Seigneurial Rights Research Articles

Select document: A settlement between the canons of St Thomas's Abbey, Dublin, and Walter de Lacy concerning the church of Ardmulchan granted to the canons by Theobald Walter

AbstractA hitherto unpublished text of a negotiated settlement between Walter de Lacy, lord of Meath (d. 1241), and the canons of St Thomas's Abbey, Dublin, relating to the church of Ardmulchan in County Meath sheds new light both on the career of Theobald Walter I (d. 1205), ancestor of the Butler earls of Ormond, and on the dealings of John, son of King Henry II of England, with his Irish lordship during the period 1185–99 for which sources are scarce. It indicates that not only in Leinster, but also in Meath, John encroached on the seigneurial rights of Anglo-Norman landholders.

Guerre, charroi et corvées. Les abbayes brabançonnes et le pouvoir princier au bas Moyen Âge

During the 14th and 15th centuries, statute labour provided to the prince by the Brabantine abbeys witnessed significant modifications. Whereas ordinary labour duties were progressively limited in time and quantity, and largely replaced by a fixed sum of money, the Burgundian dukes of Brabant could not wage war without an increasingly significant number of chariots, horses and carters. Hence, as they offered an incredibly rich pool of resources, extraordinary transport labour duties of the abbeys were maintained, even if the ever-growing scale of warfare soon made even them insufficient. After having sought to maximise the output of the transport labour duties, Charles the Bold attempted to organise levies on a territorial, sovereign, basis, in order to respond to the increasing need of means for military transport. However, the fact that the duke tried to combine both sovereign and seigneurial rights led to severe discontent which erupted after his death when Mary of Burgundy had to make new concessions to the abbeys and accept further limitations to be put on the traditional extraordinary corvées.

L’archevêque et les communautés canoniales en Bordelais à l’époque de la réforme grégorienne (1079-1145)

Canonical communities and Gregorian Reform in the Bordelais (1079-1145). The holding of two councils, chaired by the legates Amat of Oloron and Hugh of Die in Bordeaux in October 1079 and October 1080, marked the introduction of the Gregorian Reform in the Bordelais. The foundation of the Benedictine Abbey of La Sauve Majeure on October 28 1079, with its privileges (exemption, immunity, attachment to Rome), did not constitute the full extent of the Reform in the Bordelais. Less well known, the foundation of the canonical communities at St. Emilion and at Comprian nonetheless illustrate over a long period the role of the archbishops of Bordeaux in their diocese : Josselin de Parthenay (1059-1086), Amat d’Oloron (1089-1101), Arnaud Geraud de Cabanac (1103-1131) and Geoffroy du Loroux (1 135-1158). From the point of view of the archbishop, the totality of these canonical foundations sit neatly within the policy of episcopal control across the diocese. These points of control are located on the principal roads and river crossings, alongside former episcopal monasteries (for example St. Romain de Blaye, St. Seurin de Bordeaux, or even St. Vincent de Bourg) and monastic sites on the coast road where the prelate had important seigneurial rights (Soulac, Mimizan). The case of St. Emilion, equally situated at a river crossing of the Dordogne, illustrates the problems and difficulties encountered by the reformers vis-à-vis the lay powers. The viscount of Castillon defeats the project of Josselin de Parthenay, which was nonetheless of a very Gregorian character, given its indictment of lay investiture and simony. His successor, Arnaud Geraud de Cabanac, is more successful, by introducing the rule of St. Augustine and by appointing an abbot from the abbey of Lesterps.

The control over the sacred as an instrument of power: proprietary churches and Leonese aristocracy in the Early Middle Ages

The possession of religious institutions was a key-factor in the construction and development of aristocratic power during the Early Middle Ages. The aim of this article is to study the proprietary churches owned by the Leonese aristocracy during the 10th century, in order to measure the role they played in the expansion and articulation of aristocratic estates, the imposition of seigneurial rights over peasant populations and the development of

A Careful Management: The Borghese Family and their Fiefs in Early Modern Lazio

AbstractThis article investigates economic management of fiefs as well as social relationships between lords and vassals in 17th- and 18th-century central Italy. Up to recent years, historians of early modern Italy as well as other European countries have stressed the “archaic” features of noble management, which would have prevented the emergence of a “modern” market-oriented agrarian economy, or have portrayed noblemen as market-oriented landowners neglecting their seigneurial rights. I argue here that both dimensions were present in noble management, as lords did not choose between them, but rather leaned upon one or the other according to circumstances. I base my argument on the case of the Borghese, one of the wealthiest papal families of the 17th century. Finally, this study shows that modern elements could be brought into a model characterized by strong seigneurial rights.

Les moulins à farine du Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice à Montréal (1658‑1840) : essai d’analyse économique d’une prérogative du régime seigneurial

The Sulpician seminary in Paris established a Canadian chapter in Ville-Marie (later Montreal) in 1657; six years later this branch became seigneur for three properties, the seigneuries of Ile de Montréal, Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes to the northwest and Saint-Sulpice to the northeast. The Conquest severed the connection with the founding house, but until the commutation of seigneurial tenure in 1840, the Canadian seminary vigorously maintained its traditional role. While earlier work has explored the seigneurial system in its legal, social and political dimensions, little work has been done on the seigneury as an economic entity, its potential for profit and loss and the manner in which traditional obligations were balanced against financial realities. Though they do not provide a complete account and offer many difficulties for analysis, the carefully preserved records of the Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice offer an important look at the financial workings of one aspect of a seigneury. Elsewhere the author has surveyed the wheat economy of Montreal, and the place of the Séminaire in provisioning the city. In this essay, she examines the interplay of economics and politics, of obligations and profitability in the management of the resources of these three properties. The author concludes that the Sulpicians attempted to achieve two objectives simultaneously: the maintenance of status and power within the political system, and the maximization of profit within the economic system. The extensive statistical basis for her conclusions is presented in a series of tables which detail the construction of both water and wind mills, and the duration of their activity; the cash receipts from each; the annual production of the mills; the accounts receivable compared with the actual receipts; the costs of running the mills, and the profitability of the mills as a strictly economic enterprise. The Séminaire invested large amounts in both their wind, and the more expensive water mills; they expected that investment to yield a solid return. Their record of repairs and renovation to existing mills, their concern for fire prevention and their willingness to invest in greater mechanization all point to a commitment to the mills as an economic enterprise. The Séminaire jealously guarded its seigneurial rights over mill sites to the end, but by the 1820s they were prepared to concede to entrepreneurs the risk of operating in an increasingly competitive commercial and industrial climate.

A Thirteenth-Century Franciscan Money Manager: Archbishop Eudes Rigaud of Rouen, 1248–1275

In the century following the death of St Francis, the Franciscan order underwent enormously rapid changes. As Franciscans became university masters, inquisitors, royal councillors and bishops, some confronted dilemmas in reconciling their religious vows with the duties of their offices. Yet whereas some friar-bishops and archbishops might have shied away from involving themselves in their churches' finances, Eudes Rigaud, the first Franciscan archbishop of Rouen, made significant investments in landed property, seigneurial rights and rents on behalf of his archdiocese. The Franciscan archbishop's commitment to ecclesiastical reform, evident in his meticulous visitations of his clergy as recorded in his episcopal register, is also visible in his efforts to augment his archdiocese's temporalities.

Coincidencias y disparidades entre los «propietarios». El regadío valenciano del siglo XIX

Recent developments in socio-economic research have centred on the key periods of the Liberal Revolution and state building in Spain, focusing on the analysis of specific landowners. This article discusses the theoretical issues raised by this type of analysis. The authors argue the importance of this method in view of the inadequacy of structure-based analysis of class, experience, interest and action Instead, attention should be paid not only to the simple fact of landowners hip, but to a series of simultaneous and opposite circumstances in terms of income, seigneurial rights and privileges, political traditions and abilities, and relations between landlords and tenants. The main elements of the analysis revolve around the case of the region of Valencia during the nineteenth century.

Aspectos de la revolución jurídica en el decreto de los señoríos de 1811

One of the basic elements which the bourgeoisie needed to address in the process of revolution was the transformation of the landholding regime and the instruments which conditioned the social relations of production: seigneurial, and principally jurisdictional, rights. This meant two tasks: overcoming the juridical structure that underlay the feudal property regime and the creation of a new system that might regulate relationships of capitalist production. Peculiarities and doubts about the origin of the feudal property regime and seigneurial rights, and the relationship between the two, would open up a series of questions relating to their legality and legitimacy, including the right of compensation. The process would be made difficult by the juridical mechanisms of feudalism, and approaches took different paths {conservative, reformist, revolutionary) reflecting the socioeconomic interests at stake, all trying to make use of the preceding legal apparatus to their benefit.

Le compoix de Lodève de 1401 à l'épreuve de la cartographie. (Représentation spatiale des activités économiques et de la propriété foncière)

The study of " compoix", fiscal registers used to establish the direct tax base in real size countries, is currently benefiting from progress in data processing, with database software packages that are very useful in processing the serial information contained in those documents. This article proposes a both methodological and interpretative study of the " compoix" of Lodève in 1401. As a first step, the steps of the elaboration of the database and cartographic media are presented, with an interpretation of the results. After confirmation of the difficulty of a demographic study of the population of Lodève, it is possible to appreciate the utility of this type of document for any study of medieval urban geography. In addition, the " compoix" provide an approach to the geographic distribution of economic activities and landed property, with emphasis being placed on ecclesiastical patrimonies. The urban and peri-urban area of Lodève in the 15th century is an area based on the economic plan and an area shared according to seigneurial rights.

Medieval Bishops' Houses in England and Wales by Michael Thompson

106BOOK REVIIWS conversi. In this respect, Salvestrini finds that the monks followed the same economic strategies as lay landlords. Both tended in the late fourteenth and fifteenth century to let more and more of their farms by sharecropping contracts. In the past, scholars have spent almost too much time on the nature and extension of such contracts. Salvestrini, however, follows a more recent trend among Italian historians and looks at the entire environment of the monks and their farmers. Thus he notes the significant role that grazing, timber farming, and the sale of chestnuts played in the economic life of the monks and their tenants. Perhaps 43% of the lands surrounding the monastery were wooded. Tenants gathered firewood, burned charcoal, and gathered chestnuts from some portion of this land while the monks harvested lumber of varying grades from much of the rest of the area. The picture that emerges from this careful study is of a complex economic system very much connected to the social and economic life of the upper Arno Valley. In spite of the fruitful observations that: fill this book, the reader is left a bit flat. The monks themselves and their connections to this complex world are largely absent. The author suggests that many were Florentine,but we never get numbers. We learn little about when or where they would have been seen. This seems to be an economic administratiori without administrators. There is a short chapter on the servants and lay brothers and sisters of the monastery, but it is perhaps the least satisfactory of his chapters. He notes several times that some of the monks were popularly venerated in the district, but he never helps us to understand why. It is, as his title suggests, a study of a patrimony and not a monastery. DUANE OSHEIM University ofVirginia Medieval Bishops' Houses in England and Wales. By Michael Thompson. (Brookfield,Vermont: Ashgate. 1998. Pp. xvi,207. $59.95.) Michael Thompson, who has produced many studies of medieval casües, here offers a useful inquiry into the architecture of English and Welsh bishops' palaces. The term "palace" includes not only the bishops' main domiciles near their cathedrals, but also their London residences, that is, the "inns" or town houses where they served as ministers of the Crown, lived after the thirteenth century while attending parliament,and the places from which they carried out legal and social business in the capital. For the medieval scribe, a palace differed from a castle in that the former was intended for domestic purposes, a castle for defensive ones. Twenty bishops and twenty-two abbots maintained London town houses; most were situated west of the city walls along the Thames, for the convenience of travel. Rents and revenues from the bishops' manors,which at the Reformation numbered 640, supported the London residences. One hundred sixty-eight manor houses contained chapels, suggesting that the bishops occasionally lived there. Probably, the most famous surviving manor house is BOOK REVIEWS107 the vast and magnificent Knole near Sevenoaks in Kent which was bought and expanded by Archbishop Bourchier in 1456 and further extended by the Sackville family over four centuries.1 The 108 illustrations provide sketches of ground plans, photographs of architectural ruins, and aerial views. Appendix 1 surveys the palace at Canterbury shortly after Archbishop Laud's death;Appendix 2 gives a list of the palaces whose bishops were licensed to crenellate between 1200 and 1523; and Appendix 3 lists bishops' manor houses. After the Norman conquest, designs for bishops' palaces predictably derived from the continent, especially France. "Without exception they are two-storied blocks vaulted at the ground level and subdivided for a smaller room at each level" (p. 31). As the number of a bishop's officials and household servants increased in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a main hall was superseded by a larger one. The site of the palace vis-à-vis the cathedral varied from place to place. Some palaces, Durham being the best example, were castles, and most palaces in design and layout were indistinguishable from those of the laity of the same social level. In the later fourteenth century, as bishops pressed seigneurial rights on the peasantry, they...

Myths of Failure, Myths of Success: New Perspectives on Nineteenth‐Century Spanish Liberalism

Between 1808 and 1843, the long process of dissolution and crisis of the Spanish Absolutist Monarchy opened up many possibilities for reaction or reform. Ultimately, however, it led to the establishment of a liberal parliamentary regime, which, while politically restrictive and socially oligarchical, was also of a very different nature from that of the absolutist government of the previous centuries. The clergy and the nobility were stripped of their status as privileged classes; tithes were abolished; the church and municipalities had their properties disentailed; and seigneurial rights were eliminated. At the same time, guilds were wiped out and freedom of industry and trade were proclaimed. These are the facts. However, William Faulkner might have been right when he said that “facts have nothing to do with truth.” Contemporaries termed what had happened the “Spanish Revolution.” But what kind of revolution was it? Did it involve real changes in the country’s social and economic structure? Did it mean a substantial transfer of power in those spheres? In short, was it an “authentic revolution,” a “bourgeois revolution”?

La Rédaction des Coutumes et les Droits Seigneuriaux Nommer, classer, exclure

En avril 1454, Charles VII dans sa lettre pour la réformation de la Justice demande, au paragraphe 125, la mise par écrit des coutumes et engage ainsi un processus de longue haleine, qui mobilise dans chaque province coutumière, dans chaque siège de bailliage les représentants des trois ordres, les commissaires délégués par le roi et nombre de praticiens du droit. Les effets de cette injonction s'avèrent limités dans un premier temps ; la coutume de Touraine est rédigée en 1461, celle d'Anjou en 1463 et celle de Bourgogne, à la demande de Philippe le Bon, en 1459. La procédure définitive est précisée par une nouvelle ordonnance de Charles VIII, le 15 mars 1499 : la mise en écrit suppose une interprétation des coutumes visant à leur amélioration ; les commissaires sont chargés de proposer les modifications. La plupart des coutumes sont alors rédigées entre 1506 et 1540 ; celle de Bretagne clôt la série en 1539. Puis un second temps fort commence avec les réformations des coutumes au milieu du 16e siècle qui tentent une unification progressive d'un droit civil commun sur le modèle de la coutume parisienne. Plus d'un siècle de travail d'écriture du droit prolongé jusqu'à la Révolution française et au Code civil par le travail des interprètes. Les objectifs déclarés dans l'ordonnance de Montilsles- Tours sont d'améliorer le fonctionnement de la justice, de favoriser la rapidité des procès et d'abaisser leurs coûts ; la mise en écrit doit en outre permettre de « mettre certaineté es jugemens » face à la multiplicité des coutumes.

The abolition of feudalism: peasants, lords, and legislators in the French Revolution

One of most important results of French Revolution was destruction of old feudal order, which for centuries had kept common people of countryside subject to lords. In this book, John Markoff addresses ways in which insurrectionary peasants and revolutionary legislators joined in bringing the time of lords to an end and how, in that ending, seigneurial rights came to be central to very sense of Revolution. He traces interaction of peasants and legislators, showing how they confronted, challenged, and implicitly negotiated with one another during course of events. Contrary to many historians who see source of revolutionary change in elite culture, Markoff argues that peasant insurrection was a crucial element of transformation of France. Of particular importance to study is Markoff's analysis of unique cahiers de doleances, lists of grievances drawn up in 1789 by rural communities, urban notables, and nobles alike. These documents are invaluable for understanding Revolution, but until pioneering work of Markoff and Gilbert Shapiro, they had not been studied systematically at national level. In addition to an unprecedented quantitative analysis of cahiers, Markoff traces ebb and flow of peasant insurrection across half a decade of revolutionary turbulence. He also offers qualitative analysis through his use of records of legislative debates as well as memoirs and journals of legislators. The Abolition of Feudalism breaks new ground in charting patterns of grievance and revolt in one of most important social and political upheavals in history.

Privilege and Profit: A Business Family in Eighteenth-Century France by P. W. Bamford

528 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE not have been drowned in the floods of industrial revolution, the new technological system gave so much more power to a strategic group that it simply swept away the majority of craft skills. Second, there is a question of periodization in the history of technology. Though the organizers apparently suggested that this was a matter meriting reconceptualization, most of the contributors to the book cling to the notion of the Industrial Revolution as a crucial watershed, whether interested in the conversion of energy, machine building, or the mechanization of traditional crafts. Finally, there is a question pertaining to the ideological components of mechanization. These go back to the 17th century at least, maybe even to ancient times. But such long-term influences cannot be demonstrated by means of the methods of social history, which are, of course, the only methods Karl Marx would have accepted. In general, this book reflects some dimensions of the lively current debate about the interpretation of the Industrial Revolution as a major watershed in world history, but it resolves few of the key questions. Some other paradigm would actually be more useful to historians and social scientists. Wolfhard Weber Dr. Weber, professor of the history of technology and economics at the RuhrUniversit ât Bochum, is the author of Arbeitssicherheit: Historische Beispiele—aktuelle Analysen (Reinbek, 1988) and editor of Technik: Von den Anfàngen bis zur Gegenwart (Braunschweig, 2d ed., 1987). Privilege and Profit: A Business Family in Eighteenth-Century France. By P. W. Bamford. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. Pp. xxv+ 347; glossary, notes, bibliography, index. $45.95. Paul Walden Bamford’s latest book is a biography of a businessman and a business. Both were introduced on pages 34—36 of his 1956 book, Forests and French Sea Power (taken from his 1951 dissertation); but in those few pages Bamford could not reveal the full range of entrepreneurial activity undertaken by his protagonist, Pierre Babaud de La Chaussade. This book takes up the tale. The approach is as rich as it is straightforward. No grand theme or conceptual interpretation is advanced; rather, Bamford uses the information generated by nearly forty years of research in French archives and notarial records to develop a comprehensive picture of the ancien régime that contributes equally to social history, economic history, and the history of technology. As social historian, Bamford traces the impetus of government contracts and regulations in transforming an originally Swiss, Protes­ tant, and petit bourgeois family into French, Catholic landowners who advanced into the minor nobility through the purchase of office and TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 529 the exercise of the privileges to which that office entitled them. Although Catholic and noble, the family lost none of the entrepre­ neurial zeal traditionally associated with Protestants and gained none of the disdain for business similarly associated with noble rank in France. Chaussade in particular expanded his business interests, buying the woodlands from which he would sell timber to the fleet, developing the forges from which he would produce its anchors and hardware. He did, however, take enthusiastically to the seigneurial rights associated with his estates, and treated his workers with quasi-feudal proprietorship. (Despite Bamford’s efforts to present Chaussade sympathetically, it is evident that he acted more from self-interest than paternalism: protecting his workers from military service, the corvée, homelessness, and hunger ensured his labor supply.) As economic historian, Bamford focuses on the microenvironment of an individual (if wide-ranging) business. The approach provides an inside view of the impediments to turning a profit in Bourbon France. The coverage can be too complete, and the reader is grateful that the Chaussade conglomerate left no account books behind; but in the accumulation of detail, we can see clearly the acumen, duplicity, patience, and luck then needed of a businessman. Fortunately, these were qualities Chaussade had in abundance; and so he was able to advance from merchant middleman to entrepreneur and industrial­ ist. Through his rise, we experience the structural flaws of French trade: colonies unexploited, shipping unprotected; policy dominated by politics, innovation stifled by tradition; foreign products protected, national trade hampered by inadequate infrastructure and local jurisdiction...

The Early Topography of the City of Utrecht and its Cross of Churches

In the middle of the first century a.d. the Romans built a castellum on the site of present day Utrecht. It formed part of the Lower German limes along the Rhine. The Romans abandoned the limes and with it Utrecht c. a.d. 260.Willibrord's settlement at Utrecht in 690 was associated with Frankish policy of expansion to the north and with the conversion of the Frisians to Christianity. Willibrord built two churches within the walls of the old Roman castellum, St Martin's and St Saviour's. Pippin III gave Utrecht exemption from royal power and it became an ecclesiastical ‘immunity’. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, after the Viking raids, Utrecht formed part of the system of the ‘Imperial Church’. Its bishops were richly endowed by the Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire with lands and seigneurial rights out of which the Utrecht bishopric came into being.Bishop Bernold (1027–54) manifested the power and wealth of the Utrecht bishops by designing a ‘cross of churches’ around his Cathedral. Three of these churches (St John's, St Peter's and St Paul's) were finished during his episcopate; St Mary's was built between 1085 and 1160.The temporal power of the bishops diminished after the Concordat of Worms in 1122. In the same year Utrecht's Charter was confirmed by the Emperor Henry V. The chartered city comprised the closes of the ‘cross of churches’, a central civilian settlement along the remnant of the Rhine, called Stathe, and two smaller settlements to the north and to the south on the banks of the river Vecht. During the same period canals were dug to improve shipping and three new parishes (with their churches) were carved out of the old one to care for the spiritual needs of the growing population of the city.A-severe flood devastated large parts of the city in about 1170. The depressions left by that flood were filled in during the thirteenth century when, in broad outline, the city took its present internal shape of which the ‘werven’ (wharves) form a unique element. A number of religious foundations filled part of the vast open spaces within the city's perimeter. Civic buildings and private houses arose, the older ones made of wood or of tufa imported from the Eifel region, the later ones of brick.

A Tuscan Monastic Lordship in the Later Middle Ages: Camaldoli

The rural economy of late medieval Italy displays many features and obeys many tendencies common to western Europe at the time. In the age of fully developed communes and nascent despotism it is customary to emphasise that peasant unfreedom and dependent tenure had as good as disappeared, demesne farming and labour services were forgotten, and seigneurial rights diminished or suppressed; where these things have been discovered to persist they are noticed as curious survivals from a different society. Income from land consisted of rents, which on the older estates of church and nobility were commonly fixed rents in money or kind, paid in perpetuity or to an increasing extent for a term of years or at pleasure. New landlords however were displacing the old, men of the urban oligarchies and middle class, who were harsher than their feudal predecessors and pursued an active agriculture by way of grants in mezzadria (sharecropping), protected in their interest by municipal statute. Among ecclesiastical lordships many monasteries succumbed to debt or moral decay, and ecclesiastical property fell victim to a fresh wave of lay encroachment, proceeding from the towns. In Lombardy and the north all classes of society sought their advantage in taking church land at nugatory rents to sublet for high profits or even in time to possess outright. A new cupidity was in the air.