Agronomie antique et élaboration médiévale : de Palladius aux Préceptes cisterciens d'économie rurale

Abstract

Ancient Agronomy and Medieval Elaboration : From Palladius to the Préceptes cisterciens d'économie rurale - The paper presented here contributes to a fuller knowledge of the agronomic and economic culture of the Cistercian order in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It has been noted that Palladius' Opus agriculturae, an agronomic treatise written near the end of Antiquity, was present in the librairies of several Cistercian monasteries in the twelfth century. The White Monks also played an important role in the diffusion of the text in Italy during the thirteenth century. At Clairvaux, an anonymous author had completed a manuscript of the Opus agriculturae (Troyes, B. M. 1369) by recording four short Préceptes cisterciens d'économie rurale. This text (edited and translated in the annex) establishes the quantity of wool necessary for monastic habits, fixes the ration of oats for plough horses, gives advice on how to cultivate the gourd (cugurta), and enumerates the elementary rules for sheep raising. The Préceptes reveal judicous garden and breeding techniques well adapted to northern France. They also show concern for the efficient management of ressources. By way of hypothesis, we may ask whether the Préceptes — which constitute a sort of memoranda — were destined to help the masters of the grain storehouses, and, through them, the laymen. The interest for domestic economy thus took contrasting but complementary courses : a knowledge of ancient and partly antiquated agronomy, but nevertheless considered as indispensable, and an elaboration of empiric wisdom — of which we have found new evidence — arising from the accumulated experience of the Cistercian monasteries and storerooms.