The goal of my paper will be try to investigate the dependency relationships inside the monastic lordship of Monte Cassino, a lordship at the gateway of South of Italy, between the Twelfth and Thirteenth century. The Southern Italy’s lordships are in fact at the center of new studies that are ...
(Show more)The goal of my paper will be try to investigate the dependency relationships inside the monastic lordship of Monte Cassino, a lordship at the gateway of South of Italy, between the Twelfth and Thirteenth century. The Southern Italy’s lordships are in fact at the center of new studies that are highlighting the particularities of the relations between lords and subjects inside of them .
In the context of a territorial lordship that covered a compact territory, the Terra Sancti Benedicti, the dependency relations appeared complex and articulated. Territorial, land and personal power were in fact overlapping, creating relationships on various levels: between the abbot, a territorial lord, and his vassals with land and special privileges, called franci and often with the status of milites; between the abbot and his subjects of the various centers of the lordship, called homines, angarii, rustici or populares; between the franci or milites, holders of a dominium, vassals or not of the abbot, and the homines that were subjected to their domain and also to the abbot.
An example of the complex picture of which I speak is given by the Charta of Pontecorvo, released to this castle in 1190 by the abbot Roffredo. The charta informs us of the powers of milites of the Pontecorvo on other inhabitants of the castle and it regulates the framework of personal dependencies inside and alongside an organic domination, the abbot’s one.
So the Franchigia circumscribes the rights of the milites, making public new aspects of their domain and it is aimed mainly to the populares of Pontecorvo, a diversified group, with members subjected only to the abbot, and others also under the domain of the milites. Here are established the relationships with the monastic lordship and the relations between a miles and a homo subjected to his power.
The charta announces the violent relations between the milites and their subjects, the legal and economic solidarity between the abbot and his subject, the attempts of government and the limitations imposed by the milites to their homines, but it is silent on a range of information such as the ordinary relationships between a dominus and his homo, the detail of the issues related to the withdrawal and its distribution, the granting of lands, the forms in which it was sanctioned and legitimized the subjection.
Other sources, and in particular the abbots’ registers of the late Thirteenth century, will give us these information.
So how was managed this complex network of relationships within the monastic lordship? How acted the abbot with those who had a dominium in his lordship? What were the nature of the relations of dependency and what opportunities they offered? What about the relationships between the abbot and the subjects without privileges and submitted only to him or also under the power of the milites? What about the practices related to the withdrawal and to justice? Did all these relationships change over time and how?
I will try to answer, even if partially, to these questions.
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