1 The Libri feudorum and the ius commune from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century
Today much more is known of the learned law stemming from the exegesis of the LF than three decades ago, when Susan Reynolds suggested that the LF were ‘one of the most extraordinarily neglected texts of the middle ages’.1 In the thirteenth century, this collection was becoming the principal source for a new law of fiefs, no longer rooted in the Lombard law but a branch of Civil law based on the exegetical devices that had been until then used to interpret the Justinianic Corpus and the Canon law texts.2 The integration of the LF within the ius commune can be appreciated through different types of sources, principally glosses, lecturae, summae, quaestiones, consilia, produced during and after its codification, and through an assessment of the activity of their authors—to this effect, the most useful reference point is an extensive list of authors in the feudal legal literature from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries provided by Gérard Giordanengo in 1992.3
This integration took place because of the attention paid to the LF by the Italian glossators. The application of the exegetical method of the gloss by Pillius was only its first step, although perhaps the most important one. We have already mentioned the significance of his apparatus for the formulation of the notion of dominium utile, which would have momentous consequences for later jurisprudence and political theory, but one cannot stress enough its importance as a basis for the glossa ordinaria feudorum by Accursius, which became for centuries the standard exegetical tool for the study of the LF.4
In light of this, the inclusion of the LF in the new editions of the Corpus iuris civilis was at the end of this path, not at its beginning.5 By the mid-thirteenth century, fiefs had been discussed by Civilians and Canonists for at least one century: from the mid-twelfth century onwards one can more than occasionally find decretals and Canon law commentaries or glosses dealing with fiefs and feudal oaths without a single mention of the LF,6 as well as consilia (‘legal briefs’) and quaestiones (scholarly exercises) concerning similar matters provided either by petty practitioners or renowned jurists such as Iohannes Bassianus, who resolved those questions through arguments based on Roman law only.7 This is not surprising since Roman law provided the bricks with which the edifices of the Italian city-states’ legal systems were being built; Obertus de Orto himself, in the earliest known consilium on a feudal matter (c. 1147), demonstrated all his acquaintance with Civil law actions.8 Accursius’s standardisation of the text and its commentary, therefore, provided shared grounds for debate and exegetical analysis on matters that had been long since discussed in light of other sources by learned lawyers, churchmen, and court practitioners.9
Besides the glosses, the flourishing of feudal summae is perhaps the most noticeable consequence of the absorption of the LF within the ius commune. Giordanengo has counted about forty authors in feudal law from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, in an inclusive list that also considers lawyers who did not rely directly on the LF or did so only loosely.10 As for the thirteenth century, at least seven of them wrote summae on the LF, to which Giordanengo adds chapters or short tracts devoted to fiefs by Canonists (Goffredus de Trano and Henricus de Segusio in their Summae decretalium)11 and a couple of works on homage (such as Martinus de Fano’s and Iohannes de Blanosco’s) containing no citations of the LF.12 In some cases, feudal summae were very short tracts: for instance, the summa by Pillius, in its thirteenth-century reworking, was just a brief compendium of the LF, of which it discussed some key elements in light mostly of other chapters of the same text.13 The summa by pseudo-Revigny, written shortly after 1250, was also relatively brief, possibly because it was unfinished, and it considerably relied on Civil and Canon law sources.14 More frequently, however, the summae feudorum were large collections of problematic questions (quaestiones) organised by subject and subdivided into titles and chapters. There are several examples for this kind of treatise. Ardizone, who attended Azo’s and Hugolinus’s classes at Bologna in the 1220s, wrote his lengthy treatise in Verona in several stages, mostly during the 1230s, extending an initial, shorter version with quaestiones and arguments based on what he experienced in Verona—and thought useful for other lawyers to know—as he believed that these local practices were, at least potentially, normative, just as Obertus had suggested several decades before him.15 The date of Odofredus’s summa is unknown, but the activity of this famous jurist is not. He was from Bologna, where he taught law intermittently from 1229 or 1230 until the early 1260s: his reliance on a proto-vulgata version might suggest that he wrote the treatise in the 1240s, slightly before the establishment of the Accursian recension.16 Some years later, Iohannes Blancus, a former law student at Modena, wrote an extensive Summa feudorum by borrowing several parts of Ardizone’s treatise, which he implemented with quaestiones based on cases he judged in person or attended as an onlooker during his long career as a lawyer, a diplomat, and a politician in Provence.17 In the late thirteenth century, Dullius Gambarini, a lawyer employed at the royal court in Naples, was ostensibly encouraged by the king himself to produce and circulate a treatise called Margarita feudorum, which served to ease the resolution of disputes concerning fiefs in light of the LF—an operation that Mario Montorzi described as a downright act of ‘politics of law’.18
All these treatises are of inestimable importance for later doctrinal debate, but one should not underestimate their practical dimensions in the time they were produced. Their authors aimed at discussing a variety of situations observable in the real world through a consistent vocabulary comprehensible to scholars across the Continent, and the LF became a very useful tool to that end.19 One of their principal goals was certainly didactic: to prepare new generations of jurists and practitioners by deploying supple interpretive tools rather than rigid sets of rules. The LF helped them develop ‘flexible and tolerant’ standards which could be then used to control doctrinal debate over a very fluid reality.20 For this to work, this literature had to keep a strong connection with the problems stemming from practice.
By the end of the thirteenth century, the LF had become an established source of the ius commune, so it was perfectly acceptable for jurists like Dinus de Mugello or Martinus Syllimani to quote the LF in glosses to the Digest or as an authoritative text in a consilium.21 When the genres of glossae and summae exhausted their initial vitality, towards the end of the thirteenth century, we see the flourishing of lecturae or commentaria, a new form of exegetical literature consisting of interpretations of the text and its glosses—an exegesis of exegeses.22 Even if the extensive Lectura librorum feudorum (1304–1309) by Andreas de Isernia would grant him great fame in the late Middle Ages, when he was known as the monarcha feudistarum (the ‘king of feudal lawyers’), the much shorter lectura (1306–1309) by Iacobus de Belviso enjoyed more success, being praised by Baldus in his treatise on the LF and broadly used in France, for instance, by Bertrand de Deaux (1318) and Bertrand Chabrol (end of 1300).23
Feudal law and the exegeses of the LF underwent further developments in the fifteenth century when doctrinal developments became entangled with political matters, such as fealty, the enfeoffment of jurisdictions, and new conceptions of sovereignty. The potential in defining with some precision and legal authority mutual obligations entailed in a vertical political relationship, made of feudal law a valuable tool for the elaboration of new configurations of power. Indeed, authors in feudal law often managed to carve out a successful career under the patronage of a ruler, an important source of legitimation for feudal law itself. One should not forget that Baldus dedicated his lectura to the future duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, when he was teaching in Pavia; five decades later Baraterius did likewise, to Filippo Maria Visconti (1442); Mattheus de Afflictis (d. 1520s), the author of famous commentaria on the LF (1475–1480), embarked upon a quite successful, if not too linear, career in the court of the king of Sicily.24 If fifteenth-century feudists, related or not to princely powers—see for instance Iacobus Alvarottus (1438) or Mincuccius (1430–1440s)—tended to stress the constitutional value of feudal law, putting emphasis on an idea of political power as unilateral, it is also true that the same doctrine continued to stress the importance of mutual obligations and the holders’ rights.25
The entanglement of feudal law with the political sphere, which conferred an aura of authority on feudal law and strengthened the professional position of its authors, was an important factor for the flourishing of treatises and courses based on the LF across Europe—for the fourteenth century, Giordanengo has counted six Italian authors, eight French, one Dutch; in the following century, feudal treatises were written in Belgium, Germany and, perhaps, Bohemia.26 If this success was undoubtedly linked to the integration of the LF in the new editions of Justinian’s Novels, there are several elements to consider in order to reappraise its actual diffusion and impact across Europe.27
Giordanengo has drawn attention to the fact that the ranks of feudists were small compared with the extensive cohorts of Civilians; as a consequence, the exegetical literature associated with the LF remained quantitatively low compared to the bulk of Civil law literature—this is all the more evident in the number of glosses, no more than 680 to the LF against the more than 96,000 for the entire Corpus iuris civilis.28 It is true that the LF, being written in medieval Latin and relatively recently, might not have needed significant interpretive efforts, but such figures are still striking. Moreover, the LF were not generally taught in ordinary curricula, which continued to be principally dedicated to the exegesis of the Justinianic Corpus, but in extraordinary classes and not seldom by early graduates.29 Further doubtful elements affect the chronology of the diffusion of the LF: a thorough analysis carried out by Emanuele Conte on the manuscript tradition of the Tres libri—the last three books of the Code of Justinian which, together with the Institutes and the Authenticum, formed the book called Volumen, the last of the five libri legales through which Civil law was taught—proved how in many cases the LF had been copied at the end of the Authenticum by different hands and therefore presumably tied to it later than the thirteenth century.30
Problems concerning the LF’s authority and its relationship with court practice emerge as soon as we move away from the strictly exegetical literature and consider other legal sources such as quaestiones and consilia. The quaestiones were dialectical exercises inspired by scholasticism; to analyse a topic, students were asked to ponder all the arguments in its favour (pro) or against it (contra). Within the law schools, this method consisted in the discussion of legal sources pro or contra a particular point of law (de iure) or a real case (de facto). From the late twelfth century the first written collections of quaestiones appeared, put together by students or by professors, such as Pillius or Roffredus, who intended to use them as didactic tools.31 No exhaustive analysis on feudal quaestiones has been carried out, so it is not possible to draw general conclusions from the partial data available; it is nonetheless clear that citations to the LF are negligible not only, for instance, in Azo, a strenuous promoter of the dogma that only Justinian’s sources were citable,32 but even in Pillius, who was particularly keen on using the LF as an authoritative source.33
The consilia were written legal opinions on specific court cases provided by external law experts, consulted ad hoc, which are attested from the twelfth century onwards.34 As Giordanengo has shown in a contribution in which he has listed more than seventy feudal consilia, this source testifies to the various interconnections between the doctrines discussed and developed in the universities and courtroom practicalities.35 However, although one would expect a high incidence of allegations to the LF in feudal cases, they are on the contrary just a few. Giordanengo explained this scarcity by suggesting that, whilst the Corpus of Justinian was deemed to be intrinsically authoritative, the LF were not, since they relied to a significant extent on the custom of Lombardy and, therefore, respected legal experts would not be too keen to suggest arguments based on it.36
Whatever the reasons for the lack of citations in these different sources, they seem to be connected to the problem of the legal authority of the collection—a problem that lay at the core of a debate that arose in explicit terms only in the early fourteenth century.37 Indeed, thirteenth-century exegetes did not always take a clear stance on this issue: Ardizone, and Blancus after him, attributed to the LF the force of law—or, at least, they acknowledged its value in preserving and transmitting an otherwise oral custom, whose normative force they did not doubt. A more cautious opinion was that by Odofredus, who saw the LF as complementary to local usages, which themselves provided the principal normative framework for feudal cases, and in the absence of which one ought to resort first to the LF and, eventually, to the other sources of the ius commune.38
At the time, however, some doubts as to the validity of the LF were raised by Henricus de Segusio, the renowned canonist known as Cardinalis Hostiensis. Henricus made a paramount distinction between the imperial constitutions contained in the LF, which possessed universal validity, and the customary texts of the collection, which were local and could not be taken as a general rule since feudal controversies were everywhere judged according to local customs. This opinion was not as radical as it might sound, since he immediately made an important exception which reinstated the LF within the feudal normative framework: if local custom fails in providing clear rules in a dispute, then one is to resort to the custom of other regions—a statement that is followed by a citation of LF 2.1: if also this custom fails, the quick-minded lawyer may use the written law without objection.39
The distinction made by Hostiensis would be repeated for centuries in the arguments against LF’s authority and reveals thus widespread diffidence towards the customary texts of the compilation. Another eminent lawyer, Iacobus de Ravanis, better known as Jacques de Revigny, who taught at Orleans in the 1260–1270s, would stress this distinction. He acknowledged the force of the law of the imperial constitutions and even recognised the LF as the ‘tenth book of the Authenticum’, but he did not touch upon directly the ambiguities of the non-imperial texts. In fact, Revigny never showed any particular interest in that compilation and did not comment on it in his works on the Authenticum. He rather expounded the idea that it was because of the multiplicity of local customs that he was unable to provide any clear rule concerning feudal tenures.40
Many thirteenth-century lawyers, however, did not take a firm position on this issue, a sign that it was not deemed urgent at the time. The situation would change in the early fourteenth century when the first cogent arguments in defence of the authority of the LF suggest that the question started being perceived as problematic at a larger scale. Indeed, in the first decade of the century, Andreas de Isernia and Iacobus de Belviso replied to criticisms that had never been organised within a structured narrative but had been put forward singularly.41 Arguments against the authority of the LF, and therefore their validity outside Lombardy, can be summarised in three main points: firstly, feudal cases ought to be judged according to local customs, which varied from place to place and thus did not need a universally normative text; secondly, if one excluded the imperial legislation contained in the collection, the LF were nothing but the local custom of Lombardy, hence applicable only to that region; thirdly, the LF as a consistent compilation did not emanate from imperial authority but, on the contrary, from the initiative of private citizens who had no authority to legislate.42
As Danusso has demonstrated, the arguments in favour of the LF, thanks to which we can understand the principal points of the debate, were originally developed by Andreas de Isernia and Iacobus de Belviso, and then re-elaborated, towards the end of the century, by Baldus, who set the cornerstones for any later discussion on the matter. The arguments proposed by the three authors revolved around four main points. Firstly, although local custom had the force of law in feudal controversies, Roman law and Lombard law were not sufficient to cover all the matters that local custom did not regulate, and, therefore, the LF were not just useful but even necessary to cover those legal gaps. Secondly, even if one deemed the texts of the LF that did not derive from the emperor as local custom, they complied with a general principle of rationality (rationabilitas) which made them universally valid. Thirdly, one could not ignore that ‘from time immemorial’ (Isernia’s expression) the LF had been an undisputed object of exegeses, a tradition that was itself sufficient to bestow authority upon the text. All these arguments were, however, superseded by the fourth and most relevant one: the conviction that the LF had been integrated into the Authenticum by command, or at least by approval, of Emperor Frederick II.
