By ROSSANO BALZARETTI Submitted for the Degree of Phd At
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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. By ROSSANO BALZARETTI Submitted for the degree of PhD At University College London. ABSTRACT This thesis is a detailed local study of the property controlled by the monastery of Sant* Ambrogio Milan in the pre-eleventh century period. Its central premise is that landowning brought the monastery a degree of material power whose nature has hitherto been poorly understood, in contrast to its spiritual importance which is well-established. Chapter One examines the authenticity and usefulness as tools for answering historical questions of three hundred and fifty charters which provide the main evidential base of the thesis. Chapter Two discusses the geographical, social and political context within which the monastery functioned, focussing not simply on the major ecclesiastical and lay jurisdictions in the region but also on the mechanics of how land itself was *held* by a religious community with little opportunity to enforce its ownership. In Chapters Three, Four and Five it is established where the monastery had property, how and when this was acquired, within a chronological framework extending from the period before the foundation of the community (in 789) to the end of the tenth century, a chronology which is essential to an understanding of the intricate changes which occurred as the result of continuing acquisition and alienation by the monastery throughout the period. Chapter Three argues that the foundation and initial endowment of the community before c.835, by kings and archbishops, established the basic framework of monastic holdings, concentrated in the hills and lakes of the north and the plains of the south and east. Chapters Four and Five discuss how the monastery added to and coped with its properties in the south and north respectively, via studies of the relationships which existed between the monastery and existing local owners. The resulting picture suggests that the monastery was as much exploited as exploiter in some villages, and that it - 2 - had to deal with resistance which was at times very prolonged. Chapters Six and Seven provide analyses of the economic organisation of property which this accumulation necessitated, particularly the development of estates and the nature of the relationships with free peasants, tenants and dependants. An important place is assigned to Sant *Ambrogio1s urban contacts, which made it part of an economy which was, within the limitations of the period, amongst the most sophisticated in Europe. The final chapter assesses to what degree and in what ways this landowning could be said to have manifested itself as ‘power*, especially the degree to which the abbots had or had not become great lords by the end of the period. The conclusions reached tend to suggest that controlling land and extracting surplus from it was not as easy as many studies of this and other early medieval monasteries have assumed. - 3 - CONTENTS. Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 8 Abbreviations 16 1 The Sources: History through charters 19 2 Landscape, settlement and society 74 3 Patterns of Landowning in north-western Lombardy, c. 750-C.1000. 123 4 Lowland Elites and Sant1Ambrogio: Cologno,Inzago and Gnignano 163 5 Upland Estates: cooperation, resistance and change 204 6 The Monastic Economy 248 7 Abbots as Lords: power and its limits at 286 Sant *Ambrogio Conclusion 332 Appendix One 340 Appendix Two 347 Maps 349 Bibliography 363 - 4 - LIST OF TABLES. Table 1 Archiepiscopal precepta 64 Table 2 Sant'Ambrogio charters by decade 64 Table 3 Documents copied pre-1000 65 Table 4 Documents copied post-1000 66 Table 5 Copied texts pre-1300 66 Table 6 Gifts to Sant'Ambrogio 154 Table 7 Sales/Exchanges involving Sant'Ambrogio 155 LIST OF MAPS. Map 1 Milan in the Early Middle Ages 349 Map 2 North West Lombardy 350 Map 3 Estate of Scaptoald 351 Map 4 Properties of basilica Sant'Ambrogio 351 Map 5 Ecclesiastical property in Lombardy 352 Map 6 Archiepiscopal properties 353 Map 7 Properties of monastery of Sant'Ambrogio 354 Map 8 Properties of Anselm of Inzago 355 Map 9 Gnignano and vicinity 356 Map 10 Campione estate 357 Map 11 Properties of Adelgisus of Schianno 358 Map 12 Limonta estate 359 Map 13 Curtes of Sant'Ambrogio 360 Map 14 Sant'Ambrogio in the Valtellina 361 Map 15 Dubino Estate 361 - 5 - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. In the four years during which I have been researching and writing this thesis I have been very fortunate in the help I have received from a great many individuals in both England and Italy. I should like to thank them all here. Of more particular debts I want to acknowledge collectively the librarians and archivists of University College London ( in particular Lesley in Inter Library Loans ), the British Library, the Institute of Historical Research and Sheffield University; and in Milan the Archivio di Stato di