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Subtitle: The Medieval Evidence
Reinterpreted, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994, 544 pgs., index, bibliography,
notes, paperback
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Reviewer's Comment:
The author has devoted years to detailed study of the documents and examples of
actual practice, such as the nature of land holding. Her conclusions are
virtually a revolution in scholarly understanding of these two political -
economic - social bases of medieval society. She describes the situation in the
opening chapter. We may add that many military historians also base their
understanding of warfare on now antiquated concepts about medieval society.
She continues by noting that professional academic teachers also are, shall we
say 'loose' in their terminology that reveals a 'loose' understanding.
Each chapter is well organized into numerous subsections. She wants to overcome
and abolish this popular misunderstanding. "This book is concerned only
with feudalism in its supposedly more precise sense. Its object is to establish
how far vassalage and the fief, as they are generally understood, constituted
institutions which are definable, comprehensible, and helpful to the
understanding of medieval history." "My argument will be that in so
far as they are definable and comprehensible they are not helpful."
Her point in this is to show that the very terms 'fief' and 'vassalage' are
actually post-medieval expressions for concepts developed several centuries
after the actuality they purport to describe. She will show that the terms and
the concepts they describe were created by 16th to 18th century historians who
'knew less than we know about the middle ages and much less about the differing
ways that societies may be organized." This applies even more to military
historians. As Hans Delbruck showed, 19th century military historians even
misunderstood the 18th century period of Frederick the Great.
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1. The Problem of Feudalism:
Dr. Reynolds writes "Feudalism, to any members of he general public who
ever refer to it, sands for almost any hierarchical and oppressive
system." ... "Medieval historians may dislike this hostile sidelight
on their period but they are not on the whole much more precise in their use of
the words feudal and feudalism."
1.2 The historiography of feudalism: In this lengthy section, Dr. Reynolds uses
her command of the literature to show that 16-18th century authors describing
'feudalism' were quoting 12th century legal compilers who were misunderstanding
the 10th century reality that they included in their documents. Since then
successive generations copy without understanding.
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2. Vassalage and the Norms of Medieval Social Relations
2.1 The concept of vassalage: In this section she begins to dissect and
differentiate modern thinking about what 'vassalage' means and what the social
relationships that actually existed. She follows a similar pattern of analysis
in the following chapters for the different countries.
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3. Fiefs and Medieval Property Relations
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4. Gaul and The Kingdom of Franks,
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5. The Kingdom of the Franks, 900 - 1100
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6. Italy
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7. The Kingdom of France, 1100 -1300
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8. England
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9. The Kingdom of Germany
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10. Conclusion
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