"Civilization of the Middle Ages" by Norman F. Cantor, pp 195 - 213.
1. Lordship was the basic social and political institutions in Germanic society. The comitatus, or gefolge the Germanic war band as described by Tacitus and in Beowuf was based on
the loyalty of warriors to their chieftain -
in return for the latter’s protection and generosity; it was the embryo of medieval feudalism.
The perpetuation of this kind of loyalty in the fifth and sixth centuries was made easier by the existence of a similar institution in the later Roman Empire, the patrocinium (clientage).
In the disturbed conditions of the late empire, certain
aristocrats gathered around them young men of fighting age whom they rewarded and protected in return for their loyalty and service. The vassals of the sixth and seventh centuries were simply the perpetuation of the German gefolge and the Latin patrocinium. They were freemen who voluntarily subjected themselves to some prominent warlord in their locality, but otherwise their only quality was their fighting ability.
The term vassal comes from the Celtic word meaning “boy." As is implied by the etymology, the vassals of the sixth and seventh centuries were simply "the boys," gangs of thugs who fought on behalf of certain big men in the neighborhood,
As yet, vassalage had nothing to do with holding land; the vassals lived in a stockade provided by the lord and were fed, clothed, and` armed by him.
2. The next stage in the emergence of feudal institution: involved the association between vassalage and landed wealth, which was intended to reward the vassals for their service and support them. It is a fact of the greatest importance that this "realization of the feudal relationship," as it has been called by F. L. Ganshof, was an extremely slow and far from uniform development. Even in the tenth century the majority of vassals in France held no land and continued to live in their lord'! household, and even in the early twelfth century, in the intensely feudalized areas of northern France and England, there were many landless vassals, although by this time they were definitely in the minority.
In Merovingian times it appears that the only vassals who received estates were very prominent men in society. The Frankish dukes and counts were given "benefices" (benefits), gifts of land, by the Merovingian rulers to secure their loyalty and maintain them while they performed their services to the royal government.
But the great aristocrats who received these benefices proceeded to treat them as hereditary estates. This practice was the beginning of the association of hereditary estates with loyalty and service to the lord. The system of benefices was imitated on a smaller scale in the relationship between some of the great aristocrats and their more important vassals. `
A slow but fundamental change in military methods between the fifth and eighth centuries increased the necessity for associating vassalage with the benefice, or the fief as it came to be called after the eighth century. The Germans had used mostly infantry, and they had followed the military principle of the folk—in—arms, with the king summoning the mass of free peasantry to come to his aid in war.
But the superiority of the armed cavalry, which had already been employed during the period of the Germanic invasions by the Roman emperor, the Huns, and some of the Germanic tribes,
became more and more evident. By the eighth century more enlightened warlords in western Europe were seeking to build their armies around the mailed and mounted soldier—the chevalier or cniht (knight).The introduction of the stirrup into western Europe from the Mediterranean world in the early eighth century markedly increased the effectiveness of the
cavalry. But
the knights equipment was a heavy expense, and a lord who wanted a formidable army of knights among his vassals found it expedient to enfeoff (invest) his chevaliers with manorial estates from which they might obtain the income necessary to array themselves for battle.The granting of a fief did not involve giving the vassal complete property rights over the estate The vassal had the use of the income of the land as a reward for service and to make it possible to outfit himself as ai knight. But technically the ultimate ownership of the Land was still the lord's, who could recover it if the vassal ceased to be loyal, and when the vassal died, the fief automatically reverted to the lord. It is believed that the precedent for feudal tenure was a system of landholding called the precurium, which existed especially on church lands in the seventh ` and eighth centuries. By this precarious tenure an abbot or a bishop who had more land than he could profitably manage himself allowed laymen no have the use of such lands, usually on the payment of a rent and with the understanding that the estate was recoverable at will.
With their accustomed intelligence and ingenuity, the Carolingian Family early realized the military advantages accruing from the enfeoffment of their vassals. Thus, when Charles Martel raised an army to encounter the invading Arabs in the fourth decade of the eighth century, he sought to obtain as large a knightly contingent as possible. He succeeded in carving out fiefs for his vassals from church lands, probably on the basis of precarious tenures.
