An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

by James Harvey Robinson

Growing power and independence of the great landed proprietor.

39. In the absence of a powerful king with a well-organized army at his back, each district was left to look out for itself. Doubtless many counts, margraves, bishops, and other great landed proprietors who were gradually becoming independent princes, earned the loyalty of the people about them by taking the lead in defending the country against its invaders and by establishing fortresses as places of refuge when the community was hard pressed. These conditions serve to explain why such government as continued to exist during the centuries following the deposition of Charles the Fat was necessarily carried on mainly, not by the king and his officers, but by the great landholders. The grim fortresses of the mediæval lords, which appeared upon almost every point of vantage throughout western Europe during the Middle Ages, would not have been tolerated by the king, had he been powerful enough to destroy them. They plainly indicate that their owners were practically independent rulers.

When the traveler in France or Germany comes upon the picturesque ruins of a mediæval castle, perched upon some rocky cliff, accessible from one side only, and commanding the surrounding country, he cannot but see that those massive walls, with their towers and battlements, their moat and drawbridge, were never intended as a dwelling place for the peaceful household of a private citizen, but rather as the fortified palace of a ruler. We can picture the great hall crowded with armed retainers, who were ready to fight for the proprietor when he was disposed to attack a neighboring lord, and who knew that below were the dungeons to which the lord might send them if they ventured to rebel against his authority.

Mediæval Fortress, showing Moat and Drawbridges

The landed proprietor and the manor.

In order to understand the position of the mediæval noble and the origin of feudalism we must consider the situation of the great landowners. A large part of western Europe in the time of Charlemagne appears to have been divided up into great estates, resembling the Roman villas. Just how these originated we do not know. These estates, or manors, as they were called, were cultivated mainly by serfs, who were bound to the land and were under the control of its proprietor. They tilled such part of the estate as the owner reserved for his own particular use, and provided for his needs and their own without the necessity of buying much from the outside. When we speak of a mediæval landowner we mean one who held one or more of these manors, which served to support him and left him free to busy himself fighting with other proprietors in the same position as himself.[59]

Immunities.

It had been common even before Charlemagne's time to grant to monasteries and churches, and even to individuals, an extraordinary privilege which exempted their lands from the presence or visits of government officials. No public officer with the power to hear cases, exact fines, obtain lodging or entertainment for the king and his followers when traveling about, or make requisitions of any kind, was to enter the lands or villages belonging to the monastery or person enjoying the immunity. These exemptions were evidently sought with a view to getting rid of the exactions of the king's officials and appropriating the various fines and fees, rather than with the purpose of usurping governmental prerogatives. But the result was that the monasteries or individuals who were thus freed from the requisitions of the government were left to perform its functions,—not, however, as yet in their own right, but as representatives of the king.[60] It is not hard to see how those who enjoyed this privilege might, as the central power weakened, become altogether independent. It is certain that a great many landowners who had been granted no exemption from the jurisdiction of the king's officers, and a great many of the officers themselves, especially the counts and margraves, gradually broke away altogether from the control of those above them and became the rulers of the regions in which they lived.