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The feudality or Feudalism (of the Latin the feudum , stronghold ) is a Political system where the central Autorité was weakened; the sovereign capacity is allotted to Principauté S, Fief S or federations intended to stabilize the area and/or the people.

This organization of the company developed in Europe between the fifth and the eighth century, after the dismemberment of the Empire Romain d' Occident. Based on the Roman and the system known as of " the hospitalité" - feudality is specific to [[the Christian Occident|European occident].

Introduction

Feudality indicates a legal system, resulting from the conquest of the Empire Romain d' Occident by the Barbares; the organization consisted of a kind of confederation of Seigneur S invested each one of a sovereign capacity in their own fields, but unequal in power, subordinated between them, and having reciprocal duties and rights.

Feudality evolves/moves and gives its identity to the Middle Ages, with the Capitulaire of Quierzy, signed by Charles the Bald person of 877 which establishes the Hérédité in the fields and the titles.

Principles

One can characterize feudalism by the whole of the institutions and contractual uses between vassal suzerains and : the suzerain having the obligation to make remain its vassal by the handing-over of a Stronghold (grounds or rights, or revenue), the vassal one owe him faith and Homage.

The vassal one was that which, having received a named territorial property benefit or Fief, was by there in the dependence of the guarantor of this property ; which it owed faith and homage, in exchange of an assistance of its suzerain in certain cases. The suzerain was that which, having conferred the stronghold, had right using the vassal one. Remainder, the same lord could be a suzerain for certain strongholds (those that it had conferred), and vassal for others (those which it had received). Thus the kings of France and England had with various resumptions of the cross bonds of vassalage.

This type of relations, to the departure limited to the warlike Aristocratie, where the King, suzerain of the suzerains , allots strongholds to its faithful to protect its field more effectively, extended to the unit from the company, the serfs , people attached to the ground of the lord, having a report/ratio of vassal with suzerain with their lord. Feudality then indicates a company characterized by the hierarchy of the grounds and the people, the parcelling out of the grounds and the authority, the domination of the fighting class.

Origins

A feudal system based on the Clientélisme appears to have existed in germ of unmemorable time at the Celts and the German ones; it was regularly restored in Gaulle at the time of the conquest by the Francs; all the conquered grounds are then divided into grounds fibers , reserved by the fate for independent chiefs, and benefit S or strongholds (as they later were named) grounds conceded by a chief with his comrades in arms in reward of the services that they had returned to him to the war. The powerful ones accommodate free men whom they educate, protect and nourish. The entry in these groups is done by the ceremony of the recommendation: These men become domestic warriors ( vassus ) attached to the person of the senior . The lord must maintain this customers by gifts to maintain his fidelity. To maintain vast customers and thus a powerful army one needs strong incomes. Those can come from commercial activities, thus the Celts could form " nations" centered on commercial crossroads materialized by Oppidum S . At the francs where all the free men are succeptibles to leave to the war and are armed, the introduction of a direct taxation is impossible. Consequently the resources of the authority are come either from the tax on the goods to tolls and on the markets ( Tonlieu ) or of the fines ( Wergeld ) secondary to the application of the Salic law. Thus the power of the Francs comes from the control of the remote trade with the Mediterranean world via the Rhone-native corridor: waterways consisted the the Rhone and the the Saone being easy to connect by road to the the Loire, the the Seine, the Meuse and with the the Rhine. When at the 7th century the Moslem conquest makes dubious the transit of the food products by the Western Mediterranean, this axis decays with the profit of an axis Pô/Rhin via the alpine collars: The Mérovingiens lose any capacity with the profit of the Pippinides of which the grounds border the Rhine and the Meuse and who have the means of maintaining powerful customers… The gold currency becoming rare because of distension of the commercial links with Byzance (which loses the control of the Western Mediterranean to the profit of the Moslems), the principal richnesses in the absence of developed trade are the possession of ground or administrative or religious loads. The dispersion of their inheritance to their vassal leads to the ousting of the mérovingiens and the first Carolingians try to prevent a similar evolution. In the absence of territorial expansion the bonds vassalic thus distend to perennialize a power must extend. This is why the Frank empires and Lombards will grow unceasingly, until the Carolingians end up beating the seconds and controlling all Europe.

To avoid a destiny similar to the mérovingiens, Charlemagne must extend its empire permanently to maintain its vassal and to avoid the dissolution of its possessions. To maintain the unit of the Carolingian Empire, Charlemagne introduces the ceremony of recommendation which imposed an oath of vassalage. It supervises closely its vassal which is inspected regularly by Missi dominici and is convened annually to leave to shift (of which the spoils and the territorial conquests could be to them redistributed). In addition, he conceded the loads only on a purely basis for life what enabled him to recover the grounds with dead of its vassal, to avoid the progressive loss of his possessions and to preserve a means of pressure on his vassal to which the pleasure of the grounds granted into precarious can be withdrawn.

When the empire stops extending, Louis the Piles must concede grounds in freehold and either as usufruct for life as his/her father did it. Balance breaks between the tax land goods and the land goods granted in pleasure to the nobility. Consequently, it is not enough any more rich to maintain its vassal and nothing any more attaches their natural inclinations of independence. Moreover military campaigns become less frequent after 820 and controls by the missi dominici rarefy and are less and less effective (they become expensive to maintain, are corruptible and the voyages at the time are painful): the control of vassal is made coward more and more. Moreover Charlemagne already the practice had to entrust the grounds in Précaire to the son of its vassal to died of those. Gradually, the hereditary transmission becomes a practice and the concept of right according to which the ground and the loads belong to the sovereign is forgotten or neglected. The things still worsen when the wire of Louis the Piles between-tear for the capacity and must concede more and more autonomy with their vassal to preserve their support.

When its sons were entredéchirent for the division of the empire because of the rules of equal share of the grounds, they must give more and more independence to their vassal to preserve their support. The reign of Charles the Bald person is symptomatic: after the Division of Verdun (843) between three wire of Louis the Piles, he inherits the kingdom of Francie Occidentale , but he needs the assent and the support of the aristocracy to enter truly in possession of his kingdom: with the Parliament of Coulaine in November 843, he concedes to them “the peaceful pleasure of their function and their goods” and in return they bring “assistance and council to him”. It tries to preserve the imperial authority by all the means associating in particular the support of the ecclesiastics to which it concedes the possibility of beating currency. The final passage towards feudality is made when it guarantees to its vassal faculty to bequeath their grounds to their heir by the capitulary to Quierzy-on-Oise of June 16th, 877.

The royal capacity weakens considerably and Europe is divided into principalities between which the communications decrease. In France, the heredity of the strongholds sanctioned in 587 by the Treated of Andelot, it is to it again three centuries afterwards by the Capitulaire of Quierzy (877), which extends heredity to the governments of the provinces of the Carolingian empire. Begin the true feudal time then; the owners of the strongholds become hereditary easily increase their power under the last Carolingians, and large the Feudataire S becomes in fact independent.

The feudal change

The authority of the king crumbles all the more quickly as the Carolingian army is cut for an offensive strategy: the annual campaigns force the neighbors with the respect (they end besides up paying a tribute). This heavy logistics cannot answer the fast and ceaseless raids of buckwheats or the Vikings of which the principal asset is mobility. Consequently defense must be dealt with locally. At the 10th century, the castles proliferate sometimes with the contempt of any legality, their owners exerting protection and domination on the territories neighborhood. In these dubious times of invasions and continual wars private, dwellings come to be bound near the castle what legitimates the lord of the manor and the exercise of the round of applause seigneurial. This one can impose taxes, tolls, drudgeries, banalities (imposed use of seigneuriaux equipment subject to payment: furnaces, mills…) liftings by its sergeants. In exchange, the vivres garnered with the castle provide for survival with the churl S (comes from Latin to reside) taken refuge between his walls in the event of plundering.

This change, poses problem because it would imply that the pleasure of the grounds passes from a land elite to a warlike elite. Cutting is not linear: with the wire of the donations the great land and buildings are extremely parcelled out and dispersed at long distances and the zone on which the châtellenie exerts its protection is perforated autonomous enclaves, which the lord claims to subject to same the royalties and same justice as his churls. Consequently the claim of the right of round of applause and justice on the grounds of church or laic owners whose goods and incomes are threatened, involves a strong dissatisfaction, the more so as the lords do not hesitate to use of violence and intimidate or maltreat the peasants or deliver themselves to plundering what does not fail to make assemble dissatisfaction in the population.

The independent sources are ecclesiastics and must be analyzed with prudence; the many exactions denounced by the clerks, like the armed robberies, are not inevitably acts direct violence: the lords of the manor try to impose taxes to the inhabitants of the grounds of church what cuts down the incomes by the monks. These “brigands” are very often despoilers of the Church in the sense that they dispute or reject the rights of the churches on the grounds to which they are the heirs. The adversaries of the Church are laic powers that the political authority does not only manage to repress. The convents and the churches, often undergo the pressures of descendants of the givers who seek to recover the patrimonial goods that they should have inherited. The Church thus takes its own defense, which is revealing slip of the authority in direction of the Church and weakening of the official legislation. The Church represents the only moral fiber, the only brake with the violence of the lords and the knights. On the whole, the interests of the lords of the manor are in conflict with those of the farming community, of the clergy and from powerful and the movement of the Paix of God rises from the efforts of these three social groups to neutralize excesses of the incipient nobility.

Warlike raising the moral standard of the conduits by the Church

The Church is not saved by the disorders of IXe and Xe century. Loads of abbots, parochial or ecclesiastical are given to the laic ones to be trained customers and the monastic discipline is slackened, the level of dark culture of the priests. The rare monasteries which preserved an irreproachable control acquire a great moral authority. This more especially as the approach of the An millet works the spirits: the Apocalypse is the crowned text which holds the most impassioned attention. One reads there that Thousand passed years, Satan, slackened its prison, from there will allure the nations in the 4 corners of the ground, Gog and Magog, and to gather them for the war, as many as the sand of the sea. . The exactions of the warriors seem to correspond to prophecy. Consequently a particular care is put to wash its sins. In particular the just monasteries receive many donations to obtain prayers in particular postmortem. The choice of the abbots is made more and more worms of the men of a great integrity and some such Guillaume of Aquitaine go until giving autonomy and immunity to monasteries which thus elect their abbot. It was the case of Gorze, Brogne or Cluny. Other monasteries use false certificates of immunity to acquire autonomy.

Of all, Cluny has the most impressive development and the influence. Under the cane of dynamic abbots such as Odon, Maïeul or Odilon, the abbey involves other monasteries which are attached to him and constitutes soon a very powerful order (in 994 the Ordre of Cluny account already 34 convents). One of the great forces of Cluny east to recruit a good part as of the her members and particularly its abbots in the high aristocracy: Bernon (909-927) belongs to the aristocracy of the county of Burgundy, Odon (927-942) to an big family of Touraine, Mayeul (948-994) to the family of Provence of Valensole, Odilon de Mercoeur (994-1048) with a chalk-lining comtal of Auvergne, Hugues de Semur (1049-1109) is the brother-in-law of the duke capétien of Burgundy and his/her niece will marry the king de Castille Alphonse VI, Pons de Melgueil (1109-1122) is related to the counts d' Auvergne and of Toulouse, Pierre de Montboissier, known as the Worthy one (1122-1156), is resulting from a seigneuriale family of Auvergne. Aymard (942-948) is the only abbot resulting from a modest milieu.

To support the conversion of the pagan populations, the worship of the saints and thus of the Relic S.A. highly encouraged as of the Life century. The possession of relics by the monasteries and other religious buildings is very run because the surge of pilgrims whom they involve is source of important benefit.

The invasions of IXe century involve their batch of misfortunes. One takes the practice, at that time to leave the relics their sanctuary, in particular for processions at the time of the public calamities, and to claim justice against the enemies or the usurpers of a church. This use applies of course also to the depredations due to the local lords: It is of one of these gatherings expiatory that starts the movement of the Paix of God. 21 assemblies of Peace are counted, but we know the decrees only for only 8 of them. They are assemblies brought together in full field, in places chosen for their very ancient popular sociability, in which the bishops make swear peace. If the Peace of God is based on a popular movement in its first phase (989-1010), it then profits from the support of the king Robert II the Piles and of the nobility who see a means there of structuring and to pacify the kingdom. The councils in Aquitaine were often convened by the duke Guillaume of Aquitaine. If the country dispute has a character antiseigneurial, the Church does not seek to replace for the central capacity but rather moraliser the control of the nobility. The oaths establish a legal and land compromise between laic armed and ecclesiastical: they institutionalize the seigniory. The fight of the Church against violences seigneuriales assoit also, by the decisions of its councils, the new social order organizing the company in three orders

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