Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (65 page)

A new fundamental division between immediate and mediate vassals emerged as politically more significant than the earlier distinction between lay and spiritual lords. The charters identified the princes as a corporate group collectively enjoying the status of ‘imperial immediacy’ (
Reichsunmittelbarkeit
) directly under the emperor. Other lords were ‘mediate’ (
mittelbar
) under at least one intervening layer of authority between them and the emperor. Ecclesiastical princely fiefs remained more defined than their secular counterparts, because they were clearly transpersonal, whereas secular ones depended on the size and biological survival of princely families. The duchy of Merania on the Adriatic coast created in 1152 passed on the extinction of the counts of Dachau in 1180 to the counts of Andechs, but was broken up when
they died out in 1248 and was absorbed into Istria. In addition to Merania, there were 16 secular princes in 1200, including the dukes holding the rumps of Bavaria, Saxony, Swabia and Lorraine, as well as Carinthia and the new duchies of Austria, Brabant, Styria and Zähringen. The others comprised Bohemia (now a kingdom), the count Palatine, the margraves of Brandenburg, Lusatia and Meissen, the landgrave of Thuringia and the count of Anhalt. Collectively, these princes held jurisdictions covering a third of the German kingdom. Another third was held by the 47 archbishops and bishops, 27 abbots and 18 abbesses comprising the imperial church. All archbishops and bishops now held secular powers in their lands comparable to dukes. The remaining third comprised royal domains and the possessions of around 80 counts and several thousand free nobles, all of whom were still immediate under the emperor, but lacked the princes’ corporate privileges. Another 14 ducal titles were created across the next two centuries, compared to only two dissolutions following family extinctions (Merania, Zähringen) (
Table 5
). The Swabian title was also defunct following the death of the last Staufer in 1268 when the bulk of its associated possessions passed to the count of Württemberg. The Franconian title had been transferred to the bishop of Würzburg in 1168, but effectively ceased to exist outside the bishopric itself.
¹⁹

Twelve of the new titles involved the elevation of loyal counts by grateful monarchs who used their prerogatives to adjust the status of existing counties to duchies. Brunswick’s elevation was an exception that proves the marginal role played by personal possessions in the formation of German territories. Having returned to Germany and imprisoned his own son in 1235, Frederick II was at the height of his power and finally persuaded the Welfs to accept peace on his terms. They surrendered their allodial possessions around Brunswick and received them back as an imperial fief augmented by the income from the crown lands at Goslar. This established Frederick’s own claim on Brunswick’s resources through vassalage, and confined the Welfs to a relatively minor role until the family’s dramatic resurgence during the seventeenth century. It also confirmed the three-way division of the old Saxon duchy into Westphalia (associated with Cologne), Brunswick in the centre, and Sachsen-Lauenburg in the east, held by the Askanier until their extinction in 1689.

The emergence of this princely elite around 1200 incorporated the
more successful of the pushy new lordly families emerging since the later tenth century who had acquired titles of margrave or landgrave, as well as the count Palatine and the Askanier counts of Anhalt. Similarly, the counts of Cilli acquired princely status without receiving a ducal title. Baden’s rulers originated as a distant branch of the Zähringen family installed as margraves of Verona in 1061. They kept their margrave title when they transferred to possessions on the Upper Rhine in 1112. The territories known later as Ansbach and Bayreuth became margraviates through their acquisition by the burgrave of Nuremberg around 1415. Brabant and Limburg became duchies around the beginning of the twelfth century as Henry IV and Henry V temporarily transferred the disputed Lorraine ducal title to their counts during the Salian civil war. Likewise, the lordship of Bouillon became a duchy in 1330 through its acquisition by later dukes of Lorraine. What became
known as the Saxon duchies emerged from the defunct landgraviate of Thuringia, which passed to the Wettin family during the thirteenth century. Later partitions amongst the Wettins created separate duchies in Altenberg, Coburg, Eisenach, Gotha, Meiningen and Weimar from fragments of Thuringia. Likewise, partitions within the Palatine and Welf families by the seventeenth century attached princely status to many of their counties and lordships as these were parcelled out among different heirs. In all cases, the emperor’s permission was required, providing further opportunities to extract concessions from the beneficiaries.
²⁰

Table 5. New Ducal Titles

*raised to a margraviate, though its later lords claimed ducal status

**new title of ‘archduke’ invented by Duke Rudolf IV

Hierarchy and Status

The last of the medieval elevations occurred in 1495 when the count of Württemberg was made duke, legitimated through his possession of Teck, which had once been held by the defunct dukes of Zähringen. Thereafter, counts who were promoted simply received the title of ‘prince’ (
Fürst
), adding a subtle, yet significant distinction between themselves as ‘new princes’ and the ‘old princely houses’ holding electoral, ducal, margravial or landgravial rank. Titles served as fine distinctions within an otherwise common corporate group and became the focus of often intense competition during early modernity.

