Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/367

Lindsay : Luther and the German Reformation 357 has been so widely accepted, that a return to labor services was enforced by the lords upon the villain tenants after the Black Death is shown to be a mistake, for the records of one hundred and twenty-six manors within the thirty years following the pestilence show no single instance of such an increase or return, but quite the contrary process. Thirdly, the distinc- tion between serfs and villains, between tenure in bondage and tenure in villainage, is shown to have had no existence in the usage of manorial courts or in other manorial records, the only place where such a distinc- tion could have had any importance if it had existed. Villains, tiafivi, customary tenants, and persons described by several other terms were un- differentiated except in the discussions of some medieval and modern lawyers. The change of labor services into money payments progressed with great rapidity after the pestilence of 1348-1349 and this was tanta- mount to the cessation of villainage as a form of tenure. Regular money payments had not that character of uncertainty which kept the villain subject to the manorial bailiff, excluded him from the king's courts, and kept his tenure like his personal status, servile. Mr. Page carefully dis- tinguishes villain status from villain tenure, and treats their disappearance as two separate though dependent movements. But the first is more satis- factorily done than the second. He notices the leasing out of the demesne as progressing coincidently with the process of commutation, but does not repeat the valuable statistics on this point given in his pamphlet. Die Umwatidluug iter Frohndieiiste. But does he not miss here perhaps the most important incentive to the non-enforcement of the disabilities of vil- lains? It was not that commutation made villainage of less interest to the lords because they could not now get labor for the demesne if they wanted to, but that by the leasing of their demesnes they did not any longer want a labor supply even if they could have obtained it. Mr. Page makes a mistake in stating that enfranchisernent came later in France than in England, as M. Doniol's book shows. But this is one of very few slips. In the matter of which his book is a special study he shows the firmness of touch, the clearness of views and the originality of interpretation which can only come from much close contact with the sources from which all our knowledge must be drawn. E. P. Chkvnev. Luther and the Gennaii Reformation. By Thomas M. Lindsay, D.D., Professor of Church History, Free Church College, Glas- gow. (New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1900. Pp. xii, 300.) The new series of small and handy volumes entitled " The World's Epoch-Makers" opens well. The editor seems to have placed the suc- cessive topics for discussion in competent hands. Certainly Dr. Lind- say is a successful and enthusiastic student of his particular theme. Of this he gave proof in a remarkable paper read before " the Alliance of the Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian System" at its fifth gen-