University of Virginia Library

RESPONSIBLE MONASTIC OFFICIALS

The Administrative Directives of Adalhard of Corbie
make it clear that the exploitation of these outlying estates
for the monastic community lay in the hands of the prior,
the chamberlain, and the porter. The prior had the responsibility
of supplying the monastery with its basic food
provisions, and for that reason had under his authority specifically
the cultivation of the fields and vineyards as well as
the supervision of the herdsmen.[185] The chamberlain was in
charge of the monastery's material equipment, including as
one of its indispensable items the monks' clothing.[186] For the
fulfillment of their respective duties, each of these officials
had assigned to him the yield of a specific number of services
or manors, while the porter was charged with the
collection of tithes in those tenures which were subject to
tithing. This included the chore of transportation and storage,
as well as the conversion of the tithes into money when
the produce was sold.[187] The collection of revenues from
outlying, and especially from distant, manors posed problems
of logistics in transportation capable of taxing the wit
of even the most astute abbots. Abbot Adalhard of Corbie
invented a unique plan for reducing the costs of such
deliveries by instituting a barter system through which the
produce from distant lands was made available to the
monastery by being traded in stages from the periphery
toward the center of its economic orbit.[188]