Rules and Rituals in Medieval Power Games: A German Perspective PDF
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Rules and Rituals in Medieval Power Games Medieval Law and Its Practice Edited by John Hudson (St Andrews) Editorial Board Paul Brand (All Souls College, Oxford) Emanuele Conte (Universita Roma Tre/ ehess, Paris) Maribel Fierro (ILC-CCHS, CSIC) Dirk Heirbaut (University of Ghent) Richard Helmholz (University of Chicago) Caroline Humfress (St Andrews) Magnus Ryan (Peterhouse, Cambridge) Robin Chapman Stacey (University of Washington) volume 29 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mlip Rules and Rituals in Medieval Power Games A German Perspective By Gerd Althoff LEIDEN | BOSTON The translation of this volume was funded by: Cluster of Excellence “Religion and politics”, Münster 2018. Cover illustration: “Friedrich Barbarossa 1157 zu Besançon, den Streit der Parteien schlichtend” (Otto von Wittelsbach, 1120–1183, will sich auf die päpstlichen Legaten stürzen). Oil painting, 1859, by Hermann Freihold Plüddemann (1809–1868). Inv. Nr. GNM 2343. Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsamlungen Dresden, Galerie Neue Meister. With kind permission of AKG-Images (Bildnummer: AKG809215). The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2019037922 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1873-8176 ISBN 978-90-04-40848-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-41531-7 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. 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Contents Preface vii List of Illustrations ix Original Publications x part 1 Introduction 1 What Exactly Are Spielregeln? 3 2 Spielregeln and Rituals 9 3 Spielregeln, Order of Rank and Conflicts 16 part 2 Rules 4 Authority and Violence of Kings in Tenth and Eleventh Century Germany 25 5 Rules of Conflict among the Warrior Aristocracy of the High Middle Ages 42 6 Openness and Secrecy: Two Fundamental Categories of Medieval Communication 61 7 Saxon Bishops in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries: Strategies and Rules of Their Political Activities 74 8 The Perspective of an Expert: Gislebert of Mons 89 vi Contents part 3 Rituals 9 Rituals and Their “Spielregeln” in the Middle Ages 109 10 The Variability of Rituals 128 11 Rituals as Lingua Franca? Joint Cultural Practises at the Eastern Borders of the Realm 143 12 Symbolic Communication and Medieval Order: Strengths and Weaknesses of Ambiguous Signs 159 part 4 Gregorian Revolution 13 Papal Authority in the High Middle Ages 173 14 Communicating Papal Primacy: the Impact of Gregory VII’s Ideas (11th–13th Century) 189 15 Examples of Justifying and Rejecting Churchly Violence at the Time of the Gregorian Revolution 203 part 5 History in Literature 16 Do Poets Play with the Rules of Society? 217 17 Heroes Who Break the Mould: Duke Ernst and the Emperor Otto 234 Conclusion 247 Works Cited 255 Index 278 Preface This book provides an overview of a subject I have been preoccupied with since the early Eighties of the last century: Rules and Rituals in Medieval Power Games. It presents a German perspective, the background of which requires some explanation. For a long time, the epoch of the High Middle Ages (the tenth to thirteenth centuries), in Germany called “Deutsche Kaiserzeit,” was presented by the Germans as their “Golden Past,” because it was the common conviction deeply rooted in society and historical science that during those times the “Reich” had been the pre-eminent force for order, the “Vor- und Ordnungsmacht,” in Europe. First and foremost, the kings and emperors of the Ottonian, Salian and Staufen dynasties were credited with this success. They were well-known and popular heroes of the German past. This conception of history dominated the German consciousness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, causing na- tional self-overestimation. Not least, it was – among other reasons – responsi- ble for two world wars, because the nation was susceptible to the flawed vision of reclaiming its Golden Past. Assumptions about this past were transformed into claims of validity in the present. After the Second World War and the end of the Nazi regime, nothing was less adequate than this conception of the German Middle Ages. Nevertheless, it was not until the next generation of medievalists that new perspectives on the German history of the Middle Ages were developed. What these new con- ceptions had in common was that they presented medieval society as an un- familiar pre-state society whose mentalities, beliefs, customs, institutions and procedures were no longer easily understandable, but instead represented a distant and different world. The politics of this society followed completely different rules from those of our modern-day society. For a long time this stimulating change of paradigm held nearly all my interest in answering the question of how this medieval society and lordship functioned. This book as- sembles some of the answers I eventually reached in exploring various aspects of this question. The Introduction and chapters of this volume all originated as lectures, ar- ticles or book-chapters, and the Conclusion gives a more precise description of which aspects are dealt with in the individual chapters. The unusually high number of other contributions of mine to this theme, mentioned in the foot- notes and Bibliography, documents to some extent how obsessed I have been with this task. I apologize for these seemingly narcissistic self-quotations. viii Preface By now, such approaches have given way to other paradigms of transcultural and global dimensions in German and international research. They have even come under fire as being Eurocentric or teleological. But this judgement is mis- leading, because it does not take into account the need to refute and replace previous nationalistic concepts of history. And especially at a time when fewer people read German, it should be interesting and rewarding for international scholars to have access to the processes of rewriting parts of Germany’s na- tional history. Several institutions and people have earned great merit for their help in finishing and producing this book. The Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” at Münster has, as ever, been the intellectual homeland where un- dertakings such as this can grow, and where colleagues from different disci- plines gave support and encouragement for this book. Through their generous financial support, the Cluster as an institution made possible an intensive control of the translation by native speakers. Kate Gilbert (Boston) checked and improved two-thirds of the translations. It was very impressive for me how perfectly she was able to comprehend what the author “really” meant. If one enjoys the reading of this book, it is entirely due to her. Another third was controlled by Theo Riches (Münster), who is also responsible for detecting and neutralising a great deal of German gravitas and complexity. Last but not least, Janna Stupperich (Münster) has counterbalanced all my weaknesses in IT. She never lost control of the many versions of the chapters, and not only mastered communication across the Atlantic but also offered helpful suggestions for the translations. I am very grateful for the interest of John Hudson (St Andrews), who inte- grated this volume into his renowned series ‘Medieval Law and Its Practice’ (MLIP) at BRILL. His support and the professional management of the produc- tion by Marcella Mulder (BRILL, Leiden) will remain in my thankful memory. This book is dedicated to Pat Geary, Geoff Koziol and Philippe Buc whose friendly headwinds encouraged me. Gerd Althoff Münster, June 2019
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