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‘Tell me, in what do your riches lie?’ the tenth-century moralist Rather of

Verona (d. 974) asked a fictional rich man in a literary dialogue. ‘In my

possession of estates, male serfs and female slaves, horses, oxen and other animals, in the obedience of my followers, in my delight in dogs and hawks, in my abundance of clothes, fine tableware, grain, wine and oil, of arms, silver, gold, jewels.’18 _{Landed property, a servile workforce, a loyal} retinue, costly possessions, and ostentatious display: the rich man’s reply suggests the complexities of achieving high social status. He was asked about riches, and answered by combining power over people and material resources in just the way that was typical of lordship, as we have seen. He alluded to the lifestyle he so enjoyed, one of hunting, feasting, personal finery, and other forms of conspicuous consumption that set him apart from others. Naturally, his words presume a hierarchical view of human relationships, from the slave to the wealthiest, most powerful lord. This section explores some implications of this self-perception for those at the top of the early medieval social order.

Great diversity was also to be found at the upper end of the scale. Those who were designated by a wide variety of terms that simply mean leading men, bigwigs, the powerful, the best (primores, potentes, optimates in Latin; there is an equivalent range of terms in Old English and other languages) enjoyed the greatest possible cluster of liberties, but even so served a princely, royal, or imperial lord. Lesser notables, well-to-do free men who enjoyed privileges on a regional level, served them sometimes voluntarily, sometimes under duress. In some places, tight hierarchies bound each group tightly to those above and below, but, in others, the contacts, obli- gations, and forms of service were looser and lighter. Additionally, those who served a lord renowned for territorial expansion had quite different opportunities from those whose lord ruled a stable, or even shrinking

polity, for royal or princely patronage depended, in part, upon available resources.

Take four men whom we have encountered earlier, all alive in the

830s: Abba, Eberhard, Riwalt, and Nordbert.19_{Riwalt and Nordbert were}

both locally substantial men who nevertheless chose to enter into dealings with an important local church, Riwalt with Redon and Nordbert with St Peter’s, Ghent. In Brittany, any superior lordship sat very lightly on local landowners such as Riwalt, but, as we have just seen, tightening obliga- tions of lordship were affecting Flanders in Nordbert’s day. Abba and Eberhard both served their king directly, the former as reeve of Kent, the latter as marquis of Friuli, but the scale of their landholding, wealth, and political influence bears no comparison. Powerful and wealthy though he was in Kentish terms, Abba was puny in contrast with Eberhard of Friuli. The latter’s family ranked among the Carolingian super-elite, and this had enabled his father and himself to benefit from the Franks’ territorial expansion under Charlemagne, resulting in landed possessions stretching from Flanders to Italy.

Other than ownership of land, there is little in common between these four elite men and their families, except the fact that they all used land to establish an association with churches—and that, indeed, is why we know about them. The diversity suggests we should look carefully into what additional markers of status there may have been in the early Middle Ages. We shall see that the vastly disparate resources and variable terminology reflected the social fluidity of the upper echelons, and the lack of any firm criteria for membership of the elite. In the absence of any precise pre- scription for gaining or losing high status, we have to search for it in various ways. So, as we shall see, did early medieval men.

In the first place, it was visible to others. Leovigild, king of the Iberian Goths (568–86), gave an estate near Merida to an abbot called Nanctus, to support his monastic following. Its inhabitants went to visit their new master, and were appalled: ‘When they went and had seen him in his wretched clothes and with his hair uncut, they despised him and said to one another, “it would be better for us to die than serve such a master” ’— so a few days later they killed him.20_{For Nanctus, lack of personal groom-} ing was a sign of asceticism, but his workers were not prepared to serve a master who looked like an abject slave, however holy he might be. A master had to look the part.

In addition to appearance, deportment and speech also conveyed high rank, as the seventh-century Northumbrian Imma found out. Taken pris- oner in battle by the Mercians in 679, he pretended that he was not a king’s retainer but only a poor peasant. His captors kept a close eye on

him and, after a while, ‘realized by his appearance, his bearing, and his speech that he was not of common stock as he had said, but of noble fam-

ily’.21_{Evidently, attendance at the royal court promoted elegant manners}

and refined speech as well as the dress code that set the elite apart from peasants.

Courtliness fostered a distinct appearance in other ways too. By the time of Charlemagne at the latest, the royal entourage dressed with an eye to fashionable display, investing in costly silks and furs, together with jew- elled, gilded weapons for the men and brooches, armbands, girdles, and necklaces for the women. Louis the Pious had to persuade his bishops and abbots—almost all of them men of high birth—not to dress like secular nobles. He urged them to give up ‘the ornaments of secular glory’— namely, ‘belts weighed down with golden sword-mountings and jewelled

daggers, exquisite clothing and footwear decorated with spurs’.22 _These

were exactly the prestigious items that Eberhard of Friuli bequeathed to his children and that, as we shall see in the next chapter, were used to cement bonds of patronage and favour. All signalled elite status, but sword belts had a special significance, for, jewelled or plain, they were badges of office as well. And this form of courtliness was catching: the trend that began at the Carolingian imperial court developed still further at the Ottonian court, and both set a fashion for luxurious high-status apparel that others emulated elsewhere. By the late tenth century at the latest, Anglo-Saxon kings and queens together with the nobles and their wives were following suit, dressing in patterned silks with ample gold embroi- dery overlaid with jewellery and heavy furs.

Attention to display extended to fine mounts and their harnesses,

decked out with ‘decorated medallions’.23 _{Only the ‘most renowned}

horses’, plump, strong, and ‘praiseworthy in every aspect’, would do for

Pope Hadrian I (772–95) to ride in processions.24_{And when (between 1036}

and 1038) the 50-year-old Boniface of Canossa journeyed across the Alps

to collect Beatrix, his bride of about 18, he shod his horses in silver. He deliberately attached the shoes so loosely that they were shed en route for the local populace to gather up: ‘this way the people might find out who

he was.’25_{No opportunity was lost to make status obvious.}

Fine food was another aspect of elite lifestyle, as we saw earlier.26 _In addition to game and the succulent meats of domesticated animals reared especially for slaughter, a well-stocked table had fish from the sea, such as porpoise and herring, and dishes prepared with imported spices. It had all these in great abundance: to judge by preachers’ complaints, bigwigs liked to eat and drink to excess. Despite this, food intake could, in principle, mark out graduations of status, for, when Louis the Pious specified the

rations for his representatives going about imperial business, he stipulated precisely ‘how much should be given to each according to his rank’, whether bishop, abbot, count, or retainer.27

Membership of the elite also implied social distance. One expression of that was a personal retinue of armed men, domestic officials, and hangers-on. Another might be a defended residence, such as the tenth- to eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon hall at Goltho, where the main hall, outbuildings, and courtyard were enclosed by an earthwork rampart and ditch. It also demanded deference and the avoidance of threatening ges- tures. ‘Servants are accustomed to hand knives to their masters [holding them] by the tip of the blade.’28_{Careful tactics might reinforce hierarchy:} Tagino, archbishop of Magdeburg (1004–12), simply preferred ‘nobility of lineage and manner’ and declined to admit the low-born into his com-

pany.29 _{Social climbers set out to erode that distance, however, for to}

emulate nobility was to court the deference due to it. Thus estate stewards of the monastery of St Gall ‘learned to blow their horns in a way that made a different sound from the other peasants’ and started carrying polished weapons and going hunting with dogs—at first just hares, but then even wolves, bears, and boars. ‘ “The cellarers can look after the fields and meadows,” they said. “We must look to our own advantages and indulge in hunting, as befits real men.” ’30

