Feudalism in 11th century Normandy

Feudalism Before the 11th century in Normandy

The Duchy and the Counties began to break down into smaller holdings as castellans and lesser seigneurs took control of local lands

Counts and lesser lords usurped/privatized a wide range of prerogatives and rights of the state, most importantly the highly profitable rights of justice, but also travel dues, market dues, fees for using woodlands, obligations to use the lord's mill, etc.

Power in this period became more personal

the vassal/feudal system was an effective tool for ducal and comital control, linking vassals to their lords

Service was indeed an important element in the formation of a nobility and the development of feudalism, but it was only one element among many.

Rulers certainly aided the formation by providing opportunities for service.

Tenth-century nobility represented itself as having illustrious ancestors, a noble family, kin, and friends, social recognition, and personal freedom: these were what made a noble in the seventh century as in the tenth century

Normandy was less 'feudal', than is usually thought.

In Normandy before 1066 there were no true fiefs

Do not use the words: fee, fevium, fevum, feodum, feudum

Use “benefice” or “holding” as in “ he held the land in service to…”

Its key institutions were lordship, vassalage, and land

Lordship and vassalage

Lordship and vassalage represent the two sides of a personal bond of mutual loyalty and military service between nobles of different rank that found its roots in the Germanic war-band.

The superior in this relationship was termed a lord, and the subordinate, who pledged loyalty and military service to his lord, was his “vassal.”

ORIGINS

The origins of the lord-man relationship may be found in the conditions of 7th and 8th century Western Europe that made such a private pledge of mutual protection and support necessary.

The breakdown of central authority in the west (due to the abandonment of the Roman cities for the countryside; the breakdown of central administrative institutions, including the army and bureaucracy; decay of roads, communications, etc.) led to dangerous times.

Lordship became the dominant societal bond--or at least the dominant vertical bond (kinship and friendship remained powerful ties) in the tenth century

Because of the Viking invasions that shattered the remaining vestiges of central authority of the Carolingian kings of West Francia (soon to be France).

Fealty

Fealty comes from the Latin fidelitas and denotes the fidelity owed by a vassal to his feudal lord.

"Fealty" also refers to an oath that more explicitly reinforces the commitments of the vassal made during homage. Such an oath follows homage.

Once the commendation ceremony was complete, the lord and vassal were in a feudal relationship with agreed obligations to one another.

The vassal's principal obligation to the lord was to "aid", or military service.

Using whatever equipment the vassal could obtain by virtue of the revenues from the fief, the vassal was responsible to answer calls to military service on behalf of the lord.

This security of military help was the primary reason the lord entered into the feudal relationship.

In addition, the vassal could have other obligations to his lord, such as attendance at his court, whether manorial, baronial, both termed court baron, or at the king's court.

Homage and Fealty

The private agreements that formed the network of mutual services were called contracts of homage and fealty, "homage" because one of the contractants agreed to become the servant (homme, or "man" of the other, and fealty, because he promised to be "feal, faithful" to him.

Oath of Fealty - the Words

The promise of faithful service to the lord was called the Oath of Fealty.

To take an oath was a very solemn proceeding; it was an appeal to God, by which a man called down on himself divine punishment if he swore falsely.

EXAMPLE

"I promise on my faith that I will in the future be faithful to the lord, never cause him harm and will observe my homage to him completely against all persons in good faith and without deceit."

Fidelity

Fidelity—the bond of mutual fidelity between an individual lord and his individual follower—has been seen as the distinctive value of the feudal ethic, whether or not one derives it, or stresses its derivation, from the timee of Germanic barbarians.

Anyone who swore fidelity to his lord was obliged not to injure the lord, betray his secrets or fortresses, impede his justice or other business pertaining to the lord’s honour, or cause him to lose his possessions.

If the vassal were to deserve the grant of a holding or fief he would have to go beyond these negative duties and faithfully give his lord aid and counsel.

The lord in return should act in a corresponding way to his vassal, lest he be censured for bad faith and perfidy.

But the king or duke were too distant for the bond to hold.

Inevitably, in the circumstances of the time, vassalage worked much more to the advantage of counts and other local lords: they could offer more effective protection to their vassals and their relations with them could be genuinely personal.

As this suggests, while kings could make use of vassalage, they did so, not primarily as rulers of a kingdom or state, but as lords like any other lord.

Acceleration towards Feudalism

the emergence of second-generation principalities went along with the emancipation of viscounties, some of which turned into counties while others kept their old titles.

Once having turned their honor into a patrimony, some viscounts benefited from favourable circumstances (minorities, wars) to extend their own domination, to reject princely tutelage, and to found principalities of their own.

This trend reached the level of the castellany which had meanwhile become the underpinning of comital power.

Thus the feudal system pushed to the extreme the principle of fidelity on which the Carolingians had tried to base their regime.

