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.

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.

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

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]—

Each mansus servilis rendered, on the other hand—

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.

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