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Conflict, Letters, and Personal Relationships in the Carolingian Formula Collections

WARREN BROWN


Over the last few decades, scholarship on early medieval conflict has been driven and shaped by the kinds of sources that scholars have used.1 The different source genres offer their own characteristic pictures of the ways that people processed disputes in the early Middle Ages. Narrative sources, for example, such as chronicles or saints' lives, tend in the process of achieving their narrative or hagiographic goals to highlight violence, extra-judicial settlement, and the ritual or symbolic expression of disputes and dispute resolution.2 Normative sources, such as law codes or royal legislation (for example, the capitularies issued by Carolingian kings), naturally emphasize institutional tools for handling conflict, such as formal judicial assemblies and judicial procedures, royal judicial officials, and laws.3 Archival sources from the period consist primarily of charters, that is, records of rights or privilege ranging from diplomas issued by kings and emperors to the property records of churches and monasteries. These tend to blend the images produced by the first two source genres. Often they record the formal resolution of property disputes in judicial assemblies headed by kings, counts, or their representatives; often they refer to laws or imply that the cases they deal with were covered by some generally recognized set of norms. Charters also, however, provide a great deal of evidence for extra-judicial negotiation and settlement, as well as for ritual and public symbolic communication as a part of dispute processing.4 1
      Over the last four decades, charters in particular have powerfully influenced early medieval dispute studies, at least in the United States, United Kingdom, and France. In an ongoing reaction against an older scholarship that overemphasized normative sources, charter-based dispute studies have pointed to charters as documents of practice, that is, as documents describing concrete cases rather than the idealized prescriptions provided by laws or capitularies.5 By providing descriptions of actual disputes, charters have greatly improved our understanding of how people in the period handled conflict, especially conflict over property. They have above all given us insight into the possible relationships between formal courts and extra-judicial processes. The rich caches of charters from eighth- and ninth-century Alemannia or Bavaria, for example, or the equally rich caches from tenth- and eleventh-century Burgundy show that people caught up in property disputes resorted both to courts and to extra-judicial settlements.6 They rarely restricted themselves to one arena or the other, however. By following the histories of particular people or properties through a series of charters, we see how disputes moved between the judicial and extra-judicial arenas as disputants followed the strategies that best suited their interests and situations.7 2
      While shedding new light on disputing in the early Middle Ages, charters have also shaped discussions of the subject by focusing attention on the particular kinds of disputes that they record and on the particular modes of dispute settlement that they reflect. In other words, much of the discussion of early medieval dispute resolution is being carried out within a conceptual framework heavily influenced by the kinds of information that charters provide. A prominent example is the raging debate over continuity and change in the political order of the western Frankish world between the ninth and the eleventh centuries (the question of the so-called "feudal revolution" or "la mutation féodale"). This debate concerns whether or not, or to what degree, central authority in what would become France collapsed around the turn of the first millennium, to be replaced by local lordship based on consensus and/or force. Essential to this debate are the questions of how people handled disputes and how their disputing practices changed over time. Much of the work done on these questions has been based on charters. As a result, it has largely focused on the subjects that such charters address, namely property disputes, and on the modes of dispute settlement that they reflect, particularly the presence or absence of effective judicial courts and the relative importance of extra-judicial settlement or compromise. According to one narrative, the ninth-century empire of the Carolingians was characterized by effective judicial courts run by counts and bishops or by imperial legates (the missi dominici). These courts continued to function until the last decades of the tenth century, when they suddenly disappeared. They were replaced by a style of dispute resolution that depended on compromise, because no party to a dispute was capable of coercing his opponent by means of the law or the courts, and because no king had the authority to insist that people use his courts. 3
      Scholars opposed to this narrative point to the great number of charters from the Carolingian period that record compromises or other kinds of extra-judicial settlements. They also note the many conflicts in the period that appeared to end in court adjudication, but in fact ended later in compromises worked out either extra-judicially or in the context of a court hearing with the help of the presiding authority figure and the other powerful people present. Since there is so much evidence for negotiation and compromise in the Carolingian period, they argue, dispute processing in the ninth century cannot have been so different in practice from that of the tenth and eleventh centuries; indeed, it appears that Carolingian judicial institutions functioned symbiotically with such extra-judicial processes. The decentralized political order visible in France after the turn of the first millennium must, they suggest, have developed gradually in the context of broad continuity in social practice rather than as a consequence of a sudden institutional collapse.8 4
      In this essay, I focus on the Carolingian period and discuss an under-exploited source for the study of dispute: the early medieval formula collections.9 This source adds another dimension to our picture of disputing in the ninth century. At the same time, it can help us understand more fully the continuities and changes in the ways that Europeans handled disputes in the centuries leading up to the first millennium. The formula collections consist of copies of documents or letters with most or all specific information, such as the names of people and places, left out in order to render them generic.10 They survive in manuscripts from across Europe north of the Alps and stem from the eighth through the early tenth centuries. The formulas in these collections cover a wide variety of texts, including royal diplomas and edicts, charters, and letters, that concern the affairs of both clerics and lay people. They apparently served as templates for scribes to draw on as they prepared their own documents, as models for students learning the craft of document and letter writing, or as case studies of legal procedure. 5
      The formulas in these collections quite often concern disputes. Those for charters project an image of disputing similar to that offered by the charters that survive elsewhere. We have formulas dealing with property disputes; we have formulas describing the activities of royal or comital judicial courts; and we have formulas that deal with extra-judicial settlement or betray evidence of it.11 The formulas for letters, however, provide a rather different picture. The letter formulas that concern disputes deal with a wider variety of subjects than do the charter formulas. These subjects include property but also such matters as theft, murder, freedom, personal offense and anger, and tension within a monastic community. Moreover, they often depict dispute settlement in a way quite different from the charters. They indicate that many disputes in the Carolingian world were settled not by adjudication or by negotiated compromise, but rather by supplication and intercession carried out through the medium of personal relationships. In other words, people caught up in disputes appealed to bonds of patronage and clientage, kinship, and friendship, in order to get the help they needed. The evidence for this consists of formulas for letters in which less powerful people write to more powerful people to ask for help, or, more commonly, in which powerful people write to people as or more powerful than they to intercede on behalf of supplicants. 6
      The kind of dispute settlement described by these letter formulas has not garnered much attention in the literature on Carolingian disputing, primarily because the formulas have received only limited attention. It is very important, however, to put the information offered by the formulas into play. First, it confirms what many students of the Carolingian period have been saying for some time about how important patronage and personal relationships were to the workings of Carolingian politics and society. It therefore expands our understanding of conflict resolution in the period to encompass the picture of political and social order that these scholars have developed.12 Second, the evidence from the letter formulas mirrors evidence from the centuries that both preceded and followed the Carolingian period. The formulas thus suggest that dispute processes in ninth-century Europe shared some important features with dispute processes that characterized western Europe earlier and would continue to be very important for a long time afterwards. 7
      The early medieval formula collections survive in roughly forty manuscripts. These manuscripts come from across western and central Europe north of the Alps and date to the period from the second half of the eighth century to the early tenth.13 Only rarely are these manuscripts devoted entirely to formulas. More commonly, groups of formulas were copied alongside other texts into codices that had a larger purpose, such as handbooks of secular or sacred law, or schoolbooks.14 It is not clear in every case why the formulas were written down. The standard view holds that they are normative, that is, that they were deliberately drawn up, or copied from older originals, to serve as models for students or scribes to use in learning about or drawing up the documents needed for typical transactions or procedures.15 This view certainly applies to some of the formulas, but by no means to all of them. A great number clearly represent documents of practice, that is, copies of actual charters or records originally drawn up to record actual transactions or procedures, that have had some or all of their references to specific people and places removed. Some of these texts are so idiosyncratic that they could not possibly have been copied to provide models for the typical.16 Were they perhaps written down not because they were typical, but precisely because they were atypical, and could therefore serve as examples of especially interesting or difficult cases? Whatever motivated their copyists, these records of practice in the formula collections not only offer us the formulaic language and formulaic descriptions of procedure that generic models provide; they also present us with images of behavior that have not otherwise survived. 8
      This last feature of the formula collections—that they preserve examples of documents that have not survived elsewhere—is what makes them especially valuable as a source. The overwhelming majority of the surviving diplomas and charters from the period come from churches and monasteries, because only churches and monasteries had the institutional longevity necessary to pass their archives or record books down to us. Moreover, these archives and record books were in general intended to preserve the memory of property holdings. The image of early medieval social and political life that they offer, therefore, is heavily biased toward that part of it that involved churches, monasteries, and their properties.17 The formula collections, in contrast, betray a strong interest not only in the activities of clerics and monks but also in the affairs of lay people. They also concern themselves with more than property. They provide us with snapshots of people doing such things as getting married or divorced, adopting children, freeing the unfree, committing and paying compensation for homicides and robberies, traveling on business, going on pilgrimage, and otherwise regulating the business of their lives.18 9
      Similarly, the letter formulas in the collections include a kind of letter that is poorly attested to outside of the collections. Medieval letters were in general, as Giles Constable has described them, self-consciously literary documents that were often written in the assumption that they would later be collected and published.19 Carolingian letters are no exception; they reflect an elite tradition of letter writing that was designed for public consumption. Letters were only saved, or copied, when something about their content, their form or style, or the person who had written them made them important enough to preserve. As a result, the letters and letter collections that we have from the period comprise mostly (although not exclusively) literary showpieces by the great letter-writers of the age, or political or theological exchanges between great political or intellectual figures, that were written with the knowledge that they would be widely read and copied.20 10
      It has become increasingly clear, however, particularly in the last decade, that people from late antiquity into the Carolingian period and beyond, both lay and ecclesiastical, wrote letters for relatively mundane purposes as well, such as transmitting practical information, sending requests, or giving orders. In 1996, for example, Mark Mersiowsky, by examining not only letters in extant letter collections but also references to letters in other kinds of sources, showed the high degree to which letter writing both pervaded and enabled Carolingian government and administration. Letters made it possible for commands and information to flow from the court to regional administrators and back, and between regional office-holders. Letters also served as a medium through which people gained access to the intercessors and mediators necessary to bring matters to the attention of the king or emperor.21 In an article of 1999, Mary Garrison focused on letter writing by people who were not directly involved in the business of church or government. By drawing inferences from other times and places for which the evidence is better, she concluded that a broad spectrum of people in the early Middle Ages, both ecclesiastic and lay, must have used letters for a variety of practical purposes.22 11
      The formula collections show this kind of letter writing in the Carolingian period most clearly. The collections preserve letter forms ranging from extensive and highly literate expressions of friendship or discussions of theology to brief notes asking for help or prayers, offering thanks for some service rendered, ordering supplies, giving directives to legates, and so forth. Their authors generally comprise the office-holding elite of the Carolingian realm; that is, the letter formulas speak to us in the voices of bishops, counts, abbots, or even kings. Occasionally one finds letters from clerics or monks of indeterminate status, or from untitled but nevertheless still clearly aristocratic lay people. Many are addressed to social and political equals; that is, a formula might represent a letter from one bishop to another. A significant number, however, represent communication between people occupying different positions in the hierarchies of ecclesiastical or secular power, that is, between priests and bishops, monks and abbots, counts and kings, and so forth. Moreover, although the letters do primarily concern the affairs of the elite, the information they contain often covers a much broader social spectrum. In the course of dealing with their main business, they frequently refer to people lower down the social scale, such as the dependants of powerful people, or even their servants. 12
      In their own way, however, the formula collections are difficult and dangerous sources. The main problem lies in how to date them. It is a well-known pitfall of formulas that they can stem from document forms that predate, sometimes by two to three centuries, the manuscripts in which they actually survive. By their very nature, formulas have been taken out of context; they may have been copied and recopied decades and even centuries after the procedures they describe were actually used, in locations far removed from the place where the original document or formula might have been produced. This is true, for example, of the formulas from Angers, most of which stem from the late sixth century but which are preserved in a manuscript of the late eighth century.23 It is, therefore, not always clear whether the content of a given formula text fits with the time in which the manuscript was compiled, or whether it represents a fossil from an earlier age.24 This characteristic of the formula collections may be responsible for the relatively little use that has been made of them as sources for early medieval social and political history.25 13
      The letter formulas I consider here, however, demonstrably belong to the Carolingian period. I discuss letter formulas that appear in a set of nine manuscripts, dating from the late eighth to the late ninth or possibly the early tenth century, that come from both eastern and western parts of the Carolingian worlds, specifically, Bavaria, Alemannia, and the northern and central parts of the West Frankish kingdom.26 Some of the relevant letter formulas in these manuscripts do predate the manuscripts themselves, but not by much; all, according to internal evidence (that is, such things as particular words, formulaic phrases, or titles given to rulers), likewise stem from the late eighth or ninth centuries. The texts themselves may not necessarily be contemporary with the manuscript they are in, but they nevertheless come from the same general period.27 In short, both the contents of the letters and the manuscripts are Carolingian; they reflect things that people living in the areas ruled by the Carolingians wrote letters about. 14
      In these nine manuscripts I have identified twenty-four formulas for letters that describe people handling disputes through personal relationships. Most are formulas for letters of intercession, in which the author of the letter writes to someone else on behalf of a supplicant. A few are letters of supplication, that is, letters addressed by the person seeking help to someone who he thinks has the power to help him. In what follows, I discuss select examples of these formulas to illustrate the variety of subjects they concern and the variety of forms that intercession and supplication could take. I cite the remaining formulas in the notes as they apply. 15
      The first example comes from a mid ninth-century manuscript from Passau in Bavaria. The manuscript was probably a schoolbook; it contains theological questions with responses, a Latin/German glossary, Latin and German religious songs, a Greek and runic alphabet, letters from bishops and archbishops, and a couple of epitaphs. Toward the beginning of the codex are seven formulas whose contents point to the cathedral church of St. Stephen at Passau. The formulas date to the reign of the Bavarian and later East Frankish king, Charlemagne's grandson Louis the German.28 16
      The particular formula of interest is written by a churchman, probably a bishop; it is addressed to a count.29 The formula runs as follows:
To the renowned and well-loved lord count [N.] I [wish] eternal salvation in the Lord. I beseech your goodness, that you remember me both in the presence of the king and of his teachers and loyal followers, and that you deign to speak well of me, just as you promised me, and to keep me everywhere in your confidence and care, and to grant your service to me. A man named N. came to us and said that your men [named] N. broke into his house and stole cows furtively by night. Therefore we are sending him to you with our letter, and we ask that you order justice to be done fully to him, just as you wish that we do concerning your man. A certain man of yours named N. came before the altar of St. Stephen and there sought aid, because he, compelled by necessity, had killed another of your men, just as he told us according to the order [of events], and he asked, that he be allowed to pay his wergeld for him. Therefore I pray that since he sought help in this place, your mercy not recede from him, and that he make good his transgressions.30
 This story deals with theft and murder, a departure from the usual run of property disputes one finds in charters. It also handles the two disputes it presents in a way that to my knowledge does not appear in charters. As far as the theft is concerned, the man whose cows were stolen does not appeal for help to the law or to a local judicial official (such as his local count). Instead, he goes for help to his lord or patron, the writer of the letter, who almost certainly—given his connections to king, court, and count—was the bishop of Passau.31 The bishop sends his man to the count with a letter in which he details the crime and asks the count to intervene for the sake of justice. Then we hear about the murder: two of the count's dependants fought and one of them was killed.32 The killer is apparently afraid that he would not be allowed to pay the dead man's blood-price, or wergeld, and would thus be left open to a revenge attack by the dead man's kin. He therefore flees to St. Stephen's church to seek sanctuary, to buy time, and to ask for intercession.33 In other words, he relies on the church for protection but on the bishop's influence with the count to defuse the conflict. The bishop presents the entire affair as a matter of mutual obligation. He has done as the count would wish in the murder case by interceding on behalf of the count's man who had sought sanctuary in the bishop's church.34 In return, he asks that the count see justice done to his own man whom the count's men had victimized in the theft case.		 17
      The formula projects a hierarchy of influence and a web of patron/client or lord/man connections. We see people appealing to their own patrons or lords to intercede with the patrons or lords of their opponents (the theft case) and appealing to other powerful people to intercede with their own lords when they are in trouble (the murder case). In neither case do the bishop and count act in their official capacities as bishop and count. In the theft case, the formula admittedly does not specify whether the count responded to the bishop's letter by dealing with his men privately or by hauling them before his court. Nevertheless, they were his men, and the bishop brought the matter to the count's attention on that basis, not because of the count's general jurisdiction over this kind of case. In short, the bishop and the count act essentially as powerful and influential people at the nexus of a set of vertical and horizontal relationships. 18
      Although this story appears in a formula, it must have been relevant and important somehow in the region around Passau in the middle of the ninth century. The specific reference to St. Stephen's church, as well as the idiosyncrasies of its contents, suggest that it was drawn from a document of practice, not artificially constructed to be generic.35 Evidently, someone decided that it was important enough, either as a model or as an especially interesting case study, to remove the names of those involved and include it with the other six Passau formulas in the Passau schoolbook. This formula survives only in the one Bavarian manuscript, however. How important or relevant is it, then, for understanding dispute resolution outside mid ninth-century Bavaria, that is, in the Carolingian world in general? 19
      The Passau formula is quite relevant to the world outside Bavaria. Although it is unique in its details, it is far from unique in the general kind of story it tells. In the remaining eight manuscripts under consideration, twenty-three formulas describe disputes that triggered letters of intercession or supplication. As mentioned previously, these manuscripts come from both the eastern and the western parts of the Carolingian-Frankish realm. Letters of this kind were, therefore, written throughout Frankish Europe. In most cases these formulas tell stories that are similar to the ones told by the Passau formula: someone comes to his lord or patron and asks for help with the lord of a man he is in conflict with, or he comes to a powerful person saying that he has committed an offense against his own lord or patron and asks the person to intercede on his behalf. A typical example is a late eighth-century formula from the Alsatian monastery at Murbach, which survives in a south-German manuscript of the ninth century. The formula represents a letter from an abbot to a bishop. A man of the bishop had come to the abbot saying that he had committed some unspecified offense against the bishop and had incurred the bishop's displeasure. He had then asked the abbot for help. The abbot accordingly writes the letter to ask the bishop to excuse the man.36 20
      It is not surprising to find churchmen and monks cast as peacemakers; peacemaking was by this point a well-established element of the clerical and monastic public image.37 It is not, however, only ecclesiastics who are portrayed this way in the formulas. Two formulas from a late ninth-century Bavarian manuscript represent a request from one count to another, followed by a response from the second count. In the request, the first count asks the second count to inquire into a matter concerning "this man" (istius hominis, presumably the bearer of the letter) and to order that his justice (iustitiam) be fully and diligently investigated. In addition, the author asks the recipient to forgive the man an exaction that he owed. In the response, the second count says that he will do as the first count had asked.38 21
      The plea for mercy in these formulas could be quite nuanced. In an eighth-century formula that stems from the territory of the Salian Franks (roughly the area covered by the modern Low Countries and northern France) and that survives in a ninth-century manuscript, a churchman intercedes with a bishop on behalf of one of the bishop's men. The writer states that the man had fled to him because he had committed some wrong against the bishop. He asks that the bishop cede the miscreant his life and forgo any mutilation or corporal punishment. Any other penitence he should decide to impose would be his choice.39 The letter writer could sometimes try to help the intercession process along, either by offering a spiritual incentive or by sending gifts along with his request. In a formula from Sens from the second half of the eighth century, which is preserved in a Tours manuscript of the early ninth century, a churchman writes to a lay aristocrat (vir inluster). The churchman asks the aristocrat to see to the justice of one of his own men who had been injured by one of the aristocrat's men. If the aristocrat does as he asks, the writer declares, he will make sure to remember him in his prayers.40 In a long formula that stems from Bourges around the turn of the ninth century (as does its manuscript), a writer (who identifies himself as the fidelis of the person to whom he is writing) asks his benefactor not to forget an earlier promise to intervene for him in some unspecified judicial matter; he accompanies his request with the gift of a sword and a shield.41 22
      A supplicant could ask a person with more power than he to intercede for him with someone even more influential. A good example is provided by a formula from the monastery on the island of Reichenau (on an arm of Lake Constance) that is attributed to the second quarter of the ninth century and that survives in a ninth-century manuscript from southern Germany. The formula has a bishop writing to a king. It seems that one of the bishop's domestic servants (parasitus) had married a young woman; however, some of his bride's property lying in the king's regnum had been unjustly seized by someone else. In response to his servant's appeal, the bishop asks the king, out of love for Saint N., to investigate the matter on his servant's behalf.42 23
      The intercessor in such a case could even be otherworldly. When someone goes to a church or monastery for help it is sometimes hard to distinguish the bishop or abbot from the patron saint whose help the supplicant is really asking for.43 A second formula from the same Reichenau collection, for example, represents a letter from an abbot to his counterpart at another monastery. According to the letter, a father had come to the writer's monastery asking for help on behalf of his son. The son, a monk at the recipient abbot's monastery, had been cast out by his community. The father pitiably asked for the good will (pietas) of Saint N. (presumably the patron of the writer's monastery) and the intercession of the writer's community to have his son readmitted. Accordingly, the first abbot asks that his colleague and his community not refuse to take back their wandering sheep.44 24
      The intercessor could also be a friend rather than a lord. A formula in a small group from the reign of Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious (r. 814–840)—transmitted in a late ninth-century manuscript from southern France—lays this out quite explicitly; a man writes to a friend of his (amicus) at the palace, saying that he had sent his legate (missus) to him. The writer asks the friend to receive the missus, listen to his case (causam), and bring him before the king (domnus noster), so that he might carry out his mandate there and return with all speed.45 25
      The hierarchy of power could get tangled up with the hierarchy of family. In a formula from the Sens collection discussed above, a man writes to his mother on behalf of the man who was actually carrying the letter. He asks that the man receive no punishment for the offences he had committed, but rather that he be excused. He concludes by begging his mother to act as if he were present in person to see her and her lord, his father. It seems that one of the mother's dependants who had gotten himself in trouble sought out his mistress's son to ask for help in returning to her good graces.46 26
      Although they are not letter formulas, two formulas for royal diplomas that date from the reign of Louis the Pious show us both intercession in action and the concrete results that followed.47 The first describes the following situation: a vassal of the emperor named Richard had come into the emperor's presence.48 According to Richard, his grandfather had "accidentally" been killed in the presence of Queen Fastrada—the third wife of Charlemagne and step-mother of the emperor—because he had killed another man. All of the grandfather's property had been confiscated by the imperial treasury (ad publicum). Now, a fidelis of the emperor Louis named Matfrid (I suspect here the famous Matfrid, Count of Orléans and the emperor's confidante) 49 had interceded with the emperor on Richard's behalf to have his grandfather's confiscated property returned. The emperor graciously complied. 27
