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HIGH AND LOW: TIES OF DEPENDENCE IN THE FRANKISH KINGDOMS*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2008

Alice Rio
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Abstract

Our understanding of ties of loyalty and dependence formed at the level of the Carolingian political elite has been much improved by a great deal of excellent recent research. As mutually beneficial relationships freely entered into, they tend to be sharply distinguished from ties of dependence involving members from the lower echelons of society: the latter ties, on the contrary, are usually seen as the result of coercion, and they were long seen as emblematic of the increasingly oppressive control of local lords. Commendation for these less powerful members of society is thus often seen as tantamount to forfeiting free status. Because oppression, for legitimate reasons, has been so strongly emphasised in historical treatments of this type of relationship, paradoxically little attention has been given to what influence the lower-status party may have had on the proceedings, the extent of their negotiating ability or the range of duties and benefits involved in such agreements. But not all lower-status people made the same deals: the Frankish formularies, an important source of evidence regarding such arrangements, show a complicated situation, indicating that ties formed at this lower level need to be treated with as much nuance as higher-status relationships.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 18 , December 2008 , pp. 43 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2008

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Jinty Nelson, Chris Wickham and Paul Fouracre for being kind enough to read drafts of this paper, and for the helpfulness and generosity of their comments. I also thank all those present at the Medieval History seminar at All Souls, Oxford, on 5 November 2007, when I gave a preliminary version of this paper.

References

1 Reynolds, S., Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar.

2 On this issue, see in particular the famous debate in Past and Present: Bisson, T. N., ‘The “Feudal Revolution”’, Past and Present, 142 (1994), 6–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the resulting debate involving Dominique Barthélemy (Past and Present, 152 (1996), 197–205), Stephen D. White (Past and Present, 152 (1996), 205–23), Timothy Reuter (Past and Present, 155 (1997), 177–95) and Chris Wickham (Past and Present, 155 (1997), 196–208), with Bisson's reply (Past and Present, 155 (1997), 208–25). See also Barthélemy, D., La société dans le comté de Vendôme de l'an mil au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1993)Google Scholar; Barthélemy, D., La mutation de l'an mil a-t-elle eu lieu? Servage et chevalerie dans la France des Xe et XIe siècles (Paris, 1997)Google Scholar.

3 Wickham, C., Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford, 2005), 570–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Formulae Turonenses no. 43 (K. Zeumer, Formulae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi, Monumenta Germaniae Historica [hereafter MGH] Legum v (Hanover, 1886), 158).

5 G. Althoff, Family, Friends and Followers: Political and Social Bonds in Early Medieval Europe, trans. C. Carroll (Cambridge, 2004), 104; Bloch, M., Feudal Society, trans. Manyon, L. A., 2nd edn (London and New York, 1962), i, 149Google Scholar; Ganshof, F.-L., Qu'est-ce que la féodalité?, 5th edn (Paris, 1982), 23–8Google Scholar; Boutruche, R., Seigneurie et féodalité (Paris, 1968), ii, 166–70Google Scholar; Kienast, W., Die fränkische Vassalität. Von den Hausmeiern bis zu Ludwig dem Kind und Karl dem Einfältigen, ed. Herde, P. (Frankfurt, 1990), 9–10Google Scholar; Depreux, P., Les sociétés occidentales du milieu du VIe à la fin du IXe siècle (Rennes, 2002), 161CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J.-P. Devroey, Puissants et misérables: système social et monde paysan dans l'Europe des Francs (VIe–IXe siècles), Classe des Lettres series 3, vol. 40 (Académie royale de Belgique, Brussels, 2006), 164.

6 Kienast, Die fränkische Vassalität, 1; Depreux, Les sociétés occidentales, 161; Devroey, Puissants et misérables, 172; on this point, see Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, 19 and 28–9.

7 Compare, for instance, the formula relating to the king's antrustio, in which ritual is much more emphasised than in this formula: Formulae Marculfi i, 18 (Zeumer, Formulae, 55; Uddholm, A., Formularum Marculfi libri duo (Uppsala, 1962), 86–7)Google Scholar. On this formula, see Depreux, Les sociétés occidentales, 158; Devroey, Puissants et misérables, 162. On the possible reasons for the transition from ‘antrustions’ to ‘vassals’, see P. Fouracre, The Age of Charles Martel (2000), 152.

