Sedlar J.W. East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500
Проиграла вся раннефеодальная система аллодального землевладения.
(с) Известно кто
Sedlar J.W. East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500. 1994
Feudal relationships in the West European sense of the term rarely existed in medieval East Central Europe. Most nobles were directly subordinate to their sovereign and owed no allegiance to any intermediate lord. Oaths of fealty or ceremonies of vassalage creating a special bond between one noble lord and another were virtually nonexistent. At the same time, landholding differed from the West European feudal model by the fact that most nobles held their land in full ownership. They owed military service to the monarch not as parties to a feudal contract but simply as members of the military class. A few exceptions to this general rule did occur.
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Whether a monarch actually received the military service to which he was entitled was another matter. In Poland during the period of disunion (ca. 1138-1310), the appanage dukes could sometimes enlist their nobles' services only by granting them new privileges. After the monarchy had become more centralized, King Casimir the Great (r. 1333-70) imposed military service as an obligation upon all landholders. Polish statutes from the end of the 14th century onward recognized a formal link between military service and landholding, although this still fell far short of a feudal obligation. Holders of both fiefs and allods were supposed to provide fully equipped cavalrymen at their own expense, in numbers proportional to their incomes. The royal courts punished those who failed to do so by imposing fines or confiscation of estates.
P.S. Jean Flori. Knightly society // The New Cambridge medieval history. Volume IV c.1024-c.1198. Part 1. 2008
Contrary to the view developed in the magnificent synthesis of that great historian of feudal society Marc Bloch, the classic ‘feudalism’, which he believed to have first emerged in the regions situated in north-west France and Belgium, between the Loire and the Rhine, probably never existed, except in the Norman model and in the regions where the Norman conquerors imposed it from the top: England, Sicily and the Holy Land. There, feudalism in its entirety is revealed in the texts: the prince held the land through the intermediary of the companions to whom he had assigned it, whilst at the lower level the knights had in their turn received ‘knights’ fees’, counterparts of the Norman fiefs de haubert, which supplied their needs and enabled them to perform armed military service. In these regions, we see more clearly and more completely than elsewhere all the forms of feudalism and its rites: homage ‘by the hands’ (immixtio manuum), the oath, investiture with the fief symbolised by the handing over of material objects, for example a clod of earth or banner, rites described in detail in the classic works on feudalism.
János M. Bak. Feudalism in Hungary? // Feudalism: New Landscapes of Debate. 2011
The word noble in the kingdom of Hungary refers to a wide stratum of landowners who held the privileges of freedom from taxes, habeas corpus, and unlimited inheritance rights to their estates as long as there was a male heir within the kindred (or clan). All of them claimed to be descendants of the land-taking clans of the ninth century or, at any rate, owned their land as grant from the king, the owner of all the land in the kingdom. They may have constituted some 5 to 6 per cent of the population (in Poland, where similar conditions prevailed, it was perhaps as high as 8 to 9 per cent), so they are by no means comparable to what was called noblesse in France or Adel in Germany. Perhaps, the word freeman (which Lisa Wolverton uses for their Czech equivalents) would be a more precise characterization. Yet, from the late thirteenth century onwards, our sources call them nobiles and the term had relevance. This legal category included a few dozen magnates/aristocrats who owned several castles, or large estates with the income from and jurisdiction over thousands of dependent peasants, including townsfolk, as well as many thousands of landowners who had no subjects at all and lived in conditions rather similar to their peasant neighbours (nobiles unius sessionis). There were, of course, lesser landowners, lords with one castle and so on, in between these two extremes. But, de iure, they all enjoyed the same privileges.
