Author: stevenattewell

How expensive would an education at the Citadel be? Do acolytes have to pay for lodging and food? What would be a good historical comparison to make?

Well, medieval universities would be the proper comparison, but they’re a bit tricky. For the most part, the universities themselves didn’t charge tuition,  although the University of Paris did start charging two sous a week (roughly a pound a year, which isn’t nothing) starting in the 12th century.

Instead, individual teachers charged fees for students who wanted to attend lectures. These fees could vary immensely – from 12 pence a year in Oxford for an undergraduate degree to 100 lire a year in Bologna for a law degree. 

And I would imagine they would have to pay for lodging and food, as medieval students did too, although often there were student rates and lots of collective student institutions to help defray the costs. 

How common was it for a master blacksmith (like Tobho Mott) to move to another city and practice his skill. Were there guild restrictions on moving to safeguard their monopolies? Would he be restricted from teaching certain things to foreign apprentices? And more importantly how would they enforce this?

It’s more that guilds managed the distribution of workers, so that there weren’t too many workers in a given area relative to how much work there was for them. Now, masters tended to have much more freedom than journeymen in terms of where they could go, because that’s part of what it meant to be a master, but there were still internal pressures to not overcrowd the market.

So it would depend on the local economy. If there is a scarcity of local blacksmiths, a foreign master would be readily welcomed, as masters were required to train apprentices and employ journeymen, so a new master would (over time) create new jobs in that industry. If there were a lot of local blacksmiths, there might be resistance, b/c the argument would be that additional masters would split the work too much.

In terms of enforcement, this is where guild charters came in: guild regulations had the force of law within that industry, so if you tried to move to a city after being refused permission (and thus weren’t licensed), you could be sued in court and the local gendarmes could expel you from the city. 

Given the “gentle bankruptcy” aspect of a King’s visit, were there any particularly . . . unusual ways that they tried to get out of such visits?

Well, A. it wasn’t easy to get out of them, and B. it actually was a social cachet to host the king, and often honors could flow from said visits, so if you could afford it, it wasn’t a bad way to try to win royal favor. 

However, there are more than few cases of rich people pleading poverty (”my estate without my undoing cannot bear it…my land sold and debts not small; how this will agree with the entertaining of such a Prince your wisdome can best judge.”) and other such excuses, especially towards the end of a monarch’s reign when political incentives start to shift. 

You have explained many times that there really isn’t a market for land because of feudal contracts, but how do ‘urban’ property rights work in a medieval setting? Do people own the buildings but not the land? Do they also own the land? Do urban property owners owe any taxes to the city or the lord who controls it?

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

Great question!

Unless one owned the freehold, then most people didn’t own the land that their buildings were on top of. Instead, what tended to happen was that people would take out very long leases on property. For example, even when Thomas Cromwell hit the big time, becoming Master of the Jewels and Clerk of the Hanaper in 1532, in order to expand his main London residence, he had to take out a ninety-nine year lease from the Augustinian Friars who had been his landlords for several decades. Moreover, there could be very complex chains of sub-tenancies, where people would take out a lease from the freeholder and then rent out properties to people who might then rent out spare rooms, etc.

To answer your question about taxes, if someone was living in a city in the legal sense, i.e a geographic corporation that held a municipal charter, then they were usually not controlled by a lord and would owe taxes only to the monarch, although often the “borough rights” that came with a municipal charter often involved freedom from some forms of taxes and feudal incidences. 

Worth noting: despite not “owning” the land in the sense that those of us in the modern west would recognize, people in cities were incredibly protective of their use-rights to said land.

When London burned down in 1666, almost before the ashes were cool people were moving back into the city and marking “their” plots of land off with rope and whatever other instruments of demarcation they could find. They fought back hard against attempts to dispossess or re-locate them; they didn’t OWN the land but they still conceived of it as theirs, and demanded their rights to it.

