four lordships, stayed in the castles, saw to their maintenance, and ate and drank. Moreover officials collected dues, fines, and labor obligations for their lords; leased mills; and exercised jurisdiction rights by holding curia or banchus publicus.15
Unlike in the formalized depictions of the activities of lords themselves, the descriptions of the more everyday manorial activities of their officials make evident the diversity of individual perspectives from which witnesses could experience lordship. Among the dependents of the lords of Chalon who were examined was one whose nephew had acted as dues collector for Guillaume in Montagny. A second had held the office of accountant for Guillaume; a third had once served as a substitute for Guillaume’s mistralis in the village of Yvonand outside of Grandson; and a fourth numbered among the people who had guarded the castle of Grandson on commission from Guillaume.16 At this level the boundary between rulers and ruled was very blurry indeed.
The Tithe Administration of the Chapter of Amsoldingen
An especially precise insight into delegation relationships is provided in the few witness depositions in which at least one party needed to ask the witnesses systematic questions about the practices of officeholders in order to prove its position. The chapter of Amsoldingen found itself in such a situation in 1312 when it defended its alleged right to the tithe of the church of Hilterfingen against the claim of the cloister of Interlaken, or rather against the rector appointed by Interlaken.17 The settlement of the legal situation was complicated by the fact that the recently deceased rector, Heinrich von Wädenswil, had for many decades held the office of provost of the chapter of Amsoldingen in addition to that of rector, as had his predecessor. The Interlaken party took the view that the dead provost had had claim to the tithe only by reason of his additional post as rector, and the new successor named by Interlaken was therefore entitled to it. Against this, the chapter of Amsoldingen held that part of the tithe had accrued to Heinrich von Wädenswil not in his function as rector but rather as provost of the chapter, and that therefore the chapter could claim the tithe in the future. To substantiate this position, it was necessary to illuminate the mechanics of collecting the tithe in enough detail to highlight the difference between Heinrich’s two positions.
An astoundingly high number of witnesses—at least twenty-seven of the total forty—who made statements on behalf of the chapter of Amsoldingen had themselves taken part in the collection of the tithe at the church of Hilterfingen in the preceding decades. In addition, numerous others who did not testify were mentioned by those who did testify. That so many people were involved is even more striking because the church of Hilterfingen was entitled to the tithes only from the village of the same name and the hamlet of Ringoltswil. At the head of the administration of these tithe rights, the statements agreed, were people who were described as ministri or ministeriales of the chapter. These terms refer to representatives of the regional service aristocracy, such as members of the families of Gobi, Lösch, and Rieden under the leadership of Heinrich Rieden, who is described in the charter as a miles and even as a dominus by one of the witnesses.18 Also belonging to this core group of lesser nobility were two illegitimate sons of the provost and a member of the Rieden family, whom the witnesses describe as the stepson (filiaster) of the provost. Although most of these people occasionally appeared in conflict with the provost, they presumably belonged to his personal retinue, which he brought with him to his church office as the scion of one of the most influential noble families in the region. These ministeriales had leased their share of the tithe of Hilterfingen for decades.
Below them came a series of people who were bound less closely to the provost, apparently belonging to the higher class of peasants. Now and then they had leased the right to the tithe of a smaller area, or even only a portion of it, for a duration of one or a few years—perhaps not from the provost or the chapter itself, but rather as subleasers of the ministeriales.19 A now-prominent member of those leasing the tithe, R. Kriecho, remembered how his father had begun to lease small shares of the tithe right of the church of Hilterfingen in one year or another. At the beginning he had to join together with his two brothers and a neighbor. In the evenings, the four had then divided the earnings among themselves at home.20 In addition to the tithe leasers, nine other witnesses stated that in one year or another, when they were hired for the task by the provost or another member of the chapter, they transported the tithe earnings from the church of Hilterfingen, where the collectors had initially assembled the tithe, back to Amsoldingen for delivery to the chapter. This involved mostly peasants from the area who earned some welcome supplementary income from it.21
The delegation of local lordship rights can only in the rarest cases be reconstructed so precisely as in Hilterfingen. But for many lordships there exists evidence that not only tithe rights22 but also many other lordly offices and competences that were not assigned as permanent hereditary tenures were carried out by rapidly changing personnel. Even though the litigating parties were presumably interested in recording details in witness deposition records from longstanding officeholders who accordingly had a wealth of experience, it is only the exceptional case that mentions people who had occupied an office for more than ten years.23 In 1278 witnesses in one deposition named at least eight different men who had held the office of crop overseer in the small village of Les Chevalleyres for periods of one to three years, including one named Perronetus, who had held two one-year terms of office separated by ten years.24 The circle of manorial officials and the people who owed these dues often overlapped. One witness from Les Chevalleyres was asked from whom he had collected dues as crop overseer; in addition to himself, he named another peasant who also appeared as a witness and stated that he had sometimes served as crop overseer.25 In a witness deposition from 1446, the witnesses casually mentioned the names of no fewer than thirteen different people who held the office of the local representative (nuncius) of the bishop of Lausanne in the small village of Villars-Sainte-Croix over a short period.26
The Circulation of Lordship Rights
The rotation of manorial officials who were responsible for small villages—sometimes including only a couple dozen households—suggests that a considerable part of the local male population participated personally in the manorial organization at one time or another. Although with different competences, most of them had the opportunity now and then to “officiate” (officiare),27 to use the typical word with which the witnesses describe this occasional service. Although the social background of the rural officeholders is seldom accessible, it would seem, on the one hand, that they belonged primarily to the upper classes of the village. Yet on the other hand, this seems not to have been a case of oligarchy, in the sense of the exclusive ruling classes that monopolized different town and village offices in the early modern period, which observed rules of succession defined by kin relationships. One can easily find rural manorial offices that were held by a father and his son or by two brothers, one after the other.28 Such successions were, however, disrupted by people with other names. The term of office was often short but variable; furthermore, repeated terms of office sometimes occurred at very different intervals. This makes it unlikely on the whole that the rotation followed specific rules. Instead the irregularity indicates that the succession of officials was determined by momentary needs, personal relationships, and the availability of qualified candidates.
The circle of people who occasionally took part in the exercise of lordship responsibilities reached past the lowest holders of office and the shortterm leasers of shares in lordship rights. Even the small, sporadic leasers of tithe shares of the church of Hilterfingen hardly went from farmyard to farmyard themselves to fetch grain and fruit. In witness deposition statements the actual collection of manorial dues of all kinds is often described through the witnesses’ childhood memories of having to fetch and carry such dues as the son or the servant of the relevant official.29 Thus in 1465 Cuonrat Würgler said that his father, a longtime substeward in the village of Mönchaltdorf, sometimes sent him around to the local farmyards to collect rents or assemble the “shrove chickens” (Fasnachtshühner) that were owed as a manorial payment.30
