REBENACQ, a medieval village

What does bastide mean ?

Rébenacq was founded as a bastide. What does that mean? In bilingual dictionaries, this French word is translated "walled town" but that doesn't fit most of the bastides you may see in southwestern France. Some of the most typical were even built up on the condition they had no wall at all!
The bastides are in fact new villages established around the 13th or 14th century. Many of them have kept their typical name, like « La Bastide Clairence » or « La Bastide Villefranche ». Most often the bastides were built around a wide square marketplace, to facilitate trade in cereal and other farm produce.

In most famous cases, the new town grew in a way that the reproduction of the same house pattern resulted in a typical network of roads. The resulting regular plan (a checked pattern) is impressive in a lot of bastides. Such a plan can sometimes be seen in towns which are not bastides. Conversely, some bastides have no regular plan; this is the case of bastides set up as an extension of former villages, for example around a medieval castle set up on a knoll (motte féodale).

Foundation texts of bastides indicate the rights and benefits granted and duties imposed on the future dwellers. At that time the rural population was getting larger, and it seemed convenient to the lords to ask people to settle down in new cities in order to gather taxes from them. To attract people, significant exemptions were granted by the founding authorities.

All the bastides were not set up as new villages; sometimes a former village was redesigned as a bastide. Recent historical studies show that authorities of the time created bastides not only to create a city, but also and perhaps mainly to change the land allotment.

In Béarn, foundation acts of bastides often include the regulations previously granted to inhabitants of Morlaas (a town which was, at a time, the capital city of Béarn).

When was Rébénacq founded?

Pierre de Bescat was lord of a parish located near the Ossau valley; he had the charge to collect the taxes due to the Bescat's church. He owned lands, a part of them were in moors. Roger d'Arévénacq, lieutenant of Gaston Fébus, Count of Béarn, convinced Pierre de Bescat to give a part of his lands, which were fallow, to set up a bastide. Gaston Fébus gave his guarantee to the rights granted to the future inhabitants by an act signed June 25^th, 1347. Like many other bastides both the local lord and the powerful overlord signed the act together (historians call this type of act contrat de pareage)

How was Rébénacq founded?

The current map of the rural districts shows that the Rébénacq area has been taken from the Bescat's lands. Seasonally, herds of cows and flocks of sheep moved across these lands. From immemorial time, the paths went along the ridges of the hills above the Néez River valley where Rébénacq is located. One of these paths goes to Jurançon and Pau. At Rébénacq, you can cross the Néez, and then gain access to the second ridge, and arrive at the village of Bosdarros.

The foundation act of Rébénacq is kept in the Public Record Office in Pau. A copy was made in the 15^th century and the text was recently translated in current French from the language spoken in Béarn at the time. It states that Rébénacq was set up on non cultivated lands, so we are sure that Rébénacq was a new city, and not an extension of a former one. Only three noblemen signed the deed, Roger de Rébénacq, Pierre de Bescat and a key figure of the Ossau valley.

The Rébénacq foundation act provides the exemption of military duties for fifteen years. There was to be a market on Thursday, twice a month. Two mills were pledged, one for flour and one for wool.
Our new town took its name from one of the founding fathers Roger d'Arrévénacq. The foundation act was signed « the day after the St-John the Baptist's day », and the church was and still is dedicated to this saint. The village's day is still celebrated in June.

Let's now have a look at the land register. The foundation act specifies the size of plots of land provided for the new inhabitants, in cubits, a measure used at that time (about half a meter). We can deduce, from the actual houses, that the marketplace should have been lined by 8 individual plots in its shorter side. This means that a plot was about seven yards wide, half a yard being left free between the houses.

Since the same distances are found in every pattern all around the marketplace, we may conclude that the old paths Chemin d'Arnaude, and Chemin de Cazaux surrounded the village. Probably no walls were built, perhaps only a paling.

Rébénacq has been located between three little streams, and the slopes made the drainage system easier.

The land surveyors of the time used Pythagoras rules to draw orthogonal lines. Because we can find only two right angles, we can presume the point from which the initial land measuring was made. Rébénacq was set up to receive about fifty houses. The plots of land of today's houses (built from 17^th century on) still nicely reflect the initial pattern.

Besides the patch of land to build their house, each new villager was given lands outside to cultivate: normally what a farmer could plough at that time during 36 days (something like 7 hectares). In Rébénacq, the total area of land devoted to the new villagers was more than five hundred hectares, about half of the actual rural district of Rebénacq. This point demonstrates that a bastide was set up not only, and perhaps not first, to found a city but to operate a land reform.

Later on, some farmer established a hut in the middle of their cultivated lands in order to live near the place were they worked.

From the XIV^{th century until today.}

^{Gaston Fébus implemented a census of the population in 1385. At that time, Rebénacq had 25 households. In 1695, Rébénacq had 400 inhabitants. The lands belonging to a castle in the North had remained preserved for farming use, preventing the extension of the village in that direction. The village was developed along the main stream (the Néez River) and also towards the east.}

^{Later on, some farmer established a hut in the middle of their cultivated lands in order to live near the place were they worked.}

^{Around 1779 (that is ten years before the "Revolution"), the royal intendant d'Etigny drew new roads. He was fond of thermal baths, and wanted to have a more convenient road to go to Les Eaux Chaudes (the warm waters) and to Les Eaux Bonnes (the good waters), two spas upstream of the valley. J.B. de Bitaubé built  in 1776 the castle you can see today on the western hill.}

^{Just after the Revolution, the older castle was sold, and then destroyed  in 1794. The associated lands remain until now without virtually any building. Private mills were set up along the Néez. Finally, in the last decades, the school has been built, then the bypass, and finally a housing development.}

^{You can still see the remnants of this history when you visit Rébénacq. Aerial photos show that the landscape reflects pretty much each step of our village's development.}