Feudal Society

Marc Bloch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317677567
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Marc Bloch said that his goal in writing Feudal Society was to go beyond the technical study a medievalist would typically write and 'dismantle a social structure.' In this outstanding and monumental work, which has introduced generations of students and historians to the feudal period, Bloch treats feudalism as living, breathing force in Western Europe from the ninth to the thirteenth century. At its heart lies a magisterial account of relations of lord and vassal, and the origins of the nature of the fief, brought to life through compelling accounts of the nobility, knighthood and chivalry, family relations, political and legal institutions, and the church. For Bloch history was a process of constant movement and evolution and he describes throughout the slow process by which feudal societies turned into what would become nation states. A tour de force of historical writing, Feudal Society is essential reading for anyone interested in both Western Europe's past and present.

With a new foreword by Geoffrey Koziol

VOLUME I

PART I

The Environment: The Last Invasions

I

______________________

MOSLEMS AND HUNGARIANS

1 EUROPE INVADED AND BESIEGED

“YOU see before you the wrath of the Lord breaking forth…. There is naught but towns emptied of their folk, monasteries razed to the ground or given to the flames, fields desolated…. Everywhere the strong oppresseth the weak and men are like fish of the sea that blindly devour each other.” Thus, in 909, the bishops of the province of Rheims assembled at Trosly. The literature of the ninth and tenth centuries, the charters, and the deliberations of councils are full of such lamentations. When all allowance has been made both for exaggeration and for the pessimism natural to religious orators, we are forced to see in this incessantly recurring theme, supported as it is by so much contemporary evidence, the proof of a state of affairs regarded as intolerable even in those days. Certainly it was a period when those who were capable of observing and making comparisons, the clergy in particular, felt themselves to be living in a hateful atmosphere of disorder and violence. Feudalism was born in the midst of an infinitely troubled epoch, and in some measure it was the child of those troubles themselves. But some of the causes which helped to create or maintain this disorderly environment were altogether foreign to the internal evolution of European societies. Forged several centuries earlier in the fiery crucible of the Germanic invasions, the new civilization of the West, in its turn, seemed like a citadel besieged—indeed more than half overrun. It was attacked from three sides at once: in the south by the devotees of Islam, Arabs or their Arabized subjects; in the east by the Hungarians; and in the north by the Scandinavians.

2 THE MOSLEMS

Of the enemies just enumerated, Islam was certainly the least dangerous, although one would hesitate to speak of its decline. For a long period neither Gaul nor Italy, among their poor cities, had anything to offer which approached the splendour of Baghdad or Cordova. Until the twelfth century the Moslem world, along with the Byzantine world, exercised a true economic hegemony over the West: the only gold coinage still circulating in our part of Europe came from Greek or Arab mints, or at least—like more than one of the silver coinages too—were copies of their productions. And if the eighth and ninth centuries witnessed the final breakdown of the unity of the Caliphate, the various states which at that time arose from the wreckage remained formidable powers. But thereafter it was much less a question of invasions properly so-called than of frontier wars. Let us leave aside the East, where the emperors of the Amorian and Macedonian dynasties (828–1056) painfully and valiantly set themselves to reconquer Asia Minor. Western societies came into collision with the Islamic states on two fronts only.

First, southern Italy. This region was, as it were, the hunting-ground of the sovereigns who ruled over the ancient Roman province of Africa—the Aghlabite emirs of Kairouan, succeeded, at the beginning of the tenth century, by the Fatimite caliphs. The Aghlabites had wrested Sicily little by little from the Greeks who had held it since Justinian’s time and whose last stronghold, Taormina, fell in 902. Meanwhile the Arabs had gained a footing in the peninsula. Across the Byzantine provinces of the south they threatened the semi-independent cities of the Tyrrhenian coast and the little Lombard principalities of Campania and of the Beneventino, which were more or less dependencies of Constantinople. At the beginning of the eleventh century they could still carry their raids as far as the Sabine mountains. One band, which had made its stronghold in the wooded heights of Monte Argento, very close to Gaeta, could only be destroyed, in 915, after twenty years of marauding. In 982, the young “emperor of the Romans”, Otto II, set out to conquer southern Italy. Though Saxon by origin, he considered himself nevertheless to be the heir of the Caesars, in Italy as elsewhere. He committed the surprising folly, so often repeated in the Middle Ages, of choosing the summer season as the time for taking to these scorching regions an army accustomed to entirely different climates, and on the 25th July he encountered the Moslem bands on the east coast of Calabria and suffered a most humiliating defeat.

The Moslem peril continued to press heavily on these regions till, in the eleventh century, a handful of adventurers from Normandy routed both Byzantines and Arabs. Uniting Sicily with the southern part of the peninsula, the vigorous state which they eventually created was destined both to bar for ever the path of the invaders and to act as an inspired intermediary between the Latin and Islamic civilizations. On Italian soil the struggle against the Saracens, which had begun in the ninth century, continued for a long time—with small and fluctuating territorial gains on either side. But in relation to Christendom as a whole, it was only a remote territory that was at issue.

