LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

the lord's court when summoned. There he sat with other vassals to hear and pronounce upon those cases in which his peers—i.e., his fellow-vassals—were involved.[70] Moreover, he had to give the lord the benefit of his counsel when required, and attend him upon solemn occasions. Under certain circumstances vassals had to make money payments to their lord, as well as serve him in person; as, for instance, when the fief changed hands through the death of the lord or of the vassal, when the fief was alienated, when the lord was put to extra expense by the necessity of knighting his eldest son or providing a dowry for his daughter, or when he was in captivity and was held for a ransom. Lastly, the vassal might have to entertain his lord should the lord come his way. There are amusingly detailed accounts, in some of the feudal contracts, of exactly how often the lord might come, how many followers he might bring, and what he should have to eat.

       A Mediæval Castle near Klagenfurt, Austria

      Different classes of fiefs.

      There were fiefs of all kinds and of all grades of importance, from that of a duke or count, who held directly of the king and exercised the powers of a practically independent prince, down to the holding of the simple knight, whose bit of land, cultivated by peasants or serfs, was barely sufficient to enable him to support himself and provide the horse upon which he rode to perform his military service for his lord.

      The nobility.

      Their privileges.

      In order to rank as a noble in mediæval society it was, in general, necessary to be the holder of land for which only such services were due as were considered honorable, and none of those which it was customary for the peasant or serf to perform. The noble must, moreover, be a free man and have at least sufficient income to maintain himself and his horse without any sort of labor. The nobles enjoyed certain privileges which set them off from the non-noble classes. Many of these privileges were perpetuated in France, and elsewhere on the continent, down to the time of the French Revolution, and in Italy and Germany, into the nineteenth century. The most conspicuous privilege was a partial exemption from taxation.

      Difficulty of classifying the nobles.

      It is natural to wish to classify the nobility and to ask just what was the difference, for example, between a duke, a count, and a marquis. Unfortunately there was no fixed classification, at least before the thirteenth century. A count, for instance, might be a very inconspicuous person, having a fief no larger than the county of Charlemagne's time, or he might possess a great many of the older counties and rank in power with a duke. In general, however, it may be said that the dukes, counts, bishops, and abbots who held directly from the king were of the highest rank. Next to them came an intermediate class of nobles of the second order, generally subvassals of the king, and below these the simple knights.

      Feudal registers.

43. The great complexity of the feudal system of land tenure made it necessary for the feudal lords to keep careful registers of their possessions. Very few of these registers have been preserved, but we are so fortunate as to have one of the count of Champagne, dating from the early thirteenth century. This gives us an idea of what feudalism really was in practice, and shows how impossible it is to make a satisfactory map of any country during the feudal period.

       Fiefs and Suzerains of the Counts of Champagne

      Growth of the possessions of the counts of Champagne typical of the period.

      At the opening of the tenth century we find in the chronicles of the time an account of a certain ambitious count of Troyes, Robert by name, who died in 923 while trying to wrest the crown of France from Charles the Simple. His county passed to his son-in-law, who already held, among other possessions, the counties of Château-Thierry and Meaux. His son, in turn, inherited all three counties and increased his dominions by judicious usurpations. This process of gradual aggrandizement went on for generation after generation, until there came to be a compact district under the control of the counts of Champagne, as they began to call themselves at the opening of the twelfth century. It was in this way that the feudal states in France and Germany grew up. Certain lines of feudal lords showed themselves able, partly by craft and violence, and partly, doubtless, by good fortune, to piece together a considerable district, in much the same way as we shall find that the king of France later pieced together France itself.

      The register of the counts of Champagne illustrates the complexity of feudal relations.

      The register referred to above shows that the feudal possessions of the counts of Champagne were divided into twenty-six districts, each of which centered about a strong castle. We may infer that these divisions bore some close relation to the original counties which the counts of Champagne had succeeded in bringing together. All these districts were held as fiefs of other lords. For the greater number of his fiefs the count rendered homage to the king of France, but he was the vassal of no less than nine other lords beside the king. A portion of his lands, including probably his chief town of Troyes, he held of the duke of Burgundy. Châtillon, Épernay, and some other towns, he held as the "man" of the Archbishop of Rheims. He was also the vassal of the Archbishop of Sens, of four other neighboring bishops, and of the abbot of the great monastery of St. Denis. To all of these persons he had pledged himself to be faithful and true, and when his various lords fell out with one another it must have been difficult to see where his duty lay. Yet his situation was similar to that of all important feudal lords.

      The chief object, however, of the register was to show not what the count owed to others but what his own numerous vassals owed to him. It appears that he subinfeudated his lands and his various sources of income to no less than two thousand vassal knights. The purpose of the register is to record the terms upon which each of these knights held his fief. Some simply rendered the count homage, some agreed to serve him in war for a certain length of time each year, others to guard his castle for specified periods. A considerable number of the vassals of the count held lands of other lords, there being nothing to prevent a subvassal from accepting a fief directly from the king, or from any other neighboring noble landholder. So it happened that several of the vassals of the counts of Champagne held of the same persons of whom the count himself held.

      The infeudation of other things than land.

      It is evident that the counts of Champagne were not contented with the number of vassals that they secured by subinfeudating their land. The same homage might be rendered for a fixed income, or for a certain number of bushels of oats to be delivered each year by the lord, as for the use of land. So money, houses, wheat, oats, wine, chickens, were infeudated, and even half the bees which might be found in a particular forest. It would seem to us the simpler way to have hired soldiers outright, but in the thirteenth century the traditions of feudalism were so strong that it seemed natural to make vassals of those whose aid was desired. The mere promise of a money payment would not have been considered sufficiently binding. The feudal bond of homage served to make the contract firmer than it would otherwise have been.

       The arrow indicates a lord of whom the vassal held one or more fiefs.

      

      It is clear, then, that no such regular hierarchy existed as some historians have imagined, beginning with the king and ending with the humblest knight included in the feudal aristocracy. The fact that vassals often held of a number of different lords made the feudal relations infinitely complex. The diagram on page 115, while it may not exactly correspond to the situation at any given moment, will serve to illustrate this complexity.

      The feudal system maintained only by force.

      44. Should one confine one's studies of feudalism to the rules laid down by the feudal lawyers and the careful descriptions of the exact duties of the vassal which are to be found in the contracts of the period, one might

Скачать книгу