A reassessment of fundamental scholarship on the Middle Ages, based on previously unknown medieval written source material.

Medieval peasantry represents a particularly attractive unknown for historians, as it is crucial for understanding both later economic growth and the surprising stagnation of some European regions. Our existing knowledge about the social structures and institutions of the medieval peasantry is incomplete, existing only in rough outlines. Almost nothing is known about their real inner dynamics and demographic aspects. This monograph takes on this challenge, taking advantage of the previously unnoticed preserved written sources of the Cheb city-state, a place unique in the European context. Drawing from this material, the book presents a remarkably detailed view of social mobility, migration, and the method of social reproduction of peasantry in the late Middle Ages, including new perspectives on the phenomenon of the disintegration of country settlements during that period.