"During a campaign, a politician was asked, 'What is Feudalism?' So, he presented an illustration of cow ownership. 'Say, you have two cows that produce folate instead of sulfate, then your master takes more than three quarters of the milk.'Inspired by the politician's, a journalist then interviewed a cattle breeder, witnessed by several other breeders. But, whether due to lack of fluency or probably less literacy, the results were beyond expectations. Here's the Q&A:Q: How much amount of milk does your cow produce?—A: which one, black one or white one?Q: Black one—A: 2 litres per day.Q: And the white one?—A: 2 litres per day.Q: Where do they sleep?—A: The Black one or the. White one?Q: The black one.—A: In the BarnQ: And the White one?—A: In the BarnQ: Your cows look healthy... What do you feed them?—A: which one..black one or white one?Q: Black one.—A: GrassQ: And the white one?—A: GrassQ [annoyed]: but why do you keep on asking if the black one or the white one when your answers are just the same??—A: Because the black one is mine.Q: And the white one?—A [paused for a moment, took a breath, then somewhat hesitantly answered]: Its also mine. [followed by applaused from other breeders]"François Louis Ganshof, a Belgian medievalist, suggests that the word 'Feudalism' (Germ. Lehnswesen or Feudalismus; Fr. feodalite) is one to which many different meanings have been attached," Sansevieria resumed. "During the French Revolution, it was virtually adopted as a generic description covering the many abuses of the Ancien Regime. Feudalism may be conceived of as a form of society possessing well-marked features which can be defined without difficulty, says Ganshof. They may be summarized as follows: a development pushed to extremes of the element of personal dependence in society, with a specialized military class occupying the higher levels in the social scale; an extreme subdivision of the rights of real property; a graded system of rights over land created by this subdivision and corresponding in broad outline to the grades of personal dependence just referred to ; and a dispersal of political authority amongst a hierarchy of persons who exercise in their own interest powers normally attributed to the State and which are often, in fact, derived from its break-up.David Herlihy, an American historian, shares the same opinion that 'Feudal' is a word which, over the centuries, has been borne many shades of meaning and have been used in many ways by different writers. The term, or its immediate ancestor, seems first to have appeared in Burgundian charters from about 881, in the form feos or feus. There it conveys the sense of a kind of movable property, probably cattle, in which payments could be made. Philologists are not agreed concerning its origins, but a reputable opinion sets as its root a Frankish word (fehu), signifying possession or property. Also according to reputable opinion, the word is cognate with the modern German Vieh, or cattle.The years in which the word first appeared, and still more the generations which followed, were for most areas of western Europe a time of profound disturbances. It was also a period of flux, in which the terminology of the written sources, and the institutions and life they depicted, were subject to constant change. Feos, in the sense of movable property, disappears from the charters after the first decades of the tenth century. At the same time the term was acquiring different forms and a different meaning. The forms are fevum, fevo, feo, and others. From the end of the eleventh century, one of its variant forms, feodum or feudum, began to prevail over the others and eventually became the standard Latin term for what today we call the fief. The word feudum, fief, was thus initially called to life to connote a concrete object-a piece of land, conveyed not absolutely but with conditions attached. The term hardly designated a full system of law, or of government, or of social relationships. The Middle Ages never knew that its society or its governments deserved to be called 'feudal'.From the late eleventh century, western Europe further witnessed a true cultural and intellectual renaissance. Men seem obsessed with a passion for order, and in the Middle Ages they sought it not only in their religious beliefs and philosophical assumptions, but also in the laws and customs by which they were living. Jurists and lawyers, for example, assiduously studied the legal monuments of the ancient Roman world. Their new consciousness and skill helped the Church develop its own great system of canon law, and Roman legal concepts similarly influenced conceptions of lay authority. The new jurisprudence affected feudal customs too.A jurist of Padua, Giacomo Alvarotto (1385-1453), called in short title De feudis, to describe basic principles governing the law of the fief. He used the term feudalis scientia, 'feudal science,' implying that the customary law of the fief was logically consistent and entirely amenable to scientific investigation.So, from both expert's explanation, we can know that the word 'Feudalism' has undergone evolution, from a kind of conditional tenure to the designation of an important body of customs and traditions common, at least in basic principles, to all Europe—this was the manner in which the mean ing of 'feudal' evolved in the late Middle Ages.Feudalism was practiced in many different ways, depending on location and period. In England, apparently the first use of the term 'feudal system' is found in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations ( 1776). Smith meant by it not really a system of law but of production. Under the 'feudal system,' workers were moved to their labors not by the incentives naturally generated by a free market but by force and coercion, by the power of the lord and the state which stood behind him. Such a system, he believed, so obstructed incentive and so weakened the natural and beneficent operation of economic laws that it inevitably led to grudging effort, low production, and general misery for all but the very rich. 'Feudal' thus identified an economy and a society marked by wide contrasts between rich and poor; a miserable and exploited peasantry; and an unresponsive, unproductive economy. These overtones of poverty, stupidity, and injustice have ever since hovered over the word 'feudal,' at least in popular usage.In the nineteenth century, the socialists borrowed this conception of feudalism (as they did much else) from the liberal economists. Marx and Engels in particular made it a part of their sweeping characterization of the stages of human development. In the beginning there was primitive communism, poor and unproductive; there followed slavery, which allowed greater wealth at the cost of human degradation; feudalism came next, and then capitalism; finally, communism returned, now wealthy and triumphant. The word 'feudal' is scattered through the Communist Manifesto of 1848 ('feudal society,' 'feudal property,' 'feudal system of industry,' and the like). It is viewed of course with opprobrium, but often favorably compared with the subsequent, still crueler exploitations of the bourgeois state.Today, many historians, anxious to avoid battles over terminology which soon become idle, prefer not to offer rigorous definitions of feudalism, but rather to describe feudal society, in the sense of listing those characteristics which seem central to it. Nearly all historians today agree that feudal society cannot be considered fixed and unchanging over all the centuries of its history. Rather, an accurate appreciation of the nature of the feudal order requires that historians recognize at least two feudal ages. The division between them falls approximately in the period 1050 to 1100, but it comes at various times in various parts of Europe.The 'first feudal age' (the term is Marc Bloch's) witnessed the spontaneous formation of the basic institutions and practices of feudalism: the personal bond between man and man known as 'vassalage'; the property bond created by the granting of fiefs; and the distribution of governmental powers among numerous petty lords. These institutions were not created by the conscious design of any lawgiver but resulted from spontaneous growth. They were rooted in the folk practices and folk culture of the peoples of the early medieval West.Perhaps the chief characteristic of commerce in the early Middle Ages was that it was inconstant and unreliable. Local communities could not depend upon a regular commerce to supply a substantial part of their essential needs. In this situation of a sporadic trade, self-sufficiency in an economic sense was sound policy for the isolated communities, even if complete economic autarchy could never be achieved. So also, because of few exchanges, money remained relatively rare within the economy, and the governments in turn could not expect to collect large monetary revenues or to use money payments to hire soldiers and support a bureaucracy. In such circumstances, retainers were best supported through grants of land, which brought consumers and producers close together and dispensed with the need for money. The peculiarities of settlement and commercial exchange affected also the exchange of information. The monastic scribe often shows a familiarity with happenings in areas far distant from his home-at Rome, for example, or the imperial court-but a defective knowledge of events occurring in his immediate neighborhood. Again, the exchange of information was not reliable, but often in this kind of human vacuum news could travel far. Early medieval society thus presents a peculiar balance of intense localism, coupled with a consciousness of membership in the universal communities of Church and empire. Moreover, the settlements of the early Middle Ages faced a nearly continuous problem of insecurity and violence. The Carolingian state for about a hundred years maintained a semblance of unity and security in Europe, but from the middle ninth century its own unity and strength were destroyed both by internecine strife and by renewed invasions. The invaders—Vikings from the North, Magyars or Hungarians from the East, and Saracens from the South—were especially active in the last decades of the ninth century and opening decades of the tenth. Again, the persons concentrated within these communities had to meet this problem primarily with their own resources, as they could not rely upon the quick reactions and effective protection of a central government.Feudal institutions were not only spontaneous in development but were also in some sense 'domestic,' as they initially concerned not the king and the great men of the realm but the humbler freemen, who within the vacuum of governmental authority had to arrange for their own protection, security, and support.Hagiography, the lives of saints, offers us the most vivid, if perhaps not the most precise, picture of European life in the first feudal age. At that time, a gigantic, savage, and most cruel multitude of Saracens sailed from the territories of Spain to the frontiers of Italy and Provence. In both kingdoms they dealt out slaughter to persons of both clerical and lay status, of both sexes and of all ages. They destroyed monasteries and laid waste cities, villages and estates. In quick raids they struck across the Julian Alps as far as the Apennines. There, giving free reign to their impiety, they long afflicted the people of the Christian name with raids and punishments. Killing some, enslaving others, despoiling still others of all they owned, they sated the desires of their impiety by their criminal acts.In the second feudal age, as part of the intellectual renaissance of the West, there is evident a growing awareness of nature as a complex of largely autonomous forces, set in motion at the act of creation but from that moment freed by God to operate according to their own inherent character. It is of course largely among the intellectuals, which is to say within the cathedral schools and the universities which flourished from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, that this new mentality is most apparent.The new mentality also affected governments. The traditional institutions