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Page 1
Although the eighth, ninth and succeeding century were not without their
brighter sides and were not those totally Dark Ages they have been
represented by the enemies of the Church, nevertheless, seeds of evil
passions, which in spite of her endeavors the Church had been unable
completely to stifle, lingered in the hearts of those strong-limbed,
strong-passioned Teutonic races which had succeeded to the tasks and
responsibilities of pagan Rome. Those races did not have Rome's
organizing power. By force, it is true, in a great measure, but force
intelligently applied, but also by patience, by an instinct for justice
and for order, Rome had welded her vast empire into a coherent whole.
Rome really, and effectively ruled. She had authority, she had prestige,
she was respected and feared, until the fatal day when, for her vices
and tyranny, she began to be hated. That day her fate was sealed.
The Teutonic races lacked the power of organization. They were strong
and comparatively free from the vices of Rome; they had a rude sense of
justice. But that very sense and instinct for that one essential of
ordered life drove the individual to take the execution of the law and
of justice into his own hands and to claim his rights at the point of
the sword. The result can be easily imagined. The sword was never for a
long time thrust back into the scabbard. Incessant wars, not at the
bidding of the ruler, nor sanctioned by the voice of public authority or
for the public welfare, but for private ends, for revenge, for greed and
booty, were waged throughout the length and breadth of Europe.
The civil government, or the empty simulacrum that went under the name,
seemed powerless, for the simple reason that the strong arm of either a
Charlemagne or a Charles Martel too seldom appeared to check the
culprits, or because the civil government itself only added fuel to the
flame, by the encouragement it gave to license and violence by its own
evil example.
But society had to protect itself. Conscious of its danger, and that it
was doomed to destruction, if some remedy were not found, it evolved in
the tenth and the following century, not an absolutely efficacious
remedy, but one which enabled it to pass in comparative safety that
dangerous period and carried European civilization to the full glories
of the age of Dante, St. Louis and the Angel of the Schools. The remedy
was feudalism.
That institution has been misunderstood. It was called forth by special
needs, and when the conditions which it met in an almost providential
manner changed, it quietly passed away. But it rendered an important
and never-to-be forgotten service to war-torn Europe. Feudalism can
scarcely be called a complete and rounded system. For it was constantly
undergoing modification. It was not the same north as south of the
Loire. It was one thing on the west, and quite another on the east of
the Rhine. In general it was, as Stubbs described it ("Constitutional
History." Vol. 1, pp. 255, 256), "a regulated and fairly well graduated
method of jurisdiction, based on land tenure, in which every lord, king,
duke, earl or baron protected, judged, ruled, taxed the class next below
him; ... in which private war, private coinage and private prisons took
the place of the imperial institutions of power." Land, "the sacramental
tie" then, "of all relations," and not money, was the chief wealth of
those ages. For services rendered, therefore, fiefs or landed estates
were the reward. Feudalism thus rested on a contract entered into by the
nation represented by the king, which let out its lands to individuals
who paid the rent not only by doing military service, but by rendering
such services to the king as the king's courts might require. The bond
was frequently extremely loose, and it was hard then to say which of the
two was in reality the stronger, the feudal lord or the technically
lower, but sometimes in reality stronger, vassal.
The feudal lord was bound to support his vassal, and in return, had a
right to expect his help in the hour of danger. The feudal lord owed his
vassals justice, protection, shelter and refuge. If certain privileges,
claimed by the feudal lord, were onerous, the vassal was not without
some guarantee that he would be shown fair play; for it was evident that
unless in some way rights and obligations were fairly well balanced, and
there was a fair return for service rendered, the whole system would
soon crumble to pieces.
The "system," if it can be called one, was, as we have said, by no means
perfect, but it bridged the historic gap which stretches between the
fall of the Carolingian power and the full dawn of the Middle Ages. It
saved Europe from anarchy. Its blessings cannot be denied. It helped to
foster the love of independence, of self-government, of local
institutions, of communal and municipal freedom. The vassal that lived
under the shadows of the strong towers of a feudal lord did not look
much further beyond, to the king in his palace or in his courts of
justice, for protection. He found it closer at home. The vassal,
moreover, began to think of his own rights and privileges, to value them
and to ask that they be enforced. The idea of right and law, one of the
most deeply engraved in the Christian conscience in the Middle Ages,
grew and developed. The barons were the first to claim these rights;
gradually the whole nation imitated them. Even when they claimed them,
primarily for themselves, the whole nation participated sooner or later
in their blessings. The Barons of Runnymede were fighting the battles of
every ploughboy in England when they wrenched _Magna Charta_ from King
John.
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