ABSTRACT
In the era of so-called classical medieval European feudalism, the gifts of fiefs made by lords to their men are generally thought to have differed fundamentally from the transactions that are the subject of anthropological theories of the gift. Whereas the contractual model of feudalism treats fief-giving simply as an instrument for remunerating a man's future service, twelfth-century literary texts represent it as an ambiguous transaction that could be understood either as a reward for past service or as remuneration for future service. Because dry documents as well as mere literature represent gifts of fiefs in both honorable and dishonorable guises, rather than treat them all as elements of feudal contracts in which fiefs are given in return for future services, they support the hypothesis that in the eleventh century and on into the twelfth, the feudal contract was not an indissoluble unity and, indeed, was no contract at all.