8 The standard edition is Zeumer, Formulae; see also Zeumer, K., ‘Über die älteren fränkischen Formelsammlungen’, Neues Archiv, 6 (1881), 9–115Google Scholar, and ‘Über die alamannischen Formelsammlungen’, Neues Archiv, 8 (1883), 473–553. The classic synthesis on formulae is Brunner, H., Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, 2nd edn (Leipzig, 1906), i, 575–88Google Scholar. More recent work includes Bergmann, W., ‘Die Formulae Andecavenses, eine Formelsammlung auf der Grenze zwischen Antike und Mittelalter’, Archiv für Diplomatik, 24 (1978), 1–53Google Scholar; Bergmann, W., ‘Verlorene Urkunden nach den Formulae Andecavenses’, Francia, 9 (1981), 3–56Google Scholar; Wood, I. N., ‘Disputes in Late Fifth- and Sixth-Century Gaul: Some Problems’, in The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Davies, W. and Fouracre, P. (Cambridge, 1986), 7–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. Lauranson-Rosaz and A. Jeannin, ‘La résolution des litiges en justice durant le haut Moyen-Âge: l'exemple de l' apennis à travers les formules, notamment celles d'Auvergne et d'Angers’, in Le règlement des conflits au Moyen-Âge, XXXIe Congrès de la SHMES (Angers, juin 2000) (Paris, 2001), 21–33; Brown, W., ‘When Documents Are Destroyed or Lost: Lay People and Archives in the Early Middle Ages’, Early Medieval Europe, 11 (2002), 337–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, W., ‘Conflicts, Letters, and Personal Relationships in the Carolingian Formula Collections’, Law and History Review, 25 (2007), 323–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Depreux, P., ‘La tradition manuscrite des “Formules de Tours” et la diffusion des modèles d'actes aux VIIIe et IXe siècles’, in Alcuin de York à Tours: Écriture, pouvoir et réseaux dans l'Europe du Haut Moyen Âge, ed. Depreux, P. and Judic, B. (Rennes and Tours, 2004), 55–71Google Scholar; Rio, A., ‘Freedom and Unfreedom in Early Medieval Francia: The Evidence of the Legal Formularies’, Past and Present, 193 (2006), 7–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. Rio, ‘Les formulaires mérovingiens et carolingiens: tradition manuscrite et réception’, Francia (forthcoming). For a translation of two of the most important collections, see also Rio, A., The Formularies of Marculf and Angers: Two Merovingian Legal Handbooks (Liverpool, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Brown, ‘When Documents Are Destroyed or Lost’; Rio, ‘Freedom and Unfreedom’, 13–16; Rio, ‘Les formulaires mérovingiens et carolingiens’.

10 The manuscript is Warsaw BU 1; see Depreux, ‘La tradition manuscrite des “Formules de Tours”’ (with a table of the formulae contained in each manuscript at 68–9).

11 See P. Geary, ‘Extra-Judicial Means of Conflict Resolution’, in La giustizia nell' alto medioevo (secoli V–VIII), Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull' alto medioevo 42 (Spoleto, 1995), i, 569–601, at 586–8.

12 See Rio, ‘Freedom and Unfreedom’, 30–1.

13 Formulae Andecavenses no. 38 (Zeumer, Formulae, 17). For a discussion and translation of this collection, see Rio, Marculf and Angers.

14 See Rio, ‘Freedom and Unfreedom’, 29.

15 Devroey, Puissants et misérables, 164–5.

16 Ibid., 269: ‘la pression exercée par la misère et l'incertitude du temps a précipité. . . un nombre croissant d'individus libres dans le rang des clientèles personnelles. . . dans un rapport de réciprocité brutalement hiérarchique’. See also Kienast, Die fränkische Vassalität, 9 (‘Bittere Not bedrängt den Freien’), for a similar view of the reasons for entry into service in this formula, if not of their institutional significance.

17 Liebs, D., ‘Sklaverei aus Not im germanisch-römischen Recht’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Romanistische Abteilung, 118 (2001), 286–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Rio, ‘Freedom and Unfreedom’, 27–8.

