The Historians' History of the World 08

Outside the family, the state was doubtless badly organised. It is necessary to call attention, in spite of all contradictory facts, to the political theory which this society represents. If the serf had no rights, the vassals had them, and well-defined ones too. The feudal tie was formed on conditions well known and accepted by him in advance; new conditions could not be placed upon him except by his own agreement. From these come those grand and strong maxims of common law which, in spite of a thousand violations, have come down to us—no tax can be imposed without the consent of the contributants; no law is valid unless accepted by those who must obey it; no sentence is legal unless declared by the peers of the accused. These are the laws of feudalism which the states general of 1789 buried under the débris of absolute monarchy; and in guarantee of these rights the vassal had the power of breaking the tie of vassalage by giving up his fief or of responding by war to a denial of justice from his lord. This right of armed resistance, which St. Louis himself recognised, led, it is true, to anarchy; it weakened the social structure, but it strengthened the individual. But it is with the individual that we must commence. Before intelligently building up the state, it is necessary to elevate the individual and the family; this double work was the task of the Middle Ages.

The church worked with energy to establish the sanctity of marriage, even for the serf; in preaching the equality of all men before God, which was a threat to the great inequalities of this world; by proclaiming by the principle of election that she reserved for herself at the very pinnacle of hierarchy the rights of the intellect, in contradistinction to the feudal world which recognised but the right of blood; and in crowning with the triple crown and seating in the chair of St. Peter, where they had one foot on the neck of kings, a serf like Adrian II and the son of a poor carpenter, like Gregory VII.

GEOGRAPHIC OUTLINES OF THE KINGDOM OF GERMANY

Such were the principles that ruled in all the countries comprised within the limits of Charlemagne’s empire, that is to say, almost the whole of the Germanic peoples, France, Germany, Italy, and the north of Spain. The political geography of the countries formed itself after the fashion of its feudal organisations. As the fundamental axiom of feudalism expressed itself, “No territory without its lord,” there did not exist throughout the land a domain so small that it was not incorporated in some degree in the hierarchy. Of all these superimposed suzerainties, the royal was the only one whose limits served to determine the extent of the realms already formed but still very vaguely outlined.i

The difference between feudalism and the politics both of antiquity and of modern times lies, according to Paul von Roth,j chiefly in the absence of a state power. There was no proper monarchy; public offices are hereditary or belong to an estate. The impossibility of the permanence of feudalism is shown, he says, most clearly in the feudal army by which even feudal justice suffered. Von Roth draws a vivid comparison between France and Germany at the end of the tenth century: France is much the more feudal and anarchic under the powerless Hugh Capet; Germany is more centralised under monarchic power. He compares them again three centuries later: France is a consolidated monarchy; Germany weak with a lasting weakness. The cause he finds above all is this—that the French kings had vigorously and in every way worked for the uprooting of the feudal system.a

THE TRANSITION FROM FEUDALISM TO MONARCHY

The moral phenomena above mentioned, tending in the direction of a general principle, were partly of a subjective, partly of a speculative order. But we must now give particular attention to the practical political movements of the period. The advance which that period witnessed presents a negative aspect, in so far as it involves the termination of the sway of individual caprice and of the isolation of power. Its affirmative aspect is the rise of a supreme authority whose dominion embraces all—a political power properly so called, whose subjects enjoy an equality of rights, and in which the will of the individual is subordinated to that common interest which underlies the whole.