As feudalism passed from its age of supremacy into its age
of decline, its customs tended to crystallize into fixed forms.
At the same time a class of men arose interested in
these forms for their own sake, professional lawyersDecline
and survivals.
or judges, who wrote down for their own and others’
use the feudal usages with which they were familiar.
The great age of these codes was the 13th century, and especially
the second half of it. The codes in their turn tended still further
to harden these usages into fixed forms, and we may date from
the end of the 13th century an age of feudal law regulating
especially the holding and transfer of land, and much more
uniform in character than the law of the feudal age proper.
This was particularly the case in parts of France and Germany
where feudalism continued to regulate the property relations
of lords and vassals longer than elsewhere, and where the underlying
economic feudalism remained in large part unchanged.
In this later pseudo-feudalism, however, the political had given
way to the economic, and customs which had once had no
economic significance came to have that only.
Feudalism formed the starting-point also of the later social nobilities of Europe. They drew from it their titles and ranks and many of their regulative ideas, though these were formed into more definite and regular systems than ever existed in feudalism proper. It was often the policy of kings to increase the social privileges and legal exemptions of the nobility while taking away all political power, so that it is necessary in the history of institutions to distinguish sharply between these nobilities and the feudal baronage proper. It is only in certain backward parts of Europe that the terms feudal and baronage in any technical sense can be used of the nobility of the 15th century. (G. B. A.)
Bibliography.—For more detailed information the reader is referred to the articles English Law; France: French Law and Institutions, Villenage; Manor; Scutage; Knight Service; Hide. For a general sketch of Feudalism the chapters in tome ii. of the Histoire générale of Lavisse and Rambaud should be consulted. Other general works are J. T. Abdy, Feudalism (1890); Paul Roth, Feudalität und Unterthanverband (Weimar, 1863); and Geschichte des Beneficialwesens (1850); M. M. Kovalevsky, Ökonomische Entwickelung Europas (1902); E. de Laveleye, De la propriété et de ses formes primitives (1891); and The Origin of Property in Land, a translation by M. Ashley from the works of N. D. Fustel de Coulanges, with an introductory chapter by Professor W. J. Ashley. Two other works of value are Sir H. S. Maine, Village Communities in the East and West (1876); and Léon Gautier, La Chevalerie (Paris, 1884; Eng. trans. by Henry Frith, Chivalry, London, 1891).
For feudalism in England see the various constitutional histories, especially W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. i. (ed. 1897). Very valuable also are the writings of Mr J. H. Round, of Professor F. W. Maitland and of Professor P. Vinogradoff. Among Round’s works may be mentioned Feudal England (1895); Geoffrey de Mandeville (1892); and Studies on the Red Book of the Exchequer (1898). Maitland’s Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge, 1897) is indispensable; and the same remark applies to his History of English Law before the time of Edward I. (Cambridge, 1895), written in conjunction with Sir Frederick Pollock. Vinogradoff has illuminated the subject in his Villainage in England (1892) and his English Society in the 11th century (1908). See also J. F. Baldwin, The Scutage and Knight Service in England (Chicago, 1897); Rudolf Gneist, Adel und Ritterschaft in England (1853); and F. Seebohm, The English Village Community (1883).
For feudalism in France see N. D. Fustel de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France (Les Origines du système féodal, 1890; Les Transformations de la royauté pendant l’époque carolingienne, 1892); A. Luchaire, Histoire des institutions monarchiques de la France sous les premiers Capétiens, 987–1180 (2nd ed., 1890); and Manuel des institutions françaises: période des Capétiens directs (1892); J. Flach, Les Origines de l’ancienne France (1886–1893); Paul Viollet, Droit public: Histoires des institutions politiques et administratives de la France (1890–1898); and Henri Sée, Les classes rurales et le régime domanial (1901).
For Germany see G. Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte (Kiel and Berlin, 1844 foll.); H. Brunner, Grundzüge der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1901); V. Menzel, Die Entstehung des Lebenswesens (Berlin, 1890); and G. L. von Maurer’s works on the early institutions of the Germans.
FEUERBACH, ANSELM (1829–1880), German painter, born
at Spires, the son of a well-known archaeologist, was the leading
classicist painter of the German 19th-century school. He was
the first to realize the danger arising from contempt of technique,
that mastery of craftsmanship was needed to express even the
loftiest ideas, and that an ill-drawn coloured cartoon can never
be the supreme achievement in art. After having passed through
the art schools of Düsseldorf and Munich, he went to Antwerp
and subsequently to Paris, where he benefited by the teaching
of Couture, and produced his first masterpiece, “Hafiz at the
Fountain” in 1852. He subsequently worked at Karlsruhe,
Venice (where he fell under the spell of the greatest school of
colourists), Rome and Vienna. He was steeped in classic
knowledge, and his figure compositions have the statuesque
dignity and simplicity of Greek art. Disappointed with the
reception given in Vienna to his design of “The Fall of the
Titans” for the ceiling of the Museum of Modelling, he went to
live in Venice, where he died in 1880. His works are to be found
at the leading public galleries of Germany; Stuttgart has his
“Iphigenia”; Karlsruhe, the “Dante at Ravenna”; Munich,
the “Medea”; and Berlin, “The Concert,” his last important
picture. Among his chief works are also “The Battle of the
Amazons,” “Pietà,” “The Symposium of Plato,” “Orpheus
and Eurydice” and “Ariosto in the Park of Ferrara.”
FEUERBACH, LUDWIG ANDREAS (1804–1872), German
philosopher, fourth son of the eminent jurist (see below), was born
at Landshut in Bavaria on the 28th of July 1804. He matriculated
at Heidelberg with the intention of pursuing an ecclesiastical
career. Through the influence of Prof. Daub he was led to
an interest in the then predominant philosophy of Hegel and,
in spite of his father’s opposition, went to Berlin to study under
the master himself. After two years’ discipleship the Hegelian
influence began to slacken. “Theology,” he wrote to a friend,
“I can bring myself to study no more. I long to take nature
to my heart, that nature before whose depth the faint-hearted
theologian shrinks back; and with nature man, man in his
entire quality.” These words are a key to Feuerbach’s development.
He completed his education at Erlangen with the study
of natural science. His first book, published anonymously,
Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit (1830, 3rd ed. 1876),
contains an attack upon personal immortality and an advocacy
of the Spinozistic immortality of reabsorption in nature. These
principles, combined with his embarrassed manner of public
speaking, debarred him from academic advancement. After
some years of struggling, during which he published his Geschichte
der neueren Philosophie (2 vols., 1833–1837, 2nd ed. 1844), and
Abälard und Heloise (1834, 3rd ed. 1877), he married in 1837
and lived a rural existence at Bruckberg near Nuremberg,
supported by his wife’s share in a small porcelain factory. In
two works of this period, Pierre Bayle (1838) and Philosophie
und Christentum (1839), which deal largely with theology, he
held that he had proved “that Christianity has in fact long
vanished not only from the reason but from the life of mankind,
that it is nothing more than a fixed idea” in flagrant contradiction
to the distinctive features of contemporary civilization.
This attack is followed up in his most important work, Das
Wesen des Christentums (1841), which was translated into
English (The Essence of Religion, by George Eliot, 1853, 2nd ed.
1881), French and Russian. Its aim may be described shortly
as an effort to humanize theology. He lays it down that man,
so far as he is rational, is to himself his own object of thought.
Religion is consciousness of the infinite. Religion therefore
is “nothing else than the consciousness of the infinity of the
consciousness; or, in the consciousness of the infinite, the
conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own
nature.” Thus God is nothing else than man: he is, so to speak,
the outward projection of man’s inward nature. In part 1 of
his book he develops what he calls the “true or anthropological
essence of religion.” Treating of God in his various aspects
“as a being of the understanding,” “as a moral being or law,”
“as love” and so on, Feuerbach shows that in every aspect God
corresponds to some feature or need of human nature. “If
man is to find contentment in God, he must find himself in God.”
In part 2 he discusses the “false or theological essence of religion,”
i.e. the view which regards God as having a separate existence
over against man. Hence arise various mistaken beliefs, such
as the belief in revelation which not only injures the moral
