474 forests and forestry: Europe The Germanic tribal peoples who settled in western Europe established laws about wood resources The Visigothic Laws of the Judges included penalties for cutting down large and small oaks as well as other trees and allowed for the seizure of the oxen and vehicle of anyone entering another’s forest with a cart to carry away wood The Burgundian Code of the late fifth and early sixth centuries required that anyone felling a fruit, pine, or fir tree had to pay the tree owner solidus The law, however, also recognized the need for wood even if one did not own wooded land: “If any Burgundian or Roman does not have forested land, let him have the right to cut wood for his own use from fallen trees or trees without fruit in anyone’s forest, and let him not be driven away by the owner of the forest.” The Laws of the Salian Franks had the following restriction: “He who takes a tree after the year that it was marked for cutting shall bear no blame If he cuts it down during that year, he shall be liable to pay solidi.” This particular law shows that the early Franks managed their woodland by designating trees of sufficient size for their needs each year and did not indiscriminately cut down forested areas In the ninth-century code of King Alfred of Wessex (r 871–99) the act of burning or felling trees carried a fine per tree based on size: shillings for a big tree and pence for a small one The Danish king Canute, ruler of Denmark and England (r 1016–35), supposedly issued a law code specific to English forests, Constitutiones de Foresta Although the law code was altered by a Norman scribe to agree with postconquest practices, it probably contains the general concept of Anglo-Danish forest law Capitulary 28 stated that anyone who disturbs the wood or undergrowth without the permis- The Savernake Horn, ivory, England or Scotland, 1325–50 Various forest scenes are depicted, among them a king seemingly in conversation with a bishop, with a forester alongside; the scene is thought to portray the forming of a forestry agreement. (© The Trustees of the British Museum) sion of the minister of the forest is considered to have violated the laws of royal chase Wood collection relied on the practices of coppicing and pollarding Trees could be cut approximately feet above ground level to create a sprouting stump that yielded a significant number of smaller branches (coppiced) or higher on the trunk so that young sprouts were out of the reach of grazing animals (pollarded) Ash and field maple were used for poles, hazel for fences, and others such as oak and birch for firewood and fodder Coppice stands usually consisted of one species growing from regularly spaced stumps and, scattered among them, larger trees, called standards, grown for construction timber The practice of coppicing dramatically increases the life span of a tree as well as its wood yield, so less clear-cutting is required Woodland in forests also provided fodder for livestock To integrate wood collection and pasturage, two practices became common First, the practice of pollarding the trees allowed livestock such as cattle to graze on grasses without reaching the trees’ new growth Second, lords permitted swine in the woods during the time of pannage, or, in medieval Latin, pasnagio, when the pigs were allowed to gorge on the fallen acorns and beech mast, typically from mid-September through mid-November This period was followed by the slaughtering season in preparation for the winter months Despite the variability of the crop, feeding pigs on fallen acorns in the fall was a common practice, to make them plump before the slaughtering season These fattened pigs were a necessity over the slim winter months; hence their common inclusion in “occupation of the months” illustrations on medieval calendars, called “books of hours.” These “occupations of the months” pages became common in later 14th-century manuscripts, such as Le livre d’heures of Jeanne d’Évreux (1310–71), the third wife of Charles IV of France, in which a swineherd knocks down acorns to feed his pigs, and Les petites heures of Jean of Valois (1340–1416), duke of Berry and Auvergne, in which pigs forage in October and are slaughtered in December While royal forests acted as sources of pasture, timber, and wood, their primary legal purpose was as hunting reserves Medieval chroniclers stress the creation of royal forests as reserves for the privilege of hunting game for the king These hunting areas were not always densely wooded; many of them were open glades with some tree cover This tradition in England dated back at least to the Saxon days (early fifth century to the conquest), when the right of the chase was reserved in areas close to royal residences Examples of AngloSaxon hunting grounds (haia) afforested by William the Conqueror (r 1066–87) were the Forest of Galtres in the center of Yorkshire and the Forest of Peak Southern Europe had hunt-