In the 3rd century, on the primordially German lands near the Rhine, a new powerful alliance of Germanic tribes arose, in which the Frankish tribes played the main role. Roman historians, who were not very well versed in the diversity of barbarian tribes and peoples, called all the Germanic tribes that lived in the Rhine region Franks. In the lower reaches of the Rhine lived tribes that were later united by historians into the group of so-called Salic (maritime) Franks. It was this part of the Frankish tribes, the strongest and most organized, that began to advance westward into the Gallic regions that belonged to Rome.
In the 4th century, the Franks, as federates, official allies of Rome, finally gained a foothold in Gaul. Their society was almost unaffected by Romanization, and politically and culturally the Franks were completely independent. As allies, they helped the Western Roman Empire a lot - in 451, the Frankish army acted on the side of the Romans against the army of Attila.
At first, the Frankish tribes did not have a single leader. The scattered principalities were united only at the end of the 5th century by the leader of one of the tribes, Clovis from the Merovingian dynasty. With the help of diplomacy, and sometimes military force, Clovis subdued or destroyed the remaining Frankish rulers and gathered a powerful army under his banners. With this army, in a few years he conquered all of Rome's Gallic lands.
Having subjugated those parts of Gaul that belonged to Rome, Clovis immediately led the fight against the Visigoths, who had previously settled in the Gallic lands. These vast, but completely neglected lands during Roman rule, excellent pastures and abundance of forests were worth fighting for. Soon the Franks owned almost all of Gaul, with the exception of a small area in the south, which remained with the Visigoths. Clovis's political influence also extended to neighboring Burgundy, which he was never able to completely conquer.
In 496, Clovis, together with his people, was baptized, thus acquiring a reliable ally - the Roman Catholic Church. The Franks were perhaps the first barbarians who adopted Catholicism among all the people. Other Germanic peoples, who adopted Christianity much earlier than them, were baptized primarily into Arianism, one of the movements of early Christianity, which the official church (both Eastern and Western) subsequently declared heresy. With the support of the church, Clovis further expanded his sphere of influence, leaving to his heirs in 511 one of the largest barbarian kingdoms up to that time.
Clovis's heirs, his sons, and after them his grandchildren, continued his work. By the middle of the 6th century, the kingdom of the Franks had become the most significant in Europe. In addition to Burgundy and Gaul, the Frankish kings quickly conquered most of the Germanic tribes living in the Rhine region. The lands of Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony, the Alemanni, and all other small Frankish tribes were subject to a single royal authority, consecrated by the Roman Church. The Franks took a leading position among the peoples of new Europe, displacing the Goths from the historical scene.
Clovis, the first of the major Frankish conquerors, generously endowed his people with land holdings. Under him, the concept of allod appeared in the European economy. An allod was a plot of land that was fully owned by the owner. Land could be given, sold, exchanged and bequeathed. The entire agriculture of the feudal West grew from allods. They formed a free peasantry, thanks to which agriculture gradually began to emerge from the crisis that began even before the Great Migration.
The introduction of allodial land tenure signaled major changes throughout Frankish society. Like all Germanic peoples, the Franks retained tribal principles. The arable land on which the community lived was always public property. Each family or clan that had its own plot had all the rights to the harvest, but in no case to the land. However, as Frankish society developed, as royal power strengthened to the detriment of the power of community elders, old family ties began to collapse. Ordinary community members preferred to run their own households and be independent from their huge family. From them the Frankish peasantry began to form - personally free people, possessing both the tools of labor and all the rights to the land they cultivated.
In economic terms, the collapse of the clan and the emergence of individual allodist farmers was, of course, a positive change, especially at first. But on the other hand, from now on all the debts that the landowner incurred, he was obliged to pay on his own, without the support of his clan. Small allods gradually passed into the hands of the rich and nobility, who took land - the main wealth in the Middle Ages - from debtors.
The royal warriors also received large plots of land. Clovis gave these allotments, called benefices, only for service and only for the duration of the soldiers’ service. His heirs transferred benefices to the category of inherited gifts. The third (and largest, besides the king) landowner in the Merovingian kingdom was the church. The kings gave the church huge land holdings, into which plots of nearby allods were gradually added. Under the Merovingians, the practice of patronage was introduced, when a peasant came under the protection of a large landowner from the nobility, transferring his plot to him. The Church was also willing to accept small landowners under its tutelage. As a rule, in this case, the peasant gave his allod to the church, and in return received a precarium for life - a slightly larger plot, for which he was also obliged to work an annual corvee or pay quitrent. The widespread enslavement of the peasantry began. By the beginning of the 10th century, there were almost no allods as such left in Europe. They were supplanted by feuds - a new form of land ownership, which owed its emergence to the new, vassal-seigneurial hierarchy of relations in medieval society.
Do you know that:
- Merovingians - the first royal dynasty of the Frankish state, ruling from 457 to 715.
- Arianism - a movement in the Christian Church in the 4th - 6th centuries. The founder of the doctrine, the priest Arius, argued that God the Father is higher than God the Son (Christ).
- Allodium (from Old High German al- all and od- possession) - individual or family land ownership in the Dark Ages and Early Middle Ages in Western Europe.
- Benefice – conditional fixed-term land grant for performing military or administrative service.
- precarious - use of land granted by the owner for an agreed period of time for a fee.
A classic example of early feudal society on the territory of the Western Roman Empire conquered by Germanic tribes was the society of the Franks, in which the decomposition of the primitive communal system was accelerated as a result of the influence of Roman orders.
1. Frankish state under the Merovingians
Origin of the Franks. Formation of the Frankish Kingdom
In historical monuments, the name of the Franks appeared starting from the 3rd century, and Roman writers called many Germanic tribes, bearing different names, Franks. Apparently, the Franks represented a new, very extensive tribal association, which included a number of Germanic tribes that merged or mixed during the migrations. The Franks split into two large branches - the coastal, or Salic, Franks (from the Latin word "salum", which means sea), who lived at the mouth of the Rhine, and the coastal, or Ripuarian, Franks (from the Latin word "ripa", which means shore) who lived further south along the banks of the Rhine and Meuse. The Franks repeatedly crossed the Rhine, raiding Roman possessions in Gaul or settling there as allies of Rome.
In the 5th century The Franks captured a significant part of the territory of the Roman Empire, namely North-Eastern Gaul. At the head of the Frankish possessions were the leaders of the former tribes. Among the leaders of the Franks, Merovey is known, under whom the Franks fought against Attila on the Catalaunian fields (451) and from whose name the name of the royal family of the Merovingians came. The son and successor of Merovey was the leader Childeric, whose grave was found near Tournai. The son and heir of Childeric was the most prominent representative of the Merovingian family - King Clovis (481-511).
Having become king of the Salic Franks, Clovis, together with other leaders who, like him, acted in the interests of the Frankish nobility, undertook the conquest of vast regions of Gaul. In 486, the Franks captured the Soissons region (the last Roman possession in Gaul), and subsequently the territory between the Seine and Loire. At the end of the 5th century. The Franks inflicted a strong defeat on the German tribe of the Alemanni (Alamans) and partially drove them out of Gaul back across the Rhine.
In 496, Clovis was baptized, accepting Christianity along with 3 thousand of his warriors. The baptism was a clever political move on Clovis's part. He was baptized according to the rite accepted by the Western (Roman) Church. The Germanic tribes moving from the Black Sea region - the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, as well as the Vandals and Burgundians - were, from the point of view of the Roman Church, heretics, since they were Arians who denied some of its dogmas.
At the beginning of the 6th century. Frankish squads opposed the Visigoths, who owned all of Southern Gaul. At the same time, the great benefits flowing from the baptism of Clovis affected. The entire clergy of the Western Christian Church living beyond the Loire took his side, and many cities and fortified points that served as the residence of these clergy immediately opened their gates to the Franks. In the decisive battle of Poitiers (507), the Franks won a complete victory over the Visigoths, whose dominance from then on was limited only to Spain.
Thus, as a result of the conquests, a large Frankish state was created, which covered almost all of former Roman Gaul. Under the sons of Clovis, Burgundy was annexed to the Frankish kingdom.
The reasons for such rapid successes of the Franks, who still had very strong communal ties, were that they settled in North-Eastern Gaul in compact masses, without dissolving among the local population (like, for example, the Visigoths). Moving deeper into Gaul, the Franks did not break ties with their former homeland and constantly drew new strength for conquest there. At the same time, the kings and Frankish nobility were often content with the vast lands of the former imperial fiscus, without entering into conflicts with the local Gallo-Roman population. Finally, the clergy provided Clovis with constant support during his conquests.
"Salic truth" and its meaning
The most important information about the social system of the Franks is provided by the so-called “Salic Truth” - a record of the ancient judicial customs of the Franks, believed to have been produced under Clovis. This law book examines in detail various cases from the life of the Franks and lists fines for a wide variety of crimes, ranging from theft of a chicken to a ransom for the murder of a person. Therefore, according to the “Salic truth” it is possible to restore the true picture of the life of the Salic Franks. The Ripuarian Franks, the Burgundians, the Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic tribes also had such legal codes - “Pravda”.
The time of recording and editing of this ordinary (from the word custom) folk law was the 6th-9th centuries, i.e., the time when the clan system of the German tribes had already completely decomposed, private ownership of land appeared and classes and the state arose. To protect private property, it was necessary to firmly establish those judicial penalties that were to be applied to persons who violated the right of this property. New social relations that arose from clans, such as territorial or neighborly relations, ties between communal peasants, the possibility for a person to renounce kinship, the subordination of free Franks to the king and his officials, etc., also required firm fixation.
“Salic truth” was divided into titles (chapters), and each title in turn into paragraphs. A large number of titles were devoted to determining the fines that had to be paid for all kinds of thefts. But the “Salic Truth” took into account the most diverse aspects of the life of the Franks, so it also contained the following titles: “About murders or if someone steals someone else’s wife”, “About if someone grabs a free woman by the arm, hand or finger”, “About four-legged animals, if they kill a person”, “About a servant in witchcraft”, etc.
The title “On insult by words” defined punishments for insult. The title “On mutilation” stated: “If someone plucks out another’s eye, he will be sentenced to pay 62 1/2 solids”; “If his nose is torn off, he will be sentenced to pay... 45 solids”; “If an ear is torn off, you will be sentenced to pay 15 solidi,” etc. (The solidi was a Roman monetary unit. According to the 6th century, it was believed that 3 solidi was equal to the cost of a cow “healthy, sighted and horned.”)
Of particular interest in the Salic Truth are, of course, the titles, on the basis of which one can judge the economic system of the Franks and the social and political relations that existed among them.
Economy of the Franks according to Salic Truth
According to the Salic Truth, the economy of the Franks was at a much higher level than the economy of the Germans, described by Tacitus. The productive forces of society by this time had developed and grown significantly. Livestock farming undoubtedly still played an important role in it. “The Salic Truth” established in unusual detail what fine must be paid for the theft of a pig, for a one-year-old piglet, for a pig stolen together with a piglet, for a suckling pig separately, for a pig stolen from a locked barn, etc. Also in detail in the “Salic Truth” Pravda" considered all cases of theft of large horned animals, sheep theft, goat theft, and cases of horse theft.
Fines were established for stolen poultry (chickens, roosters, geese), which indicated the development of poultry farming. There were titles that spoke of the theft of bees and hives from the apiary, of damage and theft of fruit trees from the garden ( The Franks already knew how to graft fruit trees by cuttings.), about the theft of grapes from a vineyard. Fines were determined for the theft of a wide variety of fishing gear, boats, hunting dogs, birds and animals tamed for hunting, etc. This means that the Frank economy included a wide variety of industries - livestock farming, beekeeping, horticulture, and viticulture. At the same time, such branches of economic life as hunting and fishing have not lost their importance. Cattle, poultry, bees, garden trees, vineyards, as well as boats, fishing boats, etc., were already the private property of the Franks.
The main role in the economy of the Franks, according to the Salic Truth, was played by agriculture. In addition to grain crops, the Franks sowed flax and planted vegetable gardens, planting beans, peas, lentils and turnips.
Plowing at this time was carried out with oxen; the Franks were well acquainted with both the plow and the harrow. Losing the harvest and damaging a plowed field was punishable by fines. The Franks took the resulting harvest from the fields on carts to which horses were harnessed. The grain harvests were quite abundant, for the grain was already stored in barns or barns, and at the house of every free Frankish peasant there were outbuildings. The Franks made extensive use of water mills.
Community-mark among the Franks
“Salic Truth” also gives an answer to the most important question for determining the social system of the Franks: who owned the land - the main means of production in that era. The estate land, according to Salic Pravda, was already in the individual ownership of each franc. This is indicated by the high fines paid by all persons who in one way or another damaged and destroyed fences or entered other people's yards for the purpose of stealing. On the contrary, meadows and forests continued to be in collective ownership and in the collective use of the entire peasant community. The herds that belonged to the peasants of neighboring villages grazed in common meadows, and any peasant could take any tree from the forest, including one that had been cut down, if it had a mark on it that it had been cut down more than a year ago.
As for arable land, it was not yet private property, since the entire peasant community as a whole retained the supreme rights to this land. But arable land was no longer redistributed and was in the hereditary use of each individual peasant. The community's supreme rights to arable land were expressed in the fact that none of the community members had the right to sell their land, and if a peasant died without leaving behind sons (who inherited the plot of land that he cultivated during his lifetime), this land was returned to the community and fell into the hands of its “neighbors,” i.e., all its members. But each communal peasant had his own plot of land for the period of plowing, sowing and ripening of crops, fenced it in and passed it on to his sons. Land could not be inherited by a woman.
The community that existed at this time was no longer the tribal community that Caesar and Tacitus had described in their time. New productive forces required new relations of production. The tribal community was replaced by a neighboring community, which, using the ancient German name, Engels called a brand. The village that owned certain lands no longer consisted of relatives. A significant part of the inhabitants of this village still continued to remain connected by tribal relations, but at the same time, strangers, immigrants from other places, people who settled in this village either by agreement with other community members, or in accordance with a royal charter, also lived in the village.
In the title “On Migrants”, “Salic Truth” established that anyone could settle in someone else’s village if none of its inhabitants protested against this. But if there was at least one person who opposed this, the immigrant could not settle in such a village. Next, the procedure for eviction and punishment (in the form of a fine) of such a migrant was considered, whom the community did not want to accept as one of its members, “neighbors,” and who moved into the village without permission. At the same time, the Salic Pravda stated that “if no protest is presented to the resettled person within 12 months, he must remain inviolable, like other neighbors.”
The immigrant remained untouchable even if he had a corresponding letter from the king. On the contrary, anyone who dared to protest against such a letter had to pay a huge fine of 200 solids. On the one hand, this indicated the gradual transformation of the community from a tribal community to a neighboring, or territorial, community. On the other hand, this testified to the strengthening of royal power and the identification of a special layer that rose above the ordinary, free community members and enjoyed certain privileges.
Disintegration of family relationships. The emergence of property and social inequality in Frankish society
Of course, this does not mean that clan relations no longer played any role in Frankish society. Ancestral ties and tribal remnants were still very strong, but they were more and more replaced by new social ties. The Franks still continued to have such customs as paying money for the murder of a person to his relatives, inheriting property (except land) on the maternal side, paying part of the ransom (wergeld) for murder for their insolvent relative, etc.
At the same time, “Salicheskaya Pravda” recorded both the possibility of transferring property to a non-relative, and the possibility of voluntary withdrawal from the clan union, the so-called “renunciation of kinship.” Title 60 discussed in detail the procedure associated with this, which apparently had already become common in Frankish society. The person who wanted to renounce his kinship had to appear at a meeting of judges elected by the people, break three branches measuring a cubit over his head, scatter them in four directions and say that he renounces the inheritance and all accounts with his relatives. And if then one of his relatives was killed or died, the person who renounced the relationship was not supposed to participate in either the inheritance or the receipt of the wergeld, and the inheritance of this person himself went to the treasury.
Who benefited from leaving the clan? Of course, the richest and most powerful people, who were under the direct patronage of the king, did not want to help their less wealthy relatives and were not interested in receiving their small inheritance. There were already such people in Frankish society.
Property inequality among members of the community is described in one of the most important titles for characterizing the social system of the Franks in the title of the Salic Truth, entitled “On a Handful of Earth.” If someone takes the life of a person, this title says, and, having given up all the property, you are not able to pay what is due according to the law, he must present 12 relatives who will swear that he has no property either on earth or under the earth. what has already been given to them. Then he must enter his house, pick up a handful of earth from its four corners, stand on the threshold, facing the inside of the house, and throw this earth over his shoulder with his left hand towards his father and brothers.
If the father and brothers have already paid, then he must throw the same land at his three closest relatives on his mother’s and father’s sides. “Then, in [one] shirt, without a waistband, without shoes, with a stake in his hand, he must jump over the fence, and these three [maternal relatives] must pay half of what is not enough to pay the penalty required by law. The other three, who are related on their father’s side, must do the same. If any of them turns out to be too poor to pay the share that falls on him, he must, in turn, throw a handful of land at one of the wealthier ones, so that he pays everything according to the law.” The stratification of free francs into poor and rich is also indicated by titles about debt and methods of repaying it, about loans and their collection from the debtor, etc.
There is no doubt that Frankish society at the beginning of the 6th century. had already disintegrated into several layers distinct from each other. The bulk of Frankish society at this time was made up of free Frankish peasants who lived in neighboring communities and among whom numerous remnants of the tribal system were still preserved. The independent and full-fledged position of the free Frankish peasant is indicated by the high wergeld, which was paid for him in the event of his murder. This wergeld, according to the Salic Truth, was equal to 200 solidi and was in the nature of a ransom, not a punishment, since it was paid in case of accidental murder, and if a person died from a blow or bite of any domestic animal (in the latter case, ergeld, as usually paid by the owner of the animal in half). So, the direct producers of material goods, i.e. free Frankish peasants, at the beginning of the 6th century. still enjoyed quite a lot of rights.
At the same time, a layer of new service nobility emerged in Frankish society, whose special privileged position was emphasized by a significantly larger wergeld than that paid for a simple free franc. The Salic Truth does not say a word about the former clan nobility, which also indicates the collapse of clan relations that has already occurred. Some of this ancestral nobility died out, some were destroyed by rising kings who were afraid of their rivals, and some joined the ranks of the serving nobility that surrounded the kings.
For a representative of the nobility who was in the service of the king, a triple wergeld was paid, i.e. 600 solidi. Thus, the life of a count - a royal official or the life of a royal warrior - was already valued much more expensive than the life of a simple Frankish peasant, which indicated the deep social stratification of Frankish society. The vergeld paid for the murder of a representative of the serving nobility was tripled a second time (i.e., it reached 1,800 solids) if the murder was committed while the murdered person was in royal service (during a campaign, etc.).
The third layer in Frankish society consisted of semi-free people, the so-called litas, as well as freedmen, that is, former slaves who were set free. For semi-free and freedmen, only half the wergeld of a simple free franc was paid, i.e. 100 solidi, which emphasized their inferior position in Frankish society. As for the slave, it was no longer a wergeld that was paid for his murder, but simply a fine.
So, tribal ties in Frankish society disappeared, giving way to new social relations, the relations of the emerging feudal society. The beginning of the process of feudalization of Frankish society was most clearly reflected in the opposition of the free Frankish peasantry to the service and military nobility. This nobility gradually turned into a class of large landowners - feudal lords, for it was the Frankish nobility, who were in the service of the king, who received large land holdings as private property when they captured Roman territory. The existence in Frankish society (along with the free peasant community) of large estates in the hands of the Frankish and surviving Gallo-Roman nobility is evidenced by the chronicles (chronicles) of that time, as well as all those titles of the “Salic truth” that speak of the master's servants or courtyard servants - slaves (vinedressers, blacksmiths, carpenters, grooms, swineherds and even goldsmiths) who served the vast master's household.
Political system of Frankish society. Rise of royal power
Profound changes in the area of socio-economic relations of Frankish society led to changes in its political system. Using the example of Clovis, one can easily trace how the former power of the military leader of the tribe was transformed already at the end of the 5th century. into hereditary royal power. A remarkable story by one chronicler (chronicler), Gregory of Tours (VI century), has been preserved, characterizing this transformation in a visual form.
Once, says Gregory of Tours, during the struggle for the city of Soissons, the Franks captured rich booty in one of the Christian churches. Among the captured booty there was also a valuable bowl of amazing size and beauty. The bishop of the Reims church asked Clovis to return this cup, considered sacred, to the church. Clovis, who wanted to live in peace with the Christian Church, agreed, but added that in Soissons there should still be a division of the spoils between his soldiers and that if during the division of the spoils he received a cup, he would give it to the bishop.
Then the chronicler says that in response to the king’s request to give him the cup to transfer it to the church, the warriors replied: “Do whatever you please, for no one can resist your power.” The chronicler's story thus testifies to the greatly increased authority of royal power. But among the warriors there were still vivid memories of the times when the king stood only slightly higher than his warriors, was obliged to share the spoils with them by lot, and at the end of the campaign often turned from a military leader into an ordinary representative of the clan nobility. That is why one of the warriors, as stated further in the chronicle, did not agree with the rest of the warriors, raised an ax and cut the cup, saying: “You will not get anything from this except what is due to you by lot.”
This time the king remained silent, took the damaged cup and handed it to the bishop's envoy. However, as follows from the story of Gregory of Tours, Clovis’s “meekness and patience” were feigned. After a year, he ordered his entire army to gather and inspected the weapons. Approaching the rebellious warrior during the inspection, Clovis declared that the warrior’s weapons were in disarray, and, snatching the ax from the warrior, threw it to the ground, and then cut off his head. “That’s what you did with the cup in Soissons,” he said, and when he freaked out, he ordered the others to go home, “inspiring great fear.” So, in a clash with a warrior who was trying to defend the previous order of dividing the spoils between the members of the squad and its leader, Clovis emerged victorious, establishing the principle of the exclusive position of the king in relation to the members of the squad that served him.
By the end of his reign, Clovis, a cunning, cruel and treacherous man, no longer had rivals in the face of other representatives of the nobility. He sought sole power by any means. Having conquered Gaul and gained enormous land wealth into his own hands, Clovis destroyed the other tribal leaders who stood in his way.
Having destroyed the leaders, as well as many of his noble relatives for fear that they would take away his royal power, Clovis extended it to all of Gaul. And then, having gathered his close associates, he said to them: “Woe is me, for I am left as a stranger among strangers and have no relatives who could give me help if a misfortune happened.” “But he said this,” the chronicler wrote, “not because he was grieving over their death, but out of cunning, calculating whether he could accidentally find another of his relatives in order to take his life.” In this way Clovis became the sole king of the Franks.
The Salic Truth also testifies to the increased importance of royal power. According to the data available in it, the royal court was the highest authority. In the regions, the king ruled through his officials - the counts and their assistants. The general tribal people's assembly no longer existed. It was replaced by military reviews convened and conducted by the king. These are the so-called “March fields”. True, in villages and hundreds (unification of several villages) a people's court (mallus) was still preserved, but gradually this court also began to be headed by a count. All “objects belonging to the king,” according to the Salic Truth, were protected by a triple fine. Representatives of the church were also in a privileged position. The life of a priest was protected by a triple wergeld (600 solids), and if anyone took the life of a bishop, he had to pay an even larger wergeld - 900 solids. Robberies and burnings of churches and chapels were punishable by heavy fines. The growth of state power required its sanctification with the help of the church, so the Frankish kings multiplied and protected church privileges.
So, the political system of the Franks was characterized by the growth and strengthening of royal power. This was facilitated by the king’s warriors, his officials, his associates and representatives of the church, i.e., the emerging layer of large landowners-feudal lords who needed royal power to protect their newly emerged possessions and to expand them. The growth of royal power was also facilitated by those wealthy and wealthy peasants who emerged from among the free community members, from whom a layer of small and medium-sized feudal lords subsequently grew.
Frankish society in the VI-VII centuries.
An analysis of the Salic Truth shows that in the development of Frankish society after the Franks conquered the territory of Gaul, both Roman and Frankish social orders played a major role. On the one hand, the Franks ensured a faster destruction of slaveholding remnants. “Ancient slavery has disappeared, the ruined, impoverished free people have disappeared,” wrote Engels, “who despised work as a slave occupation. Between the Roman column and the new serf stood a free Frankish peasant" ( F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, pp. 160-161.). On the other hand, not only the final disintegration of clan relations among the Franks, but also the rapid disappearance of their communal ownership of arable land should be attributed to the influence of Roman social order. By the end of the 6th century. it had already transformed from hereditary possession into full, freely alienable land ownership (allod) of the Frankish peasant.
The very resettlement of the Franks to Roman territory broke and could not help but break alliances based on blood kinship. Constant movements mixed tribes and clans among themselves, and alliances of small rural communities arose that still continued to own land together. However, this communal, collective ownership of arable land, forests and meadows was not the only form of ownership among the Franks. Along with it, in the community itself there existed, long before the resettlement, the individual ownership of the Franks for a plot of land, livestock, weapons, a house and household utensils.
In the territory conquered by the Franks, the private land ownership of the Gallo-Romans, preserved from antiquity, continued to exist. In the process of conquering Roman territory, large private ownership of the land of the Frankish king, his warriors, servants and associates arose and became established. The coexistence of different types of property did not last long, and the communal form of ownership of arable land, which corresponded to a lower level of productive forces, gave way to allod.
The edict of King Chilperic (second half of the 6th century), who established, in a change to the “Salic truth,” the inheritance of land not only by the sons, but also by the daughters of the deceased, and in no case by his neighbors, shows that this process occurred very quickly.
The appearance of land allod among the Frankish peasants was of utmost importance. The transformation of communal ownership of arable land into private ownership, i.e., the transformation of this land into a commodity, meant that the emergence and development of large land ownership, associated not only with the conquest of new territories and the seizure of free land, but also with the loss of the peasant’s right of ownership to the plot of land he cultivates became a matter of time.
Thus, as a result of the interaction of socio-economic processes that took place in ancient Germanic society and in the late Roman Empire, Frankish society entered the period of early feudalism.
Immediately after the death of Clovis, the early feudal Frankish state was fragmented into the fiefs of his four sons, then united for a short time and then fragmented again. Only Clovis's great-grandson Clothar II and great-great-grandson Dagobert I managed to achieve a longer unification of the state's territory in one hand at the beginning of the 7th century. But the power of the Merovingian royal family in Frankish society was based on the fact that they possessed a large land fund, created as a result of the conquests of Clovis and his successors, and this land fund during the 6th and especially the 7th centuries. melted continuously. The Merovingians generously distributed awards to their warriors, their service people, and the church. As a result of the Merovingians' continuous land grants, the real basis of their power was greatly diminished. Representatives of other, larger and richer landowning families gained power in society.
In this regard, the kings from the Merovingian clan were pushed into the background and received the nickname “lazy”, and actual power in the kingdom ended up in the hands of individual people from the landowning nobility, the so-called major-domes (major-domes were originally called the senior managers of the royal court who were in charge of the palace household and palace servants).
Over time, the mayors concentrated in their hands all military and administrative power in the kingdom and became its de facto rulers. “The king,” the chronicler wrote, “had to be content with just the title and, sitting on the throne with long hair and a growing beard, represent only one likeness of the sovereign, listen to the ambassadors who appeared from everywhere and give them answers at parting, as if on his own behalf.” , memorized and dictated to him in advance... The administration of the state and everything that needed to be carried out or arranged in internal or external affairs, all this lay in the care of the mayordomo.” At the end of the 7th and beginning of the 8th century. The majordomos, who came from the rich noble family of the Carolingians, especially strengthened, which laid the foundation for a new dynasty on the throne of the Frankish kings - the Carolingian dynasty (VIII-X centuries).
2. Empire of Charlemagne
Formation of the Carolingian Empire.
In 715 Charles Martell, who ruled until 741, became the mayor of the Frankish state. Charles Martell made a series of campaigns across the Rhine into Thuringia and Alemannia, which again became independent under the “lazy” Merovingian kings, and subjugated both regions to his power. He re-annexed Frisia, or Friesland (the country of the Frisian tribe), to the Frankish state, and forced the Saxons and Bavarians to pay him tribute again.
At the beginning of the 8th century. The Franks had to face the Arabs, who penetrated from the Iberian Peninsula into Southern Gaul in order to tear it away from the Frankish state. Charles Martell hastily assembled military detachments to repel the Arabs, since the Arab light cavalry advanced very quickly (along the old Roman road that led from the south to Poitiers, Tours, Orleans and Paris). The Franks met the Arabs at Poitiers (732) and won a decisive victory, forcing them to turn back.
After the death of Charles Martel, his son Pepin the Short, so nicknamed for his small stature, became the mayor. Under Pepin, the Arabs were finally expelled from Gaul. In the Trans-Rhine regions, Pepin intensively carried out the Christianization of the Germanic tribes, trying to reinforce the power of arms with church preaching. In 751, Pepin the Short imprisoned the last Merovingian in a monastery and became king of the Franks. Before this, Pepin sent an embassy to the Pope asking whether it was good that the Frankish state was ruled by kings who did not have actual royal power? To which the pope replied: “It is better to call the one who has power king than the one who lives without royal power.” After this, the pope crowned Pepin the Short. For this service, Pepin helped the pope fight against the Lombard state and, having conquered the Ravenna region they had previously captured in Italy, handed it over to the pope. The transfer of the Ravenna region marked the beginning of the secular power of the papacy.
In 768 Pepin the Short died. Power passed to his son, Charlemagne (768 - 814), who, as a result of a series of wars, managed to create a very large empire. These wars were waged by Charles the Great, as well as his predecessors, in the interests of large landowners-feudal lords, one of whose prominent representatives he himself was, and were caused by the desire of large Frankish landowners to seize new lands and to forcefully enslave peasants who still retained their freedom .
In total, more than 50 military campaigns were carried out under Charles, half of them he led himself. Charles was very active in his military and administrative enterprises, skillful in the field of diplomacy and extremely cruel towards the Frankish masses and the population of the lands he conquered.
The first war started by Charlemagne was the war with the German tribe of the Saxons (772), which occupied the entire territory of Lower Germany (from the Rhine to the Elbe). Even at this time the Saxons were still at the last stage of the primitive communal system. In a long and stubborn struggle with the Frankish feudal lords, who seized their lands and brought them enslavement, the Saxons showed strong resistance and showed great courage. For 33 years Charlemagne fought to subjugate the free Saxon peasants. With fire and sword, he spread Christianity among the Saxons, believing that the conquest should be secured by Christianizing the Saxons, who adhered to pre-Christian cults. The conquest of the Saxons was completed only in 804, when the Saxon nobility took the side of the Frankish feudal lords in the fight against their own people.
Simultaneously with the Saxon wars, Charles, at the request of the Pope, and also in his own interests, since he feared the strengthening of the Lombards, launched two campaigns against them. Having defeated the Lombards who lived in Northern Italy in the valley of the Po River, Charlemagne assumed the iron crown of the Lombard kings and began to be called the king of the Franks and Lombards (774). However, Charles did not give the captured Lombard regions to the Pope.
Charles also launched a campaign against the German tribe of Bavarians, depriving them of their independence. Military campaigns under Charlemagne were also directed against the nomadic tribe of Avars, who lived at that time in Pannonia. Having destroyed their main fortress (791), Charles captured huge booty in the palace of the Avar Khagan (Khan). Having defeated the Avars, Charles created a special border region - Pannonskuvd Marka.
Border clashes under Charlemagne also occurred with the tribes of the Western Slavs, whose settlements were located on the eastern borders of his empire. But the resistance of the Slavic tribes did not allow Charlemagne to include their territories in the empire. He was even forced to enter into alliances with the Slavic nobility against common enemies (for example, with the Obodrites against the Saxons or with the Slovenes from Horutania against the nomadic Avars) and limit himself only to the construction of fortresses on the Slavic border and the collection of tribute from the Slavic population living near it.
Charlemagne made a number of military campaigns beyond the Pyrenees (778-812). On the territory conquered beyond the Pyrenees, a border region was created - the Spanish March.
So, as a result of long aggressive wars waged by the mayors and kings of the Carolingian family, a vast state was created, only slightly inferior in size to the former Western Roman Empire.
And then Charles decided to declare himself emperor. In 800, Pope Leo III, interested in spreading the influence of the Roman Church in all the lands conquered by the Franks, and therefore in a direct alliance with Charlemagne, crowned him with the imperial crown.
The emerging empire enjoyed great influence in the international affairs of its time. The supreme power of the emperor was recognized by the kings of Galicia and Asturias. The kings of Scotland and the leaders of the Irish tribes were on friendly terms with him. Even the distant Baghdad caliph Harun ar-Rashid, who sought to rely on an alliance with the empire of Charlemagne in the fight against Byzantium and the Cordoba Caliphate in Spain, sent rich gifts to Charles.
At the beginning of the 9th century. Charlemagne's empire had to face a serious danger for the first time in the form of Norman pirates. The Normans, as the Scandinavian tribes inhabiting Scandinavia and Jutland were called at that time, included the ancestors of modern Norwegians, Swedes and Danes. In connection with what happened in the 8th and 9th centuries. among the Scandinavian tribes, through the process of decomposition of clan relations, the sharp separation of the nobility and the strengthening of the role of military leaders and their squads, these leaders began to undertake distant sea voyages for the purpose of trade and robbery. Later, these pirate campaigns became a real disaster for the population of Western Europe.
Establishment of feudal ownership of land in Frankish society in the 8th-9th centuries.
The basis of changes in the social system of the Franks in the 8th and 9th centuries. There was a complete revolution in the relations of land ownership: the ruin of the mass of the free Frankish peasantry and the simultaneous growth of the property of large landowners due to the absorption of small peasant property. Feudal land ownership arose and began to develop among the Franks back in the 6th century. However, under the Merovingians it did not play a leading role in the social system. The main unit of Frankish society during this period was the free peasant community - the mark.
Of course, the development of private land ownership in those days inevitably led to the growth of large land ownership, but at first this process proceeded relatively slowly. Feudal ownership of land became dominant only as a result of the agrarian revolution in the 8th and 9th centuries. On this occasion, Engels wrote: “... before the free Franks could become anyone’s settlers, they had to somehow lose the allod they received during the occupation of the land, their own class of landless free Franks had to be formed” ( F. Engels, The Frankish period, K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. XVI, part I, p. 397.).
Due to the low level of development of productive forces, the small peasant often found himself unable to retain the plot of land he had just received. The small peasant's lack of opportunity to expand his farm, extremely imperfect agricultural technology and, as a result, the extreme helplessness of the direct producer in the face of all kinds of natural disasters, steadily led him to ruin. At the same time, the non-stop process of internal decomposition of the community itself also led to the separation of rich peasants from among the free community members, who gradually took over the lands of their impoverished neighbors and turned into small and medium-sized feudal owners.
So, as a result of economic changes, the free Frankish peasant lost his land property and fell into complete economic dependence both on large landowners (combatants, king officials, church dignitaries, etc.) and on smaller feudal lords. This process of peasants losing their land was accelerated by a number of reasons; internecine wars of the Frankish nobility and long military service, which separated the peasants from their farming for a long time, often into the hottest hole; burdensome taxes, which fell heavily on the peasants as state power strengthened, and unbearable fines for various types of offenses; forced contributions to the church and direct violence from large landowners.
The difficult situation of the Frankish peasants led to the fact that in the 8th and 9th centuries. The practice of so-called precaries became widespread. Precarity, already known to Roman law, acquired its name from the Latin word “preces”, which means “request”, and even under the Merovingians meant the transfer by a large landowner of a plot of land to a landless peasant for use or possession. For the land received, the peasant was obliged to bear a number of duties in favor of its owner. This was the first, earliest form of medieval precarity.
Another form, the most common in the 8th and 9th centuries, was the following: the peasant, seeing that he was unable to retain his land, “gave” it to a powerful neighbor, and especially often to the church, since the danger of losing the land most often was for him it is precisely the presence of such a powerful neighbor. Then the peasant received this land back, but not as his own property, but as a lifelong, sometimes hereditary, holding and again bore certain duties in favor of the landowner. For this, the latter guarded his farm.
There were collections of so-called formulas (i.e., samples of legal acts) that formalized such transfers of land. Here is one of the responses of the abbess of the convent to a request for land to be given to the precarity. “To the sweetest woman such and such am I, abbess so and so. Since it is known that you own your property in such and such a district recently behind the monastery of St. Mary approved and for this she asked us and the named monastery to give [you] a precarity, then with this letter they approved for you, so that while you are alive, you would own and keep this land in use, but would not have any right There was no way to alienate it, and if I decided to do this, I would immediately lose the land...”
Sometimes a precarist received, in addition to his former land, given to him as a precarist, an additional plot of land. This was the third form of precarity, which served mainly the church to attract small owners, turn them into precarists and use their labor on still uncultivated lands. It is clear that both the second and third forms of precarity contributed to the growth of large landownership.
So, precaria was a form of land relations that, in cases where it connected representatives of two antagonistic classes, led simultaneously to the loss of the free Frankish peasant's ownership of the land and to the growth of feudal land ownership.
Within the ruling class of landowners at this time, special land relations also developed in connection with the spread of so-called benefices, introduced under Charles Martel after the battle with the Arabs at Poitiers (the Latin word “beneficiura” literally meant beneficence). The essence of the benefice boiled down to the following: land ownership was transferred to one person or another not as full ownership, as was the case under the Merovingians. The person who received the benefices had to perform military service in favor of the one who gave him this land. In this way, a layer of service people was formed, obligated to perform military service for the land holdings they received. If the beneficiary refused to perform military service, he also lost his benefits. If a beneficiary or grantee of a beneficiary died, the latter returned to its owner or to his heirs. Thus, the beneficiary could not be inherited by the person who received it, and was only a lifelong and conditional land ownership.
Charles Martell received the land he needed to distribute benefices by confiscating part of the church property for his own benefit (this was the so-called secularization, or the transfer of church land into the hands of secular authorities). Of course, the church was very dissatisfied with this, despite the fact that it was in all the conquered areas. received new lands and new privileges. Therefore, the successor of Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, although he did not return the selected lands to the church, nevertheless obliged the beneficiaries to pay certain contributions in its favor.
The introduction of benefits, which were distributed along with the peasants sitting on the granted land, led to a further increase in the dependence of the peasants on the landowner and to increased exploitation.
In addition, military power was gradually concentrated in the hands of the ruling class. From now on, large landowners could use the weapons in their hands not only against external enemies, but also against their own peasants, forcing them to bear all kinds of duties in favor of the land owners.
Enslavement of the Frankish peasantry
The growth of large landownership at the expense of free peasants who lost ownership of land was accompanied by their enslavement. A bankrupt small owner was often forced not only to give his land to a large landowner, but also to become personally dependent on him, that is, to lose his freedom.
“To my master brother so-and-so,” it was written in the servitude letters on behalf of the peasant. “Everyone knows that extreme poverty and heavy worries have befallen me and I have absolutely no means of living or clothing. Therefore, at my request, in my greatest need, you did not refuse to give me so many solids from your money; and I have nothing to pay these solids with. Therefore, I asked to complete and approve the enslavement of my free personality to you, so that from now on you will have complete freedom to do with me everything that you are authorized to do with your natural slaves, namely, sell, barter, and punish me.”
Free peasants could become dependent on a large feudal lord and on more favorable terms, without initially losing their personal freedom and becoming, as it were, under the protection of a large landowner (the so-called commendation, from the Latin word “commendatio” - “I entrust myself”). But it is absolutely clear that the commendation of a peasant, as well as his transformation into a precarist of some large landowner, led to the same consequences, i.e., to the transformation of this free peasant, as well as his offspring, into serfs.
The state played an active role in this process. This is evidenced by a number of decrees of Charlemagne and his immediate successors. In his decrees (capitularies, from the Latin word “caput” - “head” or “head”, since each decree was divided into chapters), Charles ordered the managers to monitor the free peasants living on the royal estates and to collect fines from the peasants in favor of the royal court and judge them. In 818-820 decrees were issued that attached all tax payers to the land, that is, deprived them of the right to freely move from one plot to another. The Carolingians ordered peasants to sue large landowners and submit to their authority. Finally, the capitulary of 847 directly ordered that every still free person, that is, first of all, a peasant, find himself a seigneur (master). Thus, the state actively contributed to the establishment of feudal relations in Frankish society.
Feudal estate and its economic life
The result of the revolution in land relations that took place in the 8th and 9th centuries was the final establishment of land ownership of the ruling class. The place of the former free peasant community-mark was taken by a feudal estate with special economic orders inherent in it. What these orders were can be seen from the so-called “Capitulary on Estates” (“Capitulare de villis”), compiled around 800 by order of Charlemagne and which was an instruction to the managers of the royal estates. From this capitulary, as well as from other sources of the 9th century, in particular from the so-called “Polyptik of Abbot Irminon” (i.e., the scribe book of the monastery of Saint-Germain, located in the suburbs of Paris), it is clear that the feudal estate was divided into two parts : a lordly estate with lordly land and a village with plots of dependent peasants.
The lordly part, or the master's land, was called a domain (from the Latin word “dominus” - master's). The domain consisted of a manor's estate with a house and outbuildings, and of the manor's arable land. The mill and the church also depended on the owner of the estate. Dominant (lord's) arable land was scattered among peasant plots, i.e., there was a so-called striped land, which was necessarily accompanied by forced crop rotation associated with the practice of open fields after harvest. Everyone had to sow the same thing in a given field and harvest the field at the same time as their neighbors, otherwise the cattle released into the field could destroy the crops that their owner had not harvested. The land of the lords was cultivated by the hands of peasants, who were obliged to work in corvee labor with their own equipment. In addition to arable land, the domain also included forests, meadows and wastelands.
Peasant land, or “holding” land, since the peasants were not its owners, but, as it were, “held” it from the owner of the land - the owner of a given estate, was divided into allotments (mansy). Each manse included a peasant yard with a house and outbuildings, a vegetable garden and arable land, scattered interspersed with other peasant and landowner lands. In addition, the peasant had the right to use communal pastures and forests.
Thus, unlike the slave, who had no home, no farm, no property, no family, the peasant who worked on the land of the feudal lord had his own home, family, and farm. The existence, along with feudal ownership, of the peasant's ownership of the farm and agricultural implements created among the producers of material goods and feudal society a certain interest in their work and was a direct stimulus for the development of productive forces in the era of feudalism.
The productive forces of society in the 8th and 9th centuries. extremely slowly, but growing all the time. Farming techniques were improved, more effective methods of soil cultivation were used, forests were cleared for arable land, and virgin soil was turned up. Overlog and two-field were gradually replaced by three-field.
Lower-quality types of cereals (oats, barley, rye) were sown mainly in economically backward parts of the empire (east of the Rhine), while in its central and western regions higher-quality types (wheat, etc.) were increasingly used. Legumes, radishes and turnips were grown from garden crops. Fruit trees include apple, pear and plum. Medicinal herbs and hops necessary for making beer were planted in the gardens. Viticulture developed in the southern parts of the empire. Among the industrial crops, flax was sown, which was used to make clothing and linseed oil.
As for agricultural implements, it should be noted that at the end of the 9th century. Plows became widespread: a small light plow for cultivating rocky or root soils, which only cut the earth into long furrows, and a heavy wheeled plow with an iron plowshare, which not only cut but also turned the earth when plowing. The harrow, which at that time was a triangular wooden frame with iron teeth, was used primarily for cultivating vegetable gardens. Harrowing of the fields was carried out using a heavy wooden log, which was dragged across the plowed field, breaking up clods of earth. The farm used scythes, sickles, two-pronged pitchforks and rakes.
The grain was cleared of straw, winnowed with a shovel in the wind, sifted through sieves woven from flexible rods, and finally threshed with simple sticks or wooden flails. As a rule, fields were cleared irregularly. It is clear that with such low agricultural technology, yields were usually extremely low (1 1/2 or 2). The peasant economy was dominated by small livestock (sheep, pigs and goats). There were few horses and cows.
The entire economy of the large estate was of a subsistence nature, i.e. The main task of every estate was to satisfy its own needs, and not to produce for sale on the market. The peasants who worked on the estates were obliged to supply food to the master's court (royal, count, monastery, etc.) and provide everything necessary for the owner of the estate, his family and numerous retinue. Crafts at this time were not yet separated from agriculture, and peasants were engaged in them along with arable farming. Only surplus products were sold.
Here is what was said about such an economy in the “Capitulary on Estates” (Chapter 62): “Let our managers, every year before the Nativity of the Lord, separately, clearly and in order notify us of all our income, so that we can know what and how much we have according to individual items , exactly... how much hay, how much firewood and torches, how much tesu... how many vegetables, how much millet and millet, how much wool, flax and hemp, how much fruit from the trees, how many nuts and nuts... how much from gardens, how much from turnip ridges, how many from fish cages, how many skins, how many furs and horns, how much honey and wax, how much lard, fats and soap, how much berry wine, boiled wine, honey - drinks and vinegar, how much beer, grape wine, new grain and old, how many chickens, eggs and geese, how many from fishermen, blacksmiths, gunsmiths and shoemakers... how many from turners and saddlers, how many from mechanics, from iron and lead mines, how many from tax people, how many foals and fillies.”
Such an estate was the main unit of Frankish society under the Carolingians, which means that in the empire of Charlemagne a large number of economically closed little worlds were created, not economically connected with each other and independently satisfying their needs with products produced within a given economy.
The plight of the peasants and their struggle with the feudal lords
Feudal dependent peasants were subjected to cruel exploitation by the feudal lords. The forms of peasant dependence in the era of feudalism were extremely diverse. It was, as Marx points out, “... unfreedom, which from serfdom with corvee labor can be softened to a simple quitrent obligation” ( K. Marx, Capital, vol. III, Gospolitizdat, 1955, p. 803.). Along with the surviving remnants of the free peasantry (especially in the eastern and northern regions of the empire) in the Frankish state of the 8th-9th centuries. there were peasants who depended on the feudal lord only in judicial matters. However, there were very few such peasants.
The bulk of the feudally dependent peasantry were serfs, over whose persons the feudal lords had ownership rights, although incomplete (that is, they did not have the right to kill them). The serfs depended on the feudal lord personally, on land, and in court, and paid him heavy feudal rent. It was expressed in the form of various duties - labor (corvée), food (in-kind dues) and monetary (monetary dues). The dominant form of rent under the Carolingians appears to have been labor rent. But at the same time there was both rent in kind and partly monetary rent.
As a personally dependent person, the serf peasant was obliged to give the feudal lord, when he inherited his land allotment, the best head of cattle; was obliged to pay for the right to marry a woman who did not belong to his master, and to make additional payments imposed on him by the feudal lord arbitrarily.
As a land-dependent peasant, the serf was obliged to pay quitrents and work as a corvee. This is how the duties of serfs were portrayed in the 9th century. in "The Politics of Abbot Irminon". From just one peasant plot (and there were several thousand such plots in the monastery economy), the monastery of Saint-Germain received annually: half an ox or 4 rams “for military purposes”; 4 denarii each ( Denarius = approximately 1/10 gram of gold.) universal taxation; 5 mods ( Modium = about 250 l.) grains for horse feed; 100 tesins and 100 draneys are not from the master’s forest; 6 chickens with eggs and after 2 years on the third - a one-year-old sheep. The holders of this allotment were also obliged to plow the monastery field for winter and spring crops three days a week and perform various manual works for the monastery.
To resolve all controversial issues, the peasant was obliged to turn to the local court, headed by the feudal lord himself or his clerk. It is clear that in all cases the feudal lord resolved disputes in his favor.
In addition, the landowner usually also had the right to collect all kinds of duties - road, ferry, bridge, etc. The situation of the working masses became even more difficult as a result of natural disasters, which they did not know how to deal with at that time, as well as endless feudal strife that ruined the peasant economy.
Cruel feudal exploitation caused an acute class struggle between the peasants and the feudal lords. The fact that this struggle was widespread is evidenced by the royal capitularies, which ordered the rebels to be severely punished, and by the reports of medieval chroniclers. From these capitularies and chronicles we learn that at the end of the 8th century. In the village of Celt, which belonged to the bishop of Reims, there was an uprising of dependent peasants. In 821, a “conspiracy” of serfs arose in Flanders. In 841-842 There was a so-called uprising of “Stelling” (which literally means “Children of the Ancient Law”) in the Saxon region, when free Saxon peasants entered into a struggle with both their own and the Frankish nobility, which brought them enslavement. In 848, free peasants fought against enslavement in the Bishopric of Mainz. The second uprising broke out there in 866. Other movements directed against feudal oppression and exploitation are also known. All these uprisings occurred mainly in the 9th century, when the revolution in agrarian relations was completed and the process of enslaving the peasants assumed the widest proportions.
These uprisings against the ruling class could not achieve victory in the historical situation when the established feudal mode of production had all the conditions for its further development. However, the significance of the early anti-feudal movements of the peasants was very great. These movements were progressive in nature, because their result was a certain limitation of the brutal exploitation of workers and the creation of more tolerable conditions for their existence. Thus, these movements contributed to a more rapid development of the productive forces of feudal society. The more time the peasant devoted to his own farm, the more interested he became in improving agricultural technology and increasing the productivity of his labor, the faster the entire feudal society as a whole developed.
Internal organization of the ruling class of feudal lords
Land relations that existed within the feudal class formed the basis of its military-political organization. Benefice, as a rule, was combined with a vassalage relationship, when a free person who received benefits from a large landowner was called his vassal (from the Latin word “vassus” - servant) and was obliged to serve him in military service. Entry into vassal relations was secured by a certain ceremony. Upon receipt of a benefice, a free person announced that he was becoming a vassal of one or another lord (senor), and the lord took an oath of allegiance from him. This ceremony later received the name homage (from the Latin word “homo” - man, since the oath of allegiance included the words: “I become your man”).
Unlike the relations established between the peasant and the feudal lord, vassal relations did not extend beyond the boundaries of the same ruling class. Vassalage consolidated the feudal hierarchy, that is, the subordination of smaller landowners to larger ones, and the larger ones to the largest ones, while the personal dependence of the peasant on the feudal lord led to the enslavement of the peasants.
Administrative structure of the empire
The years of the reign of the first Carolingians include a temporary strengthening of central state power, the main and determining reason for which, of course, cannot be seen in the “outstanding abilities” of the Carolingians and, in particular, in the “state talent” of Charlemagne. In fact, some strengthening of the central state apparatus under the Carolingians was caused by profound changes in the field of social relations.
During this period, the class of feudal landowners needed a central power that would ensure the rapid subordination of the class of peasants who fought against enslavement, and at the same time would pursue a broad policy of conquest that would bring large landowners both new lands and new serfs. Thus, changes in the forms of the feudal state were due to fundamental changes in the position of the peasantry and its struggle against the ruling class. For a time, the imperial court with its officials - the chancellor, the archchaplain and the count palatine - became the center of government of the Carolingian empire. The Chancellor served as the emperor's secretary and custodian of the state seal. The archchaplain ruled the Frankish clergy, and the palatine was similar to the former majordomo, in charge of the palace economy and administration.
With the help of royal capitularies, Charlemagne sought to resolve various issues of governing his vast state. Capitularies were issued by Charlemagne on the advice of large landowners, who met twice a year in the royal palace for this purpose.
The empire was divided into regions. The border areas were called marks. The marks were well fortified and served both for defense and as springboards for further captures. At the head of each region were counts, and at the head of the marks were margraves. To monitor the activities of the counts, Charles sent special sovereign envoys to the region.
Strengthening the state apparatus of the empire, especially necessary for the ruling class in the era of fundamental social changes taking place in Frankish society, and aimed at the oppression and enslavement of the masses, Charlemagne carried out a judicial reform, abolishing the previously existing obligation of the population to appear at district court hearings. Elected positions of judges from the people were abolished. The judges became government officials who received a salary and judged under the chairmanship of the count. Military reform was also carried out. Charlemagne stopped demanding military service from the peasants (by this time, most of them had already gone bankrupt and became completely dependent on the feudal lords). The royal beneficiaries became the main military force.
Strengthening the political power of feudal lords
The establishment of feudal ownership of land led to the strengthening of the political power of landowners over the working population living on their lands. The Merovingians also contributed to the expansion of the private power of large landowners, giving them so-called immunity rights.
Under the Carolingians, immunity was further developed. The name immunity comes from the Latin word “immunitas”, which translated into Russian means “inviolability” of a person, his liberation from something.
The essence of immunity was that the territory of the landowner of the immunist (i.e., the person who received the immunity letter) was exempted by the king from visiting royal officials to perform judicial, administrative, police, fiscal or any other duties. The responsibility to perform these functions was transferred to the immunologist himself, whose private power thus increased greatly. Sometimes the king transferred to the benefit of the immunologist all proceeds that until that time had gone to the royal treasury (taxes, court fines, etc.). A large landowner turned out to be a kind of sovereign in relation to the population living on his lands.
In this way, royal power itself seemed to contribute to the transformation of large landowners into people independent of the king. But this happened, of course, only because of her weakness. Immunity, as the sum of the political rights of the feudal lord in relation to the peasant economically dependent on him, grew and developed independently of the will of kings and emperors. Large landowners, who received full economic power over the peasant population of their estates, sought to make this population politically dependent. They arbitrarily carried out justice and reprisals on their estates, created their own armed detachments and did not allow royal officials within the boundaries of their domains. The central government turned out to be powerless in the fight against such tendencies of large landowners and was forced to formalize the already established relations with the help of immunity letters.
Under the Carolingians, immunity became a widespread phenomenon and turned into one of the powerful means of enslaving the peasantry. Immunity rights spread to larger territories, and the immunoists themselves acquired even greater power. The immunoist now convened court meetings, held trials, searched for criminals, collected fines and fees in his favor, etc.
“At the request of bishop so-and-so,” the kings wrote in their charters, “...we granted him this benefit, which consists in the fact that within the boundaries of the estates of the church of this bishop... not a single sovereign official shall dare to enter to hear legal proceedings.” cases or the collection of any judicial fines, but the bishop himself and his successor, in the name of God, by virtue of complete immunity, let them own all the rights indicated... And everything that the treasury could receive there from free or unfree and other people, living on the lands... of the church, let them forever go to the lamps of the designated church.”
Finally, in order to ensure the recruitment of free settlers on the lands of large landowners for military service, the Carolingians transferred to these landowners administrative rights over all free settlers on their estates, i.e., they appointed lords for these previously free people in the legal sense. Thus, significant changes occurred in the political situation of persons who settled on the lands of large landowners, that is, peasants and other free people. Previously, these persons were legally equal to the owner of the estate, although they were economically dependent on him. Now they have become people subordinate to the landowner in legal terms.
The expansion and strengthening of immunity, which in the hands of the ruling class was an instrument of non-economic coercion of the masses of the exploited peasantry, contributed to the process of its further enslavement and the strengthening of feudal exploitation. "Economic subjugation received political sanction" ( F. Engels, Frankish period, K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. XVI, part D, pp. 403.. .). The peasant, who had previously lost ownership of his ancestral land, now lost his personal freedom. The private power of the immunolist acquired a kind of state character, and the estate of the immunolist turned into a small state.
Internal weakness of the Carolingian Empire and its rapid collapse
The empire of Charlemagne, which arose as a result of wars of conquest, like other similar empires of the ancient and medieval eras, did not have its own economic base and represented a temporary and fragile military-administrative association. It was extremely diverse both in terms of the ethnic (tribal) composition of the Carolingian Empire and in terms of its socio-economic development. In a number of areas, tribal characteristics have long been erased. The Germanic tribes that conquered these areas adopted not only the provincial dialects of the Latin language, but also the social orders characteristic of the late Roman Empire. The embryos of feudal relations that arose in it (large landownership combined with small farming, subsistence farming, colonate and patrocinium) contributed to the more rapid development of feudalism in such areas of the Carolingian state as Aquitaine, Septimania and Provence. The regions east of the Rhine turned out to be significantly more backward in terms of the level of development of feudal relations. Such areas were Bavaria, Saxony, Alemannia, Thuringia and Frisia, where the development of feudalism was slow and where a large number of tribal remnants were preserved.
Finally, there were areas in the Carolingian Empire in which Romanesque and Germanic elements appeared to be ethnically mixed. The interaction of the socio-economic orders that existed among the indigenous Romano-Gallic population with the socio-economic orders that existed among the alien Germanic tribes (Franks and Burgundians) led to the development of feudalism in its most classical forms. These areas were those parts of the empire that were, as it were, at the junction between the Roman and Germanic worlds, i.e. North-Eastern and Central Gaul, as well as Burgundy.
There were no economic ties between the tribes and nationalities united in the empire of Charlemagne through purely violent means. That is why historical development continued not within the borders of the empire as a whole, but within individual nationalities and tribes or more or less related compounds. The natural tendency of tribes and nationalities, conquered by force of arms, to liberate themselves from the power of the conquerors, the undivided dominance of natural economy in feudal estates, the collapse of Frankish society into a number of economically closed little worlds, the continuous growth of the power of large landowners locally and the impotence of the central government - all this did the inevitable political collapse of the empire.
Indeed, after the death of Charlemagne (814), the empire was first fragmented among his heirs, and then finally split into three parts. This disintegration was formalized by the Treaty of Verdun, concluded between the grandchildren of Charlemagne in 843. One of these grandsons, Charles the Bald, received, under the Treaty of Verdun, possession to the west of the Rhine - the West Frankish state (i.e., the future France). Another grandson, Louis the German, received possessions east of the Rhine - the East Frankish state (i.e., the future Germany). And the eldest grandson, Lothair, received a strip of land along the left bank of the Rhine (the future Lorraine) and Northern Italy.
Feudal-church culture
In feudal society, which replaced the slave society, a new, feudal culture arose. The bearer of feudal culture in the early Middle Ages was the church.
Religion in feudal society was one of the powerful means of establishing and maintaining the class rule of the exploiters. Promising heavenly bliss as a reward for earthly suffering, the church in every way distracted the masses from the fight against the feudal lords, justified feudal exploitation and persistently tried to educate the working people in the spirit of complete submission to their masters. The influence of the church had a strong impact on the spiritual culture of medieval society. “...the feudal organization of the church,” wrote Engels, “sanctified the secular feudal state system with religion. The clergy was also the only educated class. From here it naturally followed that church dogma was the starting point and basis of all thinking. Jurisprudence, natural science, philosophy - all the content of these sciences was brought into conformity with the teachings of the church" ( F. Engels, Legal Socialism, K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. XVI, part I, p. 295.).
The disintegration of feudal society into a number of economically and politically closed little worlds and the widespread breakdown of the trade, political and cultural ties that existed in the slave society determined the absence of any broad education in the 6th-10th centuries. All schools that existed at that time (episcopal and monastic) were in the hands of the clergy. The church determined their program and selected the composition of their students. The main task of the church was to educate church ministers who were able to influence the masses with their preaching and protect the existing order intact.
The church essentially demanded very little from its ministers - knowledge of prayers, the ability to read the Gospel in Latin, even without understanding everything that was read, and familiarity with the order of church services. Persons whose knowledge went beyond the scope of such a program appeared in Western European society in the 6th-10th centuries. with the rarest exceptions.
When creating schools, the church could not do without some elements of secular education that feudal society inherited from the ancient world. Having adapted these elements of secular education to its needs, the church became their unwitting “guardian.” The ancient disciplines taught in church schools were called the “seven liberal arts”, which meant: grammar, rhetoric and dialectics (the so-called trivium - “three ways of knowledge”, or the first stage of education), and arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music ( the so-called quadrivium - “four paths of knowledge”, or the second stage of learning). An attempt to bring together the elements of education inherited from antiquity dates back to the 5th century. and was undertaken by Marcian Capella. The division of the “liberal arts” into trivium and quadrivium was carried out already in the 6th century. Boethius and Cassiodorus - the last representatives of ancient education.
But the “liberal arts” of the Middle Ages were a very distant resemblance to what was taught in ancient schools, because representatives of church education argued that any knowledge is useful only if it helps to better assimilate church teaching. Rhetoric at this time was considered as a subject that helped to competently draw up documents necessary for the church and state. Dialectics (as formal logic was then called) was completely subordinated to theology and served representatives of the church only to fight heretics in disputes. Music was needed during worship, astronomy was used to determine the timing of various church holidays and for all kinds of predictions.
