B 03: Exploitation of Resources and Ruling Areas in the Middle Ages: Monasteries and Castles

Summary

This project will explore the interrelationship between tangible (raw-materials, basic technical materials) and intangible resources (networks, education, literacy) in relation to specific social structures and culturally defined options of action. A selection of medieval monasteries and castles in the chosen area (Upper Swabia in South Germany) during the time from the 8th to the 14th cent. AD will serve as an example. Medieval castles and monasteries are especially suitable for the investigation of socio-cultural dynamics, because of their role as economic and cultural centres and because of the fact that monasteries were subject to strict monastic rule implying an austere hierarchy. At the same time monasteries and castles were centres of political power, decisive for the shaping of medieval society. Thus, a whole bunch of mutually interrelating resources, in our definition ResourceComplexes, becomes available for analysis, not to be found in any other aspect of medieval research. This offers a wide variety of options to explore movements with economic, cultural and social motivations.

Scientific Aims

In an interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeology and historical sciences the project examines the interdependency between the development of resources and their use and control. Their socio-cultural impact will be explored, as well as the question how this was utilised by secular and ecclesiastic powers, to expand their respective domains. By this the project pursues three closely linked aims:

1. It will be considered which kinds of tangible and intangible resources were crucial for the establishing of a monastery or a castle and how these resources were subsequently used and transformed into spatial, cultural and social changes or movements. Especially intangible resources rarely were taken into account in previous studies. But exactly the wide variation of resources, including raw-materials, use and control of water, capital gained by production, social network of monastic communities, but also cultural resources like literacy, rules and legislation creates an innovative approach for research.

2. The relation between use of resources and socio-cultural organisation in monasteries and castles will be investigated. Most importantly this comparison will be done between monasteries belonging to the same order and between those of different orders, an aspect up to now ignored by research. The different form of written normative texts, for example in the case of Benedictines and Cistercians, not only determines different preconditions for the spiritual and social regime of a monastic society, but different preconditions for the use of a specific natural environment and its resources as well.

3. Not least it will be explored how the use of individual resources affected power structures, especially which kinds of relations existed between secular and ecclesiastic authorities. Here close connections may exist, if aristocrats founded monasteries as a place of memorial and burial for their family; still under territorial aspects competitive relations could emerge. This field of controversy offers the possibility to identify socio-cultural dynamics, not just for individual examples but medieval society in general.

Long-term Perspective

All these aspects will be analysed in a diachronic way for the region between Lake Constance and the Danube with a first focus on the monasteries of the 8th to the 14th centuries. Based on the results of this study during the second phase of funding the castles and their use of resources will be in the centre of interest. During the third phase the regional and chronological frame of the study will be expanded in order to identify the changes and continuities in the relevance of resources for a long period of time, encompassing all of the Middle Ages.
The project concentrates on case studies, in several ways perfectly fitting to the general research interest of the Collaborative Research Centre. With the example of medieval monasteries and castles the interaction of economic, social and political aspects of the development and use of resources can be demonstrated. This is facilitated by the unique situation allowing the combined analysis of archaeological and written evidence to shed light on the variety of structures of a specific region.

Impact for the Collaborative Research Centre

The project is assigned to project division B. MOVEMENTS but a multitude of links with division A. DEVELOPMENTS (with regard to processes of social change) and C. VALUATIONS (with regard to symbolic and religious aspects of resources) exist. The comprehensive and comparative approach of Collaborative Research Centre 1070 provides the chance to examine general mechanisms working in socio-cultural dynamics and to formulate models of the realities of human life in historic times.

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