Pagus
Encyclopedia
In the later Western Roman Empire
, following the reorganization of Diocletian
, a pagus (compare French pays
, Spanish pago, "a region, terroir
") became the smallest administrative district of a province
.
By that time the word had long been in use with various meanings. Smith's Dictionary says of it, "The meaning of this word cannot be given in precise and absolute terms, partly because we can have no doubt that its significance varied greatly between the earliest and the later times of Roman history, partly because its application by Latin writers to similar, but not identical, communities outside Italy ..."
of Indo-European
*pag-, a verbal root, "fasten" (English peg), which in the word may be translated as "boundary staked out on the ground." In semantics
, *pag- used in pāgus is a stative verb
with an unmarked lexical aspect of state resulting from completed action: "it is having been staked out," converted into a noun
by -us, a type recognizable in English adjectives such as surveyed, defined, noted, etc. English does not use the noun: "the surveyed," but Latin characteristically does. Considering that the ancients marked out municipal districts with boundary stones, the root meaning is nothing more than land surveyed for a municipality with stakes and later marked by boundary stones, a process that has not changed over the millennia.
Earlier hypotheses concerning the derivation of pāgus suggested that it is a Greek loan from either πήγη, "village well," or πάγος, "hill-fort." William Smith
opposed these on the grounds that neither the well nor the hill-fort appear in the meaning of pāgus.
, pagus referred to a country district or to a community within a larger polity
; Julius Caesar
, for instance, refers to pagi within the greater polity of the Celtic Helvetii
.
The pagus and vicus
(a small nucleated settlement or village) are characteristic of pre-urban organization of the countryside. In Latin epigraphy
of the Republican era
, pagus refers to local territorial divisions of the peoples of the central Appennines and is assumed to express local social structures as they existed variously.
As an informal designation for a rural district, pagus was a flexible term to encompass the cultural horizons of "folk" whose lives were circumscribed by their locality: agricultural workers, peasants, slaves. Within the reduced area of Diocletian's subdivided provinces, the pagi could have several kinds of focal centers. Some were administered from a city, possibly the seat of a bishop; other pagi were administered from a vicus that might be no more than a cluster of houses and an informal market; yet other pagi in the areas of the great agricultural estates (latifundia
) were administered through the villa
at the center.
The historian of Christianity Peter Brown
has pointed out that in its original sense paganus meant a civilian or commoner, one who was excluded from power and thus regarded as of lesser account; away from the administrative center, whether that was the seat of a bishop, a walled town or merely a fortified village, such inhabitants of the outlying districts, the pagi, tended to cling to the old ways and gave their name to "pagans"; the word was used pejoratively by Christians in the Latin West to demean those who declined to convert from the traditional religions of antiquity.
count
(comes
). Within its boundaries, the smaller subdivision of the pagus was the manor
. The majority of modern French pays are roughly coextensive with the old counties (e.g., county of Comminges
, county of Ponthieu
, etc.) To take an instance, at the beginning of the 5th century, when the Notitia provinciarum was drawn up, the Provincia Gallia Lugdunensis Secunda
formed the ecclesiastical province of Rouen
, with six suffragan sees; it contained seven cities (civitates
). For civil purposes, the province was divided into a number of pagi: the civitas of Rotomagus (Rouen) formed the pagus Rotomagensis (Roumois
); in addition there were the pagi Caletus (Pays de Caux
), Vilcassinus (the Vexin
), the Tellaus (Talou); Bayeux
, the pagus Bajocassinus (Bessin
), and the Otlinga Saxonia; that of Lisieux
the pagus Lexovinus (Lieuvin
); that of Coutances
the p. Corilensis and p. Constantinus (Cotentin
); that of Avranches
the p. Abrincatinus (Avranchin
); that of Sez the p. Oximensis (Hiémois), the p. Sagensis and p. Corbonensis (Corbonnais); and that of Evreux
the p. Ebroicinus (Evrecin) and p. Madriacensis (pays de Madrie) (EB "Normandy").
