The Emperor Lothar 840-55 Massacre of St. Brice’s Day 1002 William, Duke of Normandy 1035-87 William, King of England 1066-87 Edward the Confessor 1042-66 Domesday Book 1086 Pope Leo IX 1048-54 Battle of Civitate 1053 Pope Nicholas II 1058-61 Robert, Duke of Apulia 1060-85 Roger II, King of Naples 1130 X FEUDALISM AND MONASTICISM FEUDALISM Wherever in the course of history men have gathered together they have gradually evolved some form of association that would ensure mutual interests. It might be merely the tribal bond of the Arabians, by which a man’s relations were responsible for his acts and avenged his wrongs; it might be a council of village elders such as the Russian ‘Mir’, making laws for the younger men and women; it might be a group of German chiefs legislating on moonlit nights, according to the description of Tacitus, by their camp fires. In contrast to primitive associations stands the elaborate government of Rome under Augustus and his successors; the despotic Emperor, his numberless officials, the senators with their huge estates, the struggling _curiales_, the army of legions carrying out the imperial commands from Scotland to the Euphrates. When Rome fell, her government, like a house whose foundations have collapsed, fell also. Barbarian conquerors, established in Italy and the Roman provinces, took what they liked of the laws that they found, added to them their own customs, and out of the blend evolved new codes of legislation. Yet legislation, without some method of ensuring its execution, could not save nations from invasion nor the merchant or peasant from becoming the victim of robberies and petty crimes. Mediaeval centuries are sometimes called the Age of Feudalism, because during this time feudalism was the method gradually adopted for dealing with the problems of public life amongst all classes in nearly all the nations of Europe. There are two chief things to be remembered about feudalism--first that it was no sudden invention but a growth out of old ideas both Roman and barbarian, and next that it was intimately connected in men’s minds with the thought of land. This was natural, for after all, land or its products are as necessary to the life of every individual as air and water, and therefore the cultivation of the soil and the distribution of its fruits are the first problems with which governments are faced.