LITMIR.BIZ

      Introduction

      Approaching the Medieval Landscape

      In the middle of a cold, icy medieval winter, the bare trees of the Ardennes would have provided little shelter from biting winds, snow, and freezing rain. But once spring arrived and “it was the time when the hoary ice melts off of the mountains and the west wind loosens up the fetid earth,” the Ardennes were beautiful. On one particular morning in April 716, as a monk named Agilolf walked through the beautiful forest toward his death, “the woods were in leaf, the plants were bright with flowers.”¹

      Changes of the seasons often brought dramatic alterations in the appearance of the mountainous, forested Ardennes. Although at times the woods may have presented a dark visage to strangers, as spring approached they would have been clothed in a range of brilliant new greens, filled with beeches and birches, water-loving alders, and leafy, shady oaks.² As the canopy grew in over the summer, trees would provide shade and shelter for plants, people, and animals. Glades and clearings were sprinkled throughout the shady, cool woods, and they would have been bright and open places, their grasses and flowers welcoming people and animals. Then the fall would usher in a new range of colors, fruits, and nuts. Tangles of brush and trees would have grown up in the places where woods and glades met, creating a varied, interesting, and complex ecosystem.

      Agilolf was walking near the Amblève River, and on the day in question, the spring thaws would have already begun. The river would have been swollen and swift, running down from its source in the Hohe Venn, a high plateau that dominates the Northern Ardennes. After flowing through the mountains surrounding the plateau and past some high, forested hills, the river is joined by one of many tributaries. The beds of both rivers were swampy, with drier land located twenty meters higher up, and a medieval author explained that they “provided many accommodations and amenities, especially an abundance of grass.”³ Before reaching the monastery of Stavelot (where Agilolf was the abbot), the river flowed by a settlement that shared its name, the manor of Amblève (or Amel), which had existed since at least Roman times.⁴

      Situated in the heart of the medieval Ardennes, far from major cities, the manor was seemingly safe in the river valley, “surrounded by a dense wood at a high elevation, and defended by hills.”⁵ Medieval evidence suggests these woods would have been filled with an abundance of wild animals such as deer, boar, and wolves. Yet the manor was also in the middle of a managed

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