^ 
 
 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 CHARLES SEIGNOBOS 
 
 of the University of Paris 
 
 TRANSLATION EDITED BY 
 
 EARLE W. DOW 
 
 Assistant Professor in the University of Michigan 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1902 
 
fl 
 
HK FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES SEIGNOBOS 
 
 0/ the University of Paris 
 
 TRANSLATION EDITED BY 
 
 EARLE W. DOW 
 
 Assistant Professor in the University of Michigan 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1902 
 
[--.vo Copits RECeiVGD 
 
 iUL, 25 1902 
 
 Cni»vniOHT ENTRY 
 
 CS Ar4 Ct XXa NO 
 COPV 3. 
 
 No.l 
 
 Copyright, 1902, 
 
 BY 
 
 Henry Holt & Co. 
 
 RCBEBT DRUMMOND, PRINTER NEW YORK 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 rAGH 
 
 INTRODUCTION „ . i 
 
 I. THE PEASANTS 
 
 3 
 
 II. THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY .27 
 
 III. USAGES AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 • • 54 
 
 V 
 
NOTE 
 
 This account of the feudal regime forms the first chapter 
 in the second volume of the Histoire Generate dii IV Steele d. 
 nos Jours, edited by MM. Lavisse and Rambaud. It is now- 
 done into English, in the hope that it may be useful as a short 
 description of the social organization prevailing in Europe 
 especially from the tenth to the thirteenth century. It seems 
 peculiarly fitted for collateral reading in high school and college 
 classes in history, and at the same time it may prove of interest 
 outside of the schools. 
 
 Now and then a note of no importance to English readers 
 has been dropped ; a passage has been rendered rather freely ; 
 or an explanation, enclosed in brackets, has been added by 
 the editor. But as a rule no changes have been made in the 
 original. 
 
 The editor is deeply indebted to Mr. Christian Gauss, of 
 Lehigh University, for extensive aid in the translation, and 
 also to his colleague, Mr. Victor Francois. He reheves them, 
 however, of all responsibility for errors. 
 
THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 FROM ITS BEGINNINGS TO THE END OF THE 
 THIRTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 The countries that made up the empire of Charlemagne 
 mderwent during the tmth century a profound transformation, 
 
 ♦•he details of which, from lack of documents, are unknown to 
 IS. When it begins to grow light again, toward the end of 
 he eleventh century, society and government both appear 
 ransformed. To the new organization historians have given 
 he rxdiVaQ feudal regime. Coming into existence in the obscure 
 )eriod that followed the dissolution of the Carolingian empire, 
 his regime developed slowly, without the intervention of a 
 government, without the aid of a written law, without any 
 
 general understanding among individuals; rather only by a 
 
 vfradual transformation of customs, which took place sooner 
 )r later, but in about the same way, in France, Italy, 
 "hristian Spain, and Germany. Then, toward the end of the 
 •leventh century, it was transplanted into England and into 
 outhern Italy, in the twelfth and thirteenth into the Latin 
 
 irtates of the East, and beginning with the fourteenth into 
 
 the Scandinavian countries. 
 
 This regime, established thus not according to a general 
 
 ')lan but by a sort of natural growth, never had forms and 
 isages that were everywhere the same. It is impossible 
 
 gather it up into a perfectly exact picture, or indeed to 
 make any general statement about it which would not be 
 '.a contradiction to several particular cases. And so no 
 
 cholar has risked publishing a study of the feudal regime 
 
 1 its entirety. All that can be attempted for the present is 
 
2 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 to bring together the most common characteristics of the 
 society and the usages in feudal countries, from the tenth to 
 the thirteenth century. 
 
 Three usages, common to all of Charlemagne's empire, 
 dominated and moulded society: the owning of large domains; 
 the obligation of lay owners to equip themselves and wage 
 war at their own expense ; and the position of the clergy as 
 owners. Society had come to be divided into two classes; 
 the mass of peasants established on the great domains ; and 
 the aristocracy, possessors of the soil, made up of two cate- 
 gories: warriors and churchmen.^ 
 
 ' The inhabitants of the towns (bourgeois) formed, from the end of the eleventh 
 century, a distinct class, intermediate between the peasants and the nobles. But 
 the towns came after the establishment of the feudal regime and even aided in 
 destroying it. It is possible, then, to except them. 
 
THE PEASANTS 
 
 The Great Domains. — Beginning with the ninth century- 
 there remained in the CaroHngian empire scarcely any small 
 owners cultivating their land themselves, save perhaps in the 
 outskirts of the cities of the south and in some remote regions 
 of the mountains or of the coasts. Almost all the land 
 belonged to large owners who did not work with their hands. 
 As it had little value, it was divided into domains of larger 
 area than what we to-day call a great estate, comparable only 
 to the domains of Russian lords before the abolition of serfdom 
 or to plantations in the United States in the time of the Xegro 
 slaves. A domain extended over the territory bf a village of 
 the present day. Most of the communes of France are but 
 mcient domains, and many of them have kept the old name ; 
 like Clichy, Palaiseau, Issy, Ivry. 
 
 The land in each domain was divided into two parts, of 
 unequal extent. The smaller, ordinarily the land near the 
 master's house, formed the reserve which the owner kept to 
 exploit directly for his own profit; this was the master's 
 land {indominicatd) . What it produced belonged to the 
 owner. There stood the master's house, where the owner 
 lived, or at least his intendant. The rest of the land was 
 distributed among a certain number of peasant families estab- 
 lished on the domain. Most frequently they lived in cottages 
 grouped around the master's house, thus forming a village. 
 Each family, from father to son, cultivated the same allotment 
 of land, which ordinarily was made up of several small parcels 
 scattered over the whole extent of the domain. The peasants 
 kept the products of the field; but, in exchange, they owed 
 dues and services to the owner and lived in dependence upon 
 
 3 
 
4 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 him. These dues and services varied infinitely, in accordance 
 with agreements made at the outset or with the custom of the 
 country; no law regulated the charges which the landlord 
 could impose upon his peasants or the amount of land that he 
 should give them. But the conditions of life, which were 
 very uniform, had produced almost everywhere very analogous 
 regimes. 
 
 This organization appears already in the register of the 
 abbey of Saint-Germain des Pres, drawn up at the end of the 
 reign of Charlemagne. Each domain has a chapter, in which 
 are enumerated, first, the reserve of the master, with the 
 'harvest; then the peasants, their families, the extent of their 
 holdings, their dues and their corvees. Here, for example, is 
 the domain of Palaiseau: "At Palaiseau there is a master's 
 reserve, with a house and other necessary buildings. There 
 are six fields of arable land, comprising two hundred and 
 eighty-seven bonnier s,^ enough in which to sow thirteen 
 hundred mnids'^ of grain; one hundred and twenty-seven 
 arpents' of vineyard, good for eight hundred measures* of 
 wine ; and a hundred arpents of meadow, from which a hundred 
 and fifty loads ^ of hay can be taken. In woodland, all to- 
 gether, there is as much as would make two leagues across, 
 sufficient to fatten fifty hogs.^ There are three mills, which 
 bring in one hundred and fifty-four minds. There is a church, 
 with all its furnishings. . . . 
 
 P A bonnier, Latin bonuarhtm, was possibly a little above three acres. See 
 Longnon, Polyptique de I' Abbaye de Saint-Germain dcs Fres, Introduction, pp. 
 20-2I.] 
 
 P M. Seignobos says boisseaux for muids. The muid, Latin viodius, as used 
 here, was possibly a little less than six pecks. See Longnon, as before, p. 26.] 
 
 [' The arpent, as understood on the domains of Saint-Germain des Pres, was 
 probably equivalent to a little less than a third of one of our acres. See Longnon, 
 as before, p. 19.] 
 
 [* The original has modios, or muids, the same measure as that just used in 
 reference to grain.] 
 
 [* The load referred to was probably less than half a ton. See Longnon, as 
 before, p. 29.] 
 
 • The meat most common at this time was pork ; the forest (of oaks) was con- 
 sidered especially as hog pasture. This was still the condition in Croatia and 
 Servia in the eighteenth century. 
 
THE PEASANTS 5 
 
 " Wilfridus, a colonus, and his wife, a colona, tenants of 
 Saint-Germain, have with them two children, named . . . 
 He occupies two free holdings. For each holding he pays 
 one ox, does the fall work on four perches,^ does corvees, 
 carting, and odd jobs when he is ordered; also he pays three 
 pullets and fifteen eggs. Hairmundus, a colonus, and his wife, 
 a colona, tenants of Saint-Germain, have with them five chil- 
 dren. . . . He occupies one free holding containing ten bo7i- 
 niers in arable land, two arpents in vineyard, one arpent and 
 a half in meadow. He pays the same. ' ' A hundred and ten 
 like articles follow, concerning coloni who each occupied one 
 holding. "Maurus, serf, and his wife, free, tenants of Saint- 
 Germain, have with them two children. . . . Guntoldus, colonus 
 of Saint-Germain, These people occupy one servile holding, 
 containing two bonniers in arable land, two arpents and a half 
 in vineyard, one arpent and a half in meadow. They cultivate 
 eight acres of vineyard, pay four measures of wine, two setters ^ 
 of mustard, three pullets, fifteen eggs, and do odd jobs, 
 corvees, and carting, , , ." The chapter on Palaiseau ends 
 thus: "This makes in all one hundred and seventeen hold- 
 ings, free and servile. 
 
 Outside of the reserve, from which the landlord drew profit 
 directly by means of the corvees, the domain was cut up into 
 tenures (that is, the holdings), divided here into two classes : 
 the larger ones, the free holdings, to judge by their name, 
 were occupied at first by free tenants ; the smaller, the servile 
 holdings, by slaves of the landlord. But this division did not 
 last, for in the very register which makes it known to us we 
 see that it had ceased to be observed ; we find serfs on free 
 holdings and free tenants on servile holdings. 
 
 An inventory of the estates of Charlemagne, dating from 
 8io, shows an altogether similar regime established on >^n__ 
 island of a little lake in the mountains of Bavaria (Staffelsee). 
 
 [^ It is thought that at that time people reckoned fifty perches to the bonnier ; 
 which would make about seventeen perches in an acre, instead of one hundred and 
 sixty as in our reckoning.] 
 
 [* The setier, Latin sextarius, of Charlemagne's time was probably equivalent 
 to about 3 J litres, or about 5f pints. See Longnon, as before, p. 27.] 
 
6 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 ' * On this estate are eighty-three free holdings. Six of these 
 each pay annually fourteen muids of grain, four hogs, two 
 pullets, ten eggs, one setter of linseed, one setier of lentils; 
 the holder does annually five weeks' corvee, ploughs three 
 days, cuts one load of hay in the master's meadow and draws 
 it in " ; and so on. 
 
 The documents of the ninth and tenth centuries — they are 
 very rare — do not permit us to affirm that all domains were 
 organized thus. Indeed we know of some domains which did 
 not present the regular arrangements of those of Saint- 
 Germain ; some where nothing was uniform, neither the area 
 of the holdings, nor the rents, nor the corvees due from the 
 tenants. Even the mansus'^ [holding], which on the lands of 
 Saint-Germain appears to have corresponded to a certain value 
 (if not an area), in most of the countries of the South was only 
 a vague name for any tenure attached to a rural house. Often, 
 in place of the maiisus, we find the colonica (tenure of the 
 colonus), which seems to have consisted of lands attached to 
 an isolated house ; the tenants, in that case, instead of living 
 together near the master's house were scattered over the 
 estate. 
 
 Nor can it be said exactly over what countries this rural 
 regime extended; the statistical inquiry that would tell us 
 cannot be made, for lack of documents. But it is probable 
 that it was of Roman origin, and that it dominated almost all 
 the ancient Roman territory of Gaul, except the mountainous 
 regions of the Pyrenees and the environs of the old Roman 
 towns, especially of those in the south and in the valleys of the 
 Rhone and Saone. It is, at least, the only one which the 
 isolated documents of this obscure period present, and it is the 
 one which, in the thirteenth century, we find established in 
 almost all of France. 
 
 It was also the usual regime in Italy in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury; but in the environs of the towns, which formed a good 
 part of the territory and withal the richest, the owners let their 
 lands, often by a perpetual lease (the old emphyteusis), to 
 
 ^ The word is of Latin origin and seems to have meant at first a house (nianere). 
 
THE PEASANTS 7 
 
 renters or to farmers who worked them on shares. Spain, too, 
 had its population of peasant tenants; but, in the lands that 
 remained Christian, many farmers lived in the fortified towns, 
 and in the country conquered from the Moors the rural 
 organization of the East was partly preserved. / In Germany, 
 where small owners were perhaps still numerous "In the time 
 of Charlemagne, cultivation by tenants (probably introduced 
 by convents and princes) soon won the entire country, except 
 some regions of the Alps and the plains bordering on the North 
 Sea, where the peasant-owners maintained themselves. The 
 same was true in the Scandinavian countries, but only after 
 the fourteenth century. As for England, the register made 
 by the Norman kings shows the entire country covered with 
 great domains divided into parcels which tenants held through 
 payment of dues and corvees. This organization seems to 
 have existed before the Norman conquest. 
 
 Thus the regime of great estates, of hereditary tenures, of 
 dues and corvees, dominated all civilized Europe. It stopped 
 in the west only with the mountains of Wales and Scotland, 
 in the south only before the Mohammedans. Toward the east 
 it extended indefinitely, according as the Slavic peoples 
 became civilized. This regime was established, in its funda- 
 mental features, from the tenth century; the documents show 
 it completely formed toward the end of the eleventh ; and from 
 then on to the fourteenth century it changed but little. We 
 can essay then to give an idea of the peasants in this period. 
 
 The Village. — It was still the great estate that dominated 
 the peasant's whole life. The master's dwelling had become 
 a fortified house, sometimes a castle, with a reserve (fields, 
 vineyards, meadows, fish-ponds, woods) which was very ex- 
 tensive, to judge by present standards. Near it were grouped 
 the tenants' houses, which were of two different types: the 
 complete house, built around a court ^ and with a garden 
 adjoining, that of the comfortably situated peasant,^ possessor 
 of a yoke of oxen; and the cottage, a building in one piece, 
 
 ' In German, the same word, Hof, designates the court and the house. 
 * In German, he is called Vollbauer (full cultivator). 
 
8 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 occupied by the peasant who had only the labor of his hands. 
 Through increase of the population the group had become 
 a village; sometimes, though rarely, a bourg with a wall. In 
 France it kept the old Roman name of the domain, villa\ 
 people called it ville, and the peasants called themselves 
 villams. The endings ham in England, heim and hausen in 
 Germany, had a like meaning. 
 
 Connected with this village was a territory (called, in the 
 north of France, the Jinage), whose limits remained those of 
 the old domain. It often happened that in the course of 
 centuries the domain had come to belong to several owners, 
 who shared the reserve and the peasants; but the territory, 
 like the group, remained unchanged. Everywhere, in Ger- 
 many as in France, the domain grew by long custom to be 
 fixed. Ordinarily it became the modern commune; and thus 
 the great landlords of former times marked out the frame and 
 created the fundamental unit of our democratic administra- 
 tions. As there were still lands to occupy and forests to 
 clear, principally in Germany, new villages^ arose during all 
 the middle ages, and especially in the thirteenth century; but 
 they were constituted on the model of the old ones. 
 
 Leaving the reserve out of consideration, the territory of 
 the village was cut up into small parcels which the peasants 
 handed down from father to son. If, in certain regions of 
 Germany, it was customary in early times to put all lands in 
 common and divide them anew among the inhabitants, — w^hich 
 has not at all been proved, — this custom disappeared every- 
 where in the middle ages, and tenures remained perpetually 
 in the same family. 
 
 It was very rare that the holding of a tenant consisted of a 
 single bit of land. Ordinarily it was made up of several pieces, 
 scattered over divers quarters of the village territory, in the 
 form of long narrow strips ; such as one sees still in the plains 
 of northeastern France and of western Germany, where the 
 traditional boundaries of the fields have been preserved. 
 
 ^ In Germany the villages established on forest clearings bear the ending rode 
 or roda, which signifies clearing (Wernigerode, Osterode, Friedrichsroda). 
 
THE PEASANTS 9 
 
 This division of the land frequently owed its origin to the 
 primitive organization of the domain: it had been" made in 
 accordance with a three-year system of rotation of crops which 
 was very common in the ninth and tenth centuries (winter 
 wheat, spring wheat, fallow). In the course of centuries the 
 pieces increased in number ; for the tenant, in France at least, 
 had the right to subdivide his holding, provided that the new 
 possessors should keep up the charges. Their number could 
 increase indefinitely, as could also the number of tenants, up 
 to the limit of the land's resources. If the limit was passed, 
 a famine or an epidemic reestablished the equilibrium between 
 the population and the means of sustenance. In Germany 
 the holdings often became indivisible, and beginning with the 
 twelfth century a class of well-to-do peasants was formed. 
 
 It would be idle to try to fix the number of the rural popula- 
 tion of Europe, even in the thirteenth century; the documents 
 are not complete or trustworthy enough. It is very likely, 
 from the analogy of India and of the Mussulman countries, that 
 the population, being wretched, prolific and attached to the 
 soil, became very dense. 
 
 The entire rural population was designated by the same 
 name, rustici (peasants), villains, Bauer (cultivators). The 
 sense attached in France to the word villain shows well enough 
 that the other classes of the nation did not distinguish between 
 the peasants, that they thought of them all with the same 
 scorn. Nevertheless the condition of the people mingled 
 together in this lower class had been, at the beginning, pro- 
 'oundly different; and there still remained enough of this 
 difference to form two categories, designated in the French 
 icts of the time by different names : the serfs and the free men. 
 
 The Serfs. — The serfs were the descendants, or at least the 
 ;uccessors, of the ancient Roman slaves {servi'). But in the 
 :ourse of centuries their condition had gradually become better. 
 The master was also a landlord : he saw in the slave only an 
 nstrument of cultivation, and asked of him only that he make 
 lis domain bring in what it should. The rural slaves, having 
 eased to be sold, couM marry; and they remained fixed upon 
 
10 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 the same domain, founding there a race of cultivators. Each 
 family received from the master a house and a portion of land, 
 which it transmitted from generation to generation and which 
 the master gave up taking back. The serf had become a 
 tenant. By the simple fact that slaves had been reduced to 
 the role of cultivators and that the master no longer demanded 
 personal service from them,^ slavery had been transformed into 
 serfdom; just as, in an inverse sense, the Russian seigneurs in 
 the eighteenth century, by imposing the roles of lackeys and 
 house-servants upon the serfs of their lands, built up again a 
 slavery like that of ancient times. 
 
 The serf had not received his tenure as a free gift; the 
 landlord, who remained his master, demanded from him 
 heavier dues arid corvees, often at will. He was "liable to 
 tax and corvee at will ", according to the energetic expression 
 of the time. However, custom was so strong in the middle 
 ages that in the end it often fixed even the dues from serfs: 
 the landlord could ask of them nothing above what they had 
 always paid. In an inverse sense it was not always necessary 
 to be a serf to be taxable at will. 
 
 It seems indeed that in the middle ages the charges 
 peculiar to the serf and characteristic of his condition were 
 those that denoted still a personal dependence: capitation, 
 right of marriage, mortmain. Capitation was a charge due 
 
 per head,^ and was ordinarily paid annually. The master 
 imposed it upon his serfs in virtue of his absolute right; it was 
 a survival of slavery. The right of marriage ^ was a charge 
 paid to the landlord by the man or woman serf who married 
 a person outside of the seigneury. So long as the tenants of 
 
 ^ We do not mean to say that in the middle ages there were no serfs acting as 
 house-servants ; but they appear very rarely, and they are not in question when 
 one speaks of serfs. 
 
 ^ It recalls the obrok of Russian serfs. 
 
 ^ With serfdom, undoubtedly, is connected the famous "right of the seigneur ", 
 which has called forth so many bitter polemics between the admirers and the 
 detractors of the middle ages. In the form in which light literature has made it 
 celebrated this right is mentioned only very rarely, in documents of a late period 
 and subject furthermore to opposed interpretations. 
 
THE PEASANTS il 
 
 the same landlord married among themselves they did not 
 cease to be subject to him, and their marriage was indifferent 
 to him. At the most it gave occasion for a slight charge. 
 But by marrying outside, the woman serf would leave her 
 master: she could do it only on his authorization. The 
 right of marriage, apparently, was the price paid to the 
 master to obtain his consent to the marriage. -^ Mortmain 
 was the right of the master to take possession of the hold- 
 ing of his serf when he died without leaving a child who was 
 living with him. The serf family only possessed its house 
 and field by the sufferance of the master, the only real 
 owner. The custom grew up of leaving the holding to the 
 family as long as its members continued to live in common. 
 But if the family became extinct or scattered, the holding 
 returned to the owner without his having to take account of 
 collateral kindred or even of the children of his serf who were 
 established elsewhere; for it belonged to him. Or, if he con- 
 sented to give it to the relatives of his serf, it was in con- 
 sideration of a rather high repurchase right. It was this right 
 of escheat that was called mortmain (the word appears in the 
 eleventh century). Custom or individual contracts often fixed 
 the amount of the repurchase right. In many Germanic 
 countries (England, Germany, Flanders), the right was 
 reduced to the master's deducting from the inheritance some 
 article or one of its cattle. For the same reason that a serf 
 could not dispose of his holding by will, he could not during 
 his life sell it or alienate it without the express consent of his 
 seigneur. 
 
 A more significant trait of his original servitude subsisted 
 for a long time. The serf established on a domain could not 
 be separated from it by his master, but he on his side did not 
 have the right to leave it and establish himself elsewhere.^ If 
 he left without permission, he wronged his master by depriving 
 him of his services ; the master had the right to pursue the 
 fugitive and bring him back. This was the right of pursuit. 
 
 1 The expression " serf of the glebe", often used to designate the serfs of the 
 middle ages, is not met with in the documents. 
 
12 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 Sometimes seigneurs took measures against these desertions 
 by entering into an agreement with neighboring seigneurs 
 mutually to deliver up their serfs. In other instances they 
 made inquests to seek out serfs who were trying to escape 
 them either by concealing their condition, or by establishing 
 themselves on the lands of other seigneurs, or by entering the 
 clergy. The count of Flanders, Charles, was assassinated in 
 1 1 27 for having engaged in a search in which a family of 
 dignitaries sprung from a serf found itself compromised. The 
 rigor of this law of pursuit was early softened. In France, 
 in the twelfth century, the custom seems to have been estab- 
 lished that a serf could betake himself elsewhere ordinarily on 
 two conditions : he had to give formal warning to his seigneur 
 (called disavowal); he had to give up all goods he possessed 
 on the domains of his seigneur. 
 
 Serfdom existed, under different names, in all Europe.^ 
 It seems that as early as the time of Charlemagne the serfs 
 formed the greater part of the rural population, and their 
 descendants were born serfs. Their holdings even took on 
 after a while the condition of serfdom, and transmitted it to 
 the people who came to occupy them: by living on a serf's 
 holding a free man became a serf.^ This is what the jurists 
 called "real servitude." 
 
 Manumission. — On the other hand, the serf could become 
 a free man. He could obtain his freedom individually from 
 his master, like the ancient slave, by means of a symbolic 
 ceremony or by a written act (charter) ; this latter form is the 
 only one which persisted through the middle ages. But 
 giving freedom individually became more and more rare; 
 almost always the master freed all the serfs of a domain at 
 once, changing by a single act the condition of an entire 
 village or of an entire quarter. 
 
 Of course the master was not moved by generosity. The 
 serfs purchased their freedom: at first by paying a given sum, 
 
 ' In Germany, the serfs were called Leibeigen. 
 
 ^ The other sources of servitude — war, condemnation, donation, offering to the 
 church — were of too little practical importance to merit more than mere mention. 
 So also with the caliber ti. 
 
THE PEASANTS 13 
 
 especially after the twelfth century, when money became less 
 scarce ; then by binding themselves in perpetuity, themselves 
 and their successors, to pay certain special charges which 
 recalled their former condition. 
 
 In exchange, the master gave up the right to demand from 
 them the charges peculiar to serfs, especially mortmain. Often 
 also he gave up arbitrary charges and pledged himself to levy 
 only fixed charges, but manumission did not necessarily lead 
 to this. The situation of those who had been manumitted 
 depended solely upon conditions agreed to between them and 
 their master and expressly stipulated in a written contract, a 
 charter. In any case they remained tenants of the domain ; 
 and as there was only a difference of charges between the serf 
 tenant and the free tenant, their condition was not as much 
 modified as the pompous formulas that were employed in 
 certain charters to vaunt the benefits of liberty would make 
 believe. Sometimes the serfs refused to purchase their liberty 
 at the price placed upon it, until the seigneur forced them to 
 it. 
 
 The Free Villains. — There had always been free men on the 
 great domains. In the time of the Empire, along with the 
 slaves were the coloni; later also the Germanic laets. The 
 charters, to designate the inhabitants of a domain, said "the 
 people, free men as well as serfs." 
 
 The free men, in distinction from the serfs, owed nothing 
 
 to the master; they were dependent upon him only in so far 
 
 as he was their landlord, only because they lived upon his 
 
 lands. They were renters or farmers in perpetuity. Their 
 
 holding was a fragment of the great domain. They cultivated 
 
 for their profit, on the condition of paying either a fixed 
 
 ount, like our farm-rents, or a certain part of the produce, 
 
 in our farming on shares. In distinction from the renter or 
 
 : .Tier of our day their condition was fixed forever : the land- 
 
 d could not take back their lands nor increase their rent. 
 
 ■ ■ the condition that they paid the old charges they were free 
 
 dispose of their holding, to bequeath it as they would, to 
 
 asfer it, even (at least in France) to parcel it out. 
 
14 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 The most fortunate owed only an annual sum, the censive 
 or cens, which had been fixed very early and by reason of the 
 cheapening of money had become all but nominal. The larger 
 portion owed several charges, perhaps variable, sometimes 
 even arbitrary, but become regular by usage. Often the 
 seigneur had accepted, for value received, a "subscription" 
 contract (sanctioned by a charter) which limited each charge 
 to a fixed figure or proportion: the tenants had become 
 "subscribers." It is probable that free tenants who were 
 subject to arbitrary tax and corvee still existed in the thir- 
 teenth century, but they were certainly not numerous. 
 
 The hospitcs, who were numerous in some provinces, were 
 also free men. Their name indicates that they were originally 
 strangers, probably admitted upon the domain to clear lands 
 not yet under cultivation. The bordarii of Normandy, the 
 English cottagers, the Kossatc of Germany, were small tenants, 
 lodged in huts, who had no cattle and who paid for their 
 holding rather in corvees than in rents. 
 
 The proportion of different sorts of peasants varied with the 
 locality and with the time. It seems that the serfs were at first 
 in the majority, at least in the north. But their number was con- 
 tinually diminishing. Serfdom was a residue of ancient slavery 
 and of German serfdom, fixed upon the land and by the land; 
 but it had ceased to be recruited, because no new slaves were 
 made. When a village oi' serfs obtained a charter of manu- 
 mission the territory of serfdom was cut down ; and it did not 
 increase, for no free land ever became serf again. In the 
 most civilized countries (Italy, the south of France, Normandy), 
 where the development took place most rapidly, it was already 
 nearly completed in the twelfth century; there remained only 
 free peasants. 
 
 Seigneurial Exploitation. — Dependence upon his village 
 landlord — called in Latin dominus, in German Herr, in 
 French seigneur — was the characteristic trait of the peasant 
 of the middle ages. This seigneur might be great or small, 
 a knight, a count, a king; he might be a warrior, a bishop, an 
 abbot, or a woman : the relations between the peasants and 
 
THE PEASANTS 15 
 
 the seigneur remained the same. They always rested upon 
 the right of the seigneur to take revenue and services from his 
 peasants, and not be in any way obHged to them in return, 
 save to leave them the possession of his land. This was an 
 exploitation (the word itself dates from this time). 
 
 How it was established is one of the most disputed ques- 
 tions in the history of the middle ages, and the documents 
 are too rare and too imperfectly studied to permit of its solu- 
 tion. It was in the logic of the organization of the great 
 domains that the tenant should be constrained to dues and 
 corvees and subjected to the landlord's intendant; this still 
 happens to-day. But as a matter of fact we know also of 
 examples of exploitation that originated in usurpation or 
 violence: functionaries who transformed the rights of their 
 office (for example, rights of toll or of requisition, or the right 
 of imposing fines) into perpetual property rights ; laymen who 
 took for themselves the tithes originally created for the profit 
 of the church; seigneurs who exacted a payment from the 
 peasants of another domain under the name of guard-money, 
 that is to say, assurances against their own brigandage ; land- 
 lords who increased unduly the charges of their tenants. 
 What was the origin, in any given village, of such and such 
 an obligation of the inhabitants, or indeed in what proportion 
 violence, usurpation, and fraud united with the primitive right 
 of the landlord to form this regime, statistics alone could tell 
 us ; and these statistics will never be made. 
 
 But the obscurity as to origins does not hinder us from 
 forming a clear idea of the regime as it was in the thirteenth 
 century. At first peasants had been able to distinguish be- 
 tween the charges they considered legitimate and the unjust 
 oractions established by violence or by fraud, which they 
 led ' ' bad customs ' ' (the expression is frequent especially 
 the eleventh century). In time usage had legitimatized 
 ; " bad customs " and fixed all the obligations of the peas- 
 ts. These obligations, which were later called feudal 
 hts (improperly, since they had nothing in common with 
 - fi^f^y differed a little from one village to another. The 
 
1 6 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 same obligation often had a different name in different places. 
 It would therefore be a long task to draw up a list of these 
 names (Du Cange gives one which takes up twenty-seven 
 quarto columns). But under these different names there 
 existed an analogous regime in all Europe. Considering 
 simply the form of tViese obligations, not their origin, they 
 can be distinguished as redevances, prestations, and corvees. 
 
 Redevances. — The redevances were paid either in money or 
 in produce; they were due at fixed times or on the occasion of 
 certain acts. 
 
 The fixed redevances paid in money were especially 
 (besides the capitation of the serfs) the redemption taxes, the 
 cenSy the taille. The cens was a money payment due from 
 the tenant on account of his tenure, a sort of farm-rent, fixed 
 by old custom. If the tenant did not pay it at the stipulated 
 time, the seigneur could take away his tenure; or at least 
 exact, with the original sum, a supplementary fine. In some 
 countries redevances also existed upon the house or the 
 chimney {masuragium, focagium, fumagiiini). The taille (or 
 qiiestd) was a regular charge levied one or more times yearly 
 upon each family of tenants. The name (which is not found 
 before the eleventh century) means simply the notch made 
 with a knife on a bit of wood at the time when the charge 
 was paid. Whatever its origin may have been, whether 
 it was a form of the capitation of serfs or a new right 
 imposed upon all tenants, the taille became so general that in 
 ordinary language it stood for all of the redevances: people 
 said ' ' tailleable at will. ' ' The taille appears at first to have 
 been arbitrary (at the will of the seigneur, a merci')} T' 
 peasants seem to have tried hard to fix it ; at the end of t 
 thirteenth century they had succeeded in their endeavor alm< 
 everywhere, often by buying a contract from the seigneur 
 which he agreed thenceforth to demand only a fixed ^ su: 
 Sometimes the wife of the seigneur interceded for the pc 
 
 ^ Which means without other limit than the mercy of the seigneur. 
 * Besides the regular tailles the seigneur sometimes levied an extraordin; 
 taille, on certain exceptional occasions, such as the marriage of his daughter. 
 
THE PEASANTS 1 7 
 
 tenants and her intervention gave rise to a touching legend, 
 hke that of Lady Godiva. The redemption taxes represented 
 old charges paid in produce, which had been suppressed by 
 an agreement with the seigneur. 
 
 The redevances paid in produce and due at fixed times 
 consisted especially of a part of the products of the soil, col- 
 lected after the harvest ; just as this is done to-day in regions 
 where farms are worked on shares. Thus the seigneur took a 
 part of the sheaves of wheat (campipars, gerbaghint), of the 
 oats (avenagiuin), of the hay {fenagmm), of the vintage 
 {vmagmin, complantunt), of the chickens, of the wax.^ He 
 also levied a charge in money or produce for each head of 
 stock (ox, sheep, pig, or goat). 
 
 Many redevances fell upon certain acts, and the number of 
 acts subjected to such a charge increased during the middle 
 ages (at least the names which designate them appear but 
 rarely until after the tenth century). In the thirteenth century, 
 we find a system of charges upon transfers: lods {laudes) and 
 ventes, a right paid by the tenant when he gave or sold his 
 holding to have the seigneur approve the transfer; the charge 
 upon succession (relief or redemption), — without counting the 
 mortmain on the succession of serfs or the right of escheat in 
 the case of goods to which there were no heirs. We also find 
 a number of charges on circulation, some of them very old; 
 on roads {carriagimn, roagiiim, etc.), on bridges, on rivers, 
 in ports, at the passage of gates; and a group of charges 
 on commerce and industry: rights on the sale of wheat, of 
 salt, of meat, of merchandise, and rights upon markets 
 (including charges on the location of tables and of reserved 
 places in the hall, and on the merchants' hampers) and upon 
 fairs. 
 
 Banalities. — There was a whole system of redevances that 
 were attached to obligations imposed by the seigneur, and that 
 took the form of a monopoly. These were the banalities. 
 They appear in the documents only after the tenth century. 
 
 ^ Wax was needed for the candles in the churches and for the seals affixed to 
 Av 1 5. Consequently beehives were much more numerous in the middle ages. 
 
1 8 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 Their name shows that they were organized by means of the 
 ban, which was the power of the seigneur to issue proclama- 
 tions and to have them executed under penalty of fine ; but the 
 origin of this power is obscure and controverted.^ 
 
 The tenants were obliged to have their grain ground at 
 the banal mill, to have their bread baked in the ba^ial oven, 
 to have their grapes pressed at the banal press ; and each time 
 they had to pay a charge (ordinarily a portion of the grain, of 
 the flour, or of the vintage). The seigneur exacted a pay- 
 ment from the tenants for allowing them to cut wood in his 
 forests, or graze their stock in his pastures, ^ or fish in his 
 waters (ordinarily the seigneur reserved the right to hunt 
 exclusively to himself). The seigneur also imposed the ex- 
 clusive use of his weights and measures, and this was still 
 another occasion for redevances. The seigneur forbade his 
 tenants to sell their grain or their wine within a certain time 
 after the harvest, and during this time he sold his own without 
 competition. All these monopolies were more oppressive to 
 the tenants than profitable to the seigneur. 
 
