Héritage, famille et liberté de disposer. Le régime castillan à la lumière des régimes coutumiers français

Abstract

A very different conception of power inspired in France the behaviour of the populations. In provinces under customs, parents were not the powerless followers of usage collectively accepted. Studies completed three decades ago have showed adjustable norms and flexible practice. Both customs and written law in France, statutory rights and castillan laws in Spain, established a different division of power. Whereas in Spain and in the south of France law was meant to establish a real head of a family, endowed with wide powers customs drawn from usage endeavoured to set limits to the parents liberties. Customs regimes anxious to uphold the interest of the inheritors were both the most egaliterian and inegaliterian according whether it was about to perserving the family house, the rights of the sons or those of the children whatever their sex. Patriarchal regimes in the south of France and in the Iberianpeninsula, egalitarian by chance, were bent on preserving the main points, namely the rank and the power of fathers through more or less inequality.