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 The few works that do discuss it, typically in the context of noble lordship, rely on outdated assumptions rather than systematic research.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.

No additional funding sources recorded.