Hombres de la villa y hombres de fuera de la villa en Piera durante la Baja Edad Media

Abstract

Analysis of the unpublished documentation about Piera (Catalonia) between the 10th and 15th centuries to interpret the late-medieval organisation of the “man from outside the town” against the “men of the town” in fiscal and defensive matters. The agrarian landscape created in 10th-11th centuries where the disorganised frontier area was, saw an increase in the farmed area in the 12th and 13th centuries, creating farms in emphyteusis and with monasteries and urban investors accumulating direct domain. This increased tax burden on the peasants by the owners at the end of the 13th and early 14th centuries, led to the first complaint to the king by the men from outside the town against the men of the town. This would be repeated shortly after regarding the internal distribution of the Crown’s fiscal demands and in the second half of the century, for the defensive system. The difficulties arisen in the second half of the 14th century show the unviability of many of the farms created in the previous century and contributed to the accumulation of property among the urban investing elite. The urban influence on the countryside –for the town itself and for the bourgeoisie of Barcelona and their monastery of Pedralbes– favoured heavy pressure in the 15th century, the nullification of the rural capacity for organisation and a malaise that led to the negotiated reduction in the tax burden.