This argument derives from a controversial account by Odofredus. The Bolognese lawyer’s lectura on the Code reports that the emperor, upon his coronation, had sent to Bologna the constitution Ad decus he had issued on the occasion with the explicit command to add it to the Authenticum alongside the Novels of Justinian. Without stating any clear causal relation, Odofredus added in the following sentence that the professor Hugolinus Presbyteri ‘put the feudal book after the ninth collection, together with the constitutions of Frederick I and Frederick II’.43 Therefore, Odofredus did not explicitly state any causal relation between the inclusion of the coronation constitution in the Authenticum and the attachment of the LF to it. In fact, in the early fourteenth century, this correlation was implicit at best—Belviso only alluded to it, while Isernia vaguely referred to the emperor’s approval, not his command. As Danusso has shown, only towards the end of the century would a causal, and not just temporal connection between the two events be postulated by Baldus, in the first coherent historical narrative of the origins of the LF as the tenth collatio of the Authenticum by imperial command.44 Although this narration would stick in the scholarly tradition until relatively recent times, sound arguments have been raised not only against the connection between the two accounts but also against the fact that the integration of the LF in the Corpus was Hugolinus’s doing.45
This narration, however, made perfect sense in a context in which feudal law—and, of course, the exegesis of the LF—became intertwined with the rising regional states, especially in the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Sicily. Indeed, it provided grounds for the legitimation of both feudal law as a state-making tool and the social standing of its authors. Feudal law was far from being the principal constitutional framework within which the Italian states were built; nonetheless, it had become a very useful tool, one might say one among many, to sanction the relationships between rulers and those who were, or were to become, their noble subjects, holders of jurisdictional rights. French law and its lawyers were not alien to these processes but in France the attitude towards the LF and custom developed quite differently.
2 The Libri feudorum in Late Medieval and Early Modern France
The relationship between universal and local law, tightly linked to the problem of what sovereignty and its fundamental principles were, was felt as particularly urgent in France. In the fourteenth century, the Valois kings were promoting a strong centralisation of powers, but regional customs still provided the principal legal framework for each subject territory. The integration of regional nobility within the kingdom often took the shape of feudal subjection to the crown, which often left untouched the local configurations of powers—within which, too, feudal relationships were diffused. An increasing number of royal ordinances were issued and local customary rules regulating specific aspects of fief-holding emerged then in clearer terms than in the past, becoming even more visible in the fifteenth century, after Charles VII commanded the writing-down of all the regional coutumiers of France in 1454.46
The flourishing of exegetical literature associated with the LF, from c. 1300 onwards, testifies to its success as a didactical tool across the French territories. However, as soon as this compilation spread in the law schools, a vigorous debate concerning its customary origins burst out. We have already observed how Revigny, in the late thirteenth century, maintained an ambiguous position towards the text and this issue in particular. Confrontation concerning the authority of the LF and their authenticitas, i.e. the legitimacy of its inclusion in the authenticae Novels, would soon focus on the customary nature of the collection and its questionable universality. We have seen that Andreas de Isernia and Iacobus de Belviso organised the first structured arguments in favour of this point in the first decade of the fourteenth century. The first cogent attack against the alleged universality of the LF had to wait until c. 1341, and came from Petrus Iacobi from Aurillac, then a professor at Montpellier.47 The French lawyer put forward his critique in an extension to his treatise (Aurea practica libellorum) on judicial procedure concerning the legal formulae for disputes regarding fiefs and vassals.48 In one of these additions, he outlined the grounds on which vassals ought to lose their fiefs, mostly quoting the LF (2.23–24), but added in the following paragraph that these ‘feudal customs [i.e., the LF], since they are local, cannot bind us in our homeland, for the laws of the book of fiefs do not bind anyone unless it is an imperial constitution’—and, to prove this point, he quoted Hostiensis.49 In the following argument he pushed the critique farther by stating that ‘all considering, no matter what I have said now or earlier about the entire matter of fiefs, I say, and this is in fact the truth, that the customs written in the Libri feudorum, from top to bottom, ought to be considered of no value [‘pro nihilo haberi debent’] for what concerns us, in the whole kingdom of France’. His conclusion rested on the deep-rooted idea that disputes over fiefs were to be determined by local custom; unlike Odofredus and Hostiensis, however, he did not reserve to the LF any subsidiary function: should local custom not cover a matter of dispute, one ought to consider only Civil law or Canon law and discard the ‘book of fiefs’ altogether.50
Petrus Iacobi’s radical views—made ambiguous by the several citations to the LF in his treatise—embodied a widespread aversion towards that collection, but not all French jurists were of the same opinion. Courses of feudal law based on the LF were quite common in the southern regions—in Montpellier, Toulouse, Avignon51—and the school of Orleans seems to have developed a specific interest in this text and, perhaps, the first ordinary lectures on the LF.52 From the works of Bertrand Chabrol, who taught in Orleans in the second half of the fourteenth century, it is possible to infer the existence of at least two professors—Jean Nicot and Jean de la Ferté—who had previously held courses on feudal law but whose works have not survived. It is worth noting how Chabrol felt it useful to discuss at the very outset of the course the problem of the continuity of the LF with the rest of the Authenticum: he wrote that some teachers, such as Jean de la Ferté, treated it as the tenth book of the Novels, but he and his master Jean Nicot disagreed, as they deemed it a distinct subject: ‘ista materia non habet materiam coniunctam’, i.e. this matter has no relationships with any other.53 He too reflected on the dual nature of the LF, customary and imperial, but unlike Petrus Iacobi, he reached the conclusion that, although only the emperor had the power to create the law, and that was certainly not the case with Obertus, who was still deemed the compiler of the LF, the emperor himself had approved these customs, which therefore were law (‘leges sunt feudorum’).54 Chabrol’s argument based on the emperor’s approval derived from Belviso’s Lectura feudorum, which he quoted incessantly: although unsubstantiated it continued to provide a solid justification for the study and use of the LF.
