Medieval Filth as a Source of Fortune
To a certain extent the story of Rome is reflected in medieval Europe,
when classical agricultural texts were rediscovered by the likes of the
thirteenth-century agronomist Walter of Henley. In these agricultural texts are
repeated the recommendations of classical authors alongside the advice of
Arabic writers such as Ibn al-Awwan, for whom waste was once again a source of
life rather than death. The importance of animal dung is medieval Arab
agriculture is apparent from the wide variety of terms employed to describe the
different varieties:
Above table after Varisco
(2012) (see chapter references)
As for the Roman rural population, waste was a source of goodness and,
for many, brought not only material benefits in the form of food but also
spiritual succor: the Bible is full of references to dung and dunghills, the
Old Testament making clear that it is from the dung heap that the poor will be
delivered and the unrighteous condemned.
Furthermore, the metamorphosis through which unholy excrement is
converted into wholesome fertilizer is akin to transubstantiation. Undoubtedly
this was read as an allegory of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection: from
death
and decaying matter, through the process of putrefaction, comes a substance
that can restore life.
For this reason, great
efforts and industry was put into retrieving manure and spreading it on fields
– even the urban population made a contribution, their ‘night soil’ being
collected by gong farmers, or ‘gongfermours’. The gonfermours’s job was to clean out urban cess-pits and take
the contents out to collection points in at the extremities of towns so that it
might be spread on the fields.