Re-Thinking Kinship and Feudalism in Early Medieval Europe (Variorum Collected Studies) [1 ed.] 9780860789604, 9781138375673, 9781003418719, 0860789608

Table of contents :
Cover
Series
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Dedication
I Maitland on family and kinship
II The invention of English individualism: Alan Macfarlane and the modernization of pre-modern England (with Richard T. Vann)
III Clotild’s revenge: politics, kinship, and ideology in the Merovingian blood feud
IV Kinship and lordship in early medieval England: the story of Sigeberht, Cynewulf, and Cyneheard
V The discourse of inheritance in twelfth-century France: alternative models of the fief in ‘Raoul de Cambrai’
VI English feudalism and its origins
VII Stratégie rhétorique dans la Conventio de Hugues de Lusignan
VIII The politics of fidelity in early eleventh-century France: Fulbert of Chartres, William of Aquitaine, and Hugh of Lusignan
IX Book Review: Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted
X The politics of exchange: gifts, fiefs, and feudalism
XI Giving fiefs and honor: largesse, avarice, and the problem of “feudalism” in Alexander’s testament
XII Service for fiefs or fiefs for service: the politics of reciprocity
XIII A crisis of fidelity in c. 1000?
Index

Citation preview

STEPHEN D. WHITE and Peace-Making in Eleventh-Century France

Feuding

Also in the Variorum Collected Studies Series: JANE MARTINDALE Status, Authority and Regional Power Aquitaine and France, 9th to 12th Centuries JANET L. NELSON Rulers and Ruling Families in Early Medieval Alfred, Charles the Bald and Others

Europe

R. J. MACRIDES in Byzantium, 11th—15th Centuries

Kinship and Justice

ADRIAAN VERHULST Rural and Urban Aspects of Early Medieval Northwest

Europe

EDWARD PETERS Limits of Thought and Power in Medieval

Europe

MARJORIE REEVES The

Prophetic

Sense of History in Medieval and Renaissance

JAMES MULDOON Canon Law, the Expansion

of Europe, and World Order

ROGER COLLINS Law, Culture and Regionalism in Early Medieval Spain HENRY ANSGAR KELLY

Inquisitions

and Other Trial Procedures in the Medieval West

ANDRÉ GOURON Junstes et droits savants:

Bologne

et la France médiévale

BERNARD S. BACHRACH

State-Building in Medieval France Studies

in

Early Angevin History

JAMES A. BRUNDAGE The Profession and Practice of Medieval Canon Law

Europe

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES

Re-Thinking Kinship and Feudalism in Early Medieval Europe

Stephen

D. White

Stephen D. White

EuMeinEarRe-Thinking droiepvlyael Kinship and Feudalism

Routledge |J IV Taylor

& Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2005 by Ashgate Publishing

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

tRoutledge he is an imprint of

Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

First issued in paperback 2018

This edition © ISBN 978-0-86078-960-4 (hbk) ISBN 978-1-138-37567-3

Notice:


2005 by Stephen D. White

(pbk)

iActStephen be to aut1988, the tas worof dhenthifksore,d. D. White has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

All ptfinwrwsorranyiandhnowkmeotmbyenuloyvchibtrsmeuaniodhwmtpeersfvgnyciuoradglt,. rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in

Product toiwiandeforonldnxpfrtlahiencoganttyuieont. or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719

Contents

vii-xvi Introduction

Acknowledgementsxvii I

Maitland The

on

family and kinship

History ofEnglish Law: Centenary Essays on

‘Pollock

and Maitland', ed. John G. Hudson, Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 89. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 199691-113

II

The invention of English individualism: Alan Macfarlane and the modernization of pre-modern

England (with Richard T. Vann) Social History 8.

III

Abingdon,

1983 345-363

Clotild’s revenge: politics, kinship, and the Merovingian blood feud Portraits in Honor Steven A.

ideology in

ofMedieval and Renaissance Living: Essays ofDavid Herlihy, ed. Samuel K. Cohn Jr. and Epstein. Ann Arbor: The University ofMichigan

107-130 Press, 1996

IV

Kinship

and

lordship

in

the story of Sigeberht, Viator 20.

V

early medieval England: Cynewulf, and Cyneheard

Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA,

The discourse of inheritance in

1989 1-18

twelfth-century France:

alternative models of the fief in ‘Raoul de Cambrai’ Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy:

Essays in

Honour

John G. Hudson.

of Sir James Holt, ed, George Garnett and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1994 173-197

VI

English feudalism and its origins American Journal

ofLegal History

19.

Philadelphia, PA,

1975 138-15

VII

Stratégic rhétorique Lusignan Histoire et société:

dans la Conventio de

Hugues

mélanges offerts à Georges Duby,

de

vol. 2:

Le tenancies le fidèle et le citoyen. Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l'Université de Provence, 1993 147-157

VIII The

politics of fidelity

in

early eleventh-century France: Hugh of

Fulbert of Chartres, William of Aquitaine, and

Lusignan Published here for the first time 1-9 IX

Book Review: Susan The

X

Reynolds, Fiefs and Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted

Vassals:

Law and History Review 15. Urbana and

Chicago, IL,

The

and feudalism

politics of exchange: gifts, fiefs,

1997 349-35

First published in: Medieval and

Gifts

in Context, ed.

Transformations: Texts, Power, Esther Cohen and Mayke B. de Jong.

1-17 Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 169-188 XI

Giving fiefs

and honor:

largesse, avarice,

and the

problem

of “feudalism” in Alexander’s testament The Medieval French Alexander, ed. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox.

Albany,

NY: State

University of

127-141 New York Press, 2002

XII

Service for fiefs

or

fiefs for service: the

politics of

reciprocity Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations ofExchange, ed. Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner and Bernhard Jussen, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 188. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003 63-98 XIII A crisis of fidelity in

c. 1000?

First published in:

Building Legitimacy: Political Discourses and Forms of Legitimacy in Medieval Societies, ed. Isabel Alfonso, Hugh Kennedy and Julio Escalona. Leiden: Brill, 2004, pp. 27-49 1-24

Index 1-4 This volume contains xviii

+

258 pages

Introduction

The essays in this volume examine the history of kinship and feudalism in early medieval Europe by focusing on France and England from the Merovingian and this

early Anglo-Saxon eras up to c.1200, with emphasis on the latter part of period. Through analysis of Latin, Old French, and Old English texts that

represent both associations among nobles and their kin, lords, men, and friends and conflicts between and within aristocratic groups, the essays investigate the political dimensions of such associations, giving particular attention to

patronage/clientage, the use of land as an item of exchange, rights in land, competition for honor, and conflicts that can often be understood as feuds. In so doing the essays call into question the longstanding historiographical practice of studying as independent systems both aristocratic kinship and feudalism in F.L. Ganshof’s

of “the system of feudal and vassal institutions.” 1 challenge the methodological convention of treating

sense

More

importantly they kinship and feudalism only as institutionalized structures, with little or no reference to political practices and processes or to the discourses that medieval texts deployed for both practical and ideological purposes when representing kinship and feudalism. Many of the essays analyze kinship and/or ties between lords and theirfideles, both as cultural constructions and, in Pierre Bourdieu’s terms, as things that medieval nobles made (though not exactly as 2 they pleased) and with which they did things or tried to do things. As for so-called rules of kinship and rules of feudal law, several of the essays treat them, with cultural models of kinship and lordship, as normative constraints along on behavior, as cultural resources that nobles used to legitimate their own conduct and/or to condemn their enemies, and as the media through which the associations already mentioned were invented and re-invented. Several essays argue that it is sometimes productive to abandon the idiom of “rules” or “laws” and, instead, to examine indigenous models that represent, often inconsistently, how various social relationships such as those between lords both

–

1

1964), 2

Frangois Louis Ganshof, Feudalism, trans. Philip Grierson, 3rd English edition (New York, p. xvi. Pierre

Bourdieu,

The

Logic ofPractice,

trans. Richard Nice

(Stanford, 1990), p.

167.

Introduction

and

appropriately. Several of the essays move in kinship and feudalism as patronage/clientage in Dominique Barthélemy’s terms that is, as a “double system of solidarity and confrontation” though they also allow for the importance in the formation of political groups and networks of other kinds of associations, such as the ones that monastic communities and their aristocratic patrons forged through the mediation of exchanges of land for prayers. 3 men

were to

be conducted

the direction of investigating

–

–

While viewing aristocratic

kinship

and feudalism

as

separate subjects of

investigation, historians of medieval Europe have commonly used the same type of analysis to study both. This mode of analysis proceeds along the following lines. First, it seeks to identify for a given sub-period of the Middle Ages the legal rules that both organized and regulated relations among kin and affines (including the dead and the unborn) in one case and, in the other, relations between lords and vassals. Second, it attempts to show how each set of rules constituted, an integrated system of kinship and marriage and a feudal legal

respectively,

system, each of which governed practice during a given sub-period. Third, it either the kinship systems or the forms of feudalism associated with

organizes

successive

sub-periods of the

Middle Ages before c. 1200 into “stage-narratives”

designed show, in the ideal case, when, how and why one system of kinship 4 or one form of feudalism changed into its successor. With only a few exceptions to

such

as

Marc

Bloch, historians who have considered kinship and/or feudalism

in this way have largely limited their attention to law codes and legislation, customals and legal treatises, so-called documents of practice, and as a last resort, political narratives, and have largely ignored literary texts of the kind that several of the following essays treat as significant evidence about aristocratic

legal and political culture. In reading “historical sources” their primary method of interpretation blends the juridical and the philological. Primary attention is given to the meanings of words, which, within any given sub-period of the Middle 3 Dominique Barthélemy, La sociétédans le comté de Vendôme de l'an mil au XlVe siècle (Paris, 1993), p. 507. 4 The term “stage-narrative” refers to a “type of textual organization” in which historians “slice up the long term into a certain number of phases, which they characterize successively and piece together to constitute a narrative. This narrative is not made up of events, but rather of situations or stages”: Philippe Carrard, Poetics of the New History: French Historical Discourse from Braudel to Chartier (Baltimore, 1992), p. 47. Taking an extreme view of what a stage-narrative of social structure must entail, Guy Bois simply posits “the simple reality [that] every human society is based on a set of structures which give its functioning a coherence and a rigidity which are incompatible with a scarcely perceptible transition from one type of functioning to another”: Guy Bois, The Transformation of the Year One Thousand: The Village of Lournand from Antiquity to Feudalism, trans. Jean Birrell (Manchester, 1992), p. 2. ...

Introduction

Ages, have been taken as the fixed products of an official legal consensus about law and power, about the rights and duties of people playing a fixed number of legal “roles,” and thus about legal, political, and social “structure.” To the extent have been studied at all, historians of both kinship and feudalism have treated them as evidence of the “institutions” or “structures” that supposedly determined them. Practices that deviated from the rules have

that

political practices

meanwhile been conveniently

explained as violations of the

of a lamentable gap between ideals and “reality.” In this type of analysis institutions or structures, are

not

simply

patterns

(sometimes represented

as

law

as many statistical

or as

now

examples call them,

patterns); they

patterns that can be explained by positing a rule or structure for which the patterns themselves are the only evidence. Sometimes the patterns seem to are

have been found for the purpose of giving pre-existing explanations something explain. In studies of both “feudal institutions” and kinship structures, even

to

societies said to be “lawless” and “anarchic” turn out to have had “structures.” Because the ultimate

earliest “institutions”

goal –

of both kinds of studies has been to show how the

familial

or

feudo-vassalic

–

gradually evolved through

series of stages into “the modem family” or “the modern state,” their authors have often found it imperative to project back into the past the categories of a

nineteenth-century European law. Using the idioms of structuralist history or the history of legal institutions (as distinguished from legal history, as writers on medieval English law have understood the term), scholars have then been able to propose different evolutionary models of kinship structure or feudal institutions without questioning the twin methodological premises that aristocratic societies of the early Middle Ages could be reduced to a small set of legal roles (e.g. father and son, lord and vassal) and role relations (e.g. kinship, marriage, feudal lordship, and vassalage) and that the history of kinship and the history of feudalism should be nothing other than histories of structures. Whereas early writers on the history of medieval European kinship

generally argued that there was an unbroken evolutionary trend toward smaller families and weaker kinship structures from earliest times to the present, Georges Duby developed a more complicated model of how medieval kinship structures

by proceeding on the assumption that their strength was inversely strength of the structures of public authority. In his earlier work Duby argued, in effect, that in c. 1000 the sudden collapse of Carolingian public institutions, whichhad previously fostered “individualism” in the control ofproperty, led to a strengthening of family structures around inheritances and an increase in evolved

correlated with the

5

“family solidarity.” Later he maintained that the same crisis in public institutions led to a sudden change in aristocratic family structure, as families, which had formerly been organized “horizontally” as loosely constituted groups of living kin, assumed the form of lignages controlled by a succession of male heads, whose primary goal was to maximize the property holdings of the lignage and maintain their integrity by enforcing a system of primogeniture and impartible inheritance. 6 Subsequently other historians have argued about whether kinship structures underwent a sudden transformation in around 1000, as Duby had suggested, or whether they evolved more slowly, with some of the changes 7 Duby associated with the year 1000 starting earlier. In the

positions

same way, different historians of feudalism have taken different about how it developed during the period before c. 1200. F.L.

Ganshof and Marc Bloch argued, albeit in different ways, that feudalism slowly evolved through various stages, which the former identified as Carolingian and classical and which the latter associated loosely with two different “ages” of feudal 8

society. Subsequently Duby proposed a history of ties between lords and their men that was roughly compatible with an older chronology of feudal development, denied that a feudal system could be found in the eleventhcentury Mâconnais, and contended that the “fief’ had nothing to do with the transformations he associated with the year 1000. However, Pierre Bonnassie argued that tme feudalism came into existence only after the violent overthrow in 1000 of the

“public” political order of the early Middle Ages a position that 9 supported but that others have attacked. Without deviating from the general view that the key to studying the history of medieval kinship,

some

–

have

5

Georges Duby, La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise (Paris, 1971), Duby’s work amounted to an attack on what David Herlihy called “the theory of progressive nuclearization”: David Herlihy, “Family Solidarity in Medieval Italian History,” in David Herlihy, Robert S. Lopez, and Vsevolod Slessarev, eds., Economy, Society, and Government in Medieval Italian History: Essays in Memory of Robert L. Reynolds (Kent, OH, 1969), pp. 173-84 at p. 174; see also Joan Thirsk, “The Family,” Past and Present 27 (1964), 116-22. 6 Georges Duby, “The Structure of Kinship and Nobility: Northern France in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” in idem, The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (Berkeley, 1980), pp. 134-48. On Duby’s arguments about the history of aristocratic kinship in medieval France, see Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship, and Gifts to Saints: The Laudatio Parentum in Western France, 1050-1150, Studies in Legal History (Chapel Hill, 1988), pp. 178-89. 7 See Claudie Amado, “La famille noble méridionale autour de 1000: perspectives et historiographie,” in Pierre Bonnassie and Pierre Toubert, eds., Hommes et sociétés dans l'Europe de l'an mil (Toulouse, 2004), pp. 185-200. 8 Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L.A. Manyon (Chicago, 1961), part I, book II, chapter 1 ; Ganshof, Feudalism, pp. 15, 65-8. 9 See below, Chapter XIII pp. 215-25.

.

feudalism, and medieval society generally is or structures

have

to

show how one set of institutions

slowly rapidly mutated into another, various scholars at one time or another, that the earliest medieval societies which evolved

argued, supposedly

or

–

“based”

so-called

societies

were) kinship (as “primitive” point in the early Middle Ages to societies “based” on lordship or proto-feudalism. However, there has also been some disagreement about whether societies based on kinship were more individualistic than those based on lordship. It has even been possible to argue that English society, at least, were

–

on

gave way at some

moved from individualism to collectivism and not the other way around, or that it has been marked by a high degree of individualism from earliest times. 10 In work of this

which

kind, the complex, variable, and risky processes through medieval nobles formulated and justified claims to land, power

specific people, social identities, and membership in specific political groups have thus frequently been reduced to structural models in which a small number of nameless role-playing representatives of structurally determined interests (“the over

lord,” “the vassal,” “the lord’s heir and the vassal’s,” “the father,” “the ancestor,” “the heir,” “the wife,” “the affines,” “the matrilateral kin,” etc.) are locked into static role relations with each other. In creating such models, it has been easy for

sight of such obvious points as that specific individuals may several of these roles simultaneously, drop one role and take on another, and step out of character to do something that the models never allowed for. It

historians to lose assume

has also been easy to forget that the models often had little to do with empirical findings about practice. Although many historians of medieval Europe have continued to write structuralist history of kinship and feudal institutions, others have looked critically at the assumptions underlying these studies and have experimented with alternative approaches. Without following those anthropologists who have announced that there is and, by implication, was no such thing as kinship, some medieval historians have called into question the structuralist approaches to 11

–

10

–

See Chapters I III For a discussion of some of these issues from a different angle, see White, Custom, Kinship, and Gifts, pp. 6-9. 11 For defenses of the study of feudalism in the sense of “the system of feudo-vassalic institutions” against the attacks of Susan Reynolds and others, see below, esp. Chapter XIII For recent work on medieval French kinship, see the literature cited in Amado, “La famille noble —

.

.

méridionale.”

12

kinship that have dominated the scholarship in this field. In addition, Ganshof’s still-influential paradigm for the study of feudalism continues to be the target of criticisms that historians such as Georges Duby began to formulate more than a half-century ago. Susan Reynolds, among others, argues persuasively for simply abandoning “feudalism,” on the grounds that the concept is so poorly grounded empirically and so theoretically vacuous that to write of it with reference to “fiefs” and “vassals” can only perpetuate serious misunderstandings of medieval societies. Others, including myself, have contended that although “feudalism” needs to be radically re-conceptualized to the point where some might prefer to abandon the term completely, one should not underestimate the importance of studying the practices long associated with it, including giving fiefs and swearing fidelity. One may therefore think of early medieval feudalism in practical terms as a form of patronage/clientage in which land sometimes figures as an item of exchange and in ideological ones as a widely dispersed folk-model of secular politics that represented communities of lay nobles held together partly by kinship and partly by exchanges of fiefs for services and services for fiefs between a king or prince and his men and also between these

men

and their and

Like the model of the three orders, this folk-model mystified medieval political practice but still had both

men.

misrepresented practical and ideological uses because it provided one set of idioms available for establishing and representing associations between nobles and evaluating them from multiple perspectives. Although the essays in this collection

were not written for the purpose into medieval reception European history of “anthropology” in of Pierre Bourdieu’s thought in particular, the following passage on

of effecting

a

general or the anthropology

of kinship from Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice (Le sens pratique) articulates several ideas that run through a significant number of the 13 essays in this volume.

12

For revisionist studies of medieval kinship, see, e.g., White, Custom, Kinship, and Gifts, esp. 86-129; William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago, 1990), chapter 4; Dominique Barthélemy, La société dans le comté de Vendôme, esp. pp. 507-56; Constance B. Bouchard, Those of My Blood: Constructing Noble Families in Medieval Francia (Philadelphia, 2001); Claudie Amado, Genèse des lignages méridionaux (Toulouse, 2001); Richard Barton, Lordship in the County of Maine, c. 890-1160 (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 92-5; and Cynthia Johnson, “Marrying and Dying in Medieval Occitania” (Ph.D. Dissertation: Department of History, Emory University, 2005). 13 For a critique of the use of functionalist anthropology by medieval historians, see Philippe Buc, The Dangers ofRitual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton, 2001), whose relevance to scholarship influenced by anti-functionalist, anti-structuralist social theory is debatable. pp.

To

kinship relations are something that people make, and they do something, is not simply to substitute a “functionalist” interpretation for a structuralist one, as the prevailing taxonomies might suggest. It is radically to question the implicit theory of practice which leads the anthropological tradition to see kin relationships “in the form of an object or an intuition,” as Marx puts it, rather than in the form of the practices that 14 produce, reproduce or use them by reference to practical functions. point

out that

with which

These observations

pertinent

are

structure but to the structuralist

Europe

can

determined

be reduced to

by

a

to studies of medieval

study

are

intended to do.

Despite

the

highly

scrutinized limitations of

of kinship and the

proceeds

study

of feudalism,

as

the essays in this volume

from discussions of kinship (Chapters I II III ) to the lordship concurrently (Chapters IV V) to analyses ,

examination of kinship and of feudal

kinship

theory, his critique of structuralism is valuable for re-thinking

the

The book

just

set of bilateral relations between lords and vassals

feudal contracts.

Bourdieu’s social

not

argument that aristocratic societies in medieval

,

,

fidelity that do not exclude kinship from consideration (Chapters Chapter I argues that although the “legal individualism” that Frederic William Maitland deployed for the purpose of contesting Sir Henry Maine’s ideas about the history of the family in early medieval Europe led him to underestimate the importance of kinship in various spheres of medieval life, it nevertheless enabled him to raise questions that are still relevant today about whether medieval kinship groups should be seen as corporations or communities, how they formed themselves, and what kind of relationships one should posit between the medieval “family” as a cultural category and the medieval family as a group organized for specific political purposes. Chapter II lordship

and

VI XIII). -

,

written in collaboration with Richard T. Vann, continues the discussion of the opposition that medievalists have commonly posited between “individualism,” on

the

one

hand, and “corporatism,” communitarianism,

or

“family solidarity,”

the other, by critically examining Alan Macfarlane’s much-debated argument about the intrinsically individualistic character of English society from its earliest

on

14

Bourdieu, The Logic ofPractice, p. 167. Bourdieu continues: “If everything that concerns family were not hedged with denials, there would be no need to point out that the relations between ascendants and descendants themselves only exist and persist by virtue of constant maintenance work, and that there is an economy of material and symbolic exchanges between the generations. The same is true of affinal relationships; it is only when one records them as a fait accompli, as the anthropologist does when he establishes a genealogy, that one can forget that they are the product of strategies oriented toward the satisfaction of material and symbolic interests and organized by reference to a particular type of economic and social conditions.” the

origins. Chapter III continues the discussion of kinship in early medieval Europe by arguing, inter alia, that in feuds waged by kings and nobles in Merovingian Francia pre-existing family groups did not spontaneously organize themselves to avenge injuries against one of their members, and that instead, feuds were occasions for constituting groups of kin to achieve multiple political purposes. By re-reading a famous entry for 757 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in which nobles fight their kin in order to support their lord, Chapter IV contests the conventional view of this story as evidence that by the mid-eighth century, loyalties to lords took precedence over loyalties to kin; instead, it argues that it is nonsensical to look for such a shift in medieval societies, where kinship and lordship/clientage provided only a basis for making claims on others for political support and where political groups were constituted in ways that virtually insured conflicts of loyalties. Investigating the interplay of claims based on kinship and/or lordship from a different angle, Chapter V shows how, in the Old French epic Raoul de Cambrai, both the discourse of kinship and that of lordship/fidelity provide the idioms that different characters use to make conflicting claims to a given “fief,” which, depending on the kind of claim made on it, can be represented in accordance with one of several different and conflicting models of what a fief is. Chapter VI makes a different kind of critique of a conventional model of feudalism. By analyzing a particularly blunt version of the well-known argument that the Norman Conquest brought feudalism to England, the chapter identifies some of the contestable assumptions about medieval societies and feudalism that underlie this thesis, which still haunts work on the early history of the English common law. Chapter IX lauds the brilliant, controversial attack of Susan Reynolds on F.L. Ganshof’s model of “feudalism” in the sense of “the system of feudo-vassalic institutions” but situates it in relation to an older tradition of criticizing juridical models of feudalism and questions

Reynolds’s contention that “fiefs” and “vassals” are concepts that historians can entirely do without. Chapters VII VIII and X XIII continue this double line of argument, first, by exposing various flaws in the juridical model of feudalism that Ganshof proposed more than a half century ago but that more recent historians have revived and, second, by experimenting with new ways of talking about feudalism through close-readings of various texts, notably the famous letter on fidelity by Fulbert of Chartres to duke William of Aquitaine and the muchdiscussed Agreement (or Conventum or Conventio) of Hugh of Lusignan and the same William. Chapter VII shows how, by invoking the terms of traditional oaths of fidelity, Hugh or someone writing on his behalf represented William as a bad lord and Hugh as a good fidelis. Chapter VIII continues the discussion of -

-

the

Agreement by arguing

that this story shows how, in order to make claims

each other, both Hugh and William invoke several different models of how a lord and afidelis should treat one another. Citing various literary and historical

on

including the Agreement, Chapter X argues that the giving of fiefs was commonly represented or misrepresented as a form of obligatory generosity (largesse) by a lord to his men, who were entitled to a reward (guerredon) for their services to him. After making a similar point about gifts of fiefs through an

texts,

–

–

examination of the “testament” of Alexander the Great in Le roman d’Alexandre

by Alexander of Paris, Chapter XI asks why this text and many others besides should have represented gifts of fiefs in terms that are totally incompatible with the way in which gifts of this kind are represented in the juridical model of feudalism. Chapter XII develops this line of discussion by arguing that indigenous models of the good lord who generously rewards his men’s past service and the bad lord who gives stingily and instrumentally and thereby bribes his underlings to serve him in the future provide a better starting-point for understanding the practice of giving fiefs than does the contractual model of feudalism. Contesting the view that the years around 1000 saw a “crisis of fidelity” and the emergence of veritable feudalism, Chapter XIII re-interprets the letter of Fulbert of Chartres, along with the Agreement, so as to bring out the similarities between these two texts and ninth-century Carolingian texts concerning oaths of fidelity and relations between lords and their fideles. In working on the thirteen chapters just mentioned over a period spanning more than three decades, I have incurred many debts. I gratefully acknowledge fellowship support I have received from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, The American Bar Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. At Emory University, I have received grants in support of my research from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the

University Research Committee, and the Center for Humanistic Inquiry, where Martine Watson Brownley, Keith Anthony, and the staff provided the ideal environment for finishing my work on this volume. I am deeply grateful to my present and former students at Emory University and thank Elizabeth Pastan for her colleagueship. Kate McGrath provided indispensable help with the index. I also owe thanks to the editors of the volumes and journals in which these essays first appeared: Isabel Alfonso; Gadi Algazi; Claudie Amado; Esther Cohen; Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.; Mayke De Jong; Steven Epstein; Julio Escalona; George Garnett; Valentin Groebner; John Hudson; Bernhard Jussen; Hugh Kennedy; Guy Lobrichon; Donald Maddox; Sara Sturm-Maddox; and the editors of The American Journal ofLegal History, Law and History Review, and Viator. 1 also wish to express my deep appreciation for the help, advice,

criticisms, and encouragement that numerous scholars, including several of those just mentioned, have given me over the years and for all they have taught me through their writings. They include: Isabel Alfonso; Gadi Algazi; Dominique Barthélemy; Robert Bartlett; Elizabeth A.R. Brown; Philippe Buc; Caroline Walker Bynum; Fredric L. Cheyette; Patrick Geary; Tom Green; John Hudson; Paul R. Hyams, William Ian Miller; Janet L. Nelson; Susan Reynolds; Barbara H. Rosenwein; and Patrick Wormald. I owe debts of gratitude I shall never be able to repay, first, to the late Samuel E. Thome, who taught me most of the legal history I know but insisted that I not take any of it for granted and,

secondly, to the late Georges Duby, who advised me to steer clear of legal history and study social history and anthropology. My greatest debt, as always, is to Kate Gilbert, an extraordinary editor, who helped me to put my thoughts as well as my writing in order and who told me, when necessary, what I was really thinking or should have been thinking.

STEPHEN D. WHITE

Atlanta, Georgia March 2005

Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgement publishers, learned societies,

is made to the

following persons, journals, permission to reproduce the essays included in this volume: the British Academy (I ); Routledge and the Taylor & Francis Group, http://www.tandf.co.uk (II); the University of Michigan Press (III ); the editors of Viator (IV); Cambridge University Press (V ); the editors of the American Journal ofLegal History (VI ); Publications de l’Université de Provence (VII ); the editors of Law and History Review (IX); State University of New York Press (XI); the editors of Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte (XII). Acknowledgement is also made to Brill Academic Publishers for permission to reprint Chapters X and XIII and institutes for their

.

Publisher’s Note The articles in this volume, as in all others in the Variorum Collected Studies Series, have not been given a new, continuous pagination. In order to avoid confusion, and to facilitate their use where these same studies have been referred to elsewhere, the original pagination has been maintained wherever possible. Each article has been given a Roman number in order of appearance, as listed in the Contents. This number is repeated on each page and is quoted in the index entries.

For Morton White

I

Maitland

‘Individuals do not

on

cease

Family

and

Kinship

to be individuals when there are many of them.’ 1

ALTHOUGH FREDERIC WILLIAM MAITLAND DISCUSSED the medieval family in the History of English Law and produced some brilliantly polemical passages about it, he should not be mistaken for an historian of the family. He did not perpetuate the earlier form of family history that other lawyers had invented, according to Engels, at the beginning of the 1860s.2 Nor does Maitland’s work in legal history clearly foreshadow shadow the newer kinds of family history that have been created since the 1960s.3 On the one hand, he discussed few of the topics that later assumed canonical status in the field of family history, where, in an era of self-consciously interdisciplinary research and histoire totale, legal historians of family institutions were joined by historical demographers, economic and social historians, analysts and psycholanalysts of familiar mentalités, historical geographers of the body, and historians of gender, aging, childhood, sex, and family violence; and although he was much © The British

Academy

1996

1

Pollock and Maitland, ii 247. 2 Frederick Engels, The Origin

of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York, 1942), (1891), p. 7. For the reference and for insights into old and new forms am indebted to Cynthia Patterson, The Family in Greek History (Cambridge, Mass., forthcoming). Beginning in 1861 with the publication of Maine’s Ancient Law and Johannes Bachofen’s Das Mutterrecht, ‘“sociological” monographs’ forming a ‘branch of legal studies’ and positing ‘a direct progression from primitive society through various intermediate stages to modern society' treated the history of the family (Adam Kuper, The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformations and Illusions [London, 1988], pp. 2-3). 3 On work of this kind, see e.g. Lawrence Stone, ‘Family history in the 1980s: past achievements and future trends', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 12 (1981), 51-87; and Robert Wheaton, ‘Introduction: recent trends in the historical study of the French family’, in Robert Wheaton and Tamara K. Hareven, eds., Family and Sexuality in French History (Philadelphia, 1980), pp. 3-25; and Louise Tilly and Miriam Cohen, ‘Does the family have a history? A review of theory and practice in family history’, Social Science History, 6 (1982), 131-80. The history of medieval English peasant families is explored from many different perspectives in Barbara A. Hannawalt, The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York, 1986). Preface to the 4th ed. of family history, I

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-1

better positioned, in terms of knowledge and interest, to anticipate modern studies on such topic as ‘feudal society and the family in early medieval England’, he never addressed this topic directly. 4 On the other hand, writing shortly after the deaths of old-style historians of the family, such as Morgan (d. 1881), Bachofen (d. 1887), Maine (d. 1888), and Fustel de Coulanges (d. 1889), Maitland did not directly engage in what he called ‘those interesting controversies about primitive tribes and savage families’, which had arisen out of his predecessors' efforts to chart the family’s evolution over the prehistoric or 5 historic barely longue durée. Instead of either contributing to an old history of the family or helping to construct a new one, Maitland deployed a distinctive style of legal analysis to contest and undermine what he considered to be dogmas, theories, and common-places about the early history of the family. As a legal historian who was sceptical about whether the medieval English family really had much of a legal history, he was interested less in what medieval kinship groups were, what they did, or what their members thought they should be and do than he was in what they were not, what they did not do, and what the law did not allow them to be or do. In discussing the family in the History of English Law, Maitland had one overriding polemical purpose, which was to contest the 4

See J. C. Holt. ‘Feudal

society

and the

family

in

early

medieval

England:

I. The revolution

of 1066’, TRHS, 5th ser. 32 (1982), 193-212; id., ‘Feudal society and the family in early medieval England: II. Notions of patrimony’, TRHS, 5th ser. 33 (1983), 193-220: id., ‘Feudal and the family in early medieval England: III. Patronage and politics’, TRHS, 5th (1984), 1-25. See also id., ‘What’s in a name: Family nomenclature and the Norman conquest’, The Stenton Lecture 1981 (University of Reading, 1982); and id., ‘Politics and property in early medieval England', PP, 57 (1972), 3-52. On the same topic, see Sidney Painter, ‘The family and the feudal system in twelfth-century England’, Speculum, 35 (1960), 1-16, reprinted in id., Feudalism and Liberty: Articles and Addresses of Sidney Painter, ed. Fred A. Cazel, Jr. (Baltimore, 1961), pp. 195-219. The last decade has seen the publication of numerous studies linking English family history and legal history. 5 Pollock and Maitland, ii 240. Discussions of Maine include: R. C. J. Cocks, Sir Henry Maine: A Study in Victorian Jurisprudence (Cambridge, 1988); Stefan Collini, Donald Winch and John Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History (Cambridge, 1983), esp. ch. 7; Stefan Collini, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850-1930 (Oxford, 1991), esp. ch. 7; John Burrow, Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory (Cambridge, 1966); id., ‘“The Village Community” and the uses of history in late nineteenth-century England’, in Neil McKendrick, ed., Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought and Society in Honour of J. H. Plumb (London, 1974), pp. 255-84; Peter Stein, Legal Evolution: The Story of an Idea (Cambridge, 1980), esp. pp. 86-98; G. Feaver, From Status to Contract (London, 1969); Kuper, Invention of Primitive Society, esp. chs 1-2. On Morgan, see T. R. Trautman, Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship (Berkeley, 1987); Kuper, Invention of Primitive Society, ch. 3. On Fustel de Coulanges, see François Hartog, Le XIXe siècle et l'histoire: le cas Fustel de Coulanges (Paris, 1988); and Fustel de Coulanges, The Origin of Property in Land, trans Margaret Ashley (2nd ed., London, 1927).

society

ser.

34

Family and Kinship

'common-place among English writers’, notably Maine, that ‘the family rather than the individual was the “unit” of ancient law.’ 6 ‘There are some’, Maitland later wrote in Township and Borough, who would have us believe that groups, families, clans, rather than individual men, were the oldest ‘units’ of law: that there was law for groups long before there was law for individuals. In the earliest stage, we are told, all is ‘collective.’ Neither crime nor debt, neither property nor marriage nor paternity can be ascribed to the individual. Far [sic] rather the group itself, the clan or family, is the one and only subject of rights and duties. 7

Maitland saw in this argument ‘a laudable reaction against the individualism of Natural Law’, 8 he also called the thesis ‘extravagant', treating it as dogma to be aggressively refuted and totally reversed. 9 In the History of English Law, he wrote, ‘The student of the middle ages will at first sight see communalism everywhere. It seems A little experience will make him to be an all pervading principle he will distrust this communalism; begin to regard it as the thin cloak of a rough and rude individualism.’ 10 Determined to find a single ‘al -pervading principle’ of early English law and denying that role to communalism, Maitland chose what Vinogradoff later called ‘antiquarian individualism’. 11 Just as in Domesday Book and Beyond he contested earlier theories about the village community by arguing that ‘so far back as we can see, the German village had a solid core of 12 individualism,’ he tried in the History of English Law to refute

Although

...

6

Pollock and Maitland, ii 240. F. W. Maitland, Township and Borough (1894; reprinted Cambridge, 1964), pp. 20-1. On Maitland’s criticisms of Maine, see H. E. Bell, Maitland: A Critical Examination and Assessment

7

(Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 75-7; Stein, Legal Evolution, pp. 106-10; Cocks, Maine, pp. 142-5 and 145 n. 1; Burrow, ‘Village Community’, pp. 275-83; and id., Whigs and Liberals: Continuity and Change in English Political Thought (Oxford, 1988), pp. 135-45. According to Stein, ‘Vinogradoff accepted Maitland’s general criticism of Maine, but believed that comparative historical method was still valid’ (Legal Evolution, p. 116). Township and Borough, p. 21. According to Burrow, ‘Maine was concerned at various points in his writings to refute the notion, which he associated primarily with Rousseau, and seems to have seen as dangerously democratic, of an original state of nature and individual natural rights’ (‘Village Community’, p. 271). See also Kuper, Invention of Primitive Society, pp. 17,

Maine’s 8

25, 231, 241. 9

‘It is

quite possible

11 ‘Maitland’s

(Pollock and Maitland, denying’ (ibid ii 240).

that ...’

very far from 10Ibid ., i 616.

we are

antiquarian

ii

243);

‘That there is truth in this

saying

.,

individualism

brought

him into collision with the

teaching

about

tribal as well as about agrarian communities’ (Paul Vinogradoff, ‘Frederic William Maitland’, in The Collected Papers of Paul Vinogradoff, 2 vols. [London, 1928], i 259.) 12

Beyond, p. 348. For a lucid, contextualized account of Maitland’s subject, see Burrow, ‘Village Community’, esp. pp. 275-83. See also Reba N. Soffer, Discipline and Power: The University, History, and the Making of an English Elite, 1870-1930 (Stanford, CA, 1994), ch. 3. Domesday

views

on

Book and

this

Maine’s teachings by finding ‘rough and rude individualism’ in the that is a corporate family, which was not, he insisted, a ‘group-unit’ 13 Maitland’s individualism’ also group. ‘antiquarian supported an even broader argument, in which, as Professor Burrow has shown, Maitland reversed ‘a famous judgment’ of Maine’s by proposing that ‘while the individual is the unit of ancient, the corporation is the unit of modern law.’ 14 This polemical agenda deeply coloured Maitland’s arguments about the medieval family, which were constructed less for the purpose of creating a comprehensive legal ethnography of the medieval family than they were for the purpose of refuting Maine’s dogmas. Although Maitland attacked those teachings as the products of dogmatic, undocumentable speculation and searched diligently for texts that would document his own conclusions about early English family 15 law, his own readings of texts were mediated by several interrelated interpretive strategies or schemas that helped him to argue that the English family was not a ‘group-unit’, could never have been the unit of early English law, and, instead, occupied a marginal position in medieval English society. Maitland achieved his polemical goal by abandoning the comparative method that Maine had used in melding evidence about many ‘Indo-European societies’ into a single evolutionary schema and by constructing, instead, a court-centred, judge-centred, state-centred national legal history in which kinship groups were almost invisible as active forces capable of shaping their own legal history and appeared, instead, as the passive subjects of external regulation by the state and its judges. ‘At the touch of jurisprudence’, as he put it in a different context, a group could become ‘a mere group of individuals, each with his separate rights’. 16 Because, in the History of English Law, Maitland evidently concurred with Pollock in sharply distinguishing ‘rules of law’ from ‘common rules of morals and manners'17 and in equating ‘law’, for the purposes of historical inquiry, with ‘the sum of the rules administered by courts of justice’, 18 and not —

13

Gierke, p. ix.

14

Township

Borough, p. 15; discussed in Burrow, ‘Village Community’, p. 283. The most judgment was that ‘the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract’: Sir Henry Maine, Ancient Law, Everyman's Library (London, 1965), p. 100. Maitland wrote to Pollock: ‘I always talk of [Maine] with reluctance, for on the few 15 occasions on which I sought to verify his statements of fact I came to the conclusion that he trusted much to a memory that played him tricks and rarely looked at a book that he had and

famous form of Maine's

once 16

17

read’: Letters, i

no.

279.

Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 150; paraphrased by Vinogradoff as, at the touch of legal doctrine’: ‘Maitland’, p. 259.

Pollock and Maitland, i p. xciv. 18Ibid ., i p. xcv.

‘communalism

evaporates

with custom, he found no place in the legal history of the family, as later historians sometimes have, for the study of how people other than judges thought about kinship and used it in practice to legitimate claims on others. 19 Moreover, because the region he studied was exceptionally as well-endowed with legal records he was not obliged to rely heavily on historians of continental family law have been evidence about familial practices, which, in any case, were controlled, he thought, by rules enforced from outside the family. 20 Though keenly 21 aware of ‘the hundred forces which play upon our legal history’, he of them from his own about the excluded many writings family, which 22 never treated ‘family concerns’ as ‘a driving force for [legal] change’ and which represented medieval families as collectivities only to the extent that judges and legislators did so which, in his opinion, wasn’t often. His discussions of family law centred on the analysis of the legal rights accorded to individual family members by English judges, who, he believed, had the power to shape the family because, by Angevin times if not earlier, they were sitting on ‘a bold high-handed court which wields the might of a strong kingship’. 23 Associated with this way of writing legal history were several other —

—

—

interpretive strategies or schemas that largely determined how the family would appear or not appear in Maitland’s work. In the History of English Law, kinship appears as an unusually weak force partly because he found ways of dissolving families into the individuals composing them, partly because he dispensed with any notion of family solidarity, group personality, or kinship ideology to represent and explain relations among kin, and partly because his penchant for deconstructing family communities contrasted sharply with what Burrow calls ‘his readiness to endorse group personalities’ under modern law 24

and with his readiness to treat state, church, and feudalism

as

unified,

19

William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago, 1990), p. 141. 20For a different approach to the same problem, see John Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England (Oxford, 1984), esp. p. 181; and White, Custom, esp. chs. 1, 2, and 5. On rules see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (1977; reprinted Cambridge, 1982), ch. 1; id., The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford, 1990), Book I, esp. pp. 37-41. 21

Pollock and Maitland, i 80. Spring, Law, Land &

22Eileen

Family:

Aristocratic Inheritance in

England,

1300 to 1800

p. 181. 23 Pollock and Maitland, ii 447. 24 ‘Village Community’, p. 279. According to Burrow, Maitland learned ‘to see in the organized social group “no fiction, no symbol, no collective name for individuals, but a living organism

(Chapel Hill, NC, 1993),

a real person”’ (ibid ., p. 277; citing Gierke, p. xxvi). Although Maitland imagined a book ‘the structure of the groups in which men of English race have stood from the days when

and on

collective forces that powerfully shaped the law, even though they, 25 too, could have been deconstructed into their individual elements. Maitland, moreover, saw an inevitable conflict between the needs of the medieval state and the ‘archaic habits and claims’ of the family26 and found signs of it in judicial and legislative decisions that he could interpret as subordinating the family’s interests to the state’s. Furthermore, by dividing his discussion of family law into so many different legal subtopics (e.g. inheritance, wills, intestacy, marriage, husband and wife, infancy and guardianship), Maitland ruled out the possibility of

addressing practical questions about how people used kinship as an giving their claims normative force and how family members used the law; and he never really asked how the law did or did not facilitate the efforts of aristocratic kinship groups, whether or not they had true corporate identities, to maintain wealth, power, and enduring social identities. Finally, although Maitland queried ‘hasty talk about national character’, ridiculed ‘ethnical theory’ as an explanation for national difference, 29 and emphasised ‘the French influence’ on English law,30 his comparisons of English and French family law were still constructed to emphasise English individualism, English ‘precocity’ in idiom for

27

28

the

revengeful kindred was pursuing the blood-feud to the days when the one-man company issuing debentures’, the family, not being an organized social group, did not figure prominently in his efforts to determine ‘how Englishmen have conceived their groups’ and, more specifically, ‘by what thoughts [Englishmen] have striven to distinguish and to reconcile the manyness of the members and the oneness of the body’ (ibid p. xxvii). On ‘family solidarity’ as an important concept in French discussions of kinship, see e.g. White, Custom, pp. 6-11 passim. According to Pierre Bourdieu, kinship groups ‘continue to exist’ partly because ‘they rest on a community of dispositions (habitus) and interests which is also the basis of undivided ownership of the material and symbolic patrimony’: Outline, p. 35. 25Positing the existence of a ‘feudal force’, which was backed by strong ‘moral sentiments’, Maitland thought that the ‘real importance' of homage and fealty lay ‘but partly within the is

.,

field of law’: Pollock and Maitland, i 300, 297. Although the phrase is presumably Pollock’s, it would not have troubled Maitland, who wrote that the law of the state was prepared to crush the family ‘into atoms’: ibid ., ii 243. 26Ibid ., i 31.

27 Ibid ., ii 240-447. For discussion of many of the same issues from perspectives very different from Maitland’s, see, e.g., Spring Law, Land, and Family and Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk and E. P. Thompson, eds., Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800

(Cambridge, 1976). 28

Pollock and Maitland, i p. cvi.

29

Ibid ., ii 402.

30

Ibid ., i 81. He also noted ‘how exceedingly like our common law once was to a French coutume’ (ibid ., i p. cvi; see also i 87; ii 445) and how many ‘invaluable hint[s] for the solution of specifically English problems’ could be found in the writings of continental medievalists’

(ibid

.,

p.

cvi).

31

suppressing archaisms in family law, and ‘a premature simplicity 32 imposed [in England] from above’. All the interpretive strategies that facilitated Maitland’s attack on Maine’s teachings about the family were at work in two important sections on the family in the History of English Law: first, the brief discussion of feuding that prefaced his entire discussion of the family; and, second, the analysis of the consent of heirs to the alienation of a topic to which he returned so often in his History as to land that he found it particularly important and troubling. 33 In order suggest to incorporate analyses of these two topics into his polemic against Maine, Maitland was obliged to make numerous choices about how to read sparse, difficult evidence; he also had to rely on many different assumptions about matters on which the evidence was largely or completely silent. The choices and assumptions he made may have been sounder than Maine’s; but when they are read in the light of the ones subsequently made by writers on the same topics in both England and France, we can see that although Maitland’s readings of texts were relatively plausible and harmonized well with his polemic against Maine, they were not the only plausible readings available. Seeing how Maitland bridged the gaps between his attack on Maine and the texts on which he grounded it helps to bridge the gap between the two sides of Maitland identified by Professor Burrow. On the one hand, we have the historian revered for ‘the political chastity of his historical writing’ and admired for making the History of English Law ‘the paradigm of a new historical objectivity’. On the other hand, we have Maine’s polemical adversary and the author of work on corporations that ‘became’, as Burrow puts it, ‘a political inspiration to social pluralists’. In the middle we have an historian whose ‘habits of mind’ (as he called them) enabled him to interpret texts in such a way as to create a History that was meant to be objective and politically chaste and that included a polemically charged refutation of Maine. 35 Immediately preceding a longer critique of ‘the popular theory that land was owned by families or households before it was owned by 36 individuals’, Maitland’s brief analysis of blood-feuds set both the —

34

31

Ibid

.,

32

Ibid

.,

33

i 224; see ii 313, 402, 445-7. ii 447.

Ibid ., ii 13, 15, 17, 20, 213, 248, 251, 254, 255, 308-13.

34See Burrow, ‘Village Community’, p. 276. 35Letter to Paul Vinogradoff, Letters, i no. 59. On the letter and

on Maitland’s politics generally, see Burrow, ‘Village Community’; and id., Whigs and Politics, pp. 135-45. On Maine’s ‘political agenda’ in Ancient Law, see Kuper, Invention of Primitive Society, p. 23. 36Pollock and Maitland, ii 245; see also ‘the common saying that the land-owning unit was not an individual but a maegð, a clan, or gens’: ii 244.

analytical agenda and the polemical tone of his entire argument on the family by justifying ‘warnings’ against the ‘temptation’ of believing ‘the common-place that the family rather than the individual was the “unit” of ancient law’. Rhetorically, the warnings were effective of because Maitland’s partly ironically judicious concessions to and because of his mainly ability to contrast ‘theories’, ‘dogmas’, dogma and ‘guesses’ 38 with statements of what is ‘clear’ and ‘plain’ because it is ‘what we see’. Before or after rejecting a theory, he liked to note that it might be true. But dogmas about the family, it turned out, might be true only of societies about which nothing was or could be known. What Maitland ‘saw’ he saw clearly revealed in what he saw as perfectly transparent texts. To attack the dogma that families were the units of early law, Maitland invoked ‘rules about blood-feud’ in Anglo-Saxon codes and the Leges Henrici Primi, which he interpreted in such a way as to represent families as fleeting associations of individuals. Several rules stipulated that compensation for homicide was due from the slayer’s maternal and paternal kin and was payable to the victim’s maternal and paternal kin; other rules provided that a married woman’s blood-kinsmen were entitled to her wer and that they, rather than her ...

37

39

—

—

40

...

41

husband and his kin, were liable for vengeance for her misdeeds. What Maitland saw in these ‘rules of blood-feud’ was ‘a practical denial of 42 [the family’s] existence’ as a legally recognised unit. Unable to resist the temptation of twice proposing extravagantly that under these rules ‘there were as many “blood-feud groups” as there were living persons’, he withdrew judiciously to the more defensible position that ‘at all events each set of brothers and sisters was the centre of a different group.’ 43 If so, then ‘the blood-feud group’ could not have been ‘a permanently organized unit’: If there is a feud to be borne or wer to be paid or received, [the group] may organize itself ad hoc;but the organization will be of a fleeting kind. The very next deed of violence that is done will call

some

other blood-feud group

37

Pollock and Maitland, ii 244. 38Also: what ‘may be’, what ‘some will surmise’, what ‘others will argue’ and what ‘others, again, may think’ (ibid ., ii 240-44). 39 Ibid ., ii 242, 243. 40 ‘It may be that in the history of every nation’ ( ibid ii 241); ‘It is quite possible that’ .,

(ii 243). 41Ibid

.,

ii 241.

42Ibid ., ii 243-4. 43 Ibid ., ii 242. He

family,

implied, for a second time, that every individual must have had a different when he wrote that ‘We must resist the temptation to speak of "the maegð” as if it

kind of corporation, otherwise women’: ibid ., ii 244.

were a

we

have

as

many

corporations

as

there are

men

and

into existence. Along with his brothers and paternal uncles

a man

to avenge his father’s death and is slain. His maternal uncles and

goes out

cousins,

who stood outside the old feud, will claim a share in his wer. This is what we see as soon as we see our ancestors. 44

Although members of a vengeance group would presumably ‘meet together and take counsel over a plan of campaign,’ they could have no collective legal identity under ‘a system which divides the wergild among individual men’. Could they have any collective identity at all? Finally, after baldly asserting that ‘if the law were to treat the clan as an unit for any purpose whatever, this would surely be the purpose 45

and blood-feud,’ 46 he extended his conclusions about ‘blood-feud groups’ to the family generally. Since ‘the blood-feud group’ was

of

wer

cognatic kindred,

a

patrilineal or matrilineal descent group, “father-right” or “mother-right” 47 our race beyond the extreme limit of history.’ ‘a system of mutually exclusive clans is impossible,'48

not a

‘the exclusive domination of either should be For the

placed

same

for

reason,

...

49

and ‘we

ought not to talk of clans at all.’ The conclusion that 50 any organization of the ‘blood-feud group’ will be of ‘a fleeting kind’ pointed toward a similar conclusion about the family, which could never have played the role in early law that Maine had assigned to it. Polemically effective as this attack on Maine was, Maitland’s reading of rules about wergeld took him far beyond what was immediately visible in the texts he read. What he said ancestors he had

artfully

and

we saw

imaginatively

when he first

saw

his

constructed from texts he

read in the light of various unsubstantiated, unstated assumptions, including these: that rules about paying compensation in Anglo-Saxon codes actually regulated this practice and corresponded closely to prevailing kinship ideology about paying compensation; that the composition of actual vengeance groups and support groups closely resembled the composition of the groups that can be reconstructed by identifying the categories of people who, according to legislators, were either 44

ii 243; italics added. See also ibid ., i 32: ‘We need not, however, regard the kindred body like a tribe or clan, indeed this would not stand with the fact that the burden of making and the duty of exacting compensation ran on the mother’s side as well Ibid

as a

as

.,

defined

the father’s. A father and son,

kindred in common, but by 45 Ibid ., ii 244; italics added. 46 Ibid ., ii 242. 47

Ibid

.,

ii 243.

48Ibid ., ii 241. 49Ibid ., ii 242. 50 Ibid ., ii 242.

or

two

no means

all.’

half-brothers, would

...

have

some

of the

same

51

legally obligated to pay wer or legally entitled to claim it; that cognatic kindreds can have no enduring group identity; that the existence of lineages is incompatible with recognition of close ties to kin outside the lineage; and, finally, that the feuding groups that he thought he saw and that he pictured for his readers can be taken as a model for in short, for the family. 52 An all other significant kinship groups associated assumption is that externally enforced legal rules formulated by rulers not only constrain familial practices but virtually constitute —

them.

Only by making such assumptions could Maitland have moved from rules about paying compensation to end blood-feuds, to the practice of paying compensation to end blood-feuds, to feuds themselves, to the recruitment of kin into ‘blood-feud groups’, to the ‘fleeting’ character of blood-feud groups, and, finally, to the absence of permanently families of any kind. By making these leaps across the gaps in his evidence, Maitland did more than attack Maine’s ideas about the early legal history of the family; he also represented groups of kin as being associations so individualistic and ephemeral that their ability

organized

collectively for any purpose, however fleeting, was in doubt. trying to determine how feuds worked and what they revealed about kinship, 53 Maitland studied feuding in order to determine or, at least, why the family why feuding could not have worked could not have been a ‘permanent and mutually exclusive [unit]’. 54 He conceded that ‘strong family groups’ may well have ‘formed themselves to act

Instead of

—

51

‘Liability to a public fine or, in grave cases, corporal or capital punishment, may concur liability to make redress to a person wronged or slain, or to his kindred, or incur his feud in default’: Pollock and Maitland, i 38; italics added. 52 For discussions of medieval kinship that query some of these assumptions see, for example, T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘Kinship, status and the origins of the hide’, PP, 56 (1972), 21-5, esp. 21 n. 35; Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983), p. 226; David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp. 82-103; Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, ch. 5; and White, Custom, ch. 4. 53 On ‘permitted or justified private war, of which we do find considerable traces in England’, with

Pollock and Maitland, i 39; see also i 46-8, 53, 58, 75. For a recent effort to show that ‘feud does not cease to be a topic for study after 1066’, see Paul R. Hyams, ‘Feud in medieval

see

England’, Haskins Society Journal, 3 (1991), 1-21. On French feuds in roughly the same period, see Stephen D. White, ‘Feuding and peace-making in the Touraine around the year 1100’, Traditio, 42 (1986), 195-263. Theoretical problems involved in the study of medieval feuds are explored in Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, ch. 6; and Stephen D. White, ‘Clotild’s Revenge: Politics, Kinship, and Ideology in the Merovingian Bloodfeud’, in Portraits of Medieval and Renaissance Living: Essays in Memory of David Herlihy (Ann Arbor, Mich., forthcoming). On feuding, see also Patrick Wormald, ‘The Age of Bede and Aethelbald’, in James Campbell, Eric John, Patrick Wormald, The Anglo-Saxons (Oxford, 1982), p. 98. 54Pollock and Maitland, ii 241. English people, he asserted, could not have been ‘grouped together into mutually exclusive clans’: ibid ii 240. .,

and that the law had to reckon with them’. 55 ‘It is wrote, that:

quite possible’,

he

in England men as a matter of fact dwelt together in large groups tilling the land by cooperation, that the members of each group were, or deemed themselves to be, kinsmen in blood, and that as a force for keeping them in these local groups spear-sibship was stronger than spindle-sibship We get a hint of such permanent cohesive groups when we find King Aethelstan that it denies the king’s legislating against the maegð that is so strong 56 rights and harbours thieves. ...

...

Maitland insisted, however, that such groups were doomed; they led precarious life of outlaws. In a society where the state and the family were enemies, strong family groups formed themselves in opposition the

to ‘a principle which seems to be incompatible with the existence of mutually exclusive gentes as legal entities’; 57 such families lived in opposition to the law of the state, which ‘will, if possible, treat the maegð as an “unit” by crushing it into atoms.’ 58 ...

Just

Maitland cited the ‘fleeting’ organization of ‘blood-feud the law’s individualistic wergild system, and the state’s hostility groups’, to powerful kindreds to show that families could not have been permanently as

organized group-units,

he used

similar but more saying that the [early]

complicated land-owning unit was not an individual but a maegð, a clan, or a gens.’ Although his attack on ‘the popular theory that land was owned by families or households before it was owned by individuals’ 60 relied on the argument strategy

to contest ‘the common

a

59

that medieval families were not corporate groups, his discussion of land law down to the early thirteenth century also attacked other dogmas. In addition to denying that true ‘family ownership’ had ever 55Ibid

ii 245. Ibid ., ii 243; italics added. 57 Ibid ., ii 245. .,

56

58

Ibid ii 243. 59Ibid ., ii 244. .,

According to Vinogradoff, Maitland was ‘opposed to the idea of a primitive shaping the early land law of Indo-European nations, and of England in particular' (‘Maitland’, p. 259). According to Burrow, Whigs and Liberals, p. 142, ‘Maitland constantly challenged Maine’s version of the history of property relations’. 60Pollock and Maitland, ii 245. In Domesday Book and Beyond Maitland referred to the same ‘theory’ (p. 340) and, before moving on to argue that land was not owned by village communities (pp. 346-56), recapitulated arguments previously used in the History (pp. 340-6). In 1874 Maine had written: ‘The collective ownership of the soil by groups of men either in fact united by blood-relationship, or believing or assuming that they are so united, is now entitled to rank as an ascertained primitive phenomenon, once universally characterizing collectivism

those communities of mankind between whose civilization and

analogy’: Sir Henry Sumner Maine, (1875; reprinted London, 1966), pp. 1-2.

connection

or

Lectures

on

our own

the

there is any distinct

Early History of Institutions

61 ‘prevailed among the English in England,’ Maitland denied that before the thirteenth century, when the ‘common law of inheritance’, he thought, ‘was rapidly assuming its final form,’ 62 there had been ‘a steady movement’ in England towards more individualistic forms of 63 property ownership. He also denied that in England and France the of law and family law had followed the same paths. 64 history property To sustain these attacks on Maine’s teachings, Maitland had to reinterpret 65 practices ‘commonly regarded as the relics of family ownership’, French as well as English of notably the widespread practice —

—

66 giving land with the consent of one or more of the donor’s kin. For the English variant of this practice, Maitland proposed an ingenious but contestable interpretation that was designed to undermine the 67 theory that the family had ever owned land. 61

Pollock and Maitland, ii 255. ii 260. 63Ibid ., ii 250. On Maitland’s ‘contemptuous attitude towards historical laws’ and on one of his protests ‘against the generalizations of anthropology, comparative jurisprudence, and 62Ibid

.,

inductive

politics

on

laws and stages of

development’,

64Pollock and Maitland, ii 255. 65Ibid ., ii 251. On ‘the inalienability of the

family

see

lands’

Vinogradoff, ‘Maitland’,

see

H. Cabot

p. 269.

Lodge, ‘Anglo-Saxon

land law’, in Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law (1876; reprinted Boston, 1905) p. 75. Arguing more cautiously than Maine had, Lodge wrote: ‘It is of course purely matter of conjecture that the

such

held land. It is, however,

pre-historic times the aggregation of individuals. disintegration of the family, and the further back we go the closer the bond of family becomes, and the stronger the probability that it held land in its collective capacity’; ibid p, 74 n. 3. 66 On approval of French sales by infant expectant heirs, see Pollock and Maitland, ii 213. 67As Maitland noted (ibid ii 251 n. 3), his own reading of Anglo-Saxon charters differed from the one proposed by Lodge in ‘Anglo-Saxon land law’, pp. 74-7. More recent discussion of the consent of heirs to alienations of land in England include: S. E. Thorne, ‘English feudalism and estates in land’, CLJ, ns 6 (1959), 193-209, reprinted in id., Essays in English Legal History (London, 1985), pp. 31-50; Milsom, Legal Framework, esp. pp. 121-4; family

as

ever

a

fair inference that in

Germanic family was regarded more as a legal entity than The course of historical development took the form of the

as an

,

.,

and Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, ch. 6. On the French laudatio parentum and on discussions of it, see White, Custom, which should be reexamined in the light of: reviews by Anita Guerreau-Jalabert in Annales E.S.C., 45 (1990), 101-5 and by Gérard

previous

Giordanengo in Revue historique, 574 (1990), 349-51; Barbara H. Rosenwein, To be a Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property, 900-1049 (Ithaca, NY, 1989); Constance Brittain Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister: Nobility and the Church in Burgundy, 980-1198 (Ithaca, NY, 1987); Emily Zack Tabuteau, Transfers of Property in Eleventh-Century Norman Law (Chapel Hill, NC, 1988); and Dominique Barthélemy, La société dans le comté de Vendôme de l'an mil au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1993), Earlier discussions of the French laudatio include: Louis Falletti, Le retrait lignager en droit coutumier français (Paris, 1923); J. de Laplanche, La réserve coutumière dans l'ancien droit français (Paris, 1925); F. Olivier-Martin, Historic du droit français des origines à la révolution (1948; reprinted Paris, 1984); Georges Duby, La société au XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise (1953; reprinted Paris, 1971); id., ‘Lineage, nobility, and knighthood’, in idem. The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (1977; reprinted Berkeley, 1980), pp. 59-80; id., ‘The structure of kinship and nobility’, in Chivalrous Society, pp. 134—48; Robert Fossier, La terre et les hommes en Picardie jusqu’à la fin du XIIIe siècle (2 vols, Paris, 1968); Paul Ourliac and J. de

Maitland’s argument on ownership fell into three main parts. First, he construed ‘family ownership’ as an archaic system in which ‘a child acquires [birth-rights] in ancestral land, and this not by gift, 68 bequest, inheritance or any title known to our modern law.’ Next, having thus transformed the study of family ownership and collective rights in land into the study of the individual birth-rights of children, Maitland then argued that birth-rights could take three different and explained forms ranging from strong to weaker to very weak the differences among them by positing a fundamental conflict of ...

—

—

interest between the owner and his heir over the question of whether land should be alienated. With ‘a strong form of “birthright”’, 69 ‘the child was born a landowner’ and could block alienations made without his consent. A weaker form of birth-right ‘only allows [the child] to recall the alienated land after his father’s death’. The weakest form of birth-right is ‘a mere droit de retrait, a right to redeem the alienated land at the price that has been given for it’. 70 Third, having reduced family ownership to a system of progressively weaker individual birth-rights defined in ways that presupposed intrafamilial conflict between an individual landholder and his individual heir and that rendered all other family members virtually invisible, Maitland traced the history of birth-rights down to the time of their disappearance in the early thirteenth century, at which time French birth-rights still survived in the very weak form of a droit de retrait. Writing of ancestors and heirs generally, he usually limited himself to discussing alienations by upper-class people. 71 Although he rejected ‘the theory that among [the Anglo-Saxons] there prevailed anything that ought to be called “family ownership”’, 72 he found two points when the birth-rights of heirs were ‘not waning in strength but waxing’. 73 First, ‘the Malafosse, Histoire du droit privé (3 vols., Paris, 1968-71); Robert Haidu, ‘Family and feudal ties in Poitou, 1100-1300’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 8 (1977), 117-28; Penny Schine Gold, The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago, Ill., 1985), ch. 4; Jean-Pierre Poly and Eric Bournazel, La mutation féodale, Xe-XIIe siècle (2nd ed,, Paris, 1991), pp. 185-93. 68Pollock and Maitland, ii 248. He reached this position by reducing corporate family ownership to various forms of co-ownership; ibid ii 245-8. Ibid ., ii 255. 70 Ibid ii 248-9. 71 On whether Maitland’s writing on land law is or is not .,

69

.,

‘directly relevant to all groups in society’, see Alan Macfarlane, The Culture of Capitalism (Oxford, 1987), p. 195, responding to a review of id., The Origins of English Individualism: The Family, Property and Social Transition (Oxford, 1978) by Rodney Hilton (‘Individualism and the English peasantry’, New Left Review, 120 [1980], pp. 109-11). medieval

72 73

Pollock and Maitland, ii 251. Ibid ii 255. .,

moved ‘in favour of the expectant heirs’ in around 900, when the alienation of book-land outside the kindred was forbidden. 74 Doubting that this effort to strengthen birth-rights had had a lasting effect, at least on upper-class practice, 75 Maitland also current of

legislation’

identified

second

a

period following

the conquest when ‘the

rights

of

the expectant heir’ were strengthened in ways revealed by a comparison of late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman charters. Whereas ‘the Anglo-Saxon thegn who holds book-land does not profess to have his heir’s consent when he

gives part of that land to a church,’ Maitland ‘his the Norman baron, will rarely execute a charter wrote, successor, of feoffment which does not express the consent of one heir or many heirs.’ 76 To

explain the

difference between pre-and

post-Conquest

charters,

Maitland asserted that, soon after 1066, when fiefs were heritable and impartible but not yet governed, he thought, by strict primogeniture, a legal rule barring tenants from alienating fiefs without the

being and was enforced for over a century ‘silently disappeared’ in the early 1200s, ‘when the tenant has a perfect right to disappoint his expectant heirs by conveying away the whole of his land by act inter vivos'. 78 Maitland’s history of birth-rights was designed to challenge several dogmas about the history of family law. First, because even after reducing family ownership to ‘a strong form of “birth-right”’ he found no evidence that it had ever ‘prevailed among the English in England,’ 79 he could reject both the theory that land was owned by families before it was owned by individuals and the theory that the family was the basic unit of early English law. Second, the finding that after 1200 birth-rights totally disappeared in England but survived in France in the form of the retrait lignager80 not only demonstrated England’s precociousness in legal development; it also undermined the ‘unwarrantable hypothesis’ that ‘the family law of every nation must needs consent of heirs came into

77

before it

...

81

74

it,

Ibid ., ii 253. For see

a recent discussion of bookland with references to other recent work on Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, pp. 324-42 passim.

1994), He thought it ’very likely' that ‘among those

75

men

who had

no

books', ‘a restraint in favour

of the expectant heirs was established’: Pollock and Maitland, ii 243. 76 Ibid ., ii 255; see also ii 251. 77 Ibid ., ii 13. 78

Ibid ., ii 308.

79

Ibid

.,

ii 255.

80See ibid 81

Ibid

.,

.,

i 344, 647; ii, 249, 311, 313, 330, 446.

i 224.

traverse the same route’. 82

Third, without denying that English land law became more individualistic when the modern right of inheritance replaced the archaic birth-right, Maitland contested the ‘belief’ that the history of family law and land law revealed ‘steady movement in one direction’, as ‘birth-rights’ and other ‘relics’ of family ownership 83 slowly, steadily, and inexorably disappeared. Rejecting the ‘natural’ that ‘those forms of which are least in accord birth-right assumption with our own ideas are also the most archaic [and] that the weaker forms are degenerate forms of the stronger’, 84 he argued that ‘restraints’ on a landholder’s power of alienation were not ‘relics of 85 family ownership’, but rather products of judicial compromises between two ‘conflicting forces’: the interests of landholders, on the 86 one hand, and the interests of heirs, on the other. Maitland also went out of his way to deny that this conflict had changed significantly

between the

Anglo-Saxon

era

and his

own

day:

In the

days before the Conquest a dead man’s heirs sometimes attempted to recover land which he had given away. They often did so in the thirteenth century; they sometimes do so at the present day. At the present day a man’s expectant heirs do not attempt to interfere with his gifts so long as he is alive; this was not done in the thirteenth century; we have no proof that it 87 was done before the Conquest. In this way Maitland replaced a theory of natural, steady, inexorable evolution from family ownership of land to individual ownership with 88 a model representing change in land law as ‘a series of compromises’ that the law had periodically imposed to adjudicate ‘a struggle’ between owner and heir. The struggle, which continued to the present day, had begun at some ill-defined moment with the appearance of ‘purchasers for land’ and of ‘bishops and priests desirous of acquiring land by gift and willing to offer spiritual benefits in return’. 89 Like other arguments of Maitland’s, this revisionist history of land law depended on textual interpretations that were shaped by his own 82

Ibid

.,

ii 255. Maitland also

queried

the distinction associated with this

hypothesis

between

‘successful races’, whose family laws had all allegedly traversed one route, and ‘backward peoples’, whose family laws had allegedly ‘wandered from the right road’; ibid ., ii 255. If every nation’s family law had had a different history, how clear was Maine’s distinction between

‘progressive’

and

‘non-progressive’ peoples (on

p. 271). 83 Pollock and Maitland, ii 250. 84Ibid ., ii 248. 85 86 87

See Lodge, ‘Anglo-Saxon land law’. Pollock and Maitland, ii 250. Ibid ii 252. .,

88Ibid ., ii 250. 89 Ibid ii 249. .,

which

see

Burrow, ‘Village Community',

way of

seeing and not seeing the family. Treating Anglo-Norman and Angevin charters as evidence of restraints on alienation but not ‘family 90 ownership’, Maitland followed his usual strategies of privileging, when he could, the legal rights of individuals and assuming that the practices of kinship groups were determined by externally enforced legal rules. These interpretive strategies were at work not just when he analysed the consent of heirs to gifts but even when he described this practice. Although he acknowledged that many gifts were made for religious 91

he understood them as alienations similar to sales, not as 92 exchanges of land for prayers for living and/or dead kin. This way of had for Maitland’s reading gifts significant implications interpretation of the heir’s consent because, in draining gifts of religious meanings, it trivialised the roles of the donor’s dead and living kin as beneficiaries of his gifts 93 and limited discussion of questions about why such gifts were made to issues of proprietary right. In a similar way, Maitland did not see what others have seen as the collective familial dimension of gifts when he represented as the consent of ‘heirs’ 94 a practice that French historians have long known as ‘the consent of kin’ (laudatio parentum). This choice of descriptive terminology was significant because it prefigured his entire interpretation

motives,

of the heir’s consent. Certain gifts, he found, were made with the consent of kin groups that included wives, sons, daughters, brothers, nephews or grandchildren; other gifts, he indicated, were approved by ‘all [the donor’s] kinsfolk’ or by ‘as many of [his] near kinsfolk as can be induced to approve the gift’. 95 Nevertheless, he saw no significance in the exact composition of these groups, which historians of the French laudatio parentum have since treated as important evidence about the 90See ibid ., ii 245-55 passim. 91 He noted that twelfth-century charters often mentioned ‘the good of the donor’s soul and the souls of his kinsfolk as the motive for the gift’ and that ‘the prayers of the donees’ ...

were

sometimes treated

as

‘services done in return for the land’: ibid

92

.,

ii 243.

‘Every alienation of land, a sale, an onerous lease in fee farm, is a “gift” but no “gift” of land is gratuitous; the donee will always be liable to render service, though it be but the service of prayers’: ibid ii 213. 93 On this issue, see, e.g., Patrick J. Geary, ‘Exchange and interaction between the living and the dead in early medieval society’, in id., Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1994), pp. 77-92. For theoretical discussions of alienation, see C. A. Gregory, Gifts and Commodities (London, 1982); and Annette B. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving (Cambridge, 1992). On medieval practice and ideology, see Rosenwein, To be a Neighbor; and White, Custom. 94 Maitland referred to those who consented to a tenant's gifts as ‘apparent or presumptive heirs’ (Pollock and Maitland, ii 13), ‘expectant heirs’ (ii 15), ‘apparent or presumptive heirs’ (ii 17), ‘expectant heirs’ (ii 251), ‘one heir or many heirs’ (ii 255), and ‘expectant heirs’ (ii 309). .,

95

Ibid ., ii 310;

on

the consent of wives,

see

ii 411, 424.

of the medieval family. 96 Instead, by describing the groups as that is, kin who might have groups of heirs or potential heirs inherited the land alienated with their consent 97 he simply excluded the possibility of interpreting consent to gifts as a collective familial act of a group with present, not future, interests in the property being given and as a transaction in which living members of a family returned land to the dead kin from whom they had received it. 98 To be sure, Maitland acknowledged that the gifts of donors with more than one son were to be approved by several heirs because he believed that a ‘stringent’ form of primogeniture was not observed in England until around 1200. 99 He also noted cases where gifts were made jointly by

history

—

—

tenants and heirs 100 or were approved by as many as nine different kin. 101 But as he described it, consent of a donor’s kin to his gift could be understood only as a set of individual acts performed by heirs who were waiving individual rights. Maitland’s preference for individualistic readings of the consent of kin became even clearer when he turned to consider why gifts were made with consent and why this practice eventually disappeared. Without noting that numerous post-Conquest gifts were made without consent and without asking why consenting heirs might have wished to 102

103 Maitland assumed that donors and donees extracted approve gifts, the consent of heirs in accordance with a binding legal rule. He reached this conclusion after first finding ‘numerous examples’ of gifts made with the consent of heirs; 104 then by inflating a practice that would 105 ‘probably’ be found in charters into a practice without which charters 106 were ‘rarely executed’; and finally by concluding that donors ‘had

96

See White, Custom, esp. pp. 13-4 and ch. 4. Unlike Maitland, writers on the French laudatio (e.g. Fossier, Picardie) have studied the consent of heirs, other kin, and wives

parentum

concurrently. 97

See Pollock and Maitland, ii 310.

98

See White, Custom, ch. 5. 99Ibid ., ii 312; see generally ii 260-313. ‘That absolute and uncompromising form of which prevails in England belongs, not to feudalism in general but to a

primogeniture highly mightiest

centralized feudalism, in which the king has not much to fear from the power of his vassals, and is strong enough to impose a law that in his eyes has many merits, above all the great merit of simplicity’: ibid ., ii 265. 100

Ibid

101

Ibid

102

.,

ii 311.

ii 309-10. Hudson finds that ‘the inclusion of consent clauses is not standard .,

charters of lesser laymen’ (Land, Law, and Lordship, p. and in great laymen’s charters (pp. 184, 185). 103

104 105

pp. 188-97; see also White, Custom, ch. 5. Pollock and Maitland, ii 309. See ibid Ibid

.,

.,

ii 251.

106Ibid ., ii 255.

188)

and is

practice even in the in royal charters

rare

107 He then asked why the law sanctioned very commonly to seek [it]’. this ‘restraint’ on a landowner’s power of alienation. He answered his question in two ways, focusing first on how the heir acquired the right to restrain alienations and then on why the judges enforced the right. Instead of seeing the heir’s right as a ‘relic of family ownership’ or at least as an adjunct of the heir’s weak birth-right to his ancestor’s land, Maitland saw it as originating either in a ‘common-law rule forbidding disherison or in the form of a [lord’s] gift [to the tenant and his heirs,] which seemed to declare that after the donee’s death the land was to be enjoyed by his heir and by none other.’ 108 In either case, the heir did not acquire the power to restrain alienations by virtue of his genealogical position in a family. 109 Whether

the power came from the state or whether it came from the ancestor’s lord and was then enforced by the state, the power was no longer once had been, according to Maitland, on birth into a family. the Preparing way for the power’s silent disappearance in around 1200, Maitland was silently transforming the archaic birth-right into something that looked more like a title recognized by modern law. As to why judges, as a matter of policy, enforced the rule against alienating land without the heir’s consent, Maitland, with no evidence to guide him, was free to speculate and did so in a revealing passage. Convinced that common law judges barely recognized, much less protected,

based,

as

it

the family’s interests in land, he insisted that ‘the object of the restraint’ [was not] solely, perhaps not mainly, the retention of land “in a family”.’ 110 Its main purpose, before the establishment of strict 111 primogeniture, was to ‘[secure] an equal division of land among sons.’ The rule achieved this goal by empowering the tenant’s sons to restrain him from alienating too much of the fief that they would divide on his death and from making gifts to one or more sons that could undermine the principle of equal division among sons. Constructing a choice for himself between a very late date for the advent of strict primogeniture and a rule designed to keep land ‘in a family’, Maitland took the first option, which harmonized better with his polemic against Maine. Although he noted that a donor’s kin sometimes tried to block his gifts 112 or to recover them and although he could have used such cases as evidence about the primary social function of consent, 113 he slighted 107

Ibid ., ii 13. Ibid ii 13. As it was in French models of the laudatio parentum. 110 Pollock and Maitland, ii 312.

108

.,

109

111

Ibid ., ii 312.

112

Ibid ., ii 310, 311 n.3. For discussions of such

113

cases see

White, Custom, esp. chs. 2-5.

this evidence on the grounds that in any age ‘expectant heirs do not like to see property given away’. 114 Maitland’s assumption that kinship groups were strictly controlled by law resurfaced even when he described the disappearance of the practice of making gifts with the consent of heirs. ‘The change’, he wrote, ‘if we consider its great importance, seems to have been effected 115 rapidly, even suddenly.’ But how sudden was the change? Just as Maitland exaggerated the frequency with which Anglo-Norman gifts were made with the consent of heirs because he saw donors and their as following a legal rule that he had largely invented for them 116 obey, he exaggerated the suddenness with which the practice disappeared probably because he assumed that the judges could simply abolish it and did so. In fact, the practice of making gifts with the consent of heirs probably did not disappear rapidly or suddenly. which, Instead, the percentage of gifts made with the consent of kin in a Yorkshire sample, reached a peak of only 55 per cent in the 1150s dropped steadily during the second half of the century, until,

kin to

—

—

in Yorkshire, it stood at 15 per cent in the 1190s. 117 A similar decline in the laudatio parentum occurred in various regions of thirteenth-century France. 118 Evidence of this kind from both France and England would have been difficult to fit into a model in which judges determined the history of family law. Maitland invoked this model once more when he attributed the disappearance of the heir’s consent to a judicial act. He saw this ‘sudden’ change as ‘the complement of that new stringent primogeniture which the king’s court had begun to enforce’. 119 Once it became clear, he thought, that a tenancy would not be divided among the tenant’s sons and that the eldest son would have it all, then a practice that had previously served the benevolent purpose of preventing the tenant from unduly privileging one son over the others by barring him from alienating land without their consent became ‘useless, inappropriate, unbearable because the eldest son, the only heir, unbearable’ would now use it to prevent the tenant from providing for his younger 120 sons. Why the disinheritance of younger sons, though unbearable for —

114

Pollock and Maitland, ii 252. Maitland well to other alienations.

was

here

writing

of wills but the remark

applies

perfectly 115

Ibid ., ii 311.

116

Practice

was

Maitland’s

only evidence

for the existence of the rule before the time of

Glanvill: Pollock and Maitland, ii 208-11. 117 These rough statistics are based on charters in EYC, vols. 1-11. 118 Fossier, Picardie, i 265-6. 119

Pollock and Maitland, ii 312.

