of the lord of the father, others that of the lord of the mother, and still others that of the
lord of the seigneurie within which the births of the children occurred. Most frequently,
these problems were resolved by conventions among lords of neighboring seigneuries to
apportion the children according to some simple formula.
A dispensation for a serf to marry a free person was less easy to obtain, because local
customs often favored regarding the offspring of mixed marriages as free people. Lords
in consequence demanded high fines to obtain the privilege of making mixed marriages.
For this and other reasons, popular demands for the abolition of serfdom usually
emphasized the desire for freedom of marriage.
William Chester Jordan
[See also: AFFRANCHISSEMENT; SERFDOM/SERVITUDE/SLAVERY]
Bloch, Marc. “Liberté et servitude personelles au moyen-âge.” In Mélanges historiques. Paris:
SEVPEN, 1963, Vol. 1, pp. 286–355.
FORMES FIXES
. The “fixed forms” of French lyrical poetry of the 14th and 15th centuries developed
from dance lyrics of the 13th century and include principally the ballade, rondeau, and
virelai. Different strophic structures characterize each form, but all include a refrain. The
poetry served to determine the form of the musical setting, although the formes fixes were
less frequently set to music after Machaut. Deschamps’s Art de dictier (1392) provides
the first systematic listing of the formal characteristics of the formes fixes for the late 14th
century. The ballade was most favored by Machaut, Froissart, and Deschamps; 15th-
century poets favored the rondeau. Later in the 15th century, the single-strophe virelai,
renamed the bergerette, enjoyed a brief flowering.
Lawrence Earp
[See also: ARS NOVA; BALLADE; BUSNOYS, ANTOINE; CHARLES
D’ORLÉANS; CHRISTINE DE PIZAN; DESCHAMPS, EUSTACHE; FAUVEL,
LIVRES DE; FROISSART, JEAN; LESCUREL, JEHANNOT DE; MACHAUT,
GUILLAUME DE; PHILIPPE DE VITRY; REFRAIN; RONDEAU; VIRELAI]
Poirion, Daniel. Le poète et le prince: l’évolution du lyrisme courtois de Guillaume de Machaut a
Charles d’Orléans. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965.
FOUAGE
. The word fouage (Lat. focagium) meant “hearth tax,” but the meaning of “hearth”
varied over time and from place to place, as did the way of assessing fouages. An
important early example of a fouage was the money tax in Normandy, where, from the
11th century, the population paid a fouage in return for the maintenance of a stable
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