for the notion of a Mediterranean reduced to prehistoric levels of co tion, we will be forced to recognize change on both the vast, internati as major new routes open up, and the intimate, local level. Power shift j» rity concerns allied with economic forces to push the flow of people an*'' into new routes, rather than choking it off as many have thought For i was more powerful than the barriers thrown up against it. Like sorneL-river, when it ran into immovable objects, it pushed its way into new chaff" But before we count, analyze, and compare, we need to explore the experf To do otherwise would be to lose sight of our travelers' humanity and thed mas they faced, as individually and in small groups they rebuilt communi*. networks out of the Roman rubble. The enlightening anecdote leavens thei standing, so long as it does not substitute for it. Every trip involved some] travel, so we need to evoke the main features of overland communications 1 was the sea that contemporaries regarded as most distinctive of Mediter travel. It has also proved most controversial over the last half-century of rj and it is there we will concentrate. We begin with a picture of land and seat Then we can probe the aggregate picture of early medieval travels in; Mediterranean in their temporal and spatial dimensions. The result will 1 raise once again the vexed question of Carolingian commerce. But we will< on the broad, firm, new ground of the world of communications and com^ which this commerce was a part. And now on to our voyagers' expeJ travel, and the temporal and spatial patterns revealed by their movemf their hundreds.
13
The experience of travel
luN" was not the first word that came to early medieval minds when they thought of travel. Labor, toil, and fatigue are better candidates.1 In fact, onPnightseek a formal blessing from the church, just as in time of war or pesti-j^Jz BUt this general perception, rooted at once in cultural attitudes anjd real ^Krience, docs not exhaust what it was like to travel across the Christian world lithe eighth and ninth centuries.
H)ur travelers' life-stories combine with other veins of testimony to evoke the header experience of travel.3 A look at land movements will remind us that the period saw new opportunities as well as old constraints, particularly in the routes Hading east and south from the western European heartland. But the sea commands the lion's share of our attention. What were the ships like, how accurately aHthey described, how were they powered? How big were they, how many men did it take to man them, did they travel alone or in groups? Describing what it was Hketosail in these smallish vessels discovers changes since antiquity in the style •avigation. They in turn will lead us to the issue of coastal sailing, which is •ually opposed to deep-sea navigation in blue water. Once we have a feel for *M it was really like, we can turn more alert eyes to the deeper, and hitherto
hidd
en patterns of early medieval communications unlocked by the movements
■undreds of travelers and objects.
IA few examples from many: Isidore of
Wllh< D*>ntns, 1,401. p. 266; cf.
C""",b,d- P - 400; John VIII, Rig. j8, JE K'' l6^-3.orRefl.55jE30g8a, Be o * ?'Frnm the Gr«k- speaking world,
TWf "42'4°8Bor54,4I6A.
trouble »«i u'«:KiKuiiein, com-:'-   0ther'" etc-> 'S used to mean
ai(BHG4y4).8,2l8.8.Forlater
Byzantines' negative ideas of travel, see Galatariotou 1993.
E.g. Libersacramentorum Gellonensis, CCL, 159.299-300, nos. 2098-9, "When one goes out on a trip" and "When one boards a ship"; cf. from the Byzantine world, the "Prayer for someone leaving on a voyage," Eucholotjion, p. 684.
For early medieval transport and travel in genera], see Leighton 1972 and Janssen 1989.
i. Land
The sea dominated early medieval thoughts about travel to Constantinople tbJ Holy Land or north Africa (Chapter 17). But for many travelers, especially thos who lived away from the coast, a land leg was inevitable. Sometimes the weathel so dictated for all travelers. This was probably what happened to p0pe Constantine, on his way home from Constantinople in 711. The season was! already advanced when his ship put into Gaeta, and he decided to cover the last! stretch by road, reaching Rome in late October. Weather probably also figured inl the land legs ofTheodore Studite's itinerary into exile in the late winter of 797."* aI similar reason probably pushed Liudprand of Cremona to begin his late autumn! journey to Italy overland; he probably stuck to terra firma again, once his ship! finally landed at Otranto (R828). In certain cases, the route itself dictated land! travel. There was, obviously, no option for northern Carolingian envoys or for a| Beneventan envoy to Constantinople (R167). Sometimes the choice seems to] have been as much pyschological as anything else. After a violent storm beached | his ship between Reggio and Naples and almost drowned his companion, St. Gregory the Dekapolite simply may have felt safer continuing on foot (R422). Other times, there is no clear logistical reason why one route was preferred. Even though they had been stowed aboard a ship bound for Constantinople, the monk! Anastasius decided to abandon his possessions and accompany an imperial official on the dangerous overland route from Thessalonica, because his spiritual advisor so intimated. But why was the imperial official traveling overland, when the monk was sailing to the same destination? Later in the same trip the motivation for another change is clearer. By taking ship atMaroneia for Constantinople, this group could avoid enemies along the last stretch of the road (Map 7.3). Later Gregory himself twice traveled the same route by sea.5 We could multiply the examples, but the point should be clear. Even along routes which we think of as maritime ones, Mediterranean communications could mix land legs with sea stretches. In other words, we need to casta glance atland travel.6
4 R79. Theodore was transported overland through Asia Minor from the vicinity of Proussa (mod. Bursa, Turkey) perhaps as far as Lampsakos (Lapseki), before boardinga ship; with numerous stops he sailed as far as the westernmost point of theChalkidike peninsula, where they again disembarked and traveled the last 80 km overland to Thessalonica: R234; Mapy.g.
5 V. Greg. Decap., 18-19, 62.16-63.14. Last
stretch: 19,63.7-8; 20, 63.15; Gregory's trips: 28-9,71.16-20. See the excellent starting point furnished by the royal travels, as analyzed by Brühl 19681: 61-7; cf. for the 10th C, the important analysis of Müller-Mertens 1980. For a vivid picture, see Riehe 1978,14-23; cf. Adam 1996,74-100, and for the 10th C, Fichtenau 1975-86,3:1-79. On the economics of transport in the Middle Ages in general, Cipolla 1944.
f j iI]C| travel means animals and wagons, and we have already seen the broader 2es that, at antiquity's close, affected the relative importance of each ■Tenter 3). Land travel, and wagons in particular, also mean roads, and their
If t history is only in its infancy.7 It is widely assumed and probably even true that £X v Roman roads remained in use. But this oversimplifies, for routes are not ^aI1 utable ribbons of road. Careful scrutiny has already uncovered a few impor-11111 changes, for instance in the famous Via Flaminia, the ancient Roman road tTt ran across the Apennines and tied Rome to the exarchate of Ravenna.8 The routes that ran across the Alps are another case in point: Roman and medieval travelers left enough traces along the way to suggest shifting patterns of use. Some 0f today's best-known passes, like the St. Gotthard, opened only long after the Cai-olingians, while others such as the Splügen, which was well-attested under the Romans, show little life in the early Middle Ages.9 The Alpine Walensee, a major route linking the Rhine via Zürich to the pass complexes centering on ChuAfea-tured more activity around 850 than it would a century later (Map 13.1). This was the key route from the Carolingian west toward Chur.10 Ten royal vessels (naves) were permanently available there to ferry travelers the 15 km to the other end of^he lake (perhaps a six-hour trip). This speaks to the volume of movement, as does the fact that the Frankish treasury expected the ferries to make £8 a year.11 From Chur southward, settlement patterns, stray finds and Carolingian documents trace
fteveral routes running into Italy, particularly via the Julier-Maloja passes.12 Archaeologically, it is possible to uncover in towns early medieval resurfacing of ancient roads. At least this is what Luni suggests, where the multiple surfaces of
[ the early medieval street running through the Forum were clearly visible to visitors in the winter of 1988-89. At other times, medieval roads broke new ground.13
7 On medieval roads, Denecke 1979 is fundamental for methods and bibliography. More generally, see Bautier 1987, and his late medieval case studies: 1961 and esp. 1963-
8 Bullough 1966b. Thomas Szabo's forthcoming study will clarify the history of the Via Francigena.
y Exemplary discussion in Schneider-Schnekenburger ig8o, 113, and, in general in-21; cf. also Overbeck 1982-1973,1: 229-39;Wyssi98g. 10 Clavadetscher 1955, ig-2on83, deduced from the Imperial PolyptycFt that traffic was about twice as frequent as occurred a century later. Archaeology confirms the general picture of greater Frankish activity:
Schneider-Schnekenburger 1980,111-12; cf. 108-9.
11 Imperial Polyptych ("Reichsurbar"), 383.3-5; for the speed of Mediterranean ship movements, see Ch. 16.4-6. The lake vessels presumably used sweeps against the wind, and so would have done at least as well as seagoing vessels relying on sail. If archaeologists were to recover such an Alpine vessel, it would allow an evaluation of volume.
12 Schneider-Schnekenburger 1980, Tafel 68-74.
13 Thus a paved "medieval" road replaced a nearby late Roman road; it was suitable for pack animals and ran through the Julian Alps towards Bukovje: Ulbert et al. 1981,25-7.
394
395
LAN D
A few
new routes developed or saw their supporting infrastructures grow. War
and
ielig'on encouraged routes that ran toward the northeastern fringe of kish power and south across the Alps. Frequent military movements toward Jri" ony obliged Charlemagne to build a new road to the war zone.14 Another new aCj linked the palaces at Aachen and Frankfurt.15 The extent to which tgr0lingian-era roads were wooden, as in nearby Denmark, beaten earth, or in some way paved is unclear but is now coming under sustained scrutiny.16 Another eastward road which shows signs of greater activity started further south and ran past Erfurt, into Slavic territory.17 When the Frankish juggernaut swallowed Bavaria in 787, the eastward expansion which had already begun there scarcely skipped a beat. This earliest Drang nach Osten brought with it a changing pattern of Frankish overland communications toward the Danube, and we shall return to it later (Ch. 19.1). Along the edges of the marcher lands, Frankish routes met prehistoric tracks that also continued to function or came back to life, as the Byzantine and Arab coin finds have shown for the ancient Amber Trail (Ch.12.7).
j But the biggest changes pointed south. The first thing to remember about Frankish travel between the Mediterranean and the north is the combined effects of the Carolingian religious affinity for St. Peter and the subjugation of Italy. By early medieval standards, an astonishing volume of travelers crossed the Alps. From 754 to the 8gos, military movements alone entailed tens of thousands of men and beasts.18 With or without armies, Carolingian kings and their entourages rode south to Italy over thirty times.19 Even leaving aside diplomacy, imperial business sent many other men south, some to stay permanently, but many
14 Brühl 1968, i: 63-4; for an interesting effort to use early maps and geology to reconstruct Charlemagne's movements across the moors, Wöhlke 1954. P5 Janssen 1989, 224.
16 For the remarkably well-preserved plank roads of northern Germany, dating from prehistory into the Middle Ages, see Hayen 1989.
IV Gockel 1984,105-6. 18 For example, over half a dozen military expeditions entered Italy in the second half <'f the 8th C. alone: see the partial list of r°yal trips south in Oehlmann 1879, 305-6. 1 here is no consensus on the size of Carolingian armies. Brühl 1968,1: 526-33 estimates the somewhat later German armies in Italyat c. 12,000-25,000, includ-mg camp followers. Ifwe presume
Carolingian armies to have been of similar size, this would imply more than 72,000 to 150,000 warriors traveling to Italy in the second halfof the 8th C. alone. Werner 1984,377, on the other hand, believes that the armies were very much larger, which would multiply this number accordingly. 19 Oehlmann 1879,304-8 tabulates some twenty-five trips. To these must be added those he excluded: Pippin king of Italy's four trips back from Francia between 790 and 806 (Brühl 1968,1:40^47), the 5 trips of his son Bernard (ibid., with BM 515b), Lothar's 7 trips south before 840 (BM 868a, 881a, 895a, 904aand 1033, 1045c, and 995a) and that of 847 (Zielinski 1990); those of Lothar II, etc. On royal retinues: Brühl 1968,1:428-9.
397
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAVEL
LAND
others on round trips and sometimes on multiple missions. 20The only attempt to| count the fraction of the northern pilgrims whose eighth-century passage is dod umented approaches one hundred, but there can be no doubt that there were ve many more.21 To these must be added half a dozen trips north of the Alps under taken by popes from 754 to 878, as well as papal envoys' numerous missions to! the northern courts, not to mention the travels of Frankish clergy on church bust! ness in Rome.22 In short, the Carolingian period saw a tremendous increase in| the volume of transalpine travel to and from Italy. Change on this scale must have I driven changes in the infrastructure that facilitated that travel.
The most favored transalpine routes shared a number of characteristics. Onl the Italian slope, royal installations known as dusae barred their narrowvalleys toI check on travelers and collect tolls.23 Growing pilgrimage to Rome spun a network of hostels along the routes south, including in the Alpine passes them-1 selves; it also elicited hospitality measures at the great abbeys and cathedrals! along the way. Churches helped, or were supposed to help, in the logistics of the I crossing by providing food and shelter, guides or guidance, and even currency] exchange.24 A Carolingian legal collection from Italy reiterated an old Gallic I canon against bishops who kept hounds. Not only was barking no substitute for chant, those who sought hospitality at the episcopal palace all too often came | away with nothing but vicious dog bites.25
The royal hand is unmistakable in forging the critical link in the chain of stations leading across the Alps to Italy and Rome. Pope Hadrian sought Charlemagne's help in defending the hostels situated along the mountain passes leading to Rome.26 Louis the Pious built a hostel in the desolate Mont Cenis pass and endowed it with properties in order to "to sustain the daily affluence of the poor people of Christ."27 A surviving piece of the emperor's polyptych lifts the
20 Hlawitschka's prosopography documents some 178 northerners in the Frankish colonization of Italy. It includes only the highest level of lay officials (down to vice-counts) north of the Apennines, excluding e.g., royal fiddes, vassals and retinues: i960,98-9.
21 Zettinger 1900,109-10.
22 Popes: Stephen II, Leo III (twice), Stephen IV, Gregory IV, and John VIII. For papal legates, see the extensive but uncritical account of Rjesenberger 1967; cf. Schieffer
23 Duparc 1951; on the sporadic Lombard and Frankish attempts to control travelers: Tangl 1958 and Schneider 1987,41,
24 Lupus ofFerrieres, Ep. 66-7 (76), 72.11-22.
See in general Lesne 1910-43, 6:96-151 and the reconstruction of the facilities indicated on the Plan of St. Gall: Horn and Born 1979, 2:23-77 and 139-67. On the Frankish response to the increasing pilgrim traffic: Schmugge 1984,4-8,12-14 and 40-4; Schneider 1987,38-9.
25 MGH Captt. no. 113, 6,1.231.16-21, from Concilium Matisconense, a. 585, c. 13, CCL, 148A.245.242-51. On the MS (Sankt Paul im Lavanttal4/i, c. 816/25, northern Italy), Mordek 1995, 685-95.
26 Cod. Car. 87, IE 2471, 623.22-31.
27 DLoth I, no. 4,14 February 825: p. 6l-43: "... sufficeret diurnus pauperum Christi concursus tolerari."
1 on the system of inns (tabernae) which studded the route through Chur into La[y and shows that there was more than piety and strategic self-interest behind
ti'
the inns returned a tidy profit to the imperial treasury.28 Reliable monaster-ved land grants in critical corridors. Nine months after the conquest of "for example, the Parisian monastery of St. Denis got the entire Valtellina.
ies recei
t jg put control over a critical entrance to Italy - the subalpine valley ends at Lake 10 and dominates the southern exits of the Chur passes toward Milan and pa via - in the hands of an abbot who was always one of the king's closest collaborators.25 An imperial estate at the Bavarian entrance to the Brenner pass was equipPed with eleven households which owed horseback messenger services "anywhere they are commanded."30
I in Italy, the Lombards had enforced or developed late Roman provisions for maintaining critical bridges, for instance across the Po at Pavia. The Franks followed suit.31 Although royal intervention may have been sporadic, kingly ambition to improve the infrastructure at certain choke points is unmistakable. The great wooden bridge Charlemagne built across the Rhine river at Mainz was a ten-year project and manifestly aimed at facilitating communications in one of the more densely populated crossroads of his empire. It also happened to be a node in the king's travels. When fire destroyed it, Charles planned to replace it with a stone structure.32 Even more grandiose - if failed - the Fossa Carolina project, a canal connecting the Danube and Rhine rivers, underscores Charles' vision of the eastward extension of his empire (Figures 13.1 and 13.2L33 Charles the Bald's great stone bridge undertaken at Pitres and recently identified by an archaeomagnetic study is yet another example, although in this case a defensive intent is clear.34 Magnificent failures though they were, such projects let us sense the scope of royal concern to improve the infrastructures of empire.
29
Imperial Polyptych, 394.12-20; cf. Clavadetscher 1955.
DDKar 1, no. 94. Quierzy, 14March775; for other examples and discussion: Stormer ig68 and Stormer 1987.
30 Staffelsee:MGHCapit. 1.252.16-20, no. 128,8;cf. Stormer 1987, 392.
31 Szab6i984.
32 Mainz bridge: Einhard, Vita Karoli, 17, 20.16-21 and 32,36.10-15; for the Rhine-Main confluence and economic c°mmunications, below, pp. 664-7. Hofmann 1965 reveals the scale of the enterprise. He estimated (444-7) at around 6,000 men the labor force required for the Part that was finished, and suggests that
ar captives must have been pressed into
33
service. They would have consumed (ibid., 450) about 5 tons of flour and 107 hi of beer per day. For excellent illustrations and more recent literature, Keller 1993. Pecher 1993,12-16, simply dismisses Hofmann's estimates. He equally dismisses (10-11; 17-19) the more detailed account of the failed undertaking in the revision of the Royal Annals (Ann. Ein., a. 793; p. 93; cf. Ann. regni Franc, s.a., p. 92) written at Louis the Pious' court, which conforms precisely to the revisor's general tendency to emphasize the father's failings. Having discarded the most important Carolingian evidence, Pecher is inclined to attribute the site to the Romans.
34 Lot 1905; Dearden and Clark 1990.
398
399
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAVEL
LAN D
Figure 13.1. "Fossa Carolina": "The Caroiingian Canal." In 793, Charlemagne tried to link the] Danube and the Rhine river systems by digging a canal. The part that he finished required the] labor of some 6,000 men. The canal was meant to allow boats to travel between two tributary! rivers, the Rezat which flows into the Main and hence into the Rhine, and the Altmühl, which] empties into the Danube. Although the local soil characteristics condemned the attempt to failure,] it gives the measure of the ambitions that the Frankish ruler brought to his empire's infrastructure, ] Courtesy of Walter E. Keller and the Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege.
With or without canals and major bridges, the rivers of northern Europe j offered comfortable travel for people and cheaper transport for bulk goods. Charlemagne and his family sailed down the Rhine, Frisian merchants were towed up it, and countless lesser streams bore boats. Such traffic stimulated the growth of small riverbank settlements, the portus.35 Freezing winters turned waterways into roads for later medieval travelers' sleds; early medieval travelers probably did no differently {Ch. 15.i). As a charter of Lothar I observes, goods moved by carts, pack-animals, mens' backs, and boats.36
35 For Frisian and other vessels on the Rhine, see below, Ch. 22.4. The streams could be very small indeed; this probably explains how Ebo evaded the Frankish troopers sent to arrest him atRheims, by boating along streams well known to his Viking associates
and boatsmen: Flodoard, História Remens'5 eccksiat, 2,20, MGH SS 36.184.13-19- See in general Suttor 1986; Ellmers 1989; on rivers, trade and towns, see Ch. 22.2. 36 D Loth I, no. 91, Aachen, 13 June 845, fbt Novalesa, on the Mont Cénis pass route.
dM -It*-
ilia
1 <- sr
figure 1 3.2, Fossa Carolina, today, looking toward the Danube end. Only this quarter of what was ■ctually dug still has water in it today. The canal is about 30 m wide; notice to either side the trees ■growing up the slope of the high mounds of excavated dirt. The photo furnishes some idea of the scale of the project. Courtesy of Walter E. Keller.
When no appealing lodging awaited them at sundown, early medieval travel-ers camped. Those who had the means carried tents, which they pitched in meadows outside towns and settlements; perhaps this explains the Arab coin that turned up in a meadow on the road from Italy (Appendix 3, A26). Sometimes markets sprouted up, as in the fields of Rouen or Pavia.37 Servants preceded the
37 Thus Witlibald's family pitched their tents °n the bank of the Seine, by the market at Rouen: Hugeburc, V. Willib. 3, 91.10-12; Ceolfrid's large group of English pilgrims Was camping in a meadow outside Langres w'ien he died: Anonymous, Historia
abbatum (Vita Ceolfridi, BHL1726), 35, p. 402. Merchants atSoissons: Heiricof Auxerre, Miracula S, Getmatii (BHL 3462), 64, PL, I24.I236D-I237A; Rainald of Marmoutiers' party, next to Pavia, in 847: HistóriatranslationisS. Gorgonii (BHL3Ô22),
400
401
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAVEL
main party to pitch camp and have dinner waiting for well-born wanderers 3s | Men on royal business could and did requisition food, supplies, and lodging.39 The issue of security in overland travel is complicated and under-researched The normative evidence suggests that early medieval travel could have beeri almost as dangerous as walking through American cities was in the 1980s. In t_h later ninth century, the freebooting that attended internecine warfare fostered a climate of insecurity.40 But few if any traveled alone. In fact, traveling parties tended to be big, approaching 100 in some instances. There was certainly safety in numbers. And the situation varied dramatically depending on when and where! one was traveling, as the pilgrim Bernard explicitly observes.41
2. The sea
Exploring the experience of sea travel in the early medieval Mediterranean is a litde more complicated. One smells more schoolroom than salt in much Carolingian writing about the sea. Except for the scarce Venetian records or some Byzantine texts, data on sea travel often come from landlubbers. They suffer from the imprecisions and stereotypes thatattend secondhand testimony abouta technical matter, and the laborious learning of the Bible or Virgil has left its mark.42 The handful of texts learned by rote so suffused the written culture that their ! phraseology tinges even the most vivid eyewitness accounts. Amalarius, for instance, made a very seasick member of his party echo the Acts of the Apostles.43
Footnote 37 (cont.)
4, MSS Mart, 2 (1865).56C and, in a meadow next to a monastery, at Orleans, ibid., 6,56F; also atPavia: CountGerald of AuriIlac:OdoofCluny, Vita Geraldi Auriliacemis (BHL 3411), 1,27, PL, 133.658B-C. One wonders whether their careful archaeological prospection would be rewarding.
38 E.g. Einhard's servants preceded him: Traral. MarcelÜnt et Petri, 3, ig, 255.8-35.
39 MGHCapit. no. 32,27,1.85.20-5; no. 40, 17,116.10-11; no. 57, 2,144.8-11; and esp. Form, imperiales, no. 7,292.29-37, commanding that the emperor's vassals be granted specified daily rations. See on these documents Ganshof 1928; cf. Ganshofig7i, i37-8n2o.
40 For instance Nithard, Historic, 2, 8, pp. 60-2, on the miraculous arrival of royal
insignia without an armed escort. Brigandage was a recurring problem: e.g. MGH Capit. no. 82,1.180-1; cf. Ganshof 1970,75.
41 Bernard, Itinerarium, 23-4, pp. 319-20, contrasts travelers' security in the Arab world, the kingdom of Pavia, and Roman territories. Lupus, Ep. 104 (101),
101.27-102.2, informs an expected visitor of the threats he would encounter in Lupus' region, and he urges him to travel in a large enough group to deter danger. Not coincidentally, both anecdotes date from the second half of the 9th C.
42 For Virgil, see below, e.g., on Agnellus of Ravenna; for the Bible, below, nig8.
43 Amalarius, Versus marirti, 427.18-19: "Hinc non surgam, nisijixa/ Haec puppis maneat ; cf. Acts 27,41.
THE SEA
L n so, the richness of scriptural sea descriptions supplied writers with valuable tools for describing their own ideas and their experience.44 Despite its shortcom-■no$ the evidence more than suffices to begin a sketch.
Terror of storms: environment and technology
Storms, and the terror that they caused, dominated early medieval writers' attitudes toward the sea. It would be profitable to write a cultural history of storm description and there are ample materials to hand for such an enterprise in the early Middle Ages.45 Let one description stand for many:
When we found a ship going up to Byzantium, we boarded it. Once we had left Sicily behind - it was a fine day and the wind was favorable - and we were sailing along nicely in the Adriatic [i.e. Ionian] Sea, a strong wind hit us-one rightly called Euroclydon [cf. Acts t_ _ and it awakened huge and irresistible seas. So the sea was raised up to a great crest by the violence of the wind. The sailors took in the sails, pulled in the steering oars and loosened cables over the bow [sea anchors?], allowing the ship to be borne along in the sea. And storm-tossed that we were for three days and three nights, we were in continuous distress and anguish, as we called on the Virgin with God and all the other saints, including St. Phantinus, since he was our own special saint.. .4S
' The scene described the effect a Gregale wind from north-northeast worked on the Ionian Sea between Italy and Greece (Map 16.1).47 Like so many others, this description emphasizes the unpredictability of a sea which fooled even experienced mariners, and the sailors' powerlessness. The sea and its devastating might serve as
ja kind of morality tale for life and a testing of faith. The Christian is buffeted by forces beyond human control until he appeals to a saint. The storm provided an opportunity for the devotees of St. Phantinus to prove their special patron's power. 1 i ie tempest continued until Phantinus appeared in a deacon's dream and struck the
I sea, calming it. When the deacon relayed the news, everyone felt better, and ate some food. Presently the sea became calm, and the ship smoothly resumed its course.
ihe hagiographer's urge to glorify his saint explains why we have so many stories of storms and their miraculous calming. But tempests were more than the
44 For instance, the hagiographical novel Vita s- Leucii (BHL 4894) constantly identifies the home port of the ships which its hero boards, surely inspired in this by Acts, e.g. 27, 2, and 6.
45 The rhetorical models for such descrip-t'ons would require close scrutiny. See on the broader topic of ship metaphors as a ''terary device, e.g. Curtius 1963,128-30.
46 Peter, Miracula S. Phanrim (BHG1509I, 72.1068-74.1108. Early medieval Greek and Latin texts follow ancient custom in extending the name Adriatic well into the modern Ionian Sea. Cf. Hugeburc, V. Willibaldi, 93.12, and Theophanes, a.m. 6224,1.410.8-9 with R139.
47 Mediterranean Pilot 1978-88, 3:32 (1.189).
402
403
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAVEL
tremulous fantasies of landlubbers. The seventh- or eighth-century Byzantine law of the sea ("The Rhodian Sea Law") constantly discusses the danger of storms and shipwrecks from the hard-nosed perspective of financial responsibility.48 Sailors' cults reflect a contemporary reality. Through the pensmen, we can still feel the need of seamen to find supernatural helpers in the struggle against natural forces beyond any human's skill or power.49 The Greek liturgy was attentive to their needs, whether it was a matter of blessing the building of a ship, a warship's departure for combat, or a prayer duringa tempest.30
Ships and their equipment
Ships meant different things in the mental world of the early Middle Ages. The "ship of state" also did duty for the church. It is the most famous and most positive metaphor.51 But elite attitudes toward ships had other facets. There was, for instance, something sinister about them: their dark shapes slicing through the water made men think of snakes, and vice versa.52 An easterner echoed ancient fathers when he described the miseries of greed and commerce; commerce bred disaster: jealousy, murder and shipwreck.53 As in late antiquity, so once again in
48 E.g. jettison: Sea law, 3, g, or 3,35, 16.1-17.180r 31.1-4; 3,27, foresees partial indemnification for a captain whose ship is lost in a storm C^dXri? yEvopE vt)<;) en route to picking up cargo, 27.4-7; cf- 3> 44. 36.1-37.8. On the date, L. Burgmann, ODB 3:1792; for jettison in an early ioth-C. Arab treatise on chartering ships, Christides 1993,82-4.
49 For a few examples from many, see the storm descriptions in Anastasius Apocrisiarius, Relatio motionis Maximi (BHG 1231), 15, PG, 90.129A-B; TranslatioHeliani, 581.17-582.ro; V. Madaluei, 15,197; another storm in Peter's Mir, Pltantini 65.891-900; Amalarius, Versus marini, 427.10-26; V. Eliae iun.,38, 58.772-82;Theosterictus,V. Nicetae Medicii (BHG 1341), 45, AASS April. 1 (1865), app., xxvii. Sailors' cults of saints: Makris 1988,148-50. Two months before T wrote these lines, when the first officer of a modern Greek cruise liner was showing me the bridge of his ship with its magnificent computers, radar and satellite navigational system, I could not help but notice
that above the helm, in a place of honor, stood a fine and holy icon.
50 Building: Eurftologion, p. 559; dromon: p. 684;cfi£landion: p. 685; tempest: pp. 636-7, with fascinating emphasis on moral disorder causing natural disorder (ataxia).
51 Rahner 1964, 304-405 and 432-503.
52 The Greek word crteiondion, which designates a new type of Byzantine warship in the early Middle Ages, probably derives from words for "water-snake" or "eel": Kahane and Kahane 1970-6,412-13; a snake sliding into the water evoked a ship; Sabas, Víta S. ioatimcti (BHG 935), AASS Nov. 2.1.361A.
53 Ignatius the Deacon (?), Vita Geor^ii Amastridos (BHG 668), 33, 51.1-7; cf. above, Ch. 4. For the discussion about the Life's date and author, see A. Kazhdan, ODB 2: 837. Acute observation of affairs of the sea characterizes also Ignatius' Life ofGregory the Dekapolite, and, I think, reinforces Ihor Sevcenko's attribution (1977,121-5) to him of BHG 668.
THE SEA
the ninth century: the other side of the coin was that ships meant profit. In a mannered metaphor, one of our travelers avers that the benefits a saint delivered to his brethren were greater than the profits brought home by a great merchant ship.54 yye have already seen that a western writer - a Venetian no less - had a cruder, or perhaps simply more precise vision of the same thing: for him ships meant slaves (Chapter 9, no).
just as western illustrators of ships seem mostiy to echo ancient models, Latin-speakers are often not much help about the craft in which they traveled.55 They avoid or do not know vessels' specialized names: they are just "ships."56 Occasionally, they misuse their names.57 Greeks can be just as vague.58 But the sea so permeates their language and the medieval Greek experience, for all its emphasis on Asia Minor and fear of the sea, that greater precision was sometimes unavoidable.59 Occasionally a more technical term slips into the writing. Warships such as dromons and chelandia are attested from late antiquity and the eighth century, respectively, and these terms entered Latin, at least in Italy, in our period.60 Achelan-dion (zalandria) was certainly something new to the experienced eyes ofVenice, since a reliable witness records the novelty of the first two constructed on the lagoon in the 850s.61 Galleys also make their appearance.62 The vocabulary relating to merchant ships seems poorer in this period, a difference which may be significant.63
54 Methodius of Constantinople, Vita Theophanis confessoris (BHG 1787Z) 28, 19.12-14.
55 Villain-Gandossi 1987, 84-8.
56 Naues, or navigia, the latter esp. around Rome; e.g. Liber pont., Mommsen, 222.20; Codex carol. 59, JE 2426, 585.15-23; Bernard, Itinerartum, 4and 5, pp. 310-11.
57 E.g. Agnellus, Lib. pont. ecd.Rau., in, 35°-'3-i4, which calls ships freighted with grain "dromons."
58 Naus or, less classically and more commonly, ploio; also karabifl. A few examples supplied in seconds by my copy of A. P. Kazhdan, A. M. Talbot etal., Dumbarton Oaks Holography Database (Washington, DC, n.d.): Ploiom Sabas, Vitaloannicii (BHG 935), 31,361A; VitaS. Macarii (BHG 1003), '8,162.28; Vita Antonii iumoris (BHG 142-3), 21,202.3. Naus: e.g. Vita Euthtjmii iunioris (BHG 655), 25,190.17.
59 For Byzantine aversion to the sea, Kazhdan 1976.
0 Dromones: e.g. R536; R.573; R.652. For Greek ship types see, in general, Ahrweiler
1966,408-18; on the dromon see the important study, in preparation, byE. Jeffreys and J. F. Pryor. Chelandia are more complicated: the term appears to be sometimes a synonym for dromones, and sometimes a distinctive kind ofwarship: Ahrweiler 1966,410-14. It is hard to believe that the terms are mere synonyms in the imperial navy records which seem to distinguish them, for instance, in 949: "three chelandia and four dromons, each with 220 men, have been sent to Africa with the protospatharios and asekretis John," Constantine VII, Decer. 2,45, 665.4-6.
61 Chroniam Venetum, 115.13-17.
62 R627; R.777; see also the forthcoming study mentioned above, n6o.
63 Other technical terms for ships occur in the context of warfare, e.g. katenai R.93; R627: kombaria (alibi koumbaria) and saktou-roi, though they seem to refer primarily to Arab round ships: cf. Ahrweiler 1966,414; cf. R677 on the capture of many karamia (i.e. karabia).
404
405
THE EXPE Rl Ji IN ^ Ľ Uť IKrtVĽL
Anastasius' Latín translation of a seventh-century Greek source calls a boat whi ■ traveled down the Tiber to the sea a leuomentum, a "lighter." This is probably a locd Roman term.64 Holkas means "merchant ship" in classical Greek; it is not, however always obvious that our authors are using it so precisely.65
The nature of the surviving records means that we see ships owned mainly b institutions, especially cathedrals and monasteries. Though the pattern is berte known north of the Alps, it also recurs in Carolingian Italy and beyond it borders.66 Fortunatus of Grado or his church had four ships and they received toll-free status in all of Charlemagne's dominions. The patriarch subsequently gave one vessel with all its gear to a monastery.67 In 822, Lothar granted total tolI-J free status to Farfa for a ship engaging in commerce ("causa mercimonii") any] where in his kingdom's maritime or fluvial districts (R373). How far did thesa "ecclesiastical" ships range? Perhaps only very locally, but we do not know foi sure. In fact, a ninth-century hagiographical novel shows a ship belonging to the bishop of Palermo in a Libyan port on business.68
The vessels had limited lifespans. Brand new ships were considered safer than older ones.69 The Sea Law distinguishes valuations of new and old ships foii indemnification purposes. New ones are rated at 50 gold solidi per 1,000 modion of capacity, old ones at the lower rate of 30 s. Although gauging worth opens upl opportunities for error, it is useful to have a rough idea of the value of ships. 41-49 metric tons (Table 13.1), a new, fully equipped ship like the seventh-centur Saint-Gervais B is reckoned at a capacity of 6,000-8,000 modii. If the equivalencies are correct, this would imply that it would have been worth between 300 andl 400 gold s.; older ships were discounted 40 percent.70 For what it is worth, 360 s. j seem to have been the salary of military governors of the lesser military provinces
64 Collectanea (CPG 7969), PL, i29.5goAand B. Semantically, the etymology parallels the English "lighter." The word could well be a local linguistic fossil from late antiquity, since its derivative Ieuammtarius was a technical term for, apparendy, harbor lighter operators of the annona service: Cod. Theod. 13,5,1,1.747.1 (a.d. 314), referring probably toRome.Casson 1995,336.
65 It does mean merchant ship in Methodius, V. Theophanis (BHG1787Z), 28,19.13-14.
66 See on the north, in the context of intrare-gional transfers, Johannek 1987,44-55.
67 DKar 1, no. 201 (?8o3). The diploma is interpolated, but that seems to bear only on the extension of this privilege to all of Fortunatus' successors; gift: Document! di Veneiia, p. 77.
68 V. Greg. Agrig., 19,164.1-7.
69 Hence Anastasius Bibliothecarius' pointed statement about the ship which sank in the Adriatic, drowning Photius' supporters. It was newly built and the victim had selected it for himself: Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Ep. 5,408.15-16; cf. Nicetas David Paphlagon, Vita Jgnatii (BHG 817), PG, i05.544CandR573.
70 On the life expectancy of ships, McCormick 1998a, 71^72. Ship values: Sea Law, 2,16,3.7-11; for the conversion of the wreck's tons into modii: Parker 1992.. 373 (no. 1001). On Byzantine officials' i2th-C. procedure for evaluating a ship's capacity in sea modioi from its dimensions, Schilbach 1970,95-6 with n6.
406
ue Byzantine government under Leo VI (886-912). This much cash could pur-i° _ s0me 3,600-4,800 "sea bushels" of wheat, in ninth-century terms or, in ^dern terms, 46-61 metric tons.71 Merchants who freighted heavy or expensive 00    s aboard old ships were not entitled to indemnification.72
0
;'lon£
■ witnesses do not make much of the traditional distinction between the and the "round" designs, associated with war and commerce respectively, sieved to have obtained in the Christian Mediterranean of the early Middle ,s Whether or not this reflects a functional interchangeableness of most bfs'is unclear' aitnou§n on general grounds that seems not improbable. When S Ryzantine naval commander gave to a church the ships he had captured from Arab raiders, this probably means that the ships were suited to more than arfare.73 A second major distinction between ships ofwar and commerce lies in the greater importance of oars in propelling the former. Not unconnected with this is a further difference: warships carried large, fighting crews, merchantmen small crews.74 A big Christian merchant vessel captured off Sardinia by Arab raiders illustrates both points. The captured ship, manned by twelve of the raiders, headed separately to rejoin their fellow raiders at a friendly Christian port. But unfavorable winds caused it to arrive at the rendezvous more than twenty days after the raiding ships. Clearly, the combination of the small crew and the delay due to winds mean that the Christian ship relied on its sails, while the raiders were able to continue pillaging and still get to the rendezvous. The warship, in other words, could use oar power (R514). A ninth-century saint's life describes a ship, apparendy a merchant vessel, arriving "under full sail" at a coastal monastery on the Black Sea (R415).
Nevertheless, merchantmen seem sometimes to have used oars or sweeps.75 Thus, a ship transporting a bishop back to his see on the Black Sea coast and overtaken by bad weather rowed into a turbulent river mouth for safety.76 Observers were alert enough to note that ships used oars when they approached or left port and required precise maneuvering under shifting wind conditions.77 Whether a ship traveling under both oars and sails is pure literary
73 ConstantineVII, Decer. 2,49, 697.4-9. theynet et al. 1991, table 3.1: a "sea bushel" (modiostlialassios, 12.8 kg wheat) sold fore. l/u s. in the capital in the gth C: ibid., 36o-i. There is no Byzantine data on salaries for the period: ibid., 370. f2 SeaLauJ, 3,11,1.8.1-5.
73 Theoph. Cont., 5, 63, 304.12-14; cf. R675. ee Deiow, Table 13.1 on the dimensions of s°me excavated early medieval merchant ,11;iriners.
74 See in general, Pryor 1992,25-39; on oars: 32.
75 Kreutz 1994,350.
76 There is no reason to think that Bishop George was traveling in a warship c. 800. Ignatius the Deacon('), V. Geor,gii Amastridos, 36,54.10-55.9.
