Most famous of these is Sigibert’s 648 charter, which famously notes that Stavelot-Malmedy was established in foreste nostra nuncupante Arduinna, or “in our forest that is called the Ardennes.” The charter also describes the Ardennes as a deserted place “in which a host of wild animals sprouts forth,” which has been connected to the royal interest in hunting.90 But wild animals were not only of royal interest—they were just as much a part of the monastic imagining of the forest. This reminder of multiple authorship of charter evidence further warns against an attempt to view charter vocabulary only as applied, state-sponsored language. Language not only could shift over time and in different contexts, but could also be used and appropriated by different groups, sometimes in spite of the intentions of the original author or speaker.
The most problematic of medieval forest and woodland terms is forestis.91 The importance that has been placed on attempting to define forestis is based in part on the fact that the term appears to have been created during the early Middle Ages. Because it occurs generally (but not exclusively) in legal sources, it is often interpreted as a medieval legal invention. The earliest provable use of the term is from Sigibert’s 648 charter. Sönke Lorenz recently argued for a rehabilitation of two earlier charters (once suspected to be forgeries) that could contain earlier uses of the word forestis.92 The related word forestarius also made its first recorded appearance in a charter issued to Stavelot. In 670, Childeric II gave a part of the royal forestis to the monks, and the forestarii were forbidden to violate monastic rights within that zone.93
Forestis circulated quickly through the Merovingian chanceries, and during the first centuries of its use, the word appears mainly, though not exclusively, in royal charters and diplomas. As Lorenz points out, at least one Merovingian vita contains the word forestis.94 Yet in some ways this is still a “charter” usage, since the vita records a donation to the monastery by Dagobert’s widow. The author likely had access to a royal charter, the language of which he adopted in his own work (just as the Carolingian author of the vita prima transferred the word forestis from Sigibert’s charter into his work). Such transmissions of language and vocabulary between source genres highlights the fact that even though specific words might have had a clear meaning to one group or in a certain context, their use and appropriation by others during the Middle Ages could blur legal or technical meanings.
General consensus among modern scholars is that forestis “is not a natural fact” and is instead a term of ownership (particularly royal) connected to hunting and game rights.95 F. Vera adds that “there is some agreement that the concept of ‘forestis’ applies to the wilderness in general and to trees, forest, shrubs, wild animals, water and fish in particular,” and that all of this belonged to the king.96 Heinrich Fichtenau concluded that this was “an institution, stretched not only over woodlands, but also over wasteland and rivers, whose hunting zones and fisheries were opened up only to the lord for pasturage, etc.”97 This emphasis on hunting rights has also led to an attempt to disassociate the forestis from the trees; Richard Hayman even wrote that the term “defined a place of deer rather than a place of trees.”98 Chris Wickham offered a definition of forestis that best expresses this consensus: “‘forest’ is not a woodland, or not necessarily.” “The history of the term,” he wrote, linking forest with royal rather than monastic identity, “is, in fact, nothing other than the history of the development of exclusive hunting reserves for kings and, later, nobles.”99
This 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