Itinerant Kingship and Royal Monasteries in Early Medieval Germany, c.936–1075

Shows how monasteries provided crucial economic and political support to itinerant monarchs in medieval Germany.

John W. Bernhardt (Author)

9780521394895, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 October 1993

400 pages
22.4 x 14.5 x 3.5 cm, 0.618 kg

"This is an outstanding, original book. Bernhardt takes some things we have long known, adds a wealth of meticulous new research, and refashions old arguments in persuasive ways." Thomas F. X. Noble, Religious Studies Review

In examining the relationship between the royal monasteries in tenth- and eleventh-century Germany and the German monarchs, this book assimilates a great deal of European scholarship on a central problem - that of the realities and structures of power. It focuses on the practical aspects of governing without a capital and while constantly in motion, and on the payments and services which monasteries provided to the king and which in turn supported the king's travel economically and politically. Royal-monastic relations are investigated in the context of the 'itinerant kingship' of the period to determine how this relationship functioned in practice. It emerges that German rulers did in fact make much greater use of their royal monasteries than has hitherto been recognised.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. German kingship and royal monasteries: the historical and historiographical context
2. Itinerant kingship, royal monasteries and the servitium regis
3. Servitium regis and monastic property
4. Monasteries in the Saxon heartland
5. Monasteries in Westphalia
6. Monasteries in the Saxon-Hessian border
7. Monasteries in Hesse and Thuringia
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]