General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

To illustrate the workings of the system, we will suppose the king or suzerain to be in need of an army. He calls upon his own immediate vassals for aid; these in turn call upon their vassals; and so the order runs down through the various ranks of retainers. The retainers in the lowest rank rally around their respective lords, who, with their bands, gather about their lords, and so on up through the rising tiers of the system, until the immediate vassals of the suzerain, or chief lord, present themselves before him with their graduated trains of followers. The array constitutes a feudal army,—a splendidly organized body in theory, but in fact an extremely poor instrument for warfare.

Such was the ideal feudal state. It is needless to say that the ideal was never perfectly realized. The system simply made more or less distant approaches to it in the several European countries.

ROMAN AND TEUTONIC ELEMENTS IN THE SYSTEM.—Like many another institution that grew up on the conquered soil of the empire. Feudalism was of a composite character; that is, it contained both Roman and Teutonic elements. The spirit of the institution was barbarian, but the form was classical. We might illustrate the idea we are trying to convey, by referring to the mediæval papal church. It, while Hebrew in spirit, was Roman in form. It had shaped itself upon the model of the empire, and was thoroughly imperial in its organization. Thus was it with Feudalism. Beneath the Roman garb it assumed, beat a German life.

THE CEREMONY OF HOMAGE.—A fief was conferred by a very solemn and peculiar ceremony called homage. The person about to become a vassal, kneeling with uncovered head, placed his hands in those of his future lord, and solemnly vowed to be henceforth his man (Latin homo, whence "homage"), and to serve him faithfully even with his life. This part of the ceremony, sealed with a kiss, was what properly constituted the ceremony of homage. It was accompanied by an oath of fealty, and the whole was concluded by the act of investiture, whereby the lord put his vassal in actual possession of the land, or by placing in his hand a clod of earth or a twig, symbolized the delivery to him of the estate for which he had just now done homage and sworn fealty.

THE RELATIONS OF LORD AND VASSAL.—In general terms the duty of the vassal was service; that of the lord, protection. The most honorable service required of the vassal, and the one most willingly rendered in a martial age, was military aid. The liegeman must always be ready to follow his lord upon his military expeditions; he must defend his lord in battle; if he should be unhorsed, must give him his own animal; and, if he should be made a prisoner, must offer himself as a hostage for his release.

Among other incidents attaching to a fief were escheat, forfeiture, and aids. By Escheat was meant the falling back of the fief into the hands of the lord through failure of heirs. If the fief lapsed through disloyalty or other misdemeanor on the part of the vassal, this was known as Forfeiture. Aids were sums of money which the lord had a right to demand, in order to defray the expense of knighting his eldest son, of marrying his eldest daughter, or for ransoming his own person in case of captivity.

The chief return that the lord was bound to make to the vassal as a compensation for these various services, was counsel and protection—by no means a small return in an age of turmoil and insecurity.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM.—After the death of Charlemagne and the partition of his great empire among his feeble successors, it seemed as though the world was again falling back into chaos. The bonds of society seemed entirely broken. The strong oppressed the weak; the nobles became highway-robbers and marauders.

It was this distracted state of things that, during the ninth and tenth centuries, caused the rapid development of the Feudal System. It was the only form of social organization, the only form of government that it was practicable to maintain in that rude, transitional age. All classes of society, therefore, hastened to enter the system, in order to secure the protection which it alone could afford. Kings, princes, and wealthy persons who had large landed possessions which they had never parcelled out as fiefs, were now led to do so, that their estates might be held by tenants bound to protect them by all the sacred obligations of homage and fealty. Again, the smaller proprietors who held their estates by allodial tenure voluntarily surrendered them into the hands of some neighboring lord, and then received them again from him as fiefs, that they might claim protection as vassals. They deemed this better than being robbed of their property altogether. Thus it came that almost all the allodial lands of France, Germany, Italy, and Northern Spain were, during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, converted into feudal estates, or fiefs.

Moreover, for like reasons and in like manner, churches, monasteries, and cities became members of the Feudal System. They granted out their vast possessions as fiefs, and thus became suzerains and lords. Bishops and abbots became the heads of great bands of retainers, and led military expeditions, like temporal chiefs. On the other hand, these same monasteries and towns, as a means of security and protection, did homage to some powerful lord, and thus came in vassalage to him.