Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/321

 309 CHAPTER I AGRICULTURAL LIFE In considering the agricultural condition of a country, the first thing to be done is to know to whom the land belongs, how it is divided, and how it is worked. At the close of the Middle Ages we find the greater portion of the soil belonging to sovereign princes (lay and ecclesiastical), to feudal lords, monasteries and institutions, to the nobles and the cities. Generally speaking, these different properties had not yet coalesced into great tracts, but belonged to separate owners, living quite at a distance from each other. It was very seldom that a whole village belonged to one proprietor. It was generally held by three or four proprietors, who let it out to feudal lords, and these in turn sublet to smaller tenants. We find in almost all parts of Germany, particu- larly those where the nobility had not great power, certain tracts belonging to peasant proprietors lying between the estates of the nobles. In the north-western and south-eastern portions of Germany, in Friesland and Lower Saxony, in Suabia, Franconia, and in the Ehine Provinces, in old Bavaria and the Tyrol, there were several prosperous landed peasant proprie- tors or corporations. The principle of ' the indivisibility of property ' -almost universally discountenanced the breaking-up of