The simplest surviving fauxbourdon settings, such as those by Binchois, may reflect the
sort of polyphony extemporized by 15th-century singers of liturgical music. While the
precise origins of fauxbourdon are debated, it is clear that there was a connection with the
similar English practice of singing “faburden.” When fauxbourdon appears in relatively
elaborate compositions, such as Dufay’s Supremum est mortalibus or Juvenis qui
puellam, it may have carried extramusical significance as a symbol or as a rhetorical
figure in the setting of a humanistic text to music.
J.Michael Allsen
[See also: BINCHOIS, GILLES; DUFAY, GUILLAUME]
Besseler, Heinrich. Bourdon und Fauxbourdon: Studien zur Ursprung der niederländischen Musik.
rev. ed. Peter Gülke. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1974.
Elders, Willem. “Guillaume Dufay’s Concept of Faux-Bourdon.” Revue belge de musicologie
43(1989):173–95.
Trowell, Brian. “Fauxbourdon.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley
Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980, Vol. 6, pp. 433–38.
FEALTY
. Fealty (OFr. feelté) was the oath of loyalty sworn by important Frankish men to their
king from the 7th century. Charlemagne’s capitulary of 802 extending that obligation to
all free men, in order to reinforce public authority, had the force of generalizing fealty in
private contracts, and by the 10th century it regularly supplemented homage. Initially, the
oath was a promise not to harm, as indicated in Bishop Fulbert of Chartres’s letter to the
duke of Aquitaine (1020), but it acquired a more positive sense in the 11th century. As
Galbert de Bruges explained (1127), a new vassal would perform homage, then would
swear fealty (with his hand on the Gospels or a relic), and finally would be invested with
a fief. Fealty in essence conferred a religious guarantee to a secular contract.
Like homage, fealty originally was an exclusive act that evolved to accommodate the
increasing complexity of feudal tenure. In the 12th century, vassals with several fiefs
often “reserved” their primary fealty for their liege homages. From the 13th century,
feudal tenants often sealed charters attesting that they held their fiefs “by faith and
homage,” and in some cases written instruments even supplanted the acts themselves.
Theodore Evergates
[See also: FEUDALISM; FIEF/FEUDUM; FIEF HOLDING; HOMAGE;
INVESTITURE (FEUDAL)]
Bachrach, Bernard S. “Enforcement of the Forma Fidelitatis: The Techniques Used by Fulk Nerra,
Count of the Angevins (987–1040).” Speculum 59(1984):796–819.
Dunbabin, Jean. France in the Making, 843–1180. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Fourquin, Guy. Lordship and Feudalism in the Middle Ages, trans. Iris and A.L.Lytton Sells. New
York: Pica, 1976.
Ganshof, François L. Feudalism, trans. Philip Grierson. London: Longman, 1952.
Poly, Jean-Pierre, and Eric Bournazel. La mutation féodale, XIe– XIIe siècles. 2nd ed. Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1991.
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