feudal system. But legitimacy was also essential to the mediaeval social order where property was owned, used and distributed collectively. Family estate property meant more to most people than keeping and cultivating a piece of land, as estate property was the only available social security worth mentioning apart from charity. Being legitimate meant that you belonged to a social security network. Being illegitimate meant exclusion. Legitimacy was basic to the socio-economic order as long as the system of collective ownership dominated European societies, which it did up to the era of the industrial revolution.32 Were illegitimate children harassed as morally inferior persons? Sources and documents preserved from the decades around do not necessarily prove that illegitimacy must have been synonymous with moral inferiority. Ecclesiastical careers were not unconditionally barred by illegitimate status.33 However, harder times were to come for the illegitimate. Some centuries later, they had been degraded into a second class of human beings. 129 32 Cf. R. H. Helmholtz, Canon Law and the Law of England, 187-210. (London 1987: The Hambledon Press.) - Mayali (1990), 71-75. 33 Mayali (1990), 67.
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