Church Advocacy and Lordship in the Holy Roman Empire

My aim in this research project is to examine the position of church advocate (Latin: advocatus / German: Vogt) between the ninth and fifteenth centuries in the Holy Roman Empire. Church advocates were the secular lords who exercised judicial authority on the estates held by religious communities. Because ecclesiastical institutions frequently possessed extensive lands, many advocates were influential figures who were in a key position to support - or challenge - the bishops, abbots and abbesses in the empire. Austrian and German historians working in the traditions of Verfassungsgeschichte and Landesgeschichte have long recognized the significance of church advocacy. In the Anglophone scholarly community, however, church advocacy remains virtually unknown. The few works that do discuss it, typically in the context of noble lordship, rely on outdated assumptions rather than systematic research. A detailed study of church advocates - one that combines Austrian and German sources and methodologies with current American, British and French theories about medieval lordship more generally - therefore offers the opportunity to drive research on the empire, church and nobility in new directions. Specifically, this project will analyze church advocacy by applying recent theories about social networks, violence, conflict resolution and medieval political culture. In this way, the project aims to bridge the gap between more traditional, institutional approaches and newer, social/cultural approaches to the study of power and authority in the empire and in medieval Europe more broadly. In the process, this kind of analysis can help scholars better understand a range of issues - from the foundations of European government and bureaucratic institutions to the rhetoric of peace and violence in the surviving medieval sources. A careful study of church advocacy thus has the potential to address many key questions of interest to medieval historians working in both Europe and North America. The Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung at the University of Vienna is an ideal location to serve as the center for this research project for two principal reasons. First, the Institute`s research group led by Univ. Prof. Mag. Dr. Christina Lutter - "Social and Cultural Communities across Medieval Monastic, Civic and Courtly Cultures in High and Late Medieval Central Europe" - is focused on many of the same themes as my project, in particular the complex interactions between religious and secular cultures in medieval Europe. Second, the primary source material for medieval church advocates is unusually rich in Austria, meaning the archives and libraries in Vienna (especially the Staatsarchiv and Nationalbibliothek) contain essential resources for this project. Vienna is thus an excellent place both to conduct careful archival research and to engage in broader discussions about the significance of church advocacy for our understanding of the legal, political, social and cultural dimensions of power and authority in medieval Europe.

The aim of this research project has been to provide a new interpretation of the history and development of the role of church advocate (Latin: advocatus; German: Vogt; a lay agent of a church community tasked with carrying out legal and administrative functions that members of the church were not permitted to do themselves) from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries in the Holy Roman Empire. Austrian and German historians working in the traditions of legal and constitutional history have long recognized the significance of church advocacy in the medieval Empire, but in recent years they have not researched the subject intensively. Meanwhile, among English-language scholars of the Middle Ages, church advocacy is virtually unknown; the few works that do discuss it rely on outdated assumptions rather than systematic research. The final product of this research project will therefore be a book-length study of medieval church advocates that will reinvigorate research into this important institution for the shaping of legal, political and economic developments in the Holy Roman Empire. The most important results of my twelve months of research as a Lise-Meitner fellow at the University of Vienna are as follows. First, my research suggests much more continuity in the nature of church advocacy between the Carolingian period (ca. 750900) and the central Middle Ages (ca. 10001300) than any previous scholars have argued. Second, my research clearly shows that church advocacy is a key component of the history of noble lordship in the Holy Roman Empire and must therefore be studied with the help of the rich modern French and American scholarship on violence, lordship and dispute settlement in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Third, my research shows that, beginning in the twelfth century, the position of advocate increasingly came to be used by territorial lords for properties that were not under the control of church communities. Examining why lords found advocacy such an appealing concept for their own administrative purposes shines new light on the development of territorial administration. Lastly, by extending my research into the Early Modern period, I have been able to develop a clearer picture of how the title of advocatus / Vogt was used by ecclesiastical communities and territorial lords throughout the history of the Holy Roman Empire. This work indicates that the narrative of the origins of government institutions that predominates today must be rewritten in a way that better incorporates changes in the institution of advocacy over time.