Elizabeth A. R. Brown. "The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe." American Historical Review, 79 (June Dec 1974), 1063 1088.
Elizabeth Brown argues in this article that "feudalism" and "feudal system" are essentially modern intellectual constructs which we have chosen to apply to the Middle Ages, and that they have become barriers rather than avenues to our understanding of medieval life and institutions. Therefore, she argues, we should seek to abolish these all encompassing terms from our writing and thought about the medieval world.
Brown does not deny at all that there were relationships and institutions in the medieval world which should properly be called feudal. However, when we go on to talk about medieval society as a whole and characterize it as "feudalism" or a "feudal system," we immediately run into complications. Where, for example, was the purest feudalism to be found? In France? Germany? England? All fall short in one way or another. Medieval institutions varied from region to region and century to century. Is "feudalism" to be adopted as a convenient simplifying tag for the beginner or general student, to be abandoned in favor of a more sophisticated outlook at the graduate level? But then, aren't we teaching a deliberately misleading picture to students, a picture they will retain?
In her argument, Brown draws mainly on the writings of modern historians, and particularly on their treatment of "feudalism" and "feudal system" and the problem of introducing valid generalizations about medieval society. Her concern, in fact, is not the medieval era itself, but with the images and constructs by which we attempt to understand it.
Anne Llewellyn Barstow. Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: The Eleventh Century Debates. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982.
Priestly celebacy is an element of Catholic practice and doct...