Various considerations suggested to Frankish rulers
and nobles the expediency of endowing these followers with land, and of
granting land to no tenant unless he would take the vassal's oath. Usually land
was the only form of pay which the lord could give; and it always served as a
material guarantee of faithful service, since it could be resumed whenever the
vassal made default. In days when law and morality availed little as the
sanctions of contracts, the landlord naturally desired to bind his tenant to
him by a personal obligation; and there were obvious advantages in providing
that every tenant should be liable to aid his lord with arms. The estates
granted to vassals were known as benefices (beneficia); they
foreshadowed the lay-fief of later times. But there are some distinctions to be
drawn.
The benefice was not de jure heritable; it escheated on the death
of either lord or tenant. The service was not measured with the same precision
as in later times. The military duties of the beneficed vassal were not
different in kind or degree from those of the ordinary freemen. Finally, the
idea had not yet arisen that vassals were superior in status to the rest of the
community. The importance of the vassal depended entirely on his wealth and his
rank in the King's employ. Only in the old age of the Carolingian Empire, when
the class of free landowners, acknowledging no lord, had been almost ground out
of existence by official oppression and the intolerable burden of military
service, was the burden of national defence thrown entirely upon vassals. Then,
as the sole military class in the community, they acquired the consideration
which, in early stages of social development, is the monopoly of those who are
trained to arms.
