The monastery of Sant'Ambrogio and dispute settlement in early medieval Milan

The monastery of Sant’ Ambrogio and dispute settlement in early medieval

Milan R o s s B A L Z A R E T T I

There are no neutral texts; even a notarial inventory implies a code, which we must decipher.

(Carlo Ginzburg)’

The early-medieval archive of the monastery of Sant’ Ambrogio in Milan documents the development of a large monastic community which was part of a highly cultured urban world and, at the same time, possessor of extensive rural properties. The collection comprises 300 land transactions of pre-eleventh century date, the majority preserved as original single sheets - the physical object and the writing on it actually dating from the same moment - rather than in later cartulary copies.’ Within this corpus there are twenty-one important pLcitu (records of court proceedings), which are the basic material for the history of dispute settlement in early-medieval Milan.3 These documents reiterate the well-known fact that disputes were generally settled in towns in northern Italy at this time even though the disputes themselves mostly involved events in the countryside. This article, an investigation of a long running dispute between Sam’ Ambrogio and its dependants at the estate of Limonta, suggests that, as a result of the use of writing by the monks in disputes, the lives of these rural serfs were touched by ways of doing things which began to urbanize them.

Padoa Schioppa, in his recent investigations of ‘justice’ at Milan before I 200, has restated the traditional view that these texts were products of

’ C. Ginzburg, Myths, Emblems, Clues (London, 1990), p. 161. ’ R. Balzaretti, ‘The lands of Saint Ambrose: the acquisition, organisation and exploitation of

landed property in north-western Lombardy by the monastery of Sant’ Ambrogio Milan, c. 780-1000’, PhD thesis, University of London (1989), pp. 19-73. The standard edition is C/odex] D[iplomaticus/ L[angobardiae], ed. G. Porro-Lambertenghi (Turin, 1873). The better text, for the ninth century only, is (Ill M/useo] Dliplomatico dell’rlrcbivio di Stato di] M/iIano/, ed. A.R. Natale (Milan, c. 1971). The earliest charter is dared 721. In what follows all unidentified place-names are in italics.

3 I Placzti def Regnum Italiae, ed. C. Manaresi, vol. I (Rome, r958), vol. I (Rome, 1962) (henceforward PLAC I and PLACr) .

Early Medieval Europe 1994 3 (I) 1-18 @ Longrnan Group Ltd 0 ~ 6 ~ - y ~ 6 z / y ~ / o ~ ~ o r o o ~ / ~ 3 . ~ o

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the ‘Italian legal tradition’.4 He argues that a coherent judicial system existed in Italy before the arrival of the Carolingians and absorbed many Carolingian practices during the ninth century. This system was based on the comital court, which met regularly in most towns, to resolve disputes using oral and written testimony before a gathering of notables and a chairman who represented the state.$ The proceedings were recorded as notitiae (or placita), drawn up by trained and perhaps profes- sional notaries in a considerable variety of forms before 8 8 0 . ~ After this date they became increasingly stereotyped in structure and formulae because of the advancing professionalization of legal expertise at Pavia.7

Placita records follow similar forms across northern Italy. They begin with a formula recording where and by whom the case was held (‘Dum in Dei nomine villa que dicitur Belano, in laubia solarii sancti Ambrosii curtis ipsius, in judicio resederent domnus Andreas. . .’). Then the case is announced, the disputants (usually two) put their cases, evidence is looked at or heard and a decision is reached. Two formulae were funda- mental to the legal validity of such records. First, a witness list, comprising the signatures or other marks of those who witnessed the text. Most charters were witnessed by both clerics and laymen, including those in this collection. Second, an accurate dating clause and an indication of the scribe who wrote out the text (‘Et gualiter hac causa acta et definita est, presentem notitia pro securitatem eiusdem monarterii sancti Ambrosii ego Johannes notarius domni imperatoris scripti et interfui. Anno domni HLu- dovici imperatoris V, mense julio, indictione octava’).8

This legal and notarial tradition is argued to have represented a particular sort of legal knowledge and also a particular sort of literacy: a

‘ A. Padoa Schioppa, ‘Aspetti della giustizia Milanese nell’ eth carolingia’, Arrhiwio Storico Lombard0 xiv (1988), pp. 9-25; A. Padoa Schioppa, ‘Aspetti della giustizia Milanese dal x a1 xii secolo’, in Milano e 2 1 suo territorio in eta communale, Atti del I I Congress0 Internazio- nale di Studi sull’ Alto Medioewo (Spoleto, 1989), pp. 459-549.

5 C.J. Wickham, ‘Land disputes [and their social context in Lombard-Carolingian Italy]’, in W. Davies and P. Fouracre (eds) The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 105-24; L.F. Bruyning, ‘Lawcourt proceedings in the Lombard kingdom before and after the Frankish conquest’,Journal of Medieval History I I (1985), pp. 193-214; C.M. Radding, The Originc of Medieval Jurisprudence (Princeton, 1987); H. Keller, ‘Der Gerichtsort in oberitalienischen und toskanischen Stadten’, Quellen und Fors- chungen xlix (1969), pp. 1-71 ; S . Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, goo-rjoo (Oxford, 1984), pp. 24-34. C.J. Wickham, ‘Land disputes’, pp. 105-12 outlines the style and format ofplurita records. The genuine Milanese cases hardly differ from those found elsewhere in northern Italy. G. Costamagna and M. Amelotti, Alle origini del notariato italiano (Rome, 1975); A. Liva, Notariato e Dorumento a Milano (Rome, 1979); C.M. Radding, The Origins of Medieval Jurisprudence (Yale, 1987), pp. 26-8, pp. 55-9; J.M. Sutherland, ‘Aspects of continuity and change in the Italian placitum, 962-72’, Journal of Medieval History z (1976), pp. 89-118; J.L. Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian government’, in R. McKitterick (ed.) The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1990). p. 261. These examples are from CDL 416, a plaritum dated July 905 (Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec x I 50, an original).