      The second of these diploma formulas tells the story of an unnamed woman who comes before the emperor. The woman produces a diploma, according to which her family had been unjustly placed in servitude by a legate (missus) of Charlemagne and put under the jurisdiction of a royal estate. The woman's diploma says further that the current emperor Louis had ordered his own missi to investigate the case; these had restored liberty and property to her family. The diploma that recorded this decision (apparently the diploma that the woman showed the emperor), however, had left out the names of the woman and her brother, so that they had been kept in imperial service. The woman had landed in the service of Louis's wife the empress Judith. Moved by Judith's suggestion, Louis had a new precept drawn up to correct the situation.50 28
      Both of these cases involve people who were essentially at odds with the emperor himself. In the first, the emperor's vassal sought to recover family property that had been confiscated by the imperial treasury. In the second, the empress Judith's maidservant sought to free herself and her brother from imperial servitude. In each case, the aggrieved parties turned for help to figures more powerful than they who enjoyed direct access to the imperial ear. Their appeals succeeded. Matfrid and Judith respectively interceded with the emperor on their clients' behalf; the emperor graciously complied with their requests and had diplomas drawn up to record the settlements. 29
      The letter formulas I have discussed here offer an image of dispute resolution in the Carolingian world that is different from that underlying much of the modern discussion of disputing in the period. As I mentioned earlier, this modern discussion has focused a great deal of attention on the presence or absence of effective judicial courts, on the proportion of disputes settled in courts versus out of court, and so forth, as criteria that can help us understand Carolingian political order in particular and early medieval political orders in general.51 In contrast, the letter formulas highlight conflict resolution through personal channels; they point up the ways that people could activate relationships of patronage and clientage, lordship and dependence, friendship, and kinship to help them settle disputes in which either they, or people who had appealed to them, were involved.52 These relationships could connect individuals or institutions, lay people and ecclesiastics. Many of the cases suggest that the distinction between lay and ecclesiastic was sometimes irrelevant; if one needed help, one simply appealed to a powerful person, or a person who had connections to powerful people, regardless of whether that person was clerical or lay. At other times, however, the distinction was very important, such as when one needed to seek sanctuary at a church or needed to ask for the intercession of a saint. 30
      I am by no means suggesting that the vision of Carolingian disputing projected by the letter formulas should take precedence over those offered by other source genres. The different source genres provide evidence for different modes of dispute processing that coexisted in the same society. Some of these modes appear simultaneously within the formula collections themselves. The letter formulas are written in the manuscripts alongside formulas that describe dispute resolution processes quite familiar to us from charters, that is, court hearings and extra-judicial, negotiated settlements. In short, the formula collections show us supplication and intercession taking place in the same society in which people could also choose to settle disputes by different means. 31
      The boundaries between the various avenues for resolving disputes were fluid; a single dispute could over time move from one avenue to another. This process is laid bare in the case of the empress Judith's maidservant. The maidservant's family had originally sought to clarify its status through a formal judicial investigation headed by imperial missi. This process worked for most members of the family, but it failed to work for the maidservant and her brother. As a consequence, the maidservant appealed to her mistress for help.53 With this explicit evidence in mind, it is easy to imagine that some of the other formulas discussed here might capture stages in disputes that took similar paths. For example, a bishop's intercession with a count, on behalf of one of his own or one of the count's men, might easily have led either to a formal judicial hearing or to a negotiated settlement. In short, the formulas suggest, as has so much other evidence for early medieval disputing, that parties to conflict selected among the options open to them according to their needs, their personal interests, the current constellation of power, and so forth. As a result, traces of conflict processes landed in different source genres according to the trajectories of individual conflicts and the needs of the participants.54 Some of the formulas I have discussed, however, suggest that different methods of resolving dispute did not always need to connect to each other. In some cases, intervention by powerful people, and the pressure that they could exert or the access to power that they could exploit, seem in themselves to have been enough to put some disputes to rest. 32
      The evidence from the letter formulas for the supplication/intercession mode of settling disputes reflects some general characteristics of Carolingian society as a whole. A great deal of scholarship has stressed how heavily people in the Carolingian world depended on personal relationships both to gain access to and to wield power, despite the Carolingian regime's attempts to project itself as a government based on public institutions. According to the work of, among others, Stuart Airlie, Matthew Innes, Mark Mersiowsky, Janet Nelson, and Chris Wickham, vertical networks of mutual obligation pervaded Carolingian society. At the most local levels, peasants and small landowners sought protection against the vicissitudes of life not only by helping each other but also by becoming friends and clients of more powerful people and of powerful local institutions, such as churches or monasteries. This process provided local leaders, or institutions, with the local influence necessary to mobilize collective action in their own interests and in the interests of their own kin, friends, and patrons. The Carolingians depended on the cooperation of those with this kind of local and regional influence and bought that cooperation with the fruits of their own patronage. These ties of patronage and clientage, of friendship and kinship, did not replace or render irrelevant the official channels of power that the Carolingians tried so hard to erect and maintain. Instead, they operated alongside, supported, and enabled the formal bonds of office and authority that gave the Carolingian regime its public face.55 According to the letter formulas, local disputing processes in the Carolingian world mirrored the features of the social and political order in which they took place. Dispute resolution through networks of personal relationships operated alongside and sometimes in connection with dispute resolution through formal judicial institutions. 33
      In addition, the letter formulas support a picture of continuity in the culture of disputing throughout the early Middle Ages. Several scholars working in different contexts have pointed out that people living in Europe both before and after the Carolingian period could also process disputes through personal connections. For example, in a 1995 article, Patrick Geary described evidence for people handling disputes through networks of patronage and clientage in letter collections from late antique and Merovingian Gaul.56 Thanks to the work of Gerd Althoff and others in Germany, and scholars such as Geoffrey Koziol in the United States, it is now well known that in the German Empire of the tenth and eleventh centuries and in France during the same period, the processing and resolution of conflict depended heavily on personal relationships.57 The letter formulas highlight the common features connecting these societies with Carolingian Europe. It appears that from the fifth century through the ninth century to the turn of the first millennium and beyond, supplication and intercession through webs of personal relationships formed an important part of the disputing repertoire.58 34
      I do not, however, want to suggest that European social and political order remained static between late antiquity and the Carolingian period, or between the Carolingian period and the eleventh century. Political and social orders did change. The ways that they changed affected the range of possible methods to which parties to conflict could resort in order to achieve the most advantageous possible outcome. The Carolingian world was characterized by its own particular range of options for handling disputes. The resources available to disputants in the Carolingian realm through networks of patronage, kinship, or friendship coexisted with those offered by extra-judicial negotiation and compromise as well as those offered, or sometimes imposed, by Carolingian central authority.59 These different possibilities have left their traces in different source genres. Seen in isolation, the individual source genres capture only part of a larger picture. It is important, therefore, that the discussion of dispute resolution in the period be carried out within a conceptual framework built from the broadest range of sources available, not limited to the analytical categories offered by a subset. The discussion must embrace the evidence from the formulas, as well as from narrative sources, laws and charters, if it is to encompass as completely as possible both the continuities linking Carolingian society to the societies preceding and following it and the differences that distinguish it. 35


