The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration Under King Henry I, 919–936

German History Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 399–423

The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936

David S. Bachrach Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 I. Introduction

For more than a century, German-speaking scholars have worked diligently to portray the eastern portions of the Carolingian empire, forged by Charlemagne (768–814), as administratively backward as contrasted with the West. In very important ways, this scholarly effort was a manifestation of German hostility towards France arising from the Napoleonic wars and, looking even further back, from Louis XIV’s wars of conquest in the Rhineland. The Carolingian empire, built on Roman administrative and fiscal foundations, was seen as the precursor to France. German scholars, embarrassed by Germany’s failure to develop as a nation state along the lines of its more westerly competitors, sought refuge in the romantic-nationalist ideology of the free Germanic warrior, resistant to the ‘civilizing’ domination of Rome.1 This ideological justification for Germany’s special path (Sonderweg), although now long removed from its initial inspiration, still underlies much of contemporary scholarship regarding the government of early medieval Germany.2 The burden of this essay is to call into question this dichotomy between East and West, by showing the continuation of Carolingian-style written administration during the reign of the first Saxon king, Henry I. In her seminal and fundamentally revisionist study of the role that the written word played in the administration of the Carolingian empire as a whole under Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, and of the West Frankish Kingdom under Charles the Bald, Janet Nelson stresses that royal power depended on the accurate and systematic descriptio of the royal fisc. This included both those resources under direct royal control (dominium) and those that had been granted as benefices (beneficia).3 With regard to the West, Nelson disputes the rather pessimistic view of F.L. Ganshof that documents were rarely used by counts or comital subordinate officials (vicarii) to provide detailed reports to royal missi who were sent from the court.4 With specific regard to the requirement, set out in

1 For a detailed discussion of the development of German nationalism in the early modern period, see the valuable recent study by Caspar Hirschi, Wettkampf der Nationen: Konstruktionen einer deutschen Ehrgemeinschaft an der Wende vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit (Göttingen, 2005); and the review by David S. Bachrach in Sixteenth Century Journal, 39 (2008), pp. 316–18. 2 Regarding the centrality of the Sonderweg model for studies of the German middle ages, particularly during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see Timothy Reuter, ‘The Medieval German Sonderweg?: The Empire and its Rulers in the High Middle Ages’, in Anne J. Duggan (ed.), Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe (Exeter, 1993), pp. 179–211. 3 Janet L. Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian Government’, in Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 258–96, here p. 272–74. 4 Missi were officials who acted as an extension of the royal will at local level, executing royal commands and solving problems in the royal interest as they understood it.

© The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghq108 400 David S. Bachrach capitularies, that vicarii were to make detailed reports regarding the beneficia in their districts for transmission to the royal court, Nelson observes: ‘it is harder still to doubt that counts and vicarii often communicated with each other in writing’.5 By contrast, however, with her positive assessment of the successful use of the written word in the West to maintain up-to-date and detailed records regarding the status of fiscal resources, including those granted out as benefices, Nelson accepts the model of a very limited use of the written word for the Carolingian East, and its Ottonian successor state.6 Here, Nelson draws attention to Karl Leyser’s contention that Ottonian government operated with ‘a modest array of institutions’ and very little use of written Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 documents.7 Ironically, Leyser himself intended his study on Ottonian government to serve as a rather more positive portrayal of the use of the written word, and institutions that depended on the written word, than had hitherto been the norm in German historiography. The great nineteenth-century constitutional scholar, Georg Waitz, who had actively sought continuities between Carolingian and Ottonian governmental practices, was frustrated by the lack of normative, capitulary legislation for the tenth- century East that set out models of how a written administration should operate under the Saxon kings.8 Waitz did argue that there was some kind of central collection office for tax and toll revenues and that Otto I (936–973) probably did have information about the gross sums of money that were coming into the royal treasury.9 Nevertheless, it was Waitz’s pessimistic conclusions regarding continuity of Carolingian administrative practices, which focused largely on the lack of surviving capitularies, that dominated subsequent German-language scholarship. Indeed, Marc Bloch, working from a francophone perspective, critically observed in 1928 that scholars specializing in early and high medieval German history virtually

5 Ibid, p. 285. 6 Ibid, p. 294. 7 Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 294; and Karl Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (London, 1979), p. 102 for the quotation, and Leyser, ‘Ottonian Government’, English Historical Review, 96 (1981), pp. 721– 53, repr. in Leyser, Medieval Germany and its Neighbours, 900–1250 (London, 1982), pp. 68–101. 8 Georg Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 6 (2nd edn, ed. G. Seeliger, Berlin, 1896), p. 323 ff. For Waitz’s observation concerning a lack of higher supervision over economic affairs, see Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 8 (2nd edn, Kiel, 1878), pp. 216–18. For further expressions of these same views, see Otto Brunner, ‘Moderner Verfassungsbegriff und mittelalterliche Verfassungsgeschichte’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung (MIÖG), Ergänzungs-Band, 14 (1939), pp. 513–28, repr. in Hellmut Kämpf (ed.), Herrschaft und Staat im Mittelalter (‘Wege der Forschung’, 2, Darmstadt, 1956), pp. 1–19; Heinrich Mitteis, ‘Land und Herrschaft. Bemerkungen zu dem gleichnamigen Buch O. Brunners’, Historische Zeitschrift, 163 (1941), pp. 255–81, 471–89; Hagen Keller, ‘Grundlagen ottonischer Königsherrschaft’, in Karl Schmid (ed.), Reich und Kirche vor dem Investiturstreit: Vorträge beim wissenschaftlichen Kolloquium aus Anlaß des achtzigsten Geburtstag von Gerd Tellenbach (Sigmaringen, 1985), pp. 17–34; and Timothy Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages 800– 1056 (London, 1991), pp. 89 and 211. 9 Waitz, Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 6 (2nd edn), p. 330. M. Stimming, Das deutsche Königsgut im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert, I. Teil: Die Salierzeit (Berlin, 1922), p. 28, notes Waitz’s observations and, in this context (p. 29), argues that it would have been impossible for King Henry III (1039–1056) to have made grants of one-ninth or other frac- tions of royal income without having a rather good idea of what the total sum of royal revenues was from particular royal estates of the fisc. This same observation has been made more recently by Neil Middleton, ‘Early Medieval Port Customs, Tolls and Controls on Foreign Trade’, Early Medieval Europe, 13 (2005), pp. 313–58 with regard to the distribution of income from royal tolls. The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 401 ignored the question of administration, especially when contrasted with the concerted efforts of their French contemporaries to grapple with administrative problems.10 Bloch emphasized that There is almost always something disappointing about reading two histories one after the other—however excellent they may be—dealing on the one hand with the institutions of medieval France, and on the other with those of Germany during the same period. You seem to be looking on at a desultory dialogue in which neither of the speakers ever gives an answer exactly meeting the requirements of his partner. One of the two books points to the problem and solves it in a certain way. But when you turn to the second book you find most of the time that the problem is not even mentioned.11 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 In the present orthodox view, however, even Leyser’s modest and impressionistic effort to revise the tendency observed by Bloch in the German historiographical tradition has largely been rejected by German scholars over the past three decades. In a 1989 article in Frühmittelalterliche Studien, the prominent specialist in Ottonian history, Hagen Keller, states explicitly: Despite the continuity of the idea of empire and the model of Charlemagne, everything that was of particular importance for high Carolingian imperial organization—centrality, office, law-giving and writing— was absent in its successor states. Indeed they simply came to an end.12 Writing a decade later, Gerd Althoff defends the provocative subtitle of Die Ottonen: Königsherrschaft ohne Staat, by simply asserting the total absence of administration of any type, much less written administration, in the German kingdom.13 This study, which is a popularizing adaptation of Althoff ’s collection of essays, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter: Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde, takes as its central premise that the Weberian model of the state is the appropriate benchmark against which to compare the Ottonian and Salian kingdoms. According to this standard, Althoff relegates them to the status of ‘archaic’ societies.14 The corresponding anglophone tradition is neatly summed up by John Bernhardt in his book on the Ottonian royal itinerary: Since the Ottonian and the Salian kings lacked the governmental infrastructure of the Carolingian kingdom and empire at the height of its power, they governed less through their representatives or written instructions sent out from the court and generally had to make their will manifest in person. There is little doubt that the Ottonian kings made less use of the written word in government than the Carolingians had at the height of

10 March Bloch, ‘A Problem in Comparative History: The Administrative Classes in France and in Germany’, in Bloch, Land and Work in Medieval Europe: Selected Papers by Marc Bloch, trans. J.E. Anderson (Berkeley, 1967), pp. 44–81. The article was first published in Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 7 (1928), pp. 46–91. 11 Bloch, ‘Problem’, p. 44. 12 Hagen Keller, ‘Zum Charakter der “Staatlichkeit” zwischen karolingischer Reichsreform und hochmittelalterlichen Herrschaftsausbau’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 23 (1989), pp. 248–64, here p. 257. For a slightly more positive assessment of the existence of a royal administration, similar to that set out by Leyser in ‘Ottonian Government’, see Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Staatlichkeit, Herrschaftsordnung und Lehnswesen im Ostfränkischen Reich als Forschungsprobleme’, in Il Feudalesimo nell’alto Medioevo (‘Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo’, 47, Spoleto, 2000), pp. 85–147, here p. 123. 13 Gerd Althoff, Die Ottonen: Königsherrschaft ohne Staat (Stuttgart, 2000), p. 8. 14 On this point, see the review of Gerd Althoff, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter: Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde (Darmstadt, 1997), by Howard Kaminisky in Speculum, 74 (1999), pp. 687–89, who points out not only Althoff’s numerous mistranslations of Latin texts, but also his methodologically flawed practice of opportunistically choosing passages that are taken out of context. 402 David S. Bachrach their power. In fact, the east Frankish kingdom of the Carolingians already used the written word in government less than did its west Frankish or Italian contemporaries.15 Very recently, this view was reiterated by Henry Mayr-Harting, who described the scholarly consensus in this manner: Ottonian politics is not easy for us moderns to grasp. Quite apart from its being so much about inheritances and feuds within or between kinships, it largely lacked anything which we can recognize as an administration or a bureaucracy, such as we historians have tended to think of as the spine of any body politic which they study. Ottonian rule was not, in Max Weber’s terminology, bureaucratic but patrimonial.16 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021

II. The German Historiographical Tradition Regarding the Royal Fisc

These claims that Ottonian kings made limited use, or indeed no use at all, of written documents and written administrative practices are particularly disconcerting in the face of a very different consensus among specialists in the study of the royal fisc in eastern portions of the erstwhile Carolingian empire. Many German scholars have established that the models of estate management that were employed by Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and their successors in the West, based on extensive written records, were also used by both the eastern Carolingians and by the Ottonians up to the end of the reign of Henry II in 1024. Of central importance in this context is the general argument that the organizational model set out in capitulary de villis, composed perhaps as early as 771 and certainly before 800, was the norm in administrative affairs and not merely normative. In 1960, Wolfgang Metz synthesized a decade of research in his enormously influential Das Karolingische Reichsgut.17 He demonstrated conclusively, contra Alfons Dopsch, that capitulary de villis was meant for the empire as a whole rather than for Aquitaine.18 He also demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that this capitulary provided information about the basis on which royal fiscal properties were organized and managed over the course of the ninth century.19 As Metz made clear, the orders set out in capitulary de villis resulted in the making of numerous inventories.20 In this context, Metz emphasizes that regular inventory lists of royal estates that were under direct royal supervision (dominium) were drawn up in a manner consistent with capitulary de villis.21 In addition, Metz noted that the king required detailed information about fiscal properties that had been granted out as benefices, and also about church holdings, principally for military planning purposes.22

15 John W. Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries in Early Medieval Germany c. 936–1075 (Cambridge, 1993), p. 5. 16 Henry Mayr-Harting, Church and Cosmos in Early Ottonian Germany: The View from Cologne (Oxford, 2007), p. 3. 17 Wolfgang Metz, Das karolingische Reichsgut: Eine Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Berlin, 1960). 18 Metz, Reichsgut, pp. 18–72, who followed here Klaus Verhein, ‘Studien zu Quellen zum Reichsgut der Karolingerzeit’, Pt 1, Deutsches Archiv für Geschichte des Mittelalters, 10 (1954), pp. 313–94; and part 2 ibid., 11 (1955), pp. 333–92. 19 Metz, Reichsgut, pp. 17–72, 220–27, and passim. In many respects, Metz’s studies were developed on the basis of the insights of Verhein, ‘Studien’, Pts 1 and 2. 20 Metz, Reichsgut, pp. 18–72, who followed here Verhein, ‘Studien’, Pts 1 and 2. 21 Metz, Reichsgut, p. 17. 22 Ibid, p. 19. The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 403

It is exceptionally important that several of these lists, which contained severely time- conditioned information, have fortuitously survived.23 The survival of these inventories is particularly significant because they demonstrate the actual implementation of royal legislation. It should be emphasized, however, that neither Metz nor his supporters argued that the regulations in capitulary de villis were slavishly copied and cited by royal estate managers. Rather, as Metz emphasized in his 1971 recapitulation of the essential arguments in his earlier monograph: ‘Thus, capitulary de villis stood temporally at the beginning of a period of extravagant and path-breaking property descriptions of which only a few examples survive regarding the royal fisc of the Carolingian period.’24 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 The general thrust of Metz’s argument—that the administrative models set out in capitulary de villis actually were utilized by estate managers—received immediate acceptance from scholars who focused on the royal fisc. Carlrichard Brühl, in his magnum opus, Fodrum, Gistum, Servitium, emphasized that the system of organization set out in capitulary de villis applied not only in the West, but also in the eastern regions of the Regnum Francorum.25 Brühl wrote with regard to capitulary de villis: We are very well informed about the organization of individual royal villae by the priceless Capitulare de villis vel curtis (sic) imperii . . . that current scholarship correctly regards as having been applicable to the entire Frankish kingdom with the exception of Italy, against the more restrictive thesis of Dopsch, who saw this text as being applicable only to Aquitaine.26 In his discussion of the tenth century, Brühl notes the unfortunate absence of a royal document comparable to capitulary de villis, but argues, on the basis of surviving monastic administrative records, that the internal organization of the royal fisc remained largely stable under the Ottonians.27 Brühl specifically drew attention to the comparative analysis by Bruno Heusinger of the administrative structures set out in capitulary de villis and the fiscal administration that can be identified in the mid-twelfth century Tafelgut Verzeichnis, which was issued by either Conrad III (1137–1152) or Frederick I (1152–1190).28 Heusinger concluded that the models of royal estate management had not changed in any significant manner.29 Wolfgang Metz came to the same conclusion in his comparison of the two documents.30

23 Ibid, pp. 19–21 for a list of these inventories. 24 Wolfgang Metz, Zur Erforschung des karolingischen Reichsgutes (Darmstadt, 1971), p. 21, ‘So steht Capitulare de Villis zeitlich am Anfang großzügiger und wegweisender Güterbeschreibungen, von denen nur einige Beispiele für das Reichsgut der Karolingerzeit erhalten sind’. 25 Carlrichard Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum, Servitium Regis: Studien zu den wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen des Königtums in Frankenreich und in den fränkischen Nachfolgestaaten Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien vom 6. bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1 (Cologne and Graz, 1968), here p. 68. 26 Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum, p. 81, ‘über die Organization der einzelnen königlichen villae sind wir genauestens unter- richtet durch das unschätzbare Capitulare de villis vel curtis (sic) imperii . . . , das von der Forschung heute wieder mit Recht für das gesamte Frankenreich mit Ausnahme Italiens in Anspruch genommen wird gegen die restrictive These von Dopsch, der es in seinem Geltungsbereich auf Aquitanien beschränkt’. 27 Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum, pp. 180–81. 28 Ibid., esp. n. 257. 29 Ibid., with reference to Bruno Heusinger, ‘Servitium Regis in der deutschen Kaiserzeit. Untersuchungen über die wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse des deutschen Königtums 900–1250’, Archiv für Urkundenforschung, 8 (1923), pp. 26–159, here p. 123. 30 Wolfgang Metz, ‘Das Tafelgutverzeichnis des römischen Königs und das Problem des servitium regis in der Stauferzeit, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Sachsens’, Niedersächsische Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte, 32 (1960), pp. 78–107, here p. 106. 404 David S. Bachrach

Studies in Landeskunde also have validated Metz’s conclusions with regard to the administration of fiscal resources in several of the regions of East Francia and the subsequent Ottonian kingdom. In investigating Carolingian fiscal resources in the Rhineland, for example, Michael Gockel emphasizes that the material drawn from sources such as the Lorsch Reichsurbar,31 which included numerous fiscal properties that had been granted to this royal monastery, ‘must be assessed in light of the capitularies, and above all the capitulary de villis, keeping in mind the thoroughly programmatic character of this text’.32 He then concludes, on the basis of a comparison of the text of the Lorsch Reichsurbar with the procedures set out in capitulary de villis that: ‘the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 inventorying and description of the royal fiscal properties for the royal central administration was carried out following a uniform program’.33 Gockel sees this accounting as resulting from a process of inquisitio—royally directed inquiries that made use of both documents and the oral testimony of witnesses.34 In addition to the major task of developing detailed accounts of fiscal production and transmitting these to the central government, Gockel also argues that Chapter 10 of capitulary de villis, regarding the establishment of administrative centres for royal forest lands, also can be seen in effect in the middle Rhineland in the ninth and tenth century.35 Gockel’s findings were fully in accord with the earlier work of Franz-Josef Heyen that was focused on the fiscal resources centred on Boppard. Heyen concluded that the