Elite status, then, implied a lifestyle and mores characterized by per- sonal display and conspicuous expenditure. An eighth-century Irish trea- tise, surely over-systematizing but nevertheless true to its spirit, sums this up. The man who had twenty-seven clients in his retinue, a house 29-foot long with a 19-foot outhouse, lavish furnishing including eight beds and couches with cushions and rugs, a cauldron in his kitchen large enough to stew an entire ox, twelve gilded bridles and hunting dogs, and whose wife had a pet lap-dog, was a ‘noble of the first rank’.31

In these terms, the fictional rich man with whom we opened had a good claim to be regarded as elite. He had the necessary wealth, lifestyle, and retinue. But were great riches and appropriate behaviour sufficient? Not necessarily. What defined the elite in early medieval perception was being ‘noble’. An early eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon treatise on status acknowledged that, ‘if a trader prospered, that he crossed thrice the open sea at his own expense, he was then afterwards entitled to the rights of a

thegn [i.e. in Anglo-Saxon terms, a noble: see below]’.32_{Maybe some early}

medieval merchants did manage to ease themselves into the ranks of the thegns, but we have no evidence to prove it. What we do have, however, are many indications that more was involved in being noble than just luxuriating in wealth, as the rich man did.

‘Noble’ was yet another flexible term. It often described a person’s high rank and position of power and privilege, but it could also refer to distin- guished, upright conduct within the religious and social expectations of the day. One or both of these meanings might be intended in any par- ticular context: they shared the implication of being notable and well known. While the rich man had a claim to be noble in the former sense, not all his peers would necessarily have regarded him in this light. There is a fundamental reason for that: despite its key place in medieval and early modern European social hierarchies, ‘nobility’ was not, in the early Middle Ages, a rank defined by objective, agreed criteria.

Rather, it was a quality. Conduct often mattered, as the word ‘noble’ itself suggested. But, in addition, ancestry counted, for two reasons. In the first place, there was a strong presumption of inherited status: knowledge of a person’s parentage confirmed his or her nobility. A woman, in particular, inherited her father’s rank, and was often the custodian of familial genealogical details. Secondly, except perhaps for the occasional merchant who made good, the main way of acquiring the resources nec- essary to support a noble lifestyle was inheritance. Since only nobles had the opportunity to assemble or inherit resources on anything more than a very modest scale, the possession of wealth did not automatically en- noble. Rather, it confirmed it. Conduct, ancestry, wealth: all contributed towards being hailed as noble.

Consider Gerald, count of Aurillac, whose celebrity as a holy man stemmed, in part, from his refusal to indulge in the ostentatious lifestyle of his noble peers. He was, nevertheless, of true blue blood: ‘he was so illustrious by the nobility of his birth, that among the families of Gaul his lineage is outstanding both for its possessions and the excellence of its life. . . . And indeed the great quantity of estates endowed with serfs, lying in various places, which came to Gerald by right of succession, testifies to the extent of [his ancestors’] riches.’ ‘Excellence of life’ in the form of ‘modesty and religion’ also ran in the family.33_{Gerald took nobility of liv-} ing to new extremes, however. In general, nobles were expected to behave in the ways that brought honour to themselves, their family, and their lord: courage and martial prowess for lay men, sexual modesty and careful

household management for women.34 _{By shunning vengeance and the}

force of arms, and keeping himself quite chaste, the count of Aurillac simply stood traditional paradigms of gendered conduct on their head. Gerald, then, had all the tokens of nobility: ancestry, great landed estates, and that other, elusive, criterion—distinguished conduct, albeit of a rather odd sort. He was so noble, his biographer implied, that he did not need to confirm the fact by flaunting his wealth.

There remains one important additional avenue to nobility or its enhancement to consider: royal service. It is not by accident that many of the words that came to denote high rank originally meant a servant or domestic retainer: this is the root meaning of ‘thegn’, ‘thane’ (the main elite rank in Anglo-Saxon England and Scotland respectively), ‘knight’ (Old English cniht), and ‘vassal’ (Old French vassallus). At the very least, since that service was often military, the death in battle of one man might open the way for the rise of another at court; conversely, distinction in battle might bring reward, patronage, and higher social esteem. Service might also be more peaceable, in the secular and ecclesiastical adminis- trative positions of great responsibility that supported the monarchies and empires of the early Middle Ages. And its rewards—prestige, influence, landed estates, even a royal bride—could be great indeed, as Eberhard of Friuli appreciated.

Access to these posts created a group of insiders, those who enjoyed and could exploit their closeness to the king for their personal and famil- ial advantage. Further, while noble ancestry conveyed noble rank (or did so for so long as memory of that ancestry was cultivated and a noble lifestyle maintained), it need not be a prerequisite for access to high office. Liutward, bishop of Vercelli (880–900), exemplifies both these points. Of low birth, he rose through ability to hold the highest ecclesi- astical positions in the court of Charles the Fat (876–87) and ‘was hon- oured and feared by all more than the emperor’. He was also successful in promoting his family, and ‘he carried off the daughters of the most noble men in Alemannia and Italy without opposition, and gave them to his

relatives in marriage’.35 _{Marriage to a woman of higher rank was an}

established means of social advancement, for women could transmit status as well as resources from one generation to another. We should remember, however, that privileges, wealth, and the power that arose from closeness to a ruler by no means always went together. Great noblemen often had obscure brothers, men of equally high birth and comparable wealth but of little political standing or influence.

Nor was royal confidence in a valued courtier necessarily matched by the trust of his peers. In the 570s, Leudast was count in Tours. He had acquired the position by winning the attention of King Charibert (561–7) and then his brother King Chilperic (561–84). The office brought respon- sibility for fiscal, military, and judicial administration on the king’s behalf, and carried a presumption of nobility, but we only hear of Leudast through the eyes of his rival for influence in the town, Bishop Gregory. The latter asserted that Leudast was the son of a slave in a royal vineyard, who was put to work in the royal kitchens. As a scullion, Gregory alleged, Leudast

had his ear mutilated for attempting to escape, but nevertheless managed to ingratiate himself at court, catching the eye of Charibert’s queen, Marcofeva. Once appointed count, Leudast ‘strutted around, bursting even more with prideful glory in his high office. He showed himself to be a rapacious plunderer, a brawling braggart, and a filthy adulterer. By sow-

ing discord and fomenting malice, he amassed no small fortune.’36 _This

may be a story of unusually successful upward social mobility; it was cer- tainly Gregory of Tours’s desperate attempt to vilify a dangerous political rival by denying him any nobility, despite his undoubted wealth, power, and royal favour. It was also the contest of a parvenu self-made through royal service with an aristocrat of ancient, inherited status often at odds with Leudast’s royal patron.37

In the absence of any hard-and-fast criteria of nobility at any point in the early Middle Ages, tension between old and new blood probably char- acterized royal courts more often than not. After all, noble status was jeal- ously guarded, to be defended against newcomers attempting to encroach upon it. ‘The emperor made you a free man but not a noble, for that is impossible’, was the accusation hurled by a ninth-century polemicist at a man whom he hated, an archbishop who coupled humble origins with

loyal service towards his imperial patron, Louis the Pious.38_{The charge}

of humble origins could also be turned against those who were noble, but not of the right sort, as Hagano discovered in the early tenth century. He came from an important landed family in Lotharingia, a part of the East Frankish kingdom that the West Frankish king Charles the Simple (898–922) seized in 911, and rapidly won the trust of his new royal lord. In his native circles, Hagano would have undoubtedly been treated with all the respect due to someone known to be of distinguished nobility. But, at Charles the Simple’s court, he encountered the rivalry of those with vested interests in the West Frankish networks of power, who resented the intrusion into their midst of an outsider—this ‘man from the middling sort whom the king had made powerful’. The old elite complained to