Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence ReinterpretedFiefs and Vassals is a book that will change our view of the medieval world. Offering a fundamental challenge to orthodox conceptions of feudalism, Susan Reynolds argues that the concepts of fiefs and vassalage that have been central to the understanding of medieval society for hundreds of years are in fact based on a misunderstanding of the primary sources. Reynolds demonstrates convincingly that the ideas of fiefs and vassalage as currently understood, far from being the central structural elements of medieval social and economic relations, are a conceptual lens through which historians have focused the details of medieval life. This lens, according to Reynolds, distorts more than it clarifies. With the lens removed, the realities of medieval life will have the chance to appear as they really are: more various, more individual, more complex, and perhaps richer than has previously been supposed. This is a radical new examination of social relations within the noble class and between lords and their vassals, the distillation of wide-ranging research by a leading medieval historian. It will revolutionize the way we think of the Middle Ages. |
Contents
1 The Problem of Feudalism | 1 |
2 Vassalage and the Norms of Medieval Social Relations | 17 |
3 Fiefs and Medieval Property Relations | 48 |
4 Gaul and the Kingdom of the Franks | 75 |
5 The Kingdom of France 9001100 | 115 |
6 Italy | 181 |
7 The Kingdom of France 11001300 | 258 |
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Common terms and phrases
abbot academic law alienation alodial alods apparently argument benefice-holders benefices beneficium bishop called fiefs Carolingian Cart charters church land confiscation Conrad count of Flanders counts courts custom customary law distinction Domesday Book duke eleventh century emperor England estates evidence feodum feudal law feudo-vassalic fiefholders France Frankish full property Ganshof Germany Gislebert of Mons grants heirs held Henry hierarchy historians hold homage Ibid ideas imply inheritance Italy jurisdiction kind king king's kingdom knights later law of fiefs lawyers laymen Lehnrecht less Libri Feudorum look lordships Lothar III Mâconnais medieval middle ages military service ministeriales normally Normandy norms ordinance owed peasants Philippe Auguste political presumably probably property rights records references relations rights and obligations Roman law royal rulers rules Sachsenspiegel scutage seems serjeanties society sometimes status subinfeudation subjects suggest tenants tenure thegns thirteenth century thought tion twelfth century Urkundenbuch vassalage vassals vassi vavassors