fief
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: law
Etymology: From Middle French fief, from Old French fief, from Medieval Latin fevum, a variant of feudum (whence also Old French fieu, fied), from Old Frankish *fehu (“cattle, livestock”), from Proto-Germanic *fehu (“cattle, sheep”), from Proto-Indo-European *peku-, *peḱu- (“sheep”). Doublet of fee, feud, and feoff.
Inflected forms:
form: fiefs
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Land held of a superior, particularly on condition of homage, fealty, and personal service, especially military service.
pos: noun
tags: countable
historical
uncountable
examples: Fief: m[asculine] A Fief. A (Knights) fee, a Mannor, or inheritance held by homage, and fealty; and given at the firſt, in truſt, and upon promiſe of aſſiſtance, or ſervice in the wars: […] Alſo, a Tenure, or Eſtate in fief, or in fee. This word was firſt heard of, after the conqueſt of Gallia by the Francs (or ancient French-men) when their Soveraign Princes, reſerving ſome land for their own Domains, diſtributed the reſt (by whole Countreys, or large territories) among their Captains, and principal followers, on condition, that they ſhould hold of them, and aid them in their wars […]
And be it further ordained and enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That the Right and Title of the said Ecclesiastics of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice of Montreal, in and to all and singular the said Fiefs and Seigniories of the Island of Montreal, of the Lake of the Two Mountains, and of Saint Sulpice, and their several Dependencies, and in and to all Seigniorial and Feudal Rights, Privileges, Dues, and Duties arising out of and from the same, and in and to all and every the Domains, Lands, Reservations, Buildings, Messuages, Tenements, and Hereditaments within the said several Fiefs and Seigniories now held and possessed by them as Proprietors thereof, […] shall be and they are hereby confirmed and declared good, valid, and effectual in the Law; […]
The chief obligation of a sipahi was to take up residence on his fief and to be prepared at all times to rally, armed for battle, to his banner-holder's flag on the sultan's order. According to the income of his fief, every sipahi had to raise a fixed number of armed horsemen (cebeli), who followed him on campaigns.
By the 14th century, however, fief holding was in decline, as salaries and retainer fees, rather than fiefs, became standard for aristocrats in binding their knights to them, and as kings increasingly exercised royal power directly or through judges and bureaucrats, not through dukes and counts. Fief holding, which is what "feudalism" must be considered to mean if the term has any precise meaning at all—and what the term meant when it was coined in the 17th century—had become an insignificant part of social and governmental relations by the end of the Middle Ages.
Where a vassal kills the brother, son, or grandson of his lord, he should lose his fief on account of it.
Investiture was the conferring of a fief by the lord to the vassal, and the rite consisted in the handing over by the lord of some symbolic object intended to represent the act of concession.
gloss: Synonym of estate: any land, when considered as a region over which the owner exercises lordly control.
pos: noun
tags: countable
figuratively
uncountable
examples: Through the years of my childhood my maternal grandmother remained the one unforgettable presence, the strong country woman ruling over her farm like a medieval lord. On her fief I first opened my eyes to poetry and to the land. […] There was something of the ancient matriarch in her, who had given her life to the ground, who felt that on her fief in southern Luxembourg she stood in the right place.
gloss: A territory, a domain, an area over which one exercises lordly control, particularly with regard to corporate or governmental bureaucracies.
pos: noun
tags: countable
figuratively
uncountable
Synonyms: fee
Related words: enfeoff
feoff
feoffee
Fief in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)
Derived words: fiefdom
fiefhold
fiefholder
fiefholding
in fief
Translations: