Economic aspects of the activities of the rural population in the Medieval Serbian lands

Abstract

Agriculture was a dominant enterprise in Slavic countries during the Middle Ages. In the Serbian lands, all the groups of the dependent people - serfs had labor duties towards their master. In medieval sources they are frequently referred to as “rabotnici” (workers), whereas their duty towards the feudal master is “rabota” (work, labor). It may be said that the Medieval Serbia tax system was not primarily based on barter or money (although there were such obligations), yet the focus was on the villagers work on feudal landlord’s field. Social differences inside serf layers were expressed by the quantity of labor they owe to their masters. The aim of this paper is to view economic contribution of the serfdom work duties. We shall try to compare this system with that of giving a tenth of the field yield (“desetak”), which was present in the Byzantine Empire7th Biennial Conference of the European Rural History Organisation [EURHO] Rural History 2025, 9 – 12 September 2025 Coimbra, Faculty of Arts and Humanities & Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, Portugal - Abstrac