Talk:Ministerialis

Articulum unius libri

This article is based on Benjamin Arnold's German Knighthood 1050–1300, and a brief paragraph on the German Wikipedia. Arnold, of course, limits his attention to Germans, knights, and the period in his title.

Nevertheless, ministerialis is a term found all over Europe; most ministeriales were not knights, and outside Germany they were often freeholders. Arnold says all these things, by way of contrast; I shall return with quotes. For now, it suffices that this article is fatally flawed, by using too narrow a reading of a partial source. JCScaliger 18:27, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I've added two references for further reading. I'll mine them for information and perk up the article after my thesis is written (on another topic). LTC David J. Cormier (talk) 23:24, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I began fleshing out the definition-bits with Delbrűck. Now on to John Freed, especially as regards the Salzburg ministerialage.LTC David J. Cormier (talk) 17:25, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Some quotations

• "The word ministerialis prevailed" over other descriptions of the same sort of person "at the beginning of the twelfth century...the word already had a long history, and certainly did not originate as a description as a description for knight.. It is found in late Latin as a term for an official of Roman emperors, and was used in a parallel sense by Carolingian and Ottonian scribes. In that age it referred not to legal status or military function, but simply to office, service, or ministerium of all kinds. Bishops and counts were called ministeriales..." (Arnold, 30)

  Nor was this the only late or medieval sense.

  • It is a common translation of "ministering spirits" (Hebrews, 1,14); and the oldest usage is from Irenaeus 3, 11, 8. his vero qui in Lege sacerdotalem et ministerialem actum praebebat [Dominus], which the Ante-Nicene Fathers series translates as liturgical; minister is LL for "deacon, church official below prebyster" (Souter, Glossary of LL0
  • The principal medieval sense is "household servant", as early as Rothari (Niermeyer, Med. Lat. Lex. minus.) This naturally includes court officials, as household servants of the Emperor.

• Ministeralis "was never the excluse property of the exalted. Of old it referred to service-relationships and to the exercise of offices, not to any particular legal status. So the early seources also used it to depict lowly servants, as in Charlemagne's capitulary De villis ir in Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims' celebrated De ordinis palatii. A royal gift of lands to the archbishops of Salzburg included this sort of ministerialis among the appurtenances...use for manorial and household servants....ministeriales or bailiffs." This died out (in Germany). Arnold 31-2

• Ministeriales were legally unfree. "But nearly all the legal and social restraints and restrictions upon m. were, in their functioning, reminiscent of vassalage, and had little in common with the yoke of serfdom. Nevertheless, in Germany the strong ties of personal and hereditary dependence which bound m. to their lords were held to constitute a type of proprietary right, a ius proprietatis, under which the lords were owners of their ministeriales, who thus had servile status." Arnold 25

• There were also free vassal-knights, who probably had patrimonies substantial enough to be able to insist on offering homage as free men. Arnold, 18. (not exact).

JCScaliger 16:57, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Removal of irrelevant tags

Two tags were added to this article which were irrelevant to it, so were removed.

The globalize tag was removed because it has not been demonstrated that an editing bias from the Wikipedia demographic has caused this article to lean in one cultural direction, as specified in the description of the tag.

The highly specialized tag was removed because it is simply utrue. The user may assert that the term has many other definitions, but that is irrelevant to the term's usage on Wikipedia to date. Using the "What links here" function shows that all links to this page refer to precisely the unfree German knights described in the article as currently drafted.

Please be more economical of tag use, for they clutter up the page and so should have a good reason.Larry Dunn 15:55, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Historiography

For a concise, scholarly treatment of the study of ministeriales, especially from the post-Wiemar period, take a look at John Freed "Reflections on the Medieval German Nobility" The American Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 3 (Jun., 1986), pp. 553-575 68.14.27.224 (talk) 22:20, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I do note that reliance on Arnold might be problematic (though one of the few sources written in English before John Freed.) Freed cites a number of German scholarly sources who disagree with Arnold's assessment of the status of unfree vassals in his "Nobles, Ministerials and Knights in the Archdiocese of Salzburg" in Speculum 62:3 (July 1987) pp. 575-611LTC David J. Cormier (talk) 19:58, 2 February 2011 (UTC)