Beyond royal estates and monasteries: landownership in the early medieval Ardennes

Abstract

Most historians who have studied the medieval Ardennes have focused exclusively on royal and monastic properties, assuming that every early reference to land in the area is either to the property of royal monasteries or to fiscal land. Actually, the evidence from the region around Bastogne (Belgium), the centre of what would later be called pagus Ardennensis, shows that as early as the seventh century ‘private’ landowners were present and active in the area. This observation leads to a new reading of the rural economy and society, the formation of monastic property and the links between local and royal power in the early medieval Ardennes.

coto de San Julián de Samos: la construcción de un territorio monástico entre los siglos X y XI

“…Más allá de su cuestionable autenticidad e independientemente de la fecha en la que hubiera de situarse la redacción del texto, la referencia a un circuito de milla y media de radio se puede entender como parte de una estrategia discursiva destinada a legitimar la implantación o extensión del dominio del monasterio sobre su entorno inmediato,-como ocurre -en otros ámbitos del occidente europeo altomedieval (cf. Larrea, 2007;Devroey y Schroeder, 2012). Sin profundizar mucho, en ella se observan dos mecanismos diferentes, aunque relacionados, de legitimación del dominio que se reivindica sobre ese espacio.…”

Early Medieval Commons? Or How the History of Early Medieval Europe Could Benefit from a Necessary Conversation: The Case From NW Iberia

“…The centrality of commons in the structuration of local and supra-local territories in the post-Roman centuries is increasingly recognised (Martín Viso 2020c), and so is their significance in the development of political authority and of aristocratic and ecclesiastical estates, as well as in the increasing formalisation of local communities towards the later part of the period (e.g. : Devroey & Schroeder 2012;Martín Viso 2020a;Mouthon 2014;Rao & Santos Salazar 2019). This paper will focus on one particular region, NW Iberia, in order to explore these issues.…”