A concise History of Germany
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| Constitutio de feudis
) was issued, which gave legal sanction to the inheritance of small fiefs. The small knights began to emerge as a class between the higher nobility and the peasants. The so-called ministeriales , a group of legally unfree serving-men, also rose as a new lower nobility, whose status as a legally defined class or ‘estate’ was codified in a ‘law of services’. As Karl Leyser has pointed out, by the end of the eleventh century Germany had a much more immobile social hierarchy and was a more ‘caste-ridden’ aristocratic society than either England or France. The German aristocracy indulged in endless feuding, with families tearing each other apart over disputed rights of succession, attempting to maintain parity of status at the same time as dividing inheritances. It was a society in which the nobles, perpetually contending for wealth, power and status, set limits on the potential power of their primus inter pares , the elected king. The Ottonian and early Salian kings were nevertheless remarkably successful, viewed in early mediaeval terms. Henry I asserted monarchical control over the church and over the stem duchies, also incorporating Lorraine (after its initial turning to the West Frankish realm). In 936 Otto I was elected and crowned in Aachen, symbolising his role as successor to Charlemagne. Otto made use of the church as a counterweight to the dukes: since the king could determine elections to bishoprics, and since church property could not become the object of dynastic inheritance, the new episcopate could to some degree be relied on as more faithful servants of the king than were the secular magnates. Church properties provided useful places for the king and his retinue to stay on their perpetual travels – for it was only by visiting different parts of the realm in person that a monarch could express and sustain his authority. (Some young noblemen were advised of the misfortune of having the king as their guest, given the ruinous expense involved.) Archbishops, bishops and abbots provided not only economic, but also military service, particularly in the form of armoured cavalry troops. Henry I and Otto I made use of both religious and military means to defend and consolidate their eastern frontiers (particularly against Magyar invasions). With the decisive victory in 955 over the Magyars at the river Lech, south of Augsburg, their military fate was sealed; with the foundation of archbishoprics and the conversion of frontier areas to the western (rather than eastern, Byzantine) form of Christianity, the areas which were emerging as Poland and Bohemia became part of the broad currents of European civilisation. The ‘eastern March’, Austria, now relatively safe from Magyar attack, was thoroughly Germanised and assimilated to Bavaria. In 962, following an earlier venture into Italy when he had designated himself King of Lombardy on marrying the former king’s widow, Otto was anointed and crowned as Emperor by the Pope. The union of the German monarchy and the Roman empire was unique among European states and lasted, with all its attendant strengths, obligations, tensions and contradictions, until 1806. Since mediaeval German monarchs had to be crowned Emperor by the Pope in Rome, they were subject to a double diversion: they had both to intervene constantly in Italian politics, in order to assert and sustain their authority; and to maintain an often difficult and delicate balance between temporal and spiritual power, between Emperor and Pope. Both elements arguably played some part in the relative weakness of the German monarchy, although historians are divided on this point. With the acquisition of Burgundy in 1033–4, the Emperor presided over three separate kingdoms. Yet kings of Germany had constantly to defend their borders and quell internal unrest at home; they could not afford to absent themselves too long in Italy without brewing up trouble for their return. Even in Italy, their campaigns were often arduous and unsuccessful – and prone to collapse in the face of disease. Otto II, for example, died in Rome in 983 from malaria at the age of twenty-eight. On the other hand, profits could be made from Italian adventures which could be usefully invested at home; and for the most part there were harmonious relationships between church and state during the Ottonian period. Map 2. The German Empire c. 1024–1125 There was a revival of intellectual life largely through the church: from monasteries, through episcopal churches, to cathedral schools, many of which were either founded or revived in the tenth century. The Salian dynasty, which was inaugurated with the election of Conrad II in 1024 following the death of the childless Henry II, generally continued Ottonian policies, with the foundation of bishoprics (such as Bamberg) and building of palaces (Goslar, Magdeburg, Aachen, Regensburg), and the erection of cathedrals, such as Speyer. But the apparent consolidation of the Imperial monarchy and union of church and state was soon to be shattered. With the transformations occurring in the two centuries after c. 1050, we enter the period conventionally termed the ‘high middle ages’. The mid-eleventh to the mid-twelfth century was a period of political conflict and religious strife. Kings were unable to control the nobility, and there was a series of revolts and civil wars, including the Saxon revolt of 1073–5, and the election of Duke Rudolf of Swabia as ‘anti-king’ in 1077. The great dynasties which were to stamp their mark on subsequent centuries of German history emerged in this period: the Welfs of Saxony, the Wittelsbachs in Bavaria, the Hohenstaufen (who took their name from the castle of Stauf, near Göppingen) who were granted the duchy of Swabia in 1079. The period of political insecurity and civil