Image above: calendar depicting agricultural workers (Munich, BSB CLM 210/818)

The focus of written sources-- and the expensive, shiny artworks associated with the Carolingian court-- mean that it is easy to attribute all the developments of the late eighth and ninth centuries to a few named elites. However, there was a much wider portion of the population who were doing all the (agricultural) work, without which the artistic, intellectual, and political developments would not have been possible.

Under the later Merovingians and Carolingians, land became increasingly consolidated in large estates run bishops, monasteries and powerful nobles. These large tracts of contiguous land were administered from central locations (villae or manors). In the villae, local leaders collected rent/surplus produce from tenants and administered justice in local courts.

Of course, in practice, not all estates conformed to this orderly model. But a great deal of land seems to have begun to be adminstered in a more orderly, planned manner (pun intended) from the eighth century onwards. (Remember the discussion about the fences last time.)

To the manor born?

In addition to the rise of manors as administrative hubs for estates, landlords seem to have gained more control over their agricultural workers in the later eighth or ninth centuries. We do not have enough documentation to show exactly when this change happened. However, it is possible that the practice of serfdom in western Europe may have begun in this period.

Serfs were people who were legally obliged to remain on (and work on) a piece of land. Eventually, serfs would not have access to all the same judicial procedures and rights as free peasants or townspeople.

Note: serfdom is different from chattel slavery, wherein another person is claimed to be owned by another person. In serfdom, if the owner of a piece of land sold the land to someone else, the serfs attached to that land went to work for the land's new owner.
Chattel slavery persisted in northern Europe for several more centuries. Slavery was not banned in the British Isles until after the Norman Conquest of 1066.
There were also varying degrees of ‘unfreedom’ in between and beyond these two categories.

We start to get a detailed insight into the lives of workers on some estates in the ninth century, because organized churches and their officials began to keep detailed records of their income from their estates...