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Feudal Society FEUDAL SOCIETY VOLUME II Social Classes and Political Organization by MARC BLOCH Translated from the French by L. A. MANYON ’ ' LIBRARY OF THE ► C E u C^'R A L liUROPEAN s , university Rli3i'/U>ES'r R O U T L E D G E London and New York First published by Routledge & Kegan Paul Lid Translated from the French LA SOCIETE EEODALE English translation © Routledge Kegan Paul Ltd 1961, 1962 Second edition 1962 First published in two volumes as Routledge paperbacks 1965 Reprinted 1967, 1971, 1975, 1978 and 1982 Reprinted in 1989, with a new foreword by T. S. Brown by Routledge, 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE 29 West 55th Street, New York, NY 10001 Printed in Great Britain by T. .1. Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except for the (/notation of brief passages in criticism British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Bloch, Marc, 1886-1944 Feudal society.-2nd ed 1. Europe. Feudalism 1. Title 3 21.3'09 4 ISBN 0-415-03917-7 Hbk (1 vol) 0-415-03916-9 Pbk vol 1 0-415-03918-5 Pbk vol 2 CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY NOTE ix Part VI— Social Classes XXI THE NOBI.ES AS A ‘ DE FACTO’ ( LASS 283 1 The Disappearance of the Ancient Aristocracies of Birth. 2 Different Meanings of the Word ‘Noble’ in the First Feudal Age. 3 The Noble Class a Class of Lords. 4 The Profession of Arms. XXII THE LIFE OF THE NOBILITY 293 1 War. 2 The Noble at Home. 3 Occupations and Distrac­ tions. 4 Rules of Conduct. XXIII CHIVALRY 312 1 Dubbing to Knighthood. 2 The Code of Chivalry. XXIV TRANSFORMATION OF THE NOBILITY INTO A LEGAL CLASS 320 1 The Inheritance of Knighthood and Nobility. 2 The Descendants of Knights become a Privileged Class. 3 The Law of the Nobles. 4 The Exceptional Case of England. XXV CLASS DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE NOBILITY 332 1 Gradations of Power and Rank. 2 Serjeants and Serf- Knights. XXVI CLERGY AND BURGESSES 345 1 The Ecclesiastical Society within the Feudal World. 2 The Burgesses. Part VII—Political Organization XXVII JUDICIAL INSTITUTIONS 359 1 General Characteristics of the Judicial System. 2 The Disintegration of Judicial Authority. 3 Trial by Peers or Trial by the Lord. 4 On the Edge of Disintegration: Survivals and New Factors. XXVIII THE TRADITIONAL POWERS: KINGDOMS AND EMPIRE 375 1 Geographical Distribution of the Monarchies. 2 Tradi­ tions and Nature of the Royal Power. 3 The Transmission of the Royal Power: Dynastic Problems. 4 The Empire. XXIX FROM TERRITORIAL PRINCIPALITIES TO CASTELLANIF.S 394 1 The Territorial Principalities. 2 Counties and Castellanies. 3 The Ecclesiastical Lordships. V CONTENTS XXX DISORDER AND THE EFFORTS TO COMBAT IT 408 I The Limits of State Action. 2 Violence and the Longing for Peace. 3 The Peace and Truce of God. XXXI TOWARDS THE RECONSTRUCTION OF STATES: NATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS 421 1 Reasons for the Reconcentration of Authority. 2 A New Monarchy: The Capetians. 3 An Archaistic Monarchy: Germany. 4 The Anglo-Norman Monarchy: Conquest and Germanic Survivals. 5 Nationalities. Part VIII—Feudalism as a Type of Society and its Influence XXXII FEUDALISM AS A TYPE OF SOCIETY 441 1 Has there been more than one Feudalism? 2 The Funda­ mental Characteristics of European Feudalism. 3 A Cross- Section of Comparative History. XXXIII THE PERSISTENCE OF EUROPEAN FEUDALISM 448 1 Survivals and Revivals. 2 The Warrior Idea and the Idea of Contract. BIBLIOGRAPHY 453 SUPPLEMENT TO I HE BIBLIOGRAPHY 1962 TO 1989 BY T. S. BROWN 482 INDEX 486 VI PLATES VI FIGHTING WITH THE LANCE: THE OLD STYLE AND THE NEW The Battle of Hastings: the Norman knights ad­ vance to the attack, some using the lance as a javelin, others handling it in the new manner. Bayeux Tapestry, end of the eleventh century 302 VII FIGHTING WITH THE LANCE: THE NEW STYLE Frieze of west facade of Angouleme Cathedral, first third of the twelfth century 303 VIII SETTING FIRE TO A WOODEN CASTLE Capture of Dinan. Bayeux Tapestry, end of the eleventh century 334 IX THE BARON BUILDS IN STONE The keep of Langeais, built in 994-995 by Fulk Nerra, Count of Anjou 335 X ARMING A NEW KNIGHT The young Offa receives his arms from King Wer- mund; a pen-and-ink sketch in Matthew Paris, Historia de Offa Rege, perhaps by the author himself (about 1250) 366 XI THE ANOINTING OF A KING Ordo of the Coronation Ceremony of the Kings of France. MS. dating from the beginning of the four­ teenth century; the miniatures perhaps copied from models of slightly earlier date facing page 367 XII THE LAND OF THE SLAVS, GERMANIA, GAUL (THE IMPERIAL TERRITORIES ON THE LEFT BANK OF THE RHINE), AND ROME DO OBEISANCE TO THE EMPEROR OTTO III From Otto Ill’s Gospelbook, School of Reichenau, end of the tenth century 398 XIII THE LORD OF THE HILLS BECOMES THE LORD OF THE PLAIN The Castle of Canossa