1

Chestnuts in charters: evidence for specialised production in tenth-century and Milan

Ross Balzaretti

The sweet chestnut tree (Castanea sativa Mill.) has been valued in much of southern Europe since before Roman times for its nutritious fruits.1 Surprisingly neglected in recent general environmental histories of medieval Europe,2 the chestnut is typically at home in

Mediterranean upland landscapes with its optimum range at 300-900m altitude. The tree will however grow there at lower altitudes as well as in colder northern latitudes including the

British Isles. In England, although chestnuts and chestnut wood have occasionally been found in Roman-period excavations (although this material was almost certainly imported),3 by the

Anglo-Saxon period the tree was entirely absent from England and other trees more tolerant of local conditions held sway.4 In as in Britain there is on-going discussion about whether the species is native or not: its presence in Italy is certainly very ancient as clear

1 Figen Korel and Murat Ö. Balaban, ‘Chemical composition and health aspects of chestnut

(Castanea spp.)’, in C. Alasalvar and F. Shahidi (eds), Tree Nuts: Composition,

Phytochemicals, and Health Effects (Boca Raton, FL., 2008).

2 John Aberth, An Environmental History of the Middle Ages (London and New York, 2013),

79 and Richard C. Hoffmann. An Environmental History of Medieval Europe (Cambridge,

2014), 170, 187.

3 This is debated. See e.g. work being carried by R. Jarman: https://glos.academia.edu/rjarman (accessed 17.08.15).

4 Della Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England. Literature, Lore and Landscape (Woodbridge,

2010), 275. 2 archaeological evidence records it as far back as the sixth millennium BCE.5 In Italy where a substantial population of chestnut trees still exists today – albeit often in a derelict state – the early Middle Ages saw the opposite development to England: the expansion of chestnut cultivation.6 The changing distribution of the chestnut can only be addressed properly by archaeology,7 and recent work in northern Italy has shown from a combination of pollen, charcoal and other remains discovered principally at Monte Barro and in Brescia that its cultivation developed significantly during the fifth and sixth centuries.8 Written evidence, which is far from being an ideal source for environmental research in this period, documents considerable early medieval interest in the tree.9 For example, the late tenth-century inventory of the properties of the large Apennine monastery of (in the Trebbia valley many kilometres inland to the north east of Genoa) recorded large quantities of chestnuts being

5 A. T. Grove and Oliver Rackham, The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological

History (New Haven and London, 2001), 163.

6 Massimo Montanari, L’alimentazione contadina nell’alto medioevo (Naples, 1979), 41.

7 A. M. Mercuri et al., ‘A marine/terrestrial integration for mid-late Holocene vegetation history and the development of the cultural landscape in the valley as a result of human impact and climate change’, Veget Hist Archaeobot, 21 (2012), 366-8.

8 Paolo Squatriti, Landscape and Change in Early Medieval Italy. Chestnuts, Economy and

Culture (Cambridge, 2013), 169-70, 174, 179-80.

9 J. A. Quiros Castillo, ‘Cambios y trasformaciones en el passaje del Apenino toscano entre la

Antigüedad Tardia y la Edad Media. El castaño’, Archeologia Medievale, 25 (1998) argues the case against documents effectively but ignores the cultural dimension which they certainly illuminate. 3 produced for the community especially near the Ligurian coast,10 and an entry in the inventory made over a century earlier in 862 raises the possibility that some chestnut production may have been traded on the market in Genoa, perhaps exchanged for more exotic products produced overseas.11

The role of this crop within early medieval economies is complicated by the fact that the nut itself can be a food of significance within autarkic productive systems. It has often been treated by historians and ethnographers simply as the ‘bread tree’.12 Although it may have been eaten in Roman times recent research suggests that firewood and even timber was of more interest to Roman chestnut growers and other products (famously wheat, oil and wine) were much more likely to be traded and consumed.13 In the medieval period and beyond it was more widespread and constituted in the words of Horden and Purcell ‘an alternative economy’ providing a non-cereal staple which would grow better than wheat and

10 ‘Breviarium de terra sancti Columbani’, in Andrea Castagnetti et al. (eds), Inventari altomedievali (Rome, 1979), 189-92 (Breve de terra que in Maritima).

11 ‘Adbreviatio de rebus omnibus Ebobiensi monasterio pertinentibus’, in Castagnetti,

Inventari altomedievali, 131: In Genua ecclesia in honore sancti Petri, potest colligere per annum castaneis modia X. Discussed by Ross Balzaretti, Dark Age (London, 2013),

99 and Squatriti, Landscapes of Change, 185.

12 Giovanni Cherubini, ‘La “civiltà” del Castagno in Italia all fine del medioevo’,

Archeologia medievale, 8 (1981) and Massimo Montanari, ‘Il tempo delle castagne’, in D.

Balestracci (ed.), Uomini, paesaggi, storie: studi di storia medieval per Giovanni Cherubini, vol. 1 (Siena, 2011), 427. Both articles deal largely with the period after the year 1300.

13 P. Conedera et al., ‘The cultivation of Castanea sativa (Mill.) in Europe, from its origin to its diffusion on a continental scale’, Veget Hist Archaeobot, 13 (2004), 173. This is disputed:

Grove and Rackham, Nature of Mediterranean Europe, 173. 4 some other grains on many sites.14 A classic case was early modern Liguria where whole societies in inland valleys survived on chestnut bread and chestnut polenta right up to the

1950s.15 Although many formerly cultivated chestnut woods have now reverted to ‘wild’ trees because of abandonment, still in the 1950s many chestnuts were ‘domesticated’ varieties which had been specifically developed over the centuries to produce larger crops of better fruit,16 and a regional repertoire of dishes existed to make fullest use of this nut.

However, given the long history of this species it is likely that improvements of this sort had been attempted very much earlier perhaps even a thousand years before in the second half of the tenth century. The connection between developments in cultivation and the possible commercialisation of chestnuts as a product to be exchanged and traded outside the place of immediate production is much less well understood, certainly for the ancient and early

14 Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea. A Study of Mediterranean

History (Oxford, 2000), 203. Rye however did grow successfully in the upper Po plain because the cold winters experienced there are necessary for it to germinate: K.-E. Behre,

‘The history of rye cultivation in Europe’, Veget Hist Archaeobot, 1 (1992), 145. This would help to explain why chestnuts were less significant as a staple in parts of this region.

15 Roberta Cevasco, Diego Moreno, Ross Balzaretti and Charles Watkins, ‘Historical chestnut cultures, climate and rural landscapes in the Apennines’, in David Harvey and Jim Perry

(eds.), The Future of Heritage as Climates Change. Loss, Adaptation, Creativity (Routledge,

London and New York, 2015), 130.

16 F. Camangi, A. Stefano and L. Sebastiani (eds.), Etnobotanica in Val di Vara. L’uso dell piante nella tradizione popolare (La Spezia, 2009), 110-114; Ross Balzaretti, ‘The History of the Countryside in sixteenth-century ’, in Ross Balzaretti, Mark Pearce and

Charles Watkins (eds.)., Ligurian Landscapes. Studies in Archaeology, Geography and

History (London, 2004), 21. 5 medieval periods, and even for the early modern period and beyond when records are much fuller.17 Therefore evidence for the crucial phase in the history of chestnuts in Italy c.950- c.1050 will be outlined first with explanations offered for why such specialisation may have happened then and what its economic and social consequences might have been. The results contribute to re-energised debates about the nature of early medieval farming.18

Until recently the study of chestnuts as of other aspects of early medieval woodland history has been rather neglected, with the exception of work of Chris Wickham who gave a lecture at Spoleto in 1989 which has become a classic of woodland history for its characteristically wide-ranging sweep coupled with the penetrating analysis of detail.19 In the few sentences he devoted to the sweet chestnut on that occasion he emphasised the fundamental fact that chestnuts, although a tree crop, are nonetheless a managed crop like

17 Charles Watkins, Trees, Woods and Forests. A Social and Cultural History (London,

2014), 261-68.

18 J. A. Quiros Castillo, ‘Agrarian Archaeology in Early Medieval Europe’, Quaternary

International, 346 (2014) and especially Debbie Banham and Ros Faith, Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming (Oxford, 2014).

19 ‘European forests in the early Middle Ages: landscape and land clearance’ reprinted with an additional note in Chris Wickham, Land and Power. Studies in Italian and European

Social History, 400-1200 (London, 1994). He drew on the earlier renowned Spoleto lecture of

Charles Higounet, ‘Les forêts de l’Europe occidentale du Ve au XIe siècle’, Settimane di

Studio, 13 (1965). The potential of medieval forest history is also clear from the important articles of Archibald Dunn, ‘The exploitation and control of woodland and scrubland in the

Byzantine world’, Byzantine and Medieval Greek Studies 16 (1992) and Richard Keyser,

‘The Transformation of Traditional Woodland Management: Commercial Sylviculture in

Medieval Champagne’, French Historical Studies, 32 (2009). 6 other agricultural staples (wheat, rice, potatoes and so on). Additionally, he proposed that ‘in

Lombardy…there is very clear documentation of castaneta in a large variety of ninth- and tenth-century texts’ and that in the tenth century ‘we have signs of new plantation’.20

Wickham based these conclusions on the work of Montanari on early medieval agriculture in northern Italy which was based largely on the evidence of charters.21 Although much of this research remains convincing the first of these statements is questioned in this paper as there does not in fact seem to be very much ninth-century evidence for chestnuts the part of

Lombardy studied here (Milan and its hinterland). In contrast the second statement is further developed by comparison of the region around Milan with that around Genoa to suggest that during the tenth century greater attention was indeed paid to the exploitation of chestnut trees, especially in the Liguria region to the point where specialised cultivation might have been developed especially on church estates. This evidence ties in with that of the Bobbio inventories mentioned above.

