APPENDIX. FEUDALISM

[1Sidenote: [800-1450 A.D.]]

2To the average mind the term Middle Ages is a synonym for chaos. And, compared with the periods before and after, it is indeed chaos. But, in a sense, all human history is “without form,” even if not “void,” and the comparative simplicity which we see in certain periods is arrived at chiefly by a process of the cancellation of numberless confusing details and the concentration of the attention on certain large and picturesque personages or movements which were actually far from holding such stark and eminent importance in the eyes of contemporaries.

3Thus in the case of Alexander’s conquest of that little segment of space which he called “the world,” to the contemporary Athenian, Alexander was almost a myth lost in the wilderness of the East as in a fog. The Athenian found his immediate troubles and triumphs in his own family, in his shop, in his deme. To myriads of other peoples, however, Alexander’s very existence was unknown; and splendid intrigues, superb politics, lofty feats of statecraft and of warfare were taking place far from the orbit of Alexander. These deeds were never chronicled, or the chronicles are lost, or perhaps only waiting discovery. Consequently we are ignorant of these confusing histories, and sum up in the exclusive phrase “Alexandrian epoch” a vast web of what were chaos, did we but know more of it.

4But still, taking history as we have it, the Middle Ages torment and bewilder us with the variety and seeming unimportance of their events. They are called the Dark Ages, though, upon a closer look, they deserve the name no more than the Night herself with all her revelation of the stars which the Day absorbs in the one central splendour of the sun.

5Let the name of Dark Ages stand, however, though it must not be forgotten that human history at least dreamed and walked in this apparent sleep. There is no lack of chronicle and no lack of action. Nor, in spite of the common idea, was there lack of progress. The barbarians had come down in avalanches of stolid clay upon the gardens of civilisation. During the seeming idleness the seeds were at work and ideals were busily thrusting upward till of a sudden they burst forth in that springtime known as the Renaissance.

6The history of each major country is given, in this work, its own chronicle, but for the better comprehension of the forces that were making possible the Renaissance and driving mankind to cry aloud for a betterment of conditions, it will be useful to set apart for brief consideration certain special phases and forces of Middle Age life. It will make it the easier to comprehend that life was by no means without the ferment of progress during that period which we so arbitrarily cleave out of history and put aside as the Middle Age.

7Throughout the various histories of modern nations will be found a discussion of the multiform phases of feudalism. It is desirable, however, to give it some isolated discussion, though necessarily brief. A guide might be found in the words of Bryce, whose definition of feudalism also makes a good beginning; and in the words of the philosopher Hegel:[a]