31 An urbar is a property record that includes a description of the property and its contents (human, animal, and inani- mate) as well as, on occasion, a description of the production of the estates in question. 32 Michael Gockel, Karolingische Königshöfe am Mittelrhein (Göttingen, 1970), p. 27, ‘Die gewonnenen Ergebnisse müssen in jedem Fall anhand der einschlägigen Kapitularien, vor allem des Capitulare de villis überprüft werden, wobei jedoch weitgehend programmatischer Charakter nicht außer acht gelassen werden darf’. In this context, Gockel cites Metz as the dominant authority on the importance of the capitulary de villis and its use in interpreting surviving urbaren. 33 Gockel, Königshöfe, p. 31, ‘die Inventarisierung und Beschreibung des Königsgutes für die königliche Zentralverwaltung nach einheitlichem Programm vorgenommen wurde’. 34 Ibid, p. 31. Here he cites Metz, Reichsgut, pp. 17ff; and the use of the phrase in villa N.N. inveniuntur from the Lorsch Reichsurbar that corresponds to the phrase invenimus in eo loco that is used in the brevium exempla. The inquest or inquisitio was a commonplace under Charlemagne’s rule so that its continued use in the middle Rhineland during the ninth and tenth century is another index of continuity of royal administration. For a list of orders requiring royal missi to carry out surveys and inquests in regard to beneficia held by vassi dominici, see A. Boretius and V. Krause (eds), Capitularia regnum Francorum, 2 vols (Monumenta Germaniae Historica [henceforth MGH]: Leges Sectio II, Hanover, 1883, 1897 [henceforth Cap. reg. Fr.]), no. 18, ch. 5; no. 23, ch. 35; no. 24, chs 1, 6; no. 33, ch. 6; no. 34, chs 10–11; no. 46, chs 6–7; no. 49, ch. 4; no. 59, ch. 3; no. 62, ch. 9; no. 63, ch. 9; no. 64, ch. 14; no. 65, ch. 9; no. 77, ch. 4; no. 80, chs 5–7. 35 Gockel, Königshöfe, p. 72. He also emphasizes (p. 82) continuity in forest administration from the Carolingian to the Ottonian period. Marianne Schalles-Fischer, Pfalz und Fiskus Frankfurt. Eine Untersuching des fränkisch-deutschen Königtums (Göttingen, 1969), p. 326, similarly makes clear in her investigation of the Carolingian fisc in the Frankfurt region the descriptive value of capitulary de villis for the management of royal resources. She emphasizes that Metz’s views had largely been accepted with specific reference to the latter’s view that the Carolingian fisc was organized into very large complexes that were administered by royal officials (Beamte). Schalles-Fischer agreed with Metz regarding the heuristic value of the capitulary de villis in understanding the administration of the fisc. However, she disagreed with his view regarding the size of the fiscal units that had their caput in the various royal palaces. She argued instead (p. 326ff) that the palaces were supported a series of autonomously administered fiscal units that had obligations to deliver supplies to the central palace. The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 405 administration of this Rhenish fiscal district was in accord with the models set out by capitulary de villis and the brevium exempla, the latter having been produced during the reign of Louis the Pious.36 In this context, Heyen refers specifically to clear evidence of royal participation in assarting activities in the Boppard fisc.37 In his thorough-going investigation of the Carolingian and Ottonian fiscal resources in Regensburg and the wider Bavarian regnum,38 Peter Schmid also followed Metz in identifying capitulary de villis as being the basic model for the administration of royal fiscal properties that are held in dominium.39 In this context he argued: Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 Even if it is the case that the administration of the demesne was not present everywhere at the same time and in the same manner, we have before us a model of the way in which the Carolingians conceived the administration of the royal fiscal properties.40 Schmid, in a manner similar to that employed by Gockel, then examined contemporary charters to show the ways in which the models set out in capitulary de villis were employed in Bavaria. In discussing the actual administration of the Regensburg palace, for example, Schmid points out that capitulary de villis required that every royal fiscal unit (curtis) should have a fishpond and that one of the elements of the royal palace complex at Regensburg was a fishpond (vivarius).41 Schmid similarly points to officials, identified in ducal and royal charters, who fulfill the functions that are set out for such men in capitulary de villis.42 These include, for example, the royal officials (actores) of Louis the German (840–876) who serve in the royal villae,43 and a royal agent (ministerialis regis), employed by the same king, who served as supervisor of the royal forest lands.44 On the basis of a thorough examination of the Staffelsee Urbar, Konrad Elmshäuser emphasizes the influence of royal administrative models on eastern ecclesiastical estate management, particularly in the region of Upper Bavaria. He argues specifically that: ‘the resulting description of the bishopric of Augsburg on the basis of its number of mansi demonstrates an actual overview of the obligations imposed by the crown’.45 The same observation was made with regard to Fulda’s administrative documents by Ulrich Weidinger.46

36 F.J. Heyen, Reichsgut im Rheinland. Die Geschichte des königlichen Fiskus Boppard (Bonn, 1956), p. 65. 37 Ibid. 38 A regnum was a subordinate territiral unit of the German kingdom governed by a duke (dux). 39 Schmid, Regensburg, p. 230, who cites Wolfgang Metz, Zur Erforschung des karolingischen Reichsgutes, p. 8ff for the central importance of capitulary de villis. 40 Peter Schmid, Regensburg: Stadt der Könige und Herzöge im Mittelalter (Kallmünz, 1977), p. 230. 41 Ibid., p. 248. 42 Ibid., p. 254. 43 A villa was a fiscal unit, and could vary widely in type and size. 44 Discussion by Schmid, ibid., p. 254. The charters in which these men appear are Die Urkunden der Ludwigs des Deutschen, Karlomanns und Ludwigs des Jüngeren ed. Paul Kehr (Berlin, 1932–1934), LdDt 24 and 132. 45 Konrad Elmshäuser, ‘Untersuchungen zum Staffelseer Urbar’, in Werner Rösener (ed.), Strukturen der Grundherrschaft im Frühen Mittelalter (2nd edn, Göttingen, 1993), pp. 335–69, here p. 352. He cites here, as comparative examples, the Saint Riquier and Saint-Wandrille polyptyques. 46 Regarding royal influence on the development of Fulda’s estate administration, see Ulrich Weidinger, ‘Untersuchungen zur Grundherrschaft des Klosters Fulda in der Karolingerzeit’, in Rösener, Strukturen der Grundherrschaft, pp. 247–65, here p. 247. 406 David S. Bachrach

More focused studies of particular aspects of royal administration also have made clear the continuing importance of the model of estate administration set out in capitulary de villis. Karl Hauck, for example, examined the implications of capitulary de villis with regard to the maintenance of wild animal preserves, distinct from ther royal forest (foresta47) which had to be maintained by royal officials and their staffs.48 Hauck makes clear the ongoing validity of the requirements in this chapter by noting that these duties were subsequently emphasized by Louis the Pious in 821, who prohibited royal officials from conscripting illegally the labour of free men to help maintain the fences that kept the wild animals within the parks.49 Hauck also emphasizes that an animal park Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 (brogilus) continued to be maintained at each palace, western and eastern—Frankfurt, Regensburg and Aachen, for example—throughout the ninth century.50 The royal courtier and later bishop, Liudprand of Cremona (died 972), observed that Otto I also maintained animal parks (brolia), albeit without the breed of wild ass kept by the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II (963–969).51 In the light of this broad agreement among specialists in the history of the royal fisc about the continuity of Carolingian administrative models into the ninth and tenth century, it is certainly a problem that specialists in royal history (Reichsgeschichte) have not integrated this information into their own works. In this context, it is worthy of note that the view that administration, even of the vestigial type, was completely absent in the East developed out of an entirely different scholarly tradition than that focused on the fisc. This tradition is the so-called ‘New Constitutional History’ as practised by historians including Theodor Mayer, Otto Brunner and Walter Schlesinger from the 1930s to the 1970s.52 This school sought to identify the specifically ‘Germanic’ character of the early medieval state.53 Emphasizing a move away from the institutional model codified by Georg Waitz, the new constitutional history insisted on a state model (Staatlichkeit) based on the ‘Germanic’ concept of lordship (Herrschaft), characterized by personal ties between

47 This term identifies a specifically established royal forest with a host of attendant rights and obligations attached to it. 48 Karl Hauck, ‘Tiergärten im Pfalzbereich’, in A. Gauert (ed.), Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäologischen Erforschungen, vol. 1 (Göttingen, 1963), pp. 30–74. 49 Hauck, ‘Tiergärten’, pp. 33–34. 50 Hauck, ‘Tiergärten’, pp. 35 and 39. Regarding the zoo belonging to the palace at Regensburg, also see Schmid, Regensburg, p. 248. 51 Hauck, ‘Tiergärten’, p. 51; and Liudprand of Cremona, Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana, c.37 in P. Chiesa (ed.), Liudprandi Cremonensis Opera Omnia: Antapodosis, Homelia Paschalis, Historia Ottonis, Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana (Turnhout, 1998). 52 Ironically, in his role as a promoter of archaeological studies, Walter Schlesinger helped to establish at Göttingen the scholarly tradition of Pfalzenforschung which led to many of the investigations of the Carolingian and Ottonian fisc that shed light on the continuing importance of written documents in the administration of fiscal resources. See, in this context, Walter Schlesinger, ‘Verfassungsgeschichte und Landesgeschichte’, Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte, p. 3 (1953), p. 1–34; and Schlesinger, ‘Merseburg: Versuch eines Modells künftiger Pfalzbearbeitungen’, in Deutsche Königspfalzen, vol. 1, pp. 158–206. 53 Regarding this tradition, see Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Die Wahrnehmung von “Staat” und “Herrschaft” im frühen Mittelalter’, in Stuart Airlie, Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz (eds), Staat im frühen Mittelalter (Vienna, 2006), pp. 39–58, here p. 39; and Steffen Patzold, ‘Die Bischöfe im karolingischen Staat: Praktisches Wissen über die politische Ordnung im Frankenreich des 9. Jahrhunderts’, in Airlie et al., Staat im frühen Mittelalter, pp. 133–62. The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 407 the lord and his retainers, or the aristocratic association (Herrschaftsverband) of the king and the nobles.54 Among the more notable elements of the Herrschaft model of government are its romantic focus on a warrior-nobility, and the concept that administration and laws were rejected by Germans who would not submit to the restrictions on their freedom that were part and parcel of the Roman system maintained by the Carolingians. Otto Brunner argued, for example, that Herrschaft was the contra-positive of a relationship based upon command and obedience (Befehls-Gehorsamsbeziehung).55 Walter Schlesinger, for his part, asserted that the Germanic kingdom of the East

Carolingians and the Ottonians was fundamentally different from that found in antiquity Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 and in the Carolingian West. The latter, Schlesinger claimed, maintained many of the political and institutional concepts and methods of the Roman world. It is in this context that Schlesinger made his famous claim: ‘The ancient state is based upon a commonality of being, the Germanic-German state is based upon lordship’.56 It is this fundamental dichotomy between institutions and lordship that has been adopted by scholars including Althoff, Keller, Bernhardt and Mayr-Harting, mentioned above.57

III. Henry I’s Fisc in Carolingian Perspective

Perhaps the strict separation of political and fiscal history of the type practised by many current scholars in German medieval history is not so surprising in the light of the institutional divisions between the historiographical traditions treating the monarchy and those focused on regional history (Landesgeschichte), and the even greater separation between royal and local history.58 The vast scholarly production in the area of economic history at the regional and local level, of which studies of the fisc are but one important component, would require that those writing the political narrative of the king and court assimilate a very large corpus of scholarship for scores of regions and localities. In

54 Goetz, ‘Wahrnehmung’, p. 39, describes the model established by the new constitutional school as emphasizing the aristocratic community of the king and nobility at the expense of institutional or territorially-based organizational principles. 55 Otto Brunner, Land und Herrschaft. Grundfragen der territorialen Verfassungsgeschichte Österreichs im Mittelalter (4th edn, Vienna, 1959), with discussion of this view by Patzold, ‘Bischöfe’, p. 133. 56 Walter Schlesinger, Die Entstehung der Landesherrschaft. Untersuchung vorwiegend nach mitteldeutschen Quellen (Dresden, 1941 and repr. Darmstadt, 1964), p. 113, ‘Der antike Staat ist gemeines Wesen, der germanisch-deutsche Staat ist Herrschaft’, with discussion by Patzold, ‘Bischöfe’, p. 133. The term ‘ein ethisches gemeines Wesen’, was developed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (died 1804). 57 It should be noted that there is some difference of opinion between Althoff and Goetz regarding the Staatlichkeit of the Ottonian kingdom. While both scholars see the late Carolingian East and its Ottonian successor as being fundamentally without administrative institutions that depended heavily on written texts, Goetz, nevertheless, wishes to characterize the Ottonian and late Carolingian polities as states. Althoff, by contrast, wishes to deny the status of ‘stateness’ (Staatlichkeit) to the Ottonian kingdom. For a detailed discussion of the differences in views on this point, see Goetz, ‘Wahrnehmung’ pp. 39–58. 58 In his pioneering work on the royal fisc at the local level, F. J. Heyen, Reichsgut im Rheinland. Die Geschichte des königlichen Fiskus Boppard (Bonn, 1956), p. 24, pointed out that Reichsgutforschung lies at the nexus of Reichsgeschichte, Landesgeschichte and Lokalgeschichte. However, he did so in an effort to justify his research to an audience that then, as now, was far more focused on the political activities of the king and magnates than upon the resources that were required for the implementation of their plans and policies. 408 David S. Bachrach scholarship concerning early medieval royal and political history, this process of assimilation continues to be very rare.59 Concomitantly, it should be emphasized that much of the scholarship on the royal fisc pre-dated the innovative work in the anglophone tradition on the practical use of written documents, pioneered by Nelson and Rosamond McKitterick, and the explosion of research that followed in their wake.60 As a consequence, these early discussions of the organization and operations of the royal fisc made little reference to the role played by written documents in its administration, at the local level, in the court, and in communications between the two in conformity with the model of administration set out Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 in capitulary de villis. Rather, these fiscal studies were written against a background in

59 In his recent study of Otto III and Boleslav Chrobry, for example, Johannes Fried, Otto III. und Boleslav Chrobry: Das Widmungsbild des Aachener Evangeliars der ‘Akt von Gnesen’ und das frühe polnische und ungarische Königtum (2nd rev. exp. edn, Stuttgart, 2001), does not indicate any recognition of the importance of economic or administrative matters to political relations, nor any awareness of the vast literature concerning the royal fisc. One index of the success of Rosamond McKitterick’s ideas in changing the scholarly discourse regarding the use of writing during the early middle ages can be seen in the responses of scholars who once had held an essentially pessimistic view regarding the use of written documents for administrative purposes. See, for example, the dramatically altered treatment of this topic between the first and second editions of Michael T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, England 1066–1307 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979; Oxford, 1993). In the first edition, Clanchy pro- moted the long-established view that writing was of little significance on either the continent or in England. By contrast, in the second edition Clanchy adopts wholesale the views set out by McKitterick in Carolingians and the Written Word. Now also see the important new study by Rosamond McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008), esp. pp. 137–291. Other important studies that have drawn attention to the widespread use of written documents for written purposes throughout the Carolingian empire include Mark Mersiowsky, ‘Regierungspraxis und Schriftlichkeit im Karolingerreich: Das Fallbeispiel der Mandate und Briefe’, in Rudolf Schieffer (ed.), Schriftkultur und Reichsverwaltung unter den Karolinger (Opladen 1996), pp. 109–66; Philippe Depreux, ‘The Development of Charters Confirming Exchange by the Royal Administration (Eighth–Tenth Centuries)’, in Karl Heidecker (ed.), Charters and the Use of the Written Word in Medieval Society (Turnhout, 2000), pp. 43–62; Matthew Innis, ‘Charlemagne’s Government’, in Joanna Story (ed.), Charlemagne: Empire and Society (Manchester, 2005), pp. 71–89; Eric J. Goldberg, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817–876 (Ithaca, 2006), pp. 18, 135, 137, 144, 164, 166, 203, 211–12, 214, 229, 297, and passim; and most recently, Walter Goffart, ‘Frankish Military Duty and the Fate of Roman Taxation’, Early Medieval Europe, 16 (2008), pp. 166–90. A somewhat different approach is taken by Simon MacLean, Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the End of the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge, 2003), who argues that the capitularies overstate the centralized nature of the Carolingian government under Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and their western successors. It should be emphasized, however, that MacLean does not investigate the kinds of questions taken up here, and does not discuss the ways in which the royal government was able to manage and make use of fiscal resources. For a comparative discussion of MacLean’s approach and that of Goldberg, Struggle for Empire, see David A. Warner, ‘Review Article: Louis the German / Ludwig der Deutsche: New Thoughts on an Old King’, Early Medieval Europe, 16 (2008), pp. 215–31. 60 Rosamond McKitterick, Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989). The general tendency of scholars to see the early middle ages as a period bereft of the use of writing for secular purposes has been subjected to sus- tained criticism, as noted above, since the publication of McKitterick, Carolingians and the Written Word. For a specific criticism of this model with a focus on the use of documents by lay people in the eastern regions of the Regnum Francorum, see Warren Brown, ‘ When Documents are Destroyed or Lost: Lay People and Archives in the Early Middle Ages’, Early Medieval Europe, 11 (2002), pp. 337–66, here pp. 337–38. The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 409 which writing of all types was believed since Waitz to have played only a very limited role in the activities of the government.61 In the light of the important scholarship embodied in the studies of the royal fisc, discussed above, the burden of this paper is to illuminate the ways in which the sources concerning the reign of Henry I, when read in their proper Carolingian context, shed light on the ongoing relevance of long-established fiscal administrative institutions. In this context, it is of central importance to show the crucial role that written documents continued to play in the management and exploitation of the royal fisc.

The administration of the fisc as whole, however, is far too broad a topic to treat in an Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 article-length study. In narrowing our focus, it is important to note that traditionally, scholars have recognized that the land-based estates and other resources of the royal fisc were divided into two major segments. One group of estates was maintained in the possession of the king. These were administered directly by his government officials both at the local level in the villae distributed throughout the countryside and by officials attached to the central government and based at the royal court, wherever it itinerated.62 A second complex of the king’s holdings (facultates), including both royal landed assets and other resources, belonged to the fisc, but these were held from the king as benefices by various of his dependents (described as both vassi and fideles). The present study will focus on the latter of these two elements of the fisc, and consider in detail the question of how Henry I was able to manage these properties through the use of the ‘written word’.

IV. Sources of Information

The sources of information for the Ottonian period, and indeed for the later Carolingian period particularly in the East, present a significantly different profile from those for the eighth and early ninth century. For the earlier period, scholars have available a considerable body of prescriptive material, such as capitulary de villis, discussed in detail above, but comparatively little descriptive material aside from fortuitously surviving administrative documents such as the monastic polyptyques and Urbaren, as well as royal administrative documents such as the brevium exempla, as seen above. By contrast, the proportion of prescriptive to descriptive sources of information is reversed for the later Carolingian and Ottonian periods.63 There are far fewer prescriptive texts, as Brühl, noted above, emphasized in his discussion of the use of the royal fisc to support the king’s itinerary. However, a much larger corpus of descriptive

61 In this context, see Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum, p. 74, who emphasizes the overwhelming absence of the use of the written word in administration (überwiegenden Schriftlosigkeit der Verwaltung) in the Frankish kingdom on the basis of F.L. Ganshof’s earlier and pessimistic work written in the wake of the Second World War. See also the relevant note in the Appendix to Notes below. 62 For the administrators of the royal fisc, see Metz, Reichsgut, pp. 144–55. To gain some insight into the activities of royal officials, albeit judicial rather than fiscal, at the local level, see Katherine Bullimore, ‘Folcwin of Rankweil: The World of a Carolingian Local Official’, Early Medieval Europe, 13 (2005), pp. 43–77. 63 For a detailed discussion of this problem, see Bernard S. Bachrach and David S. Bachrach, ‘Continuity of Written Administration in the Late Carolingian East c. 887–911: The Royal Fisc’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 42 (2008), pp. 109–46. 410 David S. Bachrach documents survive. It must be emphasized that administrative documents very frequently dealt with information that was severely time-conditioned. Consequently, it is only by the barest of chances that one would expect to find such a text surviving either as an original document or even as a copy. One such fortuitously surviving text is the indiculus loricatorum, which was drawn up by Otto II’s chancery in 982 to summon reinforcements from both ecclesiastical and secular magnates in Italy.64 As a consequence, most of the surviving administrative documents from the reign of Henry I and, indeed, from the entire tenth century, are to be found as imbedded fragments within other texts (fragmenta), or as references in extant documents to no longer Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 surviving texts (perdita). For the most part, these fragmenta and perdita are to be found in surviving royal charters, and in so-called ‘private’ charters that were drawn up by private parties, including secular and ecclesiastical magnates. The prominent administrative historians,Thomas Zotz and Franz Staab, who have both worked extensively on the administration of agricultural estates in the Carolingian East and Ottonian kingdoms, have demonstrated in considerable detail that royal charters provide detailed information about the management and administration of fiscal properties, including both those held directly by the king, and those that were granted out as benefices.65

V. Grants of Benefices from the Royal Fisc under Henry I

In November 920, the year after his royal accession, Henry I issued a charter on behalf of Babo, a vassallus66 of Duke Burchard I of Swabia (917–926), in which the king permitted Babo to retain possession of certain specified properties that he had held up to that time as a benefice (beneficium).67 Moreover, at the request of Burchard, who had agreed to subject himself to Henry’s authority (ditio) after the Saxon king’s lightning campaign into Swabia in 919, the king permitted Babo henceforth to hold this benefice as his personal property (in proprium).68 This royal confirmation of Babo’s possession of the benefice, and further permission by the king for Babo to possess this property as an allod,69 almost certainly means that the property, which was located at Singen near Lake Constance, earlier had been granted as

64 For the text of the indiculus, see Ludwig Weiland (ed.), Constitutiones et act publica imperatorum et regum 911–1197, vol. 1 (MGH, Hanover, 1893), pp. 632–33. Regarding the nature of the indiculus loricatorum, and particularly the fact that the surviving text refers to the reinforcements summoned by Otto II for the campaign in Italy, see Karl Ferdinand Werner, ‘Heersorganisation und Kriegsführung im deutschen Königreich des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts,’ in Ordinamenti militari in occidente nell’alto medioevo (‘Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano Sull’alto Medievo’, 15, Spoleto, 1968), pp. 791–843, here p. 825. 65 See, in this regard, Thomas Zotz, ‘Beobachtungen zur königlichen Grundherrschaft entlang und östlich des Rheins vornehmlich im 9. Jahrhundert’, in Rösener, Strukturen der Grundherrschaft, pp. 74–125, here p. 80; and Franz Staab, ‘Aspekte der Grundherrschaftsentwicklung von Lorsch vornehmlich aufgrund der Urbare des Codex Laureshamensis’, in ibid., pp. 285–334. 66 A diminutive of vassus. 67 Theodor Sickel (ed.), Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser: Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I. (Hanover, 1879–1884). Henry’s charters will be identified henceforth as DH, and Otto I’s charters will be identified as DO I. Concerning the charter on behalf of Babo see DH 2. 68 Concerning Henry’s campaign into Swabia and Burchard’s surrender, see Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxoniae, ed. and trans. Reinhold Rau (‘Quellen zur Geschichte der sächsischen Kaiserzeit’, 8, Darmstadt, 1971), 1.27. 69 An allod is a piece of property that is held freely by an individual or corporation. It is not subject to rent. The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 411 a beneficium to Babo by Burchard out of the properties (ministerium) that Burchard himself held as a beneficium from the king to support his office as count (comes) of the pagus of Hegowe along the shores of Lake Constance.70 If this property had been granted as a benefice to Babo by the previous king, Conrad I, we would expect to see mention of this earlier royal grant in the charter. It is an even more remote possibility that this benefice had been granted to Babo out of Burchard’s own allodial property. There is no evidence of which this author is aware that Henry I, his predecessors or his successors confirmed the grant of private land by one secular individual to another. By contrast, royal charters routinely were issued to confirm the concession by one individual to another, or to a Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 church, of properties that had been held up to this point as benefices from the royal fisc.71 This grant to Babo by Henry at a royal assembly (placitum) held at Seelheim, located in the modern Landkreis of Kirchhain near Kassel, therefore sheds light on several aspects of both institutional and administrative continuity with Carolingian paradigms early in Henry’s reign. First, the grant, which was issued at the request of Burchard, makes it clear that the Swabian duke wished to regularize and obtain royal sanction for his subgranting of fiscal property in beneficium. In doing so, Burchard was following the procedures established by Charlemagne and maintained by his successors for royal fideles who used part of their beneficia to provide support to their own fideles.72 Specifically, as Janet Nelson has identified with regard to the West, benefice holders were to work with the comites, vicarii and royal missi to provide detailed and updated assessments of the status of fiscal resources currently being held as beneficia.73 In the context of Babo’s possession of fiscal property as a beneficium, two points are of particular importance. First, earlier under Charlemagne, Carolingian government legislation explicitly forbade the unilateral transformation of a benefice into an allod by the holder of the beneficium.74 Thus, Burchard was required by law to seek royal permission on behalf of Babo for the transformation of this beneficium into property held in proprium. Second, each holder of a beneficium was required to provide specific details regarding all of the fiscal resources that he had used to establish his own fideles as ‘housed men’ (casati) from the material basis of his beneficium, including the location and administrative jurisdiction in which the property was located.75 As Henry’s decision in this case makes clear, he or his officials were satisfied that Burchard’s description of the

70 DH 2. Babo held the beneficium in the pagus of Hegowe, which formed part of the comitatus of Burchard. Since this was royal property, the only man with the authority to grant it out as a benefice, other than the king, was Burchard. Moreover, this grant would only be legal if it were drawn from the resources of Burchard’s own ministerium. Since Henry agreed to the transaction, permitted it to stand, and did not comment on its illegal origin in the royal charter, it seems likely that Burchard had followed the rules on these points. 71 In this context, see, for example, DO I 28, 114, 197, 230, 291 and 387. 72 Cap. reg. Fr., no. 49 ch. 7. In discussing this text, Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 285, points out that the comital vicarii probably communicated with their superiors in writing when providing details about the state of all of the beneficia in their regions. 73 Cap. reg. Fr,. no. 49 ch. 4; and Cap. reg. Fr., no. 80 ch. 5. On this point, also see Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 285. 74 Cap. reg. Fr., no. 49 ch. 4, ‘vel etiam quid unusquisque, postquam hoc facere prohibuimus, in suum alodem ex ipso beneficio duxit vel quid ibidem exinde operatus est’. 75 Cap. reg. Fr., no. 80 ch. 5, ‘ut missi diligenter inquirant et describere faciant unusquisque in suo missatico, quid unusquisque de beneficio habeat vel quot homines casatos in ipso beneficio’. 412 David S. Bachrach beneficium that was granted to Babo conformed with the records possessed by the royal government.76 The very fact that Burchard found it necessary to follow these procedures sheds yet further light, from an administrative perspective, on the written information that was available to Henry’s fiscal officials regarding the state of the royal fisc in Swabia as early as November 920, which was within a few months of his elevation to royal power. As the duke of Saxony, Henry certainly had no personal information about the extent or distribution of royal possessions (facultates) in Swabia before his election as king in May

919. Yet, here was Burchard, appearing at Seelheim, some 400 kilometres north of Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 Singen, to ask for royal approval, according to law, of an act that undoubtedly took place before Henry became king less than two years earlier. The most likely explanation for this course of action is that Burchard was aware that the details of the royal fiscal holdings, including those facultates that had been granted as beneficia, were now available to Henry and his advisors once information about these fiscal properties had been transferred to the new king. Seen from Burchard’s perspective, it obviously would have been a much simpler matter to avoid the need to obtain royal authorization for this property transaction by acting as if the grant to Babo consisted of Burchard’s allodial possessions, or by simply hiding the matter completely from the king. Naturally, such a course of action, which was illegal, was only viable if the duke could be sure that the king was not aware of the extent and nature of the property designated for the support of the comital office (ministerium) in Hegowe, and thus would not be able to detect resources that had been usurped from this ministerium. However, it is clear that royal agents, through a process of investigation (inquisitio), were able to detect such usurpations, both in the Carolingian period and in Carolingian successor states, using both written documents and oral testimony, taken under oath, a procedure of which Burchard was certainly aware.77 Just such a process of inquisitio is discussed in one of Henry I’s charters that concerns an exchange of properties undertaken between the monastery of Hersfeld and the king in June 933.78 In this case, the king made a grant of ‘the entire property attached to the church at Frauen-Breitungen, just as this was delineated by faithful men who affirmed their findings with an oath’.79 There follows a word map of the boundaries of this property, drawn up on the basis of the inquisitio of the properties conducted by a royal official who interviewed the faithful men (fideles viri) of the locality. The clear implication of the behaviour of Burchard at Seelheim in 920, from both an institutional and administrative perspective, is that the duke believed Henry I had access

76 Not insignificantly, the grant identifies the property by villa, pagus and comital jurisdiction. 77 Regarding the thoroughness of this checking process and its importance for assuring a regular stream of supplies to the king and court, see Metz, Reichsgut, pp. 210–13, 231–32. It is clear that the inquisitio process often relied on oral testimony rather than exclusively on the written word. In this context, see the valuable overview of the process of evaluating property claims using both written documents and oral testimony in Patrick Geary, ‘Land, Language and Memory in Europe 700–1100’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 9 (1999), pp. 169–84. 78 See DH 35. 79 Ibid., ‘totam marcham illam ad matricem aecclesiam in Breitinga spectantem, sicut per fideles viros cum iurisiurandi affirmatione circumducta est’. With regard to the widespread practice of interviewing knowledgeable men about the boundaries and contents of properties, see Geary, ‘Land, Language and Memory’, esp. pp. 178–82, for a discussion of this practice east of the Rhine during Charlemagne’s reign. The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 413 to information about royal fiscal resources in Swabia. The likely source of this information were documents stored as part of the royal treasury (thesaurus) handed over to Henry I by Duke Eberhard of Franconia after the former’s royal accession in 919. It seems likely that this treasury included dossiers of written materials detailing the royal fiscal resources as they were known to exist under Conrad I, Eberhard’s elder brother, including those facultates that had been granted out as beneficia.80 Of course Conrad, as regent of Louis the Child (died 911), had access to all the records of the royal fisc under the last Carolingian king.

As Peter Schmid has demonstrated, even in the period 916–918, when both Duke Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 Arnulf of Bavaria and Burchard of Swabia were in open revolt against Conrad, the resources of the royal fisc maintained their distinct royal status and were not allodialized or confiscated either by the rebellious dukes or their comites.81 As a consequence, not only did the facultates of the royal fisc remain under royal control de iure, but the rapid submission of Burchard, and then of Duke Arnulf (921), meant that the de facto royal control over these fiscal resources was secure as well.82 Burchard’s need to obtain royal recognition for Babo’s beneficium and the request for the grant in proprium is therefore a clear indication of Henry’s possession of detailed information regarding the royal fisc in Swabia, and consequently of his ability to exercise authority over these properties, including those that had been granted out as benefices. As other surviving documents from Henry I’s reign make clear, the maintenance of detailed records available to the king regarding the facultates of the fisc that had been granted out in beneficium concerned not only property, but also incomes in cash and kind derived from royal estates. In June 930, for example, King Henry issued a charter in which he granted as a beneficium one-ninth (pars nona) of the entire revenues of forty-seven named villae to the canons of St Mary at Aachen.83 This ninth was due to be provided from the entire production (conlaboratus) of these villae, including specifically ninths of the grain production (annona), cash payments (census) due from the dependents of the villae, a ninth of the new-born cattle (pecus), and a ninth of the newborn animals (animantes), which might include chickens and pigs. The scribe noted in the charter that this grant of

80 Widukind, Res gestae, 1.26, ‘Evurhardus adiit Heinricum seque cum omnibus thesauris illi tradidit’. The use of the plural here, i.e. treasuries or treasures, should not be thought to exclude the formal transfer of the impedimenta of the royal court to the new king. Nor should the reader be under the misapprehension that the treasury, or indeed royal treasure, was an unlikely repository for administrative documents. The storage of substantial numbers of administrative documents as part of the royal wardrobe in England during the thirteenth century provides an illumin- ating illustration of the extent to which even heavily bureaucratized states, such as England under Edward I (1272–1307), blurred the boundaries between the private royal household and the administrative apparatus of the state. For a useful guide to the administrative documents from this period, including their means of storage, see Bryce D. Lyon, A Constitutional and Legal History of Medieval England (2nd edn, New York, 1980); also Bryce Lyon and Mary Lyon, The Wardrobe Book of 1296–1297: A Financial and Logistical Record of Edward I’s 1297 Autumn Campaign in Flanders Against Philip IV of France (Brussels, 2004). According to the elder Vita of Mathilda, MG SS 10, p. 576, when Henry I acceded to the throne he also obtained ‘totaque regni facultas’. Such a statement only makes sense, however, if Henry had information about these facultates. 81 Schmid, Regensburg, p. 118. 82 Widukind, Res gestae Saxonicae, 1.27. 83 DH 23. 414 David S. Bachrach one-ninth of the conlaboratus of the villae conformed with the conditions of the grants of beneficia to St Mary as these had been set out in the documents (scripta) of earlier kings.84 In this context, Henry’s grant in 930 to the church of St Mary was a modified version of a beneficium grant going back to the reign of Lothar II (855–869), and updated regularly by Lothar’s successors, including Arnulf (887–899) and Conrad I (911–918). In this case, Henry’s grant included one-ninth of the total revenues (conlaboratus) of four royal villae that did not appear in Arnulf ’s earlier grant in 888, thereby making it clear that we are dealing here with a real-time phenomenon rather than the pro forma confirmation of an old document.85 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 In his own confirmation of the earlier grant of the benefice to St Mary in 888, King Arnulf had called attention to the fact that other royal vassals (quibuslibet personis beneficientur) already held as benefices some complete villae from whose resources the church of St Mary was to receive its ninth. Making matters even more complex, other royal fideles held as benefices some portion of the resources of yet other royal villae, which were still under direct royal supervision, from which St Mary was to receive a ninth of the conlaboratus. This information in the royal charter indicates the significant levels of administrative complexity of which the king’s officials were capable. Each of the royal villae, whether held as benefices or directly supervised by royal officials, consisted of numerous constituent elements, each of which could be, and were, assigned to separate recipients as benefices. In this charter, Arnulf also makes it clear that the royal government maintained the power to give direct orders not only to the stewards (ministri) who administered the villae that remained under direct royal control, but also to the ministri of the villae that were held from him as beneficia either in whole or in part.86 This is particularly important, because the ability to give orders to the stewards of villae that were held as benefices indicates that the royal government maintained ongoing supervision over these properties much as Charlemagne’s government had done a century before.87 As would later be true of Henry I, King Arnulf made a grant to St Mary at Aachen of one-ninth of the annual gross product that included crops, animals and all sources of monetary income. It is, of course, obvious that in order for the ministri of the forty-three villae listed in Arnulf ’s charter to provide the pars nona to St Mary, each minister had to have a record of the gross product of his villa on an annual basis. This type of account had been required by Charlemagne and by his successors in both the East and the West, including Louis the German. Indeed, the concept of gross annual output (omnis

84 DH 23, ‘in annona in censibus pecoribus et cunctis animantibus et omnibus que dici aut nominari possunt compen- diis, sicuti in predictorum regum scriptis tenetur’ 85 Paul Kehr (ed.), Die Urkunden Arnolfs (MGH ‘Diplomata regum Germaniae ex stirpe Karolinorum’, 3, Berlin, 1940), henceforth DA. See DA 31. 86 DA 31, ‘de nominatis iam XLIII villis, de omni conlaboratu dominii nostri et speciali peculiare omnium animantium et iumentorum seu ex omni censu quarumcumque rerum pars nona a ministris ipsarum villarum, sive in regis dominium sint sive quibuslibet personis beneficientur, absque negligentia iugiter tribuatur’. 87 For a detailed discussion of this supervision of royal fiscal properties, see Bernard S. Bachrach, ‘Charlemagne’s Royal Fisc in Military Perspective’, in Felice Lifschitz and Celia Chazelle (eds), Paradigms and Methods in Early Medieval Studies (New York, 2007), pp. 119–37, with the relevant literature cited there. With regard to the transmission of this information to the royal court by the officials of the fisc, as well as by missi, see Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 281. The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 415 conlaboratus) was used by the authors of capitulary de villis to denote the production of the royal estates held by the government no later than the first decade of the ninth century and perhaps as early as 771.88 For the officials of the church of St Mary to know that they were receiving the stipulated ninth and not some lesser percentage of the annual production of these villae, and for the king, whether Arnulf or Henry, to know that his orders had been obeyed, both parties, the royal court and the beneficiary, needed copies of the annual inventory of production that the steward was required to compile.89 Further, if Arnulf or Henry were to know if the required inventory, compiled by the minister of each villa, was accurate, Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 it was necessary, as Charlemagne had emphasized, for agents from the central government to check the steward’s accounts through an inquest at each villa.90 This, of course, was the inquest process that was employed by Henry I, as noted above, in 933 with regard to properties exchanged with the monastery of Hersfeld. Moreover, as with any agricultural enterprise, the omnis conlaboratus of each estate varied from year to year. Natural contingencies such as droughts, rainfall, cold spells, heat spells, insect infestations and diseases affecting crops or livestock could all have an impact on overall production. In addition, some of the sources of revenue from royal estates came from goods such as honey, clothing or manufactured items that were produced on a year-round basis.91 As a result, it was necessary not only to make a new inventory each year, but to keep running totals of production over the course of the year. In returning to Henry’s reconfirmation and expansion of the beneficium held by St Mary’s of Aachen, it is important to keep in mind that all of the administrative factors that influenced Arnulf ’s knowledge of and control over the royal villae, a portion of whose resources were granted to the canons in 888, were still in force in 930. Indeed, a grant made in 935 by Henry to the monastery of Stablo helps illuminate even further the sophisticated administrative procedures that were employed by the royal government to ensure continued control over resources that were granted as benefices from the resources of the royal fisc. While encamped along the Chiers river, a tributary of the Maas, in June 935, Henry granted to the monastery of Stablo cash payments (census) that were owed by a group

88 Concerning the use of the term conlaboratus as the standard technical term—also used in capitulary de villis—for the entire production of a villa, see Metz, Reichsgut, pp. 66, 129; and Jean Durliat, ‘“De conlaboratu”: faux rende- ments et vraie comptabilité publique à l’époque carolingienne’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 56 (1978), pp. 445–57. 89 On this point, even a scholar such as Stimming, Das deutsche Königsgut im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert, p. 29, who was pessimistic concerning the use of written records by fiscal officials, saw it as necessary that the king had sound information regarding the resources and income of the fisc so that he could be in a position to grant fixed percentages to recipients. 90 Thomas Gross and Rudolf Schieffer (eds), De ordine palatii (Hanover, 1980), Ch. 23–27, refer to ministri established at court, and also to ministri without specific offices who were available for missions such as auditing written reports submitted by the stewards of estates. 91 Concerning industrial production at royal villae in the Ottonian period, see Peter Donat, ‘Gebesee—Zur Problematik Ottonischer Königshöfe’, in Lutz Fenske (ed.), Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen und archäolo- gischen Erforschung, vol. 4: Pfalzen—Reichsgut—Königshöfe (Göttingen, 1996), pp. 110–48, here p. 138; Michael Gockel, ‘Tilleda’, in Gockel (ed.), Deutschen Königspfalzen: Repertorium der Pfalzen, Königshöfe und übrigen Aufenthaltsorte der Könige im deutschen Reich des Mittelalters, vol. 2: Thüringen (Göttingen, 2000), pp. 549–631, here p. 553 416 David S. Bachrach

(familia) of unfree dependents (mancipia) who were settled on the important royal villa of Jupille, now located within the municipal boundaries of Liège.92 Jupille, it should be noted, was one of the villae from whose conlaboratus a ninth was to be granted to the canons of St Mary at Aachen in both 888 and 930, by King Arnulf and King Henry respectively. According to the text of the agreement of 935, this census had been held in beneficium, until the granting of the charter on 8 June, by an unnamed man. This unnamed man (is qui), or more probably his ancestor, was therefore in a position similar to those men named in 888 who were noted in Arnulf ’s charter as having been granted benefices (beneficiantur) drawn from the royal villae, including Jupille, from which a ninth Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 of the conlaboratus was granted to St Mary at Aachen. After identifying the previous status of the census as a beneficium in 888 and 930, the act of 935 then records the mancipia who paid the census. The ten living adults are all listed by name. Their census, as well as the census of their male and female children, is specifically transferred by King Henry as a benefice to the monastery of Stablo. The charter then requires that the census owed by the children of Gerdruda, who is not listed among the ten living adults, is also to be transferred to Stablo. In sum, the royal charter concludes that ‘the aforementioned congregation (Stablo) shall enjoy the grant (concessio) from these mancipia that we have made’.93 The considerable detail given in this charter provides important insights into the complex administrative work that was required to maintain current and accurate information regarding the royal resources within villae such as Jupille that had been granted as benefices. This charter also sheds further light on the large scope of the written administrative tasks that were required to identify and transmit the ninth of the entire production of the forty-seven villae that had been granted as a benefice to the canons of St Mary at Aachen in 930. First, it should be noted that the king was in a position to grant as a benefice the census payments due from one familia of mancipia while retaining the bodies and labour of these dependents either in direct royal possession (in dominium) or for a separate grant as a beneficium. As the charter makes clear here, Stablo was only to receive the census, but not the labour or possession of this familia of unfree dependents. The ability to make such important distinctions regarding such closely related resources undoubtedly is the hallmark of a sophisticated administrative apparatus, and, moreover, one that obviously made considerable use of the written word. This administrative sophistication must be kept in mind when considering the import of the grant of one-ninth of the conlaboratus of villae such as Jupille. The second point that requires emphasis here is that the royal scribe who drew up this charter for Stablo had available correct information about the number and names of the mancipia who were part of this particular familia, and who were alive and capable of

92 DH 40. The demesne of the royal villa at Jupille, which was an important fiscal property and possibly the birth place of Pippin III, certainly could not have been cultivated by the 10 mancipia and their children listed in this charter. Rather, the listing of the names of the members of this particular familia mancipium indicates that the term familia here is an institutional designation for this group of unfree labourers, defined in opposition to other familiae mancipium who served on the demesne at Jupille, as well as in opposition to groups of semi-free and free royal dependents who held various economic relationships with this villa and its minister. 93 DH 40. The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 417 paying a census in June 935. The precariousness of life in premodern societies need not be belaboured here. However, it should be sufficient to note that documents listing the status of individuals as being alive and subject to paying a census were severely time-conditioned. Indeed, this reality is manifest in the specific mention, in a separate clause of the charter, regarding the children of Gerdruda: ‘et his scilicet qui ex Gerdruda procreati sunt’. This makes clear that Gerdruda herself was known by the royal scribe to have had a different status from that of the other adult mancipia whose children also were required to pay a census to the holder of this beneficium.94 It seems likely that this different status was that

Gerdruda was now deceased, but there may have been some other reason why she, as an Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 individual, was not required to pay a census although her children were required to do so. She may, for example, have remarried a free man who then purchased her freedom.95 We cannot now know the answer to this question, but it is clear that the clerk who drew up this charter had such information. The third point that must be noted here, therefore, is that the scribe of this still extant charter had this information available to him while drawing up the act at a time when he was located at least 130 kilometres south of where the mancipia in question lived, since he was encamped with the king along the Chiers river. This geographical reality, emphasized in the dating clause of the charter, ‘actum iuxta flumen Char’, requires that the information regarding the names of the adult mancipia, the altered status of Gerdruda, and the fact that she had offspring, was made available to the scribe in written form. Can one really imagine that one or more people connected to these fiscal assets at least a week’s travel to the north of the Chiers were brought to the royal encampment and then dredged up a list of people and other relevant information which they had memorized?96 As capitulary de villis makes clear, one of the three major reports required of royal stewards, such as the minister of the villa at Jupille, was to provide detailed information regarding all of the revenues acquired by the villa during the course of the year, as well as the individual or institutions to which any of these revenues had been disbursed.97 The transfer of the census payments made by this familia mancipium from the unnamed holder

94 Ibid. 95 There are very large numbers of examples from so-called private charters in this period for the purchase by one spouse of another from unfreedom. See, for example, Die Traditionen des Hochstifts Freising, vol. 2: 926–1283, ed. Theodor Bitterauf (Munich, 1909, repr. Aalen, 1967), nr. 1087 pp. 30–31. In this case, the nobilis Adalpreht gave property to Bishop Lambert in order to purchase the freedom of his wife and son, Hasapurc and Vodarhart. 96 A trained performer can memorize an epic poem, but it is a very different matter for an untrained person to memorize complex lists of names, and these two practices should not be conflated. In this regard, it is useful to compare the discussion of oral performances, and concomitant claims that medieval society largely lacked a written component, by Michael Richter, The Formation of the Medieval West: Studies in the Oral Culture of the Barbarians (Dublin, 1994); Richter, The Oral Tradition in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, 1994); and Richter’s essays collected in Studies in Medieval Language and Culture (Dublin, 1995), with the observations by Wilhelm Störmer, ‘Heinrichs II. Schenkungen an Bamberg: Zur Topographie und Typologie des Königs- und Bayerischen Herzogsguts um die Jahrtausend-Wende in Franken und Bayern’, in Fenske, Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge, vol. 4, pp. 377–408, here p. 402. The latter concludes with regard to the efforts of Henry II (1002–1024) to carry out an inquisitio in Bavaria in 1007, ‘that it is not possible that the king and his chancery had simply memorized these numerous places . . . This means, in explicit terms, that Henry II must have had some sort of written description of the lower-Bavarian properties held by the duke and the king before 1007’. 97 Cap. reg. Fr. no. 32, chs 55, 62. 418 David S. Bachrach of the beneficium to the monastery of Stablo was therefore a relatively simple matter of accounting by clerks at the royal court, but a step that could only be taken because a detailed file of information was at hand on a regular basis in written form.

VI. Henry I’s Fiscal Administration in the Light of Otto I’s Administrative Documents

In addition to providing detailed and up-to-date information about fiscal properties currently being held as benefices from the royal fisc, the written records maintained by Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 Henry’s government permitted the continuation of an institutional memory regarding these properties so that they would not be forgotten in the period of transition that inevitably followed the death of one king and the accession of another. As noted above, Henry benefited from the detailed record-keeping of his predecessors, including Arnulf and Conrad, which enabled the royal government to maintain knowledge of and, therefore, control over fiscal properties that had been granted as benefices. As will now be seen, the detailed records kept by Henry’s government created this same institutional continuity and memory to the benefit of the government of his son and successor Otto I. In June 941, Otto issued a charter for the benefit of Siegfried, the son of Count Gero.98 Otto’s grant to his godson (spiritualis filiolus) Siegfried consisted of two parts. First, Siegfried was to receive everything that his father Gero had held as a beneficium in two villae in Schwabengau, with the important exception of the royal fiscal property consisting of the church of St Wicbert, which Otto had already granted to the monastery of Hersfeld. This portion of Otto’s grant to his godson is identified by the scribe as including the newly constructed fort (novum castellum) at Osteregulun (Egeln).99 The second part of the grant consisted of the beneficium that previously had been held by a man named Bardo, but which was now in royal possession. This fiscal property consisted of lands attached to the royal villa of Cokstedi (Cochstedt, south of Egeln), and twelve mancipia whose names are then listed in the text as being attached to this villa.100 In considering the implications of this text for understanding both the central role played by written documents in the administration of King Henry’s fisc, and also institutional continuity between the governments of Henry and Otto, several points must be adduced. First, both the beneficium held by Gero in June 941 and the beneficium previously held by Bardo were almost certainly granted during the reign of Henry, who had died just five years previously after holding the royal office for seventeen years. Consequently, this charter makes it clear that Otto’s officials were aware of the status of these holdings as fiscal property despite the transition from one reign to another. As had been true in the case of Duke Burchard and the latter’s vassallus Babo, without royal records of the grants of beneficia, there was no way to keep track of these fiscal properties over time, much less across reigns when there was considerable turnover in personnel in the royal household.

98 DO I 40. This is very probably Markgraf Gero who served as one of Otto I’s most important military commanders against the Slavs. 99 DO I 40. 100 Ibid. The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 419

The second point that requires emphasis here is that the royal charter issued for Siegfried makes it clear that Otto’s officials not only knew that fiscal properties had been granted out as beneficia during the previous reign, but they also had up-to-date information about the physical status of these holdings, and the status of their appurtenances, including dependents. In the case of the two villae held by Gero, the king’s clerks identified a newly constructed castellum, which required a royal license to build. In the case of the beneficium held by Bardo, the clerk had a list of the mancipia who currently were dependents of the fiscal property attached to the villa of Cochstedt. As noted above with regard to the census payments of the unfree dependents attached to Jupille, which were transferred to Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 the monastery of Stablo, the lifetime of mancipia was highly time-conditioned information. Thus, we see Otto’s officials not only making use of information first inscribed during Henry I’s reign, but we also see them updating this information on an ongoing basis. This pattern of maintaining institutional and administrative memory regarding fiscal property granted as beneficia from the reign of Henry I to the reign of Otto I can be also be seen in considerable detail in a charter issued by Otto at Rhenen, forty kilometres south-east of Utrecht, on 17 July 944. Here, Otto I gave royal fiscal property currently held in direct royal possession, totum quod . . . hactenus habuimus, to the church of Utrecht then headed by Bishop Baldric (917–976).101 This grant, which may have been made at the request of Brun, Otto’s younger brother and archbishop of Cologne, consisted of fiscal lands located in the pagus of ‘Lake and Isla’ named after the Lek and Ijssel rivers and located in the modern province of Utrecht in the Netherlands.102 In describing the history of these fiscal properties, the scribe who drew up this document—it is not known whether this was a royal or an episcopal official—noted that ‘this property had been held by Waltgerus and after him by his son Ratbot from the fisc (ex nostra parte) as a benefice (beneficium)’.103 This brief note regarding the previous holders of the fiscal property in the pagus of Lake and Isla is significant in the context of the administrative and institutional memory that was maintained between the reigns of Henry I and his son. We are dealing here with a minimum of four separate property transactions that were recorded and made available to the scribe who drew up this document. Moving from most recent to furthest distant in time, royal clerks were aware that the current possession of the property by the royal fisc was due to its recovery from Ratbot, who had held the facultates as a beneficium. It is not known now exactly when the property was recovered from Ratbot by the royal fisc, but it is certainly possible that this occurred during the reign of Henry I, who had died just eight years earlier. The second transaction was the grant of the property in question to Ratbot as a beneficium. Again, given that Otto had been king for only eight years in 944, it is certainly possible that the grant of the fiscal property in the pagus of Lake and Isla had occurred during the reign of Henry I.

101 DO I 58. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid. 420 David S. Bachrach

The third transaction, as we move backwards in time, was the recovery of the fiscal property by the royal government from Waltgerus prior to its granting to Ratbot. There is no indication in the surviving records whether Waltgerus lost possession of the fiscal lands in question because he had died, or for some other reason, although it is highly unlikely that Waltgerus had engaged either in treasonous or irresponsible behaviour given his son Ratbot’s eventual recovery of the benefice. The temporal interval between the recovery of the property from Waltgerus and its subsequent grant to Ratbot is not now known.

The fourth land transaction about which Otto’s officials, and subsequently the scribe Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 who drew up this document, were informed was the original grant of the fiscal properties in question to Waltgerus as a beneficium. In the light of the temporal framework within which these transactions occurred, it is very likely that the grant of the benefice to Waltgerus took place during Henry I’s reign or perhaps even earlier. In sum, we are dealing here with a series of property transactions that may well have spanned a generation or an even longer period of time. The scribe who drew up this document, whether a royal clerk or a scribe employed by Bishop Baldric of Utrecht, had information concerning these transactions with regard to properties that were located anywhere from forty to eighty kilometres to the west, which would have been between two and four days’ travel in each direction from the royal court assembly at Rhenen.104 We must therefore answer this basic epistemological question: how did the scribe who drew up this charter have available detailed information regarding the history of these properties as beneficia? It is possible that a courtier of Henry, with specific expertise in the history of royal fiscal properties in the regions west of Utrecht, appeared at the royal assembly at Rhenen and provided testimony regarding his memory of the grants of beneficia made by the old king, information that was then incorporated in very brief form into this charter on behalf of Bishop Baldric of Utrecht. It seems far more likely, however, that the dossier regarding these fiscal properties going back to the reign of Henry I, if not earlier, included information about its history, and that working from this, the scribe simply added this material to his text. There are several charters from early in Otto I’s reign that shed similar light on the continuity in written fiscal administration and on institutional memory between the reigns of Henry I and his son. In 947, for example, while at Salz in Franconia, Otto granted fiscal properties as allods to a royal estate steward (villicus) named Wetti. The properties in question, though held in dominium by the fisc prior to the grant to Wetti, previously had been granted out as beneficia to three men. The first, named Roho, was apparently a free layman, while the other two, named Engilbraht and Wolfhart, were unfree dependents (servi) of the church of St Peter (Frankfurt?) and the king respectively. The properties were located at Seckbach, now a Stadtteil of Frankfurt. Of considerable

104 Obviously, a courier using the tractoria system—a system of highway resting points that provided shelter and new horses for riders who were operating under royal orders—that operated during the Carolingian period could cover this distance much more rapidly. However, there is no evidence from this charter that such a courier was dispatched to the estates in question, much less that he made use of this Carolingian-style ‘pony-express’. With regard to the use of the tractoria system to support travel by royal officials in the Carolingian period, see F.L. Ganshof, ‘La Tractoria: Contribution à l’étude des origines du droit de gîte’, Tijdschrift voor rechtsgeschiedenis, 8 (1928), pp. 69–91. The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 421 interest, in the present context, is the detail with which Wetti’s new possessions are described in the royal charter. The appurtenances of the one piece of property (hoba dominica) that previously had been held as a beneficium by Roho, are explicitly identified as including an unfree female dependent (ancilla) named Gerburg along with her sons and daughters (filii, filiae). As noted above with regard to census payments of mancipia granted in 935 by Henry to the monastery of Stablo, information regarding unfree dependents was highly time-conditioned, and therefore required regular updating. As was true with regard to several other charters discussed thus far, the royal charter on behalf of the villicus Wetti was drawn up far from the property that was being granted. In this case, the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 royal court was at Salz, some eighty kilometres north-west of Seckbach. Consequently, we are dealing here not only with the institutional memory of a grant of a benefice probably made during the reign of Henry I, but also with evidence for the maintenance of current written records regarding the status of this benefice over time.105 As well as maintaining royal power through an ongoing supervision of properties granted out as benefices, records of the type discussed thus far served the additional purpose of helping Otto I to avoid inadvertently granting the same fiscal resource to more than one recipient at the same time. This issue became particularly important when the king decided to make very large grants of property to favoured recipients, as was the case shortly after Otto’s accession to the throne. On 21 September 937, King Otto transferred a very large portfolio of properties, resources, and incomes to the church of St Maurice at Magdeburg.106 These included the royal curtis of Magdeburg, its twenty-three named dependent properties east of the Elbe, its six named dependent properties on the Horaha river, three familiae of semi-free dependents (liti) attached to the comital ministerium of Gero, fifteen familiae of Slavic dependents (Sclavi) attached to the comital ministerium of Christian, and all of the census revenues and a tenth of the revenues of the sales (venundationes) from three other named places.107 In the present context, it is important to note that Otto made these grants with the knowledge that several of these properties, excluding those belonging to the comital ministeria of Gero and Christian, had already been granted to other recipients as beneficia: cuiuscunque sint modo beneficia.108 Otto’s officials were in a position to know that many of these properties had been granted out as benefices, and thus, from an administrative perspective, they knew which properties had to be recovered in order to validate the act. Given the very large size of the donation to St Maurice, it is likely that Otto’s officials were faced with the task of identifying and then notifying a noteworthy number of fideles that their benefices were being revoked in favour of the king’s foundation at Magdeburg, so that we can see here not only a substantial and complicated amount of ‘paper work’ but also the substantial deployment of royal personnel. Moreover, since the foundation of the church of St Maurice took place in 937, just a year after Otto’s accession, it is very

105 Regarding this charter, see DO I 87. Other charters with similar information include DO I 1, 10, 22, 33, 44, 51, 57, 61, and perhaps 95 as well, if one sees the property confiscated from Lorsch as originally having been given as a beneficium. 106 DO I 14. This grant of properties serves as the foundation charter for this church. 107 DO I 14. 108 Ibid. 422 David S. Bachrach likely that the great majority if not all of the benefices in question had been granted by Henry I, and so we can see yet another example of continuity in administrative and institutional memory across the reigns of the first two Saxon kings.

VII. Conclusion

Scholars who have accepted the Herrschaft model for Ottonian Germany have failed to address the most fundamental question of administrative history: how? How was it the case that Burchard obeyed an inconvenient law established by Charlemagne that could Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 be and was enforced by Henry, the new king? How was it possible for Henry to grant as a benefice one-ninth of the entire revenues, including census payments, of forty-seven villae to the canons of the church of St Mary even as many of these villae, or portions of the facultates of these villae, were themselves held in beneficium by various other recipients? How were Henry and his fiscal officials able to draw fine distinctions in granting the census but not the labour or possession of a single group of unfree dependents? How could a royal clerk located 130 kilometres from the villa at Jupille have up-to-date information regarding the status, names and numbers of the members of this familia? How did officials working for Otto I have detailed information about benefices that were granted to recipients during the reign of Henry I? We are dealing here with a huge volume of surviving information which can be multiplied a great many times by the numerous charters that have not been discussed here. Moreover, this information was largely time-conditioned in nature. The only plausible explanation is that Henry was able to control the royal fisc, including those resources that had been granted out as benefices, because he had available substantial quantities of written information, and a staff of officials who organized, interpreted and deployed this information in the royal interest in a manner consistent with Carolingian practice highlighted in capitulary de villis. Crucial to these processes of organization and interpretation was the royal inquisitio, supervised by officials dispatched by the central government, that relied for its operation on the availability of written documents, but also on the oral testimony, taken under oath, of vast numbers of local witnesses. To assert, in the face of this kind of royal administrative practice, that Henry and his advisors were bound by some kind of ur–Germanic aversion to ‘paper-work’ is to raise an otherwise undocumented, romantic ethnic stereotype in the face of actual evidence that survives from Henry I’s reign as well as the reign of his son Otto I. In every important

109 As Giles Brown, ‘Introduction: The Carolingian Renaissance’, in Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), p. 1–51, here p. 44, makes clear with respect to Ottonian culture, ‘Wherever one looks there is continuity through the ninth century and beyond. This is especially true in the east where Ottonian culture is but late Carolingian culture under another name’. Regarding the Carolingian-style organization of the Anglo-Saxon state, see James Campbell: ‘Observations on English Government from the Tenth to the Twelfth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth Series, 25 (1975), pp. 39–54; and Campbell, ‘The Significance of the Anglo-Norman State in the Administrative History of Western Europe,’ in Werner Paravicini et Karl Ferdinand Werner (eds), Histoire comparée de l’administration (IVe-XXVIIe siècles) (Munich, 1980), pp. 117–34. Both of these studies have been reprinted with additional notes in James Campbell, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London and Ronceverte, 1986). The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 423 administrative sense, when dealing with the royal fisc, the Saxon king Henry, like his Anglo-Saxon contemporaries, was a Carolingian-style king.109

Abstract

Traditionally, scholars have depicted the early Ottonian kingdom, ruled by Henry I (919–936) as being defi- cient in royal administrative structures, particularly those that depended on the use of documents. Instead, Henry is supposed to have ruled his kingdom through a wide range of rituals associated with sacral kingship. However, it long has been recognized that both ecclesiastical and royal estates in the eastern portions of the Carolingian empire, which developed into the early German kingdom, were organized in a manner con- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/gh/article/28/4/399/688104 by guest on 01 October 2021 sistent with the dictates of the famous capitulary de villis. Recent scholarship has made it clear that this capitulary required the production of large numbers of documents, which were crucial both for the administration of individual estates and for the use of these estates by the king. This essay draws out the numerous ways in which Henry I and his officials used the ‘written word’ to administer the king’s estates, and shows an important element of royal administration that demonstrates enormous continuities with the adminstrative structures that were in place in the Carolingian Empire. Keywords: Henry I, royal estates, capitulary de villis, administration, written word, carolingian empire, continuity, documents University of New Hampshire [email protected]