Frisonica libertas: Frisian freedom as an instance of medieval liberty

Abstract

In the later Middle Ages the predominantly rural Frisian territories covering the coastal area between the Zuider Zee and the River Weser stood out by virtue of their anomalous position. One striking phenomenon in this area was the early breakdown of feudalism; another was the failure of sovereign rule to take root. A crucial development was how the resulting political vacuum was filled by communal institutions. This paper tries to explain this state of affairs, a situation the Frisians themselves referred to as ‘Frisian freedom’, in terms of the communalism thesis propounded by Peter Blickle. In summary, it can be said that the Frisian territories, at least while the communal institutions were in their prime, constitute an even more prototypical model of rural communalism than the founding cantons of the Swiss Confederation.

Keywords:

• Frisians
• Frisian freedom
• freedom from servitude
• medieval liberty
• communalism
• Swiss Confederation
• podestà
• Charlemagne

‘In the history of Western freedom, Frisian libertas enjoys a particular status’, as the German medievalist Bernd Schneidmüller would have it.¹ But is this rather emphatic statement really true? Certainly, the Frisians were both praised and rebuked at an early date for their pre-occupation with freedom: the first author to mention their craving for liberty was Bartholomaeus Anglicus in his encyclopaedia, De proprietatibus rerum (c.1240). Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini further elaborated on Bartholomaeus’ remarks, giving the reputation of the freedom-loving Frisians a new and even stronger emphasis in his Cosmographia (1450–60).² This notion endured for some centuries. John Adams, one of the founding fathers of the United States, commented in 1782: ‘The people of that province [Friesland] have been ever famous for the spirit of liberty.’³ At around the same time, the French writer and future revolutionary leader, the Count de Mirabeau, compared the small Frisian nation to ‘a robust oak, with the sap of liberty preserving its strength and its verdure’.⁴ In modern studies of medieval or early modern liberty, however, Frisian freedom (Frisonica libertas) is rarely considered worth mentioning.⁵ Why has it failed to catch the attention of present-day historians? Is it perhaps seen as a myth, and thus hardly deserving of notice in discussions of medieval and early modern liberty?

Frisian freedom was not mythical at all, quite unlike Batavian liberty, which was an invention of the sixteenth century.⁶ The Frisians themselves had already coined the pregnant phrase ‘Frisian freedom’ (or ‘Frisian liberty’) around 1300.⁷ But the question remains, what exactly did they mean by this? Was it to designate their freedom from princely rule, that is, their political freedom, as Dutch historians, in the wake of Nico Algra, especially tend to view it at present?⁸ Or did it also encompass, in accordance with the traditional view of historians, the Frisians’ freedom from servitude, thus their social freedom?⁹

A careful consideration of these questions suggests that Frisian freedom may be a manifestation in a rural environment, rather than an urban one, of the widespread communal movement of the later Middle Ages. This paper examines some characteristics of what might be called communal freedom in medieval Friesland, in particular the issue of how the Frisians attempted to justify their liberty. It also looks for an explanation for the emergence in Friesland of the extraordinary idea of instituting the office of potestas, which, as functionaries of this name are not to be found elsewhere, can only have been inspired by the example of the so-called podestà in the city-states of northern Italy.

Frisian freedom: practice and ideology

Medieval Friesland covered the coastal area from the Zuider Zee to the Weser. During the Central Middle Ages in adjacent territories feudalism gradually penetrated society and the rights of counts, originally officers with limited powers, slowly developed into rule by territorial princes; but Friesland took a different path.¹⁰ There, for reasons not discussed in this article, both processes – feudalisation as well as the growth of sovereign rule – broke down. As a consequence, rural communes consisting of hereditary owners of farmsteads – a group that included the nobility – developed into the central institutions of Frisian society, the basic unit being the commune at the village level. At a higher level so-called communitates terrae (German: Landesgemeinden) came into being, which – in what was a crucial development – by absorbing the rights of the counts, managed to fill, at least in part, the political vacuum that had arisen in the Frisian lands. At the same time they remained loyal to the Holy Roman Emperor, however. The overall result was the disintegration of the former counties into a large number of small, self-governing districts called terrae, where the nobility essentially never evolved out of a pre-feudal phase, knighthood was non-existent, towns only developed slowly and the process of state-building was markedly delayed. The organisational structure of these terrae was quite simple, being limited to two institutions: the communal assembly and the communal court.

In the eastern part of Friesland, between the rivers Lauwers and Weser, these conditions are supposed to have existed from about 1100, although, probably due to the extreme paucity of sources, the first documentary attestation of a terra in this area does not go further back than 1220. In the western territories, between the Zuider Zee and the Lauwers, the rights of the counts of Holland to these lands were still recognised until approximately 1250, and again, if only for brief periods, in 1310, 1398 and 1421. Later on, the powerful dukes of Burgundy, who, as successors to these counts, had assumed the title of ‘lord of Friesland’, at times posed a serious threat to the autonomy of especially this part of Friesland.

An important development in late medieval Friesland was the emergence of a class of haedlingen ¹¹ ‒ literally ‘headmen’ ‒ as the leading force in society. Their provenance is a moot point in Frisian historiography. Some historians regard them as having been the richest and most powerful members of the commune, a kind of ‘farmers’ aristocracy’; others see them as the descendants of ancient noble families, who reputedly had retained their dominance, and argue that the communes had never exerted any real influence.¹² From c.1350, the haedlingen dominated the communes in most areas. In the eastern part of Friesland, especially in the region between the rivers Ems and Jade, communal institutions eventually even vanished, as did the communes themselves. There the haedlingen established a form of independent rule, while at the same time exerting certain rights over their ‘subjects’, a relationship which, in a sense, resembled seigneurial dominion. In the western territories, the communal institutions continued to exist, even if under increasing pressure from the haedlingen.

While the communal organisations were in their prime, an ideology began to develop that aimed to vindicate the Frisians’ position – unusual according to the prevailing norms – within the European socio-political fabric. In this attempt at self-justification, the figure of Charlemagne featured conspicuously.¹³ From an early date, this exemplary king, as the Frisians mainly viewed him,¹⁴ was portrayed as the source of both their freedom and their law. Indeed, the Frisians were among the most zealous devotees of Charlemagne, whose cult had spread across Western Europe particularly from the twelfth century. According to Frisian legend, Charlemagne, the ‘southern’ king, had granted freedom to the Frisians as a reward for capturing Rome on his behalf, an event that reputedly took place after the pope had been removed from power by the rebellious Romans.¹⁵

On several occasions over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Frisians brought to light a spurious charter ascribed to Charlemagne. It is now generally assumed that it must have been fabricated at some point in the final years of the thirteenth or the first decades of the fourteenth century (1297 × 1319).¹⁶ It explicitly confirmed the Frisians’ freedom both from servitude (and thus from feudalism) and from princely rule. It also graciously released them from any obligation to pay tribute, a stipulation that applied specifically to the so-called huslotha, an annual tax they owed to Charlemagne's kingly successors in return for his reputedly having liberated them from the oppression of the Norsemen.¹⁷

Eventually, in 1417, the Frisians acquired from Sigismund, the king of the Romans, an authentic charter, which granted them imperial liberty, that is, freedom from princely rule on the basis of a privilege or privileges granted by the Holy Roman Empire. (A privilege bestowed on them by William of Holland, as king of the Romans, in 1248 had been formulated in such vague terms as to have no real significance). However, one of the stipulations of Sigismund's charter was the re-introduction of an annual tribute, something the Frisians were unwilling to accept and which they ignored. When the western territories of Friesland once again recognised the count of Holland as their lord in 1421, if only for a short time, all Frisians were viewed by the Empire as rebels.

Nevertheless, in 1493, Maximilian of Habsburg, then king of the Romans, promulgated a new imperial privilege, which, however, unlike Sigismund's, was operative in West Frisia only.¹⁸ This was because, in 1464, part of the eastern territories had been transformed, with imperial approval, into the county of East Friesland: even though the new count, the most powerful haedling of that area, was a fellow East Frisian, freedom from princely rule no longer applied there. While this new charter notably included the full text of the spurious privilege, Maximilian not only declared some of its provisions invalid, among them the release from annual tribute, but also added new clauses, strongly diminishing its appeal to the Frisians. Partly for that reason, its effect was minimal.

Five years later, in 1498, with the required fiat of the electors, Maximilian conferred the unique title of hereditary gubernator and potestas of the West Frisian lands, along with some East Frisian and adjacent semi-autonomous Saxon territories, on a foreign prince, his nephew, Albrecht, duke of Saxony. Shortly afterwards he expanded this gift to include all the East Frisian territories, as well as the Saxon town of Groningen. Thus, in spite of their imperial privileges, the Frisians’ freedom from princely rule had now been lost in the western part of Friesland as well. Nevertheless, their loss of political freedom did not entail the introduction of feudalism. While the new lord, unlike the count of East Friesland, did make a serious attempt to enforce a feudal structure in the western territories as soon as his rule seemed firmly established there, in the end he failed to do so. This failure can be attributed to the unanimous rejection by the West Frisian haedlingen of his proposal to transform them into feudal nobility.

The genesis and development of the expression ‘Frisian freedom’

In medieval legal texts, ‘liberties’ (plural) are a widely used concept, meaning first of all ‘privileges’, that is, exemptions from obligations that a ruler has granted to his subjects.¹⁹ The singular form (‘liberty’) did not necessarily denote a particular privilege given by a higher authority, however. It was also used more specifically to designate the opposite of servitude, a situation often closely connected with self-government.²⁰

Though rare, there are some examples of ‘liberties’ – in the plural ‒ in connection with the Frisians. One can be found in the privilege that William of Holland bestowed on the Frisians in 1248, confirming ‘all the rights, liberties and privileges conceded to all Frisians by the emperor Charlemagne’.²¹ In Sigismund's privilege the plural form is also found.²² These cases reflect the perspective of rulers, however. The designation normally used by the Frisians themselves is ‘liberty’ – and it is a matter of moment to discover when the singular form appears in connection with the Frisians. No less important is establishing when the phrase ‘Frisian freedