lands had been allotted to him) granted immunities to be possessed
quieto ordineand in return for prayers for the safety of his family and
‘the stability of our whole empire’ (or ‘the stability of the realm’ or ‘the
state of our whole realm’). Towards 840, in a charter confirming the
titles of the monastery of Corvey, Lewis spoke of himself as holding
court at Paderborn ‘for the government of holy mother the universal
church, and also for the state of the realm committed to us by divine and
paternal right’.^135 Lewis’s son, Charles the Fat, trusted in 882 that it was
‘for the state of his kingdom’ that he answered generously the petitions
of his faithful vassals.^136 Louis ‘d’Outremer’, one of the last Carolingian
rulers of that western part of the empire soon to be known as France,
listened in 946 to the urgings of two of his dukes pro statu et stabilitate
regni nostri, and for ‘the state of the church’ granted to the abbey of
Cluny certain lands of the viscounty of Lyons. The corpus of charters of
this greatest of monasteries, founded in Burgundy in 910 on property
given by duke William of Aquitaine, shows clearly the difference of
roles, as they had developed since at least the time of Marculf, between
even the greatest of landlords who endowed churches out of their own
estates and the kings who ensured the stability of their realms by giving
political sanction to the grants of their vassals. Around the year 994,
Rudolf III, king of Burgundy, confirmed all the possessions granted or
to be granted to Cluny, pro nobis quam pro statu regni totius nostri;
and Robert I, king of France (996–1031), alone and then with his son
Hugh, confirmed grants made to the monks who prayed at Cluny for
the state of the whole church—grants which should stand in perpetuity
‘for us and for the state and safety (incolomitate) of our realm, along
with that of our nobles, and of all Christ’s faithful people, living and
dead’. Duke William of Aquitaine, the successor of Cluny’s founder
looked for the same spiritual benefits in his grants, but made no such
claims to state.^137
Frankish kings endowed churches ‘for the [good] state of the
commonwealth and the salvation of all Christian people’. The Frankish
state was part of the universal order of Christianity, but its stability and
continuity were embodied in a legal order created by the statutaof its
40 Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Justice
(^135) Ludowici Germanici [etc.] Diplomata, I, 31. 35 , 65. 10 , 67. 5 , 80. 1 , 315. 15 , 354. 15.
(^136) Karoli III Diplomata, 8. 10 , 12. 30 , 17. 1 , 34. 5 , 131. 10 , 147.10.
(^137) Recueil des Chartes de L’Abbaye de Cluny, i. 380 (no. 396): a grant by Rudolf II of
upper Burgundy, for prayers pro nobis quam pro statu regni nostri; for royal acts in the early
volumes of the Cluny charters, few of them grants of a king’s own property, see: i, nos. 16,
17, 21 (Charles the Bald), 70, 78, 223, 237, 242, 245, 246, 247 (Louis the Blind, k. of
Provence), 285, 396, 397, 398 (Rudolf II of Burgundy), 417 (Hugh of Arles, k. of Italy and his
son Lothar), 622, 627, 628, 631 (Conrad of Burgundy), 688, 689, 763, 774 (Louis IV
‘d’Outremer’, k. of the West Franks); ii, nos. 980, 1067 (Lothar, k. of the West Franks), 1052,
1152, 1716 (Conrad of Burgundy), 1143, 1262 (the Emperor Otto 1); iii, nos. 2270, 2466,
2485, 2711 (royal grants), 2716, 2737 (grants of William of Aquitaine).