Key Players in the Rural Clearance of Medieval Europe 1050-1150

Between about 1050 and 1150, Europe underwent one of the most transformative periods in its environmental and social history. Forests, marshes and wilderness were rapidly reshaped into fields, villages and monastic estates. This sweeping “Age of Clearance” altered landscapes, power structures and daily life in ways still visible today and provided for the establishment of both new monasteries and preceptories. But what forces drove the major actors in this dramatic rural reshaping of medieval Europe?

Medieval monasteries in the Netherlands

"The historical development of monastic life in the present-day Netherlands made a late start in comparison with the surrounding countries, though ‘foreign’ abbeys from an early moment possessed immovable goods in the Netherlands, which often were organised in manors (‘courts’). However, the number of monasteries which actually settled in the Netherlands before 1100 was very modest. What are the facts?