2
Feudalism as
a system of rights.
Although
full-grown feudalism was largely the result of the breakdown of older government and
law, it both inherited law from the past and created it by a rapid growth of
custom based on present fact. In one
sense it may be defined as an arrangement of society based
on contract, expressed or implied. The
status of a
person depended in every way on his position on the land, and on the other hand
land-tenure determined political rights and duties. The acts constituting the feudal contract were called homage and investiture. The tenant or vassal knelt before the
lord surrounded by his court (curia), placing his folded hands
between those of the lord, and thus became his ‘man’ (homme, whence the
word homage). … The lord in turn responded by ‘investiture’,
handing to his vassal a banner, a staff, a clod of earth, a charter, or other symbol
of the property or office conceded, the fief (feodum or Lehn) as it was termed
…. This was the free and honourable
tenure characterized by military service, but the peasant,
whether serf or free, equally swore a form of fealty and was
thus invested with the tenement he held of his lord. The feudal nexus thus created essentially involved reciprocity.
— The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History