Political, constitutional, economic events. Not to mention the enterprises (and revolutions) of Attila, Justinian, Charlemagne, Frederick II, Gregory VIII . Alongside the high tradition specialist historiography has long recognized the importance of the daily chores of a mass of unknown people .
Poor, servants, slaves, farmers, artisans, traders, exiles, beggars, stateless persons . And it is not a question of exegetical attitudes or "preferences"; it is all too obvious to remember that the problem concerns the documentation we have. Often small and unreliable or, worse, non-existent if we try to reconstruct the history of the unknown.
Despite these objective difficulties, the relationship between high culture (and history) and popular culture (and history) is not an unexplored field. Today I would like to say a few words about the social and economic context in which, in the Carolingian era, the image of the peasant and the image of the intellectual .
The topic I have chosen is also an opportunity to point out two books (very different from each other) that I found full of ideas to understand this "phase" of the Middle Ages:Eileen Power, Life in the Middle Ages , Einaudi, and Alcuin of York, Mathematical games at the court of Charlemagne, edited by Raffaella Franci, published by ETS.
The image of the farmer. As I mentioned earlier, the oral culture of the lower classes of pre-industrial Europe tends to leave no traces. Or, worse, to leave deformed ones. Having said this, it is all too evident that the image of the farmer is not only the one handed down to us by Andrea Cappellano (in De amore ) or by Boccaccio. Don't you think?
The book by Eileen Power , in addition to being a pleasant "novel", it has the advantage of giving a name and a face to one of the many medieval stereotypes. U a farmer, a traveler, an abbess, a housewife, a merchant and a clothmaker . Power presents them to us immersed in their daily life, catapulting us into the houses and streets of medieval Europe. Beyond the discourse that could be made on female figures, on the level of social and economic history I was fascinated by the days of Bodo the farmer and his wife Ermetrude , always running around the manso , Between tributes and exactions, fairs and meetings with the Missi Dominici.
Who is Bodo? And you, how do you imagine it? I can tell you that, despite the harshness of the times, he is extremely human, certainly not the petty and narrow-minded peasant of polite tales. He loves family, has a lively and playful soul - he dances and sings during popular festivals, notoriously hated by the monks - and leads his children, especially the older Wido, towards his future life as a farmer. Farmer, husband, father, teacher.
Bodo is a 9th century farmer. The main source used by the author is a cadastral book probably compiled by an abbot to find out with which lands they belonged to the abbey and to whom they were managed. I remind you that between the sixth and ninth centuries we witnessed the phenomenon of the Curtense economy which specifically characterizes the economic life of the early Middle Ages. The villa or curtis it was a real center of residence and production:farm, farm, laboratories. The land belonging to the abbey was divided into fiscs which were funds large enough to be managed by one factor.
Each of these was divided into tributary lands and noble lands:the former were divided into smaller quantities called mansi and inhabited by settlers, while the latter were administered directly by the monks through the farmers. The characteristic element of the Curtense economy is the presence of a series of works that the owners or mansi they were required to offer to the dominus in the form of corvées working. Bodo is inserted in this social and economic context.
The image of the intellectual. The life of these centuries appears conservative, populated by peasants, free or serfs, who cultivated the fields together with their families. An economy that aimed at food self-sufficiency, integrated with hunting and fishing, in which exchange was minimal as it was reserved only for (often meager) production surpluses.
Although not technically incompatible with trade, the Curtense system appears to be characterized by a centripetal vocation to subsistence , without any overall or long-term vision that, perhaps, could have favored exchanges more.
This relative economic stagnation seems to be the negative image of cultural revival. All historians agree that the reign of Charlemagne coincided with a general awakening of culture throughout the West. Don't believe the story of culture at the mercy of monastic libraries, eh! Of course, an initial boost comes thanks to the formation of the first Christian schools (think of the case of Clement of Alexandria I mentioned in this video).
But it should not be forgotten that the first schools were being organized which, despite being run by the clergy, were open to young people belonging to aristocratic families . Charlemagne thought that culture was an essential element in improving the state of the public service; despite being almost illiterate, he did not hesitate to intervene in questions of science, philosophy and theology (just remember the case of the Libri Carolini ). The Schola Palatina met around the sovereign in Aachen , a circle of scholars coordinated by a Benedictine monk, Alcuin of York .
In 781 Charlemagne and Alcuin meet in Pavia. How to refuse the offer to work in his service? Alcuin has the task of organizing the schools and formulating the program to follow, respecting the canonical division between crossroads and crossroads. He gets books sent by the English monasteries, establishes scriptoria to copy the manuscripts, he contributes to the creation of real teaching manuals.
In the book Alcuin of York, Mathematical games at the court of Charlemagne, edited by Raffaella Franci, you will find a series of mathematical games taken from the Propositiones, the oldest known collection of mathematical problems in Latin today. The book is precious not only on the level of the history of mathematics but also for realizing the similarities / differences between Alcuin's solutions and the modern ones. The image of the intellectual is therefore not that of the monk imprisoned in the scriptorium. The stereotype is replaced by an active figure, dedicated to research and teaching.
Bibliography:
Eileen Power, Life in the Middle Ages, Einaudi.
Alcuin of York, Mathematical games at the court of Charlemagne, edited by Raffaella Franci, ETS.