The Origins of Feudalism

The legacy of Rome, in the matter of the social relationships, consists into the "patronage", this technique by which free peasants place themselves, economically and politically, under the dependence of a landlord, due to the disorders of the end of the Roman empire. German tribes, as far as they are concerned, knew the institution of a warriors' companionship, by which warriors gathered around a war chief, who distributed lands and parts of the booty. The Merovingian times, as they are quickly turning into times of disorder too, are perpetuating those types of personal relationships. The struggles between the heirs of Clovis are just the appropriate atmosphere where new forms of such relationships appear, like the bodies of armed retainers, of the "antrustiones", all those bodies of armed warriors associated with the magnates of the time. The "commendatio" and the allowance of tenements held for life appear too during the Merovingian times. Some free men are seen becoming the "vassals" of more powerful neighbours who are called "seniores", through a legal act called the "commendatio" -the "recommendation of oneself. The free men who are commending themselves exchange the honorable services they can provide to the "potens" for the safety provided by the latter. Such relationships have in no case, at that time, any military aspect. On the contrary, such contracts are mainly the fact of private persons. On the other hand, the Merovingian times are seing the beginnings of the allowance of land estates by the magnates, "as a benefit". Such "potentes" are granting to some people some land estates as a "benefectum", as a gift coming from their benevolence. Such estates are hold for life only by the tenant. Both institutions, the "commendatio" -that is the first form of the vassalage- and the "benefit" are remaining independent of each other. The weakening of the theoretical conceptions of the political relationships allowed to a important development of those personal links. The Carolingian society eventually was to turn broken up into numerous entities, like the villae, counties, Church circonscriptions, etc.) the inhabitants communities of the 9th century included. The links from man to man, on a other hand, formed the social basis as the Carolingians officialized the ancient 'commendatio' and the vassality, which tend to conceal more intellectual and legal concepts. The Frankish king thus, in the whole of his dominions, will have every freeman to swear fidelity. Time of the first Carolingians at last owed much to conquest and booty -under the form of lands- which allowed to maintain the faithfullness of the Greats. The strong power of the Emperor only could give structure to such a diversity and as soon as it began lacking, since the late 9th century A.D., all those groups will render themselves autonomous and have their status turn hereditary. Castles, in the landscape at the time of the Carolingien decline, as they were built against the Northmen, turned the symbolic landmark

Several status, like said, contributed to the decline of the Carolingians et eventually brought by 1000 B.C. to the classical medieval society and political system:

• By about 850 A.D. vassality has turned official. A man, the 'vassal,' is 'giving' or 'recommending' himself to a patron, the 'senior,' who in exchange, awards him with a land called a 'benefit.' A difference is made between the royal vassals ('vassali regales') and the other ones (the 'vassali'). Carolingians began to enrole vassals about 750, from what they saw in England and Spain. Vassals are owing help, advice and protection to the king and, by 800 A.D. the vassali regales turned the kingly guard and cavalry, installed in their lands taken from the royal domain, and most of them immunists. Rulers since tried to have all the Greats turned vassals as every count and high-ranking official had become kingly vassals since the times of Pippin the Short. The other type of the vassals, the 'private vassals,' are displaying the same characteristics but working to the service of a private senior. They are owing to him their service in exchange of patronage and a benefit but the senior does not shield the miscellaneous aspects of the king's power. The Capitulary of Mersen (847) invited every freeman in the Empire to engage like a vassal and turning the seniores into another relay of the ruler, or of the Carolingian deconcentration policy. All seniores are now royal vassals. In 850 they even wanted to have the system passed to clerics in their relations to their bishops. By that time also, enroling like a vassal and being treated with a benefit have become mandatorily associated as a vassal almost always holds a benefit and being awarded a benefit brings to turn a vassal. The term 'fief' appeared by the end of the 9th century A.D. and replacing benefit. The lands of the vassals in turn turned hereditary at the Capitulary of Quierzy-sur-Oise in 877. 'Precaria verbo regis' of the time of Charles the Hammer had been progressively included into the kingly vassality. The institution of vassals kept existing and developing in the various territorial entities and kingdoms which appear from the disintegration of the Carolingian empire
• As soon as in 850 A.D. the countal function began to turn hereditary to certain families which, moreover, then came to settle definitively into such or such region of the Empire. That was more or less officialized by the Capitulary of Quierzy-sur-Oise in 877, the one which turned so the vassals' benefits also. On a timespan of 60 years, from 890 to 950 A.D. 55 counties in total will have turned independent
• Immunist lands were existing since long. It was a land given by the Frankish king, which was exempt from taxes. That status was then granted to lands already privately owned, by lay or cleric landlords. Royal civil servants could not enter into a immunist domain. Charlemagne, as far as he is concerned, granted immunity mostly to Church properties, likely in the purpose to create relays of his authority others than the counts in terms of taxes, ost and justice. Immunists further were often kingly vassals. By 900 A.D. and then in the 10th century, such domains naturally will turn autonomous as, moreover, most had been stolen by their own officials or the ducal and countal families of the area

Counts and territorials princes took their independency from the Frankish ruler, first, during the first half of the 10th century A.D. as they created 'principalties', a large set of territories and then the move increased, in the second half of the same century and reaching to lower and lower layers. Those new 'lords' each built wooden castles upon earth mounds like a sign of their power. When this downwards motion eventually stopped, that is during the darkest times of the Middle Ages, about 1000 A.D., it will have settled at the level of the famed manors -or "seigneuries". Manors are those domains with a castle, a lord and his warriors, a church and the peasants as it was there, in territories reaching the size of a contemporary French commune, that, among those times without no authority anymore, that the real, daily power will be exerted

The Carolingian times are the times when the system of the antique villa of the Roman times is geographically and structurally turning into the Carolingian type of the villa, when the vassalage and benefices become the basis of the Carolingian "ost" and when the feudal institutions become part of the state mechanisms. The Church, at the same time, is becoming more efficient. All such trends might have brought to a steady, Frankish empire in the frame of which the first synthesis between the legacy of Rome, the Church, and the German tribes might have occurred. Such a Frankish world might have protected the life of the peasants of the kindgom inside ascertained borders and allowed a more potent Church, as the "missi dominici" and the counts, or the Frankish values shifted back to the banks of the Rhine, would have made of Charlemagne, his predecessors and heirs, the founders of an orderly, earthly kingdom. The events however brought another history. It's not until the year 1000 A.D. that in the manors, and with the will of the Church to bring back the knights to the order of the "Peace of God" movement, that the European synthesis will actually occur de se, and develop further until 1250 A.D., eventually reaching its apogee. On a timespan of 500 years, since the reign of King Clovis, the stabilization of the western part of the former Roman empire only was performed, finally, by self, from the bottom up. That came from the final disappearance from the Roman empire both in the West or the East, the Arab conquest which broke the trade routes between Europe and Byzantium, or the will of papacy to reinstate a Empire, be it Roman or not, in the West