Why did governments around civilized Europe transition from classical era administration to feudalism?

[Barsoom]

If you think peasants always paid everything they wed exactly on time with no protest, no hiding goods and fleeing to the hills and no revolts... then I suggest you are mistaken and have not properly considered what you have said.

When you say there was no transition from the Roman Empire to feudalism... what exactly do you think happened in between? I get the feeling you are not expressing yourself as you would wish.

If a social contract is not a contract, then is it merely a social? It is a contract - and, sometimes, if not always, a legally enforceable one. Peasants had rights by law and custom, as did nobles and merchants and lords - in the Empire as well as under feudalism.

Of course peasants hid some of their wealth, and sometimes themselves, when the collectors came around. They also sometimes revolted, but peasant revolts were rarely successful. It's true enough that such factors were significant in limiting the effectiveness of resource collection by the authorities. But they were not powerful enough to change the system. Not until the 14th/15th century when the rise of the cities changed the political balance.

I've already said what a social contract is: it's a though experiment, which means it doesn't exist in a material sense. It's an invention of 17th century political philosophy. Today when many countries have a constitution spelling out the rights of citizens and limitations on government activity, we can make an argument that they are an expression of a social contract. Though I have to remind you that they were not written as actual contracts between freely joining individuals and the government, they were written as law and adopted by the government, and the assent of the citizens is implicit rather than explicit. In the Middle Ages no Western country had such a constitution. The closest thing to it were decrees issued by various rulers that granted some (not all) of their subjects certain privileges. The most famous of these is king John's Magna Carta, there are also a couple of Golden Bulls in different countries, Blijde Inkomsten in the Low Countries, and so on. Such decrees are legal hybrids, they were issued as decrees thus one-sidedly and not mutually agreed as contracts are, but they did usually specify that the ruler was not allowed to renege on them and if they did anyway the subjects of the decree were allowed to resist. Enforcement of the decree's privileges depended on the balance of power between the ruler and the subjects involved. Technically, as soon as the ruler did renege, he withdrew the whole decree including the right to resist, so their legal protections were of limited value, but they gave legitimacy or propaganda value to resisters and the king who withdrew them was easily painted as a tyrant. Golden Bulls and the like started being drawn up in the 13th century, so even if you could argue that they were forerunners to later constitutions, they don't cover most of the medieval period. Feudalism started with the Carolingians, so beginning in the late 8th century. There are approximately 5 centuries between the introduction of feudalism and the first Golden Bulls.

The western half of the Roman Empire fell in the 5th century. The traditional date is 476 and that's good enough for me though the processes that made if fall and determined what replaced it obviously lasted for decades on both sides of that date. So, there are approximately 3 centuries between the fall of the western Romans and feudalism. The political systems of West-European countries during that period varied quite a bit. As @Semper Victor shows, the Visigothic kingdom in Spain closely resembles late Roman administration. The same can be said for Ostrogothic Italy, which was even formally a part of the (Eastern) Roman Empire, but not for the fragmented rule of the Lombards. The Franks under the Merovingians also retained Roman administrative practices but more substantial migrations from their old homeland beyond the Rhine changed the character of the land much more than either Visi- or Ostrogoths did. On the other hand, the Franks extended their power to large parts of old Germania thus introducing their form of rule in lands never governed by Rome. Overall, I prefer the term post-Roman (or subroman as the British like to call it) as survivals of Roman social and administrative structures are probably the most common element between them.

As the term implies, the "barbarian" kings of the states located on the old western Roman territory tried to hang on to Roman administrative practices. Contrary to @Reichcube's thesis in the OP, they clearly did not think the new form of government was superior. They did find that they couldn't run their kingdoms entirely on the Roman model, in large part because the economic basis for it didn't exist anymore: money was scarce and at the local level largely replaced by barter, international trade was severely limited, and cities had diminished in size and wealth. These factors were not uniform, in general more survived in the Mediterranean area than in northern Gaul and more in Gaul than in Britain, but Italy was badly affected by Justinian's long war of reconquest and the Lombard invasion and may have ended up poorer than Visigothic Spain. For much of the period an "international" economic system was alive and well in the eastern Roman Empire but that collapsed entirely with the Arab conquest of its richest lands in Egypt and Syria and the devastation of Anatolia. Arab activity in the west ended the Visigothic kingdom and further disrupted Italy and southern France.

The most immediate effect of economic deterioration was the impossibility of maintaining standing armies paid in cash. Kings instead settled their warriors on productive lands (there's a big debate on whether they displaced the previous inhabitants or only exploited their surplus). If you stretch the concept of feudalism to mean merely land in return for military service, then the roots of the system took hold even during the late Roman period as various barbarian groups settled on Roman lands as foederati. I think that's an overly broad interpretation, one that also obliterates distinctions between, for example, medieval Europe and Japan at the time of the feuding daimyo's. The more narrow conception stresses that the feudal contract is, indeed, a contract in both form and content. Post-Roman landed militaries were settled by law and called forth by royal command or, in some northern regions, on the authority of the people gathered in assembly (thing). Feudal warriors received land by contract and were called forth on the authority of that same contract. Aristocrats of course were socially expected to enter such a contract, and if they wanted to retain the lands granted their ancestors they had to renew the contract, but they were not legally forced to do so. One is legally a one-sided process, the other is two-sided. Do you see the difference?

