by Robert Killam

Created on: May 14, 2009   Last Updated: May 18, 2009

Despite what many Hollywood fabrications will tell you, peasant life in the Middle Ages was a grim, bleak status. Unlike the lower class of modern-day (especially America), there were no benefits to doing a peasant's work. There were no scheduled breaks, no "9-to-5" clock in, clock out schedule, and there certainly was no "human resources" department that you could complain to. In the Middle Ages lasting from the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Reformation, peasant life was a nearly inescapable form of slavery that trapped peasants and their families into barely scratching out a living.

In layman's terms, there were three classes of peasant in the Middle Ages, generally speaking. The lowest of the low were slaves, who were treated as property to be bought and sold. After the early Middle Ages, the number of slaves did decline, which some speculate is due to the hostile manner in which slaves acted (and understandably so). The majority of peasants were called serfs. Unlike slaves, serfs were technically free people who could not refuse to work, but could also not be evicted. The highest class of peasantry, at least until the formation of towns, were the freemen, who were property owners of small pieces of land. Freemen could come and go as they pleased, and conducted themselves in the manner of most people in quasi-free monarchies today.

Peasants worked for a lord, taking care of his land for him. In a sense, it was very much like a modern farm wherein the farmer employs farmhands to do his work for him. Of course, given their wealth and influence, lords lived in comparably opulent settings, in contrast to the borderline squallor peasants were made to live in. However, despite the fact that most peasants were lumped together as far as their living conditions, each had certain rights and privileges that varied among the three classes. Nevertheless, despite the variation in rights, a wise lord would treat his peasants well, because a lack of morale meant a lack of production. A lack of production, then, could mean a lack of a head if the lord's business partners came calling to collect.

Due to the particular situation serfs were in concerning their "non-eviction" status, lords and serfs usually respected the rights of one another and cooperated on a reasonable level (even if the lord thought of himself as a better human being). While a man was a serf, he had control over one thing: the farming equipment in his hands. He had no particular

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