All immediate fiefs were linked to the emperor through the obligations of vassalage. Women acquired the status of duchess, margravine or princess through marriage or kinship, but were generally disbarred from fief-holding. This had obvious disadvantages as families adopted more dynastic inheritance strategies. Since around 1037, emperors had designated some fiefs as
Weiberlehen
, permitting women to inherit if the vassal died without a son.
²¹
The most important of these ‘women’s fiefs’ was Austria, which was designated as such in 1156. The emperor benefited from continuity of service since, though the female fief-holder could not serve herself, she was obliged to send male warriors to fulfil her duties. There were at least ten female imperial fiefs by the eighteenth century, while Charles VI effectively converted the entire Habsburg hereditary possessions into one through the Pragmatic Sanction in 1713 to allow his daughter, Maria Theresa, to inherit.
²²
The idea of
Leihezwang
expressed in the thirteenth-century
Sachsenspiegel
suggested the emperor had to redistribute any fief that fell vacant. This
was never formally adopted and was rendered irrelevant by the flexibility of inheritance arrangements that ensured there were always heirs. In practice, the emperor had to buy off or defeat claimants if he wanted to retain a vacant fief. The difficulties are illustrated by the long and ultimately fruitless attempts by thirteenth-century kings to retain the landgraviate of Thuringia after the death of Heinrich Raspe in 1247.

Many immediate fiefs were small and not associated with princely titles. Some were parcels of royal domains that remained in the hands of former ministeriales during the later thirteenth century. Others belonged to knights who only secured recognition of immediacy in the sixteenth century (see
pp. 553–62
). However, the vast majority were classed as mediate fiefs following the Staufer legislation and in turn fell into two main categories. The first, known as ‘knight’s fiefs’ (
Ritter-
or
Schildlehen
), obliged their holders to act as armed retainers for their lord and provided the primary way in which princes discharged their own obligations to the Empire prior to early modernity. The second category emerged through the extension of vassalage as a means of profiting from the new forms of wealth being created by commoners. ‘Wallet fiefs’ developed in late medieval Austria and Bavaria as peasants agreed to pay dues into their lord’s wallet (
Beutel
) rather than perform various services in person. In fourteenth-century Brandenburg and elsewhere, burghers acquired fiefs and even towns held them collectively. The commercialization of fief-holding and lordship generally allowed this to spread as lords sold or pawned fiefs. By 1596, 54 of Württemberg’s 181 lesser fiefs were held by commoners.
²³

Contemporaries responded to the growing complexity of feudal arrangements by trying after 1200 to fix their overall structure in what was known as the ‘military shield order’ (
Heerschildordnung
). This envisaged a hierarchy descending from the king through ecclesiastical princes, secular princes, counts and barons, subvassals of these, further subvassals or ministeriales and finally the commoner ‘passive vassals’. Authors accepted some regional variations, but such schemes remained an idealized representation of reality and were abandoned by 1500.
²⁴
There was never a single continuous feudal chain from king to peasant. All secular princes and most counts and barons were in fact immediately subordinate to the king, and not through other intermediaries.

More meaningful distinctions were expressed in new forms of homage and investiture rituals developed during the thirteenth century. Princes received enfeoffment in person from the enthroned king to symbolize their proximity to majesty. Counts and knights were summoned to receive enfeoffment from their nearest prince acting as the emperor’s proxy, while citizens swore homage through their magistrates in the imperial cities. Princely investitures assumed increasingly elaborate forms in the high Middle Ages. A prince would arrive at the emperor’s camp with hundreds of followers. He would then ride round the king three times while his nearest relations kneeled as petitioners before the monarch. The prince then dismounted and knelt to receive investiture (see
Plate 23
). The development of heraldry added to the display. Electors received flags emblazoned with the badge of their arch-office, while senior immediate vassals were given red flags symbolizing their superior ‘bloody jurisdiction’ (
Blutsgerichtsbarkeit
) over capital crimes.
²⁵
Elements of written culture crept in; for instance, the counts were summoned by letter rather than imperial heralds by the fifteenth century. However, the rituals demonstrated the continued importance of the personal element in these arrangements, which, like those during the earlier Middle Ages, were agreed discreetly in advance to avoid public humiliation for the participants.

TERRITORIALIZATION

Territories in Imperial History

Territorialization denotes how the status and rights associated with fiefs became fixed in specific lands. The term derives from Leopold von Ranke in 1839 who distinguished political development at the level of the principalities from that at national level. Like ‘feudalization’, the term is both useful and problematic. Ranke’s distinction proved fundamental in entrenching the dualist interpretation of the Empire being eaten from within as the principalities supposedly usurped the emperor’s powers. It implies that territorialization was ‘unwanted’, driven instead by princes who placed their own interests above those of the nation. The customary linkage of ‘territory’ to ‘state’ adds to this, suggesting a federalization of the Empire as a loose association of what became de
facto independent states. Similar problems stem from the strong contemporary tradition of regional history, which traces the development of the modern German federal states (
Bundesländer
) from the various principalities, counties and cities once occupying their current space.
²⁶

Territorialization was a feature of the entire Empire and not just those principalities large enough to appear on the pages of historical atlases. The process emerged from the wider adjustments of power outlined in the preceding section and which represented a division of labour within the elite’s collective responsibility for the Empire. The emperor upheld the Empire’s overall integrity, pursued the imperial mission, and offered ‘leadership’ along the lines of idealized kingship. The princely elite exercised more local responsibilities for order and justice through their ‘political self-sufficiency’.
²⁷
They were expected to carry out their tasks without the emperor’s supervision or assistance. Territorialization developed to enable them to achieve this, thus complementing rather than contradicting imperial authority. The late medieval and early modern conflicts between emperors and princes remained largely personal, not constitutional.