Arn, bishop of Salzburg from 785 and archbishop and Bavarian metropolitan from 798 until his death in 821, was an important figure in all aspects of the Carolingian Renaissance: church reform, the revival of learning, and imperial governance [1]. It is not surprising, then, that scholars have long been interested in his family and early career. But it was not until 1931 that Josef Sturm finally and firmly established his Bavarian origins [2]. The key document was a deed dated 25 May 758 and preserved with the great cartulary of Freising cathedral, which recorded the conveyance of property at a place named Bittlbach by a man named Haholt to Freising, and the subsequent dedication by him and his unnamed wife of their son, Arn, at the “altar of St Mary erected in the church of St Zeno” at Isen, a small proprietary monastery of the cathedral located 31 kilometers southeast of Freising [3].
The property, Bittlbach, now divided into an Outer- and an Inner-Bittlbach, is only about four kilometers north of Isen, and the deed relates in great detail the circumstances of the events around its conveyance [4]. Haholt had been severely wounded by a certain man, and, despairing of his life and on the advice of his kinsmen, he had invited bishop Joseph of Freising to come to him for “the consolation of my soul and the advantage of our son Arn.” [5] The bishop ( s. 749–764 ) was the founder-patron of Isen, and he advised Haholt to build a church on his hereditary property at Bittlbach [6]. When the church was complete, Joseph came to consecrate it, whereupon the property together with the new church was conveyed to Freising on the condition that the property be granted as a life benefice to Arn. Sometime thereafter “divine mercy granted a period of life and strength ( virtutemque ) of body and soul” to Haholt. He intended to go to Freising to confirm his donation, but it happened that bishop Joseph was then nearby at the “cell and oratory of St Zeno” at Isen, where Arn was dedicated at the altar and the grant of Haholt’s property at Bittlbach was confirmed.
It is clear that Haholt was a person of importance in Agilolfing Bavaria, and he and his family have been examined with some care since Sturm [7]. But one unusual aspect of this critical document from 758 has not received close attention: its anomalous place in the Freising cartulary [8]. The cartulary was begun about the year 824 under bishop Hitto ( s. 811–835 ) by the monk Cozroh. By mid-830, he had completed copying the available deeds from the earlier pontificates and also the deeds accumulated up to then under bishop Hitto [9]. Those deeds were copied according to pontificate by Cozroh and a few other scribes into the new gatherings, and additional documents were subsequently entered into the new cartulary ( Codex A ) during the pontificates of bishops Hitto and Erchanbert ( s. 836–854 ) until 848, when Cozroh died, and a new collection ( Codex B ) was begun. Cozroh also created a table of contents or “Renner” for Codex A by pontificate for each of the bishops up to the year 830, which assigned a number to each document according to its sequence in the new codex. Finally, in 1187 the Freising sacristan, Conrad, copied, with some rearrangement and editing, the items in Cozroh’s manuscript to which he added a few previously-unrecorded items ( Codex C ).
Surprisingly, Haholt’s important deed is nowhere to be found in the two earliest collections of Freising deeds, Codices A and B, but it was known to Conrad, who copied it on folios 4v–5r in Codex C. Rather, the sheet containing Cozroh’s transcription of the document was subsequently bound at the very beginning of Codex A and directly after the Renner list for bishop Arbeo’s pontificate ( fol. d2/20 ), but Cozroh assigned it no Renner number for Joseph’s pontificate [10]. The next page ( nil/21 ), the first of a new sheet, is blank, although the reverse image of Trad. Freising, nr. 11 can be seen through it. That deed itself is then transcribed on the three following pages of the folded sheet ( fol. 1a–c/22–24 ), the final page ( fol. 1c/24 ) also contains two other deeds, Trad. Freising, nr. 527 as well as the beginning of nr. 1007, which is concluded on the facing page of a new sheet ( fol. 2/25 ).
The first deed added on fol. 1c/24, Trad. Freising, nr. 527, is an undated conveyance by a priest named Eigil, concerning property and slaves at Tulling. It is in the same hand as nr. 11, but its header is not set off, and it too was not assigned a Renner number. Other than their adjacent positions, there is no obvious connection between the contents of nr. 527 and nr. 11 [11]. The second added deed, Trad. Freising, nr. 1007, is in a much later hand and describes property in Lower Austria belonging to the monastery of St Castulus at Moosburg, so it may be dated to around 895, when nearby Moosburg became a proprietary monastery of Freising. Neither of these additional deeds, nr. 527 and nr. 1007, was subsequently transcribed by Conrad into Codex C.
Conrad’s transcription of nr. 11 in Codex C begins on folio 4v and ends on folio 5r. It is placed between two other early documents, Trad. Freising, nr. 15 ( Codex C, fol. 4r–v ) and nr. 23 ( fol. 5r ), which are transcribed consecutively in Codex A [12]. Neither nr. 15 nor nr. 23 have any other apparent substantive relationship to nr. 11. Conrad’s text agrees with Cozroh’s and ends with a variation of his standard phrase omitting the witness lists, Testes per aures tracti in libro traditionum habentur, which agrees with the wording of Cozroh’s text: Isti testes per aures tracti. As usual, Conrad also omits the scribal attestation. His omission of Trad. Freising, nr. 527 from Codex C may indicate that he consulted Cozroh’s exemplar from 758 rather than the extant copy now in Codex A, but that does not account for Conrad’s summary statement about the witness list, which implies its inclusion in whatever then constituted Codex A.
Fortunately, we can determine the approximate date when the exemplar of Trad. Freising, nr. 11 came into Cozroh’s possession, and also suggest in what manner. This information is provided by the contemporary transcription on folio 1c/24 of Trad. Freising, nr. 527. Theodor Bitterauf, the modern editor of the cartulary, placed nr. 527 in the years 825 to 827, based on the names of the witnesses. The deed also states that the conveyance was made “into the hands of the bishop and his advocatus, Ermper( h )t, and into the capsa of St Mary.” The bishop’s advocatus or lay steward was a layman who served as an episcopal official in legal and other secular proceedings where the bishop as a clergyman could not act [13]. Here, together with bishop Hitto, he took legal possession of the property by the deed and placed it into the chest ( capsa ) where diocesan property documents were kept. There is no other record of Ermperht in that episcopal position, but in February 825, an Ermperht did serve as a sworn juror, a scabinus constitutus, in an important trial when bishop Hitto claimed a priest as a bondsman of St Zeno at Isen; in January 829, an Ermperht stood at the head of the witness list immediately after a Reginperht and a Piligrim, both also known to be episcopal advocati, for bishop Hitto’s purchase of woodlands ( see below ) [14]. Those are both good indications that Ermperht was indeed acting as an official for the bishop in the mid-to-late 820s, just as Bitterauf argued.
With this dating of Cozroh’s transcription, it is also possible to suggest how this early document from bishop Joseph’s pontificate came into Cozroh’s possession. Sixty-nine years after the ceremony at Isen, on 16 March 827, “a certain man named Haholt” also donated all of his inherited property at Bittlbach to Freising [15]. However, he too made an agreement ( convenientia ) with bishop Hitto that he could hold it as a benefice to the end of his life and those of his wife, Perhthild, and of his son, also named Arn. Sometime thereafter at Bittlbach, this later Haholt invested Hitto’s agent ( missus ) with the property there, and “moreover, I, Undeo, unworthy deacon, wrote these deeds in identical wording ( epistulas in uno tenore ) at the command of bishop Hitto and at the request of Haholt.” Evidently then, the scribe, Undeo, made two copies of these new deeds, one of which was retained by Haholt and the other brought to Freising, where it was copied by Cozroh into the new cartulary [16].
There is an additional peculiarity of the 758 deed which has not been noted but may be relevant here. The final clause containing the scribal attestation reads: Hanc traditionis cartulam Heres presbiter conscripsit iussione Josephi episcopi seu rogatione Haholti et filii eius Arnonis traditorum. This form in the third person rather than a statement by the scribe himself in first person with ego is striking and unique. Unfortunately, Conrad’s exclusion of this section precludes information on what he saw in his exemplar. The narrative in the third person may have been added as an explanatory gloss, but it is unlikely that anyone still alive in 827 had also been present in 758, and the information it contains is specific enough to suggest a specific reason. According to the narrative of nr. 11, Arbeo wrote the deed up in 758 at the command of bishop Joseph and the request of Haholt and his son Arn. This is similar to the procedure attested by Undeo in 827. If bishop Joseph’s copy from 758 had still been in the Freising archive, one would have expected Cozroh to copy it with the other deeds from his pontificate and to assign it a Renner number, but that was not the case. However, if the donors, Haholt and Arn, also had retained a copy in 758, possibly this copy containing the original text of Trad. Freising, nr. 11 was produced at Bittlbach in the spring of 827 even though there is no reference to it in the record of the later transaction. Accordingly, the terms of the 758 deed must have been directly relevant to the new agreement in 827.
