medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
> How about 'farmstead'?
vague enough.
>Or, if that's too likely to be interpreted to signify a place with a single
dwelling, 'estate'?
even vaguer.
Vague is Good.
Vaguer is Gooder.
> PS: It's not necessary for an estate to be composed solely of properties
forming a contiguous unit.
not at all.
From: Rosemary Hayes-Milligan & Andrew Milligan
> But I think if 'mansa' can be transltaed as 'manor', that agrees with
Christopher's suggestion of 'fief'. A manor was a fief
unless it was a "freehold".
>that included
that *may* have included
>lands and rights/responsibilities, etc. Not all lands in all manors were
contiguous - certainly in the later middle ages when lordships might have been
joined or split.
"subinfucation" was not just a late middlevil phenomenon.
the best example of extensive subinfudation i know of is to be found in the
early 12th c. at the _villa_ of Mantarville, on the eastern border between the
diocese/county of Chartres and the diocese of Sens/royal domain.
there happens to survive a series of nearly a dozen charters which record the
consolidation and acquisition of the lands of this _villa_ by the regular
canons of St. John's of Chartres.
it seems that the place, being on a border, had been split up between the
vassals of the Bishop of Chartres (most notably the Vidame of Chartres) and
those of the King.
trying to reconstruct the extent of these various subinfudations was rather
like trying to take apart and reassemble one of those dreadful chinese wooden
puzzles, the work of several weeks, and, while i have a memory of having
indeed done it, i no longer have the results of that work available (being on
a now-dead, unbackedup harddrive).
but, it was quite extensive, the degree to which the place --which was really
*quite* modest, without even a village church (and is, today, little more than
a wide place in the road, with a farmhouse and a barn)--was cut up, into
quarters, eights and even 16ths.
this led me to think that the splitting happened several generations before
the surviving documents, which date from the late teens to the early thirties
of c. 12.
after nearly a generation's effort, the canons of St. John's were able to put
the Capstone on their work of consolidation and acquisition, receiving from
Fat Louis a formal charter in which he gave up his rights of _brenagium_ at
Mantarvilla.
_brenagium_, for the brenagially-challenged, was the right of a _capitelis
dominus_ to have his hunting dogs feed at a place, and it was the only thing
which the Capetian had retained at Mantarville.
c
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