VALVASSORE. — Usually it means “vassal of a vassal,” but the term had a somewhat different meaning according to the periods and ages. In Italy, etymologically, the vassi vassorum were called v., that is, the vassals of the royal vassals, those who in the 10th century were called milites secundi ordinis.
However, in the Edict De beneficis of 1037 issued by Corrado II, reference is made to the nostris maioribus valvasoribus et eorum militibus, that is, to those vassals who in the same document are called seniores in competition with their milites; Corrado II also distinguishes there between maiores valvasores and minores valvasores: the cases involving the maiores were settled before the king’s tribunal, those involving the minores before the tribunal of the seniores. Thus one reads of the usus maiorum valvasorum in dandi equis et armis suis senioribus. Accordingly, after the bishops, abbots, marquises, and counts, there was a feudal class divided into valvasores maiores and minores. The former are those who later appear under the name capitanei; the latter more properly retained the name V. In the Consuetudines feudales of the 12th century, after the dux, the marchio, and the comes, the valvasor maior occupies the next place in the feudal hierarchy: he is one who has been invested feudally by the prince or another authority with a parish church or part of one, and who is now called capitaneus qui proprie valvasor maior olim dicebatur. Those who held a fief from the capitani, on the other hand, were called V. Those who held from the V. a fief that the latter had received from the capitani were called valvasini id est minores valvasores. According to the Libri feudorum, these did not possess a true grant of a feudal character. For when the V. children, the fief that he had granted to the valvasino reverted to the capitano. Now, however, say the Libri feudorum, referring to their own time (the middle of the 12th century), the valvasini in the Curia (tribunal) of Milan enjoyed the same rights as the V. France, in the 12th century, V. was the free man who fought with limited light arms; in Normandy and England, the free man liable for military service but who was not to be enrolled among the vassals. Thus terra valvassani is the fief held by a knight of inferior rank, with obligations of rent and corvées.
stor. e dir., Milano 1915; M. Bloch, La société féodale, 2 voll., Parigi 1939-40.