Rudolf II, Duke of Austria
Rudolf II, a member of the House of Habsburg, was Duke of Austria and Styria from 1282 to 1283, jointly with his elder brother Albert I, who succeeded him. Rudolf II was born in Rheinfelden, the youngest son of Count Rudolf of Habsburg and his first wife Gertrude of Hohenberg to survive infancy. In 1273 his father was elected King of the Romans, the first of the Habsburg dynasty, whereafter he seized the "princeless" duchies of Austria and Carinthia from the Bohemian king Ottokar II. After King Ottokar was defeated and killed in the 1278 Battle on the Marchfeld, King Rudolf in December 1282 vested his sons Albert and Rudolf II with the Austrian and Styrian duchies. However, in the Treaty of Rheinfelden on 1 June 1283 Rudolf II had to relinquish his share in favour of his elder brother Albert. In compensation Rudolf II was designated as future King of the Romans and his father appointed him a "Duke of Swabia" - more or less an honorific title, as the former stem duchy had been in long-term disarray after the last Hohenstaufen duke, the underage Conradin, was killed in 1268.
In Swabia the former Counts of Habsburg only held various smaller home territories summed up as Further Austria, of which Rudolf II never got hold. In the course of the reconciliation process with the Bohemian Přemyslid dynasty, Rudolf II in 1289 married Agnes of Bohemia, daughter of the late King Ottokar II, they had John of Swabia. Rudolf II died at the age of 20 in Prague, where he stayed at the court of his brother-in-law King Wenceslaus II, husband of his sister Judith of Habsburg. In the same year his son was born, his brother's failure to ensure that Rudolf II would be adequately compensated for relinquishing his claim on the throne caused strife in the Habsburg dynasty, leading to the assassination of Albert I by Rudolph's son John Parricida in 1308
Alsace
Alsace is a cultural and historical region in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. From 1982 to 2016, Alsace was the smallest administrative région in metropolitan France, consisting of the Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin departments. Territorial reform passed by the French legislature in 2014 resulted in the merger of the Alsace administrative region with Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine to form Grand Est. Alsatian is an Alemannic dialect related to Swabian and Swiss German, although since World War II most Alsatians speak French. Internal and international migration since 1945 has changed the ethnolinguistic composition of Alsace. For more than 300 years, from the Thirty Years' War to World War II, the political status of Alsace was contested between France and various German states in wars and diplomatic conferences; the economic and cultural capital of Alsace, as well as its largest city, is Strasbourg. The city is the seat of bodies; the name "Alsace" can be traced to the Old High German Ali-saz or Elisaz, meaning "foreign domain".
An alternative explanation is from a Germanic Ell-sass, meaning "seated on the Ill", a river in Alsace. In prehistoric times, Alsace was inhabited by nomadic hunters. By 1500 BC, Celts began to settle in Alsace and cultivating the land, it should be noted that Alsace is a plain surrounded by the Vosges mountains and the Black Forest mountains. It creates Foehn winds which, along with natural irrigation, contributes to the fertility of the soil. In a world of agriculture, Alsace has always been a rich region which explains why it suffered so many invasions and annexations in its history. By 58 BC, the Romans had established Alsace as a center of viticulture. To protect this valued industry, the Romans built fortifications and military camps that evolved into various communities which have been inhabited continuously to the present day. While part of the Roman Empire, Alsace was part of Germania Superior. With the decline of the Roman Empire, Alsace became the territory of the Germanic Alemanni; the Alemanni were agricultural people, their Germanic language formed the basis of modern-day dialects spoken along the Upper Rhine.
Clovis and the Franks defeated the Alemanni during the 5th century AD, culminating with the Battle of Tolbiac, Alsace became part of the Kingdom of Austrasia. Under Clovis' Merovingian successors the inhabitants were Christianized. Alsace remained under Frankish control until the Frankish realm, following the Oaths of Strasbourg of 842, was formally dissolved in 843 at the Treaty of Verdun. Alsace formed part of the Middle Francia, ruled by the eldest grandson Lothar I. Lothar died early in 855 and his realm was divided into three parts; the part known as Lotharingia, or Lorraine, was given to Lothar's son. The rest was shared between Louis the German; the Kingdom of Lotharingia was short-lived, becoming the stem duchy of Lorraine in Eastern Francia after the Treaty of Ribemont in 880. Alsace was united with the other Alemanni east of the Rhine into the stem duchy of Swabia. At about this time, the surrounding areas experienced recurring fragmentation and reincorporations among a number of feudal secular and ecclesiastical lordships, a common process in the Holy Roman Empire.
Alsace experienced great prosperity during the 13th centuries under Hohenstaufen emperors. Frederick I set up Alsace as a province to be ruled by ministeriales, a non-noble class of civil servants; the idea was that such men would be more tractable and less to alienate the fief from the crown out of their own greed. The province had a central administration with its seat at Hagenau. Frederick II designated the Bishop of Strasbourg to administer Alsace, but the authority of the bishop was challenged by Count Rudolf of Habsburg, who received his rights from Frederick II's son Conrad IV. Strasbourg began to grow to become the commercially important town in the region. In 1262, after a long struggle with the ruling bishops, its citizens gained the status of free imperial city. A stop on the Paris-Vienna-Orient trade route, as well as a port on the Rhine route linking southern Germany and Switzerland to the Netherlands and Scandinavia, it became the political and economic center of the region. Cities such as Colmar and Hagenau began to grow in economic importance and gained a kind of autonomy within the "Décapole", a federation of ten free towns.
As in much of Europe, the prosperity of Alsace came to an end in the 14th century by a series of harsh winters, bad harvests, the Black Death. These hardships were blamed on Jews, leading to the pogroms of 1336 and 1339. In 1349, Jews of Alsace were accused of poisoning the wells with plague, leading to the massacre of thousands of Jews during the Strasbourg pogrom. Jews were subsequently forbidden to settle in the town. An additional natural disaster was the Rhine rift earthquake of 1356, one of Europe's worst which made ruins of Basel. Prosperity returned to Alsace under Habsburg administration during the Renaissance. Holy Roman Empire central power had begun to decline following years of imperial adventures in Italian lands ceding hegemony in Western Europe to France, which had long since centralized power. France began an aggressive policy of expanding eastward, first to the riv
Duchy of Styria
The Duchy of Styria was a duchy located in modern-day southern Austria and northern Slovenia. It was a part of the Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution in 1806 and a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria–Hungary until its dissolution in 1918, it was created by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1180 when he raised the March of Styria to a duchy of equal rank with neighbouring Carinthia and Bavaria, after the fall of the Bavarian duke Henry the Lion earlier that year. Margrave Ottokar IV thereby became the first Duke of Styria and the last of the ancient Otakar dynasty; as Ottokar had no issue, he in 1186 signed the Georgenberg Pact with the mighty House of Babenberg, rulers of Austria since 976, after which both duchies should in perpetuity be ruled in personal union. Upon his death in 1192, Styria as stipulated fell to the Babenberg duke Leopold V of Austria; the Austrian Babenbergs became extinct in 1246, when Duke Frederick II the Quarrelsome was killed in battle against King Béla IV of Hungary.
Styria a ceased Imperial fief, due to the lack of a central authority after the deposition of Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen evolved into a matter of dispute among the neighbouring estates. It passed through the hands of Hungary in 1254, until the Bohemian king Ottokar II Přemysl conquered it, being victorious at the 1260 Battle of Kressenbrunn; as King Ottokar II had married the last duke's sister Margaret of Babenberg he laid claim to both Austria and Styria, which however met with strong opposition by the elected German king Rudolph of Habsburg, who now recalled the duchies as reverted fiefs. Rudolph defeated Ottokar at the 1278 Battle on the Marchfeld, seized Austria and Styria and granted them to his sons Albert I and Rudolf II; the House of Habsburg provided Styria with dukes of their lineage since. It however was separated from Austria by the 1379 Treaty of Neuberg, after which Styria and Carniola formed the Inner Austrian territory ruled by the descendants of Leopold III of Habsburg of the Leopoldian line, who took their residence at Graz.
