6 - MONASTERIES IN THE SAXON–HESSIAN BORDER REGION

Summary

RIVER BASINS AS A GEOPOLITICAL SETTING

In the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, one can discern a general Ottonian policy of securing the approaches and the river crossings along the upper Weser and the lower Fulda and Werra Rivers which led to the main routes connecting Saxony to the middle Rhine and to eastern Franconia, Bavaria and Italy through Thuringia. The Ottonian rulers gradually brought these approaches and fords directly or indirectly within royal influence. The foundation of several abbeys, Helmarshausen — a royal monastery — and three royal convents — Hilwartshausen, Kaufungen and Eschwege — can be linked to this general policy. All of these royal abbeys were located in an area containing large royal forests and some royal property, considerable parts of which the Carolingian royal monasteries of Fulda, Hersfeld and Corvey, administered for the realm. In the same area, however, the indigenous nobility also owned considerable amounts of allodial property interspersed between these large complexes of royal forest and scattered royal properties. For example, the foundation endowment and later property grants for Hilwartshausen, and grants for Helmarshausen, originated almost exclusively from the allodial possessions of the Saxon nobility. However, the noble founders of both abbeys quickly turned to the king to protect their religious foundations from the property claims of their kinsfolk. Consequently, both Hilwartshausen and Helmarshausen offered a method for the Ottonian kings to strengthen and extend their influence in an area already containing substantial royal holdings without initially granting royal property to the new foundations.