With the break-up of the Roman empire, the weak governments which took the place of imperial authority were not able to main tain the discipline and judicial power which would have been necessary to guarantee the tenure and status of the serfs. And yet serfdom became the prevailing condition for the lower orders dur ing the middle ages, custom and economic requirements producing checks on the sway of masters. The direction of events towards the formation of serfdom is already clearly noticeable in Celtic communities. In Wales and Ireland the greater part of the rural working classes was reduced not to a state of slavery, but to serf dom. The male slave (W. caeth) does not play an important part in Celtic economic arrangements: there is not much room for his activity as a completely dependent tool of the master. The female slave (cumal) was evidently much more prominent in the house hold. Prices are reckoned out in numbers of such slaves and there must have been a constant call for them both as concubines and as household servants. As for male workmen, they are chiefly taeogs in Wales, that is half-free bondmen with a certain though base standing in law. Even these, however, could not be said to form the social basis for the existence of an upper free class. The latter was numerous, not wealthy as a rule, and had to undertake directly a great part of the common work, as may be seen from the extent of the free and servile tenures on the estates carved out for English conquerors in Wales and Ireland. Anyhow, the taeog class of half-free peasants stands by the side of the smaller tribes men as subjected to heavier burdens in the way of taxation and services in kind. In Wales they are distributed into gavells and gwelys, like the free tribesmen themselves and thus connected with the land, but there is nothing to show that this connection was deemed a servitude of the glebe. The tie with the lord is after all a personal one.
The Germanic tribes moved on similar lines. The slaves had their separate households, while the masters exacted tribute from them in the shape of corn, cattle or clothes, and the serfs had to obey to the extent of rendering such tribute (Tacitus, Germania, 21). This means, of course, that it was in the interest of the mas ter to levy tribute and not to organize slave labour. After the conquest of the provinces by the Germanic invaders the Roman stock of coloni naturally combined with German tributary peas ants to form mediaeval serfdom. A half-free group is marked off in the early laws under the designation of liti, lazzi, aldiones. But in process of time this group was merged with freedmen, settled slaves (servi casati) and small freedmen into the numerous class of serfs (servi, rustici, villani) which appears under different names in all western European countries. The customary regula tions of the duties of an important group of this class in regard to their lords are clearly expressed in the Bavarian law (7th cen tury) : serfs settled on the estates of the church have to work.
as a rule, three days in the week for their masters and are sub ject to divers rents and payments in kind. The regulations in ques tion, although entered in a legal text, are not a legislative enact ment but the result of a slow process of adjustment of claims between the ecclesiastical landowners and masters on one side and their rural dependents on the other. There can be no doubt
that they were largely representative of the conditions prevail ing on Bavarian estates belonging not only to the church but also to the duke and to lay lords. The old English Rectitudines singularum personarum, (nth century) present other variations of the same customary arrangements. The rustic class appears in them to be differentiated into several subdivisions—the geneats performing riding duties and occasional services, the gebiirs bur dened with week work and the cotsets holding cottages and per forming light work in the shape of one day in the week and serv ices to match (see VILLEINAGE). Of these various groups that of the geburs corresponds more closely to the continental serfs (coloni, Horige, unfreie Hintersassen).
The dualism characteristic of mediaeval serfdom, its formation out of debased freedom and rising servitude, may be traced all through the history of the middle ages. French jurists of the 13th century, e.g., lay stress on a fundamental difference in law between the complete serf whose very body belongs to his lord (cf. the German Leibeigenschaft) and the villein or roturier, who is only bound to perform certain duties and ought not to be further oppressed by the landowners on whose soil he is settled (Beaumanoir, Coutume de Beauvaisis). But the same texts which draw the line between the two classes make it clear that there were no other guarantees to the maintenance of the rights of the superior rustics than the moral sense and the self-interest of their masters. It must be added, however, that even in the dark est times, economic forces provided some protection for the peasants who had lost the means of appealing to legal remedies. Lords who did not wish to see their estates deserted had to sub mit to the rule of custom in respect of exactions. And the screen of rural custom proved sufficient to allow of the growth of some property in the hands of the toiling class, a result which in itself rendered possible further emancipation.
A very instructive example of the formation of serfdom is presented by the history of Russia. Personal slavery in the sense in which it existed in the West was practised in ancient Russia, (kholopi) and arose chiefly from conquest, but also from volun tary subjection in cases of great hardship and from the redemp tion of fines and debts (cf. the 0. Eng. wite-theow). The great mass of the peasantry was originally free. Even when landowner ship was appropriated by the crown, the ecclesiastical corporations and the nobles, the tillers of the land retained their personal freedom and were considered to be farmers holding their plots under contracts. They were free to leave their farms provided they were able to effect a settlement in regard to all outstanding rent arrears and debts. The custom of the country gradually took the shape of a simultaneous resettlement of all conditions of rural occupation about St. George's day (Nov. 24), that is after the gathering of the harvest and the practical winding up of rural work.