MISSI DOMINICI
. The Carolingian system of royal messengers, generally referred to by the Latin term
missi dominici, developed under the early Carolingian mayors of the palace but was first
exploited by Charlemagne (r. 768–814). During his reign, these king’s representatives
made regular visits throughout the kingdom as a means of linking local government and
the central administration. This was one way in which Charlemagne sought to maintain
control over the wide-ranging territories under his authority, for which he had only a
rudimentary political organization that relied heavily on local powers.
Not a separate class of officials, the missi were chosen from lay and ecclesiastical
magnates, usually counts and bishops, more rarely abbots. Each group of missi, including
both a layperson and a churchman, was assigned to cover a defined area, the missaticum,
where they exercised the royal authority on the king’s behalf. They might investigate the
conduct of government officials in the region (especially if abuses by them had been
reported), transmit new royal decrees to local magnates, hear new oaths of allegiance to
the sovereign, and assist local counts in the administration of justice.
By the end of Charlemagne’s reign, four journeys a year to a given missaticum was the
norm, so that the obligation to undertake the trips represented a significant commitment
of time away from the other duties of the missus as a member of the secular or
ecclesiastical nobility. This problem, together with the large size of the area for which a
group of missi was responsible and the difficulty of enforcing its decisions on local
magnates, limited the system’s effectiveness.
Celia Chazelle
Ganshof, François L. Frankish Institutions Under Charlemagne, trans. Bryce Lyon and Mary Lyon.
Providence: Brown University Press, 1968.
. “The Use of the Written Word in Charlemagne’s Administration.” In The Carolingians and the
Frankish Monarchy: Studies in Carolingian History, trans. Janet Sondheimer. London:
Longman 1971.
Halphen, Louis. Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire, trans. Giselle de Nie. Amsterdam:
North-Holland, 1977.
McKitterick, Rosamond. The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians, 751–987. London:
Longman, 1983.
——. The Carolingians and the Written Word. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
MOISSAC
. (Tarn-et-Garonne). The fame of the former Benedictine abbey of Saint-Pierre at
Moissac, a major stop on the route to Santiago de Compostela, rests with the sculpture of
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1182