It didn't take long for other scholars to see some value in the works of Cujas and Hotman and apply the ideas to their own studies. Before the 16th century was over, two Scottish lawyers -- Thomas Craig and Thomas Smith -- were using "feudum" in their classifications of Scottish lands and their tenure. It was apparently Craig who first expressed the idea of feudal arrangements as a hierarchical system; moreover, it was a system that was imposed on nobles and their subordinates by their monarch as a matter of policy.2 In the 17th century, Henry Spelman, a noted English antiquarian, adopted this viewpoint for English legal history, as well.
Although Spelman never used the word "feudalism," either, his work went a long way toward creating an "-ism" from the handful of ideas over which Cujas and Hotman had theorized. Not only did Spelman maintain, as Craig had done, that feudal arrangements were part of a system, but he related the English feudal heritage with that of Europe, indicating that feudal arrangements were characteristic of medieval society as a whole. Spelman wrote with authority, and his hypothesis was happily accepted as fact by scholars who saw it as a sensible explanation of medieval social and property relations.
Over the next several decades, scholars explored and debated "feudal" ideas. They expanded the meaning of the term from legal matters and adapted it to other aspects of medieval society. They argued over the origins of feudal arrangements and expounded on the various levels of subinfeudation. They incorporated manorialism and applied it to the agricultural economy. They envisioned a complete system of feudal agreements that ran throughout all of Britain and Europe.
What they did not do was challenge Craig's or Spelman's interpretation of the works of Cujas and Hotman, nor did they question the conclusions that Cujas and Hotman had drawn from the Libri Feudorum.
From the vantage point of the 21st century, it's easy to ask why the facts were overlooked in favor of the theory. Present-day historians engage in rigorous examination of the evidence and clearly identify a theory as a theory (at least, the good ones do). Why didn't 16th- and 17th-century scholars do the same? The simple answer is that history as a scholarly field has evolved over time; and in the 17th century, the academic discipline of historical evaluation was in its infancy. Historians did not yet have the tools -- both physical and figurative -- we take for granted today, nor did they have the example of scientific methods from other fields to look to and incorporate into their own learning processes.
Besides, having a straightforward model by which to view the Middle Ages gave scholars the sense that they understood the time period. Medieval society becomes so much easier to evaluate and comprehend if it can be labeled and fit into a simple organizational structure.
By the end of the 18th century, the term "feudal system" was in use among historians, and by the middle of the 19th century, "feudalism" had become a fairly well-fleshed out model, or "construct," of medieval government and society. And the idea spread beyond the cloistered halls of academia. "Feudalism" became a buzzword for any oppressive, backward, hidebound system of government. In the French Revolution, the "feudal regime" was abolished by the National Assembly, and in Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, "feudalism" was the oppressive, agrarian-based economic system that preceded the inequitable, industrialized, capitalist economy.
With such far-ranging appearances in both academic and mainstream usage, it would be an extraordinary challenge to break free of what was, essentially, a wrong impression.
Continued on page four: Medieval History Comes of Age.
