Exercise of Royal Power in Early Medieval Europe

Exercise of royal power in early medieval
Europe: the case of Otto the Great

936–73 emed_283 389..419
David Bachrach
Current scholarly orthodoxy holds that the German kingdom under the
Ottonians (c.919–1024) did not possess an administration, much less an
administrative system that relied heavily upon the ‘written word’. It is the
contention of this essay that the exercise of royal power under Otto the Great
(936–73) relied intrinsically on a substantial royal administrative system that
made very considerable use of documents, particularly for the storage of
crucial information about royal resources. The focus of this study is on Otto
I’s use of this written information to exercise royal power in the context of
confiscating and requisitioning property from both laymen and ecclesiastical
institutions.
Introduction
Ottonian politics is not easy for us moderns to grasp. Quite apart
from its being so much about inheritances and feuds within or
between kinships, it largely lacked anything which we can recognize
as an administration or a bureaucracy, such as we historians have
tended to think of as the spine of any body politic which they study.
Ottonian rule was not, in Max Weber’s terminology, bureaucratic but
patrimonial.1
Given the depth of Henry Mayr-Harting’s knowledge regarding Otton-

ian historiography and his well-deserved reputation for thorough schol-
arship, it cannot be doubted that he has accurately set out the orthodox
context in which he places his 2007 study of the church of Cologne under
the leadership of Archbishop Brun.
1
Henry Mayr-Harting, Church and Cosmos in Early Ottonian Germany: The View from Cologne
(Oxford, 2007), p. 3.
Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4) 389–419

© 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350
Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
390 David Bachrach
Indeed, in 1928 Marc Bloch, looking back over more than a generation
of scholarship, observed that scholars specializing in the history of
medieval Germany tended to ignore the problem of administration all
together, a tendency that he compared unfavourably with the historio-
graphical tradition in France.2 Taking up the question of Ottonian
administration in 1979, after a historiographical gap of almost a century
going back to the work of Georg Waitz, Karl Leyser concluded on the
basis of an impressionistic investigation of a small selection of the relevant
sources that the German royal government operated on the basis of ‘a
modest array of institutions’ and very little use of written documents.3
In contrast with even this mildly optimistic view of governmental
capacity, however, in an important article of 1989 Hagen Keller, a leading
specialist in Ottonian history, specifically rejected the idea that the
Ottonian government had any administrative capacity. Keller asserted
baldly: ‘Despite the continuity of the idea of empire and the model of
Charlemagne, everything that was of particular importance for high
Carolingian imperial organization – centrality, office, law-giving, and
writing – was absent in its successor states. Indeed they simply came
to an end.’4 Writing a decade later in 1999, Gerd Althoff defended the
provocative subtitle of his work on the Ottonian dynasty, Die Ottonen:
2
March Bloch, ‘A Problem in Comparative History: The Administrative Classes in France and in
Germany’, in Land and Work in Medieval Europe: Selected Papers by Marc Bloch, trans. J.E.
Anderson (Berkeley, 1967), pp. 44–81, here p. 44. The article was first published in Revue
historique de droit français et étranger (1928), pp. 46–91.
3
Karl Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medeval Society: Ottonian Saxony (London, 1979), p.
102 for the quotation; and also Karl Leyser, ‘Ottonian Government’, English Historical Review
96 (1981), pp. 721–53, repr. in idem, Medieval Germany and its Neighbours, 900–1250 (London,
1982), pp. 68–101. It should be emphasized that although Leyser discusses some Ottonian period
charters and narrative sources, he does not examine the ways in which royal officials recorded,
maintained and accessed information that was necessary to carry out the myriad activities that
Leyser, himself, recognizes that the Ottonian kings undertook. For the earlier tradition regard-
ing administration in the Ottonian kingdom, Georg Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte 6, 2nd
edn, ed. G. Seeliger (Berlin, 1896), pp. 323 ff., began by looking for continutities between the
Carolingian and Ottonian periods. He was frustrated, however, by the lack of prescriptive
legislation of the type found in Carolingian era capitularies. For Waitz’s observation concerning
a lack of higher supervision over economic affairs in Ottonian Germany, see Deutsche
Verfassungsgeschichte 8, 2nd edn (Kiel, 1878), pp. 216–18.
4
Hagen Keller, ‘Zum Charakter der “Staatlichkeit” zwischen karolingischer Reichsreform und
hochmittelalterlichen Herrschaftsausbau’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 23 (1989), pp. 248–64,
here p. 257: ‘Trotz der Kontinuität der Idee des Imperiums und der Vorbildhaftigkeit Karls
des Großen wirkt gerade das, was in Besonderheit der hochkarolingischen Reichsorganisa-
tion ausmachte – in Stichworten: Zentralität, Amt, Gesetzgebung, Schriftlichkeit –, in den
Nachfolgerreichen des karolingischen Imperiums zunächst nicht fort, sondern bricht geradezu
ab.’ For a slightly more positive assessment of the existence of a royal administration, similar to
that set out by Leyser in ‘Ottonian Government’, see Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Staatlichkeit,
Herrschaftsordnung und Lehnswesen im Ostfränkischen Reich als Forschungsprobleme’,
in Il Feudalesimo nell’alto Medioevo, Settimane (Spoleto, 2000), pp. 85–147, here p. 123: ‘Wie
weit vorwiegend personale oder aber Amtsbindungen das Herrschaftsgefüge bestimmten, hing
nicht zuletzt von der Existence einer funktionierenden Verwaltung (sic) und deren Einordnung
in eine feudale Gesellschaftsordnung ab.’
Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

© 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Exercise of royal power: the case of Otto the Great 391
Königsherrschaft ohne Staat, by simply asserting the absence of royal

administration of any type, much less written administration.5
Against this historiographical tradition must be set the realities of Otto
I’s rule. In the course of three and a half decades (936–73), Otto had a
record of extraordinary achievement in many facets of public life. In the
realm of military affairs, Otto and his military commanders launched
dozens of successful campaigns of conquest in the Slavic east as well as in
the Italian kingdom; the latter Otto eventually conquered and incorpo-
rated into his empire in 962.6 Otto launched a massive invasion of the
west Frankish kingdom in 946 during the course of which he established
himself as the hegemon in west Frankish affairs.7 The king weathered two
major civil wars (938–9, 953–4) in which he overcame the array of military
and political forces commanded by his brother Henry, his son Liudolf,
the dukes of Swabia, Franconia, and Lotharingia, as well as numerous
5
Gerd Althoff, Die Ottonen: Königsherrschaft ohne Staat (Stuttgart, 2000), p. 8: ‘Mit den kon-
stitutiven Elementen moderner Staatlichkeit – Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung, Ämterorganisation,
Gerichtswesen, Gewaltmonopol – läßt sich Königsherrschaft im 10. Jahrhundert nicht zure-
ichend erfassen.’ This study, which is a popularizing adaptation of Althoff’s collection of essays,
Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter: Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde, takes as its central
premise that the Weberian model of the state is the appropriate benchmark against which to
compare the Ottonian and Salian kingdoms. See the devastating review of Gerd Althoff,
Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter: Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde (Darmstadt, 1997),
by Howard Kaminsky in Speculum 74 (1999), pp. 687–9. Although sympathetic to Althoff’s
effort to project the Ottonian kingdom as a Weberian ‘archaic’ polity, Kaminsky emphasizes
Althoff’s, ‘slack way with his Latin sources. These are quoted in German translations that are
sometimes wrong but that are not corrected by reference to the Latin originals (usually quoted
in the footnotes), themselves sometimes misunderstood. Some of the mistakes are serious, and
one or two are tendentious’ (p. 688).
The corresponding Anglophone tradition before the publication of Mayr-Harting, Church
and Cosmos, is neatly summed up by John W. Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monas-
teries in Early Medieval Germany c. 936–1075 (Cambridge, 1993), p. 5: ‘Since the Ottonian and
the Salian kings lacked the governmental infrastructure of the Carolingian kingdom and empire
at the height of its power, they governed less through their representatives or written instruc-
tions sent out from the court and generally had to make their will manifest in person. There is
little doubt that the Ottonian kings made less use of the written word in government than the
Carolingians had at the height of their power. In fact, the east Frankish kingdom of the
Carolingians already used the written word in government less than did its west Frankish or
Italian contemporaries’ (my emphasis).
6
For an overview of Otto’s military campaigns within the context of Ottonian and Salian
warfare, see Bruno Scherff, Studien zum Heer der Ottonen und der ersten Salier (919–1056) (Bonn,
1985). Concerning military organization of Germany under Henry I and Otto I, see Bernard S.
Bachrach and David S. Bachrach, ‘Saxon Military Revolution, 912–973?: Myth and Reality’,
EME 15 (2007), pp. 186–222; and David S. Bachrach, ‘The Military Organization of Ottonian
Germany, c. 900–1018: The Views of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg’, Journal of Military
History 72 (2008), pp. 1061–88. For the most part, the administrative aspects of Ottonian
military organization have been ignored by specialists in both German and military history.
See the discussion by David S. Bachrach, ‘Memory, Epistemology, and the Writing of Early
Medieval Military History: The Example of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg (1009–1018)’, Viator
38 (2007), pp. 63–90, particularly pp. 63–70.
7
For a discussion of this campaign, see Les Annales de Flodoard, ed. Ph. Lauer (Paris, 1905), s.a.
946, and the new English translation The Annals of Flodoard of Reims 919–966, ed. and trans.
Steven Fanning and Bernard S. Bachrach (Peterborough, 2004); and Widukind, Res gestae
Saxonicae, MGH SS 3, 3.3 (Hanover, 1839), p. 451.

392 David Bachrach
lesser secular and ecclesiastical magnates.8 In his most famous military

achievement, Otto met and destroyed the fighting potential of the Hun-
garians in 955 at the battle on the Lechfeld and in subsequent mopping-
up operations.9 The bulk of these military operations required the
mobilization of very large armies, whose core consisted of the royal
military household, to take on the grinding exigencies of siege warfare.10
It is in this context, as archaeological research has shown, that Otto and
his officials constructed, expanded, and maintained hundreds of substan-
tial fortifications, many of which were built in stone.11
8
With regard to Ottonian military operations during the period of civil wars, see Bachrach,
‘Military Organization’, passim.
9
The basic study is now Charles Bowlus, The Battle of Lechfeld and its Aftermath, August 955: The
End of the Age of Migrations in the Latin West (Aldershot, 2006).
10
Concerning the central role attributed to sieges during the Ottonian period by contemporary
narrative sources, see Bernard S. Bachrach, ‘Magyar–Ottonian Warfare: à-propos a New Mini-
malist Interpretation’, Francia 13.1 (2000), pp. 211–30; Bachrach, ‘Memory, Epistemology, and
the Writing of Early Medieval Military History’, pp. 75–90; idem, ‘Military Organization’, pp.
186–222; Bachrach and Bachrach, ‘Saxon Military Revolution’, passim; and Scherff, Studien,
p. 11. Archaeological discoveries since the 1950s have confirmed the dominant role of sieges
in Ottonian warfare. Joachim Henning, ‘Archäologische Forschungen an Ringwällen in
Niederungslage: Die Niederlausitz als Burgenlandschaft des östlichen Mitteleuropas im frühen
Mittelalter’, in Joachim Henning and Alexander T. Ruttkay (eds), Frühmittelalterliche Burgen-
bau in Mittel und Osteuropa (Bonn, 1998), pp. 9–29, emphasizes that the construction of forts
by the inhabitants of the Lausitz region, for example, corresponded with the invasions of these
lands by Ottonian military forces. Thus, not only did Otto’s opponents in Germany, the west,
and Italy make considerable use of fortresses for defensive purposes, so too did his opponents
in the Slavic east.
11
The substantial archaeological discoveries of the past fifty years have unearthed a vast number of
fortifications, particularly stone fortifications, from the Ottonian period, including a very large
number built directly by the Ottonian kings. See, for example, Albert K. Hömberg, ‘Probleme
der Reichsgutforschung in Westfalen’, Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 96 (1960), pp. 1–21;
Erik Szameit, ‘Zum frühmittelalterlichen Burgwall von Gars/Thunau. Bemerkungen zu den
Fortifikationsresten und der Innenbebauung. Ein Vorbericht’, in Henning and Ruttkay (eds),
Frühmittelalterliche Burgenbau, pp. 71–8; Peter Ettel, ‘Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen auf der Burg
Horsadal, Roßtal bei Nürnberg’, in ibid., pp. 127–36; Hans-Wilhelm Heine, ‘Frühmittelal-
terliche Burgen in Niedersachsen’, in ibid., pp. 137–49; Michael Gockel, ‘Ebersdorf ’, in Michael
Gockel and Karl Heinemeyer (eds), Die deutsche Königspfalzen: Repertorium der Pfalzen,
Königshöfe und übrigen Aufenhaltsorte der Könige im deutschen Reich des Mittelalters I: Hessen
(Göttingen, 1985), pp. 74–82; Karl Heinemeyer, ‘Ermschwerd’, in ibid., pp. 83–97; idem,
‘Eschwege’, in ibid., pp. 98–130; and Michael Gockel, ‘Fritzlar’, in ibid., pp. 457–509. In this
context, considerable attention should be paid to the maintenance and expansion of Carolingian
period fortification systems such as those located in the Hassegau region between the Unstrut and
Saale Rivers, including the very large fortified complexes at Altstedt, Mühlhausen, Tutinsode,
Schlotheim, Eschwege and Frieda. With regard to this particular fortification system see, for
example, Michael Gockel, ‘Mühlhausen’, Die deutschen Königspfalzen: Repertorium der Pfalzen,
Königshöfe und übrigen Aufenthaltsorte der Könige im deutschen Reich des Mittelalters, vol. II
Thüringien (Göttingen, 2000), pp. 258–318, particularly p. 288.
A second major line of fortifications was identified by Walter Schlesinger, who demonstrated
conclusively that the so-called Hersfelder Zehntverzeichnis (HZV), a list of the tithe revenues held
by the monastery of Hersfeld in the Unstrut, Saale, and Middle Elbe River valleys, although late
in date, described conditions in 780. On this basis, Schlesinger argued that the nineteen urbes
listed in the HZV, from which Hersfeld received tithe revenues, were elements of a defensive
system of fortifications that was erected by Pippin I and Charlemagne. Working on the basis of
Schlesinger’s insights, with regard to this important text, the archaeologist Paul Grimm synthe-

These fortresses, however, hardly exhaust the catalogue of building

projects undertaken by Otto during his reign. The major archaeological
explorations of the past thirty years make clear that Otto also provided
funding for the construction, expansion, and maintenance of many hun-
dreds of church buildings ranging from simple parish churches to vast
and elaborate stone edifices that served as the religious adjunct to the
numerous royal palaces located throughout the kingdom.12 Moreover,
these palace chapels themselves, formed only a small part of the vast
complex of monumental stone buildings and numerous outworks that
comprised royal palaces.13 It is important to emphasize that a great many
of the military, ecclesiastical and palatine building projects undertaken by
Otto have left no trace in the surviving written record, and so additional
archaeological excavations have the potential to expand our knowledge of
Ottonian building activities even further.14
In addition to his successes as a military commander and as a builder,
Otto maintained control over a vast panoply of no fewer than 800 royal
fiscal holdings, including salt and silver mines, industrial facilities for the
sized archaeological, topographical and onomastic studies dating back to the nineteenth century,
to provide a detailed and comprehensive examination of this defensive system from the
perspective of military history, and particularly the question of the development of a system of
defence-in-depth. Grimm’s conclusions regarding the development of the fortress system in
Elbe–Oder regions under the Ottonian and Salian kings were confirmed by Gerhard Billig in his
magisterial study of Burgward organization in upper Saxony and the Meißen March. With regard
to the size, complexity and organization of this system of fortifications, see Walter Schlesinger,
Die Entstehung der Landesherrschaft, Teil I (Dresden, 1941), p. 79; Paul Grim, Handbuch vor-und
frühgeschichtlicher Wall-und Wehranlagen Teil I: Die vor- und frühgeschichtlichen Burgwälle der
Bezirke Halle und Magdeburg (Berlin, 1958), passim; and Gerhard Billig, Die Burgwardorganisa-
tion im obersächsisch-meissnischen Raum: Archäologisch-archivalisch vergleichende Untersuchungen
(Berlin, 1989), passim.
12
See, for example, Gerhard Leopold, ‘Archäologische Ausgrabungen an Stätten der ottonischen
Herrscher’, Herrschaftsrepräsentation im Ottonischen Sachsen (1998), pp. 33–76, who argues for a
massive royal construction effort on churches in Saxony from 919 onwards. For royal construc-
tion or royal support for the construction of particular churches, from an archaeological
perspective, see, for example, Ulrich Reuling, ‘Quedlinburg: Königspfalz-Reichsstift-Markt’, in
Lutz Fenske (ed.), Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen
Erforschung vierter Band: Pfalzen – Reichsgut-Königshöfe, (Göttingen, 2001), pp. 184–247; Paul
Grimm, ‘Archäologische Beobachtungen an Pfalzen und Reichsburgen östlich und südlich des
Harzes mit besondere Berücksichtigung der Pfalz Tilleda’, in Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu
ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung, vol. 2 (Göttingen, 1965), pp. 273–99; and
Holger Grewe, ‘Die bauliche Entwicklung der Pfalz Ingelheim im Hochmittelalter am Beispiel
der Sakralarchitektur’, in Caspar Ehlers, Jörg Jarnut and Matthias Wemhoff (eds), Deutsche
Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung, vol. 7 Zentren
herrschaftlicher Repräsentation im Hochmittelalter, Geschichte, Architektur und Zeremoniell
(Göttingen, 2007), pp. 101–20. Very large numbers of royal charters issued by Otto I also
demonstrate the support of church establishments.
13
The basic starting point for discussions of royal palace complexes in the Ottonian period is now
Die deutsche Königspfalzen: Repertorium der Pfalzen, Königshöfe und übrigen Aufenhaltsorte der
Könige im deutschen Reich des Mittelalters, vols 1–4 (Göttingen, 1982–2000).
14
To give but one example, of the more than 250 fortifications identified through archaeological
excavations in northern Bavaria dating from the period c.700–c.1000, only 30 are named in
surviving written sources. On this point, see Ettel, ‘Ergebnisse’, p. 127.

394 David Bachrach
production of iron and bronze goods, tanneries, vineyards, forest lands,

urban rental properties, grain farms, cattle and stud farms, and fisheries,
as well as cloth and clothing factories.15 These fiscal holdings were
complemented by a wide range of taxes, tolls and tributes that provided
Otto with large-scale revenues both in kind and in cash.16
In light of the undoubted successes enjoyed by Otto in exercising royal
power in so many areas of public life, a fundamental question is raised.
How have scholars sought to explain the ability of the Ottonians gener-
ally, and Otto I in particular, to rule the German kingdom in the
supposed absence of any royal administrative capacity? In short, the
historiographical tradition dealing with Ottonian rule has simply ignored
this problem, preferring to focus enormous attention on the role of the
royal itinerary and on the practice of sacral kingship in the realm of
politics.17 Again, Mayr-Harting provides a clear synopsis of scholarly
orthodoxy on this point:
The royal court was constantly on the move . . . The itinerary was
partly economic in point – to exploit effectively the rulers’ estates in
the regions; but it was partly political. In face-to-face politics the
king’s periodic presence was vital. There was yet another point to the
itinerary. It was sacral . . . Sacral kingship, however, was no easy or
15
The figure of 800 fiscal units must be considered a minimum, derived from counting the fiscal
properties identified in surviving royal and so-called private charters from Otto I’s reign, as well
as royal fiscal properties from the eighth, ninth, and early tenth century that can be identified
in royal hands under Otto I’s successors. In regard to the enormous continuity in royal
possession of Carolingian fiscal assets under the Ottonians see, for example, Wolfgang Metz,
Das karolingische Reichsgut (Berlin, 1960), p. 179; Marianne Schalles-Fischer, Pfalz und Fiskus
Frankfurt: Eine Untersuchung zur Verfassungsgeschichte des fränkischen-deutschen Königtums
(Göttingen, 1969), p. 265 and passim; Michael Gockel, Karolingische Königshöfe am Mittelrhein
(Göttingen, 1970), passim; and Peter Schmid, Regensburg: Stadt der Könige und Herzöge im
Mittelalter (Kallmünz, 1977), p. 284 and passim.
16
With regard to Ottonian period taxes and tolls, the most recent work is Neil Middleton, ‘Early
Medieval Port Customs, Tolls and Controls on Foreign Trade’, EME 13 (2005), pp. 313–58. This
study focuses considerable attention on the problem of record keeping by fiscal officials, noting
that the grants of certain percentages of toll revenues, e.g. a tenth, necessarily required the
keeping of toll records over the course of the entire year (p. 327). For comparative purposes
regarding the revenues obtained by Charlemagne from tolls, see F.L. Ganshof, ‘A propos du
tonlieu a l’époque Carolingienne’, Settimane 6 (1959), pp. 485–508.
17
With regard to the central role of the itinerary in the practice of royal government, the basic
work remains Carlrichard Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum Serivitum Regis: Studien zu den wirtschaftli-
chen Grundlagen des Königtums im Frankenreich und in den fränkischen Nachfolgestaaten Deut-
schland, Frankreich und Italien vom 6. bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Cologne, 1968). Many
scholars have added to the picture of the royal itinerary in a variety of areas. Bernhardt, Itinerant
Kingship, for example, emphasizes the important role that monasteries, alongside bishoprics,
played in providing material support for the royal court on the move. Additional insights, from
archaeological, art historical and architectural perspectives, have been developed through the
series Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung, 7
vols (Göttingen, 1963–2007), published through the auspices of the Max-Planck-Institut für
Geschichte at Göttingen; and the series Die deutsche Königspfalzen: Repertorium der Pfalzen,
noted above (nn. 11 and 14).

short-term answer to political turmoil and rebellion. To achieve it was

a slow process, requiring hard work and perseverance. Constant atten-
dance at church festivals, public crown-wearings, collection of saints’
relics for the royal chapel (which travelled on the itinerary), represen-
tations of the ruler in art and in forms of buildings, gift-giving,
especially to churches, memorials in royal burials and tombs in
churches, hagiographies of saintly members of the dynasty were all
part of the build-up. So, very much, was the itinerary. Itinerant
kingship was a highly ritualized business. The itinerary could itself be
conceived as a sacral procession . . .18
In this model, politics depended on the perception of the king as a sacral

figure, a perception that the Ottonian kings assiduously cultivated. Above
all, according to the orthodox model, sacral kingship provided the Otton-
ian kings with the means to cultivate and then represent consensus
among the aristocrats upon whose support royal rule depended.19 Let
there be no confusion here. These aspects of sacral kingship were very
important in the Ottonian period, as they were in the Carolingian period,
and indeed for the Roman emperors, both pagan and Christian.20
However, as Marc Bloch emphasized eighty years ago, in all of the
scholarly discussion of royal politics, sacral kingship, gift-giving, and even
the route of the itinerary, one question has remained conspicuous by its
absence: how? How do any of the elements of the orthodox treatment of
royal rule explain the construction of stone fortifications, the support of
their garrisons, or the equipping of the royal military obsequium? How
does the collection of saints’ relics, or attendance at church festivals,
explain the government’s possession and mobilization of the economic
wherewithal that permitted Otto to build and maintain hundreds of
churches? How did the commissioning of hagiographical accounts of the
lives of Ottonian princesses provide prebends and other endowments to
thousands of clerics, monks and nuns? How do the political functions of
the royal itinerary explain the management of more than 800 fiscal
complexes that were spread throughout the Ottonian realm north of the
Alps? Here it should be emphasized that we are dealing with fiscal
properties held directly in dominium that were not granted out as ben-
18
Mayr-Harting, Church and Cosmos, pp. 3–4.
19
On this point, see Gerd Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale: Symbolik und Herrschaft in Mittelalter
(Darmstadt, 2003), pp. 71–6; Hagen Keller, ‘Ritual, Symbolik und Visualisierung in der Kultur
des ottonischen Reiches’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 35 (2001), pp. 23–59; and the discussion by
Mayr-Harting, Church and Cosmos, p. 5.
20
Regarding the importance of sacral elements of rule to both pagan and Christian Roman
emperors, see Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity,
Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge, 1990).

