{"id":1131011,"date":"2026-08-05T02:46:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T02:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1131011\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T02:46:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T02:46:41","slug":"were-medieval-german-soldiers-really-vassals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1131011\/","title":{"rendered":"Were Medieval German Soldiers Really Vassals?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Historians have often portrayed the milites of pre-Crusade Germany as warrior-vassals on the path to becoming medieval knights. David Bachrach challenges that interpretation, arguing that these fighting men were a far more socially diverse group of professional soldiers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By David Bachrach<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a recent study regarding the development of knighthood in the German kingdom up through the thirteenth century J\u00f6rg Peltzer has reiterated several traditional tropes in German scholarship regarding the meaning of the term miles\/milites in the pre-crusade period. Of particular importance, he concludes that the creation of knighthood was a social process that was preconditioned by \u201cthe role of the miles as a warrior vassal in the eleventh century.\u201d He sees this role as being shaped by the church and the court into something new during the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, particularly the introduction of the ethos and concomitant respectability of \u201cchivalry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peltzer\u2019s views regarding the status of the milites as vassals in the period before the turn of the twelfth century and, indeed, dating back to the tenth century draw on earlier German scholarship, and particularly the work of Josef Fleckenstein and Franz-Reiner Erkens. Moreover, this conception of milites is embedded in the basic research tools of scholarship for the pre-crusade period, namely the editions of royal charters by the Monumenta Germaniae Historica<\/strong><\/a>, in which the editors\u2019 German introductions to the individual Latin texts routinely identify the milites as Lehnsm\u00e4nner (vassals). Facing-page Latin-German translations of narrative works also routinely use Lehnsmann or Vasall for milites in the period up through c. 1100.<\/p>\n

Were the Milites Really Vassals?
\n\"\"<\/a>Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 127, f. 98r \u2013 Passionary of Weissenau (https:\/\/www.e-codices.ch\/en\/list\/one\/fmb\/cb-0127)<\/p>\n

However, the use of the English and German terms vassal (Lehnsmann\/Vassal) and, to a lesser extent, warrior (Krieger) to denote milites in the pre-crusade period is highly problematic. From a purely terminological perspective, the authors of narrative sources and charters from the tenth and eleventh centuries did not use the terms milites and vassi\/vassali (the latter a diminutive of the former) as synonyms.<\/p>\n

The two terms had very different functions. The word vassus in its various forms indicated a hierarchical relationship in which the vassus had the lower station. There was no necessity that the vassus in the German kingdom provide military service to his senior, although this certainly could be part of the relationship. Indeed, the lack of a direct connection between vassalage and military service during the tenth and eleventh centuries marks a change in the semantic field of the term from the Carolingian period. In his capitulary for royal missi, issued in 818 or 819, Louis the Pious (814-840) assumed that his own vassi as well as the vassi of his bishops, abbots, abbesses, and counts would have military obligations on the basis of this relationship. He stated: \u201cThat our vassi and the vassi of the bishops, abbots, abbesses, and counts, who are not in the army in this year shall pay the heribannum (fine for failure to perform military service), except for those who, because of the reasons of necessity set out by our lord and father Charles, have been sent home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vassalage and Military Service
\n\"\"<\/a>The Holy Roman Empire around 1000 AD \u2013 Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

We largely hear about vassals in the charters of the early medieval German kings when they were the recipients of property or when property that they previously had held was given to another recipient. Consequently, there is a bias in this type of source toward the identification of high-ranking men who held the status of vassal. \u00a0Early in his reign, for example, Henry I (919-936) famously made a grant of property to a man named Babo, who was the vassalus of Duke Burchard of Swabia, as part of the arrangement that led to the latter\u2019s submission to Henry\u2019s rule. In 940, Otto I (936-973) granted a substantial tract of land belonging to the fisc to a count named Marchwart, who is identified as both a nobilis and a vassalus of Duke Berthold of Bavaria (938-947). Once again, the grant facilitated the future working relationship between the king and the duke, whom Otto had imposed in Bavaria following his invasion the previous year.<\/p>\n

Parenthetically, there is no circumstance in which Marchwart owed personal military service to Duke Berthold, as both of these men held high royal offices and had the responsibility to lead levies on a royal campaign. In a similar vein, in 950 Otto I granted fiscal property to a count named Gerung, who is denoted as the vassalus of Liudolf, the king\u2019s son and recently appointed duke of Swabia (950-954). In 958, Otto I granted substantial fiscal properties to his own faithful and favored vasallus Count Billung, whom he later appointed as duke in Saxony. Billung, of course, did not owe personal military service to the king, but rather was the leader of the entire expeditionary levy from Saxony on campaign.<\/p>\n

