Manorial Organization in the Low Countries in the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Centuries

Abstract

The type of economic organization known as the manor existed in the north of Gaul, including the regions which were later to be known as the Low Countries,1 in the Merovingian period and even in Roman times, but it is not till the eighth century that evidence regarding it becomes relatively abundant. The little that can be said of its structure and diffusion before the Carolingian period can only be of an introductory character. We have no evidence as to the relative proportions of large, middle-sized, and small estates, but there can be no doubt from texts of the seventh and early eighth centuries that large, indeed very large, estates existed at this period.