 Rights of Justice. — These also were redevances, rights 
 which the seigneur levied in virtue of his power of jurisdiction. 
 The people of the middle ages certainly understood it so, for 
 in the acts where the lucrative dependencies of a domain are 
 enumerated, we find justice figuring along with lands, vine- 
 yards, meadows, woods, mills. In almost all the documents 
 of the middle ages, justice means the right of levying fines or 
 the product of those fines. Very often this right was shared 
 with other persons, and mention is made of the half or quarter 
 of the justice of such and such a village. They even came to 
 distinguish between high and low justice (later also middle), 
 
 1 The question most discussed is whether the seigneur acted in virtue of his 
 right as landlord or whether he was exercising a public power, legal (delegated 
 by the sovereign) or usurped. 
 
 ' It is not agreed whether the woods and pastures had always belonged to the 
 landlord, who conceded only the use of them to his tenants, or whether they were 
 formerly goods held in common, later usurped by the seigneur. The latter 
 opinion is connected with a general theory which makes collective ownership ♦" ■ 
 primitive regime of all Europe. It has scarcely any documentary foundati< 
 has been strongly combated by Fustel de Coulanges. 
 
THE PEASANTS • 19 
 
 according to the value of the profits. Ordinarily high justice 
 meant that one had the right of levying fines of -more than 
 sixty sous. They brought under this head the right of con- 
 demning to death, which entailed the right of confiscating the 
 goods of the condemned. 
 
 What was the origin of these justices ? Was the right of 
 rendering public justice, formerly reserved to the sovereign and 
 his functionaries (dukes, counts, centenarii^, given to or usurped 
 by the seigneur .'' Or did he only extend the domestic power 
 exercised from time immemorial by the master over the serfs 
 of his household, by the landlord over the tenants of his lands .-' 
 The problem is not yet considered solved. But we must resist 
 the natural temptation to imagine * ' high justice " as a privi- 
 lege reserved to a few great seigneurs. In France especially, 
 the seigneur of a single village (and at the beginning each 
 village was simply a single domain) almost always had high 
 justice over his tenants. Beaumanoir, at the end of the 
 thirteenth century, says that all the vassals of the count of 
 Clermont had, on their lands, "all justice." If Normandy 
 was an exception, it was because the duke, who organized it, 
 reserved the right of condemning to death (justice of the 
 sword) to himself. We must also remember that justice, 
 having been treated like every other lucrative property, was 
 often divided up, in such manner that the primitive extent of 
 the rights it conferred was rendered unrecognizable, especially 
 in the thirteenth century.^ 
 
 Organized as we see it in the twelfth century, justice was 
 
 a form of the exploitation of tenants by the seigneur. The 
 
 word exploit was even used to designate judicial formalities ; 
 
 tViPv said "subject to taille and to justice", or "subject 
 
 xploitation." And like the taille, justice could be either 
 
 trary or limited ; that is to say, the fine could be either at 
 
 will of the seigneur or fixed at a definite sum. In general, 
 
 The jurists, beginning with the fifteenth century, ceased to understand the 
 I organization of the middle ages and aided in accumulating around the 
 ion of the origin of the justices a mass of clouds which are all brought 
 her in the book of Championnidre: Traite sur la Propriete des Eaux 
 jntes, 1846. 
 
20 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 the amounts had become fixed. Custom finally established 
 a certain fine for each crime. Frequently also the seigneur 
 made a contract with the peasants which regulated the tariff of 
 fines. Here is an example in the year 1239, taken from a 
 village in Belgium (Sirault) ; it shows with what definiteness 
 all cases were provided for: "The spoken insult is at four 
 sous, the lie is at five sous. Whosoever strikes another . . . 
 it is at ten sous, and if blood flows it is at twenty sous. 
 Whosoever draws a cutting weapon without striking, it is at 
 thirty sous. The blow of a club is at twenty sous, and if blood 
 flows, at forty sous. The blow of a cutting weapon is at sixty 
 sous." For grave crimes (murder, arson, rape, and ordinarily 
 larceny) the right of the seigneur remained discretionary. 
 The penalty was death or banishment, and the seigneur con- 
 fiscated all the goods of the condemned. 
 
 Out of the right of justice arose also the redevances the 
 tenants paid to be exempted from attending the three annual 
 judicial assemblies (general pleas) ; the payments levied upon 
 tenants who pleaded among themselves before the tribunal of 
 the seigneur; and probaby the rights of seal, record, notary, 
 paid for having private acts drawn up and authenticated (rights 
 which still subsist). 
 
 Prestations. — Much less important than the redevances, the 
 prestations were irregular charges, requisitions, which the 
 seigneur exacted, though by what title it is often difficult 'o 
 say. The most frequent was the right of entertainment, 
 often to a seigneur who was not the landlord of the vilk 
 The peasants had to receive the seigneur when he came 
 the village, lodge him and his escort, horses, dogs, 
 falcons, serve a meal to the men and feed the animals, 
 ruinous obligation was gradually regulated. Custom es' 
 lished how often the seigneur had the right to demand ho 
 tality (ordinarily three times per year), how many men 
 animals he could bring along, and how liberally he was enti 
 to be served at table. Then the right was converted intc 
 annual tax. 
 
 The right of seizure was the right of the seigneur to t 
 
THE PEASANTS 21 
 
 what he must have for the needs of his house, provisions, 
 beasts of burden, ploughs, fodder, even beds; ordinarily at 
 some price, either arbitrary or fixed. The right of credit 
 permitted the seigneur to require merchants to give him on 
 credit the articles he demanded of them. Ordinarily the time 
 of the credit was limited. 
 
 Corv6es. — The corvee, that is to say, the obligation to go 
 and perform certain work in person, existed before the middle 
 ages, and under two forms : the landlord exacted corvees from 
 his tenants, for his service; the State imposed corvees upon 
 the inhabitants for the maintenance of roads and bridges. 
 Both reappear in the middle ages, but by far the more 
 important were the corvees of the landlord. 
 
 The tenants had to aid the seigneur in cultivating his 
 domain : they must plough his fields, dress his vines, harvest 
 his grain, mow his meadows, draw in his sheaves and his hay. 
 Usually these services were regulated : the tenant subject to 
 corvee owed a fixed number of days per year; he owed either 
 simply the work of his hands {fnanoperae), or the service of 
 his beasts, of his plough, of his carts {carroperae). Custom 
 sometimes decided that he should be supported by the sei- 
 gneur, and how he should be supported. 
 
 The tenants had to do transport service for the seigneur, fetch 
 firewood, stone, furniture, and food. They had to perform 
 the seigneur's commissions. They had to keep up the roads, 
 repair buildings, clean out the castle moats and the seigneur's 
 fish-ponds. They owed assistance in case of flood or of fire. 
 They must aid the seigneur in his wars, go and mount guard 
 in his castle by day or by night (this was the guetd), construct 
 fortifications, dig moats, make palisades; they were even 
 obliged to follow him to war when he made an expedition into 
 the neighboring country (this was the exercitus, or hostis, and 
 avalcatd). 
 
 >f the old State corvees those for the maintenance of high- 
 , of bridges, and of dikes were perhaps preserved ; but it 
 ficult to distinguish them from the corvees established by 
 i 3igneur for his own profit. 
 
22 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 The Intendant. — To collect so many different rights, to 
 exact so many services, was a complicated and absorbing task. 
 The seigneur did not care to take it upon himself. Except 
 in the case of some convents perhaps there could not be found 
 in the middle ages a single great domain managed directly 
 by the seigneur. Everywhere the seigneur delegated his 
 powers to an intendant; the tenants had relations only with 
 the intendant. An analogous regime subsists still on the great 
 estates of Hungary and Russia. 
 
 We have not documents enough upon the domains of small 
 lay seigneurs to say how affairs were managed there. Almost 
 all we are acquainted with is the exploitation of the ecclesias- 
 tical domains and of those of the great seigneurs. 
 
 It seems that at the beginning there was an intendant in 
 each domain, ordinarily a peasant, sometimes even a serf. 
 The Latin texts call him now major, now by an old Roman 
 name, villicus\ in German he is called Meier, or Schultheiss 
 (collector). He held a more important tenure than the other 
 tenants. Frequently the functions became fixed in the same 
 family, and the domain, from the eleventh century, was 
 administered by an hereditary mayor whom the proprietor 
 could no longer dismiss. Where the domain belonged to 
 several seigneurs, the intendant often continued to administer 
 it for all; the joint owners then came to an agreement as to 
 the division of revenues and profits. 
 
 But in the thirteenth century, in the case of a great number 
 of villages, there appears to have been a division among 
 several intendants who each acted for a different seigneur. 
 We see very frequently, especially upon the domain of a con- 
 vent, an intendant charged with the administration of tenants 
 scattered in several villages. This was a consequence of the 
 dismemberment of the villa. The isolated tenures were then 
 attached artificially to a center of exploitation located outside 
 of the territory of the village; the intendant's house was 
 situated in a village of the environs: in Germany this was 
 called the Frohnhof (the corvee house). 
 
 When a seigneur possessed several villages in the 5 -"^ 
 
THE PEASANTS 23 
 
 quarter he put them in one group and entrusted them to a 
 superior intendant, called in the north provost {praeposittis), 
 in the south baile {bajuhis), in Germany Amman, in some 
 places chatelain. Also these intendants frequently became 
 hereditary; and there were even infeudated provostships, that 
 is to say, given in fief. The name provost was applied also 
 to the intendant of a single village. 
 
 The intendant represented the landlord, who left to him 
 the exercise of all his rights. He managed the reserve, kept 
 the buildings in repair, cultivated the fields, harvested the 
 crops. He called for and superintended the corvees. He 
 levied the redevances that were fixed and fixed those that 
 were variable, usually after having consulted the notables of 
 the village "in order to find out each one's means." He 
 farmed out the oven, the mill, the wine-press, the market. 
 He saw that the ban was cried. He had evil-doers arrested, 
 rendered justice, collected fines and executed persons sen- 
 tenced to death. He led the tenants to the army of the 
 seigneur. 
 
 Ordinarily the intendant received no salary for his services : 
 he looked after his pay himself, by keeping a part of the profits. 
 In France, from the twelfth century, the provostships even 
 came to be farmed out ; they were sold to the highest bidder 
 for a certain number of years. The intendant was by no 
 means a functionary who was paid to administer a village; his 
 post brought him what he could make out of it, for it rested 
 with him to take much or little from the tenants. The petty 
 rapine and innumerable vexations which such a regime stood 
 for can easily be gathered from the example of the Russian 
 intendants before the abolition of serfdom. 
 
 Characteristics and Extent of the Seigneurial R6gime. — It is 
 dly possible by a single case to give a full idea of so com- 
 ated and varied a regime. The following example is taken 
 n an ecclesiastical domain in the thirteenth century, in a 
 vince (Normandy) where the condition of the villains was 
 :e favorable. The details, drawn from a short satirical 
 m which pictures the life of the villains of Verson, are 
 
2 4 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 confirmed by the cartulary of the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel, 
 by which the village was controlled. 
 
 The tenants must fetch stone, mix mortar, and serve the 
 masons. Toward the last of June, on demand they must 
 mow and turn hay and draw it to the manor-house. In 
 August they must reap the convent's grain, put it in, sheaves 
 and draw it in. For their tenure they owe the champart: they 
 cannot remove their sheaves before they have been to seek the 
 assessor of the champart, who deducts his due, and they must 
 cart his part to the champart-barn ; during this time their own 
 grain remains exposed to the wind and rain. On the eighth of 
 September the villain owes his pork-due, one pig in eight; he 
 has the right to take out two, the third choice belongs to the 
 seigneur. On the ninth of October he pays the cens. At Christ- 
 mas he owes his chicken-due ; also the grain-due of two sellers 
 of barley and a quart of wheat. On Palm Sunday he owes his 
 sheep-due ; and if he does not pay it on the day set the sei- 
 gneur fines him, arbitrarily. At Easter he owes corvee : by 
 way of corvee he must plough, sow and harrow. If the villain 
 sells his land, he owes the seigneur the thirteenth part of its 
 value. If he marries his daughter to any one outside the 
 seigneury, he pays a marriage-right of three sous. He is sub- 
 jected to the mill-ban and the oven-ban: his wife goes to get 
 bread ; she pays the customary charges ; ^ the woman at the 
 oven grumbles — for she is " very proud and haughty" — and 
 the man at the oven complains of not having his due; he 
 swears that the oven will be poorly heated and that the vil- 
 lain's bread will be all raw and not well browned. The 
 picture stops with this trait, which shows the villains a prey 
 to the bickerings of subalterns. 
 
 This agricultural regime is not what we are used to. It 
 unites in a confused whole all the systems which we now see 
 working separately. To-day we have cultivation on a large 
 scale, practised by the large landowners, and cultivation on s 
 small scale, practised by the small landowners. The middk 
 ages was a time of ownership on a large scale and cultivatior 
 
 [^ They are specified in the original : "fournage, letortel, Taiage."] 
 
THE PEASANTS 25 
 
 on a small scale ; the great landowner distributed the larger 
 part of his domain among peasants who practised cultivation 
 on a small scale in the manner of our small landowners. 
 To-day the landowner who does not cultivate his land him- 
 self usually chooses between two plans : either he exploits it 
 directly through laborers paid by the day, or he gives it over 
 to a farmer or renter for a definite sum or for a share of the 
 produce. In the latter case he takes back the land on the 
 expiration of the contract. In the middle ages the owner 
 employed the same men as day-laborers on his reserve and as 
 renters on the lands that he did not exploit directly. But they 
 were day-laborers who received no pay and hereditary renters 
 from whom he could not take back the land they cultivated.^ 
 
 The landowner, in allowing generations of tenants to suc- 
 ceed each other upon the same soil, by a sort of prescription 
 ,lost his absolute right of disposing of the land. The tenants, 
 in return for this hereditary possession, remained subject to 
 pecuniary or personal charges, which constituted a sort of rent. 
 These pecuniary charges and these corvees, which were due to 
 the seigneur, cannot therefore be compared to a tax or a 
 public prestation; they rested upon the same principle that 
 underlies the obligations of modern farmers and renters: they 
 grew out of the right of the owner to make the tenant pay for 
 the service rendered him in lending him land. The difference 
 is that while our farmers have but a precarious possession and 
 are in danger of seeing their charges increased at the end of 
 the lease, the tenant of the middle ages enjoyed an assured 
 possession, encumbered only with fixed charges. He was 
 consequently in a firmer situation, one that was nearer to 
 ownership. And yet the feudal rights (as they were im- 
 properly called later) were destined to become so odious that 
 it was necessary to abolish them in all Europe. This was 
 because the peasants, become hereditary possessors, finally 
 looked upon their tenure as a property encumbered with servi- 
 ^"des. They deemed themselves owners, not farmers. The 
 
 ^ There were also temporary farmers and renters, like ours, especially after the 
 Ifth century. But this was exceptional. 
 
26 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 seigneur seemed to them a parasite who rendered them no 
 service in exchange for what he took from them. 
 
 The other characteristic trait of this regime is that there 
 was no State over the seigneur to step in between him and his 
 peasants, as the modern State steps in between the owners and 
 the farmers. " Between thy villain and thee there is no other 
 judge but God," says a French jurist of the thirteenth century. 
 In most countries the tenants did not have even the right to 
 come together to deliberate on their common interests, except 
 by the permission of the seigneur. Illicit assemblage was a 
 crime punishable by an arbitrary fine. Thus the peasants 
 were irremediably subject to the seigneur and to his intendant. 
 The seigneur, too, was at the same time party and judge, and 
 no superior power obliged him to remain within the limits of 
 his rights. The condition of the peasants therefore depended 
 upon the character of the seigneur and of the intendant, and 
 consequently always remained precarious. 
 
 We should be giving ourselves a false impression if we 
 imagined that all the peasants of Europe were under the regime 
 which we have just described. During the entire middle ages 
 there remained some peasants who were full owners, inde- 
 pendent of the seigneurs of the neighborhood, subject only to 
 the prince of the country, sometimes even organized into com- 
 munities: the freeholders of Aquitaine, the mountaineers of 
 Beam, of Bigorre and of the Basque countries, the free men 
 of Schwyz and Appenzell, the free peasants of the Alps, of 
 Westphalia and of Friesland, — not to speak of the farmers of 
 Normandy, the English free tenants and the emphyteutas of 
 Italy. But such persons formed only scattered and widely 
 separated groups; and we should be giving ourselves a much 
 falser impression still if we imagined that even as many as a 
 quarter, say, of the peasants of the middle ages were in the 
 condition of these privileged few. 
 
II 
 
 THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 
 
 The Nobles ; their Arms. — In all the Europe of the middle 
 ages, those that were rich enough not to have to work formed 
 a privileged class, sharply separated from the rest of society. 
 All who were in this upper class, except the clergy, were 
 warriors by profession. 
 
