Politics Religion and State building (11th – 16th/19th centuries)

Kingship and its modus operandi

Introduction

The kingdom was born of the common will of the Princes of the old Carolingian kingdom of East Francia[1] to give themselves a king. Established in 888 with the election of Arnulf[2], of the prestigious descent of Charlemagne[3], it was from the outset conceived of as perpetuating Carolingian power. The 899, 911 and 919 elections would contribute to delineate the nature of Germanic kingship : an authority arising from the consensus between the major ruling families who had chosen to bring the entities under their control together under the domination of one single sovereign, guarantor of the legitimacy of a power they exercised only by delegation. The sovereign, born of one of the kingdom's ruling families drew his own legitimacy from the choice made by his peers, confirmed by the full rites of coronation and sometimes by force of arms. This sacred kingship was also a sacerdotal kingship and the close relations binding in its foundations royal power and the Church carried the germs of a potentially dangerous rivalry.

Sacred kingship Vs elective monarchy: Primus inter pares or Stirps regia?

The elective principle underpinning Germanic kingship went against the dynastic conception[4] bound in the view of kingship inherited from the Carolingian era and so it was that the Ottonians succeeded each other quite regularly from 919 to 1024 as did the Salians from 1024 to 1125[5]. It only came into its own in situations when there was a power vacuum, as happened upon the death of Henry II[6] (1024) or Henry V[7] (1125) who died with no heir to succeed them. The nobles[8] mighty objections to this dynastic principle were manifest in the revolts that accompanied each succession: Only Henry III[9] in 1039 was spared a revolt as he accessed the throne.

The Ottonians (Saxon dynasty). Simplified genealogical table
The Salians. Simplified genealogical table

Thus the nobles played a fundamental role in the king's rise to power: it is they, as representatives of the realm's peoples, who, by electing him, made the king. The ostensible respect of the elective process and of the rituals remained paramount for them as for the sovereign: the election was followed by the oath of fidelity, an acknowledgement of the regal nature of the power exercised by the new sovereign. It was only on the strength of that oath that the ceremonies of anointment or coronation of the king then his enthronement at Aachen in Charlemagne's palatine chapel took place; they formalised the nobles' choice and realized it in everybody's eyes.

Roger II's coronation mantle © Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien.InformationsInformations[10]
The Star Mantle of Henry II , Holy Roman Emperor - 1000 Jahre Bistum Bamberg.InformationsInformations[11]

The delegation of power

The realm originally had no institutions or unity. The basis for the sovereign's might arose first from his own landed property and wealth to which were added royal assets (fisc) and royal prerogatives (regalia). But the essence of the sovereigns' power rested with their capacity to impose their authority and exercise it. Thus the service of the king (servicium regis[12] )would only be carried out in so far as the monarch was in a position to exact it.

For want of a state administration, the management of such a vast conglomerate was impossible for the king who had to devolve part of his powers to established local aristocratic families. This capability to delegate authority or to regain it was both the hallmark of the sovereign's supreme power and the wellspring of the legitimacy of the nobles' power as well as a form of government. The nobles also took direct part in the exercise of power being part of the royal council or Hoftag (diet). The king would ask for their opinions and their decisions. The diet may well represent the realm's only actual institution; but its importance was due more to instituted practice than to any juridical foundation. The princes' power was outstanding and the kings all sought with variable success, to curb it and curtail their influence. The destitutions of incumbent title holders, the dismemberment of vast duchies handed down since the 10th century or the creation of new entities helped undermine the odd rebellious vassal or reward loyalty. But contrary to the drive observable in other Latin realms, not least the Capetians', the sovereigns did not seek to regroup vacant duchies. Though there existed royal property scattered about throughout the kingdom (Königslandschaften), there was no effort towards constructing a solid centralised royal estate. This model was also imposed on a royal power compelled to conciliate the nobles in order to remain at the head of a fragile conglomerate.

The Holy Roman Empire circa the year 1000InformationsInformations[13]

All told, we have as much a monarchy as an oligarchy. This collective dimension to power is confirmed by the traction of the elective principle. The nobles it is who collegially make the king, thereby indicating the assent of the realm's diverse provinces to the choice made by the titular sovereign when he appointed his successor himself. Hence their paradoxical attachment to the royal power: the main source of the nobles' power legitimacy rested with the greatness of a rich and powerful sovereign.

  1. East Francia

    Eastern part of the great Frankish kingdom created by Charlemagne consisting of the duchies of Bavaria, Saxony, Swabia and Franconia. It originated with the 843 Treaty of Verdun between Louis the Pious' three heirs: Western Francia went to Charles the Bald, Eastern Francia went to Louis known as the German. The central portion, along with the imperial title went to Lothair.

  2. Arnulf

    Arnulf, also known as Arnulf of Carinthia, king of Bavaria: He was the illegitimate son of Carloman, son of Louis the German who had inherited Bavaria at the death of his father. In the eyes of the nobles and of the contemporaries, he remained first and foremost a Carolingian, in the direct descent of Charlemagne.

  3. Charlemagne

    Carolus Magnus, known as Charlemagne sovereign of the Frankish kingdom from 768 to 814. At the death of his father (Pepin III the Short, he accessed  power and promptly sidelined his brother to govern alone. Although he did not found it, he left his name to the Carolingian dynasty because of the prestige associated to his person and reign. Through conquest (Bavaria, Italy, Saxony, Catalonia) he considerably enlarged the kingdom the organisation of which he developed around a royal court which he had soon fixed in Aachen. The imperial coronation in Rome on 25 December 800 consecrated the return of a Christian Empire in the West. This political re-birth of the Christian West was also a cultural revival which saw the thriving of arts and letters. At his death in 814, he left to his son Louis the Pious a prosperous empire, a fitting match for the Eastern Byzantine Empire.

  4. Dynasty or Stirps regia

    The royal lineage from which kings were chosen (Chaney, cult of kingship).

  5. Salian dynasty (1024-1125)

    The death of Henry II without direct descent in 1024 left open the question of his succession. The choice of Conrad son of Count Henry of Speyer to the detriment of his cousin did not pass without opposition and he was crowned only in 1028. However, Conrad II instated the Salian dynasty whose name is coined on his paternal ancestry. His appointment appears to have marked the return of the elective principle. Nevertheless, the Salians were closely related to the outgoing Ottonian (or Saxon) dynasty: Conrad was the great-grandson of Liutgarde, daughter of Otto I. His reign established the Germanic kingship: he received King Rudolph III of Burgundy's inheritance when the latter, dying without heir in 1032, transferred the royal insignia to him. He died in 1039 choosing to be buried in Speyer Cathedral which he intended as a dynastic necropolis.

  6. Henry II

    King from 1002 to 1024. He was the last ruling Ottonian, succeeding his cousin Otto III whose closest relation he was. He had no difficulty in prevailing over the nobles, relieved to see the back of Otto III's universalist and imperial dreams and to have one of their number ascend the throne; besides his claims to the crown would have been hard to dispute. His reign marked the narrowing of the political space to the Frankish world, foregoing Otto III's dreams of Roman grandeur and universalist ambitions. Henry II's main claim to fame is his piety (he was known as “the Saint”). Fervent advocate of monastic reform, he made very numerous donations to the church but kept a close control of appointments. Married to Cunigunde, daughter of the Count of Luxembourg, he died without direct heir in 1024, leaving the succession open.

  7. Henry V

    Henry V, son of King Henry IV was elected and crowned as early as 1101 by his father against an oath not to rebel against him. But, with the wind in his sails, Henry did rebel in 1104, locking up his father and forcing him to surrender the insignia of power. At the death of Henry IV in 1106, Henry V found himself at the head of a divided realm torn apart by some 40 years of civil war. Realising that, in an unequal fight with the papacy, he was running out of financial and ideological arguments that may give him the upper hand, he nevertheless embarked on a long negotiation process, made the more difficult by hardened positioning. In 1119, the election of Guy of Burgundy, Archbishop of Vienna (Calixtus II) finally brought about a compromise, the famous Concordat of Worms, signed in that city on 23 September 1122. Henry V died three years later without descent. Upon an initiative of Adalbert of Mainz who played a key role in the negotiations, the princes placed Lothair of Süpplingenburg, the old Duke of Saxony at the head of the realm, thus putting an end to the Salian dynasty.

  8. Nobles

    This term covers the leading members of the highest ruling aristocracy of the kingdom, referred to in Latin by the terms potentes (the mighty), procures (greats, nobles, ruling aristocracy) or principes (princes, first). To some ten aristocratic families ruling the duchies that made up the kingdom, were soon added some thirty prelates making up the kingdom's body of bishops and archbishops.

  9. Henry III

    Eldest son of Henry II, he accessed the throne in 1039 at the age of 22 without any notable opposition: he was the first German king not to have to force part of his vassals to acknowledge him by force of arms. He ruled following in his father's political footsteps fighting against the nobles' drive towards heredity, subsuming the duchies into property to be passed down rather than received from the king. But the main theatre of his reforming action was Italy. In 1046, Henry III arrived in Italy to restore order in papal affairs. In a first synod in Pavia he threw his support behind the programme of pontifical reforms, condemned simony and forbade the traffic of ecclesiastical offices. This done (Synod of Sutri 24 December 1046), he had a close ally, Suidger of Bamberg, elected pope as Clement II, who in return crowned him forthwith. By intervening in Rome, the Emperor fulfilled a role desired by some but criticised by the reformers of a church subject to royal power. Henry III died prematurely at 38 on 5 October 1056 but not before having had his son, three years old Henry safely crowned; his wife Agnes of Poitou would take up the regency.

  10. Roger II's coronation mantle © Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien.

  11. Sternenmantel Kaiser Heinrichs II. Unterm Sternenmantel - 1000 Jahre Bistum Bamberg [on line]. 2007. [accessed on 03/06/2012] Available at http://www.eo-bamberg.de/eob/dcms/sites/bistum/information/jubilaeum2007/logo_motto/sternenmantel/index.html

  12. Servicium regis

    Besides the king's private estates, royal income proceeded from the servicium regis or service of the king which formed not just the economic basis of the aulic (pertaining to a royal court) system but also of the royal operation itself ensuring its economical survival and enacting the diverse parties' obligations towards the king. Whilst they had soon vanished in the kingdoms of Latin Christendom (as early as the end of the 9th century) the obligations owed the crown by the nobles in the Germanic realm remained fully operative. The term encompasses all the obligations the realm's nobles (princes, vassals, bishops) owed the king : fodrum (right of fodder), gistum (shelter), servitia (diverse services, notably military). The role of shelter (gistum cum fodrum) remained fundamental: feeding and maintaining the troops, armed service and court service went on being performed as of old: this archaism kept the royal power structure going. Otton I turned service into a government model, thoroughly codified and organised. Royal domains, monasteries, cities, princes all contributed by way of annual giving (dona annualia).

  13. Map of the Kingdom of Germany © SA, ESO Le Mans, CNRS, 2012

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