All societies are conditioned by their environment, but for a largely peasant society which was almost exclusively dependent upon its own agricultural production this was particularly the case. Behind the history of events, and underpinning settlement, social structure, the economy, urban development and that of religious institutions, were what Braudel called ‘structural realities’, that is geography and the environment.

Geography

The principality of Salerno, in which Cava itself and most of its congregation lay, was composed of four, or if one includes the duchy of Amalfi perhaps one should say five, distinct geographical zones (Map 7). The geographical heart of the principality was the alluvial plain stretching south from the city of Salerno to Paestum, although the coastline of this plain was marshy, malarial, and relatively uninhabited; there was still, however, some economic activity in this region, notably fishing. The classical city of Paestum had been abandoned when the inhabitants had moved, at some point in the early Middle Ages, possibly as late as c. 1000, to the upland site of Capaccio, some 6 km inland, for reasons both of health and security. The bishop, probably the only suffragan of the archbishop of Salerno within the principality until the second half of the eleventh century, still called himself ‘bishop of Paestum’, but he would seem actually to have been resident in Capaccio. His title, however, officially changed to reflect this reality only during the later twelfth century. This coastal plain proper is relatively narrow, about 6 km wide at the northern end and 10 km at the south, but it shades into a slightly higher plain south of Eboli, 46 metres (about 150 feet) above sea level. Most of the early-medieval settlement in the low-lying region was actually on the lower slopes of the mountains that bordered it, although there was intensive cultivation around the river Tusciano below Eboli, and settlement spread into the plain during the twelfth century. Several villages developed in this plain during that century, and the number of rural churches founded in the area suggests that there may also have been quite widespread dispersed settlement.