Manorialism

Manorialism was the economic and cultural framework of feudal society during the Middle Ages in Europe, spanning approximately the fifth to fifteenth centuries. It was marked by the emergence of single-family farms operating collectively under the legal and economic power of a primary landowner, or lord, to whom mandatory contributions were made in the form of labor and taxes. Lords were patriarchs in the Roman villa system who settled their former slaves on their own estates as peasant-class laborers after the Roman Empire and its centralized leadership and protections declined. The manorial system was slowly replaced by a market-based economy founded on a new agrarian structure that diverged from the feudal open-field system. In France, feudal dues were not officially abolished until the French Revolution, and in Germany, some feudal manors remained until the start of World War II.

Background

Manorialism has its roots in the rural economy of the late Roman Empire. At that time, a declining population put a strain on labor production and caused the imperial economy to falter. In efforts to stabilize the situation, Roman leaders attempted to control the social structure by mandating that land laborers must be tied forever to the land they worked and could not move away from it or take legal action against the land owner—a system that eventually became known as serfdom.

At about the same time, around the start of the sixth century CE, a number of farming innovations were introduced that facilitated the rise of the manorial system. One was in the form of the heavy plow, which could dig deeper into Europe’s hard soil than previous hand-plow technologies. The new plow meant that fields no longer needed to be square in shape and cross-plowed, which involved making a second round of plow cuts perpendicular to the first. Eliminating the need to plow fields twice was a boon for production. However, in order to optimize the efficiency of the heavy-plow technology, all land in a village had to be reorganized into large, fenceless fields that could be plowed in long narrow strips. A related farming innovation of the day was the advent of using a rigid collar and tandem harness system to control the teams of eight oxen required to power the new heavy plow. The system allowed the oxen teams to pull with equal strength and greater efficiency.

The new approaches to farming promoted increased collaboration among peasant laborers who often worked dozens of fields across a village. With the novel technologies, fields became open to each other and meant that laborers had to pool their resources in order to gather the required oxen teams, as most peasants did not own the requisite eight oxen themselves. The increased cooperation led to the formation of a village council that was made up of peasants who were responsible for deciding how the day-to-day farming would be managed. The council also was charged with settling labor-related disputes among the village peasants.

Manorialism was built on the idea that a stable society was possible only when every individual in the social order accepted his or her status within it and fulfilled the roles associated with that status. In other words, an individual’s rights, obligations, and relationship to the law were based on, and restricted by, his or her social rank.

Overview

The manor was the primary unit of economic, political, and social organization in medieval Europe, serving as home to a community of peasants under the authority of a lord. To be a lord, an individual had to control at least one manorial village; some lords controlled up to one hundred or more. A small village might include ten to twelve families, while larger estates could accommodate as many as sixty families.

Manors were made up to two main parts: the lord’s land (or demesne) that was worked by the peasant laborers, and the small farms belonging to the peasant families. In addition, each manor included common lands that the peasants could use to graze their animals, hunt, and fish. Medieval manors usually housed various specialty workshops, such as blacksmiths, carpenters, stonemasons, cobblers, bakers, and wine makers, which were essential to supporting village life. Each village also had at least one priest. The lord of the manor was responsible for the protection of both the land and the peasants. In the event of an attack by another lord, the peasants would find shelter within the lord’s dwelling. By the twelfth century, the manorial lord’s home resembled a castle fortification in which the peasants lived and worked.

Peasants were held to a stringent set of regulations that defined their relationship with the manorial lord. In return for security and the right to farm and bequeath land to their male heirs, peasant laborers had to meet certain obligations. Specifically, a peasant was not permitted to leave the manor without the lord’s permission or to marry without prior consent from the lord. In some cases, a lord was allowed to choose a wife for a village peasant and require a marriage under threat of a fine and other penalties. Under duty to the lord, peasants also had to work the lord’s land before tending to their own, and they were required to fulfill other labor needs of the lord at any time upon his request, such as gathering firewood, digging ditches, and repairing roads and buildings. On top of the labor obligations peasants had to meet, they also had to pay the lord annual taxes for everything from property rights to the use of the lord’s mills and workshops.

Despite its strictly hierarchical structure, the manorial system in feudal society promoted cooperation for the collective good of the village and its lord. There were clearly defined roles and responsibilities under the manorial system, which worked well as long as each member of the village—from lord and nobility to priests and peasants—played their part and adhered to the rules. The manor village in medieval Europe encapsulated the three key aspects of society in the Middle Ages: politics, religion, and labor production.

Toward the end of the Middle Ages in Europe, shifts in the economy, politics, and religion started to undermine the feudal manorial structure, causing it gradually to dissipate as urbanization and market-based priorities began to take hold.

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