CHAPTER VIII.

_CONNEXION BETWEEN THE ROMAN LAND SYSTEM AND THE LATER MANORIAL SYSTEM._

I. IMPORTANCE OF THE CONTINENTAL EVIDENCE.

«The question a complex one.»

In now returning to the question of the origin of the English manorial system it is needful to widen the range of the inquiry, and to seek for further light in Continental evidence.

The question itself has become a complex one. There may have been manors in the south-eastern districts of Britain before the Saxon conquest, while Britain was a Roman province, or the Saxons may have introduced the manorial system when they conquered the country. These remain the alternatives now that we have seen that the tribal system in Britain was evidently not its parent. But even if the Saxons introduced the manorial system, the further question arises whether it was a natural growth from their own tribal system, or whether they had themselves adopted it from the Romans? It is obvious, therefore, that no adequate result can be obtained without a sufficiently careful study (1) of the Roman provincial land system and (2) of the [p253] German tribal system. Not till both those have been examined can it be possible to judge which of the two factors contributed most to the manorial system, and to what extent it was their joint product.

«The two factors, the Roman land system and the German tribal system.»

The question must needs be complicated by the fact that during the whole period of the later empire a large portion of Germany was included within the lines of the Roman provinces; or, to state the point more exactly, that a large proportion of the inhabitants of these Roman provinces were Germans. It will be seen in the course of the inquiry how much depends upon the full recognition of this fact. Indeed, the very first step taken will bring it into prominence, and put us, so to speak, on right geographical lines, by showing that the nearest analogies to the English manor were to be found in those districts precisely which were both Roman and German under the later empire.

In studying, therefore, the land system in Roman provinces, we must not forget that we are studying what, though Roman, may have been subject to barbarian influences. In studying, on the other hand, the German tribal system, it is no less important to remember that some German customs may betray the results of centuries of contact with Roman rule.

II. THE CONNEXION BETWEEN THE SAXON 'HAM,' THE GERMAN 'HEIM,' AND THE FRANKISH 'VILLA.'

It would be unwise to build too much upon a mere resemblance in terms, but we have seen that the Saxon words generally used for manor were '_ham_' and '_tun_.' [p254]

We have seen how King Alfred, in the remarkable passage quoted in an earlier chapter, put in contrast the temporary log hut on lænland with the permanent hereditary possession--the '_ham_' or manor. This latter was, as we have seen, the estate of a manorial lord, with a community of dependants or serfs upon it, and not a village of coequal freemen. Hence the word _ham_ did not properly describe the clusters of scattered homesteads in the Welsh district. In King Alfred's time Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and even parts of Wiltshire were still, as already mentioned, regarded as Welsh. They formed what was known as West Wales. The manorial system had encroached far into them, but it would seem that the phraseology of the earlier system had not yet wholly disappeared. King Alfred in his will carefully abstained from applying the word _ham_ to his numerous possessions in these districts.

He disposed in his will of more than thirty separately named estates in this West Welsh district, but he invariably used, in describing them, the word 'land'--the _land_ or the _landes_ at such and such a place;--and he concluded this part of his will with the statement, 'These are all that I have in _Wealcyne_, except in _Truconshirie_' (in Cornwall). Then in the rest of his will King Alfred disposed of nearly as many estates in the south-east or manorial districts of England, and here he immediately changed his style. It was no more the _land_, at this place and that, but the _ham_ at such and such a place.[339] In the old English translation of the will given in the _Liber de Hyda_ [p255] 'land' is rendered by 'lond' and 'ham' invariably by '_twune_.'[340] Thus without saying that the words _ham_ and _tun_ always were used in this sense, and could be used in no other, they were generally at least synonymous with _manor_.

As late as the time of Bede, the suffix 'ham' or 'tun' was not yet so fully embodied with the names of places as to form a part of them. In the Cambridge MS. of his works 'ham' is still written as a separate word.

«The German _heim_.»

It is a curious fact that the suffix 'ton' or 'tun' was practically used nowhere on the Continent in the names of places; but the other manorial suffix, 'ham,' in one or other of its forms--'hem,' 'heim,' or 'haim'--was widely spread. And as in those districts where it was found most abundantly, it translated itself, as in England, into the Latin _villa_, its early geographical distribution may have an important significance.

«Geographical distribution of _hams_ and _heims_.»

«In England.»

On the annexed map is marked for each county the per-centage of the names of places mentioned in the Domesday Survey ending in _ham_.[341] This will give a fair view of their distribution in Saxon England. It will be seen that the 'hams' of England were most numerous in the south-eastern counties, from Lincolnshire and Norfolk to Sussex, finding their densest centre in Essex.[342]

«In Picardy.»

Passing on to the Continent, very similar evidence, but of earlier date, is afforded for a small district surrounding St. Omer, in Picardy, by a survey of the [p256] estates of the Abbey of St. Bertin, taken about the year 850. The 'villas' there mentioned as '_ad fratrum usus pertinentes_,' and which were distinctly manors, are twenty-five in number, and the names of fifteen of them ended in 'hem.'[343]

Similar evidence is given for various districts in Germany in the list of donations to the abbeys, the abbots of which possessed estates in different parts of Germany--sometimes whole manors or villages, sometimes only one or two holdings in this or that place.

«In the various abbey cartularies.»

«_Heims_ most numerous in the Roman province of Germania Prima.»

On the accompanying map are marked the sites of places mentioned in the cartularies of the Abbeys of Fulda,[344] Corvey,[345] St. Gall,[346] Frising,[347] Wizenburg,[348] Lorsch,[349] and in other early records, ending in _heim_ in the various districts of Germany. The result is remarkable. It shows that these _heims_ were most numerous in what was once the Roman province of _Germania Prima_, on the left bank of the upper Rhine, the present Elsass, and on both sides of the Rhine around Mayence--districts conquered by the Frankish and Alamannic tribes in the fifth century, but inhabited by Germans from the time of Tacitus, and perhaps of Cæsar, and so districts in which German populations had come very early and continued long under Roman rule. In this district the _heims_ rose in [p257] number to 80 per cent. of the places mentioned in the charters.

There were many, but not so many, _heims_ in the valley of the Neckar; but everywhere (with small local exceptions) they faded away in districts outside the Roman boundary, except in Frisia, where the proportion was large.

Now, the question is, what do these _heims_ represent?

«_Heim_ and _villa_ interchange.»

We have already said that they interchange like the English 'ham' with the Latin 'villa.' The districts where they occur most thickly, where they formed 80 per cent. of the names of places in the time of the monastic grants, and which had formed for several centuries the Roman province of Upper Germany, shade off into districts which abounded with local names ending in _villa_.

«_Wilare_, _weiler_, and _wyl_.»

They did so a thousand years ago, and they do so now. It is only needful to examine the Ordnance Survey of any part of these districts to see how, even now, the places with names ending in 'heim' are mixed with others ending in 'villa,' or 'wilare,' or the Germanised form of the word, 'weiler,' or 'wyl;' and further, how the region abounding with 'heims' shades off into a district abounding with names ending in 'villa,' or 'wilare,' and we may add the equally manorial Latin or Romance termination _curtis_, or 'court,' and its German equivalent 'hof,' or 'hoven.' And such was the case also at the date of the earliest monastic charters.

This fact in itself at least suggests very strongly that here, as in England, 'ham' and 'villa' were synonyms for the same thing, sometimes called by its [p258] Latin and sometimes by its German name. Indeed, actual instances may be found in the charters of these districts in which the name of the same place has sometimes the suffix _villa_ or _wilare_ and sometimes _heim_.[350]

Moreover, these places which are thus called 'villas' or 'heims' in the monastic charters were to all intents and purposes _manors_ as far back as the records allow us to trace them.

The earliest surveys of the possessions of the abbeys leave no doubt as to their manorial character.[351]

And the earliest charters prove that they were often at least manorial estates before they were handed over to the monks.

Indeed, a careful examination of the Wizenburg and Lorsch charters and donations leads to the result that these 'heims' and 'villas' were often royal manors, '_villæ fiscales_' on the royal domains, just as Tidenham and Hysseburne were in England. They seem to have often been held as benefices by a _dux_ [p259] or a _comes_, or other beneficiary of the king, just as Saxon royal manors were held by the king's thanes as 'læn-land.'[352]

Thus the royal domains of Frankish kings were apparently under manorial management, and practically divided up into manors. The boundaries or 'marchæ' of one manor often divided it from the next manor;[353] while one 'villa' or 'heim' often had sub-manors upon it, as in the case of Tidenham.[354]

Thus the 'villa,' 'heim,' or 'manor,' seems to have been the usual fiscal and judicial territorial unit under Frankish rule, as the manor once was and the parish now is in England. And this alone seems to afford a satisfactory explanation of the use of the word 'villa' in the early Frankish capitularies, and in the Salic laws. It is there used apparently for both private estates and the smallest usual territorial unit for judicial or fiscal purposes.[355]

When a law speaks of a person attacking or taking possession of the 'villa' of another, the 'villa' is clearly a private estate. But when it speaks of a [p260] crime committed 'between two villas,' the word seems to be used for a judicial jurisdiction, just as if we should say 'between two parishes.'

This double use of the word becomes intelligible if 'villa' may be used as 'manor,' and if the whole country--the _terra regis_ with the rest--were divided in the fifth century into 'villas' or 'manors,' but hardly otherwise.

The remarkable passage in the Salic laws '_De Migrantibus_,' which provides that no one can move into and settle in another 'villa' without the license of those 'qui in villa consistunt,' but that after a twelvemonth's stay unmolested he shall remain secure, 'sicut et alii vicini,' seems at first sight to imply a _free village_.[356] But another clause which permits the emigrant to settle if he has the royal 'præceptum' to do so,[357] suggests that the 'villa' in question was one of the royal 'villas'--a 'villa fiscalis' in the demesne of the Crown.[358]

«_Ham_ and _villa_ in the Salic laws,»

The Salic law has come down to us in Latin versions, but the Malberg glosses contain some indications that the word _villa_ was used as a translation of variations of the word _ham_, then applied by the Franks to both kinds of _villas_ in the manorial sense.

The old tradition recorded in the prologue to the [p261] later versions of the Salic laws, whatever it be worth, attributes their first compilation to four chosen men, whose names and residences are as follows:--Uuisogastis, Bodogastis, Salegastis, Uuidogastis, _in loca nominancium_, Bodochamæ, Salchamæ, Uuidochamæ.

In another version of the prologue instead of the words '_in loca nominancium_,' the reading is '_in villis_,' and the termination of the names is 'chem,' 'hem,' and 'em.'[359]

«and in the Malberg glosses.»

Dr. Kern, in editing the Malberg glosses, points out that the gloss in Title xlii. shows that '_ham_' might be used by the Franks in the sense of 'court'--'king's court,'--just as in some parts of the Netherlands, especially in the Betuwe, '_ham_' is even now a common name for ancient mansions, such as in mediæval Latin were termed '_curtes_.' Thus he shows that the Frankish words '_chami theuto_' (the bull of the ham) were translated in Latin as '_taurum regis_,' _cham_ being taken to mean king's court.[360] Possibly the lord of a _villa_ provided the 'village bull,' just as till recent times in the Hitchin manor, as we have seen, the village bull was under the manorial customs provided for the commoners by the rectorial sub-manor.

So in another place the word '_chamestalia_' seems to be used in the Malberg gloss for 'in truste _dominica_,'[361] the 'cham' again being taken in a thoroughly _manorial_ sense.

That there were manorial lords with _lidi_ and tributarii--semi-servile tenants--as well as _servi_, or slaves, under them, is clear from other passages of the Salic laws.[362] [p262]

But the 'ham' of the Malberg glosses seems to have had sometimes at least the _king_ for its lord. And this brings us again to the double use in the Salic laws of the word 'villa.' It seems, as we have said, to have been used not only for a 'villa' in private hands, but also in a wider sense for the usual fiscal or judicial territorial unit, whether under the jurisdiction of a manorial lord, or of the 'villicus' or 'judex,' or beneficiary of the king.

Lastly, the early date of the Salic laws bringing the Frankish and Roman provincial rule into such close proximity, irresistibly raises the question[363] whether there may not have been an actual continuity, first between the Roman and Frankish villa, and secondly, between the Roman system of management of the imperial provincial domains during the later empire, and the Frankish system of manorial management of the 'terra regis' or 'villæ fiscales' after the Frankish conquest. If this should turn out to have been the case, then the further question will arise whether under the tribal system of the Germans the beginnings of manorial tendencies can be so far traced as to explain the ease with which Frankish and Saxon conquerors of the old Roman provinces fell into manorial ways, and adopted the manor as the normal type of estate.

This is the line of inquiry which it is now proposed to follow. [p263]

III. THE ROMAN 'VILLA,' ITS EASY TRANSITION INTO THE LATER MANOR, AND ITS TENDENCY TO BECOME THE PREDOMINANT TYPE OF ESTATE.

«The Roman villa like a manor.»

The Roman _villa_ was, in fact, exceedingly like a manor, and, moreover, becoming more and more so in the Gallic and German provinces, at least under the later empire as time went on.

«An estate.»

The villa, as described by Varro and Columella, before and shortly after the Christian era, was a farm--a _jundus_. It was not a mere residence, but, like the villa of the present day in Italy, a territory or estate in land.

«The _curtis_.»

The lord's homestead on the villa was surrounded by two enclosed 'cohortes,' or courts, from which was derived the word '_curtis_,' so often applied to the later manor-house.[364]

«The _villicus_ and slaves.»

At the entrance of the outer court was the abode of the '_villicus_'--a strictly manorial officer, as we have seen--generally a slave chosen for his good qualities.[365] Near this was the common kitchen, where not only the food was cooked, but also the slaves performed their indoor work. Here also were cellars and granaries for the storing of produce, the cells in which were the night quarters of the slaves, and the underground '_ergastulum_,' with its narrow windows, high and out of reach, where those slaves who were kept in chains lived, worked, and were tormented; for [p264] in the _ergastulum_ was revealed the cruel side of the system of slave labour under Roman law. Columella says that the cleverest slaves must oftenest be kept in chains.[366] Cato, according to Plutarch, advised that slaves should be incited to quarrel amongst themselves, lest they should conspire against their master, and considered it to be cheaper to work them to death than to let them grow old and useless.[367]

In the inner 'cohort' were the stalls and stables for the oxen, horses, and other live stock; and all around was the land to be tilled.

Thus the Roman villa, if not at first a complete manor, was already an estate of a lord (dominus) _worked by slaves_ under a _villicus_.

Sometimes the whole work of the estate was done by slaves; and though the estimates of historians have varied very much, there is no reason to doubt that in the first and second centuries the proportion of slaves to the whole population of the empire was enormous.

«The _decuriæ_, slaves.»

But even the management of slaves required organisation. The anciently approved Roman method of managing the slaves on a villa was to form them into groups of _tens_, called _decuriæ_, each under an overseer or _decurio_.[368]

The _villicus_, or general steward of the manor, was sometimes a _freedman_. And there was a strong reason why a freedman was often put in a position of trust, viz. that if he should be dishonest, or show [p265] ingratitude to his patron, he was liable to be degraded again into slavery. There is an interesting fragment of Roman law which suggests that the decurio of a gang of slaves was sometimes a _freedman_, and that it was a common practice to assign to the freedman a portion of land and a _decuria_ of slaves, and no doubt oxen also to work it, thus putting him very much in the position of a colonus with slaves under him. The result of his betrayal of trust, in the case mentioned in the fragment, was his degradation, and the resumption by his patron of the _decuria_ of slaves.[369] Thus we learn that the lord of a villa might, in addition to his home farm worked by the slaves in his own homestead, have portions of the land of his estate let out, as it were, to farm to _freedmen_, each with his _decuria_ of slaves, and paying rent in produce.

«Groups of tens.»

