One of the reasons so many medievalists may be annoyed by the term "feudalism" is that the situation regarding its validity is still very much up in the air. There is a general consensus that the old definition regarding a "system" is inaccurate, and even narrowing the term "feudal" to the specific relationship between a lord and vassal regarding a fief has been questioned. But, just as after Elizabeth Brown's article, authoritative books are still being published that include the old feudalism model, and there has been no new model introduced to take its place.
But do we need one?
The feudalism model was popular because it simplified medieval society. But medieval society wasn't really simple. The more historians have learned over the last century, the clearer this has become. In the Middle Ages . . .
- Society wasn't as rigid as it was once believed; there was such a thing as social mobility.
- Women had more power and rights than was originally deduced from reading sources written by monastics who rarely saw any women, let alone interacted with them.
- The charming triangle of "those who fought, those who prayed, and those who worked," which was actually devised as a description of society during the Middle Ages, does not take into account a wide variety of people who lived in and contributed to medieval communities. And . . .
- Fighting men were not limited to knights who swore fealty to their lords and received land in return; there were paid mercenaries, archers, miners, foot-soldiers, and a host of other types of combatants who participated in the fierce and frightening conflicts of medieval battles under a variety of conditions.
Some teachers and authors are focusing on the realities of medieval society instead of concentrating on a model to explain them. This seems a sensible way to proceed. Admit that the Middle Ages was a complex time, and that studying it can be complicated (but worth the effort!). Examine the monarchies, the duchies and counties and earldoms, the empires and leagues, and the treaties, contracts and customs that related them to one another without trying to fit them into any kind of model. Look at how leaders pulled together their armies in each individual case without automatically attributing it to a "feudal system" -- or any kind of system, unless one reveals itself in the course of uncovering the facts.
In the meantime, perhaps more academics will focus their energies on the feudalism problem instead of avoiding it. Perhaps there will be more symposiums, more panels at medieval conferences, more seminars in post-graduate programs, to deconstruct feudalism and lay open the workings of medieval society in terms non-academics can understand (possibly the most difficult aspect of their work). There may yet be reason to hope, as Elizabeth Brown put it, "that, with a resounding whoop, historians [will] join together, following the example of the National Assembly, to annihilate the feudal regime . . ."7 With fresh scholarship to incorporate in new publications, it may be possible to get the word out to other historians, as well as non-academics.
Then, maybe someday, medievalists can stop sighing at the mention of the F-word, and there'll be no need to repeat the refrain that there was no such thing as feudalism.
Continued on page eight: Sources and Suggested Reading.
