The Differences among Manor Owners, Peasants, Tenants and Freemen in Middle Ages

Free farmer: A relatively wealthy tenant farmer can freely use part of the land by paying a fixed rent to the Lord. They can stay at the manor or leave if they feel fit. They participate in the main court, or they can appeal to the king's court.

Tenant slaves: They are neither slaves nor free men. The Lord does not own them, nor can he betray them. Although they have specific obligations to the Lord, they are more attached to the land than to the Lord. They can't be deprived of the right to live in the manor, but they can't leave without the consent of the Lord. They participate in the court of the manor, that is, the court of the Lord, but they cannot appeal to the court of the king.

Farmers: The life of farmers is generally hard and monotonous. They work at sunrise and rest at sunset. Their farmhouse is not only unheated in winter, but also bitter all year round. Bad food and bad cooking. Diseases such as smallpox, typhoid fever and cholera often occur. The birth rate is very high, but the mortality rate, especially the infant mortality rate, is also very high, so that the agricultural population in medieval Europe hardly increased.

Extended data

The concept of farmers in the middle ages

"Peasant" was a very important concept in the Middle Ages, but in the early Middle Ages in Western Europe, the peasant was not a concept of class or stratum, but an economic concept, and a social group engaged in agricultural production activities. As a class farmer, it appeared after 1 1 century. Taxes and corvees divide farmers into free people and non-free people. Getting rid of military service is the real symbol of the emergence of "farmers" as a class. With the reduction of material and legal restrictions, farmers have a sense of identity and the same identity, that is, "rural identity."

References:

Western Europe Middle Ages-Baidu Encyclopedia

Changes of "Farmers"-People's Network