Your longer explanations of the Roman system are excellent.

You mean @Semper Victor, I think?

 

[Semper Victor]

To further illustrate this issue of continuity of Roman administrative and social trends in Visigothic Spain. I wrote before that archaeology has been unable to settle the question of how did the Visigothic elites live, but there is an example that could be enlightening in this respect, although chronologically it is a bit out of our time frame:

This is the digital reconstruction of a rural villa or palace of an Hispano-Gothic magnate excavated at the site known as Pla de Nadal, in Riba-Roja del Túria, near Valencia. It has been dated to the VIII c. CE, and so it's quite probable that it was built already under Muslim rule. An inscription found in one of the stone capitals found in the place has furnished us with the name of the owner: THIVDIMIR.

This caused many historians to think that this villa may have been built by dux Theodemir, a Visigothic nobleman who was probably the dux of the Carthaginensis province at the time of the Muslim invasion. The oldest surviving Arabic document related to this invasion is precisely the pact between Abd al-Aziz, son of the governor of Ifriqiya Musa ibn Nusayr, and this Theodemir, by which he was allowed to retain under his direct rule a large portion of territory in the Iberian southeast and east (the actual provinces of Murcia, Alicante and Valencia). The building that can be seen in the picture above, and firmly dated to the VIII c . CE, is virtually identical to some late Roman villas from North Africa. See for example these mosaics:

The image above is a mosaic found in Carthage (dated to the IV c. CE) of the villa of a certain "IVLIVS", a rich landowner. notice the similarities with the Visigothic villa above, especially the two towers in its main façade.

And this other mosaic can be found in the Bardo Museum in Tunis.

 

[Ming]

(Continuation of my previous post)

What "killed" the ancient Roman administrative system in the West was not the rise of feudalism, but the decline of cities and the drop in long distance maritime and fluvial trade. Both phenomena must have affected dramatically imperial revenues, and the only way to avoid a fiscal collapse would have been to ensure that the Roman state was able to collect directly the two main taxes that gravated the peasants:

• The poll tax (capitatio).
• And the land tax (iugatio).

These two taxes had formed by far the main share of Roman direct fiscality since Republican times. But just as in any premodern society (and in practice, in all post-agricultural societies, including our contemporary western one) the elites were largely exempt from direct taxation. During the Principate, anybody who belonged to the senatorial class was exempt from these taxes, and some social groups (like soldiers who had been awarded the "honorable dismissal") also enjoyed fiscal exemptions.

Did these taxes continue to raise significant funds in the east?

I've read before that the Byzantines were *also* relatively cash poor when the Arabs showed up and that one of the reasons subject populations preferred the Arabs as overlords was significant tax breaks, even with the jizya.

Edit: It seems so.

Iugatio-capitatio - Wikipedia

it.wikipedia.org

 

[Barsoom]

Did these taxes continue to raise significant funds in the east?

I've read before that the Byzantines were *also* relatively cash poor when the Arabs showed up and that one of the reasons subject populations preferred the Arabs as overlords was significant tax breaks, even with the jizya.

Edit: It seems so.

Iugatio-capitatio - Wikipedia

it.wikipedia.org

When the Arabs showed up, the eastern Roman Empire had just gone through 3 decades of incredibly destructive war with Persia, during which it had temporarily lost Syria, Egypt and much of Anatolia. Heraclius recovered these territories just 6 years before the Muslim attack.

 

[Ming]

When the Arabs showed up, the eastern Roman Empire had just gone through 3 decades of incredibly destructive war with Persia, during which it had temporarily lost Syria, Egypt and much of Anatolia. Heraclius recovered these territories just 6 years before the Muslim attack.

Yeah, the (admittedly Italian language) wiki article I linked puts that in context.

Basically, the reimposition of the iugatio and capitato landed on heavily devastated areas and combined with the Romans expecting to enforce religious orthodoxy made the locals not very enthusiastic.

 

[Semper Victor]

Did these taxes continue to raise significant funds in the east?

I've read before that the Byzantines were *also* relatively cash poor when the Arabs showed up and that one of the reasons subject populations preferred the Arabs as overlords was significant tax breaks, even with the jizya.

Edit: It seems so.

Iugatio-capitatio - Wikipedia

it.wikipedia.org

Yes, they did. As Barsoom has already said, the Sasanian-Roman war of 602-628 CE was incredibly destructive and deplated the coffers of the Roman Empire, and brought widespread destruction to its richest provinces. This paper offers a good view of Late Roman fiscality in Egypt during the VI c. CE, a relatively well-documented period and territory thanks to some fortunate findings of papyrus archives.

PS: Egypt is a somewhat special case, though. It was densely populated and highly urbanized, to a degree that was completely out of any possible comparison with most of the West, so it is doubtful if the elaborate and intricate Roman tax system that existed there in the VI c. CE would have ever been practical in many other Roman-controlled lands. Its territorial administration was also specific to it, as the Romans inherited the division of the Nile Valley into nomoi, that in turn the Ptolemies had inherited from the Achaemenids, and the latter in turn from the Pharaohs. Due to this, the distiction between city/town/large village in Egypt was often a confused affair.

 

[Semper Victor]

Yeah, the (admittedly Italian language) wiki article I linked puts that in context.

Basically, the reimposition of the iugatio and capitato landed on heavily devastated areas and combined with the Romans expecting to enforce religious orthodoxy made the locals not very enthusiastic.

That is not very convincing, though. The Sasanian tax system, that would have been imposed in these lands by the conquerors (it is effectively attested in Egyptian papyri) was also based on a poll tax (gizidag, which later became the Islamic jizya) and a land tax (Karag, which later became the Islamic kharaj).

 

[Ming]

s

That is not very convincing, though. The Sasanian tax system, that would have been imposed in these lands by the conquerors (it is effectively attested in Egyptian papyri) was also based on a poll tax (gizidag, which later became the Islamic jizya) and a land tax (Karag, which later became the Islamic kharaj).

Can you clarify what's not convincing?

The wiki article basically says the Romans were broke and in debt, so the taxes were raised higher by Heraclius on lands devastated by war, not just a continuation of taxes they were already paying.

 

[Semper Victor]

Can you clarify what's not convincing?

The wiki article basically says the Romans were broke and in debt, so the taxes were raised higher by Heraclius on lands devastated by war, not just a continuation of taxes they were already paying.

That the re-imposition of the Roman tax system upset the native population of the Levant and Egypt. By all accounts, Roman fiscality was quite similar to the Sasanian one, which would have been imposed on them by the armies of Xusro II, and also to the Islamic tax system that would be imposed by the Caliphate (which was basically copied from the Sasanian model).

 

[Ming]

That the re-imposition of the Roman tax system upset the native population of the Levant and Egypt. By all accounts, Roman fiscality was quite similar to the Sasanian one, which would have been imposed on them by the armies of Xusro II, and also to the Islamic tax system that would be imposed by the Caliphate (which was basically copied from the Sasanian model).

I have no expertise in the subject but the article says they were raised, not merely continued. Are you saying there is no evidence that taxes were actually raised by heraclius? (or lowered by the caliphate?) I haven't gotten around to reading the paper you linked, I'm goofing off at work.

 

[Semper Victor]

I have no expertise in the subject but the article says they were raised, not merely continued. Are you saying there is no evidence that taxes were actually raised by heraclius? (or lowered by the caliphate?) I haven't gotten around to reading the paper you linked, I'm goofing off at work.

Exactly. For all we know, he merely reinstated Roman fiscality and administrative network. Most of these provinces had spent a long time under Sasanian occupation (Jerusalem was occupied by them in 614 CE, and Alexandria in 619 CE, and the Sasanian army did not retreat until after 628 CE), so to all effects Heraclius needed to rebuild all the Roman administrative network from scratch, as (if Egypt is a valid example for the rest of territories) the Sasanians substituted it with their own (highly developed) administrative system. What is more possible is that what had been a "normal" fiscality was hardly bearable now due to the destruction caused by the war, although Egypt in particular saw little fighting on its soil.

As for the Caliphate, the Egyptian evidence (again, with all the caveats I have posted earlier about using Egypt as an example) seems to imply that the tax burden of the Caliphs, at least during the Umayyad era, was every bit as heavy as under the Romans, if not more. Under Umayyad rule, the Arab authorities even imposed the obligation on local peasants to carry with them at all times tax certificates issued by the local tax collector in each district. If a peasant was stopped by the authorities ouside his district of residence and he could not produce the tax certificate for that year (that certified he had paid the yearly tax imposed by the Muslim administration), he was to be arrested and tried for deserting his lands and fiscal obligations. To my knowledge, the Roman administration never went as far as this in Egypt.

 

[Reichcube]

Contrary to @Reichcube's thesis in the OP, they clearly did not think the new form of government was superior.

I never wrote that they (the rulers at the time) thought feudalism was superior, please try not to strawman me; Obviously medieval elites were huge romaboos.
I meant they were "superior" (and I used quotation marks for a reason) in a paper-beats-rock sense; because feudalism replaced the old administration and the old administration never came back. (with feudalism being later "defeated" by newer forms of bureaucratic government)

They did find that they couldn't run their kingdoms entirely on the Roman model, in large part because the economic basis for it didn't exist anymore: money was scarce and at the local level largely replaced by barter, international trade was severely limited, and cities had diminished in size and wealth.

Another drawback of the classical era bureaucratic governments: they require wealthy, monetized, urban economies to function. Feudalism, while being less efficient, allows for some modicum of control over any kind of podunk.

 

[Barsoom]

I never wrote that they (the rulers at the time) thought feudalism was superior, please try not to strawman me; Obviously medieval elites were huge romaboos.
I meant they were "superior" (and I used quotation marks for a reason) in a paper-beats-rock sense; because feudalism replaced the old administration and the old administration never came back. (with feudalism being later "defeated" by newer forms of bureaucratic government)


Another drawback of the classical era bureaucratic governments: they require wealthy, monetized, urban economies to function. Feudalism, while being less efficient, allows for some modicum of control over any kind of podunk.

Good job dismissing all progress. By that standard postapocalyptic Mad Max "government" is "superior" to everything else. You'll excuse me for disagreeing with this use of superior, whether you put it in quotation marks or not.

The best you can say for post-Roman government - not feudalism! (you seem to have missed the point of the last page of this discussion) - is that it adapted to the conditions of the time. Clearly sophisticated forms of government can't exist without sufficiently sophisticated economies. But Roman economy and society didn't disappear all at once, there were remnants in every part of the former Empire, from isolated villas in Britain to nearly all of society in Visigothic Spain. Clever rulers extracted maximum value from these survivals by adopting administrative practices tailored to them. Certainly they tried to harness the prestige of the old Empire by adopting Roman titles and dressing in the clothes appropriate for them, not because they were fanboys but precisely because they were calculating power players.

 

[loup99]

Not commenting on the topic of the thread since I think it has largely been answered by others more eloquently than I would, but a few remarks on parts of the discussion:

Taxes are not a contract. The state one-sidedly determines who pays taxes and threatens punishment if people refuse to pay up. That punishment could be loss of your property if you refused to pay for long enough or caused enough trouble for the tax collector but it didn't need to be. It was indeed quite common to require taxes in kind, including periods of military service. If the ruler specified this kind of payment and that specific punishment, then yes, it looks very much like feudalism; that's why it took time for students of medieval history to discover that their supposedly widespread model was in reality not all that widespread.

One should however differentiate taxes and ground rent, and note that statute labour was also frequent. Therefore such payments during the Middle Ages could be specified on the contract, although naturally the oral ones haven't been kept, we only have the written inventories and charters alike, but some of those give us hints about previous oral agreements. The definition of "tax" is important here.

You say citizens may subvert payment or depart, but realistically that was not an option for a peasant either in Roman or in medieval times.

That was not always true, in some cases clearings during the Middle Ages actually meant peasants could move out from their previous area of culture and cultivate a new territory. We have examples of peasants moving in Western Europe, as names attest it. It really depends what sort of situation the peasant was in, the sort of status and contract (oral or written) and the period. If they were prosperous and affluent it naturally wasn't interesting for them to depart.

 

[Barsoom]

Not commenting on the topic of the thread since I think it has largely been answered by others more eloquently than I would, but a few remarks on parts of the discussion:

One should however differentiate taxes and ground rent, and note that statute labour was also frequent. Therefore such payments during the Middle Ages could be specified on the contract, although naturally the oral ones haven't been kept, we only have the written inventories and charters alike, but some of those give us hints about previous oral agreements. The definition of "tax" is important here.

That was not always true, in some cases clearings during the Middle Ages actually meant peasants could move out from their previous area of culture and cultivate a new territory. We have examples of peasants moving in Western Europe, as names attest it. It really depends what sort of situation the peasant was in, the sort of status and contract (oral or written) and the period. If they were prosperous and affluent it naturally wasn't interesting for them to depart.

Yes, there was labor by contract as well as by imposition. I meant to distinguish between two types of relationship between government and subjects, especially warriors, one-sided vs. two-sided, but you're right I did simplify to make my point.

And yes, peasants did move. Lords were not happy with it and tried to legally bind them to the land but it was never absolute, of course. That said, small scale movement from one village to the next didn't really improve the position of the peasant, it mostly enriched one lord at the expense of another. Movement to a new settlement did frequently improve the peasants' position, as the owner of the land needed to attract settlers willing to do the hard work of clearing the land. This was a significant factor particularly in the Ostsiedlung and the Reconquista, though the kings of England and Scotland, for example, also imported Flemings to develop previously unproductive lands and the Cistercian order was active doing the same all over Europe. Such settlements involved contracts between the king and the new owner of the land (i.e. a lord or an abbot) and between the new owner and the peasants he recruited for the job. Many of these contracts survive in various archives. A few of them date to the 10th or (in Spain) even 9th century but they vastly increased in volume after the year 1000.

Note, though, that real improvement here came from actual contracts, not from an abstract social contract. Peasants could bargain for a better deal when their labor was needed to cultivate new settlements, they didn't have that power vis à vis their lords in established settlements. Also, while peasants were better off in the new settlements, they were still held to manorial service. At this level the basic structure of lord-peasant relations was the same. However, the expansion of Latin Christendom through new settlements coincides with the gradual abolition of serfdom in the core regions so it may well have been a factor there. If we distinguish between serfs and free peasants, then one of those groups saw a big improvement in its conditions and the other a much smaller one.

An even bigger social change between the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages was the abolition of slavery, which was pushed to more peripheral areas as the church forbade the enslavement of Christians by other Christians. The driving factor appears to be mainly ideological. On the other hand, academics debate whether Roman-style slavery was perhaps replaced by serfdom and that could have more material causes. The process took a very long time, starting already in the Merovingian period in France and not ending until the 13th and 14th century in northern Europe. In Spain and Portugal slavery seems to have never completely ended as a steady source of non-Christian slaves was close at hand for all of the Middle Ages and when the Reconquista finally concluded, they quickly shifted their activities to Africa and the New World.

 

[Semper Victor]

Yes, there was labor by contract as well as by imposition. I meant to distinguish between two types of relationship between government and subjects, especially warriors, one-sided vs. two-sided, but you're right I did simplify to make my point.

And yes, peasants did move. Lords were not happy with it and tried to legally bind them to the land but it was never absolute, of course. That said, small scale movement from one village to the next didn't really improve the position of the peasant, it mostly enriched one lord at the expense of another. Movement to a new settlement did frequently improve the peasants' position, as the owner of the land needed to attract settlers willing to do the hard work of clearing the land. This was a significant factor particularly in the Ostsiedlung and the Reconquista, though the kings of England and Scotland, for example, also imported Flemings to develop previously unproductive lands and the Cistercian order was active doing the same all over Europe. Such settlements involved contracts between the king and the new owner of the land (i.e. a lord or an abbot) and between the new owner and the peasants he recruited for the job. Many of these contracts survive in various archives. A few of them date to the 10th or (in Spain) even 9th century but they vastly increased in volume after the year 1000.

Note, though, that real improvement here came from actual contracts, not from an abstract social contract. Peasants could bargain for a better deal when their labor was needed to cultivate new settlements, they didn't have that power vis à vis their lords in established settlements. Also, while peasants were better off in the new settlements, they were still held to manorial service. At this level the basic structure of lord-peasant relations was the same. However, the expansion of Latin Christendom through new settlements coincides with the gradual abolition of serfdom in the core regions so it may well have been a factor there. If we distinguish between serfs and free peasants, then one of those groups saw a big improvement in its conditions and the other a much smaller one.

An even bigger social change between the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages was the abolition of slavery, which was pushed to more peripheral areas as the church forbade the enslavement of Christians by other Christians. The driving factor appears to be mainly ideological. On the other hand, academics debate whether Roman-style slavery was perhaps replaced by serfdom and that could have more material causes. The process took a very long time, starting already in the Merovingian period in France and not ending until the 13th and 14th century in northern Europe. In Spain and Portugal slavery seems to have never completely ended as a steady source of non-Christian slaves was close at hand for all of the Middle Ages and when the Reconquista finally concluded, they quickly shifted their activities to Africa and the New World.

Slavery persisted in its Roman form under the Visigoths, if the abundant Visigothic legislation that has survived to our days has to be believed. Visigothic legal texts refer to slaves by the Classical Latin term of servus, -i and although some historians have proposed that this word might have changed its meaning from Classical Latin and evolved to mean something similar to the medieval "serf", it is clear from the content of the texts themselves that the meaning implicit is that of "slave". And slaves seem to have been very abundant, enough to deserve being addressed in the laws issued by practically all the Visigothic kings. In the final decades of the Regnum Gothorum, laws against fugitive slaves became increasingly draconian, which must mean that fleeing slaves had become a real problem.

The first great division among slaves in Visigothic legislation was between "slaves of the Treasury" and the rest. The slaves of the Treasury belonged to the royal Thesaurus (not to the king himself, Visigothic law distinguished clearly between the private property of the king and what belonged to the Crown) and enjoyed several privileges. According to the important legal reform of king Khindasvint as compiled in the Forum Iudicum (VII c. CE), slaves of the Treasury could bear witness in a trial without being submitted to torture (this was compulsory for all other slaves, following Roman legal precedent that went back as far as Republican times), and they could also be manumitted by the managers of the royal estates (although king Khindasvint stated that the royal signature was necessary in this case). They could also own properties and even their own slaves (again, following Roman custom) that they could only sell (with the king's authorization) to other slaves of the Treasury.

Other slaves did not enjoy these privileges, although the slaves of the Church again formed a special group. They seem to have been quite numerous, probably several thousands in each bishopric. Some of them tilled the land, some others were pacifices (artisans), and some were domestic slaves. Some slaves of the Treasury were clerics (a novelty, unattested in Roman times) who were tied for life to a church (probably in the royal estates) and were subjected to the poll tax (capitatio). Some of these clerics-slaves managed to make considerable fortunes, enough for them to even be able to found churches. After 589 CE (as decreed by the III Council of Toledo), manumitted slaves could be ordained as priests, with the condition that their previous owners renounced all their legal rights over them (Visigothic law retained the Roman legal figures of the freedman and the patron). Manumitted slaves of the Church and all their descendants came under the perpetual patronage of the Church (i.e. to all effects, they became "serfs" of the Church and not completely "free" men).

Slavery was an hereditary condition, and this point was increasingly reinforced across the years. Initially, if a slave (male or female) fled and married a free man or woman but was later discovered, the children of this marriage would remain as freeborn children, but king Ervigius (r. 680-687 CE) decreed that such children would become slaves of the owner of the enslaved mother/father if the latter was discovered. In general, the laws issued during the last thirty years of the Visigothic Kingdom reach delirious levels or rigor when dealing with slavery, as shown by some examples taken from a manuscript of the Forum Iudicum dated to the reign of king Alfonso X of Castile (r. 1252-1284; this legal text remained as authoritative in much of the Iberian Peninsula until the Lower Middle Ages):

• If a woman married a man without her father's authorization, she and her husband would become enslaved to the man who had been chosen by her father to marry her (law issued by king Recceswinth).
• If a woman were to consider her husband as dead and remarried and then her first husband reappeared, then the latter could sell her into slavery, as well as her new husband.
• If a woman prostitutes herself in a city and she is freeborn, she is to be flagged, and if she "sins" again, she must be handed as a slave to a "villain". And if the woman were born a slave, she is to be flagged, scalped and exiled from the city.
• A slave who has been sold is forbidden from bearing witness against his/her former owner, and if he/she does that, then he/she must be sold to his/her former owner so that the latter can exact revenge from them.
• King Egica also decreed that all Jews must convert to the Christian faith. Those who refused, or those who secretly still followed Jewish practices after converting, would be (in the best of cases) sold into slavery.
• The most demented law: King Egica issued a law stating that the population of every village in the kingdom should torture any unknown traveller in order to discover if the latter was a fugitive slave. If any village ignored this law, then every inhabitant of the village would receive 200 lashes as punishment.

 

[Victor1234]

Slavery persisted in its Roman form under the Visigoths, if the abundant Visigothic legislation that has survived to our days has to be believed.

They seem to have been quite numerous, probably several thousands in each bishopric. Some of them tilled the land, some others were pacifices (artisans), and some were domestic slaves. Some slaves of the Treasury were clerics (a novelty, unattested in Roman times) who were tied for life to a church (probably in the royal estates) and were subjected to the poll tax (capitatio).

Excellent insights as always, but surely numerous is a very relative term?

One imagines in peak Roman times, vast hordes of slaves toiling away on the latifundia of Hispania. Proportionally wouldn't have there been less slaves in Visigoth Spain regardless of Christianity or amount of legislation to the contrary? After the ravages of multiple invasions, breakdown in large agricultural trade and the appearance of the coloni and bagaudae, there must have been a lot of pressures on the traditional slaveholding structures (economic and competitive from those other agricultural classes if nothing else) and more options available to the enslaved.

 

[Semper Victor]

Excellent insights as always, but surely numerous is a very relative term?

One imagines in peak Roman times, vast hordes of slaves toiling away on the latifundia of Hispania. Proportionally wouldn't have there been less slaves in Visigoth Spain regardless of Christianity or amount of legislation to the contrary? After the ravages of multiple invasions, breakdown in large agricultural trade and the appearance of the coloni and bagaudae, there must have been a lot of pressures on the traditional slaveholding structures (economic and competitive from those other agricultural classes if nothing else) and more options available to the enslaved.

The Iberian Peninsula is a very diverse territory, both in topography and climate. Based on topography, climate and archaeology, it is generally assumed that the Roman latifundia must have been concentrated in the Guadalquivir Valley (the Roman and Visigothic Baetica), the lower Guadiana Valley and what is today southern Portugal (i.e. the southern-central part of ancient Lusitania) and perhaps the Ebro valley. Most Roman villae and the largest concentration of Roman cities and towns are attested in Baetica and south-central Lusitania, so it seems that population density (or at least urbanization) was higher there. In comparison, although the Ebro valley (corresponding to the Late Roman Tarraconensis) has yielded less remains of Roman villae. And the same stands for the two remaining provinces, Gallaecia and Carthaginensis, although the climate and terrain of these areas is much less suited to the sort of agriculture that was practised in Roman latifundia (the same is true for northern Lusitania and marginal areas of Baetica). So it is probable that even in Roman times, the truly large concentrations of slaves were only to be found in those areas, and it is possible that the trend continued in Visigothic times. Archaeology has revealed that Emerita Augusta (Mérida) did not shrink in size at all during Visigothic times, and although Hispalis (Sevilla) and Corduba (Córdoba) have been less excavated, it seems that these cities also retained a considerable degree of urban activity.

It is also possible, as some scholars have mantained, that what happened is that the condition of the slaves (servi) and the Roman colons (coloni) became gradually similar, to the point where both status became de facto identical. In fact, Visigothic laws do not mention coloni at all, only servi. In other words, a majority of the peasantry in Visigothic Spain became progressively reduced to a situation virtually identical to Roman slavery. This would explain the apocalyptic tones of some of the laws of King Egica. You will find the whole Forum Iudicum here, and I will quote verbatim Egica's law about fugitive servi:

EGICA, KING. XXI. Concerning Fugitive Slaves, and those who Shelter Them.

It has been plainly set forth in former laws, by what means and investigations the secret escape of fugitive slaves may be repressed. But as, under various legal pretexts of judges, or through the fraud of those who shelter them, their flight is concealed, and the enforcement of the laws becomes difficult, and with the increasing number of fugitives the facilities for their concealment become greater, to such an extent has this evil grown that there is scarcely a town, castle, village or hamlet, where a number of fugitive slaves are not known.

[317] Leaving the provisions of a former law relating to fugitive slaves in full force, we now decree that hereafter, whoever shelters a fugitive slave belonging to another, shall immediately subject him to a judicial examination, even though he should assert that he is freeborn, in order that it may be ascertained whether he is a freeman or a slave, and should he prove to be a slave, that he may be returned to his master. If, however, said person should not produce said fugitive in court, or restore him to his master, whether he proves to be either a slave or a freeman, said person shall receive a hundred and fifty lashes by order of the judge. In case he should be freeborn, he shall receive a hundred and fifty lashes, and shall pay in addition a pound of gold to the master of the fugitive slave, and should he not have the means to pay said sum, he shall receive two hundred lashes. All other residents of that neighborhood, whether they be natives, or foreigners, freemen or slaves, whether they belong to the clergy or are in the service of the Crown, shall be liable to similar penalties, if they do not give notice of said fugitive, or drive him from the possession of him who concealed him, when they are aware of the presence of said slave.

And we also provide that the following shall be strictly observed, to wit: that whenever any fugitive slaves come into any locality, all the inhabitants shall assemble, and shall make a thorough examination of said fugitive slaves, either by the application of torture, or by any other severe method; in order to ascertain whose slaves they are, when they escaped from their masters, and when they arrived in that vicinity; and to this end they must use every means possible, in order that said slaves may be delivered up, or sent to their masters, as provided by a former law. If, however, said persons should not comply with this provision, and should neither make inquiry concerning said fugitive slaves, nor endeavor to restore them to their masters, nor subject them to judicial examination, as aforesaid, but said slaves should subsequently be found in the place where they had first taken refuge, all the inhabitants of that neighborhood, both men and women, of whatever race, family, rank, or dignity to which they may belong, shall each receive two hundred lashes [318] in public, by order of the judges. And if the tiuphadi or deputies, or all invested with judicial power, or officials of the treasury, or attorneys, or priests, or any employees of the royal service, should, in any way, connive at the concealment of said fugitive slaves, or should neglect to execute the sentence of this law upon all persons subject to their jurisdiction, they shall be arrested by the bishop, or the governor of the province, and shall publicly receive two hundred lashes. If any bishop having jurisdiction of such a cause either influenced by friendship, or corrupted by a bribe, or through lukewarmness, should not carry out the sentence of the law upon those who are guilty, he shall bind himself before God, and in the presence of the governor, or his deputy, that, by way of penance, for thirty days he will not touch wine or food, excepting each day at vespers, and then only a morsel of barley bread and a cup of water, for the sustenance of his body; and this bitter penalty he must endure for the reason that he refused to carry out the provisions of the law. We hereby admonish all judges and governors to execute the sentence aforesaid; and, should they neglect to perform their executive and judicial duties, they shall each forfeit three pounds of gold to the royal treasury.

Any person who, within the limits of Spain, desires to purchase any slave from a party unknown to him, must not conclude said purchase until inquiries have been made to determine whether said stranger is selling a slave of his own, or one belonging to some other person. Said inquiries shall take place in the presence of the judge, or of persons of respectability who are present where said slave is offered; and the vendor of the slave shall make his statements under oath. The slave who is offered for sale shall himself be subjected to a severe examination; and, should it be ascertained that he is not the property of the person who offered him for sale, but that he belongs to another, then the judge shall order him to be restored to his master. The judge shall retain in custody the party who attempted to sell the slave of another, as well as the slave in question, until the arrival of the master, when the judicial examination shall be completed, and the satisfaction required by law shall be made. [319] Given and confirmed at Cordova, in the sixteenth year of our happy reign.

(The underlining is mine) I insist again that Egica was one of the very last Visigothic kings; he reigned between 687 and 702 CE, he died 9 years before Tariq ibn Ziyad landed in Algeciras, thus starting the Islamic conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom. Despite what some scholars say (as I have explained above) about the assimilation of coloni with servi, you will notice that the condition described in this law is not that of a medieval serf, but that of chattel slavery, including sale and purchase of human beings, etc. And that if King Egica thought necessary to enact such a draconian law, the problem of fugitive people "of servile condition" must have been a serious one.

 

[Barsoom]

The Iberian Peninsula is a very diverse territory, both in topography and climate. Based on topography, climate and archaeology, it is generally assumed that the Roman latifundia must have been concentrated in the Guadalquivir Valley (the Roman and Visigothic Baetica), the lower Guadiana Valley and what is today southern Portugal (i.e. the southern-central part of ancient Lusitania) and perhaps the Ebro valley. Most Roman villae and the largest concentration of Roman cities and towns are attested in Baetica and south-central Lusitania, so it seems that population density (or at least urbanization) was higher there. In comparison, although the Ebro valley (corresponding to the Late Roman Tarraconensis) has yielded less remains of Roman villae. And the same stands for the two remaining provinces, Gallaecia and Carthaginensis, although the climate and terrain of these areas is much less suited to the sort of agriculture that was practised in Roman latifundia (the same is true for northern Lusitania and marginal areas of Baetica). So it is probable that even in Roman times, the truly large concentrations of slaves were only to be found in those areas, and it is possible that the trend continued in Visigothic times. Archaeology has revealed that Emerita Augusta (Mérida) did not shrink in size at all during Visigothic times, and although Hispalis (Sevilla) and Corduba (Córdoba) have been less excavated, it seems that these cities also retained a considerable degree of urban activity.

It is also possible, as some scholars have mantained, that what happened is that the condition of the slaves (servi) and the Roman colons (coloni) became gradually similar, to the point where both status became de facto identical. In fact, Visigothic laws do not mention coloni at all, only servi. In other words, a majority of the peasantry in Visigothic Spain became progressively reduced to a situation virtually identical to Roman slavery. This would explain the apocalyptic tones of some of the laws of King Egica. You will find the whole Forum Iudicum here, and I will quote verbatim Egica's law about fugitive servi:



(The underlining is mine) I insist again that Egica was one of the very last Visigothic kings; he reigned between 687 and 702 CE, he died 9 years before Tariq ibn Ziyad landed in Algeciras, thus starting the Islamic conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom. Despite what some scholars say (as I have explained above) about the assimilation of coloni with servi, you will notice that the condition described in this law is not that of a medieval serf, but that of chattel slavery, including sale and purchase of human beings, etc. And that if King Egica thought necessary to enact such a draconian law, the problem of fugitive people "of servile condition" must have been a serious one.

Visigothic Spain had an unusual political system for its time as kings rarely passed on their title to their sons. Instead a new king was selected from a group of 15 to 20 noble families which also formed a court around the king (their presence is recorded as witnesses to royal acts and church councils). Keeping crown property distinct from the private property of the king served the purpose of preventing consolidation in one family's hands. The great noble families probably had extensive landed estates and were allied with local nobles of lesser status as well as with each other. When a king found a reason to dispossess one of the families, the others insisted that the confiscated lands go the crown and not to the personal domain of the king. Property was also frequently restored and exiles recalled after a new king came to power. While this pattern looks rather cyclical, the overall system was quite stable.

It does seem, however, that Egica's reign was a bit unusual. First, he apparently exiled and dispossessed a larger number of rivals than most. Second, he divorced his wife, who was the daughter of his predecessor, signalling a stronger break with the old king and his backers than was usual. Third, he tried to pass the crown to his own son. All of this led to an uprising by a rival who managed to take control of the capital long enough to be anointed by its archbishop. The rival disappeared from the historical record shortly after and the archbishop was formally deposed by a church council. Though the son, Wittiza, succeeded the father, he behaved in the usual fashion by recalling exiles and restoring their confiscated properties. This is probably a sign that the budding dynasty didn't have firm enough control to stick to Egica's hardline policy, and Wittiza was overthrown after 9 or 10 years on the throne to boot. (The crisis that followed gave the Arabs a splendid opportunity to invade.) So, I'm suggesting that Egica's laws on slavery could be influenced both by a combative personality and by turmoil resulting from the upheavals of his reign, which were compounded by an outbreak of plague that forced the king and his heir out of their capital.

 

[loup99]

Yes, there was labor by contract as well as by imposition. I meant to distinguish between two types of relationship between government and subjects, especially warriors, one-sided vs. two-sided, but you're right I did simplify to make my point.

And yes, peasants did move. Lords were not happy with it and tried to legally bind them to the land but it was never absolute, of course. That said, small scale movement from one village to the next didn't really improve the position of the peasant, it mostly enriched one lord at the expense of another. Movement to a new settlement did frequently improve the peasants' position, as the owner of the land needed to attract settlers willing to do the hard work of clearing the land. This was a significant factor particularly in the Ostsiedlung and the Reconquista, though the kings of England and Scotland, for example, also imported Flemings to develop previously unproductive lands and the Cistercian order was active doing the same all over Europe. Such settlements involved contracts between the king and the new owner of the land (i.e. a lord or an abbot) and between the new owner and the peasants he recruited for the job. Many of these contracts survive in various archives. A few of them date to the 10th or (in Spain) even 9th century but they vastly increased in volume after the year 1000.

Note, though, that real improvement here came from actual contracts, not from an abstract social contract. Peasants could bargain for a better deal when their labor was needed to cultivate new settlements, they didn't have that power vis à vis their lords in established settlements. Also, while peasants were better off in the new settlements, they were still held to manorial service. At this level the basic structure of lord-peasant relations was the same. However, the expansion of Latin Christendom through new settlements coincides with the gradual abolition of serfdom in the core regions so it may well have been a factor there. If we distinguish between serfs and free peasants, then one of those groups saw a big improvement in its conditions and the other a much smaller one.

With regards to written contracts, it should be noted that because of its strong scriptural tradition Northern Italy also had them a lot earlier than other regions of Carolingian Europe. There we have examples of livello (written agrarian contracts) from the end of the 8th century. That being said with regards to improvement of conditions, at the same time we see the alleux (allods) disappearing within the area of present day France, even though on the margins such as in the mountains they remained for a bit longer. Progressively the burden of the ground rent also increased, as the grand Carolingian domains of the laypersons were evenly split up with inheritances and became a patchwork of small exploitations, meaning the peasants themselves ended up with increasingly smaller pieces of land to exploit, even though the statute labour disappeared together with the reserve. More aristocrats in numbers in the 12th century and onwards meant the level of ground rent had to increase to maintain the levels of income for the aristocracy. However, I do want to add that the economic growth during the Carolingian period meant that many aristocrats organised clearances to expand their domains at the time, so this happened long before the Cistercian order came into existence or the Reconquista and the Ostsiedlung took place.