With favorable conditions, the most dynamic lineages developed a sense of dynasty, and relied on kin ties and fidelity to control wider territories and power-centres.

Operating with hierarchical bonds of fidelity and with real or artificial kinship ties, they entrenched their power.

Land was “held” under a variety of ways

The only reason to suppose that any of them did may be that some are said to have ‘held’ their land and that the viscount’s land, for which he owed his share, was called a benefice.

That, however, seems to have been a traditional word for the land of viscounts, as of counts, and ‘holding’, is not significant.

Example:

One reference from before 1033 to a man holding an estate from the abbey of St—Ouen of Rouen as a miles, a ‘knight’ (or, more loosely, ‘soldier’), which land he was allowed to pass on to his sons, for the same service

Motte-and-bailey castles sprang up all over Normandy

Castellans

The castellans who controlled these castles were essentially politically autonomous, despite the efforts of counts and dukes to rein them in and the exalted theocratic claims made by kings and their ecclesiastical supporters.

The custodian of a castle would have regarded himself as responsible to his lord for its safety at the same time as he enjoyed some of the rights of property in it and hoped to hand on both responsibilities and rights to his son or sons.

His rights would presumably have been weaker, and his obligations greater, than those of a castellan who built his own fortress on his own alod but took an oath of fidelity to a local magnate.

Amount of service required before 1066

No uniform system of servicium debitum had been imposed by the Norman dukes.

The military duties of vassalage were still being worked out

However, there was an early link between land and military service

Source of pre-feudal military forces

Rulers of any standing must have needed to call on their richer and more powerful subjects and neighbors, who were, of course, those most likely to have held the kind of inherited property that was sometimes called alodial.

Calling on them may have been all they could do: it looks as though, right through the eleventh century, rulers relied less on fixed rules than on persuasion, backed by promises or threats, when they wanted military support from their nobles.

In areas where comital power wins less well established a lot may have depended on contracts between individuals.

The need to furnish garrisons for the fortifications that appeared all over the country from the late tenth century on must have intensified demands for regular military service.

In Normandy local lords demanded garrison service from church tenants: they are surely even more likely to have demanded it from lesser landowners who did not have churches to complain on their behalf.

Most military or quasi-military obligations mentioned in the charters seen to be of a home-guard kind rather than anything distinctively noble.

Altogether it is probably as misleading to draw a hard line of status between military service and other obligations as it is to connect military service with any particular category of property.

A stronger obligation lay on those lesser alodholders who were brought under jurisdiction of banal lords or castellans, who presumably profited from some relics of the old obligations of vicarial courts, however obscure and unjust the stages by which they had established their authority.

‘Aid and counsel’

Those who attended courts may have been spoken of as doing so in order to offer ‘aid and counsel’.

This phrase had originated in the ninth century and had probably spread since then through being used in church charters.

It is most likely to occur in ecclesiastical grants of property that specify the obligations of the grantee, but those whose aid and counsel would be most desired by any ruler or lord would be those of higher status, who, in all but the smallest lordships, would be holders of full property.

What this meagre selection of evidence and conjecture comes down to is that alod-holders in the tenth and eleventh centuries might or might not owe military and other services.

The connection between fiefs and military service at this period is both extremely obscure and central to arguments about feudo-vassalic institutions.

It is obscure because the charters say so little about services of any kind and because other records of services are still rare.

Men referred to as militia need not, however, have held land, whether as fiefs or alods, or owed service for what they did hold.

Service

One problem faced by a lord was the difficulty of exacting as much service as he could from his feudal tenants.

Services over the tenth and eleventh century tended to become fixed as customary obligations.

Thus throughout northern France in the 12th and 13th century military service for fiefs was limited for offensive campaigns to forty days for a knight.

This limitation on military service highlights an irony about 'feudalism': there seems to have been no period in which feudal obligation was the chief form of military recruitment.

In pre-Conquest England and Normandy, many nobles would have answered a king’s summons to war with a retinue appropriate to their rank and dignity, even if it exceeded the number of thegns or knights owed from their lands.

Knight-service in war…

was far less common than castle guard, attendance in court, accompanying your Lord when he traveled, hospitality to the lord or to his servants, wardship and marriage, and providing aid to one’s Lord

Other Services

castle-guard

the obligation of a vassal to serve in a castle garrison of the lord;

suit in court

the vassal's obligation to attend the lord's court, to give him counsel, and to help him judge disputes;

Travel

accompanying the lord when he traveled or attended the court of his lord--meant to increase the social status of the lord; or

hospitality to the lord or to his servants.

Wardship and marriage

This referred to a lord’s right to control descent of fief by choosing husbands of female heirs and guardians of minors, preferably in consultation with heir's closest male adult kinsmen.

providing aid to one’s Lord

“aid” was economic help given by the vassal to his lord.