The largest in Europe was the one that arose at the end of the 5th century. state of the Franks. Its creator was the leader of one of the tribes Clovis from the Merovei clan. By this name, the descendants of Clovis, who ruled the Frankish state until the middle of the 8th century, are called the Merovingians.
Having united the Franks under his rule, Clovis defeated the Roman army at the Battle of Soissons (486) and subdued Northern Gaul. Gradually there was a rapprochement between the two peoples: the Franks and the locals (descendants of the Gauls and Romans). The entire population of the Frankish state began to speak the same dialect, in which Latin was mixed with Germanic words. This adverb later formed the basis French. However, the letter used only Latin language, on it, under Clovis, the first record of the judicial customs of the Franks was made (the so-called Salian law). According to the laws of the Franks, many crimes were punished with a large fine (the murder of a person, the abduction of other people's livestock or a slave, the burning of a barn with bread or a barnyard). There was no equality of people before the law: the size of the fine for murder depended on who was killed (for example, the life of a Frank was valued higher than the life of a descendant of the Gauls and Romans). In the absence of evidence, the accused could be subjected to "God's judgment", for example, they could offer to get a ring from a pot of boiling water. If at the same time the burns turned out to be small, then for those present it was a sign that God was on the side of the accused.
The appearance of written laws, binding on the entire territory of the Frankish state, led to its strengthening.
Clovis considered the Frankish kingdom his own possession. Shortly before his death, he divided it among his sons. The heirs of Clovis waged a long struggle for land and power. People died - blood was shed. The country either fell apart into separate parts, then united. As a result, the power of the Merovingian kings became insignificant. On the contrary, the mayor (in Latin - "head of the house") began to exert a great influence on the affairs of the state. Initially, a noble Frank, appointed by the king to the post of mayor, was in charge of the palace economy, managed the royal property throughout the country. Gradually, the post of mayordom turned into a hereditary one, and the mayordom itself became the highest official in the state.
The famous Major Karl Martell (which means "Hammer") ruled the country, regardless of the king. In his time, an army of Muslim Arabs invaded Gaul from Spain, but was defeated by the Franks at the Battle of Poitiers (732). The threat of the Arab conquest prompted Charles Martel to create a strong cavalry army. The Franks who wished to serve in it received land from the mayor house with peasants living on them. With the income from these lands, their owner acquired expensive weapons and horses.
The lands were given to the soldiers not in full ownership, but only for life and on the condition that the owner would carry a horse military service, in which he swore an oath to the mayor. Later, land holdings on the same condition began to be inherited from father to son.
For land distributions to the soldiers, Charles took away part of the possessions of the church (after the death of the mayor, the clergy took revenge on him by spreading stories about how the winner at Poitiers is tormented in hell for having robbed the church).
The military reform of Charles Martel marked the beginning of the formation of a new social system in Europe - feudalism.

Origin of the Franks. Formation of the Frankish kingdom

In historical monuments, the name of the Franks appeared starting from the 3rd century, and Roman writers called many Franks Germanic tribes bearing various names. Apparently, the Franks represented a new, very extensive tribal association, which included in its composition a number of Germanic tribes that merged or mixed during the migrations. The Franks split into two large branches - the seaside, or salic, Franks (from the Latin word "salum", which means sea), who lived at the mouth of the Rhine, and the coastal, or Ripuarian, Franks (from the Latin word "ripa", which means coast) who lived south along the banks of the Rhine and Meuse. The Franks repeatedly crossed the Rhine, raiding Roman possessions in Gaul or settling there in the position of allies of Rome.

In the 5th century the Franks captured a significant part of the territory of the Roman Empire, namely North-Eastern Gaul. At the head of the Frankish possessions were the leaders of the former tribes. Of the leaders of the Franks, Merovei is known, under which the Franks fought against Attila in the Catalaunian fields (451) and from whose name the name of the Merovingian royal family came. The son and successor of Merovei was the leader Childeric, whose grave was found near Tournai. The son and heir of Childeric was the most prominent representative of the Merovingian family - King Clovis (481-511).

Having become king of the Salic Franks, Clovis, together with other leaders who acted like him, in the interests of the Frankish nobility, undertook the conquest of vast areas of Gaul. In 486, the Franks captured the Soissons region (the last Roman possession in Gaul), and later the territory between the Seine and the Loire. At the end of the 5th century the Franks inflicted a severe defeat on the Germanic tribe of the Alemanni (Alamans) and partially forced them out of Gaul back across the Rhine.

In 496, Clovis was baptized, having accepted Christianity along with 3 thousand of his warriors. Baptism was a clever political move on the part of Clovis. He was baptized according to the rite adopted by the Western (Roman) Church. The Germanic tribes moving from the Black Sea region - the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, as well as the Vandals and Burgundians - were, from the point of view of the Roman Church, heretics, since they were Arians who denied some of its dogmas.

At the beginning of the VI century. Frankish squads opposed the Visigoths, who owned all of southern Gaul. At the same time, the great benefits that flowed from the baptism of Clovis affected. All the clergy of the Western Christian Church, who lived beyond the Loire, took his side, and many cities and fortified points, which served as the seat of this clergy, immediately opened the gates to the Franks. In the decisive battle of Poitiers (507), the Franks won a complete victory over the Visigoths, whose dominance from then on was limited only to the borders of Spain.

Thus, as a result of the conquests, a large Frankish state was created, which covered almost all of the former Roman Gaul. Under the sons of Clovis, Burgundy was annexed to the Frankish kingdom.

The reasons for such rapid successes of the Franks, who still had very strong communal ties, was that they settled in North-Eastern Gaul in compact masses, without dissolving among the local population (like the Visigoths, for example). Moving deep into Gaul, the Franks did not break ties with their former homeland and all the time drew new forces for conquest there. At the same time, the kings and the Frankish nobility were often content with vast lands the former imperial fiscus, without coming into conflict with the local Gallo-Roman population. Finally, the clergy provided Clovis with constant support during the conquests.

"Salic truth" and its meaning

The most important information about the social system of the Franks is provided by the so-called "Salic Truth" - a record of the ancient judicial customs of the Franks, which is believed to have been made under Clovis. This law book examines in detail various cases from the life of the Franks and lists fines for a wide variety of crimes, ranging from the theft of a chicken to a ransom for killing a person. Therefore, according to the "Salic Truth" it is possible to restore the true picture of the life of the Salic Franks. The Ripuarian Franks, the Burgundians, the Anglo-Saxons, and other Germanic tribes also had such judicial records - Pravda.

The time for recording and editing this ordinary (from the word custom) folk law is the 6th-9th centuries, that is, the time when the tribal system among the Germanic tribes had already completely decomposed, private ownership of land appeared and classes and the state arose. To protect private property, it was necessary to firmly fix those judicial penalties that were to be applied to persons who violated the right to this property. Firm fixation also required such new social relations that arose from tribal relations, such as territorial, or neighboring, ties of communal peasants, the opportunity for a person to renounce kinship, the subordination of free Franks to the king and his officials, etc.

The Salic Truth was divided into titles (chapters), and each title, in turn, into paragraphs. A large number of titles were devoted to determining the fines that had to be paid for all sorts of thefts. But the “Salic Truth” took into account the most diverse aspects of the life of the Franks, so there were also such titles in it: “On murders or if someone steals someone else’s wife”, “On if someone grabs a free woman by the hand, by the brush or by the finger”, “About quadrupeds, if they kill a man”, “About a servant in witchcraft”, etc.

In the title "On Insult with Words" punishments for insult were determined. The title "On Mutilation" stated: "If someone plucks out another's eye, he is awarded 62 1/2 solidi"; “If he tears off his nose, he is awarded for payment ... 45 solidi”; “If the ear is torn off, 15 solidi are awarded,” etc. (The solidus was a Roman monetary unit. According to the 6th century, it was believed that 3 solidus was equal to the cost of a “healthy, sighted and horned” cow.)

Of particular interest in Salic Pravda are, of course, the titles, on the basis of which one can judge the economic system of the Franks and the social and political relations that existed among them.

