exercise of royal power in early medieval europe

Exercise of royal power in early medievalEurope: the case of Otto the Great

936–73emed_283 389..419

David Bachrach

Current scholarly orthodoxy holds that the German kingdom under theOttonians (c.919–1024) did not possess an administration, much less anadministrative system that relied heavily upon the ‘written word’. It is thecontention of this essay that the exercise of royal power under Otto the Great(936–73) relied intrinsically on a substantial royal administrative system thatmade very considerable use of documents, particularly for the storage ofcrucial information about royal resources. The focus of this study is on OttoI’s use of this written information to exercise royal power in the context ofconfiscating and requisitioning property from both laymen and ecclesiasticalinstitutions.

Introduction

Ottonian politics is not easy for us moderns to grasp. Quite apartfrom its being so much about inheritances and feuds within orbetween kinships, it largely lacked anything which we can recognizeas an administration or a bureaucracy, such as we historians havetended to think of as the spine of any body politic which they study.Ottonian rule was not, in Max Weber’s terminology, bureaucratic butpatrimonial.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 orthodoxcontext in which he places his 2007 study of the church of Cologne underthe leadership of Archbishop Brun.

1 Henry Mayr-Harting, Church and Cosmos in Early Ottonian Germany: The View from Cologne(Oxford, 2007), p. 3.

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Indeed, in 1928 Marc Bloch, looking back over more than a generationof scholarship, observed that scholars specializing in the history ofmedieval Germany tended to ignore the problem of administration alltogether, a tendency that he compared unfavourably with the historio-graphical tradition in France.2 Taking up the question of Ottonianadministration in 1979, after a historiographical gap of almost a centurygoing back to the work of Georg Waitz, Karl Leyser concluded on thebasis of an impressionistic investigation of a small selection of the relevantsources that the German royal government operated on the basis of ‘amodest array of institutions’ and very little use of written documents.3

In contrast with even this mildly optimistic view of governmentalcapacity, however, in an important article of 1989 Hagen Keller, a leadingspecialist in Ottonian history, specifically rejected the idea that theOttonian government had any administrative capacity. Keller assertedbaldly: ‘Despite the continuity of the idea of empire and the model ofCharlemagne, everything that was of particular importance for highCarolingian imperial organization – centrality, office, law-giving, andwriting – was absent in its successor states. Indeed they simply cameto an end.’4 Writing a decade later in 1999, Gerd Althoff defended theprovocative subtitle of his work on the Ottonian dynasty, Die Ottonen:

2 March Bloch, ‘A Problem in Comparative History: The Administrative Classes in France and inGermany’, 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 Revuehistorique 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 Review96 (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 periodcharters 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 thatLeyser, himself, recognizes that the Ottonian kings undertook. For the earlier tradition regard-ing administration in the Ottonian kingdom, Georg Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte 6, 2ndedn, ed. G. Seeliger (Berlin, 1896), pp. 323 ff., began by looking for continutities between theCarolingian and Ottonian periods. He was frustrated, however, by the lack of prescriptivelegislation of the type found in Carolingian era capitularies. For Waitz’s observation concerninga lack of higher supervision over economic affairs in Ottonian Germany, see DeutscheVerfassungsgeschichte 8, 2nd edn (Kiel, 1878), pp. 216–18.

4 Hagen Keller, ‘Zum Charakter der “Staatlichkeit” zwischen karolingischer Reichsreform undhochmittelalterlichen Herrschaftsausbau’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 23 (1989), pp. 248–64,here p. 257: ‘Trotz der Kontinuität der Idee des Imperiums und der Vorbildhaftigkeit Karlsdes Großen wirkt gerade das, was in Besonderheit der hochkarolingischen Reichsorganisa-tion ausmachte – in Stichworten: Zentralität, Amt, Gesetzgebung, Schriftlichkeit –, in denNachfolgerreichen des karolingischen Imperiums zunächst nicht fort, sondern bricht geradezuab.’ For a slightly more positive assessment of the existence of a royal administration, similar tothat 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: ‘Wieweit vorwiegend personale oder aber Amtsbindungen das Herrschaftsgefüge bestimmten, hingnicht zuletzt von der Existence einer funktionierenden Verwaltung (sic) und deren Einordnungin eine feudale Gesellschaftsordnung ab.’

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Königsherrschaft ohne Staat, by simply asserting the absence of royaladministration of any type, much less written administration.5

Against this historiographical tradition must be set the realities of OttoI’s rule. In the course of three and a half decades (936–73), Otto had arecord of extraordinary achievement in many facets of public life. In therealm of military affairs, Otto and his military commanders launcheddozens of successful campaigns of conquest in the Slavic east as well as inthe Italian kingdom; the latter Otto eventually conquered and incorpo-rated into his empire in 962.6 Otto launched a massive invasion of thewest Frankish kingdom in 946 during the course of which he establishedhimself as the hegemon in west Frankish affairs.7 The king weathered twomajor civil wars (938–9, 953–4) in which he overcame the array of militaryand 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 centralpremise that the Weberian model of the state is the appropriate benchmark against which tocompare 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’seffort to project the Ottonian kingdom as a Weberian ‘archaic’ polity, Kaminsky emphasizesAlthoff’s, ‘slack way with his Latin sources. These are quoted in German translations that aresometimes wrong but that are not corrected by reference to the Latin originals (usually quotedin the footnotes), themselves sometimes misunderstood. Some of the mistakes are serious, andone or two are tendentious’ (p. 688).

The corresponding Anglophone tradition before the publication of Mayr-Harting, Churchand 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 andthe Salian kings lacked the governmental infrastructure of the Carolingian kingdom and empireat 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 islittle doubt that the Ottonian kings made less use of the written word in government than theCarolingians had at the height of their power. In fact, the east Frankish kingdom of theCarolingians already used the written word in government less than did its west Frankish orItalian contemporaries’ (my emphasis).

6 For an overview of Otto’s military campaigns within the context of Ottonian and Salianwarfare, 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 OttonianGermany, c. 900–1018: The Views of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg’, Journal of MilitaryHistory 72 (2008), pp. 1061–88. For the most part, the administrative aspects of Ottonianmilitary 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 EarlyMedieval Military History: The Example of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg (1009–1018)’, Viator38 (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 gestaeSaxonicae, MGH SS 3, 3.3 (Hanover, 1839), p. 451.

Exercise of royal power: the case of Otto the Great 391


lesser secular and ecclesiastical magnates.8 In his most famous militaryachievement, 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 themobilization of very large armies, whose core consisted of the royalmilitary household, to take on the grinding exigencies of siege warfare.10

It is in this context, as archaeological research has shown, that Otto andhis 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: TheEnd of the Age of Migrations in the Latin West (Aldershot, 2006).

10 Concerning the central role attributed to sieges during the Ottonian period by contemporarynarrative 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, andthe 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 siegesin Ottonian warfare. Joachim Henning, ‘Archäologische Forschungen an Ringwällen inNiederungslage: Die Niederlausitz als Burgenlandschaft des östlichen Mitteleuropas im frühenMittelalter’, 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 fortsby the inhabitants of the Lausitz region, for example, corresponded with the invasions of theselands 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 opponentsin the Slavic east.

11 The substantial archaeological discoveries of the past fifty years have unearthed a vast number offortifications, particularly stone fortifications, from the Ottonian period, including a very largenumber built directly by the Ottonian kings. See, for example, Albert K. Hömberg, ‘Problemeder Reichsgutforschung in Westfalen’, Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 96 (1960), pp. 1–21;Erik Szameit, ‘Zum frühmittelalterlichen Burgwall von Gars/Thunau. Bemerkungen zu denFortifikationsresten und der Innenbebauung. Ein Vorbericht’, in Henning and Ruttkay (eds),Frühmittelalterliche Burgenbau, pp. 71–8; Peter Ettel, ‘Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen auf der BurgHorsadal, 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 MichaelGockel 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 thiscontext, considerable attention should be paid to the maintenance and expansion of Carolingianperiod fortification systems such as those located in the Hassegau region between the Unstrut andSaale Rivers, including the very large fortified complexes at Altstedt, Mühlhausen, Tutinsode,Schlotheim, Eschwege and Frieda. With regard to this particular fortification system see, forexample, Michael Gockel, ‘Mühlhausen’, Die deutschen Königspfalzen: Repertorium der Pfalzen,Königshöfe und übrigen Aufenthaltsorte der Könige im deutschen Reich des Mittelalters, vol. IIThüringien (Göttingen, 2000), pp. 258–318, particularly p. 288.

