Part 24 (1/2)

There was little town life in western Europe before the twelfth century.

The Roman towns were decreasing in population before the German inroads.

The confusion which followed the invasions hastened their decline, and a great number of them disappeared altogether. Those which survived and such new towns as sprang up were, to judge from the chronicles, of very little importance during the early Middle Ages. We may a.s.sume, therefore, that during the long period from Theodoric to Frederick Barbarossa by far the greater part of the population of England, Germany, and northern and central France were living in the country, on the great estates belonging to the feudal lords, abbots, and bishops.[155]

[Sidenote: The manor, or vill.]

These mediaeval estates were called _vills_, or _manors_, and closely resembled the Roman villas described in an earlier chapter. A portion of the estate was reserved by the lord for his own use; the rest of it was divided up among the peasants,[156] usually in long strips, of which each peasant had several scattered about the manor. The peasants were generally serfs who did not own their fields, but could not, on the other hand, be deprived of them so long as they worked for the lord and paid him certain dues. They were attached to the land and went with it when it changed hands. The serfs were required to till those fields which the lord reserved for himself and to gather in his crops. They might not marry without their lord's permission. Their wives and children rendered such a.s.sistance as was necessary in the manor house.

In the women's buildings the daughters of the serfs engaged in spinning, weaving, sewing, baking, and brewing, thus producing clothes, food, and drink to be used by the whole community.

[Ill.u.s.tration: An English Manor House, Thirteenth Century]

[Sidenote: The obligations of the serfs.]

We get our clearest ideas of the position of the serfs from the ancient descriptions of manors, which give an exact account of what each member of a particular community owed to the lord. For example, we find that the abbot of Peterborough held a manor upon which Hugh Miller and seventeen other serfs, mentioned by name, were required to work for him three days in each week during the whole year, except one week at Christmas, one at Easter, and one at Whitsuntide. Each serf was to give the lord abbot one bushel of wheat and eighteen sheaves of oats, three hens and one c.o.c.k yearly, and five eggs at Easter. If he sold his horse for more than ten s.h.i.+llings, he was to give the said abbot four pence.

Five other serfs, mentioned by name, held but half as much land as Hugh and his companions, by paying and doing in all things half as much service.

There were sometimes a few people on the manor who did not belong to the great body of cultivators. The limits of the manor and those of the parish often coincided; in that case there would be a priest who had some scattered acres and whose standing was naturally somewhat superior to that of the people about him. Then the miller, who ground the flour and paid a substantial rent to the lord, was generally somewhat better off than his neighbors, and the same may be said of the blacksmith.

[Sidenote: The manor independent of the outside world.]

One of the most remarkable characteristics of the manor was its independence of the rest of the world. It produced nearly everything that its members needed and might almost have continued to exist indefinitely without communication with those who lived beyond its bounds. Little or no money was necessary, for the peasants paid what was due to the lord in the form of labor and farm products. They also rendered the needful help to one another and found little occasion for buying and selling.

[Sidenote: The monotony and misery of the peasants' lives.]

There was almost no opportunity to better one's condition, and life, in the greater part of the hamlets, must have gone on for generation after generation in a weary routine. The life was not merely monotonous, it was miserable. The food was coa.r.s.e and there was little variety, as the peasants did not even take pains to raise fresh vegetables. The houses usually had but one room. This was ill-lighted by a single little window and had no chimney.

[Sidenote: The manor court.]

Yet the very dependence upon one another can hardly have failed to produce a certain spirit of brotherhood and mutual a.s.sistance in the community. It was not only separated from the outside world, but its members were brought together constantly by their intermingled fields, their attendance at one church, and their responsibility to one proprietor. The men were all expected to be present at the ”court” which was held in each manor, where the business of the manor was transacted under the supervision of a representative of the lord. Here, for instance, disputes were settled, fines imposed for the violation of the customs of the manor, and redistributions of the strips of land took place.

[Sidenote: The serf an inferior farmer who could only exist when there was plenty of land.]

The serf was ordinarily a bad farmer and workman. He cultivated the soil in a very crude manner, and his crops were accordingly scanty and inferior. Obviously serfdom could exist only as long as land was plentiful. But in the twelfth and thirteenth century western Europe appears to have been gaining steadily in population. Serfdom would, therefore, naturally tend to disappear when the population so increased that the carelessly cultivated fields no longer supplied the food necessary for the growing numbers.

[Sidenote: Barter replaced by money transactions.]

The increased use of money in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which came with the awakening trade and industry, also tended to break up the manor. The old habit of bartering one thing for another without the intervention of money began to disappear. As time went on, neither the lord nor the serf was satisfied with the ancient primitive arrangements, which had answered well enough in the time of Charlemagne.

The serfs, on the one hand, began to obtain money by the sale of their products in the markets of neighboring towns. They soon found it more profitable to pay the lord a certain sum instead of working for him, for they could then turn their whole attention to their own farms. The proprietors, on the other hand, found it to their advantage to accept money in place of the services of their tenants. With this money the landlord could hire laborers to cultivate his fields and could buy the luxuries which were brought to his notice as commerce increased. So it came about that the lords gradually renounced their control over the peasants, and the serf was no longer easily distinguishable from the freeman who paid a regular rent for his land.[157] A serf might also gain his liberty by fleeing to a town. If he remained undiscovered, or was unclaimed by his lord, for a year and a day, he became a freeman.

[Sidenote: Disappearance of serfdom.]

The slow extinction of serfdom in western Europe appears to have begun as early as the twelfth century. A very general emanc.i.p.ation had taken place in France by the end of the thirteenth century (and in England somewhat later), though there were still some serfs in France when the revolution came in 1789. Germany was far more backward in this respect.

We find the peasants revolting against their hard lot in Luther's time, and it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that the serfs were freed in Prussia.

[Sidenote: Importance of town life.]

93. It is hardly necessary to point out that the gradual reappearance of town life in western Europe is of the greatest interest to the student of history. The cities had been the centers of Greek and Roman civilization, and in our own time they dominate the life, culture, and business enterprise of the world. Were they to disappear, our whole life, even in the country, would necessarily undergo a profound change and tend to become primitive again like that of the age of Charlemagne.

[Sidenote: Origin of the mediaeval towns.]