Let us try, now, to look at those estates from a more human point of view and see what life was like to a farmer who lived upon them.

The abbey possessed a little estate called Villaris, near Paris, in the place now occupied by the park of Saint Cloud.

When we turn up the pages in the estate book dealing with Villaris, we find that there was a man called Bodo living there.[1] He had a wife called Ermentrude and three children called Wido and Gerbert and Hildegard; and he owned a little farm of arable and meadow land, with a few vines.

And we know very nearly as much about Bodo's work as we know about that of a smallholder in France today.

Let us try and imagine a day in his life.
On a fine spring morning towards the end of Charlemagne's reign Bodo gets up early, because it is his day to go and work on the monks' farm, and he does not dare to be late, for fear of the steward.