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German History Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 399–423

© The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society.

All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghq108

The Written Word in Carolingian-Style FiscalAdministration under King Henry I, 919–936

David S. Bachrach

I. Introduction

For more than a century, German-speaking scholars have worked diligently to portray

the eastern portions of the Carolingian empire, forged by Charlemagne (768–814), as

administratively backward as contrasted with the West. In very important ways, this

scholarly effort was a manifestation of German hostility towards France arising from theNapoleonic wars and, looking even further back, from Louis XIV’s wars of conquest in

the Rhineland. The Carolingian empire, built on Roman administrative and fiscal

foundations, was seen as the precursor to France. German scholars, embarrassed by

Germany’s failure to develop as a nation state along the lines of its more westerly

competitors, sought refuge in the romantic-nationalist ideology of the free Germanic

warrior, resistant to the ‘civilizing’ domination of Rome.1 This ideological justification

for Germany’s special path ( Sonderweg ), although now long removed from its initial

inspiration, still underlies much of contemporary scholarship regarding the government

of early medieval Germany.

2

The burden of this essay is to call into question thisdichotomy between East and West, by showing the continuation of Carolingian-style

written administration during the reign of the first Saxon king, Henry I.

In her seminal and fundamentally revisionist study of the role that the written word

played in the administration of the Carolingian empire as a whole under Charlemagne

and Louis the Pious, and of the West Frankish Kingdom under Charles the Bald, Janet

Nelson stresses that royal power depended on the accurate and systematic descriptio of the

royal fisc. This included both those resources under direct royal control ( dominium ) and

those that had been granted as benefices ( beneficia ).3 With regard to the West, Nelson

disputes the rather pessimistic view of F.L. Ganshof that documents were rarely used by

counts or comital subordinate officials ( vicarii ) to provide detailed reports to royal missi

who were sent from the court.4 With specific regard to the requirement, set out in

1 For a detailed discussion of the development of German nationalism in the early modern period, see the valuable

recent study by Caspar Hirschi, Wettkampf der Nationen: Konstruktionen einer deutschen Ehrgemeinschaft an der

Wende vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit (Göttingen, 2005); and the review by David S. Bachrach in Sixteenth Century

Journal , 39 (2008), pp. 316–18.

2 Regarding the central ity of the Sonderweg model for studies of the German middle ages, particularly during

the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see Timothy Reuter, ‘The Medieval German Sonderweg?: The Empire and its

Rulers in the High Middle Ages’, in Anne J. Duggan (ed.), Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe (Exeter, 1993),

pp. 179–211.

3 Janet L. Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian Government’, in Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), The Uses of Literacy in Early

Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 258–96, here p. 272–74.

4 Missi were officials who acted as an extension of the royal will at local level, executing royal commands and solving

problems in the royal interest as they understood it.

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400 David S. Bachrach

capitularies, that vicarii were to make detailed reports regarding the beneficia in their

districts for transmission to the royal court, Nelson observes: ‘it is harder still to doubt

that counts and vicarii often communicated with each other in writing’.5

By contrast, however, with her positive assessment of the successful use of the written

word in the West to maintain up-to-date and detailed records regarding the status of

fiscal resources, including those granted out as benefices, Nelson accepts the model of a

very limited use of the written word for the Carolingian East, and its Ottonian successor

state.6 Here, Nelson draws attention to Karl Leyser’s contention that Ottonian

government operated with ‘a modest array of institutions’ and very little use of written

documents.7

Ironically, Leyser himself intended his study on Ottonian government to serve as a

rather more positive portrayal of the use of the written word, and institutions that

depended on the written word, than had hitherto been the norm in German

historiography. The great nineteenth-century constitutional scholar, Georg Waitz, who

had actively sought continuities between Carolingian and Ottonian governmental

practices, was frustrated by the lack of normative, capitulary legislation for the tenth-

century East that set out models of how a written administration should operate under

the Saxon kings.8 Waitz did argue that there was some kind of central collection office for

tax and toll revenues and that Otto I (936–973) probably did have information about the

gross sums of money that were coming into the royal treasury.9 Nevertheless, it was

Waitz’s pessimistic conclusions regarding continuity of Carolingian administrative

practices, which focused largely on the lack of surviving capitularies, that dominated

subsequent German-language scholarship.

Indeed, Marc Bloch, working from a francophone perspective, critically observed in1928 that scholars specializing in early and high medieval German history virtually

5 Ibid , p. 285.

6 Ibid , p. 294.

7 Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 294; and Karl Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (London,

1979), p. 102 for the quotation, and Leyser, ‘Ottonian Government’, English Historical Review , 96 (1981), pp. 721–

53, repr. in Leyser, Medieval Germany and its Neighbours, 900–1250 (London, 1982), pp. 68–101.

8 Georg Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 6 (2nd edn, ed. G. Seeliger, Berlin, 1896), p. 323 ff. For Waitz’s

observation concerning a lack of higher supervision over economic affairs, see Waitz, Deutsche

Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 8 (2nd edn, Kiel, 1878), pp. 216–18. For further expressions of these same views, see

Otto Brunner, ‘Moderner Verfassungsbegriff und mittelalterliche Verfassungsgeschichte’, Mitteilungen des Instituts

für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung (MIÖG), Ergänzungs-Band, 14 (1939), pp. 513–28, repr. in Hellmut Kämpf

(ed.), Herrschaft und Staat im Mittelalter (‘Wege der Forschung’, 2, Darmstadt, 1956), pp. 1–19; Heinrich Mitteis,

‘Land und Herrschaft. Bemerkungen zu dem gleichnamigen Buch O. Brunners’, Historische Zeitschrift , 163 (1941),

pp. 255–81, 471–89; Hagen Keller, ‘Grundlagen ottonischer Königsherrschaft’, in Karl Schmid (ed.), Reich und

Kirche vor dem Investiturstreit: Vorträge beim wissenschaftlichen Kolloquium aus Anlaß des achtzigsten Geburtstag

von Gerd Tellenbach (Sigmaringen, 1985), pp. 17–34; and Timothy Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages 800–

1056 (London, 1991), pp. 89 and 211.

9 Waitz, Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 6 (2nd edn), p. 330. M. Stimming, Das deutsche Königsgut im 11. und 12.

Jahrhundert, I. Teil: Die Salierzeit (Berlin, 1922), p. 28, notes Waitz’s observations and, in this context (p. 29), argues

that it would have been impossible for King Henry III (1039–1056) to have made grants of one-ninth or other frac-

tions of royal income without having a rather good idea of what the total sum of royal revenues was from particular

royal estates of the fisc. This same observation has been made more recently by Neil Middleton, ‘Early Medieval Port

Customs, Tolls and Controls on Foreign Trade’, Early Medieval Europe, 13 (2005), pp. 313–58 with regard to the

distribution of income from royal tolls.


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The Written Word in Carolingian-Style Fiscal Administration under King Henry I, 919–936 401

ignored the question of administration, especially when contrasted with the concerted

efforts of their French contemporaries to grapple with administrative problems.10 Bloch

emphasized that

There is almost always something disappointing about reading two histories one after the other—however

excellent they may be—dealing on the one hand with the institutions of medieval France, and on the otherwith those of Germany during the same period. You seem to be looking on at a desultory dialogue in which

neither of the speakers ever gives an answer exactly meeting the requirements of his partner. One of the two

books points to the problem and solves it in a certain way. But when you turn to the second book you find

most of the time that the problem is not even mentioned.11

In the present orthodox view, however, even Leyser’s modest and impressionistic effort to

revise the tendency observed by Bloch in the German historiographical tradition has

largely been rejected by German scholars over the past three decades. In a 1989 article in

Frühmittelalterliche Studien, the prominent specialist in Ottonian history, Hagen Keller,

states explicitly:

Despite the continuity of the idea of empire and the model of Charlemagne, everything that was of par-

ticular importance for high Carolingian imperial organization—centrality, office, law-giving and writing—

was absent in its successor states. Indeed they simply came to an end.12

Writing a decade later, Gerd Althoff defends the provocative subtitle of Die Ottonen:

Königsherrschaft ohne Staat , by simply asserting the total absence of administration of any

type, much less written administration, in the German kingdom.13 This study, which is a

popularizing adaptation of Althoff ’s collection of essays, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter:

Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde , takes as its central premise that the Weberian model of

the state is the appropriate benchmark against which to compare the Ottonian and

Salian kingdoms. According to this standard, Althoff relegates them to the status of

‘archaic’ societies.14 The corresponding anglophone tradition is neatly summed up by

John Bernhardt in his book on the Ottonian royal itinerary:

Since the Ottonian and the Salian kings lacked the governmental infrastructure of the Carolingian kingdom

and empire at the height of its power, they governed less through their representatives or written instructions

sent out from the court and generally had to make their will manifest in person. There is little doubt that the

Ottonian kings made less use of the written word in government than the Carolingians had at the height of

10 March Bloch, ‘A Problem in Comparative History: The Administrative Classes in France and in Germany’, in

Bloch, Land and Work in Medieval Europe: Selected Papers by Marc Bloch, trans. J.E. Anderson (Berkeley, 1967),

pp. 44–81. The article was first published in Revue historique de droit français et étranger , 7 (1928), pp. 46–91.

11 Bloch, ‘Problem’, p. 44.

12 Hagen Keller, ‘Zum Charakter der “Staatlichkeit” zwischen karolingischer Reichsreform und hochmittelalterlichen

Herrschaftsausbau’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 23 (1989), pp. 248–64, here p. 257. For a slightly more positive

assessment of the existence of a royal administration, simi lar to that set out by Leyser in ‘Ottonian Government’ ,

see Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Staatlichkeit, Herrschaftsordnung und Lehnswesen im Ostfränkischen Reich als

Forschungsprobleme’, in Il Feudalesimo nell’alto Medioevo (‘Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull’alto

medioevo’, 47, Spoleto, 2000), pp. 85–147, here p. 123.

13 Gerd Althoff, Die Ottonen: Königsherrschaft ohne Staat (Stuttgart, 2000), p. 8.

14 On this point, see the review of Gerd Althoff, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter: Kommunikation in Frieden und

Fehde (Darmstadt, 1997), by Howard Kaminisky in Speculum, 74 (1999), pp. 687–89, who points out not only

Althoff’s numerous mistranslations of Latin texts, but also his methodologically flawed practice of opportunistically

choosing passages that are taken out of context.


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their power. In fact, the east Frankish kingdom of the Carolingians already used the written word in govern-

ment less than did its west Frankish or Italian contemporaries.15

Very recently, this view was reiterated by Henry Mayr-Harting, who described the

scholarly consensus in this manner:

Ottonian politics is not easy for us moderns to grasp. Quite apart from its being so much about inheritancesand feuds within or between kinships, it largely lacked anything which we can recognize as an administra-

tion or a bureaucracy, such as we historians have tended to think of as the spine of any body politic which

they study. Ottonian rule was not, in Max Weber’s terminology, bureaucratic but patrimonial.16

II. The German Historiographical Tradition Regarding the Royal Fisc

These claims that Ottonian kings made limited use, or indeed no use at all, of written

documents and written administrative practices are particularly disconcerting in the face

of a very different consensus among specialists in the study of the royal fisc in easternportions of the erstwhile Carolingian empire. Many German scholars have established

that the models of estate management that were employed by Charlemagne, Louis the

Pious and their successors in the West, based on extensive written records, were also used

by both the eastern Carolingians and by the Ottonians up to the end of the reign of

Henry II in 1024. Of central importance in this context is the general argument that the

organizational model set out in capitulary de villis , composed perhaps as early as 771 and

certainly before 800, was the norm in administrative affairs and not merely normative.

In 1960, Wolfgang Metz synthesized a decade of research in his enormously influential

Das Karolingische Reichsgut .17 He demonstrated conclusively, contra Alfons Dopsch, that

capitulary de villis was meant for the empire as a whole rather than for Aquitaine.18 He

also demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that this capitulary provided

information about the basis on which royal fiscal properties were organized and managed

over the course of the ninth century.19

As Metz made clear, the orders set out in capitulary de villis resulted in the making of

numerous inventories.20 In this context, Metz emphasizes that regular inventory lists of

royal estates that were under direct royal supervision ( dominium ) were drawn up in a

manner consistent with capitulary de villis .21 In addition, Metz noted that the king

required detailed information about fiscal properties that had been granted out as

benefices, and also about church holdings, principally for military planning purposes.22

15 John W. Bernhardt, Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries in Early Medieval Germany c. 936–1075 (Cambridge,

1993), p. 5.

16 Henry Mayr-Harting, Church and Cosmos in Early Ottonian Germany: The View from Cologne (Oxford, 2007), p. 3.

17 Wolfgang Metz, Das karolingische Reichsgut: Eine Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung

(Berlin, 1960).

18 Metz , Reichsgut , pp. 18–72, who followed here Klaus Verhein, ‘Studien zu Quellen zum Reichsgut der

Karolingerzeit’, Pt 1, Deutsches Archiv für Geschichte des Mittelalters, 10 (1954), pp. 313–94; and part 2 ibid ., 11

(1955), pp. 333–92.

19 Metz, Reichsgut , pp. 17–72, 220–27, and passim. In many respects, Metz’s studies were developed on the basis of

the insights of Verhein, ‘Studien’, Pts 1 and 2.

20 Metz , Reichsgut , pp. 18–72, who followed here Verhein, ‘Studien’, Pts 1 and 2.

21 Metz, Reichsgut , p. 17.

22 Ibid , p. 19.


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It is exceptionally important that several of these lists, which contained severely time-

conditioned information, have fortuitously survived.23 The survival of these inventories

is particularly significant because they demonstrate the actual implementation of royal

legislation. It should be emphasized, however, that neither Metz nor his supporters

argued that the regulations in capitulary de villis were slavishly copied and cited by royal

estate managers. Rather, as Metz emphasized in his 1971 recapitulation of the essential

arguments in his earlier monograph: ‘Thus, capitulary de villis stood temporally at the

beginning of a period of extravagant and path-breaking property descriptions of which

only a few examples survive regarding the royal fisc of the Carolingian period.’24

The general thrust of Metz’s argument—that the administrative models set out in

capitulary de villis actually were utilized by estate managers—received immediate

acceptance from scholars who focused on the royal fisc. Carlrichard Brühl, in his magnum

opus , Fodrum, Gistum, Servitium, emphasized that the system of organization set out in

capitulary de villis applied not only in the West, but also in the eastern regions of the

Regnum Francorum.25 Brühl wrote with regard to capitulary de villis :

We are very well informed about the organization of individual royal villae by the priceless Capitulare de villis

vel curtis (sic) imperii . . . that current scholarship correctly regards as having been applicable to the entire

Frankish kingdom with the exception of Italy, against the more restrictive thesis of Dopsch, who saw this text

as being applicable only to Aquitaine.26

In his discussion of the tenth century, Brühl notes the unfortunate absence of a royal

document comparable to capitulary de villis , but argues, on the basis of surviving monastic

administrative records, that the internal organization of the royal fisc remained largely stable

under the Ottonians.27 Brühl specifically drew attention to the comparative analysis by

Bruno Heusinger of the administrative structures set out in capitulary de villis and the fiscal

administration that can be identified in the mid-twelfth century Tafelgut Verzeichnis , which was

issued by either Conrad III (1137–1152) or Frederick I (1152–1190).28 Heusinger concluded

that the models of royal estate management had not changed in any significant manner.29

Wolfgang Metz came to the same conclusion in his comparison of the two documents.30

23 Ibid , pp. 19– 21 for a list of these inventories.

24 Wolfgang Metz, Zur Erforschung des karolingischen Reichsgutes (Darmstadt, 1971), p. 21, ‘So steht Capitulare de

Villis zeitlich am Anfang großzügiger und wegweisender Güterbeschreibungen, von denen nur einige Beispiele für

das Reichsgut der Karolingerzeit erhalten sind’.

25 Carlrichard Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum, Servitium Regis: Studien zu den wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen des Königtums in

Frankenreich und in den fränkischen Nachfolgestaaten Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien vom 6. bis zur Mitte des

14. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1 (Cologne and Graz, 1968), here p. 68.

26 Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum, p. 81, ‘über die Organization der einzelnen königlichen villae sind wir genauestens unter-

richtet durch das unschätzbare Capitulare de villis vel curtis (sic) imperii . . . , das von der Forschung heute wieder mit

Recht für das gesamte Frankenreich mit Ausnahme Italiens in Anspruch genommen wird gegen die restrictive These

von Dopsch, der es in seinem Geltungsbereich auf Aquitanien beschränkt’.

27 Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum, pp. 180–81.

28 Ibid., esp. n. 257.

29 Ibid., with reference to Bruno Heusinger, ‘Servitium Regis in der deutschen Kaiserzeit. Untersuchungen über die

wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse des deutschen Königtums 900–1250’, Archiv für Urkundenforschung, 8 (1923),

pp. 26–159, here p. 123.

30 Wolfgang Metz, ‘Das Tafelgutverzeichnis des römischen Königs und das Problem des servitium regis in der

Stauferzeit, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Sachsens’, Niedersächsische Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte, 32

(1960), pp. 78–107, here p. 106.


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Studies in Landeskunde also have validated Metz’s conclusions with regard to the

administration of fiscal resources in several of the regions of East Francia and the

subsequent Ottonian kingdom. In investigating Carolingian fiscal resources in the

Rhineland, for example, Michael Gockel emphasizes that the material drawn from

sources such as the Lorsch Reichsurbar ,31 which included numerous fiscal properties that

had been granted to this royal monastery, ‘must be assessed in light of the capitularies,

and above all the capitulary de villis , keeping in mind the thoroughly programmatic

character of this text’.32 He then concludes, on the basis of a comparison of the text of

the Lorsch Reichsurbar with the procedures set out in capitulary de villis that: ‘the

inventorying and description of the royal fiscal properties for the royal central

administration was carried out following a uniform program’.33 Gockel sees this

accounting as resulting from a process of inquisitio —royally directed inquiries that made

use of both documents and the oral testimony of witnesses.34 In addition to the major

task of developing detailed accounts of fiscal production and transmitting these to the

central government, Gockel also argues that Chapter 10 of capitulary de villis , regarding

the establishment of administrative centres for royal forest lands, also can be seen in

effect in the middle Rhineland in the ninth and tenth century.35

Gockel’s findings were fully in accord with the earlier work of Franz-Josef Heyen that

was focused on the fiscal resources centred on Boppard. Heyen concluded that the

31 An urbar is a property record that includes a description of the property and its contents (human, animal, and inani-

mate) as well as, on occasion, a description of the production of the estates in question. 32 Michael Gockel, Karolingische Königshöfe am Mittelrhein (Göttingen, 1970), p. 27, ‘Die gewonnenen Ergebnisse

müssen in jedem Fall anhand der einschlägigen Kapitularien, vor allem des Capitulare de villis überprüft werden,

wobei jedoch weitgehend programmatischer Charakter nicht außer acht gelassen werden darf’. In this context,

Gockel cites Metz as the dominant authority on the importance of the capitulary de villis and its use in interpreting

surviving urbaren.

33 Gockel, Königshöfe, p. 31, ‘die Inventarisierung und Beschreibung des Königsgutes für die königliche

Zentralverwaltung nach einheitlichem Programm vorgenommen wurde’.

34 Ibid , p. 31. Here he cites Metz, Reichsgut , pp. 17ff; and the use of the phrase in villa N.N. inveniuntur from the

Lorsch Reichsurbar that corresponds to the phrase invenimus in eo loco that is used in the brevium exempla.

The inquest or inquisitio was a commonplace under Charlemagne’s rule so that its continued use in the middle

Rhineland during the ninth and tenth century is another index of continuity of royal administration. For a list of or-

ders requiring royal missi to carry out surveys and inquests in regard to beneficia held by vassi dominici , see

A. Boretius and V. Krause (eds), Capitularia regnum Francorum, 2 vols (Monumenta Germaniae Historica [henceforth

MGH ]: Leges Sectio II , Hanover, 1883, 1897 [henceforth Cap. reg. Fr.]), no. 18, ch. 5; no. 23, ch. 35; no. 24, chs 1, 6;

no. 33, ch. 6; no. 34, chs 10–11; no. 46, chs 6–7; no. 49, ch. 4; no. 59, ch. 3; no. 62, ch. 9; no. 63, ch. 9; no. 64, ch.

14; no. 65, ch. 9; no. 77, ch. 4; no. 80, chs 5–7.

35 Gockel, Königshöfe, p. 72. He also emphasizes (p. 82) continuity in forest administration from the Carolingian to the

Ottonian period.

Marianne Schalles-Fischer, Pfalz und Fiskus Frankfurt. Eine Untersuching des fränkisch-deutschen Königtums

(Göttingen, 1969), p. 326, similarly makes clear in her investigation of the Carolingian fisc in the Frankfurt region

the descriptive value of capitulary de villis for the management of royal resources. She emphasizes that Metz’s views

had largely been accepted with specific reference to the latter’s view that the Carolingian fisc was organized into

very large complexes that were administered by royal officials (Beamte). Schalles-Fischer agreed with Metz regarding

the heuristic value of the capitulary de villis in understanding the administration of the fisc. However, she disagreed

with his view regarding the size of the fiscal units that had their caput in the various royal palaces. She argued in-

stead (p. 326ff) that the palaces were supported a series of autonomously administered fiscal units that had obliga-

tions to deliver supplies to the central palace.


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administration of this Rhenish fiscal district was in accord with the models set out by

capitulary de villis and the brevium exempla , the latter having been produced during the reign

of Louis the Pious.36 In this context, Heyen refers specifically to clear evidence of royal

participation in assarting activities in the Boppard fisc.37

In his thorough-going investigation of the Carolingian and Ottonian fiscal resources

in Regensburg and the wider Bavarian regnum,38 Peter Schmid also followed Metz in

identifying capitulary de villis as being the basic model for the administration of royal

fiscal properties that are held in dominium.39 In this context he argued:

Even if it is the case that the administration of the demesne was not present everywhere at the same time and

in the same manner, we have before us a model of the way in which the Carolingians conceived the adminis-

tration of the royal fiscal properties.40

Schmid, in a manner similar to that employed by Gockel, then examined contemporary

charters to show the ways in which the models set out in capitulary de villis were employed

in Bavaria. In discussing the actual administration of the Regensburg palace, forexample, Schmid points out that capitulary de villis required that every royal fiscal unit

( curtis ) should have a fishpond and that one of the elements of the royal palace complex at

Regensburg was a fishpond ( vivarius ).41 Schmid similarly points to officials, identified in

ducal and royal charters, who fulfill the functions that are set out for such men in

capitulary de villis .42 These include, for example, the royal officials ( actores ) of Louis the

German (840–876) who serve in the royal villae ,43 and a royal agent ( ministerialis regis ),

employed by the same king, who served as supervisor of the royal forest lands.44

On the basis of a thorough examination of the Staffelsee Urbar , Konrad Elmshäuser

emphasizes the influence of royal administrative models on eastern ecclesiastical estate

management, particularly in the region of Upper Bavaria. He argues specifically that:

‘the resulting description of the bishopric of Augsburg on the basis of its number of

mansi demonstrates an actual overview of the obligations imposed by the crown’.45 The

same observation was made with regard to Fulda’s administrative documents by Ulrich

Weidinger.46

36 F.J. Heyen, Reichsgut im Rheinland. Die Geschichte des königlichen Fiskus Boppard (Bonn, 1956), p. 65.

37 Ibid.

38 A regnum was a subordinate territiral unit of the German kingdom governed by a duke (dux ).

39 Schmid, Regensburg, p. 230, who cites Wolfgang Metz, Zur Erforschung des karolingischen Reichsgutes, p. 8ff for

the central importance of capitulary de villis.

40 Peter Schmid, Regensburg: Stadt der Könige und Herzöge im Mittelalter (Kallmünz, 1977), p. 230.

41 Ibid ., p. 248.

42 Ibid ., p. 254.

43 A villa was a fiscal unit, and could vary widely in type and size.

44 Discussion by Schmid, ibid., p. 254. The charters in which these men appear are Die Urkunden der Ludwigs des

Deutschen, Karlomanns und Ludwigs des Jüngeren ed. Paul Kehr (Berlin, 1932–1934), LdDt 24 and 132.

45 Konrad Elmshäuser, ‘Untersuchungen zum Staffelseer Urbar’, in Werner Rösener (ed.), Strukturen der

Grundherrschaft im Frühen Mittelalter (2nd edn, Göttingen, 1993), pp. 335–69, here p. 352. He cites here, as com-

parative examples, the Saint Riquier and Saint-Wandrille polyptyques.

46 Regarding royal influence on the development of Fulda’s estate administration, see Ulrich Weidinger,

‘Untersuchungen zur Grundherrschaft des Klosters Fulda in der Karolingerzeit’, in Rösener, Strukturen der

Grundherrschaft , pp. 247–65, here p. 247.


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More focused studies of particular aspects of royal administration also have made

clear the continuing importance of the model of estate administration set out in

capitulary de villis . Karl Hauck, for example, examined the implications of capitulary

de villis with regard to the maintenance of wild animal preserves, distinct from ther royal

forest ( foresta 47 ) which had to be maintained by royal officials and their staffs.48 Hauck

makes clear the ongoing validity of the requirements in this chapter by noting that these

duties were subsequently emphasized by Louis the Pious in 821, who prohibited royal

officials from conscripting illegally the labour of free men to help maintain the fences

that kept the wild animals within the parks.49 Hauck also emphasizes that an animal park

( brogilus ) continued to be maintained at each palace, western and eastern—Frankfurt,

Regensburg and Aachen, for example—throughout the ninth century.50 The royal

courtier and later bishop, Liudprand of Cremona (died 972), observed that Otto I also

maintained animal parks ( brolia ), albeit without the breed of wild ass kept by the

Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II (963–969).51

In the light of this broad agreement among specialists in the history of the royal fisc

about the continuity of Carolingian administrative models into the ninth and tenth

century, it is certainly a problem that specialists in royal history ( Reichsgeschichte ) have not

integrated this information into their own works. In this context, it is worthy of note that

the view that administration, even of the vestigial type, was completely absent in the East

developed out of an entirely different scholarly tradition than that focused on the fisc.

This tradition is the so-called ‘New Constitutional History’ as practised by historians

including Theodor Mayer, Otto Brunner and Walter Schlesinger from the 1930s to the

1970s.52 This school sought to identify the specifically ‘Germanic’ character of the early

medieval state.53 Emphasizing a move away from the institutional model codified byGeorg Waitz, the new constitutional history insisted on a state model ( Staatlichkeit ) based

on the ‘Germanic’ concept of lordship ( Herrschaft ), characterized by personal ties between

47 This term identifies a specifically established royal forest with a host of attendant rights and obligations attached

to it.

48 Karl Hauck, ‘Tiergärten im Pfalzbereich’, in A. Gauert (ed.), Deutsche Königspfalzen: Beiträge zu ihrer historischen

und archäologischen Erforschungen, vol. 1 (Göttingen, 1963), pp. 30–74.

49 Hauck, ‘Tiergärten’, pp. 33–34.

50 Hauck, ‘Tiergärten’, pp. 35 and 39. Regarding the zoo belonging to the palace at Regensburg, also see Schmid,

Regensburg, p. 248.

51 Hauck, ‘Tiergärten’, p. 51; and Liudprand of Cremona, Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana, c.37 in P. Chiesa

(ed.), Liudprandi Cremonensis Opera Omnia: Antapodosis, Homelia Paschalis, Historia Ottonis, Relatio de Legatione

Constantinopolitana (Turnhout, 1998).

52 Ironically, in his role as a promoter of archaeological studies, Walter Schlesinger helped to establish at Göttingen the

scholarly tradition of Pfalzenforschung which led to many of the investigations of the Carolingian and Ottonian fisc

that shed light on the continuing importance of written documents in the administration of fiscal resources. See, in

this context, Walter Schlesinger, ‘Verfassungsgeschichte und Landesgeschichte’, Hessisches Jahrbuch für

Landesgeschichte, p. 3 (1953), p. 1–34; and Schlesinger, ‘Merseburg: Versuch eines Modells künftiger

Pfalzbearbeitungen’, in Deutsche Königspfalzen, vol. 1, pp. 158–206.

53 Regarding this tradition, see Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Die Wahrnehmung von “Staat” und “Herrschaft” im frühen

Mittelalter’, in Stuart Airlie, Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimitz (eds), Staat im frühen Mittelalter (Vienna, 2006),

pp. 39–58, here p. 39; and Steffen Patzold, ‘Die Bischöfe im karolingischen Staat: Praktisches Wissen über die

politische Ordnung im Frankenreich des 9. Jahrhunderts’, in Airlie et al., Staat im frühen Mittelalter , pp. 133–62.


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the lord and his retainers, or the aristocratic association ( Herrschaftsverband ) of the king and

the nobles.54 Among the more notable elements of the Herrschaft model of government

are its romantic focus on a warrior-nobility, and the concept that administration and laws

were rejected by Germans who would not submit to the restrictions on their freedom that

were part and parcel of the Roman system maintained by the Carolingians. Otto Brunner

argued, for example, that Herrschaft was the contra-positive of a relationship based upon

command and obedience ( Befehls-Gehorsamsbeziehung ).55

Walter Schlesinger, for his part, asserted that the Germanic kingdom of the East

Carolingians and the Ottonians was fundamentally different from that found in antiquity

and in the Carolingian West. The latter, Schlesinger claimed, maintained many of the

political and institutional concepts and methods of the Roman world. It is in this context

that Schlesinger made his famous claim: ‘The ancient state is based upon a commonality

of being, the Germanic-German state is based upon lordship’.56 It is this fundamental

dichotomy between institutions and lordship that has been adopted by scholars including

Althoff, Keller, Bernhardt and Mayr-Harting, mentioned above.57

III. Henry I’s Fisc in Carolingian Perspective

Perhaps the strict separation of political and fiscal history of the type practised by many

current scholars in German medieval history is not so surprising in the light of the

institutional divisions between the historiographical traditions treating the monarchy

and those focused on regional history ( Landesgeschichte ), and the even greater separation

between royal and local history.58 The vast scholarly production in the area of economic

history at the regional and local level, of which studies of the fisc are but one importantcomponent, would require that those writing the political narrative of the king and court

assimilate a very large corpus of scholarship for scores of regions and localities. In

54 Goetz, ‘Wahrnehmung’, p. 39, describes the model established by the new constitutional school as emphasizing

the aristocratic community of the king and nobility at the expense of institutional or territorially-based organiza-

tional principles.

55 Otto Brunner, Land und Herrschaft. Grundfragen der territorialen Verfassungsgeschichte Österreichs im Mittelalter

(4th edn, Vienna, 1959), with discussion of this view by Patzold, ‘Bischöfe’, p. 133.

56 Walter Schlesinger,Die Entstehung der Landesherrschaft. Untersuchung vorwiegend nach mitteldeutschen Quellen

(Dresden, 1941 and repr. Darmstadt, 1964), p. 113, ‘Der antike Staat ist gemeines Wesen, der germanisch-deutsche

Staat ist Herrschaft’, with discussion by Patzold, ‘Bischöfe’, p. 133. The term ‘ein ethisches gemeines Wesen’, was

developed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (died 1804).

57 It should be noted that there is some difference of opinion between Althoff and Goetz regarding the Staatlichkeit of

the Ottonian kingdom. While both scholars see the late Carolingian East and its Ottonian successor as being funda-

mentally without administrative institutions that depended heavily on written texts, Goetz, nevertheless, wishes to

characterize the Ottonian and late Carolingian polities as states. Althoff, by contrast, wishes to deny the status of

‘stateness’ (Staatlichkeit ) to the Ottonian kingdom. For a detailed discussion of the differences in views on this point,

see Goetz, ‘Wahrnehmung’ pp. 39–58.

58 In his pioneering work on the royal fisc at the local level, F. J. Heyen, Reichsgut im Rheinland. Die Geschichte des

königlichen Fiskus Boppard (Bonn, 1956), p. 24, pointed out that Reichsgutforschung lies at the nexus of

Reichsgeschichte, Landesgeschichte and Lokalgeschichte. However, he did so in an effort to justify his research to an

audience that then, as now, was far more focused on the political activities of the king and magnates than upon the

resources that were required for the implementation of their plans and policies.


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which writing of all types was believed since Waitz to have played only a very limited role

in the activities of the government.61

In the light of the important scholarship embodied in the studies of the royal fisc,

discussed above, the burden of this paper is to illuminate the ways in which the sources

concerning the reign of Henry I, when read in their proper Carolingian context, shed

light on the ongoing relevance of long-established fiscal administrative institutions. In

this context, it is of central importance to show the crucial role that written documents

continued to play in the management and exploitation of the royal fisc.

The administration of the fisc as whole, however, is far too broad a topic to treat in an

article-length study. In narrowing our focus, it is important to note that traditionally,

scholars have recognized that the land-based estates and other resources of the royal fisc

were divided into two major segments. One group of estates was maintained in the

possession of the king. These were administered directly by his government officials both

at the local level in the villae distributed throughout the countryside and by officials

attached to the central government and based at the royal court, wherever it itinerated.62

A second complex of the king’s holdings ( facultates ), including both royal landed assets

and other resources, belonged to the fisc, but these were held from the king as benefices

by various of his dependents (described as both vassi and fideles ). The present study will

focus on the latter of these two elements of the fisc, and consider in detail the question of

how Henry I was able to manage these properties through the use of the ‘written word’.

IV. Sources of Information

The sources of information for the Ottonian period, and indeed for the later Carolingianperiod particularly in the East, present a significantly different profile from those for the

eighth and early ninth century. For the earlier period, scholars have available a

considerable body of prescriptive material, such as capitulary de villis , discussed in detail

above, but comparatively little descriptive material aside from fortuitously surviving

administrative documents such as the monastic polyptyques and Urbaren, as well as royal

administrative documents such as the brevium exempla , as seen above.

By contrast, the proportion of prescriptive to descriptive sources of information is

reversed for the later Carolingian and Ottonian periods.63 There are far fewer

prescriptive texts, as Brühl, noted above, emphasized in his discussion of the use of theroyal fisc to support the king’s itinerary. However, a much larger corpus of descriptive

61 In this context, see Brühl, Fodrum, Gistum, p. 74, who emphasizes the overwhelming absence of the use of the writ-

ten word in administration (überwiegenden Schriftlosigkeit der Verwaltung) in the Frankish kingdom on the basis of

F.L. Ganshof’s earlier and pessimistic work written in the wake of the Second World War. See also the relevant note

in the Appendix to Notes below.

62 For the administrators of the royal fisc, see Metz, Reichsgut , pp. 144–55. To gain some insight into the activities of

royal officials, albeit judicial rather than fiscal, at the local level, see Katherine Bullimore, ‘Folcwin of Rankweil: The

World of a Carolingian Local Official’, Early Medieval Europe, 13 (2005), pp. 43–77.

63 For a detailed discussion of this problem, see Bernard S. Bachrach and David S. Bachrach, ‘Continuity of Written

Administration in the Late Carolingian East c. 887–911: The Royal Fisc’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 42 (2008), pp.

109–46.


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documents survive. It must be emphasized that administrative documents very frequently

dealt with information that was severely time-conditioned. Consequently, it is only by the

barest of chances that one would expect to find such a text surviving either as an original

document or even as a copy. One such fortuitously surviving text is the indiculus loricatorum,

which was drawn up by Otto II’s chancery in 982 to summon reinforcements from both

ecclesiastical and secular magnates in Italy.64

As a consequence, most of the surviving administrative documents from the reign of

Henry I and, indeed, from the entire tenth century, are to be found as imbedded

fragments within other texts ( fragmenta ), or as references in extant documents to no longer

surviving texts ( perdita ). For the most part, these fragmenta and perdita are to be found in

surviving royal charters, and in so-called ‘private’ charters that were drawn up by private

parties, including secular and ecclesiastical magnates. The prominent administrative

historians,Thomas Zotz and Franz Staab, who have both worked extensively on the

administration of agricultural estates in the Carolingian East and Ottonian kingdoms,

have demonstrated in considerable detail that royal charters provide detailed information

about the management and administration of fiscal properties, including both those

held directly by the king, and those that were granted out as benefices.65

V. Grants of Benefices from the Royal Fisc under Henry I

In November 920, the year after his royal accession, Henry I issued a charter on behalf

of Babo, a vassallus 66 of Duke Burchard I of Swabia (917–926), in which the king

permitted Babo to retain possession of certain specified properties that he had held up to

that time as a benefice ( beneficium ).67 Moreover, at the request of Burchard, who hadagreed to subject himself to Henry’s authority ( ditio ) after the Saxon king’s lightning

campaign into Swabia in 919, the king permitted Babo henceforth to hold this benefice

as his personal property ( in proprium ).68

This royal confirmation of Babo’s possession of the benefice, and further permission

by the king for Babo to possess this property as an allod,69 almost certainly means that the

property, which was located at Singen near Lake Constance, earlier had been granted as

64 For the text of the indiculus, see Ludwig Weiland (ed.), Constitutiones et act publica imperatorum et regum

911–1197 , vol. 1 (MGH , Hanover, 1893), pp. 632–33. Regarding the nature of the indiculus loricatorum, and particu-

larly the fact that the surviving text refers to the reinforcements summoned by Otto II for the campaign in Italy, see

Karl Ferdinand Werner, ‘Heersorganisation und Kriegsführung im deutschen Königreich des 10. und 11.

Jahrhunderts,’ in Ordinamenti militari in occidente nell’alto medioevo (‘Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano

Sull’alto Medievo’, 15, Spoleto, 1968), pp. 791–843, here p. 825.

65 See, in this regard, Thomas Zotz, ‘Beobachtungen zur königlichen Grundherrschaft entlang und östlich des Rheins

vornehmlich im 9. Jahrhundert’, in Rösener, Strukturen der Grundherrschaft , pp. 74–125, here p. 80; and Franz

Staab, ‘Aspekte der Grundherrschaftsentwicklung von Lorsch vornehmlich aufgrund der Urbare des Codex

Laureshamensis’, in ibid., pp. 285–334.

66 A diminutive of vassus.

67 Theodor Sickel (ed.), Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser: Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I. (Hanover,

1879–1884). Henry’s charters will be identified henceforth as DH, and Otto I’s charters will be identified as DO I.

Concerning the charter on behalf of Babo see DH 2.

68 Concerning Henry’s campaign into Swabia and Burchard’s surrender, see Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxoniae,

ed. and trans. Reinhold Rau (‘Quellen zur Geschichte der sächsischen Kaiserzeit’, 8, Darmstadt, 1971), 1.27.

69 An allod is a piece of property that is held freely by an individual or corporation. It is not subject to rent.


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a beneficium to Babo by Burchard out of the properties ( ministerium ) that Burchard himself

held as a beneficium from the king to support his office as count ( comes ) of the pagus of

Hegowe along the shores of Lake Constance.70 If this property had been granted as a

benefice to Babo by the previous king, Conrad I, we would expect to see mention of this

earlier royal grant in the charter. It is an even more remote possibility that this benefice

had been granted to Babo out of Burchard’s own allodial property. There is no evidence

of which this author is aware that Henry I, his predecessors or his successors confirmed

the grant of private land by one secular individual to another. By contrast, royal charters

routinely were issued to confirm the concession by one individual to another, or to a

church, of properties that had been held up to this point as benefices from the royal fisc.71

This grant to Babo by Henry at a royal assembly ( placitum ) held at Seelheim, located in

the modern Landkreis of Kirchhain near Kassel, therefore sheds light on several aspects

of both institutional and administrative continuity with Carolingian paradigms early in

Henry’s reign. First, the grant, which was issued at the request of Burchard, makes it

clear that the Swabian duke wished to regularize and obtain royal sanction for his

subgranting of fiscal property in beneficium. In doing so, Burchard was following the

procedures established by Charlemagne and maintained by his successors for royal fideles

who used part of their beneficia to provide support to their own fideles .72 Specifically, as

Janet Nelson has identified with regard to the West, benefice holders were to work with

the comites , vicarii and royal missi to provide detailed and updated assessments of the status

of fiscal resources currently being held as beneficia .73

In the context of Babo’s possession of fiscal property as a beneficium, two points are of

particular importance. First, earlier under Charlemagne, Carolingian government

legislation explicitly forbade the unilateral transformation of a benefice into an allod bythe holder of the beneficium.74 Thus, Burchard was required by law to seek royal

permission on behalf of Babo for the transformation of this beneficium into property held

in proprium. Second, each holder of a beneficium was required to provide specific details

regarding all of the fiscal resources that he had used to establish his own fideles as ‘housed

men’ ( casati ) from the material basis of his beneficium, including the location and

administrative jurisdiction in which the property was located.75 As Henry’s decision in

this case makes clear, he or his officials were satisfied that Burchard’s description of the

70 DH 2. Babo held the beneficium in the pagus of Hegowe, which formed part of the comitatus of Burchard. Since this

was royal property, the only man with the authority to grant it out as a benefice, other than the king, was Burchard.

Moreover, this grant would only be legal if it were drawn from the resources of Burchard’s own ministerium. Since

Henry agreed to the transaction, permitted it to stand, and did not comment on its illegal origin in the royal charter,

it seems likely that Burchard had followed the rules on these points.

71 In this context, see, for example, DO I 28, 114, 197, 230, 291 and 387.

72 Cap. reg. Fr., no. 49 ch. 7. In discussing this text, Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 285, points out that the comital vicarii prob-

ably communicated with their superiors in writing when providing details about the state of all of the beneficia in

their regions.

73 Cap. reg. Fr ,. no. 49 ch. 4; and Cap. reg. Fr ., no. 80 ch. 5. On this point, also see Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 285.

74 Cap. reg. Fr., no. 49 ch. 4, ‘vel etiam quid unusquisque, postquam hoc facere prohibuimus, in suum alodem ex ipso

beneficio duxit vel quid ibidem exinde operatus est’.

75 Cap. reg. Fr., no. 80 ch. 5, ‘ut missi diligenter inquirant et describere faciant unusquisque in suo missatico, quid un-

usquisque de beneficio habeat vel quot homines casatos in ipso beneficio’.


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beneficium that was granted to Babo conformed with the records possessed by the royal

government.76

The very fact that Burchard found it necessary to follow these procedures sheds yet

further light, from an administrative perspective, on the written information that was

available to Henry’s fiscal officials regarding the state of the royal fisc in Swabia as early

as November 920, which was within a few months of his elevation to royal power. As the

duke of Saxony, Henry certainly had no personal information about the extent or

distribution of royal possessions ( facultates ) in Swabia before his election as king in May

919. Yet, here was Burchard, appearing at Seelheim, some 400 kilometres north of

Singen, to ask for royal approval, according to law, of an act that undoubtedly took place

before Henry became king less than two years earlier.

The most likely explanation for this course of action is that Burchard was aware that

the details of the royal fiscal holdings, including those facultates that had been granted as

beneficia , were now available to Henry and his advisors once information about these

fiscal properties had been transferred to the new king. Seen from Burchard’s perspective,

it obviously would have been a much simpler matter to avoid the need to obtain royal

authorization for this property transaction by acting as if the grant to Babo consisted of

Burchard’s allodial possessions, or by simply hiding the matter completely from the king.

Naturally, such a course of action, which was illegal, was only viable if the duke could be

sure that the king was not aware of the extent and nature of the property designated for

the support of the comital office ( ministerium ) in Hegowe, and thus would not be able to

detect resources that had been usurped from this ministerium. However, it is clear that

royal agents, through a process of investigation ( inquisitio ), were able to detect such

usurpations, both in the Carolingian period and in Carolingian successor states, usingboth written documents and oral testimony, taken under oath, a procedure of which

Burchard was certainly aware.77

Just such a process of inquisitio is discussed in one of Henry I’s charters that concerns

an exchange of properties undertaken between the monastery of Hersfeld and the king

in June 933.78 In this case, the king made a grant of ‘the entire property attached to the

church at Frauen-Breitungen, just as this was delineated by faithful men who affirmed

their findings with an oath’.79 There follows a word map of the boundaries of this

property, drawn up on the basis of the inquisitio of the properties conducted by a royal

official who interviewed the faithful men ( fideles viri ) of the locality.The clear implication of the behaviour of Burchard at Seelheim in 920, from both an

institutional and administrative perspective, is that the duke believed Henry I had access

76 Not insignificantly, the grant identifies the property by villa, pagus and comital jurisdiction.

77 Regarding the thoroughness of this checking process and its importance for assuring a regular stream of supplies to

the king and court, see Metz, Reichsgut , pp. 210–13, 231–32. It is clear that the inquisitio process often relied on

oral testimony rather than exclusively on the written word. In this context, see the valuable overview of the process

of evaluating property claims using both written documents and oral testimony in Patrick Geary, ‘Land, Language

and Memory in Europe 700–1100’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , 6th series, 9 (1999), pp. 169–84.

78 See DH 35.

79 Ibid., ‘totam marcham illam ad matricem aecclesiam in Breitinga spectantem, sicut per fideles viros cum iurisiurandi

affirmatione circumducta est’. With regard to the widespread practice of interviewing knowledgeable men about

the boundaries and contents of properties, see Geary, ‘Land, Language and Memory’, esp. pp. 178–82, for a discus-

sion of this practice east of the Rhine during Charlemagne’s reign.


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to information about royal fiscal resources in Swabia. The likely source of this

information were documents stored as part of the royal treasury ( thesaurus ) handed over

to Henry I by Duke Eberhard of Franconia after the former’s royal accession in 919. It

seems likely that this treasury included dossiers of written materials detailing the royal

fiscal resources as they were known to exist under Conrad I, Eberhard’s elder brother,

including those facultates that had been granted out as beneficia .80 Of course Conrad, as

regent of Louis the Child (died 911), had access to all the records of the royal fisc under

the last Carolingian king.

As Peter Schmid has demonstrated, even in the period 916–918, when both Duke

Arnulf of Bavaria and Burchard of Swabia were in open revolt against Conrad, the

resources of the royal fisc maintained their distinct royal status and were not allodialized

or confiscated either by the rebellious dukes or their comites .81 As a consequence, not only

did the facultates of the royal fisc remain under royal control de iure , but the rapid

submission of Burchard, and then of Duke Arnulf (921), meant that the de facto royal

control over these fiscal resources was secure as well.82 Burchard’s need to obtain royal

recognition for Babo’s beneficium and the request for the grant in proprium is therefore a

clear indication of Henry’s possession of detailed information regarding the royal fisc in

Swabia, and consequently of his ability to exercise authority over these properties,

including those that had been granted out as benefices.

As other surviving documents from Henry I’s reign make clear, the maintenance of

detailed records available to the king regarding the facultates of the fisc that had been

granted out in beneficium concerned not only property, but also incomes in cash and kind

derived from royal estates. In June 930, for example, King Henry issued a charter in

which he granted as a beneficium one-ninth ( pars nona ) of the entire revenues of forty-sevennamed villae to the canons of St Mary at Aachen.83 This ninth was due to be provided

from the entire production ( conlaboratus ) of these villae , including specifically ninths of the

grain production ( annona ), cash payments ( census ) due from the dependents of the villae , a

ninth of the new-born cattle ( pecus ), and a ninth of the newborn animals ( animantes ),

which might include chickens and pigs. The scribe noted in the charter that this grant of

80 Widukind, Res gestae, 1.26, ‘Evurhardus adiit Heinricum seque cum omnibus thesauris illi tradidit’. The use of the

plural here, i.e. treasuries or treasures, should not be thought to exclude the formal transfer of the impedimenta of

the royal court to the new king. Nor should the reader be under the misapprehension that the treasury, or indeed

royal treasure, was an unlikely repository for administrative documents. The storage of substantial numbers of ad-

ministrative documents as part of the royal wardrobe in England during the thirteenth century provides an illumin-

ating illustration of the extent to which even heavily bureaucratized states, such as England under Edward I

(1272–1307), blurred the boundaries between the private royal household and the administrative apparatus of the

state. For a useful guide to the administrative documents from this period, including their means of storage, see

Bryce D. Lyon, A Constitutional and Legal History of Medieval England (2nd edn, New York, 1980); also Bryce Lyon

and Mary Lyon, The Wardrobe Book of 1296–1297: A Financial and Logistical Record of Edward I’s 1297 Autumn

Campaign in Flanders Against Philip IV of France (Brussels, 2004).

According to the elder Vita of Mathilda, MG SS 10, p. 576, when Henry I acceded to the throne he also obtained

‘totaque regni facultas’. Such a statement only makes sense, however, if Henry had information about these

facultates.

81 Schmid, Regensburg, p. 118.

82 Widukind, Res gestae Saxonicae, 1.27.

83 DH 23.


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one-ninth of the conlaboratus of the villae conformed with the conditions of the grants of

beneficia to St Mary as these had been set out in the documents ( scripta ) of earlier kings.84

In this context, Henry’s grant in 930 to the church of St Mary was a modified version

of a beneficium grant going back to the reign of Lothar II (855–869), and updated regularly

by Lothar’s successors, including Arnulf (887–899) and Conrad I (911–918). In this case,

Henry’s grant included one-ninth of the total revenues ( conlaboratus ) of four royal villae

that did not appear in Arnulf ’s earlier grant in 888, thereby making it clear that we are

dealing here with a real-time phenomenon rather than the pro forma confirmation of an

old document.85

In his own confirmation of the earlier grant of the benefice to St Mary in 888, King

Arnulf had called attention to the fact that other royal vassals ( quibuslibet personis

beneficientur ) already held as benefices some complete villae from whose resources the

church of St Mary was to receive its ninth. Making matters even more complex, other

royal fideles held as benefices some portion of the resources of yet other royal villae , which

were still under direct royal supervision, from which St Mary was to receive a ninth of the

conlaboratus . This information in the royal charter indicates the significant levels of

administrative complexity of which the king’s officials were capable. Each of the royal

villae , whether held as benefices or directly supervised by royal officials, consisted of

numerous constituent elements, each of which could be, and were, assigned to separate

recipients as benefices. In this charter, Arnulf also makes it clear that the royal

government maintained the power to give direct orders not only to the stewards ( ministri )

who administered the villae that remained under direct royal control, but also to the

ministri of the villae that were held from him as beneficia either in whole or in part.86 This is

particularly important, because the ability to give orders to the stewards of villae thatwere held as benefices indicates that the royal government maintained ongoing

supervision over these properties much as Charlemagne’s government had done a

century before.87

As would later be true of Henry I, King Arnulf made a grant to St Mary at Aachen of

one-ninth of the annual gross product that included crops, animals and all sources of

monetary income. It is, of course, obvious that in order for the ministri of the forty-three

villae listed in Arnulf ’s charter to provide the pars nona to St Mary, each minister had to have

a record of the gross product of his villa on an annual basis. This type of account had

been required by Charlemagne and by his successors in both the East and the West,including Louis the German. Indeed, the concept of gross annual output ( omnis

84 DH 23, ‘in annona in censibus pecoribus et cunctis animantibus et omnibus que dici aut nominari possunt compen-

diis, sicuti in predictorum regum scriptis tenetur’

85 Paul Kehr (ed.), Die Urkunden Arnolfs (MGH ‘Diplomata regum Germaniae ex stirpe Karolinorum’, 3, Berlin, 1940),

henceforth DA. See DA 31.

86 DA 31, ‘de nominatis iam XLIII villis, de omni conlaboratu dominii nostri et speciali peculiare omnium animantium

et iumentorum seu ex omni censu quarumcumque rerum pars nona a ministris ipsarum villarum, sive in regis

dominium sint sive quibuslibet personis beneficientur, absque negligentia iugiter tribuatur’.

87 For a detailed discussion of this supervision of royal fiscal properties, see Bernard S. Bachrach, ‘Charlemagne’s Royal

Fisc in Military Perspective’, in Felice Lifschitz and Celia Chazelle (eds), Paradigms and Methods in Early Medieval

Studies (New York, 2007), pp. 119–37, with the relevant literature cited there. With regard to the transmission of

this information to the royal court by the officials of the fisc, as well as by missi , see Nelson, ‘Literacy’, p. 281.


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conlaboratus ) was used by the authors of capitulary de villis to denote the production of the

royal estates held by the government no later than the first decade of the ninth century

and perhaps as early as 771.88

For the officials of the church of St Mary to know that they were receiving the

stipulated ninth and not some lesser percentage of the annual production of these villae ,

and for the king, whether Arnulf or Henry, to know that his orders had been obeyed,

both parties, the royal court and the beneficiary, needed copies of the annual inventory

of production that the steward was required to compile.89 Further, if Arnulf or Henry

were to know if the required inventory, compiled by the minister of each villa , was accurate,

it was necessary, as Charlemagne had emphasized, for agents from the central

government to check the steward’s accounts through an inquest at each villa .90 This, of

course, was the inquest process that was employed by Henry I, as noted above, in 933

with regard to properties exchanged with the monastery of Hersfeld.

Moreover, as with any agricultural enterprise, the omnis conlaboratus of each estate

varied from year to year. Natural contingencies such as droughts, rainfall, cold spells,

heat spells, insect infestations and diseases affecting crops or livestock could all have an

impact on overall production. In addition, some of the sources of revenue from royal

estates came from goods such as honey, clothing or manufactured items that were

produced on a year-round basis.91 As a result, it was necessary not only to make a new

inventory each year, but to keep running totals of production over the course of the year.

In returning to Henry’s reconfirmation and expansion of the beneficium held by

St Mary’s of Aachen, it is important to keep in mind that all of the administrative factors

that influenced Arnulf ’s knowledge of and control over the royal villae , a portion of

whose resources were granted to the canons in 888, were still in force in 930. Indeed, agrant made in 935 by Henry to the monastery of Stablo helps illuminate even further the

sophisticated administrative procedures that were employed by the royal government to

ensure continued control over resources that were granted as benefices from the resources

of the royal fisc.

While encamped along the Chiers river, a tributary of the Maas, in June 935, Henry

granted to the monastery of Stablo cash payments ( census ) that were owed by a group

88 Concerning the use of the term conlaboratus as the standard technical term—also used in capitulary de villis—for

the entire production of a villa, see Metz, Reichsgut , pp. 66, 129; and Jean Durliat, ‘“De conlaboratu”: faux rende-

ments et vraie comptabilité publique à l’époque carolingien

german history 2010 bachrach 399 423

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