development of feudalism in the middle ages

Using whatever equipment the vassal could obtain by virtue of the revenues from the fief, the vassal was responsible to answer calls to military service on behalf of the lord. The vassal’s principal obligation to the lord was to “aid”, or military service.

Fealty denotes the fidelity owed by a vassal to his feudal lord. During homage, the lord and vassal entered into a contract in which the vassal promised to fight for the lord at his command, whilst the lord agreed to protect the vassal from external forces. This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony, which was composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty. Only when the infrastructure existed to maintain unitary power- with the arrival of European monarchies -did feudalism begin to yield to this new power structure and eventually disappear.īefore a lord could grant land (a fief) to someone, he had to make that person a vassal. These acquired powers significantly diminished unitary power in these empires.

Mounted soldiers began to secure a system of hereditary rule over their allocated land and over those who tended the fields in that area and their power over the territory came to encompass the social, political, judicial, and economic spheres. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.įeudalism, in its various forms, usually emerged as a result of the decentralisation of an empire: especially in the Carolingian empires which both lacked the bureaucratic infrastructure necessary to support cavalry without the ability to allocate land to these mounted troops. Feudalism describes a combination of legal, military and social customs that flourished in Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries.

Development of feudalism in the middle ages