The lack of evidence in support of an argument as important as Belviso’s lay it open to further criticisms, which became particularly strong in sixteenth-century France, where according to Brown and Reynolds the original sin of feudalism took place. A new generation of jurists imbued with humanistic culture then dissected all the points made in favour or against the LF in the previous two hundred years. What had changed was the intellectual framework in which those points were combined and organised. The principal novelty was the analysis of law from a historical perspective, which had to be tested meticulously based on sources through the new tools provided by philology. The encounter of textual and historical analysis in the field of legal studies gave birth to the first structured theories on feudal institutions not just as legal devices but as consistent entities; consequently, there emerged the first substantiated hypotheses on their historical origins. The leading actors of this debate soon polarised into two opposing sides: on the one hand, the advocates of the ancient Roman origins of fiefs—the ‘Romanist’ thesis—such as Ulrich Zasius, Andrea Alciato, and Jacques Cujas. On the other hand, the supporters of the German roots, called ‘Germanists’, were led by Charles Dumoulin and François Hotman.55
Among the former ones, the most important figure, in light of his later influence, was certainly Cujas (1522–1590), who approached the LF while conducting his studies on Justinian’s Novels. He reorganised the content of the LF in five books, including the extravagant material available to him, thus to overcome the apparent inconsistencies of the texts and refute some arguments brought against the authority of the collection. This recompilation, called De feudis libri quinque, was probably the most influential edition of the LF, which enjoyed long-standing success and made headway towards a more analytical approach to the text. As for the origins of fiefs, however, Cujas came up with a scarcely original theory that derived them from Roman law tenurial contracts.56
On the opposite side, Charles Dumoulin (1500–1566), a convinced Gallicanist, was aiming to demolish the Romanist thesis and provide a consistent theory of the Frankish origins of feudal institutions.57 Dumoulin was a very talented lawyer but also a staunch supporter of the national propaganda endorsed by the monarchy, which was keen on emphasising the intrinsic superiority of French institutions and legal tradition. The milieu of the Gallican jurists was then deliberately promoting widespread ‘distrust of “ultramontane” institutions’, for whose diffusion in France they generally blamed Roman law, engendering what has been described as ‘the most ferocious kind of Italophobia’, soon exacerbated by the religious wars of that century.58 This violent thrust against Romanism drove Dumoulin’s demonstration that Roman law and the LF were inapplicable to the French legal system, and that feudal institutions, so deeply entrenched in the structuring of the kingdom, were intimately French. Taken singularly, his arguments against the authority and authenticity of the LF were the same as his forerunners’—principally, that its compilers were not legislators and that feudal matters ought to abide by local custom alone. However, the place where he decided to expound these arguments, the introduction to his reform of the Parisian coutumier, which was supposed to function as ius commune in the whole kingdom, could not be more indicative of the author’s purpose: to state the supremacy of locally-grown French customary law over any external intromission, be it that of ancient Roman law, Lombard feudal custom, or even imperial legislation.59
With Dumoulin, we have reached the root of the problems with feudalism according to Reynolds and Brown. Indeed, the main terms of his narration of the origins of fiefs are strikingly similar to those used by Bloch and Ganshof. According to Dumoulin’s view, fiefs and vassalage originated in ancient Gaul; although they pre-existed the formation of the empire, under Charlemagne they became one of the typical features of Frankish power—a claim that allowed him to prove that fief-giving was a royal right that the king of France had inherited directly from the Carolingians, and which the elective German emperors were lacking, not being blood-related to the Frankish dynasty. A corollary of these two points was that the Carolingians had spread feudal institutions throughout Europe with their conquests. All these arguments supported the most radical and important one: feudal institutions, being originally and distinctly French, ought to be regulated without any external intrusion, i.e. through distinctly French norms—the Parisian customary law that Dumoulin was then reforming and that he upheld as the highest normative expression of the French people.60 Dumoulin’s thesis, only partly updated by Hotman, would set the principal terms for later approaches to feudal institutions. Indeed, as Donald Kelley put it, these authors ‘were able to place the study of law and institutions into a European context and to employ a rudimentary kind of comparative method’, which fascinated scholars on a continental scale.61
The historical-philological approach to feudal institutions brought in this way the emergence of explanatory accounts of the ‘feudal’ origins of many European polities and the idea that feudal institutions had to be somehow universal. Similar approaches and ideas also spread in Italy, where the LF continued to be considered an undisputed source of law, despite the traditional scepticism towards Germanist positions—see, for instance, the reconstruction of Giambattista Vico, who located the origins of fiefs at the very beginning of Roman law, the ius Quiritium.62
Through the French tradition, feudal law was imported into Scotland and England, respectively by Thomas Craig and Henry Spelman, to whom Frederic William Maitland and, after him, John G.A. Pocock ascribed the introduction or ‘discovery’ of the feudal system in England, with paramount consequences on subsequent interpretations of the kingdom as ‘feudal’.63
However, Germany also proved a fertile ground for these ideas, especially considering the later influence of the tradition of German legal-historical studies on modern historiography. As one would expect, the French Germanist theses met with immediate success, without, however, obliterating the traditional exegesis of the LF, which continued to circulate, especially in the reformed version by Cujas. Here, too, the customary texts of the LF were considered as the local custom of Lombardy, but they were believed to stem from the social practice of a Germanic people, the Lombards or Langobards, a connection that revealed the idea of a common origin, rooted in custom, uniting the Germanic peoples. Another relevant difference was that in the Reich the imperial legislation included in the LF could not be dismissed as ‘local law’, as Dumoulin had done. However, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German feudal literature also was characterised by a variety of approaches.64 No scholar would at that point doubt the intimately feudal nature of the Reich. Johann Peter von Ludewig (1740), for instance, defined Germany as ‘ein Lehnreich’ (‘a feudal empire’), which should have been restored by rediscovering its medieval roots and removing the Italian doctrines.65 On the other hand, one can also find opinions such as Georg Adam Struve’s or Georg Ludwig Böhmer’s, according to whom the LF constituted the common law of fiefs in Germany—that is to say, a law possessing subsidiary function in respect to local law and custom, which were acknowledged as the principal normative frameworks.66
Even when the LF faded out of the German legal systems, during the slow and irregular stages of codification of German law, studies on that collection were not interrupted. On the contrary, the refined tools of historical and textual analysis allowed the formulation of the first plausible theories on the LF’s authorship and formation.67 It was in the wake of such a rich tradition that Ernst Adolph Theodor Laspeyres, a pupil of Friedrich Carl von Savigny, published in 1830 a fundamental work on the origins and codification of the LF, which still today is a reference point for any study on the collection.68 Some decades later, Karl Lehmann would offer a critical edition of what he deemed as the recensio antiqua (1892), soon followed by a critical edition of the vulgata (1896), which is still the reference edition for the LF.69
3 The Libri feudorum and Feudalism: Open Questions
This cursory exploration of the uses of the LF leads us back, eventually, to some interpretive issues raised by Reynolds. The breadth of the debate originating from Fiefs and Vassals stands as proof of the relevance of the LF for present-day historiography so that it seems useful to stress some of the elements on which historians tend to agree before assessing some problematic points regarding the LF.70
If, as we have seen, early modern jurists interpreted legal notions of fiefs and vassalage as historically determined institutions, later scholars were able to project these notions onto medieval society as a whole—a transition that is deemed accomplished when Montesquieu wrote his Histoire de la féodalité in his major work De l’esprit des lois (1758), in an attempt to reconcile the Germanist and Romanist positions that still marked French debate on the matter.71 This transition brought forward a notion of feudalism (or féodalité) which was virtually detached from the analysis, or any direct knowledge, of the LF and which was soon used to describe the privileges of the noble class—those that the French revolutionaries declared to abolish in 1789.72 Eventually, feudalism became an abstract category employed by economists and sociologists to refer to a stage of social development in the history of humankind, or a mode of production, whose inconsistencies have been effectively outlined by Brown in her famous 1974 article and further developed by Reynolds.73