396 David Bachrach
efices to churches to be managed by ecclesiastical authorities.21 How does

the construction of royal tombs explain the ability of Otto I and his
successors to access the revenues from estates that they did not visit, i.e.,
the great majority of the estates held by the king. In short, scholars have
failed to ask the most basic and pressing administrative questions of all.
Once a political decision had been reached through a highly ritualized
court proceeding of the type discussed in such detail by scholars such as
Althoff and Keller, what series of administrative acts were set in train to
assure that these decisions were, in fact, carried out? Indeed, at an even
more basic level, before the highly ritualized building of a political
consensus took place on the sacralized royal itinerary, on what basis did
the king and his magnates decide that x number of soldiers were available
to be mobilized for a specific campaign, or that the resources were
available to build a fortress or church of y dimensions? The answers to
these questions required detailed information without which building
projects would be stalled, and campaigns would be disrupted.
The thesis of this study is that an analysis of the political aspects of
Ottonian government through the monistic prism of sacral kingship and
the royal itinerary alone cannot explain Otto I’s undeniable achievements
as a military commander, as a builder, and as the custodian of the royal
fisc, or his ability to overwhelm political opponents both within and
beyond the frontiers of the kingdom. This does not mean that sacral
kingship was not important. It does mean, however, that a study of
politics, in isolation, also cannot illuminate management of the royal fisc.
In order fully to understand the basis of Otto I’s ability to exercise power
effectively, it is necessary to turn to the problem of administration, that
is to ask how the king had available the information that was required to
levy the human, material and financial resources that made possible his
political and policy decisions, and how the king made use of this infor-
mation. It is, therefore, the burden of this paper to show that Otto I’s
exercise of power depended not only on sacral kingship, but also on the
existence of well-functioning systems of fiscal, legal and administrative
institutions that, themselves, relied upon the massive use of written
21
Regarding the active management of fiscal properties by royal officials in this period, see
Gockel, Karolingische Königshöfe, p. 27; Schalles-Fischer, Pfalz und Fiskus, p. 326; Schmid,
Regensburg, p. 230; and F.J. Heyen, Reichsgut im Rheinland. Die Geschichte des königlichen Fiskus
Boppard (Bonn, 1956) p. 65. It should be noted that these studies were completed before the
path-breaking work of Rosamond McKitterick, Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge,
1989) and the important studies on the use of written documents by the Carolingian govern-
ment that came in its wake (see Janet Nelson below, n. 22). Consequently, largely missing from
these early discussions of the administration of the fisc was the role played by written docu-
ments at the local level, in the court, and in communications between the two. Rather, these
fiscal studies were written against a background in which writing of all types was understood to
have played only a very limited role in the activities of the government.

documents. Because of the enormous scale of this problem, however,

it is necessary to limit an examination of the ways that the royal admini-
strative practices and institutions facilitated Otto the Great’s successes
in the public sphere. The focus of this essay is on Otto I’s ability to
use royal administrative assets to exercise his power over secular indivi-
duals and ecclesiastical institutions specifically through confiscations
and requisitions of property, including both allodial possessions and
benefices.
Confiscations
The economic basis of power in the early Middle Ages, as Janet Nelson
cogently observed in a discussion of the use of literacy in the Carolingian
government under Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald,
was ‘efficient landlordship’.22 Stripping a magnate of the benefices that he
held from the royal fisc, and even more so, stripping him of his family’s
allodial possessions, was tantamount to reducing him to the level of
political and social nonentity.23 Consequently, the political decision by
the king to exercise his power in this manner was fraught with consid-
erable political risks and dangers to his position of political and moral
authority. On the level of practical politics, therefore, royal confiscations
of property from magnates can certainly be understood as having been
made more palatable to the ‘political community’ in the manner sug-
gested by scholars such as Althoff, Keller and Mayr-Harting, with the
king presenting himself plausibly as the vicarius Dei carrying out the
consensus decision of the magnates. What remains to be explained,
however, are the mechanisms by which these ostensibly political decisions
regarding the confiscation of property could be put into practice. In this
context, a distinction is to be drawn between the confiscation of ben-
efices, which were royal property that had been granted in usufruct as a
benefice to a royal fidelis, and the personal properties (allods) of royal
subjects. As will be seen below, the king had the power to confiscate both
types of properties. However, the types of information, and therefore the
administrative procedures required to obtain, store, retrieve and use this
22
Janet L. Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian Government’, in Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), The
Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 258–96, here p. 272.
23
With regard to the loss of personal honour that attended the loss of honores in the Carolingian
and Ottonian periods, see Karl Leyser, ‘Early Medieval Canon Law and the Beginnings of
Knighthood’, in Instutionen, Kultur und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Josef Flecken-
stein zum 65. Geburtstag (Sigmaringen, 1984), pp. 549–66, repr. in idem, Communications and
Power in Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries, ed. Timothy Reuter
(London, 1994), pp. 51–71. The earlier tradition on this point is set out in Hans Fehr, ‘Das
Waffenrecht der Bauern im Mittelalter’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte.
Germanistische Abteilung 35 (1914), pp. 111–211, particularly pp. 130–4.

398 David Bachrach
information, were different in the case of properties held as benefices as

contrasted with those held as allods. These differences will be examined
in greater depth below.
It should be emphasized that information about the confiscation of
property by the royal government, as well as by other lords north of the
Alps, appears in numerous narrative sources.24 However, details of these
confiscations generally can be identified only insofar as the lands and
other resources confiscated or requisitioned by the royal government
subsequently were granted to an ecclesiastical institution or, much more
rarely, to a layman, and that the charter for this subsequent grant has,
itself, fortuitously survived. Similarly, the trial proceedings leading to
confiscations, and the subsequent administrative actions taken by royal
officials with regard to the confiscation of lands must be reconstructed on
the basis of the information that was recorded in later alienations of this
confiscated property from the fisc.25 In this context, one particularly
forthcoming set of charters concerns the confiscation and subsequent
disposition of a large quantity of both the benefices and allodial posses-
sions held by Count Guntram, known as Guntram the Wealthy, one of
the ancestors of the Habsburgs.
On 9 August 952, at a royal assembly in the palatio at Augsburg, the
monastery of Einsiedeln, located in the modern Swiss canton of Schwyz,
was given by the king a property called Liel (Lielahe), located in the pagus
of Breisgau within the comital jurisdiction of Liudolf, Otto I’s son.26 This
was the first of several grants made by the king out of the fisc over a
period of ten years consisting of properties that had been confiscated
from Count Guntram populari iudicio at the Augsburg assembly.27
24
Famously, Otto I stripped his son-in-law Conrad the Red, duke of Lotharingia, of all of his
beneficia because of the latter’s leadership of a revolt against the king in 954. In this regard, see
Continuator Reginonis, MGH SS 1 (Hanover, 1836), s.a. 954, p. 623. At a lower political level,
Gerhard of Augsburg, Vita Sancti Uodalrici, MGH SS 4 (Hanover, 1841), 1.28, p. 415, notes that
Bishop Ulrich’s successor at Augsburg, Henry, sought in 973 to repossess the beneficia of several
of the milites who had served in the obsequia of Bishop Ulrich’s nephews Manegold and
Hupold.
25
The procedures by which such confiscations took place at the comital level in the east during
the Carolingian period are discussed in detail by Warren Brown, Unjust Seizure: Conflict,
Interest, and Authority in an Early Medieval Society (Ithaca, 2001). For the operation of comital
courts in the western tradition during the reign of Charles the Bald, see Janet Nelson, ‘Dispute
Settlement in West Francia’, in Paul Fouracre and Wendy Davies (eds), The Settlement of
Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 45–64, and reprinted in Janet Nelson,
The Frankish World (London, 1996), pp. 51–74.
26
All references are to Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser: Konrad I., Heinrich I. und
Otto I., ed. Theodor Sickel (Hanover, 1879–84). For the property at Liel, see DO I 155. The
identification of the site of the trial as the royal palatio is found in DO I 236. For an overview
of royal grants to Einsiedeln in the tenth century, see Joachim Salzgeber, ‘Landschenkungen an
das Kloster Einsiedeln im 10. Jahrhundert’, in Festschrift zum tausenden Todestag des seligen Abtes
Gregor, des dritten Abtes von Einsiedeln: 996–1996 (Munich, 1996), pp. 243–66.
27
DO I 155.

Further alienations of fiscal property acquired, or reacquired in the case

of benefices, from Guntram were made to the monastery of Lorsch in
August 953, Einsiedeln again in January 958, to a royal fidelis named
Rudolf in April 959 (almost certainly Duke Rudolf ), and to Bishop
Conrad of Constance in February 962.28 These grants included properties
in fifteen villae located within three pagi that were within the comital
jurisdiction of three separate comites (Liudolf, Prihibo and Burchard).
From an administrative perspective, the considerable size and distri-
bution of the properties the king confiscated from Guntram raise impor-
tant questions about the availability of information regarding the count’s
possessions. Still further questions arise concerning the subsequent ability
of royal fiscal officials to take possession of, or to repossess in the case of
benefices, the properties that Guntram held in the pagi of Breisgau,
Thurgau (modern Switerzland), and Alsace, these being located hundreds
of kilometres from the court at Augsburg. Guntram’s matrix of properties
in Breisgau included the locus of Liel, noted above, as well as holdings in
the villae of Buggingen (Puckinga), Ihringen (Uringa), and Maurach
(Muron).29 These lands are situated some 280 to 320 kilometres south-
west of the royal palace. The cluster of eight villae in the environs of the
modern Alsatian town, Brumath, in which Guntram had property hold-
ings, are three hundred kilometeres west by north-west of Augsburg.30
The properties at Hüttenheim and Colmar, also in Alsace, were a further
sixty and ninety kilometres to the south-west of Brumath respectively.31
Guntram’s property in Thurgau (Switzerland) at the villa of Eschenz
(Akinza) is located 220 kilometres south-west of Augsburg. Taken in sum,
the properties confiscated from Guntram were many weeks’ journey from
the court. The basic administrative question, therefore, is how did the
royal officials at Augsburg know what properties Guntram held in these
three widely separated pagi? More pressingly, how did the fiscal officials
come to have this information on 9 August 952 about property at Liel,
only a few days after Guntram’s trial and the judgement against him?
Obviously, Guntram had this information about his properties, very
likely in written form given the widespread practice in the German
kingdom of keeping personal archives, but he had every incentive to hide
28
DO I 166, 189, 201 and 236. For the identification of the royal fidelis as Duke Rudolf, see Die
Urkunden Otto des II. und Otto des III., ed. Theodor Sickel (Hanover, 1893), DO II 51 and DO
III 273.
29
See DO I 155 and 236.
30
See DO I 166 and 201. Also see the confirmation of the subsequent grant of these properties by
Duke Rudolf, including Guntram’s former possessions at Colmar and Hüttenheim, to the
monastery of Peterlingen in DO II 51 and DO III 273.
31
The modern location of the property situated within the villa of Hillisazaas has not been
identified by scholars.

