prevailing assumption that although a forestis might have had trees they were in no way a defining feature has been challenged, however, often on the basis of the Stavelot evidence. In the 1950s, Rudolf Schützeichel argued that the foundation charter of Stavelot-Malmedy, with its emphasis on the natural characteristics of the Ardennes, proves that during its earliest phases, forestis was a synonym for silva.100 Lorenz drew on the Stavelot evidence to argue that in its earliest Merovingian and Carolingian uses, forestis developed to describe wooded properties. There was a “territorial character to forestis as an area clearly defined and in all cases covered with woods and waters.”101 Most recently, Keyser claims that in France after the ninth century, forestis “gradually became almost synonymous with silva, designating wooded land, albeit a treed space under lordly control.”102 Despite such compelling arguments for the inclusion of woodland features into at least the earliest phases of the history of the word, forestis is still traditionally defined not as a geographic term, but as a word denoting ownership and privilege.
Forestis has been chiefly defined as “an area under the king’s law”103 and as tied to concepts of “legal delimitation, the prohibition, the reserved usage.”104 This has a deep history: in his 1909 study of Merovingian and Carolingian charters, Hans Thimme concluded that forestis was a purely legal definition that had little, if anything, to do with woods, woodland activities, or even hunting.105 In a 1964 article, Heinrich Rubner concluded that Roman law saw the saltus as an unclaimed or unowned property (a waste land or a “res nullius”), but that forestis reflected a sense of exclusive control over hunting rights.106 In 1989, Wickham wrote that on the Continent in the 600s through 800s, forestis was always associated with royal possession and legal restriction.107 In such definitions, the creation of forestes becomes an official, regularized, and imposed state process.
Although we must be wary of applying later meanings of forestis to the earlier uses of the term, it appears that the Carolingian kings made a distinct effort to use the term in a regularized manner. The Merovingian forestis may not have been exclusively tied to royal power, but by the end of the ninth century the Carolingian kings had largely succeeded in transforming the word into a technical and legal word. As Schützeichel explained, “the legal sense of forestis was already well-developed, and the term was being broadly used as a terminus technicus in charters.”108
This evolution of usage can be compared with the history of another well-known medieval term, mansus. Recent work has suggested that mansus and forestis might both have been part of attempts by the Carolingian government to regularize a formerly varied or mutable term, and to apply it uniformly to a diverse set of geographic and agricultural zones. Christopher Sonnlechner argued that mansus could be used in many contexts to present a “homogenized” view of land-holding.109 This process bears striking similarities to those explored by James C. Scott, who points out that modern states “took exceptionally complex, illegible, and local social practices, such as land tenure customs or naming customs, and created a standard grid whereby it could be centrally recorded and monitored.”110
Carolingian uses of both mansus and forestis seem to show an administrative attempt to control and regularize record-keeping and legal terminology. Yet although the role of official, bureaucratizing forces during the early Middle Ages is clear, giving too much prominence to the Carolingian “State” also runs the risk of exaggerating the centralizing ability of early medieval monarchs, and deemphasizing the roles of other participants. Matthew Innes described this in a way that invokes Carolingian uses of the forest: “When scholars have gone hunting Carolingian government, they have had a clear idea of the kind of beast they were tracking: a hazy silhouette, glimpsed from afar, but recognizably of the same species as the modern state.… Tracking a beast resembling the modern state, they have returned empty handed, unable even to point to a strong scent or a footprint.”111
This is particularly important in the context of Stavelot’s early Merovingian charters (which are those containing the term forestis), whose most recent editor has argued were perhaps not even the product of the Merovingian chancery to whom they were attributed, but instead either produced by Grimoald or a monastic writer.112 Though I would not go as far as Innes in dismissing comparisons between early medieval and modern governments, it is important to remember that the medieval state was never the sole controller of written records. Other actors also influenced words and meaning, through direct intervention, later interpolation, or even outright forgery.113 This led to a cacophony of competing written voices and to complex and widely scattered networks of chanceries and scriptoria. The vagaries (and deliberate manipulations) of charter preservation are also important to pay attention to, especially since the survival of early medieval charters that include the term is scattered and random. Furthermore, the earliest uses of the term forestis survive only in copies. Forestarii appears in an original charter from 707, but the earliest surviving original charter to use the term forestis is from 717.114 Therefore all attempts to define what the term meant during the first several centuries of its use must acknowledge the holes in the manuscript record, later substitution by Carolingian copyists, and even forgery.
A literal example of this is a ninth-century charter issued by Zwentibold, who created a forestis from woodlands previously belonging to the abbey of St. Maximin in Trier. The manuscript, which has been the object of much linguistic debate, has a lacuna where a word was never filled in: “ut quandam silvam in pago Treverensi in bannum mitteremus et ex ea, sicut Franci dicunt, ________ faceremus.”115 If this spot should contain the term forestis, it allows for the intriguing possibility that the word may not have been a legal term per se but instead an “ethnic” term like “gualdus/waldus” that resulted from the blending of Latin and Germanic tongues.116 Another manuscript from the 800s also points in this direction. Louis the Pious issued a charter to a royal forester named Ado, who served in the Vosges. This charter was copied into a handbook in the classical shorthand of Tironian notes, but there were a few words for which the scribe had no notational abbreviations, including forestarius and forestem, which he wrote out in full.117
Many historians invoke the first appearance of forestis in Stavelot-Malmedy’s foundation charter and make bold claims from this about the nature of the word. Yet almost none have discussed the other forest words that are found in that same charter, or set the 648 charter in the context of other charters issued by Sigibert to Remacle. It is also important that although modern scholars are fascinated with the term, forestis was used very rarely in Stavelot-Malmedy’s sources. Of the sixty-eight reported forests or woodlands (excluding the Ardennes) from Stavelot-Malmedy’s pre-1158 charters, only seven are labeled as forestes. Except for in the vita prima, which used the foundation charter as a template, the monks of Stavelot themselves never used the word forestis, and it disappears from Stavelot-Malmedy’s charters after around 950.118 One place name includes the word nemus, and five charters contain no name for the property but describe woodland uses or produce. The remaining instances all use variations on the term silva, many of which provide contextual details that make distinctions about woodland use and properties. This parallels results from the Belgian CETEDOC project. In their set of 183 sources written before the year 1000, the word silva appears fifty-seven separate times (with another ten occurrences of the related silvestris) and saltus twenty-seven times, whereas forestis is found only eight times and foresta only once.119 Given its relative scarcity, it is possible that too much attention has been given to forestis at the expense of a more complete discussion of other woodland terms.
Furthermore, the 648 charter itself is not consistent when using forest words. Although Sigibert’s first use of forestis supports the association with royal ownership, it is just prologue. One important contextual point not raised in discussions that focus on legality is that when Sigibert’s scribes reached
