VOLUME X SLICE III Fenton, Edward to Finistere (continued 4)

FESCENNIA, an ancient city of Etruria, which is probably to be placed immediately to the N. of the modern Corchiano, 6 m. N.W. of Civita Castellana (see Falerii). The Via Amerina traverses it. G. Dennis (Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, London, 1883, i. 115) proposed to place it at the Riserva S. Silvestro, 3 m. E. of Corchiano, nearer the Tiber, where remains of Etruscan walls exist. At Corchiano itself, however, similar walls may be traced, and the site is a strong and characteristic one—a triangle between two deep ravines, with the third (west) side cut off by a ditch. Here, too, remains of two bridges may be seen, and several rich tombs have been excavated.

See A. Buglione, “Conte di Monale,” in Römische Mitteilungen (1887), p. 21 seq.

FESCENNINE VERSES (Fescennina carmina), one of the earliest kinds of Italian poetry, subsequently developed into the Satura and the Roman comic drama. Originally sung at village harvest-home rejoicings, they made their way into the towns, and became the fashion at religious festivals and private gatherings—especially weddings, to which in later times they were practically restricted. They were usually in the Saturnian metre and took the form of a dialogue, consisting of an interchange of extemporaneous raillery. Those who took part in them wore masks made of the bark of trees. At first harmless and good-humoured, if somewhat coarse, these songs gradually outstripped the bounds of decency; malicious attacks were made upon both gods and men, and the matter became so serious that the law intervened and scurrilous personalities were forbidden by the Twelve Tables (Cicero, De re publica, iv. 10). Specimens of the Fescennines used at weddings are the Epithalamium of Manlius (Catullus, lxi. 122) and the four poems of Claudian in honour of the marriage of Honorius and Maria; the first, however, is distinguished by a licentiousness which is absent in the latter. Ausonius in his Cento nuptialis mentions the Fescennines of Annianus Faliscus, who lived in the time of Hadrian. Various derivations have been proposed for Fescennine. According to Festus, they were introduced from Fescennia in Etruria, but there is no reason to assume that any particular town was specially devoted to the use of such songs. As an alternative Festus suggests a connexion with fascinum, either because the Fescennina were regarded as a protection against evil influences (see Munro, Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus, p. 76) or because fascinum (= phallus), as the symbol of fertility, would from early times have been naturally associated with harvest festivals. H. Nettleship, in an article on “The Earliest Italian Literature” (Journal of Philology, xi. 1882), in support of Munro’s view, translates the expression “verses used by charmers,” assuming a noun fescennus, connected with fas fari.

The locus classicus in ancient literature is Horace, Epistles, ii. 1. 139; see also Virgil, Georgics, ii. 385; Tibullus ii. 1. 55; E. Hoffmann, “Die Fescenninen,” in Rheinisches Museum, li. p. 320 (1896); art. Latin Literature.

FESCH, JOSEPH (1763-1839), cardinal, was born at Ajaccio on the 3rd of January 1763. His father, a Swiss officer in the service of the Genoese Republic, had married the mother of Laetitia Bonaparte, after the decease of her first husband. Fesch therefore stood almost in the relation of an uncle to the young Bonapartes, and after the death of Lucien Bonaparte, archdeacon of Ajaccio, he became for a time the protector and patron of the family. In the year 1789, when the French Revolution broke out, he was archdeacon of Ajaccio, and, like the majority of the Corsicans, he felt repugnance for many of the acts of the French government during that period; in particular he protested against the application to Corsica of the act known as the “Civil Constitution of the Clergy” (July 1790). As provost of the “chapter” in that city he directly felt the pressure of events; for on the suppression of religious orders and corporations, he was constrained to retire into private life.

Thereafter he shared the fortunes of the Bonaparte family in the intrigues and strifes which ensued. Drawn gradually by that family into espousing the French cause against Paoli and the Anglophiles, he was forced to leave Corsica and to proceed with Laetitia and her son to Toulon, in the early part of the autumn of 1793. Failing to find clerical duties at that time (the period of the Terror), he entered civil life, and served in various capacities, until on the appointment of Napoleon Bonaparte to the command of the French “Army of Italy” he became a commissary attached to that army. This part of his career is obscure and without importance. His fortunes rose rapidly on the attainment of the dignity of First Consul by his former charge, Napoleon, after the coup d’état of Brumaire (November 1799). Thereafter, when the restoration of the Roman Catholic religion was in the mind of the First Consul, Fesch resumed his clerical vocation and took an active part in the complex negotiations which led to the signing of the Concordat with the Holy See on the 15th of July 1801. His reward came in the prize of the archbishopric of Lyons, on the duties of which he entered in August 1802. Six months later he received a still more signal reward for his past services, being raised to the dignity of cardinal.

In 1804 on the retirement of Cacault from the position of French ambassador at Rome, Fesch received that important appointment. He was assisted by Châteaubriand, but soon sharply differed with him on many questions. Towards the close of the year 1804 Napoleon entrusted to Fesch the difficult task of securing the presence of Pope Pius VII. at the forthcoming coronation of the emperor at Notre Dame, Paris (Dec. 2nd, 1804). His tact in overcoming the reluctance of the pope to be present at the coronation (it was only eight months after the execution of the duc d’Enghien) received further recognition. He received the grand cordon of the Legion of Honour, became grand-almoner of the empire and had a seat in the French senate. He was to receive further honours. In 1806 one of the most influential of the German clerics, Karl von Dalberg, then prince bishop of Regensburg, chose him to be his coadjutor and designated him as his successor.

Events, however, now occurred which overclouded his prospects. In the course of the years 1806-1807 Napoleon came into sharp collision with the pope on various matters both political and religious. Fesch sought in vain to reconcile the two potentates. Napoleon was inexorable in his demands, and Pius VII. refused to give way where the discipline and vital interests of the church seemed to be threatened. The emperor on several occasions sharply rebuked Fesch for what he thought to be weakness and ingratitude. It is clear, however, that the cardinal went as far as possible in counselling the submission of the spiritual to the civil power. For a time he was not on speaking terms with the pope; and Napoleon recalled him from Rome.

Affairs came to a crisis in the year 1809, when Napoleon issued at Vienna the decree of the 17th of May, ordering the annexation of the papal states to the French empire. In that year Napoleon conferred on Fesch the archbishopric of Paris, but he refused the honour. He, however, consented to take part in an ecclesiastical commission formed by the emperor from among the dignitaries of the Gallican Church, but in 1810 the commission was dissolved. The hopes of Fesch with respect to Regensburg were also damped by an arrangement of the year 1810 whereby Regensburg was absorbed in Bavaria.

In the year 1811 the emperor convoked a national council of Gallican clerics for the discussion of church affairs, and Fesch was appointed to preside over their deliberations. Here again, however, he failed to satisfy the inflexible emperor and was dismissed to his diocese. The friction between uncle and nephew became more acute in the following year. In June 1812, Pius VII. was brought from his first place of detention, Savona, to Fontainebleau, where he was kept under surveillance in the hope that he would give way in certain matters relating to the Concordat and in other clerical affairs. Fesch ventured to write to the aged pontiff a letter which came into the hands of the emperor. His anger against Fesch was such that he stopped the sum of 150,000 florins which had been accorded to him. The disasters of the years 1812-1813 brought Napoleon to treat Pius VII. with more lenity and the position of Fesch thus became for a time less difficult. On the first abdication of Napoleon (April 11th, 1814) and the restoration of the Bourbons, he, however, retired to Rome where he received a welcome. The events of the Hundred Days (March-June, 1815) brought him back to France; he resumed his archiepiscopal duties at Lyons and was further named a member of the senate. On the second abdication of the emperor (June 22nd, 1815) Fesch retired to Rome, where he spent the rest of his days in dignified ease, surrounded by numerous masterpieces of art, many of which he bequeathed to the city of Lyons. He died at Rome on the 13th of May 1839.

See J.B. Monseigneur Lyonnet, Le Cardinal Fesch (2 vols., Lyons, 1841); Ricard, Le Cardinal Fesch (Paris, 1893); H. Welschinger, Le Pape et l’empereur (Paris, 1905); F. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille (4 vols., Paris, 1897-1900).

FESSA, a town and district of Persia in the province of Fars. The town is situated in a fertile plain in 29° N. and 90 m. from Shiraz, and has a population of about 5000. The district has forty villages and extends about 40 m. north-south from Runiz to Nassīrabad and 16 m. east-west from Vāsilabad to Deh Dasteh (Dastajah); it produces much grain, dates, tobacco, opium and good fruit.

