Cortez Todd
Professor Luckhardt
History 331
19 September 2014
Feudalism
Agreement between lord and Vassal Historians have come to a controversy with the word feudalism being used to describe to mideval governmental system. A case study by George T. Beech The Lord/Dependent (Vassal) Relationship states “A look at how the creation of lord/dependent relationships , that is how men entered into them, is a natural starting point for discussion of the subject as a whole. The author never describes explicitly the act whereby one man became the dependent of a lord but he allude to it often enough to leave no doubt as to how it occurred. The dependent initiated it by swearing an oath of fidelity, fidelitias, to his superior; jurare fidelatatem is the invariable formula”( 13-14) . Not answering the origin of feudalism, but showing the interaction of it makes the Hugh of Lusignan source reliable. The narrative of Hugh and his lord gives a more precise view of lord and vassals. Other sources only give a broad point, which never give details and the actual mind set of a lord and vassal. Understanding how vassals viewed themselves and their lords are more valuable then any documents left over for us to interpret their views. In the Hugh of Lusignan the count says” how can you who are my vassal, hold something which I did not give you, against my will”?(Hugh of Lusignan380). This statement implies that the count views his vassals as property, making one assume the vassal can only do as told and never own anything for himself. Statements similar to these throughout the source gives more superior prestige to the lords, and lowering the respect of the vassals portraying them to seem as slaves. The act of superiority by the count gives a sense that the two men understand their relationship, and gives a belief that the vassal knew of an order in which he must obey. In the acts they consistently know the system and are obiding by the rules of feudalism. In The Tyranny of a Construct by Elizabeth A.R. Brown she writes “Implicit in his assessment of Spelman and the feudal system is a clear objection to applying the label “ feudal system” to medieval England, presumably because of a belief that England never underwent a systemization of social and political life or, as Maitland puts it, never experienced “ the development of what can be properly called a feudal system”( 150). This concept denounces feudalism, but never replaces the word with anything else understandable. Also it leaves us with an emptiness to understanding the medieval politics and social structure. Elizabeth also writes “ The specific abstraction “ feudal” and “ feudalism” are defended on the grounds that, however awkward and inappropriate in terms of their original connotations these words and others like them may be, the historian in this respect no worse off than the scientist, who must also make do with the inconvenient and suitable terminology. Micheal Poston goes beyond Bloch to declare that “without generalized terms representing entire groups of phenomena not only history but all intelligent discourse would be impossible”, and he maintains no difference exist between words such as feudalism and other terms like war and agriculture”.( 153). In the Hugh of lusignan account shows were the limit would come to sources from documents, because of most of their agreements were done orally. The account does show the mindset showing how the lord and the vassals understood their places in society and how the world work from their view. Taking note from the relationships shows a connection with some respect to a feudal system. George T. Beech writes “ Hugh`s pure virtue, and his transformation from a weak into a powerful dependant, were most likely the exaggeration if not the invention of the anonymous author for literary purpose. Otherwise he is describing aristocratic relations as they actually existed in early eleventh-century Aquitaine”.(26). The story gives a