It is crucial to anchor any study of any plant crop in a specific landscape at a precise time because there could be considerable variation in woodland cover even over short distances, and certainly across time. Like all plants, chestnuts are sensitive to soil quality, water supply and temperature which vary, notably with altitude.22 But these trees are as sensitive to the vagaries of human activity, with demand and fashion being important aspects

20 Wickham, Land and Power, 192.

21 Montanari, L’alimentazione contadina (Naples, 1979), 37-43, 296-301. The distribution map on p. 39 suggests that chestnuts were found at all altitudes including those below 200m normally the lower limit for the species.

22 Giancarlo Bounous (ed.), Il Castagno. Risorsa multifunzionale in Italia e nel mondo

(Milan, 2014), 39-60. There is a useful summary of the medieval Italian history of the chestnut at 5-10. 7 of their history. Chestnuts were, for example, extensively cultivated in the nineteenth century high up in the Ligurian Apennines at the margins of their ‘zone’ because of a complex mix of supply and demand of other staples (wheat, potatoes) but also because the taste for chestnut products had long been developed there.23 The same region a thousand years before obviously had a very much lower population which necessarily resulted in more limited cultivation of the tree even those away from biologically marginal areas. This historical variation means that care needs to be taken not to attribute a ‘chestnut civilisation’ to Italy too readily as ‘where, when and why’ are questions which should always be foregrounded. A good example of this is Tuscany where Chris Wickham showed in The Mountains and the

City (1988) that the Garfagnana valley in the Lucchesia was not dominated by a ‘chestnut civilisation’ until the later medieval period as documented by Giovanni Cherubini.24 In the early Middle Ages local references to trees showed them to be ‘single trees scattered across mixed forest’ instead of the ‘whole chestnut forests’ of later periods.25 These conclusions can be supplemented by research excavation at Miranduolo (south of Siena) which argued for expansion of chestnuts as a food source from the second half of the ninth century: before the tree was mostly used for timber.26

23 As argued in Cevasco et al., ‘Historical Chestnut Cultures, Climate and Rural Landscapes in the Apennines’, in Harvey and Perry, The Future of Heritage as Climates Change.

24 Cherubini, ‘La civiltà del castagno in Italia alla fine del medioevo’ and Montanari, ‘Il tempo delle castagne’.

25 Chris Wickham, The Mountains and the City. The Tuscan Appennines in the Early Middle

Ages (Oxford, 1988), 23. Critiqued by Quiros Castillo note 9 above.

26 M. Buonincontri et al., ‘Farming in a rural settlement in central Italy: cultural and environmental implications of crop production through the transition from Lombard to

Frankish influence (8-11th centuries A.D.)’, Veget Hist Archaeobot, 23 (2014), 785. 8

Alongside Tuscany, chestnuts have been studied for other Italian regions notably

Campania, and Liguria.27 Chris, in his review of my Dark Age Liguria - in which chestnuts inevitably figured large and which owes a great deal to the inspiration of his own work - wondered if ‘chestnuts show some economic specialisation’ in this region.28 Drawing on Chris’s advocacy of comparative method at the micro as well as at the macro scale, it will become clear that the comparative study of Genoa and Milan and their respective regions in the tenth century suggests that such specialisation may have occurred.29 Archaeological research into past flora (especially palynological studies) would without doubt provide the best evidence to answer these questions but the current state of archaeological research in these regions does not permit a detailed like for like comparison for this period.30 Charters from these two regions do provide relevant evidence in forms which allow meaningful comparison and the result reveals whether, and if so how, the production of chestnuts may

27 Squatriti, Landscape and Change, passim; Patricia Skinner, Medieval Amalfi and its

Diaspora, 800-1250 (Oxford, 2013), 63-7; Balzaretti, Dark Age Liguria, passim.

28 Chris Wickham, ‘Review of Balzaretti, Dark Age Liguria’, Mediterranean Historical

Review, 29:2 (2014), 172.

29 Chris Wickham, ‘Problems of comparing rural societies in early medieval western Europe’,

TRHS, 2, sixth series (1992); ‘Problems in doing Comparative History’, The Reuter Lecture

2004 (Southampton, 2005); and especially Framing the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2005).

30 M. Rottoli, ‘Reflections on Early Medieval resources in northern Italy: The archaeobotanical and archaeozoological data’, Quaternary International, 346 (2014) sets out the issues very well for this region; compare Wendy Davies, ‘Thinking about the Welsh environment a thousand years ago’, in ead., Welsh History in the Early Middle Ages. Texts and Societies (Farnham, 2009), Chapter XVII for the Welsh case where synthesis has similarly been lacking. 9 have been to some degree specialised, in the way that the olive production discussed elsewhere in this volume clearly was.31

I The Genovesato The archaeology of plant remains (especially for ‘prehistory’) is better-developed in Liguria

(e.g. Finalborgo, Priamar, Sarzana and neighbouring Luni) than in the Milanese region but has nevertheless afforded little information so far about the presence of chestnuts in the region in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Results from a rescue excavation at Corvara (73 m asl near Beverino in the lower Vara valley near La Spezia) demonstrated from analysis of charcoal remains that the local environment was dominated by woodland, especially chestnut woodland at the end of the tenth century.32 Further, an assemblage that included grinding stones, locally made pottery testi (cooking utensils) and pig bones suggested to the excavators a domestic use of chestnuts for flour to make bread and to fatten animals for eventual human consumption.33 This eastern village was part of a network of estate centres owned by the bishops of Luni rather than Genoa, but similar villages and similar landscapes are documented in the Genoese charter material especially in the Bisagno and Polcevera valleys.

