FEUDALISM: NORTH AND SOUTH

A strange inversion is currently taking place in the historiography of medieval Europe. For a long time, the political history of northern Europe was dominated by a feudal version of history: historians wrote confidently of a ‘feudal system’, of ‘feudal society’ and of ‘feudal monarchy’. What they meant by the use of these terms was that society was organised by feudal bonds and that feudalism defined political and social structures. Homage, fealty and feudal service were the ubiquitous signs of a true ‘system’ which embraced almost the whole of society (from princes to peasants) and nearly all social activity (warfare and political action, agriculture and social discipline). Only towns and trade remained isolated from the system's comprehensiveness. The situation in Italy was always different, as we shall see, but the historiography of feudalism has for some time seemed to be moving in different directions north and south of the Alps. While in northern Europe historians have been reducing the significance of feudalism, even propounding the rewriting of medieval history without it, Italian historians have been revising their medieval history specifically to include it. In northern Europe, decades of social history have taught us the importance of other, non-feudal social bonds, such as kinship, lordship and community, to the point where feudo-vassalic bonds have faded into the background.