the early days of the duchy, saw ‘barely literate priests of Danish stock’
themselves ‘bearing arms and holding lay fees by military service’.^71 But
references in other areas to ‘enfeoffed knights’ (fevales, milites feudales)
and to men holding feodalitersuggest that feudal tenure was a wide-
spread answer to military needs well before 1100.^72 What is certain is
that ‘feudalism’ came to depend on the authority of kings who moved
from the confirmation of the enfeoffments of churches to the incorpo-
ration of feudal notions into their systems of government. The uses of
grants in feodumin the political management of Italy are clear from
Frederick I’s diplomata. A number of margraves, counts, and other
magnates were invested with their lands and offices in Italy per rectum
feudum, the beneficiaries sometimes being recorded as swearing fidelity
to the emperor ‘as vassal to lord’. A treaty between the emperor
Frederick and the count of Barcelona provided for the infeudation of the
latter’s nephew Raymund with the county of Provence, to be held for a
rent of fifteen marks of fine gold payable at Arles every feast of the
Purification, the new count’s oath of fealty to the emperor against all
men, especially the opponents of Pope Victor, and homage and service
for the fee; the citizens of Arles were in turn to owe fealty and service to
Count Raymund, and the count of Folcalquier to do him rather than the
emperor homage.^73
To his fidelis, Arnold of Dorstadt, and his heirs female as well as
male, Frederick granted an Italian castle as ‘a lawful fief according to
German practice (per rectum feodum secundum morem Theutonicum)’,
which suggests that it was in Germany first that imperial fief-giving and
feudal hierarchy were important in the constitution of the kingdom.^74
Frederick cited his role as peace-maker and creator of ‘an ordered state’
(ordinatum statum) amongst quarrelling princes as the reason for his
confirmation of the count-palatine of the Rhine’s restoration of two
churches to the archbishop of Trier in return for the archbishop’s con-
cession of a castle in feodum to the count.^75 A royal act notified
Eberhard of Strubenhart’s grant to a monastery of a fief bestowed on
him by a lord, who had received it from the emperor, who had it from
the bishop of Speyer; all three lords approved the gift.^76 The emperor
The law of land-holding 205(^71) The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, iii. 120, and cf. ii. 82.
(^72) Niermeyer, lexicon minus, 413.
(^73) Constitutiones, i. 231; Friderici I Diplomata, 1152–1158, 316; 1158–1167, 12, 71, 94,
100, 137, 138–9, 176, 198–203, 220–5, 235, 243–5, 290, 376–9, 389–92; 1168–1180, 229,
283; 1181–1190, 111, 151–2, 197–8.
(^74) Friderici I Diplomata, 1158–1167, 462–3; for the continued importance of infeudation
in Germany, see e.g. Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum,v (1313–24), 898
(index, s.v. feodum), and Constitutiones, xi (1354–6), 634–5 (infeudatio generalis).
(^75) Friderici I Diplomata, 1158–1167,174–5; cf. 1152–1158,128–9, 364; 1158–67,417;
1168–1180,49, 272–7.
(^76) Ibid.1181–1190,225–6; cf. 1158–1167,157.