In the 16th century some students of the law and customs of the fief declared that feudal institutions were universal and maintained that feudal systems had existed in Rome, Persia, and Judaea. Historians and philosophers were persuaded that if the universe operated systematically, so too must societies. Those who formulated the concept of feudalism were affected by the search for simplicity and order in the universe associated with the work of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) and especially Isaac Newton (1642-1727). This period was later dubbed an age of "bastard feudalism" because of the use of salaries and written contracts between lords and dependents. Later rulers who adopted and adapted feudal institutions to increase their power were labeled "feudal" and their governments called "feudal monarchies." Despite the survival of institutions and practices associated with the medieval feudal system in the 17th century, historians of that time presented medieval feudalism and the feudal system as declining in importance in the 14th and 15th centuries. In the 17th century, as later, the high point of feudalism was located in the 11th century. A variety of Roman, barbarian, and Carolingian institutions were considered antecedents of feudal practices: Roman lordship and clientage, barbarian war chiefdoms and bands, grants of lands to soldiers and to officeholders, and oaths of loyalty and fidelity. Although Charlemagne may seem an anomaly in this evolution, he was presented as "sowing the seeds" from which feudalism emerged. The feudal construct neatly filled the gap between the 5th and the 12th century. The Roman Empire and the various emperors' accomplishments provided a key to understanding Roman history, and the reemergence of states and strong rulers in the 12th century again furnished manageable focal points for historical narrative, particularly since medieval states and governmental practices can be presented as antecedents of modern nations and institutions. The terms feudalism and feudal system enabled historians to deal summarily with a long span of European history whose complexities were-and remain-confusing. The feudal states were not contiguous but rather were scattered at strategic locations surrounded by potentially dangerous and hostile lands. Use of the terms associated with feudum to denote the essential characteristics of the early Middle Ages has invested the fief with exaggerated prominence and placed undue emphasis on the importance of a special mode of land tenure to the detriment of other, more significant aspects of social, economic, and political life. They were derived from the Latin words feudum ("fief") and feodalitas (services connected with the fief), both of which were used during the Middle Ages and later to refer to a form of property holding. The expressions féodalité and feudal system were coined by the beginning of the 17th century, and the English words feudality and feudalism (as well as feudal pyramid) were in use by the end of the 18th century. They refer to what those who invented them perceived as the most significant and distinctive characteristics of the early and central Middle Ages. Feudalism and the related term feudal system are labels invented long after the period to which they were applied. Feudalism, also called feudal system or feudality, French féodalité, historiographic construct designating the social, economic, and political conditions in western Europe during the early Middle Ages, the long stretch of time between the 5th and 12th centuries.
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