In 1456 they could enlarge the Styrian territory by acquisition and re-acquisition of the comital Celje estates in Lower Styria. Both duchies were again ruled in personal union, when Leopold's grandson Frederick V inherited Austria in 1457. In 1496 Frederick's son Maximilian I signed an order expelling all Jews from Styria, who were not allowed to return to Graz until 1856. In 1512 the duchy joined the Empire's Austrian Circle. A second Inner Austrian cadet branch of the Habsburgs ruled over Styria from 1564. Under Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria, Graz became a centre of the Counter-Reformation, expedited by the Jesuits at the University of Graz established in 1585 and continued under Charles' son Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg, who became sole rule of all Habsburg hereditary lands and Holy Roman Emperor in 1619; the Protestant population was expelled, including the astronomer Johannes Kepler in 1600. Meanwhile, at the time of the Ottoman invasions in the 16th and 17th centuries after the 1526 Battle of Mohács, the land suffered and was depopulated.
The Turks made incursions into Styria nearly twenty times. Styria remained a part from 1804 belonged to the Austrian Empire; the development of the duchy was decisively promoted by Archduke John of Austria, younger brother of Emperor Francis I of Habsburg, who in 1811 founded the Joanneum, predecessor of the Graz University of Technology, the University of Leoben in 1840. He forwarded the construction of the Semmering railway to Mürzzuschlag and the Austrian Southern Railway line from Vienna to Trieste completed in 1857, which boosted the Styrian economy. In the course of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the duchy was assigned as a crown land for the Cisleithanian part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, while along with the rise of nationalism the conflict between the German and Slovene population intensified. On the collapse of Austria-Hungary in the aftermath of World War I, the rump state of German Austria claimed all Cisleithanian Austria with a significant German-speaking population including large parts of the Styrian duchy, while the Slovene Lower Styrian part joined the State of Slovenes and Serbs.
Armed conflicts arose around the multilingual town of Maribor, until by the 1919 Treaty of St Germain the former duchy was partitioned broadly along ethnic lines, with two thirds of its territory including the ducal capital of Graz remaining with Austria, the southern third of Lower Styria with Maribor passing to the Kingdom of Serbs and Slovenes becoming part of modern Slovenia. In 1910, population of Styria included: 983,000 speakers of German 409,000 speakers of Slovene Otakars Ottokar IV House of Babenberg Leopold V of Austria Leopold VI of Austria, son Frederick II of Austria, killed in battlePřemyslids Ottokar II of Bohemia, againstÁrpád dynasty Béla IV of Hungary and his son Stephen V of Hungary, claimants Rudolph I King of the Romans 1273–1291 Albert I, son King of the Romans from 1298, jointly with his brother Rudolph II and his son Rudolph III Frederick the Fair, son of Albert I, jointly with his brother Leopold I Albert II, son of Albert I, jointly with his brother Otto the Merry Rudolph IV, son of Albert II Albert III, son of
Further Austria
Further Austria, Outer Austria or Anterior Austria was the collective name for the early possessions of the House of Habsburg in the former Swabian stem duchy of south-western Germany, including territories in the Alsace region west of the Rhine and in Vorarlberg. While the territories of Further Austria west of the Rhine and south of Lake Constance were lost to France and the Swiss Confederacy, those in Swabia and Vorarlberg remained under Habsburg control until the Napoleonic Era. Further Austria comprised the Alsatian County of Ferrette in the Sundgau, including the town of Belfort, the adjacent Breisgau region east of the Rhine, including Freiburg im Breisgau after 1368. Ruled from the Habsburg residence in Ensisheim near Mühlhausen were numerous scattered territories stretching from Upper Swabia to the Allgäu region in the east, the largest being the margravate of Burgau between the cities of Augsburg and Ulm. During the Habsburg Monarchy they were humorously called "tail feathers of the Imperial Eagle".
Some estates in Vorarlberg possessed by the Habsburgs were considered part of Further Austria, though they were temporarily directly administered from Tyrol. The original home territories of the Habsburgs, the Aargau with Habsburg Castle and much of the other original possessions south of the High Rhine and Lake Constance were lost in the 14th century to the expanding Swiss Confederacy after the battles of Morgarten and Sempach; these territories were never considered part of Further Austria – except for the Fricktal region around Rheinfelden and Laufenburg, which remained a Habsburg possession until 1797. From 1406 until 1490 Further Austria together with the Habsburg County of Tyrol was included in the definition of "Upper Austria". From 1469 to 1474 Archduke Sigismund gave large parts in pawn to the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold. At the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the Sundgau became part of France. After the Ottoman wars many inhabitants of Further Austria were encouraged to emigrate and settle in the newly acquired Transylvania region, people that were referred as Danube Swabians.
In the 18th century, the Habsburgs acquired a few minor new Swabian territories, such as Tettnang in 1780. In the reorganization of the Holy Roman Empire in the course of the French Revolutionary Wars, much of Further Austria, including the Breisgau, was by the 1801 Treaty of Lunéville granted as compensation to Ercole III d'Este, former duke of Modena and Reggio, who however died two years later, his heir as his son-in-law was Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este, the uncle of Emperor Francis II. After the Austrian defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz and the Peace of Pressburg in 1805, Further Austria was dissolved and the former Habsburg territories were assigned to the Grand Duchy of Baden, the Kingdom of Württemberg and the Kingdom of Bavaria, as rewards for their alliance with Napoleonic France. Minor estates passed to the Grand Duchy of Hesse. Fricktal had become a French protectorate in 1799 and part of the Helvetic Republic in 1802, incorporated into the Swiss canton of Aargau the next year.
After the defeat of Napoleon, there was some discussion at the Congress of Vienna of returning part of all of the Vorlande to Austria, but in the end only Vorarlberg returned to Austrian control, as Foreign Minister Klemens von Metternich did not want to offend the rulers of the South German states and hoped that removing Austria from its advanced position on the Rhine would reduce tensions with France. As of 1790 Further Austria was subdivided into ten districts: Breisgau at Freiburg Offenburg: several localities in the present Ortenaukreis, the Imperial city of Offenburg not included Hohenberg, present Ostalbkreis, former county, at Rottenburg am Neckar Nellenburg, former landgraviate, at Stockach Altdorf, today Weingarten Tettnang, former County of Montfort Günzburg, former Margraviate of Burgau Winnweiler in the Palatinate, former County of Falkenstein the former Imperial city of Konstanz Bregenz, present-day Vorarlberg administrated from Tyrol. Politically, the Further Austrian territories were held by the Habsburg Dukes of Austria from 1278 onwards.
Upon the 1379 Treaty of Neuberg, they together with Carinthia, Styria and Tyrol fell to the Leopoldian line: Leopold III, until 1386 William, son, 1386–1406Further divided into Inner Austria proper and Upper Austria, ruled by: Frederick IV, younger brother of William, 1406-1439 Frederick V, nephew of William, ruler of Inner Austria, 1439-1446 Sigismund, son of Frederick IV, 1446–1490In 1490 all Habsburg possessions were re-unified under the rule of Frederick V, Holy Roman Emperor since 1452. Upon the death of Emperor Ferdinand I of Habsburg in 1564, Further Austria and Tyrol was inherited by his second son: Ferdinand II, 1564–1595 Matthias, 1595–1619, Holy Roman Emperor from 1612, with his younger brother Maximilian III as regent, 1612–1618In 1619 the Habsburg hereditary lands were re-unified under the rule of Emperor Ferdinand II, he gave Further Austria to his younger brother: Leopold V, 1623–1632 Ferdinand Charles, son, 1632–1662 under the tutelage of his mother Claudia de' Medici, 1632–1646 Sigismund Francis, brother 1662-1665In 1665 the Habsburg lands were re-unified under the rule of Emperor Leopold I.
