Banalités (; from '' ban'') were, until the 18th century, restrictions in feudal tenure in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

by an obligation to have peasants use the facilities of their lords. These included the required use-for-payment of the

lord Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power (social and political), power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the Peerage o ...

mill Mill may refer to: Science and technology * Factory * Mill (grinding) * Milling (machining) * Millwork * Paper mill * Steel mill, a factory for the manufacture of steel * Sugarcane mill * Textile mill * List of types of mill * Mill, the arithmetic ...

to grind

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached husk, hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and ...

, his

wine press A winepress is a device used to extract juice from crushed grapes during winemaking. There are a number of different styles of presses that are used by wine makers but their overall functionality is the same. Each style of press exerts control ...

to make wine, and his

oven upA double oven A ceramic oven An oven is a tool that is used to expose materials to a hot environment. Ovens contain a hollow chamber and provide a means of heating the chamber in a controlled way. In use since antiquity, they have been use ...

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 could also be subjected to the ''banalité de tor et ver'', meaning that only the lord had the right to own a

bull A bull is an intact (i.e., not Castration, castrated) adult male of the species ''Bos taurus'' (cattle). More muscular and aggressive than the females of the same species (i.e. cows proper), bulls have long been an important symbol cattle in r ...

or a

boar The wild boar (''Sus scrofa''), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a Suidae, suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The speci ...

. 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 Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, or violence, including death or other forms of ...

. This practice of forced labor was called the

corvée Corvée () is a form of unpaid forced labour that is intermittent in nature, lasting for limited periods of time, typically only a certain number of days' work each year. Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state (polity), state for the ...

. In

New France New France (, ) was the territory colonized by Kingdom of France, France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Kingdom of Great Br ...

, the only banality was the mandatory use of the lord's mill. 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'' mills and ovens. In Scotland,

thirlage Thirlage was a feudal Servitude in civil law, servitude (or astriction) under Scots law restricting Manorialism, manorial tenants in the milling of their grain for personal or other uses. Vassals in a Barons in Scotland, feudal barony were thirled ...

tied land to a particular mill, whose owner took a proportion of the grain as ''multure''.

Dictionary of the Scots Language The ''Dictionary of the Scots Language'' (DSL) (, ) is an online Scots– English dictionary run by Dictionaries of the Scots Language. Freely available via the Internet, the work comprises the two major dictionaries of the Scots language: *'' ...

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 The French Republic introduced the French Revolutionary Calendar starting with the year I. Events January–June * January 7 – The Ebel riot occurs in Sweden. * January 9 – Jean-Pierre Blanchard becomes the first to ...

Sources

* Eugène Bonnemère, ''Histoire des paysans, depuis la fin du moyen âge'', BNF.
Banal Rights - The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Sources

Notes

See also