List of forms of government
54-460: Quatre-Vallées ( French pronunciation: [katʁ vale] , literally, "Four Valleys") ( Gascon : Quate-Vaths ) was a small province of France located in the southwest of France. It was made up of four constituent parts: Aure valley (Gascon: Aura ), Barousse valley (Gascon: Varossa ), Magnoac valley (Gascon: Manhoac ), and Neste or Nestès valley (Gascon: Nèsta or Nestés ). The Aure and Barousse valleys are contiguous. The Neste valley
108-424: A seigneur or "lord", 12th century), which gives rise to the expression "seigneurial system" to describe feudalism. Originally, vassalage did not imply the giving or receiving of landholdings (which were granted only as a reward for loyalty), but by the 8th century the giving of a landholding was becoming standard. The granting of a landholding to a vassal did not relinquish the lord's property rights, but only
162-623: A Seigneur or Dame that owns the fief. The Guernsey fiefs and seigneurs existed long before baronies, and are historically part of Normandy . While nobility has been outlawed in France and Germany, noble fiefs still exist by law in Guernsey. The owners of the fiefs actually convene each year at the Court of Chief Pleas under the supervision of His Majesty's Government. There are approximately 24 private fiefs in Guernsey that are registered directly with
216-474: A sociolect of Gascon with special phonetic and lexical features, which linguistics named Judeo-Gascon . It has been superseded by a sociolect of French that retains most of the lexical features of this former variety. Béarnais , the official language when Béarn was an independent state, does not correspond to a unified language: the three forms of Gascon are spoken in Béarn (in the south, Pyrenean Gascon, in
270-485: A land grant in exchange for service continued to be called a beneficium (Latin). Later, the term feudum , or feodum , began to replace beneficium in the documents. The first attested instance of this is from 984, although more primitive forms were seen up to one hundred years earlier. The origin of the feudum and why it replaced beneficium has not been well established, but there are multiple theories, described below. The most widely held theory
324-549: A standard feudal system, nor did there exist only one type of fief. Over the ages, depending on the region, there was a broad variety of customs using the same basic legal principles in many variations. In ancient Rome, a " benefice " (from the Latin noun beneficium , meaning "benefit") was a gift of land ( precaria ) for life as a reward for services rendered, originally, to the state. In medieval Latin European documents,
378-851: A year in an inn at Garaison, a famous pilgrimage center where the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared in the beginning of the 16th century. Garaison is located in the commune of Monléon-Magnoac , in the Magnoac valley. However, Arreau , the capital of the Aure valley, is often considered by local people to be the capital of Quatre-Vallées. At the start of the French Revolution, the Quatre-Vallées remained quiet. They had been freed and exempted from feudal taxes and corvées for centuries already, and so they did not demand equality and
432-562: Is also contiguous with Barousse and Aure, but most of the Neste valley was under the jurisdiction of Gascony and Comminges , and there were only two small enclaves in the Neste Valley that were part of the Quatre-Vallées province, these two enclaves being surrounded by villages under the jurisdiction of Gascony and Comminges, and physically separated from the Aure and Barousse valleys. The Aure, Barousse, and Neste valleys are all located in
486-437: Is first attested around 1250–1300 (Middle English); the word "fief" from around 1605–1615. In French, the term fief is found from the middle of the 13th century (Old French), derived from the 11th-century terms feu , fie . The odd appearance of the second f in the form fief may be due to influence from the verb fiever 'to grant in fee'. In French, one also finds seigneurie (land and rights possessed by
540-559: Is put forth by Marc Bloch that it is related to the Frankish term *fehu-ôd , in which *fehu means "cattle" and -ôd means "goods", implying "a moveable object of value". When land replaced currency as the primary store of value , the Germanic word *fehu-ôd replaced the Latin word beneficium . This Germanic origin theory was also shared by William Stubbs in the 19th century. A theory put forward by Archibald R. Lewis
594-518: Is that the origin of 'fief' is not feudum (or feodum ), but rather foderum , the earliest attested use being in Astronomus 's Vita Hludovici (840). In that text is a passage about Louis the Pious which says "annona militaris quas vulgo foderum vocant" , which can be translated as "(Louis forbade that) military provender which they popularly call 'fodder' (be furnished)." In