 Charlemagne already had required that all the free men of 
 his empire should bear arms. The necessity of defending 
 oneself, the taste for idleness and adventure, and the prejudice 
 in favor of the warrior's life led in all Europe to the formation 
 of an aristocracy of men of arms. There was no need of the 
 State's higher authority to impose military service. The life 
 of war being alone esteemed among laymen, each one sought 
 to lead it; the class of men of arms included all who had the 
 means to enter it. 
 
 The first condition was to be able to equip oneself at one's 
 own expense. Now, from the ninth century, almost all com- 
 bat was on horseback; accordingly the warrior of the middle 
 ages called himself in France chevalier, in southern France 
 caver, in Spain caballero, in Germany Ritter. In the Latin 
 texts the ancient name of the soldier, miles, became synony- 
 mous with chevalier. 
 
 In all Europe, war was carried on under the same condi- 
 tions and the men of arms were equipped in about the same 
 way. The man completely armed for battle — the chevalier, or 
 knight — had his body protected by armor. Down to the end 
 of the eleventh century this was the byrnie, a tunic of leather 
 
 loth covered with metal scales or rings; then the byrnie 
 
 27 
 
2 8 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 was everywhere replaced by the hauberk/ a coat of metal mail 
 with sleeves and a hood, opening at the top in such fashion 
 that it could be put on like a shirt. The hauberk at first came 
 down to the feet ; when it was shortened to the knee the legs 
 were covered with greaves of mail, which protected the feet 
 and to which was fastened the spur, of the form of a lance-point. 
 The hood concealed the neck and the head, and came up to 
 the chin, allowing simply the eyes, nose and mouth to show. 
 At the moment of combat the knight covered his head with 
 the helm, a steel cap in the shape of a rimmed cone, topped 
 by a circular knob of metal or glass, the crest, and provided 
 with a blade of iron which protected the nose, the nasal. ^ 
 This helm was laced to the hauberk with leather strings. 
 Only in the fourteenth century appear the armor of metal plates 
 and the visored casque, which were to last down to the seven- 
 teenth century — the armor of Bayard and of Henry IV, 
 which we are too often tempted to imagine as characteristic 
 of the knights of the middle ages. 
 
 To parry blows, the knights carried the ecu, a buckler of 
 wood and of leather bound together by bands of metal, pro- 
 vided in the center with a buckle of gilded iron (whence the 
 name buckler). The ecu, after having been round, became 
 oblong, and lengthened out in a manner to cover a man on 
 horseback from his shoulder to his foot. It was carried sus- 
 pended from the neck by a wide strap; at the moment of 
 combat it was swung to the left arm by means of handles 
 placed on the inside. It was on the ecu that the arms which 
 each family had adopted as its emblem were painted, beginning 
 with the twelfth century. The offensive arms were the sword, 
 ordinarily wide and short, with a flat pommel, and the lance, 
 made of a long thin shaft (of ash or elm), terminated by a 
 lozenge-shaped point. Above the point was nailed a rectan- 
 gular band of cloth, the gonfalon, which floated in the wind. 
 
 * In the Bayeux tapestry, made some years after the conquest of England 
 (1066), the greater part of the knights are represented as wearing the byrnie, but 
 some have the hauberk. 
 
 ^ The nasal disappeared at the end of the twelfth century. 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 29 
 
 The lance could be stuck into the ground by the handle, which 
 ended in an iron point. 
 
 Thus covered and armed, the knight was well-nigh invul- 
 nerable ; and his armor was brought nearer and nearer perfec- 
 tion, rendering him like a living fortress. But in consequence 
 he was so heavy that he had to have a special horse to carry 
 him in battle. He was provided with two horses : the palfrey, 
 which he rode when on a journey, and the dextraruis, led 
 along by a valet. The moment before combat the knight put 
 on his armor, mounted his dextrarius and went forward, hold- 
 ing his lance before him. 
 
 The knights were looked upon as the only real men of 
 arms; the accounts of combats speak only of them; they alone 
 formed the battle-lines. But other cavaliers went with them 
 on their expeditions, who were covered with a tunic and a 
 bonnet, provided with a lighter and less costly equipment, 
 armed with a small buckler, a narrow sword, a pike, an axe 
 or a bow, and mounted upon horses of less strength. They 
 were the indispensable companions of the knight ; they led his 
 battle-horse,^ carried his buckler, helped him put on his armor 
 the moment before combat and mount into the saddle. In 
 consequence they were ordinarily called valets or squires ; in 
 Latin, scutifer or armigcr (he who carries the shield or the 
 armor). For a long time the knights kept these valets of 
 arms at a distance ; even at the end of the eleventh century 
 the Chanson de Roland speaks of squires as of an inferior class. 
 They kept their head shaved, like servants, and at table they 
 were served a coarser bread. But little by little the brother- 
 hood of arms brought the knights and the squires together. 
 In the thirteenth century they formed one class, the highest in 
 lay society, and the ancient Latin name of noble {iiobilis), 
 which designated the first class (in German edel), was given 
 to them all. 
 
 Degrees of Nobility. — To lead the life of a warrior it was 
 essary to have the means to live without working. In the 
 Idle ages no one was noble unless he had a revenue suffi- 
 
 1 On the right, whence the name dextrarius. 
 
30 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 cient to support him. Ordinarily this revenue was furnished 
 by a landed estate : the noble possessed ^ a domain ; and as he 
 did not cultivate it himself (honor forbade that), he had it 
 cultivated by his tenants. In this way the noble usually 
 exploited at least a few families oT villains, in relation to whom 
 he was a seigneur (in Latin dommus ; whence the Spanish Don). 
 But while a sufficient revenue was the practical condition in 
 order to be a noble, there were inequalities of possession 
 among the nobles, glaring inequalities which established a 
 series of degrees, from the squire to the king. The people 
 of the time saw these degrees clearly enough, and even dis- 
 tinguished them by names. 
 
 In the highest grade were the princes who had some titled 
 dignity (kings, dukes, marquises, counts), sovereigns of an 
 entire province, possessors of hundreds of villages, who could 
 take several thousand knights to war. 
 
 Then came the higher nobles, ordinarily possessors of many 
 villages, who led a troup of knights to war with them. As 
 they had no official title they were designated by names of 
 common speech, whose meaning was vague and somewhat 
 elastic ; names which differed with the country but were used 
 synonomously. The most frequent were : baron, in the west 
 and south of France and in the Norman regions ; sire or 
 seigneur'^ in the east (baron designated the man, the man par 
 excellence; sire signified both leader and master). In Lom- 
 bardy they were called captains, in Spain ricos Jioinbrcs (rich 
 men). In Germany people said Hcrr, which corresponds to 
 seigneur; in England, lord; the translation into Latin was 
 dommus (master). Later they were also called bannerets, 
 because, to rally their men, they had a square banner at the 
 end of their lance. 
 
 Under these came the bulk of the ancient nobility, the 
 knights (in German Rittcr, in English knight, in Spanish 
 caballero, in Latin miles), possessors of a domain which con- 
 
 ^ It will be shown farther on in what different ways a noble could be s 
 sessor. 
 
 ' Sire is the nominative, seigneur the accusative. 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 31 
 
 sisted, according to the richness of the country, of an entire 
 village or of a portion of a village. Almost all were in the 
 service of some great seigneur, from whom they held their 
 domain; they followed him on his expeditions. This, though, 
 did not hinder them from making war on their own account. 
 They were sometimes called bachelors, in Lombardy vavasors. 
 Also one finds the striking expression miles iiniiis sciiti, knight 
 of a single shield, who had no other knight under his orders. 
 
 At the bottom of the ladder were the squires. At first 
 simple valets of arms in the service of a knight, they became 
 possessors of lands (of the extent of what we to-day call a 
 great estate) and in the thirteenth century they lived as 
 masters in the midst of their tenants. In Germany they were 
 designated as EdclknecJit (noble valet), in England squire 
 (corruption of the word ecuyer), in Spain infanzon. They 
 formed the bulk of the nobility in the thirteenth century, and 
 in following centuries ennobled bourgeois proudly took the 
 title of squire. 
 
 We can thus distinguish four degrees, which correspond 
 roughly to military grades; the princes, dukes, and count? 
 would be generals, the barons captains, the knights soldiers, 
 the squires servants. But in this strange army, where the 
 groups of which it was composed made war against each othei' 
 and where wealth decided rank, the community of life finally 
 attenuated differences to the point where all, from the general 
 to the valet, began to feel themselves members of the same 
 class. Then the nobility was definitely constituted, then it 
 came to be a closed and isolated class. 
 
 In the thirteenth century it became the custom to divide 
 men rigorously into two classes, the nobles or gentlemen (well- 
 born men) and the not-nobles, who were called in France 
 customary men or subject-men (the word roturier was not used 
 in the middle ages). And these classes became rigorously 
 hereditary. The noble families refused to mix with descend- 
 ants of not-noble families. A man who was not the son of a 
 noble was not allowed the privilege of becoming a knight, 
 even though he was rich enough to lead the life of a knight; 
 
32 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 the daughter of a not-noble could not marry a noble; he who 
 consented to marry her made a misalliance and thereby dis- 
 honored himself; his wife would not be received in the noble 
 families, and his children would not be treated by the nobles 
 as equals. This heredity, which appears less marked in the 
 documents of the preceding centuries, became the dominant 
 trait of society down to the eighteenth century. In proportion 
 as degrees between the nobles were effaced, the noblesse 
 became more separated from the rest of the nation. It was in 
 France and Germany that the aristocratic sentiment established 
 itself most strongly. It was weakened in Spain, especially in 
 the south, by contact with the rich inhabitants of the Moorish 
 towns, and in Italy and perhaps in the south of France by the 
 social influence of the merchants. In England, where habitual 
 warfare ended early, nothing distinguished the squire from the 
 rich peasant; the demarcation was established much higher, 
 between the lords and the rest of the nation, and the privileged 
 class was reduced to a high aristocracy of limited numbers. 
 
 Chivalry. — The warlike society formed by the knights had 
 its usages to which all were bound. The arms of the knight 
 were difficult to handle; before bearing them, it was necessary 
 to have served an apprenticeship. It was an honor to bear 
 them ; before doing so one must have been declared worthy of 
 this honor. No one was born a knight; he was made a knight 
 by a solemn ceremony; the king himself had to be made a 
 knight. 
 
 Every young noble began by learning the metier of a man 
 of arms : to mount a horse, to handle arms, to climb a scaling- 
 ladder. But he could serve his apprenticeship either in his 
 father's house (which especially the sons of great families did) 
 or in that of a stranger (apparently the more usual procedure). 
 Ordinarily the father sent his son to a seigneur richer than 
 himself, who took the young man into his service and brought 
 him up; whence the expression nourri, often found in the 
 chansons de gcste (the seigneur said: my nonrrt). Appren- 
 ticeship was complicated with the service of squire; but with 
 this service of a valet of arms was joined the service of a valet 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 33 
 
 de chambre, a characteristic of chivalry customs. The squire 
 assisted his seigneur in dressing- and undressing; he brought 
 in the courses and served at table; he made the beds. These 
 duties, which the ancients regarded as debasing and imposed 
 upon their slaves, were honorable in the eyes of the nobles of 
 the middle ages (so had they been in the eyes of the Ger- 
 mans: Tacitus made note of it). During this period, which 
 lasted from five to seven years, the young noble, called a 
 squire or page (little seigneur), did not have the right to bear 
 arms. 
 
 When he had finished his apprenticeship, ordinarily at from 
 eighteen to twenty years old, if he was rich enough to lead 
 the life of a knight, he entered into knighthood by a martial 
 ceremony, described in the cha7isons de gestc. The young 
 man first went through a bath, then donned the hauberk and 
 helmet. A knight, sometimes his father, more often the sei- 
 gneur who had brought him up, girded him with the sword 
 which he was thenceforth to carry. This was called dubbing 
 and was the essential act. Ordinarily the knight struck the 
 young man a blow of the fist upon the back of the neck : this 
 was the accolade. Afterward the new knight mounted his 
 horse, took a lance, and did an exercise in galloping and in 
 striking at a manikin prepared in advance: this was the 
 quintain. Such was the ceremony of making a knight in the 
 twelfth century. It was sometimes even reduced to a single 
 act, the colee, the blow upon the neck: this was a means of 
 avoiding expense. Beaumanoir speaks of an inquest which, 
 to be vahd, called for a fixed number of knights. As one 
 was lacking to their number they forthwith made a knight of 
 a gentleman present. One of them gave him a blow and 
 said to him : "Be thou a knight. ' ' 
 
 Later the clergy introduced acts which turned the entrance 
 into knighthood into a complicated religious ceremony.^ After 
 a fast, the young man passed the night preceding the dubbing 
 
 ^ There is an Italian formulary for blessing the sword which dates from the 
 end of the eleventh century, but the usage did not spread until the thirteenth 
 century. 
 
34 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 in prayers: this was the vigil of arms. In the morning he 
 went to mass; the sword was laid upon the altar, as if to 
 consecrate it to the service of God; the priest blessed it: 
 *' Lord, hear my prayers and deign to bless with Thy majestic 
 hand this sword which Thy servant . . . desires to gird upon 
 him." Then came a sermon, in which his duties toward the 
 church, the poor and the widowed were recalled to the future 
 knight. 
 
 They usually chose for the ceremony either the great feast- 
 days, especially Easter and Pentecost, or some exceptional 
 event, the marriage or baptism of a prince ; or even the occa- 
 sion of a battle. In that case they dubbed a whole troop of 
 new knights at the same time. 
 
 Only the rich became knights. Men of gentle rank who 
 were poor did not care to bear the cost of the ceremony and 
 the expense of the knight's life; they preferred to remain 
 squires. There were consequently two sorts of squires, those 
 who were not old enough and those who were not rich enough 
 to become knights. In England, where knighthood was use- 
 less, almost all gentlemen ceased to have themselves received 
 into knighthood and were content to remain squires. 
 
 Donjons, Castles and Manor-houses. — The noble of the 
 middle ages was not only a warrior ; he made a fortress of his 
 dwelling. Already the great Roman landlords had sometimes 
 fortified their country houses ; but the custom does not appear 
 to have become general in France until toward the tenth 
 century. 
 
 Of the old fortified houses of this time not one has been 
 preserved. We know them only through rare remains and by 
 scattered allusions in the writers. It seems that these strong- 
 holds {firmitates) were made only of wood and earth. 
 Immediately around the site where one wished to build he 
 dug a wide, deep foss; the earth, thrown up on the inside, 
 formed an artificial mound, the motte. For an outer defence 
 square wooden posts were set in the ground and strongly 
 bound together in such a way as to form a continuous palisade, 
 which oftentimes was fortified from place to place by wooden 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 35 
 
 towers. Within this enclosure were erected the wooden build- 
 ings which served as lodgings for the servants, as stables, 
 granaries and storehouses. Dominating all rose a large 
 square tower, of wood, which was covered in case of siege with 
 skins of fresh-slain beasts, to prevent its being set on fire : this 
 was the donjon {dominiunt), that is to say, the house of the 
 master. The door was a little above the ground, and was 
 reached only by a wooden stair which led down over the foss 
 toward the open country. Such were the donjons of the north 
 in the tenth century.^ 
 
 In the south of France the earth and wood were replaced 
 by stone. Thick walls and square towers were built of 
 masonry, in imitation of the Roman fortified towers {castra). 
 Toward the twelfth century this custom became general in 
 Europe. Then the square towers and right angles were 
 replaced by round tov/ers and rounded corners, more advan- 
 tageous for defence. These constructions retained the Latin 
 name castelluni (diminutive of castruni) ; in the south, castel\ 
 in the north, chateau; in English, castle. Often they were 
 also called pies sis (palisade). 
 
 The castle consisted of a group of fortifications. It was 
 built on a scarped hill, on a rocky promontory, or on an arti- 
 ficial height, a motte, in a position to dominate the environs. 
 It was always isolated, either by a continuous moat, which 
 was filled with water when possible, or at least by a cut on 
 the side of the mountain. Means of defence were multiplied. 
 Coming from the open country one was first confronted by the 
 barbican (devised after the thirteenth century), a fortification 
 out beyond the moat. Next came the moat, which was often 
 filled with water. Behind the moat stood a palisade called 
 the barriers. Behind these barriers was a space encircling the 
 enclosing wall, or curtains. This wall was sloping at the 
 base, and was thick and high. Those who were besieged 
 could move about at its summit, on a circular path constructed 
 in its thickness, and hurl missiles through apertures called 
 
 [^ Compare the illustration in VioUet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire de V Architecturt 
 Fran^aise du XI ^ au XVI ^ Siecle, vol. iii. p. 64.] 
 
36 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 crenelles. They could also throw stones or pour molten pitch 
 or boiling oil from galleries covered by open work which pro- 
 jected out from the crenelles in a way to permit dropping such 
 matter directly over the foot of the wall (down to the thirteenth 
 century these galleries were of wood and were called honrds\ 
 they were replaced by machicoulis of stone). This enclosure 
 protected all the buildings. 
 