400 David Bachrach
this information from royal officials.32 Moreover, even if the names of the
villae in which Guntram held property, and the pagi in which they were
to be found, were coerced from him after his conviction for treason, this
was hardly sufficient information to carry out, as contrasted with simply
declaring, the confiscation of these holdings. The officials of the royal fisc,
who took over possession of the confiscated properties in fifteen separate
villae, and the beneficiaries of royal largess, who received these lands as
grants from the king, required detailed information about the boundaries
as well as topographical information regarding the benefices and allods
Guntram had held.
Readers familiar with boundary clauses in Anglo-Saxon sources but
not with contemporary German documents, are likely to be surprised by
the comparatively detailed boundary clauses in large numbers of the
latter.33 For example, Otto I’s confirmation on 15 May 949 of a grant to
Archbishop Robert of Trier of two properties at Zerf and Serrig, as well
as administrative jurisdiction of forest lands attached to them, included
the following information about the historical background of earlier
grants, the status of the animal populations in forest lands, and the
boundary of the forest lands to be administered by the archbishop:
predecessores nostri reges . . . quasdam res ad fiscum publicum per-

tinentes concesserunt sancto Petro ad Trevericam ecclesiam . . .
dederunt villam Valeriam cum exceptis locis Cerviam et Serviacum
cum foreste regia que sibi eotenus vendicaverunt causa venationis;
nam quia sub hac ocasione tunc temporis depopulabantur circum-
quaque loca illius ecclesie a venatoribus . . . imperato Karolus predicta
loca Cerviam et Servicaum pariter cum foreste ad sanctum Petrum, ne
sub occasione ipsius forestie circumiacentes res ecclesie vastarentur.
Igitur nos fidelium nostrorum, Brunonis videlicet et ducis Cunradi
et archiepiscopi Rothberti, peticionibus annuentes illud imperiale
preceptum ante nos recitatum et a nostris fidelibus approbatum, pre-
scripte petitionis preceptum innovamus, quin et roboramus, videlicet
forestem hiis locis et confiniis determinatam que et a nostra constat
esse nullo imperiali precepto discreta, scilicet ex eo loco ubi Primancia
fluvius oritur usque ad Bischofesfelt et sic via publica usque ad
32
With regard to the keeping of archives by lay people in the eastern kingdom, see Warren Brown,
‘When Documents are Destroyed or Lost: Lay People and Archives in the Early Middle Ages’,
EME 11 (2002), pp. 337–66. For a detailed examination of one particular lay archive, see
Katherine Bullimore, ‘Folcwin of Rankweil: The World of a Carolingian Local Official’, EME
13 (2005), pp. 43–77.
33
See, for example, DH I 35; DO I 8, 11, 96, 103, 110, 118, 131, 145, 178, 259, 433; DO II 14, 27, 28,
39, 47, 50, 53, 66, 90, 125, 134, 165, 191, 204, 220, 221, 235, 262, 278, 288, 292, 297. In this context,
it should be noted that there is nothing to differentiate in terms of detail between word maps
describing properties north of the Alps, and word maps describing properties south of the Alps.

Marciacum et sic inde usque quo Sarowa in Mosellam fluit, inde a

locum Live nominatum, a Lyve autem illuc ubi Bodelaha in Droganam
fluvium cadit, inde recto tramite ad ortum fluminis Primantie.34
In addition to the boundaries and topography of these sites, the new

recipient of these lands required further information, including not only
lists of buildings, fields, meadows and vineyards, but also various types of
livestock, tools and, not least, various human dependants of differing
legal status. Of course, this information was highly time-conditioned
given not only the vagaries of yearly agricultural production, but also the
high mortality rates of both livestock and humans. In addition, Gun-
tram’s possible participation in both property sales and exchanges had to
be taken into account by royal officials.35
According to the charter issued on behalf of the monastery of Ein-
siedeln at Augsburg in August 952, it was Liudolf, the comes in whose
comitatus Breisgau was located, who had interceded with his father, King
Otto, to obtain the property at Liel.36 It is highly problematic, however,
to suggest that either Liudolf, or even one of the members of his staff, had
memorized all of the pertinent information regarding Guntram’s hold-
ings at Liel, much less all of the details of those properties at Buggingen,
Ihringen and Maurach, which also were located in Liduolf’s comitatus.37
34
DO I 110. ‘Our predecessor granted certain property belonging to the royal fisc to St Peter of
Trier. They gave the villa of Valeria, with the exception of the properties at Cervia and Serviacus,
along with the royal forest which they had sold to them previously for the purpose of hunting.
For at that time, the areas around the church had been hunted out by hunters. At the order of
Charles, the aforementioned places, Cervia and Serviacus along with the forest land were given
to St Peter to prevent that the properties of the church located nearby the forest from being
devastated. Therefore we, accepting the petition of our faithful men, namely Bruno and Duke
Conrad, and Archbishop Robert, regarding this imperial order that was recited before us and
which was approved by our faithful men, shall renew the command set out in this written
request, and shall confirm it, namely that the forest set within these places and boundaries that
have been established and are in no way different from [those set out in] any other imperial
order: thus, [the boundaries shall be] from a place where the Neckar (Primancia) River rises up
to Bischofesfelt and from there along the public highway to Marciacus and then to the place
where the Saon (Sarowa) flows into the Moselle. Then the [boundary] goes from a place called
Live, from Live where the Bodelaha flows into the Drogana River. Then along the right bank
of the Neckar River.’
35
Numerous royal as well as ‘private’ charters attest to land sales and exchanges throughout Otto
I’s reign. On this point, see Bullimore, ‘Folcwin of Rankweil’, passim. It should be noted that
Folcwin, as a centenarius, was a man of much lower social and political status than was
Guntram. For more contemporary documents regarding land sales see, for example, Die
Traditionen des Hochstifts Freising: Band II 926–1283, ed. Theodor Bitterauf (Munich, 1909; repr.
Aalen, 1967), nr. 1152 pp. 78–9. In this case, in return for Count Adalbero’s property, the bishop
of Freising offered property in the northern section of the villa of Hohinpurc that was
surrounded by a ditch (vallum).
36
DO I 155.
37
See DO I 236 for the properties in question. Even if someone had memorized these data, it is
necessary to ask where he obtained this information and how such an oral report was to be
confirmed at the royal court.

402 David Bachrach
Moreover, given the more than three-week round trip, under optimal
circumstances, between these estates and Augsburg, it is impossible from
a logistical standpoint that men were dispatched from the royal court to
undertake a detailed property inventory and then make a report follow-
ing Guntram’s conviction for treason, since Liel was granted to the
monastery of Einsiedeln mere days after the disgraced count’s trial had
taken place. In this context, it should be emphasized that the king,
and Liudolf, had to have a pretty good idea about the overall value
of the property that Guntram had at Liel, otherwise they risked insult-
ing the monastery with a niggardly gift, or harming the fisc by giving
too much away. So, the basic question remains. How did Otto and
Liudolf know on 9 August 952, that Guntram possessed Liel, and that this
locus was an appropriately valuable property to grant to the monastery of
Einsiedeln?
To put the matter in the clearest possible terms, in order to identify
even a list of Guntram’s properties, much less a more or less comprehen-
sive descriptio of the boundaries and contents of these holdings, such as
Liudolf and Otto almost certainly had available, the royal court required
detailed records. Given the quantity and complexity of the information
that was required, it is almost certainly the case that these records were
kept in written form.38 To suggest otherwise requires that one postulate
some type of oral system for maintaining and updating literally millions
of pieces of information regarding crops, animals, humans, buildings,
tools, and the myriad other elements of thousands of fiscal and allodial
properties that were of interest to royal planners. However, as noted
above, the records used by royal officials to advise Otto and his son
Liudolf about the properties held by Guntram were probably not of the
same type, since Guntram held benefices from the fisc and also had
allodial possessions. Both were confiscated at Augsburg. As will be seen
38
In considering the maintenance of information over time, it is important to emphasize that not
all types of information were stored in the same manner during the early Middle Ages. It is a
very different matter, for example, for a trained performer to memorize an epic poem than it is
for an untrained man to memorize complex lists of names, buildings, field dimensions, tools,
crops, and property boundaries. These two practices should not be conflated. In this regard, it
is useful to compare the discussion of oral performances, and concomitant claims that medieval
society largely lacked a written component, by Michael Richter, The Formation of the Medieval
West: Studies in the Oral Culture of the Barbarians (Dublin, 1994); The Oral Tradition in the Early
Middle Ages (Turnhout, 1994); and Richter’s essays collected in Studies in Medieval Language
and Culture (Dublin, 1995), with the observations by Wilhelm Störmer, ‘Heinrichs II.
Schenkungen an Bamberg: Zur Topographie und Typologie des Königs-und Bayerischen
Herzogsguts um die Jahrtausend-Wende in Franken und Bayern’, in Fenske (ed.), Deutsche
Königspfalzen, pp. 377–408, here p. 402. The latter concludes with regard to Henry II’s
(1002–24) efforts to carry out an inquisitio in Bavaria in 1007, ‘that it is not possible that the
king and his chancery had simply memorized these numerous places . . . This means, in explicit
terms, that Henry II must have had some sort of written description of the lower-Bavarian
properties held by the duke and the king before 1007’ (author’s translation).

below, different officials were responsible for the production and main-
tenance of records regarding these different types of holdings.
Records for benefices

In considering the sources of information available to the king and royal
officials regarding the location and composition of the properties that
Guntram held as benefices, it is likely that Otto and his advisers turned
to records that were kept at court as part of the impedimenta carried in the
king’s baggage train. In this context, it should first be emphasized that the
keeping of documents in an itinerant court was hardly a problem for
medieval kings. Certainly Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, and Lothar I are
all known to have maintained moving archives and even libraries.39 For
the later period, most medievalists are well aware of the famous account
of King Philip II of France losing his archive when the royal court was
ambushed by Richard Lionheart’s forces, and the wagons carrying the
French royal documents fell into the river and were swept away.40
The second point that requires emphasis is that the Carolingians, upon
whom, it is important to stress, the Ottonians modelled their own
administrative practices, required that the comital vicarii and centenarii
develop and submit to the royal court detailed records of all benefices
within their areas of juridical competence, including benefices that were
held from the king as well as those held from other secular and ecclesi-
39
On the maintenance of royal archives by the later Carolingians into the tenth century, see Metz,
Das karolingische Reichsgut, p. 221; Klaus Verhein, ‘Studien zu Quellen zum Reichsgut der
Karolingerzeit’, part 2, Deutsches Archiv für Geschichte des Mittelalters 11 (1955), pp. 333–92, here
p. 376; and most recently Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, ‘Secular Administration’, in F.A.C. Mantello
(ed.), Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide (Washington, DC, 1996), pp.
195–229, here p. 199. Regarding the transportion of Lothar I’s library on campaign, see Eric J.
Goldberg, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817–876 (Ithaca,
2006), p. 18. Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 281 argues that there is no information to support the case
that Charlemagne had a central archive that received reports from missi. She indicates, instead,
that the reports drawn up by the stewards of royal estates and by the missi, may have been
collected in the archives of the missi themselves. Nevertheless, Nelson does not indicate that
there is any information to support her contention concerning the archives of missi with regard
to the reign of Charlemagne. She does point to the fact that Hincmar of Rheims, in 854, had
lists of oath-takers, with the unspoken presumption that these lists had been developed by
Hincmar in his role as a missus. Later in the same study (pp. 286, 287), however, Nelson
contradicts herself with regard to the evidence for Charlemagne’s reign, noting that documents
were drawn up for storage in Charlemagne’s royal archive. Nelson appears not to have taken
into account the fact that under Louis the Pious, having multiple copies of documents drawn
up included one copy being reserved for the royal archive, and further copies being designated
for specific comital and episcopal archives. Regarding the production of multiple copies of
documents for archiving purposes, including in the royal archives, see Cullen J. Chandler,
‘Between Court and Counts: Carolingian Catalonia and the aprisio Grant, 778–897’, EME 11
(2002), pp. 19–44, here pp. 28 and 29.
40
See, for example, the discussion by John W. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus
(Berkeley, 1986), p. 56.

404 David Bachrach
astical magnates.41 In discussing application of this administrative

requirement in the west, Janet Nelson has made clear that such records
were, in fact, drawn up by missi.42
As noted above, a series of properties that Guntram held as benefices
were successfully confiscated by Otto I’s officials and subsequently
granted to other recipients over a period of several years. This reality
almost certainly required that Otto’s government had the same level of
information about fiscal properties that had been granted as benefices as
did Charles the Bald, Louis the Pious and Charlemagne. Whether this
information regarding all of these properties was held in a royal archive or
was derived from other sources must remain, for now, an open question.
With regard to the particular locus at Liel, granted to Einsiedeln in 952,
however, the matter is rather more clear, and the information seems
almost certainly to have been at the royal court at the time of Guntram’s
trial. Liel was granted to the monastery just a few days after being
confiscated from Guntram. This means that Otto had to hand informa-
tion about Guntram’s benefices at the actual trial. Moreover, as suggested
above, Otto required rather detailed information to ensure that the grant
of the locus at Liel was appropriate for his gift to Einsiedeln.
The subsequent grants of Guntram’s former benefices illuminate
further aspects of royal record keeping with regard to these grants from
the royal fisc. Specifically, it is possible to see in these charters glimpses of
the ‘dossiers’ for these properties that travelled with the court. For
example, the grant in 958 to the monastery of Einsiedeln of the property
that Guntram had held in the villa of Eschenz, noted above, shows that
royal clerks had available detailed information about a property that was
confiscated and incorporated into the fisc, even though the charter was
drawn up at a considerable geographical distance and years removed from
Guntram’s trial at Augsburg in 952.43 When he took up pen and parch-
ment, the royal clerk responsible for this still-extant document was at the
palace at Pöhlde, some 500 kilometres north of the beneficiaries at
Einsiedeln, and 580 kilometeres north of the villa of Eschenz. While
standing at his writing desk, the clerk was provided with information that
this fiscal property (res iuris nostri) was located in the Thurgau, and that
41
With regard to Ottonian use of Carolingian administrative models, with particular reference to
the fisc, see Metz, Reichsgut, pp. 18–72, 220–7, and passim; Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum, p. 68; and
Gockel, Karolingische Königshöfe, p. 27. Concerning Ottonian maintenance of Carolingian
administrative practice with regard to military affairs, see Bachrach, ‘Magyar–Ottonian
Warfare’, passim; Bachrach and Bachrach, ‘Military Revolution’, passim; and Bachrach,
‘Ottonian Military Organization’, passim. With regard to the specific requirement that the
centenarii were to provide detailed reports regarding the beneficia that were held in their
areas of jurisdiction, see MGH Capitularia 1 (Hanover, 1883), no. 49 c. 4, p. 136.
42
Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 285.
43
DO I 189.

Thurgau was located within the comitatus of Duke Burchard within the
duchy (ducatus) of Alamannia. This was, of course, time-conditioned
information given the nature of mortality rates in tenth-century Europe,
and the consequent regular reassignment of pagi to new counts. While at
Pöhlde the clerk also was made aware that the property at Eschenz had
belonged to Comes Guntram, and further, that it had been confiscated
because of the latter’s perfidia and assigned to the fisc as the result of a
public trial, i.e. reatus iusto iudicio publice in ius regium et diiudicata.44 As
these details make clear, we are dealing here with both an institutional
memory about the historical status of the property now held by the fisc,
and an up-to-date set of data about the political and administrative
jurisdictions within which this fiscal property was located, at a remove of
almost six hundred kilometres and five years from the property itself, and
from the trial at which it was confiscated. Whether all of the details
regarding the contents of this property were also available to the royal
clerk cannot now be known. What is certain, however, is that this
information had to be made available to the abbot of Einsiedeln before
his administrators could effectively take possession of Guntram’s former
lands.
The grant to the royal fidelis Rudolf in 959, discussed above, provides
a similarly illuminating glance into the operations of the royal adminis-
trative apparatus that travelled with the king. The charter on behalf of
Rudolf was issued at Walbeck, some 650 kilometres from Colmar and 620
kilometres from Hüttenheim, two further Alsatian estates that had been
confiscated from Guntram in 952.45 The clerk who drew up this text was
aware of the means by which, and the reason why, the fisc had reacquired
these two properties, as well as the holdings at Hillisazaas, noting ‘we
acquired all of these properties in full ownership because Guntram was a
rebel against the public good and our royal power’.46 In addition, the
clerk was sufficiently well informed about the contents of the properties
associated with the villa of Hillisazaas, to note that the dependent prop-
erty at Brumal (Pruomad) and its appurtenances were not available to be
granted to Rudolf.47 In this exclusion of the property at Brumal from the
grant to Rudolf, we see that the dossier regarding this particular fiscal
holding had been updated to note that Brumal was no longer available to
be granted away.48
44
DO I 189.
45
DO I 201.
46
DO I 201: ‘omnia quae nobis ideo in ius proprietatis sunt redacta, quia ipse Guntramnus contra
rem publicam nostrae regiae potestati rebelles extitit’.
47
DO I 201.
48
The identity of the recipient of this grant has not been transmitted in the surviving written
sources.

406 David Bachrach
The final surviving grant of property confiscated from Guntram was

issued in February 962 on behalf of Bishop Conrad of Constance, as
noted above, while the king was at Riana, south of the Alps in Italy. The
document was drawn up almost a full decade after Guntram’s trial at
Augsburg in 952.49 The cleric who wrote out this surviving original
charter had available up-to-date information concerning the pagus and
the name of the count in whose comitatus these properties were located.
In addition, the clerk had available the historically pertinent information
that the grant to Conrad consisted of those lands that Guntram had held
in the three villae of Buggingen, Ihringen and Maurach. The clerk was
also fully informed that these properties had come into the fisc (nostrum
regium ius) following a trial at the royal palace in Augsburg, i.e. in nostro
palacio Augustburc iudicata fuissent.50
As these documents, issued over a period of ten years, make clear, royal
officials had available detailed information about both the composition
of royal fiscal holdings, and the tenurial history of these properties.
Moreover, the clerks who drew up these documents had this information
while hundreds of kilometres away from the sites in question. Conse-
quently, it is highly improbable, not to say impossible, that the informa-
tion provided in these charters was based upon spot questioning of locals
living within the villae in question. Rather, we are dealing here with a
staff of clerks who had access to copious and time-conditioned docu-
ments regarding the property holdings of the royal fisc.
Information regarding allodial properties

Guntram’s property at Liel, noted earlier, very likely was a benefice rather
than an allod. It was the practice in royal documents, as will be seen
below, to identify specifically those properties which were the allodial
possessions of individuals named in charters, and to differentiate between
these properties held in full ownership from those that were held as
benefices. In this case, Liel was not identified as an allod. Similarly, the
properties granted to Einsiedeln in 958 and to Bishop Conrad of Con-
stance in 962 were not identified as Guntram’s allods. Furthermore, in
each of these latter two charters, Guntram is identified as a comes, a fact
that further indicates that the properties located in four villae in Thurgau
and Breisgau had been held by Guntram as a benefice, very likely as part
of his comital ministerium.51
49
DO I 236.
50
DO I 236.
51
DO I 189 and 236.

The administrative procedures and documentary materials that were

required to keep track of benefices, as seen above, had their focus in the
itinerant royal court.52 By contrast, the confiscation of allodial lands
required extensive written administration at the comital level combined
with a sharing of information by the counts with the royal court. Given
what is known about Carolingian administrative practice upon which
Ottonian practice was modelled, as noted above, it is unlikely that
officials serving directly in the royal court kept lists of the allodial land-
holders within the hundreds of pagi in the kingdom, much less detailed
inventories of the contents of these holdings.53 In the Carolingian
period, these administrative tasks had been the obligation of the count
within whose region of administrative competence the pagus was
located.54 Thus, when in 953 the monastery of Lorsch received a grant of
thirty hobae from Guntram’s former allodial holdings (quicquid heredi-
tarii iuris) that were located in eight separate villae in Alsace, it benefitted
from the administrative actions taken by the local count, Bernhard,
following Guntram’s trial.55
The charter issued to Lorsch makes clear that Bernhard had fulfilled
his administrative responsibilities by the time the grant was made to this
monastery since Guntram’s thirty hobae were already fully integrated into
the royal fisc before August 953, i.e. nostre vero potestati ut subiaceret
fiscatum.56 Among other matters, Bernhard’s men were able to identify
the particular thirty hobae within these eight villae that belonged to
Guntram, were able to distinguish these from the hundreds of other
hobae that comprised these complex economic units, and passed on this
52
Changes in the physical status of lands and other properties held as beneficia were to be reported
to the court by comital officials. However, the main responsibility for maintaining up-to-date
records regarding the possessor of the benefice, the boundaries of the benefice, and the reacquis-
tion of the benefice by the royal fisc, lay with officials at court. It was only from this central
perspective that it was possible for the king’s advisers to know the status of royal fiscal lands
throughout the many hundreds of pagi within the German kingdom north of the Alps.
53
Regarding continuities in royal administrative practice from the Carolingian to the Ottonian
period, see nn. 39 and 41.
54
For the Carolingian capitulary legislation on this point, see MGH Capitularia 2 (Hanover 1898),
no. 188 c. 5, p. 10; vol. II, no. 273 c. 27, p. 321 and ibid., no. 274 c. 13, p. 331. For a discussion
of these list-making requirements and their implementation in the west from a pessimistic
perspective, see F.L. Ganshof, ‘Charlemagne et les institutions de la monarchie franque’, in W.
Braunfels et al. (eds), Karl der Grosse: Lebenswerk und Nachleben, 5 vols (Düsseldorf, 1965), I, pp.
349–93. See this article in a revised version, ‘Charlemagne and the Institutions of the Frankish
Monarchy’, published in F.L. Ganshof, Frankish Institutions under Charlemagne, trans. Bryce
and Mary Lyon (Providence, RI, 1968), pp. 3–55, 101–51. For a much more positive assessment
of the capacity of the western Carolingian kings to enforce these list-making requirements, with
an emphasis on keeping lists of men liable for military service, see Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 279; and
now Walter Goffart, ‘Frankish Military Duty and the Fate of Roman Taxation’, EME 16 (2008),
pp. 166–90, who emphasizes the connection between keeping track of men with military
obligations and tax assessments carried out by Charles the Bald.
55
DO I 166 for the grant to Lorsch in which the allodial nature of these properties is identified.
56
DO I 166 for the description.

408 David Bachrach
information to the royal fiscal officials, with the record eventually finding
its way into the hand of the royal clerk who drew up the charter on behalf
of Lorsch.57
A further administrative question is raised in this context. How did
Count Bernhard know that Guntram had allodial properties within the
comitatus? As suggested above, the comites with responsibility for a par-
ticular comitatus maintained lists of the allodial landholders within their
areas of administrative competence. If it became necessary to assess a
particular landowner for military service, or, as in the case of Guntram,
to confiscate property, the count could carry out an inquisitio on the
model that had long been the norm under both the Carolingians and the
Ottonians.58 Since the grant to Lorsch in 953 makes clear that this
information about Guntram’s allodial holdings was obtained by the
court, there can be no question that an administrative procedure to
identify the thirty hobae, i.e. an inquest, had taken place.
Indeed, a royal charter issued on behalf of St Emmeram in February
961 illustrates how this procedure was executed.59 In this case, Otto
granted a portion of the allodial property (partem hereditatis) that the
nobilis vir Diotmar had held at Premberg (Priemperch), which was
located in the pagus of Nordgau within the comitatus of Count Berthold.
The property had been taken into possession by the fisc, i.e. regiae
potestas, following the judgement (iudicium) of the local scabini.60 Here,
Count Berthold presided over a trial in which the scabini gave their
judgement, and the property was inventoried. The scabini were probably
responsible for the on-site process of investigating the boundaries and
contents of Diotmar’s holding. Following this process, the lands were
transferred to the fisc along with a detailed written report.61
Another example of comitial judicial efforts at the mallum being
deployed in the interest of the royal fisc can be seen in a charter issued in
57
DO I 166.
58
Regarding the continued importance of expeditionary levies under the Ottonians, see Bachrach
and Bachrach, ‘Military Revolution’, pp. 15–17, 29–35, and passim; and Bachrach, ‘Ottonian
Military Organization’, passim. Concerning the use of the process of inquisitio by the Carol-
ingians, and by the Ottonians following Carolingian practice, see Metz, Das karolingische
Reichsgut, pp. 210–13, and 231–2. For similar continuity in the use of the inquisitio in the regions
of the middle kingdom, see Karl Heidecker, ‘Communications by Written Texts in Court Cases:
Some Charter Evidence (ca. 800 – ca. 1100)’, in Marco Mostert (ed.), New Approaches to
Medieval Communications (Turnhout, 1999), pp. 101–26, here pp. 103–4, for the use of the
inqusitio in Burgundy. For the application of this process under Henry I, see DH I 35.
59
DO I 219.
60
DO I 219.
61
For a thorough presentation of this process, see DO I 419a and 419b which provide details of
the inquisitio held to determine whether the bishopric of Chur had been wrongly dispossessed
of properties by royal officials. These charters list the names of the electi viri who gave their
judgement on the basis of testimony taken from knowledgeable people who had been sum-
moned to the court proceedings.

late May 961 on behalf of Theoderich, provost of the Mainz cathedral.

This document lists properties in five separate locations in Nahgowe that
Theoderich was to receive as an allodial grant from the king. These
properties had come into the fisc after being confiscated at a comital
mallum headed by Count Emicho of Nahgowe. The text of the royal
charter issued on behalf of Theoderich emphasizes that the judgement
against the two landowners, Lantbert and Megingoz, had been reached
following the practice (ius) and knowledgeable decision (scitum) of Fran-
corum iudicumve scabinorum.62
Guntram’s case makes clear that the political decision to confiscate
allodial property required that a set of administrative procedures be
set in train. The royal charters that describe the details of the confisca-
tions of property from Diotmar, Lantbert and Megingoz, demonstrate
that these administrative procedures entailed considerable cooperation
between officials of the royal fisc and officials employed at the local
level by the counts. In sum, comital officials deployed the judicial assets
at their disposal to identify and then confiscate on behalf of the fisc,
the allodial possessions of men, such as Guntram, who were convicted
of treason.
The outcome of the legal procedure at the comital level resulted in the
production of written records. This is made clear by the survival of
fragmenta of these proceedings that subsequently were recorded in royal
charters. In the case of the properties confiscated from Guntram that
subsequently were granted to Lorsch in 953, the royal clerk who drew up
this charter was working at Mainz, 175 kilometres north-west of Brumath,
where Guntram’s former possessions were located. Consequently, the
clerk certainly did not have immediate access to local scabini or iudici
who could give him information orally about the trial. Rather, he had to
rely on the written report regarding the comital inquisitio. Just as impor-
tantly, the decision by Otto I and his advisers to grant the property in
question to Lorsch, was made possible by the availability of this written
information to the royal court. Moreover, it requires emphasis that the
procedures and documents that were deployed in this case hardly repre-
sent an isolated instance of the royal administration at work. Rather, the
insights regarding royal administrative institutions and practice provided
by the case of Guntram are further illuminated by more than twenty
other cases of property confiscations north of the Alps, the details of
which have fortuitously survived in charters.63
62
DO I 226.
63
See DO I 30, 32, 52, 59, 60, 78, 80, 107, 115, 135, 164, 171, 194, 195, 200, 204, 207, 217, 219, 226,
316, 320, 330, 331, 332, 333, 383.

410 David Bachrach
Requistions and confiscations of church property

There is an important distinction to be drawn between servitium regis on
the one hand and the requisition of church property for the use of the
king on the other. In the traditional account regarding servitium regis, the
Ottonian kings granted numerous fiscal resources to ecclesiastical insti-
tutions in return for which the abbots, abbesses and bishops were
required to provide material support to the itinerant court, as well as
provide military supplies and contingents for royal campaigns.64 What
generally is omitted in scholarly discussions of servitium regis in the
Ottonian period, however, is that royal grants of this type were also used
quite frequently for military purposes in the Carolingian era as well.65
By contrast, the requisition of church lands was not a quid pro quo
agreement, but rather the assertion of royal power over the allodial
holdings of the church, including properties that specifically had been
granted in full ownership by the reigning king himself, or by his prede-
cessors.66 Unlike the confiscations discussed above, however, it was not
necessarily the case that the ecclesiastical institution had incurred royal
disfavour, but rather simply that the king had need of its lands at this
time. The practice of requisitioning properties from churches was already
quite old by the accession of Otto I, dating back at least to the reign of
Charles Martel who famously requisitioned considerable church property
pro verbo regis to provide material support for an expanded military
establishment in the 730s.67 In some cases, ecclesiastical institutions were
64
The basic account of the system is Brühl, Fodrum Gistum. The most thorough discussion of the
military aspects of servitium regis in the Ottonian period is Leopold Auer, ‘Der Kriegsdienst des
Klerus unter den sächsischen Kaisern’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichts-
forschung 79 (1971), pp. 316–407; and idem, ‘Der Kriegsdienst des Klerus unter den sächsischen
Kaisern’, MIÖG 80 (1980), pp. 48–70.
65
In this regard, see Bernard S. Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare: Prelude to Empire
(Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 57, 66, and passim; and Timothy Reuter, ‘The Imperial Church
System of the Ottonian and Salian Rulers: A Reconsideration’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History
33 (1982), pp. 347–74, who sought to place Ottonian practices within a broader context that
showed Carolingian grants of resources to ecclesiastical institutions, as well as the similar uses
of royal fiscal resources by the kings of France and England.
66
A number of scholars have recognized that grants by kings of the Ottonian dynasty to
ecclesiastical institutions were not absolute. With regard to grants to various royal chapels in
Frankfurt, for example, that subsequently were revoked, see Schalles-Fischer, Pfalz und Fiskus
Frankfurt, p. 274.
67
See in this regard, Ganshof, Frankish Institutions, pp. 148–49, n. 387; Bernard S. Bachrach,
‘Charles Martel, Mounted Shock Combat, the Stirrup and Feudalism’, Studies in Medieval and
Renaissance History 7 (1970), pp. 49–75, and reprinted with the same pagination in idem, Armies
and Politics in the Early Medieval West (Aldershot, 1993); Herwig Wolfram, ‘Karl Martell und das
fränkische Lehenswesen. Aufnahme eines Nichtbestandes’, in Jörg Jarnut, Ulrich Nonn and
Michael Richter (eds), Karl Martel in seiner Zeit (Sigmaringen, 1994), pp. 61–78; and Ulrich
Nonn, ‘Das Bild Karl Martells in mittelalterlichen Quellen’, in ibid., pp. 9–21. It should be
noted, however, that Charles Martel’s role in this matter generally is agreed to have been
exaggerated in contemporary sources.

required to grant economic resources to the fideles of the king at a rental

rate far below that which the current market would bear, i.e. in return for
the so-called ‘ninths and tenths’.68 As will be seen below, in other cases
ecclesiastical institutions were not so fortunate, and simply had their
properties requisitioned with compensation paid at a much later date, if
at all. In both sets of circumstances, i.e. forced rentals of property pro
verbo regis and outright requisitions, the royal government required very
detailed written records of ecclesiastical holdings in order to know the
extent, boundaries and contents of a particular church’s lands, and also to
make a determination about which of these properties best suited royal
needs at a particular moment. Obviously, churches also required detailed
accounts of lands that they had lost. It is to the evidence for these royal
and ecclesiastical documents that we will turn next.
On 29 May 940, Otto issued a still-extant charter on behalf of Bishop
Landbert of Freising in which he ordered that the small monastery
(abbatiola) of Moosburg and the fiscal property (curtis) at Föhring be
returned to Landbert’s see.69 According to the text of the charter, these
two fiscal units originally had been granted to Freising by the Carolingian
king Arnulf (887–99), with the grant subsequently being confirmed by
his son Louis the Child (899–911). However, per quondam machinationem
these properties had come into the possession of the royal fisc, i.e. ad
cameram nostram.70 The acquisition of these properties by the fisc, in a
manner identified by the king in the 940 charter as illegitimate, sheds
considerable light on royal records regarding church holdings, as well as
royal administrative practice once church lands were added to the fisc.
The date of this charter is quite significant, coming as it does shortly
after the extensive recovery efforts (Revindikationspolitik) undertaken by
Otto I in Bavaria following the death of Duke Arnulf in 937 and the
banishment of Arnulf’s son Eberhard in 938. Otto’s officials systemati-
cally reacquired fiscal properties for which the current holders did not
have sufficient proof of legitimate usufruct or ownership.71 The ability of
royal officials to execute such a policy, and, indeed, of Otto and his
advisers to conceive of such a policy, is, ipso facto, evidence of their
possession of detailed records regarding royal fiscal holdings in Bavaria
68
For a useful survey of this practice in the west during the Carolingian period, see Giles
Constable, ‘Nona et Decima: An Aspect of Carolingian Economy’, Speculum 35 (1960), pp.
224–50. Constable did not discuss this practice in the east.
69
DO I 30.
70
DO I 30.
71
Regarding this Revindikationspolitik in Bavaria, see Hans Constantin Faußner, ‘Die Verfügungs-
gewalt des deutschen Königs über weltliches Reichsgut im Hochmittelalter’, Deutsches Archiv 29
(1973), pp. 345–449, here p. 409. With particular reference to this charter as evidence of Otto
I’s effort to make good excesses committed by his officials in Bavaria, see Schmid, Regensburg,
p. 148.

