In the 3rd century, a new powerful alliance of Germanic tribes arose in the primordially Germanic lands near the Rhine, in which the tribes of the Franks played the main role. Roman historians, not too well versed in the diversity of barbarian tribes and peoples, called Franks all the Germanic tribes that lived in the Rhine region. Tribes lived in the lower reaches of the Rhine, later united by historians into a group of so-called Salic (seaside) Franks. It was this part of the Frankish tribes, the strongest and most organized, that began to move westward, into the Gallic regions that belonged to Rome.

In the IV century, the Franks, as federates, the official allies of Rome, finally entrenched themselves in Gaul. Their society was almost unaffected by Romanization, and politically and culturally, the Franks were completely independent. As allies, they helped the Western Roman Empire a lot - in 451, the Frankish army took the side of the Romans against the army of Attila.

At first, the Frankish tribes did not have a single leader. The disparate principalities were united only at the end of the 5th century by the leader of one of the tribes - Clovis from the Merovingian dynasty. With the help of diplomacy, and sometimes military force, Clovis subjugated or destroyed the rest of the Frankish rulers and gathered a powerful army under his banners. With this army, in a few years, he conquered all of his Gallic lands from Rome.

Having subjugated those parts of Gaul that belonged to Rome, Clovis immediately led the fight against the Visigoths, who had settled in the Gallic lands even earlier. These vast, but completely neglected during the Roman period, the excellent pastures and the abundance of forests were worth fighting for. Soon, the Franks owned almost all of Gaul, with the exception of a small area in the south, which remained behind the Visigoths. The political influence of Clovis also extended to neighboring Burgundy, which he did not manage to completely conquer.

In 496, Clovis, along with his people, was baptized, thus acquiring a reliable ally - the Roman Catholic Church. The Franks were perhaps the first barbarians who accepted Catholicism with the whole people. Other Germanic peoples, who adopted Christianity much earlier than them, were baptized mainly into Arianism, one of the currents of early Christianity, which the official church (both Eastern and Western) subsequently declared heresy. With the support of the church, Clovis further expanded his sphere of influence, leaving to his heirs in 511 one of the most extensive barbarian kingdoms by that time.

The heirs of Clovis, his sons, and after them - grandchildren, continued his work. By the middle of the VI century, the kingdom of the Franks became the most significant in Europe. In addition to Burgundy and Gaul, the Frankish kings quickly conquered most of the Germanic tribes that lived in the Rhine region. The lands of Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony, the Alemanni, and all other small Frankish tribes were subject to a single royal authority, consecrated by the Roman church. The Franks occupied a leading position among the peoples of new Europe, displacing the Goths from the historical stage.
Clovis, the first of the major Frankish conquerors, generously endowed his people with land holdings. Under him, the concept of allod appeared in the European economy. An allod was a land plot that was fully owned by the owner. Land could be donated, sold, exchanged and bequeathed. The whole agriculture of the feudal West grew out of allods. They formed a free peasantry, thanks to which agriculture gradually began to emerge from the crisis that had begun even before the Great Migration of Nations.

The introduction of allodial land ownership testified to major changes in the entire Frankish society. Like all Germanic peoples, the Franks retained tribal foundations. The arable land on which the community lived has always been public property. Each family or clan, which had its own plot, had all the rights to the harvest, but in no case to the land. However, with the development of Frankish society, with the strengthening of royal power to the detriment of the power of communal elders, the old tribal ties began to collapse. Ordinary community members preferred to run their own household, to be independent of a huge family. From them, the Frankish peasantry began to form - personally free people, possessing both tools of labor and all rights to the land that they cultivated.

In economic terms, the disintegration of the clan, the separation of individual allodist farmers was, of course, a positive change, especially at first. But on the other hand, from now on, all the debts that the landowner committed, he was obliged to pay on his own, without the support of the clan. Small allods gradually passed into the hands of the rich and the nobility, who took land - the main wealth in the Middle Ages - from debtors.

Large plots of land were also received by the royal warriors. These allotments, called benefices, Clovis gave only for the service and only for the duration of the service of the soldiers. His heirs transferred the benefices to the category of inherited gifts. The third (and largest, besides the king) landowner in the Merovingian kingdom was the church. The kings gave the church huge land holdings, into which plots of nearby allods gradually poured. Under the Merovingians, the practice of patronage was introduced, when a peasant came to a large landowner from the nobility under patronage, transferring his plot to him. The church also willingly accepted small landowners under its guardianship. As a rule, in this case, the peasant gave his allod to the church, and in return received a precarium for life - a slightly larger plot, for which he was also obliged to work out the annual corvée or pay dues. The widespread enslavement of the peasantry began. By the beginning of the 10th century, there were almost no allods left in Europe as such. They were supplanted by feuds - a new form of land ownership, which owes its emergence to a new, vassal-seigneurial hierarchy of relations in medieval society.

Do you know that:

• Merovingians - the first royal dynasty of the Frankish state, which ruled from 457 to 715.
• Arianism - a trend in the Christian church in the 4th - 6th centuries. The founder of the doctrine, the priest Arius, argued that God the Father is higher than God the Son (Christ).
• Allodium (from Old High German al- all and od- possession) - individual or family land ownership in the Dark Ages and the Early Middle Ages in Western Europe.
• Benefice - conditional urgent land grant for the performance of military or administrative service.
• precarium - the use of land provided by the owner for an agreed period for a fee.

The largest in Europe was the one that arose at the end of the 5th century. state of the Franks. Its creator was the leader of one of the tribes Clovis from the Merovei clan. By this name, the descendants of Clovis, who ruled the Frankish state until the middle of the 8th century, are called the Merovingians.
Having united the Franks under his rule, Clovis defeated the Roman army at the Battle of Soissons (486) and subdued Northern Gaul. Gradually there was a rapprochement between the two peoples: the Franks and the locals (descendants of the Gauls and Romans). The entire population of the Frankish state began to speak the same dialect, in which Latin was mixed with Germanic words. This dialect later formed the basis of the French language. However, only Latin was used in the letter; under Clovis, the first record of the judicial customs of the Franks was made on it (the so-called Salic law). According to the laws of the Franks, many crimes were punished with a large fine (the murder of a person, the abduction of other people's livestock or a slave, the burning of a barn with bread or a barnyard). There was no equality of people before the law: the size of the fine for murder depended on who was killed (for example, the life of a Frank was valued higher than the life of a descendant of the Gauls and Romans). In the absence of evidence, the accused could be subjected to "God's judgment", for example, they could offer to get a ring from a pot of boiling water. If at the same time the burns turned out to be small, then for those present it was a sign that God was on the side of the accused.
The appearance of written laws, binding on the entire territory of the Frankish state, led to its strengthening.
Clovis considered the Frankish kingdom his own possession. Shortly before his death, he divided it among his sons. The heirs of Clovis waged a long struggle for land and power. People died - blood was shed. The country either fell apart into separate parts, then united. As a result, the power of the Merovingian kings became insignificant. On the contrary, the mayor (in Latin - "head of the house") began to exert a great influence on the affairs of the state. Initially, a noble Frank, appointed by the king to the post of mayor, was in charge of the palace economy, managed the royal property throughout the country. Gradually, the post of mayordom turned into a hereditary one, and the mayordom itself became the highest official in the state.
The famous Major Karl Martell (which means "Hammer") ruled the country, regardless of the king. In his time, an army of Muslim Arabs invaded Gaul from Spain, but was defeated by the Franks at the Battle of Poitiers (732). The threat of the Arab conquest prompted Charles Martel to create a strong cavalry army. The Franks who wished to serve in it received land from the mayor house with peasants living on them. With the income from these lands, their owner acquired expensive weapons and horses.
The lands were given to the soldiers not in full ownership, but only for life and on the condition that the owner would perform equestrian military service, in which he took an oath to the mayor. Later, land holdings on the same condition began to be inherited from father to son.
For land distributions to the soldiers, Charles took away part of the possessions of the church (after the death of the mayor, the clergy took revenge on him by spreading stories about how the winner at Poitiers is tormented in hell for having robbed the church).
The military reform of Charles Martel marked the beginning of the formation of a new social system in Europe - feudalism.

A classic example of an early feudal society in the territory of the Western Roman Empire conquered by the Germanic tribes was the society of the Franks, in which the decomposition of the primitive communal system was accelerated as a result of the influence of the Roman order.

1. Frankish state under the Merovingians

Origin of the Franks. Formation of the Frankish kingdom

In historical monuments, the name of the Franks appeared starting from the 3rd century, and Roman writers called many Germanic tribes Franks, which bore various names. Apparently, the Franks represented a new, very extensive tribal association, which included in its composition a number of Germanic tribes that merged or mixed during the migrations. The Franks split into two large branches - the seaside, or salic, Franks (from the Latin word "salum", which means sea), who lived at the mouth of the Rhine, and the coastal, or Ripuarian, Franks (from the Latin word "ripa", which means coast) who lived south along the banks of the Rhine and Meuse. The Franks repeatedly crossed the Rhine, raiding Roman possessions in Gaul or settling there in the position of allies of Rome.

In the 5th century the Franks captured a significant part of the territory of the Roman Empire, namely North-Eastern Gaul. At the head of the Frankish possessions were the leaders of the former tribes. Of the leaders of the Franks, Merovei is known, under which the Franks fought against Attila in the Catalaunian fields (451) and on whose behalf the name of the Merovingian royal family came. The son and successor of Merovei was the leader Childeric, whose grave was found near Tournai. The son and heir of Childeric was the most prominent representative of the Merovingian family - King Clovis (481-511).

Having become the king of the Salic Franks, Clovis, together with other leaders who acted like him, in the interests of the Frankish nobility, undertook the conquest of vast areas of Gaul. In 486, the Franks captured the Soissons region (the last Roman possession in Gaul), and later the territory between the Seine and the Loire. At the end of the 5th century the Franks inflicted a severe defeat on the Germanic tribe of the Alemanni (Alamans) and partially forced them out of Gaul back across the Rhine.

In 496, Clovis was baptized, having accepted Christianity along with 3 thousand of his warriors. Baptism was a clever political move on the part of Clovis. He was baptized according to the rite adopted by the Western (Roman) Church. The Germanic tribes moving from the Black Sea region - the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, as well as the Vandals and Burgundians - were, from the point of view of the Roman Church, heretics, since they were Arians who denied some of its dogmas.

At the beginning of the VI century. Frankish squads opposed the Visigoths, who owned all of southern Gaul. At the same time, the great benefits that flowed from the baptism of Clovis affected. All the clergy of the Western Christian Church, who lived beyond the Loire, took his side, and many cities and fortified points that served as the seat of this clergy immediately opened the gates to the Franks. In the decisive battle of Poitiers (507), the Franks won a complete victory over the Visigoths, whose dominance from then on was limited only to the borders of Spain.

Thus, as a result of the conquests, a large Frankish state was created, which covered almost all of the former Roman Gaul. Under the sons of Clovis, Burgundy was annexed to the Frankish kingdom.

The reasons for such rapid successes of the Franks, who still had very strong community ties, was that they settled in North-Eastern Gaul in compact masses, without dissolving among the local population (like the Visigoths, for example). Moving deep into Gaul, the Franks did not break ties with their former homeland and all the time drew new forces for conquest there. At the same time, the kings and the Frankish nobility were often content with the vast lands of the former imperial fiscus, without entering into conflicts with the local Gallo-Roman population. Finally, the clergy provided Clovis with constant support during the conquests.

"Salic truth" and its meaning

The most important information about the social system of the Franks is reported by the so-called "Salic Truth" - a record of the ancient judicial customs of the Franks, which is believed to have been made under Clovis. This law book examines in detail various cases from the life of the Franks and lists fines for a wide variety of crimes, ranging from the theft of a chicken to a ransom for killing a person. Therefore, according to the "Salic Truth" it is possible to restore the true picture of the life of the Salic Franks. The Ripuarian Franks, the Burgundians, the Anglo-Saxons, and other Germanic tribes also had such judicial codes - Pravda.

The time for recording and editing this ordinary (from the word custom) folk law is the 6th-9th centuries, that is, the time when the tribal system of the Germanic tribes had already completely decomposed, private ownership of land appeared and classes and the state arose. To protect private property, it was necessary to firmly fix those judicial penalties that were to be applied to persons who violated the right to this property. Firm fixation also required such new social relations that arose from tribal relations, such as territorial, or neighboring, communal peasant ties, the ability for a person to renounce kinship, the subordination of free Franks to the king and his officials, etc.

The Salic Truth was divided into titles (chapters), and each title, in turn, into paragraphs. A large number of titles were devoted to determining the fines that had to be paid for all sorts of thefts. But the “Salic Truth” took into account the most diverse aspects of the life of the Franks, so there were also such titles in it: “On murders or if someone steals someone else’s wife”, “On if someone grabs a free woman by the hand, by the brush or by the finger”, “About quadrupeds, if they kill a man”, “About a servant in witchcraft”, etc.

In the title "On Insult with Words" punishments for insult were determined. The title "On Mutilation" stated: "If someone plucks out another's eye, he is awarded 62 1/2 solidi"; “If he tears off his nose, he is awarded for payment ... 45 solidi”; “If the ear is torn off, 15 solidi are awarded,” etc. (The solidus was a Roman monetary unit. According to the 6th century, it was believed that 3 solidi was equal to the cost of a “healthy, sighted and horned” cow.)

Of particular interest in Salic Pravda are, of course, titles, on the basis of which one can judge the economic system of the Franks and the social and political relations that existed among them.

The economy of the Franks according to the "Salic truth"

According to the Salic Pravda, the economy of the Franks was at a much higher level than the economy of the Germans, described by Tacitus. The productive forces of society by this time had significantly developed and grown. Animal husbandry undoubtedly played an important role in it. The Salic Pravda established in unusual detail what fine should be paid for the theft of a pig, for a one-year-old piglet, for a pig stolen together with a piglet, for a suckling pig separately, for a pig stolen from a locked barn, etc. truth” considered all cases of theft of large horned animals, theft of sheep, theft of goats, cases of horse theft.

Fines were set for stolen poultry (hens, roosters, geese), which indicated the development of poultry farming. There were titles that spoke about the theft of bees and hives from the apiary, about damage and theft of fruit trees from the garden ( The Franks already knew how to graft fruit trees by cuttings.), about stealing grapes from a vineyard. Penalties were determined for the theft of a wide variety of fishing tackle, boats, hunting dogs, birds and animals tamed for hunting, etc. This means that the Frank economy had a wide variety of industries - animal husbandry, beekeeping, gardening, and viticulture. At the same time, such branches of economic life as hunting and fishing have not lost their significance. Livestock, poultry, bees, garden trees, vineyards, as well as boats, fishing boats, etc., were already the private property of the Franks.

Agriculture played the main role in the economy of the Franks, according to Salic Pravda. In addition to grain crops, the Franks sowed flax and planted vegetable gardens, planting beans, peas, lentils and turnips.

Plowing at that time was carried out on bulls, the Franks were well acquainted with both the plow and the harrow. Damage to the harvest and damage to the plowed field were punishable by fines. The resulting harvest from the fields was taken away by the Franks on carts to which horses were harnessed. The harvests of grain were quite plentiful, for the grain was already stacked in barns or rigs, and there were outbuildings at the house of every free Frankish peasant. The Franks made extensive use of watermills.

The Mark community of the Franks

"Salic Truth" also provides an answer to the most important question for determining the social system of the Franks, who owned the land - the main means of production in that era. The manor land, according to the Salic Pravda, was already in the individual ownership of each franc. This is indicated by high fines paid by all persons who in one way or another spoiled and destroyed fences or penetrated with the aim of stealing into other people's yards. On the contrary, the meadows and forests continued to be collectively owned and used by the entire peasant community. The herds that belonged to the peasants of neighboring villages were still grazing in common meadows, and every peasant could take any tree from the forest, including a felled one, if it had a mark that it had been cut down more than a year ago.

As for arable land, it was not yet private property, since the entire peasant community as a whole retained the supreme rights to this land. But arable land was no longer redistributed and was in the hereditary use of each individual peasant. The supreme rights of the community to arable land were expressed in the fact that none of the members of the community had the right to sell their land, and if a peasant died without leaving behind his sons (who inherited the plot of land that he cultivated during his lifetime), this land was returned to the community and fell into the hands of "neighbors", i.e., all its members. But each communal peasant had his own plot of land for the time of plowing, sowing and ripening of grain, he fenced it and passed it on to his sons by inheritance. Land could not be inherited by a woman.

The community that existed at that time was no longer the tribal community that Caesar and Tacitus once described. New productive forces demanded new production relations. The tribal community was replaced by the neighboring community, which, using the ancient Germanic name, Engels called the brand. A village that owned certain lands no longer consisted of relatives. A significant part of the inhabitants of this village still continued to remain connected with tribal relations, but at the same time, strangers already lived in the village, immigrants from other places, people who settled in this village either by agreement with other community members, or in accordance with the royal charter.

In the title "On Settlers", "Salicheskaya Pravda" established that any person could settle in a foreign village if none of its inhabitants protested against it. But if there was at least one person who opposed this, the settler could not settle in such a village. Further, the procedure for eviction and punishment (in the form of a fine) of such a migrant, whom the community did not want to accept as its members, “neighbors”, and who moved into the village without permission, was considered. At the same time, the “Salicheskaya Pravda” stated that “if no protest is presented to the resettled person within 12 months, he must remain inviolable, like other neighbors.”

The settler remained inviolable even if he had a corresponding letter from the king. On the contrary, anyone who dared to protest against such a charter had to pay a huge fine of 200 solidi. On the one hand, this indicated the gradual transformation of the community from a tribal to a neighboring, or territorial, community. On the other hand, this testified to the strengthening of royal power and the allocation of a special layer that towered over ordinary, free community members and enjoyed certain privileges.

Disintegration of tribal relations. The emergence of property and social inequality in Frankish society

Of course, this does not mean that tribal relations no longer played any role in the society of the Franks. Tribal ties, tribal remnants were still very strong, but more and more they were replaced by new social ties. The Franks still continued to have such customs as paying money for the murder of a person to his relatives, inheriting property (except land) on the maternal side, paying part of the ransom (wergeld) for the murder for his insolvent relative, etc.

At the same time, "Salicheskaya Pravda" recorded both the possibility of transferring property to a non-relative, and the possibility of voluntary withdrawal from the tribal union, the so-called "renunciation of kinship." Title 60 discussed in detail the procedure associated with this, which, apparently, had already become common in Frankish society. That person who wished to renounce kinship had to appear at a meeting of judges elected by the people, break three branches over his head there, measuring a cubit, scatter them in four directions and say that he renounces the inheritance and from all accounts with his relatives. And if later one of his relatives was killed or died, the person who renounced kinship should not have participated either in the inheritance or in receiving the wergeld, and the inheritance of this person himself went to the treasury.

Who benefited from leaving the clan? Of course, the richest and most powerful people who were under the direct patronage of the king, who did not want to help their less wealthy relatives and were not interested in receiving their small inheritance. There were already such people in Frankish society.

The property inequality among the members of the community is described in one of the most important titles for the characterization of the social system of the Franks, the title of "Salic Truth", entitled "About a handful of land." If someone takes the life of a person, this title says, and, having given all the property, you will not be able to pay what is due according to the law, he must present 12 relatives who will swear that neither on earth nor under the earth he has more than that that they have already been given. Then he must enter his house, pick up a handful of earth from its four corners, stand on the threshold, facing inside the house, and throw this earth with his left hand over his shoulder at his father and brothers.

If the father and brothers have already paid, then he should throw the same land on his three closest relatives by mother and father. “Then, in [one] shirt, without a belt, without shoes, with a stake in his hand, he must jump over the wattle fence, and these three [maternal relatives] must pay half of what is not enough to pay the vira followed by law. The same should be done by the other three, who are relatives on the father's side. If one of them is too poor to pay the share falling on him, he must, in turn, throw a handful of land on one of the more prosperous, so that he pays everything according to the law. The stratification of free francs into poor and rich is also indicated by titles about debt and methods of its repayment, about loans and their recovery from the debtor, etc.

There is no doubt that Frankish society at the beginning of the VI century. already disintegrated into several distinct layers. The bulk of Frankish society at that time consisted of free Frankish peasants who lived in neighboring communities and among whom numerous remnants of the tribal system were still preserved. The independent and full position of the free Frankish peasant is indicated by the high wergeld, which was paid for him in the event of his murder. This wergeld, according to the Salic Pravda, was equal to 200 solidi and was in the nature of a ransom, and not a punishment, since it was also paid in case of an accidental murder, and if a person died from a blow or bite of any domestic animal (in the latter case, iergeld, as usually paid by the owner of the animal in half the amount). So, the direct producers of material goods, i.e., free Frankish peasants, at the beginning of the 6th century. still enjoyed more rights.

At the same time, a layer of new service nobility formed in Frankish society, whose special privileged position was emphasized by a much larger wergeld than that paid for a simple free franc. “Salicheskaya Pravda” does not say a word about the former tribal nobility, which also indicates the already completed disintegration of tribal relations. Part of this tribal nobility died out, part was destroyed by the risen kings, who were afraid of rivals, and part joined the ranks of the service nobility that surrounded the kings.

For a representative of the nobility who was in the service of the king, a triple wergeld was paid, that is, 600 solidi. Thus, the life of a count - a royal official or the life of a royal warrior was already much more expensive than the life of a simple Frankish peasant, which testified to the deep social stratification of Frankish society. Wergeld, paid for the murder of a representative of the service nobility, was tripled a second time (that is, it reached 1,800 solidi) if the murder was committed at a time when the murdered was in the royal service (during a campaign, etc.).

The third layer in the society of the Franks was made up of semi-free, the so-called litas, as well as freedmen, that is, former slaves set free. For semi-freemen and freedmen, only half the wergeld of a simple free franc, that is, 100 solidi, was paid, which emphasized their inferior position in Frank society. As for the slave, it was no longer the wergeld that was paid for his murder, but simply a fine.

So, tribal ties in Frankish society disappeared, giving way to new social relations, the relations of the emerging feudal society. The beginning process of the feudalization of Frankish society was most clearly reflected in the opposition of the free Frankish peasantry to the service and military nobility. This nobility gradually turned into a class of large landowners - feudal lords, for it was the Frankish nobility, who was in the service of the king, who, when seizing Roman territory, received large land holdings already on the rights of private property. The existence in Frankish society (along with the free peasant community) of large estates that were in the hands of the Frankish and surviving Gallo-Roman nobility is evidenced by the chronicles (chronicles) of that time, as well as all those titles of the Salic Truth, which speak of the master's servants or yard servants - slaves (vine growers, blacksmiths, carpenters, grooms, swineherds and even goldsmiths), who served the vast master's economy.

The political structure of Frankish society. Rise of royalty

Profound changes in the field of socio-economic relations of Frankish society led to changes in its political system. On the example of Clovis, one can easily trace how the former power of the military leader of the tribe turned already at the end of the 5th century. into hereditary royalty. A wonderful story has been preserved by one chronicler (chronicler), Gregory of Tours (6th century), which characterized this transformation in a visual form.

