ABSTRACT
Duby had both empirical and theoretical grounds for taking a position on feudalism. In the eleventh-century Maconnais, he found that fiefs, as compared with allods, were relatively unimportant; that “the relationship of vassalage was a tie of mutual friendship similar to that which bound the family together,” just as it had been in the tenth century; and that “personal relationships” among nobles were complicated by the “inheritance and exchange of feudal tenures,” and by “plurality of homage.” Instead of being precisely dictated by the specific terms of the oath of fidelity, political relations between lords and fideles were evidently negotiated, in Susan Reynolds's terms, with reference to two conflicting norms, one privileging the claims of lords on their fideles and the other privileging the “mutuality of obligations” between lords and their fideles.
