Note 53 — Chapter I · DEFINITION AND DISTINCTION FROM KINDRED PHENOMENA.
Reading edition
With these serfs may be compared the Roman coloni. “The colonatus consists in this, that men are inseparably attached to a landed property for the purpose of cultivating it.… This connection with a determinate estate, from which the colonus might be severed only in some cases fixed by law, brought about an approximation of the colonus to the slave (as servus terrae), but also a difference between them, a security for the colonus, which protects him from the lord’s arbitrary power. Hence the colonus stands with regard to the lord on the free footing of one bound only to comply with the yearly canon, annua functio, a tribute fixed by contract or custom, which he has to pay to the lord, generally in products of the land”53.