Manorial Law

LIKE THE FEUDAL LAW of lord-vassal relations and dependent land tenure, so the manorial law of lord-peasant relations and agricultural production came to form a legal system. Of course, the two systems were closely related to each other.

The manorial economy did not become predominant in Europe until the eleventh century. In the preceding era, after the Germanic tribes had settled down in western Europe, no one type of agricultural economic relations had prevailed. On the one hand, within the tribal and village structure there were large numbers of peasant family households that were free, in the sense that they were not tilling the soil of a superior (except sometimes as hired laborers) and were not bound in personal service to a superior. On the other hand, slavery also abounded in European agriculture of that period. Many of these slaves were either descendants of persons captured in battle and reduced to slavery by the Germanic tribes, or they had themselves been captured in the more or less continual warfare that was waged in Europe prior to the eleventh century. Others were descendants of persons who had been slaves in the late Roman Empire. In addition, there seems to have been an upsurge of slavery in Europe in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries when many Slavs were captured and enslaved by the Frankish armies in the East; indeed, the Western word "slave" (in German, Sklave) derives from this historical experience. (The name "Frank," in contrast, came to mean "free.") Many slaves served in their masters' households, but most worked in the fields.

With the emergence of lordship units, and especially with the linkage

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of vassalage and fiefs in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, a third class of peasant____________________________________________________ neither free

nor slave___ became increasingly important. These peasants, often called serfs, were distinguished by

several characteristics: (1) unlike slaves, they were not owned by a master and could not be bought and sold; (2) unlike slaves, they could contract legal marriages; (3) unlike most slaves, they provided their own food and clothing; (4) unlike most slaves, they had certain rights in house and land and goods; (5) unlike free peasants, they were bound to the land_______________ that is, they could not leave without

the lord's permission and they went with the land when it was transferred; (6) unlike most free peasants, they were required to perform heavy labor services on the lord's demesne; (7) unlike most free peasants, they were required to pay the lord various dues in kind and in money for the land w hich they held; and (8) unlike most free peasants, they were severely restricted in their rights of use and disposition of the land, and their property remained with the lord upon their death.

In some respects, the serfs were like another class which had survived from the late Empire, the coloni, who were not slaves but who performed labor services on the lord's demesne. There were also other kinds of peasants in varying degrees of dependency.

In the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, peasants of all kinds -- free peasants, slaves, coloni, and others -- were involuntarily or voluntarily or Semivoluntarily drawn, in increasing numbers, into the estates of the lords as serfs. The mansi (landholdings) of the serfs were divided from the mansus indominicalus, or dominant estate ("demesne") of the lord. Yet the serfs performed labor services and other duties on the lord's demesne, and the lord exercised economic, fiscal, police, and judicial rights over the serfs on the tenements held by them.

From the point of view of its internal relations, the fief took the form of an autonomous community, and in most parts of Europe it was given the name "manor" ( manerium). 2One important characteristic of the manor, viewed as an autonomous community, was the exalted position of the lord of the manor and the menial position of the serfs. Another important characteristic was the economic and political interdependence of all members of the manor, including the lord's household, the serfs, and the intermediate classes of knights, manorial officials, and other freemen (including free peasants) who lived there. A certain tension existed between these two characteristics.

With regard to the menial position of the serfs, Philippe de Beaumanoir wrote in the thirteenth century that of "the third estate of

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men," that is, of "such as are not free," "some are so subject to their lord that he may take all they have, alive or dead, and imprison them, whenever he pleases, being accountable to none but God." Beaumanoir contrasted this position of some of the serfs with that of the others, who in his time were the vast majority. 3 Prior to the eleventh century, however, his statement would have applied to almost all serfs. In the earlier period, manorial custom, even more than the feudal custom of that time, had substantially lacked objectivity and universality (as defined in chapter 9) and was therefore subject to far greater arbitrariness and abuse than at a later period; it also substantially lacked the oth er qualities of the later Western systems of law reciprocity of legal relations between superior and

inferior, participatory adjudication, systematic integrity, and organic growth.

Nevertheless, the interdependence between the peasants and the lord of the manor tended to overcome, to some extent, the hardships of their legal insecurity. Typically, the lord was not an absentee landlord or a mere tax collector, as in many non-Western lordship regimes. Instead, he lived on the estate and supervised its management. Even when he managed his manor (or manors) through an agent (or agents), he was entirely dependent on its economic profitability for the satisfaction of his own military and economic obligations to his superior lord (whether it was the king or an intermediate lord). Equally important, he was the political ruler of the entire manorial community, responsible for maintaining order within it, for protecting it against outside attack, and for appointing officials to administer it and preside over its assemblies. Once again, these aspects of manorial life were far more loosely ordered and far more subject to local and individual eccentricities in the period prior to the eleventh century than in the period thereafter.

Just as feudal custom was transformed into a system of feudal law in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and especially between 1050 and 1150, so manorial custom was transformed into a system of manorial law in roughly the same period. As in the case of feudal law, so in the case of manorial law there was in that period a substantial increase in the objectivity and universality of its norms. An element of reciprocity also developed in the legal relations between peasants and lord, although it was less apparent than in feudal law since homage and fealty were absent from lord-peasant relations, and there was no concept of a lord-peasant contract to enter into a lifelong relationship; nevertheless, the peasants brought group pressure to bear upon lords in order to exact more favorable conditions of labor, which had the force of concessions reciprocally granted on condition of loyalty. In addition, manorial law was administered by an assembly of members of the manor, including the serfs, who participated in adjudication of disputes under the presidency of the lord's official, the steward.

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eleventh and twelfth centuries, like feudal law though to a lesser extent, acquired the quality of an integrated system of concepts and procedures as well as the quality of a developing system with the capacity for incremental growth over generations and centuries.

In contrast with feudal law, however, the emergence of a new system of manorial law in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was directly connected with economic class struggle. Whereas feudal law chiefly regulated relations among persons belonging to a single economic class, the feudal aristocracy, manorial law chiefly regulated relations between rich and poor, rulers and ruled, "management" and "labor." This does not mean that manorial law was simply imposed on the peasants; on the contrary, they were not without substantial leverage to protect their class interests. Especially in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, improvements in economic conditions made it economically feasible for them to insist on substantial improvements in their conditions of servitude. However, the development of a new body of law to secure those improvements was dependent not only on changes in economic conditions but also on changes in legal conditions. New legal concepts and institutions, and new attitudes toward law, had emerged or were emerging, to which both lords and peasants resorted in the effort to resolve the conflicts between their economic interests.

A crucial aspect of the enormous growth in prosperity that occurred during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries was the final cessation of military attacks from the north, east, and south. Indeed, by the end of the eleventh century the West had achieved sufficient economic strength to launch its own military invasion of the Middle East (the First Crusade, 1095-1099). Another aspect of the growth of prosperity was the movement for land reclamation and colonization: in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Europeans cleared forests and encroached on waste lands, drained marshes, and reclaimed land from the sea -- in England, Germany, Flanders, and elsewhere.

These factors substantially strengthened the economic position of the peasants. It might be thought that the increase of population would have lessened the value of their individual labor, but any such tendency was

-319- counteracted by the economic factors which had helped to produce the increase: the availability of land, the possibility of movement to the expanding cities and towns, and the beginnings of a money economy. There was, in fact, a great shortage of labor for the work to be done. Moreover, the increase of population contributed to the rise of peasant class consciousness, which was itself an important factor in the struggle for better working and living conditions.

The church, too, in carrying out the Papal Revolution, pursued policies that were favorable to the peasants. It offered serfs an opportunity for emancipation through entry into holy orders. 4In launching the First Crusade, it offered them an opportunity for emancipation through enlistment in the Holy War. 5_In addition, the church, which was by far the largest proprietor in Europe, holding perhaps onefourth or more of all the land, often attracted peasants from other estates by offering more favorable conditions of life and work. Escape to church manors, whether legal or illegal, encouraged escape to other more congenial manors as well, or to the cities, thereby putting pressure on lords to yield to peasant grievances.

In addition, the church generally emancipated the slaves on its own domains and thereby, as well as through other means, contributed to the virtual elimination of peasant slavery throughout most of Europe in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. (Household slavery survived in some places.) This had the secondary effect of relieving serfs from the pressure of competition from an even more downtrodden class. Here again, economic and ideological factors were joined. Christian leaders had previously accepted slavery as a fact of life, while teaching that slaves should be treated with humanity and that the freeing of a slave was a pious and meritorious act. As a result of the Papal Revolution the church for the first time gave a systematic legal formulation of its views on slavery. It took the position that slavery itself was not illegal but that it was a sin for a Christian to hold a Christian as a slave. 6_In England, for example, almost 10 percent of the population recorded in Domesday Book just after the Norman Conquest were slaves. These were mostly herdsmen and ploughmen. In the succeeding two or three generations most of them were given small holdings as serfs, and slavery in England virtually disappeared. 7_

European serfs in the eleventh and twelfth centuries were for the first time in a strong enough position to take the risk of illegal escape from their lords to other lords who offered better working conditions. The age of widespread peasant rebellions and large-scale manumissions of serfs in France, Germany, and England did not come until the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In Italy, however, and occasionally in France, Germany, and England, there were spasmodic peasant rebellions and grants of peasant charters of liberties in the twelfth and early thirteenth

320- centuries. Apart from these more dramatic events, between about 1050 and 1250 the economic position of the serf gradually improved and, even more to the point, his basic legal rights were gradually established. In fact, it was in the name of the basic legal rights of serfs that rebellions and manumissions took place.

The transformation of manorial custom into a system of manorial law in the eleventh and twelfth centuries may best be considered in terms of the six categories that have already been used in describing the transformation of feudal custom into a system of feudal law: (1) objectivity, (2) universality, (3) reciprocity, (4) participatory adjudication, (5) integration, and (6) growth.