Money and robbers, 900–1100

ney and robbers, 9OO1100 Alexander Murray

To robbers and thieves money is more tempting than other commodities. There WQJmore money in Eurofie in 1 ZOOthan in 900. So we should expect, other things being equal, an increase in robbery in these two centuries. This expectation is conjrnzed by a survey of recorded cases; and it Jinds further corroboration in the fortunes of hagiopaphical motifs relating to thieves.

In houses with servants there used to be (and may still be for all I know) a rule that cash should not be left lying about. It ‘tempted,’ the servants. The servants were not tempted by the furniture, pictures or even the silver, which it was their daily duty to care for, and any item of which could be worth many times the cash likely to be lying around. ?. he menace was money. It made an honest man in to a felon. Economic theorists have dwelt on the advantages money offers to the merchant as medium of exchange: it is portable, divisible, generally acceptable (and constant in value. A fact that gets less academic notice is that the same qualities also recommend

Journal of MedievalHistory4 ( 1978): ^55-94.

money to thieves. Its portability is more important to them even than to the merchant. And because money - for the same reason that it is divisible- comes in the form of identical lumps of metal, the thief knows that while everyone will recognize the value of the money he steals, no-one will know where it comes from. This upside-down version of the economist’s ABC has a practical application, lwhich extends beyond large houses. It serves to interpret economic and political history; and in particular, to interpret it in a phase of the European middle ages. No metdieval subject attracts more attention than the changes that took place around the millennium. These changes touched almost every aspect of social and religious life. They included the rise of government, and its accoutrements of law and official!dom, together with a whole range of economic shifts. The economic shifts included a new impetus in the use of money, an impetus whose degree is debated but not its presence. Now mutual connections between these changes have often been sought for. Among the changes to appear most frequently in these attempts to form mutual connections has been the spread of money. It is with this type of search - for a mutual connection, with money at one end of it - that the present article will be concerned. The concern in this case is more than petty curiosity. The eleventh century is thought of as a dawn. Its institutions, ancestors to ours, appear as an evolutionary iml3rovement on a barbarian ancten r&me that went before. That evolutionary view is flattering to ourselves ; and of course it is not hard toI back up from documents left behind by the

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victorious institutions - since it was llattering to them too. But listening to flattery is The truth of the view matters; dangerous. and there are stumbling-blocks in this one. Not the leas&f the stumbling-blocks is that, of contemporaries who left opinions on the subject, most thought they were living not at dawn but at dusk. Research on the supposed terrors of the year 1000 has shown it was not then, in the last watch of the dark-age night, that contemporaries thought the world was ending, bu; around and after the mideleventh century: that is, just when the ftiatures of our modern world were starting to emerge t Focillon 1969 :6 7-7 1; Erdmann 1932; Erdmann and Fickermalm 1950: 310.22-4 and 314.35-315.2; Caspar 1920: 183.3-5). In this article I hope to indicate one field where these pessimists may have been right. The law-and-order of the new monarchies, I shall suggest, did ;jot impinge on a homogeneous barbarism, continuous since the death of Charlem:,gue. The law-andorder was preceded at.5 partly evoked by new types of disorder, themselves called up by the vagaries of positive social growth in the preceding two centuries. The period round the millennium, that is to say, will be portrayed not as a simple switch from dark to light; but as one phase in a series of challenges and responses, in which the values of civilization appear, vanish, reappear, vanish again, and so on. The resulting picture may be one degree more complex than what it replaces. But if that is its only offence, it will have achieved its purpose. The first of the two developments to be connected together is the spread of money. By the year 1000 very little of Charlemagne’s political creation remained. But his econ-

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omic creation not only remained: it was in many ways more advanceld than when he had left it. The trade-links of Charlemagne’s common market, joining the great river valleys of PO, Rhine, Danube. and others, had survived the political colllapse. The links had allowed certain areas to draw commercial benefit both from local agrarian activities, in and around big abbleys, and from trade with Christendom’s distant but rich neighbour, Islam - above all the slave trade. In these areas there are signs of economic advance in rhe very years of Carolingian political collapse, from about 850 onwards. One advance was almost certainly that in the use of minted and unminted precious metal as a medium of exchange. The Saxon emperors appreciated and encouraged this development, with their concern for markets and mints; in their homeland on the Saale, then in the Rhineland, then in the Po valley. The 97Os, when Otto the Great opened the Rammelsberg silvler mine, witnessed a fresh wave of money in northern Europe, affecting England. On top of that came, after the millennium, what was relatively a flood of precious metal, as the walls of Islam were breached in southern Italy, Spain and elsewhere. The use of money not only gathered momentum in the areas it had already affected, but made its impact also on France, indirect beneficiary of Norman activities in southern Italy. The last thirty years of the eleventh century were decisive: with the establishment of an Anglo-Norman empire in the north, the capture in the south of Toleldo and Palermo - in ef‘fect huge moneyboxes - and finally, with the extension of Italiian trade to the eastern Mediterranean. This growth was not merely a growth in long-distance trade, and its accessories. The

rising supply of precious metal and the better organization of minting raised the status of money inside the European economy. One index of what happened is that the Latin word petunia, in the century is referring to farm and stock as money, had to the meaning of and “money’ the millenmum, meant predominan‘money’ by 1100 (Violante 1953:42; Ducange 1886 : 239). This process is one of the most elusive and subtle that historians have to study. Among its problems, I:he exact chronology of each element in the process is much debated. But amid the debate a geographical course suggests itself with some confidence for the front of the monetary advance in Latin Europe. In the tenth century the front was in the PO, Danube and Rhine valleys, and in east Saxony. Towards the end of the century it is in evidence in England. In the eleventh, it was in Italy more generally and in France. In the last quarter of the eleventh century the development appears to have ‘exploded’, bringing a particularly marked rate of change everywhere. The changes included - though for simplicity’s sa3.e I have sought to overlook the topic in H iiat follows - a growing precision in the siotion of what constituted money. The subtleties of this subjf ct - money and its introduction - can be pu sued through a large bibliography.’ It is othziwise with the other subject we have to colrsider. Most of this article will accordingly be devoted to it. It is robbery. A simple q;lestion will be posed: did the increasing iiquidity of the European economy in tlic tenth and eleventh centuries increase tjre illegal, as well as the legal, mobility of wealth? Were the

servants more tempted because there was more money lying about? In a word, were there more robbers? Whatever problems robbers once posed for the forces of’ law-and-order, they pose equally testing ones for historians. The first problem is definition. Right through the period in question, as before it and after it, there was a common form of violent appropriation which its critics would refer to as ‘rapine’. Strong men in castles helped themselves to what they fancied among the local peasantry, including - when the time savings. This rapine came - any monetary was often practised on peasantry over whom the culprit had legal rights, as lord. But so long as there was no stronger power nearby to stop it the rapine could in fact extend anywhere in reach. Abundant evidence survives, Ifor example, of invasion of church estates, normally less able to protect themselves than lordly ones. Nor were lords the Even the humble peasant only delinquents. could steal, in numerous ways: if only by letting his cattle graze over a boundary. These people will not be understood here as ‘robbers’. Their alibi will be that their depredations were extensions of rights they held or claimed as part of their ordinary means of life, including the right to make war on their personal enemies. Such a distinction certainly poses problems. In the famous storv of Alexander the Great’s the pirate insisted that capture of a ‘pirate, the difference between him and his captor was only one of scale. Nor was the pirate’s view unrepresented in the early middle ages (though the story itself- with a significance I shall allude to in due course - was a latecomer). I have taken the other view, however, the view shared by most reflective

(Lecoy de la Marche 1886:413). riches” Figures 2-4 depict the characteristic activities of such robeurs as conceived in the early thirteenth century, in the Good San-raritan windows of Bourges and Sens Cathedrals.

Figure 1. The free-lancefur: a cutpurse arrested in the aci. Gorleston Psalter; early fbukeenth century, BL S. 49622, f. 153r. A

spirits in the twelfth century: that there was a difference of kind; that a ruler is worth his and that even a rapacious or vindictive has therefore some title to brb disished from a robber. My robber is pure parasite. For all the questions raised by this demarcation, we can hardly do otherwise than accept it as a guide. The Latin t,f the period, thougt it too has its puzzles Gundman I968 53 1-Z), confirms this demarcation with the terms praedo or latro, fbr ‘robber’. The term l&o also shared withfur the connotation of ‘thief’ - an ofknder rence from the robber is one of pt of k-0 was the one that into vernaculars as ‘robber’, The folces - one from Latin in the tury, the other from French in the exemplify the characteristic use “ktrones had occupied a certain forest, where they practised rapine on passers- by -and !i. Geraldi 654~); “[the is caught by robeurs in st, and stripped of’ his

If robbers and thieves present problems of definition they present even harder problems of historical detection. It was thek business to hide. The forces of law, whose business it was to find them, only start leaving records of their findings sorn~ generations after the period we are concerned represent with. Naturally : their findings a belated response to the robbers’ challenge, and are therefore unhelpful in telling historians about the emergence of the chaknge in the tenth and eleventh centuries. This i?aw in legal sources might in principle be avoided by a study of chronicles and lettero. But these pose another problem if taken by themselves. Among the changes of the eleventh century was a proliferation of most sorts of literature, including those most directly useful as historical sources, Arryone, therefore, who wants to prove an increase in this or that &ring the century can easily do it by counting up the absohtte number of references to it in such sources. The result may be deceptive. All these diffic&ies compounded perhaps by an k-mate reluctance in traditional historiograph.y &o frtaquent criminal quarters - have deprived early medieval robbers of an historkn; ;,it least of an historian who could directly answer our question. So the task will be approached from scratch. Whenever we approach anything from scratch or otherwise, it is its biggest features we see first, features which often becomt invisible later fortheir very size. Our present

Figure 2. A clumsy robber-band:

about 12 15. Good Samaritan

quarry has its big features. They are in fact familiar humps in the medieval landscape. Before our search becomes absorbed in the minutiae of robbery, a fresh look will be appropriate at these familiar humps, dominating the approach to the subject. ft is customary to see the pagan invasions of Europe in the tenth century as signs of the ultimate regression of European civilization. Amid thle rivalries of the late Carolingians the pagans saw their chance, and Norsemen, Slavs, Magyars and S,aracens reduced Europe to a more primitive chaos than it had known even in the fifth century. There is much in this view. But from one angle, the economic, and in some phases of the in-

window

in the ambulatory,

Bourg~s C;~hdral.

vasions, this view is the opposite of the truth. From this angle the invasions signiiy not the collapse, but the progress, of the late and post-Carolingian world; only it was uneven progress. Professor P. H. Sawyer has exposed some economic aspects of’ the late Viking invasions. Many causes contributeld to the Viking invasions, he agrees: for example upheavals in Scandinavian populations, and shifts in politics and technology. But in one phase of the invasion, the last, from about 980 to 1066, one cause outside Scandinavia thrusts itself to the fore. The areas the late Vikings robbed or took Danegcld from were conspicuous for recent vigorous commercial

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northern Germany and Fhch-s; ;i1il< JOW all Englar~d. Both coin-hoards ;trad c !IF orric-les reveal that the late Vikings qw! krrisdws with coined money from England and these neighcse *_+ns. bow-s h&d enjoyed recent economic proess. But the progress was unmatched in c m1iitar~ and political spheres. The Norin the opposite condition 197 1:86-I 19). Only William r and his treasu&- hunt ing e Patourel 1969 :429-SO, ited both English and ~115,would combine the strong gnn~th

:

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vasions can be extended. It fits those othc 1’ tenth-century iwaders who, tor twth the siv and ttirocity 01‘ their armies and the extent ot‘ the lands they despoiled, excelled even thtb Vikings: the Magyars. One test is enough to show this: a comparison of-the Magyar-s with their eighth-century predecessors the Awl-s. Both made their homes in Pannonia (in tht. IIW&I-11 Hungary) ; both lived by plunder ; tmth enjoyed military organization on a national scale. But the Avars had worked almost exclusively in the east, whcrcas the Magvars gave most of‘ their attention to the Gcrl~~an Empire and Italy. Pot it ical factors for example the military b-tunes ot‘ the Byzantine and western Empires - do not

suffice to explain the switch. What does, is the fact that the western Empire’s big rivervalleys were in the tenth century tasting their first riches. The invaders (ill-starred rivals, here, of the Saxon emperors) now came to take a share of them.

