described as neither ‘Holy’, ‘Roman’ nor an ‘Empire’ by Voltaire
[1694–1778] (1756: Ch. LXX). The empire masked a confusing array
of jurisdictions. The ‘Holy Roman Emperor’ was the nominal
supreme ruler of a hotchpotch of kingdoms, dukedoms, sovereign
bishoprics, independent or federated cities and the like. His powers
over each were different and ill-defined. The heads of some of these
territories had the power to elect the emperor’s successor. The
Catholic Church, in the shape of the pope, claimed powers over the
emperor and his ‘vassals’ (those who had sworn allegiance to him),
which in later times were felt to be ‘sovereign’ prerogatives. Equally
the Church claimed exclusive jurisdiction over all the clergy and
many matters of family law – as well as rights to censorship and the
levying of separate clerical ‘taxes’. In some cases incumbents of
independent kingdoms such as France and Spain held territory within
the Empire as nominal vassals of the emperor or some other ‘ruler’.
Similar confusions were to be seen in relationships between the King
of England in his capacity as Duke of Normandy and the King of
France.
Law enforcement and defence were the subject of a patchwork of
rights and privileges, the consequence of a pyramid of personal
relationships between lords and vassals. Each vassal, in turn, was lord
to an inferior group of aristocrats, until one descends to the level of
the ordinary knight in his manor. At the aristocratic level the
possession of land entailed not only something like the modern idea
of ownership, but, perhaps more, the notion of government. In
principle, in the early feudal period, land could only be held by those
prepared to administer and, most importantly, defend it. Hence only
adult fighting men could hold land. If, for instance, the king gave land
to a duke, the only way the duke could hope to hold it was by sub-
contracting the administration and defence of much of it to a group
of earls or counts. Each earl or count, in turn, would obtain the
allegiance of knights to hold particular manors, or fortified villages.
One consequence of this is, logically, an overlapping of juris-
dictions in that the same area would be under the control of (in our
example) a king, a duke, a count and a knight. Undoubtedly, also, the
Church would also claim jurisdiction in some cases. For that matter it
was common for hard-up lords to grant jurisdiction in commercial
matters to town councils through charters – the terms of which some
councils in Britain still preserve and attempt to enforce.32 SYSTEMS