The Origins of the German Principalities, 1100-1350: Essays by German Historians 1472448421, 9781472448422

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of genealogical charts
List of maps
List of figures
Preface
List of contributors
List of abbreviations
Genealogical charts
Maps
SECTION A Introductory essays
1 A political and social revolution: the development of the territorial principalities in Germany
2 The growth of princely authority: themes and problems
SECTION B Forms and structures of power
3 Princely lordship in the reign of Frederick Barbarossa: a historiographical analysis
4 Urban lordships
5 The imperial city: the example of Nuremberg
6 Forms and structures of power: ecclesiastical lordship
7 Foundations and forms of princely lordship: the archbishopric of Mainz
8 Eichstätt: abbey, diocese, lordship
SECTION C Strategies of power
9 Marriage and inheritance
10 The propaganda of power: memoria , history, patronage
11 Violence, feud, and peacemaking
SECTION D The geography of power
12 Centres and peripheries of power
13 The territorial principalities in Lotharingia
14 The rise of the Wettins
15 Saxony after 1180
16 Pomerania, Mecklenburg and the ‘Baltic frontier’: adaptation and alliances
SECTION E The consolidation, expansion and disruption of power
17 The Zähringer in Swabia and Burgundy
18 A success story: Brandenburg in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
19 The Babenbergs: from frontier march to principality
20 Shaping a dominion: Habsburg beginnings
Appendix: selected primary sources
(a) The Privilegium Minus 1156
(b) The Gelnhausen charter 1180
(c) The confederation with the ecclesiastical princes 1220
(d) The statute in favour of the princes 1230
(e) The Mainz land peace 1235
(f) The creation of the duchy of Brunswick 1235
Glossary
Bibliographies
Index

Citation preview

The Origins of the German Principalities, 1100–1350

The history of medieval Germany is still rarely studied in the English-speaking world. This collection of essays by distinguished German historians examines one of the most important themes of German medieval history, the development of the local principalities. These became the dominant governmental institutions of the late medieval Reich, whose nominal monarchs needed to work with the princes if they were to possess any effective authority. Previous scholarship in English has tended to look at medieval Germany primarily in terms of the struggles and eventual decline of monarchical authority during the Salian and Staufen eras – in other words, at the ‘failure’ of a centralised monarchy. Today, the federalised nature of late medieval and early modern Germany seems a more natural and understandable phenomenon than it did during previous eras when state-building appeared to be the natural and inevitable process of historical development, and any deviation from the path towards a centralised state seemed to be an aberration. In addition, by looking at the origins and consolidation of the principalities, the book also brings an English audience into contact with the modern German tradition of regional history (Landesgeschichte). These path-breaking essays open a vista into the richness and complexity of German medieval history. Graham A. Loud is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Leeds and was Head of the School of History at Leeds from 2012–15. Jochen Schenk is Lecturer in Transnational Medieval History at the University of Glasgow and was formerly a post-doctoral research fellow at the German Historical Institute in London.

The Origins of the German Principalities, 1100–1350 Essays by German Historians

Edited by Graham A. Loud and Jochen Schenk IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE LONDON

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 selection and editorial matter, Graham A. Loud and Jochen Schenk; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Graham A. Loud and Jochen Schenk to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-4724-4842-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-55489-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of genealogical charts List of maps List of figures Preface List of contributors List of abbreviations Genealogical charts Maps

viii ix x xi xiv xvi xix xxxviii

SECTION A

Introductory essays 1 A political and social revolution: the development of the territorial principalities in Germany

1

3

GRAHAM A. LOUD

2 The growth of princely authority: themes and problems

23

JÖRG ROGGE

SECTION B

Forms and structures of power 3 Princely lordship in the reign of Frederick Barbarossa: a historiographical analysis

37

39

WERNER HECHBERGER

4 Urban lordships GABRIEL ZEILINGER

60

vi

Contents

5 The imperial city: the example of Nuremberg

68

CARLA MEYER-SCHLENKRICH

6 Forms and structures of power: ecclesiastical lordship

83

ANDREAS BIHRER

7 Foundations and forms of princely lordship: the archbishopric of Mainz

101

JOACHIM SCHNEIDER

8 Eichstätt: abbey, diocese, lordship

121

HELMUT FLACHENECKER

SECTION C

Strategies of power 9 Marriage and inheritance

137 139

KARL-HEINZ SPIEß

10 The propaganda of power: memoria, history, patronage

160

STEFAN TEBRUCK

11 Violence, feud, and peacemaking

181

CHRISTINE REINLE

SECTION D

The geography of power

205

12 Centres and peripheries of power

207

PAUL-JOACHIM HEINIG

13 The territorial principalities in Lotharingia

220

MICHEL MARGUE AND MICHEL PAULY

14 The rise of the Wettins

239

ANDRÉ THIEME

15 Saxony after 1180

256

ARND REITEMEIER

16 Pomerania, Mecklenburg and the ‘Baltic frontier’: adaptation and alliances OLIVER AUGE

264

Contents

vii

SECTION E

The consolidation, expansion and disruption of power

281

17 The Zähringer in Swabia and Burgundy

283

THOMAS ZOTZ

18 A success story: Brandenburg in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

298

LUTZ PARTENHEIMER

19 The Babenbergs: from frontier march to principality

312

CHRISTINA LUTTER

20 Shaping a dominion: Habsburg beginnings

329

MARTINA STERCKEN

Appendix: selected primary sources (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

347

The Privilegium Minus 1156 347 The Gelnhausen charter 1180 349 The confederation with the ecclesiastical princes 1220 352 The statute in favour of the princes 1230 355 The Mainz land peace 1235 357 The creation of the duchy of Brunswick 1235 365

Glossary Bibliographies Index

369 378 393

Genealogical charts

I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX

Salians Staufer Welfs Babenberger Zähringer Counts of Andechs and Dukes of Merania Wittelsbacher Ascanians Landgraves of Thuringia Wettins Counts and Dukes of Limburg Dukes of Brabant Dukes of Upper Lotharingia Spanheimer Lords of Mecklenburg Dukes of Pomerania Margraves of Baden Habsburger Luxemburger

xix xx xxi xxii xxiii xxiv xxv xxvi xxvii xxviii xxix xxx xxxi xxxii xxxiii xxxiv xxxv xxxvi xxxvii

Maps

I II III IV V

Germany and its Principalities c. 1200 Northwest Germany Southwest Germany Northeast Germany Southeast Germany

xxxviii xxxix xl xli xlii

Figures

9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5

Marriages and sons of the Wittelsbacher Dukes of Bavaria Marriages and heirs of the Welf Dukes of Brunswick Married and clerical sons in princely families Clerical careers among the sons of imperial princes Married daughters and nuns among the daughters of the upper nobility

144 145 148 149 151

Preface

The study of medieval German history, and especially that of the central and later Middle Ages, has always been somewhat neglected in the Anglophone academic world. When I first started to teach medieval history nearly 40 years ago, almost the only relevant book available for students or the intelligent general reader was Geoffrey Barraclough’s The Origins of Modern Germany, then already a generation old and definitely showing its age, but which remained for want of anything else as the standard introduction for at least another decade. That dire situation has much improved in recent years, not least in the greatly extended range of contemporary sources from Germany now available in English translation (see the bibliography at the back of this book). But, having for some years tried to teach an advanced course on the history of the German Empire in the central Middle Ages, one is acutely conscious of the many gaps in the available literature, and of how few historians writing in English have ventured into this field. Without, for example, the contributions of the Oxford historian Karl Leyser and his pupils Benjamin Arnold and Timothy Reuter, the available scholarship in English would still appear remarkably thin. And insofar as historians in Britain have studied medieval Germany they have tended to follow the example of Prof Leyser and looked to the earlier part of the period. Anglophone study of the Carolingian and Ottonian periods relatively flourishes, while that of the centuries from the Investiture Contest onwards is less populated, even taking into account the handful of historians (very able ones) working in this field in the USA. The history of the German empire in the Middle Ages is fascinating. But by no means all medievalists in the English-speaking world can read German, or at least read it well, and the sheer complexity of the history, and the formidable bulk of the German-language scholarship which needs to be addressed, provide a considerable disincentive to the neophyte seeking to enter this field. The model for this book was actually provided by Barraclough, who immediately before the Second World War published a book of translated essays on their country’s history by German historians. Needless to say, those essays from the interwar years, or in at least one case considerably earlier, have long since ceased to be helpful, and their methodology appears

xii

Preface

horribly dated. Yet the idea of bringing recent scholarship by German historians on their country in the Middle Ages to the attention of an Anglophone audience remains just as relevant in 2017 as it was in 1938. What we have sought to do here is to examine one of the central and most important themes of German medieval history, the development of the local principalities which became the dominant governmental institutions of the late medieval Reich, whose nominal monarchs needed to work with the princes if they were to possess any effective authority at all. Furthermore, by taking this theme we can counteract what is still a tendency in much of the available scholarship in English of looking at medieval Germany primarily in terms of the struggles and eventual decline of monarchical authority during the Salian and Staufen eras, of in other words the ‘failure’ of a centralised monarchy. The decline of royal authority is of course an important subject in German medieval history, some aspects of which, indeed, I address in my own essay in this collection – but it is not the be-all and end-all of that history. In the modern era the federalised nature of late medieval and early modern Germany seems a more natural and understandable phenomenon than it did during the first great age of professionalised history in Germany during the age of Bismarck, when state-building appeared to be the natural and inevitable process of historical development, and any deviation from the path towards a centralised state seemed to be an aberration. In addition, by looking at the origins and consolidation of the principalities, we can engage with the modern German tradition of regional history (Landesgeschichte), a concern which has been encouraged by the federal, provincial structure of the German Republic, as well as by a natural distaste for the excesses of centralised government that proved so disastrous in the first half of the twentieth century. And it is worth remembering that in a kingdom as large as Germany, for most of its inhabitants, even among the upper class, what happened in their own locality was always more important than the activities of a distant monarch, who was seldom if ever seen. We have attempted to present this book in a way that assists the reader to find his or her way through what will be to many an unfamiliar part of medieval history – hence the lavish provision of maps, genealogical charts, bibliographies and the contemporary documents translated in the appendix. Every effort has been made to make the translations of essays originally written in German as idiomatic as possible, although we are conscious that others might have done better in this respect. One aspect has inevitably proved problematic – to achieve complete consistency with regard to personal and place names. The only way to have done this would have been to leave all of these in the German forms, but in that eventuality it would seem perverse to have presented Anglophone readers with, for example Heinrich der Löwe rather than the more familiar Henry the Lion. We have generally anglicised personal names, although we have preferred the German Ludwig to the French Louis, or the (rather archaic) English Lewis. Place names have been left in Germanic forms, hence Strassburg not Strasbourg, unless

Preface

xiii

there is a common English equivalent – for example Cologne, not Köln, and Nuremberg, not Nürnberg. Many people have contributed to the completion of this substantial book, which has inevitably taken a considerable time to bring to fruition. The editors are grateful to the contributors (or almost all of them) for delivering their essays in good time, and for their patience at a long drawn-out process of translation and editing. We must also apologise for the sub-title to our one Austrian, one Swiss and two Luxemburger contributors – one should of course understand ‘German’ as ‘German-speaking’. All but two of these essays were originally written in German – our thanks go to our translator, Prof Phyllis Jestice of the College of Charleston (SC). Even more so, we are grateful to the German Historical Institute in London and its director, Prof Andreas Gestrich, who agreed most generously to sponsor this publication and to pay for the costs of translation. John Smedley commissioned the book for Ashgate publishers, and Max Novick and Jennifer Morrow saw it through the press at Routledge. Katherine Fenton created the genealogical charts and maps, the suggestions of Michel Pauly considerably improved the charts, and Lutz Partenheimer assisted with the proof-reading. My co-editor Jochen Schenk was instrumental in persuading the GHI to support the project, and did almost all the work of enlisting our contributors. Alan Murray, Editor of the International Medieval Bibliography at the Institute for Medieval Studies at Leeds, has been involved with this project from the start, and while other burdens prevented him from playing as much part in the editing as he would have wished, he has throughout been an unfailing source of wise advice and knowledge for the editors, and has contributed greatly to helping this volume to completion. GAL

Contributors

Oliver Auge is Professor of the Regional History of Schleswig-Holstein at the University of Kiel. Andreas Bihrer is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Kiel. Helmut Flachenecker is Professor of Franconian Regional History at the University of Würzburg. Werner Hechberger is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Koblenz. Paul-Joachim Heinig was Professor of Medieval History at the University of Gieβen from 1999 until his retirement in 2015. He has been the managing director, and remains the secretary, of the commission overseeing the Regesta Imperii research project. Christina Lutter is Professor of Austrian History at the University of Vienna and a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Michel Margue is Professor of Medieval History and Head of the Institute of History at the University of Luxemburg. Carla Meyer-Schlenkrich is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Heidelberg. Lutz Partenheimer is a Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Potsdam. Michel Pauly is Professor of Transnational Luxemburg History at the University of Luxemburg, and was President of the International Commission for the History of Towns 2006–16. Christine Reinle is Professor of Regional and Late Medieval History at the University of Gieβen. Arnd Reitemeier is Professor for the Regional History of Lower Saxony at the University of Göttingen. Jörg Rogge is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Mainz.

Contributors

xv

Joachim Schneider is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Würzburg. Karl-Heinz Spieß was Professor of Medieval History at the University of Greifswald from 1994 until his retirement in 2014. Martina Stercken is Professor of Medieval and Comparative Regional History at the University of Zürich. Stefan Tebruck is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Gieβen. André Thieme has taught at the Technical University, Dresden, and is now in a senior position with the Saxon Castles and Gardens Museum organisation at Dresden. Gabriel Zeilinger is Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Kiel, and also a Fellow of the German Maritime Museum at Bremerhaven. Thomas Zotz was Professor of the Medieval Regional History of South-West Germany at the University of Freiburg from 1989 until his retirement in 2010.

The Editors Graham A. Loud is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Leeds and was Head of the School of History 2012–15. Jochen Schenk is Lecturer in Transnational Medieval History at the University of Glasgow and was formerly a post-doctoral research fellow at the German Historical Institute in London.

Abbreviations

AfK AQDG

BDLG CD Anhalt CD Brand CD Sax DA FMST GFred

Helmold

Hist. Dipl. Fred. II

HJ HZ JBLG JGMOD Lambert

Archiv für Kulturgeschichte (Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters. Freiherr von SteinGedächtnisausgabe) Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte Codex Diplomaticus Anhaltinus, ed. Otto von Heinemann (6 vols., Dessau 1867–83) Codex Diplomaticus Brandenburgensis, ed. Adolph Friedrich Riedel (25 vols., Berlin 1838–69) Codex Diplomaticus Saxoniae (31 vols., Dresden/ Hanover/Peine 1864–2014) Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters Frühmittelalterliche Studien Die Taten Friedrichs oder richtiger Cronica (Gesta Frederici seu rectius Chronica), ed. FranzJosef Schmale (AQDG 17, Darmstadt 1965) Helmoldi Presbyteri Bozoviensis Cronica Slavorum, ed. Bernhard Schmeidler (MGH SRG, Hanover 1937) Historia Diplomatica Friderici Secundi, ed. J.L.A. Huillard-Bréholles (6 vols. in 11 parts, Paris 1852–61) Historisches Jahrbuch Historische Zeitschrift Jahrbuch für brandenburgische und preussische Landesgeschichte Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands Lamperti Monachi Hersfeldensis Opera, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (MGH SRG 1894)

Abbreviations Lebensbeschreibungen

Mecklenburgisches UB

MGH

MIÖG Mon. Boica Ostsiedlung

Pommersches UB

QDVWSG

QGDB

RhV Thietmar

Urkunden HL

UB

xvii

Lebensbeschreibungen einiger Bischöfe des 10. bis 12. Jahrhunderts, ed. Hatto Kallfelz (AQDG 22, Darmstadt 1973) Mecklenburgisches Urkundenbuch, ed. Verein für Meklenburgische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde (24 vols. Schwerin 1863–1913; 2 vols. Nachträge 1936–77) Monumenta Germaniae Historica [following the usual conventions: LdeL = Libelli de Lite; SRG = Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum; SS = Scriptores, etc. See www.mgh.de/fileadmin/Downloads/pdf/ DA-Siglenverzeichnis.pdf] The ‘Diplomatum Regum et Imperatorum Germaniae’ series will be rendered as follows: MGH Dipl. Frederick I, etc. For full details, see the bibliography of primary sources Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung Monumenta Boica, ed. Christian Friedrich Pfeffel et alii (53 vols., Munich 1763–1956) Urkunden und erzählende Quellen zur deutschen Ostsiedlung im Mittelalter, ed. Herbert Helbig and Lorenz Weinrich (2 vols., AQDG 36, Darmstadt 1968–70) Pommersches Urkundenbuch, ed. Robert Klempin, Rodgero Prümers, Georg Winter, Otto Heinemann, et alii (12 vols., vols. 1–6 Stettin 1868–1905; vols. 7–12, also ed. Klaus Conrad, Aalen and Cologne 1958–2000) Quellen zur deutschen Verfassungs-, Wirschaftsund Sozialgeschichte bis 1250, ed. Lorenz Weinrich (AQDG 32, Darmstadt 1977) Quellen zur Geschichte des deutschen Bauernstandes im Mittelater, ed. Rudolf Buchner (AQDG 31, Darmstadt 1974) Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter Thietmari Merseburgensis episcopi Chronicon, ed. Robert Holtzmann (MGH SRG, n.s. 9, Berlin 1935) Die Urkunden Heinrichs des Löwen, Herzogs von Sachsen und Bayern, ed. Karl Jordan (MGH, Weimar 1949) Urkundenbuch

xviii

Abbreviations

UB Babenberger

UB Steiermark

VF VSWG Widukind

ZBLG ZGOR ZSSRG GA ZSSRG KA

Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Babenberger in Österreich, ed. Heinrich Fichtenau and Erich Zöllner (4 vols. in 5 parts, Vienna 1950–97) Urkundenbuch des Herzogstum Steiermark, ed. Josef Zahn et alii (4 vols. Graz 1875–1903, 1964) Vorträge und Forschungen Vierteljahrsschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte Die Sachsengeschichte des Widukind von Korvei, ed. Paul Hirsch and Hans-Eberhard Lohmann (MGH SRG, Hanover 1935) Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte Zeitschrift für Geschichte des Oberrheins Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Germanistische Abteilung Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung

Genealogical charts I

Salians

Conrad I (911-18) Werner Count of Wormsgau Conrad the Red = Liudgarda Duke of Lotharingia d. of Otto 1 (d.955) (d. 953) Otto of Worms Duke of Carinthia (d. 1004) Henry of Worms (d. 990/1?)

Bruno (Pope Gregory V, 996-9)

Conrad of Carinthia Duke of Carinthia (d. 1011) Conrad the Younger Duke of Carinthia (d. 1039)

Conrad II (1024-39)

= (3) Gisela (d.1043) Henry III (1039-56)

= (2) Duke Ernst I of Swabia (Babenberger) (d. 1015) Ernst II Duke of Swabia (d. 1030)

William Bp. of Strasburg (d. 1047)

Bruno Bishop of Würzburg (d. 1045) Gebhard (III) Bishop of Regensburg (d. 1060)

Herman IV Duke of Swabia (d. 1038)

(1) Gunhild of Denmark (d. 1038) (2) Agnes of Poitou (d. 1077)

Adelheid Abbess of Gandersheim and Quedlinburg (d. 1096) Agnes = (1) Frederick of (d. 1143) Staufen (d. 1105) Duke of Swabia = (2) Leopold III Margrave of Austria (Babenberger)

Henry IV (1056-1106)

Conrad King of Italy (d. 1101)

Henry V = Matilda daughter of (1106-25) Henry I of England (d. 1167) N.I.

II Staufer Ct . Frederick of Buren (d. pre 1054)

Ludwig Frederick of Buren = Agnes Duke of Swabia d. of Henry IV Ct. Palatine of the Rhine (d.1095/6) (1079-1105) (d.1145)

Adelaide = ?

Otto Bp. of Strassburg (1083 - 1100)

Otto Bp. of Bamberg (1083 - 1100) Frederick = (1) Judith Duke of Swabia (2) Agnes of Saarbrücken (d. 1147)

Conrad III (King 1138-52)

Henry (d. 1150) (1) Frederick Barbarossa (King 1152-90)

(2) Judith = Ludwig II (d. 1191) Landgrave of Thuringia (d. 1172)

Frederick Duke of Swabia (d. 1167) (2) Conrad Ct. Palatine (d. 1195)

Agnes = Henry I Count Palatine (d. 1204) of the Rhine

Gottfried (d. 1187-8)

Henry VI (1190-7)

Frederick, Duke of Swabia (d. 1191)

Otto (d. 1200)

Conrad (d. 1196)

Frederick II (1212-50)

Henry [VII] d. 1241

Conrad IV (1250-4) Conradin (d.1268)

Manfred King of Sicily (d. 1266)

Philip (King 1198- 1208)

III Welfs Welf II Count of Lechrain (d. 1030)

Kunigunde = Azzo of Este (d. 1097)

Welf III Duke of Carinthia 1047, (d. 1055)

Welf IV Duke of Bavaria 1070 (d. 1101) Henry the Black Duke of Bavaria 1120 (d. 1126)

Welf V Duke of Bavaria 1101 (d. 1120)

Henry the Proud Duke of Bavaria 1126 Duke of Saxony 1137 (d. 1139)

Judith = Duke Frederick of Swabia

Welf VI Duke of Spoleto 1152 (d. 1191) Welf VII (d. 1167) N.I.

Frederick Barbarossa

Henry the Lion = (1) Clementia of Zähringen (c. 1130-95) (2) Matilda, d. of Henry II of England Duke of Saxony 1142-80 (d. 1189) Duke of Bavaria 1156-80 (1) (2) Henry Gertrude = (1) Frederick Duke of Swabia Ct. Palatine of (d.1167) the Rhine 1195 (2) Cnut IV of Denmark (d. 1227)

(2) Otto IV King 1198 (d. 1218)

(2) William (1184-1213)

Otto = Mechtild of Brandenburg (1204-52) Duke of Brunswick 1235 Albrecht I (d.1279) Henry (d. 1322)

Albrecht II (d. 1318)

John (d.1277) Otto II (d. 1330)

Otto, Bishop of Hildesheim (d.1279)

Conrad, Bishop of Verden (d. 1300)

IV Babenberger Leopold Margrave of the East Mark (d.994) Ernst I Duke of Swabia (d. 1015)

Poppo, Archbp. of Trier (1016-47)

Adalbert I, = sister of Bp. Meinwerk of Margrave of the East Mark Paderborn (d.1034) (d.1055) Dedi II, Margrave of Meissen

Ernst II Duke of Swabia (d. 1030)

Herman Duke of Swabia (d. 1038) Leopold I, Margrave of the Hungarian Mark, (d.1043)

Leopold IV (d.1108-41)

Ernst = Adelaide (1025/8-1075) Leopold II = Itha (d.1095) King Henry IV Leopold III = Agnes, (c.1073-1136) widow of Duke Frederick of Swabia (d.1143)

Henry Jasomirgott Duke of Bavaria 1143-56 Duke of Austria 1156 → (c.1114-77)

Otto, Bp. of Freising (d.1158)

Conrad, Bp. of Passau 1148-64 Archbp. of Salzburg 1164-6 (d.1168)

= (1) Gertrude (d.1143) (2) Theodora Komnena (d.1184) (2) Leopold V = Helena, d. of (1157-94) King Geza of Hungary

Henry (d.1223)

Frederick I (d.1198)

Leopold VI = Theodora Angelos (1176-1230) (d.1246)

Henry (d.1228)

Frederick II = (1) Sophia Laskarina Bellicosus (2) Agnes of Meran (d.1260/3) (1211-46) N.I.

V Zähringer Ct. Berthold of Breisgau (d.1024) Berthold I ‘the bearded’, Duke of Carinthia (d.1078)

Herman I (d.1074)

Berthold II = Agnes Duke of Swabia d. of Rudolf 1092-6 of Rheinfelden (d.1111) (King 1077-80)

Herman II (d.1130)

Berthold III (d.1122)

Margraves of Baden

Bertold IV = (d.1186) (1) Berthold IV (d.1218) N.I.

(1) Heilwig (2) Ida of Flanders (d.1216)

Gebhard (Bp. of Konstanz 1084-1110)

Conrad = Clementia (d.1152) of Luxemburg

Adalbert (d. after 1195)

Hugh

Rudolf, (Bp. of Liège 1167-91)

VI Counts of Andechs and Dukes of Merania

Berthold II Ct. of Andechs (d.1095)

=

Gisela of Schweinfurth

Berthold III = Sophia, (d.1151) d. of Margrave Poppo

Poppo (d.1148)

Berthold IV Margrave of Istria 1173 Duke of Merania 1180 (d.1188)

Henry, Abbot of Millstatt (d. pre-1187)

Berthold V (d.1204)

Otto I Duke of Merania Ct. Palatine of Burgundy (d. 1234)

Otto II (d.12 48) N.I.

=

=

Agnes, d. of Count Dedi of Ruchlitz (d.1195)

Henry, Margrave of Istria (d.1228)

5 sisters

Berthold, Patriarch of Aquileia (d.1251)

Hedwig, d. of Otto IV, Count Palatine of Wittelsbach (d.1176)

Otto, Bp. of Bamberg (1177-96)

Ekbert, Agnes Bp. of Bamberg, (d.1201) 1203-37 = Philip IV of France

Gertrude (d.1213) = Andrew I of Hungary

VII Wittelsbacher Count Otto II of Scheyern (d. c. 1078)

Ekkehard I (d. 1091)

Arnold of Scheyern (d. 1123)

Otto IV of Wittelsbach Count Palatine 1111/20 (d. 1156)

Counts of Dachau

Otto V Duke of Bavaria 1180 (d. 1183)

Frederick

Ludwig Duke of Bavaria (m. 1231)

Otto Count Palatine (d. 1189)

Conrad, Archbp. of Mainz and Salzburg (d. 1200)

Otto VIII Count Palatine (d. 1209)

Otto Duke of Bavaria (d. 1253)

Ludwig II, Duke of Upper Bavaria (d. 1294)

Rudolf (d. 1317)

Henry, Duke of Lower Bavaria (d. 1290)

Ludwig King 1314 (d. 1347)

Ludwig (V) Duke of Bavaria Margrave of Brandenburg (d. 1361)

Otto (d. 1312)

Ludwig III (d. 1296)

Stephen Duke of Lower Bavaria (d. 1375)

Stephen (d. 1309)

VIII Ascanians Ct. Esico (d. 1059/60) Ct. Adalbert (d. c. 1080) Ct. Otto of Ballenstedt Ct. Herman I of Winzenburg (d. 1123) ?

Siegfried, Count Palatine of the Rhine (d. 1113)

Albrecht ‘the Bear’ = Sophia Margrave of Brandenburg (d. 1170)

Otto I Margrave of Brandenburg (d. 1184)

Otto II (d. 1205)

John I (d. 1266)

Bernhard = Judith, d. of Mieszko III Ct. of Anhalt-Aschersleben of Poland Duke of Saxony 1180 (d. 1212)

Herman (d. 1176)

Sophia Albrecht Duke of Saxony Abbess of Gernrode 1221-44 (d. 1261)

Albrecht II Cts. of Henry I Weimar-Orlamünde Ct. of Anhalt (d. 1220) (d. 1251/2) Otto III the Pious (d. 1267)

Henry II ‘the Fat’ (d. 1266)

Bernhard I (d. 1286/7)

Siegfried (d. 1298) Albrecht II = Agnes, d. of Duke of King Rudolf I SaxonyWittenberg (d. 1298)

4 sons

Otto I (d. 1304)

Henry III (d. 1307)

Rudolf I Duke of Saxony-Wittenberg (d. 1356)

Cts. of Anhalt-Aschersleben

John II (d. 1281)

Otto IV (d. 1308)

Erich Archbp. of Magdeburg (1283-95)

Conrad II (d. 1319) Margraves of Brandenburg

Conrad I (d. 1304) Waldemar (d. 1319)

John I (d. 1292)

Bernard II (d. 1320)

Princes of Anhalt-Bernburg

IX Landgraves of Thuringia1 Count Ludwig ‘the Bearded’ (d. 1080) Count Ludwig ‘the Leaper’ (d. 1123)

Ludwig I = Hedwig of Gudensberg d. 1140

Udo Bishop of Naumburg 1125-48

Ludwig II = Judith, d. of Duke (d. 1172) Frederick of Swabia

Ludwig III ‘the Pious’ Count Palatine of Saxony 1180 (d. 1190)

Ludwig IV (d. 1227)

Herman II (d. 1241)

Herman I = Sophia, d. of Duke (d. 1217) Otto I of Bavaria

= (St.) Elizabeth of Hungary (d. 1233)

Sophia, Duchess of Brabant (d. 1275)

1 Landgraves underlined and in bold

Henry Raspe (d. 1180)

Henry Raspe anti-king 1246-7 (d. 1247) N.I.

Gertrude, Abbess of Altenburg (d.1297)

Conrad Master of the Teutonic Order 1239-

X Wettins Dietrich Count of Hassegau (d. 982) Dedo I Count of Hassegau (d. 1009)

Frederick Count of Eilenburg (d. 1017)

= Matilda, Dietrich II Count of Eilenberg d. of Margrave Ekkehard I of Meissen (d. 1034)

Dedo II Count of Eilenburg Margrave of Lausitz from 1046 (d. 1075)

Frederick Bp. of Münster 1064-84

Dedo IV (d. 1124)

Ct. Thimo = Ida, (d. c. 1091) d. of Otto of Nordheim

Gero Günther, Bishop of Naumburg 1079-89

Conrad Margrave of Lausitz and Meissen (d. 1157)

Dedi III = Gertrude, d. of Ct. Henry I (d. 1069) Margrave of Lausitz Ekbert I of Meissen and Meissen (d. 1103) Dietrich Dedo IV Frederick Hedwig, d. of = Otto ‘the Rich’ Albrecht ‘the Bear’ Margrave of Meissen (d. 1185) Ct of Brehna (d. 1182) [see Ascanians] (d. 1190) Henry II Conrad Dietrich Margrave of Lausitz and Meissen (d. 1123) Dietrich Albrecht ‘the Proud’ Margrave of Lausitz and Meissen (d. 1195) (d. 1221) Sophia Abbess of Quedlinburg 1203-1224/5 Henry ‘the Illustrious’ (d. 1288) Albrecht Margrave 1288-1307 (d. 1314) Frederick I (d. 1323) Frederick II (d. 1349)

XI Counts and Dukes of Limburg Frederick Duke of Lower Lotharingia (d. 1065) Walram II = Jutta Count of Arlon and Limburg daughter of Duke Frederick of Lower Lotharingia (d. 1065) (d. pre 1082)

Henry I Count of Limburg Duke of Lower Lotharingia 1101-6 (d. 1119) Walram III Duke of Lower Lotharingia 1128-39 (d. 1139) Henry II Duke of Limburg (d. 1167) Henry III (d. 1221)

Walram Count of Arlon (d. c. 1145) Margaret =

Godfrey III Duke of Brabant

Walram IV = (1) Kunigunde of Bitche (2) Ermesinde, (d. 1226) Countess of Luxemburg (1) Henry IV (d.1246)

Matilda =

= Irmgard d. & heir of Count Adolf III of Berg

Count William III of Jülich (2) Henry V, Ct. of Luxemburg (d. 1281)

Adolf, (IV), Count of Berg (d. 1259)

Walram V (d. 1279) Irmgard = Count Rainald of Geldern (d. 1283) (Duke of Limburg 1280-8) Adolf V (d. 1296)

William I (d. 1308)

Conrad Bp. of Osnabrück 1306-10

XII

Dukes of Brabant

Godfrey I Duke of Lower Lotharingia (1106-39) Godfrey II Duke of Lower Lotharingia (1139-42) Godfrey III (1142-90)

= Margaret of Limburg

Henry I ‘the Pious’ 1190-1235

Henry II (1235-48)

Mary = Otto IV

Duke Henry II of Limburg

Margaret = Gerhard of Geldern

Albert Bp. of Liège (m. 1192)

Matilda = Florenz of Holland

Henry III ‘the Peaceable’ (1248-61)

Henry IV (1261-9) (monk 1269 – d.1272)

John I ‘the Victorious’ (1268-94) Duke of Limburg from 1289 John II ‘the Peaceable’ (1294-1312) John III (duke 1312-55)

Joan = (1) Ct. William IV (d.1406) of Holland (2) Wenceslaus Duke of Luxemburg

Margaret = Louis de Mâle, (d. 1368) Ct. of Flanders

3 sons who died young

XIII Dukes of Upper Lotharingia Gerhard (d. 1070) Dietrich (d. 1115) Simon I (d. 1139)

Dietrich (Thierry) Count of Flanders 1128-68

Matthew I (d. 1176)

Simon II (d. 1206)

Theobald I (d. 1220)

Frederick I (d. 1207)

Dietrich Bp. of Metz (d. 1181)

Frederick II (d. 1213)

Matthew Bp. of Toul (1198-1207)

Matthew II (d. 1251)

James, Bp. of Metz (1239-66)

Frederick III (d. 1303)

Theobald II (d. 1312)

Frederick IV (d. 1329)

Raoul (Rudolf) (d. 1346)

XIV Spanheimer Eberhard Count of Spanheim Siegfried = Count of Spanheim (d. 1065)

Count Engelbert

Richgard

Ct. Engelbert I = Hardwig Margrave of Istria 1090-6 d. of Duke Bernhard II (d. 1096) of Saxony

Herman Hartwig Burgrave of Magdeburg Archbp. of Magdeburg (d.1118) 1079-1102

Hartwig I Bernhard Siegfried Engelbert II Henry I Duke of Carinthia Margrave of Istria from 1103 Ct. of Libenau Ct. of Truchsee Bp. of Regensburg 1105-26 (d. 1147) (d. 1130) Duke of Carinthia (d. 1123) (d. 1141)

Cts. of Libenau Ulrich I Duke of Carinthia (d. 1144)

Henry II Duke of Carinthia (d. 1161)

Engelbert III Margrave of Istria 1124-71 Margrave of Tuscany 1171-3 (d. 1130)

Hartwig II Bp. of Regensburg 1155-64

Ropoto Ct. of Ortenburg (d. c. 1185)

Herman = Agnes, d. of Duke of Carinthia Duke Henry of Austria (d. 1181)

Ulrich II Duke of Carinthia (d. 1202)

Ulrich III Duke of Carinthia (d. 1269)

= Judith, d. of Bernhard Duke of Carinthia King Ottokar I of (d. 1256) Bohemia

Philip Archbishop-elect of Salzburg, and Patriarch of Aquileia (d. 1279)

XV Lords of Mecklenburg Niklot Prince of the Obodrites (d. 1160) Wartislaw (executed 1164)

Pribislaw I = Woizewa, d. of Duke Wartislaw I (d. 1178) of Pomerania

Niklot (Nicholas) (d. 1200)

Henry Borwin I = Matilda, illeg. d. of (d. 1227) Henry the Lion

Henry Borwin II (d. 1226)

John Lord of Mecklenburg (d. 1264)

Henry I ‘the Pilgrim’ (d. 1302)

Nicholas (d. 1225)

= Christiane, d. of King Swerker II of Sweden

Pribislaw II Lord of Mecklenburg-Parchim (d. 1270)

5 other sons

Pribislaw III (d. 1316)

Henry II (d. 1329)

Albrecht = Euphemia of Sweden (d. 1379) Duke of Mecklenburg 1348

John (d. 1392/3)

Elizabeth Abbess of Wienhausen 1241-65

Henry Borwin III Lord of Mecklenburg-Rostock (d. 1278)

John (d. 1266)

Waldemar (d. 1282)

XVI

Dukes of Pomerania

Wartislaw I (d.1153)

Bogislaw I = (1) Walburga of Denmark Duke of Pomerania-Stettin (2) Anastasia of Poland (d. 1187)

(1) Wartislaw II (d.1184)

(1) Ratibar II (d.1185)

(2) Boglislaw II (d.1220)

Barnim I (d.1278)

Bogislaw IV (d. 1309)

Barnim II (d.1295)

Wartislaw IV (d. 1326)

Bogislaw V (d. 1373)

Barnim IV (d. 1365)

Casimir I (d.1180)

(2) Casimir II, Duke of Pommerania -Demmin (d.1219) Wartislaw III (d.1264)

Otto I (d. 1344) Barnim III (d. 1368)

Wartislaw V (d. 1390)

Wartislaw VI (d. 1394)

XVII Margraves of Baden Berthold I of Zähringen Duke of Carinthia (d.1078) Herman I (d.1074) Herman II (d. after 1122) Herman III (d.1153)

Herman IV = Udalhildis (d.1190) Herman V = Irmgard d. of Henry, (d.1243) Ct. Palatine of the Rhine [see Welf]

Henry (d.1231)

Herman VI = Gertrude of Austria (d.1250)

Frederick (I) (d.1268)

Herman VIII (d. 1300)

Herman VII (d.1291)

Frederick (d.1217)

Rudolf I (d.1288)= Kunigunde of Eberstein (d.1284) Rudolf II (d.1291)

Rudolf VI (d. 1372)

Rudolf III (d. 1332)

Frederick II (d. 1333)

Rudolf IV (d. 1348)

Frederick III (d. 1353)

Hesso (d.1296/7)

Rudolf V (d. 1361)

Herman IX (d. 1353)

XVIII

Habsburger

Radbod Ct. of Kletgau (d. pre-1045) Werner I Ct. of Habsburg (d. 1096)

Albrecht I (d. 1050/5)

Otto II (d. 1109)

Albrecht II (d. 1141)

Werner II (d. 1167) Otto II Bp. of Konstanz 1166-74

Albrecht III (d. 1199)

Rudolf II = Agnes of Staufen (d.1232) Albrecht IV ‘the Wise’ = Heilwig of Kyburg (d. 1239)

Rudolf I (1218-91) King of Germany 1273-91 Albrecht I King 1298-1308

Rudolf III (d. 1249)

Albrecht V Canon of Strassburg (d. 1256) Rudolf II Duke of Austria (d. 1290)

Werner II Ct. of Habsburg-Laufenburg

4 other sons

John (d. 1313

Rudolf King of Bohemia 1306 (d. 1307)

Frederick III ‘the Fair’ (d. 1330) anti-king 1314-25

Katherine = Charles of Anjou (d. 1323) Duke of Calabria (d. 1328)

Rudolf IV (d. 1365)

Albrecht II Duke of Austria (d. 1358)

Albrecht III (d. 1395)

XIX Luxemburger Conrad Count of Luxemburg (d. 1086) Ermesinde = Godfrey Count of Namur (d. 1143) (d. 1139) Henry (IV) Count of Luxemburg and Namur (d. 1196) Ermesinde (d. 1246)

= Walram IV Duke of Limburg (d. 1226)

Henry V Count of Luxemburg (d. 1281)

Henry VI (d. 1288)

Baldwin (d. 1288)

= Margaret of Brabant Henry VII German King 1308-13 Emperor 1312

Walram (d. 1288)

Baldwin Archbishop of Trier 1307-54

John ‘the Blind’ = (1) Elizabeth d. of K. Wenzel II of Bohemia King of Bohemia (d. 1330) 1310-46 (2) Beatrice of Bourbon

(1) Charles IV King of Germany 1346-78 Emperor 1355-78

Wenceslaus King 1376-1400

(2) Wenceslaus = Joan, Duchess of Brabant Duke of Luxemburg 1354-83

Sigismund King 1410-37 Emperor 1433-7

Maps

I Germany and its Principalities

0

200

100

miles 100

200

300

kilometres

II

North-West Germany

Schleswig

Stade

Oldenburg

Hamburg

Bremen Verden

Coevorden All er

Osnabrück Minden r se We

Utrecht Nijmegen

Rhine

Brunswick

Münster

Hildesheim

Cleves

Hameln

aa M

Antwerp

s

Paderborn

Louvain Liège

Fritzlar Jülich

Aachen Limburg

Namur

Cologne † Siegburg Hersfeld † Fulda † Koblenz

Arlon

Bingen Mo sel

Prüm †

Trier

Worms

Luxemburg Metz

Bamberg Würzburg

Eichstätt

200

100

miles 200

Aschaffenburg †Lorsch Heidelberg

Speyer

Nancy

100

Gelnhausen Main

Nuremberg

Verdun

0

Frankfurt

Mainz

300

kilometres

III

South-West Germany Mainz Trier Würzburg

Worms M os el

Luxemburg Verdun

Heidelberg

Speyer

Necker

Metz

Toul

Nancy

Eichstätt

Rh ine

Trifels Hagenau

†Hirsau

Strassburg

Teck

Ulm Augsburg

Freiburg Breisach Colmar † Remiremont

Danube

Besançon bs

Dou

Le ch

† Weingarten

Basle Königsfelden †

Constance Zurich

† St Gallen

Muri Lucerne

Fribourg

Chur Meran

Lausanne

Splügen

Stelvio

St Gotthard e ôn Rh

Trent

0

200

100

miles 100

200

300

kilometres

IV North-East Germany

Rügen

Danzig

Rostock Schwerin

Lübeck

† Dargun

Parchim

Hamburg

Stade

Stargard

Stettin Lüneburg Havelberg Brandenburg

Jerichow † Hannover Brunswick Hildesheim

Magdeburg O de

Hameln Goslar

r

e Elb

Halle

Unstrut

Saale

Erfurt Hersfeld †

Liegnitz

Merseberg Leipzig Naumburg

Meissen Dresden Chemnitz

† Fulda e

Eger

Ohn

Prague

0

200

100

miles 100

200

300

kilometres

Breslau

V South-East Germany

Prague Nuremberg

Moldau

Würzburg Pilsen

Regensburg

Olmütz

† Niederalteich

Eichstätt

Zwettl

Passau Ulm

Freising Mühldorf Inn

Linz Wels

Krems Klosterneuburg † Vienna † Pressburg St Pölten Gottweig

Danube

† Lambach

Heiligenkreuz † Raa b

s Enn

Salzburg Innsbruck

Mürz

Brenner

Chur Meran

Graz

Brixen Gurk

Stelvio

Klagenfurt Trent

Cividale Aquileia

0

200

100

miles 100

200

300

kilometres

Dr

au

Section A

Introductory essays

1

A political and social revolution The development of the territorial principalities in Germany Graham A. Loud

The mid-thirteenth century saw what was arguably one of the most important changes to the European body politic during the entire Middle Ages. For almost three centuries the German Empire had been the dominant power in Christendom. Yet in little more than a generation the authority and prestige of the emperor was eclipsed, and within the German Reich it became clear that real power and authority rested, not with the king/ emperor, but with a group of localised territorial princes. After the long interregnum that followed the death of Conrad IV in 1254, the election of Rudolf of Habsburg as king in 1273 saw the princes choosing as ruler not one of themselves, but a relatively minor and peripheral figure. While King Rudolf may not have been quite the roi fainéant that his detractors, and especially his rival Ottokar of Bohemia, claimed, his resources were slight, his power base, such as it was, on the southern edge of the Reich, and his authority circumscribed.1 His successors similarly reigned, rather than ruled, over Germany – a situation that remained more or less unchanged until the end of the Middle Ages. Thus, in the mid-fifteenth century a future pope, Enio Silvio Piccolomini, could say to the German princes: ‘You only obey him [the emperor] as far as it pleases you, and it pleases you as little as possible’.2 Admittedly, this process was not quite as rapid as the curt summary above might imply. The development of princely authority and the consolidation of territorial lordship (Landesherrschaft) within Germany took at least a century and a half, and were thus evolutionary rather than revolutionary. But within the political arena its effect was indeed revolutionary. The

1 See, for example, King Ottokar’s protest to Gregory X at Rudolf’s election, MGH Constitutiones, iii.19–20 no. 16, in which he complained that: ‘if the world has to endure that such a lofty position be conferred upon someone so abased and humble, the empire will be reduced to nothing’. 2 Quoted by Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History (London 2016), p. 278.

4

Graham A. Loud

Staufen emperors dominated Christendom; their late medieval successors were of little account in the wider European context, and the fragmentation of authority in Germany was to continue up to the nineteenth century. How and why did this dynamic change, which came to fruition between c. 1237 and c. 1273 take place? The seeds of change were certainly sown considerably earlier. For all their military power and undoubted prestige, the authority of the German emperors, even at its apparent height in the later twelfth century, was less impressive in reality than in outward appearance. The sheer size of Germany, and the slowness of medieval communications, meant that the emperors of the tenth through to the twelfth century never effectively governed the whole of their kingdom, in the way that rulers of smaller, more coherent and administratively more advanced realms did – in the twelfth century above all the kings of England and Sicily.3 The authority of the German rulers rested upon three principal supports. The first was the scale of their resources. The combination of ‘imperial’ lands with the private family resources of the Staufen family made Frederick Barbarossa far and away the wealthiest and most powerful prince within the Reich. It has been estimated, for example, that by the later part of his reign, by which time the Staufers’ resources had been considerably enhanced by a ruthless and effective campaign of acquisition, Frederick I controlled at least 200 castles in Germany, and possibly more.4 The most powerful other prince, Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, possessed perhaps 50, and many of these were lost when he fell out with Barbarossa and was deprived of his duchies and most of his fiefs in 1180.5 Furthermore, the emperor’s lands and castles were spread over a much wider geographical area than were those of most of the other princes. When in 1206 Barbarossa’s youngest son, Philip, wrote to Pope Innocent III justifying his claim to the kingship, he explained his election to the throne as follows: ‘Amongst all the princes of the empire there was at that time none richer, more powerful or more glorious than ourselves. For we had very ample and widespread possessions, and we [also] had very many castles, strongly fortified and impregnable. We had so many ministeriales that we could scarcely number them with any certainty. We had castles,

3 Here Karl Leyser, ‘Ottonian Government’, English Historical Review 96 (1981), 721–53, remains illuminating, and especially pp. 733–4 on the relative regional impact of Ottonian rule. 4 Indeed, Arnold of Lübeck claimed that when Otto IV married Philip of Swabia’s eldest daughter in 1209, he received with her 350 castles, Arnoldi Chronica Slavorum, ed. J.M. Lappenberg (MGH SRG, Hanover 1868), VII.14, p. 286. 5 See the map of Henry’s castles in Saxony in Joachim Ehlers, Heinrich der Löwe. Eine Biographie (Munich 2008), p. 125.

A political and social revolution

5

towns, manors and very wealthy burgesses. We had an enormous sum of money in gold and silver, and a hoard of precious stones.’6 The hyperbole in this claim is obvious, but there was an underlying reality – the Staufer were wealthier than anyone else. Second, the German rulers in the later twelfth century still exercised effective control over much of the Church within their kingdom. Despite almost 40 years of conflict, the earlier Investiture dispute between pope and emperor, which had ended in 1122, had made little practical difference to this control. The emperor may have given up the symbols of that rule in the peace treaty of 1122, but that agreement was a compromise which left the lay ruler with most of the substance of his authority, even if he had to exercise this in slightly more subtle ways than he had done hitherto. Frederick Barbarossa exercised at least some voice in choosing the new bishop in about a third of the episcopal elections that took place during his long reign.7 In some instances, notably the prolonged dispute over the see of Magdeburg right at the start of his reign, he succeeded in imposing his candidate in the face of considerable opposition – in this particular case including from the pope, whose consent was required to translate Barbarossa’s favoured candidate, Bishop Wichmann of Zeitz, to his new see.8 Above all, when a renewed bout of hostilities broke out between emperor and pope in 1159–60, the overwhelming majority of the leaders of the German Church, with a few rare exceptions (mainly in the province of Salzburg) supported Barbarossa, not Alexander III.9 They continued to support him until well into the 1170s. The close relationship between monarch and many of his bishops was also shown by his frequent stays in episcopal cities, and often in the bishops’ own residences, during his journeys through the Reich.10 The emperor’s wishes did not always prevail in episcopal elections – as for example in another lengthy dispute at Trier in the 1180s, when he was eventually forced reluctantly to accept a candidate whom he had initially opposed.

6 MGH Dipl. Philip, pp. 288–93 no. 128, at p. 292. This passage has been quoted many times, notably by Karl Leyser, ‘Frederick Barbarossa and the Hohenstaufen Polity’, Viator 19 (1988), 174 [reprinted in his Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Gregorian Revolution and Beyond, ed. Timothy Reuter (London 1994), p. 140]. 7 Bernhard Töpfer, ‘Kaiser Friedrich I. Barbarossa und der deutsche Reichsepiskopat’, in Friedrich Barbarossa: Handlungspielräume und Wirkungsweisen des staufischen Kaisers, ed. A. Haverkamp (VF 40: Sigmaringen 1992), pp. 389–433. 8 Peter Munz, Frederick Barbarossa: A Study in Medieval Politics (London 1969), pp. 56–8; Knut Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa: Eine Biographie (Munich 2011), pp. 118–21; Dietrich Claude, Geschichte des Erzbistums Magdeburg bis in das 12 Jahrhundert (2 vols., Cologne 1972–5), ii.71–89. The installation of Wichmann was all the more notable since, although there was a divided election by the chapter, he was not one of the original two candidates. 9 Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa, pp. 410–12. 10 Ibid., p. 152.

6

Graham A. Loud

But, arguably, this was an exceptional case rather than the norm, sparked off by bitter division within the chapter, and at a time when relations with the papacy were especially difficult.11 Certainly, even towards the end of the century this imperial influence over the episcopate remained strong. Of the 11 German bishops who joined Henry VI’s Crusade in 1197, four were former imperial chaplains, and at least two more were close allies and partisans of the emperor. The five of those six still alive in 1198 all supported the Staufen candidate Philip of Swabia in the disputed election that followed Henry VI’s premature death.12 They were among the 28 German archbishops and bishops named in the appeal of the princes to Innocent III in May 1199, asking him (in vain) to approve the election of Philip.13 Third, there was the prestige and authority of the royal and imperial title. Whether the imperial coronation in Rome actually added anything extra to the ruler’s authority in Germany is a moot point – although perhaps in Italy it did. Certainly, the German princes felt that their choice was more important than papal confirmation, and indeed they viewed the imperial confirmation at Rome as simply ‘declarative’, and in no sense as ‘constitutive’. They made their disapproval of papal pretensions clear at the diet of Besançon in 1157.14 The prestige of the crown mattered in Germany, and Barbarossa certainly exercised it effectively – for example in enlisting his magnates to serve on his Italian expeditions, and also, and not least, in dispute settlement among the more quarrelsome of their number. For example, when Frederick returned from Italy in 1168, the duchy of Saxony was split by conflict between Henry the Lion and a wide-ranging coalition of his local enemies. But once the emperor made clear that he was supporting the duke, then the revolt against the latter collapsed and peace was restored.15 By contrast, when in 1180 the emperor decided that he had had enough of his troublesome cousin, his action was decisive in allowing Henry’s local enemies to bring him down – and in haemorrhaging support from the duke by those hitherto loyal to him.16 To what extent the crown brought more concrete benefits, possession of the royal fisc apart, is a more difficult

11 Gesta Treverorum, Continuatio III, MGH SS xxiv.383–90; Arnoldi Chronica Slavorum, III.11, pp. 95–7. 12 G.A. Loud, ‘The German Crusade of 1197–1198’, Crusades 13 (2014), 158–60. 13 Regestum Innocentii III Papae Super Negotio Romani Imperii, ed. Friedrich Kempf S.J. (Rome 1947), pp. 33–8 no. 14. See more generally, Bernd Schütte, König Philipp von Schwaben. Itinerar, Urkundenvergabe, Hof (Hanover 2002), pp. 197–211, especially 200–1. 14 GFred, III.10–12, pp. 408–18, especially 414–16 [The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa: Otto of Freising and His Continuator Rahewin, trans. C.C. Mierow (New York 1953), pp. 183–6]; Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa, pp. 275–6. 15 Karl Jordan, Henry the Lion, trans. P.S. Falla (Oxford 1985), pp. 100–5; Ehlers, Heinrich der Löwe, pp. 141–9. 16 Jordan, Henry the Lion, pp. 166–78; Ehlers, Heinrich der Löwe, pp. 323–43.

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question to answer – how far, for example, did the emperors levy taxes and dues from the towns in Germany, as the French kings from Philip Augustus onwards so effectively did?17 Nevertheless, it is easy to point to the limitations of royal/imperial authority. Its geographical impact was patchy. There were always significant regions where the ruler rarely went, he had few or any lands, and where his local authority was usually limited: in the southeast (the ecclesiastical province of Salzburg), increasingly in Lotharingia and in much of north Germany. Henry the Lion controlled the bishoprics of eastern Saxony, not the emperor.18 Nor did his downfall make an appreciable difference to the direct power of the emperor in the north. Local lordship in Saxony may now have been split, and increasingly fragmented, after 1180, but the lands and rights confiscated from Duke Henry were re-granted to others, and did not profit the crown directly. The region remained a peripheral zone for royal authority. But, above all, outside their immediate court and the royal writing office, the German rulers only possessed an administration for their own lands, and not for the kingdom as a whole. The kings of England and Sicily, and after 1204 increasingly (if still patchily) the French rulers, had administrative structures and officials at their disposal with jurisdiction over the whole of their kingdoms, notwithstanding who actually possessed, or was the overlord, of particular lands. The sheriffs in England, vicomtes in Normandy, justiciars and chamberlains in Sicily, and increasingly the baillis in the French kingdom, exercised justice and raised money everywhere. The Staufen ministeriales administered the emperor’s lands, whether personal or ‘imperial’, but had no remit outside them. They were essentially no different from those who administered the lands of the other princes within the Reich.19 Nor was the itinerant rulership of the emperors conducive to the development of a centralised and effective financial administration for the crown such as the Sicilian diwān, the English Exchequer or the French chambre des comptes. The consequent limitations of royal/imperial authority are graphically illustrated by Barbarossa’s so-called ‘land peace’ of 1188, issued shortly before his departure on Crusade, and clearly intended to promote the internal peace of the realm in his absence. It sought above all to regulate feuds and

17 Benjamin Arnold, Power and Property in Medieval Germany: Economic and Social Change c. 900–1300 (Oxford 2004), pp. 78–9, 109–14. 18 Jordan, Henry the Lion, pp. 122–3. For the bishoprics in Lotharingia, elections to most of which were under the control of that region’s higher aristocracy during the twelfth century, Julia Barrow, The Clergy in the Medieval World: Secular Clerics, Their Families and Careers in North-Western Europe c. 800-c.1200 (Cambridge 2015), p. 274. 19 Leyser, ‘Frederick Barbarossa and the Hohenstaufen Polity’, 156–7 [and Communications and Power . . . The Gregorian Revolution, pp. 119–20].

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provide some rules for outlawry. The major thrust was to impose some sort of rules under which feuds might be conducted, and especially in preventing indiscriminate arson. It did not, however, specify that internal warfare was forbidden – merely that some actions were permissible during it, and some were not.20 By contrast, as soon as Count Roger II of Sicily had gained control of the south Italian mainland in 1129, and before he secured his royal title, his first move was explicitly and strictly to forbid private warfare, a prohibition that was repeated in the royal legislation of the 1140s.21 Nor did the kings of England tolerate hostilities among their major subjects. But they had much greater powers of coercion, for in Sicily and England justice belonged to the monarch. In Germany it was privatised, often into the hands of the very people who would conduct violent clashes with their local opponents. The political crisis after 1198 revealed the fragility of the crown’s authority – and not just in that the succession was disputed, and a lengthy civil war took place. England had, after all, seen the ‘nineteen long years when God and his saints slept’ of Stephen’s reign, and the kingdom of Sicily faced revolt and internal dispute during Frederick II’s minority and then his lengthy absence in Germany after 1212. But neither of these periods of disorder had any long-term effect on the authority of the crown, which was swiftly and effectively re-imposed in England after 1154, and in the kingdom of Sicily after 1220. In Germany, the crisis after 1198 led to a significant, and as it turned out, permanent, diminution in royal authority. The rich patrimony bequeathed by Frederick Barbarossa to his successor and to his other sons was greatly diminished. Crown lands and Staufen family lands were alienated, either in return for military support, or after the murder of King Philip in 1208 simply taken over. The Swabian chronicler Burchard of Ursberg, who was a Staufen sympathiser, claimed of Philip that: ‘Since he lacked the money to provide his knights with wages or pay [salaria sive solda], he began to alienate the estates that his father the Emperor Frederick had acquired throughout Swabia, by pledging villages, country estates or the churches that lay next to them to this or that baron or ministerialis. And so it happened that nothing was left to him, except for the empty name of lord of the land, and the cities and villages in which fairs were held, and a few castles in that region.’22

20 MGH Dipl. Frederick I, iv.275–7 no. 988, derived from Burchardi Praepositi Urspergensis Chronicon, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger and Bernhard von Simson (MGH SRG, Hanover 1916), pp. 65–9. See here the characteristically acute observations of Karl Leyser, ‘Frederick Barbarossa: Court and Country’, in his Communications and Power . . . The Gregorian Revolution and Beyond, p. 152. 21 G.A. Loud, Roger II and the Creation of the Kingdom of Sicily (Manchester 2012), pp. 19, 75, 325. 22 Burchardi Praepositi Urspergensis Chronicon, pp. 91–2.

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Burchard went on to suggest that Frederick II made further extensive alienations of both family and imperial property in return for support after his arrival in Germany in 1212.23 This may be going too far and too fast; Frederick II still had quite extensive property in the 1220s and 1230s, and indeed at the start of his reign was actively seeking to extend this – not least in his attempts to profit from the extinction of the Dukes of Zähringen in 1218 further to extend his family’s traditional power base in Swabia.24 But the civil war certainly began the process by which the crown was impoverished, even if it may not have been completed until after 1250. Innocent IV’s declaration of Frederick’s deposition in 1245 appears to have had catastrophic effects on Staufen landholding, and indeed on the crown lands.25 Much of what was left in the south ended up in the hands of the dukes of Bavaria after the death of the last Staufer, Conradin, in 1268. Later attempts at resumption, notably by Rudolf of Habsburg, though they were made, were at best only partly successful, and most of what was recovered was soon alienated once more.26 Furthermore, the years of crisis also saw the formal abandonment of royal claims over the Church, as first Otto IV and then his rival King Frederick promised independence to the Church in return for papal support for their kingship. At Eger in 1213, for example, Frederick expressly promised that episcopal elections would henceforth be free and canonical, appeals to Rome would be allowed, and the rulers’ right of spolia from the property of deceased prelates, and of administering churches during vacancies, would be surrendered.27 These promises were repeated at Hagenau in September 1219.28 Admittedly, promises could be disregarded: Henry II’s very similar pledges made after the murder of Thomas Becket had been systematically and more

23 Ibid., p. 109. 24 As well as reclaiming the fiefs the Zähringer held from the crown, Frederick also bought out the claims of the Margraves of Baden to their allodial lands in 1219, and paid the Bishop of Bamberg 4000 marks for the fiefs which the duke had formerly held from that see in 1225. He also took over the fiefs that the Zähringer had held from the Bishops of Strassburg, Harmut Heinemann, ‘Das Erbe der Zähringer’, in Die Zähringer. Schweizer Vorträge und neue Forschungen, ed. Karl Schmid (Sigmaringen 1990), pp. 215–65, especially 244–8, 257–61; Peter Thorau, König Heinrichs (VII.), das Reich und die Territorien (Jahrbücher des deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich (VII.), vol. i, Berlin 1998), pp. 48–63. 25 See especially Andreas Christoph Schlunk, Königsmacht und Krongut. Die Machtgrundlage des deutschen Königtums im 13. Jahrhundert – und eine neue historische Methode (Stuttgart 1988), especially pp. 190–9, even though Schlunk’s detailed statistics are by no means easy to understand. Benjamin Arnold, German Knighthood 1050–1300 (Oxford 1985), pp. 222–4, suggests that these losses were particularly due to imperial ministeriales having to submit to other lords after 1245. 26 Arnold, Power and Property, pp. 111–13; Wilson, Holy Roman Empire, pp. 382–5. See, for example, MGH Constitutiones iii.27–8 no. 26 (February 1274), 29–32 nos. 28–33 (1274–5), 78 no. 87 (July 1275). 27 MGH Dipl. Frederick II, ii.77–80 no. 205. 28 MGH Dipl. Frederick II, iii.257–60 no. 554.

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or less immediately ignored. But with Frederick II an absentee ruler after 1220, in Germany there was no going back. Indeed, he marked his departure in that year by a wide-ranging surrender of his rights to the ecclesiastical princes: inter alia repeating his earlier promises concerning the property of deceased prelates, strengthening their authority over their own vassals, and forbidding his officials to interfere with prelates’ exercise of regalian rights.29 Similar concessions to the remaining, secular, princes followed 12 years later.30 By then the traditional bases of royal authority had been very largely eroded. One should indeed probably view Frederick II’s concessions of 1220 and 1232 less as real surrenders of royal authority than as recognising the rights and powers that the princes were already in practice exercising. The crown’s prestige and intangible authority did remain high for a little longer; the princes rallied behind Frederick when he returned to Germany to face down his rebellious son in 1235 and supported him in his subsequent conflict with Duke Frederick ‘the Warlike’ of Austria.31 But the foundations of royal authority were irretrievably weakened. The imperial land peace issued at Mainz in August 1235 was long on the rhetoric of royal authority, but to view this as laying a new basis for its effective implementation, as some historians have done, is woefully misguided. Indeed, while emphasising the importance of the partnership between crown and princes may have been politically effective in the short-term, by relying upon the latter to enforce peace and order, this only served, with the emperor once more an absentee, to strengthen the authority of the provincial rulers.32 And soon afterwards Frederick II’s renewed, and increasingly embittered, conflict with the papacy progressively undermined the legitimacy and respect that was by now the principal, and almost the only, support for the authority of the crown. One symptom of this was the proclamation of ‘land peaces’ (Landfrieden), hitherto an imperial prerogative, by provincial rulers, as was done by the dukes of Bavaria in 1244, and again in 1255,33 and indeed by an alliance of Rhineland towns in a series of meetings from July 1254 onwards.34

29 Ibid., 383–91 no. 620 [also in MGH Constitutiones, ii.89–91 no. 73; translation below, pp. 352–5]. 30 MGH Constitutiones, ii.211–13 no. 171 [translation below, pp. 355–7]. 31 There is an excellent discussion by Björn Weiler, Kingship, Rebellion and Political Culture: England and Germany c. 1215–c.1250 (Basingstoke 2007), pp. 39–52. 32 MGH Constitutiones, ii.241–8 no. 196 [translation below pp. 357–65]. Cf. above all, Ernst Kantorowicz, Frederick II, 1194–1250, trans. E.O. Lorimer (London 1931), pp. 410–15, but also Thomas C. Van Cleve, The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen: Immutator Mundi (Oxford 1972), pp. 382–4. There is a more extended, and considerably more subtle, discussion by Björn Weiler, ‘Reasserting power: Frederick II in Germany (1235–1236)’, in Representations of Power in Medieval Germany, 800–1500, ed. Björn Weiler and Simon Maclean (Turnhout 2006), pp. 241–71. But, to view the Land Peace, as he does, as a ‘more rigorous and radical interpretation of imperial authority’ (pp. 268–9), is surely misleading. 33 MGH Constitutiones, ii.570–9 no. 427, 596–602 no. 438. 34 Ibid., ii.579–589 no. 428.

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The discussion so far has been almost entirely devoted to the crown. However, an examination of the flaws that were always present in the exercise of monarchical authority is a necessary precursor to looking at the rise of the princes, who in the mid-thirteenth century moved to fill a political power vacuum. As has already been suggested, the development of ‘princely’ power, and even the notion of who and what a prince was, was a slow process, beginning back in the time of the Investiture Contest and continuing well into the thirteenth century. It was in no senses a coherent process, nor – as Benjamin Arnold has reminded us – was it necessarily a conscious and planned one. The creation of princely authority is usually linked with the development of ‘territorial lordship’ (Landesherrschaft), although what exactly that term implies, and how useful it is as a tool for understanding the political and social changes underway in the top layer of German aristocratic society during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, remains controversial.35 What we can say is this. From c. 1100 onwards we can see powerful local dynasts consolidating and extending their property, a nexus of legal and fiscal rights, and a network of vassals, in particular regions, to such an extent that they increasingly became the dominant power in that region. Often these dynasts bore a ‘princely’ title of duke or margrave, but the title was not the source of their power, and gave them rather prestige than effective authority. Indeed, in at least one case, the title was essentially bogus. The Dukes of Zähringen, who became the dominant power in the Black Forest in southwest Swabia, derived their ducal title from Berthold (I), appointed Duke of Carinthia during Henry IV’s minority in 1061. But Berthold subsequently rebelled against the king and was replaced as duke in Carinthia by a royal supporter. His son, also Berthold, subsequently tried to claim the duchy of Swabia through marriage to the daughter of Duke Rudolf, elected as anti-king in 1077. But he never succeeded in vindicating this claim, and the duchy of Swabia – or perhaps we should say more correctly the ducal title – remained with Henry IV’s son-in-law Frederick and his descendants, the family we know as the Staufer, kings from 1138 onwards. Yet this did not prevent the Zähringer claiming ducal rank and their pretensions being accepted.36

35 Benjamin Arnold, Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany (Cambridge 1991), pp. 61–73. 36 See especially Gerd Althoff, ‘Die Zähringer – Herzöge ohne Herzogtum’, in Die Zähringer, Schweizer Vorträge und neue Forschungen [above, note 24], pp. 81–94, particularly pp. 82–7. Helmut Maurer, Der Herzog von Schwaben. Grundlegen, Wirkungen und Wesen seine Herrschaft in ottonischer, salische und staufische Zeit (Sigmaringen 1978), p. 221, suggests that the first use of the ‘Duke of Zähringen’ title came in 1100. Otto of Freising had some sharp remarks about this ‘empty title of duke’, GFred, I.9, p. 148 [The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. Mierow, p. 43].

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This consolidation of localised territorial, judicial and eventually political, power by a small number of aristocratic dynasties was a slow and piecemeal process, but it was certainly a dynamic one. Princes – let us use the term, even if it is essentially anachronistic for most of the twelfth century – often forced their weaker neighbours to hand over property or rights, sometimes to become their vassals, to make them their heirs if they lacked male children and to become their supporters and allies in local conflicts. They founded castles to defend their dominions and as centres for their exploitation, staffing them with ministeriales, legally-unfree knights who were bound to serve the lords whose property (in a very real sense) they were. Dynasts pursued advantageous marriages for themselves and their children; the Habsburgs’ rise from local counts in Alsace in the twelfth century to the throne in 1273 was largely based on a series of shrewd marriages to heiresses, through which they inherited first a share in the counties of Pfullendorf and Lenzburg (Frederick Barbarossa took the rest), and later in their entirety the counties of Homburg and Kyburg in modern-day Switzerland.37 Princes also persuaded churchmen to give them property as fiefs, but without recognition of any form of effective dependence. They exploited their position as advocates (legal representatives – German Vögte) of churches for financial gain, and sometimes to administer, or effectively alienate, their lands. (It was hardly surprising that relations between many churchmen and the advocates of their churches were antagonistic; the tart comments of the thirteenth-century chronicler Herman of Niederaltaich about the counts of Bogen, the hereditary advocates of his monastery in Bavaria, were hardly unique in their disapproval).38 Their methods could vary from the exploitation of legal claims to outright violence and theft: Henry the Lion’s seizure of the county of Stade from the churchman who was the last male member of the comital line in 1144 was a case in point, and this particular piece of high-handedness poisoned relations between the duke of Saxony and the archbishops of Bremen for some 40 years.39 But these de facto local rulers also sought to develop and consolidate their power bases in other ways. They imported colonists to clear forest and waste, and founded villages and towns

37 Oswald Redlich, Rudolf von Habsburg. Das deutsche Reich nach dem Untergang des alten Kaisertums (Innsbruck 1903), pp. 14, 17. 104; H.E. Feine, ‘Die Territorialbildung der Habsburger im deutschen Südwestern, vornehmlich im späten Mittelalter’, ZSSRG GA 67 (1950), 183–5. The Counts of Homburg died out in 1223, and Kyburg in 1264. 38 De Advocatis Altahensibus, ed. P. Jaffé, MGH SS. xvii.373–4. Cf. the views of a monk of Goseck, in Saxony, on the high-handed exercise of the advocate’s position by Countess Eilika of Ballenstadt in the 1120s; his criticism was of course compounded by her gender, Chronicon Gozecense, ed. Rudolf Köpke, II.19, 21, MGH SS x.154–5. 39 Jordan, Henry the Lion, pp. 27–9; Ehlers, Heinrich der Löwe, pp. 65–70. The origins and development of this dispute are exhaustively analysed by Gerd Althoff, ‘Heinrich der Löwe und das Stader Erbe. Zum Problems der Beurteilung des Annalista Saxo’, DA 41 (1985), 66–100.

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(think of Freiburg-in-Breisgau, Chemnitz, Munich and indeed Berlin, among others), seeking to increase their income through rents and agricultural dues, tolls and minting rights, and levies from the towns. They founded markets,40 and – especially along the eastern frontiers – encouraged foreign merchants and artisans to settle in new towns.41 But while this economic activity might be seen in some senses as benevolent, albeit of course intended for the local ruler’s profit, it was still backed up by the threat of force, both to safeguard the dues levied by the landowner and to guard against others intruding on his resources. Hence, at some time in the mid-twelfth century Ludwig II, Landgrave of Thuringia, responded to outsiders trying to carve assarts out of forest land he considered his: Landgrave Ludwig sends greeting to the provost of the woodland squatters (extirpatori). We want you to be warned to leave the woodlands the sooner the better and to depart with all the squatters subject to you. If, however, you should fail to do this, even for a moment, I myself will come to you and lay waste everything that is yours with fire and pillage, not without danger even to your life.42 Assarting clearly remained a sensitive issue for territorial lords, and even if responses became more measured, they were still heavy-handed. Thus, in 1254 a court presided over by Dukes Ludwig and Henry of Bavaria promulgated a decree ordering those making assarts without the landowner’s consent to vacate such holdings within 15 days, render satisfaction for any damage done, and to pay a heavy fine, which would be doubled should they fail to leave within the specified period.43 The exercise of such judicial rights was crucial to the rise of territorial lordship, for these rights were both a source of profit and of very real local power. Indeed, Prof Arnold has suggested that the possession of the right to exercise high justice over a region (Landgericht), jurisdiction which allowed the infliction of the death penalty, was a crucial component in the consolidation of princely power. The Landgericht was derived from the authority of local counts, once long ago exercised as the representative of the state, and it was these judicial rights as much as increasing their landed base, which made the emerging dynasts such energetic collectors of comital titles.44

40 For one example among many, the foundation of a market at Stendal by Margrave Albrecht of Brandenburg c.1160, Ostsiedlung, i.146–8 no. 32; also in Lutz Partenheimer, Die Entstehung der Mark Brandeburg (Cologne 2007), pp. 144–7 no. 25. 41 Thus, in 1208 Duke Leopold II of Austria granted Flemish burgesses settled in Vienna the same rights as native Austrians, Ostsiedlung, ii.474–6 no. 125. 42 QGDB, p. 192 no. 75, quoted by Arnold, Power and Property, p. 58. 43 MGH Constitutiones, ii.633 no. 461. 44 Arnold, Princes and Territories, pp. 189–93.

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They also founded their own monastic houses, and while this required a landed endowment and some surrender of rights – not perhaps that much since the dynasts remained as the advocates of these houses – these monasteries were potentially sources of patronage, and were valuable for the dynasties’ prestige as mausolea, ‘places of memory’ and centres of propaganda, while of course the monks’ prayers were essential to the princes’ salvation. The propagation of the dynasty’s memory, and indeed the construction of an often legendary memory for the ancestors of the twelfth and thirteenth century princes can be seen in such texts as the Weingarten ‘History of the Welfs’, the Lauterberg Chronicle for the Wettins, or the Reinhardsbrunner Chronicle for the Landgraves of Thuringia, all products of monasteries founded by, and intimately connected with, the princely dynasty.45 Such monastic foundations were a symbol of the pretensions of a dynasty seeking to proclaim its status within the highest ranks of the German aristocracy. And as new families emerged into the ranks of the imperial princes, they, too, saw the need for places of commemoration – hence the Habsburgs foundation of the monastery of Königsfelden in the Aargau in 1311. This was in the first instance to commemorate the murdered King Albrecht, but it became both a burial site and a place of memory for the entire dynasty, serving the Habsburgs in much the same way as earlier Klosterneuburg and Heiligenkreuz had their Babenberg predecessors.46 The scale and chronology of these developments was by no means the same for every aspirant princely dynasty. The Welfs, for example – and we are told this by their own historian from Weingarten – first sought fiefs from neighbouring churchmen during the late eleventh century to make up for the fiefs used to endow knights to enhance their military following during the conflicts of Henry IV’s reign. It was then, too, that they began aggressively to acquire counties in Swabia. Welf IV, we are told: took possession of all the properties which Count Luithold had in these parts, by donation from him, apart from those he handed over to St. Mary in Zwiefelten, along with the two castles of Achelm and Wulvelingen. He received and obtained the patrimony of Count Otto of Bouchorn, who surrendered this of his own free will during his lifetime.47

45 For the Weingarten History, see below note 47; Chronicon Montis Sereni, ed. Ernst Ehrenfeuchter, MGH SS xxiii.130–226; Cronica Reinhardsbrunnensis, ed. Oswald HolderEgger, MGH SS xxx(1).490–658. This last work was written quite late, during the 1340s, but clearly contains older material about the Landgraves dating from around 1200. 46 For these last, Karl Lechner, Die Babenberger. Markgrafen und Herzoge von Österreich 976–1246 (6th ed., Vienna 1996), pp. 122–3, 127–9, 257–60; Arnold, Power and Property, pp. 160–1. See below, pp. 336, 344. 47 Historia Welforum, ed. Erich König (Schwäbische Chroniken der Stauferzeit 1, 2nd ed., Sigmaringen 1978), c. 13, p. 20 [also in Historia Welforum Weingartensis, MGH SS xxi.462].

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How much free will was involved, we may dispose to doubt, although Count Otto lacked a male heir, which may have made his surrender a degree more palatable. But, by contrast, the Wettins and the descendants of the Thuringian Count Ludwig ‘the Leaper’ (d. 1123) only emerged into the front rank of the aristocracy as territorial magnates with the patronage of the Emperor Lothar in the 1130s.48 His favour to them rewarded their support of him in the years before 1125, when as Duke of Saxony he had opposed Henry V.49 However, the Wettins in particular also benefited from profitable marriages,50 while one of the means which the new Landgraves of Thuringia used to consolidate their position was through the acquisition of the Vogtei of several of the most important monastic houses in the region.51 After 1138 the landgraves of Thuringia were closely allied with Conrad III, an alliance which was strengthened by the marriage of Ludwig II to Conrad’s niece, and Frederick Barbarossa’s half-sister, in the late 1140s. The landgrave reciprocated by taking part in Barbarossa’s expeditions against Poland in 1157, and to Italy in 1158–60.52 The favour of Lothar, and then his Staufen successors, to these two dynasties which became entrenched along the eastern frontier reminds us that the rise of these local territorial rulers, and the process by which they consolidated their power in particular regions, was not necessarily one which brought them in conflict with the monarchs; and indeed the twelfth-century rulers often encouraged the establishment of local and regional predominance. The classic example of course came with Frederick Barbarossa’s creation, or sanctioning, of the duchy of Austria in 1156. Faced with resolving a conflict between his cousin Henry the Lion and his uncle Henry of Babenberg over who should have the title of Duke of Bavaria, and anxious,

48 Annales Pegavienses, ad. an. 1130–1, MGH SS xvi.256; Chronicon Montis Sereni, MGH SS xxiii.140–1; Annalista Saxo, ed. Klaus Naß (MGH SS xxxvii, Hanover 2006), p. 593. Hans Patze, Die Entstehung der Landesherrschaft in Thüringen (Cologne 1967), pp. 208–9. 49 Patze, Die Entstehung, 205; Jörg Rogge, Die Wettiner. Aufstieg einer Dynastie im Mittelalter (Ostfildern 2009), pp. 30–1. 50 The most significant Wettin marriages were those of Count Henry I of Eilenburg to the sister of Margrave Ekkehard of Meissen (c. 1100), Count Dedo IV to Bertha, daughter of Wiprecht of Groitzch (c. 1110?), and that of Margrave Dietrich of Meissen to Jutta, daughter of Landgrave Herman of Thuringia (d. 1217), which gave their son a claim to Thuringia after the death of the last Landgrave in 1247. Rogge, Die Wettiner, pp. 29, 55, 62. For Bertha, Chronicon Montis Sereni, pp. 139, 146. The landgraves also benefited from the marriage of Landgrave Ludwig I, son of Ludwig ‘the Leaper’, to Hedwig, daughter and heir of Count Giso (IV) of Gudensberg (d. 1122), Patze, Die Entstehung, pp. 193, 195–6, 204–5. 51 Patze, Die Entstehung, p. 205. 52 Ibid., pp. 210–11, 216; and cf. Chronica Regia Coloniensia, ed. Georg Waitz (MGH SRG, Hanover 1880), pp. 97, 104.

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too, for princely support for his next Italian expedition, the emperor brokered a compromise. Henry the Lion received back the duchy of Bavaria (or perhaps more properly we should say the ducal title) which his ancestors had held, but Henry of Babenberg retained ducal rank over his own extensive lands in the southeast. More significant, however, were the terms on which the new duchy was granted. It was to be hereditary in the Babenberg line, and in the absence of direct heirs the duke was allowed to designate whom he wished as his successor. Fiefs held from the empire by previous Babenberger lords were confirmed. The dukes of Bavaria were to have no further authority over the Babenberg lands. The new dukes were to possess full judicial authority within their dominions, free of external interference (including, by implication, from the emperor). They would only owe him military service in regions bordering on Austria.53 Thus, whereas other territorial principalities developed piecemeal, and over a long period, the duchy of Austria as a quasi-independent principality was created at one fell swoop – albeit over lands which the Babenberger already possessed. The 1156 grant embodied a more-or-less complete surrender of imperial authority in return for short-term political advantage. On the latter level, it did work. Peace was secured between Welf and Babenberger, which enabled the emperor to spend four years campaigning in Italy in 1158–62. Both dukes served on that expedition and brought substantial military contingents to the siege of Milan in 1158.54 The Babenberger remained on good terms with the Staufen emperors through the rest of the twelfth century. Duke Henry’s son Leopold materially assisted, and eventually joined, Barbarossa’s Crusade in 1189–90, and subsequently handed the captive Richard of England over to Henry VI; the latter’s ransom financed the imperial conquest of the kingdom of Sicily. Leopold’s younger brother took part in the unsuccessful south Italian expedition of 1191. At the same time the emperor continued to favour the Babenberger, not least when in 1187 he consented to Leopold succeeding the childless Duke Ottokar IV of Styria.55 The 1156 grant may have been a particular generous and clear-cut concession to a princely dynast – who was also, we should remember, a close relative of the emperor. But it was by no means an isolated example. Frederick

53 MGH Dipl. Frederick I, i.259–60 no. 151 [translation below, pp. 347–9]. Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa, pp. 127–34, stresses that while Barbarossa had probably always intended to restore Henry the Lion as duke of Bavaria, the issue was so sensitive that lengthy negotiations, and major concessions, were needed to bring it to a successful conclusion. 54 Holger Berwinkel, Verwüsten und Belagern. Friedrich Barbarossas Krieg gegen Mailand (1158–1162) (Tübingen 2007), pp. 46–7, and passim. Henry the Lion’s contingent was as much as 1200 knights, Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa, p. 463. 55 Georg Scheibelreiter, Die Babenberger. Reichsfürsten und Landesherren (Vienna 2010), pp. 240–3. Ottokar died in May 1192, and Leopold duly succeeded him as Duke of Styria.

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Barbarossa, for example, granted extensive powers in Burgundy to the Duke of Zähringen in 1152, recognised the pretensions of the Duke of Bohemia to a royal crown in 1158 (again, in return for his participation in the Italian expedition of that year), gave the bishopric of Würzburg ducal authority in eastern Franconia in 1168, and the archbishopric of Cologne ducal power in Westphalia in 1180, all of these for short-term political advantage.56 The background throughout the reign was the need to keep the princes and prelates of Germany satisfied, and if possible at peace with one another, while the emperor devoted much of his attention to the affairs of his north Italian kingdom. Similarly, Frederick II secured peace with the Welfs through the creation of the duchy of Brunswick in 1235, and in 1243 was prepared to agree to the succession of the margrave of Meissen to the inheritance and position of his childless uncle Landgrave Henry Raspe of Thuringia. Significantly increasing the power of the Wettins was a price worth paying if it kept two influential north German princes on his side during his conflict with the papacy.57 By 1245, on the eve of Innocent IV’s bull of deposition, he was even prepared to contemplate raising the duchy of Austria to be a kingdom, and his erstwhile enemy Duke Frederick to be a king.58 We can recognise this long-standing concern with keeping the princes contented without returning to the nationalist controversies of the age of Bismarck, when historians such as Giesebrecht and von Sybel disputed as to how far the involvement with Italy ‘changed’ or ’diverted’ the ‘natural’ development of the Reich. The other obvious point to make about the Staufer is that within their local power bases they were doing exactly what the other emerging princes were, both before and after Conrad III’s election to (or more properly seizure of) the throne in 1138. The difference was one of scale rather than kind. The Staufer had several different regions of local predominance: in their native Swabia (though here they were in competition with both Welf and Zähringer),59 in Alsace, in the Lausitz mark on the eastern frontier, and to some extent in Burgundy after Barbarossa’s marriage to the local heiress Beatrice in 1156. Even in some other regions where their possessions were more limited, they still possessed considerable influence – in Franconia for example they were advocates of at least 14 monasteries during the late

56 MGH Dipl. Frederick I, i.22–4 no. 12, 335–7 no. 201; iii.5–7 no. 546, 362–3 no. 795 [translated below, pp. 349–51]. For the Bohemian role in Barbarossa’s second Italian expedition, see especially Vincent of Prague, Annales, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, MGH SS xvii.667–75, as well as Berwinkel, Verwüsten und Belagern passim. 57 MGH Constitutiones, ii.263–4 no. 197; Hist. Dipl. Fred. II, vi(1).100–1. In the event, the latter expedient was unsuccessful, in that it did not prevent Henry Raspe becoming the papally-sponsored anti-king in 1246. 58 MGH Constitutiones, ii.358–60 no. 261. 59 There is a helpful map in Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa, p. 45.

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twelfth century.60 They also had what was left of the imperial fisc. But the Staufer still sought to expand, and to develop, their territories and their rights, just as other princes did. According to his half-brother Otto of Freising, Duke Frederick II of Swabia, Barbarossa’s father, was celebrated as a builder of castles, and ‘so generous . . . that a great multitude of warriors flocked to him and offered themselves voluntarily for his service’.61 But to afford such a following, extensive lands and great wealth were required. Barbarossa himself subsequently displayed an acquisitive streak to rival that of any of the other princes, including Henry the Lion of Saxony – anxious as he was both to endow his growing brood of sons, and so to strengthen the dynasty as a whole that they would be able to maintain their grip on the throne after his death. In particular, in the wake of the disastrous epidemic which ravaged his army in Rome in 1167, he sought to secure the succession for his own family to the lordships of men who had died or who had lost their heirs, notably his cousin Frederick of Rothenburg, the counts of Sulzbach and Pfullendorf (in this last case he allowed his Habsburg allies a share of the spoils), and – the greatest territorial coup of his reign – to the south German lands of Duke Welf VI, succession to which he purchased c. 1178. Even if Duke Welf proceeded to live on a good bit longer than any contemporary had a right to expect – and enjoying a disgraceful old age, devoted to the twin delights of pious benefactions and whoring – this coup confirmed the Staufen dominance of Swabia, as well as precipitating the final breach between the emperor and Welf’s nephew Henry the Lion.62 The other significant development of Barbarossa’s reign was the emergence of a concept of what a ‘prince’ was; with the development of the idea that there was a specific group at the head of the nobility who were dependent on the emperor alone, and who comprised the Reichsfürstenstand, the ‘guild of imperial princes’. These of course were precisely those lords who had consolidated their local territorial power and rights to dominate a particular region, in the way that has already been described. While we should be cautious about transposing the rather stylised hierarchical view of later law tracts like the Sachsenspiegel too far back into the twelfth century, it would seem the enunciation of the princely concept emerged during the last decade of Barbarossa’s reign. A crucial piece of evidence for this was

60 Schlunk, Königsmacht und Krongut, pp. 57–8. 61 GFred I.12, p. 152 [Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, translated Mierow, p. 45]. 62 See especially Leyser, ‘Frederick Barbarossa and the Hohenstaufen Polity’, 164–76 [and Communications and Power . . . The Gregorian Revolution, pp. 128–42]. For the Sulzbach inheritance, MGH Dipl. Frederick I, iii.117–20 nos. 624–5. Historia Welforum, pp. 68–70. The chronicler Burchard also noted Frederick’s acquisitions, ‘either by gift, purchase or inheritance’, after 1167, Burchardi Praepositi Urspergensis Chronicon, pp. 49–50. After 1190 the Staufer held the advocacies of some 29 monasteries in Swabia, Schlunk, Königsmacht und Krongut, p. 65.

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the emperor’s grant of the newly created Margraviate of Namur to Count Baldwin of Hainault at his great court at Mainz in 1184. The lord emperor creates from these [fiefs of the recently deceased Count of Namur] a march of the empire, which march the Count of Hainault receives from the lord emperor, and from it he shall be counted as a prince and liege man of the empire (princeps imperii et ligii homo censibitur) and shall enjoy the privileges of the princes of the empire.63 Yet we should note that this grant does not survive in an original charter, but only in a copy of 1258, so was the mid-thirteenth-century copyist preserving, or was he perhaps ‘improving’ and updating the terminology of the original? Certainly, the contemporary chronicler from Hainault, Gilbert of Mons, who provided a detailed account of the Mainz court, said only that the emperor granted Baldwin the lands of his uncle the Count of Namur, and made no mention of his alleged new and princely status.64 Whatever the exact case here – and the modern generation of medieval historians is less concerned with establishing and dating precise legal definitions for concepts of authority than were our predecessors – the development of the princely concept was probably encouraged by the structural changes that followed the downfall of Henry the Lion in 1180. These developments – the splitting of ducal authority in Saxony between the archbishopric of Cologne and the Ascanians, the transfer of the duchy of Bavaria to the Wittelsbacher, the further splitting of the old Bavarian duchy by the creation of the duchy of Merania, the grant of ducal rank to the ruler of Styria, and the recognition of Pomerania and Mecklenburg as independent lordships – largely completed the long process of transition by which ducal authority was privatised and localised.65 The dukes of the Ottonian and Salian periods had ruled as public authorities, as royal vicegerents over provinces. The dukes (and other princes, margraves, landgraves, etc.) of the later Middle Ages ruled over their own private dominions, and their titles were more a badge of rank than in themselves a source of power.66 The latter they had to consolidate for themselves. After 1180, for example, the Wittelsbach strengthened their initially fragile hold over their new duchy through the energetic expansion of their own landed holdings, taking

63 MGH Dipl. Frederick I, iv.90–1 no. 857. 64 Le Chronique de Gislebert de Mons, ed. Leon Vanderkindere (Brussels 1904), pp. 162–3 [Gilbert of Mons, Chronicle of Hainaut, trans. Laura Napran (Woodbridge 2005), p. 89]. 65 Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa, p. 479. 66 The classic study is Gerd Tellenbach, ‘From the Carolingian Imperial Nobility to the German Estate of Imperial Princes’, in The Medieval Nobility: Studies on the Ruling Class in France and Germany From the Sixth to the Twelfth Century, trans. and ed. Timothy Reuter (Amsterdam 1979), pp. 203–31.

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advantage in particular of the number of local aristocratic dynasties extinguished through failure of heirs, some, or occasionally all, of whose property was acquired by the duke – in a number of cases by purchase. The acquisition of the lands of the Counts of Bogen, inherited after the death of the last, childless, count in 1242 was particularly noteworthy, for this was one of the most powerful families in eastern Bavaria who had, despite their relationship, been long-standing opponents of the Wittelsbacher. But it was by no means an isolated example.67 This privatisation of authority was also made manifest during the thirteenth century when some princely dynasties, notably the Wittelsbacher, the Welfs, the margraves of Brandenburg, the dukes of Pomerania and the lords of Mecklenburg, split lands and titles between different branches of the family. In particular, the Welf duchy of Brunswick was divided between the brothers John and Albrecht in 1267, only a generation after its creation, and then again in 1291. There were to be no less than nine further partitions of the Welf lands before 1500.68 One might suggest therefore that the later twelfth century saw a decisive step in the emergence of the territorial princes in Germany, even though outwardly imperial authority remained strong, at least until the death of Henry VI in 1197, and was to some extent re-asserted by Frederick II. Nor were the two necessarily in conflict – under Barbarossa emperor and princes rather saw themselves as being in partnership. But by the 1220s and 1230s the foundations of imperial power were seriously weakened, and Frederick II, far more than his predecessors, focussed his time and attention on Italy and ruled as an absentee. Nor was the presence of first one, and then another of his sons, an effective substitute. As minors they were ineffectual, Henry (VII)’s regent Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne was murdered (by one of his own relatives) in 1225,69 and as a young adult King Henry found himself in

67 Thus, Duke Ludwig I inherited the allodial land of the Landgraves of Stefling in 1196, although a neighbouring count was re-invested with their fiefs, and similarly inherited part of the property of the Margraves of Vohburg when this dynasty died out in 1204. After the last count of Frontenhausen died in 1226, he purchased part of their lands from the counts’ relative Bishop Conrad (IV) of Regensburg. His father had bought Dachau from the widow of the last count in 1182. Much later, when the counts of Moosburg died out in 1284, Duke Henry took over their fiefs held from the bishop of Freising, Andreas Kraus, ‘Das Herzogtum der Wittelsbacher: die Grundlegung des Landes Bayern’, in Die Zeit der frühen Herzogs, von Otto I zu Ludwig dem Bayern (Beiträge zur bayerischen Geschichte und Kunst 1180–1350), ed. Hubert Glaser (Munich 1980), pp. 176–7, 179–80, 183. 68 Bernd Schneidmüller, Die Welfen. Herrschaft und Erinnerung (Stuttgart 2000), p. 286. Bavaria was partitioned between brothers in 1255, and there was a further division between Bavaria and the Palatinate in 1317, Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, p. 381. Brandenburg remained divided between two princely lines between 1258 and 1317, Partenheimer, Die Entstehung der Mark Brandenburg, p. 81. For Pomerania and Mecklenburg, see below, pp. 270–2. 69 Chronica Regia Coloniensis, pp. 255–7.

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conflict with his father. His half-brother Conrad IV faced a rival anti-king from 1246 onwards. Reading contemporary narratives of the first half of the thirteenth century from some regions of Germany, for example those from the lower Rhineland such as the Cologne Chronicle and the ‘Deeds of the Bishops of Utrecht’, one is struck by how rarely the monarchs appear – and indeed how increasingly irrelevant they were to a world of local conflicts and rivalries, which they were quite unable to control or quash. When Bishop Otto of Utrecht was killed fighting against his rebellious subjects in Coevorden and Drenthe in 1227, and his ally the Count of Geldern taken prisoner, King Henry (VII) did indeed declare the perpetrators to be outlaws. But the new bishop of Utrecht was left to his own devices in struggling to retrieve the situation, with neither financial nor military aid from the crown, let alone direct royal intervention.70 In 1240 the archbishop of Cologne ignored Conrad IV’s attempts to broker a peace between him and his local enemies such as the Count of Jülich, and a year later the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz sent troops to ravage the Wetterau region, despite the king’s efforts to stop them.71 If the full reality of where real and effective power lay only revealed itself after 1245, after which the princes decided the destiny of the crown, the seeds had been sown earlier. Yet one would not suggest that the dynamic process was over by 1245, or whatever other date in the early to mid-thirteenth century one might choose as an example. Certainly, by then the reality of princely power was established, and there was a clear concept of what a prince was. Territorial rulers had long since usurped a quasi-royal style, such as the ‘by the grace of God’ formula in their documents, as well as in their religious and artistic patronage. They were developing their own administrations and new types of documentary record such as the Urbar. Fixed territorial boundaries began to be established. During the fourteenth century, princes also began to raise general taxation (Landsteuer) in their territories.72 But the political geography of Germany remained notably unstable, and this for two reasons. Allusion has already been made to one – the propensity for divided succession, which was re-asserted from the mid-thirteenth century in a way that was far less apparent in the twelfth, and led authority in some regions increasingly to fragment. This applied not just to princely dynasties, but to others as well – the Habsburgs, as yet only local counts, albeit powerful ones, divided their territory in the 1230s,73 and their example was followed by other comital families, especially those which had been

70 Gesta Episcoporum Traiectensium, ed. L. Weiland, MGH SS xxiii.417–9, cc. 29–32. Hist. Dipl. Fred. II, iii.350–1. 71 Chronica Regia Coloniensia, pp. 277, 282. 72 Wilson, Holy Roman Empire, pp. 532–3. 73 Redlich, Rudolf von Habsburg, pp. 19, 78–9.

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successful through acquisition or inheritance in extending their dominions.74 The other factor was the biological extinction, not just of comital, but of princely dynasties. The Dukes of Zähringen died out in the male line in 1218, the Babenberger in 1246, the Landgraves of Thuringia in 1247, the Dukes of Merania in 1248, the Spanheimer Dukes of Carinthia in 1279 and the Dukes of Limburg in 1283.75 One might speculate how different the electoral college that emerged during the interregnum, and was then frozen in time thereafter, would have been if some or all of these dynasties had continued. In nearly every case division between co-heiresses and rival claims led to prolonged conflict among prospective heirs that destabilised regions. The dispute in Swabia over the Zähringen inheritance lasted on-and-off for eight years, that for the Thuringian succession for 17 years.76 The conflict for the Andechs-Merania inheritance, for example, was complicated by the number of potential heirs: the deceased duke Otto had five sisters, all still living and all married with husbands keen to press their claims, when he died in June 1248 – and by the extended geographical spread of the family’s holdings – not just in their nominal duchy in Istria and Croatia, but their ancestral lands in Bavaria and other properties, both allods and fiefs, in Franconia, and even in imperial Burgundy. That they held fiefs from several different churches, including the bishoprics of Bamberg and Brixen and the abbey of Fulda, complicated matters further. A general settlement was only reached in 1260, and even then there were still dissatisfied parties raising claims, especially in Burgundy.77 The conflict for the Babenberg inheritance lasted even longer; Austria indeed remained a battleground until the death of Ottokar II of Bohemia at the battle of Dürnkrut in 1278. Of course other families rose up to fill the vacuum left by the extinction of these princely dynasties, notably the Counts of Wurttemberg and Tyrol, and above all the Habsburgs, although these last only fully consolidated their principality in the southeast in the early fourteenth century. So, the rise of the territorial principalities was far from being the end of the dynamic process, and indeed the German political structure remained notably unstable through to the end of the Middle Ages.

74 Thus, the Counts of Urach in Swabia divided their lands in 1245, and again in 1272, while the Counts of Henneberg divided their lands in eastern Franconia and Thuringia in 1274, Heinemann, ‘Das Erbe der Zähringer’, p. 239. The Counts of Tirol divided their lands c. 1271, Arnold, Princes and Territories, pp. 270–1. 75 Arnold, Princes and Territories, p. 108. 76 Heinemann, ‘Das Erbe der Zähringer’, especially pp. 220–6; for Thuringia, Rogge, Die Wettiner, pp. 62–6. 77 Johannes Mötsch, ‘Das Ende der Andechs-Meranier – Streit ums Erbe’, in Die AndechsMeranier in Franken, ed. Lothar Henig (Mainz 1998), pp. 129–41.

2

The growth of princely authority Themes and problems1 Jörg Rogge

This volume offers to Anglophone readers the fruits of recent research by German historians on the political and constitutional development of the Roman-German Reich from the kingdom of the high Middle Ages to the late medieval princely states of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The essays gathered together here illuminate this development up to the mid-fourteenth century, when the process was still not complete. Therefore, the focus of this volume is on the foundation and development of princely lordship, because in the late medieval Reich – in contrast to the kingdoms of France and England – no relatively strong monarchy established itself. Instead, political developments were marked by both cooperation and opposition between the princes and kings.1

Preliminary remarks In the period examined here, lordship was not only an institutionally closed and hierarchically structured construct, but was above all a comprehensive social practice. Princes and kings competed for lordship rights and areas, secured their lordship claims or questioned those of others. Their success or failure depended on both internal and external factors. Was the family able to transform itself into a dynasty? Did the dynasty have command of necessary resources? Did this dynasty develop sufficient ability to assert itself compared to the competition? How did kings intervene in the development of the princes’ lordship?2 The articles in this volume provide answers to these questions.

1 This introduction will examine overarching and general trends in the genesis of princely lordship in the Reich up to the middle of the fourteenth century. As occasion offers, I refer to the articles collected in the volume, which also deal with the differences and peculiarities of the various regions and forms of lordship discussed here. 2 Jörg Rogge, ‘Zur Praxis, Legitimation und Repräsentation hochadeliger Herrschaft im mitteldeutschen Raum. Ergebnisse und Perspektiven’, in Hochadelige Herrschaft im mitteldeutschen Raum (1200–1600). Formen – Legitimation – Repräsentation, ed. Jörg Rogge and Uwe Schirmer (Stuttgart 2003), pp. 465–506, at p. 496.

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German scholars have employed a variety of perspectives and have posed a range of questions to portray and analyse the development of princely lordship, including legal and constitutional history, social and economic history, as well as cultural history (communication). When dealing with the territories of princely lordship in the Roman-German Reich in the period covered by this volume, one can speak of lordship over both land and people. To be sure, the princes’ lordship was based on place, but at the same time the areas of their lordship were not clearly demarcated territories. Still, both ecclesiastical and secular lords took pains to impose their will in the area of their lordship with the help of administrative structures (offices, advocacies) and the employment of ministeriales in castles or towns. In many regions, this concern of princes to intensify their lordship can be discerned starting around the year 1200. Important innovations were put in place in the course of the thirteenth century, with the consequence that at the beginning of the modern period it is possible to speak of territorial states. Historians have debated the question of whether the princes regarded the intensification of their lordship rights in their region and the establishment of territorial lordship over the whole area as their ultimate political goal. In the older scholarship it was assumed that the princes consciously worked against the kings in order to achieve this aim.3 Current studies, by contrast, stress that there was no binary opposition of kingship and princes in the high Middle Ages.4 It was much more the case that kings stabilised the hierarchy in the ranks of the high nobility and settled the princes’ claims to rights and possessions. The articles in this volume also underscore the view that the goal the princes and high nobles pursued was not to create a closed ‘territorial state’. The princes no more acted with a long-term perspective to erect a closed territorial state than the kings pursued a systematic policy to centralise their rule. Duke Henry the Lion was an important exception – and he was deposed in the year 1180 precisely because of his single-minded territorial policy.5 The princes’ pursuit of feuds, as a result, is no longer regarded primarily from the perspective of territorial development. Current scholarship emphasises and demonstrates plausibly that the princes turned to feuding in order to defend their honour and rank. For from the perspective of feuds as well, the interaction of king, nobility and princes was marked by the concern to hierarchicise personal relations, rather than with linking their lordship to land as a preliminary to state-building.6 The examples collected in this volume also

3 See Werner Hechberger, ‘Princely Lordship in the Reign of Frederick Barbarossa: An Historiographical Analysis’, below p. 53. 4 Benjamin Arnold, Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany (Cambridge 1991), pp. 71–2. 5 Hechberger, ‘Princely Lordship’, below p. 51. 6 See Christine Reinle, ‘Violence, Feud, and Peacemaking’ in this volume. See also the contributions to Fehdeführung im spätmittelalterlichen Reich. Zwischen adeliger Handlungslogik und territorialer Verdichtung, ed. Julia Eulenstein et al. (Affalterbach 2013).

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provide evidence that the princes took advantage of a variety of lordship rights that were not necessarily connected to each other. The development of the principalities does not show evidence of carefully planned political activity, but rather the reaction of political actors to biological chance (marriage, birth and death) and taking advantage of opportunities to expand their lordship area and rights.7 When the Ascanians, Babenbergs and Zähringer died out, their relatives and neighbours profited, notably the Habsburgs, who inherited key parts of the Zähringer lordship. But to be sure, the creation and extension of princely lordships was not undertaken solely by peaceful means; it is clear from the articles in this volume that the princes’ territorial expansion was also pursued with military force. Rivalries over lordship rights and possessions were fought out militarily and success on the battlefield could lead to expansion of lordship, as can be seen with the Ascanians in Brandenburg after the Battle of Bornhöved (1227) and the Habsburgs after the Battle of Dürnkrut in 1278.8 In the following pages the development of lordship in the principalities will be sketched with particular consideration of the following external and internal factors: the influence of the kings in the development of princely lordship, differences between ecclesiastical and secular principalities, the means by which lordship was implemented in relation to the material resources available and aspects of the practice of lordship.

The significance of the kings for the development of princely lordship, 1100–1350 Kingship strongly influenced the political playing field on which the high and princely nobility developed their lordship. The kings awarded fiefs and rights, and also confirmed the princes’ possessions. They also at times and in specific regions of the Reich tried to claim positions of lordship in opposition to the princes.9 In the period under consideration here, it is possible to divide royal lordship in the Reich into three phases. First is the period of Staufen rule, which ended in 1245/50 with the deposition and death of Emperor Frederick II. Second is the phase of the so-called Interregnum up to the election of Rudolf of Habsburg in 1273. Third and finally, there is the time of rivalry between the Wittelsbacher, Luxemburger and Habsburgs for the throne up to the middle of the fourteenth century.10

7 Ernst Schubert, Fürstliche Herrschaft und Territorium im späten Mittelalter (Munich 1996), p. 5. 8 See Lutz Partenheimer, ‘A Success Story: Brandenburg in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, below p. 305, and Martina Sterken, ‘Shaping a Dominion: Habsburg Beginnings’, below p. 331. 9 See Partenheimer, ‘Brandenburg’, and André Thieme, ‘The Rise of the Wettins’ (for Meissen and Pleissenland) in this volume. 10 Jörg Rogge, Die deutschen Könige im Mittelalter. Wahl und Krönung (2nd ed., Darmstadt 2011), pp. 55–63.

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To put it simply, in essence the princes were hierarchically subordinated to the Staufen kings. What they received in return from the king was that he would protect their interests and that they would be provided with rights and lordship areas appropriate to their rank. In the first third of the thirteenth century the long absence of the Staufen kings had a massive influence on political development in the Reich. With the Statutum in favorem principum (1231/1232) the legal foundation was laid for the development of the principalities, inasmuch as Frederick II granted the princes rights that had been abandoned to them but were still in part contested.11 The period between the death of Frederick II in 1250 and the election of Rudolf of Habsburg in 1273 is usually known as the Interregnum. During this period there was no effective royal lordship in the Reich. The kings – Henry Raspe, William of Holland, Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso of Castile – were for various reasons not in a position to make good their claims of lordship and to implement effective royal rule.12 In this period the ecclesiastical and secular princes, as well as the towns, were able to secure their lordship and legal positions and in part to develop them. For the relationship of the princes to the crown it was important as well that the seven-member college of electors (the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, the count palatine of the Rhine, the margrave of Brandenburg, the duke of Saxony and the king of Bohemia) developed, which was responsible for royal elections.13 Bishops and princes sought to expand their claims to territorial and lordship rights. This led to the integration (or subjection) of less powerful nobles and imperial ministeriales in the areas of their lordship. The towns again sought to secure peace in the land and their interests by forming leagues.14 The Interregnum served as a catalyst for the

11 MGH Constitutiones ii.211–13 no. 171 [translated below, pp. 355–7]: In this document the construction of royal castles and towns on ecclesiastical land or as an imposition on the princes is forbidden. The ecclesiastical princes in particular opposed the foundation of towns in the areas of their lordship. Existing markets were not allowed to be harmed by the foundation of new markets, and the obligation to visit specific markets was established. Further, the inviolable precincts around newly founded royal towns were set aside. Frederick II recognised the princes’ right to issue laws, which in the long term led to the replacement of predominantly customary rights with territorial law. Among other things, the royal towns were forbidden to receive princely and ecclesiastical serfs and to extend the towns’ jurisdiction at the expense of that of the princes. Furthermore, private lands and fiefs of which the towns had taken possession had to be returned and the princely right to conveyance and mint were guaranteed. See also Wolfgang Stürner, Friedrich II, 1194–1250 (Darmstadt 2009), pp. 280–5. 12 Martin Kaufhold, Interregnum (Darmstadt 2002). 13 Rogge, Könige, p. 49. See also Alexander Begert, Die Entstehung und Entwicklung des Kurkollegs. Von den Anfängen bis zum frühen 15. Jahrhundert (Berlin 2010). 14 Eberhard Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelalter 1150–1550: Stadtgestalt, Recht, Verfassung, Stadtregiment, Kirche, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft (2nd ed., Cologne 2012), pp. 315–21.

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development of the territorial princes into important agents of ‘state’ order in the Reich and promoted the emancipation of towns and the increasingly wealthy class of burghers. Indeed towns formed (peace) leagues like the Rhenish League (1254–6) to safeguard their rights and the peace in times of weak royal lordship, among other reasons against the ambitions of princes.15 Rudolf of Habsburg’s assumption of office in 1273 began the reclamation of lost royal possessions, with the princes’ support. Already here it is possible to discern a situation that came fully into place with the elections of Adolf of Nassau (1292), Albert of Habsburg (1298) and finally Henry VII (1308): the kings were not sovereign rulers, but rather were dependent on their princely electors. The kings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries did not succeed in building up a royal territory or crown demesne, which could have served as the basis for lordship without recourse to their personal or dynastic resources. After 1300, the kings of the Reich as crown-bearers were only as strong as they were in their capacity as princes.16 The relationship between kings and princes was less hierarchical than it was ‘collegial.’17

Distinguishing features of princely lordship up to the midfourteenth century: personal and territorial connections Up to the middle of the fourteenth century, in the conflicts between kings and aristocratic rivals certain ecclesiastical and secular princes had successfully asserted themselves to secure regions and rights of lordship long-term for their dynasty or ecclesiastical institution (archdiocese or diocese). Those dynasties that did not die out after 1350 created, through successful centralisation of their lordships, the prerequisites for intensifying their lordship into rule over areas (territorial states). This development can aptly be described as: ‘from cumulative lordship based on isolated rights to complex power.’18 The great imperial princely dynasties that were successful in the long term included the Habsburgs (in Austria), Wittelsbacher (in Bavaria), Luxemburger (until 1437), as well as the Wettins (in Saxony and Thuringia) and the Welfs (in Lower Saxony).

15 Gerold Bönnen, ‘Der Rheinische Bund von 1254/56: Voraussetzungen, Wirkungsweisen, Nachleben’, in Städtebünde – Städtetage im Wandel der Geschichte, ed. Franz J. Felten (Stuttgart 2007), pp. 13–35; Bernhard Kreutz, Städtebünde und Städtenetze am Mittelrhein im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Trier 2005). 16 See Paul-Joachim Heinig, ‘Centres and Peripheries of Power’ in this volume. 17 Michael Menzel, Die Zeit der Entwürfe 1273–1347, Gebhardt Handbuch der Deutschen Geschichte (10th ed., vol. 7a, Stuttgart 2012), p. 50 18 Ibid., p. 52.

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But how in fact did one become an imperial prince? Until about the middle of the twelfth century, the term princeps (‘the first’) designated highly placed churchmen and laymen. The term did not signify a particular legal position, but was rather a marker of a person’s social position in the noble hierarchy. From about 1180 a narrowing of the meaning can be seen. The term ‘prince’ or ‘imperial prince’ (princeps imperii) came to be used for an ecclesiastical or secular lord who held his area of lordship (fief) and regalia (rights of justice, toll, mint) directly from the king. From that point, in the view of constitutional law imperial princes were subordinated directly to the king. In practice, these individuals also held imperial fiefs indirectly from ecclesiastical princes, for example rights of advocacy. Such a fief was regarded as neutral for status as an imperial prince.19 But because many counts and barons (Freiherren) also held their fiefs from the king, further distinguishing marks were necessary to define the group of imperial princes. In contrast to a non-princely high noble, a prince had at his disposal a lordship similar to a duchy, over a terra (land) along with the right of high justice; therefore princes were also called domini terrae (lords of the land). In the twelfth century, for example, the Ascanians in the Brandenburg mark (from 1172), the Wettins in the Meissen mark (from 1125), or the Babenberger in Austria (1156) were regarded as imperial princes.20 The first formal elevation to the rank of imperial prince seems to have taken place in 1184, when Emperor Frederick Barbarossa elevated Count Baldwin of Hennegau to become a princeps imperii. For this, the candidate had to surrender his fiefs and allodial land to the king, in order to receive them back again as a single entity in the form of an imperial fief.21 In the thirteenth century more imperial princes were created: in 1235 Emperor Frederick II made the Welf duke Otto the Child an imperial prince; in 1283 the duchy of Limburg became an imperial principality; and in 1292 Landgrave Henry I of Hesse was elevated to the ranks of the imperial princes.22 In c. 1200 there were 22 secular and 92 ecclesiastical imperial princes (bishops, archbishops, imperial abbots);23 thanks to land partitions in the secular lordships the number of secular princes rose to about 44 by c. 1350.24 Nonetheless, the ecclesiastical lordships remained in the majority.

19 Arnold, Princes, pp. 32–7. 20 See Thieme, ‘Wettins’; Partenheimer, ‘Brandenburg’; and Christina Lutter, ‘The Babenbergs: From Frontier March to Principality’ in this volume. 21 Werner Hechberger, Adel, Ministerialität und Rittertum im Mittelalter (Munich 2010), p. 23. See also Michel Margue and Michel Pauly, ‘The Territorial Principalities Lotharingia’ in this volume, but cf. also the comments above, pp. 18–19. 22 Arnd Reitemeier, ‘Saxony after 1180’, p. 257 below. See also Arnold, Princes, pp. 36–7. 23 Hechberger, ‘Princely Lordship’, p. 45 below. 24 See Karl-Heinz Spieß, ‘Marriage and Inheritance’, below p. 141.

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The secular princes In the development of princely lordship a gradient can be discerned from the southwestern regions of the Reich to the northeast. This fact can be demonstrated using the examples of Lotharingia on one hand and Pomerania as well as Mecklenburg on the other.25 The varying development of princely lordship is thus also to be explained based on the geographical situation of the lordship areas. There were landscapes close to the king: Franconia with Nuremberg, parts of the modern states of Hesse, Rhineland Palatinate and Bavaria, as well as a localised region on the middle Rhine and lower Main eastward through Frankfurt and Wetzlar, parts of Swabia with the centre at Augsburg, the region on both sides of the Saale and on the middle Elbe with the centre at Erfurt. Next to these were the so-called ‘king-open’ landscapes: the upper Rhine and the upper lower Rhine and the territories of the electors (electoral Mainz, electoral Trier, electoral Cologne, the electoral Palatinate, electoral Brandenburg and the kingdom of Bohemia). Beyond these were the territories whose dynasties – Habsburg, Luxemburg and Wittelsbach – were rivals for the throne, and finally the regions ‘distant from the king’ – northern and eastern Germany as well as regions in the far west and southwest of the Reich.26 While the princes in the royally-close landscapes used comparable political and legal means to build up the areas of the lordship, on the borders of the Reich in the twelfth and thirteenth century the same could only be accomplished through colonisation, settlement and mission, as well as by military force. Still, in the developed landscapes as well as in the areas of colonisation, for a long time the princes demonstrated clearly that they understood their lordship primarily as a lordship over people and not defined by the area or a clearly demarcated territory. Of the princes presented in this volume, at the most two in the thirteenth century might possibly have regarded their lordship as linked to the territory. For the Zähringer there is evidence that they based their lordship as dux Zaringiae on the political region they defined as Zaringia.27 The counts of Luxemburg in 1290 no longer identified their vassals directly with the person of the count; instead they were homines comitatus lucenburgensis. This is regarded as evidence of the special definition of lordship, that is, the territorialisation of ‘feudal’ relations.28 Nonetheless, these examples are not typical for our period.

25 Margue and Pauly, ‘Lotharingia’. See also Oliver Auge, ‘Pomerania, Mecklenburg and the “Baltic Frontier”: Adaptation and Alliances’ in this volume. 26 For details on this point, see Heinig, ‘Centres’, pp. 215–16 below. 27 See Thomas Zotz, ‘The Zähringer in the Southwest of the Holy Roman Empire’, pp. 295–6 below. 28 Margue and Pauly, ‘Lotharingia’, pp. 231–2 below.

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The ecclesiastical princes and the distinctive features of the ecclesiastical territories The so-called Investiture Contest was brought to an end with the Concordat of Worms in 1122. In accordance with this agreement, kings could only invest the bishops with the areas and rights of secular lordship after they had received confirmation by the pope.29 So it became significant that the archbishop/bishop was on one the hand the spiritual shepherd of a diocese and on the other hand a member of the imperial principate, who exercised the rights of secular lordship. Accordingly, the area of ecclesiastical office and influence – the diocese – became distinguishable from the secular lordship and sovereign rights in the so-called Hochstiften.30 The dioceses and the Hochstiften were not always congruent. In the following section, the focus is on bishops’ lordship in the Hochstiften. As a general rule, cathedral chapters elected the bishops; for example in all northern German dioceses the right of election was established in 1233.31 As a corporation, the cathedral chapter also enjoyed rights of lordship, and at times wrestled with the bishops over the division of incomes and rights. Through entry into a cathedral chapter, the (lesser) nobility could take part in the lordship of the land and at the same time provide later-born sons with ecclesiastical benefices. The cathedral chapter protected and defended its exclusivity in rank; the first ancestry tests, in which candidates had to prove their noble lineage, were recorded in Mainz in 1326. Compared to the secular principalities, the ecclesiastical lordships had a great structural advantage, because they were not inherited and therefore were not in danger of partition. Still, there were repeated conflicts over the occupation of the bishop’s throne between cathedral chapter and popes or between rival parties within the chapter.32 Important for the development of ecclesiastical territorial lordship – as it was in rivalry and competition with the secular princes – was the Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis (Confederation with the ecclesiastical princes) that Frederick II issued in April 1220.33 With this document the emperor confirmed the legal position of the archbishops and bishops with regard to their areas of secular lordship. Frederick renounced his right to establish mints or tolls in their lordships in the German parts

29 Werner Goez, Kirchenreform und Investiturstreit 910–1122 (Stuttgart 2000), pp. 178–81. 30 For a survey of the successes and failures of the archbishoprics and bishoprics in centralisation of rule, see Menzel, Zeit der Entwürfe, pp. 54–62. 31 Reitemeier, ‘Saxony’, below p. 260. 32 Examples from the Mainz lordship can be found in Joachim Schneider, ‘Foundations and Forms of Princely Lordship: The Archbishops of Mainz’, pp. 108–10 below. 33 MGH Dipl. Frederick II, iii.383–91 no. 620 [translated below, pp. 352–5]; see also Andreas Bihrer, ‘Forms and Structures of Power: Ecclesiastical Lordship’ in this volume.

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of the Holy Roman Empire. In these regions he would not have any new castles or towns erected. He further promised not to lure away the ecclesiastical princes’ ministeriales or to seize spolia (the possessions of a dead cleric). The emperors and kings would accept the judgements of ecclesiastical courts and help to implement them. The witnesses to this document included Archbishop Siegfried of Mainz and Bishop Hartwig of Eichstätt.34 The bishopric of Eichstätt is a good example of the process of winning and securing ecclesiastical territorial lordship. At first the rights the king had handed over played an important role, although to be sure in return for these rights (fortification, mint, market and justice) the king demanded services, above all military and rights of lodging – the servitium regis. In a second stage, the bishops had to assert themselves against the claims of secular lordship. In Eichstätt the bishops fought until the beginning of the fourteenth century against the advocates of the Hochstift, the counts of Hirschberg. It was only after this comital family died out that the bishops could effectively develop their lordship in the region.35 Up to the middle of the fourteenth century the archbishops and electors of Cologne, Mainz and Trier, and the archbishoprics of Magdeburg, Salzburg, Bremen, Besançon and Prague, built up their lordships, as did 40 more bishoprics. In addition to these were the lordships of the imperial abbots and abbesses of monasteries and canonries.36 Towns as competitors with the princes in the development of lordship Compared to the princes, but also in contrast to the towns of northern Italy, towns in the Reich did not exercise strong lordship over their hinterland. After the middle of the thirteenth century only a few towns (for example Aachen, Dortmund and Mühlhausen) acquired lordship rights beyond their walls as part of the process of emancipating themselves from lords over their towns. This was accomplished above all in regions of the Reich in which princely and high noble lordship had not developed very

34 Flachenecker, ‘Eichstätt – Abbey, Diocese, Lordship’, below pp. 128–32. See also Schneider, ‘Bishopric’ for Mainz’s use of these rights. 35 Flachenecker, ‘Eichstätt’. For Eichstätt, see also Benjamin Arnold, Count and Bishop in Medieval Germany: A Study of Regional Power, 1100–1350 (Philadelphia 1991). 36 The influence of the ecclesiastical women directly subordinate to the Reich and who controlled lordships began to decline in the mid-twelfth century; in the thirteenth century these lordships were increasingly integrated into the developing principalities. See Jo Ann McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Nuns Through Two Millennia (2nd ed., London 1998); Sigrid Hirbodian, ‘Weibliche Herrschaft zwischen Kirche und Welt. Geistliche Fürstinnen im 11. – 14. Jahrhundert’, in Mächtige Frauen? Königinnen und Fürstinnen im europäischen Mittelalter (11. – 14. Jahrhundert), ed. Claudia Zey (Ostfildern 2015), pp. 411–36.

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far, such as Swabia and Franconia or in the region of the Swiss confederation. The town councils or sometimes individual citizens and institutions (such as the Knights Hospitaller) acquired judicial and/or lordship rights in villages in a variety of ways, assumed the advocacy over spiritual institutions (monasteries) and sometimes also gained toll and conveyance rights. The trend was for town councils and burghers (especially those who had enriched themselves through trade) to use the local nobles’ need for money to acquire these rights by purchase or in pawn.37 Scholars accept that 10% of the towns acquired considerable lordships beyond their walls.38 In most cases these remained a collection of differing lordship and ownership rights up to the sixteenth century, at which time a few towns were able to expand them into territorial rule. Bern, Nuremberg (which since 1313 had exercised rights of conveyance and low justice), Ulm, and Rothenburg ob der Tauber were especially successful in this respect. The areas in which Bern, Ulm and Nuremberg exercised lordship are those most comparable to the contadi of the city-states of Italy, although the most important and largest territorial expansions of these cities did not occur until the fifteenth century.39 Cologne, by contrast, is an example of a city that did not develop a political-territorial regional lordship, but nonetheless could control the economic region around the city.40 Still, however the political activities of the towns may have appeared in individual cases, the goal of this policy was always the safeguarding of the town against (princely) neighbours, protection of roads, assuring a secure food supply for the townsfolk and economic dominance with the goal of suppressing crafts and trade in the countryside, as well as the collection of dues, tolls and taxes.

Means and practices of lordship by princely dynasties and ecclesiastical princes In principle, starting around the year 1300 the princes’ territorial lordship consisted in the intensification and expansion of noble lordship rights. This expansion was accomplished by acquiring rights of varying origin and composition. Thus, it is entirely accurate to assert that ‘the natural home of the medieval German “administrative” rulership was the principalities’.41

37 See Gabriel Zeilinger, ‘Urban Lordship’ in this volume, and also Isenmann, Deutsche Stadt, pp. 680–9. 38 It is a distinguishing feature of towns in the Reich that they were separated from the surrounding countryside by a wall, unlike most of the ‘burghs’ in England or Scotland. See Bärbel Brodt, Städte ohne Mauern: Stadtentwicklung in East Anglia im 14. Jahrhundert (Paderborn 1997). 39 Nürnberg und Bern. Zwei Reichsstädte und ihre Landgebiete, ed. Rudolf Endres (Erlangen 1990). 40 Zeilinger, ‘Urban Lordship’, p. 65 below. 41 Len Scales, The Shaping of German Identity: Authority and Crisis, 1245–1414 (Cambridge 2012), p. 72.

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In the following section, the first task is to ascertain more precisely what rights these were and to question how these rights were acquired. Second, I will illustrate what administrative possibilities the princes had to impose their will. Third, I will sketch what problems and hindrances could lead to the ending of princely lordship or could delay or even prevent the establishment of territorially closed principalities. Rights of lordship and their acquisition The princely dynasties and bishops and archbishops expanded their rights and areas of lordship using a variety of means. Their territorial foundations were allodial land and fiefs granted by the king. A decisive criterion to develop a principality upon these foundations was the acquisition of (further) lordship rights (regalia), which typically the king granted in return for services that were performed for him. Both secular and ecclesiastical princes received the transfer of rights ultimately derived from central rulership. Among these rights were high justice (capital punishment), the right to hold a market, operate a mint, collect tolls or conveyance dues, build castles and fortify towns, as well as the advocacy and protection of churches42 and keeping the peace. In the marches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such as Brandenburg and Meissen, colonisation and settlement policies were also highly significant. The ecclesiastical and secular princes competed to amass these rights. In this competition, up to the middle of the fourteenth century, the lesser counts and noblemen in particular were the losers; if their lines did not die out, they became subject to the princes. Princely marriage had a primarily political character in a number of regards.43 The union between members of two dynasties was often a means to strengthen the friendship between the families or to bring a conflict to an end. Long-term commitments were also often connected to the marriage, such as promises of mutual aid against a third party. Such marriages were, however, also a promissory note to the future in respect to the possibility of expanding, erecting and intensifying lordship. The marriage contracts, among other issues, might regulate how the couple’s inheritance should be divided. Marriage with an heiress could lead to the merging of her lordship with one’s own. Another possible way to increase territory was the purchase of allodial land and/or fiefs. Princes also employed military force and feuds to gain the advantage and secure rights in rivalries with other princes (including members of their

42 On this issue see, for example, Zotz, ‘Zähringer’ regarding the monasteries of St. Georgen, St. Peter, and St. Blasien; Thieme, ‘Wettins’ for Altzella; and Partenheimer, ‘Brandenburg’ concerning Lehnin, below pp. 253, 288, 303. 43 Spieß, ‘Marriage’, pp. 153–4.

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own family) as well as with counts and royal ministeriales. In this regard, it was crucial that feuds would not be punished if they were conducted following specific criteria. The Mainz Land Peace of 1235 established that before starting a feud one must have sought justice before a court.44 At the most basic level, the princes’ successful demonstration of military strength and ability to hold their own was vital not just for the acquisition of rights of lordship and territories, but also for their prestige and to safeguard their standing in the princely hierarchy. The application of rights in the practice of lordship Up to the mid-fourteenth century at first castles and (after c. 1250) towns played a key role in implementing rights and claims of lordship. Ministeriales governed and defended their princes’ castles. Besides this, at first castles were also the places where the court resided and where the pomp and festivities of princely lordship took place. Henry the Lion is representative of the princes who offered all aspects of chivalric-courtly culture at their courts in the castles, in order to remain attractive to their ministeriales and to impress their peers.45 For the exploitation and gradual intensification of lordship over wider areas, the princes established offices or advocacies, in which an official or ministerialis they had appointed was responsible for carrying out the ruler’s will, assuring peace and collecting dues and taxes. From the mid-thirteenth century on, the towns were more and more important relative to the castles. They were administrative centres and functioned as temporary residences, since in this period the princes still travelled around the area of their lordships. Additionally, they were economically attractive for the princes. It was not just the Habsburgs who used the financial and military resources of their towns.46 The Ascanians in Brandenburg – like their peers in other parts of the Reich – also regarded the towns as important sources of income, used them as secure residences and profited from their economic impact on the surrounding countryside.47 The memory and memorial locales of the family became important for the development of dynastic self-understanding and identity. Tomb edifices in monastic or collegiate churches, for example at Petersberg near Halle and in the monastery of Altzella for the Wettins or for the Zähringer at St. Peter’s in the Black Forest, did not serve just as memorials of the dead and places of prayer for their souls, but also strengthened the feeling of

44 Reinle, ‘Violence’, p. 188 below. 45 See, for example, Joachim Ehlers, Heinrich der Löwe. Eine Biographie (Munich 2008), pp. 294–302. 46 Sterken, ‘Habsburg’ beginnings’, pp. 340–2 below. 47 Partenheimer, ‘Brandenburg’, pp. 309–10 below.

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solidarity of the living members of the dynasty with its dead members. By means of communication of the living with one another as well as the living with the dead, families could develop a dynastic sensibility, which rested on knowledge of the ancestry and deeds of the dynasty (genealogy, historiography), as well as on caring for souls.48 The development and stabilisation of dynastic sensibilities, noble self-understanding and princely identity were in turn an important precondition for successful imposition of lordship and expansion of regions of lordship. Until c. 1300 there is relatively little evidence for concrete administration of lordship or the incomes the princes wrested from these regions. At a comparatively early stage, the Babenberger undertook arrangements to gain an overview of their possessions. Already before the year 1200 they established an urbar (register of possessions).49 In about the same period, ‘feudal’ relations in Upper Lotharingia came to be fixed in writing. In all the principalities, the production of documents increased during the thirteenth century; toward the end of the century some princes (notably the archbishop of Cologne and the dukes of Bavaria) had important documents transcribed into so-called cartularies.50 For this purpose princes required writing staff, which can first be documented in the west – there was a chancery in Flanders before 1150, and in Hainault/Brabant c. 1200.51 But it was only in the fourteenth century that princes can be definitively shown to have established central administrations for their court and lordship area. In 1334/36 the Wettins set up a register for tax income and for the first time in 1349/50 the fiefs of the Wettins – both the ones they received and the ones they granted – were systematically recorded in a book. In the 1330s the Wettins had a permanent chancellor and kept an archive.52 The princes’ problems and difficulties in creating territorial lordship The examples of the Zähringer, Babenberger and Ascanians testify impressively to the most important reason why a principality would lose in competition with rivals: the extinction of the dynasty. The families were powerless against biology; indeed, even a ‘surplus’ of children could become a problem for the dynasties. The dynasties that were successful in the long term

48 Stefan Tebruck, ‘The Propaganda of Power: Memoria, History, Patronage’ in this volume demonstrates, based on the example of the Welfs and Ludowings, the essential elements of high noble memorial culture and its political function. 49 Lutter, ‘Babenberger’, p. 323 below. Princely urbars are extant for Styria from the years 1220–1230 and 1256/57, for Tyrol c. 1288, and the other Habsburg lands. 50 Schubert, Fürstliche Herrschaft, p. 29. 51 Margue and Pauly, ‘Lotharingia’, p. 229 below. 52 Jörg Rogge, Die Wettiner, Aufstieg einer Dynastie im Mittelalter (Ostfildern 2009), pp. 118–20.

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succeeded in finding solutions to the problem of dividing lordship among male members. Because in the thirteenth century the lordships were regarded as family property in which each son had a share, they were divided among the sons as inheritance. In general, the consequence of these land partitions was the political and economic weakening of the now-smaller aggregate holdings. The Wettins and Habsburgs, just like the Wittelsbacher in Bavaria, succeeded in regulating these divergent tendencies. In the so-called house or family pacts it was laid out on the one hand in what way the partition of autonomous lordship could be carried out, but on the other hand criteria were also specified to assure the cohesion of the dynasty, and thus also of the region of lordship, so the dynasty would not lose either territory or rights. Since sons could be compelled if necessary to become clerics or cathedral canons and to enter an ecclesiastical career, the number of heirs could thus be limited.53 The idea of primogeniture was not established in the fourteenth century because the princes could choose between the sons qualified for lordship, and if necessary collateral lines of the family could inherit if the chief branch of the family died out. In addition to biological issues, most princes faced, at least at times, financial difficulties that stood in the way of extending their lordship. A characteristic feature of princely household policy was the purchase and sale of rights of lordship. That means that individual possessions had to be assessed and converted into money, for example, in order to make settlements with relatives at partitions. Besides that, daughters’ dowries had to be paid as well as expenses for journeys to the royal court. Not least, the cost of maintaining their own courts often had a negative impact on princes’ budgets. Very often, income was not sufficient to meet these expenses, so that repeatedly princes pledged taxes, tolls, property or rights over villages to acquire the cash they needed. In this process, the merchants of the towns played an important role as creditors, including Jewish communities, as for example in Hildesheim and Göttingen.54 Because the annual budget could not be calculated, the constraints upon princely finances were structural in nature. There are cases like that of Rainald II of Gelderland, who in 1342/43 planned his itinerary along a route where he expected to get cash, for example at toll stations. With reference to this example, as Ernst Schubert put it, ‘princely peripatetic lordship in the older tradition was certainly necessary not just because of political factors, but also because of simple supply needs’.55 This commercialisation of lordship rights in the fourteenth century also contributed to the fact that no territorially closed ‘princely states’ developed in this period.

53 Spieß, ‘Marriage’, pp. 147–9 below; Jörg Rogge, Herrschaftsweitergabe, Konfliktregelung und Familienorganisation im fürstlichen Hochadel: Das Beispiel der Wettiner von der Mitte des 13. bis zum Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart 2002), pp. 325–33 (also concerning other princes). 54 Reitemeier, ‘Saxony’, p. 263 below. 55 Schubert, Fürstliche Herrschaft, p. 36.

Section B

Forms and structures of power

3

Princely lordship in the reign of Frederick Barbarossa A historiographical analysis Werner Hechberger

‘Germany’s Middle Ages – Germany’s Destiny’ – so runs the title of a 1933 lecture by Hermann Heimpel.1 In this way Heimpel, who after the Second World War was to become first director of the renamed Max-Planck Institute for History, succinctly summarised an idea that shaped generations of German historians: that German history differs fundamentally from that of other European nations, and the reasons for such a difference are to be found in the Middle Ages. In contrast to other countries like France or England, monarchical central authority in Germany failed in the Middle Ages. Therefore, the modern nation state could be realised only in the late nineteenth century. This historical view and the master narrative linked to it were naturally a variant of the thesis of the ‘delayed nation’ and of a German ‘special path’ (Sonderweg). As Timothy Reuter aptly remarked, many medievalists have continued to stress this theme: ‘as medievalists we all know, or think we know, that Germany Was Different’.2 In the nineteenth century German historians were not afraid of value judgements and did not fail to provide normative assessments of this central question. A drama was designed, the history of the failure of German imperial rule. Kingship in the medieval East Frankish-German Empire became, according to this view, the victim over time of a struggle against unfavourable popes and unruly princes. The beginnings of this debate lay in a famous altercation between Heinrich von Sybel and Julius Ficker over the question

1 Hermann Heimpel, Deutschlands Mittelalter – Deutschlands Schicksal (Freiburg i. Breisgau 1933). 2 Timothy Reuter, ‘The Medieval German Sonderweg? The Empire and Its Rulers in the High Middle Ages’, in Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. A.J. Duggan (London 1993), pp. 179–211 [reprinted in Timothy Reuter, Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities, ed. Janet N. Nelson (Cambridge 2006), pp. 388–412. Subsequent references are to this latter edition]. See also B. Demotz, Les principautés dans l’Occident médiéval. À l’origine des régions (Turnhout 2007); David A. Warner, ‘Reading Ottonian History. The Sonderweg and Other Myths’, in Challenging the Boundaries of Medieval History: The Legacy of Timothy Reuter, ed. Patricia Skinner (Turnhout 2009), pp. 81–114.

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of whether the German rulers’ Italian and imperial policies were responsible for the breakdown of the monarchy’s central power.3 The value judgement presented was then accepted in German medieval studies for a long time. The majority of German historians in the nineteenth century, who were Prussian- and Protestant-oriented, sided with the kings. The princes appeared to them as outright villains. The foundation and development of their lordship in the high and late Middle Ages was regarded as a usurpation of what were originally royal rights. In the final analysis, they argued, the princes contributed to the dissolution of a strong Reich. After the First World War, however, the perspective shifted. ‘Territorial history’ as a new sub-discipline was a German invention that can be explained against a backdrop of the defeat in 1918: it sought not least to uncover which regions were included in ‘early Germany’. The development of lordship over specific lands, which led to the territorial states of the early modern era onwards, was developed as a central theme of historical research. These territorial states were understood as the continuation of medieval noble and princely lordship. Walter Schlesinger and Theodor Mayer in particular proposed a model according to which a supposedly age-old Germanic noble lordship was the starting point of German history.4 It was only over time, they argued, that this was reshaped in the kingdom of the Franks by the superimposition of a strong monarchical central power. It is then supposed to have broken through again as princely lordship in the high Middle Ages, and then developed into territorial lordship. This so-called ‘noble lordship theory’ is based on the idea that a wide variety of pre-existing noble rights of lordship were collected together. In this view there can be no standard model of princely lordship, since the precise position of each prince rested on a foundation of vastly different rights. Princely lordship understood in this way could therefore never reach a ‘final state’. So Walter Schlesinger reached the conclusion that the princely lordship could not be explained. All that historians could do would be to describe the numerous individual cases.5

3 Thomas Brechenmacher, ‘Wie viel Gegenwart verträgt historisches Urteilen? Die Kontroverse zwischen Heinrich von Sybel und Julius Ficker über die Bewertung der Kaiserpolitik des Mittelalters (1859–1862)’ in Historisierung und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. U. Muhlack (Berlin 2003), pp. 87–112. 4 Theodor Mayer, ‘Die Ausbildung der Grundlagen des modernen deutschen Staates im hohen Mittelalters’, HZ 159 (1939), 457–87 [reprinted in Herrschaft und Staat im Mittelalter, ed. H. Kämpf (Darmstadt 1956, new ed. 1984), pp. 284–331]; Theodor Mayer, Fürsten und Staat. Studien zur Verfassungsgeschichte des deutschen Mittelalters (Weimar 1950), new ed. 1969); Walter Schlesinger, ‘Verfassungsgeschichte und Landesgeschichte’, Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 3 (1953), 1–34 [reprinted in Walter Schlesinger, Beiträge zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte des Mittelalters (Göttingen 1963), ii. 9–41]. 5 Walter Schlesinger, Die Landesherrschaft der Herren von Schönburg. Eine Studie zur Verfassungsgeschichte des Deutschen Reiches in Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Münster 1954), p. 168.

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A phenomenon can be detected in both claims that can be characterised as ‘contemporaneity’ (Zeitgebundenheit) in German historical studies – in other words, historians’ values and wishes influence the questions and results of historical research. In the light of the fractured history of Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is no wonder that the history of research on princely lordships did not follow an unbroken course either. The starting point for all older interpretations was a premise that historians have until very recently rarely doubted – that it should be possible to reconstruct the plans of a medieval ruler and to describe the intentions behind his deeds.6 And naturally it must have been the king’s wish to strengthen central power. The nation state that was so greatly longed for in nineteenth-century Germany was the backdrop of this historiography. In this view, princes and kings appeared as natural opponents. A clear-cut ‘dualism of nobility and kingship’ was accepted as the fundamental and decisive element of the medieval constitution.7 In all variants of this master narrative the Staufen period, especially in the twelfth century, was recognised as playing a key role. After Heinrich von Sybel’s work, Frederick Barbarossa’s Italian and imperial policies were judged very critically. In general, though, German historians let themselves get carried away with enthusiasm for the image of an emperor who had already had a good press among his contemporaries. Wilhelm von Giesebrecht, for example, author of a history of the imperial age that was widely popular in the nineteenth century, saw Barbarossa’s era as a high point of German history. He grounded this view characteristically in the result of the conflict with the most important prince of the Reich. The fall of Henry the Lion, the great and mighty duke of Saxony and Bavaria, showed, for Giesebrecht, how brilliant the position of this ruler must have been.8 In the twentieth century historians such as Theodor Mayer and Karl Bosl developed this model. Now the twelfth century appeared as an age that had been shaped by the processes of territorialisation. Nobles built castles, founded monasteries, took over ecclesiastical advocacies and increasingly understood the area of their lordship in spatial terms. This is supposed to have heightened the fundamental conflict between king and princes, and Barbarossa – so historians argued – attempted to push back the princes. This interpretation was developed the furthest in the thesis of a Staufen ‘imperial reform’. This concept can be summarised with two fundamental ideas. The first is that Barbarossa systematically attempted to cut back the rights of lordship of the

6 For a new appraisal of this problem, see Alfred Haverkamp, ‘Einleitung’, in Friedrich Barbarossa. Handlungsspielräume und Wirkungsweisen des staufischen Kaisers, ed. Alfred Haverkamp (Sigmaringen 1992), pp. 9–47. 7 Mayer, ‘Ausbilding’, p. 293. 8 Wilhelm von Giesebrecht, Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, v Die Zeit Kaiser Friedrichs des Rothbarts (Braunschweig 1880), p. 951.

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secular nobility, among other ways through the development of the royal possessions. It is supposed to have been his long-term goal to displace a great part of the nobility in favour of servitors who were subject to instruction – the ministeriales. Second, the plan is supposed to have been to bind the top nobles more closely to the king through an intensification of so-called ‘feudal’ relationships. This was supposed to create a smaller circle of pre-eminent princes. The king would decide who would belong to this group, and in this way these princes could be better controlled. The large duchies of the early Middle Ages were made smaller. Theodor Mayer formulated the fundamental idea in drastic terms: the princes would come up against the destruction of the duchies. The dynastic nobility would be shattered by the ministeriales.9 Karl Bosl expressed the thought in his standard work on the Staufen ministeriales that it had become the goal to drive out the high nobility.10 The phenomenon of contemporaneity was especially clear in research on the most important change in princely lordship in Barbarossa’s time. At first the term princeps was used, as in previous centuries, for the emperor and in unspecific terms for the nobility in general. At the end of the twelfth century the circle of people to whom the term was applied shrank significantly. For the year 1184 or 1188 it is reported that Count Baldwin of Hainault was named margrave of Namur and elevated to be princeps imperii.11 What therefore had changed in the position of the principes in the Reich north of the Alps? Julius Ficker differentiated in his classic work between older and newer imperial princes. He argued that in the Frankish period the incumbents of offices, whether dukes or counts, were members of a class who as nobles of office ‘had pre-eminence over the birth rank of the free lords’.12 After the kingdom of the Franks ended, vassalage is supposed to have displaced office-holding. The class that was founded by holding office then developed into a vassalage-based ‘young’ princely class. This idea was criticised as the noble lordship theory was established, with its emphasis on ‘autogenic’ rights of lordship. The causal relationship was reversed: it was not that office ennobled, but rather that the nobles held the offices. Therefore, it made no sense to speak of a class created from officials. The principes of the older period, this new argument ran, were appointed to high offices because they came from the nobility.13 In this perspective the

9 Mayer, Fürsten und Staat, p. 238. 10 Karl Bosl, Die Reichsministerialität der Salier und Staufer (Stuttgart 1951), ii. 620–32, esp. p. 629. 11 MGH Dipl. Frederick I, iv.90–1 no. 857 = MGH Constitutiones i. 423–4 no. 298. See above, p. 19. 12 Julius Ficker, Vom Reichsfürstenstande 2 vols, in 4 parts, from vol. 2, part 1, ed. P. Puntschart (Innsbruck 1861, 1911; Graz 1921, 1923; new ed. 1984), i. 93. 13 Friedrich Keutgen, Der deutsche Staat des Mittelalters (Jena 1918, new ed. 1963), p. 78; see also pp. 91–2.

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rank of imperial prince was a creation of the twelfth century, not a redesign of an older rank.14 A new phase of research began with the prosopographical studies of Gerd Tellenbach. These underpinned the idea that there had been a noble layer since the Carolingian period from which officials were drawn. This ‘Reich aristocracy’ produced the dukes (duces) of the high Middle Ages.15 Before 1180 the title princeps was used unspecifically and very broadly. A more exclusive character can first be detected in the context of the process against Henry the Lion, in the witness list of the Gelnhäuser charter of April 1180 depriving him of the duchy of Saxony.16 Historians today no longer speak of an ‘older’ princely class. By contrast, at first there was general agreement that in the period after 1180 a class of imperial princes (principes imperii) existed that was defined in terms of its rights. However, the question of what precisely these criteria were caused some problems, at least with regard to the lay princes. What the foundations were for the position of ecclesiastical princes did not cause similar difficulties. The bishops entered the class of imperial princes when the king invested them; there were only a few exceptions to this rule. For the same reason abbesses and abbots of the imperial monasteries, as well as provosts of imperial canonries, were also imperial princes.17 Hence there were, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, no less than 92 ecclesiastical imperial princes. Only 22 secular imperial princes are known for the year 1190.18 The ‘feudal’ component of their position is unproblematic. An imperial prince paid homage only to the king or the Church. In point of fact, though, the king also had other vassals, whose number significantly increased in the late Middle Ages.19 Therefore, there must have been another criterion as well. Some historians have thought they could find it in the Sachsenspiegel,

14 Heinrich Mitteis, The State in the High Middle Ages: A Comparative Constitutional History of Medieval Europe, trans. H.F. Orton (Amsterdam 1975) [first published in German in 1940], pp. 244–5; Mayer, ‘Ausbildung’, pp. 288–310; Mayer, Fürsten und Staat, pp. 236–9. 15 Gerd Tellenbach, ‘From the Carolingian Imperial Nobility to the German Estate of Imperial Princes’, in The Medieval Nobility: Studies on the Ruling Class in France and Germany From the Sixth to the Twelfth Centuries, trans. and ed. Timothy Reuter (Amsterdam 1979), pp. 203–31 [first published in German in 1943]. 16 MGH Dipl. Frederick I, iii.360–3 no. 795 = MGH Constitutiones i.384–6 no. 279 [translated below, pp. 349–51]; Heinrich Koller, ‘Die Bedeutung des Titels “princeps” in der Reichskanzlei under den Saliern und Staufern’, MIÖG 68 (1960), 63–80. 17 Karl-Friedrich Krieger, Die Lehnshoheit der deutschen Könige im Spätmittelalter (ca. 1200–1437) (Aalen 1979), pp. 159–68. 18 See the list in Theo Kölzer, ‘Der Hof Kaiser Barbarossas und die Reichsfürsten’, in Deutscher Königshof, Hoftag und Reichstag im späteren Mittelalter, ed. Peter Moraw (Stuttgart 2002), p. 16. 19 Krieger, Lehnshoheit, pp. 577–88.

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the famous legal text from the first half of the thirteenth century.20 The work distinguishes between territorial law and feudal law. In consequence, scholars now looked for a criterion in territorial law. A classic treatise by Edmund E. Stengel has shaped the scholarship. Ducal and duke-similar lords to whom other lords (and also counts) were subject, he argues, formed the new princely class.21 Karl Heinemeyer, too, saw the conditions for membership of this group in an extensive region of lordship and wide judicial supremacy.22 Since historians regarded these legal criteria as authoritative, they looked for a precise time and binding act for the creation of the class. In the case of the ecclesiastical princes, they fixed the definition of the class with the Concordat of Worms in 1122.23 They also argued that 1180 marked a dividing line for the secular princes.24 That Baldwin of Hainault was elevated to the rank of princeps in 1184/88 through a formal public act was taken as an indication that the Reich’s constitution had been purposefully changed. Edmund E. Stengel even assumed that a formal ‘imperial law’ had been enacted.25 It was possible to link such an interpretation with the idea of the Staufer’s plans to reform the state. At first scholars agreed about the king’s goal: Barbarossa wanted to transform the constitution, strengthening ‘feudal’ ties and setting aside the allodial foundations of the nobility’s position.26 However, this transformation of the Reich into a ‘feudal state’ could not be completed. The ‘allodial problem’, historians argued, remained a factor in German history.27 Heinrich Mitteis, probably the most famous twentieth-century German legal historian to deal with the Middle Ages, disagreed about the significance of ‘feudalism’ for the state constitution in his standard work. He argued instead that the class of imperial princes was the princes’ own

20 Sachsenspiegel. Land- und Lehnrecht, ed. Karl August Eckhardt, MGH Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui NS 1,1: Landrecht, 2: Lehnrecht (Göttingen 1955/56). 21 Edmund E. Stengel, ‘Land- und lehnrechtliche Grundlagen des Reichsfürstenstandes’, ZSSRG GA 66 (1948), 294–342 [reprinted in Stengel, Abhandlungen und Untersuchungen zur mittelalterlichen Geschichte (Cologne 1960), pp. 133–73, especially p. 149]. 22 Karl Heinemeyer, ‘König und Reichsfürsten in der späten Salier- und frühen Stauferzeit’, BDLG 122 (1986), 1–40, esp. p. 17. 23 Ibid., p. 17. 24 Ficker, Vom Reichsfürstenstande, i.58–66; Heinrich Mitteis, Lehnrecht und Staatsgewalt: Untersuchungen zur mittelalterlichen Verfassungsgeschichte (Weimar 1958 ed., first published 1933), pp. 437–43; Stengel, ‘Land- und lehnrechtliche Grundlagen’, pp. 133, 136–8, 146–7, 158, 171–2; Tellenbach, ‘From the Carolingian imperial nobility’, p. 226; Heinemeyer, ‘König und Reichsfürsten’, pp. 34–7. 25 Stengel, ‘Land- und lehnrechtliche Grundlagen’, p. 300. 26 Krieger, Lehnshoheit, p. 575. 27 Schlesinger, ‘Verfassungsgeschichte’, p. 30; Krieger, Lehnshoheit; K.-H. Spieß, Das Lehnswesen in Deutschland im hohen und späten Mittelalter. With T. Willich (3rd ed., Stuttgart 2011), pp. 44, 46–9.

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creation. Their goal, according to Mitteis, was on one hand to secure their princely standing against the ‘other’ nobles, and on the other hand to create a basis for the development of their own territorial lordship. They would thus have limited all other nobles. With this argument Mitteis sought to explain the failure of the German monarchy. He found a central argument in a regulation of the Sachsenspiegel, that the king had to re-grant princely fiefs which had reverted to him after the incumbent’s death within a year and a day of the latter’s demise.28 Mitteis saw in this rule an ‘imperial law’ that Barbarossa must have granted to the imperial princes in 1180 as guarantee for the survival of their position.29 Its consequences, for Mitteis, were far-reaching. The legal principle, he argued, favoured the centrifugal tendencies of feudalism in Germany, creating conditions unlike France or England. It is precisely in this way that he saw, even in the favourable situation after the fall of Henry the Lion, the way closed off to a ‘unified state’. Barbarossa was forced to grant the two duchies out again to new holders. If it had not been for a law in 1180 that kept monarchical power from being strengthened, might not the way have been smoothed toward the modern state in Germany, too? Both Edmund E. Stengel and Heinrich Koller agreed that the initiative lay with Frederick and that the establishment of an imperial princely class was against his interests. Koller was of the opinion that the clear disparity in number between the ecclesiastical and secular imperial princes (92 to 22) was an indication of Barbarossa’s goal to develop a ‘counterweight’ to the secular princes with the help of the ecclesiastical princes. They also rejected the idea that the earlier normative obligation to perform homage forced policy into specific courses.30 Werner Goez doubted that this (the so-called Leihezwang) had ever been a principle of imperial law.31 The king, he argued, had de facto almost always given fiefs that had fallen vacant to relatives who made claims by right of inheritance. In consequence, the renewed rendering of fiefs had become simply a custom. It is a peculiarity of German medieval studies that legal historians for a long time definitively shaped the debate. The reason for this lay in nineteenth-century German history. Several generations of German historians had bemoaned the lack of a nation state. They extensively investigated the reasons for the collapse of a sense of state, and their preoccupation with law and the constitution made legal history gain in importance. Outside of

28 Sachsenspiegel, 1, III 60, p. 245. 29 Mitteis, State in the High Middle Ages, pp. 246–7, 251, 337; Mitteis, Lehnrecht, pp. 442–3, 460–1, 685–6, 697–8, 703. 30 Stengel, ‘Land- und lehnrechtliche Grundlagen’, pp. 137–8; Koller, ‘Die Bedeutung des Titels “princeps”’, p. 73. 31 W. Goez, Der Leihezwang. Eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte des deutschen Lehnrechts (Tübingen 1962), pp. 1, 250, 254.

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Germany this was regarded as odd and disquieting. Marc Bloch, after the First World War, was already struck by German historians’ obsession with the state.32 It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that this approach became less significant. Scholars still argued about the territorial law components of the imperial princely class, but finally reached the conclusion that no clear criteria for this question could be discovered in territorial law, the details of which can anyway hardly be established from the sources.33 Such a view can be seen, in particular, in scholarship on later elevations to the rank of imperial prince, in the context of a newly awakened interest in the late Middle Ages. Karl-Friedrich Krieger, for example, emphasised that recognition as an imperial prince ‘besides purely legal criteria also presumed a certain constellation of political interests and power, not precisely defined legally’.34 Krieger stressed the advantages for the king, contradicting Mitteis among others: he argued that strengthening the importance of the link in feudal law, something which became constitutive for the position of the princes became an instrument to bind them to the Reich and to incorporate their hitherto partially autonomously-practiced lordship as a delegated official power.35 Behind this new interpretation lies the aforementioned change in ideas about the course of German medieval history. In this view, the establishment of the imperial principate was not a matter of reconnecting to the crown, with the help of a different legal system and new methods, particular powers that had drifted away. Instead, Krieger argued, princes first intellectually laid claim to largely autonomous lordship areas in a juridically thought-through system. Through the incorporation of the allodial noble lordships in the Reich’s feudal ties, every development in lordship would appear to be a royal initiative.36 This perspective then provoked research into the question of how Staufen ‘feudal policy’ appeared in practice.37 Prosopographical research has led to modification of the thesis that the imperial princely class had its start in the year 1180. Peter Moraw has questioned the real relationships that lay beyond the legal categories. It was impossible, he argued, to speak of an ‘imperial princely class’ before the

32 Karl Ferdinand Werner, ‘Marc Bloch et la recherche historique allemande’, im Marc Bloch aujourd’hui. Histoire comparée et sciences sociales, ed. H. Atsma and A. Burguière (Paris 1990), pp. 125–34. 33 Hans-Georg Krause, ‘Der Sachsenspiegel und das Problem des sogenannten Leihezwangs. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Entstehung des Sachsenspiegels’, ZSSRG GA 93 (1976), 21–99; H. Leppin, ‘Untersuchungen zum Leihezwang’, ZSSRG GA 105 (1988), 239–52. 34 Krieger, Lehnshoheit, pp. 171, 200. 35 Ibid., pp. 171–3, 575. 36 Ibid., p. 127. 37 Sigrid Hauser, Staufische Lehnspolitik am Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts, 1180–1197 (Frankfurt a.M. 1998), pp. 433–40.

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fifteenth century. Until the end of the Middle Ages the imperial princes were not a unified body, since despite their common legal position, the social positions of the members of this class were highly heterogeneous.38 Moraw worked with a concept of class that was oriented on self-understanding and political dealings, rather than on legal criteria. Ernst Schubert thought similarly: ‘the princes opposed kings only in individual relations, never as a noble class or community nor yet even once as a high noble cooperative. Like mutual cooperation, the Reich also lacked the step from typical noble insubordination to fundamental opposition’.39 The splitting up of the high nobility ‘around the year 1200’ had for Schubert become instead a problem of political realities.40 Nor, he argued, did the criteria of either territorial or feudal law clearly separate the princes from the other high noble families. Direct answerability to the Reich and the control of regalia were important, but had by no means become the princes’ exclusive right. Furthermore, both before and after 1200, marriage between princely and other high noble families was the norm. Obviously, the development of medieval society cannot be explained solely by legal criteria. The idea of a class community in which social standing plays a central role opened new perspectives. The attainment of princely dignity brought with it a gain in status, not an absolute increase in real power.41 Ceremonial and honorary rights and privileges only later became established in legal procedure.42 New stimuli came from several directions. Susan Reynold’s thesis that feudalism as a comprehensive legal system as described in the classic handbooks did not exist before the twelfth century aroused disagreement both in Germany and elsewhere. The question indeed became a hot topic of discussion.43 Earlier certainties have begun to totter.44 An ever-growing number of

38 Peter Moraw, ‘Fürstentum, Königtum und “Reichsreform” im deutschen Spätmittelalter’, BDLG 122 (1986), 117–36. 39 Ernst Schubert, ‘Probleme der Königsherrschaft im spätmittelalterlichen Reich. Das Beispiel Ruperts von der Pfalz (1400–1410)’, in Das spätmittelalterliche Königtum im europâischen Vergleich, ed. R. Schneider (Sigmaringen 1987), pp. 135–84, esp. p. 184. 40 Ernst Schubert, König und Reich. Studien zur spätmittelalterlichen deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte (Göttingen 1979), pp. 308–15; Ernst Schubert, Fürstliche Herrschaft und Territorium im späten Mittelalter (2nd ed., Munich 2006), p. 10. 41 Schubert, Herrschaft, p. 11. 42 Karl-Friedrich Krieger, ‘Fürstliche Standesvorrechte im Spätmittelalter’, BDLG 122 (1986), 91–116. 43 Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford 1994), cf. Stefan Patzold, Das Lehnswesen (Munich 2012). 44 Das Lehnswesen im Hochmittelalter. Forschungskonstrukte – Quellenbefunde – Deutungsrelevanz, ed. Jürgen Dendorfer and Roman Deutinger (Ostfildern 2010); Ausbildung und Verbreitung des Lehnswesens im Reich und in Italien im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, ed. K.-H. Spieß (Ostfildern 2013).

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scholars agree with the argument that the relationship between king and princes can first be described as ‘feudal’ in the time of Barbarossa, and then only tentatively, and probably not as a result of royal initiative.45 Roman Deutinger points out that it was only in 1156, in the Privilegium Minus, that for the first time a duchy was explicitly designated as a fief.46 Furthermore, according to Jürgen Dendorfer, it is no longer certain whether ‘feudal law’ played an important role in the process against Henry the Lion.47 Parallel to this development, historians are now more cautious in their assessment of the question of how far Barbarossa recognised the possibilities of rediscovered Roman law and tried to put it to use. At least north of the Alps there are only limited traces of this.48 In general, the question of whether the king could impose law effectively in the twelfth century is regarded with caution. Historians only ascribe to Barbarossa the adoption of developments in European legal thought and their use for political goals north of the Alps with some reservations. Thus, too, a question that was not considered at all in the older scholarship has come into stark relief: did the kings actually regard the positions of the princes as a fundamental problem for their lordship? Until recently it hardly appeared to be in doubt that it must be in the ruler’s fundamental interest to limit the power of the princes. At least it was an implicit starting point that kings naturally wanted to establish a ‘modern’ state with a strong central authority or – so said the older view – to restore the original elements of state and sovereignty that had once existed in the Frankish era. Heinz Angermeier pointed out as early as 1981 that this assumption is by no means self-evident. Contemporaries until the fifteenth century, he argued, ‘did not a priori [want] a state in our modern sense’.49 Using the work of Karl Leyser as a starting point, Hanna Vollrath suspected that Barbarossa

45 Hauser, Staufische Lehnspolitik, pp. 395–408; Spieß, Lehnswesen, p. 21; Roman Deutinger, ‘Vom Amt zum Lehen. Das Beispiel der deutschen Herzogtümer im Hochmittelalter’, in Ausbildung und Verbreitung, pp. 133–57. 46 Roman Deutinger, ‘Das Privilegium minus. Otto von Freising und der Verfassungswandel des 12. Jahrhunderts’, in Die Geburt Österreichs. 850 Jahre Privilegium Minus, ed. P. Schmid and H. Wanderwitz (Regensburg 2007), pp. 179–99. 47 Jürgen Dendorfer, ‘Das Lehnrecht und die Ordnung des Reiches. “Politische Prozesse” am Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts’, in Ausbildung und Verbreitung, pp. 187–220. 48 Gerhard Dilcher, ‘Die Entwicklung des Lehnswesens in Deutschland zwischen Saliern und Staufern’, in Il Feudalesimo nell’ Alto Medioevo (Spoleto 2000), i. 263–303; Gli inizi del diritto pubblico. L’età di Federico Barbarossa: Legislazione e scienza del diritto/ Die Anfänge des öffentlichen Rechts. Gestzgebung im Zeitalter Barbarossas und das Gelehrte Recht, ed. Gerhard Dilcher and Diego Quaglioni (Bologna 2007); Gli inizi del diritto pubblico, 2. Da Federico I a Federico II/ Die Anfänge des öffentlichen Rechts, 2. Von Friedrich Barbarossa zu Friedrich II., ed. Gerhard Dilcher and Diego Quaglioni (Bologna 2008). 49 Heinz Angermeier, ‘König und Staat im deutschen Mittelalter’, BDLG 117 (1981), 167–82 [reprinted in Angermeier, Das alte Reich in der deutschen Geschichte. Studien über Kontinuitäten und Zäsuren (Munich 1991), pp. 13–30, at p. 30].

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did not want to hold onto fiefs that had fallen vacant.50 In the time of Frederick Barbarossa, there simply was no conflict line ‘princes vs. king’ in a struggle over the founding of modern sovereignty. Several configurations were imaginable in the high Middle Ages in the dense network of relations between kings and princes. One can certainly argue that there were at times some fundamental conflicts. But these were by no means the usual state of affairs, rather an expression of crisis, or of a breakdown in rule. The dictum of Hagen Keller, that royal rulership took place ‘in and above the conflict of the magnates’,51 may also apply to the twelfth century. That the relationship between king and princes underwent changes in what was by no means a continuous process has become a central theme in modern German medieval studies. The starting point for this view was the studies of the reigns of Henry I and Otto I by Gerd Althoff and Hagen Keller.52 In Henry I’s time the king appeared as primus inter pares, and the monarch’s position could only gradually be developed. Knut Görich and Gerd Althoff have shown, in studies of Otto III, that older scholars who ascribed comprehensive political plans to this ruler had become victims of the values and norms of their own time.53 The fundamental consensus that the princes fashioned policy with the king was disturbed in the Salian period, and in the so-called Investiture Contest this led to a greater crisis that was brought to an end with the ‘Concordat of Worms’. The strengthened self-consciousness of the princes can be seen in assemblies which took place without the king. By 1122 at the latest it was clear that princes could also represent the Reich in opposition to the king, and were participants in lordship.54

50 Karl Leyser, ‘Frederick Barbarossa and the Hohenstaufen Polity’, Viator 19 (1988), 153– 76 [reprinted in his Communications and Power in Medieval Europe, ii The Gregorian Revolution and Beyond, ed. Timothy Reuter (London 1996), pp. 115–42]; Hanna Vollrath, ‘Politische Ordnungsvorstellungen und politisches Handeln im Vergleich. Philipp II. August von Frankreich und Friedrich Barbarossa im Konflikt mit ihren mächtigsten Fürsten’, in Political Thought and the Realities of Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph Canning and Otto-Gerhard Oexle (Göttingen 1998), pp. 33–52, especially pp. 49–50. 51 Hagen Keller, Zwischen regionaler Begrenzung und universalem Horizont. Deutschland im Imperium der Salier und Staufer 1024–1250 (Frankfurt a.M. 1986), p. 73. 52 Gerd Althoff and Hagen Keller, Heinrich I. und Otto der Große. Neubeginn auf karolingischem Erbe (2 vos., Göttingen 1985). 53 Knut Görich, Otto III. Romanus Saxonicus et Italicus. Kaiserliche Rompolitik und sächsische Historiographie (Sigmaringen 1993); Gerd Althoff, Otto III, trans. Phyllis G. Jestice (University Park, PA 2003). 54 Stefan Weinfurter, ‘Reformidee und Königtum im spätsalischen Reich. Überlegungen zu einer Neubewertung Kaiser Heinrichs V.’, in Reformidee und Reformpolitik im spätsalisch-frühstaufischen Reich, ed. Stefan Weinfurter and Hubertus Seibert (Mains 1992), pp. 1–46 [reprinted in Weinfurter, Gelebte Ordnung – Gedachte Ordnung. Ausgewählte Beiträge zu König, Kirche und Reich, ed. H. Kluger, H. Seibert and W. Bomm (Ostfildern 2005), pp. 289–333, esp. 331–4]; Jutta Schlick, König, Fürsten und Reich 1056–1159. Herrschaftsverständnis im Wandel (Stuttgart 2001), pp. 48–55; Stefan Patzold, ‘Königtum

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After a transitional phase under Lothar III and Conrad III, a period began with Frederick Barbarossa in 1152 in which the princes’ agreement was a cornerstone of the ruler’s policy. Royal documents from this period regularly mention that the princes’ advice had been sought. Not only the royal dignity but the imperial title, too, was based on princely election. At times Barbarossa had to set aside political plans when he encountered princely resistance. On the other hand, it was also possible for him to proceed more firmly against individual princely opponents than had been the case for many of his predecessors.55 Karl Leyser and Timothy Reuter posed the question why, then, the emperor should have had any need to reform the Reich. According to contemporary standards his lordship was magnificent.56 Benjamin Arnold even suggests that the rulers deliberately delegated royal rights to the princes, so that the emperor would clearly have a function that was clearly different to other European kings.57 Another idea that has been abandoned is that Frederick Barbarossa’s age was shaped by a fundamental opposition between Staufer and Welf, something which was once regarded as a variant of the axiomatic conflict between king and princes.58 Knut Görich has stressed the significance of the ruler’s and the Reich’s honour as a leitmotiv for political dealings.59 Conceptions of rulership with centralisation as its goal are not compatible with this view. The thesis of a Staufen ‘state reform’ has now very few supporters left. The ruler’s central tasks were to protect the peace and to re-impose it when necessary. The reality of policy north of the Alps for considerable periods consisted simply of ad hoc conflict resolution – it can well be described as ‘muddling through’. The perfect example for the realisation of this perspective is the celebrated downfall of Henry the Lion. The duke of Saxony and Bavaria held his position in large part thanks to the sponsorship of his royal cousin Frederick Barbarossa. But in 1176 he denied his ruler military support in the latter’s war with the towns of northern Italy. The emperor lost the Battle of Legnano and

55 56

57 58 59

in bedrohter Ordnung. Heinrich IV. und Heinrich V. 1105/06’, in Heinrich V. in seiner Zeit. Herrscher in einem europäischen Reich des Hochmittelalters, ed. Gerhard Lubich (Vienna 2013), pp. 43–68. Werner Hechberger, Staufer und Welfen (1125–1190). Zur Verwendung von Theorien in der Geschichtswissenschaft (Cologne 1996), pp. 252–6. Karl Leyser, ‘Frederick Barbarossa: Court and Country’, in his Communications and Power . . . The Gregorian Revolution and Beyond [above, note 50], pp. 143–55; Timothy Reuter, ‘Sonderweg’ [above, note 2], pp. 396–7. Benjamin Arnold, Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany (Cambridge 1991), pp. 280–4. Hechberger, Staufer und Welfen. Knut Görich, Die Ehre Friedrich Barbarossas. Kommunikation, Konflikt und politisches Handeln im 12. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt 2001), esp. pp. 371, 377; Knut Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa. Eine Biographie (Munich 2011), esp. p. 660.

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was forced to abandon his Italian policy. A few years later Henry was outlawed, lost his duchies and had to go as an exile to his English father-in-law. German historians used to see in this episode the paradigm for conflicts between king and princes, and for the way that Barbarossa dealt with unruly princes. A legal process, they believed, was initiated. At first the emperor is supposed to have held back, but at every stage he controlled events. His end goal was not just the exile of his greatest rival but also the paring back of the two largest duchies in the Reich – and both Bavaria and Saxony were partitioned in 1180. It has only recently been shown that this view is quite incompatible with the evidence of the contemporary sources.60 The duke’s main opponent was Archbishop Philip of Cologne, a rival in territorial politics, as well as the other regional princes of Saxony, who complained about the duke’s methods of organising his duchy. Interestingly, therefore, conflicts with other nobles that had developed in the course of developing a principality were the trigger that led to the duke’s fall. The emperor simply stopped supporting his cousin after 1176. It is questionable whether he welcomed the lasting deprivation of Henry’s power that resulted. This re-evaluation has allowed doubt to grow about the assumption that the king consciously introduced the rank of imperial prince. It has become impossible to sustain the idea that this rank was constituted at a specific moment through a formal act in pursuit of a concrete political goal.61 Already Gerhard Theuerkauf had spoken of a process that stretched into the first half of the thirteenth century.62 Alfred Haverkamp saw the gradation of a narrower circle of imperial princes from the ‘usual holders of lordship’ as a long-term evolution, which the events of 1180 may have accelerated, but which had not yet been brought to fruition.63 Karl-Heinz Spieß is of the view that from the twelfth century on, it was ‘social stratification’ within the aristocracy that made constitutional gradations in rank develop. Thus, he argued, one could begin to speak of a distinct group within an increasingly differentiated aristocracy.64

60 Stefan Weinfurter, ‘Erzbischof Philipp von Köln und der Sturz Heinrichs des Löwen’, in Köln – Stadt und Bistum in Kirche und Reich des Mittelalters. Festschrift für Odilo Engels zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Hanna Vollrath and Stefan Weinfurter (Cologne 1993), pp. 455–82 [reprinted in Weinfurter, Ordnung, pp. 335–60]; Hechberger, Staufer und Welfen, pp. 303–32; Knut Görich, ‘Jäger des Löwen oder Getriebener der Fürsten? Friedrich Barbarossa und die Entmachtung Heinrichs des Löwen’, in Staufer und Welfen. Zwei rivalisierende Dynastien im Hochmittelalter, ed. Werner Hechberger and Florian Schuller (Regensburg 2009), pp. 98–117. 61 Heinemeyer, ‘König und Reichsfürsten’, p. 36. 62 Gerhard Theuerkauf, ‘Fürst’, in Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, ed. A. Erler and E. Kaufmann (Berlin 1971), i. 1337–51, esp. 1343, 1348–9. 63 Alfred Haverkamp, Medieval Germany 1056–1273, trans. Helga Braun and Richard Mortimer (Oxford 1988), pp. 271–2. 64 Karl-Heinz Spieß, Familie und Verwandtschaft im deutschen Hochadel des Spätmittelalters (Stuttgart 1993), p. 2; idem, ‘Ständische Abgrenzung und soziale Differenzierung zwischen Hochadel und Ritteradel im Spätmittelalter’, RhV 56 (1992), 181–205, at p. 184.

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The question of intention, comprehensively discussed in the older literature, is perhaps even more interesting. Scholars’ descriptions of the early formal acts that elevated men to the rank of imperial prince assumed the influences of ‘feudal’ thought. When in 1184/88 the count of Hainault was named as margrave of Namur, he first surrendered both his fiefs and his allodial possessions to the emperor. This united them into a single fief, which was then once more granted to the man newly elevated as a princeps imperii. Was that what was intended, if indeed anything was intended at all? Steffen Schlinker emphasises how important the reception of Roman law was and sees the elevations in rank as the ruler’s effort at integration, which served to strengthen his lordship structures.65 On the one hand the emperor is supposed to have emphasised the origins of lordship rights; on the other princely rank would have been a legitimisation of high noble lordship. Dietmar Willoweit regards the introduction of the imperial princely rank as an ‘organisational act’ initiated by the emperor. He is supposed to have used it for the realisation of a new, rational concept of lordship that rested on ‘Roman delegation thought’.66 The idea that the princely dignity would promote the possession of a legally differentiated principality from former lordships appears, according to this theory, as a new mode of description for the fact that princes had a share in royal lordship.67 There are though some doubts as to whether the specific content of Roman law already played a practical role north of the Alps in Barbarossa’s time. What was perhaps more significant for this development, at least at first, was an increasing interest in legal questions, and a concern to describe legal relationships with greater precision and clarity. The ius feodale, so Ernst Pitz believes, was a new formation of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and could not have been instituted without the assistance of Roman-canon law studies that had developed in imperial Italy.68 Meanwhile, Brigitte Kasten has tried to demonstrate continuity in thought from the early medieval precaria to the elevations to the rank of imperial prince.69

65 Steffen Schlinker, Fürstenamt und Rezeption. Reichsfürstenstand und gelehrte Literatur im späten Mittelalter (Cologne 1999), pp. 218–22. 66 Dietmar Willoweit, ‘Rezeption und Staatsbildung im Mittelalter’, in Akten des 26. Deutschen Rechtshistorikertages, Frankfurt am Main, ed. Dieter Simon (Frankfurt a.M. 1987), pp. 19–44, at p. 25. 67 Schlinker, Fürstenamt und Rezeption, pp. 46–8; Dietmar Willoweit, ‘Fürst und Fürstentum in Quellen der Stauferzeit’, RhV 63 (1999), 7–25, esp. 22–3. 68 Ernst Pitz, Verfassungslehre und Einführung in die deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte des Mittelalters (Berlin 2000), p. 780, see also pp. 766–7. For the state of scholarship, see Gerhard Theuerkauf, ‘Fürst’, in Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, ed. A. Cordes, H. Lück, D. Werkmüller and R. Schmidt-Wiegand (2nd ed., Berlin 2008), i. 1887–93. 69 Brigitte Kasten, ‘Zum Gedankengut der Fürstenerhebungen im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert’, in Ausbildung und Verbreitung, pp. 159–86.

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In any case, in recent scholarship the dichotomy between king and princes no longer appears as a starting point of a historical development, but rather as its result. Peter Moraw believes that the history of the late Middle Ages only saw the institutionalisation of a dualism between king and imperial classes after other designs had failed.70 He argues that a partially institutionalised Reich came into being beside the king in a new sense. Ernst Schubert, too, concludes that the dualism of king and Reich emerged in the late Middle Ages and was responsible for Germany’s unique development.71 The Reich, he argues, would not have been in a position to develop into a modern state without the king’s ruling authority. Bernd Schneidmüller sees, in his highly-regarded concept of ‘consensual lordship’, the participation of the princes in royal lordship as an obvious component of the ‘decision-making structure’ of the entire Middle Ages. The king was always reliant on the magnates’ consensus. Schneidmüller firmly turned against a historical approach in which the ‘fascination of the law-freed ruler’ was the key element of both description and explanation.72 For Barbarossa’s time one might therefore suggest that the relationship between the king and his princes raised no problems of fundamental importance. The royal court was very attractive, an attractiveness that decreased only after the defeats in Italy in 1167 and 1176, while the role of the imperial ministeriales now gradually became discernible.73 The growing precision of legal thought through the introduction of ideas from both feudal and Roman law resulted in the relations between ruler and princes being clearly thought through, and defined with a new precision. But one can at the most speak in terms of a new mode of thought to describe known realities beginning to be established. Barbarossa could not have pursued reform plans, while whether one can ascribe to him a conscious ‘feudalising policy’ is contested and rather questionable. Instead one must imagine the relationship between ruler and princes as always being personal. The king was primarily concerned with princes, not with principalities. Institutional thought was still in its infancy. The idea of a ‘feudal tie’ between king and prince in Barbarossa’s time was certainly not primarily an issue of territory.

70 Peter Moraw, ‘Königliche Herrschaft und Verwaltung im spätmittelalterlichen Reich (ca. 1350–1450)’, in Das spätmittelalterliche Königtum im europäischen Vergleich, ed. Reinhard Schneider (Sigmaringen 1987), pp. 185–200. 71 Schubert, König, p. 296. 72 Bernd Schneidmüller, ‘Konsensuale Herrschaft. Ein Essay über Formen und Konzept politischer Ordnung im Mittelalter’, in Reich, Regionen und Europa in Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Festschrift für Peter Moraw, ed. Paul-Joachim Heinig (Berlin 2000), pp. 53–88, esp. 84–5. 73 Alheydis Plassmann, Die Struktur des Hofes under Friedrich I. Barbarossa nach den deutschen Zeugen seiner Urkunden (Hanover 1998) pp. 227–8; Kölzer, ‘Der Hof Kaiser Barbarossas’, pp. 3–48, esp. p. 42; Jan Ulrich Keupp, Dienst und Verdienst. Die Ministerialen Friedrich Barbarossas und Heinrichs VI. (Stuttgart 2002), p. 475.

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New opportunities for research have emerged. The investigation of the material basis of the principality must no longer be presented simply as a history of usurpation or a planned gathering of rights that took place in a continuing conflict with monarchical authority. The territorial aspect of princely lordship was not yet central, even though it was becoming ever more prominent in the twelfth century. It can clearly be seen that lordship was increasingly thought about in connection with territories rather than people. The economic upswing of the twelfth century, fuelled by population growth and extensive land development, made it necessary to consider the geographical boundaries of princely lordship more precisely as well. It is important to take the context of these developments into account. In the time between the end of the ninth century and the thirteenth century there were important changes in the position and structure of noble families. At first one can speak of the build-up of districts of lordship that were more stable over time, which led to noble families taking root in specific regions and locales. They could consist of several different forms of possession. Allodial ownership was the core, a ‘freehold’ that was not linked to any legal dependence on another lord. These possessions could be expanded through land clearance, which took place on a much greater scale during this period.74 Alongside this was the possession of fiefs, which could be held from other nobles, the king or from the Church. Originally, these could not be partitioned, which kept them from being fragmented through inheritance. Royal offices were especially important in this regard. Inheritance practices were already established in the second half of the ninth century, and the Ottonians clearly accepted the heritability of countships. The process of making the countships both allodial and patrimonial began. The Carolingian countship system, perhaps never fully established in the first place, dissolved. Although the idea of office never completely vanished, from the twelfth century onwards the comital title was understood above all as a recognition of worth and rank. Comital families came into being and with them a unique feature of the German aristocracy: the highest title of a house was applied to all its members. One cannot underestimate the importance of ecclesiastical advocacy for the development of individual lordship districts, a system that emerged at the latest in the tenth century. The build-up of churches’ rights by means of royal grants of immunity led to the development of the ‘Carolingian official

74 For this and what follows, see the overviews by Ernst Schubert, Fürstliche Herrschaft und Territorium im späten Mittelalter (2nd ed., Munich 2006); Bernhard Schimmelpfennig, Könige und Fürsten, Kaiser und Papst im 12. Jahrhundert (2nd ed., Munich 2010); Werner Hechberger, Adel, Ministerialität und Rittertum im Mittelalter (2nd ed., Munich 2010).

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advocacy’ into a ‘high advocacy’ that was akin to a countship in that it allowed the exercise of high justice over areas with ecclesiastical immunity. This made advocacies over episcopal churches and monasteries as attractive for nobles as they were lucrative. In the eleventh century nobles usually claimed advocacy as a hereditary right. The numerous so-called ‘new’ counts who appear in the sources of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were for the most part, according to recent scholarship, the descendants of old comital families. There is, however, only rarely evidence of institutional continuity to comital offices or rights from the Frankish period. It was also possible to rise to the dignity of count through the acquisition of church advocacies. Such new counts did not always formally receive their rank from the king – indeed in normal circumstances this was probably unusual. The development of the ducal dignity was essentially similar. Although its character as an office was strongly emphasised in the Ottonian and Salian periods, the ducal title from the late tenth century onwards could also be understood, at least at times, as a declaration of a family’s worth and rank. This was the case with those dukes who did not succeed in establishing themselves in their intended area of lordship, but continued to bear their title – the earliest case was that of Otto of Carinthia in 985. The same was true for the holders of those new ducal titles that resulted from the partition of old duchies. This political measure was used several times in Barbarossa’s reign – Bavaria was partitioned in 1156, and again in 1180, and Saxony, too, in 1180. This was not a matter of destroying old duchies; rather the king wanted to satisfy the rival ambitions of princes. The territorial aspect may not have been the primary issue in Barbarossa’s time. In a society of rank it was important to assure the social position of adversaries when resolving conflicts. This was significant in measures that brought long-term conflicts in the Reich to an end. When Henry the Lion was re-granted the duchy of Bavaria in 1156, which Conrad III had taken from his father in 1139, the rank of the existing duke, Henry Jasomirgott, had to be preserved. Therefore, the march of Austria was separated from Bavaria and raised to be an independent duchy.75 After the downfall of Henry the Lion in 1180, the former Bavarian count palatine Otto of Wittelsbach succeeded to his ducal title. Margrave Berthold of Andechs, who had formerly been Otto’s equal in rank, received the title duke of Merania, while Margrave Ottokar became duke of the newly created duchy of Styria.76 Thus, the solution of problems with rank had consequences for constitutional and territorial

75 Knut Görich, ‘“ . . . damit die Ehre unseres Onkels nicht gemindert werde . . . ” Verfahren und Ausgleich im Streit um das Herzogtum Bayerns 1152–1156’, in Die Geburt Österreichs. 850 Jahre Privilegium Minus, ed. Peter Schmid and Heinrich Wanderwitz (Regensburg 2007), pp. 23–35. 76 Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa, p. 479.

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history, not vice versa. In such measures the intention was to re-establish consensus through negotiation, not to implement abstract legal ideas. Historians at times speak of these new dukes, rather misleadingly, as ‘titular dukes’ or as the holders of ‘regional duchies’. Their standing could at first be regarded as lower than that of those dukes who could trace their position directly back to the old duchies, as can be seen in Otto of Freising’s disparaging remark about the ‘empty title’ (vacuum nomen) of the duke of Zähringen.77 However, since the titles of both groups derived equally from royal grants, their legal position was in fact no different.78 Furthermore, from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onwards, younger sons also claimed the ducal title and the designation ducissa for wives became customary. Another shift in ideas about relationships developed along with the territorial fixing of noble lordships, and this led to a change in the structure of noble families. For the early Middle Ages historians use the problematic term ‘clans’ (Sippen), understanding thereby horizontal groups based on blood kinship (Latin: cognatio) that were not stable over time. The clan’s members were joined together by common possessions and common interests, and oriented themselves towards the king or on particular important members of the family. These groups formed or dissolved again through political developments or occurrences within the family, such as inheritance. There was, at this period, no discernible pre-eminence given to kin related through the male line. Noble dynasties developed with the territorial fixing of noble families. Since in normal circumstances inheritance passed in a father-son succession, the importance of ancestors in the male line increased and finally became constitutive for noble lineages in the modern sense. This thesis, originating with Karl Schmid and developed by Georges Duby,79 may correctly describe the long-term development even though more recent research has suggested that collateral relatives remained important for a long time.80 Noble families

77 GFred I c. 9, p. 25; The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa by Otto of Freising and His Continuator Rahewin, trans. C.C. Mierow (New York 1953), p. 43; Gerd Althoff, ‘Die Zähringerherrschaft im Urteil Ottos von Freising’, in Die Zähringer. Eine Tradition und ihre Erforschung, ed. Karl Schmid (Sigmaringen 1986), pp. 43–58, esp. 46–7; Thomas Zotz, ‘Dux de Zaringen – dux Zaringiae. Zum zeitgenössischen Verständnis eines neuen Herzogtums im 12. Jahrhundert’, ZGOR 139 (1991), 1–44, esp. 6–8, 23–4. 78 Werner Hechberger, Adel im fränkisch-deutschen Mittelalter. Zur Anatomie eines Forschungsproblems (Ostfildern 2005), pp. 260–2. 79 Karl Schmid, Geblüt, Herrschaft, Geschlechterbewußtsein. Grundfragen zum Verständnis des Adels im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen 1998); Georges Duby, ‘The Structure of Kinship and Nobility’, in idem, The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (London 1977), pp. 134–48. 80 Hechberger, Staufer und Welfen, pp. 153–60; Jürgen Dendorfer, Adelige Gruppenbildung und Königsherrschaft. Die Grafen von Sulzbach und ihr Beziehungsgeflecht im 12. Jahrhundert (Munich 2004); Jonathan R. Lyon, Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100–1250 (Ithaca, NY 2013).

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began to construct castles as residences in the mid-eleventh century. This development reached its peak in the twelfth century and continued to the end of the thirteenth. Usually, one of these new centres of lordship played a special role for the family’s image as well as for its politics. Finally, the dynasty took the name of its chief residence. At first naming after the lordship seat was merely a designation of origin, but later it continued to be used even when the castle which had originally provided the name had been lost. In the twelfth century the use of seals and heraldic devices also began, at first representing an individual but then becoming the heritable sign of a noble lineage. As one can see first in the southwest of the Reich, this process was supported by a ‘symbiosis’ between noble families and Church reform. Nobles founded monasteries (which served as the family burial place), showered them with gifts and sought to hold onto their advocacy as a hereditary right. This assured the foundation’s continuing existence, in return for which the monastery cared for the souls of the dead and secured by that means the family’s memoria. It was through this form of remembrance that the dynasty was first durably established as an intellectual construct, and from these origins a historiography of such noble families developed, starting in the later twelfth century.81 It is possible to see the princely court emerging more clearly in the sources from the 1170s onwards. The royal court served as a model for its organisation.82 Taken as a whole, these new, regionally fixed, areas of lordship, which became more stable over time, developed in the high Middle Ages as a result of the processes outlined above. They varied in size and their incumbents in rank. Their roots lay in rights of lordship that either emanated from the king or were regarded as the autogeneous possession of noble families. How one should regard the relationship between these two foundations is a matter about which contemporaries already argued. Regional differences were great and not least a question of specific power relationships. This can be seen for example in the relationship between dukes and counts. In Bavaria it was at least claimed that counts should be dependent on the duke, while in Saxony or Lotharingia, for example, the relationship was marked by conflict and rivalry.83

81 Benjamin Arnold, Power and Property in Medieval Germany: Economic and Social Change c.900–1300 (Oxford 2004), pp. 150–74. 82 Karl-Heinz Spieß, Fürsten und Höfe im Mittelalter (Darmstadt 2008), pp. 17–23. 83 On this problem see Pitz, Verfassungslehre, pp. 685–730. For Bavaria see Ludwig Holzfurtner, ‘Herzog oder König? Königliche Eingriffe in bayerische Grafschaften während des Hohen Mittelalters’, ZBLG 68 (2005), 289–304; Werner Hechberger, ‘Herzog und Herzogtum. Die Welfen in Bayern’, in Die Geburt Österreichs, pp. 77–101; Jürgen Dendorfer, ‘Von den Babenbergern zu den Welfen. Herzog und Adel in Bayern um die Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts’, in München, Bayern und das Reich im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert. Lokale Befunde und überregionale Perspektiven, ed. Hubertus Seibert and Alois Schmid

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But what did princely lordship look like in the age of Frederick Barbarossa? Current scholarship no longer describes it as a conglomerate of rights that had been wrested from the crown in protracted struggles. But the twelfth-century prince also no longer appears as a noble whose family had over long decades industriously developed an age-old autogeneous position. As with the king, one cannot describe the princes developing systematic policies with a long-term perspective – such a view would be anachronistic, certainly for the twelfth century.84 The historian sees the beginnings of modernity only from later hindsight. That by no means makes it uninteresting, but indeed one should beware at this level as with kingship of attributing political dealings to far-reaching objectives. Recent case studies show numerous variants in princely lordship in Barbarossa’s time, each with different, and mostly limited, goals.85 Henry the Lion, who went further than his contemporaries in developing, at least to some extent, a purposeful territorial policy, is thus the exception, not the norm.86 It was precisely this exceptionality that may have led to his fall. That the problem played a role, as the relationship between duke and count in Saxony demonstrated, shows plainly which fundamental questions were still open in the twelfth-century Reich. One can of course describe the emergence of the princely group and the territorial lordship that developed in terms of individual cases. But such an approach leads down a blind alley if one gets lost in the details of each individual case. One should not overlook the points of commonality: the princes’ so-called territorial policies do display similarities. In some regions they can undoubtedly be described in terms of competition and rivalry one with another. It is also clear that in Barbarossa’s time the princes did not act uniformly, or as a unit, certainly not against the king. The king could be the referee in the resulting conflicts. But in some regions he himself, as a territorial lord, was also a participant in this system.

(Munich 2008), pp. 221–48, esp. 227. For Saxony see Joachim Ehlers, Heinrich der Löwe. Eine Biographie (Munich 2008), p. 116. 84 Ernst Schumbert, Fürstliche Herrschaft und Territorium im späten Mittelalter (2nd ed., Munich 2006), p. 5; Arnold, Princes, pp. 280–4; Timothy Reuter, ‘All Quiet Except on the Western Front? The Emergence of Pre-modern Forms of Statehood in the Central Middle Ages’, in his Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities [above note 2], pp. 432–58, especially 452. 85 See, for example, Gerhard Lubich, Auf dem Weg zur “Güldenen Freiheit” (1168). Herrschaft und Raum in der Francia orientalis von der Karolinger- zur Stauferzeit (Husum 1996); Oliver Auge, Handlungsspielräume fürstlicher Politik im Mittelalter. Der südliche Ostseeraum von der Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts bis in die frühe Reformationszeit (Ostfildern 2009); Stefan Burkhardt, Mit Stab und Schwert. Bilder, Träger und Funktionen erzbischöflicher Herrschaft zur Zeit Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossas. Die Erzbistümer Köln und Mainz im Vergleich (Ostfildern 2008). 86 Ehlers, Heinrich der Löwe, pp. 399–401; Bernhard Schneidmüller, ‘Heinrich der Löwe. Innovationspotentiale eines mittelalterlichen Fürsten’, in Staufer und Welfen, pp. 51–65.

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Despite this long history of research, it is clear that the question remains unresolved of whether a modernising phase took place in the twelfth-century Reich. Numerous important studies have been published both on the history of the kingdom and on that of the different regions of princely lordship. Nonetheless, problems arise when attempting to pull these together into a new consensus. Historians are agreed on the need to abandon the idea of a fundamental conflict between king and princes. In any case, this idea was never a driving element of German constitutional history. Scholars now see attempts to develop princely lordship in Barbarossa’s time as less purposeful than was once assumed. Neither princes nor king were formulating coherent long-term plans. The princes’ policies were motivated by concerns of honour and striving for rank, rather than the wish to build up a territory. There was a variety of ways to assure, fashion and develop princely lordship. But there was no ‘to-do list’ of goals from which they had to work. From the twelfth century onwards the legal position of the princes gradually became more precise, as a form of transpersonal lordship. Ideas of feudal law began to play a role, although later and less intensively than older scholarship assumed. The influence of Roman law ideas clearly encouraged the desire for more precise thought. One cannot entirely exclude the idea that the emperor himself played an active role in this development, but it is unlikely. Nor does it seem that the actual lordship exercised by the princes changed significantly in the time of Barbarossa. Was, then, Germany’s Middle Ages Germany’s destiny? Hermann Heimpel’s lecture from the year 1933 is a perfect example of the ‘contemporaneity’ of a historian. In an article that was widely noted in Germany, Timothy Reuter modified the thesis of a German special path that began in the Middle Ages, although he still accentuated certain unique features in German history. As an intellectual starting point for his model for Germany’s development, he chose neither a supposedly tightly organised Carolingian Empire in the age of Charlemagne nor a supposedly ungermanic noble lordship. His starting point was instead an ethnically heterogeneous Kingdom of the East Franks in the ninth century.87 This approach suggests another model for the course of German history. What importance can be ascribed in it to princely lordship in the late twelfth century must be clarified by individual studies that do not limit themselves to description but also seek to provide an explanation.

87 Reuter, ‘Sonderweg’, p. 400. For context, see Reuter, ‘All quiet except on the Western Front?’

4

Urban lordships Gabriel Zeilinger

There was virtually no town or city in medieval Germany – nor indeed in the rest of Europe – that did not develop on lands formerly or continuously under aristocratic or ecclesiastical rule.1 The notion of the ‘free’ medieval city is hugely influenced by the relatively few examples of large (free) imperial cities such as Cologne, Nuremberg or Strassburg, which developed a wide-ranging autonomy in the course of the Late Middle Ages. However, the vast majority of European towns remained within the framework of lordship throughout pre-modern times. This setting also implied a persistent contact between lords and communes, personified by the mediators between the two spheres, for example reeves and bailiffs, as well as municipal officials and councilmen. The political and social elites of towns quite often had a family background of service to the respective lord, and were thereby used to the mechanisms of seigneurial rule not only as subjects but even as agents, if not practitioners by delegation.2 Thus, these elites – especially in the larger towns – could, and in some cases would, seek to establish extramural lordships of their own. What may at first sight appear as contradictory to the basically egalitarian concept of citizenry, is easily resolved by pointing out the importance of the town wall in separating the ‘within’ from the ‘outside’ of the commune and its ideals, not least in a legal sense. Yet, the municipal magistrates could only govern their towns with some hierarchical traits, even on the inside of the walls.3

1 The terminological problem of ‘town’/‘city’ etc., elaborately discussed in a European perspective in Vielerlei Städte. Der Stadtbegriff, ed. Peter Johanek and Franz-Joseph Post (Cologne 2004), will not be raised anew here. In the following, the term ‘town’ will be used pragmatically for the general phenomenon of urban settlements (of different kinds), while ‘city’ will be applied only to specific examples where urbanity was fully developed, not least in an economic, legal and political sense. 2 Mittler zwischen Herrschaft und Gemeinde. Die Rolle von Funktions- und Führungsgruppen in der mittelalterlichen Urbanisierung Zentraleuropas, ed. Elisabeth Gruber, Susanne C. Pils, Sven Rabeler, Herwig Weigl and Gabriel Zeilinger (Innsbruck 2013). 3 The mastercompendium of the (later) medieval urban history of Germany, now in an extended and revised version, remains Eberhard Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelalter 1150– 1550. Stadtgestalt, Recht, Stadtregiment, Kirche, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft (Vienna 2012).

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These circumstances provide the background for the origins and early development of urban lordships in Germany, which are to be found in the written evidence mainly from the thirteenth century, although this phenomenon was considerably more prevalent in the time after 1350.4 We shall, therefore, have to take occasional foresights in dealing with this topic. Another caveat needs to be stated now. Urban lordships – that is, the possessions and entitlements of towns, of their corporations or of individuals in the towns’ hinterland – were of course not the same as principalities. Given the abovementioned constitutional framework, urban lordships were almost always subordinate ones, even considering the proprietary rights involved. Nevertheless, at least the lordships of imperial cities shared one characteristic with principal lordships, namely that they were by their status reichsunmittelbar (subject only to the king/emperor, that is, to the Empire). This was another reason why Imperial cities were more likely to gain their own territories, apart from the sheer number of towns involved – and it has been estimated that around 10% of the imperial cities formed sizeable extramural lordships.5 In the following discussion, the topic will be examined by (1) a general outline of the conjunction of urbanisation and the formation of urban lordships, and (2) some exemplary sketches of urban lordships, focussing mainly on Southern Germany. As sources for this topic, research has mainly drawn upon the diplomatic and urbarial evidence, and at a later period also on seigneurial and municipal account books and ordinances, as well as to surviving collections of correspondence.

The two sides of medieval urbanisation: the internal and external growth of towns Most European towns in the Middle Ages, and not just those in Germany, were not ‘founded’ on ‘greenfield’ sites. The formation and further development of towns usually took place at locations with some pre-existing central functions for the surrounding area – these might be economic, religious, administrative or legal ones. A surplus of such services is one possible definition for urban settlements in general, and was certainly a characteristic of episcopal sees and of the emporia and castral towns of the Ottonian and Salian eras, the two oldest types of urban settlement in the German Empire. The age of the Hohenstaufen (1152–1250) saw the height

4 Still relevant as (even programmatic) outlines: Gerd Wunder, ‘Reichsstädte als Landesherren’, in Zentralität als Problem der mittelalterlichen Stadtgeschichtsforschung, ed. Emil Meynen (Vienna 1979), pp. 79–91; Dietmar Willoweit, ‘Stadt und Territorium im Heiligen Römischen Reich. Eine Einführung’, in Statuten, Städte und Territorien zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit in Italien und Deutschland, ed. Giorgio Chittolini and Dietmar Willoweit (Berlin 1992), pp. 39–48, with a wide-ranging summary of previous research. 5 Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelalter, p. 682.

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of enfranchisements, rather than actual ‘foundations’, of towns, and was a period of intensified concentration of seigneurial rights in towns – both practices implemented not just by the monarchs but also by the princes of the time. Thus, there was, from the beginning, a coherence between seigneurial lordships and their territory on the one hand, and towns and their respective hinterlands on the other. Many Hofrechte (leges familiae) of the High Middle Ages applied to the issuing lord’s bondsmen and (often unfree) personnel, not only at court but also in the periphery – forming yet another link between town and countryside.6 Towns such as these, with their markets, fortifications, and not least with their evolving communes, were therefore an attraction to people seeking better economic, legal and social circumstances for themselves, just as they were attractive to the lords of the land and their subsidiaries. In Alsace, for example, where in the course of the thirteenth century some 60–70 towns emerged in addition to the relatively few already in existence before this period (particularly Strassburg),7 this urban ambiguity is conspicuous in several cases.8 In Colmar, which later on would become the leading imperial city of Upper Alsace, the space between three adjacent manors of different ecclesiastic landlords was filled during the eleventh and twelfth centuries by mercantile activity and settlement, for which we have archaeological evidence. The Vogtei (advocacy) of those manors, which involved in particular the exercise of high justice, was before 1200 in the hands of the Counts of Dagsburg-Egisheim, but was taken over by the Staufen king, later emperor, Frederick II, circa 1212–14. The diplomatic evidence indeed shows the presence of ministeriales and other officials of both these formerly ‘external’ rulers at this time. In 1212 and again in 1214, the burgenses (not yet citizens by full right!) of Colmar sold parts of their common land in order to use the revenue to build a wall for their churchyard. For these acts, the emerging community of burgenses, obviously headed by followers of the Hohenstaufen, first had to appropriate the commons, legally, politically and socially, and then get the proper landlords to consent to the sales – to which

6 For overviews, cf., for example, David Nicholas, The Growth of the Medieval City: From Late Antiquity to the Early Fourteenth Century (London 1997); Die Urbanisierung Europas von der Antike bis in die Moderne, ed. Gerhard Fouquet and Gabriel Zeilinger (Frankfurt am Main 2009); Knut Schulz, Die Freiheit des Bürgers. Städtische Gesellschaft im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter (Darmstadt 2008). 7 For Strassburg’s many, but rather scattered extramural belongings, which are not further discussed in this article, cf. Gerd Wunder, Das Straßburger Landgebiet. Territorialgeschichte der einzelnen Teile des städtischen Herrschaftsbereichs vom 13. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin 1967). 8 What follows in this paragraph is drawn from my University of Kiel Habilitationsschrift, Gabriel Zeilinger, Verhandelte Stadt. Herrschaft und Gemeinde in der frühen Urbanisierung des Oberelsass vom 12. bis 14. Jahrhundert (to be published in Mittelalter-Forschungen, forthcoming).

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they did, or rather to which they were forced. In the following three to four decades, Colmar was encircled with its first comprehensive wall and grew substantially, both in population and central functions. It also maintained its role as stronghold for the Hohenstaufen kings and their partisans in the region. Thereby, it attained the status of a royal city, which it managed to retain far beyond the end of this dynasty – with increasing municipal autonomy.9 Both the internal growth of the town and the development of several suburbs made necessary two extensions of the city wall, the first around 1250, and then again around 1287. In the course of the following two centuries the city, that is, its magistrates and its institutions of different kinds, was able to acquire an urban territory of moderate size but compact structure, eventually comprising c. 6,600 hectares (25.5 square miles) right around the city and including lordship over some villages. What possibly restricted further growth of this zone of direct influence was the fact that other towns had emerged around Colmar, within a meagre radius of some 10–15 kilometres. The records of new citizens received in Colmar, documented since 1361 and naming their places of origin, still show Colmar’s role as an economic centre of Upper Alsace and as a favourite destination for migrants from the countryside.10 The formation of an urban territory may be more clearly visible in other places, but Colmar gives a fascinating example of the different processes connected with medieval urbanisation on both sides of the town wall – and it stands as a good example of those medium- or small-sized towns which succeeded in forming urban lordships in their immediate hinterland. Generally, individual or institutional property possession in a town’s vicinity formed the base and beginning of the development towards urban lordships. Affluent townsmen, religious institutions such as friaries or quite frequently civic hospitals,11 then, rather later, the civic magistrates, would acquire extramural estates, which usually included not only, if at all, the right of agrarian usage but often further entitlements such as rents, tolls or local jurisdiction. The acquisition of such lands and/or rights could come by

9 It appears more appropriate to speak of ‘royal’ towns or cities (if granted the title of civitas) until at least the fourteenth century, when the concept of an ‘empire’ separate from the king’s person was widely established and the term ‘imperial city’ thus got more validity; cf. Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelater, pp. 295–304. 10 Odile Kammerer, ‘Colmar ville-état et la puissante seigneurie des Ribeaupierre avant le XVIe siècle’, in Les relations entre Etats et principautés des Pays-Bas à la Savoie (XIVe–XVIe s.), ed. Jean-Marie Cauchies (Neuchâtel 1992), pp. 99–114; Gabriel Zeilinger, ‘Urbane Entwicklung abseits der Kathedralstadt. Die Stadtwerdung Colmars und die Urbanisierung des Oberelsass vom 12. bis zum 14. Jahrhundert’, in Städtische Räume im Mittelalter, ed. S. Ehrich and J. Oberste (Regensburg 2009), pp. 123–36. 11 For their role in town-country-relations, see among other regional and local studies, Michel Pauly, Peregrinorum, pauperum ac aliorum transeuntium receptaculum. Hospitäler zwischen Maas und Rhein im Mittelalter (Stuttgart 2007), especially pp. 319–40.

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purchase, by pawn or by fief. Anyway, money was usually involved. And in that respect, not only was there urban surplus capital to be invested, but the landed aristocracy of different ranks intensified the use of cash or credit money in administering their lordships as well – as they had increasingly done since the beginning of the thirteenth century. Even in those cases in which the town as a whole, as a commune, was not the proper owner of certain outlying rights, those who were, namely members of the urban elite or urban institutions, in the long run tended to yield some kind of control to the magistrates and senior municipal office-bearers. Thus, when a certain concentration of such external grounds and rights was reached, the town could establish a somewhat formalised rule of the area. Among the instruments used for that purpose were, in the political and military sphere, the Landwehren (defensive dykes that also marked the zone of superiority), and contracts with the urban or the landed aristocracy guaranteeing communal access to their castles (Öffnungsrechte) or possibly even the latters’ status of ‘outburghers’ as means of integrating them into the urban sphere of influence. In addition to the potentially lucrative manorial rights and to military aspects, the towns’ magistrates also sought to gain broader jurisdictional control of their hinterlands beyond their immediate fringe areas – lower justice being anyway widely attached to property rights over Land und Leute (ownership of land which also included the bondsmen therein). Such jurisdictional rights were often a matter of dispute with the princes of the respective region. However, the strongest influence over the environs of towns was probably the economy. The town functioned both as a marketplace and as a centre of capital, and thus could in most cases impose regulations for all kinds of economic transactions, not least the control of measures and tariffs. The politics of the market – in a larger sense – may even be considered as the (initial) driving force behind all the facets mentioned above.12 As we shall see in the following examples of early urban lordships, mainly in Southern Germany, individual encroachment on the hinterland was still more common than outright municipal lordship until about the second half of the fourteenth century. It simply took time to put together a more tightly-knit scheme of rule, based on different types of rights and revenues, that would merit the notion and term of urban territory – or actually lordship. But by the end of that process some of the largest cities would even include other, minor, towns within their urban lordships – Nuremberg, for example, had no less than six of these subordinated to its rule.

12 Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelalter, pp. 679–89; Tom Scott, Society and Economy in Germany 1300–1600 (Basingstoke 2002), especically pp. 32–4 and pp. 135–48. For the economic significance of the hinterlands to urban merchants, see Matthias Steinbrink, Ulrich Meltinger. Ein Basler Kaufmann am Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart 2007), Niels Petersen, Die Stadt vor den Toren. Lüneburg und sein Umland im Spätmittelalter (Göttingen 2015).

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Patterns of urban lordships Nuremberg, which is the ‘classic’ example of a large urban territory of the (Late) Middle Ages in the German Empire, is covered by Carla MeyerSchlenkrich’s essay in this volume. One should, however, note here that Nuremberg and its social and political elite eventually dominated a territory which was quite unique in its combination of spatial quantity and political quality compared to other major cities within the late medieval Empire. ‘Nuremberg was a city-state in all but name’13 – and even in terms of scale could almost be compared with the Italian city-states. By contrast, Lübeck, situated on the Baltic Sea coast, which with about 25,000 inhabitants towards the end of the Middle Ages had roughly the same population as contemporary Nuremberg, would not develop a dependent territory of similar size or seigneurial saturation.14 Its magistrates rather concentrated on sustaining several Vogteien and other posts mainly along major trade routes. Yet, members of Lübeck’s elite as well as urban (not least religious) institutions still held numerous extramural estates, although the city council held only a limited control over these.15 Nor did Cologne, the largest city of medieval Germany with around 40,000 inhabitants, build a notable territory in terms of political rule; but it did exert strong economic control in a wide area around the city, not least through the impact of its market within the region and beyond – including official market policies.16 The major imperial city of Ulm, however, acquired several formerly noble lordships in its immediate vicinity, either by pawn or purchase, in most cases involving the acquisition of full seigneurial rights. Ulm thereby established a compact and powerfully controlled urban lordship around its walls, which amounted to c. 800 square kilometres (just over 300 square miles), that is about half the size of Nuremberg’s territory, and added some 10,000 dependent villagers to the 15,000 townspeople. This was accomplished mainly in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. But before that time, and the more active involvement of the magistracy in that process of civic expansion, it should once again be stressed that the prevalent footholds of Ulm in its hinterland were the scattered possessions of individual citizens or urban institutions – along with the city’s role as a (supra-)regional economic centre.

13 Scott, Society and Economy in Germany, p. 138. Cf. also Tom Scott, The City-State in Europe, 1000–1600: Hinterland – Territory – Region (Oxford 2012). 14 Cf. Frank G. Hirschmann, Die Stadt im Mittelalter (Munich 2009), pp. 18–20. 15 Cf. Elisabeth Raiser, Städtische Territorialpolitik im Mittelalter. Eine vergleichende Untersuchung ihrer verschiedenen Formen am Beispiel Lübecks und Zürichs (Lübeck 1969). 16 Cf. Franz Irsigler, Die wirtschaftliche Stellung der Stadt Köln im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert. Strukturanalyse einer spätmittelalterlichen Exportgewerbe- und Fernhandelsstadt (Wiesbaden 1979).

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Some decades earlier, and to some extent closer to Nuremberg’s model of urban lordship, came the development of the territories of the somewhat smaller cities of Berne and Zurich, which exercised in particular the aforementioned instrument of Öffnungsrechte to noble castles.17 In general in the late medieval empire, a decline in the significance and size of urban territories can be observed as one progresses from south to north.18 That tendency was partly due to the relatively higher density of imperial cities in Southern Germany. As has already been seen in the case of Colmar, not all royal/imperial cities within the empire had a very large number of inhabitants. Yet, even among those which were only of medium size, quite a few still managed to establish urban lordships, at least on a minor scale. Another example of that sort of town is the imperial city of Nördlingen in Eastern Swabia – with slightly above 5,000 inhabitants this was about the size of Colmar in the fifteenth century. Nördlingen became a royal civitas in 1215, and later on an imperial city, although it was more than once in the following decades held in pawn by the neighbouring Counts of Oettingen. Their territorial encirclement of Nördlingen and its outskirts led to the situation that the city and its council – in spite of the extensive external possessions held by its citizens and urban institutions, among others the civic hospital and urban monasteries – would never achieve an outright urban lordship, for it lacked some vital elements for this, notably the exercise of high justice or of the right of escort. One should note, however, that the network of Nördlingen’s extramural stepping stones, whether economic or political, and whether it was individuals, institutions or the commune who held them, was of such a quality that they can at least be regarded as ‘elements of a rudimentary territory’.19 That notion undoubtedly had its manifestation in the everyday presence and practice of townspeople in the surrounding countryside. That aspect even applies to definitely small towns like Mindelheim, a good 100 kilometres south of Nördlingen. Mindelheim was originally under the rule of the noble family of Mindelberg. It received a town charter in the middle of the thirteenth century, and was eventually taken over by the barons of Frundsberg in 1467. They held the town firmly within the grip of their power and permitted hardly any communal autonomy. Nevertheless, increasingly since the second half of the fourteenth century, the few leading families of Mindelheim acquired estates outside the town, which implied not

17 Wunder, ‘Reichsstädte als Landesherren’ [above note 4]; cf. Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelater, pp. 684–9, also for the other examples above. 18 Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelater, p. 684. 19 Rolf Kiessling, Die Stadt und ihr Land. Umlandpolitik, Bürgerbesitz und Wirtschaftsgefüge in Ostschwaben vom 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert (Cologne 1989); for Nördlingen in particular see pp. 31–106; the translated quotation is on p. 97.

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only that they received agrarian revenues, but that they held other manorial rights as well. This undoubtedly influenced town-country relations within the Frundsberg dominions.20 Even if, as has been remarked earlier, urban lordships, urban territories or merely urban possessions in a certain town’s hinterland, could hardly ever compare to principalities in the German Empire – and certainly not before 1350 – the effect of this phenomenon on the administrative, political and social history of Medieval Germany should not be underestimated. For the administrative practices and forms of political organisation which towns developed from around 1200, not least the widespread use of written documentation, exercised a considerable influence on the development of the German principalities.21 The princes, indeed, kept a close eye on the way in which urban lordships were managed.

20 Kiessling, Die Stadt und ihr Land, pp. 649–62. Cf. Olaf Mörke, Die Ruhe im Sturm. Die katholische Landstadt Mindelheim unter der Herrschaft der Frundsberg im Zeitalter der Reformation (Augsburg 1991). 21 Cf., for example, Peter Moraw, ‘Cities and Citizenry as Factors of State Formation in the Roman-German Empire of the Late Middle Ages’, in Cities and the Rise of States in Europe, A.D. 1000 to 1800, ed. Charles Tilly and Wim P. Blockmans (Boulder, CO 1994), pp. 100–27.

5

The imperial city The example of Nuremberg Carla Meyer-Schlenkrich

What is an ‘imperial city’? The term ‘imperial city’ (in German Reichsstadt) is mostly defined in standard textbooks without regional or chronological differentiation as a city in the Roman-German Empire north of the Alps whose direct overlord was the king or emperor, in contrast to the majority of towns, which were under princely or noble lordship.1 Primary identifying characteristics are an obligation to swear an oath of homage and to pay imperial taxes, in return for which the cities profited from the legitimisation of the rights they received by sovereign privileges. Second, a common feature can be attested – that these originally royal cities in the course of formulating their constitutions emancipated themselves from the ruler’s direct lordship. The most important of them succeeded in winning autonomy in terms both of communal self-rule as well as foreign policy. In modern research, however, these ‘imperial cities’ are paralleled by another type of ‘free city’ (Freie Stadt) in the sense of cities freed from their lords, mostly bishops, as well as by ‘territorial towns’ (Territorialstadt, landesherrliche Stadt) under the control of an ecclesiastical or lay lord. Such a categorisation must be regarded relatively, first because of the great differences between individual imperial cities, depending on whether they were small or large, influential or insignificant, near or far in their relationship with the king, patrician or dominated by guilds.2 Second, these

1 See Joachim Schneider, ‘Die Reichsstädte’, in Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation 962 bis 1806. Von Otto dem Großen bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters. Essays. 29. Ausstellung des Europarates in Magdeburg und Berlin und Landesausstellung SachsenAnhalt, ed. Matthias Puhle and Claus-Peter Hasse (Dresden 2006), pp. 410–23, esp. p. 411; Paul-Joachim Heinig, ‘Reichsstädte’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters (Munich 1995), vii. 637–9 and idem, Reichsstädte, freie Städte und Königtum 1389–1450. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte (Wiesbaden 1983); Eberhard Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelalter 1150–1550. Stadtgestalt, Recht, Verfassung, Stadtregiment, Kirche, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft (Vienna 2012), pp. 280–326. 2 See the discussion in Schneider, ‘Die Reichstädte’, p. 412.

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towns shared many common structural features with towns that had different sorts of lordship. Many factors like population size, financial strength and economic structure, the relations of towns one with another, as well as royal interests in the region, formed more important connections than a town’s ‘constitution’. Besides this ‘diverse side by side’3 existence of cities at a synchronistic level, a third issue is change over time: indeed cities could also lose their status as imperial or free city, as contemporaries attentively noted.4 Modern scholars underscore that the greatest threat to towns’ status was the mortgaging of quite a few of them in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. If the towns did not come up with the mortgage payment themselves, in general they were incorporated into princely territories. Even more fundamental is the question of the period when one can even speak of the phenomenon of the ‘imperial city’.5 Since the 1970s scholars have agreed that the concept of the ‘imperial city’ did not yet exist in the Staufen period. Peter Moraw has demonstrated in a series of studies that the expression civitas imperii had ‘neither been unequivocally formulated nor introduced to constitutional law as a concept’ in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.6 Some historians link the rise of imperial cities to the power vacuum created by the end of the Staufen dynasty in 1245/50 in many regions of the Reich that had hitherto been close to the king, above all in southern Germany. During the Interregnum many princes and nobles undoubtedly succeeded in bringing formerly Staufen towns under their own regional lordship. However, King Rudolf of Habsburg did his best from 1273 onwards to force these new occupants out again through his efforts at recovering crown lands. Based on mentions of these towns in royal documents, Eberhard Isenmann concludes that there were no less than 105 ‘imperial’ and ‘free’ cities under Rudolf’s lordship.7 By contrast, Moraw does not see the decisive phase in the creation of the imperial city until the century between 1350 and 1450.8 In this period the efforts to integrate the kingdom under the Luxemburger Charles IV reached a high point. His death led to a crisis beginning in the 1380s, which after the interlude of the ‘elector king’ Rupert of the Palatinate was marked by the

3 Peter Moraw, ‘Reichsstadt, Reich und Königtum im späten Mittelalter’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 6 (1979), 385–424, here at p. 386. 4 The Nuremberg chronicler Meisterlin at the end of the fifteenth century presented the two recent examples of Mainz’s and Regensburg’s degradation to the status of territorial town. See Sigmund Meisterlin’s Chronik der Reichsstadt Nürnberg, 1488, ed. Dietrich Kerler and Matthias Lexer, in Die Chroniken der fränkischen Städte. Nürnberg (vol. iii, Leipzig 1864) (Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte vom 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert 3), no. 6, pp. 3–180, here at p. 78. 5 For the rough lines of development, see Schneider, ‘Die Reichsstädte’, p. 414. 6 For these points, see e.g. Moraw, ‘Reichsstadt, Reich und Königtum’, p. 393 with note 19. 7 Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Mittelalter, p. 282. 8 Moraw, Reichsstadt, Reich und Königtum, p. 386.

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long absence of the ruler from the core lands of the Reich. Especially because of the existential threat of Hussites and Turks, which the community of the Reich had to meet – whether at the side of or without the king, the Reich itself stepped, so to say, beside the king. In both movements, according to Moraw, the imperial cities were ‘more carried along than active’.9 The discussion which follows concentrates upon the imperial city of Nuremberg, but one should stress that this should by no means be regarded as the history of a ‘typical’ example. It must be seen rather as an exceptional case that – despite reverses and constant threats – was able to profit more than most imperial cities from its key position in royal politics. This unusual closeness to the king over the course of many centuries can already be seen in the frequency of royal visits to the city: indeed every single crowned head of the empire from 1050 to 1571 was without exception a guest in Nuremberg.10 Charles IV of Luxemburg, who came about 40 times to the city on the River Pegnitz, called Nuremberg ‘the most distinguished and best-situated city of the empire’,11 while the Nurembergers themselves hailed their town as aula regia and caput regni.12 In the following remarks, I shall first discuss the question of when and how Nuremberg could become a central royal location and climb from there to its status as ‘royal city’. Second will be an inquiry into when the town emancipated itself from its royal lord, how it gathered ever more power from the hand of royal deputies into its own power sphere, and thus how it became an ‘imperial city’ in the modern scholarly sense of the term.13

9 Ibid., p. 390. 10 Ursula Schmidt-Fölkersamb, ‘Kaiser, Reichsbewußtsein und Reichssymbole in Nürnberg’, in Nürnberg – Kaiser und Reich. Ausstellung des Staatsarchivs Nürnberg, ed. Günther Schuhmann (Neustadt a.d. Aisch 1986), pp. 112–40, here at p. 112. 11 Monumenta Zollerana. Urkunden-Buch zur Geschichte des Hauses Hohenzollern, iv, ed. Rudolph Freiheir von Stillfried and Traugott Maercker (Berlin 1858), p. 106 no. 95 (20 November 1366). 12 ‘Nuremberg attoleris’, in Historiae Rhytmicae. Liturgische Reimofficien des Mittelalters, 7. Folge, ed. Guido Maria Dreves (Leipzig 1898; reprint New York 1961) (Analecta hymnica Medii Aevi 28), p. 180 no. 64. For the colloquial paraphrases of the fourteenth century, see, Carla Meyer, Die Stadt als Thema. Nürnbergs Entdeckung in Texten um 1500 (Ostfildern 2009), p. 264. 13 Its status as an imperial town has always played a significant role in regional scholarship on Nuremberg. See above all the highly-regarded article by Hermann Heimpel, ‘Nürnberg und das Reich des Mittelalters’, ZBLG 16.2 (1951/52), 231–64 and also the exhibition catalogue Nürnberg – Kaiser und Reich [see note 10 above];. see also Dieter J. Weiss, ‘Des Reiches Krone – Nürnberg im Spätmittelalter’, in Nürnberg. Eine europäische Stadt in Mittelalter und Neuzeit, ed. Helmut Neuhaus (Nurember 2000), pp. 23–41. Among recent studies, see especially the work of Ernst Eichhorn (e.g., ‘Das Gesamtkunstwerk Reichsstadt. Nürnberg und Rothenburg – ihre Bedeutung für den Reichsstadtbegriff in Franken. Stadttopographie – Stadtbefestigung – Reichsstadtkunst’, in Reichsstädte in Franken. Aufsätze, ii, ed. Rainer A. Müller (Munich 1987), pp. 322–41); Rudolf Endres

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From imperial possession to royal town – Nuremberg in the Salian and Staufen eras The starting point for the late medieval development of imperial cities is related to the ‘town policy’ that the Staufen pursued in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, both with royal possessions and in their dynastic lands. Especially in Swabia, eastern Franconia and on the Upper Rhine they founded towns. To an equal degree they promoted older settlements that already lay on royal lands or were on church lands where the king was the advocate (the secular protector who exercised judicial lordship). In many cases it was possible for the kings to push ecclesiastical rights aside and assume sole lordship over the town in question.14 Nuremberg was one of the towns whose history stretched back before the Staufen era to the period around the year 1000.15 The settlement appears for the first time in writing as Nuorenberc, in a document of the Salian emperor Henry III in 1050.16 Its core was a castle erected on a cliff overlooking the River Pegnitz, whose first construction has been shown archaeologically to date back to the tenth century; it probably belonged to the margraves of Schweinfurt.17 In 1003 this noble castle came into royal possession, apparently as a consequence of the feud between Emperor Henry II and Margrave Henry of Schweinfurt. The Ottonian king must soon have passed it on to his new foundation, the bishopric of Bamberg, which he, conscious of his

14

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16

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(e.g., ‘Nürnberg – die “heimliche Hauptstadt des Reiches”’, in Nürnbergs große Zeit. Reichsstädtische Renaissance, europäischer Humanismus, ed. Oscar Schneider (Cadolzburg 2000), pp. 92–110); Reinhardt Seyboth (see below, notes 40, 62 and 68); Margret Wensky, ‘Zur wirtschaftlichen und politischen Bedeutung deutscher Reichsstädte im Spätmittelalter: Frankfurt am Main, Nürnberg und Köln’, in Poteri economici e poteri politici secc. XIII – XVIII, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Florence 1999), pp. 607–17. For a concise overview of the city’s history, see Michael Diefenbacher, Horst-Dieter Beyerstedt, and Martina Bauernfeindt, Kleine Nürnberger Stadtgeschichte (Regensburg 2012). See Schneider, ‘Die Reichstädte’, p. 414; Gabriel Zeilinger, ‘Zwischen familia und coniuratio. Stadtentwicklung und Stadtpolitik im frühen 12. Jahrhundert’, in Heinrich V. in seiner Zeit. Herrschen in einem europäischen Reich des Hochmittelalters, ed. Gerhard Lubich (Vienna 2013), pp. 103–18. See Alois Schmid, ‘Vom “fundus Nuorenberg” zur “civitas Nuoremberch”. Die Anfänge der Stadt Nürnberg in der Zeit der Salier und Staufer’, in Nürnberg. Eine europäische Stadt in Mittelalter und Neuzeit, ed. Helmut Neuhaus (Nuremberg 2000), pp. 3–22; Karl Bosl, ‘Die Anfänge der Stadt unter den Saliern’, in Nürnberg – Geschichte einer europäischen Stadt, ed. Gerhard Pfeiffer (Munich 1971), pp. 11–16. Document of 16 July 1050, MGH Dipl. Henry III, pp. 336–7 no. 253, also in Nürnberger Urkundenbuch, ed. Stadtarchiv Nürnberg (Nuremberg 1959), no. 9. For a facsimile and a short description see Norenberc – Nürnberg 1050 bis 1806. Eine Ausstellung des Staatsarchivs Nürnberg zur Geschichte der Reichsstadt, ed. Peter Fleischmann (Munich 2000), here pp. 48–9. Schmid, ‘Vom fundus Nuorenberg’, pp. 5–6.

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childlessness, had chosen as the centre of his memoria.18 This is why, by the time of his death in 1024, Nuremberg was an episcopal, not an imperial possession. This situation was altered under the Salians who followed Henry II on the throne. From the first they sought to push back Bamberg’s influence in the region. The role of central location fell to Nuremberg, from which the remaining royal possessions in the border region between Bavaria and Saxony, eastern Franconia and Bohemia could be controlled. These efforts found written expression in the register of royal possessions probably compiled in 1064/65, which described royal holdings in the environs of the castrum Nurenberc.19 When Henry III came to Nuremberg for the assembly documented in a charter of 1050, he and his followers could probably count for lodging not only on the castle but also two royal residences on the site of the modern churches of St. Egidius and St. Jacob at its foot. It was there that two nuclear settlements stretched, in which townsfolk from the ranks of the ministeriales, traders and artisans lived.20 The settlement in the area of the modern church of St. Egidius had already been granted market rights by Henry III and raised to the status of a forum.21 Nuremberg’s ascent continued with Henry’s homonymous son, who is known to have been a guest on the Pegnitz a total of eight times between 1061 and 1097.22 From its more frequent designation as castrum modern scholars have concluded that Henry IV, a notable castle-builder, expanded Nuremberg’s simple place of refuge into an impressive castle complex. The final phase of the Investiture Contest, to be sure, nearly destroyed Nuremberg’s closeness to the king. As the young Henry V resolved to depose his father in 1104/05, the conflict found one focus in Nuremberg, which was conquered in 1105 after a siege lasting several weeks. In the late Middle Ages the chronicler Meisterlin still regarded the struggle between father and son and its devastation of the town as a turning point in his Nuremberg Chronicle.23 With the end of the Salians, even Nuremberg’s status as a centre of crown possessions appeared once again to be endangered. After the dynasty was extinguished with the death of Henry V, the Staufen dukes of Swabia as the

18 Ibid., p. 7 with note 25. 19 See Schmid, ‘Vom fundus Nuorenberg’, pp. 8–9; Nürnberger Urkundenbuch, no. 15; Das Tafelgüterverzeichnis des römischen Königs, ed. Carlrichard Brühl and Theo Kölzer (Vienna 1979), p. 53; see also pp. 16–18. 20 See Karl Bosl, ‘Das staufische Nürnberg’, in Nürnberg – Geschichte einer europäischen Stadt [above, note 15], pp. 16–29, here p. 14. 21 See Schmid, ‘Vom fundus Nuorenberg’, p. 7; Bosl, ‘Die Anfänge unter den Saliern’, p. 15. 22 See Schmid, ‘Vom fundus Nuorenberg’, p. 10 with note 42. 23 Sigmund Meisterlin’s Chronik der Reichsstadt Nürnberg, pp. 80–1; see also Meyer, Die Stadt als Thema, p. 159.

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nearest relatives of the late ruler claimed the right to inherit Nuremberg, although the Staufen candidate for the throne had to yield place to the Saxon duke Lothar of Supplinburg in the royal election which took place at Mainz on 24 August 1125. Only after Lothar’s death in 1138 and the accession of the Staufen Conrad III to the throne could Nuremberg re-establish its links to the king. In the meantime, admittedly, the revenues from what was becoming imperial land went to one of Conrad’s sons, although his nephew Frederick Barbarossa followed him on the throne. According to Karl Bosl, one should ‘not imagine too great a legal difference between dynastic and crown possessions in the earlier Staufen period’.24 When scholars nonetheless date the ‘true rise’ of the city to become a ‘pre-eminent locale of the Reich’25 in the time of Conrad III and Frederick Barbarossa, the reason for this is our increasing knowledge about Nuremberg’s internal organisation in the early Staufen period. The first town count can already be found under Conrad, a position that the family of the lords or counts of Raabs held until the end of the twelfth century.26 As royal deputy for the locale, this official was also responsible for the administration of the surrounding countryside as well as exercising judicial functions. From Conrad’s reign onwards, coins were also minted in Nuremberg, and Staufen ministeriales began to organise the hinterland as imperial possession.27 The town expanded north of the Pegnitz as far as the river, primarily thanks to the Jewish quarter set up in 1147. Likewise, in c. 1150 in the side of the town near the church of St. Lawrence south of the Pegnitz, a Staufen-planned settlement in oval form with regularly-plotted streets arose around the royal palace by St. Jacob’s. It was probably also under Conrad III that the Raabs family began construction of an imperial palace beside the Salian castle; Frederick Barbarossa brought it to completion. Today its Sinwell Tower and double chapel still attest to the building activity of this period.28 After the Raabs dynasty died out in 1190, Frederick gave the town countship (the burgraviate) as a fief to the Swabian counts of Zollern, although he apparently restricted their duties and rights compared with those possessed by their predecessors. Roughly contemporaneously, it is possible to see other

24 Bosl, ‘Das staufische Nürnberg’, p. 17. 25 Ibid., p. 16. See also Alfred Wendehorst, ‘Nürnberg’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters (Munich 1993), vi. 1317–22, here at col. 1318. 26 Bosl, ‘Die Anfänge unter den Saliern’, p. 14. 27 See Bosl, ‘Die staufische Stadt’, pp. 18–19; Reinhardt Seyboth, ‘Reichsmünzstätte’, in Stadtlexikon Nürnberg, ed. Michael Diefenbacher and Rudolf Endres (2nd ed., Nuremberg 2000), pp. 874–5 (available online at www.stadtarchiv.nuernberg.de/stadtlexikon/, 13 March 2014). 28 See Diefenbacher et al., Kleine Nürnberger Stadtgeschichte, p. 20; Erich Bachmann and Albrecht Miller, Kaiserburg Nürnberg (14th ed., Munich 1994), pp. 7–15, 38–52.

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imperial appointees exercising rights of lordship. For example, the administrator of imperial lands and the royal judicial court that met before St. Egidius was one of what Karl Bosl called ‘imperial officials’, at first with the title provisor and later buticularius imperii.29 From 1173/74 on, a sheriff is attested as the ruler’s deputy in the town and thus judge in the town court.30 One can see from Barbarossa’s division of responsibilities in and around Nuremberg a concern not to give too much power to any one official. Nuremberg was not an isolated case of this concern; the Staufen-founded towns in Swabia and Alsace were also strictly organised among royal and noble servants.31 It is from this understanding of royal lordship over towns that one should interpret an important document of Frederick II of 8 November 1219, in the arenga of which Nuremberg appears for the first time as a civitas.32 Still known today as the ‘Great Freedom Letter’, the document was long characterised as a milestone on Nuremberg’s way from ‘royal town’ to ‘imperial freedom’.33 In point of fact, it deals above all with individual rights and economic privileges. Fifteen of its 18 provisions concern the protection of merchants from judicial duels, assurances of fief possession and rights to mortgage, freedom from toll and mint privileges. Only a few comments in the privilege deal with the position of the town’s inhabitants in relation to the king. With the provision that no citizens of this place should have any other protector (advocatus) than the Roman king and emperor, Frederick disallowed rival claims to the advocacy, above all probably from the bishops of Bamberg. There is still no trace of an ‘emancipation’ of the burgers from the king’s lordship over the town, which scholars see as a mark of development ‘from the royal to the imperial city’. One should, on the contrary, understand the provision as an intensification of royal grasp on the town. Only a single regulation in the document allows the interpretation that a greater ‘freedom’ might be allowed to the community: the annual royal tax should be levied on the whole community rather than on individual burgers – in other words, in terms of taxation the town was being treated as a corporation.34

29 Bosl, ‘Das staufische Nürnberg’ pp. 20–1. 30 Ibid., pp. 18 and 20. 31 See Gabriel Zeilinger, ‘Urbane Entwicklungen abseits der Kathedralstadt. Die Stadtwerdung Colmars und die Urbanisierung des Oberelsass vom 12. bis zum 14. Jahrhundert’, in Städtische Räume im Mittelalter, ed. Susanne Ehrich and Jörg Oberste (Regensburg 2009), pp. 123–36. 32 Nürnberger Urkundenbuch, no. 178. See Norenberc – Nürnberg, pp. 50–1. 33 It still appears thus with Wendehorst, ‘Nürnberg’, cols. 1318–19; for a different interpretation, see Thomas Engelke, ‘Freiheitsbrief 1219’, in Stadtlexikon Nürnberg, pp. 305–6. 34 See Walter Bauernfeind, ‘Steuer- und Zollhoheit’, in Stadtlexikon Nürnberg, p. 1042.

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Royal or imperial city? Nuremberg after the interregnum The political and legal emancipation of urban communities from royal town lordship, that is, the gradual replacement of royal representatives such as advocates and sheriffs by the citizenry and council, is a process now usually dated from the end of Staufen rule in the middle of the thirteenth century.35 This was also the case in Nuremberg. Already in c. 1240 the citizenry had their own seal, after which in 1254 it is designated for the first time as universitas civium, the community of burgers. Around the middle of the thirteenth century two committees composed of burgers also appear. A committee of 13 lay judges (scabini) at first supported the royal sheriff in judicial proceedings. More significant was the committee of 13 councillors (consules) who first appear in 1256 along with the sheriff as representatives of the town when Nuremberg joined the league of Rhineland towns.36 This alliance is sometimes regarded as Nuremberg’s first autonomous action as an ‘imperial city’.37 The mixed league of princes and towns, which was first established between Mainz, Worms and Oppenheim and reached its greatest extent with the addition of Nuremberg and Regensburg, was formed in hope of advancing the goals of the Mainz Imperial Land Peace of 1235. The fall of the Staufen dynasty and the years of the Interregnum presented ‘direct royal’ towns like Nuremberg with more difficulties than the general problem of keeping the peace. Just as dangerous was the prospect that kings would pledge them to win princely support. Nuremberg suffered this fate from 1269 to 1273, when the town found itself nominally in the hands of the Wittelsbacher.38 It was only thanks to King Rudolf of Habsburg’s recovery efforts that Wittelsbach attempts to make Nuremberg a Bavarian territorial town were stymied.39 According to Michael Diefenbacher, this engagement of Rudolf’s laid the cornerstone for the development of the ‘imperial city’. However, Rudolf’s policy also laid the foundation for Nuremberg’s centuries-long rivalry with the burgraves and later margraves of Ansbach, who sought important new authority in the Interregnum.40 As thanks for their help in

35 See Heinig, ‘Reichsstädte’, col. 637; Schneider, ‘Die Reichsstädte’, p. 415. 36 See Gerhard Pfeiffer, ‘Der Aufstieg der Reichsstadt Nürnberg im 13. Jahrhundert’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 44 (1953), 14–23 and idem, ‘Nürnbergs Selbstverwaltung 1256–1956’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 48 (1958), 1–25. 37 See Diefenbacher, et al., Kleine Nürnberger Stadtgeschichte, p. 21. 38 See Ansgar Frenken, ‘Das Interregnum als historische Chance. Handlungsspielräume und Chancennutzung in Zeiten des Umbruchs skizziert am Beispiel der Nürnberger Burggrafen und Bürger’, ZBLG 68 (2005), 1069–105. 39 On the success of Rudolf’s recovery policy in the region around Nuremberg, see the Reichssalbüchlein produced in c. 1300, MGH Constitutiones, iii.627–31; Nürnberger Urkundenbuch, no. 1973. See Norenberc – Nürnberg, pp. 52–3. 40 See Reinhard Seyboth, ‘Burggraftum Nürnberg’, in Lexikon der Stadt Nürnberg, pp. 174–5.

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the election of 1273, Rudolf enfeoffed them with the burgraviate, which besides custodianship of the castle encompassed further lucrative sovereign rights. Rudolf thus can be regarded as promoter in the formative process not just of the imperial city of Nuremberg but also the rival territorial lordship of the Zollern.41 When we reach the fourteenth century, its two greatest rulers – the Wittelsbach Ludwig IV ‘the Bavarian’ and his Luxemburg competitor Charles IV – both had a decisive influence on the history of Nuremberg. How much importance both emperors placed on the town on the Pegnitz can be seen at a glance in the number of their visits to Nuremberg. In his 33year reign Ludwig the Bavarian visited Nuremberg 74 times. For his part, Charles IV was a guest about 40 times, sometimes for months at a stretch.42 Ludwig’s reign was overshadowed both at its beginning and at its end by conflicts with anti-kings. Ludwig sought support from the towns both in his 1314–1322 conflict with his Habsburg rival Frederick the Fair and in the conflict that broke out with the Avignon pope in 1324 over the papacy’s right to confirm the Roman-German royal election. Nuremberg profited to a high degree: Ludwig issued no less than 34 charters to the town, granting among other things freedom from toll at 72 toll stations and an expansion of the town council’s judicial authority at the expense of the imperial sheriff.43 Of central importance for Ludwig was not just the commune but Konrad Gross, the richest Nuremberg burger of the time, who served several times as Ludwig’s financier and in return received regalian rights.44 In 1339 Gross redeemed the office of imperial sheriff, including toll and minting rights in Nuremberg, which had been pledged to the burgrave. These activities display the progressive weakening of the sheriff’s office, which had also been obligated by oath to the council since 1313. Konrad Gross administered the office until his death and willed it to his sons; the town only gained the mortgage in 1385 and, finally, complete control of the office in 1427.45 In this long drawn-out process, the consules and scabini of the thirteenth century had melded together by c. 1320, into a 26-man council that

41 Cf. Frenken, ‘Das Interregnum als historische Chance’; Karl Bosl, ‘Nürnberg im Interregnum und im ausgehenden 13. Jahrhundert’, in Nürnberg – Geschichte einer europäischen Stadt, [above note 15], ed. Pfeiffer, pp. 29–33. 42 See Schmidt-Fölkersamb, ‘Kaiser, Reichsbewußtsein und Reichssymbole’, p. 113. 43 See Reinhard Seyboth, ‘Ludwig IV. (der Bayer)’, in Stadtlexikon Nürnberg, pp. 653–4; Werner Schultheiß, ‘Politische und kulturelle Entwicklung 1298–1347’, in Nürnberg, ed Pfeiffer, pp. 38–45; Alexander Schubert, Zwischen Zunftkampf und Thronstreit. Nürnberg im Aufstand 1348/49 (Bamberg 2008), pp. 29–36. 44 See Michael Diefenbacher, 650 Jahre Hospital zum Heiligen Geist (Nuremberg 1989), pp. 41–52. 45 See Reinhard Seyboth, ‘Friedrich VI.’, in Stadtlexikon Nürnberg, p. 310; Reinhard Seyboth, ‘Friedrich VI. (I.), Burggraf von Nürnberg, Kurfürst von Brandenburg (1371–1440)’, in Fränkische Lebensbilder. Neue Folge der Lebensläufe aus Franken 16 (Neustadt an der Aisch 1996), pp. 27–48.

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accumulated new duties in the fourteenth century.46 One can see how they expanded their sphere, on one side in the books of statues compiled in 1302,47 on the other in the development of conciliar offices, which served in part as administrators of specified areas, in part like the Rugamt (‘office of reprehension’), which had oversight over market and business activities.48 In Nuremberg a small group of families established themselves as the urban elite, coming either from the ranks of the ministeriales or rising through long-distance trade. As in other upper German towns, soon after 1300 Nuremberg had probably also formed a second ‘great council’. It was, however, only convened when the ‘small council’ wanted to assure the agreement of the entire citizenry on a matter. In the mid-fourteenth century other economically rising sectors of the populace also demanded a voice. These tensions erupted in a revolt in 1348/49, which historians have labelled the ‘artisan revolt’ (Handwerkeraufstand).49 The trigger for the revolt admittedly lay beyond the town walls. The cause of the dispute was the renewed conflict over the throne at the end of the reign of Ludwig the Bavarian, when in 1346 the Luxemburger Charles IV was elected anti-king with support both from the curia and the French king. At first the Wittelsbach party could count above all on the support for Ludwig’s side of many towns in the Reich. As a result, among other things Charles IV had to have himself crowned in Bonn since Aachen, the traditional coronation site, closed its gates against him. Nonetheless, Ludwig’s death on 11 October 1347 and the difficulty the Wittelsbach party had agreeing on a successor soon brought Charles the advantage. In Nuremberg the course of the throne struggle appears to have divided opinion, and the break was not between authorities and community (as the term ‘artisan revolt’ suggests), but in part ran through individual patrician families, such as among the kin of the well-known chronicler Ulman Stromer.50 The revolt council that replaced and in part drove out the old council in 1348/49 was thus no pure guild or artisan regime, even though

46 See Ernst Pitz, Die Entstehung der Ratsherrschaft in Nürnberg im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Munich 1956), esp. pp. 17–58. 47 Edited in Satzungsbücher und Satzungen der Reichsstadt Nürnberg aus dem 14. Jahrhundert, ed. Werner Schultheiß (Nuremberg 1965/78). See Pitz, Entstehung der Ratsherrschaft, pp. 59–126. 48 See Walter Lehnert, ‘Nürnberg – Stadt ohne Zünfte. Die Aufgaben des reichsstädtischen Rugamts’, in Deutsches Handwerk in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Sozialgeschichte – Volkskunde – Literaturgeschichte, ed. Rainer S. Elkar (Göttingen 1983), pp. 71–81, esp. pp. 73–4. 49 On the significance and controversial valuation of the Nuremberg revolt in scholarship since the 1950s, see Meyer, Die Stadt als Thema, pp. 400–2. 50 Schubert, Zwischen Zunftkampf und Thronstreit, pp. 52–9 and 71; Wolfgang Frh. Stromer von Reichenbach, ‘Die Metropole im Aufstand gegen König Karl IV. Nürnberg zwischen Wittelsbach und Luxemburg Juni 1348 – September 1349’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 65 (1978), 55–90, here at pp. 70–4.

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it allowed the introduction of guilds as its most successful social novelty. Despite that, members of the old council-worthy families, further ‘honourable’ families and artisans worked together on the new council. At first Charles IV too was willing to have dealing with this new council, but with the consolidation of his position in the Reich he came out in favour of the council members who had fled in June 1349. In a document of 2 October 1349 he declared all documents of the revolt council to be invalid and authorised the restored old council to punish the rebels.51 At the same time, his privilege guaranteed that there would be no punishment if Nuremberg’s Jewish quarter were destroyed. Soon after, a pogrom in December 1349 led to the murder of over 500 Jews and the exile of the survivors from the town. In local politics, the end of the revolt meant the restoration of the patrician regime. Nonetheless, in 1370 the council decided to expand its ranks to include artisans; although only half of the 16 additional ‘named members’ were to come from the eight most important guilds. Furthermore, the burgermeisters who led council and court as well as the Losunger, who controlled town finances, could only be elected from the patriciate. In the fourteenth century there was apparently an effort to extinguish all memory of the revolt; only in the fifteenth century did the master narrative spread of the rebellious artisans rising against the legitimate regime.52 The overcoming of the revolt strengthened Nuremberg’s relationship with Charles IV even more, so that the town played a leading role in his future policy for the land bridge between Bohemia and the Rhineland that he started to develop in 1353.53 It also shows Nuremberg’s key position for Charles that he celebrated the baptism of his first-born son Wenceslas in Nuremberg, and already before that, on 10 January 1356, he issued there the first 23 provisions of his most famous privilege, the ‘Golden Bull’. It was expanded with eight additional provisions at an imperial assembly in Metz on 25 December 1356, in which too Nuremberg’s position was clearly defined. While Frankfurt was established as the place where the college of electors should select a king and Aachen was confirmed as the coronation site, Nuremberg was designated as the town in which the newly elected king should hold his first assembly.54

51 MGH Constitutiones ix.292–3 no. 592. See Norenberc – Nürnberg, pp. 56–7. 52 For this issue, see Meyer, Die Stadt als Thema, pp. 400–16; eadem, ‘Alte Bücher für neue Krisen. Die Sallust-Rezeption in der spätmittelalterlichen Chronistik’, in Krisengeschichte(n). “Krise” als Leitbegriff und Erzählmuster in kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive, ed. Carla Meyer, Katja Patzel-Mattern and Gerrit J. Schenk (Stuttgart 2013), pp. 213–48. 53 See Helmut Müller, ‘Die Reichspolitik Nürnbergs im Zeitalter der luxemburgischen Herrscher 1346–1437’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 58 (1971), 1–101, esp. pp. 16–27. 54 As in the Golden Bull of Emperor Charles IV of 1356, ed. Wolfgang D. Fritz, MGH Fontes Iuris 11, p. 87. On the copy made for Nuremberg between 1366 and 1378, see Norenberc – Nürnberg, pp. 58–9.

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Charles’ second son Sigismund, who as the last of the Luxemburg dynasty acceded to the throne in 1411 after the ten-year reign of Rupert of the Palatinate, carried his father’s policy further, on 29 September 1423 designating the town as the permanent repository for the imperial insignia.55 The citizens of Nuremberg undertook from then on the duty and honour of escorting these pieces to royal and imperial coronations. With good cause historians have established that both the imperial and the free cities in the era of Charles IV and the first years of his successor Wenceslas reached the apex of their autonomous political significance.56 This is especially true of Nuremberg, which both rulers promoted. According to Helmut Müller, Charles’ goal of bringing his eldest son to the throne led him in the last years of his reign to support the Zollern against Nuremberg interests.57 The competition between town and burgraves for the ruler’s favour and the preservation of their rights was not a regional peculiarity as can be seen in a league of 15 Swabian imperial cities that formed in 1376 at the initiative and under the political leadership of Ulm. Without their town lord’s consent, the league openly took a stand against Charles’s repeated mortgaging and imposition of high taxes, with which he financed his bid for Wencelas’s election.58 Even after Wencelas’s elevation, the league was not obsolete, in face of the increasing conflict between princely and town leagues because of Wencelas’s weakness during these last years of the fourteenth century. The Nurembergers long followed a policy of reconciliation between the different estates, even when they themselves reached the high point of their political power with the town league of 1384. There was no stopping the military escalation. After initial successes the united towns suffered defeat at the hands of the princely coalition in the First Town War of 1387/88.59 Historians agree that the outcome of the war foreshadowed the decreasing political maneuverability of the towns in the fifteenth century.60 With the defeat of the towns their quest to establish themselves as a constitutional power alongside king, electors and lords began to fade. The polarisation

55 Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser II. Ein Beitrag zur Herrschergeschichte von Rudolf I. bis Maximilian I. 1273–1519, ed. Hermann Fillitz (Munich 1978), pp. 39–40. See Julia Schnelbögl, ‘Die Reichskleinodien in Nürnberg 1424–1523’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 51 (1962), 78–159, here pp. 88–95; Gerhard Rechter, ‘Die “ewige Stiftung” König Sigismunds von 1423’, in Nürnberg – Kaiser und Reich [above note 10], pp. 50–6. 56 According to Wensky, ‘Zur wirtschaftlichen und politischen Bedeutung’, pp. 607–8. 57 See Müller, ‘Die Reichspolitik Nürnbergs’, pp. 18–26. 58 For this point, see Schneider, ‘Die Reichstädte’, p. 419. 59 See Müller, ‘Die Reichspolitik Nürnbergs’, pp. 36–49; Alexander Schubert, Der Stadt Nutz oder Notdurft? Die Reichsstadt Nürnberg und der Städtekrieg von 1388/89 (Husum 2003). 60 See Wensky, ‘Zur wirtschaftlichen und politischen Bedeutung’, pp. 607–8.

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of the Reich in the fifteenth century acted in the princes’ favour, and even powerful towns like Nuremberg found themselves more heavily pressured than before to submit to the regional hegemonial systems of their princely neighbours.61 Nuremberg did not lose its connection to the king; the town remained the showplace for many imperial assemblies.62 However, these took place more frequently in the ruler’s absence. The number of visits by rulers to Nuremberg declined dramatically. Sigismund visited the city only six times during his 27 year reign, as did his Habsurg successor in 43 years on the throne. The rulers thus lost their grip on the Reich and this weakness of the crown forced the towns to look out after their own interests more. The first half of the fifteenth century brought ambivalent developments for Nuremberg. On one hand the town succeeded from 1385 in pushing the Zollern successively outside of their walls through financial redemption of their rights and incomes. The negotiations of 1427 were a symbolic high point, when the council bought the ruins of the burgraves’ castle, which the Wittelsbachs had destroyed seven years before, from the princely family (now elevated in rank to become margraves).63 Since the Zollern did not give up all sovereign rights, though, sufficient grounds remained for judicial and military conflicts. The so-called Second Town War began thus in 1449 with a feud of the margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach against Nuremberg, from which it spread quickly to other regions and fanned a new and fundamental conflict between towns and territories.64 Even though it ended without serious consequences for Nuremberg itself, the war overall was a defeat for the town party.

Conclusions and perspective With what for the towns was a gloomy ending to the Second Town War before us, the formation process of the imperial city appears somewhat different than that suggested in the scholarship cited in the introduction, and still not certain and fixed even after 1450.65 Through the political inferiority of towns,

61 See Schneider, ‘Die Reichsstädte’, p. 420. 62 See Reinhard Seyboth, ‘Nürnbergs Rolle auf den Reichsversammlungen und Städtetagen des ausgehenden 15. Jahrhunderts’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 94 (2007), 1–48; idem, ‘Reichsstadt und Reichstag. Nürnberg als Schauplatz von Reichsversammlungen im späten Mittelalter’, Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung 52 (1992), 209–21. 63 See Reinhard Seyboth, ‘Nürnberg, Cadolzburg und Ansbach als spätmittelalterliche Residenzen der fränkischen Hohenzollern’, Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung 49 (1989), 1–25, esp. pp. 1–6; Pitz, ‘Entstehung der Ratsherrschaft’, pp. 140–56. 64 For this point see Gabriel Zeilinger, Lebensformen im Krieg. Eine Alltags- und Erfahrungsgeschichte des süddeutschen Städtekriegs 1449/50 (Stuttgart 2007). 65 See Heinz Gollwitzer, ‘Bemerkungen über Reichsstädte und Reichspolitik auf der Wende vom 15. zum 16. Jahrhundert’, in Civitatum Communitas. Studien zum europäischen

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the situation which they had still hoped to achieve in the 1380s, as corporations with an autonomous role in politics in the Reich, came to nothing.66 A complementary factor was Emperor Frederick III’s 27-year absence from the core lands of the Reich from 1444 onwards, which caused a withering of relations between imperial cities, even one so close to the ruler as Nuremberg, and the crown. Scholars detect a change with Frederick’s reinstitution of an active imperial policy or a general ‘intensification’ of imperial policy in the sense of a strengthening of imperial institutions in the decades from 1470 on as the towns once again found themselves more strongly claimed by both imperial and estate policies. As a corporate answer to these new challenges, assemblies of towns were established parallel to imperial assemblies, now meeting regularly unlike their predecessors (which were only called as part of specific town alliances and by individual towns or groups of towns).67 Admittedly, it would still be a long road before the imperial cities wanted to and were able to take part actively in the imperial assemblies themselves.68 But the ‘rise of the imperial city’ should certainly not only be described in constitutional terms. Conspicuous above all is the wide acceptance of the concept ‘imperial city’ in the public perception and argumentation of contemporaries. What ‘the Reich’ was and which party should rightly represent it was already repeatedly and pointedly an issue in Nuremberg sources in the military conflicts of 1449/50.69 Against the polemics of the noble party, which mocked the town’s burgers as peasants in political songs and other invective as peasants and denied that they had either the mental capability or the social standing for lordship, the pro-town voices countered with the claim that ‘the Reich’ was represented in the policies and troops of the towns.70 Even though the positioning of the pro-town side and their opponents was mired in controversy, nonetheless the contours of both the Reich and the ‘imperial city’ emerge ever more clearly.

66 67 68

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Städtewesen. Festschrift Heinz Stoob, ed. H. Jäger et al. (Cologne 1984), pp. 488–516; Eberhard Isenmann, ‘Reichsstadt und Reich an der Wende vom späten Mittelalter zur frühen Neuzeit’, in Mittel und Wege früher Verfassungspolitik. Kleine Schrift, ed. Josef Engel (Stuttgart 1979), pp. 9–223. See, for example, Heinig, ‘Reichsstädte’, col. 638. Wensky, ‘Zur wirtschaftlichen und politischen Bedeutung’, p. 608. For towns’ self-positioning in the new political climate of the Reich after 1470, see Schneider, ‘Reichsstädte’, pp. 420–1. On Nuremberg’s unusual engagement at the level of the Reich see Reinhard Seyboth, ‘Reichsinstitutionen und Reichsbehörden in Nürnberg im 15/16. Jahrhundert’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 79 (1992), 89–121. On the fundamental conflict over the rising power of the towns in the political order of the Reich see the works of Klaus Graf, among others ‘“Der adel dem purger tregt haß”. Feinbilder und Konflikte zwischen städtischem Bürgertum und landsässigem Adel im späten Mittelalter’, in Adelige und bürgerliche Erinnerungskulturen des Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Werner Rösener (Göttingen 2000), pp. 191–204. For this point see especially Meyer, Die Stadt als Thema, pp. 179–244 with references to further literature.

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The historiographical witnesses of the late fifteenth century advance yet another step. Especially suggestive is the famous townscape of Nuremberg that the humanist Hartmann Schedel inserted into his world chronicle (printed in 1493).71 Nuremberg is depicted not only as a populous, prosperous and well-defended town. The imperial eagle and the royal castle demonstrate simultaneously Nuremberg’s direct relationship to the king as its only town lord without any noble serving as intermediary; the gallows in the foreground places into prominent relief the rights and privileges that the ruler had delegated to the community. This demonstration, impossible to misunderstand, provided the historical anchoring for Schedel’s friend Sigismund Meisterlin in his magisterial history of the city (1485–1488). While he subtly stigmatised the Zollern, so menacing to Nuremberg, as social climbers, the author by contrast tried to make the citizens and their town older and thus to show that Nuremberg had found itself ‘under the eagle’s wings since time immemorial’.72 To support this contention, Meisterlin moved Nuremberg’s origin nearly 900 years earlier to the reign of the ancient emperor Tiberius. For the following centuries, too, he expended a great deal of creative energy to anchor the town’s history firmly in the rolls of kings and emperors by moving important events to the showplace Nuremberg.73 Thus, at this point at the latest, its status as an imperial city was an essential element of Nuremberg’s identity, which it was necessary to defend from the Zollern and other enemies. As Peter Moraw has already pointed out, even into the fifteenth century the Reich was less to be understood as ‘an instance with institution-forming power’ as ‘a potential for arguments’ used in varying ways by different sides depending on the perspective of each. He summed up the ‘imperial city’ in the same way based on the history of the term: it was not – as the modern scholarly term suggests – an unambiguous constitutional ‘fact’.74 Much more, in the many diplomatic and legal conflicts, but also in the attacks, raids and not least in the ‘margrave wars’ that were an existential shock to Nuremberg in the middle of both the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, its position as an imperial city was a sharp and sure weapon.

71 Hartmann Schedel, Weltchronik. Kolorierte Gesamtausgabe von 1493 [Facsimile], ed. Stephan Füssel (Cologne 2001), here at fol. 99v – 100r. 72 Sigmund Meisterlin’s Chronik der Reichsstadt Nürnberg, p. 45. 73 For this issue, see Meyer, Die Stadt als Thema, pp. 153–69. 74 Moraw, ‘Reichsstadt, Reich und Königtum im späten Mittelalter’, pp. 395 and 402.

6

Forms and structures of power Ecclesiastical lordship Andreas Bihrer

The Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis Shortly after 1215, when in England the Magna Carta had been agreed upon as a new legal foundation between king and barons, the relationship between emperor and princes was also redefined juristically in the Reich. In the process, not just a single royal document was prepared as in England; Frederick II issued a total of three charters over the space of 15 years. Since the nineteenth century scholars have named them, respectively, as the Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis (issued by Frederick II in Frankfurt in April 1220), the Statutum in favorem principum (granted by Frederick’s son Henry (VII) at Worms in May 1231 and confirmed by Frederick himself at Cividale year later), and the Mainz imperial land peace (proclaimed by Frederick in August 1235).1 The earliest of this series of three documents, which older scholarship called Frederick II’s ‘princely laws’ but today are mostly regarded as ‘princely privileges,’ was the Confoederatio of 1220, which codified the privileges of the ecclesiastical princes. The fact that in 1220 it appeared necessary for Emperor Frederick II to confirm the rights of this group, and this group only, in the form of a charter of traditional ceremonial type and sealed with a golden bull demonstrates that by then this sub-group of the imperial princes had reached a separately defined status.2

1 On use of the name Confoederatio since the nineteenth century, see Wolfgang Stürner, Handbuch der Deutschen Geschichte, vi Dreizehntes Jahrhundert (1198–1273) (10th ed., Stuttgart 2007), p. 208. For translations of all three documents, see below pp. 352–65. 2 For the diplomatic aspects of the Confoederatio, see Ludwig Weiland, ‘Friedrichs II. Privileg für die geistlichen Fürsten’, in Historische Aufsätze: Dem Andenken an Georg Waitz gewidmet, ed. Konrad Trieber (Hanover 1886), pp. 249–76, as well as the summary in Paul Zinsmaier, ‘Zur Diplomatik der Reichsgesetze Friedrichs II. (1216, 1220, 1231/32, 135)’, ZSSR GA 80 (1963), 85–102, and most recently Walter Koch, ‘Die Edition der Urkunden Kaiser Friedrichs II’, in Das Staunen der Welt. Kaiser Friedrich II. von Hohenstaufen 1194–1250, ed. idem (Göppingen 1996), pp. 40–71, besides the foreword to the new edition with an overview on the diplomatic research of earlier scholars in MGH Dipl. Frederick II, iii.no. 620.

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Only a good ten years later, when the changed political conditions in the Reich called for it, was this privilege for the ecclesiastical imperial princes expanded by statute to include all the princes. Thus, in the early thirteenth century the ecclesiastical princes assumed a special position in the Reich, the development and historical genesis of which will be discussed in this essay. First, however, it is necessary to take a closer look at the Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis. The arenga (that is the preamble) of the document gives some clues to its prehistory.3 The Staufer Frederick II, although he had been elected king as a child in 1196, had to assert himself against the Welf Otto IV, who became sole king in 1208 and ruled as emperor from 1209 onwards.4 And although from 1212 on Frederick was able progressively to increase the number of his adherents, it took until Otto IV’s death in 1218 before his claim to the throne was recognised in the entire Reich. He was keen to secure his newly won position with the election of his son Henry VII as king, succeeding in this goal in April 1220. According to the arenga of the Confoederatio, the ecclesiastical princes had assisted Frederick’s climb to the throne, had supported him in the first years of his reign and had elected his son as king in Frederick’s lifetime. A closer look at the chain of events that ended the Staufen – Welf throne struggle (which had broken out after the death of Emperor Henry VI in 1197) offers a more nuanced picture, however. Not all ecclesiastical princes had supported Frederick from the beginning, nor had they supported him to the same degree. Nonetheless, in the early thirteenth century it was not possible to achieve the royal dignity – whether the process involved military conflict as with Frederick II or through a royal election as with Henry (VII) – without the support of many of the ecclesiastical princes, who were more numerous than the secular imperial princes and constituted the largest group of royal electors in the Reich. For their support, but also for the royal service of the ecclesiastical imperial princes at Frederick II’s court for day-to-day ruling tasks (for example in form of advice and participation in the rule of the Reich) a ‘reward’ was due in 1220 – this was the Confoederatio. The fact that the text of the document was being negotiated for more or less two years demonstrates that the Confoederatio was meant to do more than honour the ecclesiastical princes for their support of the Staufen.5 The second part of the arenga addresses abuses and practices that supposedly had been introduced during the Staufen-Welf throne struggle: specifically

3 MGH Dipl. Frederick II, iii.383–91 no. 620. 4 On the historical background, see Wolfgang Stürner, Friedrich II. 1194–1250 (3rd ed., Darmstadt 2009) and Stürner, Handbuch. 5 For the duration of dealings between Frederick II and the princes, I have followed Stürner, Friedrich II, p. 235, and Stürner, Handbuch, p. 206.

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named were the raising of new tolls, the minting of new coins and feuds between advocates. The arenga alludes not just to noble attacks on the Church in the Reich but also to attacks from the king himself. In his attempts to re-establish the Staufen power base after the throne dispute, Frederick II had repeatedly challenged the position of the ecclesiastical princes. With his aggressive territorial policies, above all his urban policy, the Staufer wanted to expand both imperial holdings and those of his dynasty, which led to confrontation especially with the ecclesiastical princes. For example, Frederick claimed influence in the election of bishops and abbots, laid claim to ecclesiastical property and fiefs and took over church advocacies. Already in the years before 1220 he had to react to the ecclesiastical princes’ opposition to his territorial policies, in some cases reversing decisions or re-granting lost privileges to the citizens of episcopal cities. Besides gifts to ecclesiastical princes, we have evidence for a large number of privileges for individuals, including some concerning new ecclesiastical acquisitions during the Staufen-Welf throne struggle (made to the detriment of the Staufen), which were now legally legitimated. Still more: already in the so-called Golden Bull of Eger from 1213 Frederick II had given up the right to spolia (or ‘spoils’, which describes the personal properties left by a dead prelate) and to the granting-out of regalian rights. He had renounced the claim to royal participation in the election of bishops or abbots, and had allowed direct appeals to the pope. At the imperial assembly of Würzburg in 1216 the Staufer had relinquished the use of regalia in favour of ecclesiastical princes. When Frederick II issued the Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis in 1220, he had thus already formally granted the ecclesiastical imperial princes many concessions. In the Confoederatio the Staufer again renounced the right to spolia, promised not to get mixed up in canon law proceedings and confirmed the right of ecclesiastical princes to dispose freely of church fiefs. Further, in future no more royal buildings would be erected on church property, nor would royal mints or toll stations. Serfs of the ecclesiastical princes would not be allowed into royal towns, there would be no more encroachments by royal advocates and the use of regalia would only be permitted on court days. Excommunication would also lead to imposition of the imperial ban.6 In the Statutum in favorem principum of 1231/32 these privileges were widened to include all territorial lords (domini terrae) and in particular augmented with regulations intended to limit both the royal policy toward towns and the burghers’ movement for greater autonomy. In the Mainz imperial land peace of 1235 Frederick II tried to draw up a vision of an overarching legal-political order in which all judicial power would be based on the king as highest judge and the king should serve as lord of all regalia.

6 See the translation below, pp. 352–5.

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But thanks to the erosion of Staufen power after Frederick’s departure for southern Italy soon afterwards, these claims could never be implemented in the years that followed. Neither the Confoederatio nor the Statutum should be understood as law, but rather as a collective privilege for the entirety of a group of persons. To be sure, the Confoederatio was later confirmed, for example in 1275 by King Rudolf of Habsburg and in 1292 by King Adolf of Nassau, but the document was never promulgated as law.7 Besides, except for the stricter rules regarding excommunication, none of the legal provisions of the Confoederatio were new, a point first established by historians after the Second World War.8 Before that time the presumption was that with the Confoederatio Frederick II had relinquished the most important royal sovereign rights, since the Staufer is supposed to have wanted to concentrate on his lordship in southern Italy and was therefore less interested in the Reich north of the Alps. Therefore, scholars of previous generations understood the privilege as a legal foundation for territorial lordship, which stood in the way of the development of a central-absolutist state in Germany and prepared the path to German particularism.9 More recent historians have convincingly demonstrated that the Confoederatio merely gathered together and repeated what had already appeared as individual privileges and legal provisions. Thus, in the Confoederatio of 1220 royal sovereign rights were not, in fact, abandoned for the first time.

7 See Arno Buschmann, ‘Fürstenprivilegien Friedrichs II.’, in Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, ed. Albrecht Cordes, Heiner Lück and Dieter Werkmüller (2nd ed., Berlin 2004), ii.1.col. 1900. 8 The recognition that no regalia were given out for the first time in the Confoederatio is the product above all of constitutional and legal history research discussions after the Second World War, initiated by Erich Klingelhöfer’s dissertation, completed in 1948. See Erich Klingelhöfer, Ursprünge und Wirkungen der Reichsgesetze Kaiser Friedrichs II. von 1220, 1231/32 und 1235 (Weimar 1951; Diss. Marburg 1948/49), and idem, Die Reichgesetze von 1220, 1231/32 und 1235. Ihr Werden und ihre Wirkung im deutschen Staat Friedrichs II. (Weimar 1955). This has prompted numerous reactions, which are summarised, along with the discussion they initiated, in Elmar Wadle, Verfassung und Recht. Wegmarken ihrer Geschichte (Vienna 2008), p. 16, and Dietmar Willoweit, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte. Vom Frankenreich bis zur Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands. Ein Studienbuch (6th ed., Munich 2009), p. 73. On the Confoederatio, see Odilo Engels, Die Staufer, pp. 135–8; Hubert Houben, Kaiser Friedrich II. (1194–1250). Herrscher, Mensch, Mythos (Stuttgart 2008), p. 62; Olaf Rader, Friedrich II. Der Sizilianer auf dem Kaiserthron. Eine Biographie (4th ed., Munich 2012), pp. 113 and 177; Stürner, Friedrich II., pp. 235–8; Stürner, Handbuch, pp. 204–10; Peter Thorau, König Heinrich (VII.), das Reich und die Territorien. Untersuchungen zur Phase der Minderjährigkeit und der ‘Regentschaften’ Erzbischofs Engelberts I. von Köln und Herzog Ludwigs I. von Bayern (1211) 1220–1228 (Berlin 1998), pp. 82–4; and Friedrich II. Leben und Persönlichkeit in Quellen des Mittelalters, ed. Klaus van Eickels and Tania Brüsch (Düsseldorf 2000), pp. 97–8. 9 For an overview of older scholarship, Goez, ‘Fürstenprivilegien’, col. 1358; Wolf, ‘Confoederatio’, col. 131, and Buschmann, ‘Fürstenprivilegien’, col. 1903.

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Today, few agree with the conclusion of scholars before the Second World War that the Confoederatio, on the basis of its many privileges, led to a significant strengthening of ecclesiastical lordship and weakening of royal lordship.10 For the most part it is stressed that in the Confoederatio Frederick II gave assurances that he would moderate the methods of his territorial policy. In particular, his policy in regard to the towns would now be confined to narrower parameters, assuring as much as possible that the Staufen ruler would not be able to use his royal status to the advantage of his dynastic property policy.11 However, because of the rapidly changing political situation in the Reich after 1220, it is impossible to measure the practical effect of the Confoederatio in the power plays of those who held lordship. Even though no new law was put in place with the Confoederatio, it is still an important piece of evidence for the relationship between king and ecclesiastical princes in the high medieval Reich. For example, the renewed documenting of legal practices in the Confoederatio shows that before 1220 these legal guidelines were not observed in practice, even by the king himself. Even though scholars would like to see the document as the legal sanctioning of developments in the previous decades and thus of customary law, in other words as a ‘reflection of the state of affairs in Germany in this period,’12 it must nevertheless be doubted that the rights put into writing in 1220 were in fact translated into reality in that way. To a much higher degree, the Confoederatio demonstrates what claims the ecclesiastical princes most wanted to establish in their relations with the crown in the early thirteenth century. Much more important from a contemporary perspective than the wrangling between the king and the ecclesiastical princes over specific privileges was the struggle on both sides to place the relationship between the two powers on secure legal foundations. The position of the ecclesiastical princes was anchored in imperial law, and the royal regalia were more clearly set off from the princes’ privileges. The legal foundation was precisely formulated in terms of juridical understanding of the time and fixed in writing. This juristic clarification in the Confoederatio therefore defined the relationship of the two powers within the Reich, so that this relationship could then be regulated on the basis of contemporary law. All the rights that Frederick II had guaranteed to the ecclesiastical princes in the Confoederatio already existed, as has been shown, in the form of individual privileges. The important novelty in 1220 lay in bringing together legal customs into a general privilege for all ecclesiastical princes, no matter which privileges an individual prince had held before. With this, the

10 See Rader, Der Sizilianer, pp. 113 and 177, as well as idem, Friedrich II., p. 27. 11 Cf. Engels, Staufer, p. 135; Stürner, Friedrich II., p. 237; and Stürner, Handbuch, p. 209. 12 Goez, ‘Fürstenprivilegien’, col. 1361.

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Confoederatio proves that the ecclesiastical princes at the beginning of the thirteenth century understood themselves as a group whose members were equals in rank, that they acted in solidarity, that they were able to define their goals jointly and that they knew how to pursue them as a group in relations with the king. Historians have rightly seen this evidence of a communal consciousness among the Reich’s ecclesiastical princes as an important milestone in Germany history: ‘the society of orders also began to form in Germany.’13

Ecclesiastical imperial princes The Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis allows a precise look at the relationship between king and ecclesiastical princes (Geistliche Reichsfürsten) in the Reich in the year 1220.14 Still, we should not forget that the document provides only a snapshot in time and merely presents legal norms. The group called principes ecclesiastici in the Confoederatio had first formed as a distinct group in the years immediately preceding 1200 and had not yet developed clear criteria for membership (although the document itself hints at such criteria). The ecclesiastical imperial princes can first be recognised as a group, although still not clearly demarcated, in the chancery language of the late twelfth century.15 The royal chancery in the East Frankish Kingdom had used the title princeps (from which stems the English term ‘prince’) to describe powerful people in general, including the emperor or king; it is possible to trace a narrowing and sharpening of the term starting only in the late eleventh century. First isolated in the late Salian period, the title principes regni (‘princes of the realm’) began to be employed for a clearly demarcated group under Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190),

13 Stürner, Handbuch, p. 209. 14 For an introduction to the ecclesiastical princes in the high medieval Reich, see Karl Bosl, ‘Geistliche Fürsten’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Josef Höfer and Karl Rahner (2nd ed., Freiburg i. Br. 1957–68), iv.619–22; Peter Moraw, ‘Fürstentümer, Geistliche. I: Mittelalter’, in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Müller, Horst Balz and Gerhard Krause (36 vols., Berlin 1976–2004), xi.711–15; Ernst Schubert, ‘Geistliche Reichsfürsten’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Walter Kasper (3rd ed., Freiburg i. Br. 1993–2001), iv.392–5; and Gerhard Theuerkauf, ‘Fürst’, in Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (2nd ed.), i.cols. 1887–93. See also Michael Borgolte, Die mittelalterliche Kirche (2nd ed., Munich 2004), pp. 45–6; Ernst Schubert, Fürstliche Herrschaft und Territorium im späten Mittelalter (Munich 1996), pp. 6–9, and (with a concentration on the secular princes) Karl-Heinz Spieß, Fürsten und Höfe im Mittelalter (Darmstadt 2008), pp. 9–12. Benjamin Arnold, Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany (2nd ed., Cambridge 2003), pp. 79–87 focusses on the issue of advocacies. 15 On the shifting meaning of the title princeps in the Salian and Staufen imperial chancery, see Heinrich Koller, ‘Die Bedeutung des Titels “princeps” in der Reichskanzlei unter den Saliern und Staufern’, MIÖG 68 (1960), 63–80, esp. pp. 69–75.

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especially in the later years of his reign. It is striking that under Barbarossa it was above all the ecclesiastical princes who were marked with the title princeps and hardly ever the secular princes – the ecclesiastical princes were thus the first to be constituted as a distinct group. This ‘developmental jump start’ can also be seen in the following years, since with the Confoederatio the ecclesiastical imperial princes received a collective privilege some time before the secular princes did. The imperial chancery’s use of the title princeps, in the first place for the ecclesiastical princes, occurred at the time of Barbarossa’s attempt to reorganise the Reich by ‘feudal’ principles. From the late twelfth century on, the direct crown vassals were more and more clearly recognised with the title ‘imperial prince’. They were the group that received fiefs directly from the king; and in contemporary legal understanding they were thus directly answerable to the king/emperor.16 In this relationship, too, it was the ecclesiastical princes who first, as a group, defined themselves not as subjects of the king but as ‘members of the Reich’ (membra imperii) who were entitled to direct participation in the imperial authority, as the Confoederatio attests. For an imperial prince to belong to the group of ecclesiastical princes, membership in the clergy and ordination were essential, although the specific clerical grade was irrelevant. Besides that, an ecclesiastical prince had to occupy a spiritual office and stand at the head of an ecclesiastical institution that could be regarded as directly under the Reich from the perspective of ‘feudal’ law. Thus, all archbishops and bishops whose chief territory lay within the Reich were ecclesiastical princes. In the thirteenth century these were the patriarch of Aquileia, the seven archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, Trier, Salzburg, Hamburg-Bremen, Magdeburg and Besançon, as well as some 40 bishops. The abbots and abbesses of imperial monasteries also belonged to this group, as well as the provosts of canonical houses which were directly dependent upon the emperor. The status of an imperial monastery or canonical house was sometimes unclear even to contemporaries, but the estimated number of somewhat more than 90 ecclesiastical imperial princes in the thirteenth century is probably accurate.17 Despite the

16 An exhaustive definition of the term ‘imperial prince’ can be found in Karl-Friedrich Krieger, Die Lehnshoheit der deutschen Könige im Spätmittelalter (ca. 1200–1437) (Aalen 1979), pp. 156–9, who rightly argues that the use of the term ‘younger imperial princely rank’ in older scholarship is not appropriate for this group, since there was never an ‘older imperial princely rank’. 17 See the summary on ecclesiastical imperial princes in Arnold, Princes, pp. 80–1; Moraw, ‘Fürstentümer’, p. 711; and Schlinker, ‘Fürstenamt’, pp. 40–3. A summary discussion of which ecclesiastical officeholders should be counted among the ecclesiastical imperial princes in the late Middle Ages can be found in Krieger, Lehnshoheit, pp. 159–68; he comes to the conclusion that in the thirteenth century there were altogether 92 ecclesiastical imperial princes (see esp. p. 168).

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territorial changes of the Reich in the late Middle Ages, despite some mediatisation and some new enfeoffments, the number of about 90 ecclesiastical imperial princes remained constant in the late Middle Ages. This number was considerably larger than the number of secular imperial princes, but the secular princes had larger territories; only one-sixth to one-seventh of imperial territory was under the lordship of ecclesiastical princes.

The episcopal office, the bishop’s court and spiritual principalities Among the ecclesiastical imperial princes, the archbishops and bishops formed the most important group. The archbishops’ and bishops’ status and potential for power stemmed to a considerable extent from the structures of the episcopate, on account of which their lifestyle, demands, areas of competence, institutional parameters and practice of lordship all differed in essential ways from the secular princes.18 Spiritual principalities were elective. Because of the bishops’ spiritual status there was no dynasty at bishops’ courts to carry on lordship, personal connections and traditions beyond the ephemeral connections of a particular prince. There were no consorts or heirs apparent, and in consequence there was no designation of a successor or other rules for succession; a regime of underage members of the family or women was impossible, as was the extinction of a ruling dynasty. After the ruler’s death there could be no partition of an inheritance, since as church property the ecclesiastical prince’s goods were in principle indivisible and inalienable. Instead, succession consisted of a series of officeholders who were chosen by election and whose deposition, thanks to their character as officials, was fundamentally simpler. Possible negative consequences were double elections and long vacancies in these sees. In contrast to secular princes, the bishop had duties, rights and competences that were clearly defined for his office, in part in canon law – for

18 The presentation follows Andreas Bihrer, Der Konstanzer Bischofshof im 14. Jahrhundert. Herrschaftliche, soziale und kommunikative Aspekte (Ostfildern 2005), pp. 16–22, and idem, ‘Research on the Ecclesiastical Princes in the Later Middle Ages: State-of-the-Art and Perspectives’, in Princely Rank in Late Medieval Europe: Trodden Paths and Promising Avenues, ed. Thorsten Huthwelker, Jörg Peltzer and Maximilian Wemhöner (Ostfildern 2011), pp. 49–70, at pp. 59–62. On the court and princely administration in the late Middle Ages see the research overview in Andreas Bihrer, ‘Curia non sufficit. Vergangene, aktuelle und zukünftige Wege der Erforschung von Höfen im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 35 (2008), 237–72 and Werner Paravicini, ‘Les cours et les résidences du Moyen Age tardif. Un quart de siècle de recherches allemandes’, in Les tendances actuelles de l’histoire du Moyen Age en France et en Allemagne. Actes des colloques de Sèvres (1997) et Göttingen (1998), ed. Otto-Gerhard Oexle and Jean−Claude Schmitt (Paris 2002), pp. 327–50.

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example leadership of the community, authority to teach or the power to consecrate in his diocese.19 The two central areas of bishops’ activities were administration of the bishopric and rule of the territory that was separate from the diocese (Hochstift).20 In other words, bishops did not just rule a diocese, but also a region of secular lordship. The bishop possessed spiritual authority and spiritual duties, which were for the most part delegated, and in some situations were even put to use to promote secular interests. The rule of a diocese opened up to the ordinary an additional area of judicial competence compared to secular princes, to which were connected substantial sources of income; the bishop’s duties as head of the diocese could also bring in payments. At the same time a more expansive administrative branch developed through diocesan administration and canon law courts than existed at the secular courts. A peculiarity of spiritual courts was the diocesan synods that, acting as a sort of assembly, linked the ruler and court officials at the bishop’s residence with the officeholders of the bishopric; church festivals or consecrations could fulfil similar functions.21 Diocesan statues, also without a counterpart on the secular side, also served to regulate the relationship between the three powers. By contrast, the rule of the secular territory of the bishop (Hochstift) was oriented toward the territorial lordship of secular princes. In territorial disputes the bishops acted as equal-ranked competitors with the laymen; the drawing together of diverse rights of lordship on the way to the territorial sovereignty of the modern era ran for the most part along the same tracks. Even the exercise of lordship differed little; professionalisation and modernisation of administration in the Middle Ages was still for the most part limited to diocesan administration. The inclusion of the cathedral chapter was another marked difference from secular courts. Up into the late Middle Ages these bodies often won the privilege of electing the prince; starting in the thirteenth century rising numbers of election capitularies gave them the possibility of exercising influence on their future ruler. Like the imperial princes in the case of the monarchy, the cathedral canons were electors and ruled during the period

19 On the process of developing the bishopric’s borders, see Bistümer und Bistumsgrenzen vom frühen Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Edeltraud Klueting (Rome 2006), passim; for the period around 1000, see Timothy Reuter, ‘Ein Europa der Bischöfe. Das Zeitalter Burchards von Worms’, in Bischof Burchard von Worms, 1000−1025, ed. Wilfried Hartmann (Mainz 2000), pp. 1−28, at pp. 13–14. 20 Moraw, ‘Fürstentümer’, p. 711. 21 Andreas Bihrer, ‘Die Diözesansynode als Hoftag des geistlichen Fürsten’, in Fürstenhof und Sakralkultur im Spätmittelalter, ed. Werner Rösener and Carola Fey (Göttingen 2008), pp. 235–60. More generally, Paul B. Pixton, The German Episcopacy and the Implementation of the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council (Leiden 1995) has much relevant material, both for this paragraph and those that follow.

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without a lord, which made them important providers of continuity at the episcopal court. Besides this, the chapter had religious duties at the bishop’s cathedral and had the right to consultation and scrutiny in the bishop’s decisions. Thus, the ordinary’s power was limited in comparison to the secular princes. The cathedral canons, as holders of benefices, were the most important sources of continuity at the bishop’s court. The secular administration at a bishop’s court was similar to that at other courts, but there was in addition diocesan administration and spiritual jurisdiction. The spiritual administration possessed a significantly greater range than the secular. Besides, additional offices existed, such as that of an auxiliary bishop and a vicar general, an official who from the thirteenth century on formed the core of the diocesan administration. Many more clerics than laymen had functions at the court, and in fact most offices were reserved exclusively for clerics. Besides a larger administration, the higher degree of institutionalisation, and the related larger number of court functionaries at the bishop’s court, the interconnection of several institutions at the bishop’s courts and the involvement of local groups was stronger than at secular courts. The tendency of episcopal administration to harden into an institution led, among other results, to a stronger professionalisation and specialisation, a higher degree of delegation and written communication and an increased fixing of competences and duties. The result was increasing demarcation and growing autonomy. The official hierarchy at bishops’ courts often held a central significance and at times could be more important than the hierarchy of favour. A bishop’s court was bound more firmly to place, in part due to its high degree of administrative activity and its stronger institutionalisation. And of course the cathedral church, the relics and the tombs of earlier bishops were immovable; besides, the church was the seat of the cathedral chapter. Since the court mostly, or at least at times, resided at the episcopal see, it was connected to a larger town. These towns differed from other residence towns because of the unique topography of the bishop’s residence, which included the cathedral, the seat of spiritual administration and canon law court, as well as a quarter for clergy. The subsidiary residences, however, were built in a style very similar to that of secular princes. An ecclesiastical principality could be attacked from outside just like a secular principality. This occurred in the first instance with noble groups in the environs of an episcopal see who sought to occupy the episcopal office and control important benefices. In the late Middle Ages the secular princes in some regions sought to gain influence over the bishops’ courts by building up a princely church regime, which could lead to the spiritual lord’s loss of immediacy to the Reich. There were also many conflicts between the bishop and the burghers of the cathedral city, which in some cases led to the bishop’s court being driven out from that city or voluntarily moving elsewhere. While during the high Middle Ages the popes tried to exert influence on the Reich’s bishops mostly during conflicts with the emperor, starting

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in the fourteenth century ever-developing papal financial demands and the increasing reliance on papal provision for filling ecclesiastical offices also took a stronger hold in the dioceses of the Reich.

The historical background The Reich’s ecclesiastical princes are a historical peculiarity, with no parallel elsewhere in the European Middle Ages.22 To be sure, other European regions experienced, for example, the exercise of lordship over land by ecclesiastical officeholders. But a pronounced territorial lordship by clergy only occurred in the special case of papal lordship over the Papal State and in the Reich. The reason for this unique development lies in the specific relations between ruler and the high churchmen in the Reich that had already developed before the high Middle Ages, and thus is to be sought in the historical genesis of relations of lordship throughout the Reich.23 The material endowment of the bishoprics was the core of the later spiritual principalities. To this provision belonged above all lordships over land, which were then expanded especially through the ruler’s gifts and favours. Such privileges could concern rights of immunity such as freedom from other judicial authority or the grant of regalia – rights over forests, tolls, mints and markets. As early as Late Antiquity bishops in the Romanised areas assumed rights of secular lordship and also what were originally imperial rights in their episcopal city and diocese. The secular possessions of the diocese were further enlarged by gifts, but also through investing the believers’ offerings in estates whose proceeds could continue to benefit the churches. Bishops’ economic foundations of course varied from diocese to diocese, but the kingdom of the East Franks was not yet unusual for Europe. The foundations for the later special development in the East FrankishGerman Reich that led to a qualitative difference compared to bishops’ lordships in other parts of Europe were first laid in the tenth and eleventh century. It was at that time that German bishops came to provide comparatively greater service to their rulers, and as a result received great privileges and gifts.24 The Carolingians further built up royal (or from the year 800 imperial) supremacy over the Church, developing a foundation laid in Late Antiquity

22 Moraw, ‘Fürstentümer’, p. 711. 23 For the ecclesiastical territories of the late Middle Ages and their administration, see the research overview in Bihrer, ‘Research on Ecclesiastical Princes’ as well as Bihrer, ‘Curia non sufficit’. 24 The most important deciding factors for the rise of the ecclesiastical principalities in the Reich, according to Peter Moraw, fell in the tenth century (see Moraw, ‘Fürstentümer’, p. 711).

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and continued by the Merovingians. In the area under his control the ruler claimed the authority to decide on ecclesiastical and even theological questions, presided over synods and had the final say in the appointment of bishops.25 Under the Ottonian and Salian kings and emperors the ruler’s supremacy over the Church in the East Frankish-German Reich grew still further and was legitimated with an increasing sacralisation of the royal office. Beside the numerous new bishoprics founded in the Ottonian era, royal influence on the occupants of bishops’ thrones was of decisive importance. Additionally, most of the newly appointed bishops came from the royal court chapel. It was mostly chaplains from the king’s environs who were rewarded with a bishop’s staff; in return they were expected to continue to express their loyalty to the ruler.26 This practice was also typical in other European kingdoms in the early Middle Ages, although the level of bishops’ connection to the ruler remained limited compared to the East Frankish-German Reich. Because of the close ties between the king or emperor and bishops, for a long time historians spoke of an ‘imperial episcopate’ and an ‘Ottonian-Salian imperial church system.’27 These terms suggest too great a homogeneity and unity within the group of bishops, and also a systematic and planned imperial activity in regard to the Church in the Reich that cannot be demonstrated from the sources and thus overdraws the relationship between emperor and bishops. Still, it can be established that the bishops rose to a pre-eminent position in the ruling order of the East Frankish-German Reich in the early Middle Ages. The bishops supported the ruler in many ways; royal service (servitium regis) involved service at court, military assistance, playing host to the royal court or undertaking embassies for the ruling house. The bishops were rewarded for this service with rich gifts, which could also involve being put in charge of imperial property or rights of lordship from the king’s hand (forest, toll, mint or market rights as well as immunity privileges). Besides

25 For the Carolingian era, see most recently Steffen Patzold, Episcopus. Wissen über Bischöfe im Frankenreich des späten 8. bis frühen 10. Jahrhunderts (Ostfildern 2008), and Monika Suchan, ‘Kirchenpolitik des Königs oder Königspolitik der Kirche’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 111 (2000), 1–27. 26 On the court chapel of the Carolingians and in the Ottonian-Salian period, see Josef Fleckenstein, Die Hofkapelle der deutschen Könige (2 vols., Stuttgart 1959–66). 27 For the origins, career, and elevation of bishops in the late Ottonian and Salian period, see Herbert Zielinski, Der Reichsepiskopat in spätottonischer und salischer Zeit (1002–1135) (Stuttgart 1984), who also provides an overview of royal service (see ibid., pp. 199–242). See also Rudolf Schieffer, ‘Der ottonische Reichsepiskopat zwischen Königtum und Adel’, FMST 23 (1989), 291–301. For an important critique of the concept of an Ottonian-Salian imperial church system, see Timothy Reuter, ‘The “Imperial Church System” of the Ottonian and Salian Rulers: A Reconsideration’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 33 (1982), 347–74’, and an overview of the scholarly discussion that followed Reuter’s questioning of this concept in Suchan, ‘Kirchenpolitik’, pp. 1–2.

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this, bishops took part in royal decisions or could act as royal deputies beyond the royal court. The archbishop of Mainz functioned as chancellor of the Reich. When a king was elected, not just the secular magnates but the bishops played a decisive role.28 Even in the late Middle Ages when the circle of royal electors was restricted to seven, three of these were ecclesiastical princes (the Rhineland archbishops, Cologne, Mainz and Trier). In short, in the Ottonian-Salian era the bishops formed an integral component of the political order in the East Frankish-German Reich. This order was oriented on royal lordship, but the participation of bishops in the exercise of lordship at the level of the Reich was established beyond doubt, so that we can already speak of the bishops in this period having a share in the Reich. One consequence of this development was a shift in the ideal of the bishop in the tenth and eleventh centuries. On the basis of their royal service and voice in imperial affairs, understanding of the bishops’ office was transformed, so that scholars have spoken of the topos of the ‘Ottonian imperial bishop.’29 More intensive rule of their own diocese also led to the development of new ideals of episcopal lordship in the eleventh century.30 Some scholars even trace the rise of a courtly culture and its ideals to the eleventh century and the circle of bishops active at the imperial court.31 But at the

28 See Patterns of Episcopal Power: Bishops in Tenth and Eleventh Century Western Europe / Strukturen bischöflicher Herrschaftsgewalt im westlichen Europa des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts, ed. Ludger Körntgen and Dominik Waßenhoven (Berlin 2011), passim, or Dominik Waßenhoven, ‘Bischöfe als Königsmacher? Selbstverständnis und Anspruch des Episkopats bei Herrscherwechseln im 10. und frühen 11. Jahrhundert’, in Religion and Politics in the Middle Ages: Germany and England by Comparison / Religion und Politik im Mittelalter. Deutschland und England im Vergleich, ed. Ludger Körntgen and Dominik Waßenhoven (Berlin 2013), pp. 31–50. 29 Recent decades have seen intensive research on contemporary expectations and ideals of the episcopal office in the Reich starting in the tenth century. For an introduction to the period around the year 1000, see Reuter, ‘Ein Europa der Bischöfe’. For the example of the archbishops of Cologne, see Odilo Engels, ‘Der Reichsbischof (10. und 11. Jahrhundert)’, in Der Bischof in seiner Zeit: Bischofstypus und Bischofsideal im Spiegel der Kölner Kirche. Festgabe für Joseph Kardinal Höffner, Erzbischof von Köln, ed. Peter Berglar and Odilo Engels (Cologne 1986), pp. 41−94; Hugo Stehkämper, ‘Der Reichsbischof und Territorialfürst’, in ibid., pp. 95–184; Wilhelm Janssen, ‘Der Bischof, Reichsfürst und Landesherr (14. und 15. Jahrhundert)’, in ibid., pp. 185–244, and Wilhelm Janssen, ‘“Episcopus et dux, animarum pastor et dominus temporalis”. Bemerkungen zur Problematik des geistlichen Fürstentums am Kölner Beispiel’, in Geschichtliche Landeskunde der Rheinlande. Regionale Befunde und raumübergreifende Perspektiven; Georg Droege zum Gedenken, ed. Marlene Nikolay− Panter, Wilhelm Janssen and Wolfgang Herborn (Cologne 1994), pp. 216–35. 30 See, for example, the study of episcopal control of tithes in the eleventh century by John Eldevik, Episcopal Power and Ecclesiastical Reform in the German Empire: Tithes, Lordship and Community 950−1150 (Cambridge 2012). 31 See C. Stephen Jaeger, ‘The courtier bishop in vitae from the tenth to the twelfth century’, Speculum 58 (1982), 291–325; and his The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (1985).

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same time, starting in the tenth century this ideal of the ‘Ottonian imperial bishop’ was challenged by new concepts of the episcopal office that arose in the milieu of the monastic reform movement and the reform papacy. Criticism of noble proprietary lordship over churches, simony and nepotism increased in force, and new expectations made pastoral service more important for bishops. In the early Middle Ages there also grew up beside the bishops increasingly powerful participants in their cathedrals: the cathedral canons. From the Carolingian era on, the life of canons was ever-more strongly regulated and at the same time differentiated from monastic lifestyles. From what was originally a small circle of clerics at the bishop’s church the institution of the cathedral chapter developed in the Reich in the period up to the eleventh century. The formal separation of the cathedral chapter’s finances from the episcopal mensa was probably complete by the beginning of the eleventh century. The cathedral canons’ participation in rule of the bishopric increased step by step, and in many cases the canons occupied central positions in the spiritual and secular administration that became increasingly differentiated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Starting in the thirteenth century, the participation of the cathedral chapter in the exercise of territorial lordship was regulated by election capitulations. The church reform movement of the tenth and eleventh centuries did not only bring with it a changed ideal for bishops and for the canons of episcopal churches; it also placed the relationship between ruler and bishops on a fundamentally new footing. The starting point was the controversy over royal investiture of bishops, which in the reform thought of the eleventh century had moved into a critique of royal appointment of bishops. The Investiture Controversy between pope and emperor was brought to an end with the Concordat of Worms in 1122, which established that in future the ruler would no longer invest holders of ecclesiastical office with ring and staff. But as a compromise it was agreed that the election of bishops and abbots could take place in the ruler’s presence. Also, after a successful election, the ruler would grant the regalia, transmitting the rights of secular lordship connected to the ecclesiastical institution to the new spiritual officeholder with the sceptre. This settlement of the Investiture Controversy thus meant a fundamental new definition of the relationship between emperor and bishops in the Reich, which was now regarded as a relationship between emperor and ecclesiastical princes. The church reform movement’s goal to attain the liberty of the Church (libertas ecclesiae) led to a progressive division between the spiritual and secular spheres and thus between spiritualia (which were awarded within the Church) and temporalia (which the ruler granted). The Staufen in the twelfth century interpreted this award of temporalia as the granting

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of a fief.32 As jurists of the Staufen era saw the matter, the ecclesiastical princes received a ‘sceptre fief’ and it was this vassalage to the king that joined them to the order of the Reich. It was no longer the sacral lordship of the ruler over the imperial church that defined the relationship between king and bishops, but rather feudal law. In this interpretation, Church property was no longer understood as part of the Reich; the Staufen claimed only ‘feudal’ overlordship, and in the Staufen period the idea fell out of use that the king could freely dispose of the property of an imperial church. Until the fourteenth century the difference between spiritual and secular princes was also expressed visually in the ceremony of enfeoffment, because instead of investiture with a sceptre the secular imperial princes were enfeoffed with a banner. In the legal concepts of the time, the ecclesiastical imperial princes were recognised in the second rank of army shield order (Heerschildordnung) and thus placed before the secular princes. This reshaping of the Reich’s constitution in the Staufen era did not just create, with the principes, a more exclusive group within the nobility and a new idea of how to order lordship. The ecclesiastical imperial princes also saw themselves increasingly as a group with common goals and understood themselves as part, indeed as carriers, of the Reich. This self-consciousness as well as group thinking can be seen in 1220 in the Confoederatio, which documents the state of the ecclesiastical princes’ legal claims after the Staufen-Welf throne struggle and in the time of Frederick II. At the same time, however, the necessity of laying out precisely the legal relationship between the ruler and the ecclesiastical princes in the Confoederatio makes it plain that the Staufen were at first not willing to accept the ecclesiastical imperial princes’ claims without opposition.

Ecclesiastical territorial lordship In the middle of the thirteenth century the concentration of the ecclesiastical princes shifted increasingly from the royal court to their own territory, where the churchmen ruled as territorial lords, even though titles like ‘prince bishop’ and ‘prince abbot’ first appeared only in the eighteenth century. The ecclesiastical imperial princes were participants in the process of territorialisation and, like their secular counterparts, sought to concentrate

32 For royal enfeoffment of ecclesiastical imperial princes, see the introductory portrayal in Spieß, Das Lehnswesen in Deutschland im hohen und späten Mittelalter (2nd ed., Stuttgart 2009), pp. 36–7.

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and intensify property and lordship rights.33 First in the twelfth century, and then more strongly in the thirteenth, bishops spoke of their territory as, for example, terra nostra (‘our land’).34 Step by step the administration of the bishops’ secular holdings was developed and professionalised alongside the spiritual administration.35 Freedom from advocates was central for the ecclesiastical imperial princes to exercise lordship in their territories.36 In the high Middle Ages advocacy over ecclesiastical institutions had become a royal or noble instrument of lordship; for the most part church officials no longer appointed advocates and instead advocacy had become hereditary. Since the church reform of the tenth and eleventh centuries, this practice was increasingly under question, but it was only in the course of the thirteenth century that the bishops in the Reich succeeded in taking over rights of advocacy and preventing occupation of these offices, to such an extent that advocacy completely vanished. With this success, the ecclesiastical princes were able to limit the attacks of secular powers on their own secular holdings, their administration and their profits. The influence of regional nobles especially on the occupation of cathedral chapter benefices remained in place. Especially after disputed elections, and when the see was vacant, the bishop’s secular holdings were often mortgaged or alienated, which led numerous bishops’ churches to fall into debt in the late Middle Ages. A new rival for the bishops rose with the communal

33 On the rise of territorial lordship in the late medieval Reich (including examples of ecclesiastical territories), see Der deutsche Territorialstaat im 14. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans Patze (2 vols., Sigmaringen 1970–71), passim, as well as the overview offered in Peter Moraw, Von offener Verfassung zu gestalteter Verdichtung. Das Reich im späten Mittelalter 1250 bis 1490 (Frankfurt 1989), esp. pp. 183–94. See also Ernst Schubert, König und Reich. Studien zur spätmittelalterlichen deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte (Göttingen 1979); Michael Menzel, Die Zeit der Entwürfe 1273–1347 (10th ed., Stuttgart 2012), pp. 53–62; and generally Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte, iii: Vom kirchlichen Hochmittelalter bis zum Vorabend der Reformation, ed. Hubert Jedin (Freiburg i. Br. 1985); Die Bischöfe des Heiligen Römischen Reiches. Ein biographisches Lexikon, ed. Erwin Gatz (3 vols., Berlin 1990–2001); Die Bistümer des Heiligen Römischen Reiches von ihren Anfängen bis zur Säkularisation. Ein historisches Lexikon, ed. Erwin Gatz (Freiburg i. Br. 2003); as well as the research overview in Erwin Gatz, ‘Zum Stand der Diözesangeschichtsschreibung im deutschsprachigen Mitteleuropa’, Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte 97 (2002), 323–37; and Alfred Strnad, ‘Auf den Spuren der Germania Sacra. Neuere Publikationen zu den geistlichen Fürstentümern im Heiligen Römischen Reich’, Innsbrucker Historische Studien 20.21 (1999), 323–98. 34 See Albert Hauck, Die Entstehung der geistlichen Territorien (Leipzig 1909), p. 672; Theuerkauf, ‘Typologie’, p. 50. 35 See Bihrer, Der Konstanzer Bischofshof, pp. 208–72, as well as the still-valuable short overview in Wolfgang Reinhard, ‘Die Verwaltung der Kirche’, in Deutsche Verwaltungsgeschichte. vol. 1: Vom Spätmittelalter bis zum Ende des Reiches, ed. Kurt Jeserich, Hans Pohl and Georg Christoph von Unruh (Stuttgart 1983), pp. 143–76, at pp. 154–6. 36 See Arnold, Princes, p. 83.

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movement in episcopal cities, starting especially in the twelfth century. In this conflict over rule of the city where the bishop had his see the bishops were often the losers or were forced to make major concessions.37 In addition, secular imperial princes tried to expand their lordship over the Church in their own territory. This could also mean that within the parameters of church-run territorial lordship not only the occupation of benefices and the bishops’ thrones were controlled, but in some cases the direct subordination to the Reich, the foundation of territorial bishoprics, or the identity of diocesan borders were contested or moved.38 The widely varying development of ecclesiastical territorial lordships in the late medieval Reich can mostly be explained by the differences in power relationships of these competing holders of lordship in the diocese and the bishops’ secular holdings. Doubtless the varying sizes of the founding endowment of bishop’s churches resulted in different starting points. And to be sure, the development of ecclesiastical territories was dependent on the efficiency of the administration, the bishops’ abilities or simply chance; certainly, the chance to gain property and rights depended above all on the ecclesiastical prince’s neighbours and rivals. By these measurements, the thirteenth century in particular set the course decisively for the development of ecclesiastical territorial lordship in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. The development of a position as territorial lord, for example through the purchase of lordships, castles and towns, could only occur within the bounds imposed by rival powers. The same can be said of attempts to intensify lordship and power within an ecclesiastical territory (for example through increased reliance on writing, institutionalisation, erection of residences or standardisation of law and administration within the lordship).

37 From the extensive literature on this theme, see especially the overview work by Frank G. Hirschmann, Die Anfänge des Städtewesens in Mitteleuropa. Die Bischofssitze des Reiches bis ins 12. Jahrhundert (3 vols., Stuttgart 2011–12), as well as the synthesis in Gerhard Dilcher, ‘Die deutsche Bischofsstadt zwischen Umbruch und Erneuerung. Stadtherrliche Rechtspositionen und bürgerliche Emanzipation im Gefolge des Investiturstreits’, in Vom Umbruch zur Erneuerung? Das 11. und beginnende 12. Jahrhundert. Positionen der Forschung, ed. Nicola Karthaus, Jörg Jarnut and Matthias Wemhoff (Munich 2006), pp. 499−510; the essays assembled in Bischof und Bürger. Herrschaftsbeziehungen in den Kathedralstädten des Hoch– und Spätmittelalters, ed. Uwe Grieme, Nathalie Kruppa and Stefan Pätzold (Göttingen 2004); and Jeffery J. Tyler, Lord of the Sacred City: The ‘Episcopus Exclusus’ in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Leiden 1999) (on the expulsion of bishops). 38 For the fourteenth century, see Johanna Naendrup-Reimann, ‘Territorium und Kirche im 14. Jahrhundert’, in Der deutsche Territorialstaat im 14. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans Patze (2 vols., Sigmaringen 1970–71), i.117–74, and Bihrer, ‘Zwischen Wien und Königsfelden. Die Kirchenpolitik der Habsburger in den Vorderen Landen im 14. Jahrhundert’, in Habsburger Herrschaft vor Ort – weltweit 1300–1600, ed. Simon Teuscher and Thomas Zotz (Ostfildern 2011), pp. 109–36, with further references.

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Still, the ecclesiastical territorial lordships also had many opportunities in the late medieval Reich, and recent scholarship on the ecclesiastical states of the early modern period has showed that these territories by no means became backwards and marginalised in the organisation of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.39 This ‘universal historical peculiarity of the narrower Holy Roman Empire’ only ended with the secularisation of church property in the early nineteenth century.

39 For the extensive scholarship, see the research overview in Kurt Andermann, ‘Die geistlichen Staaten am Ende des Alten Reiches. Versuch einer Bilanz’, HZ 271 (2000), 593–619. See also Bettina Braun and Frank Göttmann, ‘Der geistliche Staat der Frühen Neuzeit. Einblicke in Stand und Tendenzen der Forschung’, in Geistliche Staaten im Nordwesten des Alten Reiches. Forschungen zum Problem frühmoderner Staatlichkeit, ed. Bettina Braun, Frank Göttmann and Michael Ströhmer (Cologne 2003), pp. 59–86; as well as the essays in Geistliche Fürsten und geistliche Staaten in der Spätphase des Alten Reiches, ed. Bettina Braun (Epfendorf 2008); Die geistlichen Staaten am Ende des Alten Reiches. Versuch einer Bilanz, ed. Kurt Andermann (Epfendorf 2004); Braun/Göttmann/Ströhmer, Staaten; and Geistliche Staaten in Oberdeutschland im Rahmen der Reichsverfassung. Kultur – Verfassung – Wirtschaft – Gesellschaft. Ansätze zu einer Neubewertung, ed. Wolfgang Wüst (Epfendorf 2002).

7

Foundations and forms of princely lordship The archbishopric of Mainz Joachim Schneider

Since the creation of the East Frankish-German kingdom in the tenth century the archbishops of Mainz were among its most influential political actors.1 They profited from the central location of their diocesan and metropolitan region and also from the outstanding prestige of the Mainz bishop ever since the time of the missionary bishop Boniface (d. 754). During the tenth century the archbishops gained the right to anoint and crown the new ruler. But even after they lost this office to the archbishops of Cologne in the following century, the Mainz archbishops played the leading role in the preparation and carrying out of the elevation of a new king. As in the thirteenth and fourteenth century royal election rather than coronation came to be the essential legitimating act in constituting a ruler, the political position of the Mainz archbishop in the empire strengthened still further.2 This influential, often decisive role of the ecclesiastical princes of Mainz was founded on material, legal and symbolic resources,3 in which secular

1 The basic works on this subject are Handbuch der Mainzer Kirchengeschichte, ed. Friedhelm Jürgensmeier, vol. i, Part 1: Christliche Antike und Mittelalter (Würzburg 2000); vol. ii: Erzstift und Erzbistum Mainz. Territoriale und kirchliche Strukturen (Würzburg 1997) (Beiträge zur Mainzer Kirchengeschichte, 6,1/1; 6,2); Friedhelm Jürgensmeier, Das Bistum Mainz (Frankfurt 1988); a briefer handbook overview is Friedhelm Jürgensmeier, ‘Erzbistum Mainz’, in Die Bistümer des Heiligen Römischen Reiches von ihren Anfängen bis zur Säkularisation, ed. Erwin Gatz (Freiburg i. Br. 2003), pp. 400–26; on the archdiocese of Mainz in the context of regional history, see Kreuz – Rad – Löwe. Rheinland-Pfalz. Ein Land und seine Geschichte, i Von den Anfängen der Erdgeschichte bis zum Ende des Alten Reiches, ed. Lukas Clemens, Franz J. Felten and Matthias Schnettger, (Mainz 2012). For the era discussed here the most important primary source collections are, Regesta archiepiscoporum Maguntinensium: Von Bonifatius bis Henry II. 742? – 1288, ed. Johann Friedrich Böhmer and Cornelius Will (Innsbruck 1877, repr. Aalen 1966); Regesten der Erzbischöfe von Mainz von 1289–1396 [appeared up to 1374] (3 vols., Leipzig and Darmstadt 1913–58). 2 For an overview, see Jörg Rogge, Die deutschen Könige im Mittelalter. Wahl und Krönung (2nd ed., Darmstadt 2011), pp. 91–3. 3 See the new study by Stefan Burkhardt, Mit Stab und Schwert. Bilder, Träger und Funktionen erzbischöflicher Herrschaft zur Zeit Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossas. Die Erzbistümer Köln

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and spiritual spheres were closely intertwined in the person of the archbishop and the area he ruled. The power of the Mainz archbishopric was also naturally the result of actions by particular archbishops as well as the influential groups in the nobility and clergy that stood behind them. Thus, by contrast to secular principalities there was a continuity problem for the power of ecclesiastical principalities since the lordship was not inherited dynastically but rather reconstituted anew with every election.4 Additionally, the archbishop of Mainz as imperial prince was part of a region on the Rhine close to the king, where, with four electors playing central roles in the empire competing with each other, none could achieve hegemony.5 The following will examine the Mainz archbishops’ resources, both how they allocated them in their principality, and also what influences, both external and internal, underlay the exercise of their lordship in the period from 1100 to 1350.

The archbishop of Mainz as ecclesiastical official and Church administrator6 Since the end of the eighth century the Mainz diocesan bishop was also an archbishop. The Mainz ecclesiastical province, with its many suffragan bishops, was the largest north of the Alps, indeed one of the largest in the whole of Latin Christendom. It reached from the Alps (Chur) almost to the North Sea (Verden) and encompassed on a west-east axis regions from Alsace and the Palatinate west of the Rhine through Swabia, Franconia, Hesse, Thuringia and Lower Saxony as far as Bohemia. Admittedly, over time it lost the Franconian diocese of Bamberg (exempt since the twelfth/ thirteenth century) and the newly created archdiocese of Prague with its suffragan bishopric of Olmütz (1344). But the narrower diocesan region, the area under the direct ecclesiastical influence of the bishop, was also not only extensive but extremely heterogeneous. It included not only the Roman-Christian influenced regions of Germania Romana west of the Rhine but

und Mainz im Vergleich (Ostfildern 2009) for the weaving together of political and spiritual, legal and ceremonial-symbolic expressions of power and staging by the archbishops in the twelfth century. 4 Essential reading is Ernst Schubert, Fürstliche Herrschaft und Territorium im späten Mittelalter (Munich 1996), pp. 6–8. A short overview for Mainz is provided by Karl Heinemeyer, ‘Territorium ohne Dynastie. Der Erzbischof von Mainz als Diözesanbischof und Landesherr’, Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 44 (1994), 1–15. 5 Paul-Joachim Heinig, ‘Die Mainzer Kirche im Spätmittelalter (1305–1484)’, in Handbuch der Mainzer Kirchengeschichte, i.416–55, here pp. 419–20; see also the important book by Peter Moraw, Von offener Verfassung zu gestalteter Verdichtung. Das Reich im späten Mittelalter 1250–1490 (Berlin 1985), pp. 175–6. 6 For the following, see Georg May, ‘Geistliche Ämter und kirchliche Strukturen’, in Handbuch, ii.445–592, here pp. 447–77.

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non-Roman Germania and eastward as far as to Germania Slavica, regions of the empire that in the high Middle Ages were settled by Slavs. The Mainz metropolitan, as was usual with this office, had to supervise the suffragan bishops under his authority. Only after the archbishop’s confirmation could a newly elected suffragan bishop be consecrated. The archbishop convened provincial synods and presided over them. He also played an important role conveying information and instructions between the curia and suffragan bishops. It was an archbishop’s special privilege to wear a pallium, a wool shawl, that he received personally from the pope and that allowed him to exercise a metropolitan’s rights. With the conferral of the pallium the archbishop was obligated to swear loyalty to the pope. A distinctive feature of the Mainz archbishop was his frequently attested position of honour as primas Germaniae, the primate or premier bishop in the German lands.7 This primacy was due above all to the honour given to St. Boniface for his role in the evangelisation of Germany and thus to his successors as archbishop of Mainz. Nonetheless, this primacy remained an unofficial title, attesting more to the views of contemporaries than to a realistic claim to power; the other archbishops, such as those of Trier or Magdeburg, repeatedly contested the position. The title did not result in any real authority over the Church north of the Alps. More important in that regard was the repeated appointment of individual archbishops of Mainz as papal legate or vicar. This honour did not lead to a lasting claim of the metropolitan to jurisdictional ecclesiastical power, that is, to a papal vicariate, in the transalpine empire, since the curia was not willing to renounce its right to control. Thus, no more lasting authority was allowed to develop between Rome and the metropolitan bishop. As bishop in his narrower diocese the Mainz archbishop, as was usual, was the decisively pre-eminent figure. He was the highest liturgist and authentic teacher, the highest judge of canon law and authoritative administrator of the diocese. He presided over diocesan synods, visited the parishes or had them visited and examined officeholders on their adherence to church laws. Later the so-called circuit courts (Sendgerichte) evolved from visitations – a means to assure ecclesiastical-moral discipline of both priest and laity in the parishes, for which the bishop was also responsible, even when for the most part he deputised the task. The archdeaconates were very significant in Mainz’s widely dispersed administrative districts, comprehensively in place by the twelfth century and responsible for ecclesiastical administration and canon law courts. At the heart of these archdeaconates were collegiate churches that were directly dependent on the archbishop. These ecclesiastical institutions also supported the archbishop of Mainz’s secular power.

7 On this point, see May, ‘Geistliche Ämter’, pp. 474–7.

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The archbishops of Mainz in the Staufen Empire8 Already at the beginning of the eleventh century the Mainz archbishop had lost to the archbishop of Cologne his early right to anoint and crown a new ruler in Aachen, because the popes forbade under canon law the Mainz archbishop acting thus beyond the boundaries of his diocese. Nonetheless, the Mainz archbishop retained a major influence on the election that preceded any coronation. At first the election usually took place in Mainz, and then it moved from the middle of the twelfth century to Frankfurt (which was subordinate to Mainz). A series of reports tells that the archbishop of Mainz was the first to cast a vote. The Mainz archbishops’ important role in the empire was also expressed with their appointment to the office of archchancellor in German lands, as well as that of archchaplain, the highest cleric at the royal court. These were honorary offices, above all ceremonial in nature, and in this period were not personally carried out by the officeholder. Finally, the high medieval rulers repeatedly sought out Mainz and its environs for important imperial assemblies and for great court festivities, such as in 1184 when Frederick Barbarossa highlighted his claim to rule in association with the leading powers of the empire and displayed his son Henry as his designated successor.9 The traditionally close relationship between the Roman-German kingship and the imperial church had remained strong after the Investiture Contest. After a decades-long struggle between emperor and curia, the Concordat of Worms in 1122 fundamentally altered the relationship between papacy and imperial office in regard to the awarding of bishoprics in the empire. Archbishop Adalbert I of Mainz (1110–1137), one of Emperor Henry V’s most resolute opponents, sought to the end to interpret the sense of the concordat as a weakening of the emperor.10 Besides the papacy, the ecclesiastical princes – especially the archbishop of Mainz since, along with the archbishop of Cologne he was the most important prince of the Church in the empire – came out of the Investiture Contest with enhanced power. For the ecclesiastical princes retained their extensive rights of secular lordship, which the ruler now granted to them as imperial fief with a special investiture symbol, the sceptre. Royal or imperial appointment to their ecclesiastical offices no longer occurred. The princes of the Church won much

8 Stephanie Haarländer and Friedhelm Jürgensmeier, ‘Die Mainzer Kirche in der Stauferzeit (1122–1249)’, in Handbuch der Mainzer Kirchengeschichte, i.290–346; Jürgensmeier, Das Bistum Mainz, pp. 86–96; Burkhardt, Mit Stab und Schwert. 9 Rogge, Die deutschen Könige im Mittelalter, pp. 91–6; Karl-Heinz Spieß, ‘Mainz, Synoden’, cols. 143–4; cf. Josef Fleckenstein, ‘Friedrich Barbarossa und das Rittertum: Zur Bedeutung der groβen Mainzer Hoftage von 1184 und 1188’, in Festschrift für Henry Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag 1971 (3 vols., Göttingen 1972), ii.1023–41. 10 Haarländer, ‘Die Mainzer Kirche’, p. 300.

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greater independence in relation to the ruler, since the canonical (that is independent) election of the bishop was guaranteed. The king or a deputy was present at the election, but not allowed to influence it.11 As a result, for Adalbert I for instance, a single-minded monastic policy that made older monasteries proprietary cloisters of Mainz answerable exclusively to the archbishop, appropriation of the rights of secular lordship and administrative improvements went hand in hand.12 The Mainz electors’ important role in royal elections and in imperial politics, whether in the political milieu of the emperor or in the camps of their opponents, brought with it opportunities but also dangers for the Mainz church and its archbishops. For example, Adalbert I was at times imprisoned in the years of the Investiture Contest for his opposition to the Salian emperor Henry V. The Staufen rulers, like their predecessors, also engaged in major multi-year conflicts with the papacy. It was dangerous to oppose Frederick Barbarossa politically. Thus, Archbishop Henry (1142–1153) was deposed for insubordination when, at the start of his reign, King Frederick and the pope were working together. His successor Arnold of Selenhofen (1153–1160) was a supporter of Barbarossa. Arnold came from a ministerial family, a rising stratum of unfree servants who in the diocese of Mainz played an increasingly large role and thus penetrated into the ranks of the old elite. But there were power struggles even within the ministerial ranks. When Arnold burdened his diocese with new exactions to finance Barbarossa’s imperial wars in Italy, a revolt broke out in Mainz that eventually led to the archbishop’s violent death. His successor Conrad of Wittelsbach (1161–1165) also came to office thanks to Frederick Barbarossa. But several years later Conrad sided with the emperor’s enemies in the papal schism between Victor IV (who had the emperor’s support) and Alexander III (Barbarossa’s enemy), so in 1165 Frederick deposed him as archbishop and replaced him with an imperial follower, Christian of Buch. This created a schism within the diocese of Mainz, thanks both to imperial politics and the wider schism within the European Church. Conrad had to abandon the diocese, but Christian of Buch hardly appeared there either, spending most of his time in Barbarossa’s entourage in Italy. The European and concurrently also the Mainz schism was finally brought to an end in 1177 when Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III agreed to the Peace of Venice. After Christian of Buch’s death, Conrad of Wittelsbach was able to return to Mainz for a second pontificate (1183–1200). This archbishop also spent a great deal of time in the Hohenstaufen entourage in Italy, but

11 For an overview, see Bernhard Schimmelpfennig, Könige und Fürsten, Kaiser und Papst nach dem Wormser Konkordat (Munich 1996). [Not all historians would agree with this summary, see above pp. 5–6, editors] 12 Heinemeyer, ‘Territorium ohne Dynastie’, pp. 9–13.

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rather than just being a follower he was also active on behalf of his diocese. Conrad concerned himself with recovering rights of secular lordship that Mainz had lost, but also with the internal concerns of clergy and church. The struggle for the German throne between the Staufer Philip of Swabia and the Welf Otto IV that began in 1198 led to another double election in the Mainz archdiocese. In 1200 both Lupold of Scheinfeld and Siegfried II of Eppstein were elected, the former friendly to the Staufen and the other an adherent of the Welfs. It was this dispute within the see of Mainz, as well as the general political situation in the empire, that left the archbishop of Cologne, Adolf von Altena, a Welf supporter, as the principal power-broker at that time. It was he therefore who called upon Pope Innocent III to rule on the legality of the royal election. When Otto IV finally won general recognition in the empire after the death of Philip of Swabia in 1208, the Welf candidate Siegfried II was finally able to establish himself in Mainz.

The power of the archbishops of Mainz as kingmakers in the thirteenth century13 With Siegfried II of Eppstein a new epoch began in the history of the archbishopric of Mainz. With only brief interludes members of this noble family occupied the archiepiscopal throne from 1200 to 1305 – Siegfried II (1200– 1230), Siegfried III (1230–1249), Werner II (1259–1284) and Gerhard II (1288–1305).14 In this period the influence of the archbishop of Mainz on imperial history reached its apex, and the secular princely lordship of Mainz also took a major upswing. This period also saw the development of the college of electors for the German royal elections as an exclusive committee of seven electors with the archbishop of Mainz at its head.15 Since the double election of 1198 the Rhineland royal electors found in the Roman curia an important support for legitimating the free right of election of princes in the empire. The archbishops of Mainz functioned several times in this period as kingmakers. Archbishop Siegfried II of Eppstein, in agreement with the curia, switched sides from the Welfs to the Staufen and took a leading role from 1212 onwards in winning acceptance for Frederick II, whom he crowned twice, first in Mainz in 1212

13 Jürgensmeier, Das Bistum Mainz, pp. 96–118; Paul-Joachim Heinig, ‘Die Mainzer Kirche am Ende des Hochmittelalters (1249–1305), in Handbuch der Mainzer Kirchengeschichte, i. 347–415. 14 On the lineage of the Eppstein archbishops, see Regina Schäfer, Die Herren von Eppstein. Herrschaftsausübung, Verwaltung und Besitz eines Hochadelsgeschlechts im Spätmittelalter (Wiesbaden 2000). 15 On this issue, see Franz-Reiner Erkens, Kurfürsten und Königswahl. Zu neuen Theorien über den Königswahlparagraphen im Sachsenspiegel und die Entstehung des Kurfürstenkollegiums (Hanover 2002); Rogge, Die deutschen Könige im Mittelalter, pp. 36–54.

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and again in Aachen in 1215. From 1241 on, Siegfried III of Eppstein, by contrast, led the decisive anti-Staufen reaction in the empire and in agreement with the other archbishops of the Rhineland set up two successive anti-kings, Henry Raspe of Thuringia (1246/47) and William of Holland (1248–1256) against the Staufen rulers Frederick II and Conrad IV. After the so-called Interregnum (1257–1273), during which there was no functional royal power in the empire, in 1273 Werner II of Eppstein provided impetus for the election of Rudolf, the first king of the Habsburg dynasty to occupy the throne of the Roman-German kingdom. The power to decide on the royal succession in the Reich had come by then to rest solely in the hands of the seven electors, among whom the four Rhineland electors set the tone. After the relatively strong kingship of Rudolf, the royal electors took great care not to let a new heredity kingship take root. In the following time, they repeatedly jumped from family to family when electing, in other words upholding the principle of dynastic change for the royal office; especially in the period around 1300 they also agreed on recognisably weak candidates. The electors calculated that in this way they could steer the successful candidates politically. They also received major material and political concessions from them before the election. Archbishop Gerhard II of Eppstein (1289–1305) played to the fullest this changeable political scene, focussing deliberately on his own advantage. Thus, at first in 1291 he brought about the election of Adolf of Nassau instead of King Rudolf’s son Albert of Habsburg. When Adolf became too independent from the electors, though, they forced him to abdicate, and in 1298 they did in fact elect Albert of Habsburg as the new king. When the Mainz archbishop soon came to oppose the increasingly self-confident new king, he suffered severe military defeats fighting him and finally in 1302 was compelled to sign a peace detrimental to the archdiocese.16 This was, however, only a temporary setback. Already in 1308, after Albert died and a new king had to be chosen, Archbishop Peter of Aspelt was able to return to the role of kingmaker and was an important promoter of Luxemburg kingship in both Bohemia and the Reich.

The effects of dynastic struggles for the Reich and papal claims to power on the archdiocese in the fourteenth century17 Peter of Aspelt (1306–1320) did not become archbishop through election by the cathedral chapter as had long been the practice; he owed his office to the decision of Pope Boniface VIII – the first case of a papal ‘provision’ of a candidate to the archdiocese of Mainz. At the beginning of the fourteenth

16 For Gerhard von Eppstein, see Heinig, Die Mainzer Kirche am Ende des Hochmittelalters, pp. 387–415. 17 Jürgensmeier, Das Bistum Mainz, pp. 121–45; Heinig, Die Mainzer Kirche im Spätmittelalter, pp. 438–90.

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century the popes began to exert an ever-greater influence in the naming of bishops and archbishops. The popes retained, as part of a general centralisation of the Church, the final decision as to whether they should accept the cathedral chapter’s recommendation for office, or indeed they simply claimed the right of appointment for themselves. Soon the Curia demanded in higher quantities the so-called servietia and sedis vacante payments when the archiepiscopal office was vacant. Non-payment was punished with severe ecclesiastical penalties; payment was a burden on the diocese that created opposition from the clergy there. This practice not only put the cathedral chapter’s right to elect (and thus the independence of the archdiocese generally) into question, but also weakened the political influence of the archbishops in imperial policy, as well as their narrower area of political influence. Especially in the case of the Rhineland archbishops, who as electors played a central role in imperial politics, this development of papal provisions offered the pope an opportunity to influence politics in the Reich. The election of the archbishops of Mainz until the Great Western Schism broke out in 1378 was thus simultaneously influenced by curial claims to power and lengthy periods of tense relations between emperor and pope. Election was further complicated by the power struggles between different king-worthy dynasties in the empire (Habsburgs, Luxemburgs, Wittelsbachs) and the regional aristocratic elite who made up the cathedral chapter and for their own part positioned themselves in favour of one or another candidate in imperial politics. For example, in the case of Peter of Aspelt the pope took advantage of a weakness in the cathedral chapter, which was politically divided between different parties and thus produced a double election. Boniface resolved the matter by installing his own third candidate. Nonetheless, Peter of Aspelt later acted completely independently in the royal elections of 1308 and 1314. His tomb monument in Mainz cathedral portrays Peter’s sovereign role, portraying him symbolically as elector of the two Roman kings Henry of Luxemburg and Ludwig of Bavaria as well as John of Luxemburg as king of Bohemia, since he places a crown on the head of each. In several other archiepiscopal elections during the fourteenth century, the candidate of the cathedral chapter stood in opposition to that of the pope. Thus, in 1320 Pope John XXII once again overruled the chapter’s decision. Their candidate, Baldwin of Luxemburg, was already archbishop of Trier and renounced the Mainz throne when he failed to obtain papal confirmation. Archbishop Matthias of Bucheck (1321–1328), who won general recognition, at first followed a pro-Habsburg policy as the pope expected. The background for this division into parties was the royal double election of 1314 and the conflict between the two kings, the Wittelsbach Ludwig of Bavaria and the Habsburg Frederick the Fair. A major conflict soon developed between Ludwig and the Curia, so the pope threw his support to an anti-Wittelsbach candidate as archbishop of Mainz. But Matthias of

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Bucheck was the last Mainz archbishop for a long time whose appointment by papal provision was accepted without opposition by the cathedral chapter. When the cathedral chapter elected Archbishop Baldwin of Trier once again, as it had in 1320, it was a clear signal that they wanted to protect their own rights against the practice of papal provision. To be sure, the cathedral chapter could not have expected that the pope would agree to this election. In fact, at the end of 1328 Pope John XXII provided the Bonn provost Henry of Virneburg as the new archbishop (1328–1353) and demanded that the entire ecclesiastical province of Mainz swear obedience to him. Virneburg was a nephew of the archbishop of Cologne, an absolutely reliable papal supporter who was a resolute opponent of Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian. The overwhelming majority of the cathedral chapter and archbishop-elect Baldwin declared their opposition to Henry of Virneburg and both rejected papal demands for obedience. At first, Henry of Virneburg left the archdiocese. The pope would not let the matter rest, though, opening a judicial process against Baldwin of Trier. John XXII’s successor Benedict XII finally went so far as to excommunicate Baldwin and also placed the archbishopric of Mainz under interdict. This papal pressure led Baldwin in 1336, as in 1321, to renounce his claim to Mainz. What really improved Henry of Virneburg’s chances of establishing himself in the archdiocese was his change of political heart, going over to Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria and swearing loyalty to him in 1337 even though Ludwig was still the pope’s enemy. Soon thereafter the cathedral chapter also recognised Henry after he made major concessions. But now Virneburg fell under papal excommunication just as Baldwin had before him, was suspended from episcopal office, and was summoned to the papal court. At the same time Pope Benedict XII again reserved for himself the right to appoint to the Mainz archiepiscopal throne if this should fall vacant by death or for any other reason. In the following years the alliance between Ludwig the Bavarian and the Luxemburger gradually dissolved. For a new royal project took concrete form, aiming to bring a member of the Luxemburg family to the throne. The old archbishop Baldwin of Trier from the Luxemburg house now turned from Ludwig the Bavarian and signalled to Pope Clement VI that he wanted to work with the papacy in the election of a new German king. Archbishop Henry von Virneburg, on the contrary, opposed this turn of events and remained a loyal adherent of Ludwig the Bavarian. That proved to be costly both to Henry and to the archdiocese. The curia, working in close agreement with the Luxemburg party, stripped the dioceses of Prague and Olmütz from the Mainz ecclesiastical province in this period of weakness. More importantly, after renewed judicial proceedings and summons to the papal court, Henry of Virneburg was deposed from his office as archbishop in 1346. In his place the pope provided the cathedral deacon Gerlach of Nassau (1346–1371). Virneburg continued to hold out in parts

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of the Mainz archdiocese against the man who had supplanted him, and the Mainz schism did not really come to an end until 1353. After Gerlach of Nassau there were two more papal provisions and as a result a new schism in Mainz. After 1371 Emperor Charles IV required an obedient elector in Mainz to elect his son and compelled the pope to make the appropriate choice, while the cathedral chapter’s candidate, Archbishop Adolf of Nassau, opposed Charles’s son as the next king. Nonetheless, this politically difficult phase of the Mainz archdiocese in the fourteenth century ended with the successful election of Wenceslas in 1376, Charles IV’s death in 1378 and the outbreak of the Great Western Schism in that same year which significantly weakened the Curia and its efforts at centralisation. The short-term quasi-hegemonic lordship of Emperor Charles IV was over, and the influence of the Mainz archbishops in imperial politics rose again, as did that of the other Rhineland electors. At the same time, decisions about the leadership of the archbishopric and the division of power within it returned to its own internal elite, the Mainz cathedral chapter and the leading noble groups of the region that provided its members.

The cathedral chapter as a power in the archdiocese – the archdiocese as bastion of the regional nobility18 From the eleventh century, in the diocese of Mainz as elsewhere, the cathedral chapter developed as a corporate body with its own financial assets parallel to the episcopal administration. Regular assemblies of the canons, possession of their own statutes, the high level of writing in administration and its own seal were the identifying marks of this corporation of cathedral canons. A further stage of development, typical for German cathedral canonries, was a departure from the practice of canons living together in community. The high-ranking members of the chapter demanded a more luxurious life with their own private means, demands that were not reconcilable to a common life with the other members of the chapter. As a rule, the cathedral canons had multiple benefices and therefore church offices and therefore could not regularly be members of a community in a single place. By the mid-thirteenth century it was already impossible to enforce a residence obligation on the canons. Archbishop Siegfried III’s attempts to do so ended in failure. In 1252 Pope Innocent IV granted the Mainz chapter the right to add to its numbers, which the archbishop then had to confirm. Normally, one became a cathedral canon by nomination after a waiting period. Before entry into the cathedral chapter the candidate had to have been ordained

18 Michael Hollmann, Das Mainzer Domkapitel im späten Mittelalter (1306–1476) (Mainz 1990); see also the summary in Heinig, Die Mainzer Kirche im Spätmittelalter, pp. 428–30; May, ‘Geistliche Ämter’, pp. 487–97.

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at least as a subdeacon, normally also as a deacon. Whether one sought ordination as a priest was left to the candidate. Mostly, though, they stayed at the rank of subdeacon. This enabled the canons to lead an essentially secular life that suited their aristocratic attitudes. To deal with the shortage of priests among the canons, four additional priestly benefices were created in the cathedral chapter. These priest-canons had a residential obligation. The number of cathedral canons in Mainz was finally fixed at 24 in 1405. The number of minor canons who were waiting to be accepted stood mostly at 16. Since 1326, according to the edict of Archbishop Matthias of Bucheck, only men whose parents and grandparents were of knightly rank, in other words at least part of the lower aristocracy, could become canons. This rule, which spread especially in the south and west of the empire, served to secure clerics’ rights in the cities and in this case was expressly enacted against the citizens of the city of Mainz, declared to be enemies of the Mainz church in 1326.19 A reception of Mainz burgers would have imperilled the rights of the clergy, since burger-canons would have come from the same urban groups that fought against those rights. The result in Mainz as elsewhere was that they were permanently excluded from the cathedral chapter. The Mainz cathedral chapter thus came to be the special preserve of the regional nobility. The most important and exclusive task of the cathedral chapter in this period was the election of a new bishop. The principle of canonical election of a bishop by the clergy and people of the episcopal city had already passed out of practice by the twelfth century. Instead, the archbishop was only elected by the high churchmen and pre-eminent laymen. In the thirteenth century the cathedral canons became the sole electors. The Staufen kings formally recognised the exclusive election right of the chapter, while on the ecclesiastical side the fourth Lateran Council confirmed it in 1215. Despite the rising practice of papal provisions in the fourteenth century, the Mainz cathedral chapter was finally, as described above, able to assert its right to elect. Beyond elections, the cathedral chapter could also win increasing influence on the bishops’ rule. Since the beginning of the thirteenth century, collaboration with the archbishops’ business came to be concentrated exclusively on the cathedral chapter, excluding other clerics from proximity to the archbishops. The cathedral chapter had to approve certain acts for them to take legal force, for example the incorporation of parishes, foundations and monasteries, or the raising of clerical taxes. The cathedral chapter also won a share in the rule of the archiepiscopal territory. Election capitulations played an important role in this development, that

19 Hollmann, Das Mainzer Domkapitel, pp. 13–42 on the ways of gaining admission to the Mainz cathedral chapter, especially pp. 14–15.

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is, promises about how they would rule that the bishops were obligated to make to the cathedral chapter before their election. The precursor of an election capitulation can be seen in Siegfried III’s promise in 1233 that he would not incur any debt without the chapter’s agreement and would not impose any new taxes on the clergy. The first extant election capitulation was put in place by Baldwin of Luxemburg, archbishop of Trier, after his election to the see of Mainz in 1328.20 Baldwin had to promise the cathedral chapter that he would protect them, that he would settle his predecessor’s debts and that he would safeguard the chapter’s traditional rights. These rights included freedom from taxation, judicial appointments for its members, the requirement of noble rank for membership, freeing the canons from their residence obligation, confirmation of the chapter’s claim to certain provostships and the right to confirm synodal decisions. Castles and fortified places under the archbishop’s control should also be open to members of the cathedral chapter – an agreement that aimed toward the cathedral chapter taking a significant part in the archbishop’s secular lordship throughout the archdiocese. Holding of these fortresses was also deputised to the cathedral chapter if the archbishop was incapacitated or the see was vacant. The cathedral canons were noble, predominantly from the comital, lordly and knightly families of the region, which had a major influence on both their politics and that of the archbishops. Noble networks, relationships of clientage and patronage, played an important role for the composition of the chapter and the election of bishops, but also for the positioning of the archdiocese vis à vis neighbouring principalities. Party divisions in imperial politics and regional politics alike were mirrored in party divisions within the cathedral chapter. A study has established that in the period 1306–1476 the 333 known canons of the cathedral chapter came from 193 families. Among them, some families dominated, providing multiple members, while other families appeared only very rarely. At the apex were 11 families, each with between five and nine cathedral canons, who held office with only brief interruptions during the entire period of the study. Rheingau was continuously the heartland that provided the highest proportion of canons, but the Middle Rhine, Rhineland Hesse and the Palatinate west of the Rhine were also important. By contrast, the northern diocesan and archdiocesan region in Thuringia as well as northern Hesse were completely excluded from providing canons in this period. Only later in the fifteenth century did a stronger influx from middle Hesse, the Odenwald, Spessart and Kraichgau begin to appear, but the Rheingau still remained pre-eminent in the metropole of Mainz and its hinterland until the middle of the fourteenth century and beyond.

20 Ibid., pp. 168–9.

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Here, among the noble families of this region, lay the true power centre of the archdiocese.21

Mainz’s rights of secular lordship: territory, offices, castles and vassals As was the case with most other imperial churches, the foundation of the secular lordship of the church of Mainz went back to grants made by the Ottonian and Salian emperors. These rulers had made major concessions to bishops to create a counterweight, reliable both politically and militarily, to the frequently rebellious high nobility of the empire.22 This exceptional position of a relatively well-underpinned secular lordship of German bishoprics survived far beyond the Middle Ages in the often substantial territories of the ecclesiastical princes. Mainz’s secular territory was from the beginning more limited than that of some of the large, far-reaching dioceses that were under the archbishopric’s spiritual authority.23 Its areas of most concentrated power as a rule fell within the diocesan region and only in particular cases reached beyond, for example to the southeast. From this grouping necessarily appeared a wide distribution of these areas of secular lordship, difficult to hold together in terms of lordship and administration and offering many open flanks to numerous neighbours and rivals. In the late Middle Ages the core region reached from the metropolis and its surrounding territory left of the Rhine to the Rheingau opposite, over regions along the Main, the Bergstrasse, Odenwald and Spessart with Aschaffenburg as the centre, and over certain isolated bases in Hesse as far as Erfurt, the old middle point of Thuringia and Eichsfeld north of it. It was impossible for the Mainz archbishops to build a comprehensive or at least unified secular territory out of these disparate pieces, one that could be ruled from a central location with a central administration. Their role in Staufen politics as well as in late medieval royal elections offered the Mainz archbishops opportunities to expand their territory.

21 Ibid., pp. 50–2. 22 Egon Boshof, Königtum und Königsherrschaft im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert (Munich 1997), esp. 88–9, 95–6; for the example of the Mainz Rheingau, see Alois Gerlich, ‘Der Aufbau der Mainzer Herrschaft im Rheingau im Hochmittelalter’, in idem, Territorium, Reich und Kirche. Ausgewählte Beiträge zur mittelrheinischen Landesgeschichte (Wiesbaden 2005), pp. 495–520, esp. pp. 495–503. 23 Fundamental for what follows is Günter Christ, ‘Erzstift und Territorium Mainz’, in Jürgensmeier, Handbuch, ii. 17–444; for a focus on the Middle Ages, see idem, ‘Kräfte und Formen geistlicher Territorialität im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter (am Beispiel des Erzstifts Mainz)’, in Hochmittelalterliche Territorialstrukturen in Deutschland und Italien, ed. Giorgio Chittolini and Dietmar Willoweit (Berlin 1996), pp. 173–201; a brief and problem-oriented account can be found in Heinig, Die Mainzer Kirche im Spätmittelalter, pp. 419–27.

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Thus, in 1232, while still loyal to the Staufer, Siegfried III gained the valuable monastery of Lorsch in the Oldenwald, later acquiring Seligenstadt, Tauberbischofsheim and Mittenberg, further important bases for rising Mainz territory in this area.24 The extinction of the Ludowing dynasty appeared to offer a great chance in 1247, since they ruled as landgraves of Thuringia and Hesse. Archbishops Siegfried III and Werner II both attempted to acquire the Ludowing fiefs. Finally, however, Werner had to leave Thuringia to the Wettins. In 1263, Werner agreed in the treaty of Langsdorf with Sophia, the daughter of the last Ludowing and handed over to her (or to be precise, her son from her marriage with Henry of Brabant) this part of the Ludoving inheritance as a fief of Mainz.25 The conflicts over Mainz’s outlying posts in Hesse and over supremacy there lasted until the fifteenth century. If Werner II of Eppstein had not established himself in this area, he would have expanded Mainz territory further to the east.26 In the Rheingau, a core region of the archdiocese, at times the rights of Mainz were maintained militarily in battles with the Rhineland counts.27 By the end of the thirteenth century the late medieval archdiocesan territory was already clearly demarcated, with its concentrations in Rheingau, Aschaffenburg, Eichsfeld and Erfurt. The city of Mainz, by contrast, slipped further and further from the archbishop’s lordship. And left of the Rhine there was no lasting significant territorial gain, despite a number of efforts. At the election of King Henry VII in 1308, and especially that of Ludwig the Bavarian in 1314, Peter of Aspelt was promised extensive returns for his ‘expenditures’. Ludwig of Bavaria even transferred imperial territory to Peter, as well as areas belonging to the Palatinate dynasty. But over the course of time the archdiocese lost these gains of imperial territory, which mostly lay west of the Rhine, to the Electors Palatine.28 After a build-up of Mainz’s territorial position in the thirteenth century, in the fourteenth and especially the fifteenth century the fragmented and militarily weaker Mainz archdiocese suffered many reverses at the hands of neighbouring princes whose power was on the rise. The episcopal schisms mentioned above played a role in this decline. Overall, though, the fact was that in the late Middle Ages an ecclesiastical principality, held as it was by rulers who thanks to the elective principle came from ever-changing dynasties and influence groups, was to

24 Christ, ‘Erzstift und Territorium Mainz’, pp. 188–92, 122, 145, 163. 25 For this point, see now Ursula Braasch-Schwersmann, 750 Jahre Langsdorfer Verträge 1263/2013. Neugestaltung in der Mitte des Reiches, ed. Ursula Braasch-Schwersmann, Christine Reinle and Ulrich Ritzerfeld (Marburg 2013). 26 Heinig, Die Mainzer Kirche am Ende des Hochmittelalters, pp. 371–4. 27 Barthold C. Witte, Herrschaft und Land im Rheingau (Meisenheim/Glan 1959), pp. 31–5. 28 Alois Gerlich, ‘Die Machtposition des Mainzer Erzstiftes unter Kurfürst Peter von Aspelt (1306–1320)’, in idem, Territorium, Reich und Kirche, pp. 441–75.

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some degree at a structural disadvantage compared to a secular principality with its stable dynasty of rulers.29 As an ecclesiastical prince, or to be more precise as an elector, the Mainz archbishop fundamentally possessed secular regalia, in other words rights that were originally royal, chief among which were secular judicial authority, market and mint rights, toll, escort and the right to maintain fortresses. But this general competence by itself was of little value. Of much more decisive significance was whether the prince succeeded in putting himself in actual possession of these rights, which were then also financially useful. In the case of the Mainz archbishops a good example is the Oberlahnstein toll on the upper middle Rhine, which became by far the most important source of income of this type.30 The Mainz archbishops succeeded in gaining this imperial toll through their involvement in the royal elections of 1292, 1309 and 1314. They secured it through a continuous strengthening of Mainz rights in Oberlahnstein that went back to the tenth century, by driving back rivals and the building of a Mainz castle in c. 1240. The Oberlahnstein toll was one of the archdiocese of Mainz’s most important sources of cash. Mainz creditors were usually exempt from the continuing toll collections. The Mainz archdiocese at the end of the Middle Ages had still not established a central financial administration, and it is impossible to reconstruct precisely the total receipts from rights of secular and spiritual lordship.31 The exceptionally widespread and fragmented nature of the territory made central organisation difficult. Of course, as in every ecclesiastical and secular principality, the ruler had a court. In the case of Mainz, though, this can only be traced in outline until the fourteenth century. The usual four court officials are attested, cupbearer, chamberlain, marshal and steward, which as elsewhere were hereditary and honorary offices held by specific noble families.32 It is rather easier to trace the regional administration of the Mainz territory than the structure of the archiepiscopal court. Already in c. 1120 there is evidence of four so-called vicariates, which functioned as a sort of middle management between the archbishop and the individual areas under

29 Heinig, Die Mainzer Kirche im Spätmittelalter, esp. pp. 421–3; see also the literature cited in note 4. 30 Christ, ‘Erzstift und Territorium’, pp. 288–9. 31 For a somewhat later period, see Anton Ph. Brück, ‘Die Finanzen des Erzstiftes Mainz um das Jahr 1400’, in Kultur und Wirtschaft im rheinischen Raum. Festschrift Christian Eckert (Mainz 1949), pp. 35–53. 32 Walter G. Rödel, ‘Mainz, Erzbischöfe von’, in Höfe und Residenzen im spätmitttelalterlichen Reich. Ein dynastisch-topographisches Handbuch, i Dynastien und Höfe, ed. Werner Paravicini and Jan Hirschbiegel (Ostfildern 2003), pp. 418–21, which extends into the early modern period; for development until the end of the fifteenth century, see Heinig, Die Mainzer Kirche im Spätmittelalter, pp. 433–4.

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the archbishop’s lordship, and that at the time brought together the four main areas the archdiocese ruled.33 The vicariates were centred in Mainz (or later on the other side of the Rhine in Rheingau), in Aschaffenburg, on the Rusteberg in northwestern Thuringia for Hesse, and Eichsfeld or Erfurt. The vicariate on the Rusteberg lost significance in the thirteenth century, once it became a hereditary living of the knightly family of Hanstein without real responsibilities, while for the Mainz territories in Hesse a higher administration was created and the vicariate in Eichsfeld was replaced by a stewardship.34 The vicariate in Erfurt also lost significance since the city of Erfurt was able to obtain or usurp the decisive rights of city lordship before the end of the thirteenth century. In c. 1300 the archdiocese put in its place a temporary administrator as deputy for the area and to safeguard its remaining rights there. By contrast, the vicariates in Rheingau and Aschaffenburg remained of long-term importance. In the later Middle Ages they still played a role in financial administration, but above all in judicial affairs, for public security and increasingly for the leadership of military contingents. The Rheingau vicar was an official serving at the archbishop’s pleasure, who also carried out the highest judicial functions in the Rheingau. The sphere of the Aschaffenburg vicariate by contrast grew narrower and this official gradually became the administrator of a particularly important official district like other civil servants but also with certain special tasks at the Mainz subsidiary residence. Beside and beneath the vicariates in the late Middle Ages, Mainz also developed an administration made up of many small parts, as was typical for the time.35 General administration, the levying of dues, military security and local judicial affairs all were among the charges of these local civil servants from the fourteenth century on, who were based in Mainz’s castles. Beneath this official layer often several chamber districts (Kameralbezirke) were created for the administration of land dues, so their districts did not always agree with that of the offices. In the fourteenth century, as in many other contemporary principalities, to a large extent lordship rights were farmed out to the officials – in return for a set fee to the lord, their grasp on the area was for the most part eliminated until the office was discharged. This was a practice usual at the time, which helped the capitalisation of rights of lordship and helped to satisfy demands by the prince’s helpers. In the regions where the Mainz archbishops pre-eminently exercised land and judicial lordship, it is still not possible to describe the archdiocese’s

33 Christ, ‘Erzstift und Territorium’, pp. 46–50; idem, ‘Kräfte und Formen’, pp. 176–86. 34 Hans Falk, Die Mainzer Behördenorganisation in Hessen und auf dem Eichsfelde bis zum Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts (Marburg 1930). 35 Christ, ‘Kräfte und Formen’, pp. 189–94.

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political influence and the scope of its lordship in detail. The reason is because in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with Mainz as elsewhere, there was no mapped out, exactly defined territorially closed princely lordship in the empire. Lordship was much more essentially a matter of personal relationships. Circles of political influence, consisting of vassals, noble servants and followers formed and reformed. Here yet again the nobles who occupied castles were of special significance. Up to the fourteenth century castles played a key role, both as military bases from which to claim lordship in feuds and to assure and expand one’s influence over a region. As a rule they formed the backbone of lordship, since radiating from them it was possible to exercise lordship over the land and people who were subject to that castle’s authority.36 On this point the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century archbishops of Mainz operated at several levels.37 The absolute acquisition of new castles and direct rule by the prince was a relatively rare occurrence because of the cost. When it did occur, a large number of retainers had to be established in the princely castle, with which service contracts were made. Much more typical was to secure castles in the area of influence by enfeoffing castles to vassals of knightly rank. But even without such a vassalage connection the archbishops could exert influence on castles, since they secured for themselves the right to occupy them in a feud from the owners. In this context the archbishops further made use of the right of distraint, by which they temporarily impounded castles or pawned castles to interested nobles, as a way to lay hands quickly on cash or discharge debts to the person involved. In this way it was possible and usual to retain the right to reclaim the castle. Finally, the replacement of service contracts with castle-holding knights is also attested. Especially interesting for episcopal princes were castles in the hand of so-called Ganerben, communities of occupants mostly of knightly rank, who constituted a disruptive element as late as the fourteenth century and who the princes of the region, acting in coordination with one another, sought to reduce to a state of dependence. The distinctive scattering of the archdiocese’s sphere of control, which stretched significantly far beyond the territory of the diocese, can be explained by rivalry with neighbouring princes like the landgrave of Hesse and the elector palatine in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. Rivalries

36 For an account that includes examples from the southwestern region, see Karl-Heinz Spieß, ‘Burg und Herrschaft im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert’, in Landesgeschichte und Reichsgeschichte. Festschrift für Alois Gerlich zum 70. Geburtstag (Stuttgart 1995), pp. 195–212; Zur Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte der mittelalterlichen Burg: Archäologie und Geschichte, ed. Lucas Clemens and Sigrid Schmitt (Trier 2009). 37 For the following, see Stefan Grathoff, Mainzer Erzbischofsburgen. Erwerb und Funktion von Burgherrschaft am Beispiel der Mainzer Erzbischöfe im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter vom 12. bis Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart 2004).

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within the archdiocese also ran over the castles whenever a schism broke out and two archbishops competed with each other. But one can also trace a concern for denser lordship around existing or new powers such as Aschaffenburg. One cannot emphasise strongly enough the role of the archiepiscopal ministeriales with regard to castles and to many other areas. This lowest grade of the nobility, at first unfree but rising to prominence in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, claimed the higher administrative offices. From them developed an independent leadership and maintenance class that kept the archdiocese alive as a secular principality vis à vis the aspiring neighbouring secular principalities. Under the informal leadership of the relatively few comital and lordly families of the region, who came from the old nobility, the Mainz archdiocese offered the lower nobility many chances to improve themselves – as vassals, in war and feud, as financial backers and administrators of archiepiscopal offices, but also as members of the cathedral chapter and collegiate churches. The struggle to improve one’s own noble power bases and the drive to preserve the archdiocese’s independence as a secular power were under these circumstances not in opposition but in fact were interdependent.38

Centres of Mainz lordship: Mainz and Aschaffenburg Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries the metropolitan city of Mainz lost its function as the pre-eminent centre for lordship and chief residence of the archbishops.39 This was a consequence of the citizens of Mainz forming an urban commune. For a long time city-based ministeriales, originally servants of the archbishop, played a leading role here, too. The setback on the way to an independent commune after the murder of Arnold of Selenhofen in 1160, the punishment for which included the destruction of the city walls and the loss of privileges, was only temporary. Thus, the burgers of Mainz in 1244 gained a major improvement in their liberties after skilled manoeuvring

38 Walter Martini, ‘Der Lehnshof der Mainzer Erzbischöfe im späten Mittelalter’ (Diss. Mainz 1971); the scholarship on the Mainz lower nobility in the late Middle Ages is limited; however, see the brief account by Regina Schäfer, ‘Zwischen den Fürsten – Gruppierungen im Ritteradel im ausgehenden Mittelalter’, in Kommunikationsnetze des Ritteradels im Reich um 1500, ed. Joachim Schneider (Stuttgart 2012), pp. 67–89; on the lower nobility in general, see Joachim Schneider, Spätmittelalterlicher deutscher Niederadel. Ein landschaftlicher Vergleich (Stuttgart 2003). 39 On history of the city in general, see Mainz. Die Geschichte der Stadt, ed. Franz Dumont, Ferdinand Scherf and Friedrich Schütz (Mainz 1998); on the residence problem in particular, see Enno Bünz, ‘Ein Erzbischof und viele Residenzen. Zur Residenzbildung im spätmittelalterlichen Erzstift Mainz’, in Spätmittelalterliche Residenzbildung in geistlichen Territorien Mittel- und Nordostdeutschlands, ed. Klaus Neitmann and Heinz-Dieter Heimann (Berlin 2009), pp. 91–112.

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between the Staufen king Conrad IV and Archbishop Siegfried III of Eppstein. The judicial rights and tax privileges they had already won from Adalbert I (1110–1137) were crucially expanded at this time, the right to free election of a city council was recognised and the Mainz city ministeriales no longer had to provide military service to the archbishop. A mutual friendship and assistance pact was concluded as between political partners of equal rank. The archbishop even granted that in future he would limit his entourage when he entered the city to a number agreeable to the city council. Formally, the archbishop remained lord of the city and appointment to the most important judgeships as well as to the cathedral chapter remained in his gift. The compromise also failed to prevent the Mainz city leaders from making common cause with rebellious ministeriales of the Rheingau in 1273–1276 or the burning of the archbishop’s residence in 1274. The palace was never rebuilt. Werner of Eppstein still regularly resided in Mainz after the destruction. It was only under his successors that Aschaffenburg came to surpass Mainz in some ways and in the course of episcopal travels became the most important subsidiary residence, at times even the chief residence of the bishop. From the first half of the fourteenth century on, Eltville provided a sort of refuge near the repeatedly rebellious metropolis, a safe distance on the other side of the Rhine but in the middle of the Rheingau, the oldest power centre of the archdiocese. Aschaffenburg, long the second most important centre of archdiocesan power, had been under the archbishop of Mainz’s lordship since the tenth century. In the thirteenth century it became the most important subsidiary residence and in the fourteenth a main residence. The archiepiscopal castle was originally on the Stiftsberg, but in the thirteenth century a new lower castle was erected close to the city. Aschaffenburg’s attractiveness and importance were grounded in the presence of a major ecclesiastical community (the collegiate church of Sts. Peter and Alexander), in its favourable position for travel and in the city’s economic strength. All these conditions made Aschaffenburg well-suited for clerical assemblies as well as for supply of the court, the archbishop and his entourage. Let us briefly summarise the history of the high and late medieval archbishopric of Mainz, which we have sketched here principally, but not only, in reference to its role as a secular principality and political actor in the empire and region, and also look beyond this. On the whole, one must come to the paradoxical conclusion that the archbishopric of Mainz was extremely fragile in terms of power politics, and yet stable in structure overall. As ecclesiastical leaders as well as imperial princes the archbishops had been deeply anchored actors in the constitutional system of the Holy Roman Empire since the tenth century. This was not true to the same degree of the leading groups within the archdiocese, the counts, lords and above all the knights in the Rhine-Main region. Moreover, a widely spread-out principality without a dynasty to rule it offered many points open to attack. The decision over the long-term survival of ecclesiastical principalities as

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truly independent power brokers in the empire and thus at the same time as spheres of influence and support for a less powerful nobility came only in the sixteenth century. Smaller bishoprics or archbishoprics until then frequently fell under the decisive influence of neighbouring secular princes. This was not true of the Mainz archdiocese, which, despite a certain weakening in the resources for its power in the fourteenth century, was able to profit and in the end maintain itself against neighbouring secular princes. And thus the noble groups could lastingly preserve their position in a prince bishopric that was so important for the functioning of the empire in a milieu that was territorially fragmented and politically marked by a delicate equilibrium.40 The archbishopric of Mainz thus continued into the modern era to form a vital support for the survival of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation as a decentralised and multi-polar political construct.

40 Alexander Jendorff, Verwandte, Teilhaber und Dienstleute. Herrschaftliche Funktionsträger im Erzstift Mainz 1514 bis 1647 (Marburg 2003).

8

Eichstätt Abbey, diocese, lordship Helmut Flachenecker

A monastic foundation on the border: between the kingdom of the Franks and the duchy of Bavaria ‘St. Boniface gave this place to our bishop Willibald for his seat [regio], which at the time was entirely devastated, so no other building stood there except a church dedicated to Mary that was still erect, smaller than the church that Willibald constructed there later’. In 740/741 the Anglo-Saxon Willibald (d. 787?) founded a monastery there.1 The regio Eihstat, which the nobleman Suidger had given to Boniface and Boniface to Willibald, formed the core of the possessions of the new monastery and bishopric.2 Eichstätt lies on the river Altmühl, which possessed a supra-regional economic function as transit route from the duchy of Bavaria into the kingdom of the Franks. The place was also a centre for an early medieval iron-mining region. Along with the neighbouring Solnhofen it already provided a Christian focal point in the seventh century.3 In Eichstätt itself there was already a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary before it became the seat of a monastery.4 Thus, a certain population density as well as economic structure was already in place.

1 Vita Willibaldi episcopi Eichstetensis, in Quellen zur Geschichte der Diözese Eichstätt, i, Biographien der Gründungszeit, ed. Andreas Bauch (2nd ed., Regensburg 1984), p. 80. The vita was written in c. 780. 2 The best, and as yet only, monograph in English on the episcopal see of Eichstätt and its political role in the High Middle Ages is Benjamin Arnold, Count and Bishop in Medieval Germany: A Study of Regional Power, 1100–1350 (Philadelphia 1991). 3 Peter Marzolff, Solnhofen, Solabasilika (Stuttgart 1987), pp. 152–65. Helmut Flachenecker, ‘Solnhofen’, in Germania Benedictina. Bayern II/3 (St. Ottilien 2014), pp. 2211–27. 4 Archaeological finds provide several supports to the thesis that since the second half of the seventh century Eichstätt had become a centre of iron production. See Karl Heinz Rider and Andreas Tillman, Eichstätt. 10 Jahre Stadtkernarchäologie-Zwischenbilanz einer Chance (Kipfenberg 1992).

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At the end of the Bavarian-Frankish conflicts in 744, parts of the Bavarian Nordgau including the Eichstätt area passed into Frankish control. A new ecclesiastical order followed the political one. Willibald’s time saw the promotion of the monastery with its possessions into a diocese with what were for a long time open borders. We do not have a formal legal act for the establishment of the bishopric, which was placed under the Frankish-dominated archdiocese of Mainz, but the creation is probably to be dated to the early 750s.5 With the support of the Carolingian ruling house the bishopric consolidated itself. The residences of the bishop and his cathedral canons clustered around the cathedral. Besides the obligatory economic buildings there was also a Martin’s Gate and a St. Nicholas Chapel as well as a church of the Holy Cross, in which the relics of St. Walburga were placed after their translatio from Heidenheim. The church buildings with their inhabitants formed their own legal area, the ‘immunity’.6 This term describes a district with special rights, in which the ecclesiastical lord was allowed to collect taxes and dues both for the king and himself. Churches and the buildings associated with them had been specially protected peace districts since the early medieval period.7

Diocesan saints and a sancta civitas Dioceses as a rule possessed special saints under whose protection and shield they placed themselves. The saints provided identity for bishoprics. Religious foundations were always addressed to the patron saints rather than to individual bishops, and the saints were held to provide legitimisation for the bishop’s claims to secular lordship.8 Along with Willibald, Walburga fulfilled that role in the bishopric of Eichstätt, whereas Wunibald and Sola stood in the shadow of these two. Richard and Wunna, the so-called parents of Willibald and his siblings, were joined to them in the veneration of the High and Late Middle Ages.

5 Der hl. Willibald – Klosterbischof oder Bistumsgründer?, ed. Harald Dickerhof, Ernst Reiter and Stefan Weinfurter (Regensburg 1990). See also Hl. Willibald. Künder des Glaubens. Pilger, Mönch, Bischof 787–1987, ed. Brun Appel, Emanuel Braun and Siegfried Hofmann (Eichstätt 1987). 6 Die Regesten der Bischöfe von Eichstätt, ed. Franz Heidingsfelder (Innsbruck/Würzburg/ Erlangen 1915–38), no. 23 (between 768 and 787; the document is lost, but it is mentioned in Conrad I’s immunity document). 7 The foundational study remains Konrad Hofmann, Die engere Immunität in deutschen Bischofsstädten im Mittelalter (Paderborn 1914). See also Dietmar Willoweit, ‘Immunität’, in Handwörterbuch zur Deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, ed. Wolfgang Stammler et al. (5 vols., Berlin 1978), ii.312–30; Clausdieter Schott and Hermann Romer, ‘Immunität’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters (9 vols., Munich and Zürich 1980–95), v.390–2. 8 Bistumspatrone in Deutschland, ed. August Leidl (Munich 1984). For Eichstätt, see the article by Brun Appel, ‘Willibald und Walburga – die Patrone des Bistums Eichstätt’, in ibid., pp. 23–31.

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The civitates, as bishops’ seats were normally called in Latin documents, had since the early Middle Ages contained the cathedral with the saints of the diocese, surrounded by a wreath of canonries and monasteries, so that they gave the impression of sanctae civitates after the model of Jerusalem and Rome. These holy places (loca sanctorum, literally ‘places of saints’) with their towers as symbol of the saints’ function as protectors and watchers surrounded the bishop’s centre with a second spiritual wall – alongside the real fortifications.9 They were all places for liturgy, prayer, pilgrimage, hospitality, as well as education. More than that, they were also administrative centres for the dioceses as well as for the ecclesiastical principalities that gradually came into existence around the year 1200. Building development in Eichstätt was limited compared to that in other episcopal seats in the eleventh century. In the time of Bishop Heribert (1022–1042)10 the Benedictine convent of St. Walburga was established, based on the former Holy Cross church with its dependent house of canonesses.11 A men’s monastery also originated in Heribert’s time, on a mountain slope northwest of the bishop’s seat.12 The Irish Benedictine monastery of Holy Cross (the so-called Schottenkloster) and a Dominican house were only added in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. With their tombs of saints and relics, cathedral closes were attractive landmarks in a large region. One of the consequences was the creation of proto-urban centres, whose inhabitants wanted to take advantage of the military and spiritual protection afforded by cathedrals as well as their economic centrality. It would therefore appear that the bishops at first had a decisive advantage in the process of lordship consolidation; the earliest towns in southern Germany arose around bishops’ seats.13

9 On the whole complex, see Alfred Haverkamp, ‘“Heilige Städte” im hohen Mittelalter’, in Mentalitäten im Mittelalter, ed. František Graus (Sigmaringen 1987), pp. 119–56; on the collegiate churches in episcopal cities, see Irene Crusius, ‘Basilicae muros urbis ambiunt. Zum Kollegiatstift des frühen und hohen Mittelalters in deutschen Bischofsstädten’, in Studien zum weltlichen Kollegiatstift in Deutschland, ed. Irene Crusius (Göttingen 1995), pp. 9–35. 10 On the individual bishops, the best and most accessible source of information is Das Bistum Eichstätt 1. Die Bischofsreihe bis 1535, ed. Alfred Wendehorst (Berlin 2006). See also Helmut Flachenecker, ‘Eichstätt’, in Die Bischöfe des Heiligen Römischen Reiches 1198 bis 1448, ed. Erwin Gatz (Berlin 2001), pp. 154–79. 11 Maria Magdalena Zunker, Geschichte der Benediktinerinnenabtei St. Walburg in Eichstätt von 1035 bis heute (Lindenberg 2009). 12 Die Geschichte der Eichstätter Bischöfe des Anonymus Haserensis. Edition – Übersetzung – Kommentar, ed. Stefan Weinfurter (Regensburg 1987), c. 30, p. 58. 13 For the development of episcopal cities in central Europe, see Helmut Flachenecker, ‘Eine vertane Chance? Die Rolle der bischöflichen Civitates im hochmittelalterlichen Spannungsfeld zwischen Raumerfassung und Herrschaftsbildung’, in Bischof und Bürger. Herrschaftsbeziehungen in den Kathedralstädten des Hoch- und Spätmittelalters, ed. Uwe Grieme, Nathalie Kruppa and Stefan Pätzold (Göttingen 2004), pp. 11–26.

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The extension of the diocesan borders The extension, as well as the demarcation, of the western part of the diocese of Eichstätt took place with the help of the monasteries of Herrieden and Heidenheim. Heidenheim on the Hahnenkamm had been founded in 751/52 by Wunibald with the support of his brother Willibald. After the deaths of Willibald and his sister Walburga, the monastery was placed under the authority of the bishops of Eichstätt. The transformation of a monastery into a house of canons increased the possessions of the Eichstätt church.14 On 23 February 888 King Arnulf gave Herrieden, originally a noble monastery under royal protection, to Bishop Erchanbald (882? – 912), who then converted it into a canonry and transferred the majority of the lands freed by this means to the church of Eichstätt.15 At the same time, with the possessions of the two foundations, the formerly unclear western border of the bishopric was secured. With titles of possession won in this way, Erchanbald had created a group of vassals dependent on him, in other words a small military contingent that he also had to make available to the king. In the winter of 894/95 there were battles in which the bishop supported the king. As a sign of his gratitude, on 25 May 895 King Arnulf gave the bishop of Eichstätt the monastery of Ahhusa (Kirchanhausen) near Beilngries.16 This monastery, founded in the eighth century, thus came under Erchanbald’s control – he then abolished the monastery and used its possessions to build up episcopal power in the district. The building up of the diocese encompassed not just the thickening of a network of parish churches but also the development of a circle of episcopal vassals and the claiming of lordship and judicial rights.

Proximity to the king and the transfer of rights of lordship Eichstätt could only safeguard its independence against the influences of both the Bavarian duke and the noble lineages there with the king’s help. In 908 Bishop Erchanbald, who has already been mentioned several times, obtained from King Ludwig a mint and rights of toll, market and fortification for his episcopal seat.17 In that period, markets attached to churches

14 Heidingsfelder, Regesten, no. 26. 15 MGH Dipl. Arnulf, pp. 27–9 no. 18 [Heidingsfelder, Regesten, no. 68]; Anonymus Haserensis, De Episcopis Eichstetensibus, ed. L.C. Bethmann, MGH SS vii.256; Anonymous Haserensis, ed. Weinfurter [see note 12], c. 8, p. 46. 16 MGH Dipl. Arnulf, pp. 202–3 no. 135. 17 MGH Dipl. Ludwig das Kind, pp. 185–7 no. 58. Helmut Flachenecker, ‘Ein Markt für öffentliche Geschäfte. Das Marktprivileg von 908 im Rahmen der späteren Stadtentwicklung Eichstätts’, in Eichstätter Lese- und Bilderbuch zum Stadtjubiläum 2008, ed. Stadt Eichstätt (Eichstätt 2008), pp. 11–19.

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and monasteries were no rarity. For Erchanbald, the charter was another important step in amassing formerly royal rights under episcopal power. Besides market, mint and toll, the lordship which had been granted over the district had to be secured. To that end, in March 912 Erchanbald had King Conrad I confirm all the possessions of the church of Eichstätt. Specifically, the document itemises Eichstätt’s most important possessions – the monastery of Herrieden, Kirchanhausen, Berching, part of the Weissenburg Forest and the church in Velden (northeast of Nuremberg). The king also confirmed the immunity that Charlemagne had granted to the church of Eichstätt.18 With these in hand, the Eichstätt bishops possessed not only spiritual privileges but also worldly possessions, judicial rights and henceforth also royal regalian property. In return, the Ottonian kings demanded a contribution to service of the Reich. For that reason, it was important for the kings to be able to influence episcopal elections. After Erchanbald’s death, Uodalfrid (912–933) took the helm of the bishopric, a member of the royal chancery who had already served as notary and chancellor under Kings Ludwig the Child and Conrad I.19 Nonetheless, the Eichstätt bishops’ closeness to the king remained limited. Bishop Starchand (933–966) was the first whose presence in Otto I’s circle can be attested.20 Bishop Reginold (966–991) was present in Ravenna in 968 when Magdeburg was elevated to an archbishopric, a project dear to Otto I.21 The Eichstätt bishop also had to provide the emperor with troops; for example in 981 he had to supply forty heavy cavalrymen for Otto II’s expedition to Rome.22 This relatively limited engagement of the bishops of Eichstätt in the affairs of the kingdom is mirrored in the small number of royal privileges that Eichstätt received. Indeed Bishop Reginold received no privileges at all. His successor Megingaud (991–1015) received a confirmation of his possession of Herrieden in November 995, and of forest rights in the regio Eihstat in January 1002.23 With the foundation of the diocese of Bamberg in 1007, Eichstätt had to swallow the loss of possessions on its northern border, in the area of modern Nuremberg. In the Salian period it is possible to see a more intensive proximity of the bishops to their kings. The appointment of Bishop Heribert to the see of St. Willibald was on express royal instructions. The close relationship between Heribert and the Salians can be seen in the reception of Conrad II and his wife

18 19 20 21 22 23

MGH Dipl. Conrad I, pp. 3–5 nos. 3–4 [Heidingsfelder, Regesten, nos. 106, 107]. Heidingsfelder, Regesten, no. 110 (note). Ibid., no. 121. Ibid., nos. 131–3. MGH Constitutiones, i.633 no. 436 [Heidingsfelder, Regesten, no. 137]. MGH Dipl. Otto III, pp. 591 no. 181, 857–8 no. 424. [Heidingsfelder, Regesten, nos. 144, 146]. On Megingaud, see Helmut Flachenecker, ‘A Clergyman out of Control. Portrait of a Bishop around the Year 1000’, Concilium Medii Aevi 17 (2014), 1–9.

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Gisela into the Eichstätt cathedral chapter, most probably as members of its prayer confraternity.24 The king had transferred his loyal follower to Eichstätt to limit the build-up of lordships among the Bavarian nobility. With the general weakening of ducal power in the Ottonian-Salian period, strengthened comital families sought to make a place for themselves in the developing power vacuum and to use this situation to their own benefit. The king hoped, with the Eichstätt bishop, to have a counterweight especially against the Bavarian nobles.25 As part of this policy, Conrad II convened an imperial assembly at Regensburg in 1027, at which all the Bavarian counts appeared and were forced to give back all unlawfully gained royal lands and rights.26 Until far into the eleventh century the Eichstätt bishops had progressively added secular rights to their spiritual rights as head of the diocese. This could only take place with royal support, which in the case of Eichstätt was rather poorly developed. Even so, the bishops could build up their own circle of vassals. They also received an increasing number of royal rights, the so-called regalia, including judicial, forest, fortification, market, mint and toll rights. By these means among others, they built up their centre, the bishop’s seat, into a civitas sancta.

In the service of the Reich Royal visits and royal services Eichstätt’s political significance, together with its cathedral school, was greatest in the eleventh century. Under Gebhard (1042–57), Henry III’s most influential advisor, and Gundekar II (1057–1075), no less than 14 members of Eichstätt’s cathedral chapter became bishops in the Reich. According to the Annals of Niederaltaich, Henry IV spent Palm Sunday 1073 in Eichstätt and Pentecost in Augsburg.27 By contrast, Lampert of Hersfeld states in his Annales that the king was already in Augsburg on Palm Sunday.28 There has been some debate over this royal visit, although most historians are disposed to believe the Niederaltaich annalist. However, even

24 Gundechar, Liber Pontificalis Eichstetensis [Liber Gundekarii], ed. L.C. Bethmann, MGHS SS vii.250; M. Groten, ‘Von der Gebetsverbrüderung zum Königskanonikat an den Domund Stiftskirchen des deutschen Reiches’, HJ 103 (1983), 1–34, at p. 16. 25 Stefan Weinfurter, ‘Sancta Aureatensis Ecclesia: zur Geschichte Eichstätts in ottonisch-salischer Zeit’, ZBLG 49 (1986), 3–40, at pp. 19–20 note 20. [reprinted in Stefan Weinfurter, Eichstätt im Mittelalter, pp. 53–92.] 26 Die Traditionen des Hochstifts Freising, ed. Theodor Bitterauf (2 vols., Munich 1905– 1909), ii. no. 1422. 27 Annales Altahenses Maiores, ed. Wilhelm von Giesebrecht and Edmund von Oefele, MGH SS xx. 824; Heidingsfelder, Regesten, no. 244. 28 Lambert, p. 144 [English translation in The Annals of Lampert of Hersfeld, trans. Ian S. Robinson (Manchester 2015), pp. 168–9].

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assuming that this visit did take place, it is the only one certainly attested until February 1310,29 Royal service was not, however, only carried out when the king visited and required hospitality. The heavy burden of services owed to the king was also extended to include care for his servants. This duty was apparently often passed on to bishops if royal emissaries were unable to support themselves. The Anonymus Haserensis reports such a case from the early eleventh century. A royal servant in the course of the king’s business appeared in Eichstätt and asked for hospitality. Since at first he was able to make his lack of means believable, he was welcomed at the bishop’s table. Later, though, it was discovered that he did possess his own supplies, and Bishop Megingaud had him whipped. But since such treatment violated the immunity of the royal servant, the bishop tried to make peace again with an expensive item of clothing.30 Emperor Henry II demanded a further substantial service (servitium) from the same bishop, apparently shortly before Easter in 1007.31 The emperor was on his way to Regensburg. It is very unlikely that he wanted to receive hospitality in Eichstätt. Instead one gets the impression that provisions should be brought to Regensburg, where a royal emissary was making demands at Altmühl. Megingaud was so horrified at the extent of the demands that at first he categorically refused. But since he could not deny the obligation of service, he gave the emissary valuable cloths made in Eichstätt.32 The example shows that the king could set the amount of servitium as well as the place to which it had to be brought.33

Eichstätt as a ‘royal diocese’: the ‘third way’ in the Investiture Contest At first Bishop Gundekar climbed the usual career ladder. He ascended to the bishop’s throne through an investiture performed by the royal house in 1057.34 Indeed, among those present at his consecration as bishop at the royal palace of Pöhlde on 27 December 1057 was cardinal deacon Hildebrand, the future Pope Gregory VII. The old unity of king and church was therefore

29 Regesta Imperii VI, 4, 2, no. 385. 30 Anonymus Haserensis, c. 20, ed. Weinfurter, p. 51. 31 Peter Schmid, Regensburg. Stadt der Könige und Herzöge im Mittelalter (Kallmünz 1977), p. 493. 32 Anonymus Haserensis, c. 23 (ed. Weinfurter, pp. 53–4). 33 Carlrichard Brühl, Fodrum, gistum, servitium regis. Studien zu den wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen des Königtums im Frankenreich und in den fränkischen Nachfolgestaaten Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien vom 6. bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (2 vols., Cologne 1968), i.209. 34 Liber Gundekarii, p. 246.

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at this time still a reality. Gundekar’s appointment and consecration, which would have caused outrage a few years later, took place without protest. While the so-called Investiture Contest was brewing, Gundekar sought to put in place a specifically Eichstätter self-understanding in regard to the novelties against which he had to contend in the second half of his episcopate. This ‘special way’ is magnificently documented in the Liber Gundecarii, compiled by Gundekar in the years 1071/72. The codex ‘contains for the most part a pontifical, a liturgical book with the instructions and prayers for the bishop’s sacramental acts and blessings, for visitations and synods.’35 This pontifical was introduced with depictions of the suffering and ruling Christ as well as Eichstätt bishop-saints, and also laid out in lists and images the Eichstätt bishops from Willibald to Gundekar.36 The codex also contains lists of the former canons of the Eichstätt cathedral chapter who had been elected bishop of other dioceses, as well as commemorating the dead of the Eichstätt cathedral chapter and finally all the bishops of the Reich who had died while Gundekar was in office. The Gundekarianum thus contains a declaration of the old imperial church and of the traditional unity of regnum and sacerdotium; it therefore represents a clear distancing from the reform papacy and its followers. Above all it displays a consciousness, visible since the tenth century, that Eichstätt occupied a special position due to its first bishop, Willibald, allegedly the scion of a royal house. Furthermore, Gundekar heightened this statement, since he was the first bishop to style himself ‘bishop of the Holy Church of Eichstätt’ (episcopus sanctae Aureatensis ecclesiae). Eichstätt looked to its historic roots in order to weather the storms of the Investiture Contest from a position of contested neutrality. The leaders of the diocese attempted to be at one and the same time traditional and pro-royal, but also modern and pro-reform. In this difficult situation the relative political insignificance of the diocese was a positive benefit. In this lee the bishop and cathedral chapter were wise enough to take shelter from the storm.37

The delayed development of a lordship Conflict with the advocates: counts of Oettingen – counts of Hirschberg The counts of both Hirschberg and Oettingen were lay advocates of the Eichstätt church. The bishop’s territory, the so-called Hochstift, was divided in an Upper Lordship (Oberstift) and a Lower Lordship (Unterstift).

35 Weinfurter, ‘Sancta Aureatensis Ecclesia’, p. 4. 36 Das ‘Pontifikale Gundekarianum’. Kommentarband zur Faksimile-Ausgabe, ed. Andreas Bauch and Ernst Reiter (Wiesbaden 1987). 37 Helmut Flachenecker, ‘Kaiser oder Papst? Drei Antworten fränkischer Bischöfe aus dem 11. Jahrhundert’, in Reichtum des Glaubens. Festgabe für Bischof Friedhelm Hofmann zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Karl Hillenbrand and Wolfgang Weiß (Würzburg 2012), pp. 71–86.

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According to canon law, all clerics were prohibited from shedding blood. Therefore, a bishop had to give the exercise of capital punishment as well as military undertakings into the hands of a layman, who held a formal position as advocate. With this office, which could also stretch to include other administrative activities, the advocates seriously restricted the bishops’ sphere of action. In the late thirteenth century a conflict broke out with the advocates of the Upper Lordship, the counts of Oettingen, to win back alienated possessions of the see. The Oettinger had since c. 1200 held advocacy rights over Herrieden, Ornbau and Lehrberg. Bishop Reimboto lodged a complaint with the archbishop of Mainz in 1286 that the Oettinger were building their own castle on Eichstätt land at Ornbau.38 King Rudolf of Habsburg ruled in March 1289 in favour of the bishop, and the count of Oettingen was ordered to raze the fortification.39 With continued royal support the bishops succeeded in further pushing back the influence of the Oettinger advocates. First in 1309 it was possible to satisfy Count Ludwig of Oettingen’s demands with a settlement.40 The declaration of an imperial ban against Count Conrad gave Bishop Philip (1306–1322) the chance to regain alienated church possessions. In 1310 King Henry VII confirmed the return of Herrieden and Ornbau.41 The count opposed the repossession by force of arms, so the regional advocate of Nuremberg had to hurry to the bishop’s assistance at royal command.42 After Conrad’s death in the summer of 1313 a force from Hohenlohe continued the struggle for Wahrberg Castle on the widow’s behalf. The double royal election of 1314 saw Bishop Philip in Ludwig the Bavarian’s camp, while the Hohenloher joined Frederick (‘the Fair’) of Habsburg. King Ludwig responded to enemy actions with a campaign of vengeance against Herrieden, which he took and destroyed on 2 April 1316. The bishop received the place back from the king.43 This action decisively ended the struggle and the Oettinger and Hohenloher renounced their claims.44 Herrieden, Wahrberg and Ornbau, as well as Altenburg near Eichstätt were now finally once again under the bishop’s lordship, as were the remains of the former Hohenloher fortress of Burgoberbach. In the years 1322/23 King Ludwig IV rejected renewed Oettinger claims to Herrieden in return for a payment from Eichstätt.45 With Henry of Zipplingen (1225–1228) began a series of bishops who strongly opposed the other advocates in the Lower Lordship, the counts

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Heidingsfelder, Regesten, no. 1005 (09/08/1286). Ibid., no. 1055 (17/03/1289). Ibid., no. 1434 (13/08/1309). Ibid., no. 1472 (07/08/1310). Ibid., no. 1497 (24/09/1311). Ibid., no. 1597 (19/05/1316). Ibid., no. 1626 (09/08/1317). Ibid., no. 1714 (1322/1323).

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of Hirschberg (so-called since 1205; before that counts of Grögling or Dollnstein) and their efforts to develop their own territory at the expense of the Eichstätt church. Henry sought closeness to the Staufen kings in order to have a political counterweight against the Hirschberger pressure. The price was that he had to spend a great deal of time away from his diocese. The cause of this dispute lay in the civic development of the city of Eichstätt.46 Since the end of the twelfth century the inhabitants of Eichstätt were designated as burghers. This marked a legal difference between them and the nobility as well as from those in the bishop’s service. Alongside their special juridical position an independent topographical establishment developed, marked by walls, parish church, market and concentrated building. Before 1200 the Eichstätt bishop, as the local landlord, would have laid out by design the town between the fortified cathedral district and the Benedictine nunnery of St. Walburga. This included the transfer of the parish church for the town community from St. John’s by the cathedral to St. Mary’s church in the marketplace. In September 1198 Bishop Hartwig (1196–1223) had King Philip of Swabia confirm the holding of a 14-day fair.47 With this royal privilege the bishop hoped to stimulate trade in his young town, after the earlier fair activity had lost most of its significance. Already in 1222 the market and a stone house found there are attested in a document. Bishop Hartwig was a member of the Hirschberg lineage. Apparently, promotion of Eichstätt fell in with the desired build-up of a Hirschberger territorial lordship, which the Hirschbergers sought to bring about in an alliance of episcopal and advocatorial office at the expense of the Eichstätt lordship. Late in 1234 Bishop Henry III (1232–1237) was with Emperor Frederick II in Foggia, where he appears as a witness in the confirmation of the Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis of 1220.48 This document fixed episcopal rights of lordship for centuries to come. In his difficult position with regard to the diocesan advocate Bishop Henry received support from Emperor Frederick II, because the accompanying privilege issued to protect bishops from the encroachment of their advocates refers specifically to Henry’s difficult situation in Eichstätt. At the same time, in November 1234, the emperor renewed the Eichstätt market privilege of 1198.49 At the end of the thirteenth century there was a shift in the bishop’s favour in the Lower Lordship as it became clear that the advocate, Count Gebhard of Hirschberg, would remain childless. The castles of Hirschberg

46 Helmut Flachenecker, Eine geistliche Stadt. Eichstätt vom 13. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert (Regensburg 1988), pp. 28–32. 47 MGH Dipl. Philip, pp. 48–51 no. 21. 48 Hist. Dipl. Fred. II, iv(1).506–7 (Heidingsfelder, Regesten, no. 684). 49 Hist. Dipl. Fred. II, iv(1).507–13 (Heidingsfelder, Regesten, nos. 685–6).

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and Sulzbürg as well as the advocacies over Eichstätt and Berching once again came into ecclesiastical hands.50 At the same time further rights and fiefs could be won back for Eichstätt from the hands of neighbouring nobles. Thus, for example the bishops won back advocacy rights over the possessions of the Benedictine priory of Solnhofen, which formerly had been under the counts of Truhendingen,51 and the church fief that had been in the hands of the counts of Leuchtenberg.52 The danger of the Hirschberger advocates engaging in a far-reaching takeover of episcopal territory was ended with the extinction of the line in 1305. Shortly before the death of the last count on 4 March 1305 – he was buried in the Augustinian foundation of Rebdorf – Bishop Conrad assured himself once again by charter of the inheritance, which led to another major conflict, in which the town of Eichstätt sided with the count.53 Now for the first time the bishopric’s territorial development could follow in greater style. In return, the Eichstätt church had to assume the Hirschbergers’ debts, which imposed a financial strain on the bishops for a long time. One hindrance remained: the Imperial Regional Court (Kaiserliches Landgericht) of Hirschberg, which was transmitted to the dukes of Bavaria. This court handled cases of high justice.54 For the further development of the lordship it was therefore important that in 1309 King Henry VII secured for Bishop Philip the ius de non evocando for the towns of Eichstätt and Berching. This assured that at least in the two most important urban centres the right of high justice would lie with the bishop.55 Bishop John I (1305– 1306) joined with the Bavarian dukes Rudolf and Ludwig in an arbitration that left contested lands and hunting rights with the Eichstätt church56 but gave imperial regional judicial authority to the Bavarian dukes, on the basis both of their right to the return of a fief when the vassal died and of inheritance.57 Royal backing helped dismiss another legal threat: King Albrecht I ruled on the Nuremberg imperial advocate’s claim to 54 village courts in the Hirschberg region in favour of Eichstätt.58 Bishop Philip’s closeness to the king – he served as confessor, advisor and diplomat for both Albert I and his successor Henry VII – helped in this matter and again documents the significance of episcopal visits to the king’s court.

50 Heidingsfelder, Regesten, nos. 1090 (15/12/1291), 1145 (15/03/1296). For the bishops and the counts of Hirschberg, see also Arnold, Count and Bishop, pp. 111–37. 51 Ibid., no. 931 (06/12/1281). 52 Ibid., nos. 963, 969 (08/01 and 03/08/1283). 53 Ibid., nos. 1288, 1289 (08/09/1304). 54 Arnold, Count and Bishop, pp. 139–40. 55 Die Urkunden des Hochstifts Eichstätt ii (Mon. Boica, vol. 50, Munich 1932), no. 52; Heidingsfelder, Regesten, no. 1432 (18/07/1309). The royal privilege was confirmed by the territorial court in Hirschberg in 1316. See Flachenecker, Eichstätt, pp. 47–8. 56 Heidingsfelder, Regesten, no. 1345 (23/09/1305). 57 Ibid., no. 1346 (19/10/1305). 58 Ibid., no. 1371 (08/09/1306).

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In this process of territorialisation, the cathedral chapter saw itself increasingly as the true guardian of Eichstätt’s rights and possessions. Its members came from the minor aristocratic or knightly families of Franconia and Swabia, but not from the duchy of Bavaria. From 1259 onwards, the chapter elected the bishops, as a result of which candidates for the episcopate always came from the ranks of the canons and had to be ready to make an election capitulation. The canons regarded the preservation of the Hirschberg inheritance and the development of ecclesiastical rule over the land as their decisive area of responsibility. It is thus described in the vitae of the bishops in the Gundekarianum. Each newly elected bishop had to swear that he would not alienate any part of the Hirschberg inheritance.59 The cathedral chapter also safeguarded its interests with the cartulary of its documents that it had created in 1299.60 Conrad of Pfeffenhausen (1297–1305) had the possessions of Eichstätt with their incomes fixed in writing with the oldest rent-roll (urbarium) in c. 1300; with episcopal charters he documented a new point of territorial departure and thus stressed his concurrence with the cathedral chapter. In this conflict with the Hirschbergers, the bishops sought anew to make use of historic tradition to support their interests. From 1243 on, Bishop Frederick had certain privileges of the Eichstätt church committed to writing, which purportedly Boniface had handed over to Willibald. Among these was the right of Eichstätt bishops to take their place beside the Mainz metropolitan at synods and act as chancellors of the church of Mainz. This would amount to a position as deputy if the Mainz archbishop were unable to participate. And finally a liturgical garment would provide the rationale that documented Eichstätt’s special position in the Mainz archdiocese. These special rights, avidly protected since the thirteenth century, did not admittedly actually stem from the early period of the bishopric.61 Internal development of the lordship: castles and castle defence agreements Castles were necessary for the military protection of territories. Beyond that, they also served as visible demonstrations of power as well as administrative centres. As well as the building and acquisition of their own castles, the episcopal territorial rulers had to seek to compel noble castellans to open their houses to the bishops in times of military conflict against a third party. They

59 Ibid., no. 1147 (15/03/1296). 60 Die Ältesten Lehnbücher des Hochstifts Eichstätt. Text und Kommentar, ed. Eckard Lullies (Ansbach 2012). 61 Helmut Flachenecker, ‘Bonifatius und Willibald. Die Bischöfe von Eichstätt als Kanzler der Mainzer Kirche’, in Beiträge zur Eichstätter Geschichte. Festschrift Brun Appel zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Helmut Flachenecker and Klaus Walter Littger (Eichstätt 1999), pp. 150–64.

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did this by means of castle defence agreements. It is impossible to discuss all the castles and agreements here, so a few examples must suffice. At the end of the thirteenth century Bishop Reimboto gained some significant acquisitions for the Eichstätt church with Wernfels,62 Spalt (which had formerly belonged to Regensburg)63 and the comital castle of Abenberg.64 He had the castles of Arberg and Mörnsheim developed and secured property in their vicinity in order to provision them better – just as in the cases of Nassenfels and Wernfels.65 Bishop Conrad II (1297–1305) purchased the castles of Kipfenberg,66 Gundelsheim67 and especially Sandsee with their surrounding villages and patronage rights.68 As a result, the regions around Spalt (1294), Abenberg (1296) and Pleinfeld (1301) that Reimboto had gained could be significantly expanded to the south, and at the same time better protected. He also fortified towns and castles already in his possession, such as the town (oppidum) of Abenberg and the castles (castra) of Nassenfels and Mörnsheim. In what came to be the Upper Lordship, Conrad strengthened the township (villa) of Arberg, an important administrative centre, with a wall, in order to stave off Oettingen influence. He continued the policies of his predecessors, buying up lordships or churches around the main episcopal castles, such as at Wernfels or Kipfenberg.69 With the Hirschberg inheritance Eichstätt received the castle of Hirschberg with its dependent possessions, in this case especially including rights of advocacy and village courts. The cathedral chapter sold a smaller castle (Kraftsbuch) to a regional noble, who, however, then had to receive the castle as a fief from Bishop Marquard. By this means, the castle stood open to the bishops and the nobles had to keep it in good repair.70 In 1332 the castles of Reichenau near Herrieden and Erlingshofen were also added.71 The town of Herrieden was provided with walls in 1340/44.72 For the castles of Nassenfels and

62 Heidingsfelder, Regesten, no. 983 (06/09/1284). For what follows, see also Arnold, Count and Bishop, pp. 117–18. 63 Heidingsfelder, Regesten, nos. 1107 (17/02/1294, in exchange for Fünfstetten),1129 (28/06/1295, the count sells his rights including the castle of Sandskron),1166 (25/03/1297, episcopal confirmation of purchase). 64 Ibid., no. 1144 (07/03/1296, purchase from the Burggrave). 65 Ibid., nos. 941 (13/02/1282), 972 (13/11/1283), 1031 (13/11/1287), 1181 (26 or 27/08/1297). 66 Ibid., no. 1232 (11/0901301). 67 Ibid., no. 1242 (c. 1301, only in Eichstätt possession until 1306). 68 Ibid., no. 1251 (20/08/1302). 69 Ibid., nos. 1225 (22/01/1301),1236 (14/09/1301). 70 Ibid., no. 1690 (07/07/1322). 71 Die Urkunden des Hochstifts Eichstätt ii, no. 323 (03/02/1332). 72 Margarete Adamski, Herrieden. Kloster, Stift und Stadt im Mittelalter bis zur Eroberung durch Ludwig den Bayern im Jahre 1316 (Neustadt/Aisch 1954), p. 88.

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Mörnsheim, Bishop Henry V (1329–1344) was able to exploit a right of repurchase.73 He also purchased Erlingshofen and Brunneck in the Anlautertal.74 Bishop Albert I (1344–1353) concluded several castle defence agreements with the regional nobility.75 This meant that their castles had to be opened to episcopal troops. A half century later, Bishops Raban (1365– 1383) and Frederick IV (1383–1415) strengthened the defences of many ‘castles and fortified towns belonging to the Church’ (castra et oppida ecclesiae). At the same time, Bishop Frederick demonstrated the episcopal presence in the towns by renovating the small residences of the lordship (castrum, domus) in Herrieden, Spalt and Berching.76 The bishops’ support for Ludwig IV opened up an opportunity to gain a land bridge between the Upper and Lower Lordships, thanks to the short-term pledge of the imperial town of Weissenburg (1315–1325), but that dream could not be brought to fruition.77 Internal development of the lordship: towns and markets78 The more fragmented a diocesan territory was, the greater its number of towns and markets. This structural connection can be seen in Franconia and Swabia as well as the Rhineland. But the establishment of towns in dioceses differed over time. The bishops’ seats are the oldest towns, and then several more central places follow in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In the fourteenth century, many smaller towns were established on the frontiers of territories. Small towns were ‘to an especially high degree instruments of lordship policy’.79 In the fifteenth century, a majority of market and town foundations took place in the interior of episcopal lordships.80

73 74 75 76

77

78

79

80

Die Urkunden des Hochstifts Eichstätt ii, nos. 322 (10/01/1332), 357 (26/01/1336). Ibid., no. 326 (10/05/1332). Ibid., nos. 383a (03/03/1339), 471 (08/10/1345), 507 (20/11/1346). Gesta episcoporum Eichstetensium continuata, ed. Ludwig Bethmann and Georg Waitz (MGH SS xxv. 601, 603. The Eichstätt episcopal palace was first restored under Bishops John II of Heideck (1415–29) and Albert II of Hohenrechberg (1429–46) (ibid., pp. 607–8). Ute Jäger, ‘Weißenburg unter Ludwig dem Bayern (1314–1347)’, Villa nostra. Weißenburger Blätter für Geschichte, Heimatkunde und Kultur von Stadt und Weißenburger Land 2 (1997), 15–21. Helmut Flachenecker, ‘Die Städte im Hochstift Eichstätt während des Spätmittelalters’, in Städtelandschaften in Altbayern, Franken und Schwaben. Studien zum Phänomen der Kleinstädte während des Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Helmut Flachenecker and Rolf Kießling (Munich 1999), pp. 152–87. Peter Johanek, ‘Landesherrliche Städte – kleine Städte. Umrisse eines europäischen Phänomens’, in Landesherrliche Städte in Südwestdeutschland, ed. Jürgen Treffeisen and Kurt Andermann (= Oberrheinische Studien 12) (1994), 9–25. Helmut Flachenecker, ‘Fränkische Städtelandschaften. Anmerkungen zu einem Forschungsdesiderat’, Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung 59 (1999), 87–108.

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Almost all the bishops of Eichstätt in the high and late Middle Ages were more or less intensively concerned with developing their towns, markets and castles, in order to push forward the development of their territory.81 For Eichstätt it is possible to define two phases of intensification, the first around the year 1300 and the second in the second half of the fifteenth century. In c. 1300 the bishops successfully settled the conflicts with their two powerful advocates. In this changed political climate, the bishops successfully established their hold on Eichstätt and Berching as centres of influence in the Lower Lordship, to which they could then add the market of Greding by royal transfer. The centres of the eastern upper lordship were won from the hands of the Burgrave of Nuremberg – Spalt in 1294, Abenberg in 1296 and then Pleinfeld in 1301. Finally, Herrieden and Ornbau were wrested from the Oettinger (1310/11), which from then on became administrative and economic (and in the case of Herrieden also religious) focal points for the western Upper Lordship. However, this process took place nearly a century later than in other episcopal principalities like Würzburg or Bamberg. An internal development of the lordship followed in the second half of the fifteenth century. Measures to promote the economy, such as the confirmation and coordination of annual markets (1482), or the acquisition of the markets of Dollnstein (1440) and Arnsberg (1475), and the elevation of the former villages of Arberg (1454) and Pleinfeld (1483) into markets, followed. The more or less systematic confirmation of artisans’ regulations also belongs in this context. The military protection of the episcopal territories was also intensified through redoubled wall-building campaigns. Nassenfels, Mörnsheim and Dollnstein – all lying in the southwest of the Lower Lordship on the border with the duchy of Bavaria – were better secured militarily. Ornbau in the Upper Lordship, too, received a new curtain wall under Wilhelm of Reichenau (bishop 1464–96). In his time there was also work on strengthening several already existing fortifications such as Beilngries and Greding. The drifting apart of bishopric and principality The area of the bishopric and the lands over which the bishop held lordship were not identical. In general, a bishop’s area of secular lordship comprised at most a third of the extent of the diocese. In some cases the area of lordship could lie at least in part outside of the diocese.82 In Eichstätt’s case the

81 Gesta episcoporum Eichstetensium continuata, 590–609. On the vitae, see Stefan Weinfurter et al., ‘Die Viten der Eichstätter Bischöfe im “Pontificale Gundekarianum”’, in Pontifikale Gundekarianum, pp. 111–47, esp. pp. 117–30 [reprinted in Weinfurter, Eichstätt im Mittelalter, pp. 155–78]. 82 See the maps of the bishopric and lordship in c. 1500 in Atlas zur Kirche in Geschichte und Gegenwart Heiliges Römisches Reich – Deutschsprachige Länder, ed. Erwin Gatz et al. (Regensburg 2009), pp. 57–143, esp. p. 79 for Eichstätt.

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lordship did lie within the diocesan boundaries, but never amounted to as much as a third of that diocese. The area of episcopal lordship was concentrated in the so-called ‘Lower Lordship’ along the Altmühl from Mörnsheim to Beilngries. The Upper Lordship was divided into three parts based on Herrieden, Ornbau and Spalt. Within the diocese were large parts of the margraviate of Ansbach, part of the Upper (Electoral) Palatinate, as well as the imperial town of Weissenburg, a lordship of the Teutonic Order around Ellingen and several knightly territories (including that of the marshals of Pappenheim). In the south the ducal Bavarian town of Ingolstadt was part of the bishopric.

Conclusion: a border lordship Eichstätt’s erection into a bishopric and its interconnected territorial development can only be understood from its position on the border of the duchy of Bavaria. Eichstätt was the seat of the bishopric and central point of a territorial lordship that only really developed in the thirteenth century. There is only limited evidence of strong royal influence. With the king’s stronger hold on Bavarian ducal power in the second half of the eleventh century, the bishopric progressively lost significance as an agent for border security. To increase their significance, the Eichstätt bishops insisted on their claim to be chancellors of the Mainz church, even though this position amounted only to a purely honorary pre-eminence at provincial synods. The struggle over advocacy rights was successfully won with Staufen support. Only then could markets and towns arise as well as the successful claiming of castles. In c. 1500 the diocese had about 310 parishes, organised into ten deaneries, along with six canonries, 13 monasteries and ten nunneries. The Upper Lordship consisted of five fragmented offices, divided into 15 administrative units (offices, town judgeships and land advocacies).83

83 Maps in Josef Seeger, Der Bauernkrieg im Hochstift Eichstätt (Regensburg 1997), p. 361.

Section C

Strategies of power

9

Marriage and inheritance Karl-Heinz Spieß

My contribution analyses two important strategies of lordship: how lords bequeathed their property and how they married off their sons and daughters. Neither strategy relied solely on the individual decision of the power holder of the time – rather they were dependent upon legal, social and economic factors. Let us first consider the development of inheritance rights. In the Ottonian and Salian periods, the kings regarded the duchies, margraviates and counties as offices and claimed the right to appoint freely to them.1 But alongside this royal claim one can clearly see the efforts of princes and counts to pass on their offices to their available sons. At the latest in the twelfth century the heritability of principalities and counties had been firmly established, leaving the king free choice of appointment only if there were no sons to inherit.2 The official character of the principalities led to the development that only one son could receive the office and the fief linked to it. Provision for additional sons and daughters had to come from the parents’ allodial property.3 Thus, to give but one example, in 1126 the Welf Henry the Proud received the duchy of Bavaria for himself, but divided the family property in Swabia with his younger brother Welf VI.4 As a result, allods were in danger of progressive subdivision depending on the number of children in the family. The princes tried to prevent excessive fragmentation

1 Egon Boshof, Königtum und Königsherrschaft im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert (Munich 1993), 98; Bernhard Schimmelpfennig, Könige und Fürsten, Kaiser und Papst nach dem Wormser Konkordat (Munich 1966), pp. 101–3, for the princes as a whole and the chapters on individual dynasties, ibid., pp. 104–10; Hans-Werner Goetz, Europa im frühen Mittelalter: 500–1050 (Stuttgart 2003), pp. 147–51. 2 Werner Goez, Der Leihezwang: Eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte des deutschen Lehnrechtes (Tübingen 1962), pp. 20–129. 3 Gerd Althoff, Family, Friends and Followers: Political and Social Bonds in Medieval Europe, trans. Christopher Carroll (Cambridge 2004), pp. 41–6. 4 Katrin Baaken, ‘Herzog Welf VI. und seine Zeit’, in Welf VI., ed. Rainer Jehl (Sigmaringen 1995), p. 10; Bernd Schneidmüller, Die Welfen: Herrschaft und Erinnerung (819–1252) (Stuttgart 2000), p. 163.

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by making originally allodial castles into fiefs, or converting important properties into monasteries, both of which measures protected the basis for lordship from fragmenting. Other means to prevent the fragmentation of family property were the joint rule of brothers or the entry of family members into the clergy, since the latter normally only took a reduced inheritance with them.5 A decisive change in the inheritance rights of the principalities and counties first appeared in the second half of the twelfth century and became standard in the course of the thirteenth. As the princes’ sovereignty became more patrimonial and allodial, the view that they were officeholders weakened, and the lordships as a whole came to be regarded as family possessions. That meant that each son could claim a part of the principality as his share of the inheritance.6 Emperor Frederick I had tried to arrest this development with his ‘law about the fief’ of 1158, in which he decreed that ‘duchies, margraviates, and counties may not be divided’ (Preterea ducatus, marchia, comitatus de cetero non dividantur).7 But the political situation in the thirteenth century, accompanied by a weakening of royal power and the continuing reception of the Roman law concept of private property, led to the view that each principality was as a whole the possession of the dynasty, whether or not the king had granted it as a fief. If a father should decide to divide his principality among several sons, the king granted these parts jointly ‘to the whole hand’ in fief.8 One can see the inheritance shift

5 Althoff, Family, Friends and Followers, pp. 48–50; Wolfgan Hartung, ‘Adel, Erbrecht, Schenkung: Die strukturellen Ursachen der frühmittelalterlichen Besitzübertragungen an die Kirche’, in Gesellschaftsgeschichte: Festschrift für Karl Bosl zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. Ferdinand Seibt (2 vols., Munich 1988), i.421–3. 6 Hermann Schulze, Das Erb- und Familienrecht der deutschen Dynastien des Mittelalters: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Fürstenrechts (Halle 1871), pp. 42–5; Karl-Heinz Spieß, Familie und Verwandtschaft im deutschen Hochadel des Spätmittelalters (Stuttgart 1993), pp. 201–2; Spieß, ‘Safeguarding Property for the Next Generations: Family Treaties, Marriage Contracts and Wills in Germany Princely Dynasties in the Later Middle Ages (14th – 16th Centuries)’, in La famiglia nell’ economia Europea secoli XIII – XVIII: The Economic Role of the Family in the European Economy from the 13th to the 18th Centuries, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Florence 2009), pp. 25–6. 7 MGH Dipl. Frederick I, ii.34–6 no. 242, at p. 36; QDVWSG, pp. 256–7; King Rudolf of Habsburg made a similar ruling in 1283 that ‘no county in the Roman empire can or may be divided or sold or have a portion taken from in through which the county will be diminished without our consent’ (quod nullus comitatus sub Romano imperio sine nostro consensu possit vel debeat dividi vel vendi aut distrahi pars aliqua, per quam esset comitatus huiusmodi diminutus), MGH Constitutiones, iii.332–3 no. 347; Quellen zur Verfassungsgeschichte des Römisch-Deutschen Reiches im Spätmittelalter (1250–1500), ed. Lorenz Weinrich (AQDG 33, Darmstadt 1983), pp. 165–6. That, however, meant that a division with the king’s agreement was now possible. 8 Goez, Der Leihezwang, pp. 94–105; Karl-Friedrich Krieger, Die Lehnshoheit der deutschen Könige im Spätmittelalter (ca. 1200–1437) (Aalen 1979), pp. 350–6.