More

precise records of’ Mawar incurconfirm this interpretation (Fasoli 1945; 1962; Musset 197 1:67-80). A map of‘ known incux-sions is, with few exceptions, the map of’ trade and markets in the tenththe Saale, century Empire : the Danube, siom

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More even than those of the Vikings, the po and Lorraine are the nodal areas rhen, the Magyar invasions make an early (Fasoli 1945: 15%3,200-l; see Figure 5, p* 69 and spectacular witness to the attralctive below). That might in principle be due to force of the Empire’s new mobile wealth. the coincidence of literary and trade centres: The Magyar appetite for precious metal had raids elsewhere might have escaped record. no doubt been whetted by proximity to the But what is known of the conduct of the Byzantine Empire. A similar stimulus helps raids suggests it is more than coincidence. account for the activities of the third For instance, the grandest and most delibernotorious set of tenth-century invaders, the ate of early Magyar campaigns - one for Saracens. Unlike Vikings and Magyars, the which these steppe horsemen troubled to Saracens who plagued southern Europe build boats - was against Venice, the chief from the mid-ninth century to the early trade centre of the Otto&n world. Econeleventh were offshoots of a poyNerfu1 economic historians date Venice’s first great omy, the very source of most geld and silver trade boom from about 880 (V’lolante then. They knew the value of money only 1953:14_21); the Magyrs attacked it in 900 too well, no less than the monetary value of (Fasoli 1945:96-N. Elsewhere in Italy and slaves. Operating on the margins of the Germany a study of the Magyars’ booty Cordoban sphere of political influence, similarly betrays their predilection for gold these were in every sense professional roband silver. While the raiders can often be bers, with a long professional tradition found stealing precious cloth and other behind them - stretching back in north more cumbersome booty (Fasoli 1945:29, Africa even to pre-Islamic days - when, in 16 I, 1701, and while they took carts around the tenth century, Latin Christian traffic for the purpose (Fasoli 1945:73), their chief ventured again into the western Mediterlove was for gold and silver, especially in the ranean (Panetta 1973:l l-19). The Saracen form of money. One (Byzantine) report robbers lost no time in fastening on this speaks of their “insatiable greed” for what traffic. They soon made a name for themthe Latin translation calls petunia - a word to be read here as comprising both ‘treasure’ , selves. The monks of Conques in southern France - far enough inland for safety alnd and ‘money’ (Fasoli 1945 :33). The Magyars history-writing, but not too far to miss the are found stripping churches of “gold and silver’” (Fasoli I945:49, 84). There are no Nlediterranean news - characterized the Saracen race as one physically fearless when means of knowing how much of that gold and silver could be regarded as money. But in pursuit of lope lucrum (Bouillet 189 7 24 7agyars are also found raising big sums 8). The monks had plenty of case-histories to expressly in money: in ransom (Fasoli go on: of a pilgrim wrecked near Luna in 1945:139-40, 161, 170, 179n., 191); by their northern Italy in 994, picked from the sea by version of Danegeld (33, 114-6, 142_3n., passing Saracen pirates and forced into military service ill nc>irh Africa (Bouillet 148, i55n-, 1.86n.I; and by taking mercenary service for cash (17611.). Appropriate Lom1397394-5); of merchants returning from a d coins have turned up in Hungaq business deal in northern Catalonia, probli 1945 :33, compare 114-6). ably about 1020 or 10X, robbed of their

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money by a Saracen band, and barely (Bouillet escaping the slave-market 1897 243); of another pilgrim, coming home from Jerusalem, set on by montagnard Saracens who demanded gold, and beat him up when he said he had none (Bouillet 1897 : 159). Not only their thirst for turpe &-urn, but their political fortunes, give Saracen robbers a special place in this study. The line between Saracen robber and Islamic crusader is often uncertain. But one certainty is that Islamic religious war tended in this epoch to create pure robbers within Europe. The hazards of that war, waged as it was over a vast frontier of sea and mountain, tended to split off small groups of Moslem warriors who were thrown on their own resources in unfriendly territory. S tramust be tegically scattered - as predators if they are not to suck one neighbourhood economy, these dry - over an ill-defended and did survive for groups could generations. They thus became the prototypes of the European outlaw-band. The infamous Saracen lair at Fraxinetum in the Provencal Alps - supposedly begun by victims of a shipwreck about 890, and active until 972 -was only one such group (Panetta 197 3 : 197-200). Another was in the Gargano Peninsula in Italy, where refugees are said to have fled from the Moslem defeat at Bari in 87 1, and where Saracen robbers were still going strong in the year 1000. We shall meet those two bands, and one other, in due course. But Italian place-names betray many more (Panetta 1973:205). These splintergroups of armed aliens, dropped within Europe by the Islamic jihad against her southern frontier, became in effect Europe’s masters in the art of robbery. In skill,

reputation, and the chronology ment, the rest - we shall apprentices.

of developsee - were

The conditions and habitats of robbery SO much for the big, and from other angles familiar, features of the terrain to be explored. Having taken a fresh look at these we can now search with more confildence for smaller, native predators. The search leads straight into the obscurest reaches of social history., Because of the obscurity it will be wise to prepare our The first preparation concerns equipment. sources. In lamenting just now the intractability of contemporary sources on this topic I omitted one kind of source. It is the last place we might think of looking for robbers; but a moment’s thought reveals that it is their natural literary home. 1 refer to saints’ Lives. There is no paradox. Before elaborate machinery for maintaining law had been developed, hagiography - with its miraculous punishments for trespassers on churchmen’s lives or property - helped fill the need (De Gaiffier 1932); a literary counterpart in this to the ecclesiastical Peace of God movement. Criminals were thus a principal concern of hagiography. There was a second reason why robbers came into saints’ Lives. The genre was designed to illustrate the power of love. This power was well set off when shown in triumplh against violence. Love might frustrate a criminal intention, for example by a miracle. It rnight even convert a tiolent felon to a life of sanctity (see below, pp. 73, 34). Add to these considerations the fact that some Imonastic saints were among the best-travelled men of

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phcir time; ami that monks and robbers were a!/most alone in sharing a taste for otherwise under-inhabited country (a circumstance which gives monasteries and robbers’ dens a strangely intertwined history); and the appearance of robbers in hagiography can be no surprise. The genre has the extra advantage, in view of the shortcomings of other sources, of continuity over the two centuries under review. It is true that the Lives vary in character, between the less and more historically realistic; and that there is on the whole a shirt towards realism in these two centuries. But allowance can be made for these variations, and appropriate lessons drawn at each stage from the historical and legendary elements. The second item of equipment that needs preparing is theoretical. Our ‘upside-down’ theory of money said money tends to make people into thieves. But this simple law worked in combination with others: concerning loot; concerning robbers and milieux that favoured them; and concerning those contemporary travel conditions that brought loot and robbers together. We must look briefly at these laws. Money is the best loot. But this preeminence does not always extend to the unminted quasi-money (for example precious metal (objects) that characterized the transitional period under consideration. So money had rivals, and one in particular: the horse. One attraction of coin to thieves is ease of transport: and a horse usually excelled it in this respect. A horse which can be got well away from the scene of the crime has also the minted coin’s virtue of not being recognized - a fact we know to have troubled some dark-age governments &tot&e 1961: 162; Whitelock 11955:383,

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399). Horses, like precious metal, were thirdly a marketable luxury. For all these reasons horses appear as poxirme accessit to precious metal throughout our two centuries, as robbers” booty. Their role is largely independent of the growing circulation of money. ‘Largely’, only : the reservation derives from a second fact about loot and money. The pull of money for a thief depends partly on his being able to buy things with it; that is, on efficiency or mobility in the market. But market efficiency itself tends to increase with the flow of money (Cipolla 196 1:6234). The stimulus of money to thievery therefore worked indirectly, through this channel, as well as directly. The indirect stimulus furthermore touched all sorts of loot, horses and the like, as well as precious metal. Charlemagne, and later Edgar of England in 962, can be watched trying to tighten up the conditions under which goods were sold, for this very reason: they saw that the long-term controlling factor in thievery is the outlet (Latouche 1961: 162; Whitelock 1955383, 399). The rising efficiency of markets, outgrowing easy control by this method, was a factor both in the growth of thievery, and in giving money its pre-eminence as a stealable article. This corollary of the ‘upside-down’ theory of money is not mere speculation. It can be illustrated. A recurrent motif in early medieval saints’ Lives tells how a petty thief tries to take some article, but is miraculously prevented from getting rid of it. For instkince, he is paralysed, or it sticks to his hand. So the thief is either discovered or induced to confess (Giinter 1954: 167,-9). Behind some instances of this motif can be sensed real historical situations; and some

of these, in turn, suggest we are in the presence of a thief who lacks an outlet. A thief in Pavia in 10 IS, for example, stole a tablecloth from a visiting party of monks. The thief “took the stolen article down to the market”, we are told; “but he was quite unable to part with it: for he was not its rightful possessor”. The thief went back and confessed (Vita S. 0diloni.s 9 I8bJ. Again, in 1002 or soon after, a French clerk in Cologne, one of a party of refugees from famine, stole some precious articles from a church. He fled by night “not pausing till he could dispose of his ill-gotten trinkets”. Near Cologne he was arrested by a provost of merchants, put in custody and brought back to the city. There “the articles were recognised” and the thief only saved from hanging by the intervention of a saintly archbishop (Vita Heriberti 748 : 1 l-42). Miracle is present in both these stories, albeit faintly in the second. But a normal incident probably lies behind each. They represent the inexpert efforts - expressly a first offence in the clerk’s case - of amateur thieves, moved perhaps by the atmosphere and opportunity of those exceptionally busy commercial cities; though Pavia, at least, probably had its professional thieves at the same epoch, shrewder in their exploitation of local emporia (see below, p. 7 1). If a sluggish market situation defeated amateur thieves in Pavia and Cologne it was even worse in he countryside. Stolen goods were hard to F;‘s:trid of safely: and harder, the more specialized they were. The miracle book of rural Conques told of a thief who stole some cloth but was miraculously prevented from having it made into breeches; and of another who stole a horn, but could do nothing but compulsively blow it; so that

both were caught (Bouillet 1897 : 176, 120). This indisposability of specialized loot is nowhere better demonstrated than in the matter of books: precious and portable, books as loot failed in one detail - few could use them. True, in a clerical city there might be some chance of selling a book. Thus, about 950 in Augsburg - a leading ecclesiastical and political centre, with some of Otto the Great’s money circulating - we read of a man who stole a book and “from the price of it bought a horse”; the miraculous element in this episode being shifted, significantly, from the disposal of’ the book to its sequel, in that the horse kicked the thief to death (Vita S. Udalrici 1194~). But getting rid of stolen books in the countryside was a different matter. For most of the tenth century Saracens in the Provencal mountains robbed local monasteries, villages and traders. About 980 a party of Provencal knights took a Saracen redoubt. Besides other “excellent spoils” the knights found there “two beautiful books”. The presence of Latin books in the lair of illiterate Moslems might be thought to need explanation. It has one: the Saracens had taken the books and could not profitably get r-id of them. The Christian knights were now in precisely the same difficulty. Keeping all the other “excellent spoils” to themselves, consequently, they decided to give the two books to Cluny (Vita S. Maioli 769b). Cluny’s historian, not reflecting that monks as such had probably lost out on the three-cornered transaction thus concluded, has nothing but praise for the knights’ generosity - charitably ignoring the constraint they were under. This motif - in which the thief cannot get rid of his booty - drops away from hagio-

