The English Village Community / Examined in its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry; An Essay in Economic History (Reprinted from the Fourth Edition)

by Frederic Seebohm

VIII. THE BOON-WORK AND WEEK-WORK OF THE SERF.

The Saxon 'boon-work' and the Roman 'sordida munera.'

Proceeding still further, besides the gafol and gafol-yrth, and yet distinct from the week-work, was the liability of the serfs on the Saxon manor to certain boon-work or services ad preces; sometimes in ploughing or reaping a certain number of acres of the lord's demesne land in return for grass land or other advantages, or without any special equivalent; sometimes in going errands or carrying goods to market or otherwise, generally known as averagium. 'He shall land-gafol pay, and shall ridan and averian [p404] and lade lædan' for his lord. So this boon-work in addition to 'gafol' is described in the 'Rectitudines.'

The various kinds of manorial 'averagium' were, as we have seen, often called in mediæval Latin angariæ, a going on errands or postal service; paraveredi, or packhorse services; and carroperæ, or waggon services.

We have seen how these services resembled the angariæ and the parangariæ and paraveredi, which were included among the 'sordida munera' or 'obsequiæ' of the Theodosian Code in force in Rhætia in the fourth century, found still surviving, though transformed into manorial services, in the same districts in the seventh century and afterwards, under the Bavarian laws and in the monastic charters. The carrying services and other boon-work on Saxon manors closely resembled those of the Frankish charters and the Bavarian laws, and probably therefore shared their Roman origin.

The week-work of the serf.

There remains to complete the serfdom its most servile incident, the week-work—that survival of the originally unrestricted claim of the lord of the Roman villa to his slave's labour which, limited, as we have seen, according to the evidence of the Alamannic laws, under the influence of Christian humanity by the monks or clergy, in respect of the servi on their estates, to three days a week, became the mediæval triduanum servitium. The words of the Alamannic law are worth re-quoting.

'Servi dimidiam partem sibi et dimidiam in dominico arativum reddant. Et si super hæc est, SICUT SERVI ECCLESIASTICI ita faciunt, tres dies sibi et tres in dominico.'

Let servi do plough service, half for themselves and half in demesne. And if there be any further [service] let them work as the servi of the Church, three days for themselves, and three in demesne. [p405]

This remarkable passage in the Alamannic code of A.D. 622 seems to be the earliest version extant of the Magna Charta of the agricultural servus, who thus early upon ecclesiastical estates was transformed from a slave into a serf.