412 David Bachrach
going back decades. As scholarship focused on the royal fisc in Bavaria has
long maintained, if royal officials did not have written records of these
fiscal holdings, it would have been impossible for such properties to have
been reacquired by the fiscal agents Otto dispatched to Bavaria.72
Returning to the charter issued to Bishop Landbert, it is important to
emphasize that neither the alleged grant by Arnulf to Freising nor the
confirmation by Louis the Child survive. Moreover, there is no mention
in this charter issued to Landbert, as there commonly is in Ottonian
dipomata, of the bishop presenting documents (praecepta) to the king as
confirmation of Freising’s legitimate possession of the monastery and
curtis.73 Rather, Landbert, Duke Berthold (brother of the now deceased
Duke Arnulf, and newly installed by Otto in place of Arnulf’s son
Eberhard), and alii fideles nostri Bawariensis regionis, including both
bishops and counts, are depicted asking the king for the return of these
lands to Freising. This set of circumstances suggests that the royal fiscal
officials who reacquired Moosburg and Föhring, had acted appropriately
if perhaps aggressively, but now political circumstances dictated that the
king publicly disavow their machinatio in order to shore up support for
Duke Berthold of Bavaria in the wake of the serious revolts against royal
rule in 939.74
From an administrative perspective, the details provided in this charter
shed light not only on the availability of detailed information regarding
royal fiscal holdings in Bavaria before 938, but also the procedures that
royal officials followed when properties were confiscated from their
holders and reintegrated into the fisc. In this case, the details of the
contents of these fiscal properties in Bavaria were recorded. With regard
to the lands returned to Freising, this information included the names of
the unfree dependants attached to the curtis of Föhring. The names of
these mancipia subsequently were included by the royal clerk charged
with drawing up the charter formally returning the curtis to Bishop
Landbert.75 In this context, it should be noted once more that informa-
tion regarding the names of dependants attached to a particular estate was
highly time conditioned.
If Bishop Landbert had reason to be annoyed at the confiscation of his
holdings by overzealous royal officials in 938, he, at least, had the satis-
72
With regard to the continued royal supervision of fiscal properties in Bavaria, even during the
reign of Duke Arnulf, see Schmid, Regensburg, p. 118, with particular reference to the royal mint
at Regensburg.
73
Regarding the citation of earlier charters in confirmation grants by Otto I see, for example, DO
I 83 on behalf of Reichenau; DO I 86 and 110 on behalf of Trier; DO I 118 on behalf of Stablo;
DO 127 on behalf of Eichstät (NB this is a praeceptum from King Arnulf ); and DO I 392 on
behalf of St Peter’s, Worms.
74
Widukind, Res gestae II.16.
75
DO I 30.

faction of receiving these lands back within two years with something of
an apology from Otto I. By contrast, Evergisus, abbot of Lorsch and
bishop of Minden, simply had to suffer the requisition of his properties
by the king in 948. In this case, Otto arranged to exchange property at the
villa of Hemmingesbach located in the Rheingau, which belonged to
Lorsch, i.e. quasdam res proprietatis ad ecclesiam sancti Nazarii, with a
cleric and royal fidelis named Liutharius, in return for properties that the
latter held in six separate villae.76 Liutharius was to receive lifetime
usufruct (quamdiu vivat) of the Lorsch properties, while Otto simply
added Liutharius’s lands to the fisc. The Chronicon Laureshamense records
that Lorsch eventually was to receive back the lands that had been given
to Liutharius as part of the exchange after the cleric’s death. In addition,
Lorsch was to receive Liutharius’s allodial possessions in the Rheingau
located in three villae, consisting of thirteen mansi and forty mancipia.77
In sum, Otto was able to require Lorsch to give up usufruct of its own
properties for an extended period of time so that the fisc could acquire
the immediate possession of properties owned by Liutharius in Loboden-
gau. This was valuable to the king to help build up the infrastructure
supporting the royal fortress complex (castellum) at Ladenburg.78 From
Liutharius’s perspective, he benefitted from being able to consolidate his
own holdings in the Rheingau while trading away assets to the king in the
Lobodengau. Ultimately, Lorsch benefitted from this forced grant of an
‘annuity’ to Liutharius, but not without medium-term dislocations in its
portfolio of landed holdings.
In administrative terms, the ability of the king to exchange Lorsch’s
property at Hemmingsbach required a considerable amount of informa-
tion. First, Otto and his officials had to know that Lorsch possessed land
in the Rheingau, i.e. the region where Liutharius desired to consolidate
his properties. The king also required detailed information concerning
the value of Lorsch’s holdings and their boundaries. Otherwise, it would
simply have been impossible for either Otto or the royal fidelis Liutharius
to know whether this was an exchange that they desired. How did Otto
come to have this detailed information?
It should be emphasized, in this context, that Carolingian officials
either drew up, or required to be drawn up, inventories of the properties
of ecclesiastical institutions following models resembling the one set out
in the capitulary de villis.79 In the case of Lorsch, the detailed study of the
76
DO I 95.
77
Chronicon Laureshamense, MGH SS 21 (Hanover, 1869), p. 389.
78
This fortress was in royal hands in 948. Two-thirds of the toll revenues collected there had been
granted to the bishopric of Worms at some point before 953, in a now-lost charter. The
remaining third of the toll revenues there were granted to Worms in 953. See DO I 161.
79
On this point, see Ganshof, Frankish Institutions, p. 36.

414 David Bachrach
so-called Lorsch Reichsurbar by Franz Staab, makes clear that the abbots
there maintained this tradition of drawing up property inventories in
both the Carolingian and Ottonian periods. They produced no fewer
than ten detailed property reports between c.800 and the end of the
eleventh century, including at least one from the late Carolingian period
and at least three from the Ottonian period.80 As had been true of the
Carolingians, Otto required this detailed information in order to assign
to Lorsch the appropriate levels of military and economic servitium that
was to be provided to the king. Of course, the abbots also had an interest
in providing this information, as it was only on the basis of these detailed
property records that the king could realistically inform royal officials,
including counts, to respect the monastery’s various immunities. In this
context, it should be noted that on 15 September 940, Otto issued a
privilege on behalf of Bishop Evergisus, now also abbot of Lorsch, grant-
ing an immunity covering the res et potestates quas per totam abbatiam that
the brothers and abbot were to enjoy legally (iure).81 This grant of an
immunity was to cover all of the properties that the monastery then
held (nunc possidet) and all of the properties that it might acquire
(acquisierit).82 Naturally, before the king could grant such an immunity,
royal officials had to be assured that Lorsch was not fraudulently claiming
lands that belonged to other ecclesiastical institutions or secular land-
holders. Such assurance could only come from a close examination of the
monastery’s own charters and polyptyques.83
All in all, even though Otto exercised his power to requisition Lorsch’s
property, by making use of the detailed information he possessed about
the monastery’s holdings, Evergisus, at least, could feel some com-
fort in 948 that his house would eventually receive back its property at
Hemmingesebach along with a ‘profit’ for its grant of an ‘annuity’ to
Liutharius. By contrast, an exchange agreement between Otto and the
80
Franz Staab, ‘Aspekte der Grundherrschaftsentwicklung von Lorsch vornehmlich aufgrund der
Urbare des Codex Laureshamensis’, in Werner Rösener (ed.), Strukturen der Grundherrschaft im
Frühen Mittelalter, 2nd edn (Göttingen, 1993), pp. 285–334, here pp. 327–8 for a summary chart.
81
DO I 34.
82
DO I 34. Naturally, as noted above, in order for this immunity to function effectively not only
did Lorsch, itself, require a list of its own properties, but the royal government needed this list
as well so that royal officials would know where they could and could not exercise their normal
authority. This property list does not survive for Lorsch in a royal charter. However, numerous
other property lists of this sort are recorded in surviving royal charters, and attest to the
administrative practice of royal officials in this regard. See, for example, DO I 222, of which
three copies survive; DO I 74 which exists in two original copies; DO I 37 and 79, which appear
to be two copies of an original list of properties and tithes granted to the monastery of St
Maurice at Magdeburg; and DO I 83 issued in surviving duplicates on behalf of Reichenau.
There are, moreover, numerous surviving grants of immunities that list the properties of the
ecclesiastical institution that are to be covered. See, for example, DO I 70, 103, 104, 118, 146, 158,
168, 174, 180, 210, 289, and 290.
83
It is precisely documents of this type that have been identified by Staab, ‘Aspekte der
Grundherrschaft’, pp. 327–8.

royal fidelis Rudolf in January 953, provided no such solace to Abbot

Hadamar of Fulda.84 In this case, the extant charter notes that with the
consent (consensus) of Hadamar and the brothers at Fulda, Otto gave
twenty-four separate properties held by Fulda in exchange for allodial
property held by Rudolf and his sons, Adalbrecht and Liubold, in Saalgau
(Salagowe), Thuringia.85 There is no indication here that Rudolf was to
give anything to Fulda, nor that Otto intended to give to the monastery
any of the properties he had acquired from Rudolf. As the exchange
agreement between Otto and Liutharius, discussed above, makes clear,
the possibility certainly cannot be excluded that Rudolf and his sons did
make a separate concession to Fulda either in the immediate context of
this exchange, or at some later date. Even if this did occur, however, it
remains clear that Otto was able to requisition Fulda’s properties to
pursue his own policy goals in the Saalgau region of Thuringia.86 In
considering the administrative underpinning of this agreement, as was
the case with Lorsch, Otto had available at the court, if not from other
sources, detailed records of Fulda’s holdings as a result of his confirma-
tion of the monastery’s immunities in 936 and 943.87
Royal grants of church lands as benefices

In addition to the acquisition of ecclesiastical lands to pursue royal
objectives in a particular area, the practice of using church lands to
support royal dependants is also well attested for Otto’s reign, despite the
fact that it was commonly understood as an abuse.88 From a political
perspective, therefore, Otto found it prudent to include in many charters
issued to ecclesiastical institutions a prohibition on granting out the
particular church’s property as benefices.89 Such pious and politically
useful pronouncements, however, did not keep Otto from requisitioning
church properties to support his dependants with benefices. Indeed, Otto
and his father Henry I even used church properties to provide benefices
to the vassalli of important royal fideles. At the very beginning of his reign
84
DO I 160.
85
DO I 160. These eleven properties do not appear again in the charters of Otto I as being granted
away, which suggests that they remained in royal possession up through 973.
86
As noted above, Otto I devoted considerable resources to the system of fortresses located
between the Unstrut and Saale Rivers in Thuringia, including the very large fortified complexes
at Altstedt, Mühlhausen, Tutinsode, Schlotheim, Eschwege and Frieda. This acquisition of
properties along the Saale River was probably intended to strengthen the royal economic
resources that were devoted to maintaining these fortifications.
87
DO I 2 and 55.
88
As will be seen below, even Otto I’s charters describe as an abuse the acquisition of these
properties on behalf of royal dependants.
89
See, for example, DO I 28, in which Otto ordered that no one should receive as a beneficium
property that he had just granted to the church of St George in Limburg.

