“The Lords”
No less complex was the composition of those participants in the assembly who assumed the role of lordship. In practice the “dependents” at a manorial court confronted not an individual lord but a multitude of lordly representatives. To some extent the Weistümer themselves made this explicit. The records for places under the lordship of cloisters particularly emphasize that an abbess, abbot, or provost as manorial lord shared the presidency of the manorial court with a noble representative (advocatus). Statements that, for example, refer to the presence of “honorable men, nobles, and knights” at the manorial court recall that often many lords—among whom the local lordship rights were shared—needed to be represented.98
The actual holder of local lordship rights seldom personally took part in the manorial court. According to most descriptions of specific court assemblies, underlings presided over the court as judges and thereby ruled “in place of” (“anstatt”) the lord, “on behalf of said” (“von heissens wegen”) lord, or “in the name of” (“im Namen”) the lord. For example, the minor lords as well as the nobles of Mont relinquished their attendance at their court assemblies to their castellans. According to witness deposition statements, the castellans in turn were represented in their absence for years by subaltern officials (nunci) at the manorial court; presumably, these were low-ranking dependents from the relevant village or a neighboring one.99 At best the lords personally took part in their own manorial courts when they themselves had a suit to bring, and when they called for a law declaration ceremony.100 Nonetheless, a lord could send a representative to the judge even when bringing a suit. At the manorial court of the Aargau village of Döttingen in 1398, the local cellarer presided in the name of the actual manorial lord, the abbot of St. Blasien, while another representative of the abbot, from the nearby town of Baden, appeared before him.101 One representative of the lord requested the other to have the court associates declare the local regulations regarding the use of pasture land.
The fact that the activities of the manorial court were dominated by representatives of the lord imparted a very practical meaning to the symbolic representation of lordship rights. Descriptions of manorial courts in witness deposition statements and charters often mention the court staff of office as an emblematic object that fulfilled this function. The representative of the lord gave this staff to the representative of the advocatus as soon as there was a question to be decided that fell under his authority, and high officials passed the staff to those they delegated to preside over the court.102 During an actual declaration ceremony, the court staff served to represent lordly power while distinguishing it from the person who exercised it in that instance. In declaration texts, the depiction of the lord apparently fulfilled a similar function. The description of his arrival did not depict the regular routine of the manorial court but rather reflected the symbolic language with which the Weistümer described the lordship system.
Political Functions
The presence of different lordly representatives at the manorial court is directly linked to the scarcely ever acknowledged fact that, through their declarations, these assemblies not only regulated the relations between lords and their peasants but also decided conflicts between lords at all levels. This expansion beyond regulating relations between lords and peasants is most readily apparent when manorial courts settled conflicts between the lordship and its local officials and ministeriales. Another key task of the manorial courts involved the resolution of conflicts between the local manorial lord (Grundherr) and the jurisdictional lord (Vogteiherr). Charters repeatedly show how representatives of manorial and jurisdictional lords or other competing lords settled conflicts over the division of fines and fees through the declarations of their shared dependents.103 Such questions dominate the text of many Weistümer.104
Furthermore, suits were often brought before the manorial court of a lordship by other lords and their dependents. During the second half of the fourteenth century, citizens of the small city of Büren regularly appeared before the manorial court of the neighboring village of Pieterlen, which was subject to a different lordship. There they raised objections to the declaration of the boundary lines between the two lordships and thereby defended their own interests as well as those of their lord before a foreign manorial court.105 While Weistümer often define who must appear before the manorial court, they conspicuously stipulate no restrictions on admittance. Weistümer and witness depositions show that those assembled at a manorial court included not only members of a limited local population but also any number of notables who had a vested interest in the legal order of a particular place.
To be sure, there were eminently practical reasons to settle conflicts between lords that concerned local legal relationships before village manorial courts. The residents and notables from the area assembled there were in a better position than higher-level ecclesiastical or territorial courts to survey the complex local legal network, with its competing interests arising from the usage, manorial, and judicial rights of multiple parties. Especially in areas with less-developed systems of territorial administration, there were no legal entities below the level of the Holy Roman Empire that could claim jurisdiction over several lords involved in one conflict. Documents that were produced from higher-level jurisdictions, which were generally legitimized “from above,” might enjoy higher prestige. Yet the regulations legitimated “from below” by the declarations of manorial courts were often more practical for, in addition to the dependents, these also included the local officials and elites against whom they were to be enforced or under whose supervision they would be implemented in everyday life.
It would be naïve to describe manorial courts simply as forums for the harmonious and well-ordered settlement of disputes. In depositions witnesses often argued that the mere fact that a lordship regularly held a manorial court in a particular place showed that the place was under his control.106 According to the same logic, conflicts between lords were often ignited by the question as to which court’s jurisdiction particular people and areas were subject. Thus the canon chapter of Amsoldingen charged the local ministeriale, Berchtold of Amsoldingen, in a list of grievances written around 1300, alleging that he had alienated the chapter’s vineyard and sought to “weaken” and “oppress” its manorial court. Berchtold had forbidden all people who lived on the far side of the Amsoldingen lake to take part in the court assembly of the chapter. Instead, he had begun to hold his own assembly in front of his castle in Stocken, even though this castle fell under the jurisdiction of the chapter and furthermore had never been the site of a court assembly.107 In 1374 the priory of Romainmôtier complained to Countess Bonne of Savoy regarding similar circumstances in the village of Bursins, over which it claimed all rights of jurisdiction. According to the priory, the noble lords of Mont had recently begun to hold their own court assemblies in the cemetery of Bursins.
In 1482 inhabitants of the city of Lausanne composed a petition of grievance regarding their bishop and his officials. One of the complaints concerned a confidant of the bishop named Ludovicus Besson. When the lawful maior of the village of Lutry had called the manorial assembly at the usual time and place, Besson had seized control from him by force. Besson had suddenly appeared with an armed retinue, mounted the court bench, and named himself the new maior in front of the appalled assembly participants. A little later he began to hear cases as maior.