Talk:Silva Carbonaria

Please vet this text, which I've completed in a very few saves, for imagined "copyright violations" now, before Wikipedia's numerous mirrors pick it up and some bright soul sees it and reports it as a copyright violation. Thank you. --Wetman (talk) 04:08, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Niviala

 * Extensive tracts of the untamed woodlands belonged to monasteries. The Benedictine Abbey of Lobbes was in the Silva Carbonaria and that of Saint Foillan, in the Forêt de Soignes/Zoniënwoud not far from Nevele.

Isn't this Nivelles instead of Nevele? "That of Foillan would probably be closer to Nivelles as Saint Foillan worked there. --moyogo (talk) 14:27, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually the article Sonian Forest translates this Niviala with Nivelles. --moyogo (talk) 14:29, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

picture text: "modern old-growth beech forest"
The density of such a forest is formed by both natural historical conditions:
 * The tree tops of beeches retaining mor daylight than those of oaks, untamed forests dominated by beeches have less undergrowth than forests dominated by oaks.
 * Under more or less medieval conditions, forests were used as wintertime pastures. The animals reduced lower species of plants as well as the regeneration of beeches and oaks by young trees.
 * Traditional wood economy of complete deforestation and complete replant of determined parts of a forest enforced the tendency of beech tops to form a dense ceiling above a clear ground. (In German such forests are called Buchendom, i.e. beech cathedral.)
 * Modern foresters with ecological awareness prefer selective cut and natural regeneration, which has the consequence of a less dense top storey and more undergrowth.
 * Pollution and resulting tree illnesses have thinned out almost all tree tops.-Ulamm (talk) 11:45, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

comments on this article
Many of the sources I can find which truly debate where the forest was are very old. Modern books seem to make assumptions that are not deeply thought through. Does anyone know of any modern source which reviews the real evidence from the ground up? More specific concerns coming from this include the shape of the forest on the map we use, and the assertion that north of the forest of the Rhineland kingdom based in Cologne. As far as I can see these are only speculations, and not agreed by everyone, even if they are published in well-known sources? Here is an old article useful because it gives the small number of old citations in full: More details about doubts:
 * We know from Roman sources that the area north of this forest was where the Salii had long lived, for example in Toxandria (see our article on the Salians), and that they had only recently starting taking over the forest when our sources concerning the forest as a boundary first start. It seems to be a boundary then between old and new (Merovingian) Salian territory, not Salian and "Ripuarian" (Rhineland). Also, later it seems to have been considered a boundary between Neustria and Austrasia.
 * As shown in the old sources mentioning the forest, it included Tournai. Our map would therefore be completely wrong.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:46, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Further notes on this subject.
 * It seems the long slow academic discussion can be summed up as questioning whether the forest went mainly east-west, splitting Hainaut from Brabant, or mainly north-south, between the old Roman civitates, and medieval church archdioceses, of Cambrai (which contained most of Brabant and Hainaut) and Tongeren/Liège. Here is a source that uses BOTH definitions? (And indeed why should the forest be a thin and unbranching line?
 * H Vander Linden 1923 is often cited as the source of the more recent north south idea http://www.persee.fr/docAsPDF/rbph_0035-0818_1923_num_2_2_6224.pdf
 * A name often mentioned as arguing for an east-west forest is G Kurth 1896, La frontière linguistique. For example Vander Linden says Pirenne and Vanderkindere, very important in early 20th century Belgian history writing, followed him.
 * Vander Linden does not comment on the primary source mentioned by the 19th century source I mentioned above (Freiherren von Richthofen) that seems to suggest Tournai is touched by the forest. Here that is on the dMGH website. Looking at it I can see why later writers might not agree that "carbonarium sylvam ingressus Tornacensem urbem obtinuit" means that Tournai is in the forest as opposed to being on the other side, which would match better sources anyway.
 * Unlike our map, Vander Linden seems to propose no forest between Brussels and Louvain, but rather the forest stopping to the south of them? I am not seeing much evidence to support our map in this respect. In other words, although Flemish speaking Brabant lands were in the archdiocese of Cambrai, I am wondering if they were not in Salian hands very early, and then always part of Austrasia. Certainly by the Middle Ages, the whole archdiocese seems to have been considered east Frankish, with the forest included, and only the lands outside the forest being in the western kingdom?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:22, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

proposal to remove map
So after looking at both our current text and more sources, as described above, I am going to remove the map which shows the forest stretching too far north.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:37, 17 December 2017 (UTC)