At the moment none of these centres have been subjected to relevant archaeological study

31 A. Brugnoli and G. M. Varanini (eds.), Olivi e olio nel medioevo italiano (Bologna, 2005) is the key work for Italy. See the chapters by Fouracre and Story elsewhere in this volume.

32 A. Cagnana, A. and S. Gavagnin, ‘Indagini archeologiche nel borgo arroccato di Corvara

(Beverino, La Spezia)’, AM, 31 (2004); Balzaretti, Dark Age Liguria, 130-1.

33 A. Cagnana et al., ‘L’abitato d'altura di X-XI secolo a Corvara di Beverino (SP).

Contributo all'archeologia del paesaggio altomedievale in Lunigiana’, in A. Del Lucchese and

L. Gambaro Archeologia in Liguria, Nuova Serie, 1 (Genoa, 2004), 134-37 (chestnuts made up 91% of the sample). 10 although the potential is there notably for Molassana an important site in the Bisagno valley directly north of Genoa itself well-documented in charters (see Figure 1 below).34

Charters have only been preserved for Genoa and its region from the year 916 onwards, a significant limitation which makes it difficult to assess the extent to which cultivation practices reported in them may or may not have been new.35 The number of survivals is not huge with 58 for the tenth century as compared with 188 for the eleventh.36

Most of the references to chestnuts are within generic formulae and limited to the two terms silva castanea and castanetum respectively referring to ‘wild’ trees used for timber and

34 Paola Melli (ed.), Genova dalle origini all’anno mille. Archeologia e storia (Genoa, 2014),

153-55.

35 Squatriti, Landscapes and Change, 192-93 argues that comparison of eighth-, ninth- and tenth-century charters across the Po Valley suggests little significant change in the chestnut landscapes they document.

36 Marta Calleri, ‘Gli usi cronologici Genovese secoli X-XII’, Atti della Società Ligure di

Storia Patria, 39/1 (1999). There is no complete single edition of these documents so the following have been used: L. T. Belgrano, Il registro della curia arcivescovile di Genova,

Atti della società ligure di storia patria, vol 2, part 2 (Genoa, 1862), cited as Registro; L. T.

Belgrano (ed.), Cartario genovese, Atti della società ligure di storia patria, vol. 2, part 1

(Genoa, 1870), cited as Cartario; M. Calleri (ed.), Le carte del monastero di San Siro di

Genova (951/952-1224) (Genoa, 1997), cited as San Siro; M. Calleri, (ed.), Codice diplomatico del monastero di Santo Stefano, vol. 1 (965-1200) (Genoa, 2009), cited as Santo

Stefano. The Belgrano texts are cartulary copies, the Calleri text largely original single sheets.

There is some overlap between editions. 11

‘domestic’ ones used for fruit production.37 This distinction in terminology, which can be inferred from later references to chestnut culture in this area in better-documented periods, is likely to have been a real one as it would seem perverse to persist in using two different modes of description otherwise. Not everyone would agree.38 These two terms occur in lists which always include other sorts of land use (grains, figs, willows, the giant reed, olives) depending on locality and it might be possible to estimate the percentage of land devoted to their cultivation from such material (although it would be too approximate to mean much on the ground). More significantly, domestic chestnut woodland was sometimes given specific names to aid identification in the field; examples include castanea budosclinga and castaneto de colloreto at Bavari in the Bisagno valley, castaneto uno in loco qui dicitur Tilia and castaneto vallasco in Zuccarello.39 Even if is no longer possible to find these locations they must refer to actual sites where chestnuts were cultivated at that time.

Genoese formulae dealing with chestnuts can be even more precise as in a single sheet original charter dated November 1006 which records a rental agreement between the monastery of Santo Stefano in Genoa and Martino relating to lands he farmed in Gallaneto

(Polcevera valley, di , a name in itself meaning something like ‘field

37 Silva castanea: 952 (Registro, 161-2); castanea bona 987 (Registro, 148-9). Castanetum:

948/9 (Registro, 162-3); 952 (Registro, 161-2); 955 (Registro, 233-4); 964 (San Siro doc. 2);

965 (Santo Stefano doc. 1); 966 (Registro, 144); 966 (Registro, 271-2); 969 (Santo Stefano doc. 2); 971 (Santo Stefano doc. 3); 972 (Registro, 223); 987 (Santo Stefano doc. 4); 990

(Santo Stefano doc. 6); 992 (Registro, 204); 993 (Santo Stefano doc. 7); 994 (Registro, 177);

38 Squatriti, Landscape and Change, 182 argues the opposite that this was a mere quirk of scribal practice.

39 Squatriti, Landscape and Change, 181-82, 198-90 for similar place names recorded in the

Po Valley. 12 of chestnuts’) directly north of Genoa.40 As part of this arrangement, which was to last for a ten-year period, Martino agreed

…to prepare the ground (pastenare) for chestnut trees and cut or improve (them) and

to put in domestic chestnut trees where appropriate so that after ten complete years

have passed they should return thence every year half of the chestnuts that have been

collected there and two good silver pennies and take those pennies to the monastery

and the chestnuts to the aforementioned place Gallaneto (my translation)

…pastenare de castaneas et taliare vel etscolere (sic. excolere) et inserire de

castaneas domesticas ubi oportunum fuerit usque at decem anni etspleti (sic. expleti)

et rendere debeant exinde per unumquemque anno de castaneas, que ibidem colecta

fuerit, medietatem et argentam denarius bonos duos dati et consignati ipsi denarii at

eodem monasterio et ipsas castaneas ic super locum Garsaneto

These phrases, which represent a typical ‘activation practice’,41 are significantly more detailed than the norm and suggest that chestnut production was perhaps commoditised in this locality around 20km north of Genoa. The possibility that Martino’s flour was sold in

Genoa’s market should at least be explored. The documentation of ‘domestic’ chestnuts for

40 ASG, Archivio Segreto 1508/6 edited as Santo Stefano doc. 21, pp. 36-38 (Cartario doc.

46). The association of Campomorone with chestnuts was noticed by late nineteenth-century

British visitors to this area who revelled in the local ‘chestnutting’: Ross Balzaretti,

‘Victorian Travellers, Apennine Landscapes and the Development of Cultural Heritage in

Eastern Liguria, c. 1875-1914’, History, 96 (2011), 453-4.

41 Diego Moreno, ‘Activation Practices, History of Environmental Resources and

Conservation’, in G. Sanga and G. Ortalli (eds.), Nature Knowledge. Ethnoscience,

Cognition, and Utility (New York, 2004). 13 the production of fruits is absolutely explicit here as is the careful management needed to improve the stock, possibly by grafting (reading taliare in that light).42 The fact that a (small) money rent was directly linked to the production of the nuts implies that Martino could sell them somewhere and that that was easier than taking the chestnuts themselves to Genoa.

Instead half the nuts were processed locally at Gallaneto, probably dried and ground into flour on site by someone else, who in turn might have taken that to Genoa for sale. The phrase here interpreted as grafting (taliere et excolere) is particularly important in the light of the biology of the chestnut tree. A chestnut tree grown from seed takes about twenty years to come into effective fruit production whereas a grafted tree takes only five or six. Hence for a peasant farmer like Martino planting grafted trees would be a very intelligent option, given that he got to keep half of the annual production under the terms of his mezzadria contract.

This sort of knowledge was probably common among farmers of trees, although it also features in the book learning represented by Roman agronomy texts such as Columella’s De arboribus which more educated monks might have had access to.43Grafting would also of course increase productivity for the monks of Santo Stefano.

It is possible to delve back beyond the year 1006 to trace how the monastery of Santo

Stefano had developed its holdings in this part of the Polcevera valley by means of a series of pro anima donations. The monastery had been founded forty years earlier in 965 outside the walls of Genoa adjacent to the ancient church of Santo Stefano by Bishop Theodulf, an active

42 Taliare could also mean ‘to prune’ and it might mean that here. There is a (rare) reference to 12 pruned olive trees (olivas tallias) in a Farfa charter of 718 (I. Giorgi and U. Balzani

[ed.], Il Regesto di Farfa compilato da Gregorio di Catino, vol. 2 (Rome, 1879), no. 3), a reference I owe to Paul Fouracre.

43 Squatriti, Landscape and Change, 93-4. 14 prelate who had been in post since 946.44 Its properties can be traced in a handful of surviving charters (all relating to properties quite near the city) which increase markedly in number and frequency in the first two decades of the eleventh century. A document which helped to establish the monastic community (1 April 965, drawn up in Genoa) constituted a pro anima gift made by two iudices and a deacon of land in Gallaneto but also in Albaro (including its church dedicated to Saint Nazarius), ‘Zinistedo’, Bavari and Campolungo.45 The abbot and his community were given the tithes from San Nazaro and property described as casis, vineis, ficetis, saletis, roboretis, castanetis, cannetis, silvis…(‘houses, vines, figs, willows, oaks, chestnuts, reed beds, woodland’). The absence of olives is worth comment because Albaro is on the coast where that tree flourishes, as is the absence of any grains.46 Otherwise this list is a pretty typical one for the area, focussed on fruiting trees (grapes and figs for humans, chestnuts for humans and pigs, acorns for pigs) and other ‘useful’ plants (willows for baskets and vine ties, reeds for forage and also for poles to support vines). In the list, the chestnut is the obvious staple food.

Four years later in June 969 a further pro anima gift was made by Serra, the widow of

Marino.47 The places listed were different (Rivarolo, ‘Manniade’, Campofregoso, Granarolo) thus increasing the number of known monastic farms but the type of production was similar

44 Valeria Polonio, ‘Tra universalismo e localismo: costruzione di un sistema (569-1321)’, in

Dino Puncuh (ed.), Il cammino della chiesa genovese dalle origini ai nostri giorni (Genoa,

1999), 87.

