Chapter 8

THE PEASANT BODO

_A. Raw Material_

1. The Roll of the Abbot Irminon, an estate book of the Abbey of St Germain des Prés, near Paris, written between 811 and 826. See _Polyptyque de l'Abbaye de Saint-Germain des Prés_, pub. Auguste Longnon, t. I, _Introduction_; t. II, _Texte_ (Soc. de l'Hist. de Paris, 1886-95).

2. Charlemagne's capitulary, _De Villis_, instructions to his stewards on the management of his estates. See Guerard, _Explication du Capitulaire 'de Villis'_ (Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, _Mémoires_, t. XXI, 1857), pp. 165-309, containing the text, with a detailed commentary and a translation into French.

3. _Early Lives of Charlemagne_, ed. A.J. Grant (King's Classics, 1907). Contains the lives by Einhard and the Monk of St Gall, on which see Halphen, cited below.

4. Various pieces of information about social life may be gleaned from the decrees of Church Councils, Old High German and Anglo-Saxon charms and poems, and Aelfric's _Colloquium_, extracts from which are translated in Bell's Eng. Hist. Source Books, _The Welding of the Race_, 449-1066, ed. J.E.W. Wallis (1913). For a general sketch of the period see Lavisse _Hist. de France_, t. II, and for an elaborate critical study of certain aspects of Charlemagne's reign (including the _Polyptychum_) see Halphen, _Études critiques sur l'Histoire de Charlemagne_ (1921); also A. Dopsch, _Wirtschaftsentwicklung der Karolingerzeit, Vornehmlich in Deutschland_, 2 vols. (Weimar, 1912-13), which Halphen criticizes.

_B. Notes to the Text_

1. 'Habet Bodo colonus et uxor ejus colona, nomine Ermentrudis, homines sancti Germani, habent secum infantes III. Tenet mansum ingenuilem I, habentem de terre arabili bunuaria VIII et antsingas II, de vinea aripennos II, de prato aripennos VII. Solvit ad hostem de argento solidos II, de vino in pascione modios II; ad tertium annum sundolas C; de sepe perticas III. Arat ad hibernaticum perticas III, ad tramisem perticas II. In unaquaque ebdomada corvadas II, manuoperam I. Pullos III, ova XV; et caropera ibi injungitur. Et habet medietatem de farinarium, inde solvit de argento solidos II.' Op. cit., II, p. 78. 'Bodo a _colonus_ and his wife Ermentrude a _colona_, tenants of Saint-Germain, have with them three children. He holds one free manse, containing eight _bunuaria_ and two _antsinga_ of arable land, two _aripenni_ of vines and seven _aripenni_ of meadow. He pays two silver shillings to the army and two hogsheads of wine for the right to pasture his pigs in the woods. Every third year he pays a hundred planks and three poles for fences. He ploughs at the winter sowing four perches and at the spring sowing two perches. Every week he owes two labour services _(corvées)_ and one handwork. He pays three fowls and fifteen eggs, and carrying service when it is enjoined upon him. And he owns the half of a windmill, for which he pays two silver shillings.'

2. _De Villis_, c. 45.

3. Ibid. cc. 43, 49.

4. From 'The Casuistry of Roman Meals,' in _The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey_, ed. D. Masson (1897), VII, p. 13.

5. Aelfric's _Colloquium_ in op. cit. p. 95.

6. The Monk of St Gall's _Life_ in _Early Lives of Charlemagne_, pp. 87-8.

7. Einhard's _Life_ in op. cit., p. 45.

8. Anglo-Saxon charms translated in Stopford Brook, _English Literature from the Beginning to the Norman Conquest_ (1899), p. 43.

9. Old High German charm written in a tenth-century hand in a ninth-century codex containing sermons of St Augustine, now in the Vatican Library. Brawne, _Althochdeutsches Lesebuch_ (fifth edition, Halle, 1902), p. 83.

10. Another Old High German charm preserved in a tenth-century codex now at Vienna. Brawne, op. cit., p. 164.

11. From the ninth-century _Libellus de Ecclesiasticis Disciplinis_, art. 100, quoted in Ozanam, _La Civilisation Chrétienne chez les Francs_ (1849), p. 312. The injunction however, really refers to the recently conquered and still half-pagan Saxons.

12. _Penitential_ of Haligart, Bishop of Cambrai, quoted ibid. p. 314.

13. _Documents relatifs à l'Histoire de l'Industrie et du Commerce en France_, ed. G. Faigniez, t. I, pp. 51-2.

14. See references in Chambers, _The Medieval Stage_ (1913), I, pp. 161-3.

15. For the famous legend of the dancers of Kölbigk, see Gaston Paris, _Les Danseurs Maudits, Légende Allemande du XIe Siècle_ (Paris 1900, reprinted from the _Journal des Savants_, Dec., 1899), which is a _conte rendu_ of Schröder's study in _Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte_ (1899). The poem occurs in a version of English origin, in which one of the dancers, Thierry, is cured of a perpetual trembling in all his limbs by a miracle of St Edith at the nunnery of Wilton in 1065. See loc. cit., pp. 10, 14.

16. 'Swete Lamman dhin are,' in the original. The story is told by Giraldus Cambrensis in _Gemma Ecclesiastica_, pt. I, c. XLII. See _Selections from Giraldus Cambrensis_, ed. C.A.J. Skeel (S.P.C.K. _Texts for Students_, No. XI), p. 48.

17. Einhard's _Life_ in op. cit. p. 45. See also ibid., p. 168 (note).

18. The Monk of St Gall's _Life_ in op. cit., pp. 144-7.

19. Einhard's _Life_ in op. cit., p. 39.

20. Ibid., p. 35.

21. Beazley, _Dawn of Modern Geography_ (1897), I, p. 325.

22. The Monk of St Gall's _Life_ in op. cit., pp. 78-9.

23. See the description in Lavisse, _Hist. de France II_, pt. I, p. 321; also G. Monod, _Les moeurs judiciaires au VIIIe Siècle_, Revue Historique, t. XXXV (1887).

24. See Faigniez, op. cit., pp. 43-4.

25. See the Monk of St Gall's account of the finery of the Frankish nobles: 'It was a holiday and they had just come from Pavia, whither the Venetians had carried all the wealth of the East from their territories beyond the sea,--others, I say, strutted in robes made of pheasant-skins and silk; or of the necks, backs and tails of peacocks in their first plumage. Some were decorated with purple and lemon-coloured ribbons; some were wrapped round with blankets and some in ermine robes.' Op. cit., p. 149. The translation is a little loose: the 'phoenix robes' of the original were more probably made out of the plumage, not of the pheasant but of the scarlet flamingo, as Hodgson thinks _(Early Hist. of Venice_, p. 155), or possibly silks woven or embroidered with figures of birds, as Heyd thinks _(Hist. du Commerce du Levant_, I, p. 111).

26. The Monk of St. Gall's _Life_ in op. cit., pp. 81-2.

27. This little poem was scribbled by an Irish scribe in the margin of a copy of Priscian in the monastery of St Gall, in Switzerland, the same from which Charlemagne's highly imaginative biographer came. The original will be found in Stokes and Strachan, _Thesaurus Palæohibernicus_ (1903) II, p. 290. It has often been translated and I quote the translation by Kuno Meyer, _Ancient Irish Poetry_ (2nd ed., 1913), p. 99. The quotation from the _Triads of Ireland_ at the head of this chapter is taken from Kuno Meyer also, ibid. pp. 102-3.