The document from 758 would then have been available to Cozroh in 827 while he was still working on the first two parts of the cartulary, and his unique use of the third person may indicate that the scribal attestation on his exemplar was either lacking or so illegible as to require a verbal gloss. It is evident from the colored header and ornamental initial to this newly-transcribed document that Cozroh wanted it to be consistent with the attractive appearance of the new cartulary, which was also conceived by bishop Hitto as a liber memorialis of the cathedral’s benefactors [17]. But, for some reason, it was retained separately with Codex A in Freising’s archive where it could have been copied much later by Conrad the Sacristan. Perhaps, the younger Haholt’s “agreement” with bishop Hitto in 827 was an attempt to remedy a legal deficiency, since by the terms of the 758 document the property at Bittlbach from the 758 grant should have reverted entirely to Freising after archbishop Arn’s death in 821. However, it appears to have been inherited by the younger Haholt, but from whom? It seems possible that in 827, bishop Hitto completely ignored the terms of the 758 deed and recognized the right of the younger Haholt’s family to continue enjoying the properties at Bittlbach as an entirely new transaction while quietly suppressing the evidence which might contradict the legality of their tenure [18]. The solemn rite of investiture with the property in 827 which followed at Bittlbach was recorded in great detail with separate and multiple witnesses ostensibly to secure Freising’s future claims against the recurrence of any such lapse.
It is an interesting question whether archbishop Arn himself enabled Haholt’s possibly-questionable tenure at Bittlbach. This later Haholt also named his son Arn, and we do have separate evidence that the archbishop completed another unusual transaction with this later namesake of his father “for their [ mutual ] advantage ( pro eorum oportunitatibus ).” According to the later cartulary copy of a genuine imperial charter for Salzburg, on 16 July 815 at the imperial palace in Paderborn, Emperor Louis confirmed a very substantial property exchange between this later Haholt and his wife, Perhthild, with archbishop Arn acting on behalf of Salzburg [19]. Haholt and his wife granted to Salzburg properties at Emmerting, Feichten, Kraham and ( Kirch- )Anschoring – all places well to the southeast of Bittlbach – and received in return from Salzburg properties ad proprietatem eorum nearer to Bittlbach at Buchbach in the Isen District ( Gau ) and at Buch near ( Alt- )Ötting. Archbishop Arn was then at faraway Paderborn in Saxony for an imperial assembly, where a number of Slav leaders were present, and his use there of the office of the imperial chancellor, Helisachar, to confirm the exchange indicates an extraordinary need to secure this transaction with a man who may even have been in his entourage [20]. The charter does not indicate any relationship between them, but the striking identity through two generations of personal names suggests that kinship was a probable element of the transaction. It is difficult to be precise in comparing the extent of the two sets of properties, but, on the face of it, the archbishop seems to have had the advantage [21].
In fact, there is a fourth act to this remarkable string of transactions. On 24 February 845 “a noble man and abbot by the name of Arn” came to bishop Erchanbert at the village of Dorfen and “reminded” ( ammonens ) him of the conveyance which his father Haholt had made for Bittlbach in 827 [22]. On the next day they met at nearby “Tegarinwac”, and abbot Arn approached the chest ( capsam ) of St Mary, renewed the conveyance of his parents ( parentorum suorum ), and added to it whatever he had by right of inheritance in the place [23]. In return, he received back from bishop Erchanbert whatever his parents had previously conveyed in that place as a benefice for a rent ( censum ) of four shillings in silver payable yearly at the feast of St Martin ( 11 November ). As an indication of the importance, the aged monk and scribe Cozroh, himself, “seeing and hearing these exchanges” wrote the deed and subscribed to it, and copies were entered both into Codex A ( fol. 359v ) and also into the new Codex B ( fol. 251v ) in a small dossier of documents transcribed during bishop Waldo’s much later pontificate ( s. 883–906; see next ). Evidently, after almost a century, Freising was still not in full possession of the property at Bittlbach, and Haholt’s descendants continued to enjoy it, enabled by bishop Hitto and his nephew and successor, bishop Erchanbert. The annual payment of rent would, however, keep alive the memory of Freising’s ultimate claim to possession until abbot Arn’s passing, presumably without direct heirs.
The small dossier in Codex B containing the duplicate of abbot Arn’s renewal of his father’s conveyance occupies only three folios ( 251r–253v ), and concludes the main section of bishop Waldo’s ‘Liber commutationum’ ( folios 20–101 ), from which it is widely separated in the present volume [24]. The content of this small dossier is also quite different from the main body, since, unlike the bulk of the volume, it has no contemporary deeds of exchange ( commutationes ) and contains four other Freising deeds which likewise long predate bishop Waldo’s pontificate, three of which are not recorded in Codex A:
nr. 473: 822, 251r: Settlement regarding property at Assling; not in Codex A [25]
nr. 669: 845, 251v: Abbot Arn’s renewal for Bittlbach; also in Codex A, fol. 359v
nr. 171: 794, 252r–v: Conveyance of Hrimcrim to Schlehdorf; not in Codex A
nr. 352: 815, 252v–253r: Abbreviated conveyance of bishop Hitto and his sister, Cotesdiu, of a church at “Haholfeshusir”; complete deed in Codex A, fol. 202v–203v with witness list and dating clause following Actum
nr. 674: 845, 253r–v: Heilrat’s provision of maternal property for her grandson Hitto; not in Codex A
It is difficult to identify a unifying factor amongst these deeds, although Bitterauf did point out, no doubt correctly, that the position of nr. 352 seems to indicate the identity of the ipsam rem referred to in nr. 674 [26]. However, it is notable that three of the five deeds explicitly involved bishop Hitto and his family: his sister Cotesdiu, her son, Kernand, and her daughter, Heilrat, Heilrat’s daughter, Perhta, and Perhta’s son, Hitto, by her husband, Willihelm [27]. It is also notable that, according to nr. 352, in November 815, the same year that the younger Haholt and his wife made their exchange with archbishop Arn, bishop Hitto established a church on his paternal inheritance at “Haholfeshusir” which his sister Cotesdiu, along with her daughter, Heilrat, then endowed as a memorial for Cotesdiu’s son, Kernand, who had died in Italy. Indeed, in 829 when Ermperht witnessed for the bishop’s purchase of woodlands ( Trad. Freising, nr. 580; see above ), that transaction was completed at “Haholfeshusun” where Hitto himself was staying at the time. It seems possible then that copies of these deeds were kept either by Heilrat herself or her grandson, Hitto, and passed after their deaths into the cathedral archive where they were copied into the final section of bishop Waldo’s register [28]. The subsequent Freising deeds provide no evidence that young Hitto did proceed to ordination as a priest and serve the cathedral as stipulated in the deed ( see below ), but under bishop Erchanbert the witness lists no longer regularly include clergy present at the conveyances, which much reduces our knowledge of the cathedral personnel.
The identity of bishop Hitto’s hereditary patrimony at “Haholfeshusun”, which bears the patronymic of the two proprietors at Bittlbach, may be relevant. In January 829, while bishop Atto and his scribe Cozroh were both at “Haholfeshusun”, Cozroh himself recorded the purchase of woodlands at Geisenhausen “which adjoin the woodlands of abbot Isker.” [29] The modern village of Holzhausen, evidently Hitto’s “Haholfeshusun”, lies only seven kilometers southeast of Geisenhausen. Abbot Isker, who at this time was probably abbot of the small foundation of Ilmmünster and possibly later abbot of Tegernsee, would have been well known to Hitto as a fellow high cleric and neighbor [30]. Thus, a man with the same name as the two Haholts had substantial properties in the area northwest of Freising, as well as in southeastern Bavaria and in the area around Isen. However, we do not know which Haholf/t – if either – was the patronym of “Haholfeshusun”. We also know that this person was related in some close way to bishop Hitto, because Hitto was quite clear that he built his church at Holzhausen “on his own inheritance [ … ] which fell to him from the share of his father ( eum obvenit de parte genitoris sui )”, who may even have been its patronym [31]. An early Haholf was evidently dead by 794 when bishop Atto ( s. 783–811 ) allowed his son, Pernolf, a share in his father’s donation at Laimbach, located only twelve kilometers southwest of Holzhausen, an agreement which was witnessed by another Haholf [32]. From 806 to 815 a Haholt or Haholf occurs regularly in the Freising witness lists, which indicates a close and continued attachment to the bishop, and this could be the same person with whom archbishop Arn made his extensive property exchange in 815 and whom Hitto allowed to continue at Bittlbach in 827 [33].
These scattered evidences all suggest some relationship between bishop Hitto and a Haholf/Haholt, and a more complete understanding of Hitto’s family might be helpful in completing our investigation of archbishop Arn’s own origins. Fortunately, there are several studies which address various aspects of Hitto’s relationships [34]. Aside from Freising deeds, much of what we know about his family is encapsulated in two lists of the ‘Nomina Fratrum de Frisigingun’ that his nephew and successor, bishop Erchanbert, prepared around 850 for inclusion in the great memorial book of the Reichenau monastery. As Karl Schmid pointed out long ago, we would normally expect these lists to be composed of, respectively, the living and the dead clerical members of the episcopal familia [35]. Rather, in Schmid’s words, “so sind wir nicht wenig erstaunt” that they are composed largely of lay men and women and “bilden eine gewiß merkwürdige Brüdergemeinschaft der Freisinger Bischofskirche!” ( p. 560 ). Moreover, several of those persons were closely related to bishops Hitto and his nephew and successor, bishop Erchanbert: Hitto’s sister, Cotesdiu, her children Kernand and Heilrat, Heilrat’s daughter, Bertha, with her husband, Willihelm, and their son, Hitto [36]. Two Reginberts are also particularly prominent in the list of the living fratres. One must be Erchanbert’s nephew, whom he promoted to the chapel royal and tried, unsuccessfully, to introduce at Freising as his own successor [37]. Also present is an Anthelm laicus, Reginbert’s brother, even though he may have fallen into disfavor with his uncle [38]. Schmid concluded that “[ d ]ie Wirklichkeit, die in der Sorge der Bischöfe für ihre Verwandtschaft zutage tritt, ist nicht zu verkennen” ( p. 563 ), a concern which included reserving the episcopal office itself through ‘nepotism’ [39].
Bishop Erchanbert’s demonstrative attention to family solidarity and its memoria in the Reichenau entries is an extraordinary witness. Schmid and others have concentrated largely on explicating Hitto’s male relations, but the Reichenau list also provides interesting evidence of the importance of women amongst Hitto’s relationships. The fratres defuncti include a Kerhilt and a Wago clericus. In 823, Wago, who was then the episcopal chaplain, made an important donation including property at “Kerhiltahusun” or “Kerhilt’s Residence”, modern Gerlhausen about ten kilometers east of Holzhausen [40]. Villages usually bore patronymic names, but there are occasional ‘matronymics’, which appear to memorialize particularly notable women [41]. It is indeed quite striking that bishop Hitto’s sister, Cotesdiu, and particularly her daughter, Heilrat, have notably high profiles in the Freising deeds as well as in Erchanbert’s memorial list of the living ‘brothers’ of Freising [42]. One might even be inclined to think that bishop Erchanbert was Cotesdiu’s son and the disappointed Reginbert, Heilrat’s, although there is no explicit evidence for either relationship.
Moreover, as in Arn’s family, their deeds provide evidence for the maintenance of family ties in Hitto’s family through repetition of entire names ( Nachbenennung ), which was less common in contemporary onomastic practice than variation of individual name elements. In bishop Hitto’s deed of 815, his sister, Cotesdiu, made provision for any son of her deceased son, Kernand, in Italy “if it happens that his son ( genitus eius ) should proceed to the land of his father ( patriam ) and there desire to claim his father’s property ( alodem ).” [43] In 834 Cotesdiu’s daughter, Heilrat, a humillima ancilla Christi, made a gift for her own soul, her mother and father, and for her brother, Kernand, where we learn that Heilrat had a “most dear son [ … ] whom I have adopted as a son of my brother called [ also ] by the name of Kernand”, who was to hold both that property and another given her as a benefice by the bishop as his own benefice after her death on condition of paying an annual rent of 12d. to the cathedral [44].
Heilrat evidently also had several sons and daughters of her own, and in 845, as an ancilla dei, she made particular provision for the son of her daughter, Perhta, by Perhta’s husband Willihelm, a grandson whom “the aforesaid Heilrat herself, inflamed by the love of her maternal uncle ( avunculus ), bishop Hitto, also called him Hitto.” [45] Heilrat came with her daughters and other faithful companions to bishop Erchanbert, perhaps her own brother, and made an agreement, by which this younger Hitto was to have the family property in “Haholfeshusir”, previously donated in 815 “if he advanced in clerical office and attained the priestly rank”, for which, as noted above, there is no evidence [46]. Her provision for young Hitto was possible because in 834, Heilrat evidently had already cleared Kernand’s prior claims on the property in “Haholfeshusir”. Heilrat, like her mother, Cotesdiu, her uncle Hitto, and her brother or cousin, Erchanbert, was an attentive and assiduous promotor of their family’s welfare and its traditions.
Heilrat’s name itself is possibly significant. The name is not common and is one of those names that could be borne by either a man or a woman. It was noted earlier that when Haholt made his donation in 758 to Isen and dedicated his son, Arn, this was done together with his wife who, however, was unnamed in the deed. Surprisingly, in the witness list to the deed, the first person ‘tugged by the ears’ was a Heilrat, and six years earlier, in 752 Haholt and Heilrat stood together at the end of the witness list for another donation to Isen amongst a small group of early Freising benefactors [47]. Heilrat occurs one other time as a laicus testis in 765 [48].
There are three clusters of evidence linking the families of archbishop Arn and bishop Hitto:
Hitto’s inheritance from his father at Haholfeshusir
Hitto’s apparently irregular handling of Haholt’s original deed of 758 and Freising’s property at Bittlbach in favor of the younger Haholt’s family and the continued concession by Hitto’s nephew, Bishop Erchanbert, to abbot Arn
The preferences in both families for Nachbenennung: Haholt, Arn, Kernand, Hitto, and the recurrence of the distinctive name Heilrat in close association with the older Haholt and as Hitto’s niece
This putative connection is, admittedly, not conclusive, but it is also interesting that the husband of Heilrat’s daughter Perhta was named Willihelm, because a Willihelm witnessed Haholt’s deed of 758, and in 769 a priest named Willihelm donated inherited property at Bittlbach to Isen [49]. If there was some genealogical relationship between bishop Hitto and archbishop Arn, the female line through Cotesdiu and Heilrat may have played a significant role [50]. But it is also notable that bishop Erchanbert does not seem to have taken any account of Arn in his memorial lists.
Hitto’s pontificate at Freising overlapped for a decade with Arn’s, from 812 to 821. Bishop Hitto first occurs securely dated as a deacon in 794, which means that he must have been born by about 770 at the latest, and he does not seem to occur as a clericus earlier than 790 [51]. Thus, his early clerical career at Freising did not overlap with Arn, who already around 778 had left Freising for the monastery of St Amand. The notable thing about Hitto’s career was his long and apparently continuous service as a deacon in the cathedral familia through May 811 before occurring first as bishop in April 812 [52]. He never occurs in the Freising deeds as a priest, so his ordination must have preceded his consecration very closely. We know from a deed settling a property dispute that, apparently in the year 811, archbishop Arn was at Freising for a metropolitan synod in publico conventu episcoporum seu abbatum, [ et ] comitum, together with his other suffragans, including bishop Atto of Freising, who died on 27 September of that year [53]. We do not know the other agenda of this metropolitan synod, but it might have provided the occasion for Hitto’s ordination to the priesthood and even agreement on succession to the bishopric.
From his elevation as archbishop in 798, Arn was actively engaged in introducing Carolingian church reforms in his archdiocese, and Hitto’s pontificate was clearly supportive of that agenda [54]. Cozroh’s well-known encomium of his bishop in the Prologue to his cartulary describes Hitto as an exemplary reform bishop, and his nephew, Erchanbert, continued the work [55]. The identification and segregation of monks from secular clergy and their subjection to the Benedictine Rule was a major part of Arn’s reform efforts as archbishop, and he would have been looking for a trusted and vigorous partner in the diocese of Freising. Hitto’s very first deed as bishop, dated 23 April 812, is also the first in which eight Freising monks are placed as a separate ordo at the head of the cathedral clergy; the identification of at least five as presbiter et monachus indicates the importance of the memorial functions also incorporated into Cozroh’s cartulary.
