Negotiating the Landscape. Ellen F. Arnold

to a strong scent or a footprint.”¹¹¹

      This is particularly important in the context of Stavelot’s early Merovingian charters (which are those containing the term forestis), whose most recent editor has argued were perhaps not even the product of the Merovingian chancery to whom they were attributed, but instead either produced by Grimoald or a monastic writer.¹¹² Though I would not go as far as Innes in dismissing comparisons between early medieval and modern governments, it is important to remember that the medieval state was never the sole controller of written records. Other actors also influenced words and meaning, through direct intervention, later interpolation, or even outright forgery.¹¹³ This led to a cacophony of competing written voices and to complex and widely scattered networks of chanceries and scriptoria. The vagaries (and deliberate manipulations) of charter preservation are also important to pay attention to, especially since the survival of early medieval charters that include the term is scattered and random. Furthermore, the earliest uses of the term forestis survive only in copies. Forestarii appears in an original charter from 707, but the earliest surviving original charter to use the term forestis is from 717.¹¹⁴ Therefore all attempts to define what the term meant during the first several centuries of its use must acknowledge the holes in the manuscript record, later substitution by Carolingian copyists, and even forgery.

      A literal example of this is a ninth-century charter issued by Zwentibold, who created a forestis from woodlands previously belonging to the abbey of St. Maximin in Trier. The manuscript, which has been the object of much linguistic debate, has a lacuna where a word was never filled in: “ut quandam silvam in pago Treverensi in bannum mitteremus et ex ea, sicut Franci dicunt, ________ faceremus.”¹¹⁵ If this spot should contain the term forestis, it allows for the intriguing possibility that the word may not have been a legal term per se but instead an “ethnic” term like “gualdus/waldus” that resulted from the blending of Latin and Germanic tongues.¹¹⁶ Another manuscript from the 800s also points in this direction. Louis the Pious issued a charter to a royal forester named Ado, who served in the Vosges. This charter was copied into a handbook in the classical shorthand of Tironian notes, but there were a few words for which the scribe had no notational abbreviations, including forestarius and forestem, which he wrote out in full.¹¹⁷

      Many historians invoke the first appearance of forestis in Stavelot-Malmedy’s foundation charter and make bold claims from this about the nature of the word. Yet almost none have discussed the other forest words that are found in that same charter, or set the 648 charter in the context of other charters issued by Sigibert to Remacle. It is also important that although modern scholars are fascinated with the term, forestis was used very rarely in Stavelot-Malmedy’s sources. Of the sixty-eight reported forests or woodlands (excluding the Ardennes) from Stavelot-Malmedy’s pre-1158 charters, only seven are labeled as forestes. Except for in the vita prima, which used the foundation charter as a template, the monks of Stavelot themselves never used the word forestis, and it disappears from Stavelot-Malmedy’s charters after around 950.¹¹⁸ One place name includes the word nemus, and five charters contain no name for the property but describe woodland uses or produce. The remaining instances all use variations on the term silva, many of which provide contextual details that make distinctions about woodland use and properties. This parallels results from the Belgian CETEDOC project. In their set of 183 sources written before the year 1000, the word silva appears fifty-seven separate times (with another ten occurrences of the related silvestris) and saltus twenty-seven times, whereas forestis is found only eight times and foresta only once.¹¹⁹ Given its relative scarcity, it is possible that too much attention has been given to forestis at the expense of a more complete discussion of other woodland terms.

      Furthermore, the 648 charter itself is not consistent when using forest words. Although Sigibert’s first use of forestis supports the association with royal ownership, it is just prologue. One important contextual point not raised in discussions that focus on legality is that when Sigibert’s scribes reached the legally binding portion of the charter—the actual donation of property—the word forestis was dropped. Sigibert gave the monks twelve milia of land from the neighboring saltus. Yet in the very next sentence, the donated portion of the saltus is referred to as ipsam forestem.¹²⁰ Throughout the charter, forestis and saltus are used quite literally interchangeably. Sönke Lorenz, who is the only scholar to have used both the entire charter and other Stavelot charters when analyzing forestis, argued that this inconsistency (along with the description of the Ardennes) is proof that the term forestis, at its inception, was equivalent with silva and designated a woodland.¹²¹

      The very few uses of the term forestis inhibit a meaningful survey of changing context or meaning. Nevertheless, some general trends are worth noting. It appears that the uses of the term forestis in Stavelot’s charters were all connected to contexts that included a focus on ownership or control of properties or with attempts to limit, bound, or label property or boundaries. Properties that included or were labeled as forestes continued to appear among the monasteries’ holdings after the initial foundational grants. In addition to the larger Ardennes, the monasteries’ holdings included parts of at least five other properties that were labeled as forestes. A forestis above the Amblève was part of a designation of the monasteries’ boundaries.¹²² Three forestes (Wulfsbusch, Fanias, and an unnamed forestis) appear as portions of a boundary clause from a royal charter.¹²³

      The overwhelming majority of uses of forestis from Stavelot and Malmedy’s documents come from royal charters, thus supporting the association with the royal court.¹²⁴ Yet royal rights to woodlands apparently existed without the label of forestis. This includes the common royal use of the phrase silva nostra, which claims direct royal control and ownership without using the term forestis, or legal concepts such as the “royal ban.” The properties granted to Cugnon included one unnamed silva dominica and the forest of Orgeo, described by Sigibert as silva nostra.¹²⁵

      The charters of Stavelot-Malmedy also support Rubner’s argument that forestis and saltus may have been equivalent. The 648 foundational charter uses the two words interchangeably. Thirty years later, another royal charter (HR 10) also used both terms. Saltus again appeared alongside forestis in a 1089 royal charter. This confirmation of earlier acts may reflect the ambiguity of the 648 charter, as it too records that the monasteries of Stavelot and Malmedy had been built “within our forestis in the saltus of the Ardennes.”¹²⁶ This close association of forestis to saltus helps to draw links more directly to the words’ geographical or topographical associations, and their connection (at least in early centuries) to silva, since Isidore of Seville clearly associated saltus with trees.¹²⁷

      Largely due to monastic ideas about the desert, but also because of the attempt to disassociate forestis from any strict geographical meaning, many authors point out that forestis could include not only woodlands, but also other “wastelands” such as swamps and moorlands. Roman sources set saltus as a direct opposite to ager, a juxtaposition that Fichtenau argues resembles the medieval incultum/cultum binary. This is an intriguing set of contrasts, particularly when set in the context of discussions of whether wilderness and waste are equivalent, and if monastic views of wilderness and civilization were similarly binary or were instead, as I argue, overlapping.

      Descriptions of the Pastoral Landscape

      Descriptions of the Ardennes as a place of desert hermitage show that the monks placed importance on the idea of isolation. They found solitude in the topography; trees and mountains defended, protected, and isolated the monks. However, solitude was not the only thing that the monks sought from their new desert wilderness. The monks of Stavelot-Malmedy controlled and managed woodland resources, and found many ways to measure, value, and assess them as sources of material wealth and social capital. They restored and maintained infrastructure, managed taxes and tithes, and controlled and redistributed labor and resources. Though these activities were seemingly at odds with their goals of spiritual isolation,