Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/693

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 677

This was the center around which the other parts of what we call the French nationality successively attached themselves. This center was necessarily more stable than these outer portions. They continued to fluctuate in various directions.

In 1032 the kingdom of Burgundy was attached to the Ger- man Empire. Lorraine, instead of two duchies, formed hence- forth only one. About the same period it also became German. The duchy of Burgundy, at first attached to the crown of France, was again detached from it in favor of the younger brother of the king. Even from the political point of view, the feudal regime was always at bottom a demesnial organization of property, according to a hierarchical order whose divisions were very intri- cate, like those of landed estates themselves. The seigneurial domains, although united under a common ownership, might be situated at a distance from one another; for some of them one might be vassal, and for others lord paramount. And this was the situation even in the case of kings. There were also ecclesi- astical, episcopal, and abbatial seigniories, where spiritual power was confused with temporal sovereignty. None of these divisions had water-courses or mountains for boundaries. The ecclesi- astical divisions of France, moreover, had no direct relation to the seigniories of the bishops and the abbots. From the time of Charlemagne there had been eighteen of these divisions ; in gen- eral, they corresponded to the Roman provinces of the time of Theodoric and of Honorius. Even the greater part of the dioceses were identical in point of territory with the cities of the fourth century, whose names they had preserved.

In the twelfth century the royal domain was augmented ; new territories and populations attached themselves to the central skeleton, increasing the fixity and the solidity of the structure. The domain was carried to the northeast as far as the Epte, to the south to Cher ; toward the southeast it extended into the basins of the Loing and the Yonne. This extension was brought about oftenest by purchase, inheritance, and marriage. The alienations, on the other hand, were rare and of little importance. At the accession of Henry Platagenet to the throne of England in 1 1 54, the situation was of the highest sociological interest, and shows