Noble Bondsmen: Ministerial Marriages in the Archdiocese of Salzburg, 1100–1343

NOBLE

BONDSMEN

Ministerial Marriages in the Archdiocese of Salzburg, 1100–1343

John B. Freed

Cornell University Press · Ithaca and London

TO SUSAN AND JENNY

CONTENTS

List of Maps and Genealogical Tables

Preface

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

The Archbishopric and Principality of Salzburg

Sources and Terminal Dates

Methodology

1The Archiepiscopal Ministerialage

Before the Investiture Conflict

The Investiture Conflict

The High Middle Ages (1122–1246)

The Salzburg Interregnum and the Later Middle Ages (1247–1343)

2Seigneurial and Canonical Restrictions on the Ministerials’ Freedom to Marry

Seigneurial Constraints on Servile Marriages

Seigneurial Constraints on Ministerial Marriages

Canonical Constraints on Ministerial Marriages

3Family Strategies

Conjugal Households

Heirs and Heiresses

Wives, Maternal Uncles, and Nephews

Sisters

Younger Brothers

Family Extinction

A Change in Family Strategy

4The Burdens of Matrimony

The Leibgedingesystem

The Abandonment of the Leibgedingesystem

The Heiratsgabensystem

The Amount of the Assigns

5The Politics of Marriage

The Twelfth Century

Archbishop Eberhard II (1200–1246)

The Salzburg Interregnum (1247–1270)

The Later Middle Ages (1270–1343)

6Ministerial Self-Consciousness

The Archiepiscopal Ministerials and Courtly Culture

The Iwein Frescoes in Rodenegg

Ulrich of Liechtenstein’s Frauendienst

Ambivalence

Conclusion

Appendix 1 The Archbishops of Salzburg, 923–1365

Appendix 2 Ministerial Lineages

Bibliography

Index

MAPS AND GENEALOGICAL TABLES

Map 1 The archiepiscopal province of Salzburg

Map 2 Southeastern Germany during the High Middle Ages

Map 3 The formation of the ecclesiastical principality

Map 4 District courts in the principality

Map 5 Seats of nobles, ministerials, and knights

Map 6 Lineages around the Wallersee

Map 7 The estate of Wolfram of Offenwang

Map 8 The Eisack and Rienz valleys

Genealogy 1.1 Sims

Genealogy 1.2 The judges and chamberlains of Friesach

Genealogy 1.3 Kalham-Wartenfels

Genealogy 2.1 Stefling-Türken

Genealogy 3.1 Tann

Genealogy 3.2 Seekirchen-Högl

Genealogy 3.3 Pettau-Königsberg

Genealogy 3.4 The Older Itzlings

Genealogy 3.5 The Younger Itzlings

Genealogy 3.6 Schnaitsee-Gutrat

Genealogy 3.7 Steinbrünning

Genealogy 3.8 Goldegg

Genealogy 5.1 Walchen

Genealogy 5.2 Felben

Genealogy 6.1 Rodank-Schöneck

PREFACE

This book had its remote beginnings one day in the spring of 1972, when I was writing my book about the German Dominicans and Franciscans. I had discovered that many of the prominent friars, like Saint Albertus Magnus, were ministeriales, and I thought that a quick trip to Firestone Library at Princeton University would provide a ready explanation for this phenomenon. I soon learned that there was no modern work of synthesis about the Dienstmänner in German and virtually nothing about them in English. Benjamin Arnold has now happily remedied the latter deficiency, and I eventually coined the word ministerial because I found it awkward and pedantic to resort to a Latin word in almost every sentence.

After I had a finished a historiographical article about the so-called Ministerialenfrage, or ministerial question, I decided to concentrate on the ministerials of a particular prince. I chose the ecclesiastical principality because Illinois State University had just started an international studies program in Salzburg, and serving as the resident faculty member gave me a chance to get there at university expense. It proved a fortuitous choice. By medieval German standards the documentation about Salzburg is abundant, little research had been done about the archiepiscopal ministerials, and Heinz Dopsch had just begun his own work on the province.

My original intention was to write a regional monograph about Salzburg comparable to Georges Duby’s classic study of the Mâconnais so that scholars could compare long-term changes in the social structures of French- and German-speaking areas. A book about the ministerials was merely the first step toward that goal, but before I could do even this, I felt I needed to reconstruct the genealogies, property holdings, and histories of the individual lineages. I planned to publish these first so as not to burden the reader of the more general work with genealogical reconstructions. While working on this material, I discovered the case of Diemut of Högl, whose name appears frequently in the following pages, and realized that it was also possible to deal with the intersection of family and social history. In the meantime, I published a series of articles about Salzburg.

Then William Chester Jordan asked me to deliver a paper at Princeton in February 1989 on the general theme of authority and marginality. I used the occasion to discuss the ministerials’ marriages. I intended at first to turn the paper into yet another article, but my colleague and friend Roy A. Austensen, who is now the provost at Valparaiso University, persuaded me that I had enough material for a book. I have thus published my conclusions before making public the genealogical and prosopographical studies they are based on, but I hope eventually to make this material available to scholars in some form. As for the regional monograph, in which I give the nobles, peasants, and burghers their due, it remains a distant dream.

