The Problem of Feudalism

Introduction of 'The Origins of the Feudal System'

This is Fustel de Coulanges’s introduction to his book The Origins of the Feudal System: Benefices and Patronage During the Merovingian Period. The text of this original translation comes from the second edition, published in 1900. Please do not miss the previous entry in this project, the translator’s preface. The next entry in this series is here: Chapter One: That Military Benefices Did Not Exist Under the Roman Empire.

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One of the most difficult problems of historical study is to uncover how the people of Gaul went from the monarchical and administrative regime given to them by Rome to a completely opposed regime: the feudal regime.

It is quite difficult even to know when this regime took shape. Here we have a great revolution, one of the greatest revolutions in government ever to take place, and we do not even know the date that it occurred.

Some date it to the capitulary of Kiersy-sur-Oise in 877; some others take it back to an edict promulgated in 615. Simply reading these two documents suffices to show the inexactitude of these two positions.

One would like to find in the texts of these times a clue to the exact date. The texts are numerous. Each of these generations of men left behind texts of every nature which told of the great events to which it was witness. Not one indicates the birth of the feudal regime. Among all these chronicles, legislative texts, selected correspondence, letters patent and charters, we never find any indication of the moment in which peasants were subjugated to lords and vassals to overlords. Men of every race will speak of the changes they have seen; none of them say: “It was in our time that the feudal regime was established.”

And it is even more difficult to say what the cause of this revolution was and the way in which it came about. If we are to assume that the subjugation of peasants to lords was the result of an armed struggle and the seizure of power, we will not find a trace of such a thing in any of the writings of the Middle Ages. If we are to assume that the lords achieved independence from the kings by a great insurrection, neither will any indication of that be found anywhere.

We possess more documents from this part of the Middle Ages than from Greek and Roman antiquity. Not a line of these documents tells us either when or how feudalism was born.

The Middle Ages did not lack jurists and legal experts. Philippe de Beaumanoir and Bouteiller in France, John of Ibelin and Philip of Novara in the Orient, Glanville and Littleton in England, and many others, described the feudal institutions which they had right before their eyes. But they did not decide upon the historical origins of those institutions. Not one of them assigns dates or attributes a precise cause.

Moderns have said: “There was, in the 5^th century, an invasion of Germans into Gaul; this overthrew everything; it was this that destroyed the Roman regime and put in its place the feudal regime. This regime thus has a Germanic origin. As far as causes go, the first is this conquest, and the class distinctions are nothing but the consequences of the distinction between victor and vanquished.”

This theory would be quite convenient. By it, the facts are explained simply, logically, and systematically. History would be made clear and easy. We would have a Roman element, a German element, and with these great words we could answer anything—we could give an account of all the institutions and likewise the revolutions of the Middle Ages.

Unfortunately, the sources do not accord with this theory. Take everything that has been written, even during the invasions themselves, even in the generation which came immediately afterwards, nay even in the five centuries which followed—you will find not a line which says that these invasions destroyed the Roman regime and established the feudal one. You will not find a single one which says, be it explicitly or by way of allusion, that the feudal regime was the result of some conquest. In the end, we find not a line, from the 5^th century up to the 12^th, indicating that the peasants were Gallic and the lords Germanic.

We must, therefore, investigate other causes rather than content ourselves with a convenient hypothesis.

All in all, the formation of the feudal regime was a very complex event. Imagining that it flowed from a single source, linking it to a single fact—this will put you inevitably in a position to be fooled. Bringing it about required a long chain of facts and the coincidence of the most diverse causes.

It was asked whether the feudal regime came from ancient Rome or Germany, and the learned thus divided into two camps, those of the Romanists and those of the Germanists. The truth lies in neither of these narrow positions. You will find the feudal regime where there are populations not at all Germanic, and you will also find it where there are populations not at all Roman. It existed equally in southern Gaul where Gallo-Roman blood dominated, in northern Gaul where the two races were mixed, and in Bavaria and in Saxony where the population was pure German. It existed among the Slavs and Hungarians. Irish sources show that it formed in Ireland quite spontaneously, without any conquest, isolated from all Roman and Germanic influence.¹ We find it quite often among other people still, even outside of Europe, and in other eras of history. It has sprung up among all races. It is neither Roman nor German; it belongs to human nature.

