a thick and nourishing ale) as well as oats, wheat, rye, beans, and flax. Two kinds of
plows were used. One was heavy: it had a coulter and moldboard, often tipped with
iron, to cut through and turn over heavy soils. The other was a light “scratch plow,”
suitable for making narrow furrows in light soils. Because the first plow was hard to
turn, the fields it produced tended to be long and rectangular in shape. The lighter
plow was more agile: it was used to cut the soil in one direction and then at right
angles to that, producing a square field. There were many animals on these farms:
cattle, sheep, horses, pigs, and dogs. In some cases, the peasants who worked the
land and tended the animals were relatively independent, owing little to anyone
outside their village. In other instances, regional lords—often kings—commanded a
share of the peasants’ produce and, occasionally, labor services. But all was not
pastoral or agricultural in England: here and there, and especially toward the south,
were commercial settlements—real emporia.
Crossing the Channel, travelers would enter northern Francia, also dotted with
emporia (such as Quentovic and Dorestad) but additionally boasting old Roman
cities, now mainly religious centers. Paris, for example, was to a large extent an
agglomeration of churches: Montmartre, Saint-Laurent, Saint-Martin-des-Champs—
perhaps 35 churches were jammed into an otherwise nearly abandoned city. In the
countryside around Paris, peasant families, each with its own plot, tended lands and
vineyards that were largely owned by aristocrats. Moving eastward, our voyagers
would pass through thick forests and land more often used as pasture for animals
than for cereal cultivation. Along the Mosel River they would find villages with fields,
meadows, woods, and water courses, a few supplied with mills and churches. Some
of the peasants in these villages would be tenants or slaves of a lord; others would be
independent farmers who owned all or part of the land that they cultivated.
Near the Mediterranean, by contrast, the terrain still had an urban feel. Here the
great hulks of Roman cities, with their stone amphitheaters, baths, and walls,
dominated the landscape even though, as at Byzantium, their populations were much
diminished. Peasants, settled in small hamlets scattered throughout the countryside,
cultivated their own plots of land. In Italy many of them were real landowners;
aristocratic landlords were less important here than in Francia. The soil of this region
was lighter than in the north, easily worked with scratch plows to produce the barley
and rye (in northern Italy) and wheat (elsewhere) that were the staples—along with
meat and fish—of the peasant diet.
By 700, there was little left of the old long-distance Mediterranean commerce of
the ancient Roman world. But, although this was an impoverished society, it was not
