The Billung Dynasty: Networking in Realm and Region and the Dynastic Continuity in the Twelfth Century

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Florian Hartmann
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 407995766

At the beginning of the twelfth century the Billung Dynasty was one of the longest-serving dynasties of dukes in the Empire. Five dukes of Saxony, that followed in direct succession, originated from the house of Billung: Hermann († 973), Bernhard I. († 1011), Bernhard II. († around 1059), Ordulf († 1072), and Magnus († 1106). No other duchy of the Empire at that period could feature such a continuity in succession. In spite of this evidence for a stable government in Saxony under the Billung Dynasty and in spite of the abundant source material, no major research has been carried out about this dynasty in the last years. While scholars have intensively worked on other noble families of the Empire, showing which extreme potential, as regards methodology, those studies of individual noble houses on imperial territory have, no monograph has been published about the Billung recently.The last major studies on the Billung Dynasty have been carried out in the 1950's. Since that time, the methodological and textual approaches have undergone profound transitions which make it necessary to question traditional views on the Billung and to investigate and assess them in a new light. After a preliminary examination three fields of investigation have appeared to be in particular suitable for re-assessment: 1. Recent studies on noble families have revealed a clan-like construction, in which personal networks constituted the organization and structure of noble families in eleventh- and twelfth-century Empire. Those new insights make it essential to scrutinize the networks of the Billung family on personal, territorial, and institutional level.2. The new understanding that the cognatic kinship remained important for the construction of dynasties still in the twelfth century prompts us to re-think the allegedly "extinction" of the Billung family in 1106 and suggests to investigate the history of the family and their self-perception beyond the year 1106. 3. Studies on the Europeanization (Bartlett) of the continent have shown that there was an increasing expansion at the periphery of Christian Europe. New evidence points to the fact that the Billung have been stronger involved in this expansionistic policy since the end of the eleventh century than it has been assumed so far and that the expansionistic policy even extended in the continuation of the dynasty under Lothar of Supplinburg.Considering those developments and drawing on recent, excellent works on other imperial noble families of this period, the project aims to shed new light on the house of Billung in the eleventh and (in their continuities) twelfth centuries and to publish the results of this project in a monographic study.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants