in 1844 was appointed dean of the faculty of medicine. He cultivated the acquaintance of Franz Grillparzer, Heinrich Laube, and other intellectual lights of the Viennese world, interested himself greatly in educational matters, and in 1848, while refusing the presidency of the ministry of education, accepted the appointment of under secretary of state in that department. His health, however, gave way, and he died at Vienna on the 3rd of September 1849. He was not only a clever physician, but a poet of fine aesthetical taste and a philosopher. Among his medical works may be mentioned: Über das Hippokratische erste Buch von der Diät (Vienna, 1835), Ärzte und Publicum (Vienna, 1848) and Lehrbuch der ärztlichen Seelenkunde (1845). His poetical works include Gedichte (Stutt. 1836), among which is the well-known beautiful hymn, which Mendelssohn set to music. “Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rat.” As a philosopher he is best known by his Zur Diätetik der Seele [Dietetics of the soul] (Vienna, 1838), which attained great popularity, and the tendency of which, in contrast to Hufeland’s Makrobiotik (On the Art of Prolonging Life), is to show the true way of rendering life harmonious and lovely. This work had by 1906 gone into fifty editions. Noteworthy also is his Beiträge zur Litteratur-, Kunst- und Lebenstheorie (Vienna, 1837–1841), and an anthology, Geist der deutschen Klassiker (Vienna, 1851; 3rd ed. 1865–1866).
His collected works (with the exception of the purely medical ones) were published in 7 vols. by Fr. Hebbel (Vienna, 1851–1853). See M. Necker, “Ernst von Feuchtersleben, der Freund Grillparzers,” in the Jahrbuch der Grillparzer Gesellschaft, vol. iii. (Vienna, 1893).
FEUD, animosity, hatred, especially a permanent condition of hostilities between persons, and hence applied to a state of private warfare between tribes, clans or families, a “vendetta.” The word appears in Mid. Eng. as fede, which came through the O. Fr. from the O. High Ger. fehida, modern Fehde. The O. Teutonic faiho, an adjective, the source of fehida, gives the O. Eng. fáh, foe. “Fiend,” originally an enemy (cf. Ger. Feind), hence the enemy of mankind, the devil, and so any evil spirit, is probably connected with the same source. The word fede was of Scottish usage, but in the 16th century took the form foode, fewd in English. The New English Dictionary points out that “feud, fee (Lat. feudum) could not have influenced the change, for it appears fifty years later than the first instances of foode, &c., and was only used by writers on feudalism.” For the etymology of “feud” (feudum) see Fee, and for its history see Feudalism.
FEUDALISM (from Late Lat. feodum or feudum, a fee or
fiel; see Fee). In every case of institutional growth in history
two things are to be clearly distinguished from the beginning
for a correct understanding of the process and its results. One
of these is the change of conditions in the political or social
environment which made growth necessary. The other is the
already existing institutions which began to be transformed to
meet the new needs. In studying the origin and growth of
political feudalism, the distinction is easy to make. The all-prevailing
need of the later Roman and early medieval society
was protection—protection against the sudden attacks of
invading tribes or revolted peasants, against oppressive neighbours,
against the unwarranted demands of government officers,
or even against the legal but too heavy exactions of the government
itself. In the days of the decaying empire and of the
chaotic German settlement, the weak freeman, the small landowner,
was exposed to attack in almost every relation of life
and on every side. The protection which normally it is the
business of government to furnish he could no longer obtain.
He must seek protection elsewhere wherever he could get it,
and pay the price demanded for it. This is the great social fact—the
failure of government to perform one of its most primary
duties, the necessity of finding some substitute in private life—extending
in greater or less degree through the whole formative
period of feudalism, which explains the transformation of
institutions that brought it into existence. Similar conditions
have produced an organization which may be called feudal, in
various countries, and in widely separated periods of history.
While these different feudal systems have shown a general
similarity of organization, there has been also great variation
in their details, because they have started from different institutions
and developed in different ways. The feudal system
with which history most concerns itself is that of medieval
western Europe, and it is that which will be here described.
The institutions which the need of protection seized upon when it first began to turn away from the state were twofold. They had both long existed in the private, not public, relations of the Romans, and they had up to this time shown no tendency to grow. One of them related to the person, to the man himself, without reference to property, Roman origins. the other related to land. There are thus distinguished at the beginning those two great sides of feudalism which remained to the end of its history more or less distinct, the personal relation and the land relation. The personal institution needs little description. It was the Roman patron and client relationship which had remained in existence into the days of the empire, in later times less important perhaps legally than socially, and which had been reinforced in Gaul by very similar practices in use among the Celts before their conquest. The description of this institution which has come down to us from Roman sources of the days when feudalism was beginning is not so detailed as we could wish, but we can see plainly enough that it met a frequent need, that it was called by a new name, the patrocinium, and that it was firmly enough entrenched in usage to survive the German conquest, and to be taken up and continued by the conquerors. In its new use, alike in the later Roman and the early German state, the landless freeman who could not support himself went to some powerful man, stated his need, and offered his services, those proper to a freeman, in return for shelter and support. This transaction, which was called commendation, gave rise in the German state to a written contract which related the facts and provided a penalty for its violation. It created a relationship of protection and support on one side, and of free service on the other.
The other institution, relating to land, was that known to the Roman law as the precarium, a name derived from one of its essential features through all its history, the prayer of the suppliant by which the relationship was begun. The precarium was a form of renting land not intended primarily for income, but for use when the lease was made from friendship for example, or as a reward, or to secure a debt. Legally its characteristic feature was that the lessee had no right of any kind against the grantor. The owner could call in his land and terminate the relation at any time, for any reason, or for none at all. Even a definite understanding at the outset that the lease might be enjoyed to a specified date was no protection.[1] It followed of course that the heir had no right in the land which his father held in this way, nor was the heir of the donor bound by his father’s act. The legal character of this transaction is summed up in a well-known passage in the Digest:—Interdictum de precariis merito introductum est, quia nulla eo nomine juris civilis actio esset, magis enim ad donationes et beneficii causam, quam ad negotii contracti spectat precarii conditio.[2] This may be paraphrased as follows:—The precarium tenant may employ the interdict against a third party, because he cannot use the ordinary civil action, his holding being not a matter of business but rather of favour and kindness. It should be noted that from its very beginning the land relationship of feudalism was not created primarily for the grantor’s income, but that it emphasized in the most striking way his continued ownership.
As used for protection in later Roman days the precarium gave rise to what was called the commendation of lands, patrocinium fundorum. The poor landowner, likely to lose all that he had from one kind of oppression or another, went to the great landowner, his neighbour, whose position gave him immunity from attack or the power to prevent official abuses, and begged to be protected. The rich man answered, I can only protect my own. Of necessity the poor man must surrender to his powerful neighbour the ownership of his lands, which he then received back as a precarium—gaining protection during his lifetime
