Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/168

160 FEUDAL SYSTEM rude existence, and many of its incidents are traceable in legislation to the reign of Charle- magne, throughout the limits of whose vast dominion feudalism had at a later period its fullest continental development. " The regu- lar machinery and systematic establishment of feuds, in fact," says Hallam, u may be consid- ered as almost confined to the dominions of Charlemagne, and to those countries which afterward derived from them." But it is not until a much later time that we find " the feu- dal period " clearly established. As the chief object of the great monarchs of the Carlovin- gian line was the establishment of a consoli- dated empire, it can scarely be held that they deliberately sought to develop a system whose very essence was the disintegration of every country in which it existed. The imbecility of the later kings of the second race favored the advance of feudalism in France; and in that country it was known earlier than any- where else, and there it received its essential peculiarities. At the time of the conquest of Gaul, and the rise of the Merovingians, there were many freeholds, that is, independent properties ; but in the course of the five fol- lowing centuries most of these had disappeared. The beneficiary condition became the common condition of territorial property. Benefice and fief are words that express the same facts at different dates. In the middle of the 12th century feodum and ~beneficium were used in- terchangeably, as they had been used for some time previously to that date. The exact nature of benefices has been the source of consider- able dispute, but the better opinion is that their ordinary duration was the life of the pos- sessor, after which they reverted to the fisc ; yet there were instances of hereditary'benefices as early as the Merovingian times. The ten- dency to retain property in their families would lead men to make use of a variety of means to render what they held hereditary, while the weakness of the kings would not enable them to resist claims powerfully urged in behalf of the sons of beneficiaries. Under the feudal system the territorial element was known as the fief, and it has been argued that this did not mean originally the land itself, but only the tenure thereof, its relation of dependence toward the suzerain ; but the weight of authority is ad- verse to this view, though it is admitted that at a later period some such distinction may have been made. The titles, or most of them, which became so identified with feudalism, were not originally hereditary, but were made so gradually, like the property possessions which rendered the great vassals so powerful. Dukes, counts, and marquises, or margraves, were at first provincial governors, officers intrusted with certain specific duties, the margraves be- ing charged with the custody of the frontiers. The weakness of the Merovingian kings made these officers very important persons in the state. The Carlovingians sought to lessen their power, and with some success so long as that race produced able kings ; but under Charle- magne's successors the counts rapidly acquired influence and wealth, and political station. The same man was allowed to enjoy several coun- ties, in all of which he endeavored to acquire landed property, and to assume a right to his dignities. In the last quarter of the 9th cen- tury the succession of a son to a father's county was a recognized usage ; and " in the next cen- tury," says Hallam, "there followed an entire prostration of the royal authority, and the counts usurped their governments as little sov- ereignties, with the domains and all regalian rights, subject only to the feudal superiority of the king. They now added the name of the county to their own, and their wives took the appellation of countess. In Italy, the inde- pendence of the dukes was still more complete ; and although Otho the Great and his descen- dants kept a stricter rein over those of Ger- many, yet we find the great fiefs of their empire, throughout the 10th century, granted almost invariably to the male and even female heirs of the last possessor." Thus the hereditary principle was recognized in a double respect- as related to the possession of land, and as re- lated to the possession of political power. The counts became the enemies of the allodial pro- prietors, whose importance was derived from a system entirely unlike that upon which their con- sequence rested. The king and the law could not protect the allodialists or independent pro- prietors from being spoiled by their enemies. Many of them surrendered their lands, and received them back upon feudal conditions; or they acknowledged themselves vassals of a suzerain. Yet the allodial lands were not en- tirely extinguished. They were common in the south of France, the strength of the feudal ten- ures being between the Somme and the Loire. According to the old French law, allodial lands were always noble, like fiefs, down to 1580. In the German empire many estates continued to be held by allodial tenures. This part of the subject is involved in considerable obscurity, for in the royal charters of the 10th and llth centuries the word allodium is continually used for a feud, or hereditary benefice. "Several passages in ancient laws and instruments," says Hallam, " concur to prove that besides the relation established between lord and vassal by beneficiary grants, there was another species more personal, and more closely resembling that of patron and client in the Koman repub- lic. This was usually called commendation, and appears to have been founded on two very general principles, both of which the distracted state of society inculcated. The weak needed the protection of the powerful ; and the gov- ernment needed some security for public order. Even before the invasion of the Franks, Salvian, a writer of the 5th century, mentions the cus- tom of obtaining the protection of the great, by money, and blames their rapacity, though he allows the natural reasonableness of the prac- tice. The disadvantageous condition of the