Symbolic Levies and Peasant Resistance during the Middle Ages:
Type de matériel :
20
Among the various payments making up feudal levies, distinctions can be made between a poll tax (chevage), fowl tax (gelinage), and certain kinds of corvées, the symbolic dimension of which was much more important than their perceived economic value. This symbolic and emblematic content of feudal fees was an integral part of the expression of lordly domination. The 1422–23 trial of Berthet de Lessart , a peasant belonging to the landholdings of the Saint-Oyend de Joux /Saint-Claude monastery in the Jura region, provides us with an opportunity to bring to light both feudal practices and the hidden strategies of peasant resistance. This trial revolved around a symbolic levy and was therefore an emblematic case, which local feudal authorities treated with the utmost concern. The event bore witness to a muted struggle between two opposite views of feudal levies and the feudal relationship itself, which were seen either as the free acceptance of feudal tutelage or as a legally based constraint.
Réseaux sociaux