Land and Work in Mediaeval Europe: Selected Papers 1138855162, 9781138855168

Citation preview

Routledge Revivals

Land and Work in Mediaeval Europe

Land and Work in Medieval Europe was first published in English in 1967. Throughout the work, the idea that Marc Bloch was not only a historian but a great teacher is exemplified, as is his ability to ask interesting and original questions through his writing. Topics covered include medieval Germany, technical problems in the medieval economy and society, and the medieval class structure.

This page intentionally left blank:

Land and work in mediaeval Europe Selected Papers

Marc Bloch Translated by J. E. Anderson

ROUILEDGE

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

REVIVALS

First published in 1967 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd This edition first published in 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1966 École Pratique des Hautes Études Copyright in the English translation © 1967 Routledge& Kegan Paul The right of Marc Bloch to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 67085525

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-85516-8 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-315-71991-7 (ebk) Additional materials are available on the companion website at [http://www.routledge.com/books/series/Routledge_Revivals]

LAND AND WORK IN MEDIAEVAL

EUROPE

This page intentionally left blank:

LAND AND WORK IN MEDIAEVAL EUROPE Selectedpapersby MARC BLOCH

TRANSLATED BY

J.

E. ANDERSON

HARPER TORCHBOOKS Harper & Row, Publishers New York and Evanston

LAND AND WORK IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE Translatedand extractedfrom MetangesHistoriques Copyright © 1966 by Ecole Pratiquedes Hautes Etudes. Copyright in the English translation © 1967 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. Printed in the United Statesof America. This book was first published in English in 1967 by Routledge& Kegan Paul Ltd., London. It is here reprinted by arrangement. First HARPER TORCHBOOK edition published 1969 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated,49 East 33rd Street, New York, N. Y. 10016.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD by I.

F. R. H. Du Boulay

page vii

The Empire and the idea of Empire under the Hohenstaufen

1

2.

A contritmtion towardsa comparativehistory of EuropeanSocieties 44

3.

A problem in comparativehistory; the administrative classesin Franceand in Germany 82

4. Technicalchangeas a problem of collective psychology

124

5. The adventand triumph of the watermill

136

6.

Mediaeval'Inventions'

169

7. The problem of gold in the middle ages

186

8. Natural economyor money economy: a pseudo-dilemma

230

INDEX

245

This page intentionally left blank:

FOREWORD F. R. H. Du

BOULAY

Although twenty years have passedsince the tragic death of Marc Bloch, only a few of his works have yet been made available in English, and even the collection of his writings in French, dispersedand varied as they are, has gone forward slowly. For the English-readingpublic The Historian's Craft appearedin 1954, and his biggestbook, Feudal Society,in 1961. Soon the brilliant essayon French agrarian society from its mediaevalorigins to the eighteenthcentury, which he called Les Caracteresoriginaux de l'histoire ruralefranfaise,will appearin an English translation by Mrs. JanetSondheimerunder the title French Rural History. This is not enough. Marc Bloch's claim to remembranceis not simply as the authorof monographsbut as a great teacher for whom history was as much a modeof enquiry as a publication of new information. Even the reportson his researchwere discoursesuponmethod,written in his unmistakablerhythmsof speech,confidential, poetic,and a trifle astonishedat what he had to say. In articles, conferencesand reviews he displayed gifts of luminous explanationand the power to ask from his subject-matterfresh and original questions.All thesemay still stir and instruct the reader. The task of drawing up Bloch's bibliographywasformidable, partly becauseit was large and scattered,and partly because his pieces were sometimes unsigned or appeared over a pseudonym.The work was put in hand by his friend and colleague, Professor Lucien Febvre, who was responsiblefor a preliminary bibliography in Marc Bloch at Strasbourg.1 After Febvre'sdeath there were more difficulties and delays, but the AssociationMarc Bloch continuedthe work, and in 1963 two handsomevolumesof Bloch's MelangesHistoriquesappeared and included a more perfect bibliography.2 In deciding what to reprint the editors had to consider three main types of Bloch's contributions: original articles, extendedreviews of a single work or of historical writings abouta single country, and vii

Vlll

FOREWORD

short book-noticesand obituaries which nonethelesswere of an interestingand original nature. For the MelangesHistoriques they thought it best to make use of the first categoryonly, and it is upon this selectionthat the presentvolume is based. Of the eight papers which are presentedhere in English dress,all but one date from Bloch's time at Strasbourg,where he was professorfrom 1919 to 1936. Only the short addresson 'Technical change as a problem of collective psychology', given at a conferenceof psychologists,derives from his later period at the Sorbonne. Two of the essaystouch upon mediaevalGermany,and these merit inclusion becauseof the small amount of literature available to studentsof this subjectwho cannotread German. They have another kind of rarity value. Bloch himself wrote surprisingly little of his own on Germany.Although he spent the years 1908-9 in Leipzig and Berlin, and never ceasedto concernhimselfwith Germanhistory, he confined his publications eitherto studieswhereGermanywastreatedcomparatively with otherwest Europeancountriesor to long collectivereviews of German historical publications in the Revue Historique. Though the abiding interest was there, it was not directed single-mindedlyupon Germanterritories in isolation, but was forever flickering over the frontiers of country and discipline. In one way he admired the solid efforts of Germanhistorical scholarshipduring the years that succeededGermany'sdefeat in 1918, especiallythe researchinto Hanseatichistory and on the diversity of agrarianforms, but he was, on the other hand, quick to denounce thehistorical nationalism, the neglect of historical work done abroad,and the disdain for comparative methods which he detected among German scholars. Of courseBloch was hard to satisfy.When he readWilly Andreas's Deutschlandvor der Riformation, a book that reactedagainst the old tradition of monumentalerudition, he found it too geistreich and prodigiouslyirritating in its neglectof verification, though intelligent and full of ideas. But his comparativediscussion of the administrative class in France and Germanyis a fine demonstrationof his own methods,which were to illumine the society of one country by pointing the differenceswith those of another.The lectureon the Empire underthe Hohenstaufen is remarkablein anotherway, for it is the only coursedelivered

FOREWORD

IX

to studentswho were going to be examinedthat he ever ronsented to print.3 Bloch felt a deep distastefor the recurrent, traditional syllabuses required of candidatesfor licence and agregation. He disliked limiting historical problems to political frontiers, andshrankfrom what he sardonicallycalled 'teaching the breviary'. The last four essaysin this volume are concernedwith more technical problems of the mediaevaleconomy, but they too reflect the author'spassionfor the comparativemethodand for visualising the physical realities behind the abstractconcepts . of which he waswriting. In 'MediaevalInventions'he reservesa kick for rural historieswhoseheroesappearto do their ploughing with charters, and for administrative histories full of the great doings of a central power that rules its provinces,seemingly regardlessof such mundanerealities as the condition of the roads, the availability of animalsfor transport,the supply of fodder for horses,and the time taken to travel. For students who feel they would like to know somethingabout money if only they could survive the buffeting from technical jargon sustained during ordinary attacks on the subject, Bloch suppliesin 'Natural Economy or Money Economy: a pseudodilemma' a preciseand lucid sketchof money'snature. If Bloch's answersto the problemshe raisedhavesometimes beensupersededby more recentresearch,he would have been the first to rejoice. Yet what he wrote has a continuing value. The questioning tone of voice endures, appealing both to intellect and to the poetic imagination. Indeed the questions may be more durable than the answers,which is more than can be said of a good deal of historical writing. Bloch's mind refusedto be delimited within the frontiers of geography,period or doctrine. His problemscould not be even posed,let alonesolved, without searchingfar afield for similarities and differences in social structures and communal mentalities.True, he beganhis life-work, as any historianmust, with a limited subject. But the work of early years among the archives of the lle-de-Franceamassedan immensecollection of material to be turned to new uses in the heyday of his maturity and experience. A growing interest in linguistics suggestedan analogous method for history. If widespread similarities in language-structuremight help to explain

x

FOREWORD

common circumstances,so too might likenessesin fields and farming methods.If the linguists could speakof iso-gloHes, he reflected with teasing pertinacity, why should not agrarian historians think likewise of iso-agres?Again, there were differences as well as similarities visible to the man who walked about with open eyes.Why should peasantholdings in France so often obey some law of fragmentationwhile the German Hufen maintained a more stubborn indivisibility? And why should the Germansdisplay a firmer social hierarchyas against the Frenchfluidity of classes?Such questionsat least threw up problemsthat requiredsomeexplanation,whereasthe study of a single society all too often disclosedonly arrangementsthat seemnatural and hencein no needof explanation. It was the same with chronology as with geography.Bloch believed that the meaningof historical eventswas clarified by a study over a long period of time no less than by a study that transcendedregional boundaries.When he becameProfessor of Economic History at the Sorbonnehe had of necessityto extendhis rangeinto the modernperiod, and the result of this can be seenin Les Caracteres.His concernwith both modernity and the past is a standingreproachto the embattlededucators andscholarsof our own day. At presentwe sufferfrom theheresy that the only way to be relevant is to be contemporary.Bloch would have madeshort work of this abysmalconfusion.He saw that the present is explained by a past that is sometimes very distant. To modernist doctrinaires he would quote Michelet: 'anyonewho thinks he can stick to presentactuality doesnot understandthe actual'. On the other hand, to understand the past one needs the smell of present-daylife. To mediaevalistpedantshe would recall how his master,Pirenne, arrived for the first time in Stockholmand hurried off at once to see the new Town Hall, exclaiming: 'If I were an antiquarian I should have eyes only for old things, but I am a historian. That is why I love life.' Neither was Marc Bloch bound to a doctrinal explanationof historical change.4 He himself did not adhere to the Jewish faith of his family, though he treated it with reverence.He was influenced by Marx and Durkheim, yet he declined to allow the social group wholly to obliterate the individual man and was preparedto admit the force of spiritual ideasin social

FOREWORD

xi

developments.In a brilliant discussionof technicalinnovation, for example, he argued that the decline of slavery did not simply follow from new inventions but that, on the contrary,it occurred through religious attitudes as much as through economicpressures.For he attributedslavery'sdecayin part to the belief of the societasChristiana that Christian men ought not to be enslaved; consequently servile labour became more difficult to get; and consequentlythe impetus came to find fresh techniquesfor work that had to be done. If Bloch was impatientof boundariesand orthodoxiesit may still be permissibleto doubt whetherhe gave enoughattention to political history conceivedas the study of particular rulers and families. In all the pagesof his Feudal Society he has little to say about individual lords acting as individuals, and there are no portraits drawn with the vivid sympathythat resurrects the Counts of Anjou in Professor Southern's Making of the Middle Ages.s Bloch frequently insisted that his subject-matter was not mankind but men. Yet it is hard to escapethe conclusion that he meantby this more especiallyhumble men and not their masters.The preferencefor the banausicwhich his readergrows to suspectbecameovert in the last, bitter days when France had been overwhelmed. French patriot and reluctant bourgeoisthough he was, he still felt himself in the company of mankind, but never less sympathetic to the powerful. 'And then,' he wrote to Lucien Febvre on grd May 1940,6 'you are a humanist, in the senseof the old Homo sum. As a mind, you are free. You are, as Michelet meantit, "a friend of the people".You have lived with the crowd. Your kids [gosses], like mine, have herdedcows with the little peasants.When you praise the natural delicacy, tolerance and good senseof our peasantsand working people underneathall the provincial varieties, you are only preaching to the converted. This is why we are great. I have known no friendshipsmore precious than those in 19 I 4 of a miner from the Pas-de-Calaisand a cafe-proprietorfrom the Bastille quarter. They were killed, both of them - the first literally on my shoulder.Why, when they comefrom suchstock, do our ruling classes(or thosewho think themselves such) show such ignorance, such limited outlook, such inhumanity of attitude?Problem,problem ...'

xu

FOREWORD

This is a comment upon his own outlook. It must be confessed,finally, that a certaincriticism of his methodis required. Ardent though he was to overstepthe boundariesof spaceand time and doctrine in his searchfor better problems,he seems sometimestoo little disciplined in the structure of his own historical writing. Readersof the essayswhich follow may feel that his thought is digressiveand parentheticalto excess.His was 'l'esprit qui court parmi les faits comme Ie feu parmi les brandes'.How true was Febvre'sencomium.His thought like lightning dartedobliquely, and sometimesit was chargedwith uncontrollableknowledge. To operateat all Bloch neededto know everything-languages, linguistics, geography, law, theology, and the historical particularities of half a dozen countries.But the polymath becomeshis own enemy,for even geniuscannotuse more than a certainnumberof tools at once, and if he tries to do so his creationswi11lack the architecture that is possibleonly to divinity. This is not to cavil ungratefully. Marc Bloch was beforeall a teacher. Some of France's most distinguished scholars are numberedamonghis pupils, and beyondtheseranks are a host of otherswho havefelt his geniusat a greaterremove.To a new generationof studentsthis book is directed knowing that no mask the riches it contains, and that transresume can repl~ce Jationwill not maskor spoille grand rythmeoratoire de son u:uvre. NOTES I.

3. 4. 5. 6.

Marc Bloch et Strasbourg.Souvenirsd'une grande histoire (Publicationsde la Facultedes Lettres de l'Universite de Strasbourg,Fasc. 103, Memorial des annees1939-1945,1947, pp. 171-189,et bibliographiedes livres et articles fondamenteauxde Marc Bloch, pp. 190-193)' Bloch himself drew up his bibliographyto datein 1934on the occasionof his candidature for the College de France. For a succinct account of Bloch's work, see Ch. E. Perrin, 'L'(I!uvre historiquede Marc Bloch, in RevueHistorique, Vol. 199 (1948), pp. 161-188. MelangesHistoriques. Marc Bloch (S.E.V.P.E.N.,Bibliotheque Generale de l'ecole pratiquedes Hautes~tudes. mask Paris, 1963). Apart from portions of the Caracteres. Annalesd'histoire sociale, 1945; also]. Stengers,'Marc Bloch et l'histoire', in Annales,Vol. 8 (1953), pp. 329-337. R. W. Southern,The Making of the Middle Ages (1953), pp:81-87· Lucien Febvre, De l'histoire au mar{JIre: Marc Bloch 1886-1944,in Annales d'histoire sociale, 1945, p. 19·

I

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFENI

I

THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTION

The State governedby the Hohenstaufenfrom I I3B to 1250 was called the Empire; the headsof this State aspired to the title of Emperor and usually bore it at least for part of their reigns. How did this political institution - the strangestknown to the Middle Ages - comeinto being, and what in it constitutes the essentialsof sovereignpower? I.

Carolingian origins: the territorial formation of the Empire

At the end of the Bth and beginning of the 9th century the Frankish kingdom had subjugatedand absorbeda large part of Eastern and Central Europe. On December25th 800 its headreceivedthe imperial crown from the Pope.The German chroniclersof the 12th and 13th centurieswere in the habit of summing up this event by saying that the Empire, which had previously passedfrom the Romans to the Greeks, was thus handedon from the Greeksto the Franks. This stating of the matter is not strictly accurate. The Greek Emperors, with their capital at Constantinople,were without any breach of tradition the heirsof the Latin-speakingEmperorswhosecapital city had been Rome. They continued in existenceafter Boo, still calling themselvesEmperorsand holding themselvesto be the legitimate successorsof the Caesars.But since December 25th 800, therewasoncemore an Emperorin the Westwho also claimed to be the rightful heir of Augustus and Constantine, and consideredRome to be his city and one of the principal seatsof his power. Everyoneknows that the CarolingianEmpire did not last as

2

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

long as the State. The treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the Empire of Louis the Pious among his three sons. In the West, there came into being the kingdom of Charles the Bald - 'WesternFrance',later to becomesimply France. In the East, it was the kingdom of Louis, 'EasternFrance'. To be precise, thiskingdom comprisedthat part of the Empire extendingnorth of the Alps and eastof the Rhine, excludingon the right bank of the river - Frisia, but including - on its left bank - the towns of Mainz, Worms and Speyeror Spires. Its inhabitants nearly all spoke Germanic dialects, lumped together in Carolingian times under the term theodiscalingua ('the languageof the people': perhaps 'the languageof the pagans,the gentiles'). Gradually it becamecustomary to call the inhabitants of these regions by the same name as their language:diutischiu liute. The country was called Diutischin lant, nowadays Deutschland. The oldest examples in the vulgar tongue are from the Annolied, at the end of the 11th century; but evidenceof its use is found in Latin transcriptsfrom the 9th centuryonwards.In Latin, as a result of classicaltraditions and confusion with the Teutonsof the 1st century B.C., they were generally called Teutonici, and the kingdom Teutonicum regnum. Finally in the centre there was the State of Lothar, a long strip stretchingfrom the North Sea to beyond the Tiber. The limits of this strangeterritory can be easily explained. Of the three sons, Lothar, the eldest, was the only one to receive (or rather to keep, for his father gave it him in his life-time) the title of Emperor; and being Emperor, he had to possessboth Rome and the 'secondRome' beyond the Alps, Aachen, the real capital of the Empire since the end of Charlemagne's reign - Aachenwhere he could see, near the tomb of his great ancestor,the imperial palacesurmountedby the bronzeeagle. The Empire in the period of the Hohenstaufenconsisted, territorially speaking,of the union of the State of Louis the Germanand the whole of the countries that had fallen to the shareof Lothar. This union came about progressively,under the following circumstances. The dissolution of the Carolingian Empire is commonly

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

3 dated from the year 843. Yet it must not be forgotten that, from 880 to 887, Charlesthe Fat, one of the sons of Louis the German, succeededin uniting under one rule the various Statesthat had been separatedby the treaty of Verdun. This renovatio imperii Francorum (the actual words on Charles'ssealf was extremely short-lived. Charles the Fat died on January 13th 888, after abdicatingin face of an insurrection.From this moment onwards the division was already half accomplished, and was consummatedafter the Emperor'sdeath. The kingdomsof EasternFrance (under a grandsonof Louis the German, the bastardArnuff), and WesternFrance (under Eudes, Count of Paris), were reconstitutedas they had been after Verdun. But what happened to the intermediateterritory, whose fate was all the more uncertain becausethere were no longer any descendantsof the Emperor Lothar in the male line? Here, a distinction must be made between three partsItaly, the Rhoneregion, and the country situatedto the north of the high land separatingthe basin of the Saonefrom those of the Meuse and the Moselle. This last section had already formed a kingdom by itself from 855 to 869, under one of the sons of Lothar I, who bore the same name as his fatherLothar II. According to a custom that was common at this period, his subjectswere called the men of Lothar, Lotharingi, from which were derived the namesLotharingia, Lothringen, Lorraine, which clung even after Lothar II's death to the countries that had formed his kingdom. Much later on the name was restricted to the infinitely smaller region that goes by the name today. Italy, the Rhone region, and Lorraine must all be thought of separately;one after the other they were all united with EasternFrance. To take Lorraine first. No independentpower was set up there in 888. Arnulf was recognisedthere, as he was in Germania. But neither he nor his successorswere left in peaceful possessionof the country. For abouta centuryit was a constant bone of contention between the kings of the two 'Frances', EasternandWestern.Thesestrugglesonly cameto an endwhen quite unexpectedlyin 987, by an intrigue originating appar-

4

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

ently in tile German court, the crown of Western France passedto the houseof the Roberts,to the detrimentof Charlemagne's descendants,who seemed since 936 to have made certain that it would fall to them. The new dynasty,much less attachedthan its rival to memoriesof the Carolingianpast, and wielding only moderatepower, ceasedto concern itself with Lorraine, which now became completely absorbed in the Kingdom of EasternFrance,of which it was henceforthconsidered to be an integral part. Secondly,Italy. The history of Italy is inseparablefrom that of the imperial name.The sovereignwho found himselfmasterof the kingdom of Italy, or, as it was also commonly called at that time, the kingdom of the Lombards, had been held since the days of Lothar I to be the prescriptive candidate for the rank of Emperor. For almost a century, the titles of King of Italy and Emperorwere contestedby various princes,whetherrelatedor not to the Carolingian family. In 951 the widow of one of these pretenders, Lothar of Provence, Queen Adelaide by name, being persecutedby her husband'srival, Berengerof Ivrea, called in the help of the king of EasternFrance,Otto I. Otto crossedthe Alps and married Adelaide. He took the title of King of the Italians or King of the Lombards. As yet his power was very weak. But in 961 he again crossedthe mountains, this time strongly establishinghis authority in Italy, and entered Rome, where on February 2nd 962 he had himself crowned Emperor by the Pope. For that time onwards the kingdom of Italy and the imperial title remainedindissolubly linked to the kingdom of EasternFrance. There remainsthe region of the Rhone. After the collapseof 888, two kingdomshad comeinto being there. In the south, there was Provence, and in the north Burgundy, with 'Transjurania',that is to say the Swiss plain, forming the centre. The single kingdom that was so created was henceforwardknown as the kingdom of Burgundy. Much later on (at the end of the 12th century) the ancient Roman towns which were traditionally held to be the capitals of the country came to be called the kingdom of Vienne or the kingdom of Ales.

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

5

Therewas nothingvery regal aboutthis Burgundianroyalty. Greatlay andecclesiasticalprincipalitieswereformed, attached to the would-be sovereignby the slenderestof links. In fact at the end of the loth century and at the beginning of the lIth the only authority which the kings of Burgundy retainedwas in Transjurania.From the time of Otto I the Germansovereigns exerciseda kind of protectorateover them. The last of the line, Rodolph III, gave an assuranceto the Emperor Henry II in IOI6 that he might expect to be his heir; in 1032, before he died, he sent Henry's successorConrad II the royal insignia. Conradoccupiedthe country and receiveddefinitive recognition in the year 1034. Thus the territorial formation of the 'Empire' was complete, apartfrom the easternfrontiers, which are not of interestto us here. 2.

The royal election

Let us now place ourselvesin the Hohenstaufenperiod; and with the objectof making a rathercloseranalysisof the political constitutionof Europe,let us start with the beginningof a new reIgn. The Emperorhasjust died: who will be his successor? In the loth and 11th centuries,the Germanmonarchy,like all the monarchiesof Europe, had lived under a regime that was a mixture of election and heredity. In the eyesof contemporaries,the electoraland the heredityprinciple, which appear to us to be contradictory,were not in the least opposedto one another. The 'people'- that is to say the great lords, lay or ecclesiastical,the only peoplewho counted- electedtheir king; but his strongesttitle to electionwas the fact that he belonged to a race that was alreadyroyal. This was a survival from an age when the Germantribes, who were accustomedto electing their chiefs, always chose them on principle from among the membersof the samesacredfamilies, who held high prestige, and were able by virtue of their blood to exercisecommand over men and affairs. Note for example the terms in which Henry II, elected in 1002 in successionto his cousin Otto III who had died childless, recalled the part played in his

6

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

accessionby Werner, the Bishop of Strasbourg.The passage comesfrom a royal proclamation.Naturally, the text was not written by the sovereignhimself: the words were put into his mouth by his chancellor, and express the ideas generally acceptedat the time. 'Mter the deathof this greatemperor(Otto III), mindful of a friendship dating from childhood (between the Bishop and Ourselves),and in considerationof the ties of blood and of parentagewhich linked us to this great Caesar,the prelateand a greatmany other personsresolved totrust in us; in suchwise that with God's help we were unanimously elected by the peoplesand the princes, and in us was vested the hereditary successionto one undivided kingdom.'2 Here more succinctly still is the form of words containedin the Annals of Quedlimbourg, announcingthe accessionof Otto I, who succeededhis father in 936: 'he is electedby hereditaryright to succeedto the kingdomsof his fathers'.3 In the time of the Hohenstaufenthe position was not quite the same, in Germany or elsewhere.Changeshad occurred throughoutEurope, but they had taken an oppositecoursein different countries.In France,and in Englandtoo, though less markedly, the elective principle had vanished; the hereditary principle was firmly established,and with it respectfor primogeniture.In Germany,the changewas in a completelyopposite direction. It reachedcompletion at the precise period of the Hohenstaufen.The facts can speakfor themselves. In 1125 the Emperor Henry V died, leaving no issue. His nearestrelativeswere his nephews- his sister'ssons- Frederick and Conrad Hohenstaufen.They were not elected.The magnatesgave the crown to someonequite unconnectedwith the previousroyal house- Lothar, Duke of Saxony.True, Conrad Hohenstaufendid on his side proclaimhimselfking in 1127, but the attemptfailed, and after eight years he had to give in. In I 138 Lothar too died, leaving no son behind him. The prospective heir appearedto be his son-in-law Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavaria, head of the Guelf family. Before his death Lothar handedover to him the royal insignia. But it was not on this prince that the election fell; it was Conrad Hohenstaufen, the former rival candidate,who obtainedthe crown.

