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SIZE

We are well informed about the size, nature, and location
of these outlying estates by such contemporaneous sources
as the Administrative Directives of Abbot Adalhard of
Corbie,[193] or the famous Polyptique of Abbot Irminon of
St.-Germain-des-Prés,[194] which furnishes us in many cases
not only with a full account of their annual yield in harvest,
equipment, and livestock, but also with the names of many
of their tenants and serfs as well as the deliveries of food
and produce to which they were held. In size these holdings
varied greatly. Some were small, the majority large, a few
colossal. At the time of Abbot Irminon (ca. 800-826), as
we have already had occasion to mention,[195] the total
number of men who lived on the monastery's outlying
possessions was calculated by B. E. C. Guérard (who spent
the better part of his life studying the extent and the form of
management of its holdings) as amounting to nearly
40,000.

As a manorial entity the Carolingian monastery thus differed
little from the fabric of a feudal estate, save that the
corporate community of men for whose sustenance this organization
was maintained consisted of monks who served
God in chant and spent much of their time in reading and
writing. Of the vast fabric of agricultural and industrial
activities which enabled them to devote their lives to these
tasks, the Plan of St. Gall reflects only a small fraction: that
portion which was carried on within the walls of the monastery
itself. An analysis of these activities, the houses,
machinery, and equipment with which they are associated
will form the subject of the second volume.

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