Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/554

 532 APPENDIX ments of the barbarians — communities which own the land in common, no mem- ber possessing a particular portion as his own. As for tenants — now fully free, no longer bound to the soil, — of these there are two classes, according to the agreement made with the landlord. There are the tithe-rent tenants, fioprlrat, and the metayer tenants, rjfxicreLacrTai. The /jLOprirris paid a tenth of the produce to the landlord, as rent for the land. The 7)/xi(Teia(TT7is worked his farm at the landlord's expense, and the produce was divided equall}^ between landlord and tenant. (Thus the ground rent = j^, of the yearly j'ield ; the interest on capital = ^-^ ; and the labour = y'^). The fjioprirris, then, corresponds to the fj-icrdwrSs or ' ' free colon " of the Justinianean code, and the r]fj.i(rfiaaT-fis corresponds to the iyairoypacpos, in respect of the con- dition of tenancy- ; with the important difference that neither /uopTiVrji nor TI/iKTetaffT'fjs is bound to the soil. The abolition of serfdom and service of the Iconoclastic reformers was by no means agreeable to the great landlords, secular or ecclesiastical. Rich lords and abbots made common cause against the new system ; and when the reaction came in the second half of the 9th century Basil's legislation restored the old order of things. The tenants ^ were once more nailed to the soil. Among other things the landlords were not satisfied with the ground rent of yj, fixed in the Agricultural Code ; it was insufiicient, they said, to make the estate pay, when the taxation was allowed for. The failure of the land reforms of Leo and Constantine, and the reversion to the old system, close the history of the tenants ; but there still remains an im- portant chapter in the history of the peasant proprietors. In the 10th century we find the large estates growing still larger at the expense of the small proprie- tors whose lands they absorb, and these small proprietors passing by degrees into the condition of tenants. This evil has been briefij^ touched upon in connexion with Romanus I. and Tzimisces : see above, p. 209, n. 46, and p. 215, n. 57- The decline of the class of small farmers was due to two causes : the influence of the ascetic ideal and the defective economical conditions of the time. The attraction of monastic life induced manj' proprietors to enter cloisters, and bestow their property on the communities which admitted them, or, if thej' were rich enough, to found new monastical or ecclesiastical institutions. The cultivation of the lands which thus passed to the church was thereby transferred from peasant proprietors to tenants. The want of a sound credit system, due to the ignorance of political economy, and the consequent depression of trade, rendered land the only safe investment for capital ; and the consequence of this was that landowners who possessed capital were always seeking to get more land into their hands. Hence they took every occasion that presented itself to induce their poor neighbours, who lived from hand to mouth and had no savings, to pledge or sell their land in a moment of need. The farmer who thus sold out would often become the tenant of the holding which had been his own property. The increase of large estates was regarded by the government with suspicion and disapprobation.* The campaign against the great landlords was begim by Romanus I. in a. d. 922, when, in the law (already mentioned) which fixed the order of pre-emption, he forbade the magnates {ol Swaroi) to buy or receive any land from smaller folk, except in the case of relationship. It was also enacted that only after a possession of ten 3-ears could a property acquired in this way become per- manentlj- the propert}- of the magnate. But a few years later the magnates had an unusually favourable opportunity and could not resist the temptation of using it. There was a long succession of bad harvests and cold winters (a.d. 927-932), which produced great distress throughout the country. The small farmers, "* In the gth century ndpoiKoi comes into use as the general word for the tenants on a landlord's estate. ■•It was a law of Justinian that high officials should not acquire landed property. Leo VI. however had repealed this law.