Out of the village. Short-distance exile and local communities in Iberia (c. 700–1200)

Abstract

Mobility can be analysed from many perspectives. One promising method is lookingat push factors, namely the reasons why people moved from one place to another.1Among these factors was enforced mobility, owing to reasons of political persecution,enmity, or banishment. Involuntary exile was considered a damnation or condemna-tion (exilium: damnationem)2because it broke with social and material relations byisolating specific individuals or groups. When speaking of exile–be it outside thehouse, manor, village, city, or the home kingdom–sources rarely specify the distanceor duration of travel imposed on an individual separated from home, since the mainpurpose of this act was to make people invisible by severing ties with their family,friends and social networks, thereby ensuring a state of loneliness. Thus, exile was aform of enforced mobility generally implemented as a social punishment for commit-ting a crime, mostly homicide or high treason (or both). There exists little informationabout relevant cases in sources related to early medieval local societies in Iberia. Those few valuable sources remaining include charters and other documents relatedto activities executed inside local societies and by individuals or families in the north-western part of the peninsula. In opposition to chronicles and laws, which have al-ready been studied by focussing on upper-class elites, the intention of the present investigation is to examine the exiles of middle- and lower-class people and what this experience meant for them