45 Santo Stefano doc. 1, pp. 3-5. The original is lost but a copy survives (Cartario doc. 6).

46 Olives do not feature much in these early Genoese charters with references at Molassana

(966, 1010), ‘Valle Bramosa’ (987), Bisagno valley (992), Carignano in Genoa (1000), Sestri

Levante (1011). References to figs and other fruit trees, reeds and willows are more common.

47 Santo Stefano doc. 2. 15 with the important addition of fields and pasture (campis et pascuis) and alii arboribus fructiferis (in addition to chestnuts). Since these gifts were to provide for the lighting

(luminaria) of the basilica of Santo Stefano the ‘fruiting trees’ may this time have included olives (and possibly walnuts). Serra herself was described as dei devota but also abbatissa of

Santo Stefano, hinting that the monastery might have been a double one (although there is dispute about this). In July 971 Todeverga and her four children made another pro anima grant of land in Gallaneto and Albaro, chestnuts again included.48 Bishop John confirmed an earlier gift by Abbess Serra of property in the vallis Bramosa described as pratis et silvis, in pascuis et herbis, in terris cultis et incultis, ficetis, castanetis, olivetis atque roboretis, another clear instance of mixed woodland.49 Chestnuts are listed in the same way in 990 and

993.50 In the contract of June 993 Andrea agreed to improve land for the monastery in Albaro during a five and half year period (quite a short timescale), creating land suitable for vines and other fruiting trees (de terra pastenare de vinea et arbores fructiferos). He also had to return annually one lamb, two chickens, and half of his production of wine, figs and chestnuts. Once again chestnuts are part of a mixed farming regime but this time there is clear evidence of ‘improvement’, which in this region probably meant constructing terraces upon which planting could take place, a labour-intensive activity.51 In this case these structures

48 Santo Stefano doc. 3.

49 Santo Stefano doc. 4, June 987.

50 Santo Stefano docs 6 and 7.

51 This is the meaning of the verb pastenare in charters of this sort and given by Niermeyer,

Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden, 1976), 770. In Liguria the local topography means that this verb must in effect mean ‘to terrace’. Pastinatio contracts (mostly relating to vines) are discussed with references by Skinner, Medieval Amalfi, 38-43. She shows (63) that such 16 were being built to plant vines rather than chestnuts because the monastery seems to have been expanding (and perhaps improving) its wine-producing capabilities. This is borne out by a further series of charters from the 990s in which vines near Genoa were given to the community as pious gifts.

Another well-documented site near Genoa is Molassana (Bisagno valley) with the details set out in Figure 1 which makes very clear that here too chestnut cultivation was part of a mixed farming system.52 Although this no doubt helped to spread risk and was therefore a sensible strategy at the level of the individual tenant it does not necessarily mean that the accumulated production of chestnuts, gathered in the central place of Genoa, could not have been managed for profit rather than subsistence. This village also had a mill and from 990 a castle which makes clear that the Genoese church was engaged in a substantial operation here. The castle was the first recorded in the Genoa region in this period. Its presence may indicate a place of particular interest to elites for its special productivity as much as any militarily strategic reason.

Figure 1: Land-use in Molassana (GE) 955-988

While it is possible that all the production of wine and chestnuts was consumed by the monastic community at Santo Stefano, it is also possible that some of it was sold in Genoa.

Inventories drawn up by the very much larger monastic communities of Bobbio (San

Colombano) and Brescia (Santa Giulia) show their interests in this region and strongly

contracts were used for chestnuts in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when that crop became more important locally.

52 Paola Guglielmotti, Ricerche sull’organizzazione del territorio nella Liguria medievale

(Florence, 2005), 31-34. 17 suggest that Genoa was a place where trade in agricultural products happened.53 Bobbio had, in the words of Squatriti, a ‘chestnut empire’ by the end of the tenth century, a considerable number of holdings as evidenced in four inventories.54 For example, the ‘Maritime’ inventory mentioned above listed chestnut groves (castenetum the term used) mostly on the higher ground in places which included Bargone, Alpe Adra near , Borzone and Caregli near Borzonasca. Genoese churches were developing interests in these places too. Some of those who held the land were specialist workers like the woodsman (silvanus) Andreas.55

II The Milanese References to chestnuts also occur in the charters of Milan and its region.56 The Milanese collections – largely but not entirely relating to the monastery of Sant’Ambrogio - contain charters several centuries older than the Genoese material (the earliest dated 721) and yet there is little reference to chestnuts before the tenth century. This absence may well be real because some places where reference to chestnuts might have been expected but is in fact absent are relatively well-documented sites (e.g. the estate of Campione alongside Lake

53 Balzaretti, Dark Age Liguria, 99.

54 Squatriti, Landscape and Change, 183.

55 Castagnetti, Inventari altomedievali, 192.

56 Montanari, L’alimentazione contadina, 37-43, 296-301 and Squatriti, Landscape and

Change, 189-94 survey the Po plain as a whole whereas the Milanese is the focus for A.

