Includes index.

Bibliography: pages 200-250.

which must be drawn from the literature which we have just been examining, and our judgment is only confirmed when we turn to the strictly feudal literature. The feudal obligation may have once been conceived of as one of unconditional personal loyalty, but, as we find it in the feudal law books of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it is clear that this loyalty was limited and conditioned by the principle of the necessary fidelity of lord as well as of vassal to the mutual and legal obligations which each had undertaken.
Manegold may express the principle in one way, John of Salisbury in another, and the authors of the Assizes of Jeru-salem in a third, but their meaning is the same. Manegold speaks of deposing the ruler who has broken his contract, John of Salisbury of the lawfulness of slaying the tyrant, the authors of the Assizes of refusing to discharge any of their feudal obligations to the lord who refuses to do justice to his vassal according to the law and the judgment of the court; the forms of expression are different but the principle is the same. The mediæval conception of contract is not a speculation of a pseudo-historical kind, related to some original agreement upon which political society was founded, but rather a natural and legitimate conclusion from the principle of the election or recognition of the ruler by the community, and the mutual oaths of the ceremony of coronation; it is an agreement to observe the law and to administer and maintain justice.

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