Chapter 5
We have already discussed natural resources and their uses in this book, but let us consider them again as an economic system of production and exchange. For in our period hard work produced food and raw materials which sustained the population at most times, but which also formed the basis for manufacture, exchange, and trade in luxuries. So, for example, trade linked Scandinavia and Hungary in the 6th century, for we find exquisite northern amber jewellery in burial in women’s graves some 1,000 kilometres away from their source. Most regions aimed to produce their own staple goods, so traders transported more exotic goods like ivory, spices, and silk. An 11th century German poem, the Merigarto, describes the priest Reginbert earning great riches by selling wine and honey in Iceland. In Norway’s oldest monastery, founded at Selja c.1100, mass was celebrated by priests dressed in vestments made of Spanish silk.
This high-value trade depended on the availability of a limited stock of silver coinage, centuries after the disappearance of the Roman imperial gold coins. Some of that gold had been turned into treasure—in artefacts related to rituals of church and court, like crosses and crowns—and some ended up in the Muslim world, as payment for goods imported into Europe. In rural society before 1100 there was little use of coinage. New gold coins were minted again only in the 13th century, first by Emperor Frederick II in 1231.
All economic activity was accelerated after the year 1000. Over the next two centuries the sufficiency of foodstuffs and growing populations allowed, as we have seen, for economies, communities, and life styles to become more diverse. Silver finds allowed the money supply to penetrate rural markets and encourage exchange even in modest surpluses of agricultural produce, and so a proliferation of small markets and new towns followed. Trade in basic foodstuffs developed, so that Baltic grain fed Flemish townspeople, allowing some 10–15 per cent of Europeans to buy their food rather than to grow it. New forms of enterprise grew in urban centres: family companies, joint-risk companies, sleeping partners in support of a merchant, all allowed trade to develop, and its effects were to be felt everywhere. Italian merchants led trade with the Far East, while Italian bankers provided the large-scale finance kings required to support war efforts. By the 15th century family-based banks with branches all over Europe were not uncommon: like the Borromei of Milan, who from 1434 had a branch in Bruges and soon after in London too.
Arable and pasture
However diverse the economy it always depended on a rural base. A balance had always to be struck between arable cultivation of fields, and other forms of production in vineyards, pasture, and meadows. The challenge faced by most individuals and communities was the production of food that was suitable and sufficient to meet the needs of working people and livestock, as well as of urban populations. Alongside the production of food was the need to gather, mine, or grow raw materials for the making of clothing, shelter, household goods, and some manufactured goods for luxury markets.
Fields produced grain that was made into the staple foods of bread and porridge. Wheat for the making of white bread was a cash crop rarely eaten by its producers, who consumed rye bread or a bread of mixed grains. Porridge was a staple in many versions: oat-based in Scotland or polenta in central Italy made of barley meal. Such staples were accompanied by much smaller portions—perhaps but a fifth of all intakes—of meat, fish, vegetables, and dairy. When peasants ate meat it was usually beef in Hungary and the Low Countries, fowl in most of France, pork in Germany and the British Isles, mutton and goat in the Mediterranean regions. Sheep milk was used more than cow milk, and sheep-folds were enriched by deposits of manure. Nutrition was enhanced by the drinking of beer: the brown and bitter Celtic and Saxon beer produced by the fermentation of oats, and further north and east, the lighter, barley-based, Germanic beer. In the south young wine was drunk in the growing areas devoted to wine-growing (Box 4).
Box 4 Wine
Although vines could only be cultivated in some parts of Europe—in the Rhine and Mosel valleys, southern France, Iberia, and Italy—wine was enjoyed more widely. Most contemporary wine-producing areas had been identified by Roman times, and viticulture continued there in following centuries. After c.1000 demand for wine grew from northwest Europe, and so the wine trade became a lively sector of the medieval economy. Enterprising bishops—like Rüdiger, archbishop of Speyer in 1084—invited expert wine-growers to settle on their domains and to trade in wine from their cities. Creating a new vineyard was a labour-intensive, and hence expensive, enterprise—involving digging terraces on hillsides, planting to a right angle so as to capture the sun, waiting three years for plants to become established, and requiring constant pruning and care. Great landlords and religious houses were best positioned to become successful wine-makers; peasants were allowed to use their lord’s winepress only against payment.
