Stem duchy

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During the Early Middle Ages, the stem duchies (from the German Stammesherzogtum)^[1] formed the major divisions of the eastern Carolingian kingdom of (East) Francia (corresponding to modern Germany but larger). Most of these duchies corresponded to major Germanic self-identifying cultural groups, whether "tribes" or confederations, which German historians later called "stems" in the sense of the trunk (German Stamm, also means tribe) of a genealogical tree (Stammbaum).

The stem duchies were the Lower Lotharingia, Upper Lotharingia and East Franconia (all three part of the old Frankish homeland), Friesland, Saxony and Thuringia, and the confederations called Swabians—heirs of the Suebi, who were called "Alemanni" by their neighbors—and the Bavarians—heirs of the Rugii who were dispersed by Odoacer in 487.

In fact in the longer view, only the Saxons really remained a separate people by the time of Charlemagne, refusing to convert to Christianity until he submitted them by force. Their western maritime neighbours, the Frisians, never formed a stem duchy with cultural allegiance to any single dux. The South and East of the modern Netherlands was in fact Frankish since Merovingian times, while the coastal area was the only one actually Frisian in culture and ethnicity.

Another major Germanic tribe, the Burgundi, gave its name to the Kingdom of Burgundy, but the Burgundian territories (of which only Franche-Comté would 'preserve' the tribal name) were in Lotharingia, not East Francia, and would largely end up in France, where the co-existent Duchy of Burgundy (Bourgogne) was from the start.

Thuringia disappeared as an independent duchy when it was annexed to the Frankish royal domain in 908, and although reinstated as a duchy in 1031, it was downgraded to a mere landgraviate in 1130.

Lotharingia—as Upper Lorraine and Lower Lorraine—is accounted a stem duchy to replace Thuringia, though Lotharingia's short-lived territories, 955–970, corresponded to no ethnic nor cultural unity. Lower Lotharingia, though, corresponds roughly to the original Frankish kingdoms unified under Clovis I, to which should be added the County of Flanders and the County of Artois as well as part of East Franconia and Upper Lotharingia.

Each nation or tribal confederacy accepted as leader a warrior chieftain acclaimed from the worthiest men of fighting age in a ruling family. The military leaders had acquired the Roman title of dux under Carolingian rule, part of the conscious revival of Romanized customs and formulas that characterize Charlemagne's court. The stem dukes loosely controlled a group of great nobles, and expected to appoint bishops and abbots (some were becoming very rich or even politically significant as prince-bishops) of their own choosing within their territories; these lay investitures later became crucial in the caesaropapist claims of the German crown.

When the last King of the Carolingian line died in 911, the stem dukes, asserting their Germanic rights to elect a king from among their number, acclaimed Conrad I, duke of Franconia King of the Germans. At his death in 918, they met again to elect his successor, Henry the Fowler, duke of Saxony.

From this national role of the stem duchies later evolved a new college, that of Prince-Electors of the Holy Roman Empire, the now formal first order of imperial vassals, no longer just Dukes but also Prince-Archbishops and various otherwise-styled rulers of major principalities (from Margrave and Pfalzgraf, both lower, to King).

The stem duchies were:

• Duchy of Saxony, to become an original electorate, ultimately a kingdom
• Duchy of Franconia, an original electorate (name preserved in German for the smaller Frankenland)
• Duchy of Bavaria, an original electorate, ultimately a kingdom
• Duchy of Swabia, an original electorate
• Duchy of Lotharingia (replacing Duchy of Thuringia), later divided into:
  • Duchy of Lower Lotharingia, in chief of which the dukes of Brabant and Gelre later claimed the higher rank of Archduke after it has itself been fragmentarized
  • Duchy of Upper Lotharingia (later simply called the Duchy of Lorraine

Traditional German historians saw the German Reich rested firmly on these stem-duchies, whereas in West Francia west of the Rhine the duchies were seen to have been regional only and had no ethnic cohesion; thus they explained in part the collapse of the western region into feudal anarchy. J Flach^[2] and W. Kienast^[3] have asserted that there was also an ethnic basis for the seven duchies that existed in France before French kings began creating dukes in the fourteenth century: Bretons, Normans, Gascons, Aquitanians, Burgundians, Goti or Septimanians and Franks. The nature and role of Germanic stem duchies are now often characterized by contrasting them with the oldest duchies of Francia, as Kienast has done.

Notes

Sources and External link

• The Stem Duchies & Marches
• Westermann, Großer Atlas zur Weltgeschichte (in German)

References

ru:Племенные герцогства