Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 5 Expansion of patriarchy by decentralization and affiliation. Political patrimonialism as
masculine domination by an hierarchy of unfree men
95
voluntarily to patriarchal power and thus become a 'familiaris' [household dependent] or
'child'
24
of the prince, as was obligatory in patrimonial states throughout the Middle Ages.
25
Although patrimonial states have existed everywhere in the world, Weber here focuses on
specific 'Occidental' developments. 'Free' men with a knightly lifestyle existed only in the
West, as a consequence of developments - in particular those of the breaking of kin ties and
the creation of feudalism - he will describe in his typification of 'free feudalism'. The particular
position of the patrimonial officials in the Western European Middle Ages cannot be
understood without a knowledge of these developments, since the entry of free men into
patrimonial service reinforced the ambiguity of the position of the officials.
The 'free men' try to retain their knightly lifestyle; the officials of unfree origin also strive for
independence and in the long run tend to form 'status groups set off from the ruled'.
26
They
are able to do so because they share in the power of the ruler; the mightier the ruler, the
mightier his official is vis-a-vis the ruled: by submitting to the ruler he has become an
extension of him. In Weber's words:
'the position of the patrimonial official derives from his purely personal submission to the ruler, and his position
vis-a-vis the subjects is merely the external aspect of this relation
.'
27
The patrimonial officials therefore struggle continuously to free themselves of the patrimonial
aspects of their position: they do not want to be appropriated - they want to appropriate.
They therefore try to monopolize their offices and form a closed status group.
28
Then they
can differentiate the 'higher, courtly, administrative services and liturgies' which 'later come
to be considered worthy also of a free man', from all those tasks which are considered
dishonorable.
29
In this way certain activities of the higher officials become honorable and
'manly', the 'ministeriales' taking over the positive status of the originally free men 'adhering
to a knightly style of life'
30
and 'everywhere in the Occident, and especially in England' finally
becoming 'absorbed as equals by the knightly stratum.'
31
24
ES p. 1026, WG p. 594/5; see also ES p. 266 (WG p. 155): or a 'puer regis', 'king's boy', as in the Carolingian
system.
25
'On the other hand, free men derived such great advantages from serving a lord that they accepted the at first
inevitable submission to the ruler's personal power. For whenever possible, the ruler insisted that officials of
extrapatrimonial origin accept the same personal dependency as the officials recruited from unfree men.' 'The
free men who became ministeriales in Germany surrendered their land to the lord and received it back from him
as service land suitably enlarged.'
26
ES p. 1026, WG p. 594.
27
and: towards the ruled 'he partakes in the ruler's dignity because and insofar he is personally subject to the
ruler's authority ('Herrengewalt')'.
28
Regulation measures on the part of the ruler reinforced the formation of legally autonomous status groups, ES
p. 1027, WG p. 595.
29
'The sordida munera and opera servilia of the manorial or personal dependents are everywhere differentiated,
in late Antiquity as well during the Middle Ages, from those higher, courtly, administrative services and liturgies
which devolve upon the ministeriales and which, at least in the service of great lords, later come to be considered
worthy also of a free man.'
30
'After the extensive debates on the origin of the ministeriales it no longer seems doubtful today that they came
at first from unfree strata; but it also seems certain that their rise as a status group was due to the massive influx
of free men adhering to a knightly style of life.'
31
'In practice this meant that their position was largely stereotyped and that therefore the lord's claims were firmly
limited; once this had happened it stood to reason that the ruler could demand of them only services
conventionally befitting a knightly status group and that in general he had to adhere to the proper status
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