It is possible, Samarrai says, that French scribes, writing in Latin, attempted to transliterate the Arabic word fuyū (the plural of fay), which was being used by the Muslim invaders and occupiers at the time, resulting in a plurality of forms - feo, feu, feuz, feuum and others - from which eventually feudum derived.Throughout the Middle Ages the majority of people living in England worked the land as peasant farmers. Further, the earliest use of feuum (as a replacement for beneficium) can be dated to 899, the same year a Muslim base at Fraxinetum ( La Garde-Freinet) in Provence was established. Indeed the first use of these terms is in Languedoc, one of the least Germanized areas of Europe and bordering Muslim Spain. Samarrai's theory is that early forms of 'fief' include feo, feu, feuz, feuum and others, the plurality of forms strongly suggesting origins from a loanword. In that text is a passage about Louis the Pious which says annona militaris quas vulgo foderum vocant, which can be translated as 'Louis forbade that military provender (which they popularly call 'fodder') be furnished.'Īnother theory by Alauddin Samarrai suggests an Arabic origin, from fuyū (the plural of fay). Lewis said the origin of 'fief' is not feudum (or feodum), but rather foderum, the earliest attested used being in Astronomus's Vita Hludovici (840). This Germanic origin theory was also shared by William Stubbs in the nineteenth century.Īnother theory was put forward by Archibald R.

Bloch said it is related to the Frankish term *fehu-ôd, in which *fehu means 'cattle' and -ôd means 'goods', implying 'a moveable object of value.' When land replaced currency as the primary store of value, the Germanic word *fehu-ôd replaced the Latin word beneficium.

The most widely held theory is put forth by Marc Bloch. The origin of the feudum and why it replaced beneficium has not been well established, but there are multiple theories, described below. The first attested instance of this is from 984, although more primitive forms were seen up to one-hundred years earlier. Later, the term feudum, or feodum, began to replace beneficium in the documents. Initially in medieval Latin European documents, a land grant in exchange for service was called a beneficium (Latin). The etymology of feodum is complex with multiple theories, some suggesting a Germanic origin (the most widely held view) and others suggesting an Arabic origin. The term 'feudal' or 'feodal' is derived from the medieval Latin word feodum. 'the feudal government') evolved into a noun: feudalism. In the 19th century the adjective 'feudal' (ie. In the 18th century Adam Smith popularized the forms 'feudal government' and 'feudal system' in his book Wealth of Nations (1776). It derived from 'feodal' which was used in seventeenth-century French legal treatises (1614) and translated into English legal treatises as 'feodal government'. The term feudalism is recent, first appearing in French in 1823, Italian in 1827, English in 1839, and in German in the second half of the nineteenth century. Brown's The Tyranny of a Construct, and Susan Reynolds' Fiefs and Vassals (1994), there has been ongoing inconclusive discussion among medieval historians as to whether feudalism is a useful construct for understanding medieval society. Since 1974 with the publication of Elizabeth A. There is also a broader definition, as described by Marc Bloch (1939), that includes not only warrior nobility but the peasantry bonds of manorialism, sometimes referred to as a ' feudal society'. In its classic definition, by François-Louis Ganshof (1944), feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs. Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Īlthough derived from the Latin word feodum or feudum (fief), then in use, the term feudalism and the system it describes were not conceived of as a formal political system by the people living in the medieval period.

Feudalism chart