“The castle, and all it
represents, will always be with us. Once it was born, once the stone was made
living, the repository of power made real, the idea could never be unmade.”
Early
European Castles: Aristocracy and Authority, AD 800-1200, by Oliver
Creighton.
I was made aware of this book via an email from Paul
Rosenberg at Freeman’s
Perspective. What piqued my interest
was a map (sourced from the book), depicting the castles of various kings,
lords, and nobles in Catalonia. If I
said that there were 200 such structures in this one province, I would probably
be understating the number.
Why do I find this interesting? Simply because it paints a picture of the
decentralized governance of Europe. I
have written of the law, the relationship of the kings and the Church, the
competing authorities, etc. – all evidence of this decentralization. But for many people, I suspect, a picture
paints a thousand words.
First, a bit of housekeeping: the term “castle” does not
come with a fixed definition, one equally applicable in all reaches of Europe
throughout all of the Middle Ages. Such
structures were not always military, were not always made from stone, did not
spread from some center in France to the outer regions, and did not always
signify the center of a feudal manor.
Second, castles represented a fundamental transformation in
the lives of the Germanic tribes who built them: they were no longer wandering;
they now put stakes in the ground, so to speak.
Status was marked by the structure, no longer by portable, personal
effects.
Finally, castle building was at its peak in the most
peaceful years of the period – once the threats and attacks from the Saracens,
Vikings, and Magyars were dealt with, castle-building thrived. If one looks only through a military lens,
this does not see reasonable. But if one
considers the required investment of time and resources, it seems wholly sound
– how, and why, would one invest such time and energy when the land under his
feet was not even secure?
Castles did represent the new aristocracy, signifying power
and authority. With the splintering of
the Carolingian Empire, authority inherently was decentralized – to counts and
viscounts, even further to lower lords.
While defense was one reason for the castle, social
competition was another. Another aspect
could be found in the tower: