Banalité From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Banalités (French pronunciation:
[banalite]; from
ban) were, until the 18th century, restrictions in feudal tenure in
France by an obligation to have peasants use the facilities of their lords. These included the required use-for-payment of the
lord's
mill to grind
grain, his
wine press to make wine, and his
oven to bake bread. Both the manorial lord's right to these dues and the banality-dues themselves are called
droit de banalité. The object of this right was qualified as
banal, e.g. the
four banal or
taureau banal.
The peasants may also be subjected to the
banalité de tor et ver, meaning that only the lord had the right to own a
bull or a
boar. The deliberate mating of cattle or pigs incurred fines. The lord of the manor could also require a certain number of days each year of the peasants'
forced labor. This practice of forced labor was called the
corvée.
In
New France, the only banality was the
mandatory use of the lord's mill.
[read: licenses, permits, regulations, taxation, patents, and the privileges of entitlements... - presence]
Similar laws, especially pertaining to mills, were common in medieval Europe and continued after the medieval period in many places (e.g.,
banrecht in the Netherlands,
Ehaft in Germany). Free peasants and tenant farmers were obligated to take their grain to the manorial lord's mill. In England, feudal duty obligated many peasants to use
bannal[1] mills and ovens. In Scotland,
thirlage[2] tied land to a particular mill, whose owner took a proportion of the grain as
multure.
[3]
In France these monopolistic rights were abolished on the night of the
4th of August 1789 but feudal lords continued to be reimbursed until
1793.
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