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.