There was nothing very peculiarly Roman in this system of classification in _tens_. The fact that men everywhere have ten fingers makes such a classification all but universal. But the Romans certainly did use it for a variety of purposes--for taxation and military organisation as well as in the management of the slaves of a villa. And _M. Guerard_, probably with reason, connects these _decuriæ_ of the Roman villa with the _decaniæ_, or groups of originally ten servile holdings, under a villicus or _decanus_, which are described on the estates of the Abbey of St. Germain in the Survey of the Abbot Irminon about A.D. 850.[370] So possibly a survival of a similar system may be traced also in the much earlier instances mentioned by Bede under date A.D. 655, in one of which [p266] King Oswy grants to the monastery at Hartlepool twelve _possessiunculæ_, each of '_ten families_;' and in the other of which the abbess Hilda, having obtained a '_possession of ten families_,' proceeds to build Whitby Abbey.[371] In all these cases of the Roman freedman and his _decuria_, the Gallic decanus and his _decania_, and the Saxon _possessiuncula_ of ten families, there is the bundle of ten slaves or semi-servile tenants with their holdings, treated as the smallest usual territorial division.[372]

But to return to the Roman villa. The organisation of _decuriæ_ of slaves was not the only resource of the lord in the management of his estate.

«The coloni, on a villa.»

Varro speaks of its being an open point, to be decided according to the circumstances of each farm, whether it were better to till the land by slaves or by freemen, or by _both_.[373] And Columella, speaking of the families or 'hands' upon a farm, says 'they are either slaves or _coloni_;'[374] and he goes on to say, 'It is pleasanter to deal with coloni, and easier to get out of them _work_ than _payments_. . . . They will sooner ask to be let off the one than the other. The best _coloni_,' he says, 'are those which are _indigeni_, born on the estate and bound by hereditary ties to it.' Especially distant corn farms, he considers, are cultivated with less trouble by free coloni than by slaves under a villicus, because slaves are dishonest and lazy, neglect the cattle, and waste the produce; [p267] whilst _coloni_, sharing in the produce, have a joint interest with their lord.

«_Adscripti glebæ._»

That the _coloni_ sometimes were _indigeni_ upon the estate, and were sometimes called _originarii_, shows the beginning at least of a tendency to treat them as _adscripti glebæ_, like the mediæval 'nativi.' Indeed, we find it laid down in the later laws of the empire that _coloni_ leaving their lord's estate could be reclaimed at any time within thirty years.[375] And nothing could more clearly indicate the growth of the semi-servile condition of the colonus, as time went on, than the declaration (A.D. 531) that the son of a colonus who had done no service to the 'dominus terræ' during his father's lifetime, and had been absent more than thirty or forty years, could be recalled upon his father's death and obliged to continue the services due from the holding.[376]

We know from Tacitus that the typical colonus had his own homestead and land allotted to his use, and paid tribute to his lord in corn or cattle, or other produce. And there is a clause in the Justinian Code prohibiting the arbitrary increase of these tributes, another point in which the _coloni_ resembled the later _villani_.[377]

«Likeness to a manor.»

«Village round a villa.»

A villa under a villicus, with servi under him living within the 'curtis' of the villa, and with a little group of coloni in their _vicus_ also upon the estate, but outside the court, would thus be very much like a later manor indeed. And Frontinus,[378] describing [p268] the great extent of the _latifundia_, especially of provincial landowners, expressly says that on some of these private estates there was quite a population of rustics, and that often there were _villages_ surrounding the _villa_ like fortifications. It would seem then that the villas in the provinces were still more like manors than those in Italy.

«The villa becoming the prevalent type of estate.»

It is now generally admitted that indirectly, at least, the Roman conquest of German territory--the extension of the Roman province beyond the Rhine and along the Danube--added greatly to the number of semi-servile tenants upon the Roman provincial estates, and so tended more and more to increase during the later empire the manorial character of the 'villa;' whilst at the same time the pressure of Roman taxation within the old province of Gaul, and beyond it, was so great as steadily to force more and more of the free tenants on the _Ager Publicus_ to surrender their freedom and swell the numbers of the semi-servile class on the greater estates; so that not only was the villa becoming more and more manorial itself, but also it was becoming more and more the prevalent type of estate.

As regards the first point, during the later empire there was direct encouragement given to landowners to introduce barbarians taken from recently conquered districts, and to settle them on their estates as _coloni_, and not as slaves. These foreign coloni became very numerous under the name of _tributarii_ and perhaps 'læti;' so that the proportion of coloni to [p269] slaves was probably, during the later period of Roman rule, always increasing, and the Roman villa under its _villicus_ was becoming more and more like a later manor, with a semi-servile village community of _coloni_ or _tributarii_ upon it in addition to the slaves.[379]

As regards the second point, the evidence will be given at a later stage of the inquiry.

* * * * *

Confining our attention at present to the Roman villa, and the slaves and semi-servile tenants upon it, we have finally to add to the fact of close resemblance to the later manor and manorial tenants proof of actual historical connexion and continuity in districts where the evidence is most complete.

A clear and continuous connexion can be traced in many cases, at all events in Gaul, between the Roman villa and the later manor.

«German lords of villas.»

In the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris the Visigothic and Burgundian invaders are described as adapting themselves roughly and coarsely to Roman habits in many respects. He speaks of their being put into the 'villas' as 'hospites.' Indeed, it is well known that these Teutonic invaders settled as invited guests, being called _hospites_ or _gasti_;[380] that they shared the villas and lands of the Romans on the same system as that which was adopted when Roman legions--often of German soldiers--were quartered on a district, according to a well-known [p270] passage of the 'Codex Theodosianus.'[381] They took their _sortes_, or fixed proportions of houses and lands and slaves, and, sharing the lordship of these with their Roman '_consortes_,' they must have sanctioned and adapted themselves to the manorial character of the villas whose occupation they shared, ultimately becoming themselves lords of villas probably as manorial as any Roman villas could be.[382]

Dr. P. Roth has shown that in Frankish districts many of the wealthy provincials remained, under Frankish rule, in unbroken possession of their former estates--their numerous 'villæ.' Amongst these the bishops and abbots were conspicuous examples. He shows that thousands of 'villæ' thus remained unchanged upon the widely extended ecclesiastical estates.[383]

Gregory of Tours speaks of the restitution by King Hildebert of the 'villas' unjustly seized under the lawless regime of Hilperic.[384] He also relates how bishops and monasteries were endowed by the transfer to them of villas with the slaves and coloni upon them.

«Villas given to the Church.»

Under the year 582, he mentions the death of a certain _Chrodinus_, also the subject of a poem by Fortunatus, a great benefactor of the clergy, and describes him as 'founding villas, setting vineyards, building houses [_domos_], making fields [_culturas_],' and then, having invited bishops of slender means to [p271] his table, after dinner 'kindly distributing these _houses, with the cultivators and the fields, with the furniture, and male and female servants and household slaves_ [_ministris et famulis_], saying, "These are given to the Church, and whilst with these the poor will be fed, they will secure to me favour with God."'[385]

Here, then, after the Frankish conquest, we have the word _villa_ still used for the typical estate; and the estate consists of the _domus_, with the vineyards and the fields, and their cultivators.

Turning to the earliest monastic records we have seen that the 'villas' or 'heims' of the abbeys of Wizenburg and Lorsch were in fact manors.

«Villas become villages,»

The donations to the Abbot of St. Germain-des-Prés,[386] in the neighbourhood of Paris, commenced in the year 558, and in the survey of the estates of the Abbey made in the year 820, there are described _villas_ still cultivated by _coloni_, _leti_, &c.--villas which grew into villages which now bear the names of the villas out of which they sprang:--

_Levaci Villa_, now _Levaville_ (p. 90). _Landulfi Villa_, now _Landonville_ (p. 94). _Aneis Villa_, now _Anville_. _Gaudeni Villa_, now _Grinville_ (p. 99). _Sonani Villa_, now _Senainville_ (p. 100). _Villa Alleni_, now _Allainville_ (p. 102). _Ledi Villa_, now _Laideville_ (p. 102). _Disboth Villa_, now _Bouville_ (p. 104). _Mornane Villare_, now _Mainvilliers_ (p. 112). And so on in numbers of instances.

«and '_hems_' which are manor.»

The chartulary of the Abbey of St. Bertin also [p272] contains instructive examples. By the earliest charter of A.D. 648 the founder of the abbey granted to the monks his villa called '_Sitdiu_,' and it included within it twelve sub-estates, one of them, the _Tattinga Villa_, which later is called in the cartulary _Tattingaheim_.[387]

The chief villa with these sub-estates was granted to the abbey '_cum domibus, ædificiis, terris cultis et incultis, mansiones cum silvis pratis pascuis, aquis aquarumve decursibus, seu farinariis, mancipiis, accolabus, greges cum pastoribus_,' &c. &c., and therefore was a manor with both slaves (_mancipia_) and _coloni_, or other semi-servile tenants (_accolæ_) upon it, as indeed were the generality of villas handed over to the monasteries.

There seems, therefore, to be conclusive evidence not only of a remarkable resemblance, but also in many cases of a real historical continuity between the Roman '_villa_' and the later Frankish manor.

IV. THE SMALLER TENANTS ON THE AGER PUBLICUS IN ROMAN PROVINCES--THE VETERANS.

«Tenants on the _Ager Publicus_.»

Passing from that part of the land in Roman provinces included in the villas, or _latifundia_, of the richer Romans, and so placed under private lordship, we must now turn our attention to the wide tracts of '_Ager Publicus_,' and try to discover the position and social economy of the tenants, so to speak, on the great provincial manor of the Roman Emperor.

Care must be taken to discriminate between the [p273] different classes of these tenants, some of them being of a free and some of them of a semi-servile kind.

«The veterans.»

First, there were the veterans of the legions, who, according to Roman custom, were settled on the public lands at the close of a war, by way of pay for their services.

«Regular centuriæ.»

For the settlement of these, sometimes regularly constituted military _coloniæ_ were founded; and in this case, where everything had to be started _de novo_, a large tract of land was divided for the purpose by straight roads and lanes--pointing north, and south, and east, and west--into _centuriæ_ of mostly 200 or 240 _jugera_, which were then sub-divided into equal rectangular divisions, according to the elaborate rules of the _Agrimensores_,[388] the odds and ends of land, chiefly woods and marshes, being alone left to be used in common by the 'vicini,' or body of settlers.

But in other cases the settlement was much more irregular and haphazard in its character.

«Irregular holdings.»

Sometimes the veteran received his pay and his outfit, and was left to settle wherever he could find unoccupied land--'_vacantes terræ_'--to his mind. Under the later empire, owing to the constant ravages of German tribes, there was no lack of land ready for cultivators, without the appliance of the red-tape rules of the _Agrimensores_. The veterans settled upon this and occupied it pretty much as they liked, taking what they wanted according to their present or prospective means of cultivating it. Lands thus taken were called '_agri occupatorii_,' and were irregular [p274] in their boundaries and divisions, instead of being divided into the rectangular _centuriæ_.[389]

It is to these more irregular occupations of territory that the chief interest attaches.

«Outfit of oxen and seed of two kinds.»

When, under the later empire, veterans were allowed to settle upon '_vacantes terræ_,' they had assigned to them an outfit of oxen and seed closely resembling the Saxon 'setene' and the Northumbrian 'stuht.'

«Single or double _fuga_.»

«The _jugum_.»

Those of the upper grade, whether so considered from military rank or special service rendered by them to the State, were provided, according to the edicts of A.D. 320 and 364, with an outfit of _two pairs of oxen_ and 100 modii of each of two kinds of seed. Those of lower rank received as outfit one pair of oxen and fifty modii of each of the two kinds of seed.[390] And the land they cultivated with these single or double yokes of oxen was perhaps called their single or double _jugum_. Cicero, in his oration [p275] against Verres, speaks of the Sicilian peasants as mostly cultivating '_in singulis jugis_.'[391] During the later empire the typical holding of land--the hypothetical unit for purposes of taxation--as we shall see, came to be the _jugum_, but the assessment no longer always corresponded with the actual holdings.

But to return to the holding of the Roman veteran. It is not impossible to ascertain roughly its normal acreage from the amount of seed allotted in the outfit, as well as from the number of oxen.

«Of about 30 jugera.»

A single pair of oxen was, as we have seen, allotted under Saxon rules as outfit to the yard-land of thirty acres, of which, under the three-field or three-course system, ten acres would be in wheat, ten in oats or pulse, and ten in fallow. With the single pair of oxen was allotted to the veteran fifty modii of wheat seed, and fifty of oats or pulse. Five modii of wheat seed, according to the Roman writers on agriculture, commonly went to the jugerum;[392] so that the veteran with a single yoke of oxen had seed for ten jugera of wheat, and thus was apparently assumed to be able to cultivate, if farming on the three-course system, about thirty jugera in all, like the holder of the Saxon yard-land. The veteran to whom was assigned the double yoke of four oxen and 200 modii of seed--100 modii of each kind--would have about 60 jugera in his double holding.

Of course, too much stress should not be placed upon any close correspondence in the number of jugera; but it is, on the other hand, perfectly natural [p276] that, in the theory of these outfits, seed should be given for a definite area, and that this should be some actual division of the centuria of the _Agrimensores_.

«Normal _centuria_, 200 and 240 jugera.»

Siculus Flaccus, who wrote about A.D. 100, and chiefly of Italy, describes how, in the regular allotments by the _Agrimensores_, one settler, according to his military rank, would receive a single modus, another one and a half, and another two modii, whilst sometimes a single allotment was given _to several people jointly_. He mentions also that the _centuriæ_ varied in size, being sometimes 200 jugera and sometimes 240; the smaller lots also sometimes varying in size, even in the same centuria, according to the fertility or otherwise of the land.[393]

All we can say is that the centuria of 240 jugera would be divisible into single and double holdings of thirty and sixty jugera respectively, just as the English double hide of 240 acres, or single hide of 120 acres, was divisible into yard-lands of thirty acres. The centuria of 200 jugera would be divisible into holdings of fifty and twenty-five jugera respectively.[394]

Passing from the outfit and the holdings, it may [p277] be asked, what was the system of cultivation? was it an open field husbandry?

«Traces of an open-field husbandry in some cases.»

«_Supercilia_ or linches.»

It is obvious that formal centuriation in straight lines and rectangular divisions, by the _Agrimensores_, produced something entirely different from the open field system as we have found it in England. But Siculus Flaccus records that in some cases, when vacant districts were occupied by settlers without this formal centuriation, as '_agri occupatorii_'--the settlers taking such tracts of land as they had the means or expectation of cultivating--the boundaries were irregular, and followed no rules but those of common sense and the custom of the country.[395] And he gives as an instance of such a common-sense rule the custom about '_supercilia_,' or _linches_, the sloping surface of which, where they formed boundaries between the land of two owners, should be kept the same number of feet in width, the slope always belonging to the upper owner, because otherwise it would be in the power of the lower owner, by ploughing into the slope, to jeopardise the upper owner's land.[396] This, he says, is the reason of the rule that the land of the owner of the upper terrace generally descends to the bottom of the slope.[397]

«The holdings sometimes composed of scattered pieces.»

Here, in this mention of _linches_ and irregular boundaries, traces seem to turn up of an open-field husbandry; and a few pages further on the same writer makes another observation which shows clearly that frequently the holding, like the yard-land, was [p278] composed of _scattered pieces_ in open fields, and that this scattered ownership, as in England, was the result of an original joint occupation, and probably of a system of co-operative ploughing.

He says[398] that in many districts were to be found _possessores_ whose lands were not contiguous, but made up of little pieces scattered in different places, and intermixed with those of the others, the several owners having common rights of way over one another's land to their scattered pieces, and also to the common woods, in which the _vicini_ only have common rights of cutting timber and feeding stock.

This reference to the common woods and rights of way belonging only to the 'vicini' seems to show that the scattering of the pieces in the holdings had arisen as in the later open-field system, from an original co-operation of ploughing or other cultivation.

«The result of joint occupation.»

Connecting these statements with the previous one, that sometimes land was assigned to _a number of settlers jointly_, and that sometimes settlers took possession, without centuriation, of so much land as they could cultivate, and transferring these same methods from Italy, where Flaccus observed them, to transalpine provinces, where larger teams were [p279] needful for ploughing, it would seem that we may rightly picture bodies of free settlers on the 'ager publicus' as frequently joining their yokes of oxen together to plough their allotments on the open-field system. And if this was done by retired veterans on public land, they were probably only following the common method adopted by the _coloni_ on the villas of the richer Roman landowners in the provinces. If they did so, they probably simply adopted the custom of the country in which they settled, and followed a method common not only to Gaul and Germany, but also to Europe and Asia.[399]

«The method of centuriation.»

Even in the case of the regular centuriation, there was an _opportunity_, apparently, for joint occupation, and probably often a necessity for joint ploughing.

Hyginus, describing the mode of centuriation, speaks first of the two broad roads running north and south and east and west; and then he says the '_sortes_' were divided, and the names recorded in tens (_per decurias, i.e. per homines denos_), the subdivision among the ten being left till afterwards.[400] It does not follow, perhaps, that the subdivision was always made in regular squares. There may sometimes have been a common occupation and joint ploughing; but of this we know nothing.

«The veterans a privileged class.»

The retired veterans were a privileged class, and specially exempted from many public burdens;[401] but in other respects there is no reason to suppose that in their methods of settlement and agriculture, and [p280] in the size of their holdings proportioned to their single or double yokes, they differed from other free settlers or ancient original tenants on the _ager publicus_. We may add that, following the usual Roman custom, these settlers probably as a rule lived in towns and villages, and not on their farms. We may assume that, having single or double yokes of oxen and outfits of two kinds of seed, they were arable and not pasture farmers, with their homesteads in the village and their land in the fields around it--in some places under the three-field system, in others with a rectangular block of land on which they followed the three-course or other rotation of crops for themselves.

Groups of settlers may therefore be regarded as sometimes forming something very much like a free village community upon the public land of the Empire, with no lord over it except the fiscal and judicial officers of the Emperor.

V. THE SMALLER TENANTS ON THE 'AGER PUBLICUS'

(_continued_)--THE LÆTI.

«The _Læti_ a semi-servile class, like the Welsh _taeogs_.»

In the second place, there were settlers of quite another grade--families of the conquered tribes of Germany, who were forcibly settled within the _limes_ of the Roman provinces, in order that they might repeople desolated districts or replace the otherwise dwindling provincial population--in order that they might bear the public burdens and minister to the public needs, _i.e._ till the public land, pay the [p281] public tribute, and also provide for the defence of the empire. They formed a semi-servile class, partly agricultural and partly military; they furnished corn for the granaries and soldiers for the cohorts of the empire, and were generally known in later times by the name of '_Læti_,' or '_Liti_'[402] They were somewhat in the same position as the Welsh '_taeogs_' or '_aillts_.' They were foreigners, without Roman blood, and hence a semi-servile class of occupiers distinct from, and without the full rights of, Roman citizens[403]--a class, in short, upon whom the full burden of taxation and military service could be laid.

«Mostly deported Germans.»

Probably this system had been followed from the time of Augustus, as a substitute for the earlier and more cruel course of sending tens of thousands of vanquished foes to the Roman slave market for sale; but it became a more and more important part of the imperial defensive policy of Rome during the later empire, as the inroads of barbarians became more and more frequent.

«System of forced emigration from conquered districts.»

There is clear evidence, from the third century, of the extension of this kind of colonisation over a wide district. It is important to realise both its extent and locality.

«A German population already in Rhætia, the _Agri Decumates_, and in Elsass.»

In order fully to comprehend the meaning and consequences of this German colonisation of Roman provinces, it must be borne in mind that the rich lands on the left bank of the Rhine, between the Vosges mountains and the river, had been settled [p282] by Germans before the time of Tacitus. Strabo[404] distinctly says that the Suevic tribes, who in his day dwelt on the east bank of the Rhine, had driven out the former German inhabitants, and that the latter had taken refuge on the west bank. Tacitus describes three German tribes as settled in this district (now Elsass).[405] Further, the large extent of country to the east of the Rhine, within the Roman lines, reaching from Mayence to Regensburg, included in the _Agri Decumates_ and the old province of Rhætia (_i.e._ what is now Baden, Wirtemberg, and Bavaria), had by the third century become filled with straggling offshoots from various German and mostly Suevic tribes who had crossed the 'Limes'--a mixed population of Hermunduri, Thuringi, Marcomanni, and Juthungi, with a sprinkling of Franks, Vandals, Longobards, and Burgundians,--some of them friendly, some of them hostile to the empire and gradually becoming absorbed in the greater group of the 'Alamanni.'

«The Alamanni.»

«The _Limes_, or '_Pfahlgraben_.'»

Further, it should be remembered that in the third century offshoots from the Alamanni and the Franks attempted to spread themselves over the country on the Gallic side of the Rhine, assuming, during periods of Roman weakness, a certain independence and even over-lordship, so that Probus found sixty cities under their control. Probus completely reduced them once more into obedience, and again made the Roman authority supreme over the 'Agri Decumates,' and Rhætia as far as the 'Limes.'[406] [p283]

A few years before, Marcus Antoninus, after he had conquered the Marcomanni in this district, had deported many of them into Britain.[407]

«Forced colonisation in Britain and Belgic Gaul.»

Probus followed his example, and deported also into Britain such of the Burgundians and Vandals from the 'Agri Decumates' as he could secure alive as prisoners, 'in order that they might be useful as security against revolts in Britain.'[408]

«Of _Læti_ in Belgic Gaul and the Moselle Valley.»

He also colonised large numbers of Germans in the Rhine valley (where he introduced, it is said, the vine culture), and some of them in Belgic Gaul. In his report to the Senate he described his victory as the reconquest of all Germany. He boasted of the subjection of the numerous petty kings, and declared that the Germans now ploughed, and sowed, and fought for the Romans. And, as he himself had deported Germans into Britain, his words cover the British as well as the Gallic and German provinces.[409] This victory over the Alamannic tribes and colonisation of them in Britain and Gaul, by Probus, was in A.D. 277.

Very soon afterwards the same policy was again followed in dealing with the Franks, who were plundering and depopulating the Belgic provinces of Gaul further to the north, and ravaging the coasts of Britain. [p284] In 286, Carausius, who was put in charge of the Roman fleet, and whose business it was to guard the Gallic and British shores infested by the Saxons and Franks, revolted and proclaimed himself Emperor, defending himself successfully against the Emperor Maximian, and leaguing himself with the Franks and Saxons. In 291, Maximian, after directing his arms against the Franks, deported a number of them and settled them as læti on the vacant lands of the Nervii and Treviri, in Belgic Gaul and in the valley of the Moselle.[410]

«Further deportations of Franks, Frisians, and Chamavi.»

The further steps taken by his co-Cæsar Constantius to put an end to the revolt of Carausius are very instructive. He first recovered the haven of Gesoriacum (Boulogne), and cut off the connexion of the British fleet with Gaul. Then he turned northward again upon the districts from whence the Frankish and Saxon pirates had been accustomed to make their ravages upon Britain and Gaul. They were, as has been said, in league with the British usurper, but succumbed to the arms of Constantius. The first use he made of his victory over them was to repeat the policy of his predecessors--to deport a great multitude into those very Belgic districts which they had depopulated by their ravages. This was the time when the districts around Amiens and Beauvais, once inhabited by the Bellovaci, and further south around Troyes and Langres, where the Tricassi and Lingones had dwelt, were colonised by Franks, [p285] Chamavi, and Frisians; and Eumenius,[411] in his Panegyric, represented them, as Probus had described the Alamanni, as now tilling the fields they had once plundered, and supplying recruits to the Roman legions. A '_pagus Chamavorum_' existed in the ninth century in this district, and so bore witness to the extent and permanence of this colony of _Chamavi_.[412] Similar evidence for the other districts, as we shall have occasion to see hereafter, is possibly to be found in the names of places with a Teutonic termination remaining to this day, though the language spoken is French.

A recent German writer, in a sketch of the reign of Diocletian, makes the pregnant remark that when account is taken of all the masses of Germans thus brought into the Roman provinces, partly as colonists and partly as soldiers, it becomes clear that the northern districts of Gaul were already half German before the Frankish invasion. These German settlers were valuable at the time as tillers of the land, payers of tribute, and as furnishing recruits to the legions; but in history they were more than this, for they were, partly against their will, the pioneers of the German '_Völkerwanderung_.'[413]

«Alamanni in Britain.»

We have seen that Probus had deported Alamanni into Britain in pursuance of this continuous [p286] policy. It is curious to observe that when Constantius soon after (in A.D. 306) died at York, and Constantine was proclaimed Emperor in Britain, one of his supporters was Crocus or Erocus,[414] a king of the Alamanni, proving that there were Alamannic soldiers in Britain under their own king--probably, more properly speaking, a sept or clan under its own chief--at that date.

But it was not long before both the Alamanni and the Franks again became troublesome in the Rhine valley. Under the year 357, in the history of Ammianus Marcellinus, there is a vivid description of the struggle of Julian to regain from the Alamanni the cities on the Lower Rhine which the latter had occupied, as in the time of Probus, within the Roman province of Lower Germany. After the decisive battle of Strasburg, Julian crossed the Rhine at Mayence and laid waste the country between the Maine and the Rhine, 'plundering the wealthy farms of their crops and cattle, and burning to the ground all the houses, _which latter in that district were built in the Roman fashion_.'[415] He then restored the fortress of Trajan which protected this part of the 'Limes.' The next year, the Salian Franks having taken possession of Toxandria, on the Scheldt, Julian pounced down upon them and recovered possession, and then set himself 'to restore the fortifications of the cities of the Lower Rhine, and to _establish afresh the granaries which had been burned, in which to stow [p287] the corn usually imported from Britain_.'[416] This was the occasion on which, according to Zosimus, 800 vessels, more than mere boats, were employed in going backwards and forwards bringing over the British corn, thus proving both the extent of British agriculture and the close connexion between Britain and the province of Lower Germany.

«Bucenobantes deported into Britain.»

The aggressions of the Alamanni, however, continued, and again we find Ammianus Marcellinus describing how, at the close of a campaign, Valentinian, in A.D. 371, deported into Britain the Bucenobantes, a tribe of the Alamanni from the east banks of the Rhine, immediately north of Mayence. He made them elect Fraomarius as their chief, and then, giving him the rank of a tribune, sent him with his tribe of Alamannic soldiers to settle in Britain, as probably Crocus or Erocus had been sent before him.[417]

«The policy a settled one, and long continued.»

This policy of planting colonies of German colonists--even whole clans under their petty chiefs--in the Belgic provinces and Britain, with the double object of keeping up the supply of corn for the empire and soldiers for the legions, was therefore steadily adhered to for several generations. And a further proof of the extent to which the system was carried turns up later in the numerous cohorts of Læti mentioned by Ammianus,[418] and in the '_Notitia_,'[419] as having been drawn from these colonies [p288] and placed as garrisons all over Gaul and Germany, but especially on the banks of the Rhine.

It has been necessary to dwell upon this subject because it is needful for the present purpose that it should be fully understood that throughout the German provinces of _Rhætia_, the _Agri Decumates_, _Upper and Lower Germany_, in _Belgic Gaul_, and in _Britain_, there were large numbers of German semi-servile settlers upon the _Ager Publicus_ interspersed among the free coloni and veterans; and that most of the settlers, whether free coloni, veterans, or læti, were engaged in agriculture. Some of them, no doubt, especially since the encouragement said to have been given by Probus to vine culture, may have occupied vineyards in Southern Gaul, or in the valleys of the Rhine and its tributaries.

Lastly, it must also be remembered that there may have been intermixed among the privileged veterans and the overburdened 'læti,' on the public lands, dwindling remains of original Gallic inhabitants, and other free coloni or tenants, not privileged like the veterans, but subject to the various public burdens. Some of these were scarcely to be distinguished, perhaps, in point of law and right from the owners of villas. They may have been holders of slaves, and have had possibly sometimes even free coloni of their own, though varying very much in the size of their holdings, and falling far below the owners of latifundia in social importance. Be this as it may, we shall presently find the free class of landholders, whoever they might be, sinking steadily into a semi-servile condition under the oppression of the Imperial fiscal officers and the burden of the taxation and services [p289] imposed upon them--the _tributum_ and _sordida munera_--the oppressive exaction of which during the later empire was forcing them gradually to surrender their freedom, and to seek the shelter of a semi-servile position under the _patrocinium_, sometimes of the fiscal officer himself, sometimes of the lord of a neighbouring 'villa.'

VI. THE 'TRIBUTUM' OF THE LATER EMPIRE.

Passing now to the system of taxation and forced services during the later empire, it will be found to be of peculiar importance, not only because of its connexion with the growing manorial tendencies, but also because the taxation resembled so closely the system of '_hidation_' prevalent afterwards in Saxon England, and some of the forced services actually survived in the manorial system.

The system of taxation was modified by the Emperor Diocletian at the very time when the policy of forced colonisation described in the last chapter was being carried out.

«The _jugatio_ or assessment by the _jugum_ or _caput_.»

It was known as the taxation '_jugatione vel capitatione_'--the tribute or stipendium of so much for every _jugum_ or _caput_.

'Jugum' and 'caput' were names for a hypothetically equal, if not always the same, unit of taxation.[420]

The 'jugum' was probably originally taken from the area which could be cultivated by the single or double yoke of oxen allotted to the settler, and may [p290] have been a single or double one accordingly. But a person holding a fraction of a _jugum_ or _caput_ was said to hold only a '_portio_,'[421] and paid, in consequence, a proportion only of the burdens assessed upon the whole jugum.

Now, if the taxation had continued at actually so much per yoke of oxen, the system would have been simple enough; and it would be easy to understand how, whilst the _jugum_ represented the unit of taxation for land, the _caput_ might be the unit corresponding in value with the jugum, but applying to other kinds of property, such as slaves and cattle, and including the capitation tax levied in respect of wives and children. And this, probably, may be the meaning of the double nomenclature--_jugum vel caput_. At any rate, we know from the Theodosian Code, that the members of a veteran's family were constituent parts of his 'caput.'[422]

The subject is obscure, but the reform of Diocletian seems to have aimed at an equalisation of the taxation according to the value of property.

«The _jugum_ became a unit of taxation,»

This seems to have involved an assessment of various kinds of land in hypothetical _juga_, of the same value (said to be fixed at 2,000 solidi); and this involved a variation in the acreage of the hypothetical _jugum_, according to the richness or otherwise of the land, just as according to Flaccus was the case also as regards the actual centuriæ and allotments.

«and varied in area.»

In one instance in which the figures have been [p291] preserved, viz. for Syria, under the Eastern Empire, the assessment was as follows under the system of Diocletian:[423]--

Of vine-land 5 jugera, or 10 plethra or half-acres. Arable, first class 20 jugera, or 40 plethra or half-acres. Arable, second class 40 jugera, or 80 plethra or half-acres. Arable, third class 60 jugera, or 120 plethra or half-acres.

In the east, therefore, sixty jugera, or 120 Greek plethra or half-acres, of ordinary arable land, were assessed as a _jugum_.

This instance makes it clear that while originally the actual allotment to a single or double yoke of oxen may have been taken as the basis of taxation, the 'jugum' had already become a hypothetical _unit of assessment_, just as, by a similar process, was the case with the English hide. Property had come to be assessed at so many _juga_ under the _jugation_, without any attempt to make the assessment accord with the actual number of yokes employed.

«The Indiction.»

The assessment was revised every fifteen years at what was called the _Indiction_.[424]

We have seen that the nominal acreage of the typical holding assigned to the single yoke of two oxen under Roman law on the Continent resembled very closely that of the Saxon yard-land, which also had two oxen allotted with it.[425] [p292]

«Analogy of the _jugum_ and _centuria_ to the yard-land and hide.»

We have also seen that the twenty-five or thirty jugera of the single yoke were probably fixed as an eighth of the Roman _centuria_, as the yard-land was the eighth of a double hide.

The common acreage of the centuria was, as we have seen, 200 or 240 jugera. The latter number may be the simple result of the use of the long hundred of 120; or it may have resulted, as suggested above, from the necessity of making the centuria of the free citizen's typical estate divisible into four double holdings of 60 acres, or eight single holdings of 30 acres each.

Be this as it may, the centuria, or typical estate of a free citizen in a regularly constructed Roman colony, seems to have stood to the single or double holding of the common and often semi-servile settler in the same arithmetical relation as the Saxon larger hide of 240 acres did to the yard-land.[426]

We have, then, two kinds of holdings:--

1. The one or more _centuriæ_ embraced in the [p293] latifundia or villas of the large landowners, which, however, when tilled by their coloni, and not by slaves, might well be subdivided into holdings of sixty or thirty acres each.

2. The double and single holdings of the smaller settlers on the 'ager publicus' of fifty or sixty and twenty-five or thirty acres each.

And we may conclude that the system of taxation called the '_jugatio_' was founded upon these facts, though in order to equalise its burden the assessment of an estate or a territory in juga became, under Diocletian, a hypothetical assessment, corresponding no longer with the _actual_ number of yokes, just as the Saxon hide _ad geldam_, at the date of the Domesday Survey, no longer corresponded with the actual carucate _ad arandum_.

Another resemblance between the Roman jugation and the Saxon hidage was to be found in the method adopted when it became needful to reduce the taxation of a district.

Thus, the land of the Ædui had been ravaged and depopulated. It had paid the tributum on 32,000 juga; 7,000 juga were released from taxation. In future it was assessed at 25,000 juga only; and so relief was granted.[427]

«The _tributum_ paid by the lord, who claimed tribute from his tenants, or '_tributarii_.'»

Further, as the English manorial lord paid the hidage for the whole manor, so the lord of the villa, under Roman law, paid the tributum not only for his own demesne land, but also for the land of his coloni and tenants. Just as the servile tenants of a Saxon thane were called his '_gafol gelders_,' so the [p294] semi-servile tenants of a Roman lord were called his _tributarii_. In both cases they paid their tribute to their lord, whilst the lord paid the imperial tributum for himself and for them.[428]

«_Coloni_ and _tributarii_ in Britain.»

In a decree of the year 319, issued by Constantine to the 'Vicar of Britain,' words are used which prove that there were _coloni_ and _tributarii_[429] on British estates.[430]

Putting all these things together, the analogy between the Roman 'jugation' and the later English hidage can hardly be regarded as accidental.

But to return, at present, to the tribute and the service due from each _jugum_ or _caput_.

«The Roman 'tributum' and the Saxon 'gafol.'»

The tribute was generally paid part in money and part in produce, and was, in fact, a tax. It was a separate thing from the _tithe_ of produce, rendered as rent to the State on the tithe-lands of the _Agri decumates_ and of Sicily, though all these various annual payments in produce may have been confused together under the term _annonæ_. The _tribute_ proper survived probably, as we shall see, in the later manorial '_gafol_.' The _tithe_, or other proportion taken as rent--for the proportion was not always a tenth[431]--more nearly resembled the manorial '_gafol-yrth_.' [p295] But we are not quite ready yet to trace the actual connexion between these Roman and later manorial payments.

VII. THE 'SORDIDA MUNERA' OF THE LATER EMPIRE.

«The _sordida munera_.»

In addition to the payments in kind or rents in produce, called _annonæ_, there were other personal services demanded from settlers in the provinces. They were called '_sordida munera_,' and strangely resembled the base services of later manorial tenants.

There is a special title of the 'Codex Theodosianus' on the 'base services' exacted under Roman law;[432] so that there is evidence of the very best kind as to what they were.

«Of three grades of holdings.»

By an edict of A.D. 328 there was laid upon the _rectores_ of provinces the duty of fixing the burden of the services according to three grades of holdings--those of the greater, the middle, and the lowest class--as well as the obligation of seeing that the services were not exacted at unreasonable times, as during the collection of crops. Further, the rectores were also ordered to record with their own hand 'what is the service and how to be performed for every "_caput_" [or jugum], whether so many _angariæ_ or so many _operæ_, and in what way they are to be rendered for each of the three grades of holdings.'[433] [p296]

Certain privileged classes were specially exempted from these 'base services,' and it happens that edicts expressly mentioning Rhætia specify from what services they shall be exempt, and so reveal in detail what the services were.

The province of Rhætia lay to the south of the Roman _Limes_, and east of the 'Agri decumates' of Tacitus, whilst also extending into the Alpine valleys of the present Graubunden. The chief city in North Rhætia, of which we speak (Vindelicia), was _Augusta Vindelicorum_ (Augsburg), and Tacitus describes the German tribes of the Hermunduri, north of the _Limes_, as engaged in friendly commerce with the Romans, and as having perfectly free access not only to the city, but also to the Roman villas around it.[434]

«What they were in Rhætia.»

We have seen that in this district south of the Danube, and in the _Agri decumates_ between the Danube and the Rhine, there were large numbers of German as well as Roman settlers, occupying land probably as free 'coloni' and 'læti,' paying tribute to the State, in addition to the usual tenth of the produce and personal services, according to their grades of holding. Edicts of A.D. 382 and 390[435] represent the tenants and settlers in this Roman province as liable with others to render, in addition to the tithe of the produce in corn, &c. (_annonæ_), _inter alia_, the following 'base services' (_sordida munera_), viz.:-- [p297]

«Supply of bread.»

(1) The '_cura pollinis conficiendi_, _excoctio panis_, and _obsequium pistrini_,' _i.e._ the preparation of flour, making of bread, and service at the bakehouse.

The supply of so many loaves of bread is a very common item of the later manorial services everywhere.

«Post-horse and carrying services.»

(2) The _præbitio paraveredorum et parangariarum_. These also were services found surviving, in fact and in name, amongst the later manorial services. The _angariæ_[436] and the _veredi_[437] were carrying services, with waggons and oxen or with pack-horses, on the main public Roman roads. The _parangariæ_ and _paraveredi_ were _extra_ carrying services _off_ the main road. There is a special title of the Codex Theodosianus '_De Cursu Publico, Angariis et Parangariis_,'[438] in which, by various edicts, abuses are checked and the services restrained within reasonable limits, both as to the weight to be carried and the number of oxen or horses required.

Carrying services also are familiar in manorial records under the name of '_averagium_.' In the Hundred Rolls and the Cartularies, and in the Domesday Survey, they occur again and again; and in the Anglo-Saxon version of the '_Rectitudines_,' in describing the services of the 'geneat' or 'villanus,' the Latin words 'equitare vel _averiare_ et summagium [p298] ducere,' are rendered 'ridan ⁊ auerian ⁊ lade lædan.' Also, in the record of the services of the Tidenham 'geneats' the words run, '_ridan, and averian, and lāde lædan, drāfe drīfan_,' &c.[439] At the same time, on the Continent the word '_angariæ_' became so general a manorial phrase as to be almost equivalent to 'villein services' of all kinds.[440]

The carrying and post-horse services, more strictly included in the manorial _angariæ_ and _averagium_, extended over Britain, Gaul, and the German provinces.

«Various _operæ_.»

(3) The '_obsequia operarum et artificum diversorum_'--the doing all sorts of services and labour when required--like the Saxon 'boon-work,' which formed so constant a feature of manorial services in addition to the gafol and regular week-work. How could the words be better translated than in the Anglo-Saxon of the Tidenham record--'and sela ōdra [p299] þinga dón,' '_and shall do other things_,' qualified by the previous words, 'swá him man byt,' '_as he is bid_.'?[441]

«Lime burning.»

(4) The '_obsequium coquendæ calcis_'--lime-burning. This was one of the specially mentioned services of the servi of the Church in Frankish times, under the Bavarian laws, in this very district of Rhætia, as we shall see by-and-by.

«Building, &c., and support of inns, roads and bridges.»

(5) The '_præbitio materiæ, lignorum, et tabulorum; cura publicarum vel sacrarum ædium construendarum atque reparandarum; cura hospitalium domorum et viarum et pontium_'--the supply of material, wood, and boarding for building, repairing, or constructing public and sacred buildings, and the keeping up of inns, roads, and bridges. Here we have two out of the 'three needs' marking in England the higher service of the Saxon thane.

Such were the chief '_sordida munera_' of the settlers in Rhætia and other Roman provinces. But servile as they were, and like as they were to the later manorial services, we must not therefore conclude that the settlers from whom they were due--whether German or Roman, in Romano-German provinces--were under Roman law necessarily _serfs_. They were, as we have said, 'free coloni' or 'læti,' and below them were the 'servi.' The three grades in which they were classed, '_ditiores_, _mediocres_, _atque infimi_,' marked gradations of wealth,--probably according to the number of yokes of oxen held, or the size of their holdings--not necessarily degrees of freedom.[442] [p300]

VIII. THE TENDENCY TOWARDS A MANORIAL MANAGEMENT OF THE 'AGER PUBLICUS,' OR IMPERIAL DOMAIN.

Having now examined into the character of the holdings, tribute, and 'sordida munera' of the tenants on what may be called the great provincial manor of the Roman emperor, it may perhaps be possible to trace some steps in the process by which these tenants became in some districts practically serfs on the royal villas or manors of the Teutonic conquerors of the provinces.

The beginning of the process can be traced apparently at work during the later empire.

«The Imperial military and fiscal officers.»

The German and Gallic provinces had for long been considered as in an especial sense _Imperial_ provinces, and their 'ager publicus' and tithe-lands had become regarded to a great extent as the personal domain of the emperors. They were under the personal control of his imperial _procuratores_, or agents.[443]

In fact there had grown up strictly imperial classes of military and fiscal officers with local jurisdiction over larger or smaller areas. There were the 'duces,' or 'magistri militum,' and 'comites,' and 'vicarii,'[444] whilst in the lowest rank of 'procuratores,' possibly controlling smaller fiscal districts or [p301] subdistricts, were the '_ducenarii_,' and '_centenarii_.'[445] They seem to have combined military, and judicial, and fiscal duties with functions belonging to a local police.

Whatever at first the exact position and authority of these military and fiscal officers of the Emperor may have been, there is evidence that they easily assumed a kind of manorial lordship over the portion of the public domains under their charge in two distinct ways.

«Were apt to assume a sort of lordship in their district.»

In the first place, the 'villa' in which a military or fiscal officer lived was the fiscal centre of his district. He was the 'villicus' by whom the 'annonæ,' tribute, and 'sordida munera' were exacted. In some instances the services seem to have been rendered in the form of work on his 'villa,' or on the villas of 'conductores,' by whom the special products of some districts were sometimes farmed.[446] And there are passages in the Codes which complain of the tendency in these Imperial officers of higher and lower rank to oppress those under their jurisdiction, even sometimes using their services on their own estates, and thus arrogating to themselves almost the position of manorial lords, whilst reducing their fiscal dependants to the position of semi-servile tenants.[447] [p302]

«Take persons and villages under their _patrocinium_.»

In the second place, the practice also was complained of by which the fiscal officers, using their influence unduly, induced tenants on the public lands of their district, and sometimes even _whole villages_, to place themselves under their '_patrocinium_,' thereby practically converting themselves into semi-servile tenants of a mesne lord who stood between them and the emperor.[448]

The question would be well worth a more careful consideration than can be given here how far these tendencies towards the gradual establishment under [p303] the later empire of a manorial relation between the 'coloni' and 'læti' on the crown lands, and the fiscal officer of the district in which they lived, were the beginnings of a process which ended in the division of the crown lands practically into 'villæ,' or districts appendant to the villa of the fiscal officer, which in their turn may have been the prototypes of the villas or manors on the 'terra regis' of Frankish and Saxon kings.[449]

«Frankish 'Terra Regis' divided into _Villæ_, or _Manors_.»

As we have said, the use of the word 'villa' in the Salic laws and early capitularies, for the smallest general territorial unit as well as for the 'villa' of a private lord, would thus perhaps be most easily accounted for. And possibly the continuity which such a result would indicate between Roman and Frankish institutions might, after all, be confirmed by the seeming continuity, in name at least, between the fiscal officers of the later empire and those of the Salic and Ripuarian, and other early barbarian codes. The appearance of the _dux_ and the _comes_ and the _centenarius_ in these codes, and in the early capitularies, as the military, fiscal and judicial officers of the Frankish kings, is at least suggestive of continuity in fiscal and judicial arrangements, though of course it does not follow that many German elements may not have been directly imported into institutions which, even under the later Roman rule in the Romano-German provinces, already indirectly and to some extent were [p304] no doubt the compound product of both Roman and German ingredients.[450]

The settlement of these difficult points perhaps belongs to constitutional rather than to economic history.

«The process of commendation commenced under Roman rule.»

Having noticed the evident tendencies of the fiscal district of the later empire to approach the manorial type, and to become a crown villa or manor with dependent holdings upon it, we must pass on to a further important effect of the oppression of the imperial officers. We have noticed the edicts intended to prevent the tenants on the imperial domain from putting themselves under their direct 'patrocinium.' These edicts did not prevent the over-burdened and oppressed tenant from putting himself under the 'patrocinium' of the lord of a neighbouring villa, thereby becoming his semi-servile tenant, in order to escape from the cruel exactions of the tax-gatherer.

This process was called 'commendation,' and it was carried out on a remarkable scale. It consisted in the surrender by the smaller tenants on the public lands of themselves and their property to some richer landowner; so parting with their inheritance and their freedom whilst receiving back a mere occupation of their holding by way of usufruct only as a '_præcarium_,' or for life, as a servile tenement, paying [p305] to their lord the fixed census or 'gafol' of the servile tenant.

«And so hastened on manorial tendencies.»

By this process they rapidly swelled the number of servile tenants on villas of the manorial type, and hastened the growing prevalence of the manorial system.[451]

«Commendation very ancient.»

This process of commendation was nothing new. It was an old tribal practice at work long before Roman times in Gaul, and destined not only to outlast the Roman rule, but also to receive a fresh impulse afterwards from the German invasions. And as its progress can be traced step by step from Roman times, through the period of conquest into the times of settled Frankish rule, and its history is closely mixed up with the history of the growth of the Roman villa into the mediæval manor, and with the change of the '_sordida munera_' from public burdens into manorial services, it presents useful stepping-stones over a gulf not otherwise to be easily crossed with security.

«Cæsar. Subjection to an overlordship a means of escape from oppression.»

Cæsar describes how in Gaul, even before the Roman conquest, the free tribesmen, overburdened by the exactions of chieftains and the tributes imposed upon them (probably by way of 'gwestva' or food-rents), surrendered their freedom, and became little more than 'servi' of the chiefs. And so far had this practice proceeded that he describes the people of Gaul as practically divided into two classes--the chiefs, whom he likened to the Roman 'equites;' [p306] and the common people, who were in a position little removed from slavery.[452]

«Tacitus.»

Further, there is the evidence of Tacitus himself that oppressive Roman exactions were forcing free tribesmen, even in _Frisia_, to surrender their lands and their children into a condition of servitude.[453]

«Gregory of Tours.»

Again, Gregory of Tours[454] describes how, in a year of famine, the poor surrendered their freedom--_subdebant se servitio_--to escape starvation. [p307]

«Salvian's complaint in the fifth century.»

Lastly, in the fifth century (A.D. 450–90) Salvian[455] describes at great length the process by which Roman freemen were in the practice of surrendering their possessions to great men and becoming tributary to them, in order to escape the exactions of the officers who collected the 'tributum.' He narrates how the rich Romans threw upon the poor the weight of the public tribute, and made extra exactions of their own; how multitudes in consequence deserted their property and became _bagaudæ_--rebels and outlaws;--how, in districts conquered by the Franks and Goths, there was no such oppression; how Romans living in these districts had their rights respected; how people even fled for safety and freedom from the districts still under Roman rule into these Teutonic districts; and he expresses his wonder why more did not do this.

«The effect of surrenders to an overlord.»

Many (he says) would fly from the Roman districts if they could carry their properties and houses and families with them. As they cannot do this (he goes on to say), they surrender themselves to the care and protection of great men, becoming their _dediticii_ or semi-servile tenants. And the rich (he complains) receive them under their 'patrocinium' or overlordship, not from motives of charity, but for gain: for they require them to surrender almost all their substance, _temporary possession only being allowed to the parent making the surrender during his life_,[456] while the heirs lose their inheritance. And this (he adds) is not all. [p308] The poor wretches who have surrendered their property are compelled nevertheless to pay tribute for it to these lords, as if it were still their own. Better is the lot of those who, deserting their property altogether, hire farms under great men, and so become the free _coloni_ of the rich. For these others not only lose their property and their status, and everything that they can call their own; they lose also themselves and their liberty.[457]

This evidence of Salvian proves that the surrender by freemen of themselves and their property to an overlord was rapidly going on in Roman provinces during the fifth century, and this as the result of Roman misrule, not of German conquest.

IX. THE SUCCESSION TO SEMI-SERVILE HOLDINGS; AND METHODS OF CULTIVATION.

From the evidence of Salvian we can pass at once, crossing the gulf of Teutonic conquest, to that of the Alamannic and Bavarian laws and the monastic cartularies, in which we shall find the process described by Salvian still going on under German rule, and thereby holding after holding, which had once been free, falling under the manorial lordship of the monasteries. [p309]

But before we do so it may be worth while to inquire further into the position, under Roman rule, of the class of semi-servile tenants into which a free possessor of land descended when he made the surrender of his holding. We may ask, What was the rule of succession to semi-servile holdings? and what were the customary methods of cultivation followed by semi-servile tenants, whether upon the villa of a lord or upon the imperial domains?

«The rule of single succession to a servile holding.»

Salvian distinctly states, as we have seen, that upon the death of the person making the surrender to a lord, the right of inheritance was lost to his children. The holding became, on the surrender, a 'præcarium'--a tenancy at the will of the lord by way of usufruct only. This being so, any actual succession to the holding must naturally have been, not by inheritance, but, in theory at all events, by regrant from the lord to the successor--generally a single successor--for, under the circumstances, the rule of single succession would be likely to be adopted as most convenient to the landlord.

«The later coloni 'usufructuarii.'»

The tenants produced by commendation were, however, hardly a class by themselves. They most likely sank into the ordinary condition of the large class of 'coloni,' &c., on the great provincial estates. And there is a passage in the 'Institutes of Justinian' which incidentally seems to imply that the ordinary 'colonus' of the later empire was very nearly in the position of the 'usufructuarius,' and held a holding which, in legal theory at least, ended with his life.[458] [p310] And if this was the generally received theory of the status of semi-servile tenants on the great estates, the probability is that the practice of single succession by regrant may have followed as a matter of convenience and as an all but universal usage.

Further, if we may suppose this to have been the case on the private estates of provincial landowners, the question remains whether the semi-servile classes of tenants on the imperial domains may not have been subject to the same customary rules.

«Tenants on public lands in theory 'usufructuarii.'»

«Probable prevalence of the rule of single succession.»

Now it must be remembered that the legal theory as regards that part of the provincial land which was not centuriated and allotted to the soldiers of the conquering Roman army as a 'colonia,' but left in the possession of the old barbarian inhabitants, was that the latter were merely usufructuary tenants, paying tribute for the use of the land which belonged now to the conquerors.[459] And although _quasi_-rights of inheritance, founded perhaps more upon barbarian usage than direct Roman law, probably grew up generally in the more settled districts of Gaul and the two Germanies, yet there may well have been grades of tenants, some with rights of inheritance and some without them. It may well be questioned whether, in the case of the 'læti' and other semi-servile tenants, hereditary rights were generally recognised. If we take into account the tendency we have noticed in the management of the provincial domains towards manorial methods and usages, it seems at least probable that the semi-servile classes of tenants under [p311] the imperial military and fiscal officers were placed much in the same position as the coloni on private villas; that, in fact, their tenure was only a usufruct for life or at will--a tenure to which, by custom, the single succession would be a natural incident.

«The Romans adapted themselves to existing usages.»

Passing now specially to the tenants on the 'Agri Decumates' and other tithe lands north of the Alps, and asking what were their rules of succession and methods of husbandry, perhaps sufficient stress has not always been laid upon the elasticity with which Roman provincial management adopted local customs and adapted itself to the local circumstances of a widely extended empire. We know little of the methods and rules adopted in the management of the 'tithe lands,' but if the foregoing considerations be sound, it may be that but little change was needful to convert their tenants into serfs on a manorial estate. They may have had but little to gain or to lose, or even to alter in their habits, in exchanging the rule of the imperial fiscal officers for the lordship of the later manorial lord.

«Management of tithe lands. Modern Eastern example.»

It is much to be hoped that more light may ere long be thrown upon this obscure subject by students of provincial law and the barbarian codes. In the meantime it may be possible, perhaps--so slowly do things change in the East--that an actual modern example taken from thence of the customary mode of managing public tithe lands at the present moment in what was once a Roman province might be a better guide to a correct conception of what went on 1,500 years ago on the 'Agri Decumates' than we could easily get in any other way.

«The Syrian code of fifth century.»

The Roman province of Syria is peculiarly [p312] interesting, because the Roman code[460] applying to it in the fifth century happens to remain, and to afford interesting evidence of adaptation to local customs in a district unique in the advantage that its usages, little altered by the lapse of time, can be studied as well in the parables of the New Testament as on its actual fields to-day.

«The 'Pflicht-theil' in Syria and in Bavaria of Roman origin.»

Sir Henry S. Maine[461] has recently referred to the parable of the 'Prodigal Son' as illustrating the custom still followed in Turkey of sons taking their portions during the parent's lifetime, leaving one home-staying son to become the single successor to the remainder, including the family homestead and land.

The Syrian code,[462] following Roman Law,[463] insisted upon three-twelfths of a man's property going to his children equally, and left him at liberty to dispose of the remaining nine-twelfths among them at his pleasure. But an _emancipated_ son had no claim to a share in the _three_-twelfths.[464] These local or Roman usages have an interesting connexion with the permission which, as we shall see in the next section, was given by the Bavarian code of the seventh century, to free possessors of land '_after they had made division with their sons_' to surrender their '_own portion_,' by way of commendation, to the Church.[465] [p313]

It is remarkable that, to the present day, in those districts of Bavaria where the Code Napoléon has not superseded ancient custom and law, the 'Pflicht-theil' of not less than one-half or one-third, as fixed by the later Roman law, still remains inalienable from the heirs, whilst a custom for the father to hand over the whole or a part of the family holding to a son during his lifetime also occurs.[466]

These coincidences between customs of Syria and Bavaria--both once Roman provinces--refer to land of inheritance. But there were also in Syria as elsewhere in the fifth century, between the freeholders and the slaves, a class of semi-servile tenants--_adscriptitii_--who were, in a sense, the property of a lord.[467] And besides these, again, from the time of the New Testament[468] to the present, there have been tenants paying a tithe or other portion of the produce in return for a usufruct only of public or private lands.

There is no direct reference to public tithe lands in the Syrian code, but the following description of present customs as regards such lands may be valuable in the absence of earlier evidence. It describes the tenants of the Crown tithe lands in Palestine as having only a usufruct, expiring at their death, and as conducting their husbandry upon an open-field system, which being so widely spread is no doubt very ancient, and likely enough to resemble [p314] more or less closely local methods followed on the 'Agri Decumates' under Roman rule.[469]

«Land system in Palestine.»

Land tenure in Palestine is of three kinds:--

I. _Ard miri_,[470] or taxed Crown land.

In this class are included nearly all the large and fruitful plains like those of Jaffa, Ramleh, and Esdraelon. These lands are leased by the Government to various individuals, or _sometimes to a whole village_. The lessee pays a _tenth_ of the produce of the soil for his right of cultivation. _Miri_ land, therefore, cannot be sold by the lessee, nor has he the power to transfer it; he merely possesses the right of cultivation for a given time, and this only holds good during the lifetime of the lessee. In the event of his death, the contract he has made becomes null and void, even though its term be not expired.

II. _Ard wakûf_, or glebe-land. . . .

III. _Ard mulk,_ or freehold, is chiefly composed of small pieces of ground in the neighbourhood of the villages, such as fig and olive plantations, gardens, and vineyards. . . .

«Tithe lands let to villages, and worked under the open-field system.»

It has been already mentioned that by far the greater part of the cultivated land is not private, but Government property, either _miri_ or _wakûf_, and that the cultivator is merely the holder. Each district has certain tracts of such lands, and after the rains they are let to the different inhabitants in separate plots. The division is decided by lottery. Herr Schick has given an account of the manner in which this lottery takes place. All those who are desirous of land assemble in the _sāha_ (an open place generally in front of the inns). The Imam, or _khatib_, who is writer, accountant, and general archivist to the whole village, presides over this meeting. The would-be cultivators notify how many ploughs they can muster. If a man has only a half-share in one, he joins another man with a like share. Then the whole number is divided into classes. Supposing the total number of ploughs to be forty, these would be divided into four classes of ten, and each class would choose a Sheikh to represent them. The land of course varies in quality, and this division into classes makes the distribution simpler. Say there are four classes, the land is divided into four equal portions, so that each class may have good as well as bad. When the Sheikhs have agreed that the division is fair, the lots are drawn. Each of the Sheikhs puts some little thing into the _khatib's_ bag. Then the _khatib_ calls out the name of one of the divisions, and some passing child is [p315] made to draw out one of the things from the bag, and to whichever Sheikh it belongs, to this class belongs the division named by the _khatib_. This decided, the Sheikhs have to determine the individual distribution of the land. In the case of ten ploughs to a class, _they do not each receive a tenth piece of the whole, but, in order to make it as fair as possible, the land is divided into strips, so that each portion consists of a collection of strips in different parts of the village lands_. The boundaries are marked by _furrows_ or stones, and to move a neighbour's landmark is still accounted an 'accursed deed,' as in the days of ancient Israel (Deut. xix. 4). . . .

_The measure by which the Fellahin divide their land is the feddân. It is decided by the amount which a man with a yoke of oxen can plough per day, and is therefore a most uncertain measure._

«Was it so on the Roman tithe lands?»

This description of the mode in which public land in Palestine is often let to individual tenants or to whole villages at a rent of a tenth of the produce, and further, the picture it gives of the cultivation of the land let to a village by those villagers who supply oxen for the ploughing on an open-field system so like that of Western Europe, at least may suggest the possibility of a somewhat similar system having been adopted in the management of the tithe lands of the 'Agri Decumates.'

The allusion to the division of the fields into strips, and to the unit of land measurement being the day's work of a pair of oxen, and, we may add, the use of the same unit of measurement throughout the Turkish Empire,[471] may at least prepare us to find [p316] indications of a somewhat similar system of cultivation on the tithe lands on the Danube and the Rhine when we come to examine their conditions under the early Alamannic and Bavarian laws.

And, lastly, this Eastern illustration of the modern management of 'tithe lands' may help us to give due weight to the suggestion of Sir H. S. Maine[472] that not only on the 'ager publicus,' but even on the Roman provincial villa itself, in the organisation of the mostly barbarian and servile tenants, and of the husbandry, many features may well have been borrowed from ordinary and wide-spread customs of barbarian communities, thus partially explaining what must again and again strike us in this investigation, viz., the ease with which Roman and barbarian elements combined during the later Roman rule of the provinces and afterwards in producing a complex and joint result--the typical manorial estate.

X. THE TRANSITION FROM THE ROMAN TO THE LATER MANORIAL SYSTEM.

«Laws of the Alamanni, A.D. 622.»

The Alamannic conquest of the province of _Germania Prima_, including what is now Elsass and the western part of the 'Agri Decumates,' may be described as almost a passive one. The population had long been partly German, and Roman provincial usages can hardly have been altogether supplanted in the fifth century. It was not till the Alamanni were themselves [p317] conquered by the Franks (who had in the meantime become nominally Christian) that their laws were codified. When this took place in the year 622 it was with special reference to the interests of the Church that the laws were framed, just as in the case of the first codification of Anglo-Saxon laws on King Ethelbert becoming a Christian.

«Permission to surrender to the Church.»

The very first provision of the Alamannic laws was a direct permission to any freeman, without hindrance from 'Dux' or 'Comes,' to surrender his property and himself to the Church by charter executed before six or seven witnesses; and it provided further that if he should surrender his land, to receive the usufruct of it back again during life as a benefice charged with a certain tribute or census, his heir should not dispute the surrender.[473]

In the Bavarian laws of slightly later date there is a similar permission to any freeman, _from his own share, after he has made division with his sons_, to surrender to the Church _villas_, _lands_, _slaves_, or other property, to be received back as a _beneficium_ in the same way,[474] and neither 'rex,' 'dux,' nor 'any other person' is to prevent it. [p318]

Who are the people thus permitted to surrender their possessions to the Church? Clearly they are the free possessores or tenants on the public lands, now become '_terra regis_,' under the fiscal officers who are still called _duces_ and _comites_.

Here, then, is still going on, but in the interest of the Church, precisely the process described by Salvian, and with precisely the same results.

Further, these results can be traced with remarkable exactness; for in the charters of _St. Gall_ and _Lorsch_ and _Wizenburg_ there are numerous instances of surrenders made under this law.

«Instances of surrender in the St. Gall charters.»

In the 'Urkundenbuch' of the Abbey of St. Gall, under date A.D. 754,[475] there is a charter by which a possessor of land in certain 'villas' in the neighbourhood of St. Gall hands over to the monastery all that he possesses therein, with the cattle, slaves, houses, fields, woods, waters, &c., thereon, together with two servi and all their belongings; and (it proceeds) 'for these things I am willing to render service every year as follows:--viz. xxx. seglas of beer (cervesa), xl. loaves and a sound spring pig (frischenga), and xxx. mannas, and to plough 2 jugera[476] (jochos) per [p319] annum, and to gather and carry the produce to the yard, also to do post service (_angaria_) when required.'

Here we have not only the public _tributum_ converted into a manorial census or 'gafol,' but also the _sordida munera_ transformed into manorial services.

In another charter, A.D. 759, is a surrender of all a man's possessions in the place called _Heidolviswilare_, to the Abbey, 'in this wise that I may receive it back from you _per precariam_, and yearly I will pay thence _census_, _i.e._ xxx. siclas of beer, xl. loaves, a sound spring frisginga, 3 day-works (operæ) of one man in the course of the year; and my son Hacco, if he survive me, shall do so during his life.'[477]

In another, A.D. 761,[478] the monks of St. Gall regrant a '_villa_' called '_Zozinvilare_' to the original maker of the surrender at the following _census_, viz. xxx. siclas of beer and xl. loaves, a friscinga, and two hens, with this addition--'_In quisqua sicione_[479] thou shalt plough _saigata una_ (one selion?) and reap this and carry it into [the yard], and in one day (jurno)[480] thou shalt cut it, and in another gather it and carry it, as aforesaid.'

In the surrender of a holding 'in villa qui dicitur _Wicohaim_,[481] the census is . . . siclas of beer, xx. maldra of bread and a frisginga, and work at the stated time at harvest and at hay-time, two days in reaping the harvest and cutting the hay, and in early spring one "_jurnalis_" at ploughing, and in the month of June to break up [brachan] another, [p320] and in autumn to plough and sow it--this is the census for that villa.'

«Like those described by Salvian.»

These grants were clearly surrenders by freemen like those described by Salvian, which carried with them whatever coloni or servi there were upon the land.

Thus, under date 771,[482] a priest gives to the monks all his property _in villa Ailingas_ and another place, except two servi and five yokes of land; and in another place he gives '_servum unum cum hoba sua et filiis suis et cum uxore sua_.' The _hoba_ was clearly the 'hub' or yard-land of the serf, and it, he and his wife and children were all granted over by their lord to the abbey.

In the same year 771[483] a man named _Chunibertus_ and his wife surrendered an estate called _Chuniberteswilari_, and it is described as including just what a Roman villa would include, _i.e._ the _villa_ itself (_casa_), surrounded by its court (_curte circumclausa_), together with buildings, slaves, arable land, meadows, fields, &c., &c. And yet in this case also he retains possession '_sub usu fructuario_' during his life, paying the same kind of census as in the other cases--xx. siclas of beer, a maldra of bread, and a _frisking_.

«Likeness of the census and services to the Saxon 'gafol' and 'gafolyrth.'»

Now, it will at once be seen how like is the census described in these charters to the Saxon gafol of the 'Rectitudines,' and of the manors of Tidenham or Hysseburne. There is distinctly the _gafol_, and in many cases the _gafolyrth_ also, but no mention of the _week-work_. Add this, and there would be an almost exact likeness to Saxon serfdom.

But it will be remembered that even under the [p321] laws of Ine the _week-work_ was not added to the _gafol_ unless the lord provided not only the yard-land, but also the homestead. These surrenders were surrenders by freemen of their own land and homesteads. It was hardly likely that the more servile week-work should be added to their census. How it would fare with their children when they sought to succeed their parents in the now servile holding is quite another thing.

«New serf created and 'week work' added.»

There is, indeed, apparently an instance, under date 787,[484] of the settlement of a new serf--the grant of a fresh holding in villenage from the Abbot of St. Gall to the new tenant. The holding, if we may use the Saxon terms, is 'set' both 'to _gafol_ and to _week-work_;' for the tenant binds himself (1) to pay to the abbey as _census_ (_i.e._ as _gafol_) yearly vii. maldra of grain and a sound spring frisking, to be delivered at the granary of the monastery; and (2) to plough _every week_ (_i.e._ as week-work)[485] at their nearest manor (_curtem_) a '_jurnal_' (or acre strip) in every _zelga_[486] (_i.e._ in each of the three fields); and also six days in a year when work out of doors is needed, whether in harvest or hay-mowing, to send two '_mancipii_' for the work: also, when work is wanted in building or repairing bridges, to send one man with food to the work, who is to stop at it as long as required. And to these payments and services the new tenant bound 'himself, his heirs, and all their descendants lawfully begotten.' [p322]

This surely is a distinct case of the settlement of a new serf upon the land, rendering in Saxon phrase both _gafol_ and _week-work_; and the serfdom created is as nearly as possible identical with that of an English manor of the same date.

«Surrender of whole villas or of holdings on villas.»

But to return to the surrenders. It is clear from the instances quoted that some of these owners who surrendered their holdings were holders of whole _villas or heims_, some of them of _portions of villas or heims_. And yet they placed themselves by the surrender, as Salvian described it, in a servile position, _lower_, as he says, _than that of the coloni of the rich_, for they merely retained the usufruct during their life. The inheritance was lost. And they still had a tribute to pay to their lord, though free from tribute to the public purse. The Frankish kings now stood in the place of the Roman Emperor. The old Roman _tributum_ apparently remained, but was payable to the Frankish king. When under the Alamannic laws these surrenders were made to the Church, the tribute also was transferred from the king to the Church.

We have seen that when such a surrender had been made under Roman rule to a rich Roman landowner, the latter became responsible to the public exchequer for the tributum, but he exacted tribute in his turn from his tenant, who thus, as Salvian said, though parting with his inheritance, still paid tribute to his lord. But this tribute can hardly have been the full _tributum_ at which the holding was assessed to the _jugatio_. It seems to have been rather a fixed and typical _gafol_ or census, marking a servile condition. For in the Alamannic laws there are clauses making the following remarkable provisions:-- [p323]

«Tribute, services, and three days' 'week-work' under the Alamannic law.»

_Leges Alamannorum Illotharii_[487] (A.D. 622).

XXII.

(1) Servi enim ecclesiæ tributa sua legitime reddant, quindecim siclas de cervisa, porco valente [al. porcum valentem] tremisse uno, pane [al. panem] modia dua, pullos quinque, ova viginti.

(2) Ancillæ autem opera inposita sine neglecto faciant.

(3) Servi dimidiam partem sibi et dimidiam [al. dimidium] in dominico arativum reddant. Et si super hæc est, sicut servi ecclesiastici ita faciant, tres dies sibi et tres in dominico.

XXIII.

De liberis autem ecclesiasticis, quod [al. quos] colonos vocant, omnes sicut coloni regis ita reddant ad ecclesiam.

XXII.

(1) Let servi of the Church pay their tribute rightly, viz., 15 siclæ of beer, with a sound spring pig, of bread two modia, five fowls, twenty eggs.

(2) Let female servi do services required without neglect.

(3) Let servi do ploughing, half for themselves and half in the demesne. And if there be other services, let them do as the servi of the Church--three days for themselves and three days in the demesne.

XXIII.

Concerning the freemen of the Church who are called 'coloni,' let all pay to the Church just as the coloni of the king.

These clauses seem to establish clearly three facts:--

(1) That the slavery of the slaves or _servi_ on the ecclesiastical estates had already, in A.D. 622, become modified and restricted as a matter of general ecclesiastical custom to a _three days' week-work_.

(2) That the proper tribute (or _gafol_) of persons becoming servi of the Church by surrender under this edict was to be as stated; the resemblance of the details of this tribute with those mentioned in the St. Gall surrenders showing the servile nature of the status into which those making the surrender placed themselves thereby.

(3) Freemen of the Church called '_coloni_' were [p324] to pay to the Church as the _coloni_ on the _terra regis_ did to the king.

In other words, a _whole villa_ or _manor_, with the village community of 'free coloni' and the 'servi' upon it, might be handed over _as a whole_ to the Church: in which case the free coloni were to remain free and pay tribute to the Church as they would have done to the king if they had been 'coloni' on the _terra regis_.

After thus becoming 'free coloni' of the Church they might, if they chose, by a second act surrender their freedom and become _servi_ of the Church, just as 'free coloni' on royal villas or on the _terra regis_ might do under this edict.

This evidence relates, it will be remembered, to the district on the left bank of the Rhine, which so abounded with '_heims_' and '_villas_,' as well as to that portion of the 'Agri Decumates' which was included in the province of Germania Prima.

There is still clearer evidence for the district to the east of the 'Agri Decumates,' comprehended in the Roman province of Rhætia.

Rhætia, it will be remembered, was the province, in edicts relating to which the '_sordida munera_' were most clearly defined. We have seen traces of some of these 'base services,' especially the _boon-work_ and the '_angariæ_,' in the St. Gall charters. Still clearer traces of them are found in the services described in the early 'Bavarian laws' of the seventh century. These laws, as has been seen, expressly allowed 'surrenders' by freemen of their property to the Church, and the services of the _servi_ and _coloni_ of the Church are described with remarkable clearness. [p325]

The section is headed--

«Tribute services and three days' 'week-work' under the Bavarian laws.»

_Lex Baiuwariorum, textus legis primus._[488]

13.

_De colonis vel servis ecclesiæ, qualiter serviant vel quale_ [_al. qualia_] _tributa reddant._

Hoc est agrario secundum estimationem iudicis; provideat hoc iudex secundum quod habet donet: de 30 modiis 3 modios donet, et pascuario dissolvat secundum usum provinciæ.[489] Andecenas legitimas, hoc est pertica [al. perticam] 10 pedes habentem, 4 perticas in transverso, 40 in longo arare, seminare, claudere, colligere, trahere et recondere. A tremisse unusquisque _accola_[490] ad duo modia sationis excolligere, seminare, colligere et recondere debeat; et vineas plantare, fodere, propaginare, præcidere, vindemiare. Reddant fasce [al. fascem] de lino [al. ligno]; de apibus 10 vasa [al. decimum vas]; pullos 4, ova 15 reddant. _Parafretos_ [al. palafredos] donent, aut ipsi vadant, ubi eis iniunctum fuerit. _Angarias_ cum carra faciant usque 50 lewas [al. leugas]; amplius non minentur.

Ad casas dominicas stabilire [al. stabiliendas], fenile, granica vel tunino recuperanda, pedituras rationabiles accipiant, et quando necesse fuerit, omnino componant. Calce furno [al. calcefurno], ubi prope fuerit, ligna aut petra [al. petras] 50 homines faciant, ubi longe fuerat [al. fuerit], 100 homines debeant expetiri, et ad civitatem vel ad villam, ubi necesse fuerit, ipsa calce trahantur [al. ipsam calcem trahant].

13.

_Concerning the coloni or servi of the Church, what services and tributes they are to render._

This is the tribute _for arable_, according to the estimation of the judge. The judge must look to it that according to what a man has he must give; for 30 modia he must give 3 modia. And for _pasturage_ he must pay according to the custom of the province. Legal andecenæ (the perches being of 10 feet), 4 perches in breadth and 40 in length, [he is] to plough, to sow, to fence, to gather, to carry, and to store. For spring crops every cultivator to prepare for two modia of seed, and sow, gather, and store it. And to plant vines, tend, graft, and prune them, and gather the grapes. Let them render a bundle of flax, of honey the tenth vessel, 4 fowls, and 15 eggs. Let them give post-horses, or go themselves wherever they are told. Let them do carrying service with waggons as far as 50 leugæ. They cannot be compelled to go farther.

In keeping up the buildings in the demesne, in repairing the hayloft, the granary, or the 'tun,' let them take reasonable portions, and when needful let them compound together. To the limekiln when near let 50 men, and when it is far let 100 men be found to supply wood or [lime-]stone, and where needful let the lime itself be carried to city or villa.

These are the services of the _coloni_ or _accolæ_ of the Church. Next as to the _servi_:--

Servi autem ecclesiæ secundum possessionem suam reddant tributa. Opera vero 3 dies in ebdomada in dominico operent [al. operentur], 3 vero sibi faciant. Si vero dominus eius [al. eorum] dederit eis boves aut alias res quod habet [al. quas habent], tantum serviant, quantum eis per possibilitatem impositum fuerit; tamen iniuste neminem obpremas [al. opprimas].

Let the servi of the Church pay tribute according to their holdings. Let them work 3 days a week in the demesne, and 3 days for themselves. But if their lord give them oxen or other things they have, let them do as much service as can be put upon them, yet thou shalt oppress no one unjustly.

«Gafol-yrth or ploughing of _andecenæ_ or acre strips, probably for the tenths on the 'tithe-lands.'»

In the face of this evidence it seems impossible to ignore either the continuity of the tribute and services under Roman and German rule on the one hand, or their identity with the _gafol_, the _gafol-yrth_, and the _week-work_ of the English manor on the other hand. There is first the tenth of the chief produce due as of old from these occupants of the 'Agri Decumates' of Tacitus, closely connected with the tribute of ploughing--the Saxon _gafol-yrth_ noticed above in the St. Gall charters. This is to be rendered in _lawful andecenæ_, and this measure of the plough-work is reckoned by the Roman rod of ten feet, and takes the precise form, four rods by forty, which belongs to the English acre of four roods;[491] and this is the [p327] strip to be sown, gathered, and stored, just as in the case of the Saxon '_gafol-yrth_.'

The tending of vines is peculiar to the country. The tenth bundle of flax, the tenth vessel of honey, and the fowls and eggs are also familiar items of the _census_ or _gafol_, both in the charters of St. Gall and in the services of Saxon manors.

«'Sordida munera.'»

Then there are the pack-horse services (_parafreti_) and the carrying services ('_angariæ cum carra_'), the keeping up of buildings, supply of the limekiln, and the carriage of lime to the villa--all which once public services ('_sordida munera_'), due to the Roman Emperor on whose tithe lands the coloni were settled, were now the manorial services of 'coloni' of the Church. They were called in the Codex Theodosianus '_obsequia_,' and are almost identical with the Saxon '_precariæ_' or boon-works.

Lastly, it has been observed that the coloni or _accolæ_ did not give '_week-work_.' This was, as has been seen, the distinctive mark of serfdom here in Rhætia, as for centuries afterwards throughout the manors of mediæval Europe.

In other words, in the seventh century there are two classes of tenants on ecclesiastical manors--(1) the _coloni_ or _accolæ_, to use the Saxon terms of King Ine's laws, _set to gafol_; and (2) the _servi_, _set to gafol and to week-work_.

Throw the two classes together, or let the remaining Roman coloni sink, as the result of conquest or otherwise, down into the condition up to which the slaves have risen in becoming serfs, and the serfdom of the mediæval manorial estate is the natural result. At the same time an explanation is given of the [p328] persistently double character of the later services, which apparently was a survival of their double origin in the union of the public tribute and _sordida munera_ of the Roman _colonus_ with the servile work of the Roman slave.

«Transition from slavery to serfdom.»

On the estates of the Church in the early years of the seventh century the humanising power of Christian feeling had silently raised the status of the slave. It had dignified labour, and given to him a property in his labour, securing to him not only one day in seven for rest to his weary and heavy-laden limbs, but also _three days in the week_ wherein his labour was _his own_. From slavery he had risen into serfdom. And this serfdom of the _quondam_ slave had become, in the eyes of the still more weary and heavy-laden free labourers on their own land, so light a burden compared with their own--such was the lawless oppression of the age--that they went to the Church and took upon them willingly the yoke of her serfdom, in order that they might find rest under her temporal as well as spiritual protection.

Such an impulse did this rush for safety into serfdom on ecclesiastical or monastic estates receive from the unsettlement and lawlessness of the period of the Teutonic invasions, that by the time of Charles the Great a large proportion of the land in these once Roman provinces had become included in the manorial estates of the monasteries.

«Scores of free-tenants on a single manor make surrenders to the Abbey of Lorsch.»

In the thickly peopled Romano-German lands on both sides of the Rhine, including the present Elsass on the one side, and the district between the Rhine and the Maine (the present Baden and Wirtemberg) on the other, so strong was the current in this direction that we find in the _Traditiones_ of the monasteries [p329] of '_Lorsch_' and '_Wizenburg_' scores of surrenders taking place sometimes in a single village. And these cases are of peculiar interest because _G. L. von Maurer_ relies almost solely upon them as the earliest examples available in support of his theory of the original German _mark_ and _free village community_. His _only_ early instances are taken from the Lorsch Cartulary.[492] He cites 107 surrenders to the Abbey of Lorsch in '_Hantscuhesheim_' alone,[493] and concludes that there must have been at least as many free holders resident there in earlier times. In _Loeheim_ there were eight surrenders; in other heims thirty-five, five, twenty-three, ten, forty, five, and so on. These must, he concludes, have formed part of originally free village communities on the German mark system.[494]

Now these surrenders to the abbey go back to the reign of Pepin; and the question is, What were these freemen who made these surrenders? Were they indeed members of _German free village communities_?

In the first place, they lived in a district which for many centuries had been a Roman province. The manners of the people had long been Romanised. Even across the Maine for generations the homesteads had been built in Roman fashion.[495] And it is significant that the fragments surrendered in this district, which since the time of Probus had become devoted to the vine culture, were mostly little _vineyards_; e.g. '_rem meam, hoc est vineam, i. in Hantscuhesheim_,'[496] and so [p330] on. These vineyards were often composed of so many '_scamelli_,' or little _scamni_--ridges or strips marked out by the Roman _Agrimensores_. All this is thoroughly Roman. What looks at first sight so much like a German free village community, was once a little Roman 'vicus' full of people, with their vineyards on the hills around it. They look like German settlers or 'free coloni' on the public domains, who had become appendant to the villa of the fiscal officer of the district, which had in fact by this time become to all intents and purposes a manor.

A little further examination will confirm this view.

«The _villas_ were _manors_.»

Turning to the record of the earliest donation to the abbey, in A.D. 763,[497] we find a description of a whole villa or _heim_--'_Hoc est, villam nostram quæ dicitur Hagenheim, cum omni integritate sua, terris domibus ædificiis campis pratis vineis silvis aquis aquarumve decursibus farinariis litis libertis conlibertis mancipiis mobilibus et immobilibus, &c._'

Here there clearly is a villa or manor, and the tenants of this manor are _liti_, _liberti_, _coliberti_,[498] and _mancipii_ or slaves. There are charters of other estates which are just as clearly manors with servile tenements and slaves upon them.

In the similar records of surrenders to the Abbey of St. Gall, as we have seen, there are also donations of little free properties in '_heims_' and '_villares_,' but by far the greater number of the earliest donations are distinctly of whole manors or parts of manors, with _coloni_ and _mancipii_ upon them. [p331]

The heims of this Romano-German district were therefore distinctly manors. They were also '_marks_.'

«Another instance.»

In 773 Charles the Great gave to the Abbey of Lauresham the 'villa' called 'Hephenheim,' '_in pago Rinense, cum omni merito et soliditate sua cum terris domibus ædificiis accolis mancipiis vineis sylvis campis pratis, &c._'--that is, the _whole manor_--'_cum omnibus terminis et marchis suis_.' And then follow the _marchæ sive terminus silvæ_, which pertained to the same villa of Hephenheim, 'as it had always been held _sub ducibus et regibus ex tempore antiquo_.' It was then a 'villa' or manor belonging to the Royal domain, and it was then held as a benefice by a 'comes,' whose predecessor had also held it, and his father before him, of the king.[499]

This is clearly a grant of a whole manor with the tenants and slaves upon it, and a manor of long standing; and the word _mark_ is simply the base Latin word for boundary, like the Saxon word 'gemære.' Further, the boundaries are given exactly as in the Saxon charters, in the form described in the writings of the Roman _Agrimensores_.

In 774,[500] Charles the Great made a similar grant to the abbey in almost identical terms of the 'villa' called '_Obbenheim_,' in the district of Worms, '_cum omni merito et soliditate sua, &c., accolis, mancipiis, &c._,' just as before. This was another whole royal manor granted with its tenants and slaves to the abbey. Yet in 788[501] the holder of a vineyard ('_j petiam de vinea_') in this same Obbenheim surrenders it to the abbey. In 782[502] [p332] there is another grant. In 793[503] there is a similar grant of five vineyards, and another[504] of three vineyards; and scores of other donations of vineyards occur in the reigns of Charles and of his predecessor Pepin.[505]

«The 'free coloni' were manorial tenants.»

«Surrenders by 'free coloni.'»

It is obvious, then, that these surrenders or donations, which were exactly like those of _Hantscuhesheim_, were made by 'free coloni' of the manor, who in the time of Pepin, while the lordship remained in the king, as well as afterwards when the manor had been transferred to the abbey, surrendered their holdings to the abbey, thus converting them either into tenancies on the demesne land, or into servile holdings under the lordship of the abbey. They were not members of a German free village community, for they were tenants of a manor when they made their surrenders. Nor were they slaves (_mancipii_). The only other class mentioned in the charter was that of the _accolæ_, the word used for 'free coloni' in the Bavarian laws. These _accolæ_, it seems, then, were 'coloni' or free tenants upon a royal manor, part of the old _ager publicus_, now '_terra regis_.' And as such under the Frankish law it seems that they had power to transfer themselves from the lordship of the king to that of the Church. The Alamannic laws were enacted or at least confirmed after the Frankish conquest, and probably were in force over this particular district at the date of these surrenders. These laws, as we have seen, expressly forbade the _comes_ under whom they lived [p333] to prevent free tenants from making such surrenders for the good of their souls.

Indeed, among the St. Gall charters there is one exactly in point.

«Example.»

It is dated A.D. 766,[506] and by it the sons of a person who had surrendered his land to the Abbey under these laws by this charter renewed the arrangement, 'in this wise, that so as we used to do service to the king and the comes, so we shall do service for that land to the monastery, receiving it as a benefice of the same monks _per cartulam precariam_.'

This view of the case may be still further confirmed. In the Lorsch records are contained in some cases descriptions of the services of the two kinds of tenants on the manors surrendered to the Abbey. There are free tenants and servile tenants, and it is a strong confirmation of the continuity of the services from Roman to mediæval times to find some of them so closely identical with the '_sordida munera_' of the Theodosian Code and the services described in the Bavarian laws.

To take an example: In _Nersten_ the services of each _mansus ingenualis_ may be thus classified:[507]--

(1) _As census_, 5 modii of barley, 1 pound of flax, at Easter 4d., 1 fowl, 10 eggs, 2 loads of wood.

(2) _As work_, 4 weeks a year whenever required.

(3) _As_ '_gafolyrth_,' to plough 1 acre in each of the [three] fields (_sationes_), and to gather and store it.

(4) _As_ '_precariæ_,' or _sordida munera_--

3 days' work at reaping

2 days' work at mowing. [p334]

2 days' work at binding and 2 loads of carrying.

The tenant gives a _parafredum_.

Attends in the host.

Carts 5 loads of lime to the kiln.

Carts 5 loads of wood.

Goes messages 'infra regnum' whenever required.

Each _mansus servilis_ rendered, on the other hand--

(1) _As census_, 1 uncia, 1 fowl, 10 eggs, a frisking worth 4d.

(2) _As boon work_, 'facit moaticum et bracem et picturas in sepe et in grania.' In addition the tenant:--

Ploughs 4 days, and all demesne land.

Feeds for the winter 5 pigs and 1 cow.

(3) _As week-work_, 3 days a week whenever required.

For women's work, 1 uncia, 1 load of wood, 1 of grass, 10 eggs.

In total there were eighty-seven '_mansi et sortes_.'

«Their Roman connexion.»

It is evident that these _mansi_ and _sortes_ were not _allodial lots_ in the common mark of a free village community, but the holdings of two grades of _semi-servile_ and _servile_ tenants _on a manor_; and it is evident that some of the services were survivals of the _sordida munera_ exacted under Roman law. Surely the continuity in the mode of surrender and in the services and tribute on these South German manors, traced from the Theodosian Code to the Alamannic and Bavarian laws, and found again in the surrenders (identical with those described by Salvian) made under those laws, and also in the later surveys of the monastic estates, excludes the probability of their having been original settlements of German free village communities on the German mark system, such as G. L. von Maurer assumes that they were.

«Manorial tendency of the Roman land-system.»

These curious and numerous instances on which this writer relied as evidence of the mark-system, and as remains of a once free German village community, turn out in fact to be further instances of [p335] the progress under Frankish rule, within a once Roman province, of the practice described by Salvian--a practice which continued from century to century, helping on the threefold tendency (1) in the villa to become more and more manorial, _i.e._ more and more an estate of a lord with a village community in serfdom upon it; (2) for all land to fall under some manorial lordship or other, whether royal, ecclesiastical, monastic or private, and so to become part of a manorial estate; (3) for the originally distinct classes of 'free coloni' on the one hand, and _slaves_ or _servi_ on the other hand, to become merged in the one common class of mediæval serfs.

We have yet, however, to examine the German side of this continental economic history as carefully as we have examined the Roman side of it, before we shall be in a position to use continental analogies as the key to the solution of the English economic problem.

It may be that direct and important German elements also entered as factors in the manorial system, both during the period of Roman rule in the German provinces, and also after their final conquest by the German tribes.

FOOTNOTES:

[339] _Liber de Hyda_, p. 63.

[340] _Liber de Hyda_, pp. 67 _et seq._

[341] The per-centage is under-estimated, owing to the repetition of various forms of the same name having been excluded in counting those ending in _ham_, but not in counting the _total_ number of places.

[342] In Essex the _h_ is often dropped, and the suffix becomes '_am_.'

[343] _Chartularium Sithiense_, p. 97.

[344] _Traditiones et Antiquitates Fuldenses._ Dronke, Fulda, 1844.

[345] _Traditiones Corbeienses._ Wigand, 1843.

[346] _Urkundenbuch der Abtei St. Gallen_, A.D. 700–840. Wartmann, Zurich, 1863.

[347] _Historia Frisingensis_, Meichelbeck, 1729.

[348] _Traditiones possessionesqne Wizenburgenses._ Spiræ, 1842.

[349] _Codex Laureshamensis Diplomaticus_, 1768.

[350] The following are examples of the interchange of villa and heim in the names of places mentioned in the charters of the Abbey of Wizenburg in the district of Spires. The numbers refer to the charters in the _Traditiones Wizenburgenses_.

Batanandouilla (9). Batanantesheim (28).

Hariolfesuilla (4). Hariolueshaim (55).

Lorencenheim (141). Lorenzenuillare (275).

Modenesheim (2). Moduinouilare (52).

Moresuuilari (189). Moresheim (181).

Munifridesheim (118). Munifridouilla (52).

Radolfeshamomarca (90). Ratolfesham, p. 241. Radolfouuilari, Radulfo villa (71 and 73).

So also, among the manors of the Abbey of St. Bertin, 'Tattinga Villa' granted to the abbey in A.D. 648 (_Chart. Sithiense_, p. 18), called afterwards 'Tattingaheim' (p. 158). See also _Codex Dip._ ii. p. 227, 'Oswaldingvillare' interchangeable with 'Oswaldingtune,' in England. See also _Codex Laureshamensis_, iii. preface.

[351] See _Traditiones Wizenburgenses_, pp. 269 _et seq._ _Codex Laureshamensis_, iii. pp. 175 _et seq._

[352] See among the Lorsch charters that of _Hephenheim_ (A.D. 773). 'Hanc villam cum sylva habuerunt in beneficio Wegelenzo, pater Warini, et post eum Warinus Comes filius ejus in ministerium habuit ad opus regis et post eum Bougolfus Comes quousque eam Carolus rex Sancto Nazario tradidit' (I. p. 16).

[353] See again the case of _Hephenheim_. 'Limites. Inprimis incipit a loco ubi Gernesheim marcha adjungitur ad Hephenheim marcham,' &c.

[354] 'Villam aliquam nuncupatam Hephenheim sitam in Pago Renense, cum omni merito et soliditate sua, et quicquid ad eandem villam legitime aspicere vel pertinere videtur.' See also the case of the Manor of 'Sitdiu,' with its twelve sub-estates upon it, granted to the Abbot of St. Bertin A.D. 648. _Chartularium Sithiense_, p. 18.

[355] _Lex Salica_, xxxix. (cod. ii.), 4. 'Nomina hominum et _villarum_ semper debeat nominare.'

xlv. (De Migrantibus). When any one wants to move from one '_villa_' to another, he cannot do so without the licence of those 'qui in villa consistunt;' but if he has removed and stayed in another 'villa' twelve months, 'securus sicut et _alii vicini_ maneat.'

xiv. 'Si quis _villa_ aliena adsalierit. . . .'

xlii. v. 'Si quis _villam_ alienam expugnaverit. . . .'

_Capitulare Ludovici Primi_, ix. 'De eo qui villam alterius occupaverit' (Hessels and Kern's edition, p. 419).

_Chlodovechi Regis Capitula_ (id. p. 408), A.D. 500–1. 'De hominem inter duas _villas_ occisum.'

[356] _Lex Salica_, xlv.

[357] _Id._ xiv.

[358] This inference is drawn by Dr. P. Roth, _Geschichte des Beneficialwesens_, p. 74. See also _Waitz_, V. G. ii. 31.

[359] Hessels and Kern's edition, pp. 422–3.

[360] By the authors of the _Lex Emendata_. Note 39, p. 451.

[361] Note 216, p. 528.

[362] Tit. xxvi. (1) 'Si quis lidum alienum extra consilium domini sui ante Regem per denarium ingenuum dimiserit IIIIM. den. qui faciunt sol. c. culp. judicetur, et capitate domino ipsius restituat. (2) Res vero ipsius lidi legitimo domino restituantur. (3) Si quis servum alienum,' &c. &c. (H. and K. 136–144).

There were also Roman tributarii, Tit. xli. 'Si quis Romanum tributarium occiderit,' &c. (s. 7).

[363] See on this point Roth, pp. 83 _et seq._

[364] Varro. i. 13.

[365] Cato, _R. R._ 2. Columella, _R. R._ i. 6–8. M. Guerard says of the 'villicus,' 'Cet officier est le même que nous retrouvons au moyen âge sous son ancien nom de _villicus_, ou sous le nom nouveau de _major_.' _Polyptique d'Irminon_, i. 442.

[366] Columella, _De Re Rustica_, i. 8.

[367] Plutarch, _Cato_, c. 21. See _Cod. Theod._ IX. xii.

[368] 'Classes etiam non majores quam denum hominum faciundæ, quas _decurias_ appellaverunt antiqui et maxime probaverunt.'--Columella, i. 9.

[369] Fragment Jur. Rom. Vatic. 272. Huschke, p. 774.

[370] _Polyptique d'Irminon_, i. pp. 45 and 456.

[371] Bede, III. c. xxiv. 'Singulæ possessiones decem erant familiarum.'

[372] See also the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, anno 777, where mention is made of '10 bonde lands' given to the monks at Medeshampstede.

[373] Varro, i. xvii.

[374] Columella, i. vii.

[375] 'Si quis colonus _originalis vel inquilinus_ ante hos triginta annos de possessione discessit,' &c.--_Cod. Theod._ v. tit. x. 1.

[376] _Cod. Just._ xi. tit. xlvii. 22.

[377] _Cod. Just._ xi. tit. xlix. 1.

[378] Frontini, Lib. ii. _De controversiis Agrorum._ Lachmann, p. 53. 'Frequenter in provinciis . . . . habent autem in saltibus privati non exiguum populum plebeium et vicos circa villam in modum munitionum.'

[379] _Cod. Theod._ v. tit. iv. 3, A.D. 409. By this edict liberty is given for landowners to settle upon their property, as free _coloni_, people of the recently conquered 'Scyras' (a tribe inhabiting the present 'Moravia').

[380] Sid. Apol. _Epist._ ii. xii. He complains that a governor partial to barbarians '_implet villas hospitibus_.'

[381] _Cod. Theod._ lib. vii. tit. viii. 5. Compare as regards the _Burgundian_ settlement the passages in the _Burgundian Laws_, carefully commented upon in Binding's '_Das Burgundisch-Romanische Königreich, von 443 bis 532_ A.D.,' 1, c. i. s. ii. _et seq._

[382] Binding, p. 36. And they called them _villas_. _Leges Burg._ T. 38–9.

[383] Roth's _Geschichte des Beneficialwesens_, p. 81.

[384] _Hist. Francorum_, f. 344.

[385] _Hist. Francorum_, f. 295.

[386] _Polyptique d'Irminon._ Large donations were made to the abbey as early as A.D. 558 by the Frankish King Hildebert. See M. Guerard's Introduction, p. 35.

[387] _Chartularium Sithiense_, pp. 18 and 158.

[388] Mr. Coote has pointed out many remains of this centuriation in Britain; and the inscriptions on many centurial stones are given in _Hübner's_ collection.

[389] Siculus Flaccus, Lachmann and Rudorff, i. pp. 136–8.

[390] _Cod. Theod._ lib. vii. tit. xx. 3. A.D. 320. 'Constantinus ad universos veteranos.' 'Let veterans according to our command receive vacant lands, and hold them "immunes" for ever; and for the needful improvement of the country let them have also 25 thousand _folles_, a pair of oxen (_boum quoque par_), and 100 modii of different kinds of grain, &c. (_frugum_).'

Ib. s. 8. 'Valentinianus et Valens ad universos provinciales,' A.D. 364. 'To all deserving veterans we give what dwelling-place (_patriam_) they wish, and promise perpetual "immunity."

'Let them have vacant or other lands where they chose, free from stipendium and annual "præstatio." Further, we grant them for the cultivation of these lands both animals and seed, so that those who have been protectores (body-guards) should receive two pairs of oxen (_duo boum paria_) and 100 modii, of each of the two kinds of corn (_fruges_)--others after faithful service a single pair of oxen (_singula paria boum_) and 50 modii of each of the two kinds of corn, &c. If they bring male or female slaves on to the land, let them possess them "immunes" for ever.'

[391] _In Verrem_, Actio 2, lib. iii. 27.

[392] Varro, _De Re Rustica_, i. 44. Columella, ii. 9. Guerard, _Irminon_, i. 1.

[393] Siculus Flaccus, _De Condicionibus Agrorum_. Lachmann and Rudorff, i. pp. 154–6.

[394] In the division of the land between the Romans and Visigoths the amount allotted '_per singula aratra_' was to be 50 aripennes (i.e. 25 jugera). _Lex Visigothorum_, x. 1, 14 (A.D. 650 or thereabouts).

The _Liber Coloniarum I._ describes the 'ager _jugarius_' as 'in quinquagenis jugeribus,' the 'ager _meridianus_ in xxv. jugeribus.' Lachmann, i. 247. Here we have the normal divisions of the centuria of 200 jugera into holdings of 25 and 50 jugera. On the other hand, the _Lex Thoria_, B.C. 111, fixed 30 jugera as the largest holding to be recognised on the public lands. Rudorff, p. 213 (_Corp. Jur. Lat._ 200, 1. 14).

[395] P. 142. 'Quam maxime secundum consuetudinem regionum omnia intuenda sunt.'

[396] P. 143. See also Frontinus, p. 43, and Hyginus, p. 115, and p. 128 on the same point.

[397] P. 152.

[398] Siculus Flaccus, Lachmann, p. 152. 'Præterea et in multis regionibus comperimus quosdam possessores non continuas habere terras, sed particulas quasdam in diversis locis, intervenientibus complurium possessionibus: propter quod etiam complures vicinales viæ sint, ut unusquisque possit ad particulas suas jure pervenire. Sed et de viarum conditionibus locuti sumus. Quorundam agri servitutem possessoribus ad particulas suas eundi redeundique præstant. Quorundam etiam vicinorum aliquas silvas quasi publicas, immo proprias quasi vicinorum, esse comperimus, nec quemquam in eis cedendi pascendique jus habere nisi vicinos quorum sint: ad quas itinera sæpe, ut supra diximus, per alienos agros dantur.'

[399] Teams of six and of eight oxen in the plough are mentioned in the Vedas. '_Altindisches Leben_,' H. Zimmer. Berlin, 1879, p. 237.

[400] Hyginus, Lachmann and Rudorff, i. 113.

[401] See _Codex Theodosianus_, vii. tit. xx. s. 9, A.D. 366.

[402] In _Cod. Theod._ vii. xx. s. 10, A.D. 369, 'læti' are mentioned; and in s. 12, A.D. 400, 'lætus Alamannus Sarmata, vagus, vel filius veterani,' are mentioned together.

[403] Compare the Welsh _aillt_, or _alltud_ (Saxon _althud_, foreigner), and the _Aldiones_ of the Lombardic laws, with the _Læti_.

[404] B. iv. c. iii. s. 4.

[405] _Germania_, 28.

[406] The importance of the _Limes_ or _Pfahlgraben_ as marking the extent of Roman rule to the east of the Rhine, has recently been fully realised. See Wilhelm Arnold's _Deutsche Urzeit_, c. iii. '_Der Pfahlgraben und seine Bedeutung._' See also '_Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen_' (Berlin, 1882), Abth. 48, c. viii. And Mr. Hodgkin's interesting paper on 'The _Pfahlgraben_' in _Archæologia Æliana_, pt. 25, vol. ix. new series. Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1882.

[407] Gibbon, c. ix., quoting _Dion. Cas._, lxxi. and lxxii.

[408] Zosimus, i. p. 68. Excerpta, _Mon. Brit._ lxxv.

[409] Wietersheim's _Geschichte der Völkerwanderung_ (Dahn), i. 245. Guerard's _Polypt. d'Irminon_, i. p. 252.

[410] 'Tuo, Maximiane Auguste, nutu, Nerviorum et Treverorum arva jacentia Lætus postliminio restitutus et receptus in leges Francus excoluit.' _Eumen. Panegyr. Constantio Cæs._, c. 21. Guerard, i. 250.

[411] _Eumen. Paneg. Constantio_, 9. Guerard, i. 252.

[412] Zeuss, _Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme_, pp. 582–4, quoting the will of _St. Widrad_, Abbot of Flavigny in the eighth century: 'In pago _Commavorum_,' 'in pago '_Ammaviorum_.' In the _Notitia Occidentis_, cxl., there is mention of _Læti_ from this district--_Præfectus Lætorum Lingonensium_. Boeking, p. 120.

[413] _Kaiser Diocletian und seine Zeit_, von Theodor Preuss, Leipzig, 1869 (pp. 54–5).

[414] 'Quo [Constantio] mortuo, cunctis qui aderunt adnitentibus, sed præcipue Eroco Alamannorum rege, auxilii gratia Constantium comitato, imperium capit.' _Mon. Brit._ Excerpta. Ex Sexti Aurelii Victoris _Epitome_ (p. lxxii.).

[415] Ammianus Marcellinus, bk. xvii. c. i. 7.

[416] Am. Marc. bk. xviii. c. ii. s. 3.

[417] _Id._ xxix. c. iv. 7.

[418] _Id._ bk. xx. c. viii. 13.

[419] Among the '_Præfecti Lætorum et Gentilium_' there is mention of the Præfectus Lætorum _Teutonicianorum_, _Batavorum_, _Francorum_, _Lingonensium_, _Nerviorum_, and _Lagensium_. _Notitia Occ._ cxl. Böcking, p. 120. See also the valuable annotation '_De Lætis._' Böcking, 1044 _et seq._

[420] _Cod. Theod._ vii. 6, 3. _Per viginti juga seu capita conferant vestem. . ._

_Id._ xi. 16, 6. _Pro capitibus seu jugis suis. . ._

[421] _Cod. Theol._ xi. 17, 4. 'Universi pro portione suæ possessionis jugationis que ad hæc munia coarctentur.'

[422] _Cod. Theod._ lib. vii. tit. xx. 4.

[423] See _Syrisch-Römisches Rechtsbuch aus dem Fünften Jahrhundert_ (Bruns und Sachan), Leipzig, 1880, p. 37; and Marquardt's _Staatsverwaltung_, ii. 220. See also Hyginus, _De Limitibus Constituendis_, Lachmann, &c., p. 205, where there is mention of '_arvum primum, secundum_,' &c., in _Pannonia_.

[424] Marquardt, ii. 237.

[425] Not that the Roman jugerum was equal in area to the Saxon acre. It was much smaller, and of quite a different shape, at least in Italy. The acreage of the jugum no doubt varied very much, as did also the acreage of the yard-land.

[426] It is even possible and probable that the Gallic coinage in Roman times, mentioned in the _Pauca de Mensuris_ (Lachmann and Rudorff, p. 373), 'Juxta Galios vigesima pars unciæ denarius est . . . duodecies unciæ libram xx. solidos continentem efficiunt, sed veteres _solidum_ qui nunc _aureus_ dicitur nuncupabant,'--the division of the pound of silver into 12 ounces, and these into 20 pennyweights--with which we found the Welsh _tunc pound_ to be connected, may also have had something to do with the contents of the centuria and jugum. At all events, the division of the pound into 240 pence was very conveniently arranged for the division of a tax imposed upon holdings of 240 acres, or 120 acres, or 60 acres, or 30 acres, or the 10 acres in each field. In other words, the coinage and the land divisions were remarkably _parallel_ in their arrangement, as we found was also the case with the _scutage_ of the Hundred Rolls, and the _scatt penny_ of the villani in the Boldon Book.

[427] Eumenius, _Pan. Constantini_, Marquardt, S. V., ii. 222.

[428] _Cod. Theod._ lib. xi. tit. i. 14.

[429] See also Ammianus. xxvii. 8, 7. Coote, 131.

[430] _Cod. Theod._ lib. xi. tit. vii. 2. Idem A ad _Pacatianum Vicarium Britanniarum_. Unusquisque decurio pro ea portione conveniatur, in qua vel ipse vel colonus vel tributarius ejus convenitur et colligit; neque omnino pro alio decurione vel territorio conveniatur. Id enim prohibitum esse manifestum est et observandum deinceps, quo[d] juxta hanc nostram provisionem nullus pro alio patiatur injuriam. Dat. xii. Kal. Dec. Constantino A. et Licinio C. Coss. (319).

[431] Hyginus. Lachmann, &c., i. 205.

[432] _Cod. Theod._ lib. xi. tit. xvi. _De Extraordinariis sive Sordidis Muneribus_. See also Godefroy's notes.

[433] Lib. xi. t. xvi. 4. 'Ea forma servata, ut primo a potioribus, deinde a mediocribus atque infimis, quæ sunt danda, præstentur.' 'Manu autem sua rectores scribere debebunt, quid opus sit, et in qua necessitate, per singula capita, vel quantæ angariæ vel quantæ operæ, vel quæ aut in quanto modo præbendæ sint, ut recognovisse se scribant; exactionis, prædicto ordine inter ditiores, mediocres, atque infimos observando.'

[434] _Germania_, xli.

[435] _Cod. Theod._ xi. 16, and 18.

[436] From _angarius_ = ἄγγαρος, a messenger or courier. The word is probably of Persian origin.

'Nothing mortal travels so fast as these Persian messengers. The entire plan is a Persian invention. . . . The Persians give the riding post the name of "_angarum_."'--_Herodotus_, bk. viii. 98.

See also the _Cyropædia_, bk. viii. c. 17, where the origin of the post-horse system is ascribed to Cyrus.

[437] From the Latin _veredus_, a post-horse.

[438] _Cod. Theod._ lib. viii. t. v.

[439] The '_veredus_' or post-horse, from which the _paraveredus_ or extra post-horse, sometimes _parhippus_ (all these words occur in the _Codex Justin._ xii. l. [li.], 2 and 4, _De Cursu Publico_), may have been equivalent to the later 'averius' or 'affrus' by which the _averagium_ was performed. Cf. '_Parhippus_ vel Avertarius' (_Cod. Theod._ VIII. v. xxii.) and see Id. xlvii., '_avertarius_' = a horse carrying 'averta' or saddlebags. Hence, perhaps, the base Latin _avera, averiæ, averii, affri_, beasts of burden, oxen, or farm horses, and the verb '_averiare_' (Saxon of 10th century '_averian_'), and lastly the noun 'averagium' for the service. See also the Gallic _Ep-o-rediæ_ (men of the horse-course) mentioned by Pliny iii. 21 (Dr. Guest's _Origines Celticæ_, i. 381), and compare this word with _paraveredi_. In modern Welsh 'Rhed' = a running, a course.

[440] Compare the careful paragraphs on these words in M. Guerard's Introduction to the _Polyptique de l'Abbé Irminon_, pp. 793 _et seq._ The sense of the word as implying a compulsory service is shown in the Vulgate of Matt. v. 4: 'Et quicunque te _angariaverit_ mille passus: vade cum illo et alia duo.'

The same word is used in Matt. xxvii. 32, and Mark xv., where Simon is _compelled_ to bear the cross.

[441] _Supra_, p. 154.

[442] There were probably _servi_ on the 'ager publicus' as there were on the Frankish public lands, called '_servi fisci_.' See _Decretio Chlotharii regis_, A.D. 511, 55S. _Mon. Germ. Hist. Legum Sectio_, ii. p. 6

[443] Compare Dr. J. N. Madvig's _Die Verfassung und Verwaltung des Römischen Staates_ (Leipzig, 1882), ii. p. 408.

[444] Madvig, ii. p. 573; and _Cod. Just._ xii. 8–14, and _Cod. Theod._ xii. i. 38. See also the _Notitia Dignitatum_, passim.

[445] With regard to the _procuratores_, _ducenarii_, and _centenarii_ see Madvig, ii. p. 411. See also _Cod. Just._, xii. 20 (De agentibus in rebus), where a certain 'magister officiorum' is forbidden to have under him more than 48 _ducenarii_ and 200 _centenarii_. Also _Cod. Just._, xii. 23 (24). Mr. Coote (_Romans in England_, p. 317 et seq.), identifies the 'centenarii' with the 'stationarii,' or police of the later provincial rule. Compare this with the distinctly police duties of the 'centenarii' of the '_Decretio Clotharii_' (A.D. 511–558), _Mon. Germ. Hist._--Capitularia, p. 7.

[446] Madvig, ii. 432, and the authorities there quoted.

[447] _Cod. Theod._, xi. tit. 11. i. 'Si quis eorum qui provinciarum Rectoribus exequuntur, quique in diversis agunt officiis principatus, et qui sub quocumque prætextu muneris publici possunt esse terribiles, rusticano cuipiam necessitatem obsequii, _quasi mancipio sui juris_, imponat, aut servum ejus aut bovem in usus proprios necessitatisque converterit. . . ultimo subjugatur exitio.' Quoting the above Lehuërou observes:--'Les ducs, les comtes, les recteurs des provinces, institués pour résister aux puissants et aux forts, n'usèrent plus de l'autorité de leur charge que pour se rendre redoutables aux petits et aux faibles, et se firent un honteux revenue de la terreur qu'ils répandaient autour d'eux. Ils enlevaient sans scrupule, tantôt le bœuf, tantôt l'esclave du pauvre, et quelquefois le malheureux lui-même avec sa femme et ses enfants, pour les employer tous ensemble à la culture de leurs _villæ_' (p. 140). See also _Cod. Theod._ viii. t. v. 7 and 15.

[448] _Cod. Theod._, xi. tit. 24, _De Patrociniis vicorum_. 'Quicumque ex tuo officio, vel ex quocumque hominum ordine, _vicos_ in suum detecti fuerint patrocinium suscepisse, constitutas luent pœnas. . . . Quoscumque autem vicos aut defensionis potentia, aut multitudine sua fretos, publicis muneribus constiterit obviari, ultioni quam ratio ipsa dictabit, conveniet subjugari.'

'Censemus ut qui rusticis patrocinia præbere temptaverit, cujuslibet ille fuerit dignitatis, sive MAGISTRI UTRIUSQUE MILITIÆ, sive COMITIS, sive ex _pro-consulibus_, vel _vicariis_, vel _augustalibus_, vel _tribunis_ (_C. J._ xii. 17, 2), sive ex ordine _curiali_, vel _cujuslibet alterius dignitatis_, quadraginta librarum auri se sciat dispendium pro singulorum fundorum præbito patrocinio subiturum, nisi ab hac postea temeritate discesserit. Omnes ergo sciant, non modo eos memorata multa ferendos, qui clientelam susceperint rusticorum, sed eos quoque qui fraudandorum tributorum causa ad patrocinia solita fraude confugerint, duplum definitæ multæ dispendium subituros.' (Dat. vi. Id. Mart. Constantinop., Theodoro v. c. Coss. 399). See also _Lehuërou_, p. 136 139, and _Cod. Just._, xi. 54.

[449] Madvig, ii. 432. 'Wie lange die Ackersleute auf den Kaiserlichen Grundstücken (_Coloni Cæsaris Dig._ vi. 6, s. 11,