PugJesusSerfs OWNED and TRADED like PROPERTY 😊
https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/1917586/serfs-owned-and-traded-like-property
JcbAzPxSerfs were considered part of the land. If you owned the land you owned all it’s resources. Forests, mines, farmland and the serfs that worked that land.
Individual rights didn’t start popping up until the black plague wiped out a third of Europe. Displaced serfs were able to go to other towns to sell their labor since there was a lack of people to do the work.
While true, it was next to impossible to keep track of people - there were no borders or division.
If a lord was offering a better deal (or their old Lord was too despotic), serfs could and would pack up and leave and there wasn’t much their old lord could do about it.
The other part of people moving to the towns was inventions of new tools such as better looms and improvements in metallurgy to make more precise tools.