Neither do peasants perform an act of homage for their lord their servitude is implicit in their status as serfs.
Peasants do not receive land from their lords, but rather, they are bound to a small patch of land where they must work until they are too old to do so, handing over a large portion of his produce to the lord’s agents each fall. Reciprocity is less evident at the base of the pyramid.
This process is known as subinfeudation, and it can go on for several levels, allowing Dukes to assemble a strong body of forces from the lands they hold in fief.
To help fill his quota, the lord parcels out some of his land to knights and lesser nobles, giving them the resources to raise and equip the forces that they need to bring when the king calls for aid. Raw numbers can be reached by levy among the peasants, but trained knights and men-at-arms, as well as specialists like archers and crossbowmen, are also needed. It is likely that he has a small retinue already to aid him in his military service when the king calls upon him, but with his new status he also has greater obligations, and needs to increase his following. The vassal responds with an act of homage, demonstrating that he understands that he is bound to his liege in service.įollowing this, the vassal is the lord of his own fiefdom, with a title like Duke, Count or Baron to his credit. When the king has land that he wishes to parcel out, and a nobleman whom he trusts or wishes to reward, he grants those lands to the new vassal in a ceremony known as investiture, because he is vesting those lands in the vassal. Generally, the king keeps some of his lands under his own control, to maintain the power and prestige of his family such lands are known as demesne lands. In practice, however, feudal kingdoms soon developed traditional duchies and counties, and while the king might modify these territories (such as by elevating a county to a duchy), he rarely starts over afresh. Theoretically, the king is sovereign, and has the right to parcel out the land as he sees fit in some cases this right comes from conquest. Feudal arrangements were a form of contract, and generally specified in detail the number of soldiers that a vassal must provide, as well as the amount of economic support that he must give annually.įeudal society can be depicted as a pyramid, with the ruler (usually a king, but sometimes an emperor or a ruling prince) at the apex and the peasantry at the base. Economic support can be in coin, grain, or both military support is typically given by the vassal’s own service in the lord’s campaigns, along with such knights and common soldiers that the vassal can raise for this purpose, but especially later in the feudal period, money for the payment of mercenary soldiers can be given instead. In return for this land, the vassal gives back to his lord, or liege, a specified amount of economic and military support. To enforce the latter point, a lord has the powers of a magistrate in judging the behavior of his vassals. This second figure, the vassal, can use this land largely as he wishes, including conferring a portion of it to vassals of his own, provided that he does not use it against his own lord’s interests. A lord owns land, but cannot oversee the exploitation of all of it, or is in greater need of military support than of a certain measure of wheat and rye, and so he confers some of his land to another. Simply put, feudalism functions on every level except the lowest in these one-on-one terms. The personal aspect of the system is found in the traditions of investiture and homage, which bound a vassal personally to his lord.
Reciprocity lies in the fact that the senior party to any relationship provided land and oversight to the junior party, who in turn was expected to provide his lord with economic and military support. Both of these aspects are key to understanding feudalism. Feudalism is a system based on reciprocal relationships between individuals, as opposed to institutions. From the fall of Rome until the rise of absolute monarchies, western Europe was dominated by feudal states.