During the second half of the eighth century, the Carolingian ruler was rewarding his aristocratic vassals with large fiefs granted from the royal demesne itself. And the great lords of the western part of the Carolingian realm were quick to imitate the king and transformed some of their own vassals into enfeoffed knights. This growing association of fief and vassalage had the effect of generally elevating the social status of the vassal. From the hired thug, the vassal was himself becoming, in many instances, an important local lord, enjoying control over one or more manors. There was, of course, a great disparity between the duke or count, who was the vassal of the king, and the common run of knightly vassals, who were, for many centuries to come, violent and uncouth people.
The increasing involvement of vassalage and fief inspired a land hunger on the part of all vassals in feudal society that persisted well into the twelfth century. Whereas previously the fief was regarded as a reward for loyalty, now vassals sought out lords who were prepared to offer them landed estates. Those vassals who already had fiefs set about obtaining more and sought to assure the hereditary character of the land that they held of their lord. Although technically the fief was not inheritable and reverted back to the lord at the vassal’s death,
by the middle of the ninth century the fief had already become a hereditary patrimony for all practical purposes. On payment of an inheritance tax called the “relief," the deceased vassal’s son professed his loyalty to the lord and took possession of the fief. The land hunger of the ninth— and tenth-century vassals is well illustrated by the great feudal epic Raoul de Cambrai, which, although it has come down to us in a twelfth-century version, dimly reflects a true incident that occurred in the ninth century and admirably mirrors the mores of the feudal class of that period. In the poem the emperor neglects to give Raoul the fief that his father had held, whereupon Raoul takes up arms against his lord in an attempt to force` him to grant what he considers his rightful inheritance.
3. The final stage in the development of feudalism
was the passing of governmental and legal authority to the kings great feudal vassals, who, in turn, passed some of this authority on to their own vassals. This stage is the product of the ninth century and was the consequence of the inability of the later Carolingians to maintain control over the dukes and counts who usurped the royal power over their duchies and counties and turned them into enormous hereditary fiefs. Lordship over manorial estates had always involved political and legal control over the dependent peasantry,
but this authority was negligible compared to the passing of public power into private hands in the ninth century! The feudal princes won from the feeble monarchy the right to collect taxes and to hold courts to hear important pleas - the right of “high justice," the power l to hang criminals—in their duchies and counties. Similarly, all lesser lords strove to gain pieces of public power and to exercise some political and ‘ legal authority within their own fiefs, By the middle of the tenth century l in France, the powers of the Carolingian king had been swallowed up in the private feudal courts, which exercised overlapping and conflicting jurisdictions in a crazy patchwork of decentralized authority.
The emergence of the feudal kind of social organization was followed by the refinement and rationalization of several aspects of lordship and
the entrenchment of a group of social values based on the ideal of loyalty.The granting of a fief did not involve giving the vassal complete property rights over the estate The vassal had the use of the income of the land as a reward for service and to make it possible to outfit himself as a knight. But technically the ultimate ownership of the Land was still the lord's, who could recover it if the vassal ceased to be loyal, and when the vassal died, the fief automatically reverted to the lord. It is believed that the precedent for feudal tenure was a system of landholding called the precurium, which existed especially on church lands in the seventh ` and eighth centuries. By this precarious tenure an abbot or a bishop who had more land than he could profitably manage himself allowed laymen no have the use of such lands, usually on the payment of a rent and with the understanding that the estate was recoverable at will.
With their accustomed intelligence and ingenuity, the Carolingian Family early realized the military advantages accruing from the enfeoffment of their vassals. Thus, when Charles Martel raised an army to encounter the invading Arabs in the fourth decade of the eighth century, he sought to obtain as large a knightly contingent as possible. He succeeded in carving out fiefs for his vassals from church lands, probably on the basis of precarious tenures. During the second half of the eighth century, the Carolingian ruler was rewarding his aristocratic vassals with large fiefs granted from the royal demesne itself. And the great lords of the western part of the Carolingian realm were quick to imitate the king and transformed some of their own vassals into enfeoffed knights. This growing association of fief and vassalage had the effect of generally elevating the social status of the vassal. From the hired thug, the vassal was himself becoming, in many instances, an important local lord, enjoying control over one or more manors. There was, of course, a great disparity between the duke or count, who was the vassal of the king, and the common run of knightly vassals, who were, for many centuries to come, violent and uncouth people.
