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Commoner


The terms common people, common man, commoners, or the masses denote a broad social division referring to ordinary people who are members of neither royalty nor nobility nor the priesthood. Since the 20th century, the term common people has been used in a more general sense to refer to typical members of society in contrast to highly privileged (in either wealth or influence).

In Europe, a distinct concept analogous to common people arose in the Classical civilization of ancient Rome around the 6th century BC, with the social division into patricians (nobles) and plebeians (commoners). The division may have been instituted by Servius Tullius, as an alternative to the previous clan based divisions that had been responsible for internecine conflict. The ancient Greeks generally had no concept of class and their leading social divisions were simply non-Greeks, free-Greeks and slaves. The early organisation of Ancient Athens was something of an exception with certain official roles like Archons, magistrates and treasurers being reserved for only the wealthiest citizens – these class-like divisions were weakened by the democratic reforms of Cleisthenes who created new vertical social divisions in contrasting fashion to the horizontal ones thought to have been created by Tullius.

With the growth of Christianity in the 4th century AD, a new world view arose that would underpin European thinking on social division until at least early modern times.Saint Augustine postulated that social division was a result of the Fall of Man. The three leading divisions were considered to be the priesthood (clergy), the nobility, and the common people. Sometimes this would be expressed as "those who prayed", "those who fought" and "those who worked". The Latin terms for the three classes – oratores, bellatores and laboratores – are often found even in modern textbooks, and have been used in sources since the 9th century. This threefold division was formalised in the estate system of social stratification, where again commoners were the bulk of the population who are neither members of the nobility nor of the clergy. They were the third of the Three Estates of the Realm in medieval Europe, consisting of peasants and artisans.


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