The ‘Book of Serfs of Marmoutier’ recorded the dealings the monastery had with its serfs in the eleventh century. The eleventh century itself is said to have been a time in which there was a collapse of political authority. Political and judicial institutions are alleged to have been ‘privatised’ as part of the so-called ‘feudal revolution’ that was caused by the collapse of Carolingian authority. This view has often been challenged. The Marmoutier material on serfs is discussed in relation to this debate. Do the monastery–serf relations reflect a privatisation of power? Or if the privatisation of power is an historical myth, how do we explain the highly contested nature of space, community, wealth and authority revealed in the ‘Book of Serfs’? It is argued that authority had indeed fragmented but that this was a response to a conjunction of factors apart from the collapse of the Carolingian state. To the contrary, the Carolingian rulers had encouraged the kind of lord–serf relations that we see in the ‘Book of Serfs’. What is different about our eleventh-century material is that there is more of it, and we are able to see details of social relations at a local level for the first time.

(READ 12 March 2004)