Serfs of the glebe: what were they and how did they live during the Middle Ages?

Let's see what the serfs of the glebe, servants of the feudal elite during the Middle Ages, were like.

Halfway between slaves and free men, we have the serfs of the glebe, a social class that appeared during the Middle Ages.a social class that appeared during the Middle Ages and was directly related to feudalism, which was the foundation of the medieval economy.

We say that they are halfway between one and the other because, although they were subject to the designs of a lord, they enjoyed some rights that allowed them to say, albeit in a very limited way, that they were human beings like any other.

The figure of the serfs of the glebe is, perhaps, difficult to understand under the modern perspective. However, reading below about this estate, perhaps we will be more aware of why this intermediate step between slavery and individual freedom was necessary.

The serfs of the glebe

The serfs of the glebe is the name given to the peasants who, in the Middle Ages and in a feudal context, established a social and legal the peasants who, in the Middle Ages and under a feudal context, established a social and legal contract of servitude with a landowner. with a landowner.

These peasants became attached to the properties of the lord, a nobleman or a high-ranking member of the clergy, offering their services and paying tribute to him in the form of crops or other products. The serfs of the glebe were in conditions close to slavery, although their feudal lord was obliged to respect some rights.

It is very important not to confuse serfdom with vassalage, which was another type of subjugation typical of feudalism.. In vassalage, a person belonging to a privileged class, such as the nobility or the clergy, established a political and military relationship of submission with another privileged person. On the other hand, in serfdom, although there is submission, it is not between people with the same privileges or the same opportunities.

Between slavery and freedom

There is no doubt that slavery is a bad thing in itself, since it implies depriving another person of freedom, a basic human right that every modern society recognizes as inalienable. However, we should not make the mistake of judging past societies solely by how they treated their people. That we have come to where we are today is not due to a sudden change, but to changes in mentality and in the way society is organized.

In classical Europe, that is, in the times of Greece and Rome, slavery was the main mode of production.. Through the subjugation of other people their economy and social system functioned, since both cultures were based on the practice of slavery.

The Greco-Roman slave was the property of his master, as goats, cows and sheep are the property of the farmer. He had no rights, not even the right to life. If his owner so decided, he could kill him without consequence or remorse. The slave had no right to form a family or to marry and, in case a slave became pregnant, the master could sell the baby in the market as if he were selling a chicken. In short, slaves were nothing more than subhuman objects in the eyes of the Romans.

At the other extreme we find the idea of the free man, the idea on which most of today's societies, defenders of individual rights, are based.. In antiquity, not everyone enjoyed this status and, although it may seem to us that the right thing to do would have been to make all slaves free persons, the truth is that if this had been done, the culture of the time, the precursor of the Western culture, would have collapsed.

At the end of the Roman Empire and with the spread of Christianity, the idea of slavery was increasingly rejected, although the idea of slavery was not accepted.The idea that all human beings were equal was not accepted. The Catholic Church introduced changes in Roman law, which materialized in the form of a modest abolition of slavery. However, this abolition of slavery was not synonymous with gaining freedom or living well.

The "freed" slaves did not have the necessary means of subsistence to be able to live on their own, which was synonymous with starvation. Although being a slave implied being an object, many masters treated their slaves with care, giving them food, shelter and protection, which with the abolition of slavery seemed to be no longer possible.

This is why many people went to landlord lands and ended up establishing a social contract between both parties.. The lord of the fief allowed them to live in the place, allowing them to have a house and, thus, gave them protection, while the new inhabitants would be in charge of working the land, giving tribute to the lord and defending him in case he needed soldiers. Thus were born the serfs of the glebe. In fact, the word glebe is quite descriptive, referring to the piece of agricultural land that these serfs worked.

Rights and obligations of this medieval estate

The serf of the glebe was a servant who had no right to leave the place where he worked.. He was, properly speaking, tied to the glebe, to the piece of land he had to cultivate. For this reason, although they were not slaves, they were not free persons either, since they did not have the right to free movement.

But, at the same time, this obligation to stay was also a right. The feudal lord could not expel them from his lands just like that. They belonged to the lord insofar as the lord owned those lands, but he did not own those people strictly speaking. He also exercised a kind of property right over the house where he lived and over part of the land he cultivated. If the owner sold the farm, the serf remained on that land, becoming the property of the new owner.

Unlike the Greco-Roman slaves, the serfs of the glebe had the right to marry.. This gave them the right to marry whomever they wished and raise a family. However, or at least in theory, they could only marry their equals without expecting consequences. A nobleman and a serf could marry, but the nobleman would lose his status and become a serf of the glebe.

In addition, they had a certain right to take a share of the harvest. Sometimes they even tilled on their own account, although they had to give part of the cultivated land to the lord or pay tribute and offer him services. Something like a kind of rent. The lord, for his part, protected them, although the serfs of the glebe were obliged to join the ranks in case the lord was involved in a military conflict and needed soldiers.

Being a serf was something that could be acquired, but could not be refused. In a convulsive era such as the Middle Ages, where wars, epidemics and famines were our daily bread, it was not unusual to find people of all classes and conditions having to go to a feudal lord and ask for permission to live there. The lord accepted, but once this social contract was established, there was no turning back.. The new serf, his children and his children's children would be serfs of the glebe forever.

How did they disappear?

Although today, at least in Europe, there is no longer serfdom, the moment when the serfs of the glebe ceased to exist is not something easily delimitable, given that there were many historical events that precipitated the recognition of full freedom in all human beings.

One of the precipitants of all this was the reappearance of slavery in the Western world.. Although the Catholic Church had eradicated slavery in Europe, with the discovery of America and the explorations in Africa, Europeans discovered that they could use slave labor again. The difference between pre-Christian slaves and those trapped in American and African lands was basically that the former were white and easily humanized while the latter, in the eyes of the Christianity of the time, were wild beasts to be domesticated.

Being able to freely exploit other people, the figure of the feudal lord dependent on the serfs of the glebe weakened and evolved into that of the master of black slaves.. At that time they could exploit the new slaves until exhaustion, and if they died nothing happened because there were many more in Africa.

However, the serfs of the glebe would continue to exist until shortly before the French Revolution. At that time, territorial servitude still existed and it was not until the appearance of enlightened thought, the bourgeois revolutions and the defense of human rights that the figure of the serf became a thing of the past.