I. Comital Courts and Royal Justice c. 1024–c. 1106

It is a truism that the Carolingian-style comital office, in the sense of a governmental position whose holder was appointed by the ruler and carried out the ruler’s policies, had ceased to exist in the German kingdom by the early decades of the twelfth century. However, the beginning of this process of dissolution remains highly contested. Some scholars argue that counts ceased to be government officials in any meaningful sense in East Francia as early as the ninth century. By contrast, other scholars argue for the continued importance of the comital office up through the death of the Salian King Henry III (1039‒1056). The following study considers the question of the fate of the comital office through the prism of the count’s role in providing and presiding over judicial fora in which the king’s subjects could pursue their legal rights, and where criminal matters were adjudicated. The temporal focus of this study is on the reigns of the first three Salian rulers Conrad II (1024‒1039), Henry III, and Henry IV (1056‒1106). Based on an analysis of royal and private charters, supplemented by letters, conciliar decrees, and narrative accounts, I conclude that the Carolingian-Ottonian comital office retained its basic structure and counts continued to function as agents of the ruler in the traditional manner up through the reign of Henry III. In addition, the ideological presentation of the comital office retained its full vigor, particularly in royal charters, through the end of Henry IV’s reign. However, there is also reason to conclude that the day-to-day involvement of counts in judicial matters as agents of the king did begin to weaken in the second half of the eleventh century, likely as a result of the corrosion of confidence in the authority of the king, and concomitantly respect for the delegation of the royal bannum in judicial matters to counts.

Economic Justice · German · Ideology · Narrative · Prism · Reign · Ruler · Historical Economic and Legal Thought · Historical Legal Studies and Society · Medieval Literature and History