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#1732765476928648-665: Is the change from "f" to "h". Where a word originally began with [f] in Latin, such as festa 'party/feast', this sound was weakened to aspirated [h] and then, in some areas, lost altogether; according to the substrate theory, this is due to the Basque dialects' lack of an equivalent /f/ phoneme , causing Gascon hèsta [ˈhɛsto] or [ˈɛsto] . A similar change took place in Spanish . Thus, Latin facere gives Spanish hacer ( [aˈθer] ) (or, in some parts of southwestern Andalusia , [haˈsɛɾ] ). Another phonological effect resulting from
702-521: Is the vernacular Romance variety spoken mainly in the region of Gascony , France . It is often considered a variety of Occitan , although some authors consider it a different language. Gascon is mostly spoken in Gascony and Béarn ( Béarnese dialect ) in southwestern France (in parts of the following French départements : Pyrénées-Atlantiques , Hautes-Pyrénées , Landes , Gers , Gironde , Lot-et-Garonne , Haute-Garonne , and Ariège ) and in
756-444: Is thus very low for Europe, at 15 inh. per km (40 inh. per sq. mile), ranging from 11 inh. per km (28 inh. per sq. mile) in the Aure valley to 75 inh. per km (194 inh. per sq. mile) in the Neste valley. There is no urban area on the territory of the former Quatre-Vallées province. In 1999 the largest villages were La Barthe-de-Neste (1,056 inhabitants) in the Neste valley and the ski resort of Saint-Lary-Soulan (1,024 inhabitants) in
810-667: The Pyrenees mountains, in the southeast of the present-day département of Hautes-Pyrénées . The Magnoac valley is located further north in the hilly countryside of Gascony, and is now the northeast of Hautes-Pyrénées. Magnoac was separated from Aure and Barousse by 19 km.(12 miles) of land not part of Quatre-Vallées. Thus, the Quatre-Vallée province was altogether made up of four geographically detached parts, from south to north: However, politically and administratively speaking, and no matter whether contiguous or detached,
864-538: The Val d'Aran of Catalonia. Aranese , a southern Gascon variety, is spoken in Catalonia alongside Catalan and Spanish . Most people in the region are trilingual in all three languages, causing some influence from Spanish and Catalan. Both these influences tend to differentiate it more and more from the dialects of Gascon spoken in France. Most linguists now consider Aranese a distinct dialect of Occitan and Gascon. Since
918-405: The 10th and 11th centuries the Latin terms for 'fee' could be used either to describe dependent tenure held by a man from his lord, as the term is used now by historians, or it could mean simply "property" (the manor was, in effect, a small fief). It lacked a precise meaning until the middle of the 12th century, when it received formal definition from land lawyers. In English usage, the word "fee"
972-505: The 11th century over the coastal fringe of Gipuzkoa extending from Hondarribia to San Sebastian , where Gascon was spoken up to the early 18th century and often used in formal documents until the 16th century, with evidence of its continued occurrence in Pasaia in the 1870s. A minor focus of influence was the Way of St James and the establishment of ethnic boroughs in several towns based on
1026-600: The 2006 adoption of the new statute of Catalonia , Aranese is co-official with Catalan and Spanish in all of Catalonia (before, this status was valid for the Aran Valley only). It was also one of the mother tongues of the English kings Richard the Lionheart and his younger brother John Lackland . While many scholars accept that Occitan may constitute a single language, some authors reject this opinion and even
1080-582: The Aure valley. Originally part of Comminges , the valleys of Aure, Barousse, Neste, and Magnoac were detached from Comminges in the 11th century and were divided between the counts of Aure, vassals of the kings of Aragon , and the counts of Astarac (in Gascony). The line of the counts of Aure ended in 1242 without a male heir, and the county of Aure was inherited by the counts of Labarthe (residing in La Barthe-de-Neste ), who by then possessed
1134-425: The Basque substrate may have been Gascon's reluctance to pronounce a /r/ at the beginning of words, resolved by means of a prothetical vowel. Although some linguists deny the plausibility of the Basque substrate theory, it is widely assumed that Basque, the "Circumpyrenean" language (as put by Basque linguist Alfonso Irigoyen and defended by Koldo Mitxelena , 1982), is the underlying language spreading around
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#17327654769281188-558: The Estates-General. This representative was assigned the task of preserving the privileges of the Quatre-Vallées at all cost. However, there was not much he could do when feudalism and all the privileges were abolished by the French National Constituent Assembly in the night of 4 August 1789, and so the Quatre-Vallées lost their old privileges. In 1790, when the départements were created,
1242-661: The French influence over the Hispanic Mark on medieval times, shared similar and singular features are noticeable between Gascon and other Latin languages on the other side of the border: Aragonese and far-western Catalan (Catalan of La Franja ). Gascon is also (with Spanish, Navarro-Aragonese and French) one of the Romance influences on the Basque language . Fief A fief ( / f iː f / ; Latin : feudum )
1296-837: The Pyrenees onto the banks of the Garonne River, maybe as far east as the Mediterranean in Roman times ( niska cited by Joan Coromines as the name of each nymph taking care of the Roman spa Arles de Tech in Roussillon , etc.). Basque gradually eroded across Gascony in the High Middle Ages (Basques from the Val d'Aran cited still circa 1000), with vulgar Latin and Basque interacting and mingling, but eventually with
1350-451: The Quatre-Vallées were too small to become a département , and against the wishes of their inhabitants, who wished to join with Comminges and Nébouzan to form a département , the Quatre-Vallées were joined with Bigorre , as well as with a fragment of Nébouzan and parts of Gascony, to form the département of Hautes-Pyrénées . The people of Quatre-Vallées objected bitterly, stressing the old historical and economic ties with Comminges, but it
1404-460: The center and in the east, Eastern Gascon; to the north-west, Western Gascon). A poll conducted in Béarn in 1982 indicated that 51% of the population could speak Gascon, 70% understood it, and 85% expressed a favourable opinion regarding the protection of the language. However, use of the language has declined dramatically over recent years as a result of the Francization taking place during
1458-467: The concerned region. It is mainly in Béarn that the population uses concurrently the term "Béarnais" to designate its Gascon forms. This is because of the political past of Béarn, which was independent and then part of a sovereign state (the shrinking Kingdom of Navarre ) from 1347 to 1620. In fact, there is no unified Béarnais dialect, as the language differs considerably throughout the province. Many of
1512-485: The descendants of Gaston de Lyon ceded the Quatre-Vallées to Henry III of Navarre, who owned many Pyrenean fiefs ( Béarn , Lower Navarre , Bigorre , County of Foix , Nébouzan ). In 1589, Henry III of Navarre became king Henry IV of France . In 1607, he united to the French crown those of his personal fiefs that were under French sovereignty (i.e. County of Foix, Bigorre, Quatre-Vallée, and Nébouzan, but not Béarn and Lower Navarre, which were sovereign countries outside of
1566-435: The differences in pronunciation can be divided into east, west, and south (the mountainous regions). For example, an 'a' at the end of words is pronounced "ah" in the west, "o" in the east, and "œ" in the south. Because of Béarn's specific political past, Béarnais has been distinguished from Gascon since the 16th century, not for linguistic reasons. Probably as a consequence of the linguistic continuum of western Romania and
1620-417: The documents) for the life of the vassal, or, sometimes extending to the second or third generation. By the middle of the 10th century, fee had largely become hereditary. The eldest son of a deceased vassal would inherit, but first he had to do homage and fealty to the lord and pay a " relief " for the land (a monetary recognition of the lord's continuing proprietary rights over the property). Historically,
1674-569: The end of privileges like the other parts of France did. At first it was planned that Quatre-Vallées would gather with the provinces of Nébouzan and Comminges , and that the three would elect common representatives to the Estates-General in Versailles . The Quatre-Vallées saw this as a breach of their Statutes and autonomy, and they sent a letter of protest to Versailles. Eventually, they were allowed to send their own representative to
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1728-600: The fees of the 11th and the 12th century derived from two separate sources. The first was land carved out of the estates of the upper nobility. The second source was allodial land transformed into dependent tenures. During the 10th century in northern France and the 11th century in France south of the Loire , local magnates either recruited or forced the owners of allodial holdings into dependent relationships and they were turned into fiefs. The process occurred later in Germany, and
