Modelling Religiopolitics. The Imperium Christianum via its Commoners

Introduction

From the 10th c. onwards, new polities emerged on the periphery of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), the new centre of Christendom. Endowing Christianity as an institutional system was integral to the emperor’s power, expanding his influence and securing his rule in the new kingdoms.

Limitations of Previous Narratives

Previous narratives have been generally constructed on the basis of limited written accounts, which mainly concern the higher echelons of society, emphasising the role of secular and ecclesiastical elites. However, the ecclesiastical and secular administrative organisation of the rural population could not be reconstructed satisfactorily from these sources, despite their importance for the stability of both State and Church.

Project Overview

RELIC proposes a complex, comparative analysis and contextualisation of archaeological and historical remains of the rural population living on the eastern fringes of the HRE during the Ottonian and Salian periods (10th -12th c.). This project explores the influences of:

1. Centres and networks of secular and ecclesiastical lords
2. The natural environment
3. The economic infrastructure

Objectives of the Study

Investigating this often-overlooked segment of the population, its hitherto unexplored or neglected role allows us to study:

• How (top-level) changes in political and ecclesiastical organisations can be reflected in the evidence concerning the lower levels of society and of the local church network
• How different strategies worked in different political settings
• What role local initiatives/agencies could have played in religious and political shifts

Research Context

The religiopolitics of the HRE is a well-researched topic. Still, investigating the involvement of the rural population in these processes is a new approach, and so is the applied methodology and primary data: proximity, network, and catchment analysis on archival archaeological data and historical evidence.

Significance of the Data

Individually, such evidence provides little information, but together it forms a significant and unexplored dataset of the rural population.