The astronomical and geographical ideas of that time testify to the extreme ignorance of the clergy. Church school students were taught that in the far east there was paradise, that the earth was like a wheel, that the ocean flowed around it on all sides, and that Jerusalem was in its center. The doctrine of the spherical shape of the earth was categorically rejected, because representatives of the church argued that it was impossible to imagine that people on the opposite side of the earth would move upside down.
All information preserved from antiquity that could prompt students to strive for knowledge based on experience was carefully suppressed. Ancient authors deliberately distorted themselves. Monks often destroyed unique texts on ancient manuscripts located in monastic libraries, and then used expensive parchment “purified” in this way to record monastic chronicles. Genuine knowledge about nature was replaced by superstitious nonsense.
Education, monopolized by the Western Christian Church, was of a very primitive nature. The Church was not, and could not be, interested in preserving the entire ancient heritage inherited by the Middle Ages and, forced to turn to the latter, tried to use it only for its own purposes.
"Carolingian Revival"
The so-called “Carolingian revival” further strengthened the position of the church in the field of spiritual culture and education. Some revival of the activities of the clergy and representatives of the imperial government in the organization of church schools in the second half of the 8th and early 9th centuries. was associated with profound socio-economic changes in the life of society, that is, with a complete revolution in land ownership relations, which led to the strengthening of secular and spiritual feudal lords and the enslavement of the peasants.
The role of the church in these conditions became increasingly important. That is why, strengthening church authority by creating a layer of literate clergy, the Carolingians left the entire monopoly on education in the hands of the church and did not in any way change the previously existing order. The Carolingians obtained the literate people they needed to work in the state apparatus from church schools.
The tasks facing these schools were clearly and concisely defined by the most prominent figure in the Carolingian Renaissance, Alcuin (circa 735-804), a graduate of the York School. In one of his letters to Charlemagne, Alcuin wrote: “I work hard on many things in order to educate many for the benefit of God’s holy church and to decorate your imperial power.” In his capitularies, Charlemagne demanded that the monks compulsorily organize monastery schools to teach clergy - reading, counting, writing and singing, since shepherds who were obliged to instruct the people must be able to read and understand the “holy scripture”. Charlemagne attracted a number of people capable of leading church schools from Italy, where the clergy had a higher level of education. So, Charlemagne took Peter of Lebanon, Paul the Deacon, Leidard and Theodulf from there.
Paying great attention to church schools, Charlemagne believed that the laity should be taught only the “truths” of religion and the “creed.” For those who refused to study the “Creed,” Charlemagne prescribed a number of church punishments (fasting, etc.). Royal envoys and counts were obliged to monitor the implementation of these orders.
Thus, both in the capitularies of Charlemagne and in the decrees of the church councils that met during his reign, it was not about increasing the general educational level and raising culture in all layers of feudal society, but only about training a certain circle of people who were able to influence the people with their preaching masses. Theology was still considered the “crown of education.” After all, “... our glorious, taught wisdom of the Lord surpasses all the wisdom of academic science,” wrote Alcuin, referring to Plato’s Academy. It is clear that with such a formulation of the question there could be no real revival of the “liberal arts” of antiquity.
Teaching aids, compiled in the form of dialogues between teacher and student, indicate the extremely low level of education of that time. An example of such a manual is the dialogue written by Alcuin for the son of Charlemagne, Pepin:
“P and p and n. What is a letter? - A l k u i n. Guardian of history. P and p and n. What is a word? - A l k u i n. Traitor of the soul... P and p and n. Who does the person look like? - A l k u i n. On the ball. - P and p and n. How is the person placed? - A l k u i n. Like a lamp in the wind... P and p and n. What is a head? - A l k u i n. Top of the body.- P and p and n. What is a body? - A l k u i n. Home of the soul... P and p and n. What is winter? - A l k u i n. Exile of summer. P and p and n. What is spring? - A l k u i n. Painter of the earth,” etc.
All the literature of the Carolingian period was purely imitative, mainly of Christian literature of the first centuries of our era. This can be seen both from the works of Alcuin himself and from the works of his student, the biographer of Charlemagne, Einhard. However, the manuscripts improved significantly during this time. A writing reform was carried out, as a result of which a clear script (Carolingian minuscule) was established everywhere, which served as the basis for the modern style of Latin letters. The scribes decorated the manuscripts with miniatures (small pictures) on biblical themes.
Along with church works, Carolingian scribes also copied books of ancient authors (poets, philosophers, lawyers and politicians), which contributed to the preservation of these manuscripts.
It is necessary to mention the construction that took place under Charlemagne. In an effort to increase the importance of imperial power and the church, he ordered the construction of palaces and cathedrals in Aachen and other points of his state. The architecture of the buildings resembled the style of Byzantine buildings in Ravenna.
Construction technology in the West at that time was extremely imperfect. By order of Charlemagne, marble columns were often used in the construction of buildings, which were exported in their entirety from Italy. At the same time, ancient monuments of art were barbarically destroyed. However, most of the buildings erected under Charles were wooden and therefore perished very quickly.
The Carolingian Renaissance was very short-lived. The rapid collapse of the empire could not but affect the field of culture. Contemporary chroniclers, recording the miserable state of education in the period following the collapse of the empire, noted that the kingdom of the Franks had become the scene of unrest and war, that internecine strife raged everywhere, and that the study of “both the sacred scriptures and the liberal arts” was completely neglected.
Thus, the actual picture of church activity in the field of spiritual culture during the early Middle Ages indicates that the monopoly on education seized by the church at the earliest stage of development of feudal society led to very disastrous results. “The inheritance from antiquity,” Engels wrote, “remained Euclid and the solar system of Ptolemy, from the Arabs - the decimal number system, the beginnings of algebra, modern writing of numbers and alchemy - the Christian Middle Ages left nothing” ( F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, Gospolitizdat, 1955, p. 5.).
The church saw one of its main tasks as keeping the masses in a state of extreme ignorance and thereby contributing to their more complete enslavement.
The then dominant feudal-church culture had a pronounced class character.
Folk art in the early Middle Ages
“The thoughts of the ruling class,” Marx and Engels pointed out, “are the dominant thoughts in every era. This means that the class that represents the dominant material force of society is at the same time its dominant spiritual force" ( K. Marx and F. Engels, German Ideology, Works, vol. 3, ed. 2, p. 45.). But this does not mean that, being dominant, this culture is the only one.
Just as the teachings of the church, which justified and defended feudal exploitation, were opposed by popular heretical anti-feudal teachings, so the spiritual culture of the ruling class was opposed by the spiritual creativity of the masses: fairy-tale epics, songs, music, dances and dramatic action.
The richness of folk art is evidenced, first of all, by the fact that the original basis of the largest epic works of the Western European Middle Ages were folk tales. These folk tales were preserved most fully in the northern and northwestern regions of Europe, where the development of feudal relations was relatively slow and where a significant layer of the free peasantry existed for a long time.
The epic works of Burgundian and Frankish society - the "Song of the Nibelungs" and the "heroic poems", in particular the "Song of Roland", were preserved only in the form of later works in which the original folk tales were subjected to appropriate processing in the interests of the ruling class. However, developed on the basis of a folk epic that poeticized the struggle of Charlemagne with the Arabs, “The Song of Roland” bears the features of a powerful folk influence. It is reflected in those parts of this poem that talk about love for “dear France”, about hatred of enemies who encroach on its freedom, and where all feudal lords who betray the interests of their homeland for the sake of personal interests are condemned.
Music and poetry undoubtedly played a huge role in folk art in the 5th-10th centuries. The most widespread in Frankish society were folk songs and epics, all kinds of comic and satirical songs.
For a very long time, the masses adhered to pre-Christian customs, made sacrifices to the former deities, combined pre-Christian religious rites with Christian ones, and “desecrated” Christian churches with folk songs and dances. In the VI century. in the south of Gaul there were cases when people, interrupting a church service, proclaimed: “Saint Martial, pray for us, and we will dance for you!”, after which a round dance was held in the church and folk dancing began.
The Catholic Church had a very negative attitude towards the musical and poetic creativity of the people. Seeing in such creativity a manifestation of “pagan”, “sinful”, “inconsistent with the Christian spirit” folk activity, the church persistently sought to prohibit it and cruelly persecuted the direct exponents and bearers of the musical culture of the people - folk singers and dancers (mimes and histrions).
Numerous church decrees directed against folk singers and actors have been preserved. Folk art, of which these singers and actors were representatives, had a pronounced anti-feudal character and was dangerous to the ruling class. Therefore, the church persecuted him tirelessly. That is why Alcuin declared that “a person who allows histrions, mimes and dancers into his house does not know what a large crowd of unclean spirits enters behind them.” Charlemagne, in turn, persecuted these individuals, classifying them as “disgraced,” and categorically forbade members of the clergy to keep “falcons, hawks, a pack of dogs and buffoons” with them. Numerous resolutions of church councils were imbued with the same spirit. However, the vitality of folk song and folk dramatic art proved irresistible.
Folk art also existed in the field of fine and applied arts, despite the fact that the latter were completely subordinated to the interests of the church and the talent of folk craftsmen was placed at the service of the ruling class of feudal lords. Various artistically executed objects have been preserved that served to decorate church buildings or were used during church services (richly ornamented bells; crayfish that served to store relics, decorated with carved items made of wood or bone; various church utensils - bowls, crosses and candlesticks made of precious metals; cast bronze church gates, etc.).
The unknown but skillful craftsmen who created these objects undoubtedly sought to satisfy church tastes as fully as possible and did not go beyond the boundaries of biblical traditions in their creativity. However, the images themselves in some cases bore traces of folk influence, which was expressed in the realistic interpretation of human figures, in the use of folk ornaments and in the depiction of various real or fabulous animals.
The influence of folk art also affected the execution of miniatures, all kinds of headpieces and capital letters that decorated church manuscripts. The miniatures were usually colored, as were the capital letters, which were often depicted either in the form of fish or animals, or in the form of all kinds of birds (storks with a snake in their beak, peacocks, roosters, ducks), or in the form of special combinations of leaves, rosettes, etc. “Animal ornamentation” has been preserved in folk art since the distant prehistoric past. Folk ornament in the form of ribbon braiding was also widely used in monastic manuscripts. Patterned fabrics (carpets, church bedspreads) also testified that the influence of folk art did not remain without a trace for this branch of applied art.
The largest in Europe was the one that arose at the end of the 5th century. State of the Franks. Its creator was the leader of one of the tribes, Clovis, from the family of Merovei. By this name, the descendants of Clovis, who ruled the Frankish state until the mid-8th century, are called Merovingians.
Having united the Franks under his rule, Clovis defeated the Roman army at the Battle of Soissons (486) and subjugated Northern Gaul. Gradually there was a rapprochement between the two peoples: the Franks and the local residents (descendants of the Gauls and Romans). The entire population of the Frankish state began to speak one dialect, in which Latin was mixed with Germanic words. This adverb later formed the basis of the French language. However, only Latin was used in the letter; under Clovis, the first recording of the judicial customs of the Franks (the so-called Salic law) was made in it. According to the laws of the Franks, many crimes were punishable by a large fine (murder of a person, theft of someone else's livestock or slave, arson of a grain barn or barnyard). There was no equality of people before the law: the size of the fine for murder depended on who was killed (thus, the life of a Frank was valued higher than the life of a descendant of the Gauls and Romans). In the absence of evidence, the accused could be subjected to “God’s judgment”, for example, asked to take a ring out of a pot of boiling water. If the burns were minor, then for those present it was a sign that God was on the side of the accused.
The emergence of written laws, mandatory throughout the territory of the Frankish state, led to its strengthening.
Clovis considered the Frankish kingdom to be his own domain. Shortly before his death, he divided it between his sons. Clovis's heirs waged a long struggle for land and power. People were dying and blood was shed. The country either fell apart into separate parts, or united. As a result, the power of the Merovingian kings became insignificant. On the contrary, the majordomo (in Latin - “elder of the house”) began to have a great influence on the affairs of the state. Initially, a noble Frank, appointed by the king to the position of mayor, was in charge of the palace economy and managed royal property throughout the country. Gradually, the position of mayordomo became hereditary, and the mayordomo himself became the highest official in the state.
The famous majordomo Charles Martel (which means “Hammer”) ruled the country without regard for the king. During his time, an army of Muslim Arabs invaded Gaul from Spain, but was defeated by the Franks at the Battle of Poitiers (732). The threat of Arab conquest pushed Charles Martel to create a strong cavalry army. The Franks who wished to serve in it received from the majordomo lands with peasants living on them. With the income from these lands, their owner purchased expensive weapons and horses.
The lands were not given to the soldiers as full ownership, but only for life and on the condition that the owner would perform mounted military service, to which he swore an oath to the mayordomo. Later, land holdings on the same condition began to be inherited from father to son.
For land distributions to the soldiers, Charles took away part of the church's possessions (after the death of the mayor, the clergy took revenge on him by spreading stories about how the winner of Poitiers was tormented in hell for robbing the church).
The military reform of Charles Martel marked the beginning of the formation of a new social system in Europe - feudalism.
In the V-VI centuries. The Franks still retained communal, clan ties; relations of exploitation among the Franks themselves were not developed; the Frankish service nobility, which formed into the ruling elite during Clovis’s military campaigns, was also not numerous.
Politically, the Frankish kingdom under the Merovingians was not a single state. After his death, the sons of Clovis began an internecine war, which continued with minor interruptions for more than a hundred years. But it was during this period that new social-class relations were formed. In order to attract the Frankish nobility, the kings practiced widespread distribution of land. Donated lands became hereditary and freely alienable property ( allod). Gradually, the transformation of warriors into feudal landowners took place.
Important changes also took place among the peasantry. In the mark (the peasant community of the Franks), private ownership of land (allod) was established. The process of property stratification and landlessness of the peasants intensified, which was accompanied by the attack of the feudal lords on their personal freedom. There were two forms of enslavement: with the help precaria and commendation. Precarious was an agreement under which the feudal lord provided the peasant with a plot of land on the terms of fulfilling certain duties; formally, this agreement did not establish personal dependence, but created favorable conditions.
Comment meant transferring oneself under the protection of the feudal lord. It provided for the transfer of ownership of the land to the master with its subsequent return in the form of holding, the establishment of personal dependence of the “weak” on his patron and the performance of a number of duties in his favor.
All this gradually led to the enslavement of the Frankish peasantry.
The most pronounced social and class differences in the early class society of the Franks, as evidenced by the Salic Truth, a legal monument of the Franks dating back to the 5th century, were manifested in the position of slaves. Slave labor, however, was not widespread. The slave, in contrast to the free community member-Frank, was considered a thing. Its theft was equivalent to the theft of an animal. The marriage of a slave with a free man entailed the loss of freedom by the latter.
Salic truth also indicates the presence of other social groups among the Franks: serving nobility, free francs(community members) and semi-free litas. The differences between them were not so much economic as socio-legal. They were associated mainly with the origin and legal status of the person or the social group to which that person belonged. An important factor influencing the legal differences of the Franks was their membership in the royal service, the royal squad, and the emerging state apparatus. These differences were most clearly expressed in the system of monetary compensation, which served to protect the life, property and other rights of individuals.
Along with slaves, there was a special category of people - semi-free litas, whose life was valued at half a free wergeld, 100 solidi. Lit represented an incomplete resident of the Frankish community, who was in personal and material dependence on his master. Litas could enter into contractual relations, defend their interests in court, and participate in military campaigns together with their master. Lit, like a slave, could be freed by his master, who, however, retained his property. For a crime, a lithu was usually given the same punishment as a slave, for example, the death penalty for kidnapping a free person.
Frankish law also testifies to the beginning of the property stratification of Frankish society. The Salic truth speaks of the master's servants or courtyard servants-slaves (vinedressers, grooms, swineherds and even goldsmiths) serving the master's household.
At the same time, the Salic truth testifies to the sufficient strength of community orders, about communal ownership of fields, meadows, forests, wastelands, about the equal rights of community peasants to a communal land plot. The very concept of private ownership of land is absent in Salic truth. It only records the origin of the allod, providing for the right to transfer the allotment by inheritance through the male line. The further deepening of social-class differences among the Franks was directly related to the transformation of allod into the original form of private feudal land ownership. Allod - alienable, inheritable land ownership of free Franks - arose in the process of disintegration of communal ownership of land. It lay at the basis of the emergence, on the one hand, of patrimonial land ownership of feudal lords, and, on the other, of the land holding of peasants dependent on them.
The processes of feudalization among the Franks received a powerful impetus during the wars of conquest of the 6th-7th centuries, when a significant part of the Gallo-Roman estates in Northern Gaul passed into the hands of the Frankish kings, the serving aristocracy, and royal warriors. The serving nobility, bound to one degree or another by vassal dependence on the king, who seized the right to dispose of the conquered land, became a major owner of lands, livestock, slaves, and colonies. It is replenished by part of the Gallo-Roman aristocracy, which goes into the service of the Frankish kings.
The clash between the communal orders of the Franks and the late Roman private property orders of the Gallo-Romans, the coexistence and interaction of social structures so different in nature, accelerated the creation of new feudal relations. Already in the middle of the 7th century. in Northern Gaul a feudal system begins to take shape fiefdom with its characteristic division of land into master's land (domain) and peasant land (holding). The stratification of the “ordinary free people” during the conquest of Gaul also occurred due to the transformation of the community elite into small patrimonial owners due to the appropriation of communal land.
Processes of feudalization in the VI-VII centuries. in the south of Gaul they did not develop as rapidly as in the north. At this time, the extent of Frankish colonization here was insignificant, the vast estates of the Gallo-Roman nobility were preserved, the labor of slaves and columns continued to be widely used, but profound social changes took place here too, mainly due to the widespread growth of large church landownership.
V-VI centuries in Western Europe were marked by the beginning of a powerful ideological offensive of the Christian Church. Servants of dozens of newly emerging monasteries and churches gave sermons about human brotherhood, about helping the poor and suffering, and about other moral values.
The population of Gaul, under the spiritual influence of the clergy, led by bishops, began to perceive more and more Christian dogmas, the idea of redemption, relying on the intercession of the holy fathers for the sake of gaining forgiveness during the transition to another world. In an era of endless wars, destruction, widespread violence, disease, in conditions of the dominance of religious consciousness, people's attention naturally focused on issues such as death, posthumous judgment, retribution, hell and heaven. The church began to use the fear of purgatory and hell for its own selfish interests, collecting and accumulating numerous donations, including land donations, at the expense of both rulers and ordinary people. The growth of church land ownership began with the church's land refusals from Clovis.
The growing ideological and economic role of the church could not but manifest itself sooner or later in its claims to power. However, the church at that time was not yet a political entity, did not have a unified organization, representing a kind of spiritual community of people led by bishops, of whom, according to tradition, the most important was the Bishop of Rome, who later received the title of Pope.
Kings, who, in order to strengthen their extremely unstable power, appointed bishops from among their confidants, convened church councils, presided over them, sometimes speaking on theological issues, increasingly interfered with the activities of the church as “Christ’s vicars” on earth. In 511, at the Council of Orleans convened by Clovis, it was decided that no layman could be ordained without royal permission. The subsequent decision of the Council of Orleans in 549 finally established the right of kings to control the appointment of bishops.
It was a time of increasingly intertwined secular and religious power, with bishops and other religious leaders sitting on government bodies and local civil administration carried out by diocesan departments.
Under Dagobert I at the beginning of the 7th century. the administration of church functions became an integral part of the path to honor, after which the king’s associates became local rulers - counts and bishops at the same time; There were often cases when bishops ruled cities and the rural settlements surrounding them, minted money, collected taxes from lands subject to taxation, controlled market trade, etc.
The bishops themselves, owning large church farms, began to occupy an increasingly higher place in the emerging feudal hierarchy, which was facilitated by the non-forbidden marriages of priests with laity, representatives of the feudal elite.
The 7th-9th centuries are characterized by the rapid growth of feudal relations. At this time, in Frankish society there was a agrarian revolution, which led to the widespread establishment of large feudal land ownership, to the loss of land and freedom by the community members, and to the growth of the private power of feudal magnates. This was facilitated by a number of historical factors. Began in the VI-VII centuries. the growth of large landownership, accompanied by infighting among landowners, revealed the fragility of the Merovingian kingdom, in which here and there internal borders arose as a result of disobedience of the local nobility or resistance of the population to the collection of taxes. Moreover, by the end of the 7th century. The Franks lost a number of lands and actually occupied the territory between the Loire and the Rhine.
One of the attempts to solve the problem of strengthening state unity in conditions of widespread disobedience to the central authorities was the church council of “prelates and nobles”, held in Paris in 614. The edict adopted by the council called for “the most severe suppression of riots and brazen attacks of attackers”, threatened punishment for “theft and abuse of power by officials, tax collectors on trading places,” but at the same time limited the rights of civil judges and tax collectors on church lands, mortgaging thus the legislative basis for their immunity. Moreover, according to the decision of the council, bishops were henceforth to be elected “by the clergy and the people,” while the king retained only the right to approve the results of the elections.
The weakening of the power of the Frankish kings was caused, first of all, by the depletion of their land resources. The distribution of land by the Frankish kings led to an increase in the power of noble families and a weakening of the position of royal power. Over time, the position of the nobles became so strong that they essentially ruled the state, occupying post of mayor. Only on the basis of new grants, the granting of new rights to landowners, and the establishment of new seigneurial-vassal ties could the strengthening of royal power and the restoration of the unity of the Frankish state take place at this time. The Carolingians, who actually ruled the country even before the transfer of the royal crown to them in 751, began to pursue this policy.
At the turn of the 7th-8th centuries. the position of mayor becomes the hereditary property of the noble and wealthy Carolingian family, which marked the beginning of a new dynasty.
Army. In the early stages of the development of the feudal state, the army was not separated from the people. It was a people's militia that took an active part in political life. At the end of the 5th - beginning of the 6th century. it was still built on a tribal basis. The free peasant was the mainstay of royal power under the Merovingians. The people's militia consisted of free Frankish community members; they participated in court and in maintaining order. As long as this support was maintained, royal power could resist the claims to power of the land magnates.
The removal of the armed people from government affairs was a direct consequence of the collapse of the tribal basis of the Frankish army, which was replenished in the 7th century. Gallo-Romans, free precarists. The military organization of the Franks was influenced by Roman institutions. Thus, garrison service, the subordination of military detachments to local officials, and the appointment by the king of commanders of thousands and centurions were introduced.
The source of law is custom. During the period V-IX centuries. On the territory of the Frankish state, the customs of the tribes were recorded in the form of the so-called “barbarian truths”. Salic, Rinoir, Burgundian, Allemansky and other truths were created.
The sources of early feudal law also include immunity charters and formulas. Charters of immunity issued by the king to the feudal lords removed the given territory from the judicial, financial and police jurisdiction of the state, transferring these powers to the feudal lords.
The formulas were samples of letters, contracts and other official documents.
The Frankish state occupied vast territories in Central and Western Europe until the 5th century. were part of the Western Roman Empire. The chronological framework of the existence of Frankia is 481-843. Over the 4 centuries of its existence, the country has gone from a barbarian kingdom to a centralized empire.
Three cities were the capitals of the state at different times:
- Tour;
- Paris;
- Aachen.
The country was ruled by representatives of two dynasties:
- From 481 to 751 — Merovingians;
- From 751 to 843 – Carolingians (the dynasty itself appeared earlier - in 714).
The most outstanding rulers, under whom the Frankish state reached the peak of its power, were Charles Martell, Pepin the Short and.
The formation of Frankia under Clovis
In the mid-3rd century, Frankish tribes first invaded the Roman Empire. They twice attempted to occupy Roman Gaul, but both times they were expelled. In the 4th-5th centuries. The Roman Empire began to be increasingly attacked by barbarians, which included the Franks.
By the end of the 5th century. part of the Franks settled on the coast of the Rhine - within the modern city of Cologne (at that time it was the settlement of Colonia). They began to be called Rhenish or Ripuarian Franks. Another part of the Frasnian tribes lived north of the Rhine, so they were called northern or Salic. They were ruled by the Merovingian clan, whose representatives founded the first Frankish state.
In 481, the Merovingians were led by Clovis, the son of the deceased King Childeric. Clovis was greedy for power, self-interested and sought at all costs to expand the borders of the kingdom through conquest. From 486, Clovis began to subjugate the outlying Roman cities, the population of which voluntarily came under the authority of the Frankish ruler. As a result, he was able to grant property and land to his associates. Thus began the formation of the Frankish nobility, which recognized themselves as vassals of the king.
In the early 490s. Clovis married Chrodechild, who was the daughter of the King of Burgundy. His wife had a huge influence on the actions of the king of Frankia. Chrodehilda considered her main task to be the spread of Christianity in the kingdom. On this basis, disputes constantly occurred between her and the king. The children of Chrodechild and Clovis were baptized, but the king himself remained a convinced pagan. However, he understood that the baptism of the Franks would strengthen the prestige of the kingdom in the international arena. The approach of war with the Alamanni forced Clovis to radically change his views. After the Battle of Tolbiac in 496, in which the Franks defeated the Alamanni, Clovis decided to convert to Christianity. At that time, in Western Europe, in addition to the classical Western Roman version of Christianity, the Arian heresy also dominated. Clovis wisely chose the first creed.
The baptismal ceremony was performed by the bishop of Reims, Remigius, who converted the king and his soldiers to the new faith. To enhance the significance of the event for the country, the whole of Reims was decorated with ribbons and flowers, a font was installed in the church, and a huge number of candles were burning. The baptism of Frankia elevated Clovis above other German rulers who disputed their right to supremacy in Gaul.
Clovis's main opponent in this region were the Goths, led by Alaric II. The decisive battle between the Franks and the Goths took place in 507 at Vouillet (or Poitiers). The Franks won a major victory, but they failed to completely subjugate the Gothic kingdom. At the last moment, the ruler of the Ostrogoths, Theodoric, came to Alaric’s aid.
At the beginning of the 6th century. The Byzantine emperor honored the Frankish king with the titles of proconsul and patrician, which elevated Clovis as a Christian ruler.
Throughout his reign, Clovis defended his rights to Gaul. An important step in this direction was the transfer of the royal court from Tournai to Lutetia (modern Paris). Lutetia was not only a well-fortified and developed city, but also the center of all of Gaul.
Clovis had many more ambitious plans, but they were not destined to be realized. The last great act of the Frankish king was the unification of the Salic and Ripuarian Franks.
Frankish state in the 6th-7th centuries.
Clovis had four sons - Theodoric, Childerbert, Clodomer and Clothar, who, unlike their wise father, did not see the point in creating a single centralized state. Immediately after his death, the kingdom was divided into four parts with capitals at:
- Reims (Theodoric);
- Orleans (Chlodomer);
- Paris (Hilderbert);
- Soissons (Chlothar).
This division weakened the kingdom, but did not prevent the Franks from conducting successful military campaigns. The most significant victories for the Frankish kingdom include the successful campaigns against the Thuringian and Burgundian kingdoms. They were conquered and incorporated into Frankia.
After the death of Khdodvig, the kingdom plunged into internecine wars for two hundred years. Twice the country found itself under the rule of one ruler. The first time this happened was in 558, when Clovis's youngest son Clothar the First was able to unite all parts of the kingdom. But his reign lasted only three years, and civil strife again overwhelmed the country. The Frankish kingdom was united for the second time only in 613 by Chlothar the Second, who ruled the country until 628.
The results of long-term civil strife were:
- Constant change in internal boundaries;
- Confrontations between relatives;
- Murders;
- Dragging vigilantes and ordinary peasants into political confrontation;
- Political rivalry;
- Lack of central authority;
- Cruelty and licentiousness;
- Violation of Christian values;
- Decline in the authority of the church;
- Enrichment of the military class due to constant campaigns and robberies.
Socio-economic development under the Merovingians
Despite the political fragmentation of the 6th-7th centuries, it was at this time that Frankish society experienced rapid development of social ties. The basis of the social structure was feudalism, which arose under Clovis. The king of the Franks was the supreme overlord who granted land to his vassal warriors in exchange for faithful service. This is how two main forms of land ownership arose:
- Hereditary;
- Alienable.
The warriors, receiving land for their service, gradually grew rich and became large feudal landowners.
There was a separation from the general mass and strengthening of noble families. Their power undermined the power of the king, which resulted in the gradual strengthening of the positions of the mayordomos - managers at the royal court.
The changes also affected the peasant community-mark. Peasants received land as private property, which accelerated the processes of property and social stratification. Some people became fabulously rich, while others lost everything. Landless peasants quickly became dependent on the feudal lords. In the early medieval kingdom of the Franks there were two forms of enslavement of peasants:
- Through comments. The impoverished peasant asked the feudal lord to establish protection over him and transferred his lands to him for this, recognizing his personal dependence on the patron. In addition to the transfer of land, the poor man was obliged to follow any instructions of the lord;
- Through bakery - a special agreement between the feudal lord and the peasant, according to which the latter received a plot of land for use in exchange for fulfilling duties;
In most cases, the impoverishment of the peasant inevitably led to the loss of personal freedom. In a matter of decades, most of the population of Frankia became enslaved.
Rule of mayors
By the end of the 7th century. royal power was no longer an authority in the Frankish kingdom. All levers of power were concentrated at the mayors, whose position in the late 7th - early 8th centuries. became hereditary. This caused the rulers of the Merovingian dynasty to lose control of the country.
At the beginning of the 8th century. Legislative and executive power passed to the noble Frankish family of Martells. Then the position of royal majordomo was taken by Charles Martel, who carried out a number of important reforms:
- On his initiative, a new form of ownership arose - benefices. All lands and peasants included in the benefices became conditionally their own vassal. Only persons who performed military service had the right to hold benefices. Leaving service also meant loss of benefit. The right to distribute benefits belonged to large landowners and the mayordomo. The result of this reform was the formation of a strong vassal-feudal system;
- An army reform was carried out, within the framework of which a mobile cavalry army was created;
- The vertical of power was strengthened;
- The entire territory of the state was divided into districts, headed by counts appointed directly by the king. Judicial, military and administrative power was concentrated in the hands of each count.
The results of Charles Martell's reforms were:
- Rapid growth and strengthening of the feudal system;
- Strengthening the judicial and financial systems;
- The growth of the power and authority of the feudal lords;
- Increasing the rights of landowners, especially large ones. At that time, in the Frankish kingdom there was a practice of distributing letters of immunity, which could only be issued by the head of state. Having received such a document, the feudal lord became the rightful owner in the territories under his control;
- Destruction of the property donation system;
- Confiscation of property from churches and monasteries.
Martell was succeeded by his son Pepin (751), who, unlike his father, was crowned king. And already his son, Charles, nicknamed the Great, in 809 became the first emperor of the Franks.
During the era of the rule of mayors, the state became significantly stronger. The new state system was characterized by two phenomena:
- Complete elimination of local authorities that existed before the mid-8th century;
- Strengthening the power of the king.
The kings received broad powers. Firstly, they had the right to convene a national assembly. Secondly, they formed a militia, a squad and an army. Thirdly, they issued orders that applied to all residents of the country. Fourthly, they had the right to occupy the post of supreme commander. Fifthly, kings administered justice. And finally, sixthly, taxes were collected. All orders of the sovereign were mandatory. If this did not happen, the violator faced a huge fine, corporal punishment or the death penalty.
The judicial system in the country looked like this:
- The king has the highest judicial power;
- Locally, cases were heard first by community courts, and then by feudal lords.
Thus, Charles Martel not only changed the country, but created all the conditions for further centralization of the state, its political unity and strengthening of royal power.
Carolingian rule
In 751, King Pepin the Short from a new dynasty, which was called the Carolingians (after Charlemagne, the son of Pepin), ascended the throne. The new ruler was short, for which he went down in history under the nickname “Short”. He succeeded Hillderic the Third, the last representative of the Merovingian family, on the throne. Pepin received a blessing from the Pope, who sanctified his ascension to the royal throne. For this, the new ruler of the Frankish kingdom provided the Vatican with military assistance as soon as the Pope requested it. In addition, Pepin was a zealous Catholic, supported the church, strengthened its position, and donated extensive possessions. As a result, the Pope recognized the Carolingian family as the legitimate heirs to the Frankish throne. The head of the Vatican declared that any attempts to overthrow the king would be punishable by excommunication.
After the death of Pepin, control of the state passed to his two sons Karl and Carloman, who soon died. All power was concentrated in the hands of the eldest son of Pepin the Short. The new ruler received a remarkable education for his time, knew the Bible very well, was involved in several sports, was well versed in politics, and spoke classical and folk Latin, as well as his native Germanic language. Carl studied all his life because he was naturally inquisitive. This passion led to the sovereign establishing a system of educational institutions throughout the country. So the population began to gradually learn to read, count, write and study science.
But Charles's most significant successes were the reforms aimed at unifying France. First, the king improved the administrative division of the country: he determined the boundaries of the regions and installed his own governor in each.
Then the ruler began to expand the borders of his state:
- In the early 770s. conducted a series of successful campaigns against the Saxons and Italian states. Then he received a blessing from the Pope and went on a campaign against Lombardy. Having broken the resistance of local residents, he annexed the country to France. At the same time, the Vatican repeatedly used the services of Charles’s troops to pacify its rebellious subjects, who from time to time raised uprisings;
- In the second half of the 770s. continued the fight against the Saxons;
- He fought with the Arabs in Spain, where he tried to protect the Christian population. In the late 770s - early 780s. founded a number of kingdoms in the Pyrenees - Aquitaine, Toulouse, Septimania, which were supposed to become springboards for the fight against the Arabs;
- In 781 he created the Kingdom of Italy;
- In the 780s and 790s he defeated the Avars, thanks to which the borders of the state were expanded eastward. In the same period, he broke the resistance of Bavaria, incorporating the duchy into the empire;
- Charles had problems with the Slavs who lived on the borders of the state. At different periods of the reign, the tribes of the Sorbs and Lutich offered fierce resistance to Frankish domination. The future emperor managed not only to break them, but also to force them to recognize themselves as his vassals.
When the borders of the state were expanded as much as possible, the king began to pacify the rebellious peoples. Uprisings constantly broke out in different regions of the empire. The Saxons and Avars caused the most problems. Wars with them were accompanied by large casualties, destruction, hostage-taking and migrations.
In the last years of his reign, Charles faced new problems - attacks by the Danes and Vikings.
The following points are worth noting in Charles’s domestic policy:
- Establishing a clear procedure for collecting the people's militia;
- Strengthening the borders of the state through the creation of border areas - stamps;
- Destruction of the power of the dukes who claimed the power of the sovereign;
- Convening of Sejms twice a year. In the spring, all people endowed with personal freedom were invited to such a meeting, and in the fall, representatives of the highest clergy, administration and nobility came to the court;
- Agricultural development;
- Construction of monasteries and new cities;
- Support for Christianity. A tax was introduced in the country specifically for the needs of the church - tithe.
In 800, Charles was proclaimed emperor. This great warrior and ruler died of fever in 814. The remains of Charlemagne were buried in Aachen. From now on, the late emperor began to be considered the patron of the city.
After the death of his father, the imperial throne passed to his eldest son, Louis the First Pious. This was the beginning of a new tradition, which meant the onset of a new period in the history of France. The power of the father, like the territory of the country, was no longer supposed to be divided between sons, but passed on by seniority - from father to son. But this became the cause of a new wave of internecine wars for the right to hold the imperial title among the descendants of Charlemagne. This weakened the state so much that the Vikings, who reappeared in France in 843, easily captured Paris. They were driven out only after paying a huge ransom. The Vikings left France for some time. But in the mid-880s. they appeared again near Paris. The siege of the city lasted more than a year, but the French capital survived.
Representatives of the Carolingian dynasty were removed from power in 987. The last ruler of the family of Charlemagne was Louis the Fifth. Then the highest aristocracy chose a new ruler - Hugo Capet, who founded the Capetian dynasty.
The Frankish state was the greatest country of the medieval world. Under the rule of his kings there were vast territories, many peoples and even other sovereigns who became vassals of the Merovingians and Carolingians. The legacy of the Franks can still be found in the history, culture and traditions of the modern French, Italian and German nations. The formation of the country and the flourishing of its power are associated with the names of outstanding political figures who forever left their traces in the history of Europe.