Practice question · Put in order
Arrange these contributions to the debate about feudalism in the order they were made.
- The Libri Feudorum compiles Lombard law on fiefs
- Reynolds argues the fief-and-vassal system is a later projection
- Early modern lawyers reconstruct a systematic law of tenure from it
- Brown attacks "the tyranny of a construct"
- Bloch describes feudal society as a whole social type
Hints
- Two of these are medieval or early modern and three are twentieth-century.
- The compilation is twelfth-century; Bloch 1939–40, Brown 1974, Reynolds 1994.
Show the answer
- The Libri Feudorum compiles Lombard law on fiefs
- Early modern lawyers reconstruct a systematic law of tenure from it
- Bloch describes feudal society as a whole social type
- Brown attacks "the tyranny of a construct"
- Reynolds argues the fief-and-vassal system is a later projection
Why
The shape of the historiography is a long construction followed by a fast demolition. The concept took five centuries to build and thirty years to be taken apart, and no agreed replacement has emerged, which is why careful writers now say "lordship", "seigneurie" or "vassalic ties" and reserve "feudal" for the thing they are explicitly arguing about.
Practise Feudal Society
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