The Consolidation of the Feudal System: The Era of “Classic Feudalism”

7.2.1 The Degradation of the System: From Lifelong

to Hereditary Benefits

The fact that the feudal pact was for life, but was not passed down, rendered it intrinsically precarious.

A first step was taken in the year 877 when Charles the Bald, at Quierzy-sur- Oise, granted his subjects, via capitulary"^[266] (a law divided into chapters), the privilege of passing their prerogatives down to their heirs in the event that they perished on a military campaign which the king had organized (Dutton 2009, 501­502). This case was an isolated one, but it reflected a trend which would eventually be institutionalized through the force of custom as the Carolingian Empire entered

into decline in the late ninth century.^[267] The shift to this process of consolidation, however, was far from smooth.

This is what Taylor (2005, 129) calls mutation feodale: a transformation of the public power and social order resulting from the alteration of the vassal’s former position in proprietary lordships. The establishment of familial succession in place of royal appointment led to the appearance of autonomous counts who began to consider their fiefdoms fully alienable, which were partitioned among multiple heirs across successive generations. The consequence was the proliferation of castles.^[268]

The principle, however, did not take root immediately. In fact, two centuries after the promulgations of the capitulary at Quierzy, the hereditary nature of vassals’ prerogatives was still a source of conflict between lords and vassals in Norman England. It was not until the twelfth century that the hereditary principle was firmly established, at which point the bone of contention became the amounts of relief taxes which inheriting vassals were obliged to pay their lords.^[269] The obsession with preserving these rights within the family was so great that even women came to be allowed to inherit and transmit them in the absence of male heirs.

7.2.2 The Transformation of the Feudal Relationship

When vassals’ privileges became hereditary, the original feudalism which had originated during the Carolingian period was transformed, altering both the cus­toms governing the relationships between lord and vassal and the legal nature of the latter’s entitlements. Thus, where Carolingian feudal vassaldom was predominantly a personal tie, the prerogatives it entailed later became the essence the feudal relationship, in what Marc Bloch has called the “second feudal age” (Bloch 2004, 69). Whereas before land was an incidental effect of becoming a vassal, under classic feudalism one became a vassal precisely and expressly to obtain the fiefdoms and privileges which vassaldom promised. This is why in the twelfth century, as Bisson (2009, 40) indicates, there was an explosive proliferation of castles, knights, and princes and bishops.

The consequence was that, in response to competition and economic pressure, aristocratic families preferred a vertical, dynastic structure of succession, seeking to restore the indivisibility of lordship and embrace a new custom of primogen­iture. The result was the appearance during the twelfth century, of dynasties indentified with regional power bases and led by a single head, generally a male (Taylor 2005, 130).

7.2.3 The Accumulation of Fiefdoms

As land ownership came to take precedence over the personal bond in feudal relationships, a struggle began to acquire the greatest possible number of new fiefdoms. In this way, those who were vassals to various kings, earls and arch­bishops managed to accumulate an abundance of fiefdoms.^[270] This land grab led some kings not to hesitate to actually become vassals of their vassals to secure certain fiefdoms, such as strategically-located castles. It goes without saying that when one had sworn loyalty to a number of different lords, a conflict could arise if any number of the latter went to war. A remedy was sought for this situation through the establishment of privileged or preferential vassal ties known as liege homage (Bloch 2004, 215).

In the end, the development of the feudal bond resulted in the formation of a particular legal regime applied to feudal lands, whose vassal occupants maintained certain well-established duties (essentially military and judicial) to their lords who, as they owned these lands outright, were beholden to no one.

7.2.4 From Public to Private Rule: The “Feudal Revolution”

From the point of view of the history of the Western polity, feudalism is a period in which a coherent, centralized public power disappeared, replaced by a vast network of private relationships. This process was accelerated by the diffusion of governmental powers resulting from the Merovingian and Carolingian kings’ granting of “immuni­ties” to their vassals, a privilege that released them from the authority of royal officials and their orders concerning taxation and jurisdiction (Robinson 2000, 31-32).

As Reynolds (1996, 20) specifies, what made vassalage so relevant was that at the time when it arose there was simply no idea of impersonal, public obligation; the Germanic tribes did not harbor the Roman notion of res publica, and the Merovingian kings perceived and administrated their kingdoms as their own private property.

Strayer (1971, 14) has indicated, that during the feudal era, interests and loyalties were primarily local, limited to the family, the neighborhood and the county. Royal officials tended to become leaders of autonomous local communities rather than agents of central authority. By the tenth century, they were practically independent, but their own authority, in turn, was being eroded by viscounts, castellans, and other leaders of smaller communities. Kings and princes were powerless to maintain control over castles they had built themselves, so they handed them over as fiefs to their vassals, at times even to prevent the raising of new fortresses, which became administrative capitals for surrounding districts and the centers of a whole network of facilities.^[271] Soon lords found themselves being defied by their own castellans, who tended to become themselves the heads of their own dynasties. As counties became hereditary and were partitioned the counts’ rights as legitimate heirs of the Frankish officials disintegrated, with the upshot that the idea of public office gave way to new conceptions and realities of power informed by feudal concepts (Bloch 2005, 124).

As Ganshof (1996, 60) points out, the feudal bond became a check on the disintegration of the state through a process that has been called the “Feudal Revolution”, conventional shorthand for the disappearance of any center capable of controlling localities, and the ascendancy of small-scale forms of organization (Reuter 2010, 72). According to Bisson (1994,18), this altered the nature and social role of violence, as it was no longer monopolized by a strong authority in the interest of maintaining public order, yielding newer “private” forms of violence, practiced by the masters of castles and those beholden to them. Lordship became predatory, militant, aggressive and unconstructive.

A near-permanent state of war was aggravated by the absence of political and social order. Orders issued in capitals were ineffectual, no longer enforceable in lands lying far from them. The lack of effective authority meant that merchants and traders were perpetually vulnerable to assault and robbery when transporting their goods. Thus, long-distance commerce was frustrated, and the economy regressed towards a model defined by local production and self-sufficiency. Finally, civilization collapsed “in the sense that the pursuit of inessentials did not enhance life but threatened survival” (Robinson 2000, 27).

The only significant and effective resistance to this state of anarchy and violence was put up by the Church which, as heir to the Roman imperial ideal, endeavored to counteract the disintegration of authority and to restore the notion of power exercised in the common interest.

7.3