CHAPTER XIII THE FEUDAL LAND SYSTEM AND FEUDAL SOCIETY With the disruption of Charlemagne's empire and the period of renewed invasions from all sides, we are no longer Meaning of able to follow the fortunes of one ruler or of feudalism several fair-sized kingdoms; but find ourselves in the complicated tangle of feudalism, with its overlapping areas, its conflicting claims and titles to land and power, its minute subdivisions of sovereignty, its thousands of lords. Feudalism in the strict sense of the word denotes the rela- tionships which existed in the Middle Ages, especially from the ninth and tenth to the twelfth and thirteenth cen- turies, between the members of the fighting and landowning class. In a broader sense it also covers the life of the subju- gated peasantry upon the land dominated by the warriors, and all the other economic, social, political, and intellectual results and accompaniments of feudalism in the narrower sense. As the Frankish state disintegrated and central govern- ment and common action ceased to exist, the pieces out of Political and which Charlemagne and his predecessors had oTthe n^inth put to g etner the i r empire fell apart again accord- and tenth ing to old geographical, tribal, and racial lines, or following more recent divisions. Local officials and great landholders again became a law unto themselves, and the former tried to hand on their political power to their sons as the latter did their lands. The Carolingian government had often tacitly admitted its inability to rule all the territory nominally subject to it by granting an im- munity to this or that monastery or great man. By such a grant the king renounced his right to collect taxes, admin- ister justice, and send his officials into the lands of the individual or monastery in question. Now the repeated in- cursions of Northmen, Saracens, and Magyars broke off
