FAMILY, FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS

Political life in the middle ages was heavily influenced by the bonds people had with one another. Among these, the bonds of kinship, friendship and lordship were by far the most important. Ritual was often used to create and strengthen these bonds, and behaviour within social groups was shaped by unwritten rules. People bound in these ways had a right to expect help and support from one another. Such bonds were both a fact and a necessity of life in the middle ages. Over time, however, these bonds and relationships changed, as did the rules and norms which governed them.

   The aim of this book is to document and describe the history of these crucial bonds, and the ways in which they shaped political life in Europe in the early and high middle ages.

GERD ALTHOFF is Professor of Medieval History, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany. His many publications include Otto Ⅲ (1996), Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter. Kom- munikation in Frieden und Fehde (1997), Die Ottonen (2000), Die Macht der Rituale. Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter (2003) and Inszenierte Herrschaft. Geschichtsschreibung und Politisches Handeln im Mittelalter (2003).

FAMILY, FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS

Political and Social Bonds in Medieval Europe

GERD ALTHOFF

TRANSLATED BY
CHRISTOPHER CARROLL

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
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First published in German as Verwandte, Freunde und Getreue. Zum politischen
Stellenwert der Gruppenbindungen im früheren Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 1990)
and © Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1990.

First published in English by Cambridge University Press 2004
as Family, Trends and Followers: political and social bonds in medieval Europe
English translation © Cambridge University Press 2004

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeface Adobe Garamond 11/12.5 pt. System LATEX 2_e [TB]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Althoff, Gerd.
[Verwandte, Freunde und Getreue, English]
Family, friends and followers: political and social bonds in medieval Europe/
Gerd Althoff; translated by Christopher Carroll.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Translation of: Verwandte, Freunde und Getreue.
ISBN 0 521 77054 8 – ISBN 0 521 77934 0 (pb.)
1. Germany – Social conditions. 2. Social history – Medieval, 500–1500. 3. Social classes – Germany – History. 4. Nobility – Germany – History. 5. Kinship – Germany – History. 6. Social groups – History. I. Title.
HN445.A67513 2004
305.5′0943′0902 – dc22 2003055818

ISBN 0 521 77054 8 hardback
ISBN 0 521 77934 0 paperback

This translation has been generously supported by The Exxon Foundation

Contents

Preface

It was extremely important to be part of a group in archaic society. As ethnology has demonstrated many times, in the absence of any so-called ‘state’, people expected help and support from, and owed obligations to, their kindred, clan or tribe. Such was the case during the middle ages. For a long time, however, historians believed in the existence of the medieval ‘state’; this ‘state’ was seen as a fundamental part of medieval history in both the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. In the 1930s, however, the idea of the Personenverbandsstaat was developed: a ‘state’ made up of groups of people rather than institutions. This term attempted to capture the special nature of the ‘state’ in the middle ages.

   It is not the aim of this book, however, to assess whether such terminology does indeed capture the special way in which law, lordship and life were organized in this period. This work is concerned more with the political role of groups and associations in the middle ages. This involves asking the following questions. Which groups had an influence on political decisions and the shape of public life? What form did this influence take? And did these groups change in any way between the early and high middle ages? By answering these questions, we may also be able to understand better how these associations and relationships may be said to constitute some sort of ‘state’.

   Human bonds and relationships can be diverse and complex, so this book will be concentrating on just a few: kinship, friendship and lordship, all of which were absolutely vital to the medieval individual. People could obviously be connected to one another in a variety of other ways too, but most of these will not be covered here. It would have been nice to include also those types of association found in the monastic and ecclesiastical worlds (such as spiritual communities and confraternities) and to compare their form and rituals with those of secular groups, but there is simply not enough space in this current study. What is more, even the three types of bond mentioned above cannot be covered in all their detail here. My prime concern is to assess the significance of these bonds in the field of politics. By exploring the political importance of group ties in the middle ages, as they appear in the sources, this book seeks to contribute to our knowledge not only of the function of these forms of association, but also of the ‘rules’ by which lordship and society were organized in the middle ages.

   This work has grown out of the Freiburg project, ‘Group structure and group consciousness’, led by Karl Schmid. The aim of the project was to identify groups within the memorial books of the Bodensee region and to provide a commentary on each. After all, when faced with the numerous entries in these memorial books, it is only natural to ask how the people named therein were connected to one another. It is impossible to say just how much this current book owes to the essential research of Karl Schmid in this field.

   My own involvement with the Münster Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB), ‘Träger, Felder, Formen pragmatischer Schriftlichkeit im Mittelalter’, also helped to inspire this current study. One of the principal questions considered by the SFB concerned the changes wrought by the penetration of particular types of written record into a sphere which traditionally lacked such records: relationships. The form and function of the written tradition relating to each of the groups mentioned above is therefore given special attention in this book. This work has benefited greatly from valuable discussions with Peter Johanek, Hagen Keller and Joachim Wollasch.

   Finally, I must also mention my co-worker, Dr Stephanie Coue, as well as Monika Gude, Thomas Schurmann and Karen Strupp, for their efforts in reading and correcting this work, not to mention their organization of the literature and the bibliography, which they compiled meticulously and with untiring tolerance. My heartfelt thanks to all of those named.

Abbreviations