Such work included, besides agriculture and farming, mining, forestry, arts and crafts, transportation and many other related revenue generating activities. Serfs in the Middle Ages earned their living by working on the landowners’ properties. You can call it a kind of modified and a way milder form of slavery. Serfs were the bonded labors that worked on the lands and other revenue generating properties of the landowners in exchange for being included under the political protection of the landowners and to be able to have access to a right to occupation (which primarily consisted of working on the leased fields or properties of the landowners). To put together a simple serfdom definition, serfdom is the term used to denote the superior-subject relationship between Middle Age landowners and bonded peasants.
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Feudalism and manorialism are inseparable entities and this is where the concept of serfdom makes an entrance. Under this system, a landlord had a number of bonded peasants under him who worked on his land by way of discharging their legal obligations to the landlord. An essential element of a feudal social structure was the phenomenon of Manorialism. The vassals were the subjects of the lords who worked on the fief granted to them by the lord in return for any kind of homage or an oath to serve the lord whenever such an opportunity arose. The lord, as the term suggests, was an aristocrat and the implied feudal superior, usually a monarch, who held ownership of the fief, the revenue generating property―agricultural land subject to inheritance. The concept of feudalism revolves around three key factors―a lord, the vassals and fief.
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In order to get a better grasp on the status and condition of serfs in the Middle Ages and serfdom in Europe, let’s first understand the concept of Feudalism.
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This article on serfs in the Middle Ages explores the condition of the bonded peasants under this system of governance by the warrior nobility of those times. Feudalism, an informal political system, prevailed in Europe in the Middle Ages.