Online Education Blog

Feudal society had a hierarchical structure in which individuals had their designated positions. King was at the top of this structure who bestowed fiefs or estates on a number of lords. The lords distributed fiefs to a number of vassals who had their specified duties and obligations. The knights were at the bottom of this hierarchy and performed military duties. The whole system worked on strong bonds of personal loyalty and allegiance.

The feudal system had its own specific forms and structures. The feudal ties involved a series of obligations binding on lords, vassals and peasants. Homage and the acknowledgment of obligation of fidelity to lord was the governing principle. The fief in the form of a landed estate was of varying size. It was also in the form of public authority or a duty or right. Elaborate rules governed the inheritance of fiefs where lords had their defined powers. The peasantry within a manor had a sort of stratification some enjoying rights and others completely subjugated. The cultivators were subjected to heavy land tax and various chesses. The institution of knights evolved out of the   need for armed power to protect the manors and suppress dissent inside it. While going through this unit you must have noticed that the form and structure of feudalism was not uniform in the whole of Europe and there were significant variations in different regions which were pointed out during our discussion.

Forms and structure of the feudaral society.

The legal complex of acts by which one free man placed himself in the protection of another was known as commendation. The primary rite of commendation was known as homage, which all classes performed during the Merovingian period but came to be limited under the Carolingian kings to the members of the aristocratic class. Reflecting the improvement of the status of vassalage in the middle of the eight century, the Carolingian added to the ceremony an oath of fealty (vassal’s acknowledgment of fidelity to his lord) to emphasize the fact that the vassals, now comprising the members of aristocracy, served as free men. In principle at least the contract of vassalage was regarded as one freely concluded between the two parties. The doing of homage and the taking an oath of fealty were fairly frequently accompanied, especially in France, by a ceremonial kiss (osculum,0, which was not only a spectacular way of confirming the obligations contracted by the two parties, but also lent dignity to the status of the vassal.

The lord or the chief of a group of vassals could both keep the vassal in his own house and feed, cloth and equip him at his own expense, or he could endow him with an estate or regular incomes derived from land and leave him to provide for his own maintenance. When a lord died without a certain heir, his vassals were regarded as the vassals of his lord until an heir to the decreased was legally established. In other words, the rights of a lord in the fiefs of his vassals necessarily reverted on his death without heirs to the lord of whom he ultimately held those fiefs. A fief normally consisted of a landed estate, which could very greatly in size. But a fief might also be some form of public authority, or a duty or right, including the right to tolls and market dues, the rights of minting and justice, the functions of advocate, mayor, provost, receiver, and so on. These fiefs which had no territorial basis consist or in the right. To certain payment made at regular intervals were known as ‘money fiefs’ inheritance of fiefs:- as long as the inheritance of fiefs had not become an established custom, the lord could demand some recompense from the aspiring candidate before admitting him as a vassal. To fealty and homage and investing him with the fief. The payment which the lord exacted on, this account was commonly known as relief, which could vary depending upon the importance of the particular fief in question-from a horse and the equipment of a knight to one year’s revenue of the fief.

Allods:-while feudal tenure – the villain tenements and the fiefs – was certainly the most common mode of holding land, it was not the only form of real property rights. There was the ‘allods’which remained independent to a significant degree owing to the porous and limited nature of the feudal network of dependent ties. The allodial right was one of complete ownership, not subject to any conditions of service or payment.

Manors:- The fundamental unit of economic production as well as social life in the feudal order was the manor. A manor was first and foremost an agglomeration of small dependent farms directly subjected to the authority of a lord and farmed by serfs or peasant cultivators bound to the soul. In a characteristic manor the village was composed of peasant households clustered together in crude homes around the nucleus of a church, grist and stone mill, blacksmith shop, wine press, bakery and other facilities. Though the manorial village was not entirely self-sufficient since certain essential commodities like salt or metal – were had to be obtained from outside sources, most of the daily needs of the peasants could be met with the goods produced within the manor. The majority of the manorial population was a vast body of servile peasantry of diverse origins, although over the course of the centuries the traces of the distinction mostly disappeared for all practical purposes.

Knights, tournaments and chivalry:-a knight was essentially a mounted warrior in the service of his liege – lord using the speed and momentum of a charge, the horse could trample his rider’s enemies and the rider could use the long lance to injure his foes while he remained out of reach of their weapons. The true knight also disdained all tricks in battle and was not supposed to strike an unarmed or unprepared enemy. Although it was held that a knight ought to help all ladies to the utmost of his power, especially if they had been deprived of their rights, or was in distress of any kind, he was expected to choose one as the special object of his attraction. To win her grace, or to enhance her reputation, he sought adventures, and fought for her both in war and tournaments. However, chivalry might be understood more as a normative guide of knight’s behavior than as a true reflection of what the knights actually did.