From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A
vassal
during the
feudalism
of
medieval
Europe
, was someone who had shared duties with a
lord
. Usually the vassal provided soldiers to the lord. The lord used his army of soldiers from all of his vassals to protect those vassals. The lord also gave him the piece of land that he held as a
fief
. By analogy the term
vassal
is used also for similar systems in other feudal societies.
The development of the
vassal
, in a society that was increasingly organised around the concept of "lordship"? in French the
seigneur
? is one sign that
Antiquity
ended and the
Early Middle Ages
began. Lordship is the basic social institution as
Tacitus
described them in his book
Germania
. The Roman West experienced them for the first time in the
Migration Period
.
As the system developed in the seventh century, the vassals were gangs of freemen who subjected themselves, in some degree of formality, to the authority of a leader, from whom they could expect to be fed, clothed and armed. The quality of a vassal was only in his fighting ability and the strength of his loyalty. The etymology (where the word came from) of "vassal" is from a Celtic word
gwas
"boy" that meant a young male slave, with a Latinised form,
vassus
that appeared in
Salic Law
(Rouche 1987 p 429), like the way "
knight
" came from the from Old English word
cniht
and similar words in Frisian and Dutch, all meaning "lad"
[1]
.
- Cantor, Norman,
The Civilization of the Middle Ages
1993
- Ganshof, Francois Louis,
Feudalism
translated 1964
- Rouche, Michel, "Private life conquers state and society," in
A History of Private Life
vol I, Paul Veyne, editor, Harvard University Press 1987
ISBN
0-674-39974-9