Mediaeval Socialism by Bede Jarrett

Author:Bede Jarrett [Jarrett, Bede]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Fiction & Literature, Religion & Spirituality, Religion, New Age
ISBN: 9781465512710
Google: Vu-dugEACAAJ
Goodreads: 13287948
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Published: 2021-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Cf. Coutenson, Theologia Mentis et Cordis, iii. 388-389, Paris, 1875; and Billnart, De Justitia, i. 123-124, Liège, 1746.

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CHAPTER V

THE LAWYERS

Besides the Schoolmen, by whom the problems of life were viewed in the refracted light of theology and philosophy, there was another important class in mediaeval times which exercised itself over the same social questions, but visaged them from an entirely different angle. This was the great brotherhood of the law, which, whether as civil or canonical, had its own theories of the rights of private ownership. It must be remembered, too, that just as the theologians supported their views by an appeal to what were considered historic facts in the origin of property, so, too, the legalists depended for the material of their judgment on circumstances which the common opinion of the time admitted as authentic.

When the West drifted out from the clouds of barbaric invasion, and had come into calm waters, society was found to be organised on a basis of what has been called feudalism. That is to say, the natural and universal result of an era of conquest by a wandering people is that the new settlers hold their possessions from the conqueror on terms essentially contractual. The actual agreements have varied constantly in detail, but the main principle has always been one of reciprocal rights and duties. So at the early dawn of the Middle Ages, after the period picturesquely styled the Wanderings of the Nations, we find the subjugating races have encamped in Europe, and hold it by a series of fiefs. The action, for example, of William the Norman, as plainly shown in Domesday Book, is typical of what had for some three or four centuries been happening here and on the Continent. Large tracts of land were parcelled out among the invading host, and handed over to individual barons to hold from the King on definite terms of furnishing him with men in times of war, of administering justice within their domains, and of assisting at his Council Board when he should stand in need of their advice. The barons, to suit their own convenience, divided up these territories among their own retainers on terms similar to those by which they held their own. And thus the whole organisation of the country was graduated from the King through the greater barons to tenants who held their possessions, whether a castle, or a farm, or a single hut, from another to whom they owed suit and service.

This roughly (constantly varying, and never actually quite so absolutely carried out) is the leading principle of feudalism. It is clearly based upon a contract between each man and his immediate lord; but, and this is of importance in the consideration of the feudal theory of private property, whatever rights and duties held good were not public, but private. There was not at the first, and in the days of what we may call "pure feudalism," any concept of a national law or natural right, but only a bundle of individual rights.

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