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 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.