Kanitz, in his admirable work on Servia, describes it as follows: "In the evening the whole family collect in the house of the starshina , near the large common hearth, where a bright wood fire crackles. The men make or repair the implements fortheir daily toil. The women spin wool or flax for their garments. The children play at the feet of their parents, or ask thegrandfather to tell them the history of Castrojan or of Marko Kraljevitch. Then the starshina , or one of the men, takes his guzia , and begins to sing, accompanying his voice with the stringed instrument. The sagas follow with lays of the heroes,and all recount in burning lines the trials of their country and its struggles for independence. Thus the common dwellingbecomes an attractive spot to all, which arouses and fosters in each man affection for his family and his country, and in allenthusiasm for the greatness, the prosperity, and the liberty of the Servian nation." Serbien , Leipsig, 1868, p. 81. Who canlook on this family life, alike so invigorating to the individual and so salutary to the state, without asking himself, with theGerman author of La Famille : "Does the economist, in considering the system of common property, take sufficient accountof its moral element? Can statistics estimate by ciphers the happiness enjoyed by the family, where the children receive at thegrandmother's knees the lessons and the traditions of their ancestors, and where the old men see their youth revive in theanimated group of their children and grandchildren?"3. The Austrian joch is nearly equivalent to one and a half English acres.
4. Art. 628 of the Servian civil code regulates the succession within the zadruga in the following manner: "Relations whohave together m the community succeed in preference to those who live outside the zadruga , although the latter may benearer in blood. The stranger, who has been admitted into the community, prevails against relations outside it. children underage who accompany their mother, when she leaves the community, retain all their rights in it. The same rule holds for allwho are detained at a distance by military service, captivity, or any other involuntary hindrance."5. The Majorat is the immoveable property which is attached to the possession of a title and cannot be alienated, but passes,with the title, from heir to heir, whether natural or adoptive. "Il est contre le système d'égalité dans l'ordre équestre d'yétablir des majorats." J. J. Rousseau, Gouv. de Pol . X.
6. By art. 508, "the goods and property of the community belong, not to its members in severalty, but to all in common."By art. 510, "none of the members of the family can sell or give in security for a debt any of the property belonging to thecommunity, without the consent of every man of full age.""The death of the chief of the family," runs art. 516, "or that of every other member does not alter its position, and in no waymodifies the relations, which result from the common possession of the patrimony belonging to all.""The rights and duties of a member of the community are the same, whatever the degree of relationship, or even if, being astranger, he has been admitted into the association by the unanimous consent of the family."7. Utiesenovitch, Die Hauakosmmuniouen der Süd-Slaven ; Mate Ivitch, Die Hauskomummionen , Semlin 1874, aninteresting work followed by a scheme for the regulation of family communities. See also an article by Prof. Tomaschek inthe Zeitsckrift für des priv. und öffent . Recht der Gegemwart , v. II. b. 8; and Bolin-Jacqnemyns, Revue de Droit intern. 8ean. (1876) p. 265, Législation dans La Croatie .
8. Thus in 1889 the Servian minister of interior lamented in the Skuptchina the dissolution of a great number of Zadrugas . Inthe last few years 1700 have ceased to exist owing to partition. See Kanitz, Serbien , p. 592. In Croatiastrange to saythediet in which the national party was predominant, recently (1874) voted a law forbidding the formation of new communities.
CHAPTER XV.
FAMILY COMMUNITIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
Chronicles, charters, chartularies of abbeys, customs, all shew us that in the middle ages there existed in France, in everyprovince, family communities exactly similar to those which are found at the present day among the southern Slays. Until thefifteenth century we find no circumstantial details concerning these institutions; but, as M. Dareste de la Chavanne remarks,there is no period in the history of France at which there is not some text, revealing, in one phase or another, the existence ofthese communities.
We have no documents to tell us how they were formed, and opinions vary on this point. M. Doniol maintains in his Histoiredes Classes rurales en France , that they were "created at one stroke as correlative to the fief," and adds that "thisinterpretation is the one given by the majority of authors whose study of law has been enlightened by a knowledge ofhistory," and especially by M. Troplong in his book on Louage . M. Eugène Bonnemère, who devotes considerable attentionto these communities in his Histoire des Paysans , is of opinion that they were developed under the influence of Christianideas and on the model of religious communities. "Prompted by weakness and despair, the serfs formed themselves intogroups, and thus associating themselves obtained possession of the soil, no longer in isolated independent ownership, butconnected in aggregations of families." These explanations are manifestly erroneous. They rest on the evidence of thecommentators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who were the first to notice these communities in France, but neversuspected the remote antiquity of the primitive institution.
