Villication
The villication (or court association ) describes a unit within a special form of manorial rule in the Middle Ages , which is called classic or two-part manorial rule . The original Latin root has been preserved in the English and French villages .
Structure and characteristics
The center of a villication was a manor ( Fronhof , Latin curtis ) with self-cultivated land (Salland, Latin terra salica ). Smaller farms ( Hufen , lat. Mansi) were grouped around this Fronhof , which were given out by the landlord and managed by the farmers themselves. From this subdivision into Fronhof and dependent Hufen, the term two-part manorial rule is derived . Larger mansions consisted of a large number of such economic units. The Salland was the Lord himself or an administrator (Meier, lat. Maior or villicus ) using the non-free Hofgesindes (lat. Mancipia ) and the forced labor of hearing hooves farmers farmed. The villication was not limited to agricultural production, but also produced commercial goods for personal use and for sale. The latter was sometimes done by indulgent servants in the peddler trade and sometimes even in long-distance trade. The legal position of the slave pawn can be very different. Differences in status can primarily be derived from the amount of compulsory labor to be performed: While the majority of dependent farmers had to work three, sometimes even five days a week, there were semi-free workers (so-called Liten ) whose forced labor lasted for several weeks Year limited.
Characteristic of the villication, in contrast to other forms of the manorial system (in particular the rented manor ), was the great importance of the association of persons: it was not the borrowed property that was the basis of the peasant's dependence on his master, but his personal affiliation to the association. So the farmer was not simply the leaseholder of an agricultural property for a rent, but was a slave to his master , which also means that the master could oblige him to perform work and that he was subject to the jurisdiction of his master (see patrimonial jurisdiction ). This personal bond between master and slave was rooted in the feudal basic structure of the Middle Ages, which Otto Brunner characterized as an exchange relationship between “protection and protection” (landlord) versus “advice and action” (slave).
Development and dissolution
The villication developed in the 7th century and was originally mainly in the central areas of the Frankish Empire between the Rhine and Loire. The expansion and assertion of manorial rule as the main form of the early medieval system of rule brought the villication to full development in other parts of Western and Central Europe in the 9th and 10th centuries.
As a result of the economic and social change processes in the High Middle Ages (land expansion, population growth, expansion of the monetary economy), the villication constitution gradually dissolved. Even the landlords themselves were less and less able or willing to maintain the organizationally demanding economic form of the villication and gradually switched to rent-based manorial systems. The private economy was largely given up, the Fronhöfe dissolved or lent. The forced labor, which was largely superfluous, was replaced by money or rent in kind. This process took place - with considerable differences from region to region - in the 12th and 13th centuries. Remnants of the villication constitution, such as compulsory labor, mostly reduced to a few days a year, certain taxes based on personal dependency (e.g. death ), etc. still existed in the late Middle Ages and in some places persisted into the 19th century.
Single example
Jürgen Espenhorst examined the structure and disintegration of a smaller villication in north-west Germany using the example of Gehrde . The starting point is a document from the time 1037/52, in which the main courtyard is described in loco riesfordi nominato ("in the place called Rüsfort ") (Osnabrück Document Book I, No. 138). It could be shown that some settlements on the eastern bank of the Hase belonged to this main courtyard, which were already mentioned in 977 (Osnabrücker Urkundenbuch I, no. 111). The main courtyard Hriasforda was mentioned as early as 880 in the Werdener Urbar . Field names and archaeological finds indicate that the main courtyard included a settlement of serfs and the Salland, but also a (own) church (on the "Kerklage"). Large parts of it were surrounded. Around 1150 there was the dissolution of the villication and a kind of "peasant liberation", through which a more independent economy and the development of a peasant class became possible. This spurred internal colonization. The landlord was no longer directly responsible for “protection and protection”, and the compulsory work was replaced by annual lease fees, fees in the event of death (“death”) and wedding (“driveway”). The landlord moved into a new "castle" (probably a moth ) and finally founded a parish church in the first quarter of the 13th century, from which the current church building of Gehrde developed. The area of the main Risforda courtyard is roughly where the village's war memorial is today.
See also
literature
- Jürgen Espenhorst: Back to bygone times, new aspects of the development of rural settlements, Rüsfort in Artland ~ 880-1990 . Gehrde 1990, especially pp. 245-288.
- Jürgen Kuczynski : General economic history . (8th lecture: The economy of feudalism and the country), Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1949.
- Werner Rösener : Article "Villication" in: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . 10 vol., Stuttgart (1977) -1999, vol. 8, col. 1694 f.