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graphy after about 1 1OO.2We shall consider later the main theme which comes to the fore to replace it: a theme in which the goods are already lost, and the role ofmiracle has shifted to that of saving the thief from secular justice (see pp. 88-9 below). The change may reflect among other things this economic fact: that after 1100 markets were more efficient, and therefore less obstructive to disposers of stolen goods. From these preparatory considerations about the object of robbery we turn to two more, concerning now the robbers themselves. They concern in particular the social and political conditions conducive to the craft. The first consideration is a mere disclaimer. The survey that follows largely ignores social questions about robbers: for example what backgrounds robbers came from; and how they saw themselves in relation to the peasantry and other classes. Readers of Professor Eric Hobsbawm’s stimulating book Bandits (1969) will be disappointed by this neglect. But I hojpe they will excuse me for sticking to my subject as closely as that author sticks to his; and perhaps investigate parallels themselves. Only one remark on the social aspect of robbery is now necessary. A growing circulation of money may, in the period 9OO1100, have been both symptom and cause of processes of social disruption, throwing people out of their livings. We happen to know, for instance, of milites pushed into robbery by poverty near Valence, a region where a busy main road was both stimulating social change, and offering this alternative means of’ livelihood t Vi:a S. Jo. valent. 1696~. A common growth in the use of‘ and the incidence of robbery could, therefore, reflect not only the magnetism of

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money to the robber, but also the power of money to disrupt communities. This ,consideration would deserve study on its own account. In what follows it must simp;y be born in mind, as a complementary hypothesis. A more confident comment can be made about the political and geographical conditions favourable to robberies. It concerns their location. The promised lands of robbers are to be found on frontiers: both because they held the long arteries which bound two economies together, and beccause they were chronically underpoliced. These sensitive areas on frontiers, if only frontiers between counties, will be the chief testingground for my hypothesis. Robbers will be found, for instance, at appropriate times at Afflighem, in a no-man’s land on the road between Flanders and Cologne; at M&-&he, in similar land on the busy Roman road between Orleans and the flel de-France; in the hrdennes, between Lower and Upper Lorraine; on the eastern Langres plateau (probably), on other, the southwestern boundary of Upper Lorraine; in the Alps; and so -on. A -few of these frontier haunts were so ideal that they would outlast the vicissitudes of centuries. The diarist John Evelyn, for instance, on 20 April 1644, escaped robbers on the northern edge of the Orleans forest, not far from the beat of the eleventh-century robber-lords of Mereville. Again in about 1100 a robber called Dunning - said to have given his name to the village of Dunstable on the Buckinghamshire-Bedfordshire border worked the sparsely inhabited country at the crossing of Watling Street and the Icknield Way (Dugdale I66 I : ~2-3): country marked out by essentially the same conditions in

1963 as the scene of the Great Train Robbery. The mention of routes and frontiers introduces one last theoretical reflection on the relation of money and robbers in the late dark age. The growih in the flow of money was linked, with an intimacy peculiar to the period, with a growth in travel. Money really ‘flowed’. There are two reasons. One is that people needed money to travel. Nonmonetary rights of hospitality were growing inadequate for the volume -of travel, and credit * machinery had not yet developed them. Yet travellers enough to replace needed to command services in far-off places. So they needed money. Their need was indeed one factor in the demand for more and better money, as can be told from travellers’ use of quasi-money as a pis ah for example pepper, taken on a long journey about 1100 from the Maconnais, whose local currency might not have been universally recognized (Duby I953 :357). Thus even those travellers with the best titles to hospitality are found using travel-money. An abbot of Cluny and his party took thirty solidi for travel expenses on a return journey to Rome in 932 (Vita S. Odonis 64c-d). Another in the late eleventh century - a time monastic ccmmonwealth when Cluny’s stretched throughout western Europe - took ten solidi for a journey merely to Valence (Vita S. Hugonis 883a). Even a secular emperor, whose right to fodrum extended all over the Empire, might have to scrape to get money to go to Italy, as Henry IV did among the uncertainties of 1076 @Iolder-Egger 1894 283.33-284.1). And if such influential magnates needed money to move, so much the more did everyone else. 0 ther travellers, from bishops down to simple knights and

pilgrims, are found to be under no illusions about this (Erdmann and Fickermann 195OA84.23-4; 247.33-4; Duby 1953:3567; Sumption 1975:172). The other reason travel and money grew together was that some journeys were made expressly to move money. Merchants, with or without their rudimentary credit devices, formed only part of’ the picture. An equally large part was piaobably played by bearers of‘ gifts. For gift-etiquette was still strong among persons of rank. Any sort of’embassy - for a marriage, or a treaty - was almost certain to be carrying gifts. Robbers will be found risking their lives on this assumption without further reconnaissance (see pp. 73-4 below). It is true that gift-etiquette was by 1100 under modification from the growth of’ organized government. But that was because government itself was creating more elaborate financial machinery. The growth of’ the papal curia in particular, with the installation there of the notorious ‘Saints Silver and Gold’ as judges, made Rome-bound travellers a regular attraction f’or predators. Understandably: an archbishop and an earl between them would be found carrying f 1000 of silver on a Rome journey in 106 1 (p. 72 below). The Roman curia’s own finance remained, too, only one aspect of the Church’s growing universality. Other aspects had their implications for robbers: councils, episcopal visits, legations, and so on. Even scholarship was no exception For the transfer of‘ necessitated it often which ill-escorted, maintenance-money, could occasionally (as we shall see on p. 73) fall into the wrong hands on its way. and These, then, were the conditions habitats of tenth.- ancl eleventh-century robberv. TWO of the conditions - more markets

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and more travel - were in themselves likely to raise the scale of robbery. Both were closely bound up with the growth of monetary circulation. In the absence of deliberate efforts of governments we should expect this trinity of conditions - money, markets and travel - to have a detectable result: a boom in robbery, roughly following the course of the monetary ‘front’. The question that remains is, did it?

A dossier oJrobberies in the tenth and eleventh centuries Two separate approaches to this question will be adopted. The first will consist of a rehearsal of robberies and rumours of robbery, from the four central monarchies of Latin Ghristendom taken region by region. Our search is for an increase in theft and robbery. So notice will be taken both of suggestive silences in the sources; and ofany contempormj opinion that the evil is getting worse. The second approach, complementary to the first, and beginning on p. 83, will be an examination of certain lc3gendary motives around the millennium. The grand tour begins with Italy, and within Italy in Rome and the roads that led to it. These were long roads, in that heyday of pilgrimage. But the roads clustered in northern and central Italy, and this was where any plunderers of Rome-bound

traffic were likely to take up stations. For most of the tenth century such plunderers make little impression in our sources. This can be shown by a sample of saints’ Lives. The sample comes from the book ( 1908) by L. Zoepf about saints’ Lives written in the tenth century. Zoepf showed that when a saint had been to Rome his biographer usually took care to point out the fact, since it showed his hero at once as a pilgrim and as a son of the Ghurch. Zoepf listed eighteen examples (163n. 4). Of these, it happens that twelve concern saints alive at some time during the ninth or tenth century. Zoepfs list is not meant to be complete, but for our pupose these twelve will serve as a pointer. Only two of the twelve Lives mention robberies or thefts on the Rome journey. The two are those of Odo and Majolus, whose adventures we shall come to shortly. Some of the remaining ten saints had troubles on their journey, including in one case a pitched battle (Vita S. Burchardi 836). Two had dealings with thieves in their home towns ( Vita S. Adalberti 585 ; Vita S. Burchardi 835; see below pp. 73 and 74-5). But with the exceptions named this group of Lives yields nothing remotely comparable to the largescale hold-ups we shall meet in 972, 106 1 and 1127 and later. Two of our group of twelve Lives actually imply safe travel conditions. St Findan of Schatfhausen, who went to Rome in 847, also took in France and Germany in his wanderings, without

Figure 5. Map showing places mentioned in the text. Legend : 972 Robbers or thieves recorded here. * 0 1074 Robbers or thieves recorded approximately here. I IQ1 Robbers or thieves recox ded in the regkn. D Other place mentioned. -_.--__ Selected main routes. Southern boundary of the archbishopric of Sens (see AA&&AA Main area of the Magyar raids.

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p. 8 1).

I

I

______----a

C

I

Toulouse

0 Angoulime

Ltmoges 0

, -+t’:;2ST \

BERNARD

PASS

Inner Pass

. PRAGUE

c 990

GARY

notable

m&lap (Vita S. Findani 503-6). John of Gone, who visited Gargano and Monte Cassino as well as Rome, returned to Metz about 930 “prosperously after a comfortable journey" (Vita JA abb. gem 255a). It might be said the ostensible poverty of some of these saints protected them. But we shall see that such poverty need not be a protection. And we happen anyway to know of‘ tenth-century journeys to Rome by other churchmen - not in these twelve Lives -who did carry big sums unmolested, albeit possibly in a party. For example Abbot Hademar of’ Fulda seems to have taken E 1001 of* silver safely to Rome in 947 or 948 (Claude 197267-8). Abbo of’ Fleury, again, must have taken plenty of cash on his first visit to Rome in 997; for he ‘bought’ a lot of‘ precious fabrics to take back home to the Loire; and neither then nor on his second visit, did he meet any more violent misfortune than sickness from Italian food (Vita S. Abbonb 40 1a-c). What thefts there were on these Rome visits seem to have got worse with time. The Cirstexception on the above list was St Ode, abbot of’ Cluny, who went to Rome in 932; he was the one who took thirty solidi. On this visit Odo and his party had many hardships on the way, but the hardships did not include loss of money. Where Ode did meet thieves was in Rome. But they are unimpressive. A peasant, seeing Ode walking meditatively with his head down, struck at him in an attempt to steal his wattr-bottle i Vita S. Wonis 66b). SlightlJr later, it seems, a i&~ stole one of‘ Odo’s party’s horses aa night. But this lalro was certainly a bungler, who did not know that mouks stay awake at

night; so that the next day both thief and or were recognized in the city. And one

