Weeds and the Carolingians
Empire, Culture, and Nature in Frankish Europe, AD 750–900

Presents a dynamic picture of early medieval Europeans struggling to control their ecosystems, and creating relationships with their vegetable environments.

Paolo Squatriti (Author)

9781316512869, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 June 2022

280 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.9 cm, 0.49 kg

'This is a brilliantly conceived book, which reveals the deep and tangled relationships between political thought and the natural world. The ways in which people think about 'good' plants and 'invasive' or 'bad' ones relates directly to their ideas about order, governance, and productivity; while these issues are of fundamental importance to society now, Squatriti shows just how much thinking around them changed in the Carolingian world. In between late Latin and vernacular, and between local practice and normative ideals, Squatriti reveals how words for weeds, explanations for their existence, tools for their removal (both physical and metaphorical) were tied to emerging forms of knowledge and authority. Squatriti's scholarly eye is omnivorous, and he draws comparisons, and seeks explanations in unpredicted yet outstandingly insightful places. This book draws with equal expertise upon archaeobotany, intellectual history, and religious reform literature to trace the ways in which ideas about everyday life, food, crops, and land management shifted in a new political world.' Caroline Goodson, University of Cambridge

Why did weeds matter in the Carolingian empire? What was their special significance for writers in eighth- and ninth-century Europe and how was this connected with the growth of real weeds? In early medieval Europe, unwanted plants that persistently appeared among crops created extra work, reduced productivity, and challenged theologians who believed God had made all vegetation good. For the first time, in this book weeds emerge as protagonists in early medieval European history, driving human farming strategies and coloring people's imagination. Early medieval Europeans' effort to create agroecosystems that satisfied their needs and cosmologies that confirmed Christian accounts of vegetable creation both had to come to terms with unruly plants. Using diverse kinds of texts, fresh archaeobotanical data, and even mosaics, this interdisciplinary study reveals how early medieval Europeans interacted with their environments.

1. Weeds, nature, and empire
2. Weeds on the ground
3. The time of weeds
4. The worst of weeds
5. The botany of paradise in Carolingian Rome
6. The uses of weeds
7. The politics of weeding in the Carolingian Empire
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Agriculture & farming [TV], The environment [RN], Medieval history [HBLC1], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]