It would take us too far even to sketch the variety of responses elicited by Reynolds’s deconstruction, which vary depending on the field of study, the historiographical tradition, or individual approach. Medievalists have tended to be quite receptive, whilst legal historians seem to be rather reluctant about dropping the notion of feudalism altogether and generally diffident concerning the notion of ‘learned’ or ‘academic’ law that underpins Reynolds’s thesis.74 If we consider historiographical tradition, with some exceptions British and American historians have been keen to accept the principal terms of such deconstruction and its polemical implications.75 This widespread attitude of anglophone historians might depend on a semantic issue, since other languages generally use two terms (French: féodalisme and féodalité; German: Feudalismus and Lehnswesen; Italian: feudalesimo and feudalità) to distinguish between a broad notion of feudalism, covering different aspects of society, and a strict notion, generally referring to the system of fidelities tying lords and vassals.76 The Italian tradition has proved quite receptive of the Reynoldsian model, despite some initial hesitation, especially from legal historians.77 Still very influential is the legacy of Giovanni Tabacco, an early critic of classic feudalism, who adopted a revised version of the Ganshofian model somewhat purged of its constitutional elements.78 Consequently, the term feudalità is generally used to describe not a model of society or political system but more specifically the system of fidelities which cemented, or was supposed to cement, the bonds within the military aristocracy.79 More problems did arise in the French and German historiographies. In France, the strict term for feudalism (féodalité) is still common coin, being used to describe the political system developing in the kingdom during the high Middle Ages.80 Reactions ranged from full-force attacks, especially by Eric Bournazel, one of the forefathers of the ‘feudal revolution’, to hesitant acceptance or constructive criticism.81 Responses among German historians of Lehnswesen were at first even more problematic, but there, too, these initial difficulties led to developing productive discussion.82
Despite an initial mixed reception, Reynolds’s model has eventually become a reference point for any study on fiefs, vassals, and feudalism. One of the points of general agreement is that historians should use the ‘feudal’ vocabulary more cautiously, as it is clear how those categories usually rest on modern notions rather than reflect what evidence offers. Recent studies on fiefs and feudal institutions tend indeed to ponder much more scrupulously than in the past the terminology of the sources so as to avoid misleading or anachronistic interpretations. In this sense, Reynolds’s deconstruction can be inscribed within a broader tendency in medieval studies to reassess traditional interpretive models inspired by teleological paradigms or ex-post applications of modern notions.83
Recent comparative efforts gave rise to ‘new landscapes of debate’ on feudalism. They have shown that elements of classic feudalism, albeit with local variations, recurred in some regions more frequently and more regularly than in others—i.e., Catalonia, Languedoc, Lombardy, and Flanders.84 Ganshof’s heavy reliance on Flemish sources, therefore, may have been determining in shaping his notions of feudo-vassalic institutions and would partly explain the distortion of this model decried by Reynolds. It is also important to stress that three of these regions are located in Southern Europe, not exactly the heartland of the Frankish Empire which had been traditionally depicted as the cradle of feudalism—even though the diffusion of the term feodum in eleventh-century north-eastern Francia should perhaps be considered here.85 This evidence would confirm the central role played in the making of feudalism, whether reality or legal theory, by regions that had been traditionally disregarded in the classic models.86
Furthermore, the idea arose that feudalism (or Lehnswesen, féodalité, feudalità) intended as a combination of elements of the Ganshofian or Blochian models—the existence of tenements called fiefs granted in exchange for service and fealty; some degree of formalisation of the terms of this exchange; a connection between personal obligations and the grant87—emerged only from the twelfth century onwards, alongside the slow construction of more solid and consistent legal frameworks. Such a late blooming of feudal institutions might support Reynolds’s thesis that, insofar as they existed, these institutions were a by-product of the new professional and academic law. Nonetheless, a not irrelevant problem on this matter concerns what ‘learned’ or ‘academic law’ are supposed to mean.88
This issue brings us back to one of the most debated points of Reynolds’s theses, which enabled both confrontation and comparative efforts in the past two decades: how to explain the emergence of a feudal terminology in several regions of Europe from the twelfth century onwards. According to Reynolds, this new vocabulary, somehow influenced by the LF, was applied to different customary realities that, for what concerns property law, had nothing to do with anything ‘feudal’.89 This point has been criticised by many. Stephen D. White reminded us how property law is itself a problematic notion and that in the high Middle Ages land can be effectively studied as ‘an item of exchange and patronage that mediates political relationships’.90 Eric Bournazel suggested that in that period fiefs represented the principal way of organising the political geography of northern France, a wide phenomenon which cannot be simply ascribed to the influence of professional lawyers—petty nobles did not read the LF, he argued.91 Elisabeth Magnou-Nortier, too, viewed academic or professional law as an insufficient explanation for the broad diffusion of a feudal terminology.92
Historians of high medieval Europe have also expressed the need for thorough regional studies focused on the lexical changes emerging from evidence, which might allow a better understanding of the logic underlying the production of sources and the vectors (both social and intellectual) of such changes.93 The relationships between fiefs, legal culture and scribal practice became a fruitful field of comparison.94 More recent studies have suggested that Italian experts in feudal law, such as Obertus de Orto, who attended Frederick I’s Diet of Roncaglia (1154), might have provided important impulses for the development of the Empire’s constitutional law in the following century.95 Therefore, the influence of Lombard feudal law (more precisely, of Lombard feudal lawyers) on the framework of the empire might have preceded any direct influence of the LF.
It has also been pointed out how Reynolds’s explanation seems to imply a gap between ‘learned’ or ‘academic law’ and social practice—a hiatus that has been recently questioned.96 The role of the LF has also been put into perspective in the German territories thanks to new comparisons with the so-called ‘mirror’ literature. The obvious starting point has been the Sachsenspiegel (‘Saxon mirror’, 1220–1234) by Eike von Repgow, a private law book which aimed at summarising and systematising the legal practices of Saxony, including feudal law (Lehnrecht), in a way which has been likened to Obertus’s attempt for Milan.97
The function of legal texts—and their interpreters and users—in shaping a technical ‘feudal’ vocabulary has been simultaneously stressed and reduced. If it is certain that from the twelfth century onwards lawyers, officers, and scribes relied all the more often on law books, manuals, and formularies, it is equally likely that such notions (and the underlying practices) could have been transmitted through other channels than the LF. Steffen Patzold, for instance, proved through an insightful analysis of twelfth-century monastic chronicles that the spread of practices of patronage and land conveyance that were framed through a feudal vocabulary—in other terms, Lehnswesen—might be explained through the circulation of cultural models within the European political elite.98
The relationships between law, legal literature, social and political practice occupy, therefore, a primary role in present-day debates on feudalism. Whether one might or might not agree with Reynolds’s theses, they have been a healthy reminder of how historians should never lose sight of the varying cultural and political contexts in which history is produced, and how those models are always liable to influence, or distort, our representations of the past. The trajectory depicted by the LF, from local custom to the ius commune feudorum, over centuries of European history is certainly one of the best possible reminders of these risks.
S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, 3.
E. Cortese, ‘Legisti, canonisti e feudisti: la formazione di un ceto medievale’, in Università e società nei secoli XII–XVI. Atti del 9° Convegno Internazionale di studi (Pistoia, 20–25 settembre 1979) (Rome: Viella, 1982), 195–281, at 214–219, 230–234; Kenneth Pennington, ‘Libri feudorum’, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Supplement 1, ed. William C. Jordan (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004), 324–325.
G. Giordanengo, ‘Les feudistes’; an updated, less detailed list is provided in G. Giordanengo, ‘La littérature’.
E. Conte, ‘Modena’, 5–6. According to the author, dominium utile was ‘one of the boldest devices designed by medieval legal scholarship, and at the same time one of the most important conceptual tools which made it possible to secure a legal grip on the vast network of rights on property’.