1782-593: The former replacing the latter north of the east and middle Pyrenees and developing into Gascon. However, modern Basque has had lexical influence from Gascon in words like beira ("glass"), which is also seen in Galician-Portuguese . One way for the introduction of Gascon influence into Basque came about through language contact in bordering areas of the Northern Basque Country , acting as adstrate. The other one has taken place since
1836-485: The four constituent parts of the Quatre-Vallée province were, from south to north: Quatre-Vallées had a land area of 878 km (339 sq. miles), 58% being Aure, 22% being Magnoac, 17% being Barousse, and 3% being Neste. At the 1999 French census, there were 13,451 inhabitants on the territory of the former Quatre-Vallées province, 42% of these in Aure, 28% in Magnoac, 17% in Barousse, and 13% in Neste. The average density
1890-436: The king of England, died in horrible pain after drinking a potion prepared by the doctor to "cure" her. She was only 45. Gaston de Lyon immediately claimed the Quatre-Vallées. His attitude was so revolting that the duke of Alençon and the duke of Vendôme, relatives of Isabelle of Armagnac, sued Gaston de Lyon to prevent him from obtaining the Quatre-Vallées. The trial lasted for more than a century. At last, ruined and discouraged,
1944-525: The kingdom of France), and so Quatre-Vallées became part of the royal domain . Nonetheless, Quatre-Vallées kept all its privileges granted in the Middle Ages , and it also kept its provincial states until the French Revolution , which decided freely what was the level of taxation and how much was given to the king. The provincial states of Quatre-Vallées, made up of only ten members, met once
1998-582: The last centuries, as Gascon is rarely transmitted to young generations any longer (outside of schools, such as the Calandretas ). By April 2011, the Endangered Languages Project estimated that there were only 250,000 native speakers of the language. The usual term for Gascon is "patois", a word designating in France a non-official and usually devaluated dialect (such as Gallo ) or language (such as Occitan ), regardless of
2052-419: The low population density of the Quatre-Vallées have turned them into a haven for nature lovers and people wishing to discover some of the wildest parts of the Pyrenees, where a spectacular landscape is combined with a rich historical heritage and many old monuments. Gascon language Gascon ( English: / ˈ ɡ æ s k ə n / ; Gascon: [ɡasˈku(ŋ)] , French: [ɡaskɔ̃] )
2106-407: The name Occitan : instead, they argue that the latter is a cover term for a family of distinct lengas d'òc rather than dialects of a single language. Gascon, in particular, is distinct enough linguistically to have been described as a language in its own right. The language spoken in Gascony before Roman rule was part of the Basque dialectal continuum (see Aquitanian language ); the fact that
2160-472: The native Romance language of the inhabitants, were quite ahead of their time: they granted full liberty to the inhabitants of the Quatre-Vallées, free ownership of land, free use of communal ovens, free usage of the forests, and so on, as well as the right to be ruled by consuls representing the people. All these privileges and liberties were unprecedented in rural areas of medieval Europe, and were normally found only in chartered cities. The Statutes of 1300 are
2214-704: The origin of the special privileges and distinct character that the Quatre-Vallées kept until the French Revolution . The Quatre-Vallées were a buffer zone between the county of Comminges and the powerful county of Armagnac (in Gascony), and were coveted by both, until eventually in 1398 they became a possession of the counts of Armagnac . In 1462, Count Jean V of Armagnac ceded the fief of Quatre-Vallées to his incestuous sister Isabelle of Armagnac. Isabelle, who had given her fortune to charities, ended up in utter poverty, and on top of it she became paralyzed with hemiplegia . Taking advantage of her weakness, Gaston de Lyon, Lord of Bezaudun and seneschal of Toulouse, lured
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2268-428: The poor Isabelle into selling him the Quatre-Vallées against 5,127 gold crowns ( écus d'or ), which he never paid, always postponing payment in the hope of a rapid death of Isabelle. At the same time, in 1475, as the king of France obtained Roussillon from the king of Aragon, the Quatre-Vallées were officially detached from the kingdom of Aragon and entered the kingdom of France. However, they were still not part of
2322-564: The privileges bestowed on the Francs by the Kingdom of Navarre from the 12th to the early 14th centuries, but the variant spoken and used in written records is mainly the Occitan of Toulouse. The énonciatif (Occitan: enunciatiu ) system of Gascon, a system that is more colloquial than characteristic of normative written Gascon and governs the use of certain preverbal particles (including
