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

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

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 over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or ar ...

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

to grind

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached 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 legum ...

, his

wine press A winepress is a device used to extract juice from crushed grapes during wine making. 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 contro ...

to make wine, and his

oven upA double oven A ceramic oven An oven is a tool which 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 us ...

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 castrated) adult male of the species ''Bos taurus'' (cattle). More muscular and aggressive than the females of the same species (i.e., cows), bulls have long been an important symbol in many religions, includin ...

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 suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The species is no ...

. 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, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...

. 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 for only a certain number of days' work each year. Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state for the purposes of ...

. In

New France New France (french: Nouvelle-France) was the area colonized by 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 Great Britain and Spai ...

, 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 (or astriction) under Scots law restricting manorial tenants in the milling of their grain for personal or other uses. Vassals in a feudal barony were thirled to their local mill owned by the feudal superior. Peo ...

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) ( sco, Dictionar o the Scots Leid, gd, Faclair de Chànan na Albais) is an online Scots-English dictionary, now run by Dictionaries of the Scots Language, formerly known as Scottish Language Dicti ...

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.

Sources

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

Sources

Notes

See also