial system (in which land and labor were divided among lords, serfs, and free peasants for mutual protection and the economic advantage of the lord) and the feudal system (which resembled the manorial system, but featured a distinct class of aristocratic warrior knights). The Christian church provided a strong element of continuity with the educational and administrative achievements of the Roman Empire. Monastic culture took shape. Christianity was a potent unifying and civilizing force within the West, though it was also the source of a fundamental rift with the Eastern empire. By the middle of the eighth century, the papacy in Roma faced military threats from the north and doctrinal threats from the East; Pope Stephen boldly initiated an alliance with the Franks that influenced history for the next millennium or more.
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