demographic development

the population of western Europe appears to have increased from the mid-seventh century onwards. Archaeological investigation of two burial fields near Cologne in Germany allows a comparison between the sixth and seventh centuries, and points to an increase in population in that part of the Rhineland of up to 60% in 100 years. This is not particularly high, since in Alemannia an extraordinary increase of three to six times the population of the sixth century is probably due to external causes such as immigrations. Pollen analyses in various areas of Germany such as the Rhön and Eifel show a clear increase in grain pollen from the seventh century onwards. This points to the extension of arable land, which is also borne out indirectly by some admittedly rare and isolated texts from the seventh century.

The earliest more explicit written records of land clearance concern the surroundings of Fulda in Thuringia during the second half of the eighth century. Particular mention is made of well-delimited virgin lands called porprisum, bifang or capture in which estates and farms were established by reclamation of new land. There were twelve in the eighth century and thirty-six in the first thirty to forty years of the ninth century. These clearances were not primarily the work of the abbey but of laymen who subsequently donated the bifang to the abbey for further extension. Elsewhere in Germany, more particularly in southwest Germany and especially in the Odenwald, numerous reclamations in the form of bifang or captura are mentioned in the records of the abbeys of Lorsch and Fulda in the ninth century.