Feudalism

Feudalism is the term used by scholars to describe the political and economic ties among members of the warrior aristocracy in western Europe during the ninth through 13th centuries based on the exchange of military service for maintenance and protection.

The terms feudalism and feudal have been applied to a great number of phenomena of the medieval period, ranging from monarchical rights over noble tenants to noble rights over peasants. While historians continue to dispute the term, most now use it to refer only to the system of power relations among members of the warrior aristocracy, the main components of which were the personal tie of loyalty known as vassalage and the land grant, known as a fief, that the lord gave to his vassal in exchange for service.

The principal element of feudalism was the relationship between the lord and his vassals, who were free or noble followers bound to their lord by formal ties of loyalty. Vassals may also have promised service, usually military, in exchange for maintenance, often in the form of a grant of land. The tie between lord and vassal, sometimes referred to as homage, was typically both voluntary and reciprocal. Lords had obligations to protect and maintain their vassals in exchange for the vassals’ loyalty and service and implied control over a deceased vassal’s widow and minor children as well as over inheritance of any land the lord may have granted his vassal.

Feudal ties were solemnized by a ritual of formal commendation wherein the new vassal would kneel before his lord, who would clasp his hands around those of his vassal, symbolizing protection and dominance. The vassal would then verbally declare himself to be his lord’s “man.” This oath was often sealed with a kiss and followed by an oath of fealty, or loyalty. Fulbert of Chartres best summed up the implications of the oath of fealty. Writing in 1050 in response to a request from the duke of Aquitaine, Fulbert stated that a vassal’s oath of fealty implied that he would neither injure his lord, nor betray his secrets or fortresses, nor impede the lord’s justice, nor impugn his honor, nor cause him to lose his possessions. In addition, in order to be worthy of a benefice, or land grant, the vassal owed his lord aid and counsel, the former usually implying military service, the latter service in the lord’s court.

The relationship between lord and vassal was personal, and even though there might be a hierarchy of feudal relationships stretching from the king through several layers of feudal bonds, the kings’ position to their vassals’ vassals (and so on) was that of nominal overlord, rather than sovereigns with universal power to command. In fact, the nature of the relationship between lord and vassal was such that a vassal would be expected unquestioningly to support his lord in battle against his lord, should the situation arise. As one medieval lord commented, “The man of my man is not my man.” The relationship was also dyadic, although there was an implied bond of solidarity among vassals of the same lord. Finally, the relationship between lord and vassal was affective, superseding (in theory, at least) the relationship between husband and wife. It is important to bear in mind that the relationship between the two parties, whatever else it was, was at its core a contract, and the relationship could be broken only if one of the parties involved failed in obligations to the other.

The other phenomenon important to historians of feudalism is the fief, or the parcel of land that the lord granted as a benefice to his vassal. The lord’s obligation to maintain his vassal had not always been exclusively in the form of a fief. Lords might offer their vassals employment or find some other way of maintaining them. By the 12th century the option of granting a fief had come to dominate this area of the feudal relation. Fiefs were units of property, normally landed, that vassals held and from which they reaped the profits. The ownership of these lands rested with the lords who granted them, even though they may have been in the possession of someone else. This split between landowner and landholder meant that the lords who granted the fiefs had the power to decide who would get the land upon the current beneficiary’s death. Usually, this would be a son (or more infrequently, a daughter) of the former vassal, who would in turn become a vassal him - or herself. The heritabil-ity of tenure quickly became a matter of course, especially with the post-Carolingian decentralization of authority.

While the system outlined above seems relatively straightforward, the apparent simplicity of the picture is deceptive. There are a number of important factors to consider before applying any notion of “feudalism” to early and high medieval western Europe. The single problem that underlies all concerns about feudalism is that both the term and the concept were essentially inventions of 17th - and 18th-century jurists and historians who were struggling to find a pattern for the political systems they were attempting to contrast with their own. This desire for uniformity led to a wide variety of political relationships and landholding arrangements being forced into a model for a political system that, as such, never existed earlier. Type of terrain, degree of warfare, style of agricultural exploitation, level of commercial activity, and lay versus ecclesiastical lordship resulted in widely differing political and landholding relationships. Our “classic” picture of feudalism assumes that the rise of feudal relations was the function of a weak central government that was unable to prevent power from devolving to the local level. Although this picture fits well with much of post-Carolingian France, it can hardly be applied to England and Germany, both of which had strong central government and royal institutions during parts of the period of “classic” feudalism. In the end, “feudalism” may roughly describe the political and economic ties among the medieval nobility, but it is a term that should be used with an awareness of the differences it masks.

Further reading: D. Barthelemy, “Debate: The ‘Feudal Revolution’ I,” Past and Present 152 (1996): 196-205; Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L. A. Manyon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe,” American Historical Review 79:4 (1974): 1,063-1,088; Franyois Ganshof, Feudalism, 3rd English ed., trans. Philip Grierson (New York: Harper, 1961); Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

—Marie A. Kelleher

Mexican testimonials from the 16th century, including the CoDEX Mendoza, were the product of multiple hands. The illustrations tended to be from indigenous artists, who then passed the text to Native scholars who added commentary in Nahuatl, before the texts fell into the hands of Spaniards who often added their own gloss notes in Spanish. Produced for the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun over a period of 30 years, this work was entitled Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espana (General History of the Things of New Spain). Known as the Florentine Codex because the primary manuscript is kept in Florence, the text provides remarkable insight into the history and culture of the AzTECs. It is not, like the letters of Hernan CoRTES, a testimony offered by a conqueror. Instead, it is an indigenous account, profusely illustrated with approximately 1,800 images, which bears witness to the history and customs of the Aztecs.

The codex has survived in 13 books, which provide extraordinary details about events and thoughts. It contains, for example, Aztec beliefs about the natural world, including thoughtful discussions about insects that paralleled the study of such creatures undertaken by European entomologists such as the English scholar Thomas Moffett (who became an ardent promoter of the production of silk in the Atlantic basin). But more of its contents relate to political and religious history, including images illustrating the birth of Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec war god, as well as depictions of other gods, worldly leaders (including MoCTEZUma), human sacrifices (which fascinated and terrified Europeans), human illness, and prostitutes.

There is only one copy of the entire manuscript, but like other documents in the 16th century the manuscript was copied in part in a process of SCRIBAL publication. The original contains all of the illustrations in addition to a complete text in Nahuatl and Spanish translations of much of it. There are two other manuscripts kept in Madrid—a Spanish version that traveled from Mexico to Europe with Rodrigo de Sequera in 1580 (and is known as the Sequera manuscript) and a censored version called the Codex Matritense.

Further reading: Bernardino de Sahagun, General History of the Things of New Spain, trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, 13 volumes in 12 books (Santa Fe: School of American Research, 1950-1982); Www. lati-namericanstudies. org/florentine-codex, includes selected images from the Florentine Codex.