PREFACE
TO include in a book on the Plan of St. Gall a translation of Adalhard's Consuetudines Corbeienses hardly calls for
justification. The two documents have much in common. Both are examples of a type of ordinance that in the
Middle Ages were referred to as brevia, i.e., "briefs"—a designation which in modern general (and distinct from
legal) parlance is more appropriately rendered by the term "directives." Such administrative ordinances were
intended to make regular and generally uniform the usages and practices (consuetudines, i.e., "customs") of a
given institution.
The Plan of St. Gall delineates in the graphic language of the architect the aggregate of buildings of which an
exemplary Carolingian monastery should be composed, the manner in which they are to relate to one another,
and how they should be arranged internally. In a comparable manner, the Directives of Adalhard of Corbie set
forth in the form of a body of managerial directives what measures should be taken by the heads of the monastery's
various economic departments in order to guarantee an even and unfailing flow of food supplies and other
material necessities for the physical sustenance of life in the abbey of Corbie. One could not conceive of two
mutually more elucidating historical sources.
It is therefore with gratitude that I accept for inclusion in this book Charles W. Jones's masterful translation
of this unique and important document. It will be a valuable source of information for those who cannot read it
in its original language and of more than casual interest to those who are aware of the (in places exasperating!)
difficulties of interpretation presented by medieval texts of this nature. Jones's translation of Adalhard's Directives
is the first of this treatise in any modern language, so far as we know, and we hope to make it available in the near
future for broader distribution by means of a separate, more easily accessible edition. More than one hundred and
twenty years ago B. E. C. Guérard, one of the greatest students of the Age of Charlemagne, recognizing the need
for translations of primary sources of this type published a French version of another important managerial
treatise of the period, the famous Capitulare de Villis (q.v.), and thus made the subject of the management of royal
desmesnes available for study in a broad spectrum of neighboring disciplines. I have no doubt that Charles W.
Jones's translation of the Customs of Corbie will have a similar effect in broadening our historical perspective of the
monastic economy of the period.