Wine was probably a sourer and weaker drink than that which we drink today, and it was occasionally flavoured with honey, peppers, or cinnamon. The rich could enjoy the fine wines of Cyprus and Gaza, but the habitual wine drinking documented in monasteries, courts, and cities was of younger wines and in great quantities. The hospitality and cuisine of the rich used and displayed wine and every parish church was obliged to use it in its central ritual, the Mass.
The 7th and 8th centuries saw the introduction of the heavy plough to large parts of central and northern Europe. It was usually led by horses—though in England oxen pulled ploughs well into the modern period—each harnessed with a collar for effective control, and supported by metal horseshoes. This plough was able to penetrate deep into heavy soil while turning and breaking it. Such preparation was particularly conducive to the growing of spelt—especially in the northeast; oats and barley, so useful for the feeding of horses, grew even on poor soil and in cool temperatures, if deeply planted. Horses in turn also served as useful draught animals for harrowing and for carting of produce to market as the economy became more commercialized.
These innovations explain how population was able to grow, as it did in some regions from the 9th, and more so from the 10th century. Although yields were paltry compared to rates in modern agriculture, there was still more food available for humans and livestock. The expectation of secure provision of food allowed some people to choose work away from the land, or in specialized occupations in rural areas: ironwork, charcoal making, or estate management. It also meant that country dwellers were able to spend more time on improvement of homes, roads, and drainage in their communities.
At the beginning of our period hunting animals in woods for food and skins, and fishing in streams made a great deal of food available according to season. But with the development over time of more intrusive management of resources by landlords—kings, abbeys, or knights—these resources were more closely controlled. Wood for the building of shelter was readily available in northern Europe, but was increasingly managed as a resource supervised by stewards, and exploited for the highest commercial returns.
Most estates were made of a section of prime land directly exploited by the landlord—the demesne—while the rest was divided among serfs. The open fields were cultivated in strips and a single holding was often made of several such strips, each of differing quality and distance from the settlement, so as to ensure equitable distribution. By-laws devised by village communities aimed to ensure mutual support: they often reserved gleaning rights for widows and the poor, food for free. Landlords strove to maximize their income from agricultural cultivation, and so their interests could both coincide and oppose those of their serfs. Projects of clearing and extension of cultivation into new areas—of woodland in Yorkshire, of marshes in the Po valley—saw investment by landlords and settlement of serfs on cleared lands. Fencing and earthworks for the defence of livestock and humans were similarly projects initiated by lords and realized with hard labour on the part of serfs and labourers.
Lordship and legal status shaped the countryside. There were share-cropping arrangements in Iberia and in Italy, which were economically very burdensome, but which did not entail loss of freedom. Such arrangements often existed between the peasant and an ecclesiastical institution, as evident from 10th century charters in northern and central Italy. There were many freeholders in northern and eastern England, and in the newly settled lands of Pomerania and Livonia. In areas of greater commercialization dues owed by serfs were often commuted to cash payments, and these meant that peasants had to participate in exchange—of produce or of some family labour—in order to earn coin. By the end of our period serfdom ties became weaker in western Europe, with many peasants entering fixed-term arrangements with their landlords. The opposite was true in central and eastern Europe.
Demand for agricultural produce came not only from local populations, but was generated from further afield by large concentrations of rich populations, such as cities and courts. The Île-de-France, the hinterland of Paris, marketed its wine and beasts almost exclusively for sale in the capital. By 1300 regions across the south of England tended their woods, raised their beasts, and grew vegetables to supply the demand generated by London’s markets. Around that time aristocrats, bishops, and abbots invested in city residences: the abbot of Cluny’s palace in Paris is now the Musée national du Moyen Age; that of the archbishops of Canterbury in London is Lambeth Palace, on the south bank of the Thames.
