PRIESTS IN EARLY BRITTANY:

Priests had very special functions; they had business skills, which they used on behalf of their neighbors, and they had money and they were prepared to lend it. In many ways their activities were central to the functioning of the community of the plebs, even if they rarely joined the band of local elders. Priests like Worcomin even had properties in two plebes – Pipriac and Maure; they were among the wealthiest of peasants, but not necessarily the most wealthy – there were often ‘multiple owners’ with more land units – and they certainly never had interests that would place them among the aristocracy.

Like the judges, priests had reputations which stretched beyond the boundaries of their home plebs, and they might sometimes be found witnessing transactions in the meetings of a neighbouring community.

Even the priests’ grants to parishes often had a family interest, and they might require a resulting tenancy to be passed on to siblings at their own deaths. For example: in 834, the priest Worcomin gave Redon land in Pipriac that he had received from his father with a reservation that whichever of his family should work the land in future should regularly pay 2s a year, and he imposed the large fine of 100s if they failed to do so.

SOURCE – Small Worlds: The Village Community in Early Medieval Britanny,  By Wendy Davies.