FEUDALISM AS A FORM OF POLITICAL ORGANIZATION THE CASE OF CASTILE AND LEON FROM THE 11™ TO THE MID-14™ CENTURY

The review deals with the problem of the medieval political system definition using the term feudalism. The case of Castile and Leon of the mentioned period demonstrates that in spite of some disadvantages the term feudalism seems enough adequate to define the sense of file political organization which existed in the Latin Medieval West of the Central Middle Ages. The main attention is paid to the part of the institute of agreement (Latin pactum, placitnm, hominiitm and some others) between the influential centers of power (Crown, Church institutions, secular lords, territorial communities (concilium, conqeio) etc.), which was the main foundation of the medieval political organization in Castile and Leon from the 11th to the middle of the 14th centuries. In the situation of the legal order fragmentation, the agreement (an institute of the private law) appears as the main instrument to organize and to divide administration, authority, military and fiscal power between file mentioned centers. The feudal character of this divided and dispersant power based on the net of private agreements seems obvious. The fief (tenentia, tenengia, honor) appears in the sources as a possession of some power fragment received by the royal vassal (lord or some influential Church institution) from the king’s hands - «de manu regis». Cities, castles, fortresses and territories were objects of the rights of the lord as the possessor. The legal base of the vassal’s power over the fief was the vassalic contract. The fief as a type of possession was not in contradiction with the other type of possession which had much more universal character, the allodial (or hereditary) one (hereditas, heredat). The institute of hominium (homenaie, pleito e (h)omenaie) of the Catalonian origin was use in Castile and Leon since the 13th century to formalize obligations (including ones of file non-vassalic character) as a mean to decide the problem of non-compliances or direct violations of agreements, because the violation of this type of contract was qualified as the direct treachery and had to be punished by the same way. The part of file learned feudal law as a part of ius commune is emphasized because the Bolognian lawyers (glossators and commentators) of the 12th-15th centuries and their Castilian and Leonian disciples and followers systematized the legal order, including the law of feudal agreement

feudalism, feudal power, Castile and Leon, vassalic contract, fragmentaion of legal order, fief, allodium, homage, Las Siete Partidas