Manorialism is the other side of the feudal coin. You could say
that the economic base of feudalism was manorial agriculture.
The reason for this is to be found in the climate and the topography.
Agricultural techniques were quite different in northern Europe
from Mediterranean lands. It is no surprise that feudalism and
manorialism never really developed in the south of Europe. In
the north you could sow grain both in fall and the spring. so
the work could be more evenly distributed during the course of
the year. Because the land was much more fertile in the north
you could have larger farms in the north than you could in the
south.
In England the average farm contained 30 acres, but in Greece
the farming unit at the most consisted of 10 acres. Oats and rye
could be grown up north. This was important for cattle raising
and also the human diet. These crops gave lower yields per acre
than wheat and barley but they required larger fields, which were
available up north. In the south they had to depend on the traditional
olives and grapes.
The moldboard plow, as distinguished from the scratch plow,
created a revolution in agriculture. It makes deep furrows and
thus provides the necessary drainage for early use of the land.
The moldboard plow was invented in Germany probably long before
the invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries. It came into
gradual use in Merovingian and Carolingian times in the area between
the Rhine and the Elbe rivers. In the Romanized areas of southwestern
Europe there were certain social obstacles to adoption of the
moldboard plow. In these regions formerly a part of the Roman
Empire, Roman conceptions of private property in land and slaves
prevented the development of private farming.
Also few individual farmers could own the necessary number of
draught animals to pull this heavy plow. It took anywhere from
four to eight oxen to pull a full-sized moldboard plow. There
was also the problem of turning several teams and a rather cumbersome
plow around when you got to the end of the field. This led to
strip farming, or long-acre farming in the north. Each strip was
roughly one acre in size. The Romans had always used square fields,
which were somewhat smaller. These sorts of tradition were hard
to overcome. In south of Europe there was therefore no comparable
change in agriculture.
New agricultural techniques brought about certain social adjustments.
Since it took 6 to 8 small oxen to pull a moldboard plow, the
pooling of resources became necessity. This led to cooperative
cultivation of the soil. By lOth century most of Europe was divided
into farming units known as manors. Manors come from two sources:
1) the villa estates of the Romans; and
2) the German villages after the migrating tribes settled down.
The Roman villa estates were worked by groups of slaves who lived
together in a separate unit on the grounds. The Germanic villages
were essentially groups of peasants huddled together for cooperative
work on the land.
So new agricultural techniques and the rise of a military and
aristocratic class creates a society of basically two social groupings:
knights and serfs. The knights were the lords of the manor or
manors. This established a uniformity in the regions where the
moldboard plow was used.
The Manor
Manors usually had four parts to them: arable land, meadow land,
waste land, and the village. Each part had a specific purpose
and none could be dispensed with if the manor was to survive.
The arable land was utilized by the three-field rotation system
which prevailed in most of Europe. This meant that one third of
the arable land always remained fallow in order not to exhaust
the soil. There was plowing the year round, except when the ground
was frozen or at harvest time. This made maximum use of the most
important tool the serfs had, the moldboard plow. The value of
manor was determined for the most part by the number of plows
and teams of oxen it possessed. Each individual pleasant strip
was about one acre in size. It took about one day to plow a single
strip. Crops and peasant field assignment were scattered in 3
fields throughout the manor. Plowing and planting was fixed by
custom. There was also uniform cropping. Thus no innovation was
possible. It kept things the way they were for almost one thousand
years.
Meadow land was as important as arable land. It was necessary
to feed the draught animals. The idea of sowing and harvesting
hay to feed the animals had not yet occurred to them. There was
thus a chronic shortage of winter fodder. This meant that there
was a constant danger of losing the cattle and sheep. It was never
successfully overcome.
The waste land was used for summer pasture for animals of the
whole manor, watched by children or lowly attendants. So-called
wasteland also provided wood for fuel and building materials for
peasant huts. In addition it provided an important part of the
food supply: nuts, berries, honey, rabbits. So, it should be obvious
that the manors were relatively small clearings among large stretches
of forest and wastelands. The vast expanse of the fertile European
plain was never fully exploited and helps to account for the backwardness
of medieval economic life. Most of central and northern Europe
was blanketed with a vast forest of tall trees or unhealthy swamps.
The village itself was usually located in the center of the arable
land, somewhere near the most convenient water supply: rivers,
natural lakes or drained swamps. Although it should be remembered
that there was precious little draining of swamps until well into
modern times. The cottages where the serfs lived were made of
mud brick reinforced with straw and had earthen floors and thatched
roof. Usually they consisted of single rooms not very large in
floor space or height. There were usually small adjoining gardens
where some vegetables and fruits were grown. Little time and ground
was wasted on flowers or decorative shrubs. Chickens, dogs, and
ducks maintained a precarious existence in the streets.
The vast majority of the European population lived on land far into the 19th century. For most of that time they farmed the soil cooperatively. In a way you could say that European peasants are no strangers to a form of primitive socialism. Until a hundred years ago all food came from fields tilled by peasants in this manner. Only in Poland and England was pattern of cooperative village farming broken early. So northern Europe provided a fundamental distinction from the grape-olive-grain-complex of the Mediterranean lands. This in fact means that agriculture was adjusted to the geographic conditions that prevailed in northern Europe. This also meant that northern Europe surpassed the Mediterranean countries in wealth and power.
Social classes within the Manor
An aristocratic class rose in Europe in 8th, 9th and 10th centuries
which drew economic support from manors by preempting rents and
services from peasants. There were only lords and peasant. Social
status was defined by obligations to the lord of the manor. The
lord had a right to the products from some part of the land. There
was the so-called lord's close and there were certain strips of
the best arable land set aside for the lord. This was called the
lord's demesne or farm run by the lord's bailiff. The lord also
got dues from the serfs: sheafs of grain and other dues in kind.
These dues varied from manor to manor, but they were fixed by
custom. Everything was fixed by custom. The lord got the best
animal when the head of the family died, for instance. He collected
fees from the serfs for using his still, wine press, bake oven
and other utilities. Fines were assessed by the manor court for
various infractions of custom and rules.
Thus the peasant class of medieval Europe can be classified into
three groups: free men, serfs (villeins), and cotters. Free men
had certain fixed dues which they had to pay or deliver. Serfs
had the same dues, but also had to provide labor services for
the lord on his land. Cotters were essentially squatters with
no rights to arable land whatsoever. They worked for some sort
of wage in kind.
The church played an important role in all this. The peasants
had to pay tithes or harvest products to the church in order to
maintain it. These tithes (1/10th of total income) were collected
by the parish priest or the lord's agent.
The conditions of peasant life were extremely bleak. Poverty and
hardship, famine and disease, stalked their daily existence. In
times of war they suffered additional troubles, such as requisitions
of food and animals, and worse yet, forced labor. But the lord
needed them. So the lord helped the serfs by providing grain for
planting and clearance of land for additional strips. Sometimes
the lords helped to introduce improvement of agricultural methods,
but that was fairly rare. The lord did protect the serfs from
thieves and marauding bands. Both lord and peasant benefit from
this system, but vastly different ways.