77 Notwithstanding the Virgilian echoes, when Agnellus depicts a fleet approaching Ravenna on a punitive expedition c. 709 using oars as it entered the (tributary of
407
reminiscence of the classical idiom for "full speed" is unclear.78 AmalariuJ implies that the ship in which he traveled to Constantinople was equipped witbj oars, since he seems to say that they needed more oars near Aigina (Map 5.3) T I
fact a sailing ship might encounter difficulties there from the meltemi or
lr» its!
absence, from daytime sea breezes, not to mention the eddies southeast of th J island.79
The triangular lateen sail was well acclimated in the Mediterranean by 0u ] period. Graffiti and frescoes at Alexandria reveal that Egyptian ships already! sported the new rig in the seventh century.80 It is generally reckoned to provide! superior sailing capacities against the wind.81 Caulking was indispensable foj the hull: a volcanic eruption on Lipari (Map 16.1) caused the seawater to boil which melted the pitch caulk of ships in the vicinity and sank them.82 Some ships had decks, under which one could keep lamps lit.83 Another kind of superstructure resembled a very large pallet, and may have been a kind of cabin.84
Ships had smaller boats aboard or in tow.85 The boat found with the Agajl
Footnote 77 (rent.)
the) Po, he might be drawing inspiration from scenes he had actually seen: Liber pont. Rau., 137,368.6: "navis vicina facta est litoris et expansis remis Eridani ripam sul-catn't."Cf. e.g., Aen. 5, i58or 10,197. Conversely, he shows ships leaving port without oarsmen as though it were something unusual: ibid., 145, 373.3-4 ("relicto sine remiseportu": cf. Aen. 4, 588). In the English Channel, Hugeburc, who herself reached her Continental home by ship, ineptly echoes Virgilian language as her uncle's oared ship leftHamwic: "Remigiis crepitantis [!]," V. Willibaldi, 3, gi.6-7;cf. also in the Atlantic, the departure of the ship taking Adalhard home from exile: "levanturvela tandem, remigia impellun-tur": Paschasius Radbertus, Vita Adalhardi (BHL58), 47, MGHSS 2.529.35.
78 Agnellus, Lib. pont. Rau., 145,372.43-4: "iussit ventis dari vela et remis expandere alassulcantespela,gus": cf. Aen. 3,520 and 5, 158 or 10,197.
79 Versus marini, 427.27-8: "palmas augere satis per tempora longa," where palmae is a poetic expression for oar blades: Thesaurus linguaeLatinae 10.1 (1982): 148.76-9. On the winds in the Gulf, Mediterranean Pilot 1978-88, 4:155; cf. the chart on 31; eddies:
153. Recent research indicates thatthe winds of antiquity were substantially the same as those of today: Murray 1987, concerning Greece, and, more widely, for the eastern Mediterranean: Murray 1995.
80 Basch 1993,28 and Figure 23-5.
81 Pryor 1992, 33-5 with important qualifications. Occasional references to sails in our text shed no new light on the issue.
82 BHG i432n, Sun. CP., 642.37-39;cf. an Arab fleet's similar fate in the Aegean: R98.
83 Called a solarium at Venice: Transl. Marci, p. 258.
84 Pope Martin I was left exposed "in grabato navis" to the taunts of people on shore, after his ship docked at Constantinople: Theodore Spoudaios, Commemoratio (CPG 7969), PL, 129.592C; cf. V. Martiniflraeca, 6, p. 258.
85 Thus the Venetian ships apparendy had a small boat called scapha: Transl. Marci, p. 257. This may also be the implication of the description of the Slav pirates aboard a lembos who preyed on passing ships in a river mouth near Christopolis: Ignatius the Deacon, V. Gregorii Decap. 10, 54.23-55-3» 12,55.26-56.9 is ambivalent. The Sea Law
calls them karaboi, e.g. 3, u, 19.10. Theophanes, a.m. 6209,1.397.6-7calls the small boats of the Arab fleetsandfl!"i>
M    ^ (j^p 20.3) from the tenth century was 8-10 m long.86 The Sea Law implies sailors might make part of the voyage aboard such a ship's boat and perhaps h r additional cargo was carried in it.87 The later Cairo documents make clear t sUCh "barges" - for which the Arabic term (qdrib) is etymologically the same the Greek korabos-were towed by a larger ship and carried cargo and even pas-seiigeis.
Baskets and sacks held food and travelers' personal effects. Along with ampnoras ant* barre's' tney a'so conveyed merchandise.89 Aside from warships fitted out with flame throwers and Greek fire, for defense sailors carried bows and arrows, and javelins. Amalarius speaks of his crew readying spears or javelins (tela) and bows against Moors and Slavs. A spear head has in fact been found on a wreck along Amalarius' Adriatic route.90
408
while Nicephorus' higher style (Brev., 54, 122.33) calls them lemboi. The term is [ sometimes used more for literary effect than technical accuracy: thus Martin I went from Porto Romano to Constantinople in a f nauis, according to Anastasius
Bibliothecarius' version of the Greek text of his letter (JE 2079), PL 129.590B-C. A contemporary account, addressed to the faithful in Rome and Africa, in Anastasius' translation, calls the same ship a lembus: Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Collectanea, PL, i29.592Aand 593A. By its manner of condensing, the Greek Life seems not to distinguish vessels. It says simply that the pope was put in a ttAoiapiov and apparently refers to the same vessel as ev tco irXoicp, V. Martini araeca, 5, p. 257. On these sources, see below, pp. 483-4 n58. p6 Parker 1992, no. 8. 87 Sea Law, 3,46, 37.1-7; here toc ecpoXxia might mean the (towed) burden or load (cf. Glare and Thompson 1996,140) or, pos-S|bly, fittings of the boat, rather than the "rudders," as Ashburner (Sea Law, 118) thought. In 3,43, and 3,44,36 (line 3 in both cases) the word might have the ancient and modern Greek meaning of "ship's boats."
Gt"tein 1967-93, i: 305-6, whose documents date mostly from the nth and 12th C. hat merchandise was transported in
baskets
appears to be the implication of
Mir. Genesii, 2, p. 10, about how the relics of St. Genesius were divided and hidden: "membratim cesa [sc. ossa] propter insid-ias gentilium, in duobus cophinis ad hoc ipsum praeparatis, ossa sanctorum con-diditmartyrum, mercibuscuidam nauclero datis, atque in navi se illius cum suis com-ponens." Baskets also held the crew's food:Transl. Marci, p. 257. For traveler's sacks: Amalarius, Versus mar., 426.3. Grain was transported in sacks in antiquity, and presumably in the early Middle Ages too: Casson 1995,200; cf. the grain which was found loose, in the hold ofSaint-Gervais B as well as one barrel: Pomeyetal. ig88,12. Such baskets and sacks occur often in the Genizah documents: Goitein ig67-g3,1: 334. For amphoras etc. see below, Table 20.1, etc.
go OnGreekfire:E.McGeer,ODB2:873. Venetian ships traveling from Africa to Sicily destroyed two Spanish Arab ships by fire: R321, butthesewerenotlikelywar-ships, nor were the Venetians likely to have had access to Greek fire, one of the Byzantine state's most closely held secrets. Amalarius on weapons: Vers, mar., 428.60-3. A few decades later, a large Byzantine ship, apparently a navy vessel from Syracuse with very skillful peltai, overtook an Arab slave raider: V. Eliae iun. 8, 12.14. Rossi Taibbi translates EUOTOXtoTaToi TteATai (12.143; cf- P-x3)>
409
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAVEL
THE SEA
As the weapons suggest, life aboard ship was not a bowl of cherries. Bagg3ge was loaded in advance of departure, and travelers were apparently expected to feed themselves.91 The typical fare was hardtack, although Venetian merchants also ate cabbage and pork.92 Fishing gear is found regularly aboard well-pre. served wrecks. A steady diet of hardtack explains why passengers were tempted to make fires for their own fish fry, and its prohibition by Byzantine sea law. The danger of fire aboard a wooden ship whose timbers were coated with pitch is easy to imagine, and even to document.93 Travelers were deprived of baths so long as the ship did not put into shore, and drinking water, of course, was at a premium.94 In these small ships' close quarters, the stench of bilge water must have been inescapable. Travelers aboard a ship sailing to Constantinople from Cyprus knew they had some mighty impressive relics aboard when the bilge began to smell like perfume.95 Against heavy weather and rain, travelers covered themselves with animal skins.96 By law, Byzantine captains were obliged to provide good quality skins to shield textile cargoes from spray, and skins were reckoned a standard part of a ship's gear, along with the mast and yard assembly, sails, anchors, hemp ropes, ship's boats, and good steering oars.97 But sea travel was not pure hell: there were opportunities for improvised liturgical services, complete with lighted lamps and incense - perhaps taken from cargo loaded at Alexandria? - and Amalarius even drafted one of his treatises aboard ship.98
Footnote 90 (cant.)
as "archers." The ancient word is used by the Byzantines to mean "spear": Du Cange 1688,1145. Byzantine warships were in fact equipped with javelins, as well as bows and arrows: ConstantineVII, Deter. 2,45, 669.19-670.2. For the spearhead, see Parker 1992, no. 1250. The nth-C. wreck at Serc,e Liman produced 50 javelins and 12 spears: Schwarzer 1991, 328.
91 Ignatius, V. Greg. Decap. 18, 62.19-20,22 and 29-30. For one case when a holy man demanded food from the skipper: see Vita Eusrratii Agauri (BHG 645), 32,389.6.
92 Biscuit: "frangere dente/ Crustas ettostas micas," Amalarius, Versus mat., 426.3-426.4; for Venetian provisions, above n8g.
93 Parker 1992, p. 29, on fishing tackle found aboard merchantmen; Sea Law, 2,10, 2.5-6. For one early medieval ship destroyed by fire, see Parker 1992, no. 97.
94 See Martin I's complaint about baths, JE
2079, PL, 129.590c. Even as he was being brutally transported into exile, Theodore Studite was able to bathe twice during a trip lasting some six weeks: Ep. 3,1.14.82-3 and 15.115-16. For the drinking water, Sea Latu, 2,12,2.9.
95 Translatio etmiracula S. Therapontis (BHG 1797), 9,125.6-8; R27.
96 Pelliculae: Amalarius, Versus mar., 428.65.
97 Aicp^Epas KaX&s, Sea Law, 3,34,30.2; cf. for protecting grain cargoes in heavy weather, 3,38,32.2; standard gear: 11, 18.7-19.11. Against Ashburner, ibid., p. 92' I think that fiistokeraia literally "mast-yard" is a copulative compound, such as is common in early medieval Greek, e.g. Browning 1969,71. Cf. the enumeration gear in Sea Law, 3,2,12.9-10.
98 Trans!. Marci, p. 258; Amalarius' Missae expo-sitionis codex, according to the letters about this he exchanged with Peter of Nonantola: Opera lituniica, 1.229.8-11 and 230.1.
Convoys andjleets
s were the rule.99 In good weather, merchantmen sometimes sailed so se together that sailors conversed across the water, and the Sea Law forsaw collisions.100 The miraculous perfume of the relic ship could be smelled aboard the ships sailing behind it and to either side, up to three Roman miles away.101 Convoys offered obvious advantages in case of marauders and shipwreck. Often, wnen we might otherwise expect only one ship, more than one is mentioned: for example- when Pope Constantine traveled to the capital or when Archbishop Felix returned to his see (R73; R83). Two or more Venetian ships transported Arab ambassadors from Africa to Sicily (R321). A group of Beneventan or Amalfitan ships went to investigate an Arab raid on Lipari.102 But convoys were especially the rule for merchant ships. Around 800, such a convoy from the Levant put into Porto Romano; the next year, the chief of Charlemagne's writing office raised a convoy (classis) in Liguria to transport the famous elephant and other gifts across the Mediterranean; and c. 840, Joseph the Hymnographer set out for Rome from Constantinople aboard a ship which was traveling in convoy.103 A Byzantine commander raiding in the vicinity of Sicily captured so many ships loaded with merchandise and especially olive oil that the price of the latter collapsed (R677). This implies that the Arabs were traveling in convoy and freighting similar goods.
How large were the convoys? Ships did travel in twos or threes, so every mention of multiple ships need not swell the roster of early medieval fleets.104 In
99 A few seeming exceptions: alone
Byzantine warship intercepted Elias the Younger's slaver heading to Africa: no companion ships are mentioned: V. Eliae inn. 8,12.140-6; Liudprand seems to imply that 1 Venetian merchant mariner was about to leave Constantinople: R825. Buttheymayweigh silence too heavily.
wo Trans!. Marci, 258.9-22; when the Sea Law, 3,36, 31-1-4 specifies that the ship which is hit must be at anchor or have slackened sail to be entitled to indemnification, it clearly implies that collisions which occurred when both ships were under sail ate a different matter.
101 Transl. etmir. Therapontis, 8,124,12-16. 1 1!442: according to the Beneventan Ttanslario S. Bartholomaei (BHL1010), '2-g-io, written shortly after the event (ibid., 52, cf. 49-50), more than one ship
"of the Lombards" went to investigate; the contemporary Transl. Bartholomaei (BHL ioog), 6.4-5, which is from Gaul but was also close to the event, mentions only one ship. On the ships' home port see below. The popes requested that Byzantine warships be deployed off the Roman coast: R678-9 and R703.
103 Mir. Genesii, 2, p. n;Ann. re^niFranc, a. 801, p. 116; John Deacon, Vita Iosephi Hymno^rapht (BHG 945), 17-18, PG, 105.956A. So too the imaginary papal convoy which transported grain from Sicily to Rome, "Leontius," V. Greg. Agrig., 219.23-4: cf. comm., ibid., pp. 381-2. For further examples see below.
