After a time of more moderate requirements imposed by the restarting, which corresponds roughly to the XV E century, the financial pressure increases. Those of the rural ones which could benefit from the good “time of the rare man” to release itself from the mass have from now on a well established position. The others, most, soon will be again confronted with serious difficulties. It is in Eastern Europe that the seigniorial reaction is most severe.  

Whereas the farming communities of Occident definitively left serfdom, and sometimes for a long time, this one roots more in the East, where the density of settlement is low. To allow the exploitation of the great seigniorial fields, it is at the same time necessary to fix this population and to force heavy drudgeries to him. It is thing made in Poland by a series of laws enacted between 1496 and 1532. The same applies to Hungary or Moscovie. In Poland, the urban middle-class itself loses the right to have grounds.  

However the ground, which is done gradually rarer and more invaluable in Occident, becomes in same time a stake disputed more and more between the social groups. The traditional lords seek to keep their fields, the urban bourgeoisies penetrate in force on the market, the peasants cling to their goods. All want to profit from the rise of the food prices (and this before even the arrival of metals of America), which ensures, unequally, of the profits to the owners and the shareholders of the ground. The employees, with the stagnant resources, see on the other hand purchasing power to them to erode slowly under the effect of inflation. The prosperity of the Rebirth is socially selective.  
 
The nobility

If there exists a commercial culture, marked by the role of the figure and the writing, sensitive to exactitude and measurement, no doubt however that the social model of reference is not the model peerage-book. The nobility is then a relatively open social group, in full renewal, and exerts a strong attraction on the middle-class elites, which they are commercial or with the service of the princes. Here still, the possession of grounds and seigniories is essential: it is by them, and the practice like noble life, that the accession with the second order is easiest. The nobility remains, by far, the social group dominating with the Rebirth.

The social hierarchy

It is generally with the blessing of the Churches and the support of the States that is posted clearly the social hierarchy, but the order is not always assured. The revolts have various reasons, since the difficulties of provisioning (“large rébeyne” of Lyon, 1529) until the refusal of the taxation. Religious dimension is often present: in the times disturbed by the questions of faith, the peasants of Bundschuh preach a reform, and revolted Hungarian of 1514 calls with the crusade against the Turk. But the social stakes often are essential, the revolt being seen as a right to resistance of communities which feel attacked.

The fight against the seigniorial reaction is one of dimensions of the war of the Peasants (1524-1525). The question of serfdom and the personal obligations involves disorders of Catalonia in Hungary. In Castille, the movement of the comuneros, the most important urban revolt of time (1520-1521), is directed at the same time against the encroachments of the aristocracy and those of the royal power. It is true that the weight of the State, in particular on the cities, is felt more and more.