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Problems of Comparing Rural Societies in Early Medieval Western Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Chris Wickham
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Extract

There is surprisingly little early medieval social history being written. In recent years, more specifically economic history has had a remarkable rebirth, thanks to the (largely unconnected) efforts of archaeologists on the one side and Belgian and German historians on the other; but the study of society in general, outside the restricted spheres of the aristocracy and the church, has been neglected. I speak schematically; obviously, there are notable exceptions. But it is significant that noone, in any country, has thought it worthwhile to attempt a synthesis of early medieval European socio-economic history as a whole that could replace those of Alfons Dopsch or, maybe, André Déléage. It would be hard; but people have tried it for the centuries after 900, with interesting (even if inevitably controversial) results. Why not earlier? Richard Sullivan recently lamented the conservatism of most Carolingian scholarship; in the arena of social history, he could easily have extended his complaints back to 500.

Type
Multiple Kingdoms and Provinces
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 2 , December 1992 , pp. 221 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1992

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References

1 I thank Leslie Brubaker, Steven Bassett, Paul Fouracre and John Haldon for commenting on drafts of this article, and Wendy Davies, Timothy Reuter and Ian Wood for advice. The arguments owe much to a decade's discussions with the Bucknell group.

2 Notes for this article will have to be almost arbitrarily selective. For the archaeologists, see e.g. Hodges, R., Dark Age Economics (1982)Google Scholar; Randsborg, K., The First Millennium A.D. in Europe and the Mediterranean (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar. For historians, see the detailed bibliographical survey by W. Rösener in Strukturen der Grundherrschaft im frühen Mittelalter, ed. idem (Gottingen, 1989), 9–28—the whole book is the most recent of several analyses of one major economic issue, the great estate in Francia. The French have been slower, with few exceptions, e.g. Lebecq, S., Marchands et navigateurs Jrisons du haut mqyen âge (Lille, 1983)Google Scholar; Toubert, P., ‘Le part du grand domaine dans le décollage économique de l'Occident’, Flaran, X (1988), 53–86Google Scholar.

3 One exception is the history of early Byzantium, for which see e.g. Patlagean, E., Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance (Paris, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haldon, J. F., Byzantium in the Seventh Century (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar. Another is ‘new cultural’ history: e.g. Brown, P. R. L., The Cult of the Saints (1981)Google Scholar; Fouracre, P., ‘Merovingian History and Merovingian Hagiography’, Past and Present cxxvii (1990), 3–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Surveys: Dopsch, A., The Economic and Social Foundations of European Civilisation (1937)Google Scholar; idem, Die Wirtschafisentwicklung der Karolingerzeit (Cologne, 1962); and the unjustly neglected Déléage, A., La vie économique et sociale de la Bourgogne dans le haut mqyen âge (Macon, 1941)Google Scholar.

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6 The remit of ‘classic feudalism’ has recently been extended southwards, by Structures féodales et féodalisme dans l'Occident méditerranéen (Rome, 1980)Google Scholar.

7 I have discussed this point elsewhere too, e.g. in Fentress, J. W. and Wickham, C.J., Social Memory (Oxford, 1992), 127Google Scholar. The relationship of the whole issue to the current vogue for historiography and discourse theory should be obvious; I hope that literary analysis does not recede from the discipline before properly deconstructing early medievalists.

8 The most recent statement of the theory, with bibliography, is Durliat, J., Les finances publiques de Dioc;étien aux Carolingiens (Sigmaringen, 1990)Google Scholar.

9 E.g. Schulze, H. K., ‘Rodungsfreiheit und Königsfreiheit’, Historische Zeitschrift, CCXLX (1974), 529–50Google Scholar; Schmitt, J., Untersuchungen zu den liberi homines der Karolingerzeit (Frankfurt, 1977)Google Scholar which includes a full bibliography of previous critiques (see esp. those of Müller-Mertens and Tabacco); Staab, F., ‘A Reconsideration of the Ancestry of Modern Political Liberty’, Viator, XI (1980), 51–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 E.g. Staab, F., Untersuchungen zur Gesellschafi am Mittelrhein in der Karolingerzeit (Wiesbaden, 1975), 261–81Google Scholar; and even his critic, M. Gockel, in a review of ibid, in Nassauische Annakn, LXXXVII (1976), 309–15. The issue does not worry everyone; but recent German historiography on peasant owners remains hesitant.

