Part Two Feudal Institutions

Part Two Feudal Institutions Introduction Amid invasions from abroad and tumult at home, with the decay and near-disappearance of effective government, the men of the early Middle Ages faced a critical problem in supplying their basic social needs-food, protection, companionship. Under such peril ous conditions, the most immediate social unit which could offer support and protection to harassed individuals was the family. What was the nature of the family in early medieval society? This is a question which must be asked in any consideration of the feudal world, but it is surprisingly difficult to answer. Few and uninformative records cast but dim light on this central institution; they are enough to excite our interest but rarely sufficient to give firm responses to our questions. At one time the common view of historians was that the family of the early Middle Ages was characteristically large, extended or patriarchal. Married sons continued to live within their father's house or with one another after their parents' deaths; they sought security against external dangers primarily in their own large numbers. There is, to be sure, much evidence of strong family solidarity and sentiment in medieval society. A heavy moral obli gation, everywhere evident, lay upon family members to avenge the harm done to a kinsman. This is one of the principal themes of FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS the epic poem Raoul of Cambrai (Document 31), as it is of many medieval tales. The characters in it repeatedly assert that warriors who fail to seek vengeance are dastards and cowards, not worth a spur or a glove. In guaranteeing that injury to a relative would not go unnoticed and unpunished, this system of family vengeance, or vendetta, undoubtedly discouraged promiscuous violence. The barbarian legal codes, redacted between the sixth and ninth cen turies (Document 8), similarly show a marked reliance upon the family in the punishment and deterrence of crime. Most forms of violence in society were considered offenses against the kinship group and not, as in later conceptions of law, against the commu nity, sovereign, or state. The codes did set limits upon the vendetta, stipulating the monetary fines which might be reasonably de manded for the death of a kin ( wergild) or for wounds inflicted upon him. But the barbarian rulers themselves assumed no respon sibility in bringing criminals to justice. The family, or no one, enforced and protected the rights and security of its members. Today, however, many historians and sociologists believe that both the size and solidarity of the kinship group in the early Middle Ages, and indeed in many presumably primitive societies, have been exaggerated. The family, based on the most powerful of human emotions, tends for that very reason to be unstable and unable to include large numbers of persons in its emotional uni verse. The love among siblings is obviously strong, and so also are their sensitivities and their hatreds. Few persons love, and fight, like brothers. Extended families have been of restricted importance in all communities in which studies have been carried out. A "small family hypothesis" has thus been gaining credence among scholars. This view holds that even in those societies in which the extended family represented some kind of ideal, few families achieved it. The glove fits early medieval society. From the eighth century on there have survived thousands of charters recording transactions in land which illustrate how the medieval family carried on its eco nomic affairs, or at least managed its landed possessions. In their vast majority, the principals involved in such charters appear as individuals, and rarely is the permission or agreement of kinsmen sought or required. Whatever the strength of family sentiment or the moral weight of the obligation to demand vengeance, the ex tended kinship group had little visible importance as an economic administrator, at least in regard to the management of land. More- 68 THE HISTORY OF FEUDALISM over, family names begin to appear in those same documents only in the late tenth century, and remain unusual for several centuries thereafter. Apart from the high aristocracy, there seems little con sciousness of membership in an identifiable kinship group, and little memory of a common ancestry. In Raoul of Cambrai the hero, Bernier, finds that his obligations toward his kin are counter manded and for a while overcome by other interests-by his duties toward his lord and by the prospect of his own material advance through the generous gifts which his lord offers him. The family in the early Middle Ages of course served as the kernel of society. Ties among brothers continued to be strong and demanding. But this universe of high emotion remained, as we have said, finite and fragile. The extended family or kinship group has not left in the sources evidence of remarkable cohesion and solidar ity. It rarely seems to have been capable of embracing large numbers under an umbrella of support and protection. Members scattered, and emotions cooled. Extended families or clans seem to have functioned best and survived best in regions where extensive agriculture, herding, and sheep raising had particular importance, such as the predominantly upland, predominantly Celtic areas of Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The manage ment and defense of large herds invited and rewarded continuing cooperation among heirs and relatives, and made those regions, socially and perhaps culturally, among the most conservative of Europe. On the other hand, systems of settled and intensive agri culture confronted the kinship group with difficult and disruptive problems concerning inheritance, authority, marriage, and the dis tribution of functions and of benefits. For the settled peasant or landlord, cooperation with a neighbor is likely to become more vital than cooperation with a more distant kinsman, and ties formed for reasons of self-interest are likely to rival and surpass in strength the sentimental bonds among kin who do not inhabit a common household. The relative strength and endurance of kinship ties has a direct relevance to the formation of the feudal bonds and to their char acter. Vassalage, for example, the personal link between man and man, seems to emerge out of a relationship which bears many similarities with the natural bonds between kinsmen, especially be tween father and son. This tie apparently first appeared, as several of the following documents will illustrate, among men who fought FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS 69 together, feasted together, lived together, and for all practical pur poses formed part of a single household. This close personal and emotional relationship among warriors, apparently the direct an cestor of feudal vassalage, very much appears to modern observers to be an extension of the kinship bond and in some measure an effort to substitute for it. The solidarity of the feudal relationship between man and man, in other words, was comparable to, and frequently stronger than, the solidarity of the kinship group. It seems to have developed primarily in those areas of Europe where, because of economic and other pressures, the extended family could not offer its members adequate support and protection. Its members were therefore prone to seek and to create other associa tions, with nonkinsmen, which more effectively answered their needs. The feudal bond initially imposed moral and ethical rather than strictly legal obligations, and these were at first quite vaguely defined. The bond was not for that reason weaker; loyalty and love have often, and usually, proved stronger than law. The personal relationship The bond between man and man, the most characteristic feature of feudal society, seems to have been based initially on considerations of persons rather than of properties. Modern social historians, in the irresistible logic of their researches, have arrived at the paradox ical conclusion that there was at first little authentically "feudal" (that is, involving a particular type of land tenure) about feudal society. The personal bond united warriors, but of differing social status. One was senior by age, talent, experience, accomplishments, or wealth; he was the chief, or the lord. His partner was of lower social station but still a freeman, still with rights which had to be respected. Personal ties of this sort seem to have been common within both barbarian and Roman societies. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing A.D. 98, has left us a succinct but revealing descrip tion of a Gemanic battlefield association which he calls the comi tatus, or 1'following" (Document 8). The young German warrior followed an older and more seasoned fighter into war. The young man's guiding ambition was to distinguish himself before his lead er's eyes; gain from him honor, arms, food, and booty; and give to him in return his loyalty-even, if the tide of battle required, his life. "It is a lifelong infamy and shame if any of the followers survives his chief," writes Tacitus, and this measures the emotional 70 THE HISTORY OF FEUDALISM content of the warrior bond. Roman patronage and Merovingian contracts of commendation (Documents 9 and I o) present similar if less colorful examples of the willing subservience of one freeman to a more powerful neighbor. The Slavic peoples of Europe knew an equivalent association among warriors, known as the druzhina, or "friendship." It seems in fact that any society in which military prowess is given an extremely high social value is likely to develop similar institutions. Young men will want to follow recognized heroes. They will want to serve them, imitate them, and perhaps attain, through faithful apprenticeship, the same levels of achieve ment. In medieval social history, this warrior institution and ethos en joyed a remarkably prolonged life. Nine centuries after Tacitus' account, a short epic poem, written in Anglo-Saxon, recounting a battle fought at Mal don in England in 99 1, describes the behavior of members of the retinue of a leader slain in the fray (Document 13).

Load more