Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

Feudalism assumed that all the land belonging to a nation belonged in the first place to that nation’s king. Because he could not govern or cultivate it all himself he would parcel it out in ‘fiefs’ amongst the chief nobles at his court, promising them his protection, and asking in return that they should do him some specified service. This system recalls the ‘villa’ of Roman days with its senator, granting protection to his tenants from robbery and excessive taxation, and employing them to plough and sow, to reap his crops, and build his houses and bridges.

In the Middle Ages the service of the chief tenants was nearly always military: to appear when summoned by the king with so many horsemen and so many archers fully armed. In order to provide this force the tenant would be driven in his turn to grant out parts of his lands to other tenants, who would come when he called them with horsemen and arms that they had collected in a similar way. This process was called ‘sub-infeudation’. Society thus took the form of a pyramid with the king at the apex, immediately below him his tenants-in-chief, and below them in graded ranks or layers the other tenants.

This brings us to the base of the pyramid, the people who could not fight themselves, having neither horses nor weapons, and who certainly could not lend any other soldiers to their lord’s banner. Were they to receive no land?

In the Roman ‘villa’ the bottom strata was the slave, the chattel with no rights even over his own body. Under the system of feudalism the base of the pyramid was made up of ‘serfs’, men originally free, with a customary right to the land on which they lived, who had lost their freedom under feudal law and had become bound to the land, ascripti glebae, in such a way that if the land were sub-let or sold they would pass over to the new owner like the trees or the grass. In return for their land, though they might not serve their master with spear or bow, they would work in his fields, build his bridges and castles, mend his roads, and guard his cattle.

From top to bottom of this pyramid of feudal society ran the binding mortar of ‘tenure’ and ‘service’; but these were not the only links which kept feudal society together. When a tenant did ‘homage’ for his land, and ‘with head uncovered, with belt ungirt, his sword removed’, placed his hands between those of his lord, and took an oath, after the manner of the thegns of Wessex to their king, ‘to love what he loved and shun what he shunned both on sea and on land’, there entered into this relationship the finer bond of loyalty due from a vassal to his overlord. It was the descendant of the old Teutonic idea of the comitatus described by Tacitus,[7] the chief destined to lead and guide, his bodyguard pledged to follow him to death if necessary.

Put shortly, then, feudalism may be described as a system of society based upon the holding of land—a system, that is, in which a man’s legal status and social rank were in the main determined by the conditions on which he held (i.e. possessed) his land. Such a system, to return to our example of the pyramid, grew not only from the apex, by the sovereign granting lands, as the King of France did to Rollo ‘the Ganger’, but from the middle and base as well.

One of the chief feudal powers in mediaeval times was the Church, for though abbots and bishops were not supposed to fight themselves, yet they would often have numbers of lay military tenants to bring to the help of the king or their overlord. Some of these tenants were men whom they had provided with estates, but others were landowners who had voluntarily surrendered their rights over their land in return for the protection of a local monastery or bishopric, and thus become its tenants. A large part of the Church land was, however, held, not by military or lay tenure, but in return for spiritual services, or free alms as it was called, i.e. prayers for the soul of the donor. Perhaps a landowner wished to make a pious gift on his death-bed, or had committed a crime and believed that a surrender of his property to the Church would placate God. For some such reason, at any rate, he made over his land, or part of it, to the Church, which in this way accumulated great estates and endowments, free from the usual liabilities of lay tenure. All over Europe other men, and even whole villages and towns, were taking the same steps, seeking protection direct from the king, or a great lord, or an abbot or bishop, offering in return rent, services, or tolls on their merchandise.

Feudalism at its best stood for the protection of the weak in an age when armies and a police force as we understand the terms did not exist. Even when the system fell below this standard, and it often fell badly, there still remained in its appeal to loyalty an ideal above and beyond the ordinary outlook of the day, a seed of nobler feeling that with the growth of civilization and under the influence of the Church blossomed into the flower of chivalry.

I made them lay their hands in mine and swear
To reverence the King as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King:
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander; no! nor listen to it,
To honour his own word as if his God’s,
To live sweet lives in purest chastity.

Such are the vows that Tennyson puts in the mouth of Arthur’s knights, who with Charlemagne and his Paladins were the heroes of mediaeval romance and dreams. King Henry the Fowler, who ruled Germany in the early part of the tenth century, instituted the Order of Knighthood, forming a bodyguard from the younger brothers and sons of his chief barons. Before they received the sword-tap on the shoulder that confirmed their new rank, these candidates for knighthood took four vows: first to speak the truth, next to serve faithfully both King and Church, thirdly never to harm a woman, and lastly never to turn their back on a foe.