MODELS

‘Dodo was the domesticus (leading administrator) of Prince Pippin, and he had many estates (possessiones) and many armed men (pueri) in his following.’ This is how the mid-eighth-century author of the ‘Life of St Landibert’ chose to emphasize the power of a dangerous enemy. No less than modern commentators he understood that Dodo's power lay in a combination of office and property, which together provided the resources to support the armed force necessary to protect his interests. Chris Wickham uses a similar formulation to characterize the basis of power in the Carolingian period. Unlike moderns, however, medieval writers were rather more concerned with the effects than with the origins of power. They thought of power in terms of morality and social convention, that is, according to how it was used. Their view of property likewise concentrated upon use, and consequently the question of ownership was generally of less interest to medieval people than the issue of possession and use of property. Here David Ganz's chapter is essential as a guide to the ways in which some medieval people thought about the acquisition and use of property: principally, how they justified it in moral terms. The notion that who possessed and used property was as important as who owned it is one which is partially retained in modern generic definitions of the term ‘property’, for they include both possession and ownership. We have maintained this open-ended definition throughout our discussions in order to deal with the variety and complexity of the medieval use of property.