What's the difference between manorialism and feudalism??

Answer 1

Manorialism or Seigneurialism describes the organization of rural economy and society in medieval western and parts of central Europe, characterised by the vesting of legal and economic power in a lord supported economically from his own direct landholding and from the obligatory contributions of a legally subject part of the peasant population under his jurisdiction. These obligations could be payable in labour (the French term corvée is conventionally applied), produce ("in kind") or rarely money.

The word derives from traditional inherited divisions of the countryside reassigned as local jurisdictions known as manors or seigneuries; each manor being subject to a lord (French seigneur), usually holding his position in return for undertakings offered to a higher lord (see Feudalism). The lord held a manor court governed by public law and local custom. Not all territorial seigneurs were secular: bishops and abbots held lands that entailed similar obligations.

In the generic plan of a medieval manor from Shepherd's Historical Atlas (illustration, right) the strips of individually-worked land in the open field system are immediately apparent. In this plan the manor house is set slightly apart from the village but equally often the village grew up around the forecourt of the manor, formerly walled, while the manor lands stretched away outside, as still may be seen at Petworth House. As concerns for privacy increased in the 18th century, manor houses were often located a farther distance from the village. When a grand new house was required by the new owner of Harlaxton Manor, Lincolnshire, in the 1830s, the site of the existing manor house at the edge of its village was abandoned for a new one, isolated in its park, with the village out of view.

In an agrarian society, the conditions of land tenure underlie all social or economic factors. There were two legal systems of pre-manorial landholding. One, the most common, was the system of holding land "allodially" in full outright ownership. The other was a use of precaria or benefices in which land was held conditionally, (giving us our word "precarious"). To these two systems the Carolingian monarchs added a third, the aprisio, which linked manorialism with feudalism. The aprisio made its first appearance in Charlemagne's province of Septimania in the south of France, when Charlemagne had to settle the Visigothic refugees who had fled with his retreating forces after the failure of his Saragossa expedition of 778. He solved this problem by allotting "desert" tracts of uncultivated land belonging to the royal fisc under direct control of the emperor. These holdings aprisio entailed specific conditions. The earliest specific aprisio grant that has been identified was at Fontjoncouse, near Narbonne (see Lewis, links).

In former Roman settlements, a system of villas dating from Late Antiquity was inherited by the medieval world


Feudalism refers to a general set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility of Europe during the Middle Ages, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs.

Defining feudalism requires many qualifiers because there is no broadly accepted agreement of what it means. In order to begin to understand feudalism, a working definition is desirable. The definition described in this article is the most senior and classic definition and is still subscribed to by many historians.

However, other definitions of feudalism exist. Since at least the 1960s, many medieval historians have included a broader social aspect, adding the peasantry bonds of Manorialism, referred to as a "feudal society". Still others, since the 1970s, have re-examined the evidence and concluded that feudalism is an unworkable term and should be removed entirely from scholarly and educational discussion (see Revolt against the term feudalism), or at least only used with severe qualification and warning.

Outside of a European context, the concept of feudalism is normally only used by analogy (called semi-feudal), most often in discussions of Japan under the shoguns, and, sometimes, nineteenth-century Ethiopia. However, some have taken the feudalism analogy further, seeing it in places as diverse as Ancient Egypt, Parthian empire, India, to the American South of the nineteenth century

Answer 2

Manorialism, or seignorialism as it is known more commonly, is the socio-economic structure that allows feudalism to work. While feudalism was the political exchange between the superior lord and his vassals, manorialism is the relationship between lower lords (primary vassals or feudal lords) and the peasants and villagers that make up his estate. Often times manorialism is confused for feudalism because of the similarities in their structure and their close ties with one another.


Feudalism, as an economic system,is often confused with the characteristics of specific feudal societies. For example, in Western European feudalism, there were specific cultural and political conditions by which feudal lords reproduced their monopolistic position. Often writers on feudalism will conflate all these cultural and political conditions with the economic system of feudalism and fail to recognize when the feudal system occurs in a different mix of cultural and political factors.

Answer 3

This talks of manorialism and feudalism hope this helps.

Manorialism or Seigneurialism describes the organization of rural economy and society in medieval western and parts of central Europe, characterised by the vesting of legal and economic power in a lord supported economically from his own direct landholding and from the obligatory contributions of a legally subject part of the peasant population under his jurisdiction. These obligations could be payable in labour (the French term corvée is conventionally applied), produce ("in kind") or rarely money.

The word derives from traditional inherited divisions of the countryside reassigned as local jurisdictions known as manors or seigneuries; each manor being subject to a lord (French seigneur), usually holding his position in return for undertakings offered to a higher lord (see Feudalism). The lord held a manor court governed by public law and local custom. Not all territorial seigneurs were secular: bishops and abbots held lands that entailed similar obligations.

In the generic plan of a medieval manor from Shepherd's Historical Atlas (illustration, right) the strips of individually-worked land in the open field system are immediately apparent. In this plan the manor house is set slightly apart from the village but equally often the village grew up around the forecourt of the manor, formerly walled, while the manor lands stretched away outside, as still may be seen at Petworth House. As concerns for privacy increased in the 18th century, manor houses were often located a farther distance from the village. When a grand new house was required by the new owner of Harlaxton Manor, Lincolnshire, in the 1830s, the site of the existing manor house at the edge of its village was abandoned for a new one, isolated in its park, with the village out of view.

In an agrarian society, the conditions of land tenure underlie all social or economic factors. There were two legal systems of pre-manorial landholding. One, the most common, was the system of holding land "allodially" in full outright ownership. The other was a use of precaria or benefices in which land was held conditionally, (giving us our word "precarious"). To these two systems the Carolingian monarchs added a third, the aprisio, which linked manorialism with feudalism. The aprisio made its first appearance in Charlemagne's province of Septimania in the south of France, when Charlemagne had to settle the Visigothic refugees who had fled with his retreating forces after the failure of his Saragossa expedition of 778. He solved this problem by allotting "desert" tracts of uncultivated land belonging to the royal fisc under direct control of the emperor. These holdings aprisio entailed specific conditions. The earliest specific aprisio grant that has been identified was at Fontjoncouse, near Narbonne (see Lewis, links).

In former Roman settlements, a system of villas dating from Late Antiquity was inherited by the medieval world.