Billing (Saxony)

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Billing (attested 937–966, † probably 967) was a Saxon great . He was long considered the progenitor of the Billunger family .

Although Billing in 937 in an entry in the Reichenau fraternization book initiated by Count Christian and from 944 to 968 in eight documents from Otto I , another document from his son Otto II and even a document from Pope John XII. is mentioned, its ancestry is unclear. Mostly an origin from the eastern Thuringia is assumed, because the majority of his possessions were on the Unstrut near Bibra . There he founded at an unknown time before April 24, 963 a monastery dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul and John the Baptist and maintained a castle ( castellum ). Billing was married to a woman from the area around Göttingen, who was not known by name . The marriage seems to have remained childless, because after Billing's death the goods he had exchanged had to be returned from the woman's dowry. Apparently, the woman's male relatives reclaimed the family property due to a missing heir. The Corveyer traditions mention soon after the year 963 a billing that his brother Bernhardus possession in the unidentified place Sashelmeshusen transfers.

During the uprising against Otto I. 937-941 Billing stood on the side of the rebels around Otto's brother Heinrich . This emerges from a certificate issued by Otto I on September 19, 944 in Bothfeld. At the instigation of his brother Heinrich I, Otto I returned Billung's possessions, including churches and all accessories, which had been confiscated as a punishment. Accordingly, Billing would have been punished relatively mildly for his participation in the conspiracy against the king. Because according to an entry in the Quedlinburg annals for the year 941, the conspirators Erich (father of the later Bishop Hildeward von Halberstadt ), Reinward, Varin, Ascheric, Bacco and Hermon had been executed. Gerd Althoff , citing a message from Thietmar von Merseburg about the sparing of his grandfather Lothar II von Walbeck, took the view that they did not belong to the inner leadership circle.

From 952 Billing acquired goods from Otto I. through an exchange deal in the Gau Neletici around Halle, where he also exercised count rights from 963 at the latest. Initially, Billing was referred to as Otto I's vassal in a document from 952, and in the following year as Otto I as a knight ( miles ). Nevertheless, the relationship between Billings and Otto I seems to have remained tense. On April 24, 963, the exemption for the Bibra monastery by Pope John XII. was probably made with the intention of preventing Otto I's plan to found an Archdiocese of Magdeburg or at least making it more difficult. With the direct subordination of the Bibra monastery to the immediate power of the Pope, it was withdrawn from being incorporated into the newly founded church province. After Billing's death, the monastery was immediately placed under the archbishopric at the instigation of Otto I. In contrast, Gertraud Eva Schrage interprets the sequence of titles used for Billing in the royal documents as an increase in rank and concludes from this that Billing initially made a career under Otto I after changing sides. An alienation between Billing and the ruler only came later.

In 967, the Annales Corbeienses recorded the death of a cheap . On May 26th, the memorial entry for Count Billing, who died on that day, but who is said to be a different person , can be found in the necrology of the Church of St. Michael in Lüneburg .

Based on a corresponding entry in the house chronicle of the St. Michael Monastery in Lüneburg from the period between 1229 and 1233, the archivist of the St. Michaelis Monastery in Lüneburg, Anton Christian Wedekind , came to the conclusion in the 19th century that Billing was the father of Hermann Billungs and thus the progenitor of the Billunger. As proof of the accuracy of the chronicle, Wedekind cited Count Billing, who was entered in the Lüneburg Necrolog on May 26th, as well as other, partly forged documents from the 17th century. Today the descent of Hermann Billung von Billing is generally considered to be excluded due to the almost identical lifetime, even if extensive relationships between one another are considered possible.

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literature

Web links

Original of Otto I's deed of gift dated June 26, 952 for Billing (Dresden, Main State Archives) in the LBA Marburg

Remarks

  1. ↑ On this entry Gerd Althoff : Amicitiae and Pacta. Alliance, unification, politics and prayer commemoration in the beginning of the 10th century (= Monumenta Germaniae historica. Volume 37). Hahn, Hannover 1992, ISBN 3-7752-5437-4 , p. 149.
  2. ↑ Commentary on the documents by Rudolf Köpke / Ernst Dümmler : Emperor Otto the Great. Darmstadt 1962, reprint of the 1st edition, Leipzig 1876, pp. 573-574.
  3. ↑ Reinhard Wenskus : The early ownership and rule in the Göttingen area. In: Dietrich Denecke (Ed.): Göttingen: From the beginnings to the end of the Thirty Years' War. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3-525-36196-3 , pp. 12–30, here p. 16.
  4. ↑ Reinhard Wenskus: The early ownership and rule in the Göttingen area. In: Dietrich Denecke (Ed.): Göttingen: From the beginnings to the end of the Thirty Years' War. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3-525-36196-3 , pp. 12–30, here p. 17.
  5. ^ DO I, 60.
  6. ↑ Thietmar von Merseburg, Chronicon, ed. by Robert Holtzmann (MGH SS rer. Germ. NS 9), Hahn, 2nd edition Berlin 1955, II, 14.
  7. ↑ Gerd Althoff : Otto the Great and the new European identity. in: Andreas Ranft (Ed.): The Hoftag in Quedlinburg 973: from the historical roots to the New Europe. DeGruyter, Berlin 2006, pp. 3–18, here p. 15.
  8. ^ DO I., 152.
  9. ↑ Hans Goetting : The Exemtionsprivilegien Pope Johanns XII. for Gernrode and Bibra. In: Hans Hirsch offered as a festive offering on his 60th birthday. Wagner, 1939, pp. 71-82.
  10. ^ Gertraud Eva Schrage: On the settlement policy of the Ottonians. Studies on the integration of the areas east of the Saale in the 10th century. In: sheets for German national history. Vol. 135, 1999, pp. 189-268, here pp. 220-221. ( Digitized version ).
  11. ↑ Chronicon Sancti Michaelis Luneburgensis in: MGH SS 23, 1874, pp. 391-397 here p. 391: filio comitis Billingi .
  12. ^ Anton Christian Wedekind : Notes on some historians of the German Middle Ages. Volume 2. Perthes and Besser, Hannover 1835, p. 227.
  13. ↑ Caspar Ehlers : The integration of Saxony into the Frankish empire. (751–1024) (= publications of the Max Planck Institute for History. Vol. 231). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-35887-0 , p. 178.
personal data
SURNAME Billing
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Count
DATE OF BIRTH 9th century or 10th century
DATE OF DEATH 967