An Introduction to the History of Western Europe - James Harvey Robinson

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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.

      

      Tendency to hereditary offices.

      The counts were in a particularly favorable position to usurp for their own benefit the powers which they were supposed to exercise for the king. Charlemagne had chosen his counts and margraves in most cases from the wealthy and distinguished families of his realms. As he had little money, he generally rewarded their services by grants of estates, which only served to increase their independence. They gradually came to look upon their office and their land as private property, and they were naturally disposed to hand it on to their sons after them. Charlemagne had been able to keep control of his agents by means of the missi. After his death his system fell into disuse and it became increasingly difficult to get rid of inefficient or rebellious officers.

      Forces opposed to disruption, viz., partial survival of royal authority and feudalism.

      Yet we must not infer that the state ceased to exist altogether during the centuries of confusion that followed the break-up of Charlemagne's empire, or that it fell entirely apart into little local governments independent of each other. In the first place, a king always retained some of his ancient majesty. He might be weak and without the means to enforce his rights and to compel his more powerful subjects to meet their obligations toward him. Yet he was, after all, the king, solemnly anointed by the Church as God's representative on earth. He was always something more than a feudal lord. The kings were destined to get the upper hand before many centuries in England, France, and Spain, and finally in Italy and Germany, and to destroy the castles behind whose walls their haughty nobles had long defied the royal power.

      Feudalism.

      In the second place, the innumerable independent landowners were held together by feudalism. One who had land to spare granted a portion of it to another person on condition that the one receiving the land should swear to be true to him and perform certain services—such as fighting for him, giving him counsel, and lending aid when he was in particular difficulties. In this way the relation of lord and vassal originated. All lords were vassals either of the king or of other lords, and consequently all were bound together by solemn engagements to be loyal to one another and care for one another's interests. Feudalism served thus as a sort of substitute for the state. Private arrangements between one landowner and another took the place of the weakened bond between the subject and his king.

      The feudal form of government and the feudal system of holding land are so different from anything with which we are now familiar that it is difficult for us to understand them. Yet unless we do understand them, a great part of the history of Europe during the past thousand years will be well-nigh meaningless.[61]

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       Table of Contents

      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.

      The invading Germans had a custom that so closely resembled this Roman one that scholars have found it impossible to decide whether we should attribute more influence to the Roman or to the German institution in the development of feudalism. We learn from Tacitus that the young German warriors were in the habit of pledging their fidelity to a popular chieftain, who agreed to support his faithful followers if they would fight at his side. The comitatus, as Tacitus named this arrangement, was not regarded by the Germans as a mere business transaction, but was looked upon as honorable alike to lord and man. Like the later relation of vassal and lord, it was entered upon with a solemn ceremony and the bond of fidelity was sanctioned by an oath. The obligations of mutual aid and support established between the leader and his

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