Quixote

Leadership of the noble classes remained viable throughout the middle ages. To a great degree, this is what accounted for the cultural stagnancy that we associate with the dark ages. Power and wealth was concentrated in the country manors rather than in the cities. North of the Alps, Europe had no proper capitals. Life was highly localized. Very little commerce took place between towns. People remained in their villages, farmed the land around them and abided by the rule of their local lord. Learning was sequestered to the monasteries. Commerce became the domain of the ostracized classes. Very gradually, over the course of 3 or 4 centuries, the supremacy and sovereignty of the nobles began to wane. Strong monarchs emerged in France, England, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden. In seafaring countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy a rich urban elite took form. The power of the rural gentry was rivaled and in many cases made subordinate to law and money. Power from prestige and tradition began to count less than that which was derived from economic utility. Auerbach’s reads Don Quixote as a demonstration of this phenomenon, which had occurred during the late middle ages almost imperceptibly. His interpretation of the Quixote character is fascinating. He analyses his social position and actually finds famously deluded sense of the world as perfectly reasonable given his rank and role in medieval society:

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“By his detailed description of the circumstances of his hero’s life, Cervantes makes it perfectly clear, at the very beginning of his book, where the root of Don Quixote’s confusion lies: he is the victim of a social order in which he belongs to a class that has no function. He belongs to this class; he cannot emancipate himself from it; but as a mere member of it, without wealth and without high connections, he has no role and no mission. He feels his life running meaninglessly out, as though he were paralyzed. Only upon such a man, whose life is hardly better than a peasant’s but who is educated and who is neither able nor permitted to labor as a peasant does, could romances of chivalry have such an unbalancing effect. His setting forth is a flight from a situation which is unbearable and which he has borne far too long.” (Mimesis, 137)

Given his position as a minor hidalgo, Quixote’s duties and office had become obsolete, supplanted by the government of the absolutist king. Three or four generations before him, his ancestors might have played a vital part in the destiny of Spain. They might have taken part in the reconquista, or they might have been charged with keeping order in the newly formed Spanish duchies while the king was away fighting in the crusades. By the start of the siglo de oro, the king’s rule was uncontested and peace reigned. The need for knights had vanished, though the people who occupied those positions lingered in their decrepit with nothing do. People today read Don Quixote and they see a man with pretentions to something greater than what he is. Quixote is a knight; he can claim that title as a birthright. The comic tension of the story, of course, is that by the 16th century, what it meant to be a knight in imperial Spain meant something far different than what it was originally intended to be. That someone would go about behaving the traditional way that a knight would behave in that time and place was cause for laughter. But Cervantes goes further than simple comedy and questions whether knighthood and nobility ever meant what it was supposed to be. Perhaps knighthood was always only performance of a role rather than a real office with duties and responsibilities. If this were true, than it brings us to the final question: is acting the part of knight equivalent on some level to being a knight, does one occupy the role simply by enacting it?

Basis for Aristocratic Entitlement

It is counterintuitive to consider, but the entrenchment of feudalism during the 9th and 10th centuries AD as the dominant and enduring social order in Europe might have actually signaled the conclusion of knighthood’s practical relevance in society. After the fall of Rome, the device of nobility was introduced by the Germanic tribal leaders as a means of stabilizing military allegiance, and later, under the Carolingians, a system for delegating governmental power. Title was awarded to those who kept the peace and assisted with the leadership of the empire. Once the Frankish throne had dissolved, there was no longer any central authority to validate noble title and to employ individuals to military and administrative office. Nonetheless, the noblemen retained their titles as emblems of prestige. Just as the 5th century Frankish chieftains derived legitimacy and license to rule from their foederati pacts with Rome long after the empire’s collapse, the medieval lords continued using their titles to assert their proprietary rights over the land. But beyond justification for one’s privilege, noble title ceased to fulfill any practical purpose. Title became strictly ceremonial. It ceased to be a position within the apparatus of power—due to the fact that that apparatus had gone defunct—and persisted instead as a social role, a pattern of behaviors and relationships that denoted power, and by denoting power also substantiated it. Auerbach, in his chapter on the courtly romance, explains the growing irrelevance of nobility and how this contrasted paradoxically with its enduring centrality in the European social life:

“The ethics of feudalism, the ideal conception of the perfect knight, thus attained a very considerable and very long-lived influence. Concepts associated with it—courage, honor, loyalty, mutual respect, refined manners, service to women—continued to cast their spell on the contemporaries of completely changed cultural periods. Social strata of later urban and bourgeois provenance adopted this ideal, although it is not only class-conditioned and exclusive but also completely devoid of reality. As soon as it transcends the sphere of mere conventions of intercourse and has to do with the practical business of the world, it proves inadequate and needs to be supplemented, often in a manner most unpleasantly in contrast to it. But precisely because it is so removed from reality, it could—as and ideal—adapt itself to any and every situation, at least as long as there were ruling classes at all.” (Mimesis, 137)
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Auerbach implies here that nobility remains a potent force in Europe precisely because it became divorced from its operative meaning and was re-established as a signifier of importance and proper conduct. So, though a count may no longer carry out a ministerial roles in the county of a kingdom, he is still viewed as a figure of authority in his particular precinct and is treated deferentially. A marquis may no longer govern the eastern march, but it is agreed by all that he and his progeny should be allowed to sit in court and that he is entitled to favors from the king. The code of chivalrous conduct was adopted by the European aristocracy to moderate power and aggression between military adversaries, but it also provides a protocol of behavior and ethics that distinguishes the noble classes from the common folk. In modern life we rely on laws to secure our rights to property and liberty; but rule of law was faint and only intermittent in medieval Europe. State power was not uniformly obeyed under the Ancien Régime. Only rule of god was respected, which was made manifest by hereditary history and fortune.

Noble Rank

The ad hoc nobility that had arisen in the European kingdoms during the first centuries of the dark ages was finally organized and given official title by Charlemagne. His grandfather, Charles Martel, had joined land rights to military responsibility a century earlier, but the hierarchy of authority was shallow. Knights extorted the peasantry for taxes on behalf of a lord to whom they were vassals, and the lord bowed to the crown. This system failed to account for differences in power between the lords, and it did not hold them to any duties of leadership beyond simple intimidation and aggressive force. They were expected to maintain a military force and nothing more. Charlemagne went further by charging the landed nobility with administrative responsibilities. He ranked the nobility with different titles, each of which entailed varying degrees of power and separate duties.

Baron (and Knight) – The lowest station of noble rank, barons had title to the land and compelled the peasantry to work their fields and cultivate wealth for the kingdom. The typical baron lived in a manor, and during times of peace, he oversaw planting and harvesting. In times of war, he rode to battle on his own horses, carried his own weapons and fought under the banner of his province’s Duke, to whom he was a vassal. If a baron was too old to fight, as was usually the case, he would send his sons to serve the king as knights. It was expected that in wars of conquest a young knight would win new land holdings which would be awarded to him by the victorious king. In this way, an otherwise errant knight could acquire his own barony to sustain himself and his family rather than having to return home and fight with his brothers for his father’s lands.

The function order viagra professional of these experts is to ensure that each of their patients restored back their problems quickly. Erectile issues viagra on line related to HIFU are less frequent than those related to surgery and radiation. This type of cialis viagra australia is effortlessly accessible on the web. He or female viagra pill she might also ask about issues in relationship with her. Count – Administration of Charlemagne’s empire hinged on the count and the county. The comital title indicated that one was the invested representative of the royal palace. Counts were appointed by the king himself and dispatched to the provinces to see to all areas of governance. They collected taxes, oversaw troop levies, built roads and fortifications, resolved judicial matters, and executed the king’s law. Charlemagne divided his kingdom into dozens of counties and placed a count in each to carry out his will. Often the position was held by a powerful local baron. If Charlemagne doubted the loyalty of his subjects in the precinct, he would send one of his own courtiers. Loyalty of the counts was paramount and, at least during the Carolingian reign, the position carried tremendous power.

Marquis – A marquis is a count whose county lies in the kingdom’s frontier along a march. A march is a contested region bordering another kingdom. A marquis was usually given a sizable army to defend his county , and by doing so, secure the kingdom’s borders. They were trained in warfare and were martial in their rule. The marquis is a higher station than count because of its military rank.

Duke – Termed peers of the king, Dukedom is the highest rank of nobility below royalty. Dukes ruled large duchies which roughly correlate to the regions of Europe we know today (e.g. Swabia, Alsace, Normandy, Holland, ect). Although the king could rule from afar with the counts, the comital mansion was usually based in the city and the counts’ influence did not reach far beyond the activities of the town. It was the dukes who held real power in the provinces since they were lords to all of the barons. This fact was especially important for military matters. The king had to go through his dukes to raise an army from the knightly classes. The Dukes made up the class from which the king chose his generals. They commanded the royal armies in the king’s absence and exercised a great deal of autonomy in deciding whom to fight and when.

The Device of Nobility

Before his death in 511 AD, Clovis I divided Frankish Gaul between his four sons. Without establishing rules for the transition of hereditary title, internecine warfare arose between Clovis’s descendants. For the next 300 years Northern Europe became a place of constantly shifting alliances and fragmented authority. The legitimacy of the Merovingian kings’ rule dissipated with each generation. By the end of the 7th century, their power had almost completely withered. The regency had become more or less ceremonial and administrative power was wielded by the kings’ subordinates. So, it was at this point, in the darkest period of the dark ages when state authority had almost completely vanished from Europe, when family feuded with family and the only law that existed was the sporadically observed moral law of the church, that the Umayyad Caliphate captured the Iberian peninsula and then crossed the Pyrenees to challenge the Franks. This external threat of Muslim invasion prompted a rapid and dramatic reorganization of European society. Before this time, the Franks did not trust each other. One could not predict the behavior of his rivals or of his friends. Given a common enemy, the lords and regents of the Frankish kingdoms could align their interests around a single purpose and presume compliance from their neighbors since the consequence for noncompliance was certain annihilation. Led by Charles Martel, Majordomo of the Austrasian kingdom, a coalition system was devised based on alliance, obligation and trust. These new pacts would allow the different kingdoms to deploy a united army made up of professional soldiers. It was to be the first standing army in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. Built into these alliance agreements were plans for supporting, training, and arming an entire class of soldiers and provisioning them while in the field. Protocol was as follows: a lord would allow a soldier to collect wealth from a part of the lord’s holdings. This soldier would coerce the peasantry living on the lord’s land to grow food for his table, hay for his horse and enough surplus product to pay for armor and weaponry. In return, the soldier would swear an oath of fealty to the lord, promising to march under his banner when called upon to fight. The lord, in turn, swore allegiance to the king and was obliged to deploy his soldiers at the king’s command. This chain of alliances, roughly based on the Roman foederatus relation, formed the basis of European feudalism. Its efficacy was proven at the Battle of Tours, where Charles Martel was able to field an army of approximately 20,000 disciplined, well-armed men, nearly matching Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi’s force of 25,000 horsemen. According to accounts of the battle, Martel’s heavy infantry endured repeated charges from Saracen cavalry without breaking. A Muslim chronicle of the event reads as follows:

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“And in the shock of the battle the men of the North seemed like a sea that cannot be moved. Firmly they stood, one close to another, forming as it were a bulwark of ice; and with great blows of their swords they hewed down the Arabs. Drawn up in a band around their chief, the people of the Austrasians carried all before them. Their tireless hands drove their swords down to the breasts [of the foe].”

We could perhaps say that it was on this battlefield outside of Tours, in October of 732 AD, that the concept of European nobility was born.

The Roman Foederati

Three barbarian foeterati behind a legionary. The looping lines around them are war bugles.

The origin of European Feudalism can be traced to the Roman Foederatus, the term from which the word feudalism is derived as well as our word federation. During the era of the Republic, a foedus was a treaty signed with other non-Roman tribes on the Italian peninsula. The agreement granted administrative autonomy to the tribes under the condition that they levy soldiers when called upon and fight under the Roman standard. Such pacts allowed Rome to consolidate the power of the Italian peoples without conquest and focus their combined might on other more formidable enemies like Carthage and Greece. Rome became rich from military victories won for them by their Foederati but was in no way required to share its wealth with them since the tribes had opted remain sovereign entities. In 91 BC the Italian states went to war with Rome over the question of inclusion in the Republic. They were soundly defeated, but so important were the Italian lands to Rome’s imperial aspirations, they were nonetheless granted blanket citizenship so as to quell ongoing strife.

During the time of the Empire, the foedus was seldom used. It was the prerogative of Rome to conquer her neighbors rather than ally with them. This remained the case throughout the Pax Romana, until the fourth century AD when new peoples began to appear across the Rhine and the Danube who were numerous and warlike. Defending so vast a frontier proved very difficult and costly for the waning empire, so rather than continuing to field legions on empty tracts of wilderness, Rome entered into foedus agreements with the same barbarian kings who threatened their borders. These treaties were initially bought with gold and silver. As the Empire’s treasury began to evaporate, they granted the Germanic tribes permission to settle west of the Rhine. Such concessions would have been unthinkable a generation ago, but fear of the barbarian onslaught had become acute and for the first time since the Punic Wars 650 years prior, Italy appeared to be vulnerable to foreign attack. Rome was desperate to secure its frontier. In 406, despite the efforts of the foederati along the Rhine and what remained of the Roman army, the borders of the Empire were breached by a mixed group of Visigoths, Vandals and Suebi. The wave of destruction that followed led to a collapse of Roman civic order in Northern Gaul. Four years later Rome was be sacked by Alaric I.
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In Europe, north of the Alps, the old foederati would retain their legitimacy as the rightfully appointed rulers of the region leading into the dark ages. In the absence of centralized authority, they carried on the laws and traditions of the fallen empire, as well as their own Germanic code. They had actually become relatively powerful under Roman patronage. They had been given land to provision their soldiers and gold to arm them. When the Romans left, the foederati were the only military force left in Gaul. Naturally, they would rise up and reclaim it.

Germanic barbarian fighting a Roman Legionary. The German’s face is depicted as thick-cheeked and wide. His hair is straight and wild.