The Rise of Dependent Cultivation and Seignorial Institutions

Abstract

This chapter explores the origins of the rural seigneurie in Western and Central Europe to form as clear an idea as possible of what it was like when fully developed. The seignorial system, or the manorial system, was not based on slavery. The Frankish immunity, seems to have been granted almost exclusively to churches. Relationships of commendation were able to give to an existing seignorial system immense expansive force. The existence of village chiefdoms is clearly attested in Gaul before Caesar and in Germany before the invasions. In the medieval seigneurie, a manse was the customary unit of tenure. The primitive occupation of the soil was carried out by patriarchal groups. The conditions of the late Roman era and early Middle Ages led to the coexistence, of manses cultivated by 'free' tenants with the new servile holdings, and linked the demesne, the cultivation of which had been mainly entrusted to slaves, to the holdings by heavy bonds of service.

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