FESSENDEN, WILLIAM PITT (1806-1869), American statesman and financier, was born in Boscawen, New Hampshire, on the 16th of October 1806. After graduating at Bowdoin College in 1823, he studied law, and in 1827 was admitted to the bar, eventually settling in Portland, Maine, where for two years he was associated in practice with his father, Samuel Fessenden (1784-1869), a prominent lawyer and anti-slavery leader. In 1832 and in 1840 Fessenden was a representative in the Maine legislature, and in 1841-1843 was a Whig member of the national House of Representatives. When his term in this capacity was over, he devoted himself unremittingly and with great success to the law. He became well known, also, as an eloquent advocate of slavery restriction. In 1845-1846 and 1853-1854 he again served in the state House of Representatives, and in 1854 was chosen by the combined votes of Whigs and Anti-Slavery Democrats to the United States Senate. Within a fortnight after taking his seat he delivered a speech in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which at once made him a force in the congressional anti-slavery contest. From then on he was one of the most eloquent and frequent debaters among his colleagues, and in 1859, almost without opposition, he was re-elected to the Senate as a member of the Republican party, in the organization of which he had taken an influential part. He was a delegate in 1861 to the Peace Congress, but after the actual outbreak of hostilities he insisted that the war should be prosecuted vigorously. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, his services were second in value only to those of President Lincoln and Secretary Salmon P. Chase in efforts to provide funds for the defence of the Union; and in July 1864 Fessenden succeeded Chase as secretary of the treasury. The finances of the country in the early summer of 1864 were in a critical condition; a few days before leaving office Secretary Chase had been compelled to withdraw from the market $32,000,000 of 6% bonds, on account of the lack of acceptable bids; gold had reached 285 and was fluctuating between 225 and 250, while the value of the paper dollar had sunk as low as 34 cents. It was Secretary Fessenden’s policy to avoid a further increase of the circulating medium, and to redeem or consolidate the temporary obligations outstanding. In spite of powerful pressure the paper currency was not increased a dollar during his tenure of the office. As the sales of bonds and treasury notes were not sufficient for the needs of the Treasury, interest-bearing certificates of indebtedness were issued to cover the deficits; but when these began to depreciate the secretary, following the example of his predecessors, engaged the services of the Philadelphia banker Jay Cooke (q.v.) and secured the consent of Congress to raise the balance of the $400,000,000 loan authorized on the 30th of June 1864 by the sale of the so-called “seven-thirty” treasury notes (i.e. notes bearing interest at 7.3% payable in currency in three years or convertible at the option of the holder into 6% 5-20 year gold bonds). Through Cooke’s activities the sales became enormous; the notes, issued in denominations as low as $50, appealed to the patriotic impulses of the people who could not subscribe for bonds of a higher denomination. In the spring of 1865 Congress authorized an additional loan of $600,000,000 to be raised in the same manner, and for the first time in four years the Treasury was able to meet all its obligations. After thus securing ample funds for the enormous expenditures of the war, Fessenden resigned the treasury portfolio in March 1865, and again took his seat in the Senate, serving till his death. In the Senate he again became chairman of the finance committee, and also of the joint committee on reconstruction. He was the author of the report of this last committee (1866), in which the Congressional plan of reconstruction was set forth and which has been considered a state paper of remarkable power and cogency. He was not, however, entirely in accord with the more radical members of his own party, and this difference was exemplified in his opposition to the impeachment of President Johnson and subsequently in his voting for Johnson’s acquittal. He bore with calmness the storm of reproach from his party associates which followed, and lived to regain the esteem of those who had attacked him. He died at Portland, Maine, on the 6th of September 1869.

See Francis Fessenden, Life and Public Services of William Pitt Fessenden (2 vols., Boston, 1907).

FESSLER, IGNAZ AURELIUS (1756-1839), Hungarian ecclesiastic, historian and freemason, was born on the 18th of May 1756 at the village of Zurány in the county of Moson. In 1773 he joined the order of Capuchins, and in 1779 was ordained priest. He had meanwhile continued his classical and philological studies, and his liberal views brought him into frequent conflict with his superiors. In 1784, while at the monastery of Mödling, near Vienna, he wrote to the emperor Joseph II., making suggestions for the better education of the clergy and drawing his attention to the irregularities of the monasteries. The searching investigation which followed raised up against him many implacable enemies. In 1784 he was appointed professor of Oriental languages and hermeneutics in the university of Lemberg, when he took the degree of doctor of divinity; and shortly afterwards he was released from his monastic vows on the intervention of the emperor. In 1788 he brought out his tragedy of Sidney, an exposé of the tyranny of James II. and of the fanaticism of the papists in England. This was attacked so violently as profane and revolutionary that he was compelled to resign his office and seek refuge in Silesia. In Breslau he met with a cordial reception from G.W. Korn the publisher, and was, moreover, subsequently employed by the prince of Carolath-Schönaich as tutor to his sons. In 1791 Fessler was converted to Lutheranism and next year contracted an unhappy marriage, which was dissolved in 1802, when he married again. In 1796 he went to Berlin, where he founded a humanitarian society, and was commissioned by the freemasons of that city to assist Fichte in reforming the statutes and ritual of their lodge. He soon after this obtained a government appointment in connexion with the newly-acquired Polish provinces, but in consequence of the battle of Jena (1806) he lost this office, and remained in very needy circumstances until 1809, when he was summoned to St Petersburg by Alexander I., to fill the post of court councillor, and the professorship of oriental languages and philosophy at the Alexander-Nevski Academy. This office, however, he was soon obliged to resign, owing to his alleged atheistic tendencies, but he was subsequently nominated a member of the legislative commission. In 1815 he went with his family to Sarepta, where he joined the Moravian community and again became strongly orthodox. This cost him the loss of his salary, but it was restored to him in 1817. In November 1820 he was appointed consistorial president of the evangelical communities at Saratov and subsequently became chief superintendent of the Lutheran communities in St Petersburg. Fessler’s numerous works are all written in German. In recognition of his important services to Hungary as a historian, he was in 1831 elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He died at St Petersburg on the 15th of December 1839.

Fessler was a voluminous writer, and during his life exercised great influence; but, with the possible exception of the history of Hungary, none of his books has any value now. He did not pretend to any critical treatment of his materials, and most of his historical works are practically historical novels. He did much, however, to make the study of history popular. His most important works are—Die Geschichten der Ungarn und ihrer Landsassen (10 vols. Leipzig, 1815-1825); Marcus Aurelius (3 vols., Breslau, 1790-1792; 3rd edition, 4 vols., 1799); Aristides und Themistokles (2 vols., Berlin, 1792; 3rd edition, 1818); Attila, König der Hunnen (Breslau, 1794); Mathias Corvinus (2 vols., Breslau, 1793-1794); and Die drei grossen Könige der Hungarn aus dem Arpadischen Stamme (Breslau, 1808).

See Fessler’s Rückblicke auf seine siebzigjährige Pilgerschaft (Breslau, 1824; 2nd edition, Leipzig, 1851).

FESTA, CONSTANZO (c. 1495-1545), Italian singer and musical composer, became a member of the Pontifical choir in Rome in 1517, and soon afterwards maestro at the Vatican. His motets and madrigals (the first book of which appeared in 1537) excited Dr Burney’s warm praise in his History of Music; and, among other church music, his Te Deum (published in 1596) is still sung at important services in Rome. His madrigal, called in English “Down in a flow’ry vale,” is well known.

FESTINIOG (or Ffestiniog), a town of Merionethshire, North Wales, at the head of the Festiniog valley, 600 ft. above the sea, in the midst of rugged scenery, near the stream Dwyryd, 31 m. from Conway. Pop. of urban district (1901), 11,435. There are many large slate quarries in this parish, especially at Blaenau Festiniog, the junction of three railways, London & North Western, Great Western and Festiniog, a narrow-gauge line between Portmadoc and Duffws. This light railway runs at a considerable elevation (some 700 ft.), commanding a view across the valley and lake of Tan y Bwlch. Lord Lyttelton’s letter to Mr Bower is a well-known panegyric on Festiniog. Thousands of workmen are employed in the slate quarries. The Cynfael falls are famous. Near are Beddau gwyr Ardudwy (the graves of the men of Ardudwy), memorials of a fight to recover women of the Clwyd valley from the men of Ardudwy. Near, too, is a rock named “Hugh Lloyd’s pulpit” (Lloyd lived in the time of Charles I., Cromwell and Charles II.).

FESTOON (from Fr. feston, Ital. festone, from a Late Lat. festo, originally a “festal garland,” Lat. festum, feast), a wreath or garland, and so in architecture a conventional arrangement of flowers, foliage or fruit bound together and suspended by ribbons, either from a decorated knot, or held in the mouths of lions, or suspended across the back of bulls’ heads as in the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. The “motif” is sometimes known as a “swag.” It was largely employed both by the Greeks and Romans and formed the principal decoration of altars, friezes and panels. The ends of the ribbons are sometimes formed into bows or twisted curves; when in addition a group of foliage or flowers is suspended it is called a “drop.” Its origin is probably due to the representation in stone of the garlands of natural flowers, &c., which were hung up over an entrance doorway on fête days, or suspended round the altar.

FESTUS (? Rufus or Rufius), one of the Roman writers of breviaria (epitomes of Roman history). The reference to the defeat of the Goths at Noviodunum (A.D. 369) by the emperor Valens, and the fact that the author is unaware of the constitution of Valentia as a province (which took place in the same year) are sufficient indication to fix the date of composition. Mommsen identifies the author with Rufius Festus, proconsul of Achaea (366), and both with Rufius Festus Avienus (q.v.), the translator of Aratus. But the absence of the name Rufius in the best MSS. is against this. Others take him to be Festus of Tridentum, magister memoriae (secretary) to Valens and proconsul of Asia, where he was sent to punish those implicated in the conspiracy of Theodorus, a commission which he executed with such merciless severity that his name became a byword. The work itself (Breviarium rerum gestarum populi Romani) is divided into two parts—one geographical, the other historical. The chief authorities used are Livy, Eutropius and Florus. It is extremely meagre, but the fact that the last part is based on the writer’s personal recollections makes it of some value for the history of the 4th century.

Editions by W. Förster (Vienna, 1873) and C. Wagener (Prague, 1886); see also R. Jacobi, De Festi breviarii fontibus (Bonn, 1874), and H. Peter, Die geschichtliche Litt. über die römische Kaiserzeit ii. p. 133 (1897), where the epitomes of Festus, Aurelius Victor and Eutropius are compared.

FESTUS, SEXTUS POMPEIUS, Roman grammarian, probably flourished in the 2nd century A.D. He made an epitome of the celebrated work De verborum significatu, a valuable treatise alphabetically arranged, written by M. Verrius Flaccus, a freedman and celebrated grammarian who flourished in the reign of Augustus. Festus gives the etymology as well as the meaning of every word; and his work throws considerable light on the language, mythology and antiquities of ancient Rome. He made a few alterations, and inserted some critical remarks of his own. He also omitted such ancient Latin words as had long been obsolete; these he discussed in a separate work now lost, entitled Priscorum verborum cum exemplis. Of Flaccus’s work only a few fragments remain, and of Festus’s epitome only one original copy is in existence. This MS., the Codex Festi Farnesianus at Naples, only contains the second half of the work (M-V) and that not in a perfect condition. It has been published in facsimile by Thewrewk de Ponor (1890). At the close of the 8th century Paulus Diaconus abridged the abridgment. From his work and the solitary copy of the original attempts have been made with the aid of conjecture to reconstruct the treatise of Festus.

Of the early editions the best are those of J. Scaliger (1565) and Fulvius Ursinus (1581); in modern times, those of C.O. Müller (1839, reprinted 1880) and de Ponor (1889); see J.E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, vol. i. (1906).

FÉTIS, FRANÇOIS JOSEPH (1784-1871), Belgian composer and writer on music, was born at Mons in Belgium on the 25th of March 1784, and was trained as a musician by his father, who followed the same calling. His talent for composition manifested itself at the age of seven, and at nine years old he was an organist at Sainte-Waudru. In 1800 he went to Paris and completed his studies at the conservatoire under such masters as Boieldieu, Rey and Pradher. In 1806 he undertook the revision of the Roman liturgical chants in the hope of discovering and establishing their original form. In this year he married the granddaughter of the Chevalier de Kéralio, and also began his Biographie universelle des musiciens, the most important of his works, which did not appear until 1834. In 1821 he was appointed professor at the conservatoire. In 1827 he founded the Revue musicale, the first serious paper in France devoted exclusively to musical matters. Fétis remained in the French capital till in 1833, at the request of Leopold I., he became director of the conservatoire of Brussels and the king’s chapel-master. He also was the founder, and, till his death, the conductor of the celebrated concerts attached to the conservatoire of Brussels, and he inaugurated a free series of lectures on musical history and philosophy. He produced a large quantity of original compositions, from the opera and the oratorio down to the simple chanson. But all these are doomed to oblivion. Although not without traces of scholarship and technical ability, they show total absence of genius. More important are his writings on music. They are partly historical, such as the Curiosités historiques de la musique (Paris, 1850), and the Histoire universelle de musique (Paris, 1869-1876); partly theoretical, such as the Méthode des méthodes de piano (Paris, 1837), written in conjunction with Moscheles. Fétis died at Brussels on the 26th of March 1871. His valuable library was purchased by the Belgian government and presented to the Brussels conservatoire. His work as a musical historian was prodigious in quantity, and, in spite of many inaccuracies and some prejudice revealed in it, there can be no question as to its value for the student.

FETISHISM, an ill-defined term, used in many different senses: (a) the worship of inanimate objects, often regarded as peculiarly African; (b) negro religion in general; (c) the worship of inanimate objects conceived as the residence of spirits not inseparably bound up with, nor originally connected with, such objects; (d) the doctrine of spirits embodied in, or attached to, or conveying influence through, certain material objects (Tylor); (e) the use of charms, which are not worshipped, but derive their magical power from a god or spirit; (f) the use as charms of objects regarded as magically potent in themselves. A further extension is given by some writers, who use the term as synonymous with the religions of primitive peoples, including under it not only the worship of inanimate objects, such as the sun, moon or stars, but even such phases of primitive philosophy as totemism. Comte applied the term to denominate the view of nature more commonly termed animism.

Derivation.—The word fetish (or fetich) was first used in connexion with Africa by the Portuguese discoverers of the last half of the 15th century; relics of saints, rosaries and images were then abundant all over Europe and were regarded as possessing magical virtue; they were termed by the Portuguese feiticos (i.e. charms). Early voyagers to West Africa applied this term to the wooden figures, stones, &c., regarded as the temporary residence of gods or spirits, and to charms. There is no reason to suppose that the word feitico was applied either to an animal or to the local spirit of a river, hill or forest. Feitico is sometimes interpreted to mean artificial, made by man, but the original sense is more probably “magically active or artful.” The word was probably brought into general use by C. de Brosses, author of Du culte des dieux fétiches (1760), but it is frequently used by W. Bosman in his Description of Guinea (1705), in the sense of “the false god, Bossum” or “Bohsum,” properly a tutelary deity of an individual.

Definition.—The term fetish is commonly understood to mean the worship of or respect for material, inanimate objects, conceived as magically active from a virtue inherent in them, temporarily or permanently, which does not arise from the fact that a god or spirit is believed to reside in them or communicate virtue to them. Taken in this sense fetishism is probably a mark of decadence. There is no evidence of any such belief in Africa or elsewhere among primitive peoples. It is only after a certain grade of culture has been attained that the belief in luck appears; the fetish is essentially a mascot or object carried for luck.

Ordinary Usage.—In the sense in which Dr Tylor uses the term the fetish is (1) a “god-house” or (2) a charm derived from a tutelary deity or spirit, and magically active in virtue of its association with such deity or spirit. In the first of these senses the word is applied to objects ranging from the unworked stone to the pot or the wooden figure, and is thus hardly distinguishable from idolatry. (a) The bohsum or tutelary deity of a particular section of the community is derived from the local gods through the priests by the performance of a certain series of rites. The priest indicates into what object the bohsum will enter and proceeds to the abode of the local god to procure the object in question. After making an offering the object is carried to an appropriate spot and a “fetish” tree set up as a shade for it, which is sacred so long as the bohsum remains beneath it. The fall of the tree is believed to mark the departure of the spirit. A bohsum may also be procured through a dream; but in this case, too, it is necessary to apply to the priest to decide whether the dream was veridical. (b) The suhman or tutelary deity of an individual is not an object selected at random to be the residence of the spirit. It is only procurable at the residence of a Sasabonsum, a malicious non-human being. Various ceremonies are performed, and a spirit connected with the Sasabonsum is finally asked to enter an object. This is then kept for three days; if no good fortune results it is concluded either that the spirit did not enter the object selected, or that it is disinclined to extend its protection. In either case the ceremonies must be commenced afresh. Otherwise offerings and even human sacrifices in exceptional cases are made to the suhman. It is commonly believed that the negro claims the power of coercing his tutelary deity. This is denied by Colonel Ellis. It is certain that coercion of deities is not unknown, but further evidence is required that the negro uses it when his deity is refractory.

The suhman can, it is believed, communicate a part of his powers to various objects in which he does not dwell; these are also termed suhman by the natives and may have given rise to the belief that the practices commonly termed fetishism are not animistic. These charms are many in number; offerings of food and drink are made, i.e. to the portion of the power of the suhman which resides in them. These charms can only be made by the possessor of the suhman.

On the Guinea Coast the spirit implanted in the object is usually, if not invariably, non-human. Farther south on the Congo the “fetish” is inhabited by human souls also. The priest goes into the forest and cuts an image; when a party enters a wood for this purpose they may not mention the name of any living being unless they wish him to die and his soul to enter the fetish. The right person having been selected, his name is mentioned; and he is believed to die within ten days, his soul passing into the nkissi. It is into these figures that the nails are driven, in order to procure the vengeance of the indwelling spirit on some enemy.

In many cases the fetish spirit is believed to leave the “god-house” and pass for the time being into the body of the priest, who manifests the phenomena of possession (q.v.). It is a common error to suppose that the whole of African religion is embraced in the practices connected with these tutelary deities; so far from this being the case, belief in higher gods, not necessarily accompanied with worship or propitiation, is common in many parts of Africa, and there is no reason to suppose that it had been derived in every case, perhaps not in any case, from Christian or Mahommedan missionaries.

See A.B. Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, chs. vii., viii. and xii.; Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, ii. 174; R.E. Dennett in Folklore, vol. xvi.; R.H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa (1904); also Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 143, and M.H. Kingsley, West African Studies (2nd ed., 1901), where the term is used in a more extended sense.

(N. W. T.)

FETTERCAIRN, a burgh of barony of Kincardineshire, Scotland, 4½ m. N.W. of Laurencekirk. Pop. of parish (1901) 1390. The chief structures include a public hall, library and reading-room, and the arch built to commemorate the visit of Queen Victoria in 1861. The most interesting relic, however, is the market cross, which originally belonged to the extinct town of Kincardine. To the S.W. is Balbegno Castle, dating from 1509, and planned on a scale that threatened to ruin its projector. It contains a lofty hall of fine proportions. Two miles N. is Fasque, the estate of the Gladstones, which was acquired in 1831 by Sir John Gladstone (1764-1851), the father of W.E. Gladstone. The castle, which stands in beautiful grounds, was built in 1809. Sir John Gladstone’s tomb is in the Episcopal church of St Andrew, which he erected and endowed. In the immediate vicinity are the ruins of the royal castle of Kincardine, where, according to tradition, Kenneth III. was assassinated in 1005, although he is more generally said to have been slain in battle at Monzievaird, near Crieff in Perthshire.

FETTERS AND HANDCUFFS, instruments for securing the feet and hands of prisoners under arrest, or as a means of punishment. The old names were manacles, shackbolts or shackles, gyves and swivels. Until within recent times handcuffs were of two kinds, the figure-8 ones which confined the hands close together either in front or behind the prisoner, or the rings from the wrists were connected by a short chain much on the model of the handcuffs in use by the police forces of to-day. Much improvement has been made in handcuffs of late. They are much lighter and they are adjustable, fitting any wrist, and thus the one pair will serve a police officer for any prisoner. For the removal of gangs of convicts an arrangement of handcuffs connected by a light chain is used, the chain running through a ring on each fetter and made fast at both ends by what are known as end-locks. Several recently invented appliances are used as handcuffs, e.g. snaps, nippers, twisters. They differ from handcuffs in being intended for one wrist only, the other portion being held by the captor. In the snap the smaller circlet is snapped to on the prisoner’s wrist. The nippers can be instantly fastened on the wrist. The twister, not now used in England as being liable to injure prisoners seriously, is a chain attached to two handles; the chain is put round the wrist and the two handles twisted till the chain is tight enough.

Leg-irons are anklets of steel connected by light chains long enough to permit of the wearer walking with short steps. An obsolete form was an anklet and chain to the end of which was attached a heavy weight, usually a round shot. The Spanish used to secure prisoners in bilboes, shackles round the ankles secured by a long bar of iron. This form of leg-iron was adopted in England, and was much employed in the services during the 17th and 18th centuries. An ancient example is preserved in the Tower of London. The French marine still use a kind of leg-iron of the bilbo type.

FEU, in Scotland, the commonest mode of land tenure. The word is the Scots variant of “fee” (q.v.). The relics of the feudal system still dominate Scots conveyancing. That system has recognized as many as seven forms of tenure—ward, socage, mortification, feu, blench, burgage, booking. Ward, the original military holding, was abolished in 1747 (20 G. II. c. 20), as an effect of the rising of 1745. Socage and mortification have long since disappeared. Booking is a conveyance peculiar to the borough of Paisley, but does not differ essentially from feu. Burgage is the system by which land is held in royal boroughs. Blench holding is by a nominal payment, as of a penny Scots, or a red rose, often only to be rendered upon demand. In feu holding there is a substantial annual payment in money or in kind in return for the enjoyment of the land. The crown is the first overlord or superior, and land is held of it by crown vassals, but they in their turn may “feu” their land, as it is called, to others who become their vassals, whilst they themselves are mediate overlords or superiors; and this process of sub-infeudation may be repeated to an indefinite extent. The Conveyancing Act of 1874 renders any clause in a disposition against sub-infeudation null and void. In England on the other hand, since 1290, when the statute Quia Emptores was passed, sub-infeudation is impossible, as the new holder simply effaces the grantor, holding by the same title as the grantor himself. Casualties, which are a feature of land held in feu, are certain payments made to the superior, contingent on the happening of certain events. The most important was the payment of an amount equal to one year’s feu-duty by a new holder, whether heir or purchaser of the feu. The Conveyancing Act of 1874 abolished casualties in all feus after that date, and power was given to redeem this burden on feus already existing. If the vassal does not pay the feu-duty for two years, the superior, among other remedies, may obtain by legal process a decree of irritancy, whereupon tinsel or forfeiture of the feu follows. Previously to 1832 only the vassals of the crown had votes in parliamentary elections for the Scots counties, and this made in favour of sub-infeudation as against sale outright. In Orkney and Shetland land is still largely possessed as udal property, a holding derived or handed down from the time when these islands belonged to Norway. Such lands may be converted into feus at the will of the proprietor and held from the crown or Lord Dundas. At one time the system of conveyancing by which the transfer of feus was effected was curious and complicated, requiring the presence of parties on the land itself and the symbolical handing over of the property, together with the registration of various documents. But legislation since the middle of the 19th century has changed all that. The system of feuing in Scotland, as contrasted with that of long leaseholds in England, has tended to secure greater solidity and firmness in the average buildings of the northern country.

See Erskine’s Principles; Bell’s Principles; Rankine, Law of Landownership in Scotland.

FEUCHÈRES, SOPHIE, Baronne de (1795-1840), Anglo-French adventuress, was born at St Helens, Isle of Wight, in 1795, the daughter of a drunken fisherman named Dawes. She grew up in the workhouse, went up to London as a servant, and became the mistress of the duc de Bourbon, afterwards prince de Condé. She was ambitious, and he had her well educated not only in modern languages but, as her exercise books—still extant—show, in Greek and Latin. He took her to Paris and, to prevent scandal and to qualify her to be received at court, had her married in 1818 to Adrien Victor de Feuchères, a major in the Royal Guards. The prince provided her dowry, made her husband his aide-de-camp and a baron. The baroness, pretty and clever, became a person of consequence at the court of Louis XVIII. De Feuchères, however, finally discovered the relations between his wife and Condé, whom he had been assured was her father, left her—he obtained a legal separation in 1827—and told the king, who thereupon forbade her appearance at court. Thanks to her influence, however, Condé was induced in 1829 to sign a will bequeathing about ten million francs to her, and the rest of his estate—more than sixty-six millions—to the duc d’Aumale, fourth son of Louis Philippe. Again she was in high favour. Charles X. received her at court, Talleyrand visited her, her niece married a marquis and her nephew was made a baron. Condé, wearied by his mistress’s importunities, and but half pleased by the advances made him by the government of July, had made up his mind to leave France secretly. When on the 27th of August 1830 he was found hanging dead from his window, the baroness was suspected and an inquiry was held, but the evidence of death being the result of any crime appearing insufficient, she was not prosecuted. Hated as she was alike by legitimatists and republicans, life in Paris was no longer agreeable for her, and she returned to London, where she died in December 1840.

FEUCHTERSLEBEN, ERNST, Freiherr von (1806-1849), Austrian physician, poet and philosopher, was born in Vienna on the 29th of April 1806; of an old Saxon noble family. He attended the “Theresian Academy” in his native city, and in 1825 entered its university as a student of medicine. In 1833 he obtained the degree of doctor of medicine, settled in Vienna as a practising surgeon, and in 1834 married. The young doctor kept up his connexion with the university, where he lectured, and in 1844 was appointed dean of the faculty of medicine. He cultivated the acquaintance of Franz Grillparzer, Heinrich Laube, and other intellectual lights of the Viennese world, interested himself greatly in educational matters, and in 1848, while refusing the presidency of the ministry of education, accepted the appointment of under secretary of state in that department. His health, however, gave way, and he died at Vienna on the 3rd of September 1849. He was not only a clever physician, but a poet of fine aesthetical taste and a philosopher. Among his medical works may be mentioned: Über das Hippokratische erste Buch von der Diät (Vienna, 1835), Ärzte und Publicum (Vienna, 1848) and Lehrbuch der ärztlichen Seelenkunde (1845). His poetical works include Gedichte (Stutt. 1836), among which is the well-known beautiful hymn, which Mendelssohn set to music. “Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rat.” As a philosopher he is best known by his Zur Diätetik der Seele [Dietetics of the soul] (Vienna, 1838), which attained great popularity, and the tendency of which, in contrast to Hufeland’s Makrobiotik (On the Art of Prolonging Life), is to show the true way of rendering life harmonious and lovely. This work had by 1906 gone into fifty editions. Noteworthy also is his Beiträge zur Litteratur-, Kunst- und Lebenstheorie (Vienna, 1837-1841), and an anthology, Geist der deutschen Klassiker (Vienna, 1851; 3rd ed. 1865-1866).

His collected works (with the exception of the purely medical ones) were published in 7 vols. by Fr. Hebbel (Vienna, 1851-1853). See M. Necker, “Ernst von Feuchtersleben, der Freund Grillparzers,” in the Jahrbuch der Grillparzer Gesellschaft, vol. iii. (Vienna, 1893).

FEUD, animosity, hatred, especially a permanent condition of hostilities between persons, and hence applied to a state of private warfare between tribes, clans or families, a “vendetta.” The word appears in Mid. Eng. as fede, which came through the O. Fr. from the O. High Ger. fehida, modern Fehde. The O. Teutonic faiho, an adjective, the source of fehida, gives the O. Eng. fáh, foe. “Fiend,” originally an enemy (cf. Ger. Feind), hence the enemy of mankind, the devil, and so any evil spirit, is probably connected with the same source. The word fede was of Scottish usage, but in the 16th century took the form foode, fewd in English. The New English Dictionary points out that “feud, fee (Lat. feudum) could not have influenced the change, for it appears fifty years later than the first instances of foode, &c., and was only used by writers on feudalism.” For the etymology of “feud” (feudum) see Fee, and for its history see Feudalism.

FEUDALISM (from Late Lat. feodum or feudum, a fee or fiel; see Fee). In every case of institutional growth in history two things are to be clearly distinguished from the beginning for a correct understanding of the process and its results. One of these is the change of conditions in the political or social environment which made growth necessary. The other is the already existing institutions which began to be transformed to meet the new needs. In studying the origin and growth of political feudalism, the distinction is easy to make. The all-prevailing need of the later Roman and early medieval society was protection—protection against the sudden attacks of invading tribes or revolted peasants, against oppressive neighbours, against the unwarranted demands of government officers, or even against the legal but too heavy exactions of the government itself. In the days of the decaying empire and of the chaotic German settlement, the weak freeman, the small landowner, was exposed to attack in almost every relation of life and on every side. The protection which normally it is the business of government to furnish he could no longer obtain. He must seek protection elsewhere wherever he could get it, and pay the price demanded for it. This is the great social fact—the failure of government to perform one of its most primary duties, the necessity of finding some substitute in private life—extending in greater or less degree through the whole formative period of feudalism, which explains the transformation of institutions that brought it into existence. Similar conditions have produced an organization which may be called feudal, in various countries, and in widely separated periods of history. While these different feudal systems have shown a general similarity of organization, there has been also great variation in their details, because they have started from different institutions and developed in different ways. The feudal system with which history most concerns itself is that of medieval western Europe, and it is that which will be here described.

The institutions which the need of protection seized upon when it first began to turn away from the state were twofold. They had both long existed in the private, not public, relations of the Romans, and they had up to this time Roman origins. shown no tendency to grow. One of them related to the person, to the man himself, without reference to property, the other related to land. There are thus distinguished at the beginning those two great sides of feudalism which remained to the end of its history more or less distinct, the personal relation and the land relation. The personal institution needs little description. It was the Roman patron and client relationship which had remained in existence into the days of the empire, in later times less important perhaps legally than socially, and which had been reinforced in Gaul by very similar practices in use among the Celts before their conquest. The description of this institution which has come down to us from Roman sources of the days when feudalism was beginning is not so detailed as we could wish, but we can see plainly enough that it met a frequent need, that it was called by a new name, the patrocinium, and that it was firmly enough entrenched in usage to survive the German conquest, and to be taken up and continued by the conquerors. In its new use, alike in the later Roman and the early German state, the landless freeman who could not support himself went to some powerful man, stated his need, and offered his services, those proper to a freeman, in return for shelter and support. This transaction, which was called commendation, gave rise in the German state to a written contract which related the facts and provided a penalty for its violation. It created a relationship of protection and support on one side, and of free service on the other.

The other institution, relating to land, was that known to the Roman law as the precarium, a name derived from one of its essential features through all its history, the prayer of the suppliant by which the relationship was begun. The precarium was a form of renting land not intended primarily for income, but for use when the lease was made from friendship for example, or as a reward, or to secure a debt. Legally its characteristic feature was that the lessee had no right of any kind against the grantor. The owner could call in his land and terminate the relation at any time, for any reason, or for none at all. Even a definite understanding at the outset that the lease might be enjoyed to a specified date was no protection.1 It followed of course that the heir had no right in the land which his father held in this way, nor was the heir of the donor bound by his father’s act. The legal character of this transaction is summed up in a well-known passage in the Digest:—Interdictum de precariis merito introductum est, quia nulla eo nomine juris civilis actio esset, magis enim ad donationes et beneficii causam, quam ad negotii contracti spectat precarii conditio.2 This may be paraphrased as follows:—The precarium tenant may employ the interdict against a third party, because he cannot use the ordinary civil action, his holding being not a matter of business but rather of favour and kindness. It should be noted that from its very beginning the land relationship of feudalism was not created primarily for the grantor’s income, but that it emphasized in the most striking way his continued ownership.

As used for protection in later Roman days the precarium gave rise to what was called the commendation of lands, patrocinium fundorum. The poor landowner, likely to lose all that he had from one kind of oppression or another, went to the great landowner, his neighbour, whose position gave him immunity from attack or the power to prevent official abuses, and begged to be protected. The rich man answered, I can only protect my own. Of necessity the poor man must surrender to his powerful neighbour the ownership of his lands, which he then received back as a precarium—gaining protection during his lifetime at the cost of his children, who were left without legal claim and compelled to make the best terms they could.3 Applied to this use the precarium found extensive employment in the last age of the empire. The government looked on the practice with great disfavour, because it transferred large areas from the easy access of the state to an ownership beyond its reach. The laws repeatedly forbade it under increasing penalties, but clearly it could not be stopped. The motive was too strong on both sides—the need of protection on one side, the natural desire to increase large possessions and means of self-defence on the other.

These practices the Frankish conquerors of Gaul found in full possession of society when they entered into that province. They seem to have understood them at once, and, like much else Roman, to have made them their own without Frankish development. material change. The patrocinium they were made ready to understand by the existence of a somewhat similar institution among themselves, the comitatus, described by Tacitus. In this institution the chief of the tribe, or of some plainly marked division of the tribe, gathered about himself a band of chosen warriors, who formed a kind of private military force and body-guard. The special features of the institution were the strong tie of faith and service which bound the man, the support and rewards given by the lord, and the pride of both in the relationship. The patrocinium might well seem to the German only a form of the comitatus, but it was a form which presented certain advantages in his actual situation. The chief of these was perhaps the fact that it was not confined to king or tribal chief, but that every noble was able in the Roman practice to surround himself with his organized private army. Probably this fact, together with the more general fact of the absorption in most things of the German in the Roman, accounts for the substitution of the patrocinium for the comitatus which took place under the Merovingians.

This change did not occur, however, without some modification of the Roman customs. The comitatus made contributions of its own to future feudalism, to some extent to its institutional side, largely to the ideas and spirit which ruled in it. Probably the ceremony which grew into feudal homage, and the oath of fealty, certainly the honourable position of the vassal and his pride in the relationship, the strong tie which bound lord and man together, and the idea that faith and service were due on both sides in equal measure, we may trace to German sources. But we must not forget that the origin of the vassal relationship, as an institution, is to be found on Roman and not on German soil. The comitatus developed and modified, it did not originate. Nor was the feudal system established in any sense by the settlement of the comitatus group on the conquered land. The uniting of the personal and the land sides of feudalism came long after the conquest, and in a different way.

To the precarium German institutions offered no close parallel. The advantages, however, which it afforded were obvious, and this side of feudalism developed as rapidly after the conquest as the personal. The new German noble was as eager to extend the size of his lands and to increase the numbers of his dependants as the Roman had been. The new German government furnished no better protection from local violence, nor was it able any more effectively to check the practices which were creating feudalism; indeed for a long time it made no attempt to do so. Precarium and patrocinium easily passed from the Roman empire to the Frankish kingdom, and became as firmly rooted in the new society as they had ever been in the old. Up to this point we have seen only the small landowner and the landless man entering into these relations. Feudalism could not be established, however, until the great of the land had adopted them for themselves, and had begun to enter the clientage of others and to hold lands by the precarium tenure. The first step towards this result was easily and quickly taken. The same class continued to furnish the king’s men, and to form his household and body-guard whether the relation was that of the patrocinium or the comitatus, and to be made noble by entering into it. It was later that they became clients of one another, and in part at least as a result of their adoption of the precarium tenure. In this latter step the influence of the Church rather than of the king seems to have been effective. The large estates which pious intentions had bestowed on the Church it was not allowed to alienate. It could most easily make them useful to gain the influence and support which it needed, and to provide for the public functions which fell to its share, by employing the precarium tenure. On the other side, the great men coveted the wide estates of bishop and abbot, and were ready without persuasion to annex portions of them to their own on the easy terms of this tenure, not always indeed observed by the holder, or able to be enforced by the Church. The employment of the precarium by the Church seems to have been one of the surest means by which this form of landholding was carried over from the Romans to the Frankish period and developed into new forms. It came to be made by degrees the subject of written contract, by which the rights of the holder were more definitely defined and protected than had been the case in Roman law. The length of time for which the holding should last came to be specified, at first for a term of years and then for life, and some payment to the grantor was provided for, not pretending to represent the economic value of the land, but only to serve as a mark of his continued ownership.

These changes characterize the Merovingian age of Frankish history. That period had practically ended, however, before these two institutions showed any tendency to join together as they were joined in later feudalism. Nor had the king up to that time exerted any apparent influence on the processes that were going forward. Grants of land of the Merovingian kings had carried with them ownership and not a limited right, and the king’s patrocinium had not widened in extent in the direction of the later vassal relation. It was the advent of the Carolingian princes and the difficulties which they had to overcome that carried these institutions a stage further forward. Making their way up from a position among the nobility to be the rulers of the land, and finally to supplant the kings, the Carolingians had especial need of resources from which to purchase and reward faithful support. This need was greatly increased when the Arab attack on southern Gaul forced them to transform a large part of the old Frankish foot army into cavalry.4 The fundamental principle of the Frankish military system, that the man served at his own expense, was still unchanged. It had indeed begun to break down under the strain of frequent and distant campaigns, but it was long before it was changed as the recognized rule of medieval service. If now, in addition to his own expenses, the soldier must provide a horse and its keeping, the system was likely to break down altogether. It was this problem which led to the next step. To solve it the early Carolingian princes, especially Charles Martel, who found the royal domains exhausted and their own inadequate, grasped at the land of the Church. Here was enough to endow an army, if some means could be devised to permit its use. This means was found in the precarium tenure. Keeping alive, as it did, the fact of the grantor’s ownership, it did not in form deprive the Church of the land. Recognizing that ownership by a small payment only, not corresponding to the value of the land, it left the larger part of the income to meet the need which had arisen. At the same time undoubtedly the new holder of the land, if not already the vassal of the prince, was obliged to become so and to assume an obligation of service with a mounted force when called upon.5 This expedient seems to have solved the problem. It gave rise to the numerous precariae verbo regis, of the Church records, and to the condemnation of Charles Martel in the visions of the clergy to worse difficulties in the future life than he had overcome in this. The most important consequences of the expedient, however, were not intended or perceived at the time. It brought together the two sides of feudalism, vassalage and benefice, as they were now commonly called, and from this age their union into what is really a single institution was rapid;6 it emphasized military service as an essential obligation of the vassal; and it spread the vassal relation between individual proprietors and the sovereign widely over the state.

In the period that followed, the reign of Charlemagne and the later Carolingian age, continued necessities, military and civil, forced the kings to recognize these new institutions more fully, even when standing in a position between the government and the subject, intercepting the public duties of the latter. The incipient feudal baron had not been slow to take advantage of the break-down of the old German military system. As in the last days of the Roman empire the poor landowner had found his only refuge from the exactions of the government in the protection of the senator, who could in some way obtain exemptions, so the poor Frank could escape the ruinous demands of military service only by submitting himself and his lands to the count, who did not hesitate on his side to force such submission. Charlemagne legislated with vigour against this tendency, trying to make it easier for the poor freeman to fulfil his military duties directly to the state, and to forbid the misuse of power by the rich, but he was not more successful than the Roman government had been in a like attempt. Finally the king found himself compelled to recognize existing facts, to lay upon the lord the duty of producing his men in the field and to allow him to appear as their commander. This solved the difficulty of military service apparently, but with decisive consequences. It completed the transformation of the army into a vassal army; it completed the recognition of feudalism by the state, as a legitimate relation between different ranks of the people; and it recognized the transformation in a great number of cases of a public duty into a private obligation.

In the meantime another institution had grown up in this Franco-Roman society, which probably began and certainly assisted in another transformation of the same kind. This is the immunity. Suggested probably by Roman practices, possibly developed directly from them, it received a great extension in the Merovingian period, at first and especially in the interest of the Church, but soon of lay land-holders. By the grant of an immunity to a proprietor the royal officers, the count and his representatives, were forbidden to enter his lands to exercise any public function there. The duties which the count should perform passed to the proprietor, who now represented the government for all his tenants free and unfree. Apparently no modification of the royal rights was intended by this arrangement, but the beginning of a great change had really been made. The king might still receive the same revenues and the same services from the district held by the lord as formerly, but for their payment a private person in his capacity as overlord was now responsible. In the course of a long period characterized by a weak central government, it was not difficult to enlarge the rights which the lord thus obtained, to exclude even the king’s personal authority from the immunity, and to translate the duties and payments which the tenant had once owed to the state into obligations which he owed to his lord, even finally into incidents of his tenure. The most important public function whose transformation into a private possession was assisted by the growth of the immunity was the judicial. This process had probably already begun in a small way in the growth of institutions which belong to the economic side of feudalism, the organization of agriculture on the great estates. Even in Roman days the proprietor had exercised a jurisdiction over the disputes of his unfree tenants. Whether this could by its own growth have been extended over his free tenants and carried so far as to absorb a local court, like that of the hundred, into private possession, is not certain. It seems probable that it could. But in any case, the immunity easily carried the development of private jurisdiction through these stages. The lord’s court took the place of the public court in civil, and even by degrees in criminal cases. The plaintiff, even if he were under another lord, was obliged to sue in the court of the defendant’s lord, and the portion of the fine for a breach of the peace which should have gone to the state went in the end to the lord.

The transfer of the judicial process, and of the financial and administrative sides of the government as well, into private possession, was not, however, accomplished entirely by the road of the immunity. As government weakened after the strong days of Charlemagne, and disorder, invasion, and the difficulty of intercommunication tended to throw the locality more and more upon its own resources, the officer who had once been the means of centralization, the count, found success in the effort for independence which even Charlemagne had scarcely overcome. He was able to throw off responsibility to any central authority, and to exercise the powers which had been committed to him as an agent of the king, as if they were his own private possession. Nor was the king’s aid lacking to this method of dividing up the royal authority, any more than to the immunity, for it became a frequent practice to make the administrative office into a fief, and to grant it to be held in that form of property by the count. In this way the feudal county, or duchy, formed itself, corresponding in most cases only roughly to the old administrative divisions of the state, for within the bounds of the county there had often formed private feudal possessions too powerful to be forced into dependence upon the count, sometimes the vice-comes had followed the count’s example, and often, on the other hand, the count had attached to his county like private possessions of his own lying outside its boundaries. In time the private lord, who had never been an officer of the state, assumed the old administrative titles and called himself count or viscount, and perhaps with some sort of right, for his position in his territories, through the development of the immunity, did not differ from that now held by the man who had been originally a count.

In these two ways then the feudal system was formed, and took possession of the state territorially, and of its functions in government. Its earliest stage of growth was that of the private possession only. Under a government too weak to preserve order, the great landowner formed his estate into a little territory which could defend itself. His smaller neighbours who needed protection came to him for it. He forced them to become his dependants in return under a great variety of forms, but especially developing thereby the precarium land tenure and the patrocinium personal service, and organizing a private jurisdiction over his tenants, and a private army for defence. Finally he secured from the king an immunity which excluded the royal officers from his lands and made him a quasi-representative of the state. In the meantime his neighbour the count had been following a similar process, and in addition he had enjoyed considerable advantages of his own. His right to exact military, financial and judicial duties for the state he had used to force men to become his dependants, and then he had stood between them and the state, freeing them from burdens which he threw with increased weight upon those who still stood outside his personal protection. In ignorance of their danger, and later in despair of getting public services adequately performed in any other way, the kings first adopted for themselves some of the forms and practices which had thus grown up, and by degrees recognized them as legally proper for all classes. It proved to be easier to hold the lord responsible for the public duties of all his dependants because he was the king’s vassal and by attaching them as conditions to the benefices which he held, than to enforce them directly upon every subject.

When this stage was reached the formative age of feudalism may be considered at an end. When the government of the state had entered into feudalism, and the king was as much senior as king; when the vassal relationship was recognized as a proper and legal foundation of public duties; when the two separate sides of early feudalism were united as the almost universal rule, so that a man received a fief because he owed a vassal’s duties, or looked at in the other and finally prevailing way, that he owed a vassal’s duties because he had received a fief; and finally, when the old idea of the temporary character of the precarium tenure was lost sight of, and the right of the vassal’s heir to receive his father’s holding was recognized as the general rule—then the feudal system may be called full grown. Not that the age of growth was really over. Feudal history was always a becoming, always a gradual passing from one stage to another, so long as feudalism continued to form the main organization of society. But we may say that the formative age was over when these features of the system had combined to be its characteristic marks. What follows is rather a perfection of details in the direction of logical completeness. To assign any specific date to the end of this formative age is of course impossible, but meaning by the end what has just been stated, we shall not be far wrong if we place it somewhere near the beginning of the 10th century.

Before we leave the history of feudal origins another word is necessary. We have traced a definite line of descent for feudal institutions from Roman days through the Merovingian and Carolingian ages to the 10th century. That line of descent can be made out with convincing clearness and with no particular difficulty from epoch to epoch, from the precarium and the patrocinium, through the benefice and commendation, to the fief and vassalage. But the definiteness of this line should not cause us to overlook the fact that there was during these centuries much confusion of custom and practice. All round and about this line of descent there was a crowd of varying forms branching off more or less widely from the main stem, different kinds of commendation, different forms of precarium, some of which varied greatly from that through which the fief descends, and some of which survived in much the old character and under the old name for a long time after later feudalism was definitely established.7 The variety and seeming confusion which reign in feudal society, under uniform controlling principles, rule also in the ages of beginning. It is easy to lose one’s bearings by over-emphasizing the importance of variation and exception. It is indeed true that what was the exception, the temporary offshoot, might have become the main line. It would then have produced a system which would have been feudal, in the wide sense of the term, but it would have been marked by different characteristics, it would have operated in a somewhat different way. The crowd of varying forms should not prevent us from seeing that we can trace through their confusion the line along which the characteristic traits and institutions of European feudalism, as it actually was, were growing constantly more distinct.8 That is the line of the origin of the feudal system. (See also France: Law and Institutions.)

The growth which we have traced took place within the Frankish empire. When we turn to Anglo-Saxon England we find a different situation and a different result. There precarium and patrocinium were lacking. Certain Results in England. forms of personal commendation did develop, certain forms of dependent land tenure came into use. These do not show, however, the characteristic marks of the actual line of feudal descent. They belong rather in the varying forms around that line. Scholars are not yet agreed as to what would have been their result if their natural development had not been cut off by the violent introduction of Frankish feudalism with the Norman conquest, whether the historical feudal system, or a feudal system in the general sense. To the writer it seems clear that the latter is the most that can be asserted. They were forms which may rightly be called feudal, but only in the wider meaning in which we speak of the feudalism of Japan, or of Central Africa, not in the sense of 12th-century European feudalism; Saxon commendation may rightly be called vassalage, but only as looking back to the early Frankish use of the term for many varying forms of practice, not as looking forward to the later and more definite usage of completed feudalism; and such use of the terms feudal and vassalage is sure to be misleading. It is better to say that European feudalism is not to be found in England before the Conquest, not even in its beginnings. If these had really been in existence it would require no argument to show the fact. There is no trace of the distinctive marks of Frankish feudalism in Saxon England, not where military service may be thought to rest upon the land, nor even in the rare cases where the tenant seems to some to be made responsible for it, for between these cases as they are described in the original accounts, legally interpreted, and the feudal conception of the vassal’s military service, there is a great gulf.

In turning from the origin of feudalism to a description of the completed system one is inevitably reminded of the words with which de Quincey opens the second part of his essay on style. He says: “It is a natural resource that The completed system. whatsoever we find it difficult to investigate as a result, we endeavour to follow as a growth. Failing analytically to probe its nature, historically we seek relief to our perplexities by tracing its origin.... Thus for instance when any feudal institution (be it Gothic, Norman, or Anglo-Saxon) eludes our deciphering faculty from the imperfect records of its use and operation, then we endeavour conjecturally to amend our knowledge by watching the circumstances in which that institution arose.” The temptation to use the larger part of any space allotted to the history of feudalism for a discussion of origins does not arise alone from greater interest in that phase of the subject. It is almost impossible even with the most discriminating care to give a brief account of completed feudalism and convey no wrong impression. We use the term “feudal system” for convenience sake, but with a degree of impropriety if it conveys the meaning “systematic.” Feudalism in its most flourishing age was anything but systematic. It was confusion roughly organized. Great diversity prevailed everywhere, and we should not be surprised to find some different fact or custom in every lordship. Anglo-Norman feudalism attained a logical completeness and a uniformity of practice which, in the feudal age proper, can hardly be found elsewhere through so large a territory; but in Anglo-Norman feudalism the exception holds perhaps as large a place as the regular, and the uniformity itself was due to the most serious of exceptions from the feudal point of view—centralization under a powerful monarchy.

But too great emphasis upon variation conveys also a wrong impression. Underlying all the apparent confusion of fact and practice were certain fundamental principles and relationships, which were alike everywhere, and which really gave shape to everything that was feudal, no matter what its form might be. The chief of these are the following: the relation of vassal and lord; the principle that every holder of land is a tenant and not an owner, until the highest rank is reached, sometimes even the conception rules in that rank; that the tenure by which a thing of value is held is one of honourable service, not intended to be economic, but moral and political in character; the principle of mutual obligations of loyalty, protection and service binding together all the ranks of this society from the highest to the lowest; and the principle of contract between lord and tenant, as determining all rights, controlling their modification, and forming the foundation of all law. There was actually in fact and practice a larger uniformity than this short list implies, because these principles tended to express themselves in similar forms, and because historical derivation from a common source in Frankish feudalism tended to preserve some degree of uniformity in the more important usages.

The foundation of the feudal relationship proper was the fief, which was usually land, but might be any desirable thing, as an office, a revenue in money or kind, the right to collect a toll, or operate a mill. In return for the fief, the man became the vassal of his lord; he knelt before him, and, with his hands between his lord’s hands, promised him fealty and service; he rose to his feet and took the oath of fealty which bound him to the obligations he had assumed in homage; he received from his lord ceremonial investiture with the fief. The faithful performance of all the duties he had assumed in homage constituted the vassal’s right and title to his fief. So long as they were fulfilled, he, and his heir after him, held the fief as his property, practically and in relation to all under tenants as if he were the owner. In the ceremony of homage and investiture, which is the creative contract of feudalism, the obligations assumed by the two parties were, as a rule, not specified in exact terms. They were determined by local custom. What they were, however, was as well known, as capable of proof, and as adequate a check on innovation by either party, as if committed to writing. In many points of detail the vassal’s services differed widely in different parts of the feudal world. We may say, however, that they fall into two classes, general and specific. The general included all that might come under the idea of loyalty, seeking the lord’s interests, keeping his secrets, betraying the plans of his enemies, protecting his family, &c. The specific services are capable of more definite statement, and they usually received exact definition in custom and sometimes in written documents. The most characteristic of these was the military service, which included appearance in the field on summons with a certain force, often armed in a specified way, and remaining a specified length of time. It often included also the duty of guarding the lord’s castle, and of holding one’s own castle subject to the plans of the lord for the defence of his fief. Hardly less characteristic was court service, which included the duty of helping to form the court on summons, of taking one’s own cases to that court instead of to some other, and of submitting to its judgments. The duty of giving the lord advice was often demanded and fulfilled in sessions of the court, and in these feudal courts the obligations of lord and vassal were enforced, with an ultimate appeal to war. Under this head may be enumerated also the financial duties of the vassal, though these were not regarded by the feudal law as of the nature of the tenure, i.e. failure to pay them did not lead to confiscation, but they were collected by suit and distraint like any debt. They did not have their origin in economic considerations, but were either intended to mark the vassal’s tenant relation, like the relief, or to be a part of his service, like the aid, that is, he was held to come to the aid of his lord in a case of financial as of military necessity. The relief was a sum paid by the heir for the lord’s recognition of his succession. The aids were paid on a few occasions, determined by custom, where the lord was put to unusual expense, as for his ransom when captured by the enemy, or for the knighting of his eldest son. There was great variety regarding the occasion and amount of these payments, and in some parts of the feudal world they did not exist at all. The most lucrative of the lord’s rights were wardship and marriage, but the feudal theory of these also was non-economic. The fief fell into the hands of the lord, and he enjoyed its revenues during the minority of the heir, because the minor could not perform the duties by which it was held. The heiress must marry as the lord wished, because he had a right to know that the holder of the fief could meet the obligations resting upon it. Both wardship and marriage were, however, valuable rights which the lord could exercise himself or sell to others. These were by no means the only rights and duties which could be described as existing in feudalism, but they are the most characteristic, and on them, or some of them, as a foundation, the whole structure of feudal obligation was built, however detailed.

Ideally regarded, feudalism covered Europe with a network of these fiefs, rising in graded ranks one above the other from the smallest, the knight’s fee, at the bottom, to the king at the top, who was the supreme landowner, or who held the kingdom from God. Actually not even in the most regular of feudal countries, like England or Germany, was there any fixed gradation of rank, titles or size. A knight might hold directly of the king, a count of a viscount, a bishop of an abbot, or the king himself of one of his own vassals, or even of a vassal’s vassal, and in return his vassal’s vassal might hold another fief directly of him. The case of the count of Champagne, one of the peers of France, is a famous example. His great territory was held only in small part of the king of France. He held a portion of a foreign sovereign, the emperor, and other portions of the duke of Burgundy, of two archbishops, of four bishops, and of the abbot of St Denis. Frequently did great lay lords, as in this case, hold lands by feudal tenure of ecclesiastics.

It is now possible perhaps to get some idea of the way in which the government of a feudal country was operated. The early German governments whose chief functions, military, judicial, financial, legislative, were carried on by the freemen of the nation because they were members of the body politic, and were performed as duties owed to the community for its defence and sustenance, no longer existed. New forms of organization had arisen in which indeed these conceptions had not entirely disappeared, but in which the vast majority of cases a wholly different idea of the ground of service and obligation prevailed. Superficially, for example, the feudal court differed but little from its Teutonic predecessor. It was still an assembly court. Its procedure was almost the same as the earlier. It often included the same classes of men. Saxon Witenagemot and Norman Curia regis seem very much alike. But the members of the feudal court met, not to fulfil a duty owed to the community, but a private obligation which they had assumed in return for the fiefs they held, and in the history of institutions it is differences of this sort which are the determining principles. The feudal state was one in which, as it has been said, private law had usurped the place of public law. Public duty had become private obligation. To understand the feudal state it is essential to make clear to one’s mind that all sorts of services, which men ordinarily owe to the public or to one another, were translated into a form of rent paid for the use of land, and defined and enforced by a private contract. In every feudal country, however, something of the earlier conception survived. A general military levy was occasionally made. Something like taxation occasionally occurred, though the government was usually sustained by the scanty feudal payments, by the proceeds of justice and by the income of domain manors. About the office of king more of this earlier conception gathered than elsewhere in the state, and gradually grew, aided not merely by traditional ideas, but by the active influence of the Bible, and soon of the Roman law. The kingship formed the nucleus of new governments as the feudal system passed away.

Actual government in the feudal age was primitive and undifferentiated. Its chief and almost only organ, for kingdom and barony alike, was the curia—a court formed of the vassals. This acted at once and without any consciousness of difference of function, as judiciary, as legislature, in so far as there was any in the feudal period, and as council, and it exercised final supervision and control over revenue and administration. Almost all the institutions of modern states go back to the curia regis, branching off from it at different dates as the growing complexity of business forced differentiation of function and personnel. In action it was an assembly court, deciding all questions by discussion and the weight of opinion, though its decisions obtained their legal validity by the formal pronunciation of the presiding member, i.e. of the lord whose court it was. It can readily be seen that in a government of this kind the essential operative element was the baron. So long as the government remained dependent on the baron, it remained feudal in its character. When conditions so changed that government could free itself from its dependence on the baron, feudalism disappeared as the organization of society; when a professional class arose to form the judiciary, when the increased circulation of money made regular taxation possible and enabled the government to buy military and other services, and when better means of intercommunication and the growth of common ideas made a wide centralization possible and likely to be permanent. Feudalism had performed a great service, during an age of disintegration, by maintaining a general framework of government, while allowing the locality to protect and care for itself. When the function of protection and local supervision could be resumed by the general government the feudal age ended. In nearly all the states of Europe this end was reached during, or by the close of, the 13th century.

At the moment, however, when feudalism was disappearing as the organization of society, it gave rise to results which in a sense continued it into after ages and even to our own day. One of these results was the system of law which it created. Decline and survivals. As feudalism passed from its age of supremacy into its age of decline, its customs tended to crystallize into fixed forms. At the same time a class of men arose interested in these forms for their own sake, professional lawyers or judges, who wrote down for their own and others’ use the feudal usages with which they were familiar. The great age of these codes was the 13th century, and especially the second half of it. The codes in their turn tended still further to harden these usages into fixed forms, and we may date from the end of the 13th century an age of feudal law regulating especially the holding and transfer of land, and much more uniform in character than the law of the feudal age proper. This was particularly the case in parts of France and Germany where feudalism continued to regulate the property relations of lords and vassals longer than elsewhere, and where the underlying economic feudalism remained in large part unchanged. In this later pseudo-feudalism, however, the political had given way to the economic, and customs which had once had no economic significance came to have that only.

Feudalism formed the starting-point also of the later social nobilities of Europe. They drew from it their titles and ranks and many of their regulative ideas, though these were formed into more definite and regular systems than ever existed in feudalism proper. It was often the policy of kings to increase the social privileges and legal exemptions of the nobility while taking away all political power, so that it is necessary in the history of institutions to distinguish sharply between these nobilities and the feudal baronage proper. It is only in certain backward parts of Europe that the terms feudal and baronage in any technical sense can be used of the nobility of the 15th century.

(G. B. A.)

Bibliography.—For more detailed information the reader is referred to the articles English Law; France: French Law and Institutions, Villenage; Manor; Scutage; Knight Service; Hide. For a general sketch of Feudalism the chapters in tome ii. of the Histoire générale of Lavisse and Rambaud should be consulted. Other general works are J.T. Abdy, Feudalism (1890); Paul Roth, Feudalität und Unterthanverband (Weimar, 1863); and Geschichte des Beneficialwesens (1850); M.M. Kovalevsky, Ökonomische Entwickelung Europas (1902); E. de Laveleye, De la propriété et de ses formes primitives (1891); and The Origin of Property in Land, a translation by M. Ashley from the works of N.D. Fustel de Coulanges, with an introductory chapter by Professor W.J. Ashley. Two other works of value are Sir H.S. Maine, Village Communities in the East and West (1876); and Léon Gautier, La Chevalerie (Paris, 1884; Eng. trans. by Henry Frith, Chivalry, London, 1891).

For feudalism in England see the various constitutional histories, especially W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. i. (ed. 1897). Very valuable also are the writings of Mr J.H. Round, of Professor F.W. Maitland and of Professor P. Vinogradoff. Among Round’s works may be mentioned Feudal England (1895); Geoffrey de Mandeville (1892); and Studies on the Red Book of the Exchequer (1898). Maitland’s Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge, 1897) is indispensable; and the same remark applies to his History of English Law before the time of Edward I. (Cambridge, 1895), written in conjunction with Sir Frederick Pollock. Vinogradoff has illuminated the subject in his Villainage in England (1892) and his English Society in the 11th century (1908). See also J.F. Baldwin, The Scutage and Knight Service in England (Chicago, 1897); Rudolf Gneist, Adel und Ritterschaft in England (1853); and F. Seebohm, The English Village Community (1883).

For feudalism in France see N.D. Fustel de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France (Les Origines du système féodal, 1890; Les Transformations de la royauté pendant l’époque carolingienne, 1892); A. Luchaire, Histoire des institutions monarchiques de la France sous les premiers Capétiens, 987-1180 (2nd ed., 1890); and Manuel des institutions françaises: période des Capétiens directs (1892); J. Flach, Les Origines de l’ancienne France (1886-1893); Paul Viollet, Droit public: Histoires des institutions politiques et administratives de la France (1890-1898); and Henri Sée, Les classes rurales et le régime domanial (1901).

For Germany see G. Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte (Kiel and Berlin, 1844 foll.); H. Brunner, Grundzüge der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1901); V. Menzel, Die Entstehung des Lebenswesens (Berlin, 1890); and G.L. von Maurer’s works on the early institutions of the Germans.

1 Digest, xliii. 26. 12.

2 Ibid. xliii. 26. 14, and cf. 17.

3 Salvian, De gub. Dei, v. 8, ed. Halm, p. 62.

4 H. Brunner, Zeitschr. der sav. Stift. für Rechtsgeschichte, Germ. Abth. viii. 1-38 (1887). Also in his Forschungen, 39-74 (1894).

5 See F. Dahn, Könige der Germanen, viii. 2, 90 ff.

6 F. Dahn, Könige der Germanen, viii. 2, 197.

7 G. Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, vi. 112 ff. (1896). Most fully described in G. Seeliger, Die soziale u. politische Bedeutung d. Grundherrschaft im früheren Mittelalter (1903).

8 F. Dahn, Könige, viii. 2, 89-90; 95.

FEUERBACH, ANSELM (1829-1880), German painter, born at Spires, the son of a well-known archaeologist, was the leading classicist painter of the German 19th-century school. He was the first to realize the danger arising from contempt of technique, that mastery of craftsmanship was needed to express even the loftiest ideas, and that an ill-drawn coloured cartoon can never be the supreme achievement in art. After having passed through the art schools of Düsseldorf and Munich, he went to Antwerp and subsequently to Paris, where he benefited by the teaching of Couture, and produced his first masterpiece, “Hafiz at the Fountain” in 1852. He subsequently worked at Karlsruhe, Venice (where he fell under the spell of the greatest school of colourists), Rome and Vienna. He was steeped in classic knowledge, and his figure compositions have the statuesque dignity and simplicity of Greek art. Disappointed with the reception given in Vienna to his design of “The Fall of the Titans” for the ceiling of the Museum of Modelling, he went to live in Venice, where he died in 1880. His works are to be found at the leading public galleries of Germany; Stuttgart has his “Iphigenia”; Karlsruhe, the “Dante at Ravenna”; Munich, the “Medea”; and Berlin, “The Concert,” his last important picture. Among his chief works are also “The Battle of the Amazons,” “Pietà,” “The Symposium of Plato,” “Orpheus and Eurydice” and “Ariosto in the Park of Ferrara.”

FEUERBACH, LUDWIG ANDREAS (1804-1872), German philosopher, fourth son of the eminent jurist (see below), was born at Landshut in Bavaria on the 28th of July 1804. He matriculated at Heidelberg with the intention of pursuing an ecclesiastical career. Through the influence of Prof. Daub he was led to an interest in the then predominant philosophy of Hegel and, in spite of his father’s opposition, went to Berlin to study under the master himself. After two years’ discipleship the Hegelian influence began to slacken. “Theology,” he wrote to a friend, “I can bring myself to study no more. I long to take nature to my heart, that nature before whose depth the faint-hearted theologian shrinks back; and with nature man, man in his entire quality.” These words are a key to Feuerbach’s development. He completed his education at Erlangen with the study of natural science. His first book, published anonymously, Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit (1830, 3rd ed. 1876), contains an attack upon personal immortality and an advocacy of the Spinozistic immortality of reabsorption in nature. These principles, combined with his embarrassed manner of public speaking, debarred him from academic advancement. After some years of struggling, during which he published his Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (2 vols., 1833-1837, 2nd ed. 1844), and Abälard und Heloise (1834, 3rd ed. 1877), he married in 1837 and lived a rural existence at Bruckberg near Nuremberg, supported by his wife’s share in a small porcelain factory. In two works of this period, Pierre Bayle (1838) and Philosophie und Christentum (1839), which deal largely with theology, he held that he had proved “that Christianity has in fact long vanished not only from the reason but from the life of mankind, that it is nothing more than a fixed idea” in flagrant contradiction to the distinctive features of contemporary civilization. This attack is followed up in his most important work, Das Wesen des Christentums (1841), which was translated into English (The Essence of Religion, by George Eliot, 1853, 2nd ed. 1881), French and Russian. Its aim may be described shortly as an effort to humanize theology. He lays it down that man, so far as he is rational, is to himself his own object of thought. Religion is consciousness of the infinite. Religion therefore is “nothing else than the consciousness of the infinity of the consciousness; or, in the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature.” Thus God is nothing else than man: he is, so to speak, the outward projection of man’s inward nature. In part 1 of his book he develops what he calls the “true or anthropological essence of religion.” Treating of God in his various aspects “as a being of the understanding,” “as a moral being or law,” “as love” and so on, Feuerbach shows that in every aspect God corresponds to some feature or need of human nature. “If man is to find contentment in God, he must find himself in God.” In part 2 he discusses the “false or theological essence of religion,” i.e. the view which regards God as having a separate existence over against man. Hence arise various mistaken beliefs, such as the belief in revelation which not only injures the moral sence, but also “poisons, nay destroys, the divinest feeling in man, the sense of truth,” and the belief in sacraments such as the Lord’s Supper, a piece of religious materialism of which “the necessary consequences are superstition and immorality.” In spite of many admirable qualities both of style and matter the Essence of Christianity has never made much impression upon British thought. To treat the actual forms of religion as expressions of our various human needs is a fruitful idea which deserves fuller development than it has yet received; but Feuerbach’s treatment of it is fatally vitiated by his subjectivism. Feuerbach denied that he was rightly called an atheist, but the denial is merely verbal: what he calls “theism” is atheism in the ordinary sense. Feuerbach labours under the same difficulty as Fichte; both thinkers strive in vain to reconcile the religious consciousness with subjectivism.