Ministerialis

The ministeriales (singular: ministerialis) were a class of people raised up from serfdom and placed in positions of power and responsibility in the High Middle Ages in the Holy Roman Empire.

What began as an irregular arrangement of workers with a wide variety of duties and restrictions rose in status and wealth to become the power brokers of an empire.

Ministeriales were trained knights, held military responsibilities and surrounded themselves with the trappings of knighthood, and so were accepted as noblemen.

[2] The term is a post-classical Latin word, meaning originally "servant" or "agent", in a broad range of senses, rather than the modern connotation of a high-ranking politician or administrator.

A mediaeval chronicler reported that Julius Caesar defeated the Gauls and rewarded his Germanic allies with Roman rank.

"Hence it is," the chronicler explained, "that German knights, unlike their counterparts in other nations, are called servants of the royal fisc and princely ministerials.

[4] Abbot Adalard of Corbie (d. 826) was Emperor Charlemagne's chief adviser, and described the running of the government in his work De ordine palatii.

There he praises the great merits of his imperial staff, made up of household servii proprii (serfs) who were the first ministerials authoritatively recorded.

[8] From the 11th century the term came to denote functionaries living as members of the knightly class with either a lordship of their own or one delegated from a higher lord as well as some political influence (inter alia the exercise of offices at court).

[9] There were two sorts of ministerials: casati, who administered lands and estates for a liege and were paid from the proceeds of the land and non-casati, who held administrative and military positions but were paid in either a fixed amount of coin or by a portion of the proceeds of mills, road or bridge tolls, or ferry fees or port taxes.

[10] As the need for such service functions became more acute (as, for example, during the Investiture Controversy), and their duties and privileges, at first nebulous, became more clearly defined, the ministeriales developed in the Salian period (1024–1125) into a new and much differentiated class.

[11] From the reign of Archbishop Conrad II (1024–1039) they were employed as stewards (Vögte), castellans (Burggrafen) and judges in the administration of the imperial territories, and in the lay principalities.

In Salzburg, Austria a Timo appears in 1125/47 in the traditionsbuch (book of traditions) as a miles (knight) of the archiepiscopal ministerialage who functioned as burgrave and also as a merchant.

Around 1145, Ulrich I of the lesser-noble Sims family chose to subjugate his household to the archbishop by marrying the Salzburg ministerial Liutkarda von Berg.

Their son, Ulrich II, was born into his mother's status as was the practice, but now the Simses enjoyed the protection of one of the most powerful houses in the region.

[16] Imperial courts increasingly rendered justice for ministerials, as when Count Frederick of Isenberg murdered Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne in 1225.

[18] Other regions were not as open, for as late as the fifteenth century the documents of the Dutch province of Gelderland continued to distinguish between knights of noble and of ministerial birth.

Conrad II von Kuchl served his succession of archbishop lieges as a financial adviser for forty years,[27] Werner von Lengfelden was master of Hohensalzburg Castle's huge kitchen,[28] and Ulrich II served as vidame of Salzburg in 1261, then, at various times, as marshal between 1270 and 1295, and as burgrave of Tittmoning in 1282.

[33] Being of a noble estate, ministerials were exempt from the more odious of corvée duties that other types of serfs performed, though some lieges would reserve the right to commandeer plow-teams and draft horses.