Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/167

 FfiTIS FEUDAL SYSTEM 159 fights, and gross licentiousness. The priests form a separate society, with hereditary dig- nity, property, and privileges. They have in particular the right of retaining the slaves who come to them, or, as they call it, present their bodies to the fetich. The limits of the term fetichism are yet unsettled, as some exclude from it the worship of forests, mountains, rivers, &c., and all such as are made to resem- ble the human form. FETIS, Francois Joseph, a Belgian composer and writer on music, born in Mons, March 25, 1784, died in Brussels, March 27, 1871. His father was an organist, and at the age of ten he was engaged as organist in his native town. Subsequently, after taking lessons from the most eminent teachers in Paris, he travelled in Germany and Italy, and made himself familiar with the works of the great masters of those countries. He returned to Paris in 1806, mar- ried a rich woman, and devoted himself to the study of the history of music, especially of that of the middle ages. In 1813, a reverse of fortune obliging him to return to the prac- tice of his profession, he became organist and teacher of music at Douai, and in 1818 was appointed professor in the conservatory of Paris, and soon after published his Traite du contrepoint et de la fugue. In 1827 he found- ed the first journal devoted to musical criti- cism that had appeared in France, the Revue musicale, which he edited till 1835. At the same time he was pursuing his researches upon the theory of harmony, writing articles for various periodicals, and volumes upon the his- tory and curiosities of music, and composing operas and pieces of sacred music. In 1832 he began his historical concerts, which have since found imitators in Germany and England. In 1833 the king of Belgium appointed him chapel master and director of the royal conservatory of Brussels. In 1864 he superintended the production of Meyerbeer's opera L" 1 Africaine, in accordance with a direction in the will of the composer. His own most successful opera was La vieille, which was performed for 100 t nights. As a writer on musical history he is unrivalled, and his works on almost every topic connected with music are numerous. His prin- cipal writings are : Biographie universelle des musiciens, et fiibliographie generate de la mu- sique, preceded by an epitome of the history of music (8 vols., Brussels, 1835-'44) ; Traite complet de la theorie et de la pratique de Vhar- monie, contenant la doctrine de la science et de Vart (Paris, 1853) ; and a sketch of Meyerbeer in the Revue contemporaine (Paris, 1859). His son EDOFAED FRANQOIS Louis, born at Bou- vines, May 12, 1816, was appointed in 1838 conservator of the royal library of Brussels, and is the author of Les musiciens beiges (2 vols., 1848), Les artistes beiges' d Vetranger (vols. i. and ii., 1858), &c. FElTHEREvS, Sophie de, baroness, mistress of the last prince of Cond6 (Louis Henri Joseph, duke de Bourbon), born in the Isle of Wight 318 VOL. vii. 11 about 1795, died in England, Jan. 2, 1841. She was the daughter of a fisherman named Clarke, represented herself as the widow of a Mr. Dawes, and is believed to have been on the stage; but the accounts of her life are conflicting until about 1817, when she became the mistress of the prince of Conde. At his instigation she married in 1818 the baron Adolphe de Feucheres, who became a member of his household, when the prince settled upon her 72,000 francs per annum. In 1822 she was divorced from the baron. She exercised over Oonde an almost unbounded influence. In 1824 he presented her with the domains of Boissy and St. Leu, and in 1825 with 1,000,000 francs, besides leaving her 2,000,000 by his will, dated Aug. 30, 1829. A year afterward (Aug. 27, 1830) the prince was found hanging in his room, under circumstances which fixed the suspicions of his relatives upon the baroness, and also upon Louis Philippe; for in order to ingratiate herself with the Orleans family she is said to have prevailed upon the prince to bequeath the bulk of his large fortune to his godson, the duke d'Aumale, a disposition which just before his death he seemed inclined to revoke in favor of the count de Chambord. His relatives accused her of having murdered the prince, and insisted upon a judicial investi- gation; but nothing could be proved against her, and the prince's death was ascribed to suicide. (See Histoire complete du proces rela- tif d la mart et au testament du due de Bour- lon, Paris, 1832.) She left her immense for- tune to her niece, Mile. Sophie Tanceron. The baron de Feucheres gave to the hospitals of Paris his whole share in the property of his former wife. FEUDAL SYSTEM, the name given to the con- dition of society that prevailed in Europe during the middle ages. Its germs were probably Asia- tic, and in Asia, though never so fully developed, it has outlasted the system established in Eu- rope. It had the firmest existence in France, Germany, Aragon, a large part of Italy, Eng- land after the conquest, and Scotland, while other European countries were more or less influenced by it. The system grew up in Eu- rope from the 5th to the 9th century, and was the consequence of the perpetual struggle of civilization against barbarism. Like all systems that have lived for any great length of time, it had a progressive formation. The struggle out of which it grew began with the fall of the imperial authority in so many parts of the Ro- man empire ; and when feudalism had estab- lished itself, the way had been prepared for a far greater advance toward the establishment of civilization. In France, feudalism was brought into a rude but intelligible form in the 10th century, and " the feudal period " is held to synchronize with the ten generations during which the throne of that country was held by the elder branch of the Capet family, 987-1328. For some generations previous to the extinc- tion of the Carlovingian dynasty it had had a