4 - MONASTERIES IN THE SAXON HEARTLAND

Summary

DEFINITION AND DELINEATION

Eastern Saxony, the Harz region and northern Thuringia formed an area containing the bases of the Saxon kings' personal and political power. From these areas the kings normally began their continual peregrinations through the realm, that is the series itionis. After these journeys they normally returned to this same area to rest, renew their strength, celebrate important religious feasts, or hunt in one of their favourite forests or game preserves. Only gradually, beginning with Henry II, the last Saxon king, and continuing under the first three Salian kings, did Saxony's dominant place in the royal itinerary begin to diminish, and then only slightly. Not until after the revolt of the Saxon nobility in 1073 did the amount and duration of royal presence in Saxony, the intensity of royal government there and Saxony's predominance in the royal itinerary decline to a point approaching the norm in other regna of the realm.

The particular political and economic structure of the Saxon heartlands along with a small number of direct references to the servitium regis in the tenth- and eleventh-century sources for this region complicates any discussion of the obligation of the royal monasteries in Saxony to provide accommodation for the king or to pay an economic servitium for the upkeep of the royal court. This area contained the rich patrimony of the royal family, the Liudolfings, the Carolingian fiscal properties granted to them in the late ninth century or taken over by them upon their entrance to the kingship, and many familial, royal and aristocratic monastic foundations.