That, in a few words, is the way in which the monks of St Germain and
the other Frankish landowners of the time of Charlemagne managed their
estates. Let us try, now, to look at those estates from a more human
point of view and see what life was like to a farmer who lived upon
them. The abbey possessed a little estate called Villaris, near Paris,
in the place now occupied by the park of Saint Cloud. When we turn up
the pages in the estate book dealing with Villaris, we find that there
was a man called Bodo living there.[1] He had a wife called Ermentrude
and three children called Wido and Gerbert and Hildegard; and he owned a
little farm of arable and meadow land, with a few vines. And we know
very nearly as much about Bodo's work as we know about that of a
smallholder in France today. Let us try and imagine a day in his life.
On a fine spring morning towards the end of Charlemagne's reign Bodo
gets up early, because it is his day to go and work on the monks' farm,
and he does not dare to be late, for fear of the steward. To be sure, he
has probably given the steward a present of eggs and vegetables the week
before, to keep him in a good temper; but the monks will not allow their
stewards to take big bribes (as is sometimes done on other estates), and
Bodo knows that he will not be allowed to go late to work. It is his day
to plough, so he takes his big ox with him and little Wido to run by its
side with a goad, and he joins his friends from some of the farms near
by, who are going to work at the big house too. They all assemble, some
with horses and oxen, some with mattocks and hoes and spades and axes
and scythes, and go off in gangs to work upon the fields and meadows and
woods of the seigniorial manse, according as the steward orders them.
The manse next door to Bodo is held by a group of families: Frambert
and Ermoin and Ragenold, with their wives and children. Bodo bids them
good morning as he passes. Frambert is going to make a fence round the
wood, to prevent the rabbits from coming out and eating the young crops;