Droit du seigneur (Sagranella)

The droit du seigneur, or ius primae noctis, is the supposed right of a feudal lord to sleep with a vassal’s bride on her wedding night. Most historians treat it as a myth, or at best a symbolic fee: no reliable medieval law codifies it. The idea owes much of its fame to Beaumarchais’s Marriage of Figaro (1778) and to Mozart’s opera of it (1786).

What survived in the South was the reality the legend stood for: the latifondo. These were huge estates worked by landless day-labourers (braccianti) under a steward’s absolute authority. Hiring was day by day in the piazza, and pay and hours were whatever the estate decided. Abuse of women workers was a recurring complaint well into the twentieth century. The post-war land reforms of 1950 began breaking up the great estates.