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

7

In 1152 Conrad died. This time royalty remained with the Hohenstaufen,and not with the son of the late king, who was held to be too young; it was Conrad'snephew, the Duke of Swabia, Frederick (Barbarossa),who was chosen.Frederick I madecertainduring his lifetime that the successionwould pass to one of his sons. But note that it was to a youngerson, who was - for reasonsthat are not at all clear - preferred to the elder. Henry VI - for this becamehis title - enteredpeacefully enoughinto possessionof his heritage,but died prematurelyin 1197. Then a double election took place. The Hohenstaufen's enemieschosea prince of the Guelf line, Otto IV; the Hohenstaufen'spartisansrallied round a representativeof this house, but they passedover the son of the previous Emperor, the youthful Frederick Roger, who was only a child, and chose instead a man who was in his prime, Henry VI's brother, Philip of Swabia.In 1208 Philip died, the victim of an assassin. But for all that Otto IV did not remainin peaceablepossession. Having fallen out with PopeInnocentIII, he soonsaw another Hohenstaufencandidateconfronting him, this sameFrederick Roger, who had been previously set aside. The 'infant' Frederick triumphed, and becamethe Emperor Frederick II. But his was not at all a tranquil reign. Even during his lifetime groupsof princeselectedin successiontwo rival kings in opposition to him. His deathin 1250 usheredin the period called the greatinterregnum.Not that Germanywas then without a king; on the contrary, she had too many - almost always two at a time, both equallyfeeble, until in 1273 anotheruniqueelection gave the crown to Rudolf of Hapsburg. Here then was nothing resembling a hereditary right of successionin the Capetiansenseof the word. It was rather a caseof two tendencies,both clearly expressedby contemporaries, in contestwith one another.The idea persistedin many minds that birth conferred certain rights. But on the other hand,the princes,fearing the hereditaryprinciple becausethey were afraid of a strong monarchy, were only too ready to believe that a candidatefor the thronewas disqualified by the fact that he had a family link with the previous sovereign. Pope Innocent III, who was also hostile to the hereditary principle as far as Germany was concerned,once expressed

8

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

this argument very clearly. Philip and Otto had just been electedsimultaneously.Innocent III pronouncedin favour of Otto. He explainedhis motives,stressingthosewhich appeared likely to appeal particularly to the German lords. Amongst thesearguments,hereis the one that is our particularconcern: 'If, as previously [in 1190], the son succeededthe father, and people were now to see brother immediately succeeding brother, the Empire would seem to them to be no longer elective,but hereditary." This was the extremepoint of view, which did not explicitly triumph until after 1273. But let us notice that in the Hohenstaufenperiod, even when rights of lineagewere recognised,the right of primogeniturewas seldom acknowledged.Heredity - without primogeniture in a State whereno partition was allowed- in an 'indivisible' kingdom,as Henry II called it - was not likely to prove very firmly based. Now this disappearance of the hereditaryprinciple was not only a matteroffact: it was also a matteroflaw. It was not the theory of the State'senemies,but rather the official doctrine, that held the monarchy to be elective, and men were very readyto glory in the fact. Two examplesfrom the beginningof the period will suffice. In 1158 Bishop Otto of Freising, Frederick Barbarossa'suncle, wrote at the requestof his imperial nephewthe two books of the Gesta Friderici. At the beginning of Book II (C.I), in his accountof Frederick'selection,he says: 'The supremeornamentof Imperial Romanlaw is that, by a uniquesystemof privilege, kings do not succeedone anotherby right of blood, but are made by the electionof princes.'And FrederickI himself, in a manifestodating from the beginning ofhis strugglewith the papacy(October1157), says: 'We hold our imperial and royal dignity from God alone' - from God, that is, and not from the Pope- 'by the election of princes'.5 No doubt it was all very well for sovereignsto recognisethe electivecharacterof the monarchyandevenon occasionto give it considerableemphasiswhen it was a question of opposing the rights of princesto the claims of the papacy;but this does not mean that they were blind to its dangers.Their political senseand family affection compelledthem to try to assureto their descendantsthe hereditarysuccessionto the throne. In order to be successfulthey had at their disposal the classic

UNDER. THE HOHENSTAUFEN

9

procedureadoptedby all monarchiesfinding themselvesin a similar position, usedby the first Capetains,usedby the ancient dogesof Venice - of associatingtheir sonswith the royal power even while their father was alive. This was an expedientof which they madewide use,but one which also had its dangers. Frederick II had his son Henry electedand consecratedking while he was alive; but Henry proceededto pursuea personal policy and had to be deposed.And as well as being dangerous the procedurewas not always effective: Henry VI had hadhis sonFrederickRogercrownedandconsecrated,but it wasnot he who succeededhim when he died. Henry VI, clearly conscious of the disadvantages latentin this associationoffatherand son, had wanted to go one better. In 1196 he tried to obtain the princes' recognitionof the hereditarynatureof the succession; but his efforts were abortive, and he abandonedhis plan for the time being, and in fact died beforehe had beenable to take it up again. The doubleelectiontaking place,as we haveseen, at his deathand the ensuingtroubleswere the final death-blow to the hereditaryright. Why then did the German monarchy, starting out from a position very similar to that of the French monarchy, not evolve, like its westernneighbour,in the hereditarydirection, but towards the electoral principle instead? It is impossible here to discussthe detailedandcomplexreasonswhich must be broughtin to explain this greatcontrast.But it is clear enough that a whole seriesof eventswereworking in the samedirection. First, there was the physiological hazard- the successive extinction, without male heirs, of the three dynasties- Carolingian, Saxon, and Salic. Sheerinescapablefact decreedthat eachtime a royal househappenedto die out, electionpure and simple would come into its own. Then there were two circumstancesof a political nature which will becomeclearer later on. The first was the union between German royalty and the Empire. Traditionally, by virtue of ideas going back to the Roman period, and handed down in historical literature of a more or less legendarykind, the Empire was consideredto be elective. Exercitusfacit imperatorem; this ancientphrase,borrowedfrom SaintJerome,became from the end of the 12th century a commonplacein political

10

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

literature. The link betweentheseideas was clearly shown in the proclamation by which the princes, in February 1237, announcedthat they had just elected as king Conrad IV, the son of FrederickII, who had beenassociatedwith him in royal dignity during his lifetime. After recalling that the 'fathers' (Senators)of Rome formerly chose their kings and emperors (I needhardly say that this statementis historically incorrect) they added:'We ... princesoccupyin this respectthe placeof the RomanSenate... .'6 Then therewas anotherpolitical circumstance-the struggle of the Germansovereignsagainstthe Popes,itself the result of the former's acquisitionof the imperial dignity. Since Gregory VII's time, the Pope'sclassic weapon had been to raise up againsta hostile king a rival king, and to this end to agitatefor a new election among the princes.At the Assembly of Forchheim, at which the rival king Rudolf of Rheinfelden was electedin 1077, the papallegatesbeing present,it was decided - if one may credit the Saxon cleric Bruno's account- that henceforwardroyalty shouldbe elective.This is perhapsnot an absolutelyliteral fact; but it is significant that a contemporary, who was well disposedtowards the Pope,should alreadyconsider it a probability. We saw above in what clear terms Innocent III expressedhimselfin 1200 againstthe hereditary principle. Later on InnocentIV contrastedthosekings 'whose kingdoms come to them by hereditary succession'with the Emperor 'who holds his Statesby free election of the German princes'.Why did the Popesadoptthis attitude?First, it was a matter of policy: they had good reasonto fear anything that might have strengthenedthe German monarchy. They were also prompted by doctrinal considerations.Election was the sole sourceof legitimate power in the Mediaeval Church: the bishop and the abbot had to be elected,also the Pope, and so it seemednaturalto churchmenthat temporalheadsshould be electedlikewise. Later, in the 14th century, the jurist Bartole pronounced,in this same sense,that election has something more divine about it than heredity.7 Moreover, the notion of hereditaryright was traditionally linked in men's minds with that of the sanctity of certain races who were the only ones thoughtcapableof providingeffectiverulers.Now the Gregorian

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

II

reforms which inspired papal policy from the secondhalf of the 11th century had consistedlargely in a protestagainstthis systemof ideasand sentiments,which werejudgedto be semipagan.The Gregoriansdid not believe in the virtue of blood: they saw the true origin of royal power in a contrastbetween the sovereignand the people. Both doctrine and self-interest inclined them in the same direction. The Popesfound in the Germanprinces, who were also apprehensiveof too strong a monarchy,their naturalallies; and it was the oppositionof the princesin 1196 that brought Henry VI's plans to grief. From his point of view the Emperor,who in practiceneededthe help of the princesagainstthe Pope,andwho as a matterof doctrine neededto base his power on somethingindependentof the Papacy,fell into the habit of proclaiming himself elected by the princes: 'The princesof Germanyon whom both our exaltation and our abasementdepend'- thesewere the words that were to be used by Frederick II in protesting against his depositionby the Pope.8 The word election at once suggestsan electoralbody. Who in fact were the electorsof the Germanking? The Hohenstaufenperiod is notablefor far-reachingchanges in the electorate,thoughtheir natureis obscure,and they have consequentlygiven rise to numerous controversies. I shall confine myself to a resumeof the main facts generallyheld to be beyonddoubt. At the beginningof our period, the king was electedby the whole body of the 'princes' (Fursten); and this word prince still had a rather vague and much less restrictedmeaningthan it would later acquire. The following bodies took part in the election: (I) the archbishops,bishopsand abbotsof the great royal abbeys;(2) amongthe laity, the Dukes and the majority of the Counts.Becauseofits sizethis electoralcollegefunctioned in a most unwieldy manner.An attemptwas made to improve it in 1125, when Lothar was elected,by the prior designation of electorsof the seconddegree,whose duty it was to make a preliminary choice among the candidates.But that did not prevent the occurrenceof riots. The negotiationswere in fact always prolonged. Then at a general sessionthey proceeded with the election.But therewas no written ballot. The principal

12

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

personstook it in turn to put forward a name,the sameor.e in eachcase,if the preliminary negotiationshad been successful. The crowd's role was to respond by acclamation.Hence the importanceattachedto the right of having the first voice and naming the person elected- which was known as the Kur. Traditionally sincethe 11th centurythe prima vox had belonged to the Archbishopof Mainz. Who had the right to the succeeding votes?There was much speculationon this point after the double election of I 198 had called attention to the inconvenience of having no well-regulated electoral law. Drawing his inspiration from certain precedentsand from the political circumstances- and even the prejudices- of his own circle (Saxony), Eike von Repgow, writing about 1230 in his Sachsenspiegel - the first great treatiseon Germanlaw - recognises six princes as possessinga right to the Kur - the three Rhinelandarchbishops(Trier, Mainz, Cologne),and threelay lords (the Count Palatineof the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margraveof Brandenburg);a fourth layman (the king of Bohemia) - whom Eike had expresslydesiredto excludefor being without German nationality, although a vassal of the Emperor, was soon added to the list. From now onwards, therefore, it included seven names,which smoothedthe way for its adoption, sevenbeing reckonedas a sacrednumber. It beganto take on a certainofficial authority. According to Eike, the right of thesepersonslay only in being the first to vote; and even then, if the princes as a whole had reachedagreement before the voting, thosewith the first voice were not obliged to do more than utter the namethat had beenpreviously agreed upon. Thesesix or sevenwere thereforenot, properly speaking, electors;but they soon becamesuch. Peopleceasedto consider that the other princes also possesseda vote. At the double election of 1257 (Richard Earl of Cornwall and Alphonse of Castile) the evolution was complete.It was surprisingly rapid. Without attemptingto clear up all the problemsposedby this almost abrupt change,we may recall that the first half of the 13th century was a period when the whole history of German society (and particularly of the nobles) was moving strongly in a hierarchicaldirection. The formation of a collegeof privileged electors ranking above the princes is in certain respectsan

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

13

eventof the sameorder as the formation of a well-definedclass of princes (in the new and narrow senseof the word) abovethe level of the Counts.When onceour candidatewas elected,what were to be his title and his powers? 3. Royal titles and powers: the Empire

Once elected, the prince chosen by his peers was from that moment onwards king. But so that he might appear to be investedwith full royal dignity one act had to be performed, which normally followed very quickly after the election. This was a religious ceremony,the consecration,which consistedof an anointing with holy oil and a solemn investiture with the insignia of royalty. These acts conferred upon the king the impress of an almost sacred and quasi-priestly character,to which we shall have to return. I have beenspeakingof kingship. Election by the princes,in fact, createda king, and not an emperor.This is a point that cannot be too strongly stressed.To become Emperor, our elected candidate needed a supplementaryconsecrationto which we shall return later on. He was a king, then; but king of what?After somehesitation (which doesnot concernus here),customby the endof the I I th century had firmly crystallised.The candidateelectedby the German princes, the king consecratedin a German church, was Romanorum rex, Romischer Konig. What did that title mean? In the first place it meant that from the moment of his election the king ruled over all the territory called Imperium Romanum, that is to say Burgundy and Italy, as well as the former kingdom of Eastern France or Lorraine; no Hohenstaufenwould ever be specially consecratedKing of Lorraine. On the other hand it sometimeshappenedthat when the King of the Romanspassedinto Italy, he had himselfreconsecrated as King of the Italians or Lombards,in a church belongingto the ancient Lombard kingdom. FrederickBarbarossawas the only one of his houseto add to the two royal consecrations- at Aix-Ia-Chapelle and Pavia-a third one at Aries, as King of Burgundy.But legally speakingtheseceremonieshad no force.

14

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

According to his title the King of the Romans was not an Emperor; yethe alreadyruled over an empire. What were his real powers over this immense, overlarge empire?Here is anotherquestionthat I cannot treat fully on this occasion. It is obvious that a distinction must be made betweenGermanyand Lorraine (now entirely absorbed)on the one hand, and Italy and Burgundyon the other. In Germany, the royal prestigeof the Hohenstaufenwas still very considerable, especiallyin Barbarossa'stime; but from then onwardsit beganto reveal two great weaknesses:there was no organised administration, comparable with the great bureaucracyin Angevin England,or evencomparablewith what wasbeginning to takeshapeat the endof the 12th centuryin CapetianFrance; and there was no concentratedroyal domain, no Ile-de-France. Confronting the royal authority there stood the great lords, who possessedlocal judicial powers. Already in Barbarossa's day they were acquiring isolated privileges; more especially under FrederickII (who was almost continuouslyabsentfrom Germany,pursuinghis Italian andworld-wide ambitions),they acquired even wider privileges. These territorial lords (domini terrae, Landherrn) were to succeedin obtainingfrom theEmperorKing some large concessionsand gradually to become the real mastersof the country. In Italy andin Burgundythe King of the Romanswas scarcelyobeyedat all - generallyspeaking - exceptwhen present;he very rarely visited Burgundy (except for Frederick I, who through his wife was masterof FrancheComte); in Italy he had to fight incessantwars againstlocal powers,especiallythe towns. There is nothing more characteristic than the ingenuouslyadmiring remarkof Otto of Freising about Barbarossain 1157: 'the Prince won back the lands north of the Alps; by his very presencepeacewas restoredto the Franks,and by his absencethe Italians were deprivedofit'.9 But the title 'King of the Romans'did not denotesimply a power to command which was straightway concededto the personwho wielded it; it implied also an idea of candidatureor future expectations.The king who had been elected by the Germanprinces was the future Emperor. He was the only one amongstthem all who could receivethe imperial dignity. Such was the current conception in Germany. The poem- the

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

15

Ligurinus - written about 1187, perhaps in Alsace, in the CistercianAbbey of Pairis, puts thesewords into the mouth of oneof the princeswho have,assembledin 1152to electtheking :10 'whoeverGermanyhaschosenas its king, to him wealthyRome bows its head and takes him as its master'. This idea won acceptancenot only among German rulers and their faithful supporters;it was almost universally recognisedthroughout Europe. The Popesthemselvesacceptedit. To Gregory VII, Henry IV after election was both 'king, and by the grace of God, future Emperor'.nInnocent III, in March 1202, recogthe right to 'elect the king who nised that the princespossessed will then be promoted to the position of Emperor' (regem in imperatorempostmodumpromovendum).12 But though a candidatefor the Empire, the King of the Romanswas not for all that alreadyEmperor.What more was requiredfor him to becomeso?A new consecration,undervery strict conditionsas to personsand place - much stricter than in the halcyon days of the Carolingian Empire. Only the Pope could consecrate- more precisely, have the king anointed in his presenceand then personallycrown him Emperor;and this ceremonycould only take placein a singlecity - Rome - which was consideredto be the capital - caput - both of the Roman Empire and of Christianity. There were nobles and clerics at Romewho maintainedthat it was only electionby the Romans that createdan Emperor;but no one apartfrom them took this archaic theory seriously. Yet it seemsto have been generally admitted that no imperial consecration was valid unless attendedby the acclamationsof the Romanpeople,that is to say unlessit took place in Rome itself. It might happenthat a King of the Romans was prevented by circumstancesfrom attendingan imperial consecrationon the banksof the Tiber; in that casehe would remainall his life simply a king. Suchwas the lot of Conrad III, the first Hohenstaufen,and later on of King Philip (of Swabia). This is a questionof title on which Frenchwriters todaysometimesmakemistakes,thoughGermans never do and never have done. Walther von der Vogelweide could speakof the imperial head- keiserlichezhoubet- of Philip, for this headhad beenpromisedto the Empire; for did not the King of the Romans already attach to his title the imperial

16

THE EMPIRE AND 'tHE IDEA OF EMPIRE

epithetsemperaugustus?But in Walther'seyesPhilip was never anythingmore than der Kiinec.13 Normally, however, the king would becomeEmperor. No soonerwas he electedthan he set about preparinghis expeditio Romana,his Riimerzug. Having assembledhis army, he would cross one of the alpine passes(usually the Brenner or the Septimer); and having been consecratedKing of Italy on the way in a Lombardy church, he would hold a solemn diet in Northern Italy - usually in the plain of Roncaglia. Then he proceededto Rome, where the ceremony took place- on principle in St. Peter's- accordingto a ritual in which every detail had significance.There were often disturbances,for the Roman people were turbulent, and were not at all fond of Germanknights,who for their part hadno love for the Romans. But this was oflittle consequence. From that momentonwards the Germanprince would be 'the ever augustEmperorof the Romans',RomaTUJrumimperator semperaugustus.By a misconception of a kind not uncommonin the Middle Ages, concerning the senseof the word augustus(which was thoughtto be derived from augere),the imperial chancery,when beginningto conduct its correspondence in German,would translatethis by Romischer Keiser zu allen Zeiten Merer des Richs. What was the contentof this imperial title? To define this is the purposeof the secondpart of this essay.

II

THE CONCEPT OF EMPIRE

Part One The study of political ideasand sentimentsis alwaysextremely difficult owing to various problems,of which the following are the principal ones. In the minds of men the intellect and the emotionsform a well-knit whole, and ideas and feelings run into one another.In order to analysethem, however,one must examinethem separately;and this act of dissectionis to a large extent artificial. Moreover, a single institution like the Empire

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

17

was thought of and experiencedin very different ways at different periods, and even at one and the same period by different social groups;it is almostimpossiblein explaining the matter- and often even in research- to enter into these detailedshadesof difference.And lastly, both the ideasand the sentimentsare only known to us through expressionsof them that still survive in texts (supplementedby sculpturedmonumentsandceremonies).Now the expressionis oftenvery clumsy, especiallyin the Middle Ages, andoften falls undersuspicionof beinginsincerethrough the useof conventionalliterary devices or becauseof personal or political bias. And -a still more serious fault perhaps- the texts are generally the work of professional writers, litterateurs or clerks belonging to the chancery.It would be childish to credit FrederickI or Frederick II with all the theories developed by their notaries, or all Germanswithout exceptionwith the one-sidedviews of Walther von der Vogelweideor the authorof the Ligurinus. Nevertheless it would be much more valuablefor us to know the thoughts and aspirations of men of action than the conceptionsor musingsof a few professionalstylists. In what follows I shall be obliged to makesomenecessarysimplifications; but it is as well to warn you that somesimplification is involved. I.

Historical memory; Roman & Carolingian traditions

Some of the prestigewhich surroundedthe nameof Emperor camefrom the historical memoriesthat it evoked.For it would indeed be a gravemistaketo think that the menof the 12th and 13th centurieswere insensitiveto their history. True, they had only an inaccurateknowledgeof it, and in their eyes it was often confused with legend. But this history, though largely fictitious or badly understood,was food for their imaginations. For well-educatedpeople, especiallyfor clerks, it was handed down through lengthy chroniclesof the world which were so numerousat this period. It was to FrederickBarbarossathat his uncle Bishop Otto von Freising dedicatedhis great Historia de duabus civitatibus, which was a kind of Discourseon Universal History. For the non-Latin-readingpublic, a clerk of Ratisbonperhaps the self-same priest Conrad to whom we owe the

18

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

famous German adaptationof the Chanson de Roland- wrote circa 1150 a history in Germanverseof more than 17,000lines on the Empire from Augustus to Conrad III. In the 12th century the nobles, generally speaking, were cultured, and eagerto read or at least listen to recitations; and even those who had no knowledgeof the chronicles picked up scrapsof history, from epic poemsor from purely oral tradition, like that which is known to have circulated,for example,under Charlemagne.Thesenarrativesactedall the more powerfully on men's minds becausethe law - which was essentiallycustomarylaw and religion - which is by its naturetraditional - both predisposed them to the view that the past was in itself something venerable,upon which the presentought to model itself. The imperial monarchywas closelyboundup with two great traditions: that of the Carolingians- especiallyCharlemagneand that of the ancientRomanEmperors. The Carolingian tradition always remained alive in the Empire. It is the explanationof the customarychoiceof placecustomary, though not compulsory- for the consecrationAix-Ia-Chapelle; and at Aix-Ia-Chapelle the very church that contained the tomb of Charlemagne.Rightly or wrongly, it was thought that the Salic dynasty, and consequentlythe Swabiandynasty,descendedfrom the Salic in the female line, came down from the 'noble and ancient Carolingian seed' through the motherof Henry III, the EmpressGisele.14Under Frederick Barbarossa,a very clear and concertedeffort was madeby the supportersof the throne to assertthe importance of thesegreattraditions.Theyforged a charterof Charlemagne, to this church at Aix-Ia-Chapelle, inserting into it one of the cleareststatementsin our possessionabout the constitutional theory of the Empire.A certainLatin poet, known by the name of Archipoeta, in the service of the imperial chancellor, Archbishop Rainald of Dassel,of Cologne, portrayedFrederick as 'transfixing the rebelswith his avenginglance, and thus representing the conqueringarm of Charles.'15The chanceryitself delighted to reproduceat the head of many imperial decrees the redundant protocol which forms the preamble to the 16 proclamationof Charlemagne. But thereis evenbetterevidence.Charlemagne,as we know,

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

19

was buried at Aix-Ia-Chapelle.OUo III, in the year 1000, had causeda search to be made for his tomb - then almost forgotten- andhadopenedit in orderto gazeuponthe marvellous remains. Here was a romantic episode which legend soon embroideredin evenmore romanticcolours. FrederickI dared to take a particularly bold step.He addedCharlesto the ranks of the Church'ssaints.The exhumationof the relics took place, with great pomp, on December29th 1166. Unfortunatelythis 'canonisation'- the actualword usedin an imperial proclamation, of doubtful authenticity,it is true, but certainly drawn up by a contemporary- dependedon the consentgiven by a Pope, PascalIII, who was opposedby the imperial party backedby most of the cardinals,and so ranksin Catholic tradition as only an anti-Pope.There is thus some doubt even today about the legitimacy of the act, and it is not quite certain whether Charlemagneis really 'Saint Charlemagne'. We seemto have devoteda good deal of spaceto the Carolingian tradition. But even underBarbarossathis tradition does not appearto havebeenprominent;andlater on it faded away perceptibly. It is not to Germanythat we must turn, aboutthe year 1200, to find a monarchy inspired by the memory of Charlemagneand concernedto revive it and make the most of it; we must turn rather to the Capetianmonarchy of Philip Augustus.What was the reasonfor this relative weakness,and especially for the steady fading, of this aspect of historical memoryin Germany?In the courseof my studiesI have often had causeto put this questionto myself, but to this very day I have never beenable to find an altogethersatisfactoryanswer. A good dealof importancemust no doubt be attachedto purely literary differences.In France,it was epic literature that was responsiblefor the very early popularisationof the Carolingian legend. In Germany, on the other hand, there was hardly anything of this nature except a literature which palely reflected this style; its own epics were directed into other channels.True, we still have to explain why Germanydid not have its own native Carolingiangeste. I do not know whether the existenceof legendary themes of a genuinely Germanic kind, forming a ready subject for poetic inspiration, would explain this ratherpeculiardeficiency.All we can do hereis to

20

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

state the facts. At the end of the 12th century, it is probable that the Charlemagnelegend, as far as the massof the people was concerned,already had something foreign and French aboutit; and this very circumstancemust have madeit seema ratherinept way of upholding a monarchyin the eyesof those to whom the Capetianmonarchy,despitethe excellentrelationship subsistingbetweenPhilip Augustusor Saint Louis and the Hohenstaufen,appearedas a rival. Moreover, the Emperors had other precedentsto invoke, which were their own, which no one could dispute, and which it was thereforeonly natural they should prefer - those provided by the ancient Roman Empire. In a decree of September 26th 1165, Barbarossa mentions among his 'predecessors'and alongside 'Charles' (Charlemagne)and Louis the Pious, Constantine,Justinian and ValentinianP Habits of mind going back to the humanism of the 16th century make us inclined today to imagine that there was a clear division betweenwhat we call Antiquity and what we call the Middle Ages. But the men of the 12th and 13th centuriesdid not view the matter at all in this light. Their thought when applied to history was generally dominatedby the idea of the four empires, based upon the propheciesof Daniel. The fourth kingdom in order of time was the Roman Empire, which was to be followed by the end of the world. This had not yet happened;and so people were still living, about the year 1200, under the Roman Empire. This notion naturally took on peculiarstrengthin the minds of princeswho called themselvesRomanorumimperatores, and in the minds of their subjects.The Kaiserchronik, as I have alreadymentioned, beganwith Augustus and went straight on to the first of the Hohenstaufen, Conrad III. 'I have dealt', wrote Quo of Freising in the prologue to his Livre des deux cites, 'with the line of Roman Emperors . . . continuing up to the present day.' This idea of the continuity of tradition was part of the ancient heritage of mediaeval historical writing. But in the Hohenstaufen'stime it exerciseda greaterspell than ever over men's minds, becauseit was moving with the generalcurrent of ideas.We commonly speaktoday of 'the Renaissanceof the

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

21

12th century', and this descriptionis a fairly apt one. Not only did this century in fact see a complete transformationin the realm of ideas; but this intellectual ferment of an extremely intense and original kind, like the great upheavalof the 16th century, found its favourite food for thought in the literary models of antiquity. There was indeed a humanistmovement in the 12th century and this return to the classicscould not fail to exercise influence in the political sphere as well. It gave direct inspiration to two movements which were extremely different, and yet related to one another. In the first place, in Rome itself in 1143, the population of the city rebelledagainstthe Pope; this communalinsurrection, beginningin much the sameway as thoseof many other towns struggling against an ecclesiasticallord, soon took on the character of a quasi-archaeologicaleffort at reconstruction, including an attempt to re-establishthe Senateand the reappearanceof the letters S.P.Q.R.on inscriptions.The leaderof this strange enterprisewas a well-educatedclerk, Arnold of Brescia. The Romans sought to negotiate with the German kings, Conrad III and then Frederick I. They wanted the governmentof the Empire; but they wanted a truly Roman Empire in which the head would reside in the Eternal City. Anq they evenclaimedthe right, ifnot to elect the Emperor,at least to confirm him in office. Frederick Barbarossacared nothing for an Empire like that - Italian, popular, and anticlerical; so he helped the Papacy to suppressthis Roman insurrection. But - and here we see the second aspect of the political influence exerted by humanism- the German Sovereignand his circle were no less sensitivethan Arnold of Bresciaand his countrymento the glory of the Roman past. Only they interpreted its lessonsin a different way. It was the Empire, and not the Senate,that they wished to re-establishin all its ancient greatness.Someof their ideason this subjectcameto themfrom the Italian lawyers. Italians of all periods had always had a tastefor legal studies,and law had beentaught in the schools. But in this spheretoo, the end of the I I th centurysawa revival. The greatcodesofJustinian,which had almost beenforgotten, were rediscoveredand becamethe subjectof specialteaching-

22

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

particularly in the great school at Bologna, and numerous commentariesand 'glosses' were written upon them. This renaissanceof Romanlaw was one of the forms taken by the great Renaissanceof Antiquity, and it was one of the earliest and most important in its effects. In the Code and the Digest peoplesaw a well-orderedEmpire coming to life, governedby an Emperor who was absolute. The Italian lawyers who devotedthemselvesto the studyof the CorpusJuris, the so-called glossateurs,were for the most part devotedto the Emperors,and many joined the service of the imperial administration;some of them even lived in the householdof FrederickBarbarossa during his sojourn south of the Alps. Not surprisingly,therefore,it is a legal documentwhich gives us the most characteristicevidenceof what might be called the theory of imperial continuity in Barbarossa'stime. In November 1158, at the Diet of Roncaglia, a law had been promulgatedon behalf of the students.Is It concludeswith these words: 'We command that this law be inserted in the imperial constitutions under the title ne filius pro patre'; you mustunderstandthat the law wasto be inscribedin theJustinian Code, in Book IV, section 13, following on fragmentsof the constitutionsof Gordianand Diocletian, the latestof which was aboutA.D. 294. And this order, as manymanuscriptsattest,was carried out. There could be no clearerindication of the desire to link up the chain of legislative tradition. Moreover, quite independentlyof any directivesfrom above,and simply for the convenienceof readers,other Hohenstaufenconstitutionswere annexedby the glossateursto different sectionsof the Code.The professorsof law thus applied to these decreesissued by contemporarysovereignsthe sameprocedurecustomarilyused by them for the laws ofJustinian,which had beenissuedafter the Codewas compiled,and so had not found a placein it. Rather than use a collection oflaws gatheredtogetherseparatelyfrom the main code, ways had beendevisedof weaving them into the very texture of the Code itself, and these were called the Authentiques.It is symptomaticthat FrederickI and FrederickII shouldthushavebeenplaceduponthesamefooting asJustinian. Among the Christian Emperors,this Prince and Lawgiver was the one preferred by writers, legal or otherwise, when they

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

23

wished to evoke the memory of the ancientpredecessors of the Hohenstaufen. Naturally, there is also sometimesa mention of Constantine, as we havejust seenabove; but the referencesas a whole are fewer than in the Ottos' days. The fact of the matteris that he was commonly held to have been the author of the notorious Donation,by which thePopewassaidto havebeengivenauthority over Rome and the greaterpart of Italy. Especiallysince the outbreakof the great struggle betweenthe Papal Power and the Empireunderthe Saliankings, this concessionwasreckoned most embarrassingin the eyes of the imperialists. If they had been good historiansas we understandthat word today, they could easily have disputed its validity. For there can be no doubt that the celebrated document in question is purely apocryphal-an impudent forgery of the 8th century. There were in fact amongthe disciplesof Arnold of Bresciasomebold spirits who venturedto throw doubtsupon its authenticity.But the critical sensewas not sufficiently widespreadat the time for this scepticismto meetwith muchsupport.The Hohenstaufen's most faithful partisansadmitted the Donation as genuine,and were contentto do more than cavil at it. This was Walter von der Vogelweide'sattitude.Accordingto him, when Constantine handedthe Pope'the lance,the sword and the crown', an angel was heard to proclaim: 'Misfortune, misfortune, triple misfortune.' It is not surprisingthat the memoryof the prince who - to adopt Walter's phrase- 'had given this poison to Christianity', was not gladly recalled. Moreover, the Christian Emperorswere not the only ones whom peopledelightedto call to mind. In the eyesof Archipoeta, Barbarossawas not only anotherCharlemagne,he was also the new Augustus.Under FrederickII theseauthenticallyclassical arid almost pagantraditionswere very clearly expressedin the realmof art. Like the Caesarsof antiquity, the Emperorhad his own statueerected,dressedin the chlamys,on a triumphal arch at the entranceto Capua. And in obvious imitation of the ancient Roman coinage, his effigy, crowned with laurel, figured on the fine gold piecesthat he struckfrom 123I onwards at Brindisi and Messina- the 'Augustales'. The classicaltradition did not furnish the Empire with forms

24

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

of literary or plastic expressiononly; it underlaycertainclaims of a much more realistic kind. Before long we shall be studying the practical contentof the idea of Empire; but we must first say a word about another element in the idea of imperial prestige- the sacredcharacterof the sovereign. 2.