70

reason why he was a bungler - pace a supernatural interpretation in the Life -was that he was an amateur: the latro is identified as son of a miller of St Paul-without-theWalls, whose later Cluniac inhabitants would rally the miller about his son’s exploit, long-remembered (Vita S, Odonis 66c-d). On yet another occasion when Ode was in Rome, two private pilgrims were attacked by a more sinister latro, who acted as a lodginghouse keeper, and tried to murder them at night to ‘despoil’ them. We know of the story because they killed him Coldatt’opees 2,9 in MPL instead (Ode, 133 574c). Despite the frequent isits of abbots of leading Cluniac houses t’-3Rome, their Lives wait until late in the te;lth century before reporting one as properly robbed en route. Then it was the notorious kidnapping of St Majolus in 972, by Saracens on what would soon be called the Great St Bernard pass. The professionalism of these Saracens stands out against the ineptitude of the thieves mentioned in accounts of Odo’s trips to Rome. There were no miracles: that is, no mistakes by the robbers. The Saracens had picked their man; they treated him with studied courtesy throughout the episode; yet demanded the huge sum of El000 in silver and would hear no excuses as to the personal poverty of the saint himself ( Vita S. Maidi 767~; Sackur 1892:228-9). We happen to know of another band of Saracen robbers being equally intransigent with a saint in Italy soon afterwards: they operated about the year 1000 from a fortress on Mount Gargano on the Adriatic coast, and murdered St Marinus when he tried to castigate their ways (Vita S. Romualdi 963a-b). These Saracen predators were nevertheless ahead

of their European emulators. Apart from the coup of 972, the first theft from a Cluniac abbot on the road to Rome, recorded in the Lives, was one in Pavia in 1013. Then, St Odilo’s party nearly lost an ornate tablecloth. But the thief could not sell it and had to bring it back and confess. On the same visit a horse was taken from Odilo’s pa.rty. The thief this time was shrewder: he took the horse at once to the market at Lodi, hoping would not be recognized. But it was, and he too had to return and seek Odilo’s forgiveness I Vita S. Odilonis 9 13c9I9a; Sackur I894:9). An Italian region well-known from the twelfth century onwards for its robbers was the Apennines, s;n;here routes led to Rome from the Adriatic (Parks 1954209). If the routes along the lower Tiber were included in the region, then it apparently deserved its reputation as early as 985; for we hear then of some “very wicked” vassals of the abbey of Farfa who used “often to plunder passersby” on one of those routes (Dresdner 1890: 11; this is the earliest allusion to robbery or theft in this exceptionally well documented book). In the Apennines proper, however, if‘ the foundation records of’ the monastic families of Vallombrosa and Camaldoli are anything to go by, the reputation exis]ted only in germ before the millennium. Th& examples suggest the word latro should here be translated ‘thief’, not ‘robber’. T-do latrones try to steal a peasant’s ox by night - though they prove not to be able to budge it (Vita, S. Jo. Gualb. 688b-c, 789a); and a latro breaks into a hermit’s dwelling while he is away (Vita S. Romualdi 99Ic-992b). The victim of each of these attempts has previously expressed fear of la&ones, as ifthat rocky region had a 1jad

name. We also hear in the same milieu of workmen and others who rob from monks cells, or pilfer their baggage while the monks work in a quarry (Vita S. Jo. Gualb. 704~; Vita S. Romualdi 997b-998a, 992b-c). These arc hardly spectacular examples of’ native European robbery on the roads to Rome. Does tenth-century Italy ofler no more than these? A consultation with three historians of travel confirms the negative impression. J. E. Tyler, in The Alpine /xzsses, G. B. Parks, in The English traweller in Italy, and J. Sumption, in Pilgrimage, have all given due emphasis to the dangers of’ highway robbery faced byL users of medieval Italian roads. None of these authors concerns himself with the question of’ change. But the series of their examples are the more revealing for that. The first case each adduces of’ full-scale highway robbery is respectively in 1026, 1061 and 1049. The earliest is not strictly a robbery at all: Bruno of‘Tou1, later Pope Leo IX, escapes from an ambush in Piedmont; but a look at the Life shows that these were political enemies, of a kind I am excluding (Tyler 1930 :3 1-2; Vita S. Leonis 47 7c-478b). In 1049, more convincingly, we hear from Normandy of’ the ‘daily’ dangers run by Norman pilgrims in northern Italy (Sumption 1975:182). A council in Rome in the first to concern itself with the 1059 matter - happens to confirm the complaint; anathematizing “those who rob and despoil pilgrims, or persons of any status travelling for purposes of prayer - clerks, monks, women or unarmed poor...” (Dresdner 189O:ll; Sumption 1975:182). The incident of 106 1 is no less revealing. It is the first Italian case in our dossier of‘ which a closeup description survives; and it is significant that it achieved a notoriety comparable to

71

that of the kidnapping of St Majolus in 972. The victim this time was no saint, but Earl Tostig of Northumbria. Having spent some weeks in Rome Tostig and his retinue were barely a day’s journey out of the city when

from St Trond in Lorraine, recounted what wa.: probably a common experience. On the wa;l to Rome ii a dI27 he had been held up and stripped of all he had (Gesta abb. Trudonensium 11, 3-4 in MGH Script. 10 :306.6-3 1). The scene of that hold-up, the they were stopped by a band of what our hills south of Siena? would indeed prove fullest source - from England - calls lutrone~ another promi!Ved land for full-scale robThe latro~s stopped the party and asked bers; where their activities were so taken for which the earl of Northumbria seas. Quick granted there by the end of the century that thinking by a well dressed young noble whc* some monks arc on record as having passed happened to be riding in front saved thpn a corpse in a ditch one day and, taking it for day. He said he was the earl while the reaE “some merchant who had been killed b) earl slipped away. Some of’ the party wer: robbers”, thought no more about it meanwhile stripped of‘ all they had - to the (Natalini 1936: 164). The central Italian tune of f 1000 of’ Pavian money - and th2 communes met the evil measure for false ear-f was led off by the robbers. The measure. But it had a start on them; and in truth soon came out. After a moment c1:,‘ the middle ages never lost it - as copious threatening rage the robbers decided tLa;t examples from the books already mentheir smart captive deserved, not blame, but praise. So they sent him off with all his tioned, and elsewhere, make plain. From Italy we turn to Germany. Conproperty and their good wishes. This reacditions in Germany were in some ways tion, together with the fact that the same English source calls them militares, would different from those in Italy. Germany had an emperor to keep order; and no pope to alone suggest we may be back on the puzzling boundary between robber and attract pilgrims. Most of Germany had a delinquent noble; and that is in fact connewer economy than Italy. Yet there were parallels. Rhineland fortunes rose as a firmed by records of the legal follow-up, rough counterpart to those of the PO valley; tvhich name the chief lutro as “Gerard of and, just as Italy had an economy rich in Galeria”, and sometimes “count of Galeria” money to the south in Moslem Sicily, so t Wa Aeduuardi regis 4 I l-12; Peter Damian, Germany had one in the east in Kievian Disc. se. in MGH Lib. de Lite 2:91.7-9; Partner 1975: I21 and 453). Russia. Of the effects of the latter Me hear, There should be no need to insist how for example, of a Russian pretender who in familiar this type of contretemps became for 1075 sued for German support with a gift of travellers in Italy in the generations after “so much sold and silver and precious IO6 I - It was so familiar in 1100 that an clothes, that no-one could remember so abbot from Vendome declined an invitation much ever before being brought to the to Rome on the sole grounds that he did not kingdom of Germany at once” (Holderwish “to die a pilgrim’s death” (Raby Egger 1894:226. I-4). And it is knolNn that 1953:: X61. Only those who survived could this was only one of such stupefying easttefi their tale. Among these another abbot, west consignments sent to German;/ in the

72

.

(Holder-Egger 1894: eleventh century 197.35-6; 202.~0-1; 226.9-17; 284.15; below, p. 74). Some of the monetary wealth of eastern regions of the Empire came indirectly, and some directly, from the slave trade. An economy which depends on slave-raiding is already predatory, and partly fbr that reason it is especially hard to tell in eastern Germany where robber and military differed. The first Saxon king, Henry the Fowler, 9 19-36, agreed that the line was easily crossed. For he is said to have made a “legion of ex-robbers” to h’elp in the war against Magyars, instead of ‘,obbing fellowSaxons as they had been doing (Lohmann Hirsch and I935 :69.1; Grundmann 1968 :332). This measure, with its aftermath in the strong rule of the three Ottos, had its effect. In the Saxon chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg, completed in ,.O18 but covering most of the tenth century In some detail, we read of no l&-ones until after the death of Otto III. They?, at Merseburg in 1017, at the behest of Henry II, “many k&ones were convicted by champions in trial by combat, and perished on the gallows” (Holtzmann 1955:460.29-3 1). There is no way of telling how effective, any more than how just, Henry II’s strong measure were. What is certain is that when the monarchy’s grip on region next conspicuously the same weakened, in the confusion Ia,f Henry IV’s reign, latrones are there again in roughly the For the Thuringians were same area. repeatedly required to arrest latrones as one of successive peace tre ties stipulation (Holder-Eggcr 1894:1Q7.33-108.1; lI6.1618). It happens that about then, the early 10703, a letter in Hildesheim, less than fifty miles to the north, reveals a case of highway

robbery probably in its own vicinity. A scholar reports that his servant, who was bringing him “a little something” to support him over the winter, was robbed of everything on the way. He does not specify where (Erdmann and Fickermann 1950: 89.4-8). East of the imperial frontier, in the years just before and after the millennium, economies were probably in the paradoxical position of possessing much money and precious metal, but not using it internally. With the main exceptions of Prague and Kiev it is doubtful if internal circulation of money was large. At the same time, rulers and some slave-traders may have been rich (Gieysztor 196 1). This high concentration of precious metal could in appropriate circumstances produce a unique temptation to robbers. Thus some of our best defined early cases fittingly come from this region. Some are from the big city, Prague. The author of the life of St Adalbert, having just said how exceptionally rich Prague had become - in the 980s and 990s - goes on to tell of’ an impius latro, one of whose beggared victims was saved from starvation by St Adalbert ( Vita S. Adalberti 58 1.6; 585.3 1). The Life also reveals suggestively that St Adalbert made a habit of visiting the “infinite” number of men kept in prison in the city (Vita S. Addberti 585. M-15). A more grandiose kind of robbery was meanwhile practised in the About the year 1000 two open country. Italian missionaries were asked by the ruler of Poland to return to Rome as his diplomatic envoys. News of the request cost the missionaries their lives. For soon after they had left for home two robbers attacked and killed them, in the belief that they would be carrying gifts of gold for the pope - which

73

they were not (Vita S. Romunldi 98Ob-98 la).

A generation or two later, in 1052 or 1053, St Hugh of Cluny came near to having the same experience in Hungary. The differences were that Hugh really was carrying “great gifts”; and that he was not killed. The robber is described by Hugh’s biographer as “a certain tyrant of that region”. In the event Hugh’s palpable sanctity caused the robber not only to give back the booty, but provide his prisoner with an escort to protect him from further harm (Vita S. Hugonis 864d-805a; Diener 1959:355-76). A link between eastern Europe’s isolated concentrations of precious metal and its high incidence of robbery is hinted by two further circumstances. In about half the cases we hear of where treasure was in transit in this area, we also hear of attempts to take it. And in each of the two saints’ Lives quoted, from Italy and France, the incident in question is much the most conspicuous robbery in the Life. It may be of further significance that St Hugh, at the onset of his experience in Hungary, chose to pray to none other than St Majolus, his predecessor at one remove as abbot of Cluny: perhaps Ht:.:;h was thinking of*Majolus’ own experience with robbers, as the last such episode lye could recall from his circle - and one in which, like Hugh, the victim had suffered from robbers on the fringe of Latin Christendom, with an imported appetite for gold. From eastern we move to western Germany. The chronology of nown robberies in northeastern Germany, in the interstices of’ strong measures by Saxon and Salian emperors, reappears in the northwest. Writing of the years 92X30, before Ottonian rule made its strength felt there, the chronicler at Priim, among the Ardennes and Eifel

74

hills, recalled that “in those days many men, including nobles, were industrious in robbery (latrocinia)” !Kurze 1935:156; Grundmann 1968:332). He looked back from a more secure period. Yet even in Otto I’s reign tkre outer rim of Lorraine was insecure. Abbot John of Gone, 941-68, travelled widely from his abbey near Metz. Robbery is once mentioned in his Life. Then it was at the very edge of the Empire, possibly on the Langres plateau. He had to go to Autun in northern Burgundy, and on the way he had to travel with one companion through “places infested with robbers, places fearful even to a large party”. The power of the robbers was such that John eventually !.-efused to continue until a local magnate gave him an escort (Vita Jo. abb. gore. 293k, 284~). It is just possible that these infesta latrociniis loca were the same as the ‘robber regions’ (praedonum jines) through which St Odo of Cluny is said to have travelled from time to time (below, p. 78). There may have been other lawless places, it is true, among the Alpine foothills near Cluny. But what is known of trade near Cluny suggests that in terms of profit the more northerly area would have held more attractions for robbers, It did for a certain robber who migrated north from Burgundy to Lorraine about the end of the century, perhaps just after the death of the last Otto in 1002. He was a renegade clerk whom our source, Thietmar of Merseburg, calls Walter Pulverel. Thietmar mentions him in the same year, 10 17, that those robbers were hanged in Saxony. Walter was executed in Lorraine where, if the outcome of a trial by battle can be trusted, he had been practising as an ‘egregious robber’ (latro eximiw) (Holtzmann 1955:474.37-475.6). About the

year 1~~100, that is about the time of Walter’s I965), whether or not a.s a direct result of’the opening of'the Rammelsberg silver mine in emigration northwards, there was also a Saxony (McKerrell and Stevenson 1972:409plague of robbers near Worms (Vita S. 12). The scale of’ thef’t appears to have risen Bumha& 835.949). We hear of both in harmony - theft by natives as well as these outbreaks in the context of their Vikings. Archbishop Wulfstan ofYork, writsuppression by strong government. But the ing in 1003-5, expressly dated the relative suppression remained precarious. For the Rhine and Mosel cities continued their multiplication of’ robbers (vpera) from the upward economic progress through the time “since Edgar died”, namely 975 (Jest eleventh century; 1959:s 1). Again the two Lives of St and when political stabill;-- again declined, robbery returned as Ethelwold, bishop of’ Winchester Pi-om 963 order of the day. Amarcius Sextus, an to 984, besides an undatable case of firstand-last-time pilfering by a monk, of’a purse otherwise: anonymous canon of Spevrlr writfull of money belonging to a guest of’ the ing jusr before 1100, puts m&lerous monastery, mention an habitual thief who thievery an highway and in home near the practised near the end of St Ethelwold’s life top of the list of evils that made his o\%rnage (Vita S. Athelwoldi 26.52; 27.63). It is true that worsf than its predecessors (M; nitius St Abbo of’ Fleury passed unmolested f‘rom 1969:X&6, lines 89-100). Ramsey in Huntingdonshire to the Channel The northern end of the Rhineland and in 988, loaded with gold and silver (Vita S. Lorraine traffic opened towards England Abbonis 393a-b). But Abbo was not ignorant and Flanders. In England the circulation of of thievery. For it is he who tells us of the coin probably rose gradually during the robbing of St Edmund’s tomb a generation middle years of the tenth century. From the earlier; and the details he gives of this time of Athelstan’s Grately ordinance, 32439, we find the Crown coupling its legislative intrepid burglary may well reflect the experience of his own day - if indeed the concern for the minting and control of coin, with a parallel concern about thievery, whole episode is not transposed fi-om then. The connection of money and robbers is worked out over two generation5 in expressed especially tellingly at the turn of‘ gradually more elaborate measures (Liebermann 1916:101.14; 110.6; 112-3.5; 111‘9.8; the century: from 1009-I 1 a phrase makes its appearance in the laws which binds the 131.7; 139.11; 150.7). Butthemeasureswere Crown’s twin preoccupations as if they were not (elaborate enough to save a bishop, at the same: “the improvement of the peace some date in the 930s or 94Os, from the and the improvement of the coinage”. For embarassment of having to step in and hang the ruler, too, saw that his progress in the eight thieves who had broken into St Edmonetary field could not safely be allowed mund’s tomb in quest of “very precious to outstrip his powers of policing (Lieberornaments of gold and silver” (Vita S. mann I903 :254,3 14; whitelock 1955 :420). Aedmundi 83-5). And in the 970s a new But English money travelled outside the degree of pressure was put on the laws. kingdom, and the Crown could not policle There is reason to believe that the cirIn 1018, a few years after everywhere. culation of coin rose markedly then (Sawyer

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Wuifstan’s complaint about rypera, and at the other end of’ the North Sea crossing, a shrill protest arose from the touchy merchants at Tiei near the mouth of’ the Rhine. They told the emperor that predatory Frisians had taken to lurking in the swampy forests a mife or two down towards the estuary. Their robberies were making trade with England impossible, and - the merchants thoughtfully added -the government would he revenue if it did not act. The government, once more that of the Emperor Henry 11, did act, with the same strong hand as in Saxon): and Lorraine (this case happens to f9e the first of’ native highway robber), since b&ore the Carolingians in Mme DoA~aerd’s economic history of’ early medieval Europe, 197 1286). This very protection irclpcd make the northern trade arteries richer, and temptation for robbers grew accordingly. When government wavered once more in the period of‘ the Investiture Contest, a new den of‘ predators on Flemish trade appears, more indomitable than bet&-e. It was in wet >ds near the main road from Cologne to Gi-lent, about 1075. The robbers were lordless knights inilite~), who lived f9y plundering rich passers-by. hat eventually put an end to their plundering was not mzlterial coercion this time, . the spirit. For the knights and built a monast,ery and hossite of‘ their felonies - a ighem, later famous in 9-v (Fulco, Chron. ALflighemense 66:815b-316a. Grundmann this about-face at with a general t in security. The ruling count crs would be remembered after his

76

death in 1095 as one who “expelled all raptms et kztrones from his territory, so that the latter came to excel all others for peace and security” (Hermannus, De zest. S. Martini Tornac. in MGH Script. 14 282.35-7). But that security again only increased the traffic; and therefore the temptation, whenever government should waver; - or whereever it should waver. It wavered for example at sea. The sea between Flanders and England flouted both policing, and the building of By 1100 the volume of sea monasteries. trafhc was enough to justify the considerable investment a robber made in switching to piracy. Thus pirates in 1101 secured with impirnity no less a prize than the complete personal treasure of Ranuif Flambard, the disgraced favourite of Rufus, as he fled by sea from Henry I (Le Prevost 1852: 109). We cannot be surprised that the attractions of such a profitable calling, followed across the marine midriff of an empire mainly defended by land- frees, survived well into the Plantagenet period. Only the loss of Normandy in 1204 changed matters, by making the Channel a hostile frontier, and so stimulating the growth of the navy. And once more, it is c~~~gr when the forces of law arrive that the extent of previous lawlessness is exposed. In 1209 King John’s government beheaded in the Stilly Isles no fewer than 112 pirates at once (Poole 1955 r433). The double story of’ eleventh-century growth in the north - in commerce and in predatory anti-commerce - also finds a postscript on dry land, in the reign of’Henry I. Henry has always been known as a feroc-ious lion of justice. But in this, apparcntly., he did no more than answer the special crlallenge of his reign. We have already met Dunning, putative eponym of

Fig1.u-e 6. Eight

Edn nund,

Pierpont

thieves hanged; probably about I 130, ~111.):St E~IIILI.I(~,, Sdfolk. .Morgan Library, New York, R/IS. 736, f: 19~.

Illustr~ctior~ to ;i IJilt* 01 St

Dunsiable, who plundered travellers in that area for years until Henry cleared up the place about 1110 (Dugdale 1661: 132-3). Further south along Wading Street there would spring up near St Alban’s, the moment Henry’s heavy hand was lifted, “a den of latnmculorum injurious to the whole country’” (Riley 1867 : 122). Further north, somewhere on or near the same main road, a grim entry in the Peterborough Chronicle for the year 1124 reflects the unprecedented character of both the evil and the reaction. The sheriff of Leicestershire “hanged more thieves (beb) than ever before: forty four of them in all were dispatched in no time”. Six more were mutilated. Public opinion murmured about rough justice on this famous occasion. But no-one denied something had had to be done. Perhaps it was this execution which shaped the imagination of a monk at Bury St Edmund’s, who illustrat&

the Life of his patron saint probably about I 130. The Life, written over a century before, relates the incident of the eight thieves who broke into St Edmund’s tomb and were hanged for it; but it also says ;he bishop who ordered the hanging was deeply ashamed for the rest of‘ his life at ha&g taken men’s lives. The monkish illustrator of Henry I’s time ignores this inhibition. lie picks on the hanging to give it a big, gruesome picture: the cold, technical efliciency of whose subject-matter has all the stamp of the reign in which it was painted t Figure 6). Italy; Germany and its outer neighbour; ami finally France. Was France’s First Age of Feudalism also a golden age of robbers? Or was there too little gold to rob ? For southern France the first sources to invite exploration are works by and about St Odo,

