A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins. Johann Beckmann

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СКАЧАТЬ avarice of landholders, favoured by the meanness and injustice of governments, and by the weakness of the people, extended this regality not only over all streams, but also over the air and wind-mills. The oldest example of this with which I am at present acquainted, is related by Jargow456. In the end of the fourteenth century, the monks of the celebrated but long since destroyed monastery of Augustines, at Windsheim, in the province of Overyssel, were desirous of erecting a wind-mill not far from Zwoll; but a neighbouring lord endeavoured to prevent them, declaring that the wind in that district belonged to him. The monks, unwilling to give up their point, had recourse to the bishop of Utrecht, under whose jurisdiction the province had continued since the tenth century. The bishop, highly incensed against the pretender who wished to usurp his authority, affirmed that no one had power over the wind within his diocese but himself and the church at Utrecht, and he immediately granted full power, by letters patent, dated 1391, to the convent at Windsheim, to build for themselves and their successors a good wind-mill, in any place which they might find convenient457. In the like manner the city of Haerlem obtained leave from Albert count palatine of the Rhine to build a wind-mill in the year 1394458.

Another restraint to which men in power subjected the weak, in regard to mills, was, that vassals were obliged to grind their corn at their lord’s mill, for which they paid a certain value in kind. The oldest account of such ban-mills, molendina bannaria, occurs in the eleventh century. Fulbert, bishop of Chartres, and chancellor of France, in a letter to Richard duke of Normandy, complains that attempts began to be made to compel the inhabitants of a part of that province to grind their corn at a mill situated at the distance of five leagues459. In the chronicle of the Benedictine monk Hugo de Flavigny, who lived in the eleventh and twelfth century, we find mention of molendina quatuor cum banno ipsius villæ460. More examples of this servitude, secta ad molendinum, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, may be seen in Du Fresne, under the words molendinum bannale.

It is not difficult to account for the origin of these ban-mills. When the people were once subjected to the yoke of slavery, they were obliged to submit to more and severer servitudes, which, as monuments of feudal tyranny, have continued even to more enlightened times. De la Mare461 gives an instance where a lord, in affranchising his subjects, required of them, in remembrance of their former subjection, and that he might draw as much from them in future as possible, that they should agree to pay a certain duty, and to send their corn to be ground at his mill, their bread to be baked in his oven, and their grapes to be pressed at his wine-press. But the origin of these servitudes might perhaps be accounted for on juster grounds. The building of mills was at all times expensive, and undertaken only by the rich, who, to indemnify themselves for the money expended in order to benefit the public, stipulated that the people in the neighbourhood should grind their corn at no other mills than those erected by them.

      FOOTNOTES

380 Hesiod, Opera et Dies, 421.—It appears that both the mortar and pestle were then made of wood, and that the former was three feet in height; but, to speak the truth, Hesiod does not expressly say that this mortar was for the purpose of pounding corn. The mortar was called ὕπερος, pila; the pestle ὕπερος, or ὕπερον, pistillus or pistillum; to pound, μάσσειν, pinsere, which word, as well as pinsor, was afterwards retained when mills came to be used.—Plin. lib. xviii. c. 3.

381 Plin. xviii. 10. ii. p. 111. This passage Gesner has endeavoured to explain, in his Index to the Scriptores Rei Rusticæ, p. 59, to which he gives the too-dignified title of Lexicon Rusticum.

382 Gellius, iii. c. 3.

383 Deuteronomy, ch. xxiv. v. 6.

384 When Moses threatened Pharaoh with the destruction of the first-born in the land of Egypt, he said, “All the first-born shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sitteth on the throne, even unto the first-born of the maid-servant that is behind the mill.”—Genesis, ch. xi. v. 5. See Homeri Odyss. vii. 103, and xx. 105.

385 Apuleii Metamorph. lib. ix.

386 The oldest cattle-mills have, in my opinion, resembled the oil-mills represented in plate 25th of Sonnerat, Voyages aux Indes, &c., i. Zurich, 1783, 4to. To the pestle of a mortar made fast to a stake driven into the earth, is affixed a shaft to which two oxen are yoked. The oxen are driven by a man, and another stands at the mortar to push the seed under the pestle. Sonnerat says, that with an Indian hand-mill two men can grind no more than sixty pounds of meal in a day; while one of our mills, under the direction of one man, can grind more than a thousand.

387 Voyage du Lévant, 4to, p. 155.

388 A haycock was called meta fœni. Colum. ii. 19. Plin. xxvii. 28.

389 Niebuhr’s Déscription de l’Arabie. A figure of both stones is represented in the first plate, fig. H.

390 Memorie di varia erudizione della Societa Colombaria Fiorentina. Livorno, 1752, 4to, vol. ii. p. 207.

391 No. 282, p. 1285, and in the abridgement by Jones, 1700–20, vol. ii. p. 38.

392 Joh. Heringii Tractatus de Molendinis eorumque jure. Franc. 1663, 4to. A very confused book, which requires a very patient reader. F. L. Gœtzius De Pistrinis Veterum. Cygneæ 1730, 8vo. Extracted chiefly from the former, equally confused, and filled with quotations from authors who afford very little insight into the history or knowledge of mills. Traité de la Police, par De la Mare.—G. H. Ayrer, De Molarum Initiis; et Prolusio de Molarum Progressibus, Gottin. 1772.—C. L. Hoheiselii Diss. de Molis Manualibus Veterum. Gedani 1728.—Pancirollus, edit. Salmuth. ii. p. 294.—Histoire de la vie privée des Francois, par Le Grand d’Aussy. Paris, 1782, i. p. 33.—See Fabricii Bibliographia Antiq. Hamburgi, 1760, p. 1002.

393 Plin. lib. vii. c. 56.

394 Stephan. De Urbibus, v. μυλαντία.

395 Pausanias, iii. c. 20. edit. Kuhnii, p. 260.

396 Strabo, lib. xii. edit. Almelov. p. 834. In the Greek stands the words ὑδραλέτης, perhaps an ἅπαξ λεγόμενον, which the scholiasts have explained by a water-mill. In many of the later translations of Strabo that word is wanting.

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