The Emperor as a sacredpersonj messianism

The ideaof royalty as somethingsacred,which was commonto the whole of the Middle Ages, did not simply apply to the imperial monarchy.It went back much further than that. The dynastiesof the ancient Germania had been invested with a hereditary religious character.Later on, in the Carolingian period, the Church had to someextentauthenticatedthis concept by christianisingit. The rite of unction was then borrowed from the Old Testament.From now onwardsthe rite of unction with holy oil would, in the eyesof the majority of his subjects, give the king a quasi-supernatural character.Now unction was not confinedto the Emperors;the kings of Franceand England - to mention only two - also had a right to it. But the full of the sacredanointingof the sovereignwere noconsequences where better exploited than in the Empire. It was a German, Guy of Osnabriick, who said: 'The king must be deemeda personapart from the ordinary run of men; for, having been anointedwith sacredoil, he assumespriestly qualities.'l9 But Guy of Osnabriick was writing thesewords in 1084 or 1085, under Henry IV, at a time when the vigorous attack led by the Gregorianreformersagainstroyalty was at its height, and was provoking a most vigorous responsefrom the imperialists. Under the Hohenstaufencontroversyon this point died down, and the protagoniststook up lessclearly definedpositions.The Gregorians,anxious to reduceroyalty to a condition of simple temporal power and kings to a position of simple loyal Christians,were in part successful.No doubt the old notion of the sacredcharacterof royalty did not disappearfrom men's minds. The Canonist Rufinus, writing in Barbarossa'sreign, knew that in orderto justify the oathof loyalty to the Emperor taken by bishops(a priest could not in principle swearfealty to a layman),it must be statedthat the Emperor'consecratedby

UNDER

TH~ TH~ HOH~NSTAUFEN HOH~NSTAUFEN

25

holy unction is not altogethera layman'.20We shall see in a few momentsevenclearerproofof the latent persistenceof this idea; but when it found expression,it was now usually only in rather attenuatedforms. According to the ancient ritual of consecrationthe future Emperor used to receive the priestly robesfrom the Pope; and the official documentsdescribedthis part of the solemn rite in words which contain the idea put forward above by Guy of Osnabrock:'Here the Pope makes him a cleric (Ibique facit eum clericum)'. Under the Hohenstaufen,the ceremonyof investingwith robesstill survived,but it had a weaker significance, the King of the Romansbeing deemedto be admittedto the numberof the canonsof St. Peter. This was a distinct downgrading,for in the Middle Ages one could be a canonwithout havingbeenadmittedto Holy Orders. The rest of the ritual is marked by a very curious tendency. Sinceit was essentialto recognisethat the Emperorbelongedto somespecificChristianrank abovethat of a simplelayman,and as there was some reluctanceto put him on a level with the priests, an attempt was made to place him on a par with the deacons.Neither the statusof canonnor that of deaconcarried much prestigeas far as the imperial monarchywas concerned. Yet by the time of Frederick Barbarossa,Henry VI or Frederick II, we have reachedthe moment when the fullest use was made of the words 'consecrated'or even 'holy' as applied to the imperial majestyin the Emperor'spalace,in his laws and proclamations,and in the Empire itself. The phrase Sacrum Imperium- later rendered as Heiliges Reich or Holy Empire, datesfrom this period. More than this: theserelatively humanterms of 'sacred'or 'holy' were sometimesreplacedby the almost blasphemousone 'divine': 'Deus es, de prole deorum', says the writer Godefroy of Viterbo (an Italian, but coming from a family of Germanorigin), when addressingHenry VI.21 And FrederickII himselfwrote to his son: 0 Caesareisanguinis divina proles. But the origin of thesefulsome expressionsis not to be soughtin any very profounddepthoffeeling; it is entirely a literary matter.The chanceryclerksor writers borrowedfrom the vocabulary of the Later Empire, from the Corpus Juris Civilis itself. One must always make allowancewhen interpreting the documentsof this period, for a certain intentional

26

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

archaismand pedantryof language.Innumerablecharterscall the Counts 'consuls'; and Barbarossa'schancerywould from time to time style the archbishopsarchijlamines.22 Thesewords such as sacred, holy, divine, were thus a kind of tradition; thoughnot a tradition entirely devoid of meaning.They sought to express a very lofty conception of the imperial dignity, whosevaluein practicewill becomeapparentlater on; but they were in any case the languageof educatedpeople, and they expressedthe ideasof a fairly restrictedcircle. On the other hand speculationsabout the end of the world, when applied to the imperial monarchy,causeda tremendous stirring of the soul. This is a very importantpoint, and a very strangeone, worth dwelling on for a moment. The peopleof the Middle Ages thought much aboutthe end of the world. They were readyto believe that it was quite near, and with the help of signs in the Sacred Books they often reflectedon the conditionsin which the Last Judgmentwould take place. Of course,it was to be precededby the coming and the triumph of Antichrist. The general course of eventsaccordingto sourcesthat are not our immediateconcern- had beensketchedout at the end of the 11th centuryby a Burgundian monk, Adso de Montierender,in a treatise entitled De Ortu et Tempore Antichristi, which created a great stir. There would come a king of the Franks who would unite the whole RomanEmpire underhis rule. Oncehe had gainedthe victory he would betakehimselfto Jerusalem,wherehe would lay down his crown and sceptre on the Mount of Olives. Then the Antichrist would appear.Naturally enough,in an Empirereconstituted by the Germankings, the last and glorious Emperor was thought of in terms of one of thesesovereigns;and there was constantspeculationas to whether it might not be the particular prince of the momentwho was destinedto fulfil this wondrous role. The persistenceof these speculationsin Barbarossa'stime is attestedin various documents- including a play in Latin verse, probably composed in the Bavarian monasteryof Tegernsee,the Ludus de Antichristo.23 In this play we seethe RomanEmperor(ImperatorRomanus)winning successive victories over the kings of France,Greece,Jerusalemand the pagan King of Babylon, then laying down the imperial

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

27

crown upon the altar at Jerusalem,thoughstill remainingking of Germany (rex Teutonicorum).The Antichrist comes on the scene,and though he is powerlessto triumph over the arms of the Germanking, he wins him over by faked miracles.Following the appearanceand martyrdomof the prophetsEnoch and Elijah, the Antichrist reignsuntil the trumpetssuddenlysound, Antichrist collapses, and everyone sings Laudem dicite Deo nostro. In a short while I shall return to severalpassagesin this strange document, which expresses,beneath the traditional theologicalimagery, a strong faithin the imperial supremacy. In FrederickII's time, thoughtsof the Antichrist, which were more intense than ever, took a singular tum. More or less everywherein Europe,but particularly in Italy, the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century witnessed an intensereligious ferment. The orthodox Church of the period wasthreatenedsimultaneouslyby a greatmysticalheresy- that of the Vaudois- and by a sect that was almost devoid of Christianity, but full of asceticismand inclined above all to mystical discoveries- the Cathari. The Papacyreactedto this peril by organising a crusade,and then by the Inquisition. Moreover in 1209 - the year when Otto IV was crowned Emperor- the Franciscansbegan their great preachingmission. Full of dangersas it was for Churchdiscipline, it was only kept within the bosom of the Church by the deep respectof St. Francis for the priesthoodon the one hand, and by the broad-mindedness and skill shown by the Curia on the other. And eventhenit was not to be without somehereticaloffshoots. More than ever men's thoughts were turning to the beyond and to the end of the world, to the figure of Antichrist, which was orthodox enough- yes, even to a new kind of messianism, which wasmuchlessso.A Cistercianabbotin Calabria,Joachim of Flore, who died in 1202, announcedthat after the reign of the Father(the Old Law) and the Son, a third kingdom would come, the kingdom of the Holy Spirit, in which the faithful would understandthe Eternal Gospel in its spiritual meaning. Joachim did not think he was making any breach with the traditionalfaith. But his disciples,who wererecruitedespecially from Franciscanconvents,were to go much further than he had, for they expectedthat the third age- close at hand, in

28

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

their opinion - would see the ruin of the establishedChurch. It was here in Italy, agitated by these mystical hopes and fears, that the destiny of the Empire under Frederick II was decided. The war betweenthe imperial party and the papal party, which constantlysetone town againstanother,and even different parties within a town, put the whole country in disarray.As the disturbancespread,it mademen all the more inclined to reflect upon the future. Prophecies were rife. Frederick himself was a strangepersonalitywho greatly exercised the imaginationsof his contemporariesas he exercisesthe imaginationsof many Germansto this day. Broughtup in Italy, and quite foreign in mannersand outlook to all things German - he could probably not even speak the language- he was neverthelessimmenselycultured, in Greek and Arabic no less than in Latin. He surroundedhimself with an oriental luxury that struck and often scandalisedthe crowd. He was curious aboutphilosophyand about observingnaturalphenomena;he was probablya mystic in his own peculiarway, a way that was apparentlynot particularlyorthodox;for his lofty intelligenceso it seems- had been attractedby the Averroist philosophy. Finally, as was only fitting, he was deeply impressedwith the grandeurof his own role, and was politically ruthless. Men's opinions of him tended to veer according to their views of prophetsand messianism.For the servantsof the Papacy,for Pope Gregory IX and even for Innocent IV, Frederickwas, if not the Antichrist (for as theologiansthey knew that he did not exhibit all the marks of the Antichrist), at any rate his forerunner, infelix prenuntiusAntichristi, as Innocent IV expressed it,24 'the beastcoming up out of the sea',who was describedin grand phraseslifted from the Apocalypse. The faithful supportersof the Emperor, on the other hand, naturally drew on very different pictures. One of them, a German Dominican, Brother Arnold, thought that he had actually discoveredthe Antichrist. Therecould be no doubt aboutit - he was Innocent IV! And aboveall they were unanimousin holding a positively messianicconception of what might be called the historical mission of their prince. After all, there is not such a great distancebetweenAntichrist and Messiah- not much more than a simple inversion

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

29

of the point of view! The samewords could be used on either side. Inmutator saeculi- he who will change the face of the centuries:it was in theseterms that a publicist from the papal party, Albert de Behaim, described Frederick II, typicus prenuntiusAntichristi.25 Well thereis certainlymore thanone way of 'changingthe centuries'.The faithful adherentsof Frederick II also believed that profound changeswere imminent and were confident that they would be brought about by their master, but in the form of a golden age with which men's minds had become familiar through the musings of the Joachites.A prophecy that was widespreadenoughto have reached the English chronicler Matthew Paris26 proclaimed these glorious days in a style that was intentionally obscure. 'Those who walked in darknesswill return to light; and the things which were separatedand scatteredabroad will be consolidated. A large cloud will begin to rain because a changerof the world is born (quia natus est inmutator saeculi). This word 'inmutator', chargedas it was with mystic meaning, clung to Frederick II. Matthew Paris himself notes27 as he follows the Emperor'sdeath: 'About this time there died the greatestof the princes of the earth, Frederick, the marvel of the world and the miraculoustransformerof the times (stupor mundi et inmutator mirabilis). But to return to the prophecythat hasjust beenquoted.One particular phrasedeservesattention: 'A large cloud will begin to rain.' It is clearly an echo of a celebratedversein Isaiah.28 The verseitself, almostliterally reproduced(quem nubespluerunt justum et super eum coeli desuperroraverant), occurs in an anonymous passagethat also appliesit to the Emperor,and this time not simply in an allusive fashion, but in the most explicit manner.The Emperor is named, and there is attachedto his name a very characteristic epithet: 'Frederick the Holy.'29 Now everyoneat that time knew that the Church traditionally looked upon this prophetic passageas a proclamationof the coming of the Christ. Among Frederick'sentourage,however sacrilegiousit may seem to us, the referencewas a perfectly consciousone. It can even be found in the Emperor'sdecrees, which were drawn up by his chancery;for example,a letter to his son Conrad, in which he tells him of his successesagainst

30

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

the Pope:30 'The pontiffs and the phariseeshad gathered togetheragainstthe Lord Christ; the prince of sedition, filled with headlong pride, had risen up against the prince of the Romans,to fight againsthim by word and by deed;but behold the Lord of hostshas brought down the pride of the prince of the priests . • .'; and in a letter to the town of lesi, his native place, 'resplendentwith his cradle', he twice calls it his 'Bethlehem'.31 Such expressionsseemedmuch less blasphemousto the men of the 13th century than they would to the most pious of our contemporaries.Men's minds at that period were accustomed to a symbolical view of the universe; everyone knew that a humanbeing can be a 'type' of Christ, without ceasingto be a simple humanbeing. It is a well-known fact that the disciples of St. Francis- or at least the most advancedamong them laid greatstressupon this idea of the perfectimitation ofJesus: 'It is well that we should rememberin the first place that Francis,our blessedmaster,conformedin all his actionsto the pattern of Christ' - these are the opening words both of the Actus h. Francisci et sociorum ejus and the Little Flowers qf St. Francis.32 But it was no slight matterfor an Emperorto be held up as an image of the Saviour. One can hardly refrain from seeingin this audaciousconceptone of the extremeforms in which the ancientbut still lively notion of the sacredcharacter of royalty reappearedunder the influence of Italian mysticism of the 13th century; and it was of course to a large extent similar ideas and similar hopes that explain the posthumous legend of Frederick II, which I do not proposeto deal with here. III THE CONCEPT OF EMPIRE

Part Two 3. The temporalpower qf the Emperors; universalmonarchy What contributionwas made to the SwabianEmperorsby the

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

31

heritage of Charlemagne,and further back still, by that of Justinianand Augustus? In the first place, they receiveda lessonin absolutism.From Barbarossa'stime onwards, the servantsof the Emperor supplied a multitude offormulaeaffirming, in theory, the omnipotenceof the prince, who was raisedby his rank abovethe laws: pro lege voluntasprincipis essesolet, as the author of the Ligurinus putsit. 33 True,thesewere commonplaces borrowedfrom Roman Law, which were constantlyin the mouthsoflawyersat all the Europeancourts of this period, but without any very precise meaningbeing attachedto them; but in imperial circles these banalities were repeated more often than elsewhere, and perhapswith more emphasis.As for FrederickII, he found in his patrimonya new exampleof absolutism,nearerat handand more vivid than that offered by the Rome of the Caesarsto the admirersof the past. For, as well as being Emperor,he was the King of Sicily, and as such the heir and upholder of a monarchywhich was Norman in origin, and peculiarly strong and despoticin character.His counsellers,mostly taken from among the Sicilian bureaucracy,held the highest ideas of sovereignpower and inspired Frederickwith the sameviews. The sacredqualities with which, as we know, contemporaries endowedthe Emperor, formed the basis of the most extreme claims. Whoeverdisobeyedhis master- evenif the recalcitrant personwere the Popehimself- committedsacrilege. Within the frontiers of the Empire proper the Emperorwas equally a king. His power over theseterritories(apartfrom the city of Rome, to which we shall return) had after all nothing specifically imperial about it. But the fact to note is that the frontiers of the Empire, in the restrictedsenseof the term, were by no means the limits of the Emperor'saspirations.As the successorof the mastersof the ancientworld, he, like them, was dominus mundi, an expression that frequently occurs in the writings of his supporters.The very moderateOtto of Freising writes in his chronicle:3 4 'The imperial authority, in which is vestedresponsibility for the supremegovernment[patrocinium] of the whole universe'. And Barbarossahimself35 says: 'and we, who by the graceof the divine mercy, hold the helm both of the City [Rome] and of the World'. And in clearer terms

32

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

still an imperial clerk, at the Council of Pavia in 1159, used thesewords of the Emperor: 'the Prince of princes,who holds the Empire and the diademof universalmonarchy'.36This idea of universal dominion was not only justified by historical precedents;it also satisfiedthe needfor writing in the temporal sphereas well as in the spiritual, for which the best minds of the age were searching.'One God, one Pope,one Emperor'37 this phraseoccursin this exactform in a decreeofBarbarossa. In practice, what ambitions were comprisedin this worldwide patrocinium?The claimswhich the GermanEmperorsmore than once assertedagainsttheir competitorsfor the Empire and for the Roman succession,the basileis of Byzantium, cannot really be consideredas more than a seriesof rather theatrical gestures;for it was only in the Ludus de Antichristo that the Imperator Romanorumsubjugatedthe King of the Greeks! Much more seriouswere the claims of the Empire upon the kingdoms of the West, formerly an integral part of the ancient Roman Empire, or upon the new kingdomsset up to the north and east of Germany,on Scandinavianor Slavonic territory. Not that the Emperor dreamt of annexing these lands; but he clearly consideredhimself superior to their rulers, who were nothing more than plain kings. In order to catchthe full flavour, and up to a certainpoint to realise thesevisions of far-spreadingdominion, we must place ourselvesin the reigns of Frederick I and Henry VI. A great deal of their strengthwas drawn from the renaissanceof classicallearning,particularly the renaissanceof Romanlaw. An Italian jurist, Huguccio of Pisa, wrote in his commentaryon the decretalsof Gratian:38 'It is by Romanlaw alone that the Romansand the subjectsof the RomanEmpire are guided and governed.What of the French and other people beyond the Alps? Are they bound by Roman laws, and should they live accordingto them?'The reply comes:'Most certainly,jor they are and are meant to be subject to the Roman Empire.' This line of thought, which was widespreadamong the Romanistsduring the period of Philip Augustus and his immediate successors, imbued the royal government of France, which was very jealous of its independence,with a lively mistrust of any teachingof Roman Law. And literature as well as legal works

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

33 proclaimed the rights of the Emperor to universal dominion. The Ludus de Antichristo containedscenesdepicting the future victoriesof the Empire, notably over France.We shouldnotice, moreover, that the author of the Ludus, in pursuanceof the well-known tendenciesof Hohenstaufenpolicy, clearly felt no particular dislike for the Capetiandynasty. The rex Francorum is a valiant man; he only gives up his independenceafter a struggle, and when he has been defeatedhe makes his submission in tolerably noble terms. On the other hand the King of the Greeksgoesdown without a strugglebeforethe Emperor. Thesetwo princestake up the sameattitudewhen faced by the Antichrist: a threat is enough to win over the King of the Greeks; but the King of France only gives way when rich presentsare offered to him. There is a perceptibleshadeof difference between the two. But in what uncompromising termsthe imperial supremacyis proclaimed,basedupon historical tradition and upon RomanLaw! The Emperorsaysto the ambassadors whom he sendsto the King of Francein order to demandhis submission: 'As it is written in the chroniclesof the historians,the whole world was formerly the domainof the Romans,but the work of courageousmen of the pastis now destroyedby the degeneracy of their successors.. . . They have been responsiblefor the decayof that power which is now being recoveredby our Most PuissantMajesty. Let all kings, then, now pay to the Roman Empire those tributes that were decreedof old.' Whereuponthe ambassadorsreply to the king: 'We know full well that His Majesty in his wisdom must submit himself to RomanLaw.' But this was not merely the languageof literary men or scholars.The Emperor'scounsellors- and even the Emperor himself- speakin very similar terms.The Anglo-Frenchwriter John of Salisbury waxes indignant because Barbarossa's chancellor, the famous Rainald of Dassel, has addressedthe King of France not as rex, but as regulus.3 9 More clearly still the Emperorat the Diet of Dole, recalling the fact that he has invited to his court the kings of France,Englandand Denmark, to take counselwith them about the schism then dividing the Papacy,calls thesesovereignsprovinciarumreges,that is to say the

34

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

kings of provincesof the Empire.40 This supremacyevenfound expressionin the insignia. Walter von der Vogelweide, who, as a good court poet, was very attentive to this kind of symbolism, contraststhe zirkel - the simple circle of gold - belonging to royalty with the morecomplicatedshape,on an octagonal base,of the imperial crown. Were thesenothing more than empty words? Not entirely. For on severaloccasionsthe Emperorsucceededin getting his authority recognisedby the northern kings and by the Slav kings or princes, and that in a form altogether foreign to Roman Law - claiming homagefrom vassalsand feudal lords alike. The idea of universal dominion came from Rome, but it was embodiedin rites that were the expressionof contemporary society; and in the sameway homagewas quite often the expressionof Papal theocracy.The Emperor would have beenequallyreadyto demandhomageof the kings of the West - of France and England: in the Ludus he requires it and actually obtainsit from the King of France. The Capetians always knew how to defend their independence;but the care taken by writers in their service, especially since Philip Augustus'stime, to affirm it, and the reactionagainstRoman Law referred to above; the exploitation in a French senseof the Carolingianlegend; the theory - incidentally, a little later in date- aboutthe king being 'Emperorin his own kingdom'all thesego to prove that the FrenchCourt had becomeaware of the dangerandconsideredit to be by no meansinsignificant. Circumstancesdid not permit the English kings any such steady successes.In I 155 Henry II wrote to Barbarossain humble terms which have not as yet perhapsbeensufficiently explained:41 'We offer you our kingdom and all the landsunder our dominion, we hand them over to your power, so that you may disposeof them as seemsgood to you, and so that your imperial will may be accomplishedin all things.' In 1193 Richard Creur de Lion, who had by chancefallen into the handsof Henry VI, paid him homage. All this howeverdid not produceany very tangible practical results.UnderFrederickII, the imperial government'sattitude changedslightly. It did not of course give up the claim to universalsovereignty- witness (amongstothers) the preamble

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

35 to the Great Charter of the Teutonic Order, in which the religious and crusading mission of the supremepower is so clearly set forth: 'God has establishedOur Empire above all the kings of the earthand extendedOur dominion over diverse climes in order that We may set Ourselvesto magnity his name down the centuriesand to spreadthe faith amongthe Gentiles; for thus did the Holy Roman Empire of old preparethe way for the preachingof the Gospel. .. .'42 But the imperial court in generalwas much lessinclined than in the pastto indulge in these grandiosedreams.The fact is that the Emperor was at this time engagedin an inexorablestruggle with the Papacy. He would have liked to rally against it all sovereigns- and even lay lords - whom he consideredto be threatenedin the same way as himself by the encroachmentsof the spiritual power. It would have beenunwise to scareaway possibleallies by any untimely declarations,all the moreso becausethe Popes, who also looked for support from the kings, did not fail to represent themselvesin that quarter as the adversariesof imperial ambition. 'What [said InnocentIV] is the main cause of the hatredshownby Frederickfor the Catholic Church?The reason is this: he casts an ambitious eye on other kingdoms which he would fain subdueto his own power; and in the path he finds this Churchwhoseduty it is, with maternalsolicitude, to protectthe rights and defendthe liberties of Christiankings, who are her spiritual sons.' In the imperial manifestoes,the themeof world dominion gives way beforethat of the solidarity of kings. It goeswithout sayingthat this did not meanthe death of the idea; and it would not be very difficult to follow its various manifestationsin periodsmuch nearerto our own. 4. The power over Romeand over the Church In their Roman and Carolingian heritage, the German sovereignsnot only found materialfor somerathervaguedreams of universal monarchy; it also inspired them with two quite definite ambitions, seeminglyof very different extent and yet closely bound up with one another- to exercise power over Rome, and power over the Papacy. Properly speaking,Rome was not part of the Kingdom of

36

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

Italy, which was the heir of the former Lombardkingdom that had never been able to subjugatethe papal city. The rights which the Germansovereignmanagedto assertover it came from his position as Emperor or as King of the Romans. It appearedquite obvious to the imperialiststhat Rome, being in principle the capital of the Empire,must of necessitybelongto it. 'By the will of God,' the chronicler Rahewin43 represents FrederickBarbarossaas saying, 'I am called, and I verily am, the Roman Emperor; and I should thereforeonly possessthe semblanceof dominion, I should only bear a worthlesstitle, a name without substance,if power over the city of Rome were to fall from my grasp.' But in the city itself there were two powers opposing the Emperor: a de facto power, the Roman nobility (for in Italy and generally speakingin the Mediterranean countries, in contrast with Northern and Central Europe,a large numberof nobleslived in the towns, and were an influential urban class); and above all a power which, as well asbeingdefacto,could rely upondejurearguments- namely the papal power. The Popes supported their claims by an apocryphal document, the Donation of Constantine,and by more authentic decrees,requiring somewhatcareful interpretation, however, which emanatedfrom the Carolingian and Saxon kings. The legal situation of Rome and of the papal territory in generalwas, in short, extremelyill-defined. Hardly anyonedisputed the fact that the Emperor possesseda rather vaguesupremacy.44But he had in fact considerabledifficulty in exercising any effective authority, and hardly succeededin doing so until he had subjectedthe local nobility and become in addition masterof the Papacyitself. The struggle betweenthe Emperorsand the Popesfills the entire Hohenstaufenperiod. It is impossibleto give an account of it in a few words. But it is necessaryto show how it was a of the imperial idea. Not that the frequent direct consequence dissensions between lay sovereigns and Popes during the Middle Ages were in any way confined to the Empire. They existed among all the Catholic States. In particular, when GregoryVII and his immediatesuccessorsassertedtheir claim to deprive the lay princesof the right to nominatethe bishops and abbots, this 'Investiture dispute' outside the Empire - in