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in the use of titles. Before, normally only the incumbent of an office was designated with the title of prince, margrave or count, while his brother would simply be called ‘the duke’s brother’ or his son ‘the duke’s son’. But with the change in inheritance practice all members of the family, including the females, received the relevant title from birth.9 The transference of concepts of private property to the principalities and counties had considerable repercussions for the social and economic situation of each family, and also altered the political landscape of the German empire. While daughters were only given a subsidiary inheritance right to the lordship (which only activated in the absence of sons), each son through birth was entitled to the inheritance and thus entitled to exercise lordship, and through marriage to found his own lineage. The father could not contest this right, because noble lordship had come to be legitimated above all by the equation of lordship with bloodline. Only a son’s voluntary renunciation of his inheritance could preserve the territory from division. Many fathers did not want to, or were unable, to obtain such a renunciation from their second, third or fourth sons, hence the middle of the thirteenth century saw the dawn of a new age of land partitions.10 The result of such subdivision was a significant increase in the number of ruling princes. While some 22 imperial princes are recorded in 1190, that number had doubled by 1350. The total constantly fluctuated, because princely houses and lineages died out, while new ones appeared as a result of fresh partitions. If one takes as a starting point the dynasties or the principalities in their original unified state, then in the fifteenth century some 25 principalities are attested.11

9 To the best of my knowledge there is still no systematic study of changes in titles borne by the high aristocracy: See, however, Florence Wilhelmina Johanna Koorn, ‘Van “coniunx” naar “comitissa”. Een onderzoek naar de positie van de gravinnen van het Hollandse huis’, in Ad fontes: Opstellen, aangeboden aan Prof. Dr. C. van de Kieft ter gelegenheid van zijn afscheid als hoogleraar in de middeleeuwse geschiedenis aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam (Amsterdam 1984), pp. 153–66; Wilhelm Störmer, ‘Adel und Ministerialität im Spiegel der bayerischen Namengebung (bis zum 13. Jahrhundert)’, DA 33 (1977), 133–9. 10 For an overview, see Reinhard Härtel, ‘Über Landesteilungen in deutschen Territorien des Spätmittelalters’, in Festschrift Friedrich Hausmann, ed. Herwig Ebner (Graz 1977), pp. 179–205; Hansmartin Schwarzmaier, ‘“Von der fürsten tailung”. Die Entstehung der Unteilbarkeit fürstlicher Territorien und die badischen Teilungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts’, BDLG 126 (1990), 161–84. The question of inheritance renunciation depended on the size of the territory. The ruler of a small county was under greater pressure than a prince with large possessions. For counts, see Spieß, Familie, pp. 272–89; for the princely counts of the Rhineland Palatinate, see Spieß, ‘Erbteilung, dynastische Räson und transpersonale Herrschaftsvorstellung: Die Pfalzgrafen bei Rhein und die ‘Pfalz’ im späten Mittelalter’, in Die Pfalz: Probleme einer Begriffsgeschichte vom Kaiserpalast auf dem Palatin bis zum heutigen Regierungsbezirk, ed. Franz Staab (Speyer 1990), pp. 167–9. 11 Julius Ficker, Vom Reichsfürstenstande: Forschungen zur Geschichte der Reichsverfassung zunächst im XII. und XIII. Jahrhunderte (2 vols., Innsbruck 1861), i.264; Krieger,

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One can demonstrate how complicated the dynastic and territorial situation was in the medieval empire with the example of the Wittelsbacher. Their dynasty possessed two principalities – the duchy of Bavaria, which they were granted by Frederick I in 1180, and the county palatine of the Rhine, which they acquired by marriage in 1214.12 In 1255 the sons of Otto II partitioned the lands for the first time, with Ludwig II holding the palatinate and parts of Bavaria and Henry XIII controlling the rest of Bavaria.13 In the following years, the palatinate lineage partitioned its principality several times among sons, although they were eventually reunited in a single hand under Rupert II (d. 1398) and Rupert III (d. 1410), thanks to the childlessness of other rulers in the family. However, after Rupert III’s death in 1410, the division of the principality among his four sons created four separate lineages of the Rhineland Palatinate dynasty, each with its own principality, two of which then died out again later in the same century.14 In the Bavarian branch of the Wittelsbacher, too, the duchy was subdivided into four lineages, although because of deaths and childlessness Duke Albrecht V (d. 1579) was finally left as the only remaining ruler of the Bavarian line.15 If one considers the political landscape of the empire at the level of dynasties, then there was only ever a single dynasty of the Wittelsbacher, which presented itself expressly as a unity in the House Treaty of Pavia (1329), even though there were two distinct Rhineland Palatinate and Bavarian

12

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Lehnshoheit, pp. 199–216; Peter Moraw, ‘Fürstentum, Königtum und “Reichsreform” im deutschen Spätmittelalter’, BDLG 122 (1986), 117–36; Karl-Heinz Spieß, Fürsten und Höfe im Mittelalter (Darmstadt 2008), pp. 10–16. On elevation to the rank of prince, see also Steffen Schlinker, Fürstenamt und Rezeption: Reichsfürstenstand und gelehrte Literatur im späten Mittelalter (Cologne 1999). On this point, see now Bernd Schneidmüller, ‘1214 – Wittelsbachische Wege in die Pfalzgrafschaft am Rhein’, in Die Wittelsbacher und die Kurpfalz im Mittelalter: Eine Erfolgsgeschichte?, ed. Jörg Peltzer, Bernd Schneidmüller, Stefan Weinfurter and Alfried Wieczorek (Regensburg 2013), pp. 12–14. Max Spindler and Andreas Kraus, ‘Grundzüge des inneren Wandels’, in Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte, ii, Das alte Bayern. Der Territorialstaat vom Ausgang des 12. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. Andreas Kraus (2nd ed., Munich 1988), pp. 72–5. Meinrad Schaab, Geschichte der Kurpfalz, i. Mittelalter (Stuttgart 1988), 91–160; Spieß, ‘Erbteilung, dynastische Räson und transpersonale Herrschaftsvorstellung’ [above, note 10]; Heinz-Dieter Heimann, Hausordnung und Staatsbildung: Innerdynastische Konflikte als Wirkungsfaktoren der Herrschaftsverfestigung bei den wittelsbachischen Rheinpfalzgrafen und den Herzögen von Bayern: Ein Beitrag zum Normenwandel in der Krise des Spätmittelalters (Paderborn 1993); and his, ‘Von Pavia nach Heidelberg. Die Hausordnungen der Wittelsbacher im 14. und frühen 15. Jahrhundert: Dynastieformierung in der Kontinuität des Gesamthauses’, in Die Wittelsbacher und die Kurpfalz im Mittelalter, pp. 109–25. Theodor Straub, ‘Bayern im Zeichen der Teilungen und der Teilherzogtümer’, in Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte [above note 13], ii.199–287; Franz Fuchs, ‘Das “Haus Bayern” im 15. Jahrhundert. Formen und Strategien einer dynastischen ‘Integration’, in Fragen der politischen Integration im mittelalterlichen Europea, ed. Werner Maleczek (Ostfildern 2005), pp. 303–24.

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lines.16 But with the duchy of Bavaria and the Rhineland Palatinate the dynasty held two principalities. Because of divisions between brothers both principalities splintered in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries into two to eight independent parts, each with their own line. Through the foundation of lineages the number of ruling princes rose even more strongly. In the generation after Ludwig the Bavarian, the Bavarian lineage alone had nine ruling princes; six remained in the next generation, until in the time of Duke Albrecht V the number had declined once again to a single prince. One must note, however, that the numbers vary significantly depending on the method of calculation and the time at which one starts.17 The same is true of the other German princely dynasties. Thus, the Welf dynasty in the fourteenth century divided itself into four or, eventually, five parts, and in these principalities as many as 23 princely sons entitled to inherit existed.18 In older scholarship, these land divisions are presented as an ‘unspeakable disaster’, or as ‘the Passion’ (Leidensgeschichte) of state unity and the Fatherland.19 Such withering judgements were influenced by the context of the unification of the empire under a single monarch in the nineteenth century.20 Still, the question remained unanswered of why princes and counts repeatedly divided their lordships among their sons, and thus weakened the political underpinning of their lordship. The answer to the puzzle lies in the dilemma, very difficult to resolve, that came with the development of inheritance rights for princes. Theoretically, there was the option of reducing the number of births through abstinence to the point that there would be only one son to inherit the lordship. In practice, though, this solution was not practical because of high child mortality – up to 50%. It would have been all too easy for the son intended as heir to die before he himself had begotten his own heir.21 In such a case,

16 It was agreed in the House Treaty of Pavia (1329) that Bavaria and the Rhineland Palatinate should be reunited if one of the lines died out. This came into effect in 1777 and changed the political map of the empire. See Karl-Friedrich Krieger, ‘Bayerisch-pfälzische Unionsbestrebungen vom Hausvertrag von Pavia (1329) bis zur wittelsbachischen Hausunion vom Jahre 1724’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 4 (1977), 385–414. 17 Karl-Heinz Spieß, ‘Lordship, Kinship and Inheritance Among the German High Nobility in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period’, in Kinship in Europe: Approaches to Long-term Developments (1300–1900), ed. David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher and John Mathieu (New York 2007), p. 63 [graph]. 18 See the graph in Spieß, ‘Safeguarding’, pp. 42. Further graphs for other principalities are available on pp. 40 (Baden), 43 (Habsburg), 44 (Luxemburg), and 45 (Brandenburg-Hohenzollern). 19 Hermann Johann Friedrich Schulze, Das Recht der Erstgeburt in den deutschen Fürstenhäusern und seine Bedeutung für die deutsche Staatsentwicklung (Leipzig 1851), pp. v, vi, 11–12, 310–11. 20 Ibid., p. 4. 21 How strongly the endangerment of the dynasty was anchored in the consciousness of contemporaries is attested in the saying attributed to Count Eberhard of Württemberg: ‘A heap of eggs and a heap of children, both soon melt away’ (Ein Eierhauff und ein Kinderhauff, die

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Figure 9.1 Marriages and sons of the Wittelsbacher Dukes of Bavaria. Figure by Karl-Heinz Spieß.

the dynasty, without male heirs, would be extinguished, and the principality or county would fall into other hands.22 To prevent this outcome, the worst possible disaster in dynastic thought, no other recourse remained but to

seind gar bald zergangen). Hansmartin Decker-Hauff, ‘Landesheinheit und Landesteilung. Wunsch und Wirklichkeit in der Vorstellung spätmittelalterlicher Landesherren’, in Münsingen: Festschrift zum Jubiläum des württembergischen Landeseinigungsvertrages von 1482 (Sigmaringen 1982), p. 34. 22 On the extinction of comital dynasties, or of the individual lineages of such dynasties, see Spieß, Familie, pp. 444–53.

Figure 9.2 Marriages and heirs of the Welf Dukes of Brunswick. Figure by Karl-Heinz Spieß.

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have as many children as possible. For this reason, it was by no means rare for members of the high nobility to have ten or more offspring.23 Christoph I, Margrave of Baden 1475–1515, for example, had eight sons and five daughters.24 How could he satisfy the inheritance rights of all of these given the relatively small margraviate of Baden? All princes who had more than one son had to deal with this problem. They might indeed have rejoiced over their numerous progeny, but still their power strategy had to concentrate on reducing the number of sons who inherited, to avoid fragmenting the basis of lordship too much. Given the right to inherit conferred by birth, this could only be achieved with a son’s ‘voluntary’ renunciation of a share of the inheritance.25 To convince a son to take this momentous step, which included renunciation of both the exercise of secular lordship and the chance to found his own dynastic lineage, the father had to be able to offer an alternative that was more or less equally attractive. One such alternative was admission as a canon in a cathedral chapter, which could eventually lead to a bishop’s throne. The cathedral chapter, with its well-endowed benefices (which could be accumulated), offered a carefree life without real obligations. If elected bishop or archbishop, the clerical princely son, despite the renunciation of his inheritance, still occupied a situation comparable to that of his brother who remained in the world, because in the empire some bishoprics possessed extensive secular lordships.26 The princely policy of allotting different roles for the sons was expressly dedicated to improving the position of the family name, house and principality, and thus was clearly recognised as a strategy of power. To clothe the paternal decision in permanent form, so-called ‘house treaties’ were enacted.27 Margrave Jakob I of Baden, for example, arranged in his house treaty and will of 1453 that three of his five sons should divide the principality between them.28

23 See the birthrates of select high aristocratic families in Spieß, Familie, pp. 439–40. 24 See the genealogical chart in Schwennicke, Europäische Stammtafeln, Neue Folge, i(2) (Frankfurt am Main 1999), Table 268. 25 On the, not always voluntary, renunciation of inheritance by ecclesiastical sons, Spieß, ‘Erbteilung’, p. 172; Spieß, Familie, pp. 281–9. 26 Aloys Schulte, Der Adel und die deutsche Kirche im Mittelalter (2nd ed., Stuttgart 1922) remains fundamental on this issue; in addition, see Roger Sablonier, Adel im Wandel: Eine Untersuchung zur sozialen Situation des ostschweizerischen Adels um 1300 (Göttingen 1979), pp. 201–4. Monographs on specific cathedral chapters offer important contributions to this topic; see the historiographical essay by Rudolf Holbach, ‘Zu Ergebnissen und Perspektiven neuerer deutscher Domkapitelforschung’, RhV 56 (1992), 148–80. 27 Collected in Die Hausgesetze der regierenden deutschen Fürstenhäuser, ed. Hermann Schulze (3 vols., Jena 1862–1871). 28 Ibid., i.174–194. On this issue see also Spieß, ‘Safeguarding property’, pp. 27–8. That the relationship between ruling brothers was potentially fraught with conflict is illustrated in Jörg Rogge, Herrschaftsweitergabe, Konfliktregelung und Familienorganisation im

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The division of the margraviate of Baden among three sons testifies that primogeniture, the sole right of the first-born son to inherit the principality, had still not infiltrated the empire. To be sure, the Golden Bull of 1356 prescribed primogeniture for the secular electorates,29 but that did not prevent the electors planning further partitions. They defined specific properties as the indivisible heart of the electorate, and then divided the remaining territories among their sons. For example, in 1410 the Rhineland Palatinate was partitioned in four shares, with the oldest son receiving the electorate, which satisfied at least the letter of the Golden Bull, if not its spirit.30 There were two reasons for this reluctance to apply primogeniture. First, the father could freely choose which son would come into the lordship, and second the new lineages established after a division provided for the birth of further progeny as a protection in case the main line died out. In fact, the electoral lineage in the Palatinate died out in 1559, and a junior lineage, founded in 1410, inherited the electorate.31 For these reasons, the general application of primogeniture in the empire was only accepted in the mid-seventeenth century, when in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War it was the only hope the smaller principalities had to survive.32 Pushing sons into the clergy was a popular instrument in princely dynasties, in as much as the number of surviving sons made such a procedure appear logical. As the graph illustrates, the number of clerical sons fluctuated enormously, but on average one out of every four sons renounced his inheritance.33 The second graph illustrates their ecclesiastical careers.34 The inheritance rights of daughters, like those of sons, also developed over time. Until the fourteenth century, daughters were placed essentially on a par with sons in terms of personal possessions, inheritance and moveable assets, although they had no claim on fiefs or offices. In any event, they eventually had to return dowries they had already received to the mass of the

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fürstlichen Hochadel: Das Beispiel der Wettiner von der Mitte des 13. bis zum Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart 2002). See the Golden Bull, cap. 25: primogenitus filius succedat in eis’, in Quellen zur Verfassungsgeschichte des Römisch-Deutschen Reiches im Spätmittelalter [note 7 above], pp. 382–3. Spieß, ‘Erbteilung’, pp. 175–7. Meinrad Schaab, Geschichte der Kurpfalz, ii, Neuzeit (Stuttgart 1992), pp. 35–7. Essential on this issue is Paula Sutter Fichtner, Protestantism and Primogeniture in Early Modern Germany (New Haven 1989). On the development of primogeniture, see also Spieß, ‘Lordship’, pp. 64–70, and for the Wettins, Jörg Rogge, Herrschaftsweitergabe. The graph can be found in Spieß, ‘Safeguarding’, p. 41. The second graph is based on an analysis of the genealogical charters, for which I am very grateful to Florian Mölle.

Figure 9.3 Married and clerical sons in princely families. Figure by Karl-Heinz Spieß.

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Figure 9.4 Clerical careers among the sons of imperial princes. Figure by Karl-Heinz Spieß, with Graham Loud and Katherine Fenton.

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inheritance before it was divided.35 This model created complicated proceedings that naturally often led to conflict. First allodial lands had to be separated from fiefs, followed by an inventory of the moveable assets and finally a reckoning of individual shares. To avoid problems, the obvious solution was to clarify the inheritance shares at the time of marriage. Thus, starting in the fourteenth century and made standard in the fifteenth, a new practice came about that regarded dowry and trousseau as an early inheritance, so that the daughter by her marriage renounced, after a fashion, her inheritance right. Since this ruling found its way into marriage contracts, these agreements functioned at the same time as inheritance contracts for the daughters. In terms of content, inheritance renunciations are very similar one to another. They covered both paternal and maternal inheritance. Almost every renunciation included a reservation according to which the daughters’ inheritance right would be reactivated if her father, sons or brothers should die without heirs of the body. This practice worked to protect the daughters’ rights relative to male relatives from collateral lineages. But toward the end of the fifteenth century this clause was widely altered in favour of more distant male relatives (agnatic inheritance), so that a daughter could only inherit if there was no living man of ‘family, arms, shield, and helm’, in other words no male member of the dynasty.36 This measure was intended to rule out the possibility that a daughter who inherited might diminish the dynasty’s possessions through her marriage.37 For daughters as well as sons, the Church was also employed as a means to limit their share of inheritance. Thus, Margrave Jakob I of Baden, in his will of 1453, mentioned above, laid down that the daughters of his sons on marriage should receive a dowry of 10,000 florins each, or be given to a convent with a life annuity of 100 florins per annum.38 Profession as a nun was accompanied by a renunciation of inheritance rights. Since capital in the amount of about 1000 florins could pay out an annuity of 100 florins, the entry of a daughter into the cloister was a great saving for a princely family compared to a dowry. To be sure, though, by proceeding with this option one lost the chance of political advantage to be gained with a daughter’s marriage.39

35 Karl Kroeschell, ‘Söhne und Töchter im germanischen Erbrecht’, in Studien zu den germanischen Volksrechten: Gedächtnisschrift für Wilhelm Ebel (Frankfurt am Main 1982), pp. 87–116; Spieß, Familie, pp. 327–30. 36 Spieß, Familie, pp. 330–2. 37 Ibid., pp. 333, 337–43. 38 See above, note 28. 39 See Spieß, Familie, pp. 366–79 with the graph on p. 367, which illustrates the relationship between married and religious daughters. On this point see also Cordula Nolte, Familie, Hof und Herrschaft: Das verwandtschaftliche Beziehungs- und Kommunikationsnetz

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Figure 9.5 Married daughters and nuns among the daughters of the upper nobility. Figure by Karl-Heinz Spieß, with Graham Loud and Katherine Fenton.

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en og b g e n ur en oh el en au nl nb ing ig en e e n z ss i h t s d I a e a o ü L N K H B

n ch ei n st ei ba h t n n c au e e ps lk ba an irk H Ep Er Fa B

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Still, the eventual rise of a nun to be abbess of her convent could also be a plus for the dynasty. Thus, six of the nine known abbesses of the Poor Clare house of Ribnitz from the time of the foundation by Henry II of Mecklenburg in 1323 until 1586 were members of the Mecklenburg dynasty.40 In cases of a family convent, the multiplication of family members holding office was foreseeable. Officially, the decision for marriage or cloister depended on the number of daughters. Thus, the Baden house treaty of 1380 specified that should there be more daughters in the future, then ‘a number of them’ should be given to a convent.41 To provide a brief and provisional assessment, it can be seen that princes in face of high child mortality wanted a large number of children because of their concern that their dynasty might die out. The inheritance right of surviving sons, which theoretically guaranteed to each a share of the principality, was restricted by ‘voluntary’ renunciations of inheritance, to prevent the dismemberment of the principality. The Church, with its comfortable life and the potential opportunities to exercise lordship offered by an imperial bishopric, absorbed the shock of renouncing inheritance, marriage and the foundation of one’s own lineage. In other words, the princes declined to limit the number of births, and instead trusted in a demarcation of which sons would inherit. The inheritance share of the daughters was reduced to a dowry and trousseau. A renunciation of inheritance at the time of marriage prevented further claims. If there were numerous daughters, entry into a convent provided relief from the financial strain of inheritance. A portrait of Margrave Christoph I of Baden, painted by Hans Baldung Grien, spells out the assumed division of roles. One can make out three secular sons and several ecclesiastical ones, one of whom as archbishop of Trier rose to electoral status. Three of the daughters are married and two are churchwomen, one with the rank of abbess.42 The second part of my contribution will be dedicated to an analysis of the politics of marriage as a strategy of power. The king gave a free hand to princes in this matter, although of course the princes could not act contrary to legal norms. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 had expressly prohibited marriage between relatives up to the fourth degree of consanguinity,

der Reichsfürsten am Beispiel der Markgrafen von Brandenburg-Ansbach (1440–1530) (Ostfildern 2005), pp. 117–21. 40 Spieß, Fürsten und Höfe, p. 38. Both daughters of Elector Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg were abbesses, Nolte, Familie, pp. 121–4. 41 Hette Auch unnser einer Döchter, die soll man uff setzen unnd berathen, In die Wehllt, Jegliche Dochter mitt Sechstausen gulden unnd Auch ettlich Döchter, Ob ihr vil wehren, Inn Clöster berathen, unnd darzu gülltte geben, dass sie Ihr zimbliche leibs notturft unnd nahrunge darinnen haben mögen, Schulze, Hausgesetze, i.173. 42 Konrad Krimm, ‘Markgraf Christoph I. und die badische Teilung. Zur Deutung der Karlsruher Votivtafel von Hans Baldung Grien’, ZGOR 138 (1990), 199–216.

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and this was in principle respected by the princes, as the numerous requests for papal dispensation from this impediment to marriage attest. But it is precisely these dispensations that show how, with papal help, the princes attempted to circumvent the barriers put in place by canon law.43 The practice of dispensation leads to the conclusion that nothing prevented the marriage of princely partners who were related in the third or fourth degree.44 Marriages between relatives of the second degree, in other words between first cousins, appear hardly ever to have been attempted. Nor did ecclesiastical doctrine on the need for free consent by both bride and groom limit princely marriage politics either, since parents assured, through the way they educated their children, or with various forms of pressure, that these children fell in step with parental plans.45 Princely marriage was less a union between the two people it most directly concerned than it was a joining of the family units that stood behind them. Both parties were fully aware that marriage carried their previously reciprocal relationship to a new level. The mingling of blood in the children born of the marriage was an irrefutable occurrence that linked the two families to each other. The sources refer to this sense of kin belonging together as ‘friendship’. The context between friendship and marriage is apparent in the marriage contracts, which speak less of a connubial union than of the founding or strengthening of a friendship, with the marriage as the means to realise that goal.46 Princely marriages therefore possessed a principally political character. Very frequently they strengthened alliances or appear in the context of peace negotiations as a sign of future reconciliation.47 An example of the first type

43 Volker Pfaff, ‘Das kirchliche Eherecht am Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts’, ZSSRG KA 63 (1977), 73–117; James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago 1987); Dieter Veldtrup, Zwischen Eherecht und Familienpolitik. Studien zu den dynastischen Heiratsprojekten Karls IV. (Warendorf 1988). 44 Nolte, Familie, p. 103 cites an instruction of Margrave Frederick the Elder of 1496, in which he speaks of the pope’s obligation to provide dispensations to the children of kings and princes who are related in the third and fourth degrees. 45 Jörg Rogge, ‘Nur verkaufte Töchter? Überlegungen zu Aufgaben, Quellen, Methoden und Perspektiven einer Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte hochadeliger Frauen und Fürstinnen im deutschen Reich während des späten Mittelalters und am Beginn der Neuzeit’, in Principes. Dynastien und Höfe im späten Mittelalter: Interdisziplinäre Tagung des Lehrstuhls für allgemeine Geschichte des Mittelalters und Historische Hilfswissenschaften in Greifswald in Verbindung mit der Residenzen-Kommission der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen vom 15.–18. June 2000, ed. Cordula Nolte, Karl-Heinz Spieß and Ralf Gunnar Werlich (Ostfildern 2002), pp. 237–8, 256–7; Spieß, Familie, 28–35; Karl-Heinz Spieß, ‘Unterwegs zu einem fremden Ehemann: Brautfahrt und Ehe in europäischen Fürstenhäusern des Spätmittelalters’, in Fremdheit und Reisen im Mittelalter, ed. Irene Erfen and KarlHeinz Spieß (Stuttgart 1997), p. 36. 46 Spieß, Familie, pp. 73–7. 47 Tobias Weller, Die Heiratspolitik des deutschen Hochadels im 12. Jahrhundert (Cologne 2004), pp. 798–805; Nolte, Familie, pp. 99–104; Oliver Auge, Handlungsspielräume

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of marriage is the double marriage, arranged by Emperor Frederick I and King Henry II of England in 1165, of Frederick’s eldest son and Duke Henry the Lion with two English princesses; the agreement buttressed the two rulers’ agreement on ecclesiastical policy in the papal schism of the time.48 A prime example of the second type of marriage alliance is the wedding of Emperor Frederick I’s son Henry VI with Constance of Sicily in 1186, the final stage of the peace agreement between the two parties which had previously been concluded in 1177.49 The practice of setting aside enmity through a marriage was even named in papal dispensations as a reason for allowing a marriage within the canonically prohibited degrees of consanguinity.50 Besides such political strategies, in arranging the marriages of their children princes also pursued strategies for increasing their possessions beyond the usual exchange of dowry and bridegift. The acquisition of land could best be achieved through marriage to an heiress. One can see two different patterns at work here.51 In the first sort, the inheritance of the daughter was already assured at the time of the marriage agreement, because she had no brothers and her father was too old, widowed or already dead, so no more sons could be expected. This was the case with Duke Henry the Black of Bavaria and his sons Henry the Proud and Welf VI, all of whom contracted lucrative marriages with heiresses.52 The same can be said of the marriage in 1310 of King Henry VII’s son John of Luxemburg with the heiress Elisabeth of Bohemia,53 or that of Maximilian of Austria with Marie of Burgundy in 1477.54 In the second sort of heiress marriage, the parties taking part in a marriage agreement did not anticipate that fate would make the daughter into an heiress. When Emperor Henry IV gave his daughter Agnes to the Hohenstaufen Frederick I in 1079, nobody could have foreseen that the Salians would die out in the male line in 1125, and that their inheritance

48 49 50 51 52 53

54

fürstlicher Politik im Mittelalter. Der südliche Ostseeraum von der Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts bis in die frühe Reformationszeit (Ostfildern 2009), pp. 248–55. Weller, Heiratspolitik, pp. 101–7 and 263–5. Ibid., pp. 116–26. Spieß, Familie, p. 80. Spieß, ‘Unterwegs in ein fremdes Land’, 10–15. Weller, Heiratspolitik, pp. 235–6, 241–7, and 255–7. Lenka Bobková, ‘Das Königspaar Johann und Elisabeth: Die Träume von der Herrlichkeit’, in Johann und Elisabeth. Die Erbtochter, der fremde Fürst und das Land: Die Ehe Johanns des Blinden und Elisabeths von Böhmen in vergleichender europäischer Perspektive, ed. Michel Pauly (Luxemburg 2013), pp. 59–67. Karl Rausch, Die burgundische Heirat Maximilians I. Quellenmäßig dargestellt (Vienna 1880); Spieß, ‘Unterwegs in ein fremdes Land’, 19–20; Sonja Dünnebeil, ‘Handelsobjekt Erbtochter – Zu den Verhandlungen über die Verheiratung Marias von Burgund’, in Außenpolitisches Handeln im ausgehenden Mittlelater: Akteure und Ziele, ed. Sonja Dünnebeil and Christine Ottner (Vienna 2007), pp. 159–84.

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would fall to the Hohenstaufen brothers Duke Frederick II and Conrad.55 It is often impossible to judge how the parties to the agreement assessed their chances at the time of the marriage contract. So, for example, when Constance of Sicily married Henry VI, it is unclear how significant the prospect of her eventual inheritance of the Sicilian crown was, in addition to the other political motives mentioned above.56 The prospect of rich rewards through marrying an heiress apparently made the issue of the bride’s age and appearance fade into insignificance. Otherwise, when choosing a partner, there was a strong preference for a young bride whose fruitfulness could be exploited to the full to produce the desired large number of children. There was also a minimum standard of attractiveness, so the husband would not be repelled and thus endanger the continuance of the dynasty.57 Elisabeth of Bohemia, who married at 18, was only four years older than her husband John, which makes this calming commentary noteworthy. The author of the Königsaal Chronicle tells of the following explanation given to the bridegroom’s father: ‘It should not influence you, my lord king, that my young mistress Elisabeth is four years older than your son, since your son has already reached his fourteenth year and this maiden her eighteenth. By the time two years have passed that physical difference between them will already have evened out. And may my lord king not be offended with what his servant has to say: Before you let such a great kingdom slip from the hand of your young son you should be equally willing to marry him to a virgin or a matron, even if she’s fifty years old.’58 While the age difference between the 30-year-old Constance of Sicily and Henry VI was already significant at 11 years,59 in the case of the rich heiress

55 Weller, Heiratspolitik, pp. 17–20, 806. 56 Ibid., 118–26, 807. King William II of Sicily and his wife Joanna were only 32 and 20, respectively, at the time of this marriage, so they might have been expected to have offspring. 57 Spieß, ‘Unterwegs’, pp. 24–5; Spieß, ‘Europa heiratet: Kommunikation und Kulturtransfer im Kontext europäischer Köngsheiraten des Spätmittelalters’, in Europa im späten Mittelalter: Politik – Gesellschaft – Kultur, ed. Rainer C. Schwinges, Christian Hesse and Peter Moraw (Munich 2006), p. 442. 58 Translation based on Ferdinand Seibt, Karl IV: Ein Kaiser in Europa 1346–1378 (Munich 1978), p. 77, in turn based on Josef Emler’s edited text of the Chronicon aulae regiae (Prague 1884), p. 139: Nec moveat vos domine rex, quod domicella mea Elizabeth etatem vestri filii Johannis excedit in quatuor annis, attigit enim filius vester annum etatis sue quartum decimum et puella hec octavum decimum, duorum annorum spacium adequabit in eis disparem quantitatem corporum. Et non indignetur dominus meus rex michi servo suo super hiis sermonibus, quos nunc locuturus sum, antequam de manu vestri iuvenis filii tale et tantum dimitteretis regnum, copulare filio vestro deberetis virginem vel matronam, que quinquagesimum attingeret annum. Spieß, ‘Unterwegs in ein fremdes Land’, p. 17. 59 Weller, Heiratspolitik, p. 116.

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Margravine Matilda of Canossa what the chronicler suggests did in fact take place. The prospect of inheritance committed the 17-year-old Duke Welf V to marriage with Matilda, who was already 43 years old.60 Marriages with heiresses, or for that matter with rich widows, were spectacular strokes of luck in what was otherwise a dogged business of channelling property titles through painstaking selection of marriage partners. The sober everyday consisted of trying to keep dowries and bridegifts within the extended family through endogamous exchange. Every father paid out considerable sums on his daughter’s dowry, while when his son married, a gift came to his family from the bride’s family. In the ideal case, reciprocal brother-sister marriages, the payments cancelled each other out. Princes and counts pursued this strategy intensively, although the reciprocal connection also had political consequences.61 So-called lineage marriages pursued a further strategy, uniting with each other members of lineages that had been created by partitions between brothers. In that way dowries remained within the dynasty, and an eventual inheritance also benefited the house concerned.62 A corollary of these endogamous marriages was the close kinship of the couple, but this could be overcome with easily-obtained papal dispensations.63 In analysing the marriage undertakings of a princely dynasty, it is clear that neighbouring dynasties whenever possible strove to link themselves to each other with several marriages rather than just one.64 This led to a closely linked kinship cluster that made it difficult to find a marital partner who was permissible in canon law. The situation of Duke Frederick the Fair of Austria, whose successful courtship of Elisabeth of Aragon in 1312 led to a quest for a dispensation, demonstrates the problem. He explained in his petition that he could not take a bride from any German princely house because he was related to all of them. As he explained, the duke of Carinthia was the brother of his mother, the margrave of Brandenburg the son of his sister, the duke of Lotharingia his brother-in-law, the duke of Bavaria his uncle, the duke of Saxony the son of his aunt and so on.65 From the fourteenth century onwards the power strategy that sought to secure unity and greater military strength through relationship by marriage was put into contractual form in so-called testamentary brotherhood vows

60 61 62 63 64

Ibid., pp. 230–5. Ibid., pp. 819–22; Spieß, Familie, pp. 61–73. Spieß, Familie, pp. 70–2; Nolte, Familie, p. 98. See notes 43–4 above; also Spieß, Fürsten und Höfe, p. 52; Nolte, Familie, p. 103. The graph provided for the dukes of Pomerania from Spieß, Fürsten und Höfe, 52 illustrates this point. For the same strategy by the margraves of Brandenburg, see Nolte, Familie, pp. 103–4. 65 Spieß, ‘Unterwegs zu einem fremden Ehemann’, 21.

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(Erbverbrüderungen).66 It should not be forgotten that at wedding festivities related princes met personally with each other and, through the communal celebration, strengthened their cohesion and above all could demonstrate that cohesion to outsiders.67 Anyone who wanted to become involved with the exclusive circle of princely marriage politics had to be ready to pay a correspondingly large dowry. Dowry in the empire corresponded to the status of the couple. An average of 450 florins for knightly families was typical, about 4,500 florins for counts and barons, and among princes about 17,000 florins, with exceptional cases of up to 32,000 florins.68 For many princes, limited income and debts made putting the dowry together in cash quite a financial feat. This might be ameliorated by agreements to pay in instalments or, as already mentioned, by giving daughters to a cloister to reduce the dowry amount. Even Elector Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg (d. 1486), who was proud of the allies he had won through marriage, decided to send two of his daughters to a convent.69 The possibility also existed of improving one’s own finances through the marriage of a princely daughter with someone of non-princely rank. The lower in rank the daughter’s marriage partner, the smaller the dowry was. On the other hand, a father was concerned to achieve an equal or higher-ranking consort for his own son, because of the financial gain of her high dowry.70 Marriage with the sons and daughters of foreign royal houses or imperial princely dynasties that had already held the German throne offered the greatest financial, and of course also political, advantages. These top-tier princely families included the Luxemburger, Habsburgs and Wittelsbacher, who since 1308 had alternately occupied the royal throne. As marriage partners for imperial princely sons and daughters who for whatever reason could not marry their equals, fathers turned to counts and lords who also numbered among the upper aristocracy. They only very rarely accepted a spouse from the ranks of the knights.71 Thus, when analysing the

66 Erhard Hirsch, Generationsübergreifende Verträge reichsfürstlicher Dynastien vom 14. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin 2013). 67 Karl-Heinz Spieß, ‘Kommunikationsformen im Hochadel und am Königshof im Spätmittelalter’, in Formen und Funktionen öffentlicher Kommunikation im Mittelalter, ed. Gerd Althoff (Stuttgart 2001), pp. 261–90, and Spieß, Fürsten und Höfe, pp. 89–103. 68 On the deviations and the attempts of princes to limit the amount of dowries, see Spieß, Familie, pp. 334–5; Spieß, ‘Safeguarding Property’ [above note 6], 30–1; Nolte, Familie, pp. 105–12; Auge, Handlungsspielräume, pp. 242–8. 69 Nolte, Familie, pp. 104, 120. 70 Spieß, Familie, pp. 361–6; Nolte, Familie, pp. 113–14 has established that the margraves of Brandenburg received 451,000 florins in dowries and paid out 444,000 florins in the period 1363–1550. 71 Peter Moraw, ‘Das Heiratsverhalten im hessischen Landgrafenhaus ca. 1300 bis ca. 1500 – auch vergleichend betrachtet’, in Hundert Jahre Historische Kommission für Hessen 1897– 1997, ed. Walter Heinemeyer (Marburg 1997), pp. 115–40.

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63 marriages of the family of the margraves of Brandenburg between 1363 and 1550, 85.72% of daughters married their equals in rank. For sons, the number is lower at 72.74%, because in 22.73% of cases they were able to win a bride of a higher, royal, rank. This proportion is significantly lower for daughters at 9.52%, presumably because marriage into a royal house demanded a very high dowry. The consciousness of rank among members of the electoral dynasty shows in the low percentage of non-princely marriages (4.55% for sons, 4.75% for daughters).72 An analysis of the imperial princely dynasties as a whole during the later Middle Ages shows great differences in rank. If one leaves out of consideration the Ascanians of Brandenburg, who had already died out in 1320, then the Luxemburger, Habsburgs, Electors Palatine and Wittelsbachs of Bavaria form the apex. The middle group consisted of the Wettins, the margraves of Brandenburg from the Zollern dynasty and the rulers of SaxonyWittenberg, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Saxony-Lauenburg, Brunswick, Hesse and Württemberg. At the bottom were Anhalt, Jülich, Baden and the cadet branch of the Wittelsbachs in the Palatinate.73 Examining marriages for these princely dynasties as a whole, over the period 1200–1550, 16.2% of their marriages were royal, 48.9% were to peers and 34.9% were below the princely level. One ought, however, to differentiate these findings by period. In the first period, 1200–1305, 17.3% of the marriages of sons of imperial princes were royal, 50% princely and 32.1% less than princely. But the number of prestige marriages rose significantly in the period 1516–1550 to 20% for royal marriages and 65.5% for princely ones, while by that time only 14.6% of sons accepted a partner of lower rank. For daughters the percentage of non-princely marriages also sank, from 51% to 20%.74 These bare statistics attest to the ever-stronger demarcation of the princes from the rest of the upper aristocracy, a process for which there are also specific examples. Thus, in 1467 Philip of the Palatinate rejected marriage to a countess of Katzenelnbogen, even though this would have been extremely lucrative for his uncle Elector Frederick of the Palatinate. He asked instead for a bride who was ‘brought up princely’ – in other words, somebody who was his equal.75

72 Nolte, Familie, pp. 96–100, with tables on marriages at pp. 438–40. For tables on the marriages of the dukes of Mecklenburg, the dukes of Pomerania, and the princes of Rügen and Werle, see Auge, Handlungsspielräume, pp. 509–12. For comital families see Spieß, Familie, 398–409. Of the 630 marriages, 87.5% were within rank, 6.3% princely, and 6.2% knightly (table on p. 399). 73 Moraw, ‘Heiratsverhalten’, pp. 134–7; Spieß, Fürsten und Höfe, p. 14. 74 These numbers come from the thesis of Jürgen Herold, Ständische Abgrenzung und soziale Differenzierung im spätmittelalterlichen Reichsfürstenstand (M.A. thesis, University of Greifswald 1997), which I directed. 75 Spieß, Familie, p. 31.

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These marriage practices, along with an increasing emphasis on princely privileges of rank,76 illuminate the path from the high medieval kingdom to the late medieval/early modern princely state, in which the electors and princes carried out a constitutionally significant political function.77 Inheritance practices and marriage politics also played an important role in the maintenance and augmentation of the princely position within the empire.

76 Karl-Friedrich Krieger, ‘Fürstliche Standesvorrechte im Spätmittelalter’, BDLG 122 (1986), 116. 77 Ernst Schubert, König und Reich: Studien zur spätmittelalterlichen deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte (Göttingen 1979), pp. 297–322; Schubert, Fürstliche Herrschaft und Territorium im späten Mittelalter (Munich 1996), pp. 104–8; Karl-Friedrich Krieger, König, Reich und Reichsreform im Spätmittelalter (Munich 1992), pp. 46–7, 105–9.

10 The propaganda of power Memoria, history, patronage Stefan Tebruck

In Late Antiquity it became a Christian liturgical practice to pray regularly for the souls of the dead, to support the poor and to make gifts to religious institutions to ease the path of one’s own soul to heaven, as well as those of the souls of the dead. The various forms of this practice, which historians group under the term memoria, developed further in the early and high Middle Ages. In the early Middle Ages gifts to ecclesiastical institutions, care for the poor and the foundation of monasteries and canonries can mostly be seen in the milieu of episcopal and royal families. But starting in the Carolingian era, it is also possible to encounter nobles in the sources, joining to a gift made to a monastery, a cathedral or a canonry a request for prayer for themselves and deceased members of their family. They had their remains buried in churches or monasteries, so they could benefit from the perpetual prayer of the community of clerics or monks. Care for memoria became an integral component not just of royal, episcopal and monastic liturgy, but of noble piety. In the late Middle Ages it is also extensively attested in non-aristocratic circles, especially in the towns, and created a rich and multivalent culture. The foundation of prayer confraternities and brotherhoods for communal memoria, the foundation and endowment of churches, the erection of tomb memorials and the preparation of books in which donors, founders and supporters of a cloister or church were listed so there could be regular prayer for their souls – all of these measures produced a multitude of art works and written sources that allow us deep insight, not just into religious life, but also into the social, economic and political conditions of the time.1

1 In German-language scholarship the following studies are particularly noteworthy: OttoGerhard Oexle, ‘Die Gegenwart der Toten’, in Death in the Middle Ages, ed. Hermann Braet and Werner Verbeke (Löwen 1983), pp. 19–77; idem, ‘Die Gegenwart der Lebenden und der Toten. Gedanken über Memoria’, in Gedächtnis, das Gemeinschaft stiftet, ed. Karl Schmid (Munich 1985), pp. 74–107; idem, ‘Memoria in der Gesellschaft und in der Kultur des Mittelalters’, in Modernes Mittelalter. Neue Bilder einer populären Epoche, ed. Joachim Heinzle (Frankfurt am Main 1994), pp. 297–323; Memoria. Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter, ed. Karl Schmid and

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For the high nobility of the Roman-German Empire in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the subject of this essay, tending to memoria was of central importance in many respects. Surviving material from the noble milieu allows us to see the degree to which noble memoria, dynastic self-consciousness and princely representation were intertwined. To illustrate that connection, this essay will focus on two prominent examples. The first is that of the Welfs, who as one of the oldest noble houses in the Reich reached their political apex in the twelfth century as a northern German princely dynasty, but remained of great importance until well into the modern era. The other case study is the Ludowings who, like many other dynasties in the Reich, first rose to prominence in the eleventh century and until their extinction in the mid-thirteenth century were among the most influential families among the higher nobility in the Staufen Reich. But before we can examine these two case studies, which have been intensively investigated in recent German-language scholarship, a few basic points about the development of memoria should be explained. Commencing in the Carolingian era but developing more intensively from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, great nobles founded monasteries for the care of their own souls and the souls of deceased family members. At first these foundations were either Benedictine monasteries or communities of canons or canonesses. But starting in the second half of the eleventh century reform-minded noble families especially sponsored the reform tendencies of the Benedictines of Hirsau (near Calw in the Black Forest) or one of the movements of reformed canons.2 In the twelfth century the Augustinian canons, the Cistercians and the Praemonstratensians all enjoyed extensive noble patronage to varying degrees in the different regions of the Reich. Nobles entrusted prayer for their families to these spiritual communities and had the remains of deceased family members buried there. At the same time, the noble founders and their successors took advantage of rights of advocacy, which might be interpreted as a form of protective lordship over the

Joachim Wollasch (Munich 1984); Memoria in der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters, ed. Dieter Geuenich and Otto-Gerhard Oexle (Göttingen 1994); Memoria als Kultur, ed. OttoGerhard Oexle (Göttingen 1995); Christine Sauer, Fundatio und Mmemoria. Stifter und Klostergründer im Bild, 1100 bis 1350 (Göttingen 1993). Michael Borgolte provides a critical overview of the relevant German-language scholarship in ‘Memoria. Zwischenbilanz eines Mittelalterprojekts’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 46 (1998), 197–210 [reprinted in Michael Borgolte, Stiftung und Memoria, ed. Tillmann Lohse (Berlin 2012), pp. 61–78]. Most recently, two collected volumes have appeared: Wider das Vergessen und für das Seelenheil. Memoria und Totengedenken im Mittelalter, ed. Rainer Berndt (Münster 2013); Libri Vitae. Gebetsgedenken in der Gesellschaft des Frühen Mittelalters, ed. Dieter Geuenich and Uwe Ludwig (Cologne 2015). 2 Lutz Fenske, Adelsopposition und kirchliche Reformbewegung im östlichen Sachsen. Entstehung und Wirkung des sächsischen Widerstandes gegen das salische Königtum während des Investiturstreits (Göttingen 1977).

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religious community and its possessions. In ideal circumstances the legal, economic and religious connections between the monastery and the noble family were very tight. For that reason, older German-language scholarship has employed the term ‘house monastery’ (Hauskloster) to describe these monasteries and canonries, expressing the idea that these institutions, with their links to their noble founding family, were in effect part of the noble house. The ways in which monasteries committed their obligation to prayer for the souls of the dead to writing, already developed in the early Middle Ages, were now developed further. Alongside the Liber memorialis, the Liber vitae and the ‘necrology’ there now appeared the ‘anniversary book’, which included the names of donors and founders along with a listing of their gifts and the obligation to pray for them on specific days. There has been intensive discussion in German-language scholarship of the transmission of noble memoria in the Ottonian and Salian periods, uncovering kinship and political groupings among the high nobility based on communal prayer endowments and entries in monastic memorial books.3 Historians have also turned to memorial transmission in the milieu of the high aristocracy to gain deeper insight into the internal development of noble families starting in the tenth and eleventh centuries. For the noble monastic founders in the high medieval Reich created religious centres for their families with their foundations, centres that went well beyond burial in the monastery and liturgical care for the dead. The noble ‘house monasteries’ took into their communities members of the founding family who were designated for life in the canonry or monastery. They gave office to the founder and his successors as advocates and in many cases also made members of the noble founding family their abbots or abbesses. Finally, they made their scriptorium available to produce documents, letters and liturgical books at their noble family’s request. It was in the ‘house monasteries’ that the first genealogical reports of the founding family were brought together, in the context of memorial recording. The first genealogy of a noble family that was created in this way in the German Empire was the Genealogia Welforum, produced in the 1120s in the monastery of Weingarten, which will be discussed below. The interest in the history and genealogy of a noble founding family was at first motivated by concern for the appropriate memoria in the monasteries and canonries. By this means the spiritual institutions played a decisive role in the rise of a noble self-consciousness about family and tradition that was focussed on the succession of the generations and was essential in forming high medieval noble dynasties. On the other hand,

3 On this issue, see especially Gerd Althoff, Adels- und Königsfamilien im Spiegel ihrer Memorialüberlieferung. Studien zum Totengedenken der Billunger und Ottonen (Munich 1984); idem, Family, Friends and Followers: Political and Social Bonds in Early Medieval Europe, trans. Christopher Carroll (Cambridge 2004).

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among the nobles concern for memoria was also closely bound to interest in their own ancestry and history, the rank and deeds of their forebears and the fame of their own family in the past and present. Memoria and fama were thus twin concerns for the aristocracy. This also provided a motive to develop a noble historiography from genealogical reports, a historiography that celebrated as much as possible the old and high-ranking beginnings of the family and glorified the deeds of the forebears alongside those of their contemporary successors. The Welf and Ludowing traditions both provide vivid examples of this phenomenon. There has been intensive discussion in German-language scholarship of the forms and development of noble memoria and historiography. Karl Schmid linked changes in memorial transmission with the shift of the nobility from early medieval family units to the high medieval noble dynasty with its stronger focus on the succession of generations.4 Hans Patze, using Karl Schmid’s work as a starting point, has coined the term ‘founder chronicle’ (Stifterchronik) to describe the chronicles and annals of noble foundations in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries that carried out this historiographical transmission.5 The authors of such works in noble house monasteries combined the history of their monastery with that of the founding family, and in that way created a sort of transmission that was the basis for forming and transmitting the founding family’s understanding of their own history at both the family and the individual level. Thus, the ‘founder chronicles’ served to solidify the traditions of noble families, which again was an important element of dynastic self-understanding and princely representation. In many cases this model of significance can be invoked for the interpretation of monastic historical works, especially if there is evidence of a close connection between the founding family and the monastic authors of genealogies and ‘founder chronicles’.6

4 See Karl Schmid, ‘Zur Problematik von Familie, Sippe und Geschlecht, Haus und Dynastie beim mittelalterlichen Adel. Vorfragen zum Thema “Adel und Herrschaft im Mittelalter”’, ZGOR 105, n.s. 66 (1957), 1–62 (reprinted in idem, Gebetsgedenken und adliges Selbstverständnis im Mittelalter. Ausgewählte Beiträge. Festgabe zu seinem 60. Geburtstag (Sigmaringen 1983), pp. 183–244); idem, ‘Heirat, Familienfolge, Geschlechterbewußtsein’, in Il matrimonio nella società altomedievale (Settimane di studio del Centrol italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 24) (Spoleto 1977), pp. 103–37 (reprinted in idem, Gebetsgedenken und adliges Selbstverständnis, pp. 388–423). Cf. the work produced from the author’s literary estate in Karl Schmid, Geblüt – Herrschaft – Geschlechterbewußtsein. Grundfragen zum Verständnis des Adels im Mittelalter, ed. Dieter Mertens and Thomas Zotz (VF 44) (Sigmaringen 1998). 5 Hans Patze, ‘Adel und Stifterchronik. Frühformen territorialer Geschichtsschreibung im hochmittelalterlichen Reich’, BDLG 100 (1964), 8–81 (part 1) and BDLG 101 (1965), 67–128 (part 2); idem, ‘Klostergründung und Klosterchronik’, BDLG 113 (1977), 89–121. 6 One of the most prominent examples for Hans Patze was the Pegau Annals, written in the first half of the twelfth century in the Benedictine monastery of Pegau (south of Leipzig).

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In many other cases, however, it is clear that the initiative for composing a ‘founder chronicle’ emanated from the cloisters and not from the founding families.7 Crises or conflicts could be trigger events, problems the church had to overcome, such as struggles over rights to property and income or the absence of noble support. In such circumstances, calling upon an old and high-ranking founding family was an important component of their own monastic presentation of evidence. At the same time it was possible to obligate the founding family to live up to a fading tradition and renew their link to the monastery, especially if the family’s interest in promoting the community had weakened. In legal conflicts forgeries could also play a role: that is, faking a monastic foundation story.8 There are also cases in which monasteries or canonries increased their memoria for the founders long after the founding family had died out; they might even create a founder tomb in order to secure their own tradition and history. The most prominent example in the Roman-German Reich may be the famous founder figures in the west choir of the cathedral of Naumburg on the Saale, which were erected in the mid-thirteenth century and are considered among the highest-quality sculptures of the entire German Middle Ages.9 At the centre of this figural

Annales Pegavienses et Bosovienses, ed. Georg H. Pertz, MGH SS xvi.232–70. The monastery was founded before 1096 by Count Wiprecht of Groitzsch (d. 1124), a close ally of King Henry IV and son-in-law of the Bohemian king Vratislav II. The Pegau annalist based his family history of the monastery’s founder on the oral report of Wiprecht’s mother, Countess Sigena. See Hans Patze, ‘Die Pegauer Annalen, die Königserhebung Wratislaws von Böhmen und die Anfänge der Stadt Pegau’, JGMOD 12 (1963), 1–62; Thomas Vogtherr, ‘Wiprecht von Groitzsch und das Jakobspatrozinium des Klosters Pegau. Ein Beitrag zur Kritik der Pegauer Annalen’, Neues Archiv für Sächsische Geschichte 72 (2001), 35–53. 7 Jörg Kastner, Historiae fundationum monasteriorum. Frühformen monastischer Institutionsgeschichtsschreibung im Mittelalter (Munich 1974); Gerd Alhoff, ‘Anlässe zur schriftlichen Fixierung adligen Selbstverständnisses’, ZGOR 134 (1986), 34–46; idem, ‘Causa scribendi und Darstellungsabsicht. Die Lebensbeschreibungen der Königin Mathilde und andere Beispiele’, in Litterae Medii Aevi. Festschrift für Johanna Autenrieth zu ihrem 65. Geburtstag, ed. Michael Borgolte and Herrad Spilling (Sigmaringen 1988), pp. 117–33. 8 A prominent example is the foundation history produced in the Cistercian monastery Pforte (near Naumburg on the Saale) in the early thirteenth century, which has an invented noble founder, Count Bruno of Pleißengau, at its centre. The purpose of this fiction was a conflict over the rights of the bishop of Naumburg. At the same time, it sought to compel the Naumburger bishop to pay compensation for moving the monastery from its original location Schmölln (near Altenburg) to the vicinity of the episcopal city Naumburg, and thus having supposedly confiscated a large portion of Bruno of Pleißengau’s original grant. See Holger Kunde, Das Zisterzienserkloster Pforte. Die Urkundenfälschungen und die frühe Geschichte bis 1236 (Cologne 2003). 9 On this point, now see the exhibition catalogue: Der Naumburger Meister. Bildhauer und Architekt im Europa der Kathedralen, Katalog zur Landesausstellung, ed. Hartmut Krohm and Holger Kunde (2 vols., Petersberg 2011).

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group stand the margraves of Meissen from the Ekkeharding Dynasty – which had died out with Margrave Ekkehard II (d. 1046) 200 years before the statues were carved. Therefore, their immortalisation among the figures in the west choir at Naumburg cannot be regarded as dynastic representation, but rather must be understood in the context of the Naumburg cathedral chapter’s self-understanding in the mid-thirteenth century. The more clearly it can be demonstrated that in many cases the founder’s memoria and a so-called ‘founder chronicle’ served the interests of the monastery, cathedral chapter or canonry, the more questionable it becomes whether these transmitted works were really about creation of dynastic self-understanding and princely representation at all. The methodological means to resolve this debate is the painstaking examination of individual cases, which can produce widely varying conclusions. In what follows I shall therefore present two prominent case studies that demonstrate in exemplary fashion the central aspects of discussion about the connections between noble memoria, the writing of history and dynastic self-understanding. The first example is that of the Welfs, research on who has provided important insights about the questions under discussion here. The second example is that of the Ludowings, who were the most influential dynasty in the central part of the Reich until the mid-thirteenth century; they too have been intensively examined in recent German scholarship. And so let us first consider the Welfs, who numbered among the oldest and most prominent high noble family units of the high Middle Ages. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that scholars have always paid them a great deal of attention.10 The Welfs, who reached their high point in the twelfth century, were not only of outstanding political and cultural significance. In addition, German scholars have held them up in all sorts of ways as a nearly ideal example for the development and mutability of high aristocratic memoria and princely self-understanding.11 The origins of the Welfs go back to the Carolingian era, even though their ancestry cannot be uncovered with complete clarity. The genealogical-historiographical tradition that evolved in the Welf milieu, starting in the third decade of the twelfth century, preserves the memory of a key ancestor named Welf, whose daughter Judith

10 See the comprehensive portrayal of the early and high medieval Welfs by Bernd Schneidmüller, Die Welfen. Herrschaft und Erinnerung (819–1252) (Stuttgart 2000). See also Die Welfen und ihr Brunswicker Hof im hohen Mittelalter, ed. Bernd Schneidmüller (Wiesbaden 1995); Heinrich der Löwe. Herrschaft und Repräsentation, ed. Johannes Fried and Otto-Gerhard Oexle (VF 57) (Stuttgart 2003); and the three-volume exhibition catalogue: Heinrich der Löwe und seine Zeit. Herrschaft und Repräsentation der Welfen 1125– 1235, Katalog der Ausstellung Brunswick 1995, ed. Jochen Luckhardt and Franz Niehoff (3 vols., Munich 1995). 11 Otto-Gerhard Oexle, ‘Welfische Memoria. Zugleich ein Beitrag über adlige Hausüberlieferung und die Kriterien ihrer Erforschung’, in Die Welfen und ihr Braunschweiger Hof, pp. 61–94.

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wed Emperor Louis the Pious in 819. The marriage of Judith and Louis produced the later king Charles II (‘the Bald’, d. 877). Judith’s younger sister Hemma was married to one of Louis the Pious’ sons by his first marriage, the East Frankish king Louis II (‘the German’, d. 876). With these two high-status marriage alliances Welf and his family assumed a position very close to the Frankish imperial house. The Rudolfings were descended from the West Frankish line of the family, who built up an independent lordship in High Burgundy and were kings of Burgundy until Rudolf III died without sons in 1032. At the turn of the ninth century the East Frankish Welfs can be seen occupying important countships and lands in Swabia, Bavaria and Raetia. With the establishment of a house of clerics, later transformed into a Benedictine monastery and named Weingarten (in Altdorf in the Schussengau north of Lake Constance) around the year 1000, and the building of the neighbouring castle of Ravensburg the Welfs formed a focal point for their widespread area of influence. Count Welf II (d. 1030) and his brother Heinrich were the first Welfs buried at Altdorf. With the monastery Altdorf-Weingarten and Ravensburg the Welfs at a very early stage took what was a decisive step in the development of many high noble families – the foundation and endowment of a spiritual institution to serve as necropolis and place of memoria, as well as the erection of a castle that at least at times functioned as their centre. It is clear that monastery and castle were of central significance for the family’s perception of self and of outsiders from the contemporary designation of family members as ‘Altdorfer’ or ‘Ravensburger’. It was only in the twelfth century that the family came to be called ‘Welfs’. The Latinized form catulus was used to present the Welfs as descendants of the Roman house of the Catilini.12 When Welf III (d. 1055) was invested with the duchy of Carinthia and the margraviate of Verona in 1047 and Welf IV (d. 1101) was appointed as duke of Bavaria in 1070, the Welfs ascended to the highest-ranking group of princes in the Salian Reich. They held the duchy of Bavaria almost without interruption until 1180 and in 1126 also secured the duchy of Saxony. Conflicts over the position of the Welfs in the Reich and their relationship to the crown (which fell to the Staufen relatives of the Welfs in the royal elections of 1138 and 1152) began with Duke Henry the Proud of Bavaria (d. 1139) and his son Henry the Lion (d. 1195). Until his deposition by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in 1180 and his banishment to the court of his father-in-law the English king Henry II, Henry the Lion was, as duke

12 As the Genealogia Welforum (prepared before 1126) reports in chapter 5 and the Historia Welforum of c. 1170 reports in chapter 2. See the Latin-German edition: Quellen zur Geschichte der Welfen und die Chronik Burchards von Ursberg, ed. and trans. Matthias Becher (AQDG 18b, Darmstadt 2007), pp. 25, 37–8. There is a brief discussion in English of the earlier history of the Welfs in Karl Jordan, Henry the Lion: A Biography, trans. P.S. Falla (Oxford 1986), pp. 1–8. [See also genealogical chart III above].

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of Saxony and Bavaria, the mightiest prince in the empire. In Bavaria the Wittelsbachs profited from his fall from power in 1180/81 to secure the ducal title; in Saxony the beneficiaries were the Ascanians. The Swabian-Bavarian possessions of the Welfs, which had fallen to Henry the Proud’s brother Welf VI (d. 1191), passed after the latter’s death into Staufen possession, since he had designated his nephew Frederick I Barbarossa as heir. However, the sons of Henry the Lion were able to preserve the Welf allodial lands in Saxony for the family. The continuance of the Welfs as a princely dynasty appeared uncertain until Henry the Lion’s grandson Otto the Child (d. 1252) was elevated to be duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (a duchy newly created from the Welf allodial possessions) by Emperor Frederick II in 1235. With the settlement of 1235 the late medieval history of the house began, now firmly linked to Saxon and northern German concerns.13 Recent German-language research has occupied itself intensively with the conflicts between the Staufer and the Welfs in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In the process, historians have freed themselves from the traditional interpretation of older scholarship, which saw these conflicts as evidence of a deeper, epochal conflict between Staufen and Welfs.14 This is not the place for further discussion of this debate. But it should be stressed that recent scholarship has shown, based not only on analysis of political history but also on examination of Welf memoria and the writing of history coupled to it, that we cannot regard the Welfs as a closed family unit with common interests and memory. Rather, it has become clear that Welf memoria, and the recollection of their own ancestry and history linked to it, was highly mutable. Their perspectives could shift with the Welfs’ political new departures and breaks in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.15 The Genealogia Welforum, prepared in the 1120s in the Welf’s own monastery of Weingarten under Duke Henry the Black of Bavaria (d. 1126) stands at the beginning of Welf memoria.16 This work is much less detailed about the dynasty’s origins in the Carolingian period than are the two later sources (which will be discussed below). Possibly its creation was inspired by the canonisation of Bishop Conrad of Constance (d. 975), an early Welf,

13 See the literature listed in note 10 above as well as the overview on the late Middle Ages by Ernst Schubert, ‘Welfen’, in Höfe und Residenzen im spätmittelalterlichen Reich. Ein dynastisch-topographisches Handbuch, 2 vols., ed. Werner Paravicini, revised by Jan Hirschbiegel and Jörg Wettlaufer (Ostfildern 2003), i. 204–13. 14 Werner Hechberger, Staufer und Welfen 1125–1190. Zur Verwendung von Theorien in der Geschichtswissenschaft (Cologne 1996); idem, ‘Haus und Geschlecht. Anmerkungen zu den Welfen des 12. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift für Württembergische Landesgeschichte 66 (2007), 47–61; Knut Görich, Friedrich Barbarossa. Eine Biographie (Munich 2011), pp. 461–85. 15 Schneidmüller, Die Welfen, pp. 15–40. 16 Genealogia Welforum, in Quellen zur Geschichte der Welfen, pp. 24–7.

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in 1123. At this time Henry the Black had the tombs of his predecessors sought out and perhaps also commissioned the Genealogia. Here can be seen the first self-conscious efforts to develop a consciousness of family and tradition in the Welf noble group. It can clearly be seen that remembrance of the Carolingian forebears had almost completely faded, and there was no knowledge at all of the Burgundian Welfs. The close connection of Henry the Black with the oldest Welf monastic foundation finds expression not only in the recording of the Genealogia Welforum but also in the duke’s decision to live in this monastery after his abdication and to arrange for his own and his wife’s burial there. He was the last Welf to find his final resting place in Altdorf-Weingarten. A further genealogical record followed the Genealogia Welforum, which can only be reconstructed today based on its reception in northern German chronicles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, such as the Annalista Saxo, (or ‘Saxon World Chronicle’). This lost text is known in German scholarship as the ‘Saxon Welf Source’.17 It was produced very probably between 1132 and 1137 in the Benedictine monastery of St. Michael’s, Lüneburg, the old burial place of the Billungs, who had held office as dukes of Saxony until the family died out in the early twelfth century. When Duke Henry the Proud of Bavaria succeeded in Bavaria in 1126 after the death of his father Henry the Black and was then also established as duke of Saxony, as son of the Billung heiress Wulfhild and son-in-law of the former Saxon duke and new king Lothar III, the foundations were laid for a Saxon branch of the Welf family. In the following period the Welfs linked themselves to the traditions of the Billung ducal family and with Lüneburg and Brunswick promoted two of the traditional centres of the Saxon duchy. The ‘Saxon Welf Source’ produced at St. Michael’s, Lüneburg, gave prominence to the Welfs’ Saxon concerns, and presented them as the legitimate heirs of the Billungs. In the ‘Saxon Welf Source’ the Carolingian beginnings of the family also come into close view for the first time, evidently as the result of more intensive and successful research than the author of the Genealogia Welforum had conducted. Count Welf (also called Eticho) appears here as the first Welf known by name. He was alleged to have married his daughter to Louis the Pious and his grandson was supposedly Charles the Bald. Thus, the Lüneburg Welf genealogy provides a founding ancestor who distinguished himself through closeness to the emperor but at the same time is presented as of such high rank that he could feel himself to be of equal birth with emperors and kings.

17 The so-called Saxon Welf Source in Quellen zur Geschichte der Welfen, pp. 28–33 (following the Low German text in Appendix IV of the Saxon World Chronicle). Cf. Otto-Gerhard Oexle, ‘Die “Sächsische Welfenquelle” als Zeugnis der welfischen Hausüberlieferung’, DA 24 (1968), 435–97.

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The third prominent source for the history of the Welfs is the Historia Welforum which was most probably produced c. 1170 in the milieu of Duke Welf VI, the brother of Henry the Proud and uncle of Henry the Lion.18 The Historia Welforum is regarded as the oldest noble ‘house tradition’ in the Reich and provides the most detailed family history of the Welfs. Its oldest manuscripts come from the Welf monastic foundations in Altomünster, Weingarten and Steingaden. The Historia expressly takes as its theme that there had been extensive research to reconstruct the beginnings and genealogy of the Welfs. The author does not appear to have used the older records from Weingarten and Lüneburg, because he gives unique insights at decisive points. Alongside the Welf progenitor in the Carolingian era, the Historia suggests, as a new element, a fictional Trojan origin for the Welfs. It is also remarkable that, again in contrast to his predecessors, the author claims that when Duke Welf III died in 1055 without direct heirs, he left all his possessions to the Welf monastery of Altdorf-Weingarten. However, his mother Imiza (Irmentrud) of Luxemburg is supposed to have overturned her son’s testamentary arrangements after his death – the author tells that she summoned her grandson Welf IV (son of her daughter Kunigunde and Margrave Azzo II of Este) from Italy and gave the family inheritance to him. While the Historia justifies the rejection of Welf III’s testament, and therefore the disinheritance of the monastery of Altdorf-Weingarten, on the grounds that it made the continuance of Welf lordship possible, the Genealogia from Weingarten and the Lüneburg history of the Welfs are completely silent on this subject. In the Historia Welforum the tale of the Welfs’ rise and self-assertion is told expressly as a tension between closeness to the king, distance from him and opposition to the crown. In this way the Historia Welforum reflects very impressionistically and nearly paradigmatically the entire spectrum of possible relations between a leading noble family and the crown in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, while stressing the high rank of the Welf princes. The focal point of the last section of the Historia is Welf VI, the uncle of the Henry the Lion, who resided in the upper Swabian-Bavarian region. According to the Historia Welforum his son Welf VII, who died in 1167 in the epidemic which swept through Barbarossa’s army near Rome, was addressed as dominus noster by Henry the Lion.19 If this can be interpreted as evidence that, at the time the Historia was composed, the Lion

18 Historia Welforum in Quellen zur Geschichte der Welfen, pp. 34–87 [Also in Historia Welforum, ed. Erich König (Schwäbische Chroniken der Stauferzeit 1, 2nd ed., Sigmaringen 1978)] On this text, see Matthias Becher, ‘Der Verfasser der Historia Welforum zwischen Heinrich dem Löwen und den süddeutschen Ministerialen des welfischen Hauses’, in Heinrich der Löwe. Herrschaft und Repräsentation, pp. 347–80; Leila Werthschulte, ‘Historia Welforum’, in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. Graeme Dunphy (Leiden 2010), i.806–7. 19 Historia Welforum c. 31, pp. 84–5.

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was regarded as heir of the entire dynasty, the text may have been created after the death of Welf VII, and before Welf VI decided to make his other nephew, Frederick I Barbarossa, his heir, that is c. 1167–78.20 The two last upper Swabian-Bavarian Welfs founded their final rest in Steingaden, the Praemonstratensian house founded and supported in the 1140s by Welf VI in the Bavarian-Swabian borderland. Here in Steingaden a short continuation of the Historia Welforum was produced that reported the inheritance agreement that Welf VI made with his nephew Frederick I Barbarossa and ends with the death and burial of Welf VI at Steingaden in 1191. The formation of the Welf tradition found expression in the context of these genealogical and historiographical texts and in liturgical memoria, as well as in prominent illustrations. The oldest pictorial representation of the Welf genealogy – indeed the oldest portrayal of a family tree in art in the Reich as a whole – is the family tree at the end of the Weingarten Necrology (Hessische Landesbibliothek Fulda, Codex D 11, fol. 13v).21 This coloured drawing, which dates from the late twelfth century, presents the succession of the generations of Welfs from the first Welf of the Carolingian age up to Duke Welf VI and his heir Frederick I Barbarossa, ranged along a tree trunk and its branches and leaves. Side notes explain that it is based on the information provided in the Historia Welforum. Still, the drawing imposes its own distinct emphasis, since the creator decided to have the Welf family tree peak with the Staufen Emperor Frederick I. This demonstrated that the artist of the oldest Welf family tree, unlike the author of the Historia Welforum, already knew of Welf VI’s bequest to the emperor. But it also demonstrates that Barbarossa had been integrated as legitimate heir into the Welf history; the creator apparently did not see the situation in terms of a diametric opposition between Staufer and Welf. Another important illustration shows even more clearly that this corresponds entirely to the perspective of the old Welf house monastery of Weingarten; for at the head of the Weingarten manuscript of the Historia Welforum we are shown Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa enthroned between his sons King Henry VI and Duke Frederick of Swabia (Hessische Landesbibliothek Fulda, Codex D 11, fol. 14r).22

20 For discussion, see Karl Leyser, ‘Frederick Barbarossa and the Hohenstaufen Polity’, in his Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Gregorian Revolution and Beyond, ed. Timothy Reuter (London 1994), pp. 133–4. 21 Otto-Gerhard Oexle, ‘Welfische und staufische Hausüberlieferung in der Handschrift Fulda D 11 aus Weingarten’, in Von der Klosterbibliothek zur Landesbibliothek. Beiträge zum zweihundertjährigen Bestehen der Hessischen Landesbibliothek Fulda, ed. Artur Brall (Stuttgart 1978), pp. 203–31. Images in Heinrich der Löwe und seine Zeit, i. 64, 68. See also Werner Hechberger, ‘Graphische Darstellungen des Welfenstammbaums. Zum welfischen “Selbstverständnis” im 12. Jahrhundert’, AfK 79 (1997), 269–97. 22 Image in Heinrich der Löwe und seine Zeit, i. 69.

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The illustration of the Welf, Billung, Ascanian and Staufen family tree in the Liber Ordinarius of the Brunswick canonry St. Blaise from c. 1300 displays significantly different points of emphasis (Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv Wolfenbüttel VII B Hs. 129, fol. 47v).23 In 1189 Matilda, wife of Henry the Lion and daughter of King Henry II of England, was buried at St. Blaise, and 1195 the Lion himself was laid to rest there. The ducal couple had thus made the Brunswick canonry the centre for memoria of the Saxon Welfs. The erection of the magnificent double tomb for Henry and Matilda in the 1220s/1230s demonstrates that the Welf dukes of BrunswickLüneburg and the canonry of St. Blaise consciously linked themselves to the memorial tradition. The illustrator of the genealogical table in the Liber Ordinarius chose the first Billung duke Herman (d. 973) and his wife as the starting point for the succession of generations in Saxony. Then he drew in the Welfs and Ascanians as the two parallel lines of inheritance after the death of Magnus, the last Billung (d. 1106), so that finally he could make the Welfs appear as heirs of the entire reunited Billung inheritance, with the marriage of Otto the Child (who became duke of Brunswick in 1235) and the Ascanian Mechtild of Brandenburg. In this perspective the Welfs were made into a Saxon noble dynasty whose memoria was firmly based in St. Blaise in Brunswick. A third and final illustrated testimony to Welf memoria must be considered, the famous Evangeliary of Henry the Lion, although the dating and interpretation of this manuscript continue to be debated among scholars (Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, Codex Guelf. 105, Noviss. 2°; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Clm 30055).24 This extraordinarily magnificent gospel book, produced in the Benedictine monastery of Helmarshausen at the request of Henry the Lion and his wife Matilda, contains two illuminated pages that portray these princely patrons. The dedication image (fol. 19r) shows Matilda and her husband, with Saints Giles and Blaise taking them by the hand and presenting them to the Virgin Mary and Child, enthroned in the upper register. The coronation image at the end of the evangeliary (fol. 171v) presents a complicated image programme that has given rise to widely differing interpretations. In the lower half of the illumination the kneeling ducal couple forms the focal point; both carry crosses in their hands and are being crowned by two hands coming from above. On the right side, behind Matilda, stand the father and grandmother of the duchess, the English king Henry II and his mother Empress Matilda,

23 Images in Heinrich der Löwe und seine Zeit, i.73. See Bernd Schneidmüller, ‘BillungerAskanier-Welfen. Eine genealogische Bildtafel aus dem Braunschweiger Blasius-Stift und das hochadlige Familienbewußtsein in Sachsen um 1300’, AfK 69 (1987), 30–61. 24 Image in Heinrich der Löwe und seine Zeit, i. 152, 207. On the debate, see Schneidmüller, Die Welfen, pp. 33–7.

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both bearing crosses, as well as another female figure that cannot be identified. Behind Henry the Lion on the left side stand his parents, Duke Henry the Proud and Gertrude, as well as her parents, Emperor Lothar III and his wife Richenza. They, too, carry crosses. The clearly divided upper half of the illumination shows Christ himself at the centre, who in a scroll presents an invitation to follow him: ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross’ (Matthew 16: 24: Qui vult venire post me, abneget semetipsum et tollat crucem suam). Christ is flanked by eight saints, including Blaise and Bartholomew (who was particularly venerated in Brunswick) and Archbishop Thomas Becket of Canterbury (recently canonised in 1173). The significance of this ambitious image is still not completely clear. If the evangeliary was produced in the mid-1170s, the coronation scene can be interpreted as an expression of the Welf ducal couple’s claim to equality of rank with the king. But if the image was only produced later, as a liturgical book for the altar of the Virgin Mary in the church of St. Blaise (which was consecrated in 1188), its production could be linked to the return of the ducal couple to Brunswick from their English exile in 1185. If that is the case, interpretations of the image as a political programme are less convincing than are interpretations that see it as an expression of piety. These interpretations link the invitation to follow Jesus with the liturgical carrying of crosses and understand the crowns descending onto Heinrich’s and Matilda’s heads as symbols of the promise of eternal life. With an eye to Welf memoria and Welf self-understanding one thing is certainly clear: the figural programme in the lower half of the coronation image documents a consciousness of the multiple descent of the ducal couple from emperors and kings and places Welf memoria in a Europe-wide context. This brief look at the Welf traditions should have made it clear how diverse and complex the background, motives and functions behind the creation of both written and figural witnesses to noble memoria and the historiography coupled to them could be. The three most important locales for transmitting Welf memoria – Weingarten, Lüneburg and Brunswick – do not stand only for the various stages of development and the different branches of the dynasty. More importantly, they also stand for the spiritual institutions that linked their differing interests with care for the memoria and fama of their princely sponsors. But one should also note that the first genealogical record, the Genealogia Welforum, reflected the keen interest of the reigning Welf, Henry the Black, in the origins and history of his family. Looking at its further development in the twelfth and thirteenth century, though, it is impossible to speak of a unified ‘Welf’ memoria, but rather of many and changing perspectives on the history of their forebears. By comparison, let us briefly consider the Ludowings, who were the most important noble family in the Hessian-Thuringian region from the late eleventh century until the family died out in the mid-thirteenth century. [See genealogical chart IX above]. At the height of the development of their lordship, the Ludowings in their capacity as landgraves of Thuringia, counts

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palatine of Saxony and counts in Hesse had at their disposal lordship over property and rights from the middle Rhine eastwards over modern northern Hesse and Thuringia as far as the region of modern Saxony.25 In contrast to the Welfs, whose origins can be traced back to the eighth/ninth centuries, the Ludowings are first encountered in the eleventh century. They are among the noble families of the high Middle Ages that first appeared in the Salian era. The first Ludowing known by name, Ludwig with the Beard, controlled property and lordship rights in Franconia and before the middle of the eleventh century began to build up a lordship based on newly cleared land on the northwest edge of the Thuringian Forest. His son Ludwig the Leaper (d. 1123) founded the Hirsau-oriented Benedictine monastery of Reinhardsbrunn (southwest of Gotha) in 1085. He also erected the oldest castles of his dynasty, which was rapidly becoming wealthy: Schauenburg (in the Thuringian Forest near Friedrichsroda), Wartburg (near Eisenach) and Neuenburg (near Naumburg on the Saale). Thanks to favourable marriage alliances, the sons of Ludwig the Leaper also acquired the inheritance of the Hessian comital family of the Gisones and expanded the area of their lordship as far as Kassel and Marburg on the Lahn. The son of the monastic founder, another Ludwig, was finally elevated to the landgravate of Thuringia by King Lothar III in 1130/31. His successors were among the closest allies of the Staufen and profited from Duke Henry the Lion’s fall from power in 1180/81, receiving the palatine countship of Saxony. The Ludowings’ alliance with the Staufen also remained a key element of landgravial policy into the early thirteenth century. It was only in the 1240s that Henry Raspe IV (1227–1247), the last Ludowing landgrave, changed sides; and with papal support he allowed himself to be elected anti-king against Emperor Frederick II in 1246. Henry Raspe’s kingship was not hopeless, but his premature and childless death in 1247 prevented any further development of his power base. In Thuringia the Ludowing inheritance went to the margrave of Meissen, the Wettin Henry the Illustrious. In Hesse it was Duchess Sophie of Brabant and her son Henry the Child who succeeded in establishing themselves as heirs. (She was the daughter of Henry’s elder brother, Ludwig IV (d. 1227) and his wife St. Elizabeth, who died in 1231 and was canonised in 1235).26

25 See the recent overviews by Matthias Werner, ‘Ludowinger’, in Höfe und Residenzen, i.149–54 and by Stefan Tebruck, ‘Landesherrschaft – Adliges Selbstverständnis – Höfische Kultur. Die Ludowinger in der Forschung’, in Wartburg-Jahrbuch 2008 (Regensburg 2010), pp. 30–77, as well as the relevant articles, maps, and illustrations in the exhibition catalogue: Elisabeth von Thüringen – eine europäische Heilige, ed. Dieter Blume and Matthias Werner, with the assistance of Uwe John and Helge Wittmann (2 vols., Petersberg 2007), pp. 58–100. 26 For this point, see most recently Matthias Werner, ‘Landgraf Heinrich Raspe von Thüringen (1227–1247) – Reichsfürst in der Mitte des Reiches und “Gegenkönig” Konrads IV.’, in

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The memoria of this noble family that rose so remarkably quickly to prominence was at first based on the monastery of Reinhardsbrunn. The foundation history of this monastery, first composed at the end of the twelfth century, only survives today in the Reinchardsbrunn chronicle (a compilation created before 1350) and a short version of the foundation history produced in 1234 under the title De ortu principum Thuringie. It combines an account of the monastery’s foundation with rich genealogical and historiographical details about the founding family.27 The author of this foundation history emphasises certain points that allow us to see how the Reinhardsbrunn monks wanted the rise of the Ludowings to be perceived. The Ludowings are praised in this text as descendants of Charlemagne and blood relatives of the Salian imperial house. The Ludowings’ closeness to the king receives particular emphasis, while no mention at all is made of Ludwig the Leaper’s participation in the Saxon princes’ opposition to Henry IV and later Henry V or to his close connections to the pro-papal Church reformers. The elevation of Ludwig I (son of the monastic founder) to become landgrave of Thuringia is presented as an elevation to the ranks of the imperial princes, as such an event was imagined at the end of the twelfth century.28 It was certainly not a foregone conclusion that the monastery founded at Reinhardsbrunn would survive and in the twelfth century would develop into a Ludowing house monastery.29 As early as the 1080s Count Ludwig the Leaper and his brother Berengar gave their older family property around Schönrain on the River Main to Hirsau so that the Hirsau monks could found a priory there. But already before 1100 the Ludowings appear to have distanced themselves for the most part from their Franconian origins, with the transfer of their main power base to Thuringia. Still, the connections

Konrad IV. (1228–1254). Deutschlands letzter Stauferkönig, ed. Gesellschaft für staufische Geschichte (Göppingen 2012), pp. 26–48; idem, ‘Neugestaltung in der Mitte des Reiches. Thüringen und Hessen nach dem Ende des ludowingischen Landgrafenhauses 1247 und die Langsdorfer Verträge von 1263’, in Neugestaltung in der Mitte des Reiches. 750 Jahre Langsdorfer Verträge 1263/2013, ed. Ursula Braasch-Schwersmann, Christine Reinle and Ulrich Ritzerfeld (Marburg 2013), pp. 5–118. 27 Stefan Tebruck, Die Reinhardsbrunner Geschichtsschreibung im Hochmittelalter. Klösterliche Traditionsbildung zwischen Fürstenhof, Kirche und Reich (Frankfurt am Main 2001). Cronica Reinhardsbrunnensis, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger, MGHS SS xxx(1). 490– 656. De ortu principum Thuringia: Historia brevis principum Thuringiae, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS xxiv.393–408. On these two sources see also the brief overview in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, i.406–7 and 513. 28 Jürgen Petersohn, ‘“De ortu principum Thuringie”. Eine Schrift über die Fürstenwürde der Landgrafen von Thüringen aus dem 12. Jahrhundert’, DA 48 (1992), 585–608 therefore regards this source as evidence of the Ludowings’ dynastic self-understanding in c. 1180. 29 For the following, cf. Jürgen Petersohn, ‘Die Ludowinger. Selbstverständnis und Memoria eines hochmittelalterlichen Reichsfürstengeschlechts’, BDLG 129 (1993), 1–39.

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of the family continued to reach back to Mainz. Ludwig with the Beard, who died before 1080, was buried in St. Alban’s, Mainz. And connections to Mainz remained remarkably strong even into the late twelfth century. In 1171 Landgrave Ludwig II, great-grandson of the first Ludowing, gave property to the canons of St. Stephen, Mainz, the income of which was to be used to care for the souls of the landgravial family. In return, the canons included the landgrave and his descendants in their prayers.30 Besides Mainz and Schönrain, another locale where a lasting Ludowing memorial tradition might have developed was Sangerhausen in northern Thuringia. A junior branch of the family had begun to establish itself there with Berengar, brother of Count Ludwig the Leaper. Berengar was buried in the church of St. Ulrich in Sangerhausen alongside the tombs of the relatives of his mother Cecilia of Sangerhausen. But apparently the possibility of developing Sangerhausen further as a memorial centre for this part of the family was deliberately cut off, since in July 1110 the church of St. Ulrich was turned over to the monastery of Reinhardsbrunn with the stipulation that the monks would pray for the living and dead of the family, including those members buried at Sangerhausen.31 From then on Reinhardsbrunn became the exclusive burial place of the dynasty. It was only then that Ludwig the Leaper’s monastery became the centre for Ludowing memoria. No memorial texts have survived from Reinhardsbrunn.32 But we know that Reinhardsbrunn had a Liber memorialis, at the head of which was listed the monastery’s prayer confraternity with Hirsau and Cluny, thanks to the Reinhardsbrunn letter collection (which was assembled after 1150).33 Therefore, it is possible to evaluate a series of relevant reports in the Reinhardsbrunn chronicle as well as individual documents that give information about the Ludowings’ endowments for the good of their souls to various ecclesiastical institutions. The first part of the Reinhardsbrunn chronicle displays in numerous passages the characteristics of a cartulary chronicle, a narrative based on documentary evidence of gifts, sales and contributions to the community. In it, the series of reports of burials and linked gifts by the founding family opens with a brief notice under the year 1110: in this year Adelheid died, praised

30 Mainzer UB, vol. 2/1, ed. Peter Acht (Darmstadt 1968), pp. 573–4 no. 338. 31 Urkunden der Markgrafen von Meißen und Landgrafen von Thüringen 1100–1197, ed. Otto Posse (CD Sax A, I/2) (Leipzig 1889), p. 22 no. 25. 32 The only extant Ludowing necrology consists of calendar entries in a psalter that probably belonged to Gertrude, the youngest daughter of Landgrave Ludwig IV and St. Elisabeth. Gertrude was abbess of the house of Praemonstratensian canonesses at Altenburg (near Wetzlar) from 1248 to 1297. Cf. Christian Schuffels, ‘Nekrologische Einträge im Kalendar des Psalters der Gertrud von Altenberg’, in Elisabeth von Thüringen, catalogue volume, pp. 257–9. 33 Die Reinhardsbrunner Briefsammlung, ed. Friedel Peeck (MGH Epistolae selectae 5, Weimar 1952).

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as fundatrix as the wife of Count Ludwig the Leaper. She was laid to rest in the middle of the church before the altar dedicated to the Holy Cross.34 Her burial was only the first of a series of princely entombments before the Holy Cross altar. Ludwig the Leaper himself entered the monastery toward the end of his life, yet again gave generous gifts for his soul and those of his descendants and died in the monastery in 1123. After him, with very few exceptions all the male members of the dynasty, as well as the landgravines, were buried in the monastic church during the twelfth century. Still, it is important to note that the Ludowing memoria was by no means linked exclusively to the monastic church of Reinhardsbrunn. Among the gifts and endowments that individual members of the family made to other religious institutions, those of Bishop Udo I of Naumburg, brother of the first Ludowing landgrave, particularly stand out. Between 1140 and 1147 he made generous donations to the canonry of St. Peter and Paul in Zeitz for the soul of his deceased father Ludwig the Leaper and his family, stipulating that on the anniversary of his father’s death there should be a vigil, mass, feeding of the poor and a monetary gift to the Zeitz canons.35 The entries for Ludwig the Leaper and his wife Adelheid in the mortuologium of Naumburg cathedral can also be traced back to Bishop Udo I. Landgrave Ludwig III’s gift to the canonry of St. Maurice in Naumburg, attested in a document dating before 1189 (and very probably before his departure of the Third Crusade, on which he died), along with Ludwig’s induction into prayer confraternity with the canons,36 adds to the impression that Naumburg existed alongside Reinhardsbrunn as a centre of Ludowing commemoration of the dead. Just as the Ludowings did not entrust the care for their memoria exclusively to the Benedictines of Reinhardsbrunn in the twelfth century, for its part their house monastery developed into a religious centre that was by no means the exclusive preserve of the landgravial family. Count Erwin of Tonna, the ancestor of the later counts of Gleichen, was the first of a series of Thuringian nobles who turned to Reinhardsbrunn with gifts and requests for burial; in 1116 he entered the monastery and died there.37 Besides him, a number of other nobles donated their goods and churches to the Ludowing house cloister up to the mid-twelfth century, so that by c. 1200 the monastery had established no less than seven priories and cared for the dead of these founding families. Reinhardsbrunn certainly profited from the rise of the Ludowings, who since the elevation of Ludwig the Leaper’s son to become landgrave of

34 Cronica Reinhardsbrunnensis, p. 529. 35 UB des Hochstifts Naumburg, Erster Teil (967–1207), ed. Felix Rosenfeld (Magdeburg 1925), pp. 130–1 no. 150; 159–60 no. 179. 36 Ibid., pp. 326–7 no. 358. 37 Cronica Reinhardsbrunnensis, p. 530.

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Thuringia in 1131 were among the most influential and powerful imperial princes of the Staufen era. The annals and ‘histories’ produced in the monastery after the mid-twelfth century show how important the Ludowings’ rise was for the monastery’s traditions and self-understanding. These records were continued up to the time of Landgrave Herman I (1190–1217) and report both the history of the landgravate and that of the Reich in this period. There is also the foundation history of the monastery mentioned above, composed at the end of the twelfth century, which reports the rise of the Ludowings and the foundation of Reinhardsbrunn. The break in tradition that endangered Reinhardsbrunn’s significance as Ludowing memorial centre began, though, with Landgrave Herman I. He chose as burial place for himself and his wife the Cistercian convent of St. Katherine in Eisenach of which he had been a benefactor since 1208. Herman I had two magnificent psalters in French style prepared there, which were probably intended for private prayer at court, but at the same time reflect in their illustration programme the landgravial family’s self-understanding. The so-called ‘Elisabeth Psalter’ (Cividale, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Codice CXXXVII) was probably made before 1208, while the ‘Landgrave Psalter’ (Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek HB II 24) may have been prepared a few years later.38 A dedication portrait at the beginning of the Litany of All Saints of the ‘Elisabeth Psalter’ (fol. 167v) is particularly revealing for the memoria and self-understanding of the princely family. It depicts Landgrave Herman I and his wife Sophia kneeling at the feet of the Holy Trinity and making an offering to the monastery of Reinhardsbrunn, shown in the form of a model church. This portrayal presents in nearly ideal form the importance of the monastery as the site of the princely family’s memoria. In the ‘Landgrave Psalter’ the portraits of the princely couple appear in a diptych-style arcade illustrating the litany of the saints (fol. 174v – fol. 176r). The landgravial couple, Herman and Sophia, are there depicted as part of a series of images of Bohemian and Hungarian royal couples, to whom the Ludowings were related through their marriage. In this way the Ludowings appear to have claimed a rank comparable to royalty for themselves. This conclusion is supported well by other aspects of Landgrave Herman I’s court. The promotion of literature, the construction of remarkably ambitious castles and the commissioning of scribes and illuminators to prepare these two psalters – very modern for their time – all attest how eager the

38 Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Der Elisabethpsalter in Cividale del Friuli. Buchmalerei für den Thüringer Landgrafenhof zu Beginn des 13. Jahrhunderts (Berlin 2001); Der Landgrafenpsalter, commentary volume, ed. Felix Heinzer (Bielefeld 1992). On both books, see most recently Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, ‘Der Elisabeth-Psalter’, in Elisabeth von Thüringen, catalogue volume, pp. 67–70; idem, ‘Der Landgrafenpsalter’, in the same volume, pp. 70–1; idem, ‘Zum Bildprogramm des Naumburger Westchores’, in Der Naumburger Meister, ii.1158–68.

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political, kinship and cultural relations of the landgrave’s court were in this period. Princely self-portrayal and memoria appear closely linked here, even when bearing in mind that the psalters were intended for use at court rather than as representational pieces. Under Herman I’s sons and successors, Landgraves Ludwig IV and Henry Raspe IV, a wide array of possibilities opened up for new developments and forms of dynastic memoria, individual pious practices and princely representation. The new religious movements of the early thirteenth century – Franciscans, Dominicans and Beguines – found resonance at the landgravial court, too, not least thanks to the influence of Ludwig IV’s wife St. Elisabeth, who was canonised in 1235, four years after her death. Promotion of the Franciscans, openness to the preachers of the poverty movement, crusader piety and privileging of the military religious orders, especially the Teutonic Knights – all of these came together in Landgrave Ludwig IV, along with a remarkably traditional attitude toward the old dynastic ‘house monastery’ of Reinhardsbrunn, to which he gave handsome gifts and which he designated as his place of burial. By contrast, with his two younger brothers, Henry Raspe IV (who succeeded him as landgrave in 1227) and Conrad, one can see new orientations. Conrad became a Teutonic Knight in 1234 and in 1239/40 was chosen as Master of the Order. He especially sponsored the house of the Teutonic Order in Marburg, participated intensively to integrate the veneration of his canonised sister-in-law Elisabeth in the Order’s sphere of interest, and was finally buried in the church of St. Elisabeth in Marburg. Henry Raspe IV favoured the Franciscans and Dominicans; he founded a prayer confraternity at St. Nicholas’s Church in Eisenach in 1239 for all the clergy in the area under his lordship, and had himself interred in the Cistercian convent of St. Katherine in Eisenach. It is notable that neither the Ludowings’ landgravial court nor the house monastery of Reinhardsbrunn understood how to make a lasting profit from the canonisation and Europe-wide veneration of Landgravine Elisabeth. The lively and rapidly expanding pilgrimage to Elisabeth’s tomb in Marburg passed them by. To be sure, there was an attempt in Reinhardsbrunn to establish their own veneration of a saint, despite restricted means. When a variety of healing miracles were reported at Ludwig IV’s grave in 1233/34 there was an attempt, albeit in vain, to initiate a pilgrimage tradition to the landgrave’s tomb in Reinhardsbrunn.39 Long after the end of the dynasty that it had to thank for its creation and success, the Ludowing house monastery of Reinhardsbrunn displayed a creative and obstinate association with the landgraves’ traditions and memoria. The monastery was largely destroyed by a great fire in 1292, although it was rebuilt relatively quickly. But the monastery fell into an ominous debt crisis that lasted until long after

39 Wilhelm Levison, ‘Miracula Lodowici Lantgravii’, Neues Archiv 47 (1928), 551–8.

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1300. The renewed veneration of Landgrave Ludwig IV, who was buried at Reinhardsbrunn, thus played an important role in the slow upturn of the monastery, which also gained financially from this cult. The vita of Ludwig IV, composed in Reinhardsbrunn in 1308 and translated into German in the 1320s, not only described the life of the saintly Ludwig at the side of his sainted wife Elisabeth, but gave Reinhardsbrunn a major role in his veneration. A long list of miraculous cures reported to have taken place at Ludwig IV’s tomb in the monastic church testified not only that Ludwig was worthy of sainthood but to the holiness of the location where these miracles occurred, that is Reinhardsbrunn.40 The newly adopted veneration of Ludwig corresponded to a renewal of interest in the memoria of the Ludowings as founders. A total of eight lavish tomb brasses are still extant, which were probably produced in the first half of the fourteenth century for the graves of the most important Ludowings and their wives who were buried at Reinhardsbrunn. It is, however, unclear what role the monastery and the new Wettin lords played in this renewed memoria of the founding family.41 It remains to summarise the conclusions that can be reached from the two examples that have briefly been sketched here. A first point is that genealogical records that developed from monastic care for memoria were an essential element in forming a family’s consciousness of ancestry and tradition over the course of several generations. The initiative to write down what was known about the forebears and the history of the family did not always stem from the noble family itself, although it did in the case of the Welf Henry the Black. With the Ludowings the interest in the genealogy and origins of the founding family appears to have stemmed from the monastery of Reinhardsbrunn. Like the genealogies, the historical works that grew from them differ. The Historia Welforum was probably produced in the direct environs of the Welf court in south Germany and can be understood as ‘noble house tradition’. But the Reinhardsbrunn foundation history, by contrast, is a monastic fundatio written in the interest of the monastery, while the ‘histories’ on the one hand celebrate the deeds of the Ludowing princes but on the other hand also display the characteristics of an entirely inward-directed monastic chronicle. Both examples also show how imprecise the term ‘house monastery’ is, and provide a glimpse at the many-sidedness and mutability of memorial practice. Both the Welfs and the

40 Leben des Heiligen Ludwig, Landgrafen in Thüringen, Gemahls der Heiligen Elisabeth. Nach der lateinischen Urschrift übersetzt von Friedrich Ködiz von Salfeld. Zum ersten Mal hg. mit sprachlichen und historischen Erläuterungen von Heinrich Rückert (Leipzig 1851). 41 Ernst Schubert, ‘Drei Grabmäler des Thüringer Landgrafenhauses aus dem Kloster Reinhardsbrunn’, in Skluptur des Mittelalters. Funktion und Gestalt, ed. Friedrich Möbius and Ernst Schubert (Weimar 1987), pp. 212–42; Magdalene Magirius, Figürliche Grabmäler in Sachsen und Thüringen von 1080 bis um 1400 (Esens/Nordsee 2002).

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Ludowings maintained close relations with different religious institutions at the same time. The gifts and foundations for the memoria of the dynasty were persistently divided among different centres, even though many monasteries – like Reinhardsbrunn – fought against losing their exclusive position as burial place of the princely house. Thus, claims to the position of ‘house monastery’ and dynastic self-understanding could conflict with each other. Finally, the examples given here also show that the de luxe liturgical books closely connected to memoria, produced on commission from the princely family, were accessible to very few. This is true of the two psalters at the Thuringian landgrave’s court and perhaps to an even higher degree of the Evangeliary of Henry the Lion in the canonical church of St. Blaise. One must therefore question to what extent they can be understood as representational art directed outward to a wider audience.

11 Violence, feud, and peacemaking Christine Reinle

Introduction to the theme: a provisional definition of feud, research trends and questions Violence was all too prevalent in the medieval German Empire, and the feud – and the need to make peace after such feuds – was a characteristic phenomenon of aristocratic life. Hence the concept has become increasingly central to modern scholarship on medieval Germany. Feuds and peace agreements had an acknowledged place in the political structure of the medieval empire. Nevertheless, they underwent a profound transformation in the several centuries from the early Middle Ages to the middle of the fourteenth century. Above all, the feud experienced a decisive formalisation and legalisation through the Landfrieden (land peace decrees) of the Staufen rulers.1 Thus, the relationship between violence, feud and peacemaking changed significantly over time. A definition of feud for our investigation that does not take into account the changes of the Staufen era must necessarily be very broad. According to Christoph Meyer, whose definition takes its inspiration from anthropology, feud in the early Middle Ages was ‘a condition of enmity between two parties who lived within the same political unity or community’.2 This fundamental truth was still valid in the late Middle Ages: feud and enmity remained inextricably linked to each other. A further fundamental issue is that neither the Frankish kings nor the later German kings/Roman emperors succeeded in delegitimising engagement in feuds. This differentiates

1 Mattias G. Fischer, Reichsreform und ‘Ewiger Landfrieden’. Über die Entwicklung des Fehderechts im 15. Jahrhundert bis zum absoluten Fehdeverbot von 1495 (Aalen 2007), p. 29. For the significance of the feud, see in particular the still very pertinent observations of Karl Leyser, ‘The German Aristocracy From the Ninth to the Early Twelfth Century, a Historical and Cultural Sketch’, in his Medieval Germany and Its Neighbours 900–1250 (London 1982), 161–89, especially pp. 173–8 [first published in 1968]. 2 Christoph Meyer, ‘Freunde, Feinde, Fehde: Funktionen kollektiver Gewalt im Frühmittelalter’, in Hoheitliches Strafen in der Spätantike und im frühen Mittelalter, ed. Jürgen Weitzel (Cologne 2002), p. 215.

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development in the German Empire from that of many other lands. Until the so-called ‘Eternal Peace’ of 1495 the feud was a component of legal order, and even after 1495 it remained a component of the social order. Inasmuch as feud can be described in a preliminary, and still rudimentary, definition, it was a socially accepted and legitimate means through which enmity between individuals or groups was manifested in violent exchanges. Feuds generally had their origin in personal disputes.3 This definition, formulated as an approach to the phenomenon, is not invalidated by the fact that the conceptualisation of feuds in the contemporary sources is vague, and moreover these sources offer differing discourses about feud depending on their type. Chroniclers were happy to portray their own institution and their charges as victims of noble or princely violence, passing over the reasons for feuding in silence, giving a central role to feuding activities and decrying breaches of the law, the excesses of feuds and the involvement of foreign troops.4 But other narrative sources depict feuds neutrally or even positively.5 Normative sources for their part discuss feuds primarily from the point of view of the pragmatic limitations and occasional suspensions that might be imposed upon them. However, we lack extended legal discussion of the feud, because during the High Middle Ages we do not as yet find those texts known as Fürstenspiegeln (mirrors of princes) in the German parts of the empire – texts in which late medieval theoreticians of lordship placed the prince’s duty to keep the peace at centre stage.6 By contrast, there was a discourse on honour which was already prevalent in the High Middle Ages, honour being a concept that was presented as competitive, even agonistic, and in consequence often helped to cause feuds.7 Personal accounts of feuds are largely lacking for the empire in our period. In light of the large number of discourses it is not permissible to come to the

3 Cf. Rudolf His, Das Strafrecht des deutschen Mittelalters (2 vols., Weimar 1920–35, reprinted Aalen 1964), i.266. His’ definition was developed in the context of treatment of murdering feuds, but can be transferred to this context. 4 For a Bavarian example, Chronicon Magni Presbiteri, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, MGH SS xvii. 519; on which see Walter Dürig, ‘Die bogen-bayerische Fehde des Jahres 1192 im Lichte eines zeitgenössischen liturgischen Gebetes’, HJ 75 (1956), 171. 5 E.g. Gesta Alberonis archiepiscopi auctore Balderico, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS viii, c. 16, p. 252 and c. 25, pp. 255–6 [A Warrior Bishop of the Twelfth Century: The Deeds of Albero of Trier, trans. Brian A. Pavlac (Toronto 2008), pp. 46, 59–61]. 6 Cf. Karl Ubl, Engelbert von Admont. Ein Gelehrter im Spannungsfeld von Aristotelismus und christlicher Überlieferung (Vienna 2000), p. 86. On pax as a lordly task and central value, see also Erwin Herrmann, ‘Der Fürstenspiegel des Michael von Prag’, HJ 91 (1971), 34; Wilhelm Janssen, ‘Friede’, in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe 2 (1975), esp. pp. 551–2; Otto Brunner, Land and Lordship. Structures of Governance in Medieval Austria, trans. Howard Kaminsky and James Van Horn Melton (Philadelphia 1992), p. 359. 7 On this point see Knut Görich, Die Ehre Barbarossas. Kommunikation, Konflikt und politisches Handeln im 12. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt 2001).

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conclusion from the existing critique of feud that the acceptance of feuding as legitimate is only a research construct.8 Only the fundamental sanctioning of every form of feud through legal norms and judicial practice would permit such a conclusion. But this was not the case. Feud and peace are closely linked to the problem of the build-up of princely lordship since the exercise of private power was long seen as a hindrance to state creation in the ‘stately’ tradition of German constitutional history. Against this view was an assessment of maintaining the peace as not only a central royal duty, but also as one of the responsibilities from which a ducal or princely position of supremacy derived. The inclination to regard feud from the perspective of general peace and thus look forward to its gradual abolition has been an influential theme in modern research. However, the work of Otto Brunner has followed quite another path, uncoupling feud from a general condemnation of the rule of force – the strong overpowering the weak – and emphasising its character as a legitimate means of violent self-help and its rules idealised.9 Both research traditions were ultimately dependent on legal and constitutional historical research questions and their point of departure was the interpretation of princely conflict. Recent research that investigates the social function of feuds focusses predominantly on the lower nobility, so they need not be considered here.10 One should, however, mention a study by Hillay Zmoras, which stresses in an innovative way the effects of noble feuds, which aided the build-up of princely lordship.11 By contrast, research on ritual has examined less the practice of feud itself but rather the mechanisms to limit and end conflict and the symbolic language around feuds and individual violent acts.12 There

8 Hans-Henning Kortüm, ‘Fehde’, in Enzyklopädie des Mittelalters, ed. Gerd Melville and Martial Staub (2 vols., Darmstadt 2008), i.274; Kortüm, Kriege und Krieger 500–1500 (Stuttgart 2010), p. 71. 9 Brunner, Land and Lordship, pp. 90–4. 10 Gadi Algazi, Herrengewealt und Gewalt der Herren im späten Mittelalter. Herrschaft, Gegenseitigkeit und Sprachgebrauch (Frankfurt a. M. 1996); Joseph Morsel, ‘“Das sy sich mitt der besstenn gewarsamig schicken, das sy durch die widerwertigenn Franckenn nitt nidergeworffen werdenn.” Überlegungen zum sozialen Sinn der Fehdepraxis am Beispiel des spätmittelalterlichen Franken’, in Strukturen der Gesellschaft im Mittelalter. Interdisziplinäre Mediävistik in Würzburg, ed. Dieter Rödel and Joachim Schneider (Wiesbaden 1996), pp. 140–67. 11 Hillay Zmora, State and Nobility in Early Modern Germany: The Knightly Feud in Franconia, 1440–1567 (Cambridge 1997). See also Zmora, The Feud in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge 2011). 12 Gerd Althoff, Spielregeln der Politike im Mittelalter. Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde (Darmstadt 1997); idem, ‘Schranken der Gewalt. Wie gewalttätig war das “finstere Mittelalter”?’ in Der Krieg im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit: Gründe, Begründungen, Bilder, Bräuche, Recht, ed. Horst Brunner (Wiesbaden 1999), pp. 1–23; idem, ‘Regeln der Gewaltanwendung im Mittelalter’, in Kulturen der Gewalt. Ritualisierung und Symbolisierung von Gewalt in der Geschichte, ed. Helga Breuninger and Rolf Peter

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are also an increasing number of studies of the day-to-day realities of feuding.13 By contrast, the history of medieval warfare is increasingly concerned on the one hand with issues of mentality like honour and shame, and on the other with matters like organisation, tactics, armaments and fortification. Furthermore, such research focusses heavily on the great military events beyond the borders of the Roman-German Empire, especially the Hundred Years War. Therefore, it too can be left out of consideration here.14 Since the theme of this volume is princely lordship, it is appropriate to discuss the significance of feud and peace for princes and the territories that were becoming principalities. Naturally the royal perspective must also be included, since the securing of peace and law was perhaps rulers’ foremost duty, but one that they could only carry out effectively with the cooperation of the princes. However, other highly relevant questions on the problem of violence cannot be treated, but should be recognised here as contested. These include in the period of my investigation the canon law doctrine of just war and also the right of resistance. I also cannot deal here with blood vengeance and enmity between individuals of lower rank than the high aristocracy, violent conflicts within cities and the spread of violence in daily social interactions. These premises form the limits of our observations. Against the backdrop of endemic violence I shall first sketch out the rules of feud, considering both the usual practices of feuds and their regimentation as they changed. I shall append some remarks about the ending of feuds. In this way I shall investigate both the foundations of feud-style exchanges and the many underlying causes of conflict. That the accepted narrative of the rules and regimentation of feuds will be examined before discussing the reasons that feuds began is because such feuds appear legitimate precisely because they depended upon rules of conduct. With the subsequent analysis of reasons for feuds and conflict the article we shall examine all the possible levels of conflict through chosen examples that were relevant to the perspective of imperial princes. We shall end with a brief discussion of the concept

Sieferle (Frankfurt a. M. 1998), pp. 154–70; Claudia Garnier, ‘Symbole der Konfliktführung im 14. Jahrhundert: Die Dortmunder Fehde von 1388/89’, Westfälische Zeitschrift 151/152 (2002), 23–46; Michael Jucker, ‘Plündern und Brandschatzen: Kriegs- und Fehdepraxis im Spannungsfeld von Recht, Ökonomie und Symbolik’, in Fehdefürhrung im spätmittelalterlichen deutschen Reich. Zwischen adliger Handlungslogik und territorialer Verdichtung, ed. Julia Eulenstein, Christine Reinle and Michael Rotthmann (Affalterbach 2013), pp. 261–84. 13 Gabriel Zeilinger, Lebensformen im Krieg. Eine Alltags- und Erfahrungsgeschichte des süddeutschen Städtekriegs 1449/50 (Stuttgart 2007). 14 Malte Prietzel, Krieg im Mittelalter (Darmstadt 2006); idem, Kriegführung im Mittelalter. Handlungen, Erinnerungen und Bedeutungen (Paderborn 2006). See also Krieg im Mittelalter, ed. Hans-Henning Kortüm (Berlin 2001); Martin Clauss, Kriegsniederlagen im Mittelalter. Darstellung-Deutung-Bewältigung (Paderborn 2009). Moreover, Körtum in Kriege und Krieger fundamentally rejects the concept of feud.

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of ‘territorialisation’, in other words territorial politics, which repeatedly appears in the context of princely feuds. Although this essay focusses on the violent conduct of conflicts, it must never be forgotten that the employment of violence was only one of the many ways of dealing with disputes. Negotiation and mediation, settlement of interests through material and legal accommodation, through gifts and privileges, through foundation of informal ties and ritual exchanges, were all complementary to threats of, and recourse to, violence.

Rules of violence: social and legal norms It has recently been argued that early medieval war did not really need a specific reason, but should be regarded rather as a competition over booty, and that this was indeed why a specialised warrior class existed.15 If this view is correct, then feud is a narrower concept, since feud at the least is bound to evidence of enmity. Nonetheless, in practice as late as the eleventh century one cannot always differentiate between feud and other types of violence because we lack information about motivation.16 Until the decrees imposing the Peace of God and Land Peaces, first found in the empire at Liège in 1082, one can only trace the normative rules for feud from the reports provided in narrative sources.17 In the Peace of God agreements, those drawing them up, who were mainly clerics, defined the times, people and places that should be exempt from the conduct of feud in a defined region; and their regulations were enforced by spiritual sanctions. These pacts operated similarly to the declarations of general peace which were established by secular authorities, and offences against which were punished by means of criminal law. Both types of peace declaration sought to place limits on the destructive potential of violent practices. For the conduct of feuds repeatedly included laying waste fields, forests and villages, robbery and kidnapping, arson, bodily harm and killing, all the offences which outside the feud were the most serious, most of which merited capital punishment.18

15 Michael Kleinen, ‘Frühmittelalterliche Kämpfer zwischen christlicher Religion und barbarischem Kriegertum’, in Emotion, Gewalt und Widerstand. Spannungsfelder zwischen geistlichem und weltlichem Leben in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Ansgar Köb and Peter Riedel (Paderborn 2007), pp. 95, 96. See also Norbert Ohler, Krieg und Frieden im Mittelalter (Munich 1997), p. 171. 16 On this issue see Timothy Reuter, ‘Peace-breaking, Feud, Rebellion, Resistance: Violence and Peace in the Politics of the Salian Era’, in his Medieval Politics and Modern Mentalities, ed. Janet L. Nelson (Cambridge 2006), p. 359. 17 See Gerd Althoff, ‘Recht nach Ansehen der Person: Zum Verhältnis rechtlicher und außerrechtlicher Verfahren der Konfliktbeilegung im Mittelalter’, in Rechtsbegriffe im Mittelalter, ed. Albrecht Cordes (Frankfurt a. M. 2002), p. 81. 18 For a helpful introduction, H.E.J. Cowdrey, ‘The Peace and the Truce of God in the Eleventh Century’, Past and Present 46 (1970), 42–67.

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After the restoration of royal authority under Henry V the Peace of God movement vanished from the empire. By contrast, general land peaces, which rested on unions initiated by magnates or the king and were secured by oaths,19 regulated which activities were to be refrained from in a specific area, and usually for a specific period of time. (Only Barbarossa’s imperial peace of 1152, the Roncaglia Peace of 1158 and the Mainz Peace of 1235 were proclaimed without temporal limitations). German scholarship has distinguished between ‘provincial’ and ‘imperial’ peace decrees, the first valid in a defined region, the latter imposed throughout the empire.20 Their requirements established times, sometimes specific days of the week, in which feuding activities were not permitted. Groups of people like clerics and monks, women, travellers, Jews or farmers – all of whom shared the common attribute of being ‘defenceless’ should be spared from the effects of feud.21 The same was true of privileged places such as churches, and also graveyards, mills and vineyards. Thus, specific protection was now also established for ‘objects’ of feuding violence. For the duration of the peace, or for those specially protected times within the period of the peace, specific acts of violence were also forbidden. These included murder and manslaughter, wounding both with and without bloodshed, robbery and theft, ‘visitation’ (breaking into houses) and breaching the village peace with acts of savagery such as arson. Sometimes the bearing of weapons was also forbidden. Later peace pacts went further, not only prohibiting the practice of feud but also taking steps against the causes of feuds, such as the imposition of unlawful tolls.22 In addition, the resources necessary to conduct a feud (such as what weapons might be used) were regulated. However, it appears instructive that feuding in and of itself was not forbidden.23 Carrying weapons was only prohibited for the duration of the

19 See on this issue the literature overview by Elmar Wadle, ‘Frühe deutsche Landfrieden’, in Überlieferung und Geltung normativer Texte des frühen und hohen Mittelalters. Vier Vorträge, gehalten auf dem 35. Deutschen Historikertag 1984 in Berlin, ed. Hubert Mordek (Sigmaringen 1986), p. 79 [reprinted in idem, Landfrieden, Strafe, Recht. Zwölf Studien zum Mittelalter (Berlin 2001), pp. 75–203]; Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Die Gottesfriedensbewegung im Licht neuerer Forschungen’, in Landfrieden. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit, ed. Arno Buschmann and Elmar Wadle (Paderborn 2002), p. 47; Fischer, Reichsreform, pp. 31–2. 20 On the problem of the concept of ‘imperial land peace’ (Reichslandfriede), see Karl Kroeschell, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, vol. 1: bis 1250 (11th ed., Opladen 1999), p. 188; Fischer, Reichsreform, p. 26. 21 Goetz, ‘Gottesfriedensbewegung’, p. 40. 22 Joachim Gernhuber, Die Landfriedensbewegung in Deutschland bis zum Mainzer Reichslandfrieden von 1235 (Bonn 1952), p. 174. 23 Claudia Garnier, ‘Die Legitimierung von Gewalt durch die hoch- und spätmittelalterliche Friedensbewegung’, FMST 42 (2008), 229–51.

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peace.24 Later regulations also expressly allowed the personal injury of an enemy (inimicus), or of an open enemy (manifestus inimicus), while carefully defining the amount of injury that could be permitted.25 Even the famous Mainz imperial peace decree of 1235 assumed the continuing pursuit of feuds.26 By examining the actions that were banned it is possible to conclude that the injury of an opponent by attacks on his property was regarded as equivalent to attack on a person and his house, just as in the practice of feud. Reuter assumes from this equivalence that in the eleventh century killings up to the level of homicide were commonplace in conflicts.27 Beyond this, bans on reysa28 demonstrate that larger, organised feuding raids may have taken place, which were apparently equated to ‘visitations’.29 There are also references to possible pitched battles.30 Otherwise, the peace declarations permit no statement about the extent of injurious actions. In the High Middle Ages, as for the Late Middle Ages, they may have differentiated depending on the type of case between petty actions by lesser persons and major warlike engagements. Support of peace-breakers was also progressively sanctioned.31 Blood vengeance was also accepted within defined limits. This was primarily defined by territorial and city laws, not by the royal peace proclamations.32 A three-day cooling off period was prescribed preceding any feuding action for the first time in Frederick Barbarossa’s Constitutio contra incendiarios of 1188.33 The Brixen provincial peace declaration of 122934 and the

24 MGH Constitutiones i.604 no. 424 (§2). See also Goetz, ‘Gottesfriedensbewegung’, p. 41. 25 The Mainz Land Peace 1103: MGH Constitutiones i.126 no. 74; the Rhineland-Franconian Land Peace 1179: MGH Dipl. Frederick I, iii.329 no. 774; the Saxon Land Peace 1221 or 1223: MGH Constitutiones, ii.394 no. 280 (§4); QDVWSG, no. 97, p. 384, on the dating question; Treuga Heinrici 1224: MGH Constitutiones, ii.399 no. 284 (§4). 26 MGH Constitutiones, ii.244 no. 196 (§9) [below, p. 360]. 27 Reuter, ‘Peace-breaking, feud’, pp. 362–4. 28 The Saxon Land Peace 1221: MGH Constitutiones ii.395, no. 280 (§17); Royal Land Peace (Constitutio generalis de iudiciis et de pace tenenda): ibid. ii.429 no. 319 (§11); the Bavarian Land Peace 1244: ibid., p. 573 no. 427 (§19). 29 Thus, the vernacular declaration of reysa in the royal land peace, the Constitutio generalis de iudiciis et de pace tendenda, of 1234: ibid., p. 429 no. 319 (§11). 30 Pax dei incerta (saec. XI. ex.), in MGH Constitutiones i. 608 no. 426 (§2). 31 Ibid., p. 609 no. 426 (§7). 32 Examples can be found in His, Strafrecht, i. 266–72; Paul Frauenstädt, Blutrache und Todtschlagssühne im Deutschen Mittelalter (Berlin 1881, 2nd ed. reprinted 1980), esp. pp. 36–41. 33 MGH Dipl. Frederick I, iv.277 no. 988 (lines 9–11): English translation: G.A. Loud, The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa: The History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick and Related Texts (Manchester 2012), p. 211, for the date, ibid., p. 10. 34 Gernhuber, Landfriedensbewegung, pp. 184, 188; MGH Constitutiones ii.569 no. 426 (§7). For a corresponding passage in the Peace of Roncaglia (1158), which by contrast only

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royal peace declaration of 1234 also established that before the declaration of a feud a judge must be called in or a querimonia take place.35 The Mainz imperial peace declaration of 1235 finally established that for a feud to be carried forward lawfully one must demonstrate ‘compelling need’ (necessitate cogente) before prosecuting the law on one’s own authority.36 This was, so it has been suggested, a paradigm shift. Up to this time a summons before a royal court had suggested that the king would follow through his initial action and an acquittal was not to be expected.37 Answering a summons to appear in court would therefore be regarded as the same thing as submission. Now, however, it was expected that the parties themselves would resort to a court, even to that of the king. To be sure, this postulate could never be fully enshrined in law, both because of the acknowledged structural deficits in the German Empire’s judiciary and the fact that courts could hardly be regarded as neutral. In the late Middle Ages the criterion of starting with legal means was regarded as satisfied if an arbitration tribunal was called, or if the plaintiffs had sought legal redress. A legal judgement did, however, have to be issued for a feud to be recognised as lawful.38 The Mainz imperial peace decree was renewed a number of times, making it over time the normative measure for royal lawmaking. From the thirteenth century onwards, as well as royal lawmaking, we also have peace edicts that lords issued for their own territories. Late medieval land edicts and land ordinances also contained peace regulations. In addition, peace agreements concluded between lords contained regulations to limit feuding, tried to stop feuding actions from crossing borders and agreed on mutual assistance. On the other hand, these agreements could also take the form of an alliance against a third party, and thus appear as de facto defensive alliances, or even offensive, alliances. Nonetheless, after the Staufen era the peacekeeping activities of the increasingly powerful territorial lords increased in importance, both besides and in combination with royal efforts. In the later Middle Ages territorial lords and cities were in practice the main authorities occupied with keeping the peace – admittedly with varying success and few lasting consequences.

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bound those taking the oath, cf. Elmar Wadle, ‘Gerichtsweg und Fehdegang im Mainzer Reichsfrieden von 1235’, in Festschrift für Heike Jung zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Heinz Müller-Dietz et al. (Baden-Baden 2007), p. 1028. MGH Constitutiones ii.429 no. 318 (§4). Ibid., ii.243 no. 196 (§§ 5, 6). For this point, see also Wadle, ‘Gerichtsweg und Fehdegang’, pp. 1026–7. Christine Reinle, ‘Fehde’, in Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (2nd ed., 2007), cols. 1518–19). Reuter, ‘Peace-breaking, feud’, p. 379. Regina Görner, Raubritter. Untersuchungen zur Lage des spätmittelalterlichen Niederadels, besonders im südlichen Westfalen (Münster 1987), p. 254.

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Against this backdrop both law and practice regarding feuds developed significantly, in both the High and Late Middle Ages. Since peace decrees criminalised certain violent actions only during the period of the peace, but not during a feud, they had only a limited effect on the methods used in feuds. Canon Law had a greater effect, with its stipulation that one should spare churches and clerics even during a feud, which was enforced by means of spiritual penalties. Admittedly, the attempt to remove arson, banned in Canon Law, from the conduct of feuding was unsuccessful. Indeed, on the contrary, during the later Middle Ages arson, robbery and seizure were in fact the most common means used to pursue a feud. The reason was probably that feud was conducted as a means to force the opponent to accept one’s rights by damaging his material resources. By contrast, attacks on the person of the opponent, which was among the few measures that were strictly limited during a general peace, was no longer a favoured method. There may have been pragmatic reasons for this change: the killing of an opponent would probably have made a later reconciliation with his party more difficult. The integration of the feud into the legal system, which stands out in the peace decrees, did not mean a permanent exclusion of specific feuding practices. Rather it established that the law would not punish feuds and the practices of feuding if specific criteria were met, or more precisely would only do so if the injured party could argue in judicial or non-judicial forums that his opponent had not adhered to those criteria. These criteria consisted of adherence to specific forms – notably the cooling-off period and its time limit – and the linking of feud to a preceding quest for legal recourse. The integration of the feud into the legal system still left plenty of room for the development of regional traditions regarding feuds. It might also have led to the development in the later Middle Ages of discourse about feuds as a predominantly quasi-legal endeavour.39 The association of pursuing a feud with the potentia of a powerful person, as is often presented by high medieval narrative sources, or with social emotions like revenge, hate or annoyance, or with a highly-esteemed social value like honour, appear hardly at all in documentary records and legal acts. Perhaps the criterion of causa iusta played a role, as it did in medieval concepts of the bellum iustum, in the development of a legal process for the conduct of feuds. The two other criteria of ‘just war’ that were put forward in medieval theology and Canon Law – the auctoritas principis and the hardly provable recta intentio – had by contrast no place in the law regarding feuds.40

39 Cf. Fischer, Reichsreform, p. 16 (with n. 92). 40 For the former, see Dietmar Willoweit, ‘Die Entwicklung und Verwaltung der spätmittelalterlichen Landesherrschaft’, in Deutsche Verwaltungsgeschichte, ed. Kurt G.A. Jeserich, Hans Pohl and Georg Christoph von Unruh (Stuttgart 1983), i.81; Brunner, Land and Lordship, p. 345.

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Feuds ended in a variety of ways. A royal intervention that aimed to impose peace by punishing one or both sides, or by forcing one side through duress to submit, or achieving a settlement through mediation or through the judiciary – was possible, but not imperative. Even when there was a killing within the high aristocracy, the king did not always become involved in the dispute. For the king, intervention was much more a political matter, and for the parties invoking it royal intervention was ‘a further means of conducting feud’.41 What could be expected from the king was a political judgement, not impartiality. He had to decide whether it was in his own interests to mediate in a conflict or to punish one of the protagonists. He could also order a truce, as rulers repeatedly did in the Late Middle Ages, and then hand over mediation to a third party. Princely intervention in the feuds of the lower nobility also became more common in this period. Otherwise, feuds were brought to an end by the mediation of a third party.42 Reuter suggested that in the eleventh century the normal means for ending a feud was a peace agreement, secured by oath and at times accompanied by the payment of compensation.43 Until the twelfth century nobles could engage in deditio, a negotiated submission, to set aside conflict.44 But, according to Reuter, in the second half of the eleventh century negotiated peace compacts came to take the place of the deditio.45 The specific points of conflict were taken up and regulated in feud-ending settlements (compositiones).46 Settlements could be agreed on the initiative of those engaged in conflict, but also through the mediation or intervention of a third party. Settlements, not feuds, also pointed the way toward a new contractual law.47

41 Reuter, ‘Peace-breaking, feud’, pp. 365–7 (quote p. 367); Hermann Kamp, Friedensstifter und Vermittler im Mittelalter (Darmstadt 2001), pp. 136–52. Judicial proceedings and conduct of feud could be functionally equivalent, because both were dedicated to gaining recompense for damages, as Görner, Raubritter, p. 47 has noted. 42 On the role of mediators in conflicts, cf. Althoff, ‘Recht nach Ansehen der Person’, pp. 83–5; Kamp, Friedensstifter und Vermittler. 43 Reuter, ‘Peace-breaking, feud’, p. 362. 44 Ibid., pp. 381–6; on deditio in general; cf. Gerd Althoff, ‘Das Privileg der deditio. Formen gütlicher Konfliktbeendigung in der mittelalterlichen Adelsgesellschaft’, in idem, Spielregeln, pp. 99–125. 45 Reuter, ‘Peace-breaking, feud’, p. 384. 46 His, Strafrecht, i. 296–314. 47 See, using the example of the electorate of Trier, Wolf-Rüdiger Berns, Burgenpolitik und Herrschaft des Erzbischofs Baluin von Trier (Sigmaringen 1980), pp. 103–8; Julia Eulenstein, Territorialisierung mit dem Schwert? Die Fehdeführung des Trierer Erzbischofs Balduin von Luxemburg (1307/08–1354) im Erzstift Trier (Koblenz 2012), pp. 512–25, 529–30 (and passim).

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Grounds for and legitimation of violence – the causes of conflict Why were there feuds? Depending on the period and type of source, the medieval evidence offers a variety of interconnected reasons, to which scholars have added still further interpretations. In the following section, we shall use these varied materials to sketch out an ideal type. It is evident that there was overlap between the reasons behind feuding, and often a number of underlying problems were intertwined in a single conflict. Competition and agonism When the empire had been set in order with the utmost wisdom in the German lands, all that region enjoyed an unwonted and long unknown peace . . . However, the emperor did not misuse so great quiet for idleness, or for enticing pleasures. For he thought it an unworthy thing to permit his powers, practised in warfare to be relaxed in sloth without advantages to the empire.48

Rahewin ascribed these views to Frederick Barbarossa, to account for his campaign against Poland, which had separated from the empire, in 1157. Striving for military glory, fed by noble agonism, seeing struggle as a positive virtue, is supposed to have been what motivated the Staufen emperor to go to war, not some sort of legal reason. In the fourteenth century Friedrich Ködiz of Salfeld, the biographer of Landgrave Ludwig IV of Thuringia (1217–1227), reported that in 1225 this husband of St. Elisabeth, soon himself to be canonised, left his own people in ignorance of his intention to attack the town of Lebus in Lower Lausitz. Once his warriors had learned what the target of their military expedition was, only fear of shame is supposed to have kept them from returning home. His opponents, however, were completely surprised by the landgrave’s action, since no enmity had hitherto existed between them.49 Despite all the wrath and threats of revenge from the Polish side, Ludwig refused to abandon his wish that they hand over the town. After it was turned over to his control, the author of the vita tells that a tournament was

48 The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, by Otto of Freising and His Continuator Rahewin, trans. C.C. Mierow (New York 1953), pp. 174–5. Udo Friedrich, ‘Die Zähmung des Heros. Der Diskurs der Gewalt und der Gewaltregulierung im 12. Jahrhundert’, in Mittelalter. Neue Wege durch einen alten Kontinent, ed. Jan-Dirk Müller and Horst Wenzel (Stuttgart 1999), pp. 165–8, esp. p. 167. 49 Das Leben des Heiligen Ludwig, Landgrafen in Thüringen, Gemahls der Heiligen Elisabeth. Nach der lateinischen Urschrift übersetzt von Friedrich Ködiz von Salfeld, ed. Heinrich Rückert (Leipzig 1851), book 3, ch. 9, pp. 36–8; cf. also Cronica Reinhardsbrunensis, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger, MGH SS xxx(1). 601.

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held and that then mit glucke unde mit heile (happily and healthily) Ludwig returned home.50 Thus, according to Ködiz’ vita of Ludwig IV, which was based on contemporary materials, the landgrave’s action against Lebus was a military campaign, carried out without legal grounds and without evidence of enmity. Thus far, one must leave open the question of whether this campaign was a feud in the usual sense of the word. Only in the fifteenth century did the chronicler Johannes Rothe recast the campaign as a war with a legal basis.51 Ködiz suggests much more strongly that the landgrave wanted to show off his knightly prowess by undertaking this campaign.52 This account is part of an early and high medieval tradition according to which the use of violence followed ‘socially-practiced patterns of rivalry’. Ludwig, too, followed this pattern of self-testing and self-representation through competition, as a means by which – one may assume – to win honour. Such rivalry patterns repeatedly made it necessary to strengthen the practice of lordship with demonstrations of power. Even the foundation of new power structures by means of conquest might be based on this idea rather than one of legal lordship.53 Perhaps this can explain why some sources mention without comment lords’ blatant violentia.54 From violence, which was practised without any legal basis, the way could easily lead to feud as a political means. Still, one should be aware that a ‘legitimisation-free’ action, like Landgrave Ludwig’s expedition, could have been rendered much more acceptable in the Late Middle Ages in light of the legalisation process already discussed. Feud as a political means also had a legal basis in the later Middle Ages.55 Common to both of my examples is not only the lack of a legal discourse, but also a lack of allusion to the patterns of state formation or territoriality. For that very reason they were placed at the beginning of this part of my exposition. They warn against uncritically placing the use of feuding violence in the High and Late Middle Ages in the context of power politics as understood in the modern era with its focus on state- or territory-building.

50 Ködiz, Das Leben des Heiligen Ludwig, pp. 38–40; Cronica Reinhardsbrunensis, p. 601. 51 Sylvia Weigelt, ‘Die Thüringische Landeschronik des Johannes Rothe. Ihre Quellen und deren editorische Darstellung am Beispiel der Vita Ludowici in der Übersetzung des Friedrich Köditz von Salfeld’, in Quelle-Text-Edition. Ergebnisse der österreichisch-deutschen Fachtagung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für germanistische Edition in Graz vom 28. Februar bis 3. März 1996, ed. Anton Schwob and Erwin Streitfeld (Tübingen 1997), pp. 115–16. 52 Ködiz, Das Leben des Heiligen Ludwig, p. 38. 53 Friedrich, ‘Zähmung des Heros’, pp. 168–70 (quote, p. 168). 54 See, for example, Wilhelm Janssen, ‘Niederrheinische Territorialbildung. Voraussetzungen, Wege und Probleme’, in Soziale und wirtschaftliche Bindungen im Mittelalter am Niederrhein, ed. Edith Ennen and Klaus Flink (Kleve 1981), p. 95. 55 Cf. Brunner, Land and Lordship, p. 90.

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The preservation and increase of honour and rank Struggle for rank and honour was naturally an expression of the noble agonism that has already been presented. Although rank and honour were the highest social values that could legitimate feuds, especially in the High Middle Ages, their importance in creating conflicts was for a long time undervalued. Instead, scholars attributed to both kings and princes a supposedly continually pursued territorial policy, and have presented this as the principal source of conflict. For example, the rebellion of the Saxon magnates and freemen against King Henry IV from 1073 to 1075 was once interpreted simply as a reaction to royal territorial policy, although Jutta Schlick partially disproved this interpretation some years ago.56 Timothy Reuter, too, suggested that defence of honour went hand in hand with the defence of power and possessions. Indeed, he warned us against understanding high medieval conflicts between nobles as fundamentally an aspect of territorial politics.57 Above all, Knut Görich has argued against ‘regarding the plentiful contemporary reports about injuries to honour as cause of conflict as a perception with little contact with reality’.58 The struggle for honour was of central significance for the princely conduct of affairs.59 The explosiveness of such disputes supports the argument that honour was a matter of overriding importance. As a result, our concept of the imperial ‘constitution’ is fundamentally changed. Thus, according to this interpretation, the interaction of king, princes and nobles in the twelfth century remained more concerned with the hierarchy of personal relationships than with the establishment of lordship over an area as a preliminary step toward state creation. This insight is of major importance for evaluating reports about conflict in the Staufen era. A good example is the so-called Tübingen feud of 1164–1166. It is hard to know what precisely happened here, because our two most important sources, the Weingarten ‘History of the Welfs’ and the early thirteenth-century chronicle of Otto of St. Blasien, disagree with each other.60 Still, it is clear that the feud began when Count Palatine Hugo II of Tübingen hanged some ministeriales of Duke Welf VI and destroyed their

56 57 58 59

Jutta Schlick, König, Fürsten und Reich (Stuttgart 2001), pp. 19, 180, 183. Reuter, ‘Peace-breaking, feud’, pp. 360–1. Knut Görich, Die Staufer. Herrschaft und Reich (Munich 2006), p. 18. Knut Görich, ‘Ehre als Handlungsmotiv in Herrschaftspraxis und Urkunden Philipps von Schwaben’, in Philipp von Schwaben. Beiträge der internationalen Tagung anlässlich seines 800. Todestages, Wien, 29. bis 30. Mai 2008, ed. Andrea Rzihacek and Renate Spreitzer (Vienna 2010), p. 131. 60 For this point see Steffen Patzold, ‘Wie Historiker Geschichte machen: Die Tübinger Fehde in den Jahren 1164 bis 1166’, Momente 3 (2010), 11.

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castle of Möhringen.61 According to Otto of St. Blasien, the count accused them of robbery (that is breach of the land peace), but he allowed his own equally guilty followers to go free.62 In the resulting feud Count Hugo found himself opposed not only by Welf VII, upholding his father’s cause, but also by Duke Berthold of Zähringen, the emperor’s nephew Frederick of Rothenburg, Duke of Swabia and a number of other nobles. In a first battle in 1164 Hugo won a brilliant victory over the young Welf VII and took several hundred prisoners, whom Welf VI ransomed when he returned from an imperial campaign in Italy. Despite the settlement (compositio) that Welf VI had concluded, his allies continued to prosecute the feud, and with some success. Frederick of Rothenburg escalated the conflict in 1166 by calling in Bohemian auxiliary troops who (allegedly) caused great devastation in the region. Finally, at an imperial assembly in Ulm, over which Barbarossa presided, Hugo was forced to submit and was handed over to the Welfs who imprisoned him, and there he died.63 That, at least, is the official Welf account. By contrast, Otto of St. Blasien presented the Staufen emperor as intervening in the conflict, commanding that the prisoners after the 1164 battle be released and demanding the unconditional submission of Count Palatine Hugo, who after his surrender was sent into exile.64 For our purposes the differences between the two accounts are less relevant than the fact that, for contemporaries, the feud broke out because of a serious injury to the authority and honour of Welf VII, which was regarded as an injustice.65 This explanation has not, however, appeared convincing to all scholars, who have persisted in seeing the cause of the feud as territorial rivalry between the expansionist counts palatine of Tübingen and the Welfs. In this view, the count palatine misused his judicial position to liquidate the Welf ministeriales who governed the outposts of their domain, and by doing this and destroying Möhringen Castle over the pretext of toll charges, he could therefore limit and harm the Welfs. The action against Möhringen, according to this interpretation, was thereby also presented by Hugo’s rivals as ‘a symbol of Hugo II’s reckless and unscrupulous territorial politics’ and drove them to take the Welfs’ side. The ‘misuse of official

61 ‘Historia Welforum’, in Quellen zur Geschichte der Welfen und die Chronik Burchards von Ursberg, ed. and trans. Matthias Becher (Darmstadt 2007), c. 30, p. 80 [also Historia Welforum, ed. Erich König (2nd ed., Sigmaringen 1978), p. 60]. 62 Ottonis de Sancto Blasio Chronica, ed. Adolf Hofmeister, MGH SRG 47 (Hanover 1912), c. 18, p. 20; Die Chronik Ottos von St. Blasien und die Marbacher Annalen, ed. and trans. Franz-Josef Schmale (Darmstadt 1998), pp. 50–1. 63 ‘Historia Welforum’, cc. 30–31, pp. 80–5 [ed. König, pp. 60–6]. 64 Ottonis de Sancto Blasio Chronica, c. 19, p. 22 (Die Chronik Ottos von St. Blasien, pp. 52–3); Patzold, ‘Tübinger Fehde’, 11. 65 Gerd Althoff, ‘Konfliktverhalten und Rechtsbewußtsein. Die Welfen im 12. Jahrhundert’, in idem, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter, p. 63.

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power’ is supposed to have angered the king and led him to intervene in the conflict against the count palatine.66 What is lacking from an argument based primarily on territorial competition is the enormous loss in standing that the Welfs would have suffered among their own ministeriales if they had not avenged the execution of members of their familia – and especially in light of the glaring inequality of treatment given to Hugo’s own followers.67 For ministeriales were not only bound to loyalty toward their lord by expectation of reward and chance of promotion, but also by bonds of reciprocal support. To fulfil this expectation was an imperative if the Welfs were to maintain their honour, and was thus a reason for feud.68 Legal claims: resistance and rebellion Besides the invocation of honour, claims of right or for the restoration of injured rights, demands for vengeance or punishment for wrongs suffered, giving aid to a friend or relative or even protecting the peace, were all potentially causes of violence. There are so many examples where feuds were conducted to protect actual or supposed rights that it is unnecessary to enumerate them here. It might be more useful to examine issues that were repeatedly contentious. To start with, throughout the Middle Ages there was strife over inheritance among nobles.69 This could lead to feuds, not only when close relatives were unable to agree over each others’ entitlement, but also when entitlements of varying legal quality were brought into play at the same time. This was the case, for example, on the death of Henry Raspe, the last landgrave of Thuringia from the Ludowinger dynasty in 1247. The Wettin Margrave Henry the Illustrious of Meissen, a distant cousin in the male line, claimed the inheritance, and his claims were eventually supported by Emperor Frederick II, who invested him with the fiefs which the Ludowinger had held from the empire. Sophia, duchess of Brabant by marriage, and daughter of Henry’s elder brother Ludwig IV, also claimed inheritance rights for her son Henry ‘the Child’. She apparently concentrated her claims on the secondary region of Hesse, where the Thuringian dynasty possessed extensive allodial lands and rights, and had

66 Peter Schiffer, ‘Möhringen und die Territorialpolitik der Pfalzgrafen von Tübingen. Zur Ursache der Tübinger Fehde (1164–1166)’, in Aus südwestdeutscher Geschichte. Festschrift für Hans-Martin Maurer. Dem Archivar und Historiker zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Wolfgang Schmieder (Stuttgart 1994), pp. 81–104, esp. 89–90 (citation pp. 90, 103). 67 For this issue, see Althoff, ‘Konfliktverhalten und Rechtsbewußtsein’, pp. 62–3. 68 Jan Keupp, Dienst und Verdienst. Die Ministerialen Friedrich Barbarossas und Heinrichs VI. (Stuttgart 2002), p. 465. 69 See Leyser, ‘The German Aristocracy’, pp. 172–4, and Benjamin Arnold, Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany (Cambridge 1991), p. 239.

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also held numerous fiefs from churches. It is possible this division of interests between Henry the Illustrious and Sophia went back to inheritance arrangements made by Henry Raspe that are no longer extant.70 However, the allods of the Ludowinger did not encompass the whole of the territory of Hesse, where Sophia appears to have been particularly active. The archbishop of Mainz reclaimed the eponymous countship of Hesse as a fief of his church. Thus, three parties opposed each other in a series of shifting conflicts and alliances. The dispute was only brought to an end after a whole series of agreements, between the archbishop and Henry the Illustrious at Udestadt in 1254; the peace of Langsdorf between Sophia of Brabant and her son Henry the Child and the archbishop in 1263, and eventually in 1264 the Hesse-Thuringian treaty brought a final settlement. Sophia and her son received the property in Hesse, as well as the countship of the region as vassals of the archbishop of Mainz, while Henry the Illustrious established himself in Thuringia. Other typical reasons for conflict were castle-building71 or arguments between ecclesiastical institutions and their advocates about the scope and practice of advocacy rights.72 Here, too, irreconcilable legal standpoints frequently clashed with each other. The vivid complaints of monasteries about their violent advocates (at least that was how they portrayed them), or the conflicts of Trier archbishops Albero of Montreuil (1132–1152)73 or Baldwin of Luxemburg (1307–1354)74 with the nobles of the region about building and occupation of castles bear paradigmatic witness to the problem. If one turns from disputes among equals to look at those persons and groups who were subject to a lordship, the violent actions of the latter might be resistance against actual or supposed injustice, but also conspiracy and

70 Matthias Werner, ‘Neugestaltung in der Mitte des Reiches. Thüringen und Hessen nach dem Ende des ludowingischen Landgrafenhauses 1247 und die Langsdorfer Verträge von 1263’, in Neugestaltung in der Mitte des Reiches. 750 Jahre Langsdorfer Verträge 1263/2013, ed. Ursula Braasch-Schwersmann, Christine Reinle and Ulrich Ritzerfeld (Marburg 2013), pp. 11–12. 71 See Hagen Keller, Zwischen regionaler Begrenzung und universalem Horizont. Deutschland im Imperium der Salier und Staufer 1024 bis 1250 (Munich 1986; paperback ed. Frankfurt a. M. 1990), pp. 346–54 (pbk). See also Alois Gerlich, Geschichtliche Landeskunde des Mittelalters. Genese und Probleme (Darmstadt 1986), p. 298. 72 Gerlich, Geschichtliche Landeskunde, p. 290. 73 Gesta Alberonis [above, note 5], pp. 251–5, cc. 15, 20–21, 25 [trans. Pavlac, pp. 44–5, 56–7, 59–61]. See Jörg R. Müller, Vir religiosus ac strenuus, pp. 362–5, 567–71, 575–8, 581, 586–92, 723–4. 74 Cf. for example, ‘Gesta Baldewini de Luczenburch Trevirensis archiepiscopi et Heinrici VII Imp.’, in Gesta Trevirorum, ed. Johannes Hugo Wyttenbach and Michael Franz Josef Müller (vol. 2, Trier 1838), cc. 257, 259 pp. 255–6, 264–8; more generally, Eulenstein, Territorialisierung.

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revolt. People resisted those above them, including territorial lords. Let us leave to one side the theological basis for a right of resistance, which recognised an entitlement to resist as legitimate where, for example, there was a reciprocal bond of loyalty, as with a vassalic relationship, that could be damaged by the lord as well by his followers, or where some participation in lordship could reasonably be demanded.75 But unfree ministeriales or urban and peasant subjects could also revolt against their lords in ways that could be understood as legitimate resistance, but that the rulers branded as illegitimate revolt.76 In high and late medieval cities, resistance against the lord or the ruling class usually took place to try to compel a change in the city’s governance. Resistance against unjust lordship could find expression in a broad spectrum of violent actions – from the refusal of dues and service, to feuds or even the expulsion or murder of the lord. A notable example was the rebellion of the peasants of Steding against the count of Oldenburg and the archbishop of Bremen, against whose lordship the peasants, supported by communal structures, revolted from c. 1204 onwards. The insurrection was only finally suppressed in 1234 by an army of knights from the archbishopric and a number of local counts, and rule over the Steding region was thereafter split between the counts of Oldenburg and the archbishops of Bremen.77 Vengeance and punishment To the medieval mind, vengeance and punishment were closely linked, something which can be seen in the terminology used to describe them. So, for example, to Gratian ‘vengeance’ (vindicta) meant ‘the punishment that was as a rule conditional on prior legal proceedings’, and that where this involved the punishment of enemies of the Church, even warfare could be employed to this end.78 Vengeance itself was interpreted ‘in its original sense,

75 Controversy about the origin of the right to resistance can be found in Fritz Kern, Gottesgnadentum und Widerstandsrecht im früheren Mittelalter (Leipzig 1914; 2nd ed., [by Rudolf Buchner] Darmstadt 1954), pp. 145–72; Karl Kroeschell, Albrecht Cordes and Karin Nehlsen-von Stryk, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, vol. 2: 1250–1650 (9th ed., Cologne 2008), p. 245; Ernst Schubert, Königsabsetzung im deutschen Spätmittelalter. Eine Studie zum Werden der Reichsverfassung (Göttingen 2005), pp. 99–100. 76 Keupp, Dienst und Verdienst, pp. 20–4; Bernd Kannowski, Bürgerkämpfe und Friedebriefe. Rechtliche Streitbeilegung in spätmittelalterlichen Städten (Cologne 2001), pp. 39–68. 77 The main contemporary account is in the Annales Stadenses, MGH SS xvi.354, 360–2 [also in QDVWSG, pp. 316–21]. 78 Ernst-Dieter Hehl, Kirche und Krieg im 12. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart 1980), pp. 71, 197; cf. also Wolfgang Haubrichs, ‘Ein Held für viele Zwecke. Dietrich von Bern und sein Widerpart in den Heldensagenzeugnissen des frühen Mittelalters’, in Theodisca. Beiträge zur althochdeutschen und altniederdeutschen Sprache und Literatur in der Kultur des frühen Mittelalters. Eine internationale Fachtagung in Schönmühl bei Penzberg vom 13. bis zum 16. März 1997, ed. Wolfgang Haubrichs et al. (Berlin 2000), p. 355.

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that is, in repayment for injustice and the restoration of justice’.79 Henry of Müllenark, Archbishop of Cologne 1225–1238, successor to the murdered Archbishop Engelbert I (1216–1225), pledged himself to vengeance as long as he lived.80 Heinz Finger, who has studied in detail the feuds that followed Engelbert’s murder, argues that punishment of the murder was a central theme of Archbishop Henry’s whole episcopate, and suspected that it was above all the archbishop’s ministeriales who demanded a policy of vengeance and rejected a settlement.81 This long feud (1227–1243) shows very clearly how one conflict could grow out of another. The archbishop’s murderer, Count Frederick of Isenberg, had assassinated the metropolitan in an argument about the advocacy of the nunnery at Essen. After his capture and execution in November 1226, his property was confiscated from his sons. Thereafter, these sons, with the help of their maternal relatives, waged a feud to regain their paternal inheritance, a feud not just with the archdiocese of Cologne but also against Count Adolf of Mark, who had received the confiscated Isenberg lands. Both sides found allies who were motivated not only by family loyalties but also by their own interests. Thus, Duke Henry of Limburg was in conflict with the archbishop of Cologne over the advocacy of the monastery of Siegburg, since the archbishop invoked claims of vassalage while Duke Henry believed he had a hereditary claim to the investiture.82 Here, as with the struggle of the Isenberg sons, the chief issue was inheritance, with both the archbishop and his noble opponents each claiming that judicial right was on their side. Help for third parties As can be seen in the Isenberg feud, assistance for a third party, with whom one might be allied, was a reason to take part in a feud. Frederick I’s condemnation of arson in his ‘Land Peace’ of 1188 takes as a starting point that an individual might not only become involved in a feud on his own account (werra propria), but also on behalf of a friend or relation (pro amico, pro parente).83 Admittedly, the formulation of Barbarossa’s peace legislation

79 Haubrichs, ‘Ein Held für viele Zwecke’, p. 354. 80 Die Regesten der Erzbischöfe von Köln, vol. iii: 1205–1304, ed. Richard Knipping (Bonn 1913), pp. 89–90 no. 571; ‘Caesarius von Heisterbach, Leben, Leiden und Wunder des heiligen Engelbert, Erzbischofs von Köln’, II.11, in Die Wundergeschichten des Caesarius von Heisterbach, vol. iii, ed. Alfons Hilka, Fritz Zschaeck and Albert Huyskens (Bonn 1937), p. 269. 81 Heinz Finger, ‘Die Isenberger Fehde und das politische Zusammenwachsen des nördlichen Rheinlandes mit Westfalen in der Stauferzeit’, Annalen des Historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein 197 (1994), 57. 82 Ibid., 34. 83 MGH Dipl. Frederick I, iv.275 no. 988, lines 18–19 (English translation: Loud, Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa, p. 209).

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leaves some doubt whether the issue at hand was participation in a friend’s or relative’s feud, or for one’s own feud being conducted to the advantage of that person. Alongside kinship and friendship (in the medieval sense), both of which had an expectation but not an overwhelming duty of support, there were vassalic and servant relationships that in the context of feuds had a definite obligation to provide assistance.84 Protection of peace Not only the pursuit of one’s own ends but also the protection of peace could be a reason for violence. Medieval peace decrees could indeed only be sustained by recourse to (counter) violence. Keeping the peace was a genuine duty of princes, as has been discussed above. The carrying out of sanctions that were imposed for breach of a land peace could often lead to a feud, especially when the offender was not a simple individual or a small and easily-isolated group of people. Late medieval land peace agreements included very detailed regulations about when such help could be called for, and in what manner and with what parameters military means might be employed. Expansion Scholars have repeatedly argued that feuding violence was not only reactive, that is, a response to an attack on rights or peace or an injury to honour, but was also employed offensively. This issue has already been discussed in the subsection ‘Competition and Agonism’ above. One could also ascribe a conflict-inducing potential to the code of honour for someone who wanted to increase his honour and reputation. Above all, however, scholars have often seen offensive struggle for resources as a motivation for feuds. But we must examine individual cases to prevent us returning to the assumption, rightly discredited since Otto Brunner, that feuds were ‘decided by might makes right’.85 The relationship between force and right needs also to be questioned. The following example illuminates the problem. Scholars for a long time regarded the Welf Henry the Lion (duke of Saxony 1142–1180, and duke of Bavaria 1156–1180) as a notorious aggressor. In particular, they pointed to the case of the Stade inheritance. When the last count of Stade died childless in 1144, his nearest heir was his brother Hartwig, who was a cleric.

84 Regina Schäfer, ‘Fehdeführer und ihre Helfer. Versuch zur sozialen Schichtung von Fehdenden’, in Fehdeführung im spätmittelalterlichen Reich, pp. 203–20. 85 Thus, for example, Friedhelm Biermann, Der Weserraum im hohen und späten Mittelalter. Adelsherrschaften zwischen welfischer Hausmacht und geistlichen Territorien (Bielefeld 2007), p. 332.

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Henry neither handed over the inheritance to the archbishopric of Bremen, as Hartwig wanted, nor did he allow the exercise of legal authority within the county to the Saxon count palatine Frederick of Sommerschenburg, who had been married to the count’s sister. Instead, in his capacity as duke of Saxony, Henry reclaimed the rights for himself, claiming that countships in such a case should return to the duke. The (somewhat later) historian Adam of Stade claimed that during the ensuing negotiations the Welf henchmen resorted to violence, and then captured and imprisoned Archbishop Adalbero of Bremen. Henry the Lion was able to take the Stade inheritance for himself.86 Henry asserted himself again, this time in his capacity as duke of Bavaria, when in 1157/8 he had the market, mint and bridge over the River Isar at Föhring, which belonged to the Bishop of Freising, destroyed. In place of the episcopal lordship that had been developing there, he established a new settlement of his own a little way upstream, a settlement that became the city of Munich. Duke Henry’s violent acts had no immediate short-term consequences, but they would have offered a classic cause for feud. This is important for our theme, because recent research suggests that Henry’s violence must be understood simply as testimony to a ‘new politics of brutal intimidation’.87 Thus, Bernd Schneidmüller explained both cases by means of Henry’s understanding of his ducal office. According to Schneidmüller, although Henry had in fact overstepped his traditional legal rights, his legal parameters were in fact not clearly defined at any time.88 This observation connects to what Peter Moraw has characterised as the ‘open constitution’ of the German Empire.89 This so-called ‘open constitution’ contained areas that were simply not regulated by prescribed legal norms. Social and legal norms might be in competition and this could create fragmented, overlapping and competing legal claims on one and the same object.90 This offered almost insurmountable potential for conflict, and even for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with their more detailed sources,

86 Annales Stadenses, MGH SS xvi.324–5. 87 Bernd Schneidmüller, ‘Heinrich der Löwe. Innovationspotentiale eines mittelalterlichen Fürsten’, in Staufer und Welfen. Zwei rivalisierende Dynastien im Hochmittelalter, ed. Werner Hechberger (Regensburg 2009), pp. 56–7; idem, Die Welfen. Herrschaft und Erinnerung (819–1252) (Stuttgart 2000), pp. 204–6, 216. 88 Schneidmüller, ‘Heinrich der Löwe’, p. 55. Schubert by contrast stresses the lawlessness of Heinrich’s proceedings. Cf. Ernst Schubert, ‘Geschichte Niedersachsens vom 9. bis zum ausgehenden 15. Jahrhundert’, in Geschichte Niedersachsens, ed. Hans Patze, vol. 2.1 Politik, Verfassung, Wirtschaft vom 9. bis zum ausgehenden 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Ernst Schubert (Hanover 1997), p. 412. 89 Peter Moraw, Von offener Verfassung zu gestalteter Verdichtung. Das Reich im späten Mittelalter 1250 bis 1490 (Frankfurt a. M. 1985), p. 21. 90 On the issue of overarching rights to objects and titles and contested rights see Gerlich, Geschichtliche Landeskunde, pp. 292, 298.

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we can often – even with the light of hindsight – not figure out which side had overstepped the traditional boundaries in a dispute. It is probable that this was not clear to contemporaries either. Besides, there is some evidence that an awareness of traditional rights that could not be realised and/or the innovative interpretation of old rights also had the potential to create feuds, and especially if the new interpretation was perceived as overreaching by the other side. Such overreaching, and if necessary violent, actions would then result in conflicts, which would often break out suddenly, and apparently due to wilful aggression. This has given modern observers the impression that feuds were a deliberate means of expansion. It is often quite impossible to discern what the causes of these feuds were, even in the fourteenth century when sources become more detailed. Short-term political alliances also led to confusing political groupings.91 The lack of a strong central power, which could have guaranteed a unified legal system and an even halfway-effective system of justice, makes the empire appear to have had a ‘polycentric and . . . at times agonistic structure’.92 The impression that this dynamic was connected to the build-up of princely power is inescapable. After all, in the cases that can be reconstructed, feuds were mostly waged over contested rights. The integration of the titled (Edelfrei) and lower aristocracy in the developing territories was marked by feud settlements. Through these settlements, but also through other alliances, the possibility of attaching oneself to different lords at the same time and playing them against each other was successively diminished. Scholars are happy to categorise princely feuds under disparaging labels such as hegemonic strife.93 But, on closer observation the effects of feuds were often minor and short-term. The disparity between specific short-term situations on the one hand and the supposed princely drive for hegemony on the other raises the question of how much we can assume about the intentions of those who were feuding and making settlements. With some territorial lords, such as Archbishop Baldwin of Trier, who has already been mentioned, it is indeed possible to discern a compelling concept of lordship. But we cannot assume that this was invariably the case. To see the chaotic feuds of the fourteenth century as merely expansive noble ‘power struggles’ is to underrate their complexity. Whether there was

91 Gerlich, Geschichtliche Landeskunde, p. 310; see also Biermann, Weserraum, pp. 690–1 and Peter Moraw, ‘Staat und Krieg im deutschen Spätmittelalter’, in Staat und Krieg. Von Mittelalter bis zur Moderne, ed. Werner Rösener (Göttingen 2000), p. 106. 92 Gabriel Zeilinger, ‘Anwesenheit und Abwesenheit. Hoffeste, Kriege und die “Verdichtung” des Reichs im 15. Jahrhundert’. Vortrag auf der Tagung Stand und Perspektiven der Sozialund Verfassungsgeschichte im römisch-deutschen Reich. Der Forschungseinfluss Peter Moraws auf die deutsche Mediävistik, Gießen, 17. – 18. 1.2014. I thank Dr. Zeilinger for sharing the manuscript of the lecture. 93 Moraw, Von offener Verfassung, p. 185; cf. also idem, ‘Staat und Krieg’, p. 108.

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deliberate provocation for a conflict, whether perhaps a territorial lord deliberately intended to force a settlement under specific terms, or whether a feud was waged entirely to seize resources, without any deeper programme at its heart, or if what was at issue was rather a matter of contested rights, all these questions must be tested in each individual case. For even when feuds led in the long-term to the build-up of a territory, that was not necessarily the intention of the participants at the time. Outcome and intention should not be mistaken for each other. The significance of feud within the parameters of the ‘territorialisation paradigm’ It is necessary to touch on this issue because feuds are often regarded as an ‘instrument’ of territorial politics and put in the context of a ‘striving for expansion’ on the part of the princes.94 Thus, a few closing remarks should be dedicated to the paradigm of ‘territorialisation’. According to accepted wisdom, the mediatising of competing lords, as well as sometimes their expulsion from a region, is regarded as a component of what scholars have labelled ‘territorialisation’. This concept is used to express the tendency no longer to constitute lordship primarily through personal relationships, but increasingly for lords to radiate out over an area and thus ‘to grasp and penetrate a specific area as lord’. This process is detectable in the twelfth century not only among the great noble families, but also with the ecclesiastical lordships on the basis of a ‘tendency to concentrate possessions and build up regional centres of gravity, which enabled the subordination of larger territorial lordships to a centre’. Such ‘concentrations of rights and possessions’ were intended ‘to assure pre-eminence in specific regions’, but not surprisingly often led to strife. This goal, the argument goes, was attained through occupation of church advocacies and comital rights, the control of allods and fiefs, regalia and judicial rights, the foundation of castles and towns, the development of financial resources, the service of ministeriales and much more.95 It goes without saying that the resources in question were stoutly contested, both legally and through the exercise of political influence, and by means of feuds.96 According to this argument, therefore, feuds were used as a means of settling legal disputes in an extra-legal manner. Nonetheless, feuds only prepared the ground to force an opponent to concede his own (legal) point of view. New legal relationships were thus not created by feuds,

94 So, for example, Willoweit, ‘Landesherrschaft’, p. 71; more neutrally, Fischer, Reichsreform, p. 16. 95 Keller, Zwischen regionaler Begrenzung, pp. 347–9. 96 Willoweit, ‘Landesherrschaft’, p. 71.

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but rather by the settlements that ended feuds. In contrast to feuding, the enforcement of the Landfrieden, if necessary through violence, served simultaneously as both an instrument and a legitimisation for princely lordship. The broad lines of the argument here are uncontroversial, but the interpretation of these proceedings as a process of territorialisation, or indeed the interpretation of princely activities as ‘territorial politics’, is contested among scholars. Some have objected that the term ‘territorial politics’ implies a ‘forward-looking plan’.97 The intentional and teleological components also make this phrase appear problematic. It has been argued, above all by Ernst Schubert, that the term ‘territorial politics’ is misleading, since not only was there no territorial state in the Middle Ages but in addition building up that ‘state’ was not a princely goal. Dynastic reasons were much more important in directing actions, and dynastic chance often had a decisive impact ‘on the outer form of a principality’.98 This suggests that we need to revise our terminology and that instead of a ‘territorial state’ we should speak instead about princely lordship. Schubert’s critique of the concept of a deliberate policy of territorialisation lends support to the argument suggested above that even feuds that may have contributed to the coalescing of principalities were not necessarily conducted with the goal of ‘expanding power’. One should not undervalue the protection of rank and honour as a motivating factor during the High Middle Ages, any more than one should the protection of peace and the fight for rights that appear so dominant in the later Middle Ages. Whether or not the fight for rights stemmed from a clear concept of territoriality or statehood must be tested in every case, and cannot be assumed without close examination. Furthermore, if one views princely lordship as the political issue that was at stake in feuds, rather than persisting in anachronistic imaginings of the state, it is easier to understand how the application of noble violence even against the prince was accepted in the context of a legitimate feud.99 Nevertheless, late medieval conduct of feuds certainly contributed to the development of princely territories. But one should regard this as an indirect effect, for example with disputes over taxes, for feuds or wars and the collection of taxes were closely connected. Space does not permit further discussion of this aspect here. In conclusion, the conduct of feuds from the time of the Staufen Landfrieden onwards underwent a process of legalisation that may indeed

97 Schubert, Geschichte Niedersachsens, p. 285. 98 Ernst Schubert, Fürstliche Herrschaft und Territorium im späten Mittelalter (Munich 1996), p. 5. Cf. also Ernst Schubert, ‘Die Harzgrafen im ausgehenden Mittelalter’, in Hochadlige Herrschaft im Mitteldeutschen Raum (1200 bis 1600). Formen-LegitimationRepräsentation, ed. Jörg Rogge und Uwe Schirmer (Stuttgart 2003), p. 33. 99 Schubert, Fürstliche Herrschaft, p. 81.

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have begun earlier, in the late eleventh century, and continued right up to the abolition of the right to feud in 1495. The use of violence within the feud still lacked a legal underpinning in the twelfth century, and could only ‘legitimately’ be pursued over contested inheritances among nobles or for the defence of rank and honour. However, from 1235 onwards feuds began to acquire a legal context. Honour, too, receded in importance as a rationale; legitimisation of feuding as a defence of one’s rights or in protection of the peace became dominant. Even when feuds contributed to the expansion of territorial lordship, whether through the settlements that ended feuds, or through the indirect effects of conflict, on the one hand; or through the preservation of the peace on the other, this should not be considered analogous to the expansionist wars of other epochs.

Section D

The geography of power

12 Centres and peripheries of power Paul-Joachim Heinig

The Reich, graced since Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa’s reign with the epithet ‘holy’, was the most geographically extended and most developmentally diverse lordship region of the European Middle Ages, and remained one of the most complex even beyond that period. It was consistent neither in spatial circumference nor inner composition, had no consistently dated beginning or a unified and consistent size, but rather experienced expansion and contractions throughout the Middle Ages. It was never formed from a centre outward, but was and remained polycentric. From 1032 on it consisted of three kingdoms – ‘German’, Italian and Burgundian – which were ruled by the king or emperor in personal union. Through election and coronation the king became the direct ruler of the German part of the empire. Although after 1100 this part was designated as regnum Teutonicum, this term was not adopted in the official royal and imperial titulature until the end of the Middle Ages. Maximilian I (1459–1519), after 1500, was the first to take the title ‘king of Germany’ (rex Germaniae). Until that time, from the Salian Henry V (1106–1125) onwards, all German kings who had not yet been crowned emperor, no matter what their dynasty, titled themselves either ‘future king’ (futurus rex) or ‘king of the Romans’ (Romanorum rex) in anticipation of rule over the Roman imperium that the Ottonians had re-founded and to which they were entitled. As the accepted term suggests, the area over which the Roman-German kings ruled most effectively was normally the realm north of the Alps. After imperial coronation, effective power extended over all three kingdoms (regna) and usually brought with it a strong connection to Rome – some emperors spent more time in Italy than in the ‘German lands.’ At the regional level, the stem duchies of Saxony, Franconia, Swabia and Bavaria feature most prominently, alongside several regions and territories in Lotharingia and North Italy and later also in Burgundy (Arelate) that were not always part of the Reich. In the course of time new territories emerged in the transalpine Reich, including the later county of Thuringia, the duchy of Austria (originally part of Bavaria) and the

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kingdom of Bohemia.1 The expansion of the empire through land clearance and settlement in German Slavia in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries (the so-called Ostsiedlung) was the work of territorial princes. At the very latest in the Staufen period, especially after Emperor Henry VI, through a fateful dynastic union, had won the much more peripheral kingdom of Sicily in 1194, ‘a growing chasm between the ruler’s expectations and the subjects’ experiences developed, what has been called “the German tension between universal and regional horizons.”’2 On the basis of their inherent coherence it is possible to distinguish between no less than 14 different territories or major regions within the late medieval empire (not including Italy).3 Each of them ‘functioned’ by its own rules and was held together by economic and social networks and traffic, shared languages and customs etc., all of which also translated in each case into a shared common identity. Each was also occupied with its own political power games. These territories and regions were: (1) the upper and lower reaches of the Lower Rhine, (2) Westphalia, (3) Lower Saxony-North Albingia, (4) Brandenburg-Mecklenburg-Pomerania, (5) the ‘Wettin Lands’ and Middle Elbe-Saale region (Saxony, Meissen, Thuringia), (6) the crown lands of Bohemia (Bohemia-Moravia-Schleswig-Lausitz), (7) the Middle Rhine-Lower Main region as well as Hesse and zones of the Franconian Upper Rhine, (8) Franconia, (9) Swabia with Alsace, (10) Lotharingia, (11) Bavaria including Salzburg, (12) the ‘Austrian Lands’ including the modern Lower and Upper Austria, Styria, Carinthia and the Tyrol, (13) Burgundy-Savoy, and (14) Prussia-Livonia. In the thirteenth century imperial rights in northern Italy were either not exercised or very much diminished, although they were not completely abandoned. Even more, at least since the fourteenth century, did Burgundy detach itself from the influence of the empire, as did in the fifteenth century the territories in the northwestern and northeastern periphery of the Reich (the modern Benelux states and the historic Teutonic Order State), and, finally, the Swiss Confederation. In all of these peripheral regions during the era of the so-called ‘open constitution,’ people were not interested in the constitution’s growing central intensification, which reached a preliminary peak in the reform decrees of the Worms imperial diet in 1495. And without fear of repercussions or any disadvantages they refused to share the burden of

1 On this point, see Caspar Ehlers, ‘Pfalzenforschung Heute. Eine Einführung in das Repertorium der deutschen Königspfalzen’, in Orte der Herrschaft. Mittelalterliche Köngspfalzen, ed. Caspar Ehlers (Göttingen 2002), pp. 25–53, at pp. 27–8. 2 Arno Borst, ‘Die staufische Herausforderung’, in Die Zeit der Staufer. Geschichte, Kunst, Kultur. Katalog der Ausstellung, ed. Reiner Haussherr (5 vols., Stuttgart 1977–1979), v.9–16. 3 See Peter Moraw, Von offener Verfassung zu gestalteter Verdichtung. Das Reich im späten Mittelalter 1250–1490 (Berlin 1985), pp. 175–6.

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common responsibilities with the rest of the future Reichstagsdeutschland (that is, a Reich governed through assemblies).

The kingdom: a regional rather than a central power Since the effectiveness of the Roman-German ruler was above all transmitted by the court, the reach and intensity of royal power within the Reich fluctuated. As a result, internal coherence within the Reich was relatively limited, a problem that had started before, but intensified after, the Interregnum of the mid-thirteenth century. Seen as a process, this problem was an outcome of the continuing overtaxing of the monarchy with the integration of what was described as the Reichsganzen (entirety of the Reich). In the Reich, justly typified as an ‘aristocracy with a monarchical apex,’ the magnates were made followers of the king through election and subsequent homage. The ruler then sought to impose his lordship over those who had not taken part in this act through a subsequent royal progress (Umritt). This strongly personalised kingship, barely supported by institutions in the Reich, remained at the core of political community and coherence even after it had lost its sacral character (which had in practice given the king a lead over the competing princes in the exercise of lordship). The process of royal election for a long time constituted the only culmination of political life within the Reich in its entirety. But with election, the chosen man stepped out of his former regional connections and entered into royal holdings and royal rights. At that point he had to merge his own pre-royal/princely following with the traditional clientele of the Crown, thus determining anew the lines of power within the realm. Continuity, coherence and change within the community of the realm, which was based entirely on personal relationships, all depended on this. The older paradigm of ‘ruler’ and ‘subject’ has long been recognised as anachronistic; the term ‘central power’ as a model for explaining power distribution within the Reich has likewise become obsolete. Instead, actual constitutional understanding now locates the relationship between king/ emperor and Reich between the two poles of demand and meeting demand. Such an interpretive approach thus sets to one side the old exclusive view of the ruler acting upon the Reich in favour of the influence of Reich-interests upon the ruler. Where requests of petitioners were not satisfied, as for example when rulership in Italy was arrested or, as in the thirteenth and fifteenth century, was pushed to the periphery of the Reich, the courts of territorial princes within the Reich became reservoirs of ‘orphaned’ royal familiars and interested persons. And naturally the coherence of the Reich, from a modern cultural history perspective, was very considerably marked by extremely divergent political, social and economic links between the central and the peripheral territorial powers and towns – factors like the inter-dynastic marriage alliances relieved the kings of sole answerability for holding the Reich together.

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Although events like Emperor Ludwig ‘the Bavarian’s’ transfer of the peripheral Margraviate of Brandenburg to a position among the core lands of the Reich through the enfeoffment of his son Ludwig ‘the Brandenburger’ testify to the true imperial sphere of influence, it is still a long-accepted ‘Upper German’ (that is from Germany south of the Main alongside parts of Saxony and Thuringia) perspective of centre and periphery, still popular among scholars, which continues to prevail. Methodologically, this perspective can easily be justified through recourse to the observation that an answer to ‘the question . . . how a region can be peripheral’4 requires a starting point, which logically can only lie within the kingdom. For throughout the entire Middle Ages the kingdom was the only power that reached throughout the entire Reich, and the ruler’s court constituted the only stage of political operation for the entire community. It bundled interests together and was the point of intersection of personal relations, but could only ever encompass parts of the Reich. So the kingdom was in reality always more or less ‘regional.’ As from c. 1470 the hitherto merely co-existing powers by leaps and bounds coalesced into a consolidated Reich-community, thereby intensifying coherence, the integrational power of the court no longer sufficed, notwithstanding certain efforts to modernise it. As long as rulership was peripatetic – and it was only from the mid-fourteenth century practised in a mixture of mobile and residential forms – the emperor or king’s travelling court stood at the centre of the Reich.5 This court was, to be sure, the highest-ranking political and social centre, but it was in this sense neither the only centre in the Reich nor the sort of centre that would have moulded and fashioned the whole Reich in a modern sense. Such a centre simply did not exist in the medieval Reich.

The Salian age Under the Ottonian kings the rulers’ continuous peregrinations had been limited to their core lands of Saxony and the neighbouring regions of Thuringia, Franconia and Lower Lotharingia.6 Starting with Henry II (1002–1024), the king zealously visited all the more important parts of the Reich. The participation of the magnates in rulership in this period manifested itself, thanks to ‘poorly developed literacy, to which a regular sharing of the ruler’s will in correspondence was practically unknown, . . . almost

4 Karl Ferdinand Werner, ‘Schlußwort’, in Nord und Süd in der deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, ed. Werner Paravicini (Sigmaringen 1990), pp. 231–6, at p. 232. 5 On the impossibility of equal personal exercise of lordship in the so-called ‘personal union state,’ see Theodor Mayer, ‘Das deutsche Königtum und sein Wirkungsbereich (wieder)’, in idem, Mittelalterliche Studien: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Lindau 1959), pp. 28–44, at p. 32. 6 They only visited the upper German duchies of Swabia and Bavaria on their way to imperial coronations to and from Italy and in exceptional cases during war.

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solely in personally accompanying the king on the progress through the Reich.’7 For the Salian and Staufen rulers in normal circumstances were neither active in the ‘stem duchies’ where they did not themselves have lands, nor did they travel in them – the exceptions were the initial progress, military campaigns and peaceful journeys through (for example on the way to Italy). For the most part, the places the king visited to exercise his rule were not fixed residences or capital cities, but rather ‘royal’ or ‘core regions’ equipped with royal estates. Of the three core regions that passed to the Salians – in the Harz, the Rhine-Main region and Bavaria – the one in the Harz was so badly weakened in the Investiture Contest that the estates of the Salians and Lothar III did not pass to the Staufen Conrad III but instead were privately bequeathed. This development was of significance to the whole Reich, since the rulers’ rootedness in the north and the process of integrating north and south alike suffered. Apart from the Rhine-Main region, in the twelfth century only the Harz provided a position ‘that could become the foundation and starting point, from which the north could be included, ruled and joined together as part of the Reich along with the south and the west.’8 It took two centuries for another realistic chance to present itself – a chance that, however, also remained untaken.

The Staufen era The two so-called ‘free’ elections of 1125 and 1138, that is, elections that were obligated to no legitimisation by inheritance, strengthened the federative potential of the high nobility to the detriment of royal power. But this tendency was again held in check by the Staufen rulers. In particular, Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa came astonishingly near to the ideal maximum coverage of the three regna. At the time of his elevation to the throne in 1152 Frederick ruled in the duchy of Swabia, administering it after handing it over in a reconciliation settlement to King Conrad III’s underage son until the latter reached his majority in 1157 and continuing to dominate the duchy thereafter. In the course of his reign, Frederick visited Lübeck, Deventer and Utrecht in the north and northwest as well as Rome in the south; he travelled from the historic duchy of Lotharingia-Burgundy in the west via Goslar and Magdeburg as far as Poland in the east. While he spent only two months in Burgundy, the six Italian campaigns altogether took up several years of his 38 year reign. The ‘German’ part of the Reich was where Frederick spent the majority of his time, 23 years altogether. It was his own estates or the palaces built in what were in part newly founded towns9 more than the tradition

7 Hans Patze, ‘Friedrich Barbarossa und die deutschen Fürsten’, in Die Zeit der Staufer. Geschichte, Kunst, Kultur, v.35–76, at p. 58. 8 Mayer, ‘Das deutsche Königtum’, p. 42. 9 Ehlers, ‘Pfalzenforschung Heute’, pp. 25–53.

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of bishops’ palaces and monasteries that bore the brunt of royal hospitality. Palaces were equally thickly strewn on the left bank of the Rhine between Basel and Mainz. In Italy too, where communes set themselves against hospitality obligations, Frederick I built his own palaces inside the communes or in the vicinity of small sites or monasteries. In Ulm he certainly held nine or ten assemblies – often after returning from Italy – and decided with the magnates among other issues that the county of Chiavenna belonged to the duchy of Swabia. The king established himself just as strongly in Alsace, where he was already acknowledged soon after 1152 as dux Alsatiae and one of his north Alpine centres of activity was based in the midst of the town and settlement of Hagenau, at the monastery of St. Wulburg, where his father was buried. In the course of their five-generation kingship, the Staufen expanded the territory under their direct lordship to a hitherto unprecedented extent, inheriting and setting up ‘imperial lands’ (terrae imperii) not just in the regions of the Rhine, Main and Neckar, but also in Franconia, Egerland, Vogtland and Pleissenland, as well as in Thuringia. To be sure, these lands did not constitute a closed territory, nor were they seamlessly linked to family lands. Even so, the Staufen rulers possessed a broader and more substantial foundation in the Reich than had been provided before by imperial estates and imperial churches. Nonetheless, the centrality remained relative. From the perspective of the throne, ‘the northwest, the far northeast, and the southeast [consisted of] empty spaces.’10 As soon as the Staufen rulers established their personal presence in hitherto peripheral Italy, the peripheries north of the Alps increased, with the consequence that the links between the regions came under stress and the nascent ministerial-based imperial administration was overburdened. The Staufen rulers’ sphere of action dwindled in many respects on account of the regional bipolarism of German royal power brought about (not for the first or the last time) by the double election of 1198 and the resultant Staufen-Welf throne struggle, which for several years saw two rulers reigning simultaneously in Swabia and the lower Rhineland. Notwithstanding several extensive journeys during the time of his minority, which once took him as far as modern Lower Saxony, the real power base of Henry (VII), even after he had come of age, was Main-Franconia and Swabia, along with Alsace. The political relations of interested parties in the kingdom from north of the Alps mostly bypassed him and led directly to his imperial father in Italy.11 It was decisive for the political system of

10 Georg Wilhelm Sante, ‘Allgemeine Geschichte und Landesgeschichte – Zentrale und föderative Potenzen in der Reichsverfassung’, in Geschichte der deutschen Länder ‘Territorien-Ploetz’, vol. i: Die Territorien bis zum Ende des alten Reiches, ed. Georg Wilhelm Sante (Freiburg & Würzburg 1964), pp. 1–54, at pp. 19–20. 11 Therefore, it appears quite appropriate to characterise him as a ‘deserted king’. See Christian Hillen, ‘Herrschaftspraxis und Itinerar Heinrichs (VII.)’, Concilium medii aevi 2 (1999), 105–29, at p. 127.

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the Staufen period that the imperial rule did not stem from a nearby king in Germany but from an emperor in far-away (even peripheral) Italy. Frederick II passed only a few years in the northern part of the Reich; he once referred to the necessity of residing there as his ‘personal sacrifice.’ This absenteeism, this long-distance rule, made it easier for the princes to intensify their areas of lordship. The result was a trend toward closed territorial lordships, in which the king/emperor could only intervene with difficulty. The ‘at times very promising attempt to establish a royal territorial state and its foundation on the regalia,’ that is, the chance at creating a monarchical state that had opened up yet again with the so-called ‘feudalising’ of the Reich, passed with the end of Staufen rule.12 Significant, especially peripheral, segments of the terrae imperii were incorporated into territorial principalities, and the majority of imperial servants became landholding nobles.13 The dynastic power that was indispensable for any lordship after the Interregnum was based, in the case of the crown, on the territorial-dynastic provision of the prince who was elected king. That allowed him to activate the power of proximity to the king and the remains of the previous system that were open to the king.

Discontinuity and incoherence in the post-Staufen Reich With the double election of 1198 and the catastrophe that befell the Staufen after the death of Frederick II, a ‘long autumn of kingship’ began concurrently with a ‘summer of the territorial principality.’14 Starting in the middle of the thirteenth century, rapidly developing events evoked very many dynastic changes, and with them shifts in the centre of gravity as well ‘system’ changes. Because pre-modern, strongly personally-patrimonially structured societies and communities achieved relative political stability especially during long reigns and periods of dynastic continuity, the fact that the Roman-German throne was not a constant created a spectacular continuity problem at the apex of the polity that was unique to Germany. This problem became even more acute in the Late Middle Ages since in the High Middle Ages the Reich, in contrast to France and England, had not developed into a hereditary monarchy but had instead strengthened its electoral character. Fifteen of the 17 kings who had ruled the Reich during the High Middle Ages (919–1248/54) had come from the same three dynasties, and with only one short exception they had formed chronological units, especially because in eight cases the succession had been directly from father to son. By contrast, the 14 legitimate kings of the significantly shorter Late

12 Mayer, ‘Das deutsche Königtum’, p. 43. 13 Ibid., p. 20. 14 Ibid., p. 18.

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Middle Ages (1248/54–1440) came from nominally six (or more accurately eight) different families.15 Because the prince-electors who were responsible for choosing the king alternated – apparently deliberately – between the three great dynasties of Habsburg, Luxemburg and Wittelsbach to prevent any one family from establishing itself on the throne in this period, the Late Middle Ages has been rightly characterised as an age of ‘institutionalised dynastic change.’ Along with the rulers, their dynasties and the preferred residences of their courts, the Reich‘s centre of action also shifted around. Instead of a single capital and residence city, which would also have provided a unitary place of burial for the rulers, there developed only a series of ‘sub-locales’ with functions that reached to the entire Reich, which, however, lacked any spatial connection to the established centres of royal power (including before 1495 Aachen, Frankfurt and Nuremberg north of the Alps). Thus, it has been said euphemistically that the Reich did not lack a capital, but rather had several.16 The discontinuity at the apex corresponded to a further weakening coherence of the Reich because the rulers’ territorial centres, dynastic bases or inherited lands – on which they were highly dependent – now changed even more strongly over time, in function and in shape. Allowing for a degree of scepticism, the crown during this period was resident in Holland (1248–56), Swabia (1273–91 and in part 1410–37), in the middle and upper Rhine region (1292–98, 1308–13 and 1400–10), in Bavaria (1314–47), in Austria and Styria (1298–1308, 1314–22 and 1438–93), in Bohemia (1346–1400/19) and temporarily at the borders or outside of the Reich in Castile (1257–73/84 and Hungary (1410–37). Areal lordship by these kings, especially if exercised from the periphery or even outside of the Reich by means of a relatively (considering the size of the Reich) modest ruling apparatus of courts with limited power to concentrate and accumulate, was effectively limited to two spheres of action: sanctions and mere legitimisation.17 The fact that royal lordship had to compete with about a dozen regional hegemonial systems created a political-geographical ordering of the Reich that was based not just on the old isolationist-vertical structures of obedience to the central power, but already displayed the beginnings of trans-territorial horizontal structures. Their further development, in

15 Peter Moraw, König, Reich und Territorium im späten Mittelalter. Prosopographische Untersuchungen zu Kontinuität und Struktur königsnaher Führungsgruppen (Heidelberg 1971), p. 3. 16 Wilhelm Berges, ‘Das Reich ohne Hauptstadt’, in Das Hauptstadtproblem in der Geschichte. Festgabe zum 90. Geburtstag Friedrich Meineckes (Tübingen 1952), pp. 1–30. 17 See generally Bernd Schneidmüller, ‘Konsensuale Herrschaft. Ein Essay über Formen und Konzepte Politischer Ordnung im Mittelalter’, in Reich, Regionen und Europa in Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Festschrift für Peter Moraw, ed. Paul-Joachim Heinig et al. (Berlin 2000), pp. 53–87, at pp. 81–2.

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other words the cross-spatial increase of interconnected interests especially between equally-ranked leaders, was an essential condition for increasing the coherence of the Reich. That the post-Staufen Reich with its ‘open’ and mostly un-institutionalised constitution (for which then alternative scenarios for future development still existed) held together at all was thanks to a few elements of relative stability, as we know since Peter Moraw’s recent identification of the relationship between centre and periphery, a theory which, albeit with some nuancing, has been generally accepted.18 It is thus possible to distinguish between six different regions, (1) the territory that formed the emperor’s dynastic power base, that is his hereditary lands, (2) the upper German lands that were ‘near to the king’ (königsnah), consisting of (a) the core area of late medieval Franconia with Nuremberg at the centre; (b) a region on the middle Rhine and lower Main now encompassing parts of the modern states of Hesse, Rhineland Palatinate and Bavaria and demarcated by the towns of Speyer and Boppard on the Rhine on the one hand and the towns of Frankfurt and Wetzlar in the East on the other; (c) the parts of Swabia lying on the upper Danube with Augsburg as the centre; (d) and the region on both sides of the Saale and on the middle Elbe with Erfurt as the centre. There was then (3) the area that was ‘open to the king’ (königsoffen), above all the upper Rhine and the upper reaches of the lower Rhine, (4) the territories of the prince-electors, in other words the Electorates of Mainz, Trier, Cologne and Palatinate, as well as Brandenburg, Saxony and the kingdom of Bohemia, (5) the territories of the dynasties that were rivals for the crown, in other words – since almost all the kings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries belonged to one of these houses – at any given time two of the trinity of Habsburg- Luxemburg-Wittelsbach. Finally (6), there were the areas ‘distant from the king’ (königsfern), especially much of lower Germany (the dividing line ran somewhat north of a line between Siegen-Giessen-Fulda) as well as regions in the extreme west and southwest of the Reich. In brief, this territorial grammar of the post-Staufen Reich (not including Italy) in retrospect affected on the one hand the ability to impose the royal will, and on the other hand, the interests of regional rulers in the affairs of the crown, until far into the fifteenth century. The king’s will was felt most in the royal hereditary lands and in the landscapes close to the king, and the least in the areas of the electors, the rival great dynasties and in the regions geographically far from the king (such as the north). A map of the late medieval Reich based on these realpolitik-structures would be much

18 See Moraw, Von offener Verfassung, p. 175. For nuancing of the argument, see e.g., Oliver Auge, ‘Reichsverdichtung und kulturelle Aneignung an der Peripherie. Die Fürsten im Nordosten des Reiches und Maximilian’, in Maximilian I. (1459–1519). Wahrnehmung, Übersetzungen, Gender, ed. Heinz Noflatscher, Michael S. Chisholm and Bertrand Schnerb (Innsbruck 2011), pp. 191–222.

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clearer (and more correct) than the coloured patchwork carpet of the usual political-geographical maps, whose inscrutability rests on their reliance on problematic formal categories such as ‘imperial immediacy’. It was more than a little decisive for the ‘new beginning’ after the Staufen era that the election of Rudolf I of Habsburg initiated personally as well as spatially a resuscitation of Staufen structures and return to the upper German core lands of the crown. Like the Staufen kings, who after the decline of their position in Bavaria following the rise of the Wittelsbachs had since the time of Frederick II devoted themselves to the upper Rhine region and Alsace, the first two Habsburgs, too, enacted their rule from within this central crown land. Neither Rudolf I nor his son Albert I transferred his political centre to Austria, which, although inherited by good fortune, was located on the Reich’s periphery. Less successful were their efforts to recover imperial property that had been alienated since 1245 and to establish themselves in the middle Elbe-Saale region, so that the north and northwest (which they never personally visited) remained on the periphery of communications and business connections. Only too plainly, from the reign of Ludwig IV ‘the Bavarian’ (1283/1314–1347),19 it was no longer the crown lands including their royal rights and possessions (Reichsgut) but the personal family possessions (Hausgut) and homeland (Hausmacht) of the dynasty from which the king was elected that provided ‘almost the only power base of the crown.’20 Thus, although the ‘burgher-friendly’ Ludwig still used the imperial towns of Nuremberg and Frankfurt as centres of power for his rule, he ignored areas like Swabia and Alsace. Instead, through rigorous dynastic politics he expanded his slim territorial basis around his residence at Munich. He thus not only reunited upper and lower Bavaria but also acquired large areas for his dynasty in the north of the Reich. After the extinction of the Ascanian dynasty in Brandenburg in 1319 he enfeoffed his son Ludwig V (1315–1361) (who afterwards married a daughter of the Danish king) with the Mark of Brandenburg. Eventually, this peripheral electoral principality and the centres of Louis’s kingship were joined to each other, by way of Thuringia, by a land bridge of political alliances; rarely was the medieval March of Brandenburg so strongly connected to the rest of the Reich, and indeed to Europe as a whole, as it was then. In 1342 Ludwig V (‘the Brandenburger’) transferred to Tyrol, which was more valuable because of its link with Italy, and had his father legitimate in feudal law his scandalous marriage with the regent Margarethe Maultasch of the

19 On the following, see Paul-Joachim Heinig, ‘Gescheiterte Inbesitznahme? Ludwig der Brandenburger und die Mark’, in Vielfalt und Aktualität des Mittelalters. Festschrift für Wolfgang Petke zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Sabine Arend et al. (Bielefeld 2006), pp. 1–26; Michael Menzel, ‘Die Wittelsbacher Hausmachterweiterungen in Brandenburg, Tirol und Holland,’ DA 61 (2005), 103–59. 20 Mayer, ‘Das deutsche Königtum’, p. 34.

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Görz dynasty, who was then still married to a brother of Charles IV. King Ludwig IV personally committed himself to the political task of expanding his dynasty’s power northward and southward, possibly primarily in reaction to the aggression of the rival Luxemburg dynasty. And when in 1345 he successfully enforced his claim to the county of Hainault as well as Holland, Zeeland and Frisia by right of his second marriage (1324) (and against the rights of his sister-in-law Philippa, wife of King Edward III of England), he had indeed brought together an impressive – although in the event not durable – dynastic power.21

Centre and periphery: nearness and farness from the king up to the mid-fourteenth century The Habsburgs profited from some areas (for example Tyrol) and the Luxemburger Charles IV from others. It is with the latter that the reliance of royal lordship on the king’s own dynastic possessions (later also called the ‘Hereditary Lands’) becomes particularly apparent. After Charles had won the March of Brandenburg from the Wittelsbachs for his own dynasty, the Bohemian territories in the middle and the north of the Reich beyond the Elbe were at last linked to each other again. Tangermünde became an imperial residence and the Hanseatic capital Lübeck experienced the honour of hosting an emperor in person one last time. As the result of a combination of the geopolitical shift of power and the simultaneous safeguarding of traditional ties of relationship and the development of promising new ones, Prague now became the centre of an expanded governmental and political system. Not until early modern Vienna did any ‘dynastic’ residential city carry out more functions, including serving as capital city of the entire Reich. With the centrality of Prague and Bohemia, the Roman-German crown for the first time found itself in a markedly favourable position with regard to taking account of and integrating the peripheral regions in the north and south as well as the assertion of their own needs. For the coherence of the Reich as well, this was probably the most advantageous situation since the Salian era; it was certainly the most favourable of the entire Late Middle Ages. As Peter Moraw has suggested: ‘A line that divides the Reich north of the Alps into northern and southern halves runs approximately through Prague and Frankfurt am Main. For the time of Charles IV one can almost speak of an axis between Prague and Nuremberg, with runners to Breslau and

21 The Wittelsbach takeover of the March of Brandenburg in 1323 linked this electoral principality for five decades (until 1373) to the Bavarian dynasty. Tyrol was claimed 1342–63, and the line that began in Holland, Hainault, Zeeland, and Frisia in 1346 lasted until 1425.

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Paul-Joachim Heinig Frankfurt am Main. In contrast, a northern quarter of the Reich would be designated by an east-west line through Frankfurt an der Oder and Amsterdam.’22

But this situation did not achieve continuity either. Indications of brewing crisis already emerged in the last third of the fourteenth century. And the ‘Hussite Revolution’ after 1415 devalued Bohemia as a potential central landscape of the Roman-German crown until the temporary bipolarity of Vienna and Prague under the early modern Habsburgs.

Summary In the final analysis, it may quite simply be true that ‘the permanent interchange of centre and periphery, which made a continuous preponderance of traditional areas almost impossible and surmounted entrenched patterns of order (Ordnungsschemata) evoking ideas of continuous ancient civilisational progress or the only gradual acculturation of barbarian groups, belongs to the peculiarities of the lasting dynamic of European history.’23 Within these parameters the history of Germany would seem to contain certain distinct characteristics. It is the result of a failed attempt to work out organizationally a universal, that is, multinational, empire.24 Of the three high medieval regna Germany (Alemannien), Italy and Burgundy (Arelate) joined together by the Roman (Roman-German) emperor in personal union, only the narrower German regnum was ‘intensified’ at the end of the fifteenth century. Certain areas like the Swiss confederation and the Habsburg Netherlands remained distinct, while some parts of the other regna had a share in it. While the regnum became to be understood ‘disregarding its numerous Romanian, Slav and Baltic members . . . more than ever as the Reich of the ‘German nation’,’ the only aspect of the old Reich

22 Peter Moraw, ‘Nord und Süd in der Umgebung des deutschen Königtums im späten Mittelalter’, in Nord und Süd in der deutschen Geschichte, ed. pp. 51–70 at p. 53. 23 Schneidmüller, ‘Konsensuale Herrschaft’, pp. 61–2: ‘Vielleicht gehörte sogar der permanente Wechsel von Zentrum und Peripherie, der beständige Präponderanzen traditioneller Räume kaum zuließ und zementierende Ordnungsschemata von andauerndem antiken Zivilisationsvorsprung oder nur allmählicher Akkulturation barbarischer Verbände überwand, zu den Besonderheiten der dauerhaften Dynamik europäischer Geschichte.’ 24 For the following, see Peter Moraw, ‘Bestehende, fehlende und heranwachsende Voraussetzungen des deutschen Nationalbewußtseins im späten Mittelalter’, in Ansätze und Diskontinuität deutscher Nationsbildung im Mittelalter, ed. Joachim Ehlers (Sigmaringen 1988), pp. 99–120 at p. 102.

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that endured in light of the growing divergence between pretence and reality was its legitimisation. At any rate: contrary to the older scholarly view, the Middle Ages not only passed on strong territories to the (early) modern period, but also a comprehensive German constitution in form of the reform laws of 1495, which in principle remained in effect until the end of the old Reich in 1806.

13 The territorial principalities in Lotharingia Michel Margue and Michel Pauly

Introduction: the Lotharingian region Originally, the name ‘Lotharingia’ designated the region of Lothar II’s lordship between the Rhine and Schelde, stretching from Frisia to Alsace, although its borders already fluctuated in the ninth century. Lothar’s kingdom, despite its history of movement between the western and eastern Carolingian kingdoms, repeatedly re-emerged as an independent structure, as the regnum Lotharii under King Charles the Bald (869–870; 876) and King Zwentibold (895–900), and later as a duchy (for example under Duke Giselbert, (928–939)). These periods of independence served as a historical and increasingly also as an identity-conveying point of reference from the mid-eleventh century on. Thus, for example, a Liège chronicler wrote in 1051: ‘Gaul sees in us its final successor, Germania its first inhabitant. We, by contrast, consider ourselves as part of neither the one nor the other but as belonging to both.’1 Before that, Emperor Otto I had turned over large portions of the contested region as a duchy to his brother Archbishop Bruno of Cologne (953–965). From Otto’s reign two Lotharingian dukes are known, each with his own area of lordship. Historians have called these ‘Upper Lotharingia’ and ‘Lower Lotharingia’, although the primary sources know only the term ‘Lotharingia’ for both. The successors of both ducal lines held onto the term ‘Lotharingia’, although in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries they lost their superior power and, despite the ducal title, were equivalent to counts, in the south in the duchy of Lotharingia/ Lorraine, in the north in the duchy of Brabant. Alongside this development,

1 Recueil des rouleaux des morts (VIIIe siècle – vers 1536), i, VIIIe siècle – 1180, ed. Jean Dufour (Paris 2005), pp. 189–94; see Michel Margue, ‘Nous ne sommes ni de l’une, ni de l’autre, mais les deux à la fois. Entre France et Germanie, les identités lotharingiennes en question(s) (2e moitié du IXe – début du XIe siècle)’, in De la Mer du Nord à la Méditerranée. Francia Media, une région au cœur de l’Europe (c. 840 – c. 1050). Actes du colloque international (Metz, Luxembourg, Trèves, 8–11 février 2006), ed. Michèle Gaillard, Michel Margue, Alain Dierkens and Hérold Pettiau (Luxemburg 2011), pp. 395–427.

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further territories developed in the old Lotharingian region up to the fourteenth century: the counties of Holland and Zeeland, Gelders, Cleves, Jülich, Hainault, Namur, Loon, Chiny, Luxemburg, Bar and the duchy of Limburg. The area also included several ecclesiastical territories – the prince-bishoprics of Trier and part of Cologne, Utrecht, Cambrai, Tournai, Liège, Metz, Toul, Verdun and eventually Strassburg and the imperial monasteries of Kornelimünster, Stavelot-Malmedy and Prüm, as well as episcopal monasteries like Saint-Hubert. It also comprised many smaller territories in what is, roughly speaking, the Rhine, Maas and Saar region, and in Alsace, as well as the city-state of Metz. There was also the county of Flanders, at least the part lying east of the Schelde, which the count of Flanders held as a vassal of the king of the Romans (‘imperial Flanders’).2 This article will restrict itself to the larger territories and for reasons of space will focus on the secular territories and in particular the county of Luxemburg.3 Our conclusions are of necessity provisional, since a comparative study of the development of the Lotharingian duchies, counties and ecclesiastical territories remains a scholarly desideratum.

Historiography and research questions The scholarly debate over an acceptable term and definition for the secular and ecclesiastical lordships that developed from comital rights starting in the eleventh century has not reached a conclusion for the former Lotharingian region, any more than it has elsewhere; indeed, the debate has not even really been held. The reason may be that the French term principautés territoriales and the German Territorialstaat were invented and

2 There is no recent overview for whole Lotharingia. For Lower Lotharingia, see ‘Le gouvernement des principautés au moyen âge: la Basse-Lotharingie du Xe au XIVe siècle’, ed. Georges Despy, Revue de l’Université de Bruxelles, nlle. série, 22 (1970), pp. 409– 510; La Wallonie, le Pays et les Hommes, 1: Histoire, économie, sociétés. Des Celtes à 1830, ed. Hervé Hasquin (Brussels 1975), pp. 63–92; and ‘Politieke ontwikkeling circa 100–1400’, Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, ii (Haarlem 1982), pp. 281–502. For Upper Lotharingia: Encyclopédie illustrée de la Lorraine. Histoire de la Lorraine, ed. Guy Cabourdin, vol. 2: Michel Parisse, Austrasie, Lotharingie, Lorraine (Nancy 1990), pp. 109–80. For the Lower Rhine region: Manfred Groten, ‘Die Erforschung des hochmittelalterlichen Adels im Rheinland. Bilanz und Perspektiven’, in Verortete Herrschaft. Königspfalzen, Adelsburgen und Herrschaftsbildung in Niederlothringen während des frühen und hohen Mittelalters, ed. Jens Lieven, Bert Thissen and Ronald Wientjes (Bielefeld 2014), pp. 191–210. 3 Michel Margue and Michel Pauly, ‘Luxemburg vor und nach Worringen. Die Auswirkungen der Schlacht von Worringen auf die Landesorganisation sowie die Territorial- und Reichspolitik der Grafen von Luxemburg’, Jahrbuch für westdeutsche Landesgeschichte 16 (1990), 111–76; Winfried Reichert, Landesherrschaft zwischen Reich und Frankreich. Verfassung, Wirtschaft und Territorialpolitik in der Grafschaft Luxemburg von der Mitte des 13. bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (2 vols., Trier 1993).

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became established in both languages in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it is far too easy to use them interchangeably despite their different meanings. Both terms awaken anachronistic associations, as does the idea of a German ‘state’ when the point of reference is the modern state, or the German and French concept of ‘territorial’, suggestive of a comprehensive lordship across a whole territory. The indication of a ‘land’ in the late medieval sense of an entity that was progressively integrated by ‘territorial lords’/Landesherren, is problematic for the earlier period, as is the whole notion of ‘prince’ – a term not legally definable until the thirteenth century, although there is a clearly attested build-up of a ruling elite as ‘imperial princes’ (the Reichsfürstenstand) in the late Middle Ages. For the area of comital and ducal lordship discussed here, in Lotharingia the terms ‘territories’ and ‘dynastic territorial lordships’ appear the most appropriate, in the sense of a progressive territorialisation of a lordship inherited within noble families. From the thirteenth century on, the concept of ‘territorial lord’ (Landesherr) is increasingly justified, in the sense of sires souverains. In this conceptual uncertainty, the question of a universally valid definition emerges, one that takes into account the diversity of historical and geographical contexts. And this again is closely linked to the history of the historiography on the rise and development of the territorial principalities, which in the former Lotharingian region has been strongly influenced by cultural and indeed political tendencies. Older, and in part even recent studies are shaped by a teleological approach and a regional (Rhineland, Walloon, Lorraine) or national (Luxemburg) historiographical or academic context that sees the medieval ‘territories’ as forerunners of the modern state. This approach manifests itself in the terms used to describe the territories and early dynastic identity constructs (for example in the Luxemburg ‘great duchy’, the former Lorraine région, or the Belgian ‘provinces’), giving the impression of a linear development and continuity that does not stand up to scholarly scrutiny. The national and regional fragmentation of scholarship has strengthened this distorted view; the dominance of this approach was only undermined starting in the 1980s through comparative studies (for example, through the Journées Lotharingiennes). This false sense of continuity must also be questioned in light of the recent discussion, especially in France and England, about the concept of the ‘state’, use of which now has been rejected for the early and central Middle Ages as a forerunner and connecting link to the modern state, or at least reduced to its medieval specificity. Even today, sometimes the negative view is implicit of the ‘territories’ as a counterweight or brake upon ‘German’ state-building – only the Reich being considered a state. What was true from the perspective of territorial dynasties looking upward in relation to the king or emperor was also true looking downwards in relation to lords, monasteries and towns. Nobles who held lordship at a local level (noblesse seigneuriale) and the towns should no longer be considered as ‘rivals’ to counts and dukes. They often participated in the dynastic lordship

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of the territories and thus move more strongly into the foreground, in the sense of a collectivity of people bearing lordship and ‘governing’. Power that regulated ‘state’ functions (the judiciary, peacekeeping, protection of the Church) was actually carried out by many actors in the medieval ‘state’, in contrast to the modern era’s dynastic monopoly on force. Research on the dynastic territorial lordships in the old Lotharingian region has had to take into account strong differences – cultural (identity-conveying elements, the development of writing and use of the vernacular language), social (lordly networks), ideal (concepts of power, law and space) and hitherto disregarded political factors (such as the processes and places for the exercise of lordship, and transfers between lords at the local, regional and kingdom levels, as well as between territories). This is necessary to consider the increase of territory, both political – that is state-building through expansion of territory – and institutional – state-building through the creation and expansion of administration, and through the participation of nobles, ministeriales and towns. This will give analysis of the historicity of the concept and its historiographical significance a decisive role. These recent research issues and desiderata in ‘Lotharingian’ historiography correspond to a new definition of the territories in closer alignment to an overall view of this concept. According to this interpretation, the principauté territoriale/territorial principality/Territorialherrschaft would be a collective living and ruling space, defined by common recognition of dynastic ‘governance’ that in the course of the late Middle Ages provides an institutional, territorial and identifying development.

Origins: eleventh – early twelfth century The origins of territorial principalities must be seen in the progressive combination, coalescence and territorial registration of lordship rights of various sorts that find expression starting in the last third of the eleventh century in the lordship vocabulary of the dukes and counts. Among them were personal rights (allodial possession), countships and other regalian rights (over mints and tolls, for example), rights inherent in vassalage, rights in relation to churches and monasteries (advocacy), including, besides as lord of the manor, judicial power (the right of high justice), executive, cultural and economic aspects. Traditionally, this development has been seen as a process of the local counts emancipating themselves from the emperor, on the one hand, and his Lotharingian deputies, the dukes of Upper and Lower Lotharingia, and later also the ducal powers of the archbishop of Cologne, on the other. Thus, it has been regarded as a process from ‘outside’, and also explained in terms of the counts’ lust for power. According to Léopold Génicot, this process took place in (Lower) Lotharingia in the second half of the twelfth

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century.4 By contrast, Jean-Louis Kupper sees the key element in the heritability of countships conceded by the king as a public office, a development that he sees as widespread in the eleventh century.5 Génicot also points out that from 1152 onwards, churchmen no longer turned to the emperor for confirmation of their possessions and privileges, but rather to the count concerned.6 In 1153 the duke of (Lower) Lotharingia also appears for the last time as an imperial deputy and therefore as the holder of a superior judicial function in Lotharingian conflicts.7 One could add that after the death of Emperor Henry VI (1197), no emperor attempted to intervene as overlord in the destiny of the territorial principalities. In this regard, Frederick I’s action at the Mainz imperial assembly of 1184 can be seen as a key development.8 The emperor wished to turn over to Count Baldwin V of Hainault the counties of Namur, Durbuy, Laroche and Luxemburg, held by his uncle Henry the Blind, who at that time was childless, in the form of an imperial margraviate, which Baldwin would hold as an imperial vassal with the status of princeps imperii. Although the project failed, due to the opposition of Cologne, Brabant and Flanders, and the later birth of Henry the Blind’s daughter Ermesinde in 1186, as late as 1192 Baldwin still represented himself in a document optimistically as marcio et princeps imperii.9 In the older scholarship this project is viewed as the crystallisation of a centrally guided policy of systematically creating the position of the ‘imperial prince’. Henry VI’s less-known successor project in favour of his younger brother Count Palatine Otto of Burgundy also failed in 1197. So did Count Dietrich of Holland’s attempt to purchase the title of ‘prince’ in 1191, and thus to free himself from vassalage to the count of Flanders.10 In the old Lotharingian region it was only in the fourteenth century that counts were again elevated to a position as imperial princes over the ducal title – Gelderland in 1317/1339, Jülich in 1339 and Luxemburg and Bar in 1354.11 Rather than a continuous imperial policy, one can see

4 Léopold Génicot, Etudes sur les principautés lotharingiennes (Louvain 1975), passim (esp. p. 30). 5 Histoire de la Wallonie. De la préhistoire au XXIe siècle, ed. Bruno Dumoulin and JeanLouis Kupper (Toulouse 2004), pp. 108–9. 6 Génicot, Etudes, pp. 84–5, 92–3. 7 Léopold Génicot, Histoire de la Wallonie (Toulouse 1973), p. 126. 8 For what follows, see Michel De Waha, ‘La marche impériale de Namur-Luxembourg. Vicissitudes d’un concept géo-politique de 1150–1300’, in Ermesinde et l’affranchissement de la ville de Luxemburg. Etudes sur la femme, le pouvoir et la ville au XIIIe siècle, ed. Michel Margue (Luxemburg 1994), pp. 91–159, and Steffen Schlinker, Fürstenamt und Rezeption (Cologne 1999), pp. 53–70. 9 Fernand Vercauteren, ‘Note sur Gislebert, rédacteur de chartes’, MIÖG 62 (1954), 238–53, at pp. 242–3. 10 ‘Politieke ontwikkeling’, p. 290. 11 Schlinker, Fürstenamt, pp. 115–62.

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in these promotions of counts to the rank of an imperial prince a desire for more efficient defence of imperial interests against the French kingdom on the western border. Under the Staufen one can also see the attempt to increase the thinly scattered imperial holdings in the earlier Lotharingia through converting them from allod into imperial fiefs to the benefit of imperial princes. One should stress, though, that already in the Staufen era such a policy was only possible if there were agreement between emperor and dynasts. Recent scholarship has shown that the origins of territorial principalities can also be connected to internal characteristics that make it possible to explain their development not just from the perspective of the empire but from that of their own internal development. As material fixed points of self-portrayal, internal characteristics used to represent dynastic lordship (documents, seals, coins, genealogies, funerary monuments) must of course be interpreted cautiously. In the Lotharingian region, the first comital documents that differ from earlier comital documents by using a titulature in the style of ‘X, count of Y’, and attest to an eponymous castle as the centre of the county appear between the last third of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century.12 At this point it became more and more common to perform public legal acts by means of written documents produced in the count’s circle. It is decisively significant that starting in the early twelfth century the corroboration formulae of these comital documents attest to the count’s auctoritas publica. This took place in the context of the first dynastic seals, whose appearance can be dated to this same period. Thus, we see seals from 1078 for the dukes of (Upper) Lotharingia (the future dukes of Lorraine), 1083 for the counts of Luxemburg, 1086 for the counts of Louvain (and of Brabant; from 1106 on dukes of (Lower) Lotharingia/Lothier and later dukes of Brabant), 1086 for the counts of Mons (later of Hainault), 1091 for the counts of Mousson (later of Bar). Seals appear in the last third of the eleventh century for the counts of Namur, 1107 for the dukes of Limburg and 1135–1148 for the counts of Chiny. Only the counts of Flanders in northern Lotharingia experienced a somewhat earlier development (1065).13 These new internal and external documentary practices illustrate two essential political developments. First, they show that although the Lotharingian dukes in the twelfth century still placed great value on a glorious title, and retained theoretically overarching rights of lordship (such as Brabant in its fight with Limburg), nonetheless in reality their power basis

12 Michel Margue, ‘Actes princiers et naissance des principautés territoriales: chartes et pouvoirs laïques dans les espaces mosan et mosellan (fin Xe – début XIIe siècles)’, in Chancelleries princières et “Scriptoria” dans les anciens Pays-Bas Xe – XVe siècles, ed. Thérèse de Hemptines and Jean-Marie Duvosquel (Brussels 2010), pp. 219–42. 13 Margue, ‘Actes princiers’, pp. 238–41.

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could hardly be distinguished from that of the most powerful counts.14 Second, a comparison with episcopal documents shows that bishops’ policies served as a model for counts and dukes. Ever since the Ottonian era, the bishops pursued internal and external territorial policies that the secular dynasties made their own starting in the eleventh century. The main lines of this policy lay in the accumulation of comital rights, castle-building, establishing protectorships over monasteries, forcing the subordination of lesser counts and lords, the establishment of a central administration and enforcing peace policies. Like the bishops, the counts and dukes combined the comital rights (comitatus) granted by the king, their rights of advocacy over imperial and sometimes even episcopal monasteries and their allodial rights in such a fashion that it was no longer always possible to differentiate between them.15 The title ‘count’ held by royal or imperial deputies in the tenth and eleventh centuries, as well as by the dynasts of the twelfth- to fourteenth-century territorial principalities, contributes to the uncertainty about rights of lordship in the various sources. The old function of countships, originally granted by the ruler, enabled counts and dukes to take control of imperial holdings (fiscus). They soon transformed royal palaces into dynastic castles or residences, minted coins in their own name, raised tolls and claimed right of conveyance and established markets at the foot of their castles. Advocacy allowed them to make inroads on monastic possessions – an occurrence that in any event was strongly exaggerated in the rhetoric of reform and in many cases served more as allocation of fiefs for ministeriales than to expand the count’s own possessions. One must also note the evidence for internal development of the area, since the erection of comital castles could lead to the foundation of urban centres in their vicinity. And finally one should also note that the foundation of family monasteries, which were directly dependent on the count’s castle and provided the dynasty with chaplains and clerks to write his documents, also supplied him with a burial place and perpetuated his memoria and represent a further step toward the creation of a pre-urban centre.16 It is possible to read the developments roughly sketched here on the basis of a few examples as a purely territorial history, in the sense of a process of accumulating territories. However, such a reading takes into account

14 For the dukes of Lower Lotharingia, see Erik van Mingroot, ‘Het Leuvense gravenhuis’, Leuven, “de beste stad van Brabant”, i, De geschiedenis van het stadsgewest Leuven tot omstreeks 1600, ed. Raymond van Uytven (Leuven 1980), pp. 47–69. For the dukes of Upper Lotharingia, see Walter Mohr, Das Herzogtum der Mosellaner (11.-14. Jahrhundert) (Saarbrücken 1979); Parisse, Austrasie, Lotharingie, Lorraine [above, note 2]. 15 Génicot, Histoire de la Wallonie, pp. 126–36. 16 Sépulture, mort et représentation du pouvoir au moyen âge. Tod, Grabmal und Herrschaftsrepräsentation im Mittelalter. Actes des onzièmes Journée Lotharingiennes, ed. Michel Margue (Luxemburg 2006).

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neither the complexity of lordship relations nor the socio-cultural dimension of political relationships. The following summary can thus at most supply some geographical clues. At the end of the eleventh century in the area between the lower courses of the Maas and the Rhine a Count Gerhard called himself after the castles of Wassenberg (1087) and Gelders (1097).17 In this area he controlled allodial lands and royal rights of countship and advocacy that went back to the Balderich dynasty in the tenth century. The more southerly Wassenberg fell to the dukes of Limburg in the twelfth century, so that the county of Gelders stretched from the middle Niers northwestward in the circuit between the Maas/Waal and the lower Rhine. The county of Hainault in the western part of Lower Lotharingia took its name from the pagus (the Hennegau) and also comitatus Hainoensis south of Valenciennes. Nonetheless, the centre of this lordship as it expanded progressively to the west, north and east was (after Valenciennes) the castle and religious foundation of Mons, both for the Reginar dynasty (until 1050) and then for the Baldwins, from the Flemish comital dynasty (1051–1280).18 The counts whose central stronghold was the castle of Louvain also came from the Reginar family. Besides the county of the same name, they also controlled counties in the pagus Bracbantensis and in several other pagi in the vicinity, especially around Brussels. Southward they extended their power through advocacy over the monastery of Nivelles and probably Gembloux; to the north they inherited the large margraviate and town of Antwerp, with a ducal title from 1106 on. As a sort of first family monastery, they contributed decisively to the foundation of Afflighem, a Benedictine abbey on the border of Flanders (1083).19 South of the Ardennes, the counts of the so-called ‘Ardennes house’ built up their area of lordship with comital rights on the middle Moselle, in the Ardennes and in the Eifel, as well as advocacy over the great imperial monasteries of St. Maximin and Echternach, and allodial land in Luxemburg. With the foundation of Münster’s abbey near the town (1083), the comital family definitively freed itself from narrow links to the episcopal city of Trier and the imperial monastery of St. Maximin.20 Further south, the dukes of Upper Lotharingia controlled a highly disparate collection of

17 Stefan Frankewitz, ‘Burgen der Grafen von Geldern im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert’, in Verortete Herrschaft [see note 2 above], 335–60. 18 Michel de Waha et Jean Dugnoille, ‘Le Hainault au Moyen Age’, in Hainault. Mille ans pour l’avenir, ed. Claire Billen, Xavier Canonne and Jean-Marie Duvosquel (Antwerp 1998), pp. 25–51. 19 Van Mingroot, ‘Het Leuvense gravenhuis’. 20 Heinz Renn, Das erste Luxemburger Grafenhaus (963–1136) (Bonn 1941); Michel Margue, Autorité publique et conscience dynastique. Etudes sur les représentations du pouvoir princier entre Meuse et Moselle. Les origines du comté de Luxembourg (Xe – début XIIe siècles) (3 vols., Unpublished Dissertation, Brussels 1999).

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rights of lordship between the Vosges Mountains, the Forest of Argonne and the Moselle-Hunsrück area, although over time these were weakened by the provision made for cadet branches of the family. Like their power base, their rights of advocacy were also divided into north and south poles between Metz (St. Peter and St. Martin) and the Vosges (Moyenmoutier, StDié, Remiremont). The town of Nancy with its Benedictine priory, founded before 1061, only much later asserted itself against other towns such as Châtenois, Prény, or Neufchâteau.21

Consolidation: second half of the twelfth – first half of the thirteenth century From the middle of the twelfth century several novelties appear in the diplomatic of comital documents that are symptomatic of a first phase of stabilisation and expansion of the territorial principalities. Comital documents, with some exceptions, are simpler, sober in appearance and stereotypical in their formulation. Their number rises sharply, for example approximately doubling for the dukes of Brabant between the first and second halves of the twelfth century.22 From west to the east (Flanders over Brabant and Hainault to Luxemburg), there is a noticeable dip in document production, and also from south to north (Lorraine over Bar as far as Luxemburg). The increase in document production and of the use of writing by the counts’ officials points to a first phase of expanding institutions, which characterised the dynastic lordship for the next few centuries, although between 1150 and 1250 these remained rather informal and fluctuated widely in their composition. Counts’ retinues came to include writing personnel (one cannot yet speak of a chancery in every territory), the council (which depending on circumstances could be divided into a small and a large council) and the court, both the inner curia and the curia plena, in which nobles and ministeriales gradually melted together into knightly status. Vassalage or the knightly state came to play a specific role.23 From the example of the county of Luxemburg we can see how in c. 1200 offices that had become hereditary among the nobles, such as the court offices, stewardship of castles and (under) advocacy of monasteries, were displaced by new offices at the central (seneschal), regional (provosts) or local (local advocates) level.

21 Encyclopédie illustrée de la Lorraine, passim; Michel Parisse, ‘Les ducs et le duché de Lorraine au XII siècle 1048–1206’, BDLG 111 (1975), pp. 86–102; Jean-Luc Fray, Nancy-le-Duc. Essor d’une résidence princière dans les deux derniers siècles du moyen âge (Nancy 1986). 22 David Guilardian, ‘Actes princiers et naissance des principautés territoriales: du duché de Basse-Lotharingie au duché de Brabant (XIe – XIIIe siècles)’, in Chancelleries princières, pp. 243–58, esp. p. 251. 23 See above notes 2 and 15.

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These positions were no longer hereditary, and counts filled them for short terms at their own discretion with members of noble or ministerial families who could be removed at will. The institutional development of the individual territories must not, however, be written only from ‘within’ but also from ‘outside’, in the sense of a history of transfers. Essential prefatory studies are still lacking in this area. It has been generally assumed that power structures intensified more in the west than in the east, but this premise requires examination. If one considers the existence of a chancery as evidence, one would be inclined to agree with this view.24 Flanders already had a clearly defined chancery in the first half of the twelfth century; the same developed about a half century later in Hainault and Brabant, but only in the fourteenth century in Luxemburg and Bar. With the creation of extensive administrative districts under regional provosts, Luxemburg also probably followed a northwestern model imitated from Champagne and Bar.25 Along with the development of comital and administrative organs, one can also measure the strengthening of counties through the rise of central places of power – both the result of a growing administration and the basis for its further growth. On this point one must guard against seeing a linear development, since such a model does not suit the fluctuating structures of lordship during the Middle Ages. Nonetheless, after several early fluctuations that could reach into the late thirteenth century, a number of dynastic centres were clearly established in Gelders (a castle), Wassenburg (a castle and a collegiate church as the comital necropolis from 1137), Louvain (a castle and the collegiate church of St. Peter, which was the dynastic burial centre from 1142), Mons (a castle and the collegiate church of St. Waudru, the comital place of burial from 1120), Namur (a castle and the church of St. Aubain that served the same purpose from 1063/64 onwards) and Luxemburg (a castle, and the monastery of St. Peter as burial centre since 1086). The counts of Bar were buried in St-Mihiel from 1083 onwards, but in 1291 the collegiate foundation of St-Maxe in Bar became the comital burial church. The example of the dukes of Upper Lotharingia/Lorraine shows, however, both that a power centre could be established late, and that it did not necessarily have to be connected to a family burial place. The dukes were buried successively in the Benedictine abbey of Bouzonville, the Cistercian monasteries of Sturzelbronn, Clairlieu and Beaupré, and only in the collegiate church of Nancy from 1346 onwards.26 Thus, roughly speaking, a political landscape emerged in the former Lotharingian region in the twelfth and early thirteenth century that

24 For what follows, see Chancelleries princières. 25 Pauly Margue, ‘Luxembourg vor und nach Worringen’, pp. 126–31. 26 Sépulture, mort et symbolique du pouvoir [see note 16 above].

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remained intact until the Burgundian era. The increasing density and intensity of dynastic territorial lordship can be seen with the example of the Luxemburg dynasty’s acquisition of the Ardennes counties of Durbuy and Laroche through inheritance in 1199, as well the margraviate of Arlon through marriage (1214/1226).27 The union of these new territories with their older ones allowed the Luxemburg territory to double its former size. But this is a modern perspective, since the individual counties continued to be administered according to their own law, and the conglomerate character of the whole was retained in reality and not just in titulature.28 Similarly, Holland, Zeeland (1167) and Frisia (1287) each retained its own unique position despite being united under a common dynasty. The same is true of Flanders and Hainault under count Baldwin (VI of Hainault and IX of Flanders).

Growing density and modernising trends: second half thirteenth – first half fourteenth century From the middle of the thirteenth century the form and character of dynastic lordship changed in a process of a steady intensification, territorialisation and rationalisation.29 The following will lay out only some of the numerous facets of this development through examples. There is need for a more comprehensive comparative study. ‘Feudal’ policy and territorialisation In the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, efforts to expand territory were still part of the order of the day. But because of the strengthening of lordship structures that had occurred in the meantime, almost all of these efforts were doomed to failure or led to decisive military encounters. The county of Luxemburg can once again serve as an example on this issue.30 Except for some local successes in ‘feudal’ politics, the counts of Luxemburg did not succeed in expanding their territory significantly in the direction of Trier or the Maas in this period. Claims to the county of Namur by Count

27 Michel Margue, ‘Ermesinde. Notice biographique’, in Ermesinde et l’affranchissement de la ville de Luxembourg, pp. 11–27 (map p. 20). 28 Michel Margue, ‘Ermesinde, comtesse de Luxembourg. Questions nouvelles pour une réinterprétation de son règne’, in Ermesinde et l’affranchissement de la ville de Luxemburg, pp. 181–210. 29 See generally (with a large focus on Lotharingia): Les principautés dans l’Occident médiéval à l’origine des régions, ed. Bernard Demotz (Turnhout 2007). 30 For what follows related to the county of Luxemburg, see Margue and Pauly, ‘Luxemburg vor und nach Worringen’, and Reichert, Landesherrschaft. See also genealogical chart XIX above.

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Henry V (d. 1281), or to the duchy of Limburg, by Count Henry VI, who died in the Battle of Worringen in 1288, were denied on the basis of others’ inheritance rights. This blocking of territorial policies to the west may have been a reason why Count Henry VII was so quick to claim Bohemia in the east for his dynasty.31 But there are also cases of successful territorial expansion through war, such as the Brabantine expansion into Limburg (1288) or the union of the three great counties of Hainault, Zeeland and Holland in the hands of the Hainault Count John of Avesnes through military means in 1299. Both these examples show, however, those expansionary efforts of this sort could only succeed when a dynasty died out. To view that issue from the opposite perspective, they also show that the establishment of an unbroken line of succession, or the right of primogeniture, was absolutely essential for the successful build-up of a lordship. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was more a question of increasing the density of lordship, either within the individual territorial complexes or on their borders. Noble lordships could still become dependent on a greater lord instead of on the emperor alone, especially on the periphery of the individual comital territories. The smaller lords were compelled to accept their land from the count as a fief, for the most part with the condition that the count had a right of access to their castle. Thus, for example, after holding out for a long time Count Philip of Vianden in 1246 had to surrender his castle and county and receive them back as a fief from the count of Luxemburg.32 The oldest evidence of vassalage by contracts of union in the empire comes from the Moselle region – Gilbert of Mons speaks of the liegemen (homines ligi) of Count Henry IV of Namur and Luxemburg in 1171.33 The establishment of vassalic relations in writing became customary in the entire Upper Lotharingian region from the beginning of the thirteenth century onwards. In Hainault already in the twelfth century, in the bishoprics of Cambrai and Liège in the thirteenth, but in the county of Luxemburg only in 1334, nobles first had to surrender their allodial lands as fiefs to the lord before vassalic links could be established. That is a clear evidence of strengthening lordship, because such claims were based neither on ‘feudal’ overlordship nor on sovereign rights. The vassalic bond itself was progressively territorialised. Thus, for example, in 1290 the vassals of the count of

31 Die Erbtochter, der fremde Fürst und das Land. Die Ehe Johanns des Blinden und Elisabeths von Böhmen in vergleichender europäischer Perspektive, ed. Michel Pauly (Luxemburg 2013). 32 Michel Margue, ‘Vianden’, in Höfe und Residenzen im spätmittelalterlichen Reich. Grafen und Herren, ed. Werner Paravicini (Ostfildern 2012), pp. 1560–74, at p. 1564. 33 La Chronique de Gislebert de Mons, ed. Leon Vanderkindere (Brussels 1904), c. 65, p. 103, and Gilbert of Mons. Chronicle of Hainault, trans. Laura Napran (Woodbridge 2005), p. 60.

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Luxemburg were designated as homines comitatus lucenburgensis, and no longer defined by their relationship to the person of the comes.34 The same is true of the title of ‘knight’. The integration of ministeriales with nobles in the knightly class was also typical. Count Henry V of Luxemburg had himself described in documents as superior dominus terre and asserted his defensio of newly founded monasteries. At the same time, the most important lords with right of high justice were successfully linked to the count’s ‘feudal’ court: they even accepted their core castles as fiefs from the count of Luxemburg. Thus, lordship was positively established over both exempt church possessions and lordships enjoying rights of high justice. The establishment of a monopoly of justice and power is significant evidence of the territorialisation of lordship, as was the accumulation of official titles. By the fourteenth century the strengthening of his lordship had progressed far enough so that count John could give the right of high justice to a number of vassals without placing his own authority in question. When Count John the Blind returned to a reliance on ‘feudal’ rights to enlarge his territory, he combined these policies with fiscal ones. He gave up monetary dues, but compelled the recipients of these concessions to use their capital to purchase allodial land, which as far as possible should lie within the county or near it, and that the vassal then had to deliver it up as a fief to him as their overlord. John was also able, with borrowed money and thanks to his advisors’ pecuniary cleverness, to purchase half of the county of Chiny. The employment of monetary means to finance an expansionary territorial policy apparently developed earlier in the county of Luxemburg than in neighbouring territories, and enabled count John to win the Roman royal and imperial crown. In the interests of consolidating lordship, the pace of reclaiming hitherto unused lands was also intensified. In heavily forested southeastern Lotharingia, such measures mostly took the form of assarting, which lords promoted by issuing settlement privileges such as Loi de Beaumont-enArgonne of 1182.35 Granting this sort of liberty to villages occurred particularly in border areas: their apparent goal was to prevent migration and to strengthen lordship in these border regions. By contrast, in the coastal areas of northwest Lotharingia the lords of Flanders and Holland engaged in drainage projects, claiming land from the sea that could be used as meadows – which was advantageous for the textile industry. Holland’s heemraadschappen, who were responsible for draining polder

34 Margue, Pauly, ‘Luxemburg vor und nach Worringen’, p. 125 and note 91. 35 La charte de Beaumont et les franchises municipales entre Loire et Rhin: Actes du colloque organisé par l’Institut de Recherche Régionale de l’Université de Nancy II (Nancy, 22–25 septembre 1982) (Nancy 1988).

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(tracts of land reclaimed from the sea) were for example led by comital officials. In the county of Cleves, Dietrich VIII (1275–1305) followed Holland’s example, systematically reclaiming land with dikes and settling new inhabitants. We cannot here discuss how settlement density was dependent on natural conditions, although this is an essential element in explaining the widely fluctuating density of town networks in the Lotharingian territories. For a long time scholars have recognised the role of long-distance trade in town formation; now stress is laid on the significance of settlement policies to control space and thus to establish lordship. Thanks to their endowment with political and administrative functions, along with their role as a local market, even minor towns could grow to be the hubs of a small, or even a larger, hinterland.36 In the mid-thirteenth century the counts of Cleves turned to a policy of town foundations to defend themselves against the archbishops of Cologne and the dukes of Gelders. In all the territories, in the course of the thirteenth century the great lords granted privileges to towns so as to attract new settlers or to prevent the existing inhabitants from migrating to neighbouring territories. Through this means the inhabitants were granted personal liberties and the community acquired a degree of administrative autonomy and autocephaly. In return, towns were expected to take part in the defence of the territory, and sometimes to pay higher taxes. There is evidence of standardising town rights only in the duchy of Gelders. The towns also increasingly provided competent burghers for the lord’s administration, especially for economic and fiscal policies, and such men thus rose into the circle of the ministeriales. In the fourteenth century burghers, especially lay judges, even rose to knightly rank in the county of Luxemburg. In general, the creation of residence- and capital cities only began in the fourteenth century. In 1340 count John the Blind said of the city of Luxemburg that it was the head (caput) of the land.37 Nevertheless, Luxemburg was by no means the sole residence either of the counts (who in the early fourteenth century rose to become kings of Bohemia) or of their seneschals and governors, who continued to live in their noble castles or town houses. Luxemburg, like Brussels, nonetheless saw a big increase in its function as a political-administrative centre in the

36 Les petites villes en Lotharingie. Actes des 6es Journées Lotharingiennes 25–27 octobre 1990, Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg, ed. Michel Pauly (Luxemburg 1992). 37 Michel Pauly, ‘Nostre ville de Lucembourc qui en est chief. L’émergence de la fonction de capitale à l’exemple de Luxemburg’, in Mondes de l’Ouest et villes du monde. Regards sur les sociétés médiévales. Mélanges en l’honneur d’André Chédeville, ed. Catherine Laurent, Bernard Merdrignac and Daniel Pichot (Rennes 1998), pp. 539–50.

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thirteenth century, coming to overshadow significantly the other towns and residences in the region. Rationalisation: the build-up of administration, written records and monetisation Modernising trends in the great lordships can be seen above all in a territorial structure, in the appointment of non-noble salaried officials with clearly defined duties (both with regard to the area over which they held authority and to their function), in a depersonalisation or territorialisation of lordship, and in a progressive increase of written records.38 It remains to attempt a comparative analysis of these measures. Officials called provosts, who no longer held their office by hereditary right but were hired and dismissed by the prince, surfaced in the early thirteenth century as part of increasingly self-conscious governance of the territories. For the rest of the century the official districts of these provosts became more clearly established, in part matching the old county borders but also including newly won areas. In quite a few territories the provostries merged into bailliages or were controlled by baillis with fluctuating territorial authority. The provosts administered high justice, issued army summonses, carried out fiscal tasks and administered the comital domain as well as advocacy and garrison rights and regalia. The prince filled these offices with a combination of nobles, ministeriales and burghers. At the highest level, in the late twelfth century the seneschal (dapifer) emerged as the prince’s deputy, holding very extensive judicial, financial and administrative responsibilities. In Luxemburg the title, adopted from Limburg, was originally related to the person of the princess, so under Henry V (1235–1281) the connection was expressly asserted to the territory: senesschal de la conteit.39 The first mentions of general comptrollers are concentrated in the second half of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century. These officials appeared in Flanders in 1255, Brabant in 1271, Champagne 1272, Namur 1279, Liège 1285, Gelders 1290, Loon 1295, Bar 1306, Cleves 1311, Jülich 1313 and in Luxemburg in 1315, but in Holland only in 1363. This office was frequently merged with that of the seneschal. The general comptroller usually had his own seal, possessed judicial authority in the area of his office and was personally responsible for correct book-keeping. Most territories before this already had local comptrollers or cellarers, who often had to remit only their surpluses to the central treasury. In the county of Bar the comptroller had already established an audit office after the French model, with its

38 For what follows, see above, footnotes 2, 7 and 29. 39 Margue, Pauly, ‘Luxemburg vor und nach Worringen’, p. 130.

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headquarters in the chief town of Bar. In Hainault under count William I (c. 1330) one can see a specialisation within the central administration and the beginnings of a rational fiscal administration with a separation of the demesne, indirect taxes, poll taxes, mortmain and judicial fines and court maintenance (hôtel). Local comptrollers had the task of supervising the lord’s income and payments in their district, but also had to oversee the provision of credit in return for pledges of demesne land. As this task grew in importance, cellarers often deputised for the provost in provostial courts, and in many cases could rise to become provosts of their districts. During the time of John the Blind of Luxemburg, Arnold of Arlon was a fiscally canny financier who advanced the count a total of 83,130 small gold guilders (approximately 294 kg of fine gold). He received a large part of the county as security for his loans, served consecutively as lay judge and provost of Arlon, a member of the inner council and of the ‘feudal’ court, general comptroller and finally as seneschal (the first commoner to hold the post for many years) and thus as governor during John’s long absences. He made possible the building up of the county into one of the most important lordships west of the Rhine. After John’s death, Arnold also served as Charles IV’s financier, until Charles’ regent Archbishop Baldwin of Trier declared him bankrupt due to his inability to provide ready cash on demand.40 In the matter of written records, the archdiocese of Trier anticipated its neighbours to the west. Its Liber annalium iurium dates to 1198–1208, while the oldest accounts from Saarburg were produced 1327/28. Baldwin of Luxemburg, archbishop of Trier, however, may well have copied the territorial subdivisions from his home county, although to be sure the officials were based in castles rather than towns. One can see the increase in written records in the establishment of registers of possessions and account books. In Luxemburg the oldest cartulary, which also contains a list of fiefs, was created in the 1340s. It may have been compiled for Archbishop Baldwin of Trier, who administered the county from 1346 to 1354 and held much of it as security. From Flanders, the oldest surviving accounting of income and payments dates to 1187. The oldest account book from Gelders, which from 1290 on was mortgaged to Flanders, dates to 1294/95. There is an extant income register for 1295– 1304 from Hainault, a payment register for 1298–99, while a rent-roll was already prepared there in 1265 and a second in 1286. In Namur a first rent-roll also dates to 1265 and a second, more complete one, to 1289. There is something to be said for the hypothesis that the comital rent-roll

40 Winfried Reichert, ‘Hochfinanz und Territorialfinanz im 14. Jahrhundert: Arnold von Arlon – Rat und Finanzier der Luxemburger’, in Hochfinanz im Westen des Reiches 1150– 1500, ed. Friedhelm Burgard et al. (Trier 1996), pp. 219–80.

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of Luxemburg (started in 1306 and ended in 1322) was produced by a Namur ministerialis who had gone over to Luxemburg service. The oldest income register for the county of Cleves started in 1317, for various provostships of Bar from 1318 and for the entire county from 1321. In the county of Chiny, demesne accounts appeared in 1330. The rent-roll of the counts of Luxemburg is, like most of such documents, incomplete. Annual income amounted to about 5000–5300 livres tournois or 7100–7500 small gold guilders (c. 25–26.6 kg of gold). In the same period count Edward I of Bar took in 8000–10,000 livres tournois from his demesne; his surviving accounts are also incomplete. This relatively small income explains the attempts by the counts of Luxemburg to annex the duchy of Limburg in the thirteenth century, and later to expand southwestward as far as the River Maas. This would have gained them tolls on the Maas and also from road traffic between Cologne and Brabant/Flanders or Champagne, and between Paris and Metz/ Strasbourg. It also helps to explain their efforts to create new toll collection points and to grant market privileges. In 1295 Adolf of Nassau expressly praised Henry VII for the security of the land and water routes in his region. In 1340 John the Blind founded the Schobermesse, a commercial fair, making it more attractive by freeing travelling merchants from all duties except escort, and in return providing protection for the eight days preceding and following the annual market, as well as the eight days of the event itself. He made peace agreements for the same end with neighbouring territorial lords and towns. The counts of Cleves and dukes of Gelders were also able to increase their income significantly thanks to escort rights and Rhine tolls. At the same time the exercise of escort rights and the imposition of protection over roads was an important factor that gave expression to lordship in clearly defined districts. The exercise of minting rights was also significant both economically and as symbols of lordship. The last can be seen in the county of Luxemburg at the latest from the time of Countess Ermesinde (d. 1246). Under Henry VII the number of mints rose from two to five, while John the Blind had coins struck in seven locales. The counts also asserted a minting monopoly against those of their vassals with rights of high justice, for example in 1307 against the counts of Salm. The counts of Bar also increased taxes on Jews and Lombards and imposed a charge for opening a new money exchange, and enriched themselves in the early fourteenth century with confiscations from Jews. All princes, however, also made use of the credit facilities of these two groups of money traders, as well as those of the financiers in Metz. Before the middle of the fourteenth century, it was still rare in the area under investigation to levy extraordinary taxes with the consent and under the control of the estates for expansion of income, but in Luxemburg under John the Blind they became increasingly frequent. After the Battle of Worringen (1288), the count of Gelders and the dowager countess of Luxemburg both imposed extraordinary aids (prieres) to compensate the

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knights who had served them in that unsuccessful campaign. While in 1293 the towns and nobles of Gelders took part in decisions, this special tax led to a rebellion against the count’s council in the city of Luxemburg in 1289, where these estates had not been consulted. Apart from military conquest and booty, counts like Henry VII and John the Blind could also gain extraordinary income through pay and guard agreements. Lords could also win imperial income as security. The Rhine toll of eight livres tournois in Bacharach, pledged by King Ludwig the Bavarian, provided an annual income of about 400 pounds heller. This was by far the most lucrative financial resource that the county of Luxemburg possessed. Integration measures As a rule, it was emergency situations that led to the integration of the different estates in the principality in the form of parliamentary assemblies, for example in Brabant where from 1248 onwards every ducal succession posed difficulties, or when Gelders was mortgaged to Flanders in 1290. In Brabant, in 1248, 1261, 1312 and 1314, rulers who faced the prospect of underage successors voluntarily recognised a right of consultation for the Brabantine towns to which they had granted privileges, as well for the still-independent minor lords. On his deathbed in 1312 John II granted the Charter of Kortenberg, which provided for a council consisting of four nobles and ten representatives of the towns, which would control the entire ducal administration. This charter was a forerunner of a Brabantine estates assembly and assured that after John II’s death his duchy remained undivided. In the opposite direction, towns and independent lords in wealthy Brabant could also seek the vital protection of self-help associations, since they would not have been able to hold out individually. In the county of Gelders, concern for the territory’s future and the need for internal security led to the first meeting of nobles and the towns in 1293 after the defeat at Worringen. In 1318 the power of the estates once again put forward a claim to shared responsibility for government. Because of the succession of a minor to the principality in 1343, a council consisting of representatives from the orders took charge, gave itself rules of procedure and hired a notary, long before other Lower Lotharingian territories had built up the council to the status of a territorial authority. In the county of Holland the towns succeeded in gaining a comital privilege following the Brabantine model, which gave them as well as the nobles a share of power in the crisis after the death of Count Florenz VI (1296/99), thanks to their role in financing the territorial expansion of the thirteenth century. The count’s council in Luxemburg, over which the widowed countess mother presided after the defeat of Worringen, possibly modelled on a Flemish example, is further evidence of the higher nobility participating in princely lordship. This council, along with the knightly estate and the

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seneschal, provided for continuity of lordship in the regency period and later during the prince’s absence. It shows that territorial lordship did not depend only on ministeriales, some of whom anyway came from an urban background, and for example brought their politico-financial competence to the count’s service. Rather, the long-standing nobility was also integrated and at times could claim the office of seneschal. Ministeriales and nobles melted together in the county of Luxemburg into a territorial leading class. John the Blind brought in the towns for the first time as witnesses for his second marriage to Beatrice of Bourbon (1336), and he had them swear that if he should die early they would defend the rights of offspring from this marriage. He confirmed this expansion of the comital curia in his will in 1340. The towns that played a part in lordship in this way were in the county of Luxemburg titled bonnes villes, following the French practice. For the first time in 1360, five towns and the nobles agreed to pay an aid to finance a war against Verdun. In Luxemburg, the Church did not take part in meetings of the estates before the end of the fourteenth century.

Conclusion To sum up, it is clear that the creation of the territorial principalities was a lengthy process that was still far from over in the mid-fourteenth century. It is best not to speak of ‘states’ even in this period. But by this time the great lords of old Lotharingia had, by and large, succeeded in replacing the old face-to-face mode of lordship, and in integrating the regional nobles and burghers and a majority of the newer religious foundations, into a ‘land’. All the different powers, both noble and burgher, as well as the prince, benefited from the establishment of a large territory with common peace and law, which protected them against outside threats and internal fragmentation and from the encouragement of economic development. The individual powers were dependent on each other, and there were cultural transfers between different groups – for example the reliance on writing that first became established in monasteries was further developed by the towns for secular purposes, before the nobles and territorial administration adopted this practice. The integration of knightly vassals and burghers into the structures of government made the territorial lordships more efficient thanks to their differing areas of expertise. Certain indications allow us to recognise early tendencies toward modernisation in the territorial principalities of Lotharingia, although a comparative study that could clarify the origins of these trends has yet to be written.

14 The rise of the Wettins André Thieme

The Wettins began their rise as margraves of the Eastmark and the Meissen Mark on the eastern edge of the Reich in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a process that continued in the thirteenth century with inheritance of the landgravate of Thuringia and the imperial district of Pleissen. After the mid-thirteenth century the Wettins held uncontested princely hegemony in the middle-German region between the rivers Werra and Elbe, a region now covered by the states of Thuringia and Saxony as well as parts of Saxony-Anhalt. At the end of the thirteenth century the Wettins’ lordship and princely rank were fundamentally threatened by the radical action of Kings Adolf and Albert. But through good fortune in battle and historic accident the Wettins overcame this existential crisis after 1307, and in the following decades zealously and successfully built up their power. Despite multiple partitions of the lordship within the family until the end of the fourteenth century, the Wettins established themselves again in the circle of the most powerful princes when in 1423 Margrave Frederick the Brave achieved the coveted electoral dignity with his investiture by the Emperor Sigismund with the duchy of Saxony-Wittenberg, and thus membership of the elite circle of the seven princely electors. The increased standing and reputation of the family was reflected in repeated marriage alliances with the various imperial dynasties, but also with the royal houses of Bohemia and Poland – the Wettins thus acted as a European dynasty. Stemming from the Saxon electoral rank, from 1423 onwards the name Saxony soon became established as a new provincial name for the growing conglomerate of Wettin lordships. The discovery of enormous silver deposits in the Westerz Mountains after 1470 not only consolidated Wettin finances but led to a general economic and cultural upswing in the Wettin lands, which now developed into one of the leading regions for innovation within the Reich and Europe as a whole. In c. 1500 the Saxon-Wettin lordships, once again divided, were numbered among the most influential principalities, and the Elector Frederick the Wise (the head of the senior, or Ernestian, line) was, next to the emperor, the most powerful man in the Reich. Thus, in the century of the Reformation the Wettins stood at the height of their power. They continued as electors, and eventually kings, of Saxony until 1918.

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None of this could have been anticipated 500 years before, as the early Wettins sought to establish their lordship in an underdeveloped border region far to the east of the Reich. In light of what was otherwise a not atypical development of dynastic lordship, one point stands out: through all lordly engagement and all political-dynastic shifts the history of the Wettins, all the way up to 1918, always remained very tightly connected to the region where their lordship originated. The history of the Wettins’ rise is thus, more perhaps than elsewhere, also the history of their land’s rise.

Origins As is so often the case, the beginnings of the Wettins lie shrouded in the darkness of a poorly documented period. Still, at the latest from the thirteenth century, when the Wettins were definitely among the mightiest princes of the Reich, consideration was given to the clan’s origins. Even though there was disagreement about the founding fathers, their prominence was unquestioned: the early thirteenth-century Genealogia Wettinensis fixed upon a certain Margrave Dietrich from the tenth century as the ancestor of the family.1 From the end of the fourteenth century antiquarians then settled on the legendary Saxon duke Widukind, Emperor Charlemagne’s opponent, as the ancestor of the Wettins, thus mooring themselves at the same time to the Ottonian emperors in what was not just a genealogical construction but above all an expression of the Wettins’ princely self-confidence.2 This learned construction was discounted by the progressive nineteenth century. Toward the end of the totally au courant Wettin lordship over what had become the kingdom of Saxony, scholars examining the roots of the Wettins focussed not on alleged ancestral bloodlines, but rather on the office of Margrave of Meissen. This approach brought Margrave Conrad the Great (d. 1157) into focus. Someone purporting to be him programmatically rode at the head of the princely procession at the Stallhof of Dresden castle between 1872 and 1876, representing him the founding MeissenWettin ancestor. But only a few years later Saxony’s leading historians made a further about-face. When the jubilee of 800 years of Wettin lordship was celebrated in 1889 it focussed on the naming of Henry of Eilenburg to the margraviate of Meissen in 1089 as the founding event, emphasising the seniority and pre-eminence of the Wettins over the younger BrandenburgPrussian lordship under the Hohenzollern.3

1 Genealogia Wettinensis, MGH SS xxiii.226. 2 See Bettina Marquis, Meißnische Geschichtsschreibung des späten Mittelalters (ca. 1215– 1420) (Munich 1998), pp. 173–5. 3 See Peter Wiegand, ‘1089 – Heinrich I. von Eilenburg erwirbt die Markgrafschaft Meißen’, in Zäsuren sächsischer Geschichte, ed. Reinhard Eigenwill (Beucha 2010), pp. 6–27, at p. 7.

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More recent historians have also had difficulties in tracing the origins of the Wettins, but their concerns have remained significantly more prosaic. The only certain point in reconstructing the family’s origins remains the Dietrich who appeared in the Genealogia Wettinensis as the tenth-century founding father, along with his sons Dedo and Frederick. [See genealogical chart X above]. Everything beyond that is extrapolated from two references by the most important chronicler of that era, Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg, who reported that this Dietrich I came de tribus Bazici and that Dedo I was related agnatically to Margrave Rikdag, a prominent regional magnate.4 A promising interpretation relates the derivation of the name Burchard from Buzici and thus derives the early Wettins from the tenth-century dukes of Swabia, among whom Burchard was a characteristic lead-name. But this thesis excludes an agnatic descent from Margrave Rikdag of the clan of the counts of Harzgau. A competing interpretation has followed this passage and linked the Wettins with Rikdag’s East Saxon kinship group, but in that interpretation de tribus Buzici remains without a conclusive explanation.5 Whatever the exact case, when the Wettins entered written history in the tenth century, they belonged to the narrow stratum of (Saxon-German) ruling families operating in an exclusive kin network in the northeastern border region of the Reich between the Rivers Harz, Saale and Elbe. Here, to be sure, they acted on the eastern periphery and were thus notably distant from the Reich’s traditional centres of lordship and culture. This marginal geographical position was reflected by the palpably second-class lordship which they held. But at the same time the neighbouring, newly subjected marches east of the Saale and Elbe, as underdeveloped as they were endangered, offered astonishing opportunities for advancement.

Borderland (Mark) The Meissen march, which later became the Wettins’ core land, is a region with an independent history before it became part of the Reich. In the course of the migration of peoples (Völkerwanderung), the older ‘Germanic’ culture between the Saale and the Neisse was thinned out starting in the fifth century. The few areas of land that remained were sporadically settled in the late sixth and seventh centuries by new groups of immigrants from the southeast, whose material culture has been interpreted as ‘Slavonic’. It is possible to detect more intensive ‘Slav’ influences from the late eighth and ninth centuries, which appears to have been a product of renewed waves

4 Thietmar, VI.50, p. 336 [English trans. Warner, pp. 272–3]. 5 Conclusively summarised by Stefan Pätzold, Die frühen Wettiner. Adelsfamilie und Hausüberlieferung bis 1221 (Cologne 1997), pp. 7–10.

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of immigration from Bohemia and Silesia. These immigrants spread over the Saale and their arrival led to a moderate settlement, and to the tribal organisation of the whole region. This intensive Slavic settlement was at first limited to a few favourable areas with good soil: in the catchment area of larger rivers and on the near side of the southern mountain foothills. Subsequently these Slavic settlers steadily expanded their territories into what to the south was a land still thickly covered by primeval forest.6 With the establishment of the Carolingian kingdom of the Franks west of the Saale in the eighth and ninth centuries, the relative backwardness of the Elbe-Saale region increased. Christianity, literacy and a money economy failed to gain a foothold here; town development and stone building remained unknown. The usual conflicts resulted from the unequal and unclearly defined situation along the border, with significant differences in culture and prosperity on the two sides. The Franks strove to secure dominance over the Saale, while the West Slav tribes engaged in war raids and looting. In the year 849 a ‘Sorbian frontier’ (limes sorabicus) is attested, with which the kingdom of the Franks had already provided protection on the Saale against Slav attacks for some time. Contemporaneously, for the first time a Frankish margrave for the region is named, who would bear personal responsibility for border defence – but there is no further report either of the man or of his office.7 The area west and east of the Saale, in which Frankish and Slav economic and ruling interests were superimposed, is to be understood at that time, even though there was no linear division, as a borderland, a march.8 This situation altered fundamentally with King Henry I’s conquest of the Elbe Slavs. After his victory over the Elbe-Slav Heveller in the region east of Magdeburg in 928, Henry stormed the main fortress of the Slav tribe of the Daleminzier, who had settled between the Mulde and the Elbe, in 929. In this same year he founded the castle of Meissen, overlooking the Elbe, as a base for establishing the lasting rule of the Reich in this region. The Slavs between the Saale and the Elbe, and soon thereafter as far as the Neisse, were now subjected to the Reich, although at first this subjection amounted only to a limited overlordship. In 937 King Otto I named a margrave, Gero, for the entire subjected area east of the Elbe and Saale.9

6 Hans Walther, ‘Die Markgrafschaft Meißen (929–1156)’, in Geschichte Sachsens, ed. Karl Czok (Weimar 1989), p. 74 provides a useful map. 7 The Annals of Fulda, trans. Timothy Reuter (Manchester 1992), p. 29. 8 On the term ‘mark’ and its layers of meaning, see now Andrea Stieldorf, Marken und Markgrafen. Studien zur Grenzsicherung durch die fränkisch-deutschen Herrscher (Hanover 2012). 9 Although Karl Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (London 1979), pp. 12–13, argued (following Widukind) that Gero succeeded to the lands and command of his brother Siegfried, suggesting therefore that this march may already have existed.

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From the mid-tenth century after his victory over the Magyars, Otto I concerned himself with firmly imposing his rule and Christianising the Elbe-Saale region. After Gero’s death in 965 his march was divided among no less than five margraves to secure the Reich’s influence. Besides the margrave of the Northmark (around Brandenburg and Havelberg), there was a margrave of the Eastmark, which stretched between Magdeburg and Merseburg from the Elbe-Saale line toward the east to the (lower) Lausitz. In the south Emperor Otto I established the three margraviates of Merseburg, Zeitz and Meissen, which under his successors melded together into the single march of Meissen by the end of the tenth century. The march and the margrave appear here as territorial and personal forms of organisation based on right on conquest, imposing royally delegated lordship over the subjected West Slav tribes. For that reason the margraves were equipped with far-reaching military and judicial authority and received the income from the regions placed under them. At the turn of the year 968/969 Emperor Otto I finally succeeded in establishing the new archbishopric of Magdeburg, with three suffragan dioceses of Merseburg, Zeitz and Meissen.10 With this foundation there began, after the first missionary efforts, the build-up of a powerful Church organisation, which bound itself closely to the pre-existing mark organisation. Christianisation, now more aggressively pursued, aimed at the integration of the West Slav tribes into the Reich. A third organisational element also began under Emperor Otto I, the establishment of burgwards, small districts of 10–15 Slavic settlements grouped around a fortified centre, from which the Reich’s lordship and law could be spread to the area.11 The populace was charged with garrisoning the fortified points. But a great and successful Slavic revolt arose in the north against Ottonian consolidation in 983. The Reich’s lordship on the Baltic coast and in the Northmark was wiped out for over 150 years, while in the Eastmark and the Meissen Mark integration into the Reich continued. Thus, the special position of the region in which the Wettins rose to power was defined in terms of developmental history, ethnicity and lordship. At the end of the tenth century the margraves of the Eastmark and Meissen exercised the Reich’s lordship over an underdeveloped region that was scarcely active economically. They only had dealings in their marks sporadically and as an outside power, while their principal residence and core territory lay west of the Saale. Still, they had at their disposal, thanks to their reinforced, special structures of lordship, a remarkable power beyond

10 MGH Dipl. Otto I, pp. 502–3 no. 366. For Magdeburg, see especially Henry Mayr-Harting, ‘The Church of Magdeburg: Its Trade and Its Town in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Century’, in Church and City 1000–1500. Essays in Honour of Christopher Brooke, ed. David Abulafia, Michael Franklin and Miri Rubin (Cambridge 1992), pp. 129–50. 11 See Gerhard Billig, Die Burgwardorganisation im obersächsisch-meißnischen Raum (Berlin 1989), passim.

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what traditional lordships in the old Reich offered. The margraves at first exercised their direct lordship over the marcher lands without competing lords or powers. By right of conquest they claimed in the king’s place comprehensive obligatory services and dues from the populace. Because of this and the border situation, the margraves had to maintain a relatively powerful and numerous following. In this complex plenitude of power the margraves of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries belonged among the most influential bearers of lordship in the Reich, their power closer to that of dukes than of typical counts. And the margraves kept this de facto in-between rank into the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, even as the original reasons for their extraordinary power progressively dissolved.

Functional elite and familial power The early Wettins were not ‘social climbers’ in the classical sense of that term. When Dietrich I and his son Dedo I appear in literary sources in the late tenth century, they already belonged to the elite kinship group of the East Saxon magnates, from which the Reich’s regional officials were recruited in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Their circle of relatives included margraves and counts, but Dietrich I, and at first also his son Dedo I, do not seem to have secured any of the more important titles and offices. Nothing is known about their early economic circumstances. Still, Dedo I, better attested in the sources, had the necessary preconditions for a lordly career. He had the social capital of prominent descent and kinship and the concomitant direct access to the major networks of those who held secular and ecclesiastical lordship. He also enjoyed the cultural capital of education and training appropriate to his rank, thanks to his kinsman Margrave Rikdag, as well as the resulting unscrupulous, lordly and military behaviour that was typical of the time. While he was still a young man, in 976 Dedo I led a Bohemian army against Zeitz during Duke Henry the Quarrelsome’s rebellion, plundered the cathedral there and apparently took his own mother captive.12 Before the year 1000 Dedo I succeeded in rising to the official elite as a count in the northern Hassegau, thanks to the help of the most influential Saxon of his time, Archbishop Giselher of Magdeburg. It is no coincidence that the countship over Hassegau, a small region west of the Saale around Wettin and north of Halle, was already in the hands of members of his kin group before Dedo’s appointment. Dedo’s brother, Frederick I, also gained comital rights in the Quezizi district, a Slav-settled small region on the middle Mulde around Eilenburg.13 From the base of their countships,

12 Thietmar, VI.50 [above, note 4]. See Pätzold, Die frühen Wettiner, p. 12. 13 Thietmar, VII.50, p. 460 [English trans., Warner, pp. 342–3].

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the Wettins collected further possessions, especially on the middle Saale and in the Eastmark. The acquisition of comital rights was essential for the Wettins to consolidate their lordship and rise further, especially because they succeeded in a period when the office of count was increasingly understood as a hereditary claim. In this de facto heritability the comital rights gained a constitutive significance for the narrower familial lordship, beyond the old wider kinship groups. The seed was sown for the Wettin family’s lordship and mental emancipation from the kinship group. The transformation of the family into a dynasty, by contrast, only took place in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These comital offices opened the way for the Wettins into a more exclusive marriage circle.14 Dedo I wed a daughter of Margrave Dietrich of the Northmark; their son Dietrich II married a daughter of Margrave Ekkehard of Meissen and thus gained a relationship by marriage to the mighty Piast dukes of Poland. Dedo II’s first wife was Oda, the daughter of Margrave Thietmar II of the Eastmark. With these marriages the family succeeded in gaining a direct connection to the highest ranks of the Saxon nobility. The long-term possession of both original counties also became a success for the Wettins in hindsight. From the countship in Hassegau the Wettins expanded beyond the Saale and took root in Wettin Castle, from which later (although only in the twelfth century) they took their dynastic name. And with the occupation of Eilenburg the Wettins advanced into the conquered Slav area of the Eastmark. It was there that their familial career experienced its next decisive stage, with their rise to the margraviate. In the race to climb the pole of lordship, it was really the margraviate that counted; only this office offered the guarantee of an exclusive position in the Saxon noble landscape and in the Reich. A sign of this is that Dedo I already attempted to win the margraviate of his deceased father-in-law in the Northmark, admittedly without success. The consequence was a lasting enmity with the Walbeckers who gained the office, which probably led in the end to Dedo’s murder in the year 1009 at the hands of Margrave Werner.15 It took Dedo’s son Dietrich II into the 1030s to bring about a lasting consolidation of his lordship in the area of the Eastmark. Even then, King Conrad II passed him over when granting the margraviate. In 1032 the Eastmark fell instead to his brother-in-law Ekkehard II, whose followers killed Dietrich in 1034, presumably to eliminate a potential rival to their

14 On the genealogy, see the foundational work of Otto Posse, Die Wettiner, Genealogie des Gesamthauses, mit Berichtigungen und Ergänzungen der Stammtafeln bis 1993 von Manfred Kobuch (Leipzig 1994), pp. 1–4. 15 Thietmar, VI.49, p. 335 [English trans. Warner, pp. 271–2].

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lord.16 But when the Ekkehardings died out in 1046, there was no avoiding the Wettins. At this point Emperor Henry III invested Dedo II, son of Dietrich II who had been murdered in 1034, as margrave of the Eastmark and Lausitz. The rise of the Wettins to princely lordship was underway, although it still did not follow a straight course. The early Wettins were embroiled during the second half of the eleventh century in the chaos of the Saxon revolt and successive uprisings against Emperor Henry IV, which beginning in 1073 set the whole region in flames. A few years earlier, Dedo II had already opposed the young Salian king, but in 1069 had to accept defeat when Henry IV personally brought an army against him. Dedo II was taken captive, lost his margravial office to his son Dedo III, and was forced to surrender part of his family lands, considerably weakening the Wettin power base in the Eastmark. After Dedo III was murdered, the Wettin made his peace with the king, was reinstalled as margrave and until his death in 1075 forbore from taking part in the revolts against the Salian. Despite this loyalty, upon his death King Henry IV gave the margraviate into foreign hands, to his old ally the Bohemian duke Vratislav.17 The Wettins’ future among the magnates of the Reich was again uncertain. Dedo II’s son from his second marriage, Henry I, was still underage at the time and at first went as a hostage to Henry IV’s court. He escaped in an adventure-filled flight back to Saxony in 1076, which did not cast a lasting cloud over his relations with the king.18 In 1088 Henry IV installed him in his father’s margraviate. Henry I conducted himself as the emperor’s ally and during the revolt of Margrave Ekbert II of Meissen stood firmly on the Salian side. As speaker of a princely court he declared the deposition of Ekbert II in Quedlinburg in 1088. One year later Emperor Henry IV also invested him with the margraviate of Meissen.19 With this addition, the Wettin Henry I now held both of the great eastern marches in his hands and was now perhaps the strongest man in Saxony after the Saxon duke. The rise of the Wettins from the mid-eleventh century on is reflected in their greater closeness to the king, an increased influence among the magnates of the Reich, the acquisition of important ecclesiastical positions and their expanded marriage circle. Frederick, Dedo II’s brother, is especially notable for his extraordinary closeness to the king and a remarkable ecclesiastical career. From 1060 to 1063 Frederick served as chancellor at the court of the underage king Henry IV and also remained a close confidant of the Salian ruler after that. He failed to be elected archbishop of Magdeburg, but

16 Annales Hildesheimenses, MGH SS iii.99. 17 The Annals of Lampert of Hersfeld, trans. I.S. Robinson (Manchester 2015), pp. 118–21, 279. See Pätzold, Die frühen Wettiner, pp. 19–21. 18 Annals of Lampert, pp. 331–4. 19 Pätzold, Die frühen Wettiner, pp. 26–8.

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succeeded in making the jump to the imperial episcopate in 1064 as bishop of Münster.20 Günther, Dedo II’s nephew, had an even stronger influence on the fate of the region as bishop of Naumburg (1079–89); two of his sisters were in charge of the old Wettin-founded convent of Gerbstedt and the revered imperial cloister Gernrode. The Wettins’ marriage circle remained exclusive and now stretched out beyond East Saxony. Dedo II’s sister Ida married a duke of Bohemia and his daughter Adelheid wed Margrave Ernst of Austria. The marriage of Margrave Henry I with the Brunonian Gertrude had especially long consequences for the Wettins. Gertrude’s daughter from an earlier marriage, Richenza, had already wed Lothar of Supplinburg, who in 1106 became duke of Saxony, in 1125 king and in 1133 emperor. Thus, the stepdaughter of Margrave Henry I and half-sister of Margrave Henry II was a duchess, and later queen and empress!

Old marches and new lordship The rapid rise of the Wettins to a double margraviate over the Meissen Mark and the Eastmark at the end of the eleventh century is deceptive about the true extent of Wettin power at that time, because the old lordship structure of the marches dissolved with increasing rapidity from the mid-eleventh century on. In this process the margraves’ ruling influence, derived from their office, steadily diminished. Despite the margravial office, rivals for rule – both churches and secular lords – established themselves, gaining individual settlements or entire burgwards, and thus constricted the margraves’ power. With the legal, ecclesiastical and cultural integration of the Slav marches into the Reich the West’s innovations in lordship also found a foothold: namely the manor and dependant tenure. The system of burgwards, the backbone of unbounded and extensive margravial lordship, broke apart step by step during this transformation of lordship. Henry I and Henry II’s power in the year 1100 was a far cry from that of their forebear Margrave Ekkebert I of Meissen around the year 1000. On the other hand, the Wettins also took part in and were beneficiaries of this change. Already around the year 1000 the brothers Dedo I and Frederick had acquired the burgward of Zörbig; more allods and fiefs followed, especially on the Saale and in the area of the Eastmark. Even before their installation as margraves, the Wettins controlled a sizeable base of power and possessions there. With their establishment in Wettin, and above all in Eilenburg, they were among the first Saxon magnates to transfer the centre of their lordship across the Saale into the march. At first, to be sure, this intensification of lordship lacked obvious consequences. Until

20 Ibid., pp. 22–3.

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the end of the eleventh century, the Wettins held onto their family convent of Gerbstedt, west of the Saale.21 The monastic foundation in Niemegk east of the Saale that the Wettin Thimo planned before 1119 at first came to nothing, and was only successfully established later in the twelfth century. By that time, too, the Wettins had regained some of the familial power base that they had lost through Dedo II’s failed opposition to King Henry IV. In the meantime, another magnate, Wiprecht of Groitzsch, had started along the path to lordly dominance in the march, using the new means available to him. Favoured by the suppression of the Saxon rebellions and in close dependence on King Henry IV, Wiprecht of Groitzsch achieved an astonishing rise to lordship in the southern march area in the last third of the eleventh century.22 Without office or title, Wiprecht rapidly acquired lands, and at the end of the eleventh century he controlled a dense power base in the Meissen Mark that made him the most powerful man in the region. Wiprecht pursued the build-up of his lordship with great effect. At his native locale of Groitzsch, which he fortified with a new stone castle before 1100, he founded the monastery of Pegau, the first functioning monastery in the march and thus provided his lordship with a spiritual centre and memorial site.23 Wiprecht purposefully brought Frankish settlers in and cleared substantial forest areas between his core base around Groitzsch and Leisnig; this is the first time that a lord’s influence changed the settlement structure of the land.24 Even though Wiprecht’s settlement plans appear to have enjoyed only partial success, he established a precedent for the great colonisation that was imposed by force 50 years later. The pioneering means to consolidate power were intensification of lordship, monastic foundation and colonisation, to which later the promotion of towns was added. Wiprecht only gained the title count after 1100 and it was only at the end of his life in 1123 that Emperor Henry V invested him with the margraviate of Meissen, thus recognising Wiprecht’s de facto princely lordship.25 Thus, it was less in the diminishing office of margrave than in the active lordly fashioning of the march’s civilising process that the opportunity lay for the future development of lordship – for the Wettins as well. The Wettins appear to have realised this, since as margraves of Meissen from 1089 onwards they had to deal with Wiprecht, who was by then already firmly established in this region.

21 For Gerbstedt, see now Harald Winkel, Herrschaft und Memoria. Die Wettiner und ihre Hausklöster im Mittelalter (Leipzig 2010), pp. 21–40. 22 For his career, Annales Pegavienses, MGH SS xvi.243–55. 23 The church of Pegau was dedicated in July 1096, Annales Pegavienses, p. 245. 24 Annales Pegavienses, p. 247. 25 Annales Pegavienses, p. 254.

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The margraves of Meissen and the Eastmark Neither Henry I nor his son Henry II succeeded in establishing themselves more strongly in the Meissen Mark, beyond their inadequate margravial sovereignty. Their lordship remained anchored in the Eastmark and they were unable to take deeper hold even there. Instead, since the 1090s Wiprecht forced through the expansion of his own lordship. Henry I died in 1103, leaving a posthumous son, Henry II, for whom his mother Gertrude oversaw the Meissen Mark and Eastmark for years. Although Henry II came of age in 1117, he, too, died young and without issue in 1123. Thus, both marks were once again available. Another, junior branch of the Wettin family had already formed an alliance with Wiprecht. Dedo IV, eldest son of Thimo of Wettin and nephew of Margrave Dedo II, married Wiprecht’s daughter Bertha – thus creating a union between the two most powerful and rival families of the march. Following his father-in-law’s example, Dedo IV began the foundation of a Wettin monastery before 1123 on the Lauterberg near Halle, east of the Saale.26 But before it was complete, Dedo IV set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and he died in 1124 on his return journey. In the meantime the political situation between the Saxons and Emperor Henry V had once again come to a head, driving a wedge between the Wiprechtings and the Wettins. After Margrave Henry II’s death, Henry V turned to his old ally Wiprecht, investing him in 1123 with both the Meissen Mark and the Eastmark. Duke Lothar of Saxony opposed this decision and supported the Wettin Conrad (younger brother of Dedo IV and cousin of the deceased Eilenburg Wettin) as margrave of Meissen and the Ascanian Albrecht the Bear as margrave of Eastmark. Wiprecht, who in his old age could not establish himself in the margravial offices against the Saxons, died early in 1124;27 his imperial sponsor Henry V followed him to the grave in 1125. The magnates of the Reich then elected as the new king the Salians’ old opponent Duke Lothar of Saxony. Thus, Lothar’s candidates as margraves were also established. Conrad I was now the uncontested new margrave of Meissen. Despite its generative crisis after the death of the childless Margrave Henry II, the Wettin family was able to maintain itself in office in at least one margraviate. In the process the ‘Wettin line’ separated from the older, extinct ‘Eilenburg line’. From Conrad’s ancestral seat, Wettin Castle, the whole dynasty came to be called the Wettins from then on – and the dynasty continued in the direct line from Margrave Conrad to the Saxon king Frederick Augustus III, who was deposed in 1918.

26 See Winkel, Herrschaft und Memoria, pp. 69–78. 27 Annales Pegavienses, p. 255.

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The core of Conrad I’s hereditary lordship lay on the middle Saale and in the Eastmark. The challenge to anchor his lordship in the Meissen march, without losing sight of the Eastmark, was much more difficult for him than for his ‘Eilenburg’ predecessors, the double margraves Henry I and Henry II. With single-mindedness and luck Margrave Conrad built up the Wettin lordship in the following three decades. Still, the nickname ‘the Great’ that later Wettin historiography gave him owes more to a desire to find a hero among the Wettin ‘progenitors’ than it has to do with his actual accomplishments. The true establishment of lordship in the march was much more the success of Conrad’s successors. Thanks to reproductive chance, Margrave Conrad I was able to unite the entire Wettin lordship once again in his hands, profiting from the rival Wiprechtings dying out in the male line. Wiprecht’s son Henry had received the Eastmark from King Lothar III in 1131. After 1134 Conrad I concerned himself more than before with gaining King Lothar III’s favour and passed longer periods at court.28 This proved to be a successful strategy: after Margrave Henry’s death in 1135, Conrad I finally also received the Eastmark.29 As double margrave he was without contest the most powerful man in the marcher region east of the Saale and one of the mightier princes of the Reich. Additionally, Conrad I claimed, as the heir of his deceased brother Dedo IV, parts of the Wiprechtian inheritance – a one-time chance to profit from the successful development of the old lordship of Wiprecht of Groitzsch. Admittedly, among the other claimants to this was the new Staufen king Conrad III, and as a result the Wettins’ relations with the new royal dynasty were at first strained. However, they eventually reached a significant settlement in the 1140s.30 Margrave Conrad received from the king the Rochlitz district, a closed island of Slavic settlement in the southern march reaching to the Erzgebirge, as an allod. He also received part of the Wiprechtian inheritance in the Groitzsch/Borna area, in the Nisan district around the later Dresden and in the Milzen district around Bautzen, as well as advocacy over the imperial monastery of Chemnitz. This was the Wettins’ breakthrough to anchor their lordship firmly in the Meissen Mark by means beyond the office of margrave. For his part, admittedly, King Conrad installed imperial burgraves in Altenburg, Meissen, Dohna and Döben as protectors of royal rights in the region, thus creating an influential new office in the marcher lands. These burgraves rapidly established themselves as regional rivals to the Wettins and presented themselves as reliable trustees for the Reich in the area. The

28 See Pätzold, Die frühen Wettiner, p. 34. 29 Chronicon Montis Sereni, ed. Ernst Ehrenfeuchter, MGH SS xxiii.144. 30 See André Thieme, ‘Pleißenland, Reich und Wettiner’, in Tegkwitz und das Altenburger Land, ed. Peter Sachenbacher et al. (Langenweissbach 2003), pp. 43–4.

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establishment of the burgraviate was also a prelude to a redoubled and ambitious imperial policy in the middle-German East. The exclusive standing that the Wettins had only just gained in the marcher lands was lastingly shaken from the mid-twelfth century onwards; indeed, it took until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to integrate the imperial burgraviates into the Wettin landscape, or to exclude them altogether. Conrad I also strengthened his dynasty with the establishment of the Augustinian priory of St. Peter on the Lautenberg, near Halle, east of the Saale.31 According to his will, the priory was to function as family cloister, burial place and memorial site for the new Wettin margravial dynasty that he had founded. The mature and well-established position of Margrave Conrad I’s lordship is also reflected in the marriage alliances of his children, which reached beyond Saxony to the elite of the Reich and of eastern Central Europe. With five surviving sons, Conrad I also solved what had been a critical family problem – shortage of heirs. He also sponsored his nephew Wichmann’s remarkable ecclesiastical career, which brought him first the bishopric of Naumburg in 1149. Then, in 1154 Wichmann was, with the support of Frederick Barbarossa, translated to the archbishopric of Magdeburg, where he became one of the most influential ecclesiastical princes of the early Staufen age.32 It therefore seems all the more astonishing that in 1154/5, when he was apparently at the height of his power, and already at an advanced age, Margrave Conrad I was drawn into a conspiracy against the new king Frederick I Barbarossa.33 Barbarossa withdrew his favour as a result. Probably under Staufen pressure, to rescue his honour and ward off further damage to his dynasty, Margrave Conrad gave up his secular lordship and entered the priory on the Petersberg in November 1156, where he died just over two months later.34 The partition of his lordship among his five sons may well have been due to Barbarossa’s pressure, and significantly weakened the Wettins’ power and influence at a sensitive time. In addition, the emperor not only deprived the Wettins of their advocacy over the imperial monastery of Chemnitz, but in 1158 he also gave the Milzen district around Bauzen to the Bohemian king. With this grant the Wettins lost for centuries their formative influence in the eastern part of the old Meissen Mark (the region which later became known as Upper Lausitz).