After the collapse of demand for food following the catastrophic Black Death landlords chose to move away from arable and to exploit other resources: fishing, mining, hemp growing. Highland areas were much affected by this change, with new investment by landlords: in Wales, Catalonia, the Massif Central, the Apennines, and the Pyrenees. Such change often resulted in more intensive fencing and enclosure, to the detriment of rural working communities.
Woodland
The production of food-grains in fields was but part of the busy and diverse agrarian economy. Fields and woodlands combined to create sustainable habitats for humans and animals. While woodland is often imagined as thick and dark, and so it was in parts of Scandinavia and northeast Europe, large sections of woods were active and noisy. There was constant collection by men and women, young and old, of undergrowth, ferns, gorse, fallen branches of all sorts, to be burnt for heating and cooking, or used in thatching, fencing, basket-making, and construction. Woodlands should be imagined as dotted by clearings and often co-existing with other forms of cultivation. They required a great deal of managing: with coppicing, and growing trees to the size required in construction. The roofs of cathedrals show just how strong and large was the timber that a carefully managed wood could produce.
For centuries scholars have imagined that with the decline of Roman imperial rule Europe ‘reverted’ and yielded to the forest. This fits well with the view we discussed above of the period 400–600 as one of decline and loss. Yet the combination of archaeology and historical botany now produces a more nuanced picture. With less state-driven demand for wood for construction and public works, management and use of wood was transformed by local communities—and sometimes assisted by legislators—into enterprises aimed at sustaining livelihoods. As demand for food by city dwellers declined some fields were allowed to turn into woodland. Similarly, when state-backed exploitation of mines ceased, as in the Tuscan Maremma, woodland grew over old pits. Chestnut trees were introduced in large parts of Italy, a tree rich in its offerings: excellent building material, good wood for charcoal, and delicious fruit which could be eaten and also made into bread flour. Alongside apple, pear, and walnut, it was considered to be central to human nutrition.
Relations with woodland developed at different speeds across Europe. Around the year 600 the villagers of Prato Spilla in the Apennines cleared areas of forest in order to grow hay instead. Since this upland wood was covered with snow in the winter, they must have used the clearing for grazing only during the spring and summer. Clearing by fire was speedy, but also dangerous and wasteful. So King Lothar I legislated in his capitulary of 840 against starting fires in wooded areas, and threatened to punish those who did with beatings and humiliating head-shaving. Clearing with axes was slower but safer.
In the midst of the woodland areas there was industry too, including charcoal-making and metal work. Wood that did not burn well or safely in domestic fireplaces—like the highly tannic chestnut—was turned into charcoal. Smiths exploited charcoal to make the hot fires required for work in metal; only in later centuries did the smithy become part of the village settlement itself. Demand for charcoal grew particularly in cities, where it was considered safer than the use of branches and faggots. Webs of lordship affected the viability of living off woodland: chestnut groves in Campania were habitually held between 800 and 1000 under agreements that required 1/3 of the yield in chestnuts to be paid to the grove’s owner.
As we have seen, demographic growth after the year 1000 saw the rise in demand for food. Larger urban populations had to be fed, and so the extent of woodland was reassessed by landlords. Woodland was increasingly regulated, and by 1200 large tracts were controlled by laws that set them apart as forest—foris, outside —for the exclusive use of the lord. Kings, religious houses, and secular landlords, all strove to regulate their woodland, and their efforts spawned a vast officialdom of foresters, woodwards, verdiers. By 1300 the king of France was served by a group of Masters of Waters and Forests (maîtres des eaux et forêts).
The management of the wooded environment paid attention to sustainability and to commercial profit. It also set aside spaces for leisure and entertainment, hunting for sport being the chosen pastime of aristocrats and their followers. Hunting and trapping was a regular activity to rid estates of foxes and vermin, but hunting with birds and dogs was the privilege of the rich and leisured. Hawking and falconry required long training and expertise, and were discussed in treatises all over Europe, from Wales to Mallorca. The birds were rare; the Teutonic knights caught, trained, and sold gerfalcons to aristocratic households throughout Europe.