M. Ryan, ‘Ius commune’, 52.
K. Pennington, ‘Feudal Oath of Fidelity and Homage’, in Law as Profession and Practice in Medieval Europe. Essays in Honor of James A. Brundage, ed. K. Pennington, Melodie Harris Eichbauer (Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2011), 93–116.
Iter Austriacum 1853, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, Archiv für Kunde österreichischer Geschichts-Quellen, 14 (1855), 78–79; Eduard Maurits Meijers, ‘Les glossateurs et le droit féodal’, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis, 13 (1934), 129–149, at 141–149.
A. Padoa Schioppa, ‘Il ruolo della cultura’, 278–284; M. Ryan, ‘Lombardist Glossae’, 76–78.
K. Pennington, ‘Law, feudal’, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 320–323.
G. Giordanengo, ‘Les feudistes’.
Henricus de Segusio did not produce any original writing but readapted Accursius’s (or Iacobus Columbi’s: see supra, ch. 2.5, footnote 63) reworking of Pillius’s summa: G. Giordanengo, ‘Les feudistes’, 110.
For an edition of the excerpt on homage by Blanosco (Jean de Blanot): Jean Acher, ‘Notes sur le droit savant au moyen age’, Revue historique de droit français et etranger, 30 (1906), 138–178. On Blanot’s attitude towards the LF and the problems with J. Acher’s edition: A. Stella, ‘In aliquibus locis est consuetudo. French Lawyers and the Lombard Customs of Fiefs in the Mid-Thirteenth Century’, in Common Law, Civil Law, and Colonial Law. Essays in Comparative Legal History from the Twelfth to the Twentieth Centuries, ed. William Eves, John Hudson, Ingrid Ivarsen, and Sarah B. White (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 25–46, at 38–42.
Hugolinus, Summa feudorum.
A. Stella, ‘The Summa Feudorum’.
G.M. Varanini, A. Stella, ‘Scenari veronesi’, 255–265.
Enrico Spagnesi, ‘Odofredo Denari’, in DBGI, 1450–1452. Another interesting summa was the one attributed to Iohannes of Ancona, written in the latter part of the thirteenth century, perhaps in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, but its attribution has been questioned on the grounds that it is unclear whether this Iohannes is identifiable with Iohannes Phaseolus from Pisa, and also because the same treatise is ascribed to Martinus Syllimani: Martin Bertram, ‘Johannes de Ancona: Ein Jurist des 13. Jahrhunderts in den Kreuzfahrerstaaten’, Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, 7 (1977), 49–64; Domenico Maffei, ‘Dubbi e proposte su Giovanni Fazioli’, in D. Maffei, Giuristi medievali e le falsificazioni editoriali del primo Cinquecento (Ius commune Sonderhefte. Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte, 10; Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1979), 75–80; Cristina Bukowska Gorgoni, ‘Fagioli, Giovanni’, DBI, 44 (1994), 166–170; Jonathan Rubin, ‘John of Ancona’s Summae: A Neglected Source for the Juridical History of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, 29 (2011–2012), 183–218.
Iohannes Blancus, Epitome iuris feudorum (Coloniae 1565); G. Giordanengo, ‘Jean Blanc, feudiste de Marseille XIIIe siècle’, Annales de la Faculté de Droit de l’Université de Bordeaux, 2 (1978), 71–93.
Mario Montorzi, Processi istituzionali: episodi di formalizzazione giuridica ed evenienze d’aggregazione istituzionale attorno ed oltre il feudo. Saggi e documenti (Padova: CEDAM, 2005), 71–133.
K. Pennington, ‘Libri feudorum’.
M. Ryan, ‘Ius commune’, 61; M. Ryan, ‘Succession to fiefs. A Ius Commune Feudorum?’, in The creation of Ius commune. From casus to regula, ed. John W. Cairns, Paul J. Du Plessis (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 143–158.
M. Ryan, ‘Ius commune’, 58–60.
M. Ascheri, The laws, 255–261.
G. Giordanengo, ‘Les feudistes’, 119–123, 128–129; Cristina Danusso, Ricerche sulla “Lectura feudorum” di Baldo degli Ubaldi (Milan: Giuffrè, 1991), 151–176.
C. Danusso, ‘Barattieri, Bartolomeo’, DBGI, 161; Giancarlo Vallone, ‘D’Afflitto, Matteo’, DBGI, 624–627; G. Vallone, Iurisdictio domini. lntroduzione a Matteo d’Afflito e alla cultura giuridica meridionale tra Quattro e Cinquecento (Lecce: Milella, 1985).
Christian Zendri, ‘Relazioni feudali e scienza giuridica nella tradizione occidentale: da Baldo degli Ubaldi a Iacopo Alvarotti’, Rivista internazionale di diritto comune, 30 (2019), 263–284.
G. Giordanengo, ‘La littérature’, 32–34.
Dirk Heirbaut, ‘Feudal law’, in The Oxford Handbook of European Legal History, ed. Heikki Pihlajamäki, Markus D. Dubber, Mark Godfrey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 528–548.
G. Giordanengo, ‘Les feudistes’, 72–73; G. Giordanengo, ‘La littérature juridique’.
Maike Huneke, Iurisprudentia romano-saxonica. Die Glosse zum Sachsenspiegel Lehnrecht und die Anfänge deutscher Rechtswissenschaft (Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 68; Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2014), 298–299.
E. Conte, “Tres Libri Codicis”: la ricomparsa del testo e l’esegesi scolastica prima di Accursio (Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte, 46; Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1990), 31–36.
A. Belloni, Le questioni civilistiche del secolo XII: da Bulgaro a Pillio da Medicina e Azzone (Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte, 43; Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1989); Manlio Bellomo, ‘Quaestiones in iure civili disputatae’. Didattica e prassi colta nel sistema del diritto comune fra Duecento e Trecento (Rome: ISIME, 2008).
E. Cortese, Il Rinascimento giuridico medievale (Rome: Bulzoni, 1992), 36–37 and 101n.
A. Belloni, Le questioni, passim.
M. Ascheri, ‘Le fonti e la flessibilità del diritto comune: il paradosso del consilium sapientis’, in Legal Consulting in the Civil Law Tradition, ed. M. Ascheri, Ingrid Baumgärtner, Julius Kirshner (Berkeley: Robbins Collection, 1999), 1–10; M. Ascheri, ‘Il consilium dei giuristi medievali’, in “Consilium”. Teorie e pratiche del consigliare nella cultura medievale, ed. Carla Casagrande, Chiara Crisciani, Silvana Vecchio (Florence: Sismel—Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2004), 243–258.
G. Giordanengo, ‘Consilia feudalia’, in Legal Consulting, 143–172.
G. Giordanengo, ‘Consilia feudalia’, 152–154.
In what follows I refer to C. Danusso, Ricerche, 151–176 and C. Danusso, ‘Federico II e i Libri Feudorum’, in Federico II e la civiltà comunale nell’Italia del Nord. Atti del Convegno internazionale promosso in occasione dell’VIII centenario della nascita di Federico di Svevia (Pavia, 13–14 ottobre 1994), ed. Cosimo Damiano Fonseca (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2001), 209–234.
C. Danusso, ‘Federico II’, 50–52.
Henricus a Segusio Cardinalis Hostiensis, Aurea summa (Coloniae: Lazarus Zetzner, 1612), 869–870. On his opinions on the LF: C. Danusso, Ricerche, 160 35n.
Frank Soetermeer, ‘Revigny (de Ravenneio, de Ravigneio), Jacques de’, DHJF, 867–870; K. Bezemer, What Jacques Saw. Thirteenth century France through the eyes of Jacques de Revigny professor of law at Orleans (Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte, 99; Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1997), 104–106; Laurent L.J.M. Waelkens, La théorie de la coutume chez Jacques de Révigny: édition et analyse de sa répétition sur la loi De quibus (D. 1, 3, 32) (Rechtshistorische Studies, 10; Leiden: Brill, 1984), 474. On the relationship between the works of Revigny and Blanot: R. Feenstra, ‘Quaestiones de materia feudorum de Jacques de Revigny’, Studi Senesi, 84 (1972), 379–401; E. Conte, ‘Framing the Feudal Bond: a Chapter in the History of the Ius Commune in Medieval Europe’, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis, 80 (2012), 481–495.
It is not made clear who these authors were, but Hostiensis and Revigny might be among the principal ones.
That the problem of the authority of the LF was perceived as new is proved by Belviso’s words: ‘Some want to say that this book is not authoritative … and I never thought to discuss this question until now, although I have held courses on this book eight times’ (‘volunt quidam dicere quod liber iste non est auctorisabilis … nec cogitavi istam quaestionem ante haec tempora disputare, et tamen octo vicibus librum istum legi’): C. Danusso, Ricerche, 152 10n. For the citation: Iacobus de Belviso, Apparatus in usus et consuetudines feudorum (Lugduni: Sachon, 1511; repr. Bologna, 1971), fo. 82va.
Odofredus, Lectura super Codice (Lugduni: Petrus Compater et Blasius Guido, 1552; repr. Bologna 1968), fo. 11vb–ra: ‘post nonam collationem posuit librum feudalem et omnes constitutiones Frederici antiqui et junioris’.
C. Danusso, ‘Federico II’, 56–66.
P. Weimar, ‘Die Handschriften’, 49–50. Ennio Cortese defines this narration a ‘fabrication circulating from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries’: E. Cortese, Le grandi linee della storia giuridica medievale (Rome: Il cigno Galileo Galilei, 2000), 307.
G. Giordanengo, ‘Consuetudo’, 59–69.
Louis de Carbonnières, ‘Jacobi (Jame d’Aurillac, de Aureliaco, ou de Montepessulano) Pierre’, DHJF, 547–549.
G. Giordanengo, ‘Les feudistes’, 126–128; C. Danusso, Ricerche, 172–173; Petrus Iacobi de Aureliaco, Aurea practica libellorum (Coloniae Agrippinae: Calenius & Quentel, 1575).
Petrus Iacobi de Aureliaco, Aurea practica, fo. 170b–171a.
Petrus Iacobi de Aureliaco, Aurea practica, fo. 173.
For instance, Jean Rainaud from Marseille, a professor in Avignon about 1418–1420: Iohannes Raygnaud, Comprehensorium feudale, ([Lyon]: Antonius du Ry, [1516]), fo. 5rb–6vb.
Marguerite Duynstee, ‘La Lectura Feudorum de Bertrand Chabrol’, Recueil de mémoires et travaux publié par la Société d’histoire du droit et des institutions des anciens pays de droit écrit, 15 (1991), 103–120; M. Duynstee, L’enseignement du droit civil à l’université d’Orléans du début de la guerre de Cent ans (1337) au siège de la ville (1428) (Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte, 253; Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2013).
M. Duynstee, L’enseignement, 303–304. This insightful book offers the critical edition of various excerpts of Chabrol’s lectura.
M. Duynstee, L’enseignement, 316.
Donald R. Kelley, ‘De origine feudorum. The Beginnings of an Historical Problem’, Speculum, 39/2 (1964), 207–228.
Cuiacius, De feudis, 4: ‘Actores, procuratores, custodes praediorum, insularii, conductores, emphyteuticarii, chartularii, precarii possessores’; Laurens Winkel, ‘Cujas (Cujacius) Jacques’, DHJF, 291–293.
Jean-Louis Thireau, ‘Du Moulin (Du Molin, Dumoulin, Molinaeus) Charles’, DHJF, 363–366; D.R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 151–182.
D. Kelley, ‘De origine’, 222.
Carolus Molinaeus, Commentarii in consuetudines Parisienses, in Carolus Molinaeus, Opera quae extant omnia, 2 vols. (Lutetiae Parisiorum: Cramoisy, 1612), i, 1–1304, at 5–48.
D. Kelley, Foundations, 202.
D. Kelley, Foundations, 211.
Raffaele Ruggiero, ‘Vico e la ricostruzione storica degli istituti feudali: la giurisprudenza napoletana tra Sei e Settecento’, in The Vico road. Nuovi percorsi vichiani. Atti del convegno internazionale (Parigi, 13–14 gennaio 2015), ed. Monica Riccio, Manuela Sanna, and Levent Yilmaz (Studi vichiani, 54; Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 2016), 145–166; C. Danusso, Ricerche, 167–170; Giuliana d’Amelio, ‘Polemica antifeudale, feudistica napoletana e diritto longobardo’, Quaderni storici, vol. 9, no. 26/2 (1974), 337–350.
The Collected Papers of Frederic William Maitland, ed. Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), i, 489: ‘the feudal system was a very early essay in comparative jurisprudence, and the man who had the chief part in introducing the feudal system into England was Henry Spelman’; John G.A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law. A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century: a reissue with a retrospect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 70–90 (on the relationships between the French school and Craig), 91–123 (on their influence on Spelman and the English ‘discovery’ of feudalism). Leslie Dodd, ‘Thomas Craig on the origin and development of feudal law’, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis, 87 (2019), 86–127.
Otto Brunner, ‘Feudalismus, feudal’, in Geschichte Grundbefriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck, 8 vols. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972–1997), ii (1975), 337–350, at 339–340.
Ioannes Petrus de Ludewig, Iura feudorum romani imperii atque Germaniae principis (Halle: Impensis Orphanotrophei, 1740), fo. 15 and 29 (‘ut Germaniam restitueremus Germaniae, per medii aeui lumina, reiectis et exsibilatis dogmatibus peregrini Latii et Longobardiae’).
C. Danusso, ‘Federico II’, 75. Struve described the Lombard law as ‘iura feudalia quibus hodie in imperio utimur’: Georgius Adam Struvius, Syntagma iuris feudalis (Jenae, 1666), 29–34. The title of one of G.L. Böhmer’s treatises, concluded in 1764, could not be clearer: ‘the principles of feudal law, especially the Lombard one, which is observed across Germany’: Georgius Ludovicus Boehmerus, Principia juris feudalis praesertim Longobardici quod per Germaniam obtinet (Gottingae: Vandenhoeck, 1767).
Karl Wilhelm Pätz, De vera librorum iuris feudalis Longobardici origine prolusio (Gottingen: Dieterich, 1805); Carl Friedrich Dieck, Literärgeschichte des langobardischen Lehenrechts bis zum vierzehnten Jahrhundert ihren Hauptgegenständen nach dargestellt (Halle: Friedrich Ruff, 1828).
