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]—
- (1) As census, 5 modii of barley, 1 pound of flax, at Easter 4d., 1 fowl, 10 eggs, 2 loads of wood.
- (2) As work, 4 weeks a year whenever required.
- (3) As 'gafolyrth,' to plough 1 acre in each of the [three] fields (sationes), and to gather and store it.
- (4) As 'precariæ,' or sordida munera—
- 3 days' work at reaping
- 2 days' work at mowing. [p334]
- 2 days' work at binding and 2 loads of carrying.
- The tenant gives a parafredum.
- Attends in the host.
- Carts 5 loads of lime to the kiln.
- Carts 5 loads of wood.
- Goes messages 'infra regnum' whenever required.
Each mansus servilis rendered, on the other hand—
- (1) As census, 1 uncia, 1 fowl, 10 eggs, a frisking worth 4d.
- (2) As boon work, 'facit moaticum et bracem
et picturas in sepe et in grania.' In addition the tenant:—
- Ploughs 4 days, and all demesne land.
- Feeds for the winter 5 pigs and 1 cow.
- (3) As week-work, 3 days a week whenever required.
- For women's work, 1 uncia, 1 load of wood, 1 of grass, 10 eggs.
In total there were eighty-seven 'mansi et sortes.'
Their Roman connexion.