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Town and Monastery in the Carolingian Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Rosamond McKitterick
Rosamond McKitterick*
Affiliation:
Newnham College, Cambridge
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Extract

Although there were both urban and rural monastic communities in the Frankish kingdoms in the Carolingian period, far more is known about the landed monasteries in the countryside regarding both their internal organisation and the relationship between them and the rural community in which they lived and over which they were the lords. The statutes of Adalhard of Corbie for example provide information concerning the monastery both within the monastic community and on its estates, and show us the abbey as the centre of an agricultural region. The monasteries in the towns on the other hand are much less well-documented and the evidence for Carolingian towns themselves is both sparse and difficult to interpret. If a town is understood to be ‘a concentration of population larger than the neighbouring agricultural settlements in which there is a substantial non-agricultural population which may be concerned with defence, administration, religion, commerce or industry’, there are not very many Carolingian centres for which enough evidence survives to justify their being called towns. Valenciennes for example, described recently as une ville carolingienne, is mentioned in the sources occasionally as a portus and seems to have succeeded Farrars in importance in the region sometime in the eighth century. In the time of Charles the Bald it had a mint, and Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, Lothar I and Lothar II are all known to have issued charters from a royal palatium at Valenciennes. There were several churches and the abbey of St Salvius in the settlement, and it is likely that some trading activity went on. But other than that Valenciennes was a settlement which carried on some sort of economic activity, very little is known. The abbey of St Amand, a rural monastery nine miles from Valenciennes, achieved a far more influential and important position in the kingdom than the town of Valenciennes ever did.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 16: The Church in Town and Countryside , 1979 , pp. 93 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1979

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References

1 Levillain, L., ‘Les statuts d’Adalhard’, Moyen Age (1900) pp 333-86Google Scholar, and Verhulst, A. and Semmler, J., ‘Les statuts d’Adalhard de Corbie de l’an 822’, Moyen Age (1962) pp 90–123 Google Scholar, 233-69. J. Godard, ‘La place de la ville et l’abbaye de Corbie dans l’économie du moyen âge’, and Doubliez, P., ‘Le monnayage de l’abbaye Saint-Pierre de Corbie’, Corbie, Abbaye Royale (Lille 1963) pp 311-7Google Scholar, 283-310.

2 Smith, C. T., An Historical Geography of Western Europe before 1800 (London 1967) p 299 Google Scholar.

3 Deissen-Nagels, F., ‘Valenciennes, ville carolingienne’, Moyen Age (1962) pp 51–90 Google Scholar.

4 Bonnard, P., ‘Peopling and the origins of settlement’, in Clout, [H. D.], [Themes in the historical geography of France] (London 1977) pp 42–54 Google Scholar at p 45.

5 Clout p 78; see also MacKendrick, P., Roman France (London 1971)Google Scholar.

6 Ennen, E., ‘Die Entwicklung des Städtewesen an Rhein und Mosel vom 6. bis 9. Jahrhundert’, SS Spoleto 6 (1959) pp 419-52Google Scholar.

7 Gregory of Tours comments on the power of the bishops in their cities, Historia Francorum, bk 6 chap 46, MGH SRM 1, p 320.

8 Vercauteren, [F.], [‘La vie urbaine entre Meuse et Loire du VIe au IXe siècle’], SS Spoleto 6 (1959) pp 453-84Google Scholar.

9 Böhner, K., ‘Urban and rural settlement in the Frankish kingdom’, European Towns. Their Archaeology and Early History, ed Barley, M.W. (London 1977) pp 185–201 Google Scholar. See too [E. M.] Wightman, [‘The towns of Gaul with special reference to the North East’], ibid pp 303-14.

10 H. Safratij, ‘Archaeology and the town in the Netherlands’, ibid pp 203-17. Gregory of Tours provides a great deal of incidental information concerning towns in the Merovingian period and some of this has been discussed by Vercauteren.