E. Laspeyres, Über die Entstehung. Laspeyres deemed superficial the old debate about the authenticity and validity of the LF, i.e. the concern as to whether this collection had been attached to the Roman legal sources rightly, or whether it contained a ‘true’ ius commune. He complained that this matter had been tackled with too much zeal in the past decades, and that even the latest studies on the LF, i.e. G.L. Böhmer’s and C.F. Dieck’s, were not satisfactory. He also lamented their heavy reliance on Cujas’s outdated edition.
K. Lehmann, Consuetudines; K. Lehmann, Das langobardische.
A very insightful and critical overview of the implications of Reynolds’s deconstruction on the old models of feudalism and the recent historiography, with particular reference to German scholarship, is: Giuseppe Albertoni, Vassalli, feudi, feudalesimo (Rome: Carocci, 2015).
Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, 2 vols. (Genève: Barrillot & Fils, 1748), ii, books 28, 30, 31; Céline Spector, Montesquieu. Liberté, droit et histoire (Paris: Michalon, 2010), 257–270.
Anthony Crubaugh, ‘Feudalism’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Régime, ed. William Doyle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 219–235.
E.A.R. Brown, ‘Feudalism’, Encyclopedia Britannica
K. Pennington, ‘Law, feudal’; D. Heirbaut, ‘Feudal law’; P. Brancoli Busdraghi, La formazione. Mario Montorzi, however, has avoided the term feudalism (feudalesimo), deemed too modern a category: M. Montorzi, ‘I giuristi e il diritto feudale’, in Il contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero. Diritto (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2012), 35–42.
Fredric L. Cheyette, review of S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals (Oxford, 1994), Speculum, 71/4 (1996), 998–1006; Stephen D. White, review of S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals (Oxford, 1994), Law and History Review, 15/2 (1995), 349–355; C. Wickham, ‘Le forme’; Richard Abels, ‘The Historiography of a Construct: “Feudalism” and the Medieval Historian’, History Compass, 7/3 (2009), 1008–1031; Charles West, Reframing the Feudal Revolution: Political and Social Transformation Between Marne and Moselle, c. 800–c. 1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 199–206.
D. Heirbaut, ‘Feudal law’.
Only a few comments on Fiefs and Vassals can be found in Il feudalesimo. Whilst P. Brancoli Busdraghi, La formazione, firmly opposed the book, more recent legal scholarship has been more receptive, e.g., M. Ascheri, The laws, 98; M. Montorzi, ‘I giuristi’.
G. Tabacco, ‘Il feudalesimo’, in Storia delle idee politiche, economiche e sociali, ed. Luigi Firpo, ii/2 (Turin: UTET, 1983), 55–115. His reception of Fiefs and Vassals was, however, enthusiastic: G. Tabacco, recensione a S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals (Oxford, 1994), Rivista storica italiana, 108/1 (1996), 363–365.
G. Albertoni, L. Provero, ‘Storiografia europea e feudalesimo italiano tra alto e basso medioevo’, Quaderni storici, vol. 38, n. 112/1 (2003), 243–268.
Florian Mazel, Féodalités (888–1180) (Paris, 2010); Les féodalites, ed. J.-P. Poly, E. Bournazel (Histoire générale des systèmes politiques; Paris: PUF, 1998).
D. Barthélemy, ‘La théorie féodale à l’épreuve de l’anthropologie (note critique)’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 52/2 (1997), 321–341; Elisabeth Magnou-Nortier, ‘La féodalité en crise’, propos sur Fiefs and Vassals de Susan Reynolds, Revue historique, 296 (1996), 253–358; E. Magnou-Nortier, ‘La “féodalité” méridionale a-t-elle existé? Réflexions sur quelques sources des Xe–XIIe siècles’, in Fiefs et féodalité dans l’Europe méridionale (Italie, France du Midi, péninsule ibérique) du Xe au XIIIe siècle, ed. Pierre Bonnassie, Hélène Débax (Toulouse: CNRS/Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 2002), 167–201.
Otto Gerhard Oexle, ‘Die Abschaffung des Feudalismus ist gescheitert’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 116 (19 May 1995), 41; Johannes Fried, review of S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals (Oxford, 1994), German Historical Institute London Bulletin, 19/1 (1997), 28–41; Das Lehnswesen im Hochmittelalter. Forschungskonstrukte–Quellenbefunde–Deutungsrelevanz, ed. Jürgen Dendorfer, Roman Deutinger (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2010); Ausbildung und Verbreitung.
Limiting ourselves to feudalism, see for instance the critical historiographical essay: Alain Guerreau, ‘Fief, féodalité, féodalisme. Enjeux sociaux et réflexion historienne’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 45 (1990/1), 137–166.
Das Lehnswesen im Hochmittelalter; Ausbildung und Verbreitung; Steffen Patzold, Das Lehnswesen (Munich, 2012).
C. West, Reframing, 199–206.
Structures féodales; Señores, siervos, vasallos en la Alta Edad Media. Actas de la XXVIII Semana de Estudios Medievales (Estella, 16–20 julio 2001) (Pamplona: Gobierno de Navarra, 2002); Fiefs et féodalité.
J. Dendorfer, ‘Zur Einleitung’, in Das Lehnswesen im Hochmittelalter, 11–40, at 26.
K. Pennington, ‘Learned Law, Droit Savant, Gelehrtes Recht. The Tyranny of a Concept’, Rivista internazionale di diritto comune, 5 (1994), 197–209.
S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, 64, 478–479; S. Reynolds, ‘Afterthoughts’; S. Reynolds, ‘Fiefs and Vassals after Twelve Years’, in Feudalism: New Landscapes of Debate, ed. Sverre Bagge, Michael H. Gelting, Thomas Lindkvist (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 15–26.
S.D. White, review, 353. S.D. White, ‘The Politics of Exchange: Gifts, Fiefs, and Feudalism’, in Medieval Transformations. Texts, Power and Gifts in Context, ed. Esther Cohen, Maike de Jong (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 169–188; S.D. White, ‘Service for Fiefs or Fiefs for Service: The Politics of Reciprocity’, in Negotiating the Gift. Pre-modern Figurations of Exchange, ed. Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner, Bernhard Jussen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 63–98.
E. Bournazel, La royauté féodale en France et en Angleterre (Xe–XIIIe siècles), in Les féodalités, 389–510.
E. Magnou-Nortier, ‘La féodalité en crise’.
Das Lehnswesen im Hochmittelalter; Ausbildung und Verbreitung; Feudalism: New Landscapes.
Le vassal, le fief.
J. Dendorfer, ‘Roncaglia: Der Beginn eines lehnrechtlichen Umbaus des Reiches?’, in Staufisches Kaisertum im 12. Jahrhundert. Konzepte, Netzwerke, politische Praxis, ed. Stefan Burkhardt, Thomas Metz, Bernd Schneidmüller, Stefan Weinfurter (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2010), 111–132; G. Dilcher, ‘Das lombardische Lehnrecht’.
On this problem: A. Stella, ‘Bringing’; A. Stella, ‘In aliquibus’.
S. Patzold, Das Lehnswesen, 96–102; G. Dilcher, ‘Das lombardische Lehnrecht’, 89–90.
S. Patzold, ‘Das Lehnswesen im Spiegel historiographischer Quellen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts’, in Ausbildung und Verbreitung, 269–306.