GRANGE
. Literally, a barn or farmstead (sometimes fortified), the term “grange” in the 12th
century became attached to the large expanses of land forming the agricultural estates of
new religious groups, especially the Cistercians, Premonstratensians, and military orders.
Such a grange is a large agrarian unit of varying size cultivated under the direct
management of its monastic owners, encompassing up to three or more parishes, on
which the most up-to-date and rationalized agriculture was practiced in the 12th and 13th
centuries. Under optimal conditions, all previous peasant cultivators on grange lands
were replaced by a staff of monastic laborers, primarily lay brothers (conversi) and hired
day workers. The claims of such monks to practice manual labor and found their houses
in uninhabited places led most historians until recently to assert that such huge farms
resulted from monastic clearance and reclamation; recent studies, however, show that
granges were almost always created by repurchase and compacting of smaller holdings
previously settled and cultivated by peasants. In many regions, the monastic granges of
the Middle Ages became model farms, while their barns were edifices of monumental
size.
Constance H.Berman
[See also: CISTERCIAN ORDER; DÉFRICHEMENT]
Berman, Constance H. “Fortified Monastic Granges in the Rouergue.” In The Medieval Castle:
Romance and Reality, ed. Kathryn Reyerson and Faye Powe. Dubuque: Kendall-Hunt, 1984, pp.
124–46.
Blary, François. Le Domaine de Chaalis: XIIe-XIVe siècles. Approches archéologiques des
établissements agricoles et industriels d’une abbaye cistercienne. Paris: Éditions des Travaux
Historiques et Scientifiques, 1989.
Higounet, Charles. La grange de Vaulerent: structure et exploitation d’un terroir cistercien de la
plaine de France: XIIe-XVe siècle. Paris: SEVPEN, 1965.
Horn, Walter, and Ernest Born. “The Barn of the Cistercian Grange of Vaulerent.” In Festschrift
Ulrich Middeldorf, ed. Antje Kosegarten and Peter Tigler. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1968, pp. 24–41.
GRANSON, OTON DE
(ca. 1345–1397). Born of a noble family in Savoy and killed in a judicial duel, Granson
served as a knight under the counts of Savoy and two kings of England. Froissart praised
Granson as banerés et riche homme durement, Deschamps was his friend, and after his
death Christine de Pizan was his ardent encomiast. She admired both Granson’s prowess
as knight and his service to womanhood, manifested especially in his poetry. Chaucer
praised him as “flour of hem that make in Fraunce.” During Granson’s long service to
Edward III and Richard II, he and Chaucer evidently became close friends; each copies
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