I have relied over the years on the help of many institutions and people, and I am grateful for this opportunity to thank them for their kindness. I apologize if I have inadvertantly omitted a name or two. Illinois State University not only paid for two lengthy visits to Salzburg, where I was able to work at the Institut für Geschichte of the University of Salzburg and the Salzburger Landesarchiv, but also provided me with several research grants to pursue my work back home. I was able to write most of the first draft of this book while I was a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1990–91. Had it not been for this fellowship, the book’s gestation period would have been even longer.

I have relied greatly on interlibrary loan for finding obscure articles and books. I owe a special thanks in this regard to Helga Whitcomb, the now retired librarian at Milner Library at ISU, and to Faridah Kassim at the Institute. Amy Berridge, Mark Darby, and Marcia Tucker, librarians at the Institute, were also extremely helpful. Dr. Martin Bitschnau, head librarian of the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck, not only supplied me with an obscure document but graciously answered my inquiries about Rodenegg and the Rodanks. Helmut Stampfer of the Landesdenkmalamt für Südtirol provided the photographs of the Rodenegg frescoes, which were taken by Hubert Walder; and I thank Dr. Stampfer and the Landesdenkmalamt for permission to reproduce them. Jill Freund Thomas, cartographer at ISU, and her assistant, William Walters, spent many hours drawing the maps. Sarah Lewin, who served as my part-time secretary at the Institute, helped with the preparation of the original manuscript. Alice Bennett, manuscript editor for Cornell University Press, read the final draft, and I am grateful for the care with which she did so; she found far too many slips.

Several people heard or read portions of the manuscript in various stages of its preparation. I presented a paper about the Rodenegg frescoes to a seminar at the Institute, and I deeply appreciated the comments of the participants—especially John Baldwin of Johns Hopkins and Elizabeth Beatson—in refining my thinking. In addition, I was able to discuss the frescoes with several medieval art historians: Virginia Roehrig Kaufmann, who provided me with color slides, Horst Bredekamp of the University of Hamburg, and Elizabeth McLachlan of Rutgers. Michael Curschmann of the Princeton German Department, who first called my attention to the frescoes, read an earlier version of chapter 6, and I have profited greatly from his suggestions. Giles Constable of the Institute, Patrick Geary, who is now the director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Benjamin Arnold of the University of Reading in England read the first draft of the entire manuscript and helped to clarify my thinking. The anonymous readers of the manuscript for Cornell University Press gave invaluable advice on how to make a detailed local study more accessible to a wider audience. My retired colleague Lawrence D. Walker, who has been my mentor for many years, read the final draft.

I will always be indebted to Heinz Dopsch, professor of comparative Landesgeschichte at the University of Salzburg and the world’s foremost authority on the history of the province. Professor Dopsch provided me with an office at the Institut where I could work, took me on tours of the countryside and historical sites, answered countless questions over the years, corrected my German, and supplied numerous articles and books that I could not readily obtain in the United States.

Finally, I thank my wife, Susan Anderson-Freed, chair of the Computer Science Department at Illinois Wesleyan University and my resident expert, who programmed the genealogies that appear in this book. Somehow she and our daughter, Jenny, managed to live with me while I, like Ulrich of Liechtenstein, was gallivanting around my imaginary world.

JOHN B. FREED

Normal, Illinois

ABBREVIATIONS

AHR American Historical Review

AÖG Archiv für österreichische Geschichte

Au Codex traditionum Augiensium

Berchtesgaden Schenkungsbuch der ehemaligen gefürsteten Probstei

Berchtesgaden

Brixner Urkunden Die Urkunden der Brixner Hochstifts-Archive , 845–1295

BUB Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Babenberger in Österreich

Carinthia I. Carinthia I. Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Landeskunde von

Kärnten

CF Codex Falkensteinensis: Die Rechtsaufzeichnungen der Grafen

von Falkenstein

FRA Fontes rerum Austriacarum

GAG Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik

Gars Die Traditionen, Urkunden und Urbare des Stiftes Gars

JbfLKNÖ Jahrbuch für Landeskunde von Niederösterreich

JMH Journal of Medieval History

Mansi Giovanni Domenico Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et

amplissima collectio

MB Monumenta Boica

MC Monumenta historica ducatus Carinthiae

MGH Monumenta Germaniae historica

MGH Schriften Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae historica

MGH SS Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores

MGSL Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskunde

MIÖG Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische

Geschichtsforschung

Necrologia Germaniae MGH: Necrologia Germaniae

OÖUB Urkundenbuch des Landes ob der Enns

QE Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen Geschichte

Raitenhaslach Die Traditionsnotizen des Klosters Raitenhaslach

Regesten Die Regesten der Erzbischöfe und des Domkapitels von

Salzburg , 1247–1343

Regesten Steiermark Regesten des Herzogtums Steiermark

Das Salzfass Das Salzfass: Heimatkundliche Zeitschrift des historischen

Vereins Rupertiwinkel

SUB Salzburger Urkundenbuch

Traditionsbücher Brixen Die Traditionsbücher des Hochstifts Brixen vom 10 . bis in das

14 . Jahrhundert

Traditionsbuch Neustift Das Traditionsbuch des Augustiner-Chorherrenstiftes Neustift

bei Brixen

TUB Tiroler Urkundenbuch

UB Raitenhaslach Die Urkunden des Klosters Raitenhaslach , 1034–1350

UB Steiermark Urkundenbuch des Herzogthums Steiermark

Urkunden Neustift Die Urkunden des Augustiner-Chorherrenstiftes Neustift bei

Brixen

VF Vorträge und Forschungen, herausgegeben vom Konstanzer

Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte

VMPIG Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte

WF Wege der Forschung

ZsbLG Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte

ZsHVStm Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins für Steiermark

Z(S)RG, GA, KA, RA Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte:

Germanistische, kanonistische und romanistische Abteilung

Introduction

In July 1213 Archbishop Eberhard II of Salzburg (1200–1246) and Bishop Manegold of Passau (1206–15) asked King Frederick II at the imperial court held at Eger (today Cheb in the Czech Republic) to confirm the marriage contract that Gerhoch II of Bergheim-Radeck, an archiepiscopal ministerial, had made with Bertha of Lonsdorf, a Passau ministerial. The couple had agreed, presumably with their lords’ consent, that their first two children were to belong to Salzburg and the third to Passau, and that any remaining children would be divided equally between the two churches. Gerhoch and Bertha could confer their alods on each other, and their children would share their paternal and maternal inheritances equally.¹ Gerhoch and Bertha’s son Ulrich II of Radeck subsequently served the archbishop, and his brother Henry III, co-owner of the castle of Radeck, belonged to the retinue of the bishops of Passau.² That the two bishops bothered the young king with such a matter at the imperial court that abrogated the Concordat of Worms and confirmed the papal recuperations in central Italy suggests that Gerhoch and Bertha were hardly ordinary serfs. In reality their brothers, Rüdiger of Bergheim and Otto of Lonsdorf, later became prince-bishops of Passau (1233–50 and 1254–65, respectively).³

This strange agreement highlights one of the oddities of the medieval German constitution: the existence of an estate of men and women who were legally unfree, as can be seen in the restrictions on their right to marry, but who by the thirteenth century formed the de facto nobility of the country. Archbishop Frederick II (1270–84), who was himself a ministerial by birth, even requested that Count Albert II of Görz (1258–1304) divide with him the children of nobles.⁴ The ministerials’ peculiar position in German society was succinctly stated in a Carinthian manorial register (Urbar) of 1267 that listed various prominent ducal ministerials under the rubric homines proprii nobiles—noble bondsmen.⁵

Servile knights (milites) were hardly unique to medieval Germany. Although Georges Duby demonstrated that the knights of the twelfth-century Mâconnais were the descendants of men who had earlier been styled as nobles and who had already been influential landowners in the second half of the tenth century, many of the knights in post-Conquest England were serfs who owed their lords labor services and servile dues for their land.⁶ What made Germany different from its western neighbors was that until the fourteenth century the taint of servitude continued to be attached to men and women like Gerhoch and Bertha, who would have been classified without question as nobles in France or England. For example, as late as 1311 Archbishop Conrad IV (1291–1312) permitted his ministerial Frederick of Goldegg to marry one of the legitimate daughters of the Styrian ministerial Rudolph of Liechtenstein, whose grandfather had already in 1250 been able to field a force of one hundred knights, on condition that any children of this marriage were to be divided equally between the church and the duke.⁷ In contrast, English knights were generally assumed to be free by the reign of Henry II.⁸

Marc Bloch popularized the thesis that the church’s crusading ideology and the threat posed by the growing wealth and aspirations of the burghers caused warriors of diverse social origins to coalesce into a single order of knights who became in turn the nobility of twelfth-century Europe. He conceded, however, that such servile knights were accepted as nobles more slowly in Germany than in France because there were simply too many ministerials for them to be absorbed imperceptibly into the ranks of the nobility.⁹ More recently, Benjamin Arnold has argued that "the Latin word ministerialis was a scribal experiment . . . which prevailed early in the twelfth [century] as the label for ‘unfree knight’ everywhere in Germany" to differentiate such servile knights from the free knights who in the eleventh century had already been styled as milites. The need for such a technical term arose in Germany because German lords maintained far larger military retinues than their French and English peers. The word ministerialis stressed the knight’s hereditary legal status rather than his military function and could thus be applied to women, children, and clerics as well. Nevertheless, the ministerials were accepted personally as nobles by the twelfth century, and a hundred years later miles replaced ministerialis as the standard designation for a member of the lower German nobility because the few remaining free knights had been absorbed into their ranks. It is Arnold’s view of the ministerials as merely a German variant of the European institution of knighthood that caused him to call his book about them German Knighthood, 1050–1300.¹⁰

Although Arnold’s application of Bloch’s model of knighthood to Germany does seem to explain reasonably well developments in the Low Countries, the Rhine valley, and east of the Elbe, it is less successful in other areas, most notably the Austro-Bavarian region, whose ministerials were among the most prestigious in the empire.¹¹ As Otto von Zallinger pointed out as early as 1878, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries scribes in southeastern Germany distinguished carefully between the ministerials, who were almost never identified as knights, and the ministerials’ own servile warriors, whom the scribes called knights.¹² Although the ministerials and knights did finally merge into a single knightly estate about 1300 in the principality of Salzburg, the late medieval nobility in the duchies of Austria and Styria was divided into two estates: the lords, who were the descendants of the most prominent ministerials, and the knights, who were the lords’ vassals.¹³ To translate ministerialis as servile knight, as Arnold does, makes it impossible to distinguish between the ministerials and their own men (unless one retains the cumbersome Latin term), and wrongly suggests that knighthood bridged the gap between the nobles and the ministerials in southeastern Germany. If anything, knighthood encouraged the union in Salzburg between the ministerials and their own servile vassals. I will therefore employ ministerial and ministerialage to refer to the ministerials and will use the word knight only when the person was actually called a miles or Ritter, because it is essential to know who was called a noble, ministerial, or knight by whom, when, and in what context.¹⁴

Whereas previous studies of the ministerials, like Arnold’s own excellent work on Eichstätt, have generally examined them from a political and juridical perspective—that is, as a major instrument in the Hohenstaufen revival of imperial authority and in the formation of the German principalities—I will, without ignoring the political and legal dimensions, approach the archiepiscopal ministerials from the vantage point of social and family history. Little work has been done on the ministerials’ own family strategies. Specifically, I will concentrate on marriage, the most fundamental of human institutions, because the restrictions on their right to marry, along with certain limitations on their freedom to alienate property, were the most visible reminders of their servile origins. The archbishops’ ability to control their ministerials’ marriages, I will argue, was a major factor in the assertion of territorial supremacy (Landeshoheit). At the same time the archiepiscopal ministerials, like the nobles, used marriage as a tool to enlarge their patrimony, enhance their prestige, forge dynastic ties to other families, both noble and ministerial, and assert their independence from the archbishop. Marriage can thus serve as a lens for examining the conflict between the ministerials’ legal condition and their real position as the de facto nobility of high medieval southeastern Germany—the curious situation that Karl Bosl described as noble servitude and that is revealed by Gerhoch and Bertha’s marriage contract.¹⁵

The Archbishopric and Principality of Salzburg

The archbishops of Salzburg exercised both spiritual and temporal authority. They were the primates of Bavaria, the ordinaries of a vast diocese in the eastern Alps, and the earthly rulers of the largest and richest ecclesiastical principality in southern Germany. As map 1 shows, the archdiocese of Salzburg stretched from the Inn River and its tributary the Isen in southeastern Bavaria, across the modern Austrian provinces of Salzburg, Carinthia, and Styria, as far south as the Drava, which formed the boundary between the archbishopric and the patriarchate of Aquileia, in what is now Slovenia. Those parts of the duchies of Carinthia and Styria that were south of the Drava were under the patriarch’s spiritual jurisdiction. In addition, the southeastern portion of the modern province of Lower Austria, the Pitten district and the area around Wiener Neustadt, belonged to the archdiocese (this region was part of the medieval duchy of Styria). It is approximately 350 kilometers in a straight line from Mühldorf on the Inn in Upper Bavaria in the northwestern corner of the archdiocese to Pettau (today Ptuj, Slovenia) on the Drava in the southeast, but there is a far greater distance to travel over the rugged terrain of the eastern Alps.

As both Pope Alexander II and King Henry IV pointed out, the excessive extent of the archdiocese and the difficulty of the roads made it impossible for Archbishop Gebhard (1060–88) to govern his bishopric situated in the mountains by himself; and they granted him permission in 1070 and 1072, respectively, to establish and endow a new diocese within the archbishopric. The king added that Gebhard could employ for this purpose the Benedictine convent in Gurk that had been founded by Saint Hemma thirty years earlier. Since Salzburg was not to suffer any loss on account of Gebhard’s concern for the spiritual welfare of his flock, the pope and king granted Gebhard and his successors the unprecedented right to name and invest the bishops of Gurk (Alexander also authorized the archbishop to consecrate the bishops).¹⁶ Gebhard, who intended the new bishop to function simply as his vicar throughout the archdiocese, neither delineated Gurk’s boundaries nor assigned any tithes to it. Although in 1075 Gregory VII rebuked Gebhard for his greed, the pope was too dependent on his support during the Investiture Conflict to pursue the issue; and it was only Archbishop Conrad I (1106–47) who finally provided Gurk with a cathedral chapter (1123), a modest diocese (1131), and tithes (1144).¹⁷

MAP 1 The archiepiscopal province of Salzburg. (The differences in shading represent the dioceses that comprised the metropolitan province of Salzburg.) Adapted from Hubert Jedin, Kenneth Scott Latourette, and Jochen Martin, eds., Atlas d’histoire de l’église: Les églises chrétiennes hier et aujourd’ hui (Brepols, Belgium, 1990).

During the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the bishop and chapter of Gurk sought to emancipate themselves from Salzburg’s tutelage and to obtain a legal status comparable to that of Salzburg’s other suffragans (Brixen, Freising, Passau, and Regensburg). The dispute was finally resolved in 1232. Henceforth the archbishop was to present the chapter with three nominees, none of whom had to be a Gurk cathedral canon; the man the canons elected was then to be consecrated and invested by the archbishop and to swear a specified oath of fealty to him.¹⁸

Gurk’s capitulation in 1232 was the result of Eberhard II’s success in ending its unique status and in thwarting the Babenbergs’ plans to establish bishoprics under ducal control in their own domains. Eberhard had in fact created three additional proprietary bishoprics: Chiemsee in Upper Bavaria (1215), Seckau in Styria (1218), and Lavant in Carinthia (1226). The archbishop possessed the right to nominate, consecrate, and invest these bishops. The new dioceses were minuscule, and Chiemsee and Seckau, like Gurk, were enclaves within the archdiocese (see map 1). The bishop of Chiemsee, whose episcopal see was on an island in a lake in the foothills of the Alps, inhabited only by the canons of Herrenchiemsee, soon took up residence in the city of Salzburg, where for six centuries he functioned as an auxiliary bishop. Lavant, which consisted of only four parishes,¹⁹ was derided for its tiny size as the Zwetschkenbistum (it was hardly considered a plum in the idiomatic English sense). The archbishop’s rights in regard to his four proprietary bishoprics were unprecedented in Christendom, and in 1870 Pope Pius IX greeted Cardinal-Archbishop Maximilian Josef von Tarnóczy of Salzburg (1850–76) at Vatican I with the words, See the half-pope, who can himself make bishops!²⁰

The principality of Salzburg embraced only a comparatively small portion of the archdiocese (see maps 2 and 3). It consisted of the modern Austrian province of Salzburg, which has an area of 7,154 square kilometers (2,762 square miles), the Ziller valley and the lordship of Windisch-Matrei, which were assigned to the Tyrol in 1810, and the Rupertiwinkel, which was ceded to Bavaria in 1816. The Rupertiwinkel (the name came into use only about 1900), agriculturally the most productive section of the medieval principality, was a strip of territory on the west bank of the Salzach, approximately thirty kilometers long, north of the city of Salzburg and the confluence of the Salzach and its tributary the Saalach, and between the mouth of the Saalach and the town of Tittmoning to the north. The archbishops thus created a principality in the Salzach valley centered on their metropolitan see, which is at the point where the Salzach breaks out of the Alps.

MAP 2 Southeastern Germany during the High Middle Ages. (The differences in shading represent the major political units in southeastern Germany.) Adapted from Grosser historischer Weltatlas, vol. 2, Mittelalter, ed. Josef Engel (Munich, 1970).

MAP 3 The formation of the ecclesiastical principality of Salzburg. Adapted from Heinz Dopsch, Geschichte Salzburgs: Stadt und Land, vol. I, Vorgeschichte , Altertum, Mittelalter (Salzburg, 1981-84).

Unlike other bishops who received comital rights from the crown during the Saxon-Salian period, the archbishops were compelled to build their territory piece by piece. Their point of departure was the city of Salzburg, where they alone exercised jurisdiction. The territory to the east and south of the city, the modern Tennengau, was heavily forested, and the archbishops established their lordship through land clearance on the east bank of the Salzach and in the Pongau, the stretch of the Salzach valley between Pass Lueg and the Gastein valley. To legitimize their acquisitions, they forged a charter in the name of King Arnulf and another charter in which Otto II allegedly confirmed the Arnulfinum in 977. All this action was duly confirmed by Henry III in 1051.²¹ The archbishops had no rivals to challenge them in this region.

The archbishops subsequently added to the Arnulfinum, probably during the Investiture Conflict, a delineation of the boundaries of the territory that their church had acquired during the eighth and ninth centuries. This clumsy falsification was intended to secure Salzburg’s rights in the Radstadt basin—that is, the upper Enns valley, west of the Mandling (the stream that still forms the border between Salzburg and Styria in the Enns valley)—whose colonization the archbishops were also promoting; but it was such a patent addition that the archbishops never dared to have the revised Arnulfinum confirmed. It was not until 1297 that Duke Albrecht of Austria, anxious to obtain the support of Archbishop Conrad IV in his bid for the crown, recognized Salzburg’s rights in the Radstadt area.²²

It was Eberhard II, creator of the ecclesiastical principality, who procured the key comital rights. In 1207 he purchased from the Swabian count Henry of Lechsgemünd the lordship of Windisch-Matrei and the count’s alodial holdings in the Upper Pinzgau (the Pinzgau is the uppermost stretch of the Salzach valley).²³ The comital rights in the Pinzgau had been divided between the Lechsgemünds, who had died out by the 1220s, in the Upper Pinzgau and the counts of Plain in the Lower Pinzgau (the area around Saalfelden). In 1228 Eberhard obtained from Duke Louis I of Bavaria (1183–1231) the feudal overlordship of the two counties and was duly enfeoffed by King Henry (VII). The Plains held the Lower Pinzgau in fief from the archbishop until the extinction of the main line of this comital dynasty in 1248.²⁴ Archbishop Conrad IV purchased the district court (Landgericht) in the Gastein valley in 1297 from the dukes of Lower Bavaria.²⁵

King Henry II’s donation of a property in the Lungau, the later Mauterndorf, to the cathedral canons in 1002 was the beginning of Salzburg’s position in the Lungau, the section of the principality south of the Radstädter Tauern (that is, on the southern side of the continental divide), which belonged to the duchy of Carinthia rather than to Bavaria. In 1213 King Frederick II conferred on Archbishop Eberhard II all the possessions that the empire possessed in the Lungau.²⁶ The comital rights in the Lungau, which the Lower Austrian lords of Lengenbach had held in fief from the counts of Sulzbach, were acquired by Archbishop-Elect Philip between 1246 and 1252.²⁷

The comital rights in the immediate vicinity of Salzburg, in the Rupertiwinkel, and in the Flachgau, the modern name for the area northeast of the city, were highly fragmented; the archbishops had to obtain the district courts, into which the counties had been divided, from the comital dynasties as they died out or from their own ministerials who had been subenfeoffed with the courts (see map 4). There is no need to describe this process in detail, but some highlights can be mentioned. The counts of Lebenau, a cadet branch of the Spanheimer, who were the dukes of Carinthia, died out in 1229. Their county was situated on both banks of the Salzach in the area around Tittmoning; it was finally assigned to Salzburg in 1254 by the First Treaty of Erharting, which Archbishop-Elect Philip made with Dukes Louis II (1253–94) and Henry XIII (1253–90) of Bavaria.²⁸ After the extinction of the cadet line of the Plains in 1260, their county to the west and south of the city of Salzburg escheated to the archbishop. However, Archbishop Conrad IV obtained direct control of key portions of this county from his own ministerials only several decades later: the Kuchltal, the portion of the Salzach valley between the city and Pass Lueg to the south, which the Gutrats held in fief from the archbishop until their extinction in the male line in 1304; and Staufeneck, northeast of Bad Reichenhall, which the impoverished Staufenecks, a family of former Plain ministerials who had entered the archbishop’s service, were forced to sell in 1305 and 1306.²⁹ Other courts to the north and east of the city were obtained in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in similar circumstances from the following lineages of archiepiscopal ministerials: the Tettelhams, Oberndorfs, Eichhams, Bergheims, Radecks, Kalhams, and Tanns.³⁰ The archbishops’ territorial supremacy in the Salzach valley was thus based on a combination of royal grants, purchases, land clearance, and forgeries.

MAP 4 Courts in the principality of Salzburg. Adapted from Heinz Dopsch, Geschichte Salzburgs: Stadt und Land, vol. I, Vorgeschichte, Altertum, Mittelalter (Salzburg, 1981-84).

In addition, the church of Salzburg not only had extensive landholdings throughout the archdiocese—for example, in the Chiemgau and the Isengau in Upper Bavaria³¹—but also exercised temporal jurisdiction until the end of the Middle Ages or even longer in a number of enclaves within the domains of rival princes, both within and outside the archdiocese. As map 5 shows, the archiepiscopal ministerials resided throughout the archdiocese, particularly in the Bavarian portion where the church had already been richly endowed in the eighth century. There were relatively few ministerials in the principality itself, especially in the mountainous Pongau, Pinzgau, and Lungau.

I shall mention only the most important of these external enclaves. Mühldorf on the Inn River, which had belonged to the church of Salzburg since 798, was part of the ecclesiastical territory, and the city was eventually represented at the meeting of the estates of Salzburg.³²

In 1142 Bishop Altmann of Trent (1124–49) bequeathed to Salzburg his possessions on the southern slopes of the Tauern in Upper Carinthia (see maps 2 and 3). This bequest was the basis of Salzburg’s extensive possessions in the Möll, upper Drava, and Lieser valleys, which gave the archbishops the potential opportunity to control the northern and southern approaches to the passes over the Tauern—that is, to create a principality comparable to Tyrol, the Swiss Confederation, or Savoy-Piedmont. The archbishops’ attempt to obtain high justice in this region, except in the lordships of Gmünd and Rauchenkatsch, which controlled access via the Lieser valley and the Katschberg Pass to the Lungau, was blocked, however, by the counts of Görz. The principality thus never achieved its full strategic potential.³³

MAP 5 Seats of nobles, ministerials, and knights. (Since not all the ministerial lineages listed in appendix 2 can be located on a map, the numbers assigned to the lineages here are not the same as those shown there.) Adapted from Heinz Dopsch, Geschichte Salzburgs: Stadt und Land, vol. I, Vorgeschichte, Altertum, Mittelalter (Salzburg, 1981-84).

Friesach, the most important city in Carinthia until the end of the thirteenth century, was on the main trade route between Venice and Vienna. The Friesach penny circulated widely in the eastern Alps, Hungary, and the Balkans. The church of Gurk had obtained as part of its endowment Saint Hemma’s market in Friesach. This market was on the left bank of the Metnitz, southeast of the present city. Count Engelbert II of Spanheim, who later became the duke of Carinthia (1124–35), acquired the market during the Investiture Conflict and was dislodged by Bishop Hiltebold of Gurk (1106–31) only in 1124 after Engelbert was besieged in the market and threatened with excommunication. Archbishop Conrad I persuaded Hiltebold to demolish his market and transfer it to the right bank, where Salzburg had its own less important market beneath its castle on the Petersberg. The two churches shared jurisdiction in Friesach—both Salzburg and Gurk had their own judges until the thirteenth century, but Gurk was soon overshadowed by its feudal suzerain and in the fourteenth century renounced its last rights in Friesach.³⁴

The archbishops possessed two lordships in Central Styria (Mittelsteiermark): Deutsch-Landsberg and Leibnitz, which were between the Lassnitz and Sulm Rivers, tributaries of the Mur. Archbishop Conrad I built castles in both places. The archbishop exercised jurisdiction in capital cases in Deutsch-Landsberg but not in Leibnitz.³⁵ The archbishops established themselves in Pettau on the Drava, the former Roman city of Poetovio, at the end of the ninth century and obtained sole jurisdiction in the city after Emperor Otto II confirmed in 982 the forged charter in which King Arnulf had allegedly granted to Salzburg the city of Pettau with its court, toll, and bridge. Conrad I secured Pettau against Hungarian attack by building a new castle in place of a ruined older fortification.³⁶ Pettau was the most important commercial center in Styria in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and remained until the sixteenth century, in Othmar Pickl’s words, a place of the first rank. ³⁷ Finally, Salzburg possessed in what was until 1918 Lower or Southern Styria (today Slovenia) a territory of approximately three hundred square kilometers on the left bank of the Sava, near the Croatian border. This territory, which included the town of Rann (today Brežice), was more than four hundred kilometers from the archiepiscopal see and was under the spiritual jurisdiction of the patriarch of Aquileia. Salzburg owed its position on the Sava to Saint Hemma, who in 1043 gave Reichenburg (today Rajhenburg-Brestanica) to Archbishop Baldwin (1041–60). The lordship on the Sava was divided into five district courts.³⁸ This, then, was the complex tangle of spiritual and temporal rights that the primate of Bavaria held in his dual role as prince-archbishop of Salzburg.

Sources and Terminal Dates

Since the location of archival depositories and the contents of published source editions are determined largely by modern rather than medieval political boundaries, one must use several documentary collections to study the archiepiscopal ministerials. The most important collection for the purposes of this book is the Salzburger Urkundenbuch (1910–33). The editors, Willibald Hauthaler and Franz Martin, published nearly all the documents, written before the death of Archbishop Eberhard II in 1246, that pertain to the archbishops and the area that constitutes the modern Austrian province of Salzburg. The first volume contains two late eighth-century summaries of Salzburg’s rights and holdings; the Traditions-bücher of five archbishops who presided over the church between 923 and 1060; the complete codices of traditions of the cathedral chapter and the Benedictine houses of Saint Peter’s and Michaelbeuern, both of which still flourish as monastic communities in the modern province;³⁹ nineteen notices, written between 860 and 1263, that have been reconstructed from the lost Traditionsbuch of the Benedictine abbey and collegiate church of Mattsee; and twenty-seven entries, relevant to the modern province, made between the eighth and twelfth centuries in the codex of traditions of the Benedictine monastery of Mondsee in the diocese of Passau.⁴⁰

The Traditionsbücher, in which various ecclesiastical foundations in the metropolitan province of Salzburg recorded conveyances of land and people, are the single most important source for studying the social structure of the Austro-Bavarian area between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. Some of the entries in the codices are summaries of charters, most of which are now lost, that were made either when the charter itself was written or at some later date; in that sense the Traditionsbücher can be compared to a cartulary. In a few cases an account of a transaction was recorded on a separate scrap of parchment and subsequently included in the collection. Most of the entries were made directly in the codex, however, either at the time of the conveyance or at some later date. The notices were a device to record the facts of a particular transaction and the identity of the individuals who could be summoned as witnesses if the proceedings were ever challenged. The names of thousands of people, their property holdings, and their family affiliations have been preserved in this fashion.

The Traditionsbücher themselves, at least initially, had no legal standing. The oral character of these collections is revealed by the phrase that introduced the witness lists in some of the entries in the archiepiscopal Traditionsbücher of the tenth and eleventh centuries: Isti sunt testes per aures attracti—a box on the ear had replaced, figuratively speaking at least, a charter as legal proof.⁴¹ Eventually, however, the ecclesiastical and secular authorities accepted the codices themselves as documentary proof. For example, in 1182 Brigid, the widow of Louis of the Porta, challenged a donation that her father-in-law had made to Neustift, a house of Augustinian canons outside Brixen. The bishops of Bamberg and Brixen and the margrave of Istria, who was the advocate of the house, ruled against her after they heard the testimony of witnesses and examined the relevant entry in the Liber testamentorum, that is, in Neustift’s Traditionsbuch.⁴² Since the Traditionsbücher also served a memorial function by preserving the names of the founders and benefactors of a church, most houses continued to make entries in their codices even after the sealed charter came into use as a form of proof. Indeed, the twelfth century was the high point in the use of the Traditionsbücher. Most churches stopped making such entries in the course of the thirteenth century. For example, the Traditionsbuch of the cathedral chapter, which was started about 1122, contains 373 notices; only 78 of these deal with the period from 1196 to 1264.⁴³ Consequently less information has survived from the thirteenth than the twelfth century about women and younger sons, whose names were more likely to be recorded in a Traditionsbuch than in a sealed charter that was itself accepted as legal proof.

Most of the entries in the Traditionsbücher, it should be pointed out, can be dated only by the episcopate or abbacy of the bishop or abbot who presided over the particular church when the notice was recorded. This explains the appearance in this book of such dates as 1125/47 or 1147/67; these particular dates refer to Abbots Balderich (1125–47) and Henry I (1147–67) of Saint Peter’s. Needless to say, such imprecision in dating enormously complicates the task of reconstructing the genealogies of the ministerials.

The growing reliance on written rather than oral proof is reflected in the chronological distribution of the charters in the second and third volumes of the Salzburger Urkundenbuch. These volumes contain approximately a thousand charters from 790 to 1246 (plus some relevant entries from the Traditionsbücher of foundations like Berchtesgaden that were outside the modern province of Salzburg); half of this material (volume 3) is from the archiepiscopate of Eberhard II (1200–1246). The ministerials themselves began to issue and preserve charters in their own family archives during the first half of the thirteenth century; regrettably few of these documents have survived. For example, by 1230 Karl of Gutrat had his own personal notary, and in 1307 the brothers Adalbero III and Ortlieb of Walch en were required to surrender the now lost letters that their grandfather had received from Eberhard II.⁴⁴ Indeed, it is worth noting that the oldest extant original charter in the archives of the counts of Törring, the only family of former archiepiscopal ministerials that survives today, dates from 1257.⁴⁵

The use of written instruments aided the development of the German territorial principalities, which in turn started to preserve such records in their own archives.⁴⁶ Not even the most diligent modern Austrian and German scholars have thus been able to publish in their entirety all the extant late medieval documents that have survived from the various principalities. For example, Franz Martin selected 390 important or representative documents from the period 1247–1343, that is, from the accession of Archbishop-Elect Philip to the death of Archbishop Henry (1338–43), for inclusion in the fourth volume of the Salzburger Urkundenbuch. In addition, Martin summarized approximately 4,000 other pertinent documents in Die Regesten der Erzbischöfe und des Domkapitels von Salzburg, 1247–1343 (1926–34). The documents contained in these two collections form the documentary base for this book.

Since most of the ministerials lived outside the modern province of Salzburg (see map 5), it is also necessary to use collections of Carinthian, Styrian, and Bavarian sources. The most complete is the Monumenta historica ducatus Carinthiae (1896–1972). August von Jaksch published the first four volumes between 1896 and 1906. The first two contain 688 documents from the diocese of Gurk that were drafted before 1269. Volumes 3 and 4 include more than 3,000 documents issued between 811 and the end of Spanheimer rule in 1269. Publication of the Carinthian documents resumed only in 1956 under the leadership of Hermann Wiessner, the provincial archivist. Volumes 5–9 cover the period from 1269 until the accession of the Habsburgs in Carinthia in 1335 and contain approximately 3,300 documents, though most are only summarized. The last two volumes include summaries of 1,900 selected documents from the period 1335–1500. In effect, the later volumes of this collection are a register of post-1269 Carinthian documents.

The Styrian documents are still being published. Joseph von Zahn edited the first three volumes of the Urkundenbuch des Herzogthums Steiermark (1875–1903), which contain material from 798 to the end of Hungarian rule in 1260 (a new edition is being prepared). The fourth volume (1960–75), edited by the Styrian archivist Gerhard Pferschy, covers the sixteen-year period 1260–76 when King Ottokar II of Bohemia ruled the duchy. Once again the geometric increase in the production and survival of documents led to the decision to summarize rather than to publish in their entirety