ABSTRACT
There is almost always something disappointing about reading two histories one after the other, however excellent they may be, dealing on the one hand with the institutions of mediaeval France, and on the other with those of Germany during the same period. If there is one institution better suited than any other to bring out the deep likenesses and divergences between these two great mediaeval civilisations by setting them side by side. At St. Martin de Tours, about the beginning of the nth century, the monastery's officials holding prebends, employed on inside and outside work, numbered among their ranks, along with the freedmen, some humble people. The evolution of administrative class in French would be fairly well characterised by saying that the chief seignorial officers formed a powerful social class, consolidated by the heritability obligations and fiefs. The opposition between the system of fiefs and the system of maintenance in the master's household was an ancient one.
