1. The Early Modern Social Order
‘The European World’
The
Early Modern
Social Order
Beat Kümin

2. A hierarchical & unequal society built on collective identities
… consisting of heterogeneous groups
… witnessing the rise of
a dynamic ‘middling sort’

3. Outline 1. Social Structure 2. Social Status 3. Social Relations
4. Social Dynamics
Handout Online

4. A society of ‘estates’  The third estate carrying the clergy and nobility on its back (French print, 1790)

5. 1. Social Structure - Building Blocks
Artisan
Beggar
Bishop
Chaplain
Count
Executioner
Gentleman
Husbandman
Jew
King
Merchant
Pope
Priest
Prostitute
Rural labourer
Slave
Urban labourer
Yeoman

6. The Social Pyramid Secular and Regular Clergy Worldly Estates Pope
Cardinal
Bishop Abbot/Abbess
Worldly Estates
Emperor / King
Duke / Count …
Urban Rural
Merchant Gentleman
Master Yeoman
Journeym. Husbandman
Urban & Rural Labourer
Blind / ‘worthy’ poor
Beggars, Executioners, Jews, Slaves, Prostitutes
Priest Monk/Nun
Chaplain Novice
Clerical proletariate /
priests without a benefice
Marginal Groups

7. Social Structure CLERGY Heinrich Bullinger,
Pastor & Reformer in Zurich (d. 1557)
Social Structure
NOBILITY
Francesco della Rovere,
Duke of Urbino (by Vittore Carpaccio, 1510)
PEASANTRY (wooodcut by Albrecht Dürer, 1512)
MARGINALS Jew with Badge (16thC Worms)
BURGHERS Merchant Georg Gisze (by Hans Holbein t.Y, 1532)

8. 2. Status
Components
Display

9. Components LINEAGE Tudor Family Tree OFFICEHOLDING Abbot Cuno of
Weingarten (c. 1520)
MARRIAGE
PARTNERS ‘The Arnolfini wedding’’ (by Jan van Eyck, 1434)
WEALTH
Banker Giovanni di’
Bicci de Medici (d. 1429)

10. Display LEISURE Hunting as a noble prerogative (c. 1518)
HERALDRY Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester,
with crests (1564)
Display
COMMEMORATION ‘Tanfield family
Monument
(Burford parish
church, 1628)
[Maximilian]
POSITION
Procession of
Augsburg Councillors
(c. 1525)

11. None shall wear any cloth of gold, tissue, nor fur of sables: except duchesses, marquises, and countesses in their gowns; [none] silver, tinseled satin, silk, or cloth mixed or embroidered with gold or silver or pearl …: except all degrees above viscountesses ... [None shall wear] velvet (crimson, carnation); … embroidery or … lace of gold or silver: except all degrees above mentioned, the wives of knights of the Garter and of the Privy Council, the ladies and gentlewomen of the privy chamber and bedchamber, and maids of honour. …. No persons under the degrees above specified shall wear any guard or welt of silk upon any petticoat, cloak, or safeguard.
‘Statute of Apparel’ issued by Elizabeth I in ( in Seminar Resources)

12. Promulgation Enforcement? Custom & Example Laws & Statutes
Conduct Literature
Sermons ….
Enforcement?
No IDs, few officials
Impostors …

13. 3. Relations
Bonds
Tensions

14. Feudal ties
Knighting ceremony conducted by French King Jean II (15thC miniature)

15. Patrons
Brokers
Clients

16. COMMUNITIES
‘Groups of people with a common point of reference and/or shared interests’

17. COMMUNITIES INTELLECTUAL Humanists BIOLOGICAL Family, Kin and
Godparents
LOCAL
Towns, Villages,
Parishes
COMMUNITIES
SITUATIONAL
Allies,
Rebels
RELIGIOUS
Fraternities, Sects
FEUDAL Manors,
Kingdoms
OCCUPATIONAL
Crafts, Guilds, ,
POLITICAL
Whigs, Tories

18. Solidarity £ s. d. RECEIPTS:s. d.
RECEIPTS:
3 levies made by the churchwardens and overseers for reliefe of the poore 14 8
EXPENDITURE:
Total
[of which, among others:] 12 6
Two poor boyes
Current Overseers
Taylor, James
Kerrard, his Wife
Paiton, Widow
Sparkes, Thomas; Wilkes, Widow; Clarke, James
Kerrad, James
For cloathes
Payed for warrants, expences, and other charges in writinge
Payed for repaireinge his house
Payed for a shroude and makinge her grave
4d. a week for 53 weeks
Payed there house rent
4d. a week for 15 weeks 1 15 3 17 10 5 4
Kineton Parish
Poor Law Returns
(1639)

19. Sociability ‘Good Fellowship’ (Mark Hailwood) Case study: Mr Ostermayr
and the butcher
(Bavaria, 1721)
‘The Law of Drinking’ (woodcut, 17thC)

20. CAUTION Proliferation Factions Exclusion Social control (charivari)
Nostalgia

21. Position & Precedence Seating plan for Whitton Church (Lincs., 18thC)
In a Star Chamber lawsuit, Giles Dobell
of Minhead (Somerset) complained that
Robert Heyward and others ‘with force
of arms, that is to say with swords and
daggers and other weapons … took out
Margaret, [my] wife, out of her pew where
she was kneeling in the church and brought
[her] out into an aisle … against her will
and then and there did beat and ill use
her.’
Cited in K. French, The Good Women of the Parish
(Philadelphia, 2008), 115.

22. Personal Honour Adriaen Brouwer, ‘Brawling Peasants’ (c. 1630)
‘In appearance: Hans Nora, Forester, accused by Uli Schär’s wife
of having called her a whore [etc.]. In response, Nora asked for the
testimony of witnesses, as he had been full of wine at the time.
[3 witnesses are cited, among which the village constable and the
landlady Barbara Herren. The constable testified that]
upon the woman’s entry to the inn, Nora had exclaimed:
out with all whores! … [Then the landlady added that]
the plaintiff had also called Nora ugly names. …
Both parties desired a reconciliation … [The
court decided that] 1. All slanderous words
shall be void … 2. The forester is fined £1 …
3. Mrs Schär is censured for her
insolent language’
Consistory Court of
Neuenegg
(Bern, 1664) … .’
Adriaen Brouwer,
‘Brawling Peasants’
(c. 1630)

23. Peasants confront a noble (woodcut, c. 1500) Socio-Economic Conflict

24. Politics
‘When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman ? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.’ John Ball’s sermon to the rebels in the English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381

25. Resistance Cover page of the Twelve Articles (1525) Third, until now it has been the custom for us to be regarded as a lord's personal property, which is deplorable since Christ redeemed us all with the shedding of his precious blood. ……. Eighth, we are aggrieved, especially those that have their own land, because these lands cannot sustain the payments on them, and because these peasants must then forfeit the land and are ruined.

26. 4.
Dynamics
Frontispiece
of Thomas
Hobbes’
Leviathan
(1651)

27. The Awakening of the Third Estate French Revolution print
Rise of the Middling Sort

28. CONCLUSIONS
Early modern society consisted of - increasingly differentiated - ‘estates’ based on lineage, collective rights and legal privileges
Relative decline of clergy // rise of middling sort/gentry & state formation
Status was displayed, acknowledged and negotiated in various forms of social exchange
Strong bonds and mutual dependencies coexisted with - periodically erupting - tensions