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
102
3. Feudalism as the affiliation of free men with patrimonial power; fusion of contradictory
patriarchal and charismatic aspects
Weber's analysis of 'free feudalism' can be understood as another instance
of the process in which free men affiliate themselves with powerful patrimonial lords. In free
feudalism the knights are 'hierarchically gradated'; yet they form a separate stratum 'above
the mass of freemen, forming a unit against them'. These free men not only share the
prestige of the lord, they also retain their own honor; the fealty contract does not diminish
their honor, but reinforces it.
17
Yet for them too affiliation provides 'the only basis for the
legitimacy of their own fief'.
18
Like the contract with a free man who becomes a patrimonial 'familiaris', the feudal contract
is a status contract; but while the first patrimonial officials had yet to fight for their material
freedom by appropriating benefices and making these hereditary, this contract brings about
a fraternization between formally free men
19
; Weber emphasizes the difference in
contractual foundation and its consequences for the respective positions of the vassal and
the patrimonial official. The emancipated office holder is 'a simple usufructuary or rentier
who had certain official duties and was to that extent akin to the bureaucratic officials'. The
free vassal, on the contrary, 'is subject to a very *tense
20
code of duties and honor', of which
his servant's piety is a part
21
:
'The warrior's sense of honor and the servant's faithfulness are both inseparably connected with the dignity and
conventions of a ruling stratum and buttressed by them
.'
22
The obligations the lord can impose upon his vassals are constrained by codes of honor as
well; they therefore become, in Weber's term, 'stereotyped', fixed.
23
Weber on the one hand constructs a sharp contrast between the position of the ministeriales
and that of the vassals, suggesting that the contradictions between patrimonial dependence
and charismatic (or: 'routinized charismatic') elements in the position of the vassals are
resolved ('merged', 'inseparably connected'), while the position of the
ministeriales remains contradictory. On the other hand, however, he states that the position
and the activities of the ministeriales were transformed once knights began to enter into the
patrimonial service; thus in the long run the two groups became identical.
24
17
'commendation is not submission to patriarchal authority, though its forms are borrowed from it', ES p. 1072,
WG p. 626.
18
ES p. 1078, WG p. 631.
19
ES p. 255, 260 (transl. 'personal loyalty'), WG p. 148, 151 ('Verbrüderungskontrakt').
20
'hochgespannte', ES p. 1074, WG p. 628.
21
ES p. 1074, WG p. 628.
22
ES p. 1078, WG p. 630/1.
23
ES p. 1075, WG p. 628.
24
In Ch. 6,7 I will show that Weber's construction of contrasting and identical characteristics of ministeriales and
vassals occupies an important place in his account of the further developments of the 'Ständestaat'. He bases
this account on a supposed contrast between English feudalism and German patrimonialism, neglecting the fact
that this contrast amounts to a gradual difference at the most, since in his own analysis both types of domination
share a great many characteristics.
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