Seigneurial Aspects of Late Roman Estate Management by John Percival

Seigneurial Aspects of Late Roman estate Management
Author(s): John Percival

Source: The English Historical Review , Jul., 1969, Vol. 84, No. 332 (Jul., 1969), pp. 449-
473
Published by: Oxford University Press
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The English Historical Review
No. CCCXXXII - July I969
Sei'gieurial aspects of Late Roman estate

management
THE administrative arrangements relating to the great estates of the
later Roman Empire include a number of features which appear to be
medieval in character and which one is therefore tempted to interpret
in largely medieval terms. The existence and importance of such
features has long been recognized, and although individual items
have sometimes tended to be discussed in isolation it cannot be
said that either the features themselves or the ancient references to
them are unfamiliar.' Nevertheless, the problem of their collective
significance has never been satisfactorily dealt with, partly because
the features on their own are inconclusive, but partly also through
a lack of corroborative evidence from related fields of study. In
recent years, however, a number of advances have been made, most
notably in the techniques of archaeology, which suggest that this
situation of uncertainty may soon cease to exist, and that at last a
precise historical context may be provided in which the older
material can be placed and properly evaluated. It is with this in
mind that a brief re-examination of this material is here offered.2
The Demesne
In the study of a particular feature three main criteria would seem
to be appropriate, and although it is not always possible to apply
them as rigidly as one might wish a preliminary statement of them
will set some sort of standard, as well as suggesting the reasons
behind the choice of examples which follow. First, and most im-
portant, one cannot be satisfied with a mere coincidence in termin-
ology: the occurrence of an apparently technical term in both
Roman and medieval sources is worth noting as a point of interest,
but without detailed information about the practice it describes
I. Among the older studies that have kept their value over the years one should
mention: E. Beaudoin, Les grands domaines dans l'empire romain (Paris, I 899); Fustel de
Coulanges, L'alleu et le domaine ruralpendant l'epoque merovingienne (Paris, I889); P. S.
Leicht, Studi sulla proprieta fondiaria nel Medioevo (Padua, I903-6); H. Gummerus,
'Die Fronden der Kolonen', Ofversigt af Finska Vetenskaps-Societetens Forhandlingar,
i (I907-8), no. 3; and of course A. Dopsch, Die Wirtschaftsentwicklung der Karolingerzeit
(Weimar, I9I2-22).
z. For help in the preparation of this article I am very much indebted to Professo
D. A. Bullough and to my colleague Dr. H. R. Loyn; needless to say, the imperfection
that still remain are my responsibility and not theirs.
? Longmans, Green & Company Limited and Contributors, I969

VOL. LXXXIV-NO. CCCXXXII FF

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450 SEIGNEURIAL ASPECTS OF LATE July
in either or both periods there is little of value that can be inferred

from it. Carelessness or a tendency to archaism on the part of a
medieval administrator, or the conscious use of an inappropriate term
for want of a better one, may be all that lies behind what appears
at first to be a meaningful survival.' By the same token one should
perhaps not worry unduly if there is no link in terminology to
support an otherwise convincing parallel; to take a particular ex-
ample, the reference in the letters of Gregory the Great to marriage
payments made by coloni to their landlord is, one would have thought,
of value, even though such payments are not verbally linked with
maritagium or something similar.2 A second criterion is that an
institution should be sufficiently distinctive for its occurrence at
widely-separated dates to be significant and not merely coincidental.
Again, a single example will suffice: Roman coloni, like their medieval
counterparts, were commonly required to pay rents in the form of
fixed proportions of their produce; but since this is so natural,
and since the possible ways of paying rents are in any case so very
few, the force of the analogy is bound to be fairly limited unless
it can be shown to work in detail as well as in general. Finally, as a
third requirement, the occurrence of an institution should be seen,
not in isolation, but as one in a series of similar occurrences, partly
for the obvious reason that several examples are better than one,
but also because in this way some idea can be formed of the degree
and direction of its development.
The division into demesne and dependent holdings, besides being
one of the more characteristic of medieval practices, is also a con-
venient illustration of the way in which these criteria can be usefully
applied. At the most obvious level, as a division of lands, it is
simply a matter of administrative convenience: a landowner uses
part of his estate for his own residence or private use, and leases
out the rest of it to tenant farmers. At this level there is nothing
striking about the practice, and no reason why it should not have
arisen quite independently in different periods and places. It is
when other features develop, of a non-territorial nature, that the
demesne/tenure structure becomes significant, and its occurrence in
more than one period ceases to be explicable solely in terms of
coincidence. In its developed medieval form the division of lands
and buildings is no more than a base upon which is built a complex
structure of social and economic ties and relationships: the two
parts of the estate are closely inter-dependent, the landlord and his
tenants have rights and duties towards each other's holdings, and
governing the whole unit is the peculiar relationship between master
i. This particularly needs emphasizing in view of the extensive use to which glos-
saries were put in both Roman and medieval times; for a striking example, see W.
Metz, Deutsches Archiv fur Erforschung des Mittelalters, x (I9 3-4), 395-4i6.
z. Gregory, Ep. I. 42; see the discussion of T. Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften,
iII. iii. I 8 8.

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i969 ROMAN ESTATE MANAGEMENT 45 1
and servant which is partly the rea

the basic territorial division. This complexity is clearly the result
of a long and involved process, and to suppose that part of this
process took place within the Roman period is not, on the face of it,
unreasonable. The factors influencing each stage of it will no doubt
have been many and various, but they are as likely to have existed
before the great invasions as during and after them. The decline
of the towns, the insecurity resulting from wars and disturbances,
the breakdown of central authority and the lack of adequate local
administrative systems were none of them evils from which the
later Roman Empire was conspicuously free. Nor could it be said
that the society of the western provinces, with its long tradition,
both Celtic and Roman, of social grades and distinctions, could
not as easily have lent itself to the growth of seigneurial authority
as that of the invading Germans.
Taken in isolation, the earliest examples of demesne structure in
the Roman period are bound to have very little significance, and it is
only in combination that they seem to make some sort of sense.
The estate of the poet Horace, which is perhaps the first example
worth considering, was clearly divided into a demesne farm on the
one hand, administered by a villicus and slave labourers, and tenant
farms on the other, let out to a number of coloni.1 That this was a
social and economic arrangement as well as a territorial one is a
reasonable assumption, though the details of it, being inappropriate
to a poetic context, are not available to us. The practice implied in
Horace occurs more obviously and rather more helpfully in the De
Re Rustica of Columella: much of the first book of this is given over
to a description of what is a demesne in all but name, and in the
preface to the ninth book, in a discussion of the siting of beehives,
the home farm is actually referred to by the phrase 'dominicis
habitationibus'.2 In this context, of course, the phrase means simply
'the master's house', just as 'dominica arca' elsewhere 3 is nothing
more than 'the master's purse'; but as we shall see the estates
envisaged by Columella were already endowed with a number of
the features which were later to give the adjective dominicus its
more specifc colouring.
The term villa dominica occurs also in one of a group of inscriptions
from second-century Africa to which we shall return later.4 The
i. For the demesne, see Satires II. 7, Odes iii. i6. 3o; for the coloni, Epistles I. I4. 2.
The matter is discussed by Fustel de Coulanges, pp. 8I-82.
2. It is admittedly a little odd that this does not occur in Book I as well, but its
occurrence here is so off-hand that its omission there is not likely to be significant.
3. VIII. 8. 9.
4. C[orpus] I[nscriptionum] L[atinarum] VIII. 25902. I, lines 20-22; for a discussion and
commentary, see J. Toutain, Mimoires prisenties ... .a l'Acaddmie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres, Ire s6rie, xi (1897), 3X-8X; E. Cuq, ibid. 83-146; Tenney Frank, American
Journal of Philology, xlvii (I 926), 5 5-73, 1 5 3-70. See also infra p- 45 5 .

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45 2 SEIGNEURIAL ASPECTS OF LATE July
estates in question here are imperial ones and also, characteristically

for Africa, centuriated. In the particular context which concerns
us certain rights are being granted to coloni 'qui in f(undo) . . . villas
habent habebunt dominicas', and it is particularly unfortunate
that the phrase is not further defined. An obvious approach would
be to take it as equivalent to 'qui eorum intra fundo. . . sunt'
earlier in the same inscription, and to 'qui intra f(undo) . . . habi-
tabunt' towards the end,' in which case it would refer to all the
coloni of the estate rather than to a specific group of them. This,
however, would give little point to the word 'dominicas' itself,
and it may be that the force of this after all is to narrow the reference.
If so, and if the coloni concerned are in some sense a privileged group,
there is much to be said for the old idea2 which would regard the
phrase as referring to the centres of the original estates from which
the large imperial one was formed - in other words, to demesnes
or sub-demesnes in a medieval sense. Other ways of taking it are
of course possible, and since nothing comparable appears in any of
the companion inscriptions thereis little hope of deciding the question
beyond doubt; but it is worth noting that in a medieval context
the phrase could really only refer to farms carved out of the demesne
and leased to tenants while still remaining part of the demesne for
administrative purposes. In the absence of confirmatory evidence
one can hardly press this meaning here, particularly as the text itself
may need correction, but the passage as a whole is worth noting.3
Quite apart from this, there is no questioning the fact that the
estates with which these inscriptions are concerned were organized
on the basis of demesne and dependent holdings. The presence on
them of procurators and other staff charged with their general
administration implies the existence of some sort of central nucleus,
and that this was a farm and not merely a block of offices is clear on a
number of counts. The duty imposed on coloni of providing agri-
cultural labour at certain times of the year implies the existence of
i. C.LL. I, lines 6-7; IV, lines 23-24.

2. Argued first, and most plausibly, by Cuq (see the reference in note 4, p. 45 I).
3. As it stands, the text at this point runs as follows: 'qui in f(undo) villae Magnae
sive Mappalia Siga villas habent habebunt dominicas ejus f(undi) aut conductoribus
vilicisve eorum in assem partes fructuum et vinearum. . . prestare debebunt'. This
produces two difficulties: (a) the interpretation of 'ejus f(undi)', which could go with
either 'villas dominicas' or 'conductoribus vilicisve', but which because of its position
does not go easily with either; and (b) the peculiar combination of 'aut. . . -ve'. The
editors of C.LL. solve both problems by inserting 'dominis' after 'dominicas': this
has the advantage of simplicity, in that one can easily see how the word could have been
omitted by the stone cutter, and is supported by an almost identical phrase a few lines
earlier in the inscription (i, lines io-ii- 'dominis aut conductoribus vilicisve ejus
f(undi) partes. . . prestare debebunt'). An alternative suggestion, however, made
originally by Toutain and more recently revived by Saumagne (see C. Courtois, L.
Leschi, C. Perrat, C. Saumagne, Tablettes Albertini. Actes privies de l'ipoque vandale
(Paris, I952). pp. 124-5), is that 'dominis' should be substituted for 'dominicas' instead
of being added to it; and this would not only solve the problems of translation but

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demesne land on which it could be performed,' and the reference

in one of the inscriptions to a villicus and servi dominici suggests
that agricultural staff as well as administrators were housed at the
centre.2
A reference as explicit as this is unfortunately, though perhaps not
surprisingly, very rare. The estates of the younger Pliny were
clearly run on the demesne/tenure principle, though his letters
contain very little that one can point to as proof, apart from inci-
dental details.3 For more direct evidence we have to go to Egypt,
where to all appearances the demesne was something of a rarity
in any case,4 and to a much later period; there is a reference in the
fourth century to aV'rovpyia,5 and in the fifth to 7TT7-caKtal,6 both of
which appear to be demesne arable, but this is not much to go on,
particularly as labour services have so far made no appearance in
Egyptian documentary material.7
That there were demesnes in the western Empire at any rate
there can be no real doubt, and it does not require much credulity
to see them implied in various sections of the legal codes.8 What
can be disputed (though here one moves on to very much less
certain ground) is the extent to which theyexisted and, by implication,
the degree of their significance for the question of continuity in
general. In one of the more recent discussions of them Professor A.
H. M. Jones argues that they were in all probability a rarity, since
most of the big landowners would not live permanently on their
estates and consequently there would be no need to maintain
would remove the passage from the present discussion altogether. The suggestion
seems to me to be epigraphically very unlikely, if not impossible, but there is perhaps
enough doubt about 'dominicas' to make the passage as a whole unreliable. The point
here made, however, is that if it is allowed to stand it must be given some force, and
the fact is that most interpretations give it none: see, for example, the view of R. M.
Haywood, Roman Africa (Tenney Frank, An Economic Sturvey of Ancient Rome, iv (Balti-
more, I938), I-II9), p. ioo.
I. For the labour services on these estates, see infra p. 459.
2. C.I.L. viii. 25902. I, lines II, I5 for the villicus; Iv, line 39 for the servidominici.
3. For one of them, see infra p. 456; for another, Ep. III. I9. 7, a famous reference to
the practice of instrumentum, which is more appropriate to slaves and veteran settlers
(Digest XIX. 2. 3; Cod. Theod. vII. 20. 3, 8) but is here applied to free coloni.
4. For a summary discussion, see E. R. Hardy, The Large Estates of Byzantine Egypt
(New York, I93I), pp. I22-32.
5. P. LeipZ. 97 (A.D. 338), discussed by A. C. Johnson and L. C. West, Byz
Egypt: Economic Studies (Princeton, I949), p. 4I; see also the further references in
p. II7.
6. References in A. Bataille, Traite d'dtudes byZantines, ii. L

pp. 56-5 8.
7. That is, in the strict sense of labour by coloni in part return for their holdings;
in all known cases in Egypt where coloni work on demesne they are paid for it, and thus
may be said to be working on the same basis as normal hired labourers. See the evidence
in Hardy, p. I I 7.
8. Such as the census regulations in Digest L. 25. 4, or the similar entry in Cod. Just.
Ix. 49. 7 (=Cod. Theod. Ix. 42. 7), which is concerned with recording the property of
proscribed persons.

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extensive demesnes to cater for them.' This may, of course, be right,

but the connection between residence on the part of an owner and
the maintenance of a demesne is not necessarily a valid one (witness
the numerous demesnes on medieval monastic estates), and it
could well be that there were other reasons why demesne farms
should have been thought desirable. Even Pliny, for example,
was fond of 'caeli. . . mutatio, ipsaque peregrinatio inter sua',2
and it is not impossible that in the western provinces the tradition
of the 'progress' of a chieftain through his various possessions still
had some force. In any case, it is not enough merely to point to the
small amount of positive evidence and to argue that the extent of
the demesne system was correspondingly restricted; in Egypt,
perhaps, an approach of this kind is legitimate, but elsewhere it has
less to recommend it, for the simple reason that it is based upon the
lack of reference to demesnes in documents which had little or no
cause to mention them. This is a point to which we shall return in
connection with labour services, and it is not always given its
full weight. Nor should it be forgotten that the indirect evidence
for demesnes is really quite considerable: the practice of leasing
the outlying parts of an estate to coloni while retaining the rest under
more direct control is recommended from Columella onwards,
and the parallel system of 'hutted' slaves was well under way by the
beginning of the third century,3 while the frequent references to
villici side by side with coloni are enough in themselves to suggest
that the division of estates along these lines was fairly common.4
We are dealing, after all, not with a system consciously created at a
given point of time, but with one which evolved gradually to meet
changing economic conditions. Direct administration of the whole
estate is progressively abandoned as more and more land is let out
to tenant farmers. In the early stages it is the part retained, the
demesne, that is the 'normal' part and the rest that is exceptional;
later the situation may be reversed, and the demesne may become
not only exceptional in this sense but an expensive luxury, though
because of the way in which it evolved there is likely to be a con-
siderable time-lag before it is recognized as such and abandoned by
the estate owner.
One of the documents referred to in this connection by Jones is
the papyrus record of estates in north Italy of the mid-sixth century,
normally referred to as P. Ital. 3.5 It describes two estates, each
i. The Later Roman Empire, 284-602 (Oxford, I964), ii. 8o6. 2. Ep. III. I9.
3. The Columella reference is R.R. I. 7. I; for a useful summary of servi cas
their implications, see Marc Bloch, The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, i (2nd
edn., I966- hereafter C.E.H.E. i2) 25 I-4.
4. See, for example, Symmachus, Ep. vi. 8i, and the comments of L. Ruggini,
Economia e societa nell' Italia Annonaria (Milano, I96I), pp. 408-9, with n. 522.
5. J.-O. Tjader, Die nichtliterarischen lateinischen Papyri Italiens aus der Zeit 445-700
(Lund, I955), pp. I84-9 (text), 408-I0 (commentary).

