AFAIK jubilee is a biblical expression and it’s not clear if it happened at all in ancient Israel and certainly not every 50 years (as mandated in the Torah) but it certainly happened unregularly in nearby mesopotania (that’s where the inspiration comes from).
I’m not away of anything comparable in medieval Europe. Peasants were considered part of the land and paid regular tribute but didn’t pile up debts or did they?
No I say up to the end of medieval times because shortly thereafter (After a brief 30-year kerfuffle) is when we see the first emergence of what we’d recognize today as nation states. Though I do not refer only to debt cancellations that go by that specific name, “jubilee” is just what we often refer to it in the west. It was done to varying degrees in many ancient cultures.
Around 1300 the church kind of coopted “jubilee” as being a bulk forgiveness of sin rather than financial debt (I think the Catholic Church did one as recently as 2000). But traditions like May Day and various festivals of fools kept the spirit of social inversion and and anti-hierarchy alive since then. We still practice echoes of those traditions today in things like April Fool’s, “opposite day”, our current labor-centric May Day, etc.
AFAIK jubilee is a biblical expression and it’s not clear if it happened at all in ancient Israel and certainly not every 50 years (as mandated in the Torah) but it certainly happened unregularly in nearby mesopotania (that’s where the inspiration comes from).
I’m not away of anything comparable in medieval Europe. Peasants were considered part of the land and paid regular tribute but didn’t pile up debts or did they?
No I say up to the end of medieval times because shortly thereafter (After a brief 30-year kerfuffle) is when we see the first emergence of what we’d recognize today as nation states. Though I do not refer only to debt cancellations that go by that specific name, “jubilee” is just what we often refer to it in the west. It was done to varying degrees in many ancient cultures.
Around 1300 the church kind of coopted “jubilee” as being a bulk forgiveness of sin rather than financial debt (I think the Catholic Church did one as recently as 2000). But traditions like May Day and various festivals of fools kept the spirit of social inversion and and anti-hierarchy alive since then. We still practice echoes of those traditions today in things like April Fool’s, “opposite day”, our current labor-centric May Day, etc.