Warren Brown is an associate professor of history in the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology <wcb@hss.caltech.edu>. A German language version of this essay is being published simultaneously in Germany in the forthcoming volume Rechtsverständnis und Handlungsstrategien im mittelalterlichen Konfliktaustrag, ed. Stefan Esders (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag), as an instance of cooperation between two communities of legal historians. The author thanks the following people for their very helpful comments on drafts of this text: Piotr Górecki, Hans Hummer, and the anonymous readers for Law and History Review. In addition, he acknowledges the participants in the colloquium held in Bochum, Germany, in honor of Hanna Vollrath (June 2004), especially Patrick J. Geary, Chris Wickham, and Professor Vollrath herself, for their critiques of the paper describing this work presented there. The research underlying this essay was supported by the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen, Germany, and by the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology.


Notes

1. Introductions to recent scholarship on medieval conflict resolution: Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relationships in the West, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), esp. Davies and Fouracre, "Introduction," 1–5 and "Conclusion," 207–40; Gerd Althoff, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1997); Le règlement des conflits au Moyen Âge. Actes du XXXIe congrès de la SHMESP (Angers, 2000) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2001), esp. Claude Gauvard, "Avant-propos," 7–8 and "Conclusion," 369–91; Conflict in Medieval Europe. Changing Perspectives on Society and Culture, ed. Warren Brown and Piotr Górecki (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2003), esp. Brown and Górecki, "What Conflict Means: The Making of Medieval Conflict Studies in the United States, 1970–2000," 1–35 and "Where Conflict Leads: On the Present and Future of Medieval Conflict Studies in the United States," 265–85.

2. Select works that deal with conflict resolution in narrative sources: Edward James, "Beati Pacifici: Bishops and the Law in Sixth-Century Gaul," in Disputes and Settlements, 25–46; Hanna Vollrath, "Konfliktwahrnehmung und Konfliktdarstellung in erzählenden Quellen des 11. Jahrhunderts," in Die Salier und das Reich, ed. Stefan Weinfurter (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1991), 279–96; Geoffrey Koziol, "Monks, Feuds, and the Making of Peace in Eleventh-Century Flanders," in The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000, ed. Thomas Head and Richard Landes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 239–58, and Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); Patrick J. Geary, "Humiliation of the Saints," in his Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 95–115; Gerd Althoff, "Königsherrschaft und Konfliktbewältigung im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert," in Spielregeln, 21–56 and "Das Privileg der deditio. Formen gütlicher Konfliktbeendigung in der mittelalterlichen Adelsgesellschaft," in ibid., 99–125; Warren Brown, Unjust Seizure: Conflict, Interest, and Authority in an Early Medieval Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), esp. 36–39 and 55–64; Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), esp. 13–122; Steffen Patzold, " ... Inter pagensium nostrorum gladios vivimus. Zu den 'Spielregeln' der Konfliktführung in Niederlothringen zur Zeit der Ottonen und frühen Salier," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Germanistische Abteilung 118 (2001): 58–99; Jesse L. Byock, "Feuding in Viking-Age Iceland's Great Village," in Conflict in Medieval Europe, 229–41; Emily Zack Tabuteau, "Punishments in Eleventh-Century Normandy," in ibid., 131–49. Narrative sources can, of course, present conflict differently. Patzold, " ... Inter pagensium," discusses lives of bishops and abbots (gesta abbatum and gesta episcoporum) from Lotharingia in the tenth and early eleventh centuries that attest to formal judicial proceedings. The Song of Count Timo (Freising or Weihenstephan) from the early ninth century depicts the actions of a count's court: Brown, Unjust Seizure, 1–5.

3. See, for example, Heinrich Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Dunker and Humblot, 1887) and vol. 2, 2d ed., ed. Claudius Freiherr von Schweren (Berlin: Dunker and Humblot, 1928); François Louis Ganshof, Frankish Institutions under Charlemagne, ed. and trans. Bryce Lyon and Mary Lyon (Providence: Brown University Press, 1968), esp. 71–97; Hermann Nehlsen, "Aktualität und Effektivität der ältesten germanischen Rechtsaufziechnungen," in Recht und Schrift im Mittelalter, ed. Peter Classen (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1977), 449–502; Davies and Fouracre, "Introduction," in Settlement of Disputes, 1–5; Roger Collins, "Visigothic Law and Regional Custom in Disputes in Early Medieval Spain," in ibid., 85–104; Ian Wood, "Disputes in Late Fifth- and Sixth-Century Gaul: Some Problems," in ibid., 7–22; Wolfgang Sellert, "Aufzeichnung des Rechts und Gesetz," in Das Gesetz in Spätantike und frühem Mittelalter, ed. Wolfgang Sellert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1992), 67–102; Rosamond McKitterick, "Perceptions of Justice in Western Europe in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries," in La giustizia nell'alto medioevo (secoli IX-XI) (Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, 1997), 2:1075–1102; Paul Hyams, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), esp. 71–110.

4. See below n. 5, as well as Joachim Jahn, Ducatus Baiuvariorum. Das bairische Herzogtum der Agilofinger (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1991); Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor, and "Baldwin VII of Flanders and the Toll of Saint-Vaast (1111): Judgment as Ritual," in Conflict in Medieval Europe, 151–61; Matthew Innes, State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400–1000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Adam J. Kosto, Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia: Power, Order, and the Written Word, 1000–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Brown, Unjust Seizure; Hans Hummer, Politics and Power in Early Medieval Europe: Alsace and the Frankish Realm, 600–1000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Jeffrey A. Bowman, Shifting Landmarks: Property, Proof, and Dispute in Catalonia around the Year 1000 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).

5. See above all: Fredric L. Cheyette, "Suum Cuique Tribuere," French Historical Studies 6 (1970): 287–99; Stephen D. White, "Pactum ... legem vincit et amor judicium: The Settlement of Disputes by Compromise in Eleventh-Century Western France," American Journal of Legal History 22 (1978): 281–308, and "Feuding and Peace-Making in the Touraine around the Year 1000," Traditio 42 (1986): 195–263; Patrick J. Geary, "Living with Conflicts in Stateless France: A Typology of Conflict Management Mechanisms, 1050–1200," in Living with the Dead, 125–60; Davies and Fouracre, "Introduction" and "Conclusion," in Settlement of Disputes, 1–5, 207–40; Wendy Davies, "People and Places in Dispute in Ninth-Century Brittany," in ibid., 65–84; Paul Fouracre, "'Placita' and the Settlement of Disputes in Later Merovingian Francia," in ibid., 23–43; Janet L. Nelson, "Dispute Settlement in Carolingian West Francia," in ibid., 45–64; Patrick Wormald, "Charters, Law, and the Settlement of Disputes in Anglo-Saxon England," in ibid., 149–68. See also above n. 4 and below nn. 6–8.

