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The third unit in this course covers Western Europe from the ninth to the fifteenth century. This is the last two-thirds of the Medieval Period. We have already covered about one-third of the Middle Ages in the previous unit.
To begin with we want to understand the conditions which exist at the beginning of our period--say in the Carolingian period of the late eighth and the early ninth. For perspective it is useful for us to remember where we started this course. We began to trace historical development about 8000 years before the present with the economic footing of domesticated food production replacing the hunting and gathering economy. This economic foundation of food production through agriculture and animal management remains the most basic foundation for any civilization that has existed since--Humans still have to eat!
Earlier we noted that the new food producing economy fostered a new social structure, the village, the self-supporting, self-contained village with its lands, dwelling places and water supplies. But between the appearance of the earliest agricultural villages and the first appearance of civilization some 5000 years later, a great deal of cultural advance took place. There was increasing specialization and division in all aspects of cultural knowledge: Social, Economic, Technological, Problem Solving & Leadership, and Ideological. There was increasing interdependence among the villages.
Eventually, states emerged built on the economic foundation of village food production and trade. Then the organized, sovereign states fostered the development of urban settlements--cities--as civilization began to dawn. Eventually regional unification of states came about, and finally, by about 2350 BC the Akkadians under Sargon I established an Empire, an embrace including several regional states subdued by force. Sargon's Empire was not very advanced above "0".
In all our study of advanced civilizations in the Near East, Greece and Rome we have had very few opportunities to remember that the agricultural villages were always the basic foundation necessary to support the superstructure of civilization.
The rise and fall of civilization is one of the important understandings you need to take away from this course. Once civilization appears that does not guarantee it will continue indefinitely. Once it advances to a certain achieved height that alone does not guarantee that it can automatically sustain itself at that level of achievement. Change is always occurring in human culture. Sometimes the changes result in advancement to higher levels of achievement and sometimes changes result in decline to lower levels. A civilization that declines beneath that level of achievement marked as the minimum for a civilized society has "fallen" and becomes a less than civilized culture. Scholars have not examined the fall of civilization as much as they have studied its rise, but in Charlemagne's day European achievement was not very civilized.
Indeed there was substantial advancement culture-wise during the eighth century and it carried over into the early ninth century. We may say that Charlemagne's Empire was not unlike the Akkadian Empire of Sargon I, not very civilized. Charlemagne's epoch did possess iron technology and several artifacts surviving from a more highly civilized age that Sargon's civilization, of course, did not possess.
Unfortunately, that level of civilization was not everywhere maintained in the face of the challenges of the late ninth and tenth centuries. Certain geographic areas of Europe experienced retrograde development plunging them in the tenth century once again down to that marginal gray area on the scale that is usually labeled a Dark Age. Other regions of Europe in the tenth century did sustain the sophistication, vitality, unity and stability of their civilization at approximately the level of the Carolingian Renaissance.
UpOne of the socio-economic developments between the sixth and the ninth century that we have not so far mentioned consisted of a major demographic shift associated with and following from the upheaval produced by barbarian migrations in the fifth century. The shift notes the evidences of weakness and attrition among the urbanized populations of Europe north of the Alps and the corresponding evidences of stability and growth in the rural village-dwelling population. This is an example of the retrograde cultural development typically described as the "fall" of Roman civilization. The exception to this development during those same centuries was Italy where the urban-dwelling farmers of Late Roman days could still be seen at the beginning of the ninth century. Most people employed in agriculture and related crafts (textiles, leathers, etc) outside of Italy were by the late ninth century living in scattered small villages close to the lands they farmed.
Such village demographics are not the new phenomenon--what is new in western Europe north of the Alps is the scarcity of towns and cities. Village agriculture and animal husbandry was older than civilization itself; for civilization, where ever it has developed, has always been erected on an economic foundation of agriculture and animal husbandry.
UpSocial status in agricultural villages has always been a factor of land owning. The family owning the largest share of the village's lands has a much higher status than the family whose holdings are average sized. And the family with average-sized holdings has a higher status than a family owning no land at all. The so-called landed families, those owning the largest share of the village's farm land constitute the aristocracy of rural society. When we have referred to families of this higher class in earlier lectures we have called them "the more powerful", a rural aristocracy, a nobility. Different regions in Europe had different labels for this rural aristocracy, and modern historians have adopted one or another of these terms universally for convenience. Many of these terms have misleading connotations.