120Ibid ., ii 312.

was promoted by fathers was a question that Maitland could have answered only by shifting the focus of his entire discussion from courts to families. But instead of seeing either primogeniture or or didn’t play in gifts changes in the roles that kin played as long-term processes associated with long-term changes in family organization, Maitland attributed both developments to judicial acts. As he saw it, these changes in family law were largely determined by the fact that ‘above our law at a critical moment stood a high-handed court of professional justices who were all for simplicity and could abolish a whole chapter of ancient jurisprudence by two or three bold decisions.’ 121

judges,

—

—

When Maitland interpreted documents very similar to ones later analysed by other historians in France as well as in England, the logic of his polemic against Maine, his decision to write a certain kind of legal history, and other interpretive choices he made often led him to see kinship groups as associations of individuals. Later, many of his successors, especially in France, preferred the opposite interpretive strategy of privileging familial collectivism. Whether or not Maitland chose the right strategy or the wrong one and whether he fully appreciated the force of arguments for alternative ways of writing family history, his own ways of looking at kinship groups, interpreting texts, and evaluating earlier historical work left marks on the way in which he wrote the legal history of the family. Yet Maitland’s own work on this subject was far from being a dated exercise in polemics, ideological projection, and tendentious readings of evidence. As a lens through which to examine the history of the family, his legal individualism, combined with his scepticism about evolutionary thought, had strengths, enabling him to see enough to contest the theories of Maine and other ‘speculative 122 lawyers’ and to grasp important issues in the history of medieval

kinship. First, Maitland’s scepticism about theories of unilinear evolution made him quick to spot evidence indicating that the history of English

steadily and inexorably from archaic collectivism always interpreted the evidence correctly, he used it effectively in the 1890s to anticipate campaigns that historians of the medieval family were waging in the 1960s against the view, still espoused by Marc Bloch and others, that family law did

not

move

to modern individualism. Whether or not he

121

Ibid

122

Kuper,

.,

ii 313. Invention

of Primitive Society,

p. 8.

ties grew steadily weaker over the course of the middle ages. Georges Duby, Robert Fossier, and David Herlihy contested the theory, each, in his own way, followed Maitland in citing changes in the roles that kin played in alienating land. 123 Moreover, in arguing that there were significant discrepancies between medieval English and medieval French family law and in associating them with the relative freedom of English, as compared with French, landholders to alienate land away from their kin, Maitland not only foreshadowed Alan Macfarlane's bold argument of the late 1970s for England’s precocious, individualistic exceptionalism; Maitland also drew attention to significant after between the two regions with respect differences, 1200, to the participation of kin in the alienation of land. In fact, the differences are evident even earlier than he thought they were. Comparisons of English and Northwestern French charters indicate, first, that throughout the twelfth century, English gifts were less likely to be made with the consent of kin than French gifts were and, second, that English kin groups participating in gifts to churches were smaller in size, simpler in structure, and less likely to include collateral kin or

family

When

124

non-co-residential kin than their counterparts in France were. 125 Although these findings do not necessarily confirm Maitland’s belief 123

According to David Herlihy, ‘Perhaps the most evident weakness with the concept of progressive nuclearization is the assumption that this movement toward nuclear families was, or had to be, progressive’: ‘Family solidarity in medieval Italian history’, reprinted in id., The Social History of Italy (London, 1978), pp. 174-5. Fossier cited both Duby’s work and data from Picardy to justify ‘l’opinion nuancée qui refuse de voir dans l’histoire familiale une courbe continue, évolution régulière’: Picardie, i 266. See also id., ‘Les structures de la famille en Occident au moyen âge’, in XVe Congrès international des sciences historiques (2 vols., Bucarest, 1980), ii 225-35; idem, Enfance de l'Europe, Xe–XIIe siècles: aspects économiques et sociaux (2 vols., Paris, 1982), ii 905-27; and White, Custom, ch. 3. 124 Origins of English Individualism. According to Elton, Maitland, pp. 100-1 Macfarlane found in Maitland’s work ‘the guidance he needed to break out of the traditional opinions concerning the “peasantry” of England and to fight his way to an interpretation so shocking to convention that the conventional have ganged up to drown him’. In addition to the critiques of this book that Macfarlane cites in Culture of Capitalism at pp. 240-41 and discusses at pp. 191-222, see Stephen D. White and Richard T. Vann, ‘The invention of English individualism: Alan Macfarlane and the modernization of pre-modern England’, Social History, 8 (1983), 345-63. 125 These conclusions are supported both by soundings of English and French twelfth-century charters and by a detailed statistical analysis of the participation of kin in twelfth-century gifts to religious houses in Yorkshire and the regions around Chartres. The Yorkshire charters surveyed are in EYC, vols. 1-11. The French documents studied are in: Cartulaire de la Sainte-Trinité de Tiron, ed. L. Merlet (2 vols., Chartres, 1883); Cartulaire de Saint-Jean-enVallée de Chartres, ed. R. Merlet, Collection de cartulaires chartrains, vol. 1 (Chartres, 1906); Cartulaire du Grand-Beaulieu-lès-Chartres et du prieuré de Notre-Dame de la Bourdinière, ed. R. Merlet and M. Jusselin, Collection de cartulaires chartrains, vol. 2, part 1 (Chartres, 1909); Cartulaire de Notre-Dame de Josaphat, ed. Charles Métais (2 vols., Chartres, 1909). I am indebted to the late David Herlihy for help in compiling the statistics.

in the ‘precocity’ of English legal development in the sphere of family law and although they are hard to reconcile with his belief that the relative simplicity of English family was imposed from above, they are at least consisteht with his underlying idea that kinship somehow counted for less in twelfth-century England than it did in twelfthcentury France. Finally, when considering how Maitland’s antiquarian individualism sometimes facilitated understanding of medieval kinship, it is worth noting that although he exaggerated the ephemerality of medieval 126 the power and will of medieval states to control groups, and the freedom of medieval people to act independently of them, he raised a critical them, question about medieval families that subsequent writers on the medieval family have frequently overlooked by

kinship

reflexively reifying family cohesion, lineage solidarity, kinship structure, and familial collectivism: How were kinship groups actually formed and re-formed for such purposes as feuding or approving gifts of land? Maitland was surely right in seeing this as a problem 127 and in thinking that people had to be actively recruited into larger kin groups by members of smaller ones or by individuals. From there, it is not a long step to anthropological ‘action theories’ about how individual 129 entrepreneurs recruit people into non-groups or quasi-groups and to the position of one recent writer on medieval feuds that ‘it always fell 128

to someone’

individual ‘to recruit his or her kin for the particular enterprise at hand.’ 130 Whatever the theoretical merits of the individualistic ‘action theories’ that Maitland’s antiquarian indi—

that is, to

some

—

126

See Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, p. 155. 127 The problem would have worried him even more if he had had access to evidence indicating that in both England and France different alienations by a single donor were approved by kin groups so different in composition that the differences cannot be explained either by assuming that the gifts concerned different inheritances or by relying on the usual expedients of killing off some relatives, bringing others into the world at the proper moment, and sending others still on crusade or on other journeys from which they can be recalled when needed to approve a gift. See White, Custom, ch. 3. 128 Pollock and Maitland, ii 242. Maitland’s observation that consent to alienations is procured from ‘as many of the donor’s near kinsfolk as can be induced to approve [it]’ (ibid ii 310) helps us to see the kin groups that participated in such gifts, not, as some historians have suggested, as enduring ‘families’, but rather as groups that were recruited for specific purposes. See White, Custom, ch. 3. For English evidence indicating how much variation there could be in the composition of the groups that approved different gifts by a single donor, see the gifts by Adam son of Peter de Birkin: EYC, iii nos. 1722, 1725-35, 1737-43, 1745, 1747, 1871, 1872; vi no. 67; The Chartulary of Rievaulx (Surtees Society, 83, 1887), nos. 92, .,

97, 100, 356. 129

See Joan Vincent, Anthropology and Politics: Visions, Traditions, and Trends (Tucson, 1990), pp. 341-53; and Ted C. Lewellen, Political Anthropology: An Introduction (2nd ed., Westport, CT, 1992), chs. 6-7. 130 Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, p. 155.

vidualism foreshadows, his belief that medieval communalism was ‘a thin cloak for a rough and rude individualism’ is still an effective antidote, at times, to ‘easy talk’, as Maitland would have called it, about family cohesion or lineage solidarity and to the tendency to confuse the family, understood as a cultural category, with actual groups of kin and to conflate kinship ideology with kinship practice. 131 As a weapon against the dogma that ‘the family was the unit of ancient law’ and against other kinds of easy talk about the early history of family, Maitland provided a counter-maxim that has remained thought-provokingly effective. Although he never said that there was no such thing as the medieval family, there were only individuals, he did say: ‘Individuals do not cease to be individuals when there are many of them.’ 132

131

As formulated in

Roger

M.

Keesing,

Kin

Groups

and Social Structure

pp. 9-11, the distinction is used in White, Custom, pp. 127-9. 132 Pollock and Maitland, ii 247.

(New York, 1975),

II

The invention of

English

individualism: Alan Macfarlane and the modernization of pre-modern

England Stephen

*

D. White and Richard T. Vann

Recent gains in empirical research made by social historians have tended to outrun ability to fit them into a comprehensive conceptual scheme: but some have been willing to look up from their parishes and commit themselves to a more general account of social development. Among the most industrious and provocative of these has been Alan Macfarlane. For the past decade he has been urging historians to use paradigms of social anthropology (and took the trouble himself to do extensive field work in Nepal). 1 Now, in The Origins of English Individualism, he has presented a radical-sounding thesis about English history which purports to show that for almost a century and a half scholars, including himself in earlier works, have ‘largely misinterpreted the basic nature of English social structure between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries’ (189). 2 The Origins of English Individualism aims to set all this right by showing that at least as early as the thirteenth century England was a unique ‘capitalist-market economy without factories’ (196), mainly populated by ‘rampant individualists’. Furthermore, because English society has undergone no basic structural change during the last seven centuries (163, 195), he argues, we must recast our ideas about the relationship between English and continental social development and about the origins of capitalism, liberty and equality, private property, the modern family, economic rationality, and industrialization (196-201). Macfarlane’s deserved reputation and the undeniable interest of his arguments have commended his book to many readers. Some – no matter how apolitical Macfarlane may think his purpose to be have used the book to support the contention that in England, at least, collective control over individual activity or -

✷ We

wish

to

thank

our

students

at

Wesleyan University for discussing with us the issues raised by Macfarlane's book 1 See Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (1970): The Family Life of Ralph Josselin (1970); and Resources and

Population: A Study of the Gurungs of Central Nepal (Cambridge, 1976). 2 All numbers in parentheses are page citations from Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism: The Family, Property and Social Transition (Oxford, 1978).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-2

3

enterprise is anomalous, unnatural and illegitimate. Others may have been attracted by its vigorous polemics. We suspect, however, that the real appeal of the book, and certainly the aspect of it which justifies sustained scrutiny, is Macfarlane’s clever blending of the traditional, the contemporary and the novel. He is not the first English historian to claim that English society has developed slowly, continuously and without major conflicts or significant structural changes: but he buttresses this traditional theme in English historiography with the kind of eclectic social history which has lately acquired great prestige. More importantly, he has been daring, or rash, enough to confront the half-articulated premises of much recent work on pre-modern European social history and to take them to their logical extremes: so even when we find him wrong, we can examine the book with Bacon’s aphorism in mind, that truth comes out more readily from error than from confusion.

I. Macfarlane’s Main Argument of Macfarlane’s argument can be outlined simply in the following three parts. First, making the tacit assumptions that human societies can be usefully divided up into a few main types, such as tribal, peasant or capitalist societies, and

The

core

that societies of each type share certain basic, interrelated and distinguishing features, Macfarlane contends that most historians have regarded later medieval and Tudor-Stuart

England as a peasant society; that true peasant societies have distinguishing features (to be discussed below); that some of these characteristics, including the most fundamental ones, are absent from England

certain

1250 and c. 1750; and that therefore historians have erred in characterizing in this period as a peasant society. Second, Macfarlane attacks the conventional view that England was radically transformed between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, as it changed from a between

c.

England

peasant to a capitalist society distinguished above all by a strong stress on individual rights and autonomy. He contends that as early as the thirteenth century all the most basic features of

capitalism

historians have therefore been mistaken in

can

be found in

saying

that it has

England; and that dramatically changed

since the

high middle ages. Third, Macfarlane also attacks the conventional claim that England came to differ fundamentally from continental and ‘third-world’ peasant societies only through its transformation into a capitalist society between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. He argues that since England had actually become a capitalist society by the thirteenth century, whereas peasant societies survived all over the continent until much later, the fundamental differences between England and its European neighbours must have arisen during Henry III’s reign, if not earlier. Macfarlane concludes by suggesting that the origins of English ‘individualism’ both in the sense of individualistic social organization and distinctiveness from other societies may lie as far back as the first Germanic settlements in England. Macfarlane’s general thesis depends upon the validity of his first two arguments, –

–

3

See Ferdinand

Mount, ‘Goodbye

to

the

peasants’, Spectator,

17

February

1979, 4.

Macfarlane

on

individualism

which he presents much more fully than the third. We shall, therefore, focus on his claim that medieval and early modern English society was not a peasant society

by ‘peasant’? And why does he regarding England as a ‘peasant society’ until about 1500 or even 1750? He goes about telling us that in a circuitous way. Eventually, he takes the logical step of rounding up some two dozen well-known historians who allegedly espouse some form of this view and who developed it, he claims, within the theoretical framework created by a curious trio of Marx, Macauley and Weber (34-52). But to show what scholars mean or should mean when they call pre-modern England a ‘peasant society’, he looks not to the work of any of these figures, but to the writings of a few sociologists and anthropologists. He then concludes that a peasant society had a ‘particular form of social and economic and ideological structure’ (9) with five main characteristics: more than half the people live in rural areas; more than half the workforce is engaged in agriculture; agriculturalists belong to the communities ruled by a state or other sovereign power; the society also contains markets and towns, and the urban culture differs significantly but not completely from that of the countryside; and finally, in rural areas, the family household is ‘the basic unit of ownership, production, and consumption’ (14). It turns out that for Macfarlane, if not for his adversaries or for many anthropologists, the final feature is the most fundamental characteristic of peasant societies, and is integrally and necessarily associated with particular types of real property law, economic organization, family life and kinship, and social structure (14-15). Now the argument takes another peculiar turn: Macfarlane proposes as a criterion of whether late medieval or early modern England was a peasant society its resemblance, not to peasant societies throughout the world, but only to those found in Eastern Europe (16-18). His main justifications for this procedure are that this region has been the subject of some influential work; 4 that it is close enough but not too close to England; and that such influential English medievalists as Kosminsky, Vinogradoff and Postan were Eastern Europeans who consciously or unconsciously compared England to their homelands. Although Macfarlane’s position has obviously been influenced by the work of the great Eastern European theorist of the peasantry, Chayanov, he deliberately declines to discuss Chayanov’s but

a

capitalist

one.

What does Macfarlane

mean

think that historians have erred in

model of peasantry in any detail. 5 According to Macfarlane, in the model Eastern

European peasant society the ownership’, and property law therefore assumes a highly distinctive form (to be discussed below). Because the household is also the basic unit of production and consumption, there is little local division of labour, hiring of labour or production for the market. As a result, local exchange and cash are uncommon, and there is no real market for land, goods or labour. The peasant household is the main ‘unit of

Polish Peasant in Europe and America (New York, 1918) and Boguslaw Galeski, Basic

5 The locus classicus is Chayanov’s Theory of Peasant Economy (ed. Daniel Thorner, Basile Kerblay and R. E. F. Smith), whose views in

Concepts 1972).

Peasant Farming in Muscovy (Cambridge, 1977) differ significantly from his.

4

See W. I. Thomas and F.

in

Rural

Znaniecki,

The

Sociology (Manchester,

family must fit into a distinctive kinship system. Peasants maintain wide networks of significant kin and often expand them not only through marriage and selection of godparents but also through adoption and fostering. They also use a form of kinship terminology that differs markedly from the type found in the industrialized world. Normally they live in large, complex, multi-generational households, each dominated by an older male exercising ‘patriarchal’ authority over all other members, particularly women and children. At a very early age, almost every child enters a marriage arranged by their elder male relatives. Since forms of joint ownership assure something for all the children of both genders, geographical mobility is minimal, and what little social mobility exists takes a predominantly cyclical form. Class differences within villages are, therefore, relatively slight, while the gap between village and urban culture is great: the concerns of peasants are parochial, for almost all their wants can be satisfied within their own natal villages. Even though this notion of peasantry may not be the one that Macfarlane’s opponents actually hold, it is at least precise. No such precision characterizes his treatment of capitalism. Instead, he seems to proceed by a via negativa, reversing his statements about peasant societies to yield his ideal type for capitalism. Even though some capitalist societies are predominantly agricultural they are still fundamentally different from peasant societies, because under capitalism the primary unit of ownership, production and consumption is not the family but the individual person, who controls his or her land absolutely, can alienate it at will, and often farms it with hired labour, exchanging its produce for cash. Markets, local exchange, extensive division of labour, hired labour, and of course money are therefore common, and their presence profoundly affects village life, particularly because they give salience to relationships based upon contract rather than status. Such contractual relationships exist even within the family, which lacks the cohesiveness of its peasant counterpart. Kinship groups are small, and only very close relatives matter; adoption and fosterage are uncommon, if not unknown. An ego-centred ‘Eskimo’ system of kinship terminology is commonly employed. Within the household, which usually has a nuclear structure, kinship ties are also relatively weak. A household head can legally disinherit his children, while a child can disregard its relatives’ wishes when choosing a spouse. Women enjoy greater freedom and more extensive property rights than their peasant counterparts; they can hold property, and when they marry, they marry late and have some control over whom they marry. These individualistic rural societies allow for, or even encourage, extensive geographical and social mobility, both of which promote the accumulation of wealth and the disintegration of barriers between local and national culture. Finally, capitalism is associated with an individualistic psychology. Under capitalism even rural dwellers, unlike true peasants, think rationally and instrumentally about their fellow humans, their property, their work and themselves. They try to maximize individual satisfaction by manipulating their environment,

whereas

peasants

are

mired

in

tradition,

collectivism

and

irrationality. Having outlined the traditional view of English history that he wishes to dispute, and having explained (more or less) what he means by such crucial terms as

‘peasant society’, ‘capitalism’ and ‘individualism’, Macfarlane uses three arguments designed to prove that between c. 1250 and c. 1750 England was a capitalist and not a peasant society. First, he cites legal evidence in an effort to show that in this period land was held not by peasant families but by individuals who owned it absolutely (see chs 4-5). Second, he contends that the absence of many other characteristic features of peasant societies shows that communities played a minor role at best in shaping the behaviour of English people (chs 3 and 6). Finally, to support his claim that England differed fundamentally from contemporary continental societies, he examines the writings of several foreign visitors to England, some medieval and Tudor or Stuart writers who compared England with continental societies, and some modern historians and social theorists who stressed the deep-seated differences between England and continental countries (ch. 7). His conclusion restates the main thesis so as to make clear its far-reaching implications for English and world history (ch. 8), but concedes that he has not provided conclusive evidence for the thesis and calls on other scholars to help him do so (204-6). II. The Historiography of the Peasantry There

are

three main flaws in Macfarlane’s thesis. He has not

the views of his most formidable opponents, and discredited their positions. His ideas about peasantry,

so

accurately represented

cannot claim to have

capitalism

and individualism

either vague or else too misleading and internally contradictory to serve the basis for any coherent interpretation of earlier English society. Finally, he are

as

frequently

overlooks

or

misinterprets

evidence

that

might

undermine

his

argument. However, Macfarlane’s work is exemplary in that it exhibits certain methodological problems and confusions that mar other more competent and

convincing

works

medieval and early modern European history. greatly simplifies the task of attacking his opponents by homogenizing and distorting their views. He also fails to acknowledge that they use dynamic rather than static models of English society, and he imputes to them his own ideas about the nature of peasantry. By virtually ignoring the differences between the views of scholars like Hilton, Homans, Raftis and Postan, to take four examples, on

Macfarlane

Macfarlane

can

represent attacks

on

one

or

another of these historians

as

a

6

comprehensive assault on them all. By employing this strategy, Macfarlane can, for example, conceal the fact that many of his opponents would readily accept his 6

For a lucid and critical (though admittedly partisan) discussion of different approaches to the study of medieval European villagers (or peasants) see R. H. Hilton, ‘The peasantry as a class’, in his The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1973), 3-12. Some of the different approaches now used in studying this subject are illustrated in the articles and note by Guy Bois, J. P. Cooper, R. H. Hilton, Emmanuel le Roy Ladurie,

M. M. Postan and John Hatcher, Heidi Wunder, Patricia Croot and David Parker in a

symposium, ‘Agrarian class structure and development’, Past and Present, LXXVNI—LXXX (1978). This arose from an article by Robert Brenner, ‘Agrarian class structure and economic development in preindustrial Europe', Past & Present, LXX (1976), 30-75.

economic

claim that Tudor—Stuart England was not a peasant society. Furthermore, not having acknowledged that his own model of peasantry differs significantly from the ones employed by other scholars, Macfarlane can then criticize them for ignoring evidence which their models are in fact designed to explain. To illustrate the working of Macfarlane’s polemical strategy, let us consider the main adversary of Macfarlane, R. H Hilton. Hilton claims that peasants are distinguished primarily by the following five characteristics,

views of

one

English only two

of which

(2

and

5)

are

those Macfarlane identifies:

at all like

(i) They possess, even if they do not own, the means of agricultural production by which they subsist. (2) They work their holdings essentially as a family unit, primarily with family labour. (3) They are normally associated in larger units than the family that is, in villages or hamlets with greater or lesser elements of common property and collective rights according to the character of the economy. (4) Ancillary workers, such as agricultural labourers, artisans, and building workers originate from their own ranks and are therefore part of the peasantry. (5) They support superimposed classes and institutions such as landlords, church, and towns by producing more than is necessary for their 7 own subsistence and economic reproduction. –

To attack

a

model like Hilton’s

–

and the

same

would be true for non-Marxist

models of the peasantry Macfarlane could either show that it was internally incoherent, or else produce data inconsistent with that model, but explicable by –

his

He does

neither,

presented data inconsistent with Furthermore, Hilton (like many other historians) has found room in his model for social institutions which he regards as fundamental features of peasant society, but which Macfarlane either ignores or hardly ever mentions. It seems inaccurate and unfair for Macfarlane to suggest that writers like Hilton cannot account for the existence of market production or 8 money in medieval society, and curious indeed to ignore a well-documented feature of medieval society to which other writers attach great importance: the distinctive relationship between lord and peasant. (‘Serfdom’ makes no appearance in the index.) Perhaps we should not expect Macfarlane to be an expert on the historiography of medieval English society; but his use of anthropological theories about peasant society is hardly more reliable. Although he cites extensive anthropological literature, his ideas about ‘peasantry’ seem unusual, if not idiosyncratic. By supposing that this term can be univocally defined and by distinguishing much more sharply than most other writers between peasant and non-peasant societies, he is able to exaggerate and dramatize the alleged errors of earlier works on English own.

and in fact Hilton has

Macfarlane’s model but not with his

7

own.

See Hilton, ‘Peasantry as a class’, 13. Several of Hilton’s essays in The English Peasantry deal extensively with the role of money in the village economy. Edward Miller and John Hatcher also discuss marketing and 8

money in medieval rural society without the slightest embarrassment (see Medieval England: Rural Society and Economic Change

1086-1348 [1978], especially 64-79 and 161-4).

village life.

9

The model of peasant societies that Macfarlane constructs

on

the basis

European evidence differs markedly from the ones employed by many if not most anthropologists, who regard Latin American, Southeast Asian and Southern European villagers also as peasants. Few of them seem to adopt the rigid position crucial to Macfarlane’s entire case, namely that the most fundamental feature of peasant society is that the household is the basic unit of ownership, production and consumption, and that therefore individual ownership cannot exist in a true peasant society. 10 Even anthropologists who stress that the peasant household is the main unit of production and consumption do not necessarily insist that it is always the primary unit of ownership. 11 While they suggest that peasants are not absolute owners of the land they occupy, they take this position for quite of Eastern

Writers like Eric Wolf make it clear that while peasants are to from slaves, in that they have some rights in the land that they work and occupy, their rights in this land are severely limited by the extensive legal different be

reasons.

distinguished

claims that landlords and sometimes the state make

12

peasant surpluses. Like many medieval historians, many anthropologists thus attach great importance to that feature of medieval society so consistently overlooked by Macfarlane: the relationship between peasants and those people to whom they owe labour services, feudal rents, dues or other obligations. Moreover, by exaggerating the isolation of peasants from other members of their on

society, Macfarlane parts company with anthropologists who emphasize the importance of regional networks linking peasants to various sorts of people in other 13 This constitutes a serious internal contradiction in villages and towns. Macfarlane’s model of peasantry. While he recognizes that peasant villages form 9 On some of the problems of constructing models of peasant society see, for example: Robert Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Civilization

(1956; reprint Chicago, 1960), esp. 16-20; Raymond Firth, Elements of Social Organization, 3rd edn (Boston, 1961), esp. 87-9; George M. Foster, ‘Introduction: what is a peasant?’ in Jack M. Potter, May N. Diaz and George M. Foster (eds), Peasant Society: A Reader, (Boston, 1967), 2-14; L. A. Fallers, ‘Are African cultivators to be called peasants?’ in Potter et al. (eds), Peasant Society, 35-41; Eric Wolf, Peasants (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1966); Teodor Shanin, ‘Introduction’, in his Peasants and Peasant Societies (1971); reprint Aylesbury, 1976), 11-19; George Dalton, ‘Peasantries in anthropology and history’, Current Anthropology, XIII (1972), 385-415; Daniel Thorner, ‘Peasant economy as a category in economic history’, in Shanin (ed.), Peasants and Peasant Societies, 202-18, esp. 202—51 James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, 1976); Samuel the

Popkin,

The Rational Peasant: The Political

Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley, 1979), and Sydel Silverman, ‘The peasant concept in anthropology’, Journal of Peasant Studies, VII (1979), 49-69. 10 Of the writers cited in fn. 9, only Thorner and possibly Shanin place as much stress as Macfarlane does on the nature of the peasant household. 11 Macfarlane’s model of peasantry resembles Thorner’s very closely, except in one

family

significant

respect. Thorner does not seem to insist that the peasant family household be the basic unit of ownership in peasant societies. In his view the ‘most fundamental feature’ of these societies is that the family household constitutes ‘the typical and most representative unit of production’ (‘Peasant economy’, 205, quoted in Macfarlane, Origins, 14). According to Macfarlane, ‘the central feature of “peasantry” is the absence of absolute ownership of land, vested in a specific individual' (80). 12 Wolf, Peasants, 1-17, 48-59. 13 See, for example, Wolf, Peasants, 37-48; Redfield, Peasant Society, 35-9.

parts of a larger society that includes cities and a state organization, he overlooks the need in such a society for some distributional mechanisms by which food and

products can reach those members of a peasant society who are not engaged agricultural production. Early on, he remarks that peasant societies are distinguishable from some tribal societies in having markets (13); but he later treats the existence of markets and production for them in medieval England as clear evidence that this was a capitalist and not a peasant society (152). other in

III. Medieval So

contradictory

a

‘Capitalism’

and

view about the role of markets in

that Macfarlane’s

of

‘Individualism’

agricultural

societies reveals

is also confused. In

one place or conception capitalism markets, money, local exchange, production for a market, extensive division of labour, hired labour and a land market as clear signs of a capitalist economic system. Now a society with none of these a pure natural economy certainly did not exist in medieval England; nobody has ever supposed that it did. The problem which Macfarlane does not adequately discuss nor, for that matter, have other historians been much more successful in doing so is that these institutions, individually and in various combinations, can be found in unambiguously pre-capitalist societies. So can a variety of family and kinship relations. Macfarlane has given a new twist to the argument made by Talcott Parsons about the special affinity of the nuclear family with industrial capitalism; since we find the nuclear family in medieval England, it must be because medieval England was also capitalist. But there were nuclear families in Carolingian society, and in many other parts of the pre- or non-capitalist world. 14 Either ‘capitalism’ is a concept capable of indefinite extension backwards and sideways, or else the nuclear family must have been more predominant in medieval England than, say, in Carolingian Europe. Yet Macfarlane provides no evidence of this. Kinship terminology turns out to be an even more slippery type of evidence of medieval ‘capitalism’. Medieval English villages employed an ‘eskimo-type’ of kinship reckoning, which Macfarlane claims is well adapted to capitalism (144-7), but how can we explain the fact that the same system is used by tribes which had not the use of fire and believed (until anthropologists disillusioned them) that they were the only people in the world? Troublesome as these difficulties are, they are less serious than the shifts to which Macfarlane must resort to maintain the claim that because medieval English people sometimes acted in ways that seem rational, self-interested and individualistic, they must have been living in a capitalist society. His crude dichotomy between individualism and collectivism makes his model of peasant society even more rigid and inapplicable. He also clears the ground for the familiar argument whose ideological uses are obvious that capitalist societies exist almost everywhere. Macfarlane does not actually make this argument; but since he seems to endorse

another,

he cites

–

–

–

–

–

–

14

On Carolingian families see Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the

Seventh

to

the

Howard B. Clarke

Twelfth Centuries, trans. (Ithaca, N. Y., 1974), 34.

genius of English institutions lies in the forests of (5, 170, 206), it would appear that eight centuries of 'individualism' had preceded its epiphany to Macfarlane in thirteenth-century legal The principles of capitalism, if not laws of nature, are at least fundamental

Montesquieu’s

views that the

Tacitus’ Germania records.

Anglo-Saxon attitudes. Even if Macfarlane’s concepts of peasantry, capitalism and individualism were sound, the empirical data that he adduces about English society would not sustain his main thesis. These

are

meant to show that a

system of absolute, individual

of real property has existed in England since around 1200 or 1250 and that in all other significant respects most ordinary English people since that date were ‘rampant individualists, highly mobile both geographically and socially,

ownership

economically “rational”, market-orientated and acquisitive, ego-centred in kinship and social life’. England ‘back to the thirteenth century was not based upon either “Community” or “communities’” (163). In order to show that the land-holding system of medieval and early modern England differs fundamentally from that found in true peasant societies, Macfarlane first sets out what he regards as necessary corollaries to the proposition that ‘The central feature of “peasantry” is the absence of absolute ownership of land, vested in a single individual’ (80). In his view, a newborn peasant either has full rights of ownership in the property of his co-residential kin, or at least possesses inalienable birthrights to that property. When the head of a peasant household dies, no property passes to his kin by will or intestate inheritance because his relatives already have property rights by virtue of their common membership in a property-holding family corporation. In such a system, he tell us, to talk of heirs at all is really misleading. ‘Primogeniture and peasant joint ownership are diametrically opposed’ (87), not only because real inheritance cannot exist in a peasant society, but also because primogeniture accords property to one person whose rights to it override the claims of his kin. Furthermore, since real property is collectively held by the peasant family household and not by its individual members and since it cannot be divided into individual shares, it can only be alienated by the entire family. A peasant woman can therefore have ‘no individual and exclusive property rights’ (80). If she leaves her natal family to live with her husband, she ‘may not take her land with her’ (91), not only because no individual peasant has property rights, but also because women are accorded inferior status (131). Members of peasant households regard their land not as a commodity or as capital, but as a symbol of their own social identity. They strive to keep it within their family and, with the support of their fellow villagers, out of the control of strangers (23-4). As a result, no real land market can exist. Macfarlane then argues that none of these propositions applies to the English system of village land tenure, at least after 1200; and that after that date, freeholds and customary tenures were owned by individual villagers who exercised absolute control over their property. Relying almost exclusively on the work of Maitland, he maintains that from 1200 onwards the rights of English freeholders in their property were not legally limited by the rights or claims of their relatives. Maitland had maintained that by Bracton’s time a feoffment to a man ‘and his heirs’

conveyed

a

heritable estate to the feoffee and

that after about

1200 a

his heirs and could

even

nothing

to the feoffee’s

heirs, and

tenant in fee could alienate his fee without the consent of

disinherit them

completely.

15

With

regard to freehold land,

therefore, Macfarlane feels justified in claiming that there is conclusive evidence for the existence of ‘a legal, de jure, system of private ownership’ (86). As for

questions whether previous writers, notably George C. Homans, have established conclusively that such lands were held by peasant families and not by individuals. 16 Homans had cited several manorial court cases to show that without the consent of his heir or heirs, a customary tenant could not alienate his land for a term longer than his own lifetime. Macfarlane claims, however, that these cases can be interpreted so as to be consistent with his own claim that legally, customary tenures, like freeholds, were owned by individuals

customary tenures, he

and not families. Since Macfarlane believes that to support his own argument he needs to show that ‘the possibility of complete [and legal?] alienation was

only

occasionally enforced’ (86), he feels justified in concluding family resource-owning unit which characterizes peasant societies does not seem in law at least, to have existed in England’ (86). Nevertheless, he goes beyond this minimal position to claim that many individual villagers actually exercised their right to alienate their land to non-kin without the consent of their kin, supporting his assertion by citing various statistics which he later uses to show that there was an active land market in medieval England. Macfarlane’s claim that a medieval English customary tenant was really the absolute owner of his tenancy is unconvincing. He is clearly right to say that historians have not amply documented familiar restraints on the power of customary tenants to alienate land; but his attempts to reinterpret Homans’s evidence on this point are not successful. Homans thinks several cases from manorial court rolls show that in some regions, at least, a customary tenant, acting alone, could only alienate land for his own lifetime, and he suggests that this would mean that the heir had a sort of birthright to his ancestor’s whole original tenancy, which he could not legally lose unless he freely waived it himself. The court of a Buckinghamshire manor ruled in 1293 that ‘no tenant of the lord can demise land except for his lifetime and that the heir is not bound to warrant [demises for a longer term ?]’. According to Homans, ‘this custom would prevent any permanent alienation of land from the village’. 17 Macfarlane, however, construes the ruling much more narrowly, claiming that it concerns only demises which he seems to take to be leases and that it is not inconsistent with another rule allowing a customary tenant to alienate in perpetuity by sale or gift (114— 15). Macfarlane does not explain why a tenant who could legally alienate his land in perpetuity would have been barred from making a lease for more than his own lifetime, nor why with such leases (but presumably not with gifts or sales) the tenant’s heir would present and

was

very

that ‘The

as

the basic

–

–

15

Sir

Frederick

Pollock

and

Frederic

William Maitland, The History of English Law before the Time of EdwardI, 2nd edn reissued with a new introduction and select bibliography by S. F. C. Milson, 2 vols

(Cambridge, 1968), II, 308-13. 16 George C. Homans, English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (1940; reprint New York, 1960), especially 195-207. 17 Ibid 196. .

have had

no

is

not as ‘lease’

obligation

glossed as ‘conveyance’ 18 completely. but

or

Moreover, if ‘demise’ considerably later document)

to warrant to his ancestor’s alienee.

(as might

be

appropriate

for

a

‘alienation’, Macfarlane’s reading of the

case

falls apart

by Homans, a manor court in Burley in Rutland ruled that bought some land and held it ‘throughout her lifetime’ could ‘after her death, sell it, bequeath it, or assign it to no one’. Homans thinks the case shows that the buyer ‘certainly did not acquire the rights which go with the 19 purchase in our modern sense of the word’. Macfarlane, however, claims that since land was frequently sold in perpetuity in later medieval England, the case merely reaffirmed the well-known thirteenth-century principle that ‘both freehold and customary land could be sold or alienated only during the lifetime of the owner and not post mortem by will’ (114). This case is very obscure, but surely Macfarlane’s interpretation is untenable. The customs of Burley may not conform to manorial practice elsewhere. Furthermore, in asserting that the case only concerns transfers of land by will, he overlooks a clear reference in the text to sales. More importantly, Macfarlane passes over the feature of the case that most concerned Homans: the fact that a woman who is said to have bought land and held it throughout her lifetime obviously had not acquired a heritable interest in it. This suggests that records of medieval land ‘sales’ may not always provide In another

a woman

case

cited

who had

evidence of the kind of land market Macfarlane

sees.

20

There is another serious weakness in Macfarlane’s treatment of medieval land

consistently fails to pierce the veil of legal texts to see how villagers actually managed their lands and to identify the sentiments or attitudes that such practices may reflect. We say ‘consistently’ because he seems not to do this on principle. To Macfarlane, the ‘crux of the matter is who owned the land’ (102). He argues that ‘to show that when the father dies the land does, in fact, usually go to the sons, or that when there is no will the family have first claim, is irrelevant’ (85) because his argument does not depend upon his ability to establish mere

tenures. He

18

We would like to thank S. E. Thorne for

raising this point. 19 Homans, English Villagers, 196 20 Another reading of the case

death, Macfarlane insists that they were ruling against the validity of post mortem (or post obit) gifts. (On these gifts, see Pollock and Maitland,

supports Homan’s general position even more strongly than his own reading. The test runs as follows: ‘Ad istam curiam venit Ricardus ate Mere et dat domino ij s. ad inquirendum si sit verus heres de terra quam Iuliana Ioye emit de Willelmo ate Mere... Qui dicunt per sacramentum suum quod dicta Iuliana emit dictam terram, habuit et tenuit toto tempore vite sue,

II, 317-29.) However, they both think that the jurors were referring to Juliana’s death and not William’s, and they therefore treat Juliana as the subject of the verb ‘potent’; but if the text is taken as referring to the death of William, who is then made the subject of this verb, then the case provides further support for Homan's claim that a customary tenant could only make an alienation that would last beyond his

post mortem nulli poterit vendere, legare assignare. Vnde concessa est seisina predicto Ricardo et heredibus suis’ (Homans, English Villagers, 442). Whereas Homans believes that the jurors were saying that a

own

.

.

set

nec

customary tenant could not make alienations that would last beyond the time of his or her

death if he secured the consent of his son and heir. This reading has the virtue of explaining why Richard was claiming to be the

‘true heir’ of the land bought from William by Juliana. (We are grateful to S. E. Thorne for suggesting this reading.)

‘statistical tendencies’ (86). He also sees no need to discuss ‘sentiment or what thought right’, because his concern is with ‘something deeper’. (The reader will

is

surprising but strong odour of structuralism.) method is open to many objections, some of which, though painfully obvious, should be mentioned. Scholars wishing to determine how any society views control over productive resources cannot justifiably limit their research to here catch the Such

a

English property law, which subject (chs. 4-5), were probably not even known to anyone in the village Macfarlane wishes to understand; the assumption that every villager understood or shared them is far-fetched. It might be legally possible for a father to give away all his land and goods to non-kin before his death, thus defeating the hopes of inheritance of his children; but if people in fact hardly ever behaved this way, is this a meaningless ‘statistical tendency’ ? English manorial custom is actually unintelligible if social practice and attitudes are ignored, because manorial court decisions were frequently shaped by those very ‘statistical tendencies’ that took on the character of customary practice, and by the sentiments particularly of jurors that were directly or indirectly expressed in court proceedings. The Eastern European ethnographers on whose work the

study

of

legal

doctrines. Bracton’s views

constitute Macfarlane’s

principal

–

on

this

source on

–

Macfarlane’s model of peasantry is based could not have arrived at their interpretations of Polish or Russian landholding without having used, and placed great

emphasis on, the very kinds of evidence that Macfarlane deliberately ignores. Finally, one can easily show that there are significant differences between societies with apparently similar rules governing real property by demonstrating that they recognize very different sorts of extra-legal norms. The ill consequences of Macfarlane’s refusal to consider the social and moral villagers exercised their property rights are reflected

context within which medieval not

only

that Homans

in the absence of any serious study of the kinds of village customs Hilton discusses, but also in his tacit decision not to mention

or

several

important and obvious villagers. He barely mentions

limitations

on

the property

individualistic property owners were freedom, while all the rest were free tenants whose a

communities whose members often acted or

English

obligations to lords neglects to point belonged to village

lot from those of modern freeholders. He also

out that many of his individualistic medieval landowners

land and other

of

that, legally, many of his absolute, serfs with more than nominal restrictions on

their

differed rather

rights

the fact

resources

collectively to

could be used. And who owned

restrict the ways in which ‘property’ is not the only,

perhaps not even the most important question; in focusing only on it Macfarlane error recently discussed by E. P. Thompson of taking no account

has fallen into the of what

was

owned

or

inherited. 21 From Macfarlane’s discussion

realize that the tenements of

use-rights seems 21

in communal

villagers

resources

were

such

as

one

would

generally comprised partly

never

of various

pasture, wastes, forests and water. He ‘rampant individualists’ to

not to see how difficult it would have been for

Thompson, ‘The grid of inheritance: comment’, in Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk and E. P. Thompson (eds.), Family and E. P. a

Society in Western Europe (Cambridge, 1976), 328-60, esp.

Inheritance: Rural 1200-1800

328.

on the complex system of village agriculture and husbandry which many medieval social and economic historians have described. Finally, since Macfarlane barely acknowledges that he is writing about a Christian culture, he

have carried

naturally says nothing about the parish community, about the obligations of villagers to support ecclesiastical institutions, or about the church laws and moral prescriptions that affected the lives of the people whose social life he wishes to explain. Macfarlane’s decision not to discuss any of these legal or extra-legal restrictions the freedom and property rights of English villagers constitutes the most serious

on

flaw in his attempt to show that a system of absolute, individual ownership existed village level in medieval England. It is only by studiously avoiding any

at the

organizations, such as the manor, the village, the parish regional community, that Macfarlane is able to suggest that English villagers were, in other respects, ‘rampant individualists’. The only community he discusses that could possibly have mediated between individual people on the one hand and English society on the other is the co-residential family. Omission of others is unjustifiable; but even if we narrow our focus to the family, Macfarlane has not demonstrated that medieval English families were structurally identical to modern ones. Because the evidence is so scanty about medieval peasant family life, and perhaps because he has anthropological training, he lays great weight on systems of kinship reckoning and terminology. He maintains that whereas many peasant societies employ ancestor-focused systems of kinship reckoning (whether unilineal or cognatic), medieval and modern English society both employ ego-centred systems (144-7). The only source cited for medieval kinship reckoning is Maitland’s interpretation of Bracton’s remarks about common-law rules of descent. He does not inquire how good Bracton’s evidence on this point is; and in his eagerness to stress the modernity of this system, he does not mention Maitland’s acute comment that Bracton’s parentelic system seems quite unnatural to modern 22 English people. His discussion of medieval English kinship terminology is even less convincing, because it is based upon records in a language not spoken by the people with whom he is concerned and because it seems to be inconsistent with other evidence about changes that may have occurred in linguistic usage. 23 discussion of communal or

the

IV. Land and Labour Markets? A further basic

Macfarlane,

similarity

between medieval and modern

English society, to Ages. He

is that land and labour markets existed in the later Middle

shows that medieval

English villagers

sometimes had servants and hired labourers

22

Pollock and Maitland, II, 386. In Reconstructing Historical Communities (Cambridge, 1977), 178, Macfarlane says, on the basis of analysing a dozen wills in one community, that kinship terminology in 23

sixteenth- and was used in the

seventeenth-century England

same way as in contemporary England. If he had extended this minute

sample

very much he would have known that was often used where we would use ‘nephew’ or ‘niece’, that ‘son’ was commonly used for ‘son-in-law’ as well as natural son, that mothers-in-law were usually called ‘mother’, while ‘mother-in-law' meant ‘cousin’

‘stepmother’.

working for them and sometimes conveyed real property rights to people other than their known relatives. His evidence (mostly taken from the as yet unpublished work of Richard Smith) only shows the number of occasions on which such practices are recorded for a particular period. Even if, as Macfarlane claims, this means that such practices were very common, we are told little about their structural significance. We need to know, for example, at what stage in the family life-cycle land transactions most often took place. In Broughton in Huntingdonshire, younger sons had the right to take possession of their portion of their parents’ moveables before the parents died; they could sell these to buy land and thus gain 24 Thus a certain volume of land a settlement in the same parish as their parents. sales could grow out of a desire to maintain close relations with the family of origin. It is certainly risky to assume, as Macfarlane seems to do, that all kinds of conveyances of different-sized parcels of different sorts of lands can usually all be 25 lumped together, and that if the parties to all these conveyances cannot be shown to have been kin, they must have been strangers whose only tie to one another was established by the conveyance. Land transactions do not amount to a land market until land is regarded as ‘just another commodity’ (23). The same is true of a ‘labour market’. Labourers and servants may have worked

for wages in both the thirteenth and nineteenth that the wage-labour relationship was the same.

but this does not

mean

Its character in the Middle

Ages

centuries,

sentiments of the

people

light of the motives and formally, fleetingly and imperfectly

must be inferred in the

whose lives

were so

recorded. which

As

have seen, Macfarlane ignores motives and sentiments on principle perhaps is just as well, when we see what he does to evidence that might

in fact

yield

and

we

–

some

a sermon.

insight

into them. At

Both discuss the

one

point

he treats

a

late medieval poem

of parents at the hands of children to their property. To Macfarlane, of course, they

sufferings

whom the parents had turned over ‘illustrate not only the extreme individualization of property rights but also the fact that parents had no customary rights to the wealth of their children’ (143).

But,

as

Emmanuel le

imitative of social and

Roy Ladurie has recently pointed out, literature is often ‘not life, but normative in relation to it’. 26 These are not legal texts,

chiefly evidence of norms about how children should treat their parents. literary source he uses extensively is the seventeenth-century diary of Ralph Josselin, which, he tells us, provides ‘the most intimate and detailed insight into the mind and activities of a yeoman farmer that we possess’ (62). Fortunately, this diary also requires little historical imagination to understand; it ‘reveals a man whose motives and actions are almost totally familiar’, who lived in a startlingly ‘modern’ world (3). 27 Let us see what this text tells us about the family and the are

Another

24

Britton, ‘The peasant family in fourteenth-century England’, Peasant Studies, v (1976), 5; 25 On this point see Cicely Howell, ‘Peasant Edward

inheritance

customs

in

the

Midlands,

1280—1700’, in Family and Inheritance, 112-55, esp. 135-8.

26

Emmanuel le

Roy Ladurie, Love, Death

and Money in the Pays d'Oc, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1982), 148. 27 Ten years ago, before his discovery that the English people were ‘rampant individualists', Macfarlane saw the diarist quite differently: ‘The basic structure of his

thought

is

‘labour market’ in the seventeenth century. One of Josselin’s first servants was own sister, whom he resolved to continue treating as a sister. When his first

his

married, Josselin referred to her as ‘the first that marryed out of my family’, just as he regarded his own time of living in another household as creating 28 a quasi-familial relationship. Sending children into another household as apprentices or servants was perhaps a precursor of proletarianization, but it bears a closer resemblance to the custom of fosterage. Of course the fact that productive units were small and the relationship between employers and workers conceived as paternal does not mean it could not be cruel and exploitative. What it could not be was impersonal, yet this is the criterion if labour is to be treated purely as a servant

commodity. Most of the medieval and

sources

early

which Macfarlane has used allow him to

modern

family

as

only transitory a

interpret

the

association of self-interested

individuals. Parents, in particular, have little to gain from their children. They have to bind them with maintenance agreements, lest they find themselves turned out

parish, or at best stingily supported at the end of their active lives. Small wonder, then, that they would wring every benefit they could from their power to give away all their land and goods and leave the children with nothing. And if this is the way members of the nuclear family might treat one another, it is hardly to be expected that more remote kin would rate more than a passing nod. Yet Josselin’s diary shows that the effective circle of kin was sometimes (perhaps usually) larger than the nuclear family, and that kinfolk felt a sense of responsibility for one another even when they did not participate in a common domestic budget. The first entry expresses Josselin’s sense of familial grievance, in the mode of claiming not to have felt it: ‘I was the eldest sonne in our whole Family and yett possest not a foote of land in which yett I praise god I have not felt inward discontent and grudging.’ 29 He eventually inherited a considerable estate from one to the

of his uncles. Towards his sisters, Josselin says,

god gave mee a heart to seeke their good in some measure, my father living and dead, and especially my sister Anna in hindring her from marrying a widdow[er], when my father had cast her of, and in reconciling her unto him agayne... When my father 30 forgett to doe for them.

was

dead in my poverty, I blesse

god

I did not

At various times he gave money to his sisters, and even to a maid who formerly worked for his father, commenting on one such occasion: ‘the lord be blessed that

hardly ever directly revealed, yet we may approach it indirectly by piecing together attitudes towards particular phenomena and guessing intuitively at the connections. This “imaginative leap” is made both easier and harder if the reader is a product of “Western” society. The gain in understanding from

a

shared tradition sometimes leads to

perception as to the differences between Josselin’s mental world and our own. Only occasionally, in the references to a witcha

loss of

craft trial or an apocalyptic vision, are we into the recognition that his perception of the world may have been based on many

jolted

assumptions totally of Josselin, 163.)

alien to

us,’ (Family Life

28

He notes the death of someone in that household as ‘the second that dyed as it were of my family, in the families wherein I have

lived’. (Diary of Ralph Josselin, 15, 191.) 29

Ibid 1. Ibid 4. .

30

.

to be a friend to any of my kindred’. 31 He also at least once got such his uncle Simon helped him pay his rent. 32 assistance; Since Macfarlane lays so much stress on the absolute ownership of land by

enables

mee

fathers and the

possibility of disinheritance, it is also worth examining Josselin’s son John. Macfarlane, naturally, quotes what seems to be

relations with his evidence of

an

actual disownment:

John declared for his disobedience

no son; I should allow him nothing except servant, yet if he would depart and live in service I would allow him 10 li. yearly: if he so walkt as to become gods son,

he tooke himselfe to bee

orderly

I should yet

own

a

him for mine. 33

In fact, however, their relations seem never to have been completely broken off; despite the fact that John gave no great sign of walking as God’s son, he was not disinherited. In 1679 Josselin settled the moiety of Stonebridge Meadow on and

him and gave him a yearly income of 50 shillings out of it; and he 34 legatee in the will that his father eventually made.

was

the residuary

Once

again, when one goes from a text as Macfarlane treats it to the living world produced it, real social relations are more complex than, and sometimes quite incompatible with, his representation to them. This can be seen dramatically in the seventeenth century, thanks to Josselin’s diary; the problem must be much worse in the thirteenth century, where we must depend largely on manorial documents in an artificial language which hardly any English villager could read. which

V. The Lessons of Macfarlane If Macfarlane had written

a

about it at such

some

merely silly book, there would be no need to go on years after its publication. We must not overlook what can be learned from his attempt to confront some stereotyped views of medieval peasant societies and to propose a more adequate one in the light of recent research. To be sure, he seriously misrepresents the current historiographical scene length,

and

when he suggests that historians as different as Hilton, Homans, Postan and Raftis all support the conventional framework that he attacks, and gives a one-sided

reading

to current

anthropological

literature when he

implies

that most students

of peasant societies treat a particular sort of household organization as the most crucial feature of ‘peasantry’. Nevertheless, there is a point to his claim that some of his opponents have not successfully assimilated the implications of recent work in social history. Throughout the book (and especially in chs 4-6) he sites recent

by scholars who probably do not share his new-found belief in early English individualism, but whose work sometimes seems to provide support for this thesis. These studies treat such topics as birth, death and marriage; patterns of inheritance or ‘devolution’; the ‘land market’; and the social structure of local communities. studies

31

Ibid 287, 319, 106.

32

Ibid 191.

33

Ibid

.

.

582, quoted

misquoted, since ‘walkt’ is omitted in Macfarlane, Origins, 63. 34 Diary of Josselin, 648, Macfarlane, Family Life of Josselin, Appendix C, 211-13. –

.

–

or

rather, slightly

Whatever

one thinks of Macfarlane’s attempt to alchemize these findings, they society far more complex, varied and dynamic than the one portrayed in older works, and suggest patterns of development considerably less straight-forward than the ones sketched boldly and perhaps crudely by earlier students of English social development. More recent attempts at synthesis have generally been rare and half-hearted, so it is not always easy to tell precisely how most writers on medieval and early modern English social history would now answer the kind of question which Marc Bloch took as the starting point for his forty-year-old study of medieval feudalism: ‘What are the distinctive features of this portion of the past which have given it a claim to be treated in isolation?’ 35 Many English social historians either ignore Bloch’s question, by producing 36 empirical studies not really designed to answer it, or else try to answer on the basis of assumptions very different from his. They either abandon the term ‘feudalism’ completely, or employ it only to name certain limited features of Anglo-Norman and Angevin society. In its place they seem more comfortable using terms like ‘traditional’, ‘pre-industrial’ or ‘pre-modern’ to characterize the social order that existed in England for over a millenium before the Industrial Revolution. 37 Many, like Macfarlane, treat the ‘traditional’ or ‘pre-modern’ family not as an important though not pre-eminent research topic (which was Bloch’s approach), but as the central focus of research around which all other institutions, practices and social developments should be organized. Furthermore, once the history of the family is made pre-eminent, it is reconstructed from statistical indices measuring mean household size, household structure, alienation of real property, inheritance patterns, market production and other quantifiable phenomena. This approach has an affinity with modernization theory, which tends to use various statistical indices not only to measure particular forms of behaviour, but also to calculate the rate at which society became ‘modernized’. In its operational form, this way of looking at ‘pre-industrial’ England provides a clear, if seriously limited blueprint for research into English social history. It gives an explicit and plausible rationale for focusing on easily quantifiable aspects of family life, while implicitly licensing historians to ignore or slight many issues central to an understanding of medieval and early modern European societies.

reveal

a

35 Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans L. A. Manyon, with a foreword by M. M. Postan (Chicago, 1961), xx. 36 See Rodney Hilton, ‘Introduction’, in Paul Sweezy et al.,The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (1976; reprint 1978),

9-30, esp. 10-11. 37 On the views of feudalism commonly adopted by English historians see M. M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society. An Economic History of Britain, 1100-1500

(Berkeley, Calif., 1972), 78-81, and Stephen D. White, ‘English feudalism and its origins’, American Journal of Legal History, xix (1975), 138-55. The term ‘traditional society’ is

particularly favoured by writers influenced by Max Weber. See, for example, David Little, Religion, Order, and Law: A Study in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York, 1969). Among writers of recent surveys of economic history, the term ‘pre-industrial’ seems to enjoy particular favour. See, for example, J. D. Chambers, Population, Economy, and Society in Pre-Industrial England, ed. with a preface and introduction by W. A. Armstrong (1972); L. A. Clarkson, The Pre-Industrial Economy in England, 150 -170 (1971); B. A. Holderness, Pre-Industrial England; Economy and Society, 1500-1700 (1976).

and this is

view

always seductive to the English mind the structures fashioned from this blueprint look as though they were built from the ground up with nothing but hard empirical data, even though the choice of building materials was implicitly dictated by some variant of modernization theory. Nevertheless, this way of looking at England’s past can lead to embarrassing difficulties. Once ‘traditional’ society is equated with a particular statistical configuration, the computer can be troublesome if it spews out a ‘modern’ statistic for the thirteenth or fourteenth century. And what if anomalous findings spout out all the time? Macfarlane, to his credit, is ready to face this question boldly, and proposes an endearingly simple answer that does not involve a retreat from a family-centred view of historical development. He holds fast to a theory by which certain statistical and legal patterns in family life really measure modernity, and insists that we accept whatever conclusions emerge from an application of the theory to empirical findings about medieval England. If what he regards as indices of modernity reveal modernity in the twelfth century, or in the German forests, Moreover

so

–

a

–

be it.

We shall not propose an alternative synthesis here. Obviously our quarrel is not with ideal types or generalizations per se. They are essential maps of the historical

terrain, and necessarily

background.

We have

must concentrate on some features and leave others in the

wish for

a historiography as precise and detailed as the Sylvia, which was on a I : I scale, but could not objected. Nor would we wish to return to the historiographical equivalent of Walter Scott’s medieval novels, or to that sort of Marxism that thinks ‘feudalism’ can simply be defined as ‘the mode of production that everywhere preceded capitalism’. The problem, rather, is which features of medieval or early modern society our models should emphasize. no

map in Lewis Carrol’s Bruno and be deployed because the farmers

It is worth recalling that to answer the question Bloch posed he examined many different facets of social life, but ultimately identified the distinctive features of feudal society in political organization, dominant types of social relationships

between and within classes, and class structure itself. 38 Thus, his substantive and methodological views about feudalism closely resemble the ideas about peasantry espoused by recent anthropologists like Eric Wolf, who believes that among the several distinctive features of peasant societies it is particularly important that ‘peasants are rural cultivators whose surpluses are transferred to a dominant 39 In short, social history, when it seeks to characterize historical group of rulers’. epochs or the process of historical change, cannot afford to be history with politics

left out:

history 38

nor can

of the

it afford to rest its gaze solely on the family. And not even the can adequately be understood through statistics alone, or by

family

Ibid 441—7, esp. 446. Wolf, Peasants, 3-4. Macfarlane calls this .

39

work ‘authoritative’ (9) but does not directly allude to this feature of Wolf's view of peasantry. While he quotes Teodor Shanin’s statement

that the activities of peasant farms

‘are geared mainly

consumption

to

production of family and

need of

the basic the dues

enforced by the holders of political and power’ (Shanin, The Awkward Class

economic

[Oxford, 1972], 28-9; quoted by Macfarlane p. 8), he does so only to support his

on

contention that in peasant household

production (8).

peasant is the

economies the basic unit of

40

emphasis on structure to the exclusion of sentiment. The new models that Macfarlane challenges us to build must, unlike his, represent the distribution of an

social power and the mental world of the past.

40

Ladurie’s Love, Death and Money in the in fact an example of bringing the

Pays d'Oc is

rigour of structural analysis

to bear in order reveal the histoire des sentiments.

to

III

Clotild’s

Revenge: Politics,

Kinship, and Ideology

in the

Merovingian Blood Feud

Introduction Sometime after the death of the Frankish

king Clovis in 511, according to Gregory of Tours, his widow Clotild, daughter of the deceased Burgundian king Chilperic, met with her three sons to instigate an attack on two of her cousins, Sigismund and his brother Godomar (III.6), 1 whose father Gundobad, Clotild’s patrilateral uncle, had killed his brother Chilperic and Chilperic’s wife (11.28). Addressing Chlodomer and her two other sons, Childebert I and Lothar

I, Clotild declared:

do not give me cause to regret the fact that I with such care. You must surely resent the brought you up 2 which has been done to me. You must do all in your power to wrong of mother and father.” When they had listened to the death avenge my

“My dear children,

...

have

her appeal they set out for Burgundy. They marched against Sigismund and his brother Godomar. (III. 5) The Franks defeated the

captured, along

with his

their troops

Burgundians. Godomar fled and Sigismund was wife and children, by Chlodomer, who brought

1. Parenthetical references in the text and notes are to book and chapter numbers in Gregory of Tours, Decem Libri Historiarum, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merowingicarum, vol. 1, pt. 1 (revised edition; Hanover/Leipzig, 1951). Translations are taken or adapted from Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth,

Middlesex, 1974). 2.

Throughout this essay,

e.g„ III.6

I

use

wrong in

preference to Gregory’s term injuria (see,

[bis] and III.7).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-3

them back

departed, wife, and

as

prisoners

Godomar

the Orléanais. When the Frankish kings had back his kingdom. After killing Sigismund, his

to

won

their

children, Chlodomer attacked Godomar with support Theuderic, who had previously married a daughter of Sigismund (III.5). 3 In the ensuing battle, Godomar’s army cut off Chlodomer’s head, “stuck it on a stake and raised it in the air.” But the Franks recovered and drove out Godomar: “They conquered the Burgundians from his half brother

and took

over

their country.” Later, Godomar

won

back his

4

kingdom (III.6). Even though this conflict between the Franks and the Burgundians involved relatively large groups, was waged partly for control of territory, and presumably led to the deaths of many people who were not kin of the principals, 5 it can still be understood as a feud since it displays so 6 many other features characteristic of this kind of process. Instead of representing

the deaths of Godomar

as

Sigismund and Chlodomer and the defeat of 7 Gregory of Tours’s History locates them in

isolated events,

3. The daughter, I assume, was born of Sigismund’s first wife and was thus a full sister of Sigeric (see below). 4. On this episode see, in particular, J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, “The Bloodfeud of the Franks,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 41 (1959); reprinted in J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings (Toronto, 1982), 121-47; I. N. Wood, “Clermont and Burgundy: 511-534,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 32 (1988): 119-25; and lan Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450-751 (London, 1994), 43, 52-54, which appeared after the present study was substantially complete. See also Roger Collins, Early Medieval Europe, 300-1000 (New York, 1991), 155-56; and Edward James, The Franks (Oxford, 1988), 85-86, 93-94. 5. In these respects the conflict differs from medieval Icelandic feuds, as analyzed and outlined in William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago, 1990), 180-81. 6. Wallace-Hadrill treated it as a “royal feud” between “two royal kins, related by marriage but distinct and separated by a considerable distance” (“Bloodfeud,” 131). The conflict exhibits most features of feuds identified by Miller (Bloodtaking and

Peacemaking, 180-81). 7. On the History,

see

Mélanges d’histoire du

Louis

Halphen, “Grégoire

de Tours, historien de Clovis,” in

moyen âge offerts à M. Ferdinand Lot par ses amis et ses élèves

235-44 (Paris, 1925); Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings, 49-70 and passim; Walter Goffart, “From Historiae to Historia Francorum and Back Again: Aspects of the Textual History of Gregory of Tours,” in Religion, Culture, and Society in the Early Middle Ages, ed. T. F. X. Noble and J. J. Contreni (Kalamazoo, 1987), reprinted in Walter Goffart, Rome’s Fall and After (London, 1989), 255-74; I. N. Wood, “Gregory of Tours and Clovis,” Revue Beige de philologie et d'histoire 63 (1985): 249-72; I. N. Wood, “The Secret Histories of Gregory of Tours,” Revue Beige de philologie et d’histoire 71 (1993): 253-70; Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, esp. 28-32; and Yitzhak Hen, “Clovis, Gregory of Tours, and Pro-Merovingian Propaganda,” Revue Beige de philologie et d’histoire 71 (1993): 271-76.

Clotild’s

a

single

them

as

Revenge

narrative and suggests, as well, that participants understood 8 phases in an ongoing conflict between two groups. The leaders

of each group

clearly recruited or identified on the basis of kinship: the Burgundians was instigated by the daughter of Gundobad’s two homicide victims and led by their grandsons; and the Burgundians were led by Gundobad’s sons. Notions of collective liability were

the Franks’ attack

on

animated the entire conflict: 9 vengeance for the deaths of Clotild’s parents was taken by their grandson on their slayer’s son, Sigismund, and on

Sigismund’s taken

on

wife and

Chlodomer

children; vengeance for Sigismund’s death was by Burgundian followers of Sigismund’s brother

Godomar. The entire conflict

was

governed by

“a notion of

exchange

...

a

kind

of my-turn/your-turn rhythm, with offensive and defensive positions 10 alternating after each encounter.” Each attack sooner or later elicited a counterattack that could be

represented

as an

Chlodomer’s homicides

act

of retaliation for

a

previous

clearly represented as committed after he was vengeance killings, charged with the task of his matrilateral avenging grandparents’ deaths. Furthermore, he chose a well-known method of killing that was deemed especially heinous under Frankish law;11 that clearly recalled the drowning of his mother’s mother; and that compensated Clotild for the wrong Gundobad had previously done to her, since the deaths of Sigismund, his wife, and their children balanced the deaths of Chilperic and his wife and the exile of their children. 12 In response to Chlodomer’s killings, the Burgundians marked Chlodomer’s death as a vengeance killing by displaying his sevwrong.

of

were

8. According to Wallace-Hadrill’s “working definition,” feud is: “first, the threat hostility between kins; then the state of hostility between them; and finally, the satisfaction of their differences and a settlement on terms acceptable to both” (“Blood-

feud,” 122). 9. “Feud involves collective nor, for that matter, need the

liability. The target need not be the

vengeance-taker be the

person most

actual wrongdoer, wronged” (Miller,

Bloodtaking, 180). 10. Miller, Bloodtaking, 181. 11. On the unusually high compensation to be paid for mathleodi (killing by throwing down a well or holding under water), see The Laws of the Salian Franks, with an introduction by Katherine Fisher Drew (Philadelphia, 1981), 104-5, 180-81. For archaeological evidence bearing on this method of killing or disposing of dead bodies, see, e.g., P. Schröter, “Skelettreste aus zei römischen Menschenopfer bei den Germanen der Kaiserzeit,” Das Archäoloqische Jahr in Bayern (1984): 118-20.1 thank Thomas S. Burns for this reference. 12. On keeping score in feuds, see Miller, Bloodtaking, 181. trans.

on a

explicitly

invoked and endorsed

vengeance

by

stake

the Franks. 13

ered head

to

St. Avitus. After

as

Indeed, balanced exchange was principle underlying divine

the

telling

Chlodomer that if he showed

respect by sparing his prisoners the Lord would support him, the saint then warned him that if he killed his prisoners, “you will fall into to

God

the hands of your enemies and you will suffer

a

fate similar

to

theirs.

Whatever you do to Sigismund and his wife and children, the same will be done to you, your wife, and your sons” (III.6). Since Gregory’s narrative later shows that the saint’s

prophecy about how God would respond killings partially fulfilled by the subsequent killings of Chlodomer (III.6) and two of his sons, 14 it appears that for Gregory “God’s vengeance is of the same nature as that of any head of a family or to

Chlodomer’s

was

warband.” 15

Although many features of the Frankish-Burgundian conflict, as Gregory narrates it, become readily comprehensible if we treat it as a feud, others remain puzzling, partly because Gregory of Tours never explicates them fully and may have misrepresented the episode 16 and partly because they raise questions that general models of feuding are not designed to answer. In spite of its errors and inaccuracies, Gregory’s account of the feud is worth analyzing closely not only because it provides evidence about how he thought feuds were carried on but also because it poses problems of interpretation that frequently arise in accounts of feuds but that historians rarely confront. First, because the feud started so long after the killings it was meant to avenge 17 that it cannot have been initi-

13. See Wallace-Hadrill, “Bloodfeud,” 131-32. 14. Two of Chlodomer’s children were killed by Lothar; the third escaped and became a priest. After his death his widow Guntheoc married Lothar (see below). 15. Wallace-Hadrill, “Bloodfeud,” 127. Gregory, he asserts, sees divine vengeance as “nothing less than God’s own feud in support of his servants, who have no other kin. God will avenge crimes specially heinous in the Church’s eyes—parricide, for example, crimes within the family generally and crimes involving all who lack natural protectors. The agent may be God himself directly intervening to strike down the culprit He (for instance with sickness) or it may be a human agent, [such] as the king. strikes to kill, to avenge insult—to himself, to his children or to his property. The Frankish churchmen cannot in any other way see ultio divina in a society dominated by the bloodfeud.” 16. See Wood, “Clermont and Burgundy,” esp. 122-25; and Wood, “Gregory of Tours,” 253-56. 17. It commenced about thirty years later according to Wood (“Gregory of ...

Tours,” 253).

ated in “hot

blood,” 18

and because it

eventually

led

to

Frankish territorial

conquests as well as vengeance killings, it is worth asking what motives or strategic considerations were actually involved in initiating it this

19

Why did the feud break out when it did? Since Clotild could have invoked her stated rationale for the attack any time after her parents died, did she do so at this time because she finally at

particular

had the her

moment.

practical

sons

that

needed

means

to avenge

her parents’ deaths, because she and

pretext for launching an attack on the Burgundians had other grounds for initiating, or because she had other reasons a

they for considering this an opportune time for waging a feud? If revenge was the real motive for the attack, why wasn’t it invoked more consistently by Frankish participants such as Chlodomer, who justified his killings by explaining that they made good military sense? If Clotild’s desire to avenge her parents was simply a pretext for attacking people whom she and her initiated with the

Second,

sons

had other

Burgundians really

many interrelated

example,

dead and

a

not

questions

Why did

was

the conflict she

a

war? 20

to

and strategy. 21 Why, Theuderic after Sigismund was

timing, motives,

summon

he

attack,

support the Franks in a feud Burgundian affine Sigismund also raises

about

did Chlodomer before?

to

feud rather than

Theuderic’s belated decision

between his half brothers and his for

reasons

summon

him

at

all?

Why didn’t Theuderic

support the Franks from the very beginning of the feud? Absent from his stepmother’s meeting with his half brothers, which postdated his marriage

Sigismund’s daughter (III.5), Theuderic played no part in the early phases of the feud. Why did he join it at all, instead of remaining outside it or supporting Godomar in avenging “the wrong done to his to

18. On revenge

killings

committed in “hot blood,”

see

Wallace-Hadrill, “Blood-

feud,” 124-25. 19. Wood’s solution to the problem is to assume that the “vengeance motif” is Gregory’s interpolation (“Gregory of Tours,” 253, 255; “Clermont and Burgundy,” 122). 20. To show that historians have exaggerated the importance of feuding in early medieval Europe, Peter Sawyer argues, inter alia, that the Franks’ conflicts with the Burgundians, Thuringians, and Visigoths were wars not feuds (“The Bloodfeud in Fact and Fiction,” Tradition og Historie-Skrivning, Acta Jutlandica, 63, Humanistisk serie, no. 61 [1987]: 29). 21. If Wood is right to contest “Gregory’s belief that Theuderic supported Chlodomer” (“Clermont and Burgundy,” 122), then explaining this alliance disappears as a

problem in feuding.

of

Frankish

history

but

not

as a

problem

in the

history

of representations

22

If Theuderic joined Chlodomer Sigismund (III.6)? his Godomar because obligation to support his Frankish half against brothers outweighed his duty to avenge his father-in-law and his duty to support his Burgundian wife and affines, why didn’t he support the Franks earlier, joining their feud immediately? Did he have other reasons for finally allying himself with the Franks against the Burgundians? Finally, why, in Gregory’s estimation, did God participate in the Frankish-Burgundian feud only intermittently and ambiguously, implicating himself only obliquely in certain acts of Frankish revenge against the Burgundians and even taking vengeance on the Franks for one of their acts of vengeance, namely, Chlodomer’s killings? In separate passages, Gregory represents Sigismund and his brother Godomar, respectively, as targets of divine vengeance. But, by condemning Chlodomer’s killings through the mouth of St. Avitus and thereby treating them as wrongs that God would avenge, Gregory also implicated God not only in the vengeance killing of Chlodomer by the Burgundians but in the subsequent killings of Chlodomer’s sons by their patrilateral uncles, Lothar and Childebert. How, then, did Gregory understand the relationship between God’s vengeance and the vengeance taken by the Franks in their feud with the Burgundians? Why, in this particular feud, did God support the Franks only intermittently, withholding from them the full support he had previously given them in wars waged by Clovis? 23

father-in-law”

feuding practices and strategy, including God’s, by consulting general models, which of necessity and functions of feuding. By representing the selected features privilege feud as being relatively rare among the Franks, 24 by treating it primarily 25 and by explaining why as a sanction behind “every feud settlement,” 26 structuralist-functionalist models of feuds were likely to be settled,

These

cannot

questions

about

be answered

22. By using vindicare and injuria soon after using the same words in recounting Clotild’s speech to her sons, Gregory pointedly contrasts Theuderic’s behavior with that of Clotild’s sons, who did avenge a wrong to a relative. 23. See, e.g., 11.40. 24. “It must be wide of the mark to conceive of the Franks being at all often engaged in major kin-warfare” (Wallace-Hadrill, “Bloodfeud,” 126). 25. Wallace-Hadrill, “Bloodfeud,” 126. 26. “[T]he mere elaboration and interdependence of kin-groups may ensure a kind of immobility. Common blood and propinquity will always make for settlement” (Wallace-Hadrill, “Bloodfeud,” 125-26). See also Alexander Callendar Murray, Ger-

27

illuminate the

Frankish-Burgundian feud mainly by identifying pressures against feuding that were evidently overcome in this particular case. Models of the feud that represent it as an exchange of retaliatory attacks between hostile groups 28 do not explain, among other things, the timing of individual moves in a feud, such as Clotild’s meeting with her sons or Chlodomer’s summons of Theuderic. Nor do they show how participants in feuds could not only achieve vengeance but also serve other startegic purposes such as territorial conquest or the reinvention of kinship groups. Models representing the feud as a method of competing for 29 scarce resources do not leave much room for the multiple strategic purposes that the Frankish-Burgundian feud may have served. Juridical models are no more useful for the purpose of answering our specific questions about the Frankish-Burgundian feud. If we treat the feud as a legal institution, 30 which was based on a generally recognized 31 “obligation to participate in interkindred feuds on behalf of one’s kin” and was also limited by “a special ‘peace’ that made violent conflict within the clan a crime for which no compensation or atonement could be made,” 32 we can both see how the Franks’ feud with the Burgundians could have been justified and identify a desire to avenge wrongs to Clotild as a possible motive for it. But the model does not tell us why the wrong Clotild suffered was avenged through feud, while other wrongs were not; why the feud started when it did; or what strategic considerations other than vengeance were incorporated into it. Moreover, although the model indicates that the “kin” of those wronged by Chilperic were obliged to avenge this wrong, and could justifiably do so feuding

Kinship Structure: Studies in Law and Society in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies: Studies and Texts, vol. 65 (Toronto, 1983), 137. 27. A model of this kind underlies the discussion of feuding in Edward James, The Origins of France: From Clovis to the Capetians, 500-1000 (London, 1982), 87-88,

manic

92. 28. A model of this kind could be constructed out of Miller’s deliberately open-ended discussion of feuding (see Bloodtaking, 180-81). 29. See, for example, E. L. Peters’s foreword to Jacob Black-Michaud, Feuding Societies [also published under the title Cohesive Force] (Oxford, 1975), xxii, xxvi, xxvii. 30. “The tribal law did not so much forbid or discourage interclan violence as it set the rules according to which these feuds were to be carried on” (Patrick J. Geary, Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World [New York, 1988], 54). 31. Geary, Before France and Germany, 52. See also James, Origins of France, 87, 88; and James, The Franks, 172. 32. Geary, Before France and Germany, 52.

against Chilperic’s kin, it does not specify these kin precisely or explain why some of them joined the feud while others did not. Nor does it explain how the main participants on the Frankish side, including Theuderic as well as Clotild and her sons, negotiated the problem of feuding with a group to whom they were linked by kinship and/or marriage. Treating feuding practices as the product of obedience to determinate rules, 33 juridical models do not fully explain the role played in feuds by people such as Theuderic, who, depending on how the “rules” were interpreted, could have justifiably joined either side in the feud or avoided participation in it altogether. Treating the conduct of the feud as 34 equally rule-bound, juridical models cannot explain how killings such as the ones committed by Chlodomer could be interpreted either as fitting acts of revenge or as blatant violations of feuding norms. Finally, because conventional models represent the feud primarily as a political process, rather than as an ideological schema for interpreting politics, they provide no way of analyzing either the retrospective narratives of feuds that observers such as Gregory constructed or the stories about feuds that participants such as Clotild told and that were indispensable to the feuding process.

To

as

questions

about

the

Frankish-Burgundian feud proceeded Gregory assigned to to how it with other kinds of political we need see intersected God, from models of feuding. that are excluded processes necessarily general We also need to view the Merovingian feud not just as a political process but also as a coherent yet flexible cultural schema for organizing political practices and imagining politics. Without the schema, no feud could have taken place. This approach is both facilitated and justified by Gregory’s 35 story of the feud, which he carefully linked to other story lines: one about Frankish-Burgundian relations down to the time of the Frankish conquest of Burgundy in 534; another about power struggles within the Frankish royal family after Clovis’s death in 511; and a third about answer our

why

it did when it did and what roles in it

33. On “the fallacies of the rule” as a method of explaining practices, see Pierre a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, 1977), 22-30. 34. See, e.g., the passage quoted above in note 30. 35. In the preface to book III of his History, Gregory cites Godomar’s loss of his homeland, inter alia, as proof that heretics would suffer divine punishment. Just before narrating the Frankish-Burgundian feud, he concludes the story about Sigismund's murder of his own son with the cryptic remark that Theuderic’s marriage to Sigismund’s daughter constituted an act of divine vengeance against Sigismund (III.5).

Bourdieu, Outline of

God’s feuds with Arians and others meriting divine vengeance. An examination of these different story lines and their interrelationships provides framework of addressing

questions about the Frankish-Burgundian feud. It also shows that feuding ideology was so capacious and manipulable and that feuding practices could incorporate so many different strategic considerations and goals other than revenge that the Merovingianm feud could have constituted “one of the key structures in which the 36 competition for power, the struggle for dominance, [was] played out.” Although this view of the Merovingian feud will be developed mainly through a study of the Frankish-Burgundian conflict, its applicability to several other Frankish feuds will be discussed in passing. a

Other

Story

Having we now

In

Lines

considered need

Franks and

our

to

Gregory’s

account

of the

Frankish-Burgundian feud,

examine the other stories with which he associated it.

Burgundians

Gregory’s History,

the feud fits into

a

longer

reign

down

Frankish conquest of the 530s. The main

events

relations from Clovis’s

1. After

3.

4.

in the story

are as

follows.

killing his brother Chilperic and Chilperic’s wife and exiling daughters, Clotild and Chroma, Gundobad acquiesced in Clovis’s marriage to Clotild (11.28). In return for several promises that were never honored, Clovis helped Godigisel to defeat Gundobad (11.32). After agreeing to pay an annual tribute to Clovis, who had withdrawn from Burgundy, and then paying for only one year, Gundobad killed Godigisel, became sole ruler of the Burgundians (11.33), and converted from Arianism to orthodoxy without, however, espousing the Trinity publicly (11.34). Upon the death of Gundobad, his son Sigismund inherited the kingdom and, at the urging of his second wife, killed Sigeric, his their

2.

story about Frankish-Burgundian the definitive

through

36. Miller,

Bloodtaking, 181;

see

also 179.

son

by

his first wife.

married Clovis’s

son

Sigismund’s daughter by

5. The feud with the in control of his

his first wife then

Theuderic (III.5).

Burgundians instigated by kingdom (III.6).

Clotild left Godomar

6. Much later, Lothar and Childebert put Godomar to flight and conquered “the whole of Burgundy,” doing so without support from

Theuderic, who had refused

to

join them (III. 11).

This factitious chronicle reveals that the

Frankish-Burgundian feud immediately marriage Sigismund’s daughter and transformed Frankish-Burgundian relations, as the Franks permanently now expanded their power into Burgundy by trying to conquer it militarily, and not, as heretofore, by supporting one Burgundian faction against another in return for tribute and/or limited territorial control. Although the question of how the marriage, the feud, and the political transformation were connected can be fully explored only by considering internal Frankish politics, as well as the Franks’ relations with the Burgundians and other peoples, several points are clear. First, Gregory a posited connection between the marriage and the feud not only by treating them as successive events in his story but also by linking them in another way that has to be decoded. Having represented Theuderic’s marriage to Sigismund’s daughter as an act of divine vengeance on Sigismund for killing his own son Sigeric, 37 Gregory then shows that in the feud waged to avenge killings committed by Sigismund’s father, Sigismund was killed, along with his second wife and their children, and was not avenged by his son-in-law Theuderic. Gregory’s narrative remains unintelligible unless we assume that the marriage had dire—and divinely sanctioned—consequences for Sigismund. The marriage, we can assume, somehow led to Sigismund’s death. Since the only way of linking the marriage and the death is to treat the cause of the death—that is, the feud—as a consequence of the marriage, we must assume that, in Gregory's estimation, the marriage triggered the feud, even though the Franks and God did not posit the same kind of relationship between the two followed Theuderic’s

to

events.

Whereas Clotild

represented

the attack

on

the

Burgundians simply

as

37. After describing Sigismund’s killing of Sigeric and the penance he did for it, Gregory concludes chapter 5 of book III by noting that “[Sigismund] returned to Lyons with divine vengeance (ultione divina) following in his tracks. King Theuderic married his daughter” (III.5).

of

avenging the killings of her parents committed long ago by 38 Sigismund’s father, the participants could have understood it, as Gregory did, as a response to Theuderic’s recent marriage to Sigismund’s daughter. The marriage posed an immediate threat to Clotild and her sons because, sooner or later, it could have facilitated interventions in their own territories by the Burgundians and because it immediately enhanced the power of Theuderic, whose power already threatened that of his half brothers and stepmother. 39 Of the four sons of Clovis who divided his kingdom (III. 1), Theuderic was in the best position to dominate the others, since he was the eldest, the only one with an adult heir by a previous marriage (see III.3), and the only one not born of Clotild. As Gregory shows, Theuderic was, in fact, the first of Clovis’s sons to assert a means

his power after 511. 40 Clotild’s feud met the threats

posed by Theuderic’s

alliance with

Sigismund

with counterthreats against both of them, doing so by dramatically transforming Frankish-Burgundian relations into a state of feud. Putting direct

military pressure on Sigismund by targeting him for revenge and kingdom for conquest, the feud also threatened to split Sigismund’s alliance with Theuderic, who was forced to choose among several potentially dangerous strategies. Whether Theuderic supported Sigismund or his half brothers, he would incur the wrath and enmity of a former ally. In theory, at least, he was well positioned to mediate between the Franks his

38. Gregory’s account of Clotild’s meeting with her sons can be read in the light of studies showing how “what may have initially been accepted as an accidental death can quite well blossom after a generation or two in the minds of the victim’s kin into a deliberately gory atrocity seen as the first step in an eternal feud”

anthropological

(Black-Michaud, Feuding Societies, 19, summarizing E. L. Peters’s findings). 39. Viewed in the context of previous relations between Franks and Burgundians, the marriage replicated both the short-term practices and a long-term political strategy f infiltration (as opposed to confrontation) that Theuderic’s father Clovis had used when trying to expand his power into Burgundy. In the short run, Clovis gained support within Burgundy through his alliances, first with Godigisel, later with Gundobad, and, perhaps, through his marriage to Clotild. These alliances also constituted elements in a longer-term strategy of infiltration because they sooner or later gave Clovis grounds for feuding not only with the Burgundian enemies of his Burgundian allies but with those Burgundian allies whom he could represent as having betrayed him. Theuderic’s marriage to Sigismund’s daughter could have had the same outcome. 40. Previously, “Clovis sent. Theuderic through Albi and the town of Rodez to Clermont-Ferrand. As he moved forward Theuderic subjected to his father’s rule all the towns which lay between the two frontiers of the Goths and the Burgundians” (11.37). Before marrying Sigismund’s daughter, Theuderic had acted as a political patron in Tours (II1.2), fought against Danish invaders (III.3), and intervened in .

.

