Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (66 page)

The exercise of jurisdiction had always entailed some sense of spatial limits, though this was complicated by the fact that authority was often over people, not places. As earlier chapters have indicated, the original duchies were not understood by their inhabitants as having precise frontiers. The feudalization of vassalage helped change conceptions of space and authority, encouraging the reconfiguration of the Empire’s internal order as a hierarchy of spatial divisions defined by the feudal order. These divisions gradually acquired solidity, crystallizing between about 1480 and 1580. While they could be combined into larger units, they could no longer be merged or dissolved into each other. New administrative subdivisions emerged that became equally rigid. These boundaries persisted well beyond 1806, in some cases to the present.

Social and Economic Factors

Territorialization is associated with princes, but was only possible thanks to the demographic and economic growth since the eleventh century that enabled lords to exploit land more intensively and extensively. Much of the Empire remained covered in forest and twelfth-century lords acquired more exclusive rights over these and other ‘empty’ areas,
and used the prerogatives granted by the emperor to command the labour needed to clear woodland, drain marshes and plant wastes. The internal migration discussed in
Chapter 2
was also part of this general situation. Changes in land use necessitated clearer boundaries to demarcate lordly authority and secure exclusive claims to labour and resources. Meanwhile, the greater concentration of wealth and people provided support for a larger and denser lordly hierarchy, especially in south and west Germany.

The Staufer charters of 1220 and 1231 accelerated an existing trend to fix authority in writing. The nascent princely elite began creating their own chancelleries from their personal chapel staff, like the emperor had done three centuries earlier. Cologne, the Palatinate and Upper Bavaria all did this during the thirteenth century, being joined by Austria (1299) and Württemberg (1350). Most others only followed in the fifteenth century, including Saxony (1428), Lower Hessen (1469), and all larger territories after the 1480s.
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These bodies developed their own internal hierarchies and demarcation of function as their advisory role was transferred to separate ‘court councils’, which also assumed greater permanence around the mid-fourteenth century. The chancelleries’ initial primary task was to maintain the feudal registers (
Lehensbücher
) appearing from 1220 and listing subordinate vassals and their obligations. The registers were expanded from the mid-fourteenth century to record the issuing of charters and other key documents and were soon supplemented by correspondence ledgers. These developments were rarely consistent, nor planned. Tirol maintained financial accounts from 1288, but stopped this when it passed to the Habsburgs in 1363 and only resumed the practice in 1415.

Territorialization was also related to the broader social transformation from aristocratic kindreds to patrilinear families, because the greater wealth both reduced mutual dependency whilst increasing the desire to demarcate exclusive shares. Like the emperors, princely families developed identities around castles, monasteries and family tombs. The margraves of Baden developed the Cistercian monastery of Lichtenfeld in 1248, which they used to bury their dead for the next 150 years as a focal point for their self-identity.
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One family’s misfortune was often a boon to others and the margraves were fortunate to acquire additional territory through inheritance. Natural extinction ended the rise of the Ebersbergers in Bavaria, Conradiners in the Wetterau and
Ezzonids on the Lower Rhine by the mid-eleventh century, dispersing their carefully accumulated lands to others. Indeed, the development of patrilinear families created smaller breeding groups, increasing the chances of extinction, though those chances were now usually only limited to individual branches. The demise of the Zähringer in 1218 halted the growth of a potentially powerful south-west German duchy, which was split between what became Baden, Fürstenberg and the Swiss confederation. Conversely, the longevity of individual rulers often contributed to territorialization. Count Eberhard I ruled Württemberg for 46 years after 1279, enabling him to exploit four changes of king to recover lands lost at the start of his reign to Rudolf I. Count Eberhard II’s 48-year rule after 1344 then consolidated Württemberg and provided the basis for its subsequent elevation to a duchy.
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Unlike the emperor, lords holding immediate fiefs enjoyed greater powers to escheat lesser, mediate fiefs, enabling them to block potential local rivals by preventing anyone accumulating too many holdings. Meanwhile, the recovery of vacant mediate fiefs allowed lords to reward loyal clients by enfeoffing them. As a result, access to higher status grew more restricted, since it was difficult for lesser nobles to accumulate their own powerbase, which could support their personal elevation. The difficulty in securing sufficient land contributed to biological extinction. Only 10 of the 25 Styrian lordly (
Herren
) families in 1300 survived a century later, while those in Carinthia declined from 12 to two across 1286–1446. The number of Austrian lordly families fell from 33 in 1200 to nine by 1450. Changes in the lower ranks were even greater: 118 Lower Austrian knightly families died out between 1524 and 1574, followed by another 92 by 1625. Only 83 of the 259 Brandenburg noble families in 1540 were still represented in 1800. This reflected a ‘natural’ process in pre-industrial Europe because richer families fared better as they produced more children. Thus, while a status group might preserve its overall wealth, its composition could change significantly as the poorer families died out. Unless it opened its ranks to new members, such a group could face gradual extinction. The top stratum of the bishop of Würzburg’s vassals was the only one to grow (from 12 families in 1303 to 51 by 1519), whereas the total number of vassal families declined from 421 to 182 in the same period.
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Although the Würzburg mediate elite prospered, they and their
equivalents elsewhere had no prospect of forming their own territories without first acquiring the status of immediacy through their own personal elevation, or the purchase or inheritance of an existing immediate fief. However, even counties offered only a restricted basis, since most of the large ones had already been raised as new principalities. Most of the counties that remained in the fourteenth century only comprised a castle, small town or large village, and some parcels of land. Rule here was more direct, since few counts had many mediate vassals of their own. Dynastic partitions eroded the potential of many counts’ families on the Rhine, Main and Danube. For instance, the county of Löwenstein was sold to the Palatinate in the mid-fifteenth century only to re-emerge after 1611 to accommodate junior lines of the Wittelsbachs. Counts declined in prestige as a group because many counties passed into the hands of princes whose ranks were also growing. The counts of Görz sold all their possessions to the Habsburgs between 1335 and 1500. By 1400, few of the families of counts had held that rank for more than a century and none were viable contenders to be German king in contrast to the position around 1300 (see
pp. 377–96
).

Growing commercialization contributed to territorialization by eroding the original military function of vassalage and providing a way that additional fiefs could be acquired. Fiefs could be assessed in terms of cash values, derived from revenue streams or land prices, rather than in disparate forms of produce and bundles of rights and obligations. It became easier to transfer fiefs, because it was clearer what was being sold and how much it should cost. This also helped resolve inheritance disputes without involving the emperor as arbitrator. Large fiefs were very expensive. Albrecht III sold his share of the Habsburg lands to his brother Leopold for 100,000 florins in 1379, while Sigismund transferred Brandenburg to Friedrich IV of Hohenzollern for four times that sum in 1415.
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Those with cash could develop and expand their territories. The Württemberg counts founded only seven towns, but bought three in the thirteenth century, 47 in the fourteenth and 10 more in the fifteenth century. This example illustrates another general point in that the counts bought land and lordships wherever these became available as a means to amass wealth and influence, rather than to create a neat, compact territory. For example, they made extensive purchases in the 1320s in Alsace, a considerable distance across the Rhine from their county; safeguarding these enclaves would haunt Württemberg rulers
until they were finally lost in the French Revolutionary Wars.
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Although families generally tried to concentrate their acquisitions from the late fourteenth century, territorialization continued to follow the logic of the imperial status hierarchy, not modern geopolitical thinking.

The intensification of vassalage and commercialization of fief-holding combined to create new subdivisions within princely jurisdictions. These, in turn, slowly gave fiefs greater geographical coherence. Dependent vassals became more closely associated with these subdivisions after the mid-thirteenth century. Other factors assisted this, including the shift to patrilinear families based in castles where the eldest male assumed responsibility for discharging obligations to the lord. The emergence of a more fixed parish structure also provided a handy means to define the shape of the subdivisions, which increasingly became known as ‘districts’ (
Ämter
). This process was neither rational nor planned. Most princely jurisdictions remained a collection of subordinate fiefs. Large chunks of land often remained unincorporated within the district structure – in some cases into the eighteenth century. Districts were generally small, mostly only three or four parishes, but they never replaced villages and towns as the primary foci for inhabitants’ identities.

Nonetheless, districts slowly acquired greater coherence, especially as they developed more clearly as administrative units under district officials (
Amtleute
or
Amtmänner
). Larger territories like Bavaria, Saxony, Styria and the Palatinate created superior districts (
Oberämter
) as an additional coordinating layer between the centre and localities. Again, variations remained. Officials in only 13 of the 40 to 45 districts in sixteenth-century Brandenburg were directly appointed by the elector, with the rest comprising his subvassals serving in that capacity under feudal obligations.
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By then, the district was the chief administrative unit in most territories and its official received new powers in line with the expanding ambitions of princes to regulate ordinary life and to meet the new obligations imposed by imperial reform (see
pp. 396–408
and
445–62
). Above all, districts provided the infrastructure required to collect taxes. Geldern in north-west Germany was unusual in already establishing a central treasury with its own accounts in 1290 in addition to the ledgers maintained by the districts. The other small Rhenish territories followed suit by 1350, but Austria and Bavaria were more typical in only doing this around 1500.

Ecclesiastical Territorialization

Ecclesiastical lords were initially ahead of their secular counterparts in developing the elements that eventually fused as territorialization. Bishops and abbots already lived apart from other clergy in their own residences by 900, followed by abbesses during the twelfth century, adding to their sense of being by various definitions ‘superior’.
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The task of church-building, together with the higher burdens imposed by medieval kings on the imperial church, encouraged the development of taxes well before these appeared in most secular fiefs. As we have seen (
pp. 347–8
), ecclesiastical lords were the first to employ ministeriales, circa 1020. Around a century later, these lords were building their own stone castles, like Aschaffenburg (1122) and Erfurt (1123) that were constructed to protect the archbishop of Mainz’s key possessions. Ecclesiastical lords also benefited from being based in towns, whereas few secular lordships possessed sizable towns prior to the later Middle Ages. Senior clerics had already developed traditions of being buried in their main church before most secular lords cultivated family tombs.

However, ecclesiastical territorialization gathered pace precisely at a time when many cathedral towns escaped episcopal jurisdiction by securing recognition of their self-governance. Bishops retained control of the cathedral and usually some other important buildings, but otherwise lost the ability to command the inhabitants’ wealth and labour (see
pp. 512–15
). Although senior clergy developed a sense of transpersonal office, they were not hereditary rulers. The Investiture Dispute and papal schisms proved particularly disruptive, because rival popes frequently appointed their own bishops to the same see. Even under normal conditions, a new bishop often had to find his feet and cultivate local clients. Cathedrals and abbeys had their own administrations known as ‘chapters’ staffed by canons supported by benefices attached to the church. Chapters acquired additional resources and rights. For example, Henry IV allowed the chapter in Speyer to own property after 1101. Chapters considered themselves representatives of their church and had displaced lesser clergy and lay inhabitants from any role in selecting new bishops and abbots by the high Middle Ages. The position of chapters was strengthened by the outcome of the Investiture Dispute, which confirmed the principle of ‘free election’. The chapters developed along broadly similar lines to the Empire’s electoral college
and entrenched their position by bargaining ‘electoral agreements’ from prospective bishops and abbots from the fourteenth century. Innocent XII forbade further agreements after 1695 and though such contracts continued to be made, bishops were generally backed by the pope and emperor in the event of disputes. Moreover, canons frequently hoped to become bishops themselves, and so refrained from undermining episcopal powers too far. Ecclesiastical princes thus broadly followed their secular counterparts in adopting a more command-style of governance from the later seventeenth century, complete with magnificent new palaces to display their status.
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