important part in Celtic economic arrangements: there is not
much room for his activity as a completely dependent tool of
the master. The female slave (cumal) was evidently much more
prominent in the household. Prices are reckoned out in numbers
of such slaves and there must have been a constant call for
them both as concubines and as household servants. As for
male workmen they are chiefly tæogs in Wales, that is half-free
bondmen with a certain though base standing in law. Even
these, however, could not be said to form the social basis for
the existence of an upper free class. The latter was numerous,
not wealthy as a rule, and had to undertake directly a great
part of the common work; as may be seen from the extent of
the free and servile tenures on the estates carved out for English
conquerors in Wales and Ireland. Anyhow, the tæog class of
half-free peasants stands by the side of the smaller tribesmen as
subjected to heavier burdens in the way of taxation and services
in kind. In Wales they are distributed into gavells and gwelys,
like the free tribesmen themselves and thus connected with the
land, but there is nothing to show that this connexion was
deemed a servitude of the glebe. The tie with the lord is after
all a personal one.
The Germanic tribes moved on similar lines. Slavery was not a natural institution with them, although it did occur. In the eyes of a Roman observer, however, even downright slavery was turned into serfdom by the force of circumstances. As Tacitus tells us, the ancient Germans made use of their slaves in a different way from the Romans. These slaves had their separate households, while the masters exacted tribute from them in the shape of corn, cattle or clothes, and the serfs had to obey to the extent of rendering such tribute (Tacitus, Germania, 21). This means, of course, that it was in the interest of the master to levy tribute and not to organize slave labour. After the conquest of the provinces by the Germanic invaders the Roman stock of coloni naturally combined with German tributary peasants to form medieval serfdom. A half-free group is marked off in the early laws under the designation of liti, lazzi, aldiones. But in process of time this group was merged with freedmen, settled slaves (servi casali) and small freedmen into the numerous class of serfs (servi, rustici, villani) which appears under different names in all western European countries. The customary regulations of the duties of an important group of this class in regard to their lords are clearly expressed in the Bavarian law (7th century): serfs settled on the estates of the church have to work, as a rule, three days in the week for their masters and are subject to divers rents and payments in kind. The regulations in question, although entered in a legal text, are not a legislative enactment but the result of a slow process of adjustment of claims between the ecclesiastical landowners and masters on one side and their rural dependents on the other. There can be no doubt that they were largely representative of the condi- tions prevailing on Bavarian estates belonging not only to the church but also to the duke and to lay lords. The old English Rectitudines singularum personarum (11th century) present other variations of the same customary arrangements. The rustic class appears in them to be differentiated into several subdivisions—the geneats performing riding duties and occasional services, the gebúrs burdened with week work and the cotsets holding cottages and performing light work in the shape of one day in the week and services to match (see Villenage). Of these various groups that of the gebúrs corresponds more closely to the continental serfs (coloni, Hörige, unfreie Hintersassen) .
The dualism characteristic of medieval serfdom, its formation out of debased freedom and rising servitude, may be traced all through the history of the middle ages. French jurists of the 13th century, e.g., lay stress on a fundamental difference in law between the complete serf whose very body belongs to his lord (cf. the German Leibeigenschaft) and the villein or roturier, who is only bound to perform certain duties and ought not to be further oppressed by the landowners on whose soil he is settled (Beaumanoir, Coutume de Beauvaisis) . But the same texts which draw the line between the two classes make it clear that there were no other guarantees to the maintenance of the rights of the superior rustics than the moral sense and the self-interest of their masters. Should the lords infringe the well-established rights of their subjects, the latter had no court to appeal to and only God could inflict punishment on the oppressors. It must be added, however, that even in the darkest times of feudal sway, economic forces provided some protection for the peasants who had lost the means of appealing to legal remedies. A certain balance had to be struck in most cases between the greed and selfishness of the class of landowners and the necessary requirements and human aspirations of the subjects. Feudal masters could not afford to act with the ruthless cruelty of slaveholders relying on government and civilization to back their claims to a complete sway over their human chattels. Lords who did not wish to see their estates deserted had to submit to the rule of custom in respect of exactions. And the screen of rural custom proved sufficient to allow of the growth of some property in the hands of the toiling class, a result which in itself rendered possible further emancipation.
A very instructive example of the formation of serfdom is presented by the history of Russia. Personal slavery in the sense in which it existed in the West was practised in ancient Russia (kholopi) and arose chiefly from conquest, but also from voluntary subjection in cases of great hardship and from the redemption of fines and debts (cf. the O. Eng. wite-theow). But the number of personal serfs was not large and they were principally to be met in the households of great people. The great mass of the peasantry was originally free. Even when in the course of time landownership was appropriated by the crown, the ecclesiastical corporations and the nobles, the tillers of the land retained their personal freedom and were considered to be farmers holding their plots under contracts. They were free to leave their farms provided they were able to effect a settlement in regard to all outstanding rent arrears and debts. Members of the household who were not directly responsible for the farms could look out for their livelihood as they pleased. The custom of the country gradually took the shape of a simultaneous resettlement of all conditions of rural occupation about St George’s day (November 24), that is after the gathering of the harvest and the practical winding up of rural work. Such was the legal state of affairs up to the end of the 16th century. A great change supervened, however, through the slow working of economic and political causes. The peasants settled under the sway of nobles and churches could very seldom produce a clean bill in regard to their money relations with the landlords. They generally had to account for arrears and got into debt from the very start by taking over stock with the farm. The longer they remained on the same plot, the more entangled became the ties of their economic dependence. Thus, as in the case of many Roman coloni, thoroughly free settlers gradually lapsed into a state of perpetual subjection from which they could not emancipate themselves by legal means. On the other hand, the growth of the Muscovite state with its fiscal and governmental requirements involved a watchful repartition of burdens among the population and led ultimately to a system of collective liability in which the farms were considered chiefly as the sources of taxable income. The government was directly interested in maintaining their efficiency and in preventing migrations and desertions which led to a weakening of the taxpaying communities. A third aspect of the question must also not be disregarded, namely, the keen competition between landowners trying to attract settlers to their estates at the expense of their needy or less powerful neighbours. The first legislative measures of the Moscow rulers directed towards the establishment of a servile class similar to the Roman coloni fall into the first years of the 17th century (A.D. 1601, 1606) and consist in enactments against landowners depriving their neighbours of the tillers of their estates. But matters were clearly ripe for a wider application of the view that the peasant ought to stick to the soil, and the restoration of the Muscovite empire under the Romanovs brought with it the consolidation of alj rural arrangements around this principle. Peter the Great regularized and completed this evolution by effecting a comprehensive cadastre and