41

Burgundians. But this strategy would have involved a vast expenditure of political capital and had little chance of success. Any effort to attain even a short-term truce could have been construed as a duplicitous and/or cowardly refusal to provide support in a feud. By withholding such support from either party, he ran the twin risks of incurring the anger of both and of losing the support of his own followers, whom Gregory later represents as goading him into military action. 42 In any case, Theuderic showed no interest in making peace. After a period of nonparticipation, and perhaps indecision, Theuderic was drawn into Clotild’s faction Chlodomer’s summons. Leaving it to the troops following his wife’s by father’s brother Godomar to avenge his father-in-law, Theuderic participated in the conquest of their territory by his half brothers. In this way, Clotild’s vengeance raid reconfigured Frankish-Burgundian relations in a way that grew out of earlier political strategies (since it depended on a kinship connection between the Franks and the Burgundians) but that served two new political purposes. In the short run, it met the threats posed by Theuderic’s marriage to Sigismund’s daughter, which continued an earlier style of Frankish-Burgundian relations. In the long run, it laid the basis for the conquest of Burgundy. Viewed as a means of avenging a wrong, transforming the Franks’ relations with a neighboring kingdom, and countering a seemingly unrelated political threat, the Frankish-Burgundian feud resembles the feud that Theuderic later initiated with the Thuringians. After Hermanfrid had killed his brother Berthar, he was shamed by his wife Amalaberg into attacking his other brother Baderic so that he could become sole ruler of Thuringia. To secure support for this undertaking, Hermanfrid first promised half the kingdom to Theuderic, who helped him defeat Baderic. Later, however, Hermanfrid broke his promise to Theuderic, creating “great enmity between the two kings” (III.4). Unable to “forget the wrongs done to him by Hermanfrid,” Theuderic decided to attack him, doing so just after Clotild had adopted the sons of the deceased

and the

Chlodomer and after Lothar had married Chlodomer’s widow (III.6). To

himself with King Hermanfrid (III.4). Hermanfrid had Berthar in battle and later killed his other brother, the instigation of his wife and with help from Theuderic, whom he later

Thuringian politics by allying previously killed his brother Baderic,

at

betrayed (III.4). 41. On mediation by 42. See below.

linked 261-67.

someone

Bloodtaking and Peacemaking,

to

both sides in

a

feud,

see, e.g.,

Miller,

support for this attack, Theuderic promised “his brother” Lothar “a share in the booty” and told his own men that they should feel resentment

secure

against the Thuringians “both because of the wrong done to me [by Hermanfrid] and for the slaughter of your own kin” in a previous 43 episode, which Theuderic then described in lurid detail. Theuderic’s force then massacred many Thuringians, “took over the country and subjected it to their own rule” (III.7). Later, Theuderic killed Hermanfrid (III.8). Like Clotild’s feud with her Burgundian kin, Theuderic’s feud with the

Thuringians

achieved

more

than revenge for old wrongs. It kingdom, into which the

transformed Frankish relations with another Franks

militarily rather than through the policy of subversion that Theuderic, like Clovis, had followed by allying himself with one faction in a neighboring kingdom against another. At the same time, by securing Lothar’s support for his feud with the Thuringians, Theuderic reactivated a kinship connection with the Frankish royal house from which he had, in a sense, been excluded by Clotild’s adoption of Chlodomer’s sons and Lothar’s marriage to Chlodomer’s now

expanded

their power

widow. Like Theuderic’s feud with the Thuringians and Clotild’s feud with the Burgundians, Childebert I’s feud with the Visigothic king Amalric served multiple political purposes. It, too, transformed the Franks’ relations with another kingdom and constituted a response to an event that was not openly represented as its cause. After receiving the younger Clotild in marriage from her brothers, Clovis’s four sons (III.l), Amalric mistreated her because she was a Catholic not an Arian. “Finally he struck her with such violence that she sent to her brother [Childebert] a towel stained with her own blood.” Greatly moved, Childebert “left immediately for Spain,” where a soldier of his killed Amalric. He “planned to take his sister home with him and carry off a large mass of treasure” (III.10). Although this feud, like the ones waged by Clotild and Theuderic, was meant to avenge a wrong to a relative, it, too, served other political purposes, as we can see by considering once more the crucial issue of timing. In introducing the feud, Gregory went out of his way to note that Childebert left Clermont-Ferrand for Spain to support his sister Clotild only after he was certain that Theuderic had returned safely from Thuringia .

(III. 10). The

news

.

.

about Theuderic

was

important since

a

false

rumor

43. Just as Clotild tells her sons that they should resent (indignate) a wrong (injuriam) that she had suffered (III.6), so Theuderic tells his men to resent (indignamini) a wrong (injuriam) that he had suffered (III.7).

about Theuderic’s death in Childebert

help expedition but

Thuringia

had led

a

senator

of Clermont

Spain of escaping from, and securing compensation for,

to

to

this city of Theuderic’s, Childebert’s subsequent can thus be interpreted not just as a vengeance raid

enter

as a means

a

failed

political undertaking.

Although

the three feuds

just

considered

wrongs, each of them served at least

were

all

other tactical

meant to

avenge

strategic purpose, openly acknowledged and could not necessarily have been achieved if the feud had been waged at another time. By feuding with the Burgundians, the Franks not only avenged the deaths of Clotild’s parents but also put political pressure on Theuderic and made the Burgundians into enemies to be conquered. By attacking Amalric, Childebert did more than avenge the dishonor suffered by his sister. By transforming an ally of the Franks into a target for revenge, the feud provided Childebert and his men with an enemy to plunder just when he needed to extricate himself from a humiliating position in Clermont-Ferrand. After initially trying to undermine the Thuringian kingdom by himself with Hermanfrid against Baderic, Theuderic construed allying Hermanfrid’s treachery as a wrong that he could avenge, with support from Lothar, by conquering Thuringia at a time when he needed to reactivate his links to the Frankish royal family. Waging a feud was thus a way of making enemies at a moment when having them was politically which

one

or

was never

useful. The Frankish

Royal Family

We

to

now

need

consider how the

same

process of

feuding

also served

as

of reinventing friendship with kin and followers. As the preceding discussion implies, Gregory locates Clotild’s feud not only in the history of Frankish-Burgundian relations, but also in another narrative concerned

a means

with internal Frankish

politics. Although the second story line and intrafamilial conflict among Frankish leaders such Theuderic and Lothar, it also describes successive alliances that these

features civil as

leaders

forged as they competed for power both inside kingdom. The early phases of the story run as follows.

same

the

war

1. After Clovis’s

death,

his four

Theuderic, Chlodomer, Childebert, kingdom equally (III. 1), while his political position remained uncertain.

and Lothar divided his widow Clotild’s

and outside

sons

2. Clovis’s four the

to

3.

gave their sister, the younger Clotild, in marriage Visigothic king Amalric, son of Alaric (III.l). sons

Acting independently of Clotild and her by his own son Theudebert (see III.l),

three

Tours (III.2), in coastal regions of his

kingdom (III.3),

sons

but

supported

Theuderic intervened in and in

Thuringia (III.4). 4. Theuderic married

a

daughter

of

Sigismund’s by

his first wife

(III.5). 5. Clotild

persuaded Chlodomer and her other two sons to avenge the deaths of her parents by attacking the Burgundians, who were led by Sigismund and his brother Godomar (III.6).

6.

Sigismund,

his second

Chlodomer (III.6). 7. Chlodomer summoned

wife,

and their children

Theuderic,

who

joined

Godomar (III.6). 8. Godomar’s men killed Chlodomer (III.6). 9. Lothar married Chlodomer’s widow,

were

him in

while

killed

by

attacking

Clotild

took

Chlodomer’s

sons—Theudovald, Gunthar, and Chlodovald as targets for vengeance)—into her and brought them up (III.6), just as she had brought up

St. Avitus had marked

(whom

household

their father and his brothers (III.6). 10. Lothar and Childebert killed Theudovald and Gunther and tried to

kill

Chlodovald,

who became

a

priest (III.18).

Instead of

rejecting all claims of kinship and engaging as isolated individuals in wars of all against all, Clotild and Clovis’s descendants selectively used the idioms of kinship to organize themselves successively into

different alliances, which included some of their kin and excluded others. to kinship on which such alliances were based could not be

The claims

44

deduced and enforced

simply by reference to genealogical position, as we can see by considering the attack by Clotild’s sons on their mother’s father’s brother’s sons, Theuderic’s failure to avenge his father-in-law, and many other episodes in Gregory’s History in which kin either failed to support kin or even attacked each other. Kinship claims had to be activated, as they were, for example, by Clotild’s speech to her sons, by Chlodomer’s summons of his half brother Theuderic, and by the bloody 44. According group at all but

to

as

(Germanic

a

is best seen not as a strict kin vengeance group kindred-based group of interested relatives, friends, and dependents"

Murray, “the

Kinship, 136).

...

token the younger Clotild sent to Childebert. 45 Although the activation of a kinship claim could take many different forms, it sometimes involved an

effort

by

the claimant

“honor” in such

to engage

the other’s

sense

of honor while

constructing

way suggest that the pursuit of it might 46 to the pursuer. The successful activation of a a

yield practical advantages kinship claim for one purpose

as

did

to

not

insure that the claim could later be

reactivated for another. But it still

47

kept the claim “in working order.” Since the Franks’ feud with the Burgundians was waged by two over-lapping kin groups—one composed of Clotild and her three sons and the other composed of Chlodomer and Theuderic—it provided each of them with occasions for redefining his or her kinship identity in such a way as to renegotiate political relations with the others. Consider, first, the different kinship identities assumed, successively, by Clotild’s sons and the political claims associated with those identities. When Chlodomer, Childebert, Lothar, and Theuderic inherited their respective kingdoms and later gave their sister Clotild in marriage to Alaric, each assumed the identity of a son of Clovis without regard to the fact that they were not all born of the

mother. However, the difference between Theuderic's position and that of Clovis’s other three sons was

same

genealogical

manifested when

Theuderic, sometimes supported by his son Theudebert, political power independently of his brothers and when he independently allied himself by marriage with Sigismund. The absence soon

exercised

of full brotherhood between Theuderic and Clovis’s three other

sons

heightened political significance when the latter, now identified as sons of Clotild, not Clovis, sought to avenge the deaths of Chilperic and Chilperic’s wife by feuding with a group led by the father of Sigismund's wife. In this feud Chlodomer, Childebert, and Lothar enacted their common brotherhood, their common tie to Clotild and her parents, and their common claim to avenge their matrilateral grandparents by fighting the Burgundians. They also distanced themselves, for the time took

on

45. Before Theuderic could feud with the Thuringians, his followers had to give him their support, which he claimed partly by invoking their dead kin’s claim on them (III.7). On methods of imposing or activating an obligation to take vengeance, see William Ian Miller, “Choosing the Avenger: Some Aspects of Bloodfeud in Medieval Iceland and England,” Law and History Review 1 (1983): 159-204. 46. Miller’s recent discussion of honor in medieval Iceland is instructive for other medieval European societies. See William Ian Miller, Humiliation (Ithaca, N.Y., 1993), esp. 93-130. 47. See Bourdieu, Outline, 35, where “kinship relationships” are represented as “something people make, and with which they do something” (author’s italics).

Theuderic, who was now the son-in-law of the son of their grandfather’s slayer, and they completely disavowed all kinship with their mother’s father’s brother’s sons, 48 Sigismund and Godomar, so that when Chlodomer killed Sigismund he was not committing an intrafamilial killing. Viewed from the perspective of both kinship identity and associated claims to support from kin, the Frankish-Burgundian feud held different being,

from

maternal

meanings for Theuderic than it did for Clovis’s other the feud

sons, and these

several different

progressed through meanings changed phases. Initially, Clotild’s decision to seek vengeance for the deaths of her parents by initiating an attack on Sigismund and Godomar placed Theuderic in a tricky position because it provided an occasion for activating at least three different kinship claims on him, each of which involved a different way of construing his kinship identity. Even though Theuderic was not descended from Chilperic, the Franks could still have claimed his support in their feud, as Chlodomer eventually did, because as

he of

was

the brother of Clotild’s

sons.

Because Theuderic

was

the husband

the

Burgundians, too, had a claim on his support, noting that Theuderic later failed to avenge

daughter of Sigismund, as Gregory implied by his father-in-law. Finally, because Theuderic was the husband of the sister of Sigismund’s victim, Sigeric, he could have been charged with the duty of taking vengeance against his own father-in-law. Like his brothers, he was thus a potential enemy of Sigismund, though for different reasons. None of these conflicting kinship claims on Theuderic, however, was activated during the early stages of the feud. Perhaps they were understood to cancel each other out. Perhaps Theuderic himself had no political interest in privileging any one of them over the others. In any case he simply remained outside the feud until Sigismund was dead, at which point he accepted Chlodomer’s summons to fight Godomar instead of trying to avenge Sigismund by fighting on the other side. Theuderic’s position in the feud changed after Chlodomer first killed Sigismund, Sigismund’s second wife, and their children and then secured Theuderic’s support against Godomar. 49 But the transformation was open to different interpretations, depending on how Theuderic’s kinship a

48. The physical distance separating the Franks from the Burgundians must have facilitated this process, though it did not necessitate it. 49. Because the killing of Sigeric would not have served the purposes of Sigismund's second wife if Sigismund had had other surviving sons by his first wife, I assume that the children killed in the Orléanais were born of the second wife.

identity was construed. We can imagine him as leaving his father-in-law unavenged and following his father-in-law’s slayer against his father-in-law's brother. We can think of him as supporting his brother and fellow-Frank against a Burgundian leader with whom he had had an indirect, affinal, genealogical connection that had never been activated and was totally severed when Sigismund died. Finally, if we think of Theuderic as Sigeric’s brother-in-law and as the brother of Chlodomer, we can imagine him as participating vicariously and retrospectively in the vengeance taken for Sigeric’s death on Sigeric’s slayer, on the instigator of the slaying, and on their children. By joining in Chlodomer’s attack on Godomar, Theuderic chose to incorporate himself into the second script and possibly into the third as well. Once again, he was a brother of at least

one

of Clotild’s

sons.

Clotild’s

participation in the feud is also worth analyzing in terms of both kinship identity and the formation of kinship groups because it involved efforts not just to avenge an old wrong but also to exercise political power by manipulating the idioms of kinship. Her meeting with Chlodomer and his brothers activated and validated her kinship claims on each of them while separating them from their half brother Theuderic, who was not her son. Having lost, through Clovis’s death, her status as the wife of a Frankish ruler, she could use the feud to reinvent herself, so to speak, as the mother of three Frankish rulers and as the daughter of the Burgundian Chilperic. Later, after her son Chlodomer had been killed to avenge a killing that he had committed to avenge a wrong against her, she assumed the identity of foster mother, or even mother, to his three children. The activation of these

kinship claims and kinship identities through Frankish-Burgundian feud did not, of course, unite Clotild and Clovis’s descendants into an enduring political alliance. But it still had implications for subsequent Frankish history, as Gregory narrates it. After Chlodomer’s death, the kinship tie with Clotild that he had previously acknowledged most dramatically by killing Sigismund was, in a sense, perpetuated when they entered their father’s mother’s household, where they were treated so affectionately that their father’s brother Childebert thought they were entering the line of succession (III.18). Childebert’s fears are understandable if we assume that Clotild’s adoption of Chlodomer’s children and the favor she subsequently showed them were methods of reasserting an identity as the mother of Frankish kings that she had previously enacted by instigating the Frankish-Burgundian feud. Although the alliance among Clovis’s descendants the mediation of the

in that feud

reproduced subsequently, several of the kinship not entirely lapse. Lothar supported in the latter’s feud with the Thuringians (III.7), and, in Theuderic association with Childebert, he conquered the Burgundians (III. 11) and forged

claims that

not

was

were

activated in it did

killed Chlodomer’s children (III.18). Theuderic and Childebert made treaty together (III.15) and later marched against Lothar (III.28).

Although Gregory

nothing

says

about how the Frankish leaders

recruited followers for their raids into

his references

Burgundy,

plunder taken in feuds suggest that they used feuding as ties with followers as well as with kin. This confirmed own

by Gregory’s

city of Clermont—a story that also shows how

by

events

unrelated

to

the feud’s ostensible

feud in which he licensed his

a means

point

of Theuderic’s feud with the

account

men

to

a

take

a

the

directly

men

of his

feud could be triggered

By initiating

cause.

plunder,

is

to

of maintaining

Theuderic did

a

more

than take vengeance on a community whose leaders, he feared, would betray him. He retained control over followers who had threatened to desert him when he refused

Burgundy. By feuding achieve the second goal,

to support Lothar and Childebert’s attack on with the men of Clermont, Theuderic could as

well

as

the

first, because,

as

he

explained

to

his men, the feud would provide them with an opportunity to take as much plunder as they might have taken in Burgundy (III. 11). By ravaging the region around Clermont (III.12), Theuderic gained political independence from his brothers, avoided involvement in a war against the Burgundians, retained control

over

his men,

acquired

a

large

stock of

plunder

himself, reasserted his power in an important region, and avenged the treachery of some troublesome enemies. In their feud with the Burgundians for

gundians,

the Franks achieved

The conclusion

something

similar.

examples of intrafamilial by numerous examples of intrafamilial treachery—is not, of course, that kinship claims were regularly respected by Frankish leaders but rather that, under certain circumstances, such claims could be effectively activated in ways that were thinkable only if the claims and the identities associated with them had been kept in working order. Feuding was one way of keeping them so. 50 alliance—which

to

can

be drawn from these

be matched

50. In considering how Clotild, her sons, and Theuderic manipulated their own kinship identities for political purposes, it is important to keep in mind that, instead of simply promoting so-called family solidarity, claims to kinship identity could also engender conflict because claiming kinship with a person, living or dead, was a means of claiming that person’s enemies as one’s own. It was a way of opting into a feud.

God’s

Vengeance

participated in the Frankish-Burgundian feud, his role ambiguous than that of Theuderic, because, instead with either party to the feud, he used both parties himself fully allying

Although it

God

was even more

in of as

instruments of different kinds of vengeance. First, since the feud enabled God to take vengeance on those who had betrayed him and his kin (i.e., the

Trinity) by espousing Arianism,

he sometimes appears in the feud as as an instrument of his

the enemy of the Burgundians, using the Franks vengeance. Before treating Godomar’s loss of his

kingdom as part of the feud had cited the same event as an (III.6), Gregory Frankish-Burgundian on enemies and supported his of how God took his vengeance example

that, whereas Clovis, “who believed in the Trinity, crushed heretics with divine help and enlarged his dominions to include all Gaul,” the Visigothic king Alaric, “who refused to accept the Trinity, was therefore deprived of his kingship, his subjects and, what is more important, the life hereafter” (Ill.pref.). As further proof that God gave little to heretics and took what they had from them, Gregory then cited the fates of Godigisel, Gundobad, and Godomar, who “lost their homeland and their souls at one and the same moment” (Ill.pref.). 51 Moreover, if Theuderic’s marriage to Sigismund’s daughter could be represented as an act of divine vengeance against Sigismund because it triggered a feud in which Sigismund, his second wife, and their children were killed, then God must have used Chlodomer as an instrument of divine vengeance against those responsible for killing Sigeric. 52 Nevertheless, because God, as represented by St. Avitus, clearly condemned Chlodomer’s killings and treated them as wrongs demanding divine vengeance on Chlodomer and his kin, God used the Burgundians as instruments of his own vengeance when they avenged Sigismund by killing Chlodomer and later used Chlodomer’s brothers, Lothar and Childebert, for the same purpose when, for their own reasons, they killed friends. He first noted

Chlodomer’s

sons.

Although Gregory

twice

implicated

God in the

Frankish-Burgundian

51. Gregory had previously shown that the Burgundians were appropriate targets for divine vengeance by first noting their belief in the Arian heresy (11.9) and then identifying King Gundioc—the father of Gundobad, Godigisel, Childeric, and Gundomar —as a kinsman of the Gothic king Athanaric, who persecuted Christians (11.28). 52. The vengeance was appropriate, moreover, because Chlodomer’s victims included not only Sigismund but also his second wife and her children.

first by representing Godomar’s loss of his kingdom as an act of divine vengeance and then by indicating that Sigismund became a target for divine vengeance by killing Sigeric, the History does not treat the

feud,

entire

feud, which ultimately led to the conquest of Burgundy, as being directly analogous to Clovis’s conflicts with Alaric and other enemies. Why, then, did Gregory refrain from representing the Franks unambiguoulsy as instruments of divine justice in their feud with the Burgundians? The obvious, though speculative, answer is that Chlodomer’s killings were not fully acceptable as instances of divine vengeance because, as prisoners, Chlodomer’s victims were entitled to mercy; because, as orthodox Christians, they were inappropriate targets of God’s anger against their Arian kin; and because, as someone who had done penance for his killing, the main victim, Sigismund, was an inappropriate target in a feud. 53 Gundobad’s private conversion to orthodoxy and Sigismund’s public one had complicated the story of Frankish-Burgundian relations, preventing Gregory from treating all subsequent wars between the two peoples as phases in the long, divinely sanctioned feud between loyal followers of the Trinity and treacherous followers of Arius. The relationship between God’s feuds with humans, on the

hand, feuds, on the other, was thus subtle and complex. Moreover, God, like humans, waged feuds in ways that were mysteriously selective and opportunistic, though not totally unpredictable. After Clovis openly espoused the Trinity, his feuds with neighboring peoples were fused in Gregory’s imagination with God’s feuds against Arians and pagans. God not only fought on Clovis’s side against the Alemanni and the Visigoths (11.30, 35, 37), but he refrained from taking vengeance on Clovis after he killed his own kin (11.42). After Clovis’s death in 511, however, the relationship between the Franks’ feuds and God’s was transformed both by the conversions to orthodoxy of neighboring rulers such as Gundobad and by the accession of new Frankish kings whose external wars could not necessarily be configured as holy wars, whose military adventures could not necessarily be configured as holy wars, and whose intrafamilial killings and treacheries, unlike Clovis’s, served no clear religious purpose. In this phase of Frankish history, God did not withdraw his support from the Franks or turn against them completely. But his participation in their feuds took on a new character. For one thing, although God, like one

and human

not

53. Because Chlodomer’s victims were, under necessarily justified in killing them.

one

interpretation, his kin, he

was

Clotild and her sons, sought vengeance against Sigismund, his reasons for doing so differed from theirs. They held Sigismund vicariously liable for his father’s killings of Clotild’s parents; God took vengeance against him for

killing his son. In later relationship between the

stages of the Frankish-Burgundian conflict, the divine feud and the human one assumed a

different aspect, as God took vengeance against Godomar for betraying the Trinity while the Franks attacked him initially to avenge his father’s killings of Clotild’s parents and subsequently to avenge the killing of Chlodomer by Godomar’s followers. Furthermore, although God indirectly implicated himself in the killings of Sigismund, his second wife, and their children—by means of which Sigismund’s killing of his son Sigeric was avenged—God also treated these homicides of Chlodomer’s as wrongs demanding vengeance, which was eventually

slightly

taken first

on

Chlodomer and later

Chlodomer became liable

effect,

as an

on

Chlodomer’s children. Paradoxically,

God’s vengeance when he acted, in instrument of God’s vengeance by killing Sigismund. Similarly,

although Godomar, along

to

with his men, acted

as

instruments of

God’s vengeance when he avenged Sigismund by killing Chlodomer, he later suffered God’s vengeance for his own treachery against the Trinity. Conclusion

Gregory’s History as usable, if flawed, evidence about early feuding practices, as well as one author’s view of feuding, 54 or whether we largely dismiss his accounts of Frankish feuds as 55 inaccurate, Gregory’s account of the Frankish-Burgundian conflict is still an important source for the study of a culture in which the feud is an important schema for imagining and experiencing politics in both the human and the supernatural spheres. If we understand the feud as both a cultural schema and a political process organized in accordance with that schema, then even inaccurate stories about feuds will provide evidence about feuding practices because no one could fully participate in a feud without locating himself or herself in a story about the feud in which he Whether

we

treat

Frankish

54. Commenting, for example, on the historical value of Gregory’s account of the Frankish-Burgundian conflict, Wallace-Hadrill observed: “Some historians look upon the story as essentially a myth. I do not know why” (“Bloodfeud,” 131 n. 3). 55. See Wood, “Gregory of Tours,” 253-57; Wood, “Clermont and Burgundy,” 122-25; and Sawyer, “Bloodfeud,” 29.

or

she

participated.

Feuds

were

without such stories

much

more

than stories about

feuds,

but

is unthinkable.

feuding Gregory assigned to God in Frankish politics, both before and after Clovis’s death, we can see that, although the bishop did not always view God’s feuds and the feuds of Frankish kings as being fused, he believed that the Franks and the God of the Franks feuded in similar ways. When it came to feuding, God did not consistently conform to juridical models any more than the Franks did; instead, he made strategic choices, just as they did. He was selective in construing certain political acts as wrongs that needed to be avenged, in recruiting supporters for his feuds, in identifying targets for vengeance, and in deciding what forms of vengeance were acceptable. At the level of ideology and overall political strategy, however, both God and his Frankish subjects consistently used the feud both as a way of competing for power and territory and as a schema for interpreting, representing, and evaluating the Surveying

the role that

competition.

relatively easy to think of the feuding either as a juridical and political institution or as an ideological schema justifying efforts to compete for scarce resources. But in the preceding analysis of the Frankish-Burgundian feud I have followed William Miller in merging the two approaches, treating the feud simultaneously as both an ideological structure and a political process. Out of a tangled web of past treacheries, any one of which could have been construed as calling for vengeance, certain 56 acts had to be identified as wrongs or injuries. Out of a large set of who have been held liable for could these people wrongs and targeted for It is

revenge,

a

definable group of “enemies” had to be constructed. To against the enemy, a vengeance group was recruited

avenge the wrong out acts

by

of

a

had

large, to

ill-defined class of

be construed

targets and third

as

parties.

potential avengers. Then, certain hostile by the avengers and seen as such the feud proceeded, its dimensions had to

vengeance

As

56. The history of Frankish-Burgundian relations down to the time of Clotild’s feud was replete with what could have been interpreted as acts of treachery, including the following. Treachery to kin: Gundobad killed Chilperic and Chilperic’s wife (11.28); Godigisel conspired with Clovis against Gundobad (11.32); Sigismund killed Sigeric (III.5). Wrongs to followers: Godigisel ejected his engineer from Vienne (11.33). Treachery to lords: Aridius betrayed his own lord Gundobad by helping Clovis (11.32); Godigisel’s engineer facilitated an attack on Godigisel by Gundobad (11.33). Treachery to God: the Burgundians espoused Arianism (II.9); Gundobad refused to acknowledge the Trinity publicly (11.34). Treachery to allies: both Godigisel and Gundobad broke promises to Clovis (11.32, 33).

be

continually tailored and retailored to fit changing circumstances. Through this complex process, both participants and observers could attain many different political and ideological goals as they refashioned the political world. Mediated by a specific, yet highly flexible, schema for configuring politics and experiencing several different kinds of conflict, the feud was a process into which multiple strategies could be enfolded. The feud was a deterrent to wrongdoing and to breaking settlements as well as a method of actually punishing wrongdoing. It was also a vehicle for achieving honor by avenging shame, for openly expressing anger and fury, for constructing enemies to be plundered, killed, and conquered, for reinventing kinship identities and kinship groups, for consolidating other kinds of political groups, and for meeting political threats that were seemingly unrelated to the feud itself. The feud could never have served these many different strategic purposes if it had not also been a complex cultural schema, deeply encoded with ideas of honor, wrong, liability, divine justice, exchange, kinship and friendship, lordship, anger, and revenge. That

was a

feud.

IV

Kinship and Lordship in Farly Medieval England: the Story of Sigeberht, Cynewulf, and Cyneheard

1 unusually lengthy entry for the year 757, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recounts and well-crafted complex story, which the chronicler and his contemporaries presumably found interesting, dramatic, and perhaps even instructive and which modern scholars have never tired of retelling. 2 The story opens in 757, 3 when Sigeberht, because of his “wrongful” acts, was deprived of his kingdom by Cynewulf and the councillors of the West Saxons. 4 Sigeberht, who, like Cynewulf, was supposedly descended

In

an

a

I received valuable help from Elizabeth A. R. Brown, Kate Gilbert, William I. Miller, and Patrick Wormald, none of whom bears any responsibility for errors I have doubtless made. 2 For the Old English text, see Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Charles A. Plummer, 2 vols. (Oxford 1899) 1.46-49, which gives the A-text (the Parker MS) and the E-text (the Laud MS) in full, with variant readings from the B-, C-, and D-texts in the footnotes. The F-text gives only a brief note on Cynewulf and Cyneheard, 1.46 n. See also The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, ed. David Dumville and Simon Keynes, 3: MS A, ed. Janet M. Bately (Cambridge 1986) 36-37, and 4: MS B, ed. Simon Taylor (Cambridge 1983) 25-26. References in this article are to the reedited version of the Old English text in Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, A Guide to Old English, Fourth Edition Revised with Prose and Verse Texts and Glossary (1986; repr. Oxford 1987) 192-195 (abbreviated henceforth as MR, followed by line numbers). For translations into modern English, which often differ from one another on crucial points, see, for example, 1

Francis P. Magoun, “Cynewulf, Cyneheard and Osric,” Anglia: Zeitschrift für englische Philologie 57, n.s. 45 (1933) 361-376 at 375-376; C. L. Wrenn, “A Saga of the Anglo-Saxons," History n.s. 25 (1940) 208-215 at 210-211; Charles Moorman, “The ‘A.-S. Chronicle' for 755 [sic]” Notes and Queries 199 (1954) 94-98 at 95; Tom H. Towers, “Thematic Unity in the Story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard,"Journal of English and Germanic Philology 62 (1963) 310-316 at 311-312; Francis Joseph Battaglia, “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 755 [sic]: The Missing Evidence for a Traditional Reading,” PMLA 81 (1966) 173-178 at 174; English Historical Documents, c. 500-1042, ed. and trans. Dorothy Whitelock, ed. 2 (New York 1979) 175-176; and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. and trans. Dorothy Whitelock, with David C. Douglas and Susie I. Tucker (London 1961) 30-31. On the later incorporation of the story chronicles or histories by such authors as Henry of Huntingdon, Florence of Worcester, Symeon of Durham, the monk of Abingdon, Aethelweard, William of Malmesbury, Roger of Wendover, and Geoffrey Gaimar, see Plummer 2.44-47; Alexander Bell, “Cynewulf and Cyneheard in Gaimar,” Modern Language Review 10 (1915) 42-46; William Hunt, “Cynewulf,” in Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee (Oxford 1917) 5.372; Battaglia 176, 177; Frederic G. Cassidy and Richard N. Ringler, Bright's Old English Grammar and Reader, ed. 3, second corrected printing (New York 1971) 139-142 passim; Whitelock, Documents 175 and nn. 4, 9. 3 Although the entry in the manuscripts is for the year 755, editors routinely assume that it treats a sequence of events beginning in 757 and ending in 786: Whitelock, Documents (n. 2 above) 124, 175 n. 5; Whitelock, Chronicle (n. 2 above) xviii, xxiii, 30 n. 5; Magoun (n. 2 above) 361, 368; Battaglia (n. 2 above) 173 n. 1; Dumville and Keynes (n. 2 above) 3.36-39, 4.25-27. 4 “Her Cynewulf benam Sigebryht his rices ond Westseaxna wiotan for unryhtum dædum, buton Hamtunscire": MR 1-2. Having become king in 756, Sigeberht ruled for only a year or so: Plummer (n. 2 above)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-4

from Cerdic, 5 retained control over Hampshire, perhaps as an underking, 6 But later, after killing an ealdorman named Cumbra, who had long stood by him, 7 Sigeberht

first driven into the Weald by Cynewulf and then killed at the village of Privet swineherd, who thereby avenged the death of ealdorman Cumbra. 8 After fighting many battles with the Britons, 9 Cynewulf decided, in 786, to expel from his kingdom an aetheling named Cyneheard, who, as Sigeberht’s brother, may was

by

a

well have been

recognized as the present king’s kinsman. 10 During his campaign against the aetheling Cynewulf visited Meretun, 11 where he stayed in a lodge with a mistress of his, while a small retinue 12 remained in a nearby hall. 13 After news of 1.46; Whitelock, Documents (n.

2 above) 75. On Cynewulf, see Whitelock, Documents 21; Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, ed. 2 (1947; repr. London 1962) 174, 203, 207, 214; P. H. Sawyer, From Roman Britain to Norman England (New York 1978) 106. Some commentators have assumed that an established constitutional body formally deposed Sigeberht: Plummer (n. 2 above) 2.44; Magoun (n. 2 above) 368, 375. Wormald takes the more plausible position that this episode merely “has a hint of ‘constitutional’ procedures": Patrick Wormald, “The Age of Offa and Alcuin,” in James Campbell et al., The Anglo-Saxons (Oxford 1982) 101-131 at 115. 5The D- and E-texts of the Chronicle explicitly identify Sigeberht as Cynewulf’s kinsman (maeg): Whitelock, Documents (n. 2 above) 175 n. 6; Cassidy and Ringler (n. 2 above) 139 n. Although other versions omit this detail, they state of Cynewulf and Sigeberht’s brother, Cyneheard, that “hiera ryhtfæderencyn gæþ to Cerdice": MR 42-43. Whereas Magoun (n. 2 above) suggests that these kinship ties were unimportant (363 and n. 3), Battaglia (n. 2 above) attaches great significance to them (176-177). 6 See Magoun (n. 2 above) 368 and n. 4, 369 and nn. 1, 2. 7 “. he hæfde þa [Hampshire] oþ he ofslog þone aldormon þe him lengest wunode”: MR 2-3. Commentators generally identify this ealdorman as Cumbra, who is named a few lines later: Plummer (n. 2 above) 2.44-45; Magoun (n. 2 above) 365 and n. 3, 369; Mitchell and Robinson (n. 2 above) 193; Cassidy and Ringler (n. 2 above) 139. The passage just quoted does not clearly indicate when Cumbra became associated with Sigeberht or when the latter killed the former. “Ond hiene þa Cynewulf on Andred adræfde, ond he þær wunade oþ þæt hiene an swan ofstang æt Pryfetes flodan; ond he wræc þone aldormon Cumbran": MR 3-6. This passage does not indicate how quickly the swineherd avenged Cumbra. On Privet(t) or Privetsflood in Hampshire, see Magoun (n. 2 above) 369 and n. 5; and Cassidy and Ringler (n. 2 above) 139. 9 “Ond se Cynewulf oft miclum gefeohtum feaht uuiþBretwalum": MR 6-7. On Cynewulf s campaigns, see Wrenn (n. 2 above) 214; A. F. Major, Early Wars of Wessex (Cambridge 1913) 79, 81. “Ond ymb xxxi wintra þæþe he rice hæfde, he wolde adræfan anne æþling se was Cyneheard haten; ond se Cyneheard wæ þæs Sigebryhtes broþur”: MR 7-9. XXXI is an error for XXIX: Mitchell and Robinson (n. 2 above) 193; Whitelock, Documents (n. 2 above) 175 n. 9. Although this passage suggests that the king initiated the conflict with the aetheling, who may simply have posed a threat to him (Towers [n. 2 above] 315), Cynewulf may have attacked Cyneheard because the latter was engaged in a revolt: Magoun (n. 2 above) 374; Stenton (n. 3 above) 207; Peter Hunter Blair, Roman Britain and Early England, 55 B.C.-A.D. 871 (New York 1963) 251; Rosemary Woolf, “The Ideal of Men Dying with Their Lord,” Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Peter Clemoes (hereafter ASE) 5 (1976) 63-82 at 71. On the position of an aetheling in this period, see David N. Dumville, “The Aetheling: A Study of Anglo-Saxon Constitutional History,” ASE 8 (1979) 1.

.

8

l0

34, esp. 14-17. scholars identify Meretun or Meranlun with Merton in Surrey: Magoun (n. 2 above) 367; Cassidy and Ringler (n. 2 above) 140 n.; Mitchell and Robinson (n. 2 above) 193. One suggests Merton in Devonshire: Wrenn (n. 2 above) 214. Another proposes Martin in Hampshire: H. P. R. Finberg, The Formation

11 Most

ofEngland, 12 “Ond

550-1042 (1974; repr. Frogmore, St. Albans 1976) 104. þa geascode he þone cyning lytle werode on wifcyþþe on Merantune”:

of this force,

see n.

MR 9-10. On the size

17 below.

13 According to one reconstruction, “the bur stands inside the stronghold (burh) but is separate from the main hall, where the King’s retinue is housed. The entire compound is surrounded by a wall and is entered through a gatu (ll. 27, 36) in the wall. The bur is entered through a duru (1. 13)”; Mitchell and Robinson

Cynewulf and Cyneheard

Cynewulf’s whereabouts somehow reached Cyneheard, the aetheling led his followers against the king and killed him before the king’s retainers could aid him. These royal retainers then confronted Cyneheard, who offered each of them “money and life," 14 presumably in return for their political support. 15 Rejecting the aetheling's offer, the 16 king’s followers attacked him and, except for one British hostage, were all killed in 17 what was evidently a hopeless attempt to avenge Cynewulf. The next morning, after barricading themselves in the stronghold at Meretun, Cyneheard and his men confronted a second, larger group of Cynewulf’s followers, led by ealdorman Osric and a royal thane called Wiferth. 18 The aetheling offered his adversaries “money and land on their own terms,” if they would grant him the kingdom. 19 In addition, either Cyneheard or Cyneheard’s men indicated that at least some of 20 Cynewulf’s followers had kin in Cyneheard’s band and would not desert him. Whatever the significance of the second statement, 21 neither it nor Cyneheard’s previous offer induced any of Cynewulf’s men to abandon the battlefield. Instead, the (n. 3 3

above) 193. On the bur, see also P. V. Addyman, “The Anglo-Saxon House: A New Review,” ASE at 304; and Kathryn Hume, “The Concept of the House in Old English Poetry,” ASE

2

(1974) 273-307 (1974) 63-74. 14 “Ond

hiera

se

æþeling gehwelcum feoh ond feorh gebead”: MR 19-20. first group of royal followers, like his later offer to the second group, may well

Cyneheard’s offer to the

15

have been made

on

condition that the members of the first band would acknowledge him as king: Woolf to determine how closely the two offers resembled one another.

(n. 10 above) 70. But it is impossible

l6 On the British hostage, see Plummer (n. 2 above) 2.46; Magoun (n. 2 above) 365 and n. 2; Mitchell and Robinson (n. 2 above) 194. Treating him as the central character in the entire story, Moorman identifies him both with the swineherd who avenged Cumbra by killing Sigeberht and with the “ealdorman’s godson,” who survived the second battle of 784 and who, under this interpretation, was the godson of ealdorman Cumbra, not ealdorman Osric: Moorman (n. 2 above) 97. On this implausible theory, see Towers

(n.

2

above) 313-314.

17Since

the first group of Cynewulf's followers was evidently smaller than Cyneheard’s force, the aetheling could not have made his offer out of desperation: see, e.g., Woolf (n. 10 above) 70. More controversial is the question of just how large these bands were. Relying on an entry for 786 (corrected from 783 or 784) from the A-, C-, D-, and E-texts (Plummer [n. 2 above] 1.52, 53; Whitelock, Documents [n. 2 above] 180), several scholars claim that Cynewulf’s first band consisted of 84 men, plus the British hostage: Magoun (n. 2 above) 371 and n. 1, 366 and n. 4; Wrenn (n. 2 above) 214; Moorman (n. 2 above) 96. However, because the entry just cited is ambiguous, others have maintained that the aetheling’s force, not the king’s first band, numbered 84 men: Cassidy and Ringler (n. 2 above) 140; Battaglia (n. 2 above) 174 n. 7; Finberg (n. 11 above) 104. 18 The passage summarized here can be rendered in various ways: Whitelock, Documents (n. 2 above) 176 n. 4; Mitchell and Robinson (n. 2 above) 194. On Osric and Wiferth, see Magoun (n. 2 above) 366, 367. 19 “Ond þa begead he him hiera agenne dom feos ond londes, gif hie him þæs rices uþon”: MR 2829. Cyneheard may have been offering men in Cynewulf’s second band a privilege similar to the one known in Scandinavia as “self-doom”: Plummer (n. 2 above) 2.46; Wrenn (n. 2 above) 215; Cassidy and Ringler (n. 2 above) 141; Mitchell and Robinson (n. 2 above) 194. Alternatively, the aetheling may simply have been offering “liberal terms”: Magoun (n. 2 above) 373 n. 1.19. 20 “. ond him cyþde þæt hiera mægas him mid wæron, þaþe him from noldon”: MR 29-30. On the question of whether the verb cyþde (third person singular) should be amended to cyþdon (third person plural), which is found in several manuscripts (Plummer [n. 2 above] 1.48), see Whitelock, Documents .

.

above) 176 n. 5. According to one commentator, "Cyneheard, realizing that he cannot defeat the [second] party, pretends that a great many of Cynewulf’s thanes, among them some of Osric’s kinsmen, have come over to his side. In reality, of course, he has only the one hostage”: Moorman (n. 2 above) 97. For convincing criticisms of this argument, see Towers (n. 2 above); and, above all, Battaglia (n. 2 above), 175-178. (n.

2

21

...

king’s followers then declared that “no kinsman was dearer to them than their lord [i.e., Cynewulf]” and that “they would never follow [their lord’s] slayer [i.e., Cyneheard]."22 Cynewulf s men then “offered their kinsmen [in Cyneheard’s band] that they might go away unharmed.” 23 Cyneheard’s followers replied that they would give this offer no more heed than Cynewulf's other followers had given on the previous day to Cyneheard’s similar offer to them. 24 No other ways of avoiding a battle or limiting its scope were proposed. In the ensuing encounter, Cyneheard and his followers were all killed, except for an ealdorman’s godson. 25 Perhaps some members of Cynewulf's party perished as well. 26 Although it is unclear why such a long, elaborate story appears in a chronicle whose other entries for this century never exceed a couple of lines, 27 the interest of modern scholars in the story is easily explained. Students of early English literature have studied it closely, partly because it resembles passages from Icelandic sagas28 and partly because it treats, in a rhetorically effective way, a major theme in early medieval literature— the loyalty of warriors to their leaders. 29 The story has also been closely examined by political and social historians. 30 Although the most cautious of them indicate that the “Ond þa cuædon hie þæt him nænig mæg leofra nære þonne hiera hlaford, ond hie næfre his banan noldon”: MR 30-32. 23 “Ond þa budon hie hiera mægum þæt hie gesunde from eodon”: MR 32-33. 24 “Ond hie cuædon þæt tæt ilce hiera geferum geboden wære þeær mid þam cyninge wærun. þa cuædon hie þæt hie hie þæs ne onmundun ‘þon ma þe eowre geferan mid þam cyninge ofslægene wærun’ ”: 22

folgian

MR 33-36. It is impossible to determine in what respects, precisely, the two offers resembled each other. 25 On the godson, whose godfather is normally identified as ealdorman Osric, not ealdorman Cumbra, see Magoun (n. 2 above) 366 and n. 3, 374; and n. 16 above. 26 On the size of the forces at Meretun, see n. 17 above. 27 On the striking differences between this story and other eighth-century entries in the Chronicle, see Plummer (n. 2 above) 2.44; Magoun (n. 2 above) 361-362; Wrenn (n. 2 above) 213. On the question of how the story came to be inserted into the Chronicle, see Magoun 374-375; Wrenn; Whitelock, Documents (n. 2 above); Cassidy and Ringler (n. 2 above) 138. 28 See Magoun (n. 2 above) 361; Wrenn (n. 2 above); C. E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-saxon England (London 1939) 26, 78-80; R. W. McTurk, ‘Cynewulf and Cyneheard’ and the Icelandic Sagas,” Leeds Studies in English n.s. 12 (1981) 81-127. 29 In addition to the works by Magoun, Wrenn, Moorman, Towers, Battaglia, Cassidy and Ringer, and Mitchell and Robinson cited in n. 2 above, see Ruth Waterhouse, "Theme and Structure of 755 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 70 (1969) 630-640; and earlier discussions cited in Magoun. According to Mitchell and Robinson, the chronicler’s story “exemplifies one of the cardinal virtues of Germanic society in the heroic age: unswerving loyalty to one’s sworn leader, even when that loyalty is in conflict with claims of kinship”: Mitchell and Robinson 192; see also 136. In defending a “traditional reading” against Moorman, Battaglia makes valuable observations that were not fully incorporated into subsequent “

discussions. 30 See, for

example, Blair (n. 10 above) 251-252; Peter Hunter Blair, An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge 1962) 209-210; Hector Munro Chadwick, The Heroic Age (Cambridge 1912) 349, 351; idem. The Origins ofthe English People, ed. 2 (Cambridge 1924) 26-29, 158, 165-173; idem, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (Cambridge 1905) 363; R. W. Chambers, England before the Norman Conquest (London 1928) 174, 176-178; Finberg (n. 11 above) 104; D. J. V. Fisher, The Anglo-Saxon Age, c. 400-1042 (1973; repr. Hong Kong 1976) 130-131; R- H. Hodgkin, A History of the Anglo-Saxons, ed. 3, 2 vols. (London 1921) 2.393-395; Hunt (n. 2 above); D. P. Kirby, The Making of Early England (New York 1967) 148; Lorraine Lancaster, “Kinship in Anglo-Saxon Society,” British Journal ofSociology 9 (1957) 230-250, 359-377 at 375; H. R. Loyn, Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest (1962; repr. New York 1963) 298; Charles Oman, England before the Norman Conquest (New York 1910) 335-336, 338-339; Stenton (n. 3 above) 208 and n. 3; Dorothy Whitelock, The Beginnings of English Society, ed. 2 rev. (Harmonds-

expressed in the story were entirely traditional and in no way progressive, 31 many others claim that by favorably portraying warriors who were willing to fight and kill their own kin in order to support or avenge their lord, the chronicler’s story provides

values

what

pointer" clearly designating the path of later English political development. 32 They have used it to show, for example, that at least by 786, “the ties between lord and man exceeded those of blood relationship” 33 and that although “the claims of kindred were still recognized” at this time, “they were, if necessary, subordinated to the superior claims of lordship.” 34 In the opinion of certain historians, the story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard signals the “victory of the lordship principle over the kindred tie.” 35 On closer inspection, however, the precise significance of this well-known tale seems one

scholar calls “a

and social

much less clear than many scholars have claimed. In fact, the chronicler never comes to articulating the rule that obligations to a lord invariably outweigh or supersede obligations to kin. Nor does the story show that in behaving as they did at Meretun, the followers of Cynewulf or Cyneheard were conforming to any such rule or to

close

anything resembling a “code.” Lacking clear textual support, conventional readings are based largely on far-reaching assumptions about early medieval English society, law, and political development and about the most plausible ways of explaining political behavior. Because these assumptions are not necessarily supported either by the story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard or by other evidence, they should be identified and queried. worth 1972) 32, 37-38; Woolf (n. 10 above) 70-71; and Wormald (n. 4 above) 115. Hunt (n. 2 above) and Magoun (n. 2 above) cite older discussions of the story by historians. Karen Ferro, “The King in the Doorway: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.d. 755," in Kings and Kingship, ed. Joel T. Rosenthal, Acta 11 (Binghamton 1986 for 1984) 17-30 appeared too late to be considered in the present article. 31 Stenton claimed only that the story was “famous” for “the loyalty” shown to Cynewulf and Cyneheard by their followers: Stenton (n. 3 above) 208. To Finberg, the tale simply revealed that “the ideals of the heroic age were not dead in [eighth-century] Wessex": Finberg (n. 11 above). Woolf anticipated part of the present argument when she claimed that Cynewulf’s men refused to follow Cyneheard because “to thegn death is preferable to ignobly entering the service of his lord’s slayer”: Woolf (n. 10 above) 70. Wormald illuminates the story by noting that “a dynastic feud” lies behind it: Wormald (n. 4 above) 115.

a

32

Loyn (n. 30 above) 298. Magoun (n. 2 above) 373 n. 2. 34Fisher (n. 30 above) 130. 35 Loyn (n. 30 above) 298. Whitelock, after first using the story to show only that warriors felt obliged to support or avenge their lords (Whitelock, Beginnings [n. 30 above] 32), later cited it as evidence that “when the claims of the lord clashed with those of the kindred, the idea becomes established during the 33

centuries after the conversion that the duty to the lord comes first”: ibid 37; see also 38. After stating that in the second battle of 784, “the bond between lord and man had proved stronger than the ties of kinship when the two came into conflict with each other,” Blair adds that “there is some reason for thinking that .

this may have become generally so”: Blair (n. 10 above) 252. Other commentators claim that the followers of Cynewulf and Cyneheard behaved in a way that was both proper and traditional. In Plummer’s opinion, "the tie of the comitatus supersedes that of the kin”: Plummer (n. 2 above) 2.46. According to Oman, the story illustrates “the Old English ideal of chivalry, the boundless fidelity due from the sworn member of the war-band to his lord”: Oman (n. 30 above) 221. According to Lancaster, the story reveals that “men who chose lord over kin were highly regarded”: Lancaster (n. 30 above) 375. Kirby cites the entry as evidence that the relationship between lord and man was “the most honourable of which Anglo-Saxon society could conceive”: Kirby (n. 30 above) 148. Blair treats the story as “a perfect example” of how the ideals of Germanic warriors were realized in practice: Blair (n. 30 above) 210. Kirby interprets the story as “a striking demonstration of the overriding claims of lordship”: Kirby (n. 30 above) 130. For similar views expressed by historians of literature, see Magoun (n. 2 above) 373 and n. 2; Cassidy and Ringler (n. 2 above) 138-139; Mitchell and Robinson (n. 2 above) 136, 192.

or lesson that contemporaries were expected to draw from the chronicler's entry for 757 was narrower and more ambiguous than the one extracted by many modern scholars. To see why this text does not provide clear evidence of the preeminent status of lordship in eighth-century England, we should first examine the early

Any conclusion

parts of the story, which concern Cyneheard’s brother Sigeberht, and only then consider the two famous battles of 786 between the followers of Cynewulf and Cyneheard. 36 In the chronicler’s

of Sigeberht’s fall, the principle of lordship does not consistently assigned absolute preeminence. The story opens, after all, with an attack on a lord by his own followers. Although the story of Sigeberht’s fall from power certainly does not indicate that warriors were considered free to disobey, abandon, or betray their chiefs whenever they wished, it clearly suggests that a man’s obligations to his lord were not thought to be absolute: when weighed against other

prevail

account

and is

not

considerations, these duties were sometimes set aside. Moreover, unless a transcendent legal code systematically regulated relations between lords and followers in

eighth-century England, the chronicler’s statement that Sigeberht deposed for his “unjust” or “wrongful” acts does not imply that a lord forfeited his legal claim on the loyalty of his followers only when he committed specific, wrongful acts, as determined by a formal legal process. Instead, if Sigeberht’s so-called deposition involved only “a hint” of constitutionalism, 37 then the chronicler’s account of it shows that although a lord in eighth-century Wessex had a claim, recognized by custom, on the loyalty of his followers, followers could sometimes justify the abandonment of their lord by means of an “officializing strategy” 38 whose customary force was well recognized. In other words, there were two equally plausible ways of simultaneously representing and evaluating Sigeberht’s fall from power. On the one hand, Sigeberht, ealdorman Cumbra, and Sigeberht’s other loyal followers could have claimed that a good lord had been foully betrayed by evil followers, who had then tried to justify their treachery by blackening their lord’s reputation. 39 In condemning Sigeberht’s enemies, they could have appealed, at least implicitly, to the principle that warriors owed loyalty to their lords. 40 On the other hand, Cynewulf and his allies, like the chronicler himself, presumably justified Sigeberht’s deposition by citing the wrongful acts that this king had supposedly committed. They thereby invoked, at least indirectly, the principle that a lord who acted wrongfully lost his claim on his followers’ loyalty. The only differwas

36 Emphasizing the unity of the chronicler’s entry, closely examine the episodes antedating 784. 37 See n. 38 On

both Moorman

(n. 2 above) and Battaglia (n. 2 above)

4 above.

“officializing strategies," see below at n. 68. 39 According to Battaglia, Cyneheard’s followers in 786 would have viewed Sigeberht’s deposition in this way: Battaglia (n. 2 above) 177. 40 On the implicit invocation of norms, see John L. Comaroff and Simon Roberts, “The Invocation of Norms in Dispute-Settlement: The Tswana Case,” in Social Anthropology and Law, ed. Ian Hamnett (London 1977) 77-112; Comaroff and Roberts, Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context (Chicago 1981) 70-106; and Simon Roberts, Order and Dispute: An Introduction to Legal Anthropology (Harmondsworth 1979) 171-172. On rules, see also Sally Falk Moore, Social Facts and Fabrications: “Customary" Law on Kilimanjaro, 1880-1980 (Cambridge 1986), esp. 38-91.

between the two arguments was that the second one was advanced by political faction. Like the account of Sigeberht’s deposition, the chronicler’s statement that Sigeberht killed ealdorman Cumbra, who had long supported him, also bears on the question of how contemporaries conceptualized the relations between followers and lords. If a transcendent legal code governed such relations and dictated the behavior of Cynewulf's and Cyneheard’s followers in 786, then we should be able to determine whether, under the same code, Sigeberht acted lawfully in killing Cumbra. If we cannot attain this objective, we can conclude that the episode in question is not necessarily consistent with conventional interpretations of our story, which depend on the view that lordship was an absolute determinant of political action, except in cases where lords had previously lost their authority by violating the code. On the one hand, if we argue that Sigebetht was justified in killing Cumbra, as Cynewulf was in overthrowing Sigeberht, then we could bolster our previous hypothesis that the mutual obligations of lord and follower were far from absolute. Under certain circumstances, one party to this sort of bilateral relationship could renounce the other and turn against him. This conclusion, however, is hard to reconcile with the view underlying conventional readings of the story that a warrior’s obligations to his lord were inviolable and therefore took precedence, in all cases, over that warrior’s other duties. According to Cassidy and Ringler, for example, a contemporary audience would ence

in

status

the victorious

have assumed that man’s loyalty to his lord is everything: that he must sacrifice his life for him if need be, and avenge his death at any cost–even at the cost of ignoring the other cardinal loyalty All the characters in this little tale are of the Germanic world, loyalty to one's kin. faithful to the heroic code and make the “correct” choice. Hence, the story is not only exemplary, but also perfectly clear: the logic of loyalty makes the behavior of the actors and the sequence of events patterned and predictable. 41

a

...

However, if the obligations of followers to lords or lords to followers could sometimes be set aside, then the political struggles recounted by the chronicler become less logical and less predictable. The mere fact that Cynewulf was the lord of certain warriors who band at Meretun in 786 will not fully account for the decision avenge their king by fighting their kin. On the other hand, if we argue that it was wrong and unlawful for Sigeberht to kill his follower Cumbra, but proper and lawful for some of Cynewulf’s followers to kill

fought against Cyneheard’s of these

men to

their

own kin in order to avenge their lord, we must provide grounds for distinguishing in this way between the killing of Cumbra and the killing of Cyneheard's followers. Even though the chronicler himself makes this distinction by obliquely condemning

killing of Cumbra and implicitly glorifying Cynewulf's men for avenging their lord, this author’s written text is not a definitive, impartial, or complete statement of law

the

or custom. Instead, it presents only one of several different stories that could have been told about Sigeberht, Cynewulf, and Cyneheard. If passages about lords who killed

41

Cassidy and Ringler (n. 2 above) 138-139; italics added. Mitchell and Robinson summarize important provisions of “the code of the comitatus" as follows: “While his lord lived, the warrior owed him loyalty

death. If his lord were killed, the warrior had to avenge him or die in the attempt. The lord in his had the duty of protecting his warriors. He had to be a greater fighter to attract men, a man of noble character and a generous giver of feasts and treasures to hold them”: Mitchell and Robinson (n. 2 above) 136. unto turn

followers who killed lords do not reveal the defeat of the lordship principle, obvious why a passage about warriors who fought their kin to avenge their lord necessarily demonstrates the superiority of lordship to kinship. An analysis of Cumbra’s death, moreover, should consider both the rhetorical and

followers

or

it is

not

episode. Clearly, this Sigeberht unfavorably. Having claimed that, as king, Sigeberht had acted wrongfully, the chronicler then suggests that, as lord, the deposed king betrayed one of his followers. Without describing the killing of Cumbra, the author provides grounds for condemning it by noting that this ealdorman had long stood by Sigeberht. If he thereby invoked implicitly a norm that lords should not kill their loyal followers, he did so under specific circumstances for a specific polemical purpose. What his text provides, therefore, is not a general statement of early English law, but further evidence indicating that an effective way of vilifying a lord and exonerating his enemies 42 was to represent him as killing or injuring a faithful follower. the normative

contexts

author wished

to

that the chronicler has created for this

portray

This kind of invective could not have succeeded unless the chronicler s audience acknowledged that lords should not kill or otherwise mistreat their loyal followers; but success also depended on the audience’s willingness to agree with the chronicler (and presumably with Cumbra and Cumbra’s avenger) that Sigeberht had no valid grounds for killing this particular follower. Because we have already seen that people could sometimes justify a royal lord’s deposition by his followers, we can assume that under certain circumstances, people could also justify the killing of a follower by his lord. The question is whether those circumstances were clearly articulated in rules that were legally binding and that formed a coherent system or code. If early medieval custom consisted of an articulated system of rules that were routinely applied to particular cases, then, at least in theory, it could have provided unambiguous answers to questions about when a lord and follower could justifiably attack one another. But if early English custom is better represented as a set of vaguely articulated norms or principles with no systematic and generally accepted method of relating one principle to another or of applying norms to practice, then this body of custom could have provided no obvious and conclusive way of deciding whether acts such as Sigeberht’s deposition or the killing of Cumbra were fully legitimate. 43

its

42 For a more elaborate example of the same strategy, see the passage about Heremod in Beowulf, lines 1709-1722. Lords could also be discredited, for example, by references to stinginess or sexual misbehavior. 43 In one form or another, this view of earlier medieval law appears in: S. F. C. Milsom, “Law and Fact in Legal Development," University of Toronto Journal 17 (1967) 1-19; Fredric L. Cheyette, “Suum Cuique Tribuere,” French Historical Studies 6 (1970) 287-299; Paul R. Hyams, “Trial by Ordeal: The Key to Proof in the Early Common Law,” in On the Laws and Customs of England: Essays in Honor of Samuel E. Thorne, ed. Morris S. Arnold et al. (Chapel Hill 1980); PatrickJ. Geary, “Vivre en conflit dans une France sans état: Typologie des mécanismes de règlement des conflits (1050-1200),” Annales E.S.C. 42 (1986) 1107—1133;

Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900-1300 (Oxford 1984) chap. 1; Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship, and Gifts to Saints: The Laudatio Parentum in Western France, 1050 to 1150 (Chapel Hill 1988) chap. 3. For a somewhat similar view of early, if not later, Anglo-Saxon law, see Patrick Wormald, “The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and Its Neighbours,” Transactions ofthe Royal Historical Society ser. 5, 27 (1977)95-114; idem, "Lex scripta and Verbum regis: Legislation and Kingship from Euric to Cnut,” in Early Medieval Kingship, ed. P. H. Sawyer and I. N. Wood (Leeds 1977) 105-138; idem, “Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes in Anglo-Saxon England,” in The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre (Cambridge 1986)149-168.

and

At first

the passage about Sigeberht’s death at the hands of a swineherd the traditional reading of the chronicler’s entry. Here, the chronicler support portrays a loyal follower who avenges his fallen lord by trekking through the Weald

glance,

seems to

down a descendant of Cerdic; and by implicitly justifying this killing, the text show that a lord’s followers had a binding obligation to avenge him. 44 This way may of interpreting the chronicler’s interpretation of Sigeberht’s death, however, is open to cut

objections. First, instead of serving primarily to celebrate a follower who did duty by avenging his lord, this passage portrays the final degradation of a bad lord, who, in isolation, met an ignoble death. Contemporaries, moreover, might well have remarked on the social status of Cumbra’s avenger. Indeed, our own view of Sigeberht’s death would change radically if we knew that only the swineherd was prepared to avenge Cumbra. In this case, an account of Sigeberht’s death could easily have emphasized the failure of Cumbra’s kin or most distinguished followers to take vengeance on Sigeberht. 45 Furthermore, if the deposed Sigeberht had, in fact, lost all his political backing after killing Cumbra, then the vengeance taken on him loses much of its heroic glamor. Killing an outcast must have been relatively easy and involved little risk of provoking an immediate retaliatory attack on the outcast’s slayer. 46 If taken at face value, the story of Sigeberht’s death can be cited in support of the conventional interpretation of the chronicler’s entry. But the significance of this episode starts to look more problematic as soon as we realize that our author told only one of several possible stories about Sigeberht’s death and used it to dramatize and justify this king’s downfall. All chroniclers both select and shape the events they record in accordance with their own political outlooks; and the authors and compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were not passive witnesses to the events they chronicled. 47 For the purpose or assessing the political significance of lordship and kinship, the famous conclusion to the story is also more ambiguous than conventional interpretations of it suggest. 48 Consider, first, the composition of Cynewulf's and Cyneheard’s followings. The fact that certain followers of Cynewulf were kinsmen of certain followers of Cyneheard 49 may suggest that lordship was more politically and legally poto

several

his

44 Although Woolf questions the conventional claim, based mainly on Tacitus’s Germania and “The Battle of Maldon,'' that an early medieval English warrior was expected to die with his lord, she argues that a man

still obliged to avenge his lord’s death sooner or later: Woolf (n. 10 above) 72 and passim. the passage in question shows that “even a swineherd recognized the obligation of taking vengeance upon one who had killed his own lord’’ (Blair [n. 10 above] 252; italics added), why does the text not portray followers other than the swineherd who recognized that obligation? To demonstrate that in this particular episode, "the logic of loyalty makes the behavior of the actors and the sequence of events patterned and predictable" (Cassidy and Ringler [n. 2 above] 139), one would have to explain how anyone could have

was

45 If

predicted

swineherd would have avenged an ealdorman. believes that Sigeberht’s slayer reappears in the story (see n. 15 above) but never asks whether he became a target for vengeance by his victim’s kin or followers. 47 On the political purposes that the Chronicle may have served, see the works cited in Whitelock, Documents (n. 2 above) 123 n. 2 and 140. Although Whitelock denies that this work “was written as propaganda," she never demonstrates that it was a value-free record of events: Documents (n. 2 above) 123, 140. Along with Natalie Zemon Davis, “we can agree with Hayden White that the world does not just ‘present itself to perception in the form of well-made stories’ Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Oxford 1987) 3, citing Hayden White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,’’ in W. J. T. Mitchell, ed., On Narrative (Chicago 1981) 23. 48 Battaglia (n. 2 above) anticipates several of the arguments advanced below. 49 Ibid 177. that

46Moorman

.

a

tent than kinship was. The magnetic force of lordship, it seems, could pull apart a kin 50 group and place kinsmen on opposing sides of a conflict. In addition, the kinship tie between the leaders of the two bands 51 can be cited as evidence that even the ruling

family

of the

kingdom

“was divided

against itself.” 52

On the other hand, an examination of the same evidence from a different perspective yields a different conclusion. The failure of the aetheling' s followers to support

king can be used as evidence of how limited Cynewulf’s powers of lordship really Cynewulf, we could argue, could not command the loyalty of all warriors from the important kin groups of his realm. Some of the king’s followers, moreover, had previously abandoned Cynewulf in favor of Cynewulf’s enemy, the aetheling, 53 and the aetheling himself, under one interpretation, had rebelled against his royal lord. 54 With respect to the relative importance of lordship and kinship, evidence about the nature of the conflict between Cynewulf and Cyneheard is also disconcertingly ambiguous. If we choose to view this conflict simply as a struggle between rival lords, each with his own following, then we must obviously treat lordship as the crucial factor determining the alignment of political forces at Meretun and dismiss kinship as a subsidiary or even irrelevant principle of political association. However, if we shift our focus by fixing on the close kinship between Sigeberht and Cyneheard, we can view the conflict of 786 between Cyneheard and Cynewulf as part of a feud that had been in progress intermittently at least since the time of Sigeberht’s deposition and in which family solidarity played a significant role, 55 especially if we allow for the possibility that both Cynewulf and Cyneheard had kinsmen among their followers. 56 If we fix our gaze on the kinship connections between Cynewulf, on the one hand, and both Sigeberht and Cyneheard, on the other, we can regard the battles of 786 as parts of an intrafamilial royal feud, 57 revealing, among other things, that family solidarity within the ruling house of Wessex was important, but not all-powerful. Because these three ways of representing and, in a sense, explaining the conflict between Cynewulf and Cyneheard all seem accurate and yet incomplete and because all of them, in one form or another, were available both to the chronicler and to the historical actors themselves, it begins to look as though the political issues raised at Meretun cannot be neatly reduced to a simple question about whether kinship or lordship was preeminent. Even the celebrated negotiations following Cynewulf’s death can be reinterpreted so as to raise questions about conventional readings of the story. In seeking the support of the first group of royal followers in return for “money and life,” Cyneheard was acting from a position of strength, since this group must have been considerably smaller than his own; 58 as an experienced leader, he must also have known something the

were.

50Moorman claims that any followers of Cyneheard whose kinsmen followed Cynewulf must have “broken blood-ties”: Moorman (n. 2 above); see also Towers (n. 2 above) 313 and n. 7; Battaglia (n. 2 above) 175. 51See n. 5 above. 52 Battaglia (n. 2 above) 177; Wormald (n. 4 above) 115. 53See Magoun (n. 2 above) 370, 373. 54 See Moorman (n. 2 above) 97; Wrenn (n. 2 above) 215. 55In attacking Cynewulf at Meretun, Cyneheard may have been trying to avenge Sigeberht’s deposition: Wrenn (n. 2 above) 214. 56 See Battaglia (n. 2 above) 177. 57 Ibid 177-178; and Wormald (n. 4 above) 115. 58 See n. 17 above. .

about the values of warriors. Nevertheless, he still thought he had a chance of gaining support from men whose lord he had just killed. Why else should he have offered to spare men who, if allowed to live, would have felt compelled to kill him in order to fulfill their obligation to avenge Cynewulf? Once again, our story reveals a more fluid political culture than the conventional interpretation allows for. Upon learning that kinsmen of theirs were supporting the aetheling, members of Cynewulf’s second band did not abandon their conflict with Cyneheard. 59 But neither

did they ignore Cyneheard’s message about the composition of his following, which made them pause before taking vengeance on every warrior implicated in killing their lord. In fact, by offering to let their kinsmen leave Cyneheard “unharmed,” these royal

followers were indicating their willingness

to

let their relatives escape vengeance,

at

least

being; and they did so without precipitating any protest by other royal followers or by the chronicler himself. In other words, a warrior’s obligation to avenge his lord could sometimes be qualified to the point where some of the lord’s slayers might escape vengeance entirely. 60 In fighting against each other, moreover, followers of Cynewulf and their kin in Cyneheard’s band were not really renouncing, in general terms, the claims of kinship and acknowledging the superior claims of lordship. Instead, under specific political conditions, members of each of these two groups were 61 fighting against specific kinsmen, who were not necessarily their close relatives and 62 who had previously broken with them, in a sense, by joining a rival following. Furthermore, any followers of Cyneheard who were also kinsmen of the aetheling were not renouncing kinship ties; instead, after trying to avert a battle in which they would have to fight their kin, they were simply choosing to honor one kinship tie rather than for the time

another. 63

Finally, we reach several important questions about the actions taken by Cynewulf’s Cyneheard’s followers. First, why did followers of Cynewulf who had kin with Cyneheard reject Cyneheard’s offer? And why was their own counteroffer to these same kinsmen rejected as well? Second, did the decisions of these warriors conform to estabished law or custom? Did these men behave properly and lawfully? Instead of responding to Cyneheard’s offer by asserting that their legal duty to their dead lord outweighed their legal obligations to their kin, Cynewulf's followers simply said, first, that no kinsman was dearer to them than their fallen lord, and, second, that they would never follow their lord’s slayer. The first statement indicates nothing about how a man should act when duties to his lord conflicted with his obligations to kin; it served only to undercut Cyneheard’s and

59On

the

question

of how many

royal

followers had kin with

Cyneheard,

see

Battaglia (n.

2

above)

176-177. 6o By arguing that Cynewulf’s followers made the offer of safe-conduct partly “to spare themselves the emotional conflict of fighting blood relatives,” Magoun does his best to minimize the political or normative significance of the conflict: Magoun (n. 2 above) 373. 6l In many societies where cognatic kindreds are found and play an important political role, obligations to distant kin are often weaker than obligations to close kin: J. D. Freeman, “On the Concept of the Kindred,"Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 91 (1961) 192-220; repr. with deletions in Kinship and Social Organization, ed. Paul Bohannan and John Middleton (Garden City, N.J. 1968) 255-272 at

265-266. 62 See n. 50 above. 63

Battaglia (n.

2

above)

177.

implicit suggestion

that

a

warrior should

not or

would

not

attack his

own

kin

even to

by Cynewulf’s followers shows that by accepting Cyneheard’s offer, they would have been committing an act that another English storyteller, the Beowulf-poet, represented as being particularly shameful. A decision on their part to become Cyneheard’s followers would probably have seemed even more blameworthy than that of the Danes in Beowulf, who reluctantly made a truce with their lord’s slayer, Finn, the king of the Jutes. The agreement between Finn and the Dane’s new leader, Hengest, took the following form: avenge his lord. The second

statement

Finn declared to

Hengest with oaths deep-sworn, unfeigned, that he would hold those left from the battle in honor in accordance with the judgment of his counsellors, so that by words or by works no man should break the treaty nor because of malice should ever mention that, princeless, the Danes followed the slayer of their own ring-giver, since necessity forced them. If with rash speech any of the Frisians should insist on calling to mind the cause of murderous hate, then the sword’s edge should settle it. 64 who

were

This passage indicates that for a contemporary audience, the crucial point about offer was that anyone who accepted it would have been following the of his

Cyneheard's slayer

ring-giver. Cynewulf’s followers were being asked to take a specific and disgraceful political action, their decision to refuse Cyneheard’s offer and attack him has no clear bearing on the question of whether, in general, lordship or kinship was the more powerful principle of political association. Moreover, the fact that they offered a safeconduct to their kin in Cyneheard’s band shows that in this encounter kinship was not a negligible force. Instead of choosing in an abstract and legalistic way between loyalty to kin and loyalty to lord, these men had to answer three specific questions about how to deal with a specific political crisis. First, should they accept the aetheling's offer, fail to avenge Cynewulf, and take the shameful step of following Cynewulf’s slayer? In effect, they answered this question in the negative. Second, was their duty to avenge their lord so broad and compelling that they had to kill Cyneheard’s entire band, including their own kin? This question, too, they implicitly answered in the negative. Finally, in trying to avenge Cynewulf, were they prepared to kill specific kinsmen who had helped to kill Cynewulf and were following Cynewulf’s slayer and who had refused their own kin’s offer of safe-conduct? In effect, Cynewulf s followers answered this question affirmatively. But because they did not deduce this affirmative answer from a general rule or principle about the relative strengths of lordship and kinship, they must have reached their decision through a process very different from the one posited by various modern scholars. According to the conventional interpretation, Cynewulf’s followers were following a legal rule when they chose to fight and kill all members of Cyneheard’s retinue. Under the interpretation proposed here, these men made political, as opposed to legal, decisions and in doing so were merely guided by norms that did not dictate their decisions but that they and the chronicler probably found useful in retrospectively explaining and justifying those decisions. Even though the chronicler never explicitly judged these decisions, he clearly approved of what happened at Meretun in 786. Many modern scholars have approved own

Because

64 Beowulf, the Donaldson Translation: Backgrounds and Sources: Criticism, ed. Joseph Tuso (New York 1975) 20, lines 1095-1105. On the relationship of this passage to our text, see Woolf (n. 10 above) 69-71.

well, because in their view the warriors in question

were conforming to a “code” legal obligations to a lord superseded every other legal obligation. "For a contemporary audience,” according to Mitchell and Robinson, “the violence and tragedy of the feud between Cynewulf and Cyneheard would have been transcended by the reassuring fact that the ideal prevailed: on both sides men made the heroic choice, and they chose right.” 65 But is it certain that contemporaries would have universally expressed unqualified approval whenever warriors avenged their lords by killing their own kin? To answer this question affirmatively requires more optimism and less irony about politics than the best medieval poets and story-tellers expressed. The chronicler’s entry for 757 portrays, against a historical background of enduring political strife, warriors who were enmeshed in dense, complex networks of potentially conflicting duties to kin and to lords and who had to make choices that required them to reinterpret, slight, ignore, set aside, or directly violate some of these obligations. Political decisions of this kind were full of poetic interest, 66 precisely because they could be used to draw attention to “irresolvable” conflicts. 67 Although the chronicler presumably wished to celebrate at least some of the warriors who fought at Meretun, he presents only one story-teller’s retrospective, ideological view of past political processes that had once been open to different readings. In the statement of Cynewulf’s followers that they would not follow their lord’s slayer, in the claim that Sigeberht was deposed for his wrongful acts, and, perhaps, as

in which

in the chronicler’s entire story, what

we

find

are not statements

of,

or

allusions to,

sovereign legal enactments, but evidence of what Pierre Bourdieu calls “officializing strategies.” Such ideological strategies, he points out, are essential to effective group action in societies in which no political institution monopolizes the legitimate use of force, because when successfully employed, they “transmute ‘egoistic,’ private, particular interests into disinterested, collective, publicly avowable, legitimate interests."68 In analyses of early English politics, these polemical strategies have to be reckoned with and should not necessarily be treated as mere cloaks for the pursuit of private advantage, especially when they seem to have led men to their deaths. Nevertheless, they cannot properly be regarded as clear-cut evidence about the principles underlying or dictating political action. Even the chronicler, though pursuing “officializing strategies” of his own, reveals that Cynewulf, Cyneheard, and their followers, as well as Sigeberht and Cumbra, were not automatons who made political decisions simply by consulting a code or rule-book. Although the conventional reading of our story lacks a solid textual basis, it accords well with broad assumptions about early English society and political development. Even though these assumptions may have been largely discarded by recent historians, 69 they retain influence, especially in literary commentaries. In particular, the claim that the chronicler’s story reveals the triumph of lordship over kinship is supported by the .

65 66

.

.

Mitchell and Robinson (n. 2 above) 201. See, for example, Whitelock, Beginnings (n. 30 above) 39.

67 Stanley B. Greenfield and Daniel G. Calder deviate from the conventional interpretation of the story when they claim that it “depicts with political overtones the irresolvable conflicts between comitatus loyalty and blood relationships”: A New Critical History of Old English Literature (New York 1986) 60. 68 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (1977; repr. Cambridge 1982)

40;

see 69

also 38-43.

See, e.g., the chapters by Campbell, John, and Wormald in Campbell (n. 4 above).

early medieval England, kinship was always weak and grew lordship gained importance. The conventional reading also rests on the questionable assumptions that legal rules in early medieval England can be clearly distinguished from other kinds of norms and that, because political behavior is normally the product of obedience to legal rules, political narratives, such as the chronicler’s entry, provide evidence of legal rules at work. Finally, the conventional reading is also based on the presupposition that early English history can be accurately represented as a process by which a society whose prehistoric forerunners on the Continent were once organized solely on the basis of kinship evolved relatively rapidly after the age of settlements into a society which was organized around lordship and in which kinship had been gradually reduced to a merely social and emotional, as opposed to a legal and political, force. 70 If these assumptions about kinship, lordship, law, and political development are abandoned or substantially qualified, then the conventional reading of our text loses much of its remaining credibility. Since the late nineteenth century, various historians have, in effect, laid the groundwork for the conventional reading of our text by emphasizing the alleged weakness of kinship in early medieval England and by noting, in some cases, the rapidity with which a rise of lordship undermined what was already an attenuated kinship system. F. W. Maitland argued that, because early English blood-feuds and settlements to feuds involved, not unilineal descent groups, but rather bilateral kindreds, which, by their very nature, could have had no enduring corporate existence, the early medieval family could not have held land communally or constituted the basic unit of early English society. 71 A little later, H. M. Chadwick argued that as “the primitive sanctity of the family was giving way," lordship or “personal allegiance” became the “dominant" principle of English political organization. 72 Phillpotts extended Maitland’s argument about the early English kindred by claiming that because the kindred’s only legal function was to engage in feuding, which ceased to be a legitimate activity after the time of Edmund, kinship in England must have quickly lost what little legal significance it had once possessed. 73 Although Stenton conceded that early English society was “knit together” by kinship, 74 he claimed that the composition of family groups was “very loose and indefinite,” that kinship never dominated legal administration, 75

presupposition weaker still,

that in

as

70 For a lucid discussion of early Germanic kinship, see Alexander Callendar Murray, Germanic Kinship Structure: Studies in Law and Society in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Studies and Texts 65 (Toronto 1983). 71 Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, ed. 2 (1898), reissued with a new introduction and select bibliography by S. F. C. Milsom, 2 vols. (Cambridge 1968) 2.240-260, esp. 2.240-245. Maitland was wrong in assuming that because feuds were carried on by cognatic kindreds, other social activities must have been carried on by kin groups constituted in the same way. See T. M. Charles-Edwards, "Kinship, Status and the Origins of the Hide,” Past and Present 56 (1977) 3-33, esp. 16 and n. 25; Lancaster (n. 30 above) 372-373; H. H. Meinhard, "The Patrilineal Principle in Early Teutonic Kinship,” in Studies in Social Anthropology: Essays in Memory of E. E. Evanspritchard, 72

ed. J. H. M. Beattie and R. G. Lienhardt (Oxford 1975) 1-29; and Murray (n. 70 above) passim. Chadwick, Heroic Age (n. 30 above) 347, 348.

73 Bertha Surtees Phillpotts, Kindred and Clan in the Middle Ages and After: A Study in the Sociology ofthe Teutonic Races (Cambridge 1913); repr. in extract as "The Germanic Kindreds,” in Early Medieval Society, ed. Sylvia L. Thrupp (New York 1967) 3-16 at 7. 74 Stenton (n. 4 above) 311-312. 75 Ibid .

313.

even coresidential kin were “in law a mere group of individuals which could 76 any time be dissolved by the action of its members." Lancaster later concluded that early English kinship

and that at

seems to have been less rigid than has frequently been thought; the circle of effective kin smaller; the lack of descent groups probable, despite patrilineal bias; the stability of marriage uncertain; and the corporateness of landholding and residential units unproven. 77

Loyn has seconded these conclusions. Noting that Germanic settlers in England lacked a complex kinship system comparable to the ones described in early Norwegian and Welsh laws, 78 he claimed that "the formal institutional life of the kin was atrophied, if not stifled at birth, by the strength of territorial lordship and Christian kingship.” 79 In early medieval England, he concluded, "kinship and kindred principles are strong socially but hesitant in their own legal right.” 80 In law, according to Loyn and others, the future belonged to lordship. 81 Arguments of this kind have often "the

proved

valuable in

undermining the

view that

potent force which held [early English] society together was not any authority of government, whether elective or hereditary, but the primary bond of blood relationship" most

between members of corporate kin groups based on "agnatic relationship.” 82 By relentlessly attacking this hypothesis, which Chadwick said was “generally” held in 1907, 83 scholars have effectively demonstrated that Anglo-Saxon England was never

virtually all significant legal and political obligations took the form kin; 84 they have also shown that, with respect to kinship organization, early medieval England differed from its forerunners on the Continent, from certain other medieval European societies, and from many non-European societies as well. 85 None of these arguments, however, comes close to demonstrating that kinship was a negligible force in early English politics or that warriors, as a group, did not attach a

society

of duties

to

in which to

kinship

ties

to

the kind of

cognatic

76 Ibid

.

binding legal force they

attributed

to

lordship.

The

finding

that

stronger than ties to distant kin, that feuds were carried on by kindreds with “indefinite” boundaries, and that feuding groups included

close kin

were

314.

77Lancaster

(n. 30 above) 376. R. Loyn, “Kinship in Anglo-Saxon England," ASE 3 (1974) 197-209 at 197-198. 79 Ibid 209. 80 Ibtd 207. Later, according to Loyn, “kinship remained immensely strong in ordinary social life," but “steady pressure was diminishing the legal sanctions attributable to kinship": ibid 199. 78 H.

.

.

.

81

See, e.g., Whitelock (n. 30 above) 38-39; Fisher (n. 30 above) 132; Finberg (n.

11

above) 230; Loyn

(n. 30 above) 292, 298. 82 Hector Munro Chadwick, The Origin of the English Nation (Cambridge 1907) 1554. 83 Ibid .

