‘Benefactoria’ and the formation of feudal networks in tenth- to twelfth-century Leon and Castile

Abstract

This paper examines and evaluates the social networks that typified the feudal system. Using tenth- to twelfth-century documents, it explores the institution of benefactoria and the associated concepts of beneficium, servitium, prestimonium, and feudum in order to approach the subject of lordship: personal lordship at its most elementary, distinguished from other forms of power such as public jurisdiction or private property. Benefactoria and its associated concepts played a key role not only during the formative period of Leonese and Castilian lordship, but also in its subsequent development as a territorial institution. This paper argues that lordship, the definitive power-structure of the feudal system, was established and widely disseminated through the agreement of benefactoria pacts. These pacts, which enshrined the exchange of services for ‘protection’, were established between individuals and institutions that were socially unequal, and extended throughout free society, from the level of the king to that of the humblest peasants. In this sense, all free men were homines de benefactoria, linked together through private relationships of domination and submission, lordship and servitude: the inhabitants of properties that were specifically designated as behetrías simply represented a more partial and restrictive expression of the original concept of benefactoria. The pace and intensity of the processes that determined the formation and development of feudalism in León and Castile were marked by the spread of this type of social relationship, which was therefore both a defining factor and a catalyst within that system.