Domus uel curtis. Residencia campesina, propiedad y explotación agraria en la Hispania visigoda

Abstract

The contraposition domus uel curtis, taken up by a law of Chindasvinto, brings us into contact with an essential problem of land ownership and exploitation in Late Antique Hispania. The contraposition seems to imply a fluid link between residence and the exploitation of peasant property involving a whole building and productive environment. The term curtis constitutes the central problem of the law, and to understand it we can only turn to the development of the law, framed in a context of peasant violence, both between owners and dependents and between free men. It shows a model of the functioning of property and peasant production relationships in the frame of the last decades of the Visigothic kingdom.