Mediaeval Socialism | Page 5

he, and was himself responsible for those beneath him in the social
scale. Landowners, therefore, in the modern sense of the term, had no
existence--there were only landholders. The idea of absolute dominion
without condition and without definite duties could have occurred to
none. Each lord held his estate in feud, and with a definite arrangement
for participating in the administration of justice, in the deliberative
assembly, and in the war bands of his chief, who in turn owed the same
duties to the lord above him. Even the king, who stood at the apex of
this pyramid, was supposed to be merely holding his power and his
territorial domain as representing the nation. At his coronation he
bound himself to observe certain duties as the condition of his royalty,
and he had to proclaim his own acceptance of these conditions before

he could be anointed and crowned as king. Did he break through his
coronation-oath, then the pledge of loyalty made by the people was
considered to be in consequence without any binding force, and his
subjects were released from their obedience. In this way, then, also
private property was not likely to be deemed equivalent to absolute
possession. It was held conditionally, and was not unfrequently
forfeited for offences against the feudal code. It carried with it burdens
which made its holding irksome, especially for all those who stood at
the bottom of the scale, and found that the terms of their possession
were rigorously enforced against them. The death of the tenant and the
inheriting of his effects by his eldest son was made the occasion for
exactions by the superior lord; for to him belonged certain of the dead
man's military accoutrements as pledges, open and manifest, of the
continued supremacy to be exercised over the successor.
Thus the extremely individual ideas as regards the holding of land
which are to-day so prevalent would then have been hardly understood.
Every external authority, the whole trend of public opinion, the
teaching of the Christian Fathers, the example of religious bodies, the
inherited views that had come down to the later legalists from the
digests of the imperial era, the basis of social order, all deflected the
scale against the predominance of any view of land tenure or holding
which made it an absolute and unrestricted possession. Yet at the same
time, and for the same cause, the modern revolt against all individual
possession would have been for the mediaeval theorists equally hard to
understand. Absolute communism, or the idea of a State which under
the magic of that abstract title could interfere with the whole social
order, was too utterly foreign to their ways of thinking to have found a
defender. The king they knew, and the people, and the Church; but the
State (which the modern socialist invokes) would have been an
unimaginable thing.
In that age, therefore, we must not expect to find any fully-fledged
Socialism. We must be content to notice theories which are socialistic
rather than socialist.
CHAPTER II

SOCIAL CONDITIONS
So long as a man is in perfect health, the movements of his life-organs
are hardly perceptible to him. He becomes conscious of their existence
only when something has happened to obstruct their free play. So,
again, is it with the body politic, for just so long as things move easily
and without friction, hardly are anyone's thoughts stimulated in the
direction of social reform. But directly distress or disturbance begin to
be felt, public attention is awakened, and directed to the consideration
of actual conditions. Schemes are suggested, new ideas broached.
Hence, that there were at all in the Middle Ages men with remedies to
be applied to "the open sores of the world," makes us realise that there
must have been in mediaeval life much matter for discontent. Perhaps
not altogether unfortunately, the seeds of unrest never need much care
in sowing, for the human heart would else advance but little towards
"the perfect day." The rebels of history have been as necessary as the
theorists and the statesmen; indeed, but for the rebels, the statesmen
would probably have remained mere politicians.
Upon the ruins of the late Empire the Germanic races built up their
State. Out of the fragments of the older villa they erected the manor.
No doubt this new social unit contained the strata of many civilisations;
but it will suffice here to recognise that, while it is perhaps impossible
to apportion out to each its own particular contribution to the whole
result, the manor must have been affected quite considerably by Roman,
Celt, and Teuton. The chief difference which we notice between this
older system and the conditions of modern agricultural life--for the
manor was pre-eminently a rural organism--lies in the enormous part
then played in the organisation