216 HANDEL
atmosphere of mutual understanding. However, in the course of the sixteenth
century, the conditions of serfdom did deteriorate. In 1496, it was enacted that
only one peasant could leave each village each year, and only for approved
purposes such as education or craft training. By this measure, the mass of the
peasantry were effectively tied to the land. In 1521, the royal courts were closed
to pleas where a peasant wished to appeal against his lord. From then on the
serfs of the nobles' estates lived entirely at the mercy of their masters. They were
dependent not only legally but economically and in almost every detail of their
daily lives — for permission to marry, for permission to go to market, for per-
mission to go to school. In addition to rising demands for unpaid labour service,
they owed their master rent in cash or in kind, tithes for the priest, and taxes for
the King.
The stratification of the peasantry was modified, but not destroyed. A small
class of prosperous peasants was able to resist the advances of serfdom. By buy-
ing their exemption from labour dues, they could keep their personal freedom;
and by employing wage-workers, they could share in the benefits of landown-
ing. They were all set for social advancement into the ranks of the commercial
bourgeoisie or even of the nobility. In general, however, the former economic
viability of the independent peasant farmers, variously known as kmiec, gbur,
or wloknik, declined, and they were inexorably pushed into varying degrees of
dependence on their noble neighbours. At the same time, the most numerous
class of peasant smallholders - variously known as zagrodnik (smallholder),
chatupnik (cottager), or ogrodnik (gardener), provided the main source of
recruits for serfdom. Oddly enough, the poorest class of landless peasants, such
as the komornik (tenant farmer), the katnik (patch-farmer), or the parobek
(hired hand), possessing no landed assets with which to attract a prospective
noble master, had a better chance of escaping the harshest impositions of feu-
dalism.
Important regional differences persisted. In Royal Prussia, where the manor-
ial system was slow to develop, rents were usually paid in kind. In Podolia and
Ukraine, on lands opened up by noble colonization, the peasant pioneers were
offered ten, twenty, or even thirty years' enjoyment of their land free of labour
services.
In the Polish countryside, the principal institution linked with the rise of serf-
dom was the Folwark - a form of manorial estate specially adapted for the
efficient use of serf labour, and, within the technical limitations of the period,
for the maximum production of grain. Its name derives from the German
Vorwerk, meaning originally 'buildings adjacent to the manor' and later
'demesne farm'. Over some 300 years, it became a characteristic feature of the
countryside, leaving its mark both on Polish society and on Polish topography.
(See Map 14.)
The Folwark developed out of earlier village communities already based on
the noble household, and had predecessors in the medieval praedia militaria or
'military estate', which had been designed for the upkeep of the knighthood. It