The term that I use, "seigneur", derives from the western Frankish region and, conveniently, it allows us to illustrate another confusion that English speaking students have long stumbled over. The word "lord" is frequently used when meaning "landlord", and just as frequently used meaning the "lord" of a vassal. And in the third case it is used when speaking of a person of royal or noble rank. The connotations of the word "lord" in each usage are different in important but obscure ways, and students may never realize that. While it is entirely possible for all three connotations to be correctly employed with regard the the same individual, the confusion arises when students assume that every land "lord" has the same responsibilities as the "lord" of a vassal and is entitled to the same recognition as the ruling "lord". Not every landlord is the lord of a vassal, and not every lord of a vassal is a royal personage. The English word senior has some of the same connotations as the word lord. In fact both the Spanish word senior as well as the French word seigneur are typically translated into English as "lord". Using the French term seigneur when speaking of a special class of landowner, ones who own enough land to have the leisure not to engage in agricultural labor, greatly reduces the confusion accompanying the indiscriminate use of the English term lord.
UpIn order better to understand these seigneur families we can make these further observations. While there were many lower class land owers in the villages, those we call seigneurs owned enough land that they did not engage in agricultural labor. How much land would it take to qualify a family as a seigneur family? We cannot answer this with a concrete figure or absolute measure; for, the amount might vary considerably in various parts of Europe. We can however, observe that the amount of land must be sufficient to allow the family to enjoy adequate food and supplies without any family members ever having to labor personally in the fields. Some seigneur families held many times this minimum amount of land. Indeed some seigneur families' holdings were scattered in several village communities over a radius of several miles. This scattering was the result of marriages among the seigneur families of neighboring villages.
How does owning sufficient land make it possible for seigneur family members to avoid the physical work in the fields? Some villagers own no land at all, or own insufficient land, and family members would starve if they were not allowed to use somebody's land in the village. These poor villagers arrange to use some of the seigneurs' lands. The seigneur family agrees to allow the landless and land-deficient families to lease and farm a portion of their land for two considerations:
Seigneurialism is used here as a designation for the body of age-old customary institutions that are found universally across Europe. Contemporary scholars are in the habit of attempting unnecessarily to identify two distinct but parallel bodies of customs here. First, we have already been discussing some the customs and practices regulating the relationship between the actual farmers and the people who do not engage in farm labor. In the ninth and tenth century there were not many groups of individuals who did not engage directly in farm labor.
How then are those who govern-lead-guard the rest of society able to dress themselves and have sufficient to eat if they do not farm and raise their own supplies. It is simply because the great majority of these individuals are seigneurs with income produced by the lower class farmers who work their lands.
Are they then serving for free? No, certainly not. In Charlemagne's day every full time government official was assigned a tract of land in addition to the land he already owned. This additional tract of land was called a benefice. The benefice was not given out-right to the officer; indeed Charlemagne's government retained possession of the benefice while allowing the official to use the produce from it. The government officer or guard exercised seigneurial rights over that land and the farmers who lived on it and farmed it, which means the holder had the right to the seigneur's share of the foodstuffs and agricultural supplies produced by the farmers on the benefice. When, in due time, the official was replaced by someone else they in turn received the benefits of the same benefice.
In Charlemagne's day such benefices had not yet become hereditary as they would typically become by the middle of the tenth century in a few limited geographic regions. By the eleventh century lands in such an arrangement would be called a fief and would be inherited by the descendants of the original holder. More on this aspect of these developments in the next lecture. Suffice it here to point out that these dimensions of seigneurialism--which were not in any sense innovations dating to this period alone--used to be understood as pertaining only to vassalage which was a "new phenomenon" emerging by the tenth century.
UpAnother dimension of the body of customs dealing with village populations has usually been called manorialism. That term derives from the medieval English word for village community, manor. We need to realize that were it not for the village communities the seigneurs would not and could not exist. There is no such thing as a village without a seigneur. Therefore manorialism is an integral part of seigneurialism.
So what was life like on the manor, that is, in the agricultural village? In the ninth century the villages were typically isolated from each other by relatively vast areas of wild unimproved land. The village's lands had been reclaimed in many cases from the midst of wild virgin timberland, by clearing rocks and bolders from the areas to be cultivated. There were no paved roads connecting villages, only trails known to the seigneurs--the only ones typically that ever left the village for any reason as long as they lived. While lower class farmers worked the land the seigneurs of the village had the leisure to visit other places. Remember that some seigneur families owed land in several villages, sometimes scattered and separated by several intervening villages.
The seigneur families had the largest and most prosperous looking dwellings in the village together with the best storage facilities. If this village were part of a benefice in the ninth century the government was the original seigneur. The seigneur's large dwelling would be where the benefice holder and his servants lived. In England if there was only one seigneur family, as was typical in later centuries in many manors, his dwelling would be called the "Manor house". If the village was owned by the local church the seigneur's dwelling and barns would be used by the Bishop or a group of his priests.
In England and northern Europe the typical village was nucleated, that is a cluster of house-barns bunched together near the drinking water-source. Around and among the cluster of house-barns would be an area fenced off, often with stone fences or hedges. This area, called the close, was where the village families planted their gardens. Outside and beyond the close in all directions would be the meadow and the arable land.
UpIn Southern Europe the soil was light and sandy working up nicely when cross-plowed with a light weight scratch plow. Such a plow easily managed by a single yoke of oxen did not overturn the soil, it merely disturbed it and crumbled it. Cross plowing produced plowlands more or less square since the furrows of the second plowing ran at right angles to the first; hence, across the original furrows. The size of the field depended on how far the yoke of oxen would pull the plow before stopping to rest. All the furrows, in both directions, were roughly this same length.
In northern Europe things were quite different. The soil was heavy, compact sod with dense root systems that did not crumble easily. It required that the soil be cut loose from the bottom of the furrow by an iron blade called a shovel or share. The evidence for the introduction of a wheeled plow for such compact, heavy soil dates to at least the first century BC. This type of plow did not turn the soil over it, but tore it up and left it in the furrow.
Then a superior wheeled plow seems to have been developed among the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe perhaps by the sixth century AD. It was introduced gradually into Western Europe beginning in the seventh century AD in northern Italy and the eighth century north of the Alps. The Slavic plow not only has a shovel but another device mounted behind it. Today the device is called a moldboard. It further lifted and twisted the soil over, upside down beside the furrow instead of allowing it to fall back into the furrow.
Such a plow was quite expensive. Typically, the seigneur owned one plow and it was used by all the village farmers who doubtless paid additional days labor and produce for its use. It typically required from two to four yokes of oxen to pull the device depending on the texture of the local soil. The resulting plow lands were rectangular.
UpIn the lighter, sandier soil of southern Europe the age-old custom involving biennial crop rotation was used, putting one-half the arable land in production each year. The growing season starts earlier in the spring but becomes too hot by late summer so the cereal crops in the south are sowed in the fall and have to be harvested before the hot part of the summer.
In northern Europe where the growing season is shorter and the summer is not so hot the villages typically divided the croplands in thirds. Each village family farmed land in each third. Two thirds of the land was put in crop each year with one-third kept fallow. This triennial rotation system was based on barley sown in the fall in the first third, and rye or oats sown in the spring in the second third. The shorter growing season in the north allowed the oats or rye to be harvested in early fall and the barley to be harvested before the fall plowing began. The fallow third was without either a fall or a spring planting that year.
Each of the thirds of crop land was subdivided into many individual plowlands, the size and shape of which depended on the weight of the soil and the fact that plowing was done with oxen. The temperament of oxen dictates that more work will get done if you work when the ox wants to work and rest when the ox wants to rest. The ox is a grass fed draft animal that can become exhausted plowing a single furrow across the field. But after a few minutes rest the ox can pull the plow back across the field.
UpThe length of the furrow depends on the heaviness of the soil--how hard the plow is to pull. Across each end of each plow land they left a grassy area. In England it was called a balk, because that's what the oxen do when they get there. They stop, they stand still, they will not pull the plow farther. They balk. They graze on the grass and stomp flys while they recover from plowing the furrow. While the oxen are resting and grazing on the balk the farmers pick up the plow and carry it to the opposite side of the plowed area and turn it around in readiness to plow a furrow back across the field to the opposite balk. When the oxen are rested they yoke them up to the plow again and plow another furrow.
The typical length of the furrow in England was a "furlong". The dictionary will tell you that a furlong is 660 feet or 40 rods. Or 40 perches. The Perch or the Rod is the tool that the ox team driver uses. Oxen will reliably move the way their noses are pointed. But these oxen have no rings in their noses so if you want to steer them you have to turn their heads with this 16.5 foot pole. The ox driver walked behind the plow in the newly opened furrow and holds on one end of the rod and the other end rides on top of the yoke, which rests on the necks of the oxen. He positions the end of the rod behind the ox's ear and pushes his head, nose and all, to point in the direction the driver wants the ox to go. Other drivers flank the forward yokes of oxen to keep them following the previously cut furrow. The typical rectangular plow-land was approximately 66 feet (four rods) wide because the oxen have to move to the other side of the plow land to return to the other end. Today that measure of 4 rods by 40 rods equals an acre. It would take 6 or 8 oxen and from 8 to 10 men one whole day to plow that acre.
UpThese one-acre plow-lands were often subdivided into narrow strips a rod or two wide and sometimes those strips were divided in halves. Each strip or part of a strip belonged to a specific farmer. The harvested crop from the plow-land would be divided in the porportions comparable to the strips. If we assume that each plow-land had once belonged to a single family to start with we should remember that families tend to branch into several branches in the course of several generations. If a relative died without heirs his strips might be reclaimed by the surviving relatives. Different customs were followed in different regions.
UpThe whole community organized together for the major farming tasks such as plowing, planting, and harvesting. In many villages the seigneur owned the only plow so the free farmers pooled their labor and rented the plow, each owing an amount of labor service and an amount of produce for the use of the plow. As noted above the major crops were cereal grains that could be thrashed and stored. Other crops were equally important; the textile crops such as flax, hemp, woad, madder, and saffron, and the fodder crops for wintering the animals such as beans, peas, or other green foliage crops.
All the village families that had hogs ran them together in a common herd during the warm part of the year, with a single villager acting as swineherd. The hogs survived on roots and acorns in the woods during the warm seasons and most would be butchered before they were very large. The breeding stock that was kept through the winter would nearly starve in the house-barn. The common herd of sheep and milkgoats grazed in the meadow in spring and summer and in the stubble after harvest, but they too nearly starved to death during the winter in the barn. Come spring the villagers would pull the animals on sleds out to the meadow or timber where they could regain their strength. The family's ox would be nursed through the winter on starvation rations. Other farm animals might include chickens and geese, and every village needed hives of honey bees.
The animals were kept in the villager's house-barns where all the warm blooded huddled animals and people together to keep as warm as possible. The chimney and the indoor fire-place have not yet been invented. They will appear by the twelfth century.
UpThe seigneur families typically bred and raised horses in addition to oxen in many of their villages. Horses were an important military resource and the swiftest means of mobility. Horses were not usable for sustained pulling of heavy loads until after the adoption of the stiff horse collar and the single-tree hitch. These ideas are traced to the Avars and begin to appear in western Europe in the eighth century. Since ancient times horses had been harnessed to easy-pulling chariot-like contraptions for transportation and military service. And they had been used specifically to pull the implement called the harrow which was drug over the newly plowed ground to further pulverize the soil. But oxen would still pull the heavy single axle cargo carrying carts for many centuries to come.
Double axle wagons begin to appear around 1125 at the same time that more sophisticated hitching devices and harness were developed for horses. Metal horse shoes and ox shoes began to be used about 900, and not long after that horses began to be used more extensively in agriculture in the Scandinavian countries and in those regions where oats were the major spring crop, because a working horse has to be grain fed.
UpThe ordinary vicissitudes of life bring changes to the rural population over time. Some families lost their lands and became dependent on renting the necessary lands from more well-to-do farmers or from the local seigneur families. Other families acquired additional lands and might even rise to the seigneur rank. Most local communities had labels they applied to the various social classes in the villages. Most of these farmers were descendants of freemen and the majority of them still own land of their very own that they have inherited from their forefathers. The best designation for these free farmers is to call them villagers or villains.
UpAnother class of farmers appear as the ninth century progresses whose immediate ancestors were not free farmers, but were indeed slaves. Very wealthy seigneur families of the eighth and early ninth century had housed and fed these slaves as a money-making investment in craft production such as swords, objects of glass, pottery, copper utensils, and the like. These products were sold to long-distance merchants who distributed and sold them in markets all over Western Europe.
The ninth century crisis which we will talk more about next lecture put these household industry operations out of business and left the seigneurs with unemployed slaves. The solution to this problem may have in some cases been simply freeing them. But it appears that the majority were not freed; rather, these slaves were installed on village lands so they could feed and support themselves while remaining the property of their owner.
Ownership of these landed slaves was hereditary in exactly the same way the land ownership was hereditary. Whoever held the seigneurial rights over the land exercised the seigneurial rights over these landed slaves.
Their status as slaves working for their own living gave rise to the term serf. Their descendants provided they paid a customary tax called relief could inherit their assigned lands. If a male serf died without living children his lands reverted to the current seigneur. Serfs had to pay an annual head tax, chevage, to the seigneur. The marriages of serfs had to be approved by the seigneur. If the daughter of the seigneur's serf wanted to marry a man who was serf of another seigneur a special formarriage tax was paid to the seigneur by the bride's father.
Over time during the tenth century many free villagers were forced by the prevailing circumstance of a given moment to accept a status virtually identical with the serf. I call this quasi-serfdom. In a society ruled by custom rather than written laws, once a freeman in momentary desperation had submitted to a customary practice they became bound to that custom for life, and their children inherited this disability.
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