Homage

Abstract

The ceremony of homage has been seen as the central element of the traditional feudo-vassalic relationship: a vassal does homage to their lord and receives a fief in return for service. Because the Norman rulers of Sicily performed homage to the pope in the twelfth century—so the logic goes—they must have been vassals of the pope and the kingdom of Sicily a papal ‘fief’; land held only on papal sufferance. This chapter abandons those assumptions and examines the meaning and relevance of homages done to the pope within the chronicles and documents in which homage is mentioned. Homage fulfilled a wide range of possible meanings and uses.