of feudalism developed, really the products of the folk culture of the early medieval West. But the princes who were intent on strengthening their own authority could, like good artisans, adopt the materials the past had given them, manipulating and utilizing them in their own interests. In the new wealth and skills growing in their societies, the princes possessed resources not available to their predecessors. They and their advisers were also gaining a new selfconsciousness, an awareness of their own situation, and a willingness to use traditional institutions in the interest of achieving a higher level of social order. A heightened consciousness and a new confidence are thus among the most salient contrasts which distinguish the two feudal ages.In the second feudal age, rising trade and expanding commercial wealth brought into prominence a new class of townsmen who were able by the power of money to challenge the traditional dominance of the warriors. The warriors themselves seem to have reacted to the new competition by stressing their moral and cultural superiority over the crude money grubbers of the city. They also sought to close their ranks to newcomers by insisting that birth and blood were prerequisites to knighthood and nobility.As an illustration, if a man of the middle class seeks the love of a woman of the higher nobility, he ought to have a most excellent character, for in order that a man of this class may prove worthy of the love of a woman of the higher nobility he must be a man with innumerable good things to his credit, one whom uncounted good deeds extol. It would seem a very great shame and a cause of reproach for a noblewoman to pass over the upper and the intermediate ranks and take a lover from the lower class unless good character in overwhelming quantity makes up for the lack of nobility. For it would not seem reasonable to any sensible people that one could find in the lowest class good and excellent men, worthy of the love of a woman of such high rank, while in the two upper classes no worthy man could be found, but all had to be rejected as of inferior quality.Amid invasions from abroad and tumult at home, with the decay and near-disappearance of effective government, the men of the early Middle Ages faced a critical problem in supplying their basic social needs-food, protection, companionship. Under such perilous conditions, the most immediate social unit which could offer support and protection to harassed individuals was the family. What was the nature of the family in early medieval society?The family in the early Middle Ages served as the kernel of society. Ties among brothers continued to be strong and demanding. But this universe of high emotion remained, finite and fragile. The extended family or kinship group has not left in the sources evidence of remarkable cohesion and solidarity. It rarely seems to have been capable of embracing large numbers under an umbrella of support and protection. Members scattered, and emotions cooled. Extended families or clans seem to have functioned best and survived best in regions where extensive agriculture, herding, and sheep raising had particular importance, such as the predominantly upland, predominantly Celtic areas of Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The management and defense of large herds invited and rewarded continuing cooperation among heirs and relatives, and made those regions, socially and perhaps culturally, among the most conservative of Europe. On the other hand, systems of settled and intensive agriculture, confronted the kinship group with difficult and disruptive problems concerning inheritance, authority, marriage, and the distribution of functions and of benefits. For the settled peasant or landlord, cooperation with a neighbor is likely to become more vital than cooperation with a more distant kinsman, and ties formed for reasons of self-interest are likely to rival and surpass in strength the sentimental bonds among kin who do not inhabit a common household.The bond between man and man, the most characteristic feature of feudal society, seems to have been based initially on considerations of persons rather than of properties.The personal bond united warriors, but of differing social status. One was senior by age, talent, experience, accomplishments, or wealth; he was the chief, or the lord. His partner was of lower social station but still a freeman, still with rights which had to be respected. Personal ties of this sort seem to have been common within both barbarian and Roman societies. In the mature feudal system, the senior warrior is called the lord, and his free follower the vassus (the term derives from a Celtic word for boy or servant) or simply his 'man' (homo). The ceremony by which one man publicly declared that he wished to become the vassal of another, and was accepted by him, was called homage. It included, in its most elaborate form, at least three separate symbolic gestures. The vassal would place his hands within the hands of his lord (the immixio manuum); they would exchange a kiss of peace; and an oath would be taken by the vassal to abide by his commitment. Of these, the 'mingling of hands' seems to have been the most common and the most important.In considering the institutional basis of feudal society, it cannot be forgotten that institutions continued to function which were much older than the system of feudalism. Foremost of these institutions was kingship itself. The kings of Europe were eager to make use of feudal institutions and feudal conceptions in strengthening their authority and in imposing precise obligations upon their subjects. But the medieval king was always something more than a feudal lord. The Church in particular held out a vision of kingship which made of it a sacred office.Perhaps the most distinctive feature of properly feudal justice was the exercise, by the lord who held the land, of some form of jurisdiction over the persons residing upon it. This has been traditionally called, not quite adequately, 'private justice.'From the eleventh century on, many princes in the European