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

37

France and in England- became an extremely lively issue. But only in the caseof the Emperordid it rapidly degenerate into an inexorable war of far-reaching significance, which lasted for centuries.Under Frederick II in particular it gave contemporariesthe impression that the struggle could only come to an end with the crushingdefeatof one or other of the two adversaries.Why was there this contrast?The reasonis to be found in the different nature and varying importanceof the interestsat stake. The French and English kings defendedtheir rights against the Curia; they wantedto remain mastersof their own clergy; they rejectedall papalinterferencein their States.But they had no thought of subjugatingthe Papacyitself (leaving aside the Avignon Papacy, which came later). Between the Emperor and the Pope, however, the stakes were quite different: the Emperor thought he had rights over the Holy See; the Pope thought he had rights over the Empire; and both parties claimed to have rights over Rome. What was the imperial point of view? In I 152 the papal election resulted in two candidates:the imperialist cardinals electedVictor IV, and the othersAlexanderIII. The Emperor was quick to recogniseVictor. At the Diet of Dole in 1162 Rainald of Dassel, the imperial chancellor, was indignant becausethe kings of Franceandof Englanddid not rally round his master'scandidate.To show the absurdity of their behaviour, he had recourse to an argument which he obviously thoughteffective, for he repeatedit in threelanguages- Latin, Frenchand German:'If in any city of the kingdom somedisagreementshould arise concerningthe episcopaldignity, and if Caesarshouldinterveneto put an end to it by his own decision, thereis no doubt at all that the prince would considersuch an act a great insult; yet here they are trying to interfere in the same manner in Rome.'45 The argument ran like this: the Popeis Bishop of Rome; now Romeis a city of the Empire, the imperial city of all cities; thereforejust as the election of the Bishop of Paris,for example,is subjectto the consent,and may require the arbitration, of the King of France,or the election of the Bishop of London is, undersimilar conditions,subjectto the King of England, so the election of the Popeconcernsthe

38

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

Emperor,and the Emperoralone. Rainald did not tell the full story. Certainly, it was not only by virtue of his temporal sovereigntyoverRome,but also by reasonof his beingentrusted with the patrocinium of the whole Christian world, that the Emperor thought he had a right to exerciseover the Popethe spiritual headof the world - the sameprotectivesupremacy that all kings, in their capacityas sacredpersons,claimedover the Churchesof their respectiveStates. This was moreover very clearly expressedin the imperial proclamationof October 28th 1159, relating to the double election: 'The Roman Empire ... must keep watch over the wellbeing of the whole world.'46 Historically speaking,this wasnot analtogetherinvalid argument.It could fall back upon ancientprecedentsand even documentsin which the imperial rights over the papalnomination had been recognised.The Saxon Emperors, the second SalianEmperor,Henry III, had madeand unmadePopes;by their interventionthey had snatchedthe Papacyfrom the yoke of the Roman factions; they had restoredits moral dignity. The greatmisunderstanding, which brokeout underHenry IV, arosefrom the fact that the Emperorsdid not and could not understandthat the Papacyas reformed by their predecessors wantedhenceforwardto be independent,and having recovered its spiritual prestigewas capablefrom now on of carryingalong with it a large part of the clergy of Europe, and even of Germany. Under Frederick II, when the struggle reachedits climax, the imperial party found a new weapon in the doctrine of evangelical poverty, a very ancient doctrine, which at that period agitatedmany minds. It was really a protest by pious peopleagainstthe worldlinessof the Church.In 1227 Henry II wrote to Henry III of England:47 'It was on poverty and simplicity that the Early Church was founded.' And in a manifestoof 1246:48 'It was always our intention to see that clerics of all ranks, and in particular the foremost of them, should be brought to such a condition, and to the end of time maintained in the same, whereby they would resemblethe fathers of the primitive Church, leading an apostoliclife and imitating the humility of Our Lord. Thoseclerics were accustomed to see the angels, they aboundedin miracles, they

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

39 healed the sick, they raised the dead; and it was by their holiness,and not by force of arms,that they subduedkings and princes.' This evangelical outlook best suited the temporal interestsof the secularpower; for the clergy, deprivedof their territorial possessions, would ceaseto be a dangerto the State. At the same time the Emperor, perhapsan only half-sincere apostleof the return to pure Christianity (for who can claim to be able to plumb the secretdepthsof this complex personality?), was flattering the aspirationsof certain devout groups and rallying round himselfsomeusefulsupport.He was playing his role as immutatorsaeculi. And what was the Pope'spoint of view? One essentialaspect of it is very clearly expressedin an often repeatedphrase borrowedfrom the Epistle to the Hebrews(vii): 'For without all contradictionthe lessis blessedof the better'; meaningthat the Pope, who was alone capableof making an Emperor by the rite of unction, should have somevoice in his selection,and in consequence - so ran Innocent Ill's contention- in the election of the King of the Romans, who was by birth the prospectivecandidatefor the Empire. On the other hand the Pope, St. Peter'ssuccessor,divinely commissionedto exercise control over Christian morality, has the power to summonall sinnersbefore his judgment-seat.The heir of the Caesars,no less than the humblest of his subjects, is answerableto his jurisdiction. Here, too, there was a precedent:it was the Pope who, in Charlemagne'sday, 'transferred'the Empire of the Greeksto the Franks.And this precedentwas at the sametime a threat; for what the Pope once gave, had he not still the power to take away? The vote of the princeswas not enough to create a king, the Emperor-to-be;the Pope'sconsentwas also necessary,at least in a contestedelection. By virtue of his power 'to bind and to loose', the Popehad the right to depose a heretical Emperor, or one who was morally unworthy. During interregna,it was he who kept order in the Empire. Betweentheseopposingsets of principles, war was inevitable. And in thesetragic circumstancesthe Empire, as the Hohenstaufenhad conceivedit, succumbed.

40

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

5. The imperial idea and Germanpatriotism Until now I have only consideredthe imperial idea in - so to speak- its internationalaspect.But the Emperorwas also, by universal consent,sovereignover Germany; and from 962 to 1257 he was in fact always of German extraction. The title Saint-Empireromain de nation germanique(Heiliges RomischesReich DeutscherNation) did not appeartill later - in the 15th century; but it was true before it actually cameinto use. This prerogative was calculated to foster patriotic pride; and this was certainly the effect it had in the Hohenstaufenperiod. It will be enoughto producea few examplesto attest the fact. Otto of Freising49makesFrederick I say, in answerto the Romans who attempt to present him with the Empire as a gift from Rome: 'I am the lawful master.Let him who would wrest the club from the handsof Herculescomeanddo so - ifhe can...• Thehandof the Franks,who arealsocalledGermans[Francorum sive Teutonicorum],hasnot yet lost its vigour.' 'The Rhine, by a turn of the wheel of fortune, now governsthe Tiber,' says the authorof the Ligurinus.50 In the Ludus de Antichristo, as we have seen,the Emperor,having laid down the crown, keepsthe title of King of the 'Teutons';and into the mouth of Antichrist the poet, whose imperialist sentimentsare already known to us, puts a flamboyant eulogy of the Germans' military virtues. Other peopleswere very plainly aware that the Empire, in spite of its aspirationstowardsuniversalism,was an essentially Germanthing. That was one of the reasonsgiven by John of Salisburyfor rejecting Barbarossa'spretensionsover the papal election: 'Who madethe Gennansjudgesof the nations?Who gave those brutal and impetuousmen such authority that at their own sweetwill they can set up a prince above the heads of the sons of men?'51 Protestsof this kind, recognising the national characterof the Empire, could not but have the effect - even among the Germansthemselves- of strengthening these sentiments.In his manifesto of March 16th 1240, FrederickII addressedhimselfto Germany,personifiedin the bestrhetoricalmanner:'Arise, unconquerableGermania,arise, you German peoples! Defend this Empire of ours which, in spite of the jealousy of other nations, has brought us to the

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

41

highest of dignities and to the sovereignty of the world.'52 Frederick II, who was himself hardly German,was no doubt quite innocentof any such feelings; but he knew how to play upon the emotions. At various times during the Middle Ages it was a great subject for debate among German writers whether their sovereigns had been right or wrong to pursue these vast imperial ambitions,insteadof confining themselvesto the more modest task of national unification, as it was achieved for example by the kings of France. In the years from 1859 to 1862, when Germanywas still seekingunity, a lively polemical controversyon this point arosebetweena Protestanthistorian on the one side, with a Kleindeutsch tendency, Heinrich von Sybel, and a Catholic historianon the other,Julius Ficker, who favouredAustria. The former maintainedthat 'the Empire ... had constantly prejudiced the interests of the nation'; the latter, on the contrary, exalted the grandeurof the imperial idea. In the Empire as reborn in 1871, this controversydied down. Although 'little Germany', PrussianGermany,so dear to Sybel's heart, triumphed, the great majority of historians were obviously inclined to support Ficker's thesis, for contemporary Weltpolitik had arouseda fellow-feeling for the mediaeval Weltherrschaft.But the end of this Weltpolitik was not a particularly happy one either; and in 1927 Georg von Below took up once more the ancient quarrel, and placed himself under Sybel'sbanner.Thesevalue-judgmentsupon the pastare only of interestas symptomsof tendenciesat work in the present.A more important task would be to attempt an analysis of the influence, exercisedby the imperial concept, on the general trend of thoughtin Germanyafter 1250,for after all it hasnever been forgotten. In ways which have varied according to the period, history and literature have always kept its memory green.It might not be impossibleeventoday to traceits effects in certain undercurrentsof Germanpatriotism which reveal a fundamentalwill to power.

42

THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

NOTES Theselecturesweredeliveredat Strasbourgin thecourseof the academic year 1927-1928to studentspreparing for the agregation in German. Revuedes Cours et Conferences, 1929, Vol. 60, pp. 481-494, 577-589, and 759-768. 2. Diplmnata reg. et imp., Vol. III, no. 34. 3. SS, Vol. III, p. 54. 4. Registrumsupernegotio imperii, no. 29; Krammer, Quellen;:;ur Geschichteder deutschenKonigswahl,Vol. I, p. 50. 5. Rahewin,Gesta, III, II. 6. Constitutiones,II, no. 329. 7. De regiminecivitatis, 23. 8. Constitutiones,Vol. II, no. 262, p. 365. 9· 51. 10. I, II. 252ff. I I. Registrum,I, 20; edit. E. Caspar,p. 33. 12. Constitutiones,II, no. 398, c. 3. 13. There are hardly any exceptionsto this rule except in the case of certain letters of Conrad III, Frederick I (before his imperial consecration), and letterswritten by their supportersto the Greekemperors. It is easy to see why, in such cases,the Kings of the Romansshould considerit good policy to anticipatetheir title of future Emperor(Otto of Freising, Gesta, 25; Jaffe, Bibliotheca, Vol. I, letters 243, 245, 410, 411). 14. Otto of Freising, Chron. VI, 32. IS. J. Grimm, Kleinere Schriften,Vol. III, p. 68. 16. Wattenbach,in Archiv. fur Kunde osterreichischerGeschichtsquellen,Vol. XIV, 1855, p. 21. 17. Constitutiones,I, no. 227, c. 3. 18. Ibid., I, no. 178. 19. Libelli de lite, Vol. I, p. 467. 20. SummaDecret., XXII, quo 5, C. 22. 21. SS., Vol. XXII, p. 39, I. 197. 22. BOhmer, Acta imperii, no. 124. 23. Editions Wilhelm Meyer, SB. der Bayer. Akad., Phil. Kr, 1882, orGes. Abh, I, and F. Wilhelm, Miinchener Texte,H. 1. 24. Epistolaesaec. XIII e regestispontificum,Vol. II, no. 456. 25. Edit. Hofler, pp. 61 and 68. 26. Chronica majora, edit. Luard, Vol. III, p. 550. 27. Ibid., Vol. V, p. 190. 28. 45,8. 29. Huilliard-Breholles,Etude sur Ia vie ••• de Pierre de la Vigne, p. 425. 30. Huilliard-Breholles,Vol. V, 2, p. 1003. 31. Constitutiones,II, no. 219. 32. For the expressionof analogousideas in the 14th and 15th centuries, I.

UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN

33. 34· 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43· 44. 45. 46.

47.

48. 49.

50. 51.

52.

43

seeJ.Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. pp. 141-2, 223,224· VIII, v. 540. VII,34· Constitutiones,I, no. 161. Ibid., I, no. 187, p. 258. Ibid., Vol. I, no. 182. C. 12, D. I. Migne, P.L., Vol. CXCIX, col. 200. Saxo Grammaticus,LXIV, edit. A. Holder, p. 539. It is true that the letter is only known to us through the Germanwriter Rahewin (Gesta111,7).As far as I know its authenticityhasnot up till now beencalled in question:is it aboveall suspicion? PreussischesUrkundenbach,no. 56. IV, 35. The title of 'patricianof the Romans',which the Emperorshad sometimes addedto the imperial title in order to expresstheir power over Roma, was no longer in use under the Hohenstaufen. SaxoGrammaticus,Vol. XIV, edit. A. Holder, p. 539. Constitutiones,I, no. 182. Huillard-Breholles,Vol. III, p. 50. Ibid., Vol. VI, p. 393. Gesta, II, 30. I, I. 254. Migne, P.L., Vol. CXCIX, Col. 39. Constitutiones,Vol. II, no. 244, p. 312.

2

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A

COMPARA-

TIVE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES!

I

I should like first of all to forestall a possiblemisunderstanding and sparemyself unnecessaryridicule. I am not a 'discoverer' of a new panacea.The comparativemethodhasgreatpossibilities; I considerthat an improved and more generaluse of this method in historical study is one of the most urgent tasks for the presentday. But the methodhasits limitations, for there is no such thing as a talisman of knowledge.But it is already a well-tried method,which haslong sinceprovedits value.There have alreadybeenmany voicesto recommendits applicationto the historyof political, economicand legal institutions.2 N everthelessit is obvious that the majority of historiansare not yet fundamentally converted to it. They make polite gesturesof assent,then go back to their work without effectingthe slightest changein their habits. Why is this? It is no doubt becausethey have been too easily persuadedthat 'comparativehistory' is a chapterof the philosophyof history or of generalsociology,and theseare disciplineswhich the historian- accordingto his cast of mind - either reveresor greetswith a scepticalsmile, but in generaltakesgood care not to practise;for what he requiresof a method is that it should be a tool, in ordinary use, easy to manipulate,and yielding positive results. Now that is exactly what the comparativemethodis - but I doubt whetherup till now it has been sufficiently shown to be such. It can and it shouldenterthe world of detailedresearch.Its future - perhaps even the future of our discipline - dependson its doing so. At this point I should like to define the nature and the possible applicationsof this excellent tool, to show by meansof some examplesthe chief servicesthat it may be expectedto render, and finally to suggestsome practical methods of making it easierto use.

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

45

Addressinga groupof mediaevalists,I shall takemy examples preferablyfrom the period usually called - whetherrightly or wrongly - the Middle Ages. But it goes without saying that mutatis mutandis- the observationsI am about to make would apply equally well to the European societies that we call modern. And I shall also allow myself sometimesto refer to the latter. II

The term 'comparativehistory', common enough today, has undergonethe fate of almostall commonwords: it haschanged its meaning.Even if we leave asideall obviously wrong usages, an ambiguity still remains.Peoplestudying the humanitiesare constantlygroupingtogetherunderthe expression'the comparative method' two widely different intellectual processes.The linguists seemto have been the only ones to have concerned themselveswith making a careful distinction betweenthem.3 Let us attemptan accuratedefinition from the historian'sown point of view. First, what do we meanin our field of study by comparison? No doubt aboutit, we meanthis: to choosefrom one or several social situations,two or more phenomenawhich appearat first sight to offer certain analogiesbetweenthem; then to trace their line of evolution, to note the likenessesand the differences, and as far as possibleexplain them. Thus two conditions are necessaryto makea comparison,historically speaking,possible: there must be a certainsimilarity betweenthe facts observedan obvious point - and a certain dissimilarity between the situations in which they have arisen. For example, if I am studying the manorial system in the Limousin, I shall be continually impelled to considersetting side by side information drawnfrom other manors;in commonor gardenlanguage, I shall be comparingthem. But I shall not considermyself to be engagedin what is technically called 'comparative'history, for I shall be taking the different objectsstudiedfrom a crosssectionof a single societyin which, looked at as a whole, there is a considerabledegreeof unity. In practice, it has become customary to reserve the term 'comparativehistory' almost

46

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

entirely for the comparativeexaminationof phenomena[hat have taken place on different sides of a State, or national, frontier. Political or national contrastsare, indeed, always the ones that strike the mind most immediately. But, as we shall see,this is really a grosssimplification. Let us confine ourselves to the idea of differencesin environment- an idea that is both more flexible and more accurate. Thus understood,the processof comparisonis commonto all aspectsof the meth·od. But it is capable of two completely different uses- different in principle and in result - according to the field of study envisaged. Let us now considerthe first case.The historianselectssome societies so widely separatedin time and space that any analogiesobservedbetweenthem with respectto suchand such phenomenacan obviously not be explained either by mutual influence or by a common origin. The commonesttype of example,sincethe distantdayswhenFatherLafitan S.J.invited his readersto compare'the customsof the American savages' with those of 'primitive times'," consistsof an examinationof Mediterraneancivilisations - Hellenic or Roman- alongside contemporary'primitive' societies. In the early days of the Roman Empire, only a short distancefrom Rome and on the delightful shores of Lake Nemi, a rite was enacted which standsout by reasonof its strangecruelty in the midst of the customsof a relatively well-policedsociety.Whoeveraspiredto become the priest of the little temple of Diana could do so under one condition only - he must kill the officiant whose placehe coveted.'If we can show that a barbarouscustomlike that of the priesthoodof Nemi has existedelsewhere;if we can detect the motives which led to its institution; and if we can prove that thesemotives have operatedwidely, universally,in humansociety, producingin varied circumstancesa variety of institutionsspecifically different but genericallyalike; ifwe can show, lastly, that thesevery motives were at work in classical antiquity; then we may fairly infer that at a remoter age the samemotives gave birth to the priesthoodofNemi.'5 This was the starting-point for the immense enquiry undertaken by Frazerin The Golden Bough, a pre-eminentexampleof a wellillustratedandinstructivepieceof researchentirelybasedon the

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

47

collection of facts from the four corners of the world. The comparativemethodas thus interpretedhas renderedimmense servicesof every kind, more particularly to the ancienthistory of the Mediterranean region. A humanist education had accustomedus to picture Rome and Greeceas too like ourselves; but the comparativemethod in the hands of ethnographershas restoredto us with a kind of mental shock this senseof the difference, the exotic element,which is the indispensablecondition for a balancedunderstandingof the past. The other benefitshave beenrathermore generalones,such as the possibility of filling in certain gaps in documentationby meansof hypothesesbasedupon analogy; the opening up of new avenuesof researchsuggestedby the comparativemethod; above all, the explanationof a great many survivals that have up to now been incomprehensible.I am thinking here of customswhich have survived and becomecrystallisedafter the original psychologicalenvironmentthat gavethembirth hasdisappeared,customswhich would seeminexplicablystrangeif the examinationof other similar casesin other civilisations did not makeit possibleto reconstructpreciselythis vanishedsituation, as in the ritual murderat Lake Nemi.6 In short, this long-range comparativemethod is essentiallya matter of interpolating a graph. It postulates,and always reverts in conclusion to the fundamentalunity of the human mind, or, alternatively, the monotonyand astonishingpoverty of the intellectual resources at man's disposal throughout the course of history. This was particularly true of primitive times, when, as Sir JamesFrazer puts it, 'the humanracein all its early crudity was building up its philosophyof life' . But thereis anotherusefor the comparativemethod.This is to make a parallel study of societiesthat are at once neighbouring and contemporary, exercising a constant mutual influence, exposedthroughouttheir developmentto the action of the samebroad causesjust becausethey are close and contemporaneous,and owing their existencein part at least to a commonorigin. In history proper, this is the equivalentof the historical study of languages (for example, Indo-European languages);whereascomparativehistory in the broad sense would more or lesscorrespondto linguisticsin general.In both

48

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

history andlanguage,it appearstrue thatof thesetwo comparative methodsthe one with the more limited horizon is also the richer in results. Becauseit is more capableof rigorous classification, and more critical about the objects it compares,it may hopeto reachconclusionsof fact that are lesshypothetical and much more precise.7 This at any rate is what I hope to be able to show; for it is certainly this method that I intend to elaborate.I proposeto comparethe variousEuropeansocieties -especially in Eastern and Central Europe- societies that are contemporary,that live close to one another,and that go back if not to one commonorigin, at any rate to several. III

But before phenomenacan be interpreted,they must be discovered.And this preliminary stepwill revealin the first place the usefulnessof the comparativemethod. But - it may be asked- is it really necessaryto go to such trouble to 'discover' historical facts? They are and can only be known through documents:in order to bring them to light, isn't it enoughto read texts and monuments?Yes, but one must know how to read them. A documentis a witness;and like mostwitnesses,it does not say much except under cross-examination.The real difficulty lies in putting the right questions.That is where comparisonscan be of suchvaluablehelp to the historian,who is alwaysin the position of the magistratehearingthe case. This is what frequently happens. In a given society, a phenomenonhas occurredover such a wide field and has had so many and such obvious consequencesthat the historianshort of being blind - canhardly fail to be struck by it. This is particularly so in the political sphere,where extendedeffects are ordinarily the easiestto detectin our source-material.Let us now consider a neighbouringsociety. It may well be that analogouseventshavearisenin it, andthat the effectshavebeen just about the samein extentand power. But either becauseof inadequatedocuments, or becausethe political and social structureof that societyis different, the result of theseeventsis lessimmediatelyperceptible.Not that they havebeenany less

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

49

serious:but their effect has beenproducedin depth, like those obscure bodily diseaseswhich do not immediately reveal a series of well-defined symptoms, and therefore go on undiscoveredfor years.When at last they do show up, they are still almost impossible to recognisebecausethe observer cannot connectthe superficialeffectswith an original causethat arose such a long time ago. Is that simply a theoreticalhypothesis? To show that it is nothing of the kind, I am led to take an examplefrom my own researches.I am sorry to have to take the stagein person;but research-workers do not normally take the trouble to recordtheir tentativeefforts, and literature does not supply any case which I could substitute for my own 8 personalexperience. If in the agrarian history of Europe there is one really striking transformation,it is the one that took place in the greaterpart of England,from about the beginningof the 15th century up to the early years of the 19th - namely the great enclosuremovement,which in its twofold form (enclosureof the commons, and enclosureof the arable) may be defined basically as a movement leading to the disappearanceof communal obligations and the growth of individualism in agriculture.Let us here consideronly the enclosuresof arable. We start out with a systemby which the arableland, as soon as the harvest was finished, was turned over to common grazing. Then it would be sown again and bear another harvest,repeatingthe rhythm of cultivation and obeying the rules laid down in the interestsof the community. We find, at the endof the transformation,all land held strictly in severalty. Everything about this great metamorphosiscatchesand holds our attention: the polemicsto which it gave rise in the course of its history; the relativeeaseof accessto mostof the documents (Acts of Parliamentand official enquiries)bearingupon them; its links with political history, in which the growing influence of Parliament,where the greatlandownerswere predominant, had the counter-effectof entrenchingthe gentry more firmly in power; its possiblerelationshipswith the two most immediately obvious facts of English Economic History -I mean mean colonial expansionand the industrial revolution, for both of which it probably preparedthe way. (This has beendoubted,

50

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

but for our purposeit is enoughthat it should be a matter of discussion);and finally the way in which it not only extended its influence into the field of social development,always a difficult subjectto uncover,but also affected the most obvious featuresof the landscape,causinghedgesto spring up throughout the English countrysidewhere it was formerly open as far as the eye could see. And so no history of England, however elementary,will fail to include someaccountof the enclosures. But on turning to a history of France- even, alas, an economic history - we shall not find the slightest allusion to movementsof this kind. And yet there certainly have been such movements.We are beginningnowadays,thanksparticularly to the laboursof Henri See,to be awareof their existence, though we are very far from being able to appreciatetheir extent,and further still from any clear perceptionof the points of similarity and of divergencebetweenthesedevelopmentsin Frenchand in English society.But let us leaveon one side this last topic, for when the comparativemethodis properly used, our first task is not to discussthe significanceof contrastsbut to discoverthe facts. It is most remarkablethat up to the present the disappearanceof communal obligations in France has hardly beennoted except at periods and in placeswhere- as in England- the phenomenonwas recordedin official documents, and where it was thus readily noticeable- namely in the 'enclosureawards'of the 18th century and the preceding or subsequent official enquiries.The sametransformation,however, took place in anotherpart of France,where it has not so far - to the best of my knowledge- been noticed, namely in Provence:and it beganin a relatively remoteperiod, the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.In Provence,it was most probably a much more profound and thorough-going change than in most of the more northerly regionswhere the samefacts have been studied again and again; but it had the misfortune to occur at a time when economiclife - especiallyrural life - was hardly of any interestto writers or administrators.Moreover, the changedid not bring about any visible modification of the countryside,since the disappearance of communalobligations did not entail the constructionof hedges,and it was therefore easyfor it to passunnoticed.

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

51

Were the repercussionsin Provencethe same as those in England? For the" moment, I must confessignoranceon this point. Moreover, I am very far from believing that all the characteristicsof the English movementwere reproducedon the shoresof the Mediterranean.On the contrary, I am struck by the fact that conditionsin the southwere peculiarowing to the very different systemof land tenure when comparedwith the north. (It did not, asin England,give rise to a redistribution of the 'strips', to 'consolidation'.Specialcustomssuch as transhumanceaccountfor socialconditionsthat are without parallel in the English countryside.I am thinking particularly of the antagonismbetweenthe big graziers, the large-scalebreeders of stock and the other classesof the population. It is none the lessextremelyinterestingto note in a Mediterraneancountry a phenomenon,with its own specialcharacteristics, which might have seemed,up till now, to be found mainly in higher latitudes.Moreover, it is not very difficult to seethe processat work in Provence;a closerexaminationreveals the existenceof a fair numberof documentsenablingits course to be followed, such as county orders, communaldiscussions, and lawsuits whoselengthy and roundaboutproceedingsbear eloquenttestimony to the seriousnessof the interestsat stake. But there is a real need to searchout these documentsand comparethem with eachother. If I have beenable to do this, it is certainly not becauseI am particularly familiar with these local documents,far from it -I know them, and always shall, much less well than the scholarswhoseordinary field of study hasbeenthe history of Provence.They are the only peoplewho can really work the vein: all I can do here is to point out its existence.I haveonly one advantageover them, a quite impersonalone;I happento have read works on English enclosures or on similar rural revolutions in other Europeancountries, and I havetried to draw someinspirationfrom them. In short, I have used that most effective of all magician'swands- the comparativemethod.

