Plural of alody; pieces of land held in absolute ownership without feudal obligations or duties.
Plural of alody, from Medieval Latin allodium via Frankish *alod (full or free property). The term emerged in early medieval legal systems to distinguish truly free holdings from conditional feudal grants.
Alodies represented the absolute opposite of feudalism—patches of land where someone could truly do whatever they wanted because they answered to no one. Nobles and monasteries fought hard to convert feudal holdings into alodies.
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