Serfs of the gleba: what were they and how did they live during the Middle Ages?

Halfway between slaves and free men we have the servants of the gleba, a social class that appeared during the Middle Ages and was directly related to feudalism, which was the foundation of the medieval economy.

We say that they are halfway between one and the other because, although they were subject to the designs of a lord, they enjoyed some rights that allowed them to say, albeit in a very limited way, that they were human beings as any other.

The figure of the serfs of the gleba is, perhaps, difficult to understand from a modern perspective. However, reading about this estate below, we may be more aware of why this intermediate step between slavery and individual freedom was necessary.

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The servants of the gleba

The servants of the gleba is the name by which they are known to the peasants who, in the Middle Ages and under a feudal context, established a social and legal contract of servitude with a landlord.

These peasants became attached to the properties of the lord, a nobleman or a member of high rank. rank of the clergy, offering their services and paying tribute to them in the form of harvests or other products. The serfs of the gleba were in conditions close to slavery, although their feudal lord was obliged to respect some rights.

It is very important not to confuse serfdom with vassalage, which was another type of submission typical of feudalism.. In vassalage, a person belonging to a privileged class, such as the nobility or the clergy, established a political and military relationship of submission with another privileged person. On the other hand, in servitude, although there is submission, this is not between people with the same privileges or the same opportunities.

Between slavery and freedom

There is no doubt that slavery is something bad in itself, since it implies depriving another person of liberty, a basic human right that every modern society recognizes as inalienable. However, one must not make the mistake of judging past societies solely by how they treated their people. That we have reached where we have today is not due to a sudden change, but to changes in the mentality and in the way in which society is organized.

In classical Europe, that is, in the times of Greece and Rome, slavery was the main mode of production. Through the subjugation of other people, their economy and their social system worked, since both cultures were based on the practice of slavery.

The Greco-Roman slave was his master's property, as goats, cows, and sheep are the farmer's. He had no right, not even to life. If its owner so decided, he could kill it without consequence or remorse. The slave had no right to start a family or to marry and, in case a slave had become pregnant, the master could sell the baby in the market like someone who sells a chicken. In short, slaves were nothing more than subhuman objects in the eyes of the Romans.

At the other extreme we find ourselves the idea of ​​the free man, an idea on which the majority of current societies, defenders of individual rights, are based. In ancient times, not everyone enjoyed this status and, although it seemed to us that the right thing to do would have been to make everyone the slaves were free people, the truth is that if the culture of the moment, precursor of the western one, had done so, it would have collapsed.

At the end of the Roman Empire and with the spread of Christianity, the idea of ​​slavery was increasingly rejected., although the idea that all human beings were equal was not accepted. The Catholic Church introduced changes to Roman Law, which materialized in the form of a modest abolition of slavery. However, this abolition of slavery was not synonymous with gaining freedom or living well.

The "liberated" slaves did not have the necessary means of subsistence to be able to live on their own, which was synonymous with ending up starving. Although being a slave meant being an object, many masters treated their slaves with care, giving them food, shelter and protection, which with the abolition of slavery it seemed that it could no longer be possible.

This is why many people went to land owned by landowners and ended up establishing a social contract between both parties.. The lord of the fief allowed them to live in the place, allowing them to have a house and, thus, gave them protection, while The new inhabitants would be in charge of working the land, paying tribute to the lord and defending him if necessary. soldiers. This is how the serfs of the gleba were born. In fact, the word gleba is quite descriptive, referring to the piece of agricultural land that these serfs worked.

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Rights and obligations of this medieval class

The servant of the gleba was a server who did not have the right to leave the place where he worked. He was, properly speaking, linked to the gleba, to the piece of plot that he had to cultivate. It is for this reason that, although they were not slaves, they were not free people either, since they did not have the right to free movement.

But, in turn, this obligation to stay was also a right. The feudal lord could not drive them off his land just like that. They belonged to the lord insofar as the lord was the owner of those lands, but not the owner of those people strictly speaking. He also exercised a kind of property right over the house where he lived and over part of the land that he cultivated. If the owner sold the farm, the serf stayed on that land, becoming the property of the new owner.

Unlike Greco-Roman slaves, the serfs of the gleba had the right to marry. This gave them the right to marry whoever they wanted and start a family. However, or at least in theory, they could only marry their equals without expecting consequences. A nobleman and a serf could marry, but the nobleman would lose his status and become a serf of the land.

Besides, they had a certain right to partake of the harvest. Sometimes they even farmed on their own, although they did have to deliver part of what they cultivated to the lord or pay them tributes and offer him services. Sort of like a kind of rental. The lord, for his part, protected them, although in turn the serfs of the land were obliged to go to the ranks in case the gentleman was immersed in a military conflict and needed soldiers.

Being a servant of the gleba was something that could be acquired, but could not be rejected. In a troubled time like the Middle Ages, where wars, epidemics and famines were our daily bread. Today, it was not uncommon to find people of all classes and conditions having to go to a feudal lord and ask permission to live there. The man accepted, but once this social contract was established, there was no turning back.. The new servant, his sons and his sons' sons would be servants of the soil forever.

How did they disappear?

Although today, at least in Europe, there is no longer serfdom, the moment in which the serfs ceased to exist is not something easily delimitable, given that there were many historical events that precipitated the recognition of full freedom in all beings humans.

One of the precipitants of all this was the reappearance of slavery in the Western world.. Although the Catholic Church had eradicated slavery in Europe, with the discovery of America and the explorations in Africa the Europeans discovered that they could use labor again slave. The difference between pre-Christian slaves and those trapped in American and African lands was basically that the former were white and easily humanizable while the latter, in the eyes of Christianity at the time, were wild beasts that owed to tame.

Being able to freely exploit other people, the figure of the feudal lord dependent on the serfs of the gleba weakened and evolved into that of the master of black slaves. At that time they could exploit the new slaves to exhaustion, and if they died it was fine because there were many more in Africa.

However, the serfs would continue to exist until shortly before the French Revolution. In those times, territorial serfdom still existed and it was not until the appearance of Enlightenment thought that the bourgeois revolutions and the defense of human rights when the figure of the serf would become part of the past.