An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

by James Harvey Robinson

CHAPTER IX

FEUDALISM

Feudalism the outgrowth of prevailing conditions and earlier customs.

40. Feudalism was the natural outcome of the peculiar conditions which prevailed in western Europe during the ninth and tenth centuries. Its chief elements were not, however, newly invented or discovered at that period but were only combined in order to meet the demands of the times. It will be well, therefore, to consider briefly those customs in the later Roman Empire and among the invading Germans which suggest (1) the habit of the mediæval landowner of granting his land to others in such a way that, while he retained the title, they became, to most intents and purposes, the real owners; and (2) the relation of lord and vassal.

Conditions of landholding in the later Roman Empire.

The beneficium.

We have seen how, before the barbarian inroads, the small landowners in the Roman Empire had often found it to their advantage to give up the title to their land to more powerful neighboring proprietors.[62] The scarcity of labor was such that the new owner, while extending the protection of his name over the land, was glad to permit the former owner to continue to till it, rent free, much as if it still belonged to him. With the invasions of the barbarians the lot of the defenseless small landholder became worse. He had a new resource, however, in the monasteries. The monks were delighted to accept any real estate which the owner—for the good of his soul and to gain the protection of the saint to whom the monastery church was dedicated—felt moved to turn over to them on the understanding that the abbot should permit the former owner to continue to cultivate his fields. Though he no longer owned the land, he still enjoyed its products and had only to pay a trifling sum each year in recognition of the monastery's ownership.[63] The use, or usufruct, of the land which was thus granted by the monastery to its former owner was called a beneficium. The same term was applied to the numerous grants which churches made from their vast possessions for limited periods and upon various conditions. We also find the Frankish kings and other great landowners disposing of their lands in a similar fashion. The beneficium forms the first stage in the development of mediæval landowning.

The origin of the relationship of lord and vassal.

Side by side with the beneficium grew up another institution which helps to explain the relation of lord and vassal in later times. Under the later Roman Empire the freeman who owned no land and found himself unable to gain a living might become the dependent of some rich and powerful neighbor, who agreed to feed, clothe, and protect him on condition that he should engage to be faithful to his patron, "love all that he loved and shun all that he shunned."[64]

The comitatus.