How Medieval Europe was Ruled [1 ed.] 9781032100173, 9781032100166, 9781003213239, 1032100176

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HOW MEDIEVAL EUROPE WAS RULED

The vast majority of studies on rulership in medieval Europe focus on one kingdom; one type of rule; or one type of ruler. This volume attempts to break that mold and demonstrate the breadth of medieval Europe and the various kinds of rulership within it. How Medieval Europe was Ruled aims to demonstrate the multiplicity of types of rulers and polities that existed in medieval Europe. The contributors discuss not just kings or queens, but countesses, dukes, and town leadership. We see that rulers worked collaboratively with one another both across political boundaries and within their own borders in ways that are not evident in most current studies of kingship, inhibited by too narrow a focus. The volume also covers the breadth of medieval Europe from Scandinavia in the north to the Italian peninsula in the south, Iberia and the Anglo-Normans in the west to Rus, Byzantium and the Khazars in the east. This book is geared towards a wide audience and thus provides a broad base of understanding via a clear explanation of concepts of rule in each of the areas that is covered. The book can be utilized in the classroom, to enhance the presentation of a medieval Europe survey or to discuss rulership more specifically for a region or all of Europe. Beyond the classroom, the book is accessible to all scholars who are interested in continuing to learn and expand their horizons. Christian Raffensperger is the Kenneth E. Wray Chair in the Humanities at Wittenberg University. The focus of his scholarly work has been on connecting eastern Europe with the rest of medieval Europe. This began with his first book, Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus’ in the Medieval World (2012) and has continued through numerous other books and articles.

HOW MEDIEVAL EUROPE WAS RULED

Edited by Christian Raffensperger

Designed cover image: “Miniature from the “Skylitzes Chronicle” (13th century), Photo 12/ Alamy Stock Photo CW5DXD” First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Christian Raffensperger; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Christian Raffensperger to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Raffensperger, Christian, editor. Title: How medieval Europe was ruled / edited by Christian Raffensperger. Description: London ; New York, NY : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023012691 (print) | LCCN 2023012692 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032100173 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032100166 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003213239 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Europe—Politics and government—476-1492. | Kings and rulers, Medieval. Classification: LCC D131 .H69 2024 (print) | LCC D131 (ebook) | DDC 940.1—dc23/eng/20230602 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023012691 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023012692 ISBN: 978-1-032-10017-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-10016-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-21323-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239 Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra

CONTENTS

List of Contributors 1 Reimagining Medieval Rulership in the Twenty-First Century Christian Raffensperger

xiii 1

2 Dying by the Sword: The Many Faces of Rulership in Christian Iberia a Thousand Years Ago Simon R. Doubleday

11

3 The Rise of Administrative Queenship in the A nglo-Norman Realm? Lois Huneycutt

27

4 Khazaria: The Exception Which Proves the Rules Alex Mesibov Feldman

41

5 Nobility, Loyalty and Dynasty in Medieval Bosnia Emir O. Filipovi´c

59

6 “Self-Governance at the King’s Command”: Towns and Their Sovereign in Medieval Hungary Katalin Szende 7 The Governance of Medieval Poland Paul W. Knoll

73 92

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8 Governing the Byzantine Empire: Politics and Administration, ca. 850–1204 Nathan Leidholm

107

9 Governing the Latin East: Jerusalem from 1099 to 1174 Erin L. Jordan

126

10 How Popes Governed Christendom? Kirsi Salonen

142

11 The Governance of High Medieval Norway (c. 1100–1350) Hans Jacob Orning

159

12 Kyivan Rus: A Complicated Kingdom Christian Raffensperger

176

13 The Princes and the King in Medieval Germany, ca. 1125–1350 Jonathan R. Lyon 14 How Early Medieval Italy was Ruled: Land and Power Edward Schoolman 15 Rulership and Governance of Medieval Bulgaria: Seventh to Fifteenth Centuries Kiril Petkov

191 208

223

Index 241

CONTRIBUTORS

Simon R. Doubleday is Professor of History at Hofstra University (New York). His books include The Lara Family: Crown and Nobility in Medieval Spain (2001) and The Wise King: A Christian Prince, Muslim Spain, and the Birth of the Renaissance (2015); he is also completing a book on León and Galicia in the reign of Sancha and Fernando I (forthcoming, 2024). He has co-edited In the Light of Medieval Spain: Islam, the West, and the Relevance of the Past (2008); Border Interrogations: Questioning Spanish Frontiers (2008); Why the Middle Ages Matter: Medieval Light on Modern Injustice (2011); and Galicia no tempo de Afonso X [Galicia in the age of Alfonso X] (2021). He was Founding Editor of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies and has also served as President of the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain. He has received several grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship. Alex M. Feldman completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham in 2018.

As a postdoctoral fellow at the  Warburg Institute, University of London, he published his PhD thesis as a book, entitled The Monotheisation of Pontic-Caspian Eurasia, 8–13th Centuries, which focuses on the process of the adoptions of various forms of monotheisms, involving historical ethnicity, theology, periodization and civilizational analysis between Central Europe, Byzantium, Rus’ and deeper into Eurasia. His next book on the evolution of Orthodox political economy from Byzantium to the Russian Empire is entitled  Orthodox Mercantilism: Political Economy in the Byzantine Commonwealth. He is the chair of the Languages and Literature department at CIS Endicott International University of Madrid. Emir O. Filipovic´  is Associate Professor of Medieval History and head of the

Doctoral Studies Programme in History at the University of Sarajevo. He has obtained his PhD in 2014 and has authored, edited and co-edited several books

xiv Contributors

pertaining to various topics from the history of Bosnia in the Middle Ages. His most recent monographs deal with relations between the Bosnian Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire (1386-1463), as well as with the construction of dynastic identity in medieval Bosnia. Lois L. Huneycutt is Associate Professor of History at the University of Missouri,

Columbia. A specialist in northwestern Europe in the central medieval period, she is the author of Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship, numerous articles on twelfth-century queens and queenship, and is currently writing a joint biographical study of Matilda of Boulogne, and the “Empress” Matilda, Countess of Anjou. She received her PhD from the University of California, Santa ­Barbara under the joint direction of C. Warren Hollister and Jeffrey Burton Russell. Erin L. Jordan is a member of the faculty in the department of history at Colorado

State University. Her research investigates the intersection of power, religion and gender in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She has published widely on the experience of monastic women. Her book, Women, Power and Religious Patronage (Palgrave, 2006) examined the political actions of the countesses of Flanders. Her current research focuses on the political culture of the Latin East, particularly in regard to the role played by women in the governance of the Crusader States. Work on this topic includes several published essays as well as her current book project, The Women of Antioch: Gender, Power and Political Culture in the Latin East. Paul W. Knoll is Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of Southern California (PhD, University of Colorado, 1964). His major scholarly interests are the political and cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, with specialization in university history and conciliarism. Among his numerous publications are two prize-winning books, The Rise of the Polish Monarchy. Piast Poland in East Central Europe, 1320–1370 (1972) and “A Pearl of Powerful Learning.” The University of Cracow in the Fifteenth Century (2016). He also has translated into English, with Frank Schaer, the Gesta principum Polonorum, a medieval Polish chronicle traditionally known as “Gallus Anonymous,” published by Central European University Press in 2003. Nathan Leidholm  holds a PhD in Byzantine History from the University of Chicago. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Program in Cultures, Civilizations and Ideas at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He is the author of Elite Byzantine Kinship: Blood, Reputation, and the Genos (Arc Humanities Press, 2019), in addition to several articles and book chapters. Jonathan R. Lyon  is Professor of History at the University of Chicago. His

research and teaching focus on the political and social history of Germany, Austria, and the Holy Roman Empire in the medieval period, particularly ­

Contributors  xv

the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. He has held fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Austrian Science Fund, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the J. William Fulbright Program, and the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Foundation. His first book, Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100–1250 (Cornell, 2013), won the 2017 John Nicholas Brown Prize for the best first book from the Medieval Academy of America. Hans Jacob Orning is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oslo.

He submitted his PhD in 2004, published as Unpredictability and Presence: Norwegian Kingship in the High Middle Ages (2008). He has also published The Reality of the Fantastic: The Magical, Geopolitical and Social Universe of Late Medieval Saga Manuscripts (2017) and Constant Crisis – The Civil Wars in Norway Deconstructed, c. 1196–1208 (forthcoming 2021). He is co-editor of Nordic Elites in Transformation I-III ­(2019–20). His main research area is Nordic political culture in the Middle Ages. Kiril Petkov is Professor of Medieval and Mediterranean History at the University of Wisconsin River Falls, USA. He holds PhDs in medieval Bulgarian and Balkan History (1994, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) and in medieval and early modern Western European history (NYU, 2002). His research interest is in the interfaith and intercultural history of the premodern Western world and the Eastern Mediterranean. He is the author and translator of numerous works including; The Maltese Dialogue: Guiseppe Cambiano, History, Institutions, and Politics of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, 1554–1556, Coriolano Cippico, The Deeds of Commander Pietro Mocenigo in Three Books, The Voices of Medieval Bulgaria, SeventhFifteenth Century: The Records of a Bygone and was the editor of State and Church: Studies in Medieval Bulgaria and Byzantium. Christian Raffensperger  is the Kenneth E. Wray Chair in the Humanities as well as professor and chair of History at Wittenberg University. He is the author of several books including Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus’ and the Medieval World (2012), Conflict, Bargaining, and Kinship Networks in Medieval Eastern Europe (2018), and Rulers and Rulership in the Arc of Medieval Europe (2023). The larger goal of his work is to demonstrate the interconnectivity of medieval Europe and to break down the barrier between eastern and western Europe created and perpetuated in the historiography. Kirsi Salonen is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Bergen, Norway. She is a specialist in the medieval papal administration, especially the Apostolic Penitentiary and the Sacra Romana Rota, and has done research in the Vatican Archives for over 20 years. Her latest monograph on the topic is Papal Justice in the Late Middle Ages: The Sacra Romana Rota (Routledge: London & New York, 2016).

xvi Contributors

Edward M. Schoolman is Associate Professor of History and the University of Nevada, Reno, where he focuses on the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean. He published a monograph, Rediscovering Sainthood in Italy: Hagiography and the Late Antique Past in Medieval Ravenna in 2016, and is working on a new book project on Greek identity; as part of an interdisciplinary team, his research extends into the interconnections between history and ecology in Italy. Katalin Szende is Professor of Medieval Studies at Central European University.

Her research concentrates on medieval cities and towns in the Carpathian Basin and Central Europe: their society, demography, literacy, everyday life, and topography. She has published Trust, Authority and the Written Word in the Royal Towns of Medieval Hungary (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 41, Brepols, 2018), is co-editor and contributor of the volumes Medieval Buda in Context (Brill, 2016) and Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2016, with Gerhard Jaritz). She is a board member of the International Commission for the History of Towns and president of the Medieval Central Europe Research Network (MECERN).

1 REIMAGINING MEDIEVAL RULERSHIP IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Christian Raffensperger

More than half a century ago, Ernst Kantorowicz published The King’s Two ­Bodies, a book that was incredibly positively reviewed and helped to shape our understanding of kingship in medieval Europe as situated around ritual and belief.1 The book spawned a reaction among revisionist scholarship in more recent times, most well known among them perhaps The King’s Other Body by Theresa Earenfight; an attempt to add the queen into the discourse of monarchy with the formulation of “collective monarchy,” explicitly challenging Kantorowicz’s definition of rulership as implicitly about kingship.2 This dichotomy of discourse and revision could be repeated in regard to the historiographies of rulership across medieval Europe; taking France as just one example, we see the scholarship of Georges Duby which largely excludes women from discussions of elite rulership challenged successfully by numerous authors such as Amy Livingstone.3 Both of these examples are about the inclusion of women – an essential element in discussing rulership in medieval Europe. However, there are other shifts afoot as well. Geographically speaking the majority of territory discussed in older studies of rulership was focused on England and France, and their progression toward centralization in the late medieval period. This was noted as recently as 2000 when Joseph Huffman critiqued this model: The Anglo-American historiographical tradition was built around Whig notions of state building and modernization. The common purpose of both Anglo-American and French historiography was to show how the rise of impersonal institutions shaped the state. Of course, such a historical paradigm naturally produced the conclusion in Anglo-French historiography that medieval Germany was simply backward in comparison to western Europe.4 DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-1

2  Christian Raffensperger

Huffman’s purpose, as is clear, is to attempt to include the German Empire in the conception of medieval Europe and medieval governance that had been clearly defined in opposition to models created to fit England and France. Iberia, as advocated for by Earenfight and others including Lucy Pick, Therese Martin, and Miriam Shadis has a yet different model for developing rulership and one also not easily mapped onto a modern nation-state.5 Such attempts to remake our understanding of medieval rulership in circumscribed areas are essential building blocks for understanding medieval rulership more broadly. But one must also look at the whole tapestry of rulership to attempt to understand what is going on in the broader world, medieval Europe, or in the Christian world at the very least. Works that broad are largely a lacuna in the scholarship. In fact, 2020 and 2021 saw three publications on rulership in medieval Europe with differing levels of success in this regard. Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World created a tripartite division of states and rulers.6 The goal of the tripartite division is to cover a broader area, but the editors’ perspective that the three regions would be dealt with separately hamstrung any ideas of a larger world that could be elicited by the contributors, leaving it to the mind of the reader. More successful was Björn Weiler’s Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe.7 Though Weiler creates a circumscribed area of Latin Europe, purposefully excluding Byzantium and any “Orthodox” area, he covers a wide range of territory with examples not just from England and France, but Iberia, Scandinavia, Poland, Hungary, and elsewhere. Of course, the title also gives away another narrowing factor of the work which is its sole focus on kings, as opposed to rulers, inclusive of queens. The final of the three recent books is Robert Bartlett’s Blood Royal which is a thematic overview of the possible life cycles of a medieval ruling family and includes male and female rulers (though unevenly dealt with) and all of medieval Europe, inclusive of Byzantium.8 But with a focus on life cycles and episodic across a wide time range, it does not deal with rulership in much depth in any one particular place – this is not its purpose. All of these books then demonstrate the interest and appetite that scholars have for engaging and reengaging with ideas of rulership in the twenty-first century. What they do not do, largely, is engage with all of medieval Europe or with the idea that “ruler” means more than “king.” This volume aims to serve as a corrective to such developments, though within a particular scope. The essays in this volume all deal with rulership, but they are purposefully about different regions of medieval Europe, different types and levels of rulership, and with different foci to demonstrate that rulership was manifold in the Middle Ages. There are, of course, still limitations and one of the main ones of this volume is that almost all of the contributions focus upon Christian Europe. While Alex M. Feldman’s piece on the Khazars stands out for its inclusion of Jews, Muslims, and pagans, the rest of the contributions are within the bounds of Christianized polities. This is in no way meant to privilege those regions, though they represent the majority of the physical territory of medieval Europe in the period under discussion.

Reimagining Medieval Rulership in the Twenty-First Century  3

While one may choose to dip in and out of this book, selecting a chapter or region to read up on to improve one’s knowledge, use for graduate readings, etc., there are, both purposeful and otherwise, thematic similarities that run throughout the whole collection. I would like to take just a bit of time to elucidate a few of those themes to highlight the broader picture of medieval European rulership. The first theme which is apparent is a negotiation of political power between rulers and elites. Such an idea is growing in popularity in medieval studies, moving beyond the once common view of hierarchical power in England as normative and the German imperial example requiring its own “special way.” Thomas Bisson’s Crisis of the Twelfth Century centralized many of his ideas about lordship and government. One of the main takeaways from that work, important for our purposes here is that “Royal order was seldom centralized order.”9 And further, Bisson adds that “Without ceasing to be a sphere of public order, the kingdom had become a fabric of lordships sharing patrimonial wealth.”10 Björn Weiler, too, has discussed the importance of elites to the good functioning of kings and kingdoms in his Paths to Kingship. For Weiler, elites were part of the governmental process, but also the succession process and helped to make both a success, or not, depending on the circumstances.11 In this volume, we see negotiated authority in numerous places, but I will single out four of the contributions which make it most apparent, those by Hans Jacob Orning, Jonathan Lyon, Katalin Szende, and Emir Filipović. Orning’s “Governance of High Medieval Norway” is focused precisely on the issue of negotiated power over the course of three moments in Norwegian history. The king may be king over a wide territory, and the breadth of Norwegian geography is stressed by Orning, but to actually make things happen in localities he needs the help and consent of the local community. Over the period examined by Orning (1100–1300), we see this local community shift from a local lord or elite who could choose to support the king and his efforts, or not; to an actual community organization inclusive of individuals who might not even be named in the sources – the importance comes from the organization rather than the people themselves. Orning’s choice of case studies to illustrate his point emphasizes the lack of centralized control noted by Bisson and Weiler to get at the negotiated reality of medieval political, even royal, power. Lyon’s contribution telegraphs by its title (“The Princes and the King in Medieval Germany”) that it will be about not just royal authority, but the ways that multiple levels of power interacted to generate rule in the medieval German empire. As noted earlier, studies of medieval Germany have often dealt with its Sonderweg and one can look at the work of Benjamin Arnold or Joseph Huffman to find other examples of this kind of conversation.12 Lyon creatively engages this narrative by focusing on multiple power centers including the Babenbergs and early Habsburgs in Austria and the rise of the Wittelsbach dynasty in Bavaria, as well as the importance of ecclesiastical power to those, and other families, in his discussion of the ways that important aristocratic families shaped not only their own regions, but the empire as a whole. Their means to do this came

4  Christian Raffensperger

through local power, yes, but also through the tradition of elective monarchy in the medieval German Empire which allowed them, as highlighted by Weiler, to shape the future of their kingdom as a whole. The contribution by Szende focuses not on royal or even elite power but on towns. Of course, those towns were situated within a kingdom, Hungary in her example, but they also existed in a wider spectrum of trade and travel, law and commerce as citizens moved and migrated throughout medieval central Europe. Szende notes that, initially at least, town creation was the preserve of the king, creating an immediate interaction between the authority of the ruler and the existence of the town. However, over time, towns became increasingly independent and were able to utilize their increasing economic prominence to create avenues of self-governance for themselves, within the hierarchy of the kingdom. This self-government, though, was real and powerful and allowed the towns to enforce laws, trade, and manage documents with their own seals; all prerogatives which were once only allowed to royal authority. Thus, as Szende notes, these towns had, “spatial and legal structures like those of other European polities.”13 Emir Filipović brings the medieval polity of Bosnia into our look at medieval rulership; an example of the breadth of medieval Europe that is being examined in this volume. Bosnia, as discussed by Filipović, is much akin to Orning’s Norway wherein the king, or ban before there was a king, negotiated with the elites to maintain power. Yet, in Bosnia much of the power of the center was devolved to the elites over the course of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. In place of direct control, the king created for himself a sense of dynastic unity among the Kotromanići, who were the only family allowed to become kings, along with a sense of loyalty to the crown and the kingdom which enmeshed the nobility in its own preservation alongside their won. For Filipović then, “the nobility functioned as a cohesive force thus retaining their unity with the ruler, stubbornly defending the borders and territorial integrity of the Bosnian Kingdom from any external pressure.”14 Thus creating a Bosnian kingdom. Close kin to negotiated authority is shared authority, the second theme seen in this collection. In her now classic The King’s Other Body, Theresa Earenfight argued for the creation of the idea of collective monarchy encompassing not just the male ruler as monarch, but his wife also as monarch.15 Such ideas have been expanded, especially in Iberia, to focus on other members of the royal family who assist in the ruling of the polity as a whole, for instance in the work of Lucy Pick who argues for the utilization of ideas of networks of power in which women participated.16 Corporate rule, by a leading family, has also been put forward as a subject of consideration whether in regard to central or eastern Europe or elsewhere.17 In this volume, the idea of shared authority can be seen in several pieces, including those by Erin Jordan (who herself has written on corporate monarchy),18 Lois Huneycutt, and Simon Doubleday. Each of those authors expands on this idea in a particular way to demonstrate a diversity of means of ruling in medieval Europe.

Reimagining Medieval Rulership in the Twenty-First Century  5

Jordan’s piece builds on similar themes to those developed by Orning regarding the interactions between rulers and their elites in collective decision making, though for Jordan this process is one that involves the corporate monarchy of both king and queen; or often just the queen herself. Jordan suggests that the negotiated rule which she suggests for the kingdom of Jerusalem was a component of attempting to deal with the “challenges encountered, most of which stemmed from the precariousness of their position and the volatility of the region.”19 To develop this argument, Jordan focuses on particular elements such as marriage and succession through which she analyzes events from the kingdom in the twelfth century. Her view of rulership in Jerusalem resonates well with the image elsewhere in this volume such as those from Orning, Huneycutt, and Lyon – once again demonstrating the broader types and styles of rulership throughout a broader medieval European world. Lois Huneycutt’s focus is on administrative queenship in the Anglo-Norman realm which highlights the ways in which queens worked on behalf of their realm and held official standing in a variety of circumstances. The queens focused on by Huneycutt held court and made decisions, planned campaigns, and ruled, all while managing their other duties. One crucially important point from this contribution is that the medieval authors found it much less surprising that these queens exercised administrative power than scholars have in the recent past, or even today. To further that observation, Huneycutt also deals with a brief history of the fields of Anglo-Norman and queenship studies to help us understand where some of the preconceptions have come from, and how they have been challenged by more recent scholarship; as well as highlighting the work that still needs to be done in incorporating administrative queenship into a normative view of medieval Europe. Simon Doubleday deploys a unique style in his chapter, focusing on the will and testament of a scribe and priest named Ecta. Ecta lived in the early eleventh century and worked under King Vermudo III of León, receiving his ultimately fatal wound at the same battle which killed his king. Ecta’s story, as outlined by Doubleday, includes the numerous layers of government that existed in medieval Iberia, particularly in the kingdom which he refers to as León-Galicia. Kings and queens participated in that governance and in the maintenance of land and authority. But so did bishops, abbots, and abbesses who all participated in the creation and enforcement of royal and other types of authority. Finally, Doubleday notes the nobles who also played a crucial role, even in defeat, being able to negotiate for their own power, and that of their kin. Doubleday’s piece is emblematic of the volume as a whole, making connections to so many of the themes noted in this introduction, and in the other chapters. The third theme is one of claims making and power. Seth Richardson helped to popularize the idea of claims making, for historians, in his work on Babylon where he argued that “The Crown’s claims to juridical power ought not to be taken at face value, especially with respect to the gaps between statute and practice.”20 For instance, in regard to Hammurabi’s famous law code, “virtually

6  Christian Raffensperger

none of Hammurabi’s ‘laws’ found their way into the relevant contracts or legal processes where one might expect to find them.”21 This idea can be, and has been, used for medieval European polities as well. Alice Rio quite clearly states the conundrum as “kings behaved as if they controlled a big state; most people knew they lived under a small one.”22 In this volume, we see this in both Nathan Leidholm’s and Kirsi Salonen’s pieces, both of which use this idea of claims making implicitly. Leidholm’s focus is not on the imperial court, nor on the emperor, though those are the focus of nearly all work on Byzantine governance that makes its way to the larger public. The implicit claim here is that the Byzantine, or medieval Roman, government is all powerful and all knowing. Emperors set the tone for the empire and their reigns are markers of the empire’s prosperity or lack thereof. Instead of these typical models, Leidholm discusses the administrative apparatus that allows the imperial government in Constantinople to function. The governmental structure revealed relies almost entirely on a hierarchy of bureaucrats, often from elite families, who work for the good of their local, not necessarily imperial, government. The case studies he focuses on serve as an important corrective for the view of a Byzantine state which is still centered solely on the emperor and empire.23 Salonen, similarly, is dealing with an overarching polity that excels in grand claims making – the papacy. Though she does not explicitly engage with this terminology, Salonen leads with the very concept – “According to the autocratic idea of the Church, the popes possessed full powers (Lat. plenitudo potestatis) in all fields of ecclesiastical administration and justice, dogma, and theology.”24 Even the title of her piece and the concluding question mark serve to highlight the idea that the claims made by the papacy may not be entirely in line with the reality of practice. And yet, the papacy, as detailed by Salonen created an entire bureaucratic apparatus as if they did, in fact, control the entirety of Christendom. That apparatus was handled through four separate fora and Salonen notes case studies of material that was handled in each of them; instances which actuated the papal claims to dominance in Christian society. Finally, it is important to note the success of the claims making by the papacy, as Salonen does, with their persistence throughout time as well as the appropriation of papal bureaucracy by growing nation-states in the late Middle Ages. Two of the papers in this collection represent a different approach to looking at medieval rulership and that is a closer look at the sources themselves. Though all scholars utilize primary sources, and we have moved away from the Rankean idea of sources equal facts, approaching the topic solely through this source or that rather than constructing a model made from a concatenation of sources is still an interesting way of examining what the sources said, rather than what we think happened. In this volume, utilizing different methodologies, both Alex Feldman and myself engage in that technique. Feldman’s piece is an in-depth analysis of the vast array of sources, in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew which tell us about the little-known polity of

Reimagining Medieval Rulership in the Twenty-First Century  7

Khazaria. He organizes his subject around multiple themes (such as the conversion to Judaism), but he starts, and is constantly enmeshing the reader in the source base to see what the sources actually say about the topic at hand as a way of stripping away the accretion of assumption that a topic as fascinating as a medieval Jewish kingdom of steppe nomads has created. In so doing, Feldman presents an in-depth analysis of the source material to give the reader a breakdown of what we can, and cannot, know about the Khazars, their conversion, and their governmental structure. In so doing, he offers a unique take on the placement of the Khazars in a wider lens of medieval European rulership. My own piece, “Kyivan Rus: A Complicated Kingdom” puts the spotlight on three particular sources, the Povest’ vremennykh let, the Chronicle of Novgorod, and the Russkaia Pravda. The first two of those are annalistic and the third is a law code and, interestingly, all three portray rulership differently in regard to medieval Rus’. The first source, known as the PVL, portrays the elite power structure of the ruling Volodimerovichi family as if it is the only governance in the entire kingdom. The second is focused, understandably, on what is going on in Novgorod and deals in detail with offices and organizations, such as the veche, which rarely appear in the PVL. Finally, the law code goes to an even deeper level mentioning, often off-handedly, offices and individuals who never appear in either of the other sources. This kind of source-specific approach is a way to present the problems inherent when we focus on one kind of source, or even one level of rulership. The last category of contributions is based around an organizational methodology demonstrating the way rulers and rulership were structured over the changing time scale of the high Middle Ages. Each of these pieces focuses on what we can know about the subject, given the source base – as the sourcefocused contributions do – but has organized the material in such a way that the reader gets a sense of what kind of rulership was operational at different moments throughout the medieval history of the polity. Paul Knoll’s work on Poland and Kiril Petkov’s on Bulgaria exemplify this idea. Paul Knoll walks through the thin source material for medieval Poland, before beginning a chronological tour through the earliest Piast polity, its eleventh- and early twelfth-century progression, the internal shifts which happened after 1138 resulting in multiple polities all being ruled by members of the Piast family, and then the progress toward reunification of the kingdom in the fourteenth century. As one sees throughout the process, the members of the Piast family are the primary rulers, no matter if the polity is centralized or decentralized, and they work in conjunction with ecclesiastical leaders and with their neighbors to create stability in the region. Rulership in Poland, as described here, is very much afamily affair. Kirik Petkov’s “Rulership and Governance of Medieval Bulgaria” follows a similar path to Knoll’s contribution. He begins by raising the issue of source, specifically the lack thereof, for anything covering the early part of Bulgarian history internal to the polity dealing with rulership. Within that rubric though,

8  Christian Raffensperger

which does change over time, Petkov deals with the waxing and waning of Bulgarian rulership structures, as well as other factors. In particular, he focuses on the relations that the Bulgarians had with their neighbors, whether those be steppe polities, the papacy, the Byzantine, or the Frankish/German Empire. Each of those presents both a threat and an opportunity to the Bulgarian rulers to appropriate new ideas and technologies, some intimately connected to ruling such as coinage. The rulers also used those same neighbors as foils to react against in creating their own identity as a Bulgarian polity and then projecting that identity more broadly. Petkov’s Bulgarian kingdom is situated very clearly as one among many polities in its region, interacting with, and reacting to, its neighbors. Finally, it is worth highlighting the contribution of Edward Schoolman as distinct from any single one of these categories as he deals with most of them in his contribution on early medieval Italy. The first part of his article covers an organizational schema that is similar to what we have seen in our last theme, looking at how different cities and regions organized their power structures and changed over time, specifically via a lens of looking at the source record that has been preserved. But he also includes a case study that combined ecclesiastical, royal/imperial, and local power to highlight the negotiated power structures which were omnipresent not just in the Italian peninsula but, as we have seen, throughout medieval Europe. Though the earliest chronological contribution, Schoolman’s piece acts as a nice cap on the totality of the practices demonstrated in this volume. All of these contributions are, of course, interrelated, and the themes delineated here could be rearranged to include other pieces or set in different ways. The purpose of such an organization is merely to highlight the connectedness of rule in medieval Europe, as the volume does as a whole; rather than focusing on modern nation states read back into the past, or a falsified version of “medieval Europe” that only covers the West. Each of these pieces presents a fascinating look at the way rulership looks in one particular area but taken together they further our understanding of how medieval Europe was ruled – as a whole, and not just in its parts.

Notes 1 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). For the reception, and a terrific analysis of the book and its context see Brett Edward Whalen, “AHR Reappraisal: Political Theology and the Metamorphoses of The King’s Two Bodies,” American ­Historical Review 125, no. 1 (2020): 132–45. 2 Theresa Earenfight, The King’s Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of Aragon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 3 ‘‘The Middle Ages were resolutely male. All the opinions that reach and inform me were held by men, convinced of the superiority of their sex. I hear only them’ Georges Duby, Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages, trans. by Janet Dunnett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) Author’s Note. Amy Livingstone, Out of Love

Reimagining Medieval Rulership in the Twenty-First Century  9

4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11

12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22

for My Kin: Aristocratic Family Life in the Lands of the Loire, 1000–1200 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010). Joseph P. Huffman, The Social Politics of Medieval Diplomacy: Anglo-German Relations (1066–1307) (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000), 5. Lucy Pick, Her Father’s Daughter: Gender, Power, and Religion in the Early Spanish Kingdoms (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2017); Therese Martin, Queen as King: Politics and Architectural Propaganda in Twelfth-Century Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Miriam Shadis, Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2009). Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c. 700-c. 1500: A Framework for Comparing Three Spheres, ed. Catherine Holmes, Jonathan Shepard, Jo van Steenbergen, and Björn Weiler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). Björn Weiler, Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). Robert Bartlett, Blood Royal: Dynastic Politics in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Thomas N. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009), 27. Bisson, Crisis of the Twelfth Century, 34. Björn Weiler, Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). Examples are woven throughout Weiler’s book. One can see a particularly nice summary of the role of elites at 36: “Consequently, even if medieval polities do not resemble a Weberian image of statehood, their l iterate elites nonetheless viewed themselves as part of a transpersonal entity that transcended individual lifespans, and that was unified by customs and practices according to which rulers and leading subjects were supposed to operate.” Benjamin Arnold, Count and Bishop in Medieval Germany: A Study of Regional Power, 1100–1350 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991); Joseph P. Huffman, The Social Politics of Medieval Diplomacy: Anglo-German Relations (1066–1307) (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000). Szende, “Self-Governance at the King’s Command”: Towns and Their Sovereign in Medieval Hungary, p. 24 of Word doc. Emir O. Filipović, “Nobility, Loyalty and Dynasty in Medieval Bosnia,” Word, p. 7. Theresa Earenfight, The King’s Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of Aragon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), see 13 in particular. Lucy Pick, Her Father’s Daughter: Gender, Power, and Religion in the Early Spanish Kingdoms (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2017). Just for one example on central Europe see Zbigniew Dalewski, “Family Business: Dynastic Power in Central Europe in the Earlier Middle Ages,” Viator 46, no. 1 (2015): 43–60. Erin Jordan, “Corporate Monarchy in the Twelfth-Century Kingdom of Jerusalem,” Royal Studies Journal VI, no. 1 (2019): 1–15. Jordan, “Governing the Latin East: Jerusalem from 1099 to 1174,” Word, p. 2. Seth Richardson, “Before Things Worked: A ‘Low-Power’ Model of Early Mesopotamia,” in Ancient States and Infrastructural Power: Europe, Asia, and America, ed. Clifford Ando and Seth Richardson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 28. Richardson, “Before Things Worked,” 28. Alice Rio, “Introduction,” in Law, Custom, and Justice in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Proceedings of the 2008 Byzantine Colloquium, ed. Alice Rio (London: Centre for Hellenic Studies, 2011), 2. I, too, have utilized claims making in regard to medieval Europe in “Kingdom of Rus’: A New Theoretical Model for Rulership in Medieval Europe,” in Rulership in Medieval East Central Europe: Power, Rituals, and Legitimacy in Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, ed. Grischa Vercamer and Dušan Zupka (Leiden: Brill 2022), 325–39.

10  Christian Raffensperger



2 DYING BY THE SWORD The Many Faces of Rulership in Christian Iberia a Thousand Years Ago Simon R. Doubleday

In the summer of 1037, a hearing was held in the church of Santa María, in the Spanish city of León. There was not yet a majestic Gothic cathedral in León, which in ancient times had been the base of the Roman legion that provided the city’s name: the Legio VII Gemina. This would be the achievement of the thirteenth century, a more prosperous and confident age in the Christian realms of Iberia. For now, León remained precarious. It had barely survived a series of onslaughts by the Islamic vizier Al-Mansūr, just before the turn of the last millennium; it remained small and—compared with the great cities of al-Andalus (Muslim-ruled Iberia)—underdeveloped. Its walls enclosed an area of roughly 50 acres, much of it uninhabited and devoted to market gardening. The modest palace of Ordoño II (r. 910–925), which stood over the ruins of a Roman thermal bath, had been converted into the church of Santa María.1 On this summer day, August 18, the dignitaries who assembled in this church, overseen by Bishop Servando, might perhaps have found some relief from the sweltering heat of the meseta. But there was important business to resolve. About two weeks earlier, King Vermudo III of León-Galicia (r. 1028–1037) had been killed in battle at Tamarón, not far from the city of Burgos. A Leonese presbyter named Ecta—also known as Lázaro—had been mortally wounded, and his properties now needed to be properly reallocated. The record of the hearing, which is preserved in the cathedral archives of León, includes an unusually vivid autobiographical narrative in which Ecta expressed his dying wishes.2 By his own account, Ecta had been raised in the frontier city of Zamora—“the town they call Numancia”, he says. He must have been well-connected: leaving his family, he says, he had come to the city of León, where he had been raised and educated under the tutelage of Bishop Servando, with whom he remained for a long time. He had then joined the monastic community affiliated with the church of Santa María, and soon came to serve Count Fernando Flaínez, one DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-2

12  Simon R. Doubleday

of the dominant aristocrats in the region. Ecta’s training in letters was probably valued by the count—this was a period in which literate presbyters and deacons were coming to occupy an increasingly important role as professional scribes— and he states that he had prospered greatly.3 Ecta had then entered the service of the late king, Vermudo III, possibly as a scribe, confessor, or chaplain, and in due course the grateful ruler had given him in its entirety the village of Matallana by means of a signed charter (Ecta’s attention to this detail is striking). He had held this property peacefully, he says, until he had been severely wounded by a sword, leaving him in terrible pain and fearing his imminent death. Although there is nothing in the text to associate this injury explicitly with the battle of Tamarón, where Vermudo had been killed, the timing makes it likely that he had been struck down there; many men of the cloth were present on the front lines in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and as we will see, Ecta was probably still in his early twenties.4 After realizing that he would not recover, he had made confession to Todimiro, abbot of the monastery of Santiago-San Miguel in León from 1002 to 1042. Appointing as his two executors the abbot, who was also known as “Muza”, and Abbess Godina (who oversaw the nuns of the convent of San Juan de Puerta de Arco, also within the city walls), Ecta had then determined that half the village should go to the church of Santa María, where he should be buried.5 The charter was duly confirmed and signed by the abbot and abbess, his executors, as well as by Bishop Servando and Abbot Felix of San Miguel de la Vega. The scribe, an older presbyter named Vivi, marked it with his monogram. We know little about Ecta other than what he tells us in this story: only that he was probably the same figure who appears as judge of the city council [concilium] of León in the same fateful year of 1037.6 But if we follow the threads that run through the fabric of his narrative, we can learn a good deal about how Christian Iberia was ruled a thousand years ago, and about the many people— both men and women, clerics and lay people alike—who were involved in this dynamic. The focus will fall, here, on the northwestern Iberian Peninsula. As Christian Raffensperger indicates in the introduction to this book, the medieval geographies of the peninsula are “not easily mapped onto a modern nation state”, so we will avoid reference to “Spain” in favor of the more plural, less anachronistic, “Iberia”. The region in question is sometimes known to scholars as the “kingdom of León”, but this underemphasizes the importance of Galicia, which was the most economically productive and densely populated part of the whole region. Several eleventh-century monarchs, including Vermudo III, and his father Alfonso V, had deep roots in Galicia; Vermudo’s daughter—and future queen—Sancha had been born, about 1014, near the Galician town of Betanzos. “Galicia” encompassed not just the modern Spanish autonomía of that name but also much of what is now the national territory of Portugal. It seems sensible, therefore, to adopt the composite term “León-Galicia” to refer to the diffuse, shifting territorial space in which these monarchs ruled. This last turn of phrase is deliberate: these were rulers in, rather than rulers of, this space.7 The idea of the royal regnum or “realm” was just one form of

Dying by the Sword  13

several discursive and jurisdictional concepts, and the authority of bishops and magnates was a fundamental dimension of the regime. Nor did royal power rest on a rigid notion of territorial integrity, or fixed frontiers; instead, it involved the exercise of power by rulers operating within a loosely defined space. This space, we might add, was a multiethnic space in which there was a significant Jewish population, notably in the city of León; just as elsewhere in northern Iberia, they would face increasingly frequent instances of antisemitic discrimination in the middle of the century. These are considerations that mean that, while our starting point is the story of individual ascent within the Church, we should be conscious of the limitations of terms such as “Christian Iberia” or “the Christian kingdoms”. When Ecta had first come to the city of León, he says, he had been educated under Bishop Servando, becoming a presbyter in the church of Santa María. This experience reflected a much broader trend: the clericalization of education in Christian Iberia since the late Visigothic period.8 The bishops of the realm, of whom Servando—himself a presbyter between 1000 and 1025—was one of the most prominent, played a vital role in the networks of power that Kyle C. Lincoln refers to as a “constellation of authority”.9 Bishops were often appointed directly by the crown, and in certain ways were ecclesiastical equivalents to the counts (lay magnates in the good graces of the king and queen, whose high status was recognized with this title); indeed, many bishops were drawn from the ranks of the same aristocratic families. A number of these men were indeed court bishops, regularly accompanying the king and enjoying a close relationship with the crown. In varying degrees, all of them were—like the bishops of the German kingdom whom Jonathan Lyon examines in his chapter—caught up in the political dynamics of the realm. Servando had been closely affiliated with Vermudo III after the latter’s succession in 1028; he had been bishop only since 1026, and we may reasonably assume that Ecta—educated under his tutelage—was therefore in his early or mid-twenties when he was killed in 1037. But soon after Vermudo’s death at the battle of Tamarón, Servando was replaced. Since a bishopric was a lifetime appointment, he had presumably passed away; although there are cases of bishops being supplemented when incapacitated by illness (as appears to have occurred repeatedly later in the life of his successor), they could not be dismissed. By late 1041, the position had been taken over by one Cipriano, who shared his name with a martyred and canonized third-century bishop of Carthage to whom one of the naves of the church of Santa María was dedicated. Royal scribes played on this fact to conflate the two bishops, and Cipriano’s appointment came to be an important spiritual instrument of rulership at a time of great instability for the new king, Fernando I.10 Among Fernando’s other loyal episcopal allies was Bishop Pedro II Kundúlfiz of Astorga (1042–1050). Further east, there was also considerable cooperation between king and bishop in and around the Castilian town of Burgos, although this see—close to the troubled frontier with the rival kingdom of Navarre—remained insecure and shadowy.

14  Simon R. Doubleday

In more northerly sees like Lugo and Mondoñedo (in Galicia), and Oviedo (in Asturias), the alliance between crown and bishop was relatively modest. For its part, the see of Santiago de Compostela, still partly associated with nearby Iria at this stage, was exceptionally independent. Its rise to international prominence is usually associated with Bishop Diego Gelmírez (1106–1139), but its foundations were laid in good measure by Bishop Cresconio, who occupied the see for a similar length of time (1037–1067). Cresconio had been a partisan of Vermudo III, confirming a document issued in Vermudo’s presence on the very eve of the battle of Tamarón.11 But over the next three decades, he appears in only twelve royal documents. Cresconio had initiated an extensive building program at Compostela, enclosing it within new walls that enclosed an area roughly equivalent to that of the royal hub of León.12 He was every bit as ambitious as the king, and probably carried himself with lordly self-confidence. Understandably, the monarchs were not always keen to recognize the patronage of Saint James, or Santiago Matamoros (Saint James the Moor-Killer), as he would later come to known. Hostility to Islamic forces was not yet the priority. The most important duel in the mid-eleventh century was not a Christian-Muslim conflict, but a struggle between León and Iria-Compostela, between the royal court and Bishop Cresconio. A thousand years ago, the church in León-Galicia was nevertheless closely affiliated with royal power: an inextricably intertwined dimension of rulership. Fernando would take steps to strengthen this relationship further. Late in 1054 or early 1055, an important gathering of bishops was held at Coyanza, just to the south of León. This council has been described as “the first clear and systematic step towards a global reorganization of the Leonese church”.13 Some of the stipulations of Coyanza parallel the preoccupations of the Peace and Truce movement, including a concern with the encroachment of the aristocracy on church dignities, procedures, and revenues. Another clause effectively reinforces the emphasis on clerical literacy which had shaped Ecta’s education and career, and which was also an important buttress of royal authority.14 The text of the council survives in two different versions, one in the ­thirteenth-century Livro Preto of Coimbra and the earlier from the Liber Testamentorum of Oviedo. The Portuguese text lacks any reference to the participation of the monarch, Fernando I, in the drafting or approval of its stipulations, but it is very likely to have taken place with royal blessing; Fernando would have been keen to reform the episcopal power, and literate clergy, on which he relied. What the council does not do is suggest sweeping royal ambitions in Iberia as a whole. There is little evidence that Fernando saw himself as having imperial authority over other Christian rulers, and nothing in the text that might indicate new ambitions in al-Andalus.15 Like the close alliance with the French monastery of Cluny, these would be later developments, occurring in the reign of Alfonso VI (r. 1072–1109). Meanwhile, the rulers in León-Galicia continued to rely heavily on their relationships with monastic communities within their territories. The relationship

Dying by the Sword  15

was closest with Sahagún and (later) San Isidoro in León, but the rulers also had ties with monasteries like Celanova in Galicia. In the last of his diplomas before the battle of Tamarón, Vermudo III appears alongside the queen, four of his counts, his armiger Nepotian Osórez, and—as we just saw—Bishop Cresconio, making a grant to Celanova.16 He was probably in Galicia mustering support for a forthcoming campaign against Fernando, then still count of Castile. Ironically, after his military victory, Fernando would also go on to be a significant patron of Celanova, as well as to the monastery of Arlanza, in Castile. On March 31, 1039, there was generous royal grant to the monastery of Arlanza that included the promise that Fernando would be interred there on his death.17 Arlanza, not far from Burgos, was closely associated with the origins of the county of Castile and was the burial place of Count Fernán González. Only late in the reign were Fernando’s burial plans displaced by San Isidoro. This relationship between the rulers in León-Galicia and some of the most prominent monasteries of the realm provided the monarchy, as well as the episcopate, with literate clerics who could produce the necessary written records: among them may have been Ecta, who had entered the service of Bishop Servando and then King Vermudo III. Ecta’s career certainly flourished alongside scribes like his older colleague, the prolifically active presbyter Vivi. Vivi was also affiliated with Bishop Servando, one of whose charters he had written in 1005 when Servando was still a presbyter. He, too, acquired a number of properties in the vicinity of León. It was he who was the notary of the Ecta’s charter of 1037. But unlike Vivi, Ecta had also—by his own account—entered the service of the king.18 The ad hoc collaboration of clerics cut from the same cloth as Ecta—men like Pedro Kendúlfiz, the future bishop of Astorga—was essential, since there was probably not yet an institutionalized royal chancery.19 This very much paralleled historical processes elsewhere in Europe.20 In Iberia as across Europe, there was an increasing reliance on the written word among private parties, as well as by the crown and by ecclesiastical institutions. There is a great deal of extant charter evidence from León-Galicia, as we might expect in a densely populated and prosperous region such as this; it is eclipsed only by Catalonia among the other Christian-ruled regions of Iberia. The charters that survived from this period shed valuable light on the movements and composition of royal courts; even if the witness lists do not necessarily reflect exact patterns of physical attendance at court, they often provide a good sense of the changing contours of allegiance and alliance. Charters had an oral and aural existence, as well as existing in written form: at court, they were read aloud in a kind of sacred theater in which the audience included powerful magnates and clerics. The formulaic Latin of the charters, Liam Moore suggests, “a written and formalized version of the spoken language”, was probably understood in large part by this audience.21 This performative potential would also have been present for private and ecclesiastical charters; Ecta’s bequest to the church of Santa María in León would undoubtedly have made for a particularly dramatic reading.

16  Simon R. Doubleday

Poor Ecta, as we have seen, had probably been struck down in battle in the service of the king of León-Galicia. In asking how rulership operated in this space, let us now turn directly to the question of war. If Christian kings in Iberia—including the rulers in León-Galicia—shared to some degree the sacral aura that surrounded many of their European counterparts, their role as military leaders was also an integral facet of their power. Historians have generally understood this as a reflection of their responsibility to lead the charge against the Muslim-ruled polities of al-Andalus. The great French historian Georges Duby spoke of a “warrior economy” in which rulers were enriched by tribute payments (parias) imposed on the Muslim ta’ifa kingdoms that had emerged after the collapse of the Cordoban caliphate early in the eleventh century. One of the hallmarks of this economy, he wrote, was the role of the king in redistributing the profits derived from war.22 It was war, of course, that cost Vermudo III his life. Metaphorically speaking, too, military expansion, and the extraction of wealth through force, was a sword by which Christian Iberian kings might live or die. In the thirteenth century, the conquests of Córdoba and Sevilla would ensure the stability of Fernando III’s reign (1217–1252) and his eventual canonization; conversely, the more modest extent of the conquests carried out by his son, Alfonso  X (r. 1252–1284) would feed political tensions that exploded in baronial revolt. Earlier in Ecta’s lifetime, King Alfonso V (r. 999–1028)—the predecessor of the fallen King Vermudo—had engaged in successful military campaigns to the south of his realms. The twelfth-century Historia Silense would portray Alfonso as “a vigorous enemy of the barbarians and their cities”.23 It was during a campaign to recapture the frontier town of Viseu (in what is now Portugal), a town that enjoyed an important strategic location among the hills north of Coimbra, that King Alfonso had been killed in 1028. It is possible that his attack on Viseu was catalyzed by the campaigns of the ta’ifa king of Seville, al-Mu’tadid. But we should be careful in our assumptions. Alfonso’s campaigns were not selfevidently directed against Islamic power, let alone a holy war. The territories of central Portugal, between the Douro and the Mondego rivers, had been largely a no-man’s land, far from centers of royal authority (either Christian or Muslim). This land was ruled by local powers—including Arabized Christian elites— who navigated complex relationships with al-Andalus and with the rulers in León-Galicia. This is a pivotal issue, because the story of medieval Iberia has often been told through the prism of Reconquista: an ideological narrative that rests on the notion that religious binaries were the primary motivating factor in territorial expansion and even the raison d’etre of Christian Iberian monarchy. When Vermudo III fell in the summer of 1037, and when Ecta was mortally wounded, it was not at the hands of a Muslim enemy: it was in battle against Vermudo’s own brother-in-law, Fernando, the count of Castile. Fernando was son of the recently deceased Sancho III of Navarre (r. 1004–1035), conventionally known as Sancho el Mayor. The backdrop to the conflict was, in fact, decades of sustained Navarrese attempts to spread their influence westwards at the expense

Dying by the Sword  17

of the rulers in León-Galicia. Navarre was the most expansionist Christian realm of the early eleventh century. Sancho el Mayor had ruled from “the very pinnacles of the Pyrenees as far as the fortress of Nájera”, the Historia Silense asserted; he “snatched from the power of the pagans as much land as was contained within those bounds” and “caused the way of St. James to run without the hindrance of deviation”.24 But the author of the Silense was writing in a different age of religious binaries, an age when French influence and new crusading sensibilities had begun to penetrate Christian Iberia. Eleventh-century realities were quite distinct: a period in which the Christian kingdoms, much like the tai’fas of al-Andalus, fought and jostled among each other for primacy and dominance more than engaging in principled conflict with a religious ‘other’. The victor at the battle of Tamarón, Fernando I (r. 1038–1065) would continue to be more concerned with consolidating his position in the Christian-ruled northwest of the peninsula than with engaging in Reconquista. Not even his climactic conquest of Coimbra in 1064 was a religious conflict: in this Portuguese frontier zone, there were likely Mozarabic Christians fighting on both sides. In the early and mid-eleventh century, religious relations were more fluid than they later became; border-crossing transfers of allegiance between Muslim and Christian rulers alike were ubiquitous. As for the parias of which Georges Duby wrote, the Historia Silense asserts that by the end of his reign Fernando I was able to distribute among his sons and heirs the parias not only of Zaragoza, but also of Toledo and of Badajoz.25 Yet these payments were not yet stable; they were irregular and insecure, and may even have been conditional on the performance of military service on behalf of these Muslim rulers. The Silense indicates that in the final year of his reign, Fernando I led a massive incursion into ‘Celtiberia’, a  term which may have referred to the tai’fa of Zaragoza, and toward Valencia.26 But there are grounds for thinking that far from being a holy war, there was a different dynamic at work: the powerful ruler of Toledo, Al-Mamūn had probably begun a collaborative relationship with the Leonese, giving monetary payments to Fernando as part of an alliance against the ta’ifas of Seville and Zaragoza. Fernando, in other words, was an ally (if not quite a client) of the Toledan emir. So, while the role of the Christian king as a warrior leader was undoubtedly important, it should be separated from the traditional adhesion to the concept of Reconquista. The sudden death of Vermudo III at Tamarón reveals another important facet of eleventh-century rulership: its extreme fragility. By virtue of his marriage to Queen Sancha, Vermudo III’s sister and daughter of Alfonso V, Fernando was successfully able to press his claim to the throne. But this was a violent change in rulership, of a kind that was all too frequent in eleventh-century Europe. As Björn Weiler has remarked, smooth patrilineal transition was surprisingly rare: “during the eleventh and twelfth centuries it occurred in only 54 out of roughly 160 successions – a third of the total”.27 The accession of a new ruler brought instability, resistance, and rebellion; in Weiler’s words, the first years of any eleventh-century reign were “fraught with dangers… Missteps, unexpected

18  Simon R. Doubleday

challenges or the sheer inability to navigate the pitfalls of rulership could turn a moment of putative hope into one of deep anxiety and profound despair”.28 Soon after Alfonso V inherited the throne, at the turn of the millennium, the frontier Castilian nobility had rebelled in collaboration with what our hostile sources sometimes call the “Ishmaelites” (Muslims).29 Similarly, when Vermudo had become king in 1028, aged no more than 11, there was also trouble: for instance, we know that Count Oveco Rudesíndez rebelled against the king and his stepmother, Urraca.30 The aftershocks of this phase of disorder would be felt for decades: no fewer than 30 years later, the monks of Celanova (in southern Galicia) were to launch a case against a monk whom they accused of having usurped control over a village in the Limia region during this phase.31 After Fernando I was crowned in the city of León in June 1038, the pattern was repeated. For Fernando, the usual dangers were heightened not only by his Navarrese origins but also by his direct responsibility for Vermudo’s death in battle. It is likely that the Galician aristocracy was especially resistant to his regime. This is suggested by a later charter, in which Fernando and Sancha gave a house in Santiago de Compostela to the monastery of Celanova so that they could build a hospital for monks arriving there on pilgrimage. This house had belonged to the countess Odrocia, but the king had confiscated it precisely because she had risen in rebellion, along with her daughter and her grandson.32 As the late Simon Barton observed, this “may merely have been part of a wider show of disaffection against Fernando’s authority. It is probably no mere coincidence that several of the oldest aristocratic families of the region disappear from the record at this time”.33 After Fernando’s own death in 1065, there would be another long phase of political instability. His arrangements for the division of León-Galicia among his children—his daughters Urraca and Elvira, as well as his sons, Sancho II of Castile, Alfonso VI of León, and García of Galicia—unraveled into bitter internecine conflict; infighting among royal heirs was a hallmark of the age. This was compounded by internal tensions. Although García’s authority within the expansive kingdom of Galicia was stronger than has usually been assumed, he faced mounting resistance from a sector of the Portuguese nobility, and in February 1071 a group of magnates rose in revolt. García defeated them near Braga, but underlying tensions remained.34 By May, his two brothers had decided to exploit these tensions, and launched an invasion of Galicia; García was captured and sent into exile in the tai’fa of Seville.35 In Alfonso’s subsequent attempts to outmaneuver Sancho, their sisters Urraca and Elvira played active roles. The efforts were at first frustrated by a Castilian occupation of León: Sancho, says the Chronica Naierensis, obliged Alfonso to go into exile in the ta’ifa of Toledo, promising dire consequences if he should attempt to regain his crown. The fact that Alfonso found sanctuary in Muslim Toledo may have been another instance of collaboration across religious lines; we should be careful about assuming that there was any relationship of subordination.36 Meanwhile, Sancho’s success in reuniting his parents’ realm proved to be a Pyrrhic victory. He faced an awkward situation

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that paralleled the one which Fernando I had faced after his coronation: how to maintain control in Galicia and León? The question would remain unanswered. Sancho’s assassination while besieging Urraca’s fortress at Zamora meant that in November 1072, Alfonso was able to return from exile, assuming rulership of the reunited realms of León, Castile, and Galicia. Let’s return, at this point, to the dying cleric Ecta’s story. It was from the same frontier town of Zamora—where Sancho II would be assassinated—that he had come as a young man, and to León that he had traveled, ultimately becoming affiliated with the royal court. Zamora had until recently been an important center of royal power, having been re-founded in the late ninth century during a phase of territorial expansion southwards to the Duero River.37 This was “the town they call Numancia”, he added in his testament, reflecting the contemporary conflation of his city with the ancient town whose resistance to Roman occupation had attained mythical proportions. But it was León that had now emerged as the leading urban hub of rulership. The texture of social life in this city was evoked magisterially by in the classic 1947 text Una ciudad de la España cristiana hace mil años: estampas de la vida de León [A City in Christian Spain a Thousand Years Ago: Features of Life in León] by the mid-twentieth century medievalist Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz.38 Recent scholarship suggests that the city had a population of at least 1,50039; this figure would have been amplified by the royal garrison and sometimes the court, as well as pilgrim traffic along the Camino de Santiago. Beginning in the final years of the reign of Fernando I and Sancha, the city became the center of a major architectural and cultural project: the endowment and expansion of the church of San Isidoro. In 1063, this church, formerly dedicated to Saint Pelayo and John the Baptist, became the resting place of the holy relics of Saint Isidore, the Visigothic bishop of Seville and author of the Etymologies. This move may have been designed to reconnect León with the Visigothic past; rather than being a precursor to reconquest, or the restoration of ‘national’ unity, it served as a means of ideologically reinforcing the regime. The ta’ifa king of Seville, al-Mu‘tadid (r. 1041–1042 to 1068–1069), is traditionally depicted as having been eager to comply with the request for the relics, from the Leonese delegation that had traveled south, because he was yielding to military pressure, but the transfer of the relics may be better seen as a gesture of friendship. The relics having been installed with due pomp and ceremony, San Isidoro was now lavishly endowed with lands, monasteries, and precious liturgical objects. The church itself, rebuilt from c. 1055, would later be expanded in Romanesque style (c. 1080) under the patronage of the infanta Urraca, and the infanta’s niece and namesake Queen Urraca (r. 1109–1126) would then transform the design of the building; the spectacular vault paintings of the pantheon would probably be added at this stage.40 For roughly three months every year—usually during the cold winters—the court also settled down at the nearby monastery of Sahagún. Here, the king could be sought out by lesser noblemen seeking to move up in the world, or

20  Simon R. Doubleday

others with grievances and petitions. Under Fernando I and Sancha, the abbot of Sahagún was one of the greatest prelates of León-Galicia and was repeatedly chosen to be the next bishop of León. For much of the rest of the year, the royal court was itinerant. It moved as necessary into Galicia (both north of the Miño River and south, into what is now Portugal), as well as into Asturias and Castile. The king would have been accompanied by a retinue including the royal armiger or alférez, usually a magnate, a number of nobles and bishops, and a variety of servants and craftsmen—including carters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and carpenters. The royal mayordomo was entrusted with the tasks of requisition, supervision, and foraging. Altogether, this itinerant court may have encompassed several hundred people. The court was slow-moving, but as in many other European contexts, itinerancy was essential to maintain royal prestige, to coordinate military campaigns, and to resolve local disputes.41 This would remain true for the remainder of the medieval period. The royal court and its chancery continued to be peripatetic, as was the case in France and Aragon, even as the hubs of royal power changed; by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the key centers were Burgos, Seville, Toledo, and Valladolid. One factor that made this almost constant movement necessary was the power of the nobility. In León-Galicia, as in so much of Europe, eleventh-century monarchy was not a well-structured bureaucracy or ‘state’ but rather a mesh of human relationships that encompassed much of the social elite: in Thomas Bisson’s words, cited in the introduction to this book, a “fabric of lordships sharing patrimonial wealth”.42 As in cases as diverse as Norway, Bosnia, and the Germanic lands, discussed in other chapters, monarchs relied upon the active cooperation of the nobility. In León-Galicia, the authority of the crown was uneven, particularly beyond the Leonese meseta.43 The nobility enjoyed a great deal of economic autonomy, drawing wealth primarily from rents and other taxes rather than through labor services.44 Their intensification of economic power in the ninth and tenth centuries was literally fortified in the eleventh century, a period in which we can trace the multiplication of feudal fortresses in Galicia combining earthworks with stone structures.45 For the monarchy, it was imperative to work with these regional authority figures. Rulership was a corporate, collective system, binding magnates to the royal court. Noblemen with close connections at the royal court might be granted properties in return for their loyalty, or even a share in royal rulership in the form of tenencias: the temporary delegation of royal lordship in a specific town or area, along with the exercise of jurisdictional, military, or financial authority.46 Some years after coming from Zamora to León, the cleric Ecta had entered the service of just such a man: Count Fernando Flaínez (d. ca. 1052). The Flaínez family were major landowners with extensive properties north of Sahagún, and they benefitted from strategic marriages with other aristocratic clans, in particular with the Ansúrez family.47 They also had a symbiotic relationship with the crown which was sufficiently close that it often survived phases of intense instability. Count Fernando Flaínez had probably begun to serve as tenant of

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León under Vermudo III and may have initially refused to surrender the city to Fernando after the battle of Tamarón. Two documents dated May 10, 1038, refer to him—not Fernando I—as ruling in the city of León (imperante).48 Even after Fernando’s coronation in León in June, the count seems to have maintained authority there: A charter dated August 31 acknowledges the rule of Fredenandus rex prolis Sancii principi [King Fernando, the son of prince Sancho] but refers to the count as dux.49 What this probably reveals is that Fernando Flaiñez was negotiating this crisis, leveraging his authority to ensure that he retained a prominent role under the new regime. This brought its rewards: by 1040, his son, Flaín Fernández (d c. 1070), was also granted a countship.50 When he rebelled against Fernando’s authority in the early 1060s, the family would fall from grace, and he would lose a number of properties, some of which Alfonso VI would go on to grant to his influential sister, the infanta Urraca.51 But the Flaínez family would once again survive this period of turbulence, remaining influential well into the twelfth century. The case of Urraca is itself revealing. A wealth of new scholarship on queenship, gender, and power in medieval Iberia has emphasized the importance of elite women, including those who formed part of the extended royal family.52 The dying Ecta’s co-executor, according to the charter, was Abbess Godina of San Juan de Puerta de Arco. Godina’s origins lay in the same Leonese noble elite which shared in the rulership of the realm: the convent she oversaw had been founded in 1011 by Count Munio Fernández and Elvira, in an assembly in which many of the magnates of the realm had been present.53 One of her fellow abbesses, in the city of León, was Queen Sancha herself, abbess of San Pelayo and San Juan Bautista in León—the church that would later be reconsecrated as San Isidoro.54 Sancha had probably occupied this role before her betrothal to Fernando in the mid-1030s, and continued to do so. The daughters of the ruling dynasty—both unmarried and married—played a vital role in administering royal estates: inherited properties that would eventually come to be known as the infantazgo.55 Royal women such as Sancha enjoyed spiritual capital, embodying and perpetuating the sanctity of their family, but do not seem to have taken vows, and exercised an active political role.56 The limited evidence from later in the reign suggests that Queen Sancha was responsible for managing royal estates as far from León as Galicia-Portugal. Women from magnate families might also enjoy a close relationship with the royal court, as well as patronizing powerful ecclesiastical institutions. This was the case, for instance, with the countess Sancha Muñiz, an heiress with high standing in the marriage market, who benefitted from a sequence of three economically profitable matches.57 In 1034, Vermudo III had directly granted her, and her then-husband, a property in Matallana—precisely the location which Ecta mentions in his charter. Tragically, her generous endowment of the monasteries of San Antolín del Esla (which she had founded) and San Salvador de Bariones to the cathedral church of León in 1040 may have resulted in her murder about five years later, possibly by her nephew: an event evoked in a striking image in the

22  Simon R. Doubleday

late twelfth-century Leonese cartulary known as the Libro de Estampas, in which Sancha—like Ecta—is struck down by the sword.58 In following the threads of Ecta’s deathbed bequest, we have uncovered a number of facets of power in Christian Iberia a thousand years ago, beginning with the prominence of bishops and monasteries in configurations of power, as well as the increasing centrality of clerical education and the written word as an instrument of law and authority. We have seen that the role of the king as a military leader is not to be conflated with a commitment to Reconquista, and have also examined the fragility of monarchical power, as well as the gradual emergence of hubs of royal power like León in an age when the court nevertheless continued to be itinerant. Finally, we have glimpsed in this text the sweeping influence of great aristocratic lineages such as the Flaínez family, and more fleetingly the critical place of socially elite women as rulers in León-Galicia. Some of these facets would change, in the decades to follow: rulership in medieval Christian Iberia was not a static phenomenon. As early as the end of the eleventh century, the role of monasteries like Sahagún was being challenged by the influence of the great French monastery of Cluny, and the papacy was asserting its interests in the peninsula in a way that it had not done two generations earlier. Under Alfonso VI and, particularly, Alfonso VII (r. 1126–1157), religious binaries would harden and the ideology of Reconquest would crystallize, partly in response to the challenge of the Almoravid and Almohad occupations of al-Andalus. The relationship between crown and nobility would also experience a slow, subtle shift. Some historians argue that a symbiotic relationship between crown and nobility would last into the late Middle Ages. For Fernando Arias Guillén, even in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries—when the crown was attempting to centralize its authority—tensions were merely sporadic: that is, nobles usually sought to control the expansion of royal government in line with their own interests.59 Emerging forms of royal taxation, he argues, were collected for the benefit of the magnates; there was competition for higher salaries and plum appointments. In his judgment, the acquisition of major lordships was largely a result of royal largesse. In my own view, however, the underpinnings of rulership would experience a marked shift in the middle of the thirteenth century. One symptomatic moment was the coalescence of an aristocratic coalition against Alfonso X in 1272. There was widespread opposition to the centralization of power and the exclusion of the aristocracy from important new positions such as merino mayor. We should certainly not overstate this shift: we have already seen phases of rebellion and resistance in the age of Vermudo III and Fernando I, too, and in the later period, the monarchy still sought the cooperation of noble lineages, just as such families seized any chance to increase their influence at the royal court. But it would also be a mistake to overemphasize the continuity. As Reyna Pastor remarked, some lineages in the later thirteenth century had amassed “states within a state”.60 These debates about the nature of rulership in medieval Christian Iberia undoubtedly merit continuing research.

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Notes 1 Carlos Estepa Díez, Estructura social de la ciudad de León, siglos XI–XIII (León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación “San Isidoro”, 1977), 115–17. 2 José Manuel Ruiz Asencio, ed., Colección documental del Archivo de la Catedral de León (775–1230), IV (1032–1109) (León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación “San Isidoro”, 1990) [hereafter, CD León], doc. 957. 3 Calleja Puerta, “Notas sobre el aprendizaje de la lectura y la escritura en la Asturias antigua y medieval”, in La educación en Asturias. Estudios históricos, ed. Aida Terrón Bañuelos and José A. Álvarez Castrillón, coords (Oviedo: Real Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 2019), 13–36, at 20. 4 Kyle Lincoln, “Beating Swords into Croziers: A Case Study of Warrior Bishops in the Kingdom of Castile, c. 1158–1214,” Journal of Medieval History 44 (1) (2018): 83–103. 5 For the identification of Todimiro and Godina, see Raúl González González, “Cultura escrita y sociedad urbana: los escribas en la ciudad altomedieval,” En la España Medieval 44 (2021): 193–235, at 218 n. 193 [accessible online at: https://revistas.ucm. es/index.php/ELEM/article/view/75420; last accessed February 25, 2023]. 6 CD León, doc. 959. 7 Carlos Estepa, “El relato histórico: rememorar y conmemorar,” in Reino de León: Hombres, Mujeres, Poderes e Ideas (910–1230), dir. Gerardo Boto Varela (Trobajo del Camino, León: Edilesa, 2010), 13–21, at 16. 8 Calleja Puerta, “Notas sobre el aprendizaje,” 15–20. 9 Kyle C. Lincoln, A Constellation of Authority: Castilian Bishops and the Secular Church During the Reign of Alfonso VIII (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2023). 10 William R. Moore, “Religious Language and the Construction of Royal Power: León, 1037–1126 (Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 2009), 87–92. 11 Maria Herrero de la Fuente, ed., Colección diplomática del Monasterio de Sahagún, II (León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación “San Isidoro”, 1988) [hereafter CD Sahagún], doc. 450; Luis Núñez Contreras, ed., “Colección diplomática de Vermudo III, rey de León,” in Historia, Instituciones, Documentos, 4 (1977), 381–514 [hereafter CD Vermudo III], doc. 20. 12 Fernando López Alsina, La Ciudad de Santiago de Compostela en la Alta Edad Media, 2nd ed. (Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 2013), esp. 134–60 and 253–61. 13 Mariel Pérez, “Proprietary Churches, Episcopal Authority and Social Relationships in the Diocese of León (Eleventh-Twelfth Centuries),” Journal of Medieval Iberian ­Studies 10, no. 2 (2018): 195–212. 14 Calleja Puerta, “Notas sobre el aprendizaje,” 20. 15 Carlos de Ayala Martínez, “Fernando I y la sacralización de la reconquista”, Anales de la Universidad de Alicante. Historia Medieval 17 (2011): 67–115, at 69. 16 CD Vermudo III, doc. 20. 17 Pilar Blanco Lozano, ed., “Colección diplomática de Fernando I (1037–1065),” Archivos Leoneses 40 (1986): 7–212 [hereafter CD Fernando I], doc. 12. 18 Raúl González González, “Cultura escrita”, 215–20. 19 Ainoa Castro Correa, “Pedro Kendúlfiz († 1051), Notary of the Royal Chancery of León: Training, Career, and Relationships”, in Le scribe d’archives dans l’Occident medieval: formations, carriers, reseaux/Archival Scribes in the Medieval West: Training, Careers, Connections, ed. Xavier Hermand, Jean-François Nieus and Étienne Rénard (Brepols: Turnhout, 2019), 103–31. Castro writes of a royal chancery but indicates that it was not formalized until the twelfth century. 20 Levi Roach, “The ‘Chancery’ of Otto I Revisited,” Deutsches Archiv fur Erforschung des Mittelalters 78, no. 1 (2022): 1–74. 21 Liam Moore, “By Hand and by Voice: Performance of Royal Charters in Eleventhand Twelfth-Century León,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 5, no. 1 (March 2013): 18–32.

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22 Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 52, 140–41. 23 Simon Barton and R. A. Fletcher (eds.), The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest, Manchester Medieval Sources Series (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000), 39. 24 Barton and Fletcher (eds.), The World of El Cid, 41. 25 Bernard F. Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 1065–1109 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 14–15. 26 Barton and Fletcher (eds.), The World of El Cid, 62–63. 27 Björn K. U. Weiler, Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 135. 28 Weiler, Paths to Kingship, 403. 29 Hélène Sirantoine, “La guerra contra los musulmanes en los diplomas castellanoleoneses (siglo XI-1126)”, in Orígenes y desarrollo de la Guerra Santa en la Península Ibérica: palabras e imágenes para una legitimación (siglos X–XIV), ed. J. Santiago Palacios Ontalva, Carlos de Ayala Martínez and Patrick Henriet (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2016), 51–65, at 52. 30 José Luis López Sangil and Manuel Vidán Torreira, “El Tumbo Viejo de Lugo (completa transcripción)”, Estudios Mindoniensis 27 (2011): 11–373, doc. 16. 31 Jose Miguel Andrade Cernadas (ed.), O Tombo de Celanova, 2 vols. (Santiago de Compostela: Consello da Cultura Galega, 1995) [hereafter Tombo Celanova] doc. 534. 32 Tombo Celanova, doc. 59; CD Fernando I, doc. 59, 158–60. 33 “Spain in the Eleventh Century,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 4, ed. D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 154–90, at 164. 34 Ermelindo Portela Silva, García II de Galicia. El Rey y el Reino, 1065–1090 (Burgos: La Olmeda, 2001), 98–100. 35 Portela Silva, García II, 124–25. 36 Juan A. Estévez Sola, ed. Chronica Naierensis (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), 173–74. 37 Fernando Luis Corral, “Utilizar el pasado para legitimar el presente: la refundación de Zamora en el siglo IX,” in L’invention de la ville dans le monde hispanique (IXe–XVIIIe siècles), ed. Louise Bénat-Tachot et al. (Paris: Éditions Hispaniques, 2019), 175–93. 38 Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, Una ciudad de la España cristiana hace mil años: estampas de la vida de León (Buenos Aires: Nova, 1947); the most recent edition is Una ciudad de la España cristiana hace mil años (Madrid: Rialp, 2014). Estepa Díez, Estructura social, 127–28. 39 40 Therese Martin, Queen as King: Politics and Architectural Propaganda in Twelfth-Century Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 132‒52. See also Martin, “The Art of a Reigning Queen as Dynastic Propaganda in Twelfth-Century Spain”, Speculum 80 (2005): 1134–71. 41 John W. Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries in Early Medieval Germany, c. 936–1075 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 42 Thomas N. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 34. 43 Álvaro Carvajal Castro, Bajo la máscara del regnum: La monarquía asturleonesa en León (854–1037) (Madrid: CSIC, 2017), 26–27; Carvajal Castro, “The Monarchy and the Elites in Early Medieval León: Ninth to Eleventh Centuries,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 7, no. 2 (2015): 232–48. 44 Amancio Isla, “The Aristocracy and the Monarchy in Northwest Iberia between the Eighth and the Eleventh Century,” in Culture and Society in Medieval Galicia: A  Cultural Crossroads at the Edge of Europe, ed. James D’Emilio (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 251–80; Álvaro Carvajal Castro, Bajo la máscara del regnum, 99–119. 45 José Carlos Sánchez Pardo, “Castros, castillos y otras fortificaciones en el paisaje sociopolítico de Galicia (siglos IV–XI),” in Los castillos altomedievales en el norte peninsular desde la Arqueología, ed. Juan Antonio Quirós and José María Tejado Sebastián (Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco, 2012), 29–56, at 49–52.

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Duby, Georges. The Early Growth of the European Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. Earenfight, Theresa. Queenship in Medieval Europe, Queenship and Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Lincoln, Kyle C. A Constellation of Authority: Castilian Bishops and the Secular Church During the Reign of Alfonso VIII. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2023. Martin, Therese. Queen as King: Politics and Architectural Propaganda in Twelfth-Century Spain. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Moore, Liam. “By Hand and by Voice: Performance of Royal Charters in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century León.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 5, no. 1 (2013): 18–32. Pick, Lucy. Her Father’s Daughter: Gender, Power, and Religion in the Early Spanish Kingdoms. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2017. Reilly, Bernard F. The Kingdom of León-Castilla Under King Alfonso VI, 1065–1109. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. Reilly, Bernard F. The Kingdom of León-Castilla Under Queen Urraca, 1109–1126. ­Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982. Reilly, Bernard F. and Simon R. Doubleday. Galicia-León under Queen Sancha and King Fernando I. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024. Shadis, Miriam. Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages, New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Weiler, Björn. Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest, ed. Simon Barton and Richard Fletcher. New York: Manchester University Press, 2000.

3 THE RISE OF ADMINISTRATIVE QUEENSHIP IN THE ANGLO-NORMAN REALM? Lois Huneycutt

In late 1109 or 1110, Bishop Herbert Losinga of Norwich found himself short of the money needed to pay fines and levies due to the crown on land he held in his diocese. Not only that, but customs duties were also being demanded from his manor at Thorpe, despite him having previously received assurance that the manor was free from such payments. Enough was enough, and the bishop decided it was time to appeal directly to King Henry I. But the king was traveling in Normandy, and so, in the interest of time, Bishop Herbert decided to approach those who had been left behind to govern England in the king’s absence. Those people included Henry’s queen Matilda, daughter of King Malcolm III of Scotland and his saintly queen Margaret, and Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, who had directed Henry’s chancery since the first year of the king’s reign. To Bishop Roger, Herbert sent a letter laying out his case carefully (if somewhat querulously), referring to documents Roger had seen that confirmed the terms of Herbert’s tenure and the “many writs” that confirmed his claims. Herbert requested relief from the “arbitrary” exactions, and if that were not possible, he suggested that the matter could be tabled until the king returned. He added that if Roger were to approach the queen for a ruling, he would “not find her difficult,” for she had long acted as a very mother to the bishop in his times of distress, and besides that, the queen was known to value Roger’s wisdom and heed his advice. To the queen, whom he referred to as “the sovereign mother of all England,” he wrote a flattering letter commending her wisdom, piety, and kindness, and implied that he had some matter of business to discuss with her, but that he hesitated to add to the burdens of administering the kingdom, a burden, he added, that she was carrying admirably. He then suggested that she approach the Bishop of Salisbury, and urge Roger to remain warm toward him and not despise his poverty.1 Bishop Herbert’s strategy of approaching the queen, who

DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-3

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would give the ultimate judgment, as well as the administrator Roger, seems to have worked, for he was pardoned the fees, and the following year, obtained a charter from the king carefully spelling out the terms of his tenure of Thorpe.2 A year after the king’s charter was issued from Winchester, “in the presence of Queen Matilda,” we find the Queen again in Winchester, presiding alone over the Michelmas meeting of the Exchequer, in what historian Francis West termed “the first example of a designated regent treating the administration as his or her own.”3 Several charters issued at the 1111 meeting survive to document the Queen’s firm and confident command of royal administrative and judicial activities. One of the litigants, Abbot Faritius of Abingdon (who had served as the queen’s physician during her pregnancies almost a decade earlier), used the Liber thesauro (probably Domesday Book) to prove that one of his manors owed nothing to another. In the writ that was subsequently issued to confirm her judgment, Matilda called the court “my lord’s and mine.”4 In a second case, Bishop Rannulf Flambard of Durham claimed a manor for Durham because the tenant, who had earlier entered into an agreement with Rannulf ’s predecessor, had failed to live up to its terms. Matilda ordered the sheriff to “see that Rannulf the bishop had full right” from the tenant. The charter issued at this time is still extant with the queen’s seal attached. And in yet a third charter, most likely issued at the same time, Matilda announced that the prior and monks of Worchester were “in the hands of the king and me, and they have the firm peace of the king and me.”5 Matilda’s sure hand in administrative matters suggests that she was fully at home in her role. Indeed, throughout much of the period between the Conquest of England and the death of Stephen’s queen Matilda of Boulogne in 1152, the Anglo-Norman queens were routinely active in the affairs of state, acting in capacities that might suggest an official place for the queen among the officers of the crown. Few scholars today are surprised to read of a medieval queen consort playing the kind of vital and visible role in the public affairs of a kingdom described here, and yet, even though the constitutional and political history of England is among the most-studied aspects of medieval European history, the role of the English queen-consort was virtually ignored until Pauline Stafford published Queens, Concubine, and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages in 1983.6 Since then, queenship studies have exploded, and today it is difficult to doubt that the queen consort and her role is an essential part of almost any story about how medieval Europe was ruled.7 Consideration of the queen’s role, as well as that of other family members in kingdoms across medieval Europe, has changed the way that we look at monarchy as a whole. As a result, today we have a much broader picture of how medieval European monarchs and their subordinates governed their realms. In the remainder of this essay, I will be showing how Anglo-Norman queens contributed to the governing of their realms, and then demonstrating that what we now know about their administrative roles and political impact has forced scholars to reconsider the constitutional history of medieval England. While examining the changes in queenship over the entire span of the medieval

The Rise of Administrative Queenship in the Anglo-Norman Realm?  29

era would undoubtedly provide fascinating and i mportant results, time and space considerations force a more focused study, and I have chosen here to look at the queen consorts in the century or so between the Norman Conquest in 1066 and the accession of Henry II in 1154. With one exception, these queens were particularly active and visible, largely because the challenges of conquering, occupying, and ruling the cross-channel kingdom that was wracked by civil war by the end of the period required a great deal of innovation that led to opportunities for the able, astute queen consorts to participate openly and regularly in the process of governing the realm. The innovative nature of Anglo-Norman queenship is evident from its beginning. From the time of their marriage, Duke William of Normandy and Duchess Matilda of Flanders often appeared together in both ceremonial roles and judicial proceedings. Matilda’s name appears on 39 of William’s surviving pre-conquest charters as either signator or co-issuer. A burst of these charters were issued just before William invaded England. William and Matilda were aware that should he succeed in becoming England’s king, both Matilda and their Norman subjects would have to get used to the new queen as the head of the Norman administration while William was in England. William of course did defeat the English armies at Hastings on 14 October, 1066. Matilda, who had financed the construction of his flagship out of her own funds, was not present at the hastily arranged and somewhat ill-starred Christmas Day coronation of the new king.8 Business in Normandy and the demands of a growing family occupied her until she was finally able to come to England in the Spring of 1068 for her coronation on the Day of Pentecost, 11 May. Her carefully planned, elaborate ceremony could not have been more different from William’s. The coronation rite, written especially for the occasion, borrowed elements from papal, episcopal, imperial, and earlier royal inaugurations to create an elaborate two-day statement of Norman power that included an enhanced laudes regiae, sung for the first time in England. It also replaced the traditional female martyr-saints typically invoked in a reginal ceremony with the apostles Peter, Paul, John, and Andrew. The text chosen for the reading on the Pentecost vigil, which would have been attended by the elite from both the English and Norman communities, was Baruch 3, a text that tells the story of a chosen people who have lost their kingdom and sovereignty through their own folly and are now in the enemy’s hand. The following day would of course mark the beginning of a new order – the celebration of the birth of the Christian church, but also the coronation of a new queen, incidentally visibly pregnant, experienced in administering the duchy of Normandy, and now claiming power in England through apostolic intercession.9 Domesday Book reveals that Matilda became a major landholder in England, and that, in her role as duchess and queen, she presided over judicial proceedings in both Normandy and England while William was elsewhere occupied. Her personal resources were such that she was able to summon her own troops to aid her husband, and later her son.10 David Bates has pointed out that even though Matilda spent most of her time in Normandy, she witnessed all the surviving English

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royal diplomas issued between 1066 and her death in 1083. In one instance, there is evidence that the issuance of a royal confirmation of a grant to Worcester Cathedral was delayed until the queen could be present. In all cases, the queen’s status was indicated by having her signs the documents immediately following the king, a practice repeated in subsequent reigns.11 In the autumn of 1080, we find Queen Matilda in Scotland, accompanied by her son Robert Curthose. Both had apparently been sent north on a mission to re-establish peace between England and Scotland. While there, the royal pair stood as godparents to the infant daughter of King Malcolm III and his queen, Margaret. This child would grow up to become the next queen of England when she married William and Matilda’s youngest son Henry in 1100. We have already seen Matilda of Scotland at work as an able and energetic member of the royal governing structure. During her tenure as Henry’s queen, she controlled substantial lands that gave her the means to engage in ecclesiastical and artistic patronage, and she was also a trusted partner who often acted exactly as Henry would have when he was occupied elsewhere. She was present when major policy decisions were made, and like her predecessor, worked in conjunction with the barons and courtiers sitting in judgment and issuing charters dealing with a wide variety of cases. She was often left in England when Henry traveled to Normandy or was elsewhere in England. The 33 extant charters that remain as evidence of her administrative acumen represent only a fraction of the business of monarchy that occupied her throughout her 18-year reign as Henry’s queen. At every turn, the narrative sources of the reign place her at the center of weighty matters such as England’s role in the investiture controversy or how and whether to receive papal legates into the kingdom. It is worth pointing out that medieval commentators generally took the queen consort’s authority to conduct the business of the realm in stride and overall, seem much less concerned than modern analysts sometimes are when they describe a queen settling a land dispute, presiding over a church council, negotiating a peace treaty, or founding an ecclesiastical community.12 Matilda of Scotland’s death in 1118 was followed by that of her only son William in 1120. With his only other legitimate child Matilda married to the Emperor of the Romans in the West, and occupied with Italian and German affairs, Henry was left without an obvious heir.13 He remarried quickly, to Adeliza of Louvain, daughter of Godfrey I “the Bearded,” Count of Louvain, and his wife Ida of Chiny, “on account of her beauty and hope for a son.”14 Adeliza was only about 18 years old at the time of her 1121 wedding. The new queen moved into a situation where the administration of England had been functioning smoothly for about two decades, and there was little need for Adeliza to become personally involved in it unless she particularly wanted to. In addition, it was clear to contemporaries that her first duty was to conceive a new heir for the kingdom, and we are left to assume that the attempt to conceive a child is the main reason that she was most often found at Henry’s side as they itinerated through his realms. But by January 1127, Henry decided to hedge

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his succession bets by requiring the barons present at the Christmas court to swear to uphold the claims of his daughter, Matilda, now widowed, childless, and living at her father’s court, should he not have another heir of his body at the time of his death. Adeliza remained by his side, and as assurances of prayers for the successful birth of an heir from ecclesiastical correspondents inform us, still hoped to bear a son for Henry. But despite the apparent efforts of both king and bishops, no child was born, which led to a war of succession following Henry’s 1135 death. Henry’s daughter, now remarried to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou in 1128, and the mother of two sons, was in Anjou when her father died. Since Matilda and Geoffrey were also supporting a baronial rebellion against royal authority in Normandy when King Henry died, it was relatively easy for Henry’s nephew Stephen, who enjoyed the support of the church and who was popular with their Anglo-Norman nobility, to seize control of England’s throne. The resulting civil war between Stephen and his cousin Matilda, who will be referred to here as “the Empress,” required yet more innovation and leadership on the part of Stephen and his queen, also named Matilda. Queen Matilda had become Countess of Boulogne in her own right after her father entered monastic life in 1125, so I will refer to her as Matilda of Boulogne or Queen Matilda to distinguish her from her predecessors and rivals.15 Queen Matilda would prove to be Stephen’s greatest asset. The available evidence points to a probable birthdate between 1103 and 1105 for Matilda of Boulougne, although she could have been born as late as about 1110. Her mother was Mary of Scotland, the younger sister of Henry’s first queen Matilda. As a granddaughter of Margaret of Scotland, Queen Matilda, and her children, as much as the Empress and hers, were descendants of Alfred the Great and the pre-conquest kings of England. The paternal side of her family was also illustrious. Queen Matilda’s father had fought on the First Crusade. Two of her uncles had served as Kings of Jerusalem. Queen Matilda’s paternal grandmother, Ida of Lorraine, was an ardent church reformer renowned for her piety and charitable acts.16 These connections and the titles and wealth that they added would be invaluable to Stephen’s efforts to hold on to his crown. The Boulonnais counts were also major landholders in England thanks to the efforts of the family, beginning with Matilda’s grandfather, who had fought with William the Conqueror in 1066 and who was eventually rewarded with lands, mostly in Essex and the southeast of England, valued at £770 in Domesday, placing his holding as the eleventh most valuable in England. From this base in the southeast, which remained under their control for the entire civil war, Stephen and his queen were able to cultivate a harmonious relationship with the residents of the city of London, whose livelihood often depended on continental trade between places like Dover in Kent and Matilda’s port of Wissant on the continent. This relationship with the citizens of London would serve them well when Stephen acceded to the throne. Possibly because she had just given birth to her son William, Matilda remained in Boulogne when Stephen claimed the throne in December 1135, and she did

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not attend his coronation. She was present at Stephen’s lavish Easter court and crown-wearing at Westminster in March 1136, which saw “the most complete gathering of the clergy of the Anglo-Norman regnum that had ever been held.” This is the first mention we have of Matilda wearing her crown.17 The following months saw Queen Matilda witnessing a flurry of the king’s charters.18 The first two years of Stephen’s reign would prove to be the most peaceful ones. During the Spring and Summer of 1138, the king was faced with rebellions in Normandy and the Welsh March, potential war in Northumberland with the Scots, and the defection or threat of defection of several leading nobles to the Empress Matilda. In the resultant crisis, the king headed for Hereford and delegated control of the southeast to his queen. She led an army into Kent to take control of Dover and its port, laying siege to the castle on the land side and then sending word to “her friends and kinsmen and dependents in Boulogne to blockade the foe by sea,” and thus took military control of southeast England.19 After the surrender of the castle in December 1138, she made her kinsman Faramus of Boulogne the new castellan of Dover. In the early months of 1139, Matilda worked with the papal legate Alberic of Ostia to effect a peace treaty between King David of Scotland, who had made several forays into England since Stephen’s succession, and King Stephen.20 The Empress Matilda landed in England about the same time to claim the crown that she and her followers believed was rightly hers, leading to a war of succession that lasted until 1153. The year 1140 saw several tests of the queen’s diplomatic abilities, as she traveled to France to arrange the marriage of her oldest son Eustace to the princess Constance, daughter of France’s King Louis VII, and then returned in May to work with the king’s brother Bishop Henry of Winchester to meet with the Empress‘s ambassadors to try (unsuccessfully) to arrange a peaceful settlement between the warring cousins. Faramus of Boulogne continued to support the queen as head of the royal armies along with the Flemish aristocrat (and relative of the king) William of Ypres when she was faced with the need to take control of the defense of the kingdom in 1141 after Stephen was taken prisoner at the Battle of Lincoln on 2 February. Stephen’s capture was followed by the defection of many of his followers, including Henry of Winchester, to the Empress, and it looked like the end of his reign. On 3 March, Bishop Henry received the Empress in his episcopal city, offering up the crown, the royal treasury and custody of the king’s castle there. On 7 April, the bishop, exercising his legatine powers, opened a council in Winchester to negotiate the king’s deposition and the election of his rival as England’s new monarch. With Stephen releasing the Archbishop of Canterbury and his party of lay and ecclesiastical magnates from their previous oaths of loyalty and support, the Council elected the Empress as Lady of the English. They also summarily refused the requests of the Queen and her clerk that King Stephen be released from captivity and that the lands he held before he become king be passed to their son Eustace.21 When the council was concluded, those present must have assumed that the Empress would soon be crowned at Westminster, and that Stephen would be held in honorable captivity until his death.

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At this point, the queen changed tactics. After the Empress once again refused a request to release the king, she began negotiating for the benefit of their son Eustace. The Empress’s refusal to treat Eustace with any kind of clemency, followed by a disastrous meeting with representatives of the City of London on 24  June, possibly on the night before her planned coronation, resulted in her being driven out of the City of London. The queen, described by a contemporary as “a woman of subtlety and a man’s resolution,” had assembled an army on the south bank of the Thames, “hoping to gain by arms what she could not by supplication.” The citizens of London opened their gates to the queen’s forces, and the Empress and her supporters were forced to flee to Oxford.22 When the Empress returned to Winchester, Bishop Henry refused to meet with her, and instead met the queen in a “family conference” where they came to terms.23 Winchester became a battleground of siege and counter-siege, but the upshot was victory by the end of September for the queen’s forces, the capture of the Empresses’ chief supporters including her half-brother Robert of Gloucester, followed by a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Empress, Queen Matilda and the Countess of Gloucester.24 By 7 December, after an awkward and hostile legatine council at Westminster, Stephen was restored to his throne. He and Queen Matilda were solemnly recrowned at Canterbury on Christmas Day. Without a peace treaty, though, England was left in the same state of war in December than it had been in January, a fact gloomily noted by all the surviving chroniclers.25 We find the queen less active in later years, as military activities slowed after the death of Robert of Gloucester and the Empress’s return to Normandy. The queen continued to administer her own lands and to advocate for her son’s succession, including trying to have him crowned during his father’s lifetime in the manner of the Capetian dynasty in France. She may have traveled to Flanders in 1150, but for the most part, she remained at Canterbury supervising the building of her new monastic foundation at Faversham. Queen Matilda’s lands in Essex remained the “cornerstone on which Stephen built his power,” not only supplying revenues, but also royal servants from the area.26 Queen Matilda’s leadership, both in warfare and diplomacy demonstrates the agency of the Anglo-Norman queen and her imprint on institutional growth and administrative procedures during the years when “men said openly that Christ and his saints slept” as a contemporary characterized Stephen’s reign.27 Having established the many public, military, and administrative roles that Anglo-Norman queens could and did play, we are left with the question as to why queens were ignored in constitutional and administrative histories until the late 1970s. The answer lies in the framework of discussion set by the earliest “scientific” historians of the Victorian Age. The constitutional medieval history of England is an enormous subject with a bibliography to match, and for all intents and purposes, it begins in the nineteenth century with Bishop William Stubbs (1825–1901). His groundbreaking three-volume constitutional history of England, a masterpiece of Victorian Whig history and English exceptionalism published between 1880 and 1887, set the tone for political studies of English

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governance well into the next century. In this massive work, Stubbs searched for the origins of the present that lay “deep in the past,” for he believed that “nothing in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the present came to be what it is.”28 His approach was marked by the tendency to perceive “the fully-fledged bird in the as yet unhatched egg,” a tendency that historians who followed him would build upon as they analyzed institutions and ideas flourishing at some later point in history and then sought the origins of what they saw in their work on later periods or in their own present.29 While not denigrating the vast erudition and careful scholarship that went into this work as well as the long shadow that Stubbs’ work has cast on the field, it is fair to point out that the Constitutional History has been criticized for its English chauvinism, a certain romantic tone, open hostility to papal “interference” in English developments, and an anachronistic picture of a government consistently and purposefully acting in what today we would call the “national interest.” As J. W. Burroughs argued, Whig historians like Stubbs and his contemporaries emphasized progress and continuity, enabling medieval English constitutional history to be read as a success story marked by a pragmatic and gradualist narrative laying the foundations for the freedoms nineteenth-century Englishmen subjects enjoyed.30 This approach was eventually questioned by scholars including J. E. A. Joliffe, who warned of the dangers of “tracing a receding perspective of his own time back and back until it encloses so small a sector of the past that his prospect of it becomes gravely compacted.” The facts to which his lines of observation lead may be facts, but they may also be “a small proportion to the whole, and the mere process of their selection may give him a very untrue picture of the age.”31 But on the whole, the process of examining eggs with fully-fledged birds in mind continued, with perhaps its culmination coming with the elegant arguments of Joseph Strayer in his On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State, which has been continuously in print since its appearance in 1970.32 Strayer’s work provided a brilliant model and a comparative framework for England and avoided the overt chauvinism present in Stubbs and his contemporaries, but still saw the development of the modern western centralized state as a rational and largely inexorable process that arose beginning about 1100. Drawing a straight line from Stubbs to Strayer requires some nuancing. For instance, Helen Cam pointed out that Stubbs did not have full access to the carefully curated record sources that are now housed in the National Archives that enabled work on financial records and the prosopographical approach pioneered by J. H. Round in his work on English baronial families.33 The greater availability of record sources made possible the kind of administrative history that flourished in the middle part of the twentieth century. Much of the scholarship on these institutions and offices began by studying the reign of Henry II and the “Angevin Leap Forward” where the common law, administrative kingship, and the solidification of institutions like the Exchequer were presumed to have begun.34 Works like those of H. R. Richardson and G. O. Sayles’ The Governance of Medieval England or Francis West’s The Origins of the Justiciarship tended to

The Rise of Administrative Queenship in the Anglo-Norman Realm?  35

focus as much or more on the “how” as the “why” of medieval governance.35 Richardson and Sayles posited that the development of royal government took an abrupt turn, not at the conquest, but after the Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106. Arguing that William the Conqueror’s plan was for his older son Robert to assume control of Normandy at his death, while his second son William would take England, they contended that the administration of England would have continued to develop gradually along traditional lines but for Henry I’s realization after Tinchebrai that he would have to divide his time between his two dominions. His solution was to create the office of the justiciar, first occupied by Roger of Salisbury. It was from this office that “the system that differentiated England from other monarchies of Western Europe and that determined so many of the characteristics of English medieval administration” developed.36 Other scholars quibbled with their chronology, either rejecting the term’s usefulness until the Angevin era, or pointing out that Odo of Bayeux in William I’s reign, or Ranulf Flambard in William II’s reign had much the same powers as Roger of Salisbury in Henry I’s, although admittedly not as singularly or consistently. Richardson and Sayles did point out that “kingship can be divided,” in the first place with the queen was “regalis imperii particeps” (a partner in royal rule) and secondly with the king’s son, but queens and queenship are not central to their discussion. In fact, the topic takes up less than two pages in their 500-plus page study, and the Anglo-Norman queens are either never mentioned or dismissed in a few lines. For historians of the 1960s and 1970s, the “big story” of the era was the delegation of monarchical authority to professional administrators and its implication for the development of efficient government. It is understandable that few people living the late nineteenth or early twentieth century world, where the public and private spheres were more sharply divided than ever before, would be inclined to look backward from the present and see the king’s wife or other family members as sources of power and influence in a medieval kingdom.37 But in the 1970s and 1980s, medievalists would begin to study both families and queens systematically and seriously. And at the same time, Anglo-Norman studies emerged as a lively area of investigation among scholars of medieval English history, leading to a host of studies that expanded on Richardson and Sayles in seeing the roots of Angevin institutions in the Anglo-Norman period. Their efforts have produced not only dozens of monographs, but also the founding of the annual Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies in 1978, followed by the American “daughter house,” the Haskins Society in 1982, each with its own set of proceedings.38 These scholars succeeded in opening a conversation that posited a great deal more continuity between the reigns of the Anglo-Norman kings, particularly Henry I (1100–1135) and the first Angevin king than had previously been realized. Many of the Anglo-Norman scholars followed C. Warren Hollister’s lead in using prosopographical methods and record sources to create administrative histories of post-Conquest England that moved beyond the origins and development of offices and institutions to investigate powerful magnates and curiales and their networks of power through such tools as analysis of witness list on royal

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and baronial charters.39 At the same time, studies of kinship networks, not just at the royal level, but among the higher nobility throughout northern Europe have revealed previously underappreciated power centers at the comital level that certainly affected the governance of the Anglo-Norman polity. For instance, the alliances Henry I created among England, Normandy, Anjou, and Blois were usually centered on keeping his nephew William Clito from being in a position to claim the throne after Henry’s death. The advent of feminist history meant that medieval women’s history was receiving far more sustained attention than ever before. Marion Facinger’s 1968 comparative study of the Capetian queens showed that not only individual queens, but also queenship itself, could be productively studied.40 Until this time, biographical studies of queens in Anglophone scholarship had tended to be the work of antiquarians outside of or on the fringes of the academy. The 1970s saw a number of articles about individual women, including the pre-Conquest queens Emma and Edith.41 JoAnn McNamara and Suzanne Wemple’s article, “The Power of Women through the Family, 500–1100,” that first appeared in Feminist Studies in 1973, provided a theoretical framework that inspired a generation of scholars to begin to create a history of medieval women and power.42 The 1980s saw a number of influential conferences dedicated to studying women and power, publication of several anthologies, and the heading “queenship” appearing in the International Medieval Bibliography for the first time.43 A question that early scholars of medieval queenship continually faced was whether there really was something that could be called “queenship” in the European Middle Ages, a something that is separate from the biographies of women who held the position, and if so, how it ought to be integrated into existing political histories of the era, but by 1995, a review article declared “the study of queenship as an institution is one of the newest historical disciplines.” Four years later, Janet L Nelson explained that “queens in the Middle Ages lived varied lives and did very different things. Nevertheless, there are enough recognizable similarities to constitute something that we can call ‘medieval queenship.’”44 More recently, Elisabeth van Houts has spoken of the “constitutional position” of the queen, a position resulting from a formalizing of the sharing of power that had sometimes been in place before 1066.45 As queenship studies developed to the point that longitudinal studies and comparative analyses were possible, it became clear that in Anglo-Norman England, there were inaugural ceremonies, ceremonial acts, privileges and public obligations, household structures, and regular sources of income from lands and monies such as “queen’s gold” that were among the prerogatives of queenship. Anglo-Norman queens used seals depicting themselves with symbols of power including crowns and scepters, issued diplomas using the same formulae as their royal husbands, and presided over the exchequer, court hearings, and ceremonial occasions exercising the full authority of the monarchy. Yet, queenship remained relational, and the authority granted to the queen consort was situational, dependent on her abilities, interests, and the trust her husband placed

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in her. If we use the term “office” for Anglo-Norman queens, it should be done cautiously and deliberately. Nothing like a modern office with job description, salary, regular means of appointment, or specific duties existed for any of the women under consideration. Reginal power was fluid, and her power was always dependent on her relationship with her husband and offspring. This conclusion in no way diminishes the role or importance of the Anglo-Norman queen. Rather, it allows us to look again at the entire model of the “developing state,” and to realize that reliance on family members as royal deputies in the Anglo-Norman realm, a practice that was well-established in England even before the conquest, developed and continued well into the twelfth century. During William I’s reign, his queen Matilda and his half-brother Bishop Odo of Bayeaux were recognized as acting on the king’s behalf. Later in the reign, we see William and Matilda’s eldest son Robert exercising authority in Normandy and engaging in at least one diplomatic mission alongside his mother. During Henry I’s reign, that role was taken up by his first queen, and briefly, by his son William. And during Stephen’s reign, Matilda of Boulogne acted with full royal authority, particularly during Stephen’s captivity in 1141, and we see her acting in tandem with her oldest son Eustace, preparing him to rule after his father. These active, astute, and literate queens carved out areas of legal, political, and military expertise that were crucial to the creation and success of the Anglo-Norman state. As Bates has argued, “the crucial point is that in England and Normandy, one member of the king’s family could supply an authority which was regarded as equivalent to his own.”46 That family member was most often his wife. Unlike other officials, queens and other family members did not work for the king, rather they were “partners in royal governance” who worked with him to govern the realm.

Notes 1 Herbert de Losinga, Epistolae Herbert de Losinga, ed. Robert Anstruther (Brussels and London: Caxton Society, 1846, repr. NY, Burt Franklin, 1964), 54–55. Roger of Salisbury is often referred to in constitutional histories as England’s first chief justiciar, or even as an early lord chancellor, but his biographer Edward J. Kealey Preferred the Term “Viceroy” and Hesitated to See His Position as Analogous to Later Office Holders. See Edward J. Kealey, Roger of Salisbury, Viceroy of England (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972). 2 See James W. Alexander, “Herbert of Norwich 1091–1119,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 6 (1969), 115–232. 3 Francis West, The Justiciarship in England (Cambridge, MA: The Cambridge University Press, 1966), 14. 4 Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066–1154, Volume II: Regesta Henrici Primi (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1956), #1000, 104. 5 See Lois L. Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship (Woodbridge, Sussex: The Boydell Press, 2003), 88–89. 6 See Stafford, Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983). Stafford’s book, which was among the first to explore queenship rather than the life of an individual queen, was preceded by the collection edited by William W. Kibler, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patron and Politician (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975) that included several essays, most notably

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7

8

9 10

11

12 13

14

15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22

23

that of Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “Eleanor of Aquitaine: Parent, Duchess, and Queen,” 1–26, that set her within a framework of queenly expectations. The enormous and growing body of scholarship on medieval queenship is best accessed through the online bibliography maintained by Theresa Earenfight, “Queenship in the Middle Ages,” at https://theresaearenfight.com/comprehensive-bibliography/. [move your cite to further reading?] See also Lois L. Huneycutt, “Queenship Studies Comes of Age,” Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 51, no. 2 (2016): 9–16. Elisabeth van Houts, “Queens in the Anglo-Norman/Angevin Realm, 10166–1216,” in Mächtige Frauen? Köninginnin und Fürstinnen im europäischen Mittelalter (11–14 Jahrhundert), ed. Claudia Zey, Sophie Caflisch and Philippe Goridis (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2015), 199–224, at 203. See Laura L. Gathagan, “’Audi Israel’: Apostolic Authority in the Coronation of Mathilda of Flanders,” Anglo-Norman Studies XLIII: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2020, ed. S. D. Church (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2021), 89–104. See Jean A. Truax, “Anglo-Norman Women at War: Valiant Solidres, Prudent Strategists, or Charismatic Leaders?,” in The Circle of War: Essays on Medieval Military and Naval History, ed. Donald J. Kagay and L. J. Andrew Villalon (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999), 111–25, at 112. Gathagan, “Iudex: Masculine, Feminine, or Neither.” David Bates, “The Representation of Queens and Queenship in Anglo-Norman Royal Charters,” in Frankland: The Franks and the World of the Early Middle Ages, ed. Paul Fouracre and David Ganz (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 285–303. See Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship, especially Chapter Four, “Godric and Goddiva: Queen Matilda’s Political Role.” The first modern biography of the Empress is Marjorie Chibnall’s The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother, and Lady of the English (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993) which has been supplemented, but not superseded by Catherine Hanley, Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). “Causa prolis et puchritudinis.” Robert of Torigni, The Chronography of Robert of Torigni, 2 volumes, ed./trans. Thomas N. Bisson (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 2020), 1, 72–73, 2: 74–75. Edmund King, King Stephen (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 20. See note 117. Heather J. Tanner, Families, Friends, and Allies: Boulogne, c. 879–1160 (Leiden: Brill, 2004). Also, Renée Nip, “Godelieve of Gistel and Ida of Boulogne,” in Sanctity and Motherhood: Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (New York: Routledge, 2016. First published by New York: Garland, 1995), 191–223. King, King Stephen, 58. Tanner, “Queenship: Office, Custom, or Ad Hoc?,” 139. Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed./trans. Marjorie Chibnall, six volumes (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1969–1980), 6: 520. See also Henry of Huntingdon, 261. John of Hexham, discussed by Tanner, “Queenship: Office, Custom, or Ad Hoc?,” 139, David Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen, 1135–54 (London: Pearson, 2000), 134, and King, King Stephen, 309. [don’t need all of these cites for this audience]. John of Worcester, Chronicle, 296–97, Gesta Stephani, 81, and William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, 98–101. Gesta Stephani, 81. For discussion of the contrasting treatment of the queen and empress in the chronicle literature of the period, Colleen Slater, “So Hard Was It to Release Princes Whom Fortuna Had Put in Her Chains: Queens and Female Rulers as Hostage-Takers,” in Medieval Feminist Forum 45, no. 2 (2009), 12–30, at 16–19, and Weikert, “The Queen, the Countess, and the Conflict.” “Interea familiar apud Geldeforde cum regina.” William of Malmsebury, Historia Novella, 100–101.

The Rise of Administrative Queenship in the Anglo-Norman Realm?  39

24 Swanton, ed./trans., Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno 1141, 266–67.y b. 25 See Edmund King, “A Week in Politics: Oxford, Late July, 1141,” in King Stephen’s Reign, ed. Paul Dalton and Graeme J. White (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2008), 58–79, at 71–72. 26 Dark, “Woman of Subtlety,” 163. 27 Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno 1137, 265. 28 The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development, Three Volumes (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1880–1887). 29 Helen Cam, “Stubbs Seventy Years After,” The Cambridge Historical Journal 9, no. 2 (1948): 129–47, at 130. 30 Cam, “Stubbs Seventy Years After,” See also J. W. Burrow, A Liberal Descent: Victorian Ideas and the English Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 31 J. E. A. Joliffe, Angevin Kingship (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1955), 1. 32 Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970). 33 John Horace Round, Studies in Peerage and Family History (Westminster: A. Constable and Company, 1901). 34 See Doris Mary Stenton, English Justice between the Norman Conquest and the Great Charter, 1066–1215 (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1964). This book originated from a series of lectures, and one talk, later chapter, was entitled “The Angevin Leap Forward.” The phrase was picked up and used ubiquitously in studies of English law over the next three decades. 35 Richardson and Sayles, The Governance of Medieval Europe from the Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963) and Francis West, The Justiciarship in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966). 36 Richardson and Sayles, Governance of Medieval England, 163–64. 37 Richardson and Sayles, Governance of Medieval England, 152. 38 For the Battle Conference, founded by R. Allen Brown, see https://battleconference.wordpress.com/ (accessed 25 July 2022), especially the History section. For the Haskins Society, founded in 1982 by C. Warren Hollister along with some of his former graduate students, see https://thehaskinssociety.wildapricot.org/ (accessed 25 July 2022). 39 Hollister’s major articles are collected in Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World (New York: Hambledon Press, 1986), but see important qualifications in David Bates’ review published in Albion 19, no. 4 (1987): 591–93. Hollister’s work on Henry I, culminating in the biography, completed after his death by his former student Amanda Clark Frost, radically changed historians’ thinking about the place of that monarch in European history. See C. Warren Hollister and Amanda Clark Frost, Henry I (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). 40 Marion F. Facinger, “A Study in Medieval Queenship: Capetian France, 987–1328,” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 5 (New York: AMS Press, 1968): 3–48. 41 Miles W. Campbell, “Queen Emma and Ælfgifu of Northampton: Canute the Great’s Women,” Medieval Scandinavia 4 (9171): 66–79; “Emma, reine d’Angleterre, mère denaturée ou femme vindicative?,” Annales de normanndie 23 (1973): 97–114; and “The Encomium Emmae Reginae: Personal Panegyric or Political Propaganda,” Annuale Mediavale 19 (1979): 27–45. For Edith, see Kenneth E. Cutler, “Edith, Queen of England, ­ 1045–1066,” Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973): 222–31. 42 JoAnn McNamara and Suzanne Wemple, “The Power of Women through the Family in Medieval Europe: 500–1100,” Feminist Studies 1, no. 3/4 (1973): 126–41. 43 For a discussion of the origins of the field, see Attila Baranyi, “Medieval Queens and Queenship” The Present Status of Research and Income and Power,” Annual of Medieval Studies at Central European University 19 (2013): 149–99. Huneycutt, “Queenship Studies Comes of Age,” extends the discussion to 2016. 44 Rachel Gibbons, “Medieval Queenship: An Overview,” Reading Medieval Studies 20 (1995): 97–107, at 97 followed by Janet L. Nelson, “Medieval Queenship,” in Women

40  Lois Huneycutt

in Medieval Western European Culture, ed. Linda E. Mitchell (New York: Garland Publishing, 1999), 179–207, at 180. 45 Van Houts, Anglo-Norman and Angevin Queens, 202. 46 David Bates, “The Origins of the Justiciarship,” Anglo-Norman Studies 4 (1981): 1–12, at 6–7.

Suggestions for Further Reading Bartlett, Robert. England under the Anglo-Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225. New York: Oxford USA, 2003. Gathagan, Laura L. “Embodying Power: Gender and Authority in the Queenship of  Mathilda of Flanders,” Unpublished PhD Dissertation, City University of New York, 2003. Huneycutt, Lois L. Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2003. Tanner, Heather J. “Office, Custom, or Ad Hoc?: The Case of Queen Matilda III of England (1136–1152),” In Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, ed. John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler, 133–58. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wertheimer, Laura. “Adeliza of Louvain and Anglo-Norman Queenship,” The Haskins Society Journal 7 (1995): 101–15.

4 KHAZARIA The Exception Which Proves the Rules Alex Mesibov Feldman

Khazaria in the Sources One of the most enigmatic examples of historical rulership, the case of K ­ hazaria may be the exception which proves several rules at once. Khazaria has been frequently viewed as a historical anomaly due to the rulers’ (khans’) adoption of Judaism sometime in the ninth century. As we will see, because the Khazar rulers refrained from converting their subjects to Judaism in a top-down fashion, ­K hazaria was not so much a historical anomaly as the historical exception which proved the Golden Rule – that he who has the gold makes the rules. Unlike every other historical case of the top-down adoptions of one brand of monotheism or another (this is what created monotheistic-based ethnicities across ­Abrahamic Civilization in the first place), after having adopted Judaism, the Khazarian khans never imposed it on their subjects, which is essentially the reason why the Khazarian Judaic identity disappeared into the sands of time. ­K hazaria is also instructive in that it straddles the geographical separation of Europe from Asia, as well as late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, demonstrating that these chronological and spatial labels are simplistic and arbitrary. In this way, Khazaria may be perhaps one of the most instructive cases about how medieval Europe was ruled in that it exemplifies the chronological, spatial and political outer limits of terms like “medieval,” “Europe” and “rulership.” Appearing in Chinese, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, Slavonic and Hebrew sources, the Khazars are first mentioned in sixth-century Chinese chronicles as being led by the Ashina dynasty in a Gökturk civil war between two clans following the death of khan Taspar in 581.1 A couple of generations later, the Khazars are mentioned in Greek by Theophanes the Confessor as allies of the Roman Emperor Herakleios in the 620s against his sworn enemies, the combined Avar and Persian armies.2 According to patriarch Nikephoros, Herakleios’ DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-4

42  Alex Mesibov Feldman

great-great-grandson Justinian II later married into the Khazar ruling dynasty, inaugurating a tradition of Roman-Khazar imperial marriages which culminated in the Roman emperor Leo IV the Khazar, (r. 775–780) – the result of Roman-Khazar unity in opposition to the Islamic Caliphate.3 Islamic authors extensively describe Khazaria, from ibn Khurrdadbih’s lateninth-century story of Sallam the Interpreter, who journeyed through Khazaria to what may have been the westernmost extension of the Great Wall of China (possibly at the end of the Hexi Corridor in present Dunhuang county, China). There are also the ninth- to tenth-century details provided by ibn Rusta, ­al-Faqih, al-Masudi, al-Istakhri, ibn Hauqal and al-Muqaddasi, the Persian geography, Hudud al-Alam and the rich journal (Risala) of ibn Fadlan’s journey to Volga Bulgaria (middle Volga).4 In the 920s, the Volga Bulgar ruler named Almush (entitled elteber) wanted bullion from Fadlan, who represented the caliph, so he could build a fortress to protect himself against the Khazars, who sought to ­subjugate him: You all came together and my master [the caliph] paid all your expenses, and the only reason was so that you could bring me this money to have a fortress built to protect me from the Jews, who have tried to reduce me to slavery.5 Almush adopted Islam to avoid the khans’ Judaism. Finally, Fadlan, like other Islamic authors, gives his own description of the lands of Gog and Magog, a longstanding monotheistic myth that spread across Islam and Christendom: The Khazars and their king are Jews. The Ṣaqālibah [Volga Bulgars] and those who live on the Khazar border are under his rule. He addresses them as slaves and they owe him their obedience. Some claim that the Khazars are the tribes of Gog and Magog.6 Khazaria soon took on the quasi-legendary status of a Jewish kingdom – a legendary third force, an unbelievable occurrence – and therefore symbolized by Gog and Magog in the minds of others, Muslim, Christian or even Jewish in the case of the mid-twelfth-century Sephardic author, Judah HaLevi, when seeking to explain why and how a ruler could adopt, in his words, the “despised” faith.7 The attribution of Gog and Magog to the Khazars appears in a Latin source as well. One of the most important sources for the Khazarian adoption of Judaism is a brief note by Christian Druthmar (of Stavelot), a ninth-century monk in the eponymous Lorraine monastery, in his “Expositio in Mattheaum Evangelistam” (written ca. 864–881): We are not aware of any nation under the sky that would not have Christians among them. For even in Gog and Magog, the Hunnic people who call themselves Gazari, those whom Alexander confined, there was a tribe

Khazaria: The Exception Which Proves the Rules  43

more brave than the others. This tribe has already been circumcised, and they profess all dogmata of Judaism. However, the Bulgars, who are also from these seven tribes, are now becoming baptized.8 For Christian Druthmar, Gog and Magog could denote a realm such as Khazaria at the nomadic peripheries of the known world, whose rulers, having adopted Judaism, would unavoidably make Khazaria an “other.” From later Orthodox Christian perspectives, the Khazars are also discussed in the Slavonic Vita Constantini (ca. 870s–880s), which details Konstantinos-­ Kyrillos’ mission to Khazaria and his fraught endeavour to convert the Khazar khan and his court to Christianity in a theological court debate.9 Two epistles of the early-tenth-century Constantinopolitan patriarch Nicholas Mystikos also indicate the mission for alliance and failed Christianization in Khazaria,10 along with the eighth-century Notitia Episcopatuum 3.11 By the tenth to twelfth centuries, the Khazars are discussed by Leo Diakonos, John Skylitzes, extensively in the works of emperor Konstantinos VII Porphyrogennetos and later by the Russian Primary Chronicle, or the Povest’ Vremennykh Let (PVL), which initially refers to the Khazars as Scythians and later as Jews during the explanation of the Rus’ian ruler Vladimir’s choice of Christianity.12 Three tenth-century Khazar Hebrew sources survive, two of which explain their own adoption of Judaism – and a tenth-century Islamic source independently verifies the Khazars’ use of Hebrew script.13 The three sources are known as the Kievan Letter (ca. 930), the anonymous Schechter Text (or Cambridge Document – ca. mid-late-940s), named after the scholar who found it in 1896 in the Cairo Geniza, and the Khazar ruler Joseph’s mid-tenth-century letter to ar-Rahman III’s (the Córdoban caliph) Jewish advisor, Hasdai ibn Shaprut (King Joseph’s Reply – ca. mid-late-940s). The Kievan Letter was sent by a community of Kievan Jews concerning personal misfortune and soliciting financial assistance; the likely recipient was the Khazarian ruler. The text indicates that a number of people (in Kiev) adopted Judaism and Hebrew as their faith and script by the 930s. Also, several signatories’ names on the document are originally Turkic and Turkic runes at the b­ ottom relate: “I have read (it).” The text also displays one of the earliest mentions of Kiev and thereby casts further doubt onto the chronological reliability of the PVL.14 The Schechter Text, anonymously compiled and addressed, although likely by a Khazarian Jewish subject in Constantinople, summarizes the Khazarian “peoplehood” story. The text recounts a Jewish migration to what later became K ­ hazaria, intermarriages between Jews and Khazarian nomads whereby “they became one people,” routed their Rus’, Caucasian and Greek enemies (matching suggestions in Konstantinos VII Porphyrogennetos’ De Administrando Imperio [DAI]15) and triumphed in a theological debate. It also offers context (perhaps as a follow-up letter) to the previously mentioned King Joseph’s Reply (KJR) to H ­ asdai ibn Shaprut of Córdoba in the mid-940s.16 Like the Schechter Text, it is meant for diplomatic consumption, comprising a conversion story, blood-lineage, top-down rule

44  Alex Mesibov Feldman

and ethnogenesis, and contains some exaggerations, although it also has some ­d ifferences from the Schechter Text. While the KJR is not entirely reliable as a source for Khazarian rulership, it reveals Joseph’s military and economic reliance on his nobles in return for their loyalty and quasi-feudal landownership rights: “my princes, officers, servants, cupbearers and those who are close to me […] Each family has its own hereditary estate.”17 Together, these epistles are known as the Khazar Correspondence, facilitated by Islamdom. However, distinctive Khazarian ties to Jewish communities in the Islamic world remain debated.18 Then, in ca. 1140, the famous Sephardic rabbi Judah HaLevi completed his Kuzari, which employed Khazaria’s historiosophical example to defend Judaism. However, not all his information is reliable, which led to confusion about the time and circumstances of the advent of Khazarian Judaism (for example, he claimed the Khazars’ Judaization occurred 400 years previously, ca. 740).19

The Advent of Khazarian Judaism: Between Christendom and Islamdom During the incessant warfare between the steppe nomads and the Caliphate from the late seventh to ninth centuries, the Gökturk Ashina dynasty consolidated power over a realm which later became known as Khazaria. It was to this realm, allegedly, that persecuted Jews fled from the empires of Christendom and Islam and established the basis for what the Schechter Text called a “return to Judaism.”20 Additional texts from the seventh to ninth centuries refer to Jews fleeing imperial persecutions and forced baptisms in places like Armenia, Italy and Constantinople, such as Michael the Syrian’s Chronicle, the Syracusan bishop’s Vita of Zosimo, Theophanes the Confessor’s Chronographia, the Chronicle of Ahima’az and the Sefer Yuhasin.21 By the 940s, a major persecution of Jews by the Roman emperor Romanos Lakapenos is recorded by the Venetian Doge Peter and al-Masudi, along with further persecutions into the 960s,22 which had a galvanizing effect for Khazarian Judaism; according to the Schechter Text: Then returned Israel, with the people of Qazaria, (to Judaism) completely; the Jews began to come from Baghdad and from Khorasan, and from the land of Greece, and they strengthened the men of the land, so that (the latter) held fast to the covenant of the “Father of a Multitude… …In the days of Joseph the king, my master, [he sought] {Alan} help when the persecution befell during the days of Romanus the evil one. When the thing became [know]n to my master, he did away with many Christians.23 From the seventh century, the world was increasingly polarized between these two ecumenical “empires of faith” (Christian Rome/Byzantium and the Islamic Caliphate) and their monotheistic affiliates, whose authorities derived from a single god and a duopoly on truth, law, legitimacy and literacy.24 The Ashina

Khazaria: The Exception Which Proves the Rules  45

khans found themselves pitted between these two ecumenical empires vying for their subjects’ allegiances and pressured to choose one form of monotheism or another.25 One of the only aspects of Khazaria that most historians agree on is the khans’ choice of Judaism to avoid political subservience to either Christendom or Islam, thereby maintaining a separate Jewish civilization.26 That did not stop Christian and Islamic rulers’ forces from attempting to proselytize among the khans’ subjects. Certain hagiographies, along with the eighth-century Notitia Episcopatuum, which lists a metropolitanate of Gotthia meant to Christianize Khazar-ruled towns in the Pontic-Caucasian region by preaching and/or settlement, indicate deliberate Roman imperial Christianization efforts.27 Islamic sources document similar efforts to Islamize Khazarian-ruled towns in the Caspian-Caucasian region by conquest and/or settlement.28 Ibn Fadlan reports that tenth-century theological hostility between the khans and the caliphs continued to cause problems within the Khazar capital of Itil, when the Khazar ruler ordered the destruction of a mosque’s minaret and its muezzins’ deaths in retaliation for a synagogue’s destruction.29 The longstanding Black Sea Jewish communities of the Crimean and Taman peninsulas, which were incorporated into Khazarian administrations for nearly two centuries (as well as perhaps some itinerant Radanite Jewish merchants) were the likeliest sources of Judaic influence in Khazaria.30 Yet the influence of J­ udaism did not eliminate some of the strongest pagan traditions of the Ashina rulers. One of these traditions was the sacral diarchic kingship, which, similarly to the ­Japanese imperial tradition, encompassed two ruling dynasties. One was a sacral khan with the symbolic sovereignty of a figurehead (alongside the heavenly-­mandated ­Eurasian rulers of Rome, China and Persia from the sixth century) but little actual power, and then a beg (or isha) who exercised the real, institutional power over daily and martial affairs. Whereas some attribute these circumstances to Judaization,31 the Ashina dynasty’s sacral position as khans ascended from their pagan, Gökturk roots.32 When he rarely appeared before his subjects, they had to prostrate themselves before him – even the beg had to perform purification rituals upon meeting the khan. Subject rulers had to send their daughters to join the khan’s harem. Ibn Fadlan claimed that upon succession, the khans would be partially strangled until they set the length of their own reigns (no longer than 40 years) and if they outlived their pre-approved reign, they would be ritually executed, buried beneath “a great abode” called “paradise” and then a river would be diverted over the burial, and the labourers would be ritually sacrificed “so that no one will know where his tomb is.” Such a figure “of awe and reverence” was maintained by a still mostly pagan subject population.33 However certain questions remain: when, where, and how much was Judaism adopted, top-down, in Khazaria?

When was Judaism Adopted? It seems that Khazarian Judaization occurred gradually over three stages beginning in the early ninth century and concluded in the early-860s – not

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dissimilar from other contemporary top-down attempts at conversion processes (i.e., Rjurikids, Arpads, Piasts, etc), which involved a gradual “intrusion and displacement,” followed by “decisive affirmation.”34 This collective three-part conversion process of inclusion, identification and displacement typically involved an initial conversion, then a phase of pagan retrenchment and finally a critical commitment.35 Based on the tenth-century Khazarian sources, we know this process began with the initial figure of Khazarian Judaism, Bulan-Sabriel (Bulan in King Joseph’s Reply and Sabriel in the Schechter Text) and his “return” to Judaism. But when could such a figure have lived? Even though Judah HaLevi’s Kuzari (ca. 1140) claims the conversion occurred about 400 years previously, 36 his writing is famously polemic and far removed from the era it describes. Other eighth- to ninth-century sources, such as the Life of St. Abo and the Kartlis Cxovreba record that the Khazars remained pagan well into the mid780s. 37 Likewise, the hagiography of John of Gotthia presents the khan as an oppressive, pagan fi ­ gure. 38 Contrastingly, according to al-Masudi’s more reliable text, the Khazarian ruler adopted Judaism during Harun al-Rashid’s caliphate (786–809). Therefore, it is likely that Bulan-Sabriel lived around the turn of the ninth century. 39 This seems to have been a private conversion, and doubtfully sincere; substantial Judaization would only take noticeable root pending a later date. Textual and archaeological sources, KJR and several Khazarian coins, may suggest the late-830s as this later date. Although it is admittedly slim evidence, many other conversion processes involve a reformist phase in the face of pagan resistance, which is indicated by KJR in the figure of a later Khazar ruler named Obadiah who eventually succeeded Bulan-Sabriel after an indeterminate period.40 According to the KJR, Obadiah was the reformer, who promulgated Jewish law and Hebrew literacy, and brought in Tanakh (the Old Testament), Mishnah, and Talmud scholars from Israel, thereby strengthening rabbinical Khazarian Judaism.41 The dates for Obadiah’s reformist reign may be derived from some Khazarian coins found in the Spillings coin hoard in 1999 on the Swedish island of Gotland. Seven Khazarian silver coins curiously contained the Arabic inscription: “Moses is the messenger of God” alongside the standard Islamic shahada: “Muhammed is the messenger of God.”42 So far, this Khazarian Moses coinage bears the only direct archaeological evidence for an attempted top-down Judaization of Khazaria. They are reliably dated to the year 837/838, and were discontinued almost immediately afterwards.43 While the context and meaning of the appearance and disappearance of these coins are highly debated among historians, it is unlikely that these coins were discontinued due to being traded northward for fur and slaves (that was their purpose), rather it is probable that these coins were discontinued due to pagan (or Christian/Islamic) resistance against the accelerating top-down Judaization. Pagan resistance to monotheization attempts is common, regardless of time, place and form of monotheism – similar pagan resistance to top-down monotheistic conversions is recorded among the Rus’, the Bulgars, Magyars,

Khazaria: The Exception Which Proves the Rules  47

­ ongols – even in the Roman Empire in the person of Julian the Apostate.44 M After the appearance of the Khazarian Moses coinage in 837/838, it is unclear whether khans derived legitimacy from both Judaism and traditional Turkic rulership, or if Judaism rendered khans illegitimate in the eyes of their still mostly pagan subjects, resulting in political instability.45 The mid-tenth-century DAI, written under the guise of the emperor Konstantinos VII Porphyrogennetos hints that a faction of Khazars called Kabars rebelled against the khans and departed westward towards the lands of the Magyars and Pechenegs.46 Whatever other conjecture this story has inspired, it seems likeliest that the Kabar story indicates pagan resistance to Obadiah’s Judaization reforms and their aspirational autonomy.47 Other evidence suggests that Judaism was not decisively adopted by the late 830s. Roman Christianization attempts across Khazaria continued into the 840s as attested by the Christian construction of Sarkel on behalf of the khans – why would Christian emperors have agreed to build the fortress of Sarkel on the Don River for the Khazars if they had already adopted Judaism in full? ­K hazarian pagan burial practices continued even later.48 While a major phase of the ­K hazarian Judaization process occurred in the late 830s, it was yet incomplete. The “decisive affirmation” likely came a generation or so later, by the ­early-860s, when four independent sources verify that a theological court debate occurred in Khazaria and that the Jewish faction triumphed: the Slavonic Vita Constantini (ca. 870s–880s), Christian Druthmar’s Expositio (ca. 869), the Schechter Text and King Joseph’s Reply (ca. 940s–950s), all of which, except the last two, are mutually independent, and all were written within living memory of the event.49 The Vita Constantini implies that Jews were already present at the Khazarian court, tilting the proceeds in their favour: The kagan answered {Konstantinos-Kyrillos}: “We say the same but maintain the following difference: you glorify the Trinity, while we, having obtained Scriptures, the One God.” (…) Then the Jews standing around Constantine said to him: “Tell us now, how is it possible for a woman to bear God in her womb upon whom she may not even look, let alone give birth to.”50 The Schechter Text and Reply illustrate an episode during the debates when, after their respective arguments, the Christian and Islamic delegations grudgingly acknowledged the comparative legitimacy of the Judaic argument, leading to the khan’s final commitment for Judaism.51 Ultimately, a three-stage Khazarian adoption of Judaism seems likeliest based on the various reliability of each source as well as similar conversion processes elsewhere: the first stage beginning ca. 786–809, the second stage in the late830s and the final stage in the early-860s.52 The Eurasian three-staged conversion process is similar to nearly every other top-down adoption of monotheism during this time. Yet this leaves the question of where did it occur?

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Where was Judaism Adopted? The exact location of Khazaria’s legendary capital city, Itil, remains unproven. Because the Volga was called Itil in Turkic, it was clearly located somewhere on the lower Volga or in the Volga delta of the north Caspian region. This is supported by textual evidence of the Tuhfat al-albab by the early-twelfth-century Andalusi author and traveller from Granada, al-Garnati.53 As of 2021, archaeologists are currently exploring two sites in the Volga delta which may contain the remains of Itil: Samosdelka and Semibugry. In the late 1990s, archaeologists discovered ruins of a major settlement near the village of Samosdelka in the southwestern Volga delta. The site comprises three settlement phases, which the archaeologists claim to match Itil: the ­K hazarian period (Itil: eighth to tenth century), the Oğuz period (Saksin: eleventh to twelfth century) and the Golden Horde period (Summerkent: thirteenth to fourteenth century). Samosdelka’s identification with Itil remains debated. The discovery of a fired-brick-built fortress, the khans’ exclusive construction material which symbolized a sacred centre, with an ash destruction layer corresponding to late-tenth-century levels, which have been associated with the conquest of Khazaria (965–969) by Svjatoslav, father of Vladimir of Kiev, has persuaded some.54 Al-Garnati wrote in his time (early twelfth century) that ­Saksin, which was previously Itil, was the only, albeit major city in the Volga delta.55 Yet neither specifically Judaic, numismatic, sigillographic nor epigraphic material has been uncovered from the site definitively proving it as Saksin or Itil, and many remain unconvinced.56 Yet another site in the Volga delta has recently revealed signs of an ancient settlement. Near the village of Semibugry (about 35km northeast of Samosdelka), in the central Volga delta, remains of such a settlement, with brick buildings, kurgans, vast amounts of ceramics, belt buckles and so forth, have been revealed, including an eighth-century Tunisian coin.57 Yet Semibugry, like Samosdelka, has yet to divulge explicitly Judaic material. Ultimately, it remains impossible to archaeologically prove that either Samosdelka or Semibugry were even the Khazarian capital of Itil, let alone the Judaic capital. However, it does not mean that Khazarian Judaic archaeological material has not been discovered elsewhere. How successfully did the Khazarian khans impose Judaism on their subjects – inside or outside the capital?

How Much was Judaism Adopted? Abrahamic faiths expanded (primarily, though not exclusively) as urban ­phenomena – and Judaism was no different. The towns of the eastern Crimea and Taman peninsulas contained long-standing Jewish communities long before the ­K hazarian khans adopted Judaism and long after they disappeared from the sources. Accordingly, Khazarian urbanism and sedentarism would correlate with monotheism, where the towns’ and fortresses’ hinterlands would have

Khazaria: The Exception Which Proves the Rules  49

likely witnessed pagans, Jews, Christians and Muslims practising horticulture, ­agriculture and pastoralism. As the process of sedentarization went, more or less so would the process of monotheization – resistance and all. King Joseph’s Reply refers not only to elite agrarianism and viticulture, but to his own semi-­ nomadism (living in Itil during the winter and at his hereditary estate during the summer), along with “each family [having] its own hereditary estate.”58 Some degree of sedentarism was clearly internalized by the ninth- to tenth-century Khazarian elite, which was effectually a conversion (of livelihood) of the tribal elite into a feudal aristocracy, and indirectly paralleled a conversion (of faith).59 Like other historical examples of top-down conversion processes, it is likely that the new ruling faith spread quicker among urban elites than rural peasants and nomads. Khazarian elites began like most aristocracies as a comitatus, or a warrior retinue with ranks and titles like isha, tudun, elteber and tarkhan.60 In many of the sites of the Saltovo Mayatski archaeological culture, roughly (although not exclusively) associated with Khazaria,61 archaeologists have found much eighth to eleventh-century evidence of economic inequality in ­K hazarian-ruled towns between the Crimea, Caucasus and Caspian Sea. This includes luxury goods like silver-and-glass jewellery, strap and belt ornaments, elaborately-carved mace-heads62 along with opulent imports from Christian and Islamic lands like Roman glazed serving plates, elephant-ivory combs and even Indo-Persian elephant-ivory chessmen.63 Contrastingly, many other Khazarian finds of simpler clay wares have been described as “typical of tribal nomads.”64 Notwithstanding the ancient Jewish communities of Crimea and Taman (and the Moses coinage), there is some scant archaeological evidence of Judaism in Khazaria – particularly menorah images ( Judaic candelabra). Aside from 9th-c menorot graffiti found in Čelarevo, Serbia, eight- to tenth-century images of menorot have been discovered etched into rings, pots, stones and bricks in sites across the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Similarly, Hebrew epigraphy has also been discovered in sites across the Pontic-Caspian steppe.65 Yet such scant occurrences of Hebrew literacy hardly signify top-down mass conversion.66 Outside of the ancient Jewish communities of Crimea and Taman, it was likely rudimentary at best. Plenty more archaeological evidence of kurgan burials and carved images of fighting warriors, suggests that much of the elite remained pagan.67 Imposing Judaism on subject peoples, rural peasants and nomads, however, was a different matter. These peoples already paid tribute to the elites, who in turn paid loyalty to the khans in return for “protection” – like in many other arrangements of the tributary mode of production, where tribute eventually became tax and hereditary social structures came to resemble classical agrarian/ semi-agrarian feudalism.68 King Joseph’s Reply and some Islamic sources suggest that top-down Judaization was successful.69 However, other reliable Islamic sources like al-Masudi, ibn Rusta and al-Istakhri refute this and there is little archaeological evidence to confirm it.70 Rather, Khazarian burial practices such as pits, catacombs and kurgans, as well as widespread cases of skull trephination, typically associated with steppe-paganism, date at least to the tenth century.71

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Among the subjects, rural peasants and nomads, complex and syncretistic beliefs and customs would likely have been common – not widespread strict adherence to Judaic laws.72 Islam and Christianity were just as widely proselytized among the khans’ subjects as was Judaism – if not more.73 The Moses coinage and King Joseph’s Reply offer what the khans wanted readers to believe, but not the entire truth. We may never know the full truth, but if we are still asking where is more archaeological evidence (menorot, synagogues, epigraphy, etc), we can only conclude, meanwhile, they were never there. No matter when or how many converted to Judaism, the impact was time-­ limited to only a few generations afterwards. Khazarian Judaism was unlikely a top-down affair.74 It was not profound enough to internally root itself among the khans’ subjects by the late tenth century when the Romans, the Rus’ians and the revenue loss due to commercial shifts between the Caliphate and Volga Bulgaria weakened Khazaria to the point of disintegration. Eventually, Khazaria disappeared from written sources, and it is impossible to say how many Jews stayed or departed.

How Khazaria Disappeared There are three probable causes of Khazaria’s tenth-century decline, which preceded the disappearance: the dissolution of Roman imperial détente with Khazaria, likely due to the khans’ adoption of Judaism instead of Christianity, competition with the Rus’ians for tribute among local communities and the shifting of Islamic silver trade routes away from Itil to Volga Bulgaria. The first cause is visible beginning with two eighth- to ninth-century hagiographies, John of Gotthia and St. Abo, which indicate that Christianization was still possible – the khans had not yet adopted Judaism.75 These hagiographies’ significance is bound to Gotthia’s status as an eparchy in the Notitiae Episcopatuum 3 during the iconoclast era.76 The contemporary Notitia records a list of metropolitan sees of the Roman eparchy of Gotthia, an ecclesiastical region which covered most of Khazaria, primarily the Crimean and Taman peninsulas, the purpose of which was to Christianize Khazaria.77 The suffragan list included the Khazars of Foullai (present Crimean Koktebel), Itil, the Chwalisians, the Onogours of Reteg (north Caucasus Terek River), the Huns and Tamatarcha/Tmutarakan (present Taman).78 Yet the imperial eparchy of Gotthia vanished. We know that 841 was the last recorded date of cooperative goodwill between the Roman emperors and ­K hazarian khans due to the Roman construction of the fortress of Sarkel (present Tsimljansk) on the Don River for the Khazars.79 Although the Vita Constantini presents Konstantinos-Kyrillos (as in Cyril and Methodios) as triumphing in the theological debates at the Khazar court (­860–861), the ­K hazarian sources for this event are written in Hebrew. Later, Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos’ epistle (920) reveals failed effort to Christianize Khazaria, calling her “…that deluded nation…”80 By the mid-tenth century, two sources credited to emperor Konstantinos VII Porphyrogennetos reveal distinctly mixed Christian imperial feelings about

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Khazaria. The De Administrando Imperio (948–952) indicates Khazarian ­potential vulnerability to the north-Caucasian Alans, suggesting a Roman interest in Khazarian weakness.81 However, in his De Ceremoniis (956–959), Konstantinos recognizes the khan as the foremost northern ruler, based on the stipulated three-pound gold seal used to address him.82 Nevertheless, the Schechter Text (ca. 949) illustrates a clearer degeneration of Roman-Khazarian relations under the reign of Romanos Lakapenos: ‘[But in the days of Benjamin] the king, all the nations were stirred up against [Qazar] {Khazaria}, and they besieged the[m with the aid of ] the king of Maqedon {Rome}. Into battle went the king of ‘SY’ {Burtas} and TWRQ[‘….] {Oğuz} [and] ‘BM {Black Bulgars} and PYYNYL {Pechenegs} and Maqedon; {…} the king of Alan fought against Qazar, for the king of Greece enticed him. {…} Romanus [the evil o]ne sent great presents to HLGW {Oleg} king of RWSY’ {Rus} inciting him to (do) his evil.’83 The Povest’ Vremennykh Let also alludes to Roman encouragement of the Rus’ians to attack Khazaria in the Roman-Rus’ian treaty of 944 – clearly this involved the khan’s conversion to Judaism. The PVL further describes ninth- to tenth-­century competition between Khazaria and the Rus’ians over tribute (and acknowledgement of their suzerainty) from local Pontic-Caspian c­ommunities  – typically paid in fur and slaves as there was insufficient bullion to circulate across Rus’ian and Khazarian tributary areas, leading to hoarding and marginal monetary circulation.84 Khazarian coins found in Eastern European hoards suggest monetary diffusion: besides garnering more tributaries, northern suzerainty was extendable by increasing coin circulation.85 By the mid-tenth century, the Rus’ians can be viewed as Khazarian economic satellites, which engendered a “translatio-­ imperii” from Itil to Kiev.86 Therefore the Moses coins’ diffusion northward suggests Khazarian economic influence projected into better fur-­ producing regions further north, along with Rus’ tribute competition. The khans’ attempt to impose a form of monotheism was perhaps occasioned by Rus’ian tribute competition.87 But where did the khans get their silver? Numismatic evidence suggests that eighth to tenth-century silver, mined in present-day Afghanistan and struck into coins in official caliphal mints, was traded northward through the C ­ aucasus in return for slaves and furs from further north, benefitting the Khazarian khans as middlemen.88 However, based on both al-Masudi’s work89 and Islamic coin finds, the routes shifted to the east of the Caspian Sea, bypassing Khazaria towards Khorasan/Khwarazmia and the newly Islamized Volga Bulgaria by the midtenth century. The underlying cause of Khazaria’s decline was ultimately due to a loss of revenue, by about four-fifths, from the early-tenth-century restructuring of Islamic trade routes.90 The khans’ inability to impose tribute on Volga Bulgaria after the early-920s resulted in a brief period of cooperation between Khazaria and the Rus’ians in an effort to supplement their declining revenue.91

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Regardless, the reorientation of Islamic trade, which Fadlan’s account suggests an interest to do direct business with Muslims in Volga Bulgaria instead of indirectly through Khazaria, greatly contributed to Khazaria’s decline.92 Ultimately, the PVL offers the typical reason for Khazaria’s disappearance under the year 965, when the Rus’ian prince Svjatoslav allegedly assaulted Sarkel and possibly Itil: Svyatoslav sallied forth against the Khazars. When they heard of his approach, they went out to meet him with their Prince, the Kagan, and the armies came to blows. When battle thus took place, Svyatoslav defeated the Khazars and took their city of Bela Vezha [Sarkel]. He also conquered the Yasians and the Kasogians.93 Yet the PVL’s chronology is notoriously unreliable and other authors date this campaign to 969 (ibn Hauqal) and/or 985 ( Jakov the monk).94 Archaeology hardly confirms the time or location of Svjatoslav’s movement(s) against ­K hazaria.95 Yet some Khazars survived Svjatoslav’s attack, since the many Christian and Islamic sources, even lead seals, mention eleventh- to twelfth-century Khazars as allies, captors and even kin.96 Regardless of its ultimate disappearance, Khazaria’s conversion to Judaism was not a historical anomaly. Adoptions of various faiths were common occurrences throughout history among previously non-sedentary and/or non-literate peoples – but they were far larger than singular rulers’ conversions. Rather it was a process which may be called ‘monotheization.’ By adopting Judaism, the Khazarian khans attempted to derive their legitimacy from two traditions – Judaism and paganism. Certainly they were at odds and it is unlikely the khans could have it both ways for very long as pagan resistance was always common during monotheization processes. They still relied on their largely still-pagan nobles for martial and economic support. Yet like other forms of monotheism, the sacred texts could be and were used as ancient forms of constitutions to be implemented wherever and whenever the rulers adopted them. The mix of paganism and Judaism also reflected the diarchic kingship: two dynasties would rule simultaneously – the khans and begs. The Schechter Text even describes the term khan as a judge (‫ – ןגכ‬kag an), who appointed lesser judges corresponding to the confessional groups over which he ruled – Islamic, C ­ hristian and Judaic judges. As they “retreated further into ritual status,” the khans “provided the necessary social glue […] to hold together an otherwise disparate society.”97 By all accounts, little changed during the attempted ­Judaization – the trouble was implementing Judaism as policy. Khazaria was not the first to attempt a top-down Judaization. But by failing to achieve it, Khazaria remains the exception which proves the rule: ethno-­ nationality, which is typically taken for granted, was never a biological trait – instead it is the residue of various monotheisms which ancient and medieval rulers successfully imposed on their subjects, or in Khazaria’s case, didn’t.

Khazaria: The Exception Which Proves the Rules  53

Therefore, it is oversimplistic to view conversions in Europe, Asia and Africa as binaries between Christianity and Islam, especially given the relatively well-­ organized seventh- to tenth-century “empires of faith,” Christian Rome and the Islamic Caliphate. While Western European rulers primarily encountered Latin or Orthodox Christianity and North African and Asian rulers primarily encountered Sunni or Shi’a Islam, establishing squabbling dynasties, Khazaria could choose Judaism between three Abrahamic faiths and avoided subjugation to either the Roman empire or Islamic caliphate. Representing a third force, Khazaria fits neatly into neither Christendom nor Islamdom – Europe nor Asia. Furthermore, straddling the late-antique and early-medieval eras, Khazaria also reveals the traditional Western-centric periodization of history. The conventional wisdom that history is “written by the winners” is arbitrary, merely explaining how the past succeeded in becoming the present instead of explaining what forces persevered or crumbled, (exemplified by Khazaria), thereby leaving our ability to learn from history shallower. Consequently, Khazaria effectively fastens together ancient and medieval history alongside European and Asian history into a broader Eurasian history.

Notes 1 D. Dunlop, History of Jewish Khazars (New York: Schocken, 1954), 3–38; Woods, Pfeiffer and Tucker (eds.), “Chinese Chroniclers of Khazars: Notes on Khazaria in Tang Period Texts,” Archivum Eurasiae  Medii Aevi 14 (2005): 231–61; Semënov, “Образование Хазарского каганата,” Вопросы Истории 8 (2008): 118–27; Zhivkov, Khazaria in Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Boston, MA, 2015), 23–53; Novoseltsev, Хазарское государство (Moscow, 1990), 83–91; Zuckerman, “Khazars and Byzantium–First Encounter,” in World of Khazars, ed. D. Sinor and N. di Cosmo (Boston, MA, 2007), 399–432; Obolensky, Byzantine Commonwealth (New York, 1971), 172; Magomedov, Образование хазарского каганата (Moscow, 1983), ­176–77; Artamonov, История хазар (Leningrad, 1962), 114–32. 2 Theophanes, Chronographia, trans. Mango, Scott and Greatrex (New York, 1997), 446–7; Howard-Johnston, “Byzantine Sources for Khazar History,” in World of Khazars, D. Sinor and N. di Cosmo (Boston, MA, 2007), 167 n17; Zuckerman, “Khazars and Byzantium,” 411–7. 3 Nikephoros, Brevarium, ed. and trans. Mango (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990), §35.28, §42.8–75, §45.36–67, §63.2, §75.23; Theophilos of Edessa, Chronicle, trans. Hoyland (Liverpool, 2001), 228–9; 305–06. 4 Khurrdadbih, Book of Roads and Kingdoms; trans. Lunde and Stone, Ibn Fadlān and Land of Darkness (New York, 2012), 99–104; 111–6, 233 n15; Golden, “Conversion of Khazars to Judaism,” in World of Khazars, ed. D. Sinor and N. di Cosmo ­( Boston, ­ arvard MA, 2007), 142; Pritsak, “Khazar Kingdom’s Conversion to Judaism,” H Ukrainian Studies 2, no. 3 (1978): 279; al-Faqih, Kitab al-Buldan, ed. de Goeje ­( Leiden, 1885), 298; Rusta, Kitab al-Alak an-Nafisa, ed. de Goeje, Bibliothecarum Geographicorum Arabicorum (Leiden, 1892), VII, 139; al-Istakhri, Masalik al-Mamalik, trans. Lunde and Stone, 152–9; Hudud al-Alam, trans. Minorsky (London, 1970), 160–2; al-Masudi, Meadows of Gold, trans. Lunde and Stone, 128–46; Hauqal, Surat al-Ard, trans. Lunde and Stone, 167–73; al-Muqaddasi, Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Marifat al-Aqalim, trans. Lunde and Stone, 171–2; Wasserstein, “Khazars and Islam,” in World of Khazars, ed. D. Sinor and N. di Cosmo (Boston, MA, 2007), 377. 5 Fadlan, Risala, trans. Lunde and Stone, 29.

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6 Fadlan, Risala, trans. Montgomery, Mission to Volga (New York, 2017), 53. 7 HaLevi, Sefer ha-Kuzari, trans. Korobkin (Northvale, NJ, 1998), 350–357. 8 Expositio, trans. Chekin, “Christian of Stavelot and Conversion of Gog and Magog,” Russia Mediaevalis 9, no. 1 (1997): 17–23; Shepard, “Khazar’s Formal Adoption of Judaism and Byzantium’s Northern Policy,” Oxford Slavonic Papers 31 (1998): 14; Golden, “Khazar Studies,” in World of Khazars, ed. D. Sinor and N. di Cosmo (­Boston, MA, 2007), 17–18. 9 Vita Constantini, Medieval Slavonic Lives of Saints and Princes, trans. Kantor (Ann Arbor, MI, 1983), 25–33; 65–81. 10 Nicholas Mystikos, Letters, eds. and trans. Jenkins and Westerink (Washington, DC, 1973), 390–1. 11 Notitiae Episcopatuum, ed. Darrouzès (Paris, 1981), 241–2. 12 PVL, trans. Cross and Sherbowizt-Wetzor (Cambridge, MA, 1953), 55, 58–61, 84, 96–119 (esp. 97); Petrukhin, “Normans and Khazars in South Rus’,” Russian History 19, no. 1–4 (1992): 393–400; Kulik, “Judeo-Greek Legacy in Medieval Rus,” Viator 39, no. 1 (2008): 51–64; Shepard, “Viking Rus and Byzantium,” in Viking World, ed. Brink and Price (New York, 2008), 498; Franklin and Shepard, Emergence of Rus (New York, 1996), 71–111. 13 Al-Nadim, Fihrist of al-Nadim, ed. and trans. Dodge (New York, 1970), 36–37. 14 Kievan Letter, ed. and trans. Golb and Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of Tenth Century (Ithaca, NY, 1982), 5–71; Golden, “Khazar Studies,” 10–11; Wasserstein, 381; Zuckerman, “Date of Khazars’ Conversion to Judaism and Chronology of Rus Oleg and Igor,” Revue des études Byzantines 53 (1995): 237–70. 15 DAI, ed./trans. Moravcsik and Jenkins (Washington, DC, 1967), §10. 16 Schechter Text, ed./trans. Golb and Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of Tenth Century (Ithaca, NY, 1982), 107–37. 17 KJR, ed./trans. Kobler, Letters of Jews Through Ages (London, 1953), 97–115; ed./trans. Golb and Pritsak, 76; HaLevi, Kuzari, trans. Korobkin, 350–57; Brutzkus, “Khazar Origin of Ancient Kiev,” Slavic and East European Review 22 (1944): 110–11; Galkina, “Территория Хазарского каганата,” Вопросы Истории 9 (2006): 141. 18 HaLevi, Kuzari, trans. Korobkin, 345; Schechter Text, ed./trans. Golb and Pritsak, 76, 94–95; Stampfer, “Did Khazars Convert to Judaism?,” Jewish Social Studies 9, no. 3 (2013): 27–28; Wasserstein, 381–5; Artamonov, 265–66. 19 HaLevi, Kuzari, trans. Hirschfield (New York, 1946), 35, 82; trans. Korobkin, xxiii; Schechter Text, ed./trans. Kokovcov, Еврейско-хазарская переписка в Х веке (­L eningrad, 1932), 127–8; ed./trans. Golb and Pritsak, 75, 127; DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in Golden Horde (University Park, PA, 1994), 300–10. 20 Schechter Text, ed./trans. Golb and Pritsak, 106–07; Kulik, “Judeo-Greek Legacy in Medieval Rus,” 54; Schama, Story of Jews (London, 2013), 266; DeWeese, 306–15. 21 Theophanes, Chronographia, trans. Mango, Scott and Greatrex, 554–555; Ahima’az, Chronicle, trans. Salzman (New York, 1924), 70; Sefer Yuhasin 2, ed. Niebuhr (Oxford, 1895), 115–124; MacMaster, “Pogrom that Time Forgot,” in Fox and Buchberger (eds.), Inclusion and Exclusion in Mediterranean Christianities (Turnhout, 2019), 217–235; Holo, Byzantine Jewry in Mediterranean Economy (New York, 2009), 43–44; Vasiliev, History of Crimean Goths (Cambridge, 1939), 102; Starr, Jews in Byzantine Empire ­(Athens, 1939), 92–93, 166; Sharf, Byzantine Jewry (London, 1971), 86–98. 22 Zuckerman, “Khazars’ Conversion to Judaism,” 246; DeWeese, 304–305; Starr, 151–152. 23 Schechter Text, ed./trans. Golb and Pritsak, 110–11, 114–15. 24 Sarris, Empires of Faith (New York, 2001); Haldon, Empire that Would Not Die (­Cambridge, 2016), 120–121. 25 Golden, “Conversion of the Khazars to Judaism,” 143; Chekin, “Role of Jews in Early Russian Civilization,” Russian History 17, no.4 (1990), 386–89; Wasserstein, 373–386; Zhivkov, 47.

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26 Eisenstadt, Explorations in Jewish Historical Experience (Boston, 2004), 66–69. 27 John of Gotthia, trans. Huxley, ‘Vita’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 19 (1978): 161–69; Notitiae Episcopatuum, ed. Darrouzès, 241–242; Zuckerman, “Byzantium’s Pontic Policy in Notitiae Episcopatuum,” in Crimée entre Byzance et le Khaganat Khazar, ed. Zuckerman (Paris, 2006), 201–30; Vachkova, “Danube Bulgaria and Khazaria as Parts of Byzantine Oikoumene,” in Other Europe in Middle Ages, ed. Curta and Kovalev (Boston, MA, 2008), 339–62; Shepard, “Khazar’s Formal Adoption of Judaism,” 11–18; Golden, Introduction to Turkic Peoples, 239–42; Magomedov, 158–73. 28 Hudud al-Alam (trans. Minorsky, 162); Rusta, al-Masudi (trans. Lunde and Stone, 117, 133); al-Athir (trans. Petrukhin, “Khazaria and Rus,” in World of Khazars, ed. D. Sinor and N. di Cosmo (Boston, MA, 2007), 263); Dunlop, 84–85. 29 Fadlan, Risala, trans. Montgomery, 85; Wasserstein, 385. 30 Golden, “Khazar Studies,” 44; Flërov and Flërova, “Иудаизм в степной и лесостепной Хазарии,” Хазары: Материалы международных коллоквиумов 16 (2005): 189; ­ Petrukhin, “Sacral Kingship and Judaism of Khazars,” in Conversions: Ideological Change in Early Middle Ages, ed. Słupecki and Simek (Vienna, 2013), 292; Brook, Jews of Khazaria (New York, 2018), 79–80; Vachkova, 353; Zhivkov, 164–165; Holo, 192–201. 31 Olsson, “Coup d’état, Coronation and Conversion: Adoption of Judaism by Khazar Khaganate,” Royal Asiatic Society 23 (2013): 496; Artamonov, 278–82. 32 Golden, “Irano-Turcica: Khazar Sacral Kingship Revisited,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 60 (2007): 161–94; Klaniczay, “Birth of New Europe about 1000,” Medieval Encounters 10, nos. 1–3 (2004): 120; Petrukhin, “Sacral Kingship and Judaism of Khazars,” 292; Zhivkov, 54–55. 33 Golden, “Khazar Sacral Kingship,” in Pre-Modern Russia and its World, ed. Reyerson, Stavrou and Tracy (Wiesbaden, 2006), 79–86. 34 Golden, “Conversion of Khazars to Judaism,” 127–61; DeWeese, 312–15; Olsson, 495–526; Zhivkov, 58–59. 35 Golden, “Conversion of the Khazars to Judaism,” 127–28; DeWeese, 312–15. 36 Pritsak, “Khazar Kingdom’s Conversion to Judaism,” 274–75. 37 Abo of Tiflis, Vita, Lives and Legends of Georgian Saints, trans. Lang (New York, 1976), 117–19; Kartlis Cxovreba, ed. Qauxchishvili (Tbilisi, 1973), 249–50; Minorsky, Sharvân and Darband (Cambridge, 1958), 42, 106; Golden, ‘Khazar Studies’ (1980), 65. 38 John of Gotthia, Vita, Житие Иоанна Готского в контексте истории Крыма “хазарского периода”, trans. Mogarichev, Sazanov and Shaposhnikov (Simferopol, 2007), 192–93; Vasiliev, Crimean Goths, 89–97. 39 Al-Masudi, Meadows of Gold, trans. Lunde and Stone, 131–33; Olsson, 495–526. 40 KJR, trans. Kobler, 111; Golden, “Conversion of the Khazars to Judaism,” 147 n123. 41 Zhivkov, 91. 42 Kovalev, “What does Historical Numismatics Suggest about Monetary History of Khazaria?,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 13 (2004): 97–129; idem, “Creating Khazar Identity through Coins: Special Issue Dirhams of 837, no. 8’,” in East Central and Eastern Europe in Early Middle Ages, ed. Curta (Ann Arbor, MI, 2005), 220–52. 43 Petrukhin, “Sacral Kingship and the Judaism of the Khazars,” 294. 44 PVL, trans. Cross and Sherbowizt-Wetzor, 84; Fadlan, Risala, trans. Lunde and Stone, 16–17; Curta, “Qagan, Khan, or King?,” Viator 37 (2006): 18; Klaniczay, 113; DeWeese, 90; Zhivkov, 20; Flërov and Flërova, 189. 45 Golden, “Conversion of Khazars to Judaism,” 161; Petrukhin, “Sacral Kingship and Judaism of Khazars,” 298; Olsson, 513–16; Zhivkov, 55–56, 126. 46 DAI, ed./trans. Moravcsik and Jenkins, §39: 1–7. 47 Curta, Southeastern Europe in Middle Ages (New York, 2006), 189; Pletnëva, Хазары (Moscow, 1976), 63; Golden, “Irano-Turcica,” 184–85; Artamonov, 278–80; 457–58; Brutzkus, 114; Olsson, 513–16; Novoseltsev, 135. 48 Zuckerman, “Two Notes on Early History of thema of Cherson,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 21 (1997): 210–22; Afanasiev, “Где же археологические свидетельства

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существования хазарского государства,” Российская Археология 2 (2001): 47–51; Shepard, “Khazar’s Formal Adoption of Judaism,” 16–17; Zhivkov, 243. 49 Vita Constantini, trans. Kantor, 25–33, 65–81; Druthmar, Expositio, trans. Chekin, 18–19; Curta, Southeastern Europe, 122–28; Golden, “Conversion of Khazars to Judaism,” 161; Shepard, “Khazar’s Formal Adoption of Judaism,” 9–34; DeWeese, 170–71; Zhivkov, 89–90; Olsson, 520–23. 50 Vita Constantini, trans. Kantor, 47; Olsson, 504–24. 51 KJR, trans. Kobler, 109–11; Schechter Text, ed./trans. Golb and Pritsak, 108–11. 52 Curta, Southeastern Europe, 217; Zuckerman, “Date of the Khazars’ Conversion to Judaism,” 237–270; Olsson, 495–526; Zhivkov, 268. 53 Al-Garnati, Tuhfat al-albab, ed./trans. Hamidullin, “Ал-Гарнати о гузах, печенегах, хазарах и булгарах,” Из глубины столетий (Kazan, 2000), 98–99; Bulan, Présence byzantine en Crimée et relations entre l’Empire byzantin, Khazars et peuples voisins (­Toulouse, 2010), 21. 54 Dunlop, 92; Zhivkov, 238–39; Bálint, “Archaeological Addenda to Golden’s Khazar Studies,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 35, nos. 2/3 (1981): 399. 55 Al-Garnati, Tuhfat al-albab, ed./trans. Hamidullin, 98–99; Vasiliev, Самосдельское городище (Astrakhan, 2011), 48–59. 56 Curta, Eastern Europe in Middle Ages (Boston, MA, 2019), 139, 178; Flërov and Flërova, 188. 57 Golovina, “Итиль найден? Учёные изучают крупное поселение хазар,” Russian Geographical Society (2020), accessed 12 May, 2023: https://www.rgo.ru/ru/article/ itil-nayden-uchyonye-izuchayut-krupnoe-poselenie-hazar. 58 KJR, trans. Kobler, 112–13; Noonan, “Khazar Qaghanate and Impact on Early Rus’ State: Translatio Imperii from Ītil to Kiev,” in Nomads in Sedentary World, ed. Khazanov and Wink (New York, 2001): 78–79. 59 Zhivkov, 181–92. 60 Rusta, Kitab al-Alak an-Nafisa, trans. Lunde and Stone, 116–17; Theophanes, ­Chronographia, trans. Mango, Scott and Greatrex, 526–31; Fadlan, Risala, trans. Montgomery, 104; Khurrdadhbih, Book of Roads and Kingdoms, trans. Lunde and Stone, 100; Semënov, “Происхождение и значение титула ‘хазар-эльтебер’,” Вопросы Истории 9 (2009), 160–63; Curta, Southeastern Europe, 164; Golden, “Comitatus in Medieval Eurasia,” 153–70; Novoseltsev, 108; Zhivkov, 225; Olsson, 517. 61 Pletnëva, От кочевий к городам: Салтово-маяцкая культура (Moscow, 1967), 185–87; Artamonov, 235–424; Werbart, “Khazars or “Saltovo-Majaki Culture’? Prejudices about Archaeology and Ethnicity,” Current Swedish Archaeology 4 (1996): 217; Afanasiev, “Где археологические свидетельства,” 43–55. 62 Zalesskaja, Zaseckaja, Kasparova, Lvova, Marshak, Sokolova and Schukin (eds.), Съкровище на хан Кубрат: Култура на Българи, Хазари, Славяни (Sofia, 1989), № 198–203, 230, 247, 267, 275, 308–315; Artamonov, 340. 63 Ibid, № 239, 294; Artamonov, 374. 64 Ibid, № 251, 257, 293. 65 Turchaninov, Древние и средневековые памятники осетинского письма и языка (Vladikavkaz, 1990), 89–90; Afanasiev, “Где археологические свидетельства,” 46; Jerusalimskaja, Кавказ на Шелковом пути (St. Petersburg, 1992), 30–31; Flërov and Flërova, 188. 66 Golden, “Conversion of Khazars to Judaism,” 159; Afanasiev, Донские аланы (­Moscow, 1993), 151–53; Shepard, “Khazar’s Formal Adoption of Judaism,” 11; Petrukhin and Flërov, “Иудаизм в Хазарии по данным археологии,” in История Еврейского народа, ed. Kulik (Moscow, 2010), 151–62. 67 Golden, “Conversion of Khazars to Judaism,” 158; Pletnëva, От кочевий к городам, 178–79; Franklin and Shepard, 80; Zalesskaja, Zaseckaja, Kasparova, Lvova, ­Marshak, Sokolova and Schukin, № 247, 263. 68 Noonan, “Observations on Economy of Khazar Khaganate,” in World of Khazars, ed. D. Sinor and N. di Cosmo (Boston, MA, 2007), 207–44; Haldon, The State

Khazaria: The Exception Which Proves the Rules  57

and the Tributary Mode of Production (New York, 1993); Flërov, ‘Хазарские города’, Проблеми на прабългарската история и култура 4-1 (Sofia, 2007), 66; Kobischankov, Полюдье: Явление отечественной и всемирной истории цивилизации (Moscow, 1999), 220–23; Afanasiev, Донские аланы, 151–53; Zhivkov, 211–24. 69 KJR, trans. Kobler, 110; al-Faqih, Kitab al-Buldan, ed. de Goeje, 298; Fadlan, Risala, trans. Lunde and Stone, 58; al-Muqaddasi, Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Marifat al-Aqalim, trans. Lunde and Stone, 171; Zuckerman, “Date of Khazars’ Conversion to Judaism,” 242; Golden, “Conversion of Khazars to Judaism,” 157–59; Pines, “Moslem Text Concerning Conversion of Khazars to Judaism,” Journal of Jewish Studies 13 (1962): 47; Schama, 266–67; Brook, 107–08. 70 Al-Masudi, Meadows of Gold, trans. Minorsky, 146; Rusta, Kitab al-Alak an-Nafisa, al-Istakhri, Masalik al-Mamalik, trans. Lunde and Stone, 116–17, 154. 71 Reshetova, “Трепанированными Среди Салтово-Маяцкой Культуры,” Еьтнографическое Обозрение 5 (2012): 151–57; Shepard, “Khazar’s Formal Adoption of Judaism,” 16–18; Flërov and Flërova, 186–89; Zhivkov, 31. 72 Afanasiev, “Где археологические свидетельства,” 53; Golden, “Irano-Turcica,” 185; Holo, 169; Zhivkov, 221–67. 73 Al-Garnati, Tuhfat al-albab, ed./trans. Hamidullin, 98–99; Notitiae Episcopatuum, ed. Darrouzès, 241–42; Vasiliev, Самосдельское городище, 160. 74 DeWeese, 316–17; Schama, 266–67. 75 John of Gotthia, Vita, trans. Mogarichev, Sazanov and Shaposhnikov, 192–93; trans. Huxley, 161–69; Abo of Tiflis, Vita, trans. Lang, 115–33; Vasiliev, Crimean Goths, 89–102; Howard-Johnston, 169. 76 Shepard, “Khazar’s Formal Adoption of Judaism,” 18–20; Zuckerman, “Byzantium’s Pontic Policy in Notitiae Episcopatuum,” 203; Obolensky, 174–75; Howard-Johnston, 171–72; Olsson, 504–24. 77 Notitiae Episcopatuum, ed. Darrouzès, 32–33, 42–45, 241–42; Sorochan, “Византийскохазарском кондоминиуме в крыму,” Византийский Временник 73, no. 98 (2014): 278–97; Sljadz, “Предыстория византийской аннексии приазовья,” Проблемы истории, филологии, культуры 2 (2015): 161–74. 78 Noonan, “Khazar-Byzantine World of Crimea in Early Middle Ages,” Archivum Eurasiae  Medii Aevi 10 (1999): 209–26; Chkhaidze, “Зихская епархия: письменные и археологические свидетельства,” ΧΕΡΣΩΝΟΣ ΘΕΜΑΤΑ. Сборник научных трудов (Sevastopol, 2013): 47–68. 79 DAI, ed./trans. Moravcsik and Jenkins, §42; Zuckerman, “Two Notes on thema of Cherson,” 210–22; Afanasiev, “Где археологические свидетельства,” 47–51; Zhivkov, 243. 80 Nicholas Mystikos, Letters, eds./trans. Jenkins and Westerink, 391. 81 DAI, ed./trans. Moravcsik and Jenkins, §10–12; Commentary, eds. Dvornik, Jenkins, Lewis, Moravcsik, Obolensky and Runciman, 5–6; Huxley, “Byzantinochazarika,” Hermathena 148 (1990): 80; Zhivkov, 145–46; Howard-Johnston, 181–183; Novoseltsev, 219. 82 De Ceremoniis, ed./trans. Moffatt and Tall, Book of Ceremonies (Canberra, 2012), xxv; Zhivkov, 145–46. 83 Schechter Text, trans. Golb and Pritsak, 112–15, 130–42; Shepard, “Khazar’s Formal Adoption of Judaism,” 9–34. 84 PVL, trans. Cross and Sherbowizt-Wetzor, 59–61, 72–78; Petrukhin, “Normans and Khazars in South Rus’,” 393–400; Kaplan, “Decline of Khazars and Rise of Varangians,” Slavic and East European Review 13, no.1 (1954): 1–10; Chekin, “Role of Jews in Early Russian Civilization,” Russian History 17, no. 4 (1990), 379–94; Noonan, “Observations on Economy of Khazar Khaganate,” in World of Khazars, ed. D. Sinor and N. di Cosmo (Boston, MA, 2007), 207–44; Kovalev, “Creating Khazar Identity through Coins,” 220–52; Shepard, “Viking Rus and Byzantium,” 496–501. 85 Franklin and Shepard, 78–82. 86 Koptev, “Story of ‘Chazar Tribute’,” Scando-Slavica 56, no. 2 (2010): 189–212; Golden, “Nomads in Sedentary World: Case of Pre-Chinggisid Rus’ and Georgia,”

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87

88 89 90 91 92

93 94 95 96

97

in Nomads in Sedentary World, ed. Khazanov and Wink (New York, 2001), 29–34; Petrukhin, “Normans and Khazars in South Rus’,” 393–400; Chekin, “Role of Jews in Early Russian Civilization,” 379–94; Shepard, “Viking Rus and Byzantium,” 496; Noonan, “Khazar Qaghanate and Early Rus’ State,” 76–102. Noonan, “Impact of Islamic Trade upon Urbanization in Rus’ Lands,” in Centres proto-urbains russes entre Scandinavie, Byzance et Orient, ed. Kazanski, Nercessian and Zuckerman (Paris, 2000), 379–94; Kovalev, “Creating Khazar Identity through Coins,” 237–40; Kaplan, 1–10. Petrukhin, “Русь и Хазария,” 76–78; Franklin and Shepard, 87; Zhivkov, 147–70. Al-Masudi, Meadows of Gold, trans. Lunde and Stone, 137. Noonan, “Observations on Economy of Khazar Khaganate,” 234–38; Feldman, “The Decline and Fall of Khazaria – Might or Money?,” Vostok (Oriens) 4 (2022): 75–84. Zhivkov, 154–56. Fadlan, Risala, trans. Lunde and Stone, 29; Jankowiak, “Two Systems of Trade in Western Slavic Lands,” in Economies, Monetisation and Society in West Slavic Lands ­800–1200, ed. Bogucki and Rębkowski (Szczecin, 2013), 137–48; Noonan, “Observations on Economy of Khazar Khaganate,” 243–244. PVL, trans. Cross and Sherbowizt-Wetzor, 84; al-Masudi, trans. Minorsky, Sharvān and Darband, 113; Hanak, Nature and Image of Princely Power in Kievan Rus’ (Leiden, 2014), 136; Vasiliev, Crimean Goths, 119–31; Petrukhin, “Khazaria and Rus’,” 261–62. Hauqal, Surat al-Ard, trans. Lunde and Stone, 175; Jakov the Monk, trans. Hollingsworth, Hagiography of Kievan Rus’, 165–81; Pletnëva, Хазары, 71; Golden, “Nomads in Sedentary World,” 60 n56. Flërov, “Донские крепости Хазарии,” Восточная коллекция 2 (2006); Artamonov, 426. PVL, trans. Cross and Sherbowizt-Wetzor, 97, 134, 168, 203; Leo Diakonos, History, trans. Talbot and Sullivan (Washington, DC, 2005), 153; John Skylitzes, Synopsis of Histories, trans. Wortley (Cambridge, 2010), 336; al-Masudi, trans. Minorsky, Sharvān and Darband, 51, 95, 106–07; al-Istakhri, Masalik al-Mamalik, al-Muqadassi, Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Marifat al-Aqalim, trans. Lunde and Stone, 153–59, 171–78; Chkhaidze, “Byzantine Lead Seals Addressed to Matarcha,” in Byzantine and Rus’ Seals, ed. Ivakin, ­ Khrapunov and Seibt (Kiev, 2015), 61–70. Golden, “Khazar Sacral Kingship,” 96.

Further Reading Brook, K. The Jews of Khazaria, 3rd edition. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. Dunlop, D. History of the Jewish Khazars. New York: Schocken, 1954. Golb, N. and O. Pritsak (eds./trans.), Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982. Sinor, D. and N. di Cosmo (eds.), The World of the Khazars, New Perspectives: Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium. Boston, MA: Brill, 2007. Zhivkov, B. Khazaria in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. Boston, MA: Brill, 2015.

5 NOBILITY, LOYALTY AND DYNASTY IN MEDIEVAL BOSNIA Emir O. Filipovic´

Introduction: Time and Space Researching and explaining how medieval Bosnia was ruled is an extremely challenging assignment, primarily due to the paucity of available contemporary sources but also because there are quite a few contradictions and peculiarities in the formation of the country’s internal structure. This means that numerous problems are yet to be resolved while many key questions still remain unanswered. However, as elsewhere in the broader region at the time, ruling Bosnia came to depend on the strength and quality of the bonds that existed between the central authorities, embodied in the person of the ruler, and the landowning nobility who, as representatives of their communities and true holders of local power, rivalled him for wealth, prestige and political influence. Therefore, I aim to present here the complex relationship between the monarchs of the royal house of medieval Bosnia and the various noble families that were nominally subjected to them, with a particular emphasis on the tense power dynamic that these two crucial elements of governance had in this rather specific political organism. But before beginning to describe and analyze the intricacies of how Bosnia was ruled and administered during the Middle Ages, it would be important to provide several brief notes on the time when it emerged as a state and the space it occupied throughout the medieval period, in the hope that this will help to situate its history into a broader chronological and geographical context. A cursory outline of the earliest documented sources on Bosnia from the tenth century onwards, along with an explanation of how its marginal position in regards to the established centres of Latin and Orthodox Christendom impacted its political and religious constitution, should make it easier to follow the discussion about the methods that Bosnian rulers implemented in an attempt to deal with the nobility who had their own ideas on how the state should be governed. DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-5

60  Emir O. Filipovic´

The medieval history of Bosnia was fundamentally defined and conditioned by the arrival of fragmented Slavic communities to the immediate Adriatic hinterland, a process which began in the early seventh century and lasted for several hundred years after that. These groups mostly gathered and settled along riverbanks so that even in later times those rivers retained their significance in the nomenclature and administrative division of regions that they inhabited. One such group managed to establish itself in a relatively small area located around the spring of the River Bosna in the centre of the Dinaric mountain range, and their land subsequently came to be known as Bosnia. And while the first reliable mention of a distinct territorial unit under this name can be dated to the midtenth century,1 the beginnings of state formation and political organization in Bosnia are shrouded in complete mystery so that not much is known about the early stages of their development.2 The history of medieval Bosnia was also shaped by its geographic circumstances as it was positioned on a landlocked, rugged and mountainous terrain, and situated right in-between the domains of the Latin-speaking Catholic world in the west and the Byzantine Orthodox world in the east, being equally distant from Rome as it was from Constantinople. These features contributed greatly to the gradual creation and eventual preservation of political and ecclesiastical individuality in Bosnia as it began to play a more prominent role in regional events from the second half of the twelfth century.3 At that time the kings of Hungary to the north and the Byzantine emperors to the south fiercely contested each other for supremacy over the Balkans,4 and it is in the midst of this competition that Bosnia ultimately emerged on their periphery as a relatively autonomous political factor after 1180, although remaining under strong Hungarian influence for decades and centuries to come.5 By the end of the twelfth century Bosnia had its own rulers who bore the title of “ban” and maintained a certain degree of independence from the Hungarian court in matters of economy, military and religion. These rulers could rely on their officials, judges and scribes; they issued charters, waged wars, concluded peace treaties and trade agreements, built churches and conducted a direct correspondence with the papal curia in Rome. The Bosnian diocese at the time nominally belonged to the Catholic ecclesiastical network but was headed by a presumably native bishop who was subject to the metropolitan jurisdiction of the archbishop of Ragusa. It also seems that due to the legacy of the Cyrillo-Methodian mission, the liturgy in Bosnia was performed in the Slavic vernacular and that overall religious practices remained under the strong impact of eastern monastic traditions, providing grounds for accusations of heresy which followed Bosnia ever since. These charges would continue to be a strain on the country’s international standing and reputation, making it difficult for rulers and nobles to develop meaningful political ties with foreign partners, but a self-governing church, which became officially schismatic and autocephalous in the mid-thirteenth century, greatly contributed to the establishment of Bosnia’s specific internal structure and organization.6

Nobility, Loyalty and Dynasty in Medieval Bosnia  61

Indeed, the religious tensions were seen as the main cause of conflicts between the Bosnian and Hungarian elites during this period, and they seriously diminished the role and standing of Bosnia in regional politics, but a change in these relations occurred in the first half of the fourteenth century when a new dynasty arrived on the throne of Hungary and took a different approach to this emerging political organism on its southern borders. Bosnia was then allowed to territorially expand, principally southwards when its borders stretched from the Cetina River in the west to the River Drina in the east, and from the River Sava in the north to the coast of the Adriatic Sea in the south.7 The process of expansion was aided by the discovery of rich silver deposits in the country and the subsequent growth of trade and economy eventually culminated with the Bosnian Ban Tvrtko (r. 1353–1391) proclaiming himself “King to Serbs, Bosnia and the Seacoast” in 1377 and thus elevating his realm to the rank of a kingdom.8 Less than a decade after this crucial symbolic event took place, the first ­Ottoman Turkish raiding forces appeared on Bosnia’s eastern borders and they only intensified as the Empire continued its relentless spread across the Balkans. The ­K ingdom of Bosnia was finally exhausted, disassembled and conquered in 1463 by the military force of Sultan Mehmed II who also ordered the execution of the last Bosnian King Stjepan Tomašević (r. 1461–1463).9 Even though this event is considered to have marked the end of the Middle Ages in Bosnia, the struggles between the Ottoman sultans and the kings of Hungary for control of Bosnian territories continued at least until the first quarter of the sixteenth century when the Ottomans finally prevailed.

The Evolution of the Composite State: Town, County, Land, Kingdom Apart from influencing Bosnia’s position in relation to the established centres of Latin and Orthodox Christendom, the geography of the land also unquestionably determined the fragmented nature of the state’s administrative composition which would endure as one of the key features of political life in the later Middle Ages. Namely, although Bosnia began its existence as a relatively small territorial entity, it was almost perfectly predisposed for growth and expansion. This propensity for enlargement ultimately resulted in the integration of neighbouring settlements, counties and lands into a larger and more complex state structure which retained its composite character well into the fifteenth century. Therefore, throughout this period the term Bosnia also came to be equally applied to different levels of territorial and administrative organization making it possible to recognize the way in which the state extended its borders and changed its shape while progressively growing outwards. For instance, the physical and symbolic centre of the state was located in the town of Visoki, not far away from the modern city of Sarajevo (the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina), and the place itself was often referred to in medieval sources only as “Bosna”.10 As the town was situated in an elongated valley of the eponymous river, which was geographically constrained

62  Emir O. Filipovic´

by surrounding hills and mountains, this whole area made up a county (župa) that was also known as “Bosna”. Furthermore, the surrounding counties, most of which were also named after Bosna’s tributary rivers (Lepenica, Trstivnica, Vidogošća, Lašva, Vrhbosna and Brod),11 made up the land (zemlja) of “Bosna”. The surrounding lands that were joined to the land of “Bosna” sometime during the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Usora, Soli, Donji Kraji, Zagorje, Humska Zemlja) were also known as “Bosnian lands” and eventually came to constitute the medieval composite state of “Bosna”.12 This dispersed distribution of structurally distinct territorial units, of course, greatly benefited the local administration and imposed certain practical restrictions on the rulers themselves. It would also become a foundation for the subsequent development of provincial power bases for the Bosnian nobility who derived their legitimacy and political position from their connection to the ancestral possessions within these counties and lands. As representatives of their kindreds and fraternities, which were inextricably linked to these territories, they participated in a parliamentary body that was essentially an assembly, council or diet of Bosnian magnates. In late medieval sources this institution was known by various Slavic, Latin and Italian names as sabor, zbor, stanak, rusag, conseyo, consiglio, assunamento, collegio, università dei baroni, to name just a few, but on a number of notable occasions it was also referred to as “the whole of Bosnia”: sva Bosna, tota Bosna, tutta Bosnia, sav rusag bosanski, thus indicating the territorial totality of the country as well as the unity that existed between the interests of the nobility and the realm as a whole. Since it joined the elites of the land in a legal, political and symbolic sense to the ruler, this representative assembly of the country’s constituent elements acted as a supreme decision-making authority within the state. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it not only had the right to choose and confirm a new ruler from among the members of the local dynasty, but was also the place where the nobility could discuss various matters and express their right to resist the kings, consequently deciding whether, when and how to replace them. The assembly also had the right to represent the state in times of interregnum, to confirm donations of land estates to other nobles, to decide about the integrity and inviolability of state territory, as well as to pass resolutions about the most important issues regarding both internal and foreign policies of the Kingdom.13 Unfortunately, not much is known about how this institution evolved other than that the process most likely took final shape sometime during the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, and that it was an expression of the ever-growing power of the Bosnian nobility. The assembly contributed to the perception that Bosnia was one unified, undivided and consolidated country, despite its fundamentally composite and fragmented nature. This political and organizational framework appropriately suited the Bosnian nobility as participation in the assembly was a right that they inherited from their predecessors, and in turn the institution served to protect and enhance these inherited rights. Therefore, despite some nobles being able to carve out semi-independent or

Nobility, Loyalty and Dynasty in Medieval Bosnia  63

autonomous domains within the Kingdom of Bosnia, even when their power obviously surpassed the authority of the king, they never gave up their hereditary roles in the state diet. Even in those cases when they were in open conflict with the king, they remained loyal to the Bosnian state, which they considered to be abstractly represented by the crown and the assembly.14 In this way, instead of being responsible for the disintegration of the political organism of Bosnia, acting within the state diet and protecting their own hereditary rights, the nobility functioned as a cohesive force thus retaining their unity with the ruler, stubbornly defending the borders and territorial integrity of the Bosnian Kingdom from any external pressure. In order to better understand how this seemingly contradictory system operated and how these noble families reached such power, it is necessary to trace the earliest known history of nobility in Bosnia and describe the progressive growth of their landed estates.

The “Noble Patrimony” and the Rise of Nobility Sources prior to the fourteenth century seldom talk about Bosnian nobility although it is plainly obvious from the several occasions when they were mentioned that the nobles played an important role in the composition of the state. The semi-mythical Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea, which purports to portray the early history of Slavic communities in the Balkans, presented the magnates Bosnae as a decisive factor in the land which acted independently and had a decisive impact on political events.15 In his 1189 charter, which is the earliest surviving document issued by a Bosnian ruler, Ban Kulin (r. ca. 1180–1203) briefly referred to his officials, that is časnici, but not much is known about them, who they were or what their competencies might have been.16 Several decades later, Ban Matej Ninoslav (r. ca. 1233–1250) complained to Pope Gregory IX that he and his ancestors used to be able to grant counties and villages of their land to anyone as they pleased, but since he abandoned heresy and converted to Catholicism, certain nobles, contrary to said custom, opposed his will and withheld those counties and lands from him.17 This indicates that already during the first half of the thirteenth century the aristocratic families became strong enough in order to be able to limit the actions and authority of the ruler. And although in his early surviving charters Ban Matej Ninoslav made no indication that any of his decisions were influenced by the nobility, in one document from 1240 he mentioned his boyars, listing them by title and name, stating that they accompanied him during his visit to Ragusa and swore with him a solemn oath.18 Nine years later the same ruler again listed in his charter the names of some other boyars whose importance in state affairs obviously only grew as time progressed.19 Concurrently to this mid-thirteenth-century process, the Catholic bishop of Bosnia, who was by then a member of the Hungarian episcopal network, decided to dislocate his see and chapter from Vrhbosna to Đakovo in Slavonia, thus opening an institutional vacuum which subsequently came to be filled by the schismatic Bosnian Church. Thus, instead of acknowledging the jurisdiction

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of a  Hungarian archbishop over religious matters in Bosnia, the local elites supported the election of a new bishop and consequently had a hand in the establishment of a completely autocephalous ecclesiastical organization that continued to be a defining feature of religious, political and social life in Bosnia throughout the later Middle Ages. This church, unlike the one in Serbia and elsewhere in the region, did not provide a backing to the ruler and central authorities but rather developed a close cooperation with the nobility of the land, eventually coming to serve as a protector and guardian of their rights.20 Because of this it is believed that the Bosnian nobility had the biggest influence in the establishment of this church in their lands and that they appropriated the territorial properties which used to belong to the Catholic Bosnian bishop after he left the country, meaning that from the mid-thirteenth century the Church in Bosnia ceased to represent a relevant rival to the nobles in competing for wealth and influence. In such circumstances the power of the nobility continued to rise and their role in government substantially increased. When Ban Prijezda (r. ca. 1250–1287) gave some lands to his son-in-law in 1287, the accompanying charter stated that he did so only after consultation and with the explicit consent of the “barons and nobles of our realm”.21 In the very beginning of the fourteenth century, the nobility even played a decisive part in the deposition of the Bosnian ruling family who were then replaced by members from the Šubići kindred in Croatia. A couple of decades later they were again instrumental in replacing Ban Mladin II Šubić (r. 1304–1322) with Ban Stjepan II Kotromanić (r. 1322–1353), the son of the ruler that they had previously overthrown.22 The unparalleled political and economic power of these nobles in subsequent times was predicated on the estates that they inherited from their ancestors and their capacity to extend them even further by all means possible. Namely, the aristocratic kindreds and families of medieval Bosnia were deeply rooted in their “noble patrimonies”, known in contemporary Slavic sources as plemenita baština or simply as plemenito. This was basically ancestral landed property to which all members of the broader family, fraternity or kindred staked a claim and the existence of shared family ownership contributed considerably to the stability and enduring nature of these noble communities.23 It is believed that the roots of this system were very old and that it was specifically the collective character of the hereditary estates that prevented the formation of stronger centralized authority in Bosnia.24 The “noble patrimony” that was inherited from ancestors was theoretically indivisible and inalienable, but it could also gradually grow and expand through conquest, purchase, exchange, donation or by any other methods, thereby significantly enhancing the income and political position of a particular nobleman or his kindred. In fact, while the nobility developed various techniques through which they extended and increased their patrimonies, the ruler often lacked the means with which he could direct the growing economic strength of the nobles towards a common goal.25 This meant that he was frequently forced to ensure the loyalty of the nobles by granting them even more property, lofty titles, broader privileges, tax exemptions, and so the authority of

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the ruler gradually became severely diminished on the territories controlled by these noble families. Information about how this relationship evolved and how it came to affect the way that Bosnia was ruled can be found in the few surviving charters that Bosnian rulers issued to their vassals.

“Loyal Service” and the “Lord’s Pledge of Faith” What we know about medieval Bosnia is mostly based on documentary evidence of varying type and quality, written in a broad array of languages and scripts, and distributed in different libraries or archives across the broader Mediterranean and Central Europe. For instance, the earlier stages of state formation in Bosnia can only be studied on the basis of Byzantine Greek texts, while in later times Cyrillic stone inscriptions as well as charters and letters composed in Latin begin to play a more prominent role. For the period from the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century historians can also count on the rich records that have been preserved in the State archives of Dubrovnik. These are mostly written in Latin or Italian, they contain diverse information, primarily concerning trading matters, and are well complemented by the many preserved Cyrillic charters which were issued by Bosnian rulers in order to regulate these commercial relations. However, there are no local narrative texts or legal codes that have survived from the Middle Ages to the present day, no charters issued to monasteries or churches in Bosnia, such as those in neighbouring Serbia, and none issued to towns or villages. These documents would have certainly simplified the task of explaining how the political and judicial mechanisms operated within the state of Bosnia and they would have helped to answer the question of how the country was governed. Although it has been positively established that Bosnian rulers and nobles possessed extensive archival documentation which confirmed and regulated their mutual rights and responsibilities, the majority of these were unfortunately lost in the whirlwind of the Ottoman conquest and subsequent centuries, meaning that only a handful of such documents survive. Nevertheless, the extant sources, however scarce, still provide at least some rudimentary information on how this relationship might have functioned and how the Bosnian nobility managed to acquire such power. The documents in question are mostly donation and pledge charters of Bosnian rulers from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, almost entirely preserved in archival institutions outside of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first group consists of grants or confirmations of landed estates while the second one contains solemn promises made by the ruler that the given properties will not be taken away.26 All donations in the form of land were given to the vassals completely unconditionally, as hereditary property which was to be integrated into their existing noble patrimonies, and there was absolutely no mention that the possession of these estates was subject to military or any other kind of service. When a Bosnian ruler gave or confirmed land to his vassals, he did not donate it as a temporary or provisional possession which would last until the nobleman

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fulfilled certain conditions. The land was always given as his full property, “to him and the last of his kin”.27 Careful inspection of these documents shows that the grants were made as a reward for something that was termed “loyal service” or vjerna služba, which was in turn reciprocated by the ruler who gave the vassal his “pledge of faith”, or vjera gospodska. The relationship between the nobility and ruler in medieval Bosnia rested on these two principles and was regulated according to customary norms of reciprocity whereby the nobleman was responsible to serve the ruler loyally, while the ruler responded by keeping him in his mercy.28 The “loyal service” is seldom defined with any precision in the existing charters. On occasions it is mentioned that the nobleman had to serve the lord “rightly and justly”,29 “with his weapons to the best of his ability”,30 “as with the shield so with the spear”,31 but other examples show that “loyal service” actually implied the entirety of obligations and responsibilities that the vassal might have had towards his liege. These were performed in various ways and included not only military, but also diplomatic duties.32 And although it might seem at first glance that “loyal service” proceeded from the donated estates or that it was somehow connected to the given land and not to the person of the nobleman, this was not the case. The grant of property was made only after the nobleman performed the “loyal service” and was a kind of a reward for it, which meant that the duty of a vassal to serve his lord loyally arose from the very fact that he was subjected to the authority of the ruler. As far as is known, the “loyal service” did not ensue from some kind of contract or given oath, but was in its very essence an indication of a vassal’s subservient status to his lord.33 To serve loyally meant that the vassal did not recognize the authority of another lord and inferred being compliant to the one to whom the service was owed. This was also reflected in the terminology used to denote the ruler as “lord”, gospodin, and the nobleman as “servant”, sluga.34 The “loyal service” of the vassal was reciprocated with the “lord’s pledge of faith” which represented a kind of a promise, akin to an oath, assuring the nobleman of his personal safety, that he or other members of his whole family will not be killed, imprisoned or held hostage, with particular guarantees concerning the inviolability of their land property, that their estates will not be taken away, divided or diminished, etc. This “pledge of faith” was hereditary so it would also sometimes be transferred to the nobleman’s descendants and usually confirmed again with the arrival of a new ruler on the throne. In this way it indicated the enduring quality of a lifelong relationship between the nobleman and his lord which, once established, was supposed to last permanently, that is until the vassal became unfaithful or committed an offence “for which it would be justified to cut a nobleman’s head off”.35 Only in that case could the “lord’s pledge of faith” be withdrawn or overturned. However, the lord was not allowed to determine or decide on his own whether the vassal performed an act of disloyalty and infidelity, but was supposed to delegate this matter to a jury of a nobleman’s peers, whereby members of the Bosnian Church appeared as guarantors that justice would be served.36

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It is not difficult to see that this kind of arrangement had both its advantages and flaws for either of the two sides and that a successful implementation of this system wholly depended on the balance of strength and power between the lord and the vassal, or primarily on a vassal’s willingness to cooperate with the ruler. However, because of the composite character of the Bosnian state and the inherent stability of the “noble patrimonies” from which the aristocratic kindreds could not be dislodged, the relationship very quickly became increasingly disproportionate. This meant that in maintaining an expansive policy the rulers were forced to rely on the “loyal service” of their vassals which was then rewarded with greater and greater privileges, so much so, that the process eventually resulted with almost all power in certain territories being concentrated in the hands of the nobility and not of the ban or king. This can be well illustrated by presenting several well-known examples from charters issued to members of the Hrvatinić family from the land of Donji Kraji, or Lower Parts of the Bosnian state. The representatives of this kindred were instrumental in both the deposition of the ruling family in 1302 and its subsequent return in 1322, for which they received enormous freedoms, honours and rights. Namely, sometime around 1326 Ban Stjepan II decided to give estates to Knez Vukoslav Hrvatinić for his “loyal service” which consisted of merely abandoning his former lord and recognizing the authority of the Bosnian ruler. He was appropriately rewarded with two counties and two towns that he and his descendants were given as patrimony “in perpetuity”, with rights to dispose of them as they wished. Furthermore, apart from relinquishing all due revenues from this land, the ban also stipulated that there were to be no state officials on Vukoslav’s land other than his own ones.37 Therefore, without the vassal’s explicit approval, the ruler almost had no authority on the land he donated or confirmed and his rights were reduced to only that which the vassal wanted to give of his own free will. In turn, the ban swore before the members of the Bosnian Church and gave the “lord’s pledge of faith” that Vukoslav was to enjoy full liberty and protection of the ruler while he remained in his mercy, and in the case someone accused him of infidelity he had the right to be tried before a jury of his peers.38 The punishments predicted for contravening these agreements were purely spiritual, meaning that no practical way existed of ensuring their proper implementation. In time, this came to work in the favour of the nobleman since the extensive rights and immunity he had on his own territories allowed for very little state interference in his affairs. While in the earlier stages of this relationship between the Bosnian ruler and his subjects the donated land could theoretically be taken away from the vassal in case of treason, the situation developed in such a way that even this gift eventually became completely inalienable and indivisible. The donation could thus not be withdrawn for any reason at all, not even in the case that the nobleman was to be found guilty of the most serious crimes such as betrayal or disloyalty. In 1380 King Tvrtko (r. 1353–1391) endowed Vukoslav’s nephew, Knez Hrvoje Vukčić and his descendants with three villages in central Bosnia along with the title of

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voivode that Hrvoje inherited from his father. The charter explicitly stipulates that these properties were to be considered “perpetual noble patrimony”. In the case that he or any of his descendants were to become unfaithful to the king or his heirs, the villages were not supposed to be taken away from them as only the perpetrator would be punished personally, and not by dispossession of land, as this would harm the whole kindred, but by losing his life or paying a penalty with his moveable assets.39 The role of the Bosnian Church in adjudging such cases was rather prominent. Most of the preserved charters specified that members of this institution were entitled to conduct an inquest and determine which party breached the customary norms, with the Church usually taking the side of the nobility. The example of voivode Pavle Klešić is particularly instructive in that regard. At the beginning of the fifteenth century King Ostoja (r. 1398–1404; 1409–1418) seized his properties forcing him to flee and take refuge in Ragusa. After careful deliberation, the bishop of the Bosnian Church wrote a letter to the Ragusan government stating that the king had agreed to return the lands which he unjustly took away from voivode Pavle.40 In this way the authority of the ruler was gradually weakened as he was left without any effective mechanisms which could force the vassal to comply with his wishes or orders since the fear of possibly losing donated property obviously did not represent enough of a motivating factor for the performing of the “loyal service”. Therefore, the system itself became both an asset and a source of weakness for the Bosnian state, with its efficiency depending on the ruler’s ability to unite and mobilize his subjects by convincing them that they would benefit individually as well as collectively from common action, but at the same time the subjects could also refuse the “loyal service”, holding out for greater privileges.41 Only when they felt secure enough in their properties did the nobles agree to assist the ruler in strengthening and expanding the state, and they did so on their own terms and for their own benefit.42 This came about during the fourteenth century when Bosnia underwent a rapid political, territorial and economic expansion which was made possible only because a delicate balance was maintained between the interests of the ruler and the nobles who remained loyal to him while he distributed the newly acquired lands among them. Loyalty also had to be ensured by the granting of broad concessions and liberties, which in turn led to the diminishing of the ruler’s position and the establishment of several powerful noble houses which were geographically distributed all across the Kingdom. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the true power in the land belonged to these families and not to the ruler who depended on their loyalty to preserve his position.

The Response of the Ruling Family – Crown and Dynasty The extensive freedoms that the Bosnian noblemen enjoyed on their estates, without practically any intrusion or obstruction from above, meant that they eventually started to behave like rulers by issuing their own charters to their

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own vassals in order to regulate matters that previously used to be resolved by the central authorities. In this way, they assumed the prerogatives of the ruler, wedging themselves between him and the petty nobility. This imitation went as far as creating their own courts, developing their own symbols and ceremonies, maintaining independent relations with foreign political actors, etc. By doing so they managed to relegate the king to the status of a first among equals, which was fittingly demonstrated by the fact that their lands were seen as separate and distinct units of the Bosnian Kingdom, alongside the king’s own territories, where he held direct control and authority, which were recognized by Ragusan contemporaries as contrata de re or by the conquering Ottomans as vilayet-i kral, that is to say “the domains of the King”. Therefore, although the king theoretically ruled the whole Kingdom, in practice he only governed one of its smaller constituent parts.43 It is because of this that the ruler and his family had to devise a set of different methods which would allow them to elevate themselves above their subjects and to retain at least a semblance of authority or an impression that they ruled over the entire state. They did so by focusing on their direct relationship with the transpersonal symbol of the “righteous Bosnian crown”, which gradually became seen as the true embodiment of the state.44 It was the crown that owned the lands, counties, towns, villages and revenues of the realm, and not the transient individual who sat on the throne at any given time and who could easily be replaced by someone else. The nobility who acted within the framework of a representative assembly accepted this and considered that they actually owed their allegiance and loyalty to the crown. In their eyes, the union of the assembly and the crown came to symbolize the state.45 The rulers wanted to make this arrangement work in their favour and formulated a response to the unbridled rise of nobility by claiming that the honour of ruling Bosnia belonged to an illustrious line of their ancestors who governed the country from some indeterminate ancient times. They relied on various legitimation strategies in order to present themselves as rightful heirs and descendants of the previous rulers of Bosnia by constantly invoking their “fathers and forefathers”, by mentioning their collective name of Kotromanići that was seldom used prior to then, by crafting an elaborate origin story that placed the history of the family in some semi-mythical times, and by using different symbols and visual devices which distinguished them from the nobles who aspired to imitate and surpass them in authority, wealth and power. It is precisely at this time, when the Bosnian nobility almost reached the pinnacle of its power, that members of the ruling family began devising and emphasizing their own dynastic identity as well as the implied connection between the dynasty and the crown.46 By doing so they wanted to promote the idea that loyalty to the crown was almost the same thing as being loyal to the ruling dynasty. In this they had a moderate amount of success. Despite the constantly diminishing authority of the rulers in medieval Bosnia, the honour of being considered a king only ever belonged to the members of the Kotromanić family.

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Conclusion In conclusion it can be said that the way Bosnia was ruled depended entirely on the complex and often antagonistic relationship between the ruler and the nobility, which gradually evolved into an abstract relationship between the crown and the assembly. The bond that merged and held the two together was an inherent expectation of loyalty that was reciprocal in nature. When the interests of these two essential components came to be aligned, the state of Bosnia prospered both economically and politically. It was therefore essential for the ruler to be able to count on the “loyal service” that the nobility owed him, and it was expected that he would reward his faithful nobles with appropriate privileges and liberties. Thus, by incentivizing loyalty the ruler inadvertently strengthened the political position of nobility at the expense of his own authority. Once the process created a disproportionate distribution of power between the ruler and the nobles, the ruler had to attempt to solidify and consolidate his position through other creative, predominantly symbolic means. On the other hand, the nobility, although quasi-independent, never considered detaching or separating their lands from the entirety of the Bosnian Kingdom. They accepted the existing framework and always behaved as an integral part of the complex state organism. Despite of their enormous wealth, influence and power, the nobles of the realm considered themselves as equally important elements of government as the ruler and therefore had no need to establish territories that would be completely independent from Bosnia. One of the main reasons which prevented them from doing so and bound them firmly to the state was the concept of “loyal service” that they owed to the old and established ruling dynasty of Kotromanići. As long as they did not go beyond the boundaries of loyalty, this was a relationship that they were allowed to dictate and understand on their own terms. By serving loyally the Bosnian nobility not only expanded their domains and increased their authority, but also preserved the functional existence of the state until it was entirely subsumed into the Ottoman Empire.

Notes 1 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio. Greek text ed. Gy. Moravcsik, English translation by R. J. H. Jenkins, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, vol. I. (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1967), 160–61. 2 Tibor Živković, “On the Beginnings of Bosnia in the Middle Ages,” in Spomenica akademika Marka Šunjića (1927–1998), ed. Dubravko Lovrenović (Sarajevo: Filozofski fakultet u Sarajevu, 2010), 161–80. 3 John Kinnamos, Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus. Translated by Charles M. Brand (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 84, 103–4. 4 Ferenc Makk, The Árpáds and the Comneni. Political Relations between Hungary and Byzantium in the 12th Century (Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó, 1989). 5 Mladen Ančić, Putanja klatna: Ugarsko-hrvatsko kraljevstvo i Bosna u XIV. stoljeću (Zadar and Mostar: Zavod za povijesne znanosti Hrvatske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti u Zadru – Ziral, Zajednica izdanja ranjeni labud, 1997); Dubravko Lovrenović, Na klizištu povijesti (sveta kruna ugarska i sveta kruna bosanska) 1387–1463 (Zagreb and Sarajevo: Synopsis, 2006).

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6 “SELF-GOVERNANCE AT THE KING’S COMMAND” Towns and Their Sovereign in Medieval Hungary Katalin Szende

When surveying the urbanization of medieval Europe, other regions than Hungary come more readily to one’s mind, and in turn, when thinking of medieval Hungary, other social groups than the bourgeoisie carry more weight. Indeed, the realm stretching across the lowlands as well as the mountain ranges of the Carpathian Basin is less known for its medieval towns than the Holy Roman Empire, France, let alone the Apennine Peninsula. Nevertheless, for an overview on ‘How Medieval Europe Was Governed’, the case of the Hungarian towns can be arguably instructive. With direct sources being few and far between, especially for the early period, the need for creating a coherent narrative compels the historian to consider various, often less traditional, approaches and alternative sources provided by archaeology, settlement geography, or sphragistics. In short, the case of Hungary can be taken as a laboratory of ‘urban history against the grain’. Hungarian towns, furthermore, may be a testing ground of Europeanization paradigms, telling a story of the import of certain practices, but also the limitations, failures or missed opportunities. The title of this essay, taken from a once influential work on British parliamentary democracy,1 and applied here with due caution, foreshadows an inherent contradiction in the role of the monarch vis-à-vis the urban communities in his realm. It is this relationship that will be explored in a chronological sequence, from the introduction of kingship in Hungary at the turn of the first Millennium up to 1526, the traditional end of the Middle Ages in Hungarian historiography. This study also ties into a growing interest in lordship and seigneurial practices on a European scale.2

The King and His Early Towns: Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries The concept of ‘towns’ and ‘urbanity’, particularly before the appearance of chartered towns, is heavily debated, and it changed significantly over time. The DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-6

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settlements discussed in the first section of this study can rather be regarded as centres of power than cities and towns in the late medieval, let alone the modern, sense of the word.3 But exactly because of this they were not only governed by the kings and their officials, but were themselves key points in the governance of the realm. From the functional point of view, the early centres in Árpádian-age Hungary can be divided into four groups of which, naturally, royal seats were the most prominent. Just like elsewhere in Europe in earlier times, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Hungarian royal court led an itinerant lifestyle. Residences situated in the Danube-bend and its broader catchment area, called ‘the middle of the realm’ already by the contemporaries, were particularly favoured.4 The second main group of early centres were the episcopal sees. The core of the ecclesiastical administration was the result of conscious and concentrated founding activity during the lifetime of Stephen I (r. 997–1038) and his successors. Following a dynastic masterplan, explained in more detail below, makes it understandable why, contrary to the core territories of western Christianity, the Church was given hardly any influence in defining the centres of ecclesiastic administration.5 The third type of power centres were seats of royal counties, which formed the most extensive network of early central places, spread evenly over the inhabited areas. Similar to the royal residences and episcopal sees, the location of the fortified county seats shows the importance of strategic considerations over economic ones. Besides these three main categories of central places, there was a fourth, less concentrated, type which included sites of trading, craft production and lay/ecclesiastical establishments such as small forts and monasteries, distributed within a range of a few kilometres. Such centres were not only on royal ground, but also under the control of the Church and the noble kindreds of the realm. The need for turning to alternative sources beyond the written ones regarding the kings’ intentions towards these ‘old centres’ is particularly pressing, since there is no explicit country-wide legislation on towns until 1405, and charters of privilege appear also relatively late, from the beginning of the thirteenth century onwards. What we have in the early royal laws that survived in exceptionally high numbers compared to other countries of East Central Europe, are references to certain activities that would go on in the urban context, most importantly trade. The laws of King Coloman distinguish two main groups of merchants: those who trade to grow rich and those poor people who sustain themselves from it, regardless of their place of residence. The same laws also order that Jews should settle exclusively in cathedral cities, irrespectively of where they owned lands. This measure was probably not put into practice.6 The most important policy measure of the Árpádian kings was a geopolitical one, namely the siting of their power centres, thereby according central roles to certain settlements in secular and ecclesiastic governance by royal will. This meant favouring strategic locations on sites that offered an overview of a considerable area and controlled its resources. The three most important early royal

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seats represent three different versions of this story: Esztergom on a hilltop by the Danube, Székesfehérvár (or Fehérvár by its medieval name) on the plain on an island surrounded by marshes, and Óbuda below a range of hills, by a harbour on the Danube. The Danube-bend, the turning point of the most crucial artery in the realm was flanked by two ecclesiastic centres: the archbishop’s seat of ­Esztergom (in symbiosis with the royal palace) at its western, and the bishops’ seat of Vác at its eastern end points. The siting of other bishops’ seats was likewise subordinated to the needs of expanding dynastic power to the entire Carpathian Basin.7 In fact, one can follow the process of the centralization of the kingdom by observing the sequence of how the diocesan seats were established. The earliest bishoprics were founded around the turn of the first Millennium west of the Danube on grounds under the firm control of the Árpádians, in Veszprém, Győr, and Esztergom, the latter becoming the first archiepiscopal see in 1000. It was soon followed, unprecedented in newly Christianized lands, by a second archdiocese centred on Kalocsa, as well as bishoprics in Eger and Pécs, the centre of the so-called Black ­Hungarians. King Stephen I’s victories over his rivals, the Gyula in Transylvania and the pretentious chieftain Ajtony at the river Maros were accompanied by laying the foundations of new bishoprics at Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár) and Cenad (Csanád), respectively. Under Stephen’s successors in the mid-eleventh century, the seat of a temporarily established duchy at Bihor (Bihar) was marked out as a diocesan seat, just like Vác, en route to the north-western territories controlled by the dukes. Finally in this first wave, when King Ladislas I (1077–1095) took over the throne of ­Croatia, he founded the diocese of Zagreb (Zágráb) in Slavonia, along the way leading there, and his successor, Coloman (1095–1116) established a see at Nitra (Nyitra), the north-western ducal seat. The southern mission was reinforced by Bač (Bács) as an additional seat of the same archdiocese beside Kalocsa, and Oradea (Várad) replaced Bihor in a much better-connected location. The documents provide very little evidence on the communities that lived on these royally chosen sites, apart from the military and productive services that they owed to the king. The duties were performed under the supervision of decuriones and centuriones who collected the taxes, administered justice in minor cases and were answerable to the comites or ispáns, that is, the leaders of the counties. Those who gained immunity from the ispán’s authority, including groups of settlers, domestic or external migrants called guests (hospites), were judged by reeves (villicus) or leaders under different other titles. Hospes gradually became a technical term for the privileged legal standing of settler communities, and then of any autonomous communities, irrespective of their origin.8 An early reference to a maior hospitum at Pécs in a document from 1181, signals that those ‘guests’ had a leader among themselves – it does not transpire whether elected or appointed.9 The names in the list where this term appears point to a place of origin somewhere on the French/German language border. A couple of decades later, in 1201, the ‘guests of Potok’ (Sárospatak or Bodrogolaszi) were

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led and judged by a prepositus (the equivalent of the French prevôt). This unique occurrence of the word in this meaning in the legal terminology of medieval Hungary points to Northern France or Lotharingia as the old homeland of these guests.10 These settlers were granted the earliest royal charter of privilege whose text has come down to us, pointing towards new forms of governance initiated by the monarchs.

Chartering People – Chartering Settlements: New Forms of Governance in the Thirteenth Century From the 1180s onwards, the prerogatives and immunities of particular social groups and communities were not based any more solely on local customs and abilities of individuals to assert them but were confirmed in writing by the rulers. The charters of privilege issued first to settlers and then increasingly to settlements were but one type of such documents besides those granted to the Church and the nobility.11 These documents served a double purpose: developing peripheral regions of the country with a population deficit and reinforcing the rights of already settled groups. Until the 1240s, development was aimed at Transylvania in the south-east, the north-eastern regions focussed on the route leading to Kiev, and Slavonia, the region between the rivers Drava and Sava, in the southwest. Reinforcement in the 1220s and 1230s targeted the already established settlements of ‘guests’ in the centre of the realm, including Fehérvár, Esztergom and the rich merchant town of Pest. In the aftermath of the Mongol Invasion of 1241/1242, charters of privilege became much more frequent and covered a more extensive area of the country. By 1301, a total number of 48 settlements received one or more such charters. Only the territory of the Great Hungarian Plain remained unaffected, which was an area used increasingly for animal husbandry (Map 6.1). So far, we have not made a clear distinction between hospes-privileges and town privileges as initially there was little to set them apart. Often first the customary liberties of various ethnic groups or other settlers were put into writing, and this then became the basis of the privileges for the inhabitants of the entire settlement. The new practice can be best appreciated by surveying the main issues, legal, administrative, ecclesiastic, and economic alike, thematized in the charters. Their overview also offers an insight into the working of royal authority vis-à-vis the emerging new concept of urbanity. The legal liberties laid out the basic right of self-governance under an elected leader; however, the modalities of the election were only vaguely defined. There was very little to indicate the eligibility for the position, apart from the fact that the leader, elected with common consent, had to be part of the community. The circle of those who were expected to participate in the election was also set in general terms, if at all: the term maior et sanior pars borrowed from canon law in the charter of Trnava probably refers to the early formation of a local elite, the will of which dominated the community.12 Applying the principle of

Self-Government at the King’s Command  77

MAP 6.1 

Newly Chartered Settlements in the Kingdom of Hungary up to 1300

majority instead of full unanimity was, according to legal historians, a sign that a ­community became a body corporate and assumed legal personality.13 The term of office was not specified in a uniform way either, but some communities received the right to review the elected judge’s performance annually and depose him if it did not meet their satisfaction. This right – together with the right of election itself – played an important role in the formation of local community identity.14 The main task of the elected judge was to exercise jurisdiction over the community, as often indicated by the title iudex or its variations, e.g. richtardus in Varaždin. His authority implied exemption from the authority of local (county) leader. Being judged by someone who is a member of the given community and follows its customs and rules embodied the essence of autonomy, that is, living after one’s own rules. The authority of the judge normally covered all civil and criminal cases, including the so-called major ones, that is, when blood was shed; otherwise, the settlement in question did not count as a fully-fledged town. Urban status also meant that the witnesses had to be of the same standing as the defendant. Following contemporary European legal practice, the judge administered justice in any case that arose on the territory of the town, whether between its own inhabitants or between locals and outsiders. His authority also extended to the

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burghers as individuals wherever they stayed; in other words, they could only be prosecuted before their own judge.15 The judge represented the interests of his fellow-burghers in front of higher instances: if someone was not satisfied with the verdict or if the judge was reluctant to take up a case, he and not the accused was summoned to the court of appeal. According to the privileges of Győr (1271), this was the “custom of the realm” (regni consuetudo).16 Among ecclesiastical liberties, communal election of parish priest deserves attention, a privilege which elsewhere, for instance in the Holy Roman Empire, was rarely enjoyed as early as the thirteenth century.17 One of the practical reasons for the development of this custom may have been the issue of language. Hospites, especially newcomers, formed their own speech community often speaking a different language or dialect from the population around them. This explains why they were granted the right to elect their own parish priest.18 Still within the ecclesiastical sphere, some privileges contain regulations concerning the collection of tithes, defining terms that were favourable for the tithe-payers, usually in the fields and not in the barns. The regulations regarding administrative autonomy highlight the intention of the rulers to donate liberties while retaining and emphasizing their own supreme authority and control over the loyalty of their towns. The privileged communities were often obliged to present the newly elected judge to the king, and the higher authority where the judges had to appear in case of unsettled disputes was also the king as the overlord of most of the chartered towns. This practice differs significantly from the situation in the Holy Roman Empire, where the ­mother-town of a newly founded settlement served as court of appeal.19 In ­Hungary this system of filiation operated only in the case of minor towns chartered in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. The do ut des (‘I give so that you may give’) principle is even clearer in economic matters. The country-wide exemption from paying customs and tolls had by the second half of the thirteenth century become one of the main means used by the rulers to promote internal trade. Concerning foreign trade, royal policy was less consistent. Royal charters also granted seigniorial rights to the communities over the town’s land, both the interior (divided into plots) and the exterior part of it.20 This meant – with very few exceptions – exemption from earlier seigniorial obligations; instead, taxes had to be paid directly to the king. In this respect as well immunity from the county comes’ authority was a decisive step in urban development. Several privileges contain perambulations of the town boundaries, both to assert communal ownership rights and to delineate the area within which the town’s laws applied. The liberty to compose one’s last will, a right of both legal and economic significance, was included already in the earliest hospes-privileges. As one of the crucial norms in the old homelands of the settlers, it had to be offered to those whom the rulers wanted to attract.21 Some privileges, such as that of Pest, state that property can only be transferred to those who are ready to provide the king the same service as its previous owner; and that no heirs may be allowed

Self-Government at the King’s Command  79

to alienate the land from the town’s jurisdiction.22 These measures imply both a direct and indirect assertion of royal power: the king authorized the town community to exert control over its members in order that they should be better able to fulfil their obligations towards the royal treasury. As ‘contracts’ between the kings and the settlers or settlements, charters of privilege specified such archaic duties as lodging and provisioning, and military services to be provided. The communities gained immunity from accommodating and provisioning any comites or magnates of the realm. However, the king reserved the right for himself and his entourage to be accommodated and catered for – a clear expression of lordship and power, especially when the formulation included an explicit demand for a dignified reception, like in the charter of Šariš, Prešov, and Sabinov in 1299: “receive us…with due honour, as your and the realm’s natural lord”.23 With the formation of permanent royal residences, the descensus (compulsory hospitality) became integrated into the regular taxes paid by the given settlement. Furthermore, several charters mention the military contingent to be supplied, although the calculation of the number of warriors and their equipment shows immense variation within the country. The only common point was that such levies could only be mobilized in a defensive war within the country, under the king’s banner.24

Self-Governance ‘on the Ground’ Obtaining a charter was just a point of departure for any aspiring settlement. Their success depended on the acquisition of further liberties from the monarchs, and the ability of the local community to put the liberties into practice. It often took several hundred years before a town acquired a full range of economic and commercial privileges.25 Granting immunities from customs and tolls were royal prerogatives just like allowing the construction of stone defence walls or granting markets rights. A further benefit for the commercial life of a town was the staple right (the obligation for merchants to stop and offer their products for sale at the local market) – a grant attached rather to a place than a community and thus did not feature in the early hospes-privileges.26 Charters of privilege frequently referred to the liberties of other towns as legal models. In contrast to the Slavic-speaking territories of East Central Europe, however, a specific trait of Hungarian royal charters was that they did not refer to any external pattern, but only those within the borders of the country. Apart from the two main models, the liberties of Fehérvár and Buda, some charters mentioned towns in the close neighbourhood as points of reference, but not foreign cities.27 Particularly conspicuous is the absence of references to the city of Magdeburg and Magdeburg law. The case of Žilina (Zsolna), one of the northernmost towns of medieval Hungary inhabited mainly by Germans and Slavs, confirms this rule. The town was originally founded under German law, with Cieszyn (Teschen) as its mother-town. King Louis I (1342–1382), however, considered this as an undesirable anomaly and in 1369 obliged the local authorities to

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choose a mother-town within the boundaries of the kingdom, whereby Žilina’s choice fell on Krupina (Korpona).28 The impact of charters on urban governance is eminently reflected in the practices of local pragmatic literacy. To make full use of the rights and to comply with the duties, for securing property rights and control over municipal land and taxation, as well as recording and following up judgements made by the municipal court, recurrence to writing was indispensable. The autonomy of urban communities included their capacity to issue authentic documents within their purview. From the thirteenth century onwards, this was linked to the use of an authentic seal, following the examples of the royal chancery and the places of authentication, that is, ecclesiastical bodies authorized to issue authentic documents.29 Just like the liberties themselves, the right to have such a seal prepared also depended on seigniorial authorization, as stated in the Tripartitum, the summa of Hungarian customary law compiled in 1514: “cities and towns have authentic seals which kings and princes have granted them, and which confirm facts and matters which are moved and come to pass before them”.30 However, at the outset it may have been sufficient to receive an oral permission or to start using a seal with the coat of arms of a community based on the customary acknowledgement of the symbol. The authentic municipal seal was an instrument by which the civic community was able to bridge the gap between the yearly election of magistrates ( judge and the councillors) and the need for measures with long-term validity. In other words, the seal ensured the continuous authority of a body which changed its members and representatives; invoked trust in the actions they took and the writings they produced. This was a truly revolutionary move towards corporate representation.31 The earliest extant examples are the gilded bronze matrices of the double seal commissioned by the Latini, the Romance-speaking (Walloon) inhabitants of the royal city of Esztergom (Figure 6.1), presumably designed in the 1230s. The reverse depicts an elaborate wall and palace, while the obverse depicts the coat of arms of the Árpádians, indicating the protection and control of the ruling dynasty.32 The roughly contemporary double seal of Pest follows the same pattern. In fact, it happened also elsewhere in Europe that early municipal seals adopted the blazon of their lord, thus paying homage and emphasizing his protection against any power that might threaten the town’s autonomy. For instance, the great seal of Vienna, a contemporary of the seals of Esztergom and Pest, bears the image of a one-headed eagle, the coat of arms of the Babenberg dynasty.33 Having obtained an authentic seal, after the first sporadic traces after the 1250s, the written output of royal towns took off from the 1290s.34 The documents were related to their external relations with the monarchs, other towns, the Church and the nobility, as well as internal affairs such as the exchange of real estate or the administering of justice. They also attest the regular operation of municipal councils, as the municipal judge as issuer was accompanied by a group

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FIGURE 6.1 Reverse

side of the matrix of the double seal of the Latini of Esztergom,

1230s

of sworn men, usually 12 in number. How far back the origin of their office goes is seldom testified by the earliest privilege of a given place; a hierarchically structured local leadership was often a later development, following the emergence of a local administrative elite. In later centuries their origin, occupation and frequency of office-holding allows conclusions on the social background and meritocratic character of civic governance.35 The increase in the volume of written production necessitated the involvement of professional notaries, the first salaried employees of the municipal administration. Their skills were in high demand not only as scribes and archivists, but also as envoys and diplomats.36 The emergence of municipal chanceries is reflected through the increasingly regular layout of the documents. Besides serving municipal governance, town chanceries had to meet the growing demands of the royal administration for reporting and the town’s inhabitants for their private affairs as well. The increasing volume of tasks frequently led to the use of town books, registers of accounts and protocols of litigation brought before the local court. The book format implied a conscious choice for the long-term preservation of information. The unbroken series of testamentary protocols of Bratislava (Pozsony, Pressburg), spanning several centuries, exemplify this new level of institutionalization.37 The most advanced stage of civic administration was the establishment of municipal archives, first as a mobile collection of documents and then

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an  assemblage solidly tied to a designated space. Not every medieval town reached this level of municipal literacy but used other means of storing their records. The documents were often simply deposited in a chest or trunk that was taken to the house of the actual judge and moved over to his successor’s home after each municipal election. The ideal long-term solution was to erect a town hall or transform a building for this purpose, an investment that only the most important civic communities could afford.38 Indeed, the proportion of town halls to the number of communities granted urban status in medieval Hungary was much lower than in the Duchy of Austria or the Kingdom of Bohemia in the same period.39 The town halls were but one and not the most frequent kind of buildings erected and managed by the municipal authorities. More constitutive of urbanity were the town walls, especially those built in stone, so much so that in 1351 the special status of walled towns was confirmed by royal decree and awarded exemption from the payment of seigniorial taxes.40 However, not all privileged settlements were guaranteed to reach this stage. The first privilege awarded to a place rarely includes stipulations about the walls, like that of Sopron where the charter of 1277 was issued after a series of battles with Otakar II and therefore the issuer, King Ladislas IV (1272–1290) stipulated the repair of the damaged fortifications.41 Town defences had a high military value and were also important elements of local cohesion and identity, frequently depicted on town seals, and their construction was usually promoted in royal murage grants. Nonetheless, there were several settlements that functioned as towns without ever having had stone walls. Further important municipal institutions were the hospitals or alms-houses, often founded and initially operated by religious orders and subsequently taken over by the municipalities. As popular targets of civic charity and donations of movable goods and landed estates, alms-houses represented both an asset and a liability for the civic authorities. Erik Fügedi’s proposal that in Hungary hospitals rather than mendicant friaries should be regarded as indicators of urbanity (friaries often being founded in market towns or even biggish villages by their noble landlords) stands to reason also from the viewpoint of the municipal governance which cared for the upkeep of these institutions and regulated the admission of the inmates.42 There would be many other ways of assessing the operation of civic governance based on material evidence, from the architectural patronage of parish churches, friaries, chapels and roadside crosses to the upkeep of street pavement and public wells. Let me just mention as a final example the regular division of plots as the ultimate expression of seigniorial involvement ‘on the ground’. Initiating a comprehensive partitioning of the ground to be distributed among the inhabitants of newly established settlements in the way as it could be proven from archaeological and cartographic evidence for medieval Buda had at least as far-reaching consequences for the future urban development as the charters of privilege did.43

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A Special Case: The Mining Towns Due to the discovery of silver, gold and copper ore, from the thirteenth century Hungary took an increasingly active part in European economy. The utilization of these resources necessitated the establishment of new settlements in the northern and eastern ranges of the Carpathians (now in Slovakia and Romania). The mining towns gained in importance due to the strong interdependence of mining and royal monetary and economic policy both in the late Árpádian period, the ‘Silver Age’ when silver was the main product, and the Angevin period, the ‘Golden Age’, when gold joined silver as an output. Examining the governance of mining towns offers a telling comparison to ‘ordinary’ centres of trade and commerce. As to their liberties, the skilled workforce that was granted the right of prospecting (Bergbaufreiheit) were also given concessions in procedural matters. For instance, the privileges of Banská Bystrica (Besztercebánya, Neusohl) (1255) allowed German settlers the recourse to judicial duels “following the customs of the Saxons”, a practice expressly forbidden in other towns.44 Krupina’s charter (1244) limited the testimonies of Hungarian witnesses compared to those of the Germans.45 Apparently the king found it so important to secure the good will of these expert miners that he was ready to suspend principles that he had enforced everywhere else. The charter issued for Kremnica (Körmöcbánya, Kremnitz), the prime gold-mining town in 1328 even disregarded the principle of internal references and declared as a model the regulations of another powerful mining town, the Bohemian Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg). The urgency of the introduction of minting currency in gold (the famous Hungarian golden florins) justified the exception from the country-wide norms.46 As a result of these developments, by the mid-fourteenth century, mining towns became a distinct category of towns from legal, administrative and economic viewpoints alike. The mining towns offer telling examples of how monarchs of different dynasties used the instruments of municipal administration in general, and the physical form, legend and imagery of the seals in particular, to assert their own authority over this strategically most important branch of the economy. Under the Árpádians, royal presence can be detected through heraldic motifs, and perhaps through the uniformity of the visual appearance of the seals. The indication of royal overlordship through the coat-of-arms emphasizes the ruling dynasty rather than a particular monarch. In the Angevin period, the legends as well as the imagery directly refer to the reigning king, showing his figure and his name. “Karolus” appears on the seal of Kremnica and “Ludowicus” on that of Nova Baňa (Újbánya, Königsberg), whereas on the seal of Baia Mare (Nagybánya, Frauenbach) the figure of St Stephen is seated on top of the mountain just like King Louis I is depicted on his majesty seal (Figure 6.2).47 The inclusion of the ruling dynasty or the actual monarch on an instrument of municipal authentication carried a strong message of combined authority. Other peculiarities of mining town governance confirm the working hypothesis that

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FIGURE 6.2 

Copy of the municipal seal of Baia Mare, c. 1350

the different characteristics of the Silver Age and Golden Age seals reflected not only the changing artistic tastes of the two periods, but also the different degrees of participation or intervention of the royal authorities into the mining towns’ administration. The mining towns pursued a regular charter-issuing activity, which documented first and foremost the exchange of real estate connected to mining and ensured the availability of human and natural resources. This, however, did not necessarily increase local autonomy. The regular and forceful presence of royal officials, especially the urburarii or comites or counts of mining and minting chambers ensured that the issued documents followed the interest of the royal treasury. The names of these persons preceded as a rule those of the elected magistrates in the opening line of the issued documents, showing their distinction. The custom of local elections and “morning meetings” (maniloquium) of the local councils, a custom particular for the mining towns, legitimized rather than counterbalanced the strong central control.48 Compared to the relatively protracted pace of the development of municipal literacy in other Hungarian urban centres, this process was swifter in the mining towns, the granting of royal privileges was followed much faster by the appearance of the first municipal seal, the employment of notaries and the setting up of municipal books. Mining towns indeed set up their books, one after the other, in the late fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries. The system, nevertheless, remained rudimentary: most municipal books were of mixed content,

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financial records were entered side by side with judicial ones and criminal cases were intermingled with property transactions.49 Besides the irregular keeping of municipal books the fact that very few mining towns had town halls also reflects the limitations of autonomy in medieval Hungarian mining towns.

Missed Chances? Means and Limits of Urban Autonomy in the Late Middle Ages By the fifteenth century, the institutional handling of urban affairs was firmly established. The concluding section of this overview will assess this first on the level of the towns themselves, and then on that of the realm. Firstly, access to citizenship was clearly regulated and firmly tied to the ownership of a burgage plot and a house in the town, paying a one-time admission fee and agreeing to paying the yearly taxes and other duties. Besides these economic criteria, moral and legal conditions also had to be fulfilled, such as swearing an oath of loyalty to the community, providing guarantors and often also producing documents of legitimate birth and a letter of release from the previous landlord. Fulfilling these conditions was the basis of participation in the election of the magistrates, in the liberties connected to trade and commerce, and in the community of defence. The setup was very similar to that of guild membership, which mutually influenced the framework of citizenship rights. The function and differentiation of the magistrates: the judge(s), the inner and outer councils, the chamberlain and the town clerk became more sophisticated, and so were their election rituals and the rules of admitting new citizens could be easily bent if the town wished to attract people with certain skills, wealth or influence.50 More problematic was for the local magistrates to cope with the encroachment of the nobility on urban communities. Even if municipal authorities justly demanded that nobles share the common burdens, they seldom had the means to enforce their rights. Their defeat became most apparent in the case of Buda, where the diet of 1492 explicitly exempted the prelates, barons and noblemen from paying any taxes and other duties after their houses in the capital.51 A specific feature for the governance of East Central European towns was the handling of multi-ethnic communities. The cohabitation of the local natives, mainly Hungarians or Slavs, with burghers from German-speaking lands and from various Italian communes was regulated in different ways, depending on the numerical proportions and the local customs. In certain parts of the country, such as the towns of the Transylvanian Saxons, where Germans were in the majority, they had exclusive rights over the municipal administration. In other areas in the western or north-eastern border zones, in Sopron, Bratislava, Trnava (Nagyszombat, Tyrnau), Košice (Kassa, Kaschau) or Prešov (Eperjes, Preschau), where Germans regularly lived together with Hungarians and Slavs – hence the multiple names – ethnic affiliation did not play a decisive role in civic governance. In a third group of towns in different parts of the realm, notably in Zagreb (1377), Žilina (1381), Buda (1439) and Cluj (Kolozsvár, Klausenburg) (1458),

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municipal councils were assembled by proportionate representation of various ethnic groups. This new phenomenon was always introduced by royal intervention, to settle or prevent, civic unrest by a compromise.52 The structures of governance developed in the royal towns served as models from the late fourteenth century onwards for small seigniorial towns under the lordship of various private lay and ecclesiastical landowners, a settlement type not discussed in this study. Recent comprehensive analyses of documents issued by these minor towns revealed the regular operation of judges and councils, although with usually only four or six members. They operated on the “self-­ governance at the lord’s command” principle, as trusted subjects of their overlords, to further paraphrase the title of this essay, and issued documents on their own remit: property transactions (mainly vineyards that were handled more liberally), as well as minor offences.53 Considering the country as a whole, institutionalization reached a higher level by various types of towns being assigned to specific courts of appeal. The most prestigious group, the seven (later eight) free royal towns, Buda, ­Bratislava, Sopron, Trnava , Košice , Bardejov (Bártfa, Bartfeld), Prešov and Pest were adjudicated by the Master of the Treasury, the next level (nine to ten towns) by another royal official, both showing the significance of these towns for the monarch, and emphasizing the vertical connections to the king as the main point of reference. Although the free royal towns occasionally coordinated their moves when it came to military involvement, or if one of them was threatened with being pledged, to a magnate or a neighbouring monarch they were too dispersed to create a steady alliance. Collaboration stayed on the level of regional leagues formed by the mining towns, with Kremnica as their court of appeal; by the Transylvanian Saxon towns as part of the local universitas Saxonum centred on Sibiu (Szeben, Hermannstadt); and by five towns in north-eastern Hungary, the so-called Pentapolis, including Košice, Levoča (Lőcse, Leutschau), Prešov, Bardejov and Sabinov (Kisszeben). Members of these groups represented their common interests at the court both in financial, military and legal matters, but such a collaboration was rather an exception than the rule.54 The lack of coordination between the towns became most apparent regarding their representation at the diets. Assemblies of the land-owning nobility were convoked in connection with royal elections and the imposition of extraordinary taxes from the late fourteenth century onwards.55 Representatives of royal free towns were invited to these occasionally from the mid-fifteenth century, and more regularly from the 1490s; however, they often failed to appear due to the high costs and other inconveniences incurred by the participation. The presence of the urban representatives seems to have been more important for the monarchs than the towns themselves. It was in the kings’ interest to claim a broader basis of legitimacy by including the towns among the ‘members of the realm,’ while the towns themselves did not yet recognize the advantages of forming their own interest groups by horizontal collaboration.56 This missed opportunity is a clear signal that ­Hungarian towns did not yet form a fourth order in the late Middle Ages.

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Conclusions This study had set out to explore the possibilities and limits of self-governance of urban communities in a country that was a latecomer on the European scene of urbanization, and where most towns remained small. The survey showed the appearance of spatial and legal structures like those of other European polities: the  plot system, citizenship, the municipal seal and various bodies of municipal governance. The town charters that set the processes of self-governance in motion, however, were initiated less by the demands of the urban population than the monarchs’ interest in using them to promote economic and political control over their realm. The deficiencies of municipal autonomy were most apparent in the mining towns, and in the limited capacity for interaction between towns across the realm at the diets or in other forms of alliance. The use of soft power in royal urban policy shown here is a phenomenon worthy of comparative research across broad urban regions. At the same time, one must acknowledge that the increasing professionalization of civic governance did leave an impact on the urban stock of the country. Despite all the weaknesses pointed out above, most towns could survive in a consolidated form during the calamitous and divided history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Hungary when royal governance had other priorities than promoting urban development.

Notes 1 Albert B. White, Self-Government at the King’s Command. A Study in the Beginnings of English Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1933). 2 Anngret Simms and Howard B. Clarke (eds.), Lords and Towns in Medieval Europe: The European Historic Towns Atlas Project (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015); Sandro Carocci, “The Pervasiveness of Lordship (Italy, 1050–1500),” Past and Present Volume 256, Issue 1, August 2022: 3–47. 3 On the functional approach to cities and towns regarding the Early Middle Ages see Howard Clarke and Anngret Simms (eds.), The Comparative History of Urban Origins in Non-Roman Europe (Oxford: BAR, 1985); Richard Hodges, Dark Age Economics. The Origins of Towns and Trade, A.D. 600–1000, 2 ed (London: Duckworth, 1989/2001), 20–24; Stadtgründung und Stadtwerdung. Beiträge von Archäologie und Stadtgeschichtsforschung, ed. Ferdinand Opll (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Städte Mitteleuropas 22) (Linz: Österreichischer Arbeitskreis für Stadtgeschichtsforschung, 2011); for Hungary: József Laszlovszky, “Frühstädtische Siedlungsentwicklung in Ungarn,” ­ in Burg, Burgstadt, Stadt. Zur Genese mittelalterlicher nichtagrarischer Zentren in Ostmitteleuropa, ed. Hansjürgen Brachmann (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995), 307–16. 4 See the studies on each seat in Towns in Medieval Hungary, ed. László Gerevich (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990); In medio regni Hungariae: régészeti, művészettörténeti és történeti kutatások “az ország közepén”/Archaeological, Art Historical and Historical Research ‘in the ­Middle of the Kingdom, ed. Elek Benkő and Krisztina Orosz (Budapest: MTA), 2015. 5 Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Town and Cathedral in Medieval Hungary,” Hortus Artium ­Medievalium 12 (2006): 207–20. 6 Decreta regni mediaevalis Hungariae/The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary ­1000–1301, ed. János M. Bak, György Bónis and James Ross Sweeney (Idyllwild: Charles Schlacks Jr., 1999), The Laws of King Coloman, art. 33, p. 27 and art. 75, 30.

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7 On the siting of diocesan seats see in more detail Katalin Szende, “By Choice or by Force? Natural and Man-Made Factors in the Siting of Bishops’ Seats in East ­Central Europe in the Christianization Period,” in Festive volume for Felicitas Schmieder’s Birthday. Nova Mediaevalia, ed. Gerda Brunnlechner and Daniel Syrbe (forthcoming [2024]). 8 The meaning of this word in the Latin sources of Hungary is considerably different from elsewhere in Europe where it refers to aliens, especially merchants, temporarily passing through or residing at a place, while in Hungary it denoted settlers with an intention of durable settling. See Lexicon Latinitatis medii aevi Hungariae, vol. IV, F–H, ed. Iván Boronkai and Kornél Szovák (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1993), s.v. ‘hospes’, 285–86. ­ alassi, 9 András Kubinyi, ed., Elenchus fontium historiae urbanae, vol. III/2 (Budapest: B 1997), 13.; István Petrovics, “Foreign Ethnic Groups in the Towns of Southern ­Hungary in the Middle Ages”, in Segregation – Integration – Assimilation. Religious and Ethnic Groups in Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Derek Keene, Balázs Nagy and Katalin Szende (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 67–88, esp. 73–74. 10 Elenchus III/2, 21–22.; Katalin Szende, “Power and Identity: Royal Privileges to the Towns of Medieval Hungary in the Thirteenth Century,” in Urban Liberties and Civic Participation from the Middle Ages to Modern Times (Beiträge zur Landes – und Kulturgeschichte 9), ed. Michel Pauly and Alexander Lee (Trier: Porta Alba, 2015), 27–67, esp. 39, 45, 56–59. 11 Pál Engel, The Realm of St Stephen. A History of Medieval Hungary 895–1526 (London: Tauris, 2001), Chapter 6: “The Age of the Golden Bulls”, 83–100; Szende, “Power and Identity,” 32–35. 12 Codex diplomaticus et epistolaris Slovaciae, ed. Richard Marsina, vol. II (Bratislava, 1987), 30–31 (henceforth CDES); Erzsébet Ladányi, Az önkormányzat intézményei és elméleti alapvetése az európai és hazai városfejlődés korai szakaszában [The Institutions of Autonomy and Its Theoretical Basis in the Early Period of European and Hungarian Urban Development], (Budapest: Márton Áron Kiadó, 1996), 135–36. 13 Heinrich Mitteis and Heinrich Lieberich, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, 13th edn. (Munich: Beck, 1974), 208. 14 Szende, “Power and Identity,” 45–46. 15 Eberhard Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt im Spätmittelalter 1250–1500. Stadtgestalt, Recht, Stadtregiment, Kirche, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft (Stuttgart: Ulmer, 1988), 78–80. 16 Elenchus III/2, 61–63. 17 Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt, 216–9; András Kubinyi, “Stadt und Kirche in Ungarn im Mittelalter”, in Stadt und Kirche, ed. Franz-Heinz Hye (Linz: Österreichischer Arbeitskreis für Stadtgeschichtsforschung, 1995), 179–97. 18 Katalin Szende, “Integration through Language. The Multilingual Character of Late Medieval Hungarian Towns,” in Segregation, Integration, Assimilation. Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe, eds. Derek Keene, Balázs Nagy and Katalin Szende (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 205–34, esp. 221–24. 19 Karl Kroeschell, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte 2 (1250–1650), 8th ed. (Opladen: UTB, 1992), 113–25. 20 Erik Fügedi, “Középkori magyar városprivilégiumok” [Medieval Hungarian Town Privileges], Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából 14 (1961): 17–107 (Reprinted in his Kolduló barátok, polgárok, nemesek [Mendicant friars, burghers, nobles] (Budapest: ­Gondolat, 1981), 238–311, 493–509. I refer here to the page numbers of this edition, here: 249–56 and 258–70. 2 1 Kroeschell, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, 75–77. See also Katalin Szende, “From Mother to Daughter, from Father to Son? Patterns of Bequeathing Movables in Late Medieval Pressburg,” in Generations in Towns. Succession and Success in Pre-industrial Urban Societies, ed. Finn-Einar Eliassen and Katalin Szende (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), 44–75, here 44–48. 22 Elenchus III/2, 40.

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23 Výsady miest a mestečiek na Slovensku [Privileges of Cities and Towns in Slovakia] I (1238–1350), ed. Ľubomír Juck (Bratislava: Veda, 1984), 82. Similar expressions are to be found e.g. in the charter of Cricau, Ighiu and Romos 1206 and the Saxons of Spiš in 1271. 24 László Veszprémy, “Körmend a középkor hadtörténetében” [Körmend in Medieval Military History] In: László Veszpremy et al., Körmend a hadtörténelemben [Körmend in Military History] (Körmend: n.p., 1992), 7–48; Katalin Szende, “Sub nostro ­vexillo regali. Katonaállítási kötelezettség a középkori magyar városi és hospes-­k iváltságlevelekben” [Military Duties in Charters Issued to Towns and hospites in Medieval Hungary], in: Hadi és más nevezetes történetek. Tanulmányok Veszprémy László tiszteletére [Military and Other Famous Stories. Studies in Honor of László Veszprémy], ed. Katalin Mária Kincses (Budapest: Hadtörténeti Intézet és Múzeum, 2018), 542–51. 25 See the example of Košice discussed by Fügedi, “Városprivilégiumok,” 238–39. 26 Boglárka Weisz, Markets and Staples in the Medieval Hungarian Kingdom (Budapest: Research Centre for the Humanities, 2020), 53–77; on market privileges and immunities see also Fügedi, “Városprivilégiumok”, 241–49. 27 Szende, “Power and Identity,” 56–59. 28 Katalin Szende, “Iure Theutonico? German Settlers and Legal Frameworks for Immigration to Hungary in an East-Central European perspective,” Journal of Medieval History 45 (2019): 360–79, at 376. 29 Zsolt Hunyadi, “Administering the Law: Hungary’s loca credibilia,” in Custom and Law in Central Europe, ed. Martyn Rady (Cambridge: Faculty of Law, 2003). Occasional Papers No. 6), 25–35. 30 The Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary: A Work in Three Parts Rendered by Stephen Werbõczy (The “Tripartitum”), ed. János M. Bak, Péter Banyó and Martyn Rady (Budapest and Idyllwild: Schlacks, 2005), 242–43 (Part II, title 13, 3§); the translation is also taken from this volume. 31 Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak, When Ego Was Imago. Signs of Identity in the Middle Ages. Visualising the Middle Ages 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 239. 32 Erzsébet F. Vattai, “Az esztergomi latinok kettős pecsétje [The Double Seal of Esztergom],” Archaeologiai Értesítő 90 (1963): 39–45, with a comprehensive list of documents corroborated with this seal. 33 Alois Niederstätter, “Das Stadtsiegel: Medium kommunaler Selbstdarstellung: Eine Annäherung anhand von Beispielen aus dem habsburgisch-österreichischen Alpenund Donauraum,” in Bild und Wahrnehmung der Stadt, ed. Ferdinand Opll (Linz: Österreichischer Arbeitskreis für Stadtgeschichtsforschung, 2004), 143–56, esp. 144, 148. 34 See the list of the earliest municipal documents in Katalin Szende, Trust, Authority and the Written Word in the Royal Towns of Medieval Hungary. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 41 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), Appendix 3, 340–51. 35 Károly Goda and Judit Majorossy, “Städtische Selbstverwaltung und Schriftproduktion im spätmittelalterlichen Königreich Ungarn – Eine Quellenkunde für Ödenburg und Preßburg,” Pro civitate Austriae 13 (2008): 60–98, esp.71–82. 36 Ágnes Flóra, “‘Laborem circumspecti domini notarii’: Town Notaries in Early Modern Transylvania,” in Writing and the Administration of Medieval Towns: Medieval Urban ­Literacy I., ed. Anna Adamska and Marco Mostert. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 27 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 313–35. 37 See the Introduction to Das Preßburger Protocollum Testamentorum 1413(1427)–1529, Band 1–2. Text edition in the series Fontes Rerum Austriacarum. Fontes Iuris. Vienna and Cologne: Böhlau, Vol. 1. 2010. 38 Judit Majorossy, “From the Judge’s House to the Town’s House: Town Halls in Medieval Hungary,” in Rathäuser als multifunktionale Räume der Repräsentation, der Parteiungen und des Geheimnisses. Forschungen und Beiträge zur Wiener Stadtgeschichte 55, ed. Martin Scheutz et al. (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2012), 155–210. 39 Juraj Šedivý, “Mittelalterliche Rathäuser im mittleren Donaugebiet. Von Räumen der örtlichen Eliten zu Symbolen der städtischen Massen,” in Political Functions of

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Urban Spaces and Town Types through the Ages, ed. R. Czaja et al. (Cracow, Torun, Vienna: Böhlau, 2019), 161–98, at 170. 4 0 Decreta regni mediaevalis Hungariae/The Laws of the medieval kingdom of Hungary, vol. 2 (1301–1457) ed. János Bak, Pál Engel and James Ross Sweeney (Salt Lake City: Schlacks, 1992), 10. Article 6. 41 Elenchus III/2, 69. 42 Erik Fügedi, “La formation des villes et les ordres mendiants en Hongrie,” Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 25 (1970): 966–87. 43 Katalin Szende and András Végh, “Royal Power and Urban Space in Medieval ­Hungary,” in Lords and Towns, 255–86. 44 CDES II, 340–41. 45 CDES II, 113–14. 46 Juck, Výsady, 115–16.; Martin Štefánik, “Die Pivilegierung der Kremnitzer Bevölkerung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Münzer-Privilegien und ihre ­sozioökonomischen Zusammenhänge (1328–1526),” in Montanregion als Sozialregion, ed. Angelika Westermann (Husum: Matthiesen, 2012), 437–56, esp. 438–39. 47 Katalin Szende, “The Mine is Mine! The Visual Assertion of Royal Authority in the Mining Towns of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary,” in Istoria ca interogaţie. Mariei Craciun, la o aniversare [Festschrift for Maria Craciun’s 60th Birthday], ed. Carmen Florea and Greta-Monica Miron (Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut, 2020), 231–52. 48 Szende, “The Mine is Mine,” 242. 49 Szende, Trust, 359–64, Table 4 and Appendix 6. 50 Ágnes Flóra, The Matter of Honour. The Leading Urban Elite in Sixteenth-Century ­Transylvania (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), 116–29; in general: Maarten Prak, Citizens without Nations. Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World, c.1000–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 27–49. 51 Article 1492:105 in Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae, 4 (1490–1526), ed. János M. Bak, Péter Banyó and Martyn Rady (Budapest: CEU Press, 2012), 44–47. 52 András Kubinyi, “Die Zusammensetzung des städtischen Rates im mittelalterlichen Königreich Ungarn,” Südostdeutsches Archiv 34/35 (1991/92): 23–42; Szende, “Integration through Language,” 214–17. 53 Bálint Lakatos, Mezővárosi oklevelek. Települési önkormányzat és írásbeliség a későközépkori Magyarországon, 1301–1526 [Market Town Charters. Self-Governance and Literacy in Late Medieval Hungary] (Budapest: MTA, 2019), 40–87; László Szabolcs Gulyás, Mezővárosi önkormányzat a középkori Hegyalján (Market-Town Self-Government in the Medieval Hegyalja Region) (Budapest: MNL, 2017). 54 István H. Németh, “The Beginnings of the Cooperation of Free Royal Towns in the Kingdom of Hungary in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Historical Studies on Central Europe 1, no. 2 (2021): 49–73. 55 Julia Dücker, Reichsversammlungen im Spätmittelalter: politische Willensbildung in Polen, Ungarn und Deutschland. Mittelalter-Forschungen, Band 37. (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2011), 58–61. 56 András Kubinyi, ‘Zur Frage der Vertretung der Städte im ungarischen Reichstag bis 1526’, in Städte und Ständestaat. Zur Rolle der Städte bei der Entwicklung der Ständeverfassung in europäischen Staaten vom 13. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert, ed. Bernhard Töpfer (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1980), 215–46.

Further readings Engel, Pál. The Realm of St Stephen. A History of Medieval Hungary 895–1526. London: Tauris, 2001. Flóra, Ágnes. The Matter of Honour. The Leading Urban Elite in Sixteenth-Century T ­ ransylvania. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019.

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Gerevich, László (ed.) Towns in Medieval Hungary. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990. H. Németh, István. “The Beginnings of the Cooperation of Free Royal Towns in the Kingdom of Hungary in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” Historical Studies on Central Europe 1, no. 2 (2021): 49–73. Juck, Ľubomír (ed.) Výsady miest a mestečiek na Slovensku [Privileges of cities and towns in Slovakia] I (1238–1350). Bratislava: Veda, 1984. Keene, Derek, Balázs Nagy and Katalin Szende (eds.) Segregation – Integration – A ­ ssimilation. Religious and Ethnic Groups in Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009, articles by József Laszlovszky, Balázs Nagy, István Petrovics, Katalin Szende, András Végh. Kubinyi, András (ed.) Elenchus fontium historiae urbanae, vol. III/2. Budapest: Balassi, 1997. Majorossy, Judit. “From the Judge’s House to the Town’s House: Town Halls in Medieval Hungary.” In Rathäuser als multifunktionale Räume der Repräsentation, der Parteiungen und des Geheimnisses, ed. Martin Scheutz et al. 155–210. Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2012. Marsina, Richard (ed.) Codex diplomaticus et epistolaris Slovaciae, II. Bratislava, Obzor, 1987. Nagy, Balázs, Martyn Rady, Katalin Szende, András Vadas (eds.) Medieval Buda in ­Context. Leiden: Brill, 2016, Studies by István Kenyeres, Martyn Rady, András Végh. Szakács, Béla Zsolt, “Town and Cathedral in Medieval Hungary.” Hortus Artium Medievalium 12 (2006): 207–20. Szende, Katalin. “Power and identity: Royal Privileges to the Towns of Medieval ­Hungary in the Thirteenth Century.” In Urban Liberties and Civic Participation from the Middle Ages to Modern Times, ed. Michel Pauly and Alexander Lee. Trier: Porta Alba, 2015, 27–67. Szende, Katalin. Trust, Authority and the Written Word in the Royal Towns of Medieval ­Hungary. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. Weisz, Boglárka. Markets and Staples in the Medieval Hungarian Kingdom. Budapest: Research Centre for the Humanities, 2020.

7 THE GOVERNANCE OF MEDIEVAL POLAND Paul W. Knoll

Introduction The polity that became the medieval Polish state emerged in the tenth century under the leadership of a family that became known as the Piasts. Our knowledge of its history and how it was ruled to the late fifteenth century, by which time it was ruled by the Jagiellonian dynasty, is dependent upon a limited number of sources. Some of these include narrative chronicles, such as the Gesta principum Polonorum (GpP) by an early twelfth-century author known traditionally as Gallus Anonymous; the late twelfth/early thirteenth-century Chronicon ­Polonorum by Master Vincentius; the Chronica Poloniae maioris from the late thirteenth century; a broad range of regional chronicles; and—finally in this category—the great Annales seu Cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae in 12 books by Jan Długosz (d. 1480). There are, additionally, important ecclesiastical annals and a variety of charters and related archival documents, whose number increases from a limited base in the tenth and eleventh centuries to a much more impressive volume by 1500.1 From these materials, complemented by a body of recent archeological investigation, comes an understanding of the forms and functions of medieval governance that the overview below provides.

The Rule of the Early Polish State Contrary to earlier interpretations, Poland’s beginnings came rather quickly— and violently—during the second quarter of the tenth century. Older centers of authority were destroyed and replaced by new strongholds, particularly at Gniezno, Poznań, Giecz, and Lad in the Warta River basin in the region that came to be known as Greater Poland (Polonia maior). By the second half of the century the initiative lay in the leadership of a pagan warrior and leader of a Polanian DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-7

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tribe, Mieszko. He was said to command an army of 3000 men and his heritage was traced back multiple generations to a mythic figure Piast. In 965 he married a Christian Czech princess, Dobrava, who apparently brought Catholic clergy with her to Gniezno, the heart of Mieszko’s growing territories. The following year he converted to Christianity, accepted a missionary bishop into his lands and joined thereby the older civilization of Latin Europe. By the time of his death in 992, Mieszko, who bore only the title of dux (duke), had successfully expanded his political control northward toward Pomerania and the Baltic, northeast to the territory eventually known as Mazovia, southward into what became the Silesian lands, and south eastly into the territory of Cracow and Sandomir, eventually known as Lesser Poland (Polonia minor). Either to insure that his patrimony would be clearly distributed to his male heirs or to protect his lands, the Gniezno state, from German influence, he apparently gave them into the protection of the papacy via a document known, from its incipit, as Dagome iudex. Mieszko’s rule was simplex. He commanded the support of his warriors and he exercised lordship in a fairly direct way. His lordship was manifested locally in his retainers, who derived a degree of support from the duke’s subjects, but for the most part they obtained resources from the leader whom they served.2 Mieszko was succeeded by his first son, Bolesław, known traditionally as Chrobry (the Brave), who consolidated his political control by expelling his half-brothers. The most important events of his reign were closely related to developments that culminated in 1000. Prior to this Bolesław had assisted the emperor Otto III in lands lying along the Elbe River and established good relations with him. A friend and favorite of Otto, Vojtěch (Adalbert), the second bishop of Prague, came to Bolesław’s court in 997 en route to Prussia to attempt the Christianization of the pagan tribes there. When Vojtěch (Adalbert) was subsequently martyred, Bolesław ransomed his remains and buried them as religious relics in the church in Gniezno. Three years later Otto came to worship at this shrine to his friend and, in a meeting that came to be known as the Congress of Gniezno, the emperor was received warmly and richly feted by the duke. Otto’s appreciation of Bolesław’s pious honoring of Vojtěch and in accord with his own larger imperial policy led to the emperor’s affirmation of the Polish Church. He established Gniezno as an archbishopric and created suffragan bishops in Cracow (Lesser Poland), Wrocław (Silesia), and Kołobrzeg (Pomerania). (The original missionary bishop, now with its seat in Poznań, remained for the time being independent of Gniezno.) The Gniezno meeting held political implications as well as religious ones. Impressed by the wealth of Bolesław’s court, according to the author of the GpP, at a banquet Otto exclaimed [about Bolesław] ‘Such a great man does not deserve to be styled duke or count… but to be raised to a royal throne and adorned with a diadem in glory.’ And with these words he took the imperial diadem from his own head and laid it upon the head of Bolesław in pledge of friendship.3

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Gifts of holy relics were exchanged, and Otto spoke of Bolesław as a brother, partner, friend, and ally. The general sense of this meeting was that the Polanian ruler had been given sovereign status, the right of investiture for ecclesiastical offices, and the entitlement of a royal coronation. This event eventually took place in 1025.4 During the course of his rule Bolesław integrated the Silesian and Lesser Poland territories into the Gniezno state and even occupied part of the Czech lands, including Prague, for a short time. Elsewhere his rule was expanded northward to the Baltic Sea. To the east he intervened in 1018 in the affairs of Rus’. In the west Bolesław’s friendly relations with the empire were not continued under Otto’s successor Henry II. Bolesław waged a series of wars with him, successfully defending his lands and receiving confirmation of this in the Peace of Budziszyn in 1018. In Bolesław’s time the term Polonia came to be applied to the polity as an entity, and the concept of the regnum Poloniae was strongly enough established that it was to endure and be influential in generations to come. Heroic and brave in battle as a warrior, Bolesław’s strength rested, if the author of the GpP is to be believed, upon 1000 military retainers whose personal loyalty to the ruler insured his larger control over Poland. This marked the height of the first stage of Piast rule. Ducal, and now royal, governance, though not well elaborated institutionally, had been firmly established. The next years were troubled. Bolesław’s sons struggled with one another for control, and although one of them, Mieszko II (1025–1034), was crowned, his rule was weakened internally by rebellious challenges from the older elite, and the kingdom faced successful attacks from all sides. His son and successor, Casimir (eventually called the Restorer) spent his youth in exile. A short return to Poland before his father died ended again in exile and was followed by a Czech invasion that sacked Gniezno and took the remains of Vojtěch (by now a saint) back to Prague. The thin layer of royal power disintegrated in this period, and a political and social revolt that probably contained elements of a pagan reaction to the early development of the Christian church in Poland destroyed most of the ecclesiastical infrastructure. The original nature of the Polish state had been profoundly changed.5

Reconstruction and Development to 1138 Casimir the Restorer (d. 1058) achieved a degree of order and stability during the latter years of his reign, though he was never crowned king. He returned from his second exile and made peace with the empire. Gradually he recovered control over Mazovia, Pomerania, and Silesia, and at the same time moved his main seat of rule from Gniezno to Cracow in Lesser Poland. This location became regarded as the first city of the kingdom and eventually its capital. He was aided in the restoration of the ecclesiastical infrastructure by furthering monastic traditions in Poland and by significant endowments to the church. These achievements rested

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upon changes in royal and ducal governance. Casimir was apparently successful in removing the older aristocracy of his predecessors and replacing it with a new elite, who formed the embryonic basis of the Polish nobility. They owed their status directly to him and were exclusively loyal to him. But Casimir was well aware of developments within the empire, and he began to adopt them by providing territorial grants to his new aristocracy in return for their military service and loyalty.6 Some of the underlying weaknesses of Casimir’s restored Poland became evident during the reign of his sons. Bolesław II the Bold sided with Pope Gregory VII in ecclesiastical matters, and in return was allowed to be crowned king in 1076. But he was challenged in 1079 by a rebellion. The heightened centralism of the kingdom was resented by some of the new elite, who mistrusted royal power. Their numbers included Bishop Stanisław of Cracow, whose family was part of the opposition to Bolesław and who apparently played an active and leading role in challenging his authority. In seeking to suppress this challenge, Bolesław had Stanisław executed. Following the murder, the nascent nobility forced Bolesław into exile in Hungary, from which he never returned.7 Bolesław’s younger brother, Władysław Herman, succeeded him, but only as duke, and proved to be a weak and passive ruler in the face of rising aristocratic power. In 1097 other groups forced him to partition territorial rule in the regnum between himself and his two sons, who could not, however, cooperate. Upon Władysław’s death in 1102, the regnum was partitioned between the older, Zbigniew, and the younger, Bolesław, called the Wrymouth. Bolesław quickly drove Zbigniew into exile. When he allowed him to return, he soon thereafter seized, blinded, and then executed him. Subsequently he did public penance, but the remainder of his reign to his death in 1138 was one that saw his authority compromised by ecclesiastical and secular elites. The source that provides us with most of our knowledge about Bolesław (the author of the GpP) saw him as a successful heroic warrior, and there are a number of positive accomplishments that can be credited to him. The reality, however, is that his effective power and authority to govern were compromised by ecclesiastical and secular elites.8 Bolesław recognized the fragility of ruling authority, and he sought to enact a new rule of inheritance for the Piast dynasty. In what was later called by Master Vincentius an Act of Succession, he tried to balance power between his designated heir and successor, Władysław, and his three younger sons. The heir (princeps or Senior) was to exercise suzerainty over the patrimony of the Piasts, controlling Lesser Poland and residing in Cracow with the others allotted their own provinces as appanages within the kingdom. Subsequent succession to supreme authority was theoretically to pass, not by primogeniture to the heir of the deceased princeps, but to the eldest surviving member of the family branches. Such a rotational system was ostensibly workable in the abstract. In reality, the system introduced ushered in a multi-generational period of fraternal violence and devastating hostilities.9

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The Era of Territorial Division In the decades following the death of Bolesław the Wrymouth, the struggles between his sons and subsequent generations effectively divided the Polish regnum (whose identity in the abstract continued to exist) into regional duchies ruled by individuals from branches of the Piast family. There were distinct lines in Silesia (where multiple sub-divisions took place), Great Poland, Lesser Poland, Mazovia, eventually Kujavia, and—for a short time—Pomerania, where, however, Piast rule effectively ended in the late twelfth century. Each Piast prince sought to enhance his own territories and, if possible, dominate his relatives. On many occasions they sought outside intervention—such as from the Empire—on their behalf, and this contributed to the weakness of the state.10 Within each of the Polish duchies, rulers sought to emulate the political structures of governance from previous generations, recruiting provincial governors, comites (military commanders), and officials from their warrior supporters. This, however, proved difficult. Increasingly the new elite created by Casimir the Restorer came to constitute a social stratum that was beginning to be independent of the ruling duke. They were sufficiently wealthy as the result of grants from the ruling duke that they could pursue their own secular and ecclesiastical foundations. They were jealous of their rights and privileges and frequently sought to have them confirmed in charters and other official documents. These developments marked the beginnings of the noble estate. Their identity was confirmed by extensive land transfers to them by local dukes in order to insure their loyalty. In the course of the late twelfth and into the thirteenth century, this group became increasingly able to support themselves from their landholdings rather than being entirely dependent upon direct support from the duke.11 Another development that had an impact upon the rulers of the various Piast duchies was the growing independence and autonomy of the church. Mieszko I and his immediate successors had effectively used ecclesiastical institutions as instruments of ducal and royal power. But just as the new elites of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries had sought to establish their own identity, so too the ecclesiastical sphere sought to free church institutions from ducal control. The conflicts between Piast dukes after 1138 hastened this, as did larger developments in the Latin church in general during the so-called Investiture Controversy and after. Members of prominent families often held ecclesiastical positions and supported efforts of the church in Poland to confirm and strengthen its liberties. They sometimes were able to trade their political support for one party or another in exchange for such things as the free election of bishops and other clerical officials. One example of this came in 1180 after Casimir the Just had rebelled successfully against his older brother, Mieszko III the Old, for possession of the ducal seat in Cracow. Casimir proceeded to confirm a broad range of church liberties during a synod in Łęczyca; in return, the Polish bishops accepted his de facto coup and recognized him as the legitimate Duke of Cracow. Mieszko III recovered control of Cracow in 1190, then lost it, only to gain it again in 1198 until his death in

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1201. Strife and political quid pro quo characterized the century and one-half after the death of Bolesław the Wrymouth.12 One who witnessed these developments, Master Vincentius, Bishop of Cracow from 1208 to 1215 (d. 1223), lamented that “through squandering, the country is destroyed completely, becoming plunder for plundering.”13 Only occasionally in these decades did one or another of the Piast dukes rise above the constraints of petty particularism and regional narrowness. One example must suffice: Duke Henry I, the Bearded, of Silesia (ruled 1201–1238). He was among the most forward-looking rulers with respect to the economic development of his territory, a process traditionally called melioratio terrae.14 He invited settlers from the west (hospites), extended them protection and privileges, was active in rural and especially urban foundations (locatio civitatis), and generally insured that legal forms based on German law were implemented to the benefit of both duke and duchy.15 The administrative sophistication of his rule ensured a degree of stability there, but he was also engaged in other parts of the Piast patrimony, by the early 1230s taking a particular interest in Lesser Poland and even areas in southern Greater Poland. Whether he had higher goals of establishing himself as princeps and seeking to unify the regnum is unclear, but it is significant that the Silesian Chronica Polonorum, which dates from the late thirteenth century, viewed Henry the Bearded as a precursor of the process of unification that eventually resulted in the reestablishment of the monarchy.16 If one Piast princeling could aspire to higher things, there were eventually others who had similar ambitions and had a base of support that made this possible.

The Process of Unification and The Beginnings of Governmental Transformation A variety of elements in the thirteenth century made unification possible. The canonization in 1253 of Bishop Stanisław of Cracow (martyred in 1079) revealed a well-developed unification ideology. His mutilated and quartered body had been found to be miraculously made whole when his coffin was examined, and  this phenomenon was extended to the image of a dismembered and disunited regnum and its potential restoration. The unity of the church in Poland, whose dioceses had all remained subject to the metropolitan in Gniezno, created a lobby favoring unification. Moreover the prosperous economy as the result of the melioratio terrae inclined many toward integration and removal of barriers to trade and commerce. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, there were several efforts toward political unification.17 Duke Henry IV Probus of Wrocław had, by the end of the 1280s, added Lesser Poland to his territorial holdings in Silesia. With the general support of the Archbishop of Gniezno he was planning a coronation, but he died at age 37 in 1290. Five years later, Duke Przemysł II of Greater Poland, who also held power in Pomerania, was crowned king of a truncated Poland regnum. His victory was

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brief, for he was assassinated the following year. The next stage in this process saw the king of Bohemia, Václav II, being crowned King of Poland. He had support from some members of civil and ecclesiastical society as well as gained control over Lesser Poland and eventually Greater Poland. Following his death five years later, his son, Václav III succeeded him for a year before himself being killed. The Czech interval on the Polish scene was not, however, without significance. Building upon governing reforms from the thirteenth century, Václav apparently fostered the use of an administrative official that eventually was to transform the central power of the ruler. During the earlier years of territorial division, provinces (terrae, ziemie in Polish) had been so fragmented that the system of local castle holders—castellans—had proved inadequate. To coordinate local affairs on a somewhat broader scale, dukes in this period had established palatines (palatinus, wojewoda in Polish), nobles designated by the duke. These positions were effectively held for life—though they never became hereditary—and had served to differentiate between greater or lesser nobles and to link the former to the highest elites within the duchies.18 This system in a divided land weakened the effective power of the duke. To overcome this, efforts were beginning to be made to introduce the office of starosta (capitaneus). This official was appointed by the duke and served at his pleasure, effectively beginning to undermine the independence of the castellans and wojewodas. Though still part of a noble hierarchy, the starosta was clearly a ducal—and potentially royal—instrument, rather than the expression of local interests. Václav strengthened and extended this position. Since he ruled his Polish kingdom essentially in absentia, the starosta was a virtual regent who acted in his absence.19 In the aftermath of Václav III’s death, Władysław Łokietek, Duke of Kujavia, gradually recovered the territorial control he had previously held—and lost—in Greater and Lesser Poland. By the end of 1315, he was the dominant Piast political leader, and he had the support of such external authorities as the papacy and the king of Hungary. These elements enabled his coronation in 1320 in Cracow by the Archbishop of Gniezno. The very location of this ceremony distanced the event from the traditions of territorial fragmentation, weak rule, and foreign involvement.20

The Last Piasts: Legitimization and Centralization Łokietek’s 13-year reign was largely devoted to consolidating his position through international alliances, especially with Hungary via the marriage of his daughter to the king there; to defending himself against challenges from Bohemia, whose ruler claimed the Polish title as successor to the last ruler of the Přemyslid family that had died out in 1306; and to legal and military struggles with the Knights of the Teutonic Order that had effectively established a territorially based Ordensstaat in Prussia and Pomerania. He had little opportunity to address some of the immediate internal administrative affairs. One of his near contemporaries wrote that upon his death he left “a great chaos of error and license.”21

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The long reign of his successor, Casimir—known traditionally as the Great— was to be very different. He resolved issues of foreign policy with Bohemia and the Teutonic Knights. He embarked upon a successful program of territorial expansion to the east into Ruthenia. He brokered and managed diplomatic settlements between Poland’s neighbors so that regional stability and a fledgling international system emerged by the end of his reign. His emergence as a  regional leader was marked in 1364 by hosting the largest royal summit of fourteenth-century Europe, the convivium maximum sometimes known as the Congress of Cracow.22 Internally, there were important developments in terms of governance. Casimir sought to create a centralized and integrated monarchy representing both his own person and also a more abstract principle of rulership that was eventually—in subsequent generations—to emerge as the ideal of the corona regni Poloniae, a political construct that included the total community of the kingdom. Means toward accomplishing this involved in part strengthening royal power. Casimir worked toward this by attempting to create central governing bodies, codifying and unifying Polish law, introducing changes in economic policy, and enhancing the kingdom’s fortified defense. One of the more obvious changes came with his development and use of a royal council. He also worked to transform the royal chancelry and treasury. Existing local and regional versions of these that had developed during the era of territorial division under each of the dukes were slowly, but effectively, superseded. By the end of his reign Casimir had come to use the position of chancellor of Cracow as an office that increasingly had responsibilities involving matters throughout the regnum. He also appointed one of his closest advisors, Janko of Czarnków, as royal vice-chancellor in these years. Casimir was aided in this by the use of educated and trained jurists in the royal court and chancery. With respect to the treasury, the existing royal treasury that had previously been focused upon personal and courtly affairs came increasingly to replace those who in previous decades had functioned as ducal treasurers. Casimir also moved to enhance the role and responsibilities of the starostas that had begun to emerge earlier. This royal governor, who was appointed or removed at royal will, rose above the local interests, including certain kinds of immunities, that had characterized the era of territorial division. This obviously enhanced royal power, but it also thereby gave expression to a new and different kind of understanding of society and the state.23 The king was less successful in legal reforms. He was able only to promulgate separate codes for Greater Poland and for Lesser Poland. Where there was a greater success was with respect to the recovery of royal estates that had been lost to the crown when local dukes had alienated parts of their shares of the royal domain to one family or another or to ecclesiastical foundation. These reversions of territory or privilege meant an enhancement of the royal domain with resulting increases in revenue. Some of this Casimir spent liberally on stone fortifications—upwards of 50 royal border castles and border walls or buildings

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in at least 35 cities. The fifteenth-century chronicler Jan Długosz observed that Casimir inherited a land “dirty and with buildings only of clay or wood and left it famous, a place of stone and bricks.”24 Casimir’s governance was not limited to institutions or organizations. He consciously pursued a program of religious patronage that emphasized his own royal status. He thereby in some instances—for example in the remodeling of the Cracow cathedral—transformed buildings that had been intended to celebrate the saints after which they were named into royal sanctuaries.25 His patronage also included efforts to associate himself with earlier figures of the Piast family, in particular with King Bolesław Chrobry, thus creating what some have called a cult of ancestry.26 The kingdom of Poland at his death in 1370 bore many aspects of a monarchy that compared well with other, modernized, states in Europe.27

Angevin Interlude and Lithuanian Union Casimir left no male heir, and as early as 1340 the question of royal succession had become an important issue. The way it was resolved had an important impact upon the nature of royal rule and the evolution of the Polish nobility (in Polish szlachta), especially their status in the governance of the realm. To arrange for his nephew Louis of Anjou, after 1342 king of Hungary, to succeed him, Casimir consulted several times with the nascent Polish nobility. Those from Lesser Poland became particularly cohesive. A meeting with them in 1350 recognized their right to be consulted as a corporate group, having a distinct status and possessing specific rights within the kingdom. Louis of Anjou, who ruled Poland from 1370 to 1382, also had no male heir. In 1374 he met with representatives of the Polish szlachta at Košice in Upper Hungary (now Slovakia) to work out a succession agreement for his Polish crown. The nobles agreed that one of his daughters would become his successor in Poland. In return, he reconfirmed their corporate status and granted them further rights by exempting them from certain taxes. The reign of Louis in Poland was largely in absentia, but it was not a popular one. His de facto regent was his mother (Casimir the Great’s sister), and she was unable to overcome opposition from and dissension between nobles in Greater Poland and those in Lesser Poland. Janko of Czarnków noted in his chronicle that “at the time of that king [Louis] there was neither stability nor justice in the Kingdom of Poland.”28 When Louis died in 1382, the szlachta, especially from Lesser Poland, refused to accept the arrangement that had been worked out with Louis and insisted they would accept only his youngest daughter, Jadwiga. They arranged for her to be crowned rex (i.e., king) in 1384, thus making it plain her eventual spouse would not automatically be able to claim the royal title and, by implication, that the nobility would play a role in these decisions. Jadwiga’s eventual husband came from an unlikely source: the pagan Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Jogaila (b. ca. 1348) had become Grand Duke by 1382 at the latest. He was faced with a number of external problems, not the least of them

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being the aggressive hostility toward Lithuania of the Knights of the Teutonic Order. He decided to seek an alliance with another traditional enemy of the Order, the kingdom of Poland, whose relationship with the Knights had badly worsened after the stable decades of Casimir the Great’s reign. His representatives met with Polish nobility in early 1385, and an agreement was soon reached. Jogaila promised to recover all territories Poland had lost to the Knights at his own effort and expense, to baptize all pagan inhabitants of Lithuania as Latin Christians, and to join the lands of Lithuania and Ruthenia to the Polish crown in perpetuity (perpetuo applicare). Early in 1386 he converted to Catholic Christianity, taking the name Władysław (Ladislaus), and he and the 12-yearold Jadwiga were married.29 The Polish nobility had successfully asserted itself in this complicated matter, and in the following years it continued to gain status within the governance of the kingdom. Eventually Jagiełło (the Polonized version of his Lithuanian name by which he is most commonly known) was recognized as king, a decision in which, once more, the nobility played a role, thus reflecting their enhanced status within the community of the realm. In what follows we will not deal with the Lithuanian part of this union (although the nobles—boyars—of Lithuania eventually gained the same rights, privileges, and prerogatives as their Polish counterparts).

Jagiellonian Rule; On the Road to the Noble Kingdom The medieval Jagiellonian era of five monarchs endured until 1506, though the dynasty itself lasted until 1572. Władysław II Jagiełło (d. 1434) was succeeded by his eldest son, Władysław III, (d. 1444), and in turn his younger son Casimir the Jagiellonian (d. 1492). Two of the latter’s sons ended the century: Jan Olbracht (d. 1501) and Alexander (d. 1506). This period saw a number of political successes for Poland. In 1410 the Teutonic Knights were defeated at the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg in German); and in a subsequent 13-year war (1454–1466), ended by the Second Treaty of Toruń, Poland gained significant parts of the Order’s territory, which became known as Royal Prussia. (The reminder of the Order’s territory was held by the Knights as a fief of the Polish crown.) Despite some difficulties, the union with Lithuania was sustained and the territories ruled by the Jagiellonians expanded eastward. During this period Jagiellonian governance continued to evolve. The offices of the court became regularized. The royal council came to include the Crown Marshall, whose administrative authority included military affairs; beyond this were the treasurer and the chancellor. The latter presided over a progressively organized and professional chancery that managed the routine of governance. For example, the personnel there were increasingly university trained, and in the reign of Casimir the Jagiellonian this level reached 43%.30 In the kingdom, administration of the Polish terrae lay in the hands consistently of starostas, beneath whom were individual wojewodas and local castellans. (Only the Castellan of Cracow lay outside this structure, for he remained the premier temporal dignity in the kingdom.)31

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In other respects, however, this period of Jagiellonian rule saw the further advance by the nobility as a crucial partner in governance. In 1422 at Czerwińsk when he needed support for his policy against the Teutonic Knights, Jagiełło extended noble rights by giving them the right of due process in his decree Nec bona recipiantur. Later, at Jedlno in 1430 and at Cracow in 1433, while seeking noble permission for the right of succession by his sons from his fourth marriage, he granted the nobility the right of habeas corpus in his decree Neminem captivabimus; this protected them from imprisonment and their land from confiscation without conviction in person by a court of law. A further extension of noble rights was given by Casimir the Jagiellonian in 1454 at a unicameral national diet in Nieszawa composed of higher clergy, state and territorial officers, and representatives from the nobility sent from local assemblies. These assemblies may have been based on a long-standing tradition of a local gatherings, the colloquium or wiec in Polish. Their composition was apparently socially egalitarian in origin, but over time they had become dominated by both lesser and greater nobility. This diet represented, in embryo, the origin of the Polish Sejm, the equivalent of Parliament, the Cortes, or the Reichstag. Needing resources to pursue war against the Teutonic Knights, Casimir promised the monarchy would in the future levy no new tax nor raise an army without consulting and gaining the consent of the nobility, and that proposals to be presented toward that end at the national diet would be transmitted to local assemblies (dietines or Sejmiki) for prior discussion so that deputies sent to the Sejm could be instructed on policy. This enabled deputies at the national diet to be guided and instructed by a broad base of political participation.32 Two last steps in the process that has been traced to this point came in 1493 and in 1505. In the former year a bicameral Sejm met for the first time. The upper house, the Senate, was composed of the king, the high clergy, and the officers of the state appointed by the king; the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, was composed of noble envoys sent from the Sejmiki. In the latter year, King A lexander was forced at the Radom Sejm to grant the decree Nihil novi. It decreed that “no new laws shall be made by us or our successors, without the consent of the councillors [sic.] and territorial deputies.”33 This effectively gave the nobility in the lower house a veto power over any proposed royal legislation. In common parlance it was understood by the nobility that “there would be nothing [new] about us without us.” Although in later generations this legislative supremacy was used to obtain advantages for the nobility, these foundations were sufficient to create the general status of a Ständestaat, a State of Estates, in which power was shared by the monarchy and the political community of the nobles. Poland was well on the way to becoming “a Republic of Nobles.”34

Other Forms of Governance In addition to secular governance at the royal, ducal, and local level, there were, of course, other kinds of rule exercised in the Polish lands in the Middle Ages

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that cannot be treated within the scope of this study. I include here only three categories that are important (and there are, to be sure, others). First of all, there was the church. While closely associated with secular institutions and governance (indeed many of its members were participants in that government), the organization, function, and personnel of the Catholic church were separate and distinct. They had their own sphere and structure that can be treated independently, and for which there is substantial literature.35 Second, there is the issue of how cities governed themselves, for in many instances urban zones were able to control what went on within their own confines. Ducal and royal rule was present, but increasingly in the Middle Age cities were able to rely upon what is called generally German law and more specifically Magdeburg Law.36 Third, there were within the medieval Polish kingdom communities that, in one degree or another, were internally self-governing, even though in external respects they may have been subject to ducal, royal, or even municipal authority. Chief among these—though by no means the only such example—were the Jews of medieval Poland. While nowhere nearly so many in numbers as they were to be in the early modern and modern world, they were an important group and were, over time, able to develop their own structures and legal systems.37

Notes 1 On Polish historical materials, see the older, but still valuable, work by Jan Dąbrowski, Dawne Dziejopisarstwo Polskie (do roku 1480) (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1964), and now Wojciech Drelicharz, Unifying the Kingdom of Poland in Mediaeval Historiographic Thought (Cracow: Societas Vistulana, 2019, Polish original 2012). For other sources, see Anna Adamska, “The Ecclesiastical Chanceries in Medieval Poland as Intellectual Centres,” Quaestiones Medii Aevii Novae 10 (2005): 171–98; and Agnieszka Bartoszewicz, Urban Literacy in Late Medieval Poland (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, Polish original 2012), 43–173 especially. 2 Mieszko’s rise and rule is effectively treated by Gerard Labuda, Mieszko I (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 2002); Jerzy Strzelczyk, Mieszko Pierwszy (Poznań: Abos, 1992); and Jacek Banaszkiewicz, “Mieszko I i władcy jego epoki,” in Civitas Schinesghe. Mieszko I i początki państwa polskiego, ed. Jan M. Piskorski (Poznań: Wydawnictwo PTPN, 2004), 89–110. In English, see Florin Curta, Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–1300), 2 vols. (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2019), I, 341–48; Strzelczyk, “Poland in the Tenth Century,” in Europe’s Center Around AD 1000. Contributions to History, Art and Archaeology, ed. Alfried Wieczorek and Hans-Martin Hinz (Stuttgart: Theiss Verlag, 2000), 287–94; and Zofia Kurnatowska, “Centers and Structure of Power of the State,” in Europe’s Center Around AD 1000, Contributions to History, Art and Archaeology, eds. Alfried Wieczorek and Hans-Martin Hinz (Stuttgart: Theiss Verlag, 2000), 295–298. 3 Gesta principum Polonorum/The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles, translated and annotated Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003), 35 and 37. 4 Roman Michałowski, The Gniezno Summit: The Religious Premises of the Founding of the Archbishop of Gniezno (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2016 Polish original 2005). 5 Gerard Labuda, Mieszko II król Polski (1025–1034). Czasy przełomu w dziejach państwa polskiego, 2nd ed. (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2008). 6 Jerzy Wyrozumski, Dzieje Polski piastowskiej (VIII wiek—1370) (Cracow: Fogra, 1999), 103–14.

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Gąsiorowski, Antoni, ed. The Polish Nobility in the Middle Ages. Anthologies. Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1984. Górecki, Piotr, “Ius ducale Revisited: Twelfth-Century Narratives of Piast Power.” In Gallus Anonymous and His Chronicle in the Context of Twelfth-Century Historiography from the Perspective of the Latest Research, ed. Krzysztof Stopka, 35–44. Cracow: PAU, 2010. Górecki, Piotr. The Text and the World. The Henryków Book, Its Authors, and Their Region, 1160–1310. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Knoll, Paul W. The Rise of the Polish Monarchy. Piast Poland in East Central Europe, ­ Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. 1320–1370. Knoll, Paul W. “The Last Piasts: Legitimating Royal Rule in Fourteenth Century Poland.” In Rulership in Medieval East Central Europe. Power, Ritual and Legitimacy in Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, ed. Dušan Zupka and Grischa Vercamer, 247–59. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021. Kurtyka, Janusz. “Das Wiedervereinigte Königreich Polen unter Ladislaus E llenlang (1304/5–1333) und Kasimir dem Grossen (1333–1370).” In Die “Blüte” der Staaten des östlichen Europa im 14. Jahrhundert, ed. Marc Löwner, 107–42. Wiesbaden: ­Harrassowitz, 2004. Mühle, Eduard. Die Piasten. Polen im Mittelalter. Munich: Beck, 2011. Wiszewski, Przemysław. Domus Bolezlai. Values and Social Identity in Dynastic Traditions of Medieval Poland (c. 966–1138). Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010.

8 GOVERNING THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE Politics and Administration, ca. 850–1204 Nathan Leidholm

Modern scholarship and Byzantine sources often create the impression that Byzantine governance began and ended with the emperor on the throne. Emperors and their personalities could indeed have a massive impact on the direction and fate of the empire. Changes in regime could, and frequently did, witness significant shifts in both the internal policies and external relations of Byzantium. Yet there was far more to governance than the individual sitting on the imperial throne. Changes in imperial regime could bring significant change, but it was the administrative apparatus that allowed the empire to survive through turbulent periods such as the mid-eleventh century when nearly a dozen emperors ruled in less than 50 years.1 Both medieval and modern historians typically use imperial reigns as chronological markers, which can also lead to a misleading impression of radical or abrupt change at all levels of administration with the change of regime. Evidence suggests a much greater level of continuity. Modern scholarship has even questioned the description of Byzantium as an empire at all.2 This chapter seeks to move the conversation surrounding governance and administration in the medieval Roman Empire away from the emperor and his court, instead examining the administrative system at multiple levels, both in Constantinople and in the more remote provinces. Numerous overviews of the imperial court and other aspects of the imperial administration already exist and are readily accessible to the reader.3 The following, therefore, seeks to offer an introduction to the mechanisms of medieval Byzantine government and administration by offering a series of four distinct case studies, each intended to illuminate different aspects of the system of governance that allowed Byzantium to function between the ninth and twelfth centuries.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-8

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Taxation: The Marcian Treatise and the Cadaster of Thebes Despite possessing a thorough, expansive administrative apparatus, the imperial government maintained limited, specific goals in the lands it controlled.4 The most notable feature of the medieval Byzantine administrative system, and one that differentiated it from many contemporary polities elsewhere (especially in Western Europe), was the maintenance of taxation, paid in both coin and in kind throughout the medieval period, and which was then used to pay the salaries of the extensive administrative apparatus and to support a professional, standing army.5 Though the peasantry faced numerous hardships, surviving evidence suggests that their most consistent complaints regarding the imperial administration stemmed from two issues in particular: tax collection and money lending.6 The two were interrelated, as taxes usually had to be paid in coin. Indeed, the process of tax assessment and collection would have been the most immediate and frequent way in which most residents of imperial lands would have encountered the central administration. For the imperial government, the functioning of the tax system involved a two-part process: assessment and collection. Both steps of this process required an extensive workforce of reasonably well-trained officials. Several sources attest to the imperial administration’s attempts to systematically register all the lands owing taxes to the imperial fisc between at least the ninth and eleventh centuries.7 Taxes were generally reassessed on a rotating schedule, which occurred every 15 years. This cycle, known as the indiction, was also one of the most common ways of dating documents or epigrams in Byzantium. There were many different taxes collected in medieval Byzantium, but the two treatises covered in this section deal primarily with the land tax (dēmosios kanon), which remained the backbone of the imperial taxation system and, thus, the imperial treasury, throughout the period covered here. The so-called Marcian Treatise is a relatively short text designed to instruct epoptai, tax assessors periodically sent by the government to assess the land tax, particularly in peasant villages.8 The exact date of the text’s composition remains unknown, but most scholars place it sometime in the tenth century. The tax base assumed and described by the Marcian Treatise are free, landowning peasants and the villages in which they live. There is no reference to great landowners other than monastic estates, even if some have seen in the text evidence of the gradual loss of peasant holdings to such figures.9 The village community, called the chorion, was the economic and social reality for probably most residents of imperial lands. The villages described in the treatise collectively made up a singular, taxable unit (homas). While land was not generally owned collectively, there was a collective responsibility for a determined amount of taxes.10 If one of the village residents failed to pay his share of that tax, the responsibility would fall on the other households to make up that difference (a practice called allelengyon). These villages served as more than the basic units of taxation. For those who spent their lives there, they also formed the locus of their social lives.

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The treatise gives the impression that, while attempts were made at m aintaining equality and standardization, much initiative and power of discretion in fact lay in the hands of the individual assessor or collector.11 This obviously opened the possibility of corruption, and there were ample opportunities for bribes or other means of coercion. Many Byzantine elites, including monasteries, benefited from the tax system through the system of tax relief. Known in the sources as sympatheia, tax relief was built into the tax system and is described in the Marcian Treatise. Other evidence, including the Cadaster of Thebes, shows that the more modest taxpayer could hope to benefit from tax relief as well, although on a vastly different scale. If the Marcian Treatise is designed as a normative, educational text, the so-called Cadaster of Thebes shows tax assessment in practice.12 The cadaster is one of the few surviving documents of its type from medieval Byzantium. As the name suggests, it is a (fragmentary) tax register from the region around Boeotian Thebes, from sometime in the eleventh century.13 The format of the cadaster largely follows the normative practices set forth in the Marcian Treatise. The surviving text is separated into chapters or headings (kephaleia), organized according to geographic location. After a brief description of the tax unit, the total amount of tax due from that unit is then listed. Amounts due from each household are listed separately, followed by the total calculated for the entire village. Many entries include at least a partial tax exemption, suggesting the prevalence of the practice. There are also several instances of land listed as klasma (pl. klasmata). This is land that, for one reason or another, was no longer agriculturally or fiscally productive, and was therefore granted tax-free status for 30 years, after which the land reverted to the state.14 This was one way in which the state gradually expanded as a landowner in its own right, a phenomenon that would grow in scale and importance over the period covered in this chapter.15 By the late eleventh century, such lands were occasionally granted to third parties, typically imperial officials or close relatives of the ruling dynasty.16 The systematic registration of land ownership, occupancy, and exploitation was a vital function of the imperial administration, reflecting the importance of tax collection in the overall functioning of the state. Yet, the Cadaster of Thebes falls considerably short of what a modern reader would expect from a tax register or was envisioned by the Marcian Treatise. Only one entry, for example, includes a precise delimitation of a tax-paying unit’s boundaries. This has led scholars to conclude that the purpose of such documentation may have had less to do with the accurate accounting of all properties for which taxes were owed and, instead, had more to do with enabling the less tangible aspects of Byzantine governance to function.17 A tax register such as the Cadaster of Thebes could be brandished by a tax collector as a kind of “proof ” or used as leverage in order to convince (or coerce) a taxpayer to pay what the tax collector deemed was due. The public perception of a thorough-going tax record allowed the government to continue collecting taxes. In a sense, even the simple act of tax assessment and collection

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utilized a certain kind of ceremonial, which was a ubiquitous aspect of medieval Byzantine rule at all levels.18 The eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed a gradual increase in two different practices, both of which alienated substantial tax revenue from the imperial state: tax farming and pronoia grants. Combined with changes in settlement patterns and loss of territory, these phenomena fundamentally altered the functional model of the empire’s finances.19 Grants of pronoia gradually came to replace the roga, or annual salary, of many imperial officials. Instead of receiving a salary in coin and/or textiles directly from the emperor, recipients of a pronoia grant would henceforth directly receive the tax revenues of a specified region or property.20 To compensate for this, the imperial government gradually increased the amount of land it directly managed, often in the form of kouratoreia like those around Antioch, so much so that “rents to the government in its capacity as a landlord now became indistinguishable in many respects from taxation.”21 Documents known as praktika, which list properties owned by a single landowner rather than the free peasant villages familiar from the Marcian Treatise, also become common by the end of the eleventh century. By the thirteenth century, a large portion of the population would have been paying their taxes to such officials rather than the imperial government, which now relied on direct land ownership or other sources for its revenues.

Imperial Justice: Eustathios Rhomaios and Demetrios Chomatenos Aside from tax collection, it was in its judicial functions that many Byzantines would have been most likely to encounter the imperial administration directly.22 Both in theory and in practice, the guarantee of justice remained one of the cornerstones of Byzantine imperial rule throughout its existence. A broad education was expected of most imperial administrators, but the law was given special importance.23 Around the turn of the tenth century, the monumental collection of law known as the Basilika was compiled. Also known as the Sixty Books, it was a codification of the Justianic corpus translated into Greek. From the time of its production, it would form the basis of Byzantine law.24 The introduction to the collection, known simply as the Eisagoge, contains “the closest thing that we possess to a written, programmatic statement of the Byzantine constitution,” including definitions of law and the role of the emperor and patriarch.25 As the Eisagoge shows, law was crucial not only to the functioning of the imperial administration, but also to the position of the emperor himself. Although several emperors attempted to present themselves as the embodiment of the law, formulations like those in the Eisagoge focus instead on the emperor’s responsibilities and present him as separate from and subject to the law.26 This section offers a window into the functioning of the judiciary through a brief examination of two figures and surviving records of their judicial decisions: Eustathios Rhomaios and Demetrios Chomatenos.

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Eustathios Rhomaios, who flourished in the first half of the eleventh century, built his career in the imperial administration. Beginning as a judge (krites), he rose through the ranks to the elevated title of magistros and the office of droungarios tes viglas, one of the highest-ranking judicial appointments at the time.27 In some ways, Eustathios exemplifies the imperial judiciary at its most developed and professional. In the first half of the eleventh century, the administrative apparatus expanded in both number and in its professionalism.28 Emperor Romanos III Argyros (r. 1028–1034), during whose reign Eustathios reached the pinnacle of his career, had himself served as a judge before ascending to the throne. This culminated in the founding of a school of law under Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos (r. 1042–1055). Though the school was short-lived, the judicial functions of both the imperial and the ecclesiastical administrations remained a vital aspect of governance in Byzantium. Demetrios Chomatenos’ biography, as well as the political environment in which he lived, was considerably different. He spent his career in the autocephalous episcopate of Bulgaria, based in Ohrid.29 After rising through the church hierarchy, he was appointed Archbishop of Ohrid in 1216 and held the post until 1236. Constantinople had been captured by members of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, after which Ohrid found itself within the territory of a new polity based in the region of Epiros.30 It was under Chomatenos that the archbishopric reached its zenith, as the collapse of central political authority from Constantinople gave the archbishop a degree of freedom not previously possible. Chomatenos even crowned and anointed Theodore Komnenos Doukas in Thessaloniki after he re-captured the city in 1224, thereby acting more like a patriarch of Constantinople than a provincial bishop.31 The ideological aims of imperial rule were in many ways mirrored in the normative role of bishops, who “saw themselves as the upholders of an ideal order, in which justice prevailed and the poor and disadvantaged were protected.”32 This helps explain the relative ease with which the latter could step in to fill the gaps left by the former in regions like thirteenth-century Epiros.33 Such coincidences further highlight the occasionally overlapping roles and priorities of the Byzantine church and imperial state, even before the latter had been severely weakened. Eustathios Rhomaios’ decisions have come down to us largely in the collection known as the Peira.34 Probably compiled by a student or colleague of Eustathios, its purpose as a learning tool and/or reference work for other jurists is clear from the collection’s thematic organization.35 The collection includes opinions on more than 200 cases. When the text provides more than simple excerpts from the Basilika, Eustathios’ contributions are generally in the form of hypomnemata, formal legal opinions that formed the basis of court decisions. The cases covered by the collection include a broad range of legal questions and offer evidence of people from a broad spectrum of socio-economic classes. This contributes significantly to the Peira’s importance, as many written sources represent only the Byzantine elite. Scholars have also noted the prominent inclusion of decisions

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that involve the powerful Skleros family, particularly in questions of property ownership and/or acquisition.36 This could be the result of the consistent desire of the imperial government to preserve the free peasant villages described in the previous section, though there may also have been political motives.37 The collection known as the Ponemata Diaphora includes records of more than 150 judicial decisions and/or opinions given by Demetrios Chomatenos, mostly in the form of letters or brief notices.38 Chomatenos’ opinions seem to have been highly sought after, just like those of Rhomaios, for they were also collected into a single compilation relatively early. Also like the Peira, the dossier attests to the wide variety of plaintiffs who came before the bishop’s court or sought his legal opinion. The list of those whose cases were addressed ranges from peasant farmers to the Grand Zhupan of Serbia Stefan Nemanjić.39 Above all, the Ponemata showcases the judicial function of Byzantine bishops. Medieval Byzantium possessed a pluralistic legal tradition, with imperial “secular” law and canon law existing side-by-side. While the two traditions had different purviews and methods, and they had developed in parallel since Late Antiquity there was considerable overlap in certain areas.40 The two bodies of law continued to follow similar trajectories into the eleventh century, which paved the way for the flourishing of canon law in the twelfth. Chomatenos demonstrates a solid grounding in imperial, “secular” law. References to the Basilika or emperors’ novels (imperial legislative acts) are nearly as ubiquitous as those to canon law or scripture. Such blurring of the distinction between imperial and canon law is typical of the Byzantine, indeed Roman legal tradition. Beyond the more “standard” collections like the Basilika or the Nomocanon in Fourteen Titles, Byzantine jurists could draw upon a varied and pluralistic body of precedent that could vary widely according to place and time. Certain legal compilations, like the so-called “Farmer’s Law,” which technically existed outside of the formally recognized body of imperial law, may have circulated more widely and exerted more influence on provincial jurisdictions than did the massive and unwieldy Basilika itself.41 Byzantine jurisprudence recognized three legitimate sources of law: the Basilika, custom, and the emperor.42 The last of these attests to the importance of Roman/Byzantine law in the legitimation of the position of emperor, a topic of considerable complexity.43 The reliance on custom, however, effectively opened the field of potential argumentation for judges or jurists like both Rhomaios and Chomatenos. Eustathios demonstrates precisely this kind of flexibility in a case concerning a woman’s second marriage. His argument is not only supported by existing legislation, but also includes a citation from the Odyssey.44 Perhaps ironically, one of the most impactful changes suggested by a comparison of the Peira with the Ponemata Diaphora is put on display by something the two corpora have in common. As many as 110 of the 150 cases recorded in the Ponemata can be classified as family law (dealing primarily with marriage, divorce, or property issues arising therefrom).45 Marriage and divorce cases especially seem to have come before ecclesiastical courts with ever-increasing

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frequency in this period. By the end of the twelfth century, the majority of divorce cases may have gone before episcopal, rather than civil courts.46 Civil judges tended to be more rigid and prescribe harsher penalties, while bishops could exercise oikonomia, the principle of granting moral concessions that allowed clergy to circumscribe the strict letter of canon law in circumstances.47 Such a high concentration of family law, however, is not unique to Chomatenos or episcopal courts. The Peira, too, includes many similar cases that came before Eustathios Rhomaios a century earlier. Though not the only explanation, it demonstrates the overlapping functions of the imperial and ecclesiastical administrations in medieval Byzantium. Still, bishops like Chomatenos found themselves in a position of increased authority in the wake of the Fourth Crusade, as much of the imperial administration was severely disrupted or completely collapsed in many regions. The church therefore provided an important element of continuity, especially as it concerned local populations and their interactions with the administration.

Diversity and Conquest: Antioch (969–1084) Byzantium’s eastern frontier remained a hotly contested zone for much of the period between the ninth and thirteenth centuries.48 Urban centers acted as nodes of control, which increased their importance. Few cities could match the importance of Antioch in this regard. As a major metropolitan center, military staging point, and the seat of one of the five patriarchates of the Christian world, Antioch on the Orontes held a particular significance for the Byzantines from both an ideological and a more practical perspective. The city had fallen to the Arabs in 638, and it would remain in Muslim hands for more than three centuries.49 After several decades of expansion in the east, Antioch was reincorporated into the Byzantine Empire in 969. Though the population may not have been as large as it once was, it was probably the largest city conquered by the Byzantines in this era.50 Taking power only months after the city’s reconquest, Emperor John I Tzimiskes (r. 969–976) established Antioch and its surroundings as a doukaton (duchy), which was subdivided into several, small themata.51 Much of the newly acquired territory was also designated a kouratoreion, an estate directly owned and managed by the emperor and his representatives. The city and its surroundings were thus incorporated into the theme (thema) system, the provincial organization of the empire in the tenth century.52 Each theme, or province, was assigned a governor who bore the title of strategos and held both dual military and civilian duties, at least in the tenth century. The arrangement in newly conquered Antioch differed significantly from many of the empire’s core territories closer to the Aegean, due especially to the city’s location near an unstable and fluctuating border. Small themata would have included small military detachments, each with its own command structure, allowing them to respond to any potential incursions by foreign armies. Antioch

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quickly became the station point for important elements of the tagmata after its reconquest, part of a general trend of stationing troops near the border.53 The doux of Antioch, who sat atop the duchy’s bureaucratic hierarchy, was routinely granted extraordinary powers by the imperial government, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that sitting emperors took extra care in selecting their appointees to the post. Tzimiskes’ successor, Emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025), employed a similar strategy in other newly conquered lands, especially in eastern Anatolia.54 Jonathan Shea has shown that under Basil II, the imperial bureaucracy expanded notably in this area as the imperial government “enhanced control over the empire through state run lands.”55 According to some estimates, the state had been the largest single landowner in the empire until at least the ninth century, though it soon faced competition with the great landowning families, particularly in Anatolia.56 Perhaps as a response to this, large portions of newly conquered territories were annexed directly by the imperial government. Among civilian administrators, the doux and others at the highest levels of government were frequently appointed directly by the emperor. Despite an influx of officials sent from Constantinople or other parts of the empire, however, Byzantine Antioch maintained a largely bilingual Greek and Arabic administration.57 And while officials appointed by the imperial government quickly came to dominate the highest levels of administration in the city and its surroundings, local elites held sway at the more middling and lower levels of the region’s socio-political hierarchy.58 A surviving bilingual Greek/Arabic inscription on a funerary stele, for example, demonstrates the ascendance of local, Chalcedonian Christian elites who would dominate local politics in the early eleventh century.59 Among the most noteworthy individuals to hold the post of doux of Antioch, Nikephoros Ouranos, who held the position from 999 to 1007, was a prolific letter writer.60 Sources variously refer to him as either doux or magistros, but a surviving seal offers yet another, extraordinary title. On this lead seal, Ouranos is given the extraordinary title “master of the east.”61 This shows the fluidity and occasional imprecision with which the Byzantines sometimes employed titles and offices, but it also demonstrates the extraordinary reputation of Nikephoros Ouranos and his importance in imperial efforts to establish and maintain control in this vital region. Ouranos’ letters show him creating an extensive network that included both other members of the administration around the region as well as others further afield.62 They put on full display an administrator who worked to balance his position between the center and periphery, the highest levels of imperial government and local players on the ground, even if many of the latter would not appear in his existing letter collection. The letters also display the impressive education and literary background typical of an upper-level official, which extended far beyond practical training.63 Ouranos’ fame, and the imperial government’s attempts to use that fame to its advantage, is suggested by an episode nearly 50 years after Nikephoros’ tenure in

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Antioch. Sometime in 1056/1057, Emperor Michael VI appointed his nephew, Michael, to the position of doux of Antioch. According to John Skylitzes, the emperor also bestowed upon him the name of Ouranos, to which Michael was apparently entitled because of his ancestry. If the new doux of Antioch had not been employing the family name previously, the emperor clearly wanted him to do so now. Thus, Michael might hope to take part in Nikephoros’ fame and good reputation both in Antioch and in the rest of the empire, to openly align himself with local, aristocratic factions, or, at the very least, to make himself more recognizable to the local populace.64 The imperial government clearly sought to benefit from such connections. Just as the episcopal courts acted side by side with the imperial judicial system, so too could church officials or clergy act as quasi-imperial officials, especially in the provinces. This was certainly the case for the Patriarch of Antioch. In a region like Antioch, which was far from Constantinople and had a multi-lingual and multi-confessional population, key figures within the church could act as important nodes of imperial contact, facilitating communications between the center and periphery, as well as between central powers and the local population. Reflecting this importance, the Patriarch of Antioch was typically appointed by the emperor himself.65 Tenth-century historian Leo the Deacon offers a lengthy account of John I Tzimiskes’ search for a new patriarch of the city soon after he had taken the throne, which reflects the urgency and importance of the position. John selected Theodore of Koloneia, who was resident in Constantinople at the time, which draws attention to the patriarch’s role as a mediator between the imperial capital and the distant province. Interestingly, it is in this same text, in a supposed speech given by the emperor to Theodore, that one can find a relatively clear declaration of the idealized, cooperative roles of the emperor and patriarch. But I know that in this life and in the earthly sphere here below there are two [authorities], priesthood and imperial rule; to the former the Creator granted responsibility for our souls, to the latter the guidance of our bodies, so that no part of these [i.e., body and soul] would be defective, but would be preserved whole and undamaged.66 The necessity of such cooperation was not limited to the more remote provinces. In fact, the Book of the Eparch, a guidebook of sorts regulating the activity of the Eparch (Prefect) of the City of Constantinople, offers clear evidence that the imperial government required the cooperation of the local guilds to enact and enforce their desired regulations on industry and trade in the city.67 Even at the very heart of the empire, the imperial government could not enforce its will without the support of other, local elements.

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Changing Imperial Politics: Anna Dalassene and the Komnenoi At all levels, governance was an essentially masculine activity. From the emperor himself to the lowest levels of administration, positions were typically reserved for men. Yet this was not universally the case in reality, particularly at the highest levels of government. Several empresses made a name for themselves throughout Byzantine history, sometimes wielding “soft” power behind the throne, sometimes ruling in their own name. Near the end of the eighth century, for example, Empress Eirene exercised sole power from 797 to 802. In the mid-eleventh century, Theodora, the last scion of the Macedonian dynasty, ruled in her own name in 1055–1056. Despite such examples, however, sole rule by an empress remained the exception rather than the rule. More often, women wielded power through less “official” means.68 This might mean wielding power over their families, including but not limited to husbands (both emperors and otherwise), or a myriad of other ways in which power could be exercised without imperial office or title. The common practice of wives employing their husbands’ titles in surviving documents attests to the ways in which symbolic or political capital might flow from the imperial government to the women behind or beside the men who held offices.69 The late eleventh century witnessed another extraordinary woman who demonstrates the wide range of possibilities for a woman wielding power at the highest levels. Anna Dalassene, mother of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118), is perhaps best known for her role in securing the throne for her son and for the extraordinary power she wielded in the first few years of his reign.70 Yet her influence and energy can be seen even before Alexios’ usurpation in 1081, and her very prominence in surviving sources from the period is a testament to the profound effect she had on contemporary politics. Reflecting this prominence, Anna Dalassene appears in nearly every narrative source covering the adult years of her life, including the histories of Michael Psellos, Anna Komnene, Nikephoros Bryennios, and John Zonaras. Two of these, Anna Komnene and Nikephoros Bryennios, were relatives of Dalassene, which at least partially explains the special prominence with which she appears in both of their narratives.71 Anna Komnene is so full of praise for Dalassene that she even feels the need to remind her readers several times that she is not, in fact, writing an encomium of her.72 Bryennios, Anna Komnene’s husband, likewise gives more space to Anna Dalassene in his Material for History than perhaps any other woman.73 Anna was born around 1025–1030 to Alexios Charon and an unknown woman from the family Dalassenos. The latter family enjoyed slightly greater prestige at the time, so Anna would come to be known by her maternal surname, Dalassene. She would eventually marry John Komnenos, brother of Emperor Isaac I Komnenos (r. 1057–1059). Dalassene’s first major appearance in Byzantine politics came at the time of Isaac I’s abdication in the autumn of 1059. According to Bryennios, when Isaac I decided to step down, Anna pressured her husband

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to take over.74 John refused, but this would not be the last time Anna and the Komnenoi would find themselves at the precipice of imperial power. At the time of Alexios I’s rebellion, Anna’s support was crucial. Her actions allowed Alexios and his co-conspirators to escape Constantinople via the Blachernae Palace at a moment when the conspiracy was on the verge of discovery by the sitting emperor.75 Dalassene, accompanied by several female relatives, secretly proceeded to Hagia Sophia, claiming to be “women from the East” intent on making a pious visit to the church while her son and his supporters prepared to leave the city. When the women were discovered by Nikephoros III Botaneiates’ men, Anna made a public display of her piety, refusing to leave the sanctuary of St. Nicholas until the emperor had publicly sworn that he would protect the safety of her and her family. Thus, while Alexios and his supporters were busy raising an army, Anna remained in Constantinople to advocate and negotiate for the safety of those family members still in the capital. She utilized gendered expectations of her behavior in order to benefit the political fortunes of her family. The episode likewise demonstrates the efficacy of ceremonial and the importance of public opinion, especially in Constantinople, in securing and maintaining imperial power. Once he had taken the throne, Alexios I famously delegated imperial powers to his mother, whom he trusted to run affairs in Constantinople while he left on a military campaign. This was no informal arrangement. Anna Komnene, in fact, claims to reproduce verbatim portions of Alexios I’s chrysobull granting plenipotentiary powers to his mother.76 Some of Dalassene’s official acts survive in the monastic archives of Mt. Athos, including at least one in which she can be seen directly contradicting an early decision of her son, Alexios I.77 In the Alexiad, Anna Komnene opines that “One could hardly at that stage call Alexius emperor once he had entrusted to her [Dalassene] the supreme authority.” 78 Anna Dalassene was so engaged in the running of the empire at the beginning of her son’s reign that Anna Komnene goes to extra lengths to remind her readers that she continued to perform other, more traditionally “feminine” duties, particularly religious ones.79 Such interjections highlight two fundamental aspects of Byzantine elite culture. Firstly, despite numerous examples to the contrary, Byzantine culture never became fully comfortable accommodating women in positions of power, at least normatively. Secondly, it reflects the importance of right belief (lit. “orthodoxy”) in Byzantine conceptions of power. In fact, there was a long tradition of women in the imperial household founding or supporting monastic or other church properties.80 It would be one of her own foundations, the monastery of Christ Panoptes, to which Anna would eventually retire.81 Both the Alexiad and Bryennios’ history highlight above all Anna’s role as a mother. While there were cultural and even rhetorical reasons to do so, in Dalassene’s case, this motherly role extended into the political sphere as well. Anna Dalassene, acting as the head of the family after her husband’s death in 1067, is typically given credit for arranging the many marriages within the Komnenos family during her lifetime, which proved key to both Alexios I’s

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and the family’s long-term success. Under Anna’s management, her children were connected via marriage to the influential families of Doukas, Botaneiates, Diogenes, and Palaiologos, to name just a few. Thanks to such shrewd alliances, branches or offshoots of the Komnenos family would dominate the highest echelons of Byzantine society and politics until the empire’s collapse in 1453. Politics in this period were defined by factions built largely around elite family groups, who had become wealthy, cohesive, and powerful enough to dominate political structures in the empire. By the late 1070s at least, the two most powerful blocs were built around the Doukai and the Komnenoi, respectively.82 The Doukai were a chief rival to the Komnenoi prior to Alexios I’s reign, and the previous generation witnessed significant tensions between them. Anna had even been tried for treason during the reign of Michael VII Doukas because of her alleged support for the previous emperor, Romanos IV Diogenes.83 The union of the two families, especially the marriage of Alexios I and Eirene Doukaina, effectively remade the Byzantine social and political elite. The Komnenoi would eventually transform the imperial government as well. Kinship with the ruling family, either by blood or marriage, became the defining characteristic determining one’s inclusion in both the highest levels of the social elite and in the government apparatus.84 By the mid-ninth century, the imperial court was organized into titles/ dignities (axiai dia brabeiou) and offices (axiai dia logou) that existed in parallel hierarchies. Technically only the latter entailed a specific duty within the imperial administration, though this line was frequently blurred.85 Rather than doing away with the existing hierarchy altogether, the Komnenoi instead refashioned it to make room at the highest levels for their relatives or other allies. The title sebastos, roughly equivalent to the Latin augustus, became the basis for these new titles, which were placed at the top of the pre-existing hierarchy. Such reforms, however, were neither immediate nor entirely unprecedented. Nearly every emperor of medieval Byzantium utilized close relatives to help them maintain control, so this was a change in degree, not in kind.86 And contrary to some older narratives, the process was begun by Alexios I, but it only became fully developed under his grandson, Manuel I Komnenos (r. 1143–1180).87 Although Alexios is known for his military exploits and shrewd diplomacy, his internal reforms, especially of the fiscal system, were arguably just as responsible for his success in staving off the near-total collapse of the empire.88 In fact, Alexios began a process that would eventually alter the empire’s tax system from its foundations. Even though the full effects would not come into view until later, Alexios’ use of pronoia grants and the replacement of the roga payment to reimburse imperial agents undermined the kind of system described at the beginning of this chapter. By the end of the thirteenth century, if not earlier, the government’s finances would depend more on the personal or family wealth of the sitting emperor and commercial trade than on the regular collection of the land tax.89

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Conclusion Byzantium maintained a complex administrative apparatus throughout the period covered here, but the system’s efficiency should not be overestimated. As shown in the comparison between the Marcian Treatise and the Cadaster of Thebes, the administration’s actual reach may not have matched the goals established in normative or educational texts. The gap between rhetoric and reality is, in fact, a constant feature of many states. Despite projections of power and an unequal relationship between Constantinople and the provinces, Byzantium’s complex administration could not function without the cooperation of various, local actors, even in Constantinople itself. This is especially clear in regions further away from the capital, as we’ve seen in the case of Antioch. In general, Byzantine sources paint a picture of an empire that was eternal and largely unchanging. While this was certainly a rhetorical exaggeration, it was the continuity and general stability of the administrative system that proved to be the empire’s strength as it survived numerous crises, both internal and external, between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. The comparison of Eustathios Rhomaios and Demetrios Chomatenos demonstrates the system’s continuity and flexibility after the loss of Constantinople in 1204, even if the church was forced to step in after the partial collapse of the imperial government in some sectors. The advent of Alexios I on the throne and the following century of Komnenian rule brought many changes to the imperial administration at all levels, but it is important not to exaggerate these changes. Anna Dalassene showcases a woman of extraordinary power, who was able to wield such power thanks, in part, to the incorporation of family networks into the formal mechanisms of power. But even her example cannot be regarded as completely unique or unprecedented in Byzantine history. The medieval Byzantine Empire is notable for having produced an abundance of source material for the study of Byzantine governance, but few theoretical treatments of its own political system or ideologies, including even the position of the emperor.90 Case studies like those presented here can therefore be a useful way to approach Byzantine modes of governance and administration, thereby playing to the particular strengths of those sources that do survive.

Notes 1 For an overview of this apparatus, see especially the tables produced by John Haldon, “Structures and Administration,” in The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies, ed. E. Jeffreys, J. Haldon and R. Cormack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 547–51. 2 See esp. Anthony Kaldellis, The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Similar arguments were made as early as the 1960s by Hans-Georg Beck, Senat und Volk von Konstantinopel: Probleme der byzantinischen Verfassungsgeschichte, Sitzungsberichte, Heft 6 (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1966).

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Holmes, Catherine et al., (eds.) Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium, and the Islamic World, c. 700–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Kaldellis, Anthony. The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Kaldellis, Anthony. Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Maguire, Henry. Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1997. Neville, Leonora. Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Oikonomidès, Nicolas. Fiscalité et exemption fiscale à Byzance (IXe-XIe s.). Athens: Fondation nationale de la recherche scientifique, Institut de recherches byzantines, 1996. Shea, Jonathan. Politics and Government in Byzantium: The Rise and Fall of the Bureaucrats. London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2020. Treadgold, Warren T. A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Wickham, Chris. The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000. Viking: New York, 2009.

9 GOVERNING THE LATIN EAST Jerusalem from 1099 to 1174 Erin L. Jordan

On 15 July 1099, crusader armies entered the city of Jerusalem, annihilating any surviving opposition and ransacking buildings in search of wealth.1 Eight days later, the leaders of the expedition turned to the matter of governing the newly conquered territory, as relayed by Guibert of Nogent: …when the holy places had been liberated, the entire Christian army was ordered to give alms and offerings, so that their souls might be receptive to the divine grace that they needed to choose the man who would rule the holy as its king.2 Although some among the clerical ranks dissented, arguing that a patriarch should be chosen first, news of the imminent arrival of an Egyptian relief force made the need for a secular leader most pressing.3 Two key candidates emerged as possible rulers of the nascent polity, Raymond of Saint-Gilles, the Count of Toulouse and Duke Godfrey of Bouillon. According to William of Tyre, After carefully considering all aspects of the matter, the electors unanimously agreed upon the duke as their choice. Godfrey was elected and escorted with great devotion to the Sepulchre of the Lord, attended by the singing of chants and hymns.4 While historians remain divided regarding the exact title assumed by Godfrey, they concur that he occupied an unprecedented position as the first Latin ruler of the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, tasked with the challenge of conquering and consolidating control of lands that had been subject to Muslim rule for centuries.5

DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-9

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Although the purview of scholars interested in medieval governance has expanded exponentially in recent years, it remains predominately limited to the kingdoms of western Europe. This examination of the nascent polity of Jerusalem in the twelfth century expands the borders and boundaries of the discussion by focusing on a political system forged in the crucible of war. The Latin Christians who settled in this region remained a minority throughout their occupation, exercising authority over territory inhabited by peoples who resented the foreign intrusion. Godfrey, and the rulers of the kingdom who succeeded him, developed a system of governing in direct response to the challenges encountered, most of which stemmed from the precariousness of their position and the volatility of the region. Constant warfare with local inhabitants was compounded by the unique character of the polity, indelibly shaped by its spiritual and theological significance. Once the footprint of the kingdom had been expanded beyond the initial conquests of the crusader army, institutions were crafted and rules and regulations introduced, producing the political and legal framework that comprised the kingdom’s government. Although the first crusaders imported ideas of governance informed by their experiences in western Europe, they recognized the need to adjust and adapt to governing in a foreign setting. While much of the historiography devoted to the political system of the kingdom focuses on identifying the extent to which rulership in Jerusalem conformed to models of governing associated with western Europe, particularly Capetian France, the discussion here adopts a different interpretive approach.6 It argues that a western model of rulership was not superimposed intact onto the political landscape of the Latin East. Rather, the mode of governing that emerged in the kingdom evolved organically, adapting to meet the unique challenges of a minority elite governing in a hostile territory plagued by constant shortages of resources and manpower.7 Perhaps the most notable departure from western political culture can be identified in the relationship between the kingdom’s crown and its nobility. The form of rulership that emerges from the pages of contemporary accounts can best be described as collaborative. Decisions were made by the king in consultation with the leading nobles and ecclesiastical officials of the realm. As the discussion here demonstrates, this co-operative approach to governing is reflected in the language that pervades the narrative accounts of the kingdom’s early history, punctuated by descriptions of this process as it played out. Due to the unique challenges they faced, including the shortage of land and revenue required to secure manpower as well as the absence of institutions or an established governing apparatus, rulers of Jerusalem seldom made unilateral decisions independently of the nobility.8 Survival depended on consensus between crown and nobility, secured in the course of conversations and often manifested in the form of compromise. Instead of approaching crown and nobility as distinct entities locked in an on-going power struggle informed by competing interests, the interpretive lens here understands them as working in tandem to overcome the  precariousness of their position and ensure the survival of the kingdom.9

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While the two parties disagreed about the course of action at times, they were ultimately united by common interests and a mutual commitment to the preservation of the kingdom. After a brief description of the various challenges faced by rulers in the Latin East that converged to produce its unique political culture, this essay will examine examples of co-operation between crown and nobility that demonstrate the peculiar nature of rulership in the kingdom of Jerusalem. It will focus on instances when the various entities involved in governing were most visibly engaged in the processes of negotiation and compromise, including succession, military campaigns, and marital strategies.10 As evidenced by the presentation of these moments in narrative sources, the consideration of the best needs of the kingdom emerged as the paramount concern of the parties involved. Succession to the throne was a subject of considerable debate and negotiation. The king consulted with the nobles regularly when planning military campaigns, enlisting their advice when devising military strategy. Royal marriages, which provided a unique opportunity to access much-needed resources and support of new allies for the nascent kingdom, are another instance when the process of consultation becomes visible. Such marriages at times produced unanticipated outcomes that presented the kingdom’s rulers with a completely different set of challenges, requiring consultation with the nobility in order to reach a resolution. The crusaders who responded to Pope Urban II’s call to travel east in 1095, surmounting numerous challenges in their quest to “liberate” the Holy Land from Muslim control, ultimately achieved their goal four years later with the conquest of Jerusalem. While, for many of them, possession of the Holy City marked the end of their pilgrimage, for those who decided to remain in the newly conquered territory, the journey had just begun. The nobles comprising the leadership of the crusade army faced an almost insurmountable task in consolidating their military position. Local Muslim leaders recently dispossessed of their lands were by no means prepared to relinquish the fight. From the moment the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem was established, it was beset on all sides by opponents attempting to reconquer lost territory or aggrandize their own position at the crusaders’ expense. The challenges of constant warfare resulted in the need for a ruler adept at military leadership and informed considerations about succession throughout the history of the polity.11 The ability of the rulers of Jerusalem to successfully consolidate their position depended in part on the available resources at their disposal. The precariousness of the kingdom’s position is a prevalent theme in narrative accounts. While exact numbers are impossible to ascertain, historians agree that the majority of those participating in the initial expedition returned home in the years after the conquest of Jerusalem. As a result, the kingdom’s first rulers faced an acute shortage of manpower.12 Some of the strain was alleviated by intermittent expeditions from the west. However, what was most needed to defend the territories acquired in the initial conquest as well as to extend control over key lands along the coast was a permanent military force provided by a settled local nobility.13 In order to prompt nobles to invest in

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the survival and stability of the kingdom, legislation was issued that ensured fiefs would stay within a family even in the absence of a male heir. However, such incentives to settlement would only work if the land or revenue that comprised such fiefs was accessible.14 This required an invested effort in expanding the physical footprint of the kingdom beyond the initial conquests. As the chronicles reveal, Jerusalem’s kings played a prominent role in defending the kingdom and securing the resources necessary to consolidate their position. However, equally evident is the role played by the kingdom’s nobility in these endeavors. Establishing permanent control would require the formation of a system of government suited to the unique political, military, and religious landscape of their newly conquered territories and the challenges endemic to the region. As the discussion here demonstrates, the type of rulership that emerged in Jerusalem was the result of the king partnering with the country’s nobles to advance their common interest, which was the survival of the kingdom.

Succession Ultimately, the choice of a ruler in the kingdom was not dictated by ideology about rulership but rather expediency.15 While hereditary principles were considered in the course of succession, ecclesiastical and secular leaders privileged the suitability of the individual candidate in their determination. The elevation of Godfrey of Bouillon to a position of preeminence, described earlier, illustrates many of the dynamics that animated rulership in the kingdom of Jerusalem for the first six decades of its history.16 Although the narrative accounts diverge on the exact course of events, a fairly consistent portrait of the process that produced the kingdom’s first ruler emerges from their pages. On the eighth day after securing control of the Holy City, nobles and ecclesiastical officials alike “assembled for consultation” in order to “choose someone from among their own number to rule over the region and to bear the royal responsibility for that province.”17 In the version of events presented by Robert the Monk, the question of a suitable ruler was subject to a “debate” which resulted in the choice of Godfrey. While some accounts suggest that the position was first offered to Raymond of St. Gilles, who declined, they all stress the unanimity of the eventual decision with Godfrey chosen “by unanimous agreement of all in a clear vote…”18 Godfrey’s tenure as ruler of the Kingdom proved short-lived. Godfrey fell ill in early June of 1100 after a brief campaign in Damascus. His men transported him to Jerusalem, where he died on July 18.19 In the absence of a direct heir, the question of succession was theoretically open for debate. Based on the contemporary evidence, there is no indication that Godfrey was ever married complicating the process. According to Susan Edgington, Godfrey’s extended illness would have provided ample opportunity to consider the succession and identify a suitable successor. Once again, the sources diverge on the particulars, but do agree that he expressed a preference for an individual with whom he shared a blood tie. They also concur that the choice of his brother Baldwin, the current count of

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Edessa, was the result of considerable discussion among the leading nobles of the polity whose consent was a precondition of succession.20 While the consensus choice among the nobles in the city was Baldwin, some contemporary accounts describe an attempt by Tancred and Patriarch Daibert to foil those plans, offering the kingdom instead to Bohemond of Antioch.21 Upon discovering the plot to elevate Bohemond to the throne, members of Godfrey’s immediate household took charge of the situation. Geldemar Carpenel and Arnulf of Choques sent a delegation to Edessa under the leadership of Robert of Rouen, bishop of Swabia, to inform Baldwin of his brother’s death and unanimously invite him “to come and take over the kingdom” in Godfrey’s place and “sit on his throne.”22 Baldwin seems to have accepted the invitation with alacrity, recovering quickly from his grief over his brother’s death to exult in his newly elevated position.23 He arrived in the city of Jerusalem on 9 November 1100. The sources provide no indication that any opposition to his ascension remained. Baldwin certainly felt confident enough in his position to leave the city in early December to campaign in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, delaying his coronation until his return to Jerusalem. After consulting “with the patriarch and all his nobles” he decided on Bethlehem as the site of his coronation, which took place on 25 December.24 Baldwin fell ill at al-Faramā while campaigning near the Egyptian border. He died en route to Jerusalem at al’Arīsh, his body arriving in the city on 7 April 1118.25 The king’s extended illness provided ample opportunity for the nobles to consult him to ascertain his views regarding his successor. According to Albert of Aachen, They realized his life was fading away, and because he was a man of great wisdom they asked him while he was still of sound mind whom he wanted to be appointed and crowned as heir to the kingdom of Jerusalem after his death, so that on his advice and instruction the man could be crowned who should be crowned, quite surely and without dispute.26 While some accounts depict him as expressly designating his brother Eustace as his successor, others are less specific, indicating a general desire for a blood relative to assume the responsibility.27 In either case, it was clear that while the dying king’s wishes were taken into consideration by the nobility, they were not regarded as binding. All accounts suggest a process of conversation and compromise, as described by William of Tyre: “Then the great men of the kingdom who were present assembled for consultation. The patriarch Arnulf and some of the key princes were also there. In the conference then held on the matter in hand various opinions were advanced.”28 Although an embassy was dispatched to Eustace, the nobility remaining in Jerusalem decided on an alternative course of action, offering the throne instead to Baldwin of Bourcq, currently present in the Holy City. The common thread in all the sources was the recognition of the need to act swiftly to ensure the kingdom’s security. The need for immediate action is expressed by Albert of Aachen:

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On the same day as King Baldwin was buried…the clergy and people of the Church, which was so undeveloped and had been bereft of so great a king and defender, began to deal with the king’s replacement, saying that it was useless advice for the place and people to lack for long a king and the comfort of a defender, and for the place and land defended by no one, should perish.29 Albert emphasized the unanimity of the decision, conveniently omitting the contingent of nobles who supported Eustace, stating “And when various peoples had said various things, at length it was approved by all that Baldwin of Bourcq should be placed on the throne…” Fulcher of Chartres provides a similar account, stating how “On Easter Day he was chosen unanimously and was consecrated.”30 Although some among the nobility of Jerusalem undoubtedly harbored a clear preference for dynastic succession, pragmatic concerns and expediency prevailed in 1118, resulting in the coronation of Baldwin II. There is no indication in the sources that Baldwin II consulted with the nobility prior to designating his eldest daughter as his heir. He seems to have felt sufficiently established in his position and the strength of her dynastic claims to act unilaterally on this matter.31 His deathbed designation of Melisende and her husband Fulk as co-rulers of the kingdom was equally uncontested, and the couple was crowned in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Christmas Day, 1131 shortly after the king’s death. While the right of Melisende and Fulk to succeed Baldwin II was debated among the nobility, the nature of their governance was, as evidenced by the rift that appeared in the kingdom shortly after their succession. Fulk attempted to rule independently of Melisende, elevating many of his own supporters to positions of importance at the expense of the kingdom’s more established families. Fulk’s attempt to impose his own vision of royal authority upon the kingdom prompted Hugh of Jaffa, the cousin of Baldwin II and one of the most powerful nobles in the Kingdom, to rebel.32 This incident is often cited by scholars as evidence of the tension that existed between crown and nobility, illustrating the growth in the power of the latter at the expense of the former.33 However, such arguments do not sufficiently consider the role of Melisende as co-ruler of the kingdom. In the eyes of the established nobility Melisende, not Fulk, represented royal authority. In supporting her, they were advocating for a shared vision of rulership that had existed in the kingdom since its inception and working to secure the status quo against the perceived threat of the outsiders supporting Fulk. This interpretation is reflected in William of Tyre’s account of the fallout from the rupture between the royal couple, which clearly positions Fulk as at fault.34 Fortunately for the survival of the kingdom, Fulk and Melisende reconciled, ruling the kingdom in tandem until his unexpected death in 1143. Not unlike the previous instance of succession, the narrative accounts provide no indication of any debate involving the nobility. In a seamless transition of power, Melisende continued to rule alongside her son Baldwin, who became Baldwin III and replaced Fulk as co-ruler of the kingdom.35

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In 1163 Baldwin III fell ill, dying of dysentery in February of that year in Beirut. Given his relative youth, Baldwin’s impending death was undoubtedly a surprise to all. However, like several of his predecessors, an extended illness gave him ample opportunity to express his expectations regarding the succession. As his marriage to Theodora had not yet produced any offspring, his younger brother Amalric was his obvious successor. In spite of the king’s wishes and the precedent of hereditary succession that had been established by his grandfather, Amalric’s ascension was initially contested. According to William of Tyre, “The succession to the throne after the death of Baldwin was the occasion of much discord among the barons of the realm, who were variously affected by the change of monarchs.” The annulment of Amalric’s marriage to Agnes of Courtney seems to have been a condition of his succession to the throne.36 Unfortunately, the sources lack clarity on the exact nature of the objection to this union formed when Amalric was Count of Jaffa and Ascalon. Amalric of Nesle, the Patriarch of Jerusalem cited consanguinity, as the two were related to the fourth degree through their common great-great-grandfather, Burchard of Montheléry. Why this was not considered an impediment when the union was first formed has led some scholars to dismiss it as masking the real source of opposition.37 Agnes was a member of the de Courtney family, formerly counts of Edessa. Their fortunes had declined considerably since the city’s fall in 1144. According to Bernard Hamilton, the true source of opposition stemmed from the nobility’s concerns about the elevation of the displaced Courtenay family to a position of potential power, and the diversion of resources to their followers in the form of patronage.38 Regardless of the exact reason, Amalric’s marriage to Agnes was dissolved by the papal legate in Jerusalem. His children with Agnes, Baldwin and Sybilla, were granted legitimacy through papal dispensation. The fact that Amalric was crowned on the same day that his brother Baldwin was buried indicates that the issue was resolved with considerable haste. Once again, succession to the throne was the product of consultation and compromise between crown and nobility.

Military Campaigns After a brief ceremony celebrating the elevation of Godfrey to a position of prominence in 1099, the royal army was forced to attend to the military needs of the nascent kingdom. News of the arrival of a Muslim force at Ascalon prompted Godfrey to mobilize the remnants of the crusader forces and march south. After setting up camp at Ramla alongside the Count of Flanders, Godfrey summoned Eustace and Tancred from Nablus. They were joined shortly after by Raymond of Toulouse, whose commitment to the kingdom overcame his continued animosity toward its first official ruler.39 Although their collaborative efforts resulted in a victory at Ascalon, Godfrey’s attempt to secure knight service during the remainder of his rule was extremely limited by the resources at his disposal, exacerbated by the departure of the initial wave of crusaders described earlier. William of Tyre estimates the number of knights in the kingdom of Jerusalem at

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a mere 300, supplemented by an additional 2,000-foot soldiers. Given the limited amount of territory subject to his authority in 1100, Godfrey relied primarily on revenue generated by taxes and commerce, which provided monetary stipends for his followers.40 The challenges faced by Godfrey also proved problematic for his successor Baldwin I. According to Albert of Aachen, after arriving in Jerusalem, Baldwin “called everyone together, great and small, from the whole assembly of the Christians…” He inquired about the fiefs held by the various nobles of the kingdom and received their oaths of homage. His actions provided the nobles with a preview of how he intended to govern, following the precedent of consultation established by his brother. In addition to a blood tie to the previous ruler, Baldwin I was an attractive candidate due to his proven military prowess. However, the future stability of the kingdom depended on its ability to support knights essential to its defense. The realm he had inherited from Godfrey was, for all intents and purposes, limited to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the coastal city of Jaffa. The survival of the kingdom depended on the acquisition of new sources of funding or additional territories that could be distributed among knights, securing their military services accordingly. The limited manpower currently at his disposal made additional conquest even more challenging, as expressed by Fulcher of Chartres: “In the beginning of his reign Baldwin as yet possessed few cities and people. Through that same winter he stoutly protected his kingdom from enemies on all sides.”41 At times he was able to supplement his forces with an influx of manpower from the west, as the example of the crusade of 1101 demonstrates. The forces that succeeded in reaching Jerusalem assisted Baldwin in repelling an attack at Ramla in 1102.42 However, expeditions from the west were inconsistent and their actions were often unpredictable. Equally unreliable was the flow of revenue in the first decade of the kingdom’s history, as evidenced by an incident described by Guibert of Nogent: “Once, when the king was suffering from a great lack of money and did not have enough to pay the monthly stipend to his knights, divine mercy suddenly and miraculously granted him aid.” The miracle described by Guibert was the discovery of a sunken Venetian vessel off the coast which contained numerous sacks of gold. The men responsible delivered the gold to the king, who distributed it accordingly, temporarily averting a crisis.43 During his reign, Baldwin maintained a relentless pace, defending conquered territory from Muslim incursions and attempting to add additional lands to the kingdom. Like his predecessor, Baldwin realized that the conquest of Ascalon was key to securing the southern border of the realm. Consultation with the leading nobles of the kingdom prompted him to target the city in his first military campaign as king. “After listening to this advice from his men, and after securing the land of Jerusalem…Baldwin left the city….”44 After only two days of hostilities, Baldwin reluctantly lifted the siege, citing insufficient numbers of men as the rationale behind his decision. As illustrated by the list of cities targeted for conquest, Baldwin I was aware that control of the coast was paramount

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to the kingdom’s success. The possession of port cities was key to ensuring the trade necessary to sustain the economy of the kingdom, allowing safe passage for pilgrims. In addition, European demand for commodities produced in the Latin East, including cotton, silks, and sugar cane, drove a lucrative export market.45 The arrival of Genoese and Pisan ships shortly after Easter facilitated an attack on the city of Arsuf, which surrendered rather quickly. Baldwin remained in the city for eight days, during which time “he consulted the lord Patriarch and nobles of the kingdom about the remaining towns.”46 After extensive discussion, they decided to turn their attention to Caesarea. When the amir of Caesarea refused their demand to surrender they laid siege, successfully capturing the city in May 1101.47 Acre was targeted next, eventually surrendering in May 1104. The arrival of an expeditionary force of English and Danes in 1106 significantly bolstered the number of knights at the king’s disposal. In typical fashion, Baldwin sought the advice of his nobles before deciding the best use of the additional men, hosting a council at Ramla to “consult an assembly of his magnates.” The port of Sidon was chosen due to its strategic location along the coast.48 Although the attack was aborted, a later attempt in 1110, with the assistance of King Magnus of Norway, proved successful due the presence of a Norwegian fleet.49 After a brief foray north to reinforce the defense of Antioch, the king returned his attention to the coast “…King Baldwin called together all the Church of the kingdom of Jerusalem from all the places which were under his control and put forward a plan for besieging Tyre….”50 As the examples here demonstrate, involving the nobility in the decision-making process was a key element of Baldwin’s approach to rulership. This collaboration contributed to his success in increasing the territorial reach of the kingdom, as conveyed by Fulcher of Chartres “…he added to his rule and subjected to his authority the lands of the Arabs or at least those which touched to the Red Sea.”51 The series of military expeditions targeting Egypt during King Amalric’s reign illustrate the co-operative approach to rulership that had become accepted practice in the Latin East. These campaigns targeted the amir Shirkuh and were motivated by the need to prevent Nur ad-Din from extending his military reach south, effectively encircling the kingdom.52 William of Tyre, who provides the most detailed account of the period, describes nearly every major decision during this campaign as the result of deliberation between the king and the nobles who accompanied him. For example, an attack on Shirkuh near Cairo occurred after “a council was held…to determine what plan of procedure should be adopted.” The ensuing night attack was “decided by unanimous consent.” The peace treaty proposed by Shirkuh in response to the successful siege of Alexandria was presented to an assembly of barons, who unanimously approved it.53 Unfortunately, the victories of 1167 were followed by a series of setbacks that threatened the stability of the kingdom and prompted a new round of appeals to the West, including an abortive attack on Damietta organized in conjunction with Byzantium.54 Devastating earthquakes in northern Syria combined with Saladin’s consolidation of his position in Egypt were cause for extreme alarm. In 1171, Amalric

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“summoned all his nobles to him and laid before them the needs of the realm.” After weighing various options they determined “with the common consent of all” to send a delegation “to explain the difficulties of the kingdom to the princes of the west and to ask for their aid.” In addition to the kings of France, England, Sicily and “the Spains” they agreed that the king himself would travel to Constantinople to plead their case to Emperor Manuel.55

Marriage In addition to securing additional resources through military conquest, the rulers of Jerusalem employed an arsenal of diplomatic tools as well. Although the silence of the sources suggests that Godfrey never married, his successors recognized the importance of marriage in acquiring important allies as well as muchneeded monetary wealth. After the death of his first wife on crusade, Baldwin I married the daughter of an Armenian prince. Although useful in consolidating his position as count of Edessa, this alliance proved less advantageous after his ascension to the throne of Jerusalem, prompting Baldwin to confine her to the convent of St. Anne in Jerusalem. Not only had the union failed to produce any offspring, but, according to Albert of Aachen, only 7,000 of the 60,000 bezants comprising the dowry had been paid.56 If the motive driving his separation from his second wife remains obscure, that prompting his marriage to Adelaide in 1113 is described explicitly in the narrative accounts. The union offered significant advantages in terms of funds and the future support of her son, Roger II, king of Sicily.57 William of Tyre explicitly acknowledged the discrepancy in their respective positions, noting that, compared to the wealthy Adelaide, Baldwin “was poor and needy, so that his means scarcely sufficed for his daily needs and the payment of his knights.”58 Albert of Aachen provided a detailed inventory of the material gains secured as a result of the union, including two triremes, one thousand warriors and seven supply ships “laden with gold and silver…and an abundance of jewels and precious garments, besides weapons, hauberks, helmets” and shields. As a result of the marriage “very great treasures were conveyed into the king’s treasury by means of which the king and all who had lost weapons in battle with the Turks were now inestimably relieved and enriched.”59 While the accounts do not suggest that the nobility of Jerusalem were consulted prior to Baldwin’s marriage to Adelaide, they may have played a role in ending the union. According to William of Tyre and Fulcher of Chartres, Baldwin fell ill in 1116. Both attribute his decision to repudiate Adelaide to fears about the religious implications of a bigamous union in the event that he did not recover. According to scholars, however, his illness prompted the leading nobles to consider potential scenarios regarding succession to the throne and the possibility of it passing to Adelaide’s son, Roger II. Not surprisingly, when Adelaide was forced to depart for Sicily in 1116 her dowry was not returned.60 Like his predecessor, Baldwin II secured the funds needed to consolidate his position as count of Edessa through a marital union. Marriage to Morphia, the

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daughter of the wealthy Armenian Gabriel of Melitene, brought Baldwin “a very large and very much needed sum of money, of which he stood in great need.”61 An additional opportunity to secure funding for the kingdom through a marital alliance involved the marriage of his daughter, Melisende.62 While Baldwin II did not seek the advice of the kingdom’s nobles in designating Melisende as his heir, he did consult them in regard to her marriage, which directly impacted them in a number of ways. The process began as early as 1126, perhaps coinciding with the death of Queen Morphia. According to William of Tyre, Fulk, Count of Anjou, was the consensus choice among those involved in the process, and an embassy was dispatched to France in the fall of 1127: “By the unanimous advice of all the princes, both ecclesiastical and secular, the king had invited him hither to wed the lady Melisend, his eldest daughter.” After accepting the proposal and settling his affairs in Anjou, Fulk departed for Jerusalem “attended by an honorable retinue of nobles and with a magnificence and pomp which surpassed that of kings.”63 Fulk and Melisende were married shortly after his arrival in 1129 with Melisende giving birth to a son in 1130. In spite of the successful conquest of Ascalon in 1153 by Baldwin III and the arrival of a Flemish contingent under the leadership of Thierry of Flanders in 1158, the kingdom continued to face manpower shortages. Such shortages, compounded by concerns about the growing threat of Muslim power in the north, prompted the nobles of Jerusalem to raise the prospect of Baldwin III’s marriage. As William of Tyre indicates, following established precedent, the marriage was subjected to considerable discussion among the nobility: About this time, the fact that the king [Baldwin III], although had now arrived at the age of manhood, as still unmarried began to be a matter of much concern to the princes of the realm, both secular and ecclesiastical. They accordingly met and deliberated about an honorable marriage for their lord…After long consideration, the various opinions were brought into harmony, and it was unanimously agreed to confer with the emperor of Constantinople on this matter.64 In the fall of 1157 an embassy was dispatched to Constantinople accordingly. Baldwin’s marriage to Theodora, the niece of Emperor Manuel, signaled a realignment of diplomatic policy in the kingdom. As repeated calls to the rulers of western Europe for reinforcements went unheeded, they looked instead to the Byzantine emperor who, in the words of William of Tyre, had the ability to “relieve from his own abundance the distress under which our realm was suffering…”65 Baldwin and Theodora were married shortly after her arrival in September 1158. After his ascension to the throne, Amalric pursued a similar marital strategy. While his brother Baldwin III had effectively expanded the kingdom through military conquest, even successful military campaigns would have proven costly in terms of men lost and resources expended. Amlaric’s ambitions regarding the conquest of Egypt made the situation even more pressing. During the first few

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years of his reign, over a dozen letters were sent west to request the aid needed to accomplish his goals. Papal appeals issued in 1165 and 1166 had only elicited minor military expeditions.66 In the absence of any meaningful response from western Europe, Amalric turned to Byzantium. The annulment of his marriage to Agnes of Courtney at the time of his succession left Amalric free to negotiate a new union.67 An embassy was dispatched to Constantinople to negotiate a royal marriage. It returned in 1167 with Maria, the daughter of Manuel’s nephew. She and King Amalric were married in August of that year. In addition to affirming the alliance between Jerusalem and Constantinople, the marriage also brought a much-needed infusion of funds in the form of Maria’s dowry.68

Conclusion While Amalric’s overture to Manuel succeeded in affirming the diplomatic relationship between the two polities and the delegations west would eventually result in several smaller military expeditions, the situation in the kingdom continued to deteriorate. The death of Amalric in July 1174 resulted in the succession of his 13-year-old son, Baldwin. Although Baldwin IV’s leprosy did not prove an impediment at the time of his ascension, it did seriously constrain his ability to govern.69 The degenerative physical condition limited the scope of his military participation, forcing him to rely on delegates to lead the royal army. The nature of his disease not only made marriage impossible, but it also propelled the question of succession to the forefront of the kingdom’s affairs for nearly a decade. Uncertainty regarding the succession intensified the infighting among Jerusalem’s nobility at the precise moment that the kingdom faced its most serious external threat in the form of Saladin. The defeat of the army at Hattin, followed by the loss of the city of Jerusalem in 1187, irrevocably altered the dynamic of rulership in the kingdom. As more and more territory was ceded to Saladin’s army, the political culture of the polity evolved in response to the altered conditions, necessitating a new approach to rulership. The territorial contraction of the kingdom occurred concurrently with the rise to prominence of the military orders, most notably the Knights Templar. First established during the reign of Baldwin II, members of the Order did not exert considerable influence over political affairs until after the death of Amalric and the succession of Baldwin IV. However, their role in governing increased in proportion to the role they played in defense of the kingdom, adding an unprecedented component to the political equation established in 1099. The consensus and cooperation between crown and nobility that characterized the first six decades of the kingdom’s history gave way to an approach to governing more suited to its new reality and the challenges it faced moving forward.70 Although a detailed description of the adjustments that were made lies outside the scope of the discussion here, the need to do so further demonstrates the extent to which rulership in the Middle Ages was neither static nor monolithic, but contingent, evolving organically in response to the unique circumstances of a particular time and place.

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Notes 1 William of Tyre, History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, ed. and trans. Emily A. Babock and August C. Krey, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 378. 2 The Deeds of Gods through the Franks. A Translation of Guibert de Nogent’s Gesta Dei per Francos, trans. Robert Levine (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1997), 132–33. Accounts agree that the majority of the participants in the first Crusade were consumed by the military task at hand, rather than on what would happen if they actually succeeded in capturing Jerusalem. See Simon John, Godfrey of Bouillon: Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Ruler of Latin Jerusalem, c. 1060–1100 (London: Routledge, 2018), 178. 3 William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 1, 381. Guibert of Nogent provides a similar account. The Deeds of Gods through the Franks, 135. 4 William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 1, 382. 5 Susan B. Edgington, Baldwin I of Jerusalem, 1100–1118 (London: Routledge, 2019), 61. 6 John L. La Monte, Feudal Monarchy in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem 1100–1291 (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy, 1932), xxi. See also Alan V. Murray, “Baldwin II and his Nobles,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 38 (1994): 60–85; Jean Richard, Le royaume latin de Jérusalem (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1953); Joshua Prawer, A History of The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem ( Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1963). Steven Tibble, Monarchy and Lordships in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099–1291 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) provides an accessible overview of the three historiographical approaches to governance in the kingdom, to which he adds his own perspective, informed by charters rather than legal texts. 7 This view echoes that expressed by Joshua Prawer, Crusader Institutions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 4–5. Prawer also posits an underappreciation for the evolutionary progression of governance in the kingdom. 8 Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades (London: Bloomsbury, 1987), 114. 9 Much of the scholarship on the kingdom views the nobility as a monolithic block, united in pursuit of single course of action. However, the discussion cites numerous examples of a nobility divided regarding their preferred course of action. This sentiment is expressed by Andrew Jotischky, “Politics and the Crown in the Kingdom on Jerusalem, 1099–1187,” History Compass 13, no. 11 (2015): 589–98. 10 This approach informs investigations into rulership which advocate for a shift away from focus on a singular monarch in favor of a “more complex process of decision making with all actors and practices involved.” See Thomas Erit and Tilmann Trausch, “Command versus Consent: Representation and Interpretation of Power in the Late Medieval Euraisan World,” Medieval History Journal 19, no. 2 (2016): 167–90, 178–82. Bernd Schneidmüller, “Rule by Consensus: Forms and Concepts of Political Order in the European Middle Ages,” Medieval History Journal 16, no. 2 (2013): 449–71 identifies a similar dynamic operating in the Holy Roman Empire. 11 Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 103. Guibert of Nogent, The Deeds of God through the Franks, 133–34. 12 Guibert of Nogent, The Deeds of Gods through the Franks, 162. Prawer, Crusader Kingdom, 21–22. 13 Jonathan Phillips, Defenders of the Holy Land: Relations between the Latin East and the West, 1119–1187 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 11. See also Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 14–15. 14 Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 69. James A. Brundage, “Marriage Law in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” in The Crusades, Holy War and Canon Law (London: Routledge, 1991), 267. 15 A lively historiographical debate about the nature of succession in the kingdom exists, centered on hereditary versus elective kingship. Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174–1277 (New York: Archon Books, 1973), 145. 16 John France, “The Election and Title of Godfrey of Bouillon,” Canadian Journal of History 18 (1983): 321–30, 325. Raymond d’Aguilers, Historia Francorum Qui Ceperunt

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17

18

19 20 21

22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34

35 36

Iherusalem, trans. John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1968), 143. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 1, 329, reports that interviews were conducted “so that the electors might obtain full and accurate information as to the worth of the several candidates.” France, “The Election and Title of Godfrey of Bouillon,” 321. Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade. Historia Iherosolimitans, trans. Carol Sweetenham (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 202; William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 1, 382: “After carefully considering all aspects of the matter, the electors unanimously agreed upon the duke as their choice.” Fulcher of Chartres. A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095–1127, trans. Frances Rita Ryan ( Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969), 124. For Raymond’s role see France, “The Election and Title of Godfrey of Bouillon,” 21. Simon John, Godfrey of Bouillon: Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Ruler of Latin Jerusalem, c. 1060–1100 (London: Routledge, 2018), 179–80. See Joshua Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972), 35–36. John, Godfrey of Bouillon, 182. Edgington, Baldwin I, 63. According to Albert of Aachen, a message was sent to Bohemond. However, the message and its bearer, the Patriarch’s secretary, were intercepted by Raymond of Toulouse. Historia Ierosolymitana, ed. and trans. Susan Edgington (Oxford: Oxford University Press), vol. 2, 28. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolymitana, vol. 2, 31, identifies the individuals comprising the delegation. Alan V. Murray, “Daimbert of Pisa, the Domus Godefridi and the Accession of Baldwin I of Jerusalem,” in From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies, 1095–1500, Alan V. Murray, ed. (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 81–102. Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition, 136. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolymitana, vol. 2, 41. Edgington, Baldwin I, 73, says Daibert was exiled to Mount Zion due to his opposition but recalled since his participation in the coronation was required. Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition, 222. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolymitana, vol. 2, 201. Guibert of Nogent makes no reference to Eustace as an alternative candidate. The Deeds of Gods through the Franks, 159. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 1, 519. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolymitana, vol. 2, 202–203. This sentiment is echoed by Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the the Expedition, 225 and William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 1, 519. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolymitana, vol. 2, 203. Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition, 225. H.E. Mayer, “Studies in the History of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 26 (1972): 100–101. H.E. Mayer, “The Wheel of Fortune: Seigneurial Vicissitudes under Kings Fulk and Baldwin III of Jerusalem,” Speculum 65 (1990): 860–77 and Jotischky, “Politics and the Crown,” 591. Hugh was joined by a number of high-ranking men, including Ralph of Fontanellis and Walter Brisebarre, lord of Beirut. Murray, “Baldwin II and his Nobles,” 79. Erin L. Jordan, “Corporate Monarchy in the Twelfth-Century Kingdom of Jerusalem,” Royal Studies Journal 6/1 (2019): 1–15. H.E. Mayer, “Angevins versus Normans. The New Men of King Fulk of Jerusalem,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 133, no. 1 (1989): 1–25, 20. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 2, 139. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea vol. 2, 295–300, is unusually circumspect in his description of what transpired and why, citing only clerical opposition

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37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

to the marriage. See Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King, 23 and H.E. Mayer, “The Beginnings of King Amalric of Jerusalem,” in The Horns of Hattin, ed. B.Z. Kedar (London: Variorum, 1992), 120–35. Bernard Hamilton, “The Titular Nobility of the Latin East: the Case of Agnes de Courtenay,” in Crusades, Cathars and the Holy Land, ed. Hamilton (Farnham: Ashgate, 1999), 197–204 and Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 36–37. Hamilton, “The Titular Noblity,” 198. The loss of much of their land was compounded by the imprisonment of Josecelin in 1150. His wife, Beatrice sold her remaining possessions in the county to the Byzantine Emperor. Agnes’s first marriage ended in 1149 with the death of her husband, Reynald, Lord of Marash. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol 1, 394–95; Raymond d’Aguilers, Historia Francorum, 133. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 1, 408–9. Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition, 128. Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition, 150, reported that 300 knights were available “to defend Jerusalem, Joppa, Ramla and also the stronghold of Haifa.” Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolymitana, vol. 2, 82. Guibert of Nogent, The Deeds of Gods through the Franks, 164. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolymitana, vol. 2, 36–37. Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and his Heirs. Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 51–52. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolymitana, vol. 2, 47. Edgington, Baldwin I, 116. Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition, 183. Edgington, Baldwin I, 124. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolymitana, vol. 2, 180. Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition, 149. Philips, Defenders of the Holy Land, 164–67. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, 340. Philips, Defenders of the Holy Land, 166–68. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, 340–42. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 1, 415, refers to her as Godehilde. She accompanied Godfrey and Eustace on crusade but died at Marash “worn out by long suffering.” Called Godevere in other sources, she is described as the daughter of Ralph II of Tosny. Edgington, Baldwin I, 46. Natasha Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Perspective (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2007), 141. Most sources agree that the name of Baldwin’s second wife was Arda, with their separation occurring between 1102 and 1108. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, 461, was openly critical of Baldwin’s behavior, stating that “…he compelled her though she had been convicted of no crime and had confessed none, to become a nun in the convent of St. Anne.” Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition, 209; William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 1, 461. Ibid. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land, 142, notes the importance of dowry funds in financing military expeditions. Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolymitana, vol. 2, 189–91. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 1, 496. Jotischky, “Politics and the Crown,” 591. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 1, 450 and Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land, 141. Phillips, Defenders of the Holy Land, 19. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 2, 38: Philips, Defenders of the Holy Land, 21. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, vol. 2, 264.

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10 HOW POPES GOVERNED CHRISTENDOM? Kirsi Salonen

Introduction The administration of the Catholic Church has been an extremely effective administrative system, to the degree that many medieval nation states copied its practices and structure to their governing institutions. Many important administrative reforms were made in the high Middle Ages when the Catholic Church reached its full powers. Together with the bureaucratization of the central administration, a well-functioning administrative structure was created in many different ecclesiastical levels. At the same time, the ecclesiastical norms were unified and codified to what we now call canon law. The ecclesiastical administration is connected to the person of the bishop of Rome, the pope. According to the autocratic idea of the Church, the popes possessed full powers (Lat. plenitudo potestatis) in all fields of ecclesiastical administration and justice, dogma, and theology. At the same time the pope was also a secular ruler in the territory of the Papal States located in central Italy. This article concentrates on the role of the pope as an ecclesiastical leader and discusses how the popes governed Christendom. The article begins by presenting the legal basis for the papal administration, the canon law. Then the article explains the four separate fora through which the medieval ecclesiastical administration was carried on: 1) the central administration of the papacy, the so-called papal curia, 2) the general Church councils, 3) the papal representatives, and 4) the local administrative hierarchy. After that the article presents, through concrete examples from the existing papal source material, what kinds of matters Christians brought before the popes in the Middle Ages and how the different kinds of issues were handled in the papal administration. The article thus shows that the popes took care of a huge spectrum of different kinds of issues, and that the papal administration was so well functioning that each office and official knew exactly what they should do. DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-10

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Ecclesiastical Norms Regulating the Papal Governing From the end of the first millennium onwards, the Roman bishops had begun to call themselves popes and to consider themselves as primus inter pares. This was also the time when the popes – in alliance with the German Emperors – began to increase their control. One means for this was to unify the ecclesiastical legislation so that the same regulations were valid all over the huge Western Christian territory. The development and unification of the ecclesiastical norms took place in two ways: through the decisions of church councils and through the decisions of popes. The ecclesiastical legislation was very heterogeneous until the eleventh century, after which took place an important turn and the Church began to unify the various ecclesiastical regulations and to collect them into a coherent compilation. The first such collection, known as Decretum Gratiani, was compiled by the canon lawyer called Gratian around 1150. The ecclesiastical norms were, however, renewed and modified actively at the turn of the thirteenth century, and updated versions of the collection of canon law were needed and compiled, also for the needs of the emerging universities, where canon law was taught. Bernardus of Pavia compiled around 1190 a new canonical collection, Breviarium extravagantium, and in 1192 another one, known as Compilatio prima. Bernardus’ work became relatively quickly outdated, and Pope Gregory IX appointed in 1230 the legal expert Raymundus de Penyaforte (d. 1275) to make a new collection. It became ready in 1234 and is known as Liber extra. In 1298 it was supplemented by a new collection called Liber sextus, and 20 years later, by the so-called Clementinae (decretals of Pope Clement V and the decisions of the Council of Vienne in 1311–1312). Finally, two other collections were added: Extravagantes Ioannis XXII (regulations of Pope John XXII) and Extravagantes communes (decretals of various later popes). These five collections formed the core of medieval canon law, which was in use until 1917 and known as the Editio Romana of Corpus Iuris Canonici.1 The development of medieval canon law is often considered to have finished with the completion of the Corpus Iuris Canonici because new collections were not made. This is, however, not true because the popes and ecclesiastical councils continued to produce new regulations that were used side by side with the codified law. Many of the new regulations were published in different forms, such as the Chancery regulations, regula cancelleria, that were promulgated by each pontiff after their election. These norms regulated the work and workload of the officials of the papal curia, but included regulations about ecclesiastical benefices or Christian behaviour too.2 In addition to the central ecclesiastical legislation, each ecclesiastical province or diocese could have their local regulations fitted to the local circumstances – as far as they did not collide with the universal norms. The provincial legislation was valid in the whole province and the decisions about such norms were normally taken in the provincial councils summoned regularly by the archbishops.

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The diocesan legislation in its turn concerned only the territory of the diocese and decisions about it were taken in the yearly diocesan synods summoned by the local bishops. Canon law set the norms for all Christian activity. It defined the principles of the Church, the tasks and rights of the clergy from the highest dignitaries down to simple clerics, the juridical processes within ecclesiastical tribunals and the everyday life of Christians. It was the task of the papal administration in different fora to ensure that Christians followed the ecclesiastical regulations and to help those who had issues with the ecclesiastical norms.

The Papal Curia The central administration of the Catholic Church took place at the papal curia and was carried on by the officials of the various papal offices. The division of labour between the different offices was well defined, and each office had specific tasks. The history of papal central administration dates back to the first Christian centuries, although its tasks were relatively limited during the first millennium. Together with the development of the papal legislation, the tasks of the papal administration grew from the eleventh century onwards. Because of the increasing workload, the popes could no longer handle all cases referred to them and they began to delegate their powers to men close to them. This led to the birth and differentiation of the various papal offices. Although the central papal offices were functioning already in the eleventh or twelfth centuries, the administrative structure of the Church was changed and developed throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. Graph 1 (below) presents this structure as a simplified model of the central offices and tribunals of the papal administration (Figure 10.1). The medieval popes made decisions about the most important ecclesiastical matters in the presence of the cardinals residing in the papal curia. It was their

Pope

Consistory Collegium of Cardinals

Apostolic

Apostolic

Dataria

Chancery

FIGURE 10.1 

Signatura iustitiae

Apostolic Chamber

Audientia Camere

The medieval papal administration

Sacra Romana Rota

Audientia litterarum

Apostolic

contra-

Penitentiary

dictarum

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task to help and advise the pope. Pope consulted the cardinals in regular meetings known as a consistory (consistorium). The everyday business of the Church was entrusted to the officials of the different papal offices. Christians from all over the Christian West could turn to these offices with a request and get their issues resolved. One of the very central offices of the papal administration was the Apostolic Chamber (Camera apostolica), which was responsible for the economy of the Church and papacy. The Apostolic Chamber, whose historical roots can be traced at least to the tenth century, worked under the guidance of the chamberlain (camerarius), one of the most powerful prelates in the papal curia who was usually appointed among the cardinals. Under his guidance, the officials of the Chamber administered the income and expenses of the curia, including bookkeeping and the activity of collectors working in different parts of the Christian West. The Apostolic Chamber was also involved in dispensing justice in litigations that involved matters both civil and criminal, related to the activity of the Chamber. The Chamber had a special section dealing with juridical issues that were entrusted to a person called the Chamber auditor (auditor camere). He could judge in matters related to economic wrongdoings, such as malversation of the collectors, as well as in other issues related to the authority of the Chamber like public safety in the papal city or the conduct of the personnel of the papal curia. In principle, the Chamber auditor dealt with the cases in the first instance, while the cases of appeal were handled by the chamberlain and later by a separate tribunal called Audientia Camere.3 The Apostolic Chancery (Cancellaria apostolica) was responsible for the practical aspects of the papal administration. It was the oldest papal office with roots back to the fifth or possibly the fourth century. Its original function was to produce and expedite the papal letters but after the curial reorganization in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it could take a hand in many different practicalities of the papal administration. Under the guidance of the cardinal called vice chancellor (vicecancellarius4), the officials of the Chancery took care of all papal correspondence and kept the papal archives. Until the 1480s, they could grant certain types of dispensations and privileges for Christians too.5 Around the 1380s, the pope entrusted to the vice chancellor the task to assign the legal processes to the auditors of the highest papal tribunal, the Sacra Romana Rota, and thus he could monitor the activity of the tribunal.6 This practice was altered in 1491, when Pope Innocent VIII delegated this task to a new office called Signatura iustitiae.7 The Apostolic Dataria (Dataria apostolica), was originally a section of the Chancery, but Pope Martin V turned it into an independent office in the 1420s. It was originally developed around an official of the Chancery called the datarius, whose task it was to date the petitions directed to the pope as well as the papal letters. Subsequently, the officials of the Dataria accumulated more responsibilities, and from the 1420s onwards they could receive the petitions directed to the pope, examine their juridical and canonical content and present them to the pope

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for his approval. This was a highly responsible task because even a small defect in the wording of a papal letter could lead to the complete invalidating of the whole letter and thereby to quarrels and finally even to juridical processes. From the 1480s onwards, the officials of the Dataria received further powers and could grant dispensations, licences, and privileges.8 Since the twelfth century, pastoral care was considered as one of the most central tasks of the Church, and therefore the papal curia included a separate office that was entrusted with the care of the souls of the Christians. The office was called the Apostolic Penitentiary (Poenitentiaria apostolica), and it had a double function: Firstly, its officials, priests known as penitentiaries, were responsible for hearing the confessions of those pilgrims who came to confess to the pope. This responsibility meant that in the main Roman basilicas there were at all times a certain number of penitentiaries, working in different languages, and acting as confessors for Christians from different parts of Christendom. Secondly, the officials of the section known as the major office (Lat. officium maius) of the Penitentiary had the powers to grant Christians four different kinds of grace: 1) absolutions from particularly grave sins typically reserved to the papal authority, 2) dispensations allowing them to act against the norms of canon law, 3) special licences allowing them not to follow the normal rules for carrying out religious exercises or functions, and 4) special declarations testifying that a person was not guilty of murder or that a monastic profession or contracted marriage was not valid.9 The papal administration also included other tribunals than the abovepresented Audientia Camere. The most influential of them was the highest ecclesiastical tribunal Sacra Romana Rota, with its official name Audientia sacri palatii. It functioned mainly as a tribunal of appeal but it could also be used as the tribunal of first instance by the inhabitants of the diocese of Rome or the Papal States. The officials of the Rota consisted of a defined number (most often 12, sometimes 14) of judges called auditors, who handled independently litigations delegated to their authority. After hearing the litigant parties and examining all written documentation brought to them, the auditor gave a sentence. Typically, he did this independently but in more advanced or difficult cases he could ask for advice from his peers.10 Another curial tribunal was Audientia litterarum contradictarum, which handled different kinds of problems regarding juridical processes in ecclesiastical tribunals. Christians could turn to it when they had controversies about who could handle their court cases or pronounce sentences.11 In principle, all curial offices functioned independently and could take decisions on the basis of the specific powers they had received from the pontiffs. In practice, the powers of various offices overlapped somewhat, and one matter could in its different stages of handling pass through various offices. A good example of such a case is a papal provision (i.e. papal appointment of a cleric to an ecclesiastical office) process. Papal provisions were normally handled through both the Dataria and the Chancery, while the payments related to the appointments had to be made through the Chamber. If there emerged problems in a provision process, the parties could litigate over it in one of the papal tribunals.

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In  case there had been malpractice, such as simony, during the process or if the appointed person had not paid the required payments to the Chamber, he automatically incurred excommunication and had to make a request for absolution and dispensation from the Penitentiary. Hence, despite the independence of each papal office, there was a lot of overlapping and collaboration within the papal administration. In addition to the cardinals and other high-ranking officials of the Curia, the papal administration employed numerous other persons. The handling of incoming petitions, the process of decision making as well as the composing and expediting of the papal letters required a lot of skilled personnel as did the financial administration and the collection and recording of various payments made to the Holy See. For these purposes, the Curia employed a large number of scribes, procurators, bookkeepers, legal experts and others. Additionally, a number of messengers (Lat. cursor) were bringing messages within the curia, but also sometimes to faraway places.12

Church Councils The plenitude of powers allowed the pontiff to take decisions in many different kinds of matters regarding the Church or the Christians. The only limitation to the powers of the pope was that his decisions or actions could not be in conflict with the content of the Holy Scripture or ecclesiastical norms dictated by the general Church councils. The most important decisions regarding the Church, such as the theological dogma or fundamental questions within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, were made in the general church councils to which hundreds of representatives – bishops, archbishops, metropolitans, cardinals, local rulers, and other influential Christians – from all Church provinces were invited. The first church councils were held already in the first Christian centuries. The earliest councils, known as pre-ecumenical councils, were only regional and thus did not have an effect upon the whole Christian territory. The first universal, or ecumenical, council was celebrated in Nicaea in 325 under the auspices of Emperor Constantine. The first seven ecumenical councils, celebrated between the years 325 and 787 were recognized by both eastern and western churches. After that, the ideological gap between the churches became too large, and the subsequent councils involved only the eastern or western church.13 The first council recognized only by the Roman Church was held in 869–870 in Constantinople. After that, due to the political instability in the territory of the western Church, there was a long break in the councils. The practice was re-established in 1123 with the First Lateran council, which was followed by a series of ecumenical councils. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries as well as the fifteenth century hosted more councils, while in the fourteenth century only one council was celebrated. Unlike the earlier ecumenical councils that concentrated mainly on doctrinal issues, the councils of the high Middle Ages laid weight

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upon clerical discipline, political relations, and the development of canon law regulations, while the late medieval councils concentrated mainly on fighting the heresies and reforming the Church.14 To these councils were invited all ecclesiastical dignitaries and secular rulers from the territory of the Western Church. They were huge celebrations involving hundreds of persons. The Fourth Lateran council, presided by Pope Innocent III in 1215, was the largest medieval council. It was celebrated in the presence of 71 patriarchs, metropolitans or archbishops, 412 bishops, 900 abbots and priors as well as a large number of representatives of the important European rulers, such as Emperor Frederick II.15

Ecclesiastical Administration at Local Level The ecclesiastical supremacy of the popes expanded quickly in the course of the first millennium and the first centuries of the second millennium, when missionaries were actively spreading the Christian faith in the outskirts of the Christendom. The papal power spread from the Mediterranean up to the north and towards east, and by the thirteenth century, most of the territory of presentday Europe was under the papal authority. The smooth governing of so large territory necessitated well-functioning local administration because the central government could not follow closely what happened in different places. Many practical issues within the ecclesiastical administration were spread over the whole territory of Christendom according to a clearly defined hierarchical model led by the pope who was on the top of the hierarchy. The highest level of the local ecclesiastical administration was the ecclesiastical province. The Christian West was divided into well over one hundred church provinces, each of which was governed by a metropolitan or archbishop. The ecclesiastical provinces were divided into smaller administrative territories called dioceses. The whole Christian territory encompassed more than one thousand dioceses, but by the late Middle Ages, almost one-third of them were only nominal because large earlier Christian territories were in lands under Muslim rule. The ecclesiastical administration in the dioceses was in the hands of bishops, who were elected to their positions by the pope, although the local cathedral chapter could recommend a suitable candidate. The cathedral chapter assisted the bishops in the administration of the diocese as well as took care of the religious activities in the cathedral. The dioceses were in their turn divided into smaller administrative areas called parishes. The size of the parishes was not regulated and varied significantly. Parishes could be divided into smaller entities called chapelries that functioned under the supervision of the parish priest to whom the parish administration was entrusted. It was the task of the local bishop to appoint priests to the parishes in his diocese, although from the high Middle Ages onwards the popes began to accumulate appointing rights to more and more ecclesiastical positions. It was also the task of the bishop to ensure that the appointed priests had sufficient

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knowledge and they were able of performing the duties of the parish priest. All parish priests had to be ordained to the highest ecclesiastical order, the priesthood (Lat. presbyter), which gave the priests the right to hear confessions, celebrate the Holy Mass and all Sacraments. Parish priests were seldom working alone, but they had usually at least one assisting cleric who would help in carrying on all the ecclesiastical duties. All assistant clerics did not have to be ordained priests but they could also have some of the lower ecclesiastical orders such as subdeacon or deacon, or only one of the minor orders. In principle there could be a mid-level administration between the dioceses and parishes, in Anglophone areas so-called archdeaconries. The significance of these has, however, been quite different for example in England, Germany, or Italy. Through the above-described hierarchy, the Catholic Church and the papal administration had a direct line from the papal curia to each parish. If the popes wanted to make some issue, such as the stipulation of new canon law regulations or the announcing of the beginning of a new jubilee year, known to all Christians, they had a functioning system of correspondence. The papal letters declaring the will of the pontiff were sent in the same form to all archbishops, who in their turn were asked to pass the knowledge on to their suffragan bishops. The bishops in their turn made the papal will known to all parish priests in their dioceses in the diocesan meetings called synods that took place once per year in the cathedral city. And finally, the parish priests passed the information on to their parishioners, and so all Christians had the possibility of knowing the papal will. And vice versa, individual Christians had the possibility to bring their ecclesiastical issues forward following the same path from below up to the papal curia. Diocesan synods were meetings summoned by the local bishop and celebrated in the episcopal towns. According to canon law, a diocesan synod had to be held once a year in each diocese. It had the right to made decisions concerning the diocese, and each priest participating in the synod had to make a copy for himself and pass the information on to his parishioners. One of the purposes of the synods was that to control the quality of the cure of souls in the diocese, and there the parish priests could ask questions from their superiors about ambiguous or difficult issues. The synod functioned also as means to spread information about new papal decisions or news from other parts of the Latin West. The synod could also function as a tribunal if there were disciplinary issues concerning the clergy.

Papal Representatives in Partibus Although it was normally possible for the popes to rule Christendom through the local administration, in some cases this was not possible or there was a question of such importance that the pope wanted to have close control of the events. In these cases, the popes could send a personal representative to the place in question. In the high Middle Ages, when this practice began to be used more often, the papal representatives were typically high-ranking ecclesiastics, often cardinals, whom

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the popes had personally entrusted the handling of the problems in question. The papal representatives were often chosen so that they would have had some knowledge about the local situation and language. In the late Middle Ages, the use of papal representatives increased considerably, and there emerged a hierarchy of papal envoys: legates, judges delegate, nuncios, collectors, and cursors.16 Papal legates were the most eminent group of papal representatives appointed personally by the pontiff, and had often the rank of cardinal. They were sent abroad for settling important ecclesiastical matters, such as for presiding ecclesiastical councils or preaching crusade, or they were sent for a diplomatic mission to the local ruler. The papal legates were originally personal trustees of the pope, but by the late Middle Ages it became more usual to entrust a local prelate with the title of papal legate, like Cardinal Wolsey at the court of King Henry VIII of England.17 The legates were usually appointed for a targeted mission, while the papal nuncios were entrusted with more general and practical tasks. Papal nuncios were often of slightly inferior ecclesiastical rank (bishop or prelate), and they were sent to a certain territory for a certain period for taking care of multiple errands. Alongside the nuncios, the papacy sent to different parts of Christendom papal collectors, whose task it was to ensure that the revenues (tithes) collected in favour of the Holy See and the crusades were duly sent to the Apostolic Chamber. Very often, especially in the later Middle Ages, the roles of a papal nuncio and collector were combined.18 Sometimes the popes used delegates for judging in particularly difficult legal cases in which an appeal had been made to the pope, but he could not take a decision without local knowledge. These papal representatives were legal experts, and they were called judges delegate (Lat. iudices delegati). They were appointed by the pope to investigate a certain legal case. The practice of appointing judges delegate became usual in the twelfth century.19

Papal Administration as Fountain of Justice Canon law together with the biblical norms regulated strictly what Christians, both ecclesiastics and lay people, could do and what was forbidden. The ecclesiastical norms also stipulated who should take care of cases in which Christians had violated the norms of the Church. Since the popes could not take care of all the small sins and crimes that were committed in different parts of Christendom, they delegated their jurisdictional powers, as well as powers to absolve Christians, to the local ecclesiastical authorities. This meant that the parish priests were in most cases the right authorities to take care of questions of ecclesiastical crimes and sins. Since all provinces and dioceses were different, the division of labour between parish priests, bishops, and archbishops could vary slightly, but in practice all provinces followed the same principles in handling crimes and sins. The Church also made a clear distinction between ecclesiastical crimes, which had to be judged openly in ecclesiastical tribunals and in which the judges

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imposed a punishment through the pronouncing of a sentence for the persons found guilty by the tribunal. This system is known as the external forum of justice. But what kinds of acts were considered as crimes that had to be judged in the ecclesiastical tribunals? Firstly, all crimes committed by members of the clergy – no matter how worldly the crimes – had to be judged in ecclesiastical tribunals because, according to the ecclesiastical norms, only another ecclesiastic person was worthy to judge over another. Secondly, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction handled all those crimes that had something to do with the Church, the dogma, or Christian worship. Additionally, the regulations of canon law stipulate about crimes concerning the Church that were brought before the ecclesiastical tribunals: falsifying ecclesiastical documents, heresy, homicide (when a cleric was either victim or perpetrator), arson, adultery, theft (from a cleric, church, or monastery), witchcraft, apostasy, simony, and abuse of sacraments. At the parish level, it was the role of the local parish priest to keep an eye on his parishioners and to note down whether they committed crimes against the Church. The parish level cannot, however, be considered as a separate tribunal since the parish priest did not have the authority to judge over his parishioners or to punish them with ecclesiastical punishments such as excommunication or interdict. This left very little means for the priests to supervise the behaviour of their parishioners. The only punitive means they had was to exclude Christians from Eucharist or forbid their access to the church. Sometimes ecclesiastical justice could be dispensed in the parishes when the bishops were paying their obligatory and regular visits to the parishes in their diocese. According to canon law, the episcopal visits should take place every year, and during the visit, the bishop had to check the property and economy of the parish and to make sure that the priest fulfilled his duties and that he and the parishioners respected the ecclesiastical norms. During these visits, the bishops could hold a court session in the parish, in which the parish priest acted as prosecutor, informing the bishop about the misdeeds of his parishioners. The bishop heard the cases and possible witnesses and made his judgement. The penalties imposed by the bishop could be fines, excommunications, and shame punishments. The rural deans had the same function in some territories and could convene similar court sessions. There is, however, a huge difference in these practices in different dioceses and territories. The episcopal court sessions in parishes were particularly practical in northern Europe, where the Christians had difficulties to access the episcopal towns due to long distances, but they were not necessary in southern Europe, where the dioceses were small and it was easy to organize the episcopal justice in a more regular way. The typical way to administer ecclesiastical justice in dioceses was to hold regular court sessions in the episcopal town. The administering of ecclesiastical justice belonged to the tasks of the bishop but very often the bishops delegated their jurisdictional powers to trained ecclesiastical lawyers who presided over the court sessions. The diocesan tribunals functioned usually professionally and followed the juridical procedure stipulated in canon law. They held sessions

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regularly, on the three weekly court days: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The episcopal courts – or consistory courts, as they also could be called, there is variation between different territories – handled cases that had been brought before the court officially and based on a written complaint, not through an oral accusation by the parish priest. Most commonly, the episcopal courts solved litigations related to marriages. Other typical cases regarded economical quarrels, insult, or violence. Additionally, the courts could deal with priestly misbehaviour such as violence, excessive use of alcohol, or gambling. According to the principles of the Catholic Church, Christians whose case had been judged at the local ecclesiastical courts could appeal to the next administrative level, i.e. from the episcopal court to the archiepiscopal court and from the archiepiscopal court to the pope. We have plenty of examples of such chains of appeal from all parts of the Christian West. The rich archival material of the highest papal tribunal, the Sacra Romana Rota, testifies that thousands of Christians from all over Christendom turned to its authority. Most of the cases handled by the Rota (c. 80%) concerned litigations about ecclesiastical benefices between two or sometimes more candidates who thought that they would have the right to appointment to the position. But the Rota also handled other kinds of litigations. Approximately one case out of eight was litigation over property including property rights, debts, payments, or rights to certain income such as tithes of a certain territory for example. The medieval Rota handled also marital litigations, but they formed only a very small part of the tribunal’s activities (c. 1%). Additionally, the Rota handled a large spectrum of different kinds of miscellaneous cases ranging from cases relating to ecclesiastical authority and jurisdiction like rights of patronage or visitation, disputes about precedence, burial rights, and violence. Most of the last examples concerned inhabitants of the Church States, but not all.

Papal Administration as Well of Grace Alongside the ecclesiastical system of justice, the different offices within the papal curia could assist Christians in many different ways. In order to receive assistance from the papal administration, Christians or ecclesiastical institutions had to turn to the pope with a written request, called a supplication or petition. It is not known for certain how the different types of petitions directed to the pope were distributed to the correct papal office, but there must have been a clear practice for that in the curia. The clients of the papal curia were usually petitioning for absolutions, dispensations, licences, privileges, provisions, and other kinds of graces.20 Those Christians who had committed a sin and petitioned for pardon in the form of a papal absolution formed the majority of the persons who turned to the pope. The ecclesiastical system of absolving Christians from sins was organized hierarchically, and only a small part of Christians needed a papal absolution. Most sinners were absolved at the local level by their parish priests. The sins confessed to and absolved by the parish priests were usually less severe, such

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as cursing, opposing one’s parents, or petty theft, and the penance was fasting, praying, or giving alms. The parish priests could absolve their parishioners from most sins, but there were certain more severe sins, such as sodomy or incest, that only the local bishop could absolve. The confession to the bishop (or his deputy) took place in the local cathedral.21 Certain sins were considered so severe that their absolution was reserved to the popes: homicide or violence involving priests (either as victim or perpetrator) and apostasy. Since busy popes could not hear these confessions personally, they delegated the task to the curial officials. The Penitentiary took care of most of the cases, but the Apostolic Chancery and Datary granted papal absolutions too.22 The papal offices could also grant petitioners dispensations. A dispensation was a grace that relaxed a person from the requirement of canon law. The most common form of dispensation granted for laypeople was marital dispensation, which allowed a too closely related couple to get legally married. The members of the clergy or various monastic orders could apply for numerous different kinds of dispensations. Some of them were related to the regulations concerning ecclesiastical benefices, such as to the obligation to personally reside at the place of an ecclesiastical office, and some referred to personal irregularities of the clergymen such as being ordained priest before reaching the required age of 25 or despite being an illegitimate child. The authority to grant various papal dispensations for Christians was delegated to the Papal Penitentiary, the Apostolic Chancery, and (later) the Apostolic Dataria. Numerous Christians turned to the Curia also for receiving different kinds of faculties or licences that would allow them to do something that was not normally permitted by the ecclesiastical norms. The most common form of the special licence granted to Christians was the so-called confessional letter (littera confessionalia) that allowed the holder of the letter to choose freely his personal confessor. Another common type of papal licence allowed the Christians to eat meat or dairy products during the fasting periods. The papal officials could also grant Christians licences regarding the ecclesiastical celebrations or exercising one’s religion. Those, who were often travelling around, such as local rulers or mendicants, could receive a licence to carry a portable altar and to celebrate at any place, while priests could receive a licence to celebrate mass differently. A form of personal favour by the Holy See was to allow a priest to make a will and leave his personal property to whom he wanted. These graces are known as licentia testandi. The papal powers allowed the pontiffs to grant different kinds of privileges, usually to ecclesiastical institutions. Privileges were permanent concessions that allowed the recipient something that was outside the ecclesiastical norms. The spectrum of issues in which the pope could grant a privilege was huge. One very common type of papal privilege was the indulgence. The popes could also change the legal status or income of a church or a monastery through different kinds of privileges: to allow two parishes to be united, or by incorporating or annexing a parish to another parish or monastery. Ecclesiastical institutions also turned to the Holy See in order to receive a papal confirmation for an important legal decision.

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A great majority of graces granted by the papal administration concerned ecclesiastical positions, called benefices, more precisely appointments to them. After the Avignon popes had begun to accumulate to the hands of popes the right to grant provisions to benefices, the popes received an ever-growing number of petitions from clerics for being appointed to different benefices. The popes could grant three different types of provisions: with a standard provision (provisio) the pope appointed a candidate to a vacant position, with a so-called new provision (nova provisio) the pope confirmed an earlier appointment, and with a future or expectative provision (gratia expectativa) the pope granted the petitioner a right for the next vacant benefice in a church or a diocese. These petitions were t ypically handled by the Apostolic Chancery or Dataria.23

Conclusions The popes governed Christendom through a highly developed hierarchical system, which involved different administrative needs in different ways. The Consistory and papal legates took care of the diplomatic and political issues abroad, nuncios and collectors ensured that the papal revenues were collected from different Christian territories and sent to the Holy See, and local ecclesiastical administrators carried on the daily business regarding the cure of souls and diocese administration on behalf of the pontiff. In addition to this administration, which was usually executed locally, thousands and thousands of Christians came to the papal curia to plead their case. The papal curia consisted of different papal offices that well-defined tasks to serve the Christians who turned to the pope with a written request. The various papal offices could grant the petitioners absolutions, dispensations, licenses, privileges, and other kinds of graces, and the papal tribunals investigated the legal cases in which the Christians had appealed to the pope. Despite all complaints about corruption and delays in the papal administration, the medieval papal curia was a very well-functioning machine, which Christians could and did turn to whenever they needed something. The papal administration followed in their decision-making the regulations of canon law as well as the later papal legal additions such as the Chancery Regulations. These ensured that the decisions taken by papal officials were not arbitrary but always in line with ecclesiastical norms.

Notes 1 The medieval collections of canon law are edited by Aemilius Friedberg in two volumes of the Corpus Iuris Canonici (CIC). The first volume is the Decretum of Gratian and the second the Decretalium Collectiones. 2 Andreas Meyer, “Spätmittelalterliche päpstliche Kanzleiregeln,” in Von der Ordnung zur Norm: Statuten in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Gisela Drossbach (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2009), 95–108. 3 Concerning the Apostolic Chamber, cf. Paul Maria Baumgarten, Aus Kanzlei und Kammer. Erörterungen zur kurialen Hof- und Verwaltungsgeschichte im XIII., XIV. und XV.

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4

5

6 7 8

9

10

11

12

13 14

15

Jahrhundert (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1907); Guglielmo Felici, La Reverenda Camera Apostolica. Studio storico-giuridico (Vatican City: Tipografia poliglotta vaticana, 1940); Niccolò Del Re, La Curia Romana: lineamenti storico-giuridici (Rome: Edizione di storia e letteratura, 1998), 285–97. About the tribunal of the Apostolic Chamber, see Emil Göller, “Der Gerichtshof der päpstlichen Kammer und die Entstehung des Amtes des procurator fiscalis im kirchlichen Prozessverfahren,” Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht 94 (1914): 114−21. In the late Middle Ages, there was no such papal official as the chancellor. Originally, the cardinal leading the office was called the chancellor and his vice the vice chancellor. When Pope Honorius III in 1227 decided that the head of the Apostolic Chancery did not have to be a cardinal, the title of the head of the office became vice chancellor. This title remained in use also after 1325, when Pope John XXII decided to entrust the office to the cardinals. Del Re, La Curia Romana, 437–38. Concerning the Apostolic Chancery, cf. Baumgarten, Aus Kanzlei und Kammer; Christopher Robert Cheney, The Study of the Medieval Papal Chancery (Glasgow: Jackson, 1966); Thomas Frenz, Die Kanzlei der Päpste der Hochrenaissance (1471−1527) (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986); Del Re, La Curia Romana, 435–46. Stefan Killermann, Die Rota Romana. Wesen und Wirken des päpstlichen Gerichtshofes im Wandel der Zeit (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009), 78–79. Concerning the Signatura iustitiae, cf. Richard Puza, “Signatura iustitiae und commission. Ein Beitrag zum Processgang an der römischen Kurie in der Neuzeit,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung 64 (1978): 95−115. Concerning the Apostolic Dataria, cf. Del Re, La Curia Romana, 447–49; Léonce Celier, Les dataires du XVe siècle et les origines de la daterie apostolique (Paris: Fontemoing et cie, 1910); Nicola Storti, La storia e il diritto della dataria apostolica dalle origini ai nostri giorni (Napoli: Athena Mediterranea, 1968). Concerning the Papal Penitentiary, cf. Emil Göller, Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie von ihrem Ursprung bis zur ihrer Umgestaltung unter Pius V., I−II (Rom: Loescher, 1907−1911); Ludwig Schmugge, Patrick Hersperger and Béatrice Wiggenhauser. Die Supplikenregister der päpstlichen Pönitentiarie aus der Zeit Pius’ II. (1458−1464) (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996); Kirsi Salonen and Ludwig Schmugge, A Sip from the “Well of Grace”: Medieval Texts from the Apostolic Penitentiary (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). Concerning the Rota, cf. Nikolaus Hilling, Die römische Rota und das Bistum Hildesheim am Ausgang des Mittelalters (1464−1513). Hildesheimische Prozessakten aus dem Archiv der Rota zu Rom (Münster: Aschendorff, 1908); Per Ingesman, Provisioner og Processer. Den romerske Rota og dens behandling af danske sager i middelalderen (Århus: Aarhus universitetsforlag, 2003); Killermann, Die Rota Romana; Kirsi Salonen, Papal Justice in the Late Middle Ages. The Sacra Romana Rota (London and New York: Routledge, 2016). Concerning the Audientia Litterarum Contradictarum, cf. Peter Herde, Audientia litterarum contradictarum. Untersuchungen über die päpstlichen Justizbriefe und die päpstliche Delegationsgerichtsbarkeit vom 13. bis zum Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts, I−II (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1970). Brigide Schwarz, “Im Auftrag des Papstes: die päpstlichen Kursoren von ca. 1200 bis ca. 1470,” in Päpste, Pilger, Pönitentiarie. Festschrift für Ludwig Schmugge zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Andreas Meyer, Constanze Rendtel and Maria Wittmer-Butsch (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004), 49–71. Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787). Their History and Theology (Collegeville: Michael Glazier, 1990). Concerning the ecclesiastical councils, cf. Norman P. Tanner, The Councils of the Church. A Short History (New York: Herder, 2001); Christopher M. Bellitto, The General Councils. A History of the Twenty-One Church Councils from Nicaea to Vatican II (New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2002). Henri Leclercq, “Fourth Lateran Council (1215),” Catholic Encyclopedia 6 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909).

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Frenz, Thomas. Die Kanzlei der Päpste der Hochrenaissance (1471−1527). Tübingen: ­Niemeyer, 1986. Göller, Emil. Die päpstliche Pönitentiarie von ihrem Ursprung bis zur ihrer Umgestaltung unter Pius V, I−II. Rom: Loescher, 1907−1911. Göller, Emil. “Der Gerichtshof der päpstlichen Kammer und die Entstehung des Amtes des procurator fiscalis im kirchlichen Prozessverfahren.” Archiv für katholisches ­Kirchenrecht 94 (1914): 114−21. Herde, Peter. Audientia litterarum contradictarum. Untersuchungen über die päpstlichen Justizbriefe und die päpstliche Delegationsgerichtsbarkeit vom 13. bis zum Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts, I−II. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1970. Hilling, Nikolaus. Die römische Rota und das Bistum Hildesheim am Ausgang des Mittelalters (1464−1513). Hildesheimische Prozessakten aus dem Archiv der Rota zu Rom. Münster: Aschendorff, 1908. Ingesman, Per. Provisioner og Processer. Den romerske Rota og dens behandling af danske sager i middelalderen. Århus: Aarhus universitetsforlag, 2003. Killermann, Stefan. Die Rota Romana. Wesen und Wirken des päpstlichen Gerichtshofes im Wandel der Zeit. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009. Le Roux, Amandine. Servir le pape, le recrutement des collecteurs pontificaux dans le royaume de France et en Provence de la papauté d’Avignon à l’aube de la Renaissance (1316–1521). University of Paris: Unprinted doctoral thesis, 2011. Leclercq, Henri. “Fourth Lateran Council (1215).” Catholic Encyclopedia 6. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. Longère, Jean. “Confession.” In Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages 1, ed. André Vauchez, Richard Barrie Dobson and Michael Lapidge, 350–51. Chicago: Fritzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000. Meyer, Andreas. “Spätmittelalterliche päpstliche Kanzleiregeln.” In Von der Ordnung zur Norm: Statuten in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Gisela Drossbach, 95–108. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2009. Puza, Richard. “Signatura iustitiae und commission. Ein Beitrag zum Processgang an der römischen Kurie in der Neuzeit.” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung 64 (1978): 95−115. Rennie, Kriston R. The Foundations of Medieval Papal Legation. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013. Salonen, Kirsi. Papal Justice in the Late Middle Ages. The Sacra Romana Rota. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Salonen, Kirsi and Ludwig Schmugge. A Sip from the “Well of Grace”: Medieval Texts from the Apostolic Penitentiary. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Sayers, Jane E. Papal Judges Delegate in the Province of Canterbury, 1198–1254: A Study in Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Administration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. Schmugge, Ludwig, Patrick Hersperger, Patrick and Béatrice Wiggenhauser. Die Supplikenregister der päpstlichen Pönitentiarie aus der Zeit Pius’ II. (1458−1464). Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996. Schuchard, Christiane. Die päpstlichen Kollektoren im späten Mittelalter. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000. Schwarz, Brigide. “Im Auftrag des Papstes: die päpstlichen Kursoren von ca. 1200 bis ca. 1470.” In Päpste, Pilger, Pönitentiarie. Festschrift für Ludwig Schmugge zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Andreas Meyer, Constanze Rendtel and Maria Wittmer-Butsch, 49–71. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004. Storti, Nicola. La storia e il diritto della dataria apostolica dalle origini ai nostri giorni. Napoli: Athena Mediterranea, 1968.

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Tanner, Norman P. The Councils of the Church. A Short History. New York: Herder, 2001. Zutshi, Patrick N.R. “Inextricabilis curie labyrinthus: The Presentation of Petitions to the Pope in the Chancery and the Penitentiary during the Fourteenth and First Half of the Fifteenth Century.” In Päpste, Pilger, Pönitentiarie. Festschrift für Ludwig Schmugge zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Andreas Meyer, Constanze Rendtel and Maria Wittmer-Butsch, 393–410. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004.

11 THE GOVERNANCE OF HIGH MEDIEVAL NORWAY (C. 1100–1350) Hans Jacob Orning

How was medieval Norway governed? In a comparative perspective, three distinctive features of this area need to be addressed to begin with as what concerns the material foundation of the country. First, Norway is a large territory. It is more than 500 kilometers from Oslo westwards to Bergen or northwards to Trondheim over land, north of Trondheim distances are even bigger. It took several weeks to travel between these towns over land, at sea one could travel the distance in one week given that weather conditions were favorable.1 Second, most of the land is utterly infertile, consisting mostly of woods and mountains. Only around 2% of it is arable. These areas are mostly widely spread out, apart from three regions with larger proportions of arable lands: around Oslo and Trondheim, and in the southwest (Lista, Jæren).2 Third, Norway was primarily a maritime unit, gaining its name from the northern way along the coast. Well into the twentieth century, water connected people whereas land divided them  –  most municipal borders of today’s Norway stretch into fiords on both sides, irrespective of the roads that have turned the land into the new communication channel.3 As a consequence of these topographical conditions, medieval Norway was centered along the coast. The military duty, which was established in the late tenth century and laid the foundations of subsequent taxation and a medieval Norwegian state, was limited to coastal areas, and only some 300 years later was there an attempt to expand taxation into inland areas.4 Along the coast, some areas stood out as particularly central places, because they were strategically located, either as communication nodes and/or as centers for amassing agricultural surplus. Far back in Norwegian history, three such central areas can be identified: an eastern area centered around Oslo, a northern one with Trondheim (Nidaros) at its center, and a western region where Bergen emerged as the core.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-11

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Oslo and Nidaros were favorably located for collecting agricultural surplus for adjacent areas, Bergen owed most of its position to its trade and travel.5 Norway shared with the neighboring Denmark a maritime culture, but Denmark was far smaller and more fertile. Sweden only emerged later as a political realm, no doubt because today’s most central and fertile region – Skåne – was controlled by Danish kings, and since the two regions of Uppland and Gøtaland were separated by large stretches of forests.6 The three regional centers in what became Norway were not only separated by huge distances, they were also oriented in different directions during the Viking Age (c. 800–1050). Viken – the eastern part of Norway, was tightly integrated into the Danish orbit – which it continued to be for a long time.7 The western part was similarly involved in an intense maritime exchange with the British Isles, and played a pivotal role in the Viking expeditions.8 The northern part of Norway – Trøndelag – took part in this exchange, as trade with furs, walrus, and fish brought the region into contact with areas further south, but its core was in the far north – Fennoscandia where the Sami people lived.9 Thus, a  pertinent question to ask in the first place is why these regions became the foundation of a political realm at all. There are several reasons why these three centers became more tightly integrated into what came to be Norway in the Middle Ages. One is that the Danish dominance in southern Scandinavia disintegrated after the death of Knut the Powerful in 1035. King Knut had been able to build up an Empire in the first decades of the eleventh century that encompassed Denmark, Norway, and England, but his sudden and premature death with no single heir led to the rapid disintegration of his realm. In Norway, it opened up opportunities to liberate itself from the Danish grip, even for the Viken region which had a long prehistory in the Danish sphere of power. After the death of King Knut, it would take more than a century before a strong Danish monarchy was re-established, so that until the mid-twelfth century, Norway was allowed to develop relatively free of external pressures.10 Second, failed Danish and Norwegian attempts to conquer England after 1035, and England’s orientation toward continental Europe after 1066, diminished the westward orientation of Bergen and western Norway. Third, the establishment of Nidaros as the religious center of Norway following the death of King Olav the Saint in 1030 strengthened the links between Trøndelag and the other regions of Norway in a religious-political enterprise.11 From c. 1050 onwards, Norway constituted one political realm, but for centuries to come, the tripartite division of Norway would persist as a structural feature in the governance of the land. Moreover, starting in the fourteenth century, inter-Nordic alliances and unions would transcend national boundaries.12 The Norwegian state formation process in the Middle Ages followed a common trajectory for areas situated in the periphery of Europe. Around the turn of the first millennium, Norway was established as a kingdom with a half-mythical founder and, fairly simultaneously, the country was Christianized. After a period of political and religious consolidation, the country plunged into civil war in

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the twelfth century, which led to a more stable Norwegian kingdom in the latter thirteenth century, where territorial expansion went along with a firmer institutional organization of the monarchy.13 Denmark went through the same sequences, albeit usually a bit earlier, given its central position as a bridgehead between the rest of Scandinavia and continental Europe.14 Sweden lagged somewhat behind given its peripheral position (today’s southern Sweden was Danish), in particular in the early phases.15 Iceland lacked a king until the country was subordinated to Norway in 1262/1264, but went through similar phases.16 In addition to parallel internal developments toward greater centralization and “Europeanization,” interaction between the Nordic realms was substantial.17 In Eastern Europe, Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary display much of the same pattern as the Nordic countries, although the proximity to The Holy-Roman Empire put this region under more strain than Scandinavia.18 The big picture of these political trends of state formation and center-periphery dynamics has been convincingly provided by Robert Bartlett, and more recently by Chris Wickham.19 It is not my intention to challenge these accounts, which are highly useful because they draw up the main patterns so as to make sense of the complex reality of the past. However, there are some dangers in focusing on the central European trends as a type of blueprint from where to observe individual developments. First, a center-periphery perspective prioritizes commonalities in development, which can come at the expense of individual traits, and generally underestimate the local and regional forces and peculiarities working against accommodation to a common pattern. Second, a  focus on a common European development often has served as a starting point for viewing the Middle Ages as the cradle of modernity, where the prime issue is to trace back modern institutions to their medieval origins.20 My intention is not to undermine such approaches to European history or to associate the impressive syntheses of Bartlett and Wickham with untenable teleology. To put it simply, my aim in this article is to adopt an alternative approach for studying the governance of medieval Norway. I will be looking not so much for the way that governance evolved during the high M iddle Ages as for enigmas and inconsistencies that characterized governance in the whole period. Moreover, there will be less emphasis on tracing the assimilation of European trends than on local and regional idiosyncrasies. My point of departure is that given the topographical restraints and the lack of major technological advances in the Middle Ages, one should put weight on the constancies and continuities of governance in the period. One such constant relates to the tyranny of distance, and – connected with that – to the need for intermediaries in governing larger territories. I will make my point by looking more closely into three cases of governance of peripheries in medieval Norway stemming from c. 1100, 1200, and 1300 respectively. The advantage of a case-based approach is that it allows for a deeper analysis within the restricted space of an article. The fuller picture, as well as the competing picture of evolution during the period, must necessarily remain in the background, though the discussion will of course take both continuity and change, centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, into account.

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Governance c. 1100 Around 1050 the Viking Age came to an end. In the following century, Norway experienced little interference from Denmark, and there was less violent fighting than in the previous century. A rudimentary kingdom had been established, where the king governed through alliances with powerful local magnates labeled lenðir menn [lendmen], as well as having more low-status men called ármenn [årmen] administering the royal farms. These circa 50 farms were concentrated in the three centers mentioned previously, and the kings and their retinues traveled between them for material and political reasons. The fact that there was relatively little outright fighting in the 100 years from c. 1050 to 1150 does not mean that conditions were peaceful. For about half of this century two or more kings shared in governing the realm of Norway in an arrangement called joint rule. The kings could be brothers taking over after their deceased father, or they could be more distant relatives. This followed the custom of dividing property equally between sons, which also was a principle in the laws. A common feature of this informal arrangement was that the relationship between co-rulers was often strained. An earlier generation of scholars interpreted joint rulership as an inherently unstable institution, which sooner or later had to recede in favor of sole monarchy.21 More recent historiography has emphasized that the division of power was a practical way of solving the challenges of controlling a large territory and that the skirmishes between co-rulers were not necessarily so grave.22 Regardless, it meant that governance easily became embroiled in the endemic rivalry between co-rulers. An example comes from 1095, just after King Håkon (r. 1093–1095) had died suddenly from a hunting wound, leaving his cousin Magnus Barefoot (r.  1093–1103) as the only remaining king. The relationship between the two kings had been extremely bad during their two years of co-rule, but they had not fought one another openly. After Håkon’s death, some of his former supporters north in the country launched a rival king, but they were easily put down. From those who had not rebelled, Magnus required that they should come to him and bow to him. In the region Elv, bordering toward Sweden in the south-east, a man called Sveinke Steinarsson had been a royal lendman, and a friend of the deceased King Håkon. Sveinke had not come to Magnus to declare his allegiance after Håkon’s death, and Magnus therefore wanted to expel Sveinke from his territories unless he was willing to yield. The story is told in Morkinskinna, a kings’ saga written in the early thirteenth century in northern Iceland.23 Written by an Icelander more than a century after the events make the source not totally trustworthy to the events it recounts. Moreover, the saga author had a proclivity for good stories and bold statements, so we must infer that the event is not told historically accurately in every detail. However, the overarching theme of how to rule locally in a peripheral area is probably rendered in a plausible way.24 King Magnus sent a delegation led by three lendmen from adjacent areas to Sveinke in Elv with the goal of making him submit or quit. Sveinke however

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came to the meeting with a superior force and behaved arrogantly and repellently. The delegation returned to the king, who prepared to sail to Elv himself. Yet even faced with the king, Sveinke wanted to take up the fight rather than to flee. Now the lendmen in the royal entourage from the vicinity approached Sveinke and tried to placate him. First, they argued, they were friends both of the king and of him, and they offered to establish a foster-brotherhood with him and to guard his properties while he was gone. And if you come back to your properties, as we expect, you shall never pay tax unless it is your will to do so. We will utilize both our lives and our goods to get our way with the king.25 Now Sveinke yielded, “because of you, and not because of the king,” and he went abroad for three years.26 With Sveinke gone, a lendmen called Kolbein took care of his former properties, which “were labeled the king’s properties.” 27 However, soon thereafter “criminals and thieves” started harassing and bothering people living in Elv, since the area was without an efficient leader. 28 So bad did things become that the king had no other choice than to ask Sveinke to return back home. Now it was Sveinke’s turn to gloat, and he did not comply until the king himself traveled to Denmark to implore him to come back. “Now Sveinke returned to his properties and became a powerful defense for King Magnus’ kingdom. Their friendship remained steady for the rest of their lifetime,” the saga concludes. 29 This story in Morkinskinna is steeped in literary tropes. The meeting between Sveinke and the royal officials is described in an exaggerated manner, where hostilities and statements take on a truly literary character. The relentless attitude of both parties is without flaw, as is their obligingness as soon as the tide turns. Moreover, the contrast between the order in Elv during Sveinke’s presence and the chaos as soon as he disappears seems overstated. However, the underlying themes are interesting and probably historically relevant despite the literariness of their presentation. This is a story about how to govern a territory. The explicit moral of the story is that King Magnus got his way. The implicit message, however, is that the area needed intermediaries and that the king normally had little say in this. Without local leaders, communities were vulnerable to attacks from outside, and probably also to internal competition. Kings could exalt themselves with an ideology promoting submission, and they did not depend on Christian notions about humility and hierarchy to deliver this message. King Magnus played on honor and notions of respect to force Sveinke to yield. However, in practice kings needed to accommodate to the actual terrain. Here the neighboring lendmen played a particularly interesting role as mediators. Behind the curtain, they could evoke a whole train of friendship notions to ameliorate the royal demand for subordination, and these notions evolved around reciprocal arrangements between parties that considered one another as equals. Interestingly, the king

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acceded to their negotiated solution with Sveinke, even if it departed radically from the king’s initial stance. Sveinke was no typical lendman due to his substantial power and his power base at the outskirts of the Norwegian territory. There are few stories as dramatic as the one about Sveinke’s resistance to King Magnus. However, the key role of local magnates in governance, and their precarious affiliation to the royal cause, is a common thread also in less dramatic episodes. Lendmen were primarily local magnates, and their loyalty to kings was dependent on context, and often wavering. Årmen had stronger connections to the king, given that they lived on – and off – his farms, and had lower status themselves, but the latter also implied that their support was of more limited value for the kings as a vehicle for controlling territories. For them, the key to control laid in the relation to lendmen, and numerous other cases show that lendmen were not intent on succumbing to the king unless they themselves wanted to and got something in return.30 Killing such magnates for their defiance was utterly risky business, which could lead to the downfall of kings. Ousting them and trying to install new leaders was likewise a fraught strategy that could easily backfire. In particular in situations where there were numerous kings, the strategic power struggle to attract adherents gave these lendmen substantial power as intermediaries between kings and localities who could only be coerced to a very limited degree.31

Governance c. 1200 In the mid-twelfth century, the uneasy cooperation between co-rulers escalated into outright enmity between contenders in what has been termed “civil wars” in Norway, and which was to last until 1240. The transition has been regarded as a watershed in Norwegian historiography in that peace was replaced by war, and war became a motor driving the state formation process further.32 The transition itself is easy to pinpoint, as in 1134 a battle was fought between the co-rulers Magnus the Blind and Harald Gille, which was the first battle between Norwegian contenders since the battle of Stiklestad in 1030. The following century witnessed around 30 battles, a high rate also by European standards.33 During this period, kings gained firmer control over the realm also at a local level. Here the untrustworthy lendmen and low-status årmen were replaced by a new office of sýslumenn [syslemen]. These men combined the high standing of lendmen and the loyalty of the former årmen. However, much of the information on this development derives from laws and ideological sources which tend to exaggerate the scope of royal power and to depict ideal claims more than real practices. In order to find out how this worked in practice, we need to consult the kings’ sagas again. For information on the period after 1177, the classical kings’ sagas  –  Morkinskinna and Heimskringla – terminate, and the so-called contemporary kings’ sagas take over – Sverris saga, Böglunga sögur and Hákonar saga Hárkonarsonar covering the period 1177–1263. Whereas these sagas are closer to the events they recount, they are more biased than the previous ones, as they

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were probably written on commission of the royal dynasty.34 Yet they are the best – and indeed only  –  option we have to get closer to local governance of Norway around 1200. Let us return to the area of Viken where Sveinke had lived 100 years earlier. In 1200, Sverre Sigurdsson had been king for more than two decades. He had arrived from the Faroes in 1177 and managed to establish himself in Trøndelag in the northern part of Norway with an armed group called the Birchlegs. However, they faced persistent opposition, and it was particularly strong in Viken, especially after an armed group called the Croziers was established there in 1196. The Croziers moreover had the support of the Pope, who had Sverre banned and placed Norway under interdict. Sverre made few serious attempts at gaining control in Viken, but the situation changed after he won a decisive victory against the Croziers in Oslo in March 1200.35 Sverre wanted to reap the fruits of the victory by showing up along the coastal areas of Viken with a huge fleet, demanding that the peasants meet with the king and declare their submission – symbolized by paying taxes and fines for their resistance.36 Confronted with the king’s threat to burn down their homesteads, many of the peasants showed up, but a quite large proportion of them did not turn up. One explanation may be that the peasants considered the taxes and fines imposed by the king so high that it would ruin them, possibly also that they did not believe that the king would implement his threats of burning. Yet, the most important cause for the peasants’ absence was that they were intent to wait for the Croziers to come to their rescue. This consideration was openly alleged by the saga author, probably because he wanted to make the point that the Croziers broke with these expectations as they did not turn up. However, after Sverre had left, the Croziers did, in fact, come back and reestablished their relations with the peasants. As in the first episode from c. 1100, the king’s attempt to gain control over Viken hinged on his relationship with local leaders. He could surely turn up with an overwhelming force and demand obedience, but the ensuing relation was of little worth unless bolstered by other means – either a sustained presence or through concessions to the local leaders. Sverre did none of those things, as he departed quickly without making any serious attempt to reconcile with the peasants or the Croziers. Hence his control over this region proved short-lived. We get to know more about local conditions in this area from a similar situation five years later, after Sverre’s death, which is described in the relatively more sober Böglunga sögur. Once again, the Croziers were squeezed by the Birchlegs in this region after a large Birchleg fleet had arrived in Viken, taking possession of the area. Unlike in 1200, however, the Croziers avoided a pitched battle, and instead sought refuge in Denmark or simply hid away. In wintertime, they returned undercover to their homes and made appointments with the local peasants to build ships so that they could withstand and possibly conquer the Birchlegs. The enterprise was undertaken by named magnates along the Viken coast and resulted in a navy of 22 ships.37 The saga specifies that these leaders were syslemen, and thus officials appointed by the Crozier king. The initiative

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proved successful not only in regaining hegemony in Viken, but also in attacking the Birchlegs through a surprise attack in the spring. Local governance could be highly efficient, but as the latter case demonstrates, it all depended on the king’s relationship to local leaders and their interests. Who were these local leaders? Were they primarily local chieftains, as Sveinke a 100 years before, or had they evolved into “royal servants,” as stated by numerous historians?38 In order to find out about this, we need to investigate how closely they were attached to the king, which in this period above all is a question of how involved they were in the group that accompanied the king on war expeditions. There are some signs that the armed groups became more professionalized, consisting of soldiers who spent most of their time following and fighting for the king. However, this probably concerned rank-and-file soldiers, who put their destiny in the hands of the king. The military leaders had more resources by themselves as local magnates and probably combined their roles with no big effort. The kings’ sagas give the impression that the groups were fighting continuously, but this image is mainly a result of a saga proclivity to recount action and to ignore more mundane affairs. There were large breaks in the warfare, probably because it would be impossible for most of the warriors to be away from home for longer intervals, in particular during sowing and harvesting.39 Compared to in the first episode, local leaders were now more involved with the king than 100 years before – whether that was with the Birchleg king or the Crozier king. They were often appointed syslemen, which meant that they were royal officials. More importantly, they had more contact with the king than before, primarily as supporters and participants in armed manoeuvers which took up considerable time. However, they had not gone from local magnates to royal servants, as they retained their role as local patrons. They still played crucial roles as intermediaries between kings and local communities, without whose support kings would get nowhere. Moreover, their crucial role as links to local communities and as military leaders was reflected in a reciprocal relationship to the king, where their advice was highly esteemed, and their participation a matter of negotiation, not command.

Governance c. 1300 In 1240, the civil wars in Norway came to an end when King Håkon Håkonsson (r. 1217–1263) conquered his last internal rival. Thereafter, no major internal struggles occurred in Norway, which entered into a phase of external expansion into the Atlantic, where Iceland, Greenland, and several Western Isles became part of the Norwegian commonwealth.40 Moreover, royal control over the realm was strengthened through an increased administrative apparatus, nation-wide legislation, and a partial transformation of the military duty into common taxation.41 Syslemen became firmly established as royal officials with specific duties in particular areas.– The National law of 1274 by King Magnus Lawmender (r. 1263–1280) transformed all inhabitants into royal subjects of a unified realm,

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whereas they had formerly been termed as the king’s “friends” in differing regional law districts.42 Gerd Althoff has remarked that in the Middle Ages, “ideal and reality existed as two separate realms that one did not even try to bring into resonance.”43 Thus, we should not take it for granted that the changes that occurred on the formal institutional level trickled down to the practical level of everyday governance, but rather make this our point of investigation. Whereas the National law laid down a uniform, universal relationship between the king and subjects, law amendments were issued in the following decades to specify matters that were not sufficiently precise in The National law, or as responses to particular concerns that had arisen. In the late thirteenth century, Håkon Magnusson was a younger brother of King Eirik (r. 1280–1299), and he served as duke of Viken until he took over as king after his brother’s death. Both as duke and king, Håkon used law amendments actively to govern his realm. 44 In 1297, he issued a law amendment for the peasants from Hadeland, an inland region situated on the eastern shores of the lake Mjøsa. It started as follows: We expect that most people know of the great and outrageous offence that the people of Hadeland committed by banding together in disobedience against us and our authority. According to the laws of the land and all justice, you deserved to lose your property and lives because of this. But because you came to us and, as could be expected, humbly asked for mercy and forgiveness, and it is known to God and the best men who are closest to us that we are willing to do what is useful and beneficial for the common people, unless we are compelled too strongly to do otherwise, we therefore announce to all men that, for the sake of God and the souls of our father and mother, we have, at the request of the best men, abandoned our anger against them and made them free and without liability in this matter […].45 Here we observe in full the royal ideology of a rex iustus – a Christian king whose prime duty was to make sure that the laws were obeyed and justice prevailed.46 A king acted as a representative of God, and should strive to govern the realm in accordance with heavenly justice. In this position he could demand obedience from all subjects, a concept that we hardly find traces of in Old Norse sources prior to the late thirteenth century. 47 The king should react to offenses by meting out punishments that reflected the nature of the misdeed. However, again in parallel with his divine office, there was always an option for the offender to regret and appeal to the king’s mercy. In this case from Hadeland, the king ended up forgiving the subjects, but as they had done wrong they did not receive equally favorable terms as more obedient subjects. In the ideologically fused language of the law amendment, there was little mention of what the peasants of Hadeland had actually done when “banding together in disobedience against us and our authority.” Even less was offered in

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terms of an explanation for why the peasants had rebelled. The crucial issue was that rebelling was illegal, immoral, and condemnable in itself. In order to find out about the real, underlying causes for the peasants’ behavior, we have to go to other sources. What they tell us is that duke Håkon had tried to introduce a new tax in this inland region. This tax was small compared to the tax paid by people along the coast, but the decisive issue is that this is probably the first attempt to tax inland peasants in Norwegian history.48 Hence, the bone of contention between duke Håkon and the Hadeland peasants was an economical one, which probably had strong political overtones, as acknowledging the king’s right to tax could open up further demands in the future. In light of this, it is not surprising that the peasants mustered fierce resistance to the duke. When delving deeper into the case, we actually see that the legal process described in the law amendment from duke Håkon aligns remarkably well with the traditional ways of settling conflicts. In spite of the duke’s harsh words about obedience and outlawry, the actual sentence was far more lenient. In Christian terms, this could be justified with reference to the duty to give mercy to a repentant sinner, but if fitted equally well with settlements where the central issue was to find a balance between the parties involved – “giving each his due,” as Fredrik Cheyette formulated it.49 What we can observe in the law amendments is a ruler who attuned his rewards and punishments to the behavior of his subjects. The duke specified that he had shown mercy to the Hadeland inhabitants, “even though they do not deserve it as much as the people of Romerike, who have always shown us benevolence in obedience and subservience with great fidelity.”50 The status of the subjects was reflected in the paragraphs that followed, which were surely good, but not as good as those of the Romerike peasants. In addition, the law amendment contains two points that somehow depart from the ideology of the rex iustus. One is the reference to “the best men who are closest to us” and “the request of the best men” in finding a solution. “The best men” is a label for leading men of the realm who were close to the king and acted as his councilors. 51 Yet such men had no part in the Christian ideology, where the king ultimately stood alone with the responsibility. As such, the specifications about “best men” can be seen as an expression of a more secular variant of the royal ideology, where the king was expected to consult powerful men before making important decisions. The second caveat concerns the recipients of the law amendment. The law addressed the collective of inhabitants in the region (“people of Hadeland”), in accordance with the legal principle that laws were acclaimed at assemblies where all free peasants met. The laws allowed that there were differences between men, as shown in wergild stipulations, but on the whole magnates and chieftains had no privileged position in the laws. Their presence and vote counted as much as that of an ordinary peasant, and the laws prohibited any type of coercion. 52 This was however an illusion, to be sure, when it came to real power, and beneath the collective of the inhabitants in the law amendment for Hadeland we do notice that the leaders and initiators were properly identified and punished for their

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actions, as it stipulated that the royal mercy was granted with “the exception of those who were the leaders and instigators of this disobedience.”53 Hence, even if the region and its people were named and perceived of as a collective, such localities had their leaders, and they were still closely attached to their community, building their authority from below. The king who questioned and challenged their position was still in trouble, even if he could muster more troops than before, and even appoint governors that owed their allegiance to him. Who were these local leaders who opposed duke Håkon and were punished? Were they royal officials, local magnates or both? On the one hand, to judge from their punishment it seems that they were “big peasants” in local communities who had informal leading positions without necessarily being connected to royal service. On the other hand, as emphasized by Dørum, around 1300 most leading local men were also attached to the king as his officials.54 If we accept this, we should not separate too strictly between local and royal leaders, but instead ask in what ways they acted as local leaders, and in what ways they represented the monarchy. This issue was a pressing one in this period, because numerous law amendments complain about syslemen abusing their power. The historian Andreas Holmsen concluded from the repetition of such complaints that the syslemen were the weak point in the state: “The royal power and the good of the people is but two sides of the same case, the behavior of the syslemen has rendered both an illusion.”55 Holmsen definitely addresses an urgent issue in medieval society: how to reach out to the peripheries of a large realm when possibilities of control are limited? Håkon did his best to secure this, and one of the first things he did as king was to promulgate a law that all sentences in grave crimes should be written down, and that all royal income should be reported to regional coroners.56 However, by attributing all guilt for the malfunctions of the royal system to the local officials, Holmsen pointed in the wrong direction. One shortcoming in his analysis relates to what the legal amendments labeled as abuse. A lot of these so-called abuses concerned the practice of making private settlements in conflicts instead of taking the case to court for a verdict. For the king this implied less royal income, as the king had a share in all fines for grave offences. The peasants perceived this differently. Taking a case to court was time-consuming, expensive, and risky. A far more flexible strategy than to try to conquer an opponent through the legal system was to strike a compromise where both sides’ grievances were taken into account. Such was the way that most conflicts were solved in Freestate Iceland, and there is no reason to assume that things were different in Norway.57 The king not only lacked the capacity to control his officials, in the last instance he also lacked the will to do so. Kings could state solemnly that their main duty was to govern justly and see that the law was respected, yet in practice they also had to secure the support of “the best men who are closest to us.” In order to do so, the king had to give them something. The most important resource the king disposed of was royal offices. A more proper label would be rewards or benefices. Syslemen surely acted as the king’s representative in local communities and were

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privileged with the task of collecting royal revenues. However, as stated by Lars Hermanson, delegating power also meant sharing power. 58 Offices were sources of income rather than bureaucratic positions. As such, they were rewards for loyalty and means to secure future loyalty and support, on which the king was as dependent now as earlier. Kings were still dependent on local magnates for governing the realm. It was just the tone, the vocabulary, and the ideology that had changed.

Conclusion: Governing Medieval Norway The governance of Norway changed notably during the high Middle Ages, as demonstrated in these three case studies from c. 1100, 1200, and 1300. Governance of local communities started out as an issue of establishing individual relationships with powerful local big men and ended up addressing a collective of local men, sometimes even without names. Moreover, the allegiances of local leaders changed substantially during these centuries. Sveinke Steinarsson had a relationship with individual kings, and it had to be renegotiated and indeed carefully crafted with a new king, as there was an exit option of serving no kings for a powerful local magnate. Such opportunities were largely gone toward the end of the period. Resistance definitely occurred, but now within the confines of a  kingdom, where the normal case was that local leaders were attached to the king. Now also the links between the king and the community had been strengthened. Around 1300, kings acted as the guarantors for the provision of justice with representatives in local communities to secure that the laws were upheld. However, this is not the whole story, as we have seen. Magnates were serving as intermediaries between kings and local communities, and the king was no less dependent on them than vice versa. These leaders did not transform from local chieftains to royal servants – they combined the roles, and this ambiguity of functions was as natural to medieval people as it is troubling for us. When we look for contrasts between public and private spheres and interests, medieval people knew that these were but two sides of the same coin. The historian Grethe Authén Blom wrote that the proliferation of law amendments and other charters from the fourteenth century onwards shows that “the monarchical ideal structure with accountability and control from above dissolved in the fourteenth century.”59 In my view, there never existed such a “monarchical ideal structure” in any other place than on the writing desk. Instead of viewing law a mendments complaining about abuse of power as a sign of royal decay as Holmsen and Blom do, I think that we should reverse the interpretation. Royal concessions did not hollow out the universality of The National law, they inversely represented attempts to increase control – albeit on the foundation of a realistic scenario that each group and individual needed to be treated separately in their own premises. However, the double allegiance of royal officials persisted, and it probably also increased in the late Middle Ages, due to a combination of fewer people, less income and the king being further away. This was not to change until the

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king had amassed more resources – in Norway after the confiscation of Church land following the Reformation, and after his need for income had exploded as a result of the inter-Nordic wars from the sixteenth century onwards. But that is another story.

Notes 1 For a discussion of travel distance and time, see Steen, Ferd og fest. 2 On the topography of Norway and its impact on agriculture, see Myhre and Øye, Norges landbrukshistorie 1. 3 The reason that the coast was so important for communication, contrasting with places like the Biscaya bay, is that most parts of the Norwegian coast are easily traversable, as it is dotted with islands providing shelter and fiords taking one far into the country. Only some places along the coast had dangerous open ocean stretches. If one takes the fiords into account, Norway has the second longest coastline in the world after Canada. 4 Ersland and Holm, Norsk forsvarshistorie 1; Steinnes, Gamal skatteskipnad i Noreg. 5 On the prehistory of these centers, see Myhre, “Chieftain’s graves and chiefdom territories in South Norway in the Migration Period.” On the role of the towns, see Helle, Norsk byhistorie. 6 A useful but fairly traditional version of the basic outlines of the Nordic countries is rendered in Helle, Kouri and Olesen, The Cambridge History of Scandinavia: Prehistory to 1520. 7 Myhre, Før Viken ble Norge. 8 Sigurðsson, Skandinavia i vikingtiden (forthcoming in English on Cornell University Press). 9 Hansen and Olsen, Samenes historie 1. 10 Bjørgo, Selvstendighet og union. 11 Imsen, Ecclesia Nidrosiensis 1153–1537; Imsen, “Ecclesia Nidrosiensis” and “Noregs veldi. Bagge, Cross & Scepter. 12 Bagge, From Viking Stronghold to Christian Kingdom. 13 14 Fenger, “Kirker rejses alle vegne”; Bregnsbo and Villads Jensen, Det danske imperium. Line, Kingship and State Formation in Sweden. 15 16 Sigurðsson, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth; Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking; Jakobsson, “The Process of State-Formation in Medieval Iceland.” 17 Sawyer and Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia; Bagge, Cross & Scepter. 18 Berend, Urbanczyk and Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages. A comparison between medieval Poland and Norway is the theme of a research project, see https://www.hf.uio.no/iakh/english/research/projects/legitimization-of-the-elitesin-medieval-poland-and-norway/. 19 Bartlett, The Making of Europe; Wickham, Medieval Europe. 20 See for instance Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State. More sociologically minded long-term narratives include Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European states; Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism; Mann, The Sources of Social Power 1. 21 See for instance Holmsen, Norges historie, who promoted the so-called “spark”-theory that only a minor conflict was needed to transform joint rule into civil war. Bjørgo argued that joint rule was more stable than it seems, see Bjørgo, “Samkongedøme kontra einekongedøme, “ but was criticized by Bagge, “Samkongedømme og enekongedømme.” 22 See Orning, “Conflict and social (dis)order in Norway, c. 1030–1160.” For the ensuing debate, see Bagge, “Borgerkrig og statsutvikling – svar til Hans Jacob Orning;” Orning, “Hvorfor vant kongene?” On the stability in ruling through a collective of dynastic members in medieval Poland, but also more generally, see Dalewski, “Family Business: Dynastic Power in Central Europe in the Earlier Middle Ages.”

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­

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Cheyette, Fredric L. “Suum Cuique Tribuere.” In Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein and Lester K. Little, 287–99. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. Dalewski, Zbigniew. “Family Business: Dynastic Power in Central Europe in the Earlier Middle Ages.” Viator 46, no. 1 (2015): 43–59. https://doi.org/10.1484/j. viator.5.103500. Den Eldre Gulatingslova. Ed. Tor Ulset, Magnus Rindal and Bjørn Eithun. Norrøne tekster, vol. 6. Oslo: Riksarkivet, 1994. Dørum, Knut. “Romerike og riksintegreringen: Integreringen av Romerike i det norske rikskongedømmet i perioden ca. 1000–1350.” Historisk institutt, Det historiskfilosofiske fakultet, Universitetet i Oslo. Unipub, 2004. Ersland, Geir Atle and Terje H. Holm. Norsk Forsvarshistorie, vol. 1. Bergen: Vigmostad og Bjørke, 2000. Fenger, Ole. “Kirker Rejses Alle Vegne”: 1050–1250, vol. B. 4. København: Gyldendals Bogklubber, 1993. France, John. Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Hansen, Lars Ivar and Bjørnar Olsen. Samenes historie. Fram til 1750, vol. 1. Oslo: Cappelen akademisk forlag, 2004. Helle, Knut. Gulatinget og Gulatingslova. Leikanger: Skald, 2001. Helle, Knut. Konge og gode menn i norsk riksstyring ca. 1150–1319. Scandinavian University Books. Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1972. Helle, Knut. Norge blir en stat: 1130–1319. 2. utg, vol. B. 3. Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1974. Helle, Knut. Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år. Oslo: Pax, 2006. Helle, Knut, E.I. Kouri and Jens E. Olesen. The Cambridge History of Scandinavia: Prehistory to 1520. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Hermanson, Lars. Släkt, vänner och makt: En studie av elitens politiska kultur i 1100-talets Danmark. Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet, 2000. Holmsen, Andreas. Norges historie: Fra de eldste tider til 1660. 4. utg. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1977. Holmsen, Andreas. “Sentrum og periferi: Konge, stormenn og bønder under Magnus Lagabøte og hans sønner.” In Nye studier i gammel historie, ed. Andreas Holmsen, 159–79. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1976. Imsen, Steinar (ed.) Ecclesia Nidrosiensis 1153–1537: Søkelys på Nidaroskirkens og Nidarosprovinsens historie. Skrifter – Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet. Senter for Middelalderstudier, vol. 15. Trondheim: Tapir akademisk forlag, 2003. Imsen, Steinar (ed.) “Ecclesia Nidrosiensis” and “Noregs Veldi”: The Role of the Church in the Making of Norwegian Domination in the Norse World. Rostra Books – Trondheim Studies in History, vol. 3. Trondheim: Akademika Publishing, 2012. Imsen, Steinar (ed.) Rex Insularum: The King of Norway and His “Skattlands” as a Political System C. 1260 – C. 1450. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2014. Jakobsson, Ármann. A Sense of Belonging: Morkinskinna and Icelandic Identity, C.1220. The Viking Collection, vol. 22. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2014. Jakobsson, Sverrir. “The Process of State-Formation in Medieval Iceland.” Viator 40, no. 2 (2009): 151–70. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.viator.1.100426. http://www.brepolsonline. net/doi/abs/10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.100426. Line, Philip. Kingship and State Formation in Sweden, 1130–1290. The Northern World, vol. 27. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Lunden, Kåre. Norge under Sverreætten, 1177–1319: Høymiddelalder. Norges Historie. Oslo: Cappelen, 1976.

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Magnus Lagabøters Landslov. Ed. Absalon Taranger. Scandinavian University Books. [3. oppl.]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1962. Mann, Michael. The Sources of Social Power: Vol. 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Miller, William Ian. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Morkinskinna: The Earliest Icelandic Chronicle of the Norwegian Kings (1030–1157). Ed. Theodore M. Andersson and Kari Ellen Gade. Islandica, vol. 51. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. Moseng, Ole Georg, Erik Opsahl, Gunnar I. Pettersen and Erling Sandmo. Norsk historie 1: 750–1537. 2. utg. Vol. 1. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2007. Munch, P. A. and R. Keyser (eds.) Norges gamle love indtil 1387: 3 – Lovgivningen efter Kong Magnus Haakonssøns død 1280 indtil 1387. Christiania: Chr. Grøndahl, 1849. Myhre, Bjørn. “Chieftain’s Graves and Chiefdom Territories in South Norway in the Migration Period.” Studien zur Sachsenforschung 6 (1987): 169–87. Myhre, Bjørn. Før Viken ble Norge: Borregravfeltet som religiøs og politisk arena. Norske Oldfunn. Vol. 31. Tønsberg: Vestfold fylkeskommune, 2015. Myhre, Bjørn and Ingvild Øye. Norges Landbrukshistorie 1: 4000 f.Kr. – 1350 e.Kr. Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget, 2002. Orning, Hans Jacob. “Conflict and Social (Dis)Order in Norway, C. 1030–1160.” In Disputing Strategies in Medieval Scandinavia, ed. Lars Hermanson Kim Esmark, Hans Jacob Orning and Helle Vogt, 45–82. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Orning, Hans Jacob. “Hvorfor vant kongene?” Historisk tidsskrift 94, no. 02 (2015): ­285–92. http://www.idunn.no/ht/2015/02/hvorfor_vant_kongene. Orning, Hans Jacob. Unpredictability and Presence: Norwegian Kingship in the High Middle Ages. The Northern World. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Sawyer, Birgit and P. H. Sawyer. Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation, Circa 800–1500. The Nordic Series, vol. 17. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Sigurðsson, Jón Viðar. Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth. The Viking Collection, vol.12. Odense: Odense University Press, 1999. Sigurðsson, Jón Viðar. Skandinavia i vikingtiden. Oslo: Pax, 2017 (forthcoming Cornell University Press, 2022). Sigurðsson, Jón Viðar. Viking Friendship: The Social Bond in Iceland and Norway, C. ­900–1300. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. Steen, Sverre. Ferd og fest: Reiseliv i norsk sagatid og middelalder. Oslo: Frydenlunds bryggeri, 1929. Steinnes, Asgaut. Gamal skatteskipnad i Noreg. Oslo: Dybwad, 1933. Strayer, Joseph R. On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State. Princeton Paperbacks. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973. Sverris saga. Ed. Þorleifur Hauksson. Íslenzk fornrit, vol. B. 30. Reykjavík: Hið íslenska fornritafélag, 2007. Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990–1990. Studies in Social Discontinuity. Rev. paperback. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1992. Tobiassen, Torfinn. “Tronfølgelov og privilegiebrev.” In Samfunnsmaktene brytes, ed. Andreas Holmsen and Jarle Simensen. Norske historikere I utvalg, 216–93. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969. Wickham, Chris. Medieval Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016.

12 KYIVAN RUS A Complicated Kingdom Christian Raffensperger

The medieval kingdom of Rus is relatively new in terms of the historiography. For decades it has been known as a principality, duchy, or series of either of those. One recent book has even called it “a mafia-like network of merchants and warlords.”1 Nevertheless, as I argued recently it was a kingdom, and known as such to its neighbors at the time, and it is really only modern historians who have decided, for modern reasons, to degrade its status to something else.2 Whether kingdom or polity (political entity) if one prefers, the governmental structure of Rus has been little written about in Anglophone scholarship. It has been touched on in surveys of the whole of Rus,3 as well as in regional surveys,4 and there has been a great deal written about succession practices.5 But as for the nitty-gritty details of how medieval Rus was ruled, there is not much scholarship, especially in English. In large part this is simply because the source base for Rus in the eleventh and twelfth centuries is pretty thin and confined to just a few internal sources. The external sources, which I have used in much of my work to talk about dynastic marriage, foreign conflicts, trade, etc. do not go into much detail about how governance worked within the kingdom of Rus.6 Thus, we are left with the internal sources. This examination of governance then will lean into that difficulty and focus on three particular sources which describe eleventh- and early twelfth-century Rus from three different perspectives. The most general, and often used, of the three sources is called the Povest’ vremennykh let, typically translated as the “Tale of Bygone Years” or known in its English translation as the Russian Primary Chronicle.7 The PVL, as I will call it, is a chronicle source that maintains a yearby-year listing of events in Rus. Though dating some events back to the Biblical Flood, the frequency of listings increased in the tenth century until the end of the chronicle in the early twelfth century. The chronicle was written on behalf of the ruling family, whom I will refer to as the Volodimerovichi though they are DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-12

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often known as the Riurikids, and thus it favors their role as rulers, specifically the branch of the family that succeeded and which ruled at the time of its composition. As a source it presents the highest level of information telling us about battles between rulers, some about foreign involvement, and the way that the family structured rule amongst themselves, including conflicts for precedence. It never gets down into the lives of ordinary people, which is a common trait among medieval chronicles. The second source that I will use is a regional chronicle for the northern city of Rus – Novgorod. This chronicle, also a listing of events by year, overlaps with the PVL in many places, but by the second half of the eleventh century when its entries increase, and certainly into the twelfth century, it contains a much more detailed listing of events in Novgorod and the surrounding area than the broader focus contained in the PVL. We see in this source a more local version of events and their impacts, such as famines and plagues, as well as local governance which does not exist whatsoever in the PVL. The final source utilized here is the Russkaia Pravda, a law code that was begun under the eleventh-century ruler, Iaroslav Volodimerich (often known as “the Wise”) and continued by his sons and grandsons. As a legal source it presents both a making of, and codification of, existing laws in the Rusian kingdom, giving us a very different perspective than either of the chronicle sources discussed earlier. It also deals with people who are not mentioned elsewhere, or only in passing, such as herders, musicians, slaves, and women. Thus, by looking at each of these sources individually we can see how they portray governance in Rus, but also the big differences in what governance means to each source. The integration of those types of governance portrayed and the way they worked in tandem, or failed to, is left to another study.

The Povest’ vremennykh let (PVL) Scholarship on the authorship of the PVL could fill several books.8 The brief overview is that it was compiled or composed at the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century in the area around Kyiv. Despite that date of composition or collation, the earliest extant copy of the PVL dates from 260 years later. Further, as noted above, the source was written with the backing of one particular family from amongst the Volodimerovichi clan, and as such it tends to favor them over its rivals. Members of other families from within the clan will sometimes get disparaging nicknames such as “the Accursed” or “the Bringer of Woe” to really let the reader know who the good and bad characters are in the story. Such source problems are common in Rusian history, but they need to be foregrounded to help us understand the difficulties inherent in attempting to write the history of the medieval period. The focus of the PVL is on what we might call the high politics of the kingdom of Rus. It is concerned with the rulers of Kyiv, the various members of the Volodimerovichi clan and their interactions. The rulers of Rus are organized in a hierarchy by the chronicle with the ruler of Kyiv paramount over all of the

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other rulers. One of the historical difficulties in attempting to understand the rulership of Rus is that in the Old East Slavic language of the chronicle, each of those rulers bore the same title, kniaz’. Kniaz’ was translated as “duke” or “prince” by the first Englishmen to come to Muscovy in the sixteenth century and as such, the translation stuck and was read back in time, even though it did not fit the medieval period. The neighbors of Rus referred to its rulers with words that are typically translated as “king,” such as rex in Latin and konungr in Old Norse.9 All of which left historians with a difficult situation where there were multiple people who bore the same title, kniaz’, and yet they were clearly in a hierarchy. How then could that be rationalized given the modern connotation of “king” as “monarch” or sole ruler? In fact, this issue is still being debated and one solution that I have proposed is that king does not mean monarch, just ruler, and that medieval authors were quite happy to have multiple rulers, even in one kingdom.10 For instance, one twelfth-century Latin source, describing Rus says, “for they have many kings there,” in a way that elicits no judgment, just a simple statement of fact.11 Thus, we begin our discussion of rule in Rus with the knowledge that there were many kings there. The hierarchy of rulers can be traced back to early kings such as Sviatoslav in the late tenth century who was the first to assign his sons as subordinate rulers to other cities within Rus. The same was true of the first Christian ruler, Volodimer Sviatoslavich (St. Vladimir to many) who, the PVL tells us, assigned his sons throughout Rus – “He set Vysheslav in Novgorod, Iziaslav in Polotsk, Sviatopolk in Turov, and Iaroslav in Rostov. When Vysheslav, the oldest, died in Novgorod, he set Iaroslav over Novgorod, Boris over Rostov, Gleb over Murom, Sviatoslav over Dereva, Vsevolod over Vladimir, and Mstislav over Tmutorokan’.”12 Each of those eight sons would be called a kniaz’, or ruler, of their particular city and its area. The title kniaz’ was given only to rulers with territories to rule, and in this case they were being assigned as subordinate rulers to their father Volodimer. The hierarchical implications are confirmed by the life and death of Volodimer’s son, Iaroslav. After the death of his brother, a co-ruler within Rus, the PVL proclaims Iaroslav as the “sole ruler” within the kingdom, despite the fact that there were other people bearing the title of kniaz’.13 Similarly, at Iaroslav’s death, he not only assigned territories to his sons, but set up his eldest son as his successor. In his dying testament he tells his sons to honor their eldest brother Iziaslav as they had honored him, placing Iziaslav as the new pater familias.14 There are at least two examples from within the PVL where we can see the larger Volodimerovichi clan acting corporately and deciding to assign, or reassign, its members to different cities and adjudicating punishment. In the wake of one of the most dramatic incidents in the PVL – the blinding of one of the members of the clan by an agent of another member – multiple senior members of the Volodimerovichi gathered to meet and discuss what to do at a place called Uvetichi.15 At the conference, senior members of the clan, inclusive of the ruler of Kyiv and the heads of the other major families from within the clan met separately from other members to decide the fate of David, who had been

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responsible for the blinding, and Vasil’ko, who had been blinded. The clan elders decided that because David he had “cast a sword among them [the family] in a fashion hitherto unknown in the land of Rus’,” he would be deprived of the rule of the city of Vladimir.16 But that he would not be imprisoned or harmed, and in fact he was offered a series of much smaller cities, towns properly, to rule as his own, as well as a payment from specific members of the clan. The prize territory of Vladimir, which had been stripped from David in punishment, was assigned to Iaroslav, son of the Kyivan ruler Sviatopolk, the PVL records, by Sviatopolk himself; thus reinforcing the idea that the territories were, at heart, hierarchically responsible to the ruler in Kyiv who acted as pater familias. As for Vasil’ko, he was placed into the care of his brother Volodar, and the two were to share rule over one city together, Peremyshl. However, the clan elders added, if Vasil’ko did not want to be with his brother, he could return to them and they would, corporately, take care of him. This example tells us about two different modalities of rule within Rus. The first is that the Volodimerovichi clan acted corporately, at least on some occasions, as when meting out justice to their own. But second, even within that framework, the ability of the ruler of Kyiv to act as the head of the kingdom and assign territories to those he chose (his son in this case) was unaffected. Rulers served multiple roles in their kingdoms, but there are three particular ones that often stand out; the ability to call troops to war (especially to defend against a foreign invasion), tribute or tax collection, and law giver. The PVL does not give much evidence of the last one, but later in this article we will see the law code that Iaroslav did produce, the Russkaia Pravda. In regard to calling troops to war, we are given a great deal of evidence of the rulers’ powers collectively and especially that of the ruler of Kyiv. The ruler of Kyiv was able to call upon multiple other rulers to make war upon the nomadic invaders, who were seen as outsiders, such as in 1060 when Iziaslav in Kyiv called upon his kinsmen to fight the Torks.17 We also see the Kyivan ruler calling on support to fight against other elements of the kin group in multiple instances, when there were uprisings against central authority or the assignment of territories (something alluded to above in regard to the decision at Uvetichi). Even though the Kyivan ruler had this power, it did not disable the military function of individual rulers from the other cities in Rus. They, too, had the ability to call soldiers together from their lands to engage in conflict with one another and to defend against nomadic or other incursions. Each of the kniazia (plural of kniaz’) in Rus were rulers, even if the kniaz’ in Kyiv was paramount. Money was required to fund any type of government at any time. Typically in the medieval period this money came from tribute payments sent in from the various regions, or more often, collected by itinerant rulers who traveled throughout their realm. There were very few medieval polities centralized or bureaucratic enough to collect taxes in the way we think of them now, with Byzantium at the top of that list. In Rus, we do not see rulers as typically itinerant, at least beyond their own city and region, though we do see tribute taking

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from the regions and subordinate rulers. One classic example comes from the PVL entry for 1014. In that year, the PVL tells us that Iaroslav, the ruler of Novgorod and son of Volodimer, decided to stop paying tribute to his father; resulting in the two of them preparing for war with one another.18 To preface this account, the chronicler notes that the ruler of Novgorod regularly, “paid two thousand grivny a year as tribute to Kyiv.”19 This is an essential fact about Rusian governance and demonstrates that there was a flow of wealth from the various cities to Kyiv which helped to reinforce the hierarchy of Rus. But we may never have known about it if Iaroslav had not stopped paying it, the reason for which we still do not know. While the PVL dates from the end of the eleventh or the early twelfth century, there are components of it that are clearly interpolations from other documents. One of the most well-known are two tenth-century treaties between Rus and Byzantium which were copied into the chronicle itself and thus give us a great deal of information, of a different kind, than is traditionally recorded in chronicle sources. There is much in these treaties that we can derive in regard to rulership beginning with the signatories to the treaties who represent not only the Kyivan ruler himself, but other individuals as well. In the 907 treaty these others who follow the Kyivan ruler are generically listed as “all the serene and great rulers and the great boyars [nobles] under his sway.”20 The treaty entered under the year 945 contains much greater detail however and lists emissaries for specific individuals leading with the Kyivan ruler Igor, but including envoys for his son, Sviatoslav, his wife Olga, and two of his nephews in addition to nineteen other named individuals (including one additional woman).21 Following a listing of all of the merchants involved, another 25 people, the preamble concludes with the statement that these individuals were sent by Igor, great ruler of the Rusians, and from each ruler and all of the people of Rus.22 These listings reinforce our understanding of rulership in Rus as led by the Kyivan king, but a participatory affair with other rulers, inclusive of women, involved. One other especially interesting aspect of rulership conveyed in this treaty is the hint that there was a royal chancellery that produced documents and seals. There is no such thing mentioned anywhere else in the PVL, but in these treaties which are said in the text itself to be copies of the original documents, we see clear statements that such existed. For instance, in the 945 treaty there is a passage which states, The agents hitherto carried gold seals, and the merchants silver ones. But your ruler has now made known that he will forward a certificate to our government, and any agents or merchants thus sent by the Rusians shall be provided with such a certificate…By this means we shall be assured that they come with peaceful intent.23 The intent of the clause is clear, envoys and merchants traveling to Byzantium have been, and will continue to be, certified by Igor’s court in Kyiv. In the

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past this was by seals, and now going forward it would be via certificates. The unmentioned part of this, which we would not expect to see baldly declared in such a document, is that there would need to be an office and literate individuals staffing it, in Kyiv to produce such certificates for those traveling to Byzantium. The inclusion of these treaties, admittedly not typical of the chronicle nature of the PVL, is essential to help us know more about the governance of Rus given their unique information.

The Chronicle of Novgorod Like the PVL, the Novgorod chronicle is a source that lists events by year. While the PVL can be seen as a regional chronicle related to Kyiv, it does cover the breadth of the kingdom of Rus, with a concrete focus upon the ruling family, or certain participants within that family. The Novgorod chronicle is focused very specifically upon the city of Novgorod and its region. Within that territory, it has a different focus than the PVL; for instance, we see individuals named, religious figures, merchants, and new positions and institutions that do not regularly occur in the PVL. We do still see the institution of kniaz’, the most common one of which is the ruler of Novgorod, not the ruler of Kyiv, though the Novgorod chronicle does mention him on occasion, as well as the plethora of kniazia throughout Rus.24 Thus, we are working within the same base framework of an annual listing of events, with at least some of the focus on rulers. The differences come with the other major foci and especially the fact that the Novgorod Chronicle does not begin having regular entries until the later eleventh century, the entries get more fulsome in the twelfth. In the twelfth century the long entries also begin to include contemporary notes indicative of an author who experienced the things at that time, such as “In the month of March on the 9th day…there was great thunder, so that sitting indoors we heard it clearly.”25 It was most likely written in the bishop’s, later the vladyka’s, court in Novgorod by ecclesiastics.26 The ecclesiastical focus can be seen throughout with the focus on monastery and church foundations, promotion and death of bishops and the archbishop, and increasing ecclesiastical affairs as the chronicle continued. In fact, both the contemporary authorship and ecclesiastical focus can be seen at the end of the entry for 1144 when the author adds, “The same year the holy vladyka Nifont appointed me priest.”27 The manuscripts in which the chronicle is preserved are similar in date to those of the PVL, thus we see them extant only from later. The political institution for which Novgorod is most famous is something called the veche.28 The veche, or town council, is mentioned in the very first year of the Novgorod chronicle, 1016, when Iaroslav summoned a veche, to talk with the people of Novgorod and ultimately to gain their support for the campaign against Kyiv.29 This mention is elided with mentions which become much more frequent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and later to create the idea that Novgorod was a self-governing polity. This is, perhaps unfortunately, not the

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case. Though it is useful to know and to mention that there was a town council that met both in the open air and in later times at the court of the archbishop of Novgorod – a powerful figure in his own right.30 The veche is mentioned in the PVL as well, though not with the same deliberate intent. For instance, in 997, the inhabitants of Kyiv met “in council,” as the text is translated, to make a decision.31 The Old East Slavic text though does use the word, veche. In Novgorod, it has accreted a meaning from later times in which the archbishop, as head of the veche, was in charge of setting the agenda and holding the meetings which determined the fate of the city, and later city-state, of Novgorod. However, in the words of Jonas Granberg who has studied the idea of the veche extensively, in the period before the second half of the twelfth century, “nothing…indicates that veche acted in the capacity of a political institution.”32 That said, it could be a means of people communicating and making corporate decisions when the normal system of rulership broke down, or even to supplement that system, as we can potentially see in examples where the ruler is expelled in the first half of the twelfth century. Another feature that is often discussed regularly in the Novgorod Chronicle, but less elsewhere is the position of posadnik. Variously translated as “burgomaster,” “mayor,” and “governor,” this is a position of authority within the city. The city may not always be Novgorod, however, and the first instance of the word in the Novgorod Chronicle is for the neighboring town of Ladoga.33 Soon though, there are multiple mentions of Novgorodian posadiniki (the plural of posadnik) with posadniki changing place relatively rapidly. For instance, in the next year, 1117, we are told that “Dobrynya, posadnik of Novgorod, died on December 6.”34 This is the entirety of the entry for that year, which allows us to see how important the role of posadnik was. We also may note that the chronicle did not record Dobrynya’s appointment, which may testify to the contemporary chronicle writing practices which were catching hold at this time. Dobrynya’s death opened up a vacancy in the position and in 1118, Dmitri Zavidits is posadnik, though only for a short time before he dies as well.35 The Novgorod Chronicle has an especially interesting note regarding Dmitri’s death saying that he had “been sole posadnik seven months.” That the chronicle felt obliged to mention that he had been “sole posadnik” is clearly an indicator that there were multiple posadniki at one time – perhaps similar to what we have seen with multiple kniazia at one time. In fact, in much later entries in the Novgorod Chronicle, there are multiple posadniki for the various boroughs (often called “ends”) of the city of Novgorod. The question of how one comes to be posadnik is a much debated one. The typical answer is that a posadnik is elected, but we do not see direct evidence of that in the sources for the period we are examining. The entries for new posadniki tend to fall into two categories. The first is some variation on the statement that, “they gave the office of posadnik to…”.36 The second is even more terse and it is largely that someone “came to be posadnik.”37 In one instance, “Daniel came from Kyiv to be posadnik in Novgorod.”38 Was he from Novgorod originally?

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Was he appointed or summoned? And if so, by whom? All questions that we do not know the answers to. As for the anonymous “they” of the first type of appointment, “they” have a lot of power. In 1134, “they took away the posadnikship from Petrila and gave it to Ivanko Pavlovits.”39 That same year though we get a brief insight into one of the possible functions of the posadnik as he dies while fighting in the Novgorodian ruler’s war against Suzdal. But before the year was out, there was a new posadnik to take his place. Clearly it was a position that was not to be left vacant long, even if we are unsure as to how exactly it was filled in this period. Another of the tasks of the posadnik can be seen in 1135 when the posadnik from Novgorod went to make peace between the people of Kyiv and Chernigov. Though the conflict in the region is reported in other chronicles, the role of the posadnik, even though the Novgorod Chronicle reports his failure, does not appear there. The last characteristic feature of Novgorod is their ability to determine their own ruler. This counteracts the centralizing function discussed in regard to the PVL above, but it does not begin to appear until the 1130s, after the time covered by that chronicle. In 1132, the Novgorodian ruler, Vsevolod Volodimerich, was reassigned by the king of Rus to the city of Pereiaslavl in the south.40 The Novgorodian chronicle writer makes their displeasure felt about this noting that Vsevolod had sworn an oath (“kissed the cross”) to remain in Novgorod for his entire life. After the people of Pereiaslavl kick Vsevolod out, he returned to Novgorod, and instead of taking him back, the people rose up against him and expelled him from the city. Though he is soon let back in, this is a dramatic instance of the power of individuals to control who rules their city, something not always seen in medieval sources. Related to this incident are the appointments of two new posadniki, one for Pskov (another neighboring town) and one for Ladoga; perhaps indicative of the new posadniki’s roles in either the ousting or the peace-making – or both! This was not the end of the drama for Vsevolod however. In 1136, there is a dramatic event that is worth quoting at length: The men of Novgorod summoned the men of Pskov and of Ladoga and took counsel how to expel their ruler Vsevolod, and they confined him in the Court of the Bishop, together with wife and children and mother-inlaw, on May 28, and guards with arms guarded him day and night, thirty men daily.41 After two months, Vsevolod and his family were released, but this event changed the way that Novgorod related to their rulers and we can see why. The chronicle is not clear enough to give us names, but it is clear that it was the “men,” which may be indicative of only elites, but it was certainly enough of the population to take action. Additionally, they summoned people from the two neighboring towns, who had assisted in the first expulsion of Vsevolod four years before. Those “men” of Novgorod, Pskov, and Ladoga were able to imprison the ruler and his family in the bishop’s court, indicative of the bishop’s collaboration or

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his absence. And finally, the guards tell us that the “men” were able to muster military force to help keep the ruler contained. All of which adds up to a proper revolution, even though the ultimate result was the assignment of a new ruler to Novgorod, it was a ruler of the Novgorodians’ choosing. This was not the end of this process either, as from 1136 to 1186, the Novgorodians had 30 rulers, giving each an approximately 2-year term on average – a major change from the period 1000–1136 when there were only 12 rulers each averaging about a decade of rule. The Novgorod Chronicle is an annalistic source, like the PVL, but it is one that covers a much narrower geographic spectrum and, as such, gives us specific information about Novgorod. That specific information does not just tell us more about Novgorod and rulers, but it includes information about the governance of the city and its officials – information that we do not receive in the PVL, or even, as we will see below, in the Russkaia Pravda. Melding the information from the Novgorod Chronicle to the PVL gives us a deeper picture of what city governance was like within the wider rule of the king of Rus.

Russkaia Pravda The collection of Rusian laws typically known as the Russkaia Pravda is actually multiple law codes and decrees which have been grouped together over time. The earliest of those is that created, we are told, by Iaroslav Volodimerich in the early eleventh century. Iaroslav ruled over the northern city of Novgorod before successfully taking Kyiv, and he was married to a Swedish princess named Ingigerd which enabled him to utilize Scandinavian forces in his campaign to take Kyiv. All of which has led some to suggest that the creation of the law code was an attempt to regulate the relations between the mercenaries and the native population of Rus.42 This law code, which comprises 18 articles and mostly concerns wergild, or man-price, type punishments akin to those found in Germanic law, is relatively short. Iaroslav’s sons, in the second half of the eleventh century, created an addition that comprises another 23 articles and while keeping monetary, rather than corporal, punishments, put the focus on the king’s officials. It is this section that will concern us a great deal, as we see positions articulated and defined here which do not appear in either of the chronicle sources which have been discussed. The last of the variants of the law code which is subsumed into the Russkaia Pravda is what is known as the Expanded Pravda and was codified in the twelfth century. The Expanded Pravda has 121 statues and covers (as one might imagine) a much wider breadth of territory with special focuses on loans with interest (which was not illegal in Rusian law) and on the treatment of women and slaves. These law codes have been meticulously studied since the eighteenth century and there are a large number of extant copies of the medieval variants. For the Short Version (the Pravda of Iaroslav and of his sons), the majority of the extant texts are from the eighteenth century, but they date back to two main fifteenth-century texts which seem to represent two main textual traditions.

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For the Expanded Version, the earliest extant copy is from the later thirteenth century, but, like with the Short Version, there are at least two textual traditions, and a fourteenth-century copy, the Trinity copy, seems to scholars to be much more akin to what the medieval versions might have been. As with the chronicles, none of these copies date from as early as we might like, but each of them contains material that we can use to discuss medieval Rusian governance, nonetheless. As noted in the introduction, the Russkaia Pravda contains material about governance in Rus that does not particularly appear elsewhere. This information begins with the very first article of Iaroslav’s Pravda which, in a listing of people who have a wergild of 40 grivnas, is listed multiple individuals who are employed at the royal court.43 In that entry we see a “palace guard,” an “agent,” and a “sheriff.”44 None of those terms appear regularly, if at all, in the PVL, but they all correspond to people who work at the king’s court and who Iaroslav thought deserved a high-value wergild to protect them from assault. While one might assume that any ruler would have a guard, it is always nice for the historian to see such assumptions confirmed by historical documents. An agent, who may have been present by another name in the tenth-century treaties with Byzantium discussed above, may also be another assumption. However, a sheriff is a particular legal official which does not necessarily have to exist and so seeing it placed prominently in the first article of Iaroslav’s code tells us that there is more governmental structure than the PVL or the Novgorod chronicle had delineated. The only other brief note that might be of interest in helping understand governance from Iaroslav’s Pravda is a mention in Article 13 that there were “township” boundaries.45 These boundaries delineated territory for the finding of stolen goods, and eventually in later editions, in the reclamation of those goods as well. The Pravda of Iaroslav’s sons, created in the middle of the second half of the eleventh century begins with a preamble stating those who helped to write it, “The Law of the Land of Rus, enacted at a meeting of the rulers Izyaslav, Vsevolod, and Svyatoslav, and the advisors Kosnyachko, Pereneg, Nikifor of Kyiv, and Nikolay Chudin.”46 It became increasingly common in the later eleventh century, of the PVL, to see advisors listed with their rulers. In fact, at the conference of Uvetichi (mentioned above), there were also advisors who helped to manage affairs. This addition to the very beginning of the expansion of Iaroslav’s law code tells us that more than just the royal family were making laws, which is important information given that many premodern laws are simply cited to the ruler who signed them, not the individuals who helped to create or write them. The main theme expanded upon by Iaroslav’s sons was the role of royal officials throughout the realm, thus this section of the law code is filled with individuals who were part of the ruler’s court or in his employ, but who do not appear in other sources. The list of such individuals begins with the very first article after the preamble, where the fine for a bailiff has risen to 80 grivnas – twice what it was in the first article of Iaroslav’s Pravda. Similarly listed in that entry is a comparable fine for the “prince’s adjutant.”47 These individuals had not appeared

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before in the Pravda, but they are soon joined by others; the prince’s steward (art. 22), assistant steward (art. 21), master of the stable (art. 23), prince’s farm manager, and multiple instances of a “bloodwite collector” and his assistant – all of whom worked and resided within the prince’s court (art. 38). The picture presented then by the Pravda of Iaroslav’s sons then is not one that we have seen thus far where a ruler ruled, or even a ruler ruled along with the ecclesiastical figures, the mayor, and the military leader, as in Novgorod. But here we see each ruler maintaining a court at which numerous individuals were employed. The list of individuals allows us to create a much better picture of the way that the realm of Rus, and its component cities, were governed. All of which is necessary given that we have very few records for Rus. For instance, England produced thousands of documents annually by the time of Henry III in the thirteenth century, while Frederick Barbarossa in the German empire produced a few thousand over the multiple decades of his reign, and in the same period in Rus there are only 191 documents, total. That is an especially good number, given that in the period we are working with there were 23 for the eleventh century and 83 from the twelfth!48 One of the main shifts in the Pravda of Iaroslav’s sons which is assumed, and not articulated until the Expanded Pravda, is the shift from wergild payments – payments to the families of the wronged or the individual who was wronged themself – to bloodwite payments – payments collected by the ruler’s officials, especially the bloodwite collector and his assistant. Those payments are divided up in article 41 where we see that they go to the sheriff, the church, and the lion’s share to the ruler himself. While article 42, the second to last of this section, lays out all the assistance that the bloodwite collector is to receive from the populace inclusive of provisions, stabling of horses, and monetary payment. These individuals had carte blanche, it seems, to travel throughout Rus, or their designated territory, and collect the fines which were increasingly common for wrongs against individuals and especially against the rulers’ property and people. The last piece of the legal code is what is known as the Expanded Pravda which dates to the middle of the twelfth century. It continues to evolve our understanding of governance and reinforces some of the items both from the earlier law codes as well as individuals we saw in the chronicles. For instance, in the section of the Expanded Pravda which is attributed to Volodimer Monomakh, there is a meeting discussed in Article 53 in which Volodimer calls together his councilors among whom are the military leaders (tysiatski) of Kyiv, Belgorod, and Pereiaslavl.49 The first two are core territories which Volodimer ruled personally as ruler of Kyiv, and the third is the city that Volodimer ruled before he took Kyiv following Sviatopolk’s death. This is a nice repetition of the importance of those military leaders as councilors to the king, but also shows his reach beyond Kyiv itself. The king’s staff is reiterated and expanded with the ruler’s “councilor,” “steward,” “man,” “page,” “groom,” and “cook” among others being singled out in several of the early articles.50 This helps us to understand the breadth of the king’s household in ways that go unmentioned in the chronicle sources.

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The king’s court once again comes into focus in the Expanded Pravda as we see it as the site of multiple engagements with legal practices. Article 40 notes that if someone captures a thief and holds him overnight, they must bring him to the king’s court rather than kill him.51 At the court, there are also a series of fees for the various crimes to be given to the officials, as we see delineated in article 107 where bloodwite fees are specified as is the constable’s fee, another official about whom we know very little.52 The Expanded Pravda also gives us an insight into the management of the court and these various fees with the off hand mention of the clerk. With such an expansive system, and with the documents and seals required in the tenth-century treaties with Byzantium, one can easily imagine a clerk (or more likely a team of clerks), but this is some of the little evidence we have for their actual existence. Article 20 records that one must pay the required sum to the “clerk” but that is the only record of it.53 One of the perils of attempting to understand medieval history through a paucity of sources is navigating the issue of who is mentioned and why. If someone is mentioned only once, like the clerk, does this mean that they are unimportant? Does it mean that they are rare? Or, I would suggest more accurately, does it mean that they are common enough to be taken for granted; so common that mentioning them outright would seem odd. What we can see in the Russkaia Pravda, all three of the pieces of it discussed, is a different type of source telling us about different types of people who participate in the governance of the kingdom of Rus. Here, we do not see the king, except as a figure whom people work for, nor the mayors, but we do see a surprisingly large number of the much humbler figures who actually make the royal administration work. But instead of seeing them in an organizational chart, we must intuit their positions and functions through the brief mentions of them in positions which might be dangerous, with their ranks often clarified for us by the price put on their lives (80 grivna for the ruler’s steward or councilor but 40 for the ruler’s page or groom). Nevertheless, it is only through this source that we see the majority of these people and thus know that they existed and that they helped Rus to function.

Conclusion Each of these sources presents us with its own source difficulties, but each of them also gives us part of the story to help understand governance within the kingdom of Rus. It is only by combining them that we can draw at least a little bit of a picture of how the totality and its component regions functioned. For instance, the kingdom of Rus was ruled by a king who was based in Kyiv. He was supreme over the other rulers within Rus, even though they all bore the same title of kniaz’ – largely because of his power as pater familias of the Volodimerovichi clan. He could appoint his kinsman to cities and towns throughout Rus to rule there at his command. Similarly, he could remove them if they broke the unwritten rules of behavior within the kingdom. Those rulers then supported their

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king by providing tribute to him and assisting him in military endeavors such as defense against invaders, such as the Polovtsy. Under the rulers there was a whole series of individuals who reported to the ruler. There were bloodwite collectors who collected payments for violations of the law, and distributed those payments to other king’s men, the church, and to the ruler himself. There were stewards who managed the king’s court and estates. Sheriffs and bailiffs who were his chief officials and enacted his law in the ruler’s territory. The king also owned everything from horses to farms to beehives, all of which were protected by law. But even within this system of rulers there was also agency for the individuals who lived in the cities. In Novgorod we can see that the town elected a mayor who was, most likely, a citizen from the town and responsible to his fellow citizens who could remove him at their will. The town also managed to appoint a military leader who was able to help lead the town’s forces when they were called upon by their ruler to participate in wider campaigns within Rus and along its borders. And in the twelfth century especially, the Novgorod chronicle tells us about the newfound agency of the townsmen who were able not only to appoint their own local officials but could now choose to enthrone or depose a ruler from the Volodimerovichi family. In this way, they played a role in the wider Rusian political system and demonstrated the agency that individuals in Rus could manage for themselves. With this picture at least sketched out before us we can see that it takes not just one source or even one type of source to determine how a polity was ruled, but a combination of sources written at different times and for different purposes. Utilized together, the historian can then build the best possible picture of the complicated kingdom of Rus.

Notes 1 Valerie A. Kivelson and Ronald Grigor Suny, Russia’s Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 17. 2 Christian Raffensperger, The Kingdom of Rus’ (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2017). 3 Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200 (New York: Longman, 1996). 4 Martin Dimnik, The Dynasty of Chernigov 1054–1146 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1994). 5 For a summative overview, as well as a new theory see Donald Ostrowski, “Systems of Succession in Rus’ and Steppe Societies,” Ruthenica XI (2012): 29–58. 6 For more on my view of Rus see Reimagining Europe: Kyivan Rus’ in the Medieval World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 7 The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text, transl. and ed. Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953). 8 For a window into that scholarship see the introduction to The Povest’ vremennykh let: An Interlinear Collation and Paradosis, Compiled and edited by Donald Ostrowski, with David Birnbaum and Horace G. Lunt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 9 For more on these translation issues see Raffensperger, The Kingdom of Rus’.

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13 THE PRINCES AND THE KING IN MEDIEVAL GERMANY, CA. 1125–1350 Jonathan R. Lyon

In the year 962, the German king Otto I (936–973), following in the footsteps of the Frankish ruler Charlemagne (768–814), traveled to Rome and was crowned emperor by the pope. For centuries thereafter, German kingship would be closely linked to the imperial title and to claims of supreme authority within Latin Christendom. The polity ruled by these German kings and emperors would increasingly come to be known as the Holy Roman Empire from the late twelfth century onward.1 Despite this impressive-sounding name, the effective reach of the emperors’ power and authority was rather limited. The German kingdom north of the Alps remained the cornerstone of their rule throughout the medieval period, and most of the German kings and Holy Roman Emperors spent much—if not all—of their reigns traveling in that kingdom rather than beyond its borders. Under Otto I and his immediate successors in the Ottonian and early Salian dynasties of the tenth and eleventh centuries, German kingship fit the picture that I suspect many readers have in their minds of what medieval rulership more generally was supposed to look like. In most cases, the royal title passed from father to eldest son in a pattern typical of how dynastic succession was expected to work in other European kingdoms too.2 Contemporary manuscript illuminations depict these rulers (and sometimes their queens too) being crowned by Christ himself and elevated over other men—or enthroned and wearing elaborate dress while surrounded by the elites of the kingdom.3 More generally, the royal court was a center of political patronage, with the rulers distributing to trusted allies both secular and ecclesiastical positions across the realm; the kings and queens used their impressive wealth to endow monastic communities and help fund the construction of grand churches; and the nobles of the kingdom gravitated to court to attend lavish feasts and show their closeness to the ruling family.4 DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-13

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However, the character of German kingship changed beginning in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries under the last two rulers of the Salian dynasty, Henry IV (1056–1106) and Henry V (1106–1125). Both clashed with the popes in Rome over the proper relationship between imperial and papal authority—and over the influence exerted by the German kings on the churches of the German kingdom. In 1076, Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085) went so far as to excommunicate Henry IV and declare him deposed.5 Civil war followed. A group of prominent German magnates (including an archbishop, bishops, and dukes) refused to acknowledge Henry IV’s legitimacy and elected their own (anti-)king to replace him. Though this new king’s reign was short-lived and not universally recognized, in subsequent years the relationship between the German rulers and the leading ecclesiastical and secular magnates of the kingdom (known collectively as the imperial princes) shifted markedly in favor of the latter group. Increasingly, the political elite came to recognize the king as being the first among equals—not as someone who stood apart from (or above) the other powerholders in the kingdom.6 The childless death in 1125 of the king and emperor Henry V thus marked, in many ways, the end of a period of German history dominated by powerful royal dynasties. Other families would be prominent and influential in subsequent centuries, but for a variety of reasons, succession to the throne was increasingly shaped by elective principles rather than dynastic ones. Between 936 and 1125, a son directly followed his father as German king six times; between 1125 and 1500 (a period twice as long), this happened only four times.7 The elective character of German kingship, best known today through the Golden Bull of 1356 (the document which enshrined the idea that there were seven “prince-electors”), shaped political life in fundamental ways. Power and authority were not concentrated in the hands of authoritarian rulers, their dynasties, and their chosen agents. Instead, many archbishops, bishops, abbots, abbesses, margraves, dukes, and counts—and even some towns—exercised a great deal of quasi-independent authority over the territories under their control. As a result, to answer the question “how was medieval Germany ruled?,” it is necessary to focus not only on the kings but also on the many regional actors who wielded effective power across the German-speaking lands between roughly 1125 and 1350.

The Kings and Their Court German kings were not micro-managers of all of their kingdom’s affairs.8 Their realm was enormous, stretching from the Baltic and North Seas in the north to the Alps in the south, and from some French-speaking areas in the west to some Slavic-speaking regions in the east. Because of their kingdom’s size, German rulers from the tenth century onwards practiced what modern historians refer to as “itinerant kingship.” There was no fixed capital where they spent most of their time, no glittering throne bolted to the floor in a palace where they resided day after day—and to where people from all over the kingdom had to come if

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they wanted to speak with their ruler. Instead, it was the kings who traveled in order to demonstrate their authority, sometimes staying in royal castles scattered around the kingdom and other times in monasteries or towns under royal control.9 Despite spending much of their reigns in the saddle, German kings could not possibly travel everywhere, and different rulers with different interests concentrated on different parts of the kingdom. Some regions therefore went years, even decades, without a visit from a king, which is one reason why some local powerbrokers were able to operate almost independently from effective German royal oversight. Our clearest picture of how German kings exercised their authority as they traveled their realm comes from the documents issued in their names. Between the twelfth and early fourteenth centuries, the chancery—the group of people responsible for writing royal documents—developed gradually in size and skill, and the number of surviving original royal privileges grows from roughly 450 under King Frederick I Barbarossa (1152–1190) to the thousands by the reign of King Charles IV (1346–1378).10 Most extant royal documents were issued for churches (bishoprics, monasteries, convents) and granted them new properties or confirmed their rights. The rhetoric employed in these privileges frequently sought to convey the impression that the ruler’s authority was expansive. For example, one of Frederick I’s charters concerning church properties includes the statement, Divine grace appointed us advocate and defender of the churches of God… so that we might defend them and their rights, full and uninjured, under our imperial protection, and so that we might not suffer them to be diminished in some way either in their possessions or in the privileges conferred by our predecessors as kings and emperors.11 Despite such grandiose language, many royal documents also make it clear that the German kings had to rule with the consent of the leading members of the secular and ecclesiastical elites. In 1149, for example, members of a monastery came to complain to King Conrad III (1138–1152) while he was holding court at Frankfurt about people damaging some of their properties. The ruler, rather than issuing a decision himself, turned to a count, who “with the common consent of the princes present there promulgated a judgment.”12 An even more striking example comes from several decades later at the court of King Frederick II (1212–1250). In 1215, Frederick II decided to grant two convents under German royal authority to a bishop in exchange for other properties.13 Only six months later, however, he was forced to backtrack. The abbesses of the two convents had complained about the agreement, and it was “the sentence of the princes” present at Frederick’s court that the ruler did not have the right to give away the two convents without the abbesses’ consent.14 These documents demonstrate that the secular and ecclesiastical magnates who attended the German royal court played a significant role in decision-making processes—and could even overrule the king in some cases.

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In other ways, too, the German kings could only act with the strong support of the other leading members of society. One chronicler reports that Frederick I “wished to declare war on the Hungarians…But being for certain obscure reasons unable to secure the assent of the princes in this matter, and thus being powerless to put his plans into effect, he postponed them.”15 The ability to wage war was a key feature of medieval rulership, and this story highlights how the German kings had to rely to a great extent on the political elites of the kingdom to carry out even the most basic functions of their role. This can also be seen in royal efforts to keep the peace, another essential element of kingship. The Imperial Land Peace promulgated by Frederick II in 1235 makes it clear that he did not have a monopoly on justice: [O]ur princes and all others who hold judicial powers directly from us, [should] judge justly the cases heard before them according to the lawful custom of their lands, and they [should] order that the other judges who are subject to them and hold jurisdiction from them do the same thing.16 Thus, as I will discuss below, regional authorities rather than the kings were the ones responsible for much of the peacekeeping and justice in their own territories. The royal court was a place where especially intractable or dangerous disputes involving members of the political elite could be discussed and judged, but it did not serve as the focal point of a centralized judicial administration that reached all corners of the kingdom.17 None of this is meant to suggest that the German kings after 1125 were powerless. They controlled royal properties in many parts of the kingdom as well as their own familial holdings, had large numbers of local agents (known as ministeriales, or ministerials) who served as administrators on their behalf on their royal and familial estates, and continued to exert enormous influence over many of the churches in their realm. Many of them also had the wealth, resources, and princely support to cross the Alps into Italy with large armies and to travel to Rome to receive their imperial coronation at the hands of the popes, an enormous undertaking. Thus, it is important to avoid the trap of thinking that the lack of a strong, centralized monarchy meant that the German kingdom was chaotic or fragmented. Historians have stressed that the elective character of German kingship, while quite different from the dynastic kingship we are accustomed to seeing in other parts of medieval Europe, helped to preserve the kingdom’s political coherence.18 Much of the German realm was effectively ruled by regional and local elites who respected the power of the king—so long as the king did not overstep what these elites considered the proper limits of royal authority.

The Dukes and Noble Lineages While the German kingdom between 1125 and 1350 was not ruled by one dynasty, or even a series of dynasties, who consistently passed down the royal title

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from father to son as part of the family’s inheritance, the leading noble lineages in contrast exerted significant control over the most illustrious secular titles: duke, margrave, and count. Indeed, many of the most long-lived dynasties in German history were not royal ones but noble ones. The Wittelsbachs ruled the region of Bavaria from 1180 to 1918, the Wettins ruled in Saxony from the twelfth century until 1918, and the Habsburgs, who first acquired the duchy of Austria in the later thirteenth century, likewise only saw their rule come to an end in 1918 in the aftermath of World War I. Munich, Dresden, and Vienna—the towns that developed into the capitals of Bavaria, Saxony, and Austria, respectively—were not royal or imperial capitals but ducal ones in the period under investigation here. These lineages, and many others, were able to survive and thrive, because nobles collectively defended their rights vis-à-vis the kings and did not hesitate to challenge royal attempts to intervene in their own intra-dynastic affairs. One of the best examples of the relative independence of the leading noble families in the German kingdom comes from the duchy of Austria.19 Before the Habsburgs acquired the duchy, it was in the hands of the Babenberg lineage. In 1156, to solve a dispute over who was the rightful duke of Bavaria, King Frederick I agreed to elevate Austria, which was then a march ruled by a Babenberg margrave, into a duchy. In the Privilegium Minus, the document that formally created the new duchy of Austria, Frederick—“with the approval of all the princes”—decreed that not only the new duke and duchess but also “their children after them, irrespective of whether these be sons or daughters, shall hold this same Duchy of Austria from the kingdom and possess it by hereditary right.”20 The king further decreed “that no person, great or small, shall presume to exercise any judicial right in the government of that duchy without the consent and permission of the duke.”21 On the one hand, we can see here some of the very real authority that the king possessed; only he was able to create a new duchy. On the other hand, by giving Austria to the Babenbergs by hereditary right and granting them control over all judicial authority there, he was ensuring that effective power in the duchy would be held by that noble lineage, not the German kings, in the future.22 The nobleman who received the duchy of Bavaria in 1156, Henry the Lion (d. 1195) of the Welf lineage, was also duke of Saxony at the time. He therefore exercised authority over extensive portions of the German kingdom, and his wide-ranging power and influence help to explain why he was able to marry a daughter of King Henry II of England and his famous queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine.23 In the duchy of Saxony, in particular, Henry the Lion acted as if he held royal authority and was the one responsible for maintaining the peace and overseeing the proper conduct of justice.24 He, not the king, defended the northeastern frontier of the kingdom and led the missionary efforts to Christianize the pagans beyond the Elbe River.25 The early growth of the town of Lübeck, which quickly developed into an important economic center in the western Baltic region, also owed much to Henry the Lion’s support.26 And his palace at Brunswick (Braunschweig), where he erected a bronze statue of a lion in the

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courtyard, served as a center of his ducal authority in a way that no royal palace did for his contemporary, King Frederick I.27 While Henry the Lion is, in many ways, an exceptional figure rather than a typical example of a duke of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, his career nevertheless demonstrates why historians must look below the level of the king to understand how the medieval German kingdom was ruled. Because Henry the Lion accumulated so much more power and authority than other German princes of the later twelfth century, several of his rivals allied against him and, in 1180, convinced King Frederick I to strip him of both duchies.28 Here again, we can see the complex interrelationship between royal and regional forms of power and authority. The king, working in concert with some of the magnates, deposed Henry the Lion, providing evidence for the effectiveness of royal rule. In a document from 1180, Frederick’s authority is clear: “Since he [Henry] was cited to come into the presence of our majesty and he ignored this summons, for this contumacy he incurred the sentence of outlawry from us [and] from the princes.”29 However, Frederick I was not able to transform the duchies of Saxony and Bavaria into strongholds of royal power after seizing them. Instead, he immediately granted the duchies to members of the regional political elites in Saxony and Bavaria who had been opposed to Henry the Lion’s power (it was in this way that the Wittelsbachs acquired Bavaria and laid the foundation for their roughly 750 years of rule there). The downfall of Duke Henry the Lion, who was forced into exile with his wife and children in England, therefore provides additional evidence for the power and influence of the secular and ecclesiastical princes of the kingdom. During the thirteenth century, it was at the level of the so-called territorial principalities—Bavaria, Saxony, and Austria, for example, as well as some of the archbishoprics and bishoprics discussed below—that effective local ­administrations developed.30 In 1232, King Frederick II issued the “Statute in Favor of the Princes,” which recognized the wide-ranging rights of these magnates within their own territories. He acknowledged, for example, that “each of the princes shall peacefully enjoy [control of ] liberties, jurisdictions, counties, … freemen and feudatories, according to the established custom of their land.” In addition, he decreed that “we shall not personally invalidate a safe conduct issued by [a] prince for his own land, or allow this to be infringed by our men.”31 As the German rulers increasingly recognized the relative autonomy of the leading members of the political elites, many of these secular and ecclesiastical princes aggressively sought to acquire lands and rights from lesser nobles in their territories. The Wittelsbach dukes of Bavaria are one of the best examples of a princely lineage that, through purchase and succession, gradually gained more and more control over all the rights and property within their duchy. Their local agents—not the kings’—were responsible for judging crimes, collecting taxes, and keeping the peace.32 The second half of the thirteenth century witnessed an acceleration of the trend of the leading noble lineages acting with little—if any strong—oversight

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from the German kings. In 1253, fewer than 75 years after King Frederick I had demonstrated his authority over the duchy of Bavaria by stripping it from Henry the Lion, the Wittelsbachs treated it as a piece of family property and divided it between two brothers. In subsequent years, other lineages followed suit and divided their duchies amongst multiple heirs.33 During this same period, there was a split royal election that resulted in neither claimant to the throne being able to exert effective authority in the kingdom; this was followed between 1273 and 1313 by a period when the prince-electors intentionally chose kings who were counts and therefore not the most powerful men in the German kingdom.34 While it would be incorrect to describe all of the German kings of the later middle ages as ineffective, there is no question that in the decades around 1300 the power dynamic between the rulers and the leading magnates had shifted— even more dramatically than in the decades around 1100—in favor of the secular and ecclesiastical princes.35 During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the German kings spent less and less of their time traveling the German kingdom and attempting to exert their authority. King Frederick III (1440–1493), a member of the Habsburg family, did not leave his dynastic lands in Austria to visit other parts of the German kingdom for more than a quarter of a century between 1444 and 1471—clear evidence that administering his family’s territories was more important to him than governing his kingdom with a strong hand.

Churches and Prelates For people today who are accustomed to modern traditions of the separation of Church and State, one of the greatest challenges to understanding how the medieval German kingdom was ruled can be appreciating the political power of archbishops, bishops, abbots, and abbesses. During the early middle ages, rulers and nobles frequently donated property to churches in return for prayers and spiritual guidance; in the process, they gradually transformed ecclesiastical communities into some of the largest landholders in Western Europe. The German rulers of the Ottonian dynasty continued this trend in the tenth and early eleventh centuries, granting numerous properties and rights (such as tolls) to bishoprics, monasteries, and convents, which were then expected to use some of the income generated from those donations to support the kings.36 As these churches increasingly became locally and regionally powerful institutions, the question of who would preside as bishop, abbot, or abbess was shaped less by spiritual concerns than by political ones. The German kings insisted on playing a role in the appointment of many ecclesiastics, and noble parents frequently sought to place some of their sons and daughters in religious communities in the hopes that these children would one day acquire prestigious and influential positions within the Church hierarchy.37 As a result, archbishoprics, bishoprics, monasteries, and convents across the German kingdom were held by high-ranking members of society who were just as caught up in the politics of the realm as dukes and other secular lords. These

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prelates were regular attendees at the royal court; according to the biographer of Archbishop Albero of Trier (1131–1152), for example: When Albero went to the royal court he was a sight for all to behold. He alone seemed worthy of admiration; by the magnificence of his entourage and disbursement he put all the other princes in the shade. By his pleasant speech and his very amusing interjection of proverbs, he was accustomed to charm both king and princes. He used to come to the court or whatever meeting last and long awaited, and he was always the last to leave. Never in an assembly did he offer his counsel without first hearing others out.38 Many of these ecclesiastical princes were much more than just important advisers at court. Because of all the property they held, they also had an obligation to provide military support for the kings—including troops when the rulers traveled to Italy.39 Their deep involvement in the politics of the German kingdom inevitably led to some of these prelates becoming entangled in violent plots. Bishop Ekbert of Bamberg (1203–1237) was implicated in the assassination of King Philip of Swabia in 1208.40 And Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne, a member of one of the leading families in his archdiocese, was assassinated in 1225 during a dispute over property rights.41 Some archbishops and bishops were so thoroughly integrated into the territorial governance of the German kingdom that they were able to acquire duchies and counties. In 1180, after King Frederick I had stripped the duchies of Bavaria and Saxony from Henry the Lion, he decreed, After discussing this matter with the princes and on their universal advice, we have divided the duchy [of Saxony] in two. In consideration of the good qualities by which our beloved prince Philip, Archbishop of Cologne, has deserved the privilege of imperial grace, through his promotion and maintenance of the honour of the imperial crown, …we confer through our imperial liberality and by title of legitimate donation one of those parts on the church of Cologne.42 The archbishop’s new duchy of Westphalia was comprised, to a great extent, of properties and rights that the church of Cologne already possessed in the region, but the king’s grant nevertheless was a significant moment. As one historian has observed, “With an enormous increase in power as a result of the [1180] charter, Archbishop Philip was unquestionably the leading prince in northern Germany, and thereafter the archbishops of Cologne would dominate affairs in the lower Rhine [region].”43 In other words, in the western half of Saxony, the greatest beneficiary of the downfall of Duke Henry the Lion was not the German rulers but an archiepiscopal church. The power and authority of the archbishops of Trier, Mainz, and Cologne, in particular, helps to explain why they emerged over the course of the centuries

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as three of the seven prince-electors of the German kings (the others were the kings of Bohemia, the dukes of Saxony, the margraves of Brandenburg, and the counts-palatine of the Rhine). What this meant, in practical terms, can be seen in the case of Mainz. During the thirteenth century, four of the archbishops of that church came from a local noble family in the archdiocese. This one family, the Eppsteins, therefore exerted enormous influence over how the medieval German kingdom was ruled at the level of the kingship. The tomb effigy of one of these archbishops, Siegfried III (1230–1249), depicts him placing crowns on the heads of two kings who are positioned to his left and right and are significantly smaller than he is.44 Another, Werner II (1259–1284), played an important role in arranging the election of the first Habsburg king, Rudolf I, in 1273. And a third, Gerhard II (1288–1305), was a pivotal figure in the next two royal elections. Since the archbishops and the other electors received grants of land and other significant concessions from newly-elected kings in return for their support, playing such a central role in the king-making process helped to expand the political and territorial power and authority of these ecclesiastical princes.45 Setting aside the prominent and somewhat exceptional examples of the three archbishop-electors, it is clear that many other ecclesiastical princes also ruled their territories in ways very similar to their secular counterparts. They possessed fiefs, had their own armed followers (ministerials), and assigned local agents to administer their properties and exercise justice.46 It was not at all unusual for bishops to build and improve castles in their possession, fortify small towns under their control, and purchase fortified sites in strategic locations around their diocese.47 King Frederick II’s “Privilege in Favor of the Ecclesiastical Princes” from 1220 acknowledged the wide-ranging rights of these prelates; its clauses included one that decreed, we shall not in future introduce new tolls or new moneys within their territories or jurisdictions without consulting them or against their wishes, but we shall preserve firm and unalterable the ancient tolls and minting rights granted to their churches.48 As the above-cited example of the two abbesses complaining about Frederick II’s attempt to sell their convents without their consent has already shown, the ecclesiastical elites could be fiercely protective of their rights and did not hesitate to challenge the German rulers when they infringed on their communities’ privileges. Some of the best evidence for the ways in which many prelates effectively functioned as the independent rulers of their own territories is their possession of minting rights. In contrast to England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, where the kings kept tight control of the coinage, the German kingdom witnessed numerous members of the secular and ecclesiastical elites in possession of the right to mint their own coins.49 These magnates expected the people living in their territories to use their coinage, and traveling from one princely territory

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to another frequently meant moving from one money regime to another. Even some convents had mints. For example, throughout the period discussed here, the women’s religious community at Quedlinburg in Saxony issued large numbers of silver pennies; these typically included an image of the abbess, sometimes flanked by church towers.50 This is clear evidence that monasteries, convents and other churches were not only religious and political centers but also economic ones. Indeed, one of the most trusted types of coins in the whole of the German kingdom was the silver mark minted by the archbishops of Cologne, because the archbishops maintained the quality and weight of these coins over a long period.51 Thus, from the court of the German kings to local communities across the kingdom, archbishops, bishops, abbots and abbesses were frequently central figures in practices of rulership. They were tasked with advising the rulers on not only political but also military matters, keeping the peace on their extensive territories and organizing the administration of their churches’ properties and rights. At the end of the period under investigation here, all of these elements were combined in an especially striking fashion by Archbishop-Elector Baldwin of Trier (1307–1354), brother of King Henry VII (1308–1313) and—according to some historians—one of the founders of the territorial “state” of Trier.52 Although I find the term “state” problematic because it is too suggestive of modern political structures, there is no question that many of the developments we associate with the growth of government and administration took place at the level of the princes rather than the king. The model of strong, centralized royal authority that historians associate with England and France from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onward simply does not apply to the German kingdom in the same period.

Towns and Urban Networks Although the secular and ecclesiastical princes are the most important figures for understanding how the medieval German kingdom was ruled, especially at the regional level, this study would not be complete without a brief discussion of the role of towns as local powerholders. The city-states of Renaissance Italy are the best-known examples of European urban communities exercising effective authority not only over town populations but also over the surrounding territories outside their walls. While the German kingdom lacked towns of comparable size and independence, there is abundant evidence from the thirteenth century onward of some German urban communities functioning as local authorities. Imperial cities, in particular, which were answerable only to the German kings rather than any secular or ecclesiastical prince, sometimes were in a position to be powerful and influential regional actors.53 The councils of wealthy, urban (male) residents who governed some of these towns acquired castles, lands, and rights in neighboring territories; were responsible for exercising justice both inside and outside their town’s walls; levied and collected taxes; and organized military

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campaigns.54 The political and military clout of some of these towns—and their aggressive behavior—is evident in King Frederick II’s 1232 “Statute in Favor of the Princes,” in which the ruler decreed that “properties and fiefs belonging to princes, nobles, …and churches that have been occupied by our cities shall be restored and not occupied in the future.”55 One of the most prominent urban communities in the German kingdom was Nuremberg. It was a town under the direct authority of the German kings, and there was a royal castle there that the rulers occasionally visited. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, royal representatives exercised authority within the town. However, during the thirteenth century, a council of townsmen gradually acquired more and more rights from the kings and became increasingly autonomous. The town council’s judicial authority expanded, for example, and Nuremberg also received privileges from many of the German kings granting various economic rights, such as freedom from some tolls. Nuremberg also expanded its authority into neighboring lands and came to dominate an extensive territory. While the town never became completely independent from royal authority, its history nevertheless provides an excellent example of the ways in which towns could become important actors at the local level.56 Though not as powerful as the leading burghers of Nuremberg, the urban elite in the town of Worms on the Rhine River gained prominence as it gradually succeeded in limiting the authority of the bishops of Worms within the town itself. By the mid-thirteenth century, the town council effectively ruled.57 In practice, this meant (among other things) that the town council oversaw the urban community’s military resources. Thus, according to one source, in the year 1242, King Conrad [IV] came to Worms seeking help…The citizens of Worms immediately prepared exceptionally well-constructed ships, equipped with fighting platforms, and marched…with 200 armed men and all of the appropriate equipment. They served the king for six weeks at the expense of the city.58 Eight years later in 1250, King Conrad IV again “asked the citizens of Worms for aid. They agreed to his request and sent him half of the military forces of the city…They came loyally with 2,000 armed men and one hundred crossbowmen.”59 Worms emerges from the pages of this source as one of the leading political and military powers in its region and as a key ally when the king needed to campaign in its environs. Because very few of the towns in the German kingdom had populations greater than 5,000 inhabitants in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, even those that were relatively autonomous could not always defend themselves effectively. As a result, from the second half of the thirteenth century—a period when, as noted above, a split royal election and relatively weak kings led to a great deal of upheaval—towns increasingly sought allies to help them maintain

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regional stability. Here too, the town of Worms is an especially good example. According to the same source referenced above, In 1254 the people of Worms and the people of Mainz entered into an alliance for all time…When they saw that the aforementioned peace agreement [between Worms and Mainz] would be very useful, the men of Oppenheim passionately demanded that they be allowed to join the union.60 This was the start of an urban association known as the Rhenish League (1254–1257), which initially included several towns of the Rhine region but then quickly spread to other parts of the kingdom and involved some secular and ecclesiastical lords too.61 From the beginning, one of the goals of the league was to enforce the decrees of the Imperial Land Peace of 1235, which had been issued by King Frederick II. In other words, in the absence of effective royal authority in the 1250s, it was local communities who filled the void and sought to preserve law and order. In later years, regional associations of this sort proliferated and fulfilled at least some of the functions we would typically expect a ruler to fulfill.62 Another regional network that began to take shape in the closing decades of the period under investigation here was the Hanseatic League. One of the towns that played a key role in its development was Lübeck. As noted above, from the late 1150s, this urban community had enjoyed the support of the powerful duke of Saxony, Henry the Lion. However, when King Frederick I stripped the duchy from Henry the Lion, Lübeck found itself without its protector. Frederick I laid siege to the town and forced it to surrender, after which it became an imperial town answerable only to the German kings.63 Lübeck was located far to the north of the regions where the German rulers spent most of their time, however, and therefore had to look for allies locally if it was going to survive and thrive.64 From the second quarter of the thirteenth century onward, the town council increasingly made agreements with other towns in the far north of the German kingdom to protect its interests. The term Hanse initially referred to associations of merchants, who banded together when traveling abroad to protect themselves and their merchandise from thieves and pirates. For merchants from Lübeck and other neighboring towns, trade in the Baltic and North Seas could be immensely profitable, but only if the trade routes were safe. In the absence of a powerful German king or prince to safeguard them, these merchants increasingly looked to the leaders of their towns to provide them with the necessary protection. From 1241, Lübeck and Hamburg began cooperating closely, and this bilateral agreement soon expanded into a regional association of towns that allied together to defend shipping routes. While the origins of the Hanseatic League thus lay within the sphere of the towns’ economic interests, these town councils also agreed to have representatives come together annually to discuss, more generally, issues of common ­interest.65 As one scholar has argued,

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The Hanseatic League was undoubtedly the most powerful of the city-leagues and is an interesting case because it suggests an alternative logic of organization to that of the sovereign state…[T]he Hansa had the ability to send emissaries, sign treaties, collect revenue, and enforce [its council’s] decisions…[A]lthough the Hansa was a confederation that did not have a founding constitution, it could raise an army, conduct foreign policy, decree laws, [and] engage in social regulation.66 While the Hanseatic League was exceptional in many ways, it—much like the Rhenish League—highlights the creativity and sophistication of urban communities’ reactions to the lack of strong centralized authority in the German kingdom between 1125 and 1350. Towns were small islands of relative wealth surrounded by the predominantly agricultural society of medieval Europe. As a result, they were an attractive target for other local powerholders in need of money. The secular and ecclesiastical princes who exercised authority at the regional level in many parts of the German kingdom sought to dominate the urban communities in their territories, and they were frequently successful at doing so. Nevertheless, some towns—especially those that were under direct royal authority—employed strategies that enabled them to act with relative independence. In the process, whether acting alone or in leagues with other urban communities, many of these towns became the effective rulers of populations both inside their walls and in the surrounding territories.

Conclusion How was the medieval German kingdom ruled between 1125 and 1350? To answer this question, we must approach it from multiple directions. The German kings were wealthy landholders who possessed castles, towns, and estates across their realm, and some even had the resources to travel as far south as Rome to be crowned emperor by the pope. As they moved around their kingdom and held court, they sought to present an image of strong authority by issuing documents and working together with the political elites of the realm. Nevertheless, in many of the regions that comprised the medieval German kingdom, the kings were not the effective rulers. Instead, the imperial princes—secular and ecclesiastical magnates such as dukes and bishops—controlled many of the most valuable properties and rights in these regions. They were the ones who were responsible for maintaining the peace and providing order in their territories. During the thirteenth century, as royal authority weakened even further, some towns also developed into local authorities. As tempting as it might be to see the multiplicity of different powerholders as evidence for the absence of effective political authority in the German kingdom, local and regional elites throughout the period 1125 to 1350 took on the responsibilities for exercising justice, organizing military resources, and collecting revenue. In other words, the German kingdom was ruled—but not by its rulers.

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Notes 1 Vedran Sulovsky, “The Concept of Sacrum Imperium in Historical Scholarship,” History Compass 17 (2019): 1. As often as possible, I will cite works in English to facilitate further reading by those interested in the history of the German kingdom. However, it is important to note that there is a vast scholarship on my topic in German. 2 For the complexity of many dynastic succession patterns in this period, see Björn Weiler, Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). 3 Laura E. Wangerin, Kingship and Justice in the Ottonian Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019), 107–50. 4 Simon MacLean, Ottonian Queenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Timothy Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages, c. 800–1056 (London: Longman, 1991), 183–220; Stefan Weinfurter, The Salian Century: Main Currents in an Age of Transition, trans. Barbara Bowlus (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Sean Gilsdorf, trans., Queenship and Sanctity: The Lives of Mathilda and The Epitaph of Adelheid (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004). 5 Maureen C. Miller, Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 6 Weinfurter, Salian Century, 159–79. For this period, see also Maureen C. Miller, “The Crisis in the Investiture Crisis Narrative,” History Compass 7 (2009): 1570–80; Ian S. Robinson, Henry IV of Germany, 1056 – 1106 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Alfred Haverkamp, Medieval Germany, 1056–1273, trans. Helga Braun and Richard Mortimer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988). 7 Counting kings between 1125 and 1500 is not always straightforward. I include here the succession of Henry VI after Frederick I; of Conrad IV after Frederick II (though there was also a rival claimant); of Wenzel after Charles IV; and of Maximilian I after Frederick III. See Peter H. Wilson, Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016), 695–96. 8 Although, as noted above, many German kings also acquired the title of emperor, I will refer to them in the remainder of this article only as kings, since the focus here is on the German kingdom, not the Holy Roman Empire more broadly. 9 John W. Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries in Early Medieval Germany, c. 936–1075 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); John B. Freed, Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 89–110. 10 Freed, Frederick Barbarossa, 107–10; Wilson, Heart of Europe, 324. 11 Die Urkunden Friedrichs I. Ed. Heinrich Appelt. 5 vols. MGH DD Deutsche Könige und Kaiser 10 (Hanover, 1975–1990), 2:253, no. 384. 12 Die Urkunden Konrads III. und seines Sohnes Heinrich. Ed. Friedrich Hausmann. MGH DD Deutsche Könige und Kaiser 9 (Vienna, Cologne and Graz, 1969), 377–79, no. 210. 13 Die Urkunden Friedrichs II. Ed. Walter Koch, et al. 6 vols. MGH DD Deutsche Könige und Kaiser 14 (Hanover, 2002–2021), 2:336–38, no. 340. 14 Die Urkunden Friedrichs II, 2:385–88, no. 365. See also Bernd Schneidmüller, “Konsensuale Herrschaft. Ein Essay über Formen und Konzepte politischer Ordnung im Mittelalter,” in Reich, Regionen und Europa in Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Festschrift für Peter Moraw Peter Moraw, ed. Paul-Joachim Heinig, et al. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2000), 53–87. 15 Otto of Freising and Rahewin, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. Charles Christopher Mierow (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 119. 16 The Origins of the German Principalities, 1100–1350: Essays by German Historians, ed. Graham A. Loud and Jochen Schenk (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 359.

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Further Readings Arnold, Benjamin. Medieval Germany, 500–1300: A Political Interpretation. Toronto and Buffalo: Macmillan, 1997. Arnold, Benjamin. Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Bachrach, David S. “Making Peace and War in the ‘City State’ of Worms, 1235–1273.” German History 24, no. 4 (2006): 505–25. Freed, John B. Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016. Gillingham, John B. “Elective Kingship and the Unity of Medieval Germany.” German History 9 (1991): 124–35. Hardy, Duncan. Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire: Upper Germany, 1346–1521. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Haverkamp, Alfred. Medieval Germany, 1056–1273. Trans. Helga Braun and Richard Mortimer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Lyon, Jonathan R. Corruption, Protection and Justice in Medieval Europe: A Thousand-Year History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2023. Lyon, Jonathan R. Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, ­1100–1250. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. The Origins of the German Principalities, 1100–1350. Essays by German Historians, ed. Graham A. Loud and Jochen Schenk. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. Reuter, Timothy. “Episcopi Cum Sua Militia: The Prelate as Warrior in the Early Staufer Era.” In Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Karl Leyser, ed. Timothy Reuter, 79–94. London and Rio Grande: Hambledon, 1992. Weiler, Björn. “The King as Judge: Henry II and Frederick Barbarossa as Seen by Their Contemporaries.” In Challenging the Boundaries of Medieval History: The Legacy of Timothy Reuter, ed. Skinner, Patricia, 115–40. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Wilson, Peter H. Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016.

14 HOW EARLY MEDIEVAL ITALY WAS RULED Land and Power Edward Schoolman

Introduction The story of how Italy was ruled in the early Middle Ages (500–1000) must be interpreted as one divided by scale. At the largest scale (when considering the  entire peninsula or defined geographic regions like Tuscany, the Veneto, or the Pentapolis), kings, dukes, and bishops along with their delegates ruled through the enforcement of laws, control of resources, and their monopolies on dispute resolution. At more local levels, especially after the disappearance of the system of Roman taxation, the landed elites who made up both urban and rural aristocracies maintained control through the rents they extracted, both in their agreements with tenants, and their connections to local institutions (such as churches and monasteries).1 This chapter, while focusing on the development of the role of aristocracies in ruling Italy, will include discussions of the continuities of Roman governance through aspects of “Roman” administration and legal practices (such as titles), the ruptures of these practices (such as the end of the Roman senate and senatorial class), and the disappearance of systems of taxations. It will also trace the innovations of this period, especially that of the direct governance by local rulers who came to power during a period of entrenchment of various new elites vested in landholding (both Byzantine and Lombard, later Frankish and local), as well as the ways in which institutional landholding and the rents they provided replaced taxation and served to define hierarchical political relationships. These innovations gave rise to new forms of estates (such as ducal or royal lands), and new institutional powers (such as episcopal sees and monasteries that held significant territory). In the end, ruling Italy was not accomplished by a single office, position, institution, or aristocratic group, but by an overlapping network of power that DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-14

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evolved over time. Further still, cities and regions developed their own traditions and customs, each diverging from late Roman models in response to different internal alignments and external forces.

Ruling through Wealth: The End of Taxes and the Rise of Rents The ways in which power was wielded in Italy were connected to how resources were collected, centralized, and distributed. Even before the arrival of outside groups such as the Ostrogoths and the Lombards, peninsular Italy’s large estates were already in the process of degradation—a process that would not be complete until the end of the seventh century.2 These estates once served as the core basis for Roman taxation, and despite their degradation and fragmention, along with the decline in the ability to raise taxes, the language of taxation and the units used to measure production continued to be in practice.3 At the end of the fifth century, our evidence for Ostrogothic Italy through the Variae of Cassiodorus demonstrates efforts by Theodoric, who ruled as the Ostrogothic king in Italy from 493 to 526, to restore and maintain previously held systems. Following the decline of the Gothic kingdom and the restoration of Byzantine control over Italy, Emperor Justinian (while ruling from Constantinople) supported his administration’s efforts to continue to restore and revive these systems of revenue generation.4 The arrival of the Lombards in 568 and  their slow establishment of a patchwork kingdom of duchies brought the end of this system and, as argued by Chris Wickham, marks one of the cleanest breaks in the post-Roman West.5 Even while taking into account the scant evidence that points to limited continuity of Roman taxation into the Lombard period, taxation did not last into the seventh century.6 Stefano Gasparri has argued that while Lombards may have adopted the surviving fiscal tools that were still in Italy when they arrived, the reality was that they developed the exploitation of their extensive landholding assets directly and through rents as a means to finance the state in their territories with relative uniformity.7 With the end of taxation, the system of rents on property financed not only the upper echelon of the Lombard Kingdom, but various aristocracies across Italy as well. Even in cities (such as Lucca), which were so central to the nascent Lombard aristocracies that members of those groups often defined themselves as cives, wealth and power were still tied to the ownership of land.8 In Italy, the development of landed elites was not solely a phenomenon associated with Lombards, but also one that took place in territories that remained subject to Byzantine authority under the control of the exarch in Ravenna, and remained central to their aristocracies following their departure from Constantinople’s orbit in the eighth century.9 The other main beneficiaries of the end of the system of taxation were churches and monasteries. With a shift toward (typically inalienable) donations from wealthy patrons (especially kings and queens), some estimates described these institutions as holding a third of cultivatable land by the seventh century.10

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Although the histories of their institutions seldom mentioned their landed properties (for which we must rely on charters and cartularies from institutional archives), these holdings helped bishops and abbots extend their authority beyond the spiritual realm, and collaborate or compete with kings, dukes, and local aristocratic families.11 The development of churches and monasteries as centers of power was not uniform, but reflected each institution’s history, their place in religious hierarchies, and their value to both local and external elites and rulers.

The Local and Regional Power of “Elites” Although Italy often found itself under a variety of different rulers and types of rule, the trajectory following the end of the Roman state is a story of fragmentation, not just in the geographic control (from a unified Italian peninsula to disunity), but also in the features of control. Institutions and individuals which gained control of land had to negotiate with the fragmentation of authority and the evolution of different systems under various regimes. For the governance of Italy, the sixth century marked a number of important changes, the reverberations of which shaped local society for centuries. The conquest of Italy by the forces of the Eastern Roman Empire beginning in 539 and the arrival of the Lombards less than 30 years later were central events to the formation of a new landholding elites. While these elites took on different characteristics, their evolution shared many similarities, and most notable is that they were influenced by the growing power of local churches that filled the void left in the absence of Roman urban administration. New hierarchies of elites also emerged. In Lombard-held cities and territories, offices (like dux) appointed administrative officials, notably gastalds, under whom a large number of other officials began to appear (such as the archiporcarius, a “chief swineherd” who served under the Dukes of Spoleto with responsibilities for managing the ducal forests and the economic activities within). In Lucca, for example, we find indications of elites who benefited from the rising merchant class and the emerging market economy; in Rome, new elites from the region came to dominate the city’s local affairs, offset by the rising political power of the papacy; in Ravenna, a similar pattern appears, with what seemed a more equal sharing of authority between the local bishops and the new elites who would eventually style themselves as dux (with multiple line, and those inheriting the title) serving simultaneously; and finally in Naples, where their office of the dux came to be heritable in the early eighth century, and came to directly coopt the position of bishop. Above these local and regional elites were Lombard kings, Byzantine exarchs (appointed directly from Constantinople from the late sixth century to 751), and various other dukes and generals in southern Italy, where power was more highly fragmented. In 751, the Lombards under King Aistulf conquered the weakened but remaining territory in the Byzantine exarchate, temporarily solidifying

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their hold on Northern Italy, an act that seemed to have little effect on the composition or disposition of the newly established hierarchies in the cities of Rome and Ravenna. However, this event triggered the consolidation of the Papal-Frankish alliance, and in 774 Charlemagne invaded northern Italy. Conquering the Lombard territories and deposing the Lombard king, adding his title of “king of the Lombards” to his own, and in 800 was further bestowed by the Pope the title of Emperor. The arrival of the Franks began a new transition in Italy: first with the incoming waves of Frankish elites and their allies who progressively supplanted many of the leading Lombards (and held offices like dux hereditarily), and second in their systematic and extensive support for religious institutions—monasteries as well as churches—which would continue to develop power as they became major landholders. Despite these changes, much of Italy remained independent from other Frankish political and cultural innovations, and local communities continued to develop in their own courses within and outside of this realm.

Lucca Lucca was like many cities that developed extensively following the arrival and settlement of the Lombards at the end of the sixth century, but has long remained a center of scholarly attention as it maintains one of the largest archives of primary source documents in Italy from before the ninth century.12 By the seventh century, it was a Lombard city with wide-ranging territorial claims, although it never extended its influence regionally.13 What is missing from these sources is what the late Roman settlement may have looked like, something visible only in the archeological records. During the period of the Lombards, Lucca’s local politics were dominated by the role of the bishop, although there are records of both Duces of the city and Gastaldi—royal Lombard officials—of nearby centers. The rich documentation for this period suggests small-scale struggles over the ownership of land and the rights of its inhabitants were regularly found in various charters that ended up in the archiepiscopal archive. Local elites collaborated with the church and also went on to serve as royal officials14 In this case, “State authority” in the form of the Lombard kings in Pavia, local rural and urban aristocracies, and the city’s Church developed through this network. There would be significant changes under the Carolingians, however, but they were not instantaneous. Lucca would become the capital of a new designated territory, the Marca di Tuscia in the 840s, insinuating the territory into a nominally more cohesive Frankish apparatus. There would be other changes as well at smaller levels. For example, privately financed rural churches in the territory of Lucca would be absorbed into Lucca’s own Church, and their holding and wealth, and the degradation of the status of those rural elites who opposed this centralization.15

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Ravenna Ravenna evolved from the Byzantine capital of the exarchate in Italy into a regional center through the extensive landholdings of its church and local elites by the end of the eighth century.16 These elites, the descendants of soldiers in the Byzantine army stationed in Italy, eventually reclaimed Roman military titles, like dux and magister militum in hereditary fashion, with their own offspring sometimes adopting “ex genere ducum” and similar formulations, and used these “Roman” titles absent any other meaning then to differentiate from lesser elites and urban functionaries.17 There were other differences that highlight the distinctive characteristics compared with its Lombard and post-Lombard neighbors. Like in the case of Lucca, the episcopal archives of Ravenna also preserve a large number of documents recording local disputes and transactions; but unlike in Lucca, where the scribes were often associated with the church, Ravenna maintained a tradition of civic notaries dating back to the late Roman Empire. And unlike Lucca, where Franks came to dominate the upper echelons of society, the local post-Byzantine aristocracy was augmented through Frankish intermarriage, with these new families using the church of Ravenna to protect its wealth through lease agreements and supporting the church against Roman oversight.18 This led to the office of archbishop developing into Ravenna’s most powerful agent (and likely the largest landholder) of the city, effectively ruling it until the formation of the local commune in the twelfth century. In the ninth century, however, the archbishops worked to ingratiate themselves with the new Carolingian rulers, and often to distance themselves from Rome by seeking privileges and rights that would foster their autonomy; but with the arrival of the Ottonians in the middle of the tenth century, the office of bishop eventually became occupied by Ottonian candidates from north of the Alps as Ravenna became a seat of Ottonian power.

Naples Unlike Ravenna, which remained under the direct control of the Byzantine Empire until 751, the city of Naples represents a nominally Byzantine territory that slowly unraveled its connections to Constantinople.19 Naples had been ruled by a duke following the arrival of the Lombards, although for the first century there are gaps in this attestation. Eventually, the city came to be ruled by one family, the Sergii dynasty after their founder, and in the ninth century the line also manage to control the controlled the episcopal see.20 Due to its geographic separation from the other major hubs of Byzantine authority in Italy, and its close connections to neighboring (although often antagonistic) Lombard states—especially the independent duchy, and later principality of Benevento many parts of Neapolitan society were highly influenced by trends and patterns immediately beyond its borders.21 Yet the society also maintained a

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FIGURE 14.1

Half-follis of Bishop Athanasius II, 878–898 (Reprinted from: Arturo Giulio Sambon, “Le Monete del Ducato Napoletano, “ Rivista italiana di numismatica 3 (1890): 445–72, plate XI

highly “Greek” characteristic, with the support of local church and monasteries in the city in which Greek language was spoken and liturgies remained in use. The Sergii dynasty, who ruled nearly uninterrupted as the Dukes in Naples from 840 until 1137 when the city was absorbed into the Norman Kingdom of Italy, were also unique in their ability to coopt the office of bishop. The sons of Sergius I divided the positions, with Gregory serving as duke from 864 to 870 and Athanasius serving as bishop from 850 to 872, but it was Gregory’s son Athanasius II who from 877 to 898 served simultaneously as bishop and then duke, a rare example of the formal merging of political and religious roles in Italy (Figure 14.1).22

Rome The history of ruling Rome is dominated by the papacy. It is unsurprising, as the main source for the city through the ninth century remains the Liber Pontificalis, the serial biography of the popes; unlike Lucca or Ravenna, there is little archival material until much later.23 In many cities, the position of bishop, archbishop, and the case of Rome, pope, took on secular authority with the decline of Roman urban administration. These positions, along with those of abbot, could serve two crucial functions: the first was in the estates held by these institutions, either through direct landholding or leased for rents; and the second was through their position to help secure the wealth of local aristocracies through gifts, exchanges, and protection of assets through donations and leases under preferential terms. In the case of Rome in particular, the early popes were politically weak compared to the sixth century when they carried significant administrative and governmental functions (although these early popes could be called upon to use their pastoral and spiritual authority during times of crisis). The surviving letters

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of Pope Gregory the Great (590–604), for example, illustrate the breadth of his responsibilities, including the staffing and issues relating to the church in Italy and beyond, the correspondence with and cajoling of the ruling Lombard kings and queens, and the administration of papal properties in Sicily.24 While things remained complex for the next 150 years, the arrival of the Franks and their willingness to collaborate with the papacy led to an alliance that eventually brought both stability and greater political power to the office of pope (although one that could be, and sometimes was, threatened by local dissatisfaction).25 Yet the city of Rome itself was also one in which urban aristocracies survived and thrived, sometimes at odds with the papacy, other times supporting one or more rivals to the see. These urban elites provided priests to important local churches, served in what were often ceremonial roles, and played parts in revolts and rebellions under the Byzantine exarchate, including later local dynastic politics.26 But in the formation of the elites of Rome the view was often outwards, especially in the eighth and ninth centuries, to families from Campagna, Franks, and their allies. Yet by this point the central axis of power was the papacy and one that would grow to eventually challenge the German emperors in the twelfth century.

Power in Action The following two cases demonstrate the very different pathways in which the interconnections between land and power become manifest in medieval Italy. Despite their differences, one a collections of texts covering nearly four centuries, and the other a document produced on a single day, both rely on the both written words and legal instruments to demonstrate both authority and ownership.

Farfa’s Cartulary and Chronicle The monastery of Santa Maria in Farfa is located just 45 kilometers north-east of Rome on the slope of the Sabine mountains. The history of the monastery, as recorded by the monks themselves in the twelfth century, traced its origin to the late seven century, when a group of monks stumbled upon an abandoned church began its first foundation. Under the Lombards, the monastery grew in prestige and in its landholdings, beginning with a major gift of 11 estates by the Duke of Spoleto, Faroald II, and continuing with other significant donations through to the ninth century. At this point, its holding stretched across northern and central Italy, but its visibility led to a host of rivalries, both local and regional. Moreover, the patterns of patronage shifted, beginning with the Lombard Dukes of Spoleto in the eighth century, to the Franks in the ninth century, onward to the local aristocratic families of Rome of the ninth and early tenth centuries, and finally to the Ottonian emperors in the tenth century.27 To see this change in the history of Farfa itself, we must turn to the end of the eleventh century, when a monk of the monastery named Gregory of Catino (1060–after 1130) was responsible for the production of four texts, all of which

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survive, that record institutional history of the monastery often through the preservation legal of legal records ( judicial decisions, donations, sales, and rents) about the land controlled by Farfa as well as its management. These four sources were part of renewed interest of Farfa’s monks in its past legacy as a means to protect its patrimony and raise its profile during a period in which there was political instability between Rome and the German Holy Roman Empire which held nominal control over much of Italy.28 The first of Gregory’s works was the Regestum, a cartulary or “register,” which was a collection of the documents affirming the monastery’s ownership of estates—or at least the most important ones for Gregory—found in Farfa’s archives. These documents include donations, wills, sales, and other legal texts that pertain to both the monastery’s holdings but also its rights, as well as its successes in past legal disputes. Gregory organized them chronologically and had them recopied into a single volume that still survives predominantly in the cartulary. From that volume, Gregory wrote a “history” of the monastery, in part based on the Regestum. Known as the Chronicle of Farfa, this text incorporated references to other documents and holdings for which he did not have records, and presented the monastery into the broader historical context from the seventh century through the twelfth. In addition to these, he created an “index” of properties controlled by the monastery in his day, known as the Liber floriger, and a register of the long-term leases that the monastery had granted, the Liber largitorius. One interesting feature of these collections is that they illuminate not just the holdings, but also suggest the long-term strategies for their management from an institutional perspective. This includes efforts at concentrating holdings, and periods which saw significant gifts and sales as land consolidations allowed for greater concentrations of efficiencies in the exploitation of resources. The patterns of how monastic landholdings change extended beyond the collections of texts themselves, leaving evidence on the landscape visible in the natural archives of the medieval local environment. These natural archives, and in particular fossil pollen preserved in lake sediment, demonstrate the effects of greater intensification of land use by Farfa and other large institutions during periods following consolidation as a way to extend the exploitation of these resources.29 Returning to the Regestum, and its collection of charters preserving the records of sales and gifts to the monastery, was one of the largest cartularies of this period in the Middle Ages, filling five published volumes and consisting of copies of 1324 documents.30 By collecting these documents together, Gregory formed a corpus of sources on the monastery’s past and contemporary holdings, although one that was only a “selective witness” to Farfa’s complete archive.31 With what is included—from its Lombard origins to the Frankish interest in its elevation as an imperial monastery in the ninth century, and even the period in which the monastery was forced to be abandoned—the general position of the monastery with respect to its political situation and holdings comes into focus.32

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The 967 Placitum of Ravenna A clear example of power in action took place in 967, at a time when the contours of rulership in Italy were being redrawn. After almost a century of weak Carolingian and post-Carolingian Frankish rule in Northern Italy, the German king (and later emperor) Otto I looked south of the Alps as a means to extend his nascent empire.33 Otto was the son of Henry the Fowler, who laid claim to the title of rex over the Germanic tribes in what was east Frankia, and established a new Saxon ruling dynasty. Coming to power as king in 936, Otto spent the early part of his reign putting down revolts supported by disgruntled nobles who did not recognize his authority or legitimacy, undertaking a campaign against the Hungarians, and later dealing with internal family struggles (notably his rebellious eldest son). Following a call from the pope (but in reality part of long-standing objectives), Otto entered Italy in 961 and defeated Berenger II, who had claimed the title of King of Italy in 950; in February of the next year, Otto received his coronation as emperor.34 Much of the local governance and customs survived the transition from the relatively weak rule of Berenger II and his father, Lothar II, to that of Otto. For example, in 966 Otto was forced to return to Rome to deal with a revolt by a group of local aristocrats; his response was to have the leaders executed, which marked a continuation of customs rather than an importation of German responses.35 The real impact may have also been the way in which Otto and his successors elevated their allies both from aristocratic families and episcopal sees, often replacing those whose loyalties were uncertain. This impacted traditional arrangements over the control of land and resources, demonstrating how the act of rulership could reshape local systems of power. An example of this pattern occurred in 967. In that year Otto spent a great deal of time in the city of Ravenna as an operating base to govern Italy, in part as an effort to raise the status of the bishopric as a means to elevate his “home” city of Magdeburg by connecting them in hagiographic traditions.36 While there, as part of his imperial responsibilities, Otto heard and adjudicated disputes, including one raised by the bishop of Ravenna himself. In the complaint, the archbishop Peter of Bologna accused two members of one of Ravenna’s leading families of having unjustly imprisoned him and pillaged the treasury two years prior. The men, Rainerius and Guido, did not attend the judicial proceeding, and without mounting a defense were found culpable as a result. In the placitum, the legal document that formalized the judicial decision issued by Otto (and also the term for the judicial assembly itself ), property held by Rainerius and Guido was seized and given to the church as compensation; this sealed the fate of the family in Ravenna, and the surviving members retreated to their holdings in the Apennine mountains where they later formed a noble house of the Conte Guidi.37 In his judgment, Otto not only supported the archbishop, his ally, but also reduced the power of a once dominant family whose roots were traced to both the early local elites of the city of Ravenna and later Frankish arrivals, and associated

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with the preceding Carolingian dynasty. More specifically, he demonstrated his authority by shifting estates into the hands of the church of Ravenna, including two valuable salt works, thereby providing that institution with continued and renewable resources one held by the family of Rainerius and Guido. He did not also do this alone. The plactium described how Otto heard the case along with the pope, John XIII, as well as a long list of bishops, counts, and judges from across central and northern Italy. Further, this case was attended by a group composed of members of Ravenna’s local elites who had aligned themselves with its bishop, all of whom were present at Otto’s court in the monastery of San Severo outside of the city. In addition, the plactium refers to a group of judges both Lombard and Roman (that is, non-Lombard in this context rather than from the city of Rome) by name, who, after listening to Peter of Bologna’s accusation and the failure of Rainerius and Guido to respond or mount a defense, decided in favor of the archbishop. The judgment was witnessed by a number of powerful lords and local elites, including Adalbert (the count of Canossa) Dato (the count of Milan), whose signatures would help ensure the validity of the document and whose local authority could be used to enforce the decision. This single document illustrates a substantial amount about how Italy was governed in practice in Ottonian Italy. Although aligned with the papacy, Otto I was acting in his capacity as emperor, adjudicating a dispute in the presence of those Italian magnates loyal to him, with the assistance of the local judges. In the judicial order, turning over property from the perpetrators to the victims (the archbishop and the Church of Ravenna), he demonstrated that property was the key to restitution, and the domain where local power and wealth resided.

Epilogue: After the Tenth Century In the wake of the Ottonians’ arrival and the revival of a centralized authority, a number of practices continued. These included the strengthening and revitalizing of institutions and their holdings, and the appearance of more monasteries that would receive imperial and local patronage. Lands that remained part of royal, ducal, ecclesiastic, and monastic estates continued to be exploited to generate revenue, and the continued disputes over ownership, as evidenced in the material from charters, demonstrate continuity in form and function. There were also significant innovations in how Italy was ruled at both the regional and local levels. The pull of “German” emperors in northern Italy, and the eventual opposition to it, helped to demarcate what was known as the investiture controversy, which began in the last quarter of the eleventh century. In the south, the eleventh century witnessed the arrival of the Normans, who over the course of a century conquered and unified the fractured independent Lombard and Byzantine territories, as well as taking Muslim Sicily. At least in northern and central Italy, the conflicts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries gave rise to a different form of local government. The

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commune—literally “collective”—was controlled by leading urban stakeholders, not just the landholding elite. This new form evolved from an intermediary stage in which cities were ruled by consules, some of whom ruled cities individually and the behest of regional powers.38 Even in cities where communes took power, they could later fall under the authority of various secular lords, their consules, or even a podesta (the term used for the local rulers in Ravenna, for example, who typically held their title for life). This shifting of power within local hands would eventually give rise to other means of control, and other pathways to rule, that would come to the fore in the later periods of the Middle Ages. From the late sixth century to the eleventh century, creating and keeping documents that deprived or provided for rights over land, and adjudicating disputes over contested estates, was the means by which those with authority exercised their rule. Alongside this, new pathways beyond who controlled land still mattered when it came to power, other means—the ability to raise an army, for example, or the popularity within the civic elite—remained essential for governing.

Notes 1 On early medieval Italian aristocracies, see Thomas S. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy A.D. 554–800 (Rome: British School at Rome, 1984); Maria Elena Cortese, L’aristocrazia toscana: sette secoli (VI–XII) (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2017); Stefano Gasparri, “The Aristocracy,” in Italy in the Early Middle Ages, 476–1000, ed. Cristina La Rocca, The Short Oxford History of Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 59–84; Edward M. Schoolman, “Nobility, Aristocracy, and Status in Early Medieval Ravenna,” in Ravenna: Its Role in Medieval Change and Exchange, ed. Judith Herrin and Jinty Nelson (London: Institute for Historical Research, 2016), 211–38; Edward M. Schoolman, “Aristocracies in Early Medieval Italy, c. 500 –1000 CE,” History Compass 16 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12499; Vera von Falkenhausen, “A Provincial Aristocracy: The Byzantine Provinces in Southern Italy (9th – 11th Century),” in The Byzantine Aristocracy: IX to XIII centuries, ed. Michael Angold (Oxford: BAR, 1984). 2 Using sources from both the eastern and western Mediterranean, Peter Sarris has persuasively argued that the Late Roman estates formed the basis for the medieval bipartite estates that emerge. Peter Sarris, “The Origins of the Manorial Economy: New Insights from Late Antiquity,” The English Historical Review 119, no. 481 (2004): 279–311. 3 Marios Costambeys, “Settlement, Taxation and the Condition of the Peasantry in Post-Roman Central Italy,” Journal of Agrarian Change 9 (2009): 113. 4 Theodoric efforts, see Jonathan J. Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Jonathan J. Arnold, “Ostrogothic Provinces: Adminisration and Ideaology,” in A Companion to Ostrogothic Italy, ed. Jonathan J. Arnold, M. Shane Bjornlie and Kristina Sessa (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 73–97. On Justinian’s efforts, see Enrico Zanini, Le Italie bizantine: Territorio, insediamenti ed economia nella provincia bizantina d’Italia: 6.-8. secolo (Bari: Edipuglia, 1998), 291–334. 5 Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 115–17. 6 The evidence for continuities of Roman taxation are thin, and rely on a single section from the History of the Lombards of Paul the Deacon and a single papyrus document from Ravenna; see Walter Pohl, “Per hospites divisi. Wirtschaftliche Grundlagen der

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7 8

9 10

11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

24

langobardischen Ansiedlung in Italien,” Römische Historische Mitteilungen 43 (2001): 179–226. Stefano Gasparri, “Le basi economiche del potere pubblico in eta longobarda,” in Between taxation and rent: Fiscal problems from late antiquity to early Middle Ages, ed. Pablo C. Díaz and Iñaki Martín Viso (Bari: Edipuglia, 2011), 71–86. Chris Wickham, “Aristocratic Power in Eighth-Century Lombard Italy,” in After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 157–60. Another feature of Lombard aristocracies in particular, and those under the authority of Pavia (rather than the independent duchies of Spoleto and Benevento) was the development of interrelationships between local urban aristocracies and access to and service in royal administration. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers, 190–99; Thomas S. Brown, “L’aristocrazia di Ravenna da Giustiniano a Carlo Magno,” Felix Ravenna 131/132 (1986): 91–98. Ian Wood, “Creating a ‘Temple Society’ in the Early Medieval West,” Early Medieval Europe 29, no. 4 (2021): 462–486. Wood notes that the situation in Italy was different from the rest of Western Europe in that it was less oriented “around the demands of the church.” Wood, “Creating a ‘temple society’ in the early medieval west,” 474. Duane J. Osheim, “The Episcopal Archive of Lucca in the Middle Ages,” Manuscripta 17 (1973): 131–146. Chris Wickham, “Settlement problems in early medieval Italy: Lucca territory,” Archeologia Medievale 5 (1978): 495–503; Annamaria Pazienza, “Una regione periferica del Regno? La Tuscia in età longobarda,” in I Longobardi oltre Pavia. Conquista, irradiazione e intrecci culturali, ed. Giancarlo Mazzolai and Giuseppe Micilei (Milan: Cisalpino, 2016), 33–52. Chris Wickham, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society 400–1000, New Studies in Medieval History (London: Macmillan, 1981); Wickham, “Aristocratic Power in Eighth-Century Lombard Italy.” Marco Stoffella, “Aristocracy and Rural Churches in the Territory of Lucca between Lombards and Carolingians: A Case Study,” in 774, ipotesi su una transizione, ed. Stefano Gasparri (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 289–311. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers. Edward M. Schoolman, “Vir Clarissimus and Roman Titles in the Early Middle Ages: Survival and Continuity in Ravenna and the Latin West,” Medieval Prosopography 32 (2017): 1–39. Schoolman, “Nobility, Aristocracy, and Status in Early Medieval Ravenna”; Edward M. Schoolman, “Local Networks and Witness Subscriptions in Early Medieval Ravenna,” Viator 44 (2013): 21–41. Giovanni Italo Cassandro, “Il ducato bizantino,” in Storia di Napoli II (Naples: 1969). Nicola Cilento, Civiltà napoletana del medioevo nei secoli VI–XIII (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1969). Amadeo Feniello, Napoli: Società ed economia (902–1137), Nuovi Studi Storici 89 (Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 2011). Edward M. Schoolman, “Dux to Episcopus: From Controlling Cities to Sees in Byzantine Italy, 554–900,” in Italy and the East Roman World in the Medieval Mediterranean: Empire, Cities and Elites, 476–1204, ed. Thomas Macmaster and Nicholas Matheu, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies (London: Routledge, 2021), 215–233. Rosamond McKitterick, Rome and the Invention of the Papacy: The Liber Pontificalis, The James Lydon Lectures in Medieval History and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/ rome-and-the-invention-of-the-papacy/D80D37A3827FD1F7BDF3F0EA489FE31F. On the letter collection of Gregory the Great, see Robert A. Markus, Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); John R. C. Martyn,

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25 26 27 28

29 30

31 32 33 34 35

36

37

38

The Letters of Gregory the Great, 3 vols. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2004); Bronwen Neil, “The Papacy in the Age of Gregory the Great,” in A Companion to Gregory the Great, ed. Matthew Dal Santo and Bronwen Neil (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 3–27; Richard Matthew Pollard, “A Cooperative Correspondence: The Letters of Gregory the Great,” in A Companion to Gregory the Great, ed. Matthew Dal Santo and Bronwen Neil (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 291–312 . The alliance began under Pepin in 754 and extended through Charlemagne into that of Louis the Pious; Thomas F. X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State: 680–825 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 256–76. See Chris Wickham, Medieval Rome: Stability and Crisis of a City, 900–1150 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), esp. 181–258. Marios Costambeys, Power and Patronage in Early Medieval Italy: Local Society, Italian Politics and the Abbey of Farfa, c.700–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Mary Stroll, The Medieval Abbey of Farfa: Target of Papal and Imperial Ambitions (Leiden: Brill, 1997). Beyond the political contests, the diverse influences on the shape of the community of Farfa during this period extend to its religious activities as demonstrated in Susan Boynton, Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000–1125 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). Edward M. Schoolman, Scott Mensing and Gianluca Piovesan, “Land Use and the Human Impact on the Environment in Medieval Italy,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 49 (2019): 419–444. ­ Il Regesto di Farfa compilato da Gregorio di Catino. 5 vols. (Rome: Società romana di Storia patria, 1879–1914). The Regestum was extended by Gregory of Catino’s nephew Todinus, who included a number of charters issued after 1099 and older text excluded by Gregory. Costambeys, Power and Patronage in Early Medieval Italy, 19. G. V. B. West, “Charlemagne’s Involvement in Central and Southern Italy: Power and the Limits of Authority,” Early Medieval Europe 8, no. 3 (1999): 341–367. On Late Carolingian Italy, see now: Clemens Gantner and Walter Pohl (eds.) After Charlemagne: Carolingian Italy and its Rulers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Levi Roach, “The Ottonians and Italy,” German History 36 (2018): 351–52, https:// doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghy039, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghy039. Roach, “The Ottonians and Italy,” 355; August Nitschke, “Der mißhandelte Papst. Folgen ottonischer Italienpolitik,” in Staat und Gesellschaft in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Gedenkschrift für Joachim Leuschner, ed. Katharina Colberg, Hans-Heinrich Nolte and Herbert Obenaus (Göttingen: 1983), 40–53. Thomas S. Brown, “Culture and Society in Ottonian Ravenna: Imperial Renewal or New Beginnings?,” in Ravenna: Its Role in Earlier Medieval Change and Exchange, ed. Judith Herrin and Janet L. Nelson (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2016), 335–44. On this event and its aftermath see Schoolman, “Nobility, Aristocracy, and Status in Early Medieval Ravenna,” 229–31; Edoardo Manarini, Struggles for Power in the Kingdom of Italy: The Hucpoldings, c. 850 – c. 1100 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021), 174–77. Chris Wickham, Sleepwalking into a New World: The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 14–17.

Further Readings Arnold, Jonathan J. “Ostrogothic Provinces: Adminisration and Ideaology.” In A Companion to Ostrogothic Italy, ed. Jonathan J. Arnold, M. Shane Bjornlie and Kristina Sessa, 73–97. Leiden: Brill, 2016.

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Arnold, Jonathan J. Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Brown, Thomas S. “Culture and Society in Ottonian Ravenna: Imperial Renewal or New Beginnings?” In Ravenna: Its Role in Earlier Medieval Change and Exchange, ed. Judith Herrin and Janet L. Nelson, 335–44. London: Institute of Historical Research, 2016. Arnold, Jonathan J. Gentlemen and Officers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy A.D. 554–800. Rome: British School at Rome, 1984. Arnold, Jonathan J. “L’aristocrazia Di Ravenna Da Giustiniano a Carlo Magno.” Felix Ravenna 131/132 (1986): 91–98. Cassandro, Giovanni Italo. “Il Ducato Bizantino.” In Storia Di Napoli Ii, 1–408. Naples, 1969. Cilento, Nicola. Civiltà Napoletana Del Medioevo Nei Secoli Vi–Xiii. Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1969. Cortese, Maria Elena. L’aristocrazia Toscana: Sette Secoli (Vi–Xii). Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2017. Costambeys, Marios. Power and Patronage in Early Medieval Italy: Local Society, Italian Politics and the Abbey of Farfa, C.700–900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Costambeys, Marios. “Settlement, Taxation and the Condition of the Peasantry in Post-Roman Central Italy.” Journal of Agrarian Change 9 (2009): 92–119. Feniello, Amadeo. Napoli: Società Ed Economia (902–1137). Nuovi Studi Storici 89. Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 2011. Gantner, Clemens and Walter Pohl (eds.) After Charlemagne: Carolingian Italy and Its Rulers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Gasparri, Stefano. “The Aristocracy.” In Italy in the Early Middle Ages, 476–1000, ed. Cristina La Rocca. The Short Oxford History of Italy, 59–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Gasparri, Stefano. “Le Basi Economiche Del Potere Pubblico in Eta Longobarda.” In Between Taxation and Rent: Fiscal Problems from Late Antiquity to Early Middle Ages, ed. Pablo C. Díaz and Iñaki Martín Viso, 71–86. Bari: Edipuglia, 2011. Manarini, Edoardo. Struggles for Power in the Kingdom of Italy: The Hucpoldings, C. 850- C. 1100. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. Noble, Thomas F. X. The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State: 680–825. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. Pohl, Walter. “Per Hospites Divisi. Wirtschaftliche Grundlagen Der Langobardischen Ansiedlung in Italien.” Römische Historische Mitteilungen 43 (2001): 179–226. Sarris, Peter. “The Origins of the Manorial Economy: New Insights from Late Antiquity.” The English Historical Review 119, no. 481 (2004): 279–311. Schoolman, Edward M. “Aristocracies in Early Medieval Italy, C. 500 –1000 Ce.” History Compass 16 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12499. Schoolman, Edward M. “Local Networks and Witness Subscriptions in Early Medieval Ravenna.” Viator 44 (2013): 21–41. Schoolman, Edward M. “Nobility, Aristocracy, and Status in Early Medieval Ravenna.” In Ravenna: Its Role in Medieval Change and Exchange, ed. Judith Herrin and Jinty Nelson, 211–38. London: Institute for Historical Research, 2016. Stoffella, Marco. “Aristocracy and Rural Churches in the Territory of Lucca between Lombards and Carolingians: A Case Study.” In 774, Ipotesi Su Una Transizione, ed. Stefano Gasparri, 289–311. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. Tabacco, Giovanni. The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy. Trans. Rosalind Brown Jensen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Egemonie sociali e struttere del potere nel Medioevo italiano.

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von Falkenhausen, Vera. “A Provincial Aristocracy: The Byzantine Provinces in Southern Italy (9th -11th Century).” In The Byzantine Aristocracy: Ix to Xiii Centuries, ed. Michael Angold, 211–35. Oxford: BAR, 1984. Wickham, Chris. “Aristocratic Power in Eighth-Century Lombard Italy.” In After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History, ed. Alexander Callander Murray, 153–70. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. Wickham, Chris. Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society 400–1000. New Studies in Medieval History. London: Macmillan, 1981. Wickham, Chris. Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Wickham, Chris. Medieval Rome: Stability and Crisis of a City, 900–1150. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

15 RULERSHIP AND GOVERNANCE OF MEDIEVAL BULGARIA Seventh to Fifteenth Centuries Kiril Petkov

Introduction: Problems and Potential Discussing the functioning of the medieval Bulgarian polity is fraught with difficulties. The evidence left behind by five centuries of political sovereignty is rather lean. Archival records produced by the central court, chancery, and administration and their local and provincial counterparts are non-existent. There are no fully indigenous law codes nor a single tax book. What is left from the state chancery are several stone inscriptions from the pagan period and six late medieval charters, one of them a late forgery. Private documentation is largely missing. Political treatises are absent. Political thought is limited to casual notes in religious writings. We cannot even tell whether what we now have is all there ever was or whether there had been more, now irretrievably lost. And while no complex polity of the period could have been governed without some sort of written record and ruled without a properly crafted, disseminated, and accepted ideology, the indisputable fact that the Bulgarian culture was not of the notarial kind is a major obstacle that has forced many a scholar into conjectures and assumptions. The dearth of evidence defines the parameters of any study of the rulership and governance of medieval Bulgaria. It is clearly not a research issue. Disagreements to sort out and opportunities to fill the large blank spots still exist, but they fall into one of three categories: small-scale empirical contributions, unverifiable inferences from cultures deemed “similar” by varying sets of criteria, and frankly teleological attempts at re-conceptualizations fueled by modern ideologies and ranging from nationalism to intersectionality. As the agenda of none of these categories justifies a new overview, and as any such endeavor ought to, in some form, support the generation of knowledge, the heuristic worth of this outline has to be sought elsewhere. DOI: 10.4324/9781003213239-15

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Hence, while what follows presents a succinct and reasonably comprehensive synopsis, it aims to throw in higher relief three principal themes, which can serve as useful points in a comparative study of political traditions. First, there is the accommodation of a Central/West Asian (Turkic/Iranian) pastoralist/ nomadic Bulgar culture onto grounds molded by Hellenistic/Roman and Christian forces and recently taken over by agriculturalist-leaning Slavic population. The experience is not unique—Avars, Khazars, Magyars (and Mongols) are all case studies—but it has its specifics. While fusion with local (mainly Slavic and Germanic) populations occurred in all of these polities, none of them evolved in territories so profoundly affected by the late Roman and Christian legacy and so directly exposed to Byzantine influences. A roster of factors shaped the culture and society of the young Bulgarian state, but the role of the political leadership, which absorbed most of these influences, cannot be underestimated. Second, the Bulgarian case offers an example of the “acculturate to compete” phenomenon. For about 200 years the state’s political system preserved features brought over by the Bulgars from the Eurasian steppes. From the moment of the Christianization in the 860s, however, an accelerating trend of “Byzantinization,” above all in rulership and governance, set in. Cautious at first, it was given a solid push in 1018 with the conquest of the Bulgarian territories by a revitalized Byzantium. The Bulgarian state (Second Tsardom) was restored in 1185 and went on to develop its own culture, but in terms of rulership and governance it was as thoroughly Byzantinized as to be considered a close replica of Byzantium. The political system of the Second Tsardom is therefore a case study of the model of an advanced center imposed on a particular periphery, of the impact of a politically sophisticated civilization on satellite or “commonwealth,” yet culturally distinct polities around its borders. Third, the overview of the Bulgarian political system poses the question of the overall role of governance. The medieval Bulgarian state expanded and contracted, consolidated and fragmented, its capacity to mobilize resources waxed and waned, it became extinct and then was revived, to be snuffed out for good by the Ottomans in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. All along, its culture blossomed and stagnated, “Golden Ages” alternated with cultural nadirs. Correlation of culture and politics, the impact of political persons, practices, ideas, and institutions on the rise and fall of culture, economy, and society is a critical question that the overview and scrutiny of rulership and governance can help answer, at least tentatively.

The Origins: The Steppe Tradition and Statehood, 680–864 The rulership of the polity that emerged in 680 along the west Black Sea region, between the Hemus Mountain in the south and the river Dnester in the north, with its core area spanning the lower Danube course, was in the Turkic tradition. Its original features were transplanted from the Azov-Caucasus multi-ethnic tribal confederation, ran in the early decades of the seventh century by Kubrat (?-ca. 665), a chieftain of Bulgar clan affiliation whose tribal belonging within the

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Bulgar group, the core of the alliance, is uncertain. At one time Kubrat was allied politically with Byzantium and received the honorary title “patrician.”1 After the Khazars shattered the Bulgar-led polity in the 650s, Bulgar tribal groups from the confederation dispersed northwest, west, and southwest, each headed by one of Kubrat’s sons.2 The third son, Asparuh, who led the settlement on the lower Danube, grew as a leader within a fairly complex and sophisticated political milieu. What he brought over from the “Old Great Bulgaria,” as the Azov confederation was called, was rulership based on three organizational elements— supra-tribal governance, clan affiliation, and personal leadership—and yet since its inception Danubian Bulgaria transcended the taxonomy tribe-chiefdom and displayed the features of a true state. Its leadership during the pagan period originally, and likely throughout, stemmed from the top nobility of the Turkic-Iranian mix of the Ounnogundur/ Olhontor Bulgars. The Danubian group remained fairly homogenous socioeconomically and endogamous ethnically at least until the early decades of the ninth century. By the mid-800s, as a result of the geographic limitations, settlement in the midst of Slavic population, and the ensuing intra-state alliances, the Bulgars began fusing with the surrounding Slavs, with pockets of ethnohomogenous Bulgars persisting until the tenth century at least. The conversion to Christianity in 864 and the subsequent adoption of Hellenized Old and New Testament names (Simeon, Samuel, John, Michael, Peter) do not allow us to trace the ethnic background of the state leaders, but there is no certain indication that the rulers were ever of mixed blood.3 From the outset, rulership was dynastic, within one or another of the leading Bulgar clans. Rulers of the clans Doulo (reigning clan until 753), Ermi, Vokil, and Ugain are recorded until the latter part of the eighth century. Clans appear to have had equal claims to power, which suggests more traditional than charismatic leadership, to use Max Weber’s typology.4 In the early 800s, a wholly new dynasty was established by Krum (802–814), linked by murky evidence to a clan belonging to another Bulgar group, the Pannonian Bulgars. That line lasted until 991 (the last member died in prison in 997). After the Byzantine conquest of Eastern Bulgaria, a (likely) collateral branch took over and endured until 1018. The principal source, the Name List of the Bulgarian Khans (composed in the mid-eighth century), stresses that power was legitimately held by members of the same clan, and change of clan was an extraordinary event.5 Legitimate inheritance was even narrower, in the direct male line, father to son. The one source arguing for the legitimacy of sibling transmission clearly sought to justify the coup of 893, in which the retired ruler Boris-Michael briefly returned to overthrow his heir and put in power his third son, Simeon.6 The ruler’s sons had titles that established succession by the heir-apparent, the kanar-tekin or “the older son,” and the position of second in line. Line extinction was a second reason for legitimate power transfer to another dynasty/clan. A collateral branch could then take over if there was an eligible male, such as a son-in-law, within the lineage. This likely happened to the founding clan Doulo in 753, and again

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in 991, when the lineage of comes [count] Nicholas, a district governor in the southwest of the state and hence a high noble likely married into the dynasty, took over after Krum’s line was effectively terminated. A third way was the decision of the “armed people” and/or of the lead nobility in cases of failure of leadership. This produced a quick turnover of dynasties in the middle quarters of the eighth century as Byzantine pressure and diminishing war spoils led to political instability. The clan principle applied here too: the entire clan of the disgraced ruler was wiped out. Rulers could also change the succession order and install other sons, as happened two times in the ninth century when firstborn sons displayed sympathy with the wrong religion, respectively Christianity and paganism. Rulers bore the title khan, a generic indication of leadership with the Turkic people.7 Greek-language sources, both domestic and Byzantine, use the indeterminate archon, or just “ruler.” Eighth-century testimonies for the political ideology of rulership are very few. The major feature was affiliation with the steppe tradition, demonstrated in the Name List’s where the clan Doulo begins its history with the Hunnic chieftain Attila and his son Ernach. Ninth- century evidence, even though it is unclear whether it can be projected backwards to 680, lists a roster of components underpinning the ruler’s claim to power.8 Besides the illustrious clan affiliation, the most stable component is charisma. The khan is consistently addressed as “ruler from God,” and there are references to him performing sacrifices. This suggests personal charisma, conceived as supernatural blessing concentrated in the ruler, as does the case with the skull of the defeated Byzantine emperor Nicephorus I (802–811) of which a drinking cup for the Bulgarian ruler Krum was crafted. Its loss—or excess—either disqualified the ruler or made him, after distinguished service, a suitable messenger to the supreme deity. An early ninth-century ruler who lost his sight just after suffering a major military defeat was strangled with a rope; the founder of the last dynasty, Krum, may have ended similarly, albeit for a different reason. While present, charisma set the ruler apart: Bulgar khans ate on an elevated dais, while their consorts and attendants sat on low stools or on the floor.9 On the other hand, just as consistent are references in the traditional vein to the head of state as “ruler of the many Bulgarians,” an indication of the nomads’ expectation for prosperity as multiplication of people. Another ideological aspect of rulership is the consistent production of stone inscriptions of all kinds, from annals to triumphal records to inventories.10 Regardless of genre, they all etch the desire for permanence of the existing power modes, operation, and incumbents onto the physical landscape and congeal time nodes around them. Inscriptions on rock formations of the early eight century, and ninth-century slabs and columns proclaiming a connection to “the land where the ruler was born” as well as stressing building activity, suggest a claim on appropriation of the territory, a sign of advancing sedentism. Glorification of military leadership on stone annals spans the charismatic and traditional aspects of rulership ideology and is documented throughout. In the first half of the ninth century, for unclear

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reasons, it acquired a special significance since the designation of the ruler as “lord of the army” entered the title of three consecutive khans. A final aspect of rulership ideology of the period is the incorporation of the Bulgar rulers in the sub-Roman Byzantine theory of “Family of Rulers” headed by the Byzantine emperor. As noted, the ancestor of the founding clan, Kubrat, was honored with the title “patrician,” as was his nephew Mauros, a leader of the splinter Bulgar group in northern Greece, as well as two eighth-century khans forced to flee Bulgaria for political reasons and find shelter in Byzantium. In a unique case, Khan Tervel (ca. 700–721) was granted the title “Caesar,” at the time reserved exclusively for the Byzantine heir-apparent, and was accorded “imperial signs.” Much like elsewhere, the practice reconciled political opposites: it satisfied Byzantine universalist claims while local rulers viewed it as recognition of standing and legitimacy, which enhanced their position both internationally and domestically. “Imperial signs”—the cross and the dress and other paraphernalia of the Byzantine autocrat—were displayed on gold medallions minted for propaganda purposes.11 Thus, there was a persisting trend for the acculturation of rulership within the sub-Roman universalist tradition. It is unclear how the eighth-century rulers ran their domain. The sources only detail military leadership and (possibly) some religious functions, consistent with their titles. Since the early 800s there is more information but there is still no full-scale snapshot of the governance system. Reconstruction is by necessity composite. A trend toward bureaucratization and autocracy can be surmised but is by no means certain, for we cannot establish the date an office, institution, or ideological tenet appeared. The eighth-century practice records the three power nodes: ruler, advisors/councilmen/servants/nobility, and the popular assembly of “armed people.” Each of these could—and did—act as a supreme power agent, with respectively diminishing frequency of action. Ninth-century inscriptions indicate, first, that the ruler was surrounded by a band of titled followers, designated as his “fed men” and gifted by him. Men of that group appear as military/administrative personnel across the state expanse. Second, the inscriptions, as well as the Byzantine observers record a military-bureaucratic apparatus of offices staffed by titled and ranked members of two noble estates, upper, boilas and lower, bagains. The upper nobility was quite numerous. Fifty-two of its clans were wiped out in 865 for opposing the conversion to Christianity without affecting the ability of the state to staff its offices. Third, that hierarchy was headed by the so-called “six great boilas.” Three of these were the top officers of the state: the boila kauhan, the ichurgu-boila, and the boila-kolober of the ruler. The first two were military-administrative officers, on occasion related to the ruler. The boila kauhan served as regent, may have been originally a co-ruler, and led the army in the absence of the khan. The ichurgu (inner) boila was subordinated to him. The boila-kolober was either the supreme religious figure of the state or the ruler’s personal diviner. Of the charges of the scores of titled officials listed in the inscriptions (besides war) we know nothing. Their ranks included Byzantine military defectors as well, another channel for the acculturation of

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the Bulgar state to the local conditions. On the strength of all this, the model of governance, that is, the distribution of power between the state (khan) and elites (boilas and bagains) appears to have been clan-derived and therefore patrimonial consensus-based. Elites were state servants and the state conferred upon them the legitimation necessary for the extraction and appropriation of local and foreign resources. This Bulgar military-administrative personnel governed the entire territory of the state. Where possible, precise borders were established, guarded, and marked with inscribed stone slabs. The principal issue is how the Slavic tribal groups comprised within the state boundaries fitted in. Suppositions about the federative, confederative, subjugated, allied, etc., status of the Slavs are purely speculative. The evidence is meager. In the eighth-early ninth century, there were clearly delineated tribal Slavic territories within the state, governed by their own leaders, with their own armed forces. Others were on allied terms with the Bulgars. Byzantine sources use the generic archon for their tribal leaders, a title on par with that of the Bulgar ruler. Since the early ninth century, Slavic names appear in official state missions to Byzantium, which suggests fusion and incorporation in the state system. On the other hand, there were attempts by peripheral Slavic tribal groups to split from the alliance; they were suppressed, and state integrity re-established. By the middle of the 800s there is no longer information either about separate Slavic territories or about Slavic leadership (whatever their status). In sum, the overall picture is that of a system of graded (mutual) dependencies orchestrated by a cohesive central power, slowly homogenizing under Bulgar overlordship. The principal means was the common early medieval paradigm: sublimating particular tribal identities into a larger ethnic and political whole through long-term roles of military affiliation integrated by a tight politico-administrative apparatus. The administrative structure was a tripartite- and tenfold-scheme modeled roughly on the Bulgar military organization, which had a center and a left and right wing, under the khan, kauhan and ichurgu boila, respectively. Three large provinces, headed by officials with the title of tarkan and a respective designation (bori-, oglu-, and zera-tarkan) encircled the core “inner” area, administrated by the ichurgu boila. Provinces were each divided into three districts, headed by a comes; counting the “inner” area, the base administrative units were thus ten in number.12 Beside military activity, there is very little on state functioning. As there was no native mint, and no active circulation of Byzantine coins, taxation was most likely limited, in kind and in service. Internal revenues may have been negligible compared to the large funds flowing in as tribute. Combined, in the early ninth-century state resources were sufficient to raise mounted forces of up to 30,000 men, “all covered in iron,” a remarkable feat in an age of metal scarcity. In terms of law, the khans were supreme judges. There is only one instance of active legislation seeking to arrest socio-economic problems caused by the advancing sedentization and the ensuing social differentiation.13 The law of the land was customary, but we know very little of it.

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Post-Conversion Adjustments: The First Tsardom, 864–1018 In 864 Khan Boris (852–889, 893) adopted Christianity together “with the people given to him by God.”14 The conversion followed a few years of vacillation between the increasingly distancing Latin and Greek variants of the faith, was met with internal opposition that was mercilessly suppressed, and ended with definitive embrace of Eastern Orthodoxy. The new religious system and the development of an Old Bulgarian cultural tradition (also known as “Old Church Slavonic”), affected, among other things, rulership patterns and the governance of the realm. The key development is the intensification of the “acculturate to compete” trend: internally, vis-à-vis domestic forces, and externally, against the regional civilizational carrier, Byzantium. First, rulership ideology underwent an osmotic fusion of old and new. Where they did not contradict the Christian norm, vestiges from the pagan period were “translated” into the new expressions and practices of power and enriched with Christian paradigms. The steppe tradition was not forgotten. The state capital was moved to the newly built Preslav in an apparent drive to dissociate from the pagan sacrality of the old seat Pliska, but the fact of building a new seat of power was in the vein of the tradition emphasized by the early khans. The monuments of state glory, the triumphal and building inscriptions, were kept intact and added to. The key document testifying to indigenous state legitimacy independent of the Byzantine matrix, the Name List, was translated into Old Bulgarian from the Greek original. Boris abandoned the title of khan and took on the Old Bulgarian/Slavic designation knjaz as the old title was too religiously loaded with personal charisma to continue with its usage, but a series of translated and domestic religious works continued to stress the divine character of rulership. It was not an entirely new idea, for the khans too were “archons from God.” As it had never been clear who the deity was, Christianity infused new vigor in the long-standing political theology of the Bulgar rulers. Second, there was a novel development. Under Christianity, where all power was from God, the balance between divine grace and personal charisma was tilted in favor of the divine agent. The consequences were both domestic and international. Domestically, dynastic rule continued to be the norm, but the minimized role of personal charisma and the more traditional connotations of knjaz led to the idea that, in terms of power, the nobility was on a par with the ruler. Both ruler and boljars (the Slavic variant of the boila) were placed by God.15 The Christian knjaz was not as exclusive as the pagan khan had been. This development may have contributed to the Bulgarian rulers’ pursuit of the imperial position, especially given the two occasions of resistance of the nobility to autocratic decision-making in the wake of the conversion. The key factor here, however, was international standing. The adoption of Christianity changed the structure of the world political order. Under paganism, there was the option of parallel claims stemming from different legitimate sources. In the unified Christian universe, the legitimacy source was only one,

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and the only structuring option was hierarchy. The unified world intensified competition for the top position, as any other standing implied inferiority. The status of knjaz satisfied Boris, whose primary concerns were domestic, and who preferred diplomacy in foreign relations. Functional sovereignty, an autonomous Bulgarian Church under an archbishop, and the recognition of Slavic (now the idiom of his progressively assimilating subjects) as liturgical language and the fundament of an indigenous culture completed the standing of the realm internationally for him. These arrangements turned insufficient for his son, the Byzantine-educated and militarily and politically ambitious Simeon, who dreamed of a new world order, of which he would be the head. After a series of failed attempts to mount the throne in Constantinople as emperor or regent, or at least be recognized as such in Bulgaria, in 918 he called the Bulgarian popular assembly, proclaimed the Bulgarian Church a patriarchy on a par with Constantinople’s, and adopted the imperial title, цѣсарь in Old Bulgarian. Seals with the title “Simeon Emperor of the Romans,” “Simeon Peace-maker,” gold-woven clothing, a purple belt, gold bracelets, a gold neck chain, and a sword adorned with gold and pearls completed the display of the new claim of the autocrat.16 So did the minting of seals; remarkably though, only lead seals had been found, no gold ones, which poses the question of whether Simeon had, after all, ever claimed that supreme sign of sovereignty. In 926, papal legates may have confirmed the title. The Byzantine government did not recognize the claim and called him “archon.”17 A concession was made only when his more docile and intensely pious son, Peter I, took over in 927. The Byzantines accorded him the simplified title of “emperor of the Bulgarians,” which lacked both the universal designation “of the Romans” and the legitimacy conferred by the formula “by God.” As the title went with marital affiliation with the Byzantine dynasty, it implied a subordination of the son-in-law to the universal “father” and head of the imperial family. To make sure there was no mistake about the source of legitimacy, Peter’s lead seals pictured him alongside his imperial bride, Maria-Irene Lakapena, both holding the double imperial cross. The contrast with the pagan khans, whose wives could not even dine alongside them in public, is striking. The seal presents the multi-layered, complex message of Bulgarian rulership in a nutshell: a contradictory mix of Christianization and acculturation, universalism and localism, competition and affiliation, sovereignty and subordination, and the floating of traditional categories, as the universalist vision of power presented by Christianity and embodied by Byzantium obliterated ranking and gender divisions and reduced divine symbols to power signs.18 The latter’s meaning was subject to interpretation; still, piety was now a power strategy. Even so, granted as an expediency, the status was abolished formally with the Byzantine conquest of the eastern portion of the country in 971, when the imperial insignia, including gold-cloth crown and purple shoes as well, were offered to the Virgin at the triumph in Constantinople. The Bulgarian tsar Boris  II (969–971) was demoted to “magister.” With the return of his brother, Roman I,

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to western Bulgaria, still unsubdued in 977, the title was taken up again and after Roman’s imprisonment in 991 it was borne by the rulers of the side branch of the dynasty, Samuel, Gabriel-Radomir, and John-Vladislav until 1018. Under John-Vladislav, one last element, самодрьжець (autocrat) is recorded. The title, and the now titular name “Peter,” after the proper name of its sanctified bearer, Peter I, as a sign of dynastic affiliation and formal continuity, were adopted as well by the leaders of two revolts aiming for the restoration of the state tradition, which was finally suppressed in 1072. Nonetheless, the imperial title, simplified in the late twelfth century to царь (and briefly the dynastic name Peter) was revived in 1185 at the Asenid revolt and remained the traditional designation of the Bulgarian rulers. Third, the conversion and the pursuit of the imperial claim did not change the functional aspects of rulership and governance. The rulers were monarchs and increasingly autocrats, chief military leaders, law-givers, supreme judges, and at least in rudiments, patrimonial owners of the state. More elaborate court ceremonial and Church participation in propagating the tsars’ rights to rule, including the granting of saintly status to Peter I, added to the rulers’ image but the institutions of the court and the officialdom of the central and provincial administration remained the same. Administratively, the base units were still the ten districts run by comites directly appointed by the ruler, and the tripartite scheme headed by the tarkans persisted. Financially, the treasury was still filled by substantial external funds: tribute, paid annually by Byzantium in 927–966, and booty and loot from the numerous wars of despoiling and expansion in all directions, which propped up the consensus-based governance model. Income from foreign trade definitely played a larger role. The first Bulgar-Byzantine trade pact dates to 716, but the moving of the main market for Bulgarians away from Constantinople to Thessaloniki and the rise of custom dues in 894, caused a war. The post-conversion rulers still did not mint coins, and taxation continued to be in kind. The state tax rate was a modium (ca. 50 pounds) of wheat, a modium of barley, and a pitcher of wine for each land unit worked by a team of oxen; ecclesiastical tithes of grain, eggs, wax, etc., were also collected. Service obligations entailed military duty, mail duty, road maintenance, a variety of building obligations, providing lodging and food for traveling state officials, etc. More significant were the novelties in the legal sphere, as written law was introduced, but again, this represents no fundamental departure from the past. Three major legal codes were adopted from Byzantium and adapted to Bulgarian conditions, the Ecloga, the Farmer’s Law, and the Law for Judging People.19 The new legal norm, thoroughly Byzantine, officialized two mutually exclusive principles. On the one hand, it followed the old Roman republican principles and recognized subjects as discrete legal entities with indelible rights over life, limb, and private property. On the other hand, autocracy accorded the ruler patrimonial rights over persons and property alike. By the tenth century, rulers could, and did, seize, alienate, and transfer property and rights, and

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granted rights to taxation, judging, and administration, as well as territories along with their inhabitants, to private individuals and corporations as they saw fit. The first instance of that kind is a charter with a grant issued to a monastery by Roman I (977–991). 20 This legal conflation, which informed practices whereby there was no difference between the state treasury and the ruler’s private purse, and in which the state and its subjects were the ruler’s property, remained in place in subsequent centuries, was enhanced during the Second Tsardom, and cast a long shadow over the entire history of Bulgaria, medieval and post-medieval. Finally, the combined effects of Christianization, acculturation within the Byzantine model, the widening of the doctrine of power to cover the entire ruling class and thus seep from the purely political sphere of life to the economy and social conditions, and the strengthening of the autocratic-patrimonial ideal gave rise to a new ideological vision of governance, Bogomilism. It is difficult to calibrate the role of each factor in its formation. Scholars of differing allegiances have emphasized one or another of them. What is clear is that Christianity provided the intellectual tools for the conceptual rethinking of the political and social order while acculturation introduced age-old dualist ideas. The latter also fomented a native response: the increasing rapprochement with Byzantium had been a constant source of political friction, and it is not a surprise that members of the ruling dynasties from the time of the khans to Boris’s son Rasate-Vladimir to Simeon’s sons, Ivan and Michael, attempted forceful changes of policy. Then, the intrusion of political power in matters of social and economic differentiation accelerated raising popular discontent. Bogomilism denied the divine origins of the powers that be, attributed them to Satan, the lord of matter in a dualist universe where God was pure spirit, and advocated resistance, disobedience to all power, and preparing the conditions for a new, purer world order—but stressed criticism, negation of, and alienation from, the exercise of any power rather than fostering active involvement and offering an alternative model of governance.21 Still, it was politically a dangerous ideology, which spread swiftly in Byzantium and Western Europe and was branded a heresy and persecuted throughout the medieval period.

Byzantine Rule, 1018–1185 After two-and-a-half centuries of growth and expansion, in the latter part of the tenth century, for a variety of reasons, the First Tsardom proved unable to withstand the pressure of a revitalized Byzantium. A series of warrior emperors embarked on what the Empire of Constantinople considered a re-conquest, and by 1018 extinguished the native political system. Attempts at restoring it flared up until the 1070s, but for all practical purposes since the early 1040s the state was no longer. For the next hundred and fifty years its people became Byzantine subjects. From the standpoint of this overview two matters are of interest: the implications of the genuine Byzantine governance model in the annexed and

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incorporated territories, and the response of the masses and the native leadership to the ideas, practices and institutions of the new rulers. Along the first line, as Byzantium was a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic polity held together by superior Greek culture, Christianity, and the imperial tradition, there were no systemic attempts at “Byzantinization.” That said, refined Byzantine churchmen complained about their boorish native charges and attempts were made to influence their cultural identity. Senior ecclesiastics and literati sensed that political allegiance was embedded in the cultural identity of their flock and composed Greek Lives of the most popular figures of Slavic-Bulgarian past in the hope that that would erode the native tradition.22 Once the conquest was over, the last dynasty’s members were co-opted and dispersed across the empire. On site remained middling and lower nobility, magnates who may or may not have exercised rights of coercion under the Bulgarian rulers, but who were now reduced to leadership of authority stemming from economic power. All positions formally representing the state, from top to bottom, were entrusted to Byzantine officials, primarily Greeks, and in any case ethnically and culturally from outside the region. Only the Church—which was demoted to an autonomous archbishopric whose heads were appointed directly by the Byzantine rulers—had its lowest tier of officials, the parish priests, composed of natives. Administratively, and in terms of projection of political power from rulers to ruled, the Bulgarian lands were governed in the current Byzantine model of “system-less” organization. The land was formally divided into three great provinces, Paristrion and Sirmium in the north-northwest of the former state, and the large katepanate of Bulgaria in the west-southwest. Their borders were unstable, they were constantly re-organized, and smaller military-administrative units within and around them fluctuated all the time as responses to expedience. Their heads were of the top ranks of the Byzantine political hierarchy and bore a variety of titles and office designations, from the generic archon to katepan and dux, to the common sevastos and strategos for the smaller units. They were appointed by the emperor and responded to him; they controlled all fiscal, administrative, and judicial officials, and sanctioned relations of social dependence and the granting/removal of exemptions and immunities. Assorted tax collectors, judges, and scribes worked under them. There was a non-stop rotation of office holders and restructuring of their hierarchy and relationship. Officials of all ranks had overlapping functions in terms of taxation, administration, law, and military affairs. Importantly, there was no bar on large local landowners to “purchase” or otherwise obtain rights, office representation, and positions as delegated plenipotentiaries, tax farmers, etc.23 In short, it was a very complex, somewhat chaotic, and fluid arrangement. The common socio-political trend to persist, however, is clear. The central power was in no position to control either its local representatives who, once in office, turned their charges into personal cash cows or the native landowners, who used their economic standing to exercise power as (quasi)officials of the state, especially through taking up obligations (and the concomitant power and prerogatives) linked to military affairs. The

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emperors were only able to limit the growth of local potentates by manipulation: through constant restructuring, attempts to solidify control with pseudo-checks and balances by endowing office-holders with overlapping functions, selective grants of revenues, and subordinating local officials to overarching supervisors chosen from the ranking loyal court nobility and central administration. Little wonder the connection between the new rulers and the ruled population was tenuous, at least. In legal terms, there was a continuity with the period of the First Tsardom, as the laws of the empire, to the extent they were applied and enforced in the described power conditions, now ran across the Bulgarian lands in their original, Christianized late-Roman form. The major change occurred in the realm of finances. The taxes, dues, and rents in kind and work of the First Tsardom were commuted, already in the 1040s, to cash payments. The conversion sparked the first major revolt after the conquest. The base tax unit remained the amount of land worked by the daily labor of a team of oxen. Several other payments, which went to support the more developed bureaucracy, accrued around it. The revenues, which the local and central governments managed to extract for their support, were now subject to the vagaries of the market and the crude attempts at currency manipulation by debasement of precious metal content. The response of the late eleventh- and twelfth-century native population was twofold. The native nobility, which mediated locally Byzantine governance, commanded considerable resources, had the population’s allegiance, and supported and maintained native religious foundations and saints. With their sponsorship and as a reflection of their worldview a new literature arose, a series of original saints’ Lives and a collection of translated and adapted apocryphal pieces.24 Two politically charged currents weave their way through the writings. On the one hand, there was a stress on the providential character of the Bulgarians and extolling of the benefits of the native state and monarchical leadership under the First Tsardom, as well as an idealization of Bulgarian statehood, implying the politico-economic illegitimacy of the conquest. On the other, the native tradition was subsumed in the Eastern Orthodox convention, including affiliation with its political arm, the Byzantine state and its rulers. In the last case, even the Emperor Basil II the Bulgar-slayer is qualified as “brave and sinless,” his rule as “blessed,” and his time as that of “wellbeing and prosperity” in Bulgaria. This fusion of state traditions reached a peak in the claim that the “Last Emperor” would be of a mixed Bulgarian-Byzantine progeny. The religious acculturation of the Bulgarians thus shored up the old claim for political parity and mingling of Bulgarians and Greeks. The two cultures and their political systems and institutions appear as co-substantial. Who governed whom, therefore, did not matter that much.

The Second Bulgarian Tsardom, 1185–1422 Then came the uprising of 1185, and the restoration of the Bulgarian state by the Asenids, a family of local magnates who rose after their request for the standard

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grant of income or an estate with military obligations was turned down. With a few exceptions, the dynasty ran the Bulgarian state until the Ottoman conquest in the early fifteenth century.25 In terms of institutions, officialdom, social ranks and status, ideology, law, administration, and taxation, the rulership and governance of the Second Tsardom completed the trend that began in the 860s and that was accelerated by the century and a half foreign rule. The Bulgarian political establishment became thoroughly acculturated in the hegemonic political matrix of the Byzantine model. Its evolution can be viewed as the unfolding of two trajectories, a theoretical and a practical one. In theory, the revived state took up where the First Tsardom left off. Since its inception, rulership was dynastic, patrimonial, and autocratic. Its legitimacy was buttressed by stress on the continuity of the state tradition and by claims for divine appointment. The full mimesis of the Byzantine model entailed progressive expansion of universalism, which in the fourteenth century logically led to the claim to supplant the old Empire in the sequence of the world monarchies. The eclat that the restorers of the state tradition obtained quickly made association with their line imperative for legitimate rule. The name “Asen,” after the more active of the two initiators of the restoration, replaced “Peter” and became the new imperial name. It was given to successive generations of male offspring within the direct line, adopted by collateral relatives as they claimed the crown, and borne by side branches in Byzantium beyond the fall of the empire. Any association with the dynasty entitled to claims to the Bulgarian throne, membership in the highest nobility, and ranking titles in both Bulgaria and Byzantium. The dynasty briefly lost its grip in 1280 but was restored in 1322.26 Transmission of power went by seniority, both in the father-to-son and brother-to-brother line, but matrilineally as well, in some cases over several generations, and jumped even to the consort’s farther.27 The flowing of the dynastic spell via the imperial women contributed to their standing: they are portrayed alongside the ruler on coins, inscriptions, and in miniatures, lauded in encomiums, and acted as regents on more than one occasion. Next, even though fourteenth-century charters make a subtle distinction by referring to “the state of my tsardom,” that “tsardom” was not exactly an office. Patrimonial-bureaucratic rule was the norm. Rulers were sovereign owners of their territory and subjects. Both were granted to private persons and corporations with charters, where state and individual are conflated as rulers signed as “my statehood.” Borrowed legal codes and charters continued to identify “ruler” and “state treasury.” The highest court offices, cup-bearer, marshal, constable, wardrobe and bedchamber heads—all of them with designations borrowed from Byzantium—were associated with the ruler’s person. Chancery personnel too was staffed with relatives. Tsars were now complete autocrats. There was no mechanism in place to contest the will of the ruler. The boljars’ council only acted during interregnums. Autocracy was entrenched enough to reduce the powers of court nobility to emergency actions, and channel popular discontent into the only imaginable option for change, imposing a “good tsar,” as it did in the wake of the only successful peasant rebellion of the

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European Middle Ages, in 1278–1280. Finally, the tsars judged, called popular and noble councils, and led the armed forces in person. The First Tsardom’s laws on the book existed, but it is indicative that there is no extant reference to objective law outside the ruler’s will. None of this was new. All were legacies from the First Tsardom, amplified as a model by the full immersion within the Byzantine tradition during the conquest. But as the ruling dynasts were “new men,” and as the Byzantines challenged the legitimacy of the Bulgarian state (they had given it in 927, they took it away in 971 and 1018) for another half-century, the theory of rulership needed additional buttressing. First, Bulgarian ideologues made a conscious effort to stress that they were no innovators but simply “restored” or “renewed” the existing state tradition.28 The eldest of the founding generation, Theodore, took on the old imperial name “Peter,” called himself outright a tsar, put on purple shoes and crown, betook himself to the old capital, Preslav, and sought recognition of his standing from Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. The youngest sibling, Kaloyan (1197–1207) directed that request to Pope Innocent III and shored it up by claiming that Peter and Samuel of the old dynasty were his “ancestors.” Ivan Asen II (1218–1241) moved pagan-era inscriptions to the new capital, Tarnov. Late medieval memorial lists of the Bulgarian rulers commemorated the rulers of the First Tsardom. Kaloyan sought an autonomous status for the Bulgarian Church in a union with the Papacy; in 1235, using the favorable political situation, Ivan Asen II had it re-acknowledged as an independent Patriarchy in the Orthodox tradition. Second, the claim for the providential character of the state and its rulership was picked up, already at the uprising in 1185, and steadily developed as time went on. Rulers gathered saint’s relics in the capital, commissioned new Lives, and minted coins where saints held the scepter with them. This aspect reached full expression under Ivan Alexander (1331–1371) and his son Ivan Shishman (1371–1395), both titling themselves “In Christ God pious tsar and autocrat of all Bulgarians and Greeks.”29 The formula was a direct copy of the Byzantine title; in the same vein of mimesis, Ivan Alexander had himself depicted with angels of God placing the crown on his head. Court literati penned encomiums and saints’ Lives praising the extraordinary piety of the tsars; under the rulers’ sponsorship, the trend reached a crescendo in the middle of the fourteenth century. The full adoption of the Byzantine model pushed the ideological claim to the extreme with the adoption of the translatio imperii claim. If the Bulgarian rulers were tsars chosen by God, and if their subjects included Greeks (or Romaioi), then the Bulgarian state was the “new Empire” and its capital, “the third Rome.”30 That was in theory. In practice, most provisions were floated by realities on the ground. Rulership was hemmed in a cocoon replica of the model polity. Beyond that, there was a conceptual void. After a brief ascendance by the mid-thirteenth century it operated in a steadily deteriorating reality of practical governance. Dynasticism provided illusionary stability. It was undermined by the extreme dilution of the concept, which allowed a parity of claims. Co-rulership was in place already in 1187 as Theodore-Peter II sought conciliation with

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Byzantium and Asen emerged as the de-facto ruler. Siblings and relatives enjoyed the h ighest titles borrowed from Byzantium, sevastocrator and despot, along with extensive domains, which they ran with plenipotentiary powers, including issuing charters (in some cases minting coins), and foreign policy. To what extent these quasi-polities conformed to Western standards for fiefs, vassalage, and apanage is unclear. What is clear is that they were too small to be self-sufficient. Formally allowed by the wide clan principle underpinning the dynasty, they flourished at the borders of the realm. There, neighboring powers propped them up and the logistics of landscape prevented their eradication. The result was a territorial fragmentation, replication of autocracy, patrimonialism, and dynasticism on local level, and reduction of the central power’s own self-sufficiency. Within, dynastic rule was problematized as spouses, taken for political or financial reasons (as did Ivan Alexander, whose second marriage was to a converted Jewish lady) had to be accommodated. A complex family hierarchy emerged where the “first-born” had to give way to the “born in purple,” and the latter, for his part, to the “young tsar,” all of these subordinated to the “great tsar” or “tsar of tsars,” but each with good claims to a “tsardom” of their own. This is how “three Bulgarias,” not counting smaller domains, came to coexist in the late 1300s. Small wonder rulers were quite conscious that the “divine will” was the ultimate operative agency in inheritance. The high status of the empress entitled foreign-born and affiliated princesses to regencies where native interests came second. Political exigencies reduced autocracy to naught as several late-thirteenth and fourteenth rulers whose titles implied world sovereignty became in fact “vassals” of Mongols and Ottomans (respectively, 1278-ca.1300, and ca.1388–1422). Even though patrimonialism was the strongest functional aspect of both rulership and governance it too was problematized with the gradual extinction of the difference between office and dignity at the top and the formation of a functional oligarchy of local lords in the vein of the Byzantine-era magnates. The extant fourteenth-century charters drew a line between potentates (boljars) and the progressively multiplying “imperial servants” (rabotniki tsarstva mi) of the fisc, law, and the army, most of them with designations from the Byzantine nomenclature, but where that line passed and what authorities it separated is unclear. The language suggests overlapping rather than distinct powers. Similarly blurred were the responsibility areas of the administrative heads, sevasts, dukes, katepans and kefalias of the ten districts, choras, into which the state was divided in the early thirteenth century (overlapping with respective Church dioceses). In sharp contrast with the pagan period and the First Tsardom, therefore, the trending governance model had shifted from “consensus-based” to “zero-sum game.” After the initial expansion under the first Asenids, the elites and the state got into an ever-sharpening competition for shrinking resources. Thus, the renewal of the state tradition conferred sovereignty externally as it bolstered local potentates internally to the extent that the latter were able to vacuum off the very concept of sovereign imperial state as the only entity with the monopoly on power in all of its forms. Progressive bureaucratization

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and ever-glamorous rulership rhetoric thus masked increasing disintegration of governance and a failure to centralize and increase efficiency. In conclusion, the evolution of the governance of medieval Bulgaria, understood as the modes in which power fluctuated between rulers (the state) and managers (the elites), was a trajectory from co-operation to contestation. The early drive (and occasional revivals) of strengthening the state, which produced a power system consistent with that of Marx’s and Weber’s theories, steadily gave way to a model in the vein of Foucault’s understanding of power as a contested, dispersed phenomenon. The single most important factor underpinning that process, in which the third agent, the population, largely stood aside, was the decreasing capacity of the Bulgarian polity to wage successful war. For a variety of reasons, ranging from geography to political model to personal ability to geo-politics, the state found no other resource to bind the elites but the spoils of war, however defined. In the presence of proceeds of or prospects for such an external resource, the elites stood by the ruler; in their absence, they turned on the central power and cannibalized its internal assets. Having ran out of resources to distribute by the mid-tenth century, and then again by the mid-thirteenth, locked up in the Byzantine matrix of “arrested development,” encircled by militarily resurgent and/or resilient polities, and unable to mobilize or generate internal resources as the local elites’ survival mode was to appropriate and deny them to the central power, the Bulgarian state faltered and eventually died.

Notes 1 Rasho Rashev, Prabylgarite prez V–VII vek (Sofia: Orbel, 2005); for Kubrat’s grave, Aleksey Бобринский, Перещепинский клад (Материалы по археологии России, №34: Petrograd, 1914). 2 Overview in Dimiter Dimitrov, Prabylgarite po severnoto i zapadnoto Prichernomorie (Varna: Georgi Bakalov, 1987). 3 Overviews in Petar Petrov, Obrazuvane na bylgarskata dyrzhava (Sofia: Nauka i Izkustvo, 1981); Dimiter Angelov, Obrazuvane na bylgarskata narodnost (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1981); Stancho Vaklinov, Formirane na starobylgarskata kultura, VI–XI vek (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1977). 4 Developed in Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). 5 Edition in Omeljan Pritsak, Die bulgarische Fürstenliste und die Sprache der Protobulgaren (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1955), translation in Petkov, The Voices, 3–5. 6 The court encomiast John Exarch, in Petkov, The Voices, 90. 7 For a detailed discussion of the meanings of the titles of the Bulgar rulers in contemporary sources see Florin Curta, “Qagan, Khan, or King? Power in Early Medieval Bulgaria (Seventh to Ninth Centuries),” Viator 37 (2006): 1–31. I am using the generic “khan” as this is the closest rendition of the title in the Bulgar inscriptions. 8 Discussion indebted to Veselin Beševliev, Pyrvobylgarite: Bit i kultura (Sofia: Nauka i Izkustvo, 1981). 9 The answers of Pope Nicholas I to the questions of the Bulgarians in Petkov, Voices, 24–31. 10 Edited by Veselin Beševliev, Die protobulgarischen Inschriften (Berlin: Berliner Byzantinische Arbeiten, Bd. 23, 1963), also as Parvobylgarski nadpisi (Sofia: BAN, 1979). Translations in Petkov, Voices, 5–13.

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Fiedler, Uwe. “Bulgars in the Lower Danube Region. A Survey of the Archaeological Evidence and of the State of Current Research.” In The Other Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. Florin Curta, 151–236. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2008. Haldon, John. Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World, 565–1204. London: UCL Press, 1999. Hupchik, Dennis. The Bulgarian-Byzantine Wars for Early Medieval Balkan Hegemony: Silver-line Skulls and Blinded Armies. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017. Leszka, Mirosław and Kirił Marinow, eds. The Bulgarian State in 927–969: The Epoch of Tsar Peter I. First ed., Łódź, 2018; 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. Mullet, Margaret. Theophylact of Ochrid. New York and London: Routledge, 2016. Petkov, Kiril. The Voices of Medieval Bulgaria, Seventh-Fifteenth Century: The Records of a Bygone Culture. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2008. Stephenson, Paul. Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900–1204. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Tăpkova-Zaimova, Vasilka. Bulgarians by Birth. The Comitopuls, Emperor Samuel, and their Successors According to Historical Sources and the Historiographic Tradition. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2017.

INDEX

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes Bosnia 4, 20, 59–70 Bulgaria 7–8, 111, 223–38;Volga Bulgaria 42, 49–52 Byzantium 2, 6, 8, 44, 60, 65, 107–19, 134, 136–37, 179–81, 185, 187, 208–09, 210, 212, 217, 224–25, 227, 228, 229–37

governance 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 34–37, 59, 74, 76–83, 85–87, 92, 94–95, 96, 99–103, 107, 109, 111, 116, 119, 127, 131, 160–66, 167, 170, 176–77, 180–81, 184–87, 198, 208, 210, 216, 223–24, 225, 227–29, 231–38

centralization 1, 3, 7, 22, 34, 64, 75, 98–100, 161, 179, 183, 194, 200, 203, 211, 217, 238 coinage 8, 46–47, 48, 49–50, 51, 108–09, 199–200, 228, 231, 235–38 Constantinople 6, 43, 44, 60, 107, 111, 114–17, 119, 135, 136–37, 147, 209, 210, 212, 230–32 crusade 31, 111, 113, 126–28, 132–33, 135, 150

Henry II of England 29, 34, 195 Hungary 2, 4, 60–61, 73–87, 95, 98, 100, 161

emperor 6, 30, 41–44, 47, 50, 60, 93, 107, 110–19, 135–36, 143, 147–48, 191–93, 203, 209, 211, 214, 216–17, 226–27, 230, 232–34, 236 England 1–2, 3, 27–37, 135, 149, 150, 160, 186, 195, 196, 199, 200

Khazars 2, 7, 41–53, 224–25 kingship 1, 2–3, 34–35, 45, 52, 73, 191–92, 194, 199 Komnenoi 111, 116–19, 135–37

France 1–2, 20, 32–33, 73, 76, 127, 135–36, 200 Frederick Barbarossa 186, 193, 236 German Empire (Germany) 1–2, 3–4, 8, 13, 20, 30, 75, 85, 93, 143, 149, 186, 191–203, 214–16, 217

Iberia 2, 4, 5, 11–22, 135 Islam 2, 11, 14, 16–18, 42–47, 49–53, 113, 126, 128, 132–33, 136, 148, 217 Italy 8, 44, 142, 149, 194, 198, 200, 208–18 Jerusalem 5, 31, 126–37 Judaism 2, 7, 13, 41–53, 74, 103, 237

law 4, 5–6, 7, 22, 34, 44, 46, 50, 74, 76, 78–80, 97, 99, 102, 103, 110–11, 112–13, 142–44, 146, 148–49, 150–51, 153, 154, 162, 164, 166–69, 170, 177, 179, 184–87, 188, 194, 202–03, 208, 223, 228, 231, 233–37; Canon law 76, 112–13, 142–44, 146, 148–49, 150–51, 153, 154; German Law 79, 97, 103; Russkaia Pravda 7, 177, 179, 184–87, 188

242 Index

lordship 3, 20, 73, 79, 86, 93

Poland 2, 7, 92–103, 161

magnates 13, 15, 18, 20–22, 32, 35, 62, 63, 79, 86, 134, 162, 164, 165–66, 168–70, 192, 193, 196–97, 199, 203, 217, 233, 234, 237 Magyars 46–47, 224 marriage 5, 17, 20, 21, 29, 32, 42–43, 98, 102, 112, 117–18, 128, 132, 135–37, 146, 152, 176, 212, 237 monarchy 1, 4–5, 15, 16, 20, 22, 28, 30, 36, 97, 99–100, 102, 160–61, 162, 169, 194 Mongols 47, 76, 224, 237

queenship 5, 21, 27–37, 191, 209, 214

nomads 7, 41–53, 179, 224, 226 Norway 3, 4, 20, 134, 159–71 Ottomans 61, 65, 69, 70, 224, 235, 237 Ottonians 93–94, 191, 197, 212, 214, 216–17 papacy 6, 8, 22, 93, 98, 142–54, 210, 213–14, 217, 236

Rome 44, 45, 51, 53, 60, 142, 146, 191–92, 194, 203, 210–11, 212, 213–14, 215, 216–17, 236 rulership 8, 13–14, 16–22, 41, 44, 47, 99, 120n3, 127–29, 131, 134, 137, 162, 178, 180, 182, 191, 194, 200, 216, 223–27, 229–31, 235–38 Rus 7, 43, 46, 51, 94, 176–88 seals 4, 28, 36, 51–52, 80–84, 87, 114, 180–81, 187, 230 succession 3, 5, 13, 17, 31–33, 45, 95, 100, 102, 128, 129–32, 135, 137, 176, 191–92, 196, 225–26 towns 4, 20, 45, 48–49, 61–63, 69, 73–87, 149, 151, 181–84, 187–88, 192–93, 200–03 trade 4, 31, 46, 50–52, 60–61, 74, 78, 83, 85, 97, 118, 133–34, 160, 202, 231