[64] See formula of "commendation," as this arrangement was called, in [Readings], Chapter IX. The fact that the Roman imperial government forbade this practice under heavy penalties suggests that the local magnates used their retainers to establish their independence of the imperial taxgatherers and other government officials.
[65] See Adams, Civilization, pp. 207 sqq.
[66] Lord is dominus, or senior, in mediæval Latin. From the latter word the French seigneur is derived. Suzerain is used to mean the direct lord and also an overlord separated by one or more degrees from a subvassal.
[67] A relic of the time when fiefs were just becoming hereditary was preserved in the exaction by the lord of a certain due, called the relief. This payment was demanded from the vassal when one lord died and a new one succeeded him, and from a new vassal upon the death of his predecessor. It was originally the payment for a new grant of the land at a time when fiefs were not generally held hereditarily. The right did not exist in the case of all fiefs and it varied greatly in amount. It was customarily much heavier when the one succeeding to the fief was not the son of the former holder but a nephew or more distant relative.
[68] Homage is derived from the Latin word for man, homo.
[69] The conditions upon which fiefs were granted might be dictated either by interest or by mere fancy. Sometimes the most fantastic and seemingly absurd obligations were imposed. We hear of vassals holding on condition of attending the lord at supper with a tall candle, or furnishing him with a great yule log at Christmas. Perhaps the most extraordinary instance upon record is that of a lord in Guienne who solemnly declared upon oath, when questioned by the commissioners of Edward I, that he held his fief of the king upon the following terms: When the lord king came through his estate he was to accompany him to a certain oak. There he must have waiting a cart loaded with wood and drawn by two cows without any tails. When the oak was reached, fire was to be applied to the cart and the whole burned up "unless mayhap the cows make their escape."
[70] The feudal courts, especially those of the great lords and of the king himself, were destined to develop later into the centers of real government, with regular judicial, financial, and administrative bodies for the performance of political functions.
[71] In the following description of the anarchy of feudalism, I merely condense Luchaire's admirable chapter on the subject in his Manuel des Institutions Françaises. The Readings, Chapters X, XII, XIII, XIV, furnish many examples of disorder.
[72] The gorgeous affairs of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were but weak and effeminate counterparts of the rude and hazardous encounters of the thirteenth.
[73] References, for the mediæval castle, the jousts, and the life of the nobles, Munro, Mediæval History, Chapter XIII, and Henderson, Short History of Germany, pp. 111–121.