Civilization During the Middle Ages

George Adams

• Publisher: Jovian Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781537800257
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

The object of this book is to show how the foundations of our civilization were laid in the past and how its chief elements were introduced, and to depict its progressive development until it had assumed its most characteristic modern features. Its purpose is to show the movement and direction of historic forces, and the relation of the facts of history one to another. In other words, it is to present as clear a view as possible of what is the most important thing for all introductory study at least, and for the permanent intellectual furniture of most - the orderly and organic growth of our civilization. If anywhere the details have been allowed to obscure the general movement, there I have failed to realize my intention...

THE FEUDAL SYSTEM

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OUT OF THE FRAGMENTS OF the Carolingian empire the modern nations were finally to arise. But there was in the meantime, as we have seen, a considerable period, after the fall of the old government, before any real national governments, at all corresponding to the modern idea, came into existence. This is the period when the feudal system was the prevailing form of political organization.

In any detailed history of civilization it would be necessary to give much space to the feudal system, both because of the large field which it occupies in the political life of the middle ages, and also because it is one of the most influential of medieval institutions, the source of legal principles and social ideas, which are, even now, by no means obsolete.

The question of the origin of the feudal system is one of the most difficult in all institutional history, for one reason, because it took its rise in ages which have left us very scanty historical material, and for another, because it originated in the domain of extra-legal and private operations, and under the influence of forces which leave but slight traces of their working. Every important point in this history has been the subject of long and violent controversy, and is so still, though to a less extent. It may be said that opinion is now practically united upon the main points in the history of political feudalism, and that present differences concern minor points of detail, or the amount of emphasis which shall be placed upon certain facts.

Before entering upon the details of the origin of the feudal system, there is one general consideration which has an important bearing upon the study which should be made clear. It is necessary here, and in all institutional history, to distinguish very carefully between two sets of causes or antecedents. First, there is the general cause, or the prevailing condition of things in the society of the time, which renders a new institution necessary; and, second, there is the old institution, on which the prevailing cause seizes, and which it transforms into a new one. Both these are always present. No institution ever starts into life wholly new. Every new institution has its foundation far in the past in some earlier one. The prevailing necessity transforms it into a new institution, but the character of the new creation is as much conditioned by the character of the old as it is by the new necessity which it is made to meet. The sneer which is sometimes heard against that sort of investigation which seeks the foundations of a new institution in those which have preceded it, as merely antiquarian, is proof only of a very narrow conception of history.

The application of this consideration to the present case becomes clear enough when the problem before us is specifically stated. What we have to do is not to account for the rise of feudal forms in general, but to account for that peculiar feudal system, which arose in western Europe in the middle ages. It is undoubtedly true that institutions have existed in Japan, and in Central Africa-, and in various Mohammedan states, almost everywhere, indeed, which are justly called feudal. It is true that under certain political conditions human nature turns, naturally as it would seem, to forms of government which are feudal. And it is necessary to take these political and social conditions into account in our study of the problem more fully than has been done, perhaps, by some merely institutional historians. They are among the most essential causes at work. But when taken alone they merely account for the rise of feudal forms in general. They give us no reason for the fact that in institutional details these various feudal systems differ from one another in essential particulars. To explain this fact we must turn to the earlier institutional foundation on which in each case the social forces built.

By “the feudal system,” when used without qualification, we always mean the system of medieval western Europe, and in accounting for its origin we have two sets of facts to consider—the condition of society which gave such forms an opportunity to develop, and the earlier institutions which were transformed by these social and economic conditions into the historical feudal system, and which determined the form assumed by many of the special features of that system.

By “the feudal system” again we commonly mean, as we should, the entire organization of society from top to bottom. In studying it, therefore, we have constantly to remember that this organization was a two-sided one. There had been more or less closely combined in it two distinct groups of practices and institutions which were in their origin independent of one another, which had grown up to meet different needs, and which remained to the end clearly distinguished by contemporaries and easily distinguishable by us. Described in the most general terms, one side was the feudal organization of government, and the other was the feudal organization of agriculture. In the case of both alike, development ofthe original beginnings had been induced by the same general condition of things in the middle and later empire, the decay of the ancient civilization, political and economic. On one side political influences were especially, active; certain earlier legal practices were seized upon and developed into institutions practically new in order to furnish to the free man locally the protection which the general government was no longer able to give. On the other side the economic were the chief influences, and institutions which had for their object to secure compulsorily the necessary cultivation of the soil were developed and added to existing institutions. The former gave rise to what we more often mean when we speak of feudalism, the latter to what we may call, using a term more frequent in England than elsewhere, the manorial system. Logically, historically, and legally, there was no necessary connection between these two sides of feudalism. There need have been no actual connection. Either side might become highly developed with practically no, or an imperfect, development of the other, as did economic feudalism in the Anglo-Saxon states. In the actual situation, however, both earlier and later, the vast importance of agriculture as the chief source of wealth and the chief support of life made it inevitable that, where political feudalism was at all developed, it should enter into a partnership with economic feudalism. It is of great importance to remember that their union was never more than a partnership. They never were amalgamated into one, but the two sides remained distinct and distinguishable so long as they existed.