The other field of conflict was in Spain. There, it was for Islam no longer a question of raids for plunder or temporary annexations; populations of Mohammedans lived there in great numbers and the states founded by the Arabs had their centres in the country itself. At the beginning of the tenth century the Saracen bands had not yet completely forgotten the way over the Pyrenees. But these long-distance raids were becoming more and more infrequent. Starting from the extreme north, the Christian reconquest, in spite of many reverses and humiliations, slowly progressed. In Galicia and on those plateaux of the north-west which the emirs and caliphs of Cordova, established too far to the south, had never held with a very firm hand, the little Christian kingdoms, sometimes divided, sometimes united under a single ruler, moved forward to the region of the Douro from the middle of the eleventh century; the Tagus was reached in 1085. At the foot of the Pyrenees, on the other hand, the course of the Ebro, although so near, remained for a long time Moslem; Saragossa fell only in 1118. These struggles, though they did not by any means preclude more peaceful relations, were as a rule interrupted only by brief truces, and they stamped the Spanish societies with a character of their own. With the Europe “beyond the passes” they had scarcely any dealings, save in so far as they furnished its nobility—especially from the second half of the eleventh century—with the opportunity for brilliant, profitable and pious adventures, while at the same time providing its peasants with the opportunity of settling on the unoccupied lands at the pressing invitation of Spanish kings and nobles. But along with the wars properly so-called went piracy and brigandage, and it was chiefly through these that the Saracens contributed to the general disorder of the West.

From an early date the Arabs had been sailors. From their lairs in Africa, Spain, and especially the Balearics, their corsairs attacked the western Mediterranean. Nevertheless, in these waters, traversed by only a very few ships, the trade of pirate in the true sense of the word had not been very profitable. In the mastery of the sea, the Saracens—like the Scandinavians in the same period—saw above all the means of reaching coasts whence they could carry out profitable raids. From 842 they went up the Rhône as far as the approaches of Arles, plundering both banks on their way. The Camargue at that time was their normal base. But soon an accident was to procure them not only safer headquarters, but also the possibility of extending their ravages very considerably.

At a date not precisely ascertained, probably somewhere about 890, a small Saracen vessel coming from Spain was driven by the winds on to the coast of Provence, on the outskirts of the present town of Saint-Tropez. Its crew hid themselves during the day, then at nightfall emerged and massacred the inhabitants of a neighbouring village. Mountainous and wooded—it was called at that time the land of ash-trees (frênes), or “Freinet” ¹—this secluded place was easy to defend. Like their compatriots of Monte Argento in Campania, at the same period, this band of Arabs fortified themselves on a height, in the midst of thickets of thorns, and summoned their comrades to join them. Thus was created a most dangerous nest of robbers. With the exception of Fréjus, which was pillaged, it does not seem that the towns, protected as they were by their walls, were direct victims. But in the neighbourhood of the coast the country districts were appallingly devastated. The brigands of Le Freinet also took numerous prisoners whom they sold in the Spanish markets.

Moreover, they were not slow to carry their incursions well inland. Very few in number, they seem to have been reluctant to face the risks of the Rhône valley, relatively populous and protected by fortified cities or castles. But the Alpine massif made it possible for small bands of practised mountaineers to steal far forward, from one range of mountains to another, from thicket to thicket, and coming as they did from the Sierras of Spain or the mountainous Maghreb, these Saracens were, in the words of a monk of Saint-Gall, “real goats”. Moreover, the Alps, in spite of appearances, were not to be despised as a field for raids. Nestling in their midst were fertile valleys, on which it was easy to descend without warning from the surrounding mountains. Such a valley was Graisivaudan. Here and there, abbeys stood forth, ideal objectives for the raider. (Above Susa, the monastery of Novalesa, whence most of the monks had fled, was sacked and burned as early as 906.) Best of all, there journeyed through the passes small parties of travellers, merchants, or even pilgrims on their way to Rome to pray at the tombs of the Apostles. What could be more tempting than to ambush them on the road? As early as 920 or 921, some Anglo-Saxon pilgrims were battered with stones in a defile, and from then on such crimes were of frequent occurrence. The Arab djichs or armed bands were not afraid to venture astonishingly far north. In 940, we find them in the neighbourhood of the upper Rhine valley and in the Valais, where they burned the famous monastery of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune. About the same time, one of their detachments riddled with arrows the monks of Saint-Gall as they walked peacefully in procession round their church. This band, at any rate, was dispersed by the little group of defenders whom the abbot hurriedly gathered together; a number of prisoners, brought into the monastery, heroically allowed themselves to die of starvation.

