Hunt on the Manorial
System
Selection from E.K. Hunt's
lucid and useful introductory book Property
and Prophets: The Evolution of Economic Institutions and Ideologies.(2nd
edition, 1975)
The decline of the western part of
the old Roman Empire left Europe without the laws and protection the empire
had provided. The vacuum was filled by the creation of a feudal hierarchy.
In this hierarchy, the serf, or peasant, was protected by the lord
of the manor, who, in turn, owed allegiance to and was protected by
a higher overlord. And so the system went, ending eventually with
the king. The strong protected the weak, but they did so at a high
price. In return for payments of money, food, labor, or military allegiance,
overlords granted the fief, or feudum--a hereditary right to use land--to
their vassals. At the bottom was the serf, a peasant who tilled the land.
The vast majority of the population raised crops for food or clothing or
tended sheep for wool and clothing.
Custom and tradition are the key to understanding
medieval relationships. In place of laws as we know them today, the custom
of the manor governed. There was no strong central authority in the
Middle Ages that could have enforced a system of laws. The entire medieval
organization was based on a system of mutual obligations and services
up
and down the hierarchy. Possession or use of the land obligated one
to certain customary services or payments in return for protection. The
lord was as obligated to protect the serf as the serf was to turn over
a portion of his crop to or perform extensive labor for the lord.
Customs were broken, of course; no system always
operates in fact as it is designed to operate in theory. One should not,
however, underestimate the strength of custom and tradition in determining
the lives and ideas of medieval people. Disputes between serfs were decided
in the lord's court according to both the special circumstances of each
case and the general customs of the manor for such cases.. Of course, a
dispute between a serf and a lord would usually be decided in his own favor
by the lord. Even in this circumstance, however, especially in England,
an overlord would impose sanctions or punishments on a lord who, as his
vassal, had persistentlv violated the customs in his treatment of serfs.
This rule by the custom of the manor stands in sharp contrast to the legal
and judicial system of capitalism. The capitalist system is based on the
enforcement of contracts and universally binding laws, which are softened
only rarely by the possible mitigating circumstances and customs that often
swayed the lord's judgment in medieval times.
The extent to which the lords could enforce their
"rights" varied greatly from time to time and from place to place. It was
the strengthening of these obligations and the nobleman's ability to enforce
them through a long hierarchy of vassals and over a wide area that eventually
led to the emergence of the modern nation-states. This process occurred
during the period of transition from feudalism to capitalism. Throughout
most of the Middle Ages, however, many of these claims were very weak because
political control was fragmented.
The basic economic institution of medieval rural
life was the manor, which contained within it two separate and distinct
classes: noblemen, or lords of the manors, and serfs (from the Latin word
servus,
"slave"). Serfs were not really slaves. Unlike a slave, who was simply
property to be bought and sold at will, the serf could not be parted from
either his family or his land. If his lord transferred possession of the
manor to another nobleman, the serf simply had another lord. In varying
degrees, however, obligations were placed upon the serfs that were sometimes
very onerous and from which there was often no escape. Usually, they were
far from being "free."
The lord lived off the labor of the serfs who farmed
his fields and paid taxes in kind and money according to the custom of
the manor. It must be added that although the system did rest on reciprocal
obligations, the concentration of economic and political power in the hands
of the lord led to a system in which, by any standard, the serf was exploited
in the extreme.
The Catholic church was by far the largest
owner of land during the Middle Ages. While bishops and abbots occupied
much the same place as counts and dukes in the feudal hierarchy, there
was one important difference between the religious and secular lords. Dukes
and counts might shift their loyalty from one overlord to another, depending
on the circumstances and the balance of power involved, but the bishops
and abbots always had (in principle at least) a primary loyalty to the
church in Rome. This was also an age during which the religious teaching
of the church had a very strong and pervasive influence throughout western
Europe. These factors combined to make the church the closest thing to
a strong central government throughout this period.
Thus the manor might be secular or religious (many
times secular lords had religious overlords and vice versa), but the essential
relationships between lord and serfs were not significantly affected by
this distinction. There is little evidence that serfs were treated any
less harshly by religious lords than by secular ones. The religious lords
and the secular nobility were the joint ruling classes; they controlled
the land and the power that went with it. In return for very onerous appropriations
of the serf's labor, produce, and money, the nobility provided military
protection and the church provided spiritual aid.
In addition to manors, medieval Europe had many
towns....
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