 To enter the castle in time of peace, one crossed the moat, 
 no longer on a stair but on a drawbridge suspended by chains, 
 the raising of which interrupted communication. Next one 
 arrived before a massive door protected by the barrier and 
 by the portcullis, an iron gate which had only to be let down 
 to close the passage. Finally, on going through this vaulted 
 door (which was guarded by a porter) one came within the 
 enclosure to the bailey, a court surrounded by buildings 
 (granaries, storerooms, chapel, kitchen, out-houses); in some 
 great castles an entire village might be found there. It was 
 to this place that the tenants of the neighborhood betook 
 themselves and their goods and chattels in case of war. 
 
 The principal structure was always the donjon, which had 
 become a colossal tower of three or four stories. One reached 
 the door by the perron, a stone stair. The donjon of 
 Beaugency was about one hundred and thirty feet high and 
 eighty in diameter, that of Coucy about two hundred and ten 
 feet high and one hundred in diameter. Here the master 
 lived, had his grand hall where he received guests,^ his room, 
 rooms for his family, and his treasure. Underground he had 
 his prison, dark, damp, dirty, into which prisoners were 
 lowered by a ladder or rope. At the summit was the lodge 
 where the watch kept lookout over the environs. The seigneur 
 could defend himself in the donjon even after the enemy had 
 forced the enclosing wall. 
 
 Throughout Europe these fortresses became the homes of 
 the seigneurs, so that the word castle has kept the meaning of 
 a luxurious habitation. But only the rich could stand the cost 
 
 ^ The greatest seigneurs sometimes had a special hall outside of the donjon, the 
 palace (in German Fallas). 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 37 
 
 of these massive buildings. In consequence at first there was 
 a castle only where a seigneur lived who possessed a small 
 town or several villages, so that in some countries the name 
 chatellany was given later to a territory formed by the group 
 of villages connected with a chateau. The number of castles 
 grew with the increase of wealth, but down to the end of the 
 middle ages there never were as many castles as there were 
 knights. 
 
 The nobles of less means contented themselves with a 
 house made strong by thick walls, by a massive door which 
 was sometimes defended by a machicoulis, and by high 
 windows. This was the manor-house (from manere, to inhabit), 
 which sufficed to resist a surprise. The nobles living in the 
 towns — and they were numerous, especially in Italy, in Spain, 
 and in the south of France — had strong houses built there 
 which were very like the manor-houses of the country. 
 
 These donjons, manors and strong houses all had thick 
 high walls; winding stairs lighted by loopholes; and damp, 
 somber rooms, where the light entered only through narrow 
 openings. They were fortresses, not pleasant homes. Life 
 in them was sad, especially during the long winter evenings. 
 In fair weather people gladly remained in the orchard, outside 
 of the enclosure. A scholar who loved the middle ages ^ 
 tried to count up the pleasures which a seigneur might enjoy. __ \\m 
 He found fifteen: hunting, fishing, fencing, jousting, playing 
 chess, eating and drinking, listening to the songs of the 
 jongleurs, watching bear-fights, receiving guests, talking with 
 the ladies, holding his court, walking in the meadows, warm- 
 ing himself, having himself cupped and bled, and watching the 
 snow fall. These pleasures were scarcely enough to keep the 
 nobles at home. When possible they visited the court of a 
 prince, or they went on expeditions into distant countries. 
 The nobles were as ready to move as the peasants were 
 sedentary. Nevertheless, through their castle or their manor- 
 house, they remained attached to the land, as is seen by their 
 very names : from the twelfth century almost all surnames of 
 
 ^ Leon Gautier, La Chevalerie. 
 
38 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 nobles were land-names (Bouchard de Montmorency, Enguer- 
 rand de Coucy).^ 
 
 % Homage and Fief. — It will be a matter of astonishment, 
 perhaps, that in this description of feudal society no mention 
 should have been made as yet of feudal relations. This is 
 because the society of the middle ages did not necessarily 
 imply feudality. It was indeed constituted in certain coun- 
 tries (England before the eleventh century, Poland, Hungary) 
 with the features just described but without any feudal char- 
 acter; and for a long time there remained, even in the most 
 strongly feudal countries, not only tenants but knights that 
 were strangers to all feudal relationship. 
 
 However, the warriors of the middle ages did not live 
 independent of each other. As early as the capitularies of 
 Charlemagne we see some who were attached, probably for 
 life, to a chief who led them to war. The chief was already 
 called seigneur, the men vassals (which seems to have meant 
 servants). These names were to go down through the middle 
 ages. The seigneur was always a rich personage, a dignitary 
 or a great landowner. He equipped, fed, kept, perhaps even 
 paid, a troop of knights and squires who served him as social 
 companions and as body-guards.^ The seigneur and his men 
 lived together in the same hall, ate together, and went on 
 expeditions together. The vassal was really a servant: he 
 waited on his seigneur at table ; he had to obey him and to 
 follow him everywhere; in battle it was his duty to give up 
 his life to protect him. But this position of servant was 
 mingled with a sentiment of comradeship which, without 
 effacing distances, created a close relation of mutual devotion ; 
 a relation which was symbolized by the oath the vassal took 
 on entering the service of the seigneur. 
 
 ^ These names naturally took the form de ; whence the presumption that the 
 "particle," as it is called (de in the Romance languages, von in German), is a 
 mark of nobility. This is a double error. There were, even in the sixteenth 
 century, knights who had only the patronymic; and on the other hand thousands 
 of not-nobles were called by the name of a domain or village. 
 
 ^ In the chansons de geste this troop is called the tnaisnie (household) of the 
 seigneur. 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 39 
 
 This regime, to which the documents of the ninth century- 
 allude, is also that which the chansons de gcste . describe, 
 although much later (twelfth and thirteenth centuries). 
 Whether it still existed in the tenth and eleventh centuries we 
 can neither affirm nor deny; the warriors did not write much, 
 and the acts — if there ever were any — of the noble lay fami- 
 lies have not come down to us. Consequently the origin of 
 feudality has remained a matter for inconclusive discussions. 
 One thing seems certain, that from the tenth century it was 
 an established usage in France to pay the vassal no longer in 
 money or produce, but by giving him a domain — a domain 
 provided with tenants. This was not a new kind of gift; it 
 was the beneficiiim. No other name is employed in the Latin 
 acts, in Germany and in Italy, down to the end of the eleventh 
 century. In France appears the 'word feviim or feodum (fief); 
 the first examples known to be authentic are from the beginning 
 of the tenth century. In eastern France the domain given by 
 the seigneur was called a chasement [casamentum, an establish- 
 ment). Thereafter the vassal, instead of remaining near his 
 seigneur, established himself upon the domain he had received ; 
 but he continued to be his man. It is not proved that every 
 vassal necessarily received a fief, even in the twelfth century. 
 But at least no one could receive a fief without becoming the 
 vassal of him who gave it, and almost all vassals possessed a 
 fief. 
 
 As in the time of Charlemagne the vassal bound himself to 
 the seigneur by a solemn act, for one was not born a vassal; 
 he became one, and he had to become one to be able to enjoy 
 the fief. This is why the ceremony creating vassalage was 
 preserved through the centuries: it served to declare the right 
 of the seigneur. The old ceremonial seems to have been very 
 much the same in all countries. The future vassal presented 
 himself before his seigneur to be, bareheaded and without 
 arms. He knelt before him, put his hands in the hands of the 
 seigneur and declared himself his man. The seigneur kissed 
 him on the mouth and lifted him to his feet. Such was the 
 ceremony of homage. It was accompanied by an oath: the 
 
40 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 vassal swore, with his hand upon rehcs or upon the Bible, to 
 remain faithful to the seigneur; that is to say, to fulfil the 
 duties of a vassal. This was the act of fidelity, or fealty. 
 Homage and fealty were two distinct acts: the one was an 
 engagement, the other an oath ; but, as there never was 
 homage without fealty, the two were finally confounded. 
 
 As a recompense for this engagement, the seigneur ceded 
 to the vassal the possession of a fief which belonged to him : 
 this was ordinarily a piece of land ; it could be any sort of 
 object or lucrative privilege. The seigneur transferred his 
 right by a solemn act: he put the vassal in possession of the 
 fief by giving him a bit of straw, or a stick, or a lance, or a 
 glove, which symbolized the object transferred. This was 
 called investiture (invest signified to put in possession of). 
 What the seigneur transferred was not the ownership of the 
 fief, but only the usufruct ; legally he remained owner. The 
 contract bound only the contracting parties and was valid 
 only during their life. At the death of the vassal, the fief 
 reverted to the seigneur; at the death of the seigneur, the 
 vassal could keep the fief only by engaging himself anew to 
 the new seigneur. 
 
 It seems that at first the seigneur, on the death of the 
 vassal, made use of his right to take back the fief in order to 
 give it to whomever he pleased. The heroes of the chansons 
 de gcstc often proceeded in this manner, and we find exam- 
 ples of life fiefs even in the twelfth century. But the custom 
 that the son should enter into the condition of his father was 
 so strong in the middle ages that the seigneurs resigned them- 
 selves to allowing their vassals to bequeath their condition to 
 their sons. Thus the heredity of fiefs was established; or to 
 speak more exactly, what became hereditary was the right of 
 contracting vassalship toward the seigneur of the fief. The 
 fief itself never became hereditary, since the seigneur remained 
 its legal owner; the contract for the usufruct never ceased to 
 be for life : it had to be renewed with each generation of 
 vassals, with each generation of seigneur. It was merely the 
 right to renew this contract that became hereditary; but in 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 41 
 
 practice this was equivalent to heredity of possession. This 
 evolution was already almost accomplished, in France, at the 
 end of the tenth century; it was confirmed, in Lombardy, by 
 an edict of King Conrad II, in 1037; it was prolonged, in 
 Germany, into the thirteenth century. 
 
 Feudal Obligations. — The fief was not given gratuitously. 
 It imposed upon the vassal certain obligations toward the 
 seigneur. These obligations always rested upon the same 
 general conception, formulated everywhere and at all times in 
 the same terms; the applications alone varied. 
 
 Above all, the vassal owed homage and fealty, the formal 
 act by which he avowed himself the man of the seigneur and 
 swore fidelity to him. This he owed on taking possession of 
 the fief; he also owed it each time the seigneur was replaced 
 by another: it was called taking up the fief. If he refused the 
 ceremony he disavowed the seigneur, and by that lost his 
 right to the fief (he was said to forfeit). He must declare to 
 the seigneur for what fief he became his man: this was the 
 avowal of fief. If the fief was composed of several objects, he 
 must enumerate them all. If there was doubt as to what the 
 fief included, he owed the seigneur a showing (or view), which 
 amounted to a descent upon the place. If through bad faith 
 he concealed a part of the fief, he lost his right to all of it. 
 These oral formalities were replaced, especially after the thir- 
 teenth century, by a written enumeration, called avowal and 
 enumeration of fief. 
 
 On taking up the fief, the vassal accepted the negative 
 obligations of a usufructuary toward the owner. He pledged 
 ■himself (often by an express formula) to maintain and guar- 
 antee the fief: to maintain it, that is to say, not to let it lose 
 its value, not to change its condition, not to take away a 
 part of it (or, as they said, abridge it) ; to guarantee it, that is 
 to say, to be ready always to recognize the right of the owner 
 and to defend it against third parties. 
 
 On swearing fidelity, the vassal pledged himself to do the 
 seigneur no wrong, to attack neither his person, nor his goods, 
 nor his honor, nor his family. Acts of homage are often found 
 
43 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 in which the vassal swore to respect ' ' the Hfe and limbs ' ' of 
 the seigneur. These negative obligations seem to have been 
 reciprocal. "The sire," says Beaumanoir, "owes faith and 
 loyalty to his man as much as the man to his seigneur. ' ' The 
 seigneur and the vassal owed each other mutual affection. 
 Neither permitted himself any hostile act toward the other. 
 The seigneur, then, should not attack nor insult his vassal, nor 
 seduce his wife or daughter. If he did, the vassal could release 
 himself from his seigneur and at the same time keep the fief. 
 The rupture was marked by an act which was the contrary of 
 investiture; the vassal threw down the straw or the glove: 
 this was the defy (breaking of faith). 
 
 The positive duties of the vassal were sometimes included 
 in a single word, service; sometimes analyzed in a formula 
 which appears as early as the tenth century: aid and counsel 
 {aiixilmm and consiliuni). 
 
 Aid was above all military: the vassal was the soldier of 
 the seigneur; he must aid him in his wars; it was for that 
 indeed that he received his fief. Certain formulas for swearing 
 homage even say it expressly: the vassal swore to serve the 
 seigneur "against all men and women who may be alive or 
 dead." This obligation, doubtless unlimited at first (it still, 
 appears so in the chansons dc geste), grew to be specific as well 
 as limited, and several services came to be distinguished: ost 
 and chevaucJiee'^ was the obligation to accompany the seigneur, 
 either on his expeditions {psf), or on his incursions into hostile 
 territory {cJievaucJiee). This service, especially in the thirteenth 
 century, was reduced as to distance and as to duration : the 
 vassal did not follow the seigneur (at least at his own expense) 
 save within certain limits, often a very small region ; he served 
 him only up to the time fixed by custom, usually forty days, 
 Estage"^ was the obligation to do garrison duty in the castle 
 of the seigneur, sometimes alone, sometimes with his family. 
 Also the vassal was under the obligation to place his own 
 
 [^ In the Latin, exercitus, or hostis, and cavakata, or expeditio, equitatio, 
 equitatus.'\ 
 
 [* In the Latin, stagium.'\ 
 
 i 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 43 
 
 castle at the disposition of the seigneur when he demanded it ; 
 for this reason his castle was said to be swearable and sur- 
 renderable,^ and it was often stipulated, especially in the thir- 
 teenth century, that the vassal must give it up to the seigneur 
 ** either when he was peaceably disposed or when he was in 
 anger, when he had a great or a small force." The seigneur 
 could put a garrison in the castle; but he must give it back 
 in the condition in which he received it, and seize nothing 
 in it except '* straw and hay." 
 
 Aid was also, though accessorily, a subvention in produce 
 or in money, due by the vassal in certain fixed cases. Ordi- 
 narily the vassal on receiving investiture made a gift, which 
 was regulated by custom. Often it was some object symboliz- 
 ing vassalage : a lance, a gold or silver spur, a pair of gloves ; 
 about Orleans it was a horse, the roncin de service; in Guienne, 
 a sum of money, the sporla. Ordinarily at each change of 
 seigneur and sometimes at each change of vassal, there was 
 due the seigneur an indemnity (the relief ox r achat) ^ which was 
 very heavy in the north of France (one year's revenue) and 
 heavier still when the new vassal was only a collateral heir of 
 his predecessor. Likewise if the vassal sold his fief, the pur- 
 chaser must have the transfer approved by the seigneur and 
 must pay him a right of sale (the quint), which sometimes 
 amounted to three years' revenue. 
 
 The seigneur had the right to make his vassals contribute 
 to some of his exceptional expenses. This was also aid, called 
 in certain regions aid in four cases. These cases varied from 
 one region to another; sometimes indeed there were more or 
 less than four. The most usual were the ransom of the 
 seigneur if he was made prisoner, his departure for a crusade, 
 the marriage of his daughter, the knighting of his son. Such 
 aid was due from the vassals who were nobles, but they did 
 not pay it with their own money; they levied it upon the 
 tenants of their domain. 
 
 The seigneur could require his vassal to entertain him, 
 
 P In the Latin, jurabile et reddibile \ that is, to be sworn into service and 
 given up.] , 
 
 r 
 
44 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 together with his escort or his hunting equipage : this was the 
 right of gitc"^ {alberga in the south of France). It was often 
 replaced by an indemnity. Also, in the thirteenth century, 
 it was strictly defined. Thus, in Guienne, the possessor of 
 Sommieres must serve to his seigneur, the duke of Acquitaine, 
 when he came, a repast for himself and ten knights; the repast 
 to consist of pork, beef, cabbage, roast chickens and mustard. 
 He himself must wait on the duke in scarlet leggins with spurs 
 of gold. Another vassal had to receive six of the hunters 
 accompanying the duke, give them bread, wine, and meat, 
 and lead them into the forest the following day. 
 
 Counsel, or court service, obliged the vassal to go to the 
 seigneur and advise with him in perplexing matters. The 
 seisrneur called all his vassals to his court at the same time. 
 The obligation to comply with such calls was often limited to 
 three assemblies, held ordinarily at the time of the great 
 feast-days: Easter, Pentecost, Christmas. The assembly of 
 vassals formed an attendance of honor for the feasts given by 
 the seigneur on the occasion of his marriage, or of that of 
 his children, and of the entry of his sons into knighthood; 
 it satisfied his vanity by enhancing the show of the cere- 
 mony. It served as a political council in grave affairs of 
 interest to the seigneury, such as war, peace, or the changing 
 of customs. It served as a tribunal {placitum) to adjust 
 differences between the vassals of the seigneur; the seigneur 
 convoked and presided over the court, and the court pro- 
 nounced sentence. To judge in the vassals' courts was not a 
 right, but an obligation which brought no reward and which 
 might draw the judger into a duel with the loser. Also it was 
 a strict obhgation : neither could the vassal refuse to sit, nor 
 could the seigneur refuse to convoke the court. This would 
 be a " default of right " (denial of justice) which would release 
 the vassal from his oath of fidelity. 
 
