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? 6
INTRODUCTION.
evident that the conception of the conventional and "unnatural"
character of the state was too firmly fixed to be shaken even by
his authority, and that it passed with little alteration into the
political theory of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries, and that, as we have said, it was not until Eousseau
in the ' Contrat Social' recovered the organic conception of the
state,1 and till the rise of the historical method of study-
ing institutions, that this mode of thought passed away; and it
lingered on in the nineteenth century in the form of the " police
theory " of the state, of Herbert Spencer and the English radicals.
The formal theory of nature and convention in the Middle
Ages represents the principles of the post-Aristotelian philo-
sophy, as mediated by the Christian Fathers. We must refer
the reader to the second volume of this work for a discussion of
the place of these conceptions in the Eoman and Canon law of
the twelfth century.
So far, then, we have been dealing with conceptions which
dominate the theories of the Middle Ages, and which had come
to them through the Fathers, but which were not strictly speak-
ing distinctively Christian, but rather represented the general
principles of the post-Aristotelian philosophy. The political
theory of the Middle Ages was also however profoundly
affected, or rather controlled, by certain conceptions which
were distinctively Christian in their form, if not in their origin.
The first of these is the principle of the autonomy of
the spiritual life, which in these ages assumed the form of
the independence of the spiritual authority from the control
of the temporal. "We have endeavoured in the first volume
to give some account of the nature and early forms of this con-
ception. It finds characteristic and permanently important
expression in the phrases of the letters and tractates of Pope
Gelasius I. , in which he lays down the great principle that the
spiritual and the temporal authority each derives its authority
from God, and that each is independent of the other within its
own sphere, while each is dependent in the sphere of the other. 2
1 Cf. Rousseau, 'Contrat Social,' i. 8. Pope Gelasius L, Tract, iv. 11, and
2 Cf. vol. i. Part III. chap. 15; and Ep. xii. 2.
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? INTRODUCTION.
7
We have in the second volume endeavoured to give some ac-
count of the treatment of this principle by the Civilians and
Canonists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 1 We shall
have to consider in detail the relation of these principles to
the theory and structure of mediseval society. We shall have
to deal with the theory and the practical nature of the relations
of the spiritual and temporal powers in the Middle Ages, to
plunge into the great conflict of the Papacy and the Empire, to
try to disentangle the real and vital significance of that great
dispute whose clamour fills these centuries.
But before we do this we must remind ourselves of the real
nature of the problem, the real and fundamental principle
which lies behind the confused noise of factions. Behind the
forms of the great conflict we have to recognise the appearance
in the consciousness of the civilised world of principles new
and immensely significant. For behind it all there lies a
development of the conception of individuality or personality
which was unknown to the ancient world. We cannot here
pretend to measure fully the gulf which lies between the
Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy and that of the Stoics,
and the other later philosophical systems, but it cannot be
doubted that the gulf is profound. The phrases, for instance,
in which Seneca describes the self-sufficiency of the wise man
may be exaggerated and overstrained. No one, he says, can
strictly be said either to benefit or to injure the wise man, for
he is, except for his mortality, like God himself; he is indeed
bound to the service of the common good, but if the conditions
of life are such as to make it impossible for him to take part in
public affairs, he can withdraw into himself and still serve the
same cause by developing his own nature and character. 2 The
phrases may be overstrained and rhetorical, but they represent
a sense of individual personality which is immensely signifi-
cant, an apprehension of aspects of human life which are sacred
and inviolable, independent of the authority, and, in his view,
even of the support of society.
1 Cf. vol. ii. Part I. chap. 8; Part 'De Clementia,' i. 8. 2; 'De Otio,' iii. ,
II. chaps. 10 and 11. and vol. i. pp. 25-29.
2 Cf. Seneca--'Ad Serenum,' viii. ;
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? 8
INTRODUCTION.
The changes which can be traced in the history of "Western
thought can be observed with equal clearness in the Semitic
literature of the Old Testament. There are few sayings more
significant than those indignant words in whichEzekiel repudiates
the traditional conceptions of Israel. "The soul that sinneth,
it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,
neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the
righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the
wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. "1 The solidarity
of the primitive and ancient group was giving way before the
development of a new apprehension of individuality.
It is this apprehension to which a new impulse and force was
given by our Lord and his disciples. To them the soul of man
has an individual relation with God which goes beyond the
control of the society. The principles of the Christian religion
represent, on this side, the same development as that of Ezekiel
and the Stoics, and it is on this foundation that the civilisation
of the mediseval and modern world has grown up. This does
not mean that religion has no social aspect, or that the political
societies have no moral or spiritual character, but it does mean
that men have been compelled to recognise that the individual
religious and moral experience transcends the authority of the
political and even of the religious society, and that the religious
society as embodying this spiritual experience cannot tolerate
the control of the State. There are aspects of human life which
are not and cannot be under the control of the laws or authority
of the State.
It is true that the great individualist development has often
been misinterpreted and exaggerated, and the greatest task
of the modern world is to recover the sense of the organic
unity of human life, that sense of unity which to the Christian
faith is equally vital with the sense of individuality. The
recovery of that sense of unity by Eousseau and Burke does
indeed represent a great moment in the development of human
apprehension, and separates the political thinking and action
of the nineteenth century by a great gulf from that of the
preceding centuries. We are once again Aristotelian, but
1 Ezekiel xviii. 20.
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? INTRODUCTION.
9
with a great difference, for the apprehension of individual
personality remains with us.
It is these convictions which lie behind the great struggles of
the spiritual and temporal powers in the Middle Ages, the great-
ness of the conflict is some measure of the immense difficulties
which beset then, and even now, the attempt to disentangle the
sphere of religion from those aspects of life which are under the
control of the State. For it must not be supposed that this was
an easy thing to do. In the first volume we have endeavoured to
point out how in the ninth century, while men clearly recognised
in principle the distinction between the sphere of the two great
authorities, yet in actual practice the two authorities constantly
overlapped. 1 These difficulties became far greater in the cen-
turies which followed, and we cannot measure the significance
of the events which took place, or estimate the real character of
the theories which were put forward, unless we continually
take account of this.
The political theory of the Middle Ages then inherited a
great conception of the independence of the Church, and we
have here the first conception which was distinctively Christian,
at least in form.
There is, however, another conception which the Middle Ages
inherited from the ancient world which is also distinctively
Christian in form if not in substance. I This is theprincipje
of the divine-nature and origin of political authority. , We have
dealt with the origin and nature of this conception in the first
volume,2 and have in the second volume examined the treatment
of the subject by the Civilians and Canonists of the twelfth
century,3 and it is unnecessary to say more about it here, as we
shall have to consider its significance very carefully in this
volume. But we must be under no misapprehension, whatever
may have been the precise significance of St Augustine's treat-
ment of the nature of secular authority, and the extent of its
influence, the tradition which had come down to the Middle
Ages was substantially clear and emphatic, and that was that
1 Cf. vol. i. pp. 253-292. 218.
3 Of. vol. i. pp. 89-98, 147-160, 211- 3 Cf. vol. ii. pp. 76-78, 143-150.
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? 10
INTRODUCTION.
the secular power is a divine institution and derives its authority
from God.
This conception had been interpreted by some of the Fathers,
and notably by St Gregory the Great, as meaning that the
authority of the secular ruler was in such a sense divine that
it was irreligious and profane to resist, or even to criticise it. 1
The theory of the "Divine Eight" of the King is a patristic
conception whose influence in the Middle Ages we shall have
to consider, although it was not till the period of the Eenaissance
that it can be said to have received its full development, and it
was then related to the development of the absolute monarchy
in Europe.
Such, then, are in general outline the principles of political
theory which the Middle Ages inherited by direct and con-
tinuous tradition from the ancient world, and these influences
must be clearly and sharply distinguished from those which
came to them in the twelfth century through the revived
study of the Eoman jurisprudence, and in the thirteenth
century through the rediscovery of Aristotle's Politics. We
have dealt with the former of these influences in the second
volume, the latter we must leave till we can deal with the
thirteenth century in a later volume. It was in the main
through the writings of the Fathers that the continuous tradi-
dition came, but, as we shall have occasion to see, it was rein-
forced throughout these centuries by the energetic study of the
Latin authors whose works had survived. We have seen that
in many most important aspects this continuous tradition repre-
sents rather the general political ideas of the last centuries of
the ancient world than distinctively Christian conceptions.
We must now observe that the order of society in Western
Europe was based largely upon principles which belonged to the
new societies. There has been and there still is much contro-
versy on the exact degree of the independence of the Teutonic
constitutions and political principles. The great constitutional
historians of the middle of the nineteenth century, like Waitz
and Stubbs, assumed that the ancient world had little or no
1 Cf. vol. i. pp. 147-160.
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? INTRODUCTION.
11
influence in determining the characteristic forms and principles
of the government of the Teutonic state. In the latter part
of the nineteenth century a very learned and capable body of
historical scholars, of whom the chief were, on the Continent,
Fustel de Coutanges, and in England, Seebohm, argued that
in reality much which had been thought to be Teutonic was
merely an adaptation of the forms and principles of the pro-
vincial administration of the later empire. We do not need
for our purpose to attempt a dogmatic decision of the con-
troversy, though we cannot conceal our own conviction that
the balance of historical research and discussion has turned
strongly against the Eomanist view. For our purpose it is
enough that we should observe the nature of the principles
which were implicit in the structure of the new societies, and
which found a large measure of reasoned expression in the
literature especially of the ninth century.
Some of these principles are of great significance. The first
and fundamental principle implicit in the organisation of the
new societies is the supremacy of the law or custom of the
community over all its members, from the humblest free man
to the king. And the second is that there could be no suc-
cession to kingship without the election or recognition of the
community. There is here indeed an obvious parallel, but also
an obvious divergence in the structure of the Teutonic societies,
as compared with that of the Eoman empire. It was indeed
the fundamental principle of the Eoman jurists that the source
of all political authority was the Eoman people, that the
emperor held his authority only because the Eoman people
had been pleased to confer it upon him. 1 But there was this
far-reaching difference between the Eoman legal theory and
the principles of the Teutonic societies, that the Eoman theory
was a theory of origins, while the Teutonic principles were
those of actually existing conditions. It was not merely that
the Teutonic king required the consent or recognition of the
community for his accession to power, but that he was not over
the law, nor its creator, but under it. The Eoman doctrine of
the legislative authority of the emperor has no counterpart in
1 Cf. vol. i. pp. 63-70.
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? 12
INTRODUCTION.
the principles of the Teutonic societies, the law was the law of
the community, not of the king. / It is true indeed that in the
earlier Middle Ages there was normally no such thing as legis-
lation in the modern sense, the law, strictly speaking, was noth-
ing but the traditional custom of the community, and legislative
acts were, properly speaking, nothing but authoritative declara-
tions of custom. As the changing conditions of mediseval life
finally made deliberate modification of these customs inevitable,
such action was taken, though reluctantly, but could only be
taken with the assent, expressed or tacit, of the community.
S Here are indeed political principles or ideas of the highest
moment, derived not from the traditions of the ancient world
and empire, but rooted in the constitutional practice of the
new societies. We have endeavoured to set out the evidence
for the predominance of these conceptions in the first volume,1
but their significance cannot be fully appreciated without a
study of the more important works on the constitutional
history of the various European countries in the early Middle
Ages.
It is in relation to these principles that we have to study the
appearance of the doctrine of the social contract; that is, the
conception of an agreement or bargain between the people and
the ruler. In the popular mind this conception is supposed to
belong to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the
real truth is that it is a mediseval conception, and that it arose
primarily out of conceptions and circumstances which were
characteristic of mediseval society. This principle or theory
has some place in ancient literature, especially in Plato's 'Laws,'2
and a phrase of St Augustine's has been sometimes quoted
as related to it, though probably without any sufficient justifi-
cation,3 but there is no evidence that there is any continuity
between the Platonic theory and that of the Middle Ages. We
have in the first volume pointed out the circumstances out of
which we think it arose,4 and, as we shall have to deal with it
in detail in this volume, we need only here say that it seems
to us clear that its origin is to be traced to the promises of
1 Cf. vol. i. chaps. 19 and 20. 3 St Augustine, 'Confessions,' III. 8. 2.
2 Cf. vol. i. p. 17. 4 Cf. vol. i. pp. 240-252.
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? INTRODUCTION.
obedience to the law, and of good government taken by the
king on his accession] It was in the eleventh century that the
Conception found a formal expression, but the principles which
lay behind the formal expression were already in existence,
and were firmly rooted in the constitutional order of the early
Middle Ages.
In approaching the subject of the nature of the political
theory of the great central period of mediseval civilisation,
from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, we must then first
be careful to observe the nature of the general principles which
the men of that time had inherited. These principles were
complex, and no complete or systematic treatment of them was
made until the thirteenth century. It may indeed be doubted
whether the various elements were capable of being brought
into an organic relation with each other, but we must not
here anticipate the discussion which belongs to later volumes.
Whether in the end these various conceptions were capable of
being fused into an organic whole or not, we must recognise
that they all have a real and significant place in mediseval
theory. The great formal conception of the distinction between
nature and convention, which came from the post-Aristotelian
philosophy in which the Christian Fathers were trained; the
principle of the equality and freedom of men which arose out
of this and the Christian tradition; the immensely significant
conception of the necessary freedom of the spiritual life and
the spiritual authority which specially represents this; the con-
viction of the sanctity of the political order; the principle of
the supreme authority of the law or custom of the community,
and of the King as responsible to govern according to the law,
--these conceptions or principles dominated the sentiment and
the theory of all mediseval society.
Our present task is to consider the development of these
conceptions under the actual circumstances of European society
from the1 tenth to the thirteenth centuries, and to inquire how
far they may have been modified or superseded by other
principles. For the new times brought new conditions, new
and important forms of political and social relations. We shall
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? 14
INTRODUCTION.
have especially to consider how far the development of feudal
ideas, and the organisation of European society on the basis of
feudal tenure, may have modified or overlaid earlier principles;
how far again in the great conflicts between the spiritual and
the temporal powers the conception of the sanctity and auto-
nomy of either may have been questioned or denied. The de-
velopment of mediseval society was very rapid, and the intellectual
development was even more rapid than that of the organisation
of society. The greatest difficulty indeed with which the
historian has to contend, in trying to interpret the Middle
Ages to the modern world, is the impression that the civilisa-
tion of these times was stationary and rigid, that the mediaeval
world was unlike the modern, specially in this, that it was
unchanging, while we perpetually change. This tradition is
primarily derived from the ignorance and prejudice of the
men of the new learning and the Eenaissance, and lingers
on, not in serious history, but in the literary tradition, and in
the prejudices which arose naturally enough out of the great
struggles of the Eeformation and the Revolution. If we are to
study the Middle Ages intelligently, if we are to appreciate
their real relation to the modern world, we must dismiss from
our minds these notions of a fixed and stereotyped society, we
must rather recognise that there have been few periods in the
history of the world when the movement of thought and of
life was more rapid than in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries.
^When we attempt to trace the history of political ideas
in the Middle Ages, we are at once confronted with the fact
that, after the active political reflection which is represented in
the literature of the ninth century, there follows a consider-
able period from which very little indeed of political theory
has survived in literature. From the end of the ninth century
till the middle of the eleventh the references to the principles
or ideas of politics are very scanty indeed. We have indeed to
remember that it is probable that a great deal of literature,
especially in the vernacular languages, has disappeared, but it
is at least a probable conclusion from what has survived that
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? INTRODUCTION.
15
there was not much reflection upon social and political ques-
tions, and that it was not till the middle of the eleventh
century that the great political agitations in Germany, and the
development of the great conflict between the Papacy and
the Empire, compelled men to question themselves as to the
principles which underlay the order of society.
This does not mean that during this time no important
changes were taking place in the structure of European society;
on the contrary, in some respects the period was one of great
and significant development. It was during these years that
feudalism was taking shape and form, establishing itself as a
system of social and economic and military organisation, and
in some degree affecting the structure of government. How
far the growth of feudalism affected the principle or theory of
political organisation is the first important question which we
have to consider.
It was during these years that European civilisation was
being rescued from a second great wave of barbarism, which
threatened for a time to overwhelm it. For upon the confused
faction fights which distracted Western Europe while the great
empire of Charlemagne was breaking up, there fell the torrent
of the second barbaric invasion. The Norsemen on the North
and West, the Magyars on the East harried and plundered, and
for a time it seemed as though the work of the preceding
centuries would be completely undone; and indeed Europe
very nearly relapsed into anarchy, and Church and State were
almost overwhelmed in a common destruction. But the victory
of Alfred over the Danes, of Otto the Great at the Lechfeld over
the Magyars, and the limits within which the Norse invasion
of France were finally contained, mark the fact that the new
civilisation was stronger than the forces which attacked it, that
the new barbarians had to reckon with a civilisation which
was not worn out like that of the Western Empire which the
forefathers of the Franks and the Englishmen had overthrown
five centuries earlier, but with one which was living and powerful
and capable of a rapid recovery and growth. The new invasions
did indeed leave profound traces behind them, but the greatest
and most powerful of the invaders, the Normans who settled in
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? 16
INTRODUCTION.
North-Western Trance, proved rapidly that they were capable
not merely of conquest, but that they could contribute greatly
to the progress of the very civilisation which for the moment
they had shaken.
The development of feudalism was in great measure the
resuIt"6F~the downfaTI_of? jih^QaxoJin^ian civilisation, but
the effects of this can also be traced in the relations of the
Papacy and the Empire. The breaking up of the Empire of
Charlemagne might indeed seem to have set the Papacy at
liberty, but actually it left it under the tyranny of the bar-
barous factions of the Eoman nobles, and its degradation was
even deeper than that of the State. It was rescued from this
in the tenth century by the Ottos, and in the eleventh by
Henry III. , but the conditions of its deliverance held in
themselves the seeds of disaster. The emperor exercised, and
for the time with excellent results, a very large measure of
control over the Church, and especially over the appointment
of its chief ministers, but it was impossible that the Church
should in the long run acquiesce in this. The principle of its
necessary independence was too firmly rooted in its history,
and it was the attempt to recover and vindicate this which
led to the great conflict of the Papacy and the Empire, of
the spiritual and temporal powers in the various European
countries. This conflict in its turn contributed a great deal
to compel men to consider and make explicit the fundamental
principles of the structure and organisation of society, and
thus to produce those energetic and audacious developments
in political theory which we have to consider.
We have, then, to deal with three great subjects--first, the
nature of the principles implicit in feudalism, and the effect
of these principles upon political ideas; second, the character-
istic political conceptions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
as related to the development of the general political and social
structure of Western civilisation; and thirdly, the forms and
theories of the relations of the temporal and spiritual authorities.
It is indeed true that we cannot isolate these various aspects of
mediseval life and thought from each other, but they do in some
measure really represent the operation of different forces, and
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? INTRODUCTION.
17
we have to consider how far it may be true that they tended
to give rise to different conceptions or principles. We shall
have to make the effort finally to bring our reflections upon
them together, and to form some unified view of their effect
upon the principles of mediseval life, but for the time being
we have found ourselves driven to deal with them separately.
We have found that the adequate treatment of the subjects
has required so much space that we have decided to deal with
feudalism and the general political ideas in this volume, and
with the relations of the temporal and spiritual powers in the
next.
We deal with feudalism first, not because it was in our judg-
ment the most important element in the structure of mediseval
society, but because it has often been thought to have been so,
and because this at least is true, that whatever its influence
may have been, it represented a new element in civilisation.
In dealing with it we shall be obliged to transcend the limits
of time which we have set to the general scope of this volume.
For the significance of feudalism in relation to political theory
cannot adequately be discussed without taking into account the
great feudal law books of the thirteenth century; and, what is
more important, the system of feudalism represents an organic
development culminating in the latter years of the thirteenth
century, which cannot be understood unless we take account
of the whole process of its development. We are, of course,
aware of the risk that we run of reading back the conceptions
of the thirteenth century into the eleventh and twelfth, and
we shall do our best to guard against this risk.
VOL. III.
B
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? PART I.
THE INFLUENCE OF FEUDALISM ON POLITICAL THEORY.
CHAPTER I.
PERSONAL LOYALTY.
There is perhaps no subject in mediseval history which is so
difficult as that of feudalism. Its origins are still obscure
and controverted, its development belongs largely to the tenth
century, and there are few periods of mediseval history where
the sources of our information are so scanty and so fragmentary,
and in the literature which has survived there is only a little
that can be said to bear directly upon feudalism. And, finally,
its real nature and essential characteristics have been so confused
by the laxity of literary usage that it is difficult to say what is
meant by the word.
Feudalism is a system of personal relations, of land tenure,
of military organisation, of judicial order, and of political
order. It affected the life of every class in the mediseval
community, from the villein to the king or emperor, and it
even affected profoundly the position of at least the greater
clergy, the bishops and abbots. There are, indeed, few aspects
of mediseval life which were not touched by it, and it is
therefore natural that it should be thought that it must have
profoundly modified both the institutions and the political
ideas of the Middle Ages.
It is not our part here to deal with the first of these
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? 20
THE INFLUENCE OF FEUDALISM. [part I.
subjects, the influence of feudalism on the institutions of
the Middle Ages, its direct effects upon the forms of the
great constitutional development which culminated in the
Parliament of Edward I. and the States-General of Philip the
Fair, and the parallel developments in other European coun-
tries. We cannot even attempt to summarise the results of the
work of the constitutional historians, for any summary would
probably mislead rather than illuminate. But it is possible
to say that while feudalism left for centuries deeply marked
traces on the social and political structure of European society,
and while the great systems of national organisation did indeed
take into themselves elements which belonged to feudalism,
they also represented principles which in their essential nature
were independent of and even contradictory to some specific
characteristics of the feudal system. In the end the king
or the parliament, or both, came to be directly related to all
the individuals who compose the State, and in their authority
the local and personal authorities and jurisdictions of feudalism
were finally lost. The royal justice at last absorbs all feudal
justice, in the administrative authority of the crown all the areas
of feudal administration are merged, and the legislative authority
of parliament asserts itself as supreme over all feudal traditions
and customs. The king and the parliament represent the nation,
and the unity of the nation finally transcends all the separatist
tendencies of feudalism.
It may even be said that the best example of this can be
found in that country where at first sight feudalism might seem
to have triumphed, for the unity of the German kingdom was
finally destroyed, and the great fiefs became practically auton-
omous provinces. But it was not feudalism which triumphed,
but territorialism. In the territorial areas there developed the
same centralised authority and administration as in England or
France, and it was no doubt that very fact which accounts for
the failure of the constitutional movement of the close of the
fifteenth century.
We have to deal here not primarily with institutions, but
with the question how far feudalism affected the political ideas]
of the Middle Ages, how far its influence coincided with tha
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? CHAP. I. ]
21
PERSONAL LOYALTY.
traditions which they inherited, and furthered the development |
of social and political ideas which were already present, or how
far it may have tended to neutralise or modify them. We
must be prepared to find that the influence of feudalism was
very complex, and that it may have tended in different /
directions.
We begin by pointing out what may seem a paradox, that
feudalism represents two principles which in their ultimate
development may seem contradictory, but which yet affected
the minds of the men of the Middle Ages at the same time.
The first principle is that of personal loyalty and devotion, the
second is that of the contractual relation.
The first principle is that which is represented especially in
the poetic literature of the Middle Ages, and which has thus
passed naturally enough into the literary as distinguished from
the historical presentation of the Middle Ages in modern
times. We are all familiar with the romantic representation
of mediseval life as dominated by the sentiment of chivalrous
loyalty and devotion. How much of exaggeration there is con-
tained in this we shall presently see, but there are elements of
real truth in it. And, more than this, these sentiments have a
real and permanent importance in political as well as in social
life. Human life in its deepest and largest terms cannot be
lived upon principles of utility and contract. Whether in the
family or in the nation the actual working of human life is
impossible without the sense of loyalty and devotion.
This is the first principle of feudalism, and the second may
well seem contradictory to it. For nothing could seem further
apart than the conception of personal loyalty and the conception
of bargain or contract as the foundation of human relations.
And yet there is no escape from the conclusion that in the last
resort feudal relations were contractual relations, that the
vassal was bound indeed to discharge certain obligations, but
only on the condition that the lord also discharged his obliga-
tions to the vassal. Here again it is evident that we are deal-
ing with a principle which is reasonable and just, for in the
long run human relations are impossible unless there is some
reasonable recognition and fulfilment of mutual obligations.
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? 22
[part 1.
THE INFLUENCE OF FEUDALISM.
The principles may seem contradictory, and indeed they were
hard to reconcile, but it is also true to say that they were not
only held together and constantly reconciled in practice, but
also that the political thinkers of the Middle Ages were aware
of certain great rational principles which lie behind these con-
ceptions, and in which they found a reasonable reconciliation
of them.
For this is the truth about feudalism. At first sight it seems
very strange and unintelligible. We find it difficult to under-
stand how men could think and act thus, but if we are a little
patient we find it becoming intelligible, and finally we see it not
as wholly unnatural and abnormal, but as representing a phase
of social and political development which lies indeed behind us,
but whose conditions we can understand, and we shall see
that in a measure these apparently strange principles have a
continuing significance even among ourselves.
The difficulty of understanding feudalism has been immensely
increased by the habit of conceiving of it as a homogeneous
system, complete and perfect at some definite time and place.
It becomes much more intelligible when we begin to see that
under the one term there are contained ideas which were very
different from each other, and that as it had slowly grown up,
so it was perpetually developing and changing. The feudal idea
as it is presented to us in the epic or romantic poetry is some-
thing quite different from that which is represented by such a
characteristic set of law-books as those which make up the
Assizes of Jerusalem, or by Beaumanoir, and when we look a
little more closely we begin to understand this, and to see that
the conceptions of the epics and romances of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries represent sometimes the tradition of th<<p
past, sometimes an elaborate and artificial convention rathe^t
than the actual reality. I
There has indeed often been a very serious misunderstanding);
even among scholars as to the value of the artistic representa-J
tion of manners and customs. In some poetry, as for instance'
in the earlier mediseval epic, the pictures of external life andj|
manners of men and women, is highly realistic, and supplies uss
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? CHAP. I. ] PERSONAL LOYALTY. 23
with very valuable information as to the conditions of con-
temporary society. In other forms of literature, and especially
in the romance of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it is
evident that we are dealing with an art which is in great part,
in its relation to the circumstances of life, conventional and
traditional, and which even in its essential sentimental or
emotional interest represents an abstraction of human life,
valuable indeed and profoundly moving and significant, but
still an abstraction rather than a realistic treatment. The
great fighting man of the epic literature, and the frank, high-
hearted, and sometimes implacable woman, upon whom often
the whole movement of the story depends, these are real figures
of men and women, and they live in the real world. But the
romantic hero or heroine, absorbed in their emotions, far re-
moved from the actual circumstances of daily life, are placed
in a world which is mainly unreal and conventional. The
transition from the Beowulf or the Icelandic Sagas to the
Arthurian romance is the transition from idealised and heroic
reality to an elaborate convention.
It is necessary to use the evidence of mediseval poetry with
great caution, and to make careful distinctions between the
value of different forms of it as illustrating the customs and
ideas of any one time.
We cannot here attempt to discuss in detail the origin of
feudalism, the subject has been handled with great learning
by a number of historians,1 but we can say with great con-
fidence, that its origin was extremely complex. Comitatus,
Commendatio, and Beneficium, these are the main elements of
the relation of lord and vassal, and each of these had an im-
portant part in the development of the whole system. From
the Comitatus there came the devotion of the band of followers
to their leader in war, the almost indissoluble tie which united
the "companion" to his chief in faith and loyalty, and this may
have been the first, as it was certainly among the most import-
ant, of the elements out of which the feudal relation grew. It
1 Cf. e. g. , Waitz, Brunner, Fustel de Coulanges, Flach, &e.
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? 6
INTRODUCTION.
evident that the conception of the conventional and "unnatural"
character of the state was too firmly fixed to be shaken even by
his authority, and that it passed with little alteration into the
political theory of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries, and that, as we have said, it was not until Eousseau
in the ' Contrat Social' recovered the organic conception of the
state,1 and till the rise of the historical method of study-
ing institutions, that this mode of thought passed away; and it
lingered on in the nineteenth century in the form of the " police
theory " of the state, of Herbert Spencer and the English radicals.
The formal theory of nature and convention in the Middle
Ages represents the principles of the post-Aristotelian philo-
sophy, as mediated by the Christian Fathers. We must refer
the reader to the second volume of this work for a discussion of
the place of these conceptions in the Eoman and Canon law of
the twelfth century.
So far, then, we have been dealing with conceptions which
dominate the theories of the Middle Ages, and which had come
to them through the Fathers, but which were not strictly speak-
ing distinctively Christian, but rather represented the general
principles of the post-Aristotelian philosophy. The political
theory of the Middle Ages was also however profoundly
affected, or rather controlled, by certain conceptions which
were distinctively Christian in their form, if not in their origin.
The first of these is the principle of the autonomy of
the spiritual life, which in these ages assumed the form of
the independence of the spiritual authority from the control
of the temporal. "We have endeavoured in the first volume
to give some account of the nature and early forms of this con-
ception. It finds characteristic and permanently important
expression in the phrases of the letters and tractates of Pope
Gelasius I. , in which he lays down the great principle that the
spiritual and the temporal authority each derives its authority
from God, and that each is independent of the other within its
own sphere, while each is dependent in the sphere of the other. 2
1 Cf. Rousseau, 'Contrat Social,' i. 8. Pope Gelasius L, Tract, iv. 11, and
2 Cf. vol. i. Part III. chap. 15; and Ep. xii. 2.
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? INTRODUCTION.
7
We have in the second volume endeavoured to give some ac-
count of the treatment of this principle by the Civilians and
Canonists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 1 We shall
have to consider in detail the relation of these principles to
the theory and structure of mediseval society. We shall have
to deal with the theory and the practical nature of the relations
of the spiritual and temporal powers in the Middle Ages, to
plunge into the great conflict of the Papacy and the Empire, to
try to disentangle the real and vital significance of that great
dispute whose clamour fills these centuries.
But before we do this we must remind ourselves of the real
nature of the problem, the real and fundamental principle
which lies behind the confused noise of factions. Behind the
forms of the great conflict we have to recognise the appearance
in the consciousness of the civilised world of principles new
and immensely significant. For behind it all there lies a
development of the conception of individuality or personality
which was unknown to the ancient world. We cannot here
pretend to measure fully the gulf which lies between the
Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy and that of the Stoics,
and the other later philosophical systems, but it cannot be
doubted that the gulf is profound. The phrases, for instance,
in which Seneca describes the self-sufficiency of the wise man
may be exaggerated and overstrained. No one, he says, can
strictly be said either to benefit or to injure the wise man, for
he is, except for his mortality, like God himself; he is indeed
bound to the service of the common good, but if the conditions
of life are such as to make it impossible for him to take part in
public affairs, he can withdraw into himself and still serve the
same cause by developing his own nature and character. 2 The
phrases may be overstrained and rhetorical, but they represent
a sense of individual personality which is immensely signifi-
cant, an apprehension of aspects of human life which are sacred
and inviolable, independent of the authority, and, in his view,
even of the support of society.
1 Cf. vol. ii. Part I. chap. 8; Part 'De Clementia,' i. 8. 2; 'De Otio,' iii. ,
II. chaps. 10 and 11. and vol. i. pp. 25-29.
2 Cf. Seneca--'Ad Serenum,' viii. ;
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? 8
INTRODUCTION.
The changes which can be traced in the history of "Western
thought can be observed with equal clearness in the Semitic
literature of the Old Testament. There are few sayings more
significant than those indignant words in whichEzekiel repudiates
the traditional conceptions of Israel. "The soul that sinneth,
it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,
neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the
righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the
wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. "1 The solidarity
of the primitive and ancient group was giving way before the
development of a new apprehension of individuality.
It is this apprehension to which a new impulse and force was
given by our Lord and his disciples. To them the soul of man
has an individual relation with God which goes beyond the
control of the society. The principles of the Christian religion
represent, on this side, the same development as that of Ezekiel
and the Stoics, and it is on this foundation that the civilisation
of the mediseval and modern world has grown up. This does
not mean that religion has no social aspect, or that the political
societies have no moral or spiritual character, but it does mean
that men have been compelled to recognise that the individual
religious and moral experience transcends the authority of the
political and even of the religious society, and that the religious
society as embodying this spiritual experience cannot tolerate
the control of the State. There are aspects of human life which
are not and cannot be under the control of the laws or authority
of the State.
It is true that the great individualist development has often
been misinterpreted and exaggerated, and the greatest task
of the modern world is to recover the sense of the organic
unity of human life, that sense of unity which to the Christian
faith is equally vital with the sense of individuality. The
recovery of that sense of unity by Eousseau and Burke does
indeed represent a great moment in the development of human
apprehension, and separates the political thinking and action
of the nineteenth century by a great gulf from that of the
preceding centuries. We are once again Aristotelian, but
1 Ezekiel xviii. 20.
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? INTRODUCTION.
9
with a great difference, for the apprehension of individual
personality remains with us.
It is these convictions which lie behind the great struggles of
the spiritual and temporal powers in the Middle Ages, the great-
ness of the conflict is some measure of the immense difficulties
which beset then, and even now, the attempt to disentangle the
sphere of religion from those aspects of life which are under the
control of the State. For it must not be supposed that this was
an easy thing to do. In the first volume we have endeavoured to
point out how in the ninth century, while men clearly recognised
in principle the distinction between the sphere of the two great
authorities, yet in actual practice the two authorities constantly
overlapped. 1 These difficulties became far greater in the cen-
turies which followed, and we cannot measure the significance
of the events which took place, or estimate the real character of
the theories which were put forward, unless we continually
take account of this.
The political theory of the Middle Ages then inherited a
great conception of the independence of the Church, and we
have here the first conception which was distinctively Christian,
at least in form.
There is, however, another conception which the Middle Ages
inherited from the ancient world which is also distinctively
Christian in form if not in substance. I This is theprincipje
of the divine-nature and origin of political authority. , We have
dealt with the origin and nature of this conception in the first
volume,2 and have in the second volume examined the treatment
of the subject by the Civilians and Canonists of the twelfth
century,3 and it is unnecessary to say more about it here, as we
shall have to consider its significance very carefully in this
volume. But we must be under no misapprehension, whatever
may have been the precise significance of St Augustine's treat-
ment of the nature of secular authority, and the extent of its
influence, the tradition which had come down to the Middle
Ages was substantially clear and emphatic, and that was that
1 Cf. vol. i. pp. 253-292. 218.
3 Of. vol. i. pp. 89-98, 147-160, 211- 3 Cf. vol. ii. pp. 76-78, 143-150.
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? 10
INTRODUCTION.
the secular power is a divine institution and derives its authority
from God.
This conception had been interpreted by some of the Fathers,
and notably by St Gregory the Great, as meaning that the
authority of the secular ruler was in such a sense divine that
it was irreligious and profane to resist, or even to criticise it. 1
The theory of the "Divine Eight" of the King is a patristic
conception whose influence in the Middle Ages we shall have
to consider, although it was not till the period of the Eenaissance
that it can be said to have received its full development, and it
was then related to the development of the absolute monarchy
in Europe.
Such, then, are in general outline the principles of political
theory which the Middle Ages inherited by direct and con-
tinuous tradition from the ancient world, and these influences
must be clearly and sharply distinguished from those which
came to them in the twelfth century through the revived
study of the Eoman jurisprudence, and in the thirteenth
century through the rediscovery of Aristotle's Politics. We
have dealt with the former of these influences in the second
volume, the latter we must leave till we can deal with the
thirteenth century in a later volume. It was in the main
through the writings of the Fathers that the continuous tradi-
dition came, but, as we shall have occasion to see, it was rein-
forced throughout these centuries by the energetic study of the
Latin authors whose works had survived. We have seen that
in many most important aspects this continuous tradition repre-
sents rather the general political ideas of the last centuries of
the ancient world than distinctively Christian conceptions.
We must now observe that the order of society in Western
Europe was based largely upon principles which belonged to the
new societies. There has been and there still is much contro-
versy on the exact degree of the independence of the Teutonic
constitutions and political principles. The great constitutional
historians of the middle of the nineteenth century, like Waitz
and Stubbs, assumed that the ancient world had little or no
1 Cf. vol. i. pp. 147-160.
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? INTRODUCTION.
11
influence in determining the characteristic forms and principles
of the government of the Teutonic state. In the latter part
of the nineteenth century a very learned and capable body of
historical scholars, of whom the chief were, on the Continent,
Fustel de Coutanges, and in England, Seebohm, argued that
in reality much which had been thought to be Teutonic was
merely an adaptation of the forms and principles of the pro-
vincial administration of the later empire. We do not need
for our purpose to attempt a dogmatic decision of the con-
troversy, though we cannot conceal our own conviction that
the balance of historical research and discussion has turned
strongly against the Eomanist view. For our purpose it is
enough that we should observe the nature of the principles
which were implicit in the structure of the new societies, and
which found a large measure of reasoned expression in the
literature especially of the ninth century.
Some of these principles are of great significance. The first
and fundamental principle implicit in the organisation of the
new societies is the supremacy of the law or custom of the
community over all its members, from the humblest free man
to the king. And the second is that there could be no suc-
cession to kingship without the election or recognition of the
community. There is here indeed an obvious parallel, but also
an obvious divergence in the structure of the Teutonic societies,
as compared with that of the Eoman empire. It was indeed
the fundamental principle of the Eoman jurists that the source
of all political authority was the Eoman people, that the
emperor held his authority only because the Eoman people
had been pleased to confer it upon him. 1 But there was this
far-reaching difference between the Eoman legal theory and
the principles of the Teutonic societies, that the Eoman theory
was a theory of origins, while the Teutonic principles were
those of actually existing conditions. It was not merely that
the Teutonic king required the consent or recognition of the
community for his accession to power, but that he was not over
the law, nor its creator, but under it. The Eoman doctrine of
the legislative authority of the emperor has no counterpart in
1 Cf. vol. i. pp. 63-70.
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? 12
INTRODUCTION.
the principles of the Teutonic societies, the law was the law of
the community, not of the king. / It is true indeed that in the
earlier Middle Ages there was normally no such thing as legis-
lation in the modern sense, the law, strictly speaking, was noth-
ing but the traditional custom of the community, and legislative
acts were, properly speaking, nothing but authoritative declara-
tions of custom. As the changing conditions of mediseval life
finally made deliberate modification of these customs inevitable,
such action was taken, though reluctantly, but could only be
taken with the assent, expressed or tacit, of the community.
S Here are indeed political principles or ideas of the highest
moment, derived not from the traditions of the ancient world
and empire, but rooted in the constitutional practice of the
new societies. We have endeavoured to set out the evidence
for the predominance of these conceptions in the first volume,1
but their significance cannot be fully appreciated without a
study of the more important works on the constitutional
history of the various European countries in the early Middle
Ages.
It is in relation to these principles that we have to study the
appearance of the doctrine of the social contract; that is, the
conception of an agreement or bargain between the people and
the ruler. In the popular mind this conception is supposed to
belong to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the
real truth is that it is a mediseval conception, and that it arose
primarily out of conceptions and circumstances which were
characteristic of mediseval society. This principle or theory
has some place in ancient literature, especially in Plato's 'Laws,'2
and a phrase of St Augustine's has been sometimes quoted
as related to it, though probably without any sufficient justifi-
cation,3 but there is no evidence that there is any continuity
between the Platonic theory and that of the Middle Ages. We
have in the first volume pointed out the circumstances out of
which we think it arose,4 and, as we shall have to deal with it
in detail in this volume, we need only here say that it seems
to us clear that its origin is to be traced to the promises of
1 Cf. vol. i. chaps. 19 and 20. 3 St Augustine, 'Confessions,' III. 8. 2.
2 Cf. vol. i. p. 17. 4 Cf. vol. i. pp. 240-252.
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? INTRODUCTION.
obedience to the law, and of good government taken by the
king on his accession] It was in the eleventh century that the
Conception found a formal expression, but the principles which
lay behind the formal expression were already in existence,
and were firmly rooted in the constitutional order of the early
Middle Ages.
In approaching the subject of the nature of the political
theory of the great central period of mediseval civilisation,
from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, we must then first
be careful to observe the nature of the general principles which
the men of that time had inherited. These principles were
complex, and no complete or systematic treatment of them was
made until the thirteenth century. It may indeed be doubted
whether the various elements were capable of being brought
into an organic relation with each other, but we must not
here anticipate the discussion which belongs to later volumes.
Whether in the end these various conceptions were capable of
being fused into an organic whole or not, we must recognise
that they all have a real and significant place in mediseval
theory. The great formal conception of the distinction between
nature and convention, which came from the post-Aristotelian
philosophy in which the Christian Fathers were trained; the
principle of the equality and freedom of men which arose out
of this and the Christian tradition; the immensely significant
conception of the necessary freedom of the spiritual life and
the spiritual authority which specially represents this; the con-
viction of the sanctity of the political order; the principle of
the supreme authority of the law or custom of the community,
and of the King as responsible to govern according to the law,
--these conceptions or principles dominated the sentiment and
the theory of all mediseval society.
Our present task is to consider the development of these
conceptions under the actual circumstances of European society
from the1 tenth to the thirteenth centuries, and to inquire how
far they may have been modified or superseded by other
principles. For the new times brought new conditions, new
and important forms of political and social relations. We shall
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? 14
INTRODUCTION.
have especially to consider how far the development of feudal
ideas, and the organisation of European society on the basis of
feudal tenure, may have modified or overlaid earlier principles;
how far again in the great conflicts between the spiritual and
the temporal powers the conception of the sanctity and auto-
nomy of either may have been questioned or denied. The de-
velopment of mediseval society was very rapid, and the intellectual
development was even more rapid than that of the organisation
of society. The greatest difficulty indeed with which the
historian has to contend, in trying to interpret the Middle
Ages to the modern world, is the impression that the civilisa-
tion of these times was stationary and rigid, that the mediaeval
world was unlike the modern, specially in this, that it was
unchanging, while we perpetually change. This tradition is
primarily derived from the ignorance and prejudice of the
men of the new learning and the Eenaissance, and lingers
on, not in serious history, but in the literary tradition, and in
the prejudices which arose naturally enough out of the great
struggles of the Eeformation and the Revolution. If we are to
study the Middle Ages intelligently, if we are to appreciate
their real relation to the modern world, we must dismiss from
our minds these notions of a fixed and stereotyped society, we
must rather recognise that there have been few periods in the
history of the world when the movement of thought and of
life was more rapid than in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries.
^When we attempt to trace the history of political ideas
in the Middle Ages, we are at once confronted with the fact
that, after the active political reflection which is represented in
the literature of the ninth century, there follows a consider-
able period from which very little indeed of political theory
has survived in literature. From the end of the ninth century
till the middle of the eleventh the references to the principles
or ideas of politics are very scanty indeed. We have indeed to
remember that it is probable that a great deal of literature,
especially in the vernacular languages, has disappeared, but it
is at least a probable conclusion from what has survived that
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? INTRODUCTION.
15
there was not much reflection upon social and political ques-
tions, and that it was not till the middle of the eleventh
century that the great political agitations in Germany, and the
development of the great conflict between the Papacy and
the Empire, compelled men to question themselves as to the
principles which underlay the order of society.
This does not mean that during this time no important
changes were taking place in the structure of European society;
on the contrary, in some respects the period was one of great
and significant development. It was during these years that
feudalism was taking shape and form, establishing itself as a
system of social and economic and military organisation, and
in some degree affecting the structure of government. How
far the growth of feudalism affected the principle or theory of
political organisation is the first important question which we
have to consider.
It was during these years that European civilisation was
being rescued from a second great wave of barbarism, which
threatened for a time to overwhelm it. For upon the confused
faction fights which distracted Western Europe while the great
empire of Charlemagne was breaking up, there fell the torrent
of the second barbaric invasion. The Norsemen on the North
and West, the Magyars on the East harried and plundered, and
for a time it seemed as though the work of the preceding
centuries would be completely undone; and indeed Europe
very nearly relapsed into anarchy, and Church and State were
almost overwhelmed in a common destruction. But the victory
of Alfred over the Danes, of Otto the Great at the Lechfeld over
the Magyars, and the limits within which the Norse invasion
of France were finally contained, mark the fact that the new
civilisation was stronger than the forces which attacked it, that
the new barbarians had to reckon with a civilisation which
was not worn out like that of the Western Empire which the
forefathers of the Franks and the Englishmen had overthrown
five centuries earlier, but with one which was living and powerful
and capable of a rapid recovery and growth. The new invasions
did indeed leave profound traces behind them, but the greatest
and most powerful of the invaders, the Normans who settled in
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? 16
INTRODUCTION.
North-Western Trance, proved rapidly that they were capable
not merely of conquest, but that they could contribute greatly
to the progress of the very civilisation which for the moment
they had shaken.
The development of feudalism was in great measure the
resuIt"6F~the downfaTI_of? jih^QaxoJin^ian civilisation, but
the effects of this can also be traced in the relations of the
Papacy and the Empire. The breaking up of the Empire of
Charlemagne might indeed seem to have set the Papacy at
liberty, but actually it left it under the tyranny of the bar-
barous factions of the Eoman nobles, and its degradation was
even deeper than that of the State. It was rescued from this
in the tenth century by the Ottos, and in the eleventh by
Henry III. , but the conditions of its deliverance held in
themselves the seeds of disaster. The emperor exercised, and
for the time with excellent results, a very large measure of
control over the Church, and especially over the appointment
of its chief ministers, but it was impossible that the Church
should in the long run acquiesce in this. The principle of its
necessary independence was too firmly rooted in its history,
and it was the attempt to recover and vindicate this which
led to the great conflict of the Papacy and the Empire, of
the spiritual and temporal powers in the various European
countries. This conflict in its turn contributed a great deal
to compel men to consider and make explicit the fundamental
principles of the structure and organisation of society, and
thus to produce those energetic and audacious developments
in political theory which we have to consider.
We have, then, to deal with three great subjects--first, the
nature of the principles implicit in feudalism, and the effect
of these principles upon political ideas; second, the character-
istic political conceptions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
as related to the development of the general political and social
structure of Western civilisation; and thirdly, the forms and
theories of the relations of the temporal and spiritual authorities.
It is indeed true that we cannot isolate these various aspects of
mediseval life and thought from each other, but they do in some
measure really represent the operation of different forces, and
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? INTRODUCTION.
17
we have to consider how far it may be true that they tended
to give rise to different conceptions or principles. We shall
have to make the effort finally to bring our reflections upon
them together, and to form some unified view of their effect
upon the principles of mediseval life, but for the time being
we have found ourselves driven to deal with them separately.
We have found that the adequate treatment of the subjects
has required so much space that we have decided to deal with
feudalism and the general political ideas in this volume, and
with the relations of the temporal and spiritual powers in the
next.
We deal with feudalism first, not because it was in our judg-
ment the most important element in the structure of mediseval
society, but because it has often been thought to have been so,
and because this at least is true, that whatever its influence
may have been, it represented a new element in civilisation.
In dealing with it we shall be obliged to transcend the limits
of time which we have set to the general scope of this volume.
For the significance of feudalism in relation to political theory
cannot adequately be discussed without taking into account the
great feudal law books of the thirteenth century; and, what is
more important, the system of feudalism represents an organic
development culminating in the latter years of the thirteenth
century, which cannot be understood unless we take account
of the whole process of its development. We are, of course,
aware of the risk that we run of reading back the conceptions
of the thirteenth century into the eleventh and twelfth, and
we shall do our best to guard against this risk.
VOL. III.
B
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? PART I.
THE INFLUENCE OF FEUDALISM ON POLITICAL THEORY.
CHAPTER I.
PERSONAL LOYALTY.
There is perhaps no subject in mediseval history which is so
difficult as that of feudalism. Its origins are still obscure
and controverted, its development belongs largely to the tenth
century, and there are few periods of mediseval history where
the sources of our information are so scanty and so fragmentary,
and in the literature which has survived there is only a little
that can be said to bear directly upon feudalism. And, finally,
its real nature and essential characteristics have been so confused
by the laxity of literary usage that it is difficult to say what is
meant by the word.
Feudalism is a system of personal relations, of land tenure,
of military organisation, of judicial order, and of political
order. It affected the life of every class in the mediseval
community, from the villein to the king or emperor, and it
even affected profoundly the position of at least the greater
clergy, the bishops and abbots. There are, indeed, few aspects
of mediseval life which were not touched by it, and it is
therefore natural that it should be thought that it must have
profoundly modified both the institutions and the political
ideas of the Middle Ages.
It is not our part here to deal with the first of these
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? 20
THE INFLUENCE OF FEUDALISM. [part I.
subjects, the influence of feudalism on the institutions of
the Middle Ages, its direct effects upon the forms of the
great constitutional development which culminated in the
Parliament of Edward I. and the States-General of Philip the
Fair, and the parallel developments in other European coun-
tries. We cannot even attempt to summarise the results of the
work of the constitutional historians, for any summary would
probably mislead rather than illuminate. But it is possible
to say that while feudalism left for centuries deeply marked
traces on the social and political structure of European society,
and while the great systems of national organisation did indeed
take into themselves elements which belonged to feudalism,
they also represented principles which in their essential nature
were independent of and even contradictory to some specific
characteristics of the feudal system. In the end the king
or the parliament, or both, came to be directly related to all
the individuals who compose the State, and in their authority
the local and personal authorities and jurisdictions of feudalism
were finally lost. The royal justice at last absorbs all feudal
justice, in the administrative authority of the crown all the areas
of feudal administration are merged, and the legislative authority
of parliament asserts itself as supreme over all feudal traditions
and customs. The king and the parliament represent the nation,
and the unity of the nation finally transcends all the separatist
tendencies of feudalism.
It may even be said that the best example of this can be
found in that country where at first sight feudalism might seem
to have triumphed, for the unity of the German kingdom was
finally destroyed, and the great fiefs became practically auton-
omous provinces. But it was not feudalism which triumphed,
but territorialism. In the territorial areas there developed the
same centralised authority and administration as in England or
France, and it was no doubt that very fact which accounts for
the failure of the constitutional movement of the close of the
fifteenth century.
We have to deal here not primarily with institutions, but
with the question how far feudalism affected the political ideas]
of the Middle Ages, how far its influence coincided with tha
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? CHAP. I. ]
21
PERSONAL LOYALTY.
traditions which they inherited, and furthered the development |
of social and political ideas which were already present, or how
far it may have tended to neutralise or modify them. We
must be prepared to find that the influence of feudalism was
very complex, and that it may have tended in different /
directions.
We begin by pointing out what may seem a paradox, that
feudalism represents two principles which in their ultimate
development may seem contradictory, but which yet affected
the minds of the men of the Middle Ages at the same time.
The first principle is that of personal loyalty and devotion, the
second is that of the contractual relation.
The first principle is that which is represented especially in
the poetic literature of the Middle Ages, and which has thus
passed naturally enough into the literary as distinguished from
the historical presentation of the Middle Ages in modern
times. We are all familiar with the romantic representation
of mediseval life as dominated by the sentiment of chivalrous
loyalty and devotion. How much of exaggeration there is con-
tained in this we shall presently see, but there are elements of
real truth in it. And, more than this, these sentiments have a
real and permanent importance in political as well as in social
life. Human life in its deepest and largest terms cannot be
lived upon principles of utility and contract. Whether in the
family or in the nation the actual working of human life is
impossible without the sense of loyalty and devotion.
This is the first principle of feudalism, and the second may
well seem contradictory to it. For nothing could seem further
apart than the conception of personal loyalty and the conception
of bargain or contract as the foundation of human relations.
And yet there is no escape from the conclusion that in the last
resort feudal relations were contractual relations, that the
vassal was bound indeed to discharge certain obligations, but
only on the condition that the lord also discharged his obliga-
tions to the vassal. Here again it is evident that we are deal-
ing with a principle which is reasonable and just, for in the
long run human relations are impossible unless there is some
reasonable recognition and fulfilment of mutual obligations.
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? 22
[part 1.
THE INFLUENCE OF FEUDALISM.
The principles may seem contradictory, and indeed they were
hard to reconcile, but it is also true to say that they were not
only held together and constantly reconciled in practice, but
also that the political thinkers of the Middle Ages were aware
of certain great rational principles which lie behind these con-
ceptions, and in which they found a reasonable reconciliation
of them.
For this is the truth about feudalism. At first sight it seems
very strange and unintelligible. We find it difficult to under-
stand how men could think and act thus, but if we are a little
patient we find it becoming intelligible, and finally we see it not
as wholly unnatural and abnormal, but as representing a phase
of social and political development which lies indeed behind us,
but whose conditions we can understand, and we shall see
that in a measure these apparently strange principles have a
continuing significance even among ourselves.
The difficulty of understanding feudalism has been immensely
increased by the habit of conceiving of it as a homogeneous
system, complete and perfect at some definite time and place.
It becomes much more intelligible when we begin to see that
under the one term there are contained ideas which were very
different from each other, and that as it had slowly grown up,
so it was perpetually developing and changing. The feudal idea
as it is presented to us in the epic or romantic poetry is some-
thing quite different from that which is represented by such a
characteristic set of law-books as those which make up the
Assizes of Jerusalem, or by Beaumanoir, and when we look a
little more closely we begin to understand this, and to see that
the conceptions of the epics and romances of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries represent sometimes the tradition of th<<p
past, sometimes an elaborate and artificial convention rathe^t
than the actual reality. I
There has indeed often been a very serious misunderstanding);
even among scholars as to the value of the artistic representa-J
tion of manners and customs. In some poetry, as for instance'
in the earlier mediseval epic, the pictures of external life andj|
manners of men and women, is highly realistic, and supplies uss
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? CHAP. I. ] PERSONAL LOYALTY. 23
with very valuable information as to the conditions of con-
temporary society. In other forms of literature, and especially
in the romance of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it is
evident that we are dealing with an art which is in great part,
in its relation to the circumstances of life, conventional and
traditional, and which even in its essential sentimental or
emotional interest represents an abstraction of human life,
valuable indeed and profoundly moving and significant, but
still an abstraction rather than a realistic treatment. The
great fighting man of the epic literature, and the frank, high-
hearted, and sometimes implacable woman, upon whom often
the whole movement of the story depends, these are real figures
of men and women, and they live in the real world. But the
romantic hero or heroine, absorbed in their emotions, far re-
moved from the actual circumstances of daily life, are placed
in a world which is mainly unreal and conventional. The
transition from the Beowulf or the Icelandic Sagas to the
Arthurian romance is the transition from idealised and heroic
reality to an elaborate convention.
It is necessary to use the evidence of mediseval poetry with
great caution, and to make careful distinctions between the
value of different forms of it as illustrating the customs and
ideas of any one time.
We cannot here attempt to discuss in detail the origin of
feudalism, the subject has been handled with great learning
by a number of historians,1 but we can say with great con-
fidence, that its origin was extremely complex. Comitatus,
Commendatio, and Beneficium, these are the main elements of
the relation of lord and vassal, and each of these had an im-
portant part in the development of the whole system. From
the Comitatus there came the devotion of the band of followers
to their leader in war, the almost indissoluble tie which united
the "companion" to his chief in faith and loyalty, and this may
have been the first, as it was certainly among the most import-
ant, of the elements out of which the feudal relation grew. It
1 Cf. e. g. , Waitz, Brunner, Fustel de Coulanges, Flach, &e.
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