Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/800

 774 SERF of the people of Europe in the middle ages and in later times. Slavery and various forms of bondage prevailed throughout the whole of the Roman empire, and slavery was known to some of the races by whom that empire was overthrown ; and out of the social and politi- cal conflicts produced by the barbarian inva- sions of the empire arose the feudal system. (See FEUDAL SYSTEM.) The invaders found a portion of the agricultural populations of the countries they acquired in a condition between servitude and freedom. These were the coloni, or bond laborers, who were attached to estates. Under the German conquerors of Gaul, where the feudal system experienced its greatest de- velopment, and where serfdom became the most extensive and severe in its application to the masses of the people, labor was almost entirely servile and compulsory. Some lords possessed more than 20,000 slaves each. The capitulary de Villit shows that the royal farms were cul- tivated by slaves, and it is estimated that they embraced a fourth part of the land. In time the benefices that were granted became herita- ble, so that the beneficiary exercised over the slaves not merely the power of an owner, but also that of a magistrate. Montesquieu asserts that at the beginning of the ascendancy of the third dynasty, in the 10th century, nearly all the people of France were serfs. The extreme sufferings of the people from famine compelled many of them to sell themselves into slavery ; others exchanged liberty for the protection of powerful men. Offenders against the laws, who could not pay the compositions demanded of them, and persons who had failed to perform their military duties, were made serfs, or were liable to be so made. Some men voluntarily became the property of churches and monas- teries. The effect of the barbarian conquests had been on the whole advantageous to the slaves found in the conquered countries, though it had considerably depressed the coloni. The two classes of forced laborers had been brought nearer together, the more favored class suffer- ing somewhat from the change, while the less favored class gained a little therefrom. For several centuries this state of things lasted, to the detriment of the coloni, or villeins, as they were called by the jurisconsults. The effect of the establishment of the feudal system, on the other hand, was beneficial to both the serfs and villeins. Chattel slavery ceased to exist, and they could no longer be bought and sold. This was principally owing to the influence of the church, which denounced traffic in Chris- tians. The serfs became hereditary bondmen, and were employed on the soil, with which they were transferred. The difference between the serfs and the villeins, however, was so faint in many respects that they are generally spoken of as forming one and the same class, even by the highest authorities. But the distinc^ tion was real, the villeins holding a medium position between the serfs and the ingenuous classes, or freemen. The serfs, who are some- times spoken of as a lower class of villeins, were in theory in the most abject state, and practically they often were so. Beaumanoir, after pointing out the two conditions of gen- tlemen and freemen, says : " The third estate of men is that of such as are not free ; and these are not all of one condition, for some are so subject to their lord that he may take all they have, alive or dead, and imprison them whenever ho pleases, being accountable to none but God ; while others are treated more gen- tly, from whom the lord can take nothing but customary payments, though at their death all they have escheats to him." The former were serfs, the latter villeins. The villein was obliged to remain upon his lord's estate. He could not sell his lands, and his person was bound, and he could be reclaimed and brought back if he left his superior. This was the con- dition of both serfs and villeins ; but the for- mer were bound to the performance of ignoble services, from which the latter were exempt. It was only against his lord that the villein was without rights, at least in England ; and " he might inherit, purchase, sue in the courts of law, though, as defendant in a real action or suit wherein land was claimed, he might shel- ter himself under the plea of villenage." Chil- dren generally followed the condition of their mother, but in England the state of the father determined that of the children as far back as the reign of Henry I., the first third of the 12th century. There the law presumed that the fathers of the bastards of female villeins were free, or that bastards were the sons of nobody, and therefore could not be the sons of slaves. In France, the free woman who mnr- ried a serf was treated as being of her hus- band's condition ; and in Flanders, if a free man married a villein, he became a villein him- self after living with her a year. Before the establishment of the feudal system, and under the Carlovingian rule, it had been provided that a free man who had taken a villein to wife could divorce her if he had been deceived as to her condition. Villeins could not marry with- out their lord's consent, or they forfeited their property, or were fined. The treatment of the servile classes differed much in different coun- tries, and villenage literally disappeared from England long before it was broken up in France. It was never abolished by statute. In France, the rise of men from a servile condition began very early and continued until great changes were effected. Many of the coloni aspired to freedom at the time when the feudal system was in its most flourishing state, and not a few of them were successful in throwing off their bonds. Those on the estates of kings arid churchmen were soonest enabled to do this, for obvious reasons. By the middle of the 13th century so many villeins had be- come possessed of fiefs, that even St. Louis, who favored the rise of the people, became alarmed, and sought to put a stop to the prac- tice. But he did not take from them the fiefs