Men were also divided into groups, ranged one above the other, according to occupation, degree of power or prestige. (How such a distinctive structure arose and developed, what were the events and the mental climate that influenced its growth, what it owed to borrowings from a remoter past, we have endeavoured to show in Book I.) In the societies to which the epithet ‘feudal’ is traditionally applied, however, the lives of individuals were never regulated exclusively by these relationships of strict subjection or direct authority. THE most characteristic feature of the civilization of feudal Europe was the network of ties of dependence, extending from top to bottom of the social scale. He had previously built up a formidable reputation for early monographs on French rural life and for a wide range of studies on topics as varied as the decline of ancient slavery and the miracle of kingly powers of the Capetian kings. Bloch’s status as the doyen of modern medievalists was not, of course, limited solely to Feudal Society (the second volume of which first appeared in 1940).
In his foreword to the first edition of the English translation, published in 1961, Professor Michael Postan could describe the work as ‘the standard international treatise on feudalism’ and launch a spirited eulogy of Bloch’s scientific approach (‘positivistic in the proper sense of the terms’), of his broad concept and of his commitment to the study of mentalities and the w link- human environment’.1 The work had an impact on the medieval, the non-historical specialist, the student, and the general reader w Inch is unparalleled by any other work on the Middle Ages. One of the outstanding historical works of modern times’, ‘a classic’ and 'a vital work of synthesis’ are some of the accolades lavished on Marc Minch’s Feudal Society.
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