Study of the villeins under the rule of the Norman kings in Medieval Sicily

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02931
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: History of Europe and America
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Takayama Hiroshi 東京大学, 大学院人文社会系研究科(文学部), 教授 (90226936)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 農民 / ノルマン / シチリア / 中世 / アラビア語 / ギリシア語 / ラテン語 / 羊皮紙

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this project, I examined in detail the Arabic, Greek, and Latin parchments which I had not got access to before, and confirmed that my hyposesis proposed in the previous project - the Arabic words muls and hursh were not a pair of opposite terms indicating two different classes of villeins as scholars had thought - is right. It is difficult to assume the existence of two classes of villeins with legal status applied uniformly in Norman Sicily. Actual conditions of villeins seem to have varied according to the relationship with their landlords. I published the result of my research as an article in an English on-line journal Spicilegium in December 2017.

Free Research Field

西洋中世史