The myth of the ancient, original ‘conquest’ was used in the medieval kingdom to permit virtually all landed (noble) property to be regarded as inheritable within the kindred (to the last surviving male, however far removed). There were very few exceptions. It was, therefore, comparable to what is generally called alodial property. In other words, unless explicitly stated otherwise, the land of nobiles was in theory not burdened with any duty. Every nobleman had the duty to follow the king’s flag in battle and had the right and duty to appear at noble assemblies - both of these in person - but these flowed from his fidelity to the crown, not from his landholding. Indeed, both royal (and, as we shall see, private) donations always refer to services already rendered by the grantee, for which the donation is a reward. Admittedly, the grant often goes on to say that it should encourage the grantee to even greater fidelity and service, but it is rare for a grant to stipulate some future conditio. Such ‘perscription’ would have been regarded as incompatible with noble liberty. Thanks to these legal fictions and common perceptions, anything resembling relationships between freemen burdened with required service would have been unthinkable. If there is no fief, there can be no vassal, unless I am mistaken.
В сборнике вообще много интересных статей. И часть из них дает неплохое представление, откуда, часто, берется "повсеместный феодализм". "А давайте патрон-клиентские связи феодальными назовем! Похоже же!"
The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, Volume 1: Prehistory to 1520. 2003
The Scandinavian nobility displays a number of characteristics which differentiate it from its European counterparts, the most important and distinctive being the allodial possession of land. Feudal tenure was almost unknown; land was inherited or bought, primarily inherited, and the rules of inheritance were therefore of decisive importance. Primogeniture was unknown but in the provincial laws of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was an essential difference between Norway and western Sweden on the one hand, where daughters did not inherit if they had brothers (but they received a dowry), and eastern Sweden and Denmark on the other hand, where sons inherited a whole share, daughters a half. The latter principle was adopted in the Norwegian Landlaw of 1274 and for the whole of Sweden in the Landlaw of 1350.
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In Sweden the word frälse (in origin ‘freedom’) was sometimes used, focusing on the tax exemption given in return for service.
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In the late Middle Ages one distinguished between knights and squires (Lat. milites et armigeri, German Ritter und Knappen). A knight was styled dominus or herre. Documents always state a man’s knighthood while, at least in the fourteenth century, the title of squire could be omitted, making it difficult for the historian to decide whether a man was noble or a freeholding bonde (peasant, farmer). This is especially true for Sweden where the ordinary frälse (gentry) was not conceived of as proper nobility but rather a cross between nobility and bønder (pl. of Scand. bonde). Knighthood was only conferred by kings and princes and was not hereditary; the honour could be entirely fortuitous, depending on political circumstances. It was, however, normal that the higher nobility were awarded the accolade, the lesser not.
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Mobility between bønder and low nobility continued in the fourteenth century. The Swedish Land law of 1350 laid down that at the annual inspection of the nobility’s weapons a bonde could present himself with horse and weapons and thereby obtain frälse.
При этом доля людей, признававшихся "благородными", в той же Дании в начале 16 века была раз в 30 ниже, чем в Польше, Венгрии или Испании.
Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, c.900 - c.1300. 2013
The growing number of foreign knights invited into the realm by dukes and the spread of western knightly culture were among the factors modifying relations between dukes and nobles during the thirteenth century. Since the war between sons of Henryk II the Pious for domination over Silesia (1248-51) Piast dukes, who needed strong military support, had encouraged immigration of more lowly knights from the Empire. In Silesia these migrants were so numerous and their culture so attractive for locals that during the fourteenth century almost the whole of the knightly elite became Germanized. In other regions of Piast Poland, where the position of nobles in relation to dukes was stronger, the scale of knightly migration was smaller and knightly elites were more traditionally oriented. Nevertheless, cultural changes were visible everywhere: familiy residences changed into countryside castles or strongholds, knights took part in tournaments organized by dukes and noble heraldry was born. This also changed relations with rulers along patterns more similar to west European ones. Yet, apart from Silesia, strong differences still remained in family structure (big clans rather than families as basic units of social order), and a lack of formal bonds of knights as duke’s vassals. The traditional ethics of knightly duties to a ruler bound together with allodial character of noble land ownership allowed little room for the spread of vassalage. It appeared in larger numbers only in ecclesiastical institutions, especially at bishops’ courts and tied to rich abbeys.
