Abstract
What farmers thought, how they imagined their world to work, and what strategies they consciously adopted to confront a capricious natural world are matters that rarely surface in the records of the Middle Ages. No writer in the ninth century spent much time pondering the thoughts of those who worked and managed the land, probably because it was assumed that those thoughts were unremarkable. Yet what could be more central to a fuller appreciation of an age like the Carolingian, in which countryside and agricultural concerns dominated, than to acknowledge the importance and, indeed, intelligibility of popular thought?
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Notes
For good general introductions to this agrarian economy, see Adriaan Verhulst, The Carolingian Economy (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 31–84
Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, A.D. 300–900 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 6–12, 575–78;
Georges Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West, trans. Cynthia Postan (London, 1968), pp. 3–58; and
Wolfgang Metz, “Die Agrarwirtschaft im karolingischen Reiche,” in Karl der Grosse: Lebenswerk und Nachleben, vol. 1, ed. H. Beumann (Dusseldorf, 1965), pp. 489–500.
Agobard would certainly be disappointed to learn that late in the twentieth century some people have used his report as evidence that the earth was once visited by alien spaceships. See Whitley Streiber, Communion (New York, 1987), p. 241, 247–48. On Agobard as a rationalist, see
Egon Boshof, Erzhischoj Agobard von Lyon (Cologne, 1969), pp. 8–10, 173 and n. 14.
The title as it stands in the Migne (PL) edition—Liber Contra Insulsam Vulgi Opinionem de Grandine et Tonitruis—was taken from an addition to the sole manuscript. Van Acker emended it to “De grandine et tonitruis,” which seems less descriptive of the actual contents of the work. There has been a good deal of discussion of this text. See Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, vol. 2, trans. J.S. Stallybrass (London, 1883), pp. 638–39
Reginald Lane Poole, Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning, 2nd rev. ed. (London, 1920; repr. New York, 1960), pp. 36–38
J.A. MacCulloch, Medieval Faith and Fable (London, 1932), p. 20
Allen Cabaniss, Agobard of Lyons: Churchman and Critic (Syracuse, 1953), pp. 24–26
Cabaniss, “Agobard of Lyons: Rumour, Propaganda, and Freedom of Thought in the Ninth Century,” History Today, 3 (1953): 128–34
Heinrich Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire: The Age of Charlemagne, trans. Peter Munz (Oxford, 1957; repr. New York, 1964), pp. 174–75; Boshof, Erzbischof Agob-ard, pp. 170–76;
Valerie I.J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, 1991), pp. 111–115; and many others.
D.E. Nineham, “Gottschalk of Orbais: Reactionary or Precursor of the Reformation?” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 40 (1989): 12[1–18]. For a quick tour of Frankish paganism in the Carolingian world, see
Pierre Riche, Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne, trans. Jo Ann McNamara (Philadelphia, 1978), pp. 181–88
Michel Rouche, “The Early Middle Ages in the West,” in A History of Private Life, vol. 1: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, ed. Paul Veyne and trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), pp. 519–36; and
Rosamond McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 789–895 (London, 1977), pp. 119–22.
De magicis artibus, in PL 110:1101D1–4, 1103C11 [1095–1110]. See also Pierre Riche, “La magie a l’epoque carolingienne,” in Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres: Comptes rendus (Paris, 1973), 134–35 [127–38] and repr. in
Riche, Instruction et vie religieuse dans le Haut Moyen Age, Variorum Reprint, CS 139 (London, 1981), item XXII.
See n. 28 earlier and Capitula Herardi 3, in PL 121:764B6–10. My purpose here is not to pursue the complex definitional and classificatory problem of the separation of religion from magic, in part because it has been treated so well and at such great length by others. See Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971), pp. 25–50, particularly p. 41 for a series of valuable distinctions.
See also Hildred Geertz, “An Anthropology of Religion and Magic: I,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (1975): 71–89and
Keith Thomas, “An Anthropology of Religion and Magic: II,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (1975): 91–109. For the Middle Ages, see
Joseph-Claude Poulin, “Entre niagie et religion. Recherches sur les utilisations marginales de l’ecrit dans la culture populaire du Haut Moyen Age,” in La culture populaire au Moyen Age, ed. Pierre Boglioni (Montreal, 1979), pp. 121–43, and Patrick Geary, “La coercition des saints dans la pratique religieuse medievale,” in La culture populaire, pp. 145–61.
See Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae (775–90), ed. Boretius, in MGH:Cap. 1, pp. 68–70, where Charlemagne’s frustration with pagan persistence in Saxony is evident. See also J.M.Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church (Oxford, 1983), pp. 412–419.
See Grimm, Teutonic Mythology 4, pp. 1769–70 and The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm, vol. 1 no. 251, trans. Donald Ward (Philadelphia, 1981), pp. 211–212. See also Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore, 1983), pp. xx, 22–25.
The assumption that Europe even in the Middle Ages was covered by primeval forest has been called into question by F.W.M. Vera, Grazing Ecology and Forest History (Oxford, 2000), pp. 1–12, 28–30, 102–83.
See H.H. Lamb, Climate: Past, Present and Future, vol. 2: Climatic history and the future (London, 1977), p. 426
Richard Hodges, Dark Age Economics:The Origin of Towns and Trade, a.d. 600–1000 (London, 1982), p. 139
Wendy Davies, Small Worlds: The Village Community in Early Medieval Brittany (London, 1988), p. 33. For objective indications of summer storminess and heavier July to August precipitation,
see H.H. Lamb, “The Early Medieval Warm Epoch and its Sequel,” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 1 (1965): 21–22 and fig. 1 [13–37].The dendrochronological evidence for northern Europe does not, however, seem to support the thesis that growing conditions were worse in the ninth century. See the tables printed in
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate since the Year WOO, trans. Barbara Bray (NewYork, 1971), pp. 386–88.
See Narayan R. Gokhale, Hailstorms and Hailstone Growth (Albany, 1975), pp. 21,25 (fig. 2–10), 50.
For a color plate of the Vienna Labors of the Months illumination, see Donald Bullough, The Age of Charlemagne (London, 1980), p. 144 plate 58.
E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande (Oxford, 1937; repr. 1972), pp. 63–83.
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© 2004 Paul Edward Dutton
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Dutton, P.E. (2004). Thunder and Hail over the Carolingian Countryside. In: Charlemagne’s Mustache and other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06228-4_7
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