11 Ganshof, F. L., Étude sur le développement des villes entre Loire et Rhin au Moyen Age (Paris 1943)Google Scholar discusses Liège in this context. See too Bullough, [D. A.], [‘Social and economic structure and topography of the early medieval city’], SS Spoleto 21 (1974) pp 351-99Google Scholar and the articles by Hubert, [J.], ‘Évolution [de la topographie et de l’aspect des villes de Gaule du Ve au Xe siècle’], SS Spoleto 6 (1959) pp 529-58Google Scholar and ‘La Renaissance Carolingienne et la topographie des cités épiscopales’, SS Spoleto 1 (1954) pp 218-25.

12 Wightman. p. 309.

13 Flodoard, Historia Remensis ecclesiae, bk 2 chap 19. MGH SS 13, p 469, and see Vercauteren, [F.], Étude [sur les civitates de la Belgique Seconde] (Brussels 1934)Google Scholar. For legislation on repairs see MGH Cap 1, p 288, chap 8; 2, p 64 chap 7.

14 Hubert, ‘Évolution’ pp 556-7.

15 Ganshof, F. L., ‘A propos du tonlieu à l’époque carolingienne’, SS Spoleto 6 (1959) pp 485–508 Google Scholar.

16 Klauser, T., ‘Eine Stationslist der Metzer Kirche aus dem 8. Jahrhundert, wahrscheinlich ein Werk Chrodegangs’, Ephemerides Liturgicae 44 (Rome 1930) pp 162-93Google Scholar. The pastoral role of the clergy of Metz was also emphasized in Chrodegang of Metz’s Rule. See too Folz, R., ‘Metz dans la monarchie franque du temps de Saint Chrodegang’, Saint Chrodegang (Metz 1967) pp 11–24 Google Scholar.

17 Kleinclausz, A., Histoire de Lyon 1 (Lyons 1939) pp 90–101 Google Scholar.

18 Schönfeld, W., ‘Die Xenodochien in Italien und Frankreich im frühen Mittelalter’, ZRG KAbt 43 (1922) pp 1–54 Google Scholar and Ullmann, W., ‘Public welfare and social legislation in the early medieval councils’, SCH 7 (1971) pp 1–39 Google Scholar. Besse, J. M., Les Moines de l’ancienne France (Paris 1906)Google Scholar is still useful.

19 On the development of monasticism in early medieval Gaul see Courtois, C., ‘L’évolution du monachisme en Gaule de St Martin à St Columban’, SS Spoleto 4 (1957) pp 47–72 Google Scholar and Prinz, F., Frühes Mötuhtum im Frankenreich (Munich 1965)Google Scholar.

20 Prinz, F., ‘Columbanus, the Frankish nobility and the lands east of the Rhine’, paper presented to the colloquy on Ireland and the Continent 500-750, Dublin, May 1977 Google Scholar.

21 See for example the account of the foundation of Fulda, Eigil, Vita sancti Sturmi, ed Pertz, , MGH SS 2, pp 366-77Google Scholar.

22 CC 148, p 153.

23 Hariulf, , [Gesta ecclesiae Centulensis], ed Lot, F., Hariulf, Chronique de l’abbaye de SaintRiquier (Paris 1894)Google Scholar.

24 On the history of St Riquier see the old-fashioned but useful account by l’Abbé, Henocque, Histoire de l’abbaye et de la ville de Saint-Riquier (Amiens 1880)Google Scholar.

25 Hariulf gives an account of the contruction, bk 2, chap 7. See too Conant, K., Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture 800-1200 (Harmondsworth 1966) pp 43-6Google Scholar.

26 Hariulf bk 2, chaps 8-10.

27 Lack of a font limited the autonomy of a city church, see Bullough p 362.

28 Hubert, J., ‘Saint-Riquier et le monachisme benedictin en Gaule à l’époque carolingienne’, SS Spoleto 4 (1957) pp 293–309 Google Scholar.

29 The text is included as appendix 7 in Lot’s edition of Hariulf, pp 306-8.

30 The wheat, oats and beans may have been received from a different type of dwelling. The text does not make it clear.

31 Hariulf appendix 6, pp 296-306.