52

A

CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE IV

Now let us passon to interpretation. The most obvious service we can hope for from a careful comparisonbetweenfacts drawn from different and neighbouring societiesis to enable us to discern the mutual influences exercisedby these groups. Careful enquiry would no doubt revealamongmediaevalsocietiesthe direction of someborrowings which have so far beeninsufficiently investigated.Here is one example, which I put forward simply as a working hypothesis. The Carolingianmonarchy,when comparedwith that of the Merovingians which immediately preceded it, shows some completelyoriginal characteristics.The Merovingiansin their relationswith the Church had never beenanything but simple laymen. But Pepin and his descendantswere anointed with holy oil at their coronation and so marked with its sacred character. The Merovingians, sharing the beliefs of their contemporaries,had in turn dominated, enriched, and exploited the Church; they had never beenmuch concernedwith backing its preceptswith the force at the disposalof the State. But the Carolingiansbehavedquite differently. Although they did not in their times of power fail to domineerover the clergy and use their propertyfor the benefit of their own policies, they neverthelessclearly consideredthemselvesin duty bound to establish the law of God. Their legislation was essentially religious and tinged with morality. When I read in a newspaper some time ago a decreepromulgatedby the Wahabite emir of the Nedj, I was struck by its points of resemblanceto the pietist literature of the Capitularies. There is not much difference betweenthe great courts assembledround the king or the emperorand the assemblyof the Councils. And lastly, the protective relationshipsunder the Merovingians, already sucha prominentforce in society,hadonly occupieda marginal position in the law, which traditionally took no cognisanceof them. The Carolingians,on the other hand, recognisedthese links and gave them sanction.They defined and set limits to the casesin which commendedman might be allowed to leave his lord. They tried to usethesepersonalrelationshipsto consol-

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

53

idate the public peace,which was at once the most cherished and the most fleeting object of their dogged ambition. 'Let each overlord exercisea coercive action upon those who are set under him, so that they may become more and more obedient and submissiveto the imperial mandatesand precepts.'9This phrasefrom a Capitulary of 8 lois an expressive short summary of the imperial social policy. No doubt a thoroughsearchin the Gaul of the Merovingianswould reveal the germsof anyoneof thesefeatures.It is none the less true that, when one considers Gaul only, the Carolingian state seemsto have comeinto being ex nihilo. But let us look beyond the Pyrenees.In barbarianEurope from the 7th century onwards kings could be observedreceiving'most holy unction',l° as one of them, Ervig, calls it. This was among the Visigoth kings; a monarchythat was entirely religious, preoccupiedwith ensuring by State action that the orders of the Church were carried out. Or consider Spain, where Councils were almost indistinguishablefrom political assemblies;or the laws of the Visigoth sovereigns,which had been replacedvery early on, in order to assuresomemeasureof control, by the ties of feudal lord andvassall l uponwhich personalitiesthe military organisation tended to be founded.12 Naturally, it is not difficult to discover, along with theseanalogies,a number of differences. The chiefoneis that the first Carolingiansgovernedthe Church, instead of being governed by the Church like the Gothic princes of the 7th century. The likenessesremain however extremelystriking. Is it only a matterof seeingthem simply as the product of similar causes,acting on both sidesin the same direction - causeswhich one would then have to define? Or rememberingthat the facts about the Visigoths are of course earlier than those about the Franks- are we to believe that a certain conceptionof royalty and its proper role, certain ideas concerningthe constitution of a feudal society, and of its use by the State, appearing first in Spain and having become embodiedin its legislative documents,were later consciously taken up by the entourageof the Frankishkings and the kings themselves?To win the right to answerthis question,a detailed enquiry would clearly be required, which I could not enter upon here. Its principal object would be to discover by what

54

A

CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

channelsthe influence of the Visigoths was able to penetrate into Gaul. There are some universally recognisedfacts which seemto be of the kind that would make this hypothesisfairly probable.It is indisputablethat there was during the century following the Arabic conquesta Spanishdiasporain the Frankish kingdom. The fugitives de partibus Hispaniae, whom Charlemagneand Louis the Pioussettledin Septimania(i.e. southern Gaul), were to a large extentpeopleof humblestation;but they also included somefrom the upperclasses(majoreset potentiores) and somepriests,that is to say, peoplewho were familiar with the political and religious customsof the countrythey had been forced to leave.1 3 Some of the Spaniardswho took refuge in Gaul had brilliant careersin the Church: such men as Claude of Turin and Agobard of Lyons, who preachedon the unified legislation which he had seen in his native country; and especially Theodulfe of Orleans, who was the first to arrive and without doubt the most influential of them all. Finally, therewas the Spanishcollection of conciliar documents,which exertedan undeniableeffect on Carolingiancanonlaw, though its extenthas not so far beenaccuratelyestimated.Let us again stressthe point that I am not claiming to reach any decisions. But I hope you will admit that this is a problem deserving attention.And it is not the only one of its kind.14 V

'Historical resemblances,' said Renanwith regardto Jesusand the Essenes,'do not always imply connections.'This is certainly true. Many similarities, when closely examined,prove not to be explicablein termsof imitation. I would freely admit that these are the most interesting ones to observe,for they allow us to take a real step forward in the exciting searchfor causes.This is wherethe comparativemethodseemscapableof renderingthe most conspicuousserviceto historiansby setting them on the road that may lead to the discoveryof real causes. Moreover- and perhapsmost importantof all- it can benefit them in a more modestbut very necessaryway by preventing them from following certain pathsthat are merely blind alleys.

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

55

Everyone knows what is meant by the EstatesGeneral or Provincial in 14th and 15th century France. (I use these epithetsin their ordinary and approximatesenseas a matter of convenience,without of coursefailing to be aware that the EstatesGeneraland Provincial were somewhatindeterminate bodies, that a truly 'general' Estates was practically never summoned,and finally that provincial representationwas by no meansfixed over a considerableperiod.) In the course of the last few years15 a numberof monographshavebeenwritten on the EstatesProvincial, especiallythose of the great feudal principalities. They representan effort on the part of scholars that is all themore praiseworthy,seeingthat almosteverywhere, especiallyfor the earlier period, the documentsare appallingly scanty and barren of information. These monographshave clearedup a numberof important points in a most interesting manner.But from the very start almost all their authorshave come up againsta difficulty they had no meansof overcoming, mean the natureof which they sometimesdid not even recognise -I mean the problem of 'origins'. I am quite ready to use this expressionas ordinarily employed by historians; but though current, it is ambiguous.It tends to confuse two intellectual operationsthat are different in essenceand unequalin scope. On the one hand there is researchinto the oldest institutions (ducal or hundred courts, for example), out of which the Estatesseem simply to have developed. This is a perfectly legitimateand necessaryenquiry. But thereremainsthe second procedure- namelyresearchinto the reasonsthat could explain why, at a given moment,thesetraditional institutionstook on a new lease of life and a new significance, why they became transformedinto Estates;that is into assembliesendowedwith political and financial duties,who were consciousof possessing, over against the sovereignand his council, a certain power, subordinateperhaps,yet none the less distinct, which was the ultimate expression,through infinitely variable means,of the different socialforces in the country. To bring the seedto light is not the samething as to show the causesfor its germination. Might we then hope to discoverthesecausesif for instancewe live in Artois (so far as the estatesof Artois are concerned)or in Brittany (ifit is a questionof the Breton Estates),or evenif we

56

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

are contentto take a generallook at the kingdom of France? Certainly not. This procedurewould simply land us in a maze of little local facts, to which we should be inclined to attribute a value that they certainly never possessed;and we should inevitably miss the essentialpoint. For a generalphenomenon can only be producedby equally generalcauses;andif thereis such a thing as a phenomenonoccurring throughoutEurope, this - which I havecalled by its Frenchname,the formation of the Estates- is undoubtedlya casein point. At varying moments- all, however, very close to one another in time - Estates may be observed springing up throughout France; but in Germany too, in the territorial principalities,therewere the Stiinde (the two wordsarecuriously alike in meaning),in Spain the Cortes, in Italy the Parliamenti. Even in the English Parliament,which was born in a vastly different political environment,developmentwas often subject to a trend ofideasanda seriesof needsanalogousto thosewhich led to the formation of what the Germanscall the Stiindestaat. Pleasedo not misunderstandme. I fully recognisethe immense valueoflocal monographs,andI do not in the leastsuggestthat their authorsshouldstepoutsidethe frameworkof their proper studiesand follow one'anotherin a searchfor the solution to this large-scaleEuropeanproblem that I havejust referredto. On the contrary, we beg them to realise that they could not, each one working on his own, find a solution to it. The chief servicethey can do us is to uncoverthe different political and social phenomenain their respectiveprovinceswhich preceded or accompaniedthe appearanceof the Estatesor the Stiinde, and which would therefore seem to have some provisional claim to be numberedamongits possiblecauses.In this enquiry, they would do well to pay some attention to the results ob-tained in other regions- to engagein fact in a little comparative history. The overall comparisonwould haveto comelater. Without preliminary local researchit would be useless;but it alone will be able to select from the tangle of conceivable causes those which exercised a general effect - the only real ones. It would not, I feel sure,be difficult to give further examples. To selectone amongmany, I shouldsay without a doubt that

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

57

when the German historians studied the formation of the imperial 'territories' (the little Statesthat were formed in the course of the 12th and 13th centuriesin the interior of the Empire and gradually acquired, to their own advantage,the lions' shareof public power), they too often allowed themselves to slip into a habit oflooking upon this phenomenonas specifically Germanic.But how can it really be separatedfrom the consolidationof the feudal principalities in France?Here is anotherillustration of the circumspectionwhich the comparative method ought to engenderin historians who are too inclined to see the causesof local social transformationsas exclusively local: the developmentof the manor in the closing centuriesof the Middle Ages and at the beginningof modern times. The lords of the manor, when their revenuewas threatenedby the fall in the value of their money rents, becamefor the first time sharply awareof the impoverishmentwhich had for a long while been eating piecemealinto their fortunes.I 6 In everycountry they were concernedto ward off this danger. With this end in view they used various means in various places, which proved more or less effective. They increased certain casual profits where the amount was not rigorously fixed by custom(the English 'fines'); they substituted,wherever the law allowedit, a rent in kind for a moneyrent, proportional to the harvest (hence the great extension of the metayage* system in France); they brutally dispossessedtheir tenants, incidentally using methodsthat differed greatly according to the locality (England,EasternGermany).This wasin principle a general effort; but there were extreme variations in the methodsused,and their success.Here then comparisoninvites us to note extremely marked divergencesas between one national setting and another- which we shall seebelow to be one of its chief points of interest. But it forces us at the same time to see in the original impulse that gave birth to such a variety of results a European phenomenon,for which only Europeancausescould be responsible.To try to explain the formation of the Gutsherrschaftin Mecklenburgor Pomerania, or the accumulationof land by the English squire, solely with • Mlto)lage, the systemof leasingland in return for a rent in kind.

58

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

the help of facts gatheredfrom Mecklenburg,Pomeraniaand England, and not found elsewhere,would be to waste one's time in a rather futile intellectualpursuit.17 VI

But let us beware of a misunderstandingfrom which the comparativemethodhas onlytoo frequentlysuffered.Too often peoplehave believedor affectedto believe that its only aim is to searchfor similarities. They are only too ready to accuseit of being satisfiedwith forced analogies,and even of inventing them on occasion by arbitrarily postulating some necessary parallelism between the various developments.There is no point in examiningwhether these reproacheshave sometimes seemedjustified, for it is only too certain that the method, if practisedthus; would be no more than a sorry caricature.On the contrary, the comparative method, rightly conceived, should involve specially lively interest in the perception of differences, whether original or resulting from divergent developmentsfrom the same starting-point. Not long ago, at the beginningof a work intendedto 'mark the specific elements in the developmentof the Germanic languagesas compared with the other Indo-Germaniclanguages',Meillet put forward as one of the essentialtasks for comparativelinguistics a sustained attempt to 'show the originality of the different languages'.ISIn the sameway comparativehistory has a duty to bring out the 'originality' of the different societies.Is it superfluous to remark that there is hardly any more delicateoperation than this, or any that more imperativelycalls for methodical comparisons?If one is to determine,not only in a general way, that two objects are not alike, but also - an infinitely more difficult but much more interesting task - by what precise characteristicsthey are distinguishable,the first step must obviously be to examinethem one by one. First of all, it is essentialto clear the ground offalse similarities, which are often merely homonymous.And someof them can be very insidious. How often hasEnglish villeinage beentreatedas the equiva-

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

59

lent of the Frenchservagein the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. No doubt a rather cursory examinationof them both could easily produce some points of resemblance.Both serfs and villeins were consideredby jurists and by public opinion to be without 'freedom', and were describedin certain Latin documents as servi. (English writers, when expressingthemselvesin French,did not hesitateto use serfas synonymouswith villein.) Becauseof this absenceof 'freedom' and this servile name, learnedpersonshave beenvery ready to equatethem with the Romanslaves.But this is a superficial analogy: the conceptof 'unfreedom' has varied greatly in content according to the period and the environment.Villeinage is in fact a specifically English institution. As Vinogradoff has shown in a work that has becomea classic,19it drew its original characteristicsfrom the very specialpolitical circumstancesin which it was born. As early as the secondhalfofthe 12th century,much earlier, that is, than their neighboursin France,the kings of England succeededin getting the authority of their courts of justice recognisedover the whole country. But this precociousdevelopment had its di~advantages.mean meanThe stateof society as then constituted meantthat the judgescame up againsta frontier which they were not able to cross until the very end of the Middle Ages. They had to makesureneverto intervenebetweenfeudal lords and thosewho held land from them in 'villeinage', i.e. on paymentof certain dues and especiallylabour services,both fixed by custom of the 'manor'. The status of these tenants varied considerably according to their origins. Some- the villeins properly speaking- were reckonedfree, becausethey were simply dependentupon their lord by reason of their tenure,by the fact that they belongedto the villa; the othersservi, nativi - were tied to their masterby personaland hereditary bonds,consideredat this period to be a mark of servitude. But all of them, whatevertheir traditional status,were passed by whenit was a questionof royaljurisdiction. In their relationship with their lords (and only in these) they were completely outsidethe scopeof the king's courts,and so of the law applied and elaboratedby them, the CommonLaw of the realm. The result was that in the courseof the 13th century they amalgamated, on the basis of this common incapacity- the most

60

A

CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

glaring and disadvantageous one conceivable- in spite (,f the original differencesbetweenthem, and formed themselvesinto a single class.The lawyers had somedifficulty in defining this new group, composedas it was of such diverse elements.But they very soon reached agreement,and they agreed on a formula which reservedthe name of 'freeman'for those alone among the king's subjects whom his courts were willing to protect againstall others. This was a new notion of liberty.2o The one-timevillein, that is, the tenantpure and simple - if I may so call him - ceasedto be numberedamong the liberi hominesand was confusedwith the hereditaryservusor nativus, becauselike him he was without accessto royal justice. These two words servusand villein cameto be treatedas synonymous. This had takenplaceby aboutthe year 1300. At the sametime certain obligations of an essentially servile nature- notably marriage dues- which should in principle have fallen only upon the descendantsof the former servi, were gradually extended- at least in many of the manors- to all villeins (in the new senseof the word). This kind of contagion,common enough in mediaevalsocieties,was here able to spread with particular ease.The assimilationof one class to the other was no doubt quite wrong: but how could its victims havemadeany effective protest, since by definition they were unable to take their grievance before any other body but the lord's court, that is to say before the verypersonwho profited by the abuse? And beforelong it was admittedthat villeinage, like the former servitude, was hereditary. This was a movement in keeping with the generaltendenciesof the time. But here, it was still further accentuatedby a special circumstance.From time to time it happenedthat a person of high standing acquireda holding'in villeinage. Of course the land, although it had changedhands,remainedsubjectto all the chargesand disabilities that had formerly adheredto it, and which the new tenant must have beenawareof - in particular the lack of protection of his possessoryrights by the royal courts vis-a-vishis lord. But the holder himself-a greatman in society, maybe- could not possibly have been reducedunceremoniouslyto the ranks of the unfree. The way out was to reintroduce a distinction betweenthe conditionof the land and the conditionofthe man,

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

61

and to agreethat no one but the descendants - all the descendants- of the original tenantsshould be classedas villeins. A new and lowly castehad been created.It was defined in law in termsof a principle readily formulatedby the legal theorists, namelythat the villein is a serfor slave (servus)in relation to his lord; that is to say no man, not even the king, may come betweenhim and his lord. But there was nothing like this in France.There, royal justice was much slower in developing, and its progresstook a quite different course.There were no greatlegislative enactmentslike thoseof Henry II in England. There was no strict classificationof the meansof action open to plaintiffs before the royal courts (like the English 'writs'). It was by a series of incursions, often hardly premeditated, taking place earlier at one place, many yearslater at another, strengthenednow by one precedent,then by another,that the kiJ!g's men gained power over the country step by step. But their victories, just because of their leisureliness, and - to start with at any rate - becausethey were not guided by any theoretical plan, were more far-reaching in their effect. In France as in England, the lord's jurisdiction, which was an amalgamof powers with very diverse origins, coveredwidely differing groupsof dependants- military vassals,citizens,freeholders and serfs. But the Frenchmonarchytreatedthe lord's jurisdiction as an indivisible whole. The royal courts allowed the seigneurto continueto try such and such a kind of case,or took it awayfrom him; they eitherinsisted,or did not insist, on the right of appeal; but in so doing they made no kind of distinction betweenthe dependantsof the lord. So it came to pass that gradually the royal judge began to slip in between the seigneurand his tenant.Henceno reasonarosefor assimilating the freeholder to the serf, who was called a villein in France,too. The two classesof men would go on existing side by side up to the end. The Frenchserfat the beginningof the 12th century, the servusor nativus, and the English theow of the sameperiod, had belongedto very similar legal classes,which it is quite permissibleto treat as two branchesof one single institution. Then villeinage cameinto existence.There was no longer any parallel. The French serf of the 14th century and the English serf or villein of the sameperiod belongedto two

62

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

totally dissimilar classes.Is it worth even comparingthem? It certainly is: but the point will now be to mark the contrasts betweenthem,which will bring out a striking antithesisbetween the respectivedevelopmentsof the two nations.21 Let us pursuethis comparisonin still greaterdetail. It was not always easy in the English manor of the 13th and 14th centuries to distinguish with certainty, amidst the manifold variety of property rights, which holdings should be classed as tenanciesin villeinage, and so carefully put in a classapart from the equally large medley of tenuresfor which the epithet 'free' was reserved.Yet it was absolutely necessaryto agree upon certain more or less fixed criteria; for it was necessaryto be able to determine which were the lands- and hence, at least in origin, the tenants- whom royal justice could not protect, becauserights of jurisdiction had beenconferredupon the lord of the manor. In their efforts to discoverthesecriteria, the lawyers sometimesreckonedto find them in the nature of the servicesattachedto the land. They worked out a concept of servile labour.22 It was agreed to treat as symptomaticof this all compulsorylabour on the land wheneverit implied the obligation to perform a large numberof days' work, and above all wheneverthere was any elementof uncertainty- either in the numberof days due or the kind of work to be done, both of thesebeing left to the arbitrary will of the lord. And it was generallyadmittedthat the obligation to serveas the headman of the village (the reeve,not unlike the starostewith whom Russian novels have familiarised us) should likewise be consideredas a taint upon the freedomof thosewho were forced by their terms of tenure,willy-nilly, to undertakethis heavyburden.In establishing these norms the English lawyers and judges were not inventing anything. They were simply drawing upon a fund of collective experiencewhich had beenworked out in a more or less confusedfashion for a long time by mediaevalsociety, on the continentas well as in England. The idea that agricultural work in itself was in some way incompatible with freedom is in keeping with very ancient tendenciesof the human mind. In the barbarianage it was embodiedin the expressionopera servilia often usedto designate this kind of work. The idea that the servus differed from the

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

63

freeholder because of the indeterminate character of the compulsorylabour demandedof him, arising from the original contrastbetweenthe slave and the Romancolonus, was a very powerful one in Gaul and Italy during Carolingian days. It never completely disappeared.In Franceunder the Capetian kings, was it not quite customaryto give the label 'franchises' to the privileges which, while not removing the peasants' obligations,set limits to them and especiallyfixed them? As for the obligation to perform for the lord someparticular specialisedservice that he might seefit to impose, in addition to the generalburdenof compulsorylabour, a burdenwhich in Englandconsistedin filling the office of reeve,this wasconsidered in many placesin Germanyto fall always upon unfree persons. In France, this notion, although less generally admitted, has neverthelessleft some traces,particularly in the documentsof the 12th century.23But in France- to which I confine myself here- these ideas as a whole were never embodied in any preciselegal formulations, though one of them by itself - the emphasison the degradingcharacterof agricultural occupations - was, it is true, usedin the 13th centuryto tracea clearer line of demarcationbetweenthe classesthan had existedin the past. But it did not, as in England, serve to fix the frontier betweenthe free and the non-free;it was rather usedas one of the distinguishing features between the nobleman, who was allowed to 'demeanhimself' - manual work being considered as, in a sense,derogatory- and the great multitude of nonnobles,which always - andnow increasingly- includedpeople whom no one would have dreamt of excluding from the categoryof the 'free'. But was there never any temptationin France, too, to define the unfree in terms of the particular servicesthat they were bound to render?There are certainly some indications that people wereriot averseto making this kind of claim. At Gonesse,near Paris, about the beginningof the 13th century, certain tenants were consideredby their neighboursas serfsbecauseof the specialforced labour incumbent upon them, particularly the task of escorting prisoners, which was thought to be a baseservice.But the tenantshad no difficulty in getting the king to recognisethat, legally speaking, therewas no questionbut what they were free.24 In their efforts

64

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

to define a serfno lawyer or Frenchlaw-court had recourseto any criterion basedupon servicesrendered.Here then we come face to face with one of the most suggestiveaspectsof this contrastbetweentwo relatedsocieties. Both of them exhibited analogoustendencies;but in one of them these remained vague and amorphous, and had no official backing, disappearingamong the medley of ideas and feelings that constitute public opinion. In the other, they blossomedforth and were embodiedin legal institutions of a very hard-and-fastkind. It will be as well to dwell a little longer on the history of classesin mediaevalsociety.Thereis no study bettercalculated to disclose deep disharmonieswithin such societies- so deep, in truth, that we can hardly explain them at all and must, for the momentat any rate, be contentto note them. First, let us go back to Westernand Central Europe about the loth and 11thcenturies.The ideathat birth setsan immeasurablegulf betweenoneman and another,a notion commonto almost all periods,was certainly not absentfrom men'sminds. In 987, in order to justify the exclusionof Charlesof Lorraine, candidatefor the throne of Franceand the legitimate heir of the Carolingians,Archbishop Auberon- or, if you prefer it, the historian Richer, attributing to the prelate a speechthat was perhapsa compositework, but was certainly in keeping with the ideas of the time - invoked the marriagecontracted by the" claimant to the throne with someonebeneathhis rank belongingto the vassalclass.2 6 And what son ofa knight would have allowed himself to be consideredon a par with the son of a serf or even a villein? But we must not deceiveourselves; rights, basedupon inheritance,had little power at this period. Society was not so much a gradation of castesdistinguished from one anotherby blood, but rather a somewhatconfused tangleof groupsbasedupon relationshipsof dependence. These ties of protection and obediencewere the strongestthat could be conceived.Even in the caseof Charlesof Lorraine, let us carefully note the turn taken spontaneouslyby Auberon's argument.There is no doubt that the bishop first reproaches the Carolingianprince with havingcontracteda mesalliancein the strict senseof the word: 'He has married a woman not his

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

65

equal from the ranks of the vassals.'But he immediatelyadds - rememberingthat this person'sfather had saved the dukes of France:'How the great duke [Hugh Capet] would suffer to know that the Queen had been chosenfrom among his own vassals!'This at onceshifts the matteron to the personalplane. The servile condition itself was the only thing considered strictly hereditary: but even so it was not in practice strictly incompatiblewith the statusof knighthood.As for the rights of freemen, they were dependentupon differences of locality, varieties of contractual relationships, the individual's social rank, as such, and not upon birth. Then came the 12th and 13th centuries.A silent but decisivemodification took place in the ideas and legal outlook of the time. The strengthof the personal bond was relaxed: homage tended, though very slowly, to becomea solemnbut ratheremptyform; the French serf, the 'hommede corps', was from now on thoughtof much less as his lord's 'man' than as the memberof a despisedclass.On all sides classesbasedupon heredity were forming, each with its own legal rules. But what differences there were in the richness of this development!26In England, villeinage was firmly established;but this was almost the only real class. Between free men, the law made no distinctions at all. In France,the lowest degreewas serfdom, the membersof which classwould not henceforwardbe eligible for knighthood;at the top camethe nobility, gradually differentiatedfrom the rest of society by a seriesof specialrights (sometimessimply survivals of ancient custom) relating to private law, criminal law and fiscal law. And lastly in Germany, from the 13th century onwards, the hierarchical idea developed with unparalleled vigour. The serf-knights,who had been eliminated in France by the crystallisationof class feeling, becamein Germanythe nucleusof a very well-defined social category.In the south of Germanytherewere eventwo suchclasses.The nobility on the one side, and the servile masseson the other, becamebroken up into a seriesof ranksgradedone abovethe other; the nobles were not all equal in birth (ebenbiirtig) or possessedthe connubium.And jurists, working things out as they went, constructed the celebratedtheory of the Heerschild in order to regulate the classificationof the upper levels of society. They

66

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

pictureda kind of ladder,eachclasshaving its own fixed place on one of the rungs. No one belonging to anyone of these groups could, without loss of caste, accept a fief from a man lower down the scale. Neighbouring and contemporarysocieties; in all cases a developmentin the same direction, stressingthe hierarchical and the hereditarytendencies;but the progressand results of this developmentrevealsuch pronounceddifferencesof degree that they are almost equivalentto a differencein kind, and in any case are marked by antitheses characteristic of their respectiveenvironments:this is the situation as revealed by the exampleI have briefly outlined to you. There were other contradictions,simpler to graspif not to explain, flowing from another kind of divergence between these societies: in one society, the persistence,and in the neighbouring one the extinction, of institutionsoriginally commonto them both. In the Carolingian period, over the territory that was later to be France,and over what was destinedto becomeGermany, by far the larger shareof that portion of the soil reservedfor tenantswas divided into tenements(as they were usuallycalled in Romancecountries),or Hufen (which was the Germanic term, usually renderedby the Latin mansus).Quite often there were severalfamilies of farmers settledon the sametenement. But in the eyesof the lord it did not thereforeceaseto be viewed as a unity. There were dues and servicesthat bore upon the whole tenementin its entirety - or rather, on its fragmented parts- on the plots of groundor buildings which it comprised. In principle, it was not permissibleever to subdivide any of theseagrarianunits. Now let us turn to Franceround aboutthe year 1200. Hardly anywhereis there any further mention of the peasanttenementas a unit of assessment; where the word doessurvive in the Romanceform of meix or mas, it is in the quite different sense of a house or centre from which the surroundingcountryis worked.27 Thosewho drewup chartersno longer assessedthe extent of seigneuriesin terms of the number of tenementsthey contained.The censiers,or lists of dueslevied by the lord, were no longer content, as before, with enumerating the holdings: they set aboutit either by consideringeach separatepieceof groundin greatdetail, or at leasteachtenant.