It does not accord with the general purpose of this book to undertake a detailed account of the rise of the manorial system or description of its final character. These things are to be sought in the special field of economic history. Here it will suffice to say that the manorial system was created by taking as a beginning the Roman system of organizing the cultivation of a great estate as a unit, managed from a common centre, the villa, and adding to it the practice of attaching the agricultural laborer to the soil so that he could not leave it himself or be removed from it by the landlord. This practice created the serf class, and by combining it with the great estate cultivated as a unit, the manor was created. So simple a statement, however, does not dispose of all the difficulties of this development, nor was the manorial system, even where independent of feudalism proper, quite so completely divorced from all results that may be called political, as this would seem to imply. Especially is it necessary to notice one development intimately connected with the rise of the manor which results in many cases in the transfer to the lord of the manor of a responsibility which is political, and normally the function of the state.

In the simplest terms, which nevertheless describe accurately the general process, this transfer came about in the following way: The Roman master had over his slaves the power of life and death and of all minor punishment. The state assumed no responsibility in regard to the misdemeanors and crimes of the slave. As the slave was transformed into the serf, still unfree, the master’s responsibility in these matters continued the same. But as the serf had been granted certain limited rights, a definite piece of land, the temporary possession of some personal property, disputes between them over these things, which would be of the nature of civil, not criminal, cases would arise. These also fell to the lord’s decision. Here is the germ of a jurisdiction and a court, which very likely in the beginning did not extend over free men. As by degrees, however, partly from economic and partly from political reasons, free men began to be included within the manorial organization, it was inevitable that disputes between them and other members of the same community should fall into the lord’s court. The state in its weakness was probably not unwilling that his responsibility should also extend itself at least to some of the criminal acts of free men. It is only necessary to suppose that the manor in time became identical in extent with the territorial jurisdiction of some local public court, the town or the hundred, to see how easy it would be to take a further step and to identify, by royal grant or private usurpation, the local public court of that territory with the private court which had grown up in the manor.

This process was greatly aided by the fact that both the general government and the landlord looked upon the administration of local justice largely as a source of revenue. Fees and fines, which in those days were paid in every case, were considered no insignificant additions to public or private income. It was evidently the economic consideration which was the chief one in this transfer, but the effect was to a considerable extent political. What is really a function of local government had passed into private hands, in many cases quite independently of the other general transformation which was going on at the same time of the functions of the central government into private possession in the rise of political feudalism proper. Where this transfer took place the local court, if it was that of a small political unit like the town, was often united with the manorial court, so that the two became practically one. If it was that of a larger unit like the hundred, the public court often continued distinct though in private hands. Whether united or distinct, however, the two jurisdictions, the manorial and the local public, were in almost all cases distinguishable from one another, and seem to have been so distinguished by contemporaries. The manorial jurisdiction proper remained a feature of economic feudalism so long as that system survived, and indeed in some countries it continued long after political feudalism proper had disappeared and local jurisdiction been fully resumed by the state. In this form it came to be transferred to some of the American colonies like Maryland.

The political feudal system proper, with which we have chiefly to deal, came into existence in the eighth and ninth centuries, owing to the disorders of the time, and the inability of the central government—even of so strong a government as Charlemagne’s—to do its necessary work without some such help. It is itself a crude and barbarous form of government in which the political organization is based on the tenure of land; that is, the public duties and obligations which ordinarily the citizen owes to the state, are turned into private and personal services which he owes to his lord in return for land which he has received from him. The state no longer depends upon its citizens, as citizens, for the fulfilment of public duties, but it depends upon a certain few to perform specified duties, which they owe as vassals of the king, and these in turn depend upon their vassals for services, which will enable them to meet their own obligations towards the king. The services rendered in this way were not regarded in the feudal age as an economic return for the land, and all ranks obtained their necessary income from other sources, chiefly from the economic side of feudalism, that is, the manorial organization.

There are always present in this political feudal system two elements which seem very closely united together, but which are really distinct, and to be kept apart from one another in mind if we are to understand the origin of the system. They were distinct in origin and early history and were brought together only in the middle period of feudal growth. One of these relates wholly to land and the tenure by which it is held. This land element is the “benefice” or “fief.” The other is the personal relation, the bond of mutual fidelity and protection which binds together the grades in the feudal hierarchy. This personal element is the relation of lord and vassal. In the ideal feudal system these two elements are always united, the vassal always receives a fief, the fief is always held by a vassal. In practice they were sometimes separated, and in some countries such a separation was recognized by the feudal law. There are, then, these two specific questions concerning the origin of the feudal system: How did these two institutions, vassalage and the benefice, come into existence and become united; and how did public duties, for example military service, get attached to them, and become changed in this way into private services which one paid as a form of land rent?

When we come to trace the origin of these two institutions we find that we are carried back to the time of political insecurity when the Roman Empire was falling to pieces, just before and at the moment of the German invasions. Then began the conditions which called these institutions into existence, and which, continuing in the main unchanged through the whole period, transformed them into the perfected feudal system.

As the real power which the Roman emperor had at his command declined, his ability to protect the citizens and preserve order in the outlying provinces became less and less. The peace and security which Rome had formerly established could no longer be maintained, and the provinces fell a prey to various disorders. Usurping emperors, peasants in insurrection, revolted troops, bands of invading Germans, marauders of all sorts appeared everywhere, and the state could not hold them in check. But the individual must obtain protection at some price. If he owns land, he will need protection in order to cultivate it and enjoy the returns; if he has no land, he will still need protection for his life and his means of livelihood. If he cannot get it from the state he must seek it where he can find it. In such political conditions there always arises a class of men strong enough from wealth or position or abilities to give some degree of protection to weaker men. The weaker men take refuge with the stronger and increase their power, which thus grows into a little semidetached fragment of the state, and the germ of the feudal system has come into existence.

In the later Roman Empire, under the influence of these conditions, two practices arose which we need to notice. One of them related to land, the other to persons owning no land. In the case of the first, the small landowner, long at an economic disadvantage, and now, in the midst of the crowding evils of the time, threatened with total destruction, gave up his land to some large landowner near him, whose position was strong enough to command or compel respect from vagrant enemies, and received it back from him to cultivate, no longer as owner, but as a tenant at will. As the form of tenure to be used in such cases, a peculiar kind of lease which had been known to the Roman law as the precarium received a great extension in practice. Under this form the owner granted the use of a piece of property to another, without rent and with no period of time specified, but with the right to call it back at will. This was the kind of tenure by which the small landholder held and cultivated the land which he had been obliged to surrender to some strong man for fear of losing it entirely. He lost the ownership of it; he held it only so long as his lord might please, but his actual condition was much improved. In the growing scarcity of laborers he was not likely to be disturbed in his tenure, and he had now an armed force which could be depended on to keep off all marauders not actually armies, and he had a right to take refuge in his lord’s fortress on some not distant hilltop when a more serious invasion threatened.

The other practice was adopted to meet the case of the freeman who owned no land, and it gave rise to an institution closely resembling, possibly derived from, the clientele which Caesar describes as prevailing in Gaul at the time of his conquest, and not unlike the earlier Roman institution of patron and client. The dependant is often called a client in the language of the time, and the institution itself the patrocinium. In a case of this sort the poor freeman goes to the rich and strong man who can afford him protection, and explaining that he can no longer care for or support himself, begs to be taken under his protection and furnished with shelter and support. The rich man grants the petition, adds the client to his household, and expects from him, in return, such services as a freeman may perform. There seems to have been no specified services, nor peculiar duty of fidelity in this arrangement, but its obligations were probably clearly enough defined in the customary law which all understood. In this way many local magnates of the age of the invasion collected about them considerable forces, composed also partly of armed slaves and serfs, and so added greatly to their own power, and furnished the locality with some degree of security. In some instances, both in the East and in the West, we know that such private forces amounted to respectable armies and served to protect extensive territories, or even to turn the march of an invading tribe.

It is important to notice that, in the case of the freeman entering into either of these relations, the personal one or the one relating to land, there was no loss of political status or personal freedom. The dependant, under the new arrangement, remained, in either relation, exactly what he had been before, both in reference to his duties to the government and his personal rights.

It was of course true, as the history of the Roman tax system makes evident, that the rich man might be so strong in his district that he could refuse to meet his Obligations towards the government, and set the local officers at defiance,: and so be able to protect from the burdens of the state the poorer men who became his clients and dependants. He could also protect them from the not infrequent abuse of power by officials, These were, no doubt, reasons for the rapid extension of these practices. But if he interfered with the real rights of the government, it was an illegal usurpation, not a recognized change in the status or duties of his dependents. That such results did follow is clear enough from the attitude of the state towards these practices, which it pronounced illegal and forbade under the heaviest penalties. But it was powerless to interfere, and even the death penalty had no effect to check them. Indeed, if the state had been strong enough to stop them, it would have been strong enough to have preserved such general security that no necessity for such customs would ever have arisen.

The results, as seen at the time of the invasions, have many features in common with the later feudal system, and it is right, in the sense mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, to speak of them as feudal, but they are still far from being the historical feudal system.

In the first place, the characteristic feature of the later feudalism was lacking. These two practices remained entirely distinct from one another. They were not yet united into a single institution. The personal relation, or client ship, did not imply at all the reception of land, and holding land by the precarium tenure involved no obligation of service.

In the second place, there was no common organization, either expressed or implied, as there was in the completed feudal system, between the various local powers which had been formed. They were merely private and wholly separate fragments into which the state had fallen. In other words, there was not enough connection between them, taken alone, to have preserved the state, as a state, through a p...

Table of contents

• INTRODUCTION
• WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH
• THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY
• THE GERMAN CONQUEST AND THE FALL OF ROME
• WHAT THE GERMANS ADDED
• THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY
• THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE
• AFTER CHARLEMAGNE
• THE FEUDAL SYSTEM
• THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY
• THE CRUSADES
• THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS
• THE FORMATION OF FRANCE
• ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES
• THE RENAISSANCE
• THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE
• THE REFORMATION
• SUMMARY