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A vassal (also called feodary or fedary), in the terminology that both preceded and accompanied the feudalism of medieval Europe, is one who enters into mutual obligations with a monarch, usually of military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain guarantees, which came to include the terrain held as a fief.[1] By analogy it is applied to similar systems in other feudal societies. It was always distinct from fidelitas, sworn loyalty of subject to king,[2] and the honor, the respect and consideration that accrued to the vassal, unlike the delegated power of a comes or count, was not expressed in expectations of related public duty.[3] In fully-developed vassalage, a commendation ceremony, composed of homage and fealty with solemnity adapted from formulas of Christian sacraments eventually made its appearance. Such elegant refinements were not in evidence at the outset, however according to Eginhard's brief description, the commendatio made to Pippin in 757 by Tassilo, duke of Bavaria, involved the relics of Saint Denis, Saint Rusticus and Saint Éleuthère, Saint Martin and Saint Germain, which had apparently been assembled at Compiègne for the event [1]. They all lived at one time or another. At the commendatio, "the vassal thereupon fell under the charismatic power, pagan in origin, of the lord his mundeburdium or mainbour, true power, at once possessive and protective" (Rouche 1987, p 429). Under the influence of the "mainbour" all previous social differentiations fell away, in a restructing of social obligations that was radically new (Rouche 1987 p 429ff). The development of the vassal, in a society that was increasingly organised around the concept of "lordship"— in French the seigneur— provides one of the threads by which the onlooker can see the Early Middle Ages evolving out of Late Antiquity.[4] Lordship is the basic social institution of the uprooted Germanic societies, as Tacitus described them in Germania and the Roman West experienced them firsthand in the Migrations Period. The irreducible unit within these "tribes", which were in fact often assemblages of mixed culture (see Alamanni), was the comitatus or gefolge, "the Germanic war band as described by Tacitus and in Beowulf... based on the loyalty of warriors to their chieftain." (Cantor 1993 p.197) A similar Roman institution, in the social disorder of the 5th and 6th centuries, was the patrocinium, commonly translated by the French term "clientage". The court-like followers who gathered of a morning in the hall of a great Roman personage in the early Empire had devolved into a gang of young "enforcers" grouped round the charismatic figure of a patricius. This word too had changed from its more familiar original meaning, now to denote a military commander the careers of Stilicho or Aëtius give examples of a patricius of the 5th century. By contrast, an apparent comparable example from the East, like the general Belisarius, still bore the aura of imperial legitimacy that the Western warlords could afford to ignore.
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