 Women and Children in the Feudal Regime.— It seemed that 
 there was no room in feudality either for women or for children, 
 since the contract of vassalage could bind only warriors. But 
 
 [• In the Latin, gislum.] 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 45 
 
 the influence of property and of inheritance was stronger than 
 logic ; the seigneur was even more a landowner than head of 
 a group. A child or a woman could inherit a great domain 
 that was distributed in fiefs to vassals, and thus become the 
 seigneur of these vassals. 
 
 The minor not being able to exercise his right himself, the 
 nearest relative on the paternal side took the bail, that is to 
 say, possession of the domain. He received the revenues and 
 occupied the place of the seigneur; he even bore the title. 
 At first also he was charged with the ward of the minor, and 
 with his education. But, as under this arrangement the holder 
 of the bail was also the child's heir and so subject to the 
 temptation to gain possession of the inheritance, the usage was 
 established of giving the ward of the minor to the nearest 
 relative on the maternal side, who would have no interest in 
 his death. On arriving at his majority (from fourteen to 
 twenty-one, according to the region), the young man had 
 himself made a knight and received then the homage of the 
 vassals. The daughter inheriting a seigneury, if she was of age, 
 exercised the seigneurial rights attached to the possession of 
 the domain ; the vassals owed her homage and service. There 
 are examples of women who governed their seigneury in 
 person, presided over their feudal court, and even fought. 
 The feudal language had no terms to designate the woman 
 seigneur ; she was called by a Latin name, dame {doniina, mis- 
 tress) ; in Spanish, Dofia. 
 
 Women and children had entered feudality as heirs of 
 seigneurs ; they also entered it as heirs of vassals. When a 
 vassal died leaving sons who were minors, the seigneur orig- 
 inally had the right to take back the fief in order to give it to 
 a man capable of rendering service; but from the eleventh 
 century he only took it, with the ward of the child, to the end 
 of the minority (this was seigneurial bail, which was later re- 
 placed by the bail of the relatives of the minor). On arriving at 
 his majority, the young man entered into possession of the fief. 
 The right of daughters was established with more difficulty. 
 A woman could not acquit herself of the services of the fief. 
 
46 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 Consequently there were countries where fiefs were not trans- 
 mitted to daughters: they passed to the son, even if he was 
 younger, or to more distant relatives. But the habit of treating 
 daughters as heirs was so strong, especially in the south of 
 France, that finally, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it 
 applied even to fiefs. Women received them as inheritances, 
 even as dowries ; they became vassals, as they could become 
 seigneurs. Of the early exclusion there remained only a privi- 
 lege in favor of male collateral heirs. 
 
 For the service of the fief the woman had to furnish a 
 substitute. For her marriage she was in law bound to secure 
 the consent of the seigneur, and, in certain countries (in Spain, 
 at Jerusalem), the seigneur presented to the heiress of a fief 
 two or three knights between whom she had to choose her 
 husband. 
 
 The Clergy in the Feudal R6gime — The clergy kept its old 
 organization, which was based upon a hierarchy of dignities 
 and absolute obedience of inferiors to superiors. Even in the 
 epochs of greatest confusion, when the "spirit of the time " 
 had most profoundly penetrated the clerg)^, the church never 
 adopted a feudal principle into its organization ; never did an 
 inferior do homage to a superior or receive his function as a 
 fief. The clerics, like the women, should remain strangers to 
 feudality, since the religious law forbade them to bear arms. 
 And nevertheless, like women, the clergy entered into the 
 feudal regime, at least the higher clergy. As for the lower 
 clergy, the parish priests, servitors of their bishop or of the 
 patron of their church, and the monks, subordinated to their' 
 abbot, remained in close and uncontrolled subjection, similar 
 to the dependence of tenants upon their seigneur. 
 
 The higher clergy possessed great domains arising from 
 donations that had accumulated through centuries; for in all 
 the Christian countries the lay landholders sought to gain the 
 favor of the saint who was patron of this church or of that 
 abbey, in order that he might intercede for them in heaven. 
 They consequently donated — and especially bequeathed — to 
 the saint or to his church, " for the redemption of their sins " 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 47 
 
 or "for the salvation of their soul," a part of their "earthly 
 goods," often some pieces of land, sometimes entire villages. 
 There was not a bishopric, an abbey, a chapter of canons or a 
 collegiate church that had not thus become a great land- 
 holder. Bishops, abbots and canons, thanks to the revenues 
 of these domains, found themselves in the position of rich 
 seigneurs. Like the lay seigneurs they had to have an escort 
 of soldiers, for their honor and defence; wherefore they dis- 
 tributed a part of the domain of the church in fiefs and acquired 
 vassals who owed them homage and service. 
 
 From the time of Charlemagne the prelates (bishops and 
 abbots), being considered as high officials, owed homage to 
 the king and were obliged to lead their men to the army. 
 This custom was preserved in the north of the kingdom of 
 France, and was so strongly established in the kingdom of 
 Germany that the prelates came to consider their ecclesiastical 
 dignity itself as a fief which they held from the king; the king 
 invested them with it by giving to them a standard, as he did 
 to the lay seigneurs. 
 
 The prelates thus formed a superior class which was part of 
 the high feudal nobility. In all Christian countries, the clergy, 
 being celibate, could not be recruited by heredity; but rarely 
 was any but a cleric of noble birth chosen to be bishop or 
 abbot. The ecclesiastical dignities thus served to provide for 
 the younger sons of noble families. Many kept the habits of 
 their youth after taking orders ; they remained hunters, drinkers 
 and warriors, like that archbishop of Mainz who, in order to 
 avoid shedding blood, fought with a club. In general, all 
 that the clergy could obtain from these sons of warriors was 
 to prevent them from arming as knights. 
 
 The convents had need of defence against the knights of 
 their neighborhood, who did not always allow themselves to 
 be intimidated by excommunication. Many made an agree- 
 ment with some seigneur who took it upon himself to defend 
 them in return for redevances to be levied upon their tenants; 
 he was called the guardian or advocate {advocatus) ; in German, 
 Voigt. The institution goes back to the Carolingians. Ordi- 
 
48 THE FEUDAL RfiGIME 
 
 narily the advocate burdened, rather than defended, the 
 domain ; the acts of convents are often full of complaints 
 against the advocates. The bishoprics sometimes had a lay- 
 defender of this kind, the vidame (vice-seigneur). 
 
 The " Ministeriales." — The richest seigneurs — kings, 
 princes and prelates — kept about them a troop of armed 
 servants. They were called in Latin ministcriales, servitors 
 {ininistermni signified service, function); in German, Dienst- 
 mannen (men for service). But serving a great seigneur was 
 an honorable occupation, which made of these servants a class 
 intermediate between the nobles and the people; and the 
 household of a great seigneur formed a complete little society, 
 in which the services much resembled public functions. 
 
 The ministcriales had charge of the household offices ; they 
 directed the services into which the care of the house was 
 divided. There were always at least four of these offices at 
 a court : ^ the table, directed by the dapifcr (seneschal, 
 Truchsess) ; the cellar, directed by the buticularhis (cup-bearer, 
 Schenk) ; the stable and forage by the comes stabidi (constable, 
 Marschalk); the chamber (dress and provisions), entrusted to 
 the earner arms (chamberlain, Kdmmerer). Other great officers 
 found at the richest courts were the first huntsman, the 
 forester, and the master of the kitchens. Besides, the artisans 
 of the seigneur — tailors, shoemakers, armorers, bakers, and so 
 on — were grouped, according to their kind of work, into 
 minis teria (trades), and each trade had a ministerialis at its 
 head. At the same time the ministeriales performed the 
 duties of knights: they escorted their master, accompanied him 
 to war, and guarded his castles. 
 
 The institution languished in France, where the minis- 
 ieriales were soon confounded with the vassals. In Germany, 
 on the contrary, down to the end of the thirteenth century, 
 the Dicnstmannen formed an important class; they were the 
 strength of the king and of the prelates. They kept the mark 
 of their origin (their ancestors had been chosen among the 
 serfs of the master). Even become knights, they still remained 
 
 ^ These four offices are mentioned from the ninth century. 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 49 
 
 serfs: they were called iinfreie Ritter (unfree knights), and in 
 acts they signed after the free men. They could riot acquire, 
 nor sell, nor bequeath, nor marry without the consent of their 
 master; they were subject to rights of mortmain, like serfs. 
 Those of the same master formed a closed society. They 
 wore garments of the same color (the master's color); they 
 married among themselves; they were not to fight against 
 each other; they must have all their differences judged by the 
 master's domestic tribunal, which was made up of their com- 
 panions and which judged according to the particular usages 
 of the master's court {HofrccJii). They did not have the right 
 to present themselves at the tribunal of the free men, where 
 judgment was governed by the law of the country (Lafidrecht). 
 Also their condition had become hereditary: the master could 
 no longer plunge their children back into servitude ; he had to 
 keep them at his court, give them an office or support 
 them. 
 
 Little by little the seigneur drew the offices away from the 
 Dienstmaiinen, who became exclusively knights. He accus- 
 tomed himself to giving each of them a benefice, that is to say, 
 the usufruct of a domain. Then, toward the end of the 
 thirteenth century, benefices became confounded with fiefs and 
 the DienstmanncJi were like vassals. Those of the king even 
 took the title of FreiJierr (free seigneur), equivalent to 
 baron. But before this time the DiensUnannen grouped about 
 the princes had developed at the German courts a knightly 
 society that was accustomed to conform to scrupulously exact 
 rules of conduct. These constituted what were called court 
 manners, cojirtoisie {Jiofische Sitte). The most original trait 
 in these manners was the respect for ladies, for the wives of 
 the seigneurs; it resembles much the respect of the servant for 
 the mistress, since it was not extended to the simple wives of 
 the Dicnstmannen. It was addressed to rank, not to sex.' 
 
 ' The origin of gallantry is a very obscure question. It was unknown to the 
 composers of the chansons de geste. It appears, much mingled with sensualit}', 
 in the poetry of the troubadours of the south of France and in the poems of the 
 Gallic cycle in the twelfth century. From France it penetrated into the German 
 poems. It is also found among the Moors of Spain, but with a sentiment of com- 
 
so THE FEUDAL RfiGIME 
 
 Complication of Feudal Relations. — The original relations 
 between knights rested upon "fealty", the reciprocal 
 devotion of the seigneur and his men. They could subsist 
 only in a rudimentary society made up of groups isolated 
 from one another, each consisting of a seigneur and his 
 vassals. It was necessary to be personally devoted to one's 
 seigneur and vassal to him alone; the essential thing was 
 vassalage. But this regime was thrown into confusion by the 
 creation of hereditary fiefs. Devotion gave place to a con- 
 tract. The vassal, thanks to the fief, became materially in- 
 dependent of the seigneur, detached himself from him, and 
 began to consider the fief as the essential, vassalage as a 
 charge accessory to the fief, an onerous burden which he 
 labored to diminish by replacing general fidelity with special 
 services. The fief, become hereditary, passed into the hands 
 of strangers who were indifferent to the seigneur and became 
 his vassals only to preserve the fief. 
 
 It happened then that the same noble came to be at the 
 same time the vassal of several seigneurs. He could not serve 
 them all, especially if they made war upon each other. It 
 was therefore necessary to introduce reserves : on taking up his 
 fief the vassal reserved his duties toward the seigneur he had 
 already; he swore to serve the new seigneur, " except for the 
 fidelity due to N. and N.," or to serve him "against all 
 except N. and N." In place of absolute devotion, there were 
 only conditional devotions. In the twelfth century, there came 
 to be a distinction made between liege homage, which bound 
 the vassal to unlimited service, and plain homage, which the 
 vassal gave standing and armed and which bound him to only 
 a limited service. 
 
 The fief soon lost its character as an establishment given 
 to a faithful supporter by way of recompense. Not only lands, 
 or functions (as with the viinistcriales), were given in fief, but 
 all sorts of lucrative rights : redevances, rights of banality, of 
 justice, of market, of tithe, and so on even to the right of 
 
 passion for the weak sex, which appears foreign to the gallantry of the French 
 middle ages. 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 5 1 
 
 taking the swarms of bees that might be found in the woods. 
 Even money pensions came to be given. All these objects 
 and rights were divided and accorded in portions: the half of 
 a domain was given in fief, a room in a castle, a part of an 
 enclosing wall, a quarter of the justice.^ 
 
 Homage, being no longer an absolute promise of devotion 
 but simply a contract, became an habitual process of establish- 
 ing a bond between two nobles. An allodial seigneur made 
 himself the vassal of another seigneur; by a fiction he ceded 
 him his domain; the other, become the legal proprietor, gave 
 him back this same domain as a fief and received the man as 
 a vassal: this was called "taking back a freehold in fief ". 
 The practice was not new, but in becoming general it estab- 
 lished between the seigneurs a gradation of nominal dependen- 
 cies. Inversely, the vassal gave a portion of his fief in fief to 
 other nobles (the elder brother to his younger brothers). In 
 this way rear vassals sprang up, who in their turn could have 
 vassals. In strict law, the consent of the seigneur was neces- 
 sary for these sub-infeudations, for they diminished the value 
 of his fief. The old Carolingian functionaries, the dukes and 
 counts, become vassals of the king because of the transforma- 
 tion of their functions into fiefs, found vassals for themselves 
 in the principal seigneurs of their province. Thus was created 
 a very complicated network of feudal bonds, reaching from 
 the king down to the squires who were possessors of a little 
 fief. 
 
 This complication was doubtless almost as old as the 
 feudal regime, for we find the superposition of fiefs and the 
 reserve of fidelity in the oldest detailed document in which the 
 word fief appears, an act of 954, in barbaric Latin mixed with 
 Catalan words: "I, Raymond, viscount of Cerdagne, I con- 
 cede to you, Peter Raymond, viscount of Urgel, and his wife 
 Sibyl, the castle of Saint Martin; and I give you Ermengaud 
 with the fief that he holds from the castle of Saint Martin, and 
 with its knights. Likewise I accord you the castle of Mirales 
 
 ' I have found in Burgundy "the third part of the half of two parts of the 
 tithe of N.' 
 
52 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 and Cheralt; and I give you Berengar of Aragal with the fief 
 that he holds from the viscounty and its knights. . . . And for 
 this gift, I, Peter Raymond, and my wife Sibyl, I recognize 
 that we are yours firmly against all men and women, except 
 the count of Urgel, that we will aid thee from our domain 
 and with our counsel to hold, guarantee and defend against 
 all men and women, by straight faith without fraud." 
 
 It is this network of feudal bonds which has been called the 
 " feudal hierarchy." The name is improper; it would assume 
 a series of fiefs and vassals, occupying all the territory, and 
 regularly superposed in grades one above the other as in a 
 hierarchy of functionaries. This is the regime which the 
 authors of the Assizes of Jerusalem^ seem to describe. Per- 
 haps it really did exist in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, where the 
 knights, who had come as conquerors, were able to create a 
 regular organization based upon a general principle. Nothing 
 like this is found in any country of Europe, not even in 
 England, where the king made all the knights his direct 
 vassals. 
 
 In Germany, where they felt the need of classifying the 
 knights who accompanied the king on his expeditions into 
 Italy, an attempt was made to range the nobles in categories, 
 called bucklers. In the first was the king alone; in the 
 second, the princes of the church who were vassals of the 
 king; in the third, the lay princes, thrown into this rank 
 because they held fiefs from the princes of the church ; in the 
 fourth, the barons, and even the counts when they were vassals 
 of a lay prince; in the fifth, the free knights who were vassals 
 of a baron; in the sixth and last, the Dicnstviannen. Each 
 rank was sharply distinguished; no one could be in two 
 bucklers at the same time. The noble who became the vassal 
 of his equal passed into an inferior rank; a prince, on becoming 
 the vassal of another, went down to the rank of baron. 
 
 It seems that in Germany homage had best preserved its 
 original meaning. In France the nobles knew nothing of this 
 hierarchy. The feudal bond had ceased there to establish a 
 
 1 Tliis is where the old feudists sought the picture of the feudal organization. 
 
THE NOBLES AND THE HIGHER CLERGY 53 
 
 relation of superiority of the seigneur to the vassal. As early 
 as the eleventh century, the count of Anjou, having conquered 
 the count of Blois, despoiled him of his county of Touraine 
 and had it given to him in fief by his prisoner (whose vassal 
 he thus became). In France any one could be at the same 
 time both seigneur and vassal. The feudal bond united only 
 lands. 
 
Ill 
 
 USAGES AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 AUods, Fiefs and Tenures. — The most apparent character- 
 istic of the feudal regime, that which has given it its name, 
 was the way of possessing land. 
 
 The normal mode of possession down to the ninth century 
 had been the allod, fully-owned property with no condition 
 and with absolute right of alienation. But from the time the 
 landlords distributed their lands, in tenures to peasants, in 
 fiefs to knights, there were three modes of possession: the 
 allod ; the fief, usufruct on condition of noble service ; ^ and the 
 tenure (censive, villain, or servile), usufruct on condition of 
 the payment of redevances. Following the custom of the 
 middle ages these possessions became hereditary, and there 
 were three sorts of inheritance. These rights of possession 
 could exist together, superimposed upon each other: a given 
 land was at the same time possessed as censive, as fief, as 
 allod, by three different owners, ^ — without counting the heredi- 
 tary intendant, who also held certain irrevocable rights over it. 
 In this sense it is inexact to speak of allods, fiefs, and cen- 
 sives; we should say possessions in allodium, in fief, in censive. 
 But finally the condition of the possessor became attached to 
 the land, in such a way that each estate took on an indelible 
 quality which was imposed upon new possessors. These lands 
 
 1 During the whole of the middle ages, one finds examples of not-noble fiefs; 
 and it is not proved even that the fief may not have begun by being a not-noble 
 tenure. Here it is a question only of the most general usage. 
 
 2 There were besides several superposed rights of fief, every time (and this was 
 the usual case) that there were several grades of feudatories. 
 
 54 
 
USAGES AND GOVERNMENT 55 
 
 were then called censives, villainages, fiefs, allods ^ ; and as the 
 fief could only be held by nobles, a distinction came to be 
 made between noble and not-noble lands. The not-noble 
 lands were the tenures of the villains; the noble lands were 
 the reserves exploited by the noble possessors of fiefs or allods. 
 A noble, on acquiring a censive, no longer made noble land 
 of it; a villain, in possessing a fief (when the custom permitted), 
 did not take away its quality of noble land. 
 
 An allod could be converted into a fief by the owner ;^ a 
 fief could with difficulty be converted into an allod. Conse- 
 quently allods became more and more rare. They finally (in 
 the thirteenth century) became so rare, especially in the north 
 of France, that the allod was considered an exceptional and 
 improbable method of ownership. It was sometimes called 
 free allod, and was said to owe nothing to any one and to be 
 held from God alone ; ^ but its existence was admitted only on 
 formal proofs, for the presumption was that all land was either 
 a fief or a tenure : ' ' No land without a seigneur. ' ' In England 
 the jurisconsults said there was only one owner, the king. In 
 the south of France allods survived in much larger numbers. 
 When the king of England, in 1273, took a census of his 
 duchy of Guienne, many nobles declared that they owed no- 
 thing to any one, or even that they did not have to answer 
 the questions of the duke. 
 
 Law of Inheritance. — Land was transmitted according to 
 two opposed systems of inheritance. By the old regime, 
 common to the Roman law and to Germanic usages, property 
 was divided equally among the children, without distinction of 
 sex. This rule was continued for allods, noble or not-noble, 
 and was extended to all not-noble lands (these were encum- 
 bered by charges, but the inheritor, whoever he might be, 
 could acquit them). When there were no children, a distinc- 
 
 1 The language of the middle ages, which was not rigorous, sometimes 
 applied the name alloa to fiefs, to indicate either that they were hereditary or that 
 they were subject to slight charges. 
 
 * See above, p. 51. 
 
 ' The famous "king of Yvetot" was simply an allodiary. 
 
56 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 tion was made between own possessions — the family inherit- 
 ance — which should return to the branch from which they 
 came, and the acquired possessions, which the owner could 
 dispose of as he liked. Such was the customary law. 
 
 For the inheritance of fiefs, on the other hand, the right of 
 the heirs was thwarted by the right of the seigneur. In rigor- 
 ous logic, the fief should be indivisible and its possessor should 
 be capable of service : it passed undivided to the eldest male 
 heir; the feudal law was characterized by primogeniture and 
 the exclusion of women. But the principle yielded — more or 
 less according to the region — before the general custom : the 
 younger sons were allowed to share with the eldest (this was 
 parage), the daughters to inherit in default of sons. There 
 merely remained a larger portion for the eldest son and the 
 preference of male over female heirs of the same degree. 
 
 Wars and Tourneys. — Every noble was a warrior. Unless 
 he was bound by some special agreement he had the right to 
 make war upon whomsoever he would. ^ Thus it was that in 
 the oaths of fidelity the contracting parties promised to respect 
 each other's "life and limbs." This condition (which we 
 improperly call private warfare) was the common law. At the 
 most, it was considered a duty to begin it only after a formal 
 declaration. 
 
 War was declared by sending a symbol to one's enemy, 
 ordinarily a glove : this was the sign that faith was broken (the 
 challenge). Sometimes a threat was sufficient, or they even 
 began actual violence forthwith. The families of the two 
 adversaries were by law drawn into the war, for relatives as far 
 as the seventh degree owed each other aid. In the thirteenth 
 century, Beaumanoir queries whether there can be war between 
 two brothers: no, he concludes, if they have the same father 
 and the same mother, since then both have the same lineage ; 
 yes, if they have only one common parent, for then each will 
 have his family for him. Those who had vassals convoked 
 them for service, and the campaign began. 
 
 1 On the origins (probably Germanic) of the right of war, already recognized 
 in the Capitularies, see vol. I of the Histoire Generale, in chapter vii. 
 
USAGES AND GOVERNMENT 57 
 
 The feudal wars read very monotonously.^ Mounted war- 
 riors fell upon the domain of the enemy, carried away flocks, 
 cut down trees, burned harvests, set fire to villages, maltreated 
 and sometimes massacred the peasants. The object was to 
 take the castles and the persons of the adversaries. This was 
 done either by surprise or by regular operations : a battle or 
 a siege. For siege ^ purposes they employed antique machines, 
 perfected in the Orient. A battle was a contest between two 
 masses of knights thrown against each other at full trot; the 
 chief aim was to unsaddle the adversary and hurl him to the 
 ground; the squires, who remained behind the combatants, 
 then rushed up to seize the unsaddled opponents and take 
 possession of their horses. The prisoners, despoiled of their 
 arms, were led away, usually tied on a horse. The victor 
 kept them in his castle, often in chains or even locked in an 
 underground cell, until they bought their freedom at the price 
 set (the ransom). Castles also were ransomed. 
 
 War became an amusement and a trade. The game was 
 not as dangerous as it seems. Orderic Vital, in telling of the 
 battle of Bremule (1119), adds: " Of the nine hundred knights 
 that fought, I know that only three were killed ; in fact, they 
 were entirely covered with iron and . . . they mutually spared 
 each other, seeking less to kill than to take each other cap- 
 tive. ' ' In default of wars the knights arranged a tourney. They 
 foipned two troops, which met in the open field and, some- 
 times with the usual arms, fought a battle as dangerous as 
 real battles; in the tourney at Neuss (near Cologne), in 1240, 
 sixty knights perished. In tourneys also prisoners were taken 
 and ransomed. The business of ransoms was so lucrative that 
 many knights, even seigneurs, extended their operations outside 
 of the warrior society, upon merchants, bourgeois, and even 
 clerics. They stopped them in the highways, made them 
 prisoners, and tortured them, in order to secure a ransom. 
 
 * The most lively descriptions are those of the chansons de gesie, particularly 
 Gflrin le Lokerain. 
 
 "^ A detailed description of a siege (that of Chateau-Gaillard) can be found in 
 Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire d' Architecture, under the words Siege and Chateau. 
 
58 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 The Germans called these adventurers Raubritter (robber- 
 knights). 
 
 Peace and Truce of God; Peace of the King. — This warlike 
 regime was agreeable only to the knights ; it weighed upon the 
 rest of the population. But since war was the common law, 
 to have it stopped there had to be a special act, a peace, and 
 to impose that peace a power capable of making it respected. 
 
 From the end of the tenth century, the church tried to 
 establish peace by pledging the knights to cease making war. 
 The attempt began in the south of France by a series of pro- 
 vincial synods. At first it was a question of protecting 
 defenceless people, peasants, monks, ecclesiastics; whoever 
 attacked them was to be excommunicated: this was the 
 Peace of God. 
 
 The Council of Toulouges (1041) went farther. It ordered 
 that all wars be suspended during feast-days and Sundays, 
 during Advent and Lent, and the second half of each week: 
 this was the Truce of God. It was confirmed and extended 
 to all Christian countries by the Council of Clermont (1095), 
 which decreed the^ first crusade. This truce should have pro- 
 cured about two hundred and forty days' peace every year and 
 reduced war to one hundred and twenty days, but it does not 
 appear that it was strictly observed. 
 
 To apply the decisions of the councils there was created, 
 in the eleventh century, for each diocese (at least in a part of 
 France), a peace association directed by the bishop. It had 
 its treasury, its tribunal, and even its peace army, formed chiefly 
 of parishioners organized as militia and led by the parish 
 priests. Of all these creations (to which scholars have given 
 much attention) we find scarcely a trace at the end of the 
 twelfth century. 
 
 In countries where the prince was very strong, he pro- 
 claimed peace and threatened with heavy fines or even with 
 death whosoever should infringe it. Thus the peace of the 
 duke reigned in Normandy, and the Norman princes established 
 the same regime in England and in the Two Sicilies. The 
 count of Barcelona made his peace respected in Catalonia, the 
 
USAGES AND GOVERNMENT 59 
 
 count of Flanders in Flanders. In Germany, several emperors 
 proclaimed the peace of the king, called also the peace of the 
 land [Landfriedeii) ; Frederic Barbarossa caused an act of peace 
 {Friedcnbrief^ to be drawn up; but these peaces encountered 
 habits that grew more and more inveterate, and war became 
 the common law of Germany, As for the king of France, he 
 was too weak to impose peace in his own domain, to say 
 nothing of the rest of the country. Even Philip the Fair con- 
 fined himself to forbidding wars and tourneys while he should 
 be at war himself Peace, in the middle ages, was an excep- 
 tional state. 
 
 Justice. — Feudal society was not acquainted with justice 
 that was the same for all. Justice, like peace, was not a 
 common right; in the middle ages it was a privilege. There 
 was a different justice and special courts for each class. The 
 cleric was amenable to the courts of the church, the bourgeois 
 to the tribunal of the town. Free men should go to the 
 tribunal of the country, presided over by the count ; but such 
 assemblies ceased to be held in France from the tenth century, 
 and in Germany, where they were kept up till the thirteenth 
 century, their action became more and more restricted. Public 
 tribunals were replaced by private tribunals : the tenant was 
 judged in the seigneur's court,^ a domestic tribunal kept by the 
 intendant; the noble vassal, in the feudal court formed by an 
 assembly of his peers. Custom, however, produced some rules 
 which were common to all the lay courts. 
 
 The procedure of the middle ages rested upon a conception 
 opposed to that of the Roman law, which continued to be 
 appHed in the courts of the church. Roman justice was 
 rendered sovereignly by the judge, in the name of society, in 
 a public interest : the judge had to prosecute crimes and arrest 
 suspects; before pronouncing sentence, he had to get light 
 on the matter by gathering information, especially written 
 proofs ; he had to judge according to reason. The justice of 
 the middle ages was rendered by the court, made up from the 
 
 * On the character of the seigneurial tribunal, see above, pp. 18-20 ; on the 
 feudal court, see above, p. 42. 
 
6o THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 people of the region (in the feudal courts it was the peers, the 
 equals of the parties, who were the judges) ; the president had 
 no other role than that of directing the court and pronouncing 
 sentence.^ 
 
 The court did not act in the public interest: it rendered a 
 service to the parties ; the plaintiff must make a request for this 
 service. Even in the matter of crimes, the court intervened 
 only on the demand of the victim or of his relatives, and the 
 criminal trial took the form of a process between the accuser 
 and the accused. Both had to be treated equally: both were 
 imprisoned, and the plaintiff who lost incurred the same penalty 
 that otherwise the defendant would have had to undergo; for 
 the accused was the equal of the accuser. 
 
 The court did not have to enlighten itself on the real truth 
 of the affair, to seek out just how it had come about: it decided 
 only on what the parties presented to it; it must judge not 
 according to equity and reason, but according to the forms 
 established by custom. Justice was formalistic, like a strictly 
 regulated game; the judges had only to maintain the rules, 
 judge the throws, and proclaim the winner. Every trial con- 
 sisted of several sacramental acts accompanied by consecrated 
 phrases, which followed each other like the scenes of a drama. 
 The petitioner (or accuser) asked for a day for the trial. 
 When the day came the petitioner set forth his complaint and 
 swore to it. The defendant immediately replied, word by 
 word, and took oath. The witnesses swore in their turn. 
 Then came the call, that is to say, the provocation ; next the 
 duel; and finally, the sentence. A word or a movement 
 that was contrary to the rules sufficed to condemn a suitor.^ 
 At Lille, whoever during the oath moved his hand, which 
 rested upon the Bible, lost his case. Particular care had to 
 be taken with the words by which the procedure was begun, 
 
 1 It cannot be said that the intendant, in the tribunals for tenants, always 
 limited himself to this role, at least in France. Judgment by the tenants appears 
 to have been the custom in Germany in the thirteenth century. 
 
 ^ The compiler of the custom of Normandy compares this procedure with the 
 game " Now up, Bernard ! " in which the player must rise at the call of his name, 
 under penalty of having his face daubed with charcoal. 
 
USAGES AND GOVERNMENT 6 1 
 
 for they decided on what ground the trial was to proceed. 
 Whence the proverb: "A word once spoken cannot be 
 recalled. "1 
 
 In criminal matters, the oath of two witnesses brought 
 condemnation upon the accused. The accused might allow 
 the first witness to swear, but at the moment when the second 
 knelt down and stretched out his hand to swear he must 
 declare that he challenged him as a false witness and a 
 perjurer. 
 
 A case might be decided by proofs, by oaths, by battle, 
 or by the Judgment of God. Proof was the ancient Roman 
 procedure ; the oath was the barbaric procedure. The Usages 
 of the County of Barcelona distinguishes them very clearly: 
 " Proof is given by witnesses, or by written testimony, or by 
 reasons, or by judgments. The oath is not a proof; but, in 
 default of proof, the defendant or the plaintiff, whichever one 
 the judge believes the more truthful and the more afraid to 
 swear, is put on his oath." Proof demanded attention on the 
 part of the judges, and the nobles regarded it as an insult to 
 have their affirmation questioned. Consequently the court 
 ordinarily preferred to remit its decision to the Judgment of 
 God (ordeal) or to the duel. Xjju^^ 
 
 The Ordeal. — The ordeal was an ancient barbaric process 
 which was accepted by the church. It was applied to parties 
 that were not able to fight; especially to women, sometimes to 
 peasants. Several of the tests employed in the ninth century 
 (water, the cross, the morsel of bread) had passed out of use. 
 The usual process, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was 
 that by fire, under two forms: the defendant plunged his hand 
 into a kettle of boiling water, or he carried red-hot irons in his 
 hand. This iron was called yz^zV^ (from y/^^za'w;;/, judgment) , 
 The hand was wrapped up, then after a few days it was 
 uncovered; if it was unimpaired, the patient had won. The 
 church, which had regularized the Judgment of God, finally 
 abolished it (at the Council of 12 15). 
 
 1 The rigor of this procedure was softened by allowing the suitor to have 
 counsel and to reserve the right of changing his words. 
 
62 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 The Duel. — For men, for all the nobles at least, the normal 
 issue of the trial was the duel, the appeal by battle. The 
 defendant (the accused), instead of exculpating himself, pro- 
 voked the complainant, or his witness. The trial was trans- 
 formed into a war; the court had no other role than to regulate 
 its conditions and declare the result. 
 
 The battle, like the rest of the procedure, consisted of a 
 series of sacramental acts: the provocation (call) by the 
 remission of the gage of battle, the choice of the day, measur- 
 ing off the lists (ordinarily one hundred and twenty-five paces), 
 the oath, the proclamation, the combat, the avowal by the 
 conquered. The arms were minutely regulated: in the 
 knights' courts they were the armor, the shield, and the 
 sword ; in the courts for the not-nobles, the shield and the staff. 
 
 The duel was the favorite procedure with the society of the 
 middle ages. It was employed for peasants, it was permitted 
 to the serfs of certain domains as a privilege. The women 
 even and the infirm could have a champion fight in their stead. 
 
 The duel served not only in cases of crime, but in suits 
 concerning ownership or succession. It was even employed 
 to decide questions of law. In the tenth century Otto I, in 
 Germany, had two champions fight to decide whether the son 
 should exclude grandsons who were his nephews from the 
 succession. In the thirteenth century Alfonso of Castile had 
 recourse to the duel to decide whether he ought to introduce 
 Roman law into his kingdom. 
 
 The duel, in the courts of nobles, was even a means for 
 causing a judgment to be annulled. In principle, the justice 
 of the middle ages knew no appeal: every judgment was 
 irrevocable; but the loser could declare the judgment false by 
 provoking those who rendered it. If he won in this battle, the 
 judgment was annulled. The duel served in the same way to 
 throw out a witness. 
 
 Confession, Penalties. — All this formalistic procedure was 
 reserved for doubtful cases, in which the defendant denied the 
 charge against him; a condemnation was only obtained with 
 great difficulty and at great risks to the accuser and his wit- 
 
USAGES AND GOVERNMENT 63 
 
 nesses. The procedure was summary, on the contrary, against 
 the delinquent taken in the act, — the testimony of those who 
 seized him sufficed to have him condemned, — summary also 
 against the delinquent who confessed his crime, especially if 
 he was a stranger or vagabond. The temptation was therefore 
 strong for the judge to urge the accused to confess by subject- 
 ing him to torture. And thus the question was to become, at 
 the end of the fifteenth century, a general custom.^ 
 
 The penalty was rigorously prescribed by custom, at least 
 in the not-noble courts. The homicide was beheaded, the 
 thief hanged, the murderer (assassin) was dragged on the 
 hurdle and hanged. Women, in place of being hanged, were 
 buried alive. If the criminal was dead, his body was executed; 
 if he had fled, his ^.^gy. The suicide was treated as the 
 murderer of himself. If an animal killed a person, it was 
 hanged or buried alive. 
 
 Custom. — The society of the middle ages scarcely knew 
 any other rule than custom. It had little idea of law estab- 
 lished by a legislative power. On the very rare occasions 
 when a prince felt the need of modifying the custom, he did it 
 only after having convoked and consulted all the notables of 
 the country. 
 
 The custom differed from one region to another. ' * One 
 would not find in the entire kingdom," says Beaumanoir, 
 "two chatellanies that use, in every case, the same custom." 
 It was not the same for the nobles, the bourgeois, the clerics, 
 and the peasants ; and for this it was only the more respected, 
 for it was the private property (the privilege) of each class. 
 It was not written, it rested upon precedents conserved in 
 the memory of the living. When it was to be ascertained, 
 an inquest was made and each one told what he remembered 
 having seen done in analogous cases. For the men of the 
 middle ages, the just was that which had always been done, 
 * * good custom ' ' ; the unjust was that which was new. Each 
 
 * Procedure by inquest, which gave birth on the one hand to the English jury 
 »nd on the other to the ecclesiastical inquisition, was, up to the end of the 
 thirteenth century, only an exceptional expedient. 
 
64 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 generation strove to imitate the one preceding and only made 
 progress unwittingly or by necessity. Out of this respect 
 for established things came that heredity characteristic of the 
 middle ages, which extended, beyond property, to all acquired 
 situations ; the son naturally took the place of his father. 
 
 The Chivalric Code. — In this society, immobilized by cus- 
 tom, the habits of the feudal knights were a continual source 
 of trouble. Their lives were governed by different and 
 mutually contradictory conceptions. The feudal (or rather 
 vassalitic) code imposed the duty of respecting the faith sworn 
 to one's companions, to one's seigneur, to one's vassal. Faith 
 was the law par excellence: the loyal man {Icgalis) was the 
 one who kept his faith; loyalty was fidelity to one's word; the 
 honorable man, the worthy knight (^probus), was at the same 
 time faithful and brave. There ought to be no quarrel between 
 men united by fidelity; and such is the idea in the chansons 
 de geste {Renaud dc Montaiiba7i, where the hero, forced to 
 combat with his seigneur, avoids doing him injury; Raoid de 
 Cambraif where Bernier remains faithful to his seigneur, Raoul, 
 who has maltreated him). In rigorous logic, if a disagreement 
 arose between the vassal and his seigneur, or even between the 
 vassals of the same seigneur, they should give over judgment 
 to the court of the seigneur, made up of peers of the vassal ; 
 and so also say the theorists of feudal law who drew up the 
 Assizes of Jerusalem. In the name of faith, the vassal could 
 call upon his seigneur to give him justice ; the seigneur could 
 summon his man "to come and do law," that is, to appear 
 before his court. There, the seigneur left the judging to his 
 men; he must "be like a balance, ready to do whatever the 
 court decides." Thus every noble would be able to obtain 
 justice from his peers and ought to submit himself to their 
 justice. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the ideal of the knight was the 
 strong and fearless warrior, the Charlemagne of the pseudo- 
 Turpin chronicle, who " with a single blow of his sword cleaves 
 in two, together with the horse, a mounted warrior dressed in 
 full armor from head to foot ' ' ; who ' ' without trouble stretches 
 
USAGES AND GOVERNMENT 65 
 
 out four horseshoes at a time ' ' ; who ' ' takes a knight in 
 armor upon his hand and Hfts him as high as his head ' ' ; who 
 " eats at his meal the quarter of a sheep or two chickens or a 
 goose." Such a one never draws back or has fear of any- 
 body. He was jealous, then, of his reputation: 
 
 " Better be dead than coward be called." 
 
 And in order not to be called coward the knight was 
 capable of every violence. His rule was honor (a new word, 
 unknown to the ancients), a sentiment made up of pride and 
 vanity, which was to dominate the nobility of Europe down to 
 the eighteenth century. Honor obliged the knight not to 
 endure anything which he thought could possibly be inter- 
 preted, by any one in the world, as a retraction. In practice, 
 it meant the duty of fighting whosoever opposed him in a right 
 to which he pretended. 
 
 Thus honor entered into conflict with faith, and for this 
 conflict the feudal code had no solution. It furnished the knot 
 of the story in several chansons de geste,'^ and in real life 
 adventures were not lacking like those recounted in an act of 
 the eleventh century, in barbaric Latin: the entanglements 
 between Hugh of Lusignan and his seigneur, William of 
 Acquitaine.^ 
 
 V Feudal States. — The feudal regime did not establish between 
 inhabitants of the same country any of the relations which seem 
 to us indispensable for the constitution of a state. There was 
 at that time neither public tax, nor public military service, nor 
 public tribun?l«- tnothin^ but private dues, private tribunals 
 (landlords' -s' courts), and service in private 
 
 wars. 
 
 The abs nee of every landlord rich enough 
 
 to be suffici* and to his men was the common 
 
 law; and w 'assalage was loosened the feudal 
 
 seigneur be( jn as an allodiary. In this sense 
 
 it was said enth century, * ' every baron is 
 
 ^ Girard de < 'e Loherain, Raoul de Cambrai, Renaud de 
 
 Montauban, 
 
 * Historiens . 534 and fol. 
 
66 TH-E FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 sovereign in his barony. ' ' This is why Guizot defined the 
 feudal regime as "the confusion of property rights and 
 sovereignty. ' ' It would be more exact to say that property 
 rights replaced sovereignty fallen into desuetude. A seigneury 
 was a state in miniature, with its army, its custom, its ban 
 (ordinance of the seigneur), its tribunal, its gallows; its people 
 called all who were not in it foreigners. 
 
 France, especially in the tenth century, was divided more 
 than any other country into sovereignties of this kind. They 
 have not been counted, but their number would certainly go 
 above ten thousand. The dismemberment was less in Spain, 
 where the Christians remained grouped around their leaders in 
 war; less in Germany, where the king had kept some authority: 
 there the rule was maintained that the ban (criminal justice) 
 should not descend to the third hand, that is, below the vassals 
 of the king. But in proportion as society became settled and 
 civilized, isolation diminished and veritable feudal states were 
 formed even in France. 
 
 In every region there was one seigneur more powerful than 
 the others, usually the descendant of an ancient Carolingian 
 functionary, almost always invested with an official title which 
 had become a dignity (a duke or a count), sometimes without 
 any title (like the sire of Bourbon, the sire of Beaujeu). He 
 was the first personage of the country; he possessed or had 
 acquired very extensive domains which brought him a princely 
 revenue and made him master of sev nd tenants; 
 
 almost all the territory was held ir or the other 
 
 seigneurs had finally become his va id as vassals 
 
 almost all the nobles of the provin 
 
 To these powers of landlord were added 
 
 powers which were foreign to feud d1 of the old 
 
 towns, which assured him a reveni the protec- 
 
 tion of churches; and often the r ights of the 
 
 crown in regard to the tempora iuh i ,. bishoprics, 
 
 coinage, Jews, watercourses, treasvr'- trcv^^' s court was 
 
 the meeting-place for all that coun nightly fetes 
 
 were given; there was held the co ce which, in 
 
 ..tiC 
 
USAGES AND GOVERNMENT 67 
 
 some provinces, became a Parlement, the tribunal of accounts, 
 which became a Chamber of Accounts, the assembly of 
 notables, which became the States. 
 
 These territories varied greatly in extent, according to 
 geographical conditions and the power of the high seigneur. 
 They were not fixed and they did not cease to change: 
 increasing by conquests, marriages, inheritances; diminishing 
 by divisions. Some disappeared (the duchy of Gascony, the 
 county of Vermandois), others were created (Artois). In gen- 
 eral they tended rather to increase in size. Finally (toward 
 the twelfth century) the great seigneurs decided that their 
 domain, like their dignity, should no longer be shared by their 
 children, but should pass undivided to the eldest son. Thence- 
 forward the feudal states were practically fixed and the frame- 
 work of the provinces was formed. 
 
 This formation did not take place in the same way in all 
 Europe. In France, where the dismemberment had been 
 extreme in the tenth century, the feudal states took shape in 
 the eleventh and were completed in the twelfth century; there 
 were about forty of them. A few alone belonged to a bishop; 
 in the majority the head was a lay prince ; at first he called 
 himself duke or count, then (in the twelfth century) he added 
 to this the name of his country (duke of Burgundy, count of 
 Anjou, count of Provence). Thus the provinces were formed. 
 Each one remained an independent state until the king of 
 France annexed it to his domain by replacing the duke or 
 count. In England, where the king kept the entire kingdom 
 in his direct power, feudal states did not arise. In Spain, 
 where the old Christian royalty had been crushed by the 
 Mussulmans, the Christian heads of provinces did like that 
 prince of Navarre at the end of the ninth century, of whom a 
 chronicle says : " He proclaimed himself king in Pampeluna. " 
 Every one took the title of king, and there were as many 
 kingdoms as there were provinces. In Italy and Germany, 
 the dismemberment, combated by the emperor, took place 
 later. Feudal states developed in the thirteenth century, in 
 forms more varied than in France: in Italy because of the 
 
68 THE FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 pope, of the Normans in Sicily, and the strength of the towns; 
 in Germany because a part of the lands belonged to princes of 
 the church and because among the lay princes the custom of 
 dividing the domain among all the sons was longer main- 
 tained. But, in every country, the feudal states, once con- 
 stituted, actively contributed to the breaking up of what re- 
 mained of the feudal regime. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Advocate ( Votgt), 47. 48 
 Aid, 42-44 
 AUod, 54, 55 
 Armor, 27-29 
 Assemblies, judicial, 20 
 
 "Bad customs," 15 
 Bat/, 45 
 
 Banalities, 17, 18 
 Bannerets, 30 
 Baron, 30 
 Bucklers, 52 
 
 Capitation, 10, 16 
 
 Castles, 34-38 ; life in, 37 
 
 Cens, censive, 14, 16 ; censive ten- 
 ure, 54, 55 
 
 Charges, see Banalities, Corvees, 
 Prestations, Redevances, 
 Rights of Justice ; servile, 10, 11 ; 
 on free villains, 14 
 
 Chateaux, see Castles. 
 
 Chevalier, 27 
 
 Children, in the feudal regime, 
 44-46 
 
 ChevaucMe, 42 
 
 Chivalry, 32-34 ; the chivalric code, 
 64, 65 
 
 Clergy, in the feudal regime, 46 
 
 Corvees, 21 
 
 Counsel, 44 
 
 Credit, right of, 21 
 
 Custom, 63, 64 
 
 Dienstmantien, 48, 49, 52 
 Domains, 3-7 
 Donjons, 34-38 
 Duel, 62 
 
 Estage, 42 
 Exercitus, 21 
 
 Exploitation, seigneurial, 14-21 ; 
 origin, 15 ; example, 24 
 
 Fealty, act of, 40 
 
 Feudal hierarchy, 52 
 
 Feudal obligations, 41-44 
 
 Feudal regime, definition, i ; chil- 
 dren in, 44-46 ; clergy in, 46 ; 
 women in, 44-46 
 
 Feudal relations, complication of, 
 
 50-53 
 
 Feudal states, 65-68 
 
 Fidelity, see Fealty 
 
 Fief, 40, 41 ; investiture ot, 40 ; ob- 
 ligations connected with, 41-44 ; 
 fief tenure, 54, 55 
 
 Gite, right of, 44 
 
 Holdings, of tenants, 3-9 ; distribu- 
 tion, 8, 9 
 Homage, 39, 41, 42, 50, 51, 52, 53 
 
 Inheritance, law of, 55, 56 
 Intendant, 22, 23 
 
 Judgment of God, 61 
 Justice, 59-61 ; high and low, 18, 
 19 ; rights of, 18-20 
 
 Knight, 27, 30, 31 
 
 Manor-houses, 27 
 Manumission, 12, 14 
 Marriage, right of, 10, il 
 Mill, banal, 18 
 
 69 
 
70 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Ministeriales, 48, 49 
 Mortmain, 10, 11 
 
 Nobles 27 ff.; grades, 29-31 
 
 Ordeal, 61 
 
 Ost, 42 
 
 Oven, banal, 18 
 
 Peace of God, 58 
 
 Peace of the king, 58, 59 
 
 Peasants, 3-26 
 
 Penalties, 62, 63 
 
 Population, rural, 9 
 
 Prevot, see Provost 
 
 Press, banal, 18 
 
 Prestations, 20, 21 
 
 Private warfare, 56, 58, 59 
 
 Provost, 23 
 
 Pursuit, right of, 11, \z 
 
 Rack at, 43 
 
 Redemption taxes, 16, 17 
 Redevances, 16-20 
 Relief, 43 
 Reserve, 3 
 
 Seigneur, or sire, 30 
 
 Seigneurial exploitation, see Ex- 
 ploitation 
 
 Seigneurial regime, characteristics, 
 23-26 
 
 Seizure, right of, 20 
 
 Serfs, 9-13 
 
 Service, of vassals, 42-44 
 
 Squires, 29, 31, 32, zz, 34 
 
 Taille, 16 
 
 Tenures, of land, 54, 55 
 
 Tourneys, 57 
 
 Truce of God, 58 
 
 Valets, 29 
 
 Vassal, 38-44 ; obligations of, 41- 
 
 44. 
 Vidame, 48 
 Village, 7-9 
 Villains, 8, 9; free, 13, 14 
 
 Ward, of minors, 45 
 Wars, 56-58 
 
 Women, in the feudal regime, 44- 
 46 
 
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 admirably arranged ; they appeal to the eye and follow a natural 
 sequence." — Prof. P. F. Emerson, of University of Vermont. 
 
 " It strikes me as the best history for the High-School student that 
 I have seen. I am particularly impressed by the interesting illus- 
 trations, the beautifully executed maps, and the lists for supplemen- 
 tary reading. This is to say nothing of the clear and orderly pres- 
 entation of tacts."— Edmund D. Scott, Holyoke{Mass.) High School. 
 
 " The pages devoted to the beginnings of the colonies are especially 
 commendable, as many important facts usually omitted, or passed 
 over with brief words of comment, receive their proper treatment in 
 Johnston."— Z>. C. Knowlton, Jthaca (N. Y.) High School. 
 
 " The account of events of recent times is set forth clearly and more 
 fully than in any other school history that I have seen. It is 
 accurate in the statement of facts, and logical in their arrangement." 
 —Prof. Brewster O. Higley, of Ohio University. 
 
 \ 
 
 rlENRY HOLT QL (-.U. 878Waba8liAve.,"'ciiicaeo 
 V'oi 
 
 i 
 
SEIGNOBOS'S POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE 
 
 since 1814. 
 
 By Charles Seignobos. Translation edited by Prof. 
 
 Silas M. Mac Vane, of Harvard University, xx -f 881 pp. 
 
 Svo. . ^3.00 net. 
 
 The author's capacity for seizing on the decisive events of recent 
 
 European history, his skill in using one event to explain another, 
 
 his steady interest in the welfare of the common mass of men, his 
 
 thorough freedom from national or other prejudice, and above all 
 
 his very suggestive generalizations on the later history of Europe, 
 
 give his work instructive qualities not always found in our general 
 
 histories. — From the Editor s Preface. 
 
 " The best history of Europe in the nineteenth century that has 
 yet appeared." — Prof. II. Morse Stephens of Cornell Univer- 
 sity, in Book Reviews. 
 
 SEIGNOBOS'S HISTORY OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE 
 
 Translation edited by Dr. Wm. Fairley. With maps 
 and numerous illustrations. 528 pp. i2mo. $1.50 net. 
 This history has all the clearness characteristic of French his- 
 torical writing, and i^ graphic in its presentation. Large use has 
 been made of the legendary and anecdotal material, but the subor- 
 dinate importance of this has been indicated by placing it in smaller 
 type than the body of the text. The space thus gained has been 
 utilized to carry on M. Seignobos's work from the time of Theo- 
 dosius I. to Charlemagne. The editor has also appended to each 
 chapter a list of sources available in English, and a very full set of 
 • Parallel Readings. 
 
 SEIGNOBOS'S FEUDAL REGIME 
 
 Translated by Prof. E. W. Dow, University of Michigan. 
 68 pp. Svo. 
 This notable monograph, originally contributed to Lavisse and 
 Ranibeaud's " Histoire G6nerale," has been pronounced by author- 
 ities to be perhaps the most illuminative work on its subject. 
 
 LANGLOIS «& SEIGNOBOS'S STUDY OF HISTORY 
 
 An Introduction to the Study of History. By Ch. V. 
 
 Langlois and Ch. Seignobos. Translated by G. G. Berry. 
 With a Preface by F'. York Powell. 350 pp. 8vo. 
 #2.25 net. 
 
 " It points out how facts in the past are to be determined, and 
 how they are to be used in writing history. It is full of interest for 
 every student of history, and of valuable suggestions for those who 
 write or hope to write it." — Jottrnal of iLducation (London). 
 
 HENRY HOLT & CO. ^^^idSS^