Rapetti, Campagne milanesi. Aspetti e metamofosi di un paesaggio rurale fra X e XII secolo

(Cavallermaggiore, 1994), 53-60, 120-28. Milanese charters are given in the edition of Giulio

Porro-Lambertenghi (ed.), Codex Diplomaticus Langobardiae (Turin, 1873). Cited as CDL. 18

Lugano and that of Limonta alongside Lake Como).57 The eight clear references to chestnuts in the ninth century (see Figure 2) employ two different terms: castenetellum (at Carpiano and Gnignano),58 and silva castana (‘Viniola’ in Sumirago,59 Bellagio60 and ‘Pegusini’61).

Reference to the microtoponym ‘Casteneto de Franci’ (a coppice wood, silva stallaria) in

Inzago in the testament of Bishop Garibald of Bergamo (March 870) is suggestive but no more.62 This is hardly many references given that the hundred or so documents for this period also note many other land-use terms (campo, prato, vinea and so on) much more frequently.

This near-absence might just reflect something real, a genuine lack of chestnut trees in the region in this period, which is not so surprising given that much of the area is not ideal territory for the chestnut tree being too low-lying and consequently too wet.63 Evidence increases in the tenth century (Figure 2) even though there are fewer charters in total from that time. Pretty consistently reference in the first half of the century is to chestnut woods

(silva castana) or chestnut trees (arbores castaneis) with ‘chestnut groves’ (castenetis) appearing more frequently after 970. Every reference to chestnuts bar one show the land to have been church property and, although surviving charters across Europe tend to document

57 This is particularly striking given that this region was important in Roman times for chestnuts: Conedera et al, ‘The cultivation of Castanea sativa (Mill.)’, 173-4.

58 CDL 87 and 120.

59 CDL 169, donated by Scaptoald to the churches of S. Maria and S. Lorenzo in Sumirago for his soul.

60 CDL 331, donated to the churches of S. Nazaro, Capiate, S. Siro in ‘Vepra’ and S. Pietro in

Pavia.

61 CDL 333, owned by the monastery of Nonantola.

62 CDL 246, donated to the nun Gariberga at S. Maria Wigilinda in Milan.

63 Rapetti, Campagne milanesi, 54. 19 the activities of churches more than lay people, many texts do deal solely with lay people which suggests that again this might be a real pattern. Perhaps church landlords especially developed the cultivation of chestnuts in this area at this time? References to single trees (as arbores) and to a communal chestnut wood (silva castana colectoria Arogno 932) imply that diversity of management existed. The presence of individual trees and small groups of trees

(ten in Inzago in 912) suggests management for production of nuts rather than timber, and that is also implied because these references occur in places much closer to Milan itself

(Inzago, Cologno, Gessate) where demand for chestnuts as food might well have been greater.

Unlike the Genoese examples, there is only one reference here to a lease involving chestnuts (a silva castana called Monticello in Inzago), a libellus made in February 912 between Bonomo of Pauliaco and Abbot Sigifred of Sant’Ambrogio.64 He (and his heirs) agreed to improve the land (meliorentur nam non depegiorentur) and to return annually 8 denarii to Sant’Ambrogio on the feast of Saint Martin (significantly in November, when chestnuts ripen). Although this is not a pastinatio contract in form it was effectively the same as the tenant was expected to ‘improve’ which probably meant expand the wood but perhaps also the productive qualities of the trees. The reference in the bounds to arbores decem suggests that every tree counted and was valued.

Figure 2: Chestnuts in the Milanese region 812-999

The small collection of charters relating to Santa Maria di Velate, near Varese to the north west of Milan, expands the source-base in an interesting way although only by fifteen

64 CDL 446, an original single sheet. 20 documents between 922 and 1007.65 This total usefully includes two inventories.66 The first

(Breve memorationis quod venit in casa Sancte Marie de massarii et de aldioni) can be roughly dated by a reference to the archpriest Leo who may have drafted it and whose successor Giovanni was definitely in place in May 959.67 The majority of tenants returned wheat (grano) and wine (vino) but there were some deviations from this norm. In Bimmio tenants returned rye and furmento (apparently different from grano), their meadows produced hay (feno) and sedge (the rare word lisca). Olive oil was also produced here and in Dublate,

Bugassco, Novago, Bemmio and Vultruna. For Vultruna we get a bit more detail as in this place Leo the archpriest had planted 37 olive trees himself which would produce 30 pounds of oil every three years: a better return was unlikely (ibi non habet plus melior quantum illum est). There is no reference to chestnuts at all in this document which is interesting given that none of the earlier charters mention them either. It probably means that Velate church did not own any at this time.

The first reference to chestnuts in these documents is in December 976 in an exchange of property in Velate itself (the named plots of Prina and Plani) between Radaldo, archpriest of Santa Maria, and Adelberto of Velate. The term used to describe the trees - silva castanea portatoria - maybe significant because it certainly refers to fruiting trees rather than those designed to provide leaf fodder or timber.68 Chestnuts are mentioned again in an exchange

(April 979) made by Radoaldo, this time of land in Orino, four plots described as terre cum silve castane superabente, totalling 121 tabulae in area and each having names (Langola,

65 Online edition at http://cdlm.unipv.it/edizioni/mi/velate-smaria1/ Le carte della Chiesa di

S. Maria del Monte di Velate I (922-1170), ed. Patrizia Merati. Cited as Merati.

66 Merati doc. 5 (‘before May 959’) and Merati doc. 12 (‘tenth century’).

67 Merati doc. 6.

68 Merati doc. 8. For the term see Niermeyer, Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus, 815. 21

Trevei and a Prada).69 A similar document dated March 993 reports parcels of silva castanea in Velate (at Sorgnano and Pillino).70 The (probably) late tenth-century inventory (Designatio terrarum) of church property in Casorate Primo and Calvignasco reports, once again, a mixed landscape which included chestnuts (castaneto et gerbo, the latter indicating shrubby land) amidst what was mostly pasture (pascuario).71 It is therefore possible, admittedly from a small evidence base, to propose that chestnut production if not introduced by the priests at

Santa Maria was at least encouraged by them in the latter decades of the tenth century. This is perhaps confirmed by a reference in a testament dated October 1026 to a small wood ‘newly of chestnut’ (silva quod est noveleto castano) in Burago.72

Further north in the region of the lakes - Lugano and Como especially – the charters associated with Isola Comacina (the tiny island in Lake Como) also provide some evidence for local chestnut cultivation. The phrase silva castanea portatoria is used here too for a wood in Bissone in 962 and a silva castana in Sorico (‘super fontana’, 1 iugerum) in 915.73

However, as there is far more reference in this material to other sorts of cultivation especially vines, there is little evidence for specialised chestnut production here. This might possibly be explained by the fact that almost all these charters are transactions between lay people. The tenth-century inventory of the monastery of Santa Cristina di Olona (near Pavia well to the south of Milan) shows that this community like many other monasteries had land around

69 Merati doc. 9.

70 Merati doc. 11.

71 Merati doc. 12.

72 Cesare Manaresi and Catarina Santoro (eds.), Gli atti private Milanesi e Comaschi del sec.

XI, vol. 2 (Milan, 1960), no. 148, discussed by Rapetti, Campagne milanesi, 55.

73 Respectively CDL 665 (a sale between lay people) and 465 (sale between a Milanese priest and Archbishop Aicho of Milan). 22

Lake Como largely for the production of olive oil. It also had castenetis at Loveno, Dervio and Bellagio.74 Santa Cristina’s chestnut ownership was clearly not great here and in the watery landscape around Olona itself where the monks had a lot of land just one chestnut grove (in casteneto sancti Cristinae) is recorded within a landscape largely devoted to marsh and the cultivation of flax and grains such as millet.75

III

Conclusion

For reasons of space two north Italian regions only have been compared here. In both areas chestnut trees and their products were usually part of mixed-use landscapes which had been widespread since Late Antiquity. Approaching the year 1000 it would seem that chestnut trees were not especially important in the Milanese and there is little suggestion in the charters from this region of specialisation in this crop despite the proximity of a potentially large market at Milan, most likely the largest city in the north of the peninsula throughout the early medieval period. Although there is some evidence of chestnuts being grown at low altitudes, the flat lands did not really suit the tree and other forms of land management with associated crops were much more common. These included specialised types of cultivation such as the cultivation of alders (Ital. auneti, Lat. aunetum ‘alder beds’ or ‘alder wood’), a moisture-loving species, intended to help prevent flooding or to drain marshes.76 In the hillier

74 ‘Breviarium de abatia sancti Christine’, 38.

75 ‘Breviarium de abatia sancti Christine que nominatur de Ollona’, in Castagnetti, Inventari altomedievali, 32. Squatriti, Landscapes of Change, 190-91.

76 Auneti at Valede (nunnery, 912); Arcagnano nr Gnignano (920); NE Milan ‘San Gregorio’

(nunnery 936); Rossate (assoc. with oak and coppice, 970); terra et buscalia, in alnis de alveum fluvio Lambro ‘in the alders in the river bed’ (20 iuges in Milan itself, 988). 23 northern parts of the region (the Brianza, pre- and lakes) chestnuts were grown seemingly more commonly but not in the specialised way that olives certainly were alongside these lakes. Therefore, a comparison of the Milanese with Liguria reveals that the latter had more chestnuts which were more suited to a more consistently mountainous region with shorter quite steep-sided valleys. The strong presence of chestnuts at Molassana with its mill and castle raises the possibility of specialised chestnut production here, and at several similar sites. The evidence of the Bobbio inventories and pastinatio contracts for chestnuts drawn up by Genoese churches implies that this crop was cultivated for ‘the market’, perhaps particularly by Genoese churches which traded in the flour. A similar pattern might emerge from analysis of charters from Brescia including the lengthy early tenth-century inventory of the estates of the royal nunnery of Santa Giulia and especially the episcopal church of

Bergamo, both powerful ecclesiastical bodies. On balance therefore the evidence suggests that many north Italian churches did encourage specialised production of chestnuts for the market and that this crop did indeed take the place in Apennine economies which wheat and other grains had in the Po valley. This was possible above all because of the skills of local specialist workers like Martino at Campomorone whose efforts are only fleetingly captured by charter texts but without whom the domestication of these landscapes would not have happened.