[ANSTHRLD] Baronial investiture ceremonies

tmcd at panix.com tmcd at panix.com
Sun Jan 27 13:55:42 PST 2008


There's a gecko on my second-story window.  It's late January, the
temperature hasn't risen above the 40s all week, and there's a gecko
on my window.  -- This has absolutely nothing to do with anything,
mind you.  I just had to share my crogglement that *there's a gecko on
my second-story window*.


On Wed, 23 Jan 2008, Diane Rudin <serena1570 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> <picture Serena crying, tearing hair, & generally carrying on
> cranky>

Tear out Robin's hair.  Not as noticable.

> ***Period ceremonies didn't include reading aloud documents!!***

I suspect they tended to have a set text of some sort, or else a new
vassal might miss out on some of the rights of infantheif and
outfangthief, saccage and soccage, tollage and tallage, pillage and
ullage, umbrage and porrage, and generally carnage and wreckage.
Reading the charter might be considered a substitute.

> In addition, homage and fealty aren't the same thing.  While these
> were eventually conflated into a single ceremony on the Continent,
> in England the ceremonial distinction remained.

??  Kneeling with one's hands between the other's, the common sign of
commendation, but with the words

    I, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, do become your liege man of life
    and limb, and of earthly worship; and faith and truth I will bear
    unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folks.
    So help me God.

?  Sounds to me like the English coronation ordo got homage and fealty
"hopelessly confused".  OK, maybe up to the semicolon is homage, but
the second half says the magic word "faith".  (And a duke drops from
the ceiling.)

> (except the GOofS, who in Ansteorra have never sworn "fealty" and
> never should)

Except they SHOULD and DO swear fealty in the period sense.  As Marc
Bloch points out (pp 146-7),

    For in the act of fealty there was nothing specific.  ... there
    were a great many reasons why the oath of fealty should be exacted
    frequently.  Royal or seignoral officials of every rank took it on
    assuming their duties; prelates often demanded it from their
    clergy; and manoral lords, occasionally, from their peasants.
    Unlike homage, which bound the whole man at a single stroke and
    was generally held to be incapable of renewal, this
    promise--almost a commonplace affair--could be repeated several
    times to the same person.  There were therefore many acts of
    fealty without homage: we do not know of any acts of homage
    without fealty--at least in the feudal period.  Furthermore, when
    the two rites were combined, the pre-eminence of homage was shown
    by the fact that it was always given first place in the ceremony.
    It was this alone that brought the two men together in a close
    union; the fealty of the vassal was a unilateral undertaking to
    which there was seldom a corresponding oath on the part of the
    lord.  In a word, it was the act of homage that really established
    the relation of vassalage under its dual aspect of dependence and
    protection.

> The only persons at Ansteorra's Coronation who swear true period
> fealty are the landed barons & baronesses, and the knights.  They
> are the only persons who are receiving/holding goods/services on
> behalf of the Crown of Ansteorra.

Knights don't get goods/services, or if they are, (a) I've missed it
and (b) the other peers are getting right royally rooked.

Going by Bloch's explanation, and Alban St. Alban's pamphlet _Faith in
Life and Limb_ (free with any order from the SCA Stock Clerk in the
heraldry section, and probably still free from his Potboiler Press
booth; highly recommended), fealty is a promise to do something or not
do something, though like homage, it implies some form of inequality
(mitigated by the kiss of commendation, if homage was done).  AsA,
p. 19:

    France, 1236: [F]rom this hour forward, I promise not to seize
    your person nor to deprive you of life or limb; I will not do this
    myself, nor shall any man or woman do it by my advice or at my
    instigation. [Ganshof, F. L., _Feudalism_, 3rd English ed,
    trans. by Philip Grierson, London; Longmans, Green and Co., 1964,
    pp 76-7]

Clearly the landed baronage are closest to period models: they get
clear fiefs, and do homage and swear fealty.  But household retainers
were something like the origin of fief-holders -- household members
were paid and kept; men with fiefs were granted land in lieu of that
and also to extend control over a different area.

Danyell de Lyncoln
-- 
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tmcd at panix.com



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