It formed slowly, insensibly, and that is why no chronicle gives it a date. It derives from a cloud of hazy causes, and that is why no contemporary writer gives a cause for it. It has its sources in the most diverse facts of the complex existence of men over the course of five or six centuries.

It is this existence in its entirety, in its detail and complexity, that we must study if we wish to know when, how, and why the feudal regime took shape. We must not start from a preconceived idea, or from a side taken in the Roman versus German question; we must observe the facts of each century until we are able to apprehend the feudal regime.

It might be useful, in order to direct our research properly, to first of all define that which we are investigating. It is not that a complete and exact definition of feudalism can be given before the end of our study; we can at least present for now a provisional definition. There are three attributes which characterize the feudal regime:

1. In this regime, land is possessed in such a manner that the possessor is not the true owner. His possession of it may be nearly assured; it may even be hereditary; but he never has full ownership. Certain aspects of property ownership are always missing, such as the right to sell it or to bequeath it. Besides, this possession is conditional—that is to say, subject whether to rent, to service, in a word to duties, and negligence with regard to these duties would entail losing possession.

2. The land is divided into large estates, that we call seigniories. Over each one of these reigns an overlord, whom every man on the estate obeys. These men are judged by him, in place of being judged by the king or by some other public authority. They pay no taxes and owe no military service to anyone but him, in place of owing such to the king; in this way each estate resembles a small state.

3. These overlords depend, not all equally upon the king, but on each other; this dependence arises from the fact that each one received his seigniory from another. This fact he formally avers with each new generation. In this way each one holds his land by another and for this reason is subject to him. From that an entire hierarchy of vassals and overlords emerges which climbs all the way up to the king.

In sum, here we have the three characteristic attributes which distinguish the feudal regime from every other regime: conditional possession of the land in place of property, the subjection of men to an overlord in place of obedience to a king, and the hierarchy of lords by the link of fief and of homage.

Thus the historian who wishes to explain how Gaul went from the Roman regime to the feudal one must inspect each generation of men and investigate whether it displays these three attributes or one of the three. Since he does not know the start date for this regime in advance, he must begin his study starting from the last generation subject to the Roman regime and continue up until the change appears before his eyes.

Since he does not know the cause in advance, he cannot content himself with studying just this or that category of facts; he must attentively observe all of them, every institution, all the regulations of public and private law, the customs of domestic life, and in particular everything having anything to do with possession of land. He must study all of these things with a universal scrupulosity, because he does not know in advance which angle the light will come from. This method is laborious, but it is the only sure one. It is not the method of the doctrinaire, but it is the method of the investigator.

We have only studied Merovingian society from two angles so far. We have observed (in the previous volume) what property regime they practiced, and we have seen successively the right to property they called alleu,² the rural organism we call the villa, the element of tenure or mansus, the diverse modes of tenure and the different classes of men: the landlord, the sharecropper, the slave, the freedman. Previous to that, we had examined the political institutions in that same era and society, and we reviewed the topics of royalty, the kings’ legislative authority, the assemblies of Nobles, the Palace, public administration by counts and other functionaries, taxes, the administration of justice, and relations with the episcopacy.

These two lines of study directed us to the feudal regime. While none of these social or political facts we encountered have by themselves a feudal character, hardly one of them will be able to avoid – sooner or later – a close link to feudalism.

1. Voir Sumner Maine, Histoire des Institutions primitives, trad. Durieu de Leyritz, 1880, chap. V, VI, X surtout, p. 192-193, 196-199, 207-208 de la traduction. – M. Rambaud dans son étude sur l’Empire grec, 1870, a montré qu’il existait là un régime féodal au Xe siècle.

2. [Translator’s Note:] Frequently referred to as “allod” or “allodium” in English-language scholarship. It signifies a “sovereign” form of landholding, subject to no higher authority.