Era 04 · ~500 — 1500

Feudal Hierarchy

How we agree

By blood & bishop

Pulse cycle

4.5s

With Rome's collapse, the consensus mechanism in Europe fractured into two overlapping systems. Kings inherited power through bloodline. The Church ratified kings through coronation, and resolved doctrinal disputes through ecumenical councils of bishops. Between kings and kings, the feudal oath of fealty was the binding contract: personal, hierarchical, revocable only by death or excommunication. The first cracks in this system — Magna Carta, the Icelandic Althing, early parliaments — showed up as early as the 10th century but wouldn't compound into anything systemic for another 500 years.

Events in this era

930

Iceland founds the Althing

At Þingvellir in southwest Iceland, the chieftains of the island convened the first Althing (Alþingi) in 930 AD. For two weeks each summer, free men would gather, the lawspeaker would recite a third of the laws from memory, and disputes would be settled by panels of jurors. It was not universal suffrage — women, slaves, and most farmers were excluded — but it was a functioning assembly-based legal system that predated any written law. It met continuously until 1798 and was re-established as Iceland's parliament in 1844, making it arguably the world's oldest legislature.

Oldest continuously-functioning parliamentary tradition

Jun 15, 1215

Magna Carta sealed at Runnymede

English barons forced King John to seal a charter at Runnymede on June 15, 1215, after he had lost nearly every military campaign he attempted and had responded by raising taxes and imprisoning dissenting nobles. The charter's central clause — no free man shall be seized or imprisoned except by the lawful judgment of his peers or the law of the land — is the direct ancestor of habeas corpus. John repudiated it within weeks. The Pope annulled it in August. But reissues in 1216, 1217, 1225, and 1297 anchored it in English law.

First written contract limiting monarchic authority

Jan 20, 1265

Simon de Montfort's Parliament meets

After defeating Henry III at the Battle of Lewes the year before, Simon de Montfort summoned a Parliament in January 1265 that for the first time included not just barons and bishops but also two knights from each shire and — critically — two burgesses from each borough. Commoners as representatives. De Montfort was killed at Evesham eight months later and his Parliament dissolved, but the precedent stuck: by Edward I's Model Parliament of 1295, including commons-representatives had become standard. The House of Commons traces directly to this.

Commoners first admitted to the legislative mechanism

Nov 1414 — Apr 1418

Council of Constance ends the Papal Schism

With three rival popes simultaneously claiming legitimacy, the Council of Constance met for three and a half years and did something novel: it asserted that a general council of bishops was superior to any single pope, and it used that authority to depose all three claimants and elect a new one (Martin V). The resulting decree, Haec sancta (1415), is the high-water mark of conciliarism — the idea that Church authority flowed upward from collective deliberation rather than downward from the pope alone. The subsequent popes spent centuries rolling it back.

Asserted collective authority over a sole-sovereign

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