January, 2023 | The Eighth Century and All That

A recent paper deserves our attention for the light it sheds on the day-to-day realities of early medieval diet, disease, and mortality. Spoiler: it wasn’t a great time to be alive.

The journal Genome Biology published “Pathogen genomics study of an early medieval community in Germany reveals extensive co-infections” in December of 2022. The team of sixteen authors performed DNA analysis on the bones and teeth of individuals buried between 650 and 800 (the dating is rough) in a German town now called Lauchheim (part of Frankish Allemania). Their findings illustrate a population ravaged by disease and hardship.

Of the seventy remains investigated, twenty-two had active infections (31% of the population!), of four different viral and bacteriological diseases. Seven individuals had two infections, and one unfortunate young man had three different diseases going on. Just what were these diseases, how prevalent were they, and what were the immediate and long-term effects?

Today let’s climb into the wayback machine and revisit a topic I first wrote about back in 2015. Capitularies are a critical resource for understanding society, government, the economy, and religion in the eighth century. This new post is necessary to better understand the definition of capitularies, introduce some scholarly opinions about their overarching purposes, as well as. Finally we’ll take a look at a new section to the Resources link: a list of every capitulary you can find in English translation, the generally accepted title, a number (which we’ll get into in a moment), probable date of issue, and where you can find it. Let’s jump in.

It is critical to remember that Pepin the Short and Charlemagne were not the pomp and circumstance figureheads we today call kings. Their authority was absolute, and their word was law, straight from God. In consultation with their leading men the king would ponder, debate, and then make his will known. Strictly speaking the law went into effect as soon as the words were spoken. As a practical matter scribes wrote down each of these decisions and directives, generally in no more than a few sentences. Each entry was given a new heading, called a capitula in Latin. We have come to call these documents capitularies, although that wasn’t generally a term used contemporaneously.^1.Innes, Charlemagne’s Government, in Empire and Society, p. 77.

Footnotes[+]

Footnotes
↑1	Innes, Charlemagne’s Government, in Empire and Society, p. 77.

Some good sites

Disease-ridden peasants?

The king’s voice, written