Yet there were always woodland areas so marginal as to remain untouched by administration and sport. These became haunts of the imagination that also attracted an alternative social scene in many parts. Fictional accounts of encounters with wild beasts or fantastic individuals may not have been utterly fanciful. Forests were homes to bears, wolves, foxes, and wildcats. Mares lived there during pregnancy and were left there to nurture their foals. The forest drew those who sought to retire from the world—hermits—but also those who sought refuge from the law. One of Europe’s most loved heroic figures—Robin Hood—was imagined in refuge in Sherwood Forest.
Water and waterways
Water is essential for all aspects of life: drink and food, industry, and hygiene. In old Roman provinces people still benefited from public works associated with water supply: aqueducts, baths, conduits, and canals. Churches often had fountains in the entry courtyards—atria—a welcoming aspect rich with symbolic value signifying life and purity. Streams offered water for washing, but domestic supplies were often engineered for the use of cities, and on large estates. As in so many areas of life, these traditions were maintained by bishops and public officials in the early part of our period: pope Hadrian I (700–95) maintained the Roman aqueducts, and a century later the bishops of Le Mans still tended to those of their city. Religious houses led the way in maintaining the quality of water as they did in other aspects of domestic material culture: bishop Rigobert of Reims (d. 743) provided piped water for the canons of his cathedral and in the Flemish village of Kootwijk each household had its own well c.1000. Bathing was uncommon but people regularly washed their faces and hands. By the 12th century Cistercian abbeys led the way in the exploitation of water for domestic use: the model which characterized the order’s houses always situated the monastery along a river, and sewage was carried away from latrines situated over the moving water. They also spread the use of waterpower for the grinding of corn grains and for fulling (where woollen cloth is beaten by wooden hammers).
Europe is well-served by its rivers. North to south and east to west, it is linked by rivers on which cargo and people travelled easily. The Baltic grain that fed Flemish townspeople made its way along the Vistula, and inland river ports formed links with sea ports, like Norwich and Yarmouth, thus allowing both centres to flourish. A river ran through every great city. Think of Paris, London, Cologne, and Rome. Many bridges stood on Roman foundations. Florence’s Ponte Vecchio did, and also housed more recent structures, butchers’ stalls built of wood, which were on occasion swept away by floods. Building bridges in cities—like the Charles Bridge in Prague, which began in 1357—were prestige projects initiated by rulers.
Rivers spelt danger too. Through the rivers of Europe, east and west, the Vikings penetrated into England, France, the Baltic lands, and deep into modern Ukraine in the 9th and 10th centuries. Any invading force—like the English during the Hundred Years War—could reach Paris easily from the coast. Rivers flooded regularly; when the Danube did in 1194 this was a disaster in Austria for both humans and their livestock. People stumbled and fell into rivers, like the boy depicted in a 15th century English manuscript, driven into the Thames by a herd of cows. In eastern England and the Low Countries there were elaborate arrangements for the distribution of responsibilities for maintaining flood defences and irrigation channels. This Flemish expertise was applied in northern Germany and Poland, as new settlements developed there too.
In the countryside access to rivers and their resources was regulated by seigneurial authority: some sections were kept private for the use of lords and their households, and others were open for their dependent tenants. Fishing in rivers was a source of livelihood and subsistence for some, but it was also a business. Fishing rights were managed by rulers as a resource: Desiderius (d. 786), king of the Lombards, handed such rights to his favourites; Carolingian officials protected the right of the monks of Farfa (central Italy) to their fisheries in 798; an association of fishermen in 10th century Pavia negotiated its rights with the king.
Some fish travelled between sea and river—like the salmon—and netted weirs were set up by landlords to capture them at crucial stages. The season and the Christian calendar imposed a rhythm too: throughout Lent, and on Fridays throughout the year, Christians abstained from eating meat. And there were unexpected gifts from the sea. The Laxdaela Saga, written down in the 13th century, describes life in Iceland favourably compared to that in the Hebrides: there were plenty of beached whales there—a sole whale could feed a family over a whole winter—and it was rich in fish, especially salmon.