in the Emilian Apennines 399 Vll INTRODUCTORY NOTE TH E most characteristic feature of the civilization of feudal Europe was the network of ties of dependence, extending from top to bottom of the social scale. (How such a distinctive structure arose and developed, what were the events and the mental climate that influenced its growth, what it owed to borrowings from a remoter past, we have endeavoured to show in Book I.) In the societies to which the epithet ‘feudal’ is traditionally applied, however, the lives of individuals were never regulated exclusively by these relationships of strict sub­ jection or direct authority. Men were also divided into groups, ranged one above the other, according to occupation, degree of power or prestige. Moreover, above the confused mass of petty chiefdoms of every kind, there always existed authorities of more far-reaching influence and of a different character. From the second feudal age onwards, not only were the orders of society more and more strictly differentiated; there was also an increasing concentration of forces round a few great authorities and a few great causes. We must now direct our attention to the study of this second aspect of social organization; then we shall at last be in a position to attempt to answer the question which it has been the main purpose of our inquiry to elucidate, namely: by what fundamental characteristics, whether or not peculiar to one phase of Western evolution, have these few centuries deserved the name which thus sets them apart from the rest of European history? What portion of their heritage has been transmitted to later times ? IX PART VI Social Classes XXI THE NOBLES AS A DE FACTO CLASS 1 THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE ANCIENT ARISTOCRACIES OF BIRTH I O R the writers who first gave feudalism its name, for the men of the French Revolution, who worked to destroy it, the idea of nobility seemed inseparably linked with it. It would scarcely be possible, however, to find mi association of ideas more palpably false—at least if we set any store by i lie exact use of historical terms. Certainly there was nothing egalitarian about the societies of the feudal era; but not every dominant class is a nobility. To deserve this name such a class must evidently combine two characteristics. First, it must have a legal status of its own, which confirms and makes effectual the superiority to which it lays claim. In the second place, this status must be hereditary—with the qualification, however, that a limited number of new families may be admitted to it, in accordance with formally established rules.In other words, actual power is not enough, nor is even that form of inheritance (effective though it is in practice) which consists as much in the advantages children enjoy through having parents of high status as in the wealth they may inherit; it is necessary, in addition, that social privileges as well as hereditary succession should be recognized by law. If in France we speak today of the upper middle classes as a capitalist aristocracy, it is only in irony. Even where, as in our modern democratic societies, the legal privileges of the nobility have disappeared, i he memory of them keeps class consciousness alive; no one is accepted as a genuine nobleman unless he can prove that they were exercised by his ancestors. In this sense—and it is the only legitimate one—nobility made ils appearance relatively late in western Europe. The first lineaments of the institution did not begin to emerge before the twelfth century, and it took definite shape only in the following century when the fief and vassal- age were already in decline. Throughout the first feudal age, and in the period immediately preceding it, it was unknown. In this respect the first feudal age differed from the earlier civilizations whose legacy it had received. The Later Empire had had the senatorial order, from which, under the first Merovingians, despite the disappearance of the legal privileges of former days, the leading Roman subjects of the Frankish king still proudly claimed descent. Among many German peoples 283 FEUDAL SOCIETY there had existed certain families officially described as ‘noble’—in the vulgar tongue edelinge, which term the Latin texts render as nobiles and which, in Franco-Burgundian, long survived in the form adelenc. Their status allowed them specific advantages, notably a higher wergild-, their members, as the Anglo-Saxon documents put it, were ‘born dearer’ than other men. Descended, so far as we know, from ancient dynasties of local chiefs—the ‘chiefs of cantons’ mentioned by Tacitus—the majority of them, where the monarchic form of government prevailed, had been gradually dispossessed of their political power in favour of the royal house, which itself was sprung originally from their ranks.
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