1. In this article Prodan's notes are given as endnotes with a superscript letter; trapslator's notes appear as footnotes with a superscript number.

2. On the feudal order, see especially his Iobdgia in Transilvania in secolul al XVl-lea [Serfdom in Transylvania in the sixteenth century], 3 vols. (Bucharest; Editura Academiei, 1967-1968), the final chapter of which exists in English translation in Review 9 (1986); 649-678; Vrbariile Jdrii Fdgdrasului [Urbaria of the Fagaras. region], 2 vols. (Bucharest : Editura Academiei, 1970, 1976); Iobdgia in Transilvania in secolul alXVII-lea [Serfdom in Transylvania in the seventeenth century], 2 vols. (Bucharest : Editura §tiinjifica §i Enciclopedica, 1986-1987); Iobdgia in Transilvania in secolul al XVIII-lea [Serfdom in Transylvania in the eighteenth century) (Bucharest : Editura §tiinjifica §i Enciclopedica, 1989). On the history of peasant movements see his Rdscoala lui Horea [Horea's uprising], 2 vols. (Bucharest : Editura §tiinjifica §i Enciclopedica, 1979; rev. ed., 1984); and the national liberation movement is covered in Supplex Libellus Valachorum, published in three editions : 1948, 1967, and 1984, the most recent one by Editura §tiinjifica §i Enciclopedica.

3. I am indebted to P. Teodor for help with this summary.

4. A very useful overview of this literature, which includes Soviet historians as well, is to be found in Antoine Casanova and Charles Parain, eds., Le deuxieme servage en Europe centrale et orientate, a special issue of the journal Recherches Internationales a la lumiere du marxisme, nos. 63-64 (1970).

5. The second serfdom is the sixteenth century reassertion, east of the Elbe, of a feudal form earlier characteristic of all Europe.

6. Banaji, Jairus, “Modes of production in a materialist conception of history,” Capital and Class 3 (1977) : 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. I am indebted to S. Papacostea and F. Constantiniu for a discussion that stimulated these proposals.

8. Romanian contains two different words for what English subsumes under the single term serfdom. The Romanian word serbie, parallel in meaning to the German Leibeigenschaft, refers to the complex involving tying serfs to the soil (see author's note a). The word iobdgie (parallel to German Untertanigkeit) refers to serfdom as a general form, of which serbie is its harshest variant. The author uses both terms in his text but is particularly concerned with how serfs became bound to the soil. To accentuate this second meaning, I use the expression bondsman when referring to the serf and bondage or tying or binding to the soil when referring to the process. The author's title ought, by these rules, to read “The Origin of Tying Serfs to the Soil in Transylvania,” but I have simplified it for the obvious stylistic reason.

9. In 1437 a massive uprising of serfs provoked a pact among the various sectors of the nobility—the Unio trium nationum—to define more fully the relations of serf and master. The original wording of the rebels’ complaint was “ca pe ni§te cumparaji ne, -au aruncat in grea robie. “

10. A legal document issued in 1514 in three parts (hence the name), codifying various aspects of Transylvanian public life; it included the lords’ decision to bind peasants to the soil after the uprising.

11. The author distinguishes between the diets of Hungary proper and those of Transylvania, which met separately.

12. One of the largest of the domains held by the prince of Transylvania.

13. The Orthodox religion practiced by the majority of Transylvanian serfs observes many feast days, on which the faithful should desist from all labor.

14. In Transylvanian feudalism, the estate was divided into allodial and urbarial portions, the latter subdivided into serf holdings.

15. In 1599, Prince Michael of Wallachia marched into Transylvania in an effort to unify under a single, reliable command the territories lying at the edge of the expanding Ottoman Empire. His victory over the forces of the Transylvanian principality produced great disarray among the nobility and much unrest among the serfs. Giorgio Basta was the Hapsburg commander who was sent in supposed alliance with Prince Michael but eventually had him assassinated. Following the defeat of Ottoman armies by Hapsburg forces at the end of the 1600s, Transylvania was fully incorporated into the empire.

16. Transylvania's administrative map contained a variety of subregions with differing statutes. Some of them prohibited serfdom; some were administered centrally (crown lands); and others were administered by the particular grouping within the feudal order that had been assigned them (for example, the Szeklers, one of Transylvania's three privileged groups along with Magyars and Saxons).

17. un bun propriu.

18. Although these terms underwent an evolution in their legal meaning from classical Roman times to their use within medieval feudalism, one sees the distinction the author wishes to make even in their original classical meanings : colonus referred simply to a settler, sent off by order to colonize an area and given land to work on, from which he had to pay taxes; servus, however, meant a slave, who had no rights whatever and was treated as property.

19. The Romanian root mos refers to midwifing the act of birth and, by derivation, extends to the ancestors; hence, mosie is an ancestral holding. The term in no way suggests that this holding is subject to any constraints or is held or utilized under the strict conditions we associate with serfdom. The term sesie, from the Latin sessio, similarly implies nothing about the user's subjection but refers only to a holding of a fixed size.

20. The author wishes to signal here that through the imposition of feudal upon customary law, the property worked by peasants had to some degree remained “theirs” even though it “belonged” to the lord; hence, what required reform was only the relation of servitude and the obligations entailed in it.

21. A description of some of the means for prolonging bound labor can be found in Verdery, Katherine, Transylvanian Villagers : Three Centuries of Political, Economic, and Ethnic Change (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1983), 215–216, 220–221 Google Scholar.

22. This shift was itself based, as the author has hinted above, on the increased requirements for maintaining feudal consumption standards, which led nobles to need more provisions; these in turn required a larger administrative apparatus, which also had to be fed.