EUROPEAN SOCIETY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

In England equality before the law was the norm by 1600, but not on the Continent. In Catholic lands one’s rights & duties depended on membership in one of the three great “estates” of society:

1st Estate: The clergy, “those who pray” (tax exempt)

2nd Estate: The nobility, “those who fight” (tax exempt)

3rd Estate: The commoners, all who work (taxed)

In Protestant lands the clergy had no special status, but legal divisions separated nobles, burghers, and peasants.

In Eastern Europe, more and more peasants endured outright serfdom after 1500.

The Divine Origin of the Three Estates

1st Estate (clergy) = ca. 1%;

2nd Estate (nobles) = ca. 2%

3rd Estate = ca. 97%

An open-field village

(1000-1800):The

“demesne” and “glebe”

are set aside for the lord and priest

The extent of the open-field

system, ca. 1300.

The “enclosure” movement

began in 16th-century

England and Scotland.

Pieter Breughel the Elder, “The Harvesters” (1565)

J.-F. Millet, “The Gleaners” (1848):“Medieval” farming methods endured in much of Europe until the late 19th

century.

European population density in 1600. Population growth caused many social problems after 1500….

Hans Weiditz, “The Tree of Society”

(woodcut published in Augsburg in 1532)

“Old Woman at a Spinning Wheel” (1667)

“The Removal of the Wool from the Skins and the Combing” (Leiden, 1595)

Hendrik met de Bles, “The Copper Mine” (ca. 1540):A water wheel powers the bellows for the charcoal

furnace that smelts the copper. Both men & women are working.

Joseph Wright, “The Ironforge” (1770s):An old-

fashioned forge, fueled by charcoal, worked by a

family

A 16th-century printshop in the Netherlands(the type of workplace where “journeymen’s guilds”

arose

A paper mill from around 1600,powered by a water wheel

Quentin Massys (Flemish), “The Moneylender and his Wife” (1514)

Luther and Calvin both detested “usurers”

The great European voyages of discovery

Antwerp around 1540—the richest European commercialcenter then, later overtaken by Amsterdam

Lisbon: “Gateway to All of India, East and West”

(ca. 1600): Nexus of the most profitable long-distance trading routes in the 16th century