The Counts of Toulouse and their Allies

The feudal system was not well developed in Occitania. The question of just how widespread it was is still hotly debated. French scholars (presumably victims of their early schooling) automatically assumed that French style feudalism was common throuout Europe. Indeed it seemed so obvious that they never really bothered to confirm it. Occitan scholars on the other hand make much of the small amount of evidence available, pointing out that practices varied extensively from one area to another, and that French style feudalism is evidenced only in few arguable cases - and in areas near to the regions under French control. (A sub-text here is that if conventional feudalism did not exist in Occitania, then French claims to the area would be even weaker than they are in any case).

Some have suspected that feudal hommage was avoided in Occitania because it involved swearing an oath (anathema to Cathars), but the fact seems to be that the feudal system was never fully developed in the Midi. At least a third of all land was in private hands outside any form of hierarchical system, and the normal relationship seems to have been not feudal but based on convientiae. As so often the Occitan word has no exact counterpart in French or English. In practice it amounted to a contract or treaty, freely entered into by individuals, for the exchange of services, guaranteeing rights and promising mutual aid in case of need. In contrast to liege-hommage the terms of these these contracts seem to have been individually negotiated rather than standardised and hereditary.

In France the system of primogeniture ensured that large powerful families tended to become more powerful over time. In Occitania, all sons, or sometimes all children shared equally in an inheritance, including lordships. Where a siegneurie in France would be inherited whole from one generation to the next in feudal France, a lordship in Occitania might be divided into numerous shares after a couple of generations. A Occitan noble might well own a twelfth, or in some cases a thirtieth, part of a castle, as did all his cousins.

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