Land and Work in Mediaeval Europe (Routledge Revivals)

Selected Papers

Marc Bloch, J. Anderson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317517382
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

Land and Work in Mediaeval Europe was first published in English in 1967. Throughout the work, the idea that Marc Bloch was not only a historian but a great teacher is exemplified, as is his ability to ask interesting and original questions through his writing. Topics covered include medieval Germany, technical problems in the medieval economy and society, and the medieval class structure.

1 The Empire and the Idea of Empire under the Hohenstaufen¹

DOI: 10.4324/9781315719917-1

I The Imperial Institution

The State governed by the Hohenstaufen from 1138 to 1250 was called the Empire; the heads of this State aspired to the title of Emperor and usually bore it at least for part of their reigns. How did this political institution – the strangest known to the Middle Ages – come into being, and what in it constitutes the essentials of sovereign power?

1 Carolingian origins: the territorial formation of the Empire

At the end of the 8th and beginning of the 9th century the Frankish kingdom had subjugated and absorbed a large part of Eastern and Central Europe. On December 25th 800 its head received the imperial crown from the Pope. The German chroniclers of the 12th and 13th centuries were in the habit of summing up this event by saying that the Empire, which had previously passed from the Romans to the Greeks, was thus handed on from the Greeks to the Franks. This stating of the matter is not strictly accurate. The Greek Emperors, with their capital at Constantinople, were without any breach of tradition the heirs of the Latin-speaking Emperors whose capital city had been Rome. They continued in existence after 800, still calling themselves Emperors and holding themselves to be the legitimate successors of the Caesars. But since December 25th 800, there was once more an Emperor in the West who also claimed to be the rightful heir of Augustus and Constantine, and considered Rome to be his city and one of the principal seats of his power.

Everyone knows that the Carolingian Empire did not last as long as the State. The treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the Empire of Louis the Pious among his three sons.

In the West, there came into being the kingdom of Charles the Bald – ‘Western France’, later to become simply France.

In the East, it was the kingdom of Louis, ‘Eastern France’. To be precise, this kingdom comprised that part of the Empire extending north of the Alps and east of the Rhine, excluding – on the right bank of the river – Frisia, but including – on its left bank – the towns of Mainz, Worms and Speyer or Spires. Its inhabitants nearly all spoke Germanic dialects, lumped together in Carolingian times under the term theodisca lingua (‘the language of the people’: perhaps ‘the language of the pagans, the gentiles’). Gradually it became customary to call the inhabitants of these regions by the same name as their language: diutischiu liute. The country was called Diutischin lant, nowadays Deutschland. The oldest examples in the vulgar tongue are from the Annolied, at the end of the nth century; but evidence of its use is found in Latin transcripts from the 9th century onwards. In Latin, as a result of classical traditions and confusion with the Teutons of the 1st century b.c., they were generally called Teutonici, and the kingdom Teutonicum regnum.

Finally in the centre there was the State of Lothar, a long strip stretching from the North Sea to beyond the Tiber. The limits of this strange territory can be easily explained. Of the three sons, Lothar, the eldest, was the only one to receive (or rather to keep, for his father gave it him in his life-time) the title of Emperor; and being Emperor, he had to possess both Rome and the ‘second Rome’ beyond the Alps, Aachen, the real capital of the Empire since the end of Charlemagne’s reign – Aachen where he could see, near the tomb of his great ancestor, the imperial palace surmounted by the bronze eagle.

The Empire in the period of the Hohenstaufen consisted, territorially speaking, of the union of the State of Louis the German and the whole of the countries that had fallen to the share of Lothar.

This union came about progressively, under the following circumstances.

The dissolution of the Carolingian Empire is commonly dated from the year 843. Yet it must not be forgotten that, from 880 to 887, Charles the Fat, one of the sons of Louis the German, succeeded in uniting under one rule the various States that had been separated by the treaty of Verdun. This renovatio imperii Francorum (the actual words on Charles’s seal) was extremely short-lived. Charles the Fat died on January 13th 888, after abdicating in face of an insurrection. From this moment onwards the division was already half accomplished, and was consummated after the Emperor’s death.

The kingdoms of Eastern France (under a grandson of Louis the German, the bastard Arnuff), and Western France (under Eudes, Count of Paris), were reconstituted as they had been after Verdun. But what happened to the intermediate territory, whose fate was all the more uncertain because there were no longer any descendants of the Emperor Lothar in the male line?

Here, a distinction must be made between three parts – Italy, the Rhône region, and the country situated to the north of the high land separating the basin of the Saône from those of the Meuse and the Moselle. This last section had already formed a kingdom by itself from 855 to 869, under one of the sons of Lothar I, who bore the same name as his father – Lothar II. According to a custom that was common at this period, his subjects were called the men of Lothar, Lotharingi, from which were derived the names Lotharingia, Lothringen, Lorraine, which clung even after Lothar II’s death to the countries that had formed his kingdom. Much later on the name was restricted to the infinitely smaller region that goes by the name today.

Italy, the Rhône region, and Lorraine must all be thought of separately; one after the other they were all united with Eastern France.

To take Lorraine first. No independent power was set up there in 888. Arnulf was recognised there, as he was in Germania. But neither he nor his successors were left in peaceful possession of the country. For about a century it was a constant bone of contention between the kings of the two ‘Frances’, Eastern and Western. These struggles only came to an end when quite unexpectedly in 987, by an intrigue originating apparently in the German court, the crown of Western France passed to the house of the Roberts, to the detriment of Charlemagne’s descendants, who seemed since 936 to have made certain that it would fall to them. The new dynasty, much less attached than its rival to memories of the Carolingian past, and wielding only moderate power, ceased to concern itself with Lorraine, which now became completely absorbed in the Kingdom of Eastern France, of which it was henceforth considered to be an integral part.

Secondly, Italy.

The history of Italy is inseparable from that of the imperial name. The sovereign who found himself master of the kingdom of Italy, or, as it was also commonly called at that time, the kingdom of the Lombards, had been held since the days of Lothar I to be the prescriptive candidate for the rank of Emperor. For almost a century, the titles of King of Italy and Emperor were contested by various princes, whether related or not to the Carolingian family. In 951 the widow of one of these pretenders, Lothar of Provence, Queen Adelaide by name, being persecuted by her husband’s rival, Bérenger of Ivréa, called in the help of the king of Eastern France, Otto I. Otto crossed the Alps and married Adelaide. He took the title of King of the Italians or King of the Lombards. As yet his power was very weak. But in 961 he again crossed the mountains, this time strongly establishing his authority in Italy, and entered Rome, where on February 2nd 962 he had himself crowned Emperor by the Pope. For that time onwards the kingdom of Italy and the imperial title remained indissolubly linked to the kingdom of Eastern France.

There remains the region of the Rhône.

After the collapse of 888, two kingdoms had come into being there. In the south, there was Provence, and in the north Burgundy, with ‘Transjurania’, that is to say the Swiss plain, forming the centre. The single kingdom that was so created was henceforward known as the kingdom of Burgundy. Much later on (at the end of the 12th century) the ancient Roman towns which were traditionally held to be the capitals of the country came to be called the kingdom of Vienne or the kingdom of A les.

There was nothing very regal about this Burgundian royalty. Great lay and ecclesiastical principalities were formed, attached to the would-be sovereign by the slenderest of links. In fact at the end of the 10th century and at the beginning of the nth the only authority which the kings of Burgundy retained was in Transjurania. From the time of Otto I the German sovereigns exercised a kind of protectorate over them. The last of the line, Rodolph III, gave an assurance to the Emperor Henry II in 1016 that he might expect to be his heir; in 1032, before he died, he sent Henry’s successor Conrad II the royal insignia. Conrad occupied the country and received definitive recognition in the year 1034.

Thus the territorial formation of the ‘Empire’ was complete, apart from the eastern frontiers, which are not of interest to us here.

2 The royal election

Let us now place ourselves in the Hohenstaufen period; and with the object of making a rather closer analysis of the political constitution of Europe, let us start with the beginning of a new reign.

The Emperor has just died: who will be his successor?

In the 10th and nth centuries, the German monarchy, like all the monarchies of Europe, had lived under a regime that was a mixture of election and heredity. In the eyes of contemporaries, the electoral and the heredity principle, which appear to us to be contradictory, were not in the least opposed to one another. The ‘people’ – that is to say the great lords, lay or ecclesiastical, the only people who counted – elected their king; but his strongest title to election was the fact that he belonged to a race that was already royal. This was a survival from an age when the German tribes, who were accustomed to electing their chiefs, always chose them on principle from among the members of the same sacred families, who held high prestige, and were able by virtue of their blood to exercise command over men and affairs. Note for example the terms in which Henry II, elected in 1002 in succession to his cousin Otto III who had died childless, recalled the part played in his accession by Werner, the Bishop of Strasbourg. The passage comes from a royal proclamation. Naturally, the text was not written by the sovereign himself: the words were put into his mouth by his chancellor, and express the ideas generally accepted at the time.

‘After the death of this great emperor (Otto III), mindful of a friendship dating from childhood (between the Bishop and Ourselves), and in consideration of the ties of blood and of parentage which linked us to this great Caesar, the prelate and a great many other persons resolved to trust in us; in such wise that with God’s help we were unanimously elected by the peoples and the princes, and in us was vested the hereditary succession to one undivided kingdom.’² Here more succinctly still is the form of words contained in the Annals of Quedlim-bourg, announcing the accession of Otto I, who succeeded his father in 936: ‘he is elected by hereditary right to succeed to the kingdoms of his fathers’.³

In the time of the Hohenstaufen the position was not quite the same, in Germany or elsewhere. Changes had occurred throughout Europe, but they had taken an opposite course in different countries. In France, and in England too, though less markedly, the elective principle had vanished; the hereditary principle was firmly established, and with it respect for primogeniture. In Germany, the change was in a completely opposite direction. It reached completion at the precise period of the Hohenstaufen. The facts can speak for themselves.