A second major line of fortifications was identified by Walter Schlesinger, who demonstratedconclusively that the so-called Hersfelder Zehntverzeichnis (HZV), a list of the tithe revenues heldby the monastery of Hersfeld in the Unstrut, Saale, and Middle Elbe River valleys, although latein date, described conditions in 780. On this basis, Schlesinger argued that the nineteen urbeslisted in the HZV, from which Hersfeld received tithe revenues, were elements of a defensivesystem of fortifications that was erected by Pippin I and Charlemagne. Working on the basis ofSchlesinger’s insights, with regard to this important text, the archaeologist Paul Grimm synthe-

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These fortresses, however, hardly exhaust the catalogue of buildingprojects undertaken by Otto during his reign. The major archaeologicalexplorations of the past thirty years make clear that Otto also providedfunding for the construction, expansion, and maintenance of many hun-dreds of church buildings ranging from simple parish churches to vastand elaborate stone edifices that served as the religious adjunct to thenumerous royal palaces located throughout the kingdom.12 Moreover,these palace chapels themselves, formed only a small part of the vastcomplex of monumental stone buildings and numerous outworks thatcomprised royal palaces.13 It is important to emphasize that a great manyof the military, ecclesiastical and palatine building projects undertaken byOtto have left no trace in the surviving written record, and so additionalarchaeological excavations have the potential to expand our knowledge ofOttonian 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 royalfiscal 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 theperspective of military history, and particularly the question of the development of a system ofdefence-in-depth. Grimm’s conclusions regarding the development of the fortress system inElbe–Oder regions under the Ottonian and Salian kings were confirmed by Gerhard Billig in hismagisterial study of Burgward organization in upper Saxony and the Meißen March. With regardto 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-undfrühgeschichtlicher Wall-und Wehranlagen Teil I: Die vor- und frühgeschichtlichen Burgwälle derBezirke 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 ottonischenHerrscher’, Herrschaftsrepräsentation im Ottonischen Sachsen (1998), pp. 33–76, who argues for amassive 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 archaeologicalperspective, see, for example, Ulrich Reuling, ‘Quedlinburg: Königspfalz-Reichsstift-Markt’, inLutz Fenske (ed.), Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischenErforschung vierter Band: Pfalzen – Reichsgut-Königshöfe, (Göttingen, 2001), pp. 184–247; PaulGrimm, ‘Archäologische Beobachtungen an Pfalzen und Reichsburgen östlich und südlich desHarzes mit besondere Berücksichtigung der Pfalz Tilleda’, in Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zuihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung, vol. 2 (Göttingen, 1965), pp. 273–99; andHolger Grewe, ‘Die bauliche Entwicklung der Pfalz Ingelheim im Hochmittelalter am Beispielder Sakralarchitektur’, in Caspar Ehlers, Jörg Jarnut and Matthias Wemhoff (eds), DeutscheKönigspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung, vol. 7 Zentrenherrschaftlicher Repräsentation im Hochmittelalter, Geschichte, Architektur und Zeremoniell(Göttingen, 2007), pp. 101–20. Very large numbers of royal charters issued by Otto I alsodemonstrate the support of church establishments.

13 The basic starting point for discussions of royal palace complexes in the Ottonian period is nowDie deutsche Königspfalzen: Repertorium der Pfalzen, Königshöfe und übrigen Aufenhaltsorte derKönige 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 archaeologicalexcavations in northern Bavaria dating from the period c.700–c.1000, only 30 are named insurviving written sources. On this point, see Ettel, ‘Ergebnisse’, p. 127.



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 werecomplemented by a wide range of taxes, tolls and tributes that providedOtto with large-scale revenues both in kind and in cash.16

In light of the undoubted successes enjoyed by Otto in exercising royalpower 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 thesupposed absence of any royal administrative capacity? In short, thehistoriographical tradition dealing with Ottonian rule has simply ignoredthis problem, preferring to focus enormous attention on the role of theroyal itinerary and on the practice of sacral kingship in the realm ofpolitics.17 Again, Mayr-Harting provides a clear synopsis of scholarlyorthodoxy on this point:

The royal court was constantly on the move . . . The itinerary waspartly economic in point – to exploit effectively the rulers’ estates inthe regions; but it was partly political. In face-to-face politics theking’s periodic presence was vital. There was yet another point to theitinerary. 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 fiscalproperties identified in surviving royal and so-called private charters from Otto I’s reign, as wellas royal fiscal properties from the eighth, ninth, and early tenth century that can be identifiedin royal hands under Otto I’s successors. In regard to the enormous continuity in royalpossession of Carolingian fiscal assets under the Ottonians see, for example, Wolfgang Metz,Das karolingische Reichsgut (Berlin, 1960), p. 179; Marianne Schalles-Fischer, Pfalz und FiskusFrankfurt: 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 imMittelalter (Kallmünz, 1977), p. 284 and passim.

16 With regard to Ottonian period taxes and tolls, the most recent work is Neil Middleton, ‘EarlyMedieval Port Customs, Tolls and Controls on Foreign Trade’, EME 13 (2005), pp. 313–58. Thisstudy focuses considerable attention on the problem of record keeping by fiscal officials, notingthat the grants of certain percentages of toll revenues, e.g. a tenth, necessarily required thekeeping of toll records over the course of the entire year (p. 327). For comparative purposesregarding the revenues obtained by Charlemagne from tolls, see F.L. Ganshof, ‘A propos dutonlieu 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 basicwork 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). Manyscholars have added to the picture of the royal itinerary in a variety of areas. Bernhardt, ItinerantKingship, for example, emphasizes the important role that monasteries, alongside bishoprics,played in providing material support for the royal court on the move. Additional insights, fromarchaeological, art historical and architectural perspectives, have been developed through theseries Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschung, 7vols (Göttingen, 1963–2007), published through the auspices of the Max-Planck-Institut fürGeschichte at Göttingen; and the series Die deutsche Königspfalzen: Repertorium der Pfalzen,noted above (nn. 11 and 14).

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short-term answer to political turmoil and rebellion. To achieve it wasa 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 inchurches, hagiographies of saintly members of the dynasty were allpart of the build-up. So, very much, was the itinerary. Itinerantkingship was a highly ritualized business. The itinerary could itself beconceived as a sacral procession . . .18

In this model, politics depended on the perception of the king as a sacralfigure, a perception that the Ottonian kings assiduously cultivated. Aboveall, according to the orthodox model, sacral kingship provided the Otton-ian kings with the means to cultivate and then represent consensusamong the aristocrats upon whose support royal rule depended.19 Letthere be no confusion here. These aspects of sacral kingship were veryimportant 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 thescholarly discussion of royal politics, sacral kingship, gift-giving, and eventhe route of the itinerary, one question has remained conspicuous by itsabsence: how? How do any of the elements of the orthodox treatment ofroyal rule explain the construction of stone fortifications, the support oftheir garrisons, or the equipping of the royal military obsequium? Howdoes the collection of saints’ relics, or attendance at church festivals,explain the government’s possession and mobilization of the economicwherewithal that permitted Otto to build and maintain hundreds ofchurches? How did the commissioning of hagiographical accounts of thelives of Ottonian princesses provide prebends and other endowments tothousands of clerics, monks and nuns? How do the political functions ofthe royal itinerary explain the management of more than 800 fiscalcomplexes that were spread throughout the Ottonian realm north of theAlps? Here it should be emphasized that we are dealing with fiscalproperties 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 Kulturdes ottonischen Reiches’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 35 (2001), pp. 23–59; and the discussion byMayr-Harting, Church and Cosmos, p. 5.

20 Regarding the importance of sacral elements of rule to both pagan and Christian Romanemperors, see Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity,Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge, 1990).



efices to churches to be managed by ecclesiastical authorities.21 How doesthe construction of royal tombs explain the ability of Otto I and hissuccessors 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 havefailed to ask the most basic and pressing administrative questions of all.

Once a political decision had been reached through a highly ritualizedcourt proceeding of the type discussed in such detail by scholars such asAlthoff and Keller, what series of administrative acts were set in train toassure that these decisions were, in fact, carried out? Indeed, at an evenmore basic level, before the highly ritualized building of a politicalconsensus took place on the sacralized royal itinerary, on what basis didthe king and his magnates decide that x number of soldiers were availableto be mobilized for a specific campaign, or that the resources wereavailable to build a fortress or church of y dimensions? The answers tothese questions required detailed information without which buildingprojects would be stalled, and campaigns would be disrupted.

The thesis of this study is that an analysis of the political aspects ofOttonian government through the monistic prism of sacral kingship andthe royal itinerary alone cannot explain Otto I’s undeniable achievementsas a military commander, as a builder, and as the custodian of the royalfisc, or his ability to overwhelm political opponents both within andbeyond the frontiers of the kingdom. This does not mean that sacralkingship was not important. It does mean, however, that a study ofpolitics, in isolation, also cannot illuminate management of the royal fisc.In order fully to understand the basis of Otto I’s ability to exercise powereffectively, it is necessary to turn to the problem of administration, thatis to ask how the king had available the information that was required tolevy the human, material and financial resources that made possible hispolitical 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’sexercise of power depended not only on sacral kingship, but also on theexistence of well-functioning systems of fiscal, legal and administrativeinstitutions that, themselves, relied upon the massive use of written

21 Regarding the active management of fiscal properties by royal officials in this period, seeGockel, 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 FiskusBoppard (Bonn, 1956) p. 65. It should be noted that these studies were completed before thepath-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 fromthese 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, thesefiscal studies were written against a background in which writing of all types was understood tohave played only a very limited role in the activities of the government.

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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 successesin the public sphere. The focus of this essay is on Otto I’s ability touse royal administrative assets to exercise his power over secular indivi-duals and ecclesiastical institutions specifically through confiscationsand requisitions of property, including both allodial possessions andbenefices.

Confiscations

The economic basis of power in the early Middle Ages, as Janet Nelsoncogently observed in a discussion of the use of literacy in the Carolingiangovernment under Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald,was ‘efficient landlordship’.22 Stripping a magnate of the benefices that heheld from the royal fisc, and even more so, stripping him of his family’sallodial possessions, was tantamount to reducing him to the level ofpolitical and social nonentity.23 Consequently, the political decision bythe king to exercise his power in this manner was fraught with consid-erable political risks and dangers to his position of political and moralauthority. On the level of practical politics, therefore, royal confiscationsof property from magnates can certainly be understood as having beenmade more palatable to the ‘political community’ in the manner sug-gested by scholars such as Althoff, Keller and Mayr-Harting, with theking presenting himself plausibly as the vicarius Dei carrying out theconsensus decision of the magnates. What remains to be explained,however, are the mechanisms by which these ostensibly political decisionsregarding the confiscation of property could be put into practice. In thiscontext, a distinction is to be drawn between the confiscation of ben-efices, which were royal property that had been granted in usufruct as abenefice to a royal fidelis, and the personal properties (allods) of royalsubjects. As will be seen below, the king had the power to confiscate bothtypes of properties. However, the types of information, and therefore theadministrative procedures required to obtain, store, retrieve and use this

22 Janet L. Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian Government’, in Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), TheUses 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 Carolingianand Ottonian periods, see Karl Leyser, ‘Early Medieval Canon Law and the Beginnings ofKnighthood’, in Instutionen, Kultur und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Josef Flecken-stein zum 65. Geburtstag (Sigmaringen, 1984), pp. 549–66, repr. in idem, Communications andPower 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, ‘DasWaffenrecht der Bauern im Mittelalter’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte.Germanistische Abteilung 35 (1914), pp. 111–211, particularly pp. 130–4.



information, were different in the case of properties held as benefices ascontrasted with those held as allods. These differences will be examinedin greater depth below.

It should be emphasized that information about the confiscation ofproperty by the royal government, as well as by other lords north of theAlps, appears in numerous narrative sources.24 However, details of theseconfiscations generally can be identified only insofar as the lands andother resources confiscated or requisitioned by the royal governmentsubsequently were granted to an ecclesiastical institution or, much morerarely, to a layman, and that the charter for this subsequent grant has,itself, fortuitously survived. Similarly, the trial proceedings leading toconfiscations, and the subsequent administrative actions taken by royalofficials with regard to the confiscation of lands must be reconstructed onthe basis of the information that was recorded in later alienations of thisconfiscated property from the fisc.25 In this context, one particularlyforthcoming set of charters concerns the confiscation and subsequentdisposition of a large quantity of both the benefices and allodial posses-sions held by Count Guntram, known as Guntram the Wealthy, one ofthe ancestors of the Habsburgs.

On 9 August 952, at a royal assembly in the palatio at Augsburg, themonastery of Einsiedeln, located in the modern Swiss canton of Schwyz,was given by the king a property called Liel (Lielahe), located in the pagusof Breisgau within the comital jurisdiction of Liudolf, Otto I’s son.26 Thiswas the first of several grants made by the king out of the fisc over aperiod of ten years consisting of properties that had been confiscatedfrom 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 hisbeneficia because of the latter’s leadership of a revolt against the king in 954. In this regard, seeContinuator 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 thatBishop Ulrich’s successor at Augsburg, Henry, sought in 973 to repossess the beneficia of severalof the milites who had served in the obsequia of Bishop Ulrich’s nephews Manegold andHupold.

25 The procedures by which such confiscations took place at the comital level in the east duringthe 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 comitalcourts in the western tradition during the reign of Charles the Bald, see Janet Nelson, ‘DisputeSettlement in West Francia’, in Paul Fouracre and Wendy Davies (eds), The Settlement ofDisputes 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. undOtto I., ed. Theodor Sickel (Hanover, 1879–84). For the property at Liel, see DO I 155. Theidentification of the site of the trial as the royal palatio is found in DO I 236. For an overviewof royal grants to Einsiedeln in the tenth century, see Joachim Salzgeber, ‘Landschenkungen andas Kloster Einsiedeln im 10. Jahrhundert’, in Festschrift zum tausenden Todestag des seligen AbtesGregor, des dritten Abtes von Einsiedeln: 996–1996 (Munich, 1996), pp. 243–66.

27 DO I 155.

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Further alienations of fiscal property acquired, or reacquired in the caseof benefices, from Guntram were made to the monastery of Lorsch inAugust 953, Einsiedeln again in January 958, to a royal fidelis namedRudolf in April 959 (almost certainly Duke Rudolf ), and to BishopConrad of Constance in February 962.28 These grants included propertiesin fifteen villae located within three pagi that were within the comitaljurisdiction 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’spossessions. Still further questions arise concerning the subsequent abilityof royal fiscal officials to take possession of, or to repossess in the case ofbenefices, the properties that Guntram held in the pagi of Breisgau,Thurgau (modern Switerzland), and Alsace, these being located hundredsof kilometres from the court at Augsburg. Guntram’s matrix of propertiesin Breisgau included the locus of Liel, noted above, as well as holdings inthe 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 themodern 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 furthersixty 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 fromthe court. The basic administrative question, therefore, is how did theroyal officials at Augsburg know what properties Guntram held in thesethree widely separated pagi? More pressingly, how did the fiscal officialscome 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, verylikely in written form given the widespread practice in the Germankingdom 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 DieUrkunden Otto des II. und Otto des III., ed. Theodor Sickel (Hanover, 1893), DO II 51 and DOIII 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 themonastery 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 beenidentified by scholars.



this information from royal officials.32 Moreover, even if the names of thevillae in which Guntram held property, and the pagi in which they wereto be found, were coerced from him after his conviction for treason, thiswas hardly sufficient information to carry out, as contrasted with simplydeclaring, the confiscation of these holdings. The officials of the royal fisc,who took over possession of the confiscated properties in fifteen separatevillae, and the beneficiaries of royal largess, who received these lands asgrants from the king, required detailed information about the boundariesas well as topographical information regarding the benefices and allodsGuntram had held.

Readers familiar with boundary clauses in Anglo-Saxon sources butnot with contemporary German documents, are likely to be surprised bythe comparatively detailed boundary clauses in large numbers of thelatter.33 For example, Otto I’s confirmation on 15 May 949 of a grant toArchbishop Robert of Trier of two properties at Zerf and Serrig, as wellas administrative jurisdiction of forest lands attached to them, includedthe following information about the historical background of earliergrants, the status of the animal populations in forest lands, and theboundary 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 Serviacumcum 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 predictaloca Cerviam et Servicaum pariter cum foreste ad sanctum Petrum, nesub occasione ipsius forestie circumiacentes res ecclesie vastarentur.Igitur nos fidelium nostrorum, Brunonis videlicet et ducis Cunradiet archiepiscopi Rothberti, peticionibus annuentes illud imperialepreceptum ante nos recitatum et a nostris fidelibus approbatum, pre-scripte petitionis preceptum innovamus, quin et roboramus, videlicetforestem hiis locis et confiniis determinatam que et a nostra constatesse nullo imperiali precepto discreta, scilicet ex eo loco ubi Primanciafluvius 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, seeKatherine Bullimore, ‘Folcwin of Rankweil: The World of a Carolingian Local Official’, EME13 (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 mapsdescribing properties north of the Alps, and word maps describing properties south of the Alps.

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Marciacum et sic inde usque quo Sarowa in Mosellam fluit, inde alocum Live nominatum, a Lyve autem illuc ubi Bodelaha in Droganamfluvium cadit, inde recto tramite ad ortum fluminis Primantie.34

In addition to the boundaries and topography of these sites, the newrecipient of these lands required further information, including not onlylists of buildings, fields, meadows and vineyards, but also various types oflivestock, tools and, not least, various human dependants of differinglegal status. Of course, this information was highly time-conditionedgiven not only the vagaries of yearly agricultural production, but also thehigh mortality rates of both livestock and humans. In addition, Gun-tram’s possible participation in both property sales and exchanges had tobe 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 whosecomitatus Breisgau was located, who had interceded with his father, KingOtto, 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, hadmemorized 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 ofTrier. 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 ofCharles, the aforementioned places, Cervia and Serviacus along with the forest land were givento St Peter to prevent that the properties of the church located nearby the forest from beingdevastated. Therefore we, accepting the petition of our faithful men, namely Bruno and DukeConrad, and Archbishop Robert, regarding this imperial order that was recited before us andwhich was approved by our faithful men, shall renew the command set out in this writtenrequest, and shall confirm it, namely that the forest set within these places and boundaries thathave been established and are in no way different from [those set out in] any other imperialorder: thus, [the boundaries shall be] from a place where the Neckar (Primancia) River rises upto Bischofesfelt and from there along the public highway to Marciacus and then to the placewhere the Saon (Sarowa) flows into the Moselle. Then the [boundary] goes from a place calledLive, from Live where the Bodelaha flows into the Drogana River. Then along the right bankof the Neckar River.’

35 Numerous royal as well as ‘private’ charters attest to land sales and exchanges throughout OttoI’s reign. On this point, see Bullimore, ‘Folcwin of Rankweil’, passim. It should be noted thatFolcwin, as a centenarius, was a man of much lower social and political status than wasGuntram. For more contemporary documents regarding land sales see, for example, DieTraditionen 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 bishopof Freising offered property in the northern section of the villa of Hohinpurc that wassurrounded 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 beconfirmed at the royal court.



Moreover, given the more than three-week round trip, under optimalcircumstances, between these estates and Augsburg, it is impossible froma logistical standpoint that men were dispatched from the royal court toundertake a detailed property inventory and then make a report follow-ing Guntram’s conviction for treason, since Liel was granted to themonastery of Einsiedeln mere days after the disgraced count’s trial hadtaken place. In this context, it should be emphasized that the king,and Liudolf, had to have a pretty good idea about the overall valueof the property that Guntram had at Liel, otherwise they risked insult-ing the monastery with a niggardly gift, or harming the fisc by givingtoo much away. So, the basic question remains. How did Otto andLiudolf know on 9 August 952, that Guntram possessed Liel, and that thislocus was an appropriately valuable property to grant to the monastery ofEinsiedeln?

To put the matter in the clearest possible terms, in order to identifyeven a list of Guntram’s properties, much less a more or less comprehen-sive descriptio of the boundaries and contents of these holdings, such asLiudolf and Otto almost certainly had available, the royal court requireddetailed records. Given the quantity and complexity of the informationthat was required, it is almost certainly the case that these records werekept in written form.38 To suggest otherwise requires that one postulatesome type of oral system for maintaining and updating literally millionsof pieces of information regarding crops, animals, humans, buildings,tools, and the myriad other elements of thousands of fiscal and allodialproperties that were of interest to royal planners. However, as notedabove, the records used by royal officials to advise Otto and his sonLiudolf about the properties held by Guntram were probably not of thesame type, since Guntram held benefices from the fisc and also hadallodial 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 notall types of information were stored in the same manner during the early Middle Ages. It is avery different matter, for example, for a trained performer to memorize an epic poem than it isfor 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, itis useful to compare the discussion of oral performances, and concomitant claims that medievalsociety largely lacked a written component, by Michael Richter, The Formation of the MedievalWest: Studies in the Oral Culture of the Barbarians (Dublin, 1994); The Oral Tradition in the EarlyMiddle Ages (Turnhout, 1994); and Richter’s essays collected in Studies in Medieval Languageand Culture (Dublin, 1995), with the observations by Wilhelm Störmer, ‘Heinrichs II.Schenkungen an Bamberg: Zur Topographie und Typologie des Königs-und BayerischenHerzogsguts um die Jahrtausend-Wende in Franken und Bayern’, in Fenske (ed.), DeutscheKönigspfalzen, 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 theking and his chancery had simply memorized these numerous places . . . This means, in explicitterms, that Henry II must have had some sort of written description of the lower-Bavarianproperties held by the duke and the king before 1007’ (author’s translation).

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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 royalofficials regarding the location and composition of the properties thatGuntram held as benefices, it is likely that Otto and his advisers turnedto records that were kept at court as part of the impedimenta carried in theking’s baggage train. In this context, it should first be emphasized that thekeeping of documents in an itinerant court was hardly a problem formedieval kings. Certainly Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, and Lothar I areall known to have maintained moving archives and even libraries.39 Forthe later period, most medievalists are well aware of the famous accountof King Philip II of France losing his archive when the royal court wasambushed by Richard Lionheart’s forces, and the wagons carrying theFrench royal documents fell into the river and were swept away.40

The second point that requires emphasis is that the Carolingians, uponwhom, it is important to stress, the Ottonians modelled their ownadministrative practices, required that the comital vicarii and centenariidevelop and submit to the royal court detailed records of all beneficeswithin their areas of juridical competence, including benefices that wereheld 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 derKarolingerzeit’, part 2, Deutsches Archiv für Geschichte des Mittelalters 11 (1955), pp. 333–92, herep. 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 casethat 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 beencollected in the archives of the missi themselves. Nevertheless, Nelson does not indicate thatthere is any information to support her contention concerning the archives of missi with regardto the reign of Charlemagne. She does point to the fact that Hincmar of Rheims, in 854, hadlists of oath-takers, with the unspoken presumption that these lists had been developed byHincmar in his role as a missus. Later in the same study (pp. 286, 287), however, Nelsoncontradicts herself with regard to the evidence for Charlemagne’s reign, noting that documentswere drawn up for storage in Charlemagne’s royal archive. Nelson appears not to have takeninto account the fact that under Louis the Pious, having multiple copies of documents drawnup included one copy being reserved for the royal archive, and further copies being designatedfor specific comital and episcopal archives. Regarding the production of multiple copies ofdocuments 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.



astical magnates.41 In discussing application of this administrativerequirement in the west, Janet Nelson has made clear that such recordswere, in fact, drawn up by missi.42

As noted above, a series of properties that Guntram held as beneficeswere successfully confiscated by Otto I’s officials and subsequentlygranted to other recipients over a period of several years. This realityalmost certainly required that Otto’s government had the same level ofinformation about fiscal properties that had been granted as benefices asdid Charles the Bald, Louis the Pious and Charlemagne. Whether thisinformation regarding all of these properties was held in a royal archive orwas 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 seemsalmost certainly to have been at the royal court at the time of Guntram’strial. Liel was granted to the monastery just a few days after beingconfiscated from Guntram. This means that Otto had to hand informa-tion about Guntram’s benefices at the actual trial. Moreover, as suggestedabove, Otto required rather detailed information to ensure that the grantof the locus at Liel was appropriate for his gift to Einsiedeln.

The subsequent grants of Guntram’s former benefices illuminatefurther aspects of royal record keeping with regard to these grants fromthe royal fisc. Specifically, it is possible to see in these charters glimpses ofthe ‘dossiers’ for these properties that travelled with the court. Forexample, the grant in 958 to the monastery of Einsiedeln of the propertythat Guntram had held in the villa of Eschenz, noted above, shows thatroyal clerks had available detailed information about a property that wasconfiscated and incorporated into the fisc, even though the charter wasdrawn up at a considerable geographical distance and years removed fromGuntram’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 thepalace at Pöhlde, some 500 kilometres north of the beneficiaries atEinsiedeln, and 580 kilometeres north of the villa of Eschenz. Whilestanding at his writing desk, the clerk was provided with information thatthis 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 tothe fisc, see Metz, Reichsgut, pp. 18–72, 220–7, and passim; Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum, p. 68; andGockel, Karolingische Königshöfe, p. 27. Concerning Ottonian maintenance of Carolingianadministrative practice with regard to military affairs, see Bachrach, ‘Magyar–OttonianWarfare’, passim; Bachrach and Bachrach, ‘Military Revolution’, passim; and Bachrach,‘Ottonian Military Organization’, passim. With regard to the specific requirement that thecentenarii were to provide detailed reports regarding the beneficia that were held in theirareas of jurisdiction, see MGH Capitularia 1 (Hanover, 1883), no. 49 c. 4, p. 136.

42 Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 285.43 DO I 189.

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Thurgau was located within the comitatus of Duke Burchard within theduchy (ducatus) of Alamannia. This was, of course, time-conditionedinformation given the nature of mortality rates in tenth-century Europe,and the consequent regular reassignment of pagi to new counts. While atPöhlde the clerk also was made aware that the property at Eschenz hadbelonged to Comes Guntram, and further, that it had been confiscatedbecause of the latter’s perfidia and assigned to the fisc as the result of apublic trial, i.e. reatus iusto iudicio publice in ius regium et diiudicata.44 Asthese details make clear, we are dealing here with both an institutionalmemory about the historical status of the property now held by the fisc,and an up-to-date set of data about the political and administrativejurisdictions within which this fiscal property was located, at a remove ofalmost six hundred kilometres and five years from the property itself, andfrom the trial at which it was confiscated. Whether all of the detailsregarding the contents of this property were also available to the royalclerk cannot now be known. What is certain, however, is that thisinformation had to be made available to the abbot of Einsiedeln beforehis administrators could effectively take possession of Guntram’s formerlands.

The grant to the royal fidelis Rudolf in 959, discussed above, providesa similarly illuminating glance into the operations of the royal adminis-trative apparatus that travelled with the king. The charter on behalf ofRudolf was issued at Walbeck, some 650 kilometres from Colmar and 620kilometres from Hüttenheim, two further Alsatian estates that had beenconfiscated from Guntram in 952.45 The clerk who drew up this text wasaware of the means by which, and the reason why, the fisc had reacquiredthese two properties, as well as the holdings at Hillisazaas, noting ‘weacquired all of these properties in full ownership because Guntram was arebel against the public good and our royal power’.46 In addition, theclerk was sufficiently well informed about the contents of the propertiesassociated with the villa of Hillisazaas, to note that the dependent prop-erty at Brumal (Pruomad) and its appurtenances were not available to begranted to Rudolf.47 In this exclusion of the property at Brumal from thegrant to Rudolf, we see that the dossier regarding this particular fiscalholding had been updated to note that Brumal was no longer available tobe 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.



The final surviving grant of property confiscated from Guntram wasissued in February 962 on behalf of Bishop Conrad of Constance, asnoted above, while the king was at Riana, south of the Alps in Italy. Thedocument was drawn up almost a full decade after Guntram’s trial atAugsburg in 952.49 The cleric who wrote out this surviving originalcharter had available up-to-date information concerning the pagus andthe name of the count in whose comitatus these properties were located.In addition, the clerk had available the historically pertinent informationthat the grant to Conrad consisted of those lands that Guntram had heldin the three villae of Buggingen, Ihringen and Maurach. The clerk wasalso fully informed that these properties had come into the fisc (nostrumregium ius) following a trial at the royal palace in Augsburg, i.e. in nostropalacio Augustburc iudicata fuissent.50

As these documents, issued over a period of ten years, make clear, royalofficials had available detailed information about both the compositionof royal fiscal holdings, and the tenurial history of these properties.Moreover, the clerks who drew up these documents had this informationwhile 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 localsliving within the villae in question. Rather, we are dealing here with astaff 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 ratherthan an allod. It was the practice in royal documents, as will be seenbelow, to identify specifically those properties which were the allodialpossessions of individuals named in charters, and to differentiate betweenthese properties held in full ownership from those that were held asbenefices. In this case, Liel was not identified as an allod. Similarly, theproperties granted to Einsiedeln in 958 and to Bishop Conrad of Con-stance in 962 were not identified as Guntram’s allods. Furthermore, ineach of these latter two charters, Guntram is identified as a comes, a factthat further indicates that the properties located in four villae in Thurgauand Breisgau had been held by Guntram as a benefice, very likely as partof his comital ministerium.51

49 DO I 236.50 DO I 236.51 DO I 189 and 236.

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The administrative procedures and documentary materials that wererequired to keep track of benefices, as seen above, had their focus in theitinerant royal court.52 By contrast, the confiscation of allodial landsrequired extensive written administration at the comital level combinedwith a sharing of information by the counts with the royal court. Givenwhat is known about Carolingian administrative practice upon whichOttonian practice was modelled, as noted above, it is unlikely thatofficials serving directly in the royal court kept lists of the allodial land-holders within the hundreds of pagi in the kingdom, much less detailedinventories of the contents of these holdings.53 In the Carolingianperiod, these administrative tasks had been the obligation of the countwithin whose region of administrative competence the pagus waslocated.54 Thus, when in 953 the monastery of Lorsch received a grant ofthirty hobae from Guntram’s former allodial holdings (quicquid heredi-tarii iuris) that were located in eight separate villae in Alsace, it benefittedfrom the administrative actions taken by the local count, Bernhard,following Guntram’s trial.55

The charter issued to Lorsch makes clear that Bernhard had fulfilledhis administrative responsibilities by the time the grant was made to thismonastery since Guntram’s thirty hobae were already fully integrated intothe royal fisc before August 953, i.e. nostre vero potestati ut subiaceretfiscatum.56 Among other matters, Bernhard’s men were able to identifythe particular thirty hobae within these eight villae that belonged toGuntram, were able to distinguish these from the hundreds of otherhobae 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 reportedto the court by comital officials. However, the main responsibility for maintaining up-to-daterecords 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 centralperspective that it was possible for the king’s advisers to know the status of royal fiscal landsthroughout 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 Ottonianperiod, 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 discussionof these list-making requirements and their implementation in the west from a pessimisticperspective, 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 FrankishMonarchy’, published in F.L. Ganshof, Frankish Institutions under Charlemagne, trans. Bryceand Mary Lyon (Providence, RI, 1968), pp. 3–55, 101–51. For a much more positive assessmentof the capacity of the western Carolingian kings to enforce these list-making requirements, withan emphasis on keeping lists of men liable for military service, see Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 279; andnow 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 militaryobligations 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.



information to the royal fiscal officials, with the record eventually findingits way into the hand of the royal clerk who drew up the charter on behalfof Lorsch.57

A further administrative question is raised in this context. How didCount Bernhard know that Guntram had allodial properties within thecomitatus? As suggested above, the comites with responsibility for a par-ticular comitatus maintained lists of the allodial landholders within theirareas of administrative competence. If it became necessary to assess aparticular landowner for military service, or, as in the case of Guntram,to confiscate property, the count could carry out an inquisitio on themodel that had long been the norm under both the Carolingians and theOttonians.58 Since the grant to Lorsch in 953 makes clear that thisinformation about Guntram’s allodial holdings was obtained by thecourt, there can be no question that an administrative procedure toidentify the thirty hobae, i.e. an inquest, had taken place.

Indeed, a royal charter issued on behalf of St Emmeram in February961 illustrates how this procedure was executed.59 In this case, Ottogranted a portion of the allodial property (partem hereditatis) that thenobilis vir Diotmar had held at Premberg (Priemperch), which waslocated in the pagus of Nordgau within the comitatus of Count Berthold.The property had been taken into possession by the fisc, i.e. regiaepotestas, following the judgement (iudicium) of the local scabini.60 Here,Count Berthold presided over a trial in which the scabini gave theirjudgement, and the property was inventoried. The scabini were probablyresponsible for the on-site process of investigating the boundaries andcontents of Diotmar’s holding. Following this process, the lands weretransferred to the fisc along with a detailed written report.61

Another example of comitial judicial efforts at the mallum beingdeployed 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, ‘OttonianMilitary Organization’, passim. Concerning the use of the process of inquisitio by the Carol-ingians, and by the Ottonians following Carolingian practice, see Metz, Das karolingischeReichsgut, pp. 210–13, and 231–2. For similar continuity in the use of the inquisitio in the regionsof 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 toMedieval Communications (Turnhout, 1999), pp. 101–26, here pp. 103–4, for the use of theinqusitio 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 dispossessedof properties by royal officials. These charters list the names of the electi viri who gave theirjudgement on the basis of testimony taken from knowledgeable people who had been sum-moned to the court proceedings.

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late May 961 on behalf of Theoderich, provost of the Mainz cathedral.This document lists properties in five separate locations in Nahgowe thatTheoderich was to receive as an allodial grant from the king. Theseproperties had come into the fisc after being confiscated at a comitalmallum headed by Count Emicho of Nahgowe. The text of the royalcharter issued on behalf of Theoderich emphasizes that the judgementagainst the two landowners, Lantbert and Megingoz, had been reachedfollowing the practice (ius) and knowledgeable decision (scitum) of Fran-corum iudicumve scabinorum.62

Guntram’s case makes clear that the political decision to confiscateallodial property required that a set of administrative procedures beset in train. The royal charters that describe the details of the confisca-tions of property from Diotmar, Lantbert and Megingoz, demonstratethat these administrative procedures entailed considerable cooperationbetween officials of the royal fisc and officials employed at the locallevel by the counts. In sum, comital officials deployed the judicial assetsat their disposal to identify and then confiscate on behalf of the fisc,the allodial possessions of men, such as Guntram, who were convictedof treason.

The outcome of the legal procedure at the comital level resulted in theproduction of written records. This is made clear by the survival offragmenta of these proceedings that subsequently were recorded in royalcharters. In the case of the properties confiscated from Guntram thatsubsequently were granted to Lorsch in 953, the royal clerk who drew upthis charter was working at Mainz, 175 kilometres north-west of Brumath,where Guntram’s former possessions were located. Consequently, theclerk certainly did not have immediate access to local scabini or iudiciwho could give him information orally about the trial. Rather, he had torely on the written report regarding the comital inquisitio. Just as impor-tantly, the decision by Otto I and his advisers to grant the property inquestion to Lorsch, was made possible by the availability of this writteninformation to the royal court. Moreover, it requires emphasis that theprocedures and documents that were deployed in this case hardly repre-sent an isolated instance of the royal administration at work. Rather, theinsights regarding royal administrative institutions and practice providedby the case of Guntram are further illuminated by more than twentyother cases of property confiscations north of the Alps, the details ofwhich 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.



Requistions and confiscations of church property

There is an important distinction to be drawn between servitium regis onthe one hand and the requisition of church property for the use of theking on the other. In the traditional account regarding servitium regis, theOttonian kings granted numerous fiscal resources to ecclesiastical insti-tutions in return for which the abbots, abbesses and bishops wererequired to provide material support to the itinerant court, as well asprovide military supplies and contingents for royal campaigns.64 Whatgenerally is omitted in scholarly discussions of servitium regis in theOttonian period, however, is that royal grants of this type were also usedquite frequently for military purposes in the Carolingian era as well.65

By contrast, the requisition of church lands was not a quid pro quoagreement, but rather the assertion of royal power over the allodialholdings of the church, including properties that specifically had beengranted in full ownership by the reigning king himself, or by his prede-cessors.66 Unlike the confiscations discussed above, however, it was notnecessarily the case that the ecclesiastical institution had incurred royaldisfavour, but rather simply that the king had need of its lands at thistime. The practice of requisitioning properties from churches was alreadyquite old by the accession of Otto I, dating back at least to the reign ofCharles Martel who famously requisitioned considerable church propertypro verbo regis to provide material support for an expanded militaryestablishment 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 themilitary aspects of servitium regis in the Ottonian period is Leopold Auer, ‘Der Kriegsdienst desKlerus unter den sächsischen Kaisern’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichts-forschung 79 (1971), pp. 316–407; and idem, ‘Der Kriegsdienst des Klerus unter den sächsischenKaisern’, 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 ChurchSystem of the Ottonian and Salian Rulers: A Reconsideration’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History33 (1982), pp. 347–74, who sought to place Ottonian practices within a broader context thatshowed Carolingian grants of resources to ecclesiastical institutions, as well as the similar usesof 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 toecclesiastical institutions were not absolute. With regard to grants to various royal chapels inFrankfurt, for example, that subsequently were revoked, see Schalles-Fischer, Pfalz und FiskusFrankfurt, 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 andRenaissance History 7 (1970), pp. 49–75, and reprinted with the same pagination in idem, Armiesand Politics in the Early Medieval West (Aldershot, 1993); Herwig Wolfram, ‘Karl Martell und dasfränkische Lehenswesen. Aufnahme eines Nichtbestandes’, in Jörg Jarnut, Ulrich Nonn andMichael Richter (eds), Karl Martel in seiner Zeit (Sigmaringen, 1994), pp. 61–78; and UlrichNonn, ‘Das Bild Karl Martells in mittelalterlichen Quellen’, in ibid., pp. 9–21. It should benoted, however, that Charles Martel’s role in this matter generally is agreed to have beenexaggerated in contemporary sources.

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required to grant economic resources to the fideles of the king at a rentalrate far below that which the current market would bear, i.e. in return forthe so-called ‘ninths and tenths’.68 As will be seen below, in other casesecclesiastical institutions were not so fortunate, and simply had theirproperties requisitioned with compensation paid at a much later date, ifat all. In both sets of circumstances, i.e. forced rentals of property proverbo regis and outright requisitions, the royal government required verydetailed written records of ecclesiastical holdings in order to know theextent, boundaries and contents of a particular church’s lands, and also tomake a determination about which of these properties best suited royalneeds at a particular moment. Obviously, churches also required detailedaccounts of lands that they had lost. It is to the evidence for these royaland ecclesiastical documents that we will turn next.

On 29 May 940, Otto issued a still-extant charter on behalf of BishopLandbert of Freising in which he ordered that the small monastery(abbatiola) of Moosburg and the fiscal property (curtis) at Föhring bereturned to Landbert’s see.69 According to the text of the charter, thesetwo fiscal units originally had been granted to Freising by the Carolingianking Arnulf (887–99), with the grant subsequently being confirmed byhis son Louis the Child (899–911). However, per quondam machinationemthese properties had come into the possession of the royal fisc, i.e. adcameram nostram.70 The acquisition of these properties by the fisc, in amanner identified by the king in the 940 charter as illegitimate, shedsconsiderable light on royal records regarding church holdings, as well asroyal administrative practice once church lands were added to the fisc.

