Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 6. Feudalism. Decentralization of patrimonialism into political domination by an hierarchy of
free men
100
unable to train and to equip themselves
5
and when he has also no means to acquire an
army of slaves or mercenaries. In Western Europe the frankish feudal system was created in
defense against the Arabian cavalry, the princes taking the lands for fiefs from the church.
6
The obedience the lord can claim from his fief-holders is not based on the appropriation of
their persons, but on a personal fraternization contract. This contract binds the military honor
of the fief-holder, the vassal, to that of his lord, while the vassal is at the same time bound by
a personal duty of fealty, of personal piety - a piety which according to Weber can be
imagined as derived and isolated
7
from the piety a dependent in a (patriarchal) household
owes his master
8
. In Weber's view contradictory elements have been merged in the feudal
relationship; he conceptualizes this contradiction by defining the feudal relationship both as a
marginal case of patrimonialism - the vassal is also a patrimonial lord, although he is not as
powerful as the overlord - and as a marginal case of charismatic domination of the military-
charismatic leader over his 'Gefolgschaft'.
9
The feudal relationship therefore is
conceptualized as a peculiar merger of personal and impersonal elements: of personal fealty
and the 'contractual stipulation of rights and duties, their depersonalization by virtue of the
rent nexus, and finally hereditary control of the possession.'
10
Because of this charismatic element of feudalism Weber discusses charisma and its
routinization in his conceptual exposition before analyzing the feudal relationship. According
to Weber feudalism is a return to the old charismatic relations of the 'Gefolgschaft' which
develops when patrimonial lords are unable to recruit subjects for the army and the
administration. In his view the tradition-breaking aspects of such 'Gefolgschaft' groups, of
wandering military fraternities, have been crucial to the particular development of
'Occidental' societies.
2. The breach with kinship by charismatic robber bands and other military fraternizations
According to Weber the historical importance of wandering groups of robbers and
conquerors lies in their break with 'tradition'. 'Tradition' here can be interpreted in the sense
of 'that which has always been', 'das ewig Gestrigen' - thus in the sense of 'kinship
relations'
11
as well as in the sense of 'patriarchal' or 'patrimonial' domination. Bands of
robbers and
conquerors break both.
Weber states that a breach with kinship was the central factor responsible for the particular
course of Western history.
12
In particular around the Mediterranean, bands of adventurers,
5
ES p. 260, WG p. 152.
6
ES p. 1077, WG p. 630.
7
'losgelöst', ES p. 1070, WG p. 625.
8
'the piety *of children and servants', see ES p. 1009, WG p. 582.
9
ES p. 1070, WG p. 625.
10
ES p. 1074, WG p. 628. I will show later that a merger of personal and impersonal elements still is
characteristic for modern masculine relationships, see Ch. 10.
11
which in my view are matrilineal ones, since with the advent of patriarchy kinship as such ceases to be the
central structuring factor; individual appropriation and domination take its place.
12
See ES p. 1244, WG p. 745: 'The mercenary soldiering and the piratical life of the early period (of Western
Antiquity), the military adventures, and the numerous inland and overseas colony foundations, inevitably leading
to intimate permanent associations between tribal or at least clan strangers, seem with equal inevitability to have
broke the strength of the exclusive clan and magical ties.' In the marxist tradition the breaking of clan ties is also
considered a decisive influence on the particular Western developments, see for instance Engels (1884) Ch. V,
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