Alpha Book

[Sidenote: The Peasantry]
In striking contrast to the nobility--the small minority of land-owning
aristocrats--were the peasantry--the mass of the people. They were the
human beings who had to toil for their bread in the sweat of their
brows and who were deemed of ignoble birth, as social inferiors, and as
stupid and rude. Actual farm work was "servile labor," and between the
man whose hands were stained by servile labor and the person of "gentle
birth" a wide gulf was fixed.
[Sidenote: Serfdom and the Manorial System]
During the early middle ages most of the peasants throughout Europe
were "serfs." For various reasons, which we shall explain presently,
serfdom had tended gradually to and the die out in western Europe, but
at the opening of the sixteenth century most of the agricultural
laborers in eastern and central Europe, and even a considerable number
in France, were still serfs, living and working on nobles' manors in
accordance with ancient customs which can be described collectively as
the "manorial system.


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