![]() Any one who was able waged war, coined money, and held courts of justice. The church was also drawn into this system, and a complex set of: personal, local relationships based on landholding was built up.įeudalism was essentially personal, private, and non-political. Land grants were made by the kings and the great nobles to their followers, with the understanding that certain services, especially military, would be required. Warriors attached themselves as personal friends and followers of some powerful chief. Men unable to make an independent living “commended” themselves to some great man on the understanding that he would support them and they would serve him. The peasants on the land needed protection, which the lords who held the land could furnish, but which bound the peasants to the soil and compelled certain obligations. Such bonds, in addition to those furnished by the church, were found in personal relations among men and in a system of dependent land tenure, with which governing authority was associated. ![]() Local officials and great landowners became a law unto themselves, and in the anarchy that followed, bonds other than political had to be found to hold society together and to maintain order and protection. However, these early attempts at state-forming were too ambitious, and even Charlemagne’s empire fell to pieces shortly after his death. Having upheld the cause of Christianity against both Pagan and Saracen, and having become the actual possessor of imperial authority over a large part of the ancient empire, the Frankish king Charlemagne was formally recognized by the pope as the successor of the Roman emperor. In this process the Frankish rulers had been most successful. ![]() They were in a low stage of economic development, caring little for industry or commerce, but eager to secure land.ĭuring the period of the conquest and break-up of the Western Empire, the barbarian bands had organized into armies of considerable size, whose leaders had attempted to rule over large fragments of the empire. Their organization was decentralized, emphasizing local independence. They were held together by ties of kinship and by vows of personal allegiance. The Teutonic invaders were warriors, organized under a military leader. In its earlier states it seemed to have more of the personal clan than of the territorial state in its composition, but by the tenth and eleventh centuries the state idea was revived, and by the close of the medieval period it was completely successful, both the clan and the church having failed in their efforts to retain political power. The compromise form of organization that resulted from this contest was called feudalism. From the point of view of political institutions, the early medieval period was characterized, not only by the formation of a powerful ecclesiastical organization which exercised extensive political authority, but also by a contest between two forms of society, the patriarchal, clan type, as represented by the Teutonic barbarians and the imperial state type, as represented by the Roman Empire.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |