Feudal Abuses in the Crown of Aragon and Catalonia
Uses and Abuses in the Crown of Aragon and Catalonia
The Crown of Aragon and Catalonia, especially influenced by the Franks, saw a more intense manifestation of feudal benefits and the six specific “abuses.” The first symptoms of worsening conditions for the peasantry began to manifest at the end of the 11th century, when the problem arose of retaining farmers who wanted to leave their land. By the mid-11th century, a major change occurred in the life of the Catalan-Aragonese peasant, who, from being rustic and free, was assigned to the land and became a servant.
The Right to Abuse
By the mid-14th and 15th centuries, the legal treatment worsened in Aragon and Catalonia. It was a general character, but the situation was worse in Catalonia because a genuine right to mistreat their subjects was established. The Code of Huesca authorized the lord of a vassal who had killed another to imprison him and let him die, but it prohibited the lord from directly executing the death penalty. This led to a patent of course to be waived, but with the ambiguous justification of a “just cause” requirement that disappeared in the Courts of Zaragoza in 1380. The fate of the peasant was no better under some lords in Catalonia. When John II was consulted on the scope of that right to abuse, he even prohibited any good cause or reason, considering it sufficient justification to proceed as they might have deemed convenient. The Courts of Cervera in 1202 recognized the power of lords to mistreat their subjects and to take away their goods.
The Six Catalan Misuses
In this context, Catalan farmers saw the obligation of some special benefits known as “abuses”:
- Remensa: A price the farmer had to pay the lord to be able to abandon their land. The condition of a remensa man was acquired by birth, marriage, or by voluntary alienation of personal freedom. The remensa peasants came to form an authentic peasantry.
- Intestia: The right of the lord to keep half or one-third of the movable goods and cattle of a farmer who died intestate.
- Exorquia: A penalty for those who had no descendants in succession to the land. It was only applied to movable goods, as the land, being a vacant good, reverted to the owner to be reversed in usufruct to one of the relatives of the deceased.
- Cugucia: The lord’s right to all or half of the assets of an adulteress, depending on whether it was with or without the consent of the husband.
- Arsía or Arsine: A pecuniary compensation received by the lord in connection with a farm fire, which amounted to a third of the peasant’s movable goods.
- Firma d’Espoli Forçada (Endowment Assurance): A fee the lord received to authorize the peasant to mortgage their land as security for his wife’s dowry. For this benefit, the lord agreed on terms with the peasant.
There is also practice (not reliably demonstrated) in Catalonia of another misuse: ius primae noctis or right of the first night.
The Abolition of Uses and Abuses
The six evil uses were abolished by the Catholic Monarchs by a pragmatic issued in Medina del Campo on October 28, 1480. In Aragon, the jus maletractandi was abolished and remained during the following centuries. The process of emancipation of the Catalan remensas began in the late 14th century, with the revolutionary generation of 1380 being the first generation (according to Vicens Vives). This coincided with the calamities resulting from the Black Death. With the uprising of 1462, the first remensa war was configured. The County Council published a draft of a General Concord, where it addressed the suppression of the misuses and ius primae noctis. The Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupe in 1486 canceled or extinguished the ius maletractandi (right to mistreat) and other abuses, such as the obligation of farmers’ wives to be nurses for the lord’s children, or the lord’s own ius primae noctis.