Introduction

DURING the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries the dominant form of government in western Europe was what has come to be known as "Germanic" monarchy. There were two quite different types-the primitive and the more fully developed. From very early times the various Germanic peoples had been accustomed to choose chieftains to lead them in war. When the state of war was prolonged, these chieftains tended to become permanent and to bolster their position with mythical traditions of a divine origin. Thus the Merovingian kings and the Anglo-Saxon rulers of Wessex claimed descent from Germanic gods. These early Germanic monarchies were in theory elective, but custom usually confined eligibility for election to the members of a single family. The royal power rested on three bases. Each king had a small group of men, bound to him by special oaths of loyalty, who served as his officials and bodyguard, clearly a later form of the German chieftain's comitatus. Then, as the leader of his people in time of war, he had the right to call every able-bodied man to military service. Finally, since there was no taxation, the king's material resources came chiefly from the land he had reserved for his own use. In time of peace his governmental functions were extremely limited. The administration of justice was carried on by the people themselves in their popular courts, and the king's local officials were mere supervisors. Outside of fighting, the chief occupations of the early Germanic kings were keeping up their supply of wine and concubines.

This simple conception of kingship began to change as soon as it came into contact with the Christian church. The political ideas of the church had their origins in Hellenistic civilization. The Hellenistic king, the basileus, had been a sacred person-he was not a god, but he was more nearly divine than ordinary men. In Christian thought the king became a man appointed by God to rule over his fellows. Although the Christian conception of kingship is seen most clearly in the Byzantine monarchy, it had a profound effect on the Germanic kingdoms of the West. Churchmen did not think of the king as a mere war chief with a few special privileges in time of peace. To them he had been appointed by God to keep order, protect the weak from the strong, and especially to maintain the Christian church and faith. Consistently and firmly throughout these centuries of confusion that have been called the Dark Ages, the church not only supported the kings against any forces that threatened their position but regularly preached the sanctity of kingly office. The later Germanic monarchs drew a large part of their resources from the lands of the church and relied heavily on ecclesiastics in the royal administration. This transformation of Germanic kings to Christian priest-kings was, of course, slow and gradual. The process began with the conversion of the Germanic peoples and was early symbolized in the crowning and anointing of Pepin as king of the Franks by the pope, even though the culmination of this alliance between church and monarchy was not reached until the early eleventh century under the Salian emperors.

In the last years of the tenth century Germanic monarchies of one or the other of these two types ruled most of Europe. The more primitive form was represented by the governments of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Kievan Russia. Anglo-Saxon England and the Holy Roman Empire that embraced Germany, Italy, and the eastern part of modern France were monarchies of the more advanced type. Although western France under the last of the Carolingians had highly developed feudal institutions, it was still in theory a Germanic monarchy.

In the course of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries the three great Germanic monarchies, England, France, and Germany, were profoundly changed by the development of the feudal institutions that have been described in an earlier essay in this series. At different times and under different circumstances they were transformed into what historians call feudal monarchies. The term feudal monarchy has been used so loosely by many writers that it is extremely difficult to define in terms of current usage. In general, one can say that a feudal state is one in which all the members of the ruling class form a feudal hierarchy with a chief lord or suzerain at its peak. If one wants to include the crusaders' states (the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the kingdom of Cyprus, and the Latin empire of Constantinople) among the feudal monarchies, it is necessary to say that all that is required to make a feudal state into a feudal monarchy is to have the suzerain bear the title of king. The rulers of these kingdoms had no power or resources that were not derived from their position in the feudal hierarchy. 'But in the three great states of western Europe the rulers retained in theory at least the authority of the Germanic kings and their power as feudal suzerains was complementary. This was also true of the Norman kingdom of Sicily even though it had not been preceded by a Germanic kingdom. Then in some states there were feudal elements but no completely organized feudal hierarchy. This situation was a stage in the development of feudal monarchy in England, France, and Germany. The Scandinavian kingdoms, Kievan Russia, and the Spanish kingdoms reached this stage but never became full feudal monarchies.

The object of this essay is to trace the development of the three great western states during the later Middle Ages, to follow their transformation from Germanic to feudal monarchies, and to indicate the forces that were to make England a constitutional, France an absolute, and Germany a figurehead monarchy. Although the chief focus of the essay must be on the depiction of an important phase of the political history of western civilization, it should be borne in mind constantly that the subject is by no means purely academic. Many of the problems that face Europe today have their roots in the Middle Ages. And the origins of Anglo-American political ideas and institutions are deeply embedded in the history of the English feudal monarchy.