FRAGMENTS FROM THE PAST A social-economic survey of the landholding system in the Ravenna Papyri NIELS PAUL ARENDS Fragments from the past A social-economic survey of the landholding system in the Ravenna Papyri Niels Paul Arends Universiteit Leiden 2018 Acknowledgements I would like to thank dr. Rens Tacoma who, at one point, invited me to write a thesis about the Ravenna Papyri, a topic that has, for at least the last one and a half year, gotten my full attention. I want to thank him and Prof. Dr. Dominic Rathbone for all the commentaries given on this work, their helpful comments, and for their tips and tricks. It is to my understanding that they have enlightened me with their vast ‘know-how’ of this specific topic, and that I, certainly, could not have done it without their help. Further, I want to thank my parents, Els Loef and Paul Arends, who have given me helpful comments as well, although it is has been their ongoing support for my study that helped me even more. Lastly, I want to thank Marielle de Haan, who has been a great proofreader, and has given me the attention when I needed it most. N., 27-6-2018 Cover picture: P. Ital. 10-11 A, taken from J. O. Tjäder (1954) 56. Contents Introduction p. 1 1 Economic aspects of the Ravenna Papyri: Fundi, massae, size and wealth p.6 1.1 Fundi, massae, names and locations: Regional trends and beyond p.9 1.2 Economic theories, and guessing the variables: Scale and Wealth p. 15 1.3 Reassessing the results: Representability p. 21 1.4 Comparisons in the broader sense p.24 1.5 Conclusion p.29 2 Social Aspects of the Ravenna Papyri: The social structure of the P. Ital. landholdings p. 30 2.1 The peasant-proprietor p. 33 2.2 Medium landowners: Civilians, merchants and artisans p.38 2.3 Large landowners: Military commanders and bureaucratic officials p. 42 2.4 Shifts in the labor-service: Slaves and the importance of P. Ital. 3 p. 45 2.5 Non-Roman elements: Goths, Easterners and the absence of Lombards p.50 2.6 Conclusion p. 54 3 Modes of Transfer: Buying, selling, donations and inheriting p. 57 3.1 Partible inheritance, inheritance practices and the status of women p. 59 3.2 Contracts of purchase and transfer letters p. 65 3.3 Donations: To the Church, from the Church p. 68 3.4 Conclusion p. 72 4 Conclusion Appendix 1 p. 80 Appendix 2 p. 83 Appendix 3 p. 94 Bibliography p. 96 Page intentionally left blank Introduction ot all papyri come from the valley of the Nile. There is a group of Latin documents, coming from the archives of the church of Ravenna, which unaided by the Egyptian N climate successfully passed through all the climatological hazards of history. The first mention of them is in a letter sent in 1433 AD to Cosimo di Medici, the grandfather of the famous Lorenzo, and Jacques Cujas in 1561-62 AD was the first to read any of them.1 In 1805 Gaetano Marini gathered them and some others between the covers of one book.2 Although a good number of these papyri were subsequently republished all through Europe, Marini’s volume has served by large as the standard edition throughout the whole of the nineteenth- until the second half of the twentieth century.3 It was in 1954 that Jan Olof Tjäder thought it to be time for a newer, correct edition. For each piece of text Tjäder provided a bibliography, text, translation, apparatus and commentary. For example, the nineteen documents dealing solely with donations are preceded by a long introduction (p.250-279) that classifies the various elements found in such documents and traces their development. His endeavor was long, and it must have been tiresome at some points, but it was worth it: The two editions are – and this is not an exaggeration – a masterpiece. The twenty-eight of the first volume include estate records, wills, an appointment of a guardian, a release and - the heart of the collection - nineteen donations, in most of which the church of Ravenna figures as beneficiary. No. 2 is the famous piece that mentions property confiscated from the Arians by Justinian and handed over to the church of Ravenna. No. 10-11 is the equally famous document concerned with a piece of property near Syracuse that Odoacer had donated to Pierius, one of his powerful supporters. All walks of life are represented, from Stephanus, vir illustris et magnificus (No. 18-19) through a well-to-do silk merchant (4-5B and 11-VI 2) to a tailor (14-15) and an ex-slave (20). Many illiterates appear and not only from among the lower classes: A man could become a sub-deacon or make his way to the command of a numerus without being able to read or sign a document with anything but a cross (No. 8, 23).4 In the second volume, which was written a couple of years later, a new group of papyri were published, in the same style, together with some remarks on the earlier thoughts of the 1 J. O. Tjäder (1955) 19. 2 G. Marini (1805). 3 I. Gallo (1986) 104. 4 From now on each document from the Ravenna Papyri will be designated as P. Ital., together with its respective number. 1 | P a g e man himself. Most importantly, it added a group of bills of exchange, together with commentaries on the history of its property and owners. These records should be seen then, as a completely functional archive of legal transactions/agreements of every kind, which could be consulted by any interested party and used in court as means of verifying claims of ownership of some other legal right/privilege. Together, they demonstrate that documents continued to play an important part in court proceedings, both in Roman and later era’s. What makes these papyri most interesting, however, is the fact that they can be taken as a prime piece of evidence for the existence of an agricultural economy, maybe for a lively land market. We see Goths and Romans, Greeks and Jews, buying and selling pieces of land to each other. We also see them donating quite extensively to the Church, which in its turn, occasionally, donates something back to its Christian followers. And, interestingly, they cover a large amount of time, with the first papyrus dating from September 445 AD, and the last papyri coming from (around) 700 AD.5 Historians have some idea of what the early medieval agricultural economy looked like in the west in the eighth and ninth centuries, but they have not been able to do the same for the centuries before. The relative lack of know-how about these centuries in the West – from the fifth till eight centuries – is a result of the paucity of usable source material for the period, and, in particular, an almost characteristic absence of documentary evidence. In this matter, the late antique historian relies heavily on the occasional, sometimes idealized, reference to rural life found in literary sources, barbarian law codes and a somewhat fragmented archaeological record. 6 For much of the eastern world for the same period, the situation is not much better. Here the late antique social-economic historian is again obliged to piece together what he can from literary evidence, epigraphy, and archaeological evidence. 7 The only region in the Roman world, East or West, for which there is enough documentary evidence to begin a useful and prudent study in the late antique agrarian economy is Egypt, from which there survive numerous collections of papyri. In the last decades, the papyri have revealed very interesting and significant details of the late antique economy. And, most importantly, on the basis of these documentary papyri a relatively clear picture of late 5 First papyrus: P. Ital.1 (445 AD); the last papyrus could actually be several papyri, because some of them are dated ‘around 700’, but the latest papyri is probably P. Ital. 45, which seems to originate from the second half of the eight-century. See: Tjäder (1982) 181-185. 6 For the polyptyques, see: J. Percival (1966) 134-138; S. Guérault (2003) 313-333; J. Nelson, S. Joye (2013) 19- 31. 7 See for an introduction A. D. Lee (2013) 223-240; M. G. Morony (2004) 166-194. 2 | P a g e antique agrarian social relations for the region has emerged. 8 Still, to many, the very idea that the Egyptian papyri can tell us anything about the agrarian economy in the West has seemed unlikely, and far-fetched. Such certainly was the position of Marc Bloch, as brought forward in his classic essay ‘The Rise of Dependent Cultivation’: “No doubt Egyptian and African evidence can throw precious light on the origins of the Western seigneurie. But only if we ask of them wat they can legitimately supply. That is, information, not about the actual thing that we are studying, but about analogous things. In short, we must treat them as documents of comparative history.”9 It is then, perhaps, quite surprising that, since the work of Jan Olof Tjäder in the 1940’s and 1950’s, no other scholar has examined the Ravenna Papyri thoroughly; or is aware of their potential for that matter. This phenomenon has gone hand in hand with an apparent lack in knowledge on the workings of land in and around Ravenna, aside from the recent work (2016) of Thomas Gray ‘The Rural Economy in Ostrogothic Italy’; but even in this chapter the Ravenna papyri are not mentioned.10 When talking about distribution of land in Italy in Late Antiquity, this is mainly done in the context of 1) the formation of the state, how the Germanic gens became a regnum; 2) how Ostrogoth policy worked in regard to religious tolerance; 3) whether the Ostrogoth kingdom is a continuation of the Roman empire; 4) the ethno-genesis of the Ostrogoth people; and lastly 5) social and cultural relationships between Romans and Goths.11 Although these different debates touch upon the usage of land during late antiquity, most observations are not comprehensive and make by no means extensive use of the Ravenna Papyri, or comment on their importance for understanding the economy in late antiquity.