By Michael Adams aka Morgoth, c. November 1988

"The three charters described below show relations between lords and peasants in twelfth and thirteenth-century Catalonia. They are from the cathedral archives of Vic which lies about 30 miles north of Barcelona. Until the late eleventh century, most peasants were tenants, that is they held their land from a lord, but the rent they paid was usually not burdensome, and they were not subject to that lord by any personal bond. This began to change in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries as lords imposed more harsh forms of control and tenants became serfs, that is, unfree peasants bound to their lord by more than the simple payment of rent."