Piotr Górecki. Words, Concepts, and Phenomena: Knighthood, Lordship, and The Early Polish Nobility, c. 1100-c. 1350 // Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe: Concepts, Origins, Transformations. 2000
Third, at the latest by the outset of the thirteenth century, ‘knighthood’ was a formal status (ius), that is, a specific bundle of privileges (and, less explicitly, obligations) for the persons to whom it pertained. Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, that status was called ‘knightly law’ (ius militare). It was broadly comparable to the ‘laws’ (iura) that specified the social positions of several other groups, including: various categories of Polish peasants and craftspeople, German immigrants, townspeople, or, later in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Jews and Armenians. In contrast to some of these other social groups, the full substantive content of ‘knightly’ status is difficult to reconstruct because, as with the term ‘knight’ itself, the documents use it on the assumption that this was clear, and did not require definition. Therefore, while we do not have access to the origins or early meanings of the Polish ‘knighthood’, we do have access to several specific areas of formal privilege that were associated with that status continuously throughout the Middle Ages, and to the expansion of these areas of privilege between the second half of the thirteenth and the middle of the fourteenth century.
The continuous elements of ‘knightly law’ included: (1) lordship - hence the routine references to ‘knightly villages’, or to villages held ‘according to knightly law’ (iure militari); (2) free choice of the ecclesiastical recipient of tithe revenue that was collected from such villages - a privilege routinely called the ‘free tithe’ (libera decima); and (3) a specified, and relatively light, level of obligations to provide transport, hospitality, and related exactions to the Piast dukes and other powerful travellers through or near such villages - the ‘knightly transport’ (conductus militaris) - a modification of one of those routine activities by the dukes and the ‘knights’ who accompanied them which defined social privilege in medieval Poland. ... The majority of ‘knights’, or persons identified as beneficiaries of ‘knightly law’, were not, in any demonstrable fashion, associated with service. Neither service, nor ‘knighthood’, can at any point of the Middle Ages be reduced to the other; ‘knightly law’ was not, and did not become, essentially a service status or tenure. The particular knights whose status and tenure were defined in terms of service are difficult to situate within the broad framework of social privilege, and within the Polish ‘knighthood’. Their proportion among the other ‘knights’ is impossible to assess, but in some respects they were atypical - for example, most ‘knights’ held estates as familial inheritances (‘patrimonies’, according to Polish sources) rather than as acquisitions through service.
P.S. Олаус Петри. Шведская хроника. Памятники исторической мысли. 2021.
В то время в Швеции жил недюжинный человек по имени Брудер Свенссон - прославленный воин, соратник Энгельбректа, много сделавший и претерпевший ради отечества. Он содержал большой отряд, а никто ему по этой части не помогал. Он явился к марску и сказал напрямоту: ты, мол, раздаешь замки и лены друзьям и любимцам, а не тем, кто заслужил. Марск тотчас велел его схватить; наутро по приказу марска ему отрубили голову.
Нобиль (her) со значительной воинской свитой (и вотчиной) высказывает недовольство, что ему не дают кормление.
В Diarium Vadstenense - казнен в 1436-м, у Олауса Петри описание идет под 1438-м.
The Cambridge history of Scandinavia. Vol. 1: Prehistory to 1520. 2003
The situation of the Danish council was not much different from what it had previously been under strong monarchs but the Norwegian and Swedish councils were doomed to a shadowy existence under the largely absent monarch: there was no central government in his place, and the councils did not control local administration which was now in all three kingdoms based on the system of len (sing. and pl.). Len (fief) denoted both a fixed administrative district of varying size and the exercise of royal authority for some time within this district by the grantee who in return obtained a share of the royal taxes, fines, etc. he collected. Under Margrethe and Erik the len administration was a tool in the hands of the monarch in their effort to control all the kingdoms and obtain as much as possible for the direct use of the Crown. The most advantageous form of administration from this viewpoint - and also the most common one - were len held ‘by account’, whereby income and expenses were reported and the balance was rendered to the monarch. But even len ‘at farm’ existed, for which the holder payed a fixed annual sum. Castle-len (len surrounding and associated with castles) could be held ‘for service’, which meant that the castell an received the ordinary income of the len in return for maintaining and defending the castle. The monarch’s need for funds also led him to mortgage len but this happened less frequently than in the past.