Enfeoffed

In early Zhou times, the charater guo, which in modern Chinese means "state," "nation," or "country," not only denoted an enfeoffed territory but also meant the walled city where the seat of the head of the fief resided.seat of the head of the fief resided.

He, too, was a knight, possessing quit-rents, a mill, and some woodland; his brothers held their share of an enfeoffed inheritance from him, according to the system of inheritance which was practised among the nobility; his wife was 'Dame Mary, the steward's lady'.

This is an understanding unique from that of all other major commentators, who argued that it referred to an official in charge of supervising the boundary of an enfeoffed land.

Here, the disrespect shown the Son of Heaven by one or more enfeoffed lords is evident.

By the time of the Nibelungenlied the word was used to denote a wide variety of usually ecclesiastic or royal administrators, from the lowest, unfree ministerial to an enfeoffed judge.

It was superimposed on rules of conduct evolved at an earlier date as the spontaneous expression of class consciousness; rules that pertained to the fealty of vassals (the transition appears clearly, towards the end of the eleventh century, in the Book of the Christian Life by Bishop Bonizo of Sutri, for whom the knight is, first and foremost, an enfeoffed vassal ) and constituted above all a class code of noble and 'courteous' people.