History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VII

It actually did: it extended the territory where armies were fighting. And the intervention by Sweden was in part inspired by it, so it may also have extended the war in time. Claiming the emperor imposed his will by it is beyond a stretch, as it was a hevaily contested edict which was ultimately revoked. so it would be better to term it an attempted imposing of will. Whether the HRE was conceived as a regular state seems a bit irrelevant. In reality it never really was.

That's all probably true, but I think it's significant that it was formed as 'not really a state' in an age when that was as good as it got.
 
So this "there was no feudalism" thing keeps coming up. I'm thinking of buying the book by the historian in question, to see what her argument really is (I feel like I'm only getting poor caricatures from people of her points). I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the details of feudalism were over-simplified and the whole European experience somewhat homogenized (and it's true that representations of feudalism do that, like in video games or movies, for example; but pop culture is not scholarship - we all know that) by 19th century historians and romantics, given how much they did that other things, but I find it hard to believe that it was made up entirely and that this system of patronage and entitlement which was very obviously abolished later on never actually existed in capacity in Real Life. Again, making room for the obvious aberrations and such, and lack of universality of really any pre-capitalist socio-economic formation (anyone making the "100% total conversion" argument is already missing the point).

It's hard to aim when the goalposts keep moving.

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Cheezy the Wiz, the definitive argument against feudalism (including any acceptance of fiefs and vassals as we understand them) is Susan Reynold's Fiefs and Vassals.

I will warn you it is extremely dry. It also assumes the audience has both an understanding of Medieval history and at least English Property Law (both medieval and modern). To be honest, knowing Civil Law wouldn't hurt either but I managed to get by with just three years at an American law school combined with four years of undergrad history ;)
 
Cheezy the Wiz, the definitive argument against feudalism (including any acceptance of fiefs and vassals as we understand them) is Susan Reynold's Fiefs and Vassals.

I will warn you it is extremely dry. It also assumes the audience has both an understanding of Medieval history and at least English Property Law (both medieval and modern). To be honest, knowing Civil Law wouldn't hurt either but I managed to get by with just three years at an American law school combined with four years of undergrad history ;)

Yeah that's the one.

That's a pretty big assumption for an author to make. Is this a history text or a legal text?

Does she provide evidence of what happened instead of the popular conception of feudalism, or merely attack the existing model? It wouldn't mean she were wrong if she did, but it makes the argument a whole lot stronger than to simply poke holes in something. Anyone can poke holes in something, so unless the original position was that the hole-poked thing was perfect, it doesn't really prove much in itself.
 
It's a history text, but it's written to an advanced audience that knows the texts and is familiar with the basic concepts. That means there's an understanding of concepts of property law. I was exaggerating slightly. A basic understanding of the concepts of Fee Simple, Life Estate, and Fee Tail (in English Common Law) is probably sufficient. The concept of a Fief is essentially a property concept. And I don't think you can study this period without understanding the development of the law in the Italian Universities.

The work is mostly deconstructive. It's about shoing how the foundations we've based the whole system of feudalism upon are fundamentally flawed. It then argues there's no point in keeping something just because you have nothing to replace it with. That's no way to study history.

However, while examining the evidence, she explores what that evidence could show (and the extent to which it could be shown). Given that, you have some idea of what existed. Of course, what you'll discover very quickly is the Medieval world is messy. There's no "system." It's a lot of complicated interactions that were not all that formalized and many interactions were not tied to land at all (which is the fundamental basis of the theory of the fief).

That being said, I think Reynolds anticipated her work would inspire people to respond, which would advance the development. But, unfortunately, people have responded by pretty much saying "oh she's right" or ignoring her arguments and sticking with the status quo. Everyone decided it was too much work to start from scratch with modern interpretive methods and they can either go on a misreading of a Medieval text by some 18th Century Frenchmen or they can scrap it and not worry about it.
 
It's just very interesting to me that something which was supposedly non-homogenous somehow turned out more or less homogenous (really, does anyone claim that it was exactly and precisely the same everywhere in the Middle Ages? I feel like she's arguing with a strawman) by the time it was abolished in the 19th Century.
 
How much of 'it' are you talking about, and where? It's easy to say 'feudalism was abolished in the 19th century', but what specific things do you mean?
 
The concepts I usually associate with the term "feudalism" are

1. The prevalence of multiple overlapping/nesting property claims on land.
2. The blurring of the distinction between "large landholder" and "sovereign" - perhaps the most important factor.
3. Weak central authority - mostly as a consequence of 2.

Having a schoolbook systematic feudal hierarchy, or having most social interactions revolve around land is not what I think about when I hear the "f-word".
 