78

abbot of Cluny from 918 to 942. They mention an array of thieves. But how many and of what sort are hard to say. “His zeal for peacemaking between kings and princes”, wrote Odo’s biographer John of Salerno, “as well as for reforming monasteries, sent him travelling in many directions”. After this imprecise allusion the biographer adds that “on these travels he was often ambushed by latrones” (Vita S. Odonis 7 la). One day a band of forty robbers sprang on Odo. The robber-chief, called Aimon, was so impressed by the psalm-singing monkish party that he restrained his accomplices; and later sought out the saint and promised to quit his life of violence.3 The second example finds Ode trave!ling “near the robberregion (jwsta firaedonum &es)“. A young robber, son of a robber-chief, was again so struck by the kindly expression on the saint’s face that, instead of attacking its owner, he prostrated himself and begged to be accepted as a monk (Vita S. Odonis 7 la-7Zb). To these cases should be added those from Italy mentioned earlier. Does this whole group suffice to explain the biographer’s “often” ? If not, was that “often”, like the suspiciously thievish round number of forty, a mere way of speaking ? The guess is likely. After all, Odo was never killed; and a hagiographer on the look-out for miracle would include his escapes. Nor does Odo in his own works refer to any more personal experiences of this kind. His only other latrones are those in his Life of St Gerald, count of Aurillac: robbers who “robbed and slaughtered passers-by and neighbours” until Gerald’s milites came to arrest them (Vita S. Gerald 654~). The date of these must have been about 900. As for their place, it is pertinent to note that an international trade route

from Verdun to Saragossa ran some 70 km from Aurillac then (Lombard I972:8 I-2). Other than Gerald’s robbers, all we have from Odo’s works is some knights who try to drive off some merchants’ pigs en route in the Auvergne (Collationes 3, 34 in MPL 133 :6 16d). In reading this cluster of cases we should note that every one of them was well remembered; as if such things did not happen every day. A second witness on security in southern France survives from two generations later. It is the Conques miracle book : The Miracles of St Faith, written mostly about 1020, but covering the previous thirty years, and with stories added over the next few decades. In well over a hundred chapters the book mentions many journeys, by laymen and clerics, mainly in southwestern France, but also comprising journeys to Santiago (Bouillet 1897 :42, 262, all unspecified references in this paragraph are to this work), Rome (114, 137, 206) and Jerusalem (94, 108 etc.). Accidents, the very stuff of miracle books, were often noted: falls down gorges ( 130-1, 1751, a flood (1301, unexplained death (q2), sickness, again in Italy - whose food and heat were notorious (139; Parks 1954:FO; Vito S. Gd. div. 7 1 lb). But except for the Saracen cases mentioned on pp. 62-3$, there are literally no straight hold-ups of traveilers for economic reasons, or even threats of the same. A mule or small article may be stolen en route (Bouillet 1897 : 18 1, 176). Traveliers are very often despoiled by political foes ( 115, 167, 192, I93, 250 etc.). But for travellers without those, conditions were safe enough for them often to travel with only one companion (38, 94, 184, 192-3), or even alone (193, 263) - at least in daytimct ( 1X45). One tale makes a pil@m in 994 deposit

part of his travel-money with a hostel keeper “as the custom is with pilgrims”, to be kept for the return journey (94). What was true of’ travel was true in general. While the Conques miracle book contains some horse- and flock-stealing (74, 132, 203; ISI), and significantly - some attempts on the gold and silver treasures of’ the monastery itself (50, 64, 1081, stories about non-travellers suggest they, too, hacl more to fear from political than from economic envy. St Faith had a reputation for freeing prisoners, it is true (76). But, except for cases already referred to, and one rescue from the gallows of a serf who did not steal a horse (751, the many tales of St Faith as a rescuer all [ouch nen made prisoner by their personal enemies. There are furthermore a few cases of conspicuous honesty: peasants return or leave put valuable lost goods ( 119, 125) - ill one case a water-bottle ( 17 7) whose security contrasts with that of St Ode’s water-bottle in thievish Rome some eighty years earlier, already mentioned. In the neighbourhood of Conques, then, in the early decades of the eleventh century, travellers minding their own business seem to have been relatively immune from theft. This immunity was however already suflering attrition. Between 1023 and 1025 the Peace of God movement, which had begun not far from Conques in the 99Os, for the first time ezrlressly added ‘merchants” to its list of proteges (Duby 1973:232). Although the chronicle of Ademar of Chabannes, written in Angouleme about 1828, mentions no robberies, we do know of cases from the region. On the main coast road near Narbonne, about 1030, a Venetian pilgrim lost eight pounds of si1vc.r solidi, together with some ‘small gifts’, to the delinquent under-

79

.

lings of a local magnate (Magnou-Nortier 1974214-15). About 1050, again, a party under St Hugh of Cluny, travelling

somewhere in Aquitaine, lost its mules “with much harness and equipment” to raptores from a roadside castle ( Vita S. Hugonis 9OZb). The Life of St Stephen of Obazine relates to much the same country as the Conques miracle book, but a century later. The contrast is marked. There is less political infighting, but now - and in a much shorter book - two clear cases of bands of la&ones, lurking in roadside lairs (Vita S. Steph. obaz. 78,232). A growth in latrocinium can meanwhile be

detected elsewhere in France. A year or two afte, the millennium Fulbc rt of Chartres expressed the hope that in the golden age he believed to be dawning the robber OJraedo) would turn his sword into a ploughshare, and allow the unarmed traveller to proceed safely (Raby 1953 26 1). But Adalbero of Laon, about 1025, thought thieving was getting worse (Carmen ad Rothbertum, line 58 in MPL I4 I :773), Adalbero is more likely to have been right. The chronicle of Radulf Glaber, written in Dijon about 1030-40, gives many hints in this direction. From before the millenn:um Radulf relates much vivid incident, including plundering expeditions by nobles, and even the case of a cannibalistic murderer who waylaid travellers to eat them. But Radulf can speak of waves of long-distance pilgrimage around the years 1000 and 1033, without a word of any pilgrims being robbed (Prou I886:52 106). Radulf’s first thief appears, in fact: soon after 1012. Like the thief in the Life of Adalbert of Praqe, this one appe;.lrs in the context of a description of a rich city. Sens, says the chronicler, had just become excep-

80

tionally rich. He goes on to tell of a thief there, miraculously saved from hanging (Prou 1886:69-70; De Gaiffier 1967:195-6). From about the same date Radulf also records, in his Life of St William of Dijon, that saint’s rescue of a number of criminals from the gallows “in various provinces” once certainly in Dijon itself (Vita S. Guil. div. 7 17c-7 18a). We have met that gallowstheme briefly in a miracle at Conques; and its novelty, and its pertinence to thieves and robbers, will concern us again. Meanwhile the robbing and ransom of merchants and others is mentioned, in the north as well as the south, in secular documents. An oath proposed by King Robert in IO23 envisaged among breakers of the peace lords who captured “villa’.us, serfs or merchants”, who “take their denyii or hold them to ransom” (Pfistcr I885:b , xii). The circulation of money in France rose around the middle of the eleventh century, in response to, inter alia, the successes of Normans and others against Moslems in the western Mediterranean. From then on our sources show no lack of robbers. Some are in Normandy itself. The duchy’s first notable scholar began his monastic career through an encounter with robbers. In IO4 1 this young nobleman was walking alone from Avranches to Rouen when, in a woody stretch a few miles from Rouen, he was set on at dusk by latrones. They were clearly experts: they did not kill him, but pulled his cowl down over his eyes, took all he had, and left him in the woods. The shock caused the frightened young man to seek admittance next morning to the nearest monastery - which happened to be Bet (Vita B. Lanfranci 300-3 1b). The duchy’s first identifiable businessman, mentioned in documents as

Ralf the Minter, on the other hand may have had his career ended by robbers. For a verse epitaph in Rouen cathedral celebrates a great man called Radulphus whose death precipitated a *‘revival of false money”: and who perished “by the hand offures” (Musset 195929 1; Sauvage 1888-90). In the duchy itself the rising temptation to robbery was offset by the strong hand of the dukes. Once more it was on the boundary of the rich economy, beyond its government’s direct reach, that robbers throve most freely. Wedged between Normandy and Flanders lay the county of Ponthieu, at the mouth of the Somme. Relatively landless, its -count and his subordinates watched ever more wealthy traders, from Flanders, England, Normandy and the fle-de-France pass across their shores and up their river. No more than the Frisians at the mouth of the Rhine could they resist the temptation these seafarers offered. It was Ponihieu that an author from another part of France, Poitiers, had in mind when he wrote, about 1070: Scorching avarice has taught certain Gallic peoples an execrable and barbarous habit, foreign to all Christian justice. They ambush the powcrttil or rich and thrcow them into prison with insults and torture, only letting them out halt‘ dead, and usually f’or a huge price (Foreville 1952: 102).

The writer’s indignant phrases suggest the scale of kidnapping was waxing: the victims are now ‘“the powerful and rich”, not just the “villeins, serfs and merchants” mentioned in King Robert’s oath of 1023. The occasion of these particular remarks was in fact the kidnapping, in 1064, of someone exceptionally “powerful and rich” : Harold Godwinson, brother of that Earl Tostig who had attracted similar attention near Rome

three years before. Although the kidnappers of Ponthieu soon had their fingers rapped by the duke of Normandy, and had to hand over their victim with honour, Harold did not in the end get away unrobbec!. For Ithe price of his rescue turned out to be those obligations to his rescuer - a rn:+il no less envious than anyone else of En&h wealth, if shrewder in getting it - which in the end cost the Englishman his kingdom. In the fle-de-France and further south the chronology of a series of incidents in the 1070s and later suggests a new wave of’ danger for travellers then. The circumstances of each case confirm the impression. In IO74 the party of no less a magnate than the archbishop of Tours was robbed by an armed band, possibly on a road to the south or southwest of Orlbans. The band killed the archbishop’s cousin in is front of his eyes. The robber-chief described to the archbishop of Sens as “a certain parishioner of yours called LanOur source for the story, Pope zelin”. Gregory VIZ, who characteristically expected the archbishop of Sens himself to take action, did not write as if’ past experience had led him to expect such an outrage 1Caspar 1920:152-3). Nor did he when in the same year he exploded against. the king, Philip I, for having “in the manner of a robber, taken an immeasurable SUIT:” (more praedonis injnitam pecuniam) from certain international merchants attending a fair in the fle-de-France. Gregory had doubtless heard the complaint fi-om Italians. Their misfortune seemed ;o him a novelty. Such a deed, he wrote, was one “hitherto unheardof; even in fables, as being perpetrated by a king” (Caspar 1920: 13 1.7--10). The apparent worsening of affairs suggested by this pair of’

81

letters might be dismissed as merely a reflection of the sudden improvement, from 10’13, in the survival of papal letters. But that these years really did conjure up new dangers for travellers is suggested by two other cases, independently witnessed. Both concern lords. The lords of Uxelles, a castle on the main road north of Cluny, watched merchant caravans pass regularly across his preserve. 0ne year, about 1074, if not that mnus mirabilis itself; the temptation grew too strong: he sent his men to round up the merchants, and would not release them without a ransom. When brought to book he confessed that none of his ancestors had ever committed this ‘sin’; though we know

that at least one of his successors did (Duby I953 :335n. 1). It was probably not long after this that a more regular headquarters of plunder was set up by the lords of M&%ille, on the Roman road between Orleans and Paris. The novelty and severity of their activities, in turn, are attested by a permanent shift in the line of traffic, to an alternative route where the abbey of St Denis

set up a priory and hospice at Tom-y (Bernois 190325, 37-8). A surviving testimony to these events can be heard in the roar of traffic which disturbs the church of St Denis at Toury today, hard by the dual carriageway Route Nationale 20, while Mer6ville remains a sleepy town boasting a Trajan’s column, but no traffic. Some of these ‘robberies’ and ‘ransoms’ were the barbarian ancestors of the tax we call ‘customs’. The name of that tax in itself suggests its unruly prehistory. The demarcation between robber and lord is again unclear. What is clear, though, is that the new economic conditions of the late eleventh century were helping, not only to