6. Alemannia: Michael Borgolte, Geschichte der Grafschaften Alemanniens in Fränkischer Zeit (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1984); Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 77–134. Bavaria: Jahn, Ducatus; Brown, Unjust Seizure. Burgundy: Barbara H. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny's Property, 909–1049 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); Fredric L. Cheyette, "Some Reflections on Violence, Reconciliation, and the 'Feudal Revolution,'" in Conflict in Medieval Europe, 243–64; Stephen D. White, "Tenth-Century Courts at Mâcon and the Perils of Structuralist History: Re-reading Burgundian Judicial Institutions," in ibid., 37–68. See also Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 81–114.

7. See Rosenwein, Neighbor; Warren Brown, "The Use of Norms in Disputes in Early Medieval Bavaria," Viator 30 (1999): 15–39 and Unjust Seizure; Hans Hummer, Politics and Power. Patzold, in his work with narrative sources, comes to a similar conclusion: " ... Inter pagensium," 85, 92, 98–99.

8. For the debate over the "feudal revolution," see above all: Jean-Pierre Poly and Eric Bournazel, La mutation féodale Xe–XIIe siècles, 2d ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991); Dominique Barthélemy, "La mutation féodale a-t-elle eu lieu?" Annales ESC 47, no. 3 (1992): 767–77; Thomas N. Bisson, "The 'Feudal Revolution,'" Past and Present 142 (1994): 6–42; Dominique Barthélemy and Stephen D. White, "Debate: The 'Feudal Revolution.' Comment 1, Comment 2," Past and Present 152 (1996): 196–223; Timothy Reuter, Chris Wickham, and Thomas N. Bisson, "Debate: The 'Feudal Revolution.' Comment 3, Comment 4, Reply," Past and Present 155 (1997): 177–225. For a summary of the debate, see Brown and Górecki, Conflict in Medieval Europe, 26–33.

9. Edition: Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, ed. K. Zeumer, Monumenta Germania Historica, Legum Sectio 5 (Hanover: Hahn, 1886).

10. See the more detailed discussion of the formula collections at n. 13 below.

11. Courts: see, for example, Marculfi Formulae, in Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 32–112 at I/25, 58–59 and I/28, 60 [cf. the edition and French translation of Marculf's formulas by A. Uddholm: Marculfi formularum libri duo (Uppsala: Eranos, 1962); I have chosen to rely on the MGH edition]; Formulae Salicae Lindenbrogianae, in ibid., 265–84, at nr. 21, 282. Settlement: see inter alia Marculfi Formulae, II/18, 88–89; Formulae Salicae Lindenbrogianae nr. 16, 277–78.

12. See below at n. 55.

13. Cf. R. Buchner, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter. Beiheft: Die Rechtsquellen (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1953), 49–55; P. Classen, "Fortleben und Wandel spätrömischen Urkundenwesens im frühen Mittelalter," in Recht und Schrift im Mittelalter, 13–54, esp. 15; the glossary to Davies and Fouracre, Settlement of Disputes, s.v. "Formula and Formulary," 271; Lexikon des Mittelalters (Munich: Artemis Verlag, 1987), s.v. "Formel, -sammlungen, -bücher"; McKitterick, Written Word, 25; Ian Wood, "Administration, Law and Culture in Merovingian Gaul," in The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 63–81, esp. 64–65; Christian Lauranson-Rosaz and Alexandre Jeannin, "La résolution des litiges en justice durant le haut Moyen Âge: L'exemple de l'apennis à travers les formules, notamment celles d'Auvergne et d'Angers," in Le règlement des conflits au Moyen Âge, 21–33, esp. 23–25; Warren Brown, "When Documents Are Destroyed or Lost: Lay People and Archives in the Early Middle Ages," Early Medieval Europe 11, no. 4 (2002): 337–66. I reached the count of about forty formula manuscripts by adding up the manuscripts used by Zeumer in his MGH edition of the formulas (as above n. 9), plus the B2 manuscript of Marculf used by Uddholm (as above n. 11), which was unknown to Zeumer. I did not include in this count manuscripts containing only a few (less than three) formulas.

14. For examples, see the information given on specific formula manuscripts below.

15. Cf. Buchner, Rechtsquellen, 50.

16. See, for example, Collectio Pataviensis nr. 2 (as n. 29 below); Formulae Turonenses vulgo Sirmondicae dictae, in Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 128–65, nr. 28.

17. See Chris Wickham, "Land Disputes and Their Social Framework in Lombard-Carolingian Italy, 700–900, in Settlement of Disputes, 105–24 at 105 for a particularly good articulation of this problem. On the sparse but nevertheless definite evidence for charters and archives kept by lay people, see Brown, "When Documents Are Destroyed or Lost;" Adam Kosto, "Laymen, Clerics, and Documentary Practices in the Early Middle Ages: The Example of Catalonia," Speculum 80, no. 1 (2005): 44–74.

18. See P. Classen, "Fortleben und Wandel spätrömischen Urkundenwesens," 15; McKitterick, Written Word, 25; Wood, "Administration, Law and Culture," 64–65; Philippe Depreux, "La tradition manuscrite des "Formules de Tours" et la diffusion des modèles d'actes aux VIIIe et IXe siècles," Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest 111, no. 3 (2004): 55–71 at 58.

19. Giles Constable, Letters and Letter-Collections. Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental, fasc. 17, A-II (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), 11.

20. See Constable, Letters and Letter-Collections, esp. 11–16 and 30–31; Ian Wood, "Letters and Letter-Collections from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages: The Prose Works of Avitus of Vienne," in The Culture of Christendom: Essays in Medieval History in Commemoration of Denis L . T. Bethell, ed. M. A. Meyer (London: Hambledon Press, 1993), 29–43; Mark Mersiowsky, "Regierungspraxis und Schriftlichkeit im Karolingerreich: das Fallbeispiel der Mandate und Briefe," in Schriftkultur und Reichsverwaltung unter den Karolingern, ed. Rudolf Schieffer (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996), 109–66; Mary Garrison, "Send More Socks": On Mentality and the Preservation Context of Medieval Letters," in New Approaches to Medieval Communication, ed. Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 69–99.

21. Mersiowsky, "Regierungspraxis und Schriftlichkeit."

22. Garrison, "Send More Socks."

23. Formulae Andecavensis, in Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 1–25; Fulda, Hessische Landesbibliothek, D1. See Zeumer, "Ueber die älteren fränkischen Formelsammlungen," Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 6 (1880): 9–115, here 91–95; Buchner, Rechtsquellen, 49; Bernhard Bischoff, Die südostdeutschen Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken in der Karolingerzeit, vol. 1, Die bayerischen Diözesen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1974), 258; Werner Bergmann, "Die Formulae Andecavenses, eine Formelsammlung auf der Grenze zwischen Antike und Mittlelalter," Archiv für Diplomatik 24 (1987): 1–53; Christian Lauranson-Rosaz and Alexandre Jeannin, "La résolution des litiges en justice," 24 and 29 (where the authors, for no clear reason, date these formulas to the seventh century). I thank Philippe Depreux for the last two references.

24. Cf. Wood, "Administration, Law and Culture," 64–65.

25. The formulas have been used most visibly in this way by Ian Wood. See, for example, "Administration, Law and Culture," 64–65 and "Teutsind, Witlaic and the History of Merovingian Precaria," in Property and Power in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 31–52, esp. 43–47.

26. The manuscripts I deal with here: Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. Kgl. Saml. 1943 (southern France, late ninth century); Leiden, BPL 114 (Bourges, ca. 800); Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4650 (ca. Salzburg, late ninth century) and Clm 19410 (Passau, mid ninth century); Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Lat. 2123 (Flavigny? late eighth/early ninth century), 4627 (Tours, ca. 800–825), and 13686 (France? ninth century); St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 550 (southern Germany, ninth century); Vatican, Reg. Lat. 612 (ca. Paris or Tours, late ninth/early tenth century). On each manuscript, see the literature given in the relevant notes below.

27. For the specific scholarship supporting this claim, see the notes to the individual formulas examined below.

28. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 19410; Collectio Pataviensis, in: Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 456–60 at 456–57. See the Catalogus codicum latinorum bibliothecae regiae Monacensis, ed. Carolus Halm, Fridericus Keinz, Gulielmus Meyer, and Georgius Thomas, Tomi II Pars III (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1969) [unchanged reprint of the edition Munich 1878]; Bischoff, Schreibschulen, 1:155 and 163–64; Franz Brunhölzl, Studien zum geistigen Leben in Passau im achten und neunten Jahrhundert (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2000), 28–45.

29. Collectio Pataviensis (as above n. 28), no. 2; Clm 19410, p. 42.

30.Inclito et amabili domino comiti ego perennem in Domino salutem. Peto bonitatem vestram, ut memores sitis mei tam in facie regis quam magistrorum eiusque fidelium, et bene de me loqui, sicut promisistis mihi et vestra confido ubique caritate, mihique vestrum servitium iniungere dignemini. Venit ad nos homo noster N. et narravit, quod homines vestri N. domum eius infringerent et boves furto nocturno furarent. Ideo misimus eum ad vos cum indiculo nostro ac petimus, ut pleniter iustitiam ei fieri iubeatis, sicut vultis, ut et nos de vestro homine faciamus. Quidam homo vester N. ante altare sancti Stefani venit et ibi querebat auxiliam, eo quod occiderit alium hominem vestrum necessitate conpulsus, sicut iste nobis referebat ex ordine, petivitque, ut sibi wergeltum eius conponere licuisset. Ideo precamur, ut, quia auxilium ab isto loco quesierat, misericordia vestra ab eo non recedat, et delicta peremendet.

31. The formula identifies the victim as the bishop's homo. In this period, being the homo of someone else implies a spectrum of meanings that ranges from "slave" to "free vassal" or "client." See Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, ed. J. F. Niermeyer and C. van de Kieft, 2d ed., revised by J. W. J. Burgers (Leiden: Brill, 2002) s.v. homo. I am interpreting the word here to mean that the victim was a free dependant or client of the writer, because in general the formulas make it very clear when they are dealing with unfree people; see, for example: Collectio Pataviensis (as above n. 28), no. 7 (servus).

32. These men are also called homines.

33. On the tactical use of sanctuary, see Hyams, Rancor and Reconciliation, 96.

34. Although the phrase sicut vultis is in the present indicative, suggesting that the count actively wishes the bishop to intercede for his man, I read it as if it were in the subjunctive; what follows indicates that the count will not know about the bishop's intercession until he receives this letter.

35. Cf. the comments by Zeumer in Collectio Pataviensis (as above n. 28), 456.

36. Formulae Alsaticae. 1. Formulae Morbacenses, in Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 329–37 (774–791), no. 1. Ms. = St. Gall 550, pp. 146–61, at p. 146. See Zeumer's introduction to Formulae Morbacenses (as above), 329–30; Karl Zeumer, "Ueber die alamannischen Formelsammlungen," Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 8 (1883): 473–553; Buchner, Rechtsquellen, 54; Die Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen, 1, Pt. IV: Codices 547–669, ed. Beat Matthias von Scarpatetti (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003), 11–16 (for this last reference I thank Gesine Jordan and Peter Erhart). Cf. Formulae Morbacenses (as above), nos. 10 and 16; Formulae marculfinae aevi karolini (as below n. 38), nos. 3, 6, 7; Formulae Salzburgenses, in Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 438–55 (mid ninth century), no. 64 (ms. = Munich, Clm 4650, as below n. 38, fol. 82v–83r); Collectio Flaviniancensis, in Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 469–92 (late eighth/early ninth century), no. 117f, ms. = Paris, BN Lat. 2123, late eighth/early ninth century—see Bibliothèque Nationale, Catalogue genérale des manuscrits latins, Tome II (Nos. 1439–2692), ed. Ph. Lauer (Paris, 1940), 329–30; Formulae Augienses, Coll. C (as below n. 42), no. 18 (ms. = St. Gall 550, as above, pp. 132–33). Zeumer also points out, in his formula edition, p. 116 n. 1, a capitulary of Charlemagne indicating that this sort of thing happened often: Divisio regnorum a. 806, c. 7, Capitula regum Francorum, ed. A. Boretius, MGH Legum section II, pt. 1 (Hannover: Hahn, 1883), 128; cf. the Regni divisio a. 831, c. 3, Capitula regum Francorum, ed. A. Boretius and V. Krause, MGH Legum section II, pt. 2/1 (Hannover: Hahn, 1890), 22.

37. See, for example, James, Beati Pacifici; Andrew Gillett, Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West, 411–533 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), esp. 113–71.

38. Formulae marculfinae aevi karolini, in Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 113–27 (reign of Charlemagne before 800), nos. 4. and 5. Ms. = Munich, Clm 4650 fol. 35r–35v. Cf. Zeumer, "Ueber die älteren fränkischen Formelsammlungen," 41–50; Buchner, Rechtsquellen, 52; Bernhard Bischoff, Die südostdeutschen Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken in der Karolingerzeit, vol. 2, Die vorwiegend österreichischen Diözesen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1980), 201–2; K. Bierbrauer, Die vorkarolingischen und karolingischen Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek. Textbd. (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1990), no. 144, 78–79; Katalog der lateinischen Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München. Die Pergamenthandschriften aus Benediktbeuern, Clm 4501–4663, ed. Günter Glauche (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994) s.v. Clm 4650. These formulas were also copied into a now lost Salzburg manuscript of the ninth century, whose texts were transcribed by the eighteenth-century Regensburg scholar Frobenius Forster and later edited by Bernhard Bischoff; see Bischoff, Salzburger Formelbücher und Briefe aus Tassilonischer und Karolingischer Zeit (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1973), esp. 12–13. Their titles also appear in a fragmentary list of ninth-century formula titles from Regensburg, Munich, Clm 29585 (2): Formularum Codicis S. Emmerami Fragmenta, Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 461–68, at 467.