Who Were the Milites?
\n\"\"<\/a>Statue of Thietmar of Merseburg in Merseburg, Germany \u2013 photo by Catatine \/ Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

By contrast with the term vassi\/vassali, the word miles in tenth- and eleventh-century German texts refers exclusively to someone who served professionally; that is, he made his living as a fighting man. The only exception to this usage was the description of monks and clerics as the milites Christi, that is the soldiers of Christ. Even in this circumstance, however, it is clear that the terminology was military in nature.<\/p>\n

The specific and narrow semantic field of the term miles in narrative works from this period can be seen quite clearly, for example, in the work of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg (1009-1018), who completed his Chronicon shortly before his death in 1018. Thietmar uses the term miles\/milites many scores of times throughout his work, most commonly in denoting the members of the military households of various magnates as they served on campaign or in garrison. He also uses the term to denote mercenaries employed by King Henry II (1002-1024). Perhaps the clearest expression of Thietmar\u2019s understanding of the technical meaning of the term miles is his description of high-ranking individuals as milites when they were performing long-term military duties. The single highest-ranking of such men was John Tzimiskes, the Byzantine general, whom Thietmar identifies as the miles who assassinated and then replaced Emperor Nikephoros Phokas (963-969) in 969.<\/p>\n

The same consistency in the use of miles to denote professional soldiers, and only professional soldiers, can be seen in historical works produced during the second half of the eleventh century by writers such as the Saxon Bruno of Merseburg, and the Swabian authors Hermann the Lame, Berthold of Reichenau, and Bernold of Reichenau. Like Thietmar, these authors routinely denoted the members of military households as milites. They also distinguished milites, as professional soldiers, from the militia levies that were mobilized by various counts and bishops.<\/p>\n

These authors, like Thietmar, also make clear that men serving as milites came from a range of social and economic milieus. Hermann the Lame, for example, emphasized the service of some milites nobiles, which makes clear that some professional fighting men had high social status. At the same time, however, the need to distinguish such men makes clear that miles did not have an inherent meaning as someone who was a nobilis.<\/p>\n

It is clear, as well, from both charters and from narrative works that many milites during the eleventh century received benefices from the magnates who employed them. However, the provisioning of some subset of milites with beneficia does not entail that every miles was a vassal. Service within the military household of a magnate did not entail a personal relationship with the employer any more than employment in the fields entailed a personal relationship with the landlord. Moreover, it is clear that many of the men who served as milites did not receive beneficia but rather were paid wages.<\/p>\n

Overall, the model espoused by Peltzer requires that there was a great mass of men who were bound together by a common ethos, a common status, and a common group identity. But there is actually no reason to believe that a simple fighting man from a poor family, or even from an unfree family, saw himself as having anything in common with the high-born commander of the military household in which he served. It is even less likely that the scion of an aristocratic family, who made a career in the military household of a bishop or of the king, understood himself to have some kind of common identity with his troopers. This concept is romantic nonsense that flies in the face of everything that aristocratic authors from the eleventh and twelfth and thirteenth centuries tell us about their views of common people.<\/p>\n

David Bachrach<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0is a Professor at the University of New Hampshire, where he researches medieval military history, particularly in England and Germany.<\/p>\n

Click here to read more from David Bachrach<\/a>
\nFurther Readings:<\/p>\n

David S. Bachrach, \u201cMilites and Warfare in Pre-Crusade Germany<\/strong><\/a>,\u201d War in History 23.3 (2015), 298-343.<\/p>\n

David S. Bachrach, \u201cMemory, Epistemology, and the Writing of Early Medieval Military History: The Example of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg (1009-1018),\u201d in David S. Bachrach and Bernard S. Bachrach, Writing the Military History of Pre-Crusade Europe: Studies in Sources and Source Criticism (London, 2021), 98-131.<\/p>\n

J\u00f6rg Peltzer, \u201cKnighthood in the Empire<\/strong><\/a>,\u201d in Knighthood and Society in the High Middle Ages, ed. David Crouch and Jeroen Deploige (Leuven, 2020), 51-69.<\/p>\n

Top Image: Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 352 fol. 6v<\/p>\n

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