Medieval Manors, Peasants, Tenant Farmers and Freemen Differences

Freeholders: were wealthier tenant farmers who were free to use a certain part of the land by paying a fixed rent to the lord. They could stay on the estate or leave if they felt it was appropriate. They participate in the lord's court and can also go to the king's court.

Tenant slaves: on the other hand, were neither slaves nor free men. The lord does not possess their person and cannot sell them. Though they had specific obligations to the lord, they were attached to the land rather than to the lord. They could not be deprived of their right to live in the manor, but they could not leave without the lord's consent. They participated in the court of the manor, the lord's court, but could not appeal to the king's court.

Peasants: the life of a peasant is generally hard and monotonous. They worked from sunrise to sunset, and their farmhouses were not only unheated in winter, but also very bleak and spartan throughout the year. The food was shoddy and badly cooked. Smallpox, typhoid, cholera, and other diseases were frequent. The birth rate was high, but the death rate, especially among young children, was equally high, so that throughout the Middle Ages the agricultural population of Europe simply did not grow.

Expanded Information

Concept of the Medieval Peasant

"Peasant" was an important concept in the Middle Ages, but in early medieval Western Europe the peasantry was not a class or a stratum of people, but rather an economic concept, a It was an economic concept, a social group engaged in agricultural activities. Peasantry as a hierarchical sense did not emerge until after the 11th century. Taxes and levies divided the farmers into free and unfree. Freedom from military service was the real sign of the emergence of the "peasant" as a class. The reduction of material and legal constraints gave the peasant a sense of identity, a ****same identity, a "rural identity".

References:

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Western Europe in the Middle Ages - Baidu Encyclopedia

Changes of the "Peasant" - People's Daily Online