39. Formulae Salicae Bignonianae, Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 227–38 (reign of Charlemagne before 774/775), no. 23. Ms. = Paris, BN lat. 13686, pp. 52–53. See L. Delisle, "Inventaire des Manuscrits Latins de Saint-Germain-des-Prés," Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes 29 (1868): 238; Zeumer, "Ueber die älteren fränkischen Formelsammlungen," 83–85; Buchner, Rechtsquellen, 53. The first half of this formula, with minor alterations, is reproduced in the Formulae Salicae Merkelianae, Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 239–64 (late eighth century), no. 49; ms. = Vatican, Reg. Lat. 612, late ninth or tenth century; see Hubert Mordek, Bibliotheca capitularium regum Francorum manuscripta. Überlieferung und Traditionszusammenhang der fränkischen Herrschererlasse, MGH Hilfsmittel 15 (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1995), 1032.

40. Formulae Senonenses, in Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 182–226, here the Cartae Senonicae, 185–207 (768–774), no. 27. Ms. = Paris, BN lat. 4627 fol. 14–14'. See Zeumer, "Ueber die älteren fränkischen Formelsammlungen," 69–79; McKitterick, Written Word, 45 and 48; Mordek, Bibliotheca capitularium, 482–83. See also the Cartae Senonicae (as above), no. 30.

41. Formulae Bituricenses, in Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 166–81, no. 17 (ca. 800). Ms. = Leiden, BPL 114 fol. 164–165'. See Zeumer, "Ueber die älteren fränkischen Formelsammlungen," 79–83; Bernhard Bischoff, "Panorama der Handschriftenüberlieferung aus der Zeit Karls des Groβen," in: Bernhard Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Studien. Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1981), 3:17; Mordek, Bibliotheca capitularium, 502–7.

42. Formulae Augienses, in Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 339–77, here Coll. C. (822–844) no. 6. Ms. = St. Gall 550 (as above n. 36), 113b–113c. See Zeumer, "Ueber die alamannischen Formelsammlungen," 473–553; Zeumer, introduction to Formulae Morbacensis (as above n. 36), 42; Buchner, Rechtsquellen, 54; Die Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen (as above n. 36). A formula from the Flavigny collection similarly represents a request by a bishop that a king intervene in a matter concerning one of the bishop's men: Collectio Flaviniacensis (as n. 36 above), no. 117a.

43. Cf. Peter Brown, The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), esp. 50–68; Rosenwein, Neighbor, 132–41 as well as index entries to St. Peter as neighbor.

44. Formulae Augienses, Coll. C. (as above n. 42), nr. 16. Ms. = St. Gall 550 (as above n. 36), pp. 130–31. See also Formulae Morbacenses (as above n. 36), no. 15.

45. Formularum Epistolarum Collectiones Minores, in Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 521–32, here II. Collectio Codicis Havniensis 1943 (817–824) no. 10. Ms. = Copenhagen 1943 fol. 67vb–70ra. See Zeumer, introduction to Collectio Codicis Havniensis 1943 (as above), 522; Mordek, Bibliotheca capitularium, 192–94. See also Formulae Salzburgenses (as above n. 36), no. 57.

46. Cartae Senonicae (as above n. 40) no. 49.

47. Formulae imperiales ex curia Ludovici Pii, in Formulae merowingici et karolini aevi, 285–328 (828–840), nos. 49 and 51. Ms. = Paris, BN lat. 2718 (Tours, ca. 830). See Mordek, Bibliotheca capitularium, 422–30.

48. Formulae imperiales (as above n. 47) no. 49.

49. See Janet L. Nelson, "The Frankish Kingdoms, 814–898: the West," in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 2:113–14 and 116–18; Philippe Depreux, "Le comte Matfrid d'Orléans (av. 815–836)," Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes 152 (1994): 331–74; Egon Boshof, Ludwig der Fromme (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1996), 145, 155, 169, and 173.

50. Formulae imperiales (as above n. 47) no. 51.

51. See above, 327 and n. 8.

52. Not that this culture of dispute resolution is completely invisible outside of the formula collections. Matthew Innes, for example, in a discussion of violence in the Carolingian world, notes several letters by Einhard, a leading member of Charlemagne's court circle and a prolific letter-writer, in which Einhard intercedes on behalf of supplicants, some higher status, some of quite low status, who were involved in disputes. See Innes, State and Society, 129–33; Einhard, Epistolae, ed. K. Hampe, MGH Epistolae V (Berlin, 1899), 105–45, letters 42, 47, 48, 49, 65. See also the capitulary of Charlemagne cited in n. 36 above.

53. See above, 340.

54. Cf. the literature cited in n. 7 above.

55. See Janet L. Nelson, "Kingship and Royal Government," in The New Cambridge Medieval History, 2:383–430, esp. 401, 403–4; Stuart Airlie, "The Aristocracy," in ibid., 431–50, esp. 431–37, 443–47; Chris Wickham, "Rural Society in Carolingian Europe," in ibid., 510–37, esp. 531–33 and 536, "Debate: The Feudal Revolution. Comment 3," "Aristocratic Power in Eighth-Century Lombard Italy," in After Rome's Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays Presented to Walter Goffart, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 153–70, esp. 166–69, and Framing the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), chap. 7; Brown, Unjust Seizure, esp. 102–23; Innes, State and Society, esp. 10, 129, 139, 189–90, 253–54; Mersiowsky, "Regierungspraxis," esp. 127–37.

56. Patrick J. Geary, "Extra-Judicial Means of Conflict Resolution," in La giustizia nell'alto medioevo (Secoli V-VIII) (Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, 1995), 569–601, here 585–94.

57. See Gerd Althoff, Verwandte, Freunde und Getreue. Zum politischen Stellenwert der Gruppenbindungen im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990) [English translation: Family, Friends, and Followers. Political and Social Bonds in Medieval Europe, trans. Christopher Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)], Amicitia und Pacta: Bündnis, Einung, Politik und Gebetsdenken im beginnenden 10. Jahrhundert (Hanover: Hahn'sche Buchhandlung, 1992), Otto III (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996) [English translation: Otto III, trans. Phyllis G. Jestice (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003)], and Spielregeln (as above n. 1), above all "Verwandschaft, Freundschaft, Klientel. Der schwierige Weg zum Ohr des Herrschers," 185–98; Hagen Keller, "Reichsorganisation, Herrschaftsformen und Gesellschaftsstrukturen im Regnum Teutonicum," in Il Secolo di ferro: mito e realtà del secolo X: 19–25 Aprile 1990 (Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, 1991), 159–95; Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor, esp. 76; Patzold, " ... Inter pagensium." See also the remarkable article by Catherine Patterson on dispute and patronage in early modern Britain: "Conflict Resolution and Patronage in Provincial Towns, 1590–1640," The Journal of British Studies 37, no. 1 (1998): 1–25.

58. Cf. the comment by Hagen Keller, "Reichsorganisation," 200, in response to a question by Pierre Riché, that also points in this direction. Gerd Althoff makes a similar point (with particular reference to people's access to a ruler) for the period of Louis the Pious: "Verwandschaft, Freundschaft, Klientel," 188.

59. At this point I must mention the challenging suggestion by Steffen Patzold, that dispute processing in Lotharingia in the tenth and early eleventh centuries, in terms of the strategic resort to formal courts, did not differ that greatly from dispute processing in the Carolingian period. See Patzold, "... Inter pagensium," 99.

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