The essential additional characteristic of serfdom was the absence of many individual freedoms held by the freedmen. The most important of these was the lack of freedom of movement of the serfs; He could not leave his property or village permanently without his master`s permission. Nor could the serf marry, change profession, or dispose of his property without his master`s permission. It was linked to its specific property and could be transferred to a new lord with this land. Serfs were often treated harshly and had little recourse against the actions of their masters. A serf could only become a freedman through liberation, the right to vote or escape. Villeinage was not a one-way exploitative relationship. In the Middle Ages, the land inside the mansion provided food and survival, and as a townman it guaranteed access to the land and saved the harvest from theft by marauding thieves. Landowners, even if they were legally entitled to it, rarely evicted townspeople because of the value of their labor. Villeinage was preferable to a vagrant, slave or landless worker. Other sources of income for the seigneur were fees for the use of his mill, bakery, or wine press, or for the right to hunt in his forest or to have pigs fed, as well as farm income and one-time payments for each change of tenant. On the other side of the coin, seigneurial administration was associated with considerable costs, perhaps one of the reasons why small houses tended to be less dependent on city ownership. The owner could not expropriate his serfs without legal reason, had to protect them from plunder by thieves or other masters and had to support them in times of famine with alms.
Many of these rights were enforceable by serfs before the seigneurial court. This chapter examines the villagers` sense of justice. The milieu of the wealthy villagers is the lowest in medieval English society, whose documentation makes the attempt possible. If we accept the existence in Edwardian England of some sort of common national legal culture that has overcome notorious jurisdictional entanglements, an intriguing question arises: how was it possible for wealthy villagers to participate in this legal world outside the village? To the extent that they could participate, the seigneurial court could hardly be their natural forum or enclosure. The chapter attempts a preliminary sketch of this legal culture. The main problem with the Coloni was to prevent them from leaving the land they had cultivated as tenants. The solution was to legally link them to their assets. As a result, a code of law introduced by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 332 required that the labor services of the Coloni be paid to the Lord.
Although the colonies were legally free, the conditions of allegiance obliged them to cultivate their master`s unleased land as well as their leased land. This not only bound them to their property, but also made their social status essentially subordinate, since the demand of the labor services required the landlord`s agents to discipline the colonies. The threat or practice of this discipline has been recognized as one of the clearest signs of a man`s personal submission. The most common type of serf in the Middle Ages. They had more rights and a higher status than the lowest serfs, but existed under a number of legal restrictions that distinguished them from free peoples. Like other types of serfs, the townspeople had to provide other services, perhaps in addition to paying monetary or production rent. The Villeins were bound to the land and could not leave without the consent of their master and the acceptance of the lord in whose manor they wanted to emigrate. Villeins were generally able to hold their own property, unlike slaves. Serfdom, a state of affairs in medieval Europe in which a tenant was tied to a hereditary plot of land and the will of its owner. The vast majority of serfs in medieval Europe earned their living by cultivating land belonging to a lord. This was the essential characteristic that distinguished serfs from slaves who were bought and sold without reference to any property. The serf provided his own food and clothing through his own productive efforts.
A considerable part of the grain that the serf grew on his property was to be given to his master. The lord could also force the serf to cultivate the part of the lord`s land that was not owned by other tenants (called the estate). The serf also had to use his master`s flour mills and no other. This chapter focuses on legalism, that is, the type of thought that uses general rules and abstract categories, and the specificity of the legal reasoning that produces it. Discussions focus on law and custom, rules and categories, as well as jurisprudence and pluralism. Serfs occupying land had to work for the owner of that land and, in return, were entitled to protection, justice and the right to use certain fields of the manor to support themselves.