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Re: Fealty


Poster: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy@abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU>

  I would like to learn more about fealty, both the society kind and the
  historical kind.

The problem with the "Society Kind" is that it is so subjective, and almost
unquantifiable.  About the sole thing I've seen that can be said in common,
is that it is a bond of a kind, and not to be taken lightly.

I have two vassals: they are required to pay me a tax on any surplus they
can produce from my lands which they hold.  Those lands must be pretty poor,
because I never see a penny... (:-)  But I told them they were subsistence
fiefs before I let them hold them...  To the "persons" behind the oath, I
suggested that this game would be fun to play only so long as we all are
friends, and that this was the only term of concession I would extract: that
if it stops being fun, they stop being vassals.

If you want to learn more about period fealty, a daunting first place to
start would both volumes of Marc Bloch's books "Fealty".  Frankly, I've not
managed to finish both of them yet, I've just read parts.

	Tibor
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