When was european feudalism

Charles Martel grants his nobles rights over tracts of land, to yield the income with which they can provide fighting men for his army. This act of generosity, ultimately for his own benefit, requires an oath of loyalty in return.

Thus there develops the relationship between lord and vassal which is at the heart of feudalism. The lord gives the vassal an income-yielding fief fehu-od in Frankish, the basis of the word 'feudal'. The vassal does homage to the lord, formalizing the relationship. The largest fiefs are those given directly by monarchs to noblemen or barons, who then subcontract parts of these fiefs to vassals of their own.

Only in this way, sharing out both the benefit and the obligation, can the king's vassals be sure of bringing their promised contingent of armed men into the field.

A pyramid of loyalty is thus created, in which each man - except at the very top and bottom - is a vassal to one lord and a lord to several vassals. At the very peak of European feudal society is the pope. By the end of the 12th century the papacy has more feudal vassals than any temporal ruler. Although feudalism develops as early as the 8th century, under the Carolingian dynasty, it does not prevail widely in Europe until the 10th century - by which time virtually the entire continent is Christian.

For the next years, great accumulations of power and landed wealth pass between a few favoured players as if in a vast board game.

The rules are complex, and to an outside eye deeply mysterious. But certain actions and qualifications bring a distinct advantage. The top players in feudal Europe come from a small group of people - an aristocracy, based on skill in battle, with a shared commitment to a form of Christianity at once power-hungry and idealistic in which the pope in Rome has special powers as God's representative on earth.

As a great feudal lord with moral pretensions, holding the ring between secular sovereigns, the pope can be seen as Europe's headmaster. Bishops and abbots are part of the small feudal aristocracy, for they are mostly recruited from the noble families holding the great fiefs. Indeed bishops can often be found on the battlefield, fighting it out with with the best. As in any other context, the strongest argument in feudalism - transcending the niceties of loyalty - is naked force.

A long dispute between scholars as to whether its institutional basis was Roman or Germanic remains somewhat inconclusive; it can safely be said that feudalism emerged from the condition of society arising from the disintegration of Roman institutions and the further disruption of Germanic inroads and settlements.

Of course, the rise of feudalism in areas formerly dominated by Roman institutions meant the breakdown of central government; but in regions untouched by Roman customs the feudal system was a further step toward organization and centralization.

The system used and altered institutions then in existence. Important in an economic sense was the Roman villa, with the peculiar form of rental, the precarium, a temporary grant of land that the grantor could revoke at any time. Increasingly, the poor landholder transferred his land to a protector and received it back as a precarium, thus giving rise to the manorial system.

It was also possible for the manorial system to develop from the Germanic village, as in England. The development of fiefs was also influenced by the Roman institution of patricinium and the German institution of mundium, by which the powerful surrounded themselves with men who rendered them service, especially military service, in exchange for protection. More and more, this service-and-protection contract came to involve the granting of a beneficium, the use of land, which tended to become hereditary.

Local royal officers and great landholders increased their power and forced the king to grant them rights of private justice and immunity from royal interference. By these processes feudalism became fixed in Frankish lands by the end of the 10th cent. Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries. It can be broadly defined as a system for structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land, known as a fiefdom or fief, in exchange for service or labour.

Feudalism negatively affected Europe during the Middle Ages by making the lives of peasant farmers harder, by spreading the Black Plague, and by controlling the lives of the uneducated and poor. Uneduacated peasants were controlled by the nobilty. They did not have rights and were restricting from many things. Feudalism helped protect communities from the violence and warfare that broke out after the fall of Rome and the collapse of strong central government in Western Europe.

Feudalism helped restore trade. Lords repaired bridges and roads. Feudalism benefited lords, vassals, and peasants. Lords gained a dependable fighting force in their vassals. Vassals received land for their military service. Peasants were protected by their lords. As the Vikings invaded western European kingdoms, local nobles took over the duty of raising armies and protecting their property.

Power passed from kings to local lords, giving rise to a system known as feudalism. Why and how did feudalism develop in western Europe? The people of western Europe needed a source of protection from many invading threats with order. As a result, they invented a system in which people of higher classes provided protection for lower classes in return for their loyalty to them. The end of serfdom meant the end of feudalism itself. As feudalism faded, it was gradually replaced by the early capitalist structures of the Renaissance.

Land owners now turned to privatized farming for profit.