Growth of the Spirit of Christianity ... to the Dawn of the Lutheran Era

Seitenzahl:

250

Gewicht:

372 g

Erschienen bei:

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Kurzbeschreibung

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: blood; the other ultimately united both with Frank and Saxon, and contributed still further to cement the relative interests of these great nations. But the great effect of these inundations from the North, whether by land or sea, was to increase and confirm the tendency to feudalism; and the tendency to feudalism undoubtedly pointed in the direction of a depression of regal authority. The feudal system bore a strong resemblance to the solar system; it had a central sun, a body of revolving planets, and a company of attending satellites, the first represented by the king, the second by the barons, and the third by the vassals of the barons. Theoretically, the king was supreme; to him all the barons swore fealty, and bound themselves to assist him in times of war. But in times of peace it was very hard to tell where the supremacy really lay. In the sense that one was independent of another, there was no supremacy; the analogy to the solar system held pre-eminently good here. As in that system the destruction of the less would involve the shaking of the greater, so in feudalism there was a principle of mutual attraction, which made the existence of the kingly power dependent on the existence of the vassal. The baron was bound to assist his sovereign by no other law than that which obliged the vassal to assist the baron; and neither sovereign nor baron was on his side free from obligation to his inferior. The king could legally take no step without consulting the barons; the barons could legally take no step without consulting their vassals; and the extremes of social life were thusknit together by a bond of mutual dependence. No doubt, there was often a very great discrepancy between the law and the practice. In mediaeval times, a sovereign of commanding military talents was frequ...

Mehr über...

Mehr von: 

Mehr von:  George Matheson, Cambridge Scholars Publishing