104 A large Christian merchantman captured by Arab raiders was escorted to port by one of the four warships: R514. Bernard attests that the six ships he saw loaded
410
411
the earlier ninth century we hear of merchant convoys comprising five, eight an ten ships.105 The estimated Arab fleets of 400 and 360 katenai loaded with sup plies which arrived at the siege of Constantinople from Egypt and Africa respec tively in the spring of 718 are far and away the biggest groups of round shipj mentioned in our period (R94, R5). Otherwise large early medieval ship forma tions were involved in military operations.
From around 700 to 970, we hear of military fleets comprising between fbu and 3,300 ships. The number ofwar fleets whose ships were evaluated by contemporaries in round hundreds might incline one to suppose that fleets dwarfed commercial convoys in the period and that, in aggregate, most of the shipping in this era was military. Divine intervention is reported to have wrecked so many huge war fleets that one might also conclude that Christians and Arabs launched many thousands of warships in the eighth and ninth century, and that little room or wood remained in the Mediterranean for more peaceful vessels.106
Some accept these figures at face value.107 A closer look shows that most of the highest numbers come from Arab historians. But the total of 2,560 Arab vessels Theophanes and Nicephorus claim for the siege of Constantinople also strains belief, like the 997 Arab ships the Byzantine navy supposedly destroyed at Cyprus
Footnote 104 {com.)
with slaves sailed in three pairs: R577-9. Two imperial warships: R573; similarly, Liudprand was supplied with two small ships which were supposed to transport him from Greece to Otranto, Letjatio, 58, 207.15-17; cf. R828. Three warships transported John VIII from Rome to Aries: R652. Thus too the Byzantine navy deployed a squadron of two crtelandia and two or moreflalaiai sentto reconnoiter the Syrian coast: R777; while Bertha of Tuscany dispatched an unknown number of her ships on a raid: R736. For a pair of Arab raiders, V. Euthymii iun., 25,189.14; cf. igo.20-191.1,
105 R333; R362, where their identification as merchant ships may have been fraudulent, but shows at least that such a figure was plausible at the Frankish royal court; and R406.
106 There are more than a dozen reports of war fleets comprising more than 100 ships: the initial fleet which lay siege to
Constantinople is alleged to have counted 1,800 ships, including, certainly, many supply ships: R93; 180 Arab ships: R126; 360 Byzantine vessels: R143; over 300 Byzantine warships: R165; more than 100 Arab ships: R319; more than 100 Arab and Byzantine ships attacked Sicily: R398; they were joined by over 300 more ships: R414; a newly built fleet of 400 dromons: R457; 300 Spanish ships: R4go; three Byzantine squadrons of too ships each: R5og; a Byzantine fleet of 300 ships lost 100 ships: R532; another ofioochelandifl: R591; 400 Byzantine ships appeared off Bari: R593; 169 Byzantine ships attack an Arab fleet: R677. This is not to mention the numerous wrecked fleets whose numbers are not supplied, e.g. that of Manes sent against Italy: Theophanes, a.m. 6224,1.410.4-9. 107 Thus, for example, Eickhoff 1966,36 or Fahmy 1966b, 119 on R126 or Eickhoff 1966, 75 on R414; Bragadin 1978, 403 on R821.
. 74gj and so forth.108 Compared with the sixth century, such fleets would repre-1 it a quantitative leap which is tantamount to a qualitative one. Justinian is ->0rted to have sent 592 or 500 ships to reconquer Africa in 533, while the Vmdals, who had been a major naval power in the preceding century, fielded at -t one fleet of 120 fast ships.109 The fact that Justinian's crews were recruited ftorn Egypt, the Aegean, Cilicia, and Constantinople suggests that his fleet was [retching the resources of the Roman empire, which at that date were still quite substantial.
It is hardly reassuring that contradictory figures are given for some of the same I arly medieval fleets. A later chronicler who often uses good sources evaluated the Arab fleet sent against Constantinople at 5,000 ships, while one Arab source about a raid on Damietta mentions 85 ships, and another, three squadrons of 100 ships- For an engagement off Sicily, an Arab reports 139 Byzantine ships, while a Greek records 45 vessels.110 One suspects that in all these cases, the larger numbers, at least, exaggerate.
Conclusive evidence comes from internal financial and logistical memoranda of the Byzantine navy. These documents detail the resources deployed in the tenth century, as the Byzantine empire approached its medieval zenith. Probably in 911, [Constantinople mounted a huge expedition to reconquer Crete. A memorandum ! survives that enumerates the detailed order of battle, listing the ships and crews supplied by the Imperial Fleet (stationed in the capital!, and the ships levied from the various provincial fleets. All told, the invasion fleet comprised 102 or 112 dromons and 75 pamphyloi, warships apparently of a type associated with the province of Pamphylia.111 The scale is entirely in keeping with other data from the same source. The order of battle for the invasion of Crete in 949 states that the Imperial Fleet at that date consisted of 100,150 or 250 ships depending on how
108 R93-5; cf. e.g., Guilland 1959,119. R156; R821 on which see the skepticism of Schlumberger 1923, 52; also Eickhoff 1966,342n6. Contrast Treadgold 1992, 142-3.
109 Procopius, Bella, 3,11, i3~i6and 23, 1.362.14-363.3 and 363.25-364.3. The differing total for Justinian's fleet depends on how one construes the Greek.
1 'o Michael the Syrian: R93; Yaqubi and Tabari, respectively, R509; Ibn Idhari, Bayon, and V. Eliae iun.: R677.
1,1 constantineVII,Decer.,2,44,
652.10-654.4; cf. 776. The individual entries for dromons total 102, while the
document itself calculates the number at 112. A transcription or mathematical error appears more likely to me than a textual accident which omitted one entry, since most entries include both dromons and pamphyloi, and the total for the latter is correct. So too Treadgold 1992,102. On pamphyloi, Ahrweiler 1966,415-17. These memoranda are discussed, and some emendations proposed, by Treadgold 1992,110-41 and 146. Treadgold (in) further deduces from the troop contingents that the Imperial Fleet alone supplied 32 dromons, and 20 pamphyloi; see alsoMakrypoulias 1995.
412
413
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAVEL
THE SEA
one construes the Greek.112 The expedition sent against Crete in 949 actuallj numbered fewer ships than that of 910, some ninety-four vessels of all types.n^i these are the kinds of numbers the Byzantine empire could deploy in 910 and 940 we must conclude either that the fleet had been inexplicably decimated since thJ ninth century or that the Arab historians greatly exaggerate the largest shirj numbers. Measured against official records, the Byzantine historians' figure i_ some 3,300 ships for the invasion of Crete in 960 would imply, for instance nearly a twenty-fold increase in the number of chelandia in eleven years...114 The largest figure after the siege of Constantinople and before the reconquest ofCreti comes from George the Monk, a notoriously bombastic ninth-century histrJ rian.115 Among Latin sources, the highest figure (400 ships) comes froc Hincmar of Rheims, who, though usually well informed, was far from the events] the second highest (300) comes from a pope transmitting a rumor and impressi ing on a Frankish king the magnitude of the danger, and the third (more thai 100), probably from a rumor conveyed informally from Africa to the court of the strategos of Sicily (R593; R165; R319, respectively). In other words, exceptfor the data from 717-18 and 960, in each of the most egregiously exaggerated ship totals in Greek and Latin sources, particular circumstances explain the exaggera-J
tions.
"3
De cer., 2,45, 664.7-13: If one construes ouoiaKa xe^av5ia p' (664.8) as a subset of ouoiai pv' (664.7), and assumes thatousia refers to ships, the total will be 150. If one construes 664.8 as an additional set of ships, under the same assumption, the total will be 250. If one rejects this meaning of ousia, the total will be too ships. Scholars diverge on the meaning of ousia in this text and hence on the totals of ships. Eickhoff 1966,137, Treadgold 1992,134 (150 ships) and Makrypoulias 1995,154-5,a" accept that ousia refers to a type of ship. R. J. H. Jenkins, in Constantine VII, Deadm. imp., 2.195-7, concludes that the word means "crew." Ahrweiler 1966,416-17, argues that the term originally meant "crew," but came to mean a type of ship in the 10th C. Sixty-four chelandia, twenty dromons (each with two ousiai, for a total of forty ousiai, where the meaning "crews" seems most compelling: cf. Jeffreys and Pryor, forthcoming study, above, n6o) and ten or more galleys: Decer., 2,45, 664.7-665.ig.
Treadgold 1992,134-41, with Table VI, calculates 150 ships certainly attested and I conjectures another ninety-five from the provincial fleets; he also concludes that the 949 invasion fleet was smaller than the earlier one.
114 Treadgold 1992,142-3, recognizes the gulf between the official memorandums and the historians; he seems nonetheless to accept the 960 figure of3,307 ships, conjecturing that the emperor sent 307 regular warships "and requisitioned many small civilian vessels." This contradicts the letter of the Greek texts, which (e.g. Ps. Symeon Mag., 758.20-2) explicitly identifies 3,000 warships (2,000 chelandia equipped with Greek fire and 1,000 dromons) and 306 (Theoph. Cont. says 307) transportvessels. Cf. R821.
115 R457; A. Kazhdan, A. Cutler, ODB 2:836.
116 One possible but very uncertain reference to a raiding squadron of 200 ships (karaboi) might occur in a financial docu-mentof7og: P. Lond. 4.1450.5; cf. P. Lond. 4.1337.
What about the smaller numbers given mostly by other, perhaps more sober, ces? Of twenty-two such cases from the ninth century, round numbers and
sot'f
er fleets still predominate in the Arab and, to a lesser degree, the Byzantine jjjstorians; the Venetian chronicler commonly identified as John of Venice also liked round numbers, but they are smaller, except for a disastrous operation
ajnst Taranto. The Frankish and papal records as well as Liudprand's diplomatic report to his ruler supply numbers which tend to be both smaller and less smoothed.117 They compare most closely with the Byzantine administrative records from the tenth century.118 This suggests that the smaller, more irregular numbers are more reliable.
There is one final consideration. We may strongly suspect that the Byzantine historians have overstated the total of 2,560 Arab ships that are supposed to have besieged Constantinople in 717-18, as well as their complete destruction by the Byzantines. But it is clear that a very large number of Arab ships engaged in one of the greatest military operations of the early Islamic era, and that many were lost (R98). A good proportion of the fleet surely comprised supply vessels, that is ships suitable for commercial activity, and perhaps commandeered for the campaign .This implies that the Arab defeat of 718 must have caused at least a temporary contraction of the merchant marine based on the southern rim of the Mediterranean.
How big were the ships'?
The consensus today is that early medieval ships were smaller than the largest ships of antiquity and of the later Middle Ages. We have already seen that that is chiefly a question of the relative proportions of different sizes of ships in the late antique merchant fleet (Ch. 4.3). Early medieval merchant ships are reckoned to .have weighed under 250 tons dead load.119 That estimation is borne out by the dimensions ofearly medieval wrecks (Table 13.1).
While no documents state explicitly the size of the ships aboard which our travelers sailed, some do give the number of people - passengers or crew- a ship
n7 R.275: thirteen ships; R308: forty; R310: seven and thirteen; R318: eight; R321: more than one, two; R325: seven; R362: e'ght; R434. eieven. sixty,
°ur; R527: forty and twenty; R530: sixty-fwo; R560: thirty-six; R627: c. fifty-four; ^36: thirty; R675: sixty or forty-five; >W: twelve; R747: thirty; R826: twenty-e,ght. Is it a coincidence that ship
118
rig
numbers - these are mostly military groups - are larger after 850? R777: four or more ships; R778:177; R808: eighteen ships; the Imperial Fleet apparently had 100 chelandia in 949: De ter., 2,45, 664.7-13; R815: over ninety-four ships.
Pryor 1992, 26-8.
414
415
inn EAl'bKltiNl.c kj r iiv/avhaj
table 13.1
Estimated sizes of early medieval ships, arranged in ascending order of length (Map 20.3)
Length (m)
Width (m)
Draught (m)
Capacity (tons)
Wreck name (and number*)
Date
15-18?
20
10
>0 +
?0-25
50
6 5
5
6 +
7
?
<2?** 1.8
41-49       Saint-Gervais B (3) 600-25
iskandil Burnu A (21) 575-600
37-58***    Yassi Ada A (22) 626
Le Bataiguier (18) 950
Agay(17) 950
Pantano Longarini (5) 600-50
1,001 518 1,239 97
8
787
iotes:
*As given on Map 20.3.
**Parker 1992, 373, describes the depth of the hold as 2 m; it presumably was not entirely below the waterline.
**The ship was actually carrying loaded amphoras weighing at least 37 tons; extrapolation from the number of amphoras
which it could have carried yields c. 50 tons; the structure implies a carrying capacity or burden of 51-58 tons: Parker
1992,454-5.
carried, and so furnish another rough standard for size. But again, not all the I data are equally reliable, as inspection of this table will immediately suggest. It shows that Bernard's figures are seriously out of line. In fact, when we consider that each person will have required several liters of water per day to survive, that the trip lasted thirty days, and that even under more technologically advanced conditions, Atlantic shippers to the Americas disembarked an average of some 274 slaves per vessel, we must conclude that this Carolingian ecclesiastical observer had no experience at estimating large groups.120 Otherwise the largest contingent consists of the 220 enslaved Italians who were being transported to Africa c. 835 along with Elias the Younger. It appears to be very large, too. But such a ship is not perhaps implausible, as we shall see in a moment.
120 This is a better explanation than concluding that he was simply "innumerate"; for innumeracy and the debate on early medieval western writers' attitudes toward numbers see Murray 1990,141-57. Sonntag 1987, on the contrary, after detailed scrutiny of Gregory of Tours and Regino of Prüm, finds that, aside from a tendency to round off, they are careful with numbers. Thesole exception concerns army sizes, which are exaggerated; Gregory's distortions appear to be conscious, Regino'sare not certainly so. In
this respect, Bernard seems closer to the mark in evaluating the crew (see below), and is careful about exchange rates and financial matters involving smaller sums. Atlantic slavers disembarked an average of 273.4 slaves 'n 9,376 voyages; shipboard mortality was significant. See D. Eltisetal. in press, Intro., Table4, whom I thank for advance access to this work. David Eltis further informs me thatthe largest slaver he knows did carry 1,500 slaves, but that this occurred only in 1862; letter ofg April 1998.
■•able 13-2
ibers of persons attested aboard ninth-century ships
Number of persons ~~^ZT Total
Number
of ships    Category of person
Date, comments
Register
53	53	1	passengers and crew	before 815; all survive shipwreck	R341
63*	over 500	8	enslaved captives	Ann. regni Franc, a. 813	R318
22 1 -	221	1	enslaved captives	835, V. Eliaeiun.	R431
I 34*	2,920	85	enslaved captives	853, Yakubi's version	R509
50-100 6*	50-100 600	100 100	crew ] enslaved women J	853, Tabari's version	R509
1,500*	3,000	2	enslaved prisoners	867, Bernard: to Africa	R577
1,500'	3,000	2	enslaved prisoners	867, Bernard: to Tripoli	R578
1,' 60	2,000 60	2 1	enslaved prisoners 1 crew of Bernard's ship J	867, Bernard: to Alexandria	R579
50	150	3	Arab crews	898-9, Letter of Bertha	R736
Note:
*Ni'i including crew.
How big were the crews? The underwater archaeological record (personal effects discovered on board wrecks, etc.) suggests that most ancient merchant-Imen carried a crew of only around a half dozen. The remains of at least three adults Ilave been discovered in one early medieval wreck.121 Insofar as merchant ships shifted to lateen sails, they may have required somewhat larger crews than did the square-riggers of antiquity.122 That large Christian merchant ship captured off Sardinia took twelve men to man; this hints that she was lateen-rigged. The Byzantine law of the sea distinguishes seven ranks aboard a merchant mariner: Paster, helmsman, master's mate (pröteus), ship's carpenter, bosun's mate (kara-bites), and cook, which suggests that at least some merchant ships carried crews of [that size, or a little larger.123 The numbers of our examples are nonetheless very Puch higher. In the case of the Byzantine squadron which attacked Damietta, we arc Poking at warships. What about the last two examples from our table?
21 Le Bataiguier, Parke
Park
r 1992, no. 97.
cr 1992; Unger 1980, 65.
123 Sea Law, 2,1-7,1.1-7. See above, p. 266mo2, for a ship's carpenter.
416
417
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAVEL
OPERATIONAL ISSUES
The Byzantine naval memoranda specify warships' crew and troop transport capacities. In 911-12, individual dromons from the Imperial Fleet were mannei by 230 rowers and 70 marines, while pamphyloi were manned by crews of 1301 160 men, plus an average of some 17 Scandinavian (Rus') fighters each. Althoug] they were oared, they show that, if anything, the crew sizes reported for thi Byzantine raiders on Damietta, as well as for Bernard's ship and the ones cap tured by Bertha of Tuscany's raiders, were on the small side. In part this may bi because the administrative records are concerned with invasions, when as man' potential fighters as possible had to be crammed on board. But it is also possible that raiders, whose main prey was slaves, or slave transporters needed to balance sufficient numbers to capture and terrorize the slaves with their carrying capacity.124 Bernard's crew size of sixty is also very large ifwe presume that it was a merchant ship, although this time his number is within the realm of plausibility. Is it possible that a raiding ship was being used for slave transport? Or that slavers routinely used larger crews to control the captives? Although the administrative documents are for oared ships, they suggest that there was no technical or eco nomic impediment in the early tenth century to building other types of ships which could have transported as many as two or three hundred souls. Given that Bernard was unable accurately to judge the quantity of slaves being transported aboard his ships in 867, and that the Life of Elias the Younger shows another slave transport conveying over 200 captives around 835, it is not impossible that the newer, bigger ships were being built a generation later. If so, we may suspect that the slave trade encouraged this development.
3. Operational issues Landings
Connected with size is the question of how ships berthed. It is of no small importance for gauging the overall tenor of sea travel in this era. Despite some spectacular cases of harbor decline, such as Carthage or Ostia, the major seaside towns and many of the minor ones still had port facilities inherited from late antiquity.125 Even so, in at least some of the latter, the relative importance and
124 Constantine VII, Dear., 2,44, 652.10-14; cf. for 949, the similar breakdown ofDe cer. 2,45, 670.3-6. Jeffreys and Pryor (above, n6o) conclude that pamphyloi were also oared ships and that, because of the invasion, the ships would have been packed. See also Treadgold 1992,110-21. The Arab
"5
raiders who carried off the population of Ischia slaughtered their own horses on the beach, clearly implying that they could not take both them and their captives home, and that human beings were, economi" cally, more valuable than horses; R308. See in general, Lehmann-Hartleben
function of the ports changed. Recent archaeology documents this process at p^venna, and the texts indicate important changes at Constantinople.126 Once in
vhile we can see ships putting into such ports, for instance, the ship which E ansported a captive pope, Martini (R19). Even at Constantinople, regular main-F uince may have slackened, although we do hear incidentally of the dredging of major port in 698.127 There were clearly problems if, when it approached its berth in Constantinople's Julian port, a ninth-century ship hit an underwater obstacle which punched a hole in its bottom.128
But ancient ports are only part of the early medieval story. The Mediterranean has virtually no tides, and two well-preserved ships which appear typical drew under 2 m when loaded. Is it possible to tell whether ships were benched, docked or anchored? A substantial number of small ports - sheltered 'anchorages flanked by a settlement - can be advanced for the western Mediterranean on the basis of archaeology, contemporary written sources and jlater medieval navigational texts.129 River mouths also attracted the smallish ships of our period, for they afforded shelter and fresh water.130 One hagio-graphical romance shows a ship putting into a stream in order to draw drinking water.131 Another saint's life depicts how sea conditions and freshwater current combined with a land breeze to cause extreme turbulence for a ship attempting to put into the mouth of the Sangarios river (mod. Sakarya), as it made along the coast of the Black Sea en route to Amastris (mod. Amasra; Maps 7.3 and 20.3).132
U6 f
1923; Rouge 1978; Ahrweiler 1978and esp. the gazeteer-survey in Schmiedt 1978. On Carthage's dwindling communications inferred from the changing ceramic record, Fulford and Peacock 1984, 2:260-2; the small section of the port so far excavated and published has been less revealing on the end of activity: Hurst 1994,109-16; Ostia's decline: Meiggs 1973, go-100; Paroli 1996, 256-7, equally inferred from changing ceramic, coin and inhumation patterns. 1 his contrasts with the continuing functioning of the neighboring Porto Romano: Coccia 1996. °r Ravenna: Maioli and Stoppioni 1987, 35; Constantinople: Mango 1985a, 37-40 and 53-6.
Mentioned only because it supposedly tnggered an outbreak of the bubonic P'ague: Theophanes, a.m. 6190, '■370.25-7.
128 V.EustratiiA3auri(BHG645),36, 391.19-392.9.
129 See, e.g. Schmiedt 1978. Along with an African preacher (Ch. 4, n5), the comparative evidence argues strongly that such minimal ports, river mouths, and beaches were important, perhaps even predominant, landings already in antiquity: Houston 1988 and McGrail 1981.
130 Charlemagne ordered defensive measures in all his Atlantic ports and navigable river mouths, and then extended them to the Mediterranean: Einhard, Vita Karoli, 17, p.
131
132
Leontius.V. Greg. Agrig. 5,149.4-6. This will have occurred between George's elevation to the episcopate c. 790 and his death c. 807. See Ignatius, V. Georgii Amastriaos 36, 54.10-55.9. The mention of a land breeze points to early morning or evening. For the breezes, see Block Sea Pilot, 29(1.156 and 1.158).
In fact, some of these "technical" landings were already beginning to grQ "commercial" landings. The development was important enough that J revivified commercial landings attracted the wrath of the Frankish ruler (§ In 823, Lothar I commanded that seaside (infra mare) commerce be c ' only at established "porturae," in order to protect his customs income f' T (R381). A little over a decade later, the prince of Benevento specifi nfl* Neapolitan ships (including those from Sorrento and Amain) could put i f Patria (now the Patria lagoon), Volturno and Garigliano rivers (Map 16'! indeed, draw their ships up (subducere) on any beach of the principality fori periods; if however they wanted to do business there, they had to pay the] established fee.133
As the treaty implies, early medieval sailors routinely beached their shl anchored them offshore. The Sea Law assumed that ships anchored either id or on a beach.134 Where circumstances permitted, they could tie up toT stylite saint's shoreside column.135 Shipping in the Tyrrhenian Sea abuni illustrates beaching. In a notorious episode shortly after the Arab sacki Peter's, Neapolitans allowed the Africans to draw their ships up (subducere) < shore near Gaeta when a storm threatened. As soon as the good wel returned, they shoved off, only to be overtaken by another violent storm.136T years earlier, Beneventan (or Amalfitan) ships had sailed off to the familiar j of Lipari to investigate the devastation wrought by Arab raiders.137 After takiog j what were purported to be the relics of St. Bartholomew, the sa ilors headed for home. Even with enemy ships in the vicinity, the local sailors' habit was sol ingrained that they pulled their ship up on the shore, because the crew wanted to sleep. The captain (nauclerus) was awakened by a miraculous warning that an enemy ship was approaching- presumably at night- and they i m mediately sailed off, reaching their home port (patrius partus) safe and sound.138 Around the same
133 Pactum Sicardi, 13, 220.17-27: "Barcas, quae ibidem ad hora canseverint vel pro tempestate subduxerint aut applicaverint per tota ipsa plagia"; rempestas may mean "storm," butitis justas likely a clarification of the preceding clause, and used in the sense of "time"; on the technical meaning of plagia in the ancient and medieval Mediterranean as "a shore suitable for beaching ships," see Schmiedt 1978, 252-3. Cf.R432.
134 Sea Law, 3, r, ro.i:ETti AiUEva f| ev Akttj; 3,2, n.2-3, and 3,15,20.2-3, which adds "towns" to the enumeration.
135 Thus a ship from Smyrna, in a port on the
south shore of Lesbos: V. Davidis, SumeoMTj rtGeor^ii, 13 (BHG494), 225.11-18. I
136 John ofNapIes, Gesta episc. Neap. 60, MGH SRL433.13-20; cf. Amari rg33-9> I:M 506-7; R478.
137 Transl. Barrholomaei (BHL1009), 5-I_"B R442; Beneventan sailors' frequenttM to the shrine: 6.8. l.ipn 'i is about 215 from Salerno via the coast and the AeW Islands. [<}.
: ;8  transl. Bartholomad (BHL 1009). 6'23~W' BHL 1010 lacks these de-tails. For pla<*| frequented by early medieval ships al» this coastal stretch, Schmiedt 1978' 180-4.
a Greek pilgrim traveling to Rome from Ephesus boarded a ship from P111 les at Reggio; as they headed north, they encountered a squall, the ship was P3' lied and the travelers went ashore.130 Two generations later, a saintly monk I resided near Reggio di Calabria concluded a pilgrimage to Taormina by Ik' n° sn'Pt0 Amain- A'ong the way, the ship put into a landing (hormetenon) "for \ ■ le rest." The only reason we know about this banal incident of sea travel is I   '"use a viper bit one of the sailors, and the good monk miraculously cured
■ ii4"
c0 the southern Tyrrhenian sea well illustrates the frequent landing, and even Leaching, of ships. But the phenomenon was not confined to that region. Ships
put
n readily almost anywhere, to judge from casual references. Late in the ninth
century, a hermit living on a mountain path between Messina and Taormina was 'nspi'cd to make the pilgrimage to Rome. Going down to the shore he found a ship1 liere d'vme providence, and embarked straightaway.141 So too the legendary st. Nicon stumbled onto a ship and its crew on Chios' shore, as he had Carlier done on the beach in his native region of Naples.142 If these ships were drawn up in a cove or other sheltered spot, the authors felt no need to specify it. A ninth-century biographer shows a holy stylite sitting on a Black Sea beach, working on a fishing net and reciting the Psalter, when a boat carrying two senatorial ladies and their retinues pulled into shore.143 Another Sicilian hagio-graphical novel depicts a ship sent from Constantinople to find a magician. The skipper spied him walking along the shore, and commanded his crew to beach the ship on the spot.144 So too, when the convoy bearing the relics of St. Mark mack its way back to Venice from Alexandria, God spread word of their marvelous cargo and people appeared to venerate the relics every time the ships "put into the ports or beaches of the regions" they traversed.145 It is no wonder that sunken ships have come to light in small coves and bays around the Mediterranean.146
*39 This is what I make of the complicated phraseology of Ignatius Deacon, V. Greg.
■ Dec, u, 55-25-56.9; cf. R422.
■ V. Eliaeiun. (BHL580), 52,80.1090-1096.
■ V. Eliaespeliot. (BHL581), 8,AASSSept. I 3d868).851A:
KaTEAflcbv £\f to> aiyiaAcp. passioNiconis (BHG1369), 6 and 5[I] MSS Mart 3.16B-C: ETTi tov aiyiaAovand Ev Tt) TTapaAig, respectively. On the :'te of this work, see McCormick 1998b, 371139.
Hindis, Sum. etGeor^ii, 19, 235.6-10. etmisCatamae(BHG 981): opcooiv tov
!42
l43 V.
1<H V.
'HAióScopov Ttspi tov aiyiaAóv PaSifjOVTcc. iivda 'HpaKAelBriS Tt\v vauv ékéAeuoev ÉAKuadř)vai, 90.9-n; for the Catanian work's composition c. 813-40, ibid., 54.
145 "... dum naves ad portus vel litora regionůmaccederent..." Transl. Marci, p. 259.
146 Two examples: the wrecks atMljet A, in a small bay south of Cape Stob, from 850-1000, Parker 1992, no. 703; and at La Palu (actually L'Anse de la Palu, He de Port-Cros) from 500-600?, ibid., no. 782; cf. Map 20.3.
420
421
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAVEL
Styles of navigation
So the early medieval ships were small and maneuverable enough that they coulH put in at all kinds of landings. When a storm threatened, when the crews were tired, to take on water, or just for a rest and perhaps some dinner, into shore they! went. Frequent landings were a part of sea travel on imperial business in thel seventh century as they were for important travelers in the ninth.147 Byzantine sea law worried about the master and crew members sleeping off the ship, though I the mention of a Syracusan lady who specialized in entertaining sailors reminds 1 us that sleep may not always have been the sailors' top priority.148 Mediterranean 1 coastal tramping as a way of life, the cabotage so memorably described by] Braudel, clearly had a long history behind it. The anecdotes lend concrete detail! to the general belief that early medieval shipping was concentrated in coastal j routes, and made frequent landings.149
All this suggests a kind of shipping which placed a premium on knowl-1 edge of coastlines - where it was safe to put in for a rest or in a hurry. As anyone I who has handled even a small boat knows, this puts emphasis on local experi-1 ence. It would have encouraged many sailors to stick to the waters, or rather,! the coastlines they knew best. Such a nautical culture would naturally have fos-1 tered zones dominated by local shipping organized around some main "hub." I From the perspective of long-distance shipping, such regionally constrained I horizons look like a limiting factor. But they might mean something else from the point of view of sailing opportunities. A skipper sure of where the next safe cove lay and confident that he could slip his ship into it, might not hesitate to venture out when conditions were changeable enough to deter a blue-water j mariner.
That some ships readily put in does not mean that they always did so, nor | that all ships did likewise.150 A miracle claims that it occurred "toward the
147 Cf. the frequent landings and relaxation enjoyed by the crew but denied to their papal captive between Rome and Constantinople in 653: Rig and Ch. 16.5, and the words of the Transl. Anastasiae (BHL402), p. 34, describing the return of the bishop of Zadar and the doge of Venice from Constantinople: "navigantes, cum saepissime insulis, villis, oppidis, et civitatibus applicantes, in eas descendis-sent cause recusationis [an recreationis?] humanae..."
148 Sea Laiv, 3,26, 26.1-27.7; the "sleeping"
occurs at day or night; Syracusan, see below.
149 See e.g. Claude 1985b, 58-60; Pryor 1992. 54-7; Braudel 1972,1:103-8.
150 For instance, the V. Damdis, Sym. et Geor^ii,
26,243.10-31 appears to contrasttwo
dif-
ferent ways of sailing in two brothers' dreams: as Symeon falls asleep, sailing from Herakleia on the Black Sea to the Sea ofMarmara, he sees St. Anthony walking across the water to him; his brother, who was sailing north from Lesbos, has a similar dream, but he sees St. Spyridonat
OPERATIONAL ISSUES
I ^ddle" of the Black Sea, on a course between Constantinople and Cherson.151 There were circumstances when the size of the vessel and the wishes of the pas-eiigers dictated frequent landings, for instance when St. Symeon of Lesbos ^oved from his home island to the Bosporus in the 820s, to escape the Arab raiders who were then proliferating in the Aegean. He traveled in a small vessel Lkation) along the shore of the Sea ofMarmara, and stopped frequendy so that he could visit the monks who resided along its Asiatic coast.152 There are plenty of Lses of coastal navigation and daily landings even in the heyday of Roman longdistance shipping, as St. Paul's voyage from Assos to Miletus reminds us (Acts 20.13-16).
Certain distant destinations obliged early medieval sailors to sail around the clock at least part of the way. Byzantine sea law assumed that a ship might be under sail at night.153 Detailed descriptions of storms occasion some mentions of night sailing. When Bonus' Venetian convoy was returning from Alexandria,
> for example, a squall overcame the ships as they sailed through the night. It made them go so fast that they covered far more distance than the sailors realized; in the poor visibility, the ships were about to run aground when the saint came to a sleeping passenger and ordered him to tell the sailors to drop the sails. They did
I so, and when the sun rose, one of the Strophades islands appeared nearby (Map 18.2).154 These coordinates reveal a blue-water crossing of the central Mediterranean. An eighth-century ship sailing from Apulia to mainland Greece also was overcome by storm. It spent the entire night at sea before arriving the
I next day at a "very safe port" on the opposite shore.155 Sailing to Constantinople, a Sicilian delegation was tossed about for three days and nights crossing the same Ionian Sea.156 Storms are not the explanation why these ships were at sea at night. In all three cases, the courses taken covered such large bodies of water that there
Psalidion walking on the shore along which his ship is coasting. In a story from the 660s, a crew member was sleeping in the middle of the night while his ship approached Gaul from across the sea; this ship sailed around the clock, perhaps over blue water: Mir. Art., 27,39.17-21. V. Niceraepatricii (BHG 1342b) 30, p. 347. Hie sailors had put into the saint's shrine, near Daphnousia (mod. Kefken Adasi: I IB g: i4g) on the Asiatic coast. The date °f the Life is not certain; most of it is a revision of a lost life written by the saint's nephew; the MS is s. xii: V. Nicetae, pp. 310-n and 329, app. Depending on the exact date, hostilities with the Bulgarians
could have dissuaded the sailors from a coastal route; but it is more likely that the blue-water route was customary, notwithstanding the violent storms which can arise on the Black Sea. Cf. R78.
152 V. Davidis, Sym. etGeorgii, 18, 233.26-234.3.
153 Sea Law, 3,36,31.5-32.12.
154 Transl. Marci, p. 258: "Stroalia"; cf. TiB 3: 266.
155 Transl. Heliani, 581.15-582.10; on the probable points of departure and arrival, see R167. The details in any case imply a blue-water course of over 100 NM.
156 Petrus, Mir. Pliantim (bhg 1509), 72.1077-81; translated above.
422
4^3
THE EXPERIENCE Ut iť.rtvc.1.
OPERATIONAL ISSUES
was no alternative to twenty-four-hour sailing; the storms were incidental. The ■ unusual circumstance of the storm accounts for us hearing about a relatively I banal occurrence.157 It is unclear whether the sailors who fell asleep during St 1 Constantine the lew's crossing from Attaleia to Cyprus did so at night, but the I distance implies at least an overnight sail (Map 7.1).158
Inevitable deep-sea crossings do not explain all night sailing. Probably in JulyB 813, Amalarius' ship was heading southbound in the vicinity of the Strait of I Otranto when one of his fellow travelers, the monk Gregory, became too seasick I to join his companions at table for dinner. He swore he would never pick himself ■ up off the boards (tabulae) until the poop stopped moving. Unfortunately for him, I the ship kept heaving and pitching all night long and he couldn't get a wink of I sleep. In the morning, strong winds began to blow from the south and eventually* drove the ship back to Dyrrachium. This was bad luck for Gregory, since south-1 erly winds blow there only some 15 percent of the time in July, but when they do, 1 they produce rough seas.159 Amalarius' good humored depiction of Gregory's! suffering (after all, if Christ's disciples got worried in a storm, why shouldn't ■ his?) is also good luck for us, because it shows that this ship was sailing at night, I apparently a matter of routine - along a coastal route. For Amalarius had been in I Zadar on 28 June, and the south wind forced him back to Dyrrachium. He was I surely heading for Kerkyra en route to Constantinople.160 Another coastal tripB which continued deep into the night covered the 27 NM from Constantinople™ west to Athyras.161 Both cases underscore that landing for the night was a custom I more observed by some sailors and in some places than others.
A literary flourish confirms that night sailing was familiar in Byzantine watersB Unless they had seen helmsmen steering their ships at night by the stars, howl would early tenth-century readers have made sense of a hagiographer's meta-B phor, that St. Theodore Studite was "a bright star ... guiding the steering of that 1 spiritual ship of the brethren," that is, the monastery of Stoudiou?162 Gregory the I
157 Another case describes how invoking a saint calmed a gth-C. lightning storm one winter's night: V. Petri Arroae (BHG 2364), 40, p. 155; cf. Vita retractota (BHG 2365),
p.115.
158 R498. From Attaleia to the western most point of Cyprus is some i3oNMas the crow flies; on speed of travel, see Ch. 16.4. See too R810.
159 Wind frequency chart: Mediterranean Pilot 1978-88, 3:29 (section 1.182.3); 161 (5.167); and 167 (6.8). Amalarius, Vers, mar., 427.10-26; cf. 427.7: "turbidus Auster."
160 Pros.
161 Miracula trio S. Nicolai (BHG 1253-6)' 2-4> 1.186.1-188.9; composed around the second half of the gthC: Beck 1959. 560.
162 Vita Nicolai Studitae (BHG 1365), PG, 105.869B; the phrase conceivably echoes j Ignatius' prologue to his Vita Nicephon (BHG 1335), 139.18-ig. On the Life and its date, A. Kazhdan, ODB 2:1471- F°r Isld°re| of Seville on sailors and stars, see Claude j 1985b, 61.
424
pekapolite's biographer indirectly reinforces the importance of non-stop sailing in Byzantium. On the saint's last trip to Constantinople he was ill, Ignatius writes, so the ship which transported him advanced "little by little," as though tnis were something unusual on the route between Thessalonica and Constantinople in the 830s.163 Along some stretches of coast, including this one, hostile activities encouraged ships not to put in to shore except under the most dire circumstances. Amalarius mentions just this reason on his homebound voyage
164
In port
When the ships put into ports, the sailors and merchants did the usual things. For instance, they visited whores who specialized in seafaring men. Thus a woman ;who seduced youths and men from the sea lingered around the port of Syracuse.165 Among the indignities inflicted on Pope Martin I when he was left exposed on his ship in the Julian Port at Constantinople, was taunting from dock-side bystanders who sound like pimps or male prostitutes.166 But early medieval manners and merchants also visited shrines and venerated relics - of St. Mark at Alexandria, for instance.167 So too the future doge John had visited Jerusalem at [least once in his younger years. That inspired him to imitate the church of the Anastasis when he decided to build a shrine for the new relics of St. Mark.168 Byzantine sailors crossing the Black Sea believed that they survived a storm thanks to a relic they had acquired at a saint's shrine during a landing.169 Mariners naturally also bought provisions.170 They loaded and unloaded cargo, transacted business (about which we have little data), and they killed time for reasons that are usually not stated.171 It was not just a matter of waiting for the right wind. The Sea Law seems to provide that a captain need not wait more than twenty days at an appointed time and place for a merchant's cargo to arrive for
163 Ignatius, V. Gre^. Decap., 29,71.19-20.
164 Below, ni93.
5 Ignatius, V. Gre^. Decap., 13,56.23-57.2. l6fi Theodore Spoudaios, Comm. (CPG 7969), PL, 129.592c: "varii homines, quos propter ferales mores lupaces dixerim." v'ta Martinigt., 6,258. On the interrelation of these various texts, see below, pp. 483-41158.
168 Tmm'' MarCÍ' 24°,2I~3; cf- above>ch- 9-1-Pros. "lohannes 14."
' v- Nicetaepatricii (BHG 1342b), 30, p. 347.
170 Transl. Marci, 257.3-9.
171 Heading for Constantinople c. 763, Gualtari was lucky to find a ship in an Apulian port loaded and ready to go ("ulterius transmeandi") Transl. Heliani, 581.16-17; cf. R167. A few decades earlier, Willibald had to wait "multos dies" for his ship to be prepared ("quando parata fuerat") at Tyre for a winter voyage to Constantinople: Hugeburc, V. Willibaldi, 101.16-17.
4*5
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAVEL
loading, and that during such delays the merchant had to pay for the cre\y'<
rations.
Aboard ship
We hear of a ship leaving port at daybreak and, a little more frequendy, of night departures. The latter are best attested in fiction, and might in fact crop up more frequently precisely because they were unusual.173 Nonetheless, around the Mediterranean the land breezes that in summer prevail before eight in the morning and after six or seven in the evening would have made those time slots most propitious for many departures.174
Discipline aboard merchant ships was not impressive, to judge from the Sea Law's concern about theft on board - with or without the captain's connivance-not to mention quarrels and fights.175 Sailors also drank a lot, even on board. Inspired by the fine weather they faced, one crew sailing between Attaleia and Cyprus had a little party. They got so drunk that they fell asleep - such was sailors' wont, we are told - and could not be awakened by a terrified passenger when the ship sprang a leak. Fortunately St. Constantine's prayers proved more powerful than seawater and wine, and the ship was saved.176
Beyond drunken sailors and terrified passengers, what were the ships carrying? The Byzantine administrative memoranda for the invasion of Crete provide exhaustive accounts of the spare parts, gear, weapons, food, drink, and raw materials supplied to each warship. They deserve a specialized study in themselves.177 For merchant mariners, the evidence is more fragmentary and complex. Travelers' accounts say little directly on this subject, but what they do say is precious and can be fitted with other evidence which testifies indirecdy to cargoes.
172 3, 25, 26.1-7, with Ashburner's discussion, ibid., pp. 103-4. Cf. too 3,22-3, 25.1-4, on conditions for filling out cargoes.
173 An imperial convoy leaving a Sicilian port at dawn: Liber pont. ecd. Rovenn., 145, 373.3-4. On night departures, Claude 1985b, 60-1; Martin I was spirited into a boat and away from Rome in the middle of the night certainly for secrecy: see Ch. 16.5. Urgency or stress on the emperor's despotical power might explain Heliodorus' nocturnal departure: V. Leonis Catan., 89.1-90.8; the papal fleet left
Agrigento at night for secrecy, according to the editor: V. Greg. Agrig., 65,222.8, cf. comm., p. 383; a nocturnal vision led some monks straight to the Tiber port of Rome, where they found a ship preparing to leave for Carthage: ibid., 24,174.25-8.
174 Weather 1962,92-5.
175 Sea law, 3,2-3 and 5-7,11.1-8 and 12.1-15.7; these are among the first problems treated in the Law.
176 V. Constanrini ludaei (BHG 370), 2g, 636A-C.
177 See in the forthcoming study of Jeffreys and Pryor, above, n6o.
OPERATIONAL ISSUES
The Byzantine sea law assumed that Greek bottoms of the seventh and eighth centuries carried slaves and textiles, especially linen and, apparently, silk (ueste) Torments.178 But they also transported bulk cargoes: grain is mentioned twice, nd wine and olive oil also occur.179 Otherwise they loaded ballast.180 Passengers might be carrying gold, silver, silk or pearls.181 Shipwrecks are now beginning to deepen the testimony of texts, but what they have to say about cargoes is best viewed in the broader perspective of routes and economic circuits (Tables 20.1-20.7)-
Like the owners and merchants, the sailors themselves probably stowed some I personal freight of their own. At least this venerable maritime tradition was I familiar in the later Middle Ages.182 Su-ch personal freight or a system of sharing the money made on the voyage explains how a seventh-century ship's carpenter I realized great profits on a voyage from Constantinople to Gaul (R24). Passengers also transported commercial freight, as we know from our travelers who paid for their pilgrimages by some kind of trading (above, pp. 24ofF).
Whatever the ships were carrying, they often loaded too much of it. This must be the explanation for the practice of jettison, throwing cargo overboard to avoid I swamping by high seas. It is carefully regulated by the Sea Law: the master was required to consultwith the passengers and take a vote, and the liability for "contribution," that is payment to indemnify each other for losses, was specified for all ranks aboard ship, down to and including slaves, whether or not they were being transported for sale.183 When jettison was decided, the merchant traveling I with his cargo was required to throw the first piece over the side.184 The number of references to the practice indicate not only that it raised complex issues of liability, but that it arose often enough to generate considerable conflict. The root of 1 the problem is revealed by another provision of the Sea Law. This required a merchant in advance to have formally accused, before three witnesses, the master of overloading the ship with cargo additional to the merchant's own, in order for the master to bear chief liability for jettison. And this was in cases where the merchant had contracted for transport of a full load.185 Whatever the inherent seaworthiness of early medieval ships, the tendency was to load them up to and beyond a safe limit. This habit, which was not unknown in antiquity, can only have encouraged those who hugged the coasdine, even as it was bolstered by the exceptionally stable sailing climate which prevails in much of the Mediterranean
7° Sea Law, 3, Q> 16.9-11; 3, 34, 30.1; cf. Trapp etal. igg4) 275.
79 Sea Lam, 3,38 and 39,32.1 and 33.1.
>0 'bid., 3,21,24.5-6; Ignatius uses a simile founded on an unballasted ship's heaving m the waves and passengers' discomfort to make a point in his V. Nicepfiori, 181.^-24.
181 Sea Lain, 3,40,34.2-7.
182 Ibid., pp. clxxiv-clxxvi.
183 Ibid., 3,9,16.1-n.
184 Ibid., 3,38,33.8-13.
185 Ibid., 3, 22, 25.1-9.
426
427
THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAVEL
OPERATIONAL ISSUES
summer."6 In fact another of Ignatius Deacon's similes suggests that in his mind, the need for jettison was due not to the ships of his age, but to human errors of seamanship.187
Danger
From all that we have found, it is clear that merchant ships plied the Mediterranean in this era, notwithstanding what has been written about the impact of warfare and raiders. Byzantine sea law speaks of the "dangers of the sea" as a matter of course, and mentions in the same breath piracy, fire and shipwreck.188 Crews, captains, and passengers were well aware of the perils they faced. As far as life aboard ship was concerned, danger reinforced the need for consensus. The biography of Gregory the Dekapolite shows how crews and merchants played a role in deciding whether a ship took a course which might be considered particularly hazardous at a particular moment. The crew (nautai) of Gregory's ship at first refused to set sail for Sicily from Corinth, out of fear of the Arabs then threatening the region.189 Merchants hesitated to put to sea from Ephesus one spring, because of nearby Arab pirates. In both cases, the saint overcame their trepidation.190 These hagiographical vignettes are entirely in keeping with the provisions of the Sea Law, which assigns liability for losses due to sailing into areas known to be infested by pirates according to the consent of the passengers or captain.191 But the very fact that consent and opposition to risky voyages were explicitly treated in the Sea Law shows that dangers were not so overwhelming as to prevent the search for profit at sea.192 And when there were good reasons for sailing, the awareness of danger looks as likely to precipitate a change in route or in habit as to curtail sailing altogether. Amalarius is quite clear when he implies that, on his return voyage from Constantinople, his ship simply stayed away from
186 On antiquity, see Digest 14, 2, pp. 219-21. On the Mediterranean's distinctively long spells of good weather, Mediterranean Pilot 1978-88,1:15.
187 Writingabout how the patriarch's helm of orthodoxy guided the storm-tossed church through seas of heresy to the safe port: V. Tarasii (BHG 1698), 418.10-21. Jettison is referred to almost as a regular procedure in heavy weather, e.g., Sea Lain, 3,35,31.1-4:3,9,16.1-17.18.
188 "Dangers" in general: ibid., 3, 30, 28.2; cf. 3,31, 29.2; pirates, etc.: 3, 28, 28.3, and 3, 29,28.3.
189 Ignatius, V. Greg Decap., 11,55.12-14.
190 Ibid., 9, 53.18—27.
191 It further absolves master or passenger of liability if a ship comes to grief at a noncontractual landing which either opposed. Sea Law, 3,4,13.17; 3, 39> 33.1-34.15.
192 See e.g., the shipowner who sailed from Methone to Demetrias, and was enslaved by the Arabs en route, while St. Blasius and his disciples miraculously escaped: R729.
428
land even under inclement weather, in order to avoid the well-attested danger of Slav pirates.193
Although we have no precise data on the cost of passenger or goods transport, the fares do not seem to have been cheap. When Gregory the Dekapolite was contemplating sailing from Reggio to Rome, he demonstrated his sanctity by turning down the gift of a gold coin, even though he needed it for the voyage.194 Bernard and his fellow passengers paid their fare, apparently of two gold pieces each, when they disembarked from his slave transport in the port of Alexandria.195 For what it is worth, these fares do not look out of line with what Goitein has found around iioo.196 So too the legendary St. Nicon took lots of money with him when lie found a ship to transport him to the east.197 In fact, Latin hagiographers rarely miss the opportunity to state that their heroes paid the "ship fare." Was this because it was a rare chance to show off a Greek loan-word which occurred but once in their Bible? Or because of a desire to reassure their readers that the saints in question were not non-paying travelers, that is slaves, aboard the vessels which took them to the Middle East?198
And so, we can reconstruct substantial parts of the experience of travel in the early medieval Mediterranean. On land, infrastructures were changing for the better, I strengthening communications between the Frankish northwest and eastern Europe with Italy, particularly across the Alps. Texts like Amalarius' Versus marini, the fictional Life of Leucius or, indeed, the substantial Byzantine hagiography of the eighth and ninth centuries add a number of new and revealing details to the picture of early medieval seafaring. Whether we are interested in hardtack, the availability of incense aboard Venetian ships, or baskets of goods, careful scrutiny of the Latin sources alongside the Greek joins with archaeology to illuminate the implications of previously isolated texts. The result is a vivid picture of shipping, both peaceful and otherwise.
■93 Amalarius, Versus mar., 428.64-5: "Sta procul a terra, Sclavorum litora linque, / Pelliculas tendant fratres pluviasque repellant." Adriatic: the Narrentani along the Neretva river: see e.g. R428 and R601; Aegean: R34; cf. Ignatius, V. Greg. Decap. ,0; 54.23-55-3-
y4 Ibid., 11, 55.15-18. For the interpretation °f to xpuoiov, cf. ibid., 17, 62.5-6 and 8. On Muslim ship fares of the early 10th C, Christidesi993,82. Itinerarium, 5, p. 311.
196 Goitein 1967-93,1,339-43, where the sea transport of a bale of "purple" (and the person who accompanied it: 341) from Alexandria to Tunisia cost a little over 4 contemporary dinars, not including customs and gratuities.
197 Passio Niconis, 5,16B.
198 Naulum occurs in the Vulgate in Jonas 1,3. Cf. e.g., Hugeburc, V. Willibaldi 91.6-7; V. Madaluei, 14, p. 197; V. Leucii, p. 364; north of the Alps: Willibald, Vita Bcmifatii (BHL 1400), 4, MGHSRG 16.8.
429
This picture gives us some insight into cargoes, sizes of ships, and groups of ships. We listen in on sailors talking between ships as the wind speeds them gentiy home on a blue-water course from Egypt, and watch the passengers do waterproof skins as the rain begins. The biggest commercial ships we have xn^ seem to be slavers, and we have noted that the ease with which early medieval ships were beached encouraged a proliferation of landing places, which some times developed into markets. But there is much that this picture does not tell us" It hints of changes in the intensity of communications, in the geographic and ethnic backgrounds of the ships and crews that frequented the northern shores of the Mediterranean, in the culture of coastal shipping. But the hints are often ambiguous: once again, so much depends on how we construe them and on the overall context in which we view them. To look behind the anecdotes, we must count, ifeven in a rudimentary fashion, to see if the frequency of communications shows any rhythms, over the years and over the seasons. To detect discrepancies we must identify, compare, explain seeming inconsistencies in the evidence which emerge only from more abstract evaluation, and point the way to deeper more difficult truths, or make simpler ones less uncertain. We shall attempt this in two ways: in the next chapters we shall grapple with the problem of the aggregate and hitherto hidden patterns of early medieval communications over time; thereafter we shall examine them through space.
I
430
14
Secular rhythms: communications ouer time
pvART 11 uncovered a surprisingly large number of people who trav-I eled in the early medieval Mediterranean region. Impressive though their numbers are, close scrutiny showed that it was their travels, not their individual numbers, that promised broader patterns of communications. Their trips document many movements which reached beyond the micro-regional level. To these personal movements the narrative records add a few more instances of communication, chiefly letters and arriving news. In these cases the persons conveying the information cannot be clearly discerned. They nonetheless imply movement which is very specifically situated in time and space, and so testify also to patterns of communication.1 In all, both kinds of evidence document substantially more movements in the early medieval Mediterranean than have ever before been observed or considered. They reveal at least 410 instances of more or less peaceable communications in the eighth and ninth centuries, ranging in geographic scale from voyages between Sicily and Rome to trips linking Sweden and Francia, via Constantinople. The aggregate data derived from this mostly prosopographical research is referred to as the "core movements." The Greek, Latin, and Old Church Slavonic evidence for each of these trips has been scrutinized in detail; erroneous hypotheses, datings, or interpretations have been eliminated insofar as was humanly possible. The results of these studies have been summarily catalogued in Appendix 4, the "Register of Communications."
The investigation has focused on long-distance travel. This is reflected in the dominant pattern of these core movements, over 340 ofwhich covered more than 500 km to east or west. The greatest single group of movements that traveled fewer than 500 km to east or west falls into what we might call longer distance regional or interregional travel, and stems from southern Italy. Most of these
1 Such movements are listed in Appendix 4, the Register of Communications.
431