Page 36 - Changing Living Spaces

Luca Mocarelli and Paolo Tedeschi

turbed the social peace in the community); (d) the communities obtained
the rights to use the properties from the state; (e) the buildings or struc-
tures were constructed through the collective labour of the villagers (e.g.
a stable, hayloft, furnace, mill, or sawmill); (f) the state granted the use or
management of that property (e.g. a bridge, a road, a forest) in exchange
for a share of the fruits and/or full maintenance (this usually happened
in the valleys that belonged to the Republic of Venice).
The goal of common real estate ownership was to improve the quality
of life of the inhabitants in a harsh environment like that of the Alpine
valleys. For the poorest families, the fruits of the common property were
usually essential for survival, and this explains why they received a sig-
nificant part of the proceeds. The remaining fruits were distributed to
other inhabitants who owned real estate and paid the corresponding tax-
es; the distribution concerned wood, hay, shrubs, and fruits such as wal-
nuts, chestnuts, berries, etc. It was also possible to share cash – the in-
come from the lease of pastures, parts of forests and rural buildings.
All the families living in the village had the following rights on the
common real estate: the erbatico (to gather up the wild grass, medicinal
herbs and sods), the legnatico (to gather up shrubs, firewood and all wood
waste that could not be used to produce charcoal), the pascolo (to drive
their cattle to pasture, but only the bovines, because the sheep had to use
specific and limited areas, while the goats were forbidden everywhere),
and the spigolatura (to gather up all the seeds left after the harvest).
Families also had the right to collect leaves (to prepare bedding for the
cattle) and stones (for building), as well as wild vegetables and fruits. For
the payment of a fee, it was also possible to plant trees (usually chestnuts
and mulberry trees) and harvest their fruits for years, or collect waste
in the woods and use it as fertilizer and, in autumn, to spread on the
streets of the village a layer of dry grasses and straw that usually served
as fodder and bedding for the cattle. During the autumn and winter, an-
imals (and sometimes people) left their droppings on this mantle, which
absorbed them: thus, in the early spring, the families who had paid for
such a right cleaned the roads and fertilized their plots of land. Finally, all
families could rent a pasture for cattle breeding and some wood for fell-
ing; in this case, however, they were in competition with the ‘foreigners’
who offered higher rents.
The main problem for the local administration was obviously to find
the right compromise between the rights of the villagers and the correct
use of the commons; it was difficult to control and coordinate the use of

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