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Medieval Society
Peasants
Peasant, serf, yeoman, freeholder: here as elsewhere, we have to contend first with the words themselves. Medieval sources are not in the least bit consistent in how they use these terms, so my description here is necessarily an amalgamation and an abstraction of usages.
I use the word "peasant" to describe someone who lived in a village or some other rural setting and who was more or less free. A serf is one who lived in the same environment, but who to one degree or an other had his freedom restricted by someone else.
Most peasants were farmers, but the word applied also to the village blacksmith or cooper or miller. Serfs, likewise might be farmers but might also be craftsmen. The difference between the two was that the peasant owned his own land, while the serf did not. The serf owed labor duties to his lord, whereas a peasant owed nothing or, more usually, owed some sort of rent.
Serfdom
Slavery was widespread in the late Roman Empire, although manumission had freed many. Slavery persisted right through the Middle Ages, but it was rare and was largely confined to the use of household slaves. Agricultural slavery belongs to the Empire, not to the Middle Ages.
The serf is a medieval invention. The word servus meant slave during the Empire, but is also applied in the Middle Ages to a serf. The status of a serf was better than that of slave, for a serf was not chattel—no one owned him. But he was in various ways tied to a plot of land, and the land was owned by someone else.
A serf was a peasant—a farmer, usually, but the village blacksmith and miller were often also serfs. They were bound to the place and could not leave without the lord's permission. They also owed work to the lord; normally, they were expected to farm the lords estates as well as their own, owed in addition some portion of their own harvest to the lord, and were further required to perform other labor services upon demand.
Within these constraints, a serf was free. A serf might accumulate personal wealth, and some peasants managed to become comfortable, at least. They could raise what they saw fit on their lands, and sell the surplus at market. And their heirs were guaranteed an inheritances; just as a serf could not leave without the lord's permission, so the lord could not dispossess his serfs without cause.
Serfdom spread generally throughout the West by the 10th century, and the central Middle Ages was its heyday. In the later Middle Ages, however, serfdom began to disappear west of the Rhine even as it spread through eastern Europe. This was one important cause for the deep differences between the society and economy of eastern and western Europe that has lasted down to our own day.