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

67

There were no more holdings composedof a fixed amount of land. Fields, vineyardsand gardenscould all be split up quite independentlyof one anotherbetweenhereditaryholders and various newcomerswho had acquired them. In Germanyon the other hand the Hufe, which was still not allowed to be subdivided, continuedin the majority of manorsto form the basis for the levying of rents or services.It, too, was destinedin the end to disappear,thoughonly slowly, and often earlierin name than in fact; for up to the endof the feudal period, the German lords sought to preserve by various means the principle of indivisibility of holdings. No parallel efforts were made, it would seem, by their French counterparts.The contrastcertainly appearsto be an extremelyancientone, seeingthat the gradual crumbling away of the peasant tenement in the western part of the Frankish Empire is observableas early as the reign of Charlesthe Bald.28 I am not evengoing to attempt to examinethe reasonsfor this here.But I think you will admit that any Frenchor Germanagrarianhistory omitting to consider this questionwould be neglectingan essentialpart of its task. If we took into accountone country only, the demiseof the peasanttenementhere and its survival in the othercountry would appearto be one of thosequite naturalphenomenathat did not need to be explained. Only comparisonshows that thereis a real problemhere, and this in itself is a stepforward: for is there a greaterdangerin any branchof sciencethan the temptationto think that everythinghappens'quite naturally'? VII

Although one of the essentialtasks in comparativelinguistics today is the tracing of the original characteristicsof the various languages,it is nonethelesstrue that its first efforts have been directed rather towards anotherobjective- the determination of kinship among the languages,and the searchfor mothertongues.One of the most impressivesuccesses of the comparative method has been the delimitation of the Indo-European group, the reconstruction- no doubt hypothetical, yet based on well-foundedconjecture- of the basic forms of the original

68

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

'Indo-European'language.The history of social organisation is in this respecta much more difficult problem. The fact is that a language presents a much more unified and easily definable framework than any system of institutions: hence the relative simplicity of the problem of linguistic affiliations. 'Up to now,' writes Meillet, 'no casehasbeendiscoveredgiving causefor the belief that the morphologicalsystemof a given languageis the result of the intermingling of the morphologies of two distinctlanguages.In all casesso far 0 bserved,a language presentsa continuoustradition', whether this tradition be 'of the current type - the transmissionof the languagefrom the adults to the children' - or whetherit arises'from a changeof language'.But let us supposethat at a given momentexamples are discoveredof this phenomenonso far unknown- 'real mixtures' between languages.When that happens (I am still quoting M. Meillet) 'linguistics will have to devise new methods'.29Now the historian of societiesfinds that the facts themselvesimpose upon him this formidable hypothesis of 'mixtures', which, if realised in the linguistic field, would be such a disturbing influence in that humanesciencewhich is rightly most self-confident. The fact that French has been deeply influenced in its vocabulary and no doubt also in its phoneticsby the Germaniclanguagesis of little consequence: therewas also sometransformation,involuntaryand as often as not unconscious,in the Latin languageas spoken in Roman Gaul. The descendantsof the Teutons who adopted the Romancedialects virtually changedover from one language to the other. But who would venture to representFrench mediaeval society as a transformation pure and simple of Gallo-Roman society? Comparativehistory can reveal to us interactions betweenhuman societieswhich were previously unknown; but, when confrontedwith societiesso far considered as lacking any ancestry in common, it would be foolish to expect to discover detachedfragments, broken off long ago from the original mother-societywhoseexistencewas previously unsuspected;to seekfor themwould be to nursea hopedestined almost always to be disappointed. In certainexceptionalcases,however,comparisonmay reveal amongsocietieswith very different historiesa seriesof extremely

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

69

ancient relationships.It would obviously be absurdly rash to jump to the conclusionthat these were directly interrelated; but it would seemreasonableto take them as evidencethat in a very remotepast there was a certain communityof make-up in civilisation as a whole. The idea of making use of the study of agrariancustomsto reconstructthe ethnic map of Europe before the time of written documentsis one that occurredlong ago to a variety of researchworkers.No onecanfail to recognise Meitzen's great contribution, but it is generally admitted today that it endedin bankruptcy.Without enteringinto the details of this failure, we may perhapsindicate the essential faults in method which must be held responsiblefor it: (I) Meitzen confused the study of different categoriesof fact, when a more correct methodwould have begun to distinguish such things as the patternof settlementand the lay-out; (2) he postulateda 'primitive' characterfor a numberof phenomena observed in historical times, and often quite recent times, forgetting that they might well have been the result of relatively recent changes;(3) be paid too exclusive attention to examiningfacts of a material nature, at the expenseof social customswhich were reflectedin the facts; (4) he only took for his ethnic elementsthosegroupsthat were historically attested Celts, Teutons, Slavs, etc.-who were all newcomersto their habitats,thus refusing a priori to admit that any part had been played by the namelessmassof people previously established on the land - the 'substratum',to use the linguist's termthough there is no indication that they were destroyedby the invaders,nor that they had beenobliged to abandonthe whole of their previouscustomsand way of life. Thereis an important lesson to be learned from these mistakes: it is not that one should give up the enquiry, but rather pursue it in a more critical spirit and by more prudentmethods.Straight away, it is essentialto note certain facts. Land in fragmentedparcels, in long narrow fields without enclosures,covered enormous tracts of Europe: England, Northern and Central France, almost the whole of Germany,and no doubt also a large part of Poland and Russia. This was in contradistinctionto other very different forms of land arrangement:the almost square fields of Southern France, and the enclosed fields in the

70

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

easternparts of France and England. In short, the agrarian map of Europeis completelyat variancewith its political and linguistic map. It is perhapsearlier than either of these last two. This is at least a possible conjecture. For the moment, our task is to collect the facts rather than to explain them. To confine ourselvesfor the momentto the very striking extension, across societies apparently separatedin every other way, of the first type of land-systemreferred to above (long open strips in scatteredownership)it is only too clear a priori that it will be our duty to try out a variety of explanationsone after the other. We must consideras possibleonesnot only a kinship among primitive civilisations, but also the hypothesis of borrowings,and the spreadof certain technicalprocessesabout a primitive centre. But one thing is certain: we shall never arrive at a complete understandingof the English open field system,the German Gewanndorf,or the French champsouverts, by examiningEngland, Germanyor Francealone. It becomesequally clear moreover-andthis is perhapsthe clearestand most cogentlessonto be drawn from comparative history-that it is high time to set about breaking down the outmodedtopographicalcompartmentswithin which we seek to confine social realities, for they are not large enoughto hold the material we try to cram into them. A certain worthy scholar some time ago wrote a whole book on Les Templiers en Eure-et-Loir.30 We can but smile at such ingenuousness. But can any of us who are historiansbe quite sure that we are not constantly guilty of the same failing? To be sure, it is hardly correct practice to transposethe departementsinto the Middle Ages. But how often have the frontiers of existing Statesnot been treated as a convenient framework for such and such a study of the legal or economicinstitutions of the past?Thereare two errorshere.First, anachronism,and that of the most obvious kind. It must be somesort of blind faith in a vaguehistorical predestinationthat has led peopleto attribute to these mere lines on a map some definite meaning, some pre-natal existence- if I may so call it - before the precise moment when the complicatedinterplay of wars and treaties actually fixed them. Then there is a more fundamentalerror too, which still persistseven when one useswhat appearsto be

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

71

a more exact methodof selectingthe facts for researchaccording to contemporary political, administrative, or national divisions;for wherehasit everhappenedthatsocialphenomena, in any period,haveobligingly andwith oneaccordstoppedtheir developmentat the same boundaries, these being precisely the sameas thoseof political rule or nationality?It is a universally acknowledgedfact that the line of demarcation,or, if you prefer it, the marginal zone between those who spoke the langued' oil and thosewho spokethe langued' OC, or the boundary of the langue d' oil on the Germanicside, doesnot correspondto any State frontier or great feudal estate.The sameis true of many other facts in the history of civilisation. If you study the Frenchtowns of the Middle Ages when the urban renaissance is taking place,you will be trying to comprehendin one sweep two objects almost totally dissimilar in every way, except in name. The ancient Mediterraneantowns on the one hand, the traditional centres of the life of the plains, the oppida inhabitedfrom time immemorial by the great men, the lords, the 'knights'; on the other, the towns in the rest of France, inhabitedabove all by merchants,who re-created them. What arbitrary cut with the scissorswould justify us in separating this latter urban type from the analogoustypes of the German Rhineland?Or when the historian has beganby studying the seigneurie to the north of the Loire, and then turns to the documents of Languedoc, does he not often feel further removed from his own country than when he is looking at documentsfrom HainauIt or even the Moselle? Whateverparticular aspectof Europeansocial life is being studied,and at whateverperiod, the studentmust find his own geographical framework, fixed not from outside but from within, if he wishesto escapefrom a world of artificiality. This will be a difficult piece of research,needing a great deal of circumspectionand much feeling of one's way; but to refuse to undertakeit would be an open admissionof mentallaziness.

72

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE 'VIII

How are we to set about this in practical terms? It goeswithout saying that the comparisonwill be valueless unless based on the study of facts gleaned from detailed, critical, and reliable documentary research. It is no less evident that human frailty makesit uselessto dream of firsthand researchin geographicalor chronologicalfields that are too vast. Moreover,it seemsinevitablethat comparativehistory properly speakingshouldalwaysbe reservedfor a small section of historians. It would perhapsseem to be time to think of organising it and in particular giving it some place in the teachingof the universities.3 1 All the same,we must not hide from ourselvesthe fact that since researchin many fields is still at a rather backwardstage,comparativestudy can itself only expect to make slow progress.It is always the sameold story: it requiresyears of analysisbefore there is material for one day's synthesis.32 This maxim is too often quoted without adding the necessarycorrective; 'analysis' can only be transformed into 'synthesis'if it has had the latter in view from the beginning and has been deliberately designed to serve that purpose. The authors of monographsmust be once again reminded that it is their duty to read the literature previously published on subjectsanalogousto theirs, and not only that bearingupon their own region - which they all do read- not only that concerning immediately neighbouring regions- which they nearly all do read- but also (somethingtoo often neglected) that dealing with more distant societies,separatedby differencesof political constitution or nationality from those they are studying. I will even venture to add: not only general text-books, but also if possible detailed monographs,of a parallel kind to the ones they are themselvesundertaking, which will generally be found much more lively and satisfying than extensivesummaries.In the courseof reading they will find material for their questionnaires,and, maybe, some guiding hypothesessuitablefor directing their researchesuntil such time as their own progresswill clearly show them as they go whether these provisional guides need correcting or

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

73

abandoning.They will learn not to attachtoo muchimportance to local pseudo-causes;at the same time they will learn to becomesensitiveto specific differences. This invitation to scholarsto pursuethis preliminaryenquiry by meansof books does not mean that they are being invited to follow an easy path. I will not go into the details of the material inconveniencesthat confront them, but there is no harm in recalling the fact that they are by no meansinconsiderable. Bibliographical information is difficult to collect, and the books themselvesmore difficult still to come by. A good internationallibrary loan system, developedand extendedto certain great countries who have up till now jealously kept their riches to themselves,would do more for the future of comparativehistory than a great deal of good advice. But the principal obstacle is an intellectual one; it concerns fixed habits of work; but even these, no doubt, are not impossible to reform. The linguist who has made a special study of a particular language and wants to gather some information about the general characteristicsof another languagedoes not usually meet with much difficulty. The grammarhe consultssets out the facts classified in a manner not very different from the one he himself uses and explains them in formulae more or less parallel with the ones he is familiar with. But how much less happily placed the historian is! If, for example, he is familiar with French society and wishes to place one aspect of it side by side with somethinganalogousthat a neighbouring society-let us say Germany- has to offer, he turns over the pagesof someworks devotedto the latter, only to find himself - even if they are the most elementarytext-books- having to gropehis way all of a suddenin what seemsto be a new world. Is it simply the difference of language?Not precisely, for in principle there is no reason why two scientific vocabularies should not correspondpretty exactly as betweenone language and another.The natural sciencesprovide many examplesof such agreement.The difficulty is that as betweenthe German and the French work most of the words simply do not correspond. How is one to translate into French the German H6rige, or into Germanthe Frenchtenancier?One can seesome

74

A

CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

possible translations, but these are mostly periphrases(one might translateHorigen as thosewho dependedon the seigneurie) or approximations (Zinsleute would only do for tenanciers en censive, a particular case of a more generalidea);33 and very often - as in the translation suggested for Horigen - these expressionsare only moderatelycommon, and do not occur in the books. It would be understandableif this absenceof parallelism could be explainedby a too obstinatefaithfulness to popular mediaeval usage preserved by both languages, whose divergenceswere a historical fact that had simply to be accepted.But this is far from being the case.The majority of these dissonantterms are entirely the creation of the historians; or at any rate they are the peoplewho havegiven both precision and extensionto the sensein which these terms are used. Rightly or wrongly, and more or less unconsciously,we have elaboratedtechnical vocabularies.Each national school has constructed its own without taking any notice of its neighbour. European history has thus become a veritable Babel. Hence the formidable dangers that lie in wait for inexperienced research-workers - and after all, do not all experts deservethis epithet once they are outside their own domain?I was oncein touch with a worker who was studying, in a one-time Teutonic country, some common land used by several villages together, that is to say what the German books, at any rate of a certain period, call a Mark.34 I had the greatestdifficulty in persuadinghim that analogouspractices existed- and sometimes still exist - outside Germany, in numberlesscountries,and notably in France;for Frenchbooks have no specialword for this kind of commonland. But this discordancein vocabularyis hardly more than the expressionof a deeper disharmony. On all sides we have French,German,Italian, English studiesgoing on; but hardly ever are they asking the samequestions.I quotedjust now an example of these perpetual cross-purposeson the subject of agrarian changes.It would not be very difficult to produce others equally eloquent of the situation: 'the administrative class',for example,has beenup to now a completelyneglected subject,in Franceand in England,in descriptionsof mediaeval society; or legal rights, which have been discussedin the

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

75

various countries under completely different schemes of classification.A historianmay well be led to wonderwhethera certain institution or fact in his own national past is to be found elsewheretoo, and if so, with what modificationsdue to checks in developmentor greater expansion; but it is more often than not impossible for him to satisfy this legitimate curiosity. When he finds nothing on the subject in the books he consults, he may well wonder whether their silence is to be explained by the silence of the facts themselves,or by the stateof oblivion into which a great problem has beenallowed to fall. This congresswill, I think, be much concernedwith reconciliation between nations by means of history. Do not be alarmed:I am not going to attemptany impromptu treatment of this most delicateof all themes.Comparativehistory as I see it is a purely scientific discipline, orientatedtowardsknowledge and not towards practical results. But what would you say about attempting a reconciliation of our terminologies and our questionnaires?Let us addressourselvesin the first place to the authors of general text-books, for they hold the first place of importanceas informers and guides. We will not ask them for the moment to abandonthe national framework in which their work is ordinarily done. It is clearly an artificial one, but it is still imposedby practical needs.Only gradually will the pursuit of knowledge adapt itself on this point to a position more in keepingwith the true facts. But we appealto them here and now not to forget that they will be read beyond their national frontiers. We beg them, as we have already besoughtthe authors of monographs,to base their plan, the treatmentof the problemsthey raise, even the terms they use, on the knowledge gleaned from work carried out in other countries. In this way, through mutual good will, a common collection scientific language in the highest sense -a collection of symbols and a system of classification- will progressively come into being. Comparativehistory will thus becomeeasier to understandand to serve, and will inspire local studieswith its own spirit - thoselocal studieswithout which it is powerless, but which can themselvesonly come to fruition with its help. In a word, let us stop talking about the history of one nation

76

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A

COMPARATIVE

and then of anotherwithout attemptingto understandtLem a coursewhich leadsto no understanding.A dialoguebetween deaf men, in which each one answersthe other'squestionsall wrong, is an ancientcomic deviceon the stage,getting an easy laugh from an audiencewhich is always ready to be amused; but it is not really to be recommendedas a seriousintellectual exerCIse.

NOTES 1.

2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

Revue de SyntheseHistorique, Dec. 1928. This article reproduces an addressgiven in the previous August at Oslo, to the International Congressof Historical Sciences(mediaevalsection). I have not aimed at more than filling out the argumentwhere the very limited time at my disposalhad necessitatedcertain last-momentcuts. Without making any pretensionto drawing up a generalbibliography, which would be out of place here, I would just mention the address given by Henri Pirenneto the Fifth InternationalCongressof Historical Sciences (Report, pp. 17-32), which is all the more significant becauseit embodiesthe thoughtsof a historian whosefame restsupon a national work; also in the Revue de Synthesethe articles by Louis Daville (Vol. 27, 1913), conceivedin a different spirit from the present work, and an article by Henri See (Vol. 36, 1923; reprintedin Science et philosophiede l' histoire, 1928); also Henri Beer's reflections (Vol. 35, 1923, p. 1I). As positive contributions to comparativehistory let us recall, in the field of political history, the remarkablearticle by Ch. V. Langlois, 'The comparativehistory of England and Franceduring the Middle Ages', in The English Historical Review, 1900; and on a rather different topic some very revealing pagesin Les Villes du Moyen Age, by H. Pirenne. See especiallyA. Meillet, La methodecomparativeen linguistiquehistorique, 1925, to which lowe the general idea of developmentin the two kinds of approach. Moeurs des sauvagesAmericains compareesaux moeurs des premiers temps, Paris, 1724; on the work itself, cf. Gilbert Chinard, L'Ameriqueet Ie reve collection exotiquedansla litteraturefran~aise collection au XVI~ et XVIIle siecies,1913,pp. 3 15ff. J. Frazer, The GoldenBough, 3rd edit. Vol. I, p. ro. The examplechosen by Meillet (op.cit) is different, drawn from researcheson animal stories. But naturally the mere fact of 'survival' is not enough; other things have to be taken into account. An interesting fact which must be explained is why the rite or institution survived despite its apparent failure to fit into its new environment.

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

77

7. The study of primitive civilisations is today turning quite clearly towards a more exact classification of the societies to be compared. Thereis no reasonat all why the secondtype of methodI am trying to classify here should not apply to these societiesjust as much as to others. Moreover, it is obvious that certain of the advantagesof a comparativehistory with limited horizons, as outlined below - where I discusssuggestionsfor research,and cautionin attributingeverything to pseudoor local causes- are equally applicableto the other method. The two aspectsof the method have certain featuresin common; but this doesnot meanthat they do not needto be carefully distinguished. The study of sacredkingship in Europe providesa very clear example both of the immense value and of the limitations of comparative ethnography.Thoughit aloneis able to put us on the right road to the correct psychological explanation of the phenomenon,it has been shown by experienceto be altogetherunfitted for the task of drawing out its real meaning.That at any rate is what I attemptedto show in Les Rois Thaumaturges,especiallypp. 53 and 59. 8. In what follows - and later on in dealing with the theoriesof Meitzen -I am anticipatingthe resultsof a work on agrariansystemsin which I have been for long engaged,whose conclusionswere presentedto another section of the congress.Compare Les Caracteres originaux de l'histoire ruralefranfaise, 1951, p. 262. 9. Cap. no. 64, cl. 17 (edit. Boretius): 'Ut unusquisquesuos iuniores distringat ut melius ac melius obediant et consentiantmandatiset praeceptisimperialibus.' 10. The twelfth Council of Toledo (681), in a letter from King Ervig, Mansi, Vol. XI, col. 1025. I I. In the collection of documentsof Sanchez-Albornoz,Les Behetrias,in Annario di historia del derechoespanol,Vol. I, 1924, noteson pp. 183, 184, 185. M. Sanchez-Albornoz'sstudy gives the most reiiable and complete explanation of the Visigoth patrocinium. Particularly to be noted is the passagein the Codex Euricianlls, CCX, which originally applied to the buccellarius (private soldier), and reappearsin the Lex Reccessuindiana,V, 3, I, with the word buccellarius substitutedfor a ratherlooser term: et quemin patrocinio habuerit. 12. The laws of Ervig (680-687),in the collection Lex Visig., IX, 2, 9, cd. Zeumer, p. 378. cf. Sanchez-Albornoz,loco cit., p. 194. 13. Maiores et potentiores: Cap. no. 133 (Vol. I, p. 263, 1.26), Pretres: Dip/omata K arolin., Vol. I, no. 2 I 7; Hist. de Languedoc,Vol. 2, col. I, 228. See E. Cauvet, Etude historique sur l'etablissementdes Espagnols dans la Septimanie,1898, and Imbart de la Tour, Les colonies agricoles et l'occupationdes terres desertesIi I' epoquecarolingienne,in Questionsd'histoire sociale et religieuse, 1907. 14. Sustainedas it was by borrowings from elsewhere,the Carolingian monarchyin its turn was copied by others. Its influenceon the AngloSaxon monarchiesdoes not seem to have been sufficiently studied. Helen Cam's useful essay, Local Gouemmentin Francia and England. A

78

A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE

comparison of the local administration and jurisdiction of the Cardingian Empire with that ojthe West Saxonkingdom, 1912, is far from exhausting

the subject. 15. Cf. H. Prentout,Les Etats provinciaux en France, in Bulletin ojthe International Committeeoj historical sciences,July 1928 (Scientific reports presented to the sixth international congressoj historical sciences).

16. Alain Chartier, in his Quadriloge invectij, composedin 1422, puts into the mouth of the knight the following words (ed. E. Droz, Les Classiques franfais du Moyen Age, p. 30): 'the commonpeoplehave this advantage, that their purse is like a cistern that has collected and continuesto collect all the waters and showersprovided by all the wealth of this kingdom ...for thefall in the value oj moneyhas lessenedthe amountthat they have to pay us in dues and rents, and the monstrousrise in the price of food and of labour for which they are responsiblehas enabledthem to collect and build up their substanceby reasonof what they collect and amassday by day.' I do not think I have come acrossan older passagewhere this observationis as clearly stated. But it would be well worth while pursuingthis line of research.For - though this is too often forgotten - the importantpoint here is not so much the moment when the phenomenonbegan to exist (one would have to go a long way back to find the starting-point),but rather the moment when it beganto be noticed. As long as the seigneursdid not realise that their dues were diminishing, they obviously would not seek for the means of repairing their loss. We have good reason to know at the present time that the depreciation of a currency while the nominal value remainsthe samecan easily remain unnoticedfor quite a long time by the people affected. Once again we see that an economic problem turns out to be a psychologicalproblem. 17. The necessityfor comparative studies, which are alone capable of dispelling the mirage of mistakenlocal causes,has been well demonstratedin a book by A. Brun, remarkablein spite of somedeficiencies: Rechercheshistoriquessur l'introduction du franfais dans les provincesdu Midi, 1923 (cf. L. Febvre in the Revuede Synthese,Vol. 38, 1924, pp. 37ff).

Brun, as is well known, has proved that French did not begin to win its way in the south of Francebefore the middle of the 15th century. Here in his own words are the reasonswhy, having first decided to restrict himself to a summaryexaminationof the relevantdocuments, he then decided to extend his researchesover the whole of southern France,insteadof exploring one region only with extreme thoroughness,as so many scholarswould no doubt have advisedhim to do. 'It would perhaps have been preferable to restrict the problem to a single province and to exhaustthe massof documentsavailable there. Yes - from the point of view of strict method this would have been the preferablecourse; but in fact this could have led to seriouserrors of interpretation. For example, having chosenProvence,and noting that Frenchwas in this region an innovation of the 16th century, one would have jumped to the conclusion that it had followed upon the

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

18. 19.

20.

2 I.

22.