West—counts, dukes, and kings—show a new effort, energy, and success in strengthening their own authority and reorganizing their principalities. In this work of reconstruction, part of much broader changes then occurring in European life, feudal institutions were central. Vassalage and the fief, to be sure, had developed spontaneously, largely without a consciously imposed design or direction, within a milieu dominated by disorders. But they remained deeply rooted in the consciousness and behavior of the people, and they offered these self-conscious rulers a means of redefining and more rigorously enforcing the obligations which, they now insisted, their subjects owed. Feudal institutions, in one sense the products of the disintegration of the state, thus became the instruments by which the state was strengthened.Feudal society bequeathed to subsequent generations not only certain distinctive conceptions and institutions of government but also a social ideal concerning the proper behavior of the knight, the warrior, and the man. This was chivalry, which meant in the most literal sense the art of mastering or managing caballi, horses. It held out a high image of the perfect warrior which, if rarely achieved and often ignored, still exerted a lasting influence on the manners and morals of the West.Probably all societies, and especially those engaged in almost constant warfare, have formed their own images of the hero. The chivalry of the Middle Ages itself inherited and absorbed older traditions of heroism, coming not only from the barbarian but also from the Greco-Roman worlds. Like Beowulf, the paradigm of Germanic heroes, the knight was expected to be a great and courageous fighter, a true master of the arms he wielded. Morally, he was to be undaunted by overwhelming odds against himself and by the certainty of his own death; he was to be selfless, willing to turn his skill and his strength toward the protection of his people, his friends, and all who needed him. He was to make war against the evil forces which harassed and endangered the human race. Tales of the classical and Biblical heroes—Alexander the Great or Judas Maccabeus—similarly, if more remotely, influenced the medieval conception of heroism. The legend of St. George and the dragon, for example, bears close similarities with the story of Perseus and the monster in classical mythology. But if chivalry maintained older traditions of heroism and manliness, it still possessed two unique qualities. The first was the assumption that fighting, even killing, could be a blessed and religiously meritorious act. The second was the conviction that among the virtues decorating the knight should be the art of acting courteously, of conducting himself well, not only on the battlefield but in the drawing room; not only among warriors but among women.The Church, and especially the reformers of the eleventh century, were primarily responsible for lending to warfare a religious aura. Violence was a major and recognized plague in Western society, and churches and churchmen were among its most frequent victims. To reform the Church required a stabilization and pacification of society. Beginning in the late tenth century, councils in the south of France tried to limit fighting, to restrict it to certain persons and allow it only at certain times. This selective pacifism embraced movements known as the Truce of God and the Peace of God.Throughout our conversation, it gave the impression that Feudalism only existed in the West, but what about the rest of the world? Parkinson noted, China became a Feudal State towards the end of the Chou Dynasty ( before 500 B.C.) and was ruled until about 250 B.C. by hereditary nobles with ranks corresponding to those of Duke, Marquis, Count and Baron. These in turn had their own vassals, their own advisers and officials, their own special training. A similar process is evident in Japanese history when a cultured and sophisticated court lost control of the provinces and saw them fall into the hands of local gentry, whose rivalries soon destroyed any semblance of unity or order.Although we could find examples of Feudalism in India, China and Japan, says Parkinson, Medieval Europe affords the classic background for chivalry. Chivalry, or Chevalerie, derived from the Arabs, is the basic conception and it means essentially a code of conduct among horsemen. Parkinson further suggests that Feudalism can show that a nobility is needed to keep the king in check and that only a tyrant will use any but his hereditary advisers. Feudalism, at its worst, could destroy the Kingdom. It could do so especially through the rebellious lord seeking help from beyond the nearest frontier. It could do so in a different way if feudal lords tried to replace the king by a committee of themselves, lacking as they would any real trust in each other. It could do so, finally, in the event of a disputed succession with different parties supporting different candidates for the throne. Considered in isolation, feudalism was more dangerous than useful.So, what about Feudalism in Indonesia?' Marah Roesli's work, Siti Nurbaya, published in 1922, can be said to represent the feudal society of his time. And now, the slogan 'Nderek bapak mawon' [it's up to the lord] is still carrying the mentality of Feudalism. Indonesian earth is keep on suffering 'the lord and his vassals' virus.In the next session, we will talk about 'Aristocracy', a sequel topic to Monarchy, bi 'idhnillah."Taking a break, Sansevieria carried a tune,Dan bangunkanlah aku[And wake me up]dari mimpi indahku[from my sweet dreams]Terengah-engah 'ku berlari[Out of breath I ran]dari rasa yang harus kubatasi *)[from the feeling that I had to limit]
Citations & References:
- F. L. Ganshof, Feudalism [translated by Philip Grierson, from the French of the 2nd Edition of 'Qu'est-ce que la feodalite?'], 1952, Longman
- David Herlihy (Ed.), The History of Feudalism, 1970, Palgrave Macmillan
- R.J. Holton, The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, 1985, Macmillan Education
*) "Sebenarnya Cinta" written by Sabrang Mowo Damar Panuluh