154. societies of this kind, see, for example, Morton H. Fried, The Evolution of Political Society: An Essay in Political Anthropology (New York 1967) chaps. 1-3; and Marshall Sahlins, Tribesmen (Englewood 84 On

Cliffs, N.J. 1968). Scholars attempting to place English kinship in a comparative European context should note Peter Sayer's contention that “the solidarity of kin-groups” throughout early medieval western Europe has been “exaggerated”: “The Bloodfeud in Fact and Fiction,” in Tradition og Historie-Skrivning, Act Jutlandica 85

63, Humanistisk serie 61 (Aarhus 1987) 27-38

at

27; italics added.

kin, 86 does

not

evidence shows

only that such

ties

of comparative

contexts.

nonkin,

as

well

as

imply that kinship ties were weak; 87 were relatively weak, when viewed in

at

most, this

certain kinds

misleading, at best, to argue for the weakness of kinship ties in early medieval England on the grounds that they were relatively weaker than such ties supposedly were in the factitious, pre-migration Germanic society that historians sometimes use as a reference point for discussions of later Germanic societies. If historians postulate the existence of a primitive Germanic society in which kinship ties were sacred and entailed inviolable and inviolate obligations, they can then cite any subsequent failure to honor these ties as evidence of a decline of kinship, rather than as instances of conflicts and contradictions that inevitably arise in certain kinds of societies. Such arguments, however, rest on the fallacious assumption that in societies where all political obligations are represented as duties to kin, these duties are always observed. 88 Furthermore, even if true corporate kin groups never existed in early medieval England, bilateral kindreds, pace Maitland, could have acted as quasi-corporate groups for certain purposes. 89 In addition, the fact that blood-feuds were waged down into the eleventh century 90 suggests that kinship long retained importance as a basis for recruitment to political groups. Although no fully articulated system of landholding by family communities seems to have existed in early medieval England, 91 documented customs barring landholders from alienating certain kinds of land away from kin 92 are clearly inconsistent with a purely individualistic system of land tenure. 93 If kinship served as an idiom of social classification that people could use to justify decisions about the allocation of important material resources, it must have had more than merely emotional It is also

or

to

social force.

Furthermore, the claim that kinship, unlike lordship, lacked “legal,” as opposed “emotional” or “social,” significance rests on the dubious assumption that in this 86 See

Sawyer (n. 85 above) 35-36. these respects, English kindreds do not seem to have differed dramatically from those studied by anthropologists: Freeman (n. 61 above) 260-262, 263-266. 88 On conflicts between a person’s obligations to different kin, see, e.g., Max Gluckman, “The Peace in the Feud,” in his Custom and Conflict in Africa (Glencoe, Ill. 1955) 1-26; idem, The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia, ed. 2 (Manchester 1967) 20-24; P. H. Gulliver, Social Conflict in an African Society: A Study of the Arusha: Agricultural Masai of Northern Tanganyika (Boston 1963) 240-258; Jane Fishburne Collier, Law and Social Change in Zincantan (Stanford 1973) 169-179; Roberts (n. 40 above) 55-56, 160. 89 See Roger M. Keesing, Kin Groups and Social Structure (New York 1975) 15; and Freeman (n. 61 above) 271. Murray incorporates this view of cognatic kindreds into his discussion of early Germanic kinship: Murray 87 In

(n.

70

8, 24-25. Whitelock (n. 30

above) 4,

90 See

above) 47; Dorothy Whitelock,

The Audience

ofBeowulf (Oxford 1951)

16-17;

30 above) 294-295. 91 See Loyn (n. 78 above) 207; Lancaster (n. 30 above) 359, 376. 92 Loyn (n. 78 above) 207; Pollock and Maitland (n. 71 above) 2.254-255. 93 between land subject to customary testamentary obligation Loyn is right to draw “a vital distinction within the kin and land owned by the kin”: Loyn (n. 78 above) 207; see also Pollock and Maitland

Loyn (n.

.

.

.

(n. 71 above) 2.2-17, 260-313. Nevertheless, the existence of so-called familial restraints on a landholder’s power of alienation may imply that his kin had birthrights to some of his land (but see Pollock and Maitland 2.248-255) and/or that a custom broadly similar to the later French retrait lignager can be found in early medieval England: see Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge 1983) 105, 107, 111, 120-123, 141, 142. French historians have routinely associated familial restraints on

alienation with

see

White (n. 43

a system of landholding in which a above) chap. 1.

landholder’s kin had

rights of some kind in his

land:

nperiod, legal and social norms can be readily distinguished from one another. If historians simply assume that royally promulgated dooms constituted legal rules, whereas norms articulated in other ways were not legally binding, then they can easily show that, legally, duties to lords came to supersede duties to kin, because dooms treat lordship more fully than kinship and were sometimes designed to undermine the legitimacy of certain kinship obligations. 94 This argument depends on the assumption that the codes were both fully authoritative and complete statements of English law. If we abandon this view of Anglo-Saxon law codes, then we can, at most, treat dooms relating to kinship or lordship as articulating, in partial form, one of several competing ideologies about what people owed their lords and their kin. 95 One implication of this argument is that the conflict that Cynewulf s followers experienced between their wish to avenge their lord and their wish to avoid harming their own kin may not have differed significantly from the conflict that a warrior probably experienced when two different kindreds to which he belonged were engaged in a feud and demanded his support. 96 The two conflicts will appear different, only if we treat kinship and lordship as mutually antagonistic principles of political organization, each of which was clearly dominant during a different stage of political development. The alternative, proposed by various historians, is to treat kinship and lordship as coexisting, if not complementary, methods of representing, structuring, activating, and legitimating certain kinds of political relationships 97 and to leave open the question of precisely how kinship and lordship ties were related to one another at specific junctures in the history of particular communities. By treating eighth-century norms about kinship and lordship merely as guides to proper behavior that were not integrated into a complete, coherent, and authoritative 98 system, we can better interpret and explain political actions such as the ones taken by the followers of Cynewulf and Cyneheard. Instead of assuming that these men were obeying legal rules, we can imagine a relationship between norm and practice similar to the one posited by Bourdieu. Insisting that “the precepts of custom have nothing in common with the transcendent rules of a juridical code" 99 and are “very close to sayings and proverbs,” 100 he asserts that “‘customary rules’ preserved by the group memory are themselves the product of a small batch of schemes enabling agents to generate an infinity of practices adapted to endlessly changing situations, without those schemes ever being constituted as explicit principles.” 101 He also argues that “the rules of customary law have some practical efficacy only to the extent that, skillfully manipulated they ‘awaken,’ so to speak, the schemes of perception and appreciation, in their incorporated state, in every member of the group.” 102 Under this interpretation .

.

.

.

.

.

132, Loyn, Fisher 132, Kirby 142-143 (all n. 30 above); William lan Miller, “Choosing the Some Aspects of the Bloodfeud in Medieval Iceland and England," Law and History Review 1 (1983) 161-204 at 170-171. On the failure of early dooms to treat kinship obligations fully, see loyn 292-293. 95 Miller (n. 94 above) 170-171. 96 Ibid 173. 97 See, e.g., Eric John, “The Age of Edgar," in Campbell (n. 4 above) 160-191 at 168-169; J. M. WallaceHadrill, “The Bloodfeud of the Franks," in his The Long-Haired Kings (1962; repr. Toronto 1982) 125 n. 3. 94 Whitelock

Avenger:

.

98

Interestingly enough,

law codes. Bourdieu 99 (n. 68 100 Ibid 17. .

101 102

Ibid Ibid

.

.

16. 17.

the

above)

obligation

16.

of warriors

to

avenge their lords goes unmentioned in Old English

of so-called customary law, norms that enjoined warriors to avenge their lords, following their own lord’s slayer, or to support their kin will retain a place in

of earlier medieval politics, but

not as

absolute determinants

to

avoid

analyses of political practice.

Explicitly or implicitly, conventional interpretations

of the story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard articulate several familiar and interrelated themes in modern historical writing

earlier European history: the decline of kinship and family; the rise of contractual lordship; and the rise of the state. Previous commentators on this text often imply that although there had once been a time when Germanic warriors valued kinship more highly than lordship, this time, in England, had passed by 786. Under this interpretation, men who supposedly chose lord over kin at Meretun were not simply making a politically expedient or personally agreeable choice; they were conforming both to the law of their own society and to an important law of historical development. Instead of allowing their kinship status to dictate their political behavior, they made political decisions mandated by their contractual relationships with their lord and, in doing so, put aside considerations of personal sentiment and paid allegiance to established authority. Relying on an inaccurate reading of the chronicler’s text, proponents of this interpretation have themselves paid allegiance to a developmental theory proposed by Sir Henry Maine. In 1861, he wrote: on

The

of progressive societies has been uniform in one respect. Through all its gradual dissolution of family dependency and place. The individual is steadily substituted for the unit of which civil laws take account. 103

movement

course, it has been distinguished by the the growth of individual obligation in its the

Family

as

Maine then identified “Contract”

as “the tie between man and man which replaces by degrees those forms of reciprocity in rights and duties which have their origins in the Family.” 104 After noting how much progress European societies had achieved in distancing themselves from societies based on the family, Maine enunciated his famous conclusion that “the movement of progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract.” 105 If stripped of its reference to “progressive societies,” this pronouncement about the general direction of European political development over several millenia may be more right than wrong. But the dangers of using it as an infallible guide to every twist and turn in earlier English history should, by now, be obvious. At the very least, it seems implausible to locate the definitive appearance of a society founded primarily on contract, not in the industrialized world of modern capitalism, but in the wilds of an eighth-century kingdom.

to

103 Henry Sumner Maine, Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Modern Ideas, ed. 10 (Boston 1963) 163. 104 Ibid 163. 105 Ibid 165; Maine’s italics. .

.

Early History of Society and Its Relation

V

of inheritance in twelfth-century alternative models of the fief in

The discourse France:

‘Raoul de Cambrai’

The inheritance of fiefs is

a

crucial issue in Raoul de Cambrai. 1 The

dated to about II80, 2 tells the story of two interrelated inheritance disputes. In the first, King Louis

surviving version, which can be gives

Giboin

le

Manceau

the

Cambrésis, which Raoul de

Cambrai’s deceased father Raoul Taillefer had held from the

king

and which Raoul, upon coming of age, claims unsuccessfully. Later, Louis gives Raoul the Vermandois, which the deceased Herbert of Vermandois had held from the king and which Raoul then fails to wrest in a guerre from Herbert’s sons. By illuminating both the 1

political and the legal dimensions of inheritance disputes

Raoul de Cambrai, ed. and tr. S. Kay (Oxford, 1992), In parentheses in the text and notes, arabic numerals refer to line numbers, roman numerals to laisses. With only a few exceptions, I follow Kay’s translations. For the edition used by previous commentators on the poem, see Raoul de Cambrai: Chanson de Geste, ed. P. Meyer and A. Longnon (Paris, 1882; repr. New York and London, 1965). Line numbers and laisse numbers in those in the edition of Meyer and Longnon. On the inheritance of fiefs in this poem, see Jean Acher, ‘Les archaïsmes apparents dans la chanson de “Raoul de Cambrai’”, Revue des langues romanes, I, (1907; repr. Liechtenstein, 1970), 237-66; idem, ‘Notes sur Raoul de Cambrai’, Revue des langues romanes, LIII (1910), 101-60; P. Matarasso, Recherches historiques et littéraires sur ‘Raoul de Cambrai’ (Paris, 1962), esp. pp. 105-25; Walker Fowler Todd, ‘Reality and Fiction in Raoul de Cambrai' (Ph.D.

Kay’s edition rarely correspond to

Dissertation, Columbia University, 1973), esp. ch. 5; S. Kay, ‘Raoul de Cambrai or Raoul sans Terre?', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen LXXXIV (1983), 311—17; R. G. Koss, ‘Raoul de Cambrai and Inheritance Disputes in Feudal Society’, Olifant XIII (1988), 97-110. See also W. C. Calin, The Old French Epic of Revolt: Raoul de Cambrai, Renaud de Montauban, Gormand et Isembard (Geneva and Paris, 1962); and F. Denis, Barons et chevaliers dans Raoul de Cambrai: autopsie d’un phénomène de glissement (New York, 1989), which includes a useful bibliography on Raoul, as does Kay, Raoul (at pp. lxxiv-lxxvii). 2

Calin,

Old French Epic, p. 26; Koss, ‘Raoul’, 99. According to Kay, the main manuscript which she designates as ‘A’ (Raoul, pp. ix-xvii) was of Raoul ‘probably composed during the reign of Philippe-Auguste (1180—1223)' (p. lxxiii). On the evolution and historical background of the poem, which treats un événement et quelques personnages de l’histoire du Xe siècle’ (Matarasso, Recherches, p. 20), see Matarasso, -

-

Recherches, pp. 17-101; and M. Rouche, ‘Raoul de Cambrai ou l’histoire dans l’épopée’, in Histoire de Raoul de Cambrai et de Bernier, le bon chevalier: chanson de geste du XIIe siècle, tr. R.

Berger and F.

Suard

(La Ferté-Milon, 1986),

pp. 13-30.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-5

this

neatly illustrates ‘the interplay 3 lordship’. Because the poet locates the two cases in an extended narrative, starting with Taillefer’s death and ending with a guerre waged jointly by Raoul’s and Herbert’s kin against the king, his poem shows how claims to fiefs fitted into political strategies rarely documented in medieval legal records and how inheritance disputes could arise out of chronic problems of political patronage that have no place in legal models of ‘feudalism’ and ‘the fief. 4 At the same time, by showing how the parties to an inheritance dispute could invoke different models of what a fief was, either to justify opposing claims to the same fief or to make the same claim in different ways, the poem helps us to understand how, during the period when the story of the two inheritance disputes circulated, ‘inheritance’ could have been understood both as ‘a seignorial concession’ and as ‘a primordial right’. 5 Representing the inheritance of fiefs as an important arena of conflict, the poem dramatises both the flexibility of a legal culture or discourse that included different models of the fief and the contradictions of a political formation that could reproduce itself only through strategies that included disinheritance pair

of

imaginary

cases

between inheritance and

as

well

as

inheritance.

Two

As

reward for his

a

Cambrésis

the

as a

Inheritange Disputes

past service, King (21-4) and, as

fief

Louis a

gives

wife,

his

Raoul Taillefer

own

sister Alice,

J. C. Holt, ‘Feudal Society and the Family in Early Medieval England, II: Notions of Patrimony’, TRHS, 5th ser., XXXIII (1983), 207. 4 Although I organise this discussion primarily around the term ‘fief (fié-see e.g. 23, 745, 877, 891) and secondarily around the term ‘honour’ (onnor- see e.g. 6,107,516,646, 688, which would complicate, but not 700, 737, 764, 841, 895, 918, 1895), a fuller study substantially change, the present argument would analyse the other words the poet uses to represent land, including: eritaige (see, e.g., 136, 327, 894); tenement (e.g. 183); terre (passim). Because Raoul de Cambrai focuses on claims to fiefs by Raoul, Giboin, and Herbert’s sons and deals only tangentially with Alice’s claim to Cambrai, I concentrate on the use of different models of the fief to justify the claims of males to land and honour and on relations between lords and men (not female tenants). Claims to land and ‘honour’ by females require separate treatment, based on different evidence. 5 Holt, ‘Patrimony’, 199. I follow Matarasso in assuming that ‘notre poète a traité la question de l’hérédité du fief telle qu'elle se posait au XIIe siècle’ (Recherches, p. 125). Matarasso also argues that the poet represents the monarchy in a way that reflects ‘certains goûts et tendances du XIIe siècle finissant’ ( ibid p. 158). According to Kay, ‘the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’ is ‘the historical period which the song reflects’ (Raoul, p. lxxiii). 3

-

-

,.,

.

.

.

The discourse

of inheritance

(143). 6 When Taillefer dies, leaving Alice pregnant with Raoul, the king’s barons advise him to give the ‘honour’ of the Cambrésis, now held by Alice, to Giboin le Manceau (106-9, 113-16), who, like Taillefer, had ‘served [the king] very well and splendidly’ and wanted ‘a gift in full recognition of his service [to Louis]’ (103-5); the barons also advise Louis to give Alice to Giboin as a wife (114-15), because Giboin ‘has served [the king] as a baron should’ (116). Following their advice (117), Louis gives Giboin ‘a very great honour’ (122) on terms which, though unclear in the poem, can be reconstructed as follows. 7 Not wishing to ‘disinherit’ Raoul, Louis makes Giboin Raoul’s guardian on condition that the boy will hold Taillefer’s fief when he is able to ‘bear arms’, at which point Louis is to grant Giboin ‘other land’ (124-8). Since Giboin accepts the gift on condition that the king will also give him Alice as a wife (129-30), Louis orders his sister to marry Giboin (144-5), to whom the king gives Alice’s inheritance of Cambrai to hold ‘in fief (147); Louis also threatens that if she commits ‘outraige’ (151) by rejecting Giboin, he will deprive her of all rights in her ‘inheritance’ of Cambrai (see 153 and note to 152), thereby forcing her to live on ‘her dower’ (152). The king, however, does not carry

who holds the town of Cambrai

as

her inheritance

out his threat to take Alice’s inheritance of Cambrai when she

refuses to marry Giboin and thus prevents Louis from giving him everything he had promised him. Instead, Louis simply takes

possession of the Cambrésis and seises Giboin with it (176. v), without necessarily resolving definitively the question of who will hold this fief when Raoul comes of age. In response, Raoul’s paternal uncle Guerri challenges the king’s gift of the Cambrésis to Giboin (xiii-xiv) and later tells his young nephew that Louis is disinheriting him ‘of your land’ (235). Raoul tells his uncle that ‘I shall get it back if I live long enough to bear arms’ (237-8), and Guerri undertakes to help him (239-40). 6 7

See Kay, ‘Raoul'. The transactions described in the rest of this paragraph are impossible to reconstruct with any certainty, not only because the poem does not describe them clearly or consistently and contains several major lacunae, but also, in my view, because the king leaves them ambiguous. For other possible reconstructions of the transactions, see

Matarasso, Recherches, pp. 106-25; Kay, ‘Raoul';and Koss, ‘Raoul'. The adoption of Matarasso’s, Kay’s, or Koss’s interpretation of these transactions would clearly entail changes in the details of the present argument, but not, I think, in the main thesis about models of the fief.

The conflict

over

the

king’s gift

to Giboin remains dormant for

many years but finally erupts after Raoul comes of age and does service to the king. Louis rejects successive requests by Guerri and Raoul that he ‘restore’ the Cambrésis to Raoul

Instead,

the

king eventually

‘swears that he will

(471-4, 509-13). give Raoul the

honours of whichever count dies from between the Loire and the Rhine’

(588-90;

Vermandois

also

see

559-62).

When

Count Herbert of

dies, leaving

his land to Raoul will warrant it

on

four grown sons, Louis reluctantly gives condition that neither he nor his followers

(732-3). Supported by Guerri,

Raoul invades the

the protests of his mother Alice (xlviii—Iviii) (lix), and his squire Bernier (xliii-xlv), who is the illegitimate son of

Vermandois Herbert’s

over

son

Ybert de Ribemont and of Marcent,

now

abbess of

the nunnery of Origny. After Raoul and his men burn Origny, killing Marcent and many others, Bernier quarrels with his lord, who strikes him

(lxxxiv). Refusing Raoul’s offer of reparations and, instead, defying his lord and vowing vengeance (lxxxv-lxxxvii), Bernier joins his father and uncles in

defending

their inheritance

against Raoul. After Raoul refuses to make peace with Bernier and Herbert’s sons, rejecting their help in recovering his father’s fief from Giboin

he is killed in battle

by Bernier (clv). Although this killing transforms the dispute over Herbert’s land into a blood feud between Raoul’s kin, led by Guerri and Raoul’s younger cousin Gautier, and the men of the Vermandois, led by Bernier,

(cvii),

the twin issues of inheritance and disinheritance remain

central to the rest of the poem. After an inconclusive battle between Gautier and Bernier, the former receives ‘his inheritance' from Alice

promised land by his father Ybert, who thereby acknowledges Bernier as a legitimate son (cxcvi). When the two feuding groups are reconciled at the king’s court by the abbot of St Germain and decide to fight together against the king (ccxxxix-ccxli), their alliance is implicitly based on their shared experience of disinheritance at the king’s hands. Guerri now blames Louis for starting the war between Cambrai and the Vermandois by giving Raoul ‘another man’s land’ (5274-5). Upon learning that Gautier and Bernier are now allied against him, Louis angrily responds by committing, or threatening to commit, new acts of disinheritance. He says that when Ybert dies he will give his land to one of his men (5216-17). When Ybert announces that he himself has already given this land (cxciv-cxcv),

while the latter is

right of a bastard to claim a already given Ybert’s land to a noble called Gilemer of Ponthieu (5218-30). Later, Louis threatens to deprive Guerri of his fief of Arras (5282-3); and after Bernier’s men burn and plunder Paris, the king plans to seize the Vermandois and the lands of Guerri and Gautier (5352-5). Meanwhile, the new allies return to their respective fiefs and prepare for a long war against Louis, in which Bernier, after marrying Guerri’s daughter, kills Giboin (cclxii), thereby avenging Raoul (5749). to

Bernier,

the

first contests the

king

fief and then declares that he has

8 Models of the Fief

the poem often privileges the claim of a deceased tenant’s heir to the tenant’s land over the claim of the tenant’s

Although lord to

the land to another follower, it does not

give

consistently

represent the fief as a heritable estate that should pass by right of inheritance to a tenant’s heir or heirs upon his death. Thus, it does not show that

by giving

Vermandois to Raoul Louis

unambiguous legal

a more

authoritative, fiefs, which was part of a coherent Instead, the poet narrates the two

simply

violated

an

rule about

system of real property law. inheritance

the Cambrésis to Giboin and the

disputes

in

malleable and

way that presupposes the existence of internally contradictory legal culture or a

discourse that included several different models of what

a

fief

and, by implication, how it should pass from one person to another. 9 Supplemented, in several cases, by norms about how

was

nobles should act, these models of the fief provide normative bases for several different and sometimes mutually contradictory claims to fiefs

gifts

by Raoul, Giboin,

of fiefs to Giboin and

and Herbert’s sons; for the for the

Raoul; and, finally,

king’s king’s

8

On my use of the term ‘fief' see above, n. 4. Although there is room for disagreement about what form these models took, how clearly and consistently they were articulated, and which ones were invoked in particular passages, I present them here, for the sake

9

legal (or cultural) models are ‘presupposed, taken-for-granted models of the world that are widely shared (although not to the exclusion of other, alternative models) by the members of a society and that play an enormous role in their understanding of that world and their behavior in it’: N. Quinn and D. Holland, ‘Culture and Cognition’, in Cultural Models in Language and Thought, ed. D. Holland and N. Quinn (Cambridge, 1987), p. 4; italics added. I discuss alternative models of lordship and fidelity in ‘La politique de la fidélité: Hugues de Lusignan et Guillaume d’Aquitaine’, in La perception du monde médiéval, ed. C. Amado and G. Lobrichon (forthcoming).

of clarity, in These

a

highly schematic way.

arguments about

he is

obliged to support one of two rival Although these characters, their supporters, and the poet himself never articulate these models clearly and hardly ever cite the norms associated with them, they implicitly invoke them by combining a claim or normative statement claims to the

why

same

fief.

about who should hold

a

fief with at least

factual

one

or

descriptive statement, ‘in such a way as to refer to a mutually understood norm’, 10 which is based, in turn, on a particular model of the fief. 11 Because several different models of the fief and several different models of proper aristocratic behaviour were use in this kind of argument, a single person’s claim

available for

to a fief sometimes took different

model

or

models he

counter-claim based dramatises the

invoked; on

forms, depending

and it could

being

shall see,

on

which

be met

by

a

yet another model of the fief. The poet

possibility

of

basing

claims to fiefs

models of the fief by organising his disinherited

usually

himself,

around

on

different

Raoul, who,

after story tries to disinherit Herbert’s heirs. As

legal culture that had room for all of these different competing models of the fief was well adapted, in several ways, to the needs of aristocratic competitors for fiefs, honour and power in a specific political formation. 12

we

a

and sometimes

The poem represents the fief in three main ways: (A) in ‘proprietary’ terms, as land in which a tenant, heir or lord can claim proprietary right by inheritance, gift, reversion or escheat; (B) in ‘personal’ terms, as a gift that forms part of an exchange between lord and man; (C) in symbolic terms, as an emblem of ‘honour’ that a tenant, heir, or lord must control and, if necessary, for in order to avenge dishonour three models of the fief, moreover,

fight

or

is

shame. Each of these

open

to

alternative

constructions.

10

11

12

J. L. Comaroff and S. Roberts, Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context (Chicago, 1981), p. 85. For the only norm about fiefs explicitly cited in the poem, see 700-1, noted below, p. 189. ‘Cultural models are not to be thought of as presenting a coherent ontology, a globally consistent whole, in the way that the expert’s theory is designed to be. Cultural models are better thought of... as resources or tools, to be used when suitable and set aside when not. That there is no coherent cultural system of knowledge, only an array of different culturally shared schematizations formulated for the performance of particular cognitive tasks, accounts for the co-existence of the conflicting cultural models encountered in many domains of experience’: Quinn and Holland, ‘Culture’, 10.

A

Proprietary

models

of the fief

proprietary models represent the fief as property to 13 person can claim proprietary right. I The Heritable Estate Model. By representing the Cambrésis as Raoul’s land, even though Louis never invests him with

Two different which

a

it, Guerri, Raoul, Alice and the poet himself treat it as a heritable estate; i.e. as land that passes, on the tenant’s death, to the tenant’s heir

by inheritance,

rather than

by

the lord’s

14

gift. Otherwise, how could the Cambrésis become Raoul’s? After Herbert’s death his sons and his grandson Bernier invoke the as

13

same

theirs,

model of the fief even

after Louis

by representing the Vermandois has given it to Raoul. 15 One royal

The distinction between proprietary and personal models of the fief incorporates and is inspired by Milsom’s distinction between ‘a direct property interest in land [or right in rem]’ and ‘a right against the lord to be seised’; Legal Framework, p. 41. However, instead of following Milsom in arguing that only the second kind of right existed in ‘a seignorial world’, Legal Framework, p. 37,1 suggest that there was a world in which both -

-

kinds of

rights were recognised.

For

Milsom, Legal Framework', in EHR, 14

a

similar

LXXXIII

suggestion, (1978), 861.

see

P. R.

Hyams,

‘Review of

Even before Raoul comes of age and claims Taillefer’s fief from the king, the Cambrésis is explicitly represented as ‘his’ by Guerri, who blames the king for giving the boy’s land to someone else (188-9) and tells Raoul that he has been disinherited of his land

by Giboin (235) and that the land will not be ‘lost’ without a fight (239-40); after Raoul comes of age and unsuccessfully claims the Cambrésis from Louis, Guerri tells him that he will give him no further support if he does not take his own land the next day (519—21). Raoul first invokes the Heritable Estate model as a boy when he declares ‘I shall get [the land] back if I live long enough to bear arms’ (237-8); as an adult, he invokes the same model when he tells Louis that ‘small and mighty would reproach me if I court further shame by countenancing another man holding my land’ (528-30). The poet, too, invokes the Heritable Estate model, declaring, first, that Louis committed an of ‘folaige’ by depriving Raoul of his inheritance and that Giboin committed an act of‘outraige’ by ‘wanting someone else’s land’ (137-8). Bernier implicitly invokes the Heritable Estate model when he says that the king’s gift of the Vermandois to Raoul is unreasonable because Louis has no grounds for giving away the lands of Herbert’s sons (749-52); when he counsels Raoul against taking their lands (760—1); when he is enraged at seeing ‘the land of his father [Ybert] and kin’ burning (1049-50); when he tells Ybert that Raoul has come to the Vermandois ‘to challenge all our lands’ (1675); and when he offers to prove by battle against Raoul that ‘it was wrong to accept the glove for [the Vermandois]’ (2153). Bernier’s father and uncles represent the Vermandois in similar terms. After accusing Raoul of wasting ‘our land’ (1646) and wrongfully invading ‘my land’ (1728), Ybert tells his brother Wedon that ‘King Louis wants to disinherit us; he has given our territory to Count Raoul’ (1823-4). Like Bernier, Wedon says that Raoul ‘shall rue the day he accepted the glove for our land’ (2332). All the men of the Vermandois swear that Raoul would ‘rue the day he received their lands as a gift’ (1863). While contesting Raoul’s claim to ‘our’ land (1933, 1939), Herbert’s sons support Raoul’s claim to ‘his’ land (1938). act

15

baron 16 and Alice 17

represent

This model of the fief

the Vermandois in the

same

that the deceased tenant’s heir

implies

claim the tenant’s fief because it is his and that if the lord to someone

the heir

else,

way. can

gives

it

both he and his donee will have ‘disinherited’

by ‘taking away’

his land. Moreover, if the fief is

a

heritable

estate, then the tenant can give it to his or her chosen heir without the lord’s approval, as both Alice 18 and Bernier’s father Ybert do late in the poem. 19 However, if the tenant dies without an heir, the fief will revert to the lord, who may give it to the donee of his choice. 2

The

Life-Estate Model.

This

model,

by Louis, 20

which is invoked

Raoul 21

and the poet, 22 represents the fief, not as a heritable estate, but as a life-estate that reverts to the lord upon the tenant’s death. 23 What then happens to the deceased tenant’s fief, after it has reverted to the lord, depends on whether the Life-Estate model is combined with the Gift for Past Service model, the

Warranty model,

or

the Gift for Future Service model

Under the Gift for Past Service

model,

the lord

(see below).

uses

the fief

as

heir, past him, or the past service of another man; under the Warranty model, the lord gives the fief to the deceased tenant’s a

gift

to reward the

service of the tenant’s

if the heir

has served

heir in order to

16

17

discharge

his

obligation

to warrant his

previous

Geoffrey says that Louis committed great ‘folaige’ by giving Raoul ‘another man’s land’ (718-20). She tells Raoul that he should not challenge land ‘where your ancestors never took so much as a penny’ (953—4) Having identified Gautier as her only heir (3421—4), Alice later announces that ‘he shall have my land’ (3939); Gautier then has ‘the land and honour’ (3941). Fearing death, he gives his land to Bernier so that after his own death Bernier will not lose any part of it (3968-9); later, he abandons all the Vermandois to Bernier ‘to dispose of freely’ (5376-7) and maintains his right to make this gift in the face of the king’s protest that a bastard cannot challenge a fief (5220-1). When Guerri contests the king’s gift of the Cambrésis to Giboin, Louis responds that ‘The gift has been made, I can’t go back on it now’ (191; see also 473-4); similarly, when I have given Raoul asks the king for the Cambrésis, Louis responds, 'I cannot do so it to [Giboin]. Not for the honour of Milan would I take it from him’ (501-3). Raoul consistently treats his lord’s gift as the basis for a rightful claim to the Vermandois, telling Bernier, at one point: ‘The gift is made, for nothing will I give it up’ (768; see also 809, 886-7, 1020-1). While condemning the king for giving Raoul the Vermandois (603-4) and saying that he was in the wrong (649), the poet also declares that Raoul had ‘right’ (602, 648) when he relied on the king’s gift, which must therefore have given him a claim to the •

18

19

20

...

21

22

23

Vermandois. Several different forms of the Life-Estate model account

of English

fief-holding.

See below at

nn.

figure prominently 45-7.

in S. E. Thorne’s

to the tenant and the tenant’s

gift

model,

Service

the lord

gives

heirs;

under the Gift for Future

the fief to the

gets

of his choice in

man

model,

return for future service. Under the Life-Estate

whoever

the deceased tenant’s fief

under this

model,

has

no

acquires it as a gift, since the heir, proprietary right to the fief and cannot

inherit it.

B Personal models

of the fief

Whereas the Heritable Estate model and the Life-Estate model treat the fief as

property,

the Gift for Past Service

model,

the

model and the Gift for Future Service model all

Warranty

as a gift forming part of an exchange between a lord proprietary right to a fief under the Life-Estate model and a man. The exchange between lord and man, however, is construed differently under each of the different personal models

represent

it

who has

of the fief. 3 The Gift for Past Service Model. This model of the fief is invoked by the poet, 24 by Giboin, 25 and by Raoul and his kin. 26 If the fief is

a

reward

or

gift

that

a

lord should make to

a

follower in return

for past service, the follower can claim a fief without having proprietary right to one; and the lord is obliged to give him a fief commensurate in value with his

past service,

though

not any

fief. 27

particular 28 4 The Warranty Model, This model represents the fief as a gift that a lord is obliged to warrant, in one of several ways, not only 24

When

25 26

See 547-50. Guerri (468-72), Raoul

27

Cambrésis by stating that he had long served the king without receiving proper recompense. See Le charroi de Nimes: chanson de geste du Xlle siècle, ed. J.-L. Perrier (Paris, 1982), 11. 64-299, where William of Orange justifies his claim to a gift of a fief by citing his long,

28

valuable service to his lord. On warranty, see P. R. Hyams,

representing the king’s gifts to Taillefer (21-4) (507—8)

and Alice

(797-802)

and Giboin all

justify

(103—5). Raoul’s claim to the

‘Warranty and Good Lordship in Twelfth Century Law and History Review, v (1987), 437—503 and the literature cited in nn. 4 and 5; and E. Z. Tabuteau, Transfers of Property in Eleventh-Century Norman Law (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988), pp. 196-204. Anticipating much of the present argument about the England’,

Warranty model, Hyams writes that ‘Before the end of the twelfth century warranty was almost universally used as the standard method of portraying tenant-right (Latin ius, French dreit). It represented lordship, viewed from the perspective of the vassal as tenant. Sometimes, indeed, warranty was equated with homage, the bond which tied the vassal to his lord and the ritual which symbolized that bond’ (‘Warranty’, 440). ...

to his donee but also to his donee’s heir:

(I) by re-giving

that the lord had

or

to his

confirming gift previously promised 29 man; (2) by defending the donee’s right to his fief against third 30 parties; (3) by giving a deceased tenant’s fief to the tenant’s heir; and (4) by giving the tenant or the deceased tenant’s heir an exchange of equal value for a fief that the lord could not warrant. 31 The first form of the Warranty model is invoked by Raoul when he tells Louis to give him Herbert’s land (662-8), which the king had, in a sense, promised to give him (559-62, 588-90). The second form of the model is invoked by the king to justify his refusal to give Raoul land that he had previously given to Giboin (473-4, 511-13); it is also invoked by Giboin when he asks Louis to support his claim to the Cambrésis against Raoul’s claim (539-53). As invoked by Guerri, who construes Louis’s refusal to give Taillefer’s fief to Raoul as a failure on the king’s part to fulfil his obligation of warranty (494-6), the third form of the same model supports the heir’s claim to a gift of the tenant’s fief from the lord. 32 Here, the Warranty model supplements the Life-Estate a

model,

under which the deceased tenant’s land does not pass to the heir by inheritance and, instead, reverts to the lord,

from whom the heir may then claim it. Thus, the heir has no proprietary right to the tenant’s fief, as he would have under the Heritable Estate

model,

right to claim the fief as gift obligation to warrant his to his men and their heirs also entails a duty to give an gifts of value to a donee or heir whose ‘exchange’ equal gift the lord has failed to warrant, the fourth form of the Warranty model provides a basis for the king’s gift of the Vermandois to Raoul 33 and for his promise to give Giboin ‘other land’ when Raoul, upon attaining his majority, is given the Cambrésis (127-8). a

29 30 31 32

but rather has

a

from the lord. Because the lord’s

See 666—8, where Raoul tells Louis to See Hyams, ‘Warranty’, 440. Ibid ., 440. When Guerri tells Raoul that the

give

king,

him Herbert’s honours.

‘who should be

upholding

and

warranting

us’

(496) has, instead,

taken Raoul’s land from him (493-5), he implies that there is a connection between Raoul’s claim to his father’s fief and the king’s obligation to ‘warrant’ his followers. 33

Louis

implicidy treats this gift

as an

exchange for the Cambrésis when he says that Raoul

will not lose a penny by accepting it (563; see also 617-18, 625). When he later insists that Raoul ‘has accepted the gift [of the Vermandois] against my will’ (756), he again treats it as a gift that he was obliged to make. The most obvious basis for this obligation is the lord’s obligation to warrant his gifts to his men and their heirs.

5 The Gift for Future Service Model. The fief is also represented, not as a reward for past service, but as a gift that a lord makes to his donee in return for future service that the latter must perform in order to retain the

gift.

Invoked

by

Louis 34 and

Bernier, 35

this

implies, inter alia, that the lord’s donee must be able to perform service commensurate in value to the gift his lord has model

given him ‘outraige’

and that he will forfeit the or

model also different claimant

implies

men can

that in

to the same

give

fief,

a

lord should consider which

him the best service for it. 36

C The This

gift if he commits felony or provide appropriate service. The assessing the conflicting claims of

otherwise fails to

symbolic model of the fief

complex model colours the meaning of every other model of

the fief. 6 The Honour Model. In that

belongs

proprietary

terms,

an

‘honour’ is

a

thing

to the tenant and that an heir can claim as his under

the Heritable Estate model. 37 In

gift

that

a

follower

can

personal terms, the ‘honour’ is a claim from his lord under the Gift for Past

Warranty model; or, under the Gift for gift that the follower must reciprocate another kind of honour, namely service, to his lord. by giving When an ‘honour’ is viewed as a possession, it takes on different meanings depending on which proprietary model of the fief is Service model and the

Future Service

34

36

a

Louis uses it when he threatens to disinherit Gautier and Guerri, after calling them both felons

35

model,

(5259-61; 5281-3).

When he implies that if Herbert’s sons had committed felony, Louis could have properly taken Herbert’s land from them and given it to Raoul (750—2). As Guerri acknowledges, Giboin is better qualified than the infant Raoul is to serve Louis in return for the Cambrésis (178—80). Later, Louis is enraged by the prospect of losing the homage of Herbert’s four sons and gaining, in return, only Raoul’s support

(724-5). 37

To hold a fief is to have honour by virtue of holding a token of honour. Taillefer held ‘the honour of Cambrai’ (6). To give a fief to a tenant is to honour him. Because Giboin wants an appropriate or full gift for his ‘service’, the barons from beyond the Rhine advise Louis to give him ‘the honour of the Cambrésis’ (105-7). On similar uses of the

‘honour’, see K.-J. Hollyman, Le développement du vocabulaireféodalen France pendant le haut moyen âge (étude sémantique) (Geneva and Paris, 1957), pp. 33-41; G. F. Jones, The Ethos of the Song of Roland (Baltimore, 1963), pp. 46-8; G. S. Burgess, Contribution à l'étude du vocabulaire pré-courtois (Geneva, 1970), pp. 68-90; and Y. Robreau, L’honneur et la honte: term

leur expression dans les

pp. 7-24.

romans en

prose du Lancelot-Graal (Xlle-XIIIe siècles) (Geneva, 1981),

combined with it. When associated with the Heritable Estate the Honour model transforms the heir’s proprietary claim

model,

to his father’s land into a more

lineage, model,

powerfully

felt

claim,

based

on

to honour itself. When combined with the Life-Estate

the Honour model makes the lord’s

generosity,

rather

lineage, the primary source of his man’s honour because the 38 acquires honour through the lord’s gift, not by inheritance. When viewed in personal terms as a gift that the lord makes to a man to reciprocate service or to discharge his obligation to warrant his gift to a donee or donee’s heirs, ‘honour’ takes on a complex meaning because the lord’s honour, as well as the follower’s, is at stake in such exchanges. Just as the lord’s men will have honour only if he gives them ‘honours’ in return for their service, so the lord will have honour only if he gives his men ‘honours’ in return for service, which they will give him only if he than

man

warrants their honours. 39 When the Honour model is combined

with the Gift for Past Service model Service

model,

the fief is

a

gift

of

or

one

with the Gift for Future

kind of honour

that the lord makes to the follower in return for kind of honour combined with makes to

(i.e. service); when the Warranty model, the

discharge

his

duty

the fief is

a

gift

(i.e. land) of another

Honour model

is

that the lord

gift gifts of honour to his type of exchange, however, can be a

to warrant his

followers and their heirs. This understood in

radically different ways. Under the Gift for Past Warranty model, the ‘honour’ is a gift that the lord is obliged to make in order to discharge an obligation to a man; under the Gift for Future Service model, it is a gift that places the donee under an obligation to honour the lord with

Service model and the

service. The

possibility of combining the Honour model with other models also has important implications for how claims to fiefs are understood, made, and prosecuted. When the Honour model is combined with either the Heritable Estate model 38

39

or

the Life-

Under this model, moreover, the follower’s honour is conditional on his ability to honour the lord by serving him. This version of the Honour model is invoked by Louis to justify his initial refusal to fulfil his promise to give Raoul the fief of the deceased Herbert of Vermandois. Herbert, the king explains, ‘leaves four sons of high repute. No one could find [the equal of] such knights. If I were to abandon their land to you, the whole nobility would reprove me for it; I would no longer be able to summon them to my court, nor would they serve and honour me’ (670—6).

represented as honour, in which case dishonoured, suffering shame that he must avenge; and because his kin participate in both his honour and his shame, they are entitled to shame him into avenging his dishonour by claiming his lost honour and, if necessary, by retaliating against those who dishonoured him by expressing anger, hatred, and enmity or by waging a feud. When Estate

an

model,

heir

the fief itself is

who loses the fief is

or tenant

the Honour model is combined with either the Gift for Past Service model as an

against

a

lord

Warranty model, the gift of a fief is represented obligatory gift of honour, in which case retaliation is a legitimate and even obligatory response to the

dishonour that

rejects

or

the

heir

an

his claim to

a

or

gift

other follower suffers when the lord of honour.

Furthermore,

when the

Honour model is combined with the Gift for Future Service

model,

the service that

provide his lord in gift represented as a gift of honour to the lord, 40 in which case the lord may retaliate against a man who dishonours him by failing to give him proper service in return for an honour. Such retaliation may involve seizing the man’s honour. 41 Finally, because a claim to a fief or to service from

return for a

a

fief is understood

least

as a

is

obliged

can

itself be

a man

of an honour

to

claim to honour and therefore includes at

implicit threat to avenge the dishonour of having the claim rejected, such claims usually involve not only normative an

arguments based

on

proprietary

or

personal models,

but also

threats and

displays of anger, which claimants to honour use, as elements in the discourse of claiming honour, to cow and shame adversaries into

40 41

respecting

See above, n. 39. See, for example, the

king’s

such claims. 42

threats to seize the lands of Guerri, Gautier and Bernier

(5218-30, 5282-3). 42

Guerri invokes the Honour model by formally challenging Louis’s gift to Giboin and that he will contest it by fighting (176.viii-176.ix); by threatening to cut off Giboin’s head if he enters the Cambrésis (185-6); and by telling little Raoul that the land will not be ‘lost’ without a fight (239-40). After Raoul’s claim to the Cambrésis is

saying

rejected, Guerri says he will give him no further support if he does not take his own land the next day (519-21). Even as a young boy, Raoul implies that he will use force to recover his father’s fief (237-8). Later, he tells Louis that he will be blamed if he continues to accept the shame of seeing another man hold ‘his land’ (528-30). Like Guerri, moreover, Raoul implicitly represents the Cambrésis as his and shows himself to be ‘preus’ by showing hatred for Giboin (359) and threatening to kill him (532-3) and is enjoined to treat Giboin as an enemy by Alice, who asks him how he can consent to having Giboin hold the Cambrésis without killing or dishonouring him (803-4) •

Claiming the Fief

In

a

dispute

over a

former could

fief between his

justify

Heritable Estate

model,

an

claim

donee,

the

easily by invoking simply rely on

the

heir and

most

a

lord’s

while the latter could

Gift for Future Service model. In

who should hold the Cambrésis and the Vermandois often a more

complicated

and varied form. To

Cambrésis Raoul invokes and Life-Estate

model,

as

well

as

Service

model,

his

Heritable Estate

own

Warranty

the Heritable Estate

when he bases his claim to Herbert’s fief

on

assume

his claim to the

justify

combination of the

a

the

Raoul, however, arguments about

model

model;

and

the Reward for Past

mother contests the claim

by invoking

the

model, which Herbert’s sons and Bernier also use

to contest Raoul’s claim to Herbert’s fief and assert their own. The

model, moreover, is invoked to justify not Cambrésis, but also the claims of both only Raoul and his father to the same fief. At one time or another, Louis invokes the Life-Estate model, the Gift for Past Service model, the Warranty model, the Gift for Future Service model, and even the Heritable Estate model. Thus, neither the dispute Reward for Past Service

Giboin’s claim to the

over

the Cambrésis

reduced to fief is

a

a

simple

heritable estate

narrated in such

kin,

nor

the

dispute

conflict

a

over

or a

as to

culture

legal designed to promote claims to fiefs

are

or

the Vermandois

can

be

life estate.

Instead, the two cases are Giboin, Raoul and his

show how Louis,

way and Herbert’s descendants all

shared

over

the juridical issue of whether the

use

discourse to

their

always

respective

selected elements of

a

justify political strategies interests in

associated with

a

world where

larger,

multi-sided

struggles for honour. Early in the poem, Louis confronts a chronic problem for lords: with only limited resources, how can he maintain his own honour by rewarding a valued follower who has a legitimate claim on his generosity under the Gift for Past Service model without completely overriding the claims to fiefs of other followers under the Heritable Estate model or Warranty model and thereby losing their support? Initially, the king’s solution is to give Giboin wardship over the Cambrésis during Raoul’s minority; marriage to Alice; and a promise of ‘other land’ as an exchange (under one form of the Warranty model) when Raoul, upon attaining his majority, receives the Cambrésis under another form of the

Warranty model or the Heritable Estate model. How is this transaction represented? Invoking the Heritable Estate model, the poet blames Louis for giving the CambrésistGiboin because in doing o so he has taken away Raoul’s ‘inheritance’ (136); he also blames Giboin for wanting someone else’s land (137-8). Nevertheless, instead of consistently privileging the Heritable Estate model by representing Louis’s gift to Giboin as an act of ‘folaige’ or ‘outraige’, the poem shows that the gift could be justified in two ways: first, like the king’s previous gift to Taillefer and like the gift that Raoul and Guerri later claim from the king, Louis’s gift of the Cambrésis to Giboin is represented as one that the king is obliged to make under the Gift for Past Service model; second, the king makes the gift on the advice of his barons, who acknowledge Giboin’s right under the Gift for Past Service model to claim a fief from his lord (106-7, 113-17, 477)- Moreover, when Louis initially makes his gift to Giboin, he acknowledges both Raoul’s claim to the Cambrésis under the Heritable Estate model or the Warranty model and his own duty, under the Warranty model, to give other land to Giboin when Raoul, upon coming of age, receives the Cambrésis.

However, or

as

a

because Alice’s refusal to accept Giboin as guardian for her son undermines Louis’s

rewarding new

Giboin without

disinheriting Raoul,

husband

plans for king devises a guardianship of

the

strategy. Instead of merely giving Giboin the

the Cambrésis until Raoul is old

a

enough to hold the honour himself, Louis seizes the Cambrésis, thereby overriding Raoul’s claim to it, and gives it to Giboin (176.vi-176.vii). Whereas Alice justifies her refusal to marry Giboin by representing him as her social inferior (215-16), the king treats it as an act of ‘outraige’ (151), which prevents him, moreover, from fulfilling his promise to give Alice in marriage to Giboin. Louis’s second gift to Giboin is thus open to two different interpretations based on different models of the fief. On the one hand, by invoking the Heritable Estate model Raoul and Raoul’s kin represent the king’s gift to Giboin as an act by which the king and Giboin ‘disinherit’ Raoul. On the other hand, by invoking the Gift for Future Service model Louis can treat Alice’s ‘outraige’ as a justification for taking the Cambrésis from Raoul and his kin (151-3, i76.vi). Having taken the Cambrésis into his own hands, the king can then represent this fief as a gift that he is obliged to make to Giboin under the Gift for Past

model; as a gift or ‘exchange’ that he is obliged to make Giboin, under the Warranty model, to compensate him for the loss of the marriage to Alice; and as a gift that his barons

Service to

approved. To challenge the king’s gift of the Cambrésis to Giboin and justify Raoul’s claim to the same fief, Raoul and his kin do not simply invoke the Heritable Estate model to show that the fief is really ‘his’; they also employ other argumentative strategies, including ones based on other models of the fief. Guerri implicitly invokes the Heritable Estate model when he challenges the king’s gift to Giboin and threatens to take the Cambrésis by force (176.viii-176.ix); at the same time, when he asks incredulously whether the king wishes to disinherit Raoul simply because the boy can neither ‘ride nor travel’ (178-80), he contests the view that a

fief,

under the Gift for Future Service

model,

return for service of a kind that Raoul cannot

must be held in

yet

provide. Later,

Guerri

again invokes the Heritable Estate model when he says that Louis should not have given Raoul’s land to someone else (187-9) and that the the

king

king ought

also cites Raoul’s

bearing

has disinherited Raoul

not to have

kinship

given

(235);

Raoul’s land to

with Louis

(188),

even

but to show

another,

though

why

Guerri

it has

no

Raoul’s claim to the Cambrésis under the Heritable

on

Estate model. Moreover, when Raoul comes of age and serves the king, Guerri bases Raoul’s claim to the Cambrésis on the Gift for Past Service the

model, asserting

that because Raoul has

long

served

without

king receiving proper recompense, Louis should invest him with his father’s fief (468-72). After Louis refuses to give the Cambrésis to Raoul because he has

to Giboin

Guerri invokes the

with the

(473-4),

Heritable Estate Cambrésis Like

by

Guerri,

model,

already given it Honour model, along

to convince Raoul that he must take the

force in order to Alice

justifies

regain

‘honour’

(486-9, 517-21).

Raoul’s claim to the Cambrésis in

multiple ways. She,

too, invokes the Gift for Past Service model when she says that Louis should compensate Raoul for his service by giving him Taillefer’s land (797-802). She, too, invokes the Heritable Estate model and the Honour model when she asks Raoul how he otherwise To

can

allow Giboin to hold his land without

dishonouring

justify

his

own

him

(803-4). Cambrésis,

claim to the

several different models of the fief. As

a

killing or

Raoul also invokes

boy,

he invokes the

Heritable Estate model when he tells Guerri that he will have his own

fief if he lives

long enough

to bear arms

(237-8).

After he

grows up and serves the king, the Heritable Estate and Honour models provide the basis for his hatred toward Giboin for

receiving the Cambrésis as a gift (356-9). Nevertheless, when Raoul, invoking the Heritable Estate model, asks Louis for investiture of ‘his’ land, as his father had held it from the king, he also bases his claim on the Gift for Past Service model, asserting that he has served the king well without receiving anything in return (507-10). After Louis rejects this claim (511-13), Raoul justifies it in yet another way. When he tells Louis that ‘Everybody knows that the father’s honour should, by right, come back to the child’ (700-1), he acknowledges that under the Life-Estate model the Cambrésis reverted to Louis become ‘his’ until the

Warranty

model to

give

king

on

Taillefer’s death and will not

fulfils his

obligation

under the

it to him. He also invokes the Heritable

Estate and Honour models

by saying

that he will be blamed if he

accepts the shame of seeing someone else hold his land (528-30) and by threatening to kill Giboin (531-3). 43 In other words, Raoul, like his mother and

paternal uncle, gives no consistent answer to question of whether the Cambrésis is ‘his’ to take or

the juridical his lord’s to

give

to him.

Confronted with Raoul’s claim to and with the whom

can

of

a

fief that Giboin

now

holds

possibility guerre between the two men, both of claim his support under different versions of the a

Warranty model, the king again plays for time, searching for a compromise in ways that are facilitated by his ability to invoke different models of the fief. Initially, to justify Giboin’s claim to the Cambrésis and to show why he cannot honour Raoul’s claim to the same land, he treats the fief as his to give under the Life-Estate model and invokes his obligation under the Warranty model to maintain his gift to Giboin. When Guerri tells him to ‘restore to

[Raoul]

the honour of the

Taillefer’

it;

43

Cambrésis,

all the land of

The Manceau has (471-2), Louis says, ‘I cannot do it. I seised him of it with the glove’ (474). Moreover, when the king .

.

.

Here, Raoul represents the Cambrésis not only as land that is ‘his’ and that he is entitled to fight for to avenge his shame (the Honour model), but also, under the Life-Estate model, as land that reverted, on Taillefer’s death, to Louis but that should now ‘come back’ to him

through

the mediation of the

king’s gift.

explains that although he himself regrets having made the gift, it was approved by his barons (475-7), he implies that under the Gift for Past Service model, which the barons had invoked (114-16), he was obliged to give Giboin a fief. When Raoul asks Louis for investiture of the Cambrésis (509), the king again invokes his obligation, under the Warranty model, to maintain his gift to I have given [the land] to Giboin, declaring, ‘I cannot do so ...

[Giboin].

Not for the honour of Milan would I take it from him’(511-13).

However, his

own

when Raoul says that he will be shamed if he permits by another (528-30) and threatens to kill

land to be held

(532-3), Giboin invokes the Warranty model in an effort to defending his claim to the Cambresis against Raoul. Giboin says that if, as he fears, Louis cannot help him to defend the gift of the Cambrésis (539-40) against Raoul and Guerri (541-4), then he will have lost the honour that he should have gained under the Gift for Past Service model for serving the king. Giboin’s claim to his lord’s support, however, is unsuccessful. Even though Louis has just declared that he cannot revoke his gift of the Cambrésis to Giboin, he does not acknowledge his duty under one form of the Warranty model to support Giboin against Raoul. Instead, by promising to give Raoul the honour of the next royal baron who dies (559-62, 588-90), Louis implicidy acknowledges his duty under another form of the Warranty model to give Raoul an exchange for the Cambrésis, while implying simultaneously Giboin

shame Louis into

that if that baron has Raoul accepts the gift, even baron’s heirs. 44 Although the

making

the

he will disinherit them.

though it may disinherit another poet himself condemns Louis for

gift (649), he insists that Raoul is right to accept it praises him for securing hostages for the gift

and

(602, 648) (606-7). The

heirs,

fact

Vermandois,

that

the

next

royal

has left four grown

sons

baron

to

die,

Herbert

of

triggers further negotiations figure prominently.

in which several different models of the fief When

Raoul, invoking

his earlier

44

In

the Warranty model, asks Louis to maintain

gift by giving

him Herbert’s honour

(662-8),

the

king

Le charroi de Nîmes, Count William refuses to accept any of three fiefs that his lord successively offers him as rewards for his past service because the deceased tenant of each

fief left at least

one son

(11. 315-79).

justifies his refusal to

do

so

by invoking

several different models of

the fief. He invokes the Heritable Estate model when he indicates

by giving the Vermandois to Raoul he would be disinheriting sons (see 678); he would be giving ‘their’ land to Raoul (673). To justify his refusal to give Herbert’s fief to Raoul, Louis

that

Herbert’s

also invokes the Gift for Future Service model to

show,

in two

different ways, that in deciding who should hold the Vermandois he is entitled to consider both the narrower and the broader

implications of his decision for his ability himself by extracting service from those who First, sons

gain

honour for

hold fiefs from him.

when he says that he does not wish to disinherit Herbert’s one could find [the equal of] such knights’ (672)

because ‘no

and because ‘I don’t want to one’

to

(678-9),

he

implies

injure four men for the sake of only deciding who should hold the

that in

Vermandois he should consider who which of them he

can

can

afford to alienate.

best

serve

Second,

him for it and

when the

king

says that if he were to give Raoul the land of Herbert’s sons all nobles would blame him (674) and ‘I would no longer be able to summon

(675-6),

them to my court, nor would they serve and honour me’ implies that his decision about whether Raoul or

he also

Herbert’s on

sons

should hold the Vermandois should turn, in part, by other nobles, who will

how that decision will be evaluated

honour him with service, under the Gift for Future Service model, only if they trust him to reciprocate by honouring them with fiefs.

Angered by the king’s refusal (680-2), Raoul seeks his hostages’ (684-5, 691-5); but their spokesman, Geoffrey, supports Raoul’s claim to Herbert’s land only equivocally and confusedly. Although he calls Raoul a ‘felon’ (714) for demanding investiture of Herbert’s fief (716) and claiming that Louis has committed ‘folaige’ and ‘outraige’ by giving Raoul another man’s ‘honour and fief (718-22), Geoffrey still says that Raoul has right (722) and support

tells Louis to deliver the land for which he himself and his associates

are

hostages (723).

Although the king is enraged at the prospect of losing four men’s homage for the sake of one man’s homage (724-5) and insists that only a marriage agreement will prevent his gift to Raoul from causing great harm to many nobles (728-9), Louis nevertheless gives Raoul Herbert’s land, on condition that neither he nor his men will warrant the gift (732-3) to Raoul, who accepts the gift

contesting the condition (909). By praising Raoul for challenging his father’s fief (742-3), the king’s French barons seem to acknowledge, as the poet does, that he can rightfully claim the Vermandois as an exchange for the Cambrésis. But Bernier, supporting the interests of his kin group, sees only ‘desraison’ in the king’s gift (749). Although he represents the Vermandois,

without

under the Heritable Estate

the land of Herbert’s sons, that under the Gift for Future

model,

he also

as

acknowledges implicitly they hold it from Louis in return for service and could therefore have lost it if they had committed felony. Because they have not committed felony (925), he argues, the king should not have taken away their land and given it to someone else (750-1); he also says, invoking the Heritable Estate and Honour models, that they are obliged, as well as entitled, to defend their land against Raoul (753-4). Caught between his duty under one form of the Warranty model to give Raoul an exchange for the Cambrésis and his duty under another form of the same model to warrant to Herbert’s heirs his previous gift to Herbert, Louis chooses, by agreeing with Bernier, to privilege the second duty over the first. Even though the king has just given the Vermandois to Raoul, he insists that he did not want Raoul to accept the gift and will not warrant it to him (755-7). Service model

When Bernier advises his lord Raoul not to take what he the land of Herbert’s

(760-1), he implicitly invokes the Heritable Estate model to justify their claim to the Vermandois; but instead of explicitly contesting Raoul’s right to this fief, Bernier adopts a more conciliatory strategy. After citing the prowess of Ernaut of Douai’s men as the reason why Raoul should not invade the Vermandois (761-3), Bernier says that he represents

as

sons

himself will compensate Raoul for any ‘mesfait’ that Herbert’s sons have committed against him (764-6). Since no one has ever accused them of

designed

wronging Raoul,

Bernier’s

to make Raoul choose between

proposal is clearly refusing an offer of

peace and surrendering his claim to the Vermandois. Raoul rejects the second option, insisting that he has received the Vermandois

as a

gift

and will

never

surrender his claim to it

(767-8). When Raoul and his

mother, Alice,

argue about whether he each of them uses arguments by force, different models of the fief. Alice first

should take the Vermandois based in part

on

recapitulates Guerri’s earlier arguments that Louis, under the Gift for Past Service model and the Honour Raoul

by failing

model,

has dishonoured

to reward him for his service and should now

give (797-802), and that Raoul, under the Heritable Estate and Honour models, incurs dishonour by allowing his own land to be held by Giboin. She then urges Raoul to avenge his shame by killing or dishonouring Giboin (803-4). In response, Raoul argues, in effect, that the king has now fulfilled his obligation under the Gift for Past Service model to reward Raoul’s service by giving him Herbert’s land (807-9) which, Raoul is the to since under the Life-Estate model it king’s give, implies, reverted to Louis on Herbert’s death. Alice, however, provides Raoul with several reasons for renouncing what she represents him the Cambrésis

-

under the Heritable Estate model and for

(816, 919)

seeking

to recover the

(920-1)

In

(1116).

giving

their

as

help

Cambrésis,

a

death

speedy

invoking the

sons

should not

Vermandois,

model,

‘right’ king has

she says, the

were

friends,

she

that Raoul has

because his ancestors have

never

moreover,

Raoul and

quarrel (817-22); finally,

the Heritable Estate

sons

feud with Giboin

(812-15; 829-31);

because Raoul’s father and Herbert Herbert’s

waging

a

to which Raoul has

land,

Raoul Herbert’s

invested him with

the land of Herbert’s

in

no

taken

implies, right to a

penny

(953-4). However, by insisting that he will not renounce the Vermandois because doing so, under the Honour model, would shame him and his kin (823-5), Raoul implies that the Vermandois is ‘his’ because the king gave it to him. When Raoul steadfastly maintains this view of honour, his mother, who construes their family’s honour differently, curses him (955-9). from it

Undaunted,

Raoul wages a feud with Herbert’s sons to seize land that he represents as his under the Life-Estate model and one form of the Warranty model and that they, invoking the Heritable Estate

model, represent

inheritance ends

as

theirs. This

when Raoul’s

only acknowledge

claim to this fief and to it.

kin,

dispute in

effect,

over

Herbert’s

abandon their

that Bernier and his kin have

They then revive Raoul’s earlier claim to Taillefer’s land

right by fighting,

in alliance with Bernier and his

and Giboin for the

Cambrésis,

kin, against

which Gautier

can

claim

Louis as

his

only under the Heritable Estate model. Thus, the long triggered by Louis’s gift of the Cambrésis to Giboin is repeatedly reinterpreted in ways that are facilitated by the ability inheritance

conflict

of the

disputants to invoke political contexts.

different models of the fief in different

Conclusion

Raoul de Cambrai does not represent the fief as modern legal histories customarily do. Proceeding on the assumption that, at

time, a single, internally consistent model of the fief was legally dominant, whether or not it was universally accepted or any

one

consistently embodied in practice, legal historians usually treat the history of ‘feudal’ land tenure as a story about how one such model succeeded another. Focusing on England, Professor Thorne, for example, identified at least three such models, each of which he assigned successively to a different chronological segment of the period 1066 to 1200. Each of these models closely resembles

model of the fief listed above. First, the fief was

a

a

lifeestate

which the tenant’s heir could claim 45 but could not demand ‘as of

the Life-Estate

right’ (see

model). 46 Next,

the fief became

another kind of life-estate, which the heir, if he was of full age and could perform the requisite service, had a right to claim, not by inheritance from his ancestor, but as a gift from the lord (see the 47 Warranty model) Eventually, the fief became a heritable estate .

that him

to the heir

passed directly from

became the

verus

the

‘independently

ancestor’,

48 so

of the

that

dominus of his fief

by

(see

lord, descending

1200

the tenant

to

finally

the Heritable Estate

49

Although Professor Milsom significantly modified Thorne’s developmental schema, emphasising that personal models of the fief antedated proprietary ones, he, too, represented the history of feudal land tenure as an evolutionary model)

,

50 process in which one model of the fief succeeded another. Professor Holt, however, represented the history of the fief very

differently by arguing, in effect, 45

46

.,

48

.,

49

.,

50

legal

culture of eleventh-

‘English Feudalism and Estates in Land’, Cambridge Law Journal, n.s. VI (I959). 196—7. Ibid 198. Ibid 198-9. Thorne treated homage, rather than warranty, as the basis of the heir’s right to claim the fief as a gift from his lord. Ibid 198. Ibid 209; on the complex process through which this model of the fief finally took shape, see 201-9. See Milsom, Legal Framework, esp. pp. 36-71. S. E. Thorne,

.,

47

that the

century

Normandy had room for

each of which resembles

a

opposing models of the fief, already considered here. ‘The

two

model

might regard the heir’s claim [to his ancestor’s fief] as permissive [see the Life-Estate model]. The vassal regarded it as title’ [see the Heritable Estate model] 51 Although the preceding analysis of Raoul de Cambrai is consistent with both Thorne’s and Milsom’s general argument that the fief was imagined in different ways during the later eleventh and twelfth centuries, it confirms Holt’s more specific contention that a single legal culture could duke

.

include several different models of the to

privilege

the lord’s interests

Future Service

fief,

(the

while others

model),

interests of vassals and their heirs

some

of which seemed

Life-Estate model and Gift for

(the

apparently privileged Heritable Estate

model,

the the

Gift for Past Service model and the

argument, however, in

also

supports

Warranty model). The present the paradoxical conclusion that

both lords and their men alike had an interest, at one another, in invoking and thereby reproducing several

practice

time

or

different models of the

fief, including

think of as A lord

being incompatible such as Louis, for example,

the Heritable Estate the

ones

that historians

with their interests

Warranty model,

model, as

well

as

lords

could sometimes find

usually

or men. uses

for

the Gift for Past Service model and as

for the Life-Estate model and Gift

for Future Service model. Men such

as

Raoul

or

Giboin could

exploit the Life-Estate model and Gift for Future Service model, as well

as

the Heritable Estate

and the

Warranty

model,

the Gift for Past Service model

model.

The poem also provides some clues about why this was so. Because men made several different kinds of claims to fiefs, 52 they had to be able to invoke different models of the lord needed to claims.

well,

fief, which the respect such

to justify decisions to

By invoking two different models of the fief, two men could

claim the

51

invoke,

as

same

fief,

in which

case

the lord invoked

one

of the

‘Patrimony’, p. 211. This argument implies that the Heritable Estate model did not become the dominant model of the fief through an evolutionary process in ‘legal theory’, but rather through a process of conflict between a lord’s model of the fief,

which was eventually discarded, and a vassal’s model, which eventually became legally dominant. 52 He could claim as a man seeking reward for his service to a lord (Reward for Past Service model); as an heir who wanted either his ancestor’s fief (Heritable Estate model) or its equivalent (Warranty model); as a donee demanding possession of the fief the lord had

given

him

or

else

an

exchange for

it

(Warranty model).

models to justify his decision to support one of the claimants. But the contradictions between opposing models of the fief were

permanently resolved in such a way as to invoke or create the kind of internally consistent master model of the fief that modern legal historians have reconstructed. Why not? Although evidence from Raoul de Cambrai is certainly consistent with the familiar argument that no such theory of the fief could be constructed in the absence of lawyers to create it, a ‘rational’ and bureaucratised procedure for applying it, and a state to impose it, 53 the poem also suggests that the existence of multiple and sometimes mutually contradictory models of the fief provided both lords and men with the flexibility they needed to make claims to fiefs in an unstable and relatively decentralised political order. In the world of Raoul, disputes over fiefs were endemic, as claims never

and counter-claims to the

same

fief flourished; and claims to fiefs

as claims to honour and only negotiating political relationships. Because ‘honour’, in the form of land held by men, was in short supply, so was the ‘honour’ that a lord could acquire only by exchanging land for the service of men. In the absence of opportunities to expand the available stock of land for distribution to

served not

claims to land, but also

as

methods of

men as one

honour in return for the honour of service, could sometimes honour the

hand,

honoured him with service men or

declaring such

gifts

dishonoured other same

fief,

such

forfeit;

lord,

on

the

who had

men, on the other

own

to new men or

men.

gifts

a

men

only by either disinheriting some other

their lands

could sometimes maintain their

contesting

new

hand,

honour

only by either claiming new gifts that

By generating two

counter-claims to the

and claims laid the basis for inheritance

disputes and other kinds of conflicts over fiefs, which, because they involved the honour of the participants, were carried on not only through discussion, but also by feuds waged to avenge dishonour. Instead of being treated became the

subjects

negotiations

in which

of

as

lawsuits

over

land,

such

disputes thus political

and of

political strategising making opposing claims

men

to a fief and

their lord invoked different models of the fief. The freedom to

53

See, e.g., Milsom, Legal Framework; and R. C. Palmer, England’, Law and History Review, III(1985), 1-50.

‘The

Origins of Property

in

invoke different and

even

mutually

inconsistent models

both the claimants and the lord with the construct different

political strategies.

provided flexibility they needed to In Raoul de Cambrai, it as his

allows Raoul to reformulate his claim to the Cambrésis status

and to reinforce it

changes

by simultaneously advancing

several different arguments for it. It allows him to claim the Vermandois on grounds that are inconsistent with his earlier claim to the Cambrésis and allows his mother Alice to contest his claim to the Vermandois

grounds. As lord, the

on

normative,

as

well

as

political,

moreover, Louis is able to

flexibility

afforded him

by

the fief because his ultimate

exploit, in two different ways, the existence of multiple models of

goal

is not to maintain

system of property holding, but rather

a

coherent

to maintain his own honour

by controlling a group of men whom he must reward with only a limited stock of land. For a time, he tries to achieve this goal by simultaneously pursuing two political strategies, both of which are by his ability to represent the fief in multiple ways. By facilitating the creation of rival claims to the same fief (Giboin’s facilitated

and Raoul’s claims to the

Cambrésis; the claims of Raoul and Vermandois) and by successively supporting whichever claimant can give him the most support and therefore poses the greatest political threat to him, he sets some of his men Herbert’s

against

the

sons to

each in

a

way that

temporarily

relieves him from pressure give them. The

to reward them with land that he does not have to

lord’s strategy can succeed, however, only if he can maintain his credit as a lord who will honour at least some of his gifts to his men and at least

some

of his men’s claims to their inheritances. A lord

who loses such credit will face

a

guerre.

54

contradictory cultural

Thus,

certainly lose

a set

honour and will

of different and sometimes

probably mutually

models of the fief serves, in various ways, as a for lords and men engaged in the continuous

resource

political relationships and in struggles for regularly produce inheritance disputes and other kinds of feuds rather than what later lawyers called ‘quietness of possession’. renegotiation

of

honour that

54

On ‘political credit’,

(1969; reprinted

see

Oxford

F. G.

Bailey, Stratagems and Spoils: A 1985), esp. ch. 3.

Social Anthropology

of Politics

VI

English Feudalism and Its Origins R. Allen Brown Origins of English Feudalism, New York, Barnes and Noble Books 1973. xiii, 164 pp. $8.50. ,

,

Medieval historians have been discussing the “origins” of English feudalism and the “impact” of the Norman conquest on English society for over a century; but they have been unable to agree about whether feudalism, or any of its elements, existed in pre-conquest England, or whether the conquest fundamentally transformed English society. 1 What has become the “orthodox” position in this controversy was first formulated in 1891 by J. H. Round, who claimed that William the Conqueror introduced “the feudal system” into England, where it had not previously existed, and that the conquest resulted in a cataclysmic break with the Anglo-Saxon 2 past. Although F. W. Maitland believed that a form of feudalism existed in pre-conquest England and therefore questioned Round’s thesis, 3 most historians accepted it, particularly after F. M. Stenton restated it in 1929; 4 and during the 1930’s and 1940’s, it attained the full status of “orthodoxy”. 5

1. Only a very brief and schematic summary of this controversy will be given here. For fuller discussions of it with extensive bibliographical references, see C. Warren Hollister, ed., The Impact of the Norman Conquest (New York, 1969) and two articles by Hollister: “The Norman Conquest and the Genesis of English Feudalism”, American Historical Review, LXVI (1961), 641-663; and “1066: The ‘Feudal Revolution’ ”, American Historical Review, LXXIII (1968), 708-723. 2. J. H. Round, “The Introduction of Knight-Service into England”, English Historical Review, VI (1891), 417-443, 625-645, VII (1892), 11-24; rpt. with additions in J. H. Round, Feudal England (London, 1895), 225-314. As Hollister notes (“The Norman Conquest”, p. 643), Round was attacking the views of earlier writers, particularly E. A. Freeman. 3. F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond. Three Essays in the Early History of England (1897; rpt. with an introduction by Edward Miller, London, 1961). Sir Paul Vinogradoff sided with Maitland against Round (see English Society in the Eleventh Century (Oxford, 1908), 39-89).

4. Sir Frank Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism 1066-1166, Second Edition (Oxford, 1961). First published in 1932, this work is based upon Stenton’s Ford Lectures at the University of Oxford for the year 1929. 5. Hollister writes that Round’s “notion of a Norman feudal revolution,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-6

recent decades, however, a number of historians have challenged the so-called orthodox interpretation in a variety of ways. They have claimed that post-conquest feudalism had at least some pre-conquest roots and/or analogues, that it had developed much more gradually than Round and his followers had supposed, and that the changes that English society underwent between c.1050 and c.1200 were caused not simply by the conquest, but also by more general factors that transformed much of western Europe during the same period. These critics have therefore concluded that some form of feudalism existed in pre-conquest England, or that orthodox writers had seriously overestimated the impact of the conquest and underestimated the continuity between pre- and post-conquest English society. 6 Nevertheless, other historians continue to accept the orthodox interpretation in some form, 7 and the controversy over the origins of English feudalism and the impact of the Norman conquest still drags on. The controversy continues partly because historians still argue about highly specific and technical questions concerning English and Norman social and military organization before and after the conquest. But even if they were to reach agreement on the answers to these questions, the controversy would still continue because of their disagreements about what feudalism is and about what constitutes a satisfactory account of its origins. However, the participants in this controversy cannot possibly resolve questions

In

asserted so boldly in the 1890’s, quickly rose to the Olympian heights of received opinion, and virtually all the research done by scholars in the 1920’s, 1930’s, and 1940’s served only to strengthen it.” (“1066: The ‘Feudal Revolution’ ”, 710) He points out that Round’s views were accepted by G. B. Adams, H. M. Chew, R. R. Darlington, Sidney Painter, Ferdínand Lot, Carl Stephenson, J. E. A. Jolliffe, and D. C. Douglas—as well as Stenton (see “The Norman Conquest”, 647-648 and nn. 32-39). 6. On the attacks against Round’s thesis by Marjory Hollings, Eric John, H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, and Frank Barlow, see Hollister, “The Norman Conquest”, 648-650; and “1066: The ‘Feudal Revolution’ ”, 710-711. Direct or indirect attacks on the orthodox interpretation, not noted by Hollister, are found in Richard Glover, “English Warfare in 1066”, English Historical Review, LXVII (1952), 1-18; D. J. A. Matthew, The Norman Conquest (London, 1966), esp. 117; and Frank Barlow, Edward the Confessor (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1970). Hollister identifies himself neither with Round nor with Round’s critics and adopts “an intermediate position between these two extremes” (“1066: The ‘Feudal Revolution’ ”, 711). 7. See, for example, J. C. Holt, “Feudalism Revisited”, Economic History Review, Second Series, XVI (1963), 104-118; and R. C. Van

Caenegem, The Birth of the English Common Law (Cambridge, England, 1973), 5-6 and nn. 7-9.

of this kind without analyzing them closely, and unfortunately they have rarely done so. They have devoted their energies almost exclusively to studying difficult texts like Domesday Book, Hemming’s cartulary, the Red Book of Worcester, and the Oswaldslow leases, to discussing obscure institutions like the servitia debita, the fivehide unit, the fyrd and the select-fyrd, laenland and bocland, sac and soc, the constabularia, and the trimoda (or trinoda) necessitas, and to attacking their opponents’ views about these various texts and institutions. But they have rarely explained what they mean by “feudalism” or “the origins of feudalism”, or directly expressed their underlying assumptions about medieval social structure and social change. Instead, they have generally presented their own views about these matters as self-evident truths that hardly need to be stated, let alone explained and justified, and have dismissed their 8 opponents’ views about them with little or no comment. Their failure to be clear about these matters has obviously prolonged the controversy and made it even more confusing than necessary. In the most recent contribution to this controversy, Origins of English Feudalism, R. Allen Brown tries to establish the validity of the orthodox interpretation beyond any doubt; and although he fails to do so, his book is still worth examining closely for the following reason. By attempting to articulate this thesis as forcefully as possible and to refute its critics’ arguments conclusively, Brown reveals its argumentative structure and the assumptions that underlie it much more clearly than its more cautious advocates. Like his orthodox predecessors, he regards the conquest as a cataclysm that destroyed a “pre-feudal” society and created a “feudal” one and maintains that English feudalism had no pre-conquest origins. But unlike his predecessors, he permits us to see clearly that these conclusions do not depend merely upon particular interpretations of texts and institutions but also on a controversial definition of feudalism and on a particular conception of what constitutes an adequate historical explanation of the appearance of a particular type of society. And, moreover, that the orthodox interpretation of the origins of English feudalism is closely associated with a much debated interpretation of the nature and origins of continetal feudalism. Brown’s definition of feudalism, his explanation of its appearance in England, and his views about continental feudalism are probably implicit in the writings of other orthodox historians. But Brown’s articulation of these views has made it easier to assess the orthodox interpretation.

particular

8. This generalization is not applicable, however, to Eric John. See “English Feudalism and the Structure of Anglo-Saxon Society”, in Eric John, Orbis Britanniae and Other Studies (Leicester, 1966), 128-153.

1.

The Argumentative Structure of the Orthodox Interpretation.

An examination of Brown’s book shows that the argument necessary to support the orthodox interpretation is much more complex than previous writers have indicated. In order to prove that post-conquest English society was “feudal” and that pre-conquest society was not (p. 94), that the “origins” of English feudalism are “found” in the conquest (p. 94), and that the conquest was a cataclysm in English history, Brown constructs what should be seen as an

eight-part argument. 1.

“Feudalism”

can

be regarded

as a

“type” of society (p. 21).

2. Of the many “characteristic” features of “feudal” societies,

four

or “essential”: “the knight, vassalic fief, [and] the castle” (p. 94). Each of these “fundamentals of feudalism”—as Brown sometimes calls them (e.g. can be precisely defined. 9 p. 94)

only

are

“fundamental”

commendation,

the

—

3. All of these fundamentals

are

“absent” from pre-conquest

England (p. 94) but present in pre-conquest Normandy (p. 84), and “all are increasingly manifest” in England soon after the conquest (p. 94). 4. Since the fundamentals of feudalism

are found in preconquest Normandy and in post-conquest England, but are absent from pre-conquest England, pre-conquest Normandy and postconquest England are therefore “feudal” societies, while preconquest England belongs to a different social “type”. 10

Since the fundamentals of feudalism are absent from preconquest England but present in pre-conquest Normandy and in post-conquest England, they were almost certainly introduced into England by the Norman conquerors (p. 85). 5.

6. The introduction of the fundamentals of feudalism into

England by the Normans moulded English society pattern" which was “to last for centuries” (p. 86). 7.

“into

a

feudal

Since the Normans almost certainly introduced the fundamentals of feudalism into England, and since the introduction of

9. On knights, see pp. 24-28 and 34-43; on vassalic commendation, pp. 28-39 and 43-45; on the fief, see pp. 29-30 and 55-72; and on the castle, see pp. 30-31 and 72-82. In these passages, Brown maintains that one can clearly distinguish between knights and other sorts of warriors, between vassalic commendation and other types of commendation, between fiefs and other tenures, and between castles and other sorts of fortification. 10. Brown calls pre-conquest English society “Germanic and prefeudal(p.94)". see

these fundamentals moulded

English society into “a feudal pattern”, the “origins” of English feudalism must be “found” solely in the conquest (p. 94), and not in any of the social developments that may have taken place in pre-conquest English society (p. 23). 8. Since the conquest resulted in the destruction of in the creation of another, it should be

society and cataclysmic

event in

one

type of

seen

as

a

English history (p. 85).

When Brown’s argument for the orthodox interpretation is thus broken down into its component parts, three things about this interpretation stand out. First, it is vulnerable to a wide variety of attacks. Its critics can challenge its advocates’ interpretations of sources, their definitions of the fundamental features of feudalism, or their definition of feudalism itself. They can also raise doubts about the way in which its advocates use the words “origins” and “cataclysm”. And they can combine these different kinds of attacks in many different ways. Second, the orthodox interpretation is not monolithic. Critics can attack some parts of it and leave others intact. They can, for example, adopt a different definition of feudalism, argue that English feudalism had pre-conquest origins, and still yet agree that pre-conquest society was not feudal. Finally, its critics can undermine it without questioning its advocates’ interpretations of sources or their definitions of the fundamental features of feudalism. They can do so because the orthodox interpretation depends very heavily upon a particular definition of feudalism and on a particular view of what constitutes a satisfactory account of the origins of English feudalism. Moreover, this definition of feudalism and the attendant explanation of its appearance in England depend in turn upon certain basic and debatable assumptions about feudal social structure and medieval social change. 11 The supporters of the orthodox view, therefore, cannot argue convincingly for its validity without directly confronting certain difficult problems concerning social organization and historical explanation. 2.

Brown and the Critics

of the

Orthodox Interpretation.

Brown acknowledges much more readily than other orthodox writers that one cannot defend this interpretation without discrediting the views about feudalism held by its critics or potential critics. Since Marc Bloch’s views about feudalism are incompatible with the orthodox interpretation of the origins of English feudalism, and since F. W. Maitland’s view of feudalism led him to attack Round’s thesis, Brown naturally attempts to show that these two 11.

