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Medieval Manorial System
The medieval manorial system was a rural economy and land-dominance institution that took shape in the 7th–8th centuries in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon …
Timeline
- 700–750Countryside of the Frankish Kingdom · FranciaIn the late Merovingian period, large estates expanded, free peasants were allocated holdings and dependent labor obligations increased; the manor (villa) spread across Western Europe as a rural economic unit combining the lord's demesne and peasant holdings.
- 779–800Manors of the Carolingian Empire · Carolingian EmpireCharlemagne issued decrees such as the Capitulare de villis, regulating crop cultivation, serf labor, inventories and dues on manors, marking the institutionalization of the manorial system at the imperial level.
- 700–800England · EnglandIn the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the manor and clerical estate bookkeeping developed in parallel, structurally echoing the continental Frankish manorial system and forming the basis of Western European feudal agricultural economy.
Sources
- Capitulare de villis vel curtis imperii (779)
- The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages — H. S. Bennett (1937)