King Robert the Pious in the early eleventh century the Carolingian
pagushad broken up, at least south of the Seine, into a collection of
castleries. Public authority was compromised still further by the possi-
bility of a castellan’s being the vassal of more than one overlord—as the
Count of Anjou himself was vassal of both Hugh Capet and the duke of
Aquitaine. The heads of old vicecomital families, and (later in the
eleventh century) ‘new men’ amongst the castle-holders, began to call
themselves ‘counts’. The domains of the old Frankish abbeys were also
breaking up, the castellans founding their own monasteries to sanctify
their independent lordship. Under Philip I (1060–1108), the dislocation
of the pagusspread to the old Carolingian heart-land north of the Seine.
Subinfeudation produced a class of lesser castellans, called knights
along with those who merely garrisoned the comital fortresses, and it
was amongst these men that territorial surnames (e.g. ‘Hervé de Mont-
morency’) emerged, because there was no other way of distinguishing
between the numerous Herveys, Hughs, and Roberts except by the
names of their estates.^29
Along with the castle and the fevum comitale on which it stood,
bannumand districtus, the criminal jurisdiction and policing functions
the vicarius(Fr. viguier) originally enjoyed as the agent of the count or
viscount, became the property of a lineage.^30 The transference of juris-
diction from public to private hands and the evolution of the seigneurie
banaleis indicated by the change in meaning of ‘customs’.^31 Under the
Carolingians, consuetudinessignified monetary impositions, often of
public origin, for instance the duties which the king was accustomed to
charge on river traffic, or the fredushe took for a breach of the peace.
Only rarely before 1000 does an order that ‘no count, viscount, judge
or secular power shall presume to hear pleas, enforce laws or adjudge
distraint’ within an immunity surrender the ‘law, justice and judgment’
at all explicitly into the hands of an abbot.^32 But in the early years of the
Seignorial jurisdiction 49(^29) J.-F. Lemarignier, Le Gouvernement royal aux premiers temps capétiens (907–1108)
(Paris, 1965), 47, 60, 68–72, 89–92, 121–3, 126–7, 131–4.
(^30) J. Richard, ‘Chateaux, chatelains et vassaux en Bourgogne au XIeet XIIIesiècles’, Cahiers
de civilisation médiévale, 3 (1960), 433–47; C. Higounet, ‘Structures sociales, ‘castra’ et
castelnaux dans le Sud-Ouest aquitaine’, in Structures féodale et féodalisme dans l’Occident
Méditerranéen (Xe–XIIIesiècles), Colloque internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique (Paris, 1980), pp. 109–17; M.Gramain, ‘ “Castrum”: Structures féodales et
peuplement en Biterrois au xiesiècle’, ibid. 119–34; Font Rius, ‘Détention des chateaux en
catalogne’, 64–7.
(^31) On the evolution of the seigneurie banale, see the classic article of J.-F. Lemarignier, ‘La
Dislocation du “Pagus” et le problème des ‘Consuetudines’ (Xe–XIesiècles)’, in Mélanges Louis
Halphen(Paris, 1951), 401–10; but cf. Jane Martindale, ‘His Special Friend’? The Settlement
of Disputes and Political Power in the Kingdom of the French (Tenth to Mid-Twelfth Century’,
TRHS, 6th ser. 5 (1995) for the demonstration that the forms of Carolingian justice continued
to be used in the localities.
(^32) For the significant terms see Niermeyer, lexicon minus, s.v. bannus, 6, consuetudo, 4;