2376-478: The right of high justice, etc.) in their lands, and some passed these rights to their own vassals. The privilege of minting official coins developed into the concept of seigniorage . In 13th-century Germany, Italy, England, France, and Spain the term "feodum" was used to describe a dependent tenure held from a lord by a vassal in return for a specified amount of knight service and occasional financial payments ( feudal incidents ). However, knight service in war
2430-410: The royal domain, and were just one of the many independent fiefs of the kingdom of France. Eventually, the maneuvering of Gaston de Lyon alerted higher authorities. Gaston de Lyon then sent his private doctor to Isabelle, and this one saw to it that she would not live long enough to embarrass his master. In August 1476, the paralyzed and forlorn Isabelle of Armagnac, who in her youth had been promised to
2484-554: The service of mercenaries . A list of several hundred such fees held in chief between 1198 and 1292, along with their holders' names and form of tenure, was published in three volumes between 1920 and 1931 and is known as The Book of Fees ; it was developed from the 1302 Testa de Nevill . The Bailiwick of Guernsey is a group of several of the Channel Islands that is a Crown Dependency . Guernsey still has feudal law and legal fiefs in existence today. Each fief has
2538-468: The sometimes emphatic affirmative que , the occasionally mitigating or dubitative e , the exclamatory be , and the even more emphatic ja / ye , and the "polite" se ) has also been attributed to the Basque substrate. Gascon is divided into three varieties or dialect sub-groups: The Jews of Gascony, who resided in Bordeaux , Bayonne and other cities, spoke until the beginning of the 20th century
2592-507: The three other valleys of Neste, Barousse, and Magnoac. Thus, the four valleys were unified under the counts of Labarthe, and began to be known as Quatre-Vallées. The counts of Labarthe were vassals of the kings of Aragon, and so Quatre-Vallées was part of the kingdom of Aragon . In June 1300, Count Bernard of Labarthe granted the 53 articles of the "Statutes, Customs, and Privileges of the Country of Quatre-Vallées". These statutes, written in
2646-413: The use of the lands and their income; the granting lord retained ultimate ownership of the fee and could, technically, recover the lands in case of disloyalty or death. In Francia , Charles Martel was the first to make large-scale and systematic use (the practice had remained sporadic until then) of the remuneration of vassals by the concession of the usufruct of lands (a beneficatium or " benefice " in
2700-414: The word 'Gascon' comes from the Latin root vasco / vasconem , which is the same root that gives us 'Basque', implies that the speakers identified themselves at some point as Basque. There is a proven Basque substrate in the development of Gascon. This explains some of the major differences that exist between Gascon and other Occitan dialects. A typically Gascon feature that may arise from this substrate
2754-681: Was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal , who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form of feudal allegiance, services or payments. The fees were often lands, land revenue or revenue-producing real property like a watermill , held in feudal land tenure : these are typically known as fiefs or fiefdoms . However, not only land but anything of value could be held in fee, including governmental office, rights of exploitation such as hunting, fishing or felling trees, monopolies in trade, money rents and tax farms . There never existed
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#17327654769282808-400: Was far less common than: A lord in late 12th-century England and France could also claim the right of: In northern France in the 12th and 13th centuries, military service for fiefs was limited for offensive campaigns to 40 days for a knight. By the 12th century, English and French kings and barons began to commute military service for cash payments ( scutages ), with which they could purchase
2862-479: Was still going on in the 13th century. In England, Henry II transformed them into important sources of royal income and patronage. The discontent of barons with royal claims to arbitrarily assessed "reliefs" and other feudal payments under Henry's son King John resulted in Magna Carta of 1215. Eventually, great feudal lords sought also to seize governmental and legal authority (the collection of taxes,
2916-403: Was to no avail. After that, the people of the Quatre-Vallées returned to their isolated and self-supporting lifestyle, away from the new trends and political changes that France experienced in the 19th century. The area remained very traditional well into the 20th century, and modernity progressed only slowly. Like the rest of the Pyrenees, Quatre-Vallées suffered a lot from rural exodus . Today,
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