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CHAP. XVI.: Of the feudal Lords or Vassals. - Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws [1748]

Edition used:

The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: Complete Works of Montesquieu, 4 vols.

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CHAP. XVI.

Of the feudal Lords or Vassals.

I HAVE taken notice of those volunteers among the Germans, who followed their princes in their several expeditions. The same usage continued after the conquest. Tacitus mentions them by the name of companions* ; the Salic law by that of men who have vowed fealty to the king; the formularies of Marculfus by that of the king’s Antrustios , the earliest French historians by that of Leudes§ , faithful and loyal; and those of later date by that of vassals** and lords.

In the Salic and Ripuarian laws we meet with an infinite number of regulations in regard to the Franks, and only with a few for the Antrustios. The regulations concerning the Antrustios are different from those which were made for the other Franks; they are full of what relates to the settling of the property of the Franks, but mention not a word concerning that of the Antrustios. This is because the property of the latter was regulated rather by the political than by the civil law, and was the share that fell to an army, and not the patrimony of a family.

The goods reserved for the feudal lords were called fiscal†† goods, benefices, honours, and fiefs, by different authors, and in different times.

There is no doubt but the fiefs at first were at will‡‡ . We find in Gregory of Tours∥∥ , that Sunegisilus and Gallomanus were deprived of all they held of the exchequer, and no more was left them than their real property. When Gontram raised his nephew Childebert to the throne, he had a private conference with him, in which he named* the persons who ought to be honoured with, and those who ought to be deprived of, the fiefs. In a formulary of Marculfus, the king gives in exchange not only the benefices held by his exchequer, but likewise those which had been held by another. The law of the Lombards opposes the benefices to property. In this our historians, the formularies, the codes of the different barbarous nations, and all the monuments of those days, are unanimous. In fine, the writers of the book of fiefs inform us, that at first the lords could take them back when they pleased, that afterwards they granted them for the space of a year§ , and that at length they gave them for life.

[* ]Comites.

[]Qui sunt in truste regis, tit. 44. art. 4.

[]Book i. formul. 18.

[]From the word trew, which signifies faithful, among the Germans.

[§ ]Leudes, fideles.

[** ]Vassalli, seniores.

[†† ]Fiscalia. See the 14th formulary of Marculfus, book i. It is mentioned in the life of S. Maur, dedit fiscum unum; and in the annals of Metz, in the year 747, dedit illi comitatus & fiscos plurimos. The goods designed for the support of the royal family were called regalia.

[‡‡ ]See the 1st book, tit. 1. of the fiefs; and Cujas on that book.

[∥∥ ]Book ix. chap. 38.

[* ]Quos honoraret muneribus, quos ab honore depelleret. Ibid. lib. 7.

[]Vel reliquis quibuscumque beneficiis, quodcumque ille, vel fiscus noster, in ipsis locis tenuisse noscitur. Lib. 1. formul. 30.

[]Lib. iii. tit. 8. sect. 3.

[]Antiquissimo enim tempore sic erat in Dominorum potestate connexum, ut quando vellent possent auferre rem in feudam a se datam: postea vero conventum est ut per annum tantum firmitatem haberent, deinde statutum est ut usque ad vitam fidelis produceretur. Feudorum, lib. 1. tit. 1.

[§ ]It was a kind of precarious tenure which the lord consented or refused to renew every year; as Cujas has observed.