31 See Winkel, Herrschaft und Memoria, pp. 75–8. 32 On his career, Dietrich Claude, Geschichte des Erzbistums Magdeburg bis in das 12 Jahrhundert (2 vols., Cologne 1972–5), ii.71–175. 33 On this point, see now Michael Lindner, ‘Eine Frage der Ehre. Markgraf Conrad von Wettin und Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa’, in Im Dienste der historischen Landeskunde, ed. Rainer Aurig, Reinhardt Butz, Ingolf Grässler and André Thieme (Beucha 2002), pp. 105–22. 34 Chronicon Montis Sereni, MGH SS xxiii.150.

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The ambivalent balance of Margrave Conrad I’s lordship is exemplified in this last act. On one hand the Wettins had permanently established themselves as the leading family of the marches, had created a basis for their lordship besides the margravial offices they had been granted, as magnates of the Reich had won dynastic prestige, and even in the forced but sovereign division of the lordship they had demonstrated princely weight. On the other hand, the Reich itself had returned to the marches with claims of lordship, lordly ambitions and the installation of new holders of lordship, thus ensuring that the Wettins now had to face dangerous rivals for pre-eminence in the region.

From the new plurality of lordship to hegemony The development of the marcher region east of the Saale was still markedly behind the older parts of the Reich during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. However, the region experienced a highly dynamic process of social and economic advance in the mid-twelfth century.35 In the course of only a few decades the substantial area still covered by forest was opened up to agriculture; by c. 1200 settlers had already reached the highest regions of the Erzgebirge. This altered the entire settlement structure of the area, which was now for the first time extensively settled. From a few isolated proto-urban seeds grew a process of town creation and town development that lasted until the mid-thirteenth century, creating a network of large and small towns, which gave the region its character and economic backbone, and from which both economic and cultural changes resulted. The sensational discovery of silver in the foothills of the Erzgebirge in the 1160s also sparked off a long-lasting mining boom, which contributed substantially to the economic upswing and cultural transfer in the region.36 Peasant migrants were brought to the region in massive numbers from all corners of the Reich. Many miners sought their fortunes here, and numerous German and Jewish merchants settled in the growing early towns. The population may, indeed, have increased ten-fold. New and innovative legal, economic and settlement structures developed from this melting pot of migrants and locally born inhabitants.37 Culturally and linguistically, German won ascendancy over Slavic. Christianity and the Church also received new foundations with the immigrants – the ecclesiastical structure became more pronounced, and monasteries and religious institutions were founded in the

35 See Karlheinz Blaschke, Geschichte Sachsens im Mittelalter (Berlin 1990), pp. 77–219; Konstantin Hermann and André Thieme, Sächsische Geschichte im Überblick (Leipzig 2013), pp. 22–3. 36 Peter Spufford, Money and Its Uses in Medieval Europe (Cambridge 1988), pp. 109–14. 37 See, for example, Otto’s regulation of a dispute between some Franconian settlers and their immediate lord in 1186, QGDB, pp. 264–6 no. 99.

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wake of colonisation and town creation. By the mid-thirteenth century, the formerly underdeveloped marches were economically and socially on a par with the older parts of the Reich. All this was not accomplished on its own but rather with special lordly control and a great deal of lordly competition. Colonisation, town promotion and monastic foundation were the decisive new instruments for developing lordship, and not just for the Wettins. In the southern marcher region Conrad I’s eldest son Otto received the march of Meissen. In fact, Otto’s lordship had for a long time not dominated the march; the core of his power still rested on the Wettin possessions between Weissenfels, Leipzig and Dresden, an area which in the meantime had itself been penetrated by other lordships. But Margrave Otto took decisive steps, successfully pursuing clearance plans in a number of areas including on the Freiberg Mulde toward the south. The margrave had only limited influence over his father’s house monastery, which lay outside of his own sphere of power and control of which required agreement with his brothers. So at an early stage Otto planned a new dynastic cloister in his own lordship, the Cistercian abbey of Altzella, which he endowed in 1162, although the monastery complex was only constructed in 1175.38 Margrave Otto also persistently and successfully promoted the development of the towns of Dresden, Meissen, Leipzig and especially Freiberg. It was in the last locale that massive silver deposits were discovered, which rapidly made Otto one of the richest princes in the Reich. Otto’s brother Dedo V held Groitzsch and Rochlitz, the other important bases for the Wettin lordship in the March of Meissen, seriously restricting Margrave Otto’s dominance over the region. Count Dedo’s colonisation successes were more modest. But Dedo also founded a new dynastic cloister for his branch of the family, the Augustinian priory of Zschillen (now Wechselburg), south of Rochlitz.39 He also promoted urban development at Rochlitz and Geithain. His closeness to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa finally brought Dedo V the Eastmark in 1185, which he left to his sons Dietrich and Conrad. On their deaths, however, this branch of the Wettin family died out in the male line in 1210. In contrast to the Meissen marcher region, the civilising process was far more muted in the Eastmark (which by this time was understood above all as the region of Lower Lausitz). Here at first Conrad I’s second son Dietrich became margrave. He was a highly successful coloniser and founded yet another Wettin dynastic cloister, the Cistercian monastery of Dobriklugk. But he died without a male heir in 1185, leaving the Eastmark available for Dedo V.40

38 Winkel, Herrschaft und Memoria, pp. 141–68. 39 Chronicon Montis Sereni, p. 175. 40 Dietrich’s son Conrad had been killed in a tournament in 1171, Chronicon Montis Sereni, p. 155.

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Conrad I’s other two sons, Henry and Frederick, received Brehna and Wettin, the original area of Wettin lordship on the Saale, a district that was circumscribed and unsuitable for development. They were thus unable to develop strong and effective territorial lordships there. Their religious loyalty remained true to the older dynastic monastery on the Petersberg. At the end of the twelfth century, therefore, the Wettin family dominated great stretches of the former frontier marches, but they were divided into rival lines. The new monastic foundations by three out of the five Wettin brothers cast into relief their wrestling for dynastic prominence within the larger Wettin family dynamic. Nonetheless, through colonisation, town development and monastic foundations, Margraves Otto and Dedo V had developed their lordships on a scale and with an intensity which the other branches of the family could not rival. There is no doubt that the margravial lines of the Wettin family had a quasi-position as imperial princes at the end of the twelfth century. Still, the establishment of lordships by the bishops of Meissen, Naumburg and Merseburg, as well as those of several other lesser lords, created important competition for the Wettins. The Staufen kings Conrad III and Frederick I had settled, in addition to the imperial burgraves, numerous ministeriales around the existing power bases of the Reich, above all in the Altenburg district. These imperial ministeriales and burgraves encouraged settlement within much of the former woodland in the Meissen Mark. In addition, Barbarossa claimed the old and important castle of Leisnig for the Reich, promoted development of the towns of Altenburg, Chemnitz and Zwickau, and endowed a new Augustinian priory at Altenburg. Thanks to contemporaneous land clearances, within a few years an extensive imperial territory had come into existence, stretching from Altenburg and Leisnig over Chemnitz and Zwickau as far as the peaks of the middle and western Erzgebirge – a mighty new power bloc that Emperor Frederick I established as imperial land (terra imperii), with a ministerial territorial judge at the head of a newly constituted power structure. This formation of the imperial region of Pleissen altered the face of lordship in the old marcher lands. The Wettins’ dominant position in the marches had as a result been placed in question at the end of the twelfth century.41 Nonetheless, the accidents of procreation and the Staufen retreat from eastern central Germany led to an astonishing increase in Wettin power during the thirteenth century. After 1210 Margrave Otto’s younger son, Dietrich ‘the Conqueror (der Besieger)’, was once again able to pull nearly all the Wettin power together in his own hands, leaving it to his infant son Henry ‘the Illustrious’ in 1221. In 1243 Emperor Frederick II betrothed his daughter to Henry’s son Albrecht and pledged to the Wettins as her dowry the

41 See Thieme, ‘Pleißenland, Reich und Wettiner’, pp. 39–60.

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imperial region of Pleissen, over which the Wettins established ever-firmer control in the following decades. When the Ludowing family died out in 1247, Henry the Illustrious inherited their landgravate of Thuringia and in a war of succession that lasted nearly 20 years established Wettin sovereignty over the Thuringian part of the inheritance. Thus, in the course of a few years the Wettins had risen to princely hegemony through central Germany both east and west of the Saale, and as land- and margraves had increased their princely prestige still further. Henry the Illustrious’s sovereign partition of his entire lordship with his sons in 1264 during his lifetime marks a high point of his power. With Henry the Illustrious, landgrave of Thuringia and margrave of Meissen, and with the marriage of Henry’s son to the emperor’s daughter, the Wettins had finally arrived in the first rank of the imperial princes.

15 Saxony after 1180 Arnd Reitemeier

The name ‘Saxony’ does not designate a clearly defined region, because its boundary shifted beyond the Elbe in the thirteenth century, so that the core area of the duchy which Henry the Lion had held came in the fourteenth century to be called ‘Lower Saxony’.1 The following exposition will, however, focus upon the regions which the Welfs controlled, so our starting point is Duke Henry the Lion.2 The topographical heterogeneity of this area of lordship is notable, ranging from the highlands of the Harz to Holstein, which had been Christianised barely a century before; in its widest sense it ranged from the Elbe to Westphalia. The Harz foothills, with the town of Braunschweig [Brunswick] and a large accumulation of monasteries, had comparatively dense settlement thanks to its areas of loess soil. By contrast, the area around Lüneburg was more sparsely populated; it was marked above all by both secular and ecclesiastical lordships with their salt and lime deposits and exports to the Baltic. The south was under the ecclesiastical influence of the archdiocese of Mainz and the bishoprics of Hildesheim and Magdeburg, but in the north the archbishopric of Bremen and the diocese of Verden held sway. The discussion which follows will examine developments in northern Germany from the last years of Frederick I until the death of Frederick II, c. 1180 – c. 1252.3 One should stress that Henry the Lion’s contemporaries did not regard his deposition in 1180/1182 as a turning point. In fact, over the following generations the Welfs continued to exercise a key influence in northern Germany and beyond, as the reign of Emperor Otto

1 Essential reading is Ernst Schubert, ‘Geschichte Niedersachsens vom 9. bis zum ausgehenden 15. Jahrhundert’, in Geschichte Niedersachsens, ii(1) Politik, Verfassung, Wirtschaft vom 9. bis zum ausgehenden 15. Jahrhundert, ed. Ernst Schubert (Hanover 1997); on the term ‘Lower Saxony’ (Niedersachsen), see Georg Schnath, Niedersachsen und Hanover. Vom Namen unseres Landes und seiner Hauptstadt (4th ed., Hanover 1964). 2 Joachim Ehlers, Heinrich der Löwe. Eine Biographie (Munich 2008). 3 Steffen Krieb, Vermitteln und Versöhnen. Konfliktregelung im deutschen Thronstreit 1198– 1208 (Cologne 2000).

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IV (1198–1218) demonstrates.4 Although after Otto IV his nephew Otto the Child concentrated on the internal consolidation of his lordship and only involved himself in imperial politics to a limited extent, in 1235 Frederick II recognised the Welfs’ continued relevance in imperial affairs. In that year, although the emperor granted Otto a ducal title, he only confirmed the bishoprics and rights previously granted to the Welfs in northern Germany, and left the duchy of Bavaria in the hands of the Wittelsbachs. Nonetheless, with the elevation of their allodial lands to the status of a duchy the emperor strengthened the position and legitimisation of the Welfs as the most significant dynasty in northern Germany, and confirmed in hindsight the power structures of the twelfth century. In fact, political, administrative and social change were taken into account, inasmuch as the duchy was called after the two towns of Braunschweig and Lüneburg, which were the centres of lordship over a heterogeneous cultural area. The corresponding developments were gradual and yet significant. For example, 1252 can be regarded as a significant turning point, since in that year with the death of Otto the Child the last ruler directly related to Henry the Lion died. The division that soon began to emerge into two lines – the ‘older Braunschweig house’ and the ‘older Lüneburg house’ – was finally put into effect in 1269.5 The division thus created what became two areas of lordship that were very differently organised politically. However, they remained closely linked to each other both politically and culturally and for centuries shaped the politics of northern Germany, despite the fact that they were occasionally rivals. The demographic growth of the twelfth century continued after 1180. Goslar in particular profited from the boom in mining. In the Harz foothills and the loess regions, wide areas of plough ridges and stone heaps attest to increasing amounts of land under cultivation. Comparable assarting practices also occurred for example on the North Sea coast, where settlers in Frisia – to a considerable extent at the archbishop of Bremen’s behest – erected dikes and secured cultivable land.6 The simplicity and low height of the dikes as well as partial land subsidence after water drainage then had disastrous consequences in storm tides. For both climatic and demographic

4 On the Welfs, see Bernd Schneidmüller, Die Welfen. Herrschaft und Erinnerung (819– 1252) (Stuttgart 2000); most recently Thomas Vogtherr, Die Welfen. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Munich 2014). On Otto IV, see Bernd Ulrich Hucker, Kaiser Otto IV. (Hanover 1990); Otto IV. Traum vom Welfischen Kaisertum, ed. Bernd Ulrich Hucker, Stefanie Hahn and Hans-Jürgen Derda (Passau 2009); Lotte Hüttebräuker, Das Erbe Heinrichs des Löwen. Die territorialen Grundlagen des Herzogtums BraunschweigLüneburg von 1235 (Göttingen 1927). 5 Gudrun Pischke, Die Landesteilungen der Welfen im Mittelalter (Hildesheim 1987). 6 Heinrich Schmidt, Politische Geschichte Ostfrieslands, v Ostfriesland im Schutze des Deiches (Pewsum 1975).

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reasons, the expansion of cultivation reached its zenith at the latest in the middle of the thirteenth century. Alongside the expansion of land under cultivation was the deep-reaching social and legal development of types of settlement, which can be seen in many places such as the Hildesheim Börde. Settlements grew from individual estates and often replaced the lord’s estates as sole centres of local rule. For example, by the time of the Sachsenspiegel (compiled c. 1230), villages had developed into economic communities in which communal oversight over cattle had been organised. They were also associations with circumscribed rights, in which the villagers collectively oversaw field boundaries and settled neighbourhood disputes. Villages were, however, certainly not autonomous communities, since all central rights lay with the local lord or a great noble, who exercised them by means of advocates and officials, as well as collecting dues. The foundation of chapels, which soon received rights of curacy, strengthened the tendency toward growing village independence. More and more a parish church with rights of pastoral care came to serve as the centre of the village community.7 At the same time, social differentiation increased. At the bottom of the social scale were the cottars, day labourers who did not farm their own lands and had no rights in the common land, but only possessed or rented a simple hut without land. The reeve who looked after the lord’s affairs stood at the pinnacle as a member of an economic élite, and assured this position over time by progressively gaining further rights. Saxon politics were marked by a continuous search for independence in the lordships of the nobles and lower aristocracy.8 Duke Henry the Lion had increased as much as possible the ‘feudal’ rights that came to him and had just as systematically claimed his rights; his successors, for want of ducal prerogatives, could not continue in such a systematic fashion and could not pursue their rights with comparable aggression. At all events, the extent to which the secular nobles could secure and strengthen their social and political position after 1180 varied markedly. In the outlying districts of Welf lordship some dynasties succeeded in increasing or building up what were practically closed areas of lordship. Especially noteworthy

7 Wolfgang Petke, ‘Wie kam die Kirche ins Dorf? Mittelalterliche Niederkirchenstiftungen im Gebiet des heutigen Niedersachsen und Harburgs’, in Gottes Wort ins Leben verwandeln: Perspektiven der (nord-)deutschen Kirchengeschichte, Festschrift für Inge Mager zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Rainer Hering, Hans Otte and Johann A. Steiger (Hanover 2005), pp. 33–68; an essential study is Arnd Reitemeier, ‘Die Pfarrgemeinde im späten Mittelalter’, in Die Pfarrei im späten Mittelalter, ed. Enno Bünz and Gerhard Fouquet (VF 77, Ostfildern 2013), pp. 341–75. 8 Ulrich Schwarz, ‘Die Entstehung des Landes Braunschweig im späten Mittelalter (1252– 1495)’, in Die Braunschweigische Landesgeschichte. Jahrtausendrückblick einer Region, ed. Horst-Rüdiger Jarck and Gerhard Schildt (Braunschweig 2000), pp. 231–66.

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are the Schaumburgers, who after 1200 were able to develop their lordship between the Weser, the Steinhuder Sea and Deister into a truly closed lordship, not least through land clearance.9 Closer to the core region of the Welf lordship, families like the counts of Roden, Wölpe, Wöltingerode and Stumpenhausen (who were soon called von Hoya), or the lords of Hodenberg and Meinersen gained in power and independence.10 In consequence, on the one hand all the dynasties including the Welfs were concerned with rounding out and securing their lordships. On the other hand, they succeeded in lessening the homogeneity of lordship and increasing its fragmentation throughout the region. A clear example comes with the lords of Meinersen, who possessed extensive lordships in the mid-thirteenth century in the border area between the two divided principalities and also in the vicinity of the Welf centre of Lüneburg.11 From that time on, princes and noble families pursued similar strategies. The Welfs aimed above all at the consolidation of their lordship and the avoidance of deep enmities with the neighbouring princes.12 The marriage of Otto the Child with the Ascanian Mechtild led successfully to a weakening of the rivalry between the two families. But the Welf princes were only to a limited extent successful in continuing to set themselves apart from the other north German nobles; they joined in the political movement toward fragmentation and at the same time increasing thoroughness of rule. Local lordships were developed and where possible rounded out. Additional areas and possessions were gained through dynastic alliances, through inheritance or as the fruits of feuds, whereby no independent power near to the centre of a lordship could be allowed to exist. So-called ‘feudal’ claims stretched over wide areas beyond allodial lands.13 Finally, rights of lordship were exercised as broadly as possible, even when the nobles did not follow the customary rules. On the whole, written records were ever more important for administration, although only rarely do we have record books like that of the lords of Meinersen (1226), and there are no extant examples of written accounts for advocates and officials. Monasteries in particular took the lead in the depth of administrative record-keeping for their possessions.

9 Schaumburg im Mittelalter, ed. Stefan Brüdermann, (2nd ed., Bielefeld 2014). 10 For example, see Nathalie Kruppa, Die Grafen von Dassel (1097–1337/38) (Bielefeld 2002); Wolfgang Petke, Die Grafen von Wöltingerode-Wohldenberg. Adelsherrschaft, Königtum und Landesherrschaft am Nordwestharz im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim 1971). 11 Peter Przybilla, Die Edelherren von Meinersen. Genealogie, Herrschaft und Besitz vom 12. bis zum 14. Jahrhundert (Hanover 2007). 12 Sigurd Zillmann, Die welfische Territorialpolitik im 13. Jahrhundert (1218–1267) (Braunschweig 1975). 13 See, for example, Wolfgan Petke, ‘Reichstruchsess Gunzelin (+1255) und die Ministerialen von Wolfenbüttel-Asseburg’, in Auf dem Weg zur herzoglichen Residenz. Wolfenbüttel im Mittelalter, ed. Ulrich Schwarz (Braunschweig 2003), pp. 47–106.

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In the thirteenth century, too, personal relations affected the relationship between the dukes and the other nobles. The importance of vassalage shows itself in presence at the prince’s court – although at times the Welfs’ political weakness at the imperial level allowed noble and lower noble dynasties to act with increasing independence and self-confidence. Henry the Lion’s hegemonial policies, which many had regarded as oppressive, had ultimately weakened the cohesion of northern Germany, a circumstance that the noble and lesser noble families were able to exploit for their own advantage. In these complex power relations the ecclesiastical princes had a special significance, and in particular because the regional nobles held the benefices of the cathedral chapters, into which the townsmen of the most important cities, Braunschweig and Lüneburg, only penetrated in the later Middle Ages. Although the archbishop of Bremen had been among Henry the Lion’s highest-profile opponents, and his successors managed in 1219 (and finally and definitively in 1236) to gain possession of the disputed county of Stade, the archbishop of Mainz by contrast had especially sought to profit from the abolition of the duchy, but did not succeed in the long-term.14 Moreover, the bishops’ scope for action increased at the end of the twelfth century, especially for the dioceses of Hildesheim and Lübeck, above all because every form of ‘feudal’ overlordship declined, so that usurped and doubtful fiefs had to be returned. In a process analogous to that of the secular princes, the bishops pursued a policy of internal development of their territories. They profited from the fact that Henry the Lion was forced to give up many advocacies, although his neighbours – for example the bishopric of Verden – could only reclaim in part. It was much more common for followers of the bishops to claim rights of advocacy on grounds of ‘feudal’ law. The ecclesiastical princes after 1180 thus acted just like the secular princes, so that for instance the bishops of Hildesheim took control of Winzenburg or the bishops of Verden constructed Rothenburg. In a parallel process, the cathedral chapters significantly increased their power. In 1233 the right of the cathedral chapter to elect their bishop was established in all northern German dioceses, and as a result the influence of nobles on the ecclesiastical principalities rose noticeably. Already Henry the Lion had taken advantage of structural changes, founding or promoting towns like Göttingen or Lübeck. Although he continued to use castles as centres of his lordship, he did not develop them further. Rather he sought to make use of the political and economic centres,

14 Heinz-Joachim Schulze, ‘Der Kampf um Grafschaft und Stadt. Stade vom Ausgang des 10. bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts’, in Stade. Von den Siedlungsanfängen bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Jürgen Bohmbach (Stade 1994), pp. 51–83. See also Michael Hohmann, ‘Das Erzstift Bremen und die Grafschaft Stade im 12. und frühen 13. Jahrhundert’, Stader Archiv NF 59 (1969), 49–118.

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and especially in Lüneburg and Braunschweig where he erected town castles of a strongly representative character, which he strengthened with religious foundations. Henry especially promoted the collegiate church of St. Blaise in Braunschweig with gifts of precious relics that he had collected while on crusade. Henry’s successors, by contrast, especially privileged St. Michael’s, Lüneburg, which also served as burial place for the older Lüneburg house. One can also see similar developments among the nobles after 1180, albeit with something of a time lag.15 Dynasties strengthened their position in part by the building of castles, which now overwhelmingly lay in low-lying areas. They became centres of regional development and often also provided the families’ names. Ministeriales and families of the lower nobility fortified their houses and developed them into so-called mottes. The growing independence as well as self-consciousness of the nobility expressed itself in noble families taking the name of their chief castle. Finally, noble families founded a substantial number of monasteries and used them as family burial places, so the alliance of castle and cloister began to build up little centres of lordship. In 1180 there were exactly a dozen towns in the duchy of Saxony: Bardowick, Braunschweig, Göttingen, Goslar, Hanover, Helmstedt, Hildesheim, Lüneburg, Münden, Northeim, Osnabrück and Stade. The following years saw a wave of small town foundations. In the first instance it was the counts and other noble families that pushed these new settlements ahead, for example Bodenwerder, Rinteln, Hessisch Oldendorf, Hameln, Holzminden, Einbeck and Neustadt am Rübenberge.16 Counts and minor noble dynasties privileged these towns as an element of their land development, because with the towns they created economic as well as administrative centres for their lordships. The establishment of markets, the economic division of labour with the specialisation of artisans and producers and increasing legal security, with the appointment of judges responsible for the local area, were stimulating both economically and socially. Consequently, substantial migration from the surrounding countryside was a predominant mark of all towns. To be sure, after 1180 the princes only promoted this movement to a limited extent, and there were no royal/imperial initiatives in this regard in northern Germany.17 The towns’ relevance as economic centres can be seen in the many establishments that monasteries, and especially Cistercian

15 Claus-Peter Hasse, Die welfischen Hofämter und die welfische Ministerialität in Sachsen. Studien zur Sozialgeschichte des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (Husum 1995). 16 Geschichtlicher Handatlas von Niedersachsen, ed. Institut für Historische Landesforschung der Universität Göttingen und der Historischen Kommission für Niedersachsen und Bremen and Gudrun Pischke (Neumünster 1989), for this point Map 46. 17 See Bernhard Diestelkamp, Die Städteprivilegien Herzog Ottos des Kindes, ersten Herzogs von Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1204–1252) (Hildesheim 1961).

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houses, built or bought in the towns to sell their products.18 The towns’ prosperity increased burghers’ longing for autonomy, from which however at first only the two big towns of Braunschweig and Lüneburg were able to profit comprehensively. Two settlements formed the core of Braunschweig, lying on the left and right sides of a ford on the River Oker. First Henry the Lion expanded these settlements markedly, and he also ordered a major expansion of the Brunonian castle of Dankwarderode. Following this, all Welf lords privileged and promoted the five settlement areas, in this way enhancing their central residence.19 To be sure, Otto IV especially made large concessions to the increasingly self-conscious united settlement, for example freeing the town’s merchants from all imperial toll payments (a privilege that Otto the Child then expanded to England and Denmark). After the individual settlements had attained the right to build fortifications and to elect representatives, in 1269 the councils of the old town, the new town and Hagen combined. Up to 1269 Braunschweig only succeeded in winning a more limited political autonomy than, for example, the imperial town of Lübeck, but still Braunschweig rose to be the leading economic town of the Saxon town league, and thus had a comparable influence to Lübeck. Lüneburg by contrast remained under the dominance of the Welf dukes. But even in Lüneburg the town consuls gained in influence. In particular the natural resources – salt and lime – were corporately administered, so that the town could use its economic power against the princes. In contrast to Braunschweig and Lüneburg, Lübeck, to which Henry the Lion had granted sweeping privileges as a trans-shipment centre of central importance for the entire Baltic region, had international relevance. This can be seen especially in the participation by Lübeck merchants in the Third Crusade. At first Adolf III of Holstein profited from the deposition of Henry the Lion to secure overlordship over the town, but he lost his position to the king of Denmark in 1203. Lübeck used this development to build up its own power and succeeded Schleswig/Haithabu as the political-administrative centre of the western Baltic. Finally, in 1226 Frederick II recognised both the importance and the autonomy of Lübeck, stipulating that the city should now answer directly to the king, and be governed by its own consules.20 Thus, in all towns elected representatives of the burgers could exercise rights of self-rule. The growing economic importance of long-distance trade and the consequent increasing political weight of the towns led to unions of merchants, which were eventually brought together under the term ‘the

18 Arnd Reitemeier, ‘Die ökonomische Entwicklung des Klosters Loccum im Mittelalter bis 1589’, in Wort halten, gestern-heute-morgen, ed. Horst Hirschler, Hans Otte and Christian Stäblein (Göttingen 2013), pp. 125–40. 19 Caspar Ehlers and Lutz Fenske, ‘Braunschweig’, in Die deutschen Köngspfalzen 4 (Göttingen 1999/2000), pp. 18–164. 20 QDVWSG, pp. 410–16.

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Hanse’.21 Contemporaneously, the burgers of nearly all the towns began in the course of the thirteenth century to compete with ecclesiastics for the care of souls, increasingly founding hospitals, over which at the end of the thirteenth century the council usually exercised sole control. After 1180 especially, the mid-range and lower lords founded towns, and these same dynasties at the same time claimed land through assarting and on rare occasions through drainage, frequently in alliance with Cistercian monasteries. In consequence of this continuing territorial development the number of parish churches rose, and these became the focal points of these newly founded villages. Rights of patronage lay in part with the local and regional nobility, but also with monasteries. Among the growing number of twelfth- and thirteenth-century monasteries, the Benedictines formed by far the largest group. Although the Cluniacs barely gained a foothold in Saxony, the network of Cistercians grew especially in the second half of the twelfth century. The Cistercians in particular also played a role in Christianisation of the Slavic regions. That a dozen Franciscan settlements followed one another in rapid succession in the larger towns shows to what a high degree Lower Saxony was linked to European-wide cultural developments. The Teutonic Order also established itself in Lower Saxony with seven houses. The weakening dominance of the Welfs and at the same time the growing efforts of the noble and lesser noble families for autonomy and enhancing their own importance strengthened the drive for social differentiation. Feuds, the building of residences and seats of lordship, dowries, inheritance of land and finally the maintenance of as prestigious a court as possible led these nobles regularly to exceed the normal income they could gain through careful management of their domains. As a result, the princes in particular began to recognise an increasing right of consultation for the lower estates. But above all, it was the merchants in the towns who functioned as creditors for the princes and nobles. The Jewish communities in for instance Göttingen and Hildesheim also participated to a considerable degree in this process. The economic behaviour of the dynasties, independent of their size and political significance, was consequently the Achilles heel of noble lordship. The running of the court was kept up by means of gradually increasing capitalisation and the mortgaging of lands. Since after the Interregnum the kings hardly appeared in northern Germany, marriage alliances became the key factor of political activity within what had truly become a regional political network.

21 Stephan Selzer, Die mittelalterliche Hanse (Darmstadt 2010).

16 Pomerania, Mecklenburg and the ‘Baltic frontier’ Adaptation and alliances Oliver Auge

Two special circumstances shaped the path of the lords of Mecklenburg and dukes of Pomerania to become imperial princes. First, Mecklenburg and Pomerania became part of the Reich relatively late and continued to lie on its periphery. And secondly, their inhabitants, like their lords, were originally Slavic pagans, who were only lastingly Christianised in the course of the twelfth century. [For the ruling families, see genealogical charts XV and XVI above].

Christianisation and subjection to vassalage Mecklenburg developed in the western part of this territory in the second half of the twelfth century out of the structures of lordship of the Obodrite confederation. It was under the political influence of both Denmark and Saxony. By contrast, the eastern part, in which Pomerania developed on both sides of the river Oder in the first half of the twelfth century, was under pressure from Denmark, Saxony, Brandenburg and also Poland.1 Saxon-Danish interplay in the west can already be seen in 1128/30. At that time Cnut Lavard (1096–1131), a descendant of the Danish royal family raised in exile as the foster son of the Saxon duke Lothar of Supplinburg, was granted rule over the West Slavic Obodrites by Lothar, who had in the meantime become king of Germany.2 With this move the Reich stretched out its feelers into this region, although it was not yet possible to make

1 Jürgen Petersohn, ‘Pommerns staatsrechtliches Verhältnis zu den Nachbarstaaten im Mittelalter’, in Die Rolle Schlesiens und Pommerns in der Geschichte der deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen im Mittelalter, ed. Rainer Riemenschneider (2nd ed., Brunswig 1983), pp. 98–115, esp. p. 100. 2 Helmold, I.49, pp. 96–8 [English trans. by Tschan, pp. 152–4]; Oliver Auge, ‘Hominium, tributum, feudum. Zu den Anfängen des Lehnswesens im Nordosten des Reiches bis 1250’, in Das Lehnswesen im Hochmittelalter. Forschungskonstrukte – Quellenbefunde – Deutungsrelevanz, ed. Jürgen Dendorfer and Roman Deutinger (Ostfildern 2010), pp. 195–215, esp. pp. 199–200; Manfred Hamann, Mecklenburgische Geschichte. Von den Anfängen bis zur Landständischen Union von 1523 (Cologne 1968), pp. 66–7.

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durable connections to the area with this move. In the same context, in 1135, at an imperial assembly at Merseburg, Lothar requested from the Polish Piast duke, Boleslav III ‘Wrymouth’, recognition of his overlordship of Pomerania and Rügen, which was given.3 By this means the Pomerania of Wartislav I (c. 1100 – c. 1148), which had formerly recognised the Polish duke’s overlordship,4 came for the first time into a relationship of dependence to the Reich, at least for the part of its territory that lay west of the Oder.5 In the wake of Polish expansion under Boleslav III, Wartislav had established himself in the 1120s and 1130s – certainly with the approval of the German king and Saxon duke Lothar – west of the Oder in the area between Peene and Müritz.6 Two of Bishop Otto of Bamberg’s missionary journeys to Pomerania took place at roughly the same time; the first in 1124–5 was still under Bolesłav’s protection, while the second in 1128 was carried out under the protection of King Lothar and Albrecht the Bear of Brandenburg.7 This, too, reflects the early stages of the Reich‘s influence on relationships in a Pomerania that was now re-establishing itself under a Christian identity on both sides of the Oder. In his second marriage, Wartislav I is supposed to have wed a Danish princess. In this way Scandinavia entered the scene in Pomerania as the third outside influence, alongside Poland and the Reich. In the 1160s Wartislav’s sons Bogislav I (c. 1130–1187) and Casimir I (after 1124–1180) were caught in the crossfire of the conflicts between the Saxon duke Henry the Lion and King Waldemar I of Denmark over control of the southwestern Baltic coast. This can be seen in the fact that, although Casimir gave military service to King Waldemar, both brothers subjected themselves to Duke Henry in c. 1164.8

3 Ottonis Episcopi Frisingis Chronica sive Historia de Duabus Civitatibus, ed. Adolf Hofmeister (MGH SRG, Hanover 1912), p. 336 [The Two Cities: A Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146, by Otto, Bishop of Freising, trans. C.C. Mierow (New York 1928), p. 426]; Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, p. 103. 4 Herbordi Dialogus de vita Ottonis episcopi Babenbergensis, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz (MGH SRG, Hanover 1868), II.5, pp. 55–6 and II.30, pp. 87–9. 5 Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, pp. 103–4. He interprets the event as establishment of a ‘clearly rewritten legal relationship’. The significance of the event in ‘feudal’ law, according to Petersohn, contradicts the current state of scholarship on ‘feudalism’ in general. On this point, see Ausbildung und Verbreitung des Lehnswesens im Reich und in Italien im 12. und 13. Jh., ed. Karl-Heinz Spieß (Ostfildern 2013). 6 Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, p. 102. 7 Helmold, I.40, p. 83 [English trans. by Tschan, p. 138]; Herbord, II.6–7, pp. 56–8; Hamann, Mecklenburgische Geschichte, p. 71. For the missionary endeavours of Otto, Bishop of Bamberg 1102–39, in Pomerania, see Robert Bartlett, ‘The Conversion of a Pagan Society in the Middle Ages’, History 70 (1985), 185–201. 8 Auge, ‘Hominium’, p. 203 with notes 37–8, following the Historia Regum Danorum dicta Knytlingasaga, ed. Finnur Jonsson, c. 120, MGH SS xxix.312. English translation: Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum / The History of the Danes, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen and trans. Peter Fisher (2 vols., Oxford 2014), ii.XIV c. 43.1, pp. 1346–9. For discussion see

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Arnold of Lübeck, when describing this act, even calls Casimir Henry’s ‘very close friend’ (amicissimus).9 However, for a short time in the 1170s Bogislav I apparently once again sought support from Poland, as his participation in the so-called princes’ conference of Gniezno in 1177 and his second marriage to Anastasia of Poland show.10 After Cnut Lavard’s murder in 113111 the region west of Pomerania was divided, with King Lothar’s at least tacit consent, into two largely autonomous power complexes under the Slav princes Pribislav (d. after 1156) and Niklot (d. 1160), of which only that of Niklot proved viable.12 In 1147 Niklot had been forced to submit to Duke Henry and afterwards stayed for a while in his circle. But he fell into disfavour with the duke when he opposed Henry’s wish to refrain from raids on the Danish coast. As an outlaw he was murdered in an ambush in 1160.13 Niklot’s son Pribislav (d. 1178) had to submit to Duke Henry in 1164, suffered the loss of much of his paternal inheritance and was forced to accept Christianity. This opened a gateway for the Christian faith in this region. Thanks to the rebellion of Saxon magnates against the duke, Pribislav was already able to regain large parts of his original property in 1167, for which he paid homage to the duke.14 The heart of the region that later became Mecklenburg thus arose under Saxon pressure with the contemporaneous expansion of castle lordship around Mecklenburg.15 It was not by chance that from 1171 onwards Pribislav was called de Mikelenburg.16 His successors did not assume the

9 10 11

12 13 14 15

16

Detleff Kattinger, ‘Heinrich der Löwe, Casimir I. von Demmin und Bogislaw I. von Stettin. Ein Versuch über das Lehnsverhältnis Heinrichs des Löwen gegenüber den pommerschen Herzögen’, in Land am Meer: Pommern im Spiegel seiner Geschichte, ed. Werner Buchholz and Günter Mangelsdorf (Cologne 1995), pp. 63–84, in contrast to Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, p. 105. More generally, see also Hans-Otto Gaethke, ‘Cnut VI. und Waldemar II. von Dänemark und Nordalbingien 1182–1227’, parts 1–3 and conclusion in Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Schleswig-Holsteinische Geschichte 119 (1994), 21–99; 120 (1995), 7–76; and 121 (1996), 7–44. Arnoldi Chronica Slavorum, ed. J.M. Lappenberg (MGH SRG, Hanover 1868), II.17, p. 58. Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, p. 105. Oliver Auge, ‘Mord, Gefangenahme, Erpressung. Andere Spielregeln der Politik im schleswig-holsteinischen Mittelalter?’, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für SchleswigHolsteinische Geschichte 136 (2011), 9–38, esp. pp. 12–13. Hans-Otto Gaethke, Herzog Heinrich der Löwe und die Slawen nordöstlich der unteren Elbe (Frankfurt am Main 1999), pp. 71–107, 135–42. Auge, ‘Hominium’, p. 201, following Helmold, I.87–8, pp. 171–2 [English trans. by Tschan, pp. 231–3]; Hamann, Mecklenburgische Geschichte, p. 82. Helmold, II.103, pp. 203–4 [English trans. by Tschan, pp. 265–7]. Ernst Münch, ‘Die Begründung des mecklenburgischen Territorialstaates 1160/67–1348’, in Die Geschichte Mecklenburgs, ed. Wolf Karge et al. (Rostock 2000), pp. 25–43, esp. p. 27. See Mecklenburgisches UB, i.101, no. 101; Münch, ‘Die Begründung’, p. 27.

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princely title that he had held, derived from the Slavic title knese (which, however, could mean any leadership position without specific rank designation). They merely called themselves lords (domini) of Mecklenburg.17 In 1171 Pribislav founded the monastery of Doberan and endowed the bishopric of Schwerin. A year later he accompanied Duke Henry on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem.18 Pribislav’s son Henry Borwin I (d. 1227) married an illegitimate daughter of Henry named Mathilde – like his son’s name the marriage is a testimony to his closeness to the ducal house, and at the same time evidence of their difference in rank. Until the end of his life Pribislav remained a loyal vassal of the Saxon duke, and it was at his court at Lüneburg in 1178 that Pribislav was mortally wounded in a tournament.19 With Henry’s fall from power and deposition as duke, the political power-map was reconfigured in the southwestern Baltic coast region. By then, although the membership of Mecklenburg and Pomerania in the kingdom of Germany had begun to crystallise, it was far from firmly established. According to Saxo, at first the Danish king renounced any wish to exert stronger influence on Sclavia in favour of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa.20 Thus, Bogislav I is supposed to have formally received an ‘eagle’ from the emperor in the imperial military encampment before Lübeck, which ceremony has been regarded as describing both the presentation of a banner and elevation to the rank of imperial prince;21 he was also named duke of Slavia.22 But Saxo reports that not only Bogislav received an eagle but also his brother Casimir, who was already dead by then, which suggests that the annalist confused him with Nikolaus (d. 1200), one of Pribislav of Mecklenburg’s two successors.23 If this is the case it would connect the early Mecklenburger to the imperial attempt to impose a new organisation on the southwestern Baltic coast. According to Arnold’s perhaps more trustworthy account, however, Pribislav only rendered hominium et tributa to the emperor.24 The combination of commitment by oath and payment of tribute in recognition of subjection to a foreign overlord was different

17 Oliver Auge, Handlungsspielräume fürstlicher Politike im Mittelalter. Der südliche Ostseeraum von der Mitte des 12. Jh.s bis in die frühe Reformationszeit (Ostfildern 2009), p. 259 note 9; Tilmann Schmidt, ‘Die Erhebung Mecklenburgs zum Herzogtum im Jahr 1348’, Mecklenburgische Jahrbücher 114 (1999), 63–74, esp. pp. 66–8. 18 Arnold, Chronica, I.1, p. 11. 19 Mecklenburgische Reimchronik des Ernst von Kirchberg, ed. Christa Cordshagen and Roderich Schmidt (Cologne 1997), c. 116, vv.17–20, p. 292. 20 Saxo Grammaticus, ii.XV c. 5.10, pp. 1484–5. 21 Thus, Fritz Curschmann, ‘Die Belehnung Herzogs Bogislaw I. von Pommern im Lager vor Lübeck (1181)’, Pommersche Jahrbücher 31 (1937), 7–33, esp. pp. 32–3. Cf. Dietmar Lucht, ‘War Bogislaw I. Reichsfürst?’, Baltische Studien NF 54 (1968), 26–30. 22 Saxo Grammaticus, ii.XV c. 5.11, pp. 1484–7. 23 Gaethke, Herzog Heinrich der Löwe, pp. 448–9. 24 Arnold, Chronica, II.17, p. 58.

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from the ‘feudal’ practice established in the Reich at that time. It shows that a different significance was given to the Pomeranian ducal title than that accorded to a ‘usual’ duke in the Reich.25 This is explained by the difference in legal relationships still existing in the Reich and in the Slavic region at the time. At the same time the emperor clearly signalled his intention to assure the Pomeranian duke an autonomous position, which at this period roughly corresponded to that of Denmark, Poland or Bohemia.26 Bogislav I later had to submit in the same way to the Danish king Cnut VI, after hard fighting, following Cnut’s de facto rejection of imperial overlordship in Pomerania in his own favour.27 The following decades were shaped by the Danish expansion as far as the rivers Elbe and Elde.28 This expansion was made possible by the disruption of the civil war in Germany between 1198 and 1208. Both new lords of Mecklenburg, the rivals Henry Borwin I and Nikolaus, were included as vassals in this wide-ranging expansion of Danish lordship, after the Danish king had ended their inheritance struggle by recognising one in the western region and the other in the east with Werle and Rostock.29 As vassals they took part in the Danish expeditions of conquest. On one of these expeditions, which led to the conquest of the counties of Holstein and Ratzeburg, Nikolaus fell in the Battle of Waschow on 25 May 1200/01.30 After that, Henry Borwin I ruled alone. As payment for his involvement he received the district of Gadebusch in 1203.31 At about the same time, his territory was caught up in the eastern settlement movement.

Membership in the Reich, divisions and regencies The Danish conquests were probably recognised in 1202 by the Welf Otto IV32 and certainly a dozen years later by the Staufen Frederick II. According to this document, issued at Metz in December 1214, the de facto transfer

25 Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, p. 106, with premises about ‘feudal’ history that have in the meanwhile been revised. On the unspecific princely titulature in the Slavic region, see Steffen Schlinker, Fürstenamt und Rezeption. Reichsfürstenstand und gelehrte Literatur im späten Mittelalter (Cologne 1999), p. 198, following Julius Ficker, Vom Reichsfürstenstande. Forschungen zur Geschichte der Reichsverfassung zunächst im XII und XIII. Jahrhundert, vol. i (Innsbruck 1861), pp. 30–3. 26 Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, pp. 105–6. 27 Svenonis Aggonis filii Brevis historia regum Dacie, ed. Martin Clarentius Gertz (Scriptores minores historiae Danicae medii aevi 1, Copenhagen 1917/18), c. 20, p. 140; Arnold, Chronica, III.7, p. 83; Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, p. 107; Gaethke, ‘Cnut VI.’, pp. 46–7; Hamann, Mecklenburgische Geschichte, pp. 95–6. 28 For details, see Gaethke, ‘Cnut VI.’. 29 Hamann, Mecklenburgische Geschichte, p. 96. 30 Arnold, Chronica, VI.13, p. 232; Hamann, Mecklenburgische Geschichte, p. 98. 31 Münch, ‘Die Begründung’, p. 27. 32 There is no record of a formal concession by Otto IV, but it can be inferred from the alliance of Pope Innocent III with the Danish king. See Regestum Innocentii III papae

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of this region of the Reich to the Danish king – including Mecklenburg and Pomerania – was linked to a legal claim that it would continue to remain part of the kingdom.33 Hence in the just over 30 years since 1181 the understanding had apparently developed that Mecklenburg and Pomerania were really parts of the imperium. When therefore the period of Danish supremacy came to an abrupt end in 1223, with Count Henry of Schwerin’s capture of King Waldemar II and his son of the same name, this region was of course among the territories the king had to agree to surrender in return for his freedom, in November 1225; and at this time it was expressly characterised as ‘belonging to the empire’ (ad imperium pertinentes).34 In addition to the Holstein region between the Eider and Levensau in the north and the Elbe in the south, the charter specifically mentioned the lands of Henry Borwin I (that is Mecklenburg) and omnes terras Sclavie (Pomerania).35 King Waldemar’s attempt to overturn this enforced agreement failed with his defeat at the Battle of Bornhöved in July 1227, by a coalition of north German princes, bishops and towns. Their victory ended direct Danish influence on the fate of Mecklenburg and Pomerania. This did not mean that the emperor inevitably wished to return to his position in 1181, however much the membership of Mecklenburg and Pomerania in the kingdom of Germany may have been obvious. This can be seen particularly in the example of Pomerania, which since the time of Bogislav I and his brother Casimir I had been divided into two regions: ‘Stettin’ and ‘Demmin’. In contrast to what had happened in 1181, Frederick II in 1231 placed all of Pomerania under the overlordship of the margraves of Brandenburg.36 At least this expressed the understanding that Pomerania belonged to the kingdom of Germany and that the emperor was responsible for its destiny. After military conflicts with the Ascanians, the two young dukes, Barnim I of Pomerania-Stettin (c. 1220–1278) and Wartislav

33

34

35 36

super negotio Romani imperii, ed. Friedrich Kempf (Miscellanea Historiae Pontificiae 12, Rome 1947), pp. 224–6 no. 84; pp. 252–3 no. 97; pp. 258–9 no. 101. See also Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, p. 108 note 31. MGH Dipl. Frederick II, ii.201–4 no. 271. Oliver Auge, ‘Konflikt und Koexistenz. Die Grenze zwischen dem Reich und Dänemark bis zur Schlacht von Bornhöved (1227) im Spiegel zeitgenössischer Quellen’, in 1200 Jahre Deutsch-Dänische Grenze. Aspekte einer Nachbarschaft, ed. Martin Krieger et al. (Neumünster 2013), pp. 71–93, esp. p. 82, following Walther Lammers, ‘Verzicht auf Reichsgebiet. Friedrichs II. Urkunde von Metz 1214’, in idem, Vestigia mediaevalia. Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur mittelalterlichen Historiographie, Landes- und Kirchengeschichte (Wiesbaden 1979), pp. 303–37, at pp. 309–10. Schleswig-Holsteinische Regesten und Urkunden, vol. 1: 786–1250, ed. Paul Hasse (Hamburg 1886), p. 199 no. 435; Lammers, ‘Verzicht’, pp. 309–400; Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, p. 108, for the following as well. Schleswig-Holsteinische Regesten und Urkunden, i.199 no. 435. Pommersches UB, i 213–14 no. 279; Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, p. 109.

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III of Pomerania-Demmin (c. 1210–1264), were forced reluctantly to accept this vassallage until 1236.37 As a result of these conflicts Wartislav also had to endure the painful loss of territory (Stargard) and recognition of Brandenburg’s right to take direct control of his territory if he failed to produce a direct heir. Shortly before, he had already had to relinquish the district of Zirzipanien between Güstrow and Lake Kummerow to the Mecklenburg lordship of Rostock.38 In the Treaty of Landen (1250), Barnim I at least succeeded in obtaining the concession of a Brandenburg fief in return for renunciation of the Uckermark. Thus, in return for express recognition of Brandenburg’s overlordship, he won the part-duchy of Demmen for himself, and he reunited Pomerania when Wartislav III died without children in 1264.39 But Pomerania, which since the reign of Count Barnim had experienced the establishment of settlements under German law,40 did not remain united for long. In 1295 Barnim I’s sons Bogislav IV (c. 1255/58–1309) and Otto I (1279–1344) partitioned it yet again, this time into PomeraniaWolgast and Pomerania-Stettin.41 The Mecklenburger were less exposed to external pressures. Their position as part of the Reich was fortified when John I (d. 1264) obtained a confirmation of his lands and rights from the emperor in February 1236,42 which was then renewed in 1314.43 Henry Borwin I had died shortly before the Battle of Bornhöved in 1226. His two sons Henry Borwin II and Nikolaus, with whom he had shared the lordship since 1201, had also passed away in 1226 and 1225, respectively.44 The lordship passed on to the four young sons of Henry Borwin II, but was at

37 Pommersches UB, i: no. 334, pp. 252–3 for Pommern-Demmin (Treaty of Kremmen 1236). For Pomerania-Stettin, see Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, p. 109 note 38 with Dietmar Lucht, ‘Die Außenpolitik Herzog Barnims I. von Pommern’, Baltische Studien, Neue Folge 51 (1965), 15–32, at p. 20, who exclude passages of the Landin treaty of 1250 and supposed visits of Barnim to Spandau in 1234 and 1236. Less convincing is Kazimierz Bobowski, ‘Das staatsrechtliche Verhältnis Pommerns zu Brandenburg im 13. Jh.’, in Pommern im Reich und in Europa, ed. Horst Wernicke and Ralf-Gunnar Werlich (Greifswald 1996), pp. 67–78 (pp. 72–5 for this question). 38 Hamann, Mecklenburgische Geschichte, p. 107. 39 Heidelore Böcker, ‘Barnim I. Herzog von Pommern (1220–1278)’, in Deutsche Fürsten des Mittelalters, ed. Eberhard Holtz and Wolfgang Huschner (Leipzig 1995), pp. 292–304, at p. 298; Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, pp. 109–10. 40 See, for example, Dietmar Lucht, Die Städtepolitik Herzog Barnims I. von Pommern 1220–1278 (Cologne 1965). 41 Pommersches UB, iii.(1).243–5 no. 1729; Rudolf Benl, ‘Pommern bis zur Teilung von 1368/72’, in Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas. Pommern, ed. Werner Buchholz (Berlin 1999), pp. 21–126, here at p. 104. 42 Mecklenburgisches UB, i.444 no. 447. 43 Friedrich August Rudloff, Pragmatisches Handbuch der Mecklenburgischen Geschichte, Part 2, sections 1–2 (Schwerin 1785), p. 427. 44 Hamann, Mecklenburgische Geschichte, p. 105.

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first exercised de facto by regents. When the two older brothers came of age in 1229, they divided the lordship between them in what is called the first ‘major land division’ (Hauptlandesteilung).45 In 1235, once the two younger brothers had also grown up, a further division into four parts followed. Four autonomous lordship districts were thus created: Mecklenburg, Parchim, Rostock and Werle. From these developed fairly long-term lordship complexes held by the different branches of the family, among which the Mecklenburg and Werle lines were particularly long-lived.46 The Werle house, which at the time of the first partition had assembled the largest area of lordship under its control, over time lost more and more property and importance, and they were ignored when in 1348 Charles IV raised the lords of the main Mecklenburg lines to become dukes. Until the fifteenth century the heads of the Werle branch remained simply lords, after which they gave themselves the title ‘prince of Wenden’, without of course thereby achieving the status of imperial princes.47 Before the lords of Mecklenburg reached such an exalted rank, their lordship passed through several more crises. For a time at the end of the thirteenth century lordship authority in Mecklenburg broke down almost completely, after Henry I ‘the Pilgrim’ (d. 1302) was captured on his journey to the Holy Sepulchre in 1272 and taken to Cairo, where he spent a quarter of a century in captivity.48 He only succeeded in gaining his liberty and returning to his homeland in 1297. In the meantime, serious power struggles were the order of the day, between his brothers and the lords of Werle, who competed for the regency for his two sons who were entitled to inherit. In 1287 the elder, Henry II (1266–1329), assumed the regency for his absent father. As sole ruler from 1302 he is believed to have prepared the ground for the rise of the lords of Mecklenburg to ducal rank, a promotion which his son Albrecht II (c. 1317–1379) brought to fruition in 1348, acting together with Charles of Luxemburg. Henry’s 1292 marriage to Beatrice, the daughter of Margrave Albrecht III of Brandenburg, had already in 1298/99 brought him enfeoffment with the Stargard district,

45 Ibid., p. 106; Georg C.F. Lisch, ‘Über die mecklenburgische Hauptlandesteilung vom Jahre 1229 und den Regierungsantritt der vier Söhne des Fürsten Heinrich Borwin II. von Mecklenburg’, Jahrbücher des Vereins für Mecklenburgische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 10 (1845), 1–22. 46 The Parchim region fell in 1273 to the Werle line which from that point built up a part-lordship of its own. See Fred Ruchhöft, ‘Das Territorium der Herrschaft Werle’, Mecklenburgische Jahrbücher 121 (2006), 7–33, at p. 14. 47 Auge, ‘Handlungsspielräume’, pp. 301–2. 48 Wolfgang and Anke Huschner, ‘Wer regierte in Mecklenburg? Konflikte um die Regentschaft während der Haft Heinrichs I. in Kairo (1272–1298)’, in Land – Stadt – Universität. Historische Lebensräume von Ständen, Schichten und Personen, ed. Ernst Münch, Mario Niemann and Wolfgan Eric Wagner (Hamburg 2010), pp. 19–75.

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lost 60 years earlier, in return for a considerable payment in silver. After his wife’s death in 1314, Henry secured this substantial increase in land for himself at the Battle of Gransee in 1316. In the Treaty of Templin of 24/25 November 1317 Henry’s lasting enfeoffment with Stargard and bordering districts was recognised.49 Barely three years later, he managed to establish himself in the lordship of Rostock. Rostock’s lord, Henry II’s relative Nicholas ‘the Child’ had died in late November 1313/14.50 This had offered the Danish king Erik Menved a renewed opportunity to gain a foothold on the southwest coast of the Baltic, since under the pressure of Henry II’s attack on Rostock (undertaken with the support of Brandenburg and Werle) Nikolaus had placed his territory under the Danish king’s overlordship in December 1300 in the hope of protecting it.51 After Nikolaus’ death King Erik ignored the inheritance claims of Henry II and the Werle lords and tried to assume direct lordship over Rostock. But since his struggle with Waldemar of Brandenburg for pre-eminence in the southwest Baltic region broke out at almost the same time, King Erik granted Rostock (with the exception of Warnemünde Castle)52 to Henry in return for his support.53 Henry was able to secure this important territorial gain from the weakened Danish crown after Erik died shortly afterwards in 1319. He accomplished this not least through an alliance with the Swedish duchess Ingeborg Håkonsdotter, which led in 1321 to the marriage of her daughter Euphemia and Henry’s son Albrecht II.54 Finally, in 1323, Henry succeeded in making peace with Christopher II of Denmark, gaining in the process Rostock, Gnoien and Schwaan as hereditary fiefs.55 By contrast, he was less successful in his efforts until 1325 to establish himself in Prignitz and the Uckermark after the Brandenburg Ascanians died out, or in his fight until 1328 over the inheritance of the princes of Rügen, to which the dukes of PomeraniaWolgast finally succeeded.56 This allowed them to expand their territory into a strategically and economically important region.

49 Karl Koppmann, ‘Die Erwerbung des Landes Stargard durch Fürst Heinrich II’, Jahrbücher des Vereins für Mecklenburgische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 55 (1890), 197–236, esp. p. 210. 50 Hamann, Mecklenburgische Geschichte, pp. 163–6. 51 Annales Lubicenses, ed. Johann Martin Lappenberg, MGH SS xvi.411–29, at p. 417; Erich Hoffman, ‘König Erik Menved und Mecklenburg’, in Mecklenburg und seine Nachbarn, ed. Helge bei der Wieden and Tilmann Schmidt (Rostock 1997), pp. 43–68, at p. 53. 52 Mecklenburgisches UB, vi.248–9 no. 3871; Hamann, Mecklenburgische Geschichte, p. 166. 53 See Detmar-Chronik, in Die Chroniken der niedersächsischen Städte vom 14. bis ins 16. Jh.: Lübeck, ed. Karl Koppmann (3 vols., Leipzig 1884; reprint Stuttgart 1967), i.425–6 no. 485. 54 Mecklenburgisches UB, vi.615–20 no. 4285, as well as pp. 620–1 no. 4286. 55 Mecklenburgisches UB, vii.114–16 no. 4443. 56 Auge, ‘Handlungsspielräume’, pp. 67–73.

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Cultural and political appropriations up to the promotion to the imperial principate Eastern settlement, which has already been mentioned briefly, had a lasting impact on the lordships of the Christianised lords of Mecklenburg and dukes of Pomerania from the late twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth century, respectively. Early on the Slav lords also succeeded in claiming equal status and lifestyle to their peers in old Christian Europe. Thus, the dukes of Pomerania as early as the 1170s and 1180s had documents prepared in the Praemonstratensian canonry at Grobe on the Usedom that are in their form just like other princely documents of the period.57 The Slav lords’ closeness to the Church was already a reflection of structural alignment at an early stage, finding expression in the establishment of a dynastic monastery, in Doberan for the lords of Mecklenburg58 and Grobe in the case of Pomerania.59 Along with imposing princely documents seals60 and – apparently a generation later – coats of arms were established as typical forms of representing lordship.61 Perhaps as early as the 1190s but certainly by 1214 the griffin was the heraldic beast of the Pomeranian dukes, who on that account were also called the family of the griffin (Geschlecht der Greifen). And before the bull’s head was adopted in c. 1219 the griffin also appears in c. 1200 as a Mecklenburg heraldic device and remained as a symbol for their lordship of Rostock.62 Information about courtly life becomes more plentiful in the thirteenth century, at first with evidence about the incumbents of the classic court offices. For Mecklenburg the first mention of a steward dates to 122263 and

57 Jürgen Petersohn, ‘Usedom im frühpommerschen Herzogsstaat’, in Tausend Jahre pommersche Geschichte, ed. Roderich Schmidt (Cologne 1999), pp. 27–65, esp. pp. 41, 46. 58 On this issue see also Ilka S. Minneker, Vom Kloster zur Residenz. Dynastische Memoria und Repräsentation im spätmittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Mecklenburg (Münster 2007), pp. 33–219. 59 Oliver Auge, ‘Zu den Handlungsspielräumen “kleiner” Fürsten. Ein neues Forschungsdesign am Beispiel der Herzöge von Pommern-Stolp (1372–1459)’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 40 (2013), 183–226, esp. p. 191. 60 Ralf-Gunnar Werlich, ‘Die Siegel der pommerschen Greifenherzöge’, in Die Herzöge von Pommern. Zeugnisse der Herrschaft des Greifenhauses, ed. Norbert Buske et al. (Cologne 2012), pp. 107–61, at p. 119. 61 Ralf-Gunnar Werlich, ‘“welches den Greifen führt” – Das Geschlecht der Herzöge von Pommern und seine heraldischen Herrschaftssymbole’, in Die Herzöge von Pommern, pp. 163–254, at pp. 171–2. 62 Ibid., p. 169; Norbert Buske, Wappen, Farben und Hymnen des Landes MecklenburgVorpommern. Eine Erläuterung der neuen Hoheitszeichen des Landes verbunden mit einem Gang durch die Geschichte der beiden Landesteile dargestellt an der Entwicklung der Wappenbilder (Bremen 1993), pp. 12–14. 63 Mecklenburgisches UB, i.266 no. 282. See also Robert Küster, ‘Die Verwaltungsorganisation von Mecklenburg im 13. und 14. Jh.’, Jahrbücher des Vereins für Mecklenburgische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 74 (1909), 115–50, at p. 116.

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a marshal to 1224,64 with chamberlains65 and a cupbearer following shortly thereafter.66 Such evidence appears significantly earlier for Pomerania, at least concerning chamberlain and cupbearer.67 Thus, in the matter of courtly organisation as well the Pomeranian dukes rapidly adopted the structures of old Christian Europe. Chronicle reports from the fourteenth century add more colour. For example, they tell of a ‘great court’ that Henry II of Mecklenburg held in 1310 for the marriage of his daughter Mechthild with the Welf duke Otto of Lüneburg, after the Wismar town council had not allowed the company in their town.68 Fursten, greuen, frowen schon/rittere, knechte, edele baron (princes, greybeards, lovely ladies, knights, servants and noble barons) are all said to have been present. The wedding of Albrecht II of Mecklenburg and Euphemia of Sweden in 1336 was also celebrated magnificently in Rostock, during the course of which Duke Erich of SaxonyLauenburg (before 1285–1360) knighted the bridegroom.69 Through their marriages the lords of Mecklenburg and dukes of Pomerania also gradually became part of the princely world of the Reich. One should remember that the social connotations of marriage might over time be quite fluid, but it was still necessary to be accepted as an equal marriage partner.70 It is clear that up to the time of Henry II the Mecklenburger either married higher-ranked partners from outside the Reich, usually from the neighbouring Slav duchies of Pomerania and Silesia or – a majority of the time – married equals in rank; that is from below the level of the imperial princes. This situation changed strikingly with Henry II, whose first marriage was top-flight, to a daughter of the margrave of Brandenburg, and whose second marriage to a princess from the electoral house of Saxony-Wittenberg was no less honourable. On the whole, however, the Mecklenburg marriages until the end of the Middle Ages were usually to their social equals.71 The

64 Mecklenburgisches UB, i.288 no. 301; Küster, ‘Verwaltungsorganisation’, p. 119. 65 Mecklenburgisches UB, i.465 no. 467; p. 512 no. 528; p. 522 no. 543; Küster, ‘Verwaltungsorganisation’, p. 125. 66 Mecklenburgisches UB, vi.453 no. 4090; vii.283 no. 4634.2; vii.313 no. 4675; Küster, ‘Verwaltungsorganisation’, p. 129. 67 Chamberlain and cupbearer: Pommersches UB, i.(1).41 no. 66. Steward: ibid., no. 170, p. 128; marshal: ibid., no. 362, pp. 282–3. 68 Mecklenburgische Reimchronik, c. 145, pp. 343–5. 69 Detmar-Chronik, p. 476 no. 585; Oliver Auge, ‘Albrecht II. 1318–1379’, in Biographisches Lexikon für Mecklenburg, vi, ed. Andreas Röpcke (Rostock 2011), pp. 26–33, esp. p. 26. 70 Oliver Auge, ‘Dynastiegeschichte als Perspektive vergleichender Regionalgeschichte. Das Beispiel der Herzöge und Grafen von Schleswig und Holstein (Anfang 13. bis Ende 17. Jh.)’, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Schleswig-Holsteinische Geschichte 135 (2010), 23–46, esp. pp. 32–3. 71 Auge, ‘Handlungsspielräume’, pp. 236–7; Peter Moraw, ‘Das Heiratsverhalten im hessischen Landgrafenhaus ca. 1300 bis ca. 1500 – auch vergleichend betrachtet’, in Hundert Jahre Historische Kommission für Hessen. Festgabe dargebracht von Autorinnen und

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same is true of the dukes of Pomerania after Barnim I, whose first marriage was with Marianna of Sweden, the second with Margareta of Werle and the third, promisingly, with Mechthild of Brandenburg. But until the time of Barnim III (at the earliest 1297–1368) their marriages remained on the whole much more limited to the southwest Baltic region (including Brandenburg) than did those of the Mecklenburg lords.72 Indeed before Barnim I the Pomerellian-Polish marriage market had still completely dominated the marriages of Pomeranian dukes. Along with marriage connections there were the politics of alliance, which allowed the lords of Mecklenburg and dukes of Pomerania to gain an ever-stronger share in the power play in the northeast of the Reich. This can first be seen in the Rostock peace agreement of 1283, in which the dukes of Pomerania and lords of Mecklenburg participated alongside a series of important Hanseatic towns, local counts and other princes.73 The Mecklenburg and Pomeranian territory was thus caught up in the Reich’s efforts to secure regional peace. The bilateral and multilateral treaty efforts up to 1350 mostly remained focussed on the region itself, and in the course of time tied it together ever more firmly both politically and dynastically.74 Compared to the enormous density of relationships within this territory, treaties that stretched outward were markedly less in both quantity and quality. The treaty partners almost all came from the south(west) Baltic region and its direct neighbours. In the period of Danish predominance at the beginning of the fourteenth century the number of agreements with Denmark naturally increased as well. The clear majority of alliances and treaties, however, were among the princes and lords of the southwestern Baltic lands themselves, as well as with the margraves of Brandenburg. These were followed by pacts with the dukes of Saxony-Lauenburg, SaxonyWittenberg and Brunswick-Lüneburg as well as the counts of Holstein, in which the Mecklenburg lords were engaged more frequently and over a longer period than the dukes of Pomerania. The increasing political network with the imperial princes nearby is also unmistakable. The density of alliances corresponds to that of dynastic unions.75 At the beginning of the fourteenth century Mecklenburg’s sphere of action expanded, and after some delay Pomerania-Stettin under Duke Barnim III followed. Toward the end of the century this development levelled out again for about 100 years, until the region was powerfully affected

72 73 74 75

Autoren der Historischen Kommission, ed. Walter Heinemeyer (Part 1, Marburg 1997), pp. 115–40, esp. p. 137. Auge, ‘Handlungsspielräume’, p. 241; Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, p. 110 note 42. Pommersches UB, ii.498–501 no. 1266; Wolf-Dieter Mohrmann, Der Landfriede im Ostseeraum während des späten Mittelalters (Kallmünz, Opf. 1972), pp. 50–84. See the tables in Auge, ‘Handlungsspielräume’, pp. 444–62. Ibid., pp. 43–60.

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by the supra-regional events of the so-called ‘intensification of empire’ (Reichsverdichtung) starting in c. 1470.76 The first expansion in this sphere of action is connected, yet again, with Henry II. His marriage to a member of the Brandenburg dynasty had opened up another dimension in his own dynastic policies. His participation in a military expedition that the Brandenburg margrave led against King Albrecht I of Bohemia in 1304 earned him the nickname ‘the Lion’.77 In 1319 he fought alongside Count Gerhard III of Holstein on the North Sea coast against the peasants of Dithmarschen.78 His death in 1329 was a setback for a time since he left behind, along with several daughters, only two under-aged sons, Albrecht and John (1326–1392/3). Until Easter 1336 a ruling council reigned for them.79 Around this period the lords of Mecklenburg and dukes of Pomerania were caught up in the conflicts between Wittelsbach and Luxemburg for the German crown. This situation was the more serious since the continuance of the neighbouring margraviate was at issue in the conflict. Since the extinction of the Ascanian family (1319/20), their march was without a lord. In 1323 Ludwig the Bavarian secured the margraviate for his own house by naming his son as margrave. Until that time he had been favourably disposed toward the idea of the dukes of Pomerania being vassals-in-chief of the German King.80 Now, however, he made an about-face, especially since Wartislav IV of Pomerania-Wolgast had neglected to receive his duchy as a fief from the king’s hand by Easter 1322, and thus to make it directly dependent on the empire. After King Ludwig granted the mark of Brandenburg cum ducatibus Stetinensi et Demensi to his son in 1323/24,81 he returned to the old Ascanian policy and commanded the Wolgast duke to accept his land from his son as a fief.82 The Pomeranian reaction was inevitable, and in 1331 the duke transferred his fealty to the king’s deadly foe Pope John XXII.83 Ludwig the

76 77 78 79

80 81

82

83

Ibid., pp. 347–58. Hamann, Mecklenburgische Geschichte, p. 169. Detmar-Chronik, pp. 437–8 no. 506. Wolfgang Huschner, ‘Die Vormundschaftsregierung für Albrecht II. und Johann von Mecklenburg (1329–1336). Ein Beitrag zur 1000-Jahrfeier Mecklenburgs’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 43 (1995), 1061–83. Pommersches UB, v.(2).557 no. 3431; Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, pp. 110–11. MGH Constitutiones v.776, no. 938; Martin Wehrmann, ‘Der Streit der Pommernherzoge mit den Wittelsbachern um die Lehnsabhängigkeit ihres Landes 1319–1338’, Baltische Studien, Neue Folge 4 (1900), 17–64; Klaus Conrad, ‘Die Belehnung der Herzöge von Pommern durch Karl IV. im Jahre 1348’, in Kaiser Karl IV. 1316–1378. Forschungen über Kaiser und Reich, ed. Hans Patzle = BLDG 114 (1978), 391–406, at p. 399 believes it was 1338; Auge, ‘Handlungsspielräume’, pp. 267–9. Pommersches UB, vii.174 no. 4361; Fritz Zickermann, ‘Das Lehnsverhältnis zwischen Brandenburg und Pommern im dreizehnten und vierzehnten Jh.’, Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preußischen Geschichte 4 (1891), 1–120, esp. pp. 98–100. Pommersches UB, viii.16–18 no. 4854. Otto I and Barnim III acted as tutores of the minor sons of Wartislav IV; Auge, ‘Handlungsspielräume’, pp. 31–2.

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Bavarian then began to modify his position, a situation which Barnim III of Pomerania-Stettin, along with his father Otto I, quickly used to his own advantage.84 At the Frankfurt assembly of 1338 they achieved for their part-duchy that the emperor should directly enfeoff them with their lands, after Margrave Ludwig the Elder of Brandenburg had renounced his overlordship of Pomerania-Stettin. (In return for this, he had received a promise of the right of escheat (Anfallrecht) for the Stettin part-duchy.85 In the privilege that he granted, Ludwig conspicuously emphasised that Otto and Barnim’s lands had already previously belonged to the Reich, and on account of this they should as imperial princes now be subject to the empire alone. This was not therefore a formal elevation to the rank of imperial prince; rather their position as imperial princes was presented as already existing. By contrast, the three sons of Wartislav IV of Pomerania-Wolgast, who were at the same time released from the guardianship of Otto I and Barnim III, were specifically invited to seek their enfeoffment from the Brandenburg margraves.86 Probably because of the nearness of Wittelsbach-held Brandenburg, Barnim III then went over to the camp of the Luxemburger Charles IV relatively late, joining him in Prague. In return Charles was prepared to enfeoff the dukes of Pomerania-Stettin and Pomerania-Wolgast with both Pomerania and the principality of Rügen, without considering the claims of lordship from either Brandenburg or Denmark. (Denmark also had a claim over Rügen, which had been Pomeranian since 1326/29).87 He also guaranteed the eventual succession of each line if the other line died out.88 With this act, for the first time all the Pomeranian dukes were recognised as full-fledged imperial princes. Albrecht II of Mecklenburg had established contact with Ludwig the Bavarian in 1341/42 when he travelled to his court to initiate a marriage project between the Wittelsbach and the Swedish royal house.89 But Albrecht had also sought out a relationship with Charles IV at an early stage, with his brother John playing an important role as mediator.90 After Ludwig’s death

84 Pommersches UB, viii.58–9 no. 4903. 85 Pommersches UB, x.291–308 nos. 5650–60; Benl, ‘Pommern bis zur Teilung’, p. 109; Schlinker’ ‘Fürstenamt’, pp. 200–1; Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, p. 111; Conrad, ‘Belehnung’, pp. 393–4. 86 Pommersches UB, x.309–10 no. 5662. 87 Joachim Krüger, ‘Die dänischen Könige als Lehnsherren der Herzöge von PommernWolgast 1325–1438 anhand der urkunlichen Überlieferung’, Baltische Studien NF 95 (2009), 9–34. 88 Landesarchiv Greifswald Rep. 2 Ducalia, no. 93–96; MGH Constitutiones viii.606–10 no. 600; pp. 616–17 no. 606; pp. 617–19 nos. 607A and B; pp. 620–1 nos. 608A and B; Schlinker, ‘Fürstenamt’, pp. 201–2; Conrad, ‘Belehnung’, pp. 391–3; Petersohn, ‘Pommerns Verhältnis’, pp. 111–12. 89 Hamann, Mecklenburgische Geschichte, pp. 173–4. 90 In 1346 John was present in Rhens when Charles was elected as anti-king. On 25 August of the same year he fought at Charles’ side in the Battle of Crécy, for which he was knighted.

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Albrecht openly went over to Charles’s side, especially because the desired freeing of Stargard from Brandenburg overlordship was not to be expected from the Wittelsbachs. Charles enfeoffed them with the Stargard district and all the remaining margravial fiefs in 1347, only five days after Ludwig’s death, thus revoking Brandenburg overlordship.91 In 1348 he elevated them to the rank of dukes.92 It is expressly stated in the pertinent document that Albrecht and John had now been elevated in veros principes et duces Magnopolenses.93 Their maternal uncle Rudolf I of Saxony-Wittenberg had served as mediator in 1347 and 1348; he had his own reasons for improving relations between Charles IV and the Mecklenburger.94 Rudolf formally renounced Saxony’s claims to overlordship in Mecklenburg,95 and Duke Erich I of Saxony-Lauenburg soon followed suit.96 The desire to shake off the still-remaining Danish overlordship over Rostock, Schwaan and Gnoien shines through in the elevation charter, inasmuch as this lordship is not mentioned in a single syllable.97 In the year after that the so-called false Waldemar of Brandenburg granted the new dukes the district of Fürstenberg, with which they then at once enfeoffed Count Otto of Fürstenberg.98 This is the first time it is possible to establish the dukes’ position of ‘feudal’ overlordship over a count, which underscored their status as imperial princes.99 The conflict between Charles IV and the Wittelsbachs, on whose side the Danish king Waldemar IV Atterdag now entered the war, culminated in

91 92

93 94 95 96 97

98 99

A year later he was in Prague for Charles’ coronation as king of Bohemia. See Schlinker, ‘Fürstenamt’, p. 141; Wolfgang Huschner, ‘Albrecht II. Fürst von Mecklenburg (1329– 1379)’, in Deutsche Fürsten, pp. 326–45, esp. pp. 333–4. Mecklenburgisches UB, x.145–6 nos. 6794A and B; Schlinker, ‘Fürstenamt’, p. 146. Mecklenburgisches UB, x.194–200 nos. 6860A and B. On this issue, see Schlinker, ‘Fürstenamt’, pp. 140–2; Ernst Münch, ‘Mecklenburg auf dem Gipfel – Voraussetzungen und Folgen der Herzogswürde 1348’, Mecklenburgische Jahrbücher 114 (1999), 49–62; Wolf-Dieter Mohrmann, ‘Karl IV. und Herzog Albrecht II. von Mecklenburg’, in Kaiser Karl IV., pp. 353–89. Schlinker, ‘Fürstenamt’, p. 145, also for what follows. He was ‘Spiritus rector [of an] encirclement policy against Brandenburg’: Schmidt, ‘Die Erhebung’, p. 64. Schlinker, ‘Fürstenamt’, p. 145. Ibid., p. 146 following Mecklenburgisches UB, vii. 297–9 no. 4653, at p. 299. Schlinker, ‘Fürstenamt’, p. 149. There was, in fact, contemporary criticism from the Danish side, but at that time King Waldemar IV was not strong enough to be able to prevent the injury to his overlordship. Schmidt, ‘Die Erhebung’, pp. 72–3 following Erich Hoffmann, ‘König Waldemar IV. als Politiker und Feldherr’, in Akteure und Gegner der Hanse – Zur Prosopographie der Hansezeit, ed. Detlef Kattinger and Horst Wernicke (Weimar 1998), pp. 271–87. Mecklenburgisches UB, x: no. 6915, pp. 241–2; Johannes Schultze, Die Mark Brandenburg (2nd ed., 5 vols., Berlin 1989), ii.75–7. For this point also see Schlinker, ‘Fürstenamt’, p. 147.

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the Mecklenburgers’ victory at Oderberg in late August 1349.100 This victory smoothed the way for the Treaty of Friedland on 23 June 1350, in which the Wittelsbachs finally renounced all claims of overlordship to Stargard.101 Thus, the lords of Mecklenburg, too, became full-fledged and universally recognised imperial princes, which they remained until the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.

100 Schultze, Die Mark Brandenburg, ii. 96 following the Detmar-Chronik, pp. 518–19 no. 677. 101 Mecklenburgisches UB, x.397–9 no. 7086 (and ibid., 399–400 no. 7087); Huschner, ‘Albrecht II.’, p. 335.

Section E

The consolidation, expansion and disruption of power

17 The Zähringer in Swabia and Burgundy Thomas Zotz

Introduction In the high medieval kingdom of Germany the duchy of the Zähringer (1098–1218) is an early example of a principality that, in contrast to the duchies that had existed since the early tenth century, was not based upon one of the empire’s great and constitutive provinces (regna) of Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony, Lotharingia and Carinthia, but rather on a newly formed territory (terra ducis) in western Swabia.1 Since the Zähringer from 1127 on also held imperial office as rectors of Burgundy,2 their principality had a two-tiered structure, which is mirrored in the title first attested around the year 1200: dux de Zaringen et rector Burgundiae.3 The Zähringer dynasty, named after the castle of Zähringen near Freiburg im Breisgau, developed at the end of the eleventh century as an offshoot of the Swabian-based Berthold-family. Another branch of the same family founded the dynasty of the margraves of Baden, which, in contrast to the Zähringer who died out in the male line in 1218, is still a flourishing noble house today.4 Memory of the Zähringer was revived in c. 1500 thanks to Habsburg genealogical research in the circle of Emperor Maximilian I,5 and in the eighteenth century the common ancestry of the dukes of Zähringen and margraves of Baden of the Zähringer family attracted the interest of early modern historiography oriented toward the house of Baden.6 Then Eduard

1 GFred I.28, p. 182 [trans. Mierow, p. 60]. The textual evidence on the Zähringer has been thoroughly examined in Ulrich Parlow, Die Zähringer. Quellendokumentation zu einem südwestdeutschen Herzogsgeschlecht des hohen Mittelalters (Stuttgart 1999). 2 Hartmut Heinemann, ‘Die Zähringer und Burgund’, in Die Zähringer. Eine Tradition und ihre Erforschung, ed. Karl Schmid (Sigmaringen 1986), pp. 59–74. 3 See Thomas Zotz, ‘Dux de Zaringen – dux Zaringiae. Zum zeitgenössischen Verständnis eines neuen Herzogtums im 12. Jahrhundert’, ZGOR 139 (1991), 1–44, esp. p. 30. 4 Hansmartin Schwarzmaier, Baden. Dynastie – Land – Staat (Stuttgart 2005). [See genealogical chart XVII]. 5 Dieter Mertens, ‘Die Habsburger als Nachfahren und als Vorfahren der Zähringer’, in Die Zähringer, ed. Schmid, pp. 151–74. 6 Johann Daniel Schöpflin, Historia Zaringo-Badensis (7 vols., Karlsruhe 1763–66).

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Heyck wrote the first scholarly monograph about the Zähringer at the end of the nineteenth century.7 Theodor Mayer stressed the novelty of the Zähringer principality in the 1930s in a slim but influential monograph about the state of the dukes of Zähringen, which he argued was the first example of the transition from the earlier state based on personal ties to an institutional territorial state, structured through monastic advocacies and town formations.8 Although this opposition of two state models appears exaggerated, Theodor Mayer deserves the credit for giving research on the Zähringer a new stimulus, which his student Heinrich Büttner then took up and implemented in several important studies.9 The Freiburg medieval historian Karl Schmid provided a decisive boost to research in the 1980s with the Freiburg Zähringer exhibition that he and Hans Schadek organised, as well as in the works that were produced in its milieu.10 In the following years the Zähringer theme belonged and still belongs among the central research projects of regional history at the University of Freiburg.11 Freiburg is an especially appropriate setting, since the Zähringer-founded city lay at the core of their lordship and, with the castle it contained, was the central place of residence above all for the last Zähringer, Berthold V, who found his final rest in its minster.12

The genesis of the duchy of Zähringen in the territory of the duchy of Swabia The Bertholde, forebears of the Zähringer dynasty that was active from 1100, had numbered since the late tenth century among the important noble families of Swabia. Berthold, a count in Thurgau, enjoyed the special

7 Eduard Karl Heinrich Heyck, Geschichte der Herzoge von Zähringen (Freiburg i. Br. 1891). 8 English version: Theodor Mayer, ‘The state of the Dukes of Zähringen’, in Medieval Germany, ed. G. Barraclough (2 vols., Oxford 1938), ii.175–202. 9 His articles are collected in Schwaben und Schweiz im frühen und hohen Mittelalter. Gesammelte Aufsätze von Heinrich Büttner, ed. Hans Patze (Sigmaringen 1972). 10 Die Zähringer, ed. Schmid; Die Zähringer. Anstoß und Wirkung, ed. Hans Schadek and Karl Schmid (Sigmaringen 1986); Die Zähringer. Schweizer Vorträge und neue Forschungen, ed. Karl Schmid (Sigmaringen 1990); Parlow, Zähringer. 11 See Heinz Krieg, ‘Die Zähringer in der Darstellung Ottos von St. Blasien’, in In frumento et vino opima. Festschrift für Thomas Zotz zu seinem 60. Geburtstag, ed. Heinz Krieg and Alfons Zettler (Ostfildern 2004), pp. 39–58; idem, ‘Adel in Schwaben: Die Staufer und die Zähringer’, in Grafen, Herzöge, Könige. Der Aufstieg der frühen Staufer und das Reich (1079–1152), ed. Hubertus Seibert and Jürgen Dendorfer (Ostfildern 2005), pp. 65–97; Zotz, ‘Dux de Zaringen’; idem, ‘Konflikt – Kompensation – Kooperation. Zähringer und Staufer in Region und Reich’, ZGOR 160 (2012), 105–29. 12 Dieter Geuenich, ‘Bertold V., der “letzte Zähringer”’, in Die Zähringer, ed. Schmid, pp. 101–16.

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trust of Emperor Otto III, who granted him market rights for Villingen in 999.13 Further comital rights in Breisgau and Ortenau and the nearness of the family to Emperor Henry II and the first two Salians Conrad II and Henry III all attest to the power and high standing of the Bertholde in Swabia.14 Thus, around the middle of the eleventh century they could lay claim to the position of duke of Swabia. At first this claim did not succeed and Berthold (I) (d. 1078), son of the like-named count whom Otto III had favoured, had to content himself with the duchy of Carinthia. But in the period of the Investiture Contest and political turmoil in the Empire, his son, again named Berthold (II), achieved the rank of duke of Swabia in 1092 as representative of the anti-Salian party, through his marriage with Agnes, daughter of the (anti-) king Rudolf,15 in opposition to Count Frederick of the Staufen family, whom King Henry IV had elevated to be duke of Swabia in 1079.16 The political schism in Swabia, which developed alongside schisms at the levels of kingdom, papacy and numerous bishoprics, was ended in 1098 by a settlement between Staufer and Zähringer settlement mediated by Henry IV.17 Berthold II (d. 1111) renounced the duchy of Swabia in favour of Frederick, and in return received Zürich, ‘the most noble town in Swabia’ (nobilissimum Suevie oppidum) as a fief from Henry IV.18 Moreover, he and his successors succeeded in wresting from the authority of the dukes of Swabia the western part of the province of Swabia, that is, the Breisgau and Ortenau along the upper Rhine, the Black Forest and the Baar on its eastern border. In this terra ducis he established an independent lordship as dux de Zaringen. This can be seen in the fact that the nobles of this region in the course of the twelfth century cease to be attested at the duke of Saxony’s assemblies, but rather appear in the following of the duke of Zähringen.19

13 MGH Dipl. Otto III, pp. 737–8 no. 311. 14 Alfons Zettler, ‘Graf Berthold, sein kaiserliches Marktprivileg für Villingen und der Aufstieg der Zähringer in Schwaben’, in Menschen – Mächte – Märkte. Schwaben vor 1000 Jahren und das Villinger Marktrecht, ed. Casimir Bumiller (Villingen-Schwenningen 1999), pp. 117–39. 15 Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 96; Tobias Weller, Die Heiratspolitik des deutschen Hochadels im 12. Jahrhundert (Cologne 2004), pp. 398–437. 16 See Thomas Zotz, ‘Ottonen-, Salier- und frühe Stauferzeit (911–1167)’, in Handbuch der baden-württembergischen Geschichte, i.1, ed. Meinrad Schaab and Hansmartin Schwarzmaier (Stuttgart 2001), pp. 381–528, for this issue pp. 420–38; Alfons Zettler, Geschichte des Herzogtums Schwaben (Stuttgart 2003), pp. 172–83; Krieg, ‘Adel in Schwaben’. 17 Karl Schmid, ‘Zürich und der staufisch-zähringische Ausgleich 1098’, in Die Zähringer, ed. Schmid, pp. 49–79. 18 GFred I.8, pp. 144–8 [trans. Mierow, p. 42]. 19 See Helmut Maurer, Der Herzog von Schwaben. Grundlagen, Wirkungen und Wesen seiner Herrschaft in ottonischer, salischer und staufischer Zeit (Sigmaringen 1978), pp. 223–44.

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It is no wonder therefore that throughout the twelfth century relations between the Zähringer and Staufer were consistently tense, and at times confrontational, since the Staufen dukes of Swabia had lost a great deal of territory to the Zähringer. The Staufen chronicler Otto of Freising wrote polemically around the middle of the twelfth century that the Zähringer had only an empty ducal title (vacuum nomen ducis) and no duchy at all, unless one regarded the countship between Jura and the Great St. Bernard that Lothar III had granted to the Zähringer as a duchy.20 That is how Otto of Freising decided to belittle what according to their titulature was the important rectorate of Burgundy! But matters were not limited only to polemical discourse. The young Frederick Barbarossa, set to succeed his father in the duchy of Swabia, in 1146 declared a feud against Duke Conrad of Zähringen (1122–1152) and successfully raided his territory almost as far as the western border of Swabia. It was a demonstration by the Swabian duke that he was actually entitled to rule over the whole region.21 In the 1160s Emperor Frederick Barbarossa acted against the Zähringer several times. He encouraged Henry the Lion’s divorce from Clementia of Zähringen, because the Welf-Zähringer alliance appeared dangerous to him. He thwarted the enthronement of Rudolf of Zähringen as archbishop of Mainz. Indeed, the latter’s brother, Duke Berthold IV, wrote at the time in a letter to the French king Louis VII about the emperor’s ‘hatred towards our kin’ (odium nostri generis).22 Thus, the genesis of the Zähringen duchy caused lasting disharmony between the Staufen and the Zähringer.

The development of Zähringer lordship in the German southwest The Zähringer employed a number of means to impose their princely lordship over their land. At the level of personal relationships, they grouped numerous nobles around themselves, including comital families like the counts of Nimburg (north of Freiburg) who first appear at the end of the eleventh century with the title ‘count’, perhaps at Zähringer initiative,23 the

20 GFred I.9, p. 148 [trans. Mierow, p. 43]; Zotz, ‘Konflikt – Kooperation – Konfrontation’. 21 Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 302; Knut Görich, ‘Fürstenstreit und Friedensstiftung vor dem Aufbruch Konrads III. zum Kreuzzug’, ZGOR 158 (2010), 117–36. 22 Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 434–5. Rudolf subsequently became bishop of Liège in 1167. 23 Ulrich Parlow, ‘Die Grafen von Nimburg’, in Teningen. Nimburg, Bottingen, Teningen, Köndringen, Landeck, Heimbach. Ein Heimatbuch, ed. Peter Schmidt (Teningen 1990), pp. 45–74, 88–96; Thomas Zotz, ‘Gespiegelter Rang in der Herrschaft von der Höhe? Die Burgen Zähringen und Nimburg im nördlichen Breisgau um 1100’, in Historia Archaeologica. Festschrift für Heiko Steuer zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Sebastian Brather, Dieter Geuenich and Christoph Huth (Berlin 2009), pp. 547–72.

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counts of Sulz am Neckar24 or the counts of Urach (east of Reutlingen).25 Many minor nobles of the region formed the duke’s circle, but above all ministeriales played an important role as both as court officials and as castellans. In the documents of the Zähringer family monastery of St. Peter’s in the Black Forest, they appear as ‘the household of the duke’ (domus ducis).26 However, if one compares and contrasts the situation around the year 1100 when the lordship of the Zähringer first emerged to that just a century later at the beginning of the thirteenth century, it is striking that some nobles from the dukes’ milieu such as the counts of Nimburg or the lords of Schwarzenberg oriented themselves differently over time, later seeking connections to the Staufen rulers. In particular, the Cluniac priory of St. Ulrich an der Möhlin (south of Freiburg), which was under the advocacy of the counts of Nimburg, appears to have become an institutional point of reference for noble groups in the Breisgau who sought to break free from Zähringer dominance in the mid-twelfth century.27 At the institutional level, three elements were essential for the development of Zähringer lordship: castles, monasteries and towns. All three came together prominently with the castle of Zähringen, the monastery of St. Peter and the town of Freiburg, which Berthold II, who was already active in this area in 1079, built up as a power centre in northern Breisgau after he gained the Rheinfelder inheritance in 1090 through his wife Agnes.28 The eponymous castle of Zähringen, apparently constructed in the late eleventh century on a mountain plateau that had been terraced for settlement in Late Antiquity and repeatedly occupied since then,29 retained its importance as ‘original seat,’ even though other Zähringer castles were constructed much more lavishly and showily; their structure with massive keeps appears

24 Volker Schäfer, ‘Hochadel aus Sulz am Neckar. Zur Geschichte der Grafen von Sulz’, in Sulz. Alte Stadt am jungen Neckar. Festschrift zur 700-Jahrfeier der Stadtrechtsverleihung, ed. Winfried Hecht, Paul T. Müller and Peter Vosseler (Sulz am Neckar 1984), pp. 53–92, esp. pp. 59–60. 25 Eva-Maria Butz, Adlige Herrschaft im Spannungsfeld von Reich und Region. Die Grafen von Freiburg im 13. Jahrhundert (Freiburg i. Br. 2002), pp. 23–4. 26 Petra Skoda, ‘Nobiles viri atque liberi – de domo ducis. Zum sozialgeschichtlichen Wandel im Breisgau der frühen Zähringerzeit’, in Herrschaft und Legitimation. Hochmittelalterlicher Adel in Südwestdeutschland, ed. Sönke Lorenz and Stephan Molitor (Leinfelden-Echterdingen 2002), pp. 49–73. See also ‘Karte der Zähringerministerialen’, in Die Zähringer, ed. Schadek and Schmid, p. 55. 27 Heinz Krieg and Thomas Zotz, ‘Der Adel im Breisgau und die Zähringer. Gruppenbildung und Handlungsspielräume’, ZGOR 150 (2002), 73–90. 28 Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 120. 29 Ansel-Mareika Andrae-Rau, ‘Gundelfingen (FR). Burg Zähringen’, in Die Burgen im mittelalterlichen Breisgau, vol. 1: Nördlicher Teil, half volume A – K, ed. Alfons Zettler and Thomas Zotz (Ostfildern 2003), pp. 160–74.

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oriented toward western European castle architecture.30 In the Breisgau, the Zähringers’ core region, these castles included those of Freiburg, Badenweiler and Breisach. With comparable monuments in Burgundy, their other area of concentration, the region of Zähringer lordship was given a thick blanket of castles in a specific architectural style. Duke Berthold II founded the monastery of St. Peter’s in the Black Forest in 1093, during the period when he held office as duke of Swabia. To do this, he transferred the monastic community of Weilheim in the Neckargau, an old Bertholdian centre of gravity, to the new centre of lordship in the southern part of the upper Rhine.31 St. Peter’s in the Black Forest became the Zähringer family monastery.32 It was here that all the dukes but the last were buried, as well as those of other members of the family – Duke Berthold V’s tomb is (as noted above) in the minster at Freiburg. The monastery was the recipient of numerous gifts from Zähringer vassals, who also founded their own churches in its immediate vicinity and found their final rest in the monastery. Members of Zähringer ministerial families also became monks there. In short, St. Peter’s was to a pronounced degree the religious centre and magnet of the Zähringer principality. In legal-institutional terms the dukes of Zähringen were bound to St. Peter’s through their exercise of advocacy. They also exercised this protective function (which was also a means of imposing secular influence on religious foundations) over a series of other monasteries in the region of their lordship.33 As advocates for the bishopric of Bamberg (founded by King Henry II in 1007) for its possessions in Swabia, the Zähringer were responsible for the monasteries of Stein am Rhein, Gengenbach and Schuttern in the Ortenau. Besides these old monasteries along the high and upper Rhine, the Zähringer also exercised the advocacy over two important reform monasteries in the Black Forest, St. George’s and St. Blasien. As these monasteries pushed forward the development of the thinly-settled Black Forest, the radius of their advocacy also expanded. One can see how important such a position was to the Zähringer in the conflict from 1124 to 1141 between Duke Conrad of Zähringen and the diocese of Basel over the advocacy of St. Blasien, in which the Zähringer finally triumphed.34

30 Alfons Zettler, ‘Zähringerburgen – Versuch einer landesgeschichtlichen und burgenkundlichen Beschreibung der wichtigsten Monumente in Deutschland und in der Schweiz’, in Die Zähringer, ed. Schadek and Schmid, pp. 95–176, esp. pp. 148–65. 31 Das Kloster St. Peter auf dem Schwarzwald. Studien zu seiner Geschichte von der Gründung im 11. Jahrhundert bis zur frühen Neuzeit, ed. Hans-Otto Mühleisen, Hugo Ott and Thomas Zotz (Waldkirch 2001). 32 On the concept and issue of dynastic monasteries, see now Jürgen Dendorfer, ‘Gescheiterte Memoria? Anmerkungen zu den “Hausklöstern” des hochmittelalterlichen Adels’, Zeitschrift für württembergische Landesgeschichte 73 (2014), 17–38. 33 Overview in Die Zähringer, ed. Schadek and Schmid, pp. 149–61. 34 Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 240, 289.

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The Zähringer also sought to exercise their influence over the great imperial monastery of St. Gall in the Thurgau, the original region of the Bertholdian counts, although with only temporary success.35 The town of Freiburg, the third key element of the Zähringer lordship in the northern Breisgau, is widely regarded by scholars as an example of the principality’s trademark: the Zähringer towns.36 Indeed, the Zähringer founded towns at numerous locations and sought to link them to one another through a common law, the ‘Freiburg Town Law’.37 Thus, one looks first to Freiburg, where according to later tradition Berthold II called a civitas into life in the year 1091. This is probably to be understood as a burgus (artisans’ settlement) at the foot of Freiburg castle. In 1120 Conrad of Zähringen, who had not yet succeeded his brother Berthold III (1111–1122), as duke, established a market here, working with merchants in the form of a sworn association (coniuratio). Before the end of the Zähringer era this burgus had developed into a flourishing town.38 This success can probably be explained by the special conditions of the foundation, which promised all inhabitants of the market settlement freedoms and rights, including free possession and inheritance, as well as the free election of advocate and parish priest, which for this period appear extremely progressive.39 If one looks at the area of Swabia which the Zähringer dominated, the ducal ‘town policy’ runs as a red thread through its history. This had indeed already begun in the pre-Zähringer period with Emperor Otto III’s market privilege for Villingen, the development of which into a town probably continued in the early twelfth century.40 Since 1098 Zürich, ‘the most noble town of Swabia’ [above, p. 285], was an important base for the Zähringer, who at first held the imperial advocacy and from the 1170s onwards also

35 Ibid., Reg. 207, 239, 574. 36 Jürgen Treffeisen, ‘Zähringerstädte’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters ix.467–8; Thomas Zotz, ‘Von Zürich 1098 bis Breisach 1198. Zum Stellenwert der Städte für die Herrschaft der Zähringer im Südwesten des Regnum Teutonicum und in Burgund’, in Stadtgründung und Stadtplanung – Freiburg/Fribourg während des Mittelalters, ed. Hans-Joachim Schmidt (Vienna 2010), pp. 35–48. 37 Marita Blattmann, Die Freiburger Stadtrechte zur Zeit der Zähringer. Rekonstruktion der verlorenen Urkunden und Aufzeichnungen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (2 vols., Freiburg i. Br. 1991). 38 Freiburg 1091–1120. Neue Forschungen zu den Anfängen der Stadt, ed. Hans Schadek and Thomas Zotz (Sigmaringen 1995). 39 Mathias Kälble, Zwischen Herrschaft und bürgerlicher Freiheit. Stadtgemeinde und städtische Führungsgruppen in Freiburg im Breisgau im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert (Freiburg i. Br. 2001), pp. 34–52. 40 Mathias Kälble, ‘Villingen, die Zähringer und die Zähringerstädte. Zu den herrschaftsgeschichtlichen Rahmenbedingungen der Stadtentstehung im 12. Jahrhundert’, in Villingen 999–1218. Aspekte seiner Stadtwerdung und Geschichte bis zum Ende der Zähringerzeit im überregionalen Vergleich, ed. Heinrich Maulhardt and Thomas Zotz (Waldkirch 2003), pp. 143–66.

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advocacy over the religious foundations of Grossmünster and Fraumünster. It is not without pride that Duke Berthold V styled himself, in a charter of 1210 for Fraumünster, as through the grant of God, emperor and king judge and advocate, the so-called Kastvogt, that is, holder of imperial judicial authority for all Zürich.41 In the southern Breisgau Duke Berthold IV (1152–1186) founded the town of Neuenburg am Rhein between 1170 and 1180, where a castle is also documented,42 and in the Ortenau Offenburg appears to have become a town in the course of the twelfth century through Zähringer initiative.43 The town of Breisach had special, in part symbolic significance for Berthold V (1186–1218) as the eponymous suburb of the Zähringer-dominated Breisgau. The last Zähringer duke, who controlled the place from 1198, erected a great keep here, and he marked his claim to lordship in this historic place by identifying with the Roman past.44 Berhold V had an inscription carved in his castle at Breisach recording him as the builder, and also reporting that Burgundy was laid waste for disloyalty. This is apparently a reference to Berthold V’s campaign against Count Thomas I of Savoy in c. 1210.45 Thus, the inscription in Breisach castle refers to the other core region of the Zähringer principality besides the Breisgau – Burgundy.

The Zähringer in Burgundy Links to the kingdom of Burgundy are characteristic of the entire history of the Zähringer and their principality. Already the marriage of Berthold II and Agnes – the daughter of King Rudolf from the Burgundian-landholding house of Rheinfelden – provided a network of relationships and their concomitant inheritance claims. After King Rudolf’s son Duke Berthold of Swabia died in 1090,46 the Zähringer received a substantial increase of possessions in Burgundy. In 1127 King Lothar III granted Duke Conrad of Zähringen the inheritance of Count William IV of Burgundy lying west of the Jura, against the claim of his cousin Count Rainald III, although Conrad could not enforce his interests. Besides this, Lothar gave the Zähringer the rectorate, that is a position as royal vicar in the kingdom of Burgundy (which besides Burgundy also included Provence), hoping to use the Zähringer as foil against the Staufer.47 This newly created imperial office to administer the kingdom of Burgundy, which had been added to

41 42 43 44 45

Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 582. Ibid., Reg. 492–3; Zettler, ‘Zähringerburgen’, pp. 131–2. Bertram Jenisch and Andre Gutmann, Offenburg (Stuttgart 2007), pp. 24–9. Zotz, ‘Von Zürich 1098 bis Breisach 1198’, pp. 45–6. Alfons Zettler, ‘Breisach (FR), Schlossberg/Eckartsberg’, in Die Burgen im mittelalterlichen Breisgau, ed. Zettler and Zotz, pp. 43–53. 46 Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 120. 47 Ibid., Reg. 249; Heinemann, ‘Zähringer und Burgund’, pp. 61–2.

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the Holy Roman Empire in 1033, was an important step-up in rank for the Zähringer and anchored their position in imperial law, as they expressed in their titulature with regular use of the term rector and occasionally also dux Burgundiae. Although Duke Conrad is attested a number of times in the following period in his function as rector in Burgundy, a new impulse to take advantage of this office became possible in 1152 when the newly-crowned King Frederick Barbarossa and Duke Berthold IV (also newly come into his office) made a treaty (conventio) according to which the king would turn over the terra Burgundie et Provincie to the duke and support him in subjecting these lands. The king also promised to help the duke in his claim to lands west of the Jura. In future, the administration of both lands would be in the king’s hands when he was present, but otherwise would lie with the duke, except for the archbishoprics and bishoprics. For his part, Berthold IV pledged to support the king in Burgundian campaigns with 1000 heavy cavalry, and on Italian expeditions with 500 heavy cavalry and 50 archers.48 For reasons we do not know, this treaty was never implemented; already in 1153 Frederick Barbarossa had reached an understanding with Berthold IV’s Burgundian opponents. In 1155 he courted Beatrice, who held the contested Burgundian inheritance.49 Apparently, at the same time as their marriage on Pentecost in 1156 the emperor, who was now pursuing his own interests in Burgundy, sought a settlement with the Zähringer. Berthold renounced the rectorate for the western part of Burgundy, Lower Burgundy and Provence, as well as his claim to the comital lands in western Burgundy. In return, he received the important right to invest the bishops of Geneva, Lausanne and Sitten with the regalia (the rights that these sees held from the Crown).50 This settlement appears at first glance to have been to the disadvantage of the Zähringer, especially compared to the abortive treaty of 1152, but on the other hand the concentration on the region between Jura and Lake Geneva offered a significant opportunity for intensifying their lordship.51 It is comparable to the Staufen-Zähringen settlement of 1098, which had been a great success. In the matter of the episcopal placements, Berthold IV was only able to exercise the rights granted to him in the case of Lausanne. Nothing is known about Sitten, and Frederick Barbarossa reclaimed the right of investiture for

48 MGH Dipl. Frederick I, i.22–4 no. 12; Zotz, ‘Konflikt – Kompensation – Kooperation’, pp. 119–21. 49 Verena Türck, Beherrschter Raum und anerkannte Herrschaft. Friedrich I. Barbarossa und das Königreich Burgund (Ostfildern 2013), pp. 81–95. 50 Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 390. 51 For this and following, see Dieter Geuenich and Thomas Zotz, ‘Hochadelsgeschlecht, Rektoren von Burgund und Stadtgründer’, in Berns mutige Zeit, ed. Rainer C. Schwinges (Bern 2003), pp. 28–37, esp. 31–3.

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Geneva for himself on the basis of a legal judgement in 1162 – in this year, as we have seen, relations between the emperor and the Zähringer had reached their lowest point. That made the bishopric of Lausanne even more important for Berthold IV, since in this diocese the Zähringer had both imperial possessions and their own at their disposal. In 1157 the duke secured his position in the bishopric through an agreement with Bishop Amadeus. Despite a complaint to the imperial court against Berthold IV in 1186, the Zähringer maintained their right to investiture in Lausanne until their end; in addition, Berthold IV was able to gain the advocacy of the diocese. As in their terra in western Swabia, the Zähringer intensified their means of developing their lordship in the part of Burgundy that remained to them after the middle of the twelfth century. At a personal level they already had long-established contacts with Burgundian nobles such as the count of Laupen and the lords of Belp and Rümligen, as a result of their rectorate. The circle of these barons, who to judge from their role as witnesses of ducal documents functioned as advisors, first expanded considerably under Berthold IV.52 But the number of his ministerial followers rose toward the end of his rule, while the participation of nobles, as seen through the mirror of ducal documents, shrank. The seats of the ministeriales, who now played a greater role at the duke’s court, were grouped above all around the lordship centre of Burgdorf, which had been part of the Rheinfelder inheritance, while further south the Burgundian nobility dominated. To move to the development of lordship at an institutional level, it was precisely in this area that Berthold IV and his son Berthold V founded a series of towns. Only a year after the Staufen-Zähringer settlement of 1156 Berthold IV created the new town of Freiburg in Üechtland (Fribourg).53 Using the name of Freiburg im Breisgau was supposed to be an emblematic sign of the joining of the two Zähringer core regions. The town of Mürten also goes back to Berthold IV, while his son Berthold V founded Berne in 1191, apparently in the context of his suppression of a Burgundian noble rebellion. In c. 1200 he built up the pre-existing Burgdorf into a town, as well as Thun, which had been turned over to him. Here as in Berne, Freiburg im Üechtland and – especially representative – in Burgdorf, the Zähringer had keep-style castles erected, which here, as in the Breisgau, gave their lordship a distinctive expression – an allusion to his suppression of the noble rebellion in 1190.54 Finally, it remains to take a look at the relationship of the Zähringer to the Burgundian monasteries.55 Unlike Swabia, here the dukes possessed no

52 Mathias Kälble, ‘“Edel notveste lüte” – der niedere Adel’, in Berns mutige Zeit, ed. Schwinges, pp. 151–7. 53 Zotz, ‘Von Zürich 1098 bis Breisach 1198’, pp. 40–1. 54 Zettler, ‘Zähringerburgen’, pp. 148–58; Geuenich and Zotz, ‘Hochadelsgeschlecht’, p. 35. 55 Gabriele Witolla, ‘Die Beziehungen des Rektors von Burgund zu den Klöstern und Stiften’, in Die Zähringer, ed. Schmid, pp. 177–213.

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rights of advocacy. Nonetheless, they used their office as rectors, and thus royal deputies, to press their advantage with the local monasteries. Berhold IV and his son won in this way a special interest with the Cluniac priory of Rüeggisberg (midway between Freiburg and Thun), a foundation of the Zähringer-connected lords of Rümligen, who exercised the advocacy here. When Berthold IV together with his son gave lands to Rüeggisberg in 1175 for the sake of their souls, he used the opportunity to make a demonstration of his lordship by gathering a large number of Burgundian nobles and ministeriales around him.56 In 1157 the Cistercian monasteries of Hauterive near Freiburg and Hautcrêt near Lausanne received a grant of protection and freedom from toll throughout his lands from Berthold IV, apparently in the context of the foundation of the town of Freiburg.57 The monastery of Hauterive in return offered its support for the foundation of Freiburg.58 An expressive witness to the ties of the duke with Hauterive can be seen in a command to the city of Freiburg not to trouble this house, which he loved with his whole heart, with further demands: anyone who offended the brethren would suffer for it.59 The Cistercian monastery of Frienisberg northwest of Berne, whose monks settled the newly founded Cistercian house of Tennenbach in the northern Breisgau,60 also enjoyed Zähringer protection.61

The Zähringer duchy under Berthold V and its end After the death of Emperor Henry VI in September 1197, a broad opposition formed against the Staufen dynasty, which was represented by Henry’s brother Duke Philip of Swabia and Henry’s son Frederick II, who was at that time only two years old. Duke Berthold V of Zähringen joined this opposing group.62 This is hardly surprising considering the long-term tensions and conflicts between the Staufen and Zähringer. Most recently, in 1184 Frederick Barbarossa had ignored Berthold IV’s claim to inherit from Count Henry of Namur, the brother of Berthold’s mother Clementia.63

56 57 58 59 60

Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 469. Ibid., Reg. 393–4. Witolla, ‘Beziehungen’, pp. 189, 209. Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 495. Heinz Krieg, ‘Zur Gründungsgeschichte des Klosters Tennenbach’, in 850 Jahre Zisterzienserkloster Tennenbach. Aspekte seiner Geschichte von der Gründung (1161) bis zur Säkularisation (1806), ed. Werner Rösener, Heinz Krieg and Hans-Jürgen Günther (Freiburg i. Br. 2014), pp. 17–40. 61 Witolla, ‘Beziehungen’, p. 209. 62 Zotz, ‘Konflikt – Kompensation – Kooperation’, pp. 124–7. 63 Gilbert of Mons, Chronicle of Hainaut, trans. Napran, pp. 88–9 [Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 246, 507]. On Duke Conrad’s marriage with Clementia of Namur, which expended Zähringer power in the northwest of the Reich, see Weller, Heiratspolitik, pp. 403–8.

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Furthermore, in 1196 at the instigation of his brother the emperor, Duke Conrad II of Swabia had undertaken a feud against Duke Berthold V.64 Hence in 1197 Berthold let the anti-Staufen party nominate him as a candidate for the throne, although early in 1198 he renounced his candidacy.65 Instead, the Welf Otto of Brunswick was elected king in opposition to the Staufen candidate, Philip of Swabia, whose supporters had elevated him in July. It is not clear why Berthold V withdrew from this contest, although it is striking how adroitly he took advantage of his subsequent move to King Philip’s party. He received the fortified town (castrum) of Breisach, which the Staufer, together with the bishop of Basel, had possessed since 1185, and also lordship and advocacy over Schaffhausen am Hochrhein, where Conrad of Zähringen had already attempted to establish himself in 1120.66 One gets the impression that Berthold V of Zähringen was more interested in acquiring important lordships for his principality than in committing to the incalculable risk of an anti-Staufen kingship. A few years later, in 1201, his successful bid to win the advocacy of the priories of St. Ulrich and Sölden from Abbot Hugh V of Cluny can be seen in the same light.67 These advocacies had fallen vacant when their former incumbent Count Berthold III of Nimburg went to the Holy Land in 1200 with his son and sold his lordship to the bishopric of Strassburg.68 In the event, a great conflict soon arose over what the Nimburger had left, including the advocacies for these Cluniac priories of St. Ulrich and Sölden, in which both the bishop of Strassburg and King Frederick II were involved. (After his arrival in Germany in 1212 Frederick had pursued an intensive policy of acquiring possessions for the Staufen house). These efforts were also aimed against the Zähringer principality, which in the meantime had to reckon with the fact that Berthold V would die without a male heir. Several interested parties made claims concerning the Zähringer inheritance after 1214. Besides Frederick II, who brought his relationship with Berhold V into play, not without some justification, these claimants included the dukes of Teck (a subsidiary line of the Zähringer), as well as the counts of Urach and Kyburg, into whose families Berthold V’s two sisters, Agnes and Anna, had married.69 Further activities of Berthold V bear witness to his efforts to intensify the structure of his princely lordship in Burgundy and in the Zähringer heartland. With his marriage to Clementia, daughter of Count Stephen III of (Upper) Burgundy in around 1200, the duke sought to strengthen his

64 65 66 67 68 69

Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 540. Ibid., Reg. 542–3. Ibid., Reg. 545. Ibid., Reg. 559–60. Parlow, ‘Grafen von Nimburg’, pp. 56–8. Hartmut Heinemann, ‘Das Erbe der Zähringer’, in Die Zähringer, ed. Schmid, pp. 215–65; Butz, Adlige Herrschaft, pp. 31–4.

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personal network and influence in Burgundy.70 To this period, too, belongs the rapid castle-building in the Zähringers’ Burgundian core region. In 1210 Berthold V issued a charter for a Zürich matter in castello Burgtorf – an expression of the function of the castle to represent lordship, as can also be seen from its building inscription. In this context, we should also remember the construction of the mighty Breisach castle in c. 1210, with its inscription announcing Berthold V’s deeds. In about the same period, in 1208, Berthold V made an attempt to gain the advocacy of St. Gallen for himself and, if he should have one, for his son, although ultimately this was a failure.71 Special attention should be paid to the degree to which Berthold V promoted the towns in his lands, while also enforcing his claims of lordship. This can be observed well with the ‘old’ towns of Villingen and Zürich, as well as the newer foundations of Freiburg im Breisgau and Berne.72 This activity included both town-building and the role of influential burgers around, and in the service of, the duke. In many areas, beginning already under Berthold IV, it led to the development of a town council (consilium). After Berthold V’s death Freiburg im Breisgau self-consciously presented itself as being governed by twenty-four local consules.73 Thus, Freiburg achieved outstanding significance for the last Zähringer duke, in the combination of the fine residential castle on the heights and the planned town, whose circuit wall (the Martin’s Gate of which can be dated by dendrochronology to 1202) gave it a new architectural accent. But above all the late Romanesque reconstruction of the Freiburg parish church, the minster, came in the time of Berthold V. This edifice, with its choir-flanking towers reminiscent of the architecture of canonical churches (Stiftskirchen), was certainly initiated and promoted by the duke, who eventually found his final rest therein.74 The intensifying structure of the Zähringer principality that can be observed under Berthold V was also reflected by a significant change in terminology. The duke’s title dux de Zaringen, with its combination of office designation and allusion to origin changed in the mid-1180s, that is at the beginning of Berthold V’s rule, to the form dux Zaringiae, a usage which at first is attested by outside references but from 1210 onwards can also be found in the duke’s own documents.75 This adaptation of their title to

70 Parlow, Zähringer, Reg. 557. 71 Ibid., Reg. 574. 72 Kälble, ‘Villingen, die Zähringer und die Zähringerstädte’, pp. 163–6; idem, ‘Edel notveste lüte’, pp. 155–7. 73 Kälble, Zwischen Herrschaft und bürgerlicher Freiheit, pp. 103–24. 74 Clemens Joos, ‘Herrschaftsbau, Bürgerkirche, Bischofsitz – Das Münster im Wandel der Geschichte’, in Das Freiburger Münster (Regensburg 2011), pp. 19–26; Thomas Zotz, ‘Die Stadtherren von Freiburg und das Münster: Berthold V. von Zähringen, die Grafen von Freiburg und das Haus Habsburg’, in Freiburger Münster. Kunstwerk und Baustelle, ed. Hans W. Hubert and Peter Kalchthaler (Freiburg i. Br. 2014), pp. 25–37. 75 Zotz, ‘Dux de Zaringen’, pp. 29–44.

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adopt a ‘territorial’ element made it more akin to those of ‘classic’ duchies like Lotharingia, and appears to reflect a new step in the integration of the Zähringen duchy, whose lordship was now recognised in the political arena as Zaringia. The terra ducis, of which Otto of Freising spoke in the mid-twelfth century, now had a name. The territorial connotation of the name can be seen clearly in the work of Caesarius of Heisterbach, who in his Dialogus miraculorum (c. 1220) tells of what an informant from the ducatus Ceringiae, the duchy of Zähringen, is supposed to have experienced at the death of the tyrannical last Zähringer duke.76 Despite this intensification of structures at both the real and terminological levels, the duchy of Zähringen had no future after the death of Berthold V in 1218, suffering a fate comparable to what befell the duchy of Swabia 50 years later after the death of the last Staufer, Conradin.77 In 1218 it was above all the political will of King Frederick II that prevailed, and he was not prepared to allow the duchy continued existence since he was pursuing his own dynastic interests in the southwest of the kingdom.78 Frederick II immediately claimed the imperial fiefs for himself, including first and foremost the rectorate in Burgundy, which he passed on to his son Henry.79 The private possessions of the Zähringer east of the Rhine fell to the counts of Urach-Freiburg, who in the thirteenth century expressly saw themselves in the Zähringer tradition,80 while the counts of Kyburg inherited the possessions west of the Rhine.81 Memory of the Zähringer lived on among the related counts of Habsburg, who eventually inherited the Kyburger lands, as was shown at Rudolf of Habsburg’s 1273 coronation in Aachen, when his wife Gertrude and daughter Gertrude received the names of the two Zähringer allodial heiresses Agnes and Anna.82 Although the margraves of Baden only recalled their progenitors in the eighteenth century, and later as grand dukes of Baden bore the title ‘duke of Zähringen’, the Zähringer memoria provided a firm, and soon also a scholarly, anchorage.

Conclusion The Zähringer decisively shaped the history of the southwestern part of the kingdom in the period from 1098 to 1218. Here in the western part of Swabia and the northern part of the kingdom of Burgundy they created

76 77 78 79 80 81

Geuenich, ‘Berthold V.’, pp. 101, 111. Thomas Zotz, ‘Schwaben, Herzogtum’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters vii.1598–1602. Heinemann, ‘Erbe der Zähringer’, pp. 217–26. Ibid., pp. 244–8. Butz, Adlige Herrschaft, pp. 141–54. Thomas Zotz, ‘Hochadel in Südwestdeutschland im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert’, in Die Grafen von Kyburg. Eine Adelsgeschichte mit Brüchen, ed. Peter Niederhäuser (Zurich 2015), pp. 19–27. 82 Regesta Habsburgica, i Die Regesten der Grafen von Habsburg bis 1281, ed. Harold Steinacker (Innsbruck 1905), 122 no. 557; Mertens, ‘Habsburger’, pp. 156–7.

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a princely state with two poles, as dukes of Zähringen and as rectors of Burgundy. The first title stemmed from the office of duke of Swabia, which Berthold held until 1098, but then gave up, and from then on they adopted the family designation of the eponymous castle of Zähringen. The uncertainty of the title in imperial legal terms was eased from 1127 onwards through the imperial office of rector of Burgundy. With the build-up of their own independent lordship along the upper Rhine and its headwaters, in the Black Forest and in Baar, in opposition to the Staufen duke of Swabia, the Zähringer supported themselves on the base of a numerous following of nobles and ministeriales, on monastic advocacies, castles and towns. Among these last Freiburg im Breisgau was especially important, and its rights and liberties were extended to other Zähringer towns, apparently with the intention of imposing a sense of common identity on the region. Politically, the Zähringer found themselves in confrontation with the Staufen dukes of Swabia, whose realm of influence had been markedly diminished. The Zähringer experienced a similar situation in the mid-twelfth century, as their positions and rights in Burgundy collapsed after Beatrice of Burgundy’s marriage with Frederick Barbarossa. In the smaller district between Jura and Lake Geneva to which the Zähringer were reduced, they sought by similar means as in Swabia to construct a dense, territorially-based structure of lordship. In the time of the last Zähringer Berthold V, who had strengthened Zähringer lordship again in ‘Zähringerland’ in Swabia, as in Burgundy, the new terminological creation dux Zaringiae gave expression to the territorial understanding of this ducal lordship. Although it was only attested once, use of the territorial understood designation ducatus Zaringiae particularly underscores this point.

18 A success story Brandenburg in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Lutz Partenheimer

The margraviate of Brandenburg was one of the most significant principalities of the German Reich that existed until 1806. It arose in 1157 and from the late thirteenth century onwards was one of the seven electoral principalities whose lords had the right to elect the king. After the margrave was crowned as king of Prussia in 1701, Brandenburg formed the core region of the new kingdom. And of course it was Prussia’s Prime Minister Bismarck who united Germany and in 1871 the Prussian king assumed the title of ‘German Kaiser’. The beginnings of Brandenburg’s history, however, reach back far beyond the middle of the twelfth century. Charlemagne had subjected the Saxons to his rule at the end of the eighth century, after almost thirty years of campaigning. These Saxons were settled in the north German plain between the lower Rhine and lower Elbe. Thus, the Franks became neighbours of the West or Elbe Slavs. These Slav tribes had formed from migratory groups, which came from what are now Polish and Czech areas in the region between the Elbe/Saale and Oder/Neisse Rivers in the seventh and eighth centuries. The Liudolfing family of nobles took over leadership of the Saxons in the second half of the ninth century. In 919 the head of this family, Duke Henry, became ruler of the kingdom of the East Franks, which had had its origins in the partition of Charlemagne’s empire among his grandsons in 843. Henry I attacked a group of Slavs whom Saxon chroniclers call the Hevelli and who called themselves Stodoranes. Brandenburg, the chief residence of the tribal princes, was probably taken in the winter of 928/929.1 Nothing has, however, survived of the wood and earthwork fortress that was erected c. 860/70 on the site where Brandenburg’s cathedral now stands. While Henry contented himself with a loose overlordship over the subject Slavs, his son Emperor Otto the Great integrated them more firmly into the

1 Widukind, I.35, pp. 48–50; trans. Bacherach, pp. 49–50. On Henry I and the eastern frontier generally, see Karl Leyser, ‘Henry I and the Beginnings of the Saxon Empire’, English Historical Review 83 (1968), 1–32 [reprinted in K.J. Leyser, Medieval Germany and Its Neighbours (London 1982), pp. 11–42].

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German state that was gradually developing from East Francia. He named Count Gero, from Gernrode in the Harz Mountains, as margrave (border count), including the Heveller principality in the area under his responsibility. Otto also founded bishoprics for the Christianisation of the heathen Slavs based on Havelberg and Brandenburg in what became the region of Brandenburg.2 The traditional date for these episcopal foundations is 948, although a date of 965 has also been suggested.3 In the latter year Gero died and the emperor partitioned his enormous territory. From the northern part arose what in the twelfth century came to be known as the Northmark between Elbe, Elde, Peene and Oder Rivers, and the area which later became known as the Fläming heath. This district also included the Stodoran region. In 983 the Slav tribes which had joined together in the Luitizi union stormed the episcopal seats of Havelberg and Brandenburg and eradicated Saxon rule between the Baltic and the Fläming region.4 Attempts at reconquest had no lasting success and the effort was abandoned c. 1000. Nonetheless, the East Frankish-German rulers did not give up their claim to regions as far as the Oder. The rulers continued to name margraves for the Northmark, as well as bishops of Havelberg and Brandenburg. In the second half of the eleventh century the West Slavs became weaker. The reasons were wars between the tribes, increasing social stratification and mounting pressure from Denmark and Poland. This altered political climate made it possible for the Germans once again to eye the territories lost in 983. But by now the crown, which had been the main agent of expansion in the tenth century, was less interested in the West Slav regions. The king had other problems, what with the Saxon rebellion (1073–1075), the outbreak of the Investiture Contest and princely opposition. Instead it was the beginning of German land development that proved dangerous to the Slavs. In the mid-eleventh century the German princes began to expand their often far-flung possessions, to create more unified lordships and to consolidate their power over the lands that belonged to them. The tools they used were not only direct military action, but also castle-building, the deployment of ministeriales, the creation of new settlements through land clearance and political marriages and alliances. Archbishops, bishops and abbots also took part in this process. Ever since the time of Emperor Otto I the East Frankish-German kings had endowed ecclesiastical officials with possessions and rights in order to make the imperial church a support for the crown against dukes, margraves, counts and other secular magnates.

2 MGH Dipl. Otto I, pp. 155–6 no. 76 (March 946); pp. 187–9 no. 105 (October 948). 3 See the literature review in Lutz Partenheimer, Die Entstehung der Mark Brandenburg. Mit einem lateinisch-deutschen Quellenanhang (Cologne 2007), pp. 171–2, note 46. 4 Thietmar, III. 17–19, trans. Warner, pp. 141–3.

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The conquest of Jerusalem by the army of the First Crusade in 1099 increased still further the Saxons’ reawakening interest in the West Slavic regions. After all, their inhabitants were still pagans – indeed worse, they were former Christians who had apostatised after the 983 rebellion – and for that reason had no lawful right to possess those regions. Probably in the winter of 1100/1101 the margrave of the Northmark succeeded in reconquering Brandenburg after a four-month siege, although it was soon lost again.5 Then, in 1108 the archbishop of Magdeburg and his suffragans called upon the secular princes of Germany to take part in an expedition against the Slavs following the example of the crusade to the Holy Land. Especially interesting is the indication that participants could occupy the best areas for settlement.6 The name of Count Otto of Ballenstedt (in East Harz) also appears in the 1108 document. He was a member of the dynasty, first mentioned with his grandfather Esico in 1036, that later became known as the ‘Ascanians’.7 In c. 1110 Otto’s sphere of influence stretched from the area of Bernburg across the Elbe into the Heveller principality.8 Soon after the count of Ballenstedt’s death (1123), his son Albrecht the Bear concluded an agreement with Pribislav, a member of the Stodorian princely family. Pribislav had become a Christian and took the name ‘Henry’ at baptism. Apparently, he wanted Ascanian help to seize lordship of Brandenburg and the Heveller area from a certain Meinfried. In return for assistance Pribislav-Henry named Albrecht the Bear as his heir. He also became godfather to Albrecht’s newborn son Otto and gave the child the district of Zauche (south of the Havel sector between Brandenburg and Potsdam). In 1127 Meinfried was murdered (by who is not known) and Pribislav-Henry ascended to the princely throne of Brandenburg. Soon afterwards, Emperor Lothar III named Albrecht the Bear margrave of the Northmark in 1134. The Ascanians assumed the advocacy (Vogtei) of the Praemonstratensian canonry of Unser Liebe Frau in Leitzkau between Magdeburg and Zerbst (1139/40), founded by their convent at Magdeburg, and also of Jerichow southeast of Tangermünde (1144). These served as provisional cathedral chapters for

5 Annalista Saxo, ed. Klaus Naß (MGH SS xxvii, Hanover 2006) pp. 499–500. 6 Ostsiedlung, i. no. 19; English translation in Louise and Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095–1274 (London 1981), pp. 74–7. 7 Derived from ‘Ascania’, a Latinised term for Aschersleben, east of Ballenstedt. See Lutz Partenheimer, ‘Die frühen Askanier und die Entstehung Anhalts’, in 800 Jahre Anhalt. Geschichte, Kultur, Perspektiven, ed. Anhaltischer Heimatbund (Dößel 2012), pp. 153–73. Aschersleben, along with Ballenstedt and the castle of Anhalt further south, was a chief seat of the family, but was lost to the Church of Halberstadt after 1315. 8 Helmut Assing, ‘Die Anfänge askanischer Herrschaft in den Gebieten östlich der Elbe’, in Brandenburgische Landesgeschichte und Archivwissenschaft. Festschrift für Lieselott Enders zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Friedrich Beck and Klaus Neitmann (Weimar 1997), pp. 21–35.

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the re-establishment of the dioceses of Brandenburg and Havelberg. The Wendish Crusade took place in 1147, to a great extent under the leadership of Albrecht the Bear. During the crusade he spared his promised inheritance, the Heveller principality.9 The prince there, Pribislav-Henry, then died in 1150 and the margrave stepped in as successor in accordance with the old agreement. However, a Slav leader, Jaxa of Köpenick10 seized Brandenburg from Albrecht, probably early in 1157, so the Ascanian had to besiege the fortress. It capitulated on 11 June 1157. On that day Albrecht the Bear ceremonially re-entered Brandenburg and had his banner raised there.11 Only at that point – as both heir and conqueror – did the Ascanian take up the title that the royal chancery had already occasionally used for him during the 1140s. The first extant document in which the writer designates Albrecht the Bear as ‘margrave of Brandenburg’ is dated 3 October 1157. After that point the Ascanians used that title with ever-increasing frequency, and the sources no longer mention the Northmark.12 Because of the reconquest and the ensuing change of title, 11 June 1157 is regarded as the ‘birthday’ of the mark of Brandenburg.

9 Jan-Christoph Herrmann, Der Wendenkreuzzug von 1147 (Frankfurt am Main 2011). 10 Michael Lindner, Jacza von Köpenick (ca. 1125/30–1176). Ein Slawenfürst des 12. Jahrhunderts zwischen dem Reich und Polen. Geschichten aus einer Zeit, in der es Berlin noch nicht gab (Berlin 2012). 11 The treatise of the so-called Henry of Antwerp reports how Brandenburg along with the Heveller principality came to Albrecht the Bear, as well as telling of the long-agreed alliance of the margrave with Pribislav-Henry. The text can be found in the source listing in Partenheimer, Entstehung [see note 3], and also at http://golm.rz.uni-potsdam/de/hva/ and in Christina Meckelnborg, Der Tractatus de urbe Brandenburg. Untersuchung und Neuedition anlässlich eines Handschriftenfundes (Berlin 2015). She argues that the source appeared in the 1170s under Margrave Otto I as a history of the inheritance of Brandenburg from an Ascanian perspective. If this was the case, it places into question the collaboration of Otto I with his brother Siegfried, who was bishop of Brandenburg 1173–1180. The cause could have been a possible concern of the margrave over the position of imperial archchamberlain in this period. See Helmut Assing, ‘Die Landesherrschaft der Askanier, Wittelsbacher und Luxemburger (Mitte des 12. bis Anfang des 15. Jahrhunderts)’, in Brandenburgische Geschichte, ed. Ingo Materna and Wolfgang Ribbe (Berlin 1995), pp. 85–168 (on this point p. 126). See also Helmut Assing, ‘Der Weg der sächsischen und brandenburgischen Askanier zur Kurwürde’, in Askanier-Studien der Lauenburgischen Akademie, ed. Eckardt Opitz (Bochum 2010), pp. 71–118 (for this point, pp. 84–5). Or it might have been caused by a reaction to the emperor’s proceedings against the Ascanians after the death of Albrecht the Bear. Barbarossa had granted Albrecht the county of Plötzkau (near Bernburg) in 1152, and in 1171 wanted to take it back from Otto’s brother Bernhard. 12 CD Anhalt I, no. 436. Helmut Assing, ‘Albrecht der Bär als marchio de Brandenburg und marchio Brandenburgensis. Werdegang und Hintergründe einer Titeländerung’, in Brandenburg, Anhalt und Thüringen im Mittelalter. Askanier und Ludowinger beim Aufbau fürstlicher Territorialherrschaften. Zum 65. Geburtstag des Autors, ed. Tilo Köhn, Lutz Partenheimer and Uwe Zietmann (Cologne 1997), pp. 133–76.

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At first Albrecht the Bear apparently had to pay those who had helped him win back Brandenburg, including the archbishop of Magdeburg and lesser nobles, with land transfers in the Heveller district. Apparently, in 1158 Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa also appointed a burgrave to see that the Ascanian did not regard his new area as an autonomous lordship, but respected the royal rights in Brandenburg that went back to the tenth century.13 On top of that, the bishop of Brandenburg returned to the fortress in 1165. The king had conceded its northern half to the bishop’s predecessors when the diocese was founded. The year 1165 also saw the foundation stone laid for the cathedral at Brandenburg that is still standing today. After a pilgrimage to Jerusalem c. 1158/9, Albrecht the Bear began to bring settlers into his new districts.14 Among others, he had people recruited who had suffered from flooding on the North Sea coast. Documents show that soon after 1157 the Ascanians advanced to Rathenow, Friesack and Nauen. With the Rathenow area they wished to link the new lordship in the Heveller region with their possessions in the region that came to be called the ‘Old Mark’ in the fourteenth century.15 Albrecht the Bear gave the church of Werben there to the Hospitallers of Jerusalem in 1160,16 and about the same time founded a market in Stendal.17 There were already settlers from Holland in the Havelberg district in 1170.18

13 Besides his article listed in the previous note, see Helmut Assing, ‘Die Anfänge deutscher Herrschaft und Siedlung im Raum Spandau-Potsdam-Berlin während des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts’, in Brandenburg, Anhalt und Thüringen im Mittelalter, pp. 103–31, and also Helmut Assing, ‘Die Potsdamer Burgen. Irrtümer, Erkenntnisse, umstrittene Fragen und neue Lösungsansätze’, JBLG 61 (2010), 13–39. 14 Helmold, I.89, pp. 174–5; English translation, Tschan, pp. 235–6. 15 Lutz Partenheimer, ‘Die Ausdehnung der askanisch-brandenburgischen Herrschaft bis zum Tode Markgraf Ottos II. (1205) nach der schriftlichen Überlieferung. Im Gedenken an Lorenz Friedrich Beck’, in 1210–2010. 800 Jahre Köpenick. Van Jacza zu den Wettinern. Burg, Herrschaft und Stadt im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, ed. Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Berlin 2014), pp. 141–55. Until 1815 the Old Mark belonged to the margraviate of Brandenburg. In that year Prussia was divided into provinces. The Old Mark was not incorporated into the province of Brandenburg, but rather the Prussian province of Saxony, which after 1945 was joined with the old duchy of Anhalt as the Bundesstaat of Sachsen-Anhalt. 16 CD Anhalt, I, no. 456. Lutz Partenheimer, ‘Die Johanniterkommende Werben (Altmark) von 1160 bis zur Reformation’, in Regionalität und Transfergeschichte. Ritterordenskommenden der Templer und Johanniter im nordöstlichen Deutschland und in Polen, ed. Christian Gahlbeck, Heinz-Dieter Heimann and Dirk Schumann (Berlin 2014), pp. 173–203. 17 CD Anhalt, I, no. 370. In this document, Albrecht the Bear named Brandenburg, Havelberg, and the Old Mark locales of Werben, Arneburg, Tangermünde, Osterburg and Salzwedel as the castles of his margraviate. On the life and deeds of the Ascanian, see Lutz Partenheimer, Albrecht der Bär. Gründer der Mark Brandenburg und des Fürstentums Anhalt (2nd ed., Cologne 2003). 18 CD Brand, A II, p. 441.

