Raffelstetten customs regulations
Raffelstetten customs regulations (Latin: Inquisitio de theloneis Raffelstettensis, literally: "Inquiry of the Raffelstetten Tolls") is a rare example of a legal regulation of customs in Early Medieval Europe, the text of which has been preserved until modern times.[1] The regulation is only known from a single copy, a manuscript dated to the 1250s, which was preserved in a church at Passau.[1] The critical edition of the manuscript was published in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in 1897 by Alfred Boretius and Victor Krause.[2][3] The incipit reads: "Noverit omnium fidelium orthodoxorum...".[4]
Contents and examination
[edit]The text takes its name Inquisitio de theloneis Raffelstettensis from Raffelstetten, a toll-bar on the Danube, a few kilometres downstream (southeast) from Linz (nowadays part of the town of Asten in Upper Austria).[1] The regulation has been dated to somewhere 903 and 905/906.[1] At the time, Raffelstetten was part of East Francia,[1] under the nominal reign of the Carolingian king Louis the Child (r. 900–911), who was about 9 years old when the incident occurred.[5] The background of the regulation was that Bavarian bishops, abbots and counts, "whose path led them to eastern territories" (qui in orientales partes iter habebant), had complained (clamor) to the child-king about being "disturbed by unauthorised customs duties and tolls" (se iniusto theloneo et iniqua muta constrictos in illis partibus et coartatos).[5] Therefore, a royal order was issued to the Margrave of the Bavarian Ostmark Aribo (r. 871–909), together with "judges from the eastern territories" (iudicibus orientalium), to investigate and redefine the existing, traditional customs law.[5] Then, a total of 41 named secular and church officials including bishops and counts reviewed the investigation, and the Inquisitio de theloneis Raffelstettensis summarises the results of their findings.[5]
The customs regulations are very valuable for scholarly research on trade in Eastern Europe in the 9th and 10th centuries.[citation needed] The text makes it clear that Raffelstetten was a place where German slave traders and their Slavic counterparts exchanged goods.[a] The Czech and Rus' merchants sold wax, slaves, and horses to German merchants. Salt, weapons, and ornaments were sought by slave trading adventurers.[citation needed]
Perhaps the most striking feature[according to whom?] of the regulations is the absence of Charlemagne's denarius, the only coin officially recognised in the Frankish Empire.[citation needed] Instead, the regulation mentions "skoti", a currency otherwise not attested in Carolingian Europe. It appears that both the name and weight of the "skoti" were borrowed from Rus' people.[b]
Vasily Vasilievsky (1888) noted[page needed] that the regulation, being the first known legal act to regulate the trade of the Rus', capped off a long tradition of trade between Germany and Kievan Rus'.[c] Alexander Nazarenko (2001) suggested that the trade route between Kiev and Regensburg (strata legitima, as it is labelled in the text) was as important in the period as that between Novgorod and Constantinople would be in the tenth century.[d]
Notes
[edit]- ^ In the vicinity of Raffelstetten, there was a place called Ruzaramarcha (literally, "the march of the Ruzari", i.e., of the Rus). It is recorded in Louis the German's charter from 16 June 862.[citation needed]
- ^ The Old East Slavic word "skotъ" derives from Old Norse *skattr; the whole monetary system is based on African dirham.[6][page needed]
- ^ The authors of the regulations proclaim that they did not institute new norms, but restored those regulations that were in force during the reigns of Louis the Pious and Carloman.[citation needed]
- ^ Nazarenko argues that the Rus' merchants arrived to Austria via the Carpathians and Kiev, rather than via Prague and Kraków, as became usual later.[6][page needed]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e König 2022, p. 2.
- ^ Boretius & Krause 1897, pp. 249–252.
- ^ König 2022, p. 1.
- ^ Boretius & Krause 1897, p. 249.
- ^ a b c d König 2022, p. 3.
- ^ a b Nazarenko 2001, pp. 71–112.
Bibliography
[edit]Primary sources
[edit]- Boretius, Alfred; Krause, Victor, eds. (1897). "Capitularia regum Francorum II: 253: Inquisito de theloneis Raffelstettensis". MGH Capit. 2: Leges. Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH) (in Latin). Hanover: Hahn. pp. 249–252. Retrieved 22 November 2024.
Literature
[edit]- George Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy (1973) pp. 131–2 of English edition
- Vasily Vasilievsky. Древняя торговля Киева с Регенсбургом // ЖМНП, 1888, июль, с. 129.
- Renée Doehaerd, Le Haut Moyen Âge occidental : économies et sociétés, 3e éd. 1990, Paris, PUF, 1971, pp. 257–8 and p. 289 (coll. Nouvelle Clio).
- König, Daniel G. (2022). "903–906: Die Raffelstettener Zollordnung und der Export slawischer Sklaven in die islamische Sphäre" [903–906: The Raffelstetten Customs Regulation and the Export of Slavic Slaves to the Islamic Sphere]. Transmediterrane Geschichte (in German). 4 (1): 17. doi:10.18148/TMH/2022.4.1.54.
- Nazarenko, Aleksandr Vasilievich (200). Древняя Русь на международных путях: Междисциплинарные очерки культурных, торговых, политических связей IX-XII веков [Ancient Rus' on International Routes: Interdisciplinary Sketches of Cultural, Trade, Political Relations 9th–12th Centuries] (in Russian). Moscow: Jazyki russkoj kulʹtury [Russian-Language Culture]. p. 780. ISBN 978-5-7859-0085-1.