Seigneurial predation in the late medieval feud

Abstract

This article challenges the ‘from-lordship-to-government’ model of the grand narrative of European state formation through a reconceptualization of the late medieval German feud and lordship (1300–1500). It demonstrates how the predatory lordship of the feudal revolution persisted in late medieval imperial lands by centring on how modalities of extractive violence linked the lordly feud and lordship together in a system of seigneurial violence. It thus returns to Gadi Algazi’s controversial thesis that seigneurial lordship was a protection racket enabled by the omnipresent potential of the feud’s lordly violence. The author proposes that an overlooked body of evidence, damage registers (Schadensverzeichnisse), provides the evidence necessary for confirming and broadening Algazi’s insights. Through an archival collection of these documents, the author elucidates how this late medieval system of seigneurial violence was typified by a continuum of extractive violence from plundering to the levying of tribute and protection. In doing so, the author highlights how this system of seigneurial violence, lordship, and late medieval advances in governance held the potential to work together in far more complex ways than the ‘from-lordship-to-government’ narrative acknowledges.