FellowSpeak: "Eating Cheese in the Carolingian Empire"

A 30 min. talk by Noah Blan, Institute for the Humanities 2018-19 postdoctoral research fellow, followed by Q & A.

On January 13, 829 CE, the Carolingian emperor, Louis the Pious, along with his eldest son and co-ruler Lothar I, issued a charter that confirmed provisions claimed by the monks of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a large and prosperous Parisian abbey. Among the supplies demanded of the villages and common households that owed them goods and services, the monks ordered more than 8,000 pounds of cheese, an astonishing request given the constraints of energy and labor in a preindustrial, organic economy. Following the production of this cheese—from small dairy farms to its consumption at elite tables—reveals how early medieval people organized land and limited resources to produce large quantities of food. This talk demarginalizes the peasants and animals whose exploitation sustained aristocratic appetites and puts them at the center of an intricate and precarious food network. In short, it examines how something as simple as eating cheese was an act that nourished a vast and complex empire.