Ministerialis

Charlemagne, Pippin, and a ministerial clerk; a 10th-century copy of the original

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 ('minores...milites') 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."[3] 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 (and well-defended) rights.[4]

Abbot Adalard of Corbie (d. 826) was Emperor Charlemagne's chief adviser, and 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 (serfs) who were the first ministerials authoritatively recorded.[5] His letters specify that not only were they considered exceptional by their superiors, but the ministerials also mentored their successors in a form of administrative apprenticeship program.[6] This may be the origin of ministerials as individuals in a set position.

It was Emperor Conrad II (990-1039) who first referred to ministerials as a distinct class. He had them organized into a staff of officials and administrators. In documents they are referred to as ministerialis vir, or ministerial men.[7]

Ministeriales (or "ministerials", as Anglicized by Benjamin Arnold) 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 (as opposed to the servi casati who were already tilling the land on a tenure.) These servants were entrusted with special responsibilities by their overlords, such as the management of a farm, administration of finances (chancery) or of various possessions. Free nobles (Edelfreie) disliked entering into servile relationships with other nobles, so lords of a necessity recruited bailiffs, administrators and officials from among their unfree servants who could also fulfill a household warrior role.[8] 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 (inter alia the exercise of offices at court).

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, bishops and archbishops were able to recruit unfree persons into military service. Such a body made up the group called ministeriales.[9]

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.[10]

As the need for such service functions became more acute (as, for example, during the Investiture Controversy), and their duties and privileges, at first nebulous, became more clearly defined, the ministeriales developed in the Salian period (1024–1125) 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 also allowed to possess, and often did hold, allods: ownership of real property (land, buildings and fixtures) that is 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, marshal and chamberlain. They were vidames (vice dominus, or runners of estates) or castellans, having both military and administrative responsibilities. Conrad II of Kuchl was the financial adviser to four archbishops over the course of 40 years.[11]

From the reign of Archbishop Conrad II (1024–1039) they were employed as stewards (Vögte), castellans (Burggrafen) and judges in the administration of the imperial territories, and in the lay principalities. As Imperial ministerials (Reichsministerialen) they upheld the Salian, and particularly the Hohenstaufen, imperial polity.

In the Archbishopric of Salzburg the ministerials and clergy together elected Archbishop Gebhard in 1060, as well as every archbishop from 1147 to 1256 save for Conrad III (r. 1177–83).[12]

The fortress of Hohensalzburg, overlooking Salzburg, Austria, was run by a ministerial castellan

Ministerials could be drawn from different occupational groups. In Salzburg, Austria a Timo appears in 1125/47 in the traditionsbuch (book of traditions) as a miles (knight) of the archiepiscopal ministerialage who functioned as burgrave and also as a merchant.[13]

By the 12th century a distinction was made between greater ministerials (ministeriales maiores) who had their own vassals and lesser ministerials (ministeriales minores) who had no vassals of their own.[14]

During the 12th century the old free nobility of Salzburg even found it a wise strategy to surrender their freedom in return for the safety of Salzburg's patronage. Around 1145, Ulrich I of the lesser-noble Sims family chose to subjugate his household to the archbishop by marrying the Salzburg ministerial Liutkarda von Berg. Their son, Ulrich II, was born into his mother's status as was the practice, but now the Simses enjoyed the protection of one of the most powerful houses in the region. This was a wise strategy, considering the weak Simses were surrounded by greedy neighbors.[15]

By the end of the 12th century the term miles—theretofore reserved for free warriors—was also being applied to ministerials. Over the course of the 13th century their status was slowly assimilated to that of the free nobility, or vassals. The remaining traces of the taint of servility gradually faded, and the "fiefs for service" turned into proper hereditable fiefs, partly also because impoverished free nobles, while reserving their personal free status, voluntarily became ministeriales.

Portrait of the famous ministerial Ulrich von Liechtenstein (1200–1275) from the Codex Manesse

By the 13th century Bavarian law held that the ministeriales (or Dienstmänner) held a position higher than the ordinary milites, and only the monarchy and princes were permitted to maintain ministeriales.[16] Imperial courts increasingly rendered justice for ministerials, as when Count Frederick of Isenberg murdered Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne in 1225. The archiepiscopal ministerials brought an appeal (and the blood-stained clothing) to the Royal Court to demand justice. The count's brothers, the bishops of Münster and Osnabrück, were brought before the court for complicity, and bloodshed at the court was narrowly averted. Count Frederick was convicted in absentia, all his ministerials were released from his service, and Frederick was captured and broken on the wheel.[17]

By the 13th and 14th centuries the ministeriales formed an intrinsic part of the lower nobility, and in the 15th century formed the core of the German knightly class (Ritterstand).[18] Other regions were not as open, for as late as the fifteenth century the documents of the Dutch province of Gelderland continued to distinguish between knights of noble and of ministerial birth.[19]

• Castle warrior
• Devşirme
• Gentry
• Mamluk
• Vavassor

• Bachrach, Bernard S. “Charlemagne and the Carolingian General Staff.” The Journal of Military History 66, no. 2 (April, 2002): 313-357.
• de Battaglia, Otto Forst. “The Nobility in the European Middle Ages.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 5, no. 1 (Oct., 1962): 60-75.
• Bosl, Karl. “Ruler and Ruled in the German Empire from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century.” In Cheyette, Fredric L. (ed.). Lordship and Community in Medieval Europe. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1968.
• Cormier, David J. "Unique Ministerials: Unfree Nobility." Compleat Anachronist, no. 159 (First Quarter, 2013)
• Freed, John B. “Medieval German Social History: Generalizations and Particularism.” Central European History 25, No. 1 (1992): 1-26.
• Freed, John B. "The Origins of the European Nobility: The Problem of the Ministerials.” Viator 7 (1976): 228-33.
• Haverkamp, Alfred. Medieval Germany 1056-1273. Translated by Helga Braun and Richard Mortimer, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
• Leyser, Karl. “Henry I and the Beginnings of the Saxon Empire.” The English Historical Review 83, No. 326 (Jan., 1968): pp. 1–32.
• Reuter, Timothy. Germany in the Early Middle Ages, 800-1056. New York: Longman Inc., 1991.
• Reynolds, Susan. Fiefs and Vassals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
• Thompson, James Westfall. “German Feudalism.” The American Historical Review 28, No. 3 (Apr., 1923): pp. 440–474.