Silva Carbonaria - Use As A Border

Use As A Border

When the Franks settled on the left bank of the Rhine in the fourth century, the Salian Franks rapidly occupied the flat open country with its coastal marshes, and the mixed tribal groups that Romans called Belgae withdrew to the wooded south; there the Romanized Celts—the "Wala" or "strangers" to the Germanic Franks—continued speaking a Late Latin: their label as Wala survives in Walloon. In the past the Romance-Germanic linguistic division that marks Belgium to this day has been perhaps too facilely linked to these geographic parameters.

The Silva Carbonaria is mentioned in the Salic Law of the Franks, where it marked "the boundary of the territories occupied by the Frankish people". For a time in the sixth century, the Silva Carbonaria formed a barrier between the West Frankish kingdom of Clovis and the East Frankish kingdom of Sigebert the Lame, centred on Cologne, until he was defeated some time after 507, and Clovis joined the two kingdoms, which however retained their separate identities throughout the rule of the Merovingians.

Extensive tracts of the untamed woodlands belonged to monasteries. The Benedictine Abbey of Lobbes lay in the Silva Carbonaria and that of Saint Foillan, in the Sonian Forest (Forêt de Soignes/Zoniënwoud) not far from Nivelles.