6 - Effects of the Black Death

Summary

Thus far the enserfment of the Catalan peasantry has been examined in connection with the social and legal changes from the eleventh to thirteenth century. The process by which a large portion of the cultivators of land in Old Catalonia were subjugated may be considered gradual, meaning that it took a long time to happen. On the other hand it was not a constant or imperceptible change. At particular points, especially in the early eleventh and late twelfth centuries, the strength of nobles' opposition to the king encouraged their domination of the countryside and its inhabitants. Imposing a servile regime was not necessarily the deliberate program of aristocrats who defied or undermined royal authority, although probably it was more so in the second of these uprisings. The movement to bind tenants to a stricter tenurial regime was made possible by the rebellions themselves, and especially by the compromises made by the Catalan monarchs to end them. Here again, the late twelfth-century incidents led more directly to the legally recognized imposition of servile status on peasants than did those of the earlier era.

I have tried to show the degree to which the legal definitions of serfdom were fixed and put into effect during the thirteenth century. The constitution “En les terres o locs” of 1283 is not so much the foundation of Catalan serfdom (although it would function in this fashion in later legal commentaries), but the conclusion of its process of definition.