Magdeburg Call 1108

The letter for help against the pagans is a manuscript probably from 1107 or 1108 in Latin . The Archbishop of Magdeburg and some other East German bishops allegedly ask bishops and nobles from western areas for help against the barbaric pagan Slavs. The church is to be rebuilt in their area.

The character of this letter is unclear, it was probably not an official document. It was not mentioned in any other source of the time. There are also no known events that would have resulted from it.

content

Archbishop Adalgot of Magdeburg , the bishops of Merseburg, Naumburg, Meißen, Havelberg and Brandenburg ask some bishops, clergy and counts in the Rhineland, Lorraine and Flanders to help end the atrocities against Christians in the Slavic areas. They are promised fertile lands. A collection point is given in Merseburg.

The letter is written in the tradition of the crusade idea, connected with claims of some bishops and nobles to areas east of the Elbe.

Alleged senders

Alleged recipient

Bishop Reinhard von Halberstadt
Abbot Erkenbert von Corvey
Bishop Heinrich of Paderborn
Bishop of Minden
Archbishop Friedrich of Cologne
.. from Aachen
Bishop Otbert of Liege
Duke Gottfried of Lower Lorraine
Count Robert of Flanders
Archdeacon Lambert (from Tournai)
Provost Berthold (from Bruges)
Tankred (from Tournai and Bruges)

time

The letter does not indicate a date. The people mentioned refer to a period between 1107 and 1108.

Archbishop Adalgot von Magdeburg and Bishop Reinhard von Halberstadt took office in the spring of 1107.
Provost Adalbert von Aachen was probably not installed until 1108, his name is not yet on the list.
King Heinrich V only stayed in Saxony for a longer period between 1106 and 1109
Count Robert II of Flanders died in 1111.
The meeting point of the troops should be on the Saturday of the prayer week before Pentecost. King Heinrich signed the deed in Merseburg on May 30, 1108, so the meeting could have taken place this year.

The appeal could have been written at the beginning of 1108 or at the end of 1107.

If the letter is a forgery from a later time, the names in question would be very exact for this period.

Official document?

The introduction to the letter in this form is unusual for medieval conditions, and the order of addressees does not follow their rank, but a geographical order of distance. Since the letter was not mentioned anywhere else and no actions related to it have been passed down at that time, the letter was probably not an official document of the bishops.

What it was made for and for what purpose the copy was preserved is unclear. In research there is still no conclusive explanation, it is probably a draft. An exercise in style was also considered in the early interpretations.

author

It is still not clear in which office or in which scriptorium the letter was written. Since Count Robert of Flanders was the only one to be called gloriosissimus ( very famous ) and three lower- ranking Flemish clergymen were named, whose names were probably not known in the East Saxon region, a Flemish clergyman is assumed to be the scribe.

Handwriting

A copy of the text has been preserved. This is located in the University and State Library Darmstadt , Hs. 749 ff. 86v – 88v. Before that she was in the Grafschaft monastery in the Sauerland.

Editions

Latin

Wilhelm Wattenbach : Handwritten . In: New archive of the society for older German history . Volume 7. 1882. pp. 624-626.
Paul Fridolin Kehr : Document book of the Hochstift Merseburg. Part I. Hall a. S., 1899. pp. 75-77 No. 91.
Friedrich Israel, Walter Möllenberg : Document book of the Archbishopric Magdeburg. Part 1. Magdeburg 1937. pp. 249-252 No. 193.

Latin and German

Herbert Helbig , Lorenz Weinrich : Documents and narrative sources on the German East Settlement in the Middle Ages., (= Selected Sources. Volume 26/1) Volume 1. Darmstadt 1968. P. 96-103.
Lutz Partenheimer : The emergence of the Mark Brandenburg . Böhlau, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2007. pp. 115–121.

