Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (18 page)

Building the German Church

Burgundy and Italy already had established ecclesiastical structures dating from late antiquity when dioceses had been established on the framework provided by the Roman imperial provinces. The emperor’s primary contribution to the development of the Italian church was to encourage the pope to create new institutions in southern Italy to curb Byzantine influence during the late tenth century. These factors ensured there were 26 archdioceses in Italy in 1000, compared to six in Burgundy, seven in France, two in Britain, and one each in Poland and Hungary.

The general framework for the German church was laid out in just twenty years by Charlemagne in collaboration with the pope. Already an important base during St Boniface’s mission, Mainz was elevated to an archdiocese in 780 to oversee all missionary work east of the Rhine. The rapidity of subsequent conquests necessitated more subdivisions to allow closer supervision of the population being incorporated into the Frankish realm (
Map 13
). Cologne was raised to an archbishopric in 794 with responsibility for north-west Germany and the Frisian missions. Hamburg-Bremen was initially one of its subordinate bishoprics, but was itself raised to archiepiscopal status during the 860s with responsibility for lands beyond the Elbe. Bavaria’s submission to Carolingian rule led to Salzburg’s elevation as an archbishopric in 798. The Empire’s foundation in 800 was preceded the year before by an assembly held by Charlemagne and Leo III in Paderborn, which had served as the main military and missionary base in the campaigns against the Saxons since 770. It was agreed to leave Saxony as part of the archdiocese of Mainz, which was simultaneously confirmed as Germany’s premier archbishopric.
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Trier was raised to an archdiocese around 800 with jurisdiction over what became Lorraine, a factor in this province’s eventual attachment to Germany rather than France. Besançon was meanwhile made the senior archdiocese for Burgundy.

Complete by 800, this basic framework survived a millennium. The only major modification was made by Otto I, and the difficulties he encountered amply illustrate the role of local elites in developing the imperial church. Otto wanted to commemorate his victory at Lechfeld over the Magyars in 955 and improve coordination of missionary activity beyond the Elbe. At his imperial coronation in 962 he announced
the establishment of a new archbishopric based at Magdeburg equal in status to Mainz, which was expected to relinquish its jurisdiction over the Saxons. The bishoprics of Brandenburg and Havelberg were transferred from Mainz. The bishop of Halberstadt (also under Mainz) was required to surrender part of his diocese to create a new bishopric of Merseburg, while additional bishops were to be installed at Meissen and Zeitz in the missionary areas.

Implementation was delayed until 968 by opposition from Otto’s son, Archbishop Wilhelm of Mainz. Otto I’s death in 973 opened the way to reverse his pet project. The pope adjusted the German hierarchy in 975–6, reasserting Mainz’s premiership and extending it to include Bohemia’s bishopric, created in Prague in 973.
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Otto II used the death of the first archbishop of Magdeburg in 981 as an opportunity to suppress the bishopric of Merseburg and redistribute its resources and jurisdictions to Halberstadt, Zeitz and Meissen, which were all considered under-endowed. Giselher, the former Merseburg bishop, was compensated by promotion to the vacant see of Magdeburg. However, this still left lesser clergy deeply disgruntled, including Thietmar, a Merseburg Cathedral canon who interpreted the 983 Slav rising as divine punishment for the suppression of his beloved diocese.
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Even the imperial family were divided over the issue. Otto II’s wife Theophanu supported Thietmar, while the emperor’s mother Adelheid backed Archbishop Giselher in opposing Merseburg’s restoration. The imperial women intervened, because Merseburg’s dissolution affected the jurisdiction over convents under their patronage. Otto III ordered Merseburg’s restoration in 998, but this was only achieved when Giselher died six years later and the new king Henry II made a large donation to compensate Magdeburg and Halberstadt.
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No further archdioceses were added after Magdeburg, but the number of bishoprics grew through a subdivision of existing dioceses, and the creation of new ones as the Empire expanded eastwards again from the twelfth century. Charlemagne’s realm had contained 180 bishoprics, of which 45 were under direct papal control. A significant number were detached in the Empire’s partition in 843 following the Treaty of Verdun, but the development of the German church created 32 bishoprics and 6 archbishoprics there by 973. This total grew to over 50 by 1500, or around a tenth of all those in Latin Christendom. There were another nine that remained unincorporated within an archdiocese, as
well as five more outside all archiepiscopal control because they had been placed under direct papal supervision, like Bamberg, founded by Henry II in 1024.
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Abbeys

The eighth century already saw the foundation of abbeys as a third ecclesiastical tier junior to bishoprics and archbishoprics. Abbeys had smaller jurisdictions and were initially closer than diocesan centres to the monastic ideal of prayer. Frankish conquests both created the need for a local ecclesiastical infrastructure and secured the slave labour necessary to build it. Charlemagne is credited with founding 27 cathedrals, and 232 monasteries and abbeys, compared to 65 palaces.
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This activity created a new sacral landscape in Germany where only Mainz, Cologne and Trier had relatively old churches. Some important monasteries traced their origins to early missionary churches like St Gallen, established in Switzerland by an Irish monk in 612, though the actual church dated from the 830s. Association with a martyred missionary often influenced the choice of location, but royal or lordly initiative was important too.

Patronage of churches and abbeys helped preserve lordly family identity. The Ottonians traced their origins to Liudolf and Oda, the pious founders of Gandersheim convent. In praying for them, the Gandersheim nuns helped perpetuate the Ottonians’
memoria
, including Abbess Hrotsvith, who wrote an early family history. Moreover, the Ottonians broke even more sharply than the Carolingians with the old Frankish practice of partible inheritance, thereby increasing the need for suitable accommodation for younger or unmarried children excluded from inheritance. All Gandersheim’s early abbesses, including Hrotsvith, were Liudolf and Oda’s direct descendants.
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Patronage extended to multiple sites, especially amongst the royal family, which remained without a fixed capital into the later Middle Ages and needed staging posts for their journeys around the Empire. Extended kinship continued to outweigh patrilinear descent in family structure, also encouraging the use of different places. In addition to Gandersheim, for instance, the Ottonians developed the former Carolingian castle of Quedlinburg into another important family convent, promoted by Henry I’s widow, Matilda. Matilda held the status of
canoness regular created by the earlier Carolingian legislation, allowing her to become Quedlinburg’s first rector without taking vows as a nun.
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The Imperial Church

This ecclesiastical infrastructure emerged as the Empire developed, creating what became known as the imperial church and serving as a primary pillar of the political order into the early nineteenth century. As a new foundation, the imperial church rested on recently endowed land, most of which came directly from the emperor. The Franks had donated about a third of their land to the church between the fifth and eighth centuries, but Charles Martel had secularized much of this to fund his campaigns. Donations resumed under his grandson Charlemagne, but were most extensive in the newly conquered areas east of the Rhine where property could be redistributed from defeated peoples.
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Prüm abbey north of Trier was especially favoured, acquiring 1,700 individual properties scattered across Lotharingia, inhabited by 16,000 to 20,000 people in 893. The 12 manors belonging to St Bertin abbey in ninth-century Flanders encompassed 11,000 hectares, while Nyvel abbey near Ghent had 14,000 dependent farms when it was given by Otto II to Theophanu after their marriage in 972.
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These properties were gifted as benefices, remaining ultimately royal possessions whilst used by the beneficiaries. The Carolingians also finally achieved the long-standing Merovingian goal of enforcing the tithe as a one-tenth tax on all Christians. Bishops were charged with coordinating collection, but the role of assigning tithes to specific churches often lay with the king.
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The emperor expected a significant return on his investment. Senior clergy represented a readily identifiable group of vassals who could be summoned, in contrast to the much larger and fluctuating numbers of secular lords. The advice of clerics was valued, especially as they were usually literate, well travelled and widely connected. They could draw on their substantial endowments to supply troops for royal campaigns and coronation journeys. These burdens increased at the end of the tenth century when German kings largely stopped living in palaces and instead stayed with bishops and abbots as they toured the Empire.
Clerics critical of such displays compared royal visits with biblical plagues of locusts.
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However, the imperial church was never an exclusive instrument of royal dominion, since lesser lords were also partners in these arrangements. This point is important, since it explains why the imperial church became so deeply embedded in the Empire’s socio-political hierarchy. Secular lords were already important local donors before the ninth-century civil wars disrupted royal supervision of abbeys. Lorsch, Fulda and other important imperial abbeys acquired additional, local patrons.
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Some houses slipped entirely under local control. Others were founded by lords on their own land. These trends created a second, mediate ecclesiastical layer under lordly jurisdiction and only indirectly subject to imperial authority. Carolingian lords passed monasteries directly to their sons, and lordly control remained pronounced until revised as protectorate powers during the Investiture Dispute that began in the 1070s (see
pp. 56–60
).

Prior to Gregory VII, lordly influence was generally welcomed. The early missionaries faced a monumental task and needed lordly protection and assistance. The term parish (
parochium
) and priest (
sacerdos
) still meant diocese and bishop respectively until well into the eleventh century. Clergy remained based in the primary religious sites like cathedral towns, travelling to outlying oratories and churches to perform services. Missionary activity further promoted the incipient hierarchy through founding mother–daughter networks with satellite churches surrounding their abbeys. Further church-building allowed the initially large parishes to be subdivided. By the eleventh century, most dioceses contained sufficient numbers of parishes to require an intermediary level of deaconries to supervise them. Demarcation was often driven by the desire to define control over tithes and other resources.
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Clergy also responded to growing demands for their services from the tenth century, as well as new ideas emerging from Gregorian reform and the requirement after 1215 to confess annually. The parish structures envisaged in Carolingian legislation around 800 finally became reality in the later Middle Ages when there were 50,000 parishes in the Empire, compared to 9,000 in England and a total of 160,000 across Latin Europe.
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The impact was profound. Christianity extended beyond the elite to become a more genuinely popular religion, changing many of its practices in the process.

The ‘incorporation’ or assignment of a parish to an abbey, a deaconry, or other higher jurisdiction entailed control over its resources, including tithes and any endowments associated with its church. With this often came the power to appoint the parish priest. By 1500, half of German parishes had been incorporated in this way, often with the priests’ functions entrusted to poorly paid vicars as substitutes. This formed a major grievance fuelling what would become the Reformation, but it also illustrates the growing complexity of overlapping jurisdictions, and interconnected spiritual, economic and political interests in the Empire.

These local networks remained mediate, subject to one or more intervening levels of secular supervision below the emperor’s overall authority, as well as subordination to at least one layer of spiritual authority, such as that of an abbot or a bishop. The extensive lordly influence remained acceptable to the emperor, because he retained overall supervision of the imperial church, including the appointment of archbishops, bishops and many abbots who remained his immediate vassals on account of their benefices. There was no significant breach in this control until 1198 when the secular supervision of the bishopric of Prague was transferred to the Bohemian king. The Bohemian church acquired full autonomy in 1344 when Prague was raised to an archbishopric, freeing it from Mainz’s spiritual jurisdiction. A separate Habsburg territorial church followed Frederick III’s concordat with the pope in 1448, which was consolidated with the establishment of new bishoprics in Vienna and Wiener Neustadt in 1469, subject to Frederick’s jurisdiction as Austrian archduke rather than as emperor. However, both bishoprics would remain under the spiritual jurisdiction of the archbishop of Salzburg, despite some reduction of that cleric’s powers by Joseph II in the 1780s.