From: greg@silver.lcs.mit.edu (Hossein Ali Qomi (mka Gregory F. Rose))
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Homage, Fealty, and Tommyrot
Date: 11 Nov 92 07:55:13 GMT
Article-I.D.: mintaka.1992Nov11.075513.24404
Organization: The Rialto

Unto the good gentles of the Rialto does Hossein Ali Qomi send greetings
and prayers for the blessings of Allah.

I was just taking this wonderfully pleasant respite from the bridge when
I saw Tibor at Eastrealm Crown Tourney and he told me about the discussion
of homage and fealty.  And then he sent me a missive asking me to comment.
Thus do holidays pass to working days...

I find much of the discussion on homage and fealty specious and dependent
on highly biased (in the statistical sense) selections of historical
evidence.  The arguments from the Golden Fleece, the Garter, the Holy
Sepulcre, etc., are rather rules-lawyerly (I mean no offense to Arval, but
they certainly are not the central tendency of medieval knighthood -- it
seems to me that appealing to them is exemplary of the "outlier is
documentation" approach which produces occasional heraldic and onomastic
abominations because one or two outlier cases can be cited).  I think it
unwise to base fundamental considerations on outlier cases.

Definitions first.  Homage is an act of publicly acknowledging a dependent
relationship of one person upon another: he who gives homage becomes the
"man," i.e., the dependent in some fundamental sense, of the recipient.  The
usual form by which this was done throughout the middle ages (at least in
Central and Western Europe) was _immixtione manuum_ -- by the placing of the
supplicant's hands between those of the recipient.  It was also possible to
do homage by _convenientia_, i.e., a formal contract, although this was
common only in the Languedoc and Catalonia prior to the Albigensian Crusades
(probably this latter form reflected a hangover of Gallo-Roman legal
traditions, while _immixtio manuum_ was Frankish in origin [the _Annales
Einhardi_ version of the _Annales Regni Francorum_ makes this quite clear
in the Tassilo case]).  Fealty was an oath taken on sacred relics which
formally reaffirmed the promise of dependency made in the act of homage.
As fealty oaths evolved, two stages of development became clear.  First,
prior to the codifications of the 12th and 13th century jurists (I am
thinking primarily in terms of the Bracton and the authors of the 
_coutumiers_), fealty oaths were _always_ appended to acts of homage and
involved the making of a solemn oath not to harm one's lord and to deliver
the agreed-upon terms of dependency.  Such oaths were required to open a
foresworn dependent to the consequences of perjury (although, please take
note, charges of treason were still based on violation of the act of
homage -- hence the need to withdraw homage through _diffidatio_ prior to
taking arms against one's lord [the case of William Clito and the Flemish
nobility is illustrative here; Marc Bloch's wonderful article on 
_diffidatio_ and _exfestucatio_ is very useful in this regard]).  From the
late 12th-early 13th centuries onward, fealty oaths were treated by the
jurists as solemnifications of feudal land tenure and dues contracts (which
is why Bracton forbids anyone to do homage or swear fealty to another,
except the king, from whom one does not feudally hold; the same phenomenon
can be seen in the continental _coutumiers_).  However, homage and fealty
were _still_ inseparable.

Liegeancy is an important related concept.  English feudal law required that
all feudal holders declare themselves in liege homage to one particular
lord, although such holders might be in homage to all the lords from whom
they held (and had to be in such homage if they held feudally).  The lord
to whom liege homage was owed was the lord for whom the holder was
obligated to do military service in person -- for the others to whom he
was in fealty he could send others to do his service.  The English custom
was to regard the lord from whom one's principal place of residence was
held as the liege lord.  The case in France was somewhat more complicated --
multiple homages for multiple holdings were as common as in England, if not
more so.  French law oscillated between regarding holding of principal
place of residence or largest and/or most valuable holding as determinantive
of liegeancy.

Much has been made in the discussion of the "vassal of my vassal is not my
vassal" principle.  This thread is immersed in confusion.  The doctrine
in England and France _both_ held that _only_ tenants in chief were vassals
of the lord from whom they held; rear vassals held of the tenants in chief
and were _their_ vassals, not those of the lord from whom the tenants in
chief held.  However, in England law required that all fealty oaths from
the time of William I contain a proviso reserving obedience to the king,
i.e., that vassals owed obedience to the king as _subjects_ which was
superior to their feudal obligations embodied in the oath.  The French
monarchy battled in vain to obtain such a proviso.  The French crown had
only its tenuous ties on its tenants in chief.

Now, for the hoary question of knighthood.  The "point" which was agreed upon
in the discussion -- that fealty and knighthood were unrelated in the
middle ages -- is patently false on the face of it.  Prior to 1300 there is
_no_ case of a knigthing reported in the sources (excepting reigning
monarchs in their childhood and the children of reigning monarchs, and in
the latter case that is _very_ rare) in which homage was not given and
fealty not sworn.  Furthermore, there is no case outside Italy where feudal
tenure was granted without the giving of homage and the swearing of fealty
(although much of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia never held feudal tenure
at all).  Medieval nobles were not so stupid as to empower someone to bear
arms without taking some measures toward guaranteeing the loyalty of those
they so empowered.  Furthermore, the analogy in the SCA ought to be between
peerages and feudal tenure, not between SCA knighthood and medieval
knighthood (until the 12th century knighthood was not a sign of noble or
gentle birth -- it was a sign of being hired as muscle by a local castellan).
The virtues which the SCA associates with peerage are the virtues of the
feudal nobility, identifiable by major holdings (for which they had given
homage and sworn fealty), not the virtues of knighthood (which most of the
male members of the feudal nobility had received in adolesence as a matter
of course).  There is no extant medieval example, excepting monarchs in
their childhood and occasionally other senior nobles in their childhood, of
a person receiving any of the orders of knightood which Arval cited who
was not already a knight and, hence (frequently excepting monarchs, but
not always), in homage to another.  These late examples are pure red herrings.

The torturous logic whereby the SCA validates its peerage structure and,
particularly, the absurdity of Mastery of Arms may have its appeal, but
that appeal is in no sense based on history.

Hossein/Greg