German

Peter Knoch : Crusade and Settlement. Studies on the call of the Magdeburg Church from 1108. In: Yearbook for the history of Central and Eastern Germany. Volume 23, 1974. pp. 1-33, here pp. 4-6.
George Adalbert von Mülverstedt : Regesta Episcopatus Magdeburgensis . Theil 1. Magdeburg 1876. pp. 348f. shortened and slightly changed transmission (regest)

literature

Helmut Beumann : Crusade Thought and Ostpolitik in the High Middle Ages. In: Heidenmission and Crusade Thought in the German Ostpolitik of the Middle Ages . Darmstadt 1963. pp. 129-135.
Peter Knoch : Crusade and Settlement. Studies on the call of the Magdeburg Church from 1108. In: Yearbook for the history of Central and Eastern Germany . Volume 23, 1974. pp. 1-33.
Giles Constable : The Place of the Magdeburg Charter of 1107/08 in the History of Eastern Germany and of the Crusades. In: FJ Felten, Nicolas Jaspert (ed.): Vita Religiosa in the Middle Ages. Festschrift for Kaspar Elm on his 70th birthday. (= Berlin historical studies, 31 / Ordensstudien, 13) Berlin 1999. pp. 293–299. expanded in
Giles Constable: Early Crusading in Eastern Germany: The Magdeburg Charter of 1107/08 . In: Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century . Farnham 2008. pp. 197-214 . The latest publication on the topic with a detailed presentation of the state of research

Web links

Epistola pro auxilio adversos paganos Repertory "Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages"

Remarks

↑ cf. Peter Neumeister: The Slavic Osteseekust in the area of tension between neighboring powers. In: Ole Harck, Christian Lübke (ed.): Between Reric and Bornhöved. Relations between the Danes and their Slavic neighbors from the 9th to the 13th centuries. Contributions to an international conference, Leipzig, 4. – 6. December 1997 (= research on the history and culture of Eastern Central Europe. 11). Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07671-9 . Pp. 37–56, here pp. 40f.
↑ No name is registered, Bishop Gottschalk resided in Minden as a member of the Pope's partisan, who was not accepted by the local East Saxon princes, whose opposing Bishop Widelo could not assert himself.
↑ No name is entered, there was apparently no abbot in Aachen at that time, or the name had not yet reached Saxony, Adalbert was first mentioned in 1108.
↑ Discussed in detail with Michael Tangl : The appeal of the bishops of the Magdeburg church province to help against the Slavs from the beginning of the 12th century. In: New archive of the society for older German history . Volume 30. 1905. pp. 183-191, here pp. 188f. (pdf), he is essentially followed by later research, most recently Giles Constable : Early Crusading in Eastern Germany: The Magdeburg Charter of 1107/08 . In: Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century . Farnham 2008. pp. 197-224 , especially pp. 198ff.

[1] . Peter Neumeister: The Slavic Osteseekust in the area of tension between neighboring powers. In: Ole Harck, Christian Lübke (ed.): Between Reric and Bornhöved. Relations between the Danes and their Slavic neighbors from the 9th to the 13th centuries. Contributions to an international conference, Leipzig, 4. – 6. December 1997 (= research on the history and culture of Eastern Central Europe. 11). Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07671-9 . Pp. 37–56, here pp. 40f.

[2] No name is registered, Bishop Gottschalk resided in Minden as a member of the Pope's partisan, who was not accepted by the local East Saxon princes, whose opposing Bishop Widelo could not assert himself.

[3] No name is entered, there was apparently no abbot in Aachen at that time, or the name had not yet reached Saxony, Adalbert was first mentioned in 1108.

[4] Discussed in detail with Michael Tangl : The appeal of the bishops of the Magdeburg church province to help against the Slavs from the beginning of the 12th century. In: New archive of the society for older German history . Volume 30. 1905. pp. 183-191, here pp. 188f. (pdf), he is essentially followed by later research, most recently Giles Constable : Early Crusading in Eastern Germany: The Magdeburg Charter of 1107/08 . In: Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century . Farnham 2008. pp. 197-224 , especially pp. 198ff.