villein and villeinage 725government and even into a short stay in debtors’ prison
in February 1346. He died in the Black Death in the sum-
mer of 1348.
He claimed he began his Chroniclein 1300 after a
visit to ROMEfor the HOLYYEARand wrote it over an
almost 50-year time span in chronological order and
using the VERNACULAR. Over time he became more
sophisticated as a historian, for instance, including the
political and economic role of Florence throughout
Europe to provide a context for his discussions of
local politics and institutions. He knew his great near-
contemporary and politician, the poet Dante ALIGHIERI,
and was familiar with the work of BRUNETTOLatini.
MATTEOMatteo was a member, as was his brother, Giovanni, of
the companies of the Peruzzi and Buonaccorsi and
worked for them in NAPLES. His life was equally eventful,
but he performed much less government service. He, too,
was caught up in the failures of the great banking family
companies in the 1340, and his wife, Lisa Buondelmonti,
suffered a period of incarceration because of his flight
from creditors. In 1362 he was prosecuted on suspicion
of Ghibelline sympathies and plots and was forbidden to
hold public office. He continued his brother’s Chronicle
from 1348 until his own death in 1363 in a more gloomy
and pessimistic style. He also wrote more rhetorical intro-
ductions to his chapters, celebrating the virtues he
emphasized in them. He died in the second great visita-
tion of the PLAGUEin 1363. His son, Filippo (1325–ca.
1405), added a few more chapters to the Chronicleafter
his father’s death.
See also CHRONICLES AND ANNALS; GIANO DELLA
BELLA;GUELFS ANDGHIBELLINES.
Further reading:Giovanni Villani, Selections from the
First Nine Books of the Croniche florentine of Giovanni Vil-
lani: Tr. for the Use of Students of Dante and Others,ed. P.
H. Wicksteed (Westminster: A. Constable, 1897); Louis
Green, Chronicle into History: An Essay on the Interpreta-
tion of History in Florentine Fourteenth-Century Chronicles
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972); Ferdi-
nand Schevill, History of Florence, from the Founding of the
City through the Renaissance(New York: Harcourt, Brace
& Company, 1936).
Villehardouin, Geoffroi de(Geoffroy)(ca. 1150–ca.
1213)a leader of the Fourth Crusade, historian
Geoffroi was probably born near Bar-sur-Aube near Troyes
in about 1150 and became a KNIGHTand an official of the
count of Champagne. According to his own chronicles he
played a prominent role in the organization of the Fourth
Crusade and in the diplomatic maneuvering that followed
the sack of CONSTANTINOPLEin 1204. Recognized for
administrative and military talent, he became the marshal
of the Balkan mainland or Romania. From there he led a
few expeditions into BULGARIA. His Conquest of Con-
stantinoplewas a firsthand account by a participant in its
decision-making process and the first medieval historical
work in Europe written in the VERNACULAR. It is the main,
but biased, source for the study of the Fourth Crusade. His
attitudes in the history reflect those of French aristocracy
of the period. He died about 1213 perhaps in GREECE; his
relatives governed a state until the late 13th century.
See alsoLATINSTATES INGREECE.
Further reading:M. R. B Shaw, trans., Joinville and
Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades(Baltimore: Pen-
guin Books, 1963), 29–160; Jeanette M. A. Beer, Ville-
hardouin: Epic Historian(Geneva: Droz, 1968); Donald E.
Queller and Thomas F. Madden, eds., The Fourth Crusade:
The Conquest of Constantinople,2d ed. (Philadelphia: Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).villein and villeinage This was a technical and legal
tenure involving the personal status of certain “unfree”
peasants, primarily in ENGLAND, who owed demeaning,
onerous, and uncertain services to their lords as part of
their tenure for land. The word existed in France, but
French vileinswere regarded as free in public law. In a
complex system of rural property holdings, one might
hold one piece of property on terms of villeinage and
others for more free or certain terms of payments or ser-
vices. So a peasant might be villein in some circum-
stances and not in others. The origins of English
villeinage were in the Anglo-Saxon period in England.
Then peasants had greater dependence on their lord for
land, housing, and protection, accepting from him an
uncertain or undefined amount of heavy labor services.
This often meant that they worked on the lord’s own
land for several days a week technically at the will of the
lord. In the 12th century, the king’s justices determined
that this liability to perform labor service at the discre-
tion of the lord was one of the legal signs of status as
villeins. Such a tenant who owed so much work per
week for the lord on his demesne was a villein. Those
who did not owe such services were considered free
peasants and accorded more personal legal rights. By the
13th century villeinage was accepted as a hereditary con-
dition of a personal character viewed much as slavery
was, thus placing definite limitations on one’s freedom.
These limitations included the inability to leave one’s vil-
lage, certain undefined labor services, and fiscal liability
for such payments of fees for MARRIAGEand even succes-
sion to the tenure involved. If one was born a villein,
one and one’s children would always be villeins. With
the demographic collapse of the PLAGUESin the mid-14th
century, conditions for their labor and the tenure of
workable property had to be improved as supply and
demand set better terms of rural work, thus softening
villeins’ obligations for labor on the estates or demesnes
of lords.