ABSTRACT
Historians for a long time viewed the economy and society of the early Middle Ages as static. The peasantry, in particular, was thought to have been not only poor but more or less immobile. Historians are well aware that early medieval peasants, though poor, often had to journey outside their localities, sometimes going quite long distances. Medieval historians have shown, too, that peasants were in permanent contact with a money economy, often to quite a considerable extent. The chapter presents the dynamic picture of the economic life of the early medieval peasantry. It explores the use of a certain document that has received particularly close examination during the twenty-five years: the Polyptych of the monastery of Prum. The term 'polyptych'–which means, literally, many leaves–denotes an inventory of material and human resources made on the orders of a great landed proprietor in the Carolingian period.
