comparing monarchy and feudalism in the middle ages

#COMPARING MONARCHY AND FEUDALISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES PROFESSIONAL#

In fact, the most important decisions had to be settled via pacts reached with the representatives of various institutions and social groups (nobility, clergy and urban leaders).

Beginning in the Late Middle Ages, kings were also compelled to consult representatives of the cities. In the early Middle Ages, kings only needed to consult the nobles and bishops assembled in the royal court ( curia). Moreover, within the scope of government, a function assigned to the executive branch today, late medieval kings could not make major decisions alone, but had to have backing from their kingdoms’ representatives. Thus, the late medieval monarchs often turned to the judicial sphere to consolidate their power. 19 To the extent that kings were considered God’s representatives, their essential role was to act as judges. The old local courts from the early medieval period did not entirely disappear, but their powers were reduced and gradually became hierarchically subject to the royal courts via the instrument of appeals. Thus, emerged a new type of process with more guarantees in which fundamentally oral processes gave way to written, documented procedures.

#COMPARING MONARCHY AND FEUDALISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES PROFESSIONAL#

18 These institutions fast came to preside over the justice administrations because of the quality of their work, which guaranteed a more dependable application of the law than that provided by local judges, essentially because these new courts were run by professional lawyers educated at European universities. The curia was also deprived of its judicial functions, prompting the emergence of royal tribunals such as the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster, 16 the French parlements, 17 and the Castilian audiencias (high courts) and chancillerías (chanceries).

The oldest of these bodies was the “Accounts Chamber” or “Comptos “( Exchequer in England), which administrated the royal agents’ finances. The royal institution, thus, came to guarantee the stability of power, averting the chaos and anarchy born of the perpetual state of war between lords which had characterized and marred the feudal era. “The king is dead, long live the king” was the refrain to formally announce the death of the sovereign in France though the king had died, his successor automatically ensured the monarchy’s uninterrupted continuity. The monarch’s power came, then, to stem from his birth as the “legitimate heir” of the deceased king. 4 Philip Augustus’s son, Louis VIII, immediately inherited the throne upon his father’s death without even having been formally designated heir.

Thus, Philip Augustus was designated as heir to the throne on November 1, 1179, and stood as heir until the death of his father, Louis VII, at which point he became the king, serving until his own death on July 14, 1223. As Jackson ( 1984, 6–7) has indicated, the transition from elective to hereditary monarchy went through an initial stage in which early Capetians crowned their successors as heirs to the throne to bring about an instantaneous transmission of power upon the king’s death.

The hereditary principle did not appear overnight because it was not easy to consolidate (Fedou 1977, 52–61).

Comparing monarchy and feudalism in the middle ages