The date of this charter is quite significant, coming as it does shortlyafter the extensive recovery efforts (Revindikationspolitik) undertaken byOtto I in Bavaria following the death of Duke Arnulf in 937 and thebanishment of Arnulf’s son Eberhard in 938. Otto’s officials systemati-cally reacquired fiscal properties for which the current holders did nothave sufficient proof of legitimate usufruct or ownership.71 The ability ofroyal officials to execute such a policy, and, indeed, of Otto and hisadvisers to conceive of such a policy, is, ipso facto, evidence of theirpossession 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 GilesConstable, ‘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 OttoI’s effort to make good excesses committed by his officials in Bavaria, see Schmid, Regensburg,p. 148.



going back decades. As scholarship focused on the royal fisc in Bavaria haslong maintained, if royal officials did not have written records of thesefiscal holdings, it would have been impossible for such properties to havebeen reacquired by the fiscal agents Otto dispatched to Bavaria.72

Returning to the charter issued to Bishop Landbert, it is important toemphasize that neither the alleged grant by Arnulf to Freising nor theconfirmation by Louis the Child survive. Moreover, there is no mentionin this charter issued to Landbert, as there commonly is in Ottoniandipomata, of the bishop presenting documents (praecepta) to the king asconfirmation of Freising’s legitimate possession of the monastery andcurtis.73 Rather, Landbert, Duke Berthold (brother of the now deceasedDuke Arnulf, and newly installed by Otto in place of Arnulf’s sonEberhard), and alii fideles nostri Bawariensis regionis, including bothbishops and counts, are depicted asking the king for the return of theselands to Freising. This set of circumstances suggests that the royal fiscalofficials who reacquired Moosburg and Föhring, had acted appropriatelyif perhaps aggressively, but now political circumstances dictated that theking publicly disavow their machinatio in order to shore up support forDuke Berthold of Bavaria in the wake of the serious revolts against royalrule in 939.74

From an administrative perspective, the details provided in this chartershed light not only on the availability of detailed information regardingroyal fiscal holdings in Bavaria before 938, but also the procedures thatroyal officials followed when properties were confiscated from theirholders and reintegrated into the fisc. In this case, the details of thecontents of these fiscal properties in Bavaria were recorded. With regardto the lands returned to Freising, this information included the names ofthe unfree dependants attached to the curtis of Föhring. The names ofthese mancipia subsequently were included by the royal clerk chargedwith drawing up the charter formally returning the curtis to BishopLandbert.75 In this context, it should be noted once more that informa-tion regarding the names of dependants attached to a particular estate washighly time conditioned.

If Bishop Landbert had reason to be annoyed at the confiscation of hisholdings 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 thereign of Duke Arnulf, see Schmid, Regensburg, p. 118, with particular reference to the royal mintat Regensburg.

73 Regarding the citation of earlier charters in confirmation grants by Otto I see, for example, DOI 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 onbehalf of St Peter’s, Worms.

74 Widukind, Res gestae II.16.75 DO I 30.

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faction of receiving these lands back within two years with something ofan apology from Otto I. By contrast, Evergisus, abbot of Lorsch andbishop of Minden, simply had to suffer the requisition of his propertiesby the king in 948. In this case, Otto arranged to exchange property at thevilla of Hemmingesbach located in the Rheingau, which belonged toLorsch, i.e. quasdam res proprietatis ad ecclesiam sancti Nazarii, with acleric and royal fidelis named Liutharius, in return for properties that thelatter held in six separate villae.76 Liutharius was to receive lifetimeusufruct (quamdiu vivat) of the Lorsch properties, while Otto simplyadded Liutharius’s lands to the fisc. The Chronicon Laureshamense recordsthat Lorsch eventually was to receive back the lands that had been givento Liutharius as part of the exchange after the cleric’s death. In addition,Lorsch was to receive Liutharius’s allodial possessions in the Rheingaulocated 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 ownproperties for an extended period of time so that the fisc could acquirethe immediate possession of properties owned by Liutharius in Loboden-gau. This was valuable to the king to help build up the infrastructuresupporting the royal fortress complex (castellum) at Ladenburg.78 FromLiutharius’s perspective, he benefitted from being able to consolidate hisown holdings in the Rheingau while trading away assets to the king in theLobodengau. Ultimately, Lorsch benefitted from this forced grant of an‘annuity’ to Liutharius, but not without medium-term dislocations in itsportfolio of landed holdings.

In administrative terms, the ability of the king to exchange Lorsch’sproperty at Hemmingsbach required a considerable amount of informa-tion. First, Otto and his officials had to know that Lorsch possessed landin the Rheingau, i.e. the region where Liutharius desired to consolidatehis properties. The king also required detailed information concerningthe value of Lorsch’s holdings and their boundaries. Otherwise, it wouldsimply have been impossible for either Otto or the royal fidelis Liuthariusto know whether this was an exchange that they desired. How did Ottocome to have this detailed information?

It should be emphasized, in this context, that Carolingian officialseither drew up, or required to be drawn up, inventories of the propertiesof ecclesiastical institutions following models resembling the one set outin 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. Theremaining 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.



so-called Lorsch Reichsurbar by Franz Staab, makes clear that the abbotsthere maintained this tradition of drawing up property inventories inboth the Carolingian and Ottonian periods. They produced no fewerthan ten detailed property reports between c.800 and the end of theeleventh century, including at least one from the late Carolingian periodand at least three from the Ottonian period.80 As had been true of theCarolingians, Otto required this detailed information in order to assignto Lorsch the appropriate levels of military and economic servitium thatwas to be provided to the king. Of course, the abbots also had an interestin providing this information, as it was only on the basis of these detailedproperty records that the king could realistically inform royal officials,including counts, to respect the monastery’s various immunities. In thiscontext, it should be noted that on 15 September 940, Otto issued aprivilege on behalf of Bishop Evergisus, now also abbot of Lorsch, grant-ing an immunity covering the res et potestates quas per totam abbatiam thatthe brothers and abbot were to enjoy legally (iure).81 This grant of animmunity was to cover all of the properties that the monastery thenheld (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 claiminglands that belonged to other ecclesiastical institutions or secular land-holders. Such assurance could only come from a close examination of themonastery’s own charters and polyptyques.83

All in all, even though Otto exercised his power to requisition Lorsch’sproperty, by making use of the detailed information he possessed aboutthe monastery’s holdings, Evergisus, at least, could feel some com-fort in 948 that his house would eventually receive back its property atHemmingesebach along with a ‘profit’ for its grant of an ‘annuity’ toLiutharius. By contrast, an exchange agreement between Otto and the

80 Franz Staab, ‘Aspekte der Grundherrschaftsentwicklung von Lorsch vornehmlich aufgrund derUrbare des Codex Laureshamensis’, in Werner Rösener (ed.), Strukturen der Grundherrschaft imFrühen 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 listas well so that royal officials would know where they could and could not exercise their normalauthority. This property list does not survive for Lorsch in a royal charter. However, numerousother property lists of this sort are recorded in surviving royal charters, and attest to theadministrative practice of royal officials in this regard. See, for example, DO I 222, of whichthree copies survive; DO I 74 which exists in two original copies; DO I 37 and 79, which appearto be two copies of an original list of properties and tithes granted to the monastery of StMaurice 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 theecclesiastical 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 derGrundherrschaft’, pp. 327–8.

