Peasant Practices in a Feudal Context: The relations of Benefactoria (11th and 12th centuries)

Abstract

The relations known as benefactoria express social practices derived from the peasant mode of production. These practices (grants of land for services, fosterage, arbitration in family disputes, the election of a chief, hospitality) are performed in the interstices of a space already feudalized, in which they tend to modify their contents. The transmutation of peasant practices is the mechanism through which relations of feudal exploitation and their forms conquest free spaces. In the area of Castile-Leon, this process concludes in the second half of the 12th century, when these social forms are fully incorporated into the feudal mode of production.