18 Althoff, Family, Friends and Followers, 103; Depreux, Les sociétés occidentales, 161.

19 Devroey, Puissants et misérables, 164. The same can be said of the word beneficium, which similarly did not always take on the technical meaning associated with precarial grants (Devroey, Puissants et misérables, 187–8).

20 The most thorough study of this kind is Kienast, Die fränkische Vassalität. For critiques of this approach, see Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, 82–3; Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, 184 and 198; Devroey, Puissants et misérables, 138–9; on beneficium, see especially P. Fouracre, ‘The Use of the Term beneficium in Frankish Sources: A Society Based on Favours?’, in The Language of Gift in the Early Middle Ages, ed. W. Davies and P. Fouracre (forthcoming). I am grateful to Professor Fouracre for allowing me to read this article ahead of publication.

21 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, 83.

22 Rio, ‘Freedom and Unfreedom’.

23 Formulae Andecavenses no. 25 (Zeumer, Formulae, 12).

24 Salvian, De gubernatione Dei v, 9. R. Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985), 42–4. The same observation could perhaps be made regarding the episode described by Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 154, ed. G. Morin, Sermones, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 103–4 (Turnhout, 1953), ii, 629; translated in Klingshirn, W. E., Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge, 1994), 205–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, J., Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History, 500–1000 (Oxford, 2005), 161Google Scholar.

25 ‘Multi eorum, et non obscuri natalibus editi et liberaliter instituti’ (De gubernatione Dei v, 21).

26 K. Bosl, ‘Potens und pauper: begriffsgeschichtliche Studien zur gesellschaftlichen Differenzierung im frühen Mittelalter und zum “Pauperismus” des Hochmittelalters’, in Bosl, K., Frühformen der Gesellschaft im Mittelalterlichen Europa (Munich and Vienna, 1964), 106–34Google Scholar; Depreux, Les sociétés occidentales, 142; Devroey, Puissants et misérables, 317–20. For the Byzantine side, see Morris, R., ‘The Powerful and the Poor in Tenth-Century Byzantium: Law and Reality’, Past and Present, 73 (1976), 3–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 For a similar point on self-sales in the eleventh century, see Barthélemy, D., ‘Qu'est-ce que le servage, en France, au XIe siècle?’, Revue historique, 287 (2) (1992), 233–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Marculf ii, 36 (Zeumer, Formulae, 96–7; Uddholm, Formularum Marculfi libri duo, 284–7); see Rio, ‘Freedom and Unfreedom’, 25–7.

29 Formulae Andecavenses no. 56 (Zeumer, Formulae, 24). On this formula, see Devroey, Puissants et misérables, 133; R. Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe–IXe siècle): essai d'anthropologie sociale (Paris, 1995), 343.

30 Addenda ad Formulae Senonenses recentiores, nos. 18 and 19 (Formulae, ed. Zeumer, 723–4). These two texts were copied in Tironian notes at the end of Paris BnF lat. 4627. Some of these are illegible, resulting in some gaps in the text.

31 For the opposition of servientes with ingenui in lists of property, see Formulae Marculfi i, 2–4; for manumissions of servientes, see Formulae Marculfi i, 39, ii, 3, ii, 34 and ii, 52; Formulae Salicae Merkelianae no. 13a; Formulae Bituricenses no. 8; Formulae Extravagantes i, 19 (all of these texts may be found in Zeumer, Formulae).

32 On the payment of a census in precarial formulae, see Hummer, H. J., Politics and Power in Early Medieval Europe: Alsace and the Frankish Realm, 600–1000 (Cambridge, 2005), 92–4Google Scholar.

33 Formulae Andecavenses no. 58 (Zeumer, Formulae, 24–5).

34 Formulae Salicae Merkelianae nos. 25–6 (= Marculf ii, 11 and ii, 28); Zeumer divided this into two distinct formulae, though it was copied as a single text in the manuscript (Vatican reg. lat. 612) (Zeumer, Formulae, 251).

35 Formulae Andecavenses no. 37 (Zeumer, Formulae, 16–17).

36 As elsewhere in this formulary, ‘brother’ is meant in the Christian sense rather than to indicate an actual family tie.

