Origins of European Feudalism
The origins of feudal institutions may be found in both Roman and German life. According to Tacitus, when a German war chief planned a campaign, he gathered about him a group of picked warriors which was called his comitatus. These men swore absolute fidelity and obedience to the chief in return for arms, food, clothing, and a share in the plunder. The German chieftains who set themselves up as kings in the Roman Empire had similar bands of sworn followers. The Frankish kings called the comitatus a truste and its members antrustiones. The Saxon kings were surrounded by bands of thanes. Thus the practice of a warrior binding himself by an oath to follow a chief in war was well established among the Germanic peoples. The Romans had a somewhat similar institution, the clientela. When a Roman freed a slave, the freedman usually remained a dependent of his former master, a cliens. Poor freemen might seek the protection of a senator by becoming his clients. In the latter years of the Roman Empire in the West the comitatus and the clientele tended to become merged into one institution. The great Roman nobles hired bands of German warriors to serve as their bodyguards. These warriors were known as bucellarii. Now the Roman senator may well have thought of his bucellarii as soldier-clients, but the Germans were more likely to consider themselves members of a comitatus. The bucellarii played an extremely important part in the wars of the fifth century [C.E.]: a large part of Belisarius‘ army was composed of his bucellarii. It seems clear that we have in these various Roman, German, and Romano-German institutions the prototype of the relationship between lord and vassal.
— Mediaeval Society, pp. 12-13
