Note {104} — VI. FEUDALISM

Feudal tenure of land was not the only form known in the Middle Age. Other more ancient forms still existed in exceptional cases; as here: land held by proprietary right, that is, allodial possessions that had never been feudalized; land held as libellum or precarium, which are about the same. A libellum was a piece of land held by one person from another for a term of years, for life, or with the right of inheritance, for a fixed rent, the libellus being the charter or grant. Libellum, precarium, usufruct, and emphyteusis, are forms of land-holding known to the later Roman law, and differing one from the other only very slightly.