Distributism and Medieval English Peasant Life: Testing the Historical Vision of Hilaire Belloc (thesis)

View/ Open
Author
Wolk, Carl Alexander
Subject
Washington and Lee University -- Honors in Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Rerum novarum (Catholic Church. Pope (1878-1903 : Leo XIII))
Belloc, Hilaire, 1870-1953
Church and social problems -- Catholic Church
Working class
Economic history
England
Metadata
Show full item recordDescription
Thesis; [FULL-TEXT FREELY AVAILABLE ONLINE] Carl Alexander Wolk is a member of the Class of 2012 of Washington and Lee University. This thesis seeks to test Hilaire Belloc's vision of the economic history of medieval England, particularly two of his claims. First, the servile state was abolished and the distributist state nearly fully completed by the fifteenth century. Second, this process was accomplished through a gradual and natural process, rather than by revolution or any single historical event. Further, this thesis will seek to uncover the causes of the growth of the distributive system, which will shed light both on the nature of the process and the economics of distributism. Belloc's claims will be compared to the records of manorial courts in medieval England. These courts, overseen by elected officials from the villages, judged legal conflicts between lords and peasants as well as between two or more peasants and recorded relevant information like the number of tenants or the legal status of peasants. [From the Introduction] Carl Wolk