A Short History of the Middle Ages Fourth Edition

were “castellans.” Guillem Guifred, a castellan in Catalonia (and a bishop, too, for

good measure), for example, received “half of the revenue of the courts [at

Sanahuja], without deceit. From the market, half.... Of the oven, half. Of rights on

minting, half.”^8

Warriors and Bishops

Although the developments described here did not occur everywhere simultaneously

(and in some places hardly at all), in the end the social, political, and cultural life of

the West came to be dominated by landowners who saw themselves as both military

men and regional leaders. These men and their armed retainers shared a common

lifestyle, living together, eating in the lord’s great hall, listening to bards sing of

military exploits, hunting for recreation, competing with one another in military

games. They fought in groups as well—as cavalry. In the month of May, when the

grasses were high enough for their horses to forage, the war season began. To be

sure, there were powerful vassals who lived on their own fiefs and hardly ever saw

their lord—except for perhaps forty days out of the year, when they owed him

military service. But they themselves were lords of knightly vassals who were not

married and who lived and ate and hunted with them.

The marriage bed, so important to the medieval aristocracy from the start, now

took on new meaning. In the seventh and eighth centuries, aristocratic families had

thought of themselves as large and loosely organized kin groups. They were not tied

to any particular estate, for they had numerous estates, scattered all about. With

wealth enough to go around, the rich practiced partible inheritance, giving land

(though not in equal amounts) to all of their sons and daughters. The Carolingians

“politicized” these family relations. As some men were elevated to positions of

dazzling power, they took the opportunity to pick and choose their “family

members,” narrowing the family circle. They also became more conscious of their

male line, favoring sons over daughters. In the eleventh century, family definitions

tightened even further. The claims of one son, often the eldest, overrode all else; to

him went the family inheritance. (This is called “primogeniture”; but there were

regions in which the youngest son was privileged, and there were also areas in which

more equitable inheritance practices continued in place.) The heir in the new system

traced his lineage only through the male line, backward through his father and

forward through his own eldest son.

What happened to the other sons? Some of them became knights, others monks.

Nor should we forget that some became bishops. In many ways the interests of