Making good use of pacts:: passeries in the Western Pyrenees at the end of the Middle Ages

The "lies et passeries" treaties between different village communities in the Pyrenees and the vicinity were made after a quite stereotyped sequence: acts of violence strictly codified by the custom, the enforcement of a peace to restore order, and finally an agreement to specify a new stable situation. This leads us to consider violence not to be the expression of a brutality proper to archaic societies but the perfectly ritualized expression of a demand for negotiations, an element of social interaction Agreements often rely on arbitration but can sometimes be turned into judgments. They consist of three distinct parts: the peace on which the parties agreed, the religious and financial compensations for the aftermath of the conflict, and the determination of new rights relating to the used of grazing, woods, village estate ... The procedures do not take into account the viscount's authority. The Bearnese society actually develops a political discourse in favor of treaties and to the detriment of judgments in all types of affairs, which originates in the very idea of power as asserted in the preamble of the "fors" at the end of the 14th century. This practice takes root in a society whose basic cell, called "ostau" or "maison casaliere", asserts the predominance of collective organizations over people.