H-France Review Vol. 5 (February 2005), No. 19
Response to William Chester Jordan's review of Robert F. Berkhofer III, Day of Reckoning: Power and Accountability in Medieval France.
By Robert F. Berkhofer III, Western Michigan University.
I read Professor Jordan's review of my book with great interest. The questions he raises about the economic portion of my argument are important and I welcome the chance to respond that the editors have provided.
In chapter one, I do argue that Benedictine monks were following a traditional pattern of patrimonial management they inherited from the Carolingians during the tenth and eleventh centuries, until the transformation of the twelfth century. Perhaps this shift appears to be overly abrupt because three chapters were abridged into the first, and still longest, chapter. In particular, the book omits some analysis of the estates of the monastery of Saint-Bertin from the imposition of the Carolingian estate system in the mid-ninth century to the end of the eleventh century (including a detailed appendix tracing estate continuity, or its lack, to the time of the papal confirmations analyzed in chapter two). Of the monasteries I study, Saint-Bertin had the most conservative approach to traditional arrangements, but nonetheless the monks there shifted their practices significantly in the twelfth century. Similar supporting material on the other monasteries for the period 877-1000 unfortunately had to be omitted in the final printing.
So, while the skeleton of the post-Carolingian analyses remain, the condensation of my argument has perhaps overemphasized the speed of transformation entering the twelfth century. The arguments I put forward on pp. 88-92 were intended to indicate not that older ideas were suddenly abandoned, but that new behaviors were added on top of them and, eventually, superseded them (how and when is explained in chapters three to five). But we need not rely solely on my findings in this regard. Since my book has appeared, Richard Keyser has shown that in the neighboring region of Champagne, a shift from a monastic economy centered on gift-exchange to one that was more recognizably commercial was starting in the twelfth century and accelerating in the thirteenth century.[1] Keyser's analysis (and his forthcoming book) will hopefully shed more light on the rise of such economic behaviors. Professor Jordan has rightly called for more work on the period before 1100 and I add my voice to his: we need more studies of the period from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, even though they are difficult because of fragmentary source survival.
However, the economic analysis was only one aspect of my overall argument in Day of Reckoning. Some of my claim for newness rests on my examination of the shift in the uses of writing, archives, and documents in selected monasteries from the Carolingian period through the twelfth century (see esp. pp. 6-7, 33-42, 73-83). Such arguments are notoriously tricky, but I would argue for a substantial discursive shift in the use of terms in monastic charters, as well as the means of copying, storing, and consulting them. This argument is in parallel with my discussion of land and estates because I am arguing for a broader shift in ideas (even perhaps mentalité), which can be observed in both changed behaviors (uses of land that were more overtly motivated by economic concerns) and in changed discourse (writings about lands, as well as other writings). My subject is not just the "fiscal, administrative, and institutional history of the period," but also power. I believe most previous historians have missed key interstitial documents in the works I examine, which indicate changed ways of thinking about writing, land, and power. One cannot forget that the abbots I examine were lords, and as such were concerned with the exercise of power over their domains. Part of their thinking was conditioned by more aggressive claims of men on the ground, whom the abbots wished to discipline as their agents, whether such men recognized their lordship or not.[2] Thus, I seek to have readers consider the administrative and economic savoir of the monks I examine in context of the pouvoir by which they ruled.
NOTES
[1] Richard Keyser, "La transformation de l'échange des dons pieux: Montier-la-Celle, Champagne, 1100-1350," Revue historique 35 (4): 793-816. As Prof. Jordan noted in his review, I choose (as does Prof. Keyser) to avoid the phrase "proto-capitalist" in favor of more neutral terms (such as "commercial"), since I wish to avoid any suggestion of teleology or presumed categorization that often is associated with the term "capitalism."
[2] Compare Henk Teunis, "The Appeal to Original Status in the Angevin Region (Eleventh-Twelfth Centuries)," Haskins Society Journal 12 (2002): 151-63.
Robert F. Berkhofer III
Western Michigan University
robert.berkhofer@wmich.edu
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H-France Review Vol. 5 (February 2005), No. 19
ISSN 1553-9172
