from Hacker News

Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

by hiharryhere on 5/25/21, 7:32 AM with 211 comments

by pmlnr on 5/25/21, 8:27 AM
In the UK, during the purchase of our house we had to take a "chancel liability insurance", because our freehold once belonced to a rectory, so to protect ourselves from repair liability towards a chapel that has been here for centuries, we had to pay a one-off insurance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability
Leftover laws are weird things.
EDIT: PS: sadly, the legendary, obligatory archery practice - http://www.lordsandladies.org/the-butts.htm SFW ; "butt" was the name of an archery range - was removed from the law in England: https://loweringthebar.net/2010/06/do-englishmen-still-have-...
by rini17 on 5/25/21, 3:09 PM
Consider yourself lucky that you can reliably trace land ownership for centuries. Eastern Europe went through multiple upheavals in last 100 years and every time the wheel of history turned, quite a lot of land was dispossessed/repossessed by law.
In Slovakia we basically ended up with two versions of land registry (called register "C" and "E") and the ongoing effort to reconcile them. Many properties are said to be "nevysporiadané" = "not settled up" which means all the owners are not known - previous landowner died or emigrated and it waits for their descendants to claim it. It isn't possible to build anything on these lots.
by Spooky23 on 5/25/21, 12:30 PM
I grew up in an area of upstate New York where the land was mostly apportioned into feudal estates by the Dutch. There were anti-rent rebellions in the 19th century and the descendants of the patroons stopped collecting the rent.
But… folks never had title to their land and were effectively stuck until a law was passed in the 1960s. It’s really interesting as the effect is that many families have lived there for 400 years, and newcomers all appeared in the 1970s onward.
by 3v1n0 on 5/25/21, 10:12 AM
The news isn't so new (https://www.lastampa.it/topnews/primo-piano/2021/03/12/news/...), but doesn't look something that will really end up well for those "barons" (no title is recognized in Italy - as should be everywhere).
However if they want the rights, they're possible legible also of having to pay to the tenants for all the improvements they did so far, and very likely taxes on the property.
So... Might end up a quite bad move.
by azernik on 5/25/21, 8:36 AM
Note that in a common law system, this would be thrown out of court under either "acquiescence" (if you don't raise a fuss for a very long time when someone unknowingly infringes your rights, you can lose those rights), or "laches" (if you wait long enough to make a legal claim that the defendant is injured by e.g. having made economic decisions in ignorance of that claim).
Not sure about the equivalent Italian law, but I would be deeply surprised if there isn't something similar.
by pjc50 on 5/25/21, 8:28 AM
Now wondering which European countries still have intact feudal law. Scotland abolished feudal tenure in 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_Feudal_Tenure_etc... ; most of the feu burdens were abolished or explicitly ported across. England&Wales still retains the feudal system in places and occasionally people are hit by "chancel repair liability" or somesuch.
The chivalric court still exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Court_of_Chivalry "prior to [1954], the Court had not sat for two centuries and before hearing the case, the Court first had to rule whether it still existed"
As does the last relic of real feudal power: the House of Lords, the last of Europe's unelected legislatures outside a microstate.
Conversely there are a few recipients of ancient national debt: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-bond-still-pays-inter...
by JoeAltmaier on 5/25/21, 1:51 PM
I wonder what obligations the Swiss lords have been neglecting. Perhaps the townsfolk could bill for absent services?
They are not peasants, as such things likely don't exist in modern Italy. So how can they owe anything?
The Swiss baron's descendants - are they still barons? Can they still hold a fief?
Perhaps the Swiss baron's lord can be convinced to levy a similar tax on them, and return the money to the town.
It's very interesting.
by mustafa_pasi on 5/25/21, 4:14 PM
I find these property rights that go back centuries a bit dubious. How was the property obtained in the first place? There were no modern laws at the time and common people had much fewer rights and protections. If the property was not obtained through outright violence, it was obtained in an environment that very much discriminated against common people, and God knows how much fraud and deception occurred. It actually happened in my hometown a couple of years ago that some people produced a document from the 1500s entitling them to a huge expanse of land. Now at the time the land was conquered through war, and then that empire collapsed and another occupying empire took its place and that one also collapsed, and yet another foreign people came and went before independence was finally declared. The people who actually lived on this land were always the same people. But somehow they don't have the right to the property that they lived on for almost a millennium, because a bunch of foreigners stole it through violence a few centuries ago and then handed what wasn't theirs to other foreigners. And now these foreigners think they have a claim to this land because their great ancestor murdered thousands of local people and took it for himself. The whole thing is ridiculous.
