A reassessment of fundamental scholarship on the Middle Ages, based on previously unknown medieval written source material.
 
The medieval peasantry represents a particularly compelling unknown for historians, as it holds the key to understanding both later economic growth and the surprising stagnation experienced in some European regions. Our current knowledge about the social structures and institutions of the medieval peasantry remains superficial, with almost nothing known about their real inner dynamics and demographic aspects. The present monograph confronts this issue head-on, taking advantage of previously neglected written sources from the Cheb city-state, which are unique in the European context. Drawing from this material, the book presents a remarkably detailed view of social mobility, migration, and the reproduction of social structures among the peasantry in the late Middle Ages while offering new perspectives on the mass abandonment of rural settlements during that period. It also identifies hitherto unknown mechanisms by which peasant communities responded to family demographic cycles and short-term economic fluctuations.