The pagus was the equivalent of what English-speaking historians sometimes refer to as the "Carolingian shire", which in German is the Gau
. In Latin texts, a canton
of the Helvetic Confederacy
is rendered pagus.
Western Roman Empire
The Western Roman Empire was the western half of the Roman Empire after its division by Diocletian in 285; the other half of the Roman Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire, commonly referred to today as the Byzantine Empire....
, following the reorganization of Diocletian
Diocletian
Diocletian |latinized]] upon his accession to Diocletian . c. 22 December 244 – 3 December 311), was a Roman Emperor from 284 to 305....
, a pagus (compare French pays
Pays (France)
In France, a pays is an area whose inhabitants share common geographical, economic, cultural, or social interests, who have a right to enter into communal planning contracts under a law known as the Loi Pasqua or LOADT , which took effect on February 4, 1995.It was augmented on June 25, 1999, by...
, Spanish pago, "a region, terroir
Terroir
Terroir comes from the word terre "land". It was originally a French term in wine, coffee and tea used to denote the special characteristics that the geography, geology and climate of a certain place bestowed upon particular varieties...
") became the smallest administrative district of a province
Roman province
In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and, until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of Italy...
.
By that time the word had long been in use with various meanings. Smith's Dictionary says of it, "The meaning of this word cannot be given in precise and absolute terms, partly because we can have no doubt that its significance varied greatly between the earliest and the later times of Roman history, partly because its application by Latin writers to similar, but not identical, communities outside Italy ..."
Etymology
Pāgus is a native Latin word from a root pāg-, a lengthened gradeApophony
In linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammatical information .-Description:Apophony is...
of Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
*pag-, a verbal root, "fasten" (English peg), which in the word may be translated as "boundary staked out on the ground." In semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
, *pag- used in pāgus is a stative verb
Stative verb
A stative verb is one that asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property . Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; that is, they have undefined duration...
with an unmarked lexical aspect of state resulting from completed action: "it is having been staked out," converted into a noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
by -us, a type recognizable in English adjectives such as surveyed, defined, noted, etc. English does not use the noun: "the surveyed," but Latin characteristically does. Considering that the ancients marked out municipal districts with boundary stones, the root meaning is nothing more than land surveyed for a municipality with stakes and later marked by boundary stones, a process that has not changed over the millennia.
Earlier hypotheses concerning the derivation of pāgus suggested that it is a Greek loan from either πήγη, "village well," or πάγος, "hill-fort." William Smith
William Smith (lexicographer)
Sir William Smith Kt. was a noted English lexicographer.-Early life:Born at Enfield in 1813 of Nonconformist parents, he was originally destined for a theological career, but instead was articled to a solicitor. In his spare time he taught himself classics, and when he entered University College...
opposed these on the grounds that neither the well nor the hill-fort appear in the meaning of pāgus.
Roman usage
In classical LatinClassical Latin
Classical Latin in simplest terms is the socio-linguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it...
, pagus referred to a country district or to a community within a larger polity
Polity
Polity is a form of government Aristotle developed in his search for a government that could be most easily incorporated and used by the largest amount of people groups, or states...
; Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, for instance, refers to pagi within the greater polity of the Celtic Helvetii
Helvetii
The Helvetii were a Celtic tribe or tribal confederation occupying most of the Swiss plateau at the time of their contact with the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC...
.
The pagus and vicus
Vicus (Rome)
In ancient Rome, the vicus was a neighborhood. During the Republican era, the four regiones of the city of Rome were subdivided into vici. In the 1st century BC, Augustus reorganized the city for administrative purposes into 14 regions, comprising 265 vici. Each vicus had its own board of...
(a small nucleated settlement or village) are characteristic of pre-urban organization of the countryside. In Latin epigraphy
Epigraphy
Epigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...
of the Republican era
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...
, pagus refers to local territorial divisions of the peoples of the central Appennines and is assumed to express local social structures as they existed variously.
As an informal designation for a rural district, pagus was a flexible term to encompass the cultural horizons of "folk" whose lives were circumscribed by their locality: agricultural workers, peasants, slaves. Within the reduced area of Diocletian's subdivided provinces, the pagi could have several kinds of focal centers. Some were administered from a city, possibly the seat of a bishop; other pagi were administered from a vicus that might be no more than a cluster of houses and an informal market; yet other pagi in the areas of the great agricultural estates (latifundia
Latifundia
Latifundia are pieces of property covering very large land areas. The latifundia of Roman history were great landed estates, specializing in agriculture destined for export: grain, olive oil, or wine...
) were administered through the villa
Roman villa
A Roman villa is a villa that was built or lived in during the Roman republic and the Roman Empire. A villa was originally a Roman country house built for the upper class...
at the center.
The historian of Christianity Peter Brown
Peter Brown (historian)
Peter Robert Lamont Brown is Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University. His principal contributions to the discipline have been in the field of late antiquity and, in particular, the religious culture of the later Roman Empire and early medieval Europe.-Life:Peter Brown was born in...
has pointed out that in its original sense paganus meant a civilian or commoner, one who was excluded from power and thus regarded as of lesser account; away from the administrative center, whether that was the seat of a bishop, a walled town or merely a fortified village, such inhabitants of the outlying districts, the pagi, tended to cling to the old ways and gave their name to "pagans"; the word was used pejoratively by Christians in the Latin West to demean those who declined to convert from the traditional religions of antiquity.
Post-Roman pagus
The pagus survived the collapse of the Empire of the West, retained to designate the territory controlled by a Merovingian or CarolingianCarolingian
The Carolingian dynasty was a Frankish noble family with origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD. The name "Carolingian", Medieval Latin karolingi, an altered form of an unattested Old High German *karling, kerling The Carolingian dynasty (known variously as the...
count
Count
A count or countess is an aristocratic nobleman in European countries. The word count came into English from the French comte, itself from Latin comes—in its accusative comitem—meaning "companion", and later "companion of the emperor, delegate of the emperor". The adjective form of the word is...
(comes
Comes
Comes , plural comites , is the Latin word for companion, either individually or as a member of a collective known as comitatus, especially the suite of a magnate, in some cases large and/or formal enough to have a specific name, such as a cohors amicorum. The word comes derives from com- "with" +...
). Within its boundaries, the smaller subdivision of the pagus was the manor
Manorialism
Manorialism, an essential element of feudal society, was the organizing principle of rural economy that originated in the villa system of the Late Roman Empire, was widely practiced in medieval western and parts of central Europe, and was slowly replaced by the advent of a money-based market...
. The majority of modern French pays are roughly coextensive with the old counties (e.g., county of Comminges
Comminges
The Comminges is an ancient region of southern France in the foothills of the Pyrenees, corresponding closely to the arrondissement of Saint-Gaudens in the department of Haute-Garonne...
, county of Ponthieu
Ponthieu
Ponthieu was one of six feudal counties that eventually merged together to become part of the Province of Picardy, in northern France. Its chief town is Abbeville.- History :...
, etc.) To take an instance, at the beginning of the 5th century, when the Notitia provinciarum was drawn up, the Provincia Gallia Lugdunensis Secunda
Gallia Lugdunensis
Gallia Lugdunensis was a province of the Roman Empire in what is now the modern country of France, part of the Celtic territory of Gaul. It is named after its capital Lugdunum , possibly Roman Europe's major city west of Italy, and a major imperial mint...
formed the ecclesiastical province of Rouen
Rouen
Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...
, with six suffragan sees; it contained seven cities (civitates
Civitas
In the history of Rome, the Latin term civitas , according to Cicero in the time of the late Roman Republic, was the social body of the cives, or citizens, united by law . It is the law that binds them together, giving them responsibilities on the one hand and rights of citizenship on the other...
). For civil purposes, the province was divided into a number of pagi: the civitas of Rotomagus (Rouen) formed the pagus Rotomagensis (Roumois
Roumois
The Roumois, , the region round Rouen is a region of plateau located in the northwestern part of the Eure département in Normandy.Its boundaries are the Seine downstream of Elbeuf to the north, to the west the Risle valley and the plain of Le Neubourg to the south. The communes are Bourg-Achard...
); in addition there were the pagi Caletus (Pays de Caux
Pays de Caux
The Pays de Caux is an area in Normandy occupying the greater part of the French département of Seine Maritime in Haute-Normandie. It is a chalk plateau to the north of the Seine Estuary and extending to the cliffs on the English Channel coast - its coastline is known as the Côte d'Albâtre...
), Vilcassinus (the Vexin
Vexin
The Vexin is a historical county of northwestern France. It covers a verdant plateau on the right bank of the Seine comprising an area east-to-west between Pontoise and Romilly-sur-Andelle , and north-to-south between Auneuil and the Seine near Vernon...
), the Tellaus (Talou); Bayeux
Bayeux
Bayeux is a commune in the Calvados department in Normandy in northwestern France.Bayeux is the home of the Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England.-Administration:Bayeux is a sub-prefecture of Calvados...
, the pagus Bajocassinus (Bessin
Bessin
The Bessin is an area in Normandy, France, corresponding to the territory of the Bajocasse tribe of Gaul who also gave their name to the city of Bayeux, central town of the Bessin.-History:The territory was annexed by the Duchy of Normandy in 924....
), and the Otlinga Saxonia; that of Lisieux
Lisieux
Lisieux is a commune in the Calvados department in the Basse-Normandie region in northwestern France.Lisieux is the capital of the Pays d'Auge area, which is characterised by valleys and hedged farmland...
the pagus Lexovinus (Lieuvin
Lieuvin
The Lieuvin is a plateau region in the western part of the Eure département in Normandy.The plateau consists of typical Norman bocage and is bounded by the Seine estuary to the north, the Risle valley to the east, the Charentonne valley to the south and, in the west, the Pays d'Auge which...
); that of Coutances
Coutances
Coutances is a commune in the Manche department in Normandy in north-western France.-History:Capital of the Unelli, a Gaulish tribe, the town took the name of Constantia in 298 during the reign of Roman emperor Constantius Chlorus...
the p. Corilensis and p. Constantinus (Cotentin
Cotentin Peninsula
The Cotentin Peninsula, also known as the Cherbourg Peninsula, is a peninsula in Normandy, forming part of the north-western coast of France. It juts out north-westwards into the English Channel, towards Great Britain...
); that of Avranches
Avranches
Avranches is a commune in the Manche department in the Basse-Normandie region in north-western France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department. The inhabitants are called Avranchinais.-History:...
the p. Abrincatinus (Avranchin
Avranchin
The Avranchin is an area in Normandy, France, corresponding to the territory of the Abrincates, tribe of Celts who also gave their name to the city of Avranches, main town of the Avranchin....
); that of Sez the p. Oximensis (Hiémois), the p. Sagensis and p. Corbonensis (Corbonnais); and that of Evreux
Évreux
Évreux is a commune in the Eure department, of which it is the capital, in Haute Normandie in northern France.-History:In late Antiquity, the town, attested in the fourth century CE, was named Mediolanum Aulercorum, "the central town of the Aulerci", the Gallic tribe then inhabiting the area...
the p. Ebroicinus (Evrecin) and p. Madriacensis (pays de Madrie) (EB "Normandy").
The pagus was the equivalent of what English-speaking historians sometimes refer to as the "Carolingian shire", which in German is the Gau
Gau (German)
Gau is a German term for a region within a country, often a former or actual province. It was used in medieval times, when it can be seen as roughly corresponding to an English shire...
. In Latin texts, a canton
Canton (subnational entity)
A canton is a type of administrative division of a country. In general, cantons are relatively small in terms of area and population when compared to other administrative divisions such as counties, departments or provinces. Internationally the best-known cantons, and the most politically...
of the Helvetic Confederacy
Helvetia
Helvetia is the female national personification of Switzerland, officially Confœderatio Helvetica, the "Helvetic Confederation".The allegory is typically pictured in a flowing gown, with a spear and a shield emblazoned with the Swiss flag, and commonly with braided hair, commonly with a wreath as...
is rendered pagus.