by Y_Y on 5/25/21, 8:11 AM
Maybe they should apply to the king of Italy for relief, since it is from his divine right to all the land that the fief is granted to his vassals.
by riccardomc on 5/25/21, 10:13 AM
Italian sources[1] say that the right of the Auguet Barons is 30% of the sale price of a house in the oldest part of the village. This is very different from what the SMH article says.
[1]https://www.iltempo.it/attualita/2021/03/12/news/nicola-zing...
by rikroots on 5/25/21, 7:21 PM
A relatively common local tax in mediaeval England was a 'Scott' charge on property and/or land, used to fund some locally necessary common good. Because the charge was most often area-based, landowners/householders just outside of the charging area were said to get away 'Scott free' - a phrase still frequently encountered in UK English.
For instance in the area where I grew up (Romney Marshes, Kent) a Scott tax used to be levied on local householders and landowners to help pay for the local sea defences (because: most of the Romney Marshes is below sea level). People living on land above sea level were exempt from the charge, thus 'Scott free'. The levy was paid in cash or thorn bushes; failure to pay led to an ear being nailed to the church door[1].
And the tax is still - apparently - alive today ... according to a brief report in the UK's Law Society's Gazette[2].
[1] - https://theromneymarsh.net/newhall
[2] - https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/unearthing-history/68506.a...
by ajdlinux on 5/25/21, 8:28 AM
Here's a fun English type of real property right that has taken some people by surprise in recent years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability
by LatteLazy on 5/25/21, 8:31 AM
When my brother bought his house (UK, built in the early 2000s), we had to buy insurance against the local church needing a new roof. The residents of the area were responsible for local church upkepe because of a medieval edict. It was only about £40 luckily...
by avereveard on 5/25/21, 8:22 AM
What a boutade. Even if all fiefdom weren't canceled after the demonarchization process, Italy still has usucapione laws that are fairly short and to the point.
by kuroguro on 5/25/21, 2:47 PM
Reminds me of the old obscure UK laws that make it illegal to carry a plank on the pavement or "play annoying games" (lol).
https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/app/uploads/2015/03/Legal_Oddities...
by koolba on 5/25/21, 4:20 PM
> The feudal arrangement is so unusual it has prompted questions in parliament. Last year, MPs asked the economy minister if there were legal avenues to abolish the “burden”.
That seems like it would have the reverse effect of acknowledging its legitimacy, at the very least retroactively.
by znpy on 5/25/21, 1:48 PM
funnily enough, this hasn't come up on italian newspapers.
I checked the Corriere (corriere.it), Repubblica (repubblica.it) and il fatto quotidiano (ilfattoquotidiano.it) since they're three different voices with vastly different opinions on what to report and what not to report.
interesting.
by refurb on 5/25/21, 2:00 PM
Mexican Ranchos are still recognized in California.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranchos_of_California
There was a process for them to be “registered” after the US took over. And many were split up as the owners had little cash to pay for upkeep.
But there are properties that derive from ranchos that carry on the rights. I recall on oceanside plot where beach access was not open to the public (contravening CA law) as it wasn’t a requirement in Mexican law.
by vmception on 5/25/21, 5:01 PM
Why wasn’t there tax collected for 60 years?
Which means it was being collected even in the 1950s
Did a bookkeeper die?
I think it will be useful to know what happened back then
by brokencode on 5/25/21, 9:01 PM
This sounds like a perfect way to destroy your family’s reputation. I can’t imagine the thought process and sense of entitlement that leads you to try to become a feudal lord in the 21st century, but I know that I could never get along with somebody like that.
by markvdb on 5/25/21, 8:48 AM
A similar feudal tax was still levied in part of the Netherlands until 2014. [0]
[0] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dertiende_penning
by ww520 on 5/25/21, 3:49 PM
Taxation without representation. Time to have tea in the next meeting.
by notorandit on 5/25/21, 1:45 PM
No way. The owner of the land is inscribed in the cadastral books. If he's from Swiss, then he can collect the money. But also pay the overdue land taxes. If he is not ...
by TomMckenny on 5/25/21, 9:12 PM
But if they called it ‘rent’ instead of ‘tax’ there would be far less outrage. Strange value system.
by oriettaxx on 5/26/21, 1:08 AM
before refusing to pay, I would first check all the figures: that tax could be lower of what they do pay now as Italian council taxes (pretty expensive) :)