SC -spice and economics

[Decker, Terry D.]

This point is open to question.  In 716, Chilperic II the King of Neustria,
abated the taxes on one pound of cinnamon, two pounds of cloves and 30
pounds of pepper for the monastery of Corbie in Normandy.  And in 745, the
archbishop of Mainz, Wynfrith Boniface, received a gift of pepper from the
Roman deacon Gemmulus.

There are a number of references which suggest the spice trade did not
disappear, but continued through Byzantium into Europe at a slower and more
costly pace.

Bear

> There's an oldie but goodie book, 
> 
> Pirenne, Henri.  ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE. 
> Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York,.
> 
> One note for the person doing the Carolingian feast, the 
> spice trade was
> not available.  "The Western peoples who, from the end of the 
> Merovingian
> era, had left off using spices, welcomed them with growing eagerness. 
> They soon recovered their place in the diet of the upper classes of
> society, and the more commerce exported them noth of the 
> Alps, the more
> the demand for them increased." p. 144.
> 
> Allison,     allilyn at juno.com