Vassal homage and oath of fealty

Vassal homage and oath of fealty was the ritual through which a vassal pledged service to a lord, binding landholding and military obligation into a personal relationship. The vassal knelt, placed his clasped hands between his lord’s, declared, “Lord, I become your man,” then rose, received a kiss on the mouth, and swore lifelong service. The ceremony made hierarchy visible, but it also established obligations that connected lords to their own overlords and held the feudal order together.

The Ritual and Its Meaning

A vassal was any man sworn to serve another. The relationship formed part of a chain of service: as peasants served local lords, those lords served their overlords. A minor lord might hold one or two fiefs, while a count or duke might possess many. These lands were held in exchange for service, so the oath joined a personal pledge to the tenure of property and the duties attached to it.

The gestures gave the bond its formal shape. Kneeling and clasping hands placed the vassal before the lord; the spoken declaration named the relationship; the kiss and oath completed the ceremony. The text describes these rituals as cementing mutual bonds. The arrangement was hierarchical rather than equal, but it was not represented as a one-sided act of submission: service flowed upward through successive relationships of lordship and vassalage.

Duties in Practice

The account of Jean de Carrouges and his father shows what followed the ceremony. Both men did homage to Count Robert of Perche, attending his court over the next decade, yielding their annual rents, helping enforce his decrees, and answering his military call-ups against the English. Fealty thus entailed more than a formulaic oath: it connected court attendance, revenue, the execution of a lord’s authority, and military service.

Military obligations also operated amid practical calculations of income and opportunity. By 1380, Jean commanded a troop of squires in campaigns in Normandy, where he sought booty and prisoners for ransom as well as distinction. When he later wished to join an expedition, he asked Count Pierre of Alençon to release him from his regular military service; the count granted the request. The episode shows a lord’s authority over a vassal’s service, as well as the possibility that the obligation could be adjusted by permission. Campaign service could also be separately accounted for: at Sluys on May 8, 1385, Jean and the nine squires under his command were recorded as present and paid 320 livres for two months’ service.

A Change of Lord

The bond could be redirected when political circumstances changed. Count Robert died without an heir in 1377, and under feudal law his lands and castles reverted to his overlord. The king granted Perche to Robert’s older brother, Count Pierre of Alençon. Jean and his father consequently became bound to a new lord: they had to do homage to Pierre and swear fealty, placing their lives and destinies substantially under his control.

This succession makes clear that homage was not simply a once-in-a-lifetime rite attached permanently to a particular estate. When lordship changed, the vassals’ personal allegiance had to be formally renewed with the new holder of authority. The episode also reveals how dependent a vassal’s position could be on larger transfers of land and power: the Carrouges men continued within the same feudal hierarchy, but their immediate obligations and political fortunes now ran through a different lord.

Fealty and Other Oaths

The book distinguishes fealty from the oaths sworn in a judicial duel, even while noting a ritual resemblance. In the duel, the combatants’ final oath echoed mutual oaths such as those of marriage and vassalage, but they joined left hands rather than right, marking their bond as hostile. The comparison underscores what homage was meant to establish: not a contest between adversaries, but a pledged relation of service and allegiance.

The oath’s importance lay in making that relation publicly legible and binding. Its repeated performance, first between the Carrouges men and Count Robert and then with Count Pierre, shows fealty as both a personal commitment and a working structure of feudal government. Land, revenue, court service, and military duty met in the act of homage, which turned an abstract hierarchy into obligations enacted between particular people.