79

reunion of 1481-1486- which is approximately correct. But would onehavenoticedthat the deepercauseof this eventwas not the reunion itself, but the specialcircumstancesin which it took place in the 15th century, at a turning-point in our history, and that Provence was sharing in a common and simultaneousdevelopmenttaking place in all the regions of southernFrance?A local enquiry would have suggested a local explanation, and the general characteristicsof the phenomenon- the only important ones- would have escapednotice' (p. xii). The point could not be betterexpressed.The resultsof Brun's researchesare in themselvesan emphatic plea for the method I am here concernedto defend. Caracteresginiraux des languesgermaniques,1917, p. vii. Villeinage in England, 1892. Naturally the literature is considerable.To tell the truth, there are few works dealing with the subjectas a whole, even in English (see however Pollock and Maitland, The History of English Law, 2nd ed, I, pp. 356ff and 412ff.) There are fewer still in French.This will I hope provide someexcusefor the schematicway in which I have had to developmy argument. New - or perhapsrenewed. In the days when slavery proper existed, the slave had clearly had no other court of appealagainsthis master than the masterhimself. The free man dependedon the law-courtsof the tribe, eitherpopularor royal. The progressofseignorialjurisdiction - less completein England than on the continent- the development of a new form of personaland heritableattachment,which placedthe individual among the unfree, had blurred the old conception and deprived it of its legal value, though probably without removing it altogetherfrom men's minds. The renaissanceof a national judicial systemrevived it. Mediaeval law, adaptingits forms to the evolution of the facts, thus often found itself dipping into an ancient fund of popular representativeinstitutions belonging to the more or less distant and forgotten past. We shall come acrossa striking exampleof this later on, when discussingthe villein's services. There is anotherand more subtle kind of misleadingsimilarity when two institutions in two different societies seem to be designed for similar ends;but analysisshowstheseendsto be completelyantithetical, and revealsthat theseinstitutions have arisenin responseto absolutely oppositeneeds.An exampleof this would be the mediaevalandmodern testamentarywill on the one hand and the Roman will on the other, The former representsthe 'triumph' of individualism over 'old family communism',the latter representsthe exact opposite- it is an instrument designedto favour the omnipotenceof the pater familias, taking its origin thereforenot from any 'tendencytowards individualisation' but on the contrary from a tremendous'concentrationof the family'. I take this example from a review by Durkheim (Annie sociologique, Vol. 5, p. 375), one of the most finished piecesof methodologythat he has produced. There was moreoversomeambiguity about the expression'servitium'

80

A CONTIUBUT10N '1'OWAltDS A COMPAltATIVE

in English legal language- or rather, in mediaeval language in general-usedas the equivalentof 'due' as well as of serviceproperly speaking.I am hereusing the term only in the restrictedsense. 23. I have referred to certain documentsin Reuuehistorique du droit, 1928, pp. 49, 50. 24. On this matter cf. my article in Melangesd'histoire du Moyen Age o.fJerts tl M. FerdinandLot, 1925,pp. 55ft, where I was incidentally at fault in neglectingto comparethe facts with thosein England. 25. Book IV, Ch. II. 26. cr. Marc Bloch, Un problerned'histoir, comparee:la ministerialiUenFrance et en Allemagne,in Revuehistorique de droit frtulfais et etranger, 1928, especially pp. 86ff, and infra, pp. 503-528,andparticularlypp. 525 and526. 27. This was moreover the original meaning (the relationship between mansusand maneseis obvious). The tenure had been called after the house,'motherof the field', as the Scandinaviandocumentsexpressit. The derived sensehad taken on a technical meaning, which disappearedalong with the institution that it designated.The first senseof the word survivedor was resuscitated.Naturally onecan discoverhere and there some survivals of the 'manse'in the ancient senseof the word, as a unit of taxation, late exampleswhich bearwitnessboth to the paststateof affairs and to the generalrevolution which only a few seigneuries,hereand there,managedto escape. 28. Cap. no. 273, ch. 30 (vol. 2, p. 323). One is temptedto put alongside this documentthe information alreadyprovided by Gregoryof Tours (Hist.franc. X, 7), aboutthe splitting up of possessiones, the basis of the generalRomano-Frankishsystemof taxation; but this is not the place to go into the relationships between the Frankish manse and the Romancaput- an extremelyintricate question. 29. La methodecomparativeen linguislique historique, pp. 82, 83. 30. Ch. Metais, Les TempliersenEure-et-Loir, 1896.Examplesof this kind of anachronismarelessrare than one wouldimagine.In the samedepartement I could refer to: Henry Lehr, La Riformeet les eglisesriformks dans collection Ie departement a~tuel d'Eure-et-Loir (1523-1912),1912. In a neighbouring region, Abbe Denis, Lecturessur l'histoire de l'agricullur dansIe departement de Seine-et-Marne,1830 (the greaterpart of the volume deals with the period before the Revolution). 31. I think I should here add a further problem peculiar to the French universities, and therefore not suitable for enlarging upon at Oslo. Our higher educationis hamstrungby the requirementsof the licence, and still more so, in the main faculties, by the syllabusfor the agregation, which reachesthe teachersready made from the handsof the responsibleauthority, namely the jury. Neither of these,it is true, is limited to the history of France; they almost always include some questionson foreign history; but, for reasonsof practicalconvenience, and quite legitimate ones, thesequestionsare regularly presentedin a national framework. The result is that the teacher may well be inclined to give his lessonsor direct his pupils' studiesalong the lines

HISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

81

of English or German institutions, for example;if he is not to neglect the infinitely importantinterestsof the pupils conunittedto his charge, he can only under very exceptionalcircumstancesreservea place in his teachingfor certainproblemsthat positively demandto be treated today along comparativelines, such as the systemof lord and vassal in Western Europe, the development of urban societies, and the agrarianrevolution. Teachingand researchbeing in the natureof the caseclosely boundup with oneanother,and both having much to gain by mutual support,one can seehow damagingthis situation is to our studies. 32. The exact wording is: 'Pour un jour de syntMse il faut des annees d'analyse' (Fustel de Coulanges,La Gaule romaine, ed. C. Jullian, p. xiii, 1875 preface).Cf. the reflections of M. Henri Berr, Bulletin du centreinternationalde Synthese,June1928, p. 28. 33. Naturally onecould put somethinglike 'Inhaberder Leihegiiter' - but who would use an expressionlike that? Hange, moreover, does not quite representtenancier: the meaningis more general. In Spanish,as I was able to satisfy myself when working on a translation, there is literally no word equivalentto 'tenure'. 34. Today there can be absolutelyno doubt that the word never really bore this narrowly specialisedmeaning,but should be considered,like Allmmde, as equivalent to communal. Cf. G. v. Below, Allmende und Markgenossenschaji,in Vierleljahrschr. flir So;:,ial-und Wirtschojtsgesch., 1903·

3 A PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY THE ADMINISTRATIVE CLASSES IN FRANCE AND IN GERMANYl

I

There is almost always somethingdisappointingaboutreading two historiesone after the other- howeverexcellentthey may be - dealingon the one handwith the institutionsof mediaeval France, and on the other with those of Germanyduring the sameperiod. You seemto be looking on at a desultorydialogue in which neither of the speakersever gives an answerexactly meetingthe requirementsof his partner.One of the two books points to a problem and solvesit in a certain way. But when you turn to the secondbook you find most of the time that the problemis not evenmentioned.Yet the two societiesoriginally - and for a good reason- had a greatmany points in common, and their developmentoffers undeniableparallels. No doubt, numerousdifferencesexistedfrom the start, and they seemto havegoneon becomingmore markedin the courseof the ages. But how is it going to be possible to throw light upon these particulardifferencesif the samequestionsare not being asked in both studies?2 If there is one institution better suited than any other to bring out the deep likenessesand divergencesbetweenthese two great mediaevalcivilisations by setting them side by side, it is surely the one that historians call the administrative classes.Though the term has long been famous in German scholarship, it would have been quite fruitless until quite recentlyto look for any mentionof the subjectin eventhe most classicalFrenchworks. But today this silencehas beenbroken, and the credit goes to the Belgian historians, who are constrainedand privileged by the past history of their country to keep constantlyin view both Franceand the Empire. As early as 191 I Pirenne was inviting us to consider whether 'an

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY

83

administrative class' has ever 'existed in France'.3 More recently, one of his pupils, Ganshof, has studied the lord's servants(ministeriales) both in a French fief-Flanders- and in the imperial principalities of Lower Lorraine.4 His book not only contains a considerable quantity of information, brought together and scrutinised with immense care, but it also constitutes an attempted interpretation of the greatest possible interest.5 Following in his footsteps, and taking advantageof his personal researches,I should like to show here what this serious problem of comparativehistory really involves. I shall in the first instancehave recourseto the Frenchfacts, but from the start shall make full use as occasiondemandsof any light that can be thrown on them by comparisonwith other countries. This will then be followed by a methodical comparisonwith Germany.

II

The manors (seigneuries) during the High Middle Ages in Capetian France comprised a whole staff of officials and servants- using these words together becauseof the impossibility of choosingbetweenthem. The languageof the period did not distinguish between these two ideas; the commonest of the Latin terms- ministeria/is- the French sergent, the Provenc;:al sirvent, and the German Dienstmann are used indifferently in both senses,meaning in fact one and the same thing.6 Administrative officials, those concernedwith justice, servantsproper, artisanswhose businessit was to supply the needsof the lord and his household,were all lumped together in the samecategory,not only in popular usage,but in legal documentstoo, and often enjoyed the sameprivileges. About 1050 the Comte de Poitiers, dispensingall thosein the employment of the monks of Saint-Jean-d' Angely from military service- except in the case of expeditionsled by the Count himself- enumeratesthem in a random fashion, thus: 'their bailiffs, overseers,shoemakers,skinners,millers, gardenersand all their own servants [sergents], those who hold office under

84

A PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY

them, perform their duties [ministerial and carry out tasks for them, either by hereditaryright, or becausethe monks have chosenof their own free will men of no matter what estate from amongthoseofthe township,who are nearlyall dependent upon them.'7 In the ordinary way the lord would recruit these indispensablehelpersfrom amonghis own men. He did not always considerhimselfboundto consultthe feelingsof thosewhom he honouredby summoningthem to his service. The document just quoted certainly seems to recognise that the monks of Saint-Jeanhad a right to exerciseconstraint. In June 1248, the charterofliberties of Saint-Germain-Lavalprescribedthat the lord could not takefrom amongthe menwithin his franchise more than six servants'and then only if they are willing';8 a clear proof that in the past the consentof the personsconcernedhad not always been required.The serfs in particular, more closely bound to their master than the other subject persons,would easily have seemedto him to be entirely at his beck and call. The monks of Saint-Perede Chartres, at the beginningof the 12th century, were accustomedto give wine to their servants,whether freemen or serfs. One year, when William I (1101-1129) was abbot, there was no wine in the cellars. Rather than buy in wine from outside, the monks, arguing on the basis of a tradition that had always been observed,accordingto them, in lean times, preferred to stop the distribution of wine. The sergents, feeling themselves injured, brought an action against them; but the judges (we do not know what court they belongedto) enteredjudgment against the plaintiffs - 'mainly for this reason [says the documentdrawn up on this occasionin the monastery],that severalof the servantswere our bondmen,and it was lawful for us in caseof need to expect them to perform our tasks on any conditionswe choseto impose'.9 All the same this institution of compulsoryservice in the household,which was quite widespreadin Germany,never seemsto have undergoneany extensive developmentin France. A large part of the staff necessaryon the manorsseemsto have beenprovidedfor them early on simply by inheritance.There, as elsewhere,it was the generally prevailing custom at this period for an office to

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY

85

becomevested in one family, and to be handeddown from father to son; but furthermore, as we shall see in a moment, the customof creatingtenanciesin return for servicesrendered, and on condition of such services,compelledthe heirs, if they did not wish to lose the land, to take over the regularsequence of servicesperformedby the deceased.For the rest, the lords of manorsseemin generalnot to have had much difficulty in finding the manpower they neededwithout having recourse to any oppressiveaction. The fact is that such servicereceived very appreciablerewards. Moreover, it would always have been necessaryto give the servantsa subsistenceallowance, whether they were volunteersor impressed.In what form did they receivethe priceof their work? In the first place, it took the form of certainexemptionsfrom dues, particularly and almost everywherefrom tallage. This was the privilege which, when transferredlater on to royal officials and applied to the royal taxes, was to constituteone of the most precious benefits offered by the monarchy to its servants.More than one institution of the Stateis thus rooted in the institutions of the manor. But these negative favours were not enough.For a long time the offering ofa moneywage was more or less incompatible with the general economic conditionsof the period. It was hardly ever resortedto except when it was a matterof hiring someextra workmenfor a shortterm project,such as extra farm work in the busyseasons,l° For more regular employments,there were two systemsin use. Either the lord of the manorundertookto provide his men with their keep,supplyingthemwith food. (Ajudgmentof the Court of Eude de Blois excludedfrom the overseer'sjurisdiction, and from all financial obligation to him, the servants of SaintMartin de Tours, whetherthey were freemenor serfswho had been freed, whether they worked in the monasteryitself or outside it, since they were 'fed, clothed, and looked after' by the monks.)11 Or the lord could makeover to them someland from which they could feed themselves,or else an income derived from land. In this last case the land or income from land (mediaevallaw madeno distinction betweenthe two, but placedthe income arising from land, and the land itself, in the categoryof real estate),was consideredto be in exchangenot,

86

A PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY

like the unfreetenement,involving the paymentof duesaccompanied by forced labour at certain periods, but essentiallyin exchangefor a regular service. In current·usage, this was called a 'fief'.12 At the height of the Middle Ages, Latinists used the word beneficiumin the same sense,having gradually given a specialisedmeaning to this ancient word which was already used in vulgar Latin - through an initial semantic limitation which did not rule out other meanings- to denote paymentfor labour, whateverits form might be.I3 As the word beneficium had belongedto the vocabulary of classical Latin, writers and lawyers, when anxious to maintain a precise terminology, continued for a long time to prefer it to Latin transcriptionsof 'fief'. The opposition betweenthe system of fiefs and the systemof maintenancein the master'shousehold (prebend)was an ancientone. The capitulary de villis already distinguished among the royal grooms those who received prebend (praebenda) from their lord the king, and those who held manorsfrom him as fiefs.14 It goeswithout sayingthat the two systemswere capableof being blended. In all periods it was quite common to see servantsof enfeoffed vassalstaking part more or less regularly in distributions of food or clothes; this was such a common event that it doesnot need any supporting referenceshere.IS After all, nothing could have been simpler or more logical than this dual arrangement. Neverthelessthe word 'fief' has been the source of many ambiguities in the course of literary history. It has been thought to designatefrom the start, not every tenure with an obligation of service, but, accordingto the custom prevailing over at any rate a large part of the feudal world towards the end of the Middle Ages, only those tenureswith an obligation to rendersomespecialknightly service.The 'fief', thus reduced to its knightly form, has beenlooked upon as a speciesof real estate exclusively reservedfor the nobility. Hence there has arisen a whole host of otiose questionsabout the right of the lord's servantsto hold fiefs, and worse still, the idea that the possessionof a fief by a lord's servantwas a sign that he had risen to a higher social rank. Summing up the 'classical' Germantheory, and - it would appear- making it his own,16 Ganshofwrites(pp. 43-44): 'thelesserservants ... thelaunderers,

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY

87

the cooks, the messengers,the gardeners,the carpenters,etc., did not receive fiefs'. But a rapid glance through diplomatic documentsis enoughto unearthfiefs among those occupying administrative posts- provosts, overseers, reeves, doyenswhose existence nobody questions, a respectablenumber of 17 and cooks (I mean those who fiefs among the carpenters actually did the cooking, not those high officials who were simply responsiblefor the service of the food at table).18 To thesemight be addedwithout difficulty fiefs amongthe slaters,19 painters,20goldsmiths,21blacksmiths,22fishermen,23even surgeonswhose special duty it was to bleed their masters;24and all of this is takenfrom Frenchor Rhinelanddocuments,going back in most cases to the 12th or even the 11th century. In anotherplace (p. 342) Ganshofsays:'It was not customary for noble vassalsto receive their keep [prebend].'This is to forget the whole crowd of vassals,very numerousin primitive times, who were not enfeofFed.Look at Norman England,for example. The tenants-in-chiefwere all obliged to put at the disposal of the royal army a fixed number of horsemen.But this did not oblige them to turn theseinto fiefs; they could if they so desired keep them under their own wing, providing themwith food and shelter;and many, especiallyin early days, preferred this solution of the matter.25 Even when they had been enfeoffed, vassalswere not above soliciting or claiming on occasions,eitherfor themselvesor the youngersonsof their house, the hospitality of the lord's household. Among the advantageswhich were recognisedas late as I 139 as belonging to the lords of Saint-Anatholyby the abbeyof Saint-Serninat Toulouse, from whom they held their fief, was the privilege of having either a canon of their lineageor a knight - also of tneir lineage- 'living with the abbot'.26The prebendand the fief were but two different methods of rewarding work, and not the distinctive marks of two social grades,one above the other. By the sametoken, how could one imagine the existence in the I I th and evenin the 12th centuryof a tenurespecifically tied to the nobility, since there did not yet exist such a body, in the exactsenseof the word, that is to say a hereditarycaste endowedwith preciselegal privileges? Certain Germanhistorians,having recognisedthe existence

88

A PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY

of thesefiefs belongingto the lord's servants,havenevertheless refused to recognisethem as 'genuine' (echte): you can have as many fiefs as you like, they have said in effect - for the documentaryevidence of their existencecan hardly be disputed- but they are of an inferior sort, their lower statusbeing marked by the fact that their holders do not owe homage. Although in accordancewith the interpretationsof certain lawyers going back to the first half of the 13th century, this distinction, evenasfar as it concernsGermany,hardly appears to gain much supportfrom the documentsof the 11th and 12th centuries.27 In France it is thoroughly contradicted by the facts at almostany period. The trouble is always anachronism. Ignoring chronology, people will insist on projecting back into the most distantpastan idea of classwhich only emerged extremely slowly. Even the word homagekept an extremely generalmeaningover a very long period: it was used of any dependentrelationship of any kind whatsoever- for to be dependenton someonemore powerful than oneself,what was that in mediaeval parlance but to call oneself 'his man'?and then, consequently,of any symbolical expressionof this dependence,for example the ceremonyof the rope (rites de la corde) or the offering of money, by which the status of serf 28 But the learned personswho deny that was acknowledged. the lord's servantsowed homageare clearly thinking of a more particular and precisemeaningof the term, namely a vassal's homagerenderedby the kiss and the taking of hands.Even in this sensehomage was not anything specifically confined to the nobility, any more than was the fief - and for a long time fief and homagewere not necessarilylinked. In the early ages of vassalagemany poor peoplehad receivedthis status.In the 12th century, by virtue of a custom from thenceforward consideredan ancient one, the Count of Flanders used to receive, together with the homage of those of his fief, the homageof the citizens from his towns.29 The performanceof homageto the new lord by his citizens and his tenantsone by one remainedtraditionally in force up to the endof the Middle Ages, especiallyin the South.so At the beginningof the 13th century, when the right to sub-let land was still ill-defined, it sometimeshappenedthat homagewas imposedon farmers or

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY

89

tenants.31 But furthermore: in certain places, the ordinary ceremonies acknowledging servile status were replaced by those elsewherereservedfor the homage of a vassa}32- the joining of handsand the kiss. In the sameway, but in the other direction, homageby a vassal,particularly when the lord was the Church, or rather a saint, towards whom humility was laudable,sometimestook on the forms properly belonging to servitude,such as paymentof chevage(poll tax) to St. Denis by the kings of France,or to St. Thomasby the Kings of England,33 or to St. Gall by Conrad I of Germany;34 or the homagepaid by the Countof Toulouseto St. Vincent de Viviers with a chain round his neck.35 The early confusion between bond service and vassalage,on which Guilhiermoz has so rightly insisted,lingered long in humanmemories.That being so, was it surprising that certain lord's servantsshould have been subjectedto homageproper? Or that they should have had to submit to it even when they were serfs?- the position of the mayor of the Canonsof Orleans, who paid them liege homagein 1176.36But not all of them owed it. In the caseof a good many of them, a simple oath of fidelity was considered sufficient. We shall never know the detailed reasonsfor this difference.The mostwe cangatheris that homagewasrequired especiallyfrom those who held the most important offices; in the case of the minor posts, the faithfulness of their holders seemedfor the most part to be guaranteedby the very fact of their humble station. It was also requiredpreferably- though with some exceptions,one of which I have just referred to from free-born sergents, the serfs being already tied to their mastersby the strongestof bonds. Naturally any precedentin the Middle Ages tendedto createa right, and customgradually came to attach the duty of homage to certain offices. At Corbie, aboutthe year 1200, the majority of the mayors,along with a foresterand two moneyers,were obliged to pay homage, sometimes- and more often than not - in the form of liege homage,sometimeswithout this reinforcement;but there was no such obligation resting upon the others. A little later we meetthe samevaried practiceat Saint-Corneillede Compiegne and on the Bishop of Chartres'lands,wherein 1280 the porter, the gardenerand the carpenterall paid liege homage,37just

go

A PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY

like certain barons,the vidame, for example,and like certain mayors and provosts. I have had to dwell rather lengthily upon this thorny questionof the sergents'fief. I could on the other hand almost completely pass over in silence the parallel matter raised concerningthe freeholds (allods) held by the ministeriales,for I am not aware of any facts in France bearing upon this theme, perhapsfor the simple reasonthat they have escaped my notice. While however documentsfrom Lotharingia have led Ganshoftoexaminethis problemrepeatedly(seeespecially pp. 291 ff.), I may perhapsbe allowed to put in a word as well. The only real difficulty appears to me to lie in the terminology. Precision of languagein mediaevallegal documentswas a result of the spreadamongnotariesof more exact legal knowledge.This is as much as to say that before the 13th century they hardly paid any attention to accuracy. Before this period they would cheerfully use now one word and now another in the same sense.Not all words, however, suffered equally from this ambiguity; those with a vigorous popular life - like fief - were more or less fixed in senseby popular usage; but others denoting less common institutions, less in keeping with the general spirit of custom, carried a great variety of possiblemeaning.Such was the casewith the word allod. Its precise technical meaning, frequently defined in contemporarydocuments, and finally the only meaning to hold the field, is well enough known - namely, land exempt from any kind of duesor seignorialservices.But alongsidethis meaning, the older senseof 'hereditary possession'seems to have survived. Above all, as Ganshofhas very ingeniously shown, there was a readinessto treat as an allod any holding carved out of an allodial lordship, a piece of ground which, whilst really being an allod, was in truth only liable to dues and services- that is, a fief - in relation to the person who worked it. 38 But there is nothing surprisingabout the fact, which is very widely attestedin Germany, that genuine allods in the full senseof the word - land situated,amid the generalmedley of seignorialrights, in a position of simplicity and isolation that was quite peculiar- shouldhave beenheld by the ministeriales;

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY

91

even if thesepeoplewere serfs,for the existenceof allods in the handsof those of humble station, and more especiallyin the hands of serfs, is well attested.39 Whatever the penetrative power of the seignorial system may have been, there were certain islands here and there which altogether escapedits impact,just as in the economicsystemtoday, capitalism,even where it has invaded industry most thoroughly, has still not succeededin killing the small craftsman.Only when the allod happenedto comeinto the handsof a serf, it necessarilylost by that very fact somethingof its strict autonomy; for the serf, by reasonof the fact that the lord 'of his body' in certain cases inherited from him, and could, in any event, levy a chargeon the whole of his goods, was incapable of disposing of his possessions - even in favour of parties who, accordingto the laws of property, were dependenton other lords or were not dependent upon anyone- without this consent creating eventually a right.40 In Hainault, where allods were fairly numerous,feudal custom,fixed in 1200 by Count Baldwin VI, laid down a perfectly clear ruling: 'the serf can under no circumstancesdienatehis allod or changeit into a fief without his lord's consent'.41The sameprinciple appliedin Germany.42 The allod, as such, did not constitutea tenancy:it was on the proprietor, and not on the ground, that this incapacityrested. Among the crowd of sergents,undifferentiatedas they must have been in early times, differences must neverthelesshave fairly quickly made themselvesfelt. They were all bound to their lord of similar ties; but they were not alike in mannerof life, in fortune, or in power. It was not long before public opinion had markedout certaindegreesamongthem. A notice at the beginningof the 12th centurytells us ofa certainskinner in the serviceof the monksof St. Perede Chartres,who managed to becomea cellarer,that he had chosen'ad maiora conscendere' .43 Over the heads of the craftsmen, servants and employees engagedin minor administrativeand legal tasksthere beganto grow up a class of people on whom their duties conferred a handsomeincome, a certain position and - this, I think, was the heart of the matter- power over other men. On the one hand, there were certain officers of the seignorial court, who, though originally appointedto fairly lowly tasks in the house

92

A PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY

and often at table, had soon ceasedto carry them out in person, except from time to time at great festivals, and had transformed themselves into superintendents, constituting themselvescounsellors to their master, and often sitting as judgesin his court;44 on the other hand there were the officials entrustedwith the administration of the various lands, the maires (or lord's stewards)to use the word most widely current in France. Generally, the custom has been to stress the first group; and there can be no doubt that in the great seigneuries the holders of court offices succeededmore completely and more quickly than their colleaguesin other employmentsin raising themselvesto the most enviable ranks of the feudal world. But this was only on the large estates,and even there this central staff was not very large. On the other hand the maires or lord's stewards were extremely numerous. I am inclined to think that the most importantpart they playedwas in forming a noble classfrom the ranks of the ministeriales.At any rate this seemsto me to be the casein most of the regions of France;but Flanders,on Ganshof'sshowing, was a curious exception. The stewardsin the village were powerful people in their little circle. They directedthe cultivation of the domain,levied the dues, presidedover the fixing of boundariesand investitures, and often metedout justice. The ancient cartulariesare full of their names,full of their disputeswith their masterstoo, and of their attempts to assert their independence.Charlemagne was already expressinghis distrust of them in recommending that they should never be selectedin the royal villae as membersof the potentiores.45 At the beginning of the 12th century, the stewardof the monks of Saint-Benoit,at Fleury, succeededin getting himself recognised as the king's man (probablyhis serf) andin the samebreathpersuadingthe other sergentsat the abbey and the stewardsof the other villae to do him fealty and homage,whereby he threw off the seignorial yoke and, moreover, substitutedhis own authority over his fellows. The king had to intervene in person to set matters right.46 About the same time, the steward of the Abbey of St-Perede Chartresa la Pommeraye,in disputewith a clerical official - the chevecier- to whom the village belonged,set fire

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY

93

47 The to the monks' houses and pillaged their cowsheds. monasticwriters are constantlygroaning about the 'rapacity' and 'perfidy' of theseevil servants.48The poets, on the other hand, delighted to sketch the portraits of faithful stewards, such as the one who led Percival'smother into the desert, or that 'good steward who ran to succour Gansi when he was mortally wounded, and who, making a somewhatpremature gestureof veneration'- for the worthy veteranhad not quite given up the ghost- cut off his lord's arm in order to preserve it as a relic.49 In the 13th century certain stewards possesseda seal, the characteristicsign of high rank, others a fortified house.5o The membersof stewards'families constantly intermarried,51 unless their wealth enabled them to aim higher still, like Aleaume, provost and stewardof St. Denis a Maisoncelles,who, although a serf, won the hand of Mistress Agnesaboutthe year 1230, the daughterof the knight Etienne Jouvin. The enormousfine of 500 livres in the currency of Provins imposedon him by the monks on the occasionof this prohibited marriageoutside the manor gives someidea of the extentof his fortune.52 Towardsthe endof the 13th century,whatwerethe respective situations in France of the seigneursand their chief servants, stewards,or officers at court? Almost everywhere, the sergents had succeededin making theirs a hereditaryoffice, quite often in law and nearly always in practice. It would sometimeshappenthat when a seigneur conferredthe office of stewardupon a new candidate,he had it statedin a written deed that the office was not alienableand could never be inherited; but on taking a closer look we frequently observe that the beneficiary of this concession, benevolentas its intention was, turned out to be none other than the son or heir of the ex-mayor. In 1225 - to quote a single case among many - Colin, the son of the late ·steward of Choisy, claimed the stewardshipas belonging to him by right of inheritance from the Abbot of Sainte-Genevieveof Paris, and failed to obtain it. Thinking better of it, he then appealedto the abbot's'pity'; and the latter, satisfiedwith this showof 'humility', grantedthe coveteddignity to the suppliant - for his life only. The deed specifies that the heirs of Colin

94

A

PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY

shall haveno right to the paternaloffice of servant;but Colin's own exampleshowsthat customwas strongerthan any written stipulations.53 The abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, Thibaut (I 154-22ndJuly1162),had forbidden underpain of anathema the transmissionof the steward'soffice to the son of the then holder. His successor,Hugo V, neededa papal bull to have this prohibition removed, and the son whom Thibaut had wished to exclude neverthelessbecame the steward of the monks.54 The hereditarycondition applied of coursenot only to the function but also to the fief with which it was rewarded.But on this point the seigneursas a generalrule continuedto avoid the very serious danger that threatenedfrom the stewards, more thanfrom any of the sergents,namelythe gradualtendency for the stewardsto merge their fief - that is, the land held in return for their services- with the seigneuriethey were trusted to administer,in the sameway that the Counts had usurped so many countiesat the King's expense,and the clericsso many Church lands which it was their businessto protect. Even a case like that of the steward of Souplainville, as early as the middle of the 12th century, who had managedto appropriate not indeedthe whole, but at leasta good half of the village and its rights, remaineda quite exceptionalone, explicableonly in terms of the weaknessof the lord of those parts, the small Chapterof Saint-Cloud.55 The seigneursmanagedto preserve their propertyas a whole, though they were sometimesobliged to detacha few seigneuriesnow and againfor somehigh-ranking officers at their court, andfor the benefitof the stewardsa large slice ofland and a bonuson the duescollectedby their efforts. Sometimesthe stewardwas endowedon a scale that allowed him to establishhis own tenancies,and even- like certain of the stewardsofSaint-Vrastd'Arras, Saint-Benoit-sur-Loireand Saint-Perede Chartres- his own vassals(vavasseurs,that is to say sub-vassals,in relation to the monastery);in this fashion he himself became a small-scaleseigneur.56 The stewards in certain placeshad such good standingthat it often seemedto knights, citizens and even other more exaltedpersonsthat it would be a goodinvestmentto buy themout (for their property, hereditaryin the first place, had soon becomesomethingthat

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY

95

could be bought and sold). In 1316 the Viscount of Lomagne, a nephewof ClementV and very anxiousto grow rich, did not consider it beneath him to acquire one of these stewardly propertiesat St. Benoit-sur-Loire.57 Did these servants,who had gradually become people of someimportance,continueto exercisetheir original functions? The majority of court officers ended, no doubt, by hardly keeping anything more of their original state than an empty name attachedto their fief, such as those at Saint-Denis-enFrance, where there were at the end of the 12th century surviving fiefs belonging to the marshal, the butler, the cook and the chamberlain,hardly distinguishableby the attachment of any specialisedservice from any common-or-garden vassal's estate.58 At Saint-Trond in Lower Lorraine, everyone- including the jack-of-all-tradeswho made keys, repaired window panesand bled the monks'bodieswhen required- was attempting as early as 1136 to transformhis tenure,encumberedwith thesemodestservices,into a 'free military fief'. On this occasion he was not successful;but his descendants were probablymore fortunate.59 This movement towards emancipationmet with some opposition, especially to start with, from the seigneurs; but in the long run they seem to have acceptedit readily enough, and sometimeseven favoured it by reducing their sergent'sfiefs or prebendrights.GO They did in fact reap some quite solid advantagesfrom the process.True, they were then obliged to recruit a new domestic staff, and consequentlyto set up either new fiefs or prebendsand so incur new expenses, or - according to a new and more flexible system that was beginning to take hold - spend a certain sum of money each year in wages.The small part of their income which they thus had to sacrifice was compensatedby the assuranceof docile servicewhich they had a right to expectover the generations from servantswho had startedat the bottom of the ladder. In 1231 Matthew Auger, chamberlainat Saint-Denis- we don't know how exactly this dignity had come his way: the documentssimply show it passingby sale from personto personanxious, no doubt, to acquire free board and lodging in the monastery, had the idea of claiming that he was actually practising his calling: he wished to dine at the abbot's table

96

A PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY

and sleep 'in his presence'.The refusal camefrom the monks' side. When the matterwas submittedto arbitration, a decision was given in the monks' favour. Matthew was acceptedas chamberlain,but his functionswere reducedto that of mounted attendance;and even then the abbot, in spite of the claims of this too eagerbodyguard,was constrainedto asserthis right to chooseat his pleasurebetweeneither a personalescort and the simple provision of a horse.6 1 As for the stewards,they were still to be seenin many villages at the end of the 13th century fulfilling their ancient role of levying dues and keeping a watchful eye on the lord's demesne.Elsewhere,however, their duties were being systematically redeemed by the great ecclesiasticalestablishments, sometimesat the price of granting their freedom. But in particular, and almost everywhere,their functionsas land agentsceasedto haveany significancebecause the seigneurs were developing the practice of leasing their demesneand their rights -a custom that was to continueas a rule up to the end of the seignorialregime. It would be worth while finding out whether many of the stewardsthemselves 62 figured among theselessees. The great ambition of all the more distinguishedministeriales had always been to live the kind of life which throughoutthe ages was considerednoble - the life of a warrior, a 'knight', fully armed, the kind of life led by those who held military fiefs. The sergents,becauseof their close dependenceon their masters,were generally bound to serve in time of war - an obligation which was the most useful and honourableof all in a society that was perpetuallyin a stateof unrest. For someof them, such as the horsemenand the couriers(caballarii) ,63 this obligation constitutedthe essentialpart of their duties; but it was generallyin addition to the technicaldemandslaid upon them by their various duties. The most important of them served on horseback,as a mounted escort, in command of small bands, armed from head to foot. Already in Charlemagne'sdays slaves possessing ministeria were by this very fact authorisedto have horses, a shield, a lance, a sword and a dagger.64 Everywherethe class of lord's servants(ministeriales) were of a naturally war-like disposition.On June3rd 1083 the Papal City was delivered into the hands of the Emperor

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY

97

Henry IV by the bold initiative of two personsbelonging to the Archbishop of Milan's retinue, one of them a gentleman of the bedchamberand the other a baker, both of them, accordingto Landulphe,'accustomedto combat and familiar with deedsof daring'.As a reward,they were dubbedknights.65 The seigneurs,reckoningtheseservantsas more amenablethan vassals,were very ready to assignthem important postsin the army. And this was not only true of the officers at court. Stewards too went to war. Amongst the obligations of the stewardof Saint-Mesminde Mecy aNemois at the end of the 12th centurywas that of riding with the abbot.66 At Bonneval, when the men of the place went on expeditions under the orders of the Count of Chartres, those who held the small offices did not stir hand or foot. The steward on the other hand, at the head of the contingentprovided by the village, carried the standardof his mastersthe monks.67 Used as they were to wearing the sword, and occupying a brilliant place in the host, the most important of the sergents could hardly have avoided bearing themselveseverywhere like warriors and considering themselvesthe equals of the military vassals.The adoptionof knightly weaponsandcostume and habits- including a strong liking for hunting - figures among the abusesof which the monasticchroniclersat SaintBenoit-sur-Loire,68Beaulieu,69 at Saint-Gall in Alemannia,70 most bitterly complainedfrom the 10th to the 12th centuriesabuseswhich the headsof the ecclesiasticalcommunitieswere trying to suppresswith the utmost vigour. But the pressureon this point was almost irresistible. Ganshofhasclearly shown that the law was bound to follow in the footstepsof custom. Little by little society formed itself into a hierarchy. The putting on of knightly armour and the dubbing of a knight which had becomea regular ceremony was in principle reservedfor the sonsof knights. The nobility formed themselvesinto a legal class which included all who, whetherthey had in fact receivedknighthoodor no, possessed the hereditary rightto receive it. This movement,which has as yet beenvery little studied,took place more or less throughout Europeduring the first half of the 13th century. The new class then found that it included, along with the ancient

98

A PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY

possessorsof seigneuries, a large number of sergent familiesofficers at court, most of whom were no longer distinguishable by their occupationsfrom the vassalsas a whole; this class included stewardstoo, not all of them, to be sure,71but those with fortuneswhich often comprisedreal seigneurieson a small scale and whose traditional mannerof life, and allianceswith families of undoubtednoble status,placedthem in the classof personswhom nobody could refuse to call knights. One has only to look through the bundlesof documentsin a region like the tIe-de-Franceto come across large numbers of stewards bearingthis title in the secondhalf of the 13th century, a title to be interpretedfrom that time onwards in its fullest sense. Sometimesit is possibleto follow quite closely the progressof a particular family, and watch it consolidating its social position more and more firmly. Take for examplethe steward of the lay seigneursat Luzarches,Eude, in I 176. He was a rich man, for he was able to give the abbey of Herivaux, on the occasionof his wife's birthday, an annualincomeof a setier* of corn and four acresof land; but thereis no indication that he claimed to be anything more than a sergent.But his son Hugo styled himselffrom that time onwardsa knight. He succeeded his father as mayor, in 1183 at the latest. He owned not only fields but also quit-rents and tithes. He had severalchildren, the eldest of whom, Clement, also becamesteward (before 1220). He, too, was a knight, possessingquit-rents,a mill, and some woodland; his brothers held their shareof an enfeoffed inheritancefrom him, accordingto the systemof inheritance which was practisedamong the nobility; his wife was 'Dame Mary, the steward's lady'. The second son, Bartholomew, adoptedthe name of squire (ecuyer); in July 1220 he was in Albigeois. The third, Renaud,took holy ordersand becamea canonand cantorat Guise.We know nothing aboutthe fourth son, Beaudouin, except that his daughter 'the noble lady Constance'marrieda knight.72 Titles, the law of succession,the ties of kinship, careersopen to the youngersons, the sourceof wealth - all theseare pointersto nobility. Of how many other families could we not probably make similar observationsif only we had more informationF3 It can scarcelybe doubted • A setier- about a gallon.

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY

99

that the small country gentry, who held such an important place in provincial life during the last centuriesof the Middle Ages, and in modern times, are to be traced back to a large extent to sergentancestors.This nobility basedupon office, but seignorial office, rose in the social scale before the noblessede robe. This latter class rose from the ranks of royal officials, a classwhosefortunesduring the period of the Frenchmonarchy have beenso often recounted.

III

I have avoided so far any mention of a particularly delicate point in the history of the ministeriales- the original servile condition of many of them. Somethingmust be said in conclusion about this aspectof the problem. They were not all serfs. German authors have noted that free men enteredthe administrativeclass at a relatively late date (12th to 13th centuries);someof them have even spoken of mass entries, which must surely be an exaggeration.The expression,suggestingas it does the idea of entry into a welldefined class,cannot, as we shall see,apply as such to France. But there can be no manner of doubt that in France at all times menwho had not beenborn in serfdomtook on seignorial responsibilities.Therewas nothing in this condition to prevent them from preservingtheir freedom. At St. Martin de Tours, about the beginning of the 11th century, the monastery's officials holding prebends, employed on inside and outside work, numberedamongtheir ranks, along with the freedmen (non-freepersonswhosestatuswas almost that of a serf), some humble people.74 At Saint-Perede Chartres,in the first years of the following century, the abbey'sservantsincluded along with the knights a tailor, a baker,a cook and an attendantin the infirmary; the former were, it appears,for the most part 'boundby the ties of servitude';the latter, it seems,werefree.75 About 1134 the Chapterin Paris entrustedits mayoral office at Rozoy to a certain Raoul ut libero homini.76 Ganshof, who has so meticulously tracked down so many seignorial officers in Flanders and in Lorraine, seemsto me to have been too

100

A PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY

easily persuaded,in many cases,of their servile status.Often, in the absenceof any preciseindicationsas to the indubitable marksof servitude,it would have beenbetterto have admitted ignorance in the matter. The words ministerialis, indicating simply a function,familia (mesnie),which may mean,as well as a group of serfs, the whole entourageof a household,servants of all gradesand evenvassals,prove nothing.7 7 Nor does the alienationby his masterof suchand sucha serfprove anything; for accordingto the ideasand languageof the time, to sell or give a man was simply to cedethe rights attachingto him; and the expressionwas used as much of a vassalas of a serU8 The arrangementof the signatures at the bottom of Lorraine Charters, ordinarily arranged in order of precedence,is neverthelessa matter of considerabledoubt; was it not quite possible for the namesof freemen and serfs to be indiscriminatelyjumbledtogetherin the samesectionif they all belonged to the sameentourage? Truth to tell, Ganshofhas perhapsonly been so ready to accept these rather fragile proofs becausehis thinking has been dominated by a single postulate, and that only halfconsciously. He would admit readily enough, if I follow his argument,that betweenthe Carolingian period and the great liberation movementsof the 12th and 13th centuriesthe only free men were the 'nobles',or - more precisely- the military vassalsand those who possessedallodial lordships; the whole of the rest of society would have been sunk in servitude. I cannotherediscussthis theory in detail, a theory that has been again and again, and rightly, attacked.It seemsto me to be basedabove all on insufficient verbal analysis.The language of the Middle Ages made terribly ambiguoususe of the word liber. Sometimesit was applied to the stateof a man who was not a serf (nor in any analogouscondition,suchas a freedman); sometimesit was used more vaguely to describeany relative relaxation in the seignorial power. This second meaning is capableof an infinite number of subtle shades:in this sense there could scarcelybe any individual who could not be called more free than so-and-soamong his neighbours;and no one, on the other hand (with the possibleexceptionof an allodial lord, who was dispensedfrom all requirementsof homage),

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY 101

could have passedas absolutelyfree. The first meaningis the only one correspondingto a clear legal conception,and it was the one adopted by the jurists as soon as they came into existence.If we are to keep our argument clear, this is the meaningwe must hold to. Now it seemsto be an undeniable fact that there were at all periods, even among the humblest, men who, although bound down by their tenure to various dues and servicesowing to their lord, were none the less not therebyattachedto their masterby the personaland hereditary bondsof serfdom.In a perfectfeudal and vassalicsociety, there would only have beentwo types of land - either fiefs or unfree tenements- and only two types of men - vassalsor serfs; but this ideal state of perfection was never realised, and so there were always someallods (freeholds) and somefree villeins.79 There can however be no doubt that a large number of ministeriales were of servile birth. Those judices of Beaulieu whom the monks claimed to prevent from wearing swords80 were serfs. Aleaume, provostmayor of Maisoncelles,who paid so dearly for the honour of a too brilliant marriage,81was also a serf. And mostof thoseintractablestewards,of whosequarrels with their masterswe read in the documents,were serfs, and expresslynamed as such. Serfs too, by all appearances,were those milites ignobiles, who composed,along with the 'noble' knights, at the end of the 11th century, the court of the seigneur of Talmont.82 One has only to look through the cartulariesof the 13th century to come acrosscountlessnumbersof manumissionsof sergents,who, if they could be setfree, mustformerly have beenserfs, both they and their ancestorswho had likewise been sergents.And there was even more to it still: for certain seigneurs were disposed to lay down servitude- which they saw as a guaranteeof dependence- as a necessarycondition for the holding of certain offices.83 How can we reconcile this original absenceof liberty with the elevation of so many of thesepeopleinto the noble class? Societyin the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries-I havealready made the point, but it needsconstantreiteration- was not a hierarchyof classes;it was rather an agglomerationor jumble of personalgroupings,serfs or vassals,dependenton lords who in their turn were attachedto other analogousgroups. There

102

A PROBLEM IN

COMPARATIVE HISTORY

was not such a thing, strictly speaking,as a nobility, but only men living in noble style; no such thing as hereditaryknights, but only horsementurned out in fine style and serving in the wars. Any powerful man who was well armedand not engaged in any pursuitdeemedto be despicablecould be called a knight and accoutredas such. To be sure, the serf is marked by a certain note of inferiority. The bond that ties him to his lord is a hereditaryone, whereasthat which ties the vassalis not hereditaryin the eyesof the law.84 It was probably this native dependence from the first days of his life, which weighedupon the servile body, attachingitself-as Guy Coquille says- 'to his very flesh and bones', and excluding every element of choice in subjection, that contemporariesthought of in the first placewhen they spokeof being deprivedof 'liberty'. Such a man was forced by his family statusto submit to humiliating hardships.He could not in general bear witness againstfree men. The Church inexorably refused to admit him to holy orders.Moreover thosewho had a nice senseof social distinctions did not allow him to ape the ways of the knight. The chronicler of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loirecalls a certain serf-knight a 'spurious miles'.85 It must also be observedthat what the poets, interpreting the opinions of the upper classesin their country houses,denouncedas scandalous,was not precisely the dubbingof a serfas knight; it was ratherin a more general way the dubbing of the 'villein', the peasantdefined not in terms of personalstatus (for one could be a 'villein' though free), but in termsof his professionand that of his ancestors.'0 Lord!' runs the complaint in Girard de Roussillon, 'how illrewardedis the worthy warrior who makes a knight of the villein's son, and then raises him to be his seneshaland his councillor.'86 The style of life seemedto count for more than the legal condition. That was why their servile origin did not prevent many sergents from pushing their way forward to knighthoodat the sametime that they were acquiringfortunes, of the seignorialtype. Understandablyenough, they then only asked to have the stain of their birth forgotten, from which so many painful incapacities and so much contempt had arisen. It is not surprisingeither that they so often succeeded.As I have tried

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY

103

to showelsewhere,it wassometimesdifficult to proveservitude.87 The payment of poll tax (chevage) was the most certain indication of it; but in many regionsit gradually ceasedto be regularly levied. Not all seigneurswere intelligent enough to realise that in spite of its small yield - still further diminished by the fall in the value of money- it would have beenin their own interest to insist on it strictly becauseit furnished them with a legal weapon of the most substantial kind in their disputeswith rebellious serfs.88At the time when Garnier de Mailly (d.1050 or 1051) was governing the abbey of SaintEtienne de Dijon, a stewardof the Viscount, who was also a serf of the monks, claimed the right to pay this humiliating contribution clandestinely, when no one was looking; but Garnier forced him to place it upon the altar in the sight of all. Writing rather more than a century later, the monk who reportsthis episodeadds:'I will not give the nameof this man for fear of offending his descendants,who are resplendent today in all the brilliance of knighthood.'89 Surely these brilliant warriors must have altogether ceasedto lay their mite upon the altar of Saint-Etienne. Knights of servile blood who wantedto climb too high must have come up against the dangerousrivalry of the members of the old vassallineages,all those who, as the Couronnementde Louis puts it, did not acceptthe fact that a king could make a counsellorout of 'a steward or surveyor'sson'.90 They risked being roughly reminded of their hereditary antecedents. Ganshof,following Galbertde Bruges,hastracedthe greatness and the fall of the family of the Flemish Lord (chatelain) Erembaud.The misadventuresof the gentlemanof the bedchamberErtaud, at the court of the Count of Champagne, Henry the Liberal, though of a less tragic kind, provided material for a narrative that Joinville doubtless borrowed from the traditions of the noblesof Champagne,a theme that the preachersfor their part found it easyto develop.91 But otherministeriales,serfsby birth and more modestin their ambitions,succeededwithout much difficulty in getting themselves recognisedas belonging to the social rank of knight. Some,perhapsmost,of themgraduallyescapedfrom the actual condition of serfdom. Others, in spite of their new dignities,

104

A PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY

remainedbound down by it. They formed the greaterpart of 92 thoseserf-knightsspokenof hereand therein our documents. Then, as the result of a slow transformation,long prepared for in the customsof the time, the idea of class,which had up till then been rather vague, came into full vigour. Serviture was less and less thought of as a personalbond and more and more as a mark of inferior social position. Knighthood and serfdom became decidedly incompatible: 'serfs, male and female, are not capableof nobility' will becomea maxim of CommonLaw.93 It was an accomplishedfact from the beginning of the 13th centuryin France,andin England.9 4 According to a famous decision by the Parliamentof Paris under Saint Louis, the lord who dubs his serf a knight is to be considered, whether he will or no, as setting him free.95 What happened then to the serf-knight?There were still a few of them at rare intervals in the first half of the century. But the majority of them, or of their descendants,appear to have risen out of serfdom.Someof them did it honestly,by beingenfranchisedsometimeson condition that they gave up the offices they held under their lord.96 Many no doubt effected the change by simple prescription.As for the successionof sergentswho had acquiredriches and power without however being able so far to achieve knighthood- they seem to have been in evidence particularly on the lands of somegreat Church lords who kept a very tight hold upontheir staff- the greatmovementtowards freedomwhich was then growing throughoutalmost the whole of Franceallowed them to get rid of the stain of servitudeby a moneypaymentbefore they continuedtheir social climb. Very often we canwatch the stewardbuying his manumissionseveral yearsbefore the rest of the village. A part of the lessernobility of the days to come was to be drawn not only from former sergents,but also from one-timeserfs. IV

We possessa Frenchtranslationcarriedout in the 14th century of the Germancustumalknown todayas the 'Mirror ofSwabia'. The authorhad a good knowledgeof both languagesand their

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY

105

equivalent terms. He renderedlehn, for example, quite correctly by the French fief. Yet there was one word that embarrassed him - the word dienstmann.Sometimesheattempted an approximatetranslation- vavassour- which doubtlesscalled up in his mind, as in the literary documents,an idea of the lessernobility; or, in a longer but more correct rendering, 'highly placed personswho have not beenset free'; sometimes - and much more often - he is simply content to transcribe the origina1.97 It is clear that he realisedthe Germandienstmann to have no exact legal equivalent in France. This humble writer had a good notion of comparativehistory.9s The evolution of the administrativeclass in French would be fairly well characterisedby saying that the chief seignorial officers formed a powerful social class, consolidatedby the heritability obligations and fiefs - an important point distinguishing them from what would today be a mere collection of officials - andlater on attainednoblestatusin largenumbers; but they never formed a legally defined class. The picture would appearto be the samein its broad outlines in England and in Italy.99 We know throughGanshof'swork that Flanders, barring one strangepeculiarity in the position of the stewards, did not deviate from the normal French type. In the principalities of Lorraine, in spite of the influence of German institutions, the classof ministerialesnever achievedmore than an embryonic legal status. Germany, on the other hand, startingfrom a very similar point, developedquite differently. Quite early on in the large estatesone can see the ministeriales being recognisedas a group apart, possessingpreciseprivileges and inspired by a vigorous esprit de corps. This was true to such an extentthat it soonbecamenecessaryto put down in writing the customs appropriateto these little societies (for the first time, as far as we know, at Bambergbetween1057 and 1065). But as early as 1020 we find a mentionon the estatesbelonging to the Chapterof Saint-Adalbertof Aachenof the 'law' about sergents,still most probably in a purely oral state, but already thought of as somethingwell defined.10o 'rhey had their own law-courts at a time when their colleaguesin France appear to have been still amenableto the ordinary seignorialcourts. In the 12th and in the 13th centuriesajus ministerialegrew up

106

A PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY

everywhere,varying in its details in the different lordships, as the author of the Sachsenspiegel(III, 42, 2) rightly noticed, yet everywhere distinguishedby a characteristicdualism: on the one hand, there were obligations of a servile nature, correspondingto the origin of most of the dienstleute,but falling even upon freemen who had enteredthis class; on the other hand there were duties essentially belonging to the nobility. In France, when the nobility became a class with rigorouslydrawn frontiers, the sergents, who had formerly been both knights and serfs, were obliged either to ceasebeing serfs or to renounce knighthood. In Germany the dienstleute, serfknights, formed a distinct classwithin the ranksof the nobility, acceptedby custom as such, and by the law-books and the imperial constitutions. The law of Southern Germany, by 101 In anadditionalrefinement,dividedit into furthersub-classes. the end, it is true, it becamemergedwith the lessernobility, but only rather late in the day; and in the south this did not happentill towardsthe end of the Middle Ages. Elsewhere,on the Lower Rhine, there was a further complication; beneath the knightly ministerial classthoseof the ministerialeswho had, without reaching the noble class, neverthelesswon their freedom, also formed themselvesin the 14th and 15th centuries into a clearly-definedclass, enteredby a deliberateand often 102 Everywhere the householdsof the ceremonial procedure. lord's servantsand officials had given birth to legal categories. How are we to explain such a sharp contrast betweenthe two countries? Ganshofseemsto considerthis a simple matter of difference in dates.'In France,'he says (p. 376), 'wherethe development of the whole of society in a feudal direction took place more rapidly, the ministeriales••• were from the courseof the lIth century onwards absorbedinto the nobility.' I do not really know what is meantby this 'feudal type': the epithetis suchan elastic one that historiansought strictly to refrain from using it without defining it. Above all I do not see that the classof nobility was already formed in France by the 11th century, nor, in a general way, much earlier than in Germany. The turning-point in this development was when the knightly classbecamea hereditarycaste.Did this really happenbefore

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY 107

IOO? I doubt whether Ganshofcould produce proof of this. MIle Zeglin, more strangelystill, has claimed to be able to explain 'the absenceof an administrativeclass' in Franceby the institution of 'liege loyalty'.lOS The lords, she maintains, would not have neededthe ministerialesbecausethey had been able to collect around themselvesa close-knit group of 'liegemen'. But what was a liegeman?The word, which evoked the idea of a very close dependence,104had two very distinct meaningsin the 12th and 13th centuries. On the one hand it was a designation,in many places,for a serf;105on the other hand it was used for a categoryof vassals,from whom one of their lords required a particularly strict homagewhich bound them to him more than to any other rival lord. Thus certain sergentswho were serfs were called in this mannerliegemen; others, who owed homage in its most stringent form, were called by the same name, but for a quite different reason. Both sections shared the name with more or less extensive groupsfrom whom they were distinguishedby their functions. Thesewere much too specialisedto be carried out by the serfs and vassalsas a whole, even the liegemen. The problem presentedby the subjectof the administrative classesshould perhaps,in truth, be treatedas a particularcase of a more generalproblem. Germanmediaevallaw as a whole is characterisedby an almost exuberantdevelopmentof the idea of class, which makesit particularly difficult for French people to understand.Its spirit is eloquentlyexpressedin the theory of the Heerschild, which distributes all the holders of fiefs over six or seven 'rungs' of the social ladder. Those who occupy a given level cannot, on pain of social degradation, becomethe feudal dependantsof those belonging to a lower level. No doubt this was a constructionby jurists, and as such artificially strict; but its roots were nonethelessfirmly planted in fact. Therewas nothinglike this outsideGermany.The same tendencyis observablein all aspectsof legal life. A historical manualof English mediaevallaw, in the chapterdealingwith the status of persons, can almost leave the nobility out of account. 'Our law', says Maitland, 'hardly knows anything of a noble or of a gentle class; all free men are in the main equal before the law.'106A similar book in Francewill devote I

108

A PROBLEM IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY

considerablespaceto the nobles, treating them ascollection a mOI~ or less unified class. A German work on the other hand will distinguish severalgroups among the nobility, and they will not all necessarilyhave the connubium. In the same way, the majority of German customs concerning the unfree part of the population, unlike the French ones, distinguish between several quite distinct grades.107 One cannot be surprisedthat within this structureof classesone above anotherone or even severalnichesshould have beenreservedover a certain period of time for the seignorialofficers, especiallyfor thosewho were simultaneouslyserfs and nobles. But this does not resolve the difficulty - it simply pushesit further back and makesit more serious. How can we account for this hierarchical tendency inherent in Germanlaw, which makesit so different from all the other legal systemsof Easternand Central Europe?The historian who could supply a satisfactory explanation could preenhimselfon having searchedout the most intimate secrets of pastsocieties.But we have not as yet reachedthat stage.lOS

NOTES

Revuehistorique de droit franfais et etranger, 1928, pp. 46-91. A Germanscholar,Ernst Mayer, hasattemptedto producea comparative history of Germanand Frenchinstitutions: Deutscheund franzosischeVerfassungsgeschichte, 1899, 2 vols. This work, 'instructiveand suggestiveas it is' - though also not a little conjectural - cannotbe said to give us all we need.No doubt sucha vast synthesis must remain a little prematureso long as the comparativemethodhas not been methodicallyapplied to particular institutions. 3. La ministerialite, a-t-eUe existeen France? in Acad. des Inscriptions. Comptes rendus, I9II. In 1915, D. Zeglin published, under the title Der Homo Ligius und die franzosischeMinisterialitiit (Leipziger Histor. Abn. 39), an instructive memoir, though too summary and sometimes rather debatable:cf. below p. 122, note 103. The work ofGanzenmiiller,Die Flandrische Ministerialitiit bis zum ersten Drittel des I2. Jahrhunderts, has today beensupersededby Ganshof'sbook. 4. Etude sur les ministerialesen Flandre et en Lotharingie, Bruxelles, 1926. 5. The principal accountson which Ganshof'sbook was basedhave been enumeratedby H. Laurent in Le Moyen-Age, 1926, pp. xiii - xv. Someof theseare of greatinterest,especiallythe report by Des Marez, which appearedin Acad. royale de Belgique, Bulletin de lo classedes Lettres, I.

2.

ADMINISTRATIVE

CLASSES: FRANCE AND GERMANY

109

1924 (M. Ganshof'swork had been crowned by the Academy before publication), and printed separatelyunder the title Note sur La ministirialiti en Belgique; I am in agreementwith him on several points. To M. Laurent'slist must now be addedthe very important accountby M. Champeaux,which appearedin the RevueHistorique de Droitfr. et etr., 1927, pp. 744-756. 6. Along with ministerialis, the documentsdrawn up in Latin use a host of synonyms,some pedanticallyborrowed from the classicallanguageciiens, satelles,famulus ..• etc., otherssimply transcriptionsof popular terms,serviensin particular.In French,menestrelappearsto haveapplied aboveall to the sergents-artisans;but in the Juraand in Savoymistral is found in the senseof an administrativeofficer (p. ex. D. D. Benoit, Histoire de l'abbayeet de la terre de Saint-Claude,vol. II, p. 65;J. A. Bonnefoy and A. Perrin, Le prieure de Chamollix, Vol. II, nos. 84 and 96; the sameholds good, it seems,of the Proven