Re-creation of a 14th-century peasant house in the village of Cotteughes (Cantal) according to archaeological excavations. Medieval mountain houses were often partly underground to protect their inhabitants from the cold. Art courtesy of Pascale Moulier.
Next, two small cowbells
This month's featured objects, two small cowbells, come to us from a farm located near Lavigerie, a village in the highlands of Auvergne, near the heart of what today is the Parc Naturel Régional des Volcans d'Auvergne. The estate belonged to a peasant named Johannes La Vernha, who died early in the year 1401, leaving his widow, Yzabelle, and their young son, Guillelmus. On March 3rd of that year, a group of kinsmen and friends of the deceased, led by Guillelmus Gitberti and including Geraldus Vigier, Johannes Sauri, Johannes Charbonel, Petrus Malrieu, Petrus de la Bodia, Gitbertum Chapela, and Petrus del Vayssayro, came before the seigneurial court in nearby Dienne to request that a guardian be assigned to the boy. The judge assented to the request and assigned the guardianship to Guillelmus Gitberti, who then proceeded to compile the inventory of Johannes's estate. It can be assumed that Johannes's death caused some cash flow problems for his heirs, for the record indicates that two cows had been sold to pay for the funeral expenses.
Among the witnesses to the act, it is interesting to note the presence of Pierre and Jacques du Trieu, Guillaume Brunenchon, Hugon Brunenchon and Guillaume Dels Angles. These men were merchants from Murat, a small town near the seigneury of Dienne, and may have contributed some of their expertise in trade and merchandise to the proceedings.
A cowherd with his charges. From Marco Polo, Livre des merveilles, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Français 2810 (15th century), fol. 30v. Public domain.
This record provides remarkable insights into the contents of a farm located in the mountains of Auvergne. Johannes la Vernha was a farmer or pastoralist who owned a medium-sized farm located in the hamlet (mansum) of Lespinasse, now part of the commune of Lavigerie in the department of Cantal. This farm consisted of two houses (sing. hospitium), one of which had a cellar (selerium), an undeveloped or ruined area (casal), four meadows, a buge (plot of temporary crops), two fields, and two gardens. Finally, Johannes had rights in another farm (affarium), possibly that of the underage heirs of a relative named Jean. The livestock consisted of seventeen sheep and eighteen cattle, including four young red and fawn cows (bimes), five cows and their calves, two two-year-old cows, and two shared cows (baux à cheptel) that were held in common with neighbors. There were reserves of hay, two setiers of rye seed, two setiers of rye and one setier of March wheat (marcendi).
Johannes’s agricultural tools consisted of an iron lock (verrolh ferri), two small cowbells (sonalhas), a plowshare (relho), a strap used to attach a yoke (iulha), a pickaxe with a wide curved blade or hoe (ligone), and another hoe or pickaxe (unum fessorium sive ligonem) used for working the soil. For cutting and shaping wood, he could use a hatchet (securim) and an small axe (ayssola).
Cowbells from the medieval era are extremely rare; few could have survived the passage of time. This iron cowbell, dated to the 14th century, is from the region of Picardy, and is similar in size and shape to the Auvergnat cowbells. Approximate dimensions: 4.21 inches (height), 1.5 inches (depth), and 2.44 inches (width). Image courtesy of the Musée d'Art et d’Archéologie, Senlis.
The mention of cowbells is particularly valuable. Although these objects are well documented for Languedoc and Provence, they are less well known to medievalists who work with records from the Massif Central. In the twentieth century, bells were hung around cows' necks during the ascent to the summer pastures, creating a cacophony of festive and varied sounds that dispersed throughout the mountains. We know that from the seventeenth century onward there were dynasties of Auvergnat craftsmen who specialized in the production of these bells. A hook-shaped rod, which could be interpreted as a cowbell clapper, was found in a twelfth-century dwelling in Croix-de-Neyrat (near Clermont-Ferrand).✱ In Cantal, in 1573, the Lord of Anjony owned a herd of around forty bovines with seventeen cowbells, a ratio which raises the question of how many cattle in the herd were typically furnished with bells.✱ The bells were inexpensive to manufacture, but it is likely that only certain animals were equipped with them, as the unique sounds of the bells made it easy to identify livestock on pastures shared by several owners.
Given this inventory, we can therefore hypothesize that Johannes La Vernha’s farm focused on the breeding and raising of livestock. This is hardly surprising: Dienne is a mountain seigneury, characterized by the proximity of lucrative pastures belonging to the lord, private individuals, or community groups or neighborhood associations. Johannes's herd is far from insignificant: although small peasant farmers typically owned only a few head of cattle, here the herd numbered around twenty.
A cow depicted on a Roman modillion in the church of Saint-Cernin (Cantal), Art courtesy of Pascale Moulier.
The house where Johannes lived with his wife, Yzabelle, and their son, Guillelmus, was furnished with a few essential items: a trough for kneading bread (mastra), a wooden container or tub in the shape of a trough (maytz), a small cauldron or pot (calcabum), and a fire stand (tripodem). The household linens included two bags (sacos), something that could have been a leather skin (charcusel ?), two bed covers (lodices), one of which was new, four bedsheets (linteamina), twelve aulnes of canvas, and seven yards of coarse fabric. The absence of any reference to beds or chests is surprising, which suggests that the inventory is incomplete or partial. We can imagine that these items may have belonged to Yzabelle as part of her paraphernal or dotal property and were not listed in the inventory for that reason. Two items do indicate a minimum level of financial and social comfort: the lock used to protect his possessions and the presence of linen rather than hemp cloth.