Markets in Early Medieval Europe

by Tim Pestell

  From workshop to market

  By the time its impressive buildings were complete c. 830, San Vincenzo was in decline. This recession was brought on by the Beneventan civil war (839–49) and its consequences, and subsequent Arab attacks (Wickham 1995, 147–51). It is therefore significant that private patronage continued to favour lay dependencies in the terra into the 850s, enhancing their form and status, even as the monastery itself dwindled (Hodges 1997a, 184). From the mid-ninth century, we find groups of families patronizing local churches (plebes) in San Vincenzo’s inner terra, such as San Pietro ad Itrias, a chapel founded in the 840s, and San Eleuterio, built in the 850s near the later village of Filignano.

  In ninth-century Italy, approximately half of the documented markets were promoted by the monasteries, the rest by secular powers (Settia 1991). In particular, markets were sponsored by powerful families, on the occasion of the feasts of popular local saints. Were the churches of San Pietro ad Itrias and San Eleuterio the locations for markets in the second half of the ninth century? Moreover, did the production site identified on the east bank of the Volturno, have its own church, in common with Eulogimenopolis, the contemporary artisanal borgo beneath Monte Cassino (Hoffman 1980, 54), just thirty kilometres away?

  In 1994–6, excavations within the atrium of the Romanesque abbeychurch and the cloister of the New Abbey, east of the river (Fig. 19.2), revealed a large number of post-holes in the travertine bedrock (Bowden forthcoming). Similar features were identified during restorations beneath the nave floor of the present church. There is limited, as yet unpublished, evidence that these features belong to an Early Medieval settlement, possibly one clustered about a small ninth-century church, as at Eulogimenopolis (Bowden et al 1996, 475; Wickham 1985). Was this church incorporated by the builders of the Romanesque abbey-church, when the monastery was moved to the east bank of the Volturno, at the end of the eleventh century? And was a market held alongside the church and settlement in the later ninth century, where a regional sheep fair was held in meadows east of the Volturno in the first half of the nineteenth century? (Hodges 1993, 1–4)

  From countryside to city

  Both the archaeological and documentary records testify to San Vincenzo’s failure to exploit its vast economic potential beyond the demands of the Carolingian-era building programme. This appears to be reflected in the changing use of buildings within the precinct, alterations being made to the monastery’s internal workshops following an earthquake in 848 – Room D was converted into a granary, while Room E became an olive press. At the same time, the monastery may have tried to control the production of high-status metalwork in its internal workshops, where sword-belt fittings and other items of personal adornment were produced, possibly for market. A small number of penannular brooches in copper-alloy were found in the latest abandonment horizons within the so-called ‘collective workshop’; a similar object was found during excavation at Vacchereccia, a dependent site in the terra (Hodges 1984, Fig. 7.6).

  In the aftermath of the Beneventan civil war, Italy’s mountainous and thinly populated interior would scarcely have been an appropriate venue for the transaction of regional trade. Ninth-century sources make clear that the upper orders of Lombard society adamantly refused to pay double tithes to diocesan bishops, preferring instead to make over their wealth to private churches (Stutz 1909, 191–2; Loyn and Percival 1975, 47–9). In the second half of the ninth century, southern Lombard donors reserved their wealth to local churches, which were the venues for markets; and by this time, the foremost markets of central and southern Italy were to be found on the coasts, at Gaeta, Naples, Amalfi and Salerno to the west, and Pescara, Trani, Otranto and Taranto to the east. Most of these were political centres under gastalds; others were seats of the Lombard court. In this way, the drift in patronage had the effect of leaching production sites and markets, and their communities, from Italy’s mountainous interior, to the plain and the sea.

  Early Medieval activity on the east bank of the Volturno evidently came to an end in the last quarter of the ninth century, probably in 881 when Saracen mercenaries despatched by the bishop-duke of Naples raided and torched the monastery (Hodges 1997b). The Chronicon Vulturnense makes clear that the monks were betrayed by lay brothers, who showed the Saracens into the cloister through the internal workshops (Chronicon Vulturnense i, 362–70). In the wake of the devastation, the surviving monks sheltered in the vicus of the lay familia, a place known in the twelfth century as Castellum Samnie, before heading south to the Lombard capital at Capua, at the mouth of the River Volturno. Was Castellum Samnie situated on the east bank of the Volturno, around the ruins of the Samnite and Roman vici and cemetery, in the area of the excavated production site? (Bowden et al. 1996).

  San Vincenzo’s uprooted and impoverished monastic elite had much to gain from the move to Capua, where it quickly sought and was granted the patronage of the Capuan court. The monastery’s familia likewise stood to benefit from the journey to Capua, a busy commercial entrepôXt. From this perspective, the Capuan diaspora may be interpreted as a monastic strategy in response to changing economic circumstances. Alternatively, it would not be a misrepresentation of the written sources to suggest that the success of the Saracen sack and San Vincenzo’s subsequent move to Capua came about on the initiative of the monastery’s artisans. Within forty years the monks were back, rebuilding the monastery where the lay artisans’ settlement, and possibly church, had once stood (Valente 1995, 57–62; Hodges and Mitchell 1996, 133–8), while the descendants of the last generation of San Vincenzo’s makers became the first generation of the artisanate of an emergent Medieval southern city.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Tim Pestell and Katharina Ulmschneider for inviting me to participate in the conference and its publication, and to Paul Blinkhorn, Karen Francis, Oliver Gilkes, Richard Hodges, Pippa Humphreys and John Mitchell.

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