Once, says Gregory of Tours, even during the struggle for the city of Soissons, the Franks captured rich booty in one of the Christian churches. Among the captured booty there was also a valuable bowl of amazing size and beauty. The bishop of the Reims church asked Clovis to return this cup, which was considered sacred, to the church. Clovis, who wished to live in peace with the Christian Church, agreed, but added that in Soissons there should still be a division of the booty between them by his soldiers, and that if he received a cup during the division of the booty, he would give it to the bishop.

Then the chronicler tells that in response to the request of the king addressed to them to give him a bowl to transfer to her church, the warriors answered: “Do whatever you please, for no one can oppose your power.” The story of the chronicler thus testifies to the greatly increased authority of royal power. But among the warriors, memories of the times when the king stood only a little higher than his warriors were still alive, he was obliged to share the booty with them by lot, and at the end of the campaign he often turned from a military leader into an ordinary representative of the tribal nobility. That is why one of the warriors, as it is said later in the chronicle, did not agree with the rest of the warriors, raised the ax and cut the cup, saying: “You will not get anything from this, except what is due to you by lot.”

The king was silent this time, took the spoiled cup and handed it over to the messenger of the bishop. However, as follows from the story of Gregory of Tours, Clovis' "meekness and patience" were feigned. After a year, he ordered his entire army to assemble and inspected the weapons. Approaching during the inspection to the recalcitrant warrior, Clovis declared that the weapon of this warrior was kept in disarray by him, and, having pulled out the ax from the warrior, threw it on the ground, and then chopped off his head. “So,” he said, “you did with the cup in Soissons,” and when he died, he ordered the rest to go home, “inspiring great fear in himself.” So, in a clash with a warrior who was trying to defend the previous order of dividing the spoils between the members of the squad and its leader, Clovis emerged victorious, affirming the principle of the king's exclusive position in relation to the members of the squad that served him.

By the end of his reign, Clovis, a cunning, cruel and treacherous man, no longer had rivals in the face of other representatives of the nobility. He sought sole power by any means. Having conquered Gaul and received huge land wealth in his hands, Clovis destroyed the other leaders of the tribe who stood in his way.

Destroying the leaders, as well as many of his noble relatives for fear that they would not take away his royal power, Clovis extended it to all of Gaul. And then, having gathered his close associates, he said to them: "Woe to me, for I have remained as a wanderer among strangers and have no relatives who could give me help if a misfortune happened." “But he said this,” the chronicler wrote, “not because he grieved for their death, but out of cunning, hoping that he could not accidentally find one more of his relatives in order to take his life.” In this way, Clovis became the sole king of the Franks.

The Salic Truth testifies to the increased importance of royal power. According to the data available in it, the royal court was the highest authority. In the regions, the king ruled through his officials - counts and their assistants. The tribal people's assembly no longer existed. It was replaced by military reviews, convened and conducted by the king. These are the so-called "March fields". True, in the villages and hundreds (unification of several villages) the people's court (mallus) was still preserved, but gradually this court began to be headed by the count. All "objects that belonged to the king", according to "Salicheskaya Pravda", were protected by a triple fine. Representatives of the church were also in a privileged position. The life of a priest was guarded by a triple wergeld (600 solidi), and if someone took the life of a bishop, he had to pay an even larger wergeld - 900 solidi. Robbery and burning of churches and chapels were punished with high fines. The growth of state power required its consecration with the help of the church, so the Frankish kings multiplied and protected church privileges.

So, the political system of the Franks was characterized by the growth and strengthening of royal power. This was facilitated by the king's warriors, his officials, his entourage and representatives of the church, that is, the emerging layer of large landowners-feudal lords, who needed royal power to protect their newly emerged possessions and to expand them. The growth of royal power was also facilitated by those prosperous and wealthy peasants who separated from the free community members, from whom a layer of small and medium feudal lords subsequently grew.

Frankish society in the VI-VII centuries.

An analysis of the Salic Pravda shows that both Roman and Frankish social order played an important role in the development of Frankish society after the conquest of the territory of Gaul by the Franks. On the one hand, the Franks ensured the more rapid destruction of slaveholding remnants. “Ancient slavery has disappeared, ruined, impoverished free people have disappeared,” wrote Engels, “those who despised labor as a slave occupation. Between the Roman column and the new serf stood a free Frankish peasant" ( F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, pp. 160-161.). On the other hand, not only the final dissolution of tribal relations among the Franks, but also the rapid disappearance of their communal ownership of arable land must be largely attributed to the influence of the Roman social order. By the end of the VI century. it has already turned from a hereditary possession into a complete, freely alienable landed property (allod) of the Frankish peasant.

The very resettlement of the Franks on Roman territory tore and could not but break alliances based on consanguinity. Constant movements mixed tribes and clans among themselves, unions of small rural communities arose, which still continued to own land in common. However, this communal, collective ownership of arable land, forests and meadows was not the only form of ownership among the Franks. Along with it, in the community itself, there was an individual property of the Franks that arose long before the resettlement for a personal plot of land, livestock, weapons, a house and household utensils.

On the territory conquered by the Franks, the private landed property of the Gallo-Romans, preserved from antiquity, continued to exist. In the process of conquering Roman territory, large-scale private ownership of the land of the Frankish king, his warriors, servants and associates arose and established itself. The coexistence of different types of property did not last long, and the communal form of ownership of arable land, which corresponded to a lower level of productive forces, gave way to allod.

The edict of King Chilperic (second half of the 6th century), which established, in a change to the Salic Truth, the inheritance of land not only by the sons, but also by the daughters of the deceased, and in no case by his neighbors, shows that this process took place very quickly.

The appearance of a land allod among the Frankish peasant was of the utmost importance. The transformation of communal ownership of arable land into private ownership, i.e., the transformation of this land into a commodity, meant that the emergence and development of large-scale landownership, associated not only with the conquest of new territories and the seizure of free land, but also with the loss by the peasant of the right of ownership to cultivated land, it became a matter of time.

Thus, as a result of the interaction of socio-economic processes that took place in ancient German society and in the late Roman Empire, Frankish society entered the period of early feudalism.

Immediately after the death of Clovis, the early feudal Frankish state was fragmented into the inheritances of his four sons, then united for a short time and then again fragmented into parts. Only the great-grandson of Clovis Chlothar II and the great-great-grandson Dagobert I managed to achieve a longer unification of the territory of the state in one hand at the beginning of the 7th century. But the power of the Merovingian royal family in Frankish society was based on the fact that they had a large land fund created as a result of the conquests of Clovis and his successors, and this land fund during the 6th and especially the 7th centuries. melted continuously. The Merovingians with a generous hand handed out awards to their warriors, and to their service people, and to the church. As a result of the continuous land grants of the Merovingians, the real basis of their power was greatly reduced. Representatives of other, larger and richer landowning families gained strength in society.

In this regard, the kings from the Merovingian clan were pushed into the background and received the nickname "lazy", and the actual power in the kingdom was in the hands of individual people from the landowning nobility, the so-called major-houses (major-houses were originally called the senior rulers of the royal court, who were in charge of the palace housekeeping and palace servants).

Over time, the mayordoms concentrated in their hands all the military and administrative power in the kingdom and became its de facto rulers. “The king,” the chronicler wrote, “had to be content with just one title and, sitting on the throne with long hair and a loose beard, was only one semblance of a sovereign, listened to the ambassadors who came from everywhere and gave them parting, as if on his own behalf, answers , memorized in advance and dictated to him ... The management of the state and everything that needed to be done or arranged in internal or external affairs, all this lay in the care of the mayor's house. At the end of the 7th and at the beginning of the 8th century. especially strengthened the mayordoms, who came out of the rich noble family of the Carolingians, who laid the foundation for a new dynasty on the throne of the Frankish kings - the Carolingian dynasty (VIII-X centuries).

2. Empire of Charlemagne

Formation of the Carolingian Empire.

In 715. Charles Martell, who ruled until 741, became the mayor of the Frankish state. Charles Martell made a series of campaigns across the Rhine to Thuringia and Alemannia, which became independent again under the “lazy” kings of the Merovingians, and subjugated both areas to his power. He again annexed Frisia, or Friesland (the country of the Frisian tribe) to the Frankish state, and forced the Saxons and Bavarians to pay tribute to him again.

At the beginning of the 8th century the Franks had to face the Arabs, who penetrated from the Iberian Peninsula into Southern Gaul in order to tear it away from the Frankish state. Charles Martell hastily gathered military detachments to repulse the Arabs, as the Arab light cavalry moved forward very quickly (along the old Roman road, which led from the south to Poitiers, Tours, Orleans and Paris). The Franks met the Arabs at Poitiers (732) and won a decisive victory, forcing them to turn back.

After the death of Charles Martell, his son Pepin the Short, so named for his small stature, became the mayor. Under Pepin, the Arabs were finally expelled from Gaul. In the regions beyond the Rhine, Pepin intensively carried out the Christianization of the Germanic tribes, seeking to reinforce the power of arms with church sermons. In 751, Pepin the Short imprisoned the last Merovingian in a monastery and became king of the Franks. Before that, Pepin sent an embassy to the Pope with the question, is it good that the Frankish state is ruled by kings who do not have real royal power? To which the pope replied: "It is better to call the king of the one who has power, rather than the one who lives without having royal power." After that, the pope crowned Pepin the Short. For this service, Pepin helped the pope fight the state of the Lombards and, having conquered the Ravenna region that they had previously captured in Italy, handed it over to the pope. The transfer of the Ravenna region marked the beginning of the secular power of the papacy.

In 768 Pepin the Short died. Power passed to his son, Charlemagne (768 - 814), who, as a result of a number of wars, managed to create a very large empire. These wars were waged by Charles). The Great, like his predecessors, in the interests of large landowners-feudal lords, one of the brightest representatives of which he himself was, and were due to the desire of large Frankish landowners to seize new lands and to forcibly enslave the peasants who still retained their freedom .

In total, under Charles, more than 50 military campaigns were made, half of them he led himself. Charles was very active in his military and administrative enterprises, skillful in the field of diplomacy and extremely cruel in relation to the Frankish masses and to the population of the lands he conquered.

The first war launched by Charlemagne was the war with the German tribe of the Saxons (772), which occupied the entire territory of Lower Germany (from the Rhine to the Elbe). The Saxons and this time were still at the last stage of the primitive communal system. In a long and stubborn struggle with the Frankish feudal lords, who seized their lands and brought them enslavement, the Saxons put up staunch resistance and showed great courage. For 33 years, Charlemagne fought for the subjugation of the free Saxon peasants. With fire and sword, he planted Christianity among the Saxons, believing that the conquest should be consolidated by the Christianization of the Saxons, who adhered to pre-Christian cults. The subjugation of the Saxons was completed only in 804, when the nobility of the Saxons took the side of the Frankish feudal lords in the struggle against their own people.

Simultaneously with the Saxon wars, Charles, at the request of the pope, and also in his own interests, since he feared the strengthening of the Lombards, undertook two campaigns against them. Having defeated the Lombards who lived in northern Italy in the Po Valley, Charlemagne put on himself the iron crown of the Lombard kings and began to be called the king of the Franks and Lombards (774). However, Charles did not give the captured Lombard regions to the Pope.

Karl undertook a campaign against the German tribe of the Bavarians, depriving them of their independence. Military campaigns under Charlemagne were also directed against the nomadic tribe of Avars, who lived at that time in Pannonia. Having destroyed their main fortress (791), Karl seized huge booty in the palace of the Avar kagan (khan). Having defeated the Avars, Karl created a special border region - the Pannonskuvd brand.

Border clashes under Charlemagne also occurred with the tribes of the Western Slavs, whose settlements were located on the eastern borders of his empire. But the resistance of the Slavic tribes did not allow Charlemagne to include their territories in the empire. He was even forced to enter into alliances with the Slavic nobility against common enemies (for example, with encouragement against the Saxons or with the Slovenes from Horutania against the nomads of the Avars) and limited himself to building fortresses on the Slavic border and collecting tribute from the Slavic population living near it.

Charlemagne made a number of military campaigns beyond the Pyrenees (778-812). On the territory conquered beyond the Pyrenees, a border region was created - the Spanish brand.

So, as a result of long aggressive wars waged by the mayors and kings from the Carolingian family, a vast state was created, in size only slightly inferior to the former Western Roman Empire.

And then Charles decided to declare himself emperor. In 800, Pope Leo III, interested in spreading the influence of the Roman Church in all the lands conquered by the Franks, and therefore in direct alliance with Charlemagne, crowned him with the imperial crown.

The emerging empire enjoyed great influence in the international affairs of its time. The kings of Galicia and Asturias recognized the supreme power of the emperor. On friendly terms with him were the kings of Scotland and the leaders of the Irish tribes. Even the distant Caliph of Baghdad, Harun-ar-Rashid, who sought to rely on an alliance with the empire of Charlemagne in the fight against Byzantium and the Caliphate of Cordoba in Spain, sent rich gifts to Charles.

At the beginning of the ninth century The empire of Charlemagne had to face for the first time a serious danger in the face of the Norman pirates. The Normans, as the Scandinavian tribes that inhabited Scandinavia and Jutland were called at that time, included in their composition the ancestors of modern Norwegians, Swedes and Danes. In connection with what happened in the VIII and IX centuries. among the Scandinavian tribes, by the process of the decomposition of tribal relations, the sharp separation of the nobility and the strengthening of the role of military leaders and their squads, these leaders began to undertake distant sea voyages for the purpose of trade and robbery. Later, these pirate campaigns became a real disaster for the population of Western Europe.

Approval of feudal ownership of land in Frankish society in the VIII-IX centuries.

The basis of changes in the social system of the Franks in the VIII and IX centuries. there was a complete revolution in the relations of land ownership: the ruin of the mass of the free Frankish peasantry and the simultaneous growth of the property of large landowners due to the absorption of small peasant property. Feudal land ownership originated and began to develop among the Franks as early as the 6th century. However, under the Merovingians, it did not play a leading role in the social system. The main cell of the Frankish society in this period was a free peasant community - the brand.

Of course, the development of private ownership of land in those days inevitably led to the growth of large-scale landownership, but at first this process proceeded relatively slowly. Feudal ownership of land became dominant only as a result of the agrarian revolution in the 8th and 9th centuries. On this occasion, Engels wrote: "... before the free Franks could become someone else's settlers, they had to somehow lose the allod they received during the occupation of the land, their own class of landless free Franks had to form" ( F. Engels, The Frankish period, K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. XVI, part I, p. 397.).

As a result of the low level of development of the productive forces, the small peasant often found himself unable to retain the allotment he had just received as his property. The small peasant's inability to expand his farm, the extremely imperfect agricultural technique, and therefore the extreme helplessness of the direct producer in the face of all sorts of natural disasters steadily drew him to ruin. At the same time, the unceasing process of internal decomposition of the community itself also led to the separation of wealthy peasants from among the free community members, who gradually took over the lands of their impoverished neighbors and turned into small and medium feudal owners.

Thus, as a result of economic changes, the free Frankish peasant lost his landed property and fell into complete economic dependence both on large landowners (combatants, officials of the king, dignitaries of the church, etc.) and on smaller feudal lords. This process of loss of their land by the peasants was accelerated by a number of reasons; internecine wars of the Frankish nobility and long military service, for a long time tearing the peasants away from their economy, often into the hottest hole; burdensome taxes, which fell heavily on the peasants as state power increased, and unbearable fines for various kinds of misconduct; forced contributions to the church and direct violence from large landowners.

The difficult situation of the Frankish peasants led to the fact that in the VIII and IX centuries. the practice of so-called precariae has become widespread. The precarium, already known to Roman law, acquired its name from the Latin word “preces”, which means “request”, and even under the Merovingians meant the transfer by a large landowner of a piece of land to a landless peasant for use or possession. For the received land, the peasant was obliged to bear a number of duties in favor of its owner. Such was the first, earliest form of the medieval precarium.

Another form, most common in the 8th and 9th centuries, was the following: a peasant, seeing that he was unable to keep his land for himself, “gave” it to a powerful neighbor, and especially often to the church, since the danger of losing land most often consisted for him it is precisely in the presence of such a powerful neighbor. Then the peasant received this land back, but not as his own property, but as a lifetime, sometimes hereditary holding, and again carried certain duties in favor of the landowner. For this, the latter guarded his household.

There were collections of so-called formulas (i.e., samples of legal acts) that formalized such transfers of land. Here is one of the answers of the abbess of the women's monastery to a request for land in the precarium. “To the sweetest woman such and such I am, abbess such and such. Since it is known that you own your property in such and such a district, recently behind the monastery of St. Maria approved and for this she asked us and the named monastery to give [you] a precarium, then with this letter they approved you so that while you are alive, you would own and keep this land in use, but would not have the right to any there was no way to alienate it, and if she decided to do this, she would immediately lose the land ... "

Sometimes the precarist received, in addition to his former land given to him as a precaria, an additional piece of land. This was the third form of precaria, serving mainly the church to attract small proprietors, turn them into precarists and use their labor force on the still uncultivated lands. It is quite clear that both the second and third forms of precaria contributed to the growth of large landownership.

Thus, the precarium was a form of land relations which, in cases where it linked representatives of two antagonistic classes, led simultaneously to the loss by the free Frankish peasant of his land ownership and to the growth of feudal land ownership.

Within the ruling class of landowners at that time, special land relations also developed in connection with the spread of the so-called beneficiaries introduced under Charles Martell after the battle with the Arabs at Poitiers (the Latin word “beneficiura” literally meant “good deed”). The essence of the beneficiation was as follows: land ownership was transferred to one or another person not in full ownership, as was the case under the Merovingians. The person who received the benefices had to carry out military service in favor of the one who gave him this land. In this way, a layer of service people was formed, who were obliged to carry out military service for the land they received. If the beneficiary refused to perform military service, he also lost the beneficiaries. If the beneficiary or the grantor of the beneficiary died, the latter returned to his owner or his heirs. Thus, a beneficiary could not be inherited by the person who received it, and was only a lifelong and conditional land ownership.

Karl Martel received the land he needed for the distribution of beneficiaries by confiscating part of the church property in his favor (this was the so-called secularization, or the transfer of church land into the hands of secular power). Of course, the church was very unhappy with this, despite the fact that it is in all the conquered areas. received new lands and new privileges. Therefore, the successor of Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, although he did not return the selected lands to the church, nevertheless obliged the beneficiaries to pay certain contributions in its favor.

The introduction of beneficiaries, which were distributed along with the peasants who sat on the granted land, led to a further increase in the dependence of the peasants on the landowner and to an increase in their exploitation.

In addition, military power was gradually concentrated in the hands of the ruling class. From now on, large landowners could use the weapons they had in their hands not only against external enemies, but also against their own peasants, forcing them to bear all sorts of duties for the benefit of the landowners.

Enslavement of the Frankish peasantry

The growth of large-scale landownership at the expense of free peasants, who lost the right to own land, was accompanied by their enslavement. The ruined small owner was often compelled not only to hand over his land to the big landowner, but also to become personally dependent on him, that is, to lose his freedom.

“To my lord brother such and such,” it was written in bondage letters on behalf of the peasant. - Everyone knows that extreme poverty and heavy worries have befallen me and I have absolutely nothing to live and dress with. Therefore, at my request, in my greatest need, you did not refuse to give me from your money so much solidus; and I have nothing to pay these solids. Therefore, I asked you to complete and approve the enslavement of my free personality to you, so that from now on you will have complete freedom to do with me everything that you are authorized to do with your born slaves, namely to sell, barter, punish.

Free peasants could become dependent on a large feudal lord on more favorable terms, without losing their personal freedom at first and becoming, as it were, under the patronage of a large landowner (the so-called commendation, from the Latin word "commendatio" - "I entrust myself"). But it is quite clear that the commandment of a peasant, as well as his transformation into a precarist of some large landowner, led to the same consequences, i.e., to the transformation of this free peasant, as well as his offspring, into serfs.

The state played an active role in this process. This is evidenced by a number of decrees of Charlemagne and his immediate successors. In his decrees (capitulary, from the Latin word “caput” - “head” or “head”, since each decree was divided into chapters), Charles ordered the managers to monitor free peasants living on royal estates, to collect fines from the peasants in favor of the royal court and judge them. In 818-820. decrees were issued attaching all taxpayers to the land, that is, depriving them of the right to freely move from one plot to another. The Carolingians ordered the peasants to sue large landowners and submit to their authority. Finally, in the capitulary of 847, it was directly prescribed that every still free person, i.e., first of all, a peasant, should find a seigneur (master). So the state actively contributed to the establishment of feudal relations in Frankish society.

The feudal estate and its economic life

The result of the revolution in land relations that took place in the 8th and 9th centuries was the final assertion of the landed property of the ruling class. The place of the former free peasant community-mark was taken by a feudal estate with special economic orders inherent in it. What these orders were can be seen from the so-called “Capitulare de villis”, compiled around 800 on the orders of Charlemagne and was an instruction to the administrators of the royal estates. From this capitulary, as well as from other sources of the 9th century, in particular from the so-called “Polyptics of the Abbot Irminon” (i.e., the scribe book of the monastery of Saint-Germain, located in the suburbs of Paris), it is clear that the feudal estate was divided into two parts : a manor estate with a manor's land and a village with allotments of dependent peasants.

The lordly part, or master's land, was called a domain (from the Latin word "dominus" - master's). The domain consisted of a manor's estate with a house and outbuildings, and from a manor's arable land. The mill and the church also depended on the owner of the estate. Domain (master's) arable land was scattered among the peasant plots, that is, there was a so-called striped land, which was necessarily accompanied by a forced crop rotation associated with the practice of open fields after harvest. Everyone had to sow the same thing in a given field and harvest the field at the same time as their neighbors, otherwise the cattle released into the field could destroy the crops not harvested by their owner. The lordly land was cultivated by the hands of peasants who were obliged to work on corvee with their equipment. In addition to arable land, the domain also included forests, meadows and wastelands.

Peasant land, or land of "holding", since the peasants were not its owners, but, as it were, "held" it from the owner of the land - the owner of this estate, was divided into allotments (mansi). Each manse included a peasant yard with a house and outbuildings, a vegetable garden and arable land, scattered in strips with other peasant and landowner lands. In addition, the peasant had the right to use communal pastures and forests.

Thus, unlike a slave who had neither a house, nor a farm, nor property, nor a family, a peasant who worked on the land of a feudal lord had his own house, family, and household. The existence, along with feudal property, of the peasant's property for farming and agricultural implements created a certain interest in the producers of material goods, feudal society, in their work and was a direct stimulus for the development of productive forces in the epoch of feudalism.

The productive forces of society in the VIII and IX centuries. extremely slowly, but growing all the time. There was an improvement in farming techniques, more efficient methods of tillage were used, forests were cleared for arable land, and virgin lands were raised. Relog and two-field gradually gave way to three-field.

Lower-quality types of cereals (oats, barley, rye) were sown mainly in the economically backward parts of the empire (east of the Rhine), while in its central and western regions, qualitatively higher types (wheat, etc.) were increasingly used. From garden crops, legumes, radishes and turnips were bred. From fruit trees - apple, pear and plum. Medicinal herbs and hops needed in the manufacture of beer were planted in the gardens. Viticulture developed in the southern parts of the empire. From industrial crops, flax was sown, which was used to make clothes and linseed oil.

As for agricultural tools, it should be noted that at the end of the 9th century. plows became widespread: a small light plow for working stony or root soils, which only cut the earth into long furrows, and a heavy wheeled plow with an iron share, which, when plowing, not only cut, but also turned the earth over. The harrow, which at that time was a triangular wooden frame with iron teeth, was used mainly in the cultivation of vegetable gardens. The harrowing of the fields was carried out with the help of a heavy wooden log, which was dragged along the plowed field, breaking up the clods of earth. The farm used scythes, sickles, two-pronged pitchforks and rakes.

The grain was cleaned of straw, winnowed with a shovel in the wind, sifted through sieves woven from flexible rods, and finally threshed with simple sticks or wooden flails. The soiling of the fields, as a rule, was carried out irregularly. It is clear that with such a low agricultural technique, the yields were usually extremely low (1 1/2 itself or 2 itself). The peasant economy was dominated by small livestock (sheep, pigs and goats). There were few horses and cows.

The entire economy of a large estate was natural in nature, i.e. the main task of every estate was to satisfy its own needs, and not to produce for sale on the market. The peasants who worked on the estates were obliged to supply the master's court (royal, count, monastery, etc.) with food and provide the owner of the estate, his family and numerous retinue with everything necessary. The craft at that time was not yet separated from agriculture, and the peasants were engaged in it along with arable farming. Only surplus products were sold.

Here is what was said about such a household in the “Capitulary on Estates” (chapter 62): “Let our managers annually, by the Nativity of the Lord, separately, clearly and in order notify us of all our income, so that we can know what and how much we have under separate articles. , exactly ... how much hay, how much firewood and torches, how much tesu ... how many vegetables, how much millet and millet, how much wool, flax and hemp, how many fruits from trees, how many nuts and nuts ... how much from gardens, how much from turnip ridges, how many from fishponds, how many skins, how many furs and horns, how much honey and wax, how much tallow, fats and soap, how much berry wine, boiled wine, honey - drinks and vinegar, how much beer, grape wine, new grain and old, how many chickens, eggs and geese, how many from fishermen, blacksmiths, gunsmiths and shoemakers ... how many from turners and saddlers, how many from locksmiths, from iron and lead mines, how many from heavy people, how many foals and fillies.

Such an estate was the main unit of Frankish society under the Carolingians, which means that in the empire of Charlemagne a large number of economically closed little worlds were created that were not economically connected with each other and independently satisfied their needs with products produced within this economy.

The plight of the peasants and their struggle with the feudal lords

The feudally dependent peasants were subjected to cruel exploitation by the feudal lords. The forms of peasant dependence in the era of feudalism were extremely diverse. It was, as Marx points out, "... unfreedom, which can be mitigated from serfdom with corvée labor to a simple quitrent obligation" ( K. Marx, Capital, vol. III, Gospolitizdat, 1955, p. 803.). Along with the surviving remnants of the free peasantry (especially in the eastern and northern regions of the empire), in the Frankish state of the VIII-IX centuries. there were peasants who depended on the feudal lord only in a judicial respect. However, there were very few such peasants.

The bulk of the feudally dependent peasantry were serfs, over whose person the feudal lords had the right of ownership, albeit an incomplete one (that is, they did not have the right to kill them). The serfs depended on the feudal lord both personally, and in terms of land, and judicially, and paid him heavy feudal rent. It was expressed in the form of various duties - labour-service (corvée), grocery (natural dues) and monetary (monetary dues). The dominant form of rent under the Carolingians, apparently, was labor rent. But at the same time there was rent in kind and partly in cash.

As a personally dependent person, the serf was obliged to give to the feudal lord when he inherited his land allotment, the best head of cattle; was obliged to pay for the right to marry a woman who did not belong to his master, and to make additional payments imposed on him by the feudal lord at will.

As a land-dependent serf, he was obliged to pay dues and work on corvee. This is how the duties of serfs were portrayed in the ninth century. in "The Politics of the Abbot Irminon". From only one peasant allotment (and there were several thousand such allotments in the monastery economy), the monastery of Saint-Germain received annually: half a bull or 4 rams “for military affairs”; 4 denarii ( Denarius = approximately 1/10 g of gold.) total taxation; 5 mods ( Modium = about 250 liters.) grains for horse feed; 100 clefts and 100 fringes not from the master's forest; 6 hens with eggs and after 2 years for the third - a one-year-old sheep. The holders of this allotment were also obliged to plow the monastery field for winter and spring crops three days a week and to perform various manual works for the monastery.

For the resolution of all disputes, the peasant was obliged to apply to the local court, headed by the feudal lord himself or his clerk. It is clear that in all cases the feudal lord resolved disputes in his favor.

In addition, the landowner usually still had the right to collect all sorts of duties - road, ferry, bridge, etc. The position of the working masses became even more difficult as a result of natural disasters, which they then did not know how to deal with, as well as endless feudal strife that ruined the peasant economy.

The cruel feudal exploitation caused a sharp class struggle between the peasants and the feudal lords. The fact that this struggle was widespread is also evidenced by the royal capitularies, who ordered severe punishment of the rebels, and the reports of medieval chroniclers. From these capitularies and chronicles we learn that at the end of the 8th century. in the village of Selt, which belonged to the Bishop of Reims, an uprising of dependent peasants took place. In 821, a "conspiracy" of serfs arose in Flanders. In 841-842. there was a so-called "Stelling" uprising (which means literally "Children of the ancient law") in the region of the Saxons, when free Saxon peasants entered into a struggle both with their own and with the Frankish nobility, who brought them enslavement. In 848, free peasants came out, fighting against enslavement in the Mainz bishopric. A second uprising broke out in the same place in 866. Other movements directed against feudal oppression and exploitation are also known. All these uprisings took place mainly in the ninth century, when a revolution in agrarian relations was completed and the process of enslaving the peasants assumed the widest dimensions.

These uprisings against the ruling class could not win in that historical situation, when the established feudal mode of production had all the conditions for its further development. However, the importance of the early anti-feudal movements of the peasants was very great. These movements were of a progressive character, for their result was a certain limitation of the cruel exploitation of the working people and the creation of more tolerable conditions for their existence. Thus, these movements contributed to the more rapid development of the productive forces of feudal society. The more time the peasant devoted to his own economy, the more he became interested in improving agricultural technology and in raising the productivity of his labor, the faster did feudal society as a whole develop.

Internal organization of the ruling class of feudal lords

Land relations that existed within the class of feudal lords underlay its military-political organization. Beneficiary, as a rule, was connected with relations of vassalage, when a free person who received beneficiaries from a large landowner was called his vassal (from the Latin word "vassus" - servant) and was obliged to serve military service for him. Entry into vassal relations was secured by a certain ceremony. Upon receiving a benefice, a free person announced that he was becoming a vassal of one or another master (seigneur), and the seigneur took an oath of allegiance from him. This ceremony was later called homage (from the Latin word "homo" - a person, since the oath of allegiance contained the words: "I become your person").

In contrast to the relations established between the peasant and the feudal lord, vassal relations did not go beyond the limits of the same ruling class. Vassality consolidated the feudal hierarchy, i.e., the subordination of smaller landowners to larger ones, and larger ones to the largest ones, while the personal dependence of the peasant on the feudal lord led to the enslavement of the peasants.

The administrative structure of the empire

The years of the reign of the first Carolingians include a temporary strengthening of the central state power, the main and determining reason for which, of course, cannot be seen in the "outstanding abilities" of the Carolingians and, in particular, in the "state talent" of Charlemagne. In fact, some strengthening of the central state apparatus under the Carolingians was caused by the most profound changes in the field of social relations.

The class of landowners-feudal lords in this period needed such a central authority that would ensure to it the fastest subjugation of the class of peasants who fought against enslavement, and at the same time would pursue a broad policy of conquest, bringing new lands and new serfs to the big landowners. Thus, changes in the forms of the feudal state were due to fundamental changes in the position of the peasantry and its struggle against the ruling class. The center of administration of the Carolingian Empire became for a time the imperial court with its officials - the chancellor, archcapellan and count palatine. The chancellor acted as secretary to the emperor and custodian of the state seal. The archchaplain controlled the Frankish clergy, and the count palatine was like the former mayor, in charge of the palace economy and administration.

With the help of the royal capitularies, Charlemagne sought to resolve various issues of governing a vast state. Capitularies were issued by Charlemagne on the advice of large landowners, who twice a year gathered for this purpose in the royal palace.

The empire was divided into regions. The border regions were called marks. The marks were well fortified and served both for defense and as springboards for further captures. At the head of each region were counts, and at the head of the marks - margraves. To control the activities of the counts, Charles sent special sovereign envoys to the region.

Strengthening the state apparatus of the empire, which was especially necessary for the ruling class in the era of fundamental social changes that took place in Frankish society, and aimed at oppressing and enslaving the masses, Charlemagne carried out a judicial reform, abolishing the previously existing obligation of the population to attend district court sessions. Elected positions of judges from among the people were abolished. The judges became state officials, who received a salary and judged under the chairmanship of the count. Military reform was also carried out. Charlemagne stopped demanding military service from the peasants (by this time, for the most part, they had already gone bankrupt and were completely dependent on the feudal lords). Royal beneficiaries became the main military force.

Strengthening the political power of the feudal lords

The assertion of feudal ownership of land led to the strengthening of the political power of the landowners over the working population who sat on their lands. The Merovingians also contributed to the expansion of the private power of large landowners, providing them with so-called immunity rights.

Under the Carolingians, immunity was further developed. The name immunity comes from the Latin word "immunitas", which in translation into Russian means "immunity" of a person, his liberation from something.

The essence of immunity was that the territory of the landowner of the immunist (i.e., the person who received the immunity letter) was exempted by the king from visiting royal officials to perform judicial, administrative, police, fiscal or any other duties. The duty to perform these functions was transferred to the immunist himself, whose private power thus grew greatly. Sometimes the king transferred to the benefit of the immunist all the proceeds that until that time had gone to the benefit of the royal treasury (taxes, court fines, etc.). A large landowner turned out to be a kind of sovereign in relation to the population living on his lands.

The royal power in this way, as it were, itself contributed to the transformation of large landowners into people independent of the king. But this was, of course, only because of her weakness. Immunity, as the sum of the political rights of the feudal lord in relation to the economically dependent peasant, grew and developed independently of the will of kings and emperors. The large landowners, who had received full economic power over the peasant population of their estates, sought to make this population also politically dependent. They arbitrarily carried out court and reprisals on their estates, created their own armed detachments and did not allow royal officials to enter their domains. The central government turned out to be powerless in the fight against such tendencies of large landowners and was forced to formalize the already established relations with the help of immunity letters.

Under the Carolingians, immunity became a ubiquitous phenomenon and turned into one of the powerful means of enslaving the peasantry. Immunity rights extended to wider territories, and the immunists themselves gained even more power. The Immunist now convened court meetings, held trials, searched for criminals, collected fines and duties in his favor, etc.

“At the request of the bishop of such and such,” the kings wrote in their letters, “... we granted him this boon, which consists in the fact that within the estates of the church of this bishop ... not a single sovereign official shall enter to hear judicial cases or the recovery of any judicial fines, but the bishop himself and his successor, in the name of God, by virtue of complete immunity, let them have all the aforementioned rights ... And everything that the treasury could receive there from free or not free and other people, living on the lands ... of the church, let them forever enter the lamps of the aforementioned church.

Finally, in order to ensure the recruitment of free settlers on the lands of large landowners for military service, the Carolingians transferred to these landowners administrative rights over all free settlers on their estates, that is, as if they appointed seigneurs for these previously free people in the legal sense. Thus, significant changes took place in the political position of the people who settled on the lands of a large landowner, that is, peasants and other free people. Previously, these persons were legally equal with the owner of the estate, although they were economically dependent on him. Now they have become people subordinate to the landowner and legally.

The expansion and strengthening of immunity, which in the hands of the ruling class was an instrument of non-economic coercion of the masses of the exploited peasantry, contributed to the process of its further enslavement and intensification of feudal exploitation. "Economic subjugation received political sanction" ( F. Engels, The Frankish period, K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. XVI, part D, pp. 403 .. .). The peasant, who had previously lost the right to own his ancestral land, now lost his personal freedom as well. The private power of the immunist acquired a kind of state character, and the estate of the immunist turned, as it were, into a small state.

The internal weakness of the Carolingian empire and its rapid collapse

The empire of Charlemagne, which arose as a result of wars of conquest, like other similar empires of the ancient and medieval eras, did not have its own economic base and was a temporary and unstable military-administrative association. It was extremely diverse both from the point of view of the ethnic (tribal) composition of the Carolingian Empire, and from the point of view of its socio-economic development. In a number of areas, tribal features have long been erased. The Germanic tribes that conquered these areas adopted not only the provincial dialects of the Latin language, but also the social order characteristic of the late Roman Empire. The embryos of feudal relations that arose in it (large landownership combined with small farming, subsistence farming, colonies and patrocinium) contributed to the more rapid development of feudalism in such areas of the Carolingian state as Aquitaine, Septimania and Provence. Significantly more backward in terms of the level of development of feudal relations were the regions east of the Rhine. Such areas were Bavaria, Saxony, Alemannia, Thuringia and Frisia, where the development of feudalism was slow and where a large number of tribal remnants were preserved.

Finally, there were areas in the Carolingian Empire in which Romanesque and Germanic elements proved to be ethnically mixed. The interaction of the socio-economic orders that existed among the indigenous Romano-Gallic population with the socio-economic orders that existed among the newcomer Germanic tribes (Franks and Burgundians) led to the development of feudalism in its most classical forms. These areas were those parts of the empire that were, as it were, at the junction between the Romanesque and Germanic worlds, that is, North-Eastern and Central Gaul, as well as Burgundy.

There were no economic ties between the tribes and nationalities united in the empire of Charlemagne by purely violent means. That is why historical development went on not within the boundaries of the empire as a whole, but within the boundaries of individual nationalities and tribes, or their more or less related compounds. The natural tendency of tribes and nationalities, subjugated by force of arms, to liberation from the rule of the conquerors, the undivided dominance of natural economy in feudal estates, the disintegration of Frankish society into a number of economically closed worlds, the continuous growth of the power of large landowners in the localities and the impotence of the central government - all this did inevitable political collapse of the empire.

And indeed, after the death of Charlemagne (814), the empire was first divided among his heirs, and then finally broke up into three parts. This disintegration was formalized by the Treaty of Verdun, concluded between the grandchildren of Charlemagne in 843. One of these grandsons, Charles the Bald, received under the Treaty of Verdun possessions to the west of the Rhine - the West Frankish state (that is, the future France). Another grandson, Louis the German, received possessions east of the Rhine - the East Frankish state (that is, the future Germany). And the eldest grandson - Lothar received a strip of land along the left bank of the Rhine (future Lorraine) and Northern Italy.

Feudal-church culture

In the feudal society that replaced the slave-owning society, a new, feudal culture arose. The bearer of feudal culture in the early Middle Ages was the church.

Religion in feudal society was one of the powerful means of establishing and maintaining the class rule of the exploiters. Promising heavenly bliss as a reward for earthly suffering, the Church by all means distracted the masses from the struggle against the feudal lords, justified feudal exploitation and persistently tried to educate the working people in the spirit of complete obedience to their masters. The influence of the church affected with all its force the spiritual culture of medieval society. “... the feudal organization of the church,” wrote Engels, “consecrated the secular feudal state system with religion. The clergy were also the only educated class. From this it followed by itself that church dogma was the starting point and the basis of all thinking. Jurisprudence, natural science, philosophy - all the content of these sciences was brought into line with the teachings of the church "( F. Engels, Legal socialism, K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. XVI, part I, p. 295.).

The disintegration of feudal society into a number of economically and politically closed little worlds and the widespread rupture of trade, political and cultural ties that existed in the slave-owning society led to the absence of any broad education in the 6th-10th centuries. All the schools that existed at that time (episcopal and monastic) were in the hands of the clergy. The Church determined their program and selected the composition of their students. The main task of the church at the same time was to educate church ministers who were able to influence the masses of the people with their preaching and protect the existing order intact.

From its ministers, the church demanded, in fact, very little - knowledge of prayers, the ability to read the Gospel in Latin, even if not understanding everything that was read, and familiarity with the order of church services. Persons whose knowledge went beyond the limits of such a program appeared in Western European society in the 6th-10th centuries. the rarest exceptions.

In creating schools, the church could not do without some of the elements of secular education that feudal society inherited from the ancient world. By adapting these elements of secular education to its own needs, the church became their unwitting "custodian". The ancient disciplines taught in church schools were called the "seven liberal arts", which meant: grammar, rhetoric and dialectics (the so-called trivium - "three paths of knowledge", or the first stage of learning), and arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music ( the so-called quadrivium - "four paths of knowledge", or the second stage of learning). An attempt to bring together the elements of education inherited from antiquity dates back to the 5th century. and was undertaken by Marcianus Capella. The division of the "liberal arts" into trivium and quadrivium was carried out already in the 6th century. Boethius and Cassiodorus - the last representatives of ancient education.

But the "free arts" of the Middle Ages were a very distant resemblance to what was taught in ancient schools, for representatives of church education claimed that any knowledge is useful only if it helps to better assimilate church teachings. Rhetoric at that time was considered as a subject that helped to competently draw up documents necessary for the church and state. Dialectic (as formal logic was then called) was wholly subordinate to theology and served the representatives of the Church only to fight heretics in disputes. Music was needed during worship, astronomy was used to determine the timing of the onset of various church holidays and for all kinds of predictions.

The astronomical and geographical representations of that time testify to the extreme ignorance of the clergy. The students of church schools were taught that in the extreme east there is paradise, that the earth is like a wheel, that the ocean flows around it on all sides, and that Jerusalem is in its center. The doctrine of the sphericity of the earth was categorically rejected, because the representatives of the church argued that it was impossible to imagine that people on the opposite side of the earth would move upside down.

All information preserved from antiquity that could prompt students to strive for knowledge based on experience was carefully hushed up. Ancient authors deliberately distorted. The monks often destroyed the unique texts on the ancient manuscripts that were in the monastic libraries, and then used the parchment “purified” in this way and expensive to record the monastic chronicles. Genuine knowledge about nature was replaced by superstitious nonsense.

Education, monopolized by the Western Christian Church, was of a very primitive nature. The Church was not, and could not be, interested in preserving all the ancient heritage inherited by the Middle Ages and, forced to turn to the latter, tried to use it only for its own purposes.

"Carolingian Revival"

The so-called "Carolingian revival" further strengthened the position of the church in the field of spiritual culture and education. Some revival of the activities of the clergy and representatives of the imperial authorities in the organization of church schools in the second half of the VIII and at the beginning of the IX century. was associated with the most profound socio-economic changes in the life of society, that is, with a complete revolution in land ownership relations, which led to the strengthening of secular and spiritual feudal lords and to the enslavement of the peasants.

The role of the church in these conditions became more and more important. That is why, while strengthening church authority by creating a layer of literate clerics, the Carolingians left the entire monopoly on education in the hands of the church and in no way changed the orders that existed before. The literate people they needed to work in the state apparatus, the Carolingians drew from church schools.

The tasks facing these schools were clearly and briefly defined by the most prominent figure in the "Carolingian Renaissance" - Alcuin (about 735-804), a pupil of the York school. In one of his letters to Charlemagne, Alcuin wrote: "I work hard on many things in order to educate many for the benefit of God's holy church and to adorn your imperial power." In his capitularies, Charlemagne demanded from the monks the obligatory organization of monastic schools for teaching clerics - reading, counting, writing and singing, since shepherds who are obliged to instruct the people must be able to read and understand "holy scripture". Charlemagne attracted a number of persons capable of leading church schools from Italy, where the clergy had a higher level of education. So, Charlemagne brought out Peter of Lebanon, Paul the Deacon, Leidard and Theodulf.

Paying great attention to church schools, Charlemagne believed that the laity should be taught only the "truths" of religion and the "creed". For those who refused to study the "creed", Charlemagne prescribed a number of church punishments (fasting, etc.). Royal envoys and earls were obliged to supervise the implementation of these orders.

Thus, both in the capitularies of Charlemagne and in the resolutions of the church councils that met during his reign, it was not about raising the general educational level and raising the culture in all strata of feudal society, but only about teaching a certain circle of people capable of influencing the people with their preaching. masses. Theology was still considered the "crown of education". Indeed, "... our glorious, taught wisdom of the Lord surpasses all the wisdom of academic science," Alcuin wrote, referring to Plato's Academy. It is clear that with such a formulation of the question, there could not have been any real revival of the "free arts" of antiquity.

Textbooks, compiled in the form of dialogues between a teacher and a student, testify to the extremely low level of education at that time. An example of such a manual is a dialogue written by Alcuin for the son of Charlemagne - Pepin:

“P and n and n. What is a letter? - A l to at and n. Guardian of History. P and p and n. What is a word? - A l to at and n. Traitor of the soul ... P and p and n. Who does the person look like? - A l to at and n. To the ball. - P and p and n. How is the person placed? - A l to at and n. Like a lamp in the wind ... P and p and n. What is a head? - A l to at and n. The top of the body.- P and p and n. What is a body? - A l to at and n. The dwelling of the soul ... P and p and n. What is winter? - A l to at and n. Summer exile. P and p and n. What is spring? - A l to at and n. Painter of the earth, etc.

All the literature of the Carolingian period was purely imitative, mainly Christian literature of the first centuries of our era. This can be seen from the works of Alcuin himself, and from the works of his student - the biographer of Charlemagne - Eingard. However, the manuscripts improved significantly during this time. A writing reform was carried out, as a result of which a clear letter (Carolingian minuscule) was established everywhere, which served as the basis for the modern outline of Latin letters. The scribes decorated the manuscripts with miniatures (small pictures) on biblical themes.

Along with church works, Carolingian scribes also copied books of ancient authors (poets, philosophers, lawyers and politicians), which contributed to the preservation of these manuscripts.

It is necessary to mention the construction that took place under Charlemagne. In an effort to increase the importance of imperial power and the church, he ordered the construction of palaces and cathedrals in Aachen and other points of his state. In their architecture, the buildings resembled the style of Byzantine buildings in Ravenna.

Construction equipment in the West at that time was extremely imperfect. By order of Charlemagne, marble columns were often used in the construction of buildings, which were taken out of Italy as a whole. At the same time, ancient monuments of art were barbarously destroyed. However, most of the buildings erected under Charles were wooden and therefore died very quickly.

The "Carolingian Renaissance" was very short-lived. The rapid collapse of the empire could not but affect the field of culture. Modern chroniclers, recording the miserable state of education in the period following the collapse of the empire, have noted that the kingdom of the Franks has become an arena of unrest and war, that internecine strife is seething everywhere, and that the study of "both the sacred scripture and the liberal arts" is completely neglected.

Thus, the actual picture of church activity in the field of spiritual culture in the early Middle Ages indicates that the monopoly on education, seized by the church at the earliest stage of development of feudal society, led to very deplorable results. “From antiquity, as a legacy,” Engels wrote, “were Euclid and the solar system of Ptolemy, from the Arabs - the decimal number system, the beginnings of algebra, the modern inscription of numbers and alchemy, the Christian Middle Ages left nothing” ( F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, Gospolitizdat, 1955, p. 5.).

The church saw one of its main tasks in keeping the masses in a state of extreme ignorance and thereby contributing to their more complete enslavement.

The then dominant feudal-church culture had a pronounced class character.

Folk art in the early Middle Ages

“The thoughts of the ruling class,” Marx and Engels pointed out, “are the dominant thoughts in every epoch. This means that the class which represents the dominant material force of society is at the same time its dominant spiritual force. K. Marx and F. Engels, German Ideology, Soch., vol. 3, ed. 2, p. 45.). But this does not mean that, being the dominant one, this culture is the only one.

Just as the teachings of the church, which justified and defended feudal exploitation, were opposed by heretical anti-feudal teachings of the people, so the spiritual culture of the ruling class was opposed by the spiritual creativity of the masses: fairy-tale epic epics, songs, music, dances and dramatic action.

The richness of folk art is primarily evidenced by the fact that the original basis of the largest epic works of the Western European Middle Ages were folk tales. These folk tales were preserved with the greatest completeness in the northern and northwestern regions of Europe, where the development of feudal relations took place relatively slowly and where a significant stratum of the free peasantry existed for a long time.

The epic works of the Burgundian and Frankish society - the Nibelungenlied and the "heroic poems", in particular the Song of Roland, survived only in the form of later works, in which the original folk tales underwent an appropriate processing in the interests of the ruling class. However, formed on the basis of a folk epic that poeticized the struggle of Charlemagne with the Arabs, the “Song of Roland” bears the features of a powerful popular influence. It is expressed in those parts of this poem that speak of love for "sweet France", of hatred for enemies who encroach on her freedom, and where all feudal lords who betray the interests of the motherland for the sake of personal interests are condemned.

Music and poetry undoubtedly played a huge role in the folk art of the 5th-10th centuries. The most widespread in Frankish society were folk songs and epics, all kinds of comic and satirical songs.

The masses of the people for a very long time adhered to pre-Christian customs, made sacrifices to the former deities, combined pre-Christian religious rites with Christian ones, and “defiled” Christian churches with folk songs and dances. In the VI century. in the south of Gaul, there were cases when the people, interrupting the church service, proclaimed: “Saint Martial, pray for us, and we will dance for you!” After which a round dance was arranged in the church and folk dances began.

The Catholic Church treated the musical and poetic creativity of the people sharply negatively. Seeing in such creativity a manifestation of “pagan”, “sinful”, “not corresponding to the Christian spirit” folk activity, the church persistently sought its prohibition and severely persecuted the direct spokesmen and bearers of the musical culture of the people - folk singers and dancers (mimes and histrions).

Numerous church decrees directed against folk singers and actors have been preserved. Folk art, which these singers and actors represented, had a pronounced anti-feudal character and was dangerous to the ruling class. Therefore, the church tirelessly pursued him. That is why Alcuin declared that "a man who lets histrions, mimes and dancers into his house does not know what a large crowd of unclean spirits follows them." Charlemagne, in turn, persecuted these persons, referring them to the number of "dishonored", and categorically forbade the representatives of the clergy to keep "falcons, hawks, packs of dogs and buffoons" with them. The same spirit was imbued with numerous resolutions of church councils. However, the vitality of folk song and folk dramatic art proved irresistible.

Folk art also existed in the field of fine and applied arts, despite the fact that the latter were completely subordinated to the interests of the church and the talent of folk craftsmen was placed at the service of the ruling class of feudal lords. Various artistically made objects have been preserved that served to decorate church buildings or were used during church services (richly ornamented bells; shrines that served to store relics, decorated with carved items made of wood or bone; various church utensils - bowls, crosses and candlesticks made of precious metals; cast bronze church gates, etc.).

Unknown, but skillful craftsmen who created these objects, undoubtedly, strived for the fullest possible satisfaction of church tastes and did not go beyond the limits of biblical traditions in their work. However, the images themselves in a number of cases bore traces of folk influence, which was expressed in a realistic interpretation of human figures, in the use of folk ornaments and in the image of various really existing or fabulous animals.

The influence of folk art also affected the execution of miniatures, all kinds of headpieces and capital letters that adorned church manuscripts. Miniatures were usually colored, as well as capital letters, which were often depicted either in the form of fish or animals, then in the form of all kinds of birds (storks with a snake in their beak, peacocks, roosters, ducks), then in the form of special combinations of leaves, rosettes, etc. "Animal ornamentation" has been preserved in folk art since the distant prehistoric past. The folk ornament in the form of ribbon braid was also widely used in monastic manuscripts. Patterned fabrics (carpets, church bedspreads) in the same way testified that the influence of folk art did not remain without a trace for this branch of applied art.

(late 5th - mid 8th century.)

The Franks in the 4th century settled in the area of ​​the Meuse River on the coast of the North Sea. Even during the great migration of peoples, 2 unions of Frankish tribes developed: the Salian Franks and the Ripuarian Franks. Salic (coastal) lived west of the Meuse River on the coast of the North Sea. Ripuarian - east of the river Meuse. Between them there was a struggle for supreme power, in which the Salic Franks won at the end of the 5th century. Their leader Clovis from the Merovean family managed to subjugate all the Franks and, having converted to Christianity, became king. The Merovingian dynasty was founded by the legendary hero Merovei, i.e. born in the sea The reign of Clovis lasted from 486 to 511. The successors of Clovis continued their aggressive policy and by the beginning of the 7th century they had captured the entire Roman province of Gaul and part of Germany. In Gaul, the Franks encountered a developed Gallo-Roman society, which contributed to the transformation of the barbarian kingdom into an early feudal one. The king concentrated supreme power in his hands, but royal legislation was issued with the consent of the Frankish nobility, whose meetings were held twice a year (in spring and autumn). The Frankish Things, called March fields, turned into ordinary military reviews and were postponed to May. From the end of the 6th century, the Franks began to pay taxes along with the Gallo-Roman population. In tribal hundreds, which were turned into territorial administrative units, power in the Thing passes to the royal official, the centurion. The centurion had the right to cancel any decision of the Thing and transferred part of the fines to the king. Several tribal hundreds were united in a judicial district, headed by a count. The count judged the population, transferred part of the court fines to the king, and he also collected taxes in favor of the king. In the 7th century, the Frankish kingdom entered a period of specific fragmentation. The Merovingian family grew in numbers. Each representative had his own lot, in fact, 4 large regions stood apart:

North-Eastern part: primordially Frankish lands in the Meuse and Rhine rivers - Austrasia.

Northwestern part: Neustria.

Southwestern part: Aquitaine.

Southeastern part: Burgundy.

At the head of each of them were the Merovingians. The fastest pace was observed in Neustria, where the Frankish and Gallo-Roman beginnings were balanced. There was a process of rapid ruin of free community members and their falling into dependence. In the southern regions, the ancient beginning dominated; for a long time, the slave-owning villa was the economic unit. On its basis, feudal landownership gradually took shape. The slowest pace was observed in Austrasia, where the system of free peasants of the community members, who formed the basis of the royal army, was preserved.

By the end of the 7th century, the decline of the Merovingian dynasty begins. Many representatives depart from the state. affairs. transferring control of their possessions into the hands of the Mayordoms (manager). There was a struggle for supreme power between the 4 regions. In 687, Major of Austrasia, Pepin of Herstal, subjugates all areas of the Frankish kingdom to his power. However, the supreme power remained in the hands of the Merovingian dynasty, who received the nickname "disliked by the king." Pepin Geristalsky became the founder of a new dynasty of Carolingians (Pipinids). After Pepin's death, his son Karl Martell (Hammer) becomes the new mayor. His reign (715-741). Charles faced two problems: 1. the separatism of the former vassals. 2. the danger of slave conquest.

Initially, Frankish kings paid their vassals for service with land in the form of an allod. The distribution of lands in the allod led to reductions in the funds of free lands and freed the vassals of the king from the need to serve. The vassals who received the allod strove for separatism. Karl conducts the confiscation of part of the church property. Relations with the church were damaged. Secularized lands were transferred to loyal vassals, but now on the rights of beneficiation. In historiography, this reform was called the beneficiary reform. With the help of the beneficiaries, Charles managed to suppress internal unrest and impose tribute on the Zarein tribes of the Saxons, Frisians, Alamans and Bavarians. The reform made it possible to create a combat-ready knightly cavalry. This was very important in the conditions of feudalization (the number of people's militia is declining).

In 732, with the help of knightly cavalry from the beneficiaries, Charles defeated the Arabs at the battle of Poitiers, for which he received the nickname Hammer.

After the death of Charles, his son Pepin the Short (741-768, king from 751) becomes the mayor. The main goal of Pepin's reign was to obtain the crown. For this it was necessary to restore relations with the church. Pepin declared all the lands secularized by his father to be "predary by royal command." Secularized lands were returned to the property of the church. The beneficiaries became the precarists of the church. Henceforth, the beneficiaries paid the church for the land, but continued to serve the king. The church could not, without the consent of the king, claim these lands back and had no right to force the beneficiaries to serve itself. Relations with the church were restored.

To get the crown, Pepin took advantage of the difficult foreign policy situation of the pope. The Lombards seized part of the papal lands. Pepin offered the Pope protection from the Lombards. In 751, Pepin the Short was crowned King of the Franks by Pope Stephen II in Soissons. Childeric the Third was sent to a monastery. After 5 years, Pepin won back the lands seized from the pope by force of arms. In history, this act was called the pipin gift, the Patrimonium of St. Peter arose. In the Frankish kingdom, the reign of the new Carolingian dynasty begins.

General History [Civilization. Modern concepts. Facts, events] Dmitrieva Olga Vladimirovna

Frankish kingdom during the Merovingian era

The Franks are a Germanic people who originally inhabited the middle reaches of the Rhine, the coast of the North Sea and the Scheldt basin. The tribes of the Ripuarian and Salic Franks, united in a tribal union, differed. In the III-IV centuries. they began to disturb Roman Gaul with regular attacks, and in the middle of the 5th century. seized its territory up to the Somme. In the campaigns, their leaders were "kings", but in fact - military leaders, whose power was not yet hereditary - Sigibert, Ragnahar, Hararih and Clovis. Clovis (481–511) became the first king of all the Franks, eliminating his political rivals through bribery, betrayal, and assassination. His biographer, Christian Bishop Gregory of Tours, left a story about deceit, with the help of which he eliminated the rest of the Frankish kings and his own relatives, hypocritically lamenting later that “he was left alone, like a wanderer among strangers, and has no relatives who could give help, if something bad happened." Clovis came from the Merovingian clan, therefore his descendants-kings are called the Merovingians, and the period of their reign from the end of the 5th to the end of the 7th century is the Merovingian.

Under Clovis, the Franks advanced to the south of the Seine, and later to the Loire. The king generously distributed the occupied lands to his antrustion warriors, while they divided the rest of the booty by lot, according to the old custom. Gregory of Tours cites in his "History of the Franks" an episode related to the division of trophies, which characterizes the attitude of fellow tribesmen to royal power during this period. After the capture of the city of Soissons, the king wished to receive a certain bowl from church utensils in order, for political reasons, to return it to the local church, but could not, because by lot it went to a simple warrior, and he, not wanting to give it to the king, cut the bowl with an ax. It follows from this that the king was considered only the first among equals, whose will was not the law for the Franks, and the figure did not have sacred features in their eyes. (Later, Clovis nevertheless took revenge on the intractable warrior by hacking him to death with an ax during a military review.)

To strengthen his authority, Clovis entered into an alliance with the Christian Church, to which he made extensive land grants, while still a pagan. In 496, he was baptized at Reims, promising from now on to fight idols in the name of the cross - "worship what he burned, and burn what he worshiped."

The adoption of Christianity in the orthodox form gave him a reason to start in 507 a campaign against the Arian-Visigoths, having expelled them, he included the vast region of Aquitaine in his possessions. For a quarter of a century, Clovis took possession of almost all of Roman Gaul (except Burgundy and Septimania). His political success was forced to recognize the Byzantine emperor Anastasius, who proclaimed the Frankish king consul and bestowed on him the honorary title of "August", a crown and a purple mantle.

The expansion of the Franks continued under the successors of Clovis, who annexed Burgundy (537) and Provence, taken from the Ostrogoths (536), in the southeast. Its other direction was the conquest of the Germanic tribes that lived in the northeast beyond the Rhine - the Thuringians, Alamans, Bavarians. The Frankish kingdom thus became the largest state in the territory of the former Western Roman Empire.

In Gaul, the Franks made up 15–20% of the local Gallo-Roman population (more than the Germans in other regions). The formation of a new way of life took place here in the conditions of active Germanic-Roman synthesis. An idea of ​​the economy and social life of the Franks is given by the so-called Salic truth, a code of customary law codified at the behest of Clovis at the beginning of the 6th century. This code book reflects both the earlier archaic orders that existed among the Franks, and the evolution of social relations in the 5th-6th centuries. - the disintegration of blood relations, the growth of property and social inequality, the formation of the state.

As is clear from the Salic truth, the Franks already had a developed agriculture. They cultivated rye, wheat, barley, legumes, flax using a two-field system; They were also engaged in horticulture and viticulture. Cattle breeding was at a high level: the Franks bred cattle and small livestock - cows, sheep, pigs, goats. As in ancient times, cattle was a measure of their wealth and often replaced money in settlements. Poultry farming, beekeeping and hunting were a help in the economy.

The main economic unit was the family that owned the estate: a house, barns and other outbuildings, a garden and a kitchen garden. All this personal-family property, including livestock and poultry, was strictly protected by law from encroachment: theft and robbery were punishable by heavy fines. Each family had an arable plot, while any cultivated piece of land - a field, a garden, a vineyard, etc. - was fenced. The redistribution of arable land, which was mentioned by ancient authors, speaking of the ancient Germans, was no longer observed. This allows a number of scholars to argue that by the 5th century the Franks had private ownership of land. It is obvious, however, that this concept is generally difficult to apply to the land relations of the period under consideration. On the one hand, the Franks had quite developed ideas about property rights, especially on movable property, expressed in such external signs of property as brands, hedges, fences, borders. On the other hand, these real estate rights were not unconditional. First, they were limited to the control of close relatives. In particular, the land plot - the so-called allod - was transferred only through the male line, while women did not have the right to inherit it (because a woman could get married and her tribal group would lose this allotment). Since private property presupposes free alienation and transfer of property, we have to state that the institution of private property was still in the process of formation among the Franks. The neighbors who made up the Frankish village also claimed certain rights to the surrounding territories, including those belonging to individual families. After the crop was harvested, all the hedges were removed from the fields and they turned into a collective grazing for livestock. Neighbors jointly determined the rules for the use of roads, water, pastures, wastelands, forests. Without the consent of the whole village, not a single stranger could settle nearby, since this inevitably entailed a redistribution of shares in common lands.

This gives grounds to talk about the formation of the so-called neighbor community among the Franks, which in mature forms will be characteristic of the entire period of the Middle Ages.

Salic truth provides much evidence that blood ties still played an important role in Frankish society. The custom of blood feud continued to exist, the relatives were due a fine for the murdered - wergeld; on the contrary, if one of the relatives had to pay this fine, his relatives helped raise the necessary funds. The rite of turning to them for help is recorded in the Salic truth in the chapter entitled "About a handful of earth." If the person sentenced to a fine had already given away all his property in payment and had nothing more, then he had to call his relatives, take a handful of earth from all corners of his empty chamber and, standing on the porch, throw it over his shoulder in the direction of the four closest relatives. If their property was not enough to pay the fine, they repeated this ceremony, involving their loved ones in it. Relatives acted as guarantors and jurors in court, had the right to inheritance.

On the other hand, the Salic truth also records the symptoms of the collapse of blood ties: some Franks, who were burdened by the duties of helping relatives and participating in ruinous mutual responsibility, declared “renunciation of kinship”, which meant not receiving their share of the inheritance of a deceased relative or wergeld. The public refusal procedure consisted in the fact that a person broke a stick over his head (symbolizing former connections) and scattered the fragments in different directions. Obviously, someone who was confident in his material well-being could take such a step, and this chapter also testifies to the property stratification among the Franks.

The social structure of the Frankish society of the Merovingian era was already quite complex. The majority were free Franks - farmers and warriors, whose life was estimated at 200 solidi wergeld. Above them on the social ladder were royal warriors, officials who were in the royal service, Christian bishops, as well as noble Romans, close to the Frankish kings - their "companions". The elite of Frankish society thus included representatives of the Gallo-Roman nobility. The rest of the Gallo-Romans were "estimated" lower than the free Franks - at 100 solidi, along with the German semi-free litas. Slaves did not have a wergeld at all and were valued on a par with cattle or other property.

By the end of the 6th century, the Franks had a “full allod” - freely alienable landed property. According to the edict of King Chilperic, it was allowed to freely give, transfer and bequeath, including to women. This act was an important step towards the formation of large landed property. Its folding was also facilitated by numerous military campaigns of the Franks, the seizure of lands with which the kings generously endowed their confidants with the rights of allod - that is, full ownership. Large land masses, concentrated in the hands of the latter, were cultivated by the hands of both Germanic and Gallo-Roman slaves, litas, colones.

Free francs began to fall more and more often into dependence on large landowners. Constant wars, vicissitudes of fate, low productivity, famine years easily destabilized the small peasant economy, forcing the farmer to seek help. The commendation became widespread - the voluntary entry of a poor land-poor person under the personal patronage of a large landowner. The commendation agreement assumed that the latter would take care of his client, give him shelter and food, and he would serve his patron in everything, maintaining the status of a free person, but he would never be able to break this agreement and get out of patronage. Thus, specific personal relations of service and patronage arose, which were a characteristic feature of the feudal era.

Dependence could also arise in the sphere of purely land relations; in particular, precarious transactions led to it. A precarium - in this case - a land allotment that a poor peasant could receive from a large landowner for cultivation on the terms of paying a part of the crop to the owner (“precarious given”). In other cases, a small landowner who had land could transfer ownership of it to a magnate or a monastery in order to get his plot back and use it for the rest of his life, but already on the rights of holding, and not ownership, along with guarantees of patronage, protection, provision in old age, etc. Such a precarium was called "returned". After the death of the peasant, he passed into the hands of the new owner. Sometimes, in such cases, a large landowner could add a certain amount of land to the peasant allotment (“prékary with remuneration”). The precarist remained personally free, but found himself in economic dependence. Thanks to precarious transactions and commendations, a layer of dependent peasantry and large landowners gradually formed - the feudalization of Frankish society began. However, in the Merovingian period, it had not yet gone far.

The political structure of the Frankish society in the V-VI centuries. retained many archaic features, but at the same time was influenced by Roman customs. In the Merovingian period, the Franks formed a state in the form that is called early feudal.

The power of the king increased significantly, reinforced by the authority of the church and references to its divine origin, and his figure itself began to acquire sacred features. Sovereigns acquired insignia - signs of their dignity. Unlike ordinary Franks, a wergeld was no longer appointed for the king, his murder could not be atoned for with money. Even an attempt on the monarch was punishable by death.

Royal power was based on vast land holdings and the strength of a professional squad, consisting of antrustions. The nobility also participated in the development of the political line and the direct administration of the country - royal relatives, large land magnates, prelates of the church, who were part of the royal Council. In conditions when the monarchy had not yet become hereditary and his eldest son did not necessarily become the king's successor, the role of this body was extremely large: the Council chose the heir from the circle of the closest royal relatives - brothers, sons, uncles, nephews. The monarchs had to reckon with the opinion of the Council, which allows historians to talk about a kind of "democracy of the nobility" in this period.

In the Frankish state, the traditional institutions of people's democracy were also preserved. The basis of the army was the militia of all free warriors who had weapons. Every year they gathered for military reviews - "March fields".

Judicial meetings remained the basis of administration and public life, at which litigation was dealt with and economic problems were resolved. However, the judicial system has also changed significantly. Along with the archaic positions of tungin (chairman of the court) and rahinburgs (elected experts and keepers of ancient law), there appeared a centurion (centenary), counts and satsebarons - bailiffs acting on behalf of the king. The royal power actively interfered in the judicial process: having codified and recorded the legal norms of his people, Clovis granted them to the Franks already in his own name as a royal law, part of the judicial fines for the violation of which he began to take in his favor.

The Merovingians introduced a kind of Roman administrative division - hundreds and counties, borrowed the system of Roman poll and land taxes from the population. However, the system of government in the Frankish state was still extremely primitive. Officials were represented by the governors and envoys of the king, many of whom were his slaves by status. They did not have permanent functions, carrying out any orders of the sovereign. The monarch himself was forced to constantly move around his vast possessions, having no capital and official residence, in order to maintain contact with his subjects and collect payments due to him from them. Upon the arrival of the king, the local population delivered food and fodder to him from all over the area. The sovereign with his retinue spent time in feasts with the local nobility, at which state affairs were decided, and the detour of the lands resumed as everything was eaten and drunk.

Thus, the specifics of the early feudal state consisted in strengthening the power of the king and his entourage while maintaining a broad support of statehood in the person of all the free people who formed the backbone of the army; in the patrimonial nature of power, under which the king ruled the state as his fiefdom; in the primitiveness of the state apparatus, which did not have clearly defined functions and specialization; in its infancy, a financial system based on proceeds from royal estates and court fines.

The difficulties of managing remote territories led to the fact that sometimes kings delegated their power functions to their confidants, granting them the so-called. "immunities". Immunity rights assumed that the territory entrusted to the administration of a private individual would no longer be entered by royal officials. An immuneist could be entrusted with the administration of justice on behalf of the sovereign, administration, collection of taxes, or all these functions together. This led to the strengthening of the private power of large magnates, who turned their local positions and privileges into hereditary ones, to the separatization of certain regions and the weakening of royal power.

Already under the successors of Clovis, it became clear that broad land grants and the distribution of immunities had exhausted the ability of kings to attract large landowners to their service. At the end of the 7th century, the Frankish kingdom practically breaks up into several large territorial entities - Neustria, with a center in Paris, Austrasia, Burgundy and Aquitaine.