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consisting of a group of farms, with the first farm in each group

being clearly different in status from those that follow it and com-
prising to all intents and purposes a demesne. This is suggested
in the first estate by the fact that the farm first mentioned has the
largest burden of payments in money and kind but does not owe
labour services, the implication perhaps being that it was larger
than the other farms and was the one on which services were per-
formed. That it paid dues at.all is explicable if it was in the hands of a
bailiff instead of the landlord himself (in this case, apparently, the
church of Ravenna). In the second estate the point is rather more
clear; the argument from labour services is no longer available,
since none existed on this estate, but the first farm is explicitly
administered by a villicus and is described in a way which suggests
that its name is that of the whole estate. Jones has pointed out'
that here the demesne pays less than the other farms in dues, and
that this, combined with the absence of labour services, should
imply that it was small; the smallness is explained, moreover, by the
fact that the farm described in the next entry seems to have been
carved out of the original demesne and transformed into an extra
colonia. In other words, on this estate a demesne has been found to be
unnecessary and has been reduced to a minimum. Whether this is
part of a general tendency, however, is another matter, and it is
perhaps better to avoid speculation along these lines; what is im-
portant is that the demesne structure appears at all in a document
so thoroughly in the Roman tradition as this.
So far we have concentrated primarily on the demesne/tenure
distinction itself. without attempting to discover much of the non-
territorial superstructure associated with it. But already indications
of this superstructure have been appearing, and we must now
assemble the evidence for it in order to assess its value. For the
more fundamental elements, such as labour services, estate juris-
diction and so on, a separate treatment will be necessary, but a
number of subsidiary points may conveniently be dealt with now.
The African inscriptions again provide a starting point. The Lex
Manciana,2 on which the organization of their estates is ultimately
based, had already by the second century assumed rather more than
i. Later Roman Empire, ii. 805-6.

2. The problems surrounding the Lex Manciana are numerous, and the bibliography
extensive. Apart from the works mentioned in notes 4, p. 45 I and 3, p. 45 2, the following
are of value: T. Mommsen, Hermes, xv (iSSo), 385-401; A. Schulten, ibid. xxix (I894),
204-30; 0. Hirschfeld, Die Kaiserliche Verwaltungsbeamten bis auf Diocletian (2nd edn.,
Berlin, 1905), pp. 121-37; J. Carcopino, Melanges d'arch. et d'hist. IAcolefranfaise de Rome,
xxvi (I906), 365-481; M. Rostowzew, Studien gur Geschichte des r6mischen Kolonates
(Leipzig and Berlin, 1910), pp. 321 f.; J. J. van Nostrand, The Imperial Domains of
Africa Proconsularis (California U.P., 1925-6), pp. I2 f.; T. R. S. Broughton, The
Romani.Zation of Africa Proconsularis (Baltimore, I929), ch. vi; G. Charles-Picard, La
civilisation de l'Afrique romaine (Paris, 1 959), pp. 6i f.

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a mere legal authority; it was now a consuetudo,1 acceptable as in-

corporating customary usage, and the object of a reverence which
was to preserve it in being, in name at least, for another three
centuries and more.2 From the use made of it in the inscriptions it is
clear that it was regarded as protecting the interests of coloni as
well as landlords, but whatever its original intention it is of interest,
not merely as one item in a possible seigneurial system but as a
medium whereby that system could conceivably be developed and
extended. Nor is it likely to have been an isolated case: the regular
laws governing municipal centres and such imperial ventures as
mines,3 and their obvious application to great estates, will naturally
come to mind; and the casual reference to a consuetudo praedii in the
Codex JustinianUS4 suggests that such documents may have been
regular and familiar in the Roman period. The existence of a lex,
moreover, gives added point to a number of features on the African
estates which one might otherwise have been reluctant to emphasize.
The reference to custodiae, for example, indicating presumably the
guarding of demesne buildings or crops at night or at harvest time,
recalls not only a chance mention of custodes in a letter of Pliny,
but also (to name but one instance) the vigiliae or wactae required
of servile tenants in ninth-century Francia.5 In the same way, the
right of coloni to pasture their sheep on the demesne in return for a
small payment also has medieval echoes.6 In addition to such cus-
tomary rights and duties, the African inscriptions refer from time
to time to demesne buildings, and although the buildings themselves
do not concern us here their role in the social framework of the
estate is of interest. An inscription from Gasr Mezuar7 contains a
reference to a brickworks and to tabernae, which will have been
'in demesne' and managed for the landlord's profit. The same may
well have been true of the shops, baths and other amenities men-
tioned on other estates in this part of Africa.8 How far one can talk
of banalite or demesne monopoly of such establishments is open to
question, though one may note, as a parallel instance, the advice
of Columella to landlords9 to build a bakehouse sufficient to cater
i. C.I.L. VIII. 25902. I, lines 20-22.

2. In C.LL. VIII. 10570. II, lines I4-I6, it is a forma perpetua inscribed on bronze
tablets. Its existence is implied in the early third century by a reference to a 'manciane
cultor' in A. Merlin, Inscr[ptions latinesde Tunisie (Paris, 1944), no. 629; and the most
striking evidence for its continuing authority is the presence of culturae mancianae in
deeds of sale of the Vandal period (the Tablettes Albertini: see the edition referred to in
n. 3, p. 452, and the further comments infra p. 458, n. 7).
3. E.g. the Lex Metalli Vipascensis in C. G. Bruns, Fontes Iuris Romani Antiqui, nos.
Iz2-13. 4. XI. 48. 5 (A.D. 366).
5. Pliny, Ep. IX. 37; B. Gueard, Polyptyque de l'abbaye de St.-Remi de Reims (Paris,
I853- hereafter St.-Remy), p. xxxii, with the references there given.
6. C.LL. VIII. 25902. iii, lines 17-20; for pastio, see again Guerard, St.-Remy, pp.
xvii-xviii.
7. C.I.L. VIII. 14428. A, lines 8, I3.
8. C.LL. viii. I4457, I6411, II73I, etc. 9. R.R. i. 6. 21.

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I969 ROMAN ESTATE MANAGEMENT 457
for all their coloni; whether the coloni are to be

own bread or to get it baked in ovens other than those on the
estate is not indicated, but the restrictive practices of a later period
could easily have arisen from this sort of situation.'
The main difficulty, with this as with all the evidence here quoted,
is that of making meaningful generalizations on the basis of evi-
dence which is not only fragmentary but scattered widely in time and
place. The processes with which we are concerned are likely to have
resulted not from one but from a multitude of social and economic
factors, which will have operated in widely-differing ways in dif-
ferent places at different periods. To take the whole of the western
Empire as a unity, developing throughout at a uniform pace, and
subject throughout to a single set of circumstances, would obviously
be ridiculous; but it is all too easy, when dealing with a parti-
cular piece of evidence, to draw conclusions which depend for
their validity on this or a similar assumption. The advanced degree
of seigneurialization apparent in Africa, for example, is partly to
be explained by the long tradition of great estates intensively
farmed which extends back to pre-Roman times, and partly also
to the official interest taken in the province as a source of grain;
the extent to which these same considerations would apply else-
where is a matter not for easy assumption, but for detailed and
perhaps ultimately unfruitful discussion. Even within a single area
different sets of circumstances will frequently have to be accounted
for: the fundamental division between Mediterranean and non-
Mediterranean France, reflected in the Middle Ages by field patterns
and crop rotation systems2 and perhaps in the Roman period by the
size and distribution of villas,3 can hardly have failed to make
itself felt in the matter of demesnes and the practices associated with
them.4 Italy itself is a parallel example: here again a geographical
and climatic division between north and south can be seen to underlie
similar divisions in respect of the structure and administration of
i. For sixth-century Egypt, see Johnson and West, pp. 204 f.; Hardy, pp. 83-84,
I3I-2. For the extreme restrictions later, see G. G. Coulton, Medieval Village, Manor
and Monastery (New York, I960), ch. vi. There is also a suggestive passage in St. John
Chrysostom's commentary on St. Matthew's Gospel (Homm. in Matth., lxi. 3), referring
to the use of olive-presses, but its wording is perhaps not sufficiently explicit.
2. See Marc Bloch, French Rural History (London, I966), ch. 2.
3. For a general survey, see A. Grenier, Manuel d'archbologie gallo-romaine (Paris,
I934), ii. 858-75. It is not at the moment possible to make any simple division of Gaulish
villas, but as a general rule one can say that the contrast is between the large and luxur-
ious ones of the south and the smaller, more utilitarian ones of the north. All the evi-
dence for intensive farming and for advances in technical matters is from the north-
east (see especially M. Renard, Technique et agriculture en pays trevire et remois (Bruxelles,
1959)), and on the analogy with Africa this could well mean an advanced degree of
seigneurialization in this region.
4. Perhaps on the lines suggested by H. Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne (London,
1939), p. 77, with rapid seigneurialization in the north and a slower rate of change in
Provence.

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45 8 SEIGNEURIAL ASPECTS OF LATE July
estates." In the south, and to some extent in central Italy as well,

seigneurialization appears to have been relatively slow, and the
absence of reference to demesnes, and in particular to labour services,
in the letters of Gregory the Great is well known.2 In the north, on
the other hand, the development is more rapid; to the evidence of
P. Ital. 3 already referred to one could add that of the Edict of
Rothari of A.D. 643,3 as well as the numerous libelli from the early
eighth century onwards.4 Regional variations, moreover, are
matched by variations from one period to another, often resulting
from quite sudden and unpredictable changes of circumstance.
The recent archaeological survey of southern Etruria, which appears
to show a dramatic drop in the number of occupied sites from the
third century onwards, accompanied by 'an increase in the size of
individual units',5 is almost certainly evidence for fundamental
tenurial changes in the later Imperial period - changes which cannot,
at the moment, be documented in any detail from other sources.6
At a rather later date, the policy of the Gothic 'tyrant' Totila with
regard to the estates of Roman landowners, though apparently
reversed by Justinian's legislation of 5 54, is a striking reminder that
tenurial arrangements were subject to rapid alteration as a result of
political as well as economic pressures.7 All this will make us wary of
generalization on the basis of particular items of evidence, and the
importance of such items will inevitably be diminished to some
extent. But the recognition that variations of this kind exist, com-
bined with a closer examination of the conditions in which they arose,
I. See Philip Jones, C.E.H.E. i2. 340-2, 395-7.

2. See, for example, C.-E. Perrin, La seigneurie rurale en France et en Allemagne du
debut du IXe a la fin du XlIe siecle (Paris, I953), i. 24; G. Luzzatto, An Economic History
of Italy (London, I96I), p. 22; Jones, Later Roman Empire, ii. 8o6.
3. Luzzatto,pp. 24-25.
4. Discussed by D. Herlihy, Agricultural History, xxxiii (I 959), 5 8-7I.
5. J. B. Ward-Perkins, Antiquity, xlii (I968), 90o9I; a similar process may be seen
in Gaul, in the nucleation of estates during the troubles of the late Empire and beyond,
reflected in the change of meaning of the word villa from 'farm' to 'village' (see A.
Grenier, Annales d'hist. icon. et soc. ii (I930), 20-47). This is presumably part of the same
process as the fortification of villas, for which see C. E. Stevens, C.E.H.E. i2. II2-3.
6. A full report, incorporating both archaeological and documentary material,
is promised for vol. xxxvi of the Papers of the British School at Rome.
7. Totila diverted to himself rents previously paid to landlords (Procopius, Gothic
Wars, III. vi. 5-7; III. xiii. I), and apparently made over to coloni the lands of their
former masters (ibid. III. XXii. 20-2I); see Ruggini, pp. 337-8. For Justinian's reversal
of all this, see the Pragmatic Sanction of 554 (R. Schoell and W. Kroll, Corpus Iuris
Civilis (Berlin, I895), iii. 799-802); Jones, Later Roman Empire, ii. 29I. A situation
which is in many ways similar is found in Africa, where the late fifth-century Tablettes
Albertini may well reveal a family of landowners systematically buying back their
former properties lost in an earlier period of unrest. Tenurial changes are further
suggested by the fact that the dominium of the estate in question is in the hands of a third
person (not the buyer or seller), whose part in the transaction seems to be entirely
formal - and this in spite of the fact that the lands involved refer back (through their
name) to the Lex Manciana of three centuries earlier, in which the control of dominus over
coloni was strict and well-defined (see supra p. 455, n. 2 and p. 456, n. 2).

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is itself of positive value, in that it

against which the more specific evidence can be made to reveal its
true significance.
Labour Services
The practice of requiring labour on the demesne in part-return for

a holding of land is, like the demesne itself, rather more than a mere
administrative convenience; it implies a certain social relationship
between owner and tenant, as well as an economic one between one
type of land and another. For our present purposes it fulfils the basic
requirement of being relatively complex compared with other
forms of payment, and its occurrence at two or more points of time
is unlikely to be wholly explicable in terms of coincidence. The
evidence for it in the Roman period is not at all plentiful, and for
this reason it has tended to be regarded as exceptional; but some of
the evidence perhaps has rather wider implications than is usually
admitted, and it may be of interest to examine the material as a
whole with this possibility in view.
A number of passages, though not as many as one might wish,
are quite unequivocal. The African inscriptions once again are
basic to the discussion, not merely because they provide more detail
than any other source but because in all of them services are mention-
ed without comment as though they were a regular and familiar
institution. Three inscriptions in particular are relevant here,' and
the information they provide can be briefly summarized. The basic
system is that coloni are required to provide operae, which are pre-
sumably days' work, at certain peak seasons in the year, namely
ploughing, harvesting and hoeing. The most frequent number of
operae per year is six, that is, two at each of the main seasons,2 but
on one estate at least the number is doubled, and we must assume
that conditions varied from place to place.3 A phrase in one of the
inscriptions, which talks of 'opera(rum) praebitionem iugorumve',
is at first sight of some interest, since it appears to denote two dis-
tinct types of service, the operae on the one hand and the provision
of oxen on the other; but the context suggests that in fact no such
distinction is intended, and that the coloni are expected to work with
what oxen, if any, they may have. The parallel in the medieval
period would not therefore be something like the distinction between
I. C.I.L. viii. 25902 (A.D. II6-7); I4428 (A.D. I8i); I0570 (A.D. I80-3); see the
bibliography given earlier, together with Perrin, Seigneurie rurale, p. I 5-26.
2. C.I.L. viii. I0570. ii, lines II-I3- 'non amplius annuas quam binas
binas sartorias, binas messorias operas debeamus'; 25902. IV, lines 24-27
quodannis in hominibus singulis in arationes operas n(umero) ii et in mes
n(umero) . . . et in sarritiones cuiusque generis singulas operas binas prestare
3. C.I.L. VIII. I4428, line i2; it is possible that the extra labour here is pa
grievance of which the coloni are complaining, but probably better to take it
variation.

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manoperae and carroperae, but the g

similar which tends to be appended to details of ploughing services.'
Separate from the main operae is the interesting duty of brick-making
and (apparently) wall-building. One of the inscriptions contains
the rather fragmentary order 'cum opus fueri[t palea]m fac[ere]
str[amento] ... paleam in lateribus ducendis et m[ . . .]s cond[endi]s',
which, if we may restore 'muris' as the penultimate word, is a clear
echo of the medieval service of pediturae.2
The lawyers, for their own good reasons, have little to say in
this connection. The only obvious reference to services on demesne
in a legal source is an item in the Codex Justinianus concerning
Illyricum and dealing with the perennial problem of fugitive
coloni.3 When such offenders are recaptured they are to be subject
to chains and other punishments, 'maneatque eos poena, qui
alienum et incognitum recipiendum esse duxerint, tam in redhibi-
tione operarum et damni, quod locis quae deseruerant factum est'.
There is nothing here apart from the reference itself, but that it is an
explicit reference seems certain.
The only other certain documentary evidence is provided by the
sixth-century papyrus P. Ital. 3 to which reference has already been
made4; on one of its two estates services are regular, and again
operae is the term used to describe them. Here, however, the services
are not occasional ones at times of particular need, but weekly
ones performed apparently throughout the year. This is particularly
striking when one notes that three out of the six coloniae mentioned
are required to provide three operae per week. Even allowing for the
fact that the average colonia is likely to have contained more than the
one adult male liable for each opera this seems oppressive, and one
has to assume, either that the practice had become more rigorous
since the second century, or that these later coloni were of parti-
cularly low status. In this context it is worth recalling that Perrin's
analysis5 of labour services on the ninth-century estates of the abbey
I. C.I.L. VIII. I0570. II, lines 8-9. The quotation in the text is from the register of
the abbey of Prum (H. Beyer, Urkundenbuch tur Geschichte ... der mittelrheinischen Terri-
torien, i (Coblenz, I86o), no. I35, section xxiv); see also Perrin, Seigneurie rurale, p. 20.
It is acknowledged that discussion on this point, as on most of this section, is bound
to be somewhat abstract without the appropriate information on plough-types and the
local organization of plough-teams.
2. C.I.L. viii. I4428, lines 7-8; for the later parallel, see St.-Remy, xviii. 2; xx. 2,
etc., and also C. Lalore, Le Polyptyque del'abbaye de Montierender (Paris, I 878), I, iv, vi, etc.
3. Cod. Just. XI- 5 3. I . I (A.D. 37I). 4. Supra p. 454.
5. Annales d'hist. icon. et soc. vi (I934), 450-66. Perrin's discussion of P. Ital. _ (Seig-
neurie rurale, p. 24) is based on the notion that the coloniae are villages, and that the
number of operae varies from two to thirteen, rather than from one to three, per week.
The latter assumption is presumably based on an earlier edition than that of Tjader
(which clearly indicates I, II and III as the appropriate figures); as to the status of
coloniae, one can only agree to differ, though it should be pointed out that the most
regular meaning of the word is an individual holding of land (J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae
Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden, I963), s.v.). For further discussion, see also Ruggini,
p. 408, n. 520.

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i969 ROMAN ESTATE MANAGEMENT 46I
of Priim suggested that week-work may originally have been the

duty of slave coloni rather than free ones; whether this is applicable
here is of course debatable, but it would be unwise to discount it
altogether.
In addition to these explicit references there are a number of
passages which, though not beyond all doubt, nevertheless give a
very strong suggestion of demesne services. Again on the question
of fugitive coloni the Codex Justinianus decrees' that landlords who
have profited by harbouring fugitives should be liable for their
tax arrears, 'sive excoluerunt agros fructibus dominis profuturos
sive aliqua ab isdem sibi iniuncta novaverunt nec mercedem laboris
debitum consecuti sunt'. One can hardly argue that services are here
inflicted only on coloni who have fled to another estate, in view of
another similarly-worded decree2 which suggests that the same
duties were expected of them before their flight; but the language
is admittedly capable of being interpreted otherwise, and perhaps
the most one can safely say is that a reference to labour services is
probable. Similarly, as has long been realized, the advice of Columella
-'avarius opus exigat, quam pensiones' - translates without undue
pressure as 'labour services are more to be desired than money rents'.3
It is true that in the lawyers the landlord's right to opus is simply
his right to insist on proper cultivation of the land he lets out,4
but it would perhaps be a little sophisticated to translate Columella's
advice as 'it is better to see the land properly tilled than to draw rent
from it'; and the immediate context (cf. the next sentence- 'eoque
remissionem colonus petere non audet') surely suggests an antithesis
between moneyrents and labour. Columella, in fact, has a great deal of
suggestive material on this subject. In his eleventh book, for example,
we find the villicus arousing the coloni in the early morning - 'pluri-
mum enim refert colonos a primo mane opus aggredi, nec lentos per
otium pigre procedere'.5 Can we really believe that a bailiff at this
early date would be engaged in chasing coloni to work on their
own holdings ? The whole context suggests demesne labour,
not least the picture a little later on6 of the rustics feeding from time
to time at the master's table, which may well represent a sort of
canteen service for coloni during the days of operae throughout the
year. From a more exotic source, the commentary on St. Matthew's
Gospel by St. John Chrysostom, comes a reference to bad land-
owners who burden their coloni by imposing 8taKovtas fElrCVOvS
upon them; here again the language is not really as precise as one
I. XI. 48. 8 (A.D. 37I).

2. Cod. Just. XI. 22. 3.
3. R.R. I. 7. I; M. Weber, Romische Agrargeschichte (Stuttgart, I89I), pp. 233-4.
4. Digest xxxIII. 7. 25. I, etc.; for the practical details, see J. Herrmann, Studien
tur Bodenpacht im Recht der graeco-aegyptischen Papyri (Miunchen, I958), pp. I25-9.
5. R.R. XI. I. I4.
6. xi. i. i8.

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would wish, but the context is suggestive of labour services and

merits inclusion here as a probable example.'
The passages so far quoted are the only ones we can use with any
real confidence. There are a number of others which may refer to
labour services but which could as easily (and in some cases, it
must be admitted, more easily) refer to something else. Horace has
a phrase 'opus debentibus' as part of a metaphor for duties towards
a mistress, and some have toyed with the idea that the metaphor
is from services in our sense2; but the context is so alien and the
point so obliquely expressed that it would be ridiculous to draw
anything from it. Mommsen quotes a passage in the Codex Theodo-
sianus,3 where a conductor takes over a villa 'cum ea dote vel forma, cui
nunc habetur obnoxia', and argues that the 'dowry' consisted, in
part, of the right to exact labour services from the coloni; if we are to
interpret the phrase as specifcally as this it would be more natural
to take it as referring to the estate customal, which may, like the
Lex Manciana, have been called a forma, but one hesitates to press
it as closely as this. The ruralia obsequia of an early fifth-century item
in the Codex Justinianus4 may well have included services on demesne,
but again the phrase is too general; and to force such an interpre-
tation, as some do, on the injunction 'opera ... eorum terrarum
domini libera (utantur)' of the Theodosian Code5 is little more than
wishful thinking. Another possible instance is Ausonius' description
of his 'parvum herediolum', in which a mention of arable and vine-
yard is followed by a comment about the available labour force -
'cultor agri. .. nec superest nec abest'; this does not look like an
exclusively slave-cultivated demesne, but equally there is no proof
that it is anything else.6
One further reference requires attention, a passage in the Lex
Coloniae Iuliae Genetivae of 43 B.C.,7 in which local landowners
owe labour services in connection with the colony's fortifications.
Although the circumstances here are rather different the language
is strikingly similar to that of the African inscriptions already men-
tioned,8 and one is therefore tempted to use it to help the present
i. Homm. in Matth. lxi. 3; see Jones, Later Roman Empire, ii. 805.
z. Epistles, i. i. 2I; see the remarks of W. E. Heitland, Agricola (Cambridge, 1921),
pp. 252 f.
3. VI. I4. 4; see the discussion in Hermes, xv (i88o), 406.
4. i. 3. i6 (A.D. 409); for a similar vagueness of phrase and context, see Digest XIX.
2. 24- 3.
5. V. 6. 3; see R. Clausing, The Roman Colonate. The Theories of its Or

I925), p. I9.
6. iii. i (De herediolo), 2I f.

7. Ephemeris Epigraphica, ii. i 0o.
8. Compare, for example, the quotation from C.LL. VIII. 25902- 'in assem quodannis
.'- (supra n., 2 p. 45 9) with the following from the colony law: 'dumne ampliusin annos
sing(ulos) inque homines singulos puberes operas quinas et in iumenta plaustraria
iuga sing(ula) operas ternas decernant' (I. 2, lines 27-30).

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i969 ROMAN ESTATE MANAGEMENT 463
discussion. Exactly what help it affords, however, is a little proble-

matical. We know that the system it reveals was extremely common
in the Roman Empire,' and whatever else it may prove it does at
least show that the Roman world was acquainted with labour
services as a general principle. Mommsen, however, used it to argue
forthe rarity ofdemesnelabour rather than the reverse; his suggestion
was2 that since the imperial estates of Africa were extra-territorial
the services which would normally have been owed to the local
municipium were done instead on the estate demesne. That is, the
occurrence of operae on these estates is exceptional and should not
be assumed in places where the peculiar administrative circumstances
do not arise. The basic point here, that there is a link between extra-
territorial status and the existence of services, is an attractive one,
and it will come in useful later3; but whether it has the limiting
effect suggested is open to doubt. Estates enjoying this status may
well have been quite numerous, and once the practice of services on
them had become established it is easy to see how other estates could
have adopted them as being desirable. The motive for such an
extension would be practical in the first instance rather than legal,
but this does not necessarily make it any less likely.
It must be admitted that the evidence for demesne services in the
Roman period is both scanty and widely scattered. Leaving aside the
less explicit references, we have a mention of them on three imperial
estates of second-century Africa and on two church estates of sixth-
century Italy, together with references in Columella to Italy of the
first century and legal enactments concerning fourth-century
Illyricum. Clearly, such a flimsy body of evidence is not enough
to suggest any widespread adoption of the system and historians are
justifiably sceptical when dealing with the Roman period in iso-
lation. Nevertheless, from the point of view of the medievalist its
interest is much greater and even these scanty references assume a
certain significance. Some of them, in any case, are much wider in
their implications than first impressions might suggest. It is to be
noted that the coloni of Africa connect their labour services explicitly
with the Lex Hadriana de rudibus agris,4 and whatever the extent of
this law's application it can hardly have covered less than Africa
Proconsularis and may well have gone beyond this. Schulten, the
most cautious in this respect, is inclined to limit it to the Tractus
Karthaginiensis,5 but it is hard to see why, and even this is a sizeable
area. There is also some significance in the rather fortuitous character
i. For a selection of parallels, see Mommsen's commentary, ad loc.

2. Hermes,xv(I880),407. 3. Infra p. 469.
4. C.I.L. viii. I0570. II, lines 25-7- 'miserearis ac sacro rescripto [non] amplius
praestare nos quam ex lege Hadriana et ex litteras (sic) proc(uratorum) tuor(um)
debemus, id est ter binas operas, praecipere dignes'.
5. Hermes, xxix (I894), 2II, followed by Haywood, p. IoI and by Broughton,
pp. I68-72.

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of much of our material - papyri, chance

on; the fact is that services are written about, not in the great
public laws and in works of literature, but in out-of-the-way private
documents, which have nothing like the ability to survive that their
public counterparts enjoy. To argue from silence, therefore, is here
a rather dangerous procedure. As has been frequently pointed out,'
even coloni are only incidentally mentioned in the legal codes; they
arise only when their supervision or their behaviour affects such
things as the tax system or the army, and apart from these matters
the government is not interested in them or in any other aspect of
the internal administration of estates. Jones argues2 that wherever
labour services existed they gave rise to disputes, and concludes
from this that lack of mention is more likely to prove their non-
existence; but as he only accepts four passages as dealing with
services and only two of these involve disputes it is hard to see the
force of this. The lack of evidence from Egypt is striking, as is the
silence of Gregory the Great already referred to3; but Egypt was
in so many ways a law to itself that we need not be unduly disturbed
by it, and Gregory's silence may, as we have suggested, be part of a
wider pattern in southern and central Italy. One must of course
admit the silence, here as in other contexts, but equally it is worth
noting that in none of the passages where services occur is any need
felt to explain their detailed working; they are a familiar and accepted
institution, and it may be that this silence is as positive as the other is
negative. Significant also is the fact that as soon as documents of the
post-invasion period become available in any number labour
services are seen to be an established and widespread feature. So
common are they, for example, in the early eighth-century leases
from northern Italy that a statistical analysis of them has been thought
possible4; the evidence is restricted and possibly untypical, but it
does seem to show that in the period from A.D. 700 to 750 services
were not only frequent but declining from a previously greater
frequency, and since it was to be another two centuries before they
declined to comparative unimportance one is perhaps justified in
assuming a comparable period of time before 700 for their rise.
Elsewhere the evidence is not so clear or so plentiful, but services
appear in the Bavarian Law and are documented in Gaul from an
early date.5 Here, as with demesnes, we are dealing with a lengthy
and probably composite process; to suppose that this process began
i. E.g. by Clausing, p. 17; Jones, Later Roman Empire, i. 358, with n. 83 on iii. 72.
2. Later Roman Empire, ii. 8o6.
3. For Egypt, see n. 7, p. 453; for Gregory, see Jones, Later Roman Empire, ii.
8o6, and Perrin, Seigneurie rurale, p. 24. To the balancing reference P. Ital. 3 we may
perhaps add the edict of Theodoric in M.G.H., Leges, v, p. I67.
4. D. Herlihy, Agricultural History, xxxiii (I959), 5 8-71.
5. Lex Baiuwariorum, I. 13; see Pirenne, p. 77 for services in the sixth century.

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i969 ROMAN EST'ATE MANAGEMENT 465
before the invasion period rather than after i

but (if the evidence so far quoted has any for
Xenia, excepta, oblationes

There occur from time to time in medieval sources payments
made from tenant to landlord which do not appear to be for any
specifc purpose or in return for any definite privilege. They are
more of the nature of gifts, and would seem to belong to a period of
fairly advanced seigneurial authority, since there is no obvious
legal reason why an estate owner should be able to exact them.
It is thus of some interest that these too can be traced back into the
later Roman period, thereby revealing once again something of the
powers already accruing to many of the dominifundorum.2
To give some idea of their character in a medieval context the
evidence from a single group of documents - the ninth-century
Polyptychs of northern France3 - may be briefly summarized. The
payments appear here under various names, but the dona of St.-
Germain and the oblationes of St.-Remy are the most common. They
are normally in kind, consisting usually of livestock or articles of
food - cows, pigs and sheep on the St.-Germain estates, and chickens
geese, wine and honey on those of St.-Remy.4 In most cases they
are paid by one man on behalf, as it were, of all the people on a
given estate; this is most commonly the major, but the presbyter
also seems to have been liable in some cases.5 It is the time of payment
however, which varies most significantly, and which gives a clue
to possible origins. In most cases a regular date is given, most
commonly Christmas but sometimes the feast day of the abbey's
patron saint or one of the traditional quarter days: thus the major
of Sicca ValliS6 'donat de ipso ministerio, ad missam sancti Martini,
multones ii, ad Nativitatem Domini porcos ii, unum de viii denariis
et alium de iiii'. In a number of instances, however, there is no
fixed date, and the payment is part of the hospitality offered to the
magister or other notable when he should happen to visit the estate
in question.7 It would appear, then, that there were two distinct
types of payment, and as we shall see there is a certain amount of
earlier evidence to support this.
Nearest in time to the Polyptychs is the entry in the so-called For-
mulae Visigothorum,8 in which a colonus is required to promise 'exenia,
I. For the wider background to labour services, and for the relevance of such
matters as the decline of slavery in late antiquity, see Bloch, C.E.H.E. i2, especially
pp. 246-5 5-
2. Bloch, C.E.H.E. 2. 273-4.
3. The two main examples here quoted are B. Guerard, Polyptyque de l'abbe Irmino
(Paris, i836-44- hereafter St.-Germain), and the St.-Remy one already referred to.
4. St.-Germain ix. 8; XXII. 2, etc.; St.-Remy I. I5; XVIII. 20; XIX. I8, etc.
5. For the major, see St.-Germain ix. 8; XXII. 2; for the presbyter, St.-Remy xIx. i 8.
6. St.-GermainxXII.2. 7. St.-Remyxvii.i.
8. Form. Visig. 36 (M.G.H., Leges v, p. 591. 13).
VOL. LXXXIV-NO. CCCXXXII GG

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ut colonis est consuetudo, annua inlatione. .. persolvere'. Here

the two types of payment appear to have been conflated, so
that exenia (i.e. xenia, 'guest-presents'), which one would have
thought likely to be irregular, are in fact given at a fixed time each
year. It is also to be noted, of course, that the payments have by this
time become legal requirements rather than voluntary gifts; they
are part of the consuetudo, and can be the subject of oaths and agree-
ments. In sixth-century Italy on the other hand, from which the
greater part of our evidence comes, it is clear that the payments
had not yet been incorporated into legal forms, though a tendency
towards this was well under way. Thus in Cassiodorus,l though not
it is true in a rural context, we find it being stressed that gifts of this
type are voluntary - 'xenia sunt ista, non debita'. A useful illustra-
tion of the sort of thing which may have given rise to such a warn-
ing is provided by the contemporary register P. Ital. 3, which
gives details of the xenia paid by each tenant without in any way
indicating that they are less of a duty than the regular dues and ser-
vices listed alongside. It is this document also which gives us our
most detailed evidence about the articles considered appropriate
for this kind of payment. On the fragment as we have it there is
mention of geese, chickens, bacon, eggs, honey and milk; we
have seen a similar list in the Polyptychs, and they occur again
in the letters of Gregory the Great without much variation.2 As
in the Visigothic Formulae, the ostensibly irregular xenia are seen
to be regularly required; there is no explicit indication of the time
of year, but their inclusion in the document would suggest that they
were annual payments.3
In Gregory's fairly frequent references to the practice the word
used is most commonly not xenia but excepta, which at one point he
glosses as vilia cibaria or something similar.4 Again, there is an
apparent conflation of two types of payment under a single head,
for in one passage he explicitly states that excepta are offered 'annis
singulis', while in another he talks of them as being given as a
purely occasional mark of honour to a visiting official.5 Excepta
is also used in a letter of Pope Felix IV contained in the Liber
Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, where it is accompanied by th
additional term accessiones.6 For Gaul in the same period our only
evidence is Caesarius of Arles, who talks of munuscula et exenia as
presents given to judges to get cases heard promptly;7 the context
i. Variae VII. 9. 3.
2. E.g. Ep. Ix. 78- 'procos xx ... verbices xx et gallinas lx'.
3. At the beginning of two lines (B. 6, 7) there is a doubtful word which co
conceivably be kal(endis), but little can be based on this.
4. Ep. I. 42; the codd. reading is vilicilia, and vilia alia would perhaps be a safer eme
dation. 5. See Ep. IX. 78 for 'annis singulis', and contrast Ep. v. 3'.
6. Chapter 6o.
7. I. 232. 10; I. 235. 22 (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina ciii, Sermo lv. 3).

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i969 ROMAN ESTATE MANAGEMENT 467
is not appropriate to the present discussion, but the use of the word
exenia is of interest. As may be expected, there is evidence of the
same sort of thing in contemporary Egypt, where a whole range
of payments of this kind was commonly made.' One of the more
helpful of the many parallels is that of a land-lease from Hermopolis,
in which there is an annual payment of 'two baskets of chaff, one
bundle of white beans, one bottle of milk, twelve bundles of ears and
... barrels of lepsane'.2AII this is 'byway of custom' (Ao'yp orvV7 OEcaS,
the exact equivalent of consuetudo), and clearly constitutes a parallel
to the Italian examples already cited. But in general the value of
the Egyptian evidence is not so much that it provides exact parallels
as that, by enabling us to trace back the words used in the various
sources, it makes it easier to guess at the origin of the various
payments concerned. Thus xenia, which are commonly presents
offered as a compliment to a visiting king or high official,3 clearly
originate in the custom of giving such presents to one's guests
which goes back at least as far as Homer. Gifts at Christmas or at
feast days are represented in Egypt by soptlKa' and (less obviously)
f3aMAo4 The term avv GE1ta, which means a customary payment or
gratuity,5 has already been noted, and it is of interest that it appears
also in the Roman legal codes in the sense of a perquisite. 6
Most of the evidence so far quoted is comparatively late, and
even with the addition of the Egyptian material it is not easy to see
these payments existing in their developed form much earlier than
the fourth century. There is, however, one reference in Columella
which must be taken as indicating something very like xenia, and
which could bring the practice much nearer the classical period.
It occurs immediately after the advice to demand opus rather than
pensiones, and is thus in an appropriate context; it refers to 'ligna et
ceterae parvae accessiones', which the coloni are bound to supply,
and although one should perhaps be waryof jumping to conclusions
it is to be noted that, as we have seen, the term accessiones seems in at
least one source to be an equivalent of excepta praediorum.7
It is clear then that these additional payments and gifts wvere by
no means new in the ninth century, but can be given a long and
I. For a discussion of some of them, see S. Eitrem, Symbolae Osloenses, XVii (I937),
26-48; see also Hardy, p. 20 and G. Rouillard, L'administration civile de 1/'1gypte byzantine
(Paris, I928), pp. 76-8I.
2. P. Berl. I6048; for a commentary and additional references, see H. Zilliacus,
Societas Scientiarum Fennica. Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum, xiv. 3. i-i6.
3. P. Petr. 2. 25 (C3 B.C.); P. Grenf. 2. I4 (b). 9 (C3 B.C.).
4. P. OxY. 724. 6 (C2 A.D.); P. Ryl. I67. i6 (Cl A.D.); P. Amh. 2. 93. II (C2 A.D.).
5. P. Lond. I. II3 (3). II; 3- I036. 8 (C6 A.D.), etc.
6. Cod. Just. III. 2. 4; Just. Nov. I 34. I
7. Columella, R.R. I. 7; it is of interest that in the second century A.D. a 'guest-
present' (the word used is xeniola) could consist of a fat pig, a brace and a half of chickens
and a bottle of wine- exactly the sort of items that crop up in the ninth-century dona
and oblationes (Apuleius, Metamorphoses II. I I).

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respectable pedigree at least as far back as the later Empire. How

significant this may be for questions of continuity in general may
well be a matter for disagreement; presents from a social inferior
to his superior must have been common throughout antiquity,
and are so natural and predictable in any case that it would be un-
wise to place too much importance on their occurrence at various
times and places. More important than this consideration, however,
is the one already stated, that presents of this type, especially
when they are demanded as a right rather than accepted as a volun-
tary act of goodwill, are evidence of an advanced degree of seigneur-
ial authority. It may not mean much that medieval landlords took
over what is after all a very small item from their Roman predeces-
sors, but it means a great deal if these predecessors were sufficiently
in control of their coloni to make this sort of demand. The warning
in Cassiodorus that xenia are not debita but a voluntarium munus
is at once an indication of the legal position and evidence of how
lightly the legal factor was regarded.
Estate Jurisdiction
This last point is one that we have touched upon atvarious stages.
The fact is that throughout a discussion of this kind two separate
developments need constantly to be kept in mind: first, the legal ex-
tension of landowners' powers, which went on continuously in the
imperial period and reached a climax in the late third and early
fourth centuries; and second, the extra-legal assumpdion of powers at
various dimes and in various circumstances, which was always
one step at least ahead of the first process and which in the last
resortwas never caught up byit. The supreme example of this second
process, if it could be proved, would be the acquisition by land-
owners of powers of jurisdiction over the people living on their
estates - in other words, the institution, within the Roman period,
of a rudimentary manorial court. What is here attempted is not so
much a proof, since on present evidence this is not really possible,
but rather a preliminary survey of the background. The question
of the origin of seigneurial justice is one that is not likely to lend
itself to a simple, or even single answer; but it will be useful at
least to ask the right question and to place it, so far as is practicable,
in the right context.'
The right to hold a court and administer justice was one which
the Roman people granted sparingly and reluctantly, and always with
appropriate sanctions against its abuse. The higher magistrates
and provincial governors possessed it as part of their imperium,
and certain other officials (such as aediles) were allowed to exercise
it in matters specifically connected with their jobs. As time went on,
x. For a brief statement along the same general lines as the present one, see again
Bloch, C.E.H.E. i2. 262-3.

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1969 ROMAN ESTATE MANAGEMENT 469
and as the burden of litigation increased, juridical powers were of

necessity delegated and disseminated to a wide variety of people,
in all cases with reluctance and with what it was hoped were ade-
quate safeguards. A grant of such powers was a matter of im-
portance, to be properly recorded and adhered to, and to usurp the
powers without a grant was an offence of the utmost seriousness.
It follows that when the codes are silent on this sort of point their
silence is significant and not simply an omission; unless a particular
class of people is expressly granted juridical powers we can only
assume that in the eyes of the law they did not possess them, and
the fact is that for landowners as such there is no specific general
grant. Consequently, the manorial court, as a recognized and official
institution, was not Roman; to argue that it was is to go contrary
to the whole spirit and practice of Roman law.
The problem, however, is not so easily solved. The silence of the
codes makes it impossible to regard the equivalent of the manorial
court as part of the juridical machinery of the Empire, and it prevents
us from assuming that landowners had any right, by virtue of being
landowners, to exercise jurisdiction over their dependents. But it
does not by any means exclude the possibility of there being courts
on the villa estates, presided over by the estate owners and dealing
with cases involving workers and tenants. That is, we can still
argue for a Roman origin for the manor court, provided we postpone
its recognition as a legal entity until after the Roman period. The
discussion which follows will help to show that this is a plausible
view and not merely a convenient verbal device.
We have already noted the tendency to allow an official to deal with
cases closely connected with his duties: thus a general, for example,
had disciplinary jurisdiction over his troops. On the same principle,
the rationales of the treasury departments were empowered to hear
cases involving fiscal matters,' and as is well known a limited juris-
diction was granted by Claudius to procurators.2 It has been suggest-
ed3 that this last extension was specifically intended for the procu-
rators in charge of imperial estates, and if this is so we are well on
the way to establishing seigneurial justice as a theoretical possibility.
The evidence for this view comes largely from the great series of
African inscriptions already referred to, and although it is not
absolutely conclusive there are strong a priori grounds for holding
that the procurators in question were indeed given juridical powers.
As we have noted, these African estates were extra-territorial, not
liable to dues and services to the local towns and not subject to the
authority of the municipal magistrates. Some sort of day-to-day
jurisdiction would have to be provided, and who more likely to
exercise it than the administrative officials in charge of the estates?
i. Jones, Later Roman Empire, i. 485. 2. Tacitus, Annals xii. 6o.
3. F. G. B. Millar, Historia, xiii (I964), I80-7.

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That this was the case at a later date is

which, in a section on disturbances in public places, excludes im-
perial estates from the main provisions and directs that when such
cases arise on imperial property 'praefecti eorum iudices sint'.1
A procurator, even when administering an estate, is rather
different from a private landowner, and there is still a large gap to
fill before we can establish the landowner as a justice. The gap begins
to close, however, when we find juridical authority being given to
men who might well be landowners as well as public officials, and
whose private and public identities may not have been easy to
separate in the popular mind. The rise of the defensor civitatis2 as a
local juridical authority is a case in point; the extension of similar
powers to the bishops is another.3 Both of these could be, and one
imagines normally were, the owners of estates; their official tole was
to some extent secondary to their role as local aristocracy, and the
exercise of their judicial functions may well have taken place on their
own property and in connection, sometimes, with their own de-
pendents.4 There is also the practice common in (but surely not
confined to) Egypt, of settling disputes by means of an agreed
arbiter, who would often in the nature of things be a landowner.5
A similar approach is to consider the responsibilities of the land-
owners with regard to the collection of the census and with the
provision of recruits for the army. It would be only natural if
minor disputes and objections connected with these matters were
dealt with on the spot rather than being sent up to the proper
authorities. Granted that the delegation of fiscal and military duties
to landowners was intended amongst other things to increase
efficiency, it is hard to believe that the whole effect would have been
cancelled by making them powerless to sort out the inevitable
complications of what could never be a completely just or accurate
system. One wonders, moreover, if anything so natural and obvious
as this would need to be sanctioned by an official grant. Here, as
elsewhere, the line between an official and a private individual may
never have been clearly drawn, and the deliberate blurting of
the line to the advantage of the individual concerned is only to be
expected.
This last point leads on to the most important consideration on
this topic. So far we have been examining ways in which, strictly
according to the law, a landowner might have held a court which
had a superficial resemblance to a medieval manor court; what
i. Digest XLIII. 8. 2. 4, citing Ulpian.
2. Jones, Later Roman Empire, i. 479-80.
3. ibid. i. 480-I (with references); see also H. F. Jolowicz, A Historical Introduction
to the Study of Roman Law (Cambridge, I932), pp. 464-5.
4. The same is true of decuriones, though their juridical powers later declined; for a
useful summary of these powers, see A. Hajje, Histoire de lajustice seigneuriale en France
(Paris, I927), pp. II7-I8. 5. See the references in Hardy, pp. 72-73.

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I969 ROMAN ESTATE MANAGEMENT 47I
we must now allow for is the extent to which juridical powers might
have been illegally assumed by landowners in a period when the
control of the central authority was rapidly breaking down. It
has now become clear that for the post-Roman period a far more
vital influence was exercised by vulgar than by classical law,' and
it may well be that in the later Empire a de facto situation existed
(and survived into later centuries) which found no mention in the
official codes. We know from the codes themselves that powers
were constantly being illegally exercised: the great series of enact-
ments directed at the more extreme forms of patronage is evidence,
not only of the seriousness of the situation, but also of the impossi-
bility of preventing or curing it.2 The decline of town life and the
consequent growth in the influence of the great landlords, the quite
extraordinary lack of adequate courts in the more outlying parts
of provinces, and above al] the sheer impossibility of deciding what
was formal jurisdiction rather than the everyday arbitration and
discipline of an employer - all this will have made the assumption
of juridical powers by landowners an easy, obvious, and perhaps
also desirable consequence. Nor can it be said that successive
emperors were wholly against the process. The continual legislation
against patronage can be seen, not as a disapproval of illegal powers,
but as an attempt to avoid the serious disruption of the census
machinery; as with so much in the codes, it is important first of all
to ask what particular considerations led to its being formulated
rather than what general attitudes it seems to imply. It is interesting
to note that a number of enactments gave considerable powers to
landowners quite apart from those connected with the census and
the army already mentioned. A law of A.D. 412, for example, gave
them powers to flog their coloni as a means of stamping out
the Donatist heresy, and a similar law of two years later extended
this right to conduictores of imperial estates.3 There is even a
Novella of Justinian4 which refers to some agricolarum domnini of
Constantinople who have been set up as iudices, and which cannot
really be explained away even though it is a special and limited
instance.
What we can say with safety is that many (perhaps most) of the
great landowners in the later Empire would be likely to have some
juridical powers in connection with one or other of their official
duties. We can believe that it was not always easy to separate what
they did by virtue of these powers from what they did by virtue
of their extra-legal influence and authority, and we can believe also
i. See the standard work of E. Levy, WYest Roman Vulgar Law (Philadelphia, I95I).
2. F. de Zulueta, De Patrociniis Vicorum (Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History,
ed. P. Vinogradoff (Oxford, I909), i); for a similar disregard of laws against private
armies and prisons, see Hardy, pp. 60-72, and for an attempt to stop the usurpation
of juridical rights by conductores, Cod. Theod. x. 26. i.
3. Cod. Theod. xvI. 5. 52. 4; 54. 6. 4. No. 8o.

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that their own inclinations and the effe

factors would tend to increase their defac
vague cloak of their dejure authority. Th
recognized or confirmed, but it was not
such - nor, in the nature of things, cou
been effective. What we have in the later
of men who happen to be landowners ho
Ages they do so because they are landown
that the difference lies in the official at
than in the system itself.'
Conclusion
It would be hard to deny that during t

Empire the control exerted by landowne
on their estates became more and more
was partly the direct result of social an
partly brought about deliberately by a s
What is here argued is that the end-product
thing which in certain important respec
normally reserved for the medieval man
has any real significance for the overall question of continuity
is bound, to some extent, to be a subjective matter, depending as
it does on the importance one attaches to the various items under
discussion; but the belief on which the present study is based is
that it does have significance, and that the more detailed inquiries
which are now becoming possible will reveal this more clearly.
At the end of the Roman period the villa estate was showing signs
of turning into a manor. After the great invasion it is manors that
eventually emerge. What is surely arguable, if not already demanded
by the evidence, is that actual villa estates survived the invasion
period and turned into actual manors. They need not have been
more than a minority, and they may have been restricted to a single
province or part of a province. That this was not Britain is clearly
implied by the absence of any specific reference to Britain in the
evidence so far quoted; whether or not this is misleading remains
to be seen, though the signs are that developments on this side of
the channel were rather different from those on the continent.2
i. If the development of private jurisdiction is to be connected with the breakdown

of central authority, it is reasonable to suppose that official notice will be taken of it
only when the central authority is restored. Thus it is not necessarily surprising that
jurisdiction of this kind is missing from the earliest post-invasion documents (e.g.
from the Italian libelli before the late eighth century).
2. The classic study of a villa-to-manor continuity in Britain is that of H.P.R. Finberg,
Roman and Saxon Withington (Leicester, I959). A more fruitful approach in recent
years, however, has been to emphasize the tenacity of Celtic arrangements throughout
the Roman period, rather on the lines of P. Vinogradoff, The Growth of the Manor
(2nd edn., London, I9iI). See, for example, G. R. J. Jones, 'Settlement Patterns in

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Between the other western provinces there

to choose; Gaul, at the moment, is perhaps the most likely candidate,
but this is something that will need further argument.1
University College, Cardiff JOHN PERCIVAL
Anglo-Saxon England', Antiquity, xxxv (I96I), 221-32, with the replies by L. Alcock,
Antiquity xxxvi (I962), 5I-55, and by S. Applebaum, Agricultural History Review,
Xi (I963), I-I4; and most recently C. E. Stevens, 'The social and economic aspects of
rural settlement', Rural Settlement in Roman Britain (C.B.A., I966), I08-28.
i. As has long been recognized, Gaul provides a great deal of continuity evidence
which is not found elsewhere. There is, first of all, the literary evidence for the survival
of individual villas during and after the invasion period: the most striking examples are
Sidonius' villa at Avitacum (Sidonius, Ep. ii. 2), those of the Leontii in the region of
Bordeaux (Sidonius, Carmina 22; Fortunatus, Carmina i. i 8, I 9, 20), and that of Nicetius,
a sixth-century bishop of Trier, on the Moselle (Fortunatus, Carmina ill. I2). Then
there are the place-names in -acum, which began as fundus names and have survived
in hundreds as the names of French villages and hamlets; for a useful summary of
them, with references to the extensive bibliography, see A. Grenier, Manuel d'archeologie
gallo-romaine, ii. 9I4-I8, and for their possible implications, C. E. Stevens, C.E.H.E. i2.
iI8-i 9. Finally, one should mention the various Merovingian wills, which show a
fairly advanced seigneurial pattern in many areas as early as the sixth and seventh
centuries; for a selection of the more reliable ones, and a general guide to their use,
see A. H. M. Jones, P. Grierson and J. A. Crook, Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire,
xxxv (I957), 356-73, and for an introductory discussion, A. Bergengruen, Adel und
Grundherrschaft im Merowingerreich (Wiesbaden, I958), pp. 38-43. For the advances in
post-Roman archaeology since the war, see E. Salin, La civilisation merovingienne (Paris,
I949-52), especially vol. i.

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Seigneurial Aspects of Late Roman Estate Management by John Percival

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Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/562480

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Sei'gieurial aspects of Late Roman estate

? Longmans, Green & Company Limited and Contributors, I969

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in either or both periods there is little of value that can be inferred

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and servant which is partly the rea

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estates in question here are imperial ones and also, characteristically

i. C.LL. I, lines 6-7; IV, lines 23-24.

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demesne land on which it could be performed,' and the reference

6. References in A. Bataille, Traite d'dtudes byZantines, ii. L

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extensive demesnes to cater for them.' This may, of course, be right,

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consisting of a group of farms, with the first farm in each group

i. Later Roman Empire, ii. 805-6.

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a mere legal authority; it was now a consuetudo,1 acceptable as in-

i. C.I.L. VIII. 25902. I, lines 20-22.

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for all their coloni; whether the coloni are to be

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estates." In the south, and to some extent in central Italy as well,

I. See Philip Jones, C.E.H.E. i2. 340-2, 395-7.

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is itself of positive value, in that it

The practice of requiring labour on the demesne in part-return for

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manoperae and carroperae, but the g

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of Priim suggested that week-work may originally have been the

I. XI. 48. 8 (A.D. 37I).

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would wish, but the context is suggestive of labour services and

5. V. 6. 3; see R. Clausing, The Roman Colonate. The Theories of its Or

6. iii. i (De herediolo), 2I f.

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discussion. Exactly what help it affords, however, is a little proble-

i. For a selection of parallels, see Mommsen's commentary, ad loc.

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of much of our material - papyri, chance

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before the invasion period rather than after i

Xenia, excepta, oblationes

VOL. LXXXIV-NO. CCCXXXII GG

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ut colonis est consuetudo, annua inlatione. .. persolvere'. Here

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respectable pedigree at least as far back as the later Empire. How

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and as the burden of litigation increased, juridical powers were of

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That this was the case at a later date is

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that their own inclinations and the effe

It would be hard to deny that during t