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Dispute settlement in early medieval Milan 3

sophisticated use of writing linked to a publicly accountable tradition of justice. While much of this picture can still be accepted, my investigation of monastic justice at Sant’ Ambrogio suggests that the placita have too readily been divorced from the other documents preserved in monastic archives, with the result that court cases and the records made of them have been regarded as public events, public being anachronistically understood as centrally controlled state interest. Although monastic agents seem to have adopted the modes of the ‘public’ courts (and indeed may have been required to do so as the consequence of immunity privi- leges), in fact they sometimes paid little respect to them. Disregarding violent intimidation (about which we know all too little), this ‘monastic legal tradition’ operated primarily through its calculated use of the written word to disarm its opponents when conflicts arose.9 It will be suggested here that this use of the written word has been glossed over in traditional legalistic Italian approaches. For reasons of space this paper examines the charters for a single monastic estate, Limonta. These show how linguistic calculation within the context of disputing was important to Sant’ Ambrogio as a means of attempting to develop and maintain power over its workforce in the countryside far distant from the city, where writing might seem to have been unimportant.

The social drama at Limonta, 83 5-998

In the ninth century Limonta, a hamlet 40 kilometres north of Milan on the shores of Lake Como, was the focus of a centrally-organized, productive estate which passed from royal to monastic ownership in the 830s. A reconstruction of its early-medieval history is possible from a dossier of twenty-three documents which was kept at the monastery of Sant’ Ambrogio.’” Five of these texts are placita and in them Sant’ Ambrogio’s rights were challenged by both its own dependants and the monastery of Reichenau. Although the texts were preserved by Sant’ Ambrogio they nevertheless give some insight into the views of those who opposed its activities.

The Limonta charters have been studied by many historians over the

J.L. Nelson, ‘Dispute settlement in Carolingian West Francia’, in W. Davies and P. Fouracre (eds) The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 45-64, and J.L. Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian government’, p. 275, for a case between St Paul at Cormery and its dependants.

lo MDM 57, 60, 6ra, 61b, 61c, 92, 139, 141, 143, 144, 146a, 148, 152, 157, 160, CDL 416,417, 427, 596, 6257 939.


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years.” These scholars have mostly been interested in them for what they reveal about the relations between lords and peasants, and particu- larly changes in servile status, between 835 and 998. Here it will be argued that, in addition to such information, they reveal much about the use of written documents within the dispute process. I shall argue that a close reading of the texts, coupled with an appreciation of how they came to be preserved in the forms we have them, indicates that monastic record keeping was anything but haphazard. While it is well known that charters which recorded title to rights over land and people were often altered in the Middle Ages when these rights were challenged as part of a dispute process, the impact which such document use had on the peasants who encountered this treatment is less understood. It may be that peasants became more closely linked to the ways of the city than was previously the case, to the extent that they could be said to have become literate in the use of written texts even when they could neither write nor read these. Before showing how this was so it is necessary first to tell in outline the Limonta story. This task is complicated by the existence of versions of crucial texts which only survive now in copies of later dates. For the time being the narrative is based on those texts which survive as originals.

The story begins on 24 January 83 5 when the emperor Lothar donated the Limonta estate to the monastery:

conferamus quandam curtem nomine lemunta cum casa indomincata et capellam ad se adspicientem dictatam videlicit in honore sancti Genesii, nec non oliveta vel mansas sex cum mancipiis ibidem commanentibus vel aspicientibus triginta quatuor vel omnibus pertinentiis vel adiecentiis suis.lz

The terms of the gift are very clear and enable us to grasp at the outset the basic bi-partite structure of the estate. This text was the legal basis of monastic possession, was frequently referred to as such in subsequent disputes and provided the linchpin of the monastic case against its adver- saries.*3

“ Classic discussions: C. Violante, La societa milanese (neU‘ eta precommunale] (Naples, 1953; 2nd edn Bari, 1974), pp. 106-8; A. Castagnetti, ‘Dominic0 e massaricio [a Limonta nei secoli nono e decimo’], Rivista di Scoria dell’ Agricoltura, vii (1968). pp. 3-20; P. Toubert, ‘I1 sistema curtense nei secoli viii, ix ex’ in Scoria d’ltalia (Einaudi), Annuli 6 (Turin, 1985), pp. 5-63 at 32, yz; R.H. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free. Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (London, 1973), pp. 66-9.

‘I ‘We confer a certain estate called Limonta with its demesne house and the nearby chapel dedicated in honour of Saint Genesis , and the olive trees and the six farms with their thirty four dependants who live there or nearby and all appurtenances.’ M[onumenta] G[ermaniae] H[istorica], Diplomata Lothari, ed. T. Schieffer (Berlin, 1966), n. 23 [= MDM 571. It has been judged totally authentic by all editors.

‘ 3 It was confirmed by Charles the Fat in 880, Otto I in 951 and 0x0 I11 in 998 [MDM 141,

C D L 596 and C D L 9391.

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Between 83 and 879 there is no information about what was happen- ing at Limonta which can be derived from indisputably authentic texts. The impression has been given by most scholars that Limonta from this time was completely dominated by the crown and Sant’ Ambrogio to the exclusion of others. Two entirely genuine charters relating to places nearby show this not to have been the caie.

In 854 at least one small lay proprietor was living in Uccio (which, according to Sant’ Ambrogio, was an outlying part of the Limonta estate), for he sold some land across the lake to another layman.’4 From a charter of 884 it is clearer still that Sant’ Ambrogio was not the sole owner in the area, even right in Limonta itself. In December 884 at Isola Comacina (the island mid-way between the Bellagio peninsula and Tre- mezzo on the northern shore) Lupus, son of Dominicione from Madro- nino sito Lemunta, sold a field and a piece of pasture in Limonta (in fundo in munte Lemonti vico) to Leonasus son of Leo from Cantonico sito Lemunta. The property was bounded by other properties owned by men from Madronino, Cantonico and, crucially, villa Lemuntu.’5 This demonstrates that Limonta was not simply a monastic estate but also a vicus where freemen lived, who owned and sold property, which at least raises the possibility that monastic claims about the servility of Limonta inhabitants were untrue.

The main sequence of charters commences in 879. It is only after this point that signs of monastic tampering with the records appear. For the moment we continue with original texts. A breve securitatis, dated November 879, records how two vassals of Appo (himself a vassal of Charles the Fat) went to Limonta (to the casam et curte in Lemunta justu lac0 Comense ad Ucto [Uccio]) with the abbot of Sant’ Ambrogio. There the abbot produced a preceptum of Lothar (presumably that which survives, dated 24 January 835) and a diploma of Charles the Fat (which is now lost). These documents were shown to those present and then read out aloud.16 Then the six mansi and the inhabitants to which the texts referred were transferred, in a symbolic ceremony per columna de eadem casa et limite ostii, from the control of Appo into that of the abbot.” Apparently Appo had held the estate as a benefice from the king (poss-

’4 MDM 9 2 [Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec ix 521, an original, written at Lecco by Ropertus, clericus.

‘ 5 MDM 148 [Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec ix 1061, an original. Presumably this and the preceding charter were preserved in the monastic archive because the community at some point acquired them as a result of a purchase of land in Limonta or its immediate vicinity.

l6 The importance of reading aloud is noted by R. McKitterick, ‘Latin and romance’, in R.P. Wright (ed.) Latin and the Romance Languages (London, rggr), p. 140.

’ 7 MDM 139 [Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec ix 981, an original. This text includes an almost verbatim report of the donation formula of Lothar’s diploma. Castagnetti, ‘Dominico e massaricio’, p. 5 .


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ibly from the abbot, the text is unclear). The symbolic ceremony and the written records which accompanied it were meant to ensure that possession was firmly in monastic hands and that the matter was at an end.” Charles the Fat, in his diploma issued to Sant’ Ambrogio on 21 March 880, confirmed monastic possession by direct reference to Lothar’s gift of 8 ~ j . I ~

These events provoked a rapid response from the monks of Reichenau (near Lake Constance in modern Switzerland) because both monasteries came to court before Charles in the cathedral of Como on 17 May 880.’” The king had ordered an inquisitium of local men to decide which monastery owned Limonta, demonstrating clearly the political sensi- tivity of the case given that Charles had himself confirmed the munsi to Sant’ Ambrogio less than two months before. Men from Bellagio, Pes- callo, Auregia and Visgnola testified for Sant’ Ambrogio on the basis of Lothar’s preceptum, which they knew because they had been present at the document reading and vestitura of November 879.’I The case was decided for Sant’ Ambrogio. Reichenau did not give up and persistence paid off when, at some point between 894 and 896, as a result of a hearing in Pavia before two missi of King Arnulf, Reichenau was invested with possession of the Limonta m a n ~ i . ~ ~ This occasion is reported within a text recording a subsequent case of October 896 when Sant’ Ambrogio’s representative claimed that the earlier Pavia case had been invalid because King Arnulf had prevented Sant’ Ambrogio’s participation : ‘because of the hostile persecution of Arnulf himself we were not able to attend that hearing’. Sant’ Ambrogio won this time. The Reichenau advocate did not come to Milan, probably because the case was heard before Lambert, Arnulf’s rival for the kingship.

The Reichenau episode shows a quite straightforward dispute in operation. It dragged on because of the political instability of late Caro-

A. Visconti, ‘Su alcune “notitiae investiturae” contenute nel Codex Diplomaticus Langobar- diae’, Annali della Uni9ersita di Macerata 6 (1930). Visconti argued that such ceremonies consisted of walking the bounds of the property and picking up earth or sticks as signs of possession.

’ g MDM 141 = MGH Diplomata Regum Germaniae ex stirpe Karolinorum, T.11, Fasc. I , Karl I11 Diplomata, ed. P. Kehr, n. 21 .

’ O MDM 144 = PLACI, pp. 581-3 [Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec ix 128, copy of twelfth o r thirteenth century]. Although a late copy the diplomatic of this text is very close to that of MDM 141. The language sticks fairly closely to Lothar’s texts. E. Hlawitschka, Franken, Alemannen, Bayern und Burgunder in Oberitalien (774-962) (Freiburg, 1960), p. I I 5 .

’’ The testimony of Conibert runs as follows, ‘Scio mansos U o s sex in Lemonta pertinuisse de curte i lk Lemonta, quod pars monasterii sancti Ambrosii tenere videtur a quando dominus Lotharius imperator curtem ipsam in Lemonta a parte sancti Ambrosii per preceptum confir- mavit abendum mansos ipsos sex cum omni integritate suorum de curte ispa Lemontapertine- bunt et aspitiebant.’

’‘ MDM 160 (PLACr IOI, Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec ix 1x9, an original). C.J. Wickham, ‘Land disputes’, p. I 19 n. 27.

I n



lingian Italy.’3 The use of written texts in the course of the hearings was undoubtedly important, and it is clear that Sant’ Ambrogio used Loth- ar’s initial diploma on whatever occasion it could. The fact that this document was read out to the rural population in 879 and remembered by some of them in court the following year should also be noted. But in the end the case was really resolved by political intrigue. Crucially there is nothing in the texts, the majority bona fide originals, to make us think that these notitiae were not drawn up entirely according to the normal procedures.’4 I suggest that this is very different in texts concerning the servi where their obligations are to the fore and are in dispute, because the monastery had much more to lose and was in a position to try to take advantage of the dependants’ apparent illiteracy. It is from this point on that the majority of the remaining Limonta texts survive as copies rather than as originals, mainly copies of late ninth/early tenth century date.

Problems with the sewi surfaced mid-way between the two Reichenau hearings in 882.’’ Perhaps the semi took their chance as a result of the Reichenau incidents: after all Lothar’s diploma was read out in Uccio in 879 and we may assume that word of it spread to Limonta itself. In most respects the cases operated at very different social levels. The court physically travelled to the villa Lemunta in November 882, and the hearing was conducted by the vicedominus of the archbishop of Milan and Abbot Peter I1 of Sant’ Ambrogio rather than by royal missi or comital representatives. Eleven (one suspects hand-picked) adstantes were present including two vassals of the abbot.

Sant’ Ambrogio claimed that the semi homines and their families (forty-seven are named in the text from Civenna, Cantoligo, Madronino and Selvaniaco) pertained to the Limonta estate as servi (that is to say of explicitly unfree status), who did labour-service for the estate, comprising the cultivation, harvesting and pressing of olives and the transpor- tation of the oil to the curte domni regis Deusdedit (possibly Desio in Brianza). In support the monastic side produced the diplomata of Lothar and Charles and reinforced them with a claim that it was an established custom of the area that these semi did these things, established a lungo tempore. The semi acknowledged a requirement to make some return to the monastery but this did not involve and had never involved olive cultivation, even when the estate had been in royal hands. This was made

’3 C.J. Wickham, Early Medieval Italy (London, 1981), p. 1 5 8 . ’4 See above p. 2. ’5 M D M 146 [Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec ix 104, an original] and M D M 146a

[Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec ix 104, a ninth-tenth century copy of the same text, on the same parchment sheet]. The original is obscured by major ink spillage, which could have been deliberate.


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quite plain: they owed no labour service for the estate’s principal crop and had never done

When the two sides were asked to produce evidence of their claims the servi could not produce a document. Witnesses were called to testify to customary practices under oath. Five nobiles et credentes liberi arzmanni from Bellagio testified in favour of Sant’ Ambrogio on the basis of Lothar’s diploma.’7 These men were those who witnessed the 879 vestz- tura and testified for the monastery in the 880 Como case. Their presence won the day for Sant’ Ambrogio this time.

Crucially the case concerned the status and obligations of the monastic workforce in a degree of detail which earlier texts do not lead us to expect. While Lothar’s grant of 835 was explicit it did not go into much detail about renders or labour obligations. As we have seen the monas- tetty was givkn rights over a demesne house, its chapel, olive groves and six mansi with thirty-four associated dependants, termed mancipiu. These provisions are consistent throughout all the texts referred to up to and including the charter of 879. The 8 8 2 placitum differs in the all encompassing formula with which it refers to these dependants :

isti prenominati servi homines vel ceteri suorum parentes et vicini ac consortes suorum, omnes habitantes in prenominatas locas . . . sunt servi de ista curte Lemonta.

Further examination of the wider context of these events indicates that the monastic claims expressed in the text may have conflicted with the situation on the ground. We have seen that in 884 some freemen were still living in Limonta. It is likely that some of these men were the so- called semi because, in the boundary clauses of the 884 charter we find men called Lupus, Dominicione, Bonus and Dognolinus from Madro- nico, names which appear also in the lists of servi in the placita of 882 (and in one of 905). While the first three names are common in other charters from the Sant’ Ambrogio collection and may not necessarily be the same people as those referred to in 884, the name Dognolinus is uncommon, occurring in these three texts only in the entire Sant’ Ambrogio corpus: it very probably represents the same man each

‘Indeed we do not seek to deny, because according to law we cannot, that we were not imperial uldii; and it is true that we were given by the emperor to that holy place, and we return renders, and we should return annually of persons and things pro uldiurzcu to the monastery, just as we did before, and as our parents did; but it is not true that either we or our parents or our wives once had to collect, press and transport olives from those olive groves, and nor should we be obliged to do this’.

‘7 G. Tabacco, I liberi del re nell’ Ituliu curolingiu epostcarolingia (Spoleto, 1966), p. 94, n. 296.



time.28 I would argue that the 884 text provides evidence of at least some of Sant’ Ambrogio’s semi in possession of property rights in Limonta and its vicinity, and therefore not being semi at all. If this was the case we can understand why these men were in dispute with the monastery: Sant’ Ambrogio was trying to increase its domination over them rather than simply maintaining a long-established status quo as it claimed. This has long been understood. That the monastery was doing this by writing them into the records as servi indicates how important the written word was to the community in maintaining its position of power over these men and women.

The 8 8 2 placitum presents another problem. Why, if there were freemen selling property in Limonta itself, did they not testify to Limonta customs in court rather than men from Bellagio, a village some distance away? Limonta is such a small place that everyone living there would surely have known about the court case and the customs of the area. A neglected charter of 885 may have the answer. Ambrosius, son of Ado and a city man, a coiner from Milan, gave a chestnut wood in Bellagio and an olivetum in Quarzano to Abbot Peter of Sant’ Ambrogio for the sake of his soul and Peter’s whom he terms amicus.‘9 This is the first evidence we have of monastic property in Bellagio, and it cannot be coincidence that it comes at this time. The monastery was establishing itself in Bellagio as well as Limonta with the consequence that it acquired friends there, including friends from the city, who could and did testify in court cases in Sant’ Ambrogio’s favour.

The dispute returned to court in July 905, again locally at the villa Bellano, an estate of the archbishops of Milan, 10 kilometres north of Lim0nta.3~ The hearing was chaired by Archbishop Andreas himself in the presence of twenty-seven adstantes, which may suggest that the monastery was having trouble enforcing the decision of 882 upon the so- called servi. As we might expect though the case was decided in favour of the monastery, with the important addition that the monastery claimed that the semi had to transport the abbot and his retainers on the lake when required and owed renders which included IOO Libras of iron and an increased money render of seventy solidi.3’ Between 906 and 910 the dispute progressed to the royal court at Pavia, where the semi again

l8 Dognolinus does not occur in any other pre-eleventh century charters from Lombardy.

‘9 MDM I 52, Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec ix I 10, an original. J0 CDL 4i6IPLAC I 17, Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec ix I 50, an original. CDL 417,

Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec ix I 5 I , is another late tenth-century version of the same text, thought by Manaresi to be a forgery. See below n. 40.

3 ’ Again the monks argued for custom established a Iungo tempore.

There is overlap of (common) names from ‘Cantonico’ too.

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lost.)’ Thus by 910 the dispute had evolved from the local monastic context to the grandest court in the Italian kingdom.

The mechanisms which resolved the dispute in the 950s are less clear as there are no texts referring to Limonta between 910 and 951. What eventually happened was clearly achieved outside any framework of ‘public justice’, which by this date in northern Italy had declined as a result of waning royal power. This comes as no surprise if it is accepted that Sant’ Ambrogio was already using both its friends and its documents to bring about the enforced servitude of the men and women of Limonta and to record the fact for posterity.

In October 95 I Abbot Aupald gained a diploma from Otto I confirm- ing monastic possession of the Limonta estate, including the olzveta and six mansi in Villa, Selvaniaco, Medranio, Cantaniaco, Uccio and Civenna together with all its dependants, servi, ancillae, aldii and aldiue.33 The end came with a grand charter of 957.34 It records that a large group of famuli (this text’s term for the servi, which occurs here for the first time in the Limonta corpus), appeared before the abbot and his assembled monks in the abbot’s first floor chamber at Sant’ Ambrogio and implored him to set out the customary renders which they owed from the Limonta estate to the monastery in a document. The abbot agreed but his terms were harsh: high money rents and an obligation upon the semi to cultivate, harvest and process olives at the expensa domnica and take the resulting oil to Milan. They had to promise to ferry the abbot and hisjideles on the lakes and provide fish for important feast days four times a year. Those who were tied to the villa only harvested the olives without pressing them.

The rest is silence: no further disputes between these servi and Sant’ Ambrogio are recorded, most probably because the 957 charter set in writing their defeat. They agreed to heavy labour service demands, increased renders and awkward transport obligations : precisely those things which they had claimed they did not owe in 882.3’ Nevertheless the charter claims this was done at the request of the semi. Perhaps the involvement of so many local men in court-cases held in cities had encouraged the locals to demand for themselves such urban practices as the recording of customary arrangements in documentary forms : on this

3’ It was heard before Berengar I and the highest nobility. The text which records this - CDL ~ ~ ~ I P L A C I 122, Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergarnene sec x I 5 3 , an original - is so damaged that the substance of the case is lost. Apparently Sant’ Arnbrogio won. See Violante, La societri milanese, p. 107.

33 CDL 596/MGH Dipf. Otto I , n. 138 , Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec x 196, an original. The formula of confirmation is close to that of Lothar’s in 835 with the significant addition of more precise words for dependants and detailed references to where they lived.

Castagnetti, ‘Dominic0 e massaricio’, pp. 8, 10, 13.

34 CDL 625, Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec x 205, an original.



occasion both the monastery and the servi had their rights and obligations enshrined in a t e ~ t . 3 ~ It ends thus:

De quo breve uno tenore scripti sunt, unum eis datum, et alterum in monasterio reservatum. Illi vero qui de villa Lernonta videntur esse, non debent olivas premere nec lignis ad ipsas olivas dare, nec evegere ipsum oleum, sed tantum debent omnes colligere, et vasa eorurn ad utilitatem predicte olive, quantum opus est, debent dare, seu et simul omnes debent ceteri adjurare ad incarican- durn, prout necesse fuerit.

Although the layout, language and structure of the document echo more common ptacita styles, there is no hint here that the servi had any real choice in the matter.37 Unusually no lay people appear to have been present as witnesses: only Abbot Aupald and fifteen other monks, priests and deacons looked 011.3~ This, like the document’s size (it is one of the largest in the Sant’ Ambrogio collection) must have been intimi- dating. After such a carefully stage-managed experience the serwi did not dare challenge Sant’ Ambrogio again.

Between 957 and 1000 Sant’ Ambrogio’s economic exploitation of Limonta and the Bellagio peninsula intensified. This is clearly evidenced by a diploma of Ot to 111, dated January 998, which again confirmed the Limonta curtis with an additional grant of four adjacent curtes: Grasegal- lae, Lencili, Nesso (where the community had had land since the mid- ninth century), and Bar11i.3~ The primary motive for these gains, which extended monastic presence from the coast to the mountainous interior, seems to have been iron extraction. An iron render had been required of the servi as early as 90j and now it was accompanied by a requirement for the famuli of Limonta and Civenna to do everything necessary to extract the iron ore and produce the metal from it.4’ Further evidence of this increased exploitation is found in a false placitum of 905, which was probably faked around this time. It indicates heavy obligations, including a high money rent, planting and pruning monastic vines at Capiate, lime extraction, cattle slaughter, grain threshing and even submission to tonsure, in addition to the provisions concerning olives. All this was to

j6 Violante, La societi miianese, p. 108. 37 It begins ‘Dum vir reverentissimus domnus Aupaldus venerabilis abbas intus in caminata

supra solarium justa ecclesiam beatissimi Ambrosii resideret pariter cum suis monachis . . .’ It ends ‘Factwm est autem hec et firmaturn anno domni prectarissimi et egregi pii patris Aupaldi reverentissirni abbatis regiminis sui X I I mense settembre, indictione X Y . Compare above p. 2. It also contains much reported speech.

3’ See above pp. 2-3. 39 CDL 939 (Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec x 180/308, an original). MGH Dipl. Reg.

et Imp. Germ., Tom. 11, Pt. 11, Otto I I I Dipl (Berlin, 1957). n. 265. 4o ‘And in this manner, so that the dependants of the monastery of Sam’ Ambrogio from

Limonta and Civenna should be able hereafter by the protection of our document to use the aforementioned properties upon the abovementioned mountain to make iron, to burn wood and ail the other things necessary for that.’


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be done by those same servi from the various hamlets and not just Limonta and Civenna as in Otto 111’s diploma.4’

The picture outlined so far has been based on original texts which are consistent with each other in what they record and which do not appear to have been substantially altered at any point after their initial production. They show that by 957 the servi had been defeated by the monks. If we now view this story through those texts which were altered after 879 we can follow the stages whereby the written record was moulded by the monks to help achieve and to quantify this victory.

The record of Lothar’s initial gift of 8 3 5 survives in two other early- medieval versions of a diploma ostensibly dated 8 May 8 3 j , also issued in the name of Lothar.4’ This text noted the previous donation and added to the earlier donation formula the names of six men who worked the estate, the composition of their families and an olivetula in locis Aucis et Conni (Uccio, just north of Limonta; Conai is unidentified). The resulting donation has, in its detail, the character of an inventorial list.

The information presented by Lothar’s diplomata can be supple- mented by three other imperfectly preserved texts which appear to date to the 8 3 0 s . ~ ~ These were copied on a single parchment sheet by the same scribe at some point in the late-ninth or early-tenth centuries most probably at the monastery of Sant’ Ambrogio.44 All three texts are concerned with inquiry into the detailed obligations of dependants at Limonta and its environs. None is dated or precisely datable, for each is an extract taken from longer texts now lost.45

The first text is part of a royal inquisitium carried out by three officials to clarify ownership of a casale at Conni. It records that the archpresbiter of the church of Missaglia (c. 20 kilometres south-east of Limonta in the

4 ’ This is recorded in CDL 417, which most authors consider a forgery. The absence of a witness list is damning. C. Manaresi, ‘Un placito falso per il monastero di Sant’ Ambrogio di Milano’, in Scvitti di paleograjia e diplomatica in onore di Vicenzo Pederica (Rome, 1941). Castagnetti, ‘Dominic0 e massaricio’, p. 19 n. 46 follows him. Violante, La soczetu milanese, 107 n. 64, argued that thisplacztum was forged in 905 but L.F. Zagni, ‘Note sulla documenta- zione arcivescovile milanese nel secolo X’, Studi di storia e diplomatica mediewale, z (1978), pp. 5-34, has redated it to the late tenth/early eleventh centuries. This dating is plausible in view of the references to iron production in the diploma of Otto 111.

4’ MGH Dipl. Loth., n. 27 = MDM 60. There are two unauthenticated tenth- or eleventh- century copies of this text roughly contemporaneous with each other which were presumably copied at the monastery or on its behalf. While some have argued for the complete falsity or the complete authenticity of this text it is likely that both of the additions are later monastic interpolations, which very probably arose as part of the dispute process.

43 MDM 61, 61a and 6rb (Milan, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene sec ix 27). Also edited in Inventari altomedievali di terre, coloni e redditti, ed. A. Castagnetti et al. (Rome, 1979). pp. 19-25.

44 Natale in his discussion of the copy argues that it was produced in 905 but this seems to me too precise for the evidence to bear.

41 Monastic inventories are usually imprecisely dated: dating clauses were apparently not necessary as these texts seem to have had no legal validity.



Brianza hills) had claimed that Conni was not part of the Limonta estate but belonged to his church. It claims that the royal missi questioned nine men from Bellagio, asking them what they knew about Conni and that all nine testified for the crown, claiming that, for the last forty years, the men of Conni had grown, harvested and pressed olives there and had subsequently been accustomed to take the oil by boat to a royal estate in Pavia. As was common in inquisitorial procedures across Europe the outcome hinged on the verbal testimony of elders as to customary practice, and this was reproduced in the text in the form of reported ~peech.4~ Hitherto this document has been regarded by scholars as referring to a time before the Limonta estate was granted to Sant’ Ambrogio (835) , providing clear evidence that the status of the workforce of Limonta had already been the subject of some dispute prior to monastic involvement. However it is possible that instead it refers to the inquisition ordered by Charles the Fat c .880 into the history of the estate.47 Were this the case the references to ‘forty years ago’ would fit rather well with events which had taken place around 835.

The second text is apparently an inventory of the estate done while it was still in royal hands (before 83 5 ) . It relates that the villa Lemunta was in two parts: the demesne, comprising the farmhouse and chapel dedicated to Saint Genesius, to which five manentes returned collectively annual renders of rye, wine, pigs, rams, chickens and eggs; and the rest, the terra absens, where an unspecified number of semi worked and returned an annual render of five solidi and two aldii who paid four solidi. Hert too there was an oliveta which returned sixty Libras of oil. A certain Madericus held parts of the estate as a benefice but the text breaks off before revealing which parts. Once more this text does not have to refer to a time before 835 because we do not know what happened at Limonta between 83 5 and 879 with certainty.@

The third text, another incomplete inventory, can be dated post-83 5 as it explicitly records monastic rights over Limonta. According to this text the demesne was worked by six famuli and their families, with an olivetum at Cornula (most probably Gorla near Bellagio) cultivated by an unspecified number of men who provided no returns as such but tended the olives in return for food and shelter. The non-demesne comprised cortis diversiis (notably inexact), oliveta in Aucis and Conni and tenant plots elsewhere. At this point the text breaks off in mid-sentence.

We should recall that, of texts claiming to refer to 835 or thereabouts,

46 S. Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900-1300 (Oxford, 1984),

4’ See above p. 6 . 4 8 The 879 breve secrrritatzs shows that Lirnonta had been held as a benefice by Appo. Maderi-

p. 14 notes the importance of unwritten custom in early medieval societies.

cus may have preceded him.


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only Lothar’s diploma of January 835 is undeniably preserved in the form in which it was first written down. The latter reveals that the Limonta estate was bi-partite and that the non-demesne, which comprised an olive grove and six small farms, was worked by thirty-four mancipia. It is possible, although admittedly not certain, that all the other information, and in particular the presence at Limonta of various grades of dependants (semi, aldii and famatli), was gathered together in the late-ninth or early-tenth centuries at the monastery of Sant’ Ambro- gio. Possibly it was fabricated there with a view to winning the disputes which the monastery was involved in at just that time. Possibly it re- flected the genuine pressure which Sant’ Ambrogio was putting on Limonta semi and the degree to which it was inquiring into their lives and indeed attempting to quantify and regulate their obligations.

The inventorid character of these texts is found again in the 905 placitum, both the original and its later tenth-century copy, and the grand charter of 957. A closer look at these texts reveals again how the monastery was concerned to quantify obligations and record them with precision in writing for all three texts contain lists of renders owed. There are also many similarities of language and rhetoric between the ‘905’ forgery and the 9 5 7 charter.49 They evince a desire to humiliate the servi by tonsure and by ritual prostration before the lord abbot.$’ Both texts are unusual in their exaggerated tone and use of uncommon words. I would suggest that the 957 text provided a model for the ‘905’ forgery which was made either in 957 or at some point later in the tenth century when the monastery wished to set in order the written record of its victory over the semi.

The production of oil and iron at Limonta undoubtedly made it a valuable property and it is no surprise that Sant’ Ambrogio should have wanted to exploit its full potential. It is hardly surprising that the monastery of Reichenau - which owned an estate at Tremezzo directly across the lake from Bellagio - also claimed ownership of Limonta. It is more surprising that, as a result of the strong objections of the so-called semi

49 There is not space here to undertake the full diplomatic analysis necessary to show exactly how both texts are linked. But the use of superlatives describing the abbot gives an exaggerated tone to both texts which may come from a common source. The 905 forgery has piissimus, excellentissimum, reverentissirnus. The 9 5 7 charter, reverentissimus, praeclarissime, vestra magnificentissima nobilitas. The genuine 905 placitum has none of these words (which are rare in the corpus as a whole).

lo The submission to the tonsure is an odd reference which may indicate the ritual humiliation of the semi (there is another: C[odice/ D[iplomatico/ L[ongobardo], ed. L. Schiaparelli (Rome, 1935), n. 19 (AD 71 5 ) . I doubt that it was an attempt to make the servi into clerics (as did happen on occasion, see a letter from Pope Zacharias to Boniface, dated 748, which refers to priests in Saxony ‘many of them are tonsured serfs who have fled from their masters’, English trans., E. Emerton, The Letters of St. Boniface, n. Ixiv, 142-5), MGH Epistolae Selectae, Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus ed. M. Tang1 (Berlin 1916), no. 80.



of Limonta to Sant’ Ambrogio’s demands, the conflict repeatedly ended up in court. Such conflicts between monastic houses and their servile dependants are not without parallel elsewhere in the ninth century, which in Italy was a time of ecclesiastical expansion. For example the monastery of San Vincenzo a1 Volturno in Molise was involved in disputes with the inhabitants of the village of Carapelle between 779 and 872. This resulted, it has been suggested, in the establishment of ‘a feudal control’ by the monastery over previously free peasants.> I My sugges- tions concerning the rituals of dispute and submission of the semi re- inforce such a feudal characterization. But what is most interesting is the apparent understanding which the Limonta semi had of the power of written documentation and the attempts - by their prolonged involvement in court cases - which they made to ensure that the written record contained the truth about their situation (that monastic demands were unjustifiably increasing). That Sant’ Ambrogio deliberately manipulated this record to ensure this did not come about shows that the resistance of the semi, while it did not allow them to escape monastic clutches, did perhaps tip power relations between them and the monastery in their favour for a while.

The written word and disputing

There can be little doubt that written documents came to have crucial importance in the settlement of disputes in northern Italy in the course of the ninth century.$’ The example of the Limonta servi (and others in the Sant’ Ambrogio collection which there has not been space here to discuss) suggests that this importance was increasingly understood by the dependant population involved in disputes. When Sant’ Ambrogio became deeply embroiled in disputes with its dependants or those it wished to see as its dependants the norms of notarial recording practice were bent to suit monastic aims. Texts were produced locally (particu- larly self-conscious recording texts such as inventories and placita) which do not quite fit usual notarial forms. These and altered copies of royal diplomata were produced precisely at the turn of the ninthhenth centuries when things seemed to be going against the community politically. The contrast with the Reichenau case is instructive: here the texts were not altered for surely the adversary would have noticed in court. These altered records proved an effective means of enforcing the monastic view on those who may have disagreed with it. At least this was so in the eyes

5 ‘ C.J. Wickham, Studi sulla societa degli Appennini nell’ altomedioevo: contadini, signori e

5’ C.J. Wickham, ‘Land disputes’, pp. 105-12, with full bibliography. insediamento nel territorio di Vulva (Sulmona), (Bologna, 1982), pp. 20-9.


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of the monks who saw the written word as a way of ordering the world to their best advantage. This suggests a well-developed understanding of the uses to which writing could be put, an understanding which sometimes drew on the expertise of notaries trained in document redaction and at other times on literate monks, but which at the same time under- mined attempts to keep the recording of court proceedings in state, that is royal or comital, hands. Those who made the narrative record were the ones with the power, both because of the very existence of the record in writing, the fact of it, and because of the very words used to tell the record and preserve the memory. The text was both a form of knowledge and a means of establishing legitimacy. It was also a means of tidying up real life and of establishing the moral high ground for the monastery.

The physical production of written records of events thought important by the monastic community was an essential part of the ritual process of disputing to the monks. Monastic authors in presenting to the world ‘what really happened’ have made it very difficult for historians now to discover ‘what really happened’. The formulae and formulaic character of records concerning disputes, conflicts and their resolution lead us into a world of what might be termed ritualized narrative structures, a world where control over the text, how it was set down and in what form, may indeed reflect and be part of the ritualistic character of the disputing process as it was seen at the monastery of Sant’ Ambrogio. This, as has been already indicated, is not entirely surprising, although it is an unusually fully documented example.53

More exciting is the possibility that, through a close reading of these texts, the voice of the servile can be recovered, albeit obliquely. I have suggested here that we do not have a crude contrast between highly literate monks and non literate peasants because both sides realized the value of writing. While it is surely true that in all documents where monastic dependants speak they do so not with their voices but in a monastic representation of their voices, yet it seems to me that communication between monastery and dependant was not entirely imposs- ible. Rosamond McKitterick has argued recently that capitularies were ‘. . . all formulated in Latin, and provision in some instances is made for reading them aloud. Yet there is seldom reference made to the need to translate the capitularies into a spoken vernacular’. 54 She believes that

$ 3 R. McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1988); J.L. Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian government’, in R. McKitterick (ed.) The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1990); A. Petrucci, ‘Alfabetismo ed educazione grafica degli scribi altomedievali (secc. vii-x)’, in P. Ganz (ed.) The Role of the Book in Medieval Culture (Brepols, 1986), pp. 109-32.

I4 R. McKitterick, ‘Latin and romance’, p. 136, p. 140. She does not accept that ‘. . . Latin was unintelligible, in whatever form, to the mass of the population’, p. 141.



Latin was much more widely understood in Frankia than many scholars have thought. I suspect that in Italy, where spoken Latin turned so late and so easily into Italian, this was especially true and that we can see the possibility of this in these charters.>’ Recent work on literacy in early medieval Europe tends to support my suggestion that these semi understood the importance of written documents for it has increasingly been stressed that communication was not simply about who could and could not read and write.@ The Sant’ Ambrogio texts show that members of relatively remote rural communities came into contact with writing when texts were read out publicly, when charters recording property transactions were drawn up, in court cases when written texts were demanded and produced (by those who had them) as evidence, and, apparently, when members of such communities demanded that customary rights be set down in writing. Here we have an example of the exportation of city habits into the countryside. While there is little doubt that these semi could not read these texts for themselves and it is still unclear if they understood them when they were read out, I would suggest that the semi did appreciate that the possession of written records by the monastery had resulted in monastic victory in court. For them the symbolic production of the written text at ceremonies of ownership transfer was enough to make this clear. In this practical sense they understood the implicit message of the court hearings that ‘written records of customs are important if a case is to be successful’, with the result that they took part in the events of 957 which produced, in Porro- Lambertenghi’s ironic phrase, the ‘charter of concord’. We should not forget that - according to this text, and in accordance with normal practice when written agreements between two parties were drawn up - they were given a copy of the agreement. What they did with it we cannot know but the fact of it was in part responsible for the monastic interest in recording the settlements of disputes at all and providing us with the texts which we still study. Our reading of these texts should

$ 5 Language scholars regard the ninth and tenth centuries as the very earliest phase in the formation of Italian, A. and G. Lepschy, The Italian Language Today (London, 1977). pp. 19-40. The standard work is B. Migliorini, Storia delfa lingua italiana (Florence, 1960): English adaptation, B. Migliorini and T. Gwynfor Griffith, The Italian Language (London, 1966). H. Bosshard, Saggio di un gfossario deff’antico lombardo (Florence, 1938), in showing that numerous modern Lombard dialect words appear in charters from Lombardy, including Milan, raises the possibility that the Latin of these charters was beginning to reflect the spoken language. This is something which requires further research.

5‘ R. McKitterick, ed., The Uses ofLiteracy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1990). pp. 3-5. Not everyone would agree. T.J. Walsh, ‘Spelling lapses in early medieval Latin documents and the reconstruction of primitive Roman phonology’, in Wright (ed.) Latin and the Romance Langrcages, pp. 205-18, argues that, ‘Even the simplest everyday notions were habitually expressed in writing in such a way as to be incomprehensible to the unlettered’ (p. 206). This depends on what is meant by comprehension.


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reveal monastic trickery and restore to the ‘people without history’ something of the dignity which the monastery sought so hard to destroy and which too few scholars have sought to restore.57

Department of History University of Nottingham

57 I should like to thank Wendy Davies, Janet Nelson and Chris Wickham for helpful corn- ments on earlier versions of this text. I am grateful also to the editors, and to the anonymous readers, of Early Medieval Europe for their criticism and advice.

. Early Medieval Europe 1994 3 ( I )

The monastery of Sant'Ambrogio and dispute settlement in early medieval Milan

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