benefices (opulenta beneficia) that induced men to endure toil and
danger to defend them’.^65
‘Fief’, ‘fee’, seems to have prevailed over ‘benefice’ because the word
always contained the notion of a payment to the recipient. Perhaps
originally signifying a payment for the services of a Carolingian official,
it also became useful to churches which needed to emphasize that their
grants of land or money were subventions to retainers rather than the
outright alienations which canon law frowned upon. A church could
apparently be granted to a priest as a feuus presbiteralis, and even an
archdeaconry be regarded as held in feudumfrom a bishop (and as such
be granted to a layman).^66 It became the practice of landlords across
Western Europe to endow churches with property and receive it back to
be held as fiefs (feudi oblati, fiefs de reprise) for the donors’ lifetimes or
in heredity.^67 Here, perhaps, was where conditions of tenure and (some-
times mutual) dependency were first worked out. At the highest level the
count of Cleve gave five estates from his proprietasto the bishop of
Münster in 1231 and received them back in feodo, in order to seal an
agreement of mutual aid and defence.^68 In France the practice appears
well established for military purposes a century and a half earlier in the
charters of King Philip I and duke William of Normandy. A great lord’s
gift to a church might include, or specifically exclude, the ‘knights’ fiefs’
on the estate. It might be necessary for a tenant in feodoto give consent
to his lord’s grant and his consequent change of allegiance.^69 In
Normandy duke William approved in 1066 the arrangement by which
five knights of John, bishop of Avranches, should, after his death, hold
in fevioof the bishopric.^70
Normandy and the Norman church were exceptional for military
enfeoffments: Orderic Vitalis, looking back from the twelfth century to
204 Legal Ordering of ‘the State of the Realm’
(^65) Recueil des Actes des Ducs de Normandie, ed. Fauroux, 130, 140, 149, 152, 154, 164,
172, 246, 276 (cum benefitiis ad ipsum castrum pertinentibus), 306, 371, 379, 402, 455, 456,
461; Recueil des Actes de Philippe Ier. ed. Prou, pp. 5, 26, 33, 64–6, 149, 180, 263, 353, 422,
437; G. Duby, La Société aux XIet XIIsiècles dans la région maconnaise(Paris, 1953), part iii,
ch. 2; F. Lot and R. Fawtier, Histoire des institutions françaises, i. Institutions Seigneuriales
(Paris, 1957), 13; The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, ii. 194, iv. 210.
(^66) Lot and Fawtier, Institutions seigneuriales, 98, and Institutions royales, 49, 195, 234;
Hollyman, Développement du vocabulaire féodal, 46–7, 52, 59; Niermeyer, lexicon minus,
417 (s.v. feodum, 12); Devic and Vaissete, Histoire générale de Languedoc, v, cols. 198–200
(c.945).
(^67) Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Cluny, 6 vols. ed. A. Bruel (Paris, 1876–94), iv.
813–14; Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, 108; Recueil des actes de Louis VI, i (1108–37), 83;
The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ii. 64–5, 152, iii. 156–7; Reynolds, Fiefs and
Vassals, 50, 179.^68 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals,456.
(^69) Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier,10, 33, 52–3, 136, 211, 241, 266, 364, 404; Recueil des
actes des Ducs de Normandie,285, 367; The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis,ii. 34–5,
152–5, 156–7; Recueil des actes de Louis VI,i. 402, 476, 486.
(^70) Recueil des actes des Ducs de Normandie, 440.