Reflections on the Unicorn's Head

Extract

Mr. Cheyette's remarks require at least a brief comment from the gild of medieval tapestry weavers with whom he disagrees so strongly. On the assumption that the historian cannot derive a definition from the evidence, he has produced an article which is at once interesting, well written, and utterly uncontaminated by contact with an original source. Thus liberated, he has woven a colorful tapestry of his own. Having written much on how feudalism ought not to be defined, he turns at length to its proper definition. Unsure of what an institution is, he defines feudalism as “a medieval way of thinking,” better yet, a “technique,” and, perhaps best of all, a “spirit.” It is not unnatural that the medieval institutional historian would object to such definitions. They have a fine sound in the context of a brief, discursive article, but in the actual writing of history they are ephemeral and, indeed, far more archetypal than the definitions that medievalists ordinarily use.

What is feudalism? Marc Bloch, whose conception of it is about as broad as one is apt to find among medieval historians, defines it as follows:

A subject peasantry; widespread use of the service tenement (i.e. the fief) instead of a salary, which was out of the question; the supremacy of a class of specialized warriors; ties of obedience and protection which bind man to man and, within the warrior class, assume the distinctive form called vassalage; fragmentation of authority — leading inevitably to disorder; and, in the midst of all this, the survival of other forms of association, family and State, of which the latter, during the second feudal age, was to acquire renewed strength — such then seem to be the fundamental features of European feudalism.