system of land tenure and agricultural production,
or whether economic necessity caused the creation of a new system. The
central fact is the same in either case.

That period of history which we call the Middle Ages covers a span of
well-nigh a thousand years. If we arbitrarily date its beginning from
the successful invasion of Rome by the barbarians in the early part of
the fifth century, and its ending with the final development of the
craft guilds in the middle of the fourteenth century, we have a
sufficiently exact measure of the time during which feudalism developed,
flourished, and declined. There are few things more difficult than the
bounding of epochs in social evolution by exact dates. Just as the
ripening of the wheat fields comes almost imperceptibly, so that the
farmer can say when the wheat is ripe, yet cannot say when the ripening
occurred, so with the epochs into which social history divides itself.
There is the unripe state and the ripe, but no chasm yawns between them;
they are merged together. We speak of the "end" of chattel slavery, and
the "rise" of feudalism, therefore, in a wide, general sense. As a
matter of fact, chattel slavery survived to some extent for centuries,
existing alongside of the new form of servitude; and its disappearance
took place, not simultaneously throughout the civilized world, but at
varying intervals. Likewise, there is a vast difference between the
first, crude, ill-defined forms of feudalism and its subsequent
development.

The theory of feudalism is the "divine right of kings." God is the
Supreme Lord of all the earth, the kings are His vice-regents, devolving
their authority in turn upon whomsoever they will. All land is held as
belonging to the king, God's chosen representative. He divides the realm
among his barons, to rule over and defend. For this they pay tribute to
the king--military service in times of war and, at a later period,
money. In turn, the barons divide the land among the lesser nobility,
receiving tribute from them. By these divided among the freemen, who
also pay tribute, the land is tilled by the serfs, who pay service to
the freeman, the lord of the manor. The serf pays no tribute directly to
the king, only to his liege lord; the liege lord pays to his superior,
and so on, up to the king. This is the economic framework of feudalism;
with its ecclesiastical side we are not here concerned.

At the base of the whole superstructure, then, was the