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A fief (/ f iː f /; Latin: feudum) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form of feudal allegiance, services or payments.
The adjective feudal was in use by at least 1405, and the noun feudalism was in use by the end of the 18th century, [4] paralleling the French féodalité.. According to a classic definition by François Louis Ganshof (1944), [1] feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations of the warrior nobility that revolved around the key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs, [1 ...
Feudal duties were the set of reciprocal financial, military and legal obligations among the warrior nobility in a feudal system. [1] These duties developed in both Europe and Japan with the decentralisation of empire and due to lack of monetary liquidity, as groups of warriors took over the social, political, judicial, and economic spheres of the territory they controlled. [2]
Feudalism as practiced in the Kingdoms of England during the medieval period was a state of human society that organized political and military leadership and force around a stratified formal structure based on land tenure.
A vassal [1] or liege subject [2] is a person regarded as having a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch, in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. While the subordinate party is called a vassal, the dominant party is called a suzerain .
The whole contract including the oath of fealty was part of a formal commendation ceremony that created the feudal relationship. [2] The term is also used by English-speakers to refer to similar oaths of allegiance in other feudal cultures, as with medieval Japan, as well as in modern organized crime.
Under the English feudal system several different forms of land tenure existed, each effectively a contract with differing rights and duties attached thereto. Such tenures could be either free-hold if they were hereditable or perpetual or non-free if they terminated on the tenant's death or at an earlier specified period.
In the Middle Ages, especially under the European feudal system, feoffment / ˈ f ɛ f m ən t / or enfeoffment was the deed by which a person was given land in exchange for a pledge of service. This mechanism was later used to avoid restrictions on the passage of title in land by a system in which a landowner would give land to one person for ...