To police the Alps or the Provençal countryside was beyond the power of contemporary states. There was no other remedy than to destroy the lair at Le Freinet. But here a new obstacle arose. It was practically impossible to lay siege to this citadel without cutting it off from the sea, whence it received its reinforcements. Now, neither the kings of this region—in the west, the kings of Provence and Burgundy, in the east, the king of Italy—nor their counts had fleets at their disposal. The only skilled sailors among the Christians were the Greeks who, however, occasionally turned their skill to account, just as the Saracens did, by taking to piracy. (It was Greek pirates who plundered Marseilles in 848.) On two occasions, in 931 and 942, the Byzantine fleet appeared off the coast of Le Freinet; on the second at least, and probably on the previous occasion also, they had been summoned by the king of Italy, Hugh of Arles, who had important interests in Provence. Nothing was achieved on either occasion. What is more, in 942, Hugh changed sides, even while the struggle was in progress, planning to make the Saracens his allies and with their aid to close the Alpine routes against the reinforcements which one of his rivals for the Lombard crown was awaiting. Then in 951 Otto the Great, king of East Francia—Germany of today—made himself king of the Lombards. His purpose was to build up in central Europe and even as far as Italy a power like that of the Carolingians, a Christian power and a promoter of peace. Regarding himself as the heir of Charlemagne whose imperial crown he was to assume in 962, he believed it to be his mission to put an end to the depredations of the Saracens. First trying the diplomatic approach, he sought to persuade the caliph of Cordova to order his people to evacuate Le Freinet. Then he formed the project of leading an expedition himself, but never carried it out.

Meanwhile, in 972, the marauders made the mistake of capturing too illustrious a prize. On the route of the Great Saint Bernard, in the valley of the Dranse, the abbot of Cluny, Maïeul, while returning from Italy, was ambushed and taken to one of those mountain refuges which the Saracens frequently used when they were not able to get back to their base. He was only released in return for a heavy ransom paid by his monks. Now Maïeul, who had reformed so many monasteries, was the revered friend, the director of conscience and, if one may venture to say it, the saint familier of many kings and barons; notably of William, count of Provence. The latter overtook on their way back the band who had committed the sacrilegious outrage and inflicted on them a severe defeat; then, gathering together under his command a number of nobles from the Rhône valley, to whom were to be distributed subsequently the lands brought back into cultivation, he launched an attack against the fortress of Le Freinet. This time, the citadel fell.

This for the Saracens was the end of large-scale brigandage on land, though naturally the coastline of Provence, like that of Italy, remained exposed to their outrages. Even in the eleventh century we find the monks of Lérins actively engaged in buying back Christians whom Arab pirates had captured and taken to Spain; in 1178 a raid near Marseilles yielded many prisoners. But the cultivation of the fields could be resumed in the coastal and sub-alpine regions of Provence, and the Alpine routes became again neither more nor less safe than any others traversing the mountains of Europe. Moreover, on the Mediterranean itself, the merchant cities of Italy, Pisa, Genoa and Amalfi, had since the beginning of the eleventh century passed over to the offensive. They chased the Moslems from Sardinia, and even hunted them down in the ports of the Maghreb (from 1015) and of Spain (in 1092). Thus they began to clean up those seas on the security of which their trade was so largely dependent. It was only a relative security, but until the nineteenth century the Mediterranean was not to know anything better.

3 THE HUNGARIAN ASSAULT

Like the Huns before them, the Hungarians or Magyars had appeared in Europe almost without warning, and at an early date the writers of the Middle Ages, who had learned to know them only too well, showed a naive astonishment that the Roman writers should not have mentioned them. Their early history is in any case much more obscure than that of the Huns, for the Chinese sources which, well before the Western records begin, enable us to follow the trail of the “Hiung-Nu”, are silent on the subject of Magyars. It is certain that the new invaders also belonged to the peculiar and highly characteristic world of the nomads of the Asiatic steppes: peoples often of very diverse languages, but astonishingly alike in their manner of life, because of the similarity of their surroundings; horse-breeders and warriors, living on the milk of their mares or the fruits of their hunting and fishing; natural enemies especially of the agriculturalists on the fringes of their territory. In its basic structure, the Magyar speech belongs to the linguistic type called Finno-Ugrian; the idioms to which it is closest today are those of certain aboriginal peoples of Siberia. But in the course of its wanderings the original ethnic stock had been mixed with numerous Turkish-speaking elements and had received a strong imprint from the civilizations of that group. ²

As early as 833 we find the Hungarians, whose name appeared then for the first time, disturbing the settled populations—the Khanate of the Khazars and the Byzantine colonies—in the neighbourhood of the sea of Azov. Soon, they are threatening at any moment to cut the Dnieper route, at this time an extremely active commercial highway by which, from portage to portage and from market to market, the furs of the North, the honey and wax of the Russian forests, and the slaves bought on all sides went to be exchanged against the merchandise or gold of Constantinople or Asia. But new hordes—the Petchenegs—starting out after them from beyond the Urals, harassed them un...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition Geoffrey Koziol
• Introduction: General Scope of the Inquiry
• Volume I
• Volume II
• Bibliography
• Index