As so many rivals fought one another in Italy, and banditry was rife where author- ity had collapsed, conditions for the people were grim. It is therefore no surprise that, although the cities continued to function as the base of rulers, in the coun- tryside the process of incastellamento begun in the previous century now reached most parts of the peninsula. In noting this dramatic development, radically chang- ing the appearance of the countryside and the form of human settlement, it is important to recall that such developments can have a variety of underlying causes and serve more than one purpose. The fundamental process was one of creating secure villages for peasants, alongside a process whereby noble residences might also be made defensible. Very few of the sites noted in the various studies ever served any military function in the strategic sense, because they were not intended to, had only very weak fortifications, and anyway would not normally have had any trained soldiers to assist in their defence. Their role was to shelter the local rural population and its mobile assets. some did, however, become the foundation for much stronger fortresses later in their existence.
rudimentary ditches were the first attempts to construct refuges in the flat plain of the Po in the ninth century. At this time, ditches and palisades were the only protection, whether for villages or for the local lord’s villa. Their location 1 Wachter, “Burgen in hannoverschen Wendland”, 155–62, with detailed lists and sum- maries of finds and dating of all the sites ; Henning, “Ringwalburgen und Reiterkrieger” ; Gringmuth-Dallmer, “Deutsche und slawische Burgen”.
was determined by what they were there to protect, not by any strategic or other concern. licences issued by King Berengar use terms such as agger, berlisca, celata, fossatum, merlo, muro, propugnaculum, spizata, turri. Many of the terms meant a wooden defence. There are also references to hedges. Towers were rare in the tenth-century references, little more than a quarter of documented sites having one, although they became increasingly common in the eleventh. In 906, Berengar licensed what became a formidable castle at Nogara “cum berliscis, merulorum propugnaculis atque fossatis”. Very few sites occupied more than 20,000 square metres, with about half having an area of between 5,000 and 15,000 square metres. In the countryside dependent on the ancient city of Bergamo, there is no evi- dence of any local defences at the start of the tenth century. The first documentary evidence of a castrum in this area is in 911, and in 959 a village previously mentioned without any reference to defences is identified as being “next to the castle” that has now acquired its name. Four documented sites were identified as being protected by ditches and hedges or palisades, while four others had walls, a much higher proportion than elsewhere. It has been suggested that these places were close to the city, and therefore copied the urban model. Most of the castles of this area were established by public officials, others by ecclesiastics, and some were held by a consortium of landowners. In the hilly country of Canossa, there are more refer- ences to the term rocca, which is distinguished from castrum, and when both are cited together the implication is of a ramparted village area adjacent to a fortified hilltop. Again, as in the north, defences often comprised only ditches and hedges. The average area enclosed was between 2,750 and 4,400 square metres.
1
A similar process has been studied in latium, where a substantial movement of people per castra also occurred, although the underlying cause may have been as much a growing population as the needs of defence. landowners were seeking to attract people to their own lands and offered well-defended villages in new locations as part of the inducement. Given the nature of the country here, build- ing was in stone from the outset.
2
It is likely that the process involved a contract between a lord and the new occupants, in which the lord would reserve part of the new structure for his own use, including, perhaps, the tower, which became much more common in the eleventh century.3
since providing a defensible hilltop village was intended to be an incentive to move, defences must have answered a perceived need for security. even where the nature of the local power differed, the same processes seem to have occurred. Also in central Italy, the local counts were effectively independent in the Marsica district of the Abruzzi. here too there is evidence of new rural fortifications developing during the tenth century, sometimes reoccupying ancient sites, often on hilltops or mountain ridges. some were created to serve the military or strategic purpose of the ruling counts and did 1 Settia, “Castelli e villaggi nelle terre Canossiane”, 288–97 ; Settia, “La struttura mate- riale del castello”, 362, 370–75, 378–96, 399 ; Settia, “Il primo incastellamento nella Berga- masca”, 239–43 ; Menant, “‘Fossata cavare, portas erigere’”, 277–81.2 Toubert, Les structures du Latium médiéval, I : 313–33.
not change the settlement pattern of the area. here again, stone was used from the outset.
1
By the end of the tenth century, the Italian countryside outside the areas that were still subject to Constantinople had been transformed, and ditched, palisaded or walled villages everywhere crowned the hills, or sprouted among the running waters of the plains. local lords and counts had also begun to provide their resi- dences with fortifications in a way similar to their counterparts in Germany and France, and if during the first half of the century the higher powers had main- tained formal control over the licensing of fortifications as an essential attribute of royal authority dating back through their Carolingian predecessors, their writ already did not run everywhere.