Inancient Rome, theLatin wordpagus (pluralpagi) was an administrative term designating a rural subdivision of a tribal territory, which included individual farms, villages (vici), and strongholds (oppida) serving as refuges,[1][2][3] as well as an early medieval geographical term. From the reign ofDiocletian (284–305 AD) onwards, thepagus referred to the smallest administrative unit of aprovince.[4] These geographical units were used to describe territories in theMerovingian andCarolingian periods, without any political or administrative meaning.
Pāgus is a nativeLatin word from arootpāg-, alengthened grade ofIndo-European*paǵ-, a verbal root, "fasten" (pango); it may be translated in the word as "boundary staked out on the ground".[5] Insemantics,*pag- used inpāgus is astative verb with an unmarkedlexical aspect of state resulting from completed action: "it is having been staked out", converted into anoun 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 ofpāgus suggested that it is a Greekloan from eitherπήγη,pége, 'village well', orπάγος,págos, 'hill-fort'.William Smith opposed these on the grounds that neither the well nor the hill-fort appear in the meaning ofpāgus.[6]
The wordpagus is the origin of the word forcountry inRomance languages, such aspays (French) andpaís (Spanish), and more remotely, for English "peasant". Corresponding adjectivepaganus served as the source for "pagan".
Inclassical Latin,pagus referred to a country district or to a community within a largerpolity;[7]Julius Caesar, for instance, refers topagi within the greater polity of theCelticHelvetii.[8]
Thepagus andvicus (a small nucleated settlement or village) are characteristic of pre-urban organization of the countryside. In Latinepigraphy of theRepublican era,pagus refers to local territorial divisions of the peoples of the centralApennines and is assumed to express local social structures as they existed variously.[9]
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, thepagani could have several kinds of focal centers. Some were administered from a city, possibly the seat of a bishop; otherpagi were administered from avicus that might be no more than a cluster of houses and an informal market; yet otherpagi in the areas of the great agricultural estates (latifundia) were administered through thevilla at the center.
The historian of ChristianityPeter Brown has pointed out that in its original sensepaganus 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, thepagi, tended to cling to the old ways and gave their name to "pagans"; the word was used pejoratively by Christians in theLatin West to demean those who declined to convert from the traditional religions of antiquity.[10]
The concept of thepagus survived the collapse of the Empire of the West. In theFrankish kingdoms of the 8th–9th centuries, however, thepagus had come to serve as a local geographical designation rather than an administrative unit. Particular localities were often named as parts of more than onepagus, sometimes even within the same document. Historians traditionally considered thepagus under theCarolingian Empire to be the territory held by a count, but Carolingian sources never refer to counts of particularpagi, and from the 10th century onwards the "county" orcomitatus was sometimes explicitly contrasted to thepagus. Unlike thecomitati, the centers of which are often identifiable as the count's seat, towns are not known to have derived any special political significance from serving as the ostensible centers ofpagi.[11]
The majority of modern Frenchpays are roughly coextensive with the old counties (e.g., county ofComminges, county ofPonthieu, etc.) For instance, at the beginning of the 5th century, when theNotitia provinciarum et civitatum Galliae was drawn up, theProvincia Gallia Lugdunensis Secunda formed the ecclesiastical province ofRouen, with six suffragan sees; it contained seven cities (civitates).[12] The province of Rouen included thecivitas of Rotomagus (Rouen), which formed thepagus Rotomagensis (Roumois); in addition there were thepagiCaletus (Pays de Caux),Vilcassinus (theVexin), theTellaus (Talou);Bayeux, the pagus Bajocassinus (Bessin, including briefly in the 9th century theOtlinga Saxonia); that ofLisieux the pagus Lexovinus (Lieuvin); that ofCoutances the p. Corilensis and p. Constantinus (Cotentin); that ofAvranches the p. Abrincatinus (Avranchin); that of Sez the p. Oximensis (Hiémois), the p. Sagensis and p. Corbonensis (Corbonnais); and that ofEvreux the p. Ebroicinus (Evrecin) and p. Madriacensis (pays deMadrie).[12]
The Welsh successor kingdom ofPowys derived its name frompagus orpagenses, and gives its name to the modernWelsh county.[13]
Thepagus was the equivalent of what English-speaking historians sometimes refer to as the "Carolingian shire", which in German is theGau. In Latin texts, acanton of theHelvetic Confederacy is renderedpagus.
Media related toPagus at Wikimedia Commons