The increasing involvement of vassalage and fief inspired a land hunger on the part of all vassals in feudal society that persisted well into the twelfth century. Whereas previously the fief was regarded as a reward for loyalty, now vassals sought out lords who were prepared to offer them landed estates, Those vassals who already had fiefs set about obtaining more and sought to assure the hereditary character of the land that they held of their lord. Although technically the fief was not inheritable and reverted back to the lord at the vassal’s death,
by the middle of the mirth century the fief had already become a hereditary patrimony for all practical purposes. On payment of an inheritance tax called the “relief," the deceased vassal’s son professed his loyalty to the lord and took possession of the fief. The land hunger of the ninth— and tenth-century vassals is well illustrated by the great feudal epic Raoul de Cambrai, which, although it has come down to us in a twelfth-century version, dimly reflects a true incident that occurred in the ninth century and admirably mirrors the mores of the feudal class of that period. In the poem the emperor neglects to give Raoul the fief that his father had held, whereupon Raoul takes up arms against his lord in an attempt to force` him to grant what he considers his rightful inheritance.
As a general rule feudalism was antagonistic to royal power. As we have seen, it involved decentralized government and the passing of public power into private hands. The king of France in the tenth and eleventh centuries was indeed the nominal lord over the great feudal princes, but he had no real power over the dukes and counts who were his vassals because he was not the liege lord over their subvassals. As long as he could not defeat the duke of Normandy or the count of Toulouse, the king in Paris had no control over them, although he had a l tight to their formal homage. The duke of Normandy had a much better
army than the king had, and the Norman knights did not recognize the king as their overlord in any way. For all practical purposes, the monarch of France, whether he was a Carolingian or, after 987, of the new Capetian house, was only the duke of Paris. A similar situation prevailed in the feudal organization of Germany in the twelfth century.
Where the feudal pyramid with the king at the pinnacle actually did operate was in England after the Norman Conquest in 1066. It did so l because the Norman dukes in the tenth and the first half of the eleventh centuries learned how to use feudal institutions in a special way—to increase the power of the central government, which was not the way feudalism had worked in the later Carolingian empire.
The third assumption allowed feudal relationships to receive the approval of ecclesiastics who were trained in the old doctrines of hierarchy. Indeed, it is likely that churchmen placed a much greater emphasis on this feudal value and made hierarchy both more central and more rigid in feudal society. Although French ecclesiastics were initially wary of the growth of feudal lordship, by the end of the tenth century, they were often ideological advocates of feudalism as part of the divinely ordained hierarchical order of the world.
The second assumption, that of loyalty, was useful to ambitious kings and dukes who sought to impose a sovereign power over the landed society in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The ideal of loyalty also inspired, to a degree, a new sensitivity to personal relationships, a sentimental view of the attachment of one human being to another; it became a constituent of the medieval idea of love and an inspiration for the romantic movement of the twelfth century.
Page 204 - The Civilization of the Middle Ages
The first assumption, on the social value of military prowess, transmuted into the ideal of aristocratic leadership in society and belief that the man on horseback was the natural leader, whereas others stood and served. Feudal recognition of the intrinsic goodness of physical strength was perpetuated in the moral sanction of the stronger over the weaker that became essential to the operation of the European states system from the twelfth to twentieth century.
206 -
The power the German and Norman Dukes of the 10th and 11th centuries was founded on the control over the churches in their territories, especially the Benedictine monasteries, and by the aid and support the church gave them in the form of revenue, knights, administrative personnel and the fostering of popular veneration for the pious ruler who affected to be a friend of the church.
On it's side the church gained it's patrons protection against the unruly lay nobility, the endowment of monasteries, and bishoprics with great estates and magnificent Romanesque houses and cathedrals, opportunities for leading ecclesiastics to attend court and thereby influence policy.
207 In the 10th and 11th centuries the Dukes of Normandy stand out for their effective control in converting their previous backward French area into a country renowned for its
great monasteries and schools, and they manipulated feudal institutions to create the strongest stare in Europe west of the Rhine.
208 - Normandy came into existence in 911 when Rollo took control of the area as a vassal of the Carolingian king, but continued to act in an entirely independent manner, expanding his territory, adopted the French language, marrying with the local population, and joining with the church.
Three stages:
