Protofeudalism ( es, protofeudalismo / feudalismo prematuro) is a concept in

medieval history In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

, especially the

history of Spain The history of Spain dates to contact the pre-Roman peoples of the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula made with the Greeks and Phoenicians and the first writing systems known as Paleohispanic scripts were developed. During Classical ...

, according to which the direct precursors of

feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...

can be found in

Late Antiquity Late antiquity is the time of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, generally spanning the 3rd–7th century in Europe and adjacent areas bordering the Mediterranean Basin. The popularization of this periodization in English ha ...

Historiographical context

Spanish

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...

relies heavily on the concept and projects it onto the late

Visigothic Kingdom The Visigothic Kingdom, officially the Kingdom of the Goths ( la, Regnum Gothorum), was a kingdom that occupied what is now southwestern France and the Iberian Peninsula from the 5th to the 8th centuries. One of the Germanic successor states to ...

, but its usage is generally deprecated in the English-language historiography of Spain (or anywhere else). The current tendency in English scholarship to downplay feudalism and reduce the usage of related terminology, especially its application to the

Early Middle Ages The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th or early 6th century to the 10th century. They marked the start of the Mi ...

, is in direct conflict with recent trends in Spanish historiography to push the start of feudalism back into the Visigothic period, sometimes seen as part of a tendency to "Europeanise" Spanish history. Interest was renewed in the history of a united Visigothic Spain during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in the mid-20th century. The perennial need to explain the rapid downfall of the Visigothic kingdom in the face of Arab invasions led some scholars to postulate the increased privatisation of public authority in the hands of regional, landed nobility: twin tendencies, called "protofeudalism" (privatisation) and "particularism" (regionalism). Typically, the protofeudal phenomenon is dated to the late 7th century, but sometimes earlier. In 1967, the Spanish historian

Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz y Menduiña (; April 7, 1893 in Madrid – July 8, 1984 in Ávila) was a Spanish scholar, politician and orator. He served as Prime Minister of the Spanish Republican government in exile during the dictatorship of Fran ...

traced the protofeudalisation (''protofeudalización'') of the Visigothic army at least to the legislation of Erwig and Wamba. A description in English of the general phenomenon is given by Payne in his general history of Iberia in two volumes:

Decentralization was unavoidable, and power became a matter of personal relationship and example. The chief lieutenants of the crown were rewarded for their services by salaries or stipendia in the form of overlordship of land or temporary assignment of income from land held in precarium, that is, on a nominally revocable basis. This system was actually first used by the church to support local establishments, and by the seventh century was widely employed by the crown and also by the magnates (the high aristocracy) to pay their chief supporters and military retainers. The process of protofeudalization inevitably carried with it a splintering of juridical and economic sovereignty that further weakened political unity.

Criticism

French historian Céline Martin has disputed the reality of "protofeudalism" by pointing to the public nature of oaths of fidelity in the late Visigothic kingdom, where oaths were generally sworn by (local) populations and not by individual men to individual lords.

Roger Collins Roger J. H. Collins (born September 2, 1949) is an English medievalist, currently an honorary fellow in history at the University of Edinburgh. Collins studied at the University of Oxford ( Queen's and Saint Cross Colleges) under Peter Bro ...

has criticised the concept as little more than an attempt by Spanish academics to integrate Spanish history into that of Europe in general. Collins cites L. García Moreno as proclaiming "international unanimity in applying the adjective 'protofeudal' to the socio-political formation incarnated by the Kingdom of Toledo at the beginning of the eighth century". Collins, however, "thinks not".

Michael Kulikowski Michael Kulikowski (born September 3, 1970) is an American historian. He is Professor of History and Classics and Head of the History Department at Pennsylvania State University. Kulikowski specializes in the history of the western Mediterranean w ...

cites the discovery of mid-7th-century '' trientes'' at El Bovalar as evidence for commercial activity in central Spain refuting the prevailing notion of "

autarky Autarky is the characteristic of self-sufficiency, usually applied to societies, communities, states, and their economic systems. Autarky as an ideal or method has been embraced by a wide range of political ideologies and movements, especiall ...

" and protofeudal serfdom.Kulikowski, 301.

References

Notes

Sources

*Castellanos, Santiago (2003). "The Political Nature of Taxation in Visigothic Spain." ''Early Medieval Europe'', 12, pp. 201–28. *Castellanos, Santiago and Viso, Iñaki Martín (2005). "The Local Articulation of Central Power in the North of the Iberian Peninsula (500–1000)." ''Early Medieval Europe'', 13 (1), pp. 1–42. *Collins, Roger J. H. (1984). "Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages." ''Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature'', 68 (1), pp. 32–41. *Collins, Roger J. H. (2004). ''Visigothic Spain, 409–711''. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. *Kulikowski, Michael (2004). ''Late Roman Spain and Its Cities''. JHU Press. . *Moreno, L. García (1992). "El estado protofeudal visigodo: precedente y modelo para la Europa carolingia" in: J. Fontaine and (edd.), ''L'Europe héritière de l'Espagne wisigothique''. Madrid, pp. 17–43. *Payne, Stanley G. (1973)
''A History of Spain and Portugal'', Vol. 1.
Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press. *Stocking, Rachel L. (2007). "Review article: Continuity, culture and the state in late antique and early medieval Iberia." ''Early Medieval Europe'', 15 (3), pp. 335–348.

Historiographical context

Criticism

References

Notes

Sources

Further reading