Manorialism, an essential element of feudal society,[1] was the organizing princ iple of rural economy that originated in the

villa system of the Late Roman Empi re,[2] was widely practiced in medieval western and parts of central Europe, and was slowly replaced by the advent of a money-based market economy and new forms of agrarian contract. Manorialism was characterized by the vesting of legal and economic power in a Lo rd of the Manor, supported economically from his own direct landholding in a man or (sometimes called a fief), and from the obligatory contributions of a legally subject part of the peasant population under the jurisdiction of himself and hi s manorial court. These obligations could be payable in several ways, in labor ( the French term corve is conventionally applied), in kind, or, on rare occasions, in coin. In examining the origins of the monastic cloister, Walter Horn found that "as a manorial entity the Carolingian monastery ... differed little from the fabric of a feudal estate, save that the corporate community of men for whose sustenance this organization was maintained consisted of monks who served God in chant and spent much of their time in reading and writing."[3] Manorialism died slowly and piecemeal, along with its most vivid feature in the landscape, the open field system. It outlasted serfdom as it outlasted feudalism : "primarily an economic organization, it could maintain a warrior, but it could equally well maintain a capitalist landlord. It could be self-sufficient, yield produce for the market, or it could yield a money rent."[4] The last feudal due s in France were abolished at the French Revolution. In parts of eastern Germany , the Rittergut manors of Junkers remained until World War II.[5] Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Historical and geographical distribution History Common features Variation among manors See also References External links

Historical and geographical distribution The great hall at Penshurst Place, Kent, built in the mid 14th century. The hall was of central importance to every manor, being the place where the lord, surro unded by dependents, expressed his position of dominance The term is most often used with reference to medieval Western Europe. Anteceden ts of the system can be traced to the rural economy of the later Roman Empire. W ith a declining birthrate and population, labor was the key factor of production .[citation needed] Successive administrations tried to stabilize the imperial ec onomy by freezing the social structure into place: sons were to succeed their fa thers in their trade, councilors were forbidden to resign, and coloni, the culti vators of land, were not to move from the land they were attached to. The worker s of the land were on their way to becoming serfs.[6] Several factors conspired to merge the status of former slaves and former free f armers into a dependent class of such coloni: it was possible to be described as servus et colonus, "both slave and colonus".[7] Laws of Constantine I around 32 5 both reinforced the semi-servile status of the coloni and limited their rights to sue in the courts; the Codex Theodosianus promulgated under Theodosius II ex tended these restrictions. The legal status of adscripti, "bound to the soil",[8 ] contrasted with barbarian foederati, who were permitted to settle within the i mperial boundaries, remaining subject to their own traditional law.

As the Germanic kingdoms succeeded Roman authority in the West in the fifth cent ury, Roman landlords were often simply replaced by Gothic or Germanic ones, with little change to the underlying situation or displacement of populations. The process of rural self-sufficiency was given an abrupt boost in the eighth ce ntury, when normal trade in the Mediterranean Sea was disrupted. The thesis put forward by Henri Pirenne, while disputed widely, supposes that the Arab conquest s forced the medieval economy into even greater ruralization and gave rise to th e classic feudal pattern of varying degrees of servile peasantry underpinning a hierarchy of localized power centers