37 Formulae Marculfi ii, 13 (Zeumer, Formulae, 83–4).

38 Formulae Lindenbrogianae no. 18 (Zeumer, Formulae, 279–80).

39 Collectio Sangallensis no. 15 (Zeumer, Formulae, 405–6). This arrangement is similar to one recorded in a document from St Gall (Wartmann, Urkundenbuch der Abtei Sankt Gallen (Zurich, 1863), no. 221, a. 816), in which a man named Cozbert gave a detailed list of all the things he expected the monastery to provide for him every year, including shoes and clothing. I thank Jinty Nelson for drawing my attention to this text.

40 Formulae Augienses coll. B nos. 2 to 12 (Zeumer, Formulae, 348–53).

41 Formulae Augienses coll. B no. 11 (Zeumer, Formulae, 353). The next formula in the collection gives another possibility, in which the giver reserved the right to join the monastery should he wish to at a later date (which would also have involved the provision of food and clothing, though on an admittedly different basis).

42 Hincmar of Rheims, De ordines palatii, ed. T. Gross and R. Schieffer, MGH Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui in usum scholarum separatim editi iii (Hanover, 1980), cap. 22 and 27, at 72 and 80.

43 Devroey, Puissants et misérables, 164–5.

44 See, for instance, Formulae Senonenses recentiores nos. 3 and 6 (Zeumer, Formulae, 212–14), in which an abbot represents a colonus of his monastery in court.

45 As in Formulae Arvernenses nos. 3 and 4 (Zeumer, Formulae, 30); Formulae Marculfi ii, 32 (Zeumer, Formulae, 95); Formulae Turonenses no. 12 (Zeumer, Formulae, 141–2); Formulae Bituricenses no. 8 (Zeumer, Formulae, 171–2); Cartae Senonicae nos. 1 and 6 (Zeumer, Formulae, 185–6 and 187–8); Formulae Salicae Lindenbrogianae nos. 10 and 20 (Zeumer, Formulae, 273–4 and 281). Formulae Morbacenses no. 19 (p. 334) shows the same solution in the case of a carta conculcatoria, guaranteeing the continuing free status of a woman and her future children after her marriage to an unfree man; the language of such documents often mirrored that found in manumissions (Rio, ‘Freedom and Unfreedom’, 17–20).

46 As in Formulae Marculfi ii, 34 (Zeumer, Formulae, 96).

47 As in Formulae Andecavenses nos. 20 and 23 (Zeumer, Formulae, 11–12); Formulae Salicae Bignonianae no. 2 (Zeumer, Formulae, 228–9); Formulae Salicae Lindenbrogianae nos. 9 and 11 (Zeumer, Formulae, 273–4); Formulae Salicae Merkelianae no. 14 (Zeumer, Formulae, 246); Formulae Argentinenses no. 2 (Zeumer, Formulae, 337); Formulae Augienses coll. B nos. 21 and 34 (Zeumer, Formulae, 356 and 360); Formulae Extravagantes i, 19–20 (Zeumer, Formulae, 545–6). For a later example in Marmoutier's Book of Serfs assimilating manumission with the transfer of an unfree person to the church, see Barthélemy, ‘Qu'est-ce que le servage’, at 255–7.

48 As in Formulae Augienses coll. B no. 42 (Zeumer, Formulae, 363).

49 As in Formulae Marculfi ii, 34 (Zeumer, Formulae, 96); Formulae Salicae Merkelianae no. 14 (Zeumer, Formulae, 246); Formulae Augienses coll. B nos. 21 and 34 (Zeumer, Formulae, 356 and 360); Formulae Extravagantes i, 20 (Zeumer, Formulae, 545–6). As Paul Fouracre has shown, such dispositions were not necessarily of a symbolic nature, but could be an important part of material support for churches (Fouracre, P., ‘Eternal Lights and Earthly Needs: Practical Aspects of the Development of Frankish Immunities’, in Property and Power in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Davies, W. and Fouracre, P. (Cambridge, 1995), 53–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

50 Formulae Argentinenses no. 2 (Zeumer, Formulae, 337); Formulae Extravagantes i, 19 (Zeumer, Formulae, 545). Formulae Extravagantes i, 26 (Zeumer, Formulae, 548–9), a manumission-like document described as a carta traditoria in its title, oddly makes the freedman owe a census to the church of St-Maximin, Trier, while apparently allowing him the freedom to choose his own protector outside it.

51 Collectio Flaviniacensis no. 8 (Zeumer, Formulae, 476).

52 Formulae Salicae Bignonianae no. 2 (Zeumer, Formulae, 228–9); Formulae Salicae Lindenbrogianae no. 11 (Zeumer, Formulae, 274).

53 Formulae Salicae Merkelianae no. 61 (Zeumer, Formulae, 261–2).

54 Formulae Marculfi i, 23 (Zeumer, Formulae, 57; Uddholm, Formularum Marculfi libri duo, 96–7). See Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, 439.

55 Formulae Marculfi i, 21 (Zeumer, Formulae, 56–7; Uddholm, Formularum Marculfi libri duo, 92–3).

56 On this word, see Rio, ‘Freedom and Unfreedom’, 25–6.

57 See, for instance, Formulae Andecavenses no. 52 (Zeumer, Formulae, 22–3).

58 See Formulae Imperiales nos. 30, 31, 48, 52 and 55 (Zeumer, Formulae, 309–11, 323 and 325–7).

59 Formulae Bituricenses no. 14 (Zeumer, Formulae, 174): ‘Vestra pietas hoc emendare compellat, qualiter elimosina atque mercis seu mundeburdum vester semper adcrescat.’

60 See Formulae Marculfi i, 24 (Zeumer, Formulae, 58; Uddholm, Formularum Marculfi libri duo, 98–101); Marculf Add. 2 adapts it to a monastery only, with very slight changes (Zeumer, Formulae, 111; Uddholm, Formularum Marculfi libri duo, 354–7).

61 Nelson, J. L., ‘Gender, Memory and Social Power’, in Gendering the Middle Ages, ed. Stafford, P. and Mulder-Bakker, A. (Oxford, 2001), 192–204Google Scholar, at 192.

62 Formulae Imperiales nos. 31 and 52 (Zeumer, Formulae, 310–11 and 325).

63 Brown, ‘Conflicts, Letters, and Personal Relationships in the Carolingian Formula Collections’.

64 See J. L. Nelson, ‘Review: Head and Landes (eds.), Peace of God’, Speculum, 69 (1994), 168; cited in Wickham, C., ‘Debate: The Feudal Revolution’, Past and Present, 155 (1997), 196–208Google Scholar, at 197–8.

65 ‘le rapport de protection/dépendance d'un faible vis-à-vis d'un patron entraînait la dégradation irrémédiable des “pauvres” et la rupture du lien entre eux et le souverain (alors que le vassal carolingien demeurait le fidèle du roi parce qu'il était son sujet’ (Devroey, Puissants et misérables, 330).

66 See Nelson, J. L., ‘Kingship and Empire’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350–c.1450, ed. Burns, J. H. (Cambridge, 1988), 211–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 223.

67 Devroey, Puissants et misérables, 330–1; MacLean, S., Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the End of the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Devroey, Puissants et misérables, 331.

69 Einhard, Epistolae, ed. K. Hampe, MGH Epistolae v (Hanover, 1898–9), no. 62, 140; translation (with some minor alterations) from P. E. Dutton, Charlemagne's Courtier: The Complete Einhard (Broadview, 1998), letter no. 58, p. 159.

70 See, for instance, Einhard, Epistolae, ed. Hampe, nos. 1, 7, 24, 39 and 51.

71 Davies, W., Acts of Giving: Individual, Community, and Church in Tenth-Century Spain (Oxford, 2007), 149–54Google Scholar.

72 See Sánchez-Albornoz, C., ‘Las Behetrías: la encomendación en Asturias, León y Castilla’, in Viejos y nuevos estudios sobre las instituciones medievales españolas, ed. Sánchez-Albornoz, C. (Madrid, 1976), i, 15–84Google Scholar. For a critique of this view, see Díez, C. Estepa, Las Behetrías Castellanas (Valladolid, 2003), i, 41–5Google Scholar; further references in Davies, Acts of Giving, 150 n. 43.

73 Davies, Acts of Giving, 153.

74 Ibid., 154.

75 Nelson, J. L., ‘England and the Continent in the Ninth Century: iii, Rights and Rituals’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, 14 (2004), 1–24Google Scholar.