THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 029
The Development of Serfdom
2-17. The Development of Serfdom
The status of other classes in the community also tended to become hereditary. This was the case with the officiates and the soldiers, though here compulsion was not so severe. But the tillers of the ground (coloni) were more hardly treated than any other class. It became impossible for them, without breach of the law, to tear themselves away from the soil of the locality within which they were born. The evolution of this peculiar form of serfdom, which existed for the purposes of the State, is difficult to trace. Many causes contributed to its growth and final establishment, as the extension of large private and especially of vast imperial domains, the imitation of the German half-free land-tenure when barbarians were settled as laeti or inquilini within the Empire, the influence of Egyptian and other Eastern land-customs, but above all the drastic changes in the imperial imposts which Diocletian introduced. The cultivator's principal end in life was to insure a contribution of natural products for the revenue. Hence it was a necessity to chain him to the ground, and in the law-books adscripticius is the commonest title for him.
The details of the scheme of taxation, given above, shew how it must have tended to diminish population, for every additional person, even a slave, increased the contribution which each holding must pay. The owners of the land were in the first instance responsible, but the burdens of course fell ultimately and in the main on the agricultural workers. The temporary loss of provinces to the invader, the failure of harvest in any part of the Empire, the economic effects of pestilence, and other accidents, all led to greater sacrifices on the part of those provinces which were not themselves affected. The exactions became heavier and heavier, the punishments for attempts to escape from duty more and more severe, and yet flight and disappearance of coloni took place on a large scale. By the end of the fourth century it was possible for lawyers to say of this unhappy class that they were almost in the condition of slaves, and a century or so later that the distinction between them and slaves no longer existed; that they were slaves of the land itself on which they were born.
In many other ways, under the new monarchy, the citizens of the Empire were treated with glaring inequality. The gradations of official station were almost as important in the general life of the Empire as they now are in China, and they were reflected in titular phrases, some of which have been given above. Etiquette became most complicated. Even the emperor was bound to exalted forms of address in his communications with his servants or with groups of persons within his Empire. "Your sublimity," "Your magnificence," "Your loftiness," were common salutations for the greater officers. The ruler did not disdain to employ the title parens in addressing some of them. The innumerable new titles which the Empire had invented were highly valued and much paraded by their possessors, even the titles of offices in the municipalities.
Great hardship must have been caused to the lower ranks of the taxpayers by the extensive relief from taxation which was accorded to hosts of men in the service of the government (nominal or real) as part payment for the duties which they performed or were supposed to perform. With these immunities, as with everything else in the Empire, there was much corrupt dealing. The criminal law became a great respecter of persons. Not only was the jurisdiction over the upper classes separated at many points from that over the lower, but the lower were subject to punishments from which the upper were free. Gradually the Empire drifted farther and farther away from the old Republican principle, that crimes as a rule are to be punished in the same way, whoever among the citizens commits them. A sharp distinction was drawn between the "more honourable" (honestiores) and the "more humble" (humiliores or plebeii). The former included the imperial ordo senator ius, the equites, the soldier-class generally and veterans, and the local senators (decuriones). The honestiores could not be executed without the emperor's sanction, and if executed, were exempt from crucifixion (a form of punishment altogether abolished by the Christian emperors). They could not be sentenced to penal servitude in mines or elsewhere. Nor could they be tortured in the course of criminal proceedings, excepting for treason, magic, and forgery.
A general survey of Roman government in the fourth and later centuries undoubtedly leaves a strong impression of injustice, inequality, and corruption leading fast to ruin. But some parts of the Empire did maintain a fair standard of prosperity even to the verge of the general collapse. The two greatest problems in history, how to account for the rise of Rome and how to account for her fall, never have been, perhaps never will be, thoroughly solved.
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