Religious Exemption, Justice, and Territories around the Year 1000: The Forgeries of Worms

Abstract

While immunities were perhaps the most important form of religious exemption in the medieval West throughout the Middle Ages, they have not been studied extensively for the period around the turn of the millennium. This paper treats immunities from the perspective of the institutions that received them, drawing on the example of the bishops of Worms in southwestern Germany. Two questions are asked: 1) What did institutions expect from receiving immunities? 2) Can we tell if they had consequences in practice? The unique sources from Worms – a dossier of forged or interpolated royal charters created by Bishop Hildibald of Worms (978-998), and numerous documents connected to his successor Burchard (1000-1025) – make it possible to study these questions in depth. Hildibald’s charters were one important starting point in the redrawing of regional power structures in favour of the church of Worms and thus its developing territorial lordship. In part, they expanded property and immunity rights, but Hildibald’s forgeries were mostly concerned with specifying and defining the terms of immunity that his church already possessed in face of regional competition by the monastery of Lorsch and by the Salian dukes and counts. This suggests that practical advantages in terms of income and power were what made immunities interesting for a church. Hildibald’s successor Burchard used his close ties to Emperor Henry II to achieve a large degree of independence from these regional political powers, relying in part on Hildibald’s forged charters. As a result of this, the counts’ powers in and around Worms were all but abolished, and judicial matters lay in the hand of the bishop. These changes in the regional power structure were accompanied by outbreaks of violence, which were countered by the emperor’s intervention and the promulgation of new laws by the bishop.