Yes, although to be precise, they still owned the leases to the burned-down buildings, which proved to be a tricky legal obstacle for Charles II and his buddies. 

You have explained many times that there really isn’t a market for land because of feudal contracts, but how do ‘urban’ property rights work in a medieval setting? Do people own the buildings but not the land? Do they also own the land? Do urban property owners owe any taxes to the city or the lord who controls it?

Great question!

Unless one owned the freehold, then most people didn’t own the land that their buildings were on top of. Instead, what tended to happen was that people would take out very long leases on property. For example, even when Thomas Cromwell hit the big time, becoming Master of the Jewels and Clerk of the Hanaper in 1532, in order to expand his main London residence, he had to take out a ninety-nine year lease from the Augustinian Friars who had been his landlords for several decades. Moreover, there could be very complex chains of sub-tenancies, where people would take out a lease from the freeholder and then rent out properties to people who might then rent out spare rooms, etc.

To answer your question about taxes, if someone was living in a city in the legal sense, i.e a geographic corporation that held a municipal charter, then they were usually not controlled by a lord and would owe taxes only to the monarch, although often the “borough rights” that came with a municipal charter often involved freedom from some forms of taxes and feudal incidences. 

If the king and his entourage came to stay with one of his vassals, would the vassal be expected to foot the bill or would the Crown pay some? What about one lord staying with another?

The king would absolutely not pay the bill. Indeed, half of the point of the king going on royal progress and crashing at his vassals’ houses was to gently bankrupt them so they didn’t have enough cash on hand to rebel against you.

I’m not familiar with sub-infeuded examples of the same process. I’m guessing it depends on the terms of the feudal contract, because some of them could be very specific about the responsibilities of the vassal to provide various services and goods when the liege lord came to visit:

Moreover I acknowledge that, as a recognition of the above fiefs, I and my successors ought to come to the said monastery, at our own expense, as often as a new abbot shall have been made, and there do homage and return to him the power over all the fiefs described above. And when the abbot shall mount his horse I and my heirs, viscounts of Carcassonne, and our successors ought to hold the stirrup for the honor of the dominion of St. Mary of Grasse; and to him and all who come with him, to as many as two hundred beasts, we should make the abbot’s purveyance in the borough of St. Michael of Carcassonne, the first time he enters Carcassonne, with the best fish and meat and with eggs and cheese, honorably according to his will, and pay the expense of shoeing of the horses, and for straw and fodder as the season shall require…

(Feudal Contract of Bernard Atton, Viscount of Carcassonne, 1110 CE)

So if there’s a similar clause as the one bolded above, then the vassal would be obligated to provide those services, but otherwise probably not. 

So on r/marvelstudios I sometimes see people talk about Moon Knight and how he could he introduced into the MCU? Apparently he’s a rich guy who got involved with magic stuff or something (I got Doctor Fate impressions)? Who is he and how would you incorporate him into the MCU?

Moon Knight is trippy as hell. Originally, he was pretty straightforwardly Marvel’s spin on Batman: he’s a caped and masked vigilante who fought crime by throwing crescent moon-shaped shuriken and using grappling guns and other gadgets, although he wore all white instead of all black, etc.

Then he got very strange: so his origin is that Marc Specter is an ex-Marine mercenary who breaks with his partner when they attack an Egyptian dig site. In the fight between him and his partner, and in the process dies and is resurrected as the avatar of Khonshu, the Egyptian god of the moon. He then establishes a couple of fake identities, one of which is the rich dude identity of Steven Grant, although he also pretends to be a taxi-cab driver as well.

However, it’s later developed that Marc Specter has multiple personality disorder and his fake identities are actually repressed personalities, and that he might just be hallucinating Khonshu….except that Khonshu is also acting in the real world. And then thinks really kick off when he starts developing personalities based off other super-heroes, then he separates himself into two heroes, Moon Knight the tech and magic-wielding hero and Mr. Knight the consultant detective.