82

create robbers who were not lords, but also to push lords a little further over the line that distinguished them from robbers. It is also clear that the upturn in robberies in the early 1070s did not drop away of its own accord. It is again the adventures of bishops that reveal this. A new complaint from Gregory VII in 108 1 described how two French bishops, of Paris and Chartres, had arrived in Rome “as they relate, not without personal fatigue and material loss, having in some places even been captured and not released without payment of ransom” Kaspar 1920594.24-8). The bishops’ loss, however, was the robbers’ gain, and these successes cannot have failed to raise hopes further. Word that a wealthy bishop was on his travels was enough to cause a robbers’ stand-by right down the road. Few sees had a wealthier reputation in these years than Canterbury, and in 1097-8 rumour sped southwards that its archbishop “had crossed the sea loaded with much gold and silver, and was making for Rome”. Accustomed to the strong civil rule of a Norman king the archbishop perhaps underestimated the danger. If so he was soon disabused. “From motives of greed”, records his biographer, who was there, “quite a number of people kept watch on the r+d, set spies and prepzred traps to catch him”. Political enemies were apparently to the fore among the setters of traps. But the biographer leaves no doubt that purely commercial robbers joined in the excitement; and as it happened, the disappointment too. For their intended victim, St Anselm, had one of the sharpest minds of the age, and he easily outwitted them all (Rule 1884:934; Parks 1954:203-5). The commercial robbers who lay in wait

for St Anselm may have included some of those economically ruined milites for whom

St John of Valence, whose bishopric spanned the great north-south route on the Rhone, showed helpful concern a year or two later (Vita S. Jo. valent. 1696e). But whether they did or not, it is clear that the worsening trend of the 1070s did not check itself. Nor would it be checked until rulers like Louis VI put siege engines to work against these unauthorized bloodsuckers on the kingdom’s road traffic. Suger’s Life of that king traces the start of his fiercest domain war, against Hugh of Puiset, to the stealing of some merchants’ horses by the custodian of a roadside castle (Waquet 1929:70, 88). The perfidious Thomas of Marle, again, second only to Hugh as a target of Louis’ law-and-order campaign, comprised in his felonies the robbing of pilgrims going through Champagne on their way to Jerusalem (Guibert of Nogent, De vita sua 3, 11 in MPL 156:933b-c; Waquet I929:3I9-20). Such curbing of r&bers was a measure of a government’s powtrs. It was indeed a cause of them: it became a commonplace that a king’s wealth rose in proportion as he protected trade (Steele 1920:44.15-24; 46.27-30; 50.14-28). A few governments, whose control of routes was their only asset, found in their role as route protectors their very raison d’hre. This was notably the case with the counts of Savoy, whose rocky patrimony held the two major Alpine passes of Mont Cenis and the St Bernard; and the international reputation of whose routes for safety became the principal boast of its government (Bartholomeus Anglicus 1601:695). A large and varied continent has been surveyed over two centuries: two centuries

when in the nature of things theft and robbery are unlikely to have left much to tell their tale. What they did leave, however, is in the main consistent with our hypothesis: the advancing wave of monetarization - in Northern Italy, the Rhineland and east Saxony, England and then France - was accompanied by a roughly corresponding wave of robbery, reaching conspicuous intensity in the 1070s in ill-ruled areas. Uncertainty remains in this picture. It attaches especially to the negative evidence at the very beginning of the period. Corroboration could perhaps be sought for this particular weakness in an evaluation of the role of robbers in the preceding age: of’their place in Charlemagne’s laws (Fichtenau I957 : 154-51, or of their - much smaller place in the apprehensions of travellers (Parks 1954:69-72, 80-l), in saints’ Lives (Graus 1965 : 135-6 etc.), and in known cases of the transit of valuables (for example Lauer 1964:60). Such corroboration would however be too oblique to justify the space its elaboration would take. There happens to exist, too, without our going outside the tenth and eleventh centuries, a more direct means of buttressing our findings so f‘ar: legend.

The evidence of legend Nothing, it was agreed, set off sanctity better than its victorious confrontation with violence. So robbers had a role in hagiography. But thev entered unci.er conditions: the saint was a hero ; and robbers, and anyone else involved in thefts and robberies, were incidental. Yet the Christian religion cared for these too - robbers, victims and everyone -

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and on a different level they also had their literature, giving them, too, an heroic role. One sort of robber actually had its in the ordinary historical biographers, genre. Since we shall be leaving this genre in a moment these robbers can be disposed of first. They were those who entered historical hagiography1 a saints. As the episode of Odo’s convert Aimon showed, a robber might give up his profession and become a monk. Well over two dozen examples of such conversions have been assembled by scholars from the literature of sainthood and monasticism (Gunter 1954:160, n. 1: Grundmann 1968 :3%&-Z, 334-B). The series of these examples, as an ensemble, teaches a lesson. Though it stretches over the medieval centuries from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance, not ;>ne of the two dozen examples falls between the years 700 and 900. The only case for the years 9CO-IO00 is that of Odo’s Aimon himself. With the robbers of Afflighem and others in the late eleventh century, exrobber saints become more fmiliar, and they rf:main a feature of church history in the central and late middle ages. Two dozen cases are not Jnany. Even if the dossier were augmented by a case or two, and even if the result only represented (as it surely did) only a fraction of real conversions of robbers, the felons who went to such extremes of penitence would remain clearly a minority. The others got no biographers at this period. The Church’s generic provision for these, and for their victims, nevertheless found its expression. It found it in a less historically exact form of’ literature. For hagiography ranges over a spectrum: at one side is factual history, at the other, myth. And it is on the mythical side of the genre that our investigation will 84

finish: with literature, that is, about saints whose historical career is obscure, but whose posthumous reputation has a significant history of its own. The saints whose posthumous reputations might concern us are too many for all to be discussed individually. I shall deal with four individually, and then some collectively. The first of the individuals is St Edigne. Saints, we all know, are invoked in time of need. In a rhpzft the person put most immediately in nted is the owner of the stolen goods. The recovery of such goods was accordingly included in the functions of more than one saint posthumously venerated in the central middle ages. Only one, however, appears to have had this as his or her principal function. This was St Edigne. Little is known of her. But all that is, relates to our subject. She lived in East Saxony, hard by the Thuringia where Lampert of Hersfeld recorded robbers in the late eleventh century. She died in 1109. By a suggestive irony, she is said to have been a daughter (or other close relation) of that king whom Gregory VII accused of ‘robbing’ Italian merchants : Philip I of France (Giinter 1954: 169). If the first person put in need by a theft is the loser of the goods, the second, if the law does its job, is the person caught and condemned for the theft. When judicial methods were still imperfect, the man condemned - for example by the ordeal - might perhaps as well be innocent as guilty. Not only would his claim on a saint’s help then be all the bolder. His situation would be one which simply anyone might fear: for who knew the same might not h;lppen to him? This anxiety surely contributed to the popularity of one of the most famous of medieval legends : that of St James of Compostela and the hanged pilgrim. The

pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela had begun in the late ninth century. From the twelfth century one miracle of ‘Sant Jago’ pushed its way to the front of those told about him. The oldest version of this miracle, in a twelfth-century manuscript, puts the incident in Toulouse. Two German pilgrims, father and son, pass a night at an inn in Toulouse, on their way to Santiago de Compostela. The innkeeper hides a silver vessel in their clothes, and after their departure charges them with theft. The pair are caught anti condemned. The son offers to die on the gallows if the father can be set free; and tile son is duly hanged. The father goes on sadly to Santiago. Five weeks later he returns by way of Toulouse, and finds his son still alive on the gallows. The son says he has been ,.elp up by the hands of St James. He is taken down and the innkeeper is hanged instead. Some recensions of this edifying story change the article stolen to a cockerel, or merely call it ‘something’ (nescio quid). But the earliest and also the most widespread versions specify the silver (or in one late tradition gold) goblet. Now it is true that cups are not money. But it was literary necessity, not economics, that ruled out money as object of the tale. For the landlord would have been a fool as well as a rogue to try that particular trick with coin: the ioot had to be identifiable. The earliest legend dates this miracle either to 1020 or to 1090 (De Gaiffier 1967 208-15; Gunter 1954:63; Hiiffer 1957 :74-6; Figure 7). The legend of St James and the goblet illustrates, by II.Srising fortunes, other things besides a general anxiety at the danger of being hanged as a thief. It stands for the dangers of pilgrims, the wiles of landlords, the opportune goodwill of St James, and so on. In so far as its does represent a

widespread anxiety at the risk of a hanging, its diffusion could equally well be read as a function of the growing efficacy of law. But the legend keeps enough specifically thievish content to earn it a place beside our other evidence, on the growing familiarity of theft after the millennium. The same qualified claim can be made for the third and fourth individual legends which claim our consideration. These concern guilty thieves and robbers as well as innocent. (Legend, remarkably enough, is usually indifferent to the question of guilt.) Indeed the legends in question concern all prisoners and condemned persons. For a thief or robber cannot be certainly identified at this period by his punishment. In accounts of theft from which I have drawn, the punishment of the culprit is generally treated as a matter of the judge’s discretion. Confinement, the loss of a hand or limb, or eyes; hanging: all these penalties could be appropriate for thieves. The argument in reverse nevertheless has more force. When it is a question of hanging, there is a fair chance we are dealing with a thief or robber. For when the accounts do specify, more often than not they specify that (Graus 1961:126-7). The third of my examples, anyway, explicitly refers to robbery. It concerns men imprisoned or in bonds. Men might be thus confined for marly reasons; and a number ot central medieval saints were famous for releasing them (Bouillet 1897 :76; Sumption 1975:67). But none so significantly for the present enquiry as St Leonard. St Leonard is supposed to have lived in sixth-century Gaul. His medieval legend relates that if anyone in prison called on [Leonard’s] name his chains broke and he was free, nor could anyone impede him further. Many people who had thus been

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pitgrim.

wrongfully

accused of theft, is rescued by St James. Church

of San Domenico,

Perugia.

ti-eed by him f’rom dungeons or bonds sought out where Leonard was living; and thw brought their heavy fetters and chains with them, al;d ot‘tered them, prostrate, at his feet. Many remained with him, and undertook to obey him as nxnial sergeants. But the man of God was concerned rather to serve them, allotting them part of the forest, 50 that they should get used to living by agriculture, ruther than that their attachment to worldly rapine Jhouid cuuse them again to be made captive in the darkness of priso?l t b’ita S. Leonardi 154d).