The book predominantly rejects 2 with lesser claims about one. She didn't dispute the weakness of central authority in France (and slightly less in Germany), but she pointed out that England had very strong central authority. Italy, of course, had strong municipal authority but the area was not unified. Ironically, the area that's not thought of as being the core of Feudalism (Germany), which used few of the commonly understood Feudal terms, would probably be the best candidate for the traditional definition of Feudalism.

Essentially, schoolbook feudalism is the feudal pyramid and the concept of the fief. The idea is that the King gives land to his vassals (Lords) to hold in fief. That means the King is the owner of the property and holds it in fee simple (meaning he holds it absolutely). The fiefholder (the Lord) "pays" the King for the land by offering military service. In turn, he subdivides his land into lesser fiefs to be given to lesser vassals who owe him military service in rent (which he can then use for his own benefit or to fulfill his obligation to his King to "pay" his rent). Reynolds's book essentially destroys this entire concept.

It's just very interesting to me that something which was supposedly non-homogenous somehow turned out more or less homogenous (really, does anyone claim that it was exactly and precisely the same everywhere in the Middle Ages? I feel like she's arguing with a strawman) by the time it was abolished in the 19th Century.

I think you lack understanding of what the evidence is for Feudalism. For the evidence to work, it assumes words were used consistently over a wide geographic range and a wide time period. Then, to fill it gaps, it'll use similarities of ceremonies (or assumed ceremonies) to assume other words also mean that same thing (for example, Benefice is used as a Carolingian version of Fief). In one source, a person would be described as placing himself in his Lord's hands (or paying him homage). Therefore, it is assumed that "placing himself in his Lord's hands" means the same thing as homage and any time one does either, one is doing it for the purposes of fulfilling their feudal obligations. One fiefholder is said to do that. Therefore, all fiefholders do that. Furthermore, if someone who is a holder of a Benefice does it, a Benefice suddenly becomes a Fief. They do this even when the context makes it clear it isn't a ceremony. For example, if a brother rebels against his King and loses a battle and is trapped and about to be killed, when he throws himself in the hands of his King, that isn't a Feudal ceremony, that's a plea for mercy. But Feudal theory doesn't treat it that way. That isn't a strawman, that's the fundamental underpinnings of the entire concept besides one book, the Libri Feodorum, which most people who talked about Fiefs never read.

Do I think Reynolds was arguing against a strawman? I think she acknowledged that she had to choose a generic definition of feudalism because there are so many shifting definitions that it's virtually impossible to respond to all of them (although, as Elizabeth A. R. Brown pointed out in Tyranny of a Construct, the fact that historians use feudalism to mean whatever they want it to mean is another problem with using the term at all). But her main point was that the evidence didn't exist when the sources are properly read.

The Fief was essentially invented as a legal concept in Italy as a method for cities there to increase their power over the countryside. As their power grew, they convinced landholders to give up absolute control over the land in exchange for holding it for the city (since land is never held in the absolute when it's subject to government regulation and control, these landholders lost little at first). Lawyers, on the other hand, began to classify and quantify and come up with neat definitions for what Fiefs meant (and then found lots of Fiefs had nothing to do with that, so they had to distinguish between "true Fiefs" and other Fiefs). In France, on the other hand, Fief was just a status symbol. If you were rich and important, your land was called a Fief (except, of course, when lower status people happened to have land called Fiefs). So as time went on, people had their land converted to Fiefs, which they held absolutely just as before, except where Royal authority limited their control (just as royal authority did over non-Fiefs). In England, the word Fief is where we get the modern "Fee," which, in legal tradition, means land held absolutely by the owner subject to no other restrictions.

The only area where the more traditional Fief system (where land is held conditionally in exchange for military service or other obligations to the true owner of the land) is true is with the Church (something we generally don't think of because the traditional feudal pyramid goes from King to Lord, not church to lord). Canon law prohibited the alienation of church land. Therefore, the church would grant land in a Life Estate for three generations (meaning three generations get to hold the land, then it reverts automatically back to the church) in exchange for the landholder to provide service to the church. Of course, once the great-grandchild finds out he has to give up the land that has been in his family forever, he's none too pleased and there's a big dispute. A lot of royal proclamations concern these lands (iirc, the proclamations of a Holy Roman Emperor, who I am drawing a blank on his name, that are the basis of the Libri Feodorum come from a dispute between a land holder and a Bishop in Milan).
 
