A refusal to perform feudal service, or any other, violation of fealty, was styled felony. Upon this and other difficulties incident to feu dal property, as in cases growing out of the succession, surrender, alienation or under-ten ure of a fief, the lord decided in a feudal court, filled by vassals, who were required to be of equal rank with the accused. To appear in these courts at the summons of the lord of the manor and accept the place of an assessor there was reckoned among the duties incident to a fief. As the relations of lords and vassals (at that time one of the most important relations in life) became more and more widely spread and the number of vassals increased at the expense of the ancient immediate subjects of the empire, the latter were thrown into the background and at length nearly forgotten.
In the 10th and I lth centuries no duty due from subjects was known except feudal duties; the whole German Empire was one vast feudal possession and the idea of feudal lords and national sovereigns were wholly confounded. If any one was neither a lord nor a vassal he was scarcely looked upon as a citizen. Hence few rich landed proprietors ventured to rely upon their own strength, without a feudal connec tion. And even most of these at last yielded to the spirit of the age and became royal vassals. The emperor, likewise, used every means to induce them to adopt such a course.
From the feudal system, the only social organization of the European states in the Mid dle Ages, a new system of civil rank arose_ The inferior nobility, a rank intermediate between the higher nobility (princes) and freemen, owes its origin, it is said, to this institution; and a regular scale of rank was formed among the vassals, without detriment, however, to the prin ciple of equal birth. The king formed the first class; the spiritual princes, bishops and imme diate abbots constituted the second; the Ur princes, dukes, landgraves, margraves and im mediate counts, the third; those barons, or rich landed proprietors, who owed fealty to no one, hut yet, on account of their limited rights or possessions, were the vassals of the emperor. the fourth; those freemen who stood in the same relation to the princes, the fifth; the vas sals of the former and the servants of the princes, the sixth; and the possessors of small fiefs, the seventh. Besides these ranks, after some centuries, the order. of citizens was formed, as being included under no one of them. The spirit of the feudal system, grounded on the prevalence of landed property, was necessarily foreign to cities which owed their origin to industry and personal property and founded thereon a new sort of power. The
principles of the feudal laws were developed and established by the Lombard lawyers of the 12th century. The collection of feudal laws and customs which is appended to the Roman code under the title of Libri Feudorum became the code of feudal law over a great part of Europe.
The feudal form of government, at a period when a spirit of independence and of opposition to despotism was abroad in the land, was well suited to put into the hands of one governor, as supreme feudal lord, the reins of the national power, to be employed against foreign enemies without endangering domestic freedom. But the purity and influence of feudal relations in time became less; and the strength of the national government declined amidst a spirit of disaffection and sedition, which became univer sal when nobles began to perceive that the feudal government was not naturally dependent on kings, hut kings on it. Indeed, the sovereigns had no other security for their sub jection than the feudal oath and the menaces of punishment, which the king might not have the ability to carry into effect, when his power was divided in most of his states, either by in vestiture or by the usurpations of the princes. Thus the vassals of the crown in Germany, Italy and the older districts of France suc ceeded in depriving the king of almost all power, even of the external honors of royalty; and never, in the two first countries and in France only after the extinction of the great baronial families, could he succeed in establish ing a new authority independent of the feudal power. See MTDTILE AGES.
Bibliography.—Abdy, 'Feudalism: Its Rise, Progress and Consequences' (London 1890); Guizot, 'Histoire de la Civilisation en France (1845) ; Hallams, Ages' (London 1818) ; Munro, W. B., 'The Seigniorial Sys tem in Canada' (New York 1907); and 'The Seigneurial System in New France' (in Vol. II, of 'Canada and Its Provinces,' Toronto 1914) ; Petersen, 'Uber den Kunnarkischen Adel im 17 Jahrhundert' (Berlin 1911); Prutz, 'The Age of Feudalism and Theocracy' (Philadelphia 1905) ; Round, 'Feudal England' (London 1909) ; Seebohni, 'The English Vil lage Community' (London 1883) ; Seignobos, translated by Dow (New York 1908) ; Stubbs, 'Constitutional History of England' (Vol. I, 1897 ed.) ; Waitz, 'Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte) (1843-78).