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royal fidelis Rudolf in January 953, provided no such solace to AbbotHadamar of Fulda.84 In this case, the extant charter notes that with theconsent (consensus) of Hadamar and the brothers at Fulda, Otto gavetwenty-four separate properties held by Fulda in exchange for allodialproperty held by Rudolf and his sons, Adalbrecht and Liubold, in Saalgau(Salagowe), Thuringia.85 There is no indication here that Rudolf was togive anything to Fulda, nor that Otto intended to give to the monasteryany of the properties he had acquired from Rudolf. As the exchangeagreement between Otto and Liutharius, discussed above, makes clear,the possibility certainly cannot be excluded that Rudolf and his sons didmake a separate concession to Fulda either in the immediate context ofthis exchange, or at some later date. Even if this did occur, however, itremains clear that Otto was able to requisition Fulda’s properties topursue his own policy goals in the Saalgau region of Thuringia.86 Inconsidering the administrative underpinning of this agreement, as wasthe case with Lorsch, Otto had available at the court, if not from othersources, 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 royalobjectives in a particular area, the practice of using church lands tosupport royal dependants is also well attested for Otto’s reign, despite thefact that it was commonly understood as an abuse.88 From a politicalperspective, therefore, Otto found it prudent to include in many chartersissued to ecclesiastical institutions a prohibition on granting out theparticular church’s property as benefices.89 Such pious and politicallyuseful pronouncements, however, did not keep Otto from requisitioningchurch properties to support his dependants with benefices. Indeed, Ottoand his father Henry I even used church properties to provide beneficesto 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 complexesat Altstedt, Mühlhausen, Tutinsode, Schlotheim, Eschwege and Frieda. This acquisition ofproperties along the Saale River was probably intended to strengthen the royal economicresources 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.



in August 936, for example, Otto issued a charter on behalf of the nunsof Alden-Eyck (modern Belgium), in which he ordered the return ofeleven hobae located in the villa of Villina, which had been taken fromthe convent iniuste in order to provide a benefice to an unnamed vassallusof Duke Gislebert of Lotharingia.90 In administrative terms, the fact thatthe original order, i.e. pro verbo regis, had been issued during the reign ofHenry I, shows that the institutional memory at the royal court regardingthe actual ownership rather than the possessio of these lands survived theaccession 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 Swisscanton of St Gall) in 950, however, makes clear that requisitions ofecclesiastical resources pro verbo regis to support royal dependants couldendure for a long period before the ecclesiastical institution obtainedrelief.91 In this case, a number of census payers (homines censuales) hadbeen requisitioned a long time before (per multa tempora) in order toprovide benefices to some unnamed royal dependants.92 In keeping withthe generally negative opionion among ecclesiastical magnates regardingsuch alienations of church property, Otto’s charter on behalf of Pfäversemphasizes that the requisitioning of the monastery’s dependants hadbeen illegitimate, i.e. the homines censuales had been iniuste abstractos.93 Tomake amends for this ‘illegitimate’ use of church property, Otto’s chartersolemnly requires that in the future neither the king (regia potestas) noranyone else shall presume to take away these censuales in order to establisha beneficium for a third party.94

This return of the censuales to the control of the monastery at Pfäversfurther illuminates several aspects of royal administrative practice dis-cussed above. First, it must be emphasized that the misappropriation ofthese censuales had taken place long in the past (per multa tempora),perhaps during the reign of a previous king. Consequently, the recoveryof these censuales was dependent upon the preservation, over a substantialperiod 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 tobe 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 hiswife and son, Hasapurc and Vodarhart.

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grandchildren) born to the censuales who had been abstracti from Pfäver’scontrol, in the period after the initial unjust requisition of these depen-dants. Moreover, information regarding the person or persons to whomthe censuales had been assigned as benefices, whether these recipients werestill alive, or whether the censuales had been regranted to yet another royalfidelis, had also to be collected and stored. Finally, all of this data wasinherently time conditioned, and therefore needed to be regularlyupdated. All of these factors necessitate that the information about thecensuales and about the individuals who received them as benefices waskept in writing. The fact that Otto was in a position to return thesecensuales and their descendants to Pfävers, necessarily entails that royalofficials 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 explanationfor the ability of royal officials to access this information, and, even morefundamentally, to know that this information existed.

A similar case arose with respect to the monastery of St Maximin nearTrier in 956. On 10 March of that year, Otto issued a charter, which is stillextant, in which the royal clerk recorded that Abbot Willerus sought thereturn by the king of all of the tithes (dominales quas vulgo salicas vocantdecimationes) of the churches possessed by St Maximin that had beengranted out as benefices.96 The text makes clear that originally these titheshad been royal property (nostre regales) and had never belonged to anybishop (nulli umquam termino episcopoali vela ecclesiae subiacentes). Atsome point in the past, these tithes had been granted by the king to StMaximin, so that they became the monastery’s property.97 However, at alater date, not specified in the charter, some of these tithes had beengranted out to royal fideles as benefices.98 It is under these circumstancesthat Abbot Willerus turned to Otto to obtain the return of the titherevenues.99

As was the case with regard to the return of the censuales to themonastery of Pfävers, the return to St Maximin of the right to collecttithe revenues held as benefices by royal dependants sheds light on theconsiderable scale of the written records available to the king. In order tocarry out his promise to return the revenues, Otto required detailed listsof the benefice holders. Moreover, it was not enough for Abbot Willerussimply 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 andtheir tithes as beneficia to give them up. See DO I 122. The return of the actual revenues of thechurches 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.



based on St Maximin’s own records. The king required assurance anddocumentary evidence that the churches in question actually were theabbey’s property, and that the abbot was not attempting to steal titherevenues that were held legitimately by others, whether lay or ecclesias-tical. In this context, it was hardly a rare event for there to be contentionbetween ecclesiastical institutions regarding the possession of parishesand their revenues.100 Again, this does not necessarily entail the presenceof written records in a royal archive. However, in cases such as this, whenresources are being held as benefices from the king, it is necessary toexplain how royal officials kept track of the grants of tithes and revenuesover time. Furthermore, since tithes were calculated as a percentage of theactual, rather than of a fictive, level of production in a given year, the kingalso required regularly updated reports regarding the quantity and pro-ductivity of the lands and animals, as well as whatever craft and industrialproduction took place within each of the parishes in question. In con-sidering the heuristic value of this case, it should be noted that theexamples of royal administrative practice regarding the requisition ofchurch property discussed here, can be multiplied in numerous othercharters dealing with the return of requisitioned properties to ecclesias-tical institutions.101

Conclusion

The current scholarly consensus concerning the government of OttonianGermany is a classic example of an ‘either/or’ argument. Either theOttonians had a Carolingian-style administration that depended heavilyupon the written word to manage and access royal resources, or theOttonians ruled a Weberian style ‘patrimonial’ polity on the basis of thecharisma they developed through the ‘production’ of sacral kingship. It isclear, however, in the works of numerous specialists in Carolingianhistory, that such an either/or argument is neither necessary nor evenplausible. 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 ofsacrality.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 titherevenues that it had lost.

101 For other examples of lands being requisitioned for use by the king, or for the use of royaldependants 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 Conductof War c. 300–1215 (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 32–63; and Goldberg, Struggle for Empire, passim.

418 David Bachrach


Ottonian period, on matters such as the meaning and purpose of theroyal itinerary, the building of royal tombs, and the symbolic language ofthe court, has had distorting consequences. This includes the wholesalefailure to incorporate into their works the findings of specialist studiesconcerning the practices of the Ottonian government with regard to thefisc, 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 bothresources under royal control and administrative practices of royal offi-cials. The basic failure of scholars focusing on royal political history toincorporate into their syntheses the enormous research on the substantialrange of government activities broadly outlined here, is compounded bytheir additional failure to ask one of the most fundamental questions ofthe historical discipline: how? How did the Ottonian kings gather, main-tain, access, and then use the massive quantities of time-conditionedinformation that made possible every aspect of their rule, ranging fromthe 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 whichOtto I’s exercise of power required the use of such detailed and time-conditioned information. This information was available to Otto becausehis government, like those of his Carolingian predecessors, made consid-erable use of ‘the written word’, to use Rosamond McKitterick’s evocativephrase. 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 absenceof the types of detailed information dealt with here, or that they occurredin a fit of absence of mind, is no longer tenable. The reader should notform the misimpression that this essay in intended to show that sacralkingship was either not present or unimportant. Rather, the focus herehas been on affirming the importance of another dimension of royalpower that has been neglected, and even denied, by scholars up to thispoint.

University of New Hampshire

