Middle Ages Vocabulary

1. MEDIEVAL: related or belonging to the Middle ages.

2. FEUDALISM: A political and economic system of Europe from the 9th to about the 15th century, based on the holding of all land in fief or fee and the resulting relation of lord to vassal and characterized by homage, legal and military service of tenants, and forfeiture.

3. VASSAL: (in the feudal system) a person granted the use of land, in return for rendering homage, fealty, and usually military service or its equivalent to a lord or other superior; feudal tenant.

4. CHIVALRY:the sum of the ideal qualifications of a knight, including courtesy, generosity, valor, and dexterity in arms.

5. MANOR:(in England) a landed estate or territorial unit, originally of the nature of a feudal lordship, consisting of a lord's demesne and of lands within which he has the right to exercise certain privileges, exact certain fees, etc

6. ARISTOCRATS:A member of a ruling class or of the nobility.

7. FIEF:a territory held in fee.

8.SERF:a person in a condition of servitude, required to render services to a lord, commonly attached to the lord's land and transferred with it from one owner to another.

9. NOBLES:Possessing hereditary rank in a political system or social class derived from a feudalistic stage of a country's development.

10. SECULAR:of or pertaining to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal

11.EXCOMMUNICATION:the act of excommunicating.

12. CRUSADES:A holy war undertaken with papal sanction.

13. RECONQUISTA:was the seven and a half century long process by which the Christian Kingdoms of northern Hispania conquered the Iberian peninsula from the Muslim and Moorish states of Al-Ándalus.

14. INQUISITION:an official investigation, esp. one of a political or religious nature, characterized by lack of regard for individual rights, prejudice on the part of the examiners, and recklessly cruel punishments.

15. BUBONIC PLAGUE:a serious, sometimes fatal, infection with the bacterial toxin Yersinia pestis, transmitted by fleas from infected rodents and characterized by high fever, weakness, and the formation of buboes, esp. in the groin and armpits.