Spencer Heath Archive

Item 954

March 1934?

Original -> 947

 

 

 

 

 

Ashley — Early European History. 900 A.D.

 

/Is this Roscoe Lewis Ashley,

Early European Civilization, 1918?/

 

Suzerain — Vassal

Investiture:  Homage (home)   Fealty

 

The right in the land was the fief. Nobles and retinues went from castle to castle eating up the surplus supplies at each place. Under the king or overlord was the lord of the manor. He owed services, military, civil (court), aids and dues. He collected rents in services and payments. The people lived in the village near the castle or manor house. Villages were homes with garden plots and also primitive industries for each village must be self-contained for lack of communications and commerce. Chief imports were millstones, metals and salt. Each manor had its own courts and local administration. The villagers became important court officers and the manorial courts really governed and under the jury system crimes were punished, the holdings and uses of land regulated, and property rights adjusted, including rent services, profits of mills, fisheries, etc., and other rights of the lord.

 

The tenants had rights in the forest and meadow land in proportion to the area of their lands. Those who held no land of the lord must pay him in grain or liquors or other goods for use of the common lands.

 

Plowing required many animals and was joint or co-operative.

 

The lord ruled his tenants “according to the custom of the manor.” (So he was under the common law). A villian paid fixed rents. A serf gave unlimited service. The villians paid rent in part by working on the roads (public service).

 

The rise of towns undermined feudalism.

 

The Church declared the Peace of God and the Truce of God so as to limit fighting and private warfare to certain days, less than one in three or a hundred a year.

 

Serfs and villians were not a part of the feudal system; they simply supported it.

 

But occasionally villians could buy their lands.

 

Because of communities widely scattered the Church was necessarily political. It performed many offices of government and was itself democratic in that even a serf could rise to any office. It was the greatest force and greatest uplifting force of the Feudal Age.

 

The Knights Templar, Hospitalers and Teutonics were Churchmen /who/ went out of the monasteries in the crusades. The Templars were suppressed everywhere by the Pope in 1312. The Teutonics held lands in East Prussia which finally came to the Hohenzallerns.

 

The Dominicans taught (black friars). The Franciscans gave relief (grey friars). There were also Carmelite and Augustinian friars. Benedictines?