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CHAPTER XVIII.
FEUDALISM.
The feudal organisation of state and society is the dominant fact of medieval history on its institutional side quite as much as the city-state is the dominant fact of ancient history from the institutional point of view. Such dominant facts cannot be restricted chronologically to a definite period; they arise gradually and give way slowly to new conditions. But it may be said in a general way that the epoch when feudalism formed most characteristically the centre of political and social arrangements comprised the eleventh and twelfth centuries. From the thirteenth century onwards feudal law continued to be appealed to and feudal principles were sometimes formulated even more sharply than before, but the modern State was beginning to assert itself in most European countries in an unmistakable manner and its influence began to modify the fundamental conceptions of feudalism. In our survey of feudal society we shall therefore look for illustrations mainly to the period between the years 1000 and 1200, though sometimes we may have to draw on the materials presented by thirteenth century documents.
The essential relations of feudalism are as unfamiliar to us as the conception of the city-state. In one sense it may be defined as an arrangement of society on the basis of contract. Contracts play an important part in the business life of our time, but we do not think of the commonwealth as based on leases: we do not consider a nation primarily as a number of lords and tenants; we do not take the status of every single person to be determined by obligations as to land; we do not assume that the notions of sovereignty and of citizenship depend on the stipulations of an express or implied contract. In the medieval period under consideration, on the other hand, it would be easy to deduce all forms of political organisation and of social intercourse from feudal contract. The status of a person depended in every way on his position on the land, and on the other hand, land-tenure determined political rights and duties. The public organisation of England, for example, was derived from the fact that all the land