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Albrecht the Bear died in this same year. His younger sons received other paternal lands, while the mark of Brandenburg fell to the share of their oldest brother, Otto I. The royal chancery consistently named him and his successors as ‘margraves of Brandenburg’ from 1172. By that point it was quite clear that a new principality had emerged among the fiefs of the German Reich. Since the former dynastic monastery of Ballenstedt as well as the Ascanian family possessions between the Harz and Mulde had gone to his youngest brother Bernhard, in 1180 Otto I founded the first monastery within the mark, a Cistercian convent at Lehnin in the Zauche district that his godfather had given him as baptismal gift. The same year saw major successes. The margrave won a victory over the dukes of Pomerania, against whom he had already fought (along with Henry the Lion) in 1177. Furthermore, Frederick Barbarossa deposed Albrecht the Bear’s great rival, the Welf Henry the Lion, from his position as duke of Bavaria and Saxony. The new duke of Saxony the emperor appointed was Otto’s brother Bernhard. Another brother, Siegfried, who had been bishop of Brandenburg since 1173, was promoted to the archbishopric of Bremen. Otto I’s son Otto II (1184–1205) and his half-brother and successor Albrecht II (1205–1220) in 1195/96 converted the Zauche district and other allodial lands, especially in the Old Mark, into fiefs of the archdiocese of Magdeburg.19 Their motives for this are unknown. Since at the time the Brandenburg line of the Ascanians consisted only of the two brothers, it has been speculated that in this way they wanted to put a stop to possible claims from other branches of the family, the crown and the Welfs.20 Spandau appears for the first time in written records in 1197; at that time a margravial advocate was based there.21 By this time at the latest the Ascanians had therefore driven the Magdeburgers out of this significant old Slav fortress town, even though Albrecht the Bear had given Spandau to the archdiocese in return for its military assistance in 1157. The turning over of other lands as fiefs may also have been compensation for this. Until about 1200 the margraves expanded their power above all in Havelland and the Zauche

19 Regesten der Markgrafen von Brandenburg aus askanischem Hause, ed. Hermann Krabbo and Georg Winter (12 vols., Leipzig 1910–1955), nos. 485, 491–2, 495–6. 20 Lutz Partenheimer, Deutsche Herrschaftsbildung im Fläming während des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (Ph.D. Dissertation, Potsdam 1988), p. 104–5, note 135; Michael Menzel, ‘Die Stiftslehen der Mark (1196–1449)’, JGMOD 52 (2006), 55–88, especially 55–63; Lieselott Enders, ‘Altmark, Nordmark und die Elbe. Werden einer historischen Region’, in Aedificatio terrae. Beiträge zur Umwelt- und Siedlungsarchäologie Mitteleuropas. Festschrift für Eike Gringmuth-Dallmer zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Gerson H. Jeute, Jens Schneeweiß and Claudia Theune (Rahden/Westf. 2007), pp. 119–24, especially p. 121–2; and Lieselott Enders, Die Altmark. Geschichte einer kurmärkischen Landschaft in der Frühneuzeit (Ende des 15. bis Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts) (Berlin 2008), pp. 35–7. 21 Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 494.

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district, where they constrained to vassalage previously autonomous smaller lordships. They then undertook larger annexations, part of whose purpose was to fend off Danish encroachment in northern Germany. In 1198 Otto II subjugated some Slavs whom the king of Denmark regarded as his vassals.22 Probably these were Pomeranians, who had advanced as far as the Finow lowlands or even into Barnim. These areas formed – at least in part – the core of a ‘not insignificant part of the mark’ that Albrecht the Bear, Otto I, Otto II and Albrecht II had seized from ‘pagans’. To protect and colonise these acquisitions, the margrave wanted to withhold the church tithes of the region. Albrecht II announced this to the pope in 1210, and a representative of Bishop Baldwin of Brandenburg agreed to the plan in Rome.23 Two redactions of a document of Bishop Siegfried II, Baldwin’s successor, from 28 December 1216 let us know the extent of the diocese at this time. The most easterly castle districts named lay on the Rivers Nuthe and Havel: Luckenwalde, Trebbin, Saarmund, Bötzow (renamed as Oranienburg in 1652) and Zehdenick. It is clear that even the bishop’s administration did not know the precise boundaries, for the clause follows: ‘and however far it extends on this side of the diocese’.24 Between 1210 and 1215 Albrecht II had a castle built at Oderberg, but he could only briefly occupy Stettin and Pasewalk.25 In exchange, he strengthened margravial rights in Brandenburg relative to the bishop.26 Besides the northern and northwestern parts of Barmin he brought the mid- and southwestern areas, which had apparently belonged to the archbishop of Magdeburg, under Ascanian lordship, as well as Potsdam and Westelow.27 He also expanded his influence in the Old Mark and Prignitz.28 The youthful mark of Brandenburg experienced its greatest growth in both area and internal stability under the joint rule of Albrecht II’s sons

22 Arnold of Lübeck, Chronicon Slavorum, VI.9, ed. J.M. Lappenberg (MGH SRG, Hanover 1868) pp. 229–30. 23 ‘Ex parte dilecti filii nobilis viri Marchionis Brandeburgensis nostris est auribus intimatum quod cum non modica terrae pars ad marchiam suam pertinens per suos et fratris ac patris avique sui labores de manibus eruta paganorum sterilis iaceat et inculta, ipsam ad cultum redigere ac de colonis fidelibus disposuit stabilire.’ Die Register Innocenz’ III. 13 Pontifikatsjahr, 1210/1211, ed. Andrea Sommerlechner and Herwig Weigl (Vienna 2015), pp. 43–6 no. 21, at p. 44. 24 et in quantum ab ea parte Diocesis se extendit, CD Brand, A VIII, p. 135. 25 Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 552. 26 Helmut Assing, ‘Wer waren die urbani Brandenburgenses? Betrachtungen zu einem kurzzeitigen Quellenausdruck aus den Jahren um 1200’, in Beiträge zur Entstehung und Entwicklung der Stadt Brandenburg im Mittelalter, ed. Winfried Schich (Berlin 1993), pp. 131–56. 27 The archdiocese was apparently pushed from the areas of Spandau and Potsdam, which Albrecht the Bear had apparently conceded in return for military assistance in 1157. [See note 13 above]. 28 In the Old Mark and elsewhere at the cost of the counts of Osterburg; for example, in Prignitz Albrecht II cut the position of the family of Gans zu Putlitz.

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John I (1220–1266) and Otto III (1220–1267). They profited from the collapse of Danish power after the Battle of Bornhöved in 1227. In 1231 at Ravenna Emperor Frederick II enfeoffed the two brothers with the mark of Brandenburg, an action to which he had already agreed in principle a decade earlier. By this act he confirmed their overlordship of Pomerania, as their father and his predecessors had possessed it from Frederick’s forerunners.29 Otto III married in 1233 or later and received the districts of Bautzen and Görlitz as pledges from his father-in-law the king of Bohemia.30 In 1232 the emperor guaranteed the secular German princes their sovereignty within their territories and in 1236 the town count (Burgrave) of Brandenburg appears for the last time in the sources. In that year the margraves of Brandenburg gained the provinces of Stargard from the duke of PomeraniaDemmin.31 At about the same time they purchased the Uckerland, south of the Welse River, from the duke of Pomerania-Stettin.32 A dispute about tithes broke out in 1234 because Bishop Gernand of Brandenburg, unlike his predecessor Bishop Baldwin in 1210, could no longer endure the Ascanians withholding tithes from large parts of his diocese. The quarrel was eventually settled by a compromise in 1237. The margraves were forced to recognise the Church’s fundamental claim to this income, although they were still able to collect them, above all in Barmin and the regions north of it.33 In 1239 the Ascanians also took control of the castles of Köpenick and Mittenwalde. This led to the former lord of these fortresses, Henry the Illustrious, Margrave of Meissen and Lausitz, from the Wettin dynasty, attacking the brothers in 1240.34 However, John I and Otto III defeated him and his allies, the archbishop of Magdeburg and the bishop of Halberstadt, in a series of battles that ranged over several years. In 1245 the two castles became permanent possessions of the mark.35 With this victory, the countryside of Teltow and Barnim lay entirely in Ascanian hands. Subsequently, in 1250, John I and Otto III received the rest of Uckerland from the duke of Pomerania-Stettin.36 Probably in the same year they

29 Hist. Dipl. Frederick II, iv(1).270–2 [Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 605]. This is the oldest extant enfeoffment of a margrave with Brandenburg by a German ruler. 30 Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 611. Conversion into a Bohemian fief took place in 1262, and in 1283 it became an imperial fief. See Regesten der Markgrafen, nos. 871, 1324. 31 Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 636. 32 Chronica Marchionum Brandenburgensium, ed. Georg Sello, in Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preussischen Geschichte 1 (1888), 111–80, at p. 121. 33 Regesten der Markgrafen, nos. 547, 617–22, 645, 648. 34 The Wettins established themselves as margraves of Lausitz (modern Niederlausitz) in c. 1180 in a conflict with the Pomeranians over the inheritance of Jaxa von Köpenick, who died in 1176. 35 Georg Sello, ‘Halberstädtisch-brandenburgische Fehde 1238 bis 1245’, Zeitschrift des Harz-Vereins für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 24 (1891): 201–19. 36 Regesten der Markgrafen, nos. 730–1; see also no. 634.

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established themselves in the province of Lebus, in partnership with the archbishop of Magdeburg, at the expense of the dukes of Schleswig, a junior branch of the Polish ruling family, the Piasts. The margraves and the archbishop agreed to divide the province between them.37 This agreement was concluded in 1252/53.38 In the following years the Ascanians expanded their influence along the lower Warthe in the direction of Mündung. In 1259 they gained the Magdeburg district of Jerichow in the angle between the Elbe and Havel, which made it possible for them to link their Old Mark possessions better to those in Havelland.39 John I and Otto III also subjected formerly autonomous smaller lordships in Prignitz and northern Havelland. In 1258, to prevent conflict between their sons, the brothers formally divided the Ascanian possessions, incomes and rights within the mark. The mark itself, however, remained intact as a single principality. The Ottonian branch, also known as the younger or Salzwedeler, died out in 1317. Since this branch had received among other property the area around Lehnin, where the family’s original Cistercian monastery was located, they founded a new monastery at Eberswalde in 1258 for the Johannite (also called older or Stendaler) line, staffing it with some of the Cistercians who lived at Lehnin. After moving site, it appears in 1273 for the first time at Chorin, its final location.40 Both branches of the family continued to expand the mark of Brandenburg. The Ascanians conquered Danzig in 1271, and again in 1308, although they held it only briefly. After violent fights with Magdeburg, they succeeded in placing a member of the older line, Erich son of Margrave John I, on the archiepiscopal throne in 1283. In 1287 he handed over the Magdeburg half of the province of Lebus to his brothers as a pledge, which was never redeemed, and this territory therefore became part of Brandenburg. When Bohemia in 1283 renounced its overlordship of the districts of Görlitz and Bautzen, which were divided from the mark by Lausitz, this roused the interest of the Ascanians. Between 1303 and 1307 they were able to take parts of this region which had formerly belonged to the Wettins, who at that time were in conflict with the king, with royal approval. This mighty expansion of Brandenburg in only a few decades was probably also the chief reason why in about 1250 the margraves became members of the newly formed group of seven electors who had the right to choose the German ruler. The composition of this group was revealed for the first time

37 38 39 40

Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 729. Lebus lies north of Frankfurt (Oder). Regesten der Markgrafen, nos. 741, 761. Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 839. On the Brandenburg monasteries, see Brandenburgisches Klosterbuch. Handbuch der Klöster, Stifte und Kommenden bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts, ed. Heinz-Dieter Heimann et al. (2 vols., Berlin 2007).

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in a document of 1298, which was then formally confirmed in 1356 by the Golden Bull of Emperor Charles IV.41 But the late thirteenth century also showed the first signs that this run of successes was coming to an end. The ever-escalating wars and increasing payments for courtly representation consumed ever larger sums, which could no longer be covered with regular margravial income. So the margraves began to mortgage, or even to sell, possessions and rights to nobles, monasteries and finally even to rich burgers. Although the Ascanians managed repeatedly to raise large sums of money by this means, in doing so they weakened their land and power base. The margraves also had to make concessions to the knights and towns in return for collection of aids. Furthermore, they started to lose territory. So the province of Stargard, as a dowry for a Brandenburg princess, went as a fief to her husband, a Mecklenburg prince, c. 1299. After her death in 1314, the Ascanians vainly demanded Stargard’s return. When Margrave Waldemar (1308–1319) tried to take the region back by force in 1315/16 he failed. Despite this, Brandenburg held its position at this time, albeit with great exertions, in a fight against a very powerful enemy coalition that included among others Poland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Lüneburg, Rügen, Mecklenburg and Magdeburg. Even the princes of Anhalt and dukes of Sachsen-Lauenberg, both descended from Albrecht the Bear, took part. Peace was made in 1317. In this same year the war that Waldemar had begun with the mark of Meissen, which from 1303 to 1305 the Brandenburg prince had held as a pledge, came to an end. Waldemar was left with possession of Dresden. But his death in 1319 and the extinction of the Brandenburg line of the Ascanians in the next year endangered what had previously been accomplished. How is this astonishing rise of the new mark to be explained? Detailed studies – and especially comparative studies with the neighbouring principalities – are lacking. It is, nevertheless, possible to identify some important factors in Brandenburg’s success. Already, soon after he captured Brandenburg in 1157, Albrecht the Bear had farmers brought in to settle the new land, a policy his successors continued on a large scale.42 The Ascanian family lands between Harz and Mulde as well as their possessions in the Old Mark provided a good basis for colonisation. By contrast, their Slav rivals, the princes of Mecklenburg and Pomerania, could not so easily lay hands on people and structures from

41 The formation of the electoral college arguably began in 1198 although the process is still not completely clear today. Assing, ‘Der Weg . . . zur Kurwürde’ [above, note 11]. 42 Winfried Schich, ‘Es kamen disse von Suawen, iene vome Rine. Zur Herkunft der Zuwanderer in die Mark Brandenburg im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert’, in Die Herkunft der Brandenburger. Sozial- und mentalitätsgeschichtliche Beiträge zur Bevölkerung Brandenburgs vom hohen Mittelalter bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Klaus Neitmann and Jürgen Theil, with the assistance of Olaf Gründel (Potsdam 2001), pp. 17–40.

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long-settled areas. Settlers were recruited even from Flanders and Holland (the former region at least partly, and the latter completely, belonging to the German Reich). Here, for example, one could find men with experience in building dikes. These settlers established their own villages in the new mark of Brandenburg, sometimes alongside the relatively few, and small, Slav settlements. The latter were, however, often completely abandoned, with their inhabitants moving to new areas. In a second phase of settlement, starting around 1200, communities with large planned streets and village greens appeared in the regions of the mark east of the Elbe. These often replaced, smaller settlements, which had been successfully established under German leadership in the first period of colonisation after 1157. To attract colonists, more favourable conditions were offered than were the norm in long-settled regions. Immigrant German farmers received 1–2 hides of ploughland and were usually guaranteed their personal freedom; nor for the most part did they have to provide labour services. Their dues were comparatively light. A land tax went to the margraves, or to the knight who held the village as a fief, in whole or in part. The Church received tithes of grain and meat, one-third going to the parish priest and the rest to the bishop. These later largely fell into the hands of local lords, and often came to be designated as ‘rent’.43 For specific needs (for wars, as ransom of Ascanians who had been captured by enemies or as dowry for daughters of the princely family when they married), the margraves also received the so-called aid as a special tax. First attested in 1170,44 this payment was demanded ever more frequently and at higher rates, until in c. 1280 the knights and towns forced an agreement that only a few reasons for this sort of extraordinary payment would be allowed. Henceforth aids would only be levied in certain specific circumstances and at a fixed level.45 The farmland that had been cleared did not serve only to feed the immigrant farmers. The new clearances also gave the prince the opportunity to establish and provide for increasing numbers of ministeriales. These ministeriales often came from the Old Mark. They received new villages, or parts of them, as fiefs, and lived from the dues of the peasants who worked the dependent farms. There were hardly any free noble vassals. Therefore, the Ascanians possessed a relatively reliable contingent of vassal knights that grew steadily, and enabled them successfully to wage wars even over a number of years and with multiple opponents. During the thirteenth century, the ministeriales became noble knights. The unfree status of their forebears was forgotten. In different regions of the mark some noble families achieved a remarkable rise. They amassed possessions and power and finally held villages and castles, sometimes even small towns – as personal possessions,

43 For the first time in 1272. See CD Brand, A VIII, p. 170. 44 Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 381. 45 Regesten der Markgrafen, nos. 1204, 1223, 1253, 1263, 1282, 1284, 1288, 1298, 1311.

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fiefs or pledges from the margraves. The margraves’ financial shortfalls played a major role in this development. Most knights, however, lived in fortified manor houses in the villages, often next to them. In the Old Mark nobles had owned c. 3–4 hides of land as demesne; in the east of the mark in c. 1300 it was 10 or more. These lands – like those of the parish priest and village mayor – were worked by cottars, both male and female. These cottars were often Slavs, who in general lived in small huts, only had a little arable land or a garden plot and also worked as day labourers for the farmers. From the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries onwards, the Slavs mixed with the immigrant German populace. Under the Ascanians apparently less than 10% of hides were in the hands of nobles. Toward the end of their lordship, the margraves’ army was increasingly strengthened by mercenary knights and contingents of troops from the towns. The emergence of new villages encouraged the creation of a network of towns.46 Alongside the castles of margraves and nobles they provided fortified points to protect the region. Before 1157 the only proto-towns were at the few large Slav castles, for example at Brandenburg and Spandau.47 Already Albrecht the Bear established a market at Stendal, and Otto I granted the inhabitants of the settlements around Brandenburg freedom from tolls within the mark. But it was especially John I and Otto III who founded and promoted many towns. These developed into important sources of income as well as secure residences for the princes, and their economic ripple effect into the surrounding countryside helped to consolidate the territory. The first evidence of the essential elements of urban development in Brandenburg can be seen in Stendal, which had a council in 1215,48 and a guild in 1231.49 Eventually, in 1285, conflicts arose between these two.50 From c. 1230 we can see trade in wood and grain from the Brandenburg towns down the Elbe to Hamburg, Flanders and even England. Flemish cloths were imported. In the second half of the thirteenth century trade in

46 Winfried Schich, ‘Stadtwerdung im Raum zwischen Elbe und Oder im Übergang von der slawischen zur deutschen Periode. Beobachtungen zum Verhältnis von Recht, Wirtschaft und Topographie am Beispiel von Städten in der Mark Brandenburg’, in Germania Slavica 1, ed. Wolfgang H. Fritze (Berlin 1980), pp. 191–238; Städtebuch Brandenburg und Berlin, ed. Evamaria Engel, Lieselott Enders, Gerd Heinrich and Winfried Schich (Stuttgart 2000). 47 Felix Biermann, ‘Burgstädtische Zentren der Slawenzeit in Brandenburg’, in Wie die Mark entstand. 850 Jahre Mark Brandenburg. Fachtagung . . . 2007 in Brandenburg an der Havel, ed. Joachim Müller, Klaus Neitmann and Franz Schopper (Wünsdorf 2009), pp. 101–21. 48 Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 556. Apparently the council consisted above all of clothing cutters, in other words fabric merchants. Their union is first attested in 1231, again for Stendal. Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 603. 49 Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 603. Guilds were associations of artisans, in the medieval cities of Brandenburg above all bakers, butchers, and shoemakers, who worked for the populace of the city, as well as wool and linen weavers, who also exported their products. 50 Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 1372.

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the Baltic Sea also appears in the sources, and the first union of towns in the mark came in 1308. Judicial rights were among the foundations of Ascanian power. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries these shifted from being a responsibility the margraves carried out as, in effect, officers of the crown into becoming a part of princely lordship. After about 1180 the margraves numbered alongside the dukes in the group of imperial princes whose secular members received their fiefs directly from the German king through the handing over of a banner.51 First attested in 1179, advocates appear as the margrave’s deputies.52 These officials came from the ranks of the ministeriales along with so-called lay judges (assessors) and performed judicial functions in specific regions – they also collected aids. Their sphere of office expanded. Eventually, there were advocates in the Brandenburg districts of Havelland, Zauche, Teltow, Barnim, Lebus, Prignitz, the Old Mark, Uckermark and the New Mark. Towards the end of Ascanian lordship the towns brought the rights of high justice that had previously belonged to noble advocates of the margrave for particular areas within the city walls, to be exercised by their mayors or councils. Mostly, they took advantage of the prince’s shortages of money to accomplish this. Less important cases (low justice) already came under the authority of mayors and lay judges in the towns. The margraves continued, however, to exercise high justice over their own ministeriales and vassals. The Ascanians did not only receive income from judicial payments and fines. Here the so-called regalia, the services originally owed to the king, played an important role, especially tolls, rights over markets, mints and mills and over Jews. Later, under pressure from the towns, many of these tolls, and the number of toll stations, were reduced; or sometimes sold to the towns by the margrave, as for example judicial rights exercised within the walls, notably charges on mills, mints and markets. Tolls on trade along the Elbe and Oder were especially important sources of income for the princes. The Brandenburg Ascanians did not have a fixed residence, although they frequently stayed at the castles of Tangermünde and Spandau. The princely chancery consisted of clerics, while nobles provided the court officials, the cupbearer, steward, marshal and chamberlain. After the 1280s, as the knights and towns began to form into organised estates, largely in response to the margraves’ demands for aids, a fixed margravial circle of advisors began to form. The neighbours of the Brandenburg Ascanians also employed the same methods of land development – fighting wars, encouraging settlement and the foundation of castles, monasteries, towns and villages. However, the Ascanians, especially the brothers John I and Otto III working together, were apparently more single-minded, dogged and persistent in the employment of

51 Andrea Stieldorf, Marken und Markgrafen. Studien zur Grenzsicherung durch die fränkisch-deutschen Herrscher (Hanover 2012), pp. 337–42. 52 Regesten der Markgrafen, no. 430.

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these means. The margraves of Brandenburg followed up the acquisition of land – whether by purchase, force, compelling vassalage or as pledge – very rapidly with planned land development. If such regions were already settled, then colonisation was continued and their lordship consolidated. The kings no longer tried to impose burgraves in Brandenburg or otherwise interfere in the mark. Thus, the bishops of Brandenburg and Havelberg, directly answerable to the ruler but with only limited resources, lacked royal support in conflicts with the Ascanians who had eliminated these burgraves by about 1230.53 Henry the Lion, who had been Albrecht the Bear’s chief rival, and his Welf successors no longer posed much of a threat after Barbarossa had engineered the fall of the duke of Saxony in 1180. The collapse of Danish lordship south of the Baltic in the Battle of Bornhöved (1227) brought about the fall of another important Ascanian opponent and also robbed Pomerania of its strongest source of external support. On top of that, Pomerania was divided between two lineages. As a result, in 1236 the Brandenburgers could take Stargard from the Demminer princes and in 1250 Uckermark from the princes of Stettin. Possession of the districts of Bautzen and Görlitz – at first as a dowry from the king of Bohemia – was naturally very valuable, because with them, among other things, Brandenburg gained a great advantage over the margraves of Meissen and Lausitz from the Wettin dynasty. Finally, after years of conflict, the margraves succeeded in taking the castles of Köpenick and Mittenwalde from the Wettin Henry the Illustrious between 1240 and 1245, and then even managed to impose an Ascanian as archbishop of Magdeburg in 1283. Of considerable importance for the rise of the mark was the long dual rule of the energetic brothers John I and Otto III, as well as the preservation of the principality’s unity despite its internal division in 1258. The margraves of Brandenburg bothered little with the affairs of the Reich, although Otto III tried and failed to gain the German crown in 1256. In 1292 his nephew, Otto IV, was, it seems, briefly considered as a candidate for election as king.54 That they should be considered, albeit fleetingly, as possible monarchs reflects the very considerable increase in the power and authority of the margraves at this period.

53 Clemens Bergstedt, ‘Die politischen Beziehungen der Bischöfe von Brandenburg und Havelberg zu den askanischen Markgrafen von Brandenburg’, in Wie die Mark entstand [as note 47], pp. 352–61. 54 Fundamental studies on this issue are Johannes Schultze, Die Mark Brandenburg, vol. i: Entstehung und Entwicklung unter den askanischen Markgrafen (bis 1319) (4th ed., 2011); Eberhard Schmidt, Die Mark Brandenburg unter den Askaniern (1134–1320) (Cologne 1973); Hans K. Schulze, ‘Territorienbildung und soziale Strukturen in der Mark Brandenburg im hohen Mittelalter’, in Herrschaft und Stand. Untersuchungen zur Sozialgeschichte im 13. Jahrhundert, ed. Josef Fleckenstein (2nd ed., Göttingen 1979), pp. 254–76; Clemens Bergstedt, ‘Die Mark Brandenburg unter den Askaniern (1170 bis 1319/20). Grundzüge ihrer historisch-politischen Entwicklung’, in Askanier-Studien [as note 11], pp. 213–58.

19 The Babenbergs From frontier march to principality Christina Lutter

Margraves in the borderland In popular handbooks one can read that the Babenbergs ruled the Austrian march, which was elevated to a duchy in the mid-twelfth century, from 976 to 1246. But on closer examination even this apparently plain statement is not as clear as it appears.1 The sources for the early history of the Babenbergs in Austria do not in fact allow us precisely to date the origins of the march, nor clearly to define either the extent of the region the Babenberger ruled or the details of the office they held. Even the family name was only reconstructed later, from a period when the process of territorial creation was already advanced. Early mentions of the marc(h/i)a orientalis, in which the Babenberger established their lordship, come from the late tenth century; the first reference to a Luitpold/Leopold, to whom King Otto II gave responsibility for the borderland on the Danube, dates to 976.2 At that time the march consisted only of the area between the Enns in the west and the Vienna Woods in the east; the ‘North Forest’ beyond the Danube was in the zone of Bohemian influence, while in the south the march

1 Important overviews are provided by Karl Brunner, Herzogtümer und Marken vom Ungarnsturm bis ins 12. Jahrhundert. Österreichische Geschichte 907–1156 (Vienna 1994); Heinz Dopsch, Die Länder und das Reich. Der Ostalpenraum im Hochmittelalter. Österreichische Geschichte 1122–1278 (Vienna 1999), which also pay attention to the more general history of the Empire and the European context. Maximilian Weltin, ‘Landesfürst und Adel – Österreichs Werden’, in ibid., pp. 218–61, and idem, Das Land und sein Recht. Ausgewählte Beiträge zur Verfassungsgeschichte Österreichs im Mittelalter, ed. F. Reichert and W. Stelzer (Vienna 2006) present the current state of research into territorial history. Central for the older scholarship is Karl Lechner, Die Babenberger. Markgrafen und Herzoge von Österreich (6th ed., Vienna 1996); cf. also Georg Scheibelreiter, Die Babenberger. Reichsfürsten und Landesherren (Vienna 2010). 2 The sources for Babenberg history are collected in UB Babenberger, and newly edited with commentary in Niederösterreichisches Urkundenbuch (NöUB), ed. Maximilian Weltin, Roman Zehetmayer, Dagmar Weltin et al. (vol. i, St. Pölten 2008, vol. ii (parts 1–2), St. Pölten 2013), here, i. no. 16b. Contemporary naming varies; here I use the forms generally adopted by modern scholars.

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bordered on the duchy of Carinthia with its Styrian march. The small but strategically important march had belonged since the Carolingian Empire’s expansion to the ‘Eastern Land’ (plaga orientalis) of the duchy of Bavaria, whose purpose until c. 800 was protection against the Avars, and then from the late ninth century against the Magyars.3 At the same time the East Frankish kings strove to limit the autonomy of the Bavarian dukes by filling important positions in Bavaria with their own relatives or royal officials. This enormous region in the Bavarian east, thinly and poly-ethnically settled, presented many challenges, both to Bavarian dukes and to royal functionaries – notably the military defence of the borderland, its cultivation and dealings with its neighbours. Far from the centres of kingship, local officials had to act independently, which led frequently to conflicts. Often alliances with the Moravian, Bohemian and later Hungarian princes and influential groups in their lands were more important than loyalty to the king. This openness in power relations is one of the key organisational elements at the heart of the southeastern periphery of the empire, and was a prerequisite for establishing lasting lordship there. In 907 nearly the entire Bavarian military force, including a Margrave Luitpold from the plaga orientalis, was annihilated during one of the Magyar raids into the West that terrified all of Europe for the next 50 years. It was only after the Ottonian kings’ successes against them that it was possible to stabilise the southeast of the empire. An important element was the decision by the Magyar prince Géza (972–997) to open his country to Christianity. The new Christian regna that gradually came into being in Central Europe in the years around 1000 – Bohemia and Poland as well as Hungary – played a central role in the eastern parts of the German empire as a model for integrating supra-regional lordship.4 In the course of political-military reorganisation, those involved looked back to Carolingian administrative models, and it is also possible to assume personal continuities. That the new man ruling the march in 976 had the same name, Luitpold, as the margrave who fell in 907 certainly points in this direction. The powerful Luitpolding family had long served as dukes of Bavaria in the tenth century and had built up their power base there. Whether and to what degree the new margrave was related to the Luitpoldings is a matter for conjecture. There is a tradition that the famous twelfth-century

3 Andrea Stieldorf, Marken und Markgrafen. Studien zur Grenzsicherung durch die fränkisch-deutschen Herrscher (Hanover 2012); Herwig Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume. Geschichte Österreichs vor seiner Entstehung. Österreichische Geschichte 378–907 (Vienna 1995). 4 Patrick G. Geary, The Myths of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton 2002); David Kalhous, Anatomy of a Duchy: The Political and Ecclesiastical Structures of Early Přemyslid Bohemia (Leiden 2012); Nora Berend et al., Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, c. 900 – c. 1300 (Cambridge 2013).

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chronicler Otto of Freising, himself a Babenberg, presents. He tells of a Bavarian count Adalbert of Bamberg, from whom descended the Adalbert who ‘afterward rescued the eastern march, that is, Upper Pannonia, from the Hungarians and annexed it to the Roman Empire’.5 This margrave, with whom Otto begins the Babenberg genealogy, was the son of the first Leopold and his second successor on the march. He played a role under the Salian emperors in the conflicts with the Hungarians, in the course of which the border between Thaya, March and Leitha was pushed eastwards.6 Like the relationship with the ‘Luitpoldings’, the connection to the ‘older’ Babenbergs in the Bavarian heartland is not directly attested, but it is plausible, for the later transmission also shows plainly that in the genealogical outlines certain kin groupings and social connections were stressed depending on political necessity. In any case, at this point in the late tenth century verifiable continuities begin, represented not least by the recurring name Leopold/Luitpold, borne by a total of six Babenberg margraves or dukes.7 The first representatives of the family did not yet concentrate their interests on the march. One of Leopold I’s sons, Poppo, became archbishop of Trier (1016–47); another, Ernst (d. 1015), was duke of Swabia and the first husband of the later queen Gisela. Leopold and his successor Henry were not even buried in the march. Memorial culture in Babenberg monastic foundations was only established with Melk in the mid-eleventh century, where the first two margraves resided and where, from 1123 on, the oldest historical record of the region, the Melk Annals, was composed.8 During the time in which Henry held office in the march the first vernacular naming of the region in a royal document occurred: in 996 Otto III gave land to the bishopric of Freising in regione vulgari vocabulo Ostarrichi in marcha et in comitatu Heinrici comitis filii Luitpaldus marchionis. This formulation demonstrates that in the contemporary view the geographical and political areas of the march were not yet congruent. Here, too, the functional designations marchio and comes are used without discernible distinction.9 Furthermore, when Lampert of Hersfeld reported the death of Margrave Ernst in Saxony, where he supported King Henry IV, in 1075, he referred to him as marchio Baioariorum. Thus, to an outsider at that time neither the

5 Otto, Chronik VI.15: Ex huius Alberti sanguine Albertus, qui postmodum Marchiam orientalem, id est Pannoniam superiorem, Ungaris ereptam Romano imperio adiecit originem duxisse traditur. 6 Herwig Wolfram, Conrad II, 990–1039: Emperor of Three Kingdoms, trans. Denise A. Kaiser (Philadelphia 2006), pp. 245–56. 7 Heide Dienst, Regionalgeschichte und Gesellschaft im Hochmittelalter am Beispiel Österreichs (Vienna 1990), pp. 15–22; Karl Brunner, Leopold, der Heilige. Ein Portrait aus dem Frühling des Mittelalters (Vienna 2009), p. 50. 8 For the early history of Melk, see NöUB 1, no. 34. 9 MGH Dipl. Otto III, p. 647 no. 232; cf. Brunner, Herzogtümer, pp. 171–2.

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march on the Danube nor his family was worth mentioning, but only his role as a Bavarian official.10

Territorial development and the creation of political structures Nevertheless, during the late tenth and eleventh centuries territorial development began at the hands not only of the margraves, but also of noble families and ecclesiastical institutions. Especially important among the latter were the archdiocese of Salzburg and the Bavarian bishoprics of Passau, Regensburg and Freising, as well as the Franconian sees of Eichstätt and Bamberg. They were often active on their own initiative, sometimes with the help of unfree servants, and motivated and legitimated by royal gifts. This last element was more significant symbolically in the sense of royal support and validation of claims rather than concretely as a definitive base for possession. Although the holdings of secular and ecclesiastical lords and their fortified centres in this period can often only be reconstructed approximately, recent research into territorial history has worked out a complex picture of cooperation and rivalry among the margrave’s family, important magnates in the march and other groups in the region.11 This picture does not suggest a clearly defined region of territorial lordship but rather a variety of personal ties between men with overlapping possessions, rights and incomes – resources that were necessary to develop the territory. At first the margraves were only primi inter pares. Still, they could use their royally delegated authority to call up a military contingent, an independence from the king that was essential in the borderland, to help build up their own pre-eminent position and to utilise their location on the border as the basis for an increasingly autonomous principality.12 If this century of continuous but unspectacular development work is mainly documented in charters, contemporary chroniclers also took note of the role that Margrave Leopold II and his like-named son played in the so-called ‘Investiture Contest’, the conflict between emperors and the papacy (1075–1122). The development of this controversy and its regional consequences were undoubtedly significant in forming the profile of Babenberg lordship in the empire’s new political landscape, while ecclesiastical reforms and organisation also contributed to territorial formation. The relations with important reform leaders like the archbishops of Salzburg and the bishops of Passau played a major role in this process. At first Leopold II was a supporter of King Henry IV, who in 1076 made Leopold a gift in the northern forest district ‘because we believe that he

10 Lambert, p. 219 [English translation: Robinson, p. 263]. 11 Weltin, Landesfürst, and idem, Beiträge as well as the commentary of NöUB. 12 On the dues in the borderland from the tenth century on, see Weltin, Landesfürst, p. 240.

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will remain faithful to us’.13 Only two years later he was already becoming untrustworthy. In 1081, after the second excommunication of the king by Gregory VII, the margrave went over to the other side, in the presence of the primores sui regiminis, as the author of the vita of the reform bishop Altmann of Passau put it some 50 years later. The result was that his followers had to abandon this part of the region, and indeed Henry IV granted the march to the Bohemian king Vratislav, who in the following year inflicted a severe military defeat on the Babenberg, again according to the Vita Altmanni, which is the only source for this event.14 Neither action, however, had long-term consequences, because without the support of the region’s magnates the Bohemian king was unable to establish himself. Nonetheless, in 1084 Leopold had to submit once more to Henry IV, who had now been crowned emperor by the anti-pope, while the reformer Bishop Altmann was forced to abandon his see. The conflict highlights above all that by this time it was hard to separate the person and office of the margrave from the territory and its people. After 1081/2 it is also possible to detect a distinct shift in the march’s policy of expansion. In its course, the district north of the Danube toward Bohemia was more strongly developed and secured with the help of noble Babenberg supporters and margravial ministeriales. In the twelfth century this group of ministeriales produced a number of social climbers, who by c. 1200 constituted the new leading elite of the territory with their own knightly entourage.15 During the last decade of his life, Leopold II (d. 1095) is for the most part attested in the north of the march around his castle of Gars. However, like his father Ernst and Ernst’s brother Adalbert he was buried in Melk on the Danube. His marriage with Ita connected him to a powerful Bavarian noble group that was influential in eastern Bavaria, in the Austrian and Styrian march, but also in Saxony and Thuringia. The marriage of their daughters document the importance of strategically important relationship networks for upward mobility: the new partners were the dukes of Bohemia and Carinthia, the margrave of Styria, the counts of Peilstein and Liutold of Moravia.16 Still, it was only with the marriage of Leopold’s like-named successor to Agnes, daughter of Emperor Henry IV and widow of the Swabian duke Frederick I, that the Babenbergs were able to make the leap into the empire’s

13 MGH Dipl. Henry IV, p. 369 no. 285; NöUB no. 36a, p. 431: Inter quos Liupoldum marchionem nostrum respeximus, quem quia fidelem nobis perseverare credimus, petitionem eius fieri adiudicavimus; Brunner, Herzogtümer, pp. 324–31. 14 Vita Altmanni, MGH SS xii.236–7: UB Babenberger iv(1), no. 585. 15 Weltin, Landesfürst, pp. 219–32. Cf. John B. Freed, Noble Bondsmen: Ministerial Marriages in the Archdiocese of Salzburg, 1100–1343 (Ithaca 1995). 16 Summarised in Brunner, Leopold, p. 80.

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highest élite. The marriage forged a kinship link to two royal families, the Salians and Staufer. The circumstances of their union are closely tied to the political conflicts that divided the empire. For the details we have an outstanding (although admittedly partisan) near-contemporary source, the chronicle of Otto of Freising, who was the fourth son of Leopold and Agnes. According to Otto, in the year 1105 Emperor Henry IV (whom the pope had excommunicated again in 1100) and his son Henry (who had been designated heir in 1099) found themselves at odds. The regnum, said Otto, was ‘miserably divided. Military forces were assembled from all its parts, the land was cruelly laid waste with fire and sword, and now the two, father and son, stood opposing one another on the bank of the [River] Regen’. Leopold III and his brother-in-law Borivoj of Bohemia, who both had interests and relatives in this region, at first stood together on Henry IV’s side. But shortly before the battle they began peace negotiations. A military conflict was averted thanks to the two brothers-in-law going over to Henry V’s side. Only Otto mentions the young king’s promise to give Leopold his recently widowed sister Agnes as wife; other sources, notably the Regensburg imperial chronicle, do not even mention Leopold III in their accounts of the events of 1105.17

From march to duchy In the years after this political ‘shift’, the reasons for which are hard to assess but may well lie in the tangled web of the varying obligations of people bound to one another with complex ties, as is typical of this period, a clear political profile of the Babenberg lordship started to emerge.18 This first flowering of Babenberg lordship, which both the contemporary sources and older scholarship credit to Leopold III, was in fact grounded above all in the changes (not least in personal and property relations) which began in the march during the reform decades. However, we can also perceive this more clearly as the contemporary sources, and especially historical narratives, become fuller. However, such sources primarily give voice to the rich monastic culture that was established in the Danube region in precisely these decades, a development made possible by the ecclesiastical reform movement. Leopold III is remembered above all as a ‘founder of monasteries’, an image of him as peacemaker and political saint that was in fact constructed posthumously, following the model of ‘holy kings’, which had already been

17 Otto, Chronik VII.9: Igitur regno miserabiliter in se ipso diviso, ex omnibus eius viribus coadunato milite, ferro flammaque crudeliter vastata terra in ripa Regini fluminis uterque, scilicet pater et filius, consedit. On this issue, see Brunner, Leopold, pp. 108–17. 18 Ibid., p. 107.

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established much earlier in the new Christian regna of Central Europe. This image, which ultimately led to Leopold’s canonisation in 1485 and was closely linked to a bid the territorial princes successfully made for their own bishopric at more-or-less this same period, also corresponds very well to his engagement with ecclesiastical foundations, although in fact, he and his wife Agnes were only directly responsible for one monastic foundation, Klosterneuburg. The first Cistercian foundation in the march, and the most important Babenberg burial centre, Heligenkreuz (1133) came into being at the initiative of his son Otto, although it certainly had Leopold III’s support.19 All the other foundations in the region were either the work of his predecessors or of other local noble families.20 Their beginnings are often shrouded in darkness. Existing ecclesiastical organisation on a regional level is better evidenced from around 1100 onwards and was no doubt due to reforming initiatives. However, most foundation narratives and the endowment traditions of individual communities were generally compiled much later, and document above all the political interests of their own time, although they clearly show that these communities were concerned with the memory of all benefactors, whose motives for their part were often complex. The sources show both cooperation and conflict between margraves and magnates, just as much as their interaction among their own families and with the monasteries.21 In the Danube march both monastic foundations and reforming activities came relatively late. At first the ecclesiastical institutions with a foot in the territory, which from the eleventh century were also in charge of pastoral care in the march, were the Bavarian bishoprics, especially Passau. Until 1254 its diocesan border with the archdiocese of Salzburg corresponded roughly to the border between Austria and the Styrian march. While in the Salzburg province many important foundations date back to the Carolingian era, east of the Enns there was under the first margraves only a single monastery, St. Pölten.22 Parallel to the spread of settlements along the Danube toward the Vienna Woods, ecclesiastical foundations proceeded in the core

19 Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge 2002). The Habsburg Emperor Frederick III received permission to establish the bishoprics of Vienna and Wiener Neustadt in 1469; see Brunner, Leopold, pp. 154–63 and 206–16. 20 Jonathan Lyon, ‘The View From Outside the Monastery: The Nobility and Monastic Patronage’, in The New Cambridge History of Medieval Western Monasticism, ed. Alison I. Beach and Isabella Cochelin (Cambridge 2017); and more specifically Christina Lutter, ‘Vita communis in central European monastic landscapes’, in Meanings of Community Across Eurasia, ed. Eirik Hovden, Christina Lutter and Walter Pohl (Leiden 2016), pp. 362–87, at pp. 370–80. 21 Weltin, Landesfürst; Folker Reichert, Landesherrschaft, Adel und Vogtei. Zur Vorgeschichte des spätmittelalterlichen Ständewesens im Herzogtum Österreich (Cologne 1985). 22 Wolfram, Grenzen, pp. 105–24; the St. Pölten tradition is in NöUB 1, no. 12c.

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region of the march, for example at Melk, site of the margraves’ first castle. In the eleventh century, as the margraves’ power centres extended beyond the Danube both eastward and northward, Melk was left in the hands of churchmen, who from 1089 on followed the Benedictine Rule with support from monks of the reform monastery of Lambach. Melk became one of the most important Babenberg monasteries, with the oldest tradition of historical writing and an early flowering of spiritual lyric poetry, whose most important practitioner was the recluse Ava.23 The same is true of Göttweig, a Passau foundation, which was reformed from St. Blasien in the Black Forest and then went on to reform monasteries in the Babenberg and Styrian marches. It was to Göttweig that Bishop Altmann retreated when he had to leave Passau during the political conflicts of the reform; and it was here that his vita was produced, a text which can also be read as a programmatic work for Margrave Leopold III.24 Leopold’s foundation of Klosterneuburg demonstrates the spatial and structural closeness of ecclesiastical and secular lordship particularly well. The establishment of monasteries went hand in hand with initiatives in settlement and castle-building. This is particularly evident for the foundations along the Danube: the ‘new castle’ was constructed for both the margrave’s court and for his clerics. In 1114 the cornerstone was laid for an imposing church that was consecrated in 1136 while the margrave was still alive. The house of canons regular and two communities of canonesses under Passau and Salzburg influence soon enjoyed great popularity among the families of the regional magnates. The whole site was chosen according to Leopold’s eastward-oriented policies, which his son Henry II continued by establishing nearby Vienna as a residence. The survival of a large number of documents allows us to see the margrave’s judicial and lordship practices, the existence of infrastructure and specialist staff at his court, and the leadership élites around him.25 Leopold’s lordship looks more structured, both spatially and personally, than that of a generation before. Loosely bound alliances were institutionally stabilised, while administrative and judicial practice was concentrated on fewer (and therefore more central) locations – such as Klosterneuburg, Tulln or St. Pölten. It is possible to read tendencies toward intensifying lordship in the terminology of documents and narrative sources. Most notably,

23 Details on Melk in NöUB 1, no. 34; on Ava cf. Fritz Peter Knapp, Die Literatur des Früh- und Hochmittelalters in den Bistümern Passau, Salzburg, Brixen und Trient von den Anfängen bis zum Jahre 1273 (Graz 1994), pp. 117–23. See also Lyon, ‘The view from outside’, and for the phenomenon more generally, Benjamin Arnold, Power and Property in Medieval Germany: Economic and Social Change c. 900–1300 (Oxford 2004), pp. 150–74. 24 Brunner, Leopold, p. 158. 25 Ibid., pp. 122, 134.

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the terms for land (terra) and the important magnates (primi, primores) are more frequently coupled and connected to lordship (regimen or principatus terrae). The sources also already speak of a specific ‘law of the land’ (ius illius terrae).26 The ‘honourable prince and margrave’, as Leopold is called in an agreement with the bishop of Passau in 1135, may already have been reckoned among the most important princes in the empire at the royal election following the death of Henry V a decade earlier. Theoretically, he may even have been considered a candidate, even if his nomination was essentially an opening gambit, intended to establish Lothar of Supplinburg as the eventual winner in the contest.27 The margrave’s de facto power base was probably still too limited to claim the imperial throne, and his network with the powerful élites of the empire was not yet dense enough. The Babenbergs’ position, though, was strengthened further through the dynastic links and positions of Leopold’s numerous children with Agnes. Before her marriage to Leopold, the margravine had allegedly already borne Frederick I of Swabia 11 children, including his successors to the duchy Frederick II and Conrad (III), the latter succeeding Lothar as king in 1138. She then had perhaps as many as 18 children with the Babenberger, 11 of whom reached adulthood, including later dukes of Bavaria and Austria and bishops of Freising, Passau and Salzburg; their daughters married into the ruling families of Poland, Bohemia, Thuringia and Montferrat, while one wed the burgrave of Regensburg.28 After Leopold III’s death in 1136, his third son, another Leopold, was his immediate successor in the march. When the Welf Duke of Bavaria, Henry the Proud, died in 1139, King Conrad transferred the duchy to his Babenberger half-brother. But Leopold IV died not long afterwards, and his older brother Henry II ‘Jasomirgott’ assumed both offices. Henry already controlled both the Salian family lands, through the inheritance of his mother Agnes, and the palatine countship of the Rhine. The background to these events at a national level was the conflict between Welfs and Staufen, about which we are well-informed through the Historia Welforum, and especially the historical work of the Babenberg Otto of Freising, both in his world chronicle and his later history of Frederick Barbarossa. Otto became bishop of Freising in 1138, and in his writings he showed considerable reserve towards his two ducal brothers when discussing these violent conflicts

26 Ibid., pp. 55–77. 27 UB Babenberger IV/1, no. 674; Narratio de electione Lotharii in regem Romanorum, ed. W. Wattenbach, MGH SS xii.509–12, esp. c. 1. 28 For the children of her second marriage, Continuatio Claustroneoburgensis Prima, MGH SS ix.610–12; see Dienst, Regionalgeschichte, pp. 46–71; Brunner, Leopold, p. 121. It is, however, possible that the Klosterneuburg chronicler confused some of the children from the first and the second marriage.

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which had laid his diocese waste.29 An effort to mediate and to legitimate Henry II through marriage to Gertrude, Henry the Proud’s widow, failed when she died in childbirth in 1143. Her brother-in-law Welf VI mobilised a coalition against the Staufen king and Babenberg duke, which included among others Margrave Ottokar III of Styria, whose mother Sophie was a Welf, and the Hungarian king Géza II. These conflicts were interrupted by the second great crusading endeavour in 1146/7, in which many of the adversaries took part. Henry II returned with a Byzantine wife, Emperor Manuel’s niece Theodora, which brought him increased prestige but due to the ever-changing political situation in Byzantium did not open up opportunities for him there.30 Despite considerable opposition, Henry Jasomirgott was able to maintain his position in Bavaria for almost two decades. However, his political dealings with his neighbours and in supra-regional context show how much his increased power also increased the number and intensity of related conflicts of interest. Coping with them required more resources than were available in the core region of his lordship. The end of the Babenbergs’ phase as dukes of Bavaria was made politically possible by the elevation of the march of Austria into a duchy. The settlement that Frederick Barbarossa finally succeeded in bringing about in 1156 gave formal expression to the status the march had already reached as an autonomous principality and confirmed some individual aspects of the territorial princely lordship that had previously developed. The marchia Austrie was separated from the duchy of Bavaria (which was now returned to the Welfs) and was granted to the Babenberg Henry II as a ducatus that answered only to the emperor. Further concessions included in what came to be called the Privilegium Minus31 were the heritability of the ducal title in both the male and female line, the right to choose a successor freely in the case of childlessness and the limitation of ‘feudal’ obligations to the king – the duke’s presence was only demanded at assemblies taking place in Bavaria, and he was obliged to provide military assistance only in lands neighbouring the duchy.32

29 Cf. Hans-Werner Goetz, Das Geschichtsbild Ottos von Freising. Ein Beitrag zur historischen Vorstellungswelt und zur Geschichte des 12. Jahrhunderts (Vienna 1984); Joachim Ehlers, Otto von Freising. Ein Intellektueller im Mittelalter. Eine Biographie (Munich 2013); Jonathan R. Lyon, Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100–1250 (Ithaca 2013), pp. 80–8. 30 Dopsch, Länder, pp. 128–34. 31 The name was adopted to illustrate the contrast with the expanded claims of the Habsburg Rudolf IV 200 years later in the famous forgery known as the Privilegium Maius: UB Babenberger IV/1, nos. 787 and 803–4; NöoUB 2/2 nos. 301, 302. 32 The text of the Privilegium Minus is most easily available in MGH Dipl. Frederick I, i.259–60 no. 151 [English translation, below p. 347–9]. For discussion, see also Loud, ‘A political and social revolution’, above pp. 15–16.

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Consolidation and crisis This concession of judicial authority was central for the further internal establishment of territorial lordship, for within the duchy lordship rights were still rather fragmented. In the following decades, remaining regalia were successively transferred to the territorial princes. Duke Henry II was able to garner not only the property of noble families that had died out, but also advocacies of important monasteries even outside of his duchy, such as Admont in Styria, one of the wealthiest ecclesiastical centres in the eastern Alps. With the inheritance agreement that Henry’s successor Leopold V made with Ottokar IV (the last of the Styrian ‘Ottokars’) in 1186, he succeeded in effecting an enormous territorial expansion of Babenberg lordship. A few years earlier this region, originally established as a march’ on the Hungarian border, had also been made a duchy, as part of the reorganisation that followed the final deposition of the Welfs from the Bavarian duchy, where the Wittelsbachs assumed lordship in 1180.33 While the Privilegium Minus brings into focus the relationship of the Babenberg duchy to imperial authority, the concessions the childless Styrian duke had to make to his people when concluding his inheritance agreement with Duke Leopold once again illustrate the ‘internal’ aspects of the establishment of lordship. Ottokar had successfully strengthened his position within his duchy in a manner comparable to the Babenbergs, while at the same time social and governmental structures within the territory had increasingly solidified.34 Along with the territorial development in newly acquired districts in the north and southeast, a loyal cluster of ministeriales developed as the core of the future territorial nobility. These ministeriales carried out a widespread takeover of advocacies over the most important monasteries in the territory, as well as exercising judicial functions, which they undertook in the prince’s name. Like Vienna in Henry II’s lordship, Graz was developed as a centre of lordship in the Styrian march. As in the Austrian march, it is possible to discern a territorial consciousness from the terminology used by the sources and from symbols of lordship like the Styrian coat of arms. Recognition of this consciousness and its bearers was provided in a document called the Georgenberg Compact (Georgenberger Handfeste), named after the place where it was promulgated in 1186. This mentions agreements between Ottokar and the Babenberg dukes, as well as with the emperor, which are not otherwise extant.35 In this text the rights of ministeriales and the holders of ecclesiastical lordships in the territory were first laid down in writing. The indivisibility of lordship over the two duchies that were about to be united through the inheritance contract was also stressed.

33 Dopsch, Länder, pp. 148–51, 296–8. See above, p. 16 34 Ibid., pp. 270–307. 35 Ibid., pp. 298–302; cf. UB Steiermark, no. 677.

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Ottokar died, and Leopold thus inherited Styria, in 1192. In this same year another spectacular event occurred. The English king Richard the Lionheart was captured by Babenberg dependents south of Vienna on his return journey from the Third Crusade, an event that even in near-contemporary sources was already becoming a subject of legend and propaganda.36 The background was once again political conflict on the European stage, which culminated in events on the Third Crusade. At its heart lay the rivalry between Richard and the French king Philip II, who were connected through shifting alliances with parties in the German Empire and imperial interests in Sicily. The Austrian duke played only a subordinate role in these European power relationships. But, after Emperor Frederick’s death on Crusade, the duke was the most important imperial prince on the spot in the Holy Land. It is not completely clear how and even whether he came to be humiliated by Richard in the course of the continuing conflicts between the crusaders there. At any rate, Leopold V could put the conflict to good use: Barbarossa’s successor Henry VI continued the alliance with Philip II against Richard the Lionheart, while the Babenberger remained on the Staufen side. Travelling through the Austrian lands on his way back from the Holy Land, King Richard was captured and imprisoned in Dürnstein Castle, which belonged to the Kuenringer, a powerful Austrian ministerial family, and soon afterwards handed over to the emperor.37 Leopold and his territories profited from the ransom paid for Richard’s release. The rumoured 50,000 silver marks that Leopold received as his share funded a decisive upswing in the ducal towns. Around the year 1200 fortifications were constructed in the Danube locales of Enns, Vienna and Hainburg, as well as at Wiener Neustadt, a new princely foundation on the border between the two Babenberg duchies of Austria and Styria. The mint was transferred from Krems on the Danube to Vienna and the responsible institution, the ‘mint house cooperative’ (Münzer Hausgenossen) was granted privileges. Soon, Viennese pennies were the most important currency throughout the region. At least as important for the prosperity of the Babenberg lands as the English ransom money was the introduction of a more systematic fiscal policy.38 In 1194, still under Leopold V, a reorganisation of princely property was begun, based on leases to rich Jewish and Christian townspeople. Leopold’s successors developed this source of revenue. New property acquired through purchase or fiefs that fell vacant were integrated into this agreement, but only a small part of the old Babenberg holdings. Under Leopold’s son of the same name, whose lordship after the

36 Regesten zur Frühgeschichte von Wien, ed. Klaus Lohrmann and Ferdinand Opll (Vienna 1981), no. 232; Jean Dunbabin, Captivity and Imprisonment in Medieval Europe, 1000– 1300 (New York 2002), pp. 4–6, 160–1. 37 Peter Csendes, Heinrich VI (Darmstadt 1993), pp. 123–5. 38 Lohrmann and Opll, Regesten, nos. 241, 247; Weltin, Landesfürst, pp. 251–2.

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short rule of his older brother Frederick I (1195–98) marked the apex of Babenberg power, Lambach, Wels and Linz were acquired by the duke in the strategically important ‘Upper Austrian’ west of the territory, close to Bavaria. Further east, he also endowed a new ducal Cistercian foundation at Lilienfeld in the Vienna Woods.39 This developing princely fiscal policy corresponded to a perceptible urban development, and opened up extraordinary opportunities for profit to urban élites. The latter were closely connected to the local nobility in dense networks of relationship. One cannot therefore formulate a formal definition of this urban ruling élite c. 1200; their position was dependent on a fluid combination of wealth, noble ancestry or knightly service, as well as access to political functions. However, the expanding sources available do show increasing differentiation between social groups in the towns. The establishment of settlements by the Babenbergs and other noble families advanced alongside fortification and territorial development. From the eleventh century onwards urban foundations were furnished with markets and rights of toll. In 1159 the bishop of Passau granted judicial privileges to the citizens (burgenses) of St. Pölten. The first princely town liberties date from 1212 (Enns) and 1221 (Vienna). The specification of town privileges in writing marked, however, rather the end of an important phase of urban development than any fundamental innovation.40 Vienna is a good example of this process. By c. 1100 the margravial entourage, as well as other noble families, had holdings and influence there. An exchange agreement with the bishopric of Passau in 1137 created the necessary conditions to build the church of St. Stephen. Toward the end of the Babenberg period as dukes of Bavaria, Henry II transferred the centre of his lordship from Regensburg to Vienna and developed the town into an early residence. The town wall was constructed c. 1200, and new ‘suburbs’ arose. Viennese citizens appear increasingly as witnesses in ducal documents and become visible as a politically active community. The town liberty of 1221 included, with the grant of a staple, a decisive favouring of the town in the context of central European trade relations. Already in 1208 Leopold V had issued a privilege for the Flemish merchants who had settled there.41

39 For evidence in detail, see ibid., p. 251. 40 Peter Csendes, ‘Urban Development and Decline on the Central Danube, 1000–1600’, in Towns in Decline, AD 1000–1600, ed. Terry R. Slater (Aldershot 2000), pp. 137–53; Erwin Kupfer, ‘Stadt und Adel im babenbergischen Österreich’, in Die Städte und Märkte Niederösterreichs im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. W. Rosner and R. Motz-Linhart (St. Pölten 2005), pp. 11–23. For a recent bibliography on Austrian urban spaces (Middle Ages to present), cf. Hermann Rafetseder, ‘Österreichische Städtebibliographie 2013’, in Pro Civitate Austriae, new series 19 (2014), 93–114. 41 Cf. Opll and Lohrmann, Regesten, 34 et seq., as well as nos. 64 (1137), 241 (after 1194), 305 (1208), and 376 (1221). [The 1208 privilege is also printed in Ostsiedlung, ii.474–6 no. 125].

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In the same decades, new religious foundations for both men and women were established in the town, adding to the earlier Benedictine ‘Scottish’ monastery, founded in 1155 after the model of Regensburg. Some of these new houses were situated on the main roads leading out of town, which thus served as both trade and pilgrimage routes.42 Crusade armies like Frederick Barbarossa’s swept through Vienna toward the southeast. Magnificent weddings took place here, such as Leopold VI’s marriage to Theodora, a relative of the Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos in November 1203, only a few months before Christian crusaders conquered and destroyed Constantinople. Prominent guests took part in such festivities, like Bishop Wolfger of Passau, who later became patriarch of Aquileia and from whose travel accounts we know many details of the everyday operation of the court. It was most probably at Wolfger’s episcopal court in Passau that the first vernacular version of the Nibelungenlied was created around the year 1200, while troubadours such as Walter von der Vogelweide, Reinmar and Tannhäuser flocked to the ducal court in Vienna, as well as comic poets like Neidhart or the Stricker.43 Leopold VI was also an influential prince in a European context. His defence of papal interests in the Holy Land as well as his actions against the Albigensians in southern France made him an important ally of the pope. But he also remained on good terms with Emperor Frederick II, whose son Henry (VII) married the duke’s daughter Margaret in 1227. Leopold played a decisive role mediating the conflicts that had yet again arisen between pope and emperor, but he died only a few days after peace was made at San Germano in southern Italy in July 1230.44 In the long years of Leopold VI’s absence, unrest had arisen in the Babenberg lands. In 1226 one of his sons, Henry, staged an uprising, but then died shortly afterwards. In particular, the process which Leopold VI had started of freeing monasteries in his territory from their advocates, and from the financial renders to which advocates were entitled in return for exercising monasteries’ secular and judicial rights, was full of potential for dispute. Conflict erupted in full force with the succession of his son Frederick II.45 For the losers in this ‘de-advocating policy’ were the territorial magnates, the ministeriales, who together with the remaining ‘old’ noble families had coalesced into a group that the sources now identify as ‘territorial lords’. At the head of the 1230 rebellion stood the most

42 Richard Perger and Walther Brauneis, Die mittelalterlichen Kirchen und Klöster Wiens (Vienna 1977); Barbara Schedl, Klosterleben und Stadtkultur im mittelalterlichen Wien. Zur Architektur religiöser Frauenkommunitäten (Innsbruck 2009). 43 Opll and Lohrmann, Regesten, nos. 278–80; Knapp, Literatur, pp. 267–345. 44 Dopsch, Länder, pp. 184–7. 45 Reichert, Landesherrschaft, pp. 128–216; Weltin, Landesfürst, pp. 241–4.

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powerful members of this group, the Kuenringer family, who had allied with King Wenceslas I of Bohemia. Duke Frederick succeeded in making a settlement, and soon Heinrich of Kuenring was re-appointed to the position that he had held before the rebellion, as marshal of Austria and the duke’s deputy in his absence.46 However, new conflicts soon broke out with Bohemia and Hungary, demonstrating how precarious the duke’s situation was. Furthermore, he also had to face conflicts with the monasteries, when he forbade them to export goods to the lands of his enemies, and also with the financial elites of the towns, upon whose resources he relied to finance his campaigns.47 Our sources shed only limited light on the complex motives behind all this turmoil. The same is true for the cause of Frederick’s conflict with his namesake the emperor, which culminated in an imperial legal process against the Babenberger duke.48 The emperor captured Vienna in 1237, granting it new liberties and, for a time, the status of an imperial town. It was here that the emperor’s nine-year-old son Conrad IV was elected Roman-German king. For a considerable time Duke Frederick lost nearly all backing in the territory. He retreated to his castle at Starhemberg, from which he organised his comeback some years later. Even then, conflicts did not cease. Frederick was able to take advantage of the defence against the Mongols, a totally unexpected threat to Christian Europe that had particularly catastrophic consequences for the kingdom of Hungary (in 1241), to promote his own interests in the Hungarian border area. Although the Mongols soon withdrew because of internal succession issues, Frederick had awakened in Béla IV a most bitter enemy. In June 1246 the continuing conflicts with the Hungarians cost the duke his life in a battle at the border river Leitha.49

Territorial lordship as cooperation between prince and nobility The Babenberg dynasty ended with the death of the childless Frederick II. His demise did not, however, mean the end of the principality, and certainly not of the territory. At first the two duchies that had grown from the ‘Austrian’ and ‘Styrian’ marches went their own ways, until after 1260 first the Bohemian king Přemysl Ottokar and finally the Habsburgs reunited them under a single lordship.50 For a long time the scholarly debate over

46 Dopsch, Länder, p. 188. 47 Jansen Enikels Werke. Weltchronik, Fürstenbuch, ed. Philipp Strauch, in MGH Deutsche Chroniken iii (Hanover 1900), verses 2179–2290; Weltin, Landesfürst, pp. 252–5. 48 MGH Constitutiones, ii.269–73 nos. 201–2. 49 UB Babenberger IV/2, no. 1286; Knapp, Literatur, pp. 482–92; Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West (Harlow 2005); Berend et al., Central Europe, pp. 443–7. 50 See Martina Stercken’s article in this volume, below p. 331.

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the Babenberg inheritance discussed these conflicts only from a dynastic perspective, and considered the period as an ‘interregnum’, like that in the empire itself between 1254 and 1273. It is, however, still possible to discern the large number of entangled factors, which over the centuries led to the development of the Babenberg territorial lordship. The principality’s geographical position had established a dense web of relationships with the neighbours to its north and southeast that were now actualised in the succession claims especially of the Bohemian and Hungarian kings. The possibility of female succession, established in the Privilegium Minus, played an important role in this development, as it already had a few years earlier in a failed plan of Emperor Frederick II and the duke to make Austria a kingdom.51 The emperor would have married Frederick’s niece Gertrude, but she immediately refused. Gertrude’s subsequent marriages, with the margraves of Moravia and Baden as well as Roman of Halicz (a relative of the Hungarian king) had no political effect. King Ottokar succeeded in using the dynastic option, at least in short-term, through his union with the much older Margaret, sister of the fallen duke. For some years this match served to legitimate Ottokar’s successes, for which he had laid the foundations during the five years after Frederick’s death, by establishing good relations with the magnates of the borderland, rapid military intervention and granting both economic and legal privileges to the Austrian territorial lords. To secure his lasting success, though, Ottokar needed above all the support of the people who had established themselves in cooperation and conflict with the Babenberg margraves and dukes as holders of the territory.52 Modern, and much more comprehensive scholarship, has revealed a political situation that Maximilian Weltin summarised with the phrase ‘the noble is the land’. In the light of decades of meticulous source-based research, Weltin took issue with previous historians who had seen the development of the principality all too one-sidedly as the accomplishment of the princely dynasty.53 While Babenberg participation in the policies of European powers has long been recognised, it is now possible through detailed analysis of property relations, the monetary economy and legal documents systematically to study the internal consolidation of the territorial lordship. It is precisely the structurally decisive conflicts of the thirteenth century that clearly illustrate the importance of these aspects for the long-term survival of the principality. It is impossible to overvalue the participation of the noble magnates in this process. From 1251 on they supported the Bohemian king as judges and

51 MGH Constitutiones ii.358–60 no. 261; Dopsch, Länder, pp. 197–201. 52 Maximilian Weltin, ‘Landesherr und Landherren. Zur Herrschaft Ottokars II Přemysl in Österreich’, in idem, Beiträge, pp. 130–87. 53 Weltin, Landesfürst and in detail idem, Beiträge.

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advocates. Members of urban élites functioned as fiscally powerful sponsors and assumed varied administrative and military duties.54 The concessions necessary to secure this support were manifested, besides the prize of princely property, precisely in such functions and their prerogatives. When King Ottokar later began to reclaim these concessions, this led to a new outburst of resistance which had a decisive impact on the conflicts between the Bohemian king and Rudolf of Habsburg for rule over the Babenberg lands. At that time the territorial lords also gradually began to define themselves as a social group, a process that continued during the first generations of Habsburg lordship. The political and economic power that they enjoyed is revealed by the legal codifications under Ottokar and Rudolf, which the conflicts had necessitated, as well as in the efforts to reclaim former Babenberg property, to lay the foundation on which to stabilise Habsburg princely policy.

54 Weltin, ‘Landesherr und Landherren’; Christina Lutter, ‘Negotiated Consent: Power Policy and the Integration of Regional Elites in Late 13th Century Austria’, in Policies of Disciplined Dissent in the 12th to Early 16th Centuries, ed. Fabrizio Titone (Rome 2016), pp. 41–64.

20 Shaping a dominion Habsburg beginnings Martina Stercken

The Habsburgs provide a unique example of the rise of a noble family in medieval Europe, as they not only enlarged their dominions in a quite spectacular way, but also managed to lay claim to the royal crown. The beginnings of the family have been studied both as a prehistory of the Habsburg monarchy and of Austria,1 and as part of German, Austrian and Swiss regional studies, and the variety of approaches taken is striking.2 This diversity reflects the development of historical research in general, focussing first on the dualism of king and empire as well as on the concentration of power in the principalities, and moving gradually from political structures to the processes of their formation. But the medieval development of the Habsburg dominions to the west and the east of the Arlberg has yet to be systematically compared. This seems to be due to the varying interests of the researchers involved, which are formed by different national frameworks of historical science. Here the peculiarities of the Habsburg authority appear to have been stressed more for the regions in the western parts (die Vorlande) that escaped Habsburg rule in the fifteenth century (nowadays Switzerland),

1 Alphons Lhotzky, Geschichte Österreichs seit der Mitte des 13. Jahrhundert (1281–1358) (Vienna 1967); Günther Hödl, Habsburg und Österreich 1273–1493 (Cologne 1988); Christian Lackner, ‘Das Haus Österreich und seine Länder im Spätmittelalter’, in Fragen der politischen Integration im mittelalterlichen Europa, ed. Werner Maleczek (VF 63, Ostfildern 2005), pp. 273–302; Alois Niederstätter, Geschichte Österreichs (Stuttgart 2007). 2 Hans-Erich Feine, ‘Entstehung und Schicksal der vorderösterreichischen Lande’, in Vorderösterreich. Eine geschichtliche Landeskunde, ed. Friedrich Metz (2 vols., Freiburg i. Br. 1959), pp. 47–66; Vorderösterreich nur die Schwanzfeder des Kaiseradlers? Die Habsburger im deutschen Südwesten, ed. Irmgard Becker (Württembergisches Landesmuseum, Stuttgart 1999); Die Habsburger im deutschen Südwesten, ed. Franz Quarthal and Gerhard Faix (Stuttgart 2000); Alois Niederstätter, Die Herrschaft Österreich. Fürst und Land im Spätmittelalter (Wien 2001); Bruno Meier, Ein Königshaus aus der Schweiz. Die Habsburger, der Aargau und die Eidgenossenschaft im Mittelalter (Baden 2008); Habsburger Herrschaft vor Ort – weltweit (1300–1600), ed. Jeanette Rauschert, Simon Teuscher and Thomas Zotz (Zürich 2013).

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and at the beginning of the nineteenth (Vorderösterreich). In particular, the history of the region between Lake Constance and the Alps, which passed from the control of the Habsburgs into the power of the (Swiss) confederacy, shows quite plainly that shaping a dominion in the late Middle Ages was in principle an open process. This open process will be traced in the following sketch, focussing on the various practices that helped to accumulate, concentrate, fix and stabilise power within the Habsburg lands. At the centre of this discussion is the period between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries, although there will be some brief excursions outside this period. This is the time between the reigns of the Habsburg count and later King, Rudolf I (1218– 1291), who started to expand the Habsburg dominion methodically, profiting from his royal authority, and his great-grandson, the Austrian duke Rudolf IV (1339–1365), who explored the means of displaying rulership in outstanding fashion. Perennial topics will be touched on such as the growth of the Habsburg dominions. But first and foremost the ways of establishing, structuring and practising authority will be emphasised, looking at spatial and personal means of control, and at the same time considering the medial dimensions of visualising power.

Acquisition of space The development of the Habsburg dominion became a success story in the time of King Rudolf I. He is one of the glittering personalities of German history after the interregnum, as he succeeded in establishing a solid basis of power in the southwest of the Empire to the north of the Alps and in expanding it eastwards, acquiring the kingship as an outsider, but then working to restore effective royal authority, following the model of the earlier Staufer dynasty. In fact the Habsburgs would not obtain the crown permanently until the late Middle Ages, but it has become the communis opinio that Rudolf was no ‘little count’, as his enemies described him, but rather the founder of a dynasty that was effective in using all the means at the thirteenth century’s disposal to control space and to develop authority.3 The starting point of Rudolf’s efforts to enlarge his control over rights, people and property, which become apparent after the division of the family possessions between his father, Count Albrecht IV, and his uncle, Count Rudolf II, in the 1230s, was the allodial land of the Habsburgs in the Aargau, as well as two monasteries, Ottmarsheim (in Alsace) and Muri

3 Oswald Redlich, Rudolf von Habsburg. Das Deutsche Reich nach dem Untergange des alten Kaisertums (Innsbruck 1903); Rudolf von Habsburg 1273–1291. Eine Königsherrschaft zwischen Tradition und Wandel, ed. Egon Boshof and Franz-Reiner Erkens (Cologne 1993); Karl-Friedrich Krieger, Die Habsburger im Mittelalter. Von Rudolf I. bis Friedrich III. (Stuttgart 1994); Karl-Friedrich Krieger, Rudolf von Habsburg (Darmstadt 2003).

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(in the Aargau), both founded in the first half of the eleventh century. The increasing written tradition of the second half of the thirteenth century is evidence for the dynamics of this acquisition process. It mirrors the astounding concentration of control in the ancestral parts of the Habsburg possessions in the upper parts of the Alsace, on the upper Rhine, in the Black Forest, on the upper Danube, in the Aargau, Zürichgau, Thurgau and also between the rivers Aare and Reuss, as well as in the region of the Walensee, where property of all kinds (castles, towns and mills etc.), as well as a conglomerate of different rights could be acquired (a count’s rights, exercising legal jurisdiction for monasteries (advocatia), jurisdictional, toll-, mintage-, market- and mining-rights).4 This impressive augmentation of possessions can be described as strategic, but largely peaceful. A milestone in this process was the acquisition of the inheritance of the counts of Kyburg. Rudolf of Habsburg was able to secure this after the death of the last male member of the Kyburg family, his maternal uncle Count Hartmann IV, in 1264; and to succeed in this despite the rival claim of Peter, count of Savoy, who also was related to the Kyburg counts and was eager to inherit himself. Another tool of Habsburg policy in the second half of the thirteenth century was purchase, which served to intensify claims in the hitherto existing centres of dominance, especially the Aargau, and in the inner, eastern and western parts of present-day Switzerland. Here the Habsburg counts apparently utilised the tenuous financial situation of the respective sellers, amongst them impoverished relatives. However, the appropriation of the duchy of Austria, an important dominion in the east of the Empire, was a more complex political matter and a product of war.5 It resulted from the opposition of King Ottokar of Bohemia to Rudolf, who had been elected king in 1273, and was finally decided at the Battle of Dürnkrut in 1278. Subsequently, Rudolf I developed his influence over the Bohemian-Moravian kingdom by wedding his daughter Guta to the son of Ottokar, Wenzel II, and his youngest son Rudolf to Wenzel’s sister Agnes of Bohemia. But first of all – as part of his endeavours to recuperate the property of the Empire, which had been alienated during the interregnum – he succeeded in taking possession of the duchies of Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, as well as the Windische Mark, counting them as fiefs of the empire, and attaching them to his family. By enfeoffing them to his sons, Albrecht and Rudolf, with the consent of the electors, the

4 Hans-Erich Feine, ‘Die Territorienbildung der Habsburger im deutschen Südwesten, vornehmlich im späten Mittelalter’, ZSSRG GA 67 (1950), 176–308; idem, Entstehung und Schicksal; Martina Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft. Kleinstadtgenese im habsburgischen Herrschaftsraum des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts (Cologne 2006), pp. 6–75. 5 For the whole process compare Krieger, Rudolf, pp. 127–54, 155–61; Niederstätter, Geschichte Österreichs, pp. 40–7.

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basis of Habsburg power was massively augmented. This act also meant a promotion of the Habsburg counts in terms of rank, into the ‘guild of imperial princes’ (Reichsfürstenstand). The duchy of Carinthia was incorporated in this increase of power, but was then enfeoffed to a Habsburg follower, Count Meinrad of Görz-Tirol. Rudolf’s strategies to secure the eastern possessions for the Habsburg family were continued by his son Albrecht, who married Elisabeth, Count Meinrad’s daughter. Albrecht not only enlarged the family property, especially in the Waldviertel and in Carinthia, but also enfeoffed the eastern dominions to his sons after his controversial election as king in 1298. However, all their struggles to bring Bohemia under Habsburg control were in vain and came to an end with the early deaths of Rudolf, Albrecht’s son and then that of the king himself. The murder of Albrecht of Habsburg by his nephew Johann (Parricida) in 1308 near Brugg in the Aargau was an event of major significance, commented on in many of the contemporary chronicles.6 It has been often suggested that the Habsburgs’ interest in the western dominions diminished with the acquisition of the duchy of Austria in 1282, the early death of Albrecht I and several divisions of the dominions under the Austrian dukes.7 But evidently it did not. On the contrary, in the western parts of the Habsburg realm more property was amassed in the course of the fourteenth century. The marriage of Duke Albrecht II with Johanna of Pfirt stabilised the Habsburg zone of control in the Upper Alsace.8 Claims in the regions of the upper Rhine, the Black Forest and the upper Danube, between the river Rhine and the Alps and along the river Aare were also extended.9 Furthermore, the Habsburg acquired pledges of the empire (Reichspfandschaften) in the 1330s, which brought towns on the Upper Rhine, notably Breisach, Neuenburg, Schaffhausen und Rheinfelden, under

6 For example, the Chronicon Koenigsweldense, in Martin Gerbert, Crypta San-Blasien nova Principum Austriacorum translatis eorum cadaveribus ex cathedrali Basiliensi et monasterio Koenigsfeldensi in Helvetia (St. Blasien 1785), appendix I, pp. 99–101; Aegidius Tschudi, Chronicon Helveticum, ed. Peter Stadler and Bernhard Stettler (Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, part 1, Bern 1968), pp. 460–2; ibid., part 3, ed. Bernhard Stettler (Bern 1980), pp. 239–45. 7 E.g. Hektor Ammann, ‘Die Habsburger und die Schweiz’, Argovia 43 (1931), 125–53, here pp. 138–9, 146, 153; Feine, Territorienbildung, pp. 233, 262–3, 297, but also Volker Press, ‘Vorderösterreich in der habsburgischen Reichspolitik’, in Vorderösterreich in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Hans Maier and Volker Press (Sigmaringen 1989), pp. 1–40; Meier, Ein Königshaus, p. 117. 8 Georges Bischoff, ‘Die markanten Züge des österreichischen Elsass’, in Vorderösterreich in der frühen Neuzeit [as previous note], pp. 271–83; Benoit Jordan, ‘Landesherrliche Städte im Oberelsass’, in Landesherrliche Städte in Südwestdeutschland, ed. Jürgen Treffeisen and Kurt Andermann (Sigmaringen 1994), pp. 231–244. 9 Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 6–75; Jürgen Treffeisen, ‘Aspekte habsburgischer Stadtherrschaft im spätmittelalterlichen Breisgau’, in Landesherrliche Städte in Südwestdeutschland [as previous note], pp. 157–229.

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their control.10 Under the rule of Duke Rudolf IV certain strategies of the Habsburgs’ appropriation policy become visible. In 1354, for instance, the small town of Rapperswil, situated strategically between the lower and the upper part of the lake of Zurich, was purchased from the family’s side branch, the counts of Habsburg-Laufenburg.11 Even more important was the acquisition of Tyrol in the year 1363, connecting the western and eastern parts of the Habsburg dominions. Neutralising the claims of all his rivals, Rudolf IV secured the county for the Habsburgs as an inheritance of the last countess Margarete (Maultasch) while she was still alive, with the consent of the county’s representatives, as well as of his father-in-law, Charles IV.12 We can only catch glimpses of how the Habsburgs financed their considerable acquisitions of rights and possessions, because few studies of their finances and administration in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are available.13 There is no doubt that the Habsburgs became a high-income dynasty in the late medieval empire. But to achieve an accurate account of their financial situation it would be necessary to take into consideration the high costs of purchasing property, running the court and undertaking wars as well as their increasing indebtedness. Both charters and lists of their income from rights and possessions (Urbare) from the thirteenth century onwards show a variety of procedures to raise money. Purchases of dominions and towns, for example, were financed by tax income, by selling or pledging dispensable rights or possessions, by payments in instalments and in the course of the fourteenth century more and more also by money from the towns already under their control.

10 T.M. Martin, Die Städtepolitik Rudolfs von Habsburg (Göttingen 1976), pp. 23–4.; Götz Landwehr, Die Verpfändung der deutschen Reichsstädte im Mittelalter (Cologne 1967), pp. 22–3. 11 Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 21–2. 12 Josef Riedmann, ‘Mittelalter’, in Geschichte des Landes Tirol von den Anfängen bis 1490, ed. Josef Fontana and Peter W. Haider (2nd ed., Bozen 1990), pp. 291–699; Klaus Brandstätter, ‘Lokale Verwaltung und habsburgische Kirchenpolitik in Tirol (14. – 16. Jahrhundert)’, in Habsburger Herrschaft vor Ort [above, note 2], pp. 49–76; Franz Huter, ‘Rudolf IV., die Vorlande und die Erwerbung Tirols [1966]’, in Franz Huter. Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Geschichte Tirols (Innsbruck 1997), pp. 250–68; Wilhelm Baum, Rudolf IV. der Stifter. Seine Welt und seine Zeit (Graz 1996), pp. 277–304; Margarete “Maultasch”, ed. Julia Hörmann-Thurn und Taxis (Innsbruck 2007). 13 Guy P. Marchal, Sempach 1386. Von den Anfängen des Territorialstaates Luzern (Basel 1986); Markus Bittmann, Kreditwirtschaft und Finanzierungsmethoden, Studien zu den wirtschaftlichen Verhältnissen des Adels im westlichen Bodenseeraum (VSWG, Beiheft 99, Stuttgart 1991); Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 37–8; Christian Lackner, ‘Zwischen herrschaftlicher Gestaltung und regionaler Anpassung. Pfandschaften, Ämterkauf und Formen der Kapitalisierung in der Verwaltung der spätmittelalterlichen habsburgischen Länder Österreich und Steiermark’, in Habsburger Herrschaft vor Ort [above note 2], pp. 35–48.

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The development of the Habsburg administration went hand in hand with the increase of their dominions. As was the case elsewhere, the lands acquired by the Habsburgs were organised piece by piece into a system based on districts (officia, Ämter) of various sizes, in order to consolidate the loose conglomerates of scattered property and various rights that the Habsburgs had appropriated.14 Older administrative entities were respected, not only in the Habsburg dominions in the west of the Arlberg but also in the east.15 A unique source for the early substructures of power in the west is the so-called Habsburgisches Urbar from the first third of the fourteenth century, allowing an insight into an administration based on writing and allocating people, property and income from jurisdiction, rights and taxes to different districts.16 In the course of the fourteenth century a kind of superstructure was developed, whereby the older districts in this region were incorporated into larger entities of administration, the Landvogteien. In contrast to these local and regional entities, the comital and later ducal court (or courts, after the division of responsibility for the eastern and western dominions) apparently played no major part in the early financial administration.17 The organisation of the chancery can be better grasped only after the middle of the fourteenth century, but its growing importance becomes clear in the huge mass of traditions produced in order to guarantee the Habsburgs’ claims. Urbarial sources and lists of fiefs and of pledges from the second half of the thirteenth century onwards testify to the significance of writing in this context, as does the increasing replacement of Latin by the German language in these documents.18 The different types of writing produced in the administration of the Habsburgs’ dominions reflect differing purposes. Urbare offer an overview of claims, income and relationships. At the same time it can be observed that the recording of rights was used to form legal relationships, intended to serve the interests of the rulers. This has been made clear by comparative studies

14 Franz Quarthal, ‘Königslandschaft, Herzogtum oder fürstlicher Territorialstaat. Zu den Zielen und Ergebnissen der Territorialpolitik Rudolfs von Habsburg im schwäbischnordschweizerischen Raum’, in Rudolf von Habsburg, ed. Boshof and Erkens [above, note 3], pp. 125–38; Quarthal, Residenz. 15 Lackner, ‘Das Haus Österreich’, p. 276. 16 Marianne Bärtschi, Das Habsburger Urbar: Vom Urbarrödel zum Traditionscodex (Zurich 2008); Das Habsburgische Urbar, ed. R. Maag, W. Glättli and P. Schweizer (2 vols., Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte 14, 15, Basel, 1894, 1904). 17 Lackner, ‘Das Haus Österreich’, p. 288; Christian Lackner, Hof und Herrschaft. Rat, Kanzlei und Regierung der österreichischen Herzöge (1365–1406) (MIÖG Ergänzungsband 41, Vienna 2002). 18 Christian Lackner, ‘Die landesfürstlichen Pfandschaften in Österreich unter der Enns im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert’, in Österreich im Mittelalter. Bausteine (St. Pölten 1999), pp. 187– 204; Alois Niederstätter, Die Herrschaft Österreich. Fürst und Land im Spätmittelalter. Österreichische Geschichte 1278–1411 (Vienna 2001), pp. 279–306, 319–22.

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of the privileges for small towns in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, establishing the right to nominate the mayor (called the Schultheiss in the west, the Stadtrichter in the eastern parts), and – especially in the west – also the people’s priest (Leutpriester).19 This tendency to unify rights can also be traced in new versions of the common law (Landrecht) – compilations of rural customary law – like those in Carinthia and Carniola from the year 1338.20 Notwithstanding conflicts in this context, which will be discussed below, the existence of chartered rights meant the availability of sanctioned knowledge about legal status, which could be useful in difficult situations, for example when rulership changed. The privileges for towns to the west of the Arlberg show how important these charters were, particularly for the less important subjects under Habsburg control.21 Occasionally also highlighted by the privileges’ layout and materiality, their importance is documented by the confirmations and copies which were invariably kept in the town’s archives. These were even produced at a later period, after the Habsburg towns had fallen under the control of the (Swiss) confederate cities and valleys, in order to make materially present and visible an event dating back a long time ago, and to remind the current rulers of the urban community’s ties to the dominant dynasty in Europe.

Monasteries, castles and towns Within the complexes of Habsburg control, monasteries, castles and, in particular, towns served as anchor points to fix power spatially, each in a different way. The foundations of the Benedictine monasteries of Ottmarsheim and Muri in the first half of the eleventh century had a religious impact, as they established the commemoration of the Habsburg founders, but they also created lieux de mémoires in regions over which the Habsburgs had claims.22 The octagonal plan of the Ottmarsheim minster apparently draws upon the architecture of Charlemagne’s minster, and thus symbolises the pretensions of the Habsburg family, even at this early period. Furthermore, the foundation of monasteries allowed bonds to different religious orders to

19 Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 199–203; Niederstätter, Die Herrschaft Österreich, pp. 340–1. 20 Niederstätter, Die Herrschaft Österreich, pp. 135–8, 253–8, 293–4; Lackner, ‘Das Haus Österreich’, p. 277. 21 Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 96–161; Peter Brun, Schrift und politisches Handeln. Eine zugeschriebene Geschichte des Aargaus 1415–1425 (Zurich 2006). 22 Jean-Luc Eichenlaub and René Bornert, ‘Abbaye Ste. Maire d’Ottmarsheim’, in Les monastères d’Alsace, ed. René Bornet (7 vols., Strasbourg 2019–11), iii.486–524; Eloanna Gilomen-Schenkel, Muri, in Lexikon des Mittelalters (Munich 1993), vi.943; Bruno Meier, Das Kloster Muri (Baden 2011).

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be established, and increasingly, from the second half of the thirteenth century onwards, to the mendicant orders. The church of the Dominican monastery in the town of Tulln, built between 1281 and 1290, was the earliest endowment of the Habsburgs in the duchy of Austria and was intended to be a memorial site.23 Among their early monastic foundations there was also the Franciscan double monastery of Königsfelden, founded in 1311 in memory of the murder of King Albrecht I on the same spot where this had taken place.24 In its precious setting it served to visualise the dynasty, and furthermore it developed a residential function in the fourteenth century when Agnes, daughter of the late King Albrecht I and widow of the Hungarian king Andreas III, came to live there, and became a representative of Habsburg interests.25 Castles in the various centres of the Habsburg possessions – for example in Alsace and in the Aargau, where the allods of the family were concentrated – marked the radius of the count’s control and rendered it visible over a long distance. Among them was the fortress that gave the dynasty its name, the Habsburg, built in the Aargau in the eleventh century.26 At the same time the phase of acquisitions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries brought many further castles under Habsburg control, often connected with small towns.27 However, Habsburg power over local castles was

23 Brigitta Lauro, Die Grabstätten der Habsburger. Kunstdenkmäler einer europäischen Dynastie (Vienna 2007), pp. 41–5. 24 Brigitte Kurmann Schwarz, Die mittelalterlichen Glasmalereien der ehemaligen Klosterkirche Königsfelden (Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Schweiz 2, Bern 2008); eadem, ‘Die Sorge um die Memoria. Das Habsburger Grab zu Königsfelden im Lichte seiner Bildausstattung’, Kunst und Architektur 50 (1999), 12–23; Königsfelden. Königsmord, Kloster, Klinik, ed. Simon Teuscher and Claudia Moddelmog (Baden 2012). 25 Hermann von Liebenau, Eine deutsche Fürstin 1280–1564. Lebensgeschichte der Königin Agnes von Ungarn der letzten Habsburgerin des erlauchten Stammhauses aus dem Aargaue, Regesten- und Urkundenanhang (Vienna 1868); Alfred Nevismal, Königin Agnes von Ungarn. Leben und Stellung in der habsburgischen Politik ihrer Zeit (Vienna 1951); Georg Boner, ‘Die politische Wirksamkeit der Königin Agnes’, Brugger Neujahrsblätter 75 (1965), 3–17; Angelica Hilsebein, ‘Das Kloster als Residenz. Leben und Wirken der Königin Agnes von Ungarn in Königsfelden’, in Wissenschaft und Weisheit. Franziskanische Studien zu Theologie, Philosophie und Geschichte 72.2 (Werl 2009), 179–250; Ellen Widder, ‘Überlegungen zur politischen Wirksamkeit von Frauen im 14. Jahrhundert. Margarete Maultasch und Agnes von Ungarn als Erbtöchter, Ehefrauen und Witwen’, in 1363–2013. 650 Jahre Tirol mit Österreich, ed. Christoph Haidacher and Mark Mersiowsky (Innsbruck 2015), pp. 91–134; Martina Stercken, ‘“Saeldenrîche frowen” und “gschwind listig wib”. Weibliche Präsenz Habsburgs im Südwesten des Reiches’, in Mächtige Frauen. Königinnen und Fürstinnen im europäischen Mittelalter (11.-14. Jahrhundert), ed. Claudia Zey (VF 81, Ostfildern 2015), pp. 337–64. 26 Peter Frey, ‘Die Habsburg im Aargau’, in Burgen der Salierzeit, ed. Horst Wolfgang Böhme (2 vols., Sigmaringen 1991), ii.331–350; Werner Meyer, ‘Habsburgischer Burgenbau zwischen Alpen und Rhein – ein Überblick’, Kunst und Architektur 2 (Bern 1996), 115–24; Dominik Sauerländer, Habsburg (Burg), in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, vi (Basel 2007), 20. 27 Redlich, Rudolf von Habsburg, pp. 544–90; Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 184–5.

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not always complete, but was often superposed by claims of noblemen or citizens, established by fiefs or pledges.28 Individual castles became centres of regional administration, for example the castle of Stein, close to the town of Baden in the Aargau, for the dominions west of the Arlberg. From the mid-thirteenth century on, towns were undoubtedly more important than castles as a component of the Habsburgs’ growing dominion: they offered a better quality of life and more economic possibilities. Unlike other noble families of their time, the counts and dukes did not excel as founders of towns. Only a very few towns were actually Habsburg foundations, and these mainly date from the fourteenth century. Nevertheless, an impressive number of urban settlements came under Habsburg control, often along with other possessions.29 There were only a few fully-fledged towns among them: Lucerne or Fribourg in the west and Vienna in the east, the latter directly subject to the empire (reichsunmittelbar), but bound to obey the Habsburg dukes. The majority of the Habsburg towns were small and relatively new urban settlements of various kinds; and more of them were deliberately acquired in the western dominions than in the eastern.30 These towns became the fixed points of the Habsburg dominions, kernels for the development of the comital and ducal administration and centres of districts. They also served as places of residence for the travelling rulers. Due to their position in the communications network and the Habsburgs’ promotion of their economic development and function as markets, these smaller towns could also offer a reservoir of taxes and military support, and partially supported the Habsburg rulers financially. While the Habsburgs could not gain a foothold in older and more developed towns west of the Arlberg, such as Zurich and Basel, they did manage to bring Vienna under their power and turn it into a permanent residence. This is most apparent in the time of Duke Rudolf IV, who not only promoted economic activity in Vienna after the town had suffered severely in the first outbreak of the Black Death, but also embellished it on a grand scale. Following the ideas and activities of his father-in-law, Charles IV in Prague, Rudolf founded a university and reconstructed the cathedral of St. Stephen in Vienna, which was to become the religious centre of the Austrian duchy.31

28 29 30 31

Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 50–2. Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 199–203. Niederstätter, Die Herrschaft Österreich, pp. 334–7. Ferdinand Opll, ‘Vom frühen 13. bis zum 14. Jahrhundert’, in Wien, ed. Peter Czendes and Ferdinand Opll (Vienna 2001, pp. 125–34; Krieger, Habsburger, pp. 142–3; Lukas Wolfinger, ‘Die Stephanskirche zu Wien als Bühne und Medium fürstlicher Selbstinszenierung unter Rudolf IV. von Österreich (1358–1365)’, in Ecclesia als Kommunikationsraum in Mitteleuropa (13.-16. Jahrhundert), ed. Eva Doležalová and Robert Šimunek (Munich 2011), pp. 219–50; Niederstätter, Geschichte Österreichs, pp. 53–4.

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Clientele The relations between the Habsburgs and the local clergy, the nobility and the citizens seem to have been quite different in the various parts of their dominion. Although Habsburg relations with the clergy have not yet been properly studied in a comparative way, it seems that they tried to influence the choice both of prelates and of parish clergy, but despite these efforts they were not entirely successful, or at least not yet, in creating a fixed clientele in the ecclesiastical sphere.32 Nevertheless, it can be observed, that – next to lords and knights – bishops played a major part in the immediate surroundings of the dukes.33 More is known about the nobility around the Habsburg rulers. The importance of the nobility is apparent not only in the context of assemblies at the court and wars, but also in the new posts in the increasingly differentiated administration of their dominions. Both east and west of the Arlberg, noblemen acted as representatives of the Habsburg counts and Austrian dukes, in effect taking over their duties as local rulers.34 In the West they were known as Landvogt, in Austria Landesmarschall, and in Carinthia, Styria and Tyrol Landeshauptmann. The eminently political function of this post can be seen at the very beginning of the Habsburgs’ control of the region. In some cases the post was filled by Habsburg confidants, as in 1280, when King Rudolf I entrusted his nephew Otto of Ochsenstein with the Landvogteien in the Alsace and in the Breisgau, assigning to him far-reaching competences as a royal representative in an ancient region under Habsburg power.35 At other times, a strong regional nobility was ousted by non-local officeholders, as after the takeover of the Austrian duchy by the Habsburgs, when Albrecht I appointed the knight Herman of Landenberg, from the hinterland of Zurich, to the hereditary office

32 Andreas Bihrer, ‘Zwischen Wien und Königsfelden’, in Habsburger Herrschaft vor Ort [above, note 2], pp. 109–36; Krieger, Habsburger, pp. 140, 144. 33 Lackner, Hof, pp. 133–52, 337. 34 Werner Meyer, Die Verwaltungsorganisation des Reiches und des Hauses Habsburg – Oesterreich im Gebiet der Ostschweiz (1264–1460), (Affoltern a. Albis 1933), pp. 144– 68; Marchal, Sempach, pp. 59–60, 70–98; Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 49–50.; Rolf Köhn, ‘Der Landvogt in den spätmittelalterlichen Vorlanden: Kreatur des Herzogs und Tyrann der Untertanen ?’ in Die Habsburger im deutschen Südwesten [above note 2], pp. 153–98; Lackner, ‘Zwischen herrschaftlicher Gestaltung’, pp. 42–6, 48; Martina Stercken, ‘Formen herrschaftlicher Präsenz. Die Habsburger in ihren Städten im Gebiet der heutigen Schweiz’, in Habsburger Herrschaft vor Ort, pp. 149–68, especially pp. 157–9. 35 Meyer, Die Verwaltungsorganisation, p. 146; Hans-Martin Maurer, ‘Die Habsburger und ihre Beamten im schwäbischen Donaugebiet um 1300’, in Neue Beiträge zur südwestdeutschen Landesgeschichte. Festschrift für Max Miller, ed. Werner Fleischhauer, Walter Grube and Paul Zinsmaier (Stuttgart 1962), pp. 24–54; Krieger, Rudolf von Habsburg, p. 184.

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of Marschall in the so-called Lande unter der Enns (Lower Austria).36 However, the bonds between the Habsburgs and the Austrian and Styrian nobility seem to have intensified under the reign of Albrecht’s sons.37 On the whole, the part played by the nobility in the entourage of the Habsburg rulers seems to have differed in the dominions on either side of the Arlberg. For the region of present-day Switzerland it is assumed that the importance of the nobility deteriorated from the thirteenth century, that the rise of the Habsburgs pushed other noble families aside and that the towns became the main pillars of the new rulers.38 In contrast, the significance of the nobility as a counterpart of the dukes seems to have been greater in the eastern parts of the Habsburg dominions.39 This was particularly the case in the duchy of Austria, where a noble élite had developed claims to participate in the running of the dominion, as well as in Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, where the post of the Landeshauptmann was traditionally given to a nobleman. In contrast to the western regions under Habsburg control, where towns and their citizens increasingly held fiefs and pledges from the rulers, in Austria and Styria it was mainly the nobility that participated in the commercialisation of ducal rights.40 The effects of the fiefs and pledges given on the relationship between their recipients and the dukes cannot be generalised. The rural courts of justice in the duchy of Austria, which were lent, pledged or sold, were in the long run alienated from the dukes.41 For the élites of the Habsburg towns, however, the personal bonds of fiefs and pledges seem to have reinforced the already existing relation with the ducal rulers.42 The important role of the Habsburg towns has been stressed first and foremost for the western parts of their realm. Here their development and

36 Katja Hürlimann, ‘Hermann IV. von L.-Greifensee’, in Zürcher Taschenbuch 2000 (Zürich 2001), pp. 23–41; E. Eugster, ‘Adel zwischen Habsburg, Zürich und dem Reich’, in Alter Adel – neuer Adel? Zürcher Adel zwishen Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. Peter Niederhäuser (Zurich 2003), pp. 13–30. 37 Niederstätter, Geschichte Österreichs, p. 48; Evelyne Webernig, Landeshauptmannschaft und Vizedomamt in Kärnten bis zum Beginn des Neuzeit (Klagenfurt 1983), pp. 66–9. 38 Waltraut Hörsch, ‘Adel im Bannkreis Österreichs’, in Sempach 1386. Von den Anfängen des Territorialstaates Luzern, ed. Guy P. Marchal (Basel 1986), pp. 353–403; Roger Sablonier, Adel im Wandel. Eine Untersuchung zur Situation des ostschweizerischen Adels um 1300 (new version: Zürich 2000); Erwin Eugster, ‘Adel zwischen Habsburg, Zürich und dem Reich’, in Alter Adel – neuer Adel? Zürcher Adel im Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Niederhäuser, pp. 13–30; Barbara Hoen, ‘Habsburg und der schwäbische Adel’, in Vorderösterreich nur die Schwanzfeder des Kaiseradlers [above, note 2], pp. 173–81. 39 Niederstätter, Die Herrschaft Österreich, pp. 279–306, 319–22. 40 Lackner, ‘Haus Österreich’, pp. 279–80; Lackner, ‘Zwischen herrschaftlicher Gestaltung’, p. 40; Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 169–74, 188–98; Lackner, ‘Die landesfürstlichen Pfandschaften’, in Österreich im Mittelalter, pp. 188, 194–5. 41 Niederstätter, Die Herrschaft Österreich, pp. 329–30. 42 Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 188–96.

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the shaping of the Habsburg dominion were tightly entangled processes.43 These processes were formed by an apparently purposeful policy, according to which the Habsburgs tried to even out the status of towns under their control. But the small towns were not only objects of power; they also played an active part in the relationship with their rulers. The activity of their citizens can be seen especially in moments of political crisis, when privileges were issued and, in the course of the fourteenth century, increasingly in the formation of the various regions’ corporate interests (Landstände).44 In the early period of the Habsburgs’ rise conflicts between the rulers and the citizens can only occasionally be traced, and these apparently occurred mainly in bigger towns. Struggles over the rights of the rulers, for example, are recorded for Fribourg, when in 1289 the Austrian ruler refused to confirm the free election of the mayor (Schultheiss) and of the people’s priest (Leutpriester); opposition also arose in Lucerne when the Habsburgs claimed key positions in the town.45 Similar developments can be traced in Vienna after the transition to Habsburg control; here the citizens opposed the new political and economic limitations and lost their privileges after a riot in 1287/8.46 In most of the small towns under Habsburg control, however, conflicts can be observed only in communities characterised by growing autonomy and prosperity, when the citizens claimed the right to nominate the heads of the communal and parochial offices themselves.47 The development of urban communities and their economic growth also had an effect on the importance of the Habsburgs’ small towns and their élites as recipients of ducal fiefs and pledges; at the same time the extension of ‘feudal’ privileges to these towns and their citizens, for example the right to receive property in fief, as well as the new economic relationship to the ruler, contributed to social change.48 The advancement of the urban élites became possible and the borders between the civic and the noble clientele of the Habsburgs blurred. The example of an Aargau family called Ribi proves that citizens could achieve higher positions around the rulers. Johannes Ribi

43 Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft; Treffeisen, Aspekte; Jürgen Treffeisen, ‘Die Breisgaukleinstädte Freiburg, Kenzingen und Endingen werden habsburgisch. Untersuchung zu den Ereignissen der 1360er Jahre’, Zeitschrift des Breisgau-Geschichtsvereins “Schau-insLand” 113 (1994), 57–72. 44 Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 85–95; Martina Stercken, ‘Krisenbewusstsein und Krisenmanagement um 1400. Briefe an die Herrschaft’, in Die Appenzellerkriege. Krisenzeit am Bodensee, ed. Peter Niederhäuser and Alois Niederstätter (Konstanz 2006), pp. 19–31. 45 Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 110–19. 46 Opll, ‘Vom frühen 13. bis zum Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts’, p. 114; Niederstätter, Geschichte Österreichs, p. 42. 47 Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 180–1. 48 Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 169–74, 188–98; Lackner, Hof, pp. 280–92.

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became a chancellor of the Austrian dukes, obtained the bishoprics of Gurk, Brixen and Chur, and acted as a Landvogt in Swabia and in the Alsace, while his father and brothers filled the position of the mayor (Schultheiss) in Lenzburg and acquired parts of the castle there. Representative groups developed in all the Habsburg dominions around the middle of the fourteenth century. These claimed to represent the community of the region, and therefore that they ought to take part in important aspects of decision-making. This process became more dynamic in the second half of the fourteenth century, but developed differently in the various parts of the Habsburg dominions.49 In the region between the Lake of Constance and the Alps the process was foreshadowed when peacemaking and later also the recording of administrative matters was organised according to these groups, whereas this development in the Tyrolean estates can only first be discerned in the use of the expression Landschaft, which was included in the treaty of 1363 which brought Tyrol under the Habsburgs’ control. Whereas in most of the other Habsburg dominions noblemen (sometimes this group included knights), clergy (prelates) and towns (to some extent also market-towns) formed estates up to the fifteenth century, in the Tyrol, rural courts of justice were included in the estates alongside the nobility and clergy.

The ruler’s presence A great deal of attention has recently been given to the practices of medieval rulership. In this context the huge importance of the rulers’ personal presence as a means to stabilise their control has been emphasised, but at the same time it has also been stressed that it was much more normal for rulers, especially those who possessed larger dominions, to be absentees.50 As their itineraries make clear, the early Habsburgs made their presence and their

49 Herbert Hassinger, ‘Die Landstände der österreichischen Länder’, Jahrbuch für Landeskunde von Niederösterreich 36 (1964), 989–1035; Franz Quarthal, Landstände und landständisches Steuerwesen in Schwäbisch-Österreich (Stuttgart 1980); Quarthal, Residenz, pp, 83–4; Folker Reichert, Landesherrschaft, Adel und Vogtei. Zur Vorgeschichte des spätmittelalterlichen Ständestaates im Herzogtum Österreich (Cologne 1985); Niederstätter, Die Herrschaft Österreich, pp. 284–306; Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 85–95; Stercken, ‘Krisenbewusstsein’ [above, note 44], pp. 19–31. 50 Thomas Zotz, ‘Fürstliche Präsenz und fürstliche Memoria an der Peripherie der Herrschaft’, in Principes. Dynastien und Höfe im späten Mittelalter, ed. Claudia Nolte, Karl-Heinz Spieß and Rolf-Gunnar Werlich (Stuttgart 2002), pp. 349–70; Thomas Zotz, ‘Präsenz und Repräsentation. Beobachtungen zur königlichen Herrschaftspraxis im hohen und späten Mittelalter’, in Herrschaft als soziale Praxis, ed. Alf Lüdtke (Göttingen 1991); Martina Stercken, ‘Formen herrschaftlicher Präsenz. Die Habsburger in ihren Städten im Gebiet der heutigen Schweiz’, in Habsburger Herrschaft vor Ort [above, note 2], pp. 149–68.

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rulership felt in their growing dominions only sporadically, residing mainly in the towns under their power, until eventually Vienna was chosen to be their principal residence.51 The early rulership of the Habsburg counts and Austrian dukes was experienced in a wide variety of activities, performed at various places. It was marked by of all kinds of assemblies (notably courts and meetings of fief holders), where important issues were discussed and decided; or by warfare, which called for allegiance. The comital and ducal duty to guarantee peace is apparent in the establishment of peace treaties. Just as other rulers, towns and in some regions also rural communities (for example, Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden) did, so too the Habsburgs saw to the public peace, restricting feuds and at the same time monopolising the legitimate exercise of power.52 After Rudolf of Habsburg’s election as king, their peace confederations formed part of a policy to recuperate the royal power over the peace, and at the same time can also be read as a legitimation of power in the southwest.53 In particular, ducal peace treaties from the beginning of the fourteenth century showed a tendency to bind the care for peace to local and regional forces under Habsburg control, and to implant it into the structures of the growing administration. Compared to other rulers of their time, the Habsburgs seem to have developed forms to compensate for their lack of presence in their dominions from quite an early date, using both personal and institutional methods to stabilise their power.54 Important in this context were the official posts representative of their rulership, which have already been mentioned. The charters of approbation for the Landvögte not only set out the terms

51 Franz Quarthal, ‘Residenz, Verwaltung und Territorialbildung in den westlichen Herrschaftsgebieten der Habsburger während des Spätmittelalters’, in Die Eidgenossen und ihre Nachbarn im Deutschen Reich des Mittelalters, ed. Peter Rück (Marburg 1991), pp. 61–86; Stercken, Städte der Herrschaft, pp. 81–4. 52 Alois Gerlich, Studien zur Landfriedenspolitik König Rudolfs von Habsburg (Mainz 1963); Alois Gerlich, ‘Landfriede und Landrecht in Österreich 1276–1281’, in BLDG 99 (1963), 82–102; Karl Lechner, ‘Die Bildung des Territoriums und die Durchsetzung der Territorialhoheit im Raum des östlichen Österreich’, in Der deutsche Territorialstaat im 14. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans Patze (2nd ed., 2 vols., VF 13–14, Sigmaringen 1986), pp. 389–462; Heinz Angermeier, Königtum und Landfriede im deutschen Spätmittelalter (Munich 1966). 53 Martina Stercken, ‘Herrschaftsausübung und Landesausbau. Zu den Landfrieden der Habsburger in ihren westlichen Herrschaftsgebieten’, in Landfrieden – Anspruch und Wirklichkeit, ed. Arno Buschmann and Elmar Wadle (Paderborn 2002), pp. 185–211. 54 Peter Moraw, Von offener Verwaltung zu gestalteter Verdichtung. Das Reich im späten Mittelalter 1250–1490 (Berlin 1985); Dietmar Willoweit, ‘Die Entwicklung und Verwaltung der spätmittelalterlichen Landesherrschaft’, in Deutsche Verwaltungsgeschichte, ed. Kurt G.A. Jeserich et al. (6 vols., Stuttgart 1983–7), i.66–142. Alois Niederstätter, ‘Habsburgische Herrschaftspraxis zwischen Bodensee und Alpen im ausgehenden Mittelalter’, in Habsburger Herrschaft vor Ort, pp. 76–88.

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for their temporary engagements, but also stressed the fact that they represented the rulers in looking after peace and justice, and administering the royal demesnes.55 Incidentally, recent research has modified the old notion of the Landvögte as exploiters and tyrants spread by Friedrich Schiller’s William Tell, pointing out that at the beginning of the Habsburg control at the foothills of the Alps there is no evidence that their representatives always despotically abused their posts.56 Visualisations of power supported and consolidated the political process. Rituals, more or less public, as well as texts, images, sculptures and architecture provided a stage for the rulers and their authority.57 From the fourteenth century onwards, for instance, the Habsburgs took over the archaic rites that went along with the appointment of the dukes at the so-called Fürstenstein close to the town of St. Veit by the River Glan in Carinthia.58 Various forms of commemorating the dead were experimented with. These should not be seen merely as religious provisions for the afterlife and memorials of the deceased for the living, but rather as also displaying the origins, power and legitimation of rulership, with its focus on the future.59 Like other nobility at the time the Habsburgs also used endowments, foundations of monasteries and burial places to combine the desire for salvation with claims of authority.60 The places of buri-

55 Meyer, Verwaltungsorganisation, pp. 123–33, 144–68. 56 Simon Teuscher, ‘Böse Vögte? Narrative, Normen und Praktiken der Herrschaftsdelegation im Spätmittelalter’, in Habsburger Herrschaft vor Ort, pp. 76–88; Stercken, ‘Formen herrschaftlicher Präsenz’, pp. 157–9. 57 Stercken, ‘Formen herrschaftlicher Präsenz’; Franz Quarthal, ‘Vorderösterreich in der Geschichte Südwestdeutschlands’, in Vorderösterreich nur die Schwanzfeder des Kaiseradlers [above, note 2], pp. 14–59. 58 Krieger, Die Habsburger, pp. 140; Alexander Sauter, Fürstliche Herrschaftsrepräsentation. Die Habsburger im 14. Jahrhundert (Ostfildern 2003); Christine Reinle, ‘Herrschaft durch Performanz? Zum Einsatz und zur Beurteilung performativer Akte im Verhältnis zwischen Fürsten und Untertanen im Spätmittelalter’, HJ 126 (2006), 25–64. 59 Memoria als Kultur, ed. Otto-Gerhard Oexle (Göttingen 1995); Michael Borgolte, ‘Zur Lage der deutschen Memoria-Forschung’, in Memoria. Ricordare e dimenticare nella cultura del medioevo. Erinnerung und Vergessen in der Kultur des Mittelalters, ed. Michael Borgolte, Cosimo Damiano Fonseca and Hubert Houben (Bologna 2005), pp. 21–8. 60 Heinrich Koller, ‘Die Habsburger Gräber als Kennzeichen politischer Leitmotive in der österreichischen Historiographie’, in Historiographie mediaevalis. Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters, ed. Dieter Borg and HansWerner Goetz (Darmstadt 1988), pp. 256–69; Franz-Heinz Hye, ‘Die Dynastie Habsburg-Österreich im Spiegel ihrer Grabstätten’, in Report of the 20th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in Uppsala 9. – 13. August 1992, ed. Lars Wikström (Stockholm 1996), pp. 207–14; Johannes Gut, ‘Memorialorte der Habsburger im Südwesten des Alten Reiches. Politische Hintergründe und Aspekte’, in Vorderösterreich nur die Schwanzfelder des Kaiseradlers?, pp. 95–113; in summary, Lauro, Die Grabstätten der Habsburger [above, note 23].

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als were usually significant. King Rudolf’s I grandchildren, Rudolf and Henry were interred around the year 1280 in the abbey of Heiligenkreuz in the Vienna Woods, which was the burial place of their predecessors as dukes of Austria, the Babenberg family.61 While the tomb of King Rudolf’s first wife, Anna, visualised the ducal and royal claims of the Habsburgs in Basel cathedral, the king himself – and also his son King Albrecht I – followed the tradition of the Salian emperors and was buried in the cathedral of Speyer.62 Among the various burial places of the early Habsburgs, the abovementioned monastery of Königsfelden in the Aargau, founded by the duchess Elisabeth in 1311 in order to commemorate the violent death of her husband, King Albrecht I, became a spectacular lieu de mémoire. Here Elisabeth’s and Albrecht’s daughter, Agnes of Hungary, who lived in this monastery for most of her long life (she was widowed in 1301, but died only in 1364), established a site of commemoration for the whole dynasty, which displayed the self-image of the Habsburgs at the time. The tomb for Duchess Elisabeth and several of her children and their consorts, but particularly the gorgeous stained glass windows in the choir of the minster, portrayed the Habsburgs as a saintly royal stirps.63 But the interior of the cathedral of St. Stephen in Vienna – and even more the cenotaph for Duke Rudolf IV and his wife, Catherine of Luxembourg – also testify to the pre-eminent importance of the culture of commemoration for the Habsburgs in displaying the prestige of the dynasty and its claim to the kingdom.64 Duke Rudolf embraced a range of media to enhance the importance of the Austrian dynasty, something which is uniquely demonstrated by the Privilegium Maius, produced in the years 1358–59. This complex of privileges included the famous charter of Emperor Frederick I establishing the duchy of Austria (the so-called Privilegium Minus) of 1156, with suitable adjustments, as well as forged charters purporting to have been issued by Julius Caesar and Nero. It had several aims, among them the transfer of ducal rights in the duchy of Austria (notably the right of primogeniture and legal authority) to all the dominions under the Habsburg rule, the augmentation of the ducal dignity and the legitimation of Habsburg claims in

61 Lauro, Grabstätten, p. 18. 62 Lauro, Grabstätten, pp. 242–3; Rudolf J. Meyer, Königs- und Kaiserbegräbnisse im Spätmittelalter. Von Rudolf von Habsburg bis Friedrich III. (Cologne 2000), pp. 41–52. 63 See Kurmann Schwarz, Die mittelalterlichen Glasmalereien [above, note 24]; eadem, ‘Zeichen der Frömmigkeit oder Bilder der Herrschaft’, in Habsburger Herrschaft vor Ort, pp. 137– 48; Claudia Moddelmog, ‘Stiftung als gute Herrschaft. Die Habsburger in Königsfelden’, in Die Habsburger zwischen Aare und Bodensee (Zürich 2010), pp. 209–22; Stercken, ‘Saeldenrîche Frowen’. 64 Lauro, Grabstätten, pp. 70–83; Wolfinger, ‘Die Stephanskirche’; Lackner, Hof, pp. 212–14.

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the Empire and to the crown.65 However, the Privilegium Maius was swiftly unmasked by Rudolf’s contemporaries as a forgery and a provocation. As a result Duke Rudolf had to abandon his self-made titles Pfalzerzherzog and Herzog in Schwaben und Elsass, created to upgrade his status by reference to the old idea of a duchy of Swabia.66 Finally, historiography, produced in differing proximity to the Habsburg counts and Austrian dukes and establishing varying judgements of their rulership, has to be considered as a factor in the stabilisation of power.67 The beginnings of the Habsburg family and their foundation of the monastery of Muri were recorded in the Acta Murensia, a chronicle as well as a survey of the monastic communities’ properties apparently written by the local monks. Its original composition is usually dated around 1150, and it would appear therefore to be an early example of comital historiography. Unfortunately, however, this text is only preserved in a copy from around 1400, when Habsburg power in the region was at stake and many subjects under Habsburg control were producing written evidence to be able to prove their legal status to possible new rulers.68 It may well, therefore, reflect the concerns of that period. In any case, the Acta contained a useful story of Habsburg origins, and should be considered as part of the contemporary historiography of the dynasty in the later Middle Ages. The growing historiography from the fourteenth century onwards not only became more literary in character, it also established particular notions of the Habsburg rulers. King Rudolf I and Duke Rudolf IV, whose reigns mark the time frame of this paper, were assessed in rather different ways. Both chronicles and popular tales usually stress how successful the kingship of Rudolf I was, and praise his character as a pious, modest, affable man, and at the same time as a wise and just one, altogether a paragon. By contrast, Duke Rudolf IV – apparently eager for recognition – was discussed far less in terms of his characteristics as a ruler. His manifold strategies to conceptualise a Habsburg notion of rulership were first recorded by the chroniclers around the Habsburg emperor Frederick III, who liked the ideas of his

65 Niederstätter, Geschichte Österreichs, p. 53; Krieger, Habsburger, p. 140; Lackner, ‘Das Haus Österreich’, pp. 278–9; Wilhelm Baum, Rudolf IV. der Stifter. Seine Welt und seine Zeit (Graz 1996). 66 Niederstätter, Geschichte Österreichs, pp. 52–3; Krieger, Die Habsburger im Mittelalter, pp. 132–5, 142; Eva Schloteuber, ‘Das Privilegium maius – Eine habsburgische Fälschung’, in Die Geburt Österreichs. 850 Jahre Privilegium Minus, ed. Peter Schmid and Heinrich Wanderwitz (Regensburg 2007), pp. 143–65. 67 Stercken, “Saeldenrîche Frowen” und “gschwind listig wib”. 68 Acta Murensia: die Akten des Klosters Muri mit der Geneaologie der frühen Habsburger. Edition, Übersetzung, Kommentar, Digitalfaksimile nach der Handschrift StAAG AA/4947, ed. Charlotte Bretscher-Gisiger and Christian Sieber (Basel 2012); Krieger, Rudolf von Habsburg, pp. 32–7.

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great-uncle. Unlike his ancestor, Frederick not only managed to reunite the Habsburg dominions under the control of relatives, but also achieved the title of archduke, and he was successful in enhancing the domus Austriae and its grandeur during his long realm, setting the standard for his son Maximilian I.69

69 Cf. Niederstätter, Geschichte Österreichs, p. 40; Krieger, Rudolf von Habsburg, pp. 3–5, 177–81, 196–7, 229–41; Willi Treichler, Mittelalterliche Erzählungen und Anekdoten um Rudolf von Habsburg (Bern 1981); Alfred Ritscher, Literatur und Politik im Umkreis der ersten Habsburger. Dichtung, Historiographie und Briefe am Oberrhein (Frankfurt 1992); Hödl, Habsburg und Österreich, pp. 45–6, 128f-9, 191–226; Jean-Marie Moeglin, Dynastisches Bewusstsein und Geschichtsschreibung. Zum Selbstverständnis der Wittelsbacher, Habsburger und Hohenzollern im Spätmittelalter (Munich 1993); Schloteuber, ‘Das Privilegium maius’, p. 165.

Appendix Selected primary sources Translated by Graham A. Loud

(a)

The Privilegium Minus: Frederick I creates the new duchy of Austria (written at Regensburg, 17th September 1156).

In the name of the holy and individual Trinity, Frederick by the favour of Divine clemency Roman emperor and Augustus. Although an exchange of property can stand as valid from being actually put into practice, nor can actions that have lawfully been carried out be overthrown by opposition; however, lest there be any doubt as to what has been done, our imperial authority ought to intervene. Let it be known to all those faithful to Christ and to our empire, both in the present age and in the generations to come, that by the grace of Him by whom peace was sent down to men on earth from Heaven, at a general court held at Regensburg on the Nativity of St. Mary, in the presence of many religious and catholic princes, we have brought to an end the dispute and argument which has for a long time been stirred up between our most dear uncle Henry, Duke of Austria,1 and our most dear nephew Henry, Duke of Saxony,2 in this manner. The Duke of Austria has resigned to us the Duchy of Bavaria, which we have immediately granted to the Duke of Saxony; however the [new] Duke of Bavaria has resigned to us all his rights over the March of Austria, along with all the benefices that the late Margrave Leopold held from the Duchy of Bavaria.3 And lest we should by this action seem in any way to diminish the honour and glory of our most dear uncle, in a decision promulgated on the advice and counsel of Prince Vladislav, the illustrious Duke of Bohemia,4

1 Henry of Babenberg (also known as Henry ‘Jasomirgott’), Barbarossa’s maternal uncle (d. 1177). He had been Duke of Bavaria since 1143. 2 Henry the Lion: Strictly speaking he was Barbarossa’s first cousin rather than his nephew – the Emperor’s mother was Henry’s aunt. 3 Henry of Babenberg’s father, Margrave Leopold III (d. 1136). 4 Vladislav II, Duke (and from 1158 King) of Bohemia (d. 1174), one of Barbarossa’s most loyal supporters. His first wife had been Henry of Babenberg’s sister.

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and with the approval of all the princes, we have changed the March of Austria into a duchy, and granted it as a benefice to our aforesaid uncle Henry and to his most noble wife Theodora, legally sanctioning in perpetuity that they and their children after them, irrespective of whether these be sons or daughters, shall hold this same Duchy of Austria from the kingdom and possess it by hereditary right. If our uncle, the aforesaid Duke of Austria, and his wife should die without children, they have full liberty to pass on the duchy to whomever they wish. We also decree that no person, great or small, shall presume to exercise any judicial right in the government of that duchy without the consent and permission of the duke. The Duke of Austria shall not owe service to the empire from his duchy, unless he shall come after being summoned to courts which the emperor has arranged in Bavaria. He shall owe no expeditionary service, except in the case that the emperor shall have ordained it in the kingdoms and provinces bordering Austria. That this our imperial constitution shall remain firm and inviolate through the ages, we have ordered this present document to be written, and it to be sealed with the impression of our seal, adding suitable witnesses, whose names are these: Pilgrim, Patriarch of Aquilea;5 Eberhard, Archbishop of Salzburg;6 Otto, Bishop of Freising;7 Conrad, Bishop of Passau;8 Eberhard, Bishop of Bamberg;9 Hartmann, Bishop of Brixen;10 Hartwig of Regensburg;11 the Bishop of Trent;12 the lord Duke Welf;13 Conrad brother of the emperor;14 Frederick son of King Conrad;15 Henry, Duke of Carinthia;16 Margrave Engelbert of Istria;17 Margrave Albrecht of Staden;18 Margrave Diepold;19 Herman Count Palatine of the Rhine;20 Otto

5 Pilgrim, Patriarch (Archbishop) of Aquilea, in northern Italy, 1130–61. 6 Eberhard I, Archbishop of Salzburg 1147–64. 7 Younger brother of Henry of Babenberg, he was the chronicler and author of ‘The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa’, and Bishop of Freising 1138–58. 8 Conrad, Bishop of Passau 1148–64, and subsequently Archbishop of Salzburg 1164–8, was a brother of Otto of Freising and Henry Jasomirgott. 9 Eberhard II, Bishop of Bamberg 1146–72. 10 Hartmann, Bishop of Brixen 1140–64. 11 Hartwig II, Bishop of Regensburg 1155–64. 12 Adalbert, bishop 1156–77. 13 Welf VI, Duke of Spoleto (1115/6–91), Henry the Lion’s uncle. 14 Son of Duke Frederick ‘the one-eyed’ by his second marriage to Agnes of Saarbrücken, and thus Barbarossa’s half-brother, born 1136 x 40, who became Count Palatine of the Rhine later in 1156. 15 Frederick of Rothernburg, Duke of Swabia, who died during the Roman expedition of 1167. 16 Henry (II), Duke of Carinthia 1144–61, from the Spanheimer family. 17 Engelbert (III), Margrave of Istria 1124–71, Duke Henry’s uncle. 18 Albrecht the Bear, Margrave of Brandenburg and of the Saxon Northmark (d. 1170). 19 Diepold V, Margrave of Vohburg (in Bavaria) c. 1130–58. 20 Herman of Stahleck had married Gertrude, sister of King Conrad III, and been appointed by the latter as Count Palatine of the Rhine c. 1142/3. He died a few days after the Privilegium

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count palatine and his brother Frederick;21 Count Gebhard of Sulzbach;22 Count Rudolf of Swinshud;23 Count Engelbert of Halle;24 Count Gebhard of Burghausen;25 the Count of Pitten,26 the Count of Peilstein,27 and many others. The sign of the lord Frederick, the invincible emperor of the Romans. I, Rainald the chancellor, in place of Arnold, Archbishop of Mainz and archchancellor, have authenticated this.28 Dated at Regensburg, 17th September, in the fourth year of the indiction, the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 1156, in the reign of the lord Frederick, august emperor of the Romans, done in Christ happily amen, in the 5th year of his reign and his 2nd as emperor. [Translated from MGH Dipl. Frederick I, i.259–60 no. 151].

(b)

The Gelnhausen charter: Frederick I announces the confiscation and subsequent division of the duchy of Saxony, the two portions of which he then re-grants to Archbishop Philip of Cologne and count Bernhard of Anhalt respectively (written at Gelnhausen, in Hesse, 13th April 1180).

In the name of the holy and individual Trinity, Frederick by the favour of Divine clemency Roman emperor and Augustus. Since human memory is fallible and does not suffice for a host of matters, the divine authority of emperors and kings, the predecessors of our age, has decreed that what the passing of time customarily removes from the notice of men should be recorded in writing. Therefore, let it be known to all those faithful to our empire, both present and future, that Henry, former Duke of Bavaria and Westphalia, was the subject of complaints both

21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

Minus was issued, seemingly without heirs, and was replaced by Barbarossa’s half-brother Conrad [see above note 14]. Otto (V) of Wittelsbach (d. 1183): He and Frederick were the sons of the Count palatine Otto (IV), see above genealogical chart VII. In Franconia, 50 km. E of Nuremberg. In July 1174, after the death of his only son, he transferred the fiefs which he held from the bishopric of Bamberg to Barbarossa’s sons, MGH Dipl. Frederick I, iii.117–19 no. 624. Also known as Count of Pfullendorf. In Saxony on the River Saale, 30 km. NW of Leipzig. In Upper Bavaria, on the River Salzach, on the modern German-Austrian border, 80 km. E of Munich. In Austria, near Wiener Neustadt. Also in Austria. Rainald of Dassel, subsequently Archbishop of Cologne 1159–67, another who died during the Roman expedition of 1167.

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from the princes and from many noblemen because he had gravely threatened the liberty of the churches of God and the noblemen of the empire, occupying their possessions and injuring their rights. Since he was cited to come into the presence of our majesty and he ignored this summons, for this contumacy he incurred the sentence of outlawry from us, from the princes and from the men of his rank among the Swabians. In addition, because he has not disdained to trample upon the churches of God and the rights and freedom of princes and noblemen, then both for the injury to them and for the manifold instances of contempt he has shown to us, and especially for his clear offence to our majesty in that he was summoned to our presence three times in legal form under the law pertaining to fiefs [sub feodali iure], and he failed either to appear or to send any representative on his behalf, he has been judged to be contumacious; and as a result, and by the unanimous sentence of the princes in a solemn court celebrated at Würzburg, both the duchy of Bavaria and that of Westphalia and Engern, as well as all the benefices that he has held from the empire are confiscated from him and awarded to our right and power. After discussing this matter with the princes and on their universal advice, we have divided the duchy which is called that of Westphalia and Engern in two. In consideration of the good qualities by which our beloved prince Philip, Archbishop of Cologne,29 has deserved the privilege of imperial grace, through his promotion and maintenance of the honour of the imperial crown, disdaining neither the expenditure of his property nor danger to his person, we confer through our imperial liberality and by title of legitimate donation one of those parts on the church of Cologne. This part extends into the archbishopric of Cologne and throughout the bishopric of Paderborn, with all rights and jurisdiction, namely with counts, advocates, soldiers,30 homesteads, estates, benefices, ministeriales, peasants and everything that pertains to this same duchy. And following on from the sentence of the princes, which permits this, and by that sentence and approved by the general assent of the princes and of the whole court, and also agreed by the public consent of our beloved blood-relative Duke Bernhard,31 to whom we have conceded the remaining part of the duchy, we have solemnly invested with our imperial banner Archbishop Philip with that portion of the duchy granted to his church. Confirming this legitimate donation by our majesty and the investiture of the church of Cologne and of the oft-mentioned Archbishop Philip, our prince, to all our successors, and wishing it to remain valid for them through all subsequent ages, and lest anyone should attempt by rash undertaking to infringe it or to violate it in any way,

29 Philip of Heinsberg, Archbishop of Cologne 1167–91. 30 conductibus; a word that has a number of meanings (households, mercenaries, rights of protection), this is the most probable translation. 31 Bernhard of Anhalt had a hereditary claim to the duchy, as the great-grandson of Magnus, the last Billung Duke of Saxony, who had died in 1106.

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we decree [this] by imperial edict, and we reinforce this our present decree through a privilege sealed with the gold bull of our excellent majesty, with an authentic record of the witnesses who were present at this event. These are: Arnold, Archbishop of Trier;32 Wichmann, Archbishop of Magdeburg;33 Conrad, Archbishop of Salzburg;34 Siegfried, Archbishop-elect of Bremen;35 Conrad, Bishop of Worms,36 Rudolf, Bishop of Liège;37 Bertram, Bishop of Metz;38 Arnold, Bishop of Osnabrück;39 Conrad, Abbot of Fulda;40 Adolf, Abbot of Hersfeld;41 Lothar, Provost of Bonn; Ludwig count palatine of Saxony and Landgrave of Thuringia;42 Bernhard, Duke of Westphalia and Engern; Godfrey, Duke of Lotharingia;43 Frederick, Duke of Swabia;44 Otto, Margrave of Brandenburg;45 Dietrich, Margrave of Lausitz;46 [11 counts, seven named others, three of whom were count officials] and many others. The sign of the lord Frederick, the invincible emperor of the Romans. I, Godfrey, chancellor of the imperial hall, in place of Archbishop Christian of Mainz, archchancellor of Germany,47 have authenticated this. These acts were in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 1180, thirteenth of the indiction, in the reign of the lord Frederick, invincible emperor of the Romans, in the 29th year of his reign and his 26th as emperor, happily amen, in a solemn court at Gelnhausen in the territory of Mainz, on 13th April. [Translated from MGH Dipl. Frederick I, iii.362–3 no. 795].

32 Arnold, Archbishop of Trier 1169–83, nephew of the celebrated Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, who had been elected ad suggestionem vel consilium imperatoris, Continuatio Treverensis, MGH SS xxiv.382. 33 Bishop of Naumburg/Zeitz 1149–54, Archbishop of Magdeburg 1154–92. 34 Conrad of Wittelsbach, Archbishop of Mainz 1161–5, driven from his see because of his support for Alexander III, Archbishop of Salzburg 1177–83, and Archbishop of Mainz once more 1183–1200. 35 Formerly Bishop of Brandenburg 1173–8, died 1184. 36 Conrad (II), Bishop of Worms 1171–92. 37 Rudolf, son of Duke Conrad of Zähringen (d. 1152), Bishop of Liège 1167–91. 38 Bertram, Bishop of Metz 1180–1212. 39 Arnold, Bishop of Osnabrück 1173–91, who died on the Third Crusade. 40 Conrad (II), Abbot of Fulda 1177–92, who had recently attended the Third Lateran Council at Rome. 41 Soon after this Adolf, Abbot of Hersfeld 1175–80, was deposed from that position, Monumenta Erphesfurtensia saec. XII, XIII, XIV, ed. O. Holder-Egger (MGH SRG 1899), p. 190. 42 Ludwig III, Landgrave of Thuringia 1172–90, Barbarossa’s nephew, son of his half-sister Judith. 43 Godfrey, Duke of Lower Lotharingia (Brabant), 1142–90. 44 Second son of Frederick Barbarossa, died at Acre in 1191. 45 Otto, Margrave of Brandenburg 1170–84, eldest son of Albrecht the Bear, and elder brother of the new Duke of Saxony. 46 Dietrich of Wettin, Margrave of Lower Lausitz 1156–85, second son of Margrave Conrad of Meissen (d. 1157). 47 Christian of Buch, Archbishop of Mainz 1165–83, who was then in Italy.

