particularly by those at the abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris, where late in life the poet
Adam made his home. The sixty or so late sequences that survive from 12th-century Paris
were the first substantial group of late sequences and the first sequence poems west of the
Rhine to be consistently unified by historical narratives depending upon Old Testament
typology. Although it is impossible to state categorically how many of these works are by
Adam, a significant number are calls to the common life as advocated by the Rule of St.
Augustine and develop themes that seem to relate to the struggles in which Adam and
other reformers from the first half of the 12th century were engaged. There are far greater
numbers of late-sequence texts than of melodies, and many individual pieces are
contrafacta.
Margot Fassler
[See also: ADAM OF SAINT-VICTOR; ANALECTA HYMNICA MEDII AEVI;
SEQUENCE (EARLY)]
Adam of Saint-Victor. Les proses d’Adam de Saint-Victor: texte et musique précédées d’une étude
critique, ed. Eugène Misset, and Pierre Aubry. Paris: Welter, 1900.
Bannister, Henry, and Clemens Blume, ed. Analecta hymnica medii aevi. Leipzig: Reisland, 1915–
22, Vols. 54–55.
Fassler, Margot. Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augus-tinian Reform in Twelfth-Century
Paris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Hesbert, René-Jean. Le prosaire d’Aix-la-Chapelle, XIIIe siècle, début. Rouen: Imprimerie
Rouennaise, 1961.
——. Le prosaire de la Sainte-Chapelle: manuscrit du chapitre de Saint-Nicolas de Bari (vers
1250). Mâcon: Protat, 1952.
Husmann, Heinrich. “Notre-Dame und Saint-Victor: Reper-toire-Studien zur Geschichte der
gereimten Prosen.” Acta musicologica 36(1964):98–123, 191–221.
SERFDOM/SERVITUDE/SLAVERY
. Roman Gaul knew chattel slavery, and chattel slavery of the classical type persisted in
the households and on the estates of the Gallo-Roman and Merovingian aristocracy long
after the fall of imperial administration. Under the Carolingians, classical slavery rapidly
declined, and one of the common Latin words for slave, servus (Fr. serf), was detached in
the process from its original meaning. It came to represent a still debased but more
elevated status than slave, although slaves properly so called continued to exist.
Historians debate whether serfs, in the new meaning of the word, were primarily the
ameliorated descendants of slaves or whether they constituted a new group of people and
their descendants, who entered or commended themselves voluntarily into debasing but
not slavish dependency, ostensibly for protection in the unsettled political and social
conditions under the later Carolingians.
The period roughly from the death of Charles the Bald (877) to the 11th century sees
weakness in central institutions and a confusion in terminology, so that it is difficult to
determine at times the precise distinctions among slaves, serfs, and free rustics. They
were all usually under heavy obligations to local lords. The question is whether these
obligations debased personal status and in effect isolated individuals from the fiscal
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