chapter threeThe Courts of Lords and Townsmen
In theirlegal procedures, the Carolingians bequeathed a model of an
ordered status regnito Western Europe, but the means of enforcing its
authority were spread perilously thin over a vast territory.^1 The Caro-
lingian empire was much smaller than its classical Roman ancestor, and
counts, missi, and scabinimade it a greater administrative reality. Yet
its cohesion was only as strong as the emperor’s control over local
officials, achieved by incessant travel, the delegation of much authority
to immune churches and great landlords generally, and continual
emphasis on the obligation of personal fidelity to the ruler. In the three
centuries after Charlemagne’s death, at least in the territory of the west
Franks which became known in the tenth century as France, the central
exercise of power was pitted against an often brutal assertion of juris-
diction by local lords. The establishment of seignorial and urban courts
nevertheless gave much greater depth to the administration of justice
and marked an essential stage in the structuring of territorial states.
The growth of feudal society
Household vassals, sustained by grants of land, formed the hard pro-
fessional nucleus of the Carolingian army and administration.^2 The
emperor depended for the government of his lands on fideleswho owed
him direct allegiance. But his subordinates on each level of the official
hierarchies of state and church—missiand archbishops, counts and
bishops, vicariiand archdeacons—also needed their personal follow-
ings.^3 Carolingian order—perhaps the order of any state there has ever
been—rested on these personal ties of loyalty as much as on the official
chains of command. Charlemagne simply tried to make sure that it was
on his person that individual loyalties were focused, using the missito
(^1) For a pessimistic assessment of the Carolingian achievement, see Ganshof, The Caro-
lingians and the Frankish Monarchy, 257–8.
(^2) P. Wolff, ‘L’Aquitaine et ses marges’, in Karl der Grosse, Lebenswerk und Nachleben, i.
Persönlichkeit und Geschichte, ed. H. Beumann (Dusseldorf, 1965), 292; J. F. Verbruggen,
‘L’Armée et la stratégie de Charlemagne’, ibid. 421 ff.
(^3) H. Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire, tr. P. Munz (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), 134 ff.;
J. F. Lemarignier, La France médiévale: Institutions et société(Paris, 1970), 92.