Adels- Und Königsfamilien Im Spiegel Ihrer Memorialüberlieferung: Studien Zum Totengedenken Der Billunger Und Ottonen Frederick S
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Connecticut College Digital Commons @ Connecticut College History Faculty Publications History Department 4-1997 (Review) Adels- und Königsfamilien im Spiegel ihrer Memorialüberlieferung: Studien zum Totengedenken der Billunger und Ottonen Frederick S. Paxton Connecticut College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/histfacpub Part of the Diplomatic History Commons, European History Commons, and the History of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Paxton, Frederick S. "Adels- Und Königsfamilien Im Spiegel Ihrer Memorialüberlieferung: Studien Zum Totengedenken Der Billunger Und Ottonen." Speculum 62.2 (1987): 379-81. Web. This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the History Department at Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author. (Review) Adels- und Königsfamilien im Spiegel ihrer Memorialüberlieferung: Studien zum Totengedenken der Billunger und Ottonen Keywords necrology, lordship, Germany Comments Initially published in Speculum, 1997, p.379-81. Copyright © The eM dieval Academy of America 1987 DOI: 10.2307/2855233 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2855233 This book review is available at Digital Commons @ Connecticut College: http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/histfacpub/37 Medieval Academy of America Adels- und Königsfamilien im Spiegel ihrer Memorialüberlieferung: Studien zum Totengedenken der Billunger und Ottonen by Gerd Althoff Review by: Frederick S. Paxton Speculum, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Apr., 1987), pp. 379-381 Published by: Medieval Academy of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2855233 . Accessed: 01/03/2013 12:14 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Medieval Academy of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Speculum. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded on Fri, 1 Mar 2013 12:14:48 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Reviews 379 textualtechniques of Fuhrmann and Mordek. He has of course to deal withthe great difficultythat Alger's text is more of a treatisethan a collectionof laws, so that dicta and canons flowtogether. The textual solutionsare necessaryand suitable. The sub- stance of the double apparatus is appropriate, unblemished by printer'serrors or proofreading slips. But I do question the forms of notation used in the text and apparatus. Is it necessaryto clutterthe text with raised lettersin order to draw the reader's attentionto the variantsin the apparatus criticus?A line-by-linenotation is surely all that is needed. The variants themselvescould have been more simplyex- pressed: many are merelychanges in word order. For example, 2.57 (p. 305, line 9) reads "accusatoresnon debentm";in the apparatus we find"m accusatoresnon debent] non debent accusatoresCT." Whynot simply"non debent accusatorestr. CT"? Or 3.60 (p. 360, line 14) "apostolical per nos auctoritate',"which leads to the variant"i apos- tolica-auctoritate] auctoritateapostolica per nos T," where "auctoritateapostolica per nos tr.T" would have been more efficientand more informative. The fiveindices thatcomplete the volume are fulland easy to use, except in the case of the last, "Personen-,Orts- und Sachregister"(pp. 403-11). For example, Mabillon, who firstpublished the preface of DMI in 1675, appears in the index in six places, but the importantreference on page 157, note 4, is missing.Likewise Alger's use of the term "corpus canonum" (p. 111) deserves some identificationin the index. But these are triflingpoints. Dr. Kretzschmarhas produced a work of outstanding scholarshipwhich well deserves its place in the series Quellen und Forschungenzum Recht im Mittelalter. JOHN GILCHRIST Trent University GERD ALTHOFF, Adels-und Konigsfamilienim Spiegelihrer Memorialiuberlieferung: Studien zumTotengedenken der Billunger und Ottonen.(Miinstersche Mittelalter-Schriften, 47.) Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1984. Pp. 440; 4 fold-outdiagrams. DM 78. THIS BEAUTIFULLY PRODUCED and fascinatingbook should provide rich rewards to anyone interestedin the nature of lordship and the familyin the centralMiddle Ages or puzzled by the meaning and social contextof the necrologicaldocuments so charac- teristicof the age. Drawing on deep familiaritywith the necrologies of Merseburg, Magdeburg, and Luneburg, which he and Joachim Wollasch have published in a facsimileedition for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Libri Memoriales et Ne- crologia,nova series 2 [1983]), Gerd Althoffargues thatreligious houses founded and continuouslyinfluenced by one familybest preserve the commemorativerecords of thatfamily and thatthe names in theirnecrologies delineate a circleof debitores,that is, those who supported the familyand itslordship. A complete analysisof such a necrol- ogy should reveal, then, the "social horizons" of both familyand lordship at various stages of theirdevelopment. Althoff'sstudies are technicaland difficult,but the author and publisherhave gone to much trouble to aid the reader. The complexityof the argumentsis mitigatedby a welcome habit of summing up at regular intervals.The book contains an index of persons discussed in the text,four diagrams illustratingthe chronologicalscope and content of the pertinent necrologies, and, most importantly,almost 150 pages of commentaryon the people whose names were entered therein. Although the com- This content downloaded on Fri, 1 Mar 2013 12:14:48 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 380 Reviews mentsunder an individual name are oftenof littlehelp while reading the text,since theytend to summarize and referback to its arguments,the commentaryas a whole will be a useful tool for futureresearch. The addition of a subject index also would have been welcome. The necrologyof the Saxon monasteryof St. Michael, Luineburg,is the "mirror"in which Althoffis able to read the historyof the familyof Hermann Billung. But the historicalreflections are obscured in the document, since the verynature of a necrol- ogy, which lists names by death date and not as a group (as is the case with the confraternitybooks thathave been utilizedin the past), means thatthe various entries must be rearranged before furtherwork can be done. Thus the analysis proceeds archaeologically,uncovering the various layers of the necrologyand reconstructing the historicalcircumstances of theirinitiation and transmission. The earliest layer of entriessuggests that the Billungs emerged fromthe "descen- dants of Widukind," a familygroup whose members occupied the most important episcopal sees in northernSaxony in the late ninthcentury. The preservationof this early layer of memorials by Duke Hermann's brotherWichmann the Elder and his nephews Egbert and Wichmann means, argues Althoff,that the familyof Wichmann held a more centralplace in the clan in the mid-tenthcentury than thatof his brother. Moreover,because theyoriginated in the familyof Wichmann,the Luneburg memo- rials reveal the compositionof rebelliousconiurationes, for the Saxon enemies of Otto I entered into pacts not only of aid and protectionbut of mutual commemorationafter death. The ducal familyitself appears in the centerof the Luneburg memorialsonly in the 970s when a rapprochementbetween Egbert and Hermann's son Bernhard I led to the latter'sassumption of the dutyof commemoratingthe dead ancestorsand debitores of the family.This transferof responsibilitiespreviously seen to by his cousins reveals thatthe feud withinthe clan had healed and thatthe Billungs had by Bernhard's time become preeminent.Indeed the assumptionof commemorativeduties and the provi- sioningof a familyfoundation to see thatthey were carried out were, Althoffargues, preconditionsof both emergentlordship and (agnatic) familyconsciousness. The memorials of the early eleventh centurymirror the social map of the ducal house at the heightof its development. They show that,contrary to historiographical expectations,the Saxon bishops did not unanimouslysupport the eastern policies of Henry II, butjoined withthe Billungs in strongopposition to the emperor. The death of Henry and the accession of Conrad II broughtan end to the Billung coalitionwith the bishops and betterrelations with the emperor,but those did not outlastthe reign of Henry III. Unfortunatelythe Luneburg memorials give no informationon the Billungs and theirsupporters in the Saxon wars of Henry IV. For reasons thatremain unclear, the political influence and the commemorativeactivity of the Billungs de- clined sharply in the late eleventh century,and, although the author suspects some connectionbetween the two, he admits that it is not apparent. When Althoffturns to the memorials of the Ottonians,he faces a differentset of problems. First of all, no necrology from the familyfoundations at Gandersheim, Quedlinburg, or St. Moritz in Magdeburg has survived as such. His archaeological methodology,however, provides the means