This reference to reformed robbers of the sixth century may be thought out of’place in an eleventh-century context. Its propriety becomes clear, however, when, it is realized that St Leonard’s special connection with captives is less likely to derive f’rom his historical career, than%om the affinity of-his name with the French word for ‘bond’, the modern lien; and that the legend quoted no earlier than in a above appears manuscript of the ‘ate eleventh century, yet reached a wide diff‘usion (attested by some 150 extant manuscripts) in the twelfth and thirteenth (Graus 1961: 1044, n. 193). The fourth saint with something to give us is appropriately St Nicholas. No saint other than the Virgin had a medieval cult as extensive as St Nicholas. Bv the late middle ages in the West, Nicholas also had a varied patronage: of sailors, children, merchants, scholars and other professions, as well as of numerous churches, dioceses, and even countries. The breadth of his patronage has helped obscure its original direction. The earliest known legtand of St Nicholas, and the legend which more than any other secured his prodigious ascendency, certainly in the eastern Church and apparently also in the West, was a story of’ his saving certain condemned men from execution (Meissen 1931:51, 55-7, 75, 2 16-30). The first story known about him tells how he saved, first,

three innocent men; and second, three guilty niilitaly officers. His rescue of the three military men can be seen as the kernel of the Nicholas-legend : the oldest, most widespread and most pertinacious part of it. It kept that status when Nicholas was first mentioned in the West; and although the saint’s readiness to help people in emergencies was extended to many other situations, the three officers - sometinles confused with other trios of persons saved from death remained at the centure of the hlledieval concept of St Nicholas. In the original eastern story the three military officers were not specifically robbers or thieves, just oppressors. But a saint who was depicted saving armed men fi-om execution could easily be called to aid condcmned malefactors in general. This elision have been made at the very appears to earliest stage of Nic”lolas’ penetration of-the West. The oldest western church dedicated to him is Rome’s St Nicholas in Carcere. The church is next to a public prison we know to have been there in the late eighth century. The church may be as old. When information thickens in thcx twelf‘th century its priest had already a customary responsibility to minister to the prisoners, and could release one every St Nicholas’ day (Meissen 1931:57). St Nicholas’ patronage of prisoners accompanied his veneration north of the Alps, together with the miracle 011‘ the three oflicers. 111the central middle i:gCs all ranks will be f’oaind thanking him i;->r liberation fi~ii all sorts of captivity, for t2:taniple fi-on1 Moslems. The captives were I li;t nect;ssarily thieves, or even criminals. But thievts were firrrlly included, For instance, Ca.c>sar 01‘ Heisterbach’s Dialogue oJ miracles brL\lght in

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S; NkP~oiasas the rescuer of a thief (fur); and attached the comment: “I have heard since youth that St Nicholas excelled all other bishops in mercy” (Book 8!, c. 73). Canonists in the twelfth and thirteentlh century invoked St Nicholas’ example as a model for ecclesiastical judges: they should take no part in capital punishment, unless it be ‘St Nicholas’ part’ as rescuers (Meissen 193 1: 229-32). The link between St Nich.olas and criminals condemned to death was early, deep and persevering. The fortunes of his cult in the West attach him to “>ur chronological hypothesis. Although j t Nicholas was mentioned in Italy in the seventh century and north of the Alps in the ninth, a palpable rise in the vigour of his cult has to wait until after 950. References and churchdedications then multiply in Italy and Germany. A new impulse can be detected about the millennium, throughout the Em.pire (Meissen 193157-70). Similar signs of the spread of the cult appear in Rouen in 1030, where Normans were open to influence from Greek southern Italy (where his reputation had long been strong, but which I have not treated as part of the Latin world). Paris knew him about the same time or perhaps a little earlier. Veneration for Nicholas built up gradually in many parts of the Latin world until the critical date of 1087 0Meissen 1931:7 l-923. In that year some merchants translated his supposed relics to Bari. From then the spread of his cult was rapid and universal. He cluickly rose to a prmnhence in the Western Church comparable to what he had enjoyed in the East. In assessing the significance of the Nicholas cult for the history of thievery, a similar qualification must be made to that

made for St James. No-one can tell quite why a saint or legend was popular. And if they could, there would be other possible explanations for the triumph of Nicholas: Greek influence; his natural and consequent association with travel and trade; and growing cosmopolitanism in general. Even Nicholas’ role as freer of criminals from prison or execution couples him not only to the history of criminals, but to that of jails and scaffolds, that is, to the advance of legal coercion. But executions play a strong enough role in the Nicholas legend, and robbery has a strong enough link with execution, for the fortunes of the Nicholas cult to merit a place in our evidence. The merit is shared by two final considerations about medieval legend. These concern, not individual saints now, but individual motifs, within the body of legend about saints and heroes as a whole. One is a motif we have already met more than once: a saint, like JCgmes or Nicholas, saves a condemned mai2 from hanging. Such intervention forms a motif over the whole spectrum of hagiography, from the more historical to the more mythical. The rescue can be natural, by means of a plea to a judge, etc; or miraculous, by supernatural physical intervention with the execution. The motif is familiar enough to have attracted the notice of leading students of hagiography, and their study of some three dozen examples throws light on some dark alleys of church history (Graus 196 1: 124-34; De Gaiffier 1967 ; Vi’ta S. Guil. div. 7 l ’tc-7 lba; Vita Heriberti 748.1 l-42; Bouillet 1897 :75). The dark alleys include ours. For in t.he chronological series of these interventions there is, again, an almost total gap between the years 700 and 1000. If the series is

reckoned by the date of the saint’s own life, the one exception is the rescue of a thief near Freising early in the eighth century. If the series follows the other possible criterion, the date of the earliest version of the legend, there are two early ninth-century exceptions. 0 the&se the motif enters again only in the eleventh century. Then there is suddenly a cluster of examples: St James of Toulouse; Christ’s rescue of a perpetrator of ‘theft’ and ‘robbery’ in Sens between 10 12 and 1032; St Faith’s rescue of a man innocent of horse-theft about 1007; and St William of Dijon’s quasi-miraculous res*:ue of a serf condemned for a ‘crime’ in Dijon, some time before 1030. To these should be added the non-miraculous rescue by Archbishop Herbert of Cologne of the clerical thief already mentioned above, in or soon after 1003. From about 1100 the theme becomes a favourite, and attaches to many saints, especially the Virgin.4 The second motif whose fortunes concern us is that of the robbers or robber-chief in secular folk-tale. The ‘dark ages’ are particularly dark in this field. Yet it can be said that nothing that is known of folk-tale contradicts our findings from hagiography. The robber would become the hero of many folk-tales, in Sherwood for yst and elsewhere. The origin of these : obber-stories is usually hard to date, unles!. details in the story emphatically attach it ICI a particular reign or milieu. Unlike the s;&-t’s Life the folk-tale did not have scri’jes at its command on any scale in the period 900-l 100. However, none of the robbc - motifs listed for medieval Europe in Professor Stith Thompson’s Motif-index of folk taks, can be confidently ascribed to an origin earlier than the twelfth century. The more circumstantial

of the stories, especially those from Spain and Italy, exude an atmosphere nearer the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The total absence of the folk-tale type ofrobberchief from the Merovingian hagiography studied by Professor Graus strengthens the same surmise: the robber-chief only caught the popular imagination after the millennium (Graus 1961 :I%). The same rule apparently holds for the robbei- of legendary antiquity: that tale of Alexander the Great and the pirate is only known to have circulated in medieval Europe from the middle of the twelfth century (Car-y 1956:958, 28 I-2). As for the classic robber of fblktale, Robin Hood, he is a latecomer. His legend associates him with Coeur-de-Lion, 1189~99 ; and the earliest certain record of the legend itself’ is from the late fourteenth century (Dobsok: Jnd Taylor 1976:l).

Conclusion In an age wheri capitalism’ is a subject of daily debate, a Lctudent of history will 1~ excused for interesting himself in the question of thie psychological and social effects of money. The question is a mystery: that is, it fascinates the mind without ever satisfying it entirely. But it allows partial answers. Here is one: money is liquid wealth, and so in its essence mobile; because it is mi>bile anyone can theoretically acquire it; and this possibility by itself evokes a desire, which in turn leads to action. That logic lies behind the rule about leaving money around in big houses. It also lies behind a certain moral trait of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. This trait has been identified with growing pre-

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&ion since Huizinga. I refer to love of money, or avadia. Contemporary moralists looked on avaritia increasingly as the prime scourge cf the age (Huizinga 1924:18-20; Little 197 1). This trait was integrally bound to the one considered in this article. As more than one of the sources on robbery were more one was just thieving aware, manifestation of avaritia (Duby 1953:335 n. I; Vita S. Jo. vaknt. 1697c). Indeed, any discussion of the motives of robbers, in the context of an ever-more monetary economy, should include more than the robber’s own taste for glittering money. He was also, surely, infected by the moral atmosphere round him. Indeed, in front of him: for a ~&“-looking rich man is surely a more tempting prey to robbers than one who seems unattached to his riches. The significance of those stories of robbers who held their hands off saints, like the humble ado and Hugh, was precisely this. The present thesis has therefore been offered as a contribution to the psychological, as well as the economic and political history, of the ‘making of the middle ages’. Money was of course not itself evil, as careless moralists were occasionallv angered into saying - wishing (for instance) that metal had never been dug up from the ground. Money nevertheless. embodied new temptations, and hence new social stresses. New ethics and institutions were needed to confront them. The time-lag between the stresses and the institutions is what I have tried approximately to fix just before and after the millennium. If-the thesis stands, then it goes without saying that consequences follow in other fields, related to the early growth of states. Since these consequences stretch far outside

the scope of this article I will confine myself to one illustrative example. During the twelfth century, lawyers felt growing dissatisfaction with the ordeal as a means of detecting crime (Van Caenegem I973:62-4). Their unease has been read as a sign of rising rationalism. It may be. But it may also be a sign of something else. A sharp rise in the crime-rate in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries would have had the effect of straining existing legal institutions - not only as to size, but as to type. The ordeal may have been a perfectly satisfactory way of identifying a criminal in a small immobile community where malefactors were few and notorious, and where society’s chief need was for a scapegoat (Brown 1975). But these small communities were beginning in the twelfth century to open into a wider world. Crime, this article has argued, was both more frequent and more cosmopolitan. When it was a question of actually checking crime, not just easing consciences, and when that crime was practised by total strangers, on highways and in cities, the inadequacies of the ordeal could not fail to become apparent. The ordeal may have got its bad name, that is to say, because it was used in the twelfth century to cope with situations it had never been meant for. This and other possible consequences of thesis must be explored the present elsewhere. It will be enough now to have suggested a possible new sequence of development for the period just before the formation of early states. The challenges to which the states were response were not all primeval. One, at least, appears to have been recent. This sequence does not justii;jr the title ‘dawn’ commonly attached to tte period. But nor does it justify that of

‘twilight’ preferred by some contemporaries - pessimists who ignored some of the proven horrors of the preceding age. The process that occurred just after the millennium was therefore not so simple as a general change from dark to light or vice versa. The dark and light followed each other in a more intricate pattern. This finding may damage some of the categories into which we like to split up history. But then medievalists, more even than cjther kinds of historian, are surely employed to ddjust that.

Notes A 1961: 155-267. in Latouche Summary thorough discussion of problems concerning the use of money in the late dark age can be found in the proceedings of a conference held on the subject in Spoleto in 1960 : Monetu e scumbi 196 1. 2 Giinter’s examples (1954: 167-g) stop before the millennium. The four early eleventh-century examples I have just mentioned are the last I know of; with the exception of Vita B. Wu&ci 59-60 (where an embezzled loaf cannot bc cut). 3 There were knightly Aimons in the eleventh century 50 km east of Aurillac (Bouillet 1897 :78, n. 1j and in Bourbon (Lemarignier 1965 : 169). 0 then&e the only clue helping to locate this incident is robber Aimon’s claim numquam memini tales viros vidisse, net @to alicubi visi fuisset I Vita S. Odonis 7 la-b): showing, that he lived nowhere near a reformed monastery. Q Poncele: (1902) lists over twenty brms of the legend. See especially his item 163; also De Gaiffier 1967 : 196-7. In the matter of thieves the Virgin was a bigger and b?tter Nicholas; but so she was in other matters too, and I have forborn from adducing the growth of her cult in the twelf‘th century as further evidence here. A link of‘ her cult with one robber, at least, is never theless established by John of’ Salerno’s assertion that the Marian title Muter misericordiae was revealed to Ode’s robber-convert Aimon, in a vision just before Aimon’s death as a monk at Cluny between about 930 and 942. The suggestion by Mabillon’s editor that the antiphon Salve Regina might itself have originated with this ex-robber is lefi

undiscussed by modern exarflple Raby 1953:227), other origin as early.

liturgical historians (for though they can suggest no

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