Diferenciación social campesina en concejos de abadengo (siglos XIII-XVI)

Abstract

Having as starting point documentation from the Monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana, this paper enquiries whether or not different seigneurial policies encouraged social polarization in the dependant communities. The process of subdivision of the old domestic units, which was a traditional mechanism of increasing exactions, pushed towards the pauperization of middle tributary sectors, who had to look for wage labour as a necessary complement for their subsistence. Concurrently, different relationships with some communities members (who being the smallest toothed wheel of the Feudal apparatus of domination, committed their actions to consolidate Monastery's patrimonial rights) stimulated the social reproduction of rich pecheros who started along the XV century an accumulation process of small census-tenancies. The proposed analysis attempts to reinsert the problem of social differentiation within the lordship far away from historiographical views based on the study of the movement of objective economic variables.