Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

pattern of land ownership; status of peasants 341
The only western landowners who are reasonably well documented in
our period are those who held large quantities of land, whether ecclesiastical
(who have been touched on above), royal or aristocratic. The properties
of the latter are occasionally mentioned or alluded to in the narrative
sources, as when Orosius and Olympiodorus tell us of the significant body
of troops that two Spanish brothers were able to raise and finance in 409
just from their rural and domestic slaves, and as when Procopius records
the huge estates, and even greater land-hunger, of the wealthy Ostrogoth
Theodahad. 55 But our best evidence for the pattern of big estates comes
from Gaul, where a number of wills detailing different aristocratic holdings
survive from the end of the fifth century onwards. From these we learn
that some individuals owned vast quantities of land, but that these large
holdings were made up of scattered properties of very varied size, rather
than concentrated blocks. Bertram of Le Mans, for instance, on his death
in 616 disposed of about 300,000 hectares of land made up of more than
135 separate units (including sixty-two villae and thirteen groups of villae),
dispersed through the territories of over fourteen civitates. 56
Bertram’s estates were widely spread (from Paris to Provence, and from
Bordeaux to Burgundy), but they were all within Francia. In the west it is a
feature of our period that, as political power fragmented, the even more
widespread landholding, which had characterized the senatorial aristocracy
of the fourth century, became impossible. Indeed, the scatter of Bertram’s
holdings throughout Francia was unusual for the sixth and seventh century,
and the result of exceptional circumstances. Like all aristocrats, Bertram
was compelled when necessary to take sides during the frequent wars
between rival Merovingian kings, and earlier in his career he lost estates
within hostile territory. In 616 he owned so many geographically scattered
estates only through the great good fortune that he happened to have
backed the right king, Chlothar II, and that Chlothar had (quite anomalously)
come to rule an undivided Francia. Even in supposedly ‘friendly’
territories, the papacy found it very difficult to hold estates outside the
borders of the empire. Gregory the Great (590–604) and his predecessors
had enormous problems in getting adequate revenue out of the Roman
church’s southern Gallic estates (by then under Frankish control), and
indeed after 613 the Gallic patrimony is never heard of again. 57
Although the evidence is very patchy, and therefore unreliable, it is none
the less possible that there was something of a contrast between the late
antique east and west, with large landowners playing a more prominent role
in the latter. It is tempting to draw a connection between this possibility and
the evidence, which we will explore in chapter 13 (pp. 350–61 below), of
55 Spanish brothers: Olympiod. Frag. 13.2 (ed. and trans. R. C. Blockley (1983) 172–3); Oros. vii.40.
Theodahad: Procop. Goth. i.3.2 (see also Cass. Var. iv.39, v.12 and x.5). 56 See p. 317 above, n. 4.
57 Papal estates: Richards (1979) 310 and 316.
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