11 A bibliography of major theorists, such as Sánchez-Albornoz, Pastor, Bonnassie, can be found in the most recent survey, de Cortazar, J. A. García, La sociedad rural en la España medieval (Madrid, 1988), 1–54Google Scholar. See below, nn. 28—9.

12 See Wickham, C. J., ‘Rural Society in Carolingian Europe’, in New Cambridge Medieval History II, ed. McKitterick, R. (Cambridge, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

13 See e.g. the classic short synthesis of early medieval economic history, Duby, G., The Early Growth of the European Economy (1974), 104–11Google Scholar; and, further, Fossier, R., ‘Les tendances de l'économie: stagnation ou croissance?’, Settimane di studio, xxvii (1979), 261–90Google Scholar; idem in Flaran, X (1988), 182–4; contrast, e.g. Untersuchungen zu Handel und Verkehr der vor- und frühgeschichtlichen Zeit in Mittel- und Nordeuropa, III, IV, eds. Düwel, K. et al. (Göttingen, 1985–7)Google Scholar, and now, for the French, Toubert and Lebecq, as n. 2.

14 See e.g. Bordone, R., ‘Tema cittadino e “ritorno alla terra” nella storiografia comunale recente’, Quaderni storici, LII (1983), 255–77Google Scholar; or the recent debate in Archeologia medievale, XIII (1986), 31–78Google Scholar; XIV (1987), 27–46; XV (1988), 105–24, 649–51. It should be noted that ‘foreign’ historians tend to adopt the conceptual framework of the country they write on; and, if they do not, they are often ignored.

15 See, for pathological examples, Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., The Governance of Medieval England (Edinburgh, 1963), 22–41Google Scholar; Brown, R. A., ‘The Norman Conquest’, Supra, ser. 5, XVII (1967), 109–30Google Scholar. More recently, things have partially improved.

16 Quoted in Carr, E. H., What is History? (1964), 9Google Scholar.

17 Brunner, H., Deutsche Rechtsgeschkhte (Leipzig-Munich, 1906–28)Google Scholar; Ganshof, F. L., e.g. ‘Le statut de la ferame dans la monarchie franque’, Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin, XII (1962), 5–58Google Scholar; Njeussychin, A. I., Die Entstehung der abhängigen Bauemschaft (Berlin, 1961)Google Scholar; for Dopsch, see above, n. 3.

18 See The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, eds. Davies, W. and Fouracre, P. (Cambridge, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. By the ninth century, some judges were literate and knew the codes reasonably well, as McKitterick, R., The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar has strongly argued for Francia; indeed, the capitularies sometimes had immediate administrative consequences—see Nelson, J. L., ‘Literacy in Carolingian Government’, in The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe, ed. McKitterick, R. (Cambridge, 1990), 258–96Google Scholar; but the point remains.

19 See, for surveys with bibliography, James, E., ‘Burial and Status in the Early Medieval West’, Supra, ser. 5, XXXLX (1989), 23–40Google Scholar; Steuer, H., ‘Archaeology and History: Proposals on the Social Structure of the Merovingian Kingdom’, in The Birth of Europe, ed. Randsborg, K. (Rome, 1989), 100–22Google Scholar.

20 See further Wickham, ‘Rural Society’.

21 E.g. Davies, W., Small Worlds (1988)Google Scholar; Staab, Untersuchungen; Rossetti, G., Societá e istituzioni nel contado lombardo durante il medioevo: Cologno Monzese, i (Milan, 1968)Google Scholar.

22 See, for a stimulating framework, the historical models in Runciman, W. G., A Treatise on Social Theory, II (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Bloch, M., Feudal Society (Cambridge, 1961), esp. 443–7Google Scholar.

24 E.g. Rossetti, , Societá e istituzioni, 42–140Google Scholar; Fumagalli, V., Terra e societá nell'Italia padana (Turin, 1976)Google Scholar; Balzaretti, R., ‘The Lands of Saint Ambrose’ (Ph.D thesis, University of London, 1989)Google Scholar; Wickham, C. J., The Mountains and the City (Oxford, 1988), 40–67Google Scholar.

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26 Tabacco, , Struggle for Power, 151–208Google Scholar; cf. Fichtenau, H., The Carolingian Empire (Oxford, 1963), 104–55Google Scholar; and, for France, Poly, J.-P. and Bournazel, E., La mutation féodale (Paris, 1980)Google Scholar.

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29 Bonnassie, , Catalogne, 539–733Google Scholar; La formaciö i expansiö del feudalism catalá, ed. Portella, J. (Girona, 1985–6)Google Scholar.

30 Bonnassie, Catalogne, 816–17Google Scholar.

31 Levy, E., West Roman Vulgar Law. The Law of Property (Philadelphia, 1951)Google Scholar. For exceptions to the hegemony of Roman law, e.g. Wickham, C. J., ‘European Forests in the Early Middle Ages’, Settimane di studio, XXXVII (1990), 479–548, at 483–99Google Scholar.

32 Maitland, F. W., Domesday Book and Beyond (1960 edition), 272–90, 374–97Google Scholar; see further below, nn. 37–9.

33 Pactus legis Salicae, ed. Eckhardt, K. A. (Hanover, 1962)Google Scholar; Ine, cap. 19, 70, Alfred, cap. IO (in Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, I, ed. Iiebermann, F., Halle, 1903)Google Scholar; Lex Baiwarwrum, cap. 3.1, ed. Schwind, E. von (Hanover, 1926)Google Scholar.

34 For Königsfreie, see above, n. 9. For aristocrats, the best recent survey is GrahnHoek, H., Die fränkische Oberschkht im 6. Jahrhundert (Sigmaringen, 1976), with bibliographyGoogle Scholar. For the quote, Wood, I. N., 'Disputes in late fifth- and sixth-century Gaul', in Davies, and Fouracre, , Disputes, 7–22, at 11Google Scholar.

35 Davies, Small Worlds; Bois, G., La mutation de l'an mil (Paris, 1989), 63–114Google Scholar; LauransonRosaz, C., L'Auvergne et ses marges (Le Puy, 1987), 397–404Google Scholar.

36 Wickham, ‘Rural Society’; cf. Staab, , Untersuchungen, 262–78Google Scholar.

37 See e.g. The Agrarian History of England and Waks, I. 2. ed. Finberg, H. P. R. (Cambridge, 1972), 430–66Google Scholar; English Medieval Settlement, ed. Sawyer, P. H. (1979), 1–34Google Scholar; and below, n. 39.

38 I have benefited from discussion here with Steven Bassett, Nicholas Brooks, Chris Dyer, Ros Faith, Dawn Hadley, Andrew Wareham and Patrick Wormald.

39 Aston, T. H., ‘The Origins of the Manor in England’, Supra, ser. 5, VIII (1958), 59–83Google Scholar; Finberg, H. P. R., Lucema (1964), 131–43Google Scholar. For non-Roman law in Francia, see above, n. 31.

40 The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, ed. Bassett, S. R. (Leicester, 1989)Google Scholar.

41 See e.g. Mann, M., The Sources of Social Power, I (Cambridge, 1986), 34–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. for the stability of rank societies, with a bibliography; Runciman, , Social Theory, II. 78–9, 148–52, 185–90Google Scholar, esp. for distinctions between them; but the list of theorists is huge. (It would, at a minimum, include Marx, Godelier, Sahlins—see below, n. 47—and Eric Wolf.)

42 See Wickham, C. J., ‘The Other Transition’, Past and Present CIII (1984), 3–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a slightly fuller discussion, with the Marxist framework more explicit; and Kula, W., An Economic Theory of the Feudal System (1976)Google Scholar. For the third early medieval system, that based on state tax-raising, see the models in Haldon, J. F., State Theory, State Autonomy, and the Pre-Modem State (1992)Google Scholar, which includes discussion of previous analyses; H. Berktay is preparing a book on the same theme.