In 1125 the Emperor Henry V died, leaving no issue. His nearest relatives were his nephews – his sister’s sons – Frederick and Conrad Hohenstaufen. They were not elected. The magnates gave the crown to someone quite unconnected with the previous royal house – Lothar, Duke of Saxony. True, Conrad Hohenstaufen did on his side proclaim himself king in 1127, but the attempt failed, and after eight years he had to give in. In 1138 Lothar too died, leaving no son behind him. The prospective heir appeared to be his son-in-law Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavaria, head of the Guelf family. Before his death Lothar handed over to him the royal insignia. But it was not on this prince that the election fell; it was Conrad Hohenstaufen, the former rival candidate, who obtained the crown. In 1152 Conrad died. This time royalty remained with the Hohenstaufen, and not with the son of the late king, who was held to be too young; it was Conrad’s nephew, the Duke of Swabia, Frederick (Barbarossa), who was chosen. Frederick I made certain during his lifetime that the succession would pass to one of his sons. But note that it was to a younger son, who was – for reasons that are not at all clear – preferred to the elder. Henry VI – for this became his title – entered peacefully enough into possession of his heritage, but died prematurely in 1197. Then a double election took place. The Hohenstaufen’s enemies chose a prince of the Guelf line, Otto IV; the Hohenstaufen’s partisans rallied round a representative of this house, but they passed over the son of the previous Emperor, the youthful Frederick Roger, who was only a child, and chose instead a man who was in his prime, Henry VI’s brother, Philip of Swabia. In 1208 Philip died, the victim of an assassin. But for all that Otto IV did not remain in peaceable possession. Having fallen out with Pope Innocent III, he soon saw another Hohenstaufen candidate confronting him, this same Frederick Roger, who had been previously set aside. The ‘infant’ Frederick triumphed, and became the Emperor Frederick II. But his was not at all a tranquil reign. Even during his lifetime groups of princes elected in succession two rival kings in opposition to him. His death in 1250 ushered in the period called the great interregnum. Not that Germany was then without a king; on the contrary, she had too many – almost always two at a time, both equally feeble, until in 1273 another unique election gave the crown to Rudolf of Hapsburg.

Here then was nothing resembling a hereditary right of succession in the Capetian sense of the word. It was rather a case of two tendencies, both clearly expressed by contemporaries, in contest with one another. The idea persisted in many minds that birth conferred certain rights. But on the other hand, the princes, fearing the hereditary principle because they were afraid of a strong monarchy, were only too ready to believe that a candidate for the throne was disqualified by the fact that he had a family link with the previous sovereign. Pope Innocent III, who was also hostile to the hereditary principle as far as Germany was concerned, once expressed this argument very clearly. Philip and Otto had just been elected simultaneously. Innocent III pronounced in favour of Otto. He explained his motives, stressing those which appeared likely to appeal particularly to the German lords. Amongst these arguments, here is the one that is our particular concern: ‘If, as previously [in 1190], the son succeeded the father, and people were now to see brother immediately succeeding brother, the Empire would seem to them to be no longer elective, but hereditary.’⁴ This was the extreme point of view, which did not explicitly triumph until after 1273. But let us notice that in the Hohenstaufen period, even when rights of lineage were recognised, the right of primogeniture was seldom acknowledged. Heredity – without primogeniture in a State where no partition was allowed – in an ‘indivisible’ kingdom, as Henry II called it – was not likely to prove very firmly based.

Now this disappearance of the hereditary principle was not only a matter of fact: it was also a matter of law. It was not the theory of the State’s enemies, but rather the official doctrine, that held the monarchy to be elective, and men were very ready to glory in the fact. Two examples from the beginning of the period will suffice. In 1158 Bishop Otto of Freising, Frederick Barbarossa’s uncle, wrote at the request of his imperial nephew the two books of the Gesta Friderici. At the ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• FOREWORD by F. R. H. Du Boulay
• 1. The Empire and the idea of Empire under the Hohenstaufen
• 2. A contribution towards a comparative history of European Societies
• 3. A problem in comparative history; the administrative classes in France and in Germany
• 4. Technical change as a problem of collective psychology
• 5. The advent and triumph of the watermill
• 6. Mediaeval ‘Inventions’
• 7. The problem of gold in the middle ages
• 8. Natural economy or money economy: a pseudo-dilemma
• INDEX