THE Ki'ot OS OF GERMAN AGRARIAN HISTORY 229 



twelve to twenty of these bond peasants; the large properties, 

 particularly the cloisters, had them by the thousands. Although 

 peasants were personally junfree, bond, bound to the soil, 

 they nevertheless enjoyed unrestricted civil rights, formed a 

 guild according to the law of the court, and had hereditary right 

 of usufruct in their indivisible farms. Their tithes and services, 

 fixed from ancient times, were not subject to increase. 



Since these manorial estates were usually not contiguous lots, 

 but mixed hides of land, in consequence of which the peasants 

 of a village might belong to different manors, it was not possible 

 to manage the larger properties from a central point. They 

 were divided, therefore, into several bond farms, each of which 

 formed, with the peasants belonging to it, a villication, and was 

 managed for the lord by one of his agents, the villicus, or 

 steward, originally selected from the peasants, later from the min- 

 isteriuls. The agent tilled the manorial land with its own serfs, 

 aided by the peasants, and gathered in the tithes for the lord. 



The significance of this entire system is thus summarized by 

 Knapp : 



On the one hand we know merely the pursuit of agriculture, and, within 

 irming on a small scale only, the family farm. On the other hand we 

 face the problem of feeding the king, the duke, the count, the freeman : there 

 Iso be an economic foundation for churches and cloisters. All this is 

 accomplished by the manorial estate. It is the prerequisite for all higher and 

 pursuits. 



If in this period, approximately from the tenth to the twelfth 

 ntury, the agrarian system was uniform throughout older < 

 my, thenceforward the further development follows rcmark- 

 ly divergent courses in the northern and southern halves of 



that we must now make a distinction U-tv, 

 Northwest and the Snuthwi 



In the Northwest, beginning with I.wer Saxony, the later 

 Hanover, this further development of the manorial system is 

 ! after tin- twelfth and thirteenth renames In the dis 

 ation of the villications. The desire of an increased in- 

 on the part of the lords, caused by the appe. f the 



tary regime which followed in the \\ake of the crusades 