wars continued through the reign of Duke Lothar of Supplinburg, who was elected king (with no hereditary blood-right) in 1125 following the death of the last Salian king Henry V (1106–25). Political turbulence was only dealt with effectively under the new Hohenstaufen (or Staufer) dynasty, which lasted from 1138 to 1254, and particularly under its most illustrious representative, Federick I, ‘Barbarossa’ (after his red beard), who ruled from 1152 to 1190. Meanwhile, a simultaneous crisis between church and state had added to the problems of the Empire, under the last Salian kings Henry IV (1056–1106) and Henry V. In the mid and later eleventh century, church reforms – including clerical celibacy, the attempted abolition of simony, and freedom from secular control – had given the clergy a distinctive and privileged status. While Popes had been gaining in self-confidence, major German prelates – the former faithful allies of the Ottonians – had been developing their own political and territorial ambitions. Particularly when Hildebrand became Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), conflicts between Pope and Emperor came to a head, with the humiliating submission of Henry IV at Canossa in January 1077. But there continued to be a conflict with the papacy over lay investiture (the nomination of candidates for important positions in the church). The outcome of the so-called ‘Investiture Contest’ was the 1122 Concordat of Worms, which allowed Henry V to influence the election of German, but not Italian, prelates. This was more of a victory for the church than the king, however: German prelates continued to develop as independent feudal magnates alongside the great secular nobility. This enhanced worldly status was contemporaneous with a religious revival marked by new monastic orders and religious communities emphasising a contemplative life and spiritual withdrawal from the world, and the virtues of poverty and penance. The high middle ages represent in a number of respects an important period of transition. The political upheavals initiated the effective replacement of the old stem duchies by new territorial lordships and the establishment of a multiplicity of principalities; it also involved a loss of prestige and authority by the Empire. Under Frederick I, extensive privileges were conceded to the magnates, despite the high-sounding imperial rhetoric proclaimed at court. The greatest of Frederick’s ‘overmighty subjects’ was his cousin Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, on whom the duchy of Bavaria was conferred, and who also gained territories in northern and north-eastern Germany. Eventually, pressures from a number of nobles and prelates led to Frederick turning against his most powerful prince. After Henry the Lion’s fall in 1180, a redistribution of territories confirmed the disintegration of the stem duchies and their replacement by smaller hereditary principalities held as fiefs by princes of the Empire. Political fragmentation continued under Barbarossa’s successors, such that by 1250, when Barbarossa’s grandson Frederick II died, the territorial powers of the princes had been consolidated. Economically, the period was one of growth and expansion. There was an intensification of cultivation, with the extension of arable land made possible by use of the four-wheeled cart pulled by a horse (replacing the slower ox) and the three-course rotation of crops. People began to live in larger villages rather than scattered hamlets. There was also an increase in trade and in craft production. Increased trade meant an increased importance of money, and a heightened prominence of Jews as money-lenders (since they had no religious prohibition on usury). Jews tended to live in separate quarters, the first recorded instance of a walled ghetto being Speyer in 1084. From the twelfth century on, German merchants were to be found all across Europe. Craftsmen began to organise themselves in guilds and corporations, and there was an early growth of towns. Those in the south tended to be predominantly towns of craftsmen; those in the north, of merchants and traders. Increased production was related to an increasing population: at the end of the twelfth century Germany’s population had increased to around seven or eight million, with more rapid increases in some areas (such as Saxony) than others. While in southern and western Germany population increase was accommodated by the extension of agricultural land at the expense of forests and marshes, in the east it led to a wave of colonisation. The Slav lands east of the river Elbe were colonised between around 1150 and 1300; and in the new villages founded in eastern territories, such as Silesia, colonising peasants were able to enjoy relatively good conditions and personal freedom. The eastwards migration and colonisation was to be of fundamental importance to German history in the later middle ages and subsequently. Yet despite – or alongside – the growth and differentiation of German society the essentially conservative German aristocracy retained its dominant status and stamped its mark on German culture. The aristocracy was essentially a warrior class, not only feuding at home but also participating in international expeditions such as the Crusades to the Holy Land. This martial class developed an elaborate code of honour – which has left a linguistic trace in the concept of ‘chivalrous’ conduct – and informed the flowering of a vernacular Middle High German literature around the end of the twelfth century. Authors such as Walther von der Vogelweide (whether or not he was personally a knight) gave vigorous and elevated expression to the ethos and experiences of the knightly class. The authors of a secular lyric poetry, known as Yüklə 7,91 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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