mean just groupings of villages which were the subjects of land-grants
or paid customary dues to landlords.^37 The charters of early eleventh-
century Anjou, on the other hand, show vicarial powers still very much
in use by the territorial agents of the new-style dynasty of counts. The
Angevin vicariisometimes held castles for the count, but the extension
of the comital estates, particularly under Geoffrey Martel (1040–60),
demanded a more numerous corps of officials to police town and
country under prepositi(prévôts, provosts) set up at Angers, Tours,
Vendome, Saumur, and other centres. One of the main functions of
both vicarii and prepositiwas to execute judgment on the parties
defeated in judicial duels.^38 When he founded the abbey of Beaulieu,
Count Fulk Nerra (d.1039) exempted from all customs both the lands
already possessed and those it should later acquire, and gave the monks
the vicariafor cases of bloodshedding, robbery, and all other offences,
with all the fines and profits arising from it. Judicial duels between the
monks’ servants and the inhabitants of their bourgwere to be held on
the monks’ land, duels between their servants and knights or men of the
count, at the latter’s castle of Loches, though the abbot was to pay no
fines to provost or vicar when his men were defeated there.^39
In making grants of vicariato private lords it was unusual at this
period for the count not to hold back jurisdiction over ‘the four cases’
of homicide, rape, arson, and robbery,^40 or else ‘the vicariaof sixty
shillings’—the amount of the penalty imposed by Charlemagne for
serious crimes.^41 Justice over criminals could still be regarded as one
amongst a number of public responsibilities, but it was fast becoming
a form of property—both a major source of profit to the landlord, and
a means of controlling the human resources of his domain. Like pieces
of land, portions of vicarial jurisdiction might be bought and sold and
held in benefice.^42 In the north the status of the vicariusgradually
changed to that of a seignorial agent, collecting for his lord the fines due
from offenders, and (in civil cases) from the losers in judicial duels (or
from both sides if they made settlements before trial); and the scope of
his justice was ultimately limited to the serfs born into the lord’s
Seignorial jurisdiction 51(^37) L. Halphen, ‘Les Institutions judiciaires en France au xiesiècle: Région angevine’, Revue
Historique, 77 (1901), 303; Guillot, Le Comté d’Anjou et son entourage au XIesiècle, i.
398–403.
(^38) Guillot, Le Comté d’Anjou, ii. 59–60 (no. 66).
(^39) Ibid.ii. nos. 6, 17, 39, 66, 80, 356, 368.
(^40) Ibid.ii. no. 381: only some of the four cases (e.g. rape and arson) might be reserved; see
J.-P. Poly et E. Bournazel, La Mutation féodale X–XIIesiècles(Paris, 1980), 87–91, for the vary-
ing local definitions of the four cases.
(^41) Guillot, Le Comté d’Anjou, ii, nos. 89, 200, 372; Capitularia, i. 72 (cc. 8,9), 224 etc.; in
England, a 60-shilling fine was set in Alfred’s laws for breaking the peace of the burhor
stronghold of a bishop or alderman quem Latine comitem vel seniorem dicunt: Liebermann,
Gesetze der Angelsachsen, i. 72–3 (Af. 40).
(^42) Guillot,Le Comté de Anjou, ii. no. 80.