Medieval History Term of the Week: Vill
Vill
Etymology: Anglo-French vil, ville farmstead, township
1) Township, local district; small unit of lordship or fiscal assessment.
(Frame, Robin. Colonial Ireland, 1169-1369, 145)
2) The smallest unit of government covering the village, or township, and the surrounding countryside. It was roughly equivalent to the parish, the smallest unit in ecclesiastical administration.
(Waugh, Scott. England in the Reign of Edward III, 238)
3) A township; part of a territorial unit called a hundred, which is, in turn, a part of a county.
(Hogue, Arthur R. Origins of the Common Law, 258)
*term definition retrieved from Netserf’s Medieval Glossary (http://www.netserf.org/Glossary)
Filed under: Middle Ages History, Medieval Glossary, Medieval History on September 25th, 2009
This reminds me that somewhere I read that “Villain” originally meant just ’someone from a village’. How it turned sour, I don’t know. Maybe a bit of anti-country bias.
Presumably, this is where the word Villein came from - a feudal peasant.
Looking at the word Villain, this came from the latin for farmhand, or the person who tended the lands around an Italian villa. It was used to differentiate people who weren’t part of the knighthood and therefore not chivalrous. As most crimes were (allegedly) committed by this class, Villainous came to mean criminal rather than not-knightly.
Great snippets of info. Keep posting!
Elaine Saundders
Author - A Book About Pub Names
http://www.book-about.blogspot.com
Robert and Elaine, I haven’t actually researched the term “villain” to know how that connotation came about, though Elaine’s explanation seems likely. According to some definitions, a villein (with an “e”) was the highest class of dependent peasantry, cultivating somewhere b/w 20 - 100 acres of land depending: http://steventill.com/2008/04/11/medieval-term-of-the-week-villein/
Makes you wonder how the term villein then evolved into a negative meaning given a villeins rank among the other peasantry. Why aren’t we calling criminals cottars or cotters instead? A cottar was among the lowest levels of peasantry, cultivating only five acres or less.