416 David Bachrach
in August 936, for example, Otto issued a charter on behalf of the nuns
of Alden-Eyck (modern Belgium), in which he ordered the return of
eleven hobae located in the villa of Villina, which had been taken from
the convent iniuste in order to provide a benefice to an unnamed vassallus
of Duke Gislebert of Lotharingia.90 In administrative terms, the fact that
the original order, i.e. pro verbo regis, had been issued during the reign of
Henry I, shows that the institutional memory at the royal court regarding
the actual ownership rather than the possessio of these lands survived the
accession of Otto I. In short, this memory was transpersonal.
Otto acted swiftly to alleviate the distress of the nuns of Alden-Eyck.
A charter issued on behalf of the monastery of Pfävers (modern Swiss
canton of St Gall) in 950, however, makes clear that requisitions of
ecclesiastical resources pro verbo regis to support royal dependants could
endure for a long period before the ecclesiastical institution obtained
relief.91 In this case, a number of census payers (homines censuales) had
been requisitioned a long time before (per multa tempora) in order to
provide benefices to some unnamed royal dependants.92 In keeping with
the generally negative opionion among ecclesiastical magnates regarding
such alienations of church property, Otto’s charter on behalf of Pfävers
emphasizes that the requisitioning of the monastery’s dependants had
been illegitimate, i.e. the homines censuales had been iniuste abstractos.93 To
make amends for this ‘illegitimate’ use of church property, Otto’s charter
solemnly requires that in the future neither the king (regia potestas) nor
anyone else shall presume to take away these censuales in order to establish
a beneficium for a third party.94
This return of the censuales to the control of the monastery at Pfävers
further illuminates several aspects of royal administrative practice dis-
cussed above. First, it must be emphasized that the misappropriation of
these censuales had taken place long in the past (per multa tempora),
perhaps during the reign of a previous king. Consequently, the recovery
of these censuales was dependent upon the preservation, over a substantial
period of time, of information about their names and changing status,
i.e. whether they were still alive at the time that this charter was issued,
and whether they were still censuales.95 In addition, information had to
be gathered and stored concerning the names of the children (or even
90
DO I 466.
91
DO I 121.
92
DO I 121.
93
DO I 121.
94
DO I 121.
95
It was possible for censuales to gain their freedom through the payment of a fee. See, for
example, Die Traditionen des Hochstifts Freising: Band II 926–1283, nr. 1087 pp. 30–1. In this case,
the nobilis Adalpreht gave property to Bishop Lambert in order to purchase the freedom of his
wife and son, Hasapurc and Vodarhart.

grandchildren) born to the censuales who had been abstracti from Pfäver’s
control, in the period after the initial unjust requisition of these depen-
dants. Moreover, information regarding the person or persons to whom
the censuales had been assigned as benefices, whether these recipients were
still alive, or whether the censuales had been regranted to yet another royal
fidelis, had also to be collected and stored. Finally, all of this data was
inherently time conditioned, and therefore needed to be regularly
updated. All of these factors necessitate that the information about the
censuales and about the individuals who received them as benefices was
kept in writing. The fact that Otto was in a position to return these
censuales and their descendants to Pfävers, necessarily entails that royal
officials had access to, if not possession of, the written records in ques-
tion. There is no necessity here that we are dealing with a central archive.
However, in the absence of a royal archive, we do require an explanation
for the ability of royal officials to access this information, and, even more
fundamentally, to know that this information existed.
A similar case arose with respect to the monastery of St Maximin near
Trier in 956. On 10 March of that year, Otto issued a charter, which is still
extant, in which the royal clerk recorded that Abbot Willerus sought the
return by the king of all of the tithes (dominales quas vulgo salicas vocant
decimationes) of the churches possessed by St Maximin that had been
granted out as benefices.96 The text makes clear that originally these tithes
had been royal property (nostre regales) and had never belonged to any
bishop (nulli umquam termino episcopoali vela ecclesiae subiacentes). At
some point in the past, these tithes had been granted by the king to St
Maximin, so that they became the monastery’s property.97 However, at a
later date, not specified in the charter, some of these tithes had been
granted out to royal fideles as benefices.98 It is under these circumstances
that Abbot Willerus turned to Otto to obtain the return of the tithe
revenues.99
As was the case with regard to the return of the censuales to the
monastery of Pfävers, the return to St Maximin of the right to collect
tithe revenues held as benefices by royal dependants sheds light on the
considerable scale of the written records available to the king. In order to
carry out his promise to return the revenues, Otto required detailed lists
of the benefice holders. Moreover, it was not enough for Abbot Willerus
simply to provide Otto with a list of the requisitioned tithes that was
96
DO I 179.
97
In 950, Otto had agreed to return to St Maximin a number of churches and their tithes that he
had requisitioned. However, at that time he did not require those who held these churches and
their tithes as beneficia to give them up. See DO I 122. The return of the actual revenues of the
churches and beneficia to St Maximin in 956 thus represents a second step taken by the king.
98
See DO I 122.
99
DO I 122.

418 David Bachrach
based on St Maximin’s own records. The king required assurance and

documentary evidence that the churches in question actually were the
abbey’s property, and that the abbot was not attempting to steal tithe
revenues that were held legitimately by others, whether lay or ecclesias-
tical. In this context, it was hardly a rare event for there to be contention
between ecclesiastical institutions regarding the possession of parishes
and their revenues.100 Again, this does not necessarily entail the presence
of written records in a royal archive. However, in cases such as this, when
resources are being held as benefices from the king, it is necessary to
explain how royal officials kept track of the grants of tithes and revenues
over time. Furthermore, since tithes were calculated as a percentage of the
actual, rather than of a fictive, level of production in a given year, the king
also required regularly updated reports regarding the quantity and pro-
ductivity of the lands and animals, as well as whatever craft and industrial
production took place within each of the parishes in question. In con-
sidering the heuristic value of this case, it should be noted that the
examples of royal administrative practice regarding the requisition of
church property discussed here, can be multiplied in numerous other
charters dealing with the return of requisitioned properties to ecclesias-
tical institutions.101
Conclusion
The current scholarly consensus concerning the government of Ottonian
Germany is a classic example of an ‘either/or’ argument. Either the
Ottonians had a Carolingian-style administration that depended heavily
upon the written word to manage and access royal resources, or the
Ottonians ruled a Weberian style ‘patrimonial’ polity on the basis of the
charisma they developed through the ‘production’ of sacral kingship. It is
clear, however, in the works of numerous specialists in Carolingian
history, that such an either/or argument is neither necessary nor even
plausible. Certainly Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, Charles the Bald and,
indeed, Louis the German, made use of both a substantial written admin-
istration and also devoted enormous resources to projecting an aura of
sacrality.102 The monistic focus by historians who study the politics of the
100
See, for example, DO I 212, concerning the bishopric of Osnabrück’s efforts to recover tithe
revenues that it had lost.
101
For other examples of lands being requisitioned for use by the king, or for the use of royal
dependants as benefices, see DO I, 72, 93, 122, 157, 163, 176, 179, 314, 319 and 428.
102
In this regard see, for example, the discussions by Janet Nelson, Charles the Bald (London,
1992), passim; Giles Brown, ‘Introduction: The Carolingian Renaissance’, in Rosamond McK-
itterick (ed.), Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 1–51;
Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare, pp. 132–59; David S. Bachrach, Religion and the Conduct
of War c. 300–1215 (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 32–63; and Goldberg, Struggle for Empire, passim.

Ottonian period, on matters such as the meaning and purpose of the

royal itinerary, the building of royal tombs, and the symbolic language of
the court, has had distorting consequences. This includes the wholesale
failure to incorporate into their works the findings of specialist studies
concerning the practices of the Ottonian government with regard to the
fisc, to military institutions, and to large-scale construction projects.
Scholarly works on these topics have demonstrated massive and fun-
damental continuities with the Carolingian period in terms of both
resources under royal control and administrative practices of royal offi-
cials. The basic failure of scholars focusing on royal political history to
incorporate into their syntheses the enormous research on the substantial
range of government activities broadly outlined here, is compounded by
their additional failure to ask one of the most fundamental questions of
the historical discipline: how? How did the Ottonian kings gather, main-
tain, access, and then use the massive quantities of time-conditioned
information that made possible every aspect of their rule, ranging from
the mobilization of armies, to the building of churches, to the confisca-
tion of the allods and benefices of traitors?
This study has touched on just one of the many areas in which
Otto I’s exercise of power required the use of such detailed and time-
conditioned information. This information was available to Otto because
his government, like those of his Carolingian predecessors, made consid-
erable use of ‘the written word’, to use Rosamond McKitterick’s evocative
phrase. To suggest that the confiscation of lands from traitors, the req-
uisition of lands from churches, or the myriad other tasks, big and small,
undertaken by the royal government could ‘simply happen’ in the absence
of the types of detailed information dealt with here, or that they occurred
in a fit of absence of mind, is no longer tenable. The reader should not
form the misimpression that this essay in intended to show that sacral
kingship was either not present or unimportant. Rather, the focus here
has been on affirming the importance of another dimension of royal
power that has been neglected, and even denied, by scholars up to this
point.
University of New Hampshire


Exercise of Royal Power in Early Medieval Europe

Transféré par

Informations du document

Description originale:

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Exercise of Royal Power in Early Medieval Europe

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Exercise of royal power in early medieval

Europe: the case of Otto the Great

Given the depth of Henry Mayr-Harting’s knowledge regarding Otton-

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4) 389–419

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Königsherrschaft ohne Staat, by simply asserting the absence of royal

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

lesser secular and ecclesiastical magnates.8 In his most famous military

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

These fortresses, however, hardly exhaust the catalogue of building

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

production of iron and bronze goods, tanneries, vineyards, forest lands,

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

short-term answer to political turmoil and rebellion. To achieve it was

In this model, politics depended on the perception of the king as a sacral

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

efices to churches to be managed by ecclesiastical authorities.21 How does

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

documents. Because of the enormous scale of this problem, however,

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

information, were different in the case of properties held as benefices as

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Further alienations of fiscal property acquired, or reacquired in the case

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

predecessores nostri reges . . . quasdam res ad fiscum publicum per-

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Marciacum et sic inde usque quo Sarowa in Mosellam fluit, inde a

In addition to the boundaries and topography of these sites, the new

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Records for benefices

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

astical magnates.41 In discussing application of this administrative

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

The final surviving grant of property confiscated from Guntram was

Information regarding allodial properties

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

The administrative procedures and documentary materials that were

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

late May 961 on behalf of Theoderich, provost of the Mainz cathedral.

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Requistions and confiscations of church property

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

required to grant economic resources to the fideles of the king at a rental

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

royal fidelis Rudolf in January 953, provided no such solace to Abbot

Royal grants of church lands as benefices

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

based on St Maximin’s own records. The king required assurance and

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Ottonian period, on matters such as the meaning and purpose of the

University of New Hampshire

Early Medieval Europe 2009 17 (4)

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi