The F-Word, Page Two

In 16th century France, Humanist scholars grappled with the history of Roman law and its authority in their own land. They examined, in depth, a substantial collection of Roman law books. Among these books was something called the Libri Feudorum -- the Book of Fiefs.

The Libri Feudorum was a compilation of legal texts concerning the proper disposition of fiefs, which were defined in these documents as lands held by people referred to as vassals. The work had been put together in Lombardy, northern Italy, in the 1100s, and over the course of the intervening centuries, many lawyers and other scholars had commented on it and added definitions and interpretations, or glosses. The Libri Feudorum is an extraordinarily significant work that, to this day, has been barely studied since the 16th-century French lawyers gave it a good look.

In the course of their evaluation of the Book of Fiefs, the scholars made some fairly reasonable assumptions:

1. That the fiefs under discussion in the texts were pretty much the same as the fiefs of 16th-century France -- that is, lands belonging to nobles;
   
   
2. That the Libri Feudorum was addressing actual legal practices of the 11th century and not simply expounding on an academic concept; and
   
   
3. That the explanation of the origins of fiefs contained in the Libri Feudorum -- that is, that grants were initially made for as long as the lord chose, but were later extended to the grantee's lifetime and afterwards made hereditary -- was a reliable history and not mere conjecture.

The assumptions may have been reasonable -- but were they correct? The French scholars had every reason to believe they were, and no real reason to dig any deeper. After all, they weren't so much interested in the historical facts of the time period as they were in the legal questions addressed in the Libri Feudorum. Their foremost consideration was whether or not the laws even had any authority in France -- and, ultimately, the French lawyers rejected the authority of the Lombard Book of Fiefs.

However, during the course of their investigations, and based in part on the assumptions outlined above, the scholars who studied the Libri Feudorum formulated a view of the Middle Ages. This general picture included the idea that feudal relationships, wherein noblemen granted fiefs to free vassals in return for services, were important in medieval society because they provided social and military security at a time when central government was weak or nonexistent. The idea was discussed in editions of the Libri Feudorum made by the legal scholars Jacques Cujas and François Hotman, both of whom used the term feudum to indicate an arrangement involving a fief.¹

Continued on page three: The Model is Constructed.

Note

¹ The word "fief" -- which rhymes with "leaf" -- is French for the Latin term "feodum." The terms "fief," "fee," and "feodum" have all been used to designate the land that's part of a feudal agreement.

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