Exploring Difference within Rural Communities in the Northern Iberian Kingdoms, 1000–1300

Historical studies in Spain have been dramatically revitalized since the 1970s and 1980s, not just for the medieval period but in general. This has meant the gradual integration of Spanish work into debates and developments in other countries. The myth of Spanish difference, for long so carefully fostered by official ideology in almost every sphere, was thus questioned in its medieval dimensions as well. It is not my intention here, however, to address these historiographical developments, which are well known.² Rather, I will examine some issues relating to peasant communities in the north of the peninsula, in particular in regard to internal forms of inequality, a theme on which Rodney Hilton wrote many illuminating pages.³ His influence, indeed, played a pivotal role in the shift from legal and institutional history to more social approaches among Spanish medievalists.⁴

The changing approach by historians to rural communities in medieval Castile has unquestionably been closely related to new ideas concerning the development of feudal society in the peninsula, and has benefited greatly from new critical editions of documentary sources. These allow a better appraisal of both the information these sources contain and the contexts in which they were compiled. Sadly, with a few notable exceptions, historians have been slow to integrate into their field the great potential contribution of archaeology, which in Spain is underdeveloped and usually under-funded.⁵

Scholars agree to some extent that local society offers a variegated picture in the period between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Diverse forms of lordship and internally divided communities are recognized, although the formalization of such differences also varied. In many cases, there were two clearly defined groups among charter witnesses, representing the free population of a community: a group of knights, and the rest of the population. The names given to these two respective groups varied according to the context. The first group were generally known as milites or caballeros, and they enjoyed certain privileges with respect to their neighbours, from whom they were distinguished by ownership of a horse and their corresponding (at least nominal) military duties. Those belonging to the remaining population were known as pedites or peones, homines, pecheros, labradores, rústicos, collazos, to cite the most common terms. Together both groups formed the body of seigneurial dependants (sometimes called vassals*⁶), although villages rarely depended on a single lord and most communities were divided in their attachments to social superiors.

But there were other differences, too, both between the two groups and within their ranks, partly corresponding to material wealth but also dictated by networks of social relationship. There were some knights, for instance, who were recognized as nobles or infanzones, along with others (caballeros villanos) who only in part avoided the obligations that were normally rendered by the commoners. Our understanding of the processes of social mobility which led to this type of differentiation within the most elevated ranks of peasant society has improved considerably in recent decades, as the result of attempts to identify mechanisms of seigneurial domination which influenced and/or made possible such differentiation.⁷ Nevertheless, more research is still needed on a number of matters, such as the position of local knights in regard to rural communities (were they essentially outsiders, or privileged members of a cohesive social body?), or the extent to which they were involved in agricultural production and direct management of their holdings. We also need to know more about the chronology of social differentiation and its regional variations.⁸

In villages where we witness this kind of internal stratification, we can also see that the remaining peasant population was not homogeneous, either. The sources we have in Spain for the study of inequality among peasant holdings, although far sparser than those available, for example, to English historians, allow us to trace a widespread, tripartite, social structure of peasants with large, medium and small holdings: that is to say, with a varying capacity for subsistence. Taking cyclical patterns into consideration, these differences mean that some households had insufficient manpower in the nuclear household, and others...