Lordship in Ninth-Century Francia: The Case of Bishop Hincmar of Laon and his Followers

Abstract

The notion of lordship has long played a role as a backdrop to research on honourable forms of dependence in the Latin West during the Middle Ages, but recent work has further emphasized its importance for understanding the exercise of power, and for social history more broadly in this period. 1 Encouraged by Susan Reynolds’s broadside against over-schematized ideas of vassalage and feudalism, medieval historians have sought to extricate themselves from legalist interpretations of medieval society, and many have turned to lordship instead. 2 Yet such a move has produced some significant uncertainties and disagreements. Among the most prominent of these uncertainties is whether Carolingian Francia was a society already permeated by lordship, or whether the age of lordship only really began after the turn of the first millennium. This article seeks to contribute towards clarifying the issue by examining some especially revealing evidence from late ninth-century northern Francia for the relations between a Frankish bishop, Hincmar of Laon (died 879), and his secular followers. 3 This material provides an opportunity to consider more closely what historians mean by lordship, and how, and when, they should use the term, and to weigh up the implications involved. In what follows, I shall concentrate on English-language work, as cognate words in other languages have distinctive traditions and connotations, though, as we shall see, these linguistic barriers have been very far from impermeable. 4

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