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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 306.: Otto I Grants Jurisdiction over a Town to the Abbots of New Corvey, 940. - A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age

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Collection: Primary Sources
Subject Area: History

306.: Otto I Grants Jurisdiction over a Town to the Abbots of New Corvey, 940. - Oliver J. Thatcher, A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age [1905]

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A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age, ed. Oliver J. Thatcher and Edgar Holmes McNeal (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905).

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306.

Otto I Grants Jurisdiction over a Town to the Abbots of New Corvey, 940.

For about 300 years after the time of Karl the Great the cities of Germany did not have self-government. Under Karl they were governed by an imperial or royal official. With the appearance and growth of feudalism, the towns came into the hands of the bishops, dukes, counts, etc., and were governed by them.

Frequently new towns grew up about monasteries or the churches, especially cathedral churches. As the land on which the town was built belonged to the abbot or bishop, as the case might be, he was naturally regarded as its lord, and of course he had jurisdiction over all its inhabitants. It is apparent that such a new town had sprung up around the monastery of New Corvey, and by this document Otto I recognized that its abbot had jurisdiction over all the people who lived on the lands of the monastery.

Otto I, etc. . . . Therefore, let all our subjects, both present and future, know that, for the love of God, the salvation of our souls, and the forgiveness of our sins, at the request of our beloved wife, we have granted that all the abbots of the monastery of New Corvey,1 beginning with Folkmar, who is now its abbot, shall have jurisdiction over all the men who live in the territory of the monastery and in the city which has been built up about it, that is, in, etc. [Here follow the names of the places over which the monastery shall have jurisdiction.] And no man and no official shall have the right of exercising over the aforesaid men that jurisdiction which is commonly called “Burgbann” [that is, the jurisdiction that goes with a town], except the abbot of the monastery and those to whom he may delegate it.

[1 ] New Corvey, near Paderborn, was founded in 816, for the purpose of Christianizing the newly conquered Saxons. It was named after its mother monastery, Corbie, in France. It was for a long time the most famous monastery in north Germany.