Becker, Irmgard Christa, ed. Vorderösterreich, Nur die Schwanzfeder des Kaiseradlers? Die Habsburger im deutsc
Rudolf I of Bohemia
Rudolf of Habsburg, a member of the House of Habsburg, was Duke of Austria and Styria from 1298 as well as King of Bohemia and titular King of Poland from 1306 until his death. Rudolf was the eldest son of Duke Albert I of Austria and his wife Elizabeth of Gorizia-Tyrol, thereby the grandson of King Rudolf I of Germany. After lengthy struggles with Adolf of Nassau, his father was elected King of the Romans in 1298 and vested sixteen-year-old Rudolf as a co-ruler with the Austrian hereditary lands of the Habsburg dynasty. According to the Rheinfelden order of succession, Rudolf acted as ducal regent on behalf of his younger brothers Frederick the Fair and Leopold I. On 25 May 1300 King Albert I arranged his marriage with the Capetian princess Blanche, a daughter of King Philip III of France by his second wife Marie of Brabant; the intended union with the French House of Capet however failed as the couple's son and daughter died young and Blanche herself died after a miscarriage, in 1305. Rudolf accompanied his father on his 1304 expedition against King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia, who had placed his son Wenceslaus III on the Hungarian throne after the Árpád dynasty died out in 1301 with the death of King Andrew III.
Another opportunity for a Habsburg gain in power opened when in 1306 King Wenceslaus III, the last Bohemian ruler of the Přemyslid dynasty, was killed and Albert I as rex Romanorum was able to seize his kingdom as a reverted Imperial fief. Rudolph was vested with the Bohemian throne, however contested by his maternal uncle Henry of Gorizia, Duke of Carinthia and husband of Wenceslaus' sister Anne; when several Bohemian nobles elected Henry King of Bohemia, Albert I placed his brother-in-law under the Imperial ban and marched against Prague. Henry fled, first to Bavaria back to his Carinthian homelands. To further legitimate the Habsburg claims to the Bohemian and the Polish throne, Albert had Rudolph married to Princess Elizabeth Richeza of Poland, a member of the Piast dynasty and widow of the predeceased King Wenceslaus II. Mocked as král kaše for his thriftiness rather than stomach problems, Rudolf was rejected by several Bohemian nobles, who continued to hold out for Henry, his aims to take hold of the silver deposits at Kutná Hora sparked a rebellion led by the noble House of Strakonice.
The king besieged the rebel fortress of Horažďovice, but died at the campsite in the night of 3 to 4 July 1307 of gastrointestinal perforation. As Rudolf left no children, the first grab of the Habsburgs for the Crown of Saint Wenceslas failed when the Bohemian nobles restored Henry as king in return for a charter of privileges, who in turn had to renounce the throne in favour of Count John of Luxembourg three years later. Instead Rudolph's enfeoffment intensified the inner Habsburg inheritance conflict, culminating in the assassination of King Albert I by his nephew John Parricida in 1308. Rudolph is buried at the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague
Windisch
Windisch is a municipality in the district of Brugg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland. Windisch is situated at the site of the Roman legion camp Vindonissa. A Celtic God, the name Vindos points to a widespread prehistorical cult of Vindos and the most origin of the Windisch place name. In 1064 the current municipality was mentioned as Vinse, in 1175 as Vindisse; until the 19th Century the official name was Windisch und Oberburg. Windisch grew into a regional power following the foundation of Königsfelden Abbey in 1309 in memory of the regicide of King Albert I of Germany in the previous year. Albert was on the way to suppress a revolt in Swabia when he was murdered on May 1, 1308, near Windisch on the Reuss, by his nephew John of Swabi, afterwards called "the Parricide" or "John Parricida", whom he had deprived of his inheritance. After the foundation of the Abbey, the village was placed under the authority of the Abbey. Starting in 1348 the rights to high and low justice were held by Agnes of Hungary, a daughter of Albert I.
In 1411 those rights transferred back to the monastery. The abbey church in antiquity under the patronage of St. Martin but in the Middle Ages under the patronage of Mary, is built on the site of the 6th Century Bishop's church; the present building, with a late-Romanesque nave and Gothic choir, was built between 1310-30. The church's charnel house was rebuilt in 1793 into a schoolhouse. After the conquest of the Aargau by Bern and the introduction of the Reformation the monastery was suppressed; until 1798 it served as the residence of the Bernese bailiffs. People from Windisch worked in the bailiff's residence as servants and workmen, while the poor came to the former abbey for alms; the main sources of income in Windisch included handicrafting, fisheries, shipping and iron ore mining in Lindhof, but agriculture was the major contributor. There was a ferry over the Reuss on the Bern-Zurich road; this was replace in 1799 by a bridge. Plague epidemics and the restrictive immigration policies of the municipality prevented growth.
However, during the 18th Century, the emergence of new occupations, led to a significant population increase. These new industries included cap and stocking weaving, water powered light industry. At the same time improved agriculture techniques allowed more food to be produced from the fields; the nearest neighbor to Windisch was the town of Brugg. The close proximity led to centuries of conflicts over grazing rights, city monopolies and the location of the municipal boundary. In 1863, due to a border adjustment, Windisch lost 45 hectares to Brugg. In the 19th Century the economy of the village changed. In 1825 Henry Kunz founded the cotton mill Kunz which had 567 employees in 1846, they built a village school. In 1804 part of Königsfelden Abbey converted into a District Hospital. In 1872 a new building was built and since 1887 it has been a psychiatric clinic; the construction of the railway network transformed Brugg and Windisch into a railroad hub with a large depot and repair shop. These innovations resulted in the influx of factory workers and trained staff.
This led to a restructuring of the population: for example, the locally born and working population fell from 88%, 55% and 21% to 4%, while the proportion of Catholics rose from 9% to 45%. Agriculture employs only 0.6% of the population. In 1965, a Higher Technical School of Windisch opened; the changing population structure led to political shifts in favor of the Social Democratic Party. With a pronounced emphasis on political independence, Windisch grew together structurally and economically with Brugg. Windisch has an area, as of 2009, of 4.91 square kilometers. Of this area, 1.16 square kilometers or 23.6% is used for agricultural purposes, while 1.22 square kilometers or 24.8% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 2.23 square kilometers or 45.4% is settled, 0.31 square kilometers or 6.3% is either rivers or lakes. Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 5.3% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 21.6% and transportation infrastructure made up 9.6%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.8% uof the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 7.1%.
22.4% of the total land area is forested and 2.4% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 13.8% is used for growing crops and 6.9% is pastures, while 2.9% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the municipality streams; the municipality is located in the Brugg district, between the Aare and Reusss in the region known as the Wasserschloss. It consists of the former linear villages of Windisch and Oberburg as well as the hamlets of Fahrgut, Schürhof and Bachtalen and the region around the former Königsfelden Abbey; the blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Or on a Sevenfold Mount Vert a Castle embattled Sable towered on dexter and to its sinister a Lion rampant Gules. The coat of arms represents the nearby Habsburg Castle and the lion of the House of Habsburg upon the verdant fields of the parish. Windisch has a population of 7,654 As of June 2009, 29.1% of the population are foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years the population has changed at a rate of 4.5%.
Most of the population speaks Germa
Ministerialis
Ministerialis were people raised up from serfdom to be placed in positions of power and responsibility. In the Holy Roman Empire, in the High Middle Ages, the word and its German translations and Dienstmann, came to describe those unfree nobles who made up a large majority of what could be described as the German knighthood during that time. What began as an irregular arrangement of workers with a wide variety of duties and restrictions rose in status and wealth to become the power brokers of an empire; the ministeriales were not free people, but held social rank. Their liege lord determined whom they could or could not marry, they were not able to transfer their lords' properties to heirs or spouses, they were, considered members of the nobility since, a social designation, not a legal one. Ministeriales were trained knights, held military responsibilities and surrounded themselves with the trappings of knighthood, so were accepted as noblemen. Both women and men held the ministerial status, the laws on ministeriales made no distinction between the sexes in how they were treated.
The origin of the ministerial pedigree is obscure. A mediaeval chronicler reported that Julius Caesar defeated the Gauls and rewarded his Germanic allies with Roman rank. Princes were awarded senatorial status and their lesser knights received Roman citizenship, he assigned these'knights' to princes but urged the princes "to treat the knights not as slaves and servants but rather to receive their services as the knights' lords and defenders. "Hence it is," the chronicler explained, "that German knights, unlike their counterparts in other nations, are called servants of the royal fisc and princely ministerials." In England there was no group of knights referred to as ministeriales, for the tight grip that English lords held upon their knights gave them less freedom than their German counterparts who had codified rights. Abbot Adalard of Corbie was Emperor Charlemagne's chief adviser, described the running of the government in his work De ordine palatii. There he praises the great merits of his imperial staff, made up of household servii proprii who were the first ministerials authoritatively recorded.
His letters specify that not only were they considered exceptional by their superiors, but the ministerials mentored their successors in a form of administrative apprenticeship program. This may be the origin of ministerials as individuals in a set position, it was Emperor Conrad II. He had them organized into a staff of administrators. In documents they are referred to ministerial men. Ministeriales of the post-Classical period who were not in the royal household were at first bondsmen or serfs taken from the servi proprii, or household servants These servants were entrusted with special responsibilities by their overlords, such as the management of a farm, administration of finances or of various possessions. Free nobles disliked entering into servile relationships with other nobles, so lords of a necessity recruited bailiffs and officials from among their unfree servants who could fulfill a household warrior role. From the 11th century the term came to denote functionaries living as members of the knightly class with either a lordship of their own or one delegated from a higher lord as well as some political influence.
Kings placed military requirements upon their princes, who in turn, placed requirements upon their vassals. The free nobles under a prince may have a bond of vassalage that let them get out of serving, so kings, princes and archbishops were able to recruit unfree persons into military service; such a body made up the group called ministeriales. There were two sorts of ministerials: casati, who administered lands and estates for a liege and were paid from the proceeds of the land and non-casati, who held administrative and military positions but were paid in either a fixed amount of coin or by a portion of the proceeds of mills, road or bridge tolls, or ferry fees or port taxes; as the need for such service functions became more acute, their duties and privileges, at first nebulous, became more defined, the ministeriales developed in the Salian period into a new and much differentiated class. They received fiefs, which to begin with were not heritable, in return for which they provided knightly services.
They were allowed to possess, did hold, allods: ownership of real property, independent of any superior landlord, but it should not be confused with anarchy as the owner of allodial land is not independent of his sovereign. Ministerials were found holding the four great offices necessary to run a great household: seneschal, butler and chamberlain, they were castellans, having both military and administrative responsibilities. Conrad II of Kuchl was the financial adviser to four archbishops over the course of 40 years. From the reign of Archbishop Conrad II they were employed as stewards and judges in the administration of the imperial territories, in the lay principalities; as Imperial ministerials they upheld the Salian, the Hohenst
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 496. Citations:
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