Sorry to double post, but I have two things to add:

First, even when not read as a deconstructive book, Fiefs and Vassals is an interesting look into the history of Medieval legal and political thought. R.W. Southern in The Making of the Middle Ages argued (among other things) that developing legal traditions in the 11th Century were crucial in creating the modern world as we know it. This book covers that and more. If you don't mind reading a text that's fairly dry and complicated, it's quite good for that purpose.

Second, it should also be clear that Reynolds is not disputing Manorialism at all (what she refers to as "Marxist Feudalism"). This is the entire concept of Peasants and landholders where peasants are allowed to work the land in exchange for providing services for a lord. She doesn't dispute this system existed at all. In fact, she points out that the fundamental distinction that legal scholars cared about was between free and unfree (freeman and serf). I would argue, based on the works of people like R.W. Southern, that it is misleading to picture it as a pyramid where the unfree peasants formed the bulk of society (sort of like the breads and cereals of the food pyramid). Instead, I think the bulk of farmers were free farmers. But it wasn't uncommon to form contracts with churches or estates where one became a peasant (and their family and their children). But it was one of many relationships, not the backbone of society.
 
The book predominantly rejects 2 with lesser claims about one.
Do you mean that she denies that even in places like the Kingdom of France there was a blurring of the landholder/sovereign lines? What other forms can a weakening of central authority (which pretty much by definition means that some local strongman takes large parts of said authority away from the center) take place? I guess it could be Italian-style municipal power, but even in southern France it never reached such heights as in Italy. Of course, local landless notables/bureaucrats whose power is not directly tied to land can also usurp the center's functions. Does Reynolds provide evidence that the latter form of decentralization was prominent in French kingdom and HRE (discounting England for a while here)?
 
Do you mean that she denies that even in places like the Kingdom of France there was a blurring of the landholder/sovereign lines?

Yes.

What other forms can a weakening of central authority (which pretty much by definition means that some local strongman takes large parts of said authority away from the center) take place? I guess it could be Italian-style municipal power, but even in southern France it never reached such heights as in Italy. Of course, local landless notables/bureaucrats whose power is not directly tied to land can also usurp the center's functions. Does Reynolds provide evidence that the latter form of decentralization was prominent in French kingdom and HRE (discounting England for a while here)?

It's difficult to answer this because it just isn't the subject of the book. The book is essentially a diving into a morass of sources (titles to land, charters, and chronicles mostly) and interpreting those sources in context. There are other books that are better at talking about this phenomenon.* She certainly talks about it, but mostly for other reasons. The biggest thing I can think of is the French tradition of having local authorities approve devising land to churches after your death. Since royal authority was weak in the Ban, it's clear they used the de facto source of authority instead. The book, here, merely reinforced what I learned in Law School. Historically, no one had any problem with a person giving their land to their children (subject to taxation, of course), but, if you were going to give your land to someone else after you die (usually a church) your children are going to complain of being robbed of their inheritance. Therefore, in France, they had a ceremony where the local ruler recognized the bequest (even today, the requirements of wills are extremely archaic in English law and are subject to being undone by your children upon the slightest misstep).

* If you want a book that talks about the lack of central authority in Northern France, I will never be able to speak highly enough about R.W. Southern's The Making of the Middle Ages. It talks about the rise of Anjou under Fulk Nerra and how he tried to establish legitimacy of his rule independent of the French King. Reynolds's work and Southern's work just talk about different things, though.

ETA: I'm happy to answer as many questions as possible, particularly because it's an extremely dense and dry book so I can completely understand others not wanting to have to struggle through it. But I will add that I read the book last October or November and do not own a copy of it. So you should expect mistakes to happen a long the way due to me not fully understanding something or not remembering it completely or correctly.
 
It's difficult to answer this because it just isn't the subject of the book.
This answer seems to undermine the book quite a bit to me. If someone denied my (2) thesis, surely it falls upon them to prove that agents of decentralization (for the lack of a better term) often were not primarily landholders, but some other entities?
 
Well, most of the agents of decentralization were Counts and Dukes not landholders in general. Sure, they held large personal estates, but their source of authority wasn't derived from land. This point is addressed in the book in detail if that's what you're looking for. Reynolds doesn't dispute there was decentralization of authority or that those that filled that vacuum had large estates. I don't think one needs to dispute that to dispute point 2.
 
Was there anyone in Germany, who after 1918 and the subsequent treaties, wanted to restore the German monarchy?
 
Interesting. It seems the pre-Nazis in face of the National People's Party wanted the monarchy back.
 
Well, most of the agents of decentralization were Counts and Dukes not landholders in general. Sure, they held large personal estates, but their source of authority wasn't derived from land.
In other words, their landholdings were more a function of their power, rather than its cause?
 
Yeah, that's a fair way of putting it.
 
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