Feudal Society: Lords, Castles, Knights, and Peasants

Beyond the personal bond of vassalage, the "ban" was the power to command, judge, and punish over a given territory, a power originally public and Carolingian in origin, exercised by counts as royal agents before being privatized after the tenth century by castellans and local nobles who seized public functions — justice, military levy, tolls — for themselves. Georges Duby identified this banal lordship as the very key to the "feudal mutation" of the year 1000. The banal lord collected so-called "evil customs" (malae consuetudines), arbitrary exactions imposed on the peasantry: the right of banvin let the lord sell his own wine before peasants could sell theirs, while his monopoly over the oven, mill, and winepress (the banalités) forced peasants to use these facilities and pay a fee for the privilege. Crucially, banal lordship applied to everyone living in the territory, free or servile alike, which distinguished it sharply from the personal bond of vassalage; in Catalonia, the notorious "evil customs" exemplify this banal oppression at its harshest.