(no subject)
I've had a better day with my research today. I spent the day immersed in identifying people in the subset of charters I'm working on based on their family relationships, and I came out with seven double-columned pages full of tiny family trees (most of them just a father and son) with related charter numbers. I started making them into a spreadsheet this evening, before I realized I'd be better served by an extension to my database, or rather, a new sub-version of it. Tomorrow's project will be databasifying today's family trees, and working on identifying people who aren't named in relation to family members in the charters. I figure that starting with family trees will give me a pretty good idea of which names are common to more than one person, which should help. I won't necessarily be able to identify someone named as "Gualterius" or "Guillelmus" or "Goffredus" or "Riuallonus" without other information, but I'm pretty sure that, for instance, there's only one "Baderon," whether he's named as "Baderon son of Caradoc" or not.
My plan for the day involves getting up at a reasonable hour, having breakfast (pain au lait, yaourt aux myrtilles - soit bluets au Canada - thé/café), working on my database as I digest, going running, showering, working on my database some more, going to the laverie to wash my towel, pyjamas, and socks, and then working some more, and maybe going to the library to work. Then, I've got stuff to make a mini-pot of my favorite vegetable soup with chick peas for supper, and then, probably more work. I told the writing group last week that I was going to get the data-crunching done this week, which, no. But I can take a good stab at it, at least!
Anyway, getting absorbed in the details of my charters is a nice change from worrying about the overall project, and really, absorbed in the details of my charters is where I want to be. I'm not especially interested (at the moment) in the grand structures of medieval Breton society and their transformation through new forms of lordship and Church reform, or even in the grand structures of how Saint-Florent organized itself in this part of Brittany. I'm interested in how it looked from the inside - in what people might have had in mind when interacting with the monks of Saint-Florent. I'm not sure it was strategic estate planning, like a lot of (cough, French) historians think. I think people's interactions with the monks were actually kind of just the things you did because the monks were there, and they were holy, and your lord gave them a chunk of land next door to you, and they kept coming around trying to get you to do the same. Likewise, from the perspective of the monks, I'm interested in what it was like to try to enact your monastery's master development plan (if it had one, which, maybe or maybe not) in a neighbourhood of actual people and actual personalities, who were also, in many cases, your friends and relatives. I'm willing to admit that there was some calculated strategy - and a lot of religion - involved on both sides, but I also think there were, like I said, personalities at work, and local meanings that weren't entirely about either politics or piety.
~
And on that note of thinking about history, it's the 945th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings today. The group of charters I'm working on is a little later - between 1066 and 1087 or so - but there were a lot of Bretons there fighting alongside the Normans. Probably some of them are in these charters. My guy William of Dol, heir of the lord of Dol and monk and abbot of Saint-Florent, didn't fight in the conquest, but he did fight alongside his father, duke William of Normandy, and Harold Godwineson when the Normans invaded Brittany in 1064. I can't help but wonder about the connection between that experience and his religious conversion shortly afterward. I'm thinking about that, and about the destruction of the English aristocracy at Senlac Ridge 945 years ago.
My plan for the day involves getting up at a reasonable hour, having breakfast (pain au lait, yaourt aux myrtilles - soit bluets au Canada - thé/café), working on my database as I digest, going running, showering, working on my database some more, going to the laverie to wash my towel, pyjamas, and socks, and then working some more, and maybe going to the library to work. Then, I've got stuff to make a mini-pot of my favorite vegetable soup with chick peas for supper, and then, probably more work. I told the writing group last week that I was going to get the data-crunching done this week, which, no. But I can take a good stab at it, at least!
Anyway, getting absorbed in the details of my charters is a nice change from worrying about the overall project, and really, absorbed in the details of my charters is where I want to be. I'm not especially interested (at the moment) in the grand structures of medieval Breton society and their transformation through new forms of lordship and Church reform, or even in the grand structures of how Saint-Florent organized itself in this part of Brittany. I'm interested in how it looked from the inside - in what people might have had in mind when interacting with the monks of Saint-Florent. I'm not sure it was strategic estate planning, like a lot of (cough, French) historians think. I think people's interactions with the monks were actually kind of just the things you did because the monks were there, and they were holy, and your lord gave them a chunk of land next door to you, and they kept coming around trying to get you to do the same. Likewise, from the perspective of the monks, I'm interested in what it was like to try to enact your monastery's master development plan (if it had one, which, maybe or maybe not) in a neighbourhood of actual people and actual personalities, who were also, in many cases, your friends and relatives. I'm willing to admit that there was some calculated strategy - and a lot of religion - involved on both sides, but I also think there were, like I said, personalities at work, and local meanings that weren't entirely about either politics or piety.
~
And on that note of thinking about history, it's the 945th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings today. The group of charters I'm working on is a little later - between 1066 and 1087 or so - but there were a lot of Bretons there fighting alongside the Normans. Probably some of them are in these charters. My guy William of Dol, heir of the lord of Dol and monk and abbot of Saint-Florent, didn't fight in the conquest, but he did fight alongside his father, duke William of Normandy, and Harold Godwineson when the Normans invaded Brittany in 1064. I can't help but wonder about the connection between that experience and his religious conversion shortly afterward. I'm thinking about that, and about the destruction of the English aristocracy at Senlac Ridge 945 years ago.