Bodies at the Bottom of a Well
Finding Violence in the European Middle Ages
Modern Medieval
by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele
As some of you may know, I’m in St. Andrews (Scotland) for the Fall and working on our new book Oathbreakers. I’ll write some more sometime soon about the wonderful group of medievalists here, the intellectual community they’ve built, and the amazing setting there is to do work on the European Middle Ages. Today, however, I want to talk briefly about echoes of violence from the medieval past.
Over coffee (sometimes the best research conversations happen over coffee), a colleague here alerted me to an archeological discovery from 2013 that might be related to our current book.
During excavations in Entrains-sur-Nohain (near Auxerre, France), the remains of some 20-30 bodies were discovered at the bottom of a well. In addition to reading about it in the link above, you can also watch an interesting short video about the discovery (in French).
The site itself was once a Roman town called Intaranum, a small-ish but thriving community that was active at least well into the 4th century CE. It was a hub for the region as “roads radiated from Entrains to Auxerre, Autun, and Bourges through Mesves or Cosnes and to Orléans through St. Amand and Neuvy-sur-Loire.” But the site must have been occupied for much longer because preliminary (in 2013) carbon dating of the skeletons dated the bodies in the well to sometime ca. 800-1000 CE. More importantly, the bodies - of men, women, and children - seem to have all been thrown into the well together. The press release says:
In the small space (barely 1.3 m in diameter) of one of the wells, the archaeologists unearthed human skeletons and two large keys... They then uncovered numerous bones... The 20 to 30 bodies thrown simultaneously into the well were in diverse positions: backed up against the wall, on their stomach or back, with their limbs folded or disconnected. The presence of men, women and children, sometimes very young, represents a civil population.
The huge question is why the bodies were there in the first place.
It’s possible that these were victims of some unknown pandemic. A follow-up article in Le Monde (in French) quotes an anthropologist saying that this is possible but perhaps unlikely, given that this site shows no signs of lime, which was often used to sanitize similar mass graves related to disease.
More likely then, this is evidence of a massacre.
One bit of helpful context in interpreting this all is that a similar find was made in Norwich, England in 2004. There, 17 skeletons (also men, women, and children) were found at the bottom of a disused well in the city. After extensive testing, in 2022 a multidisciplinary team concluded definitively that these were Jews who were murdered almost certainly ca. 1190 CE by the city’s Christians in an event that was described by a medieval chronicler and was linked to the beginning of the Third Crusade.
An academic article that discusses 2 other bodies found in wells from Normandy in the 8th-10th centuries (and that mentions both of the above examples) further helps us interpret what’s going on in Entrains-sur-Nohain. In Normandy, the skeletons of both individuals showed signs of trauma - likely murder or mistreatment - and so were their bodies were almost certainly thrown in after death. In their conclusions, the authors of the article emphasize how uncommon it is to find bodies in wells from medieval Europe. Therefore, such archeological discoveries in wells strongly suggest that there was a desire to conceal what was done. At the very least, such discoveries should be seen as signaling some sort of extraordinary event.
At Entrains-sur-Nohain, and in the period the skeletons seem to date from, there was no shortage of violence in the period from which the skeletons date. One definite possibility is that the fallen may have been the victims of a raid by external forces. Viking attacks were endemic throughout the Loire valley (the site is only about 18 miles from that river) in the later 9th century. Petty castellans, such as those we talk about in Chapter 8 of The Bright Ages, were constantly at war in the region during the 900s and could have sacked the town. But the most intriguing possibility is the victims are related in some way to the Battle of Fontenoy, in June 841 - having taken place only about 14 miles from Entrains-sur-Nohain.
That battle, the centerpiece of our new book Oathbreakers, was the bloodiest element of the Carolingian Civil War of the 840s. There, the sons of Emperor Louis the Pious (d. 840) met in battle, with the younger brothers Charles the Bald (d. 877) and Louis the German (d. 876) defeating their elder brother Lothar (d. 855) and nephew Pepin of Aquitaine (d. ca. 864). What stood out to contemporaries in this battle was not only the fact that brother fought brother, but that it was a slaughter.
The Annals of Fulda state “there was such slaughter on both sides that no one can recall a greater loss among the Frankish people in the present age.” Andreas of Bergamo noted “After the battle arrays were set up… there was a great slaughter, mainly of Aquitanian nobles. There, because of evil contentions and improvidence,…many strong men died”. The historian Nithard, a noble and participant in the battle, recounted that “the booty and the slaughter were immense and truly astonishing.” Angelbert, another participant who wrote a dirge about the battle afterwards, said in his poem that “There has been no worse massacre on the field of battle. Christian law is violated; blood flows in waves; and in hell the maw of Cerberus opens with glee.” The Annals of Xanten noted, chillingly, that the Christians had “fought each other like madmen (debachati sunt).” Finally, the Annals of St. Bertin recorded that “Many were slain on both sides; still more were wounded. Lothar suffered a shameful defeat and fled. The slaughter of the fugitives continued on all sides, until Louis and Charles, afire with generous feelings, ordered an end to the carnage.”
That last bit in that last quotation should catch our attention because it means that the violence didn’t end with the battle. It means that the defeated were being pursued to the death. This would expand the scope of the battlefield beyond the field in which it took place to surrounding towns and villages radiating outwards from Fontenoy.
If Pepin of Aquitaine fled southwest from the battle, it’s possible (given Entrains-sur-Nohain’s situation on the old Roman road network mentioned above) that he and his army would have passed through on his way to safety. In addition, the army of Charles the Bald was said to have camped before and after the battle at Thury, a site between Entrains-sur-Nohain and Fontenoy. Could the residents of this town have been caught in the bloody aftermath of the battle, or could they have been victims of a foraging army on its way to the battle? We cannot be certain until more research is done to determine how precisely these people died.
What we can say for now is that the families of Entrains-sur-Nohain - men, women, and children - were almost certainly murdered as a part of the extraordinary violence that accompanied the breakdown of the Carolingian empire. They most likely suffered because of the violent squabblings of elites over power and how it led to civil war, to external invasions, and ultimately petty warlords across the 9th and 10th centuries.
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