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The “privilege in favour of the ecclesiastical princes” (issued at Frankfurt, 26th April 1220)

In the name of the holy and individual Trinity. Frederick II by the favour of Divine clemency King of the Romans and always Augustus, and King of Sicily. We duly recollect the effective and loyal assistance that our beloved and faithful subjects the ecclesiastical princes have previously rendered to us, by promoting us to the summit of the empire, by supporting us after our promotion, and through the willing and unanimous election of our son Henry as their king and lord. We have [thus] decided that those through whom we were promoted ought always to be themselves promoted, and those through whom we have been supported should, along with their churches, always have the support of our protection against any [possible] harm. Therefore, since certain customs, or we may rather say abuses, which are burdensome to them have arisen as a consequence of the long period of disturbance within the empire, which is now through the grace of God quiet and at peace; in the form of new tolls and moneys (in novis theloneis et monetis), which have had the effect of invalidating each other through the similarities of the images upon them, [also] in wars between advocates and with innumerable other evils, we have promulgated various decrees to counter these abuses. (1) First, we promise that in future on the death of any ecclesiastical prince we shall never claim what he leaves for the fisc; forbidding also any [other] layman claiming these things for himself on any pretext. Rather they shall pass to his successor, if the predecessor has died intestate, while if they have made a will then we wish this to be put into effect. If indeed anybody shall presume to claim these effects for himself in defiance of this decree, he shall be proscribed and outlawed, and shall remain deprived of any fief or benefice that that he holds. (2) Item: we shall not in future introduce new tolls or new moneys within their territories or jurisdictions without consulting them or against their wishes, but we shall preserve firm and unalterable the ancient tolls and minting rights granted to their churches, nor shall we infringe these, nor shall we permit them to be breached by others in any way, for they customarily disturb and debase the coinage by [striking] similar images, which practice we absolutely forbid. (3) Item: we shall not to their prejudice receive in our cities men of whatever sort who are retained in servitude to these princes, for whatever reason they may have abandoned service to them. And we wish the same [decree] to be generally observed, both amongst themselves and by all laymen. (4) Item: we decree that nobody shall damage the property of any church on the excuse of being the advocate of its property; if anyone should do such damage, then he shall make double reparation for that damage and shall pay 100 marks of silver to our treasury.

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(5) Item: if any of the princes shall under the law pertaining to fiefs (iure feodali) issue a summons to a vassal who has gravely offended him, and then confiscates this fief, we shall protect [his retention of] this fief for his own use. And if he should then, out of his own goodwill and generosity, wish to confer this fief on us, we shall receive it, notwithstanding our own personal love or hatred. However, if it should happen that any fief held from an ecclesiastical prince should fall vacant, either from the death of the person enfeoffed (infeodatus) or for whatever other reason, we shall on no account seize it upon our own authority, or rather by violence. If we cannot obtain this by his own grant made out of goodwill and generosity, we shall do our best to defend this successfully for his own use. (6) Item: we shall as is right shun those persons whom they have excommunicated, provided that they have notified us of this, either in person by word of mouth, or by letter, or through trustworthy envoys deserving credence. Until these people are absolved, we shall not allow them the right to appear in court; with the exception that excommunication does not exempt them from answering plaintiffs against them, but this must be done through an advocate. They shall, however, lose the right and power to give judgement themselves, to give evidence and to bring cases against others. (7) And since the material sword has been appointed to render assistance to the spiritual sword, excommunication shall be followed by a sentence of outlawry from us, if the persons excommunicated remain in that state for longer than six weeks, and if it has been made known to us by any of the means mentioned above. This outlawry must not be revoked unless the sentence of excommunication is lifted first. (8) We have firmly promised to rule and to work to their advantage through just and efficacious judgement both in these and in other ways; and they in turn have promised us and pledged their faith to assist us effectively and to the best of their powers against any man who resists by violence such a judgement of ours rendered in their favour. (9) Item, we decree that no building, castle or city shall be constructed on ecclesiastical territory, either on the excuse of acting as advocate or by any other pretext. And if perhaps these have been constructed, against the wishes of those to whom the territory belongs, [then] they shall be destroyed by royal power. (10) Item: following the example of our grandfather, the Emperor Frederick of happy memory, we forbid any of our officials to claim for themselves jurisdiction in the cities of these same princes over tolls, minting or any other public functions; except for eight days before a court of ours that has been publicly announced is held there, and for eight days after it is finished. Nor indeed even in that period should they presume to infringe in any way the jurisdiction of the prince and the customs of the city. And whenever we shall arrive at any city of theirs without

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publicly announcing a court, our officials shall have no rights in it, but its prince and lord shall [continue to] enjoy full power therein. (11) We do indeed know how great the loyalty of the aforesaid princes is towards us, and thus we intend all the more to further their interests. And since oblivion, the enemy of memory, is accustomed to bury the acts of men through the lengthy evolution of time, we wish to ensure with careful diligence that these benefits of our grace conferred on churches shall be remain valid in perpetuity. We decree that our heirs and successors in the empire should preserve them and put them into practice, and ensure that laymen universally observe them for the benefit of churches. And that they should be preserved for posterity and not escape the memory or notice of the present time, we have had this document written down, and had it undersigned with the names of those princes who were present, and have had it authenticated by our seal. The witnesses are these: Siegfried, Archbishop of Mainz;48 Dietrich, Archbishop of Trier;49 Engelbert, Archbishop of Cologne;50 Albert, Archbishop of Magdeburg;51 Hugh, Bishop of Liège;52 Otto, Bishop of Utrecht;53 Ekbert, Bishop of Bamberg;54 Conrad, Bishop of Regensburg;55 Hartwig, Bishop of Eichstätt;56 Dietrich, Bishop of Münster;57 Henry, Bishop of Worms;58 Engelhard, Bishop of Naumburg;59 Henry, Bishop of Basel,60 and many others. Sign of the lord Frederick II, most invincible King of the Romans and King of Sicily. I, Conrad, Bishop of Metz and Speyer, chancellor of the imperial hall,61 have validated [this document], acting in the place of lord Siegfried, Archbishop of Mainz, and archchancellor of all Germany.

48 Siegfried (II) of Epstein, Archbishop of Mainz 1200–30. 49 Dietrich (II), Archbishop of Trier 1212–42, son of Count Dietrich of Wied who had died on the Third Crusade. 50 Engelbert, Archbishop of Cologne 1216–25, murdered by one of his own relatives, the Count of Isenberg, in November 1225, after a dispute about a church at Essen; for which Chronica Regia Coloniensis, ed. G. Waitz (MGH SRG, Hanover 1880), pp. 255–6. 51 Albert of Kevernburg, Archbishop of Magdeburg 1205–32. 52 Hugh (II), Bishop of Liège 1200–29. 53 Otto of Lippe, Bishop of Utrecht, 1215–28, another prelate who died violently, in battle against the rebellious men of Coervoden. 54 Ekbert of Merania, Bishop of Bamberg 1203–37. 55 Conrad (IV) of Teisbach, Bishop of Regensburg 1204–26. 56 Hartwig, Bishop of Eichstätt 1195–1223. 57 Dietrich (III) of Isenberg, Bishop of Münster 1218–26,a relative of the Archbishop of Cologne, and an accessory to his brother’s murder of the archbishop. 58 Henry (II) of Saarbrücken, Bishop of Worms 1217–34. 59 Engelhard, Bishop of Naumburg 1207–42. 60 Henry (II) of Thurn, Bishop of Basel 1216–38. 61 Conrad of Scharfenberg, Bishop of Speyer 1200–24, and also Bishop of Metz in plurality from 1212, was one of Frederick II’s most trusted supporters. Unusually for a German prelate, he was from a ministerial family.

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These acts took place in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 1220, ninth of the indiction, in the reign of the lord Frederick II, most glorious King of the Romans and of Sicily, in the eighth year of his reign in Germany, twenty-third in Sicily. Dated at Frankfurt, 26th April. [Translated from MGH Dipl. Frederick II, iii, 383–91 no. 620; earlier edition MGH Constitutiones, ii.89–91 no. 73.]

(d)

“The statute in favour of the princes” (issued at Cividale, May 1232)

In the name of the holy and individual Trinity. Frederick II, by the favour of Divine clemency Emperor of the Romans always Augustus, King of Jerusalem and Sicily. Let the lofty throne of our empire be exalted as we act with princely moderation of rule in all matters of peace and justice. We [now] make provision for the rights of our princes and magnates, for, just as the head rests upon healthy members, so our empire exists and flourishes, and the power of so great and mighty a Caesar rules and is spread wide, supported by and carried on their shoulders. Therefore, let both the present age and future posterity know that we have met with our beloved son Henry, King of the Romans, at Cividale in Friuli, and at the request of the princes and magnates, of whom a large number were there assembled for love of us, that we deign to honour and strengthen by our authority the grace that was granted to them by this same king, our son, in a general court at Worms,62 we have decided to look with favour upon their request, so that by acting fairly to benefit them, we may [also] appropriately promote the best interests of ourselves and our empire. (1) We therefore concede and give by perpetual confirmation what this same king our son is known to have conceded, decreeing that no new castle or city shall be constructed on the territory of churches, by us or by anyone else, either on the excuse of acting as advocate or by any other pretext whatsoever. (2) Item: that new markets may not interfere with old ones in any way. (3) Item: nobody shall be forced to go to any particular market against his will. (4) Item: long-established roads shall not be diverted, except at the wishes of those who use them. (5) Item: new military levies shall not be imposed in our cities.

62 MGH Constitutiones, ii.418–20 no. 304 (1st May 1231). [There is an English translation of this document by Brian Pullan, Sources for the History of Medieval Europe, From the mid-eighth to the mid-thirteenth Century (Oxford 1966), pp. 211–13].

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(6) Item: each of the princes shall peacefully enjoy [control of] liberties, jurisdictions, counties, tithings, freemen and feudatories, according to the established custom of their land. (7) Item: tithing men (centegravii) shall receive their tithings from the lord of the land or the man who has been enfeoffed by the lord of the land. (8) Item: nobody shall change the place of tithing without the consent of the lord of the land. (9) Item: no legally free person (sinodalis) shall be summoned to a tithing. (10) Item: persons who reside outside church walls shall be expelled from the ranks of the citizens. (11) Item: tributes of wine, money, grain and any others that peasants have agreed to pay shall be remitted and not received in future. (12) Item: men belonging to princes, nobles, ministeriales and churches shall not be received in our cities. (13) Item: properties and fiefs belonging to princes, nobles, ministeriales and churches that have been occupied by our cities shall be restored and not occupied in the future. (14) Item: we shall not personally invalidate a safe conduct issued by prince for his own land, or allow this to be infringed by our men. (15) Item: no persons shall be forced by our officials to restore the dues which they have received from their men for a long time, before they went to live in our cities, unless those men were directly subject to the empire, who shall be required to pay a levy with regard to the market right of those persons in the lands of whom these dues are collected. (16) Item: no man harmful to the land or who has been convicted or outlawed by a judge shall be knowingly received in our cities; convicted persons who have been received [there] shall be expelled. (17) Item: we shall not have any new coinage struck in the land of any prince through which the money of this same prince may be harmed. (18) Item: our cities shall not extend their jurisdiction beyond the boundaries of the city, except in cases where we possess special jurisdiction. (19) Item: a plaintiff in our cities shall bring suit in the court which has jurisdiction over the crime, unless the defendant or principal debtor shall be found to be present there, in which case he shall be made to respond there. (20) Item: nobody shall receive in pledge property with which someone has been enfeoffed, without the consent and agreement of the chief lord. (21) Item: nobody shall be forced to perform work for a city unless they are legally subject to this. (22) Item: men living in our cities shall pay to lords and advocates the customary and lawful dues to which they are liable for their property outside the city, but they shall not be molested with undue exactions. (23) Item: men who are subject to advocacies or feudatories and who wish to return to their lords shall not be forced to remain where they are by our officials.

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To ensure the memory and continued validity of this our grant and confirmation, we have had the present privilege drawn up and authenticated by the seal of our majesty. The witnesses of this matter were: S[iegfried], Archbishop of Mainz;63 B[erthold], Patriarch of Aquileia;64 the archbishops of Salzburg and Magdeburg; E[kbert], Bishop of Bamberg; S[iegfried, Bishop of] Regensburg, chancellor of the imperial hall;65 [the bishop of] Würzburg;66 H[enry], Bishop of Worms; the Bishop-elect of Freising;67 the Abbot of Sankt Gallen;68 A[lbrecht], Duke of Saxony;69 O[tto] Duke of Merania and B[ernhard], Duke of Carinthia;70 Count H[erman] of Ortenburg;71 Count A[dolf] of Schauenburg;72 the count of Seyn;73 Gerlach of Budingen; G. of Bolland, Gunzelin, G[odfrey] and C[onrad] of Hohenlohe, the butler of Winterstet, the butler of Klingenburg, Richard the chamberlain,74 and many others. Sign of the lord Frederick II, most invincible Emperor of the Romans, always Augustus, King of Jerusalem and Sicily. These acts took place in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 1232, in the month of May, fifth year of the indiction, in the reign of the lord Frederick II, most glorious Emperor of the Romans, always Augustus, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, in the twelfth year as Roman emperor, seventh in the kingdom of Jerusalem and thirty-fourth in the kingdom of Sicily. Dated at Cividale in Friuli, in the aforesaid year, month and indiction. [Translated from MGH Constitutiones, ii.211–13 no. 171]

(e)

The imperial land peace (issued at Mainz, 15th August 1235)

Frederick II, by the favour of Divine clemency Emperor of the Romans [and] always Augustus, King of Jerusalem and Sicily: having been raised to the throne of imperial eminence by Divine command, we seek to strengthen our

63 Siegfried (III) of Eppstein, Archbishop of Mainz 1230–49, nephew of his predecessor and namesake. 64 Berthold of Merania, Patriarch of Aquileia 1218–51, brother of Ekbert of Bamberg. 65 Siegfried, Bishop of Regensburg 1227–46. 66 Henry of Lobdenburg, Bishop of Würzburg 1225–54. 67 Conrad of Tölz, Bishop of Freising 1230–58. 68 Conrad of Bussnang, Abbot of Sankt Gallen 1226–39. 69 Duke of Saxony 1212–61. 70 Bernhard of Spanheim, Duke of Carinthia 1202–56. 71 Herman I, Count of Ortenburg (d. 1265). 72 Adolf IV, Count of Holstein from 1225, who in 1239 resigned his position and entered the Franciscan Order. He died in 1261. 73 Henry III, the last Count of Seyn, in the lower Rhineland, 1202–1246/7, who died childless and without a male heir. He was a relative of Henry, Archbishop of Cologne 1225–38. 74 All these persons were ministeriales.

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policy for the rule of our subjects through the double bond of peace and justice, so that our name shall be celebrated through this, and what gives glory to the ruler benefits those subject to him. For through this the authority of the ruler shall be strengthened, while he who in the preservation of peace and the execution of justice is stern to the wicked is to the same extent sought after by the law-abiding . . . (1) Our clemency should promote the liberties and rights of churches so generously that service, both in spiritual and in temporal matters, ought to be rendered the more devotedly by them and their rectors. We therefore firmly decree and strictly order that nobody should unjustly resist the jurisdiction of bishops and archdeacons in the cities, towns, villages and in any of the places of our holy empire, but should [rather] respect their pronouncements and just sentences in ecclesiastical cases. (2) We furthermore decree and strictly order that all the advocates of churches shall faithfully defend them to the best of their powers and ability, as they cherish Divine grace and our favour. They should also show themselves to be rational and modest with regard to the properties of their advocacies, so that serious dispute does not come to our attention about these. Otherwise we shall impose due punishment, according to justice, to resolve disputes about these. Moreover, we strictly forbid, on pain of [loss of] our grace and that of the empire, that anyone should invade the property of churches on account of any fault, debt or war of their advocates, or take them in pledge, or harm them with fire or plundering. If anybody should do this and be legitimately convicted, he shall be outlawed in the presence of his judge; nor shall that outlawry be relaxed unless he has paid triple reparation for the harm done, double to the church to which the property belongs, and once to the advocate. (3) It frequently happens that after dispute has arisen, especially among military men, peace is restored by the introduction of a truce through the chain of obligation; and that through human sin it then breaks down, and unless it is made subject to a binding sanction matters return to their former dangerous state. Therefore, we sternly and strictly order that unless the person by whom the truce has been violated does not swear on oath before a judge to uphold the truce that has been violated in its original state, in the presence of him in whose hands the promise was made and of two other law-worthy men [synodales viri], the violator shall be outlawed, nor shall he be absolved from his outlawry except with the consent of the plaintiff, otherwise he shall lose his hand. If indeed the person into whose hands the truce has been given, shall be unwilling to accept the ‘witness unto the truth’,75

75 John, 5:33.

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(5)

(6)

(7)

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he shall be forced to by the judge, unless he declares on oath that he does not know this; otherwise the person convicted shall lose a hand. If the truth is violated through the death of anyone and any relative of the murdered man shall prove this according to the procedure already stated, the convicted violator is to be dishonoured and outside the law (erenlos et rechtlos). The office of judge deserves to be upheld by good conduct, since the person who imposes punishment on others ought to be of exemplary way of life. We therefore sanction and firmly enjoin, if they wish to obtain our grace, that our princes and all others who hold judicial powers (iudicia) directly from us, judge justly the cases heard before them according to the lawful custom of their lands, and they order that the other judges who are subject to them and hold jurisdiction from them do the same thing. Should anyone not do this, we shall punish them severely as it shall prove just, and wishing to spare or exempt nobody in this, we shall remit no aspect of our right or of the appropriate punishment. We also instruct that this same rigour is to be observed by greater judges with regard to inferior judges. The magistracy and the laws are betrayed if anybody acts as avenger of their own injury, since when the authority of the law ceases license for savagery is granted. We therefore decree that nobody, whatever the injury done to them or the nature of their complaint, shall take revenge themselves, unless their charge has first been stated before a judge and prosecuted according to law until a definitive sentence [has been pronounced]; except when he has reasonably met force with force in defence of his person or of his goods, which is called ‘self-defence’ (Notwehr). If anyone should otherwise proceed to punishment, he shall give double reparation for the damage done to his adversary, nor shall any action concerning injury or grievance be brought by him in the future. If anyone shall bring a case before a judge as described above, but legal remedy (ius) does not follow, and forced by necessity it is necessary for him to challenge (diffidare) his enemy, which in the vernacular is called Widersage, he shall do this on two separate occasions, and from then until the fourth day, that is for three whole days, the challenger and the man challenged shall both keep the peace, with regard to both persons and property. Anybody who violates this decree is to be charged before a judge; who shall cite the violator [to appear before him] either in person or through an envoy. Unless the violator is brought before him on this matter, or shall prove his innocence through a sevenfold band of law-worthy men, that he has not done this in defiance of the decree, he shall be subject to the perpetual penalty that is described as being ‘dishonoured and outside the law’. When innovations are introduced without the consent of the lord [this is] not without harm to the law. What makes this worse is the fraud

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(8)

(9)

(10) (11)

Translated by Graham A. Loud and deceit by which somebody presumptuously usurps for himself revenues from the state. Thus we have decreed that all tolls both on land and waters which have been instituted, whomever this is by or wherever this might be, after the death of our father of holy memory the Emperor Henry shall be entirely removed, unless the person who has this toll proves, in front of the emperor, as is just, that the toll is lawfully held. We also order all additional tolls to be removed and entirely to cease, and matters properly to remain in their original situation. If anybody should violate this our sanction, or add any other due or statute, or wrongly claim these in an unlawful place, and be lawfully convicted of this in front of his judge, [then] he shall be punished as a robber and highwayman. We wish the keepers of tolls both on land and water to be legally responsible for the repair of bridges and roads, on behalf of the travellers and navigators from whom they levy the tolls, and for peace, security and escort, so that they lose nothing throughout the area of their jurisdiction, but they faithfully carry out their duties as best they can. Anybody who has been three times lawfully convicted in our presence, shall not keep their right, but give up the toll to the lord from whom they hold it.76 In addition we strictly forbid either lords or cities to build walls or anything else on the excuse of levying tolls or those other exactions which in the vernacular are called Ungelt77 from men living outside the town or from strangers, or from their goods. A lord should rather build [these] from his own resources or those of his men. Violators of this our edict are to be punished as robbers on the public highway. If there should be war or feud between anyone, of whom one or other of the parties has a toll or guard on a road, neither of them nor anybody else in hatred or blame of him to whom the right of toll or guard pertains, shall seize anything from those travelling, thus travellers shall enjoy peace and security on the road. Who contravenes this [edict] shall be punished as a public robber. We order that all public roads be kept open and forced roads are to cease entirely. We firmly decree that all moneys [issued] after the death of our father the Emperor Henry of holy memory are to cease entirely, wherever and by whomever they have been instituted; unless the one who holds them shall in accordance with justice prove in our presence that they hold this right from the empire. Whoever shall mint money unjustly shall be punished as a forger. Old moneys shall however be respected in a lawful, just and rational manner.

76 This clearly refers to keepers of tolls who have not fulfilled their duties, as defined above. 77 Excise dues, a major element in town finances.

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(12) Foolish things shall be presumed [to be] illegal, when the impropriety of an acquisition performs a good deed for humanity through legal complaints about venality. We strictly prohibit anyone from offering escort for a price to anybody else, unless he holds the right of guard by feudal right (iure feodali) from the empire. (13) We command that the [status of] Pfahlbürger in all cities, both in ours and those of others, shall cease and [this class] be completely abolished.78 We order that the Muntmannen are also wholly to cease wherever they are. (14) Nobody shall presume to take pledges without the authority of the judge of the province; should someone do this, he shall be punished as a robber. (15) When among everyone the vice of ingratitude is no light crime, how much more harshly should it be punished in a son, insofar as he forgets paternal love, and for the benefit of whom he can provide no service or devotion. We therefore sanction by this edict to be valid in perpetuity that whatever son shall deprive his father of castles, lands or other possessions through violence, or shall ravage his property with fire and slaughter, or shall make an alliance with the enemies of his father, or making oaths and fealty which are to the serious damage or destruction of the paternal honour or property, which are called in the vernacular Verderpussne:79 if the father with two men of good reputation and unblemished rank, lawworthy men (synodalibus hominibus), shall charge this same son on oath in front of a judge with any of the crimes listed above, he shall by this law be perpetually deprived of all property, by succession, ownership or inheritance, either paternal or maternal, movable or immovable, or fiefs; so that he may not at any time obtain these, either from the father or by restitution from any judge, or as a benefice. (16) If a son should be convicted in front of his judge of plotting the death of his father or of laying violent hands upon him either to wound or imprison him, he shall in the same way be deprived in perpetuity of his right and all legitimate claim by this law, so that he shall be as is said in the vernacular erenlos and rechtlos, with no possibility of restitution of his place.80

78 Peasants who had fled to cities and claimed burgess status: King Henry had already legislated about this in Alsace in 1224, setting out the means by which nobles and ministeriales might reclaim their dependants, MGH Constitutiones, ii.402–3 no. 287. See also the ‘Statute in favour of the Princes’ of 1232, clause 12 (above, p. 385), and Arnold, Power and Property in Medieval Germany, p. 57. 79 Modern German Verderben = ‘ruin’. 80 These two clauses, and the subsequent ones qualifying and expanding upon them, reflect the disgrace and deprivation of Frederick’s eldest son Henry at this same Diet, on a charge of rebellion against his father. Cf. Annales Scheftlarenses Maiores, MGH SS xvii.340; Cronaca S. Petri Erfordensia Moderna, in Monumenta Erphesfurtensia. Saec XII. XIII, XIV, ed. O. Holder-Egger (MGH SRG Hanover 1899), p. 233.

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(17) The witnesses whom the father shall nominate [to testify] in front of the judge on these matters, notwithstanding [any] blood-relationship by which they are bound to the father or son, shall be required ‘to give testimony of the truth’, entirely without contradiction and leaving nothing out. Should they refuse [to do this], they shall be forced by the judge in accordance with right and custom, unless they should declare their ignorance on oath. (18) Ministeriales or their men of servile condition, by whose advice and help a son has perpetrated any of the aforesaid crimes, who are accused in front of their judge by the father in accordance with the above procedure, shall be subject by the same law to the above-said penalty, to be as said in the vernacular erenlos and rechtlos, and marked with perpetual infamy. Such strict measures are not, however, to be taken against them unless the son has first been tried, to avoid malice and fraud. (19) All others by whose advice and help a son transgresses against his father, and who are convicted in accordance with the above procedure by witnesses in front of the judge under whose jurisdiction this has taken place, shall be proscribed; nor shall they be absolved from their proscription unless they pay damages to those harmed by their advice and help, a double payment to the father and to the judge what they are liable for, namely the Wette. If one of these shall be a vassal of the father, nevertheless by this law he shall lose his fief in perpetuity. If however the lord should at some other time restore this same fief, or an equivalent from his immovable property, or if he does not have this, he shall be held to pay his judge the value of these things. (20) However, in all the aforesaid cases every witness should be a free man, of unblemished rank and good reputation, in cases involving princes and others of equivalent status. Ministeriales shall be admitted in cases involving ministeriales and men of inferior rank, but not in cases involving freemen. Peasants and men of servile condition shall not be admitted in cases involving men of superior status, but [only] in those of their peers. (21) If the father, prevented by age, infirmity, captivity or other legitimate reason, should be unable to prosecute an injury, someone from his blood kin, having testified on oath to the clear impediment of this father, ought to be admitted to prosecute this same action in the father’s place, with every right granted to him that pertains to the father. All these special circumstances ought generally to be allowed in perpetuity through hatred and detestation of a crime against the natural equity of Divine and human law. (22) A variety of penalties has been found depending on the extent of the harm [done]. Thus we pursue those outlawed for a public crime, because the frightfulness of the crime has forbidden their country [to them], and also that an offence does not remain unpunished. We

Appendix: selected primary sources

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(24)

(25)

(26)

(27)

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therefore firmly and sternly order and decree that a sentence of outlawry is to be proclaimed by judges only in public places. Nor should that outlawry be lifted, unless a sufficient security has been offered to satisfy the accuser according to the custom of the region; should the judge not do this, we ourselves will make inquiry into the judge and punish him. Also, we strictly order that every judge, whether a prince or of lower rank should relax the penalty that is called wette on one who has been absolved from outlawry, so rather that others shall fear to be laid under outlawry. Item, we decree that whoever remains under the outlawry of the emperor for a year and a day, [and] if the plaintiff at whose charge he has been outlawed has lawfully proven his case against him before us, by our sentence he shall be pronounced erenlos and rechtlos. Item, whoever is charged by another and summoned to a duel for the crime of treason, or has stirred up any trouble against either us or our empire through their advice or help, if after the legally prescribed interval he does not appear to prove his innocence, he shall be judged by our sentence erenlos and rechtlos. Similarly for treachery and murder, which is called mord. We order and strictly forbid anyone to take those outlawed by the hand or knowingly receive them as guests. Should anyone do this and be lawfully convicted, he shall be punished as an outlaw, unless he declares his innocence by the seven-fold hand of law-worthy men of unblemished status. Wherever an outlaw is banished or seized, let no one defend him; and if anyone shall knowingly defend him and shall be lawfully convicted of this, he shall be held guilty of the same crime and sentenced as an outlaw. No city or town shall knowingly receive an outlaw; nobody shall defend him, and if any harm be done to him, he shall receive nothing in compensation. Nobody is to take part in buying or selling with him, rather he is to be avoided in all circumstances. If a city shall knowingly receive him in its community, and it is walled, the judge of the region shall destroy that wall; his host shall be punished as an outlaw and his house is to be destroyed. If the city lacks a wall, the judge is to have it burned down and nobody is to be permitted to prevent this. If the city should prove recalcitrant, both the city and the men who resist shall lose all their legal rights. If the judge under whose jurisdiction this is fails to do this, we are to be informed and we shall have this done ourselves. The means of doing harm are removed if the perpetrator is denied opportunity. Hence following the civil law we visit the same penalty on both thieves and those who offer help to them by sharing in their gains or buying their booty. We therefore decree that whoever knowingly buys something plundered or stolen, or looks after it, that is knowingly receives booty or stolen property from somebody not

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under sentence of outlawry, and is lawfully convicted of this for the first time, shall pay double the value to the lord of that property. If he should be convicted of having done this a second time, [then] if the property shall have been plundered he shall be punished as a plunderer, and if stolen as a thief. (28) The cares of ruling over the empire and the concerns of the various lands and regions which it is always better to supervise through our own diligence mean we cannot preside in person over the hearing of [all] legal pleas; we wish these [therefore] to be settled in our place by a supervising judge who is a man of proven faith and honest opinion. Apart from those matters which we have expressly reserved for our own decision, his judgement is to be inviolably respected. We therefore decree that our court shall have as justiciar a man of free condition, who shall remain in that office for at least one year, if he conducts himself well and justly. He shall preside here in judgement every day, except for Sundays and the major feast days, rendering justice to all plaintiffs, apart from to princes and other most high personages, in cases which touch the persons, rights, honour fiefs, properties and inheritances of these same, and with the exception of the greatest cases; for we reserve discussion of and judgement over these to our highness. This judge is not to appoint terms or days for those difficult cases involving these same people that pertain to him without our special mandate. He shall not outlaw those [of them] found guilty, nor absolve them from outlawry; for we reserve these cases to the authority of our excellence. And this same judge shall swear that he will receive nothing for giving judgement; that he shall do justice neither from love nor hate, from prayer nor price, nor from fear or favour, or from any other reason apart from what he shall know to be just or believe according to his conscience with good faith, avoiding all deceit and trickery. We devolve upon him and assign the rights, which in the vernacular are called Wette, that come from the absolution of outlaws – although only of those whose cases are heard before him – that he shall judge with benevolence and shall receive bribes from no one.81 He shall relax this penalty for nobody, that men shall fear outlawry the more. (29) He shall have a special notary, who writes down the names of those outlawed, and the details which led to this outlawry, of the plaintiffs, the case or dispute itself, and the day [when this happened], also the names of those released from outlawry and of the plaintiff through whom they were outlawed, the reason and the day of the absolution, the names of the guarantors for the absolved (who they are and where they come from), and any cautionary payment which the person to be

81 These iura included fees or payments.

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absolved is to pledge in accordance with the custom of the region for the satisfaction of plaintiffs. He is to receive letters and serve them. He shall have no other duties apart from the business of the court. He is to write down the names of those who are accused or denounced as injurious to the land, but he shall delete their names and crimes when they are absolved from suspicion. This same man is to record all sentences passed in our presence in major cases, and in particular those involving divergent judgements, which are called in the vernacular gesamint Urteil, so that in the future ambiguity in similar cases may be removed, making clear the region according to the custom of which sentence has been pronounced. The notary shall be a layman, on account of sentences involving bloodshed, which ought not to be written by a cleric, and especially that should he be delinquent in his office he may be punished with appropriate penalties.82 Item, he shall swear an oath in accordance with the form of the oath that the justiciar takes, that he will comport himself in his duties faithfully and in accordance with the law, and that he will write or do nothing contrary to right and duty according to his conscience and with good faith, avoiding all deceit and trickery. These constitutions have been issued and promulgated for the general welfare and tranquillity of the empire, and on the advice and with the assent of the princes both ecclesiastical and secular, as well as of many nobles and other faithful subjects of the empire, in a solemn court celebrated at Mainz; in the year from the incarnation of the Lord 1235, in the month of August, eighth [year] of the indiction, in the rule of the lord Frederick II, by the grace of God invincible Emperor of the Romans always Augustus, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, his fifteenth year as emperor, tenth in the kingdom of Jerusalem, thirty-seventh in the kingdom of Sicily, happily, amen. [Translated from MGH Constitutiones, ii.241–47 no. 196]

(f)

The creation of the duchy of Brunswick (issued at Mainz, 21st August 1235)

In the name of the holy and individual Trinity. Frederick II, by the favour of Divine clemency, Emperor of the Romans always Augustus, King of Jerusalem and Sicily. The glorious ‘Lord of Lords’83 in his majesty, who creates kingdoms and strengthens empire, from whose mercy we live, and from whom we are endowed, has appointed us that we may rule happily over kings and

82 In other words, he cannot plead benefit of clergy to avoid the penalties of secular law. 83 I Timothy, 6:15; Revelations, 19:16.

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kingdoms, and has raised us to the imperial throne, that through our actions, our devoted gratitude and by our moderation peace and justice may be continued for our subjects, and that we who have been exalted over the sons of men by Him who rules the lands of the earth, may not admit the unworthy to a share in our solicitude but may distinguish worthy men with honours and generously bestow upon them then rank and distinction of the imperial name as a title of honour. Therefore, let both the present age and posterity in future know by the present document that, since it has for a long time been our intention that we bind our beloved blood relation Otto of Lüneburg more closely in loyalty to the empire and devotion to us, but neither place nor time granted an opportunity for us to follow through our intention by putting this into practice. But as a result of our happy arrival in Germany, a court was appointed [to meet] at Mainz for the reform of the condition of the entire land, and the aforesaid Otto was summoned to this same court and has attended. While our serene majesty was enthroned there, without princes sitting alongside, the aforenamed Otto of Lüneburg knelt before us, and putting aside all the hatred and rancour that could have existed between our forefathers, put himself completely into our hands, to obey our orders and be subject to our goodwill, and in particular he has expressly assigned his own castle of Lüneburg, which in the German language is called Eigen, with many other castles, lands and men pertaining to this same castle, to our ownership and lordship, so that we may do with it whatever is pleasing to us, as though we were to do this with our own property. We who are required in every way to increase our empire, have received into our ownership the aforesaid castle of Lüneburg, along with all [its] castles, appurtenances and men, in accordance with the assignment made by Otto, but in the presence of the princes we have conceded and transferred this into imperial property, so that it may legally be enfeoffed by the empire. Furthermore, we have bought the town of Brunswick, half the lordship of this from the margrave of Baden and the other half from the duke of Bavaria, our beloved princes, acting on behalf of their wives who were the daughters of the late Henry of Brunswick, Count Palatine of the Rhine, uncle of the said Otto, and in this same court we have similarly conceded this to the empire, transferring the ownership due to us to the lordship of the empire.84 Furthermore, Otto has in this same general court, with his hands joined palm to palm within our hands and over the holy cross of the empire which was being held there, sworn an oath of fealty, with us looking on, that he would entrust himself completely and with sincere and obedient devotion to

84 Henry of Brunswick, the eldest son of Henry the Lion, had died in 1227. His daughter Irmgard (d. 1260) had married Margrave Herman V of Baden (d. 1243); his other daughter Agnes (d. 1286) was married to Duke Otto [II] of Bavaria (d. 1253).

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our order and wish, and he granted his own castle to be our property, in full, something that nobody forced upon him, and he humbled himself in every way in our presence. Considering, moreover, that he has never offended against the empire and neither has he ever wished to plot against our honour at the suggestion of anyone, we have deemed it worthy and useful to provide from our imperial munificence for his support and profit. Therefore, with the counsel, agreement and in the presence of the princes we have joined together the town of Brunswick and the castle of Lüneburg, along with all their castles, men and appurtenances, and we have created a duchy therein, making by imperial authority our said kinsman Otto duke and prince, and we have granted that duchy to him as a fief of the empire, to be passed on to his heirs, both sons and daughters, hereditarily, and according to custom we have solemnly invested him [with it] by banner. From our overflowing grace we have also granted him the tithe revenues from Goslar belong to the empire. Further, we have granted to him that his ministeriales shall become ministeriales of the empire; these same ministeriales to possess all those rights that imperial ministeriales possess. Therefore, as a record of this concession and to strengthen its validity in perpetuity, we have ordered the present privilege to be drawn up and it to be reinforced by the impression of the golden bull with the seal of our majesty. The witnesses of this matter are: the Archbishops S[iegfried] of Mainz, H[enry] of Cologne, E[berhard] of Salzburg, D[ietrich] of Trier, and [the archbishop of] Besançon, W[ilbrand] Archbishop-elect of Magdeburg;85 Bishops E[kbert] of Bamberg, S[iegfried] of Regensburg the chancellor of the imperial hall,86 H[enry] of Konstanz,87 S[ibot] of Augsburg,88 B[erthold] of Strassburg,89 H[enry] of Basel,90 C[onrad] of Hildesheim,91 J[ohn of Liège],92 G[ottfried] of Cambrai,93 J[ohn] of Metz,94 [the bishops of] Toul and Münster,95 E[ngelhard] of Naumburg, [the bishop of] Utrecht,96 C[onrad]

85 Wilbrand had been the cathedral provost at Magdeburg before his election, and was archbishop 1235–53. 86 Siegfried, Bishop of Regensburg 1227–46. 87 Henry of Tanne, Bishop of Konstanz 1233–48, from a ministerialis family in Swabia. 88 Sibot of Seefeld, Bishop of Augsburg 1227–47. 89 Berthold of Teck, Bishop of Strassburg 1223–44. 90 Henry (II) of Thun, Bishop of Basle 1215–38. 91 Conrad (II) of Reisenberg, Bishop of Hildesheim 1221–46. 92 John of Rumigny, Bishop of Liège 1229–38. 93 Gottfried, Bishop of Cambrai 1219–37. 94 John (I), Bishop of Metz 1224–38. 95 Roger, Bishop of Toul 1231–52, and Ludolf, Bishop of Münster 1226–47. 96 Otto (III), Bishop of Utrecht 1234–49, younger son of Count William I of Holland, who died in 1223.

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of Osnabrück,97 R[üdiger] of Passau,98 H[enry] of Eichstätt,99 C[onrad] of Speyer,100 E[kkehard] of Merseburg,101 G. of Verdun,102 and C[onrad] of Freising;103 Brother H[erman], Master of the House of St. Mary of the Germans of Jerusalem;104 the abbots of Murbach, Reichenau and Ellwangen; O[tto], Duke of Bavaria and Palatine Count of the Rhine; H[enry], Duke of Brabant;105 A[lbrecht], Duke of Saxony; B[ernhard], Duke of Carinthia; M[atthew], Duke of Lotharingia;106 H[erman], landgrave of Thuringia and Palatine Count of Saxony;107 H[enry], Margrave of Meissen;108 H[erman], Margrave of Baden; J[ohn] and O[tto], Margraves of Brandenburg;109 H[enry], Count of Seyn; H[enry], Count of Bar;110 D[ietrich], Count of Cleves;111 H[enry], Count of Anhalt,112 and many others. Sign of the lord Frederick II, most invincible Emperor of the Romans, always Augustus, King of Jerusalem and Sicily. I, Siegfried, Bishop of Regensburg and chancellor of the imperial hall, have authenticated this, acting on behalf of the lord archbishop of Mainz, archchancellor of the whole of Germany. These acts took place in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 1235, in the month of August, eighth year of the indiction, in the reign of the lord Frederick, most glorious Emperor of the Romans, always Augustus, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, in the sixteenth year as Roman emperor, tenth in the kingdom of Jerusalem and thirty-eighth in the kingdom of Sicily. Dated at Mainz, in the aforesaid year, month and indiction. [Translated from MGH Constitutiones, ii.263–5 no. 197].

97 Conrad (I) of Veltzburg, Bishop of Osnabrück 1227–38. 98 Rüdiger of Radeck, Bishop of Passau 1223–50, who was deposed by Pope Innocent IV for his continued support of Frederick II, and who died in 1258. 99 Henry (III) of Rabenburg, Bishop of Eichstätt 1232–7. 100 Conrad (IV) of Dahn, Bishop of Speyer 1233–6. 101 Ekkehard, Bishop of Merseburg 1215–40. 102 This initial may be an error: The bishop of Verdun was then Rudolf (1224–45). The see was clearly Verdun (Verdunensis) in Upper Lotharingia, and not Verden in Saxony (Verdensis), whose bishop in 1235 was anyway Lothar. 103 Conrad of Tölz, Bishop of Freising 1230–58. 104 Herman of Salza, Master of the Teutonic Order (d. 1239), one of Frederick’s closest collaborators. 105 Henry I, Duke of Brabant 1190–235. 106 Matthew II, Duke of Upper Lotharingia 1220–51. 107 Herman II, Landgrave of Thuringia 1227–41. 108 Henry ‘the Illustrious’, Margrave of Meissen 1221–88. 109 John I (d. 1266) and Otto III (d. 1267), jointly Margraves of Brandenburg from 1220. 110 Henry II, Count of Bar, was killed at Gaza in November 1239 while on Crusade. 111 Dietrich V, Count of Cleves 1193–1260, who later became an early supporter of the antiStaufen king, William of Holland, to whom he was related. 112 Henry, Count of Anhalt (d. 1251/2) was one of the sons of Duke Bernhard of Saxony (d. 1212) – see genealogical chart VIII.

Glossary

Advocate: see Vogt Burgrave: this title (‘castle count’) was used for the noble who administered, defended and exercised justice in some of the more important towns in the Reich, such as Cologne, Mainz, Nuremberg and Regensburg. In Latin the title was often rendered as ‘town/city prefect’ (praefectus civitatis) as well as comes urbanus. As time went on, the emergence of town councils and magistrates tended to limit the original authority of the burgrave, and even deny him access to the town from which he derived his title, although burgraves frequently remained as powerful landowners in the immediate vicinity, as at Nuremberg. Here burgrave became simply a synonym for ‘count’. In parts of the northeast, however, notably in the marches of Brandenburg and Meissen, burgraves were appointed by the princely rulers to fulfil their traditional role as administrator of newly founded towns in these regions. Count Palatine (German Pfalzgraf ): this title originated with a court official of the early Middle Ages, literally the supervisor of the royal palace, but by the twelfth century it was essentially an honorary title which marked out an especially powerful noble within one of the old Carolingian and Ottonian-era provinces/duchies. There was only ever one such Count Palatine in each duchy. In the later Middle Ages the designation became the prerogative of the Counts Palatine of the Rhine (Lotharingia), whose title dated back to the late tenth century. In other provinces use of the title ‘count palatine’ fell into disuse during the thirteenth century. From 1214 the position of Count Palatine of the Rhine was held by the Wittlesbach family, along with the duchy of Bavaria – the two regions were formally divided in 1253. The Wittelsbach lordship along the middle Rhine and in the Neckar valley became known as the ‘Palatinate’ (German Rheinpfalz), and was held by the senior branch of the family, along with their electoral title, until the expulsion of Count Frederick V during the Thirty Years’ War. Duchies: the German (or more properly East Frankish) kingdom that developed after 843 was divided into four large duchies, in effect provinces, each of which was alleged to have a ‘tribal’/ethnic basis Bavaria,

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Franconia, Saxony and Swabia. To these Lotharingia (hitherto independent or claimed by the West Frankish king) was added during the reign of Henry I (919–36). The dukes who ruled over each duchy, although in practice powerful and semi-independent, were at least in theory royal deputies, who ruled over but did not ‘own’ their duchies. However, these large ‘stem duchies’ were soon subject to change. The Franconian ducal title was suppressed after 939 and the duchy taken into the king’s hands. Lotharingia was divided into two parts, upper and lower, and the duchy of Carinthia was split away from Bavaria, both in the reign of Otto II. While dukes remained, as time went on hereditary ducal succession was frequently subject to royal interference, especially under the early Salians, and the power and authority of the dukes increasingly rested on their own possessions and rights. There was, in other words, a privatisation of authority. Furthermore, other families developed equal power bases, and became in practical terms independent of traditional ducal authority – the rise of the Zähringer in Swabia is a particular case in point – while on the eastern frontier the Margraves of Brandenburg and Meissen, and the Landgraves of Thuringia, emerged as independent ‘princes’ outside any residual authority exercised by the duke of Saxony. Similarly, Austria became a duchy independent of Bavaria in 1156, while the ducal title of lower Lotharingia was disputed and split between the rival Brabant and Limburg dynasties. The fragmentation of the old duchies was completed after 1180 by the division of the old duchy of Saxony into two parts, Westphalia and Eastphalia, in the ‘Gelnhausen charter’ [see above, pp. 349–51], and the creation of the duchy of Merania for the counts of the Andechs dynasty. The title of duke was still used in the thirteenth century – the duchy of Brunswick was created for the Welfs in 1235 – but the significance was one of prestige rather than legal authority – and not all the imperial princes (Reichsfürsten) held the title of duke. Furthermore, the division of family lands by the princes led to a multiplication of ducal and other titles. Election (royal): when and why Germany became an elective monarchy are complex and much discussed questions. In the earlier Middle Ages the royal succession, in East Francia as in other kingdoms, worked through a combination of relationship to the previous ruler, designation and election. In practice, if a ruler left a son, and especially if that son was already adult, then the succession was usually hereditary. What confused the issue in Germany, and prevented the development of a clear hereditary line, was the number of times when it happened that on the death of the ruler there was no direct male heir (in 911, 918, 1002, 1024, 1125 and 1137/8). Sometimes this did indeed result in the formal election of a new ruler, when more than one candidate was considered by the assembled magnates and a selection process took place, as occurred in 1024 and 1125. But in 1138, for example, although a formal election was announced, the process was short-circuited by

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what was in effect a coup d’état, when, before the planned assembly of the great men of the kingdom was held, a small group of nobles met and declared their candidate elected, in the absence of many other leading men. And in 1152, and again with the ‘election’ of the child Conrad IV in 1238, the process of choosing a new ruler was described as an electio, even though there was only one candidate, and what took place seems to have been more acclamation than election. Both Salian and Staufen monarchs tried to secure hereditary succession, not least through designating and crowning their sons during their own lifetime, although Henry VI failed to persuade the princes to accept his proposal for a clearly defined hereditary monarchy in 1195/6. That the elective principle in the end prevailed was largely due, first to challenges by rival candidates to the Staufen predominance, as after 1198 and again after 1245, and then to the uncertainty that prevailed after the death of the last Staufen king in 1254. And it was only in 1273 and thereafter that a recognised body of electors (q.v.) emerged; in earlier ‘elections’, whether or not these were in practice acclamations of one generally accepted candidate, those who took part varied in number, and such assemblies were ad hoc groupings of those members of the higher nobility who were important at the time and bothered to attend. In 1125, for example, Lothar seems to have been elected by quite a large group, not just a few princely figures – although contemporary descriptions suggest that this ‘election’ – even though there was more than one candidate – was less a process of casting votes than a somewhat disorderly acclamation of the most popular choice, after some rather perfunctory initial discussion. Electors: the seven princes who from 1273 onwards had the exclusive right to elect the German king (and emperor-elect). These were the three ecclesiastical electors: the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz and Trier; three secular princes: the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg and the Count Palatine of the Rhine (the senior member of the Wittelsbach family), and the King of Bohemia. The pre-eminence of these seven reflects the political situation of the years after the death of Frederick II in 1250 – earlier royal elections, up to that of Conrad IV in 1238, had a considerably wider constituency. (It would seem that the discussion in the Sachsenspiegel (q.v.), which names these seven electors, was the product of one of the later redactions of this text – whoever wrote this section disliked the participation of the King of Bohemia). The position of the seven electoral princes was formally confirmed in law by the Golden Bull of Charles IV in 1356, and their number and composition remained unaltered until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 – apart from the transfer of the electoral role from one branch of the dukes of Saxony to another in 1547. The idea that the ‘college’ of electors had a distinct constitutional role in imperial diets (assemblies) only emerged during the fifteenth century.

372

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Emperor: that the same monarch is variously described as both ‘king’ and ‘emperor’ often confuses new students of German history. Whereas royal status derived from designation or election (q.v.) and coronation as king of Germany, that king only became emperor after coronation as ‘Roman Emperor’ by the pope in Rome, which might often occur some years after a ruler’s royal coronation. Thus, Lothar III was elected as German king at Mainz in August and crowned as king at Aachen in September 1125, but only received imperial coronation in June 1133. His successor Conrad III never received imperial coronation, and was therefore strictly speaking only king – although a few contemporaries, especially outside the Reich, did still refer to him as emperor. The link between becoming king and emperor was made more explicit in the thirteenth century when it became customary to describe the German ruler as ‘king of the Romans’ (Rex Romanorum), or even ‘king of the Romans and emperor-elect’. After 1273 only a few German kings actually received imperial coronation (Henry VII in 1312, Charles IV in 1355 and Sigismund in 1433), and in one case (Ludwig IV/‘Louis of Bavaria’) a ruler claimed imperial status as a consequence of a Roman coronation that was not by the pope (1328). Feudalism: the use of this term is one of the most marked dissonances between German-language and English-language history writing. Thanks to the work of, among others, John Prestwich, Susan Reynolds and Elizabeth Brown, the concept of ‘feudalism’ has become very largely discredited among Anglophone medievalists – not merely because it was an anachronistic construct of the Enlightenment rather than a contemporary medieval term, but because the concept is no longer seen as a helpful one in describing medieval social structures. We are now much more conscious of regional variations, and while different societies might have fiefs, vassals, bonds of dependence and dependent tenure, and military obligations in return for that tenure, the forms which these took could still be very different. There was, in short, nothing systematic about ‘the feudal system’. At the most, therefore, Anglophone historians might still use the adjective ‘feudal’ to refer to those matters pertaining to the fief (Latin feudum). By contrast, many German historians continue to use the term for a society in which fiefs and vassalage were core elements of social cohesion among the upper class (German Lehnswesen – from Lehen, meaning a fief). Some Anglophone historians are also cautious about the term ‘feudalism’ because of the dangers of confusion with Marxist ‘feudalism’, a very different, although arguably equally outmoded historical concept. There is only one word for these two interpretations in English – in German the difference is immediately apparent, since Marx described his concept of ‘feudalism’ as der Feudalismus. Heerschild: (literally ‘military shield’), this was the sevenfold system of social stratification first enunciated in the Sachsenspiegel (q.v.) in the

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early thirteenth century. The king formed the first rank, the ecclesiastical princes the second, the lay princes the third, other lesser territorial lords formed the fourth rank and so on. To what extent it was ever more than a theoretical construct is a good question. Landgrave: (Latin comes provincialis), was a title first appearing in Lotharingia at the end of the eleventh century, but it only became prominent when in 1131 King Lothar III conferred rule over Thuringia to the counts of the Ludowinger dynasty. Its significance may be that it was a mark of their authority being directly dependant on the monarch, and independent from another provincial ruler, as a sort of ‘super-count’, although the origins and exact significance of this title have been much debated by historians. A few years later we also find a Landgrave in Alsace – a title subsequently conferred upon the Habsburg dynasty. However, use of this title did not multiply. The Landgraves of Hesse during the second half of the thirteenth century derived their usage of the title from their relationship to the Ludowinger, who had died out in the male line in 1247, and whose lands in Hesse they inherited. Land peace: (German Landfriede) the proclamation of a ‘land peace’ by secular rulers was derived from the clerical Peace and Truce of God, which originated in southern France in the late tenth century. The former was intended to impose limitations on warfare, in particular by protecting non-combatants (and above all churches and churchmen). The latter attempted to prevent warfare on Sundays and the great Church festivals, when it was especially inappropriate for Christians to kill other Christians, but was gradually extended to comprise lengthier periods of truce. These clerical efforts to control internecine warfare were backed up by spiritual sanctions, notably the excommunication of truce breakers. From c. 1050 onwards secular rulers, such as William the Conqueror in Normandy, took the lead in proclaiming such peaces/truces, with the support of the local bishops. Germany, however, played little or no part in the early development of this movement. However, in 1103 Henry IV, struggling to assert his authority in his divided kingdom, proclaimed a general four-year truce throughout Germany. Subsequent rulers followed his example, notably Frederick Barbarossa in 1152 and again in 1158, while in 1188, before his departure on Crusade, he laid down detailed regulations to control and limit the impact of blood-feuds. Frederick II’s land peace issued at Mainz in 1235 laid more stress than previous enactments on the role of judges in enforcing law and order and on the particular need to guarantee the safety of roads and travellers. Needless to say, such royal proclamations tended to be aspirational, and were of only limited effectiveness. The problem was always that the rulers lacked effective means of enforcement. Nevertheless, they persisted in these endeavours; and from the mid-thirteenth century onwards princely rulers began to proclaim them in their dominions, and even leagues of towns, especially in

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the (relatively urbanised) Rhineland. After the Interregnum Rudolf of Habsburg made a number of peace proclamations, either for the empire as a whole or for specific regions; his example was followed by Charles IV in 1354, and Maximilian I ordered a general land peace as late as 1495. Leihezwang: this was the name coined by historians for an alleged legal principle that should fiefs held directly from the king/emperor be confiscated or escheat to the crown, then the ruler had to re-grant them to another holder within a year and a day of receiving them, rather than keeping them in his own possession. It was, so this theory suggested, because of this principle that Frederick Barbarossa was ‘forced’ to re-grant the fiefs confiscated from Henry the Lion in 1180. However, although this view was once generally accepted, modern historians are now very sceptical as to whether such a principle or custom – for which written evidence is lacking – actually existed; and they suggest rather that the decision to re-grant confiscated or escheated fiefs was essentially a pragmatic and political one, as in 1180 where Barbarossa needed to reward his allies. Margrave: this title (Latin marchio, and from which the English ‘marquis’ is derived) was borne by rulers of frontier districts (‘marches’/‘marks’) in the Carolingian period – not just in East Francia (the later Germany), but in West Francia and Italy as well. Their role in commanding the defence of the march granted them authority over other local nobles, including local counts. As the Ottonian kingdom expanded to the east during the tenth century a whole series of such military districts were created along the frontier, some of which such as Austria (the ‘east mark’) and Meissen survived into the twelfth century, although others such as Brandenburg were more recent creations. As time went on the specific role of frontier defence became less important, and the title of margrave became simply one of a variety of princely appellations – the Margraves of Baden are an obvious case in point. For the earlier history of these frontier districts, there is an exhaustive monograph by Andrea Stieldorf, Marken und Markgrafen. Studien zur Grenzsicherung durch die fränkisch-deutschen Herrscher (Hanover 2012). Ministerialis: a warrior who was of unfree status; these are often referred to as ‘servile knights’, although their social status was a great deal higher than that of a serf. This was a German peculiarity – elsewhere a ministerialis was simply a ‘servant’. The term first emerges in Germany in the early eleventh century, although its origins were probably older. By the middle of that century the ministeriales were already well-established, as can be seen from a surviving list of the rules and customs pertaining to the ministeriales of the bishopric of Bamberg, dating from the time of Bishop Gunther (1057–65). The origins of this social group are much disputed; this may have been from the household servants of great lords, although another theory is that ministeriales derived from peasants who

Glossary

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had prospered and sought knightly status. (It is quite feasible that in fact the ministeriales came from both groups). Later, there were even cases where free knights voluntarily accepted this quasi-servile status in return for the grant of a holding. Furthermore, where daughters of ministeriales married freemen, their children would ipso facto acquire this condition. Because of their especially close links with their lords, ministeriales were often entrusted with the administration of their lands, and were thus a crucial support for the developing princely dynasties. A few ministeriales, especially those favoured by the imperial Salian and Staufen dynasties, became very wealthy and powerful, notably Henry VI’s chamberlain and right-hand man Markward of Anweiler (d. 1202), and his contemporary Werner (II) of Boland, who held benefices from no fewer than 44 different lords. By the early thirteenth century ministeriales probably comprised about two-thirds of German knights – by the end of that century their ‘servile’ status was becoming increasingly anachronistic, and they and the remaining ‘free’ knights merged into one class of imperial knighthood in the late Middle Ages. The literature on ministeriales is extensive, and often opaque. For a brief, clear and helpful introduction in English, see Benjamin Arnold, ‘Servile retainers or noble knights: the medieval ministeriales in Germany’, Reading Medieval Studies 12 (1986), 73–84; and for a more extended discussion, the same author’s German Knighthood, 1050–1300 (Oxford 1985), especially chapter 1 for the origins of the class. Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH): an organisation for the publication of the sources for German history in the Middle Ages, founded by Baron von Stein in 1819, but largely developed thereafter by Georg Heinrich Pertz, its principal editor for 50 years from 1823. Since the Second World War, it has been based at Munich, where its quarters are in the Bavarian State Library. It is the most important medieval textual/editorial institution in the world. In addition to its publication of primary sources (see the bibliography for what is only a small selection), it has its own monograph series, and publishes an annual journal, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters. For its history and development up to 1960, see David Knowles, Great Historical Enterprises (London 1963), pp. 63–97 [first published in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Ser. V.10 (1960), 129–50]. Provost (Latin prepositus): the head of a collegiate church (German Stift). In a cathedral, the provost functioned as the administrator of its lands while the dean supervised the subordinate clergy and the services – the provost was, however the senior of the two. There were quite a number of other collegiate churches in Germany staffed by canons which were not the seats of bishoprics – in contrast to France and England these tended to remain in the hands of secular clergy, rather than being converted to follow a quasi-monastic rule like that of the Augustinians. Some of these canonical churches might be very wealthy, like the

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imperial church of SS. Simon and Jude at Goslar, founded by Henry III whose provosts were often subsequently promoted to the episcopate. As with all senior positions within the German Church in the Middle Ages, provosts were almost invariably of aristocratic background. Reichsfürstenstand (Guild of imperial princes): a concept which emerged towards the end of the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, and subsequently encapsulated in law, notably in the Sachsenspiegel (q.v.). Its members were the most important great lords – effectively the emerging territorial princes – who were deemed to hold fiefs only from the emperor, and formed the third rank in the Heerschild (q.v.). The Sachsenspiegel may present too neat a picture of this group in the early- to mid-thirteenth century – other contemporary sources are vaguer as to who the ‘princes’ were, but by the last years of the century holding fiefs directly from the emperor (Reichsunmittelbarkeit) was seen as the essential and defining characteristic of this group, and lords were formally admitted to the rank of imperial prince, as was the Landgrave of Hesse in 1292. Sachsenspiegel (literally ‘Saxon mirror’): a treatise of customary law in north Germany, written originally in Latin, but only surviving in later German versions, was drawn up by Eike von Repgow between c. 1220 and c. 1235. It was revised at least three times in the next 40 years, and became an extremely influential model for later law treatises. It was the first systematic attempt to compile a handbook as to what the law of Germany was. Some of the legal rulings within it remained in force into the nineteenth century. Urbar (Latin: urbarium): a document listing rights and income derived from a particular landholding, or set of landholdings, was similar to the polyptychs (estate surveys) of the Carolingian era – although this type of document had subsequently fallen into disuse. The earliest known Urbar was drawn up for Count Sigeboto IV of Falkenstein, in Bavaria, in 1166, but this remains an isolated example, and Urbaren only really developed on any scale from the mid-thirteenth century onwards, as a means for lords to administer and to exploit their property more effectively. The first known Urbar drawn up for a territorial prince was prepared for the dukes of Bavaria c. 1231. Some churches also utilised this type of documentation, in an attempt to forestall alienation of their property by lay nobles. From c. 1300 such documents were usually written in German rather than Latin. Vogt (Advocate): a layman who administered criminal jurisdiction within the lands of a church, including bishoprics, since churchmen were forbidden from shedding blood, and could not therefore impose judicial penalties involving loss of life or limb. The advocate of a particular church was often, at least originally, a member of the family who had founded that church, and advocacies (Latin advocatia, German Vogtei) tended to remain hereditarily within one family, as for example the Counts of Bogen who functioned as the advocates of the Bavarian monastery of

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Niederaltaich until the family died out in 1242. A Vogtei gave its possessor considerable local power, and income, since the Vögte received a share of fines and other income from their office, while relations between them and the churches whose rights they exercised might often be tense (see the essay by Helmut Flachenecker in this volume). As time went on, there was a tendency for the nascent territorial princes to take over Vogtei from lesser aristocratic families, especially when such families died out in the male line, and sometimes also by purchase. Monasteries from the newer centralised religious orders such as the Cistercians and the Praemonstratensians tended to avoid the appointment of advocates. Advocates were also sometimes found as secular local officials, for example in the lands of the margraves of Brandenburg.

Bibliographies

English translations of primary sources from medieval Germany [One should note here that we have listed ‘historical’ texts, including for the sake of completeness those from before the period directly covered by this book, but have excluded purely literary texts.] Adam of Bremen. History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, trans. Francis J. Tschan (New York 1959, new edition by Timothy Reuter 2002). [The] Annals of Fulda, trans. Timothy Reuter (Manchester 1992). [The] Annals of Lampert of Hersfeld, trans. I.S. Robinson (Manchester 2015). [The] Book of Emperors. A Translation of the Middle High German Kaiserchronik, trans. Henry A. Myers (Morgantown, WV 2013). [The] Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, trans. James A. Brundage (Madison 1961, 2nd ed., New York 2003). [The] Chronicle of Prussia by Nicolaus von Jeroschin. A History of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, 1190–1331, trans. Mary Fischer (Crusade Texts in Translation 20: Farnham 2010). [The] Chronicle of the Slavs, by Helmold, Priest of Bosau, trans. Francis J. Tschan (New York 1935). Cosmas of Prague. The Chronicle of the Czechs, trans. Lisa Wolverton (Washington, DC 2009). [The] Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa. The History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick and Related Texts, trans. G.A. Loud (Crusade Texts in Translation 19: Farnham 2010). [The] Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, by Otto of Freising and His Continuator Rahewin, trans. C.C. Mierow (New York 1953). [The] Dialogue on Miracles: Caesarius of Heisterbach (1220–1235), trans. H. von E. Scott and Charles C. Swinton Bland (2 vols., London 1929). Eleventh-Century Germany. The Swabian Chronicles, trans. I.S. Robinson (Manchester 2008) [contains Hermann of Reichenau 1000–1054, both versions of Berthold of Reichenau and Bernold of Konstanz]. Gervase of Tilbury. Otia Imperialia. Recreation for an Emperor, ed. and trans. S.F. Banks and J.W. Binns (Oxford Medieval Texts 2002). Gilbert of Mons, Chronicle of Hainault, trans. Laura Napran (Woodbridge 2005). [The] Histories of a Medieval German City, Worms c.1000-c.1300, trans. David Bachrach (Farnham 2014).

Bibliographies

379

History and Politics in Late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe. The Chronicle of Regino of Prüm and Adalbert of Magdeburg, trans. Simon MacLean (Manchester 2009). Imperial Lives and Letters of the Eleventh Century, trans. Theodor E. Mommsen and Karl F. Morrison (New York 1962, new edition 2000) [contains Wipo’s Life of Conrad II, the Life of Henry IV, and the Letters of Henry IV]. Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita ab eo ipso conscripto. Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV and his Legend of St. Wencesclaus, ed. Balázs Nagy, trans. Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer (Budapest 2001). [The] Life of Otto, Apostle of Pomerania, 1060–1139, trans. Charles H. Robinson (London 1920). [The] Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, trans. Jerry C. Smith and William L. Urban (2nd ed., Chicago 2001). Ottonian Germany. The Chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg, trans. David A. Warner (Manchester 2001). Queenship and Sanctity. The Lives of Matilda and the Epitaph of Adelheid, trans. Sean Gilsdorf (Washington, DC 2004). [The] Two Cities: A Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146, by Otto, Bishop of Freising, trans. C.C. Mierow (New York 1928). Warfare and Politics in Medieval Germany, c. 1000: On the Variety of Our Times by Alpert of Metz, trans. David S. Bachrach (Toronto 2014). [A] Warrior Bishop of the Twelfth Century: The Deeds of Albero of Trier, trans. Brian A. Pavlac (Toronto 2008). Widukind of Korvey, Deeds of the Saxons, trans. Bernard S. Bachrach and David S. Bachrach (Washington, DC 2014).

Primary sources, in the original language [This list is intended as a general guide for further study, and not every item listed here has been cited by our authors in the essays above. Where there are multiple editions, as is the case for several of the chronicle sources, we have cited the most recent or most easily available volumes and only occasionally more than one edition].

(a) Narrative texts Acta Murensia: die Akten des Klosters Muri mit der Geneaologie der frühen Habsburger. Edition, Übersetzung, Kommentar, Digitalfaksimile nach der Handschrift StAAG AA/4947, ed. Charlotte Bretscher-Gisiger and Christian Sieber (Basel 2012). Aegidius Tschudi, Chronicon Helveticum, ed. Peter Stadler and Bernhard Stettler (13 vols. + 4 index vols., Bern 1968–2001). Annales Altahenses Maiores, ed. Edmund von Oefele (MGH SRG, Hanover 1891) [also edited ed. Wilhelm von Giesebrecht and Edmund von Oefele, MGH SS xx.772–824]. Annales Magdeburgenses, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS xvi.105–96. Annales Mellicenses, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, MGH SS ix.479–535. Annales Pegavienses et Bosovienses, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS xvi. 232–270.

380

Bibliographies

Annales Reicherspergenses, and Chronicon Magni Presbiteri, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, MGH SS xvii.439–76, 476–523. Annales Stadenses, ed. J.M. Lappenberg, MGH SS xvi.271–379. Annales Stederburgenses, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SS xvi.197–231. Annalista Saxo, ed. Klaus Naß (MGH SS xxxvii, Hanover 2006). Arnoldi Chronica Slavorum, ed. J.M. Lappenberg (MGH SRG, Hanover 1868) [also in MGH SS xxi.115–250]. Bellum Waltharium, 1260–3, MGH SS xvii, 105–14. Brunos Buch vom Sachsenkrieg, ed. Hans-Eberhard Lohmann (MGH SRG, Leipzig 1937). Burchardi Praepositi Urspergensis Chronicon, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger and Bernhard von Simson (MGH SRG, Hanover 1916). ‘Caesarius von Heisterbach, Leben, Leiden und Wunder des heiligen Engelbert, Erzbischofs von Köln’, in Die Wundergeschichten des Caesarius von Heisterbach, vol. iii, ed. Alfons Hilka, Fritz Zschaeck and Albert Huyskens (Bonn 1937). Chronica de Origine Ducum Brabantiae, ed. I. Heller, MGH SS xxv.405–13. Chronica Marchionum Brandenburgensium, ed. Georg Sello, in Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preußischen Geschichte 1 (1888), pp. 111–180. Chronica Regia Coloniensia, ed. Georg Waitz (MGH SRG, Hanover 1880). Chronicon Gozecense, ed. Rudolf Köpke, MGH SS x.140–57. Chronicon Montis Sereni, ed. Ernst Ehrenfeuchter, MGH SS xxiii.128–226. [Die] Chronik der Grafen von der Mark von Levold von Northof, ed. Fritz Zschaeck (MGH SRG, n.s. 6, Berlin 1929). [Die] Chroniken der niedersächsischen Städte vom 14. bis ins 16. Jh.: Lübeck, ed. Karl Koppmann (3 vols., Leipzig 1884: reprint Stuttgart 1967). [Die] Chronik Ottos von St. Blasien und die Marbacher Annalen, ed. F-J. Schmale (AQDG 18, Darmstadt 1998). [Le] Chronique de Gislebert de Mons, ed. Leon Vanderkindere (Brussels 1904). Chronique en vers de Jean Van Heelu, ou Relation de la Bataille de Woeringen, ed. J. F. Willems (Brussels 1836). Continuatio Claustroneoburgensis Prima, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, MGH SS ix.607–13 [continuation of the Gottweig Annals]. Continuatio Claustroneoburgensis Secunda, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, MGH SS ix.613–24. Cronica Reinhardsbrunnensis, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger, MGH SS xxx(1).490–658. De Ortu Principum Thuringie: Historia Brevis Principum Thuringiae, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS xxiv.393–408. Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroniken und die Anonyme Kaiserchronik, ed. Franz-Josef Schmale and Irene Schmale-Ott (AQDG 15, Darmstadt 1972). Genealogia Wettinensis, ed. Ernst Ehrenfeuchter, MGH SS xxiii.226–30. [Die] Geschichte der Eichstätter Bischöfe des Anonymus Haserensis. Edition – Übersetzung – Kommentar, ed. Stefan Weinfurter (Regensburg 1987). [also in Anonymus Haserensis, De Episcopis Eichstetensibus, ed. L.C. Bethmann, MGH SS vii.253–66]. Gesta Alberonis archiepiscopi auctore Balderico, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS viii. Gesta Episcoporum Eichstetensium continuata, ed. Ludwig Bethmann and Georg Waitz (MGH SS xxv. Gesta Episcoporum Traiectensium, ed. Ludwig Weiland, MGH SS xxiii.400–26. Gesta Treverorum, Continuatio III, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS xxiv.380–9.

Bibliographies

381

Gundechar, Liber Pontificalis Eichstetensis [Liber Gundekarii], ed. L.C. Bethmann, MGH SS vii.239–53. Helmoldi Presbyteri Bozoviensis Cronica Slavorum, ed. Bernhard Schmeidler (MGH SRG, Hanover 1937). Herbordi Dialogus de vita Ottonis episcopi Babenbergensis, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SRG, Hanover 1868). Hermanni Altahensis Annales, ed. Philipp Jaffé, MGH SS xvii.381–407. Historia Welforum, ed. Erich König (Schwäbische Chroniken der Stauferzeit 1, 2nd ed., Sigmaringen 1978). Lamperti Monachi Hersfeldenis Opera, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (MGH SRG 1894). [Das] Leben des Heiligen Ludwig, Landgrafen in Thüringen, Gemahls der Heiligen Elisabeth. Nach der lateinischen Urschrift übersetzt von Friedrich Ködiz von Salfeld, ed. Heinrich Rückert (Leipzig 1851). Lebensbeschreibungen einiger Bischöfe des 10. bis 12. Jahrhunderts, ed. Hatto Kallfelz (AQDG 22, Darmstadt 1973). Mecklenburgische Reimchronik des Ernst von Kirchberg, ed. Christa Cordshagen and Roderich Schmidt (Cologne 1997). Monumenta Erphesfurtensia, Saec. XII, XIII, XIV, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger (MGH SRG, Hanover 1899). Narratio de electione Lotharii in regem Romanorum, ed. W. Wattenbach, MGH SS xii.509–12. Otto of Freising: Die Taten Friedrichs oder richtiger Cronica (Gesta Frederici seu rectius Chronica), ed. Franz-Josef Schmale (AQDG 17, Darmstadt 1965). Ottonis Episcopi Frisingis Chronica sive Historia de Duabus Civitatibus, ed. Adolf Hofmeister (MGH SRG, Hanover 1912). Ottonis de Sancto Blasio Chronica, ed. Adolf Hofmeister (MGH SRG, Hanover 1912). Quellen zur Geschichte der Welfen und die Chronik Burchards von Ursberg, ed. and trans. Matthias Becher (AQDG 18b, Darmstadt 2007). Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum/The History of the Danes, ed. Karsten FriisJensen and trans. Peter Fisher (2 vols., Oxford 2014). Thietmari Merseburgensis episcopi chronicon, ed. Robert Holtzmann (MGH SRG, n.s. 9, Berlin 1935). [Der] Tractatus de Urbe Brandenburg. Untersuchung und Neuedition anlässlich eines Handschriftenfundes, ed. Christina Meckelnborg (Berlin 2015). Vincent of Prague, Annales, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach, MGH SS xvii.658–83. Widukind: Die Sachsengeschichte des Widukind von Korvei, ed. Paul Hirsch and Hans-Eberhard Lohmann (MGH SRG, Hanover 1935). [Die] Wundergeschichten des Caesarius von Heisterbach, ed. Alfons Hilka, Fritz Zschaeck and Albert Huyskens (3 vols., Bonn 1933–7).

(b) Royal and papal documents MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum [printed volumes] MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum i (911–1197), ed. Ludwig Weiland (Hanover 1893). MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum ii (1198–1272), ed. Ludwig Weiland (Hanover 1896). MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum iii (1273–1298), ed. Jakob Schwalm (Hanover 1904–6).

382

Bibliographies

MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum iv (1298–1313), ed. Jakob Schwalm (2 parts, Hanover 1906–11). MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum v (1313–1324), ed. Jakob Schwalm (Hanover 1909–11). MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum vi, part 1 (1325– 1330), ed. Jakob Schwalm (Hanover 1914–27). MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum vi, part 2, Dokumente zur Geschichte des Deutschen Reiches und seiner Verfassung (1331–1335), ed. Ruth Bork and Wolfgang Eggert (Hanover 1999–2003). MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum vii, Dokumente zur Geschichte des Deutschen Reiches und seiner Verfassung (1336–1344), ed. Michael Menzel (Part i, (1336–1339), Hanover 2013), this edition remains incomplete. MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum viii (1345–1348), ed. Karl Zeumer and Richard Salomon (Hanover 1910–26). MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum ix, Dokumente zur Geschichte des Deutschen Reiches und seiner Verfassung, 1349, ed. Margarete Kühn (Weimar 1974–83). MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum x, Dokumente zur Geschichte des Deutschen Reiches und seiner Verfassung (1350–1353), ed. Margarete Kühn (Weimar 1979–91). MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum xi, Dokumente zur Geschichte des Deutschen Reiches und seiner Verfassung (1354–1356), ed. Wolfgang D. Fritz (Weimar 1978–92). MGH Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum xii, Dokumente zur Geschichte des Deutschen Reiches und seiner Verfassung (1357–1359), ed. Ulrike Hohensee, Matthias Lawro, Michael Lindner and Olaf B. Rader (Hanover 2013).

––– MGH Diplomata Regum Germaniae ex Stirpe Karolinorum Die Urkunden Ludwigs des Deutschen, Karlmanns und Ludwigs des Jüngeren, ed. Paul Kehr (Berlin 1932–4). Die Urkunden Karls III, ed. Paul Kehr (Berlin 1936–7). Die Urkunden Arnolfs, ed. Paul Kehr (Berlin 1940). Die Urkunden Zwentibolds und Ludwigs des Kindes, ed. Theodor Schieffer (Hanover 1960).

––– MGH Diplomata Regum et Imperatorum Germaniae [printed volumes: see also online resources below] Die Urkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I., ed. Theodor Sickel (MGH Diplomata 1, Hanover 1879–84) Die Urkunden Otto des II., ed. Theodor Sickel (MGH Diplomata 2(i), Hanover 1888) Die Urkunden Otto des III., ed. Theodor Sickel (MGH Diplomata 2(ii), Hanover 1893) Die Urkunden Heinrichs II und Arduins, ed. Harry Bresslau, Hermann Bloch and Robert Holtzmann (MGH Diplomata 3, Hanover 1900–3) Die Urkunden Konrads II, ed. Harry Bresslau (MGH Diplomata 4, Hanover 1909)

Bibliographies

383

Die Urkunden Heinrichs III, ed. Harry Bresslau and Paul Kehr (MGH Diplomata 5, Berlin 1926–31) Die Urkunden Heinrichs IV, ed. Dietrich von Gladiss and Alfred Gawlik (3 vols., MGH Diplomata 6, Berlin 1941, Weimar 1952, Hanover 1978) Die Urkunden Lothars III. und der Kaiserin Richenza, ed. Emil von Otthental and Hans Hirsch (MGH Diplomata 8, Berlin 1927) Die Urkunden Konrads III. und seines Sohnes Heinrich, ed. Friedrich Hausmann (MGH Diplomata 9, Vienna 1969) Die Urkunden Friedrichs I, ed. H. Appelt, with Rainer-Maria Herkenrath, Walter Koch and Bettina Pferschy (MGH Diplomata 10, 5 vols. Hanover 1975–90) Die Urkunden Philipps von Schwaben, ed. Andrea Rzihacek and Renate Spreitzer (MGH Diplomata 12, Wiesbaden 2014) Die Urkunden Friedrichs II, ed. Walter Koch, with Klaus Höflinger, Joachim Spiegel and Christian Friedl (MGH Diplomata 14, 4 vols. so far, Hanover 2002–14) Die Urkunden Heinrich Raspes und Wilhelms von Holland, ed. Dieter Hagermann and Jaap G. Kruisheer, with Alfred Gawlik (MGH. Diplomata 18, Hanover 1989–2006) Die Urkunden Alfons‘ von Kastilien, ed. Ingo Schwab, with Alfred Gawlik (MGH. Diplomata 19(i), Hanover 2016)

––– Acta Imperii Inedita Saeculi XIII et XIV, ed. Eduard Winkelmann (2 vols., Innsbruck 1880–5). Historia Diplomatica Friderici Secundi, ed. J.L.A. Huillard-Bréholles (6 vols. in 11 parts, Paris 1852–61). [Die] Regesten des Kaiserreiches unter Heinrich VI. 1165-(1190)-1197, ed. Gerhard Baaken, after J.F. Böhmer (Regesta Imperii IV(3), Cologne 1972). [Das] Tafelgüterverzeichnis des römischen Königs, ed. Carlrichard Brühl and Theo Kölzer (Vienna 1979). Regestum Innocentii III papae super negotio Romani imperii, ed. Friedrich Kempf (Miscellanea Historiae Pontificiae 12, Rome 1947).

(c) Other documentary collections Actes des princes-éveques de Liège, Hugues de Pierrepont, 1200–1229, ed. Édoard Poncelet (Brussels 1941). [Die] Admonter Briefsammlung, ed. Gunther Hödel and Peter Classen (MGH Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit vi, Munich 1983). [Das] älteste Bayerische Herzogsurbar: Analyse und Edition, ed. Ingrid HeegEngelhart (Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen Geschichte, n.s. 37, Munich 1990). Cartulaire de l’église Saint Lambert de Liège, ed. Stanislas Bormans, Émile Schoolmesters and Édoard Poncelet (6 vols., Brussels 1893–1933). Codex Diplomaticus Anhaltinus, ed. Otto von Heinemann (6 vols., Dessau 1867–83). Codex Diplomaticus Brandenburgensis, ed. Adolph Friedrich Riedel (41 vols., Berlin 1838–69). Codex Diplomaticus Nassoicus, ed. Karl Menzel and Wilhelm Sauer (3 vols., Wiesbaden 1885–7). Codex Diplomaticus Prussicus, ed. Johannes Voigt (6 vols., Königsberg 1836–61).

384

Bibliographies

Codex Diplomaticus Saxoniae Regiae, I. Hauptteil, vols. 1–3: Urkunden der Markgrafen von Meißen und Landgrafen von Thüringen 948–1234, ed. Otto Posse (Leipzig 1882–1898). Codex Falkensteinensis: Die Rechtsaufzeichnungen der Grafen von Falkenstein, ed. Elisabeth Noichl (Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen Geschichte, n.s. 29, Munich 1978). [Das] Habsburgische Urbar, ed. R. Maag, W. Glättli and P. Schweizer (2 vols., Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte 14–15, Basel 1894–1904). Mainzer Urkundenbuch i Die Urkunden bis zum Tode Erzbischof Adalberts I (1137), ed. Manfred Stimming (Darmstadt 1932); ii Die Urkunden seit dem Tode Erzbischof Adalberts I (1137) bis zum Tode Erzbischofs Konrads (1200), Teil I (1137–75), Teil II, 1176–1200, ed. Peter Acht (Darmstadt 1968–78). Mecklenburgisches Urkundenbuch, ed. Verein für Meklenburgische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde (25 vols., Schwerin 1863–1936/77). Monumenta Bambergensia, ed. Philipp Jaffé (Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum 5, Berlin 1869). Monumenta Boica, ed. Christian Friedrich Pfeffel et al. (53 vols., Munich 1763–1956). Monumenta Corbeiensia, ed. Philipp Jaffé (Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum 1, Berlin 1864). Monumenta Historiae Ducatus Carinthiae, ed. August von Jaksch (4 vols., Klagenfurt 1896–1906). Monumenta Moguntina, ed. Philipp Jaffé (Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum 3, Berlin 1866). Monumenta Zollerana. Urkunden-Buch zur Geschichte des Hauses Hohenzollern, ed. Rudolph Freiherr von Stillfried and Traugott Maercker (9 vols., Berlin 1852–61). Niederösterreichischen Urkundenbuch, ed. Maximilian Weltin, Roman Zehetmayer, Dagmar Weltin et al. (2 vols. in 3 parts, St. Pölten 2008–13). Niederösterreichischen Urkundenbuch. Acta Austriae Inferioris. Urkundenbuch des aufgehobenen Chorherrstiftes Sanct Pölten (976–1400), ed. Anton Feigel and Josef Lampel (2 vols., Vienna 1891–1901). Nürnberger Urkundenbuch, ed. Stadtarchiv Nürnberg (Nuremberg 1959). Osnabrücker Urkundenbuch, ed. Friedrich Philippi and Max Bär (4 vols., Osnabrück 1892–1902). Pommersches Urkundenbuch, ed. Robert Klempin, Rodgero Prümers, Georg Winter, Otto von Heinemann et al. (12 vols., vols. 1–6 Stettin 1868–1905; vols. 7–12, also ed. Klaus Conrad, Aalen and Cologne 1958–2000). Quellen zur deutschen Verfassungs-, Wirschafts- und Sozialgeschichte bis 1250, ed. Lorenz Weinrich (AQDG 32, Darmstadt 1977). Quellen zur Geschichte des Deutschen Bauernstandes im Mittelalter, ed. G. Franz (AQDGM 31, 2nd ed., Darmstadt 1974). Quellen zur Verfassungsgeschichte des Römisch-Deutschen Reiches im Spätmittelalter (1250–1500), ed. Lorenz Weinrich (AQDG 33, Darmstadt 1983). Regesta Archiepiscoporum Maguntinensium: Von Bonifatius bis Heinrich II. 742? – 1288, ed. Johann Friedrich Böhmer and Cornelius Will (Innsbruck 1877, reprint Aalen 1966). Regesta Habsburgica, i Die Regesten der Grafen von Habsburg bis 1281, ed. Harold Steinacker (Innsbruck 1905).

Bibliographies

385

Regesta Habsburgica, ii(1) Die Regesten der Herzoge von Österreich von 1281 bis 1314: Die Regesten Albrechts I von 1281–1296, ed. Harold Steinacker (Innsbruck 1934). Regesta Habsburgica, iii Die Regesten der Herzoge von Österreich, sowie Friedrichs des Schönen als deutschen Königs, von 1314–1330, ed. Lothar Gross (Innsbruck 1922–4). Regesta Habsburgica, v Die Regesten der Herzoge von Österreich, 1365–1395, ed. Christian Lackner and Claudia Feller (2 vols., Vienna 2009). [Die] Regesten der Bischöfe von Eichstätt, ed. Franz Heidingsfelder (Innsbruck/ Würzburg/Erlangen 1915–38). [Die] Regesten der Bischöfe von Passau i 731–1206, ed. Egon Boshof and FranzReiner Erkens (Munich 1992). Regesten der Bischöfe von Strassburg i Bis zum Jahre 1202, ed. Paul Wentzcke (Innsbruck 1908), ii Regesten der Bischöfe von Strassburg vom Jahre 1202–1305, ed. Alfred Hessel and Manfred Krebs (Innsbruck 1928). Die Regesten der Erzbischöfe von Köln, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm Oediger, Richard Knipping, Wilhelm Kishky, Wilhelm Janssen and Norbert Andernach (12 vols, Bonn and Düsseldorf 1901–2001). Regesten der Erzbischöfe von Mainz von 1289–1396, ed. Ernst Vogt, Heinrich Otto and Fritz Vigener (3 vols., Leipzig and Darmstadt 1913–58). Regesten der Markgrafen von Brandenburg aus askanischem Hause, ed. Hermann Krabbo and Georg Winter (12 vols., Leipzig, 1910–1955). Regesten der Pfalzgrafen am Rhein 1214–1508, i 1214–1400, ed. Adolf Koch and Eduard Winkelmann (Innsbruck 1894). Regesten zur Frühgeschichte von Wien, ed. Klaus Lohrmann and Ferdinand Opll (Vienna 1981). [Die] Reinhardsbrunner Briefsammlung, ed. Friedel Peeck (MGH Epistolae Selectae 5, Weimar 1952). Sachsenspiegel, Land- und Lehnrecht, ed. K.A. Eckhardt (MGH Fontis Iuris, n.s. 1, Hanover 1933). Salzburger Urkundenbuch, ed. Willibald Hauthaler and Franz Martin (4 vols., Salzburg 1910–33). Schleswig-Holsteinische Regesten und Urkunden, i, 786–1250, ed. Paul Hasse (Hamburg 1886). [Die] Traditionen des Hochstifts Freising, ed. Theodor Bitterauf (2 vols., Quellen und Erörterungen zur Bayerischen Geschichte 4–5, Munich 1905–1909). [Die] Traditionen des Hochstifts Passau, ed. Max Heuwisser (Quellen und Erörterungen zur Bayerischen Geschichte 6, Munich 1930). [Die] Traditionen des Hochstifts Regensburg und des Klosters St. Emmeram, ed. Josef Widemann (Quellen und Erörterungen zur Bayerischen Geschichte 8, Munich 1943). [Die] Urkunden Heinrichs des Löwen, Herzogs von Sachsen und Bayern, ed. Karl Jordan (MGH, Weimar 1949). Urkunden und erzählende Quellen zur deutschen Ostsiedlung im Mittelalter, ed. Herbert Helbig and Lorenz Weinrich (2 vols., AQDG 36, Darmstadt 1968–70). Urkundenbuch der Bishöfe und des Domkapitels von Verden, ed. Arend Mindemann (3 vols., Stade 2001–12). Urkundenbuch des Erzstifts Magdeburg i (937–1192), ed. Friedrich Isräel and Walter Möllenberg (Magdeburg 1937) [only volume published].

386

Bibliographies

Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Babenberger in Österreich, ed. Heinrich Fichtenau and Erich Zöllner (4 vols., in 5 parts, Vienna 1950–97). Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der jetzt die preußichen Regierungsbezirke, Coblenz und Trier bildenden mittelrheinischen Territorien, ed. Heinrich Beyer (3 vols., Coblenz 1860–74). Urkundenbuch für die Geschichte des Niederrheins, ed. Theodor J. Lacomblet (4 vols., Düsseldorf 1840–58). Urkundenbuch des Herzogstums Steiermark, ed. Josef Zahn et al. (4 vols., Graz 1875–1903, 1964). Urkundenbuch des Hochstifts Halberstadt, ed. Gustav Schmidt (4 vols., Leipzig 1883–9). Urkundenbuch des Hochstifts Hildesheim und seiner Bischöfe, ed. Karl Janicke and Hermann Hoogeweg (6 vols., Leipzig 1896–1911). Urkundenbuch des Hochstifts Meissen, ed. Ephraim Gersdorf (Codex diplomaticus Saxoniae regiae, II. Hauptteil, vols. 1–3, Leipzig 1864–7). Urkundenbuch des Hochstifts Merseburg. Erster Teil (962–1357), ed. Paul Kehr (Halle 1899). Urkundenbuch des Hochstifts Naumburg, Erster Teil (967–1207), ed. Felix Rosenfeld (Magdeburg 1925). Urkundenbuch des Hochstifts Naumburg, Zweiter Teil (1207–1304), ed. Hans K. Schulze (Cologne 2000).

(d) Online resources Codex diplomaticus Saxoniae regiae online www.clio-online.de/web=3374 Regesta Imperii, www.regesta-imperii.de St. Gallen Klosterarchiv, www.stiftsarchiv.sg.ch [Die] Urkunden Heinrichs V. und der Königen Mathilde, ed. Matthias Thiel and Alfred Gawlik (MGH Diplomata 7) www.mgh.de/ddhv [Die] Urkunden Heinrichs VI, ed. Heinrich Appelt, Bettina Pferschy-Maleczek and Peter Csendes (MGH Diplomata 11) www.mgh.de/datenbanken/urkunden-heinrichs-vi/ Würtembergisches Urkundenbuch Online des Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, www.wubonline.de/

Secondary literature in English about medieval Germany, from the Investiture Contest to c. 1350 Abulafia, David, ‘Kantorowicz and Frederick II’, History 62 (1977), 193–210 [reprinted in David Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean (Aldershot 1987)]. Abulafia, David, Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (London 1988). Arnold, Benjamin, German Knighthood, 1050–1300 (Oxford 1985). Arnold, Benjamin, ‘Servile retainers or noble knights: The medieval ministeriales in Germany’, Reading Medieval Studies 12 (1986), 73–84. Arnold, Benjamin, ‘German bishops and their military retinues in the medieval Empire’, German History 7 (1989), 161–83. Arnold, Benjamin, Count and Bishop in Medieval Germany (Philadelphia 1991). Arnold, Benjamin, Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany (Cambridge 1991).

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Arnold, Benjamin, ‘Episcopal authority authenticated and fabricated: Form and function in medieval German bishops’ catalogues’, in Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Karl Leyser, ed. Timothy Reuter (London 1992), pp. 63–78. Arnold, Benjamin, ‘Instruments of power: The profile and profession of ministeriales within German aristocratic society (1050–1225)’, in Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Thomas N. Bisson (1995), pp. 36–55. Arnold, Benjamin, Medieval Germany 500–1300: A Political Interpretation (Basingstoke 1997). Arnold, Benjamin, ‘Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250) and the political particularism of the German princes’, Journal of Medieval History 26 (2000), 239–52. Arnold, Benjamin, ‘The end of territorial lordship in medieval Germany: Reflections upon an historiographical theory’, Reading Medieval Studies 26 (2000), 27–48. Arnold, Benjamin, Power and Property in Medieval Germany: Economic and Social Change, c. 900–1300 (2004). Arnold, Benjamin, ‘The Western Empire 1125–98’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History iv, c. 1024–c.1198, ed. David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith (2 vols., Cambridge 2004), ii.384–421. Bachrach, David, ‘Making peace and war in the “city state” of Worms, 1235–1273’, German History 24 (2006), 505–25. Bagge, Sverre, ‘Ideas and narrative in Otto of Freising’s Gesta Frederici’, Journal of Medieval History 22 (1996), 345–77. Bagge, Sverre, Kings, Politics and the Right Order of the World in German Historiography, c. 950–c.1150 (2002). Bagge, Sverre, ‘German historiography and the twelfth-century Renaissance’, in Representations of Power in Medieval Germany, 800–1500, ed. Björn Weiler and Simon Maclean (Turnhout 2006), pp. 165–88. Barrow, Julia, ‘Cathedrals, provosts and prebends: A comparison of twelfth-century German and English practice’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37 (1986), 536–64. Barrow, Julia, ‘Education and the recruitment of cathedral canons in England and Germany, 1100–1225’, Viator 20 (1989), 117–38. Barrow, Julia, The Clergy in the Medieval World: Secular Clerics, Their Families and Careers in North-Western Europe c.800–1200 (Cambridge 2015).1 Bartlett, Robert, ‘The conversion of a pagan society in the Middle Ages’, History 70 (1985), 185–201. Bartlett, Robert, The Making of Europe. Conquest, Colonisation and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (1993). Bayley, C.C., The Formation of the German College of Electors in the Mid-Thirteenth Century (Toronto 1949).2 Bosl, Karl, ‘Noble unfreedom: The rise of the ministeriales in Germany’, in The Medieval Nobility, ed. Timothy Reuter (Amsterdam 1979), pp. 291–311.

1 2

Not just about Germany, but contains a great deal of very valuable material about the German Church. Still useful, despite its age.

388

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Brunner, Otto, Lord and Lordship: Structures of Governance in Medieval Austria, trans. Howard Kaminsky (Philadelphia 1992). Bumke, Joachim, The Concept of Knighthood in the Middle Ages, trans. W.T.H. Jackson (New York 1982). Bumke, Joachim, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Berkeley, CA 1991). Burleigh, Michael, ‘The military orders in the Baltic’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History v, c.1198–c.1300, ed. David Abulafia (1999), pp. 743–53. Chazan, Robert, ‘Emperor Frederick I, the Third Crusade and the Jews’, Viator 8 (1977), 83–93. Christiansen, Eric, The Northern Crusades. The Baltic and the Catholic Frontier, 1100–1525 (1980). Du Boulay, F.R.H., ‘Law enforcement in medieval Germany’, History 63 (1978), 345–55. Du Boulay, F.R.H., ‘The German town chroniclers’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R.H.C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford 1981), pp. 445–69. Du Boulay, F.R.H., Germany in the Later Middle Ages (1983). Eldevik, John, ‘Driving the chariot of the Lord: Siegfried I of Mainz (1060–84) and episcopal identity in an age of transition’, in The Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages, ed. J.S. Ott and A. Trumbore Jones (2007), pp. 161–88. Eldevik, John, Episcopal Power and Ecclesiastical Reform in the German Empire: Tithes, Lordship and Community 950−1150 (Cambridge 2012). Freed, John B., ‘The origins of the European nobility: The problem of the ministerials’, Viator 7 (1976), 211–41. Freed, John B., The Friars and German Society in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, MA 1977). Freed, John B., ‘The formation of the Salzburg ministerialage in the tenth and eleventh centuries’, Viator 9 (1978), 67–102. Freed, John B., ‘The ministerials and the church in twelfth-century Salzburg’, Medieval Prosopography 3 (1982), 1–20. Freed, John B., The Counts of Falkenstein: Noble Self-consciousness in TwelfthCentury Germany (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 74, Philadelphia 1984). Freed, John B., ‘Reflections on the medieval German nobility’, American Historical Review 91 (1986), 553–75. Freed, John B., ‘Nobles, ministerials and knights in the archdiocese of Salzburg’, Speculum 62 (1987), 575–611. Freed, John B., ‘Medieval German social history: Generalizations and particularism’, Central European History 25 (1993), 1–26. Freed, John B., Noble Bondsmen: Ministerial Marriages in the Archdiocese of Salzburg, 1100–1343 (Ithaca, NY 1995). Freed, John B., ‘Bavarian wine and woolless sheep: The Urbar of Count Sigeboto IV of Falkenstein, 1126- ca. 1198’, Viator 35 (2004), 71–112. Freed, John B., ‘The creation of the Codex Falkensteinensis (1166): Selfrepresentation and reality’, in Representations of Power in Medieval Germany, 800–1500, ed. Björn Weiler and Simon Maclean (Turnhout 2006), pp. 189–210. Freed, John B., Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth (New Haven, CN 2016).

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Geary, Patrick J. and Freed, John B., ‘Literacy and violence in twelfth-century Bavaria: The “murder letter” of Count Sibito IV’, Viator 25 (1994), 115–29. Gillingham, John, ‘Why did Rahewin stop writing the Gesta Frederici?’, EHR 83 (1968), 294–303. Gillingham, John, ‘Elective kingship and the unity of medieval Germany’, German History 9 (1991), 124–35. Gillingham, John, ‘The kidnapped king: Richard I in Germany, 1192–4’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, London, 30 (2008), 5–34. Griffiths, Fiona J. and Hotchin, Julie (ed.), Partners in Spirit: Women, Men and Religious Life in Germany, 1100–1500 (Turnhout 2014). Hamilton, Bernard, ‘Prester John and the three kings of Cologne’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R.H.C. Davis, ed. Henry Mayr-Harting and R.I. Moore (London 1985), pp. 177–91. Haverkamp, Alfred, Medieval Germany 1056–1273, trans. Helga Braun and Richard Mortimer (Oxford 1988). Herde, Peter, ‘From Adolf of Nassau to Lewis of Bavaria, 1292–1347’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History vi, c.1300–1415, ed. Michael Jones (Cambridge 2000), pp. 515–50. Hiestand, Rudolf, ‘Kingship and Crusade in twelfth-century Germany’, in England and Germany in the High Middle Ages: In Honour of Karl J. Leyser, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Hanna Vollrath (Oxford 1996), pp. 236–65. Jackson, W.T.H., ‘Knighthood and the Hohenstaufen imperial court under Frederick Barbarossa’, in The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey, iii (1990), 101–20. Jaeger, C. Stephen, ‘The courtier bishop in vitae from the tenth to the twelfth century’, Speculum 58 (1982), 291–325. Jaeger, C. Stephen, The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (Philadelphia 1985), especially chapters 1–4. Jaeger, C. Stephen, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200 (Philadelphia 1994).3 Jakobs, Hermann, ‘Aspects of urban social history in Salian and Staufen Germany’, in England and Germany in the Middle Ages, ed. Haverkamp and Vollrath (1996) [as above], pp. 283–98. Jordan, Karl, Henry the Lion, trans. P.S. Falla (Oxford 1986). Krieger, Karl-Friedrich, ‘Obligatory military service and the use of mercenaries in imperial military campaigns under the Hohenstaufen Emperors’, in England and Germany in the Middle Ages, ed. Haverkamp and Vollrath (1996) [as above], pp. 151–68. Lees, Jay T., Anselm of Havelberg: Deeds into Words in the Twelfth Century (Leiden 1998). Leyser, Karl, ‘The German aristocracy from the ninth to the early twelfth century: A historical and cultural sketch’, Past and Present 41 (1968), 25–53 [reprinted in his Medieval Germany and Its Neighbours 900–1250 (London 1982), pp. 161–89].

3

Not just about Germany, but devotes considerable attention to the Reich.

390

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Leyser, Karl, ‘Frederick I, Henry II and the hand of St. James’, English Historical Review 90 (1975), 481–506 [reprinted in his Medieval Germany and Its Neighbours, pp. 215–40]. Leyser, Karl, ‘Frederick Barbarossa and the Hohenstaufen Polity’, Viator 19 (1980), 153–76 [reprinted in his Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Gregorian Revolution and Beyond (1994), chapter 7, pp. 115–42]. Leyser, Karl, ‘The crisis of medieval Germany’, Proceedings of the British Academy 69 (1983), 409–43 [reprinted in his Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Gregorian Revolution and Beyond, chapter 2, pp. 21–49]. Leyser, Karl, ‘Gregory VII and the Saxons’, Studi Gregoriani 14 (1991), 231–8 [reprinted in his Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Gregorian Revolution and Beyond (1994), chapter 4, pp. 69–75]. Leyser, Karl, ‘Frederick Barbarossa: Court and country’, in his Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Gregorian Revolution and Beyond (1992), chapter 8, pp. 143–55. Leyser, Karl, ‘From Saxon freedoms to the freedom of Saxony: The crisis of the eleventh century’, in his Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Gregorian Revolution and Beyond (1992), chapter 3, pp. 51–67. Lotter, Friedrich, ‘The Crusading idea and the conquest of the region east of the Elbe’, in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. Robert Bartlett and Angus McKay (1989), pp. 267–306. Loud, Graham A., ‘The German Crusade of 1197–1198’, Crusades 13 (2014), 143–71. Lyon, Jonathan R., ‘Fathers and sons: Preparing noble youths to be lords in twelfthcentury Germany’, Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008), 291–310. Lyon, Jonathan R., Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100–1250 (Ithaca, NY 2013). Mathäus, Michael, ‘Forms of social mobility: The example of Zensualität’, in England and Germany in the Middle Ages, ed. Haverkamp and Vollrath (1996) [as above], pp. 357–69. Matthew, D.J.A., ‘Reflections on the medieval Roman Empire’, History 77 (1992), 363–90. Mortimer, Richard, ‘Knights and knighthood in Germany in the central Middle Ages’, in The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey, vol. i (1986), 86–103. Murray, Alan V. (ed.), Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier 1150–1500 (Aldershot 2001). Murray, Alan V., ‘Finance and logistics of the Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa’, in In Laudem Hierosolymitani: Studies in Crusades and Material Culture in Honour of Benjamin Z. Kedar, ed. I. Shagrir, R. Ellenblum and J. Riley-Smith (Aldershot 2007), pp. 357–68. Murray, Alan V., ‘Henry of Livonia and the Wends of the eastern Baltic: Ethnography and biography in the thirteenth-century Livonia mission’, Studi Medievali Ser. III.54 (2013), 807–33. Munz, Peter, Frederick Barbarossa: A Study in Medieval Politics (London 1969). Munz, Peter, ‘Why did Rahewin stop writing the Gesta Frederici? A further consideration’, English Historical Review 84 (1969), 771–9. Neel, Carol L., ‘The historical work of Burchard of Ursberg’, Analecta Praemonstratensia 58 (1982), 96–129, 225–57; 59 (1983), 19–42, 221–57; 60 (1984), 224–55; 61 (1985), 5–42.

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Offler, H.S., ‘Aspects of government in the late medieval Empire’, in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J.R. Hale, J.R.L. Highfield and B. Smalley (1965), pp. 217– 47 [reprinted in H.S. Offler, Church and Crown in the Fourteenth Century: Studies in European History and Political Thought, ed. A.I. Doyle (Aldershot 2000)]. Paschovsky, Alexander, ‘The relationship between the Jews of Germany and the king (11th–14th centuries). A European comparison’, in England and Germany in the Middle Ages, ed. Haverkamp and Vollrath (1996) [as above], pp. 193–218. Pixton, Paul, The German Episcopacy and the Implementation of the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council 1216–1245, Watchmen on the Tower (Leiden 1997). Rady, Martyn, ‘The German settlement in central and eastern Europe during the High Middle Ages’, in The German Lands and Eastern Europe: Essays on the History of Their Social, Cultural and Political Relations, ed. Robert Bartlett and Karen Schönwalder (New York 1999), pp. 11–47. Reuter, Timothy, ‘Episcopi cum sua militia: The prelate as warrior in the early Staufen era’, in Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Karl Leyser, ed. Timothy Reuter (London 1992), pp. 79–94. Reuter, Timothy, ‘The medieval German Sonderweg? The empire and its rulers in the High Middle Ages’, in Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. Anne Duggan (London 1993), pp. 179–211 [reprinted in Timothy Reuter, Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities (Cambridge 2006), pp. 388–412]. Reuter, Timothy, ‘Filii matris nostrae pugnant adversum nos: bonds and tensions between prelates and their milites in the German high Middle Ages’, in Chiesa e mondo feudale nei secoli X-XII (Atti della dodicesima Settimana internazionale di studio, Mendola, 24–28 agosto 1992: Milan 1995), pp. 247–76. Reuter, Timothy, ‘Mandate, privilege, court judgement: Techniques of rulership in the age of Frederick Barbarossa’, in his Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities (2006), pp. 413–31. Reuter, Timothy, ‘Peace-breaking, feud, rebellion, resistance: Violence and the peace in the politics of the Salian era’, in his Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities (2006), pp. 355–87. Robinson, I.S., ‘Pope Gregory VII, the princes and the pactum‘, English Historical Review 94 (1979), 721–756. Robinson, I.S., ‘The Bible in the investiture contest: The south German Gregorian circle’, in The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Honour of Beryl Smalley, ed. Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood (Studies in Church History, Subsidia 4, Oxford 1985), pp. 61–84. Robinson, I.S., ‘The friendship circle of Bernold of Constance and the dissemination of Gregorian ideas in late eleventh-century Germany’, in Friendship in Medieval Europe, ed. Julian Hazeldine (Stroud 1999), pp. 185–98. Robinson, I.S., Henry IV of Germany, 1056–1106 (Cambridge 1999). Robinson, I.S., ‘Innocent II and the empire’, in Pope Innocent II (1130–43). The World vs. The City, ed. John Doran and Damian J. Smith (London 2016), pp. 27–68. Rösener, Werner, ‘The decline of the classic manor in Germany during the High Middle Ages’, in England and Germany in the Middle Ages, ed. Haverkamp and Vollrath (1996) [as above], pp. 317–30. Scales, Leonard E., ‘At the margin of community: Germans in pre-Hussite Bohemia’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Ser. VI.9 (1999), 327–52. Scales, Leonard E., ‘Monarchy and German identity in the later Middle Ages’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 83 (2001), 167–200.

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Scales, Leonard E., ‘Germen Militiae: War and German identity in the later Middle Ages’, Past and Present 180 (2003), 41–82. Scales, Leonard E., The Shaping of German Identity: Authority and Crisis, 1245– 1414 (Cambridge 2012). Schmandt, Raymond H., ‘The election and assassination of Albert of Louvain, Bishop of Liège, 1191–92’, Speculum 42 (1967), 639–60. Tellenbach, Gerd, ‘From the Carolingian imperial nobility to the German estate of imperial princes’, in The Medieval Nobility, ed. Timothy Reuter (Amsterdam 1979), pp. 203–31. Toth, Michael, ‘Welfs, Hohenstaufen and Habsburgs’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History v, c.1198–c.1300, ed. David Abulafia (Cambridge 1999), pp. 375–404. Urban, William L., ‘The Wendish princes and the “Drang nach Osten”’, Journal of Baltic Studies 9 (1978), 225–44. Urban, William L., The Prussian Crusade (Lanham, MD 1980). Urban, William L., Ditmarschen: A Medieval Peasant Republic (Lewiston, NY 1991). Urban, William L., The Baltic Crusade (2nd ed., Chicago 1994). Van Cleve, Thomas C., The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. Immutator Mundi (1972). Vollrath, Hanna, ‘The western empire under the Salians’, in New Cambridge Medieval History iv, c. 1024–c.1198, ed. David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith (2 vols., Cambridge 2004), ii.38–71. Weiler, Björn, ‘Image and reality in Richard of Cornwall’s German career’, EHR 113 (1998), 1111–42. Weiler, Björn, Henry III of England the Staufen Empire, 1216–1272 (Woodbridge 2006). Weiler, Björn, ‘Reasserting power: Frederick II in Germany (1235–1236)’, in Representations of Power in Medieval Germany, 800–1500, ed. Björn Weiler and Simon Maclean (Turnhout 2006), pp. 241–71. Weiler, Björn, Kingship, Rebellion and Political Culture. England and Germany c. 1215-c.1250 (Basingstoke 2007). Wells, David A., ‘Imperial sanctity and political reality: Bible, liturgy and the ambivalence of symbol in Walther von der Vogelweide’s songs under Otto IV’, Speculum 53 (1978), 479–510. Wilson, Peter H., The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History (London 2016).

Index

Aachen 31, 77–8, 104, 107, 214, 296, 372 Aargau 14, 330–2, 336–7, 340–1, 344 Adalbert I, Archbishop of Mainz (d. 1137) 104–5, 119 Adalbert I, Margrave of the Eastmark 316 Adolf of Nassau, King 27, 86, 107, 236 advocates 12, 15, 62, 74, 98, 128–31, 198, 223, 226–7, 260, 287, 290, 293–5, 303, 310, 358, 376–7 Agnes, daughter of Emperor Henry IV 154, 285, 287, 316–17, 320 Albert (Albrecht) I, King 14, 27, 107, 131, 216, 332, 338–9, 344 Albrecht I, Duke of Brunswick (d. 1267) 20 Albrecht I ‘the Bear’, Margrave of Brandenburg (d. 1170) 249, 265, 300–4, 307, 309, 311, 348 Albrecht II, Duke of Austria (d. 1358) 331–2 Albrecht II, Duke of Mecklenburg (d. 1379) 271, 274, 277–9 Albrecht II, Margrave of Brandenbug (d. 1220) 303–4 Albrecht Achilles, Margrave of Brandenburg (d. 1486) 157 Alexander III, Pope 5, 105 Alfonso X, King of Castile 26 Alsace 17, 62–3, 212, 332, 336, 338, 341 Altdorf, abbey of see Weingarten Altzella, abbey of 34, 253 Angermeier, Heinz, historian (1924–2007) 48 Aquileia, Patriarchs of 89, 325, 348, 357 archdeaconries 103, 358 Arnold of Arlon 235 Arnold of Lübeck, chronicler 4, 266–7

Arnold of Selenhofen, Archbishop of Mainz (d. 1160) 105, 118, 349 Arnulf, King (d. 899) 124 Ascanian family 25, 34–5, 216, 269, 276, 300–10; see Albrecht I; Albrecht II Aschaffenburg 113–14, 116, 118–19 Assarting 13, 232, 257, 263 Babenberger family 16, 22, 25, 28; see also Adalbert I; Frederick ‘the Warlike’; Henry ‘Jasomirgott’; Leopold Baden, margraves of 9, 146–7, 150, 152, 283, 296, 366, 368, 374 Baldwin of Luxemburg, Archbishop of Trier 108–9, 112, 196, 201, 235 Baldwin, Count of Hainault and Margrave of Namur (d. 1195) 19, 28, 42, 44, 52, 224 Bamberg, bishops / bishopric of 9, 22, 71–2, 74, 102, 125, 135, 288, 315, 348–9, 354, 367, 375 Barnim I, Duke of Pomerania-Stettin (d. 1278) 269–70, 275 Barnim III, Duke of Pomerania-Stettin (d. 1368) 275–7 Basel 212, 337, 344; bishopric / bishops of 288, 294, 354, 367 Beatrice, Empress (d. 1183) 17, 291, 297 Berne 32, 66, 292–3, 295 Bernhard, Count of Anhalt and Duke of Saxony (d. 1212) 301, 303, 349–51, 368 Berthold, Duke of Merania (d. 1188) 55 Berthold I of Zähringen (d. 1078) 11, 285 Berthold II, Duke of Zähringen (d. 1111) 11, 285, 287–9 Berthold III, Duke of Zähringen (d. 1122) 289

394

Index

Berthold IV, Duke of Zähringen (d. 1186) 194, 286, 291–3, 295 Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen (d. 1218) 290, 292–7 Billung family 168, 171, 350 Black Forest 11, 161, 285, 288, 297, 319, 331–2; Abbey of St. Peter’s in 34, 287–8 Bogen, counts of 12, 20, 376–7 Bogislav I, Duke of Pomerania (d. 1187) 265–9 Bohemia 214, 217, 313; kings of 107, 233, 239, 251, 316, 320, 347, 371 Boniface VIII, Pope 107–8 Boniface, St., Archbishop of Mainz 101, 103, 121, 132 Bonn 77; provosts of (see Henry of Virneburg; Lothar) Bornhöved, Battle of (1227) 25, 269–70, 305, 311 Bosl, Karl, historian (1908–93) 41, 74 Brabant; dukes / duchy of 35, 114, 195–6, 220, 225, 228–9, 234, 351, 368 Brandenburg, March of 20, 25, 28–9, 33–4, 80, 157–8, 208, 210, 215–17, 240, 264, 269–70, 272, 275–8, 298–310, 369–70; bishops / bishopric of 299, 303–4, 348; town of 243, 298, 300–1, 307, 309 Braunschweig [Brunswick] 172, 256–7, 260–2 Bremen, archbishops of 89, 197, 199–200, 257, 260, 351 Brixen; bishops / bishopric of 22, 341, 348 Brunswick; duchy of 17, 20, 28, 167, 365–8, 370; see also Otto ‘the Child’, John Burchard of Urspberg, chronicler 8–9 Burgraves 73, 250, 305, 311, 320, 369 Burgundy 17, 207–8, 211, 218, 283, 286, 288, 290–7 Carinthia 22, 55, 166, 285, 331, 338–9, 370 castles 4, 8, 12, 14, 18, 24, 26, 31, 33–4, 41, 56–7, 112–14, 116–18, 130–5, 140, 177, 196, 202, 226–8, 232–3, 235, 260–1, 287–8, 292, 297, 305, 308–11, 335–7, 361, 366–7 cathedral chapters 30, 91–2, 110–13, 133, 260, 375–6 chanceries 35, 88–9, 225

Charles IV, Emperor 69–70, 76–9, 110, 217, 235, 271, 277–8, 337, 371–2 Chemnitz 13, 250–1, 254 Christian of Buch, Archbishop of Mainz 1165–83 105, 351 Christoph, Margrave of Baden (d. 1527) 146, 152 Chur 102; bishopric of 341 Caesarius of Heisterbach 296 Cistercians 161, 177, 261–3, 303, 306, 318, 377 Cleves, county of 221, 233–4, 236 Cnut Lavard (d. 1131) 264, 266 Colmar 62–3, 66 Cologne 32, 65; archbishops of 19, 21, 31, 89, 95, 198, 223, 233, 350, 367, 371; see also Engelbert, Philip Confoederatio cum Princibus Ecclesiasticis (1220) 10, 30–1, 83–9, 97, 352–5 Conrad, Archbishop of Mainz and Salzburg (d. 1200) 105–6, 351 Conrad, Duke of Zähringen (d. 1152) 286, 288–91 Conrad I, King 125 Conrad II, Emperor 125–6, 245, 285 Conrad III, King 17, 50, 55, 73, 155, 211, 250, 254, 320, 372 Conrad IV, King 3, 21, 107, 119, 326, 371 Conrad, Margrave of Meissen (d. 1157) 240, 249–52 Conradin, Duke of Swabia (d. 1268) 9, 296 Constance of Sicily, Empress (d. 1198) 154–5 Cottars 258, 309 Dagsburg-Egisheim, counts of 62 Denmark 262, 264, 268–9, 272, 275, 299, 304, 307 Dietrich ‘the Conqueror’, Margrave of Meissen (d. 1221) 254 Dortmund 31 Dürnkrut, battle of (1278) 22, 25, 331 Eger, Golden Bull of (1213) 9, 85 Eichstätt, bishops / bishopric of 31, 121–36, 315, 354, 368 elections, episcopal 5–6, 91–2, 107–11, 132 elections, royal 26–7, 95, 101, 106, 129, 370–1

Index Elizabeth of Bohemia 154–5 Elizabeth of Hungary, Landgravine of Thuringia 173, 178–9, 191 Engelbert, Archbishop of Cologne (d. 1225) 20, 198, 354 England 7–10, 23, 32, 83, 213, 222, 309; kings of 4, 7–8, 16, 154, 171, 217 Erfurt 29, 113–14, 116, 215 Ficker, Julius, historian (1826–1902) 39–40, 42 finance 36, 234–7, 310, 333 Flanders, county of 35, 221, 224–5, 227, 232, 235, 237, 309 Franciscans 178, 263 Franconia 17–18, 29, 32, 71, 132, 207, 210, 370 Frankfurt 29, 78, 83, 104, 214–16, 218 Frederick, Count of Isenberg (d. 1226) 198 Frederick I Barbarossa, Emperor 4, 6–8, 12, 15–19, 28, 41, 45, 48–53, 59, 73–4, 88–9, 104–5, 140, 154, 166–7, 169–70, 186–7, 191, 194, 198–9, 211–12, 224, 251, 253, 256, 267, 286, 291–2, 302–3, 311, 321, 325, 347–51, 373 Frederick I, Duke of Swabia (d. 1105) 10, 154, 285, 320 Frederick II, Duke of Swabia (d. 1147) 18, 155 Frederick II, Emperor 8–10, 17, 20, 25, 28, 30–1, 74, 83–8, 97, 106–7, 130, 195, 213, 254–7, 262, 268–9, 293–6, 325–7, 352–68, 373 Frederick II ‘the Warlike’, Duke of Austria (d. 1246) 10, 326–7 Frederick III, Emperor 81, 345–6 Frederick III ‘the Fair’, Duke of Austria (d. 1330) 76, 108, 129, 156 Frederick of Rothenburg, Duke of Swabia (d. 1167) 18, 194, 211, 348 Freiburg im Breisgau 13, 283, 286–9, 295 Fribourg (Switzerland) / Freiburg in Üechtland 292, 337, 340 Fulda, abbey of 22, 215, 351 Geldern, counts / county of 21, 36, 221, 224, 227, 233–6 Gelnhausen charter (1180) 17, 43, 45, 349–51 (text), 370 Genealogia Welforum 162, 167–8, 172

395

Geneva 291–2 Giesebrecht, Wilhelm von, historian (1814–89) 17, 41 Gilbert of Mons, chronicler 19, 231 Golden Bull (1356) 78, 147, 307, 371 Goslar 211, 257, 262, 367, 376 Gottweig, abbey of 319 Gross, Konrad 76 guilds 77–8, 309 Gundekar, Bishop of Eichstätt 126–8 Gundekarium 128, 132 Gurk, bishopric of 341 Habsburgs 12, 14, 21–2, 25, 27, 36, 215, 329–46; see also Albrecht II; Frederick ‘the Fair’; Frederick III; King Albert; Maximilian; Rudolf I; Rudolf IV Hainault, county of 217, 225, 227–8, 230–1 Heerschild 97, 372–3 Heiligenkreuz, abbey of 14, 318, 344 Heimpel, Hermann, historian (1901–88) 39, 59 Henry of Müllenark, Archbishop of Cologne 198 Henry of Virneburg, Archbishop of Mainz 109–10 Henry, Count of Namur (d. 1196) 19, 231, 293 Henry ‘Jasomirgott’, Duke of Austria (d. 1177) 15–16, 55, 320–1, 324, 347–8 Henry ‘the Black’, Duke of Bavaria 154, 168, 172, 179 Henry ‘the Proud’, Duke of Bavaria 139, 166–9, 172, 320 Henry, Duke of Bavaria (d. 1290) 13 Henry ‘the Lion’, Duke of Saxony (d. 1195) 4, 6–7, 15–16, 18–19, 24, 34, 41, 43, 45, 48, 50–1, 55, 58, 154, 166–7, 169–73, 199–200, 256–8, 260–1, 266–7, 303, 311, 347, 349–50 Henry I, King 49, 242, 298, 370 Henry II, Emperor 71–2, 210, 285, 288 Henry II, King of England 9, 154, 166, 171 Henry III, Emperor 71–2, 126, 285 Henry IV, Emperor 11, 14, 72, 126–7, 154, 164, 174, 193, 246, 248, 285, 314–17, 373 Henry V, Emperor 15, 72, 104–5, 174, 186, 207, 248, 320

396

Index

Henry VI, Emperor 6, 20, 84, 154–5, 170, 208, 224, 293, 360, 371, 375 Henry VII, Emperor (d. 1313) 27, 108, 129, 131, 154, 372 Henry (VII), King (d. 1246) 10, 20–1, 84, 114, 154, 212, 236, 296, 325, 355, 361–2 Henry Borwin I, lord of Mecklenburg (d. 1227) 267–70 Henry ‘the Illustrious’, Margrave of Meissen (d. 1288) 173, 195–6, 254–5, 305, 311, 368 Henry Raspe, Landgrave of Thuringia and anti-King (d. 1247) 17, 26, 107, 173, 178, 195 heraldry 273 Herman I, Landgrave of Thuringia (d. 1217) 177–8 Herrieden 133–6; monastery of 124–5, 129, 135 Hesse, landgraves of 28, 114, 117, 195–6, 374 Hildesheim 261, 263; bishops / bishopric of 256, 260, 367 Hirschberg, counts of 31, 128–33 Hirsau, abbey of 161, 174 Historia Welforum 14, 162, 169–70, 320 Holland, county of 217, 221, 224, 230–2, 234, 237 Holstein, counts of 262, 275–6, 357 Hugo II, Count of Tübingen 193–4 Innocent III, Pope 4, 106, 268 Innocent IV, Pope 9, 17, 110, 368 Interregnum 3, 25, 263 Investiture Contest 5, 11, 30, 49, 96, 211, 299, 315 Italy 6, 15–16, 105–6 Jews 36, 73, 78, 186, 236, 252, 263, 310, 323 Johannes Ribi, Habsburg chancellor 340–1 John, Duke of Brunswick 20 John I, Margrave of Brandenburg (d. 1266) 305–6, 309–11, 368 John II, Duke of Brabant 237 John XXII, Pope 108–9, 276 John ‘the Blind’, Count of Luxemburg and King of Bohemia 108, 154, 232–3, 235–8

Klosterneuburg, abbey of 14, 318–20 Königsfelden, abbey of 14, 336, 344 Krieger, Karl-Friedrich, historian (born 1940) 46 Kuenringer family (Austrian ministeriales) 323, 326 Kyburg, county of 12, 294, 296, 331 Lampert of Hersfeld, chronicler 126–7, 314 Land peaces 7–8, 10, 26–7, 181–2, 185–9, 203, 373–4 Lausanne 291–3 Lausitz mark 17 Lauterberg, Augustinian Priory of 249, 251, 254; Chronicle of 14 Legnano, battle of (1176) 50–1 Leihezwang 45, 374 Leopold (V) I, Duke of Austria (d. 1194) 16, 322–3 Leopold (VI) II, Duke of Austria (d. 1230) 13, 323–5 Leopold I, Margrave of Austria (d. 994) 313–14 Leopold II, Margrave of Austria (d. 1095) 315–16 Leopold III, Margrave of Austria (d. 1136) 315–20 Leopold IV, Margrave of Austria (d, 1141) 320 Leyser, Karl, historian (1920–92) 50 Liège, bishopric of 221, 231, 234 Limburg, dukes / duchy of 22, 28, 198, 221, 225, 227, 231, 234, 236, 370 Lothar, Provost of Bonn 351 Lothar III, Emperor 15, 50, 73, 172–3, 211, 247, 250, 264–5, 290, 300, 320, 371–3 Lübeck 65, 211, 217, 260–2, 267 Lucerne 337, 340 Ludwig I, Duke of Bavaria 20 Ludwig I, Landgrave of Thuringia (d. 1140) 173–4, 176–7 Ludwig II, Duke of Bavaria 13 Ludwig II, Landgrave of Thuringia (d. 1172) 13, 15, 175 Ludwig III, Landgrave of Thuringia (d. 1190) 176, 351 Ludwig III ‘the Child’, King 124–5 Ludwig IV ‘the Bavarian’, Emperor 76–7, 108, 114, 129, 134, 143, 210, 216–17, 276–8, 372

Index Ludwig IV, Landgrave of Thuringia (d. 1227) 173, 178–9, 191–2 Ludwig ‘the Leaper’, Count of Thuringia (d. 1123) 15, 173–6 Ludowinger family 15, 22, 114, 172–80, 195–6, 255, 373 Luxemburg 228–9, 233–4; counts / family of 25, 27, 29, 215, 217, 224, 230–3, 237–8 Magdeburg, archbishops of 5, 89, 103, 243–4, 300, 303, 305–7, 354, 367; see also Wichmann Mainz 75, 212, 368, 372; archbishops of 29, 31, 89, 95, 101–20, 132, 196, 260, 371; land peace (1235) 10, 34, 75, 83, 85–6, 186, 188, 357–65 (text), 373; see also Christian of Buch; Conrad; Matthias of Bucheck; Siegfried II of Eppstein; Siegfried III of Eppstein markets 13, 31, 33, 62, 64–5, 72, 77, 93–4, 115, 124–6, 130, 134–5, 200, 226, 233, 236, 261, 285, 289, 302, 309–10, 324, 331, 337, 341, 355–6 marriage 12, 15, 33, 47, 144–5, 148, 150, 152–9, 247, 259, 263, 271, 274–5 Matthias of Bucheck, Archbishop of Mainz 108–9, 111 Mayer, Theodor, historian (1883–1972) 40–2, 284 Maximilian I, Emperor 154, 207, 346, 374 Mecklenburg 19–20, 29, 152, 266–7, 270–6, 277–9 Megingaud, Bishop of Eichstätt (d. 1015) 125, 127 Meissen, margraves of, 33, 165, 243, 246–55, 370; see also Wettins Meisterlin, Sigmund, chronicler 72, 82 Melk, abbey of 314, 316, 319 Memoria 14, 160–80, 343–4 Merania, dukes of 19, 22, 55, 370; see also Berthold, Otto Merseburg 243, 265; bishops / bishopric of 241, 243, 254, 368 Milan, siege of (1158–9) 16 Mindelheim 66–7 mining 239, 252, 257 Ministeriales 7, 9, 12, 24, 26, 31, 34, 42, 53, 62, 72–3, 77, 118–19, 193–5,

397

197–8, 202, 223, 226, 232–3, 238, 254, 261, 287, 292–3, 297, 299, 308, 310, 316, 322, 325, 350, 362, 375 mints / minting 73–4, 124, 200, 236, 310, 323, 360 Mitteis, Heinrich, historian (1889–1952) 44–5 Moraw, Peter, historian (1935–2013) 46–7, 53, 69, 82, 200, 215, 217 Muri, abbey of 331, 335, 345 Naumburg 164–5, 173, 176, 251, 254; bishop / bishopric of 164, 176, 247, 251, 354, 367 Niederaltaich, abbey of 12, 126–7, 376–7 Nibelungenlied 325 Nördlingen 66 Northmark 243, 245, 299–301 Nuremberg 29, 32, 64, 68–82, 214, 217, 369 Oberlahnstein 115 Oettingen, counts of 66, 128–9 Öffnungsrechte 64, 66 Oldenburg, counts of 197 Ottmarsheim, abbey of 330–1, 335 Otto, Bishop of Freising, chronicler (d. 1158) 18, 56, 286, 296, 314, 317, 320–1, 348 Otto, Duke of Merania (d. 1248) 22, 357 Otto, Margrave of Meissen (d. 1190) 253–4 Otto I, Bishop of Bamberg (d. 1139) 265 Otto I, Duke of Bavaria (d. 1183) 55 Otto I, Emperor 49, 125, 220, 242–3, 298–9 Otto I, Margrave of Brandenburg (d. 1184) 300–1, 303–4 Otto II, Emperor 125, 312, 370 Otto II, Margrave of Brandenburg (d. 1205) 303–4 Otto III, Emperor 49, 285, 289, 314 Otto III, Margrave of Brandenburg (d. 1267) 305–6, 309–11, 368 Otto IV, Emperor 9, 84, 107, 256–7, 262, 268 Otto ‘the Child’, Duke of Brunswick (d. 1252) 28, 167, 257, 259, 262, 365–7 Otto of St. Blasien, chronicler 193–4

398

Index

Ottokar II, King of Bohemia 3, 22, 326–7, 331 Ottokar III, Duke of Styria 321 Ottokar IV, Duke of Styria 16, 55, 322–3 Palatinate (Rheinpfalz) 29, 112, 114, 136, 142–3, 147, 158, 369 papacy 5, 76, 92–3, 105 Passau; bishops / bishopric of 315–16, 318–20, 324–5, 345, 348, 368 peasants 197, 252, 258, 276, 308, 361 Peter of Aspelt, Archbishop of Mainz (d. 1320) 107–8, 114 Philip of Heinsberg, Archbishop of Cologne 1168–91 51, 349–51 Philip ‘of Swabia’, King 4–5, 107, 130, 293 Poland 265–6, 299, 307, 313, 320 Pomerania 19–20, 29, 267–70, 275–7, 307, 311 Pomerania-Stettin 270, 275, 277, 305, 311 Potsdam 300, 304 Prague, 217–18, 277–8, 337; archbishopric of 31, 102, 109 Praemonstratensian canons 161, 170, 273, 300–1, 377 Pribislav, lord of Mecklenburg (d. 1177) 266–7 Pribislav-Henry, Slav-Christian prince (d. 1150) 300–1 Privilegium Maius (1358–9) 344–5 Privilegium Minus (1156) 15–16, 48, 321–2, 327–8, 347–9 (text) Rahewin, chronicler 191 Rainald of Dassel, Archbishop of Cologne 1161–7 349 Regalia 28, 31, 33, 94, 115, 124–5, 202, 310 Regensburg 127, 320, 324–5, 347, 349, 354 Reichsfürstenstand 18–19, 376 Reinhardsbrunn, abbey of 173–80; Chronicle of 14, 175 Remiremont, abbey of 228 Reuter, Timothy, historian (1947–2002) 39, 50, 187, 190 Reynolds, Susan, historian (born 1929) 47–8, 372 Richard, Earl of Cornwall 26 Ribi family (Aargau) 340–1; see also Johannes Ribi

Roman Law 48, 52, 59, 140 Rudolf I, King 3, 9, 25, 27, 69, 75–6, 86, 107, 129, 216, 296, 328–32, 338, 342, 344, 374 Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria (d. 1365) 333, 337, 345 Rudolf of Rheinfelden, Duke of Swabia and anti-king 11, 285, 290 Rügen 265, 272, 277, 307 Rupert, King (d. 1410) 69–70, 78, 142 Sachsenspiegel 18–19, 43–4, 371–2, 376 Salzburg 208, 319; archbishops / archbishopric of 5, 7, 31, 89, 315, 318, 320, 348, 351, 357, 367 Saxo Grammaticus, chronicler 267 Schlesinger, Walter, historian (1908–84) 40 Schubert, Ernst, historian (1941–2006) 36, 47, 53, 203 seals 225 settlement 252–4, 270, 299, 302, 307–9 Sicily 7–8, 323 Siegfried (II) of Eppstein, Archbishop of Mainz (d. 1230) 31, 106, 354 Siegfried (III) of Eppstein, Archbishop of Mainz (d. 1249) 21, 107, 110, 114, 119, 357, 368 Sigismund, Emperor 78, 80, 239, 372 Slavs 241–4, 250, 252, 263, 266, 298–300, 304, 309 Spandau 270, 303, 309–10 Spanheimer family, Dukes of Carinthia 22, 316, 348, 357, 368 Stade, county of 12, 199–200, 260 statute in favour of the Princes (1232) 10, 26, 83, 85, 355–7 (text) St. Blasien, abbey of 288, 319; see Otto of St. Blasien Stendal 13, 302, 309 Stettin 269, 304, 311 St. Pölten 318–19, 324 Strassburg 62; bishops / bishopric of 9, 368 Styria 16, 19, 55, 214, 316, 318, 322–3, 326, 331, 338–9 Swabia 9, 18, 29, 32, 71, 132, 207, 211, 284–6, 341, 345 Switzerland 32, 335, 339, 342–3 Sybel, Heinrich von, historian (1817–95) 17, 39–41

Index Tellenbach, Gerd, historian (1903–99) 43 Teutonic Knights 136, 178, 208, 263, 368 Thietmar, Bishop of Merseburg 241 tolls 13, 30, 32–3, 36, 63, 85, 93, 186, 223, 226, 236, 309–10, 352–3, 360, 363 towns 32, 34, 60–82, 134–5, 292–3, 297, 309–10, 324–5, 335, 337, 339–40, 356, 361, 373–4 Trier; archbishops of 5, 29, 31, 89, 95, 103, 354, 367, 371; see also Baldwin of Luxemburg Tulln 319, 336 Tyrol; counts / county of 22, 216, 332–3, 338, 341 Ulm 32, 65, 79, 194, 212 Upper Lotharingia; dukes / duchy of 220, 223, 225, 227–9, 368 Urbaren 21, 35, 333–4, 376 Utrecht 211; bishops of 21, 354, 367 Verden; bishops of 256, 260, 368 Vienna 217, 319, 322, 324–6, 337, 340, 342 Vogt / Vögte, see Advocates Weingarten; abbey of 162, 166, 169–70, 172 Welf family 20, 27, 143, 158, 162–3, 165–72 Welf I (d. 876) 168 Welf II (d. 1030) 166 Welf III, Duke of Carinthia (d. 1055) 166, 169 Welf IV, Duke of Bavaria (d. 1101) 14, 169 Welf V, Duke of Bavaria (d. 1120) 156

399

Welf VI (d. 1191) 18, 139, 154, 167, 169–70, 193–4, 321, 348 Welf VII (d. 1167) 169–70, 194; see also Henry the Lion, Otto IV, Otto the Child Wenceslas (Wenzel), Emperor 78–9 Wenzel II, King of Bohemia 331 Werner of Eppstein, Archbishop of Mainz 107, 114, 119 Wettins 14–15, 17, 27–8, 34–6, 208, 239–55; see also Dietrich ‘the Conqueror’, Henry ‘the Illustrious’ Wichmann, Archbishop of Magdeburg 4, 251, 351 William, Count of Holland and King (d. 1256) 26, 107 Willibald, Bishop of Eichstätt 121–2, 124 Wiprecht of Groitzch 248–50 Wittelsbacher 19–20, 25, 27, 55, 75, 142–3, 215, 320, 369, 371; see also Conrad, Archbishop of Mainz and Salzburg; Dukes of Bavaria; Ludwig I; Ludwig II; Ludwig IV; Otto I, Duke of Bavaria Worms 75, 355; bishops of, 351, 354, 357, Concordat of (1122) 44, 49, 96 Worringen, Battle of (1288) 231, 236–7 Württemberg, counts of 22, 143 Würzburg 85, 350; bishops / bishopric of 17, 135, 357 Zähringer family 9, 11, 17, 22, 25, 29, 34–5, 56, 283–97; see Berthold I-V, Conrad Zeitz; bishops of 4, 243 Zollern; counts of 73, 79–80, 82, 158 Zurich 66, 285, 289–90, 295, 331, 333, 337–8