Paul Vinogradoff

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Paul Gavrilovich Vinogradoff
Born	November 30 (18), 1854 Kostroma, Russia
Died	December 19, 1925 (aged 71) Paris, France
Occupation	Historian, Educator
Nationality	Russian (to 1918); British (from 1918)
Subjects	Medieval Europe
Notable work(s)	Villainage in England: Essays in English Medieval History
Spouse(s)	Louise Stang
Children	Helen, Igor

Sir Paul Vinogradoff (Russian: Па́вел Гаври́лович Виногра́дов, transliterated: Pavel Gavrilovich Vinogradov; November 18 (30), 1854, Kostroma, Russia–December 19, 1925, Paris, France) was a highly reputable Anglo-Russian historian-medievalist.

He became professor of history at the University of Moscow, but his zeal for the spread of education brought him into conflict with the authorities, and consequently he was obliged to leave Russia. Having settled in England, Vinogradoff brought a powerful and original mind to bear upon the social and economic conditions of early England, a subject which he had already begun to study in Moscow.

His Villainage in England (1892) is perhaps the most important book written on the peasantry of the feudal age and the village community in England; it can only be compared for value with FW Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond. In masterly fashion Vinogradoff here shows that the villein of Norman times was the direct descendant of the Anglo-Saxon freeman, and that the typical Anglo-Saxon settlement was a free community, not a manor, the position of the freeman having steadily deteriorated in the centuries just around the Norman Conquest. The status of the villein and the conditions of the manor in the 12th and 13th centuries are set forth with a legal precision and a wealth of detail which shows its author, not only as a very capable historian, but also as a brilliant and learned jurist.

Almost equally valuable was Vinogradoff's essay on “Folkland” in vol. viii. of the English Historical Review (1893), which proved for the first time the real nature of this kind of land. Vinogradoff followed up his Villainage in England with The Growth of the Manor (1905) and English Society in the Eleventh Century (1908), works on the lines of his earlier book.

In 1903 he was appointed Corpus professor of jurisprudence in the university of Oxford, and subsequently became a fellow of the British Academy. He received honorary degrees from the principal universities, was made a member of several foreign academies and was appointed honorary professor of history at Moscow.

[edit] Partial bibliography

(1880) The Origins of Feudal Relations in Lombard Italy
(1884) Villainage in England (publ. 1887; trans. to English 1892)
(1905) The Growth of the Manor
(1908) English Society in the Eleventh Century
(1909) Roman Law in Medieval Europe
(1913) Constitutional History and the Year Books
(1917) Year Books of Edward II, 1312 – 1313
(1920) Outlines in Historical Jurisprudence (Introduction and Tribal Law)
(1922) Outlines in Historical Jurisprudence (The Jurisprudence of the Greek City)