> What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? In short: Weapons. On the pre-gunpowder battlefield, the mounted, armored knight was roughly e

> What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? In short: Weapons. On the pre-gunpowder battlefield, the mounted, armored knight was roughly equivalent to the modern light tank. It is incredibly hard to take out an armored knight with the kind of weapons or tools which would have been available to peasants or serfs, so it doesn't take that many knights to keep enough peasants in-line to build a very wealthy kingdom. Religion during this era functioned much more like the modern civil service than what you or I would recognize as a church, and this also included both education and state security functions. When firearms became commonplace, this game totally changed. Previously, weapons, even the longbow, took years to master well enough to be combat effective. With muskets, you can turn a group of ignorant peasants into a fighting force capable of taking on armored cavalry in a few months, possibly even weeks. The Enlightenment, as well as our ideas about "equal treatment under the law", were the direct result of this force parity.