The economy of the Franks according to the "Salic truth"

According to Salic Pravda, the economy of the Franks stood at a much higher high level than the economy of the Germans, described by Tacitus. The productive forces of society by this time had significantly developed and grown. Animal husbandry undoubtedly played an important role in it. Salichnaya Pravda established in unusual detail what fine should be paid for the theft of a pig, for a one-year-old piglet, for a pig stolen together with a piglet, for a suckling pig separately, for a pig stolen from a locked barn, etc. truth” considered all cases of theft of large horned animals, theft of sheep, theft of goats, cases of horse theft.

Fines were set for stolen poultry (hens, roosters, geese), which indicated the development of poultry farming. There were titles that spoke of the theft of bees and hives from the apiary, of damage and theft of fruit trees from the garden (the Franks already knew how to graft fruit trees by cuttings.), Of the theft of grapes from the vineyard. Penalties were determined for the theft of a wide variety of fishing tackle, boats, hunting dogs, birds and animals tamed for hunting, etc. This means that the Frank economy had a wide variety of industries - animal husbandry, beekeeping, gardening, and viticulture. At the same time, such branches of economic life as hunting and fishing have not lost their significance. Cattle, poultry, bees, garden trees, vineyards, as well as boats, fishing boats, etc., were already the private property of the Franks.

Agriculture played the main role in the economy of the Franks, according to Salic Pravda. In addition to grain crops, the Franks sowed flax and planted vegetable gardens, planting beans, peas, lentils and turnips.

Plowing at that time was carried out on bulls, the Franks were well acquainted with both the plow and the harrow. Damage to the harvest and damage to the plowed field were punishable by fines. The resulting harvest from the fields was taken away by the Franks on carts to which horses were harnessed. The harvests of grain were quite plentiful, for the grain was already stacked in barns or rigs, and there were outbuildings at the house of every free Frankish peasant. The Franks made extensive use of water mills.

The Mark community of the Franks

"Salic Truth" also provides an answer to the most important question for determining the social system of the Franks, who owned the land - the main means of production in that era. The manor land, according to the Salic Pravda, was already in the individual ownership of each franc. This is indicated by the high fines paid by all persons who, in one way or another, spoiled and destroyed fences or entered other people's yards with the aim of stealing. On the contrary, meadows and forests continued to be collectively owned and used by the entire peasant community. The herds that belonged to the peasants of neighboring villages were still grazing on common meadows, and every peasant could take any tree from the forest, including a felled one, if it had a mark on it that it had been cut down more than a year ago.

As for arable land, it was not yet private property, since the entire peasant community as a whole retained the supreme rights to this land. But arable land was no longer redistributed and was in the hereditary use of each individual peasant. The supreme rights of the community to arable land were expressed in the fact that none of the members of the community had the right to sell their land, and if a peasant died without leaving behind his sons (who inherited the piece of land that he cultivated during his lifetime), this land was returned to the community and fell into the hands of "neighbors", i.e., all its members. But each communal peasant had his own plot of land for the time of plowing, sowing and ripening of grain, he fenced it and passed it on to his sons by inheritance. Land could not be inherited by a woman.

The community that existed at that time was no longer the tribal community that Caesar and Tacitus once described. New productive forces demanded new production relations. The tribal community was replaced by the neighboring community, which, using the ancient Germanic name, Engels called the brand. A village that owned certain lands no longer consisted of relatives. A significant part of the inhabitants of this village still continued to remain connected with tribal relations, but at the same time, strangers already lived in the village, immigrants from other places, people who settled in this village either by agreement with other community members, or in accordance with the royal charter.

In the title "On Settlers", "Salicheskaya Pravda" established that any person could settle in a foreign village if none of its inhabitants protested against it. But if there was at least one person who opposed this, the settler could not settle in such a village. Further, the procedure for eviction and punishment (in the form of a fine) of such a migrant, whom the community did not want to accept as its members, “neighbors”, and who moved into the village without permission, was considered. At the same time, the “Salicheskaya Pravda” stated that “if no protest is presented to the resettled person within 12 months, he must remain inviolable, like other neighbors.”

The settler remained inviolable even if he had a corresponding letter from the king. On the contrary, anyone who dared to protest against such a charter had to pay a huge fine of 200 solidi. On the one hand, this indicated the gradual transformation of the community from a tribal to a neighboring, or territorial, community. On the other hand, this testified to the strengthening of royal power and the allocation of a special layer, towering over ordinary, free community members and enjoying certain privileges.

Disintegration of tribal relations. The emergence of property and social inequality in Frankish society

Of course, this does not mean that tribal relations no longer played any role in the society of the Franks. Tribal ties, tribal remnants were still very strong, but they were more and more replaced by new social ties. The Franks still continued to have such customs as paying money for the murder of a person to his relatives, inheriting property (except land) on the maternal side, paying part of the ransom (wergeld) for the murder for his insolvent relative, etc.

At the same time, "Salicheskaya Pravda" recorded both the possibility of transferring property to a non-relative, and the possibility of voluntary withdrawal from the tribal union, the so-called "renunciation of kinship." Title 60 discussed in detail the procedure associated with this, which, apparently, had already become common in Frankish society. The person who wanted to renounce kinship had to appear at a meeting of judges elected by the people, break three branches over his head there, measuring a cubit, scatter them in four directions and say that he renounces the inheritance and all accounts with his relatives. And if later one of his relatives was killed or died, the person who renounced kinship should not have participated either in the inheritance or in receiving the wergeld, and the inheritance of this person himself went to the treasury.

Who benefited from leaving the clan? Of course, the richest and most powerful people who were under the direct patronage of the king, who did not want to help their less wealthy relatives and were not interested in receiving their small inheritance. There were already such people in Frankish society.

The property inequality among the members of the community is described in one of the most important titles of the “Salic Truth” for characterizing the social system of the Franks, entitled “About a handful of land”. If someone takes the life of a person, this title says, and, having given all the property, you will not be able to pay what is due according to the law, he must present 12 relatives who will swear that he has no property either on earth or underground that they have already been given. Then he must enter his house, pick up a handful of earth from its four corners, stand on the threshold, facing inside the house, and throw this earth with his left hand over his shoulder at his father and brothers.

If the father and brothers have already paid, then he must throw the same land on his three closest relatives by mother and father. “Then, in [one] shirt, without a belt, without shoes, with a stake in his hand, he must jump over the wattle fence, and these three [maternal relatives] must pay half of what is not enough to pay the vira followed by law. The same should be done by the other three, who are relatives on the father's side. If one of them is too poor to pay the share falling on him, he must, in turn, throw a handful of land on one of the more prosperous, so that he pays everything according to the law. The stratification of free francs into poor and rich is also indicated by titles about debt and methods of its repayment, about loans and their recovery from the debtor, etc.

There is no doubt that Frankish society at the beginning of the VI century. already disintegrated into several distinct layers. The bulk of Frankish society at that time consisted of free Frankish peasants who lived in neighboring communities and among whom numerous remnants of the tribal system were still preserved. The independent and full position of the free Frankish peasant is indicated by the high wergeld, which was paid for him in the event of his murder. This wergeld, according to the Salic Pravda, was equal to 200 solidi and had the character of a ransom, and not punishment, since it was also paid in case of an accidental murder, and if a person died from a blow or bite of any domestic animal (in the latter case, iergeld, as usually paid by the owner of the animal in half the amount). So, the direct producers of material goods, i.e., free Frankish peasants, at the beginning of the 6th century. enjoyed more rights.

At the same time, a layer of new service nobility formed in Frankish society, whose special privileged position was emphasized by a much larger wergeld than that paid for a simple free franc. “Salicheskaya Pravda” does not say a word about the former tribal nobility, which also indicates the already completed disintegration of tribal relations. Part of this tribal nobility died out, part was destroyed by the risen kings, who were afraid of rivals, and part joined the ranks of the service nobility that surrounded the kings.

For a representative of the nobility who was in the service of the king, a triple wergeld was paid, that is, 600 solidi. Thus, the life of a count - a royal official or the life of a royal warrior was already valued much more than the life of a simple Frankish peasant, which testified to the deep social stratification of Frankish society. Wergeld, paid for the murder of a representative of the service nobility, was tripled a second time (that is, it reached 1,800 solidi) if the murder was committed at a time when the murdered was on royal service(during a hike, etc.).

The third layer in the society of the Franks was made up of semi-free, the so-called litas, as well as freedmen, that is, former slaves set free. For semi-freemen and freedmen, only half the wergeld of a simple free franc, that is, 100 solidi, was paid, which emphasized their incomplete position in the society of the Franks. As for the slave, it was no longer the wergeld that was paid for his murder, but simply a fine.

So, tribal ties in Frankish society disappeared, giving way to new social relations, the relations of the emerging feudal society. The beginning process of the feudalization of Frankish society was most clearly reflected in the opposition of the free Frankish peasantry to the service and military nobility. This nobility gradually turned into a class of large landowners - feudal lords, for it was the Frankish nobility, who was in the service of the king, who, when seizing Roman territory, received large land holdings already on the rights of private property. The existence in Frankish society (along with a free peasant community) of large estates that were in the hands of the Frankish and surviving Gallo-Roman nobility is evidenced by the chronicles (chronicles) of that time, as well as all those titles of the Salic Truth, which speak of the master's servants or yard servants - slaves (vine growers, blacksmiths, carpenters, grooms, swineherds and even goldsmiths), who served the vast master's economy.

The political structure of Frankish society. Rise of royalty

Profound changes in the field of socio-economic relations of Frankish society led to changes in its political system. On the example of Clovis, one can easily trace how the former power of the military leader of the tribe turned already at the end of the 5th century. into hereditary royalty. A wonderful story has been preserved by one chronicler (chronicler), Gregory of Tours (6th century), which characterized this transformation in a visual form.

Once, says Gregory of Tours, while still fighting for the city of Soissons, the Franks captured rich booty in one of the Christian churches. Among the captured booty there was also a valuable bowl of amazing size and beauty. The bishop of the Reims church asked Clovis to return this cup, which was considered sacred, to the church. Clovis, who wished to live in peace with the Christian Church, agreed, but added that in Soissons there should still be a division of the booty among his soldiers and that if he received a cup in the division of booty, he would give it to the bishop.

Then the chronicler tells that in response to the request of the king addressed to them to give him a cup to transfer to her church, the combatants answered: “Do whatever you please, for no one can oppose your power.” The story of the chronicler thus testifies to the greatly increased authority of royal power. But among the warriors, memories of the times when the king stood only a little higher than his warriors were still alive, was obliged to share the booty with them by lot, and at the end of the campaign often turned from a military leader into an ordinary representative of the tribal nobility. That is why one of the warriors, as it is said later in the chronicle, did not agree with the rest of the warriors, raised the ax and cut the cup, saying: “You will not get anything from this, except what is due to you by lot.”

The king was silent this time, took the spoiled cup and gave it to the messenger of the bishop. However, as follows from the story of Gregory of Tours, Clovis' "meekness and patience" were feigned. After a year, he ordered his entire army to assemble and inspected the weapons. Approaching during the inspection to the recalcitrant warrior, Clovis declared that the weapon of this warrior was kept in disarray by him, and, having pulled out the ax from the warrior, threw it on the ground, and then chopped off his head. “So,” he said, “you did with the cup in Soissons,” and when he died, he ordered the rest to go home, “inspiring great fear in himself.” So, in a clash with a warrior who was trying to defend the old order of dividing the booty between members of the squad and its leader, Clovis emerged victorious, affirming the principle of the king's exclusive position in relation to the members of the squad that served him.

By the end of his reign, Clovis, a cunning, cruel and treacherous man, no longer had rivals in the face of other members of the nobility. He sought sole power by any means. Having conquered Gaul and received huge land wealth in his hands, Clovis destroyed the other leaders of the tribe who stood in his way.

Destroying the leaders, as well as many of his noble relatives for fear that they would not take away his royal power, Clovis extended it to all of Gaul. And then, having gathered his close ones, he said to them: “Woe to me, for I have remained as a wanderer among strangers and have no relatives who could give me help if a misfortune happened.” “But he said this,” the chronicler wrote, “not because he grieved for their death, but out of cunning, hoping that he could not accidentally find one more of his relatives in order to take his life.” In this way Clovis became the sole king of the Franks.

The Salic Truth testifies to the increased importance of royal power. According to the data available in it, the royal court was the highest authority. In the regions, the king ruled through his officials - counts and their assistants. The tribal people's assembly no longer existed. It was replaced by military reviews, convened and conducted by the king. These are the so-called "March fields". True, in the villages and hundreds (the union of several villages) the people's court (mallus) was still preserved, but gradually this court also began to be headed by a count. All "objects that belonged to the king", according to "Salicheskaya Pravda", were protected by a triple fine. Representatives of the church were also in a privileged position. The life of a priest was guarded by a triple wergeld (600 solidi), and if someone took the life of a bishop, he had to pay an even larger wergeld - 900 solidi. Robbery and burning of churches and chapels were punished with high fines. The growth of state power required its consecration with the help of the church, so the Frankish kings multiplied and protected church privileges.

So, the political system of the Franks was characterized by the growth and strengthening of royal power. This was facilitated by the king's warriors, his officials, his entourage and representatives of the church, that is, the emerging layer of large landowners-feudal lords, who needed royal power to protect their newly emerged possessions and to expand them. The growth of royal power was also facilitated by those prosperous and wealthy peasants who separated from the free community members, from whom a layer of small and medium feudal lords subsequently grew.

Frankish society in the VI-VII centuries.

An analysis of the Salic Pravda shows that both Roman and Frankish social order played an important role in the development of Frankish society after the conquest of the territory of Gaul by the Franks. On the one hand, the Franks ensured the more rapid destruction of slaveholding remnants. “Ancient slavery has disappeared, ruined, impoverished free people have disappeared,” wrote Engels, “those who despised labor as a slave occupation. Between the Roman column and the new serf stood a free Frankish peasant” (F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, pp. 160-161.). On the other hand, not only the final disintegration of tribal relations among the Franks, but also the rapid disappearance of their communal ownership of arable land must be largely attributed to the influence of the Roman social order. By the end of the VI century. it has already turned from a hereditary possession into a complete, freely alienable landed property (allod) of the Frankish peasant.

The very resettlement of the Franks on Roman territory tore and could not but break alliances based on consanguinity. Constant movements mixed tribes and clans among themselves, unions of small rural communities arose, which still continued to own land in common. However, this communal, collective ownership of arable land, forests and meadows was not the only form of ownership among the Franks. Along with it, in the community itself, there was an individual property of the Franks that arose long before the resettlement for a personal plot of land, livestock, weapons, a house and household utensils.

In the territory conquered by the Franks, the private landed property of the Gallo-Romans, preserved from antiquity, continued to exist. In the process of conquering Roman territory, large-scale private ownership of the land of the Frankish king, his warriors, servants and close associates arose and established itself. The coexistence of different types of property did not last long, and the communal form of ownership of arable land, which corresponded to a lower level of productive forces, gave way to allod.

The edict of King Chilperic (second half of the 6th century), which established, in a change to the Salic Truth, the inheritance of land not only by the sons, but also by the daughters of the deceased, and in no case by his neighbors, shows that this process took place very quickly.

The appearance of a land allod among the Frankish peasant was of the utmost importance. The transformation of communal ownership of arable land into private property, that is, the transformation of this land into a commodity, meant that the emergence and development of large-scale landownership, associated not only with the conquest of new territories and the seizure of free land, but also with the loss by the peasant of the right of ownership to processed by him land plot became a matter of time.

Thus, as a result of the interaction of socio-economic processes that took place in ancient German society and in the late Roman Empire, Frankish society entered the period of early feudalism.

Immediately after the death of Clovis, the early feudal Frankish state was fragmented into the inheritances of his four sons, then united for a short time and then again fragmented into parts. Only the great-grandson of Clovis Chlothar II and the great-great-grandson Dagobert I managed to achieve a longer unification of the territory of the state in one hand at the beginning of the 7th century. But the power of the Merovingian royal family in Frankish society was based on the fact that they had a large land fund created as a result of the conquests of Clovis and his successors, and this land fund during the 6th and especially the 7th centuries. melted continuously. The Merovingians with a generous hand handed out awards to their warriors, and to their service people, and to the church. As a result of the continuous land grants of the Merovingians, the real basis of their power was greatly reduced. Representatives of other, larger and richer landowning families gained strength in society.

In this regard, the kings from the Merovingian clan were pushed into the background and received the nickname "lazy", and the actual power in the kingdom was in the hands of individual people from the landowning nobility, the so-called majordomes (major-houses were originally called the senior rulers of the royal court, who were in charge of the palace housekeeping and palace servants).

Over time, the mayordoms concentrated in their hands all the military and administrative power in the kingdom and became its de facto rulers. “The king,” the chronicler wrote, “had to be content with just one title and, sitting on the throne with long hair and a loose beard, was only one semblance of a sovereign, listened to the ambassadors who came from everywhere and gave them answers, as if on their own behalf, , memorized in advance and dictated to him ... The management of the state and everything that needed to be done or arranged in internal or external affairs, all this lay in the care of the mayor's house. At the end of the 7th and at the beginning of the 8th century. especially strengthened the mayordoms, who came out of the rich noble family of the Carolingians, who laid the foundation for a new dynasty on the throne of the Frankish kings - the Carolingian dynasty (VIII-X centuries).

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

In the 3rd century, in the original German lands near the Rhine, a new powerful union Germanic tribes, in which the Frankish tribes played the main role. Roman historians, not too well versed in the diversity of barbarian tribes and peoples, called Franks all the Germanic tribes that lived in the Rhine region. Tribes lived in the lower reaches of the Rhine, later united by historians into a group of so-called Salic (seaside) Franks. It was this part of the Frankish tribes, the strongest and most organized, that began to move westward, into the Gallic regions that belonged to Rome.

In the IV century, the Franks, as federates, the official allies of Rome, finally entrenched themselves in Gaul. Their society was almost unaffected by Romanization, and politically and culturally, the Franks were completely independent. As allies, they helped the Western Roman Empire a lot - in 451, the Frankish army took the side of the Romans against the army of Attila.

At first, the Frankish tribes did not have a single leader. The disparate principalities were united only at the end of the 5th century by the leader of one of the tribes - Clovis from the Merovingian dynasty. Through diplomacy, and sometimes military force Clovis subjugated or destroyed the rest of the Frankish rulers and gathered a mighty army under his banners. With this army, in a few years, he conquered all of his Gallic lands from Rome.

Having subjugated those parts of Gaul that belonged to Rome, Clovis immediately led the fight against the Visigoths, who had settled in the Gallic lands even earlier. These vast, but completely neglected during the Roman period, the excellent pastures and the abundance of forests were worth fighting for. Soon, the Franks owned almost all of Gaul, with the exception of a small area in the south, which remained behind the Visigoths. The political influence of Clovis also extended to neighboring Burgundy, which he did not manage to completely conquer.

In 496, Clovis, along with his people, was baptized, thus acquiring a reliable ally - the Roman Catholic Church. The Franks were perhaps the first barbarians who accepted Catholicism with the whole people. Other Germanic peoples, who adopted Christianity much earlier than them, were baptized mainly into Arianism, one of the currents of early Christianity, which the official church (both Eastern and Western) subsequently declared heresy. With the support of the church, Clovis further expanded his sphere of influence, leaving to his heirs in 511 one of the most extensive barbarian kingdoms by that time.

The heirs of Clovis, his sons, and after them - grandchildren, continued his work. By the middle of the VI century, the kingdom of the Franks became the most significant in Europe. In addition to Burgundy and Gaul, the Frankish kings quickly conquered most of the Germanic tribes that lived in the Rhine region. The lands of Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony, the Alemanni, and all other small Frankish tribes were subject to a single royal authority, consecrated by the Roman church. The Franks occupied among the nations new Europe leading position, displacing the Goths from the historical stage.
Clovis, the first of the major Frankish conquerors, generously endowed his people with land holdings. Under him, the concept of allod appeared in the European economy. An allod was a land plot that was fully owned by the owner. Land could be donated, sold, exchanged and bequeathed. The whole agriculture of the feudal West grew out of allods. They formed a free peasantry, thanks to which agriculture gradually began to emerge from the crisis that had begun even before the Great Migration of Nations.

The introduction of allodial land ownership testified to major changes in the entire Frankish society. Like all Germanic peoples, the Franks retained tribal foundations. The arable land on which the community lived has always been public property. Each family or clan, which had its own plot, had all the rights to the harvest, but in no case to the land. However, with the development of Frankish society, with the strengthening of royal power to the detriment of the power of communal elders, the old tribal ties began to collapse. Ordinary community members preferred to run their own household, to be independent of a huge family. From them, the Frankish peasantry began to form - personally free people, possessing both tools of labor and all rights to the land that they cultivated.

In economic terms, the disintegration of the clan, the separation of individual allodist farmers was, of course, a positive change, especially at first. But on the other hand, from now on, all the debts that the landowner committed, he was obliged to pay on his own, without the support of the family. Small allods gradually passed into the hands of the rich and the nobility, who took land - the main wealth in the Middle Ages - from debtors.

Large plots of land were also received by the royal warriors. These allotments, called benefices, Clovis gave only for the service and only for the duration of the service of the soldiers. His heirs transferred the benefices to the category of inherited gifts. The third (and largest, besides the king) landowner in the Merovingian kingdom was the church. The kings gave the church huge land holdings, into which plots of nearby allods gradually poured. Under the Merovingians, the practice of patronage was introduced, when a peasant came to a large landowner from the nobility under patronage, transferring his plot to him. The church also willingly accepted small landowners under its guardianship. As a rule, in this case, the peasant gave his allod to the church, and in return received a precarium for life - a slightly larger plot, for which he was also obliged to work out the annual corvée or pay dues. The widespread enslavement of the peasantry began. By the beginning of the 10th century, there were almost no allods left in Europe as such. They were supplanted by feuds - a new form of land ownership, which owes its emergence to a new, vassal-seigneurial hierarchy of relations in medieval society.

Do you know that:

• Merovingians - the first royal dynasty of the Frankish state, which ruled from 457 to 715.
• Arianism - a trend in the Christian church in the 4th - 6th centuries. The founder of the doctrine, the priest Arius, argued that God the Father is higher than God the Son (Christ).
• Allodium (from Old High German al- all and od- ownership) - individual or family land ownership in Dark Ages and the Early Middle Ages in Western Europe.
• Benefice - conditional urgent land grant for the performance of military or administrative service.
• precarium - the use of land provided by the owner for an agreed period for a fee.

General History [Civilization. Modern concepts. Facts, events] Dmitrieva Olga Vladimirovna

Frankish kingdom during the Merovingian era

The Franks are a Germanic people who originally inhabited the middle reaches of the Rhine, the coast of the North Sea and the Scheldt basin. The tribes of the Ripuarian and Salic Franks, united in a tribal union, differed. In the III-IV centuries. they began to disturb Roman Gaul with regular attacks, and in the middle of the 5th century. seized its territory up to the Somme. In the campaigns, their leaders were "kings", but in fact - military leaders, whose power was not yet hereditary - Sigibert, Ragnahar, Hararih and Clovis. Clovis (481–511) became the first king of all the Franks, eliminating his political rivals through bribery, betrayal, and assassination. His biographer, Christian Bishop Gregory of Tours, left a story about deceit, with the help of which he eliminated the rest of the Frankish kings and his own relatives, hypocritically lamenting later that “he was left alone, like a wanderer among strangers, and has no relatives who could give help, if something bad happened." Clovis came from the Merovingian clan, therefore his descendants-kings are called the Merovingians, and the period of their reign from the end of the 5th to the end of the 7th century is the Merovingian.

Under Clovis, the Franks advanced to the south of the Seine, and later to the Loire. The king generously distributed the occupied lands to his antrustion warriors, while they divided the rest of the booty by lot, according to the old custom. Gregory of Tours cites in his "History of the Franks" an episode related to the division of trophies, which characterizes the attitude of fellow tribesmen to royal power during this period. After the capture of the city of Soissons, the king wished to receive a certain bowl from church utensils in order, for political reasons, to return it to the local church, but he could not, because by lot it went to a simple warrior, and he, not wanting to give it to the king, cut the bowl with an ax. It follows from this that the king was considered only the first among equals, whose will was not the law for the Franks, and the figure did not have sacred features in their eyes. (Later, Clovis nevertheless took revenge on the intractable warrior by hacking him to death with an ax during a military review.)

To strengthen his authority, Clovis entered into an alliance with the Christian Church, to which he made extensive land grants, while still a pagan. In 496, he was baptized at Reims, promising from now on to fight idols in the name of the cross - "worship what he burned, and burn what he worshiped."

The adoption of Christianity in the orthodox form gave him a reason to start in 507 a campaign against the Arian-Visigoths, having expelled them, he included the vast region of Aquitaine in his possessions. For a quarter of a century, Clovis took possession of almost all of Roman Gaul (except Burgundy and Septimania). His political successes were forced to be recognized by the Byzantine emperor Anastasius, who proclaimed the Frankish king consul and bestowed on him the honorary title of "August", a crown and a purple mantle.

The expansion of the Franks continued under the successors of Clovis, who annexed Burgundy (537) and Provence, taken from the Ostrogoths (536), in the southeast. Its other direction was the conquest of the Germanic tribes that lived in the northeast beyond the Rhine - the Thuringians, Alamans, Bavarians. The Frankish kingdom thus became the largest state in the territory of the former Western Roman Empire.

In Gaul, the Franks made up 15–20% of the local Gallo-Roman population (more than the Germans in other regions). The formation of a new way of life took place here in the conditions of active Germanic-Roman synthesis. An idea of ​​the economy and social life of the Franks is given by the so-called Salic truth, a code of customary law codified at the behest of Clovis at the beginning of the 6th century. This code book reflects both the earlier archaic orders that existed among the Franks, and the evolution of social relations in the 5th-6th centuries. - the disintegration of blood relations, the growth of property and social inequality, the formation of the state.

As is clear from the Salic truth, the Franks already had a developed agriculture. They cultivated rye, wheat, barley, legumes, flax using a two-field system; They were also engaged in horticulture and viticulture. Cattle breeding was at a high level: the Franks bred cattle and small livestock - cows, sheep, pigs, goats. As in ancient times, cattle was a measure of their wealth and often replaced money in settlements. Poultry farming, beekeeping and hunting were a help in the economy.

The main economic unit was the family that owned the estate: a house, barns and other outbuildings, a garden and a kitchen garden. All this personal-family property, including livestock and poultry, was strictly protected by law from encroachment: theft and robbery were punishable by heavy fines. Each family had an arable plot, while any cultivated piece of land - a field, a garden, a vineyard, etc. - was fenced. The redistribution of arable land, which was mentioned by ancient authors, speaking of the ancient Germans, was no longer observed. This allows a number of scholars to argue that by the 5th century the Franks had private ownership of land. It is obvious, however, that this concept is generally difficult to apply to the land relations of the period under consideration. On the one hand, the Franks had quite developed ideas about property rights, especially on movable property, expressed in such external signs of property as brands, hedges, fences, borders. On the other hand, these real estate rights were not unconditional. First, they were limited to the control of close relatives. In particular, the land plot - the so-called allod - was transferred only through the male line, while women did not have the right to inherit it (because a woman could get married and her tribal group would lose this allotment). Since private property presupposes free alienation and transfer of property, we have to state that the institution of private property was still in the process of formation among the Franks. The neighbors who made up the Frankish village also claimed certain rights to the surrounding territories, including those belonging to individual families. After the crop was harvested, all the hedges were removed from the fields and they turned into a collective grazing for livestock. Neighbors jointly determined the rules for the use of roads, water, pastures, wastelands, forests. Without the consent of the whole village, not a single stranger could settle nearby, since this inevitably entailed a redistribution of shares in common lands.

This gives grounds to talk about the formation of the so-called neighbor community among the Franks, which in mature forms will be characteristic of the entire period of the Middle Ages.

Salic truth provides much evidence that blood ties still played an important role in Frankish society. The custom of blood feud continued to exist, the relatives were due a fine for the murdered - wergeld; on the contrary, if one of the relatives had to pay this fine, his relatives helped raise the necessary funds. The rite of turning to them for help is recorded in the Salic truth in the chapter entitled "About a handful of earth." If the person sentenced to a fine had already given away all his property in payment and had nothing more, then he had to call his relatives, take a handful of earth from all corners of his empty chamber and, standing on the porch, throw it over his shoulder in the direction of four closest relatives. If their property was not enough to pay the fine, they repeated this ceremony, involving their loved ones in it. Relatives acted as guarantors and jurors in court, had the right to inheritance.

On the other hand, the Salic truth also records the symptoms of the collapse of blood ties: some Franks, who were burdened by the duties of helping relatives and participating in ruinous mutual responsibility, declared “renunciation of kinship”, which meant not receiving their share of the inheritance of a deceased relative or wergeld. The public refusal procedure consisted in the fact that a person broke a stick over his head (symbolizing former connections) and scattered the fragments in different directions. Obviously, someone who was confident in his material well-being could take such a step, and this chapter also testifies to the property stratification among the Franks.

The social structure of the Frankish society of the Merovingian era was already quite complex. The majority were free Franks - farmers and warriors, whose life was estimated at 200 solidi wergeld. Above them on the social ladder were royal warriors, officials who were in the royal service, Christian bishops, as well as noble Romans, close to the Frankish kings - their "companions". The elite of Frankish society thus included representatives of the Gallo-Roman nobility. The rest of the Gallo-Romans were "estimated" lower than the free Franks - at 100 solidi, along with the German semi-free litas. Slaves did not have a wergeld at all and were valued on a par with cattle or other property.

By the end of the 6th century, the Franks had a “full allod” - freely alienable landed property. According to the edict of King Chilperic, it was allowed to freely give, transfer and bequeath, including to women. This act was an important step towards the formation of large landed property. Its folding was also facilitated by numerous military campaigns of the Franks, the seizure of lands with which the kings generously endowed their confidants with the rights of allod - that is, full ownership. Large land masses, concentrated in the hands of the latter, were cultivated by the hands of both Germanic and Gallo-Roman slaves, litas, colones.

Free francs began to fall more and more often into dependence on large landowners. Constant wars, vicissitudes of fate, low productivity, famine years easily destabilized the small peasant economy, forcing the farmer to seek help. The commendation became widespread - the voluntary entry of a poor land-poor person under the personal patronage of a large landowner. The commendation agreement assumed that the latter would take care of his client, give him shelter and food, and he would serve his patron in everything, maintaining the status of a free person, but he would never be able to break this agreement and get out of patronage. Thus, specific personal relations of service and patronage arose, which were a characteristic feature of the feudal era.

Dependence could also arise in the sphere of purely land relations; in particular, precarious transactions led to it. A precarium - in this case - a land allotment that a poor peasant could receive from a large landowner for cultivation on the terms of paying a part of the crop to the owner ("given precarium"). In other cases, a small landowner with land could transfer ownership of it to a magnate or a monastery in order to get his plot back and use it for the rest of his life, but already on the rights of holding, and not ownership, along with guarantees of patronage, protection, provision in old age, etc. Such a precarium was called "returned". After the death of the peasant, he passed into the hands of the new owner. Sometimes, in such cases, a large landowner could add a certain amount of land to the peasant allotment (“prékary with remuneration”). The precarist remained personally free, but found himself in economic dependence. Thanks to precarious deals and commendations, a layer of dependent peasantry and large landowners gradually formed - the feudalization of Frankish society began. However, in the Merovingian period, it had not yet gone far.

The political structure of the Frankish society in the V-VI centuries. retained many archaic features, but at the same time was influenced by Roman customs. In the Merovingian period, the Franks formed a state in the form that is called early feudal.

The power of the king increased significantly, reinforced by the authority of the church and references to its divine origin, and his figure itself began to acquire sacred features. Sovereigns acquired insignia - signs of their dignity. Unlike ordinary Franks, a wergeld was no longer appointed for the king, his murder could not be atoned for with money. Even an attempt on the monarch was punishable by death.

Royal power was based on vast land holdings and the strength of a professional squad, consisting of antrustions. The nobility also participated in the development of the political line and the direct administration of the country - royal relatives, large land magnates, prelates of the church, who were part of the royal Council. In conditions when the monarchy had not yet become hereditary and his eldest son did not necessarily become the king's successor, the role of this body was extremely large: the Council chose the heir from the circle of the closest royal relatives - brothers, sons, uncles, nephews. The monarchs had to reckon with the opinion of the Council, which allows historians to talk about a kind of "democracy of the nobility" in this period.

In the Frankish state, the traditional institutions of people's democracy were also preserved. The basis of the army was the militia of all free warriors who had weapons. Every year they gathered for military reviews - "March fields".

Judicial meetings remained the basis of administration and public life, at which litigation was dealt with and economic problems were resolved. However, the judicial system has also changed significantly. Along with the archaic positions of tungin (chairman of the court) and rahinburgs (elected experts and keepers of ancient law), there appeared a centurion (centenary), counts and satsebarons - bailiffs acting on behalf of the king. The royal power actively interfered in the process of legal proceedings: having codified and recorded the legal norms of his people, Clovis granted them to the Franks already from own name as a royal law, part of the judicial fines for the violation of which he began to take in his favor.

The Merovingians introduced a kind of Roman administrative division - hundreds and counties, borrowed the system of Roman poll and land taxes from the population. However, the system of government in the Frankish state was still extremely primitive. Officials were represented by the governors and envoys of the king, many of whom were his slaves by status. They did not have permanent functions, carrying out any orders of the sovereign. The monarch himself was forced to constantly move around his vast possessions, having no capital and official residence, in order to maintain contact with his subjects and collect payments due to him from them. Upon the arrival of the king, the local population delivered food and fodder to him from all over the area. The sovereign with his retinue spent time in feasts with the local nobility, at which state affairs were decided, and the detour of the lands resumed as everything was eaten and drunk.

Thus, the specifics of the early feudal state consisted in strengthening the power of the king and his entourage while maintaining a broad support of statehood in the person of all the free people who formed the backbone of the army; in the patrimonial nature of power, under which the king ruled the state as his fiefdom; in the primitiveness of the state apparatus, which did not have clearly defined functions and specialization; in its infancy, a financial system based on proceeds from royal estates and court fines.

The difficulties of managing remote territories led to the fact that sometimes kings delegated their power functions to their confidants, granting them the so-called. "immunities". Immunity rights assumed that the territory entrusted to the administration of a private individual would no longer be entered by royal officials. An immuneist could be entrusted with the administration of justice on behalf of the sovereign, administration, collection of taxes, or all these functions together. This led to the strengthening of the private power of large magnates, who turned their local positions and privileges into hereditary ones, to the separatization of certain regions and the weakening of royal power.

Already under the successors of Clovis, it became clear that broad land grants and the distribution of immunities had exhausted the ability of kings to attract large landowners to their service. At the end of the 7th century, the Frankish kingdom practically breaks up into several large territorial entities - Neustria, with a center in Paris, Austrasia, Burgundy and Aquitaine.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEODALISM IN THE FRANK STATE

Some Germanic tribes, in which the decomposition of the tribal system occurred without a significant impact of Roman social relations, were subjugated by the Frankish early feudal state (for example, the Alemanni and Bavarians already in the 6th-7th centuries). This conquest accelerated the emergence of feudalism among these tribes.

Frankish State of the Merovingians

In 486, as a result of the Frankish conquest in Northern Gaul, the Frankish state arose, headed by the leader of the Salian Franks Clovis (486-511) from the Merovean family (hence the Merovingian dynasty). Thus began the first period in the history of the Frankish state - from the end of the 5th to the end of the 7th century - usually called the Merovingian period.

Under Clovis, Aquitaine was conquered (507), under his successors - Burgundy (534); The Osgoths ceded Provence to the Franks (536). By the middle of the VI century. The Frankish state included almost the entire territory of the former Roman province of Gaul. The Franks also subjugated a number of Germanic tribes living beyond the Rhine: the Thuringians, Alemanni and Bavarians recognized the supreme power of the Franks; the Saxons were forced to pay them an annual tribute. The Frankish state lasted much longer than all the others barbarian kingdoms continental Europe, many of which (first part of the Visigothic and Burgundian, then Lombard) it included in its composition. The history of the Frankish state allows us to trace the development of feudal relations from the earliest stage to its completion. The process of feudalization took place here in the form of a synthesis of decaying late Roman and German tribal relations. The ratio of those and others was not the same in the north and in the south of the country. North of the Loire, where the Franks, with their still rather primitive social order, occupied continuous territories and constituted a significant part of the population, late antique and barbarian elements interacted in approximately the same proportion. Since the Franks settled here in isolation from the Gallo-Roman population, they retained the social orders they brought with them, in particular the free community, longer than in the south. In the areas south of the Loire, the Franks were few in number, and the Visigoths and Burgundians who settled here earlier remained in the minority. These latter, long before the Frankish conquest, lived in constant and close contact with the Gallo-Roman population. Therefore, the influence of late antique relations played a much more significant role in the process of synthesis here than in the north of the country, and the decomposition of barbarian social orders proceeded faster.

"Salic Truth" - a source for studying the social system of the Franks

The most important source for studying the social system of the Franks (mainly Northern Gaul) in the Merovingian period is one of the most famous barbarian truths - "Salic Truth" ("Lex Salica").

It is a record of the judicial customs of the Salic Franks, which is believed to have been made at the beginning of the 6th century, i.e., during the lifetime (and possibly by order) of Clovis. Roman influence was much less pronounced here than in other barbarian truths, and is found mainly in external features: the Latin language, fines in Roman monetary units.

The "Salic Truth" in a more or less pure form reflects the archaic orders of the primitive communal system that existed among the Franks even before the conquest. But in it we also find new data - information about the origin of property and social inequality, private ownership of movable property, the right to inherit land and, finally, the state. During the VI-IX centuries. Frankish kings made more and more additions to the Salic Truth, therefore, in combination with other sources of a later period, it also allows us to trace the further evolution of Frankish society from the primitive communal system to feudalism.

Economy and communal organization of the Franks according to the "Salic truth"

The level of economic development among the Franks was significantly higher than that of the ancient Germans described by Tacitus. In agriculture, which in the VI century. was the main occupation of the Franks, apparently, the two-field system already dominated, the periodic redistribution of arable land, which hindered the development of more intensive forms of agriculture, ceased. In addition to grain crops - rye, wheat, oats, barley - legumes and flax were widely used among the Franks. Vegetable gardens, orchards, and vineyards began to be actively cultivated. A plow with an iron plowshare, which loosened the soil well, is becoming widespread. Various types of draft animals are used in agriculture: bulls, mules, donkeys. Soil cultivation methods have improved. Two- or three-fold plowing, harrowing, weeding of crops, threshing with flails became common; water mills began to be used instead of manual ones. Cattle breeding also developed significantly. The Franks bred in large numbers cattle and small livestock - sheep, goats, as well as pigs and various types of poultry. Among the usual activities should be called hunting, fishing, beekeeping.

Economic progress was the result not only of internal development Frankish society, but also the result of borrowing by the Franks, and even earlier by the Visigoths and Burgundians in the south of Gaul, more advanced methods of conducting Agriculture they encountered in conquered Roman territory.

During this period, the Franks have a fully developed private ownership of movable property. This is evidenced, for example, by the high fines set by Salichnaya Pravda for the theft of bread, livestock, poultry, boats, and nets. But Salicheskaya Pravda still does not know about private ownership of land, with the exception of personal plots. The owner of the main land fund of each village was the collective of its inhabitants - free small farmers who made up the community. In the first period after the conquest of Gaul, according to the ancient text of the Salic Truth, the Frankish communities were settlements of very different sizes, consisting of related families. In most cases, these were large (patriarchal) families, which included close relatives, usually of three generations - the father and adult sons with their families, running the household together. But there were already small individual families. Houses and household plots were privately owned by individual large or small families, and arable and sometimes meadow plots were in their hereditary private use. These allotments were usually surrounded by a fence, wattle and were protected from intrusions and encroachments by high fines. However, the right to freely dispose of hereditary allotments belonged only to the entire collective of the community. Individual-family ownership of land among the Franks at the end of the 5th and in the 6th century. was just being born. This is evidenced by the IX chapter of the Salic Truth - “On allods, according to which land inheritance, land (terra), in contrast to movable property (it could be freely inherited or donated) was inherited only through the male line - by the sons of the deceased head of a large family ; female offspring were excluded from the inheritance of the land. In the absence of sons, the land passed to the disposal of the community. This is clearly seen from the edict of King Chilperic (561-584), which, in a change to the above-mentioned chapter of the Salic Truth, established that in the absence of sons, the land should be inherited by the daughter or brother and sister of the deceased, but “not neighbors” (as it was, obviously , before).

The community also had a number of other rights to the lands that were in the individual use of its members. Apparently, the Franks had an “open field system”: all arable plots after harvesting and meadow plots after haymaking turned into a common pasture, and for this time all hedges were removed from them. The fallow land also served as a public pasture. Such an order is associated with striping and forced crop rotation for all members of the community. Lands that were not part of the household plots and arable and meadow allotments (forests, wastelands, swamps, roads, undivided meadows) remained in common ownership, and each member of the community had an equal share in the use of these lands.

Contrary to the assertions of a number of bourgeois historians late XIX and XX century. (N.-D. Fustel de Coulange, V. Wittich, L. Dopsh, T. Mayer, K. Bosl, O. Brunner and others) that the Franks in the 5th-6th centuries. complete private ownership of the land dominated, a number of chapters of the Salic Pravda definitely testify to the presence of a community among the Franks. So chapter XLV “On Settlers” reads: “If someone wants to move to a villa (in this context, “villa” means a village. - Ed.) to another and if one or more of the residents of the villa want to accept him, but there is at least one who oppose resettlement, he will not have the right to settle there. If the stranger still settles in the village, then the protester can bring legal proceedings against him and expel him through the courts. "Neighbors" here act in this way as members of the community, regulating all land relations in their village.

The community, which, according to Salic Pravda, was the basis of the economic and social organization of Frankish society, was in the 5th-6th centuries. a transitional stage from an agricultural community (where collective ownership of all land, including the arable plots of large families, was preserved) to a neighboring community-mark, in which the ownership of individual small families to allotment arable land already dominates, while maintaining communal ownership of the main fund of forests, meadows, wastelands, pastures, etc. Before the conquest of Gaul, the owner of the land among the Franks was the clan, which broke up into separate large families (this was the agricultural community). Long campaigns during the period of conquest and settlement in the new territory accelerated the beginning of the 2nd-4th centuries. the process of weakening and disintegration of tribal and the formation of new, territorial ties, on which the neighboring brand community that was formed later was based. According to F. Engels, "the clan was dissolved in the community-mark, in which, however, traces of its origin from the relations of kinship of members of the community are still quite often visible."

The Salic Pravda clearly traces tribal relations: even after the conquest, many communities consisted largely of relatives; relatives continued to play a large role in the life of the free franc. A close union consisted of them, including all relatives “up to the sixth generation” (the third generation in our account), all members of which, in a certain order, were obliged to act in court as jurors (taking an oath in favor of a relative). In the case of the murder of a franc, not only the family of the murdered or murderer, but also their closest relatives, both on the father’s side and on the mother’s side, participated in receiving and paying the wergeld.

But at the same time, Salic Truth already shows the process of decomposition and decline of tribal relations. Among the members of the tribal organization, property differentiation is outlined. The chapter "On a handful of land" provides for the case when an impoverished relative cannot help his relative in paying the wergeld: in this case, he must "throw a handful of land on someone from the more prosperous, so that he pays everything according to the law." There is a desire on the part of more prosperous members to leave the union of relatives. Chapter IX of the Salic Pravda describes in detail the procedure for renunciation of kinship, during which a person must publicly, in a court session, renounce affiliation, participation in the payment and receipt of wergeld, inheritance and other relations with relatives.

In the event of the death of such a person, his inheritance does not go to relatives, but to the royal treasury.

The development of property differentiation among relatives leads to a weakening of tribal ties, to the disintegration of large families into small individual families.

At the end of the VI century. the hereditary allotment of free Franks turns into a complete, freely alienable landed property of small individual families - allod. Previously, in the Salic Pravda, this term denoted any inheritance: in relation to movables, the allod was understood at that time as property, but in relation to land - only as a hereditary allotment, which cannot be freely disposed of. The edict of King Chilperic already mentioned above, having significantly expanded the right of individual inheritance of the community members, in essence, deprived the community of the right to dispose of the allotment land of its members. It becomes the object of wills, gifts, and then sale and purchase, that is, it becomes the property of a community member. This change was of a fundamental nature and led to a further deepening of property and social differentiation in the community, to its disintegration. According to F. Engels, "the allod created not only the possibility, but also the necessity of transforming the initial equality of land holdings into its opposite."

With the emergence of the allod, the transformation of the agricultural community into a neighboring or territorial one, usually called the brand community, which no longer consists of relatives, but of neighbors, is completed. Each of them is the head of a small individual family and acts as the owner of his allotment - allod. The rights of the community extend only to undivided land marks (forests, wastelands, swamps, public pastures, roads, etc.), which continue to be in the collective use of all its members. By the end of the VI century. meadow and forest plots often also pass into the allodial property of individual community members.

The community-mark, which had developed among the Franks by the end of the 6th century, is the last form of communal land tenure, within which the decomposition of the primitive communal system is completed and class feudal relations are born.

Social stratification in the Frankish society of the Merovingian period

The germs of social stratification among the conquering Franks are manifested in Salic Pravda in various sizes of the wergeld of different categories of the free population. For simple free Franks, it is 200 solidi, for royal warriors (antrustions) or officials who were in the service of the king, it is 600. Apparently, the Frankish tribal nobility also joined the group of royal warriors and officials during the conquest. The life of the semi-free - Litas - was protected by a relatively low wergeld - 100 solidi.

The Franks also had slaves who were completely unprotected by the wergeld: the killer only compensated for the damage caused to the master of the slave.

The development of slavery among the Franks was facilitated by the conquest of Gaul and subsequent wars, which gave a plentiful influx of slaves. Subsequently, slavery also became a source of slavery, into which ruined free people fell, as well as a criminal who did not pay a court fine or wergeld: they turned into slaves of those who paid these contributions for them. However, slave labor among the Franks was not the basis of production, as in the Roman state. Slaves were used most often as household servants or artisans - blacksmiths, goldsmiths, sometimes as shepherds and grooms, but not as the main labor force in agriculture.

Although the "Salicheskaya Pravda" does not know any legal distinctions within ordinary free community members, in it and in other sources of the 6th century. there is evidence of the presence of property stratification in their environment. This is not only the above information about the stratification among relatives, but also indications of the spread of loans and debt obligations in Frankish society. Sources constantly mention, on the one hand, the rich and influential " the best people”(meliores), on the other hand, about the poor (minoflidi) and completely ruined, vagabonds unable to pay fines.

The emergence of allod stimulated the growth of large land ownership among the Franks. Even during the conquest, Clovis appropriated the lands of the former imperial fiscus. His successors gradually seized all the free, undivided lands among the communities, which at first were considered the property of the whole people. From this fund, the Frankish kings, who became large landowners, generously distributed land grants in full, freely alienable (allodia) property to their confidants and the church. So, by the end of the VI century. in Frankish society, a layer of large landowners - future feudal lords - is already emerging. In their possessions, along with the Frankish slaves, semi-free - Litas - and dependent people from among the Gallo-Roman population - freedmen by Roman law, slaves, Gallo-Romans who were obliged to bear duties ("Romans-tributarii"), possibly from among the former Roman columns.

The growth of large landownership was especially intensified in connection with the development of the allod within the community. The concentration of land holdings is now taking place not only as a result of royal grants, but also by enriching one part of the community members at the expense of another. The process of ruin of a part of the free community members begins, the reason for which is the forced alienation of their hereditary allods.

The growth of large landownership inevitably leads to the emergence of private power of large landowners, which, as an instrument of non-economic coercion, was characteristic of the emerging feudal system.

The oppression of large secular landowners, ecclesiastical institutions and royal officials, forced free people to give up personal independence and surrender under the "protection" (mundium) of secular and spiritual large landowners, who thus became their seigneurs (masters). The act of entering under personal protection was called "commendation". In practice, it was often accompanied by entry into land dependence, which for landless people often meant their gradual involvement in personal dependence. At the same time, the commendation strengthened the political influence of large landowners and contributed to the final disintegration of tribal unions and communal organization.

Gallo-Roman population and its role in the feudalization of Frankish society

The process of feudalization took place not only among the Franks themselves, but even faster among the Gallo-Romans, who made up the majority of the population of the Frankish state. The barbarian conquests destroyed the foundations of the slave system and partly undermined large-scale land ownership, especially in southern Gaul, where the Burgundians and Visigoths divided the land, capturing a significant part of it from the local population. However, they did not abolish private ownership of land. Everywhere among the Gallo-Roman population, not only small peasant land ownership was preserved, but even large-scale church and secular land ownership, based on the exploitation of slaves and people who were sitting on foreign land, close in position to the Roman columns.

"Salic truth" divides the Gallo-Roman population into three categories: "royal companions", in which one can see a privileged group of Gallo-Romans, close to the king, apparently, large landowners; "possessors" - landowners of small estates and peasant types; taxable people (“tributaries”) who are obliged to bear duties. Apparently, these were people using foreign land on certain conditions.

The neighborhood of the Gallo-Romans, among whom private ownership of land had long existed, naturally accelerated the decomposition of communal relations and the feudalization of Frankish society. The position of the Gallo-Roman slaves and columns influenced the forms of dependence into which the impoverished Frankish community members were drawn. The impact of the decaying late antique relations in the process of feudalization was especially great in Southern Gaul, where the conquerors lived in close proximity to the Gallo-Romans in common villages. Here, earlier than in the north among the Germans, private ownership of land in its Roman form was established, the transition to the Marche community took place earlier, its decomposition and the growth of large landed property of the barbarian nobility proceeded faster. The object of exploitation of the German large landowners in the VI-VII centuries. there were not yet dependent peasants, but slaves, columns, freedmen who were planted on the land, the status of which was largely determined by Roman legal traditions. At the same time, the Frankish conquest of Southern Gaul contributed to the fragmentation of large domains and the barbarian and Gallo-Roman nobility and strengthened the layer of small peasant proprietors, mixed in ethnic composition. In the process of synthesis of Gallo-Roman and Germanic relations, legal and ethnic differences between the conquerors and the local population in all areas of the kingdom were gradually erased. Under the sons of Clovis, the obligation to participate in the military militia applies to all the inhabitants of the kingdom, including the Gallo-Romans. On the other hand, the Frankish kings are trying to extend the land and poll taxes, preserved from the Roman Empire and at first levied only on the Gallo-Roman population, and on the conquering Germans.

In connection with this policy of the royal power in Gaul, uprisings broke out repeatedly. The largest of them took place in 579 in Limoges. The masses, outraged that King Chilperic had increased the land tax, seized and burned the tax rolls and wanted to kill the royal tax collector. Chilperic brutally dealt with the rebels and subjected the population of Limoges to even more severe taxation. Social differences are increasingly coming to the fore in the life of Frankish society: there is an increasing convergence of the Gallo-Roman, Burgundian and Frankish landowning nobility, on the one hand, and German and Gallo-Roman small farmers of different legal status, on the other. The main classes of the future feudal society - feudal lords and dependent peasants - begin to take shape.

The Frankish kingdom of the Merovingian period from the end of the 6th - beginning of the 7th century. was already an early feudal society, although the process of feudalization in it developed rather slowly. Until the end of the 7th c. the main stratum of this society remained free small landowners, in the north still united in free communes-marks.

The emergence of the state among the Franks

The beginning of the feudalization of Frankish society was accompanied by the emergence of an early feudal state.

The governing bodies inherent in the primitive communal system at the stage of military democracy are gradually giving way to the increased power of the military leader, who is now turning into a king. This transformation was accelerated by the very fact of the conquest, which brought the Franks face to face with the conquered Gallo-Roman population, which had to be kept in subjection. In addition, in the conquered territory, the Franks faced a developed class society, the continued existence of which required the creation of a new state power to replace the state apparatus of the slave empire destroyed by the Franks.

The king concentrated in his hands all the functions government controlled centered on the royal court. The power of the king was based primarily on the fact that he was the largest landowner in the state and was at the head of a large, personally devoted squad. He ruled the state as a personal economy, gave his close associates private property of lands that had previously been national, tribal property, arbitrarily disposed of state revenues that came to him in the form of taxes, fines and trade duties. Royal power relied on the support of the emerging class of large landowners. Since its inception, the state has defended in every possible way the interests of this class of feudal lords and, through its policy, contributed to the ruin and enslavement of free community members, the growth of large landed property, and organized new conquests.

In the central administration of the Frankish state, only faint traces of the former primitive communal organization have survived in the form of annual military reviews - the “March fields”. Since in the Merovingian period the bulk of the population of Frankish society were still free community members, of whom the general military militia also consisted, all adult free Franks converged on the "March fields". However, these meetings, in contrast to the public meetings of the period of military democracy, now had no serious political significance.

Traces of the ancient primitive communal order are more preserved in the local administration of the Frankish state.

"Hundreds" of the divisions of the tribe among the ancient Franks after the conquest of Gaul turned into territorial administrative units. The management of the county - a larger territorial unit - was entirely in the hands of the royal official - the count, who was the chief judge in the county and levied a third of all court fines in favor of the king. In "hundreds" people's assemblies of all free people (mallus) gathered, performing mainly judicial functions and chaired by an elected person - "tungin". But even here there was a representative of the royal administration - a centurion ("centenary"), who controlled the activities of the assembly and collected a share of the fines in favor of the king. With the development of social differentiation c. among the Franks, the leading role in these meetings passes to more prosperous and influential persons - the “rachinburgs” (rachin-burgii), or “good people”.

Self-government was most fully preserved in the village community, which elected its officials at village meetings, created a court for petty offenses and ensured that the customs of the mark were observed.

The fragmentation of the state under the successors of Clovis

The growth of large landownership and the private power of large landowners already under the sons of Clovis led to a weakening of royal power. Having lost, as a result of generous land distributions, a significant part of their domain holdings and incomes, Frankish kings turned out to be powerless in the fight against the separatist aspirations of large landowners. After the death of Clovis, the fragmentation of the Frankish state began.

From the end of the VI century. it is planned to separate three independent regions within the Frankish state: Neustria - North-Western Gaul with a center in Paris; Austrasia - the northeastern part of the Frankish state, which included the original Frankish regions on both banks of the Rhine and the Meuse; Burgundy - the territory of the former kingdom of the Burgundians. At the end of the 7th century Aquitaine stood out in the southwest. These four regions differed from each other in the ethnic composition of the population and the characteristics of the social system, and the degree of feudalization.

In Neustria, which was strongly Romanized by the time of the Frankish conquest, the Gallo-Romans, who made up a significant part of the population after the conquest, merged with the conquering Franks earlier than in other areas of the kingdom. Here, by the end of the 6th - beginning of the 7th century. great importance acquired large ecclesiastical and secular landownership and the process of the disappearance of the free peasantry was rapidly proceeding.

Austrasia, where the bulk of the population were the Franks and other Germanic tribes subject to them, and the influence of the Gallo-Roman orders was weak, until the beginning of the 8th century. retained a more perceptive system; here the Marka community decomposed more slowly, the allodist landowners continued to play an important role, being part of the Marka communities and forming the basis of the military militia. The emerging class of feudal lords was mainly represented by small and medium-sized feudal lords. Church landownership was less represented here than in Neustria.

In Burgundy and Aquitaine, where the Gallo-Roman population was also mixed with the Germanic (first with the Burgundians and Visigoths and then with the Franks), small free peasant and medium-sized landownership also remained for a long time. But at the same time, there were also large land holdings, especially church ones, and a free community already in the 6th century. disappeared almost everywhere.

These regions were weakly interconnected economically (at that time natural-economic relations dominated), which prevented their unification in one state. The kings from the Merovingian house, who headed these areas after the fragmentation of the Frankish state, waged a struggle for supremacy among themselves, which was complicated by continuous clashes between the kings and large landowners within each of the areas.

Unification of the country by majordoms of Austria

At the end of the 7th century the actual power in all areas of the kingdom was in the hands of the mayors. Initially, these were officials who headed the royal palace administration (majordomus - the head of the house, the household manager of the court). Then the mayordoms turned into the largest landowners. All management of each of the named areas of the kingdom was concentrated in their hands, and the mayor acted as the leader and military leader of the local landed aristocracy. The kings from the house of the Merovingians, who had lost all real power, were appointed and removed at the will of the mayors and received from their contemporaries the disparaging nickname "lazy kings."

After a long struggle among the Frankish nobility in 687, Major of Austrasia, Pepin of Herstal, became Major of the entire Frankish state. He succeeded because in Austrasia, where the process of feudalization was slower than in other parts of the kingdom, the mayordoms could rely on a fairly significant layer of small and medium feudal lords, as well as free allodists of the peasant type, interested in strengthening the central government to combat oppression. large landowners, to suppress the enslaved peasantry and to conquer new lands. With the support of these social strata, the mayordoms of Austrasia were able to reunite the entire Frankish state under their rule.