Milano, the Archivio Capitolare della basilica di Sant'Ambrogio, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, and the libraries of the Universita Cattolica and the Universita Statale. Collectively too I want to thank the secretarial staffs of the History Departments of University College London and Sheffield University, the regulars of the Early Medieval Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research and the Early Medieval Forum in Sheffield. My supervisors Wendy Davies and Chris Wickham have supplied endless help, encouragement and thought- provoking criticism for which a simple thankyou hardly seems adequate. I thank them both deeply in the happy knowledge that over the past four years we have become friends. The following individuals, in England and Italy, have been kind enough to answer numerous particular queries and, although they may not always have realised it, have taught me about the early Middle Ages for which I will always remain grateful: Anna Maria Ambrosioni, David Andrews, Martin Carver, Michael Clanchy, Michael Crawford, David D'Avray, Paul Fouracre, Cristina La Rocca, Silvia Lusuardi-Siena, Bob Moore, Jinty Nelson, Susan Reynolds, Gabriella Rossetti, Julia Smith and Lizzie Ward. - 6 - I owe a particular debt to Professore Cinzio Violante for valuable advice in Pisa and especially for his kind gift of books. My understanding of what history might be about was deepened hugely by my recent association with the Department of History at Sheffield University. I thank all my colleagues and students there very much. I owe particular debts to my fellow medievalists - Katharine Keats-Rohan, Edmund King, David Luscombe, Bob Moore, Janey Stevenson, Kath Thompson and Simon Walker - and also to Stephen Salter for long discussions about Max Weber and much else. I could not have persevered in my research without the support of my friends Maria Bonomi, Montserrat Cabret i Pairet, Paul Heywood, Helen Johnson, Alastair Leonard, John Moreland, Michael Penry, Stephen Salter, Johnathan Scott, Lindsey Shaw, Janey Stevenson, Suzy Turner, Mary Vincent and Simon Walker. I thank them all, con affetto e con amore. My family have put up with me over four years which I am sure must have seemed never-ending at times. My greatest thanks must be to them and especially to my parents for continuing support, not least financial, without which I suspect I should never have finished, or started. Ross Balzaretti Pyrford, August 1989. - 7 - INTRODUCTION. The site where Saint Ambrose built a basilica and where he is buried has been called, '...one of the symbols of continuity in Christian history * .^^ Yet its significance as a holy place stretches back beyond Ambrose into pre-Christian and early Christian times when it was part of the most important burial site of Roman Mediolanum and close to the mausoleum of San Vittore. I t had seen the burials of numerous early martyrs, notably Saints Protasius and Gervasius whose bodies, discovered by Ambrose, provided the pretext for for the construction of the Basilica Ambrosiana there. Already then, by the time our story begins in the late eighth century, the place had been holy for centuries. However, Sant‘Ambrogio, the church we see today, is not Ambrose* s church but the work of the Middle Ages, when the * Ambrosian Tradition * of worship, deliberately different in many of its customs from Roman norms, was in full cry. Those who shouted loudest in defence of these Milanese practices were the archbishops who, as senior metropolitans of northern Italy and direct descendants of bishop Ambrose, maintained the tradition in the face of ceaseless papal threats throughout the medieval period. The church of Sant* Ambrogio became the most potent symbol of archiepiscopal power and lavish embellishments were bestowed upon it to enhance the cult of the saint. This cult of Ambrose began to override those of other Milanese saints in the ninth century with the encouragement of Carolingian kings, whose advisers revered his writings. It was in this atmosphere that a monastery following the Benedictine Rule was set up at the basilica in 789/790 as a result of action by Archbishop Peter and Charlemagne. It is this community - which survived until - 8 - Introduction its dissolution in 1798 - which forms the basis of our story. Yet the religious history of the monastery of Sant *Ambrogio in the early medieval period forms no part of what follows and at the outset it is necessary to explain why. It is not meant to imply that this religious history was not important - although I myself would not endow it with the overwhelming significance that many historians do - but rather that its importance has already been established as a result of the researches of Ambrosioni, Cattaneo and Ferrari.Further, it is a contention of this thesis that Sant‘Ambrogio1s landholding as much as its provision of religious services, gave it its place in the complex world of Milanese and Lombardian society in the two centuries following its first appearance.