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The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718-1050
Archibald R. Lewis
Conclusion
[401] The society which had emerged in Southern France and Catalonia by 1050 differed in many ways
from that found in these same regions in 718 on the eve of Moslem and Carolingian intervention in the
affairs of the Midi. Yet in one respect it was similar. In 718 the social pattern which existed south of the
Loire and north of the Pyrenees was generally similar in every region, except in tribal Gascony and in
Catalonia, which had been overrun by the Moors. Life in the Limousin or the Valley of the Rhone was
remarkably similar, judging from our scanty sources, to that found in Septimania, the Toulousain, or
Provence near the mouths of the Rhone. By 1050 this was even truer. Regional differences existed in
the mid-eleventh century as they had existed even in 950. Gascony, which had never known Roman or
Visigothic law or where it had disappeared leaving no trace, kept certain unusual legal procedures.
Visigothic law gave a different cast to the legal system which was used in Catalonia. The aprisio
continued in 1050 important in the Spanish March long after it had disappeared north of the Pyrenees.
Gascony and Western Aquitaine kept a prevailing villa system intact to a greater degree than the rest of
the Midi, but lagged in clearing their vacant land for cultivation.
Nevertheless one should not overestimate such regional differences. By 1050, and even earlier, we can
clearly view this whole region as an area enjoying a civilization generally similar in character in every
portion of it, and different from that found in Northern France. All of the Midi and Catalonia by the
eleventh century had the same kind of social classes, the same kind of Church, the same kind of
military system, the same method of landholding, the same weak feudalism, the same lack of
government, the same type of voluntary courts or assemblies which kept the peace. We can say, by this
time, that we are dealing with what, for want of a better term, we might call a special civilization. All
this explains why a Raymond of Saint-Gilles could rally the nobles of these regions to follow him as
Provençals on the First Ciusade; why troubadour lyrics could [402] spread so rapidly from the
Limousin to Gascony, Catalonia, Languedoc, and the Valley of the Rhone; and how a count of
Barcelona could effectively operate in Languedoc, and his successors, as kings of Aragón, could
become counts of Provence. By 1050 a new and unusual society had emerged in lands which lay south
of Poitou and Burgundy.
How did this society of 1050 differ from the earlier one of 718? In the first place, by the mid-eleventh
century the society of these regions was a much more vital one. Two new classes had appeared, the
milites and the bourgeois. One was the product and result of the new castles which had arisen in the
course of the tenth century; the other had emerged as a result of the revival of trade and commerce and
the new growth of towns. In the countryside a new, freer, and more independent peasantry was to be
found on the aprisiones and medium plantum which were created out of vacant and uncultivated land,
as the villa system disappeared and the older serfdom with it. Only near castles was a new and different
serfdom appearing. The Church, vigorous and growing, was busy checking the abuses of the new
militarism and beginning to demand a more spiritual life, free of secular control. In Aquitaine and
Catalonia new principalities, making use of money in a new way, were appearing. The society of the
Midi and Catalonia, then, in 1050 was richer, more militarized, and more productive in its agricultural
and commercial life than it had been in 718. At the same time it had a more vigorous Church and in
certain areas the beginnings of more effective regional government. It was a society ready to play an
important role in the medieval civilization of Western Europe.
How did all this come about? What caused the emergence of this vital and unusual civilization in
Southern France and Catalonia? First of all we need to assess the role of the Carolingians in this
process -- a role frequently overestimated or even misunderstood. Perhaps their most important
contribution was the conquest of Septimania and the Spanish March and their partial pacification of
Gascony. As a result of this, both Septimania and Catalonia became integrated with the rest of the Midi,
an integration that survived the decay of Carolingian authority, while enough ties were established
between the Gascons and their Southern French neighbors so that in the tenth century Gascony too
could become a part of Southern French civilization in a real sense, despite its backward, primitive
society.
On the other hand, little of the political system which the Carolingians imposed upon the Midi and
Spanish March survived the end of the ninth century, except perhaps in Catalonia. Though the names of
the officials [403] which they introduced -- counts, viscounts, and vicars -- survived, their functions did
not. Nor did the territorial boundaries which they established always survive either in later counties,
viscounties, or vicaria. The feudalism which they introduced either disappeared into the allodial and
family system which prevailed, or was modified into a system of precaria and benefices closer to that
found in these regions in pre-Carolingian times. Their military organization disappeared also, except
perhaps in Catalonia, until a new and different one, based upon castles and milites, appeared in the late
tenth century. Except in Catalonia, so did their judicial system, which became a system of informal
regional assemblies and courts keeping order by invoking public opinion to obtain agreements on a
voluntary basis. By the tenth century little of the Carolingian political system had survived which could
form the basis of later government, either feudal or nonfeudal.
Where the Carolingians made the most important contribution to the Midi and Spanish March, as a
matter of fact, was in what they did for the Church. The revival which they encouraged in the Church
of Aquitaine, Septimania, and the Spanish March never completely stopped, though they were less
successful in this respect in Gascony and Provence. From this revival stemmed a renewed Church and
monastic growth which spread from the Massif Central and Languedoc and Catalonia, until by the end
of the tenth century a vigorous Church was one of the realities in every part of these lands which lay
south of Poitou and Burgundy. Similarly the aprisio system, which they sponsored in Septimania and
Catalonia, and the medium plantum, which seems to have begun during their rule, were important as
means of clearing new land for cultivation, and from the tenth century on, changed the face of Southern
France and the Spanish March and helped free the peasantry from its ancient bondage to serfdom and
the villa system.
Though we must agree that a debt is due the Carolingians on the part of Southern France and Catalonia,
we still must emphasize that the particular type of society which emerged by 1050 was more the result
of certain indigenous instincts than it was of Carolingian influence. What were these instincts or
traditions? The first was the insistence upon land being allodial. From the time of Louis the Pious the
society of Southern France and Catalonia fought for allodial rights. As a result Carolingian benefices
and aprisiones disappeared by 900, and every later attempt to create a true principality failed also, as
those to whom land was given on feudal terms transformed it into allods. If Charles the Bald failed in
this respect, so did Louis of Provence, William the Pious of Auvergne, Count Ebles [404] Manzur of
Poitou, Count Raymond Pons of Toulouse, Marquis William I of Provence, and many others.
The second important instinct or tradition of these regions was its emphasis on family control of
property, political power, and the Church. This, like the emphasis on the allod, doomed Carolingian
feudalism and government, and helped make all later attempts to create principalities impossible. This family system also helps to explain why women became powerful in the Midi and Catalonia at an early
period and remained so, and why the Church in this region was so different from that found elsewhere.
At a time when all other political institutions had disappeared, it was the family system which survived
as the basis of public order and control of private property.
The third instinct was one which insisted on viewing feudal ties less as a matter of personal loyalty in
the Carolingian or Northern French sense than as individual agreements over property as such. Even
before Charlemagne this seems to have been the case in regard to early precaria and benefices given
out by private individuals and the Church. It remained so later. As a result the feudalism that we find by
the eleventh century in our regions concentrates on the fief and conditions under which it is held,
generally demanding at least a cens in payment for it, instead of upon the loyalty of fidelitas which
should exist between lord and vassal of which the fief was a payment or tangible token. Such a
feudalism at best could be only a fragile affair of little value in the establishment of an effective
governmental system.
Finally to make this system work the society of Southern France and Catalonia added, in the tenth
century, its own contribution of a unique sort: the informal court or assembly which represented
independent families, churchmen, milites, and other magnates, and which met on a local or regional
basis to keep peace, settle disputes, and handle other matters of importance. Until counts of Barcelona
and dukes of Aquitaine began to use money and power in a new way, this was the closest thing to
government which we find in Southern France. Out of it were to come those representative assemblies
and local town councils which were to be so important for the future in these regions.
The society of the Midi, then, was different from that of Northern France by 1050, because its original
elements, the contributions that the Carolingians made to it, and the basic instincts were different from
those north of the Loire. And it was to remain different until the armed might of Northern French
monarchs and nobles forcibly integrated it into a new France which was being built in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries.
Introduction
[xi] In the late twelfth and the thirteenth centuries when the armed might of the nobles and monarchy of
Northern France began to expand south into the Midi, the Northern French discovered in Southern
France and Catalonia a society very different from their own. The society with which the Northern
French barons were familiar was a feudal one in which a great portion of the land was held feudally as
fiefs, and in which feudal duties consisted of regular military service, regular court service, and special
dues or aids rendered to an overlord by his vassal (who tended to be essentially a fighting man). This
was not true of the Midi. Many years later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, historians who
were engaged in examining France's institutional past became aware of this fact. Since that time
scholars have often noted various unique aspects of the society of these regions. They have noted the
prevalence of allodial land to be found there, the important role played by women in society and in the
feudal system, a great emphasis on money, an apparent institutional and class fluidity, the survival of
Roman and Visigothic law, and the weak or negative nature of the feudal obligation -- all of which are
in contrast to the Northern French custom and practice.(1)
Are these features which distinguished Southern French and Catalan society from that north of the
Loire merely regional peculiarities -- variants of the institutions and customs which are to be found in
Northern France? Or do they represent something more than that? This is the first question which needs
to be answered. And if they do represent more than regional differentiations, are there sufficient
similarities among the various portions [xii] of Southern France and Catalonia, as a whole, so that one
can view the society to be found there as a unit which can be studied from an institutional point of
view?
While the following pages will attempt to answer this last question in the affirmative, it might be well
in advance to note that in the late eleventh century there was already a consciousness of such a unity
present in Southern France and Catalonia. This explains why those nobles who followed Raymond of
Saint-Gilles and Bishop Ademar of LePuy on the First Crusade called themselves Provenзals and so
distinguished themselves from their Norman and Northern French companions of arms. It also explains
why some decades earlier Raoul Glaber, in commenting on the customs and habits of those nobles who
followed Constance of Provence north upon her marriage to King Robert of France, should be so struck
by the traits which they displayed and which marked them off from the Northern French society of
which he approved. By the time of the Albigensian Crusade such differences were to be settled in
blood. As early as the eleventh century, then, before the Troubadour society of the Midi had developed,
one can distinguish in contemporary accounts and attitudes a certain fundamental difference between
Southern French and Catalan society and its feudalism, and that found in Northern France.
In the light of these facts it seems surprising to note that there exists no study of the origins and
development of Southern French and Catalan society as a whole, except in Molinier's fragmentary and
out-dated article, written many decades ago for the revised Histoire Gйnйrale de Languedoc,
concerning its feudal institutions. Nor does a great deal exist in the way of regional studies from whichsuch a synthesis might be constructed. True we have Brutail's examination of Roussillon, and Breuil's view of eleventh-century Gascony. We possess Poupardin's studies of the Rhone Valley region in his histories of the kingdoms of Provence and Burgundy, as well as Manteyer's and Bousquet's studies of
Provence proper. We possess the admirable works of Abadal i de Vinyals on Catalonia, and Higounet's
history of the county of Commignes, as well as his important demographic studies. We possess
Boutrouche's illuminating views on the Bordelais. We have a series of important articles concerning the
role of Roman law in the Midi and Catalonia written by Tisset, Gouron, Hilaire, Didier, Valls-Taberner,
and others. We even get some view of Auvergne in certain works by Saigne and Boudet. But only in
Tenant de la Tour's history of the Limousin or Fournier's work on Auvergne do we find the kind of
regional study which makes Duby's Maconnais and Garaud's article on Poitou so valuable to the
institutional historian.
[xiii] On the other hand original sources from which such a study might be constructed are surprisingly
full in comparison with their nonexistence for many regions north of the Loire. For the earlier
Carolingian period, for instance, we possess a number of reliable chronicles, as well as the charters and
capitularies of the monarchs themselves. After the time of Charles the Bald, when such Carolingian
materials become scantier and less pertinent, we begin to find hundreds of charters from every region
collected in the cartularies of important cathedral churches and abbeys, as well as some contemporary
eleventh-century chronicles. For one region, the Spanish March, such materials have only recently been
made available to historians through the work of Catalan scholars in publishing their rich documentary
collections. For the other regions of the Midi the more significant collections have long been available
in published form. Except for Gascony and Provence, as a matter of fact, sufficient published and
unpublished materials do exist to allow one to trace the origins and development of Southern French
and Catalan society with some hope of success.
What seems to have hindered such a study, then, is not the lack of materials from which it might be
constructed -- at least as far as the sources are concerned -- but something else. This something else has
been the particular preoccupations of those able and talented historians who have examined these
regions. In general such gentlemen have used one of two approaches in their studies. First, they have
insisted on treating Southern France and sometimes Catalonia as parts of a France which was then
considered as a unit. Historians using this approach have begun by considering these regions as parts of
a centralized Carolingian system which began to disintegrate about the end of the ninth century. Their
eyes have been fixed and their attention riveted on the Carolingian element which Southern France and
Catalonia had in common with other parts of France. Naturally, under the circumstances, a concern
with Charles the Bald or the comital agents of the Carolingian monarchy has seemed more important
than an examination of the society of the Midi and the Spanish March in which they had to function.
Carolingian machinery of government, even in disintegration, has been the chief interest of such
historians until they can pick up the story again in the thirteenth century with an analysis of the
Capetian governing system.
A second preoccupation of historians examining Southern France and Catalonia has been equally
important in preventing them from dealing with the society of these regions. I refer to what, for want of
a better term, might be called their genealogical interests. This, of course, began early with Baluze and
DeVic and Vaissette in the seventeenth century, and [xiv] has continued ever since. Those who have
shared it have concentrated their efforts on the discovery of the origins of the various noble houses
which arose in the Midi and Catalonia in the tenth and eleventh centuries. They have carried back their
interest into the earlier Carolingian period where, with remarkable ingenuity, they have attempted to
untangle the family relationships of those nobles who held comital and viscontal charges from the
Carolingians in these regions.
Such studies have given us important information, but in their zeal to uncover family relationships,
they have tended to ignore the society in which such families functioned and had their being. Individual
noble houses, as a result, have emerged from the obscurity of charter and chronicle. The society in
which they lived and breathed has remained more unknown to us than is necessary.
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