The Spirit of Laws by M. de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu Volume 2

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ... security which was called firmitas;* but this could not be an homage, since the kings gave it to another, f And though the abbot SugerJ makes mention of a chair of Dagobert, in which according to the testimony of antiquity, the kings of France were accustomed to receive the homage of the nobility; it is plain that he expresses himself agreeably to the ideas and language of his own time. "When the fiefs descended to the heirs, the acknowledgment of the vassal, which at first was only an occasional service, became a regular duty, It was performed in a more solemn manner, and attended with more formalities because it was to be a perpetual monument of the reciprocal duties of the lord and vassal. I should be apt to think, that homages began to be established under King Pepin, which is the time I mentioned that several benefices were given in perpetuity, but I should not think thus without caution, and only upon a supposition that the authors of the ancient annals of the Franks were not ignorant pretenders, who in describing the fealty professed byTassillon, duke of Bavaria, to King Pepin, spoke according to the usages of their own time. Chap. XXXIV.-- The same Subject continued. When the fiefs were either precarious or for life, they seldom had a relation to any other than the political laws; for which reason in the civil institutions of those times there is very little mention made of the law of fiefs. But when they were become hereditary, when there was a power of giving, selling, and bequeathing them, they had a relation both to the political and the civil laws. The fief, considered as an obligation of performing military service, depended on the political law; considered as a kind of commercial property, it depended on the civil...