57Vicerrectoría de Investigaciones, Innovación y Extensión

The political-military practices in the fragmented successor barbarian kingdoms have been known since the 17th century as feudalism. The word feudalism is based on the medieval Latin

feudum, which was borrowed from the old German fee, a commonly used term in the Middle Ages which meant cattle or land held under certain obligations. 76

Even though the word components are from the Middle Ages, the concept of feudalism was not invented until the 17th century, in the modern era. The word feudalism as a system of personal and cliental relationships of lord and vassal was introduced to legitimise the modern state by contrasting the modern conditions of the 17th century with the pre-modern conditions of the previous age(s) that were surpassed by the modern ones.

The political-military practices of the feudal epoch did not constitute a “state” in any formal sense. Feudal governance lacked key features of a state, such as permanent structures for decision-making, a standing army, or an extensive administration that operated according to codified law. Most important, though, people were personally loyal to counts and kings, their identity as human beings was not bound up with a secular political order they belonged to.77 Feudalism as a social world of ‘overlapping and divided authority’ was a pyramidal structure of individuals bound together by oaths of loyalty. The king was at the top of this pyramid and was the sovereign, or overlord, of the entire kingdom. Several dukes or princes, who held 74 Strayer, Feudalism, p 34 75 Ibid., pp. 15-20. 76

Gianfranco Poggi, The State, Its Nature, Development and Prospects, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990, p. 36. 77

huge tracts of land within the kingdom, were his direct vassals. At the bottom of the pyramid were the simple knights, who held sufficient land to maintain themselves and their families.78 The glue that held the feudal “state” together was the vassalage defined as “a system in which a free man binds himself personally to a lord, offering him loyalty and military service in return for protection and the use of property (usually land).”79 It was entered into by doing homage, which was a ceremony in which the lesser man, kneeling before the greater man with hands joined as if in prayer, pledged himself and his loyalty to the greater man.80

The core constituent relationship of feudalism was the personal bond between lord and vassal, with land (and its people and product) – the fief – being loaned by the king or lord in exchange for the military support of the vassal. However, the vassal also had to provide the king or lord with “counsel” or advice on, say, whether or not to go to war.

The king prevailed as conqueror, tribute-taker and rentier, not as head of state that durably and densely regulated life within the feudal realm. He was sovereign only in the sense of being primus inter pares “first among equals”, and therefore his authority was limited by the clearly recognized rights and privileges accruing to the three estates of the realm – the first estate of the clergy, the second estate of the nobility, the third estate of the bourgeoisie. 81 Together, the crown and estates governed the feudal estate (a medieval version of the modern state). This was made possible through the great council, composed of members of the three estates that represented their estates as corporate groups such as the nobility and clergy, which eventually included other corporate groups such as lawyers, professors, and physicians.82 Thus the feudal “state” was constitutional in that the three estates represented the realm of the king, voiced protest, restated rights, gave advice, and agreed to financial requests. But, since the king needed the consent of the estates to gain access to their financial resources, especially for war, a struggle ensued between the crown, on the one hand, which needed the money, and the council of estates, on the other hand, which had it to give out but expected justification.83 The clergy that included the bishops and abbots of its religious orders and the knights, masters, and grandmasters of its military orders were equal in status and power to the kings and counts of secular nobility. Many dioceses and religious orders acquired a lot of wealth and land. The military orders were powerful as they were made up of armed monks.

The great power and wealth of the church created tensions between the church and feudal kings, as the latter frequently sought to control the appointment of the clergy and looked for an opportunity to deprive them of their rightful property. The threat of excommunication was usually enough to persuade an unwilling king to bend to the wishes of the church.84

The clergy served an important politico-cultural function in medieval Europe. They comprised its intellectuals, and as such they interpreted the meaning of scripture, elaborated Church doctrines, and carried on the traditions of classical philosophy and science inherited

78

R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953, p. 16-17. 79

Jeffrey Burton Russell, Medieval Civilization, New York: John Wiley& Sons, 1968, p. 86. 80

Ibid.,p.204. 81

Pierson, The Modern State, p. 43. 82

D’Entreves, The Notion of the State, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967, p. 90. 83

Sidney Painter, The Rise of Feudal Monarchies, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1951, pp. 1- 4. 84

from Rome. The clergy came to be respected for its learning as well as feared for its enforcement of canon law, under which, among other things it could accuse people of heresy (i.e., adherence to religious teaching contrary to Church dogma) and execute them.

Few people outside the clergy and the nobility were literate in Latin, the lingua franca of religion and government that inevitably enabled the ecclesiastics to penetrate, and take charge of, the administration of the kingdoms and other feudal entities. The use of Latin gave the clergy enormous power because the Church communicated legal and moral ideas.85

The unity that existed during the medieval times came not through identification with the political association of the state but through a system of religious rituals and ceremonies institutionalised by the Church throughout Western Europe that served not only the religious function of reinforcing and strengthening faith, but the socio-political function of establishing identity in Christendom, that universal community to which all Christian believers belonged.86

Of course, many areas in Europe were not thoroughly Christianized until the 12th and the 13th centuries. The establishment of Catholic dogma was a struggle, a political act that often involved persuasion and the use of military force in the form of Crusades instigated by popes and undertaken by Christian kings to win to the faith different peoples from different places. The universal idea of Christendom that acted as a bond of union of different peoples and places both retarded the emergence of an understanding of the territorialized political community and made available a powerful alternative community identity across the otherwise politically fragmented lives of medieval peoples.87 In this alternatively imagined Christian community, the political was subordinated to the religious, as was reason to faith. The subordination of the political to the religious resulted in the limitation of the power of the kings, who were obliged to pledge their ultimate allegiance to the Pope. Kings did not see themselves as the sovereign power of the state. They continued to express their claims to power in terms of their being the representatives of a universal Christendom in Europe. Of course, this allowed them to claim rightful authority in areas outside their territorial domain. However, the rise of Christianity raised the problem of conflicting Church-state loyalty. Situations were bound to arise in which the jurisdictional lines between Church and state were hazy. Indeed, it sometimes appeared to the conscientious Christian that the secular authority had invaded sacred territory. When this happened, the Christian, if he were concerned about an eternal life of salvation, had to obey the authority (the Church) which was of consequence.

85 Ibid., p.38. 86 Ibid. 87

Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, Boston: Little, Brown, 1960, chap. 4.