43 For methodology, e.g. Byock, J. L., ‘Saga Form, Oral Prehistory, and the Icelandic Social Context’, Mew Literary History, XVI (1984–5), 153—73Google Scholar; Andersson, T.M. and Miller, W.I., Law and Literature in Medieval Iceland (Stanford, 1989)Google Scholar.

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45 Víga-Glúms saga, cap. 1; Brennu-Njáls saga, cap. 119; Laxdœla saga, caps. 27, 46; Ljosvetninga saga, caps. 6, 7–on which see Andersson, and Miller, , Law and Literature, 51–5Google Scholar (note that this story of Guómundr had a very clear moral edge— ibid., 100— and, doubtless, thirteenth-century resonance). The sagas are ed. in the Íslenzk Fornrit series (Reykjavik), respectively vols. IX (1956), XII (1954), V (1934), X (1940).

46 Vita Lebuini antiqua, ed. Hofmeister, A. in M. G. H., Scriptores, XXX, 2 (Leipzig, 1934), 793Google Scholar; for context, see e.g. Iintzel, M., Ausgewählte Schriften, I (Berlin, 1961), 115–27, 286–92Google Scholar; Löwe, H., ‘Entstehungszeit und Quellenwert der Vita Lebuini’, Deutsches Archiv, XXI (1965), 345–70Google Scholar; Epperlein, S., Herrschqft und Volk im karolingischen Imperium (Berlin, 1969)Google Scholar. For the Liutizi, , Tkietmari Merseburgensis episcopi chronicon, ed. Holzmann, R. (Berlin, 1955), vi. 25Google Scholar; Fritze, W. H., ‘Beobachtungen zu Entstehung und Wesen des Lutizenverbundes’, Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschkmds, VII (1958), 1–38Google Scholar. I am grateful to Timothy Reuter for help with these references.

47 Sahlins, M., ‘Poor Man, Rich Man, Big-Man, Chief’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, V (1962–1963), 285–303Google Scholar; see further idem, Stone Age Economics (1974), 130–48.

48 See, for a stimulating survey of the major texts (Ine, Beowulf, The Finnsberg Fragment, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 757, etc.), Abels, R. P., Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (1988), 11–42Google Scholar; our interpretative frameworks differ. Compare the impermanence of Irish dependence set out in Críth Gablach, ed. Binchy, D. A. (Dublin, 1970)Google Scholar, which must have had similar results.

49 See e.g. Hodges, R., The Hamwih Pottery (London, 1981), 61–94Google Scholar; Excavations at Dorestad, I, eds. van Es, W. A. and Verwers, W. J. H. (Amersfoort, 1980), 56–160Google Scholar.

50 See, for surveys, Kirchner, H., ‘La ceramica’, in Barcelo, M. et al. Arqueohgía medieval (Barcelona, 1988), 88–133Google Scholar; Lloret, S. Gutierrez, Ceramica comun paleoandalusi del sur de Alicante (Alicante, 1988)Google Scholar; Arthur, P. and Whitehouse, D., ‘La ceramica dell'Italia meridionale’, Archeobgia medievale, IX (1982), 39–46Google Scholar.

51 Hurst, J. G., ‘The Pottery’, in Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Wilson, D.M. (Cambridge, 1976), 283–348, at 299–303Google Scholar; for recent bibliography, Hamerow, H., ‘Settlement Mobility and the “Middle Saxon Shift”’, Anglo-Saxon England XX (1991), 1–17, at 13–14Google Scholar. Outside East Anglia, its distribution is, significantly, restricted to high-status sites.

52 Compare the comments in Hodges, R., The Anglo-Saxon Achievement (1989), e.g. 186–96Google Scholar, which, despite disagreements, seems to me the most interesting current synthesis along these lines.

53 Davies, , Small Worlds, esp. 63–104, 134–87Google Scholar; Smith, J. M. H., Province and Empire (Cambridge, 1992), 116–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Wickham, C. J., ‘Mutations et revolutions aux environs de l'an mil’, Médiévales, XXI (1991), 27–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see further Sahlins, , Stone Age Economics, 1–99Google Scholar.