IV.6.1
OUTLYING ESTATES
The agricultural and industrial economy of a Carolingian
monastery was based not only on the produce of the land
that lay in the immediate vicinity and the labor of the monks
and serfs who resided within the monastic enclosure, but
also on the revenues and manufactured goods of a vast web
of outlying estates, the monastery's curtes or villae. Recent
investigations have made it clear that these outlying estates
consisted in part of holdings that formed a reserve exploited
directly for the benefit of the abbey, and in part of tenures
granted to tenants against the payment of tithes[182]
or against
the rendering of certain labors or services needed in the
exploitation of the reserve.[183]
This arrangement is very
similar, as François Ganshof has pointed out, to the
tripartite division of the fiscal property of a royal domain
prescribed by the famous Capitulare de villis, which earmarks
one-third of the produce of the domain for use by
the manor itself, one-third for use by the court, and another
third for use according to instructions from the palace, or
for sale.[184]
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]
MANAGEMENT BY MONKS OR BY LAYMEN?
Whether the monastery's outlying estates should be administered
by monks or by laymen was a matter of debate
and widely varying practice. In 812 the monks of Fulda
protested before the emperor against the increasing administrative
fragmentation of the holdings of their abbey, declaring
themselves in favor of a single and common manorial
entity (commune ministerium)—managed by the monastery
as a whole through its leading representatives, the deans
and the prior[189]
—as preferable to watching their holdings
being surrendered to the "selfish interest of laymen" or to
"malicious serfs."[190]
But at the synod of Aachen held in 816,
the assembled bishops and abbots of the empire ruled that
the outlying estates should henceforward be managed by
laymen exclusively. The monks who had been entrusted
with their supervision were ordered to return to the mother
house, and the abbots were admonished to reduce the number
of their visits to the outlying manors to the absolute
minimum.[191]
The capitulary of Louis the Pious which
promulgated these resolutions consolidated them into
imperial laws.[192]
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.