See John, “English Feudalism”, 128 and passim.

influential historians fundamentally misunderstood feudalism. Bloch’s ideas about feudalism are incompatible with the orthodox interpretation in at least three ways. First, since Bloch, unlike Brown, regarded a subject peasantry as a “fundamental feature” of feudal society, 12 and since a subject peasantry may well have existed in pre-conquest England, 13 Bloch could easily have argued that English feudalism had at least certain pre-conquest origins. Second, since Bloch, unlike Brown, believed that the structure of feudal society derived its “special character” not just from the bond of vassalage but also from other kinds of social ties, he would presumably have denied that one could give a satisfactory account of the origins of English feudalism by referring only to the introduction of feudal ties. 14 Finally, Bloch explicitly argued that one could not explain the distinctive features of Anglo-Norman feudalism without noting that the conquest coincided with the appearance of “new material and moral conditions” 15 —conditions to which Brown’s argument, as outlined above, makes no reference. Brown is therefore correct in thinking that in order to vindicate the orthodox interpretation he must discredit Bloch’s views about feudalism; but he is able to attack these views only by misconstruing them or by resorting to illogical arguments. First, he that Bloch’s views about feudalism are incompatible with suggests a rigorous analysis of feudal relationships. l6 Yet, although Bloch never attempts to analyze some of the more technical rules of feudal law, his approach is in no way incompatible with such analysis. Brown also claims that Bloch virtually equated the terms “feudal” and “medieval” and thereby obscured the differences between feudal and non-feudal medieval societies (p. 22). Bloch, however, did nothing of the sort. He specifically stated that some medieval societies were not feudal and, in fact, strongly emphasized the dif12. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L. A. Manyon (Chicago, 1961), 446. 13. See M. M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society. An Economic History of Britain 1100-1500 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972), 73-87; and T. H. Aston, “The Origin of the Manor in England”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, VIII (1958), 59-84. 14. See Bloch, Feudal Society, xx, 123-142, 443, and 446. 15. Bloch, Feudal Society, 445. 16. Brown claims that historians of feudalism fall roughly into two groups: writers like Bloch and Maitland, who use the word “feudalism” in “the broad sense”, and writers like Round, Stenton, F. L. Ganshof (and himself), who use the word in a “narrow” sense (p. 22; cf. 19 and 23). He insists that only members of the second group can analyze feudalism clearly and rigorously (pp. 19, 21, 22, 23). On the relationship between Brown’s view of feudalism and Ganshof s, see below, pp. 148-149.

ferences between Anglo-Saxon and truly feudal societies. 17 Brown also finds fault with Bloch’s list of the “fundamental features" of feudal society 18 because it includes features which are not “peculiar” to feudalism (p. 22). Brown insists that “a subject peasantry” is not “essentially feudal” (p. 22) because it is not “unique to feudal society” (p. 23) and suggests that if it were “essentially feudal”, then all societies with subject peasantries would “partake” of feudalism. 19 He therefore claims that Bloch’s use of the term “feudalism” is too “broad” (p. 22) and seems to think that those who adopt it will classify so many societies as “feudal” as to make the term useless for historical analysis (pp. 22-23). These criticisms of Bloch are also unjustified. An “essential” characteristic of one type of social organization need not be “unique” to societies of that type, and the fact that two societies share an “essential” characteristic does not necessarily mean that they belong to the same social type. Brown is therefore mistaken in claiming that Bloch used the term too broadly. If Bloch had simply equated “feudalism” with “manorialism”, or “feudal society” with 20 “peasant society”—as some writers have done —then Brown’s criticism might make sense. But Bloch explicitly refrained from doing this 21 —as Brown himself admits (p. 23). Brown fails to note that for Bloch, what distinguishes feudal societies from societies belonging to other social types is the conjunction in feudal societies of certain “fundamental features”, and not the presence of any one of them. And since Brown fails to note this fact, he is unable to discredit Bloch’s view of feudalism, or to defend the orthodox interpretation against Bloch’s followers. Maitland’s view of feudalism is also incompatible with the orthodox interpretation, since it provided at least part of the basis for his argument for the existence of pre-conquest feudalism. But although Brown's attack on Maitland is somewhat more reasonable than his critique of Bloch, it is not ultimately successful. Brown criticizes Maitland for not defining feudalism precisely,22 for 17. Bloch, Feudal Society, 181-187. Brown does note this passage from Bloch (p. 45), but not in his general critique of Bloch’s approach. 18. See Bloch, Feudal Society, 446. 19. In fact, Brown uses this argument to show why Bloch was wrong

regard family and state organization as fundamental features of feudal societies (p. 22); but he strongly suggests that the same argument could be used to attack Bloch's inclusion of “a subject peasantry” in his list of feudal society’s fundamental features. 20. See Maurice Dobb, Papers on Capitalism, Development and Planning (New York, 1967), 2. 21. Bloch, Feudal Society, 442. 22. That is, Maitland, according to Brown, uses the word feudalism in “the broad sense”. See above, note 16. to

treating seigneurial justice as one of the most “essential” features of feudalism (pp. 31-32 and 93-94), and for attaching too much importance to feudal “legal ideas” (p. 58). These criticisms are, in a sense, justified. Granted, Maitland did not define feudalism precisely, and he never clearly explained why he attached such 24 importance to “the ideas in which feudalism is expressed”, or why he regarded seigneurial justice as one of the most essential 23

features of feudalism. Nevertheless, his views about feudalism cannot be dismissed as easily as Brown thinks. Maitland argued—and argued with unusual vehemence—that feudalism presupposed the acceptance of the principle of seigneurial justice and that this principle was not just a part of the “superstructure” of feudalism— as Brown would regard it (pp. 31-32 and 93-94). And however obscure this argument of Maitland’s may be, it deserves more serious consideration than Brown gives it. Maitland regarded feudalism as “a complex state of society found in medieval France, Italy, Germany, and England 25 and believed that it arose in England partly as a result of the action of certain “social and economic forces”. 26 He also regarded the development of at least one legal idea, the principle of seigneurial 23. He favored using the term “in a very wide sense”. See F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond. Three Essays in the Early History of England (1897; rpt. with an introduction by Edward Miller, London, 1961), 267. 24. Domesday Book and Beyond, 268. 25. Sir Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I. Two Vols. Second Edition (1898; rpt. with a new introduction and select bibliography by S.F.C. Milsom, Cambridge, 1968), I, 66. Maitland’s lectures on English constitutional history (which he completed in 1888 and never intended to publish) contain several interesting passages on feudalism (see F. W. Maitland, The Constitutional History of England, ed. H. A. L. Fisher (1908; rpt. Cambridge, England, 1963), 23-24, 38-39, 57, and 141-164), as does his lecture on “The Body Politic” (see H. A. L. Fisher, ed.. The Collected Papers of Frederic William Maitland. Three Vols. (Cambridge, England, 1911), 285-303 at 297). But the relationship between the views on feudalism that he expressed in these early works and those that he later advanced is quite unclear. For some interesting comments on Maitland’s views about feudalism, see John, “English Feudalism and the Structure of Anglo-Saxon Society”, above, note 8. 26. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 374. See also Domesday Book and Beyond, 375, where he refers to “religious” forces; and Maitland, Constitutional History, 145, where he attacks other writers for laying “too much stress on the military and political, too little on the economic side of feudalism”, and argues that “one main cause” of the movement towards feudalism in pre-conquest England was that the “distribution of wealth” was becoming “more and more unequal”.

as an independent “cause” of feudalism and thought that the introduction of this principle was “capable of transforming a nation”. 27 He was not very clear about the precise nature of the relationship between this principle, social and economic forces, and the development of feudalism, and to explain this relationship he used two rather different metaphors. He once pictured this basic legal principle as “machinery” which, “when set in motion by social and economic forces”, 28 carried out at least part of what he called “the feudalizing process”. 29 On another occasion, he seems to have been viewing the law as a mechanism which was passive but which, when it recognized the principle of seigneurial justice, gave “free play” to social and economic forces and allowed them to carry out “the feudalizing process”. 30 On one main point, however, Maitland’s position was unambiguous. The principle of seigneurial justice was not a mere addition to, or rationalization for, feudal institutional arrangements which had been previously determined by particular social and economic forces and/or a particular kind of military organization. 31

justice,

27. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 307: Of all the phenomena of feudalism none seems more essential than seignorial [sic] justice. In times gone by English lawyers and historians have been apt to treat it lightly and to concentrate their attention on military tenure. For them ‘the introduction of the military tenures’ has been ‘the establishment of the feudal system.’ But when compared with seignorial justice, military tenure is a superficial matter, one out of many effects rather than a deep-seated cause. Seignorial justice is a deep-seated cause of many effects, a principle which when once introduced is capable of transforming a nation. For Maitland’s views

dependent tenure,

the relationship between seigneurial justice and Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law. I,

on

see

72. 28. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 374. 29. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 270; cf. 374. Maitland closely identified “the feudalizing process” with “the process which substitutes for peasant proprietorship the manorial organization” (p. 267) and which led to “the subjection to seignorial power of free land-holders and their land” (p. 374). He did not see seigneurial jurisdiction as a kind of neutral governmental authority. Rather, he regarded it as a kind of “power” which made it easier for lords who held it as a right to tighten their “grip upon the land” (p. 375) and upon those who lived upon the land (see p. 323). 30. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 375. 31. As S. F. C. Milsom points out, Maitland did not believe that legal reasoning could “always be manipulated to produce” sensible practical results. See Milsom’s introduction to Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, I, xxix.

Brown’s views about feudal legal ideas in general and about the principle of seigneurial jurisdiction in particular differ totally from Maitland’s and seem considerably less compelling. Brown apparently regards feudal legal ideas simply as ways of explaining, rationalizing, or legitimating pre-existing institutional arrangements. But instead of arguing for this position, he simply asserts that “it is the knight and his military tactics which are the fundamentals of feudalism, not the legal ideas which came later” (p. 58— my italics); and he claims that Maitland failed to recognize this self-evident truth because he was thinking like a lawyer and was therefore “divorced from reality” (p. 58; cf. 31). Brown also asserts that seigneurial justice is only a “characteristic feature of developed feudalism” (p. 93) and that feudalism can exist without it (p. 32), but his arguments in support of this assertion are unconvincing.32 .

3. Brown’s View

.

.

of Feudalism.

Brown

clearly recognizes that formulate, explain, will be compatible with

supporters of the orthodox interpretation and justify a definition of feudalism that this interpretation, but he is no more successful in doing this than he is in attacking Bloch’s and Maitland’s ideas about feudalism. Although he regards feudalism as a type of society which has four fundamental features, he never satisfactorily explains why, or in what sense, these features are “fundamental”. He is therefore unable to explain why societies that possess these features should be classified together and be sharply distinguished from societies that lack even one of them. And because he does not explain how “fundamental” social features are to be identified, he fails to show how, by focusing on his four fundamentals, he can illuminate any other aspects of feudal society, or the workings of feudal society as a whole. Brown claims, as noted above, that of the many “characteristic" features of feudal societies only four are really “fundamental” or “essential”: the knight, vassalic commendation, the fief, and the castle. But he never explains how these fundamental features are to be distinguished from merely characteristic ones; and in practice he seems to use several different criteria in making such distinctions. He fallaciously argues, as we have seen, that “a subject must

32. Brown argues that seigneurial justice cannot be an essential, or fundamental feature of feudalism because it was not part of “the original nexus of vassalage” in the Frankish kingdom, and because its “origins and development” cannot be explained by reference to “factors” that are “purely feudal” (pp. 31-32). This argument appears to be circular.

be a fundamental feature of feudal society because “unique” to feudal society; and he also claims that seigneurial justice cannot be a fundamental feature because it was not part of the Frankish nexus of vassalage and because its origins and development cannot be explained by “purely feudal factors”. 33

peasantry”

cannot

it is not

knight is a fundamental feature at least in part because his presence reveals something particularly important about the “nature” of feudalism (p. 36) and also seems to assume that his four fundamentals determine the over-all structure of feudalism 34 —although he never indicates precisely how they do this. criteria Moreover, he never proves that any of these various vague are met only by the four features that he terms fundamental. He never demonstrates that these features are the only unique or essential features of feudalism, or that only they reveal the true nature of feudalism and determine its over-all structure. Since Brown does not explain why the knight, vassalage, the feif, and the castle are fundamental features of feudalism, or prove that they are the only such features, he cannot possibly show that those societies that he terms “feudal” resemble one another fundamentally and differ fundamentally from societies that he regards as “non-feudal”. He is therefore unable to show that pre- and post-conquest England belong to two, fundamentally different types of society, and as a result he cannot support his cataclysmic interpretation of the conquest. He admits, of course, that feudal societies may differ from one another in certain respects. He notes, for example, that fiefs were not always heritable (p. 91 and n. 41) and suggests that some feudal societies were more prone to “disorder” than others (p. 22); and he naturally concedes that Anglo-Norman England and pre-conquest Normandy differed, even though both were feudal societies (p. 84). But he never explains why such differences are less fundamental than the differences between pre- and postconquest England. He also admits that non-feudal societies sometimes resembled feudal ones and notes certain similarities between the institutions of pre- and post-conquest England. But he never explains why, in spite of these similarities, these two societies are fundamentally different. The most serious defect in Brown's discussion of feudalism, however, results from his attempt to combine two very different ways of talking about feudalism—the one illustrated by Bloch’s Feudal Society and the other by F. L. Ganshofs Feudalism. 35

He suggests that the

33. 34. 35. by Sir

See above, note 32. See below, section 5. F. L. Ganshof, Feudalism, trans. Philip Grierson, with F. M. Stenton. Third English Edition (New York, 1964).

a

forward

Whereas Bloch regarded feudalism viewed it as

as

a

36 “type of society”, Ganshof

institutions creating obligations of obedience and on the part of a free man mainly military service (the vassal) towards another free man (the lord), and the obligations of protection and maintenance on the part of the lord with regard to his vassal. 37 a

body of

service

—

—

Ganshof explicitly distinguished himself from historians like Bloch who used the word feudalism to refer to a type, or “form" of society, 38 and since Brown uses the word in this latter sense, he is totally misrepresenting his own view of feudalism when he identifies it with Ganshofs (pp. 22-23). Brown actually follows Bloch in regarding feudalism as a type of society, but then limits his discussion of feudalism to those aspects of feudal society (plus the castle and the art of mounted warfare) that Ganshof treated in his study of “feudal and vassal institutions”. 39 By proceeding in this way, Brown presumably hopes to secure the advantages and to avoid the defects of both Bloch’s and Ganshofs approaches i.e. to be able both to discuss feudal society and not just some of its “legal forms” 40 and to limit his discussion (for the sake of “precision” and “clarity” (p. 21)) to a small set of feudal institutions. But in the end Brown has only sacrificed the advantages of both approaches. By attributing far more importance to vassalage and the fief than Ganshof ever did, 41 he has given a distorted picture of the social function of these institutions, and by excluding a vast number of important subjects from his discussion of feudalism he has given up the possibility of illuminating, or even discussing, the actual workings of feudal society. After initially indicating that his discussion of feudalism will —

36. See Bloch, Feudal Society, Chapter XXXII. 37. Ganshof, Feudalism, xvi. 38. Ganshof, Feudalism, xv-xvi. Ganshof, however, does give his own list of the main “features” of this form of society (p. xv), and it differs from those of both Bloch and Brown. 39. Ganshof, Feudalism, xvi. 40. Ganshof, Feudalism, xvii. 41. Ganshof merely claims that in feudal society, “the fief, if not the corner-stone, was at least the most important element in the graded system of rights over land which this type of society involved” (Feudalism, xvi), and that “the student will be better prepared to understand the characteristics of such a society if he has first grasped the significance of certain of its legal forms: the meaning of the words ‘lord’ and ‘vassal’, and the legal relationship which existed between the persons whom they described"

(Feudalism, xvii).

feudal society, and not just feudal and vassal institutions, Brown gives reasons for drastically limiting the scope of this discussion. In principle, of course, this procedure is quite justifiable. Even an indefatigable student of the “ambiance sociale totale” like Bloch slighted certain social phenomena in his attempt “to analyze and explain” feudal “social structure and its unifying principles”. 42 But Brown’s decision to ignore most features of feudal society and to consider only his four fundamentals serves no such purpose. He excludes from his discussion of feudalism any full treatment of such important topics as manorial and familial organization—to take only the most obvious examples—and justifies doing so on the grounds that neither is “unique” to feudal society (pp. 22-23). He then claims to have arrived not only at a strict definition of feudalism, but at a proper understanding of it. But if his ultimate purpose is to provide not just a way of identifying feudal societies, but a means of understanding them, then it is hard to see how he can justifiably ignore topics like manorial and familial organization, or how his definition can fail to inhibit such understanding. treat

4. The

Origins of English Feudalism.

Since Brown’s definition of feudalism is so unsatisfactory, his of the origins of English feudalism must also be suspect. He argues that because the Normans brought the four fundamentals of feudalism to England and because the importation of these fundamentals moulded English society into a “feudal pattern”, the found in the Norman “origins of English feudalism are Conquest”. But his argument will not hold if feudalism has other fundamental features (like a subject peasantry) that can be found in pre-conquest England. Even if one accepts Brown’s definition of feudalism, however, his account of its origins in England is still open to another kind of attack. When Brown states that “the origins of English feudalism are found in the Norman Conquest”, and that English feudalism is “the direct result” of the conquest (p. 17), he presumably means that the introduction of the four fundamentals into England by the Normans is the cause of England’s becoming a feudal society. And when he refers to the “tabula rasa of the Norman Conquest” (p. 85) and claims that important changes in pre-conquest society like “manorialization” are “largely irrelevant to the issue of the origins of English feudalism" (p. 23), he is apparently claiming that one can fully explain the development of English feudalism without taking note of the condition of pre-conquest society. In another passage, however, Brown states that the “problem” of the origins of English feudalism account

.

.

.

.

42. Bloch, Feudal Society, xix.

.

.

resolve itself into an equation with an answer which avoid—non-feudal pre-conquest England, feudal plus pre-conquest Normandy, equals feudal post-Conquest Anglo-Norman England” (p. 85). However silly this bit of historical mathematics or mathematical history may be, it nevertheless expresses a truth that undercuts Brown’s main thesis. Here, at least, Brown seems to indicate that the four fundamentals operated with at least certain features of non-feudal pre-conquest society to make post-conquest society feudal and that the importation of these fundamentals was only one of a number of conditions jointly sufficient to bring about this change in English society. If so, then Brown should indicate what these features of pre-conquest society were; but nowhere in his book does he do this. Morever, if Brown chooses to identify the origin of English feudalism only with the importation of the four fundamentals and not with these features of pre-conquest society, he should give some reason for doing so. He should explain why the origins of English feudalism do not lie, at least in part, in the pre-conquest period. This too Brown has failed to do.

“appears there

5.

to

seems no reason to

Underlying Assumptions.

Since Brown has not formulated a satisfactory definition of feudalism or given an adequate explanatory account of its origins in England, his attempt to establish the validity of the orthodox interpretation of English feudalism is a failure. Moreoever, his book makes clear that this interpretation rests upon the same underlying assumptions about feudalism and feudal development as the theory about the origins of continental feudalism first formulated by Heinrich Brunner and recently restated by Lynn White, Jr. 43 And since these assumptions are so hard to defend, it seems unlikely that the orthodox interpretation of the origins of English feudalism can ever be made immune to attack. Following Brunner, Lynn White, Jr. claims that “feudalism was essentially military, a type of social organization designed to produce and support cavalry”, 44 and that the adoption of a particular kind of military organization by the Carolingian monarchs of the eighth century 43. See Heinrich Brunner, “Der “Reiterdienst und die Anfànge des Lehnwesens”, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte, Germanistische Abteilung, VIII (1887), 1-38, rpt. in Heinrich Brunner, Forschungen zur Geschichte des deutschen und französischen Rechts (Stuttgart, 1894), 39-74; and Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962; rpt. New York, 1966), Chapter I 44, White, Medieval Technology, 3. .

explains the appearance of this type of social organization on the continent. 45 Brown explicitly endorses White’s thesis (p. 24 and 15) and constructs what amounts to a parallel thesis about English feudalism and its origins. Like White, Brown maintains that military organization is the most fundamental feature of feudal social organization, and he then claims that the establishment of feudal military organization in England after the conquest explains the appearance of English feudalism. Like White, however, Brown gives no convincing reasons for accepting this simplistic model of feudalism and medieval social change. He gives no justification for assuming that feudal military organization is the most fundamental feature of feudal society, or that the adoption of feudal military organization determined the over-all structure of English feudal society. Basic to Brown’s entire argument is his assumption that feudal military organization is more fundamental to feudalism than any other aspect of feudal social organization. He commends historians like Round, Stenton, and Hollister for focusing their discussions of English feudalism on “the central and crucial issue of the organization of military service” (p. 23; cf. pp. 19-20). 46 He attacks writers like Bloch and Maitland for over-emphasizing the importance of non-military aspects of feudalism. 47 And he regards only feudal military institutions as “fundamental features” of feudal society. Never, however, does he demonstrate that military institutions are the most fundamental features of feudal society. Just as Lynn White, Jr. simply assumes that “feudalism was essentially a way of organizing society for instant warfare”, 48 and that the primary function of feudal social organization was “to produce and support cavalry”, 49 Brown merely takes it for granted that military institutions n.

are

more

fundamental

to

feudalism than those institutions

45. See White, Medieval Technology, Chapter 1 esp. 5, 10, 13, 28, and 38. White argues that this new type of military organization involved the use of a new kind of military force—heavily armed cavalry—which used a “revolutionary new way of doing battle” (p. 2); and that this “new mode of warfare” was “made possible” by “the sudden introduction of an alien ,

military technology”—i.e. the stirrup (p. 38). 46. See C. Warren Hollister, Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions (Oxford, 1962); and Military Organization of Norman England (Oxford, 1965). Brown criticizes Hollister, however, for exaggerating “in every instance” “the degree of pre-Conquest English influence” on post-conquest military organization (p. 23, n. 13). 47. See above, section 2. 48. White, Medieval Technology, 136. 49. White, Medieval Technology, 3.

that he thinks White, Brown

are

50 merely “characteristic” of feudal society. Like

never

rebuts Bloch’s contention that

one

cannot

adequately analyze “a highly complex type of social organization” like feudalism, or understand “its unifying principles” by attaching some sort of “illusory primacy” to any one of its particular aspects— whether political, legal, economic, or military. 51 Another basic, and related, assumption underlying Brown’s argument for the orthodox interpretation is that feudal military organization determined the over-all structure of feudal society both on the continent and in England, Following White, Brown maintains that the “true origin of [continental] feudalism is to be found in the adoption of heavy cavalry by the Franks in the eighth century" (p. 24), and that other, non-military aspects of continental feudalism

can

be

seen as

inevitable “social

repercussions”

of this

52 change in military organizations (p. 24, n. 15). He claims that since knights needed money, horses, servants, and attendants, and “freedom from all other occupations”, like “the sordid necessity of tilling the soil”, knighthood “inevitably became an upper-class affair” (p. 27). Increasing technological sophistication made mounted warfare more and more expensive and caused knights to become “ever more sharply distinguished from the ordinary peasant” (p. 29). It also caused free peasants to become less and less valuable as soldiers, and they therefore declined “towards servitude" (p. 29). It was, in addition, “inevitable” that “the new class of knights should become a landed aristocracy” (p. 27), and its members were “bound to acquire” “low-level jurisdiction of a semi-agricultural kind” over their peasants (p. 32). Within this class, feudal lords acquired “an automatic (and entirely logical) jurisdiction” over their vassals (p. 31). Brown clearly suggests that a similar, inevitable process of social change was initiated in England by the conquest when he claims that English feudalism was “the direct result” of the conquest (p. 17) and that the feudal military arrangements established in England by the Normans “were to mould society into a feudal pattern to last for centuries” (pp. 85-86). In short, Brown claims that in late eleventh-century England, as in eighth-century Frankia, the introduction of feudal military organization had certain logical, automatic, and inevitable .

.

.

50. He simply stresses “the importance of military history” (p. 24) and points out that “military organization and tactics are an integral part of society, not easily changed” (p. 36; cf. p. 32). 51. See Bloch. Feudal Society, xvii and 59. 52. According to Brown, “H. Brunner’s classic thesis that the origins of feudalism are essentially military with social repercussions remains unbroken though not unchallenged" (p. 24, n. 15).

and inevitably led to the formation of a feudal society. Brown, however, neither shows that the “feudal pattern” of English society or continental societies resulted inevitably from such changes in military organization, nor does he defend this simplistic explanatory model of social development against the direct and indirect attacks of Bloch, Maitland, and other writers. 54 If Brown cannot provide any basis for assuming that feudalism is “essentially military”—and it is hard to see how any type of society could be “essentially military”—then he cannot justifiably define feudalism solely in terms of certain military institutions or employ a model of feudalism that assigns primacy to military organization. If he can give no convincing reasons for assuming that feudal military organization determined the over-all structure of feudal society, then he cannot justifiably treat the importation of feudal military organization into England by the Normans as the origin of English feudalism. And if he can justify neither his definition of feudalism nor his model of feudal social development, then he cannot argue convincingly for the orthodox interpretation of the origins of English feudalism. In the end, Brown’s attempt to restate this interpretation and to defend it against its critics simply reveals its dependence upon crude models of feudalism and feudal development and shows that historians will have to construct better models if they are to understand English feudalism and explain its development. And they can only do this by ceasing to “social

repercussions” 53

53. Not surprisingly, Lynn White, Jr. accepts the orthodox interpretation of the origins of English feudalism. See Medieval Technology, 36-38. 54. For some examples of such attacks—aside from Bloch’s and Maitland's —see M. M. Postan’s “Forward” to Bloch’s Feudal Society, xii-xv; R. H. Hilton and P. H. Sawyer, “Technical Determinism: The Stirrup and the Plough”, Past and Present, XXIV (1963), 90-104, esp. 90-91 and 95; David Herlihy, ed., The History of Feudalism (New York, 1970), “General Introduction”, xiii-xxviii, esp. xxv; and Frederic L. Cheyette, Lordship and Community in Medieval Europe. Selected Readings (New York, 1968), “Introduction”, 1-10. For much more complex treatments of the development of feudal social organization, see, for example, Georges Duby, La Société aux XIe et XIIe siécles dans la région mâconnaise (Paris, 1953) and The Early Growth of the European Economy. Warriors and Peasants from the seventh to the twelfth century, trans. Howard B. Clarke (Ithaca, N.Y., 1974); and Robert Fossier, La Terre et les hommes en Picardie jusqu’à la fin duXIIIe siècle. Two Vols. (Paris-Louvain, 1968).

any sort of “illusory primacy” to military aspects of feudalism, and by thinking and writing more clearly and systematically about social structure, social change, and historical explanation. 55

assign

55. For a very recent discussion of feudalism, see Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe”, American Historical Review, LXXIX (1974), 1063-1088. The present review-article was completed prior to the appearance of Professor Brown’s article and cannot therefore treat the issues that she discusses. Her arguments for completely abandoning the whole concept of feudalism, however, do not seem entirely convincing.

VII

Stratégie rhétorique dans la Conventio de Hugues de Lusignan.

Peu avant l'année 1030, Hugues de Lusignan a fait 1 le récit de ce que furent, pendant une décennie environ, ses relations avec son seigneur Guillaume, comte de Poitou et due d'Aquitaine de 995/8 environ, à 1030 2 .

Au début de la Conventio (ou Conventum), Hugues est déjà fidelis de Guillaume, de qui il tient une terre, et il a l'appui de quelques hommes qu'il commande, mais il lui manque plusieurs forteresses qu'il revendiquera plus tard. D'abord, Guillaume accomplit une promesse faite à Hugues en lui concédant l'honor du défunt vicomte Boso de Châtellerault. Mais quand, peu aprés, le vicomte Savaric de Thouars saisit cet honor, que Hugues avait brièvement tenu de Guillaume, le comte n'aide pas réellement Hugues à le récupérer et ne lui accorde pas non plus de compensation convenable. Ensuite, après que Guillaume eut fait à plusieurs reprises obstacle aux efforts de Hugues pour obtenir des forteresses que son père, son oncle ou un autre de ses parents ont tenues, à ce qu'il prétend, Hugues défie son seigneur' ce qui provoque entre eux un conflit (guerra). Finalement, ils arrivent à un accord par lequel Hugues jure fidélitéà Guillaume et à son fils et renonce à tout ce qu'il avait auparavant revendiqué de la part du comte; en retour, Guillaume et son fils concèdent à Hugues l'honor de Joscelin, l'oncle de Hugues, vis à Vivonne, et consentent à lui porter leur fidélité. Complétant d'autres etudes de la Conventio3 j'envisage à propos de ce texte une question différente de celles que se sont posées les autres commentateurs, mais qui porte encore sur des points que leur travail souléve à propos des pratiques politiques et de la culture juridique du début du onziéme siécle : comment Hugues a-t-il réussi à bâtir un récit qui montre clairement que son seigneur, le comte Guillaume, l'a traité injustement ? Comme le récit de Hugues décrit et évalue à la fois ses rapports avec le comte, dans un but politique, il ressemble à ce que Pierre Bourdieu appelle une stratégic d'officialisation dont l'objet est de "transmuer des mobiles et des intérêts prives, particuliers, "égoi'stes",... en mobiles et en intérêts légitimes, désintéressés, collectifs et publiquement avouables" 4 Le texte présente aussi une ressemblance avec les "modéles de discussion" grâce ,

.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-7

auxquels les plaideurs africains qu'ont étudies John L. Comaroff et Simon présentent une "image cohérente d’évenements et d'actions significatifs s" en fonction d'un ou plusieurs référents normatifs, implicites ou explicitie5 C'est pourquoi je me suis demandé comment, selon les termes de Bourdieu, Hugues a imposé sa propre définition de la situation6 qu'il décrit, en codant son récit selon les "référents normatifs" dont parlent Comaroff et Roberts, de manière à "mobiliser", selon l'expression de Bourdieu, "les schèmes de perception et d'évaluation" de son public 7 Le récit que présente Hugues ne ressemble pas, même de loin, à un plaidoyer dans lequel l'application de règies à des faits justifie un résultat juridique particulier. Plutôt, il trace de Guillaume, image aprés image, un portrait où tous reconnaissent un seigneur perfide, immodéré, qui a causé du tort (dampnum) et fait du mal (malum) à son fidelis, qui lui a refusé aide (adiutorium) et conseil (consilium), qui a refusé de lui faire droit (rectum) et de compenser le mal (malum) et le tort (dampnum) qu'il a subis et qui lui a dénié la juste récompense de son service loyalement exécuté. En même temps, Hugues se présente dans le rôle bien connu du loyal fidelis qui a fait preuve de fidélité (fidelitas) et d'amour (amor) envers son seigneur et lui a accordé son aide (adiutorium) et son conseil (consilium) jusqu'à ce qu'il se Roberts

.

.

sente finalement contraint de le défier.

Remarquablement répétitif, tant par son style que par son contenu, le Hugues présente beaucoup de traits d'une tradition juridique orale 8 Reprenant les mêmes mots et les mêmes formules 9 Hugues dépeint les mêmes actions à maintes reprises. Ces nombreuses répétitions ont différentes fonctions. En débutant ou en terminant de la même façon des scénes similaires, certaines formules assurent cette continuité narrative qui est essentiel e au discours oral. Six rencontres entre Hugues et Guillaume commencent récit de

.

,

par une formule précisant que l'un est venu vers l'autre et a Une seconde formule précise l'état d'esprit dans lequel les interlocuters se sont quittés 11 Une troisième précise la réaction affective d'un protagoniste aux paroles qu'il vient d'entendre 12 D'autres répétitions indiquent que Guillaume a fait, a promis de faire ou a négligé de faire, à maintes reprises, certains actes essentiels à ses rapports avec Hugues. Divisant son récit en unités qui rappellent les laisses des chansons de geste, Hugues revient sur la perfidie du comte comme sur un théme, en citant, dans chaque épisode, au moins une promesse que Guillaume lui a faite, mais n'a pas tenue. Faisant précéder les promesses ou les engagements du comte de l'expression promisit comes Ugoni (6, 93; voir aussi 104) ou de la formule per talem conventum (59, 64, 90-91, 171, 217,219,248-249), Hugues fait ressortir le contraste entre les paroles et les actes de Guillaume. Aprés avoir promis à Hugues Ego finem nonfaciam cum Ioszfredum vicomiti (40), le comte fecitque finem cum vicecomite Ioszfredo (43); ou encore, apres avoir promis à Hugues ut finem vel socie-

parlé10

.

.

.

Straégle rhétorique dans

la Conventio de H. de

Lusignan

tatem cum Aimericum non haberet sine [consilio ?] Hugoni et Malavallis factus nonfuisset sine suo consilio (105-106), Guillaume fecitque... finem cum Aimirico et permisit ei facere sine consilio Ugoni (106-107). Hugues montre également combien les paroles du comte sont vaines en notant,

coup, deux occasions où Guillaume lui a dit de ne pas craindre 13 chose mais sans rien faire pour apaiser ses craintes. quelque De la même façon, à trois reprises, Guillaume assure Hugues qu'il lui 14 portera secours si "le malheur le frappe" mais n'en fait rien. Dans deux de ces cas, c’est Guillaume lui-même qui formule, en des termes quasiment identiques, la conclusion que Hugues voulait sans doute que ses auditeurs tirent en voyant ainsi le comte manquer à sa parole. Au début du récit, Guillaume dit à Hugues; "Agis sans douter de ma parole et de ma bonne foi (creditam fidemque meam) et s'il t'arrive malheur, alors tu sauras que j'ai commis une trahison (traditionem) envers toi" (61-62). Ici, la réaction de Hugues est de "placer sa foi et sa confiance en Dieu et en le comte" 15 Plus tard, Guillaume dit encore "s’il arrive malheur à [Hugues], il saura que je l’ai trahi (traditum), et alors, il ne devra plus me croire (credat)" (204-205). Même si le comte, comme le fait remarquer Hugues, l'a déjà trompé auparavant, et même si ses hommes lui conseillent de ne plus faire confiance au comte : ut mitteret in credendam comiti (207-208), Hugues croit encore aux promesses de Guillaume : omnia mittam in tuo credentia (210). Pour indiquer qu'un seigneur doit faire certaines choses pour son "homme", Hugues emploie parfois des expressions centrées sur les mots senior et debet 16 Plutôt que de passer en revue les devoirs du senior, Hugues se contente de faire allusion à certains, en utilisant des mots lourds de sens, comme iuvo, consilium, et leurs dérives. A part l'énoncé abstrait du devoir qu’a le seigneur d'aider son vassal (122), cite à la note 16, Hugues ne fait qu'une seule référence explicite au devoir que Guillaume a de l'aider 17 Mais il rappelle sans cesse que Guillaume a promis son aide, que lui-même l'a demandée, et que le comte ne l'a pas foumie. Une telle promesse, sim tuus adiutor (92-93) précède la déclaration que nihilque iuvavit Ugoni (98). Aprés chaque appel à l'aide de Hugues : adiuva me (124); mihi adiuva (156), il est précisé, une ou plusieurs fois, que Guillaume n'a pas répondu : comes autem nihil adiuvavit (125); comes nihil adiuvabat (128); comes vero nihil ei adiutorium nec consilium dedit (157). Guillaume et son fils commandent meme une fois à leurs hommes, sous peine de mort, de ne pas aider Hugues : ut nemo adiuvaret Ugoni (133) et, dans un conflit que celui-ci a mené pour Guillaume, ce dernier ne l'a pas aidé : comes vero nihil iuvavit (47-48). Hugues obtient un effet rhétorique similaire en employant à maintes reprises le mot consilium. Aprés avoir promis de ne pas agir sans consulter Hugues : sine consilio suo (106,180,217), Guillaume fait précisément cela (107, 222). De même, démontrant implicitement que son seigneur lui a coup

sur

,

,

.

.

.

donné un mauvais conseil, Hugues relève subtilement que Guillaume lui a conseillé (120-121) d'acquérir un seigneur (Bernard) qui lui a pris sa terre et a exploité, au détriment de Hugues (159), une trêve qu'avait obtenue le comte (135-136, 160). Hugues démontre aussi l'inanité de l'avis que lui a donné Guillaume (181) sur la façon de se conduire avec le comte Foulque. Enfin, Hugues affirme que, quand il a appelé Guillaume à l'aide contre Bernard, qui assiégeait alors l'épouse de Hugues, le comte ne lui a accordé ni aide, ni conseil (157). En répétant le mot reddo dans plusieurs contextes différents, Hugues trouve d’autres façons de montrer l'écart entre les paroles et les actes de Guillaume. Aprés que Guillaume s'est engagéà remettre à Hugues quelques otages que ce dernier a pris : ego eas [ostaticos] tibi reddam (92), Hugues demande qu’il les lui rende : ostaticos meos... redde mihi (123-124), mais Guillaume ne les rend pas : ostaticos suos non reddidit (125-126). Auparavant, Hugues a demandéà Guillaume de lui restituer la terre que Raoul lui avait prise : terram quam Radulfus ei tulerat reddere ei (39-40) et Guillaume a promis de le faire : tuam terram reddam (42), mais il n'en fit rien : et nil hoc factum (42-43). C'est également par la répétition, plus que par l'argument juridique, que Hugues s'efforce de montrer ce qu’il a perdu en suivant Guillaume, Quatre épisodes se terminent par l'affirmation qu'il a subi un tort (dampnum) 18; sept autres, par la description des torts qu'il a subis 19 Pour souligner qu'on lui a souvent pris sa terre, Hugues emploie, à maintes reprises, le verbe tollo (5, 39-40, 121, 131, 167, 176, 272). Enfin, diverses formules incluant le mot malum soulignent les maux qu'a valus à Hugues son allégeance à Guillaume. II emploie une formule pour se plaindre d'ennuis dont il impute la responsabilitéau comte 20 d'autres, pour parler des maux qui le menacent (142,254,268-269), de perfidie (252-253, 260, 268, 269,276), de maux qui pourraient le frapper (61-62, 87, 204) ou lui arriver (190-191, 218, 223) et d'autres maux qui l'ont affligé ou menacé (57, 134, .

,

158,234,195,202,211,225). Plusieurs passages montrent que le comte manque de ce que les poétes appellent la "mesure". Guillaume se fâchait contre Hugues sans raison valable (9, 73) et se montrait affligé du succès militaire de Hugues alors que, selon Hugues, il aurait du s'en réjouir (54). II émettait des preténtions extravagantes quant à ses droits sur Hugues. Une fois, il dit à Hugues : "Tu es à moi pour faire ma volonté" (53); une autre, "Tu m'appartiens tellement que si je t'avais dit de prendre un paysan pour seigneur, tu aurais dû le faire" (75-76). Finalement, Guillaume dit à Hugues : "si le monde entier m'appartenait, je ne te donnerais pas même ce que je pourrais soulever d’un seul doigt" (208-209). Loin de représenter les pouvoirs habituels d'un seigneur sur son fidelis, de tels propos ne pouvaient assurément émaner que d'un mauvais seigneur.

propre conduite à celle du comte, Hugues se dépeint Animé par l'amour de son seigneur21 il lui fait 23 A la demande de son seigneur, il lui remet les obéit otages (55, 63-64). Sourd à son propre jugement, il obéit à l'ordre que lui a donné Guillaume de devenir l'homme de Bernard (78-88) et il entre, toujours à la demande de Guillaume, au service du comte Guillaume d'Angouleme (198-202). Quand Guillaume lui eut dit de bâtir la forteresse de Gençay : fac castrum (171), Hugues le fit: et fecit Ugo castrum (174). Il a également aidé Guillaume contre Aimery : iuvavitque ei [comite] Ugo ut potuit (103). Contrairement à Guillaume qui s'est montré irrité ou affligé à l’égard de Hugues, sans motif (11, 54, 83, 85), Hugues ne manifeste de colère contre Guillaume qu'à la fin du récit, alors qu'il a de bonnes raisons de le faire (196, 232). Tout en faisant preuve de loyauté envers Guillaume, Hugues montre qu'il reste un homme d'honneur, qui n'est pas si servilement soumis à son seigneur qu'il ne mérite que du mépris pour ses efforts 24 Le récit, à cette fin, montre les efforts que fait Hugues pour poursuivre unilatéralement ses propres intérêts (9-10, 50-51, 128-131), en même temps qu'il se montre protestant toujours plus nettement que Guillaume le traite mai (195) et l'induit en erreur (206, 253). En outre, au moment où le récit atteint son sommet, Hugues souligne que ses doléances sont justes, en employant à plusieurs reprises les termes rectum et rectitudo. Avant de défier le comte, Hugues "se rend à la cour du comte pour lui exposer son bon droit" (231-232). Plus tard, il s'empare de la tour de Chizé "parce qu’il estime en avoir le droit, parce que la tour avait été a son pére ou à un autre de ses parents" (239-240). Quand Guillaume exige avec colére que Hugues "lui restitue la tour qu'il a volée à Pierre", Hugues riposte en exigeant que le comte "rende a Hugues l’honneur de son pére et les autres choses qui ont appartenu à des membres de son lignage et auxquelles il a droit" (240-243). Une autre façon de mettre en évidence les dimensions normatives du récit consacré par Hugues au mauvais seigneur et au bon fidelis consiste à comparer ce texte à d'autres, de tradition juridique similaire, comme la célébre lettre de Fulbert de Chartres au même Guillaume d'Aquitaine, ou des serments de fidélité languedociens du onziéme siécle, ou aussi plusieurs chansons de geste. S'il embellit son analyse de la "fidélite" d'emprunts aux auteurs classiques, Fulbert emploie aussi des termes contemporains. Un dominus et son fidelis, écrit l'évêque, ne doivent pas se causer de dampnum ou se faire de malum l'un à l'autre et doivent loyalement s'accorder consilium et auxilium 25 Ce sont les mêmes mots, ou de proches équivalents 26 qu'emploie Hugues de majniére a invoquer implicitement ces régies et ainsi, montrer que Guillaume est un mauvais seigneur. Plus précises encore que le parallèle entre le texte de Fulbert et celui de Hugues sont les ressemblances de forme et de fond qui existent entre le

Opposant

sa

comme un bon confiance 22 et lui

fidelis.

,

.

.

.

,

et le texte de serments de fidélité languedociens. Parmi les 27 plus importants de ces documents "essentiellement oraux" on retrouve ceux qui occupent une place également importante dans le récit de Hugues, notamment : adiuvo, consilium, damnum, fidelis et fides, finis, homo, ingenium, perdo, senior, societas, et tollo. En outre, les passages où ces mots apparaissent ressemblent de prés à certains passages du récit de Hugues. Ainsi, ces hommes promettent qu'à moins d'être relevés (absolvo) de leur serment (sacramenta), ils ne chercheront jamais à causer aucun tort (damnum) à leur seigneur (senior), ni à lui faire rien perdre (perdo), ni à lui prendre (tollo) son bien, ni à le blesser par perfidie (ingenium), ni à faire certaines actions précises sans son conseil (sine consilio), ni à accepter une entente (finem) ou une alliance (societas) avec homme ni femme qui aurait pris (tollo) un bien à leur seigneur; ces hommes jurent aussi, fidélement (per directam fidem), d'être les soutiens (adiutor) de leur seigneur contre tous les hommes (contra omnes homines) et de lui être fidéles (fidelis) sans perfidie (sine ingenio), comme un homme doit l'etre à son seigneur, auquel il s'est livré de ses propres mains (sicut homo debet esse ad suum seniorem cui se propriis manibus commendavit). En employant précisément les mêmes mots, Hugues montre que son seigneur a fait, et à plusieurs reprises, exactement ce que, dans le texte des serments, les hommes jurent de ne pas faire, et qu'il n'a pas fait ce qu'ils jurent de faire. En vérité, le contraste entre ce que le comte a fait ou n'a pas fait, d'une part, et d'autre part, ce que les gens jurent de faire ou de ne pas faire, dans les traditionnels serments de fidélité est si frappant qu'il semble qu'en faisant écho à ces serments, Hugues ait dépeint Guillaume comme un parjure et un traître, sans jamais utiliser ces mots. Un passage, en particulier, confirme cette hypothese : apres avoir, avec l'aide de Hugues, assiege Aimery dans Malval, le comte "promet a Hugues, comme tout seigneur

Conventum

mots les

,

doit promettre ratio

homme, de ne pas conclure d'entente ou d'allianle consentement de Hugues de ne pas permettre que Malval soit construit sans le consentement de Hugues" (104-106). De toute evidence, Hugues cite ici un serment que le comte a d'abord prete, puis ce avec

rompu

Aimery

a son

sans

(106-108).

Enfin, en comparant le récitde Hugues avec plusieurs chansons de geste, on voit comment Hugues peut avoir invoqué et utiliséà son profit des images conventionnelles et des normes implicites. Par plusieurs côtés, son portrait du comte Guillaume ressemble de prés à certaines figures poétiques de mauvais seigneurs, qui peuvent trés bien avoir été en cours d'élaboration à l'époque de Hugues. Tout comme le récit de Hugues, Le

charroi de Nîmes et Raoul de Cambrai ont l'un et l'autre pour personnage seigneur dont la grande faute est qu'au lieu de récompenser comme il se doit ses loyaux vassaux, en leur dormant des terres et des épouses, il distribue avec duplicité et sans générosité, de simples promesses de

un

domaine et de

des terres

mariage;

qu'il

n'est pas réellement

en mesure

de

donner, parce que d'autres ont un droit dessus, ou des terres que, pour une raison ou une autre, il ne peut ou ne veut garantir. En outre, chacun de ces

seigneurs imaginaires manifeste un manque de "mesure". Ayant appris, au début du Charroi de Nîmes, que le roi Louis l'a "oublié" quand il a "distribué des fiefs à ses barons" 28 Guillaume d'Orange a, avec son seigneur, une rencontre qui ressemble à plusieurs des rencontres qu'Hugues a avec le sien. Le roi, comme Guillaume de Poitou, se révèle mauvais seigneur. En réponse à Guillaume au Court Nez, qui fait valoir qu'il a servi son seigneur "comme son homme" 29 le roi demande d'abord un délai, déclarant qu'il récompensera Guillaume dés qu'un autre de ses vassaux mourra. Quand Guillaume se plaint qu'il n'a rien gagnéà servir ce "mauvais" roi 30 Louis déclare : "J'ai encore soixante de tes pairs à qui je n'ai ni promis, ni donné quoi que ce soit" 31 C'est seulement quand ,

,

,

.

Guillaume le traite de menteur que Louis finit par tenir compte du mécontentement de Guillaume, se souvient de ses loyaux services et lui promet "un beau cadeau" 32 Cependant, comme le remarque Guillaume, chaque cadeau que le roi lui fait est vicié, parce qu'à chaque fois, le défunt bénéficiaire laisse un héritier. En fin de compte, le roi concéde l'Espagne à Guillaume, mais à la condition (par itel convenant) de ne pas être son .

"garant" 33

.

De telles rencontres entre seigneur et vassal sont aussi capitales dans Raoul de Cambrai que dans le récit de Hugues 34 Ici, une querelle entre deux families rivales et une autre, entre ces families et le roi Louis, ont toutes deux pour origine trois efforts successifs du roi pour résoudre précisement le même probléme politique que celui auquel fait face le seigneur, dans Le charroi de Nîmes et dans la Conventio, à savoir comment, avec des ressources limitées, récompenser ses loyaux vassaux pour leurs services. Dans le premier cas, le roi Louis récompense Raoul I de Cambrai 35 en lui dormant en fief le Cambrésis 36 et en mariage, sa propre sœur. A la mort de Raoul I, qui laisse sa femme Aalais enceinte du futur Raoul II, le roi récompense Gibouin du Mans de ses services 37 non pas en l'investissant d'un héritage vacant mais en lui concédant le fief de Cambrai, à la condition (per tel convent) 38 que Raoul II le récupére à sa majorité, le roi devant alors donner une autre terre à Gibouin. Ainsi, le roi Louis récompense son "homme" en partie avec une terre qu'il n'est par réellement libre de lui donner, et en partie avec la promesse d'un cadeau futur. En acceptant le fief, Gibouin persuade Louis de lui accorder aussi Aalais en mariage. Quand celle-ci refuse d’épouser Gibouin comme son frére le lui commande, Louis donne la terre á Gibouin en supprimant, semble-t-il, la condition qu'il avait d'abord imposée; et quand le frére de Raoul I, Guerri le Sor, conteste cette transaction au motif que le roi a accordéà un autre la terre de Raoul II, Louis répond que "le don est fait" et ne peut etre révoqué39 .

,

,

.

A la majorité de Raoul II, Louis se retrouve confronté au devoir de 40 récompenser un vassal et essaie, de nouveau, de s'en tirer, non pas en concédant immédiatement un héritage vacant, mais plutôt, comme le roi du Charroi de Nîmes et comme le seigneur de Hugues, en cherchant à gagner du temps et en manœuvrant à coup de promesses et de fiefs déjà occupés. En lui demandant de laisser Gibouin tenir Cambrai pendant plusieurs années, Louis promet à son neveu le fief du prochain baron à mourir entre Paris et le Vermandois; et quand Herbert de Vermandois décède, laissant quatre héritiers mâles adultes, Raoul II réclame ce fief. Dans un premier temps, Louis rejette la requête de Raoul II en alléguant qu'il ne peut le faire sans déshériter quatre précieux vassaux, mais finalement, il lui accorde la terre de Herbert à une condition (par tel covent) 41 : que ni lui, ni ses hommes ne soient les "garants" 42 de Raoul II. Raoul II meurt dans la guerre que lui déclarent alors les fils de Herbert et, aprés avoir tenté de le venger, son oncle s'unit aux fils d'Herbert pour faire la guerre au roi que, comme le poéte, ils accusent d'être à l'origine de tout le conflit. Plutôt que d'énoncer en termes abstraits, comme le fait la lettre de Fulbert, les devoirs réciproques du seigneur et de son vassal, et plutôt que de spécifier, comme le font les serments de fidélité, les devoirs d'un vassal particular, les récits "didactiques" comme Raoul de Cambrai et Le charroi de Nîmes présentent des modéles et invitent à suivre ces modéles, en décrivant seulement les actions des héros et des vilains, et les conséquences de ces actions 43 Comme le récit de Hugues, chacune de ces épopées présente un mauvais seigneur qui est aisément reconnaissable comme tel, non seulement parce que les autres personnages le jugent durement, mais aussi parce qu'on le montre en train de pratiquer des formes incorrectes de don et d'échange. L'usage du récit à cette fin présuppose l'existence d'une tradition juridique qui compte, parmi ses nombreuses "notions consacrées" 44 un modéle, connu de tous, du comportement du mauvais seigneur 45 Tandis que le bon seigneur est identifiable au fait qu'il récompense convenablement ses vassaux pour les services, le mauvais seignur se reconnaît au fait qu'il n'accorde pas leur dû a ses vassaux. C'est pourquoi, une façon de saper l'honneur d'un seigneur de chair et d'os comme Guillaume V consiste à lui prêter le comportement du modéle, en montrant qu'à de nombreuses reprises, il a négligé d'accorder à ses vassaux l'aide, le conseil, la terre et, par dessus tout, l'honneur qu'il leur devait. Telle est dans le récit de Hugues, la stratégic sous-jacente. .

,

.

Traduit de

l'anglais par Marie-Anne Payet

Notes

O u fait

rédiger.

2. J. MARTINDALE, "Conventum inter Guillelmum Aquitanorum comes et Hugonem Chiliarchum", English Historical Review 1969, p. 528-548, aux p. 542-548. Les numéros, dans le texte et dans les notes, renvoient à la numérotation des lignes adoptée par Martindale. Pour une traduction en anglais par G. Beech, voir Readings in Medieval History, sous la dir. de P. J. Geary, Peterborough, Ontario, 1989, p. 405-410. ,

J'ai aussi beaucoup utilisé une traduction anglaise inédite faite par un groupe dirigé par S. Reynolds. G. Pons prépare une traduction en français. 3. Outre MARTINDALE, "Conventum", voir G. BEECH, "A Feudal Document of Early Eleventh-Century Poitou", Mélanges offerts à René Crozet, sous la dir. de P. Gallais et Y.-J. Riou, Poitiers, 1966, p. 203-213; A. RICHARD, Histoire des comtes de Poitou, 778-1126, vol. 1, 778-1126, Paris, 1903, p. 157-167; M. GARAUD, "Un probléme d'histoire : à propos d'une lettre de Fulbert de Chartres à Guillaume le Grand, comte de Poitou et due d'Aquitaine", Etudes d'histoire du droit canonique dédiées à Gabriel Le Bras, Paris, 1965, vol. 2, p. 559-562; J.-P. POLY et E. BOURNAZEL, La mutation féodale, Xe-XIIe siècles, Paris, 1980, p. 137-154; G. DUBY, Le moyen-âge. De Hugues Capet à Jeanne d'Arc, 987-1460, Paris, 1987, p. 102-112; et J. DUNBABIN, France in the Making, 843-1180, Oxford, 198?, p. 175, 230-231, 233-234. 4. Outline of a Theory of Practice, traduit par R. Nice, p. 40. 5. Rules and Processus : The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African context, Chicago, 1981, p. 84. Plutôt que de citer expressément les règies, ces plaideurs parlent simplement de ce qui s'est passé en organisant leurs déclarations de telle façon qu'ils font référence, maniére non ambiguë, encore que tacite, à des régies mutuellement comprises : ibid , p. 85. 6. BOURDIEU, Outline, p. 40. 7. Ibid, p. 17. 8. Voir, par ex. W. J. ONG, Orality and Literacy : The Technology of the Word, Londres et New York, 1982, spécialement ch.. 3, "Some Psychodynamics of Orality". 9. A propos des formules, voir, par ex., ONG, Orality and Literacy, spécialement p. 23-27, 34-38. 10. veniens comes ad Ugonem quam iratus, dixit ei (84-85); venit Ugo ad comitem, dixit ei (110); veniens Ugo ad comitem, dixit ei (119-120); Veniens Ugo ad comitem, dixit ei (155); Pergens ad comitem, dixit ei (162-163); properavitque ad Hugonem cum humilitate et dixit ei (11-12). 11. Partiti sunt Hugo etRadulfus tristes (37); Et partiti sunt (Ugo et comes) in ira (195-196); Versusque estplacitus in ira (185-186). 12.Ut audivit Comes iratus est valde (11); Ut audivit Radul dolensfuit valde (27); Ut audivit hoc comes contristavit se valde (240-241); Ut autem audivit Ugo dubitavit valde comitem (252). Cette formule, qui en développe une plus courte : Ut audivit comes (170); Cum autem audivit Hugo hoc (231); Ut audiuit Ugo (261-262) est elle-même, une fois, développée davantage : Ut autem audivit Comes, letus esse debuisset, fuitque tristis (54). 13. Noli hoc timere (143); Nolite timere hoc (147-148). 14. si deprehenderit tibi male (61-62); si tibi male deprehenderit (87); si male deprehenderit ei (204); voir aussi si ei male ducebat ei (219-220).

15. Au moyen d'une interpolation, j'aligne le passage Misitque (fidem) Ugo in Deum et in illo (63), avec quatre autres passages cités ci-dessous, à la note 22. 16. promisit ei Comes, sicut debet Senior promittere suo homini rationem (104); per fidem quam senior adiuvari debet homini suo (122); ego portam illi fidem sicut senior portare debet homini suo (203). 17. Comes autem qui adiuvare debuerat Hugoni (131). 18. Recepitque dampnum Ugo valde (139); recepit dampnum valde (95); Et hoc dampnum recepit Ugo (159); dampnum Ugoni veniebat (237-238). A la fin du récit, Guillaume stipule que Hugues ne doit pas souffrir d'autre tort: pro omnibus causas que de retro fuerunt dampnum tibi amplias iam non eveniet (259-260). 19. "A cause de son amour et de sa fidélité envers le comte, Hugues... se sépare de la femme" (14-15); "Maintenant, Hugues est encore sans sa terre et il a perdu l'autre terre qu'il avait tenue en paix au nom du comte" (43-45); "Aprés quoi Hugues n'obtint ni les hommes, ni justice, et il perdit sa terre" (56-57); "Mais maintenant le comte a pris le meilleur domaine à l'eveque Ysembart et à Hugues" (65-66); "Mais le comte n'acheva pas la forteresse pour Hugues, mais il négocia avec Aimery et abandonna la forteresse et ne fit rien pour aider Hugues" (84-86); "aucun des biens mentionnés n'échut à Hugues" (94-96) "la querelle entre Bernard, Aimery et Hugues s'amplifia" (111-114). 20. Male est modo mi, senior meus, quia de fiscum quern fecisti mihi adquirere, nihil habeo (110-112); Valde est mi male quia senior quern feci per tuum consilium modo mi tollit meum fiscum (119-121). 21. propter eius amorem fidelitatemque (14-15); pro amore Guillelmi Comiti (36); pro amorem comiti (38); pro eius amore (201). 22. Misit Ugo in credentia seniori suo (94); Mi.sit se Ugo in credenda et in amicicia comiti seniori suo (200-201); mitteret in credendam comiti (207-208); omnia mittam in tua credentia (210). 23. Fecitque Ugo quod praecepit ei comes (1.14); Omnia faciam quod mihi iusseris (1.20). 24. Sur l'honneur, voir J. PITT-RIVERS, "Honour and Social Status", Honour and Shame

:

The Values

of Mediterranean Society,

sous

la dir. de J.G.

Peristiany, Chicago,

1966, p. 21-77 et P. BOURDIEU, "The Sentiment of Honour in Kabyle Society",traduit par P. Sherrard, ibid p. 193-241. 25. The Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres, présenté par F. Behrends, Oxford, 1976, n° 51, aux p. 90-93. 26. Senior pour dominus et adiutorium pour auxilium. 27. E. MAGNOU-NORTTER, "Fidélité et féodalité méridionales d’aprés les serments de fidélité (Xe-début XIIe siécle)", Annales. du Midi, 1968, p. 457-484, à la p. 463; pour des références à ces serments, voir p. 464, n. 18-19. 28. Le charroi de Nimes : Chanson de geste du XIIe sécle, présenté par Duncan McMillan Paris, 1972,1.38, 39. Pour une traduction anglaise, voir "The Wagon Train", traduit par G. Price, William, Count of Orange : Four Old French Epics, présenté par G. Price, Londres, et Totowa, New Jersey, 1975, p. 61-91, à la page 61. Bernard continue: "A l’un il donne une terre, á l'autre, un château, à un autre, une cité, à un autre, une ville, selon qu’il le juge approprié" : ibid 1.37-38. C'est un meme acte révélateur d'un mauvais seigneur qui précipite l'action dans le Lai de Lanval, de Marie de France. 29. Ibid 1. 65-67. 30. Ibid 1. 76-66. 31. Ibid 1. 280-281. 32.Ibid 1. 307. ,

,

,

,

,

,

,

33. Ibid 1. 585-588. 34. Raoul de Cambrai: Chanson de geste, présentée par P. Meyer ,

et A.

Longnon,

v lbid 1.21. I , 1.2135 .

3. Ibid 1. 2337 v. Ibid 1.101-103,116. 3. Ibid 1. 123. 3. Ibid 1. 308. 40. Voir ibid laisse 33. 41. Ibid 1.907. 42. Ibid 1. 907. 43. F. L. CHEYETTE, "The Invention of the State", Essays in Medieval Civilization : The Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures, sour la dir. de Bede Karl Lackner et Kenneth Roy Philipp, Austin, 1979, p. 143-176, aux pages 158-159. 44. C. GEERTZ, Negara : The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali, Princeton, 1980, p. 135. 45. Sur le "bon seigneur", voir P. R. HYAMS, "Warranty and Good Lordship in Twelfth-Century Engand", Law and History Review, 1987, p. 437-503, épdcialement ,

, ,

,

,

, ,

p. 439-440.

VIII

The Politics of Fidelity in

Eleventh-

Early

Century France: Fulbert of Chartres, William of Aquitaine, and Hugh of Lusignan 1

bishop Fulbert of Chartres to write to him about the oath of fidelity (forma fidelitatis), the bishop 2 responded in a letter about how a fidelis and his lord should treat one another. This issue was clearly of great practical importance to the two men, both of whom were great lords with many fideles, who, in many cases, must have had fideles of their own. For this reason, the bishop’s letter to the duke can hardly have been a purely academic, disinterested exercise in juridical reasoning about the oath of fidelity. Nevertheless, because it discussed only an abstract lord (dominus) and an abstract fidelis, rather than a specific dispute about what fidelity meant and what it entailed, modem scholars have been free to detach Fulbert’s discussion of fidelity from the ideology and political strategies that must have been associated with it originally. In the depoliticized form of “a definition of the obligations created by the vassalic [i.e. feudal] contract,” the letter has long provided the basis for what this essay calls the juridical model of classical feudalism (“la féodalite”), which F. L. Ganshof identified with “the system of feudo-vassalic institutions” during a period running from the tenth to When William duke of

Aquitaine

and count of Poitou asked

...

the thirteenth century.

3

1

This is a revised version of Stephen D. White, “Politics of Fidelity: Hugh of Lusignan and William of Aquitaine,” in Claudie Duhamel-Amado and Guy Lobrichon, eds., Georges Duby: L’écriture de l'histoire (Brussels: De Boeck Université, 1996), pp. 223-30. 2

of Fulbert of Chartres, ed. and English trans. by F. 51, pp. 90-3. On the letter, see M. Garaud, “Un probléme d’histoire: à propos d’une lettre de Fulbert de Chartres à Guillaume le Grand, comte de Poitou et due d’Aquitaine,” Etudes d’histoire du droit canonique dédiees à Gabriel le Bras, vol. 1 (Paris, 1965), pp. 559ff. The present essay refers throughout to fideles (or, The Letters and Poems

Behrends

(Oxford, 1976),

occasionally, “men”)

no.

instead of “vassals” and focuses

on

oaths of

fidelity

rather than

on

the ceremony of homage. 3 F. L. Ganshof, Qu’est-ce que la féodalité, 2nd ed. (Brussels, 1947), pp. 83, 103; see also pp. 13, 14, 190. Marc Bloch called Fulbert’s letter “une analyse de 1 ’hommage et de ses

effets”: M. Bloch, La société féodale, 2 vols.

(Paris, 1940),

vol. 1, p. 338. On the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-8

The Politics

of Fidelity

in

This model is remarkable for its in

it.

4

Early Eleventh-Century France simplicity,

as

well

so-called feudal

as

for the erudition used

constructing Privileging lordship fidelity (along with and and other of homage vassalage) slighting types relationships among nobles and other the model also suppresses social forms of (e.g., kinship friendship), differences among lords and among fideles to the point of reducing all instances of feudal lordship and fidelity to a single form. Moreover, by ignoring both the ambiguities of fidelity and the temporal dimension of relationships between lords and fideles, the model excludes what this paper calls the politics of fidelity, which involved two main elements: (1) the process of imposing or trying to impose a particular interpretation on “fidelity,” as Fulbert attempted to do in his letter to William of Aquitaine and as William and his fidelis Hugh of Lusignan are represented as trying to do in the text to be discussed below; (2) the process also depicted in the same text through which a lord enforces or tries 5 to enforce his own interpretation of fidelity on his fidelis or vice versa. Moreover, since the juridical model of feudalism excludes plurality of homage as being an anomaly or a late development, the expansion of the model to include other people linked to the lord or his fidelis by oaths of fidelity merely has the effect of situating the lord and his fidelis in a so-called feudal (or vassalic) pyramid and does nothing to change the way in which the model 6 represents the bilateral relationship between them. Finally, by representing political relations between lord and fidelis as the product of a feudal contract that imposed legal obligations on both lord and man, the model radically 7 simplifies the study of aristocratic politics. It enables historians to provide all-purpose explanations for the political acts of nobles by first reducing them to the acts of a “lord” or a "fidelis” without regard to the other social identities of these juridical personae (e.g., as kinsmen) and then treating these acts as products of obedience or disobedience to the rules of feudal law that supposedly governed 8 their relationship, as established under a feudal contract. These explanations are obviously circular, since the main evidence for the rules of feudal law that

letter

also J.-F.

see

1970), pp.

Lemarignier,

and

La France médiévale: institutions et société (Paris,

128-9.

4

On the model’s virtues, see, e.g., P. Ourliac and J. de Malafosse, Histoire du droit privé, vol. 2, Les biens, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1971) pp. 151-3. 5 For an interesting reading of the Conventum, see J.- P. Poly and E. Boumazel, La mutation féodale, Xe-XIIe siécles (Paris, 1980), pp. 148-54. 6 Ganshof,Qu 'est-ce que la féodalité, pp. 68-9,121-3. 7 8

See For

1980), p.

Lemarignier, La France médiévale, p. 126. critique of this kind of “juridisme,” see P. Bourdieu, Le sens pratique (Paris,

a

67.

The Politics

of Fidelity

in

Early Eleventh-Century France

supposedly govern the acts in question consists of evidence about the conduct hypostasized rules supposedly govern. When viewed in this way, the juridical model of feudalism is readily identifiable as a structuralist model of medieval aristocratic society. Models of this kind reduce a group or society to a “structure,” which A.R. Radcliffe-Brown defined as “an arrangement of persons in institutionally controlled or defined 9 relationships” and which J. Boissevain identified more fully as “an enduring system of groups, composed of statuses and roles, supported by values and 10 connected sanctions which operate to maintain the system in equilibrium.” Just as it was “a fundamental tenet of a structural-functional anthropology,” according to S. Humphreys, “that the anthropologist’s task was to discover the rules governing the structure of the society,” so it has been the goal of historians of feudalism to identify from narrative and normative texts both the specific regional or local customs that “regulated feudo-vassalic relations” in different pays and “the general principles that regulated the relationships of vassals to 11 lords and the régime of fiefs.” When discussing “feudal organization” in the eleventh-century Mâconnais, however, Georges Duby had a different agenda and could therefore raise questions about political culture, class, and power that the juridical model of 12 feudalism excluded. Without totally rejecting this model, Duby undermined it by advancing arguments whose theoretical implications for the study of lordship and fidelity are the subject of the present paper. By noting in passing that the bond between lord and man was sometimes represented as “a tie of friendship,” Duby showed that during the eleventh century, relations between a lord and his fidelis could be understood in terms very different from the ones that Fulbert of Chartres used in his letter on fidelity to William of Aquitaine and that modern historians such as Ganshof subsequently privileged in the juridical model of 13 feudalism. In addition to showing that the relationship between a lord and his fidelis could be understood as one of friendship as well as one of lordship and fidelity, Duby argued that in the Mâconnais, lordship and fidelity took several that the

9

“such

as

the

relationship

of

king

and

Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function

(New York, 1965), p.

subject,

or

that of husband and wife”: A. R.

in Primitive

Society: Essays

and Addresses

11.

10

J. Boissevain, Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators and Coalitions (Oxford, 1974), p. 4. 11 S. Humphreys, “Law as Discourse,” History and Anthropology 1 (1985), 241-64 at 242; Ganshof, Qu ’est-ce que la féodalité, p. 86. 12 G. Duby, La société aux Xle et Xlle siècles dans la région mâconnaise (Paris, 1971), pp. 149-71. 13

Ibid ., p. 161;

see

also pp. 159 and 156, n. 34.

different forms,

depending

on

whether the lord and his fidelis both

belonged

to

“the upper or the lower stratum of the nobility” or whether the lord belonged to 14 the former group and the fidelis to the latter. In this way, Duby implicitly questioned the legal model of power associated with the

juridical model of feudalism and the assumption underlying the model 15 legal rules determined political practice. He did so by arguing: (1) that only when a lord was already more powerful than his man did the creation of “a feudal tie” between them entail true political subordination offidelis to lord; (2) that plurality of homage (and thus fidelity to more than one lord) was an integral part of eleventh-century politics; and (3) that other kinds of social ties played a 16 role in limiting and controlling the conduct of nobles. To represent upper-class society in the Mâconnais, Duby abandoned the familiar image of the feudal pyramid (since no such pyramid existed, he maintained), and, instead, used the 17 metaphor of a “tightly woven fabric” (“un tissu serre”). Based mainly on “faith,” the different, crisscrossing social ties that made up the social fabric connected a chevalier, for example, to everyone around him of his status or higher, including clerks, kin, neighbors, lords and men. It was through these multiple ties, and not through ties of fidelity alone, that power over nobles was exercised. As Duby put it in an important passage about the exercise of social control over nobles in a stateless society, serious concerns of nobles about incurring the condemnation of priests and monks or that of their kin, neighbors, 18 lords, or men, compelled them to conduct themselves with restraint. Instead of treating power as a legally constituted repressive force that superiors imposed from above (so to speak) on inferiors, Duby saw it as a moral force based on 19 faith, not law. Exercised through persuasion and the threat of sanctions, this form of power was channeled through several kinds of social ties and along many different trajectories; it flowed horizontally among peers, as well as 20 vertically from lords to men or vice versa. Power of this kind obviously existed independently of feudal contracts or oaths of fidelity, which did no more that

.

.

.

14

Ibid ., pp. 160, 164. Compare the critique in M. Foucault, La chaps. 1-2. 15

16 17

18

Duby, La société, pp. 158, 160, 163, Ibid ., pp. 164, 170. Ibid ., p. 170: “Le souci

19

de

d’éviter

voisins, de ses seigneurs Ibid pp. 165, 169-70.

lignage,

ses

volonté de

savoir

(Paris, 1976), part 4,

170.

la

réprobation

des ministres de Dieu, de

et de ses hommes le forceà se tenir

son

tranquille.”

.,

20

“Recherches sur l’évolution des institutions judiciares pendant le Xe et le Xle siécle dans le Sud de Bourgogne,” in idem, Hommes et structures du moyen âge: Receuil d ’articles (Paris, 1973), pp. 6-60 at p. 46; see also idem, La societé, p. 148. G.

Duby,

than formalize

relationships

21

power relationships. According to Duby, feudal between lords and fideles were neither created nor regulated by the

preexisting

kind of coercive law that is

central to the

as

juridical

to other structuralist social models. In the

model of feudalism

absence of

as

it is

“superior authority

invested with the power to command and sanction,” aristocratic political practice was not legally regulated and was instead constrained only by “moral

previously explained, through the social ties that made one could also imagine as a social network. Disputes 22 settled politically, not by the enforcement of feudal law. Since “there was

pressure,” operating, up the social were no

as

fabric, which

feudal system,” there could be

no

institutionalized rules of feudal law that 23

systematically regulated political practice. To show how Duby’s ideas can be developed so as to carry studies of relations between a lord and his fidelis even further away from Ganshof's juridical model of institutionally controlled feudal relationships and to bring such studies into line with the processual, transactional, and cultural analyses of law, discourse, and politics that developed in reaction to studies of legal 24 institutions and structures, the remainder of this essay briefly compares the early eleventh-century text known as the Conventum—which describes a series of disputes and agreements between Hugh of Lusignan and his lord, William count of Poitou and duke of Aquitaine—with the previously mentioned letter on 25 fidelity by Fulbert of Chartres to the same William. In the present context, this narrative is important because, in contrast to both Fulbert’s letter and the juridical model of feudalism, it does not picture relationships between lords and 21

“La vassalité et le fief ont aménagé les rapports qu’imposait déja 1 ’inégale répartition de la richesse et du pouvoir; ils n’en ont pas crée d’autres”: La société, p. 164. 22 Ibid pp. 165, 169, 170; see also Duby, “Recherches.” 23 Duby, La société, p. 164. 24 Many of them developed partly in reaction against structuralism. See T. C. Lewellen, Political Anthropology: An Introduction (1983), chaps. 6-7; J. Vincent, Anthropology and Politics: Visions, Traditions and Trends (Tucson, 1990), pp. 334-62. On the “cultural construction of power relations,” see J. Starr and J. F. Collier, “Introduction: Dialogues in Legal Anthropology,” in idem, History and Power in the Study ofLaw: New Directions in Legal Anthropology (Ithaca, 1989), p. 3. .

.

.

.,

25

For the text and commentary,

Aquitanorum

comes

et

see

J. Martindale, “Conventum inter Guillelmum Historical Review 84, 1969, pp.

Hugonem Chiliarchum," English

528—48. For additional discussions of this text, see, e.g., A. Richard, Histoire des comtes (Paris, 1903), vol. 1, pp. 157-67; M. Garaud, “Un probléme

de Poitou, 778-1126

d’histoire,” pp. 559-62; J.-P. Poly and E. Boumazel, La mutation féodale: Xe-XIIe (Paris, 1980), pp. 137-54; G. Duby, Le moyen âge, 987-1460 (Paris, 1987), pp. 102-12; J. Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843-1180 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 175, 230-1,

siécles

233-4.

men as

the fixed

juridical products

of oaths of

feudal law. Instead, it represents them negotiations, which involved not only the

as

fidelity,

the unstable

making

feudal contracts, or subjects of ongoing

of agreements but also the

use

of violence and threats of violence. Thus, Hugh and his lord William repeatedly re-made their relationship (though not as either of them pleased) so that its form time

depended on: (1) an unstable balance of power between the partly determined by the positions that each occupied at a time in a given larger, shifting social network; and (2) the outcomes of successive exercises in the politics of fidelity in which Hugh and his lord each tried to “officialize” and impose his own claims on the other and to contest the other’s claims on himself by deploying one of several different conventionalized at any

given

two men, which

was

models of fidelity.

telling the story of Hugh and William from the former’s perspective, the consistently represents Hugh as a good fidelis and William as a bad lord hy implicitly invoking certain norms about how a lord and his man should treat one another and showing that Hugh had conformed to them whereas In

Conventum

26

William had violated them.

At the

same

time, the

text shows that each of them

could represent the proper relationship between lord and fidelis in several different ways. Encoded in Hugh’s story are three different models of fidelity:

(1)

a

political

model that

privileges

the lord’s power

over

“his” man;

27

(2)

a

familial model, in which lord and man, though unequal in power, are “friends,” who support one another out of “love” and “fidelity” without openly computing and

28

they exchange; and (3) a “transactional” or economic model representing (or misrepresenting) the two men as parties to balanced exchanges, in which Hugh, for example, is William’s man only with 29 respect to a particular fief.

26

comparing

On the

the costs of what

implicit

invocation of norms,

Processes: The Cultural Logic 27

of Dispute

in

see an

J. L. Comaroff and S. Roberts, Rules and Context (Chicago, 1981), esp. pp.84-6.

African

Hugh presented William’s use of this model unfavorably, without, however, rejecting the model itself. 28 See G. Duby, Les trois ordres, ou l'imaginaire du féodalisme (Paris, 1978), pp. 93-4. On other instances in which clientage is represented as a form of friendship, see, e.g., F. G. Bailey, Stratagems and Spoils: A Social Anthropology of Politics (1969; repr. Oxford, 1985), chap. 3; J. Pitt-Rivers, The People of the Sierra (New York, 1940), p.140; E. R. Wolf, “Kinship, Friendship, and Patron-Client Relationships in Complex Societies,” in The Anthropology of Complex Societies, ed. M. Banton (1966; repr. Fakenham, Norfolk, 1968), pp. 1-22. 29 On transactional relationships, see Bailey, Stratagems and Spoils, chap. 3.

One

can

conflicting

think of these different models of cultural renditions of the

“resources” that both lord and

use

as

as

“alternative, often

“idioms”

or

cultural

to formulate and “officialize” their

30

Each model privileged “cultural categories” that could acquire new meanings when submitted to the “empirical risks” of the politics of 31 fidelity. Although William and Hugh may each have viewed fidelity differently in ways appropriate to his position as lord or man, each of them could draw on the same three models, each of which was sufficiently ambiguous 32 as to be useful to either lord or man. Though sometimes serving mainly as smokescreens assertions of power by William or Hugh, the ideological masking 33 models were not completely out of line with practical experience. They were also the cultural media in which the relationship between lord and man had to be constructed: to adapt E. P. Thompson’s formulation to the present context, the models were “deeply imbricated within the very basis of [political] relations, 34 If fidelity could be which would have been inoperable without [them].” constructed in multiple ways in accordance with one of the models and if its construction at any given moment depended partly on the balance of power between lord and man, then, if that balance was continually subject to change, we reach the position of Poly and Boumazel that “le contenu de la fidélite 35 n’est pas en effet fixe une fois pour toutes.” How Hugh or William practiced the politics of fidelity depended partly on the bargaining position he thought he held when negotiating with the other and partly on his choice of bargaining 36 strategies. William, for example, tended to resort to the political model of fidelity when he either needed no support from Hugh or encountered stubborn resistance from him; he invoked the familial model when he thought he could extract a special favor from his man in return for a general promise of friendship. Meanwhile, Hugh accepted William’s use of the authoritarian model when it seemed expedient to show deference to his lord or when William used it claims

on one

another.

man

fidelity

world” and

.

.

.

30

N. Quinn and D. Holland, “Culture and Cognition,” in idem, eds., Cultural Models and Thought (Cambridge, England, 1987), pp. 3-40 at p. 10; Humphreys, “Law as Discourse,” pp. 243-4; Starr and Collier, “Introduction,” p. 4; Bourdieu, Le sens

in

Language

pratique, pp. 184—9. 31 M. Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago 1985), p. ix. 32 Poly and Boumazel, La mutation féodale, p. 147. 33 See Duby, Les trois ordres, p. 20. 34

E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act (New York, 1975), p. 261. 35 Poly and Boumazel, La mutation féodale, p. 147. 36 For a valuable discussion of these issues, see W. I. Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago, 1990), esp. chap. 6.

to assert his power

he

thought

rest of the

Hugh’s rivals; and he invoked the familial model when gain credit with William by showing “love” for him. The

over

he could

time, each

man

relied

on

various forms of the transactional model,

configure land, fortresses, military aid, hostages, and promises of all these things as items of exchange that could be balanced off against other items in what were represented (or misrepresented) as balanced exchanges. In negotiations configured in accordance with the transactional model, each party using

it to

relied

of two different strategies to represent himself as the other’s maximizing his own claims on the other and minimizing what the

on one

creditor:

(1) already

other had

done to

discharge them; (2) minimizing

the other’s abstract

him and maximizing what he himself had already done to discharge them. Integral to both strategies, for example, were William’s efforts to claims

on

substitute to have

mere

promises

of future

gifts

for actual

to lands that his kin had

gifts; Hugh’s recurrent claims previously held and that, in his view,

“right” was obliged to give him; and the claims of each man that because he had “given” the other something, the other now owed something to him. In all such negotiations, each party’s bargaining position was influenced, in a bewildering variety of ways, by the general position he occupied in a larger social network and, more specifically, by his success or failure in establishing relationships with third parties such as count Fulk d’Anjou, Boso de Châtellerault, Bernard de la Marche, or Aimery de Rancogne. For example, either Hugh or William could strengthen his bargaining position with the other by preventing him from establishing and maintaining ties of friendship with third parties. Whereas William could drive a harder bargain with Hugh when he could prevent him from establishing a connection with an alternative patron or ally or when he could play him off against a rival, Hugh had more political leverage with his lord when he also had an alternative source of patronage and when William was alienated from Hugh’s rivals for comital favor. In addition, bilateral negotiations between Hugh and his lord were further complicated by the fact that William had such limited resources with which to satisfy the claims of his men that he could rarely give something to Hugh without “taking” it from another fidelis, whom he could reward only by “taking” something from Hugh. Under these circumstances, virtually any agreement William made with one of his fideles could be construed as an alliance against another of them. In a political system with such inherent contradictions, no equilibrium was attainable and the threat of a limited guerra was omnipresent. Nevertheless, although it is instructive to demystify the ideology of fidelity by reducing successive negotiations between lord and fidelis, including the swearing of fealty and the establishment of convenientiae, to phases in a competitive game of power politics, it is important to remember that the game itself was culturally William

constructed and that the

ideology

of

fidelity,

to

adapt

an

insightful

remark of

Duby’s present context, “is not a reflection of lived experience; it is a 37 to act project upon it.” When viewed from the perspective on politics and law to the

that

Duby began to

formulate in his

study of the Mâconnais

and

developed fully

in Les trois ordres, the distinction customarily made between legislative or “normative” texts such as Fulbert’s letter to William of Aquitaine and records of

political practice

such

as

the Conventio is

both types of texts should be read political culture.

37

Duby, Les d’agir sur lui.”

trois

as

partially dissolved, to the point where political practice and

evidence of both

ordres, p. 20: ideology “n’est pas

un

reflet du

vécu,

c’est

un

projet

IX

Book Review: Susan

Reynolds, Fiefs

and Vassals:

The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted In

already stirred up much discussion and is bound to stimulate more, Reynolds campaigns with great learning, analytical skill, and polemical zeal against the study of “feudalism in its ‘narrow sense’ of relations within the noble class” (3) in medieval England, France, Germany, and Italy. Reynolds’s primary targets are a

book that has

Susan

thus historians such

as

F. L. Ganshof, who in 1944 canonized feudalism

as

“one of the

great institutions of European history,” defining it as “a body of institutions creating and regulating the obligations of obedience and service—mainly military service—on the part of a free man (the vassal) towards another free man (the lord), and the obligations of protection and maintenance on the part of the lord with regard to his vassal. The

obligation of maintenance

his vassal of

had

usually

as one

of its effects the grant

by the

lord to

unit of real property known as a fief' (Feudalism, trans. Philip Grierson, 3d English ed. [New York, 1961], p. xvi). Totally rejecting this narrow model of a

feudalism, Reynolds sees greater value in what she loosely terms “feudalism in its [broader] Marxist sense, which involves not only relations between nobles and peasants but consideration of the whole economic structure of

society and the reasons for change.” However, she still complains that “the study of the broader impeded by its inheritance from the narrower one of the idea that

economic and social

subject

seems

to be

fiefs and vassalage were central and defining institutions of medieval European society" (3). She therefore attacks models of “feudal society” such as the one formulated in 1939 sense

by Marc Bloch, who treated as “fundamental features” of feudalism in the

not

of family

broad

only peasantry, warrior élite,fragmented authority, and attenuated forms and state, but also vassalage and the fief (Feudal Society, trans. L. A. Manyon a

a

[Chicago, 1961], 446). Because Reynolds denies that the concepts of vassalage and the fief

are

“helpful

to

the understanding of medieval history” (2), she considers Ganshof’s models of feudalism to be intellectually bankrupt and finds serious flaws in broader models such as Bloch’s: Fiefs and

vassalage, as they

constructs.

.

.

.

are

generally

defined

by

medieval historians

today,

are

post-medieval

Historians often refer to both fiefs and vassals when neither word is

They sometimes refer to them in ways that, irrespective of terminology, seem distort the relations of property and politics that the sources record. Even when the historians follow the terminology and take pains to establish the phenomena recorded, they in their sources.

to

me

to

tend to fit their

findings

into

a

framework of interpretation that

was

devised in the sixteenth

century and elaborated in the seventeenth and eighteenth. (2)

From Law and History Review. © 1997 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-9

Instead of

reformulating

the concepts of fief and vassalage, Reynolds rejects them if we see it through seventeenth-

both because “We cannot understand medieval society or eighteenth-century spectacles. Yet every time

...

we

we

think of fiefs and vassals

do just that” (3). She also dismisses “[t]he idea of ‘tenure’ as distinct from ‘ownership'" as “inappropriate” for the period before 1100 (62) and denies not only that vassalage “the cement of medieval

was

bonds” such

as

lordship

or

kinship

society” (7)

ties

were

but also that “purely interpersonal integrating forces in early medieval

the main

society. Although Fiefs and Vassals is admittedly "rather negative in tone” (475) and is

not

meant to create "a new model into which evidence is to be fitted as it has been fitted

for centuries into the model of feudalism" (482), Reynolds complements her critique of previous scholarship on fiefs and vassals not simply with proposals for further research but with

an

alternative model of medieval

society from which she virtually eliminates

only fiefs and vassals but also fragmented authority, sharp class divisions, and kinship. Interpersonal bonds, she believes, “were not the whole story nor even most of the story” (476) in constituting medieval societies, which were held together mainly by effective governments ruling real states (26-27), by a concept of “the public welfare" (25), and by other widely shared values and norms, including “a belief in hierarchy, obedience, and loyalty on the one hand and a belief in custom, immanent justice, mutuality of obligations, and collective judgement on the other" (34-35). Although she not

divides medieval of

society, for practical purposes, into three vaguely defined “categories” people—nobles, laborers, and members of a large intermediate group—she abandons

the concept of class, seeing medieval society as marked by “infinite gradations rather than wide social gulfs” (38^)0, 476). Her suggestions for further research include studies treating “high politics and actual events" as determinants of or

layers

.

.

.

social structure (481-82). To replace analyses of vassalage and fiefs, she favors research “a whole range of different social and political relations” and “a whole range of separate [real property] rights or obligations—as many of each as one can think of’

on

(481). Whether

or

provisional

not

Reynolds

succeeds in

model of medieval

society

on

others, her book is important

received ideas about fiefs and vassals and is

1100,

on

either her research

agenda or her critique of particularly interesting for the period before

imposing

as a

which this review focuses with particular reference to France. In arguing

persuasively that many previous historians have misrepresented medieval ideas about political relationships and rights to land, she shows just how little evidence supports the familiar generalizations about vassals, fiefs, feudal law, feudal theory, and the feudal system that have been endlessly recycled by many legal historians of feudal institutions, by some (though hardly all) writers on feudal society, and by innumerable teachers and textbook writers. Vigilantly scrutinizing modern work for inaccurate, tendentious readings of medieval texts and for any trace of the idea that "fiefs and vassalage were central and defining institutions of medieval European society” (3), Reynolds convincingly criticizes those who have treated lordship and kinship

as

“mutually exclusive

alternatives” (25), made incoherent distinctions between “public and private relations and obligations” (25), defined vassalage “in terms of the sentiments it is supposed to

embody” (27), assumed that “vassalage was essentially defined by its rituals of initiation" (28), and, above all, conceptualized vassalage so loosely that they find examples

of it everywhere (33). Her discussion of fiefs shows that “Not until after 1100 were the properties of nobles and other free men normally described as fiefs, nor did the word fief begin to denote anything like a consistent category of property—in so far, considering its aberrant use in England, as one can say that it ever did” (59). Reynolds concludes that “in so far as anything like feudo-vassalic institutions [ever] existed, they were the product not of weak and unbureaucratic government in the early middle ages but of the increasingly bureaucratic government and expert law that began to develop from about the twelfth century” (478-79). She also asserts that before 1100, “the standard form of property for nobles and other free men was something much more like the common modern idea of ‘freehold property’ than the modern idea of ‘feudal property'" (73). The rules of fiefholding that emerged after 1100 “seem to derive," she thinks, .

“not from social that the other words,

.

.

of the lay nobility in the earlier middle ages, but from the practices devised to protect the property of the church” (64). Ganshof, in wrong in thinking that early medieval sources revealed “the general

norms

clergy was

principles” which, by regulating “the relationship of vassal to lord and the custom of fiefs,” largely regulated the life of the medieval nobility long before those principles were ever

articulated in lawbooks and court records (Feudalism, 68).

Although Reynolds repeatedly criticizes contemporary scholars as well as earlier ones for misrepresenting the history of fiefs and vassals before 1100 and, in some cases, for reproducing an unsatisfactory model of medieval society, she will not provoke a clearcut confrontation between defenders of the historians

narrow

view of feudalism, which presentday

espouse in toto, and supporters of Fiefs and Vassals, which raises so many distinct and debatable historiographical, empirical, and theoretical issues that no reader should feel compelled to accept or reject the book’s entire thesis. Reynoldsism

rarely

is really several different theses linked loosely together by a deep antipathy to the of feudalism, against which Reynolds constantly reacts and sometimes overreacts.

study

Because the

narrow view of feudalism has already been rejected or bypassed by while the broader view has been revised in many ways since Bloch’s medievalists, many day, the main issue raised by Fiefs and Vassals is not whether Reynolds has convincingly undermined “the modern concepts of vassalage and the fief’ (14), but how her proposals for revising Bloch’s broad model of feudalism compare with the proposed revisions of other historians. A subsidiary issue is whether a style of analysis that is so successful in demonstrating that practices once associated with vassalage and/or fiefholding were not really the products of obedience to rules of so-called feudal custom can ever produce coherent hypotheses about medieval societies or social change when the analysis turns, as Reynolds says it should, into a search for infinite gradations in medieval socety, for a multitude of medieval social practices, and for as many contemporary ideas about practice as one can think of. Although Reynolds presents an overpowering case against older views of feudalism, her proposed revisions of those views are

unpersuasive partly because she

never

demonstrates their

superiority to other forms

of revisionism and partly because the empirical evidence for them is ambiguous at best. Moreover, because Reynolds’s own proposals are also open to objections analogous to the

ones

she herself makes

her when she constructs such as

assumes

against feudalism,

readers should wonder whether to follow

the role of hyper-empiricist deconstructor of post-medieval

vassalage, fief, feudalism

or

them with other post-medieval constructs such

class, or when she proposes to replace government and ownership. Because

as

Reynolds's critique of previous work

on

feudal society sometimes presupposes

an

underlying

skepticism about the entire historical project of analyzing and explaining what called “a social structure and its unifying principles” (Feudal Society, p. xx),

Bloch

historians she

more

uses

in

committed to that project than she is may well applaud individual tactics feudalism but question her intellectual strategy of implicitly

attacking

contesting the idea that medieval societies could have had unifying principles or, at least, unifying principles other than the ones she posits. Although Reynolds tries not to attack a straw man (14, 15, 17) and finds grounds for criticizing recent scholars, her overall argument would have been more intellectually productive if, instead of organizing it around an attack on conventional views of “feudo-vassalic institutions,” she had first identified herself with other historians who have attacked, revised, or bypassed those views and if she had then explained and debated her differences with them. Readers could then have identified and assessed both the distinctive features of her arguments and the views she shares with other historians. By indiscriminately attacking the work of any historian whose views she can somehow associate with “the modern concepts of vassalage and the fief’ (14), Reynolds runs obscuring issues she needs to clarify. She clearly does so when discussing

the risk of

recent writers on medieval

France, whom she criticizes for their “unanimity in using

the categories of classic feudalism” (119). Even though fiefs, vassals, and feudalism still figure in recent French manuals and textbooks, Reynolds's criticism is an odd one to level at scholars such as Georges Duby, who has already done much to undermine

Reynolds prefers broad approaches to feudalism; Duby and pursued them for decades. Reynolds denies that the fief was a crucially important institution in medieval society; Duby did the same in 1978 (Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, rev. printing [Chicago, narrow

views of feudalism.

other French medievalists have

1982], 153). Reynolds denies that “feudal anarchy" prevailed in France before 1100 (124-25); Duby did so in 1953 (La Société aux Xle et XII siécles dans la région mâconnaise [1953; rpt. Paris, 1971], 165-71). Denying that relationships between lords and

men were

strictly regulated by feudal contracts, Reynolds argues that they

have taken different forms

depending

on

the social distance between the

must

parties (31,

127); Duby made a similar argument long ago (La Société aux Xle et XII siécles, 159-65). Reynolds certainly has her differences with recent French scholars. But treating them

as defenders of a “common view” of fiefs, vassals, and feudalism misrepresents their work and prevents her from either using it to support her argument or else explaining precisely how and why her argument differs from theirs; the same strategy

primarily

prevents readers of Fiefs and Vassals from seeing clearly that

one can

reject “the

modern concepts of vassalage and the fief’ without fully embracing Reynoldsism. In a similar but less striking way Reynolds’s relentless critique of those concepts sometimes obscures the

to which the

concepts have been revised by recent English historians. objections can be made to her readings of recent work on medieval Germany and Italy, her failure to consider revisionist historiography on feudalism carefully impedes her efforts to articulate her own views, whose relationship to

degree

Whether

or

not similar

this kind of work she

never

explains.

Moreover, if we start, as many other historians have, from the premise that conventional ideas about fiefs and vassals are deeply flawed and if we then ask, after considering recent work based on this

premise, whether these concepts should be revised,

radically reformulated, or simply scrapped and, if scrapped, replaced with what, we can find grounds for contesting some of Reynolds’s revisionist arguments about political relationships, land law, and the connection between the two. We can also gauge the extent to which her own argument involves the use of concepts that are almost as problematic as she considers fiefs, vassalage, and feudalism to be. Although Reynolds rightly emphasizes the need for caution “in deducing norms that governed lay property from records about church property’’ (123), this warning should apply not only to arguments about fiefs and vassals but also to the arguments of Reynolds herself, who has little evidence for her assertions about how “nobles and free men" did

or

did not

use

the term

fief before 1100 (59) or about the advantages of using the term “ownership” in discussing early medieval land law. All generalizations about eleventh-century secular land law are

tenuous and

depend on an ability

to fit the available evidence into

intelligible

schemas,

rather than to catalogue a whole range of phenomena. The same point holds for generalizations about political relationships and about the possible connection between such relationships and claims to rights in land. Even though Reynolds has read an astonishing amount about fiefs and vassals and has

closely

scrutinized

a

multitude of sources,

some

of the available evidence is hard

interpretive schemas that she proposes to substitute for vassalage and the fief. For example, her inattention to chansons de geste, as Patrick Wormald has noted (Times Literary Supplement [March 10, 1995], 12), is regrettable. Though dating from after 1100, these texts come closer than Latin sources do to documenting a lay political culture that could not have been invented out of nothing in the twelfth century. Among the cultural stereotypes that figure in chansons de geste are the lord who gives or should give land and wives to his loyal followers; and the disinherited man who seeks land and a wife. Interestingly enough, both stereotypes are invoked in the Conventum, an early eleventh-century text that Reynolds closely examines (125-27). Although this to fit into the

evidence cannot be neatly fitted into conventional models of fiefs and vassals, it fits as awkwardly into the flat landscape of land-owning subjects that Reynolds substitutes

just

fiefholding vassals. The evidence probably fits best subject of heritable claims by those who possess it patronage that mediates political relationships among

for the feudal landscape of

world where land is both the

into

a

and

an

item of exchange and

individuals

or

lineages.

A similar question about Reynolds’s revised model of medieval society would have arisen if she had supplemented her painstaking readings of individual charters and

prosopographical researches other historians political networks and show how they served as frameworks for settling disputes and exercising political power in other ways. Although no one could seriously maintain that by themselves interpersonal relationships actually constituted a political community, the formation of such networks and their maintenance over time are hard to explain without sometimes positing patron/client relationships that Reynolds finds less important than relationships between rulers and subjects. Could political groups have existed without the redistribution of land through forms of exchange that have no place in Reynolds’s landscape of rulers and land-owning subjects? In the absence of such groups, could rulers have ruled or governed (if they narrative

sources

with fuller discussions of the

have used to reconstruct aristocratic

did govern)? Other evidence that Reynolds discusses but does not always analyze fully is difficult

to fit into an

eleventh-century

world of “complete property rights, formally undivided

with any superior” (150). As she points out, “[o]ne of the chief reasons for identifying property of unspecified status [in eleventh-century France] as feudal rather than alodial seems

to be that the consent of a lord was recorded when it was

given

to a church”

(146). To undermine this argument, Reynolds provides an alternative explanation for the consent of lords to gifts by people whom other historians (including the present reviewer) have represented as the lords' tenants, though not as tenants identical to twelfth-

or

thirteenth-century

tenants. In cases where the lords in

question were counts

Normandy, “it is surely likely,” Reynolds asserts, that they were “asked to give their consent to gifts not—or not only—because they were lords or overlords in the sense of the later law of fiefs but because they were regarded as the effective rulers of their counties. The same may well apply to some castellans or other lords” (147—48). Like many of Reynolds’s arguments, this one is effective in contesting the assumption that late twelfth-century rules of fief holding were binding in the eleventh century; but it is no more plausible than the argument that concepts of gift, countergift, tenure, seisin, and warranty were elements of eleventh-century legal culture. Finally, Reynolds’s argument takes no account of a common type of lawsuit in which a lord challenged a gift to a monastery on the grounds that the monks had received land from his fief or casamentum without his authorization. Reynolds could try to make sense of these disputes by arguing that the lord’s claim had a political and/or governmental basis, not a tenurial one. But the more frequently she uses this argument (139, 147, 152, 163, 288-89) the less convincing it sounds, not only because some of the lords in question seem never to have governed anything or anyone, but also because Reynolds's concept of government is so elusive. Although her arguments generally rest on careful documentary analyses, many of them also depend heavily on her invocation of concepts such as ruler and subject, state or government, public good, freehold tenure, and politics. Her reliance on such concepts can be puzzling because, in the absence of convincing evidence to substantiate them, she relies on assumptions about medieval society that resemble the ones she first of Anjou

or

identifies in arguments about fiefs and vassals and then demolishes. Her references to government are particularly problematic because her argument requires government to

perform functions that others have assigned to political or tenurial forms of lordship. Although Reynolds acknowledges that evidence of French government is very scanty until well after 1100 (133), she insists that historians should not “deduce from the lack of records of secular government that France was a moral and political vacuum in which there was no idea of public interest” (129). Similarly, after conceding that it is “difficult to know” how much German or

kings

were

“concerned” about

governing

their

subjects

their realm before 1100, she then maintains that “the lack of surviving administrative records, combined with the application of stereotypes about feudal government and

about Germany’s inevitable disunity, may have created an exaggerated impression of local government as entirely unsupervised by a totally unbureaucratic royal government” (409). When she contends that people did not owe obedience to the king of Germany

“only

as

the ‘feudal lord’ at the head of

a

hierarchy

of

interpersonal

links of ‘vassalage,'"

she does so, not because she can present compelling evidence for this view, but rather because she considers it “perverse to suppose” the contrary (404). When she has more

data, she represents eleventh-century French “government” in these

terms:

At the level of castellanies

or

banal

lordships

.

.

.

rights

of government and

rights

of property

much less easy to distinguish than had been the case under Carolingian rule. Above that level there was in some areas very little superstructure before the twelfth century. In were

others, where

counts

or

dukes established

or

maintained their

authority, they

needed to tap

the wealth of their greater subjects, but, lacking the legitimacy of kingship, they had to build up loyalty, obligation, and fear on the foundation of what might at first be little more than alliance much

or

more

voluntary authority

submission. In

practice

the

early Capetians

do not

seem

to

have had

than did counts. (131)

How, then, did government differ from lordship? Having complained that “the words vassals and vassalage imply conceptual black holes that are liable to swallow up any historical scholarship that ventures into them”

(34), Reynolds

uses

features of medieval

terms such as

government

not so much to

designate

documented

surrogates for constructs such as feudal lordship revisionist model of medieval society. For feudal

society as to serve

as

that she wants to supplant in a lordship, she substitutes rulers and the state:

lords and feudal

similarly

she replaces

vassals with

subjects, feudal tenure with freehold tenure, and feudal law with norms and values. Politics serves as a residual category for practices that seem ungoverned, beyond the rule of law, her

own

or

otherwise

inexplicable.

As she demolishes

one

structuralist-functionalist

model of medieval society, Reynolds replaces it with another. Although model facilitates an attack on narrow models of feudalism, it is also vulnerable

not only to the usual array of objections to structuralist-functionalist models, but also to precisely the kinds of attacks that she launches against Ganshof’s model of feudalism. If she can replace vassals and fiefs with “a whole range of different social and

and “a whole range of separate [real property] rights or obligations many of each as one can think of’ (481), she could easily replace the construct “government” with “a whole range" of power relationships.

political relations”

—

as

Whether

or

not

Fiefs and Vassals presents

a

methodologically consistent

or

consistently

defensible argument about medieval society, the book is valuable as a polemic against certain forms of conventional wisdom and obscurantism that have not yet been fully extirpated from medieval historiography. By simply demolishing the narrow view of feudalism, rather than following the usual course of trying to amend, marginalize, or bypass it, and by questioning other received ideas, Reynolds also puts herself in an

unusually good position to formulate questions about how, without privileging fiefs and vassalage, historians can develop clearer understandings of medieval politics and law. Because her

answers

to these

questions

are

both

provisional

and debatable and would

be very hard to defend against the hyper-empirical style of deconstructive analysis she often deploys in attacking feudalism, the immediate value of her work lies in her negations, not her assertions. Yet the

by inventing of empirical

a

negations serve a positive purpose of showing how, special, legal sphere of early medieval society lying beyond the reach

investigation by non-lawyers, generations of legal historians of feudalism mystified the study of medieval history. As a long overdue exercise in demystification, Reynolds’s book is a significant achievement.

X

The Politics of Exchange:

Gifts, Fiefs, and Feudalism According to a worthy man who advises King Arthur in the early thirteenth-century non-cyclic prose-Lancelot, gift-giving is a lord’s best means of insuring that his men will not fail him. “You should never tire of giving,” the wise man tells the king at one point, ...

for you know very well that you cannot be

go to ruin

destroyed by giving, but you can destroyed by largesse, but Always give plenty, and you will have plenty

by too much

on, for

holding by avarice. give, for everything you give will

many have been ruined to

other lands will

A

king,

come

the wise

attractive”

gifts

to

to yours.

man

great

has

no one was ever

remain in your land, and the wealth of many

1

previously declared,

should

give

“beautiful and

men; he should also

(fiez) of the needy [vavassors] with fine rents and rich lands ...; by it, if you give to them; rather you will win their hearts You should prefer that your men of valour hold a part of your land with honour 2 than that you shamefully lose both [the land] and [the men]. increase the fiefs

for you will not lose

“Giving,” the wise

man

...

concludes,

1 Lancelot

of the Lake, trans. Corin Corley (Oxford, 1989), pp. 244-5; Lancelot do Non-cyclic Old French Prose Romance, ed. Elspeth Kennedy (Oxford, 1980), vol. 1, p. 288, 11. 19-22. The entire passage discussed here appears in the later, cyclic prose-Lancelot: Lancelot, part II, trans. Carleton W. Carroll, in Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, 6 vols. (New York, 1993-96), vol. 2, chap. 49, p. 122; Lancelot, roman en prose du xiiie siècle, ed. Alexandre Micha, 8 vols. (Geneva, 1978-82) vol. 8, XLIXa.28-30, pp. 21-3.I follow the earlier, non-cyclic version, which I refer to in the text simply as the Lancelot. On the preudome’s advice to Arthur, see Elspeth Kennedy, “Social and Political Ideas in the French Prose Lancelot,” Medium Aevum 26 (1957), 90-106 at 96-100. 2 Lancelot, trans. Corley, p. 244; Lancelot, ed. Kennedy, p. 288,11. 10-18. Lac: The

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-10

The Politics will

never come

wear

out the

to an end as

long

of Exchange

you wish it to continue, for you will

as

and silver of your land: rather

gold

[the gold

and

silver]

you out as the water wears out the mill-wheel. For that reason, you should

yourself to giving tirelessly, and if you were worldly honour, the hearts of your people, and the noble rewards to which

anything

wear

apply

to do this you would win

the love of

ordained, and

man was

never

will

no one

our

.

Lord. Those

should

aspire

.

.

are

to win

else. 3

“Do you feel I am advising you loyally?,” the wise man asks Arthur. Arthur dutifully says, Yes. But the wise man’s advice would have been

significantly qualified by another wise man, William of Malmesbury, who implicitly acknowledged the political necessity for lordly giving and cultivating a reputation for largesse but who also worried about the effects of what Arthur’s advisor called “giving tirelessly.” Instead of contrasting the generous lord with the avaricious lord, William, writing in a different tradition several generations earlier, adapted, for his own purposes, a distinction of Cicero’s between the 4 “liberal” giver and the “prodigal” giver. Whereas liberal givers, William wrote, give carefully and with moderation, prodigal ones exhaust their patrimonies by giving “inconsiderately”; and “when they have nothing [more] to give, they turn to rapine; and they then get more odium from those from whom they take, than beneficium from those to whom they give.” This, according to William, was the fate of that notoriously prodigal giver, William Rufus. At the outset of his reign, milites flocked to him. He denied them nothing and promised them even more for the future. Word of his largesse aroused the whole West and spread to the East. Even when the king’s resources failed, his passion for giving did not. So he turned his thoughts to plunder and was aided in his rapacity by Ranulph Flambard, who met his master’s insatiable need for property to give away by plundering the rich, exterminating the poor, and confiscating “other men’s inheritances.” Thus, a “fierce flame of evil” soon “burst forth from what [Rufus] 5 considered liberality.”

3

Lancelot, trans. Corley, p. 245; Lancelot, ed. Kennedy, p. 289,11. 6-12. Cicero, De Officiis, ii. 16, Cicero in Twenty-eight Volumes, Loeb Classics, vol. 21 (1913; Cambridge, Mass., 1990), p.226. 4

5

William of

Malmesbury,

De Gestis

Regum Anglorum

Libri

Quinque,

ed. William

Stubbs, 2 vols., Rolls Series 90, vol. 2 (London, 1887-89), chaps. 313-6, pp. 226-7. According to Orderic Vitalis, William Rufus was “generous to knights and foreigners, but

greatly oppressed

the poor inhabitants of his kingdom and took from them by force on strangers” (The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed.

the wealth he lavished and trans.

Marjorie Chibnall,

6 vols.

[Oxford, 1969-80],

vol. 5, bk.

10, chap. 2,

The Politics

of Exchange

For the general purpose of assessing the utility of the concept of gift-exchange in studying medieval European societies and for the specific purpose of evaluating the recent effort of Susan Reynolds to deconstruct feudalism to the point where gift-giving by lords virtually disappears as an important feature of medieval politics, the two passages on gift-giving just cited are useful for several reasons. First, instead of illuminating the kinds of gifts for religious purposes—gifts to monks, gifts to saints, gifts to God—on which so much discussion of medieval gift-exchange has focused in recent years, the passage from the Lancelot and the one from William of Malmesbury focus 6 attention on the relatively neglected topic of gift-giving for secular purposes. Directly concerned with the gifts that lords made to their men in the expectation of getting some kind of return, the two authors also mention, at least obliquely, the gifts of service that men supposedly made to their lords out of love and loyalty, in return for the gifts their lords made to them, and, one assumes, in the hope of extracting further gifts from their lords. In the aftermath of Susan Reynolds’s intense, much-discussed, and instructive attack on the concept of feudalism, medieval texts that represent gift-giving, ideologically, as a means of making and possibly even keeping friends and treat it, in more practical terms, as a method that lords used to recruit men and maintain political followings can be used to raise questions about Reynolds’s argument. Her critique plays down the role of gift-exchange within the medieval nobility in several different ways: first, by denying lordship and other “interpersonal bonds” (as she calls them) a determinative role in constituting medieval societies; second, by dismantling the concept of the fief on the grounds that before 1100 the lands of nobles were more like “freehold property” than like “feudal property”; and third, by minimizing both the practical and ideological importance of exchanges between 7 lords and their men. In the post-feudal era that Reynolds wants to usher in, is there any analytical value in representing fiefs—as my two passages do and as Jean-Pierre Poly and Eric Boumazel recently did—as “gifts that oblige and constrain” or, at least, in thinking of gifts of land and exchanges of honor as

pp.

200-3).

For

a

speech criticizing William the Conqueror for his lack of generosity,

see

Orderic, Ecclesiastical History, vol. 2, bk. 4, pp. 312-5. 6

Many studies

Ilana Friedrich

on

gifts to medieval religious communities

Silber, Virtuosity,

are

noted and

Charisma, and Social Order: A

analyzed in Comparative

Sociological Study of Monasticism in Theravada Buddhism and Medieval Catholicism (Cambridge, 1995). See also Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, “Middeleeuwse vrome schenkingen als instrument van sociale integratie en politieke machtsvorming. Een historiografisch overzicht,” Tidschrift voor Geschiedenis 109 (1996), 443-64. 7 Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994), pp. 62, 73, 476.

methods of

constituting political relationships and of keeping or trying to keep 8 “working order,” as Pierre Bourdieu puts it? Is Reynolds right in deconstructing fiefs, fidelity, and feudalism to the point where the notion of the gift of a fief in return for fidelity is, as she implies, an “unhelpful” or unviable 9 concept for understanding medieval societies? Or should we give more attention than she does to medieval folk-models of gift-giving and lordship such

them in

as

the

ones

encoded in the two passages cited above and in the many chansons example, freely exploited in constructing his

de geste that Marc Bloch, for 10 picture of feudal society? For the purpose of

analyzing gift-giving in Europe during

the central middle

ages, the two passages summarized above are also instructive because, for all their differences, they both locate gift-giving, not in the legal framework of feudal contracts between lord and vassal, but rather in a larger, well populated political arena with more room both for political competition and for political ideology than one normally finds in the juridical models that distinguished legal 11 The Lancelot treats historians have sometimes used to explain feudalism. in a lord not as an element individualized, isolated simply gift-giving by of fiefs for but rather as a of service, sign largesse, which the text exchanges a but as a represents not simply as lordly virtue, political strategy for winning the support of many people and for maintaining and reproducing an entire political régime. William of Malmesbury’s view of gift-giving is different but not totally different. By showing how largesse can degenerate into prodigality, he simply complicates the model found in the Lancelot by revealing that, in practice, unless a lord’s need to exchange gifts for political support is checked 8

Poly and Eric Bournazel, The Feudal Transformation, 900-1200, trans. Higgitt (New York, 1991), p. 63; and idem, La mutation féodale, Xe-XIIe siècle, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1991), p. 130 (“le cadeau-qui-oblige, le don contraigniant”); Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory ofPractice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, 1977), p. 35. 9 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 73, 476. 10 Although Bloch acknowledged that “the picture drawn by the poets can [not] be accepted without some retouching,” he also mocked historians who totally dismissed such evidence as “mere fiction” and accepted only “the testimony of dry documents”: Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L.A. Manyon (Chicago, 1961), pp. 195-6, 231. Jean-François Lemarignier also used evidence from texts such as Raoul de Cambrai: La France médiévale: Institutions et société (Paris, 1970), pp. 128-31. 11 See the analogies in which a lord and his men appear, respectively, as an estate-owner and his gardeners (S.E. Thorne, “English Feudalism and Estates in Land,” Cambridge Law Journal, 2nd ser. 6 [1959], 193-209, repr. in idem, Essays in English Legal History [London, 1985], pp. 13-30 at p. 16) or in which the lord is played by a theater owner who decides which men should get tickets and where they should sit (S.F.C. Milsom, The Legal Framework of English Feudalism [Cambridge, 1976], p. 45). Jean-Pierre

Caroline

by an ability to keep while giving, the need to give will lead to an acute need to 12 take as well as give. In a sense, therefore, the two treatments of gift-giving are complementary, since the prose-Lancelot uses warm, optimistic, ideological terms to advocate a political strategy of lordly giving which William of Malmesbury implicitly endorses in principle, but whose practical political dangers he coldly and pessimistically dissects. In the Lancelot, gifts appear as virtually unlimited goods (like water) that a lord and all his men can and should freely and amicably exchange and transform into honor without counting costs, 13 insisting on balanced reciprocity, or exhausting their own resources. But the gifts still serve an instrumental political purpose for a lord such as Arthur. By making his men love him, gift-giving provides him with political support he would not otherwise have. In William of Malmesbury’s text, the instrumental purposes of Rufus’s gifts to selected men are highlighted not only because Rufus gave too much to some, but also because his supply of gifts—unlike the water in Arthur’s mill-stream—was so strictly limited that he could not give to some without taking from others. But in this same account, Rufus’s gifts and his reputation for largesse still serve the indispensable political purpose of enabling him to maintain the political following he needs in order to be a lord at all. The problem that neither text explores is how—or, indeed, whether—a lord, living under conditions of scarcity, can keep giving enough to maintain the reputation for largesse that he needs to maintain political support, without sooner or later undermining that reputation for largesse by taking instead of giving. This political problem is neatly captured by Pierre Bourdieu, who observes that because the “strategies designed to establish or maintain lasting relations of the dependency are generally very expensive in terms of material goods .

.

.,

end, and the actions necessary to ensure the continuation of 14 If politics, in Bourdieu’s aphoristic power themselves help to weaken it.” formulation, is “the privileged arena for the dialectic of the official and the means

eat up the

useful,” then

politics of medieval exchange provide simultaneously both “official” 15 of representations gift-giving. a

discussion of the

medieval texts that

12

13

See Annette Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox

should draw and

on

“practical”

of Keeping-While-giving

(Berkeley, 1992). In romances, honor

can

be

represented

as

either

a

limited

or an

unlimited

good.

See, e.g., the debate between King Bademagu and his son Meleagant in Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot, or The Knight of the Cart (Le Chevalier de la Charette), ed. and trans. William W. Kibler (NY, 1991), 11. 3, 142-3, 302. 14 Bourdieu, Outline, p. 184. See also F.G. Bailey, Stratagems and Spoils: A Social

Anthropology ofPolitics (Oxford 1969). 15

Bourdieu, Outline, pp. 40-41.

To find such a text, I shall leave William of Malmesbury’s early twelfth-century story about a real lord who gave too much and the early thirteenth-century prose-Lancelot's story about an imaginary lord who first gave too little and was then advised to give tirelessly. I turn instead to an early eleventh-century Poitevin narrative, known as the Conventum or the Agreement, about a lord who eventually gives just enough to one of his men to settle a feud with him, at least temporarily, but who continually appears in the story as a treacherously unreliable giver of gifts. Dating from around 1030, when Reynolds finds no real lordship or vassalage, no real fiefs, and, thus, no real gifts of fiefs by lords to vassals, the Agreement describes a lengthy dispute that 16 Whether the text is a was punctuated by many short-term settlements. de Beech has recently argued) or whether it is proto-chanson geste (as George the narrationes that eleventh-century litigants (as I believe) a story resembling sometimes made at placita, it has gradually acquired, for studies of lordship and fidelity, the kind of canonical status previously given to texts such as the early eleventh-century letter on fidelity from Fulbert of Chartres to the very same William who appears in the Agreement and to Galbert of Bruges’s description 17 of what Jacques Le Goff called “the ritual of vassalage.”

16

Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, chaps. 2, 3, and 5. George Beech, Yves Chauvin, and Georges Pons, Le Conventum (vers 1030): Un précurseur aquitain des premières épopées (Geneva, 1995) for the text of the Conventum, English and French translations of it, and an interesting, though unpersuasive argument that the Agreement is a “literary,” rather than an “historical,” text. Passages from this edition of the Conventum (pp. 123-38) are cited in subsequent notes as C, followed by line numbers. For an earlier edition of the Conventum, see J. Martindale, "Conventum inter Guillelmum Aquitanorum Comitem et Hugonem Chiliarchum,” English Historical Review 84 (1969), 528-48. Other discussions of the Agreement include the works cited in Beech, Le Conventum, p. 9 n. 2; Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 125-6, 127, 132, 155, 171, 174; and Stephen D. White, “The Politics of Fidelity: Hugh of Lusignan and William of Aquitaine,” in Georges Duby: L'écriture de l’histoire, ed. Claudie Duhamel-Amado and Guy Lobrichon (Brussels, 1996), pp. 223-30, which reconsiders the relationship between the Conventum and Fulbert’s letter to William (for which see The Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres, ed. and trans. Frederick Behrends [Oxford, 1976], no. 51 at pp. 90-93). I thank Dr. Reynolds for introducing me to the text, inviting me to discussions of it at the University of London, and sharing her ideas about it with me. For an analysis of Galbert of Bruges’ description of homage (for which, see Galbertus Notarius Brugensis, De multro, traditione, et occisione Gloriosi Karoli Comitis Flandriarum, ed. Jeff Rider, CCCM 131 [Turnhout, 1994], chap. 56, pp. 105-6), see Jacques Le Goff, “The Symbolic Ritual of Vassalage,” in idem, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1980), pp. 237-87 and 354-67. 17

See

See

What

distinguishes the Agreement description of political practices and a normative terms.

18

from these texts is that it is both

a

narrative encoded, for a purpose, with As the narrative opens, Hugh is William’s fidelis; he

commands the support of some horsemen and holds at least one fortress. He has yet to marry and lacks several fortresses that he later claims by right, including

Vivonne, Civray, and Chizé. In the first part of the story, which is set mainly in northern Poitou, William fulfils a promise to Hugh by giving him land— identified as an honor—of the deceased viscount Boso of Châtellerault; but after Hugh loses the honor to viscount Savary of Thouars, Count William does not help Hugh to recover it, fails to compensate him for its loss, denies him other aid, and prevents him from gaining support from others. The second part of the text tells a similar story set mainly in southern Poitou, where William fails to aid

Hugh in gaining fortresses previously held by Hugh’s father and uncle. Hugh’s worsening relations with the count culminate in a feud. But the two men reach an agreement, under which Hugh, renouncing everything he had previously demanded from the count, swears fidelity to William and William’s son, who, in return, gives Hugh his uncle Joscelin’s honor at Vivonne and agrees to bear faith to him “without evil trickery.” In interpreting this text, Reynolds certainly finds good grounds for emphasizing the inadequacy of conventional feudal terminology for the purpose of classifying either the property rights in dispute between William and Hugh or 19 the relationship between the two men. But it is still worth emphasizing how frequently land figures in exchanges between the count and his man. Whereas Reynolds suggests, at one point, that nobles at this time possessed “complete property rights, formally undivided with any superior,” the Agreement, like other eleventh-century texts, routinely identifies lands, fortresses, and towers as fiefs, honores, or benefices and treats land, in these many different guises, as gifts that Count William makes to his fideles and that have implications for the future status of the lands given and for the relationship between the giver and 20 the recipient. Far from being complete alienations, the count’s gifts of land are 18

See Stephen D. White, “Stratégie rhétorique dans la Conventio de Hugues de Lusignan,” in Histoire et société: mélanges offerts à Georges Duby, 4 vols. (Aix-en-Provence, 1993), vol. 2, Le tenancier, le fidèle et le citoyen, pp. 147-57; and idem, “The Politics of Fidelity.” 19 See Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 125-7. George Beech used the text “to illuminate the development of feudal custom in medieval Poitou” in “A Feudal Document of Early Eleventh-Century Poitou,” in Mélanges offerts à René Crozet (Poitiers, 1966), pp. 203-13 at p. 203. See Martindale, “Conventum.” 20 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, p. 150. Writing to Robert the Pious in 1023/24, Count Odo II of Chartres mentions the beneficium that the king had given him: Fulbert of

associated in various ways with other kinds of gifts that pass, could pass, or should pass between the two men, including gifts of hostages, pledges, aid,

marriageable widow, a marriageable daughter, friendship, and, in one 21 striking case, “anything” that Hugh of Lusignan wanted. It is no accident, in other words, that the Agreement, in just 342 lines, uses forms of dare, reddere, 22 However or tradere forty-nine times in the sense of “to give” or “to render.” these gifts are interpreted, they are almost all associated in some way with a relationship between William of Poitou and Hugh of Lusignan that the author of the Agreement carefully represents and pointedly evaluates by reference to oaths of fidelity. However much the relationship may have differed from vassalage, as earlier historians of feudalism customarily interpreted it, the Agreement narrates William’s and Hugh’s dealings with one another in ways that presuppose total familiarity with the terms of contemporaneous oaths 23 specifying the mutual obligations of lord and fidelis. In typical oaths of fidelity from eleventh-century Languedoc, the man swore not to cause loss (dampnum) to his lord (senior), to make him lose (perdo) anything, to take (tollo) property from him, to injure him by evil trickery (ingenium), to take important actions without consulting him (sine consilio), or make any agreement (finis) or alliance (societas) with any man or woman who took (tollo) property from the lord. The man also swore faithfully (per directam fidem) to be a helper (adiutor) to his lord against all men (contra omnes homines) and to be a faithful man (fidelis) to him without evil trickery (sine malo ingenio), as a man ought to be to his lord, to whom he had commended himself with his own hands (sicut homo debet esse ad suum seniorem cui se propriis manibus commendauit). In cases where the lord swore a similar oath to his fidelis, the two men thus promised each other to 24 exchange benefits in the form of help and counsel, not evil. This is precisely the kind of exchange envisioned by Fulbert of Chartres, who asserts that a dominus and his fidelis should not cause loss (dampnum) to each other or do evil (malum) to each another; that they should faithfully give one another counsel counsel,

a

Chartres, Letters, no. 86 pp. 152-5. For references to benefices, fiefs, and honores in the Conventum, see Beech et al., Le Conventum, “Index,” s.vv. beneficium, feuum, and honor. 21

phrase, see C 15-16. al., Le Conventum, Index, s.vv. dare, reddere, or tradere. 23 According to Reynolds, it does not seem “either scholarly or rational” to describe the relationship between Hugh and William “in terms of vassalage”: Fiefs and Vassals, p. 22

For the last

See Beech et

126. 24

See Elisabeth

Magnou-Nortier, “Fidélité et féodalité méridionales d’après XIIe siècle),” Annales du Midi 80 (1968), 457-84.

serments de fidélité (Xe-début

les

(consilium)

and aid

(auxilium);

and that the

man

will

earn or

be

worthy

of the

25

land his lord may give him only if he has given his lord aid and counsel. The Agreement repeatedly uses precisely the same words found in both oaths of fidelity and in Fulbert’s

letter—including

adiuvare

or

auxiliari thirteen

times, consilium thirteen times, dampnum five times, malum twenty-six times, tollere nine times, senior thirteen times, fides and its derivatives thirty times, 26 and, as previously noted, words of gift forty-nine times. Through the use of these specific, evocative terms, the story is neatly designed to demonstrate that

negative stipulations of his oath of by doing things he fidelity, repeatedly had sworn not to do and failing to do things he had sworn to do. By carefully encoding the text of the Agreement with these keywords from oaths of fidelity, the author not only highlighted what he wanted to represent as the count’s perjury, but also highlighted, whether or not his accusations were true, the implicit norms that were supposed to be used to evaluate a lord’s political whereas

Hugh

observed the

positive

and

violated the terms of his oath

William

conduct. Because it is clear, then, that the Agreement evaluated William’s treatment of Hugh in terms of conventionalized understandings in the form of models or

exchanges between lords and their men should be conducted understandings are easily recoverable from the text, there is no good reason for completely scrapping the idea that political relationships among eleventh-century nobles were routinely constituted through gifts of land and/or service. Nevertheless, a closer look at the Agreement reveals that from this text, it is impossible to reconstruct any single model of how such exchanges 27 Instead of being governed by anything resembling a were supposed to work. feudal contract in which William would have taken Hugh’s homage and invested him with a fief in return for service, exchanges of gifts between the two men remained highly negotiable for three main reasons. First, the relationship norms

about how

and because those

between the two

men

could be understood and evaluated in accordance with at

least three different models, none of which was clearly dominant and each of which had different implications for the ways in which the two men would exchange gifts. Second, although land figured prominently in each of these different models of the 25 26

relationship between lord and fidelis,

Fulbert of Chartres, Letters, no. 51. See Beech et al., Le Conventum, Index, s.vv.

the

gift

of land

was

adiuvare, auxiliari, consilium, dampnum, fides and derivatives, malum, senior, tollere. For words of gift, see above n. 20. 27 On the coexistence of conflicting models of fiefs, see Stephen D. White, “The Discourse of Inheritance in Twelfth-Century France: Alternative Models of the Fief in ‘Raoul de Cambrai,’” in George Garnett and John G. Hudson, eds., Law and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 173-97.

remarkably unstable, contested, and negotiable category. Finally, exchanges of gifts between William and Hugh remained highly negotiable because, in practice, the forms that the exchanges took must have depended partly on the two men’s respective skills at negotiating and partly on the relative strengths of their respective bargaining positions, which were significantly influenced by the position that each man held, at a given moment, in a political arena where we find other lords, other fideles, and many caballarii and where there were never enough gifts, never enough fiefs, and never enough honor to go itself

a

around. Because the Agreement is written from Hugh’s perspective, it consistently represents him as a good man and the count as a bad lord by implicitly invoking, as

already noted,

certain

norms

about how

another. But the text also shows that

a

lord and

a

fidelis

should treat

one

William could each represent the in accordance with several different

Hugh and

proper relationship between lord and man models or schemas, each of which provided idioms for

making claims on the vassalage, Jacques explicates it, the with several different and is encoded Agreement potentially conflicting models of fidelity and lordship. First, we find what I shall call, following Le Goff, a “political” model, which privileges the lord’s power over “his” man and in which the former’s gifts to the latter are purely discretionary and really serve as 28 methods of buying the man’s service or even buying the man himself. This model—which the story represents in pejorative terms but never repudiates—is invoked most clearly, first, when the count tells Hugh, “You are mine to do my other. Like the ritual of

as

Le Goff

will”; later, when he tells him, “You are so much mine that if I should tell you to make a peasant your lord you should do it”; and, finally, when he tells him, “If all the world

mine I would not give you as much as my finger would way of constructing lordship is displayed when William directs 29 his anger at Hugh for failing to obey him. At other times, however, the relationship between the same two men is

hold.” The

were

same

constructed in accordance with

a

familial model that resembles the

Goff finds encoded in the ritual of

homage. According

to this

one

that Le

model, lord and

in power, are “friends,” who, as oaths of fidelity stipulate, should aid, advise, and trust one another out of “love” and “fidelity” and avoid doing evil to each other or causing each other loss. When the relationship

man,

though unequal

assumes

28 never

this form of

“lop-sided friendship”—as

See the discussion of vassalage in Le Goff, “Ritual,” pp. 248-63, which, however, clearly shows that “the symbolic system of vassalage” was “a whole” or a

“system” (p. 259). 29

Julian Pitt-Rivers calls it—the

See C 72,104-5,275-6.

parties exchange gifts without computing the costs of the gifts and without comparing those costs with the costs of previous gifts or gifts that might be 30 made in the future. Within the terms of the familial model, the parties also make promises to each other, invoking the model as a way of claiming political credit from each other. Although the polemical logic of the Agreement requires that only Hugh can invoke the familial model with any sincerity, the same logic requires William to invoke the familial model manipulatively, as he does when he tells Hugh, “I will give you whatever you want from me and you will be my two

31

friend before everyone else except my son.” In addition to the political and familial models of lordship, there is also economic

or

transactional model in which the lord and his

to well-defined

exchanges,

which

are

constructed in such

man

figure

as

an

parties

way as to specify the from the transaction. (F.G. Bailey found a

precise benefits that each would gain examples of such transactions, or “deals,” as I think of them, by looking at 32 American gangsters. But the political careers of medieval big men work just as well.) This kind of deal is illustrated clearly when William tells Ralph of Thouars, who is his man: “Promise me solemnly that you will not give [Hugh] your daughter nor keep your agreement with him and I likewise will see that he 33 does not possess Joscelin’s honor or Joscelin’s wife. The most intriguing thing about this episode is that here, William exercises control over the marriage of his man’s daughter, not by invoking his feudal right to do so, but rather by making a deal with his man. Another form of this kind of transaction is the one under which Hugh was supposed to become another lord’s “man” “for” a part of 34 a fortress; and by making an agreement under which he breaks the link between serving the count and holding a particular fief, Hugh shows that under an earlier agreement, a lord such as William must have given land in the form of a fief, a benefice, or an honor to Hugh, who was supposed to reciprocate by 35 serving the count “for” that particular piece of land. Although relations between lord and man involved far more than a single deal of this kind or even a succession of such deals, it was perfectly thinkable, at least within the nobility of this region, for someone such as Hugh to become William’s “man” “for” “a 30

See Julian Pitt-Rivers, The

31

C 15-16.

32

Bailey, Stratagems and Spoils,

33 34 35

People of the Sierra,

2nd ed.

(Chicago, 1971),

p. 140.

“Introduction.”

C 35-7. C 96. C 251-8. This arrangement loosely resembles the

imaginary

one

in which Charles

Martel agrees to let Girart de Roussillon convert a fief into an allod: La chanson de Girart de Roussillon, ed. and trans. into modern French by Michéline de Combarieu du Grès and Gérard Gouiran

(Paris, 1993), 11. 468-503.

particular parcel of land, in which case the service Hugh owed limited, if only by general sense of balance and reciprocity. A further implication of this way of configuring the relationship between lord and man is that the latter’s obligation to serve the former depended on his continued possession of the land “for” which he was to do service. fief"

or

for

a

must have been

The Agreement associates with each of these three different ways of

configuring the relationship between a lord and his fidelis several different—and sometimes conflicting—concepts of what “land” is and what one could count, so to speak, as a “gift” of land. In the Agreement, as in other eleventh- and twelfth-century texts, there is a contradiction between the right of an heir such as Hugh to inherit and have seisin of lands that his ancestors had held and the right of a lord such as William to give those same lands to the heir or to someone else. Were the fortresses that Hugh’s father or uncle had once held really Hugh’s by right of inheritance? Or were they the count’s to give away? In fact, the Agreement provides only wonderfully ambiguous answers to these questions by showing, on the one hand, that heirs claim their ancestors’ lands by right and represent themselves as justified in taking those lands away from others and, on the other, that heirs receive certain lands as gifts and that the count claims the right to dispose of such lands by gift and, in fact, gives the 36 lands away (whatever that means). Early in the story, William gives Viscount 37 Ralph land that Ralph’s brother had held before him. A little later, the count offers to “give” Hugh an honor that Hugh’s uncle had previously held and that 38 Hugh could have claimed by right. When Hugh claims the castle of Civray as “rightfully” his because “it had been his father’s,” Count William gives it to him 39 When Hugh on condition that he serve another lord for part of the castle. claims that because the castle of Gençay belonged to his kinsmen, he has better right to it than do the men from whom he had just captured it, his other lord, Fulk Nerra, asks him how he can hold the castle without having received it as a 40 gift from Fulk. After Hugh captures the castle of Chizé because “he thought he had a right to [it] since it had belonged to his father or others of his ancestors and he was losing that right,” the count angrily orders him to return the castle but later offers to “give” Hugh a castle that Hugh claimed as an inheritance from his uncle, provided that Hugh gave up his demand for a castle that his father had

36 37 38 39 40

See C 94, 211-12, 272, 283-303. C 5-11. C 19-22. C 94. C 210-15.

once

held.

41

In all of these cases, the

inheritance

acquired by ambiguous.

remains

Is it

question of whether “right”

to

a

fief can be

by gift remains unresolved so that the fief's status gift that a man gets from a lord? Or an inheritance

or a

that he gets from ancestors? Of course, it can he both. To resolve this ambiguity, legal historians have devised various

ingenious strategies, such as: privileging the lord’s right to the land as “legal,” while demoting the man’s right of inheritance to the status of a moral claim; elevating the man’s right to inherit the fief to the status of a legal right, while according the lord the right to confirm and receive homage; and asserting (as Maitland did) that the heir has right to the land, while the lord has right to the lordship over the 42 land. Because the arguments for both positions depend on the contestable assumption that early medieval law tolerated no such ambiguities, it seems better, taking eleventh-century legal and political discourse at its word, to accept the cultural fact that just as eleventh-century gifts of land to religious communities could often hold multiple meanings by figuring simultaneously in several different transactions, fiefs could be understood in the two ways already 43 mentioned. Although it is tempting to assume that heirs treated land as an inheritance while lords viewed it as within their gift, the oversimplifications involved in this argument become evident when you note, first, that no one is or just a lord for life or even for a moment, and, second, that nobles

just an heir have

a

real stake in the idea that their lord

the inheritances of other

men.

This is

William to do at several

points

can

reward them

precisely

what

by “giving” them Hugh wants his lord

in the story. This is what several lords in 44 chansons de geste do. This is also what William Rufus, among others, did. Just as a lord could “give” his man the man’s own inheritance or an honor that another heir claimed in

as

his

own

in another man’s fortress

rights one

that

lord could

was

inheritance,

promise

to

give

his

rights

man a

in

a

lord could also

“give”

his

man

fortress that had yet to be built or about to be torn down. If nothing else was available as a gift, a or

a

particular

fief that he did not hold or,

as

in

Raoul de Cambrai, the next fief to become available.

41 42 43

C 283-303. See White, “Discourse of Inheritance.” See Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship, and

Gifts

to Saints:

The Laudatio

Parentum in Western France, 1050-1150 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1988); Barbara Rosenwein, To Be a Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny's Property, 909—1049

(Ithaca, NY/London, 1989). 44

On treacherous lords in chansons de geste, see Adalbert Dessau, “L’idée de la au moyen âge et son rôle dans la motivation de quelques chansons de geste,”

trahison

Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 3

(1960), 23-6.

Finally, the question of what a lord’s gift really was, what it amounted to, actually meant turned on the practical and highly negotiable questions of whether the lord had undertaken to warrant his gift and whether he would actually do so and, if so, when and against whom. The Agreement is mainly a story about a lord who did not warrant his gifts as lords, under one interpretation, 45 were supposed to do. In this respect, the story bears a particularly close resemblance to chansons de geste—such as Raoul de Cambrai, Le charroi de Nîmes, and Garin le Loheren—in which lords are condemned for failing, in one 46 In a different telling, William of way or another, to warrant their own gifts. Rufus about William could have thematized the same issue Malmesbury’s story have warranted but whom he on the men whose lands Rufus should by focusing disinherited instead. Under conditions of land scarcity, fortress scarcity, and man-power scarcity, lords with politically important men to reward found it politically essential not only to treat one man’s inheritance as another man’s reward or gift, but also to assimilate into the category of the gift not only possession of land, but also the hope of possessing it. Although it was “villainy,” as King Arthur puts it in Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, to mock another by promising without giving, promising land was an indispensable what it

47

political tactic for lords. If lords had the option of

construing many different kinds of transactions did their men, who, as the Agreement shows, could do their best to represent their own actions as ways of giving their lord aid or counsel. As practiced both by William and by Hugh, the strategy of representing

involving

land

as

“gifts,”

so

lands, promises of lands, and various political

45

an

obligation

See Paul R.

to

give

has been

acts

as

“gifts”

is

a

method of

discharged shortly. The same strategy can also be used to establish a claim to a counter-gift. In fact, the entire Agreement illustrates the latter strategy by enumerating, on the one hand, the many gifts of service that Hugh made to William and, on the other, William’s many failures to complete these exchanges by giving what he owed to Hugh. Even though the Agreement describes gifts of land that have a role to play in the relationship between lord and fidelis, what it describes is not the showing

that

or

will be

Hyams, “Warranty and Good Lordship in Twelfth-Century England,” (1987), 437-503; see also White, “Discourse.” 46 Raoul de Cambrai, ed. and trans. Sarah Kay (Oxford, 1992); Le charroi de Nîmes, ed. J.-L. Perrier (Paris, 1982); Garin le Loheren, ed. J.E. Vallerie (Ann Arbor, 1947). 47 Chrétien de Troyes, The Story of the Grail (Li Contes de Graal), or Perceval, ed. Rupert T. Pickens and trans. William W. Kibler, Garland Library of Medieval Literature, series A, vol. 62 (New York, 1990), 11. 997-8; the statement is proverbial, as the editor notes, citing: Proverbes français antérieurs au XVe siècle, ed. Joseph Morawski, Les Classiques Français du Moyen Age, vol. 47, no. 220 (Paris, 1925).

Law and History Review 5

famous

legitimate

union of

vassalage

and fief that

preoccupied

older historians

of feudalism, but rather lots of casual couplings—or sometimes serial monogamy—between one of several different models of lordship, on the one 48

of several different ways of configuring gifts, on the other. The process of configuring regional politics in the form of such plastic exchanges was culturally complicated and politically risky. In a militarized, politically

hand, and

unstable battle

one

society,

or

the efforts of both lords and

fortresses staffed

controllable and

quickly

milites

by

as

men to treat

“gifts,”

consumable item such

such

food, provides

as

using some

help a

in

more

graphic

the process of submitting to empirical risks. “If culture,”

examples

of what Marshall Sahlins identifies

“received

meanings”

and cultural

as

things

rather than

as

categories anthropologists claim a meaningful order, still, in action Culture is therefore a gamble played with meanings are always at risk related to their signs as empirical tokens [are] to nature,” since “Things are 49 cultural types.” To understand how these dangerous exercises in the cultural politics of exchange played themselves out in negotiations between William and Hugh and to get an even clearer picture of why exchanges between the two men were highly negotiable, we need to take account of the fact that their exchanges were conducted in a unstable political arena where land, fortresses, and fighters were all in short supply—as was honor in the sense of prestige—and were all the subjects of intense competition, which periodically escalated into open feuding. Under these conditions, exchanges between William and Hugh can never be understood in isolation from the political settings in which they were made. The gifts William makes or proposes to make to Hugh can always be construed as takings from someone else, while many of the gifts that the count makes to other men can be construed as takings from Hugh. Other strategies, too, center on giving and taking. Hugh frequently tries to bypass the count in his quest for more gifts, as he seeks gifts from his own peers, such as the viscount of Thouars, or from his other lord Fulk Nerra. Some of these gifts are, in fact, ones that William could have given him. Meanwhile, William tries to enhance his own status as patron partly by trying to subvert Hugh’s efforts to secure gifts from others, partly by controlling the exchanges of hostages used to fortify agreements within the region, and, above all, by treating any interest that a man of his acquires in a castle as a gift that he made to him. The count’s power sometimes takes the form of an ideological conjuring trick by which he Sahlins writes, “is

as

.

.

48

.

.

.

.

Reynolds’s discussions of this problem include extensive bibliography: Fiefs Vassals, Index, s.vv. “union of benefice or fief and vassalage.” 49 Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago, 1985), p. ix.

and

successfully imposes on others his own definition of the political landscape. The strategies is to generate a bewildering network of claims and counter-claims to both land and political support. Although these claims and counter-claims provide grounds for small-scale wars, they are also incorporated into a discourse of fidelity, lordship, and gift-exchange and into a counterdiscourse of treachery and feud, in which nobles exchange mala instead of 50 beneficia. In trying to recover the first discourse from the text of the Agreement between Hugh and William, I have moved pretty far from the conventional models of feudalism and of feoffments that Reynolds has rightly contested and that also came under strong attack more than forty years ago from Georges Duby, who argued, for example, that feudal lordship took multiple forms, including ties of friendship; and that “feudal relations among the high aristocracy crisscrossed each other,” did not necessarily entail “true subordination," and “were adapted to the previous structure of the upper-class without 51 significantly modifying it.” Instead of representing the relationship between William and Hugh as something that was, or ought to have been, determined by any kind of feudal contract, the Agreement represents a tie that was or ought to have been constructed in terms of multiple models of lordship, fidelity, and gift-giving and that was the subject of ongoing renegotiation. Nevertheless, I have strong reservations about Reynolds’s argument (as I understand it) that because there were significant variations in eleventh-century political practice and because the political discourse of that period was unstable and full of contradictions, that discourse—in which lordship, fidelity, and gift-exchange all figured prominently—did not have an important place in aristocratic regional politics. Although it is instructive to deconstruct and demystify “feudalism”—as Reynolds has ably done—by reducing the practices once associated with lordship, fidelity, and fief-giving to a series of heterogeneous political maneuvers in a competitive game of aristocratic power politics, it is important to remember that the game itself was culturally constructed and that its construction was itself a political process that was not strictly regulated by any state or government. Although the politics of exchange in eleventh-century France cannot be reduced to a matter of feudal custom or to effect of these

gift-exchange as a model for feud and, by implication, feud as a model for gift-exchange, see William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago, 1990), p. 182. 51 See the discussion of “Les relations féodales à la fin du XIe siècle” in Georges Duby, La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise (1953; Paris, 1971), pp. 158-65. Some theoretical implications of the passage are discussed in White, “The Politics of Fidelity.” On 50

any single norm of reciprocity, a rhetorical framework for it can be found in several lines from the Old Norse Havamal that Marcel Mauss used at the

beginning of his

essay

Those who

on

the

gift:

exchange presents with longest 52 If things turn out successfully.

one

another

Remain friends the

Marcel 52 Mauss, The trans. W.D. Halls

Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, (New York, 1990), p. 1. From stanza 41 of the Havamal.

XI

Giving Fiefs Problem of

and Honor: “Feudalism”

Largesse, Avarice,

and the

in Alexander’s Testament

When, in Branch IV of the Vulgate Roman d’Alexandre, Alexander realizes dying (Br. IV, v. 253), he lies down on a gold bed covered with

that he is

silk and makes Aristotle had v.

668-95)

a

generous gift of land to each of the twelve peers, whom chosen to be the king’s principal companions (Br. I,

previously

and whom Alexander himself had

previously promised

to

reward

in this way (Br. I, vv. 1388-92). 1 Each of you, Alexander now tells the peers, will have a reward (guerredon) for your services (servises) (Br. IV, v. 285); each will have “land and fief and casamentum”

2

(terre et fié et chasement: Br. IV, v. 287). To the first peer, Ptolemy, he gives Egypt and, along with it, Cleopatra as a wife; and to Philipperideus, Cleopatra’s son by Alexander’s father Philip, Alexander gives the land of Esclavonia, which he later gives as well to two other peers. To a second peer, called Clin, Alexander gives all of Persia. Emenidus of Arcage gets the gift of Nubia. Alexander then gives greater India to Aristé, Syria to Antiochus, Cilicia to Antigonus and Caesarea to Filote. To Licanor he gives Alenie and Esclavonia as well. His gift to Festion consists of Hungary and the kingdom of Ansor. For a third time, Alexander makes a gift of Esclavonia, this time to Leoine, who also receives Venice. Finally, he gives Carthage to Aridès and Greater Armenia to Caulus of Macedonia. Having now given casamenta

to

become the

all twelve peers, Alexander orders the last eleven of them to of the first, Ptolemy, and to receive their lands from him and

men

become his tenants.

Receiving them as his men, Ptolemy undertakes, in effect, gifts to them by promising that they will not lose any of their lands as long as he lives; 3 the peers respond, in turn, that they will provide Ptolemy with aid. Alexander dies a little later, and in eulogizing him (Br. IV, vv. 642-1366), the peers and Aristotle praise him primarily for his generous giving and view his death as a victory for largesse over avarice (Br. 4 IV, vv. 664-66, 749, 864-66, 1282, 1311). According to Licanor, addressing his dead lord: “Your great largesse could never be equalled./ For even before you to warrant Alexander’s

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-11

acquired wealth by conquest,/ You had already given it away or promised give it away./Well were the twelve peers rewarded for their service (servise);/ Each had for it [i.e., their service] a crown of gold”(Br. IV, vv.1305-9). The question of why, in a poem written in the late twelfth century A.D., a king who died in the fourth century B.C. should be represented as rewarding his men with lands that are clearly identified as “fiefs” is more difficult to 5 answer than one might think. The most obvious answer, which is implicit in the remarks of a recent commentator on Alexandre de Paris’s poem, is simply that in the episode just considered, as in other parts of the poem, this poet, like the authors of other romances of antiquity, anachronistically modelled antiquity on “the realities” of twelfth-century “feudal society,” where, it is 6 assumed, feudal lords rewarded their men’s services with fiefs. This way of relating Alexander’s imaginary gifts of “fiefs” to the so-called “realities” of twelfth-century feudal society will not, however, satisfy many recent writers on the history of feudal society and feudalism. Some of these historians now had

to

postmedieval construct that medievalists should abandon in discussing twelfth-century feudal society, continue Others, (Reynolds, p. 2). to employ what I refer to in this paper as the contractual model of feudalism.

dismiss “the fief”

as a

7

In this model the to

land that

a

term

“fief” does not refer, to someone who is

lord gives

man’s past service. Rather it is

applied

to

as it generally does in our poem, already his man in return for the land that the lord gives to someone

who becomes his man, just before the man receives the fief under the terms of a feudal contract or contract of vassalage specifying the future service in return for

which the

man

will hold the fief from his lord. 8 Whichever of these

opposing positions on the fief we adopt, the argument that Alexander’s gifts of fiefs were simply modeled on “feudal realities” collapses, in one case because feudal realities were radically misrepresented in the poem, and in the other because there were no feudal realities for the poem to represent or misrepresent. However, by severing, in one way or another, all connection between Alexander’s imaginary gifts of fiefs and twelfth-century practice (feudal or not), each of the historical arguments about feudalism just mentioned also rules out, for one reason or another, the possibility of explaining why Alexander’s gifts to the peers are represented as they are in the Vulgate Alexandre. Because proponents of the contractual model of feudalism have sometimes maintained that, centuries before the time when this poem was composed, Carolingian lords gave so-called benefices or fiefs to their men out of generosity and in recognition of their men’s loyal services (Ganshof, pp. 11, 50), these scholars could argue that although the form of fief-giving practiced in our poem by Alexander was not modelled on twelfth-century realities, it was based on an accurate tradition about how fief-giving among the Franks had been practiced centuries before. This argument, however, leaves us with the problems of explaining how a largely accurate image of an archaic, Carolingian form of fief-giving had been transmitted over a period of several centuries, why the

Giving

Fiefs and Honor

often used by Alexandre de Paris (not to mention other twelfth-century writers), and, above all, what meaning this particular image of the fief as a reward for service could have had in a society where, in practice, the fief was understood in entirely different terms. These problems begin to look soluble, however, if we start our discussion of them by rejecting two traditional assumptions of writers on feudalism: first,

image

that

was so

only

a

single,

contractual model of feudalism

forms of

can

capture the many different during the

fief-giving that were, in fact, practiced in France central Middle Ages, as Fredric L. Cheyette shows with particular

clarity

in

a

9 forthcoming study of Occitan fiefs; and, second, that by 1000 if not earlier, the image of fiefs as rewards for service had lost all practical significance and

lived

on only in poetic representations of what were self-evidendy archaic or imaginary fief-giving practices. We can then abandon, as well, the assumption underlying one part of Susan Reynolds’s critique of feudalism: that because the contractual model of feudalism just mentioned is easy to deconstruct into a variety of different practices and, more specifically, because the medieval term “fief” was not consistently used as a univocal, technical legal term, fiefs and fief-giving, even when they are explicitly represented as such in both legal and literary texts, are not worth investigating as evidence about medieval legal culture. 10 Finally, we can then take account of the fact that because terms such as “fief” "casamentum,” “honor,” and “land” all carried multiple meanings, some

of them consistent with modern historical usage and others not, fiefs and fief-giving could be—and were—represented in different and sometimes conflicting ways both in documents of the kind that Cheyette, for example, analyzes and in literary texts, including the Roman d’Alexandre, where Alexander’s fief-giving, as we shall see, is contrasted with the fief-giving that bad, avaricious lords

use as

a

kind of

bribery

or

extortion. 11

gifts of fiefs are not represented as feoffments but are, in fact, depicted in terms virtually identical that historical texts had, on occasion, used to represent fief-giving

Because Alexanders last

governed by feudal to

the

ones

contracts

for several centuries down

12

through the time of our poem’s composition, we do not need to choose between treating Alexander’s imaginary gifts as the products of poetic invention or arguing that they were simply modelled on the so-called “realities” of feudal practice. As represented through the use of a malleable feudal discourse that metaphorically posited a social relationship between lord and man that was mediated by land, fief-giving could itself take multiple forms, take on different meanings even when it took the same form, and be represented in multiple ways. In this chapter I explore the hypothesis that by celebrating Alexander’s gifts of fiefs as examples of his largesse and by contrasting them with pejoratively constructed images of the bribe-like gifts of avaricious lords such

as Darius, Alexandre de Paris’s poem draws on a feudal discourse that had been in existence for several centuries or complex 13 more. By selectively using this discourse, the Roman d’Alexandre presents

help us to understand, first, what Pierre Bourdieu gift experienced, or at least, as supposed to be experienced,” and, second, the gift as it was not supposed to be experienced but must often have been experienced, particularly by the least-empowered recipients of a lord’s gifts. As we might have expected, instead of either directly reflecting the so-called “realities” of inherently ambiguous feudal practice or departing from practice totally, the poem shows, by deploying one form of feudal discourse, how fief-giving was mystified as largesse and, in Bourdieu s terms, misrecognized, as it had to be misrecognized in order for it to be put into practice and construed as honorable for both giver and recipient. 14 In a less obvious way, the poem also shows, by using an alternative form of feudal discourse, how the dishonorable use of fief-giving as a form of bribery or extortion was both acknowledged and yet explained away as the expression of the avarice of bad lords. In representing fiefs and fief-giving, the Vulgate Alexandre obviously did not describe ordinary legal practice realistically, any more than other Old French narrative poems did when, for example, they represented appeals of 15 treason decided by judicial duels. Instead, the text presents contrasting images of good and bad styles of gift-giving, including fief-giving, and integrates each image into a different model of lordship: a model of good, generous lordship, embodied in Alexander, and a contrasting model of bad, avaricious lordship, embodied in lords such as Darius. Nevertheless, in representing fiefs and fief-giving through the use of terms such as “fief” "casamentum," “inheritance,” “seisin,” “enfeoff” “giving,” and “giving back,” the poem draws on a feudal discourse in terms of which the ordinary, as well as the extraordinary, practice of fief-giving was constructed. The finding that the late twelfth-century Vulgate Alexandre draws on a well-established feudal discourse to create a meaningful and unmistakably feudal landscape for Alexander’s empire is particularly noteworthy not only because it is incompatible with the conventional theory that centuries earlier fiefs had ceased to be considered, for all practical purposes, as rewards for services, but also because the finding is hard to reconcile with the revisionist history of medieval French property rights that Susan Reynolds presents as a radical alternative to the conventional story of how twelfth- and thirteenth-century feudal tenure gradually developed out of feudal practices dating back to the period before 1100. Emphasizing the differences between twelfth- and thirteeth-century land law, Reynolds first argues that “the properties of French nobles [were not] called fiefs before the thirteenth century, except in contexts where the word had a quite different meaning” from the one it acquired after 1200 (p. 274). Proposing a new way of explaining when and how an idea of feudal tenure took shape before 1200, she argues that, to the extent that feudal tenure existed at all in twelfth-century France, it was, in that period, only in the process of being imposed by rulers and lawyers on nobles, whose property images

of fief-giving that

has called “the

as

can

rights before must

so full and so free of any superior claims that they those of the modern freeholder than to those of

1100 had been

have been closer

to

feudal tenants in the contractual model of feudalism (p. 73). Even after 1100, she implies, feudal tenure and thus feudal discourse must both have been seen by nobles as devices by which their rights in land were restricted by rulers.

Although

the arguments that

Reynolds

uses to

support thishypothesis

have the virtue of revealing fatal flaws in the contractual model, the hypothesis takes no account of significant continuity in the history of feudal discourse over

the

does

not

course

of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Because her argument fief-giving is represented as a form of patronage in

consider how

twelfth-century texts, including Old French poems such as the Vulgate Alexandre, where the fief can hardly be dismissed as “a postmedieval construct” and needs to

be

explained

medieval concept with

as a

1100, Reynolds is in

a

history

that

began

well before

compare twelfth-century feudal discourse with earlier forms of feudal discourse. A preliminary comparison of this kind

position

no

to

suggests that however much Alexander’s imaginary gifts of fiefs may differ from the feoffments of later French law, the fiefs he gives are still depicted in most rewards for service and, as such, are virtually identical to fiefs only in twelfth-century chansons de geste, such as Raoul de Cambrai and Le charroi de Nîmes, and in twelfth-century historical writing, but

instances

as

mentioned not also in texts

Lusignan 16 fidelity.

as

old

as

the

early eleventh-century

Conventum of

Hugh

of

and the almost contemporaneous letter of Fulbert of Chartres on If so, then a form of feudal discourse that shows fiefs being exchanged

for service should not be

interpreted, as Reynolds proposes to do, as and their agents created and imposed so rulers something twelfth-century as to restrict the property rights of nobles who, before 1100, had understood that

those

rights in terms Freely drawing

Alexander’s

gifts

of

an

entirely

different discourse.

feudal discourse, Le roman d’Alexandre represents to the twelve peers as gifts of fiefs partly by emphasizing on

certain formalities that the

king

observes in

making

them. In several

cases

the

poem shows him making his gift by means of the traditional gesture of giving his gage (Br. IV, vv. 306, 365, 503) to a kneeling donee (Br. IV, vv. 365, 410, 481, 503). The witnessing of several gifts is specifically noted as well. With the

watching, Alexander “enfeoffs” (fievé) Caulus with Greater (Br. IV v. 515). As Filote kneels by the foot of the bed on which the king reclines, Alexander, again with the Macedonians watching, invests (revest) him with Caesarea (Br. IV, v. 410-11). The king himself repeatedly represents his gifts as parts of honorable exchanges of land for service (Br. IV, vv. 394, 399-400, 418-20, 475, 507-8) and is praised, after his death, for having honored his men with gifts (Br. IV, vv. 706-7, 785, 807-8, 1421). After giving Cilicia to Antigonus, the king undertakes to give him other lands “because you have been of such great good service (service) to me” (Br. IV, v. 393). He gives land to Filote “because you have served (servi) me so very well” (Br. IV, v. 409). Macedonians Macedonia

gifts are routinely identified as rewards (merite) (Br. IV, vv. 295-97) or countergifts (guerredons) (Br. IV, vv. 420-21, 456). Alexander tells Licanor that that in my lifetime you shall have a countergift “you have served me so well (guerredon) for [doing so]” (Br. IV, vv. 420-21). He says that because of what Festion has done for him, he owes him a countergift (guerredon) and will give him land (Br. IV, vv. 456-57). After announcing that “the day for Caulus to be rewarded (guerredoné)” has come (Br. IV, v. 509; see also 327-29) and then giving him Macedonia, Alexander tells him: “You have always served (servi) me with good will and I, I believe, have given you a very rich gift” (Br. IV, vv. 512—13). Addressing all twelve peers, Alexander says: “You have always done more than I have asked of you; I wish to recompense (guenedoner) all of you for your services (services)” (Br. IV, ww. 472-73). Confirming what the poem has already shown about the peers’ participation in Alexander’s army, the king explicitly identifies as military the services in return for which he makes his gifts to them (Br. IV, vv. 473, 509). Explaining his gift to Antigonus, Alexander says that he was “the noblest chevalier” and had “always served him well” (Br. IV, vv. 393-94); Licanor, he says, was known for his “chevalerie” and had used his sword to do good service, for which a great fief would be his reward (Br. IV, vv. 418-23). The rich fief given Caulus is a reward for fighting alongside his lord (Br. V, vv. 507-9). While sometimes emphasizing the intangible dimensions of fiefs by representing them as “honors,” the poem draws attention to the practical legal significance of Alexander’s gifts of fiefs by showing that he “invests” (Br. IV, v. 411), “enfeoffs” (Br. IV, v. 515), and “seises” (Br. IV, v. 516) his men with land and “houses” them by giving them casamenta (Br. IV, vv. 321, 516, 517). The poem also shows that the land Alexander gives is “quit” of obligations and counterclaims (Br. IV, vv. 306, 326, 409, 511), is supposed to be held “without dispute” (sans tençon) (Br. IV, v. 326), and should pass as an “inheritance” (hiretage) to the donee’s heirs (Br. IV, vv. 364, 498, 510). Several of Alexander’s gifts, moreover, explicitly convey power over his fief’s leading inhabitants, including kings, dukes, castellans, and knights, who are to do homage to the donee, fight under his banner, acknowledge his lordship, and show him honor (Br. IV, vv. 322-26, 359-60, 428-30, 457-58). By giving land to a peer, Alexander makes him a lord whose men’s relationships to him are closely analogous to the peer’s own relationship with Alexander. By making gifts of this kind to all twelve peers, Alexander provides them with fiefs, which could also be represented as honors, casamenta, or, simply, lands. The feudal discourse used in representing Alexander’s last gifts also appears in earlier episodes. Having promised to make a gift to Aristé with his glove (Br. III, v. 4118), Alexander later uses his glove to invest him with land taken from Porus (Br. III, vv. 4074-78, 4117-18). Darius contends that Alexander’s father Philip should serve him because he holds land from him and is his liegeman (Br. I, vv. 1896-97). After Samson, disinherited by Darius, His

.

.

.

becomes Alexander’s

liegeman

that he

and undertakes

to serve

him, Alexander,

on

the

conquer Samson’s lost inheritance, renders the inhertance to Samson and undertakes to give him land of his own if Samson

understanding

can

man (Br. I, vv. 724-51). Alexander ofBagdad” (Br. IV v. 1205). Antipater, the lord of Sidon, is condemned for giving Alexander poor “service” for his “land” (Br. III, vv. 7730-32) and for betraying a lord who had given him “rich fiefs” (Br. IV, v. 1049). Alexander’s takeover of the Amazon kingdom provides serves

him; Samson then becomes Alexander’s

expands Antiochus’s “fief” with “the

honor

a more extended illustration of how the poem constructs a feudal landscape. The queen offers to place her kingdom in Alexander’s charge, hold it from him, and provide him with ten thousand female soldiers in time of war.

the offer, Alexander says that when the queen has done him homage, he will, with his barons’ consent, give her fief and inheritance back to her III, vv. 7669-72). Kneeling before Alexander, the queen does homage to

Accepting (Br.

him and reiterates her Alexander has

promise to aid him. Although angered by the news that arranged marriages between two of his men and two of her

women, she does not contest her new lord’s

power in her fief (Br. III, vv. 17 reprise, rather than a fief given

7678-84).

In

claim

to exercise this kind of

representing

a

so-called

fief

de

reward for service, this episode shows how could take different forms.

as a

Alexander’s fief-giving practices Although Alexandre de Paris’s poem often represents Alexander’s gifts of land as gifts of fiefs, most of these feoffments differ significantly from ones that 18 appear in the contractual model of feudalism. Whereas in this model the lord his man a fief in return for future while the man does homage services, gives

to the lord and swears

gift, Alexander usually future ones, to men, who, at the time swear fealty to him, though they have presumably done both previously. Instead of initiating exchanges of land for future service, as feoffments do in the contractual model, Alexander’s gifts of fiefs are literally “countergifts” (guerredons), which he uses to reciprocate gifts of service previously made to him. Because Alexander’s gifts of fiefs extend preexisting relationships, rather than inaugurate new ones, and because they are rewards for services that his donees have already performed, the fiefs he gives to them cannot possibly serve the instrumental, economic function of providing them with what F. L. Ganshof once called “the means of furnishing [a] lord with the [future] services required by the contract of vassalage” (p. 106). Instead of constituting what Marc Bloch saw as the vassal’s “pay,” the fiefs that Alexander gives to his men are both rewards for their honorable services and fealty

to him at the time of the

fiefs in return for past services, of the gift, do not do homage or

gives

not

tokens of their honor. 19

d’Alexandre fief-giving is also represented as a form of as an essential attribute of a good lord. As largesse, Alexander, practiced by fief-giving, like other forms of gift-giving, manifests In Le

roman

which the poem treats

the

generosity

of

a

lord whose

ability

to

honor his

men

by rewarding

them

with fiefs and other forms of wealth

depends

on

his

ability

to

acquire

land and

movable wealth, with their aid, through conquest. As practiced by Darius and by other avaricious lords with whom Alexander is repeatedly contrasted, fief-giving, with other forms of

gift-giving, is a kind of bribery, which bad by definition, unable to conquer new lands or defend their own territories, use to buy services from their lowborn, ill-chosen underlings or to extort them from nobles. Each of these two contrasting images of fief-giving is thus integrated into a different model of lordship. In each model, the same kinds of people—the lord, his magnates, his knights, and his serfs—and the same forms of wealth—land and movable prestige-wealth—are associated through the mediation of two contrasting processes, namely giving and taking. 20 On the one hand, because the good lord is generous, he can secure the support of both magnates and knights for the purpose of conquering and plundering the territories of his enemies, whose wealth he can then use to honor and reward his men, thereby preparing the way for further conquests and more gift-giving. On the other hand, because the bad lord displays his avaricious nature by hiding his wealth from his nobles, keeping his poor knights poor, and making gifts only for the purpose of extracting specific services from bribable underlings, he cannot retain the loyalty of his men, conquer new territory, or defend his own land. The bad lord acquires additional wealth only by taxing, oppressing, and disinheriting his own nobles. Because, in Le roman d’Alexandre, the interdependency of generosity and conquest is openly acknowledged, Alexander appears in a favorable light when he proposes to conquer territory so that he can make gifts to Samson, to Ptolemy, to the other peers, and to his poorest knights. He is also praised for giving the peers what he had taken from Saracens (Br. IV, vv. 668-70), for killing Nicolas and giving his own men Nicolas’s land (Br. IV, vv. 831-43), for freely giving away what he had conquered (Br. III, vv. 2234-35), and for being such a great conqueror that he can make his men possessors of other peoples wealth (Br. I, vv. 2103-4). Had he lived, his mourners say, he would have conquered the whole world and given away all its wealth (Br. IV, vv. 910-11). an anecdote about Alexander told by the thirteenth-century writer In Philippe de Navarre, the interdepency of largesse and conquest is explained more clearly when Alexander says: “I desire to conquer everything and to give everything away so generously that I shall retain nothing except the lordship and the honor; and I wish to be avaricious only in keeping for myself honor, the love of my people, and the love of all those who serve me. And for the sake of this, I will possess the lordship of the world; and whatever I can 21 conquer and possess I shall give to those through whom I conquered it.” in this the of Alexander’s gifts, By specifying way proper beneficiaries this speech brings out more explicitly than does Alexandre de Paris’s poem that instead of practising indiscriminate, disinterested, or charitable generosity, Alexander uses a distinctive form of largesse: he gives and gives generously

along

lords, who

are, almost

mainly

to the nobles who serve him in war, and

rarely

if

ever

gives

much to

anyone else. Indeed, as Le roman d’Alexandre clearly reveals, anyone who is not a beneficiary of his largesse is likely to be a victim of his plundering. Not only does he exclude serfs from his presence (Br. I, vv. 226-27, permission, he also divests them, as well as usurers and

232); with his felons, of their property so that he can give land to poor bachelors (Br. I, vv. 648-57).Whereas Darius gives honors and even noble wives to lowborn men (Br. III, 175), Alexander follows the advice of Aristotle, who tells him that there is nothing worse than a rich serf, that a serf will never be good unless he is punished, and that every three or four years, Alexander should simply seize the serf’s hoarded wealth (Br. III, vv. 49-50). 22 Within his own social class, by contrast, Alexander practices largesse that is free, spontaneous, uncalculated, openhanded, and seemingly disinterested. Since Alexander freely, publicly, and joyously gives fiefs, as well as other prestigious gifts, to reward his men, and since his men freely and joyously love, honor, and loyally serve Alexander, there seems to be a connection between, on the one hand, each individual gift of a fief that Alexander makes to a man and, on the other, the services that the man performs for Alexander. But that connection is repressed or euphonized as much as possible. 23 Because Alexander both promises and gives his men many gifts of many different kinds, 24 individual gifts of fiefs easily get lost in the never-ending flow of lordly largesse. Instead of hiding his wealth, as avaricious lords do, Alexander distributes it freely (Br. I, vv. 205-16), giving away as much land as he has (Br. I, vv. 514-21) and promising to give away more when he conquers it (Br. I, vv. 646-47). Whereas avaricious lords never give until they know exactly what they will receive in return for their gifts (Br. I, vv. 95-100), Alexander keeps no clerk with him to record his gifts and calculate their value (Br. I, vv. 514-21); nor do his men calculate the extent of their services to him (Br. III, vv. 2687, 4703), and they receive rewards (guerredons) greater than the services they have performed (BR. IV, v. 1392). In these ways, the economic role of the fief, the practical value of the man’s services, the exchange value of the fief, and the role of fief-giving as an instrument for extracting service are all concealed as much as possible. Since fief-giving, as Alexander practices it, is a form of largesse that honors both donor and donee, the question of what, precisely, is exchanged for what when he gives away a fief remains open. In fact, the question is never even raised father’s

in the poem, except in cases where an avaricious lord such as Darius disinherits his man25 or where a treasonous man fails to serve his lord. 26 Although it is

clearly understood that each of Alexander’s men will continue to serve receiving a gift from him, that gift, to the extent that it is associated with the man’s service at all, is represented as a reward for past service, not as pay for future service, which, it is further understood, the man performs in the expectation of gifts of fiefs. In short, the lord’s gift of a fief in return for service him after

is not of the

openly acknowledged for what, in ongoing process of maintaining a

one

sense, it

lord’s

following.

the basis of other evidence that it is shameful for and shameful for his

calculating

man

to sell

and

is, namely

a

lord

27

to

an

If we

buy

essential part

can assume on

his man’s services

them, then the closer the parties come to precise, quantifiable connection between gift

acknowledging a clear relationship between the value of each, the less honorable and noble the gift of a fief will be. If largesse is to serve its multiple purposes, the lord and the man, to adapt Bourdieu’s formulation, “must not be entirely unaware of the truth of their exchanges while at the same time they must refuse to know and above all to recognize it” (Bourdieu, p. 6). The truth of exchanges of fiefs for services between a lord and his men includes several troubling possibilities that do not arise in Alexander’s realm but become realities in the territory of any lord who does not expand his domains. First, when the lord does not have enough land to reward all his followers, he and service and

a

.

.

.

,

28 may find it necessary to reward some of them at the expense of others. the lord’s need to use land to reward some of his men will conflict Second,

with the claims of other lord

must sooner or

men

later

to hold

secure

offer

their lands heritably. Third, because every

from his

he must

gifts

a return

necessarily spontaneously, of them, thereby turning his previous gifts

some

now see as

bribes. In Le

when

are

roman

sooner or

that his

men

will not

later extort services from

to them into what some will d’Alexandre these contradictions and conflicts,

acknowledged at all, are simply blamed on the avarice of bad Darius, whose style of giving is sharply contrasted with Alexander’s. Instead of scrupulously rewarding the past services of loyal fidèles, saving poor knights from poverty, and giving generously for the sake of giving, the avaricious lord, as Alexander explains to Porus, oppresses his nobles with inquests and taxes (Br. IV, vv. 2206-95). Instead of gaining the political support from they

lords such

as

nobles that he needs

to conquer new territory and defend the territory he already has, Darius, for example, gives “honors” and noblewomen to lowborn men, who oppress his serfs, burghers, and poor knights and shame the nobles so that eventually the king has no one to support him (Br. III, vv. 172-81). Refusing to support a “bad lord” (malvais segnor), the nobles leave the task of defending Darius to the serfs whom he has enriched (Br. III, v. 188). They would be fools, they say, to remain with a lord who has disinherited and abased them in order to raise their inferiors above them (Br. III, vv. 240-43). Instead of showing love to the wellborn, Darius raises his serfs (culverts) above his nobles (Br. III, vv. 255-56). What distinguishes an avaricious lord such as Darius from a generous lord is not that he gives away nothing at all, but rather that he makes gifts of the wrong kind in the wrong way to the wrong people and thus establishes, through giving, the wrong kinds of relationships with donees. Instead of giving spontaneously, joyously, and without calculation, he gives only when he must

do

in order to achieve his

so

own

ends. His

gifts

look like payments

or

bribes,

establish are, in F.G. Bailey’s terms, purely “transactional,” not “moral,” in that they entail only balanced exchanges of finite wealth for specific services, which must be immediately rendered in rather than

gifts;

the relations

they

full. 29 Whereas the generous lord has no clerks to write down his gifts and calculate their value, the avaricious lord needs such people because, for him, gift giving involves calculation, which, in turn, involves computing and comparing the them. He

respective never

values of his

makes

even

gifts and of the returns he expects from gift unless he knows what kind of (Br. I, vv. 98-100). When Darius summons

own

the smallest

countergift he will get in return to help him against Alexander, he offers to pay him and his men and promises to give him Alexander’s armor and horse; when he summons his own men to help him defend himself against Alexander, he cannot count on their Porus

support and therefore threatens those who do not answer the summons with dire punishments (Br. III, vv. 202-10, 166-68). In both cases Darius is represented unfavorably for trying to buy or extort service that a generous lord’s

provide eagerly and spontaneously. On other occasions he tries to or tribute improperly by claiming, in effect, that he has already paid for it with the gift of a fief. By demanding services and/or tribute from Philip and Alexander on the grounds that they hold land from him, he is, in effect, claiming that because he has given them lands, they are now in his debt (Br. I, vv. 1895-1904, 2084-2188). men

would

secure

service

Bad

as

avaricious lords

are

made

out

to be in the Roman

d’Alexandre, the

fief-giving they practice only as indicators of but also as lordship, commonplace, quasi-legitimate patronage strategies that in historical practice, lords of finite territories ordinarily used and had to use to maintain authority over nobles with virtually infinite appetites for honor. As Marc Bloch saw, the bad lord of twelfth-century Old French literature is just a caricature of ordinary lords in real life. “The good master,” Bloch observed, “is he who keeps in mind the maxim which one of the chansons numbers among Charlemagne’s lessons to his successor: ‘Take care not to deprive the orphan child of his fief.’ But how many lords were—or had to be—good masters?” (p. 196). Leaving aside Alexander, how many lords could afford to be good lords all the time? In lordships that did not continuously expand, as Alexander’s kingdom did, practices that are stigmatized as marks of bad lordship —promising fiefs without giving them, giving fiefs without warranting them, disinheriting minors, marrying heiresses and widows to underlings, patronizing lowborn men, and buying political support with gifts and promises of gifts— could also be seen by the bad lord’s friends as legitimate methods of conserving or distributing resources that he needed to honor his friends at the expense of their enemies. 30 From an outside-observer’s perspective, the same practices look like necessary elements of a patronage system in distributing honor in a forms of bad

that

can

be seen,

not

lordship

where honor is

for honor among

a

limited

good

and where,

given

the intense

competition

lord’s men, the lord, in the absence of opportunities territory, could maintain his own power only by disseising,

for

a

conquering new disinheriting, and dishonoring some of his men and giving their honors to others. Other forms of bad fief-giving, notably rewarding lowborn people, can be seen as securing necessary political support or, even more favorably, as rewarding mere knights, whose poverty gave them claims on a lord’s largesse. By starkly contrasting the generous lord, who scrupulously avoids such practices, with the avaricious lord, who uses them constantly, the Roman d’Alexandre misrepresents and conceals as much as possible the various forms of fief-giving and fief-taking that lords routinely used and had to use merely to maintain honor. In the same way, by contrasting the well-rewarded nobles and knights of the generous Alexander with the oppressed, disinherited nobles of the avaricious Darius and with the same king’s servile, bribable underlings, the poem radically simplifies the political experiences of men patronized by lords. The execution of this ideological strategy involved the deployment of two contrasting images of fief-giving, one associated with generous lords such as Alexander and the other with avaricious lords such as Darius. In one image the fief looked like

an

the fief looked like

bribe. 31

Le

a

honorable reward for honorable service; in the other By simplifying and moralizing the politics of fief-giving,

reproduced and mystified but failed to resolve a underlying ambiguity in fief-giving, which could never, of course, distinguished clearly and conclusively from bribery. roman

d’Alexandre

fundamental be

Notes In notes 1 and 6, the abbreviation RA refers to: Alexandre de Paris, Le Roman d’Alexandre, translated into modern French by Laurence Harf-Lancner with the text edited by E.C. Armstrong et al., “Lettres Gothiques” (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1994). 1. In the text and notes, references in parentheses numbers in RA; translations mine.

are

to

branch and

verse

as a rough equivalent of the term “fief” see Mediae Niermeyer (Leiden: Brill, 1976), s.v. For doubts about whether the term had any consistent meaning, see Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reconsidered (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), pp. 119-20.

2. On the term “casamentum”

Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, ed.

J.

F.

3. On warranty see Paul R. Hyams, “Warranty and Good Lordship in Twelfth-Century England,” Law and History Review 5 (1987), 437-503. On warranty in a chanson de geste, see Stephen D. White, “The Language of Inheritance in Raoul de Cambrai:

Alternative Models of Fief-holding,” in Law and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt, ed. George Garnett and John Hudson (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1994),

173-97

(here 181-82).

4. For praise of largesse, which is often accompanied by explicit condemnations of avarice or covetousness, see, e.g., Lancelot do Lac: The Non-cyclic Old French Prose Romance, ed. Elspeth Kennedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), vol. 1, pp. 288, 1.19 to p. 289, 1.12, which also appears in Lancelot: roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, ed.

Alexandre Micha, 9 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 1978-82) vol. 8, XLIXa.28-30 (pp. 21-23); L’Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, ed. Paul Meyer, 3 vols. (Paris, 1891-1901), 11. 2679-712,

4297-319; Raoul de Houdenc,

Le

roman

des eles, in Le

roman

des eles, by Raoul

de Houdenc and The Anonymous Ordene de la chevalerie, ed. Keith Busby (Amsterdam: Utrecht Publications in General and Comparative Literature 17, 1983), 11. 150-266; Richard W Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffrey de Charny: Text, Context, and Translation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), p. 143. In “The Politics of Gift-exchange. Or, Feudalism Revisited,” in Medieval Transformations, ed. Esther Cohen and Mayke de Jong (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming), I compare the passage from the Prose Lancelot with a discussion of William Rufus’s prodigality in William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum Anglorum Libri Quinque, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols., Rolls Series no. 90, vol. 2 (London, 1887-89), cc. 313-16 (pp. 226-27). On William Rufus’s practice of taking from the English so that he could give to knights and strangers, see The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Maijorie Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969-80), vol, 5, book 10, chap. 2 (pp. 200-3); on William the Conqueror’s lack of generosity, see Orderic, Ecclesiastical History, vol.

2, Book

4

(pp. 312-15).

5. In the Pseudo-Callisthenes’ account of Alexanders last moments, Alexander

gives to

no

fiefs and, instead, appoints rulers of territories in his empire and bequeaths land people. See The Greek Alexander Romance, trans. Richard Stoneman

various

(Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1991), pp. 152-55. 6.

RA, pp. 5-58 (here p. 41).

on Reynolds’ critique of feudalism see Dominique Barthélemy, l’épreuve de l'anthropologie (note critique),” Annales HSS, mars— avril 1997, no. 2, 321-41. See also reviews by Fredric L. Cheyette in Speculum 71 (1996), 998-1005; Paul R. Hyams in Journal of Interdisciplinary History 27(1997), 655-62; Stephen

7. For comments

“La théorie féodale à

D. White in Law and History Review 15 (1997), 349-55. 8. For the model

see

F.L. Ganshof, Feudalism,

trans.

Philip Grierson, 3rd ed. (New

York: Harper, 1964) and, for a more recent statement, Paul Ourliac and Jean-Louis Gazzaniga, Histoire du droit privé français de l'An mil au Code civil (Paris: Albin Michel, 1985), pp. 220-22. For a critique of the model, see Stephen D. White, “Service for Fiefs or Fiefs for Service: The Politics of Reciprocity,” in Négocier le don, ed. Gadi Algazi et al. (forthcoming). For recent works that invoke the contractual model, see, e.g., Constance Brittain

Bouchard, 'Strong of Body, Brave and Noble': Chivalry and Society in Medieval France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 35-46; and Catherine Vincent, Introductionà l'histoire de l'occident médiéval (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1995), pp. 65-66. 9. Fredric L.

Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne

and the World

of the

Troubadours

(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), chapters 10-13. 10.

Reynolds

relations if

insists that “we cannot understand medieval

society and

its

property

through [postmedieval] spectacles. Yet every time we think of fiefs and vassals we do just that” (Fiefs and Vassals, p. 3). Reynolds has much more to say about hw we are not to think of medieval fiefs than about how we should think of them.

we

see

it

11. On alternative models of the fief and fief-giving, see White, “Discourse of Inheritance”; idem, “La politique de la fidélité: Hugues de Lusignan et Guillaume d’Aquitaine,” in Georges Duby: L’Ecriture de l'histoire, ed. Claudie Duhamel-Amado and Guy Lobrichon (Brussels: De Boeck, 1996), pp. 223-30; and Barthélemy, “La théorie

féodale.” 12. On fiefs as rewards for service see White, “La politique de la fidélité”; idem, “Stratégie rhétorique dans la Conventio de Hugues de Lusignan,” in Mélanges offerts à Georges Duby, 4 vols. (Publications de l’Université de Provence: Aix-en-Provence, 1993), vol. 2, Le tenancier, le fidèle et le citoyen, pp. 147-57. 13. On feudal discourse see White, “Discourse of Inheritance”; “La politique de la fidélité”; and “Stratégie rhétorique.” The “discourse of fiefs” is discussed from a different perspective in Jean-Pierre Poly, “La crise, la paysannerie libre et la féeodalité,” in Eric Bournazel and Jean-Pierre Poly, eds., Les féodalités (Paris: Presses Universitaires

de France, 1998) at, e.g., p. 112.

misrecognition and gifts see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 6.

14. On

Practice,

trans.

15. The notion that

judicial procedures were represented realistically in romances Stephen D. White, “Imaginary Justice: The End of the Ordeal and the Survival of the Duel,” Medieval Perspectives 13 (1998), 32-55; and “Liars, Bunglers, and Lawyers in Old French Literature: Lying, Mispleading, and Legal Artifice in Imaginary Treason Trials,” in Medieval History in the Comic Mode, ed. Laura Blanchard (forthcoming). is contested in

16. See my articles cited above in

17. On this kind of fief,

Vhssals, esp.

nn.

3, 8, and 11.

Ganshof, Feudalism, pp. 121-23; Reynolds, Fiefs and

see

260-63.

18. Alexanders gifts usually differ as well from the feoffments that form one element of the “ritual of vassalage,” as analyzed by Jacques Le Goff in “The Symbolic Ritual of Vassalage,” in idem, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur

Goldhammer

(Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 1980), 237-87 (here p. 249).

19. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L.A. Manyon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 175: “the grant of a fief was the pay of a commended individual.” What was expressed in terms such as fief, according to Bloch, was “basically an economic against an obligation to do something" concept. By fief was meant a property granted .

.

.

(p. 167). 20. One list of the things Alexander gives away includes not only duchies and kingdoms, but also birds, dogs, cloaks with fur collars, silver goblets, gold cups, horses that are strong and beautiful, and mules with fine harnesses. 21. Les

Quatreâges de l’homme: Traité moral de Philippe de Navarre, ed. Marcel de c. 70 (p. 41). Translation my own. My emphasis.

Fréville (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1888), 22. For Aristotle’s blamed

largely

on

his

tire speech

disposition

to

see

give

Br. III, vv, 16-87. For Darius’s to

serfs,

see

Br.

fall, which III, vv. 163-347.

is

23. The men to whom Alexander gives fiefs rarely do him homage on swear fealty to him. The same goes for enfeoffed men in other stories. For a rare example, see Jehan Bodel, La chanson des Saisties, ed. Annette Brasseur (Geneva: Droz, 1989), vol. 1, vv. 1149-61, which Ganshof cited from an earlier edition in Feudalism, pp. 125-26. 24. References to gifts in Le roman d’Alexandre include: Br. I, vv. 157-65, 703-43, 1057-59, 1078, 1084, 1452-53, 1475-76, 1633-93, 1858, 2280, 2295, 2507-14, 2631-58, 2670-71; Br. III, vv. 899, 4118, 4132, 5988-98, 7634-45; Br. IV vv. 121, 141-42, 942, 1047-49, 1139, 1164, 1204-11, 1216, 1389, 4074, 4078, 4112-14, 4385. 25. See Br. III, vv. 240-43. The question is also raised in Raoul de Cambrai (see White, “Discourse of Inheritance”) and in Le charroi de Nîmes (see White, “Stratégic rhétorique”). 26. As in the

case

of Antipater (Br. III, vv. 7730-32).

27. If the gift of a fief is to honor both lord and man, it must be misrecognized euphemized as a love token of the kind that Philippe de Navarre mentions in a story about a king of Jerusalem and a rich man of his. Refusing a gift that the king gave him, the rich man said, “Lord, you give me too much, give to others.” The king replied to him, “Take my gift, because it seems to me that from a new gift there comes new love or new remembrance of love” (Les Quatre âges de l'homme, c. 71 [p. 41]). or

28. In fact, the mere expectation that some will be rewarded others intensifies envy and competition among the lord’s men. 29. F. G. Bailey, Strategems and Spoils: Blackwell, 1969), p. 48.

A Social

30. See

White, “Discourse of Inheritance.”

31. See

Bourdieu, Outline, pp.

190-97.

at

the expense of

Anthropology of Politics (Oxford:

XII

Service for Fiefs

or

Fiefs for Service

The Politics of Reciprocity

*

something additional (as some tend lead one to believe when they speak of »ideology«); 1 it is part of the economy itself.

Discourse is not to

1. Fiefs In the

era

fiefs made

as

Gifts

of so-called »classical« medieval European feudalism, the gifts of by lords to their men are generally thought to have differed fundamental y from the transactions that are the subject of anthropological theories

gift. As a result, fief-giving has rarely occupied a significant place 2 analyses of medieval gift-giving inspired by anthropology. For anthropologists, the gift, as represented by Marcel Mauss in his classic of the

in the

study,

is

»apparently

free and disinterested but nevertheless constrained and

✸ I owe special thanks to Gadi Algazi, Dominique Barthélemy, Philippe Buc, Kate Gilbert, Paul R. Hyams, and William I. Miller. 1 PIERRE BOURDIEU, The economy of symbolic goods, in: IDEM, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action, Palo Alto, CA 1998, pp. 92-123, here:p. 119. 2 On analyses of this kind, see ARNOUD J. A. BIJSTERVELD, Middeleeuwse vrome schenkingen also instrument van sociale integratie en politieke machtsvorming. Een historiografisch overzicht, in: Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 109 (1996), pp. 443-464; ILANA F. SILBER, Gift-giving in the great traditions: The case of donations to monasteries in the medieval West, in: Archives européenes de sociologie 36 (1995), pp. 209-243; IDEM, Virtuosity, Charisma, and Social Order: A Comparative Sociological Study of Monasticism in Theravada Buddhism and Medieval Catholicism, Cambridge, UK 1995; and, for a valuable critique, PHILIPPE BUC, Conversion of objects: Suger of Saint-Denis and Meinwerk of Paderbom, in: Viator 28 (1997), pp. 99-143.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-12

self-interested«;

3

for historians of feudalism, the

gift of a fief,

represented feudalism, openly self-interested and so clearly and explicitly constrained by the terms of a feudal contract that the fief does not really qualify as a gift at all. Prior to the advent of classical feudalism, according to Ganshof, a fief was a discretionary reward given by a lord to his man for past services that 4 the man had performed for the lord out of loyalty. However, as a result of what Ganshof called »the legal union between vassalage and [fief],« fief-giving underwent a total transformation during the ninth century, for the man’s is

in F. L. Ganshof s model of classical

as

so

service to his lord was now »rendered in return for a [fief] instead of the other way around.« 5 Legally, »the service due from a [man] was [now] regarded 6 as being the immediate consideration for the grant of a [fief].« ...

No

longer

...

a

reward for past

service,

the fief

was now »a

tenement

freely

3 MARCEL MAUSS, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W. D. HALLS, foreword by MARY DOUGLAS, New York 1990, p. 3; IDEM, Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques (1923-1924), in: Sociologie et anthropologie, Paris9 1985, pp. 143-274, here: pp. 147-148. For the incorporation of this view into a discussion of medieval gifts, see, e. g., GEORGES DUBY, The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century, trans. HOWARD B. CLARKE, Ithaca, NY 1974, pp. 48-57; LESTER K. LITTLE, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe, Ithaca, NY 1978, esp. pp. 3-18; and ARON J. GUREVICH, Categories of Medieval Culture, trans. G. L. CAMPBELL, London 1985, chap. 6. For a discussion of medieval gifts that deviates, sometimes sharply, from Mauss’s views, see STEPHEN D. WHITE, Custom, Kinship, and , Gifts to Saints: The Laudatio Parentum in Western France, 1050-1150, Chapel Hill, NC 1988,

esp. pp. 27-31.

For clarity’s sake, I refer only to fiefs and to men, omitting mention of »benefices« or »vassals.« In this pre-classical period, gifts of fiefs must have closely resembled Mauss’s gifts, provided that we can assume that the practice of rewarding men with fiefs, though nominally a discretionary act, constituted one form of the »necessary generosity« that medieval lords, according to Georges Duby, were expected to display by making gifts which, in Mauss’s terms, were »in theory obligatorily« (Duby, Warriors and Peasants voluntary« but »in reality [were] given [as in note 3], p. 51, citing MAUSS, The Gift [as in note 3], p. 3). 5 FRANÉOIS L. GANSHOF, Feudalism, trans. PHILIP GRIERSON, New York 1964, p. 50. After characterized noting that »the last decades of the eighth and the whole of the ninth century were by the spread of the institutions of vassalage and benefice« (ibid ., pp. 23-24), Ganshof asserted must have existed in early Carolingian that a »legal connection between the two institutions is clearly attested in those of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious« (p. 40). times, and On this union and its implications, see also pp. 42-50. 6 Ibid a person by assuming ., pp. 42-43. Here, the legal historian first imputes intentions to that that person must have intended to achieve the function that the historian has assigned to the practice the person was performing; the historian then finds evidence of »the general principles which regulated the relationship of vassal to lord and the custom of fiefs« (ibid ., p.68) by assuming that in acting to achieve the purpose that has been imputed to him or her, the person was following or obeying a legal rule. 4

...

...

...

...

...

Service for Fiefs

or

Fiefs for Service

lord to his [man] in order to procure the latter the maintenance his due and to provide him with the means of furnishing his lord 7 with the services required by the contract of vassalage.« The meaning of this contract, according to Jacques Le Goff, was unambiguously encoded in a

granted by a that

was

perfectly integrated tripartite ritual in which a ceremony of homage, an oath of fidelity, and investiture with a fief fused together to constitute »a juridically 8 (and symbolically) indissoluble unity.« As a party to a contract of vassalage, which inaugurated the relationship between lord and man instead of continuing it, the lord acted freely in the sense that he made his gift voluntarily and was not fulfilling a prior obligation to give, whereas the man acted voluntarily in the sense that he freely chose to assume, in return for the lord’s gift, obligations of service. The lord’s gift, however, was in no sense disinterested because, as Ganshof put it, »the intention behind [it] was that of rendering 9 the service due [from the man] as efficient as possibles In giving the man a fief, the lord’s purpose was to enable the man »to provide the service, 10 and in particular the military service, which [the man] owed [the lord].« In accepting the gift, the man explicitly agreed that in exchange for the property given to him he was obliged to perform services, the extent of which was precisely stipulated, once and for all, in the contract and precisely correlated ...

11

with »the size and value of the fief.« Since Ganshof's time, historians have succeeded contractual model of

fief-giving

more

flexible

admirably in making his by arguing, for example, that

distinguish between different forms of feudal relationships; political and the »affective,« as well as the legal, dimensions

historians should

study the of relations between lords and men; ask how common fiefs were and what kinds of people held them; and treat the gift of a fief, rather than homage or the oath of fidelity, as the basis of a man’s obligation to do feudal service.12

Ibid p. 106 (italics added); see also p.95. JACQUES LE GOFF, The symbolic ritual of vassalage, in: IDEM, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. ARTHUR GOLDHAMMER, Chicago 1980, p.260; GANSHOF, Feudalism (as in note 5), p. 50. 7

.,

8

Ibid ., p. 50. Ibid ., p.95. 11 Ibid ., p. 50. 12 On the different forms that feudal relationships could take at different levels of society, see, e. g., GEORGES DUBY, La société aux Xle et Xlle siècles dans la région mâconnaise, Paris 1971, pp. 164-165; PIERRE BONNASSIE, La Catalogne du milieu du Xe à la fin du Xle siècie: Croissances et mutations d’une société, 2 vols., Toulouse 1975, vol. 2, pp. 735-780 passim, and esp. p.739; IDEM, La Catalogne au toumant de 1’an mil: Croissance et mutations d’une société, Paris 1990, pp. 420-421; JEAN-PIERRE POLY and ERIC BOURNAZEL, La mutation féodale, Xe-XIIe siècie, Paris 1991, esp. p. 130. On the affective dimensions of feudal relationships and the »lived 9

10

13

Nevertheless, although reacting against Ganshof s »juridisme,« recent writers on feudalism have largely retained from his contractual model the underlying assumptions that relations between lords and men can be explained as the product of obedience or disobedience to the terms of binding feudal 14 that these contracts became institutionalized through the »union« contracts, of the fief with vassalage, 15 and, finally, that, as a result of the union of

vassalage and the fief, que le prix du service,

the fief became »moins la récompense du dévouement le résultat d’un marché conclu entre seigneurs et vassaux«.

16

see, e.g., BONNASSIE, La Catalogne au toumant (in this note), p.416. On questions about how common fiefs were, what kinds of people held them, and when the practices of fiefgiving and fief-holding became more widely diffused, see, e.g., POLY and BOURNAZEL, La mutation féodale (in this note), p. 130; ERIC BOURNAZEL, La royauté féodale en France et en Angleterre (Xe-XIIIe siècles), in: Les féodalités, ed. JEAN-PIERRE POLY and ERIC BOURNAZEL, Paris 1998, pp. 389-510, here: pp. 396-400. On the fief as »le cadeau-qui-oblige, le don-contraignant,« which created »un lien entre deux hommes,« see POLY and BOURNAZEL, La mutation féodale, pp. 129-130. On George Duby’s move toward substituting a political model of fidelity for a contractual model of feudalism, see STEPHEN D. WHITE, The politics of fidelity: Hugh of Lusignan and William of Aquitaine, in: Georges Duby: L'écriture de l’histoire, ed. CLAUDIE DUHAMEL-AMADO and GUY LOBRICHON, Brussels 1996, pp. 223-230. Although this model failed to supplant the contractual model, elements of it are incorporated into the important discussion of fiefs in POLY and BOURNAZEL, La mutation féodale, chap. 2. 13 For criticism of Ganshofs »juridisme,« see POLY and BOURNAZEL, Introduction, in: Les féodalités (as in note 12), pp. 3-12, here: p. 4. 14 See, e. g., BONNASSIE, La Catalogne du milieu (as in note 12), vol. 2, pp. 736-739; HIDEYUKI KATSURA, Serments, hommages et fiefs dans la seigneurie des Guilhem de Montpellier (fin Xledébut XIIIe siècle), in: Annales du Midi 104 (1992), pp. 141-161, where the author searches for the fief of »la féodalité classique« (pp. 142, 143, 160); and THOMAS N. BISSON, The »Feudal Revolution� AB; in: Past and Present 142 (1994), pp.6-42, here: p.27, which alludes to Robert the Pious’s ineffectual resistance to »a feudal-contractual view of fidelity.« The revised discussion of fiefs in BONNASSIE, La Catalogne au toumant (as in note 12) refers, for example, to »les normes« established by convenientiae (p. 420), and argues that in Catalonia, »Les institutions féodo-vassaliques avec la même netteté, la même préecisions que dans les pays qui, [se] presentent comme l’Ile-de-France ou le Normandie par exemple, passent pour avoir été les berceaux de la >feodalité classiqueI need have no regard to this man; this man is in favour with the count or the king; this man could

speak of me

the poor, this has Whereas generous

court; I shall give him something.< When he gives not to 44 nothing to do with largesse hut rather seems aggression.«

at

men refrain from promising gifts that they do not want to do not know that »it is folly to promise if they wish to avaricious men make, do no more than that« because »it can bring shame on [the miser] if he has no inclination to give yet still makes someone come ten times to his house for a

in

45

gift.« Elaborating

largesse and avarice, Raoul showed a more extended passage how minstrels, »who witness in market place and on

the

contrast

between

42 Raoul de Hodenc, Le roman des eles, 11. 135-143, in: Raoul de Hodenc, Le roman des eles; The Anonymous Ordene de Chevalerie, ed. and trans. KEITH BUSBY (Utrecht Publications in General and Comparative Literature 17) Amsterdam 1983, pp. 1-70, 161-169; English translation: pp.34 and 362. On largesse in other stories, see, e.g., DOMINIQUE BOUTET, Sur l'origine et le sens de la largesse arthurienne, in: Le moyen âge 89 (1983), pp. 397-411; ERIC KÖHLER, L’Aventure chevaleresque: Idéal et réaiité dans le roman courtois, trans. ELIANE KAUFHOLZ, Paris 3974, esp. pp. 7-43. 43 Ibid 11. 209-226, 161-172, 186-190; p. 163 passim. 44 Ibid 11. 173-192, p. 163 (italics added). Similarly, a gift, Bourdieu wrote, »is an attack on the freedom of the one who receives it. It is threatening: it obligates one to reciprocate, and to reciprocate beyond the original gift; furthermore, it creates obligations, it is a way to possess, by creating people obliged to reciprocate« (BOURDIEU, Economy [as in note 1 ], p. 94). 45 Raoul de Hodenc, Le roman des eles (as in note 42), 11. 205-208, 194-197; p. 163 passim. See Chrétien de Troyes, The Story of the Grail (Li contes del graal), or, Perceval, ed. RUPERT T. PICKENS, trans. WILLIAM W. KIBLER, New York 1990, 11. 997-998: »It is a wicked thing to mock another and to promise without giving.« .,

.,

residence both honourable and shameful

deeds,«

can

identify

the generous

man:

When

they have performed and it comes to asking for a reward, a generous man cannot prevent at least the tip of the liberality within him from showing forth. If he has anything, he must give immediately, and if he cannot give, but makes a promise, he should proffer his apologies so openly and outline his intentions so clearly that everyone can recognise his desire to do good. The miser, by contrast, shames himself not by withholding gifts but by making them in the wrong way: [I]f he gives, he will hold his gift back so long that he who receives it will not feel any gratitude towards him; and if [he] makes a promise, he will place so many conditions on it that one can certainly tell at once that his promise is worthless. From his heart, the resting place of shame, struck in the flesh by evil, issues forth a feeble word stuffed with derision, void and stinking and without taste. 46

The

style

contrast

of

between this shameful

style

of

miserly giving

and the honorable

that both Raoul de Hodenc and the author of the prose-Lancelot advocate was so well understood that storytellers could, without

generosity

explanation, use good gift-giving as a sign of good lordship, identify a lord as bad by describing his miserly gift-giving, and construct important scenes or even entire stories that explore avaricious giving and its consequences. In praising lords for their largesse and good gift-giving or condemning them for miserliness and their manipulative use of gifts (for bribery), these texts do not always refer explicitly to fief-giving, as opposed to gift-giving of other kinds; but whenever they do so, they use the same discourse. Although these stories focus on gift-giving by kings, they never indicate that there was anything distinctively royal about largesse; in other texts lesser lords are also 47 praised for their largesse. fief-giving Good

Praising Arthur as »a generous giver and spender« who surpassed all other kings in largesse, Waco’s Roman de Brut shows the king making good gifts of fiefs very similar to the ones that the prudhomme in the prose-Lancelot ad-

Raoul de Hodenc, Le roman des eles (as in note 42), 11. 68-69, 71-83, 84-94, p. 162. »Le plus souvent réservée jusqu’ici [the early twelfth century] aux optimates, [la largesse] apparaît chez Orderic Vital dans les portraits des princes mais aussi des seigneurs de moindre importances JEAN FLORI, L’Essor de la chevalerie, XIe-XIIe siècles, Geneva 1986, p.273. Flori also shows that in Wace’s Roman de Rou, Robert the Magnificent’s largesse includes fief-giving (p. 310) and that in the verse-chronicle of the dukes of Normandy by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, the contrast made between the good lord Richard I and the bad lord Raoul Torta turns largely on the fact that the former is generous and the latter avaricious (p. 313). 46

47

vises Arthur

to

make. At

an

Easter feast that Arthur holds in Paris for his

amis, compensated men’s losses [of land?] and rewarded their deserts, repaying each according to what he had done. To Kei... he gave all Anjou and Angers To Bedoer... he gave in fief all Normandy And he gave Flanders to Holdin, Le Mans to his cousin Borel, Boulogne to Ligier, and Puntif to Richier. To many according to their nobility, to several according to their service, he gave what honours were available and to vavasors he gave lands. In this way the king »enfeoffed« his great men, made all his close associates rich, and »honoured« all his people, »especially 48 cherishing and rewarding the best ones.« He

one’s service ...

...

An

display of good fief-giving is described in Alexandre de Paris’s Le roman d’Alexandre, in which the dying Alexander distributes territories he has conquered to each of the twelve peers. When the king realizes that he is dying, he lies down on a gold bed covered with silk and declares that each peer will have a reward (guerredon) for his services (servises); 49 each will have »land and fief and casamentum« (terre et fié et chasement). The king himself repeatedly represents his gifts as parts of honorable exchanges of land for service and is praised, after his death, for having honored 50 his men with gifts. After giving Cilicia to Antigonus, for example, the king undertakes to give him other lands »because you have been of such great good service to me.« Alexander tells Licanor that »you have served me so well that in my lifetime you shall have a reward for [doing so].« He because of what Festion has done for him, he owes him a reward that, says and will give him land. After first announcing that »the day for Caulus to be rewarded« has come and then giving him Macedonia, Alexander tells him: »You have always served me with good will and I, I believe, have given you a very rich gift.« Addressing all twelve peers, Alexander says: »You have always even more

elaborate

...

done

than I have asked of you; I wish to reward all of you for Confirming what the poem has already shown about the peers’ participation in Alexander’s army, the king explicitly identifies as military the services in return for which he makes his gifts to the peers. Explaining more

your services.«

his

48

gift

to

Antigonus,

Alexander says that he

was

»the noblest chevalier«

WAGE, La partie Arthurienne du Roman de Brut, ed. IVOR D. O. ARNOLD and PELAN, Paris 1962, 11. 9022, 9030-32, 10, 147-10, 170, 10, 171-10, 172, 10, 197-10, 198. I have adapted Judith Weiss’s translation of a different version in WACE and LAWMAN, The Life of King Arthur, trans. JUDITH WEISS and ROSAMUND ALLEN, London 1997, pp. 56-57 passim. 49 Alexandre de Paris, Le roman d’Alexandre, ed. and trans. LAURENCE HARF-LANCNER, from the ed. by E. C. ARMSTRONG et al., Paris 1994, 4.253, 285, 287. ROBERT

M. M.

50

Ibid ., 4.394, 399-400, 418-420, 475, 507-508, 706-707, 785, 807-808, 1421.

and had »always served [me] well.« Licanor, the king says, was known for his chevalerie and had used his sword to do good service, for which a great fief would be his reward. The rich fief that Alexander

gives Caulus is a reward 51 his lord. Alexander dies a little later, and, in eulogizing him, the peers and Aristotle praise him primarily for his generous giving and view his death as a victory for avarice over largesse. According to for

fighting alongside

Licanor, addressing his dead lord: Your great largesse could never be equalled. For even before you had acquired wealth by conquest, You had

already given

it away

or

promised

to

give

it away.

the twelve peers rewarded for their service; Each had for [his service] a crown of gold. 52

Well

Good

were

largesse, practiced by lords with an land, expected to increase, as Arthur and Alexander they both do, by taking land from enemy lords and giving it to their own 53 men as fiefs or »honours.« Although, in twelfth-century literature, the gift of a fief is always part of an exchange between lord and man, the exchange is hardly ever governed by a contract under which a lord gives a man a fief in return for specifically designated services so as to constitute de novo and in toto the relationship between them. Hardly ever does the man whom the lord invests with a fief do homage to his lord or swear fealty to him; instead, it is 54 assumed, he has done so well before he is ever given a fief. Only when the obligation to give a fief is in dispute does either party ask whether the fief is too small or too large. Because a good lord freely, publicly, and joyously gives fiefs, as well as other prestigious gifts, to his men, who give honor and loyal service to him, any individual gift of a fief that a lord makes to a man

fief-giving

abundance of

thus is

a

which

grand

act

of

are

51 Ibid A fuller discussion of the passage can be found in WHITE, Giving ., 4.393-513 passim. fiefs and honour (as in note 36). 52 Alexandre de Paris, Le roman d’Alexandre (as in note 49), 4.664-666, 749, 864-866, 1282, 1311, 4.1305-1309. On Alexander’s largesse, see also ibid 1.95-97, 370-378, 799; 3.2625-2647, 5972-5976, 6682; 4.969-974, 1032-1036, 1152-1153, 1272-1275, 1343-1350, 1664-1670. For avarice, see ibid ., 4.655, 664-666, 749, 883, 968, 1282-1283, 1305-1312, 1616-1617, 1684-1687, 2187-2195. For a discussion, see GAULLIER-BOUGASSAS, Les romans d’Alexandre (as in note 36), pp. 324-329. 53 Meanwhile, according to Alexandre de Paris, Le roman d’Alexandre (as in note 49), 3.16-87, they should refrain from squandering wealth on gifts to serfs and, instead, should plunder them at will. On the fate of a king who gave to serfs, see 3.163-347. 54 For a rare example, see Jehan Bodel, La chanson des Saisnes, ed. ANNETTE BRASSEUR, Geneva 1989, vol. 1, 11. 1205-1208 (AR) and 11. 1149-1152 (LT). This passage is cited from an earlier edition in GANSHOF, Feudalism (as in note 5), pp. 125-126. .,

55

be connected with the service that the man performs for his lord. But the connection is either euphemized by representing it as a bond of amity, totally repressed by treating the gift as totally spontaneous, or slightly misrepresented must

by describing the fief as a reward for past service without alluding 56 future service due for it. Because a good lord will continually promise his men gifts and give them

to any

57

single gift of a fief easily gets lost in the never-ending a shameful sign of avarice, as Alexandre de Paris and Raoul de Hodenc both show, for a lord to calculate the value 58 of his gifts or even keep track of them, because his men do not appear to 59 calculate the value of their services to him, and because the gifts that pass

gifts of many kinds, flow of

a

lordly largesse.

Because it is

back and forth between the lord and his and

friendship,

60

the

practical service,

value of the man’s

men are

all treated

as

tokens of honor

economic function of the

fief,

and the relative values of

gift

the instrumental and service

unspoken or are treated with real or feigned indifference; they are directly mentioned only when a dispute arises out of an alleged failure to make

either go a

it does in Raoul de Cambrai and Le charroi de Nîmes. To acknowledge openly that a fief is given only in return for specific service, either past

gift,

as

is hard to reconcile either with the notion of a fief as an »inheritance« 61 that should pass by right to the man’s heir or with the belief that when a lord has conquered new territory with his men’s aid, his men, by helping him conquer it, acquire claims to gifts of fiefs in it before the lord or

future,

55 »The giver should be as happy with his gift as is the man he gives it to. One should not give with bad grace, but always with a cheerful appearance, for a gift which is given cheerfully has twice the merit, while one which is given reluctantly brings no return (guerredon)« (Lancelot du Lac [as in note 39], p. 758; Lancelot of the Lake [as in note 39], p. 244). 56 On euphemisms in gift exchange, see BOURDIEU, Economy (as in note 1). 57 For Alexander s gifts and promises of gifts, see Alexandre de Paris, Le roman d’Alexandre (as in note 49), 1.157-165, 703-743, 1057-1059, 1078, 1084, 1452-1453, 1475-1476, 1633-1693,

1858, 2280, 2295, 2507-2514, 2631-2658, 2670-2671; 3.899, 5988-5998, 4118, 4132, 7634-7645; 4.121, 141-142, 942, 1047-1049, 1139, 1164, 1204-1211, 1216, 1389, 4074, 4078, 4112-4114, 4385. 58 See, e. g., ibid ., 1.95-100, 514-521. 59 Ibid ., 3.2687, 4703. 60

122, 248; 3.357-363, 4703, 4145, 7272; 4.706, 785, 807, 1047-1049, 1421, see also STEPHEN D. WHITE, The Language of inheritance in twelfth-century France. Alternative models of the fief in »Raoul de Cambrai», in: Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy. Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt, ed. GEORGE GARNETT and JOHN HUDSON, Cambridge, UK 1994, pp. 173-197. 61 On warranty, see PAUL R. HYAMS, Warranty and good lordship in twelfth century England, in: Law and History Review 5 (1987), pp. 437-503. Ibid ., 1.116,

1464. On »honours«

makes the

62

A century later the same way of representing the relationship largesse and good lordship was articulated with particular clarity by Philippe de Navarre (d. 1261/64), who, in Les quatres ages de l’homme, attributes the following speech to Alexander:

gifts.

between

everything and to give everything away so generously that I shall nothing except lordship and honour; and I wish to be avaricious only in keeping for my own self honour and the love of my people and the love of all those who serve me. And for the sake of this, I shall have the lordship of the world; and whatever I can conquer and possess I shall give to those through whom I conquered it. 63 I desire to conquer

retain

in other models of

good lordship, a lord’s largesse and prowess, his his and his men’s love for him are all understood to be mutually men, loyalty If interdependent. fief-giving is to be considered a form of largesse that honors both giver and recipient, then the question of what, precisely, is Here,

as

to

exchanged for what when a lord gives his man a fief should remain open, ambiguous, and subject to negotiation and re-negotiation within limits loosely imposed, on the one hand, by a rough sense of reciprocity and, on the other, by the relative political power of the two parties. Although it is understood that a man will serve after, as well as before, receiving a fief as a gift, that gift to the extent that it is associated with the man’s service at all should be represented only as a reward for past service, not as pay for future service, which, it is also understood, the man will perform in return for promises 64 of further gifts of fiefs and for gifts of other kinds. The exchange of gift for service, which is always in progress and can never be costed out with any precision, is not fully and openly acknowledged for what, in a sense, it is: namely, an exchange of service for fief. To the extent that literary images of good gifts of fiefs provide evidence about »the gift as experienced or, at 65 least, meant to be experienced,« they indicate that if the gift of a fief is to honor both lord and man, it is to be perceived, not as the subject of a contract, but as a reward and as a love token of the kind that Philippe de Navarre mentions in a story about a king of Jerusalem and a rich man of his. Refusing a gift that the king gave him, the rich man said, »Lord, you give me too much, give to others.« The king replied to him, »Take my gift, because it –

–

62

away

Important questions about the lord’s are

power to construct »fiefs«

as

something he can give

beyond the scope of this chapter.

Philippe de Navarre, Les quatres âges de l’homme: Traité moral de Philippe de Navarre, ed. MARCEL de FRÉVILLE (Société des Anciens Textes Fran^ais) Paris 1888, c. 70, p. 41. 64 On »little presents« as a means of extending a friendship into the future, see BOURDIEU, Outline (as in note 21), pp. 7-8. 65 Ibid ., p. 5. 63

seems

man

that from a new gift there If it is shameful for a lord

to me

of love.« to

66

love or new remembrance his man’s service and for his

comes new

to

buy

sell it, then the closer the parties come to openly calculating a precise gift and service, the less honorable the gift of a fief will serve its multiple purposes, the lord and the man, to

connection between be. If largesse is to

to the present subject, »must not be entirely while at the same time they must exchanges 67 refuse to to recognize it.« Because literary images of good fief-giving are constructed so as to show how an honorable gift of a fief should be made, they also constitute evidence about several norms that could be implicitly or explicitly invoked to justify a claim to honor and to a fief. From the ways in which good gifts of fiefs are represented, it is clear that a gift of this kind should honor both giver and recipient, should reward honorable service performed out of love and loyalty, and should be withheld from anyone incapable of having honor. In addition,

adapt

Bourdieu’s formulation

unaware

of the truth of their know and above all

the fief should be

...,

inheritance that a lord should fully warrant to his man These norms of good fief-giving appear to privilege not lords; but, as we shall see, a lord, too, could use cultural resources in disputes where he could justify a failure to give an

68

and the man’s heirs. the interests of men, them

as

to one man

his

duty or

his obligation to reward another for his service and disinherit one man by giving his fief or his father’s fief to another

by invoking

not to

by revoking a gift made

Bad gifts In contrast

to

Arthur, the bad lords portrayed twelfth-century literature transgress norms of good fief-giving and fail to show the kind of generosity for which Alexander is praised above all else. Instead, they display avarice, along with other characteristic traits of bad lords, such as lack of prowess and a shameful disposition to favor low-born 69 flatters and other evil counselors, instead of true nobles. The best example of a bad lord who makes bad, miserly gifts is Darius, whose own to

good

lords such

him.

as

Alexander and

in

Philippe de Navarre, Les quatres âges de l’homme (as in note 63), c. 71, p. 41. BOURDIEU, Outline (as in note 21), p. 6. 68 On the invocation of norms, see, e. g., STEPHEN D. WHITE, Inheritances and legal arguments in western France, 1050-1150, in: Traditio 43 (1987), pp. 55-103; IDEM, Stratégic rhétorique dans la Conventio de Hugues de Lusignan, in: Histoire et societe. Mélanges offerts à Georges Duby, Aix-en-Provence 1993, vol. 2: Le tenancier, le fidèle et le citoyen, pp. 147-157; and IDEM, Language of inheritance (as in note 60). 69 On the attribution of anger to lords as a way of vilifying them, see STEPHEN D. WHITE, The politics of anger, in: Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. BARBARA H. ROSENWEIN, Ithaca, NY 1998, pp. 127-152. 66

67

men, in Le

roman d’Alexandre, call him a malvais segnor and whose style of 70 the Other examples of gift-giving poem sharply contrasts with Alexander’s. the same kind of lord are the kings in Le charroi de Nîmes and Raoul de Cambrai, each of whom, instead of generously rewarding his men with fiefs,

either withholds

gifts from them completely or else deceives with largesse,

Raoul de Hodenc puts it, style of fief-giving.

by practicing

a

miserly, manipulative,

and

as

aggressive

Darius makes gifts of the wrong kind in the wrong way to the wrong people. Instead of generously rewarding the past services of loyal fideles and giving generously for the sake of giving, he withholds gifts from the nobles who are entitled to them or else gives gifts solely for the sake of extracting specific services from the bribe-takers and flatterers whom he buys. Worse yet, Darius gives fiefs and even noble wives, along with their lands, to serfs, thereby resources that a good lord would have used to honor nobles. Even those occasions when he gives to nobles, he reveals, by giving too little too late in return for specific services, that he wishes only to buy their support, not win their love. As a result, he incurs their distrust and hatred and

wasting on

loses their support when he needs it the most. 71 In Le charroi de Nîmes, the miserly gift-giving style of King Louis is sharply contrasted with the largesse of his man Count William, who, it is assumed, will keep his promise to give »the

needy

strongholds

young

men«

»money and estates, castles

and fortresses« if

him

and

borderlands, territory the king fails to reward

the Saracen

they help king has just given him. At the beginning of the story, William for his long service when rewarding other barons with fiefs for theirs. Instead of acceding speedily to William’s demand for a reward, Louis asks him to wait until one of the king’s barons dies, at which point, Louis promises, he will give William a fief that he cannot yet specify and that may turn out to be a fief that the king should not give and that William should not receive. After William refuses to rely on the king’s insubstantial, unreliable promise of an unspecified fief, Louis offers him, in succession, three different fiefs, each of which William refuses because the king’s gift of it would disinherit the heir or heirs of a deceased man of the king’s. Linally, Louis gives William the kingdom of Spain, which, since the king does not hold it and will not warrant it, William must acquire for himself and defend without his lord’s aid. 72 In Raoul de Cambrai, a different King Louis actually makes the

to conquer

70 On Darius, see Alexandre de Paris, Le roman d’Alexandre (as in note 49), 3.163-347; for his men’s condemnation of him, 3.184. 71 Ibid ., 3.63 ff. For references to other portraits of avaricious lords, see GAULLIER-BOUGASSAS, Les romans d’Alexandre (as in note 36), p. 324, n. 81 and p. 326, n. 85. 72 Le charroi de Nîmes, ed. JOSEPH L. PERRIER, Paris 1982, 11. 1-769. I largely follow the

several bad gifts of the kind that the king in Le charroi de Nîmes merely proposes to make. First, he disinherits Raoul by rewarding Giboin for his service with a gift of the Cambrésis, which, however, the king seems unable and unwilling to warrant to Giboin. When, after a shameful delay, Louis respounds to mounting political pressure by finally agreeing to give Raoul a fief, he resorts to the conventionalized delaying tactic, promising, just as King Louis does in Le charroi de Nîmes, to give his man the fief of whichever bar-on

of his is the

next to

die.

73

Even

though

the baron who dies

next

leaves

of full age, Louis, after procrastinating as long as possible and complaining about losing four men’s service in order to reward one man, disinherits all four men by giving their father’s fief to Raoul; but, like the other King Louis, he refuses to warrant his gift to his man, who, like William, four

sons

must conquer

it himself. of bad

fief-giving and avaricious giving generally, it is giving speedily, spontaneously, and joyously, the bad lord delays giving as long as possible and carefully calculates what he will gain and lose from making gifts. He gives only when he comes under strong political pressure to do so and believes he can use his gift to achieve a political purpose. Instead of freely giving fiefs without considering just how much he has to give, the bad lord promises what he cannot give, will not give, or should not give. When he must give, he gives what he does not possess and cannot get, what he will not get, or what he should not take, such as the inheritances of minor heirs, the marriage portions of widows, or marriageable From

examples

clear that instead of

heiresses and their inheritances. Because the avaricious lord cannot or will his gifts of fiefs to his men by giving them the aid and counsel

not warrant

74

from him, the gifts he makes are likely to be worthless. WTien he fails to honor his men by giving them fiefs, they must either seek aid and largesse from a more generous lord, as William and other men in these stories

they need

translation in The Waggon-Train, trans. GLANVILLE PRICE, in: William, Count of Orange: Four Old French Epics, ed. GLANVILLE PRICE, London 1975, pp.61-91, here: pp. 61-74. 73 For a discussion of this motif, see JEAN-PIERRE MARTIN, Les motifs dans la chanson de geste: définition et utilisation (Discours de l’épopée médiévale), Thèse de doctorat de Troisième

Cycle, Paris 1992, p.346. (as in note 72), 11. 585-588, King Louis gives William Spain but will it. In Raoul de Cambrai, ed. and trans. SARAH KAY, Oxford 1992, King Louis gives Raoul the Vermandois but refuses to warrant it (11. 731-733). In Garin le Loherenc, ed. ANNE IKER GITTLEMAN, Paris 1996, 11. 21-22, King Pepin’s refusal to aid Hervis against the Saracens amounts to a refusal to warrant a fief that Hervis holds from the king. In: La chanson de Guillaume, ed. FRANÇOIS SUARD, Paris 1991, 1.154, the failure of King Louis to aid William is tantamount to the failure to warrant a gift. 74

In Le charroi de Nîmes

not warrant

threaten

do,

75

or else gain honor through their own efforts, as William also does in Le charroi de Nîmes. 76 Oblivious to the demands of honor in fief-giving, he is even prepared to make gifts of land and wives to serfs.

to

The bad lord’s

of fiefs

thus

exposed as purely manipulative, mercenary buy political support, buy off political opposition, and promote envious competition among his nobles. Gifts of this kind and miserly giving generally are thus integrated into a kind of folk model of bad lordship. Instead of conquering new territory that he can give out as fiefs to the nobles who helped him conquer it and whose loyal service he is obliged to reward, the bad lord cannibalizes his own territory, taking land from nobles in order to make gifts to flatterers and serfs, who are incapable of reciprocating with loyal service. In these ways, the stereotypical bad lord’s avarice, combined with his lack of prowess, doom him to dishonor. gifts

are

transactions, which he

uses

to

the forms of bad gift-giving that the bad lords of twelfth-century literature are condemned for practicing can be understood as caricatures of tactics that were, in real life, integral parts of a sensible, potentially effective patronage strategy. Indeed, it was a style of giving that lords of finite

Nevertheless,

territories could

in

trying to secure the political support they authority, since, unlike the fictionalized medieval Alexander, they never had enough land to distribute in the form of fiefs to everyone with a claim on their generosity. Indeed, virtually every devious needed

to

maneuver

reinterpreted

not

help using

maintain their

ascribed

to

own

the bad lord of method of

twelfth-century literature can be maintaining a lord’s authority. Promising

practical giving them and giving fiefs without warranting them were clearly methods of temporarily relieving the lord from pressure to give, extracting as much political credit as possible from followers without actually depleting the lord’s limited stock of landed resources, and, in some cases, encouraging his men to plunder each other instead of seeking substantial rewards from their lord. Disinheriting minors was a means of expanding the resources available for distribution to valued supporters as largesse. Lords who were condemned for giving to so-called flatterers, evil counselors, and traitors were simply rewarding members of one political faction at the expense of another. Similarly, the hateful practice of giving to serfs instead of nobles can be seen as just a pejorative construction of the common-place practice of patronizing marginal nobles, who could be represented by as a

fiefs without

75

See Le charroi de Nîmes (as in

note

72), 11. 94-114; Raoul de Cambrai (as in

535-553. 76

See Le charroi de Nîmes (as in

note

72), 11.

1463-1486.

note

74),

11.

serfs and by their friends as poor but deserving knights. In lord, who, in literature, uses these tactics constantly is just a caricature of the ordinary lord, who, in practice, used them when necessary. »The good master,« Marc Bloch observed, »is he who keeps in mind the maxim which one of the chansons numbers among Charlemagne’s lessons to his successor: >Take care not to deprive the orphan child of his fief.< But how 77 or had to be many lords were good masters?« How many lords were considered good lords by men to whom the lords did not continually distribute largesse? By starkly contrasting the good lord, who is always generous to his men and always politically successful, with the bad lord, who always practices a miserly style of gift-giving to ill effect, political fictions never take their enemies sum, the bad

as

–

full

–

of the obvious fact that no lord ever had enough land at his disposal emulate Alexander in giving a fief to every man of his with a claim

account to

give fiefs to some of them only by ignoring others, by disinheriting others still, when necessary, by delaying his gifts, and by breaking at least some of his promises to give. Even so, by showing that a lord’s men were sometimes the beneficiaries, as well as the victims, of the bad lord’s miserly style of fief-giving, these same stories allow us to see that they, like the lord himself, sometimes had an interest in justifying the very fief-giving practices that, at other times, they had an interest in condemning as avaricious. Doing so was possible because the norms of fief-giving were not organized into a system of real property law designed to regulate claims to landed resources in a peaceful civil order and to promote what lawyers of a later time called »quietness of possession.« Instead, in a militarized society where the giving and taking of land were required moves in the game of honor and kept creating new claims and countercaims to the same landed resources, norms of fief-giving had continuing force only to the extent that they could be used and re-used as cultural resources in disputes by people enmeshed in a political patronage system in which fief-giving was, for lords, a potentially honorable method of maintaining political support and, for men, a potential source of wealth and honor. As result, the norms of fief-giving never had to be reconciled with one another and, when reformulated, if necessary, from the perspective of a lord’s friends, they could be redeployed so as to justify the very fief-giving practices that our stories condemn. For example, because fiefs could be understood as gifts made to reward past service, it was possible to justify giving a fief to honor a loyal follower’s claim to a reward in preference to the claim of an heir too young to perform any service for which he should be reto one

77

and therefore could

BLOCH, Feudal Society (as in

note

17),

p. 196.

warded. 78 But because fiefs could also be viewed as inheritances, rights to which passed from one member of a lineage to another, 79 a lord could be blamed for taking a fief from his deceased man’s heir and giving it to one of men. Because a fief was considered to be remuneration for a man’s loyal service in the future, any act of disloyalty on his part provided grounds for

his

the fief forfeit and giving it to another man, whose loyal service claim to it. Since norms of fief-giving were not supposed to regulate

declaring gave him

a

practice and, instead, provided the categories in terms of which fief-giving could be negotiated, evaluated, and experienced, the norms could be redeployed in different ways, depending on the relative status of the parties and on the precise political context of deployment, so as to capture an appropriate perception of the same gift of a fief from different subject positions.

80

One man’s generous lord was thus another man’s miser. What one could construe as generous gift-giving, another man would see as disinheritance. What a man could construe as a gift that rewarded him for his past service to his lord, his lord could understand as a means of securing his service

man

in the future. It ways

by invoking

was

norms

thus possible to evaluate the same from the same normative repertoire.

gift

in different

Negotiated gifts In those

twelfth-century stories where gifts of fiefs are negotiated through of being made spontaneously by good lords, the possibility instead debate, of using norms from this repertoire to support opposing positions in arguments 81 about fief-giving is illustrated in several episodes already mentioned. In Le charroi de Nîmes, Count William justifies his claim to a fief by representing fiefs as honorable rewards for past services of the kind that he had done for King Louis, whereas Louis proposes to make William gifts of fiefs that could be justified only by treating fiefs as remuneration for future service. In Raoul de Cambrai, where several claims to fiefs are virtually identical William’s claim in Le charroi de Nîmes, the same norms of fief-giving are invoked. They are invoked, however, in more complicated and contradictory ways primarily because, in a story where two different fiefs are in dispute, to

WHITE, Language of inheritance (as

78

See

79

On the

in note

60).

complexities and uncertainties of inheritance, see JOHN HUDSON, Land, Law, and Anglo-Nomian England, Oxford 1994, which neatly demonstrates, inter alia, the

Lordship in futility of trying to identify definitively the periods when

fiefs

were or were not

heritable.

JUNE STARR and JANE COLLIER, Introduction: Dialogues in legal anthropology, in: History and Power in the Study of Law: New Directions in Legal Anthropology, ed. IDEM, Ithaca, NY 1989, pp. 1-28. 81 On this method of argumentation, see also WHITE, Stratégic rhétorique (as in note 68). 80

On

norms as

resources, see, e.g.,

Raoul use

justifies

his claim

to contest

his claim

his claim

to a

of the fiefs by invoking a norm that others the other fief. In Le charroi de Nîmes William justifies

to one

to

gift of a

fief by laboriously showing how much good service he has done for his lord, relative to what his lord has given him and how much he has lost in serving his lord without receiving any compensation from him. At the same time William refuses one gift the king offers him because it is too large and rejects several others on the grounds that in making these gifts of fiefs to him, the king would be disinheriting the heirs of men who had served him. Finally, William condemns every gift the king offers him because, he says, »the king wishes to pay me for my services« and does 82 so »exactly as if it were a reproach.« Implicit in William’s statements about his

is a version of the service from his men, a lord should give them fiefs as rewards commensurate with their past services and as compensation for losses already incurred in serving him and should do so in a way that honors both donor and donee. own

familiar

claims norm

to a

of

fief and the

fief-giving

king’s style

that instead of

of

gift-giving

buying

Without openly contesting this norm, King Louis gives or proposes to give fiefs in ways that presuppose an entirely different understanding of fief-giving when he proposes to delay his gift to William until another magnate of his dies, offers William fiefs that are shameful for the king to give and for his man to receive, and, in the end, offers to give William a fief for which no thanks

are

has

claim

no

make

to

from

due, to

William

William says, because the king has never controlled it and it at all. At the same time, in representing the gift he will

retaining his services and dissuading William lord, the king openly represents his gift to for services he has already performed, but rather as

as a means

himself

of

another

attaching William, not as a reward a means of retaining his service to

for the future. The idea that

a man owes service

for any fief he receives is made even clearer when Louis proposes to reward William with fiefs that children of deceased men of his could claim as 83 their inheritance. In Raoul de Cambrai, the gift of King Louis to Giboin triggers a dispute the Cambresis out of which a dispute over the Vermandois later develops. Initially, the king rewards Giboin for his past service by giving him the Cambreésis, even though in doing so he disinherits the infant Raoul, whose

over

father Raoul had held this honor at the time of his death. Later, to meet the claim to a fief that Raoul makes on several different grounds, Louis promises to

give

82 83

him the fief of the first baron

Le charroi de Nîmes (as in Ibid ., 11. 300-443.

note

72), 1.

17.

to

die. On the death of Herbert of Ver-

mandois, who leaves four sons of full age seised of the Vermandois, Louis reluctantly gives Raoul the Vermandois but refuses to warrant it. Giboin’s initial claim to a fief, like William’s, is based on the principle that fiefs should be given to men to reward past service. Because Giboin has served his lord well, he is entitled to a reward in the form of a fief. Once Giboin receives the Cambresis from King Louis, however, he can also base his claim to it on the fact that it is a gift from the king, who, by giving it to him, should assume an obligation to defend his right to it against other claimants, notably Raoul, who claims the Cambresis on several different grounds. During Raoul’s minority, his kin can support his claim to the Cambrésis on the grounds that because fiefs are heritable, rights to them should pass directly from father to heir without reverting, even in theory, to the father’s lord, who should fully warrant his gift, not just to his donees, but to their heirs as well. Instead of warranting the gift of the Cambrésis to Giboin, the argument continues, Louis should act as Raoul’s warrantor either by protecting him against Giboin's effort to disinherit him or else by giving him another fief of equal value as an exchange for the Cambresis. After Raoul comes of age and serves Louis, he is also in a position to justify his claim to the Cambrésis by arguing, as Giboin initially did in claiming the same fief, that he is entitled to it as a reward for his service to the king. Once Raoul has been promised the fief of the next baron to die, he can claim another fief on a different basis. Because the argument for giving the Vermandois to Raoul, like the argument for giving the Cambrésis to Giboin, depends on the norm that if gifts of fiefs are not inheritances and, instead, are remuneration for future service, right to a fief should revert, on the death of the lord’s donee, to the lord, who may, at his discretion, give the fief back to whomsoever he chooses. Since the norm of fief-giving underlying this argument is virtually identical to the norm necessary to justify the gifts King Louis offers to William in Le charroi and radically different from the model of fief-giving as a way of rewarding service, it is clear, first, that fief-giving could be understood either as a way of rewarding past service and as a way of remunerating future service and, second, that both ways of understanding fief-giving were sometimes useful cultural resources for both men claiming fiefs and lords needing to give them.

3.

Fief-Giving in Practice

Whereas the contractual model of feudalism instrument for texts

treats

fief-giving simply

as an

remunerating man’s future service, twelfth-century literary represent it as an ambiguous transaction that could be understood a

either

reward for past service that fief-giving was open

as a

showing

remuneration for future service. By these two different constructions and

or as

to

ambiguity could be concealed by euphemistically generously given to reward past service and by pejoratively marking other gifts as devices for buying men’s future services, these same texts, again in contrast to the contractual model, also show how the ambiguities of feudal discourse could be used to evaluate fief-giving as well as represent it and to justify some claims to fiefs and undermine the legitimacy of others. Finally, instead of treating fief-giving as a legal act serving the purely instrumental purpose of conveying real property under an explicitly articulated contract, literary texts represent it as a malleable form of political patronage that a lord and his man could try to exploit in a variety of ways. To complicate even further the political meanings of fief-giving, poets situated it in political scripts along with many other political processes in which fiefs figure, including taking and forfeiting fiefs, honoring men by giving fiefs, shaming men by disinheriting them of their fiefs or by failing to reward them with fiefs, warranting or refusing to warrant fiefs to men and their heirs, waging feuds to recover lost fiefs, and conquering lands out of which new fiefs could be created. By situating fief-giving in a political arena where fiefs are limited goods for which men seeking honor constantly compete, these stories not only show that fief-giving was always open to being by showing,

as

well,

how its

identifying some fiefs

considered either

a

reward

as

honors

or a

bribe;

could be represented as a Because poets situate fief-giving in

to one man

they also

taking of

reveal that every gift of fief from another.

a

fief

a

bring out its multiple they organize those meanings, contradictions, into a model of and bad their stories, unlike the contractual meanings good giving, model of gift-giving, represent fief-giving in terms that are, in certain political scripts

that

and ironies and because

respects, congruent with the ones used in anthropological studies of the gift. To be sure, in contrast to one form of gift-giving sometimes considered by anthropologists, fief-giving was represented in literary texts, not as a totally free and disinterested act, but rather as a form of obligatory generosity lord was supposed to use to reward his men for past service. But because fief-giving actually served the less clearly acknowledged purpose of establishing or re-establishing the lord’s power over his man by obliging the man to do future service and because this purpose was repressed, euphemized, or otherwise misrepresented, fief-giving still shares with other forms of gift-giving the critical feature of imposing an obligation to reciprocate without appearing to do so. Because the underlying ambiguity of gift-giving, as Bourdieu explicates it, was not the ideological by-product of efforts to misrepresent gift-giving after the fact, but was necessary to the actual practice of gift-giving (and, one should add, to the process of arguing retrospecthat

a

about what the gift meant), it is worth asking whether, in practice, the ambiguity that is found in literary representations of fief-giving is also found in the practice of fief-giving itself and, if so, whether it could have

tively same

served the same function. Could literary evidence, like the proverbs and other forms of discourse used by anthropologists to reconstruct indigenous models of the

gift,

illuminate medieval

understandings

of the

practice

of fief-giving

facilitate the construction of an alternative to the contractual model of feudalism, in which fief-giving, as we have seen, differs radically so as

to

from

gift-giving? Anticipating strong objections to the very idea of using literary texts to il uminate practice, Marc Bloch wrote: »Mere fiction! those historians who only accept the testimony of dry documents will perhaps exclaim. But this is 84 not the final word.« Even though literary images of fief-giving differ so much from the image of fief-giving in the contractual model that they might be dismissed as either the conventionalized products of pure literary fantasy or as archaisms self-consciously introduced into stories about antique kingdoms, there are several reasons for preferring them to the image of contractual fief-giving as evidence about how fief-giving was actually conceptualized in practice. For one thing, the contractual model has been shown to lack a solid documentary basis. Although the texts commonly cited as evidence about fief-giving in practice do not fully support Susan Reynolds’s arguments for minimizing the importance of fiefs as items of political patronage, they are still inconclusive, at best, as she has cogently argued, on the critical question of what meanings contemporaries attached to transfers of landed resources and whether, like the lawyers of later times, they understood 85 contractual terms. Even the texts that appear to record feudal contracts or convenientiae need not, as Fredric L. Cheyette has shown, be treated as transparent descriptions of how the parties to such transactions understood either their relationships to each other or the role that fiefs did or did not play in mediating those relationships. 86 Moreover,

fief-giving in

BLOCH, Feudal Society (as in note 17), p. 231. SUSAN REYNOLDS, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted, Oxford 1994. For responses to Reynolds’s work from historians who endorse parts of her argument but not others, see DOMINIQUE BARTHÉLEMY, La théorie féodale à l’épreuve de l'anthropologie (note critique), in: Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 52:2 (1997), pp.321-341; and reviews by STEPHEN D. WHITE, in: Law and History Review 15 (1997), pp. 349-355, and FREDRIC L. CHEYETTE, 84 85

in:

Speculum 71:4 (1996), pp. 998-1006. FREDRIC L. CHEYETTE, On the fief de reprise, in: Hommage à Pierre Bonnassie: Les sociétés méridionales à l’âge féodal (Espagne, Italic et sud de la France Xe-XIIIe s.), ed. HÉLÈNE DÉBAX, 86

Toulouse 1999, pp. 319-324.

other texts used

substantiate the contractual model become open to different Reynolds, we reject the legal historian’s practice of reading transparent records of practices that we can then treat as evidence

readings if, them as of the have been

to

like

rights and duties under feudal contracts that the actors must following in order to reproduce those practices with what looks 87

regularity. If, in certain cases, we treat such texts as the products of strategies designed to construct, in particular ways for particular purposes, 88 the very practices that the texts represent, we can see how, even in dry documents, fiefs and gifts of fiefs are sometimes constructed and reconstructed for the purpose of imposing particular meanings on different kinds 89 of political processes and political relationships. Even after 1000, by which time the so-called union of vassalage and fief had supposedly transformed fief-giving definitively into a means of remunerating future services, fief-giving continued to be represented as a method of rewarding past services not just in literature but in texts concerned with actual practice. To take one example of a text that supposedly substantiates the contractual model of feudalism but that is open to a completely different reading, consider the well-known letter on fidelity of 1021 from Fulbert of Chartres to William of Acquitaine. Simply by changing two questionable translations that Ganshof and others have made in explicating the letter one can show that the bishop did not, in fact, give what Ganshof called »a remarkable definition of the obligations created by the contract ofvassalage,« under like

which mentions he

a

lord gave

no

did, what

fief« and

to

contract a man

a

fief to

a man

in

return

whatsoever. Fulbert did

should and should

»[deserve]

to

hold his

not

fief«;

for future services. not

spell

do in order

that is, the

90

The letter

out, as Ganshof said to »be worthy of his

bishop

did

not

specify

the conditions on which a man was entitled to hold a fief that was »his« because his lord had previously given it to him. Since the text never identifies the fief in question as the man’s and refers only to »fief« or »a fief« (beneficium) it

evidently refers to what a man who

had

previously

sworn

fidelity to

lord should do if he were to merit, and seem worthy of, a gift of a fief from his lord. In other words, Fulbert did not represent the fief as land given in return for future services under a feudal contract; instead, like vernacular a

On »the fallacies of the rule,« see BOURDIEU, Outline (as in note 21), pp. 22-30. On the construction of legal facts, see LAWRENCE ROSEN, The Anthropology of Justice: Law as Culture in Islamic Society, Cambridge, UK 1989, and IDEM, Bargaining for Reality: The Construction of Social Relations in a Muslim Community, Chicago 1984. 89 See FREDRIC L. CHEYETTE, The Culture of Fidelity: Giving and Taking (forthcoming), and IDEM, On the fief de reprise (as in note 86). 90 GANSHOF, Feudalism (as in note 5), pp. 83-84 (italics added). 87

88

pictured it as land that might be given as a reward for past service 91 fidelis who merited it. In the early twelfth century, long after fief-giving had supposedly been totally transformed into a means of remunerating men for future service, historians such as Orderic Vitalis and William of Malmesbury treated it as twelfth-century poets did, representing it favorably when it was used to honor

poets, he to a

reward past service and unfavorably when it involved either avaricious giving of the kind that poets, too, condemned or so-called »prodigal« men

and

to

giving to men of no worth at the expense of men of honor. According to Orderic, William I divided up the chief provinces of England amongst his followers (adiutoribus suis') and made the humblest of the Normans men of wealth. After describing the king’s gifts of lands and honors to courtiers and magnates who, in turn, gave gifts of land to their own men, Orderic also adventurers who had notes that »the king granted many great honours to supported him and favoured them so highly that they had many vassals [clientes] in England wealthier and more powerful than their own fathers had been in Normandy.« Describing fief-giving in terms virtually identical to the ones used in chansons de geste, Orderic relates how Richard of Heugleville fought for many years for Duke William of Normandy, who gave him a wife, along with her inheritance, promised him far more, and would have fulfilled his promises if Richard had continued to serve him faithfully. Later, in addition to noting how Henry I showed his gratitude to duke Robert of Normandy by giving him the Vexin as a benefice, Orderic praised the king for his general practice of honoring men with gifts: ...

From the beginning of his reign he wisely recommended himself to all men, inviting them into his favour (ad amorem sui) with royal gifts. He treated the magnates with honour and generosity, adding to their wealth and estates (honores), and by placating them in this way won their loyalty. 92

Although representing fief-giving favorably when it was generously used to honor men and reward loyal service, Orderic’s text also shows that lords could be condemned for their avarice when they failed to reward their men The Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres, ed. and trans. FREDERICK no. 51, p.91 f. For other readings of the letter, see, e.g., BOURNAZEL, La royauté féodale (as in note 12), pp. 389-510, here: p. 399; POLY and BOURNAZEL, La mutation féodale (as in note 12), pp. 148-150; and WHITE, The politics of fidelity (as in note 12), pp. 223-230. 91 For the letter, BEHRENDS, Oxford

see

1976 ,

Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. MARJORIE CHIBNALL, Oxford 1969-1980, vol. 2, pp.260-261, 262-263, 264-265; vol. 3, pp. 252-255; vol. 4, pp. 76-77; vol. 5, p.297. 92

and also for their prodigality if they gave away too much. In a into the mouths of two rebellious magnates, William I is cast in the conventionalized role of the avaricious lord who practiced bad fief-giving. After criticizing William for disinheriting even his own »friends and

generously speech put

connexions« in France, the earls Roger of Hereford and Ralph of Norwich charge him with committing similar offences against »us and our peers.« After

conquering England, they complain:

[William] did not reward the supporters who raised him above his own people, as he ought to have done, but showed ingratitude to many who had shed their blood in his service and on the slightest pretext punished them with death as if they had been enemies. To victors who had endured wounds he gave barren estates, wasted and depopulated by his army; and after they had made these lands fertile, he began to covet and either took them back or appropriated part of them. All 93 his death would cause great rejoicing.

them,

men

hate him and

William is later condemned for his avarice in a self-serving speech attributed to knights who urge his son Robert Curthose to rebel against his father so that he can gain the wealth he needs in order to show his own generosity to them.

Royal prince, how can you live in such wretched poverty? Your father’s minions guard the royal treasury so closely that you can scarcely have a penny from it to give to any of your dependants. It is a great dishonour to you and injury to us and many others that you should be deprived of the royal wealth in this way. Why do you tolerate it? A man deserves to have wealth if he knows how to distribute it generously to all seekers. How sad that your bounteous liberality should be thwarted, and that you should be reduced to indigence through the parsimony of your father, who sets his servants,

or

rather your servants,

over

94

you.

Orderic’s purpose here, as elsewhere in his History, was to condemn the kind of prodigal giving that Robert’s knights wanted Robert to engage in, the writer achieves this rhetorical effect by ironically representing them as manipulating for their own purpose a conventionalized distinction 95 between generous and avaricious lords.

Although

Ibid ., vol. 2, pp. 312-313. Ibid ., vol. 3, pp. 96-97. 95 Orderic also utilized an unfavorable construction with regard to the practice of paying men for military service, instead of rewarding them for it, when, for example, he compared covetous clerks who »shamelessly pandered to the king« to »recruits who received wages from their officers for their service« (ibid ., vol. 2, p.268). Noting the integral connection between rewarding some men by taking property from others, Orderic condemned those Normans »who coveted the wealth and wide fiefs (larges honoures) of Waltheof« (vol. 2, p. 320), and cited a vision of Robert Curthose distributing the wealth of the church to worthless people (vol. 3, 93 94

A variant form of this method of evaluating lords on the basis of how they made gifts is used in the work of William of Malmesbury, who believed that lords who gave too much, instead of giving moderately, would eventually engage in the kinds of bad giving that in literature avaricious lords were routinely condemned for practicing. Instead of contrasting the generous lord with the avaricious lord, William adapted, for his own purposes, a distinction of Cicero’s between the »liberal« giver and the »prodigal« giver, who, after he has wasted his resources on excessive gifts to worthless men is indistinguishable from an avaricious giver. 96 Whereas liberal givers, William wrote, give

carefully and with moderation, prodigal ones exhaust their patrimonies by giving »inconsiderately«; and »when they have nothing [more] to give, they turn to rapine; and they then get more odium from those from whom they take, than beneficium from those to whom they give.« This, according to William, was the fate of that notoriously prodigal giver William Rufus. At the outset of his reign, milites flocked to him. He denied them nothing and promised them even more for the future. Word of his largesse aroused the whole West and spread to the East. Even when the king’s resources failed, his passion for giving did not. So he turned his thoughts to plunder and was aided in his rapacity by Ranulph Flambard, who met his master’s insatiable need for property to give away by plundering the rich, exterminating the poor, and

confiscating »other men’s inheritances.«Thus a »fierce flame of »burst forth from what [Rufus] considered liberality.« 97 In a less dramatic way, William sharply criticized Henry I’s wife Matilda for being evil«

soon

»thoughtlessly prodigal« made excessive claims

on

because she »fell into the error of prodigal givers,« her own tenants, and took away their property. 98

106-107). He criticized one lord for dissipating his inheritance by giving to greedy sycophants (vol. 3, pp. 256-257) and another for being »lavish to the point of prodigality« (vol. 3, pp. 216-217). He also linked bad giving and evil counsel in describing the baron who advises his lord to diminish his inheritance by giving lands to a traitor (vol. 2, pp. 312-313). Showing how a lord could sometimes reward some of his men by taking land from others, Orderic indicated that it was partly by means of disinheriting rebels that he could raise his dependents and supporters to high ranks by heaping honors on them (vol. 3, pp. 214-217). 96 Cicero, De Officiis, 2.16, in: Works (Loeb Classical Library) Cambridge, MA 1913, rpt. 1990, vol. 21, p. 226. 97 William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum Anglorum Libri Quinque, ed. WILLIAM STUBBS (Rolls Series 90) London 1887-1889, 5.313-316, vol. 2, pp. 226-227. According to Orderic, William Rufus was »generous to knights and foreigners, but greatly oppressed the poor inhabitants of his kingdom and took from them by force the wealth he lavished on strangers« (Ecclesiastical History [as in note 92], vol. 5, pp. 200-203). 98 William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum Anglorum (as in note 97), 5.418, vol. 2, pp.494-495. pp.

ambiguities and ironies of fief-giving and gift-giving are displayed even clearly and pertinently in the early eleventh-century narrative known as the Agreement or Conventum of Hugh of Lusignan, in which Count William of Poitou and his man Hugh engaged in an extended, remarkably well documented dispute concerned largely with fief-giving. Here, to summarize quickly an argument I have developed elsewhere, the same images of good The

more

and bad fief-giving that appear in twelfth-century vernacular literature are used so often that the Agreement has been confused with a proto-epic. 99 In how fiefs repeatedly became the main subjects of contested exchanges between William and Hugh, the author’s underlying strategy is to represent the former as a bad lord and the latter as a good fidelis. On the

showing

hand,

represented as either duplicitously assuming the pose he can win Hugh’s love or else making bad gifts of lord so that generous the kind that bad lords are condemned for making in Le charroi de Nîmes,

one

of

William is

a

Raoul de

Cambrai, and Le roman d’Alexandre. On the other hand, Hugh consistently plays the role of the good man, who serves his lord purely out of love and loyalty even though, instead of being rewarded for doing so, he suffers damage, for which, to make matters worse, his lord never compensates him.

Although promising to love Hugh above everyone other than his own son, generously, warrant gifts to him, and aid him against enemies, William forgets Hugh when giving gifts to others, gives others the fiefs that he should have given to Hugh, gives Hugh fiefs but later refuses to warrant them, refuses to give Hugh fiefs that are Hugh’s by right of inheritance, and takes away lands of Hugh’s in order to give them to others. The relationship between Hugh and William is thus mediated by two different forms of exchange. On certain occasions, exchanges between the two are meant to look reward him

99 For the text, see GEORGES BEECH, YVES CHAUVIN, and GEORGES PON, Le Convention (vers 1030): Un précurseur aquitain des premières épopées, Geneva 1995, pp. 123-138 (text), 139-147 (French trans.), 147-153 (English trans.). For fuller statements of arguments presented here, see White, Stratégic rhétorique (as in note 68); IDEM, Politics of fidelity (as in note 12); and IDEM, The politics of exchange: Gifts, fiefs, and feudalism, in: Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power and Gifts in Context, ed. ESTHER COHEN and MAYKE DE JONG, Leiden 2000, pp. 169-188. Other discussions include: POLY and BOURNAZEL, La mutation féodale (as in note 12), pp. 138-154; BOURNAZEL, La royauté féodale (as in note 12), pp. 396-402; GEORGE T. BEECH, The lord/ dependent (vassal) relationship: A case study from Aquitaine, c. 1030, in: Journal of Medieval History 24 (1998), pp. 1-30; JANE MARTINDALE, Status, Authority and Regional Power, Aquitaine and France, 9th to 12th Centuries, London 1997, chaps. 7 and 8; DOMINIQUE BARTHÉLEMY, Autour d'un récit de pactes (»Conventum Hugonis«): La seigneurie chatelaine et le féodalisme en France au XIè siècle, in: Il Feudalesimo nell’Alto Medioevo, Spoleto 2000, vol. 1, pp.447-489.

like exchanges between a generous lord, such as Alexander, and his men. Though unequal in power, William and Hugh treat each other as »friends,« giving support to one another out of »love« and »fidelity« without openly computing and comparing the costs of what they give. At other times, the relationship between the two assumes a purely transactional form, as William, after carefully determining how much he will give, calculatingly and avariciously makes bad gifts to Hugh, striking bargains with him that he then tries to manipulate so as to maximize his own claims on Hugh and minimize 100 Hugh’s claims on himself. Even though the Agreement, written after feudal relationships had supposedly been realized through the union of vassalage and fief, neatly shows that the relationship between a lord and his fidelis was supposed to be mediated by the exchange of gifts, including gifts of fiefs, it does not show that fiefs were given or were supposed to be given in return for contractually defined future services. Because, therefore, it does not document anything remotely resembling an institutionalized, legitimate union of vassalage and fief-giving, it cannot provide evidence that a »crisis« in fidelity resulted from that union in the years around 1000. 101 Instead, the narrative actually testifies to the cultural force of a relatively stable, if ambiguous, feudal discourse in which fidelity and the fief were important, albeit contested, concepts and in terms of which the game of aristocratic politics was constructed and conducted.

men

used

Like the feudal discourse encoded in chansons de geste, the discourse deployed in the Agreement was one in terms of which both lords and could construct claims against each other. In this text, the discourse is

repeatedly broken faith with Hugh and committed notably, trying to reduce Hugh to servitude and failing to aid him that constitute grounds, according to a capitulary of Charlemagne’s, for a man to abandon his senior. 102 The same discourse, however, could easily have been redeployed in such a way as to bring out, not William’s infidelity, but Hugh’s. The process of conducting regional politics in terms of this discourse posed cultural complications, as well as political risks. In an unstable, militarized society, the efforts of both lords and men to treat towers, fortresses, hostages, counsel, aid in battle, or promises to »give« any of these items as »gifts« and to renegotiate the terms of their relations with others by trying to show that such gifts did or did not create debt, pay off debts, or at least reto

show that William had

several

specific offences

–

–

WHITE, Politics of fidelity (as in note 12), pp. 227-228. See BISSON, »Feudal Revolution« (as in note 14), pp. 26-27. 102 See ROBERT BOUTRUCHE, Seigneurie et féodalité, vol. 1: Le premier age des liens d’homme homme, Paris 1959, pp. 364-365. 100 101

à

duce indebtedness

provide striking examples

of what Marshall Sahlins identifies

the process of submitting »received meanings« and »cultural categories« 103 In the world of the Agreement Hugh and William's to empirical risks. exercises in the cultural politics of giving fiefs and claiming fiefs were particularly chancy and dangerous because they were practiced in an enclosed as

political arena where, for lords, the most honorific and sought-after exchange, namely, fortresses, were in such short supply that fief-giving inevitably involved fief-taking and where the exchange of beneficia between friends was often replaced by the exchange among enemies of such mala as plundering, burning, killing, and mutilation. In this setting, feuding 104 was as much a model for gift exchange as gift exchange was for feuding.

items of

4. Conclusions documents as well as mere literature represent gifts of fiefs in both honorable and dishonorable guises, rather than treat them all as elements of feudal contracts in which fiefs are given in return for future services,

Because

dry

support the hypothesis that in the eleventh century and on into the feudal contract was not an indissoluble unity and, indeed, contract at all. On the contrary, relations between lords and men

they the

twelfth,

was no were

not

contractual,

except in the loose sense of involving some kind of reciprocity, constituted and re-constituted by gifts that were, in their ambiguous as the anthropologist’s gift. If so, then the image of

and own a

way,

legally

as

were

institutionalized union of fief and

tenth century

fidelity

over

the

course

of the

right around the turn of the millennium must be a kind of non-event or myth, which simply serves the purpose of marking a longer or more sudden transition or mutation from an era of loyalty, when good gifts or

of political disintegration, when bad, or at least ineffective, the norm. If no such institutionalized union of vassalage fief-giving and fief occurred, and if fief-giving did not become the subject of feudal contracts until much later, then there are good grounds for simply rejecting the curiously counterintuitive proposition that in itself the proliferation of

flourished,

to an age was

contractual fief-giving actually promoted or caused political We can then see eleventh-century fief-giving simultaneously 103

disintegration. as an

essential

MARSHALI. SAHUNS, Islands of History, Chicago 1985, p. IX. See WHITE, Politics of exchange (as in note 99). On gift exchange as a model for feud and, by implication, feud as a model for gift exchange, see WILLIAM IAN MILLER, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland, Chicago 1990, p. 182. 104

process in

maintaining an economy of honor and as a form of political patronage not necessarily differ totally from the patronage practices of earlier periods, for it was still supposed to be animated by what Georges Duby once called »the spirit of largesse bequeathed by the early Middle 105 Ages.« In place of the legal historian’s myth of a union of vassalage and fief that effected, inter alia, a critical transformation in styles of aristocratic patronage and gift-giving, both literary and historical accounts of gifts give us a myth of their own about fief-giving the medieval myth of the generous lord, the avaricious lord, and, from time to time, the prodigal lord. The medieval myth misrepresents practice, particularly when it radically distinguishes between gifts as rewards and gifts used instrumentally to extract service. Nevertheless, as a starting point for considering the questions of how gifts were supposed to be represented and experienced and how they were misrepresented, this medieval myth has value not found either in the modem contractual model of medieval fief-giving or in models of medieval society that have been intellectually cleansed of all traces of feudalism. By analyzing the myth, we can see the extent to which, in any given case, the construction of fief-giving involved the strategic use of images by positioned actors, including not only the author of the text representing the transaction but also the participants in the transaction itself. In addition to serving their pliant instrumental that did

–

function of and

condemning

euphemizing the

most

honorable forms of

the least honorable forms of this

practice,

these

fief-giving images

of

into the process of fief-giving that without fief-giving deeply them the process itself would have been inoperable. The images provided the means by which lords and men not only officialized their own gifts of fiefs were so

woven

fiefs, but actually constructed the fief and gifts of fiefs so as to generate bewildering variety of political strategies strategies that included not only giving fiefs by taking them and taking them by giving them, but also giving fiefs to reward past service, giving fiefs to extract future services, and, of course, doing both simultaneously. and claims of a

105

DUBY,

–

Early

Growth (as in

note

3), p.259.

Cridelsitsy A FiXIII of 1000? c. in

"FÉODALITÉ. N’en avoir

aucune

Gustave

idée

précise, mais tonner contre."

Flaubert, Dictionnaire des

idées reçnes

When in 1953 the late

Georges Duby traced the abrupt transformation of a Carolingian society into a feudal society in the county of Mâcon between 980 and 1030, he broke this epoch-making change down into a sequence of three main developments: first, the collapse of Carolingian public institutions, notably the court of the count of Mâcon (mallus publicus), which the great lords of the county abandoned while simultaneously establishing themselves as independent lords of castles, that is, castellans; second, the usurpation and privatization by these newly independent castellans of the Carolingian ban (i.e. the power of command) that Carolingian public officials such as counts had previously monopolized; and, finally, the use of the ban by castellans to establish private lordships (seigneuries banales) over both slaves and free allodialists, who, in the new feudal society, merged together to form a newly constituted class of serfs in what had become, in Marxist terminology, a feudal, as opposed to a slave, mode 1 of production. Paradoxically, however, Duby firmly denied that the establishment of what F.L. Ganshof had called “feudalism in the legal sense of the word,” that is, “the system of feudal and vassal institutions,” had played a part in the transformation of the Mêconnais into a feudal society in the years ...

around 1000.

2

Duby had

both

empirical and theoretical grounds for taking this position on eleventh-century Mâconnais, he found that fiefs, as compared with allods, were relatively unimportant; that “the relationship of vassalage [was] a tie of mutual friendship similar to that which bound the family together,” just as it had been in the tenth century; and that “personal relationships” among nobles were complicated by the “inheritance and exchange of [feudal] tenures,” 3 and by “plurality of homage.” Moreover, instead of following historians of feudalism. In the

1 2 3

Duby (1953). Ganshof (1964) xvi. Duby (1953) 163—4.1

follow the translation in

revisionist discussion of feudal institutions them: ibid 149-58. .

was a

Duby later acknowledged

that

Duby (1968) 144—5. Preceding this relatively conventional treatment of in studying the Mâconnais, “I found DOI: 10.4324/9781003418719-13

A Crisis

feudal institutions in

of Fidelity

in

c.

1000?

lordship as the only existing form of eleventh-century Mâconnais, Duby argued that political power nobles were constrained by political pressures exercised through social networks constituted by several different kinds of ties, including fidelity, associations with religious communities, and, above all, kinship, which together constituted a more important force for political cohesion than did lordship, though conflicts 4 chronically arose out of all such ties, including ties between lords and men. It was these changing social networks and not a feudal system, Duby implied, that constituted the political arena in which aristocratic politics were played out in the eleventh-century Maconnais. Finally, instead of regarding the fief and vassalage as legal institutions that regulated, determined and legitimated aristocratic feudal politics in early society in the Mâconnais, Duby maintained that over

in the final

treating

feudal

nobles in the

were adapted to the previous structure of Vassalage and fief, significantly modifying it of bom the customary practices private usage, organized relationships already imposed by an unequal division of wealth and power. They did not create new ones. In [the] eleventh-century Mâconnais there was no feudal pyramid, no 5 “feudal system.”

analysis,

feudal institutions

the upper class, without

....

Although Duby never specified precisely when the customary practices of fief and vassalage appeared, he clearly implied that they had existed well before the transformation of a Carolingian society in the Mâconnais into a feudal one. Duby’s revisionist positions on both feudalism in the legal sense of the word and the place of this form of feudalism in early feudal society in the Mâconnais foreshadowed several later critiques of the same concept of feudalism as a theoretical construct, including his own pointed observation in The Three Orders that “the fief’ had nothing to do with what he then saw as a European-wide 6 feudal revolution in the mode of production in c. 1000. However, unlike his account of the collapse of Carolingian public institutions in the county, the formation of the seigneurie banale, and establishment of a new class structure in on feudalism did not significantly influence subsequent

rural society, his views

precious little evidence concerning the fief before the time of Philip Augustus.” Duby (1994) 51. 4 Duby (1968) 165-7; see also Duby (1980) 49, 58. 5 Duby (1968) 164; Cheyette (1968) 144. 6 Duby (1980) 153. On the connections between Duby’s revisionist views on feudalism, a concept that he never fully abandoned, and later critiques of this concept, see Cheyette, (1968) 1-10; Brown (1974) 1063-88; White (1996) 223-30; idem (2003a); and Cheyette (2002) .

A Crisis

regional

ofFidelity

in

c.

studies of the establishment of feudal

1000?

Pierre Bonnassie’s

society and,

in fact,

flatly a by findings in into a feudal In this Romano-Visigothic public order Catalonia society. part of the old West Frankish kingdom, Bonnassie maintained, the development of feudo-vassalic institutions created by feudal contracts was an integral part of a contradicted

were

about the transformation of

feudal revolution that also involved the establishment of

a

feudal mode of

Like the transformation in the Mâconnais between 980 and 1030 that

production. Duby had traced,

the Catalan feudal revolution in

c.

1020, according

to

Bonnassie, overthrew the antecedent system of public order maintained by the count of this region, established private banal lordships as units of seigneurial

exploitation one.

of peasants, and

replaced

a

slave mode of production with

a

feudal

Moreover, in Bonnassie’s Catalonia, unlike Duby’s Mâconnais, the feudal

revolution also led to the establishment of

truly

feudal institutions and the 7

creation of a feudal system, that is, feudalism in the legal sense of the word. Before 1020, Bonnassie contended, there was no “true feudalism” in Catalonia. “The fief remained

granted by seems

a

the count to reward

strictly public institution, a public property public service,” while “the vassalic network

to have been confined to the count’s

identified

as

public officials,

not

onwards, however, feudalism

own

followers,” whom Bonnassie

private dependents

8

of the count. From

c.

1020

established in Catalonia, as one could see of documents called convenientiae, in which a lord and a

from the

was

proliferation “agreed between them, freely and without the intervention of any public or private jurisdiction, the definition of the obligations binding one to the other, and 9 guaranteed their execution by solemn agreement.” Convenientiae, according to Bonnassie, appeared at a time when Catalan society was experiencing “a rapid development—even a veritable revolution—of which the convenientiae constitute 10 one of the most spectacular evidences.” The totality of such agreements man

constituted

a system that Bonnassie identified as “the basis of social relations 11 and, especially, of feudal relations in eleventh-century Catalonia.” In contrast to the early feudal society that Duby portrayed in his study of the Mâconnais,

early feudal society in Catalonia was organized into a feudal vassalage and the fief were regulated by feudal contracts 7

See Bonnassie

(1991a) 170-94,

which

lucidly

and

concisely

system, in which that created and

sets out Bonnassie’s

Catalan feudalism. For other versions of this argument see idem (1991b) position 149-69; idem (1991c) 104-32; idem (1976) 2:735-80; and idem (2000) 2:569-606. 8 Bonnassie (1991a) 187. on

9

10 11

Bonnassie Bonnassie Bonnassie

(1991a) (1991a) (1991a)

170. 187. 184.

legitimated new legal relationships, instead of simply organizing relationships “already imposed,” as Duby had put it, “by an unequal division of wealth and power.” In arguing that “true feudalism” had not existed in Catalonia before 1020 but suddenly came into being thereafter as part of a feudal revolution, Bonnassie established a new paradigm for studying feudalism, the feudal revolution, and feudal society in the southern regions of the old West Frankish 12 kingdom, and elsewhere in southwest Europe. In their important study, The Feudal Transformation (La mutation féodale), Jean-Pierre Poly and Eric Bournazel deployed a version of Bonnassie’s paradigm for the purpose of 13 analyzing an even larger territory of Europe. Bonnassie’s paradigm now provides the starting-point for Thomas N. Bisson’s recent, highly original argument that in the northern parts of the old West Frankish kingdom, which he calls northern Francia for the sake of convenience, the proliferation of fiefs in c. 1000 triggered “a crisis of fidelity” marking the transformation of Carolingian political structures, based on the principle that fidelity and service to public officials was a public obligation, into feudal political structures, based on feudal agreements under which private lords 14 could secure fidelity and service from vassals only by giving them fiefs. As a result of this revolution in political structures in c. 1000, according to Bisson, northern Francia, not to mention the rest of Europe, became, for the next two 15 centuries “a place even less like ours than it had been.” In a subsequent article Bisson

that in different regions, “feudalization,”

acknowledges

as

he calls it,

took different forms, proceeded at different rates, and did not necessarily involve either a feudal revolution or the complete overthrow of Carolingian political structures. But he still identifies the

of fiefs and feudalization generally— slave mode of production into a feudal

proliferation

and not the transformation of

a

driving the transformation of the regional societies in northern emphasizing the importance of Bonnassie’s conclusions about Catalan feudalism for the study of feudalism in northern Francia, Bisson sharply criticizes Duby for failing to see how important the proliferation of fiefs in c. 17 1000 was for understanding the feudal revolution. Bisson also criticizes unnamed critics of feudalism for overlooking the findings of “specialists familiar one—as

Francia.

the motor

16

In

with the sources,” who had discovered in the South “concrete realities of

12 13 14 15 16

Bonnassie

(1991a) Poly and Bournazel (1991). Bisson (1994) 21-8. Bisson (1997) 225. Bisson (2000) 1:389-439. Bisson 17 (1994) 23. .

lordship, vassalage, anachronism.”

and feudal tenure that

were

18

had

wholly exempt

from

conceptual

These critics, according to Bisson, were “false prophets,” who and had induced their readers to forget that “if ‘feudalism’ is

forgotten dispensable in medieval history, lordship, vassalage, feudal tenure, homage, and 19 fealty assuredly are not,” since they are, as he put it, “documented realities.” To document the reality of a crisis of fidelity in c. 1000 in the North, Bisson cites several late tenth-century episodes from Richer’s History of France, in which he sees “the tension between old public order and the new vassalic régime [flaring] into visible conflict”; letters of Gerbert of Aurillac, “whose writings are full of anxiety about fidelity and its violation”; and the chapter “On the king’s 20 fidelity” in Abbo of Fleury’s Canons. Bisson also cites the well-known letter on fidelity by Fulbert of Chartres from c. 1021, which, as he reads it, shows “concretely how benefices and rewards were muddying the waters of good faith” between fideles and their lords; and the Conventum of Hugh of Lusignan (late 1020s), in which Bisson finds evidence of the collapse of public order and public fidelity in early eleventh-century Poitou and the advent of a new vassalic régime closely resembling the feudal system that had been established, according to 21 Bonnassie, in early eleventh-century Catalonia. All of these texts, as Bisson reads them, document “a crisis of fidelity in the millennial generation. Without ceasing to be a public obligation, fidelity, or more exactly its sworn content, was being tainted by a vassalage more demanding than it had been in 22 Carolingian times—and far more prevalent.” In the following brief comment .

.

.

part of Bisson’s argument about feudalism, I consider two main questions: first, does the model of the old Carolingian public order that underlies on

one

his account of

crisis of

18

fidelity

in

1000

accurately represent Carolingian political practice? Second, do Fulbert’s letter on fidelity and the Conventum of Hugh of Lusignan clearly document the collapse of that order and the advent of a new vassalic régime in which good faith between fideles and their lords had been 23 corrupted by gifts of fiefs? a

c.

(2000) 391. (2000) 437-8. 20 Bisson (1994) 24-5. 21 Bisson (1994) 26-7. See Behrends (1976) no. 51; and Beech, Chauvin, and Pon (1995) 123-38 with French and English translations at pp. 139—47 and pp. 147-53, respectively. For another edition of the Conventum with facing English translation, see Martindale (1997) chap. Vllb. 22 Bisson (1994) 27. 19

23

see

Bisson

Bisson

For my comments on other aspects of Bisson’s argument in “Feudal Revolution,” (1996) 205-23.

White

I Recent work

on

Carolingian politics, including

Susan

Reynolds’s important

critique of the concept of feudalism, calls into question the stark historians of France since

contrast that

Carolingian public order and the private régime of feudalism. Brilliantly synthesizing this work, Janet L. Nelson tacitly rejects the assumption that Carolingian rulers maintained a kind of public order that was untainted by the kinds of “gifts and rewards” that Bisson associates with a corrupted form of the old Carolingian order and with an 24 emergent vassalic régime. On the contrary, Nelson interprets “patronage in the form of [royal] land grants” from conquered territories, the royal fisc, ecclesiastical estates, and “estates confiscated from the faithless” as ordinary instruments of 25 Carolingian royal power. Land grants to followers, she further explains, were also instruments of aristocratic power, including the power of counts, who, far from acting as accountable public officials of the Carolingian state, “used their own lands to build up what would later be called affinities of men (often 26 kinsmen) holding land from them and dependent on their patronage.” Because “political crisis,” she finds, “can be documented by a fall in numbers of grants, the defusing of crisis by a marked rise as the ruler rewarded supporters,” the exercise of political power must have depended on the effective use of patronage and the ability of lords to confiscate the estates of their former supporters for 27 “treason, and disloyal service” and grant them out to supporters. If so, then the lands that Carolingian kings and other lords gave to fideles cannot have been discretionary rewards for service. On the contrary, such gifts should be seen as instances of the necessary generosity of lords to their supporters without which Carolingian expansion would have been impossible. By the same token, fideles cannot have been faithful to lords purely as a matter of public obligation, untainted by the expectation of rewards, including, in some cases, rewards in the form of land grants. Instead of being precisely dictated by the specific terms of the oath of fidelity, political relations between lords and fideles were evidently negotiated, in Susan Reynolds’s terms, with reference to two conflicting norms, one privileging the claims of lords on their fideles and the other privileging the “mutuality of obligations” between lords and

24

Duhy

have made between

Nelson (1995) 383-431 and the bibliography 951-8. responsibility for the interpretation I have placed on her work. 25 Nelson (1995) 384, 386-7, 392-5, 412-5. 26 Nelson (1995) 412. 27 Nelson (1995) 392, 386.

Prof. Nelson bears

no

28

Whereas lords could back up their claims to the loyalty and of their support fideles with the threat of confiscating their lands, fideles could sometimes back up their claims to rewards from their lords, Nelson’s argument their

fideles.

implies, by deserting them, rebelling against them, or threatening to do one or the other. Although Nelson regards “ideas of shared participation in public duties and benefits, of generalized commitment” as “essential elements of Carolingian government,” she treats the inculcation of such ideas, not as an accomplished fact, but as an unfinished political project of particular rulers and advisors, who attempted to legitimate public claims of the kind that Bisson’s model of 29 Carolingian politics treats as legally binding and automatically efficacious. As Nelson explains, moreover, Charlemagne incorporated into his

notions of lordship, freedom and reciprocal duty that appeal. When he demanded an oath of fidelity from “all,” according to a capitulary dated between 787 and 792, he also “sent missi to explain that he was well aware that many complain that their law had not been kept for them; and that it is totally the will of the lord king that each man should have his law fully kept.” What lex sua meant can be reconstructed from two later statements. A further oath of fidelity in 802, Charlemagne said, meant that each was thereby obliged not to harm “the honor of the realm” but to be faithful “as a man in right ought to be to his lord” [sicut homo per drictum debet esse domino 30 suo]. own

rulership

.

.

.

would have universal

In

a

section of a

capitulary dated 802-803, moreover,

Charlemagne forbade anyone to abandon his lord having once accepted the symbolic lordly gift of a shilling “unless”—and here follow four conditions: “unless his lord seeks to kill him, wife from

or

assaults him with

a

stave,

debauches his

or

daughter, or takes away his allodial property.” Life, personal immunity degrading physical violence, patriarchal rights in his female dependents,

or

28

Reynolds (1994) 34-5. On oaths of fidelity, see Reynolds (1994) 86-9, 127-30; Magnou-Nortier (1969) 115—42; Cheyette (1999) 166-77; and Cheyette (2001) 187-247. 29 Nelson (1995) 426, 429,430. 30 Nelson (1995) 425. For the capitulary of 787/792, see Boretius (1883) MGH Capit., I, no. 25 (787/792) c. 4, p. 67. For the oath of 802, see ibid I, no. 34, p. 101 which reads: “Sacramentale qualiter repromitto ego: domno Karolo piissimo imperatori, filio Pippini regis et Berthane fidelis sum, sicut homo per drictum debet esse domino suo ad suum regnum et ad suum rectum. Et illud sacramentum quod iuratum habeo custodiam et custodire volvo, in quantum ego scio et intellego, ab isto die in antea, si me adiuvet Deus, qui coelum et terram creavit et ista sanctorum patrocinia.” .

these constituted a man’s lex, and at the same time, by setting limits 31 lord could do, provided legitimate grounds for rejecting lordship.

patrimony: on

what

a

Further evidence that the obligations of lord and fidelis were assumed to be reciprocal, even if the reciprocity in question was unbalanced, can be found in later capitularies. “In 843,” Nelson writes, “Charles the Bald elaborated on his grandfather’s words: while his fideles promised in turn to uphold the king’s honor, Charles promised to keep for each his due law in each rank and status 32 and not to deprive anyone of his honor without just cause.” For evidence of the same kind of reciprocity between Charles and his fideles one can look to the 33 oaths that the former and the latter exchanged in 858 and in 876. Because Nelson’s argument shows that no system of public order and fidelity untainted by expectations of reciprocity between ruler and fidelis or by rewards, including land grants, had ever existed during the Carolingian era, it obviously .

conflicts with Bisson’s contention that this terminal crisis in c.1000

or was

transformed

same more

..,

system either underwent

slowly through

a

a

process of

feudalization. Moreover, by rejecting the static model of Carolingian public order that provides a backdrop for arguments that a longer or shorter process of feudalization transformed and

privatized this public order and by replacing it Carolingian politics that highlights political contraditions, conflict and change, Nelson’s work also raises doubts about whether further political changes in the years around 1000 necessarily involved any kind 34 of radical, epoch-making transformation in aristocratic politics. with

a

dynamic

model of

II Did this

change

involve the establishment of

benefices and rewards undermined Bisson’s argument for this

a

vassalic régime in which

faith between fideles and their lords?

good position rests largely

on

his

readings

of the

31

Nelson (1995) 425, citing Boretius (1883) MGH Capit., I, no. 77 (802/03) c. 16 (p. 172), which is quoted below in n. 46, along with another passage to the same purpose from another capitulary, this one dated 801-813. 32 Nelson (1995) 425, citing Boretius (1883) MGH Capit., II, no. 254 (843) c. 3, p. 255. 33 Boretius

(1883)

MGH

Capit., II,

p. 100. 34 Nelson

no.

269

(858)

p. 296; and II,

no.

(1994) 163-9; and Nelson (1986) 45-64. For a broad attack mutationnisme, see Barthélemy (1997) For references to other critiques argument, see White (2003b) .

.

220

on

(876),

so-called

of the

same

Conventum of

Hugh

of

Lusignan

and the famous letter of

bishop

Fulbert of

Chartres to William, duke of Aquitaine, the same William who appears in the Conventum as the count of Poitou and the lord (senior) of Hugh of Lusignan.

Reading the bishop’s letter as an authoritative explication of a contractual quasi-contractual agreement between a lord and his fidelis, Bisson uses it evidence of how, during the years around 1000, benefices and rewards

were

or

as

muddying the waters of good faith. A fidelis, request) must not only “abstain from wrong

duke William's

(at [Fulbert] [but also] do what is right if he is to deserve his casamentum.” This term, while evidently synonymous with beneficium, suggests that Fulbert had knights as well as magnates in mind. It is the word that he had applied to the holdings of his sub-vassal knights at Vendôme and Chartres in 1008, in letters that mark the earliest known attempt of a lord to define the substance of (lesser) knightly 35 fealty. By 1020 Fulbert was known for his concerned authority in such matters. wrote

the

identify

To

casamentum

that it

just mentioned

as

the

fidelis’s

casamentum is to

was not benefice or reward of the kind that a Carolingian fidelis might have received from his lord, but rather a fief, which the lord had already given to the fidelis and in return for which the fidelis was obliged to “do what is right,” instead of being obliged to do right to his lord as a matter of public 36 obligation. If, however, we do not base a reading of Fulbert’s letter on the unsubstantiated assumption that it was an authoritative interpretation of a new kind of agreement between a lord and his fidelis, we can interpret it as a gloss on a man’s oath of fidelity to his lord—one that Fulbert sent to William as a friend, assume

35

Bisson

36

a

(1994) 26.

In certain respects, Bisson’s reading of Fulbert’s letter resembles that of Ganshof, according to whom the letter presented “a remarkable definition of the obligations created

by the

contract of vassalage” and who translated a critical passage from the letter

only right that the vassal should abstain from injuring his lord in any of ways just mentioned]. But it is not because of such abstention that he deserves to hold his fief’ (Ganshof, 1964 , 83; italics added). For other examples of this conventional as

follows: “It is

[the

way of translating Fulbert’s letter, see Guillot and Sassier (1994) 192; Boutruche (1959) 369-70. Ganshof s chronology of the history of feudalism, however, differed

significantly from the one Bisson now proposes. Arguing that “the legal union of vassalage and benefice” took place in Charlemagne’s reign or, at the very latest, in the reign of Charles the Bald, Ganshof asserted that “the disintegrative effects” of vassalage became evident in the ninth century (ibid 42-3, 50, 56-9). On the “union” of vassalage and benefice (or fief), see White (2003a). .

and

fidelis,

in order to counsel him

political ally

about the

faithfully

legal

basis

of the claims that lords, including both William and Fulbert himself, could legitimately make on their fideles, including those who held benefices from them and those who did not.

37

In other words, Fulbert’s letter

what Pierre Bourdieu has called show that their claims

binding

their

oaths of fidelity that these

such

texts

on

provided the makings of “officializing strategy” that lords could use to fideles were legitimate, being based on the

an

Cicero’s

as

De

men

had

inventione

sworn to

them.

provided

the

introductory part of Fulbert’s letter; but when it

fidelity

that

a

fidelis

was

supposed

to

swear

38

To be sure, ancient phraseology of the

explicating lord, the bishop

came to

to his

the oath of used terms

ones used during the years around 1000 in surviving oaths of fidelity from Occitania and, as we shall see, in the Conventum of Hugh 39 of Lusignan. In several respects, the oath of fidelity that Fulbert glossed in the

identical

or

similar to the

from the years around 1000 and as Charlemagne and Charles

letter resembled both Occitan oaths of

fidelity

oaths of

rulers such

Carolingian acknowledged their obligations to their fideles, swearing reciprocal oaths to them, as does the lord in Fulbert’s 40 letter to William of Aquitaine. Finally, the oath of fidelity to a lord that Fulbert commented upon in his letter to William evidently indicated, as did Occitanian 41 oaths, that the fidelis's violation of the terms of the oath amounted to perjury. Fulbert began his letter to William by stating that “he who swears fidelity to his lord should always keep these six terms in mind: safe and sound, secure, 42 honorable, useful, easy, possible,” The bishop then explained these terms as fidelity

the Bald, who, sometimes by

sworn

as

to

Nelson shows,

follows: Safe and sound, that is, not to his

37

cause

his lord any harm

body [de corpore suo].Secure, that is, not to

The discussion here

owes

cause

[dampnum]with respect to him harm [dampnum] with

much to the valuable comments

on

Fulbert’s letter in

Reynolds (1994) 20, 23, 38, 127-8; also 35, where she aptly identifies Fulbert as “that supposed theorist of feudo-vassalic values.” 38 On “officializing strategies,” see Bourdieu (1977) 40. 39 On Fulbert’s borrowings from Cicero, see Carozzi (1981) lxiv-lxviii. 40 While noting that Occitanian oaths of fidelity taken by lords to their men are very rare, Magnou-Nortier notes that, in other respects, they resembled Carolingian oaths (1969) 16-19. 41 Magnou-Nortier (1969) 122-3; possible penalties for perjury also included cutting off the right hand, according to Poly and Bournazel (1991) 149-50. 42 Behrends (1976) no. 51: “Qui domino suo fidelitatem iurat, ista sex in memoria semper habere debet: incolumne, tutum, honestum, utile, facile, possibile." Here and elsewhere, my translation of this letter largely follows the one in Behrends (1976) no. 51.

respect to his

secrets or his fortresses

[municionibus] through which it is possible [honestum], that is, not to do anything that would cause harm [dampnum] with respect to his rights of justice or to other matters pertaining to his honor. Useful, not to cause him any harm [dampnum] with respect to his possessions [possessionibus]. Easy and possible, not to make it difficult for his lord to do something that would be of value to him and that he could otherwise do with ease, or to render it impossible for him to do what was 43 otherwise possible. for him to be safe. Honorable

Having

shown that

Fulbert then

a

explained

should not harm his lord in any of these ways, what the fidelis needed to do in order to be rewarded with

fidelis

Bisson and other commentators would have it, to merit “his casamentum,” that is land that he had already received as part of a feudal agreement with his lord. a

casamentum and not,

That

as

fidelis should avoid inflicting injuries on his lord [with respect to the six just mentioned] is just, but not in this way does he earn a casamentum; for it is not enough to abstain from evil [a malo], it is also necessary to do good [bonum]. So it remains for him to give his lord counsel and aid [consilium et auxilium] faithfully with respect to the same six matters if he wishes to be seen as worthy of a beneficium and to be secure as to the fidelity [de fidelitate] that he a

matters

has

sworn.

44

43

Behrends (1976) no. 51: “Incolumne uidelicet, ne sit dampnum domino de corpore Tutum, ne sit ei in dampnum de secreto suo uel de municionibus per quas tutus esse potest. Honestum, ne sit ei in dampnum de sua iustitia uel de aliis causis quae ad honestatem eius pertinere uiderentur. Vtile, ne sit ei in dampnum de suis possessionibus. Facile uel possibile, ne id bonum quod dominus leuiter facere poterat faciat ei difficile, suo.

neue id quod possibile erat, reddat ei impossibile. In sharply distinguishing between the fidelis’s negative obligations not to harm his lord, on the one hand, and his positive obligations to give his lord aid and counsel, on the other, historians of feudal institutions have overlooked the positive dimensions of the fidelis’s so-called “negative” obligations, which, in a world where political neutrality was virtually impossible to maintain, effectively required the fidelis to dissociate himself totally from anyone who was not his

lord’s friend and active supporter. 44 Behrends (1976) no. 51: “Ut

fidelis haec nocumenta caueat iustum est, sed non sufficit abstinere a malo, nisi fiat quod bonum est. Restat ergo ut in eisdem sex supradictis consilium et auxilium domino suo fideliter prestet, si beneficio dignus uideri uult, et saluus esse de fidelitate quam iurauit." The last phrase could have been construed so as to indicate that a fidelis had so-called “positive” obligations to his lord, whether or not he had received a benefice from him. ideo casamentum meretur. Non enim

In conclusion, Fulbert wrote, The

lord,

in his turn,

ought to treat his fidelis similarly with respect to each of the six matters [just mentioned]. If he does not do so, he will rightfully be considered to be of ill-faith [malefidus], just as the fidelis, if he is caught violating any of them by his own actions or by giving counsel [to others], will be considered 45 perfidious [perfidus] and perjured [periurus]. As this way of

rendering Fulbert’s letter indicates, the bishop did not state or imply relationship between a lord and his fidelis was created by a feudal or contract under which the lord granted a man a casamentum in agreement return for which the man then became the lord’s fidelis by swearing an oath of fidelity obligating him not only to abstain from doing wrong to his lord in the six ways already mentioned but also to do what was right, namely give his lord aid and counsel with respect to the same six matters. Instead, the letter simply represented the lord’s gift of a benefice to the fidelis as being contingent on the fidelis's earning it by fulfilling the terms of his oath of fidelity to his lord—a position that hardly amounts to a dramatic change from Carolingian patronage practices. The fidelis, according to Fulbert, would not be considered worthy of a beneficium or be discharged of his obligations under the oath of fidelity he had sworn to his lord unless he faithfully counseled and aided his lord with respect to the same six matters mentioned above. If he were to be caught violating any of these obligations, he would be judged unfaithful and perjured, in which case, by implication, his lord would be entitled, at the very least, to confiscate his beneficium and give it to others. While construing the obligations of the fidelis to his lord very broadly, the letter also indicated that under the terms of an oath that the lord evidently swore to his fidelis, the lord had parallel obligations to the fidelis, whom the lord was obliged not to harm with respect to the same six matters. Under one reading, the letter also implies that the lord was obliged “to give his [fidelis] counsel and aid faithfully” with respect to these same matters. Nevertheless, the letter treats the lord’s obligations to his fidelis as being weightier than the fidelis's obligations to his lord by implying that penalties for violating the former were more serious than were the penalties for violating the that the

latter. In

stating

that the lord had

identical to the

45

(1976) no. 51: “Dominus quoque fideli suo in his omnibus uicem reddere non fecerit, merito censibitur maleftdus, sicut ille, si in eorum preuaricacione uel faciendo uel consenciendo deprehensus fuerit, perfidus et periurus.” debet.

Behrends

obligations to his fidelis that were virtually fidelis’s obligations to his lord but that the fidelis evidently had

Quod

si

legal way of enforcing, Fulbert does not appear to have been proposing a interpretation of a lord’s obligations to his fidelis. From a comparison of Fulbert’s general statement of these obligations with statements from two capitularies of Charlemagne’s, one of them discussed by Nelson in a passage cited above, about the specific obligations whose violation gave a man grounds for abandoning his lord, we can see that all of the obligations mentioned in the two capitularies can be subsumed under the general categories of harm (dampnum) that lords swore not to cause their fideles and that fideles swore not to cause their lords. According to the capitulary of 802-803 discussed by Nelson, a man had grounds for abandoning his lord if the lord had tried to kill him or assault him with a stave [i.e. tried to harm him with respect to his life or members], or had tried to debauch his wife or daughter [i.e. tried to harm him with respect to his honor] or had tried to deprive him of part of his patrimony [i.e. tried to harm him with respect to his possessions or fortresses]. A man could also abandon his lord, according to a passage in another capitulary, this one dated 801-813, if the lord had tried to reduce him to servitude unjustly [i.e. tried to harm him with respect to his honor and possessions], plotted against his life [i.e. tried to harm him with respect to his body or members], committed adultery with his wife [i.e. harmed him with respect to his honor] intentionally fallen on him with his unsheathed sword [i.e. tried to harm him with respect to his body], or had failed to defend him as the lord ought to have done after the vassal had commended himself to his lord with his hands [i.e. had failed to give him aid 46 faithfully]. What distinguishes Fulbert’s statement about a lord’s obligations to no

novel

his

from the two passages just cited is that it was vague, as the two capitularies were not, about the possible consequences of the lord’s violating his obligations to his men. man

46

“Quod nullus seniorem

dimittat postquam ab

acciperit valente solido uno, aut filiam maculare, seu hereditatem ei tollere” (Boretius [1883 ], MGH Capit., I, no. 77 [802-3], c. 16 [p. 172]). “Si quis seniorem suum dimittere voluerit et ei approbare potuerit unum de his criminibus: id est primo capitulo si senior eum iniuste in servitio redigere voluerit; secundo capitulo si in vita eius consiliaverit; tertio capitulo si senior vassalli sui uxorem adulteraverit; quarto capitulo si evaginato gladio super eum occidere voluntarie occurrerit; quinto capitulo si senior vassalli sui defensionem facere potest postquam ipse excepto

manus

si eum vult

suas

occidere,

suum

aut cum baculo

in eius commendaverit et non

eo

caedere, vel

fecerit,

uxorem

liceat vassallum

eum

dimittere.

de istis quinque capitulis senior contra vassallum suum perpetraverit, liceat vassallum eum dimittere.” ( Boretius [1883 ], MGH, Capit., II, no. 104 [801-813],

Qualecumque

c.

8

[p. 215]).

and 364—5.

On these two texts,

see

Ganshof (1969) 31; and Boutruche

(1959)

1: 190-2

By privileging in this way the obligations of the fidelis to his lord over the obligations to the former and by treating the fidelis's right to a beneficium as being contingent on his being faithful to his lord in the ways that the letter explicates, Fulbert’s letter shows that a traditional oath of fidelity could be interpreted so as to legitimate the lord’s broad claims on his fidelis, while making it difficult if not impossible in practice for the fidelis to call the lord to account for failing to observe his own obligations of fidelity to his fidelis. Under this reading, the letter does not document the appearance of a new vassalic régime, much less the establishment of so-called classical feudalism; nor does it show that gifts of fiefs were undermining the fidelis's fidelity to his lord or that lords were being forced to assume new obligations to their fideles. Instead, the letter provided William and, by extension, other lords, with a template for making very serious claims on the loyalty of any fidelis to whom a lord had given a benefice and for threatening him with confiscation of the benefice and possibly other sanctions for any violation of his many demanding obligations to

latter’s

his lord. Two other letters of Fulbert’s

provide examples of the kinds of claims on his fideles that a lord could make by construing the oath of fidelity as he did in his letter to William. Consider, first, Fulbert’s letter to bishop Reginald of Paris: This is what I which I have

require shall

of you:

assurance as

acquire

the

owe

the laws of our court.

with your

to my life and limbs and the land

advice,

against all men fidelity you saving [king] handing over of Vendôme castle for me and my fideles to use, for which they will give you surety; the commendation of your milites, who hold a beneficium from our casamentum, saving the fidelity they owe you; justice as to the complaint of Sanctio and Hubert, as to the complaints of the canons of our church, and as to or

as

Robert, and

to your aid

as

to the

47

Here, Fulbert demands, in effect, that Reginald observe the Fulbert

terms of his oath of

fidelity by harming body, his fortifications, his or his of Fulbert also demands that Reginald aid him possessions justice. powers against all men except king Robert and counsel him faithfully with respect to the to

land that he holds

or

not

will

Fulbert’s

acquire through Reginald’s

counsel.

48

Another letter of

Fulbert’s, this one to the nobles in the Vendômois who held land from the church of Saint Mary of Chartres by the gift of bishop Reginald, illustrates both the 47 48

Behrends

(1976) no. 9 (1008). reading of Fulbert’s letter, (1998) 409.

For another

Bournazel

see

Poly and Bournazel (1991) 148-50;

and

claims that, under the terms of Fulbert’s letter to duke William, a lord could on fideles of his who held land from him or his church and the sanctions

make

that the lord could threaten to

impose

on

them.

them to do service to the church of Chartres

or

Summoning and admonishing else present a legal argument for

doing so, Fulbert wrote that if they did neither, he would excommunicate them, lay an interdict on the castle of Vendôme and its territory, give the lands they held from the church of Chartres to others, and never make any settlement

not

with them about these lands.

Despite wielded

49

the obvious differences between and the

bishop lay magnate, the authority that fideles is virtually identical to as a

Conventum, exercised of Poitou, he broke his

or

ones

some of the powers that Fulbert that duke William of Aquitaine exercised as a

Fulbert represents himself as having over his the authority that William, according to the

tried to exercise

own

over Hugh when, in his role of count agreements with Hugh, blocked Hugh’s agreements

with other lords, and refused to make settlements that he had promised to make Hugh. Count William also demanded the hostages that Hugh had taken in

for

disputes with other lords, demanded control over fortresses to which Hugh had claims by right of inheritance, and ordered Hugh to become the man of other lords.

50

As

Hugh’s lord, was William legally entitled to exercise authority over Hugh ways? Bisson assumes that he was, at least under Carolingian principles of public fidelity, and that Hugh could have had no normative basis for contesting the authority that William exercised or tried to exercise over him. William’s “problem,” he writes, in these

was

that

Hugh

lord of

could not be content with

Lusignan

submission that left the count free to alter agreements without

consulting

him. When

Hugh

ambitious clientele entitled him to there

trouble:

did the

an

equal

same

bearing

in reverse,

on as

a fidelity of Hugh’s interest

if his armed and

claim to his lord-count’s

seizures and devastations

good faith,

violations of

alleged relating to the control or inheritance of castles and lordships. All that is left of public order here is the tenacious recognition that complaints should be pleaded openly and procedurally.51 good

was

faith and

vengeful

sworn

over

commitments

Here, Bisson posits the existence of an old, moribund Carolingian public order, for which Nelson finds no evidence, and an emerging vassalic régime, for which 49 50

Behrends

(1976) no. 10 (1008) pp. 20-3. (1993) 147-57; and Beech et al. (1995) 51 Bisson (1994) 26-7. See White

123-38.

eleventh-century Mâconnais and which he and inadequate model for analyzing eleventh-century 52 aristocratic politics. If we read the Conventum against the two oaths of fidelity that Fulbert discusses in his letter to William of Aquitaine, roughly contemporaneous oaths of fidelity from Occitania, and the ninth-century Carolingian texts pertaining to fidelity that Nelson has discussed, the Conventum appears in a totally different light from the one Bisson places it in. Representing the dispute between William and Hugh from the latter’s perspective, the Conventum shows, as I have argued elsewhere, that whereas Hugh faithfully fulfilled the terms of his oath of fidelity to William, William was a traitor who had consistently acted in bad faith in his dealings with Hugh. The Conventum achieves this rhetorical effect, not by baldly asserting Hugh’s power to act as he did or by citing new-found feudal principles, but rather by repeatedly using words and phrases from the oaths of fidelity that William and Hugh had evidently exchanged and that also provided the basis for the statements in Fulbert’s letter to William about the obligations of a fidelis to his lord and a lord to his fidelis. Unlike Fulbert’s letter to William, however, the Conventum invokes the terms of this oath in such a way as to justify Hugh’s claims on his lord William and his decision to defy his lord and wage a guerra against him. In this way the Conventum gives greater weight than does Fulbert’s letter to the kind of reciprocal good faith between lord and fidelis for which Nelson finds 53 evidence in ninth-century Carolingian texts. The rhetorical strategy that the author of the Conventum deployed for the purpose of justifying Hugh’s conduct vis-à-vis his lord William presupposes that William had sworn an oath of fidelity to Hugh that resembled the oath that Fulbert glossed in his letter to the same William, the Occitanian oaths that men swore to their lords during the years around 1000, and, in several respects, Carolingian oaths of fidelity. As we have seen, Fulbert’s letter indicates that the lord swore not to do evil (malum) to his ifidelis by causing him harm (dampnum) with respect to his body (corpus), fortresses, or possessions or by making it difficult or impossible to accomplish something that would be of value to the fidelis. Under one interpretation of the letter, moreover, the lord swore to give his fidelis counsel (consilium) and aid (auxilium). Since, according to the same letter, the lord’s oath of fidelity to his fidelis was identical in most respects to the Duby

found

no

evidence in the

other historians have criticized

52

as an

In addition to criticisms of feudalism in the

legal sense of the word that are found (1997a) 321-41; and idem (1993) kinship and vassalage constituted

in works cited elsewhere in this paper, see Barthélemy 621, where Barthélemy argues that in the Vendômois,

“a double system of solidarity (or confrontation).” 53 See above at nn. 28-33; see also Magnou-Nortier

(1969)

117.

fidelis’s

oath to the lord, it is reasonable to suppose that it resembled Occitanian a lord, which, in turn, resembled Carolingian oaths of fidelity

oaths of fidelity to

by mlers

to their fideles, as well

Carolingian oaths sworn by fideles to fidelity, the fidelis swore faithfully (per directam fidem) that from this hour forward (de ista ora in antea) he would not harm his lord with respect to his body or his possessions, including fortresses, and would be a helper (adiutor) to his lord and be faithful (fidelis) to him without evil trickery (sine malo ingenio), as a man ought to be to his lord (sicut homo debet esse ad suum seniorem). The man also swore that unless he was absolved (absolvere) from his oath (sacramentum), neither he nor anyone acting in consultation (consilium) with him would cause loss (dampnum) to his lord (senior), make him lose (perdere) anything, take (tollere) property from him, injure him by evil trickery (malum ingenium), take certain specified actions without consulting him (sine consilio), or make an agreement (finis) or alliance (societas) 54 with any man or woman who took (tollere) property from the lord. As has of use a number of oaths out, Magnou-Nortier pointed ninth-century fidelity similar words and phrases, including: ab ista die in antea, vobis adiutor ero, sicut homo per drictum debet esse domino suo, sine fraude et malo ingenio, and sworn

as

their rulers. In Occitanian oaths of

consilio

et

auxilio.

55

For the purpose of demonstrating that William had betrayed (tradere) Hugh’s (fides) in him, the Conventum repeatedly deploys many words and phrases

faith

identical with,

or similar to, words and phrases used in oaths of fidelity, including: fidelitas (8 times), fides (9), fidelis (2); dampnum (5); malum (14); consilium (13); (ad)iuvare (10) and auxiliari (1); promittere (7); ingenium (5); finis (14); conventus (22) and convenientia (1); and tollere (8), as well as capere 56 (8), apprehendere (4), auferre (1), and ferre (3). These words, along with others that invoke oaths of fidelity, are woven into the story of Hugh and his lord William in such a way as to justify the former’s complaints against the latter. When Hugh aided his lord and obeyed his commands, he repeatedly incurred harm (dampnum) and evil (malum) for which he received no compensation from William. Although William was obliged to give aid (adiutorium or auxilium) to

54

On the terms of Occitanian oaths, see Magnou-Nortier (1969) esp. 119-26; and Cheyette (2001) 187-92. For examples of oaths, see Devic and Vaissette (1872) nos. 139 (c. 985; cols. 301-2), 148 (c. 989; cols. 312-14); 179 (c. 1020; cols. 372-4); 185 (c. 1025 cols. 381-2); 202 (c. 1034; cols. 406-11); 204 (c. 1035; cols. 412-14); 209 (c. 1036; cols. 425-6). 55 Magnou-Nortier (1969) 119. 56 See Beech et al. (1995) “Index du Conventum” (pp. 171-81), s. w.fidelitas,fides, fidelis, dampnum, malum, consilium, (ad)iuvare, auxiliari, promittere, ingenium, finis, conventus, convenientia, tollere, capere, apprehendere, auferre,ferre.

Hugh, under the oath of fidelity promised (promittere) to do so, the

William had

sworn to

him, and explicitly

aid William

promised Hugh was never forthcoming. On several occasions, William promised to take counsel (consilium) with Hugh before undertaking actions that had bearing on Hugh’s interests, including his claim to hold a castrum that had been his father’s; but in each case William acted without consulting with Hugh. Hugh acted out of trust, fidelity, and love for his lord William, who reciprocated by breaking his promises to Hugh and treating him with evil trickery (per malum ingenium). Finally, William insulted and dishonored Hugh by claiming him as “his,” asserting his power to make Hugh the man of a rusticus, and ordering his [i.e. William’s] men to besiege a fortress where Hugh’s wife resided. In short, the Conventum demonstrated that in exercising his authority over Hugh in the ways already mentioned, William harmed Hugh with respect to his body, his agreements with others, his fortifications, his possessions, his honor, and various interests of his that William had made it impossible for him to achieve. By situating the dispute between the two men in a political world that Fulbert’s letter to William totally excludes from view, while legitimating the authority of lords living in that world, the Conventum also shows implicitly that Hugh was entitled to many of the gifts of land that he sought from William by right of inheritance, by conquest, or by virtue of the agreements Hugh had made with William or others. In the course of demonstrating that William was a traitor, the Conventum specifies normative grounds on which Hugh may have sought redress at William’s court for the injuries that William had caused him in violation of William’s own oath of fidelity. When he received no justice there, he renounced his fealty to William except for William’s person and his city of Poitiers. When William responded by seizing a benefice of Hugh’s, Hugh retaliated, at which point William agreed to come to an agreement with him. In the narrating of this story, the Conventum, in contrast to Fulbert’s letter to William, treats a fidelis's limited renunciation of fidelity to his lord and direct 57 attacks against him as appropriate sanctions against a lord who was a traitor. Even though the Conventum obviously represented the dispute between Hugh and William tendentiously, just as Fulbert tendentiously represented the claims of lords over their fideles, this narrative shows that it was thinkable in the early eleventh century to justify a fidelis’s claims on his lord by invoking traditional terms of oaths of fidelity and to do so without deviating from Fulbert’s interpretation of them, which, with only a little tinkering, could have legitimated

57

See White

(1993) ;

see

also idem

Conventum include Martindale

(1996) 223-30. Important recent (1997) chap. VIII; and Barthélemy (2000).

studies of the

58

Lusignan’s claims against his faithless lord. Though written in such a way as to privilege the lord’s claims on the fidelity of his fidelis, Fulbert’s letter still acknowledged what Reynolds calls the “mutuality” of obligations between lords and their fideles. If we supplement the letter with the postulate that a limited feud was an appropriate sanction for a fidelis to use against a lord who had violated his obligations to his man and also denied him justice, we arrive at a clear justification for Hugh’s conduct, as the Conventum both represents and Hugh

of

justifies it. In order to

explicate

the Conventum and Fulbert’s letter of

not assume that either of these texts

fidelity,

we

need

evidence of the establishment of a

provides régime that came into being in northern Francia in the years around 1000 through a process of feudalization that corrupted an old Carolingian system of public order. Instead, both texts represent a political world in which it was not feudal contracts or the feudal institutions of fief and vassalage, but rather oaths of fidelity, whatever precise form they took, that provided the key terms of a discourse in terms of which nobles, both lay and ecclesiastic, legitimated their own conduct and that of their amici, as they represented, evaluated, and tried to control political relations between lords and fideles in different ways and from different positions in a political field. This discourse, I believe, can be meaningfully characterized as “feudal”; but, given the misunderstandings that the use of this term inevitably creates, there are certainly good reasons to call it a 59 “culture of fidelity,” as Cheyette proposes, or a discourse of fidelity. As Duby pointed out in his study of the Mâconnais, fiefs and vassalage did not constitute the primary basis of social relations within the eleventh-century nobility; and to represent political relations between lords and fideles or lords and vassals in this way is deeply misleading. As Cheyette pointed out in 1968 “If a historian approaches medieval society primarily in terms of fief and vassalage, he must make an important empirical assumption, [namely] that fief-holding and vassalage were in fact of primary importance in medieval society, indeed, that they determined its nature.” Rejecting this assumption, along with the assumption that the fief and vassalage were legal institutions, historians since Duby have found alternative ways of analyzing what Cheyette identified as the relationships of “dominion and dependence, command and obedience, fellowship and service” that had “traditionally been explained in new

vassalic

,

58

The Conventum

also echoes the words of the

that William tried to make

capitulary

cited above in

n.

36

by

serf.

complaining Hugh 59 See Cheyette (2001) chaps. 10-13. On feudal discourse, see 127-141; idem (2000) 169-88; idem (1994) 173-97; and idem (2003a). a

White

(2002)

terms of

vassalage” and,

in

some cases,

these historians have not

the fief.

60

In

pursuing

these lines of

the “documented realities” of fief and

inquiry, ignored vassalage. Instead, after abandoning the conventionalized historiographical practice of reading texts such as Fulbert’s letter to William, the Conventum of Hugh of Lusignan, and oaths of fidelity as though they were transparent legal documents providing evidence of legal institutions, they have found that such texts take on new significance, as Cheyette observed, if one treats them as evidence of discursive practices rather than reading them through the lens of feudalism

60 61

or

feudal institutions.

61

Cheyette (1968) 5, 7; see also Cheyette (1996) 998-1006. a brilliant, devastating critique of Ganshof (1964) see Guerreau (1980)

For

,

78-80.

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——.

,

-

.

Index

the most important topics discussed; the most and the most important texts cited, including literary as historical ones. It does not include references to modem scholars or their works.

This index contains references

important persons well

as

and

to

places mentioned;

casamenta: X X_12 ; XIII XIII_17 XIII_18 ; see fiefs castles: VI VI_147 ; X X_13 ; see fortresses Catalonia: XIII XIII_11 XIII_13

Abbo of Fleury, Canons: XIII XII _13 action

theory:

-

I I_112

agreement of Hugh of Lusignan: see Conventum inter Guillelmum

Aquitanorum

et

comes

-

chansons de geste: VII VII_148 , VII_151 ; IX IX_353 ; XX_4 ,

Hugonem

Chiliarchum

see -

et

comes

Charles the Bald, king and emperor:

aid: VII VII_149 ; XIII XII _18 XIII_19 , XII _21 , XII _23 XII _4 ; -

XIII XIII_15 XIII_17 -

-

service

Charroi de Nîmes: VII VII_152 VII_4 ; X X_14 ; XI XI_131 ; XII XII_79 , XII_82 , XII_84 , XII_86 , XII_88 , XII_95 -

Alexandre de Paris, Le roman d'Alexandre: XI XI_127 XI_38 ; XII XII_77 XII_8 , XII_79 XII_80 , XII_82 , XII_84 , XII_95 allods: IX IX_354 ; XIII XII _9 anger: III III_118 , III_127 , III_130 ; V V_176 , V_185 , V_191 ; -

-

-

-

-

-

,

charters: I I_106 I_7 , I_111 ; IX IX_353 XII XII_73 Chrétien de Troyes, Le conte du Graal (Perceval): X X_14 -

chivalry: Cicero:

VII VII_150 VII_51 ; X X_12 ; XI XI_133

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: IV IV_1 IV_18 anthropology: I I_112 ; II II_345 II_347 II_350 II_51 II_357 II_360 II_362 ; III III_117 n.III_38; VIII VII _3 ; ,

,

XI XI_137 ; XII XII_85 , XII_96 ; XIII XIII_15 , XIII_17 ,XIII_20

Hugonem

Chiliarchum see

-

,

Loheren, Raoul de Cambrai Charlemagne, king and emperor:

agreements: X X_11 , X_15 ; XIII XIII_22 XIII_3 ; see Conventum inter Guillelmum

Aquitanorum

X_6 X_13 X_14 ; XI XI_131 ; XII XII_71 XI_96 ;

Charroi de Nîmes, Garin le

,

,

,

X X_15 ; XII XII_63 , XII_67 , XII_70 , XII_73 , XII_89 , XII_97 avarice: XI XI_127 , XI_134 XI_8 ; XII XII_70 , XII_73 , XII_75 , XII_78 , XII_80 , XII_83 , XII_92 XII_4 -

-

De inventione: XIII XIII_17 De officiis: X X_2 ; XII XII_94 clans:I I_99 , I_101 ; see kinship groups Clotild, queen of the Franks: III III_107 , III_111 , III_113 , III_118 III_20 , III_124 , III_128 Clovis, king of the Franks: III III_107 , III_112 , III_114 III_15 , III_119 , III_121 III_4 , III_126 , III_129 -

-

ban: XIIIXII _9 benefices: XII XII_64 n.XII_2; XIII XII _13 , XII _19 XII _21 , XII _24 ; -

communalism: II,113_93

compensation: I I_98 I_100 ; III III_113 III_120 ;

fiefs Beowulf: IV IV_12 bequests: I I_103 see

birth-rights:

—

collectivism: I I_110 ; II II_352 -

,

VII VII_147 VII_8 ; X X_7 ; XII XII_77 , XII_87 consilium: see counsel -

II_103 5 -

bloodfeuds: II_97 I_101 ; IV IV_14 , IV_16 ; V V_176 ; see feuds, guerrae book-land: I I_104 Bracton, De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae: II II_353 , II_356 II_7 bribery: XI XI_129 , XI_134 -

-

contracts: IV IV_18 ; see feudal contracts convenientiae: XIII XIII_11 ; see agreements Conventio: see Conventum Conventum inter Guillelmum Aquitanorum et Hugonem Chitiarchum: VII_147 VII_57 ; VIII VII _5 VII _9 ; IX IX_353 ; X X_6 X_17 ; XI XI_131 ; XII XII_72 XI_95 XI_7 ; comes

VII

-

-

-

-

,

XIII XIII_13 , XIII_16 XIII_17 , XIII_22 co-ownership: I I_103 n. 68 -

capitalism: II II_345 II_9 II_352 II_3 II_362 capitularies, Carolingian: XIII XII _7 XIII_8 -

-

,

,

-

,

XIII_15 , XIII_20

corporations:

II_94 ,

96 8 -

Index counsel: VII VII_148 , VII_149 VII_50 , VII_151 ; XIII XII _18 XIII_19 , -

-

XIII_21 , XIII_23 XIII_4 courtesy: XII XII_74

oaths of: VII VII_151 VII_2 ; VIII VII _1 VII _9 ; X X_7 X_10 ; -

-

XII XII_65 ; XIII XII _14

—

XIII_20 ;

-

fealty fief-giving: XI XI_128 XI_9 XI_133 XI_138 ; XII XII_65 XII_69 XII_70 XII_72 XII_3 XII_80 XII_85 XII_89 XII_92 ; XIII XII _13 ; see gifts fiefs: I I_104 I_108 ; V V_173 V_97 ; VI VI_141 VI_148 ; see

-

-

,

I I_94 , I_110 ; II II_356 custom: I I_95 ; II II_354 , II_356 , II_358 ; IV IV_8 , IV_17 IV_18 ; IX IX_350 IX_51 ; X X_17 ; XIII XIII_10 Cyneheard, brother of Sigeberht: IV IV_1 18 Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons: courts:

-

-

,

,

-

-

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

VII VII_153 ; VIII VII _6 ; IX IX_349 IX_55 ; X X_1 , X_3 X_4 , X_6 , X_7 , X_9 , X_11 X_15 ; XI XI_127 XI_8 , XI_131 ; XII XII_63 XII_74 , XII_76 ; XIII XII _9 XIII_13 , XIII_21 , XII _25-XII _6 ;

-

-

-

-

,

IV IV_1 IV_18 -

-

-

benefices, casamenta reprise: XI XI_133

see

discourse: V V_174 ; X X_16 ; XI XI_129 XI_30 ; XII XII_71 ; -

XIII XIII_25-XIII_6 dishonor: III III_120 ; V V_178 , V_185 , V_193 , V_196 ; XII XII_72 , XII_84 , XII_97 ; see shame disinheritance: I I_109 ; V V_174 ; IX IX_353 ; X X_14 ; XI

XI_132 XI_4 XI_136 XI_8 ; XII XII_81 -

fiefs de

fortresses: X X_12 , X_15 ; XIII XIII_22 XII _3 ; see castles II II_352 ; VI VI_151 ; IX IX_355 ; XI XI_128 ; XIII XII _9 XIII_13 , XIII_15 , XIII_22 -

Francia, Carolingian:

-

III III_120 ; VIII VII _3 ; X X_3 , XII XII_79 ; XIII XII _9 XIII_10

friendship:

-

,

,

Fulbert, bishop

of Chartres: VII VII_151 VII_154 ; VIII VII _1 VII _9 ; X X_6 ,X_8 ; XI XI_131 ; XII XII_72 , XII_91 -2 ; XIII XIII_13 , XIII_16-XIII_26

XII_85 XII_7 , XII_89 XII_93 VI VI_140 -

,

Domesday Book:

,

-

Fulk Nerra, count of Anjou: VIII VII _8 ;

enmity (inimicitia): V V_185 ; hatred

see

X_8 X_17 ;

-

,

X X_12 , X_15

(malum): VII VII_148 ; XIII XIII_24 exchange: III III_109 III_10 III_113 ; V V_178 V_181 V_184 V_188 V_192 ; VII VII_154 ; X X_5 X_8 X_15 X_16 ; XI XI_131 ; XII XII_67 XII_69 XII_78 XII_96 XII_7 ; see gifts evil

gages: XI XI_131

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

excommunication: XIII XIII_21 extortion: XI XI_129

Karoli Galbert of Bruges, De multro Comitis Flandriarum: X X_6 Garin le Loheren: X X_14 generosity: V V_184 , V_186 ; VII VII_152 ; X X_1 X_2 , X_4 X_5 ; XI XI_127 XI_9 , XI_133 XI_4 , XI_136 XI_8 ; XII XII_69 XII_71 , XII_73 XII_4 , XII_78 , XII_80 XII_81 , XII_83 -XII_4 , .

.

.

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

,

family: I I_91 I_113 ; II II_354 II_357 II_359 II_62 ; -

-

,

,

IV IV_14 , IV_18 ; IX IX_349 ; XIII XII _9

XII_89 , XII_93 XII_5 , XII_98 ; XIII XIII_14 ; Gerbert of Aurillac: XIII XIII_13

see

-

gifts

family solidarity: I I_95 I_113 fealty: VIII VII _8 ; XI XI_133 ; XII XII_78 ; XIII XII _13 ; see fidelity felony: V V_192

gifts: I I_103 I_105

feoffments: II II_353 II_4

XII _21 XII _24 ; see exchange, fief-giving, generosity, patronage Gregory of Tours: III III_107 III_30

,

—

-

-

-

feudalism: I I_95 ; II II_361 II_2 ; V V_174 , V_194 V_7 ; VI VI_138 VI_55 ; VIII VI _1 VII _9 ; IX IX_349 IX_55 ; X X_3 X_4 , X_8 , X_15 , X_16 ; XI XI_128 XI_9 , XI_133 ; -

-

-

-

-

-

-

,

-

IV_13 IV_15 IV_17 ; V V_185 V_193 V_196 V_7 ; X X_7 X_15 X_16 ; XII XII_97 ; see bloodfeuds, -

,

,

,

-

,

guerrae fideles: VII VII_147 VII_8 VII_150 VII_52 ; VIII VII _1 VII _9 ; X X_7 X_12 , X_14 ; XI XI_136 ; XII XII_82 , XII_92 , -

-

-

,

-

XII_95 XII_6 ; XIII XIII_13 -XIII_26 -

-

-

,

,

-

,

-

-

-

-

guerrae: V V_173 V_5 , V_179 , V_187 V_9 , V_197 ; VII VII_147 ; VIII VII _8 ; XIII XII _23 ; see bloodfeuds, feuds -

-

guerredons:

XI XI_132 XI_3 , XI_135 ; -

see

rewards

harm

VII VII_151 , XIII XIII_20 , XIII_23 XIII_4

(dampnum):

VII_152 ;

X X_8 ;

-

hatred (odium): V V_185 , V_189 ; X X_2 ; XII XII_94 ; see

enmity

Havamal: X X_17 heiresses: XI XI_137 heirs: I I_97 , I_102 n.I_67, I_103-I_10 ; II II_353-II_4 ; X X_12

Hemming's Cartulary: VI VI_140 Henry I, king of England: XII XII_92 XII_94 Henry II, king of England: II II_346 homage: VIII VII _2 VII _4 ; X X_9 X_13 ; XI XI_133 ; XII XII_65 ,

fidelity: VII VII_152 VII_154 ; VIII VII _1 VII _9 ; X X_6 X_7 X_10 ; XI XI_131 ; XII XII_68 XII_9 XII_72 XII_91 XII_96 ; XIII XII _1 XIII_20

-

-

-

XII XII_63 XII_4 , XII_67 , XII_73 , XII_88 , XII_90 , XII_98 ; XIII XII _9 XIII_14 XIII_21 XIII_26 feuds: I I_97 , I_100 , I_112 ; III III_107 III_30 ; IV IV_10 , ,

-

,

feudal contracts: VIII VII _1 VII _6 ; X X_4 , X_9 , X_16 ; XI XI_128 , XI_131 ; XII XII_64 XII_72 , XII_78 , XII_88 , XII_91 -XII_9 ; XIII XIII_11 , XIII_16 , XIII_19 , XIII_25 feudal revolution: XIII XIII_10 XIII_12 feudal society: VI VI_147 , VI_149 n. VI_41, VI_150 , VI_152

,

12 ; II II_354 ; V V_175 V_7 , V_181 , , V_183 , V_185 , V_196 ; VII VII_150 , VII_153 VII_4 ; VIII VII _2 , VII _8 ; IX IX_354 ; X X_1 X_17 ; XI XI_127 XI_38 ; XII XII_63 XII_5 , XII_67 ; XIII XIII_14 , -

,

,

,

,

XII_78 ; XIII XIII_10 XIII_13 ,

,

Index homicide: II_98 ; III III_107 III_12 , III_114 , III_116 , III_119 , III_121-III_4 , III_126 , III_128 , III_130 ; IV IV_2 IV_9 , IV_11 , -

-

IV_13 ; V V_174 V_176 V_7 ; XII XII_97 -

-

,

,

,

X X_1

-

-

,

honor (honor): III III_122 , III_130 ; V V_174 n.V_4, V_175 V_6 , V_178 , V_183 V_6 V_188 , V_193 , V_196 V_7 ;

VIIVII_147 VII_151 VII_154 ;

-

lordship: IV IV_1 IV_18 ; V V_174 ; VIII VI _1 VII _9 ; IX IX_350 IX_354 ; X X_3 X_6 X_10 X_13 X_15 X_17 ; XI XI_134 -

-

,

-

lords: IV IV_4 , IV_6 IV_7 , IV_10 , IV_12 ; VII VII_150

X_2 X_3 X_4 -

-

,

,

,

,

XI_138 ; XII XII_76 , XII_80 , XII_84 ; XIII XII _9 XIII_13 , XIII_15 love (amor): VII VII_148 ; VIII VII _6 VII _7 ; XII XII_71 , XII_80 , XII_95 XII_6 : XIII XIII_24 loyalty: IX IX_350 , IX_355 ; X X_3 ; XI XI_134 XI_5 ; -

-

-

,

X_7 X_8 , X_10 , X_15 ; XI XI_129 , XI_132 , XI_137 XI_8 ; XII XII_69 XII_74 , XII_76 , XII_78 , XII_80 , XII_87 , XII_89 , XII_92 , -

-

,

-

XII XIII_21

-

XII_96 XII_97 ; XIII XIII_15 , XIII_20 , XIII_22 , XIII_24 ,

hostages: X X_8 X_15 ; XII XII_96 ; XIIIXIII_2 Hugh of Lusignan: VII VII_147 VII_57 ; X X_7 X_16 ;

XII_64 XII_67 XII_69 XII_80 XII_86 XII_97 ; XIII XII _14 ,

,

,

,

,

,

,

XII XII_95 XII_7 ; XIII XIII_22-XIII_6 ; see Conventum inter Guillelmum

Mâconnais: VIII VII _3 VIII_5 , VII _9 ; XIII XII _9 XIII_12 , XIII_22 , XIII_25 manorialization: VI VI_150 markets: II II_348 , II_352 , II_357 II_60

Aquitanorum comes

mediation: III III_124

-

-

-

-

et

-

Hugonem

Chiliarchum individualism: I I_93 , I_96 , I_101 , I_107 , I_110 , I_113 ; II II_345 II_63 —

individuals: II_113 , IV IV_15 , IV_18 inheritance: I I_96 , I_102 I_3 , I_105 ; II II_353 , II_356 , II_360 II_62 ; V V_173 V_97 ; IX IX_353 ; X X_2 , X_12 X_13 ; XI XI_132 , XI_136 ; XII XII_79 , XII_81 , XII_83 , XII_86 XII_7 , XII_92 , XII_94 XII_5 ; XIII XIII_10 , XIII_22 ; -

-

-

-

-

see

-

-

primogeniture

investiture: XI XI_132

milites: X X_2 , X_15 ; see knights mode of production: feudal: XIII XII _9 , XIII_11 slave: XIIIXIII_9 models:

of feudalism: X X_16 ; XI XI_128 XI_9 , XI_131 ; -

XII XII_64 , XII_66 , XII_68 XII_9 , XII_72 , XII_88 , XII_90 of fidelity: X X_9 X_13 -

-

of gift-giving: X X_172 of lordship: V V_177 n.V_9; VII VII_154 ; X X_9 , X_15 ; XI XI_134 modernization theory: II II_362

Josselin, Ralph: II II_358 II_60 judges: I I_95 I_108 I_9 justice, seigneurial: VI VI_145 VI_8 -

V V_195 ; VI VI_141 , VI_148 ; IX IX_350 , IX_354 norms: III III_114 ; IV IV_6 IV_7 , IV_17 ; V V_177 ;

Normandy:

-

,

-

-

kin: II_98 , I_99 , I_100 , I_102 , I_104 , I_106 I_8 , I_110 I_11 ; -

-

II_354 II_358 II_9 ; III III_113 III_14 III_119 III_20 III_126 ; IV IV_3 IV_4 ; V V_174 V_176 V_181 V_185

II

-

-

,

-

-

-

-

,

IXIX_350 IX_51 , IX_353 , IX_355 ; X X_9 X_10 ; XII XII_81 , XII_86 XII_7 , XII_97 ; XIII XIII_14 , XIII_24

,

—

,

,

,

,

obedience: IX IX_349 IX_51 ; XII XII_66 ; XIII XIII_26

V_188 , V_193 ; VIII VII _4 ; X X_12 ; XII XII_88 kingship: I I_95

-

kinship: II_91 I_113 ; II II_347 II_8 II_352 II_3 II_357 ; III III_108 III_114 III_120 III_25 III_130 ; IV IV_1 IV_18 ; -

-

-

,

,

-

-

,

,

,

orality: VII VII_148 Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History: XII XII_72 , XII_92

outlaws: II_101

V V_188 ; VIII VII _2 ; IX IX_350 ; XIII XIII_10 kinship groups: I I_92 , I_94 , I_96 , I_100 , I_106 , I_109 I_10 , I_112 ; II II_348 ; III III_113 , III_124 ,

ownership:

III_130 ; IV IV_10 , IV_16 ; V V_192 knights: VI VI_147 , VI_153 ; VIII VII _4 ; see milites

patronage: IX IX_353 ; XI XI_131 , XI_137 ; XII XII_70 XII_71 ,

outrage: V V_175 , V_183 , V_187 , V_191

-

II_97 ,

I_101 I_5 ; II II_353 II_7 ; IV IV_16 -

-

-

XII_84 , XII_89 XII_90 , XII_98 ; XIII XIII_14 , XIII_19 ; see gifts peace: V V_176 , V_192 peasants: II II_346 II_52 ; VI VI_148 , VI_153 ; IX IX_349 ; X X_10 ; XIII XI _1 -

largesse: see generosity laudatio parentum: II_102

I_67, I_108

n.

n.

I_109

-

,

I_109

law: I I_93 I_9 , I_101 I_2 , I_108 I_9 , I_112 ; II II_356 II_7 ; IV IV_15 ; V V_177 ; VIII VII _8 ; IX IX_353 IX_5 ; -

-

-

-

-

perjury: VII VII_152 ; XIII XIII_19 Philippe de Navarre, Les quatres

X X_13 ; XII XII_85 I_104 , I_111

family: I

feudal: VI VI_143 ; VIII VII _4 , VII _5 French: I I_111 of real property: I I_102 , I_103 II II_347 ; XII XII_85 Leges Henrici Primi: I I_98 lineages: II_100, I_113 ; V V_184

peers: XI XI_132 perfidy: VII VII_150 ages de

l'homme: XI XI_134 , XI_180 ; XII XII_80 placita: X X_6

I_71, I_105 ;

n.

III III_120 , III_125 , III_130 ; V V_177 ; X X_2 ; XI XI_134 XI_5 ; XII XII_84 XII_94 XII_97 Poitou: VII VII_147 VII_54 ; VIII VII _1 VII _9 ; XII XII_95 XII_7 ;

plunder:

-

,

-

XIII XIII_13 , XIII_24

,

-

-

,

Sigeberht, king of the West Saxons:

prayers: II_106

primogeniture: I I_104 I_107 I_9 ; -

,

II II_353 ;

-

-

social networks: IV IV_13 ; VIII VII _3 VIII_5 , VII _8

inheritance

see

promises: VII VII_148

IV IV_1 IV_2

slaves: XIII XII _9 XIII_12 -

states: II_95 I_6 ; IV IV_18

VII_9 VII_152

-

-

,

strategies: VIII VII _2 ; XII XII_98 officializing: VII VII_147 VII_54 ; XII XII_98

Prose-Lancelot: X X_1 X_2 , X_3 , X_4 ; XII XII-73 , XII-76 -

prowess: XII XII_81

-

rhetorical: IV IV_13 ; XIII XIII_23 raids: III III_120 , III_125

Ranulph Flambard:

structuralist-functionalism: III III_112 ; VIII VII _3 ; IX IX_355

X X_2 ; XII XII_94

Raoul de Cambrai: V V_173 , V_194 V_7 ; VII VII_152-VII_4 ; X X_13 X_14 ; XI XI_131 ; XII XII_79 , XII_82 XII_3 XII_86 XII_7 XII_95 -

Tacitus, Germania: II II_353 taking: X X_12 X_15 ; XI XI_134 ; XII XII_97 ; XIII XIII_23

-

-

-

,

Raoul de Houdenc, Roman des eles: XII XII_74 6 , XII_79 , XII_82

traitors: VII VII_152 ; XIII XIII_22 , XIII_24 treason: IV IV_6 ; VII VII_149 ; XIII XIII_14

-

reciprocity: X X_12

X_17 ; XIII XIII_15 XIII_16 , XIII_23 reconciliations: V V_176 Red Book of Worcester: VI VI_140 Reginald, bishop of Paris: XIII XIII_21 reparations: V V_176 ; see compensation retrait

-

,

V V_195 ; VI VI_143 , VI_147 VI_9 , VI_153 ; VII VII_149 VII_152 VII_4 ; VIII VII _1 , VII _3 , VII _6 ; IX IX_349 IX_55 ; X X_6 X_8 , X_10 , X_15 ; XI XI_128 ,

vassalage:

see

-

-

,

-

,

XI_133 ; XII XII_64 XII_6 XII_68 , XII_91 XII_2 , XII_96 XII_7 ; -

-

-

,

lignager: I I_103-I_4

revenge:

XIII_4

-

,

,

XIII XII _9 XIII_13 , XIII_25-XIII_6 -

vengeance

vengeance: II_98 ; III III_107 , III_109 III_17 , III_120 III_26 , III_128 III_30 ; IV IV_2 , IV_5 , IV_7 IV_9 , IV_11 IV_13 IV_17 IV_18 ; V V_176 V_7 , V_185 , V_196 vengeance groups: I I_99 ; III III_129 -

rewards: XI XI_128 XI_9 ,XI_132 , XI_135 XI_6 ; XII XII_76 XII_81 , XII_85 , XII_87 XII_8 , XII_92 , XII_98 ; XIII XIII_13 XIII_14 ; see guerredons rhetoric: VII VII_147 VII_57 Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy: XII XII_92 XII_93 Roger, earl of Hereford: XII XII_93 romances of antiquity: XI XI_128 ; -

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

,

-

violence: III III_119 ; IV IV_13

symbolic:

XII XII_67

,

Paris, d’Alexandre: XI XI_127-XI_38; XII XII_77-XII_8, XIi_79-XII_80, XII_82, XII_84, XII_95 rules: I I_94 I_99 I_107 I_8 ; II II_356 ; IV IV_6 IV_8 IV_14 Alexandre de

see

Le

roman

-

,

-

,

,

IV_17 ; VI VI_143 ; VII VII_148 ;

see

,

norms

Wace, Roman de Brut: XII XII_76 warranty: II II_354 II_5 ; V V_180 V_82 , V_184 , V_186 V_7 -

-

-

,

-

William, count of Poitou, duke of Aquitaine: VII VII_147 VII_57 ; VIII VI _1 VII _9 ; X X_6 X_16 ; XII XII_91 XII_95 XII_7 ; XIII XIII_16 XIII_18 -

-

-

-

-

,

scarcity, of land:

X X_10 ,

X_15 ; XI XI_136 ;

William I, king of England, duke of

-

-

-

,

XII_77 XII_9 XII_81 XII_86 XII_9 XII_92 XII_96 ; XIII XII _11 XII _14 -

-

,

,

,

,

,

aid shame: III III_118 , III_120 III_130 ; IV IV_12 ; V V_178 , XIII_21 ,

see

,

,

see

,

,

,

dishonor

,

XII XII_69

XII_71

,

-

,

V_185 V_189 V_193 ; XI XI_136 ; XII_75 XII_79 XII_81 XII_83 XII_87 XII_89 ;

Normandy: XII XII_93 William II, king of England: X X_2 , X_5 , X_13 X_14 ; XII XII_94 William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum Anglorum: X X_2 X_6 , X_14 ; XII XII_92 , XII_94 wrath: III III_117 ; see anger -

-

,

,

XII _21

XII XII_84 , XII_97 serfs: II II_356 ; XI XI_135 XI_6 ; XII XII_82 , XII_84 ; XIII XII _9 service: V V_180 , V_183 V_5 ; VI VI_149 ; XI XI_128 XI_9 , XI_131 XI_3 , XI_135 XI_137 ; XII XII_64 XII_5 XII_71 , -

,

V_191 ; X X_14 ; XI XI_127 ; XII XII_82 XII_88 wars: X X_16 ; see feuds, guerrae wergild: I I_98 I_100, I_101

-

,

wrongs: III III_119 ; VII VII_150

,

Yorkshire: I I_109