they drew their life, men had to look about them for protection. It became customary for men to hand over land and liberty to some near lord, and enter into a relationship akin to serfage in return for protection. Thus the Gallo-Roman population were becoming accustomed to personal dependence even while the Merovingians were establishing their kingdom.
On their side the Franks and other Teutons had inherited the institution of the comitatus, which bound the young warrior to his chief. They were familiar with exacting modes of personal retainership, which merged the follower's freedom in his lord's will. If during the reigns of Pepin and his prodigious son the development of local dominion and dependence was held in some abeyance, on the death of Charlemagne it would proceed apace. All the factors which tend to make institutions out of abuses and the infractions of earlier custom, sprang at once into activity in the renewed confusion. Everything served to increase the lesser man's need of defence, weld his dependence on his lord, and augment the latter's power. Moreover, long before Charlemagne's time, not only for protection in this life, but for the sake of their souls, men had been granting their lands to monasteries and receiving back the use thereof—such usufruct being known as a beneficium. This custom lent the force of its example and manifest utility to the relations between lay lords and tenants. And finally one notes the frequent grant to monasteries and individuals of immunity from governmental visitation, a grant preventing the king's officers from entering lands in order to exercise the king's justice, or exact fines and requisitions.[1]
From out of such conditions the feudal system gradually took form. Its central feature was the tenure of a fief by a vassal from his lord on condition of rendering faithful military and other not ignoble service. As the tenth century passed, fiefs tended to become hereditary. So long as the vassal fulfilled his duty to his lord, the rights of the lord over the land were nominal; more substantial was the mutual obligation—on the part of the lord to protect his
- ↑ Such immunities were common before Charlemagne. Cf. Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 243-302.