The five major synods held across the Frankish empire in the year after Hitto’s consecration, 813, underscored the urgency of the reform program and, perhaps, its particular salience for Arn [56]. If Deacon Hitto were known to archbishop Arn as a trusted kinsman as well as a faithful cleric in the cathedral familia under Atto, that would have been a solid recommendation for promoting him to the newly-vacant bishopric. Kinship was a persuasive consideration within a society which placed an exceptionally high value on family relations and where effectiveness in office required a high level of personal stature. In his extensive study of ecclesiastical nepotism, Klaus Schreiner noted that “prominent origins both promised and guaranteed good execution of office; for that reason, there was no cause to raise objections when noble candidates for office were advantaged by their relatives.” [57] Nor do the extensive acta of the reforming synods of 813 give any indication that episcopal nepotism was considered a pressing problem.
In her interesting review of episcopal and priestly nepotism at Freising, Geneviève Bührer-Thierry has rightly drawn attention to the preamble of Heilrat’s remarkable deed of 845 in favor of her grandson Hitto which was composed by Cozroh at the direction ( iussione ) of bishop Erchanbert:
Felici migratione defunctis Hittone episcopo et sororis sue [ sic ] Cotesdiu aliisque cognatis eorum, honorifice in ipsam sedem Frigisingensis ecclesie ordinatus est Erchanbertus episcopus qui hoc magne pietatis debito promeruit cathedram episcopalem possidere [58].
This is clearly programmatic for Erchanbert’s entry in the Reichenau Liber Memorialis, which identifies by name the aliisque cognatis eorum referred to in the deed. Particularly striking is the claim that Erchanbert’s consecration was not due to any personal merit, but rather that “he deserved ( promeruit ) to possess the episcopal seat” as a result of hoc magne pietatis debito, which appears to be an assertion of family solidarity and the privileges of kinship.
The term pietas is, of course, a word with a long history and powerful associations. But, although quite apposite to the memorial intent of the Freising cartulary, it occurs only rarely in the Freising deeds and then most often in the common sense of divine pietas, that is, benevolence or mercy, as is the case in Haholt’s deed of 758 [59]. In classical Latin pietas meant the fulfillment of customary and cultic duties towards one’s family and the gods as well as one’s country, and this sense of pietas as an obligation was preserved in patristic literature [60]. That might be the meaning here: either that Hitto had an obligation ( debitum ) out of pietas to promote Erchanbert, or that Erchanbert was obliged to become bishop by the great pietas which he held towards his family and which he then expressed in his liturgical memorial. But it could also mean that the great pietas of his family towards Freising was the cause of his entitlement to the bishop’s seat. As Schreiner pointed out, it was in the interest of the church to enjoy the patronage of important families and to be governed by a person of stature, who had the authority to rule its secular lordship and represent its interests in an aristocratic society and polity. Familial pietas was, thus, considered mutually beneficial to the family and to the church. Even modern charities which are dependent on a few patrons and large donors may practice something similar.
The deed itself affirms that Erchanbert’s ascent was secured honorifice, just as it proclaims the enabling familial circumstances publicly. Bishop Erchanbert in turn no doubt wished to exercise similar pietas towards his nephew, Reginbert, whose apparent shortcomings, however, may have frustrated any efforts on his behalf [61]. Thus, pietas evidently had limits. But there could have been no question about Hitto’s competence, and any influence exercised by archbishop Arn to secure a kinsman’s elevation to the bishopric of Freising would have been regarded positively as an honorable exercise of pietas. Similarly, a sense of reciprocal pietas may have informed bishops Hitto and Erchanbert in their obliging treatment of the two younger Arns with regard to the property at Bittlbach. This all may have been nepotism, but it need not have been perceived as prejudicial to the church.
© 2022 bei den Autoren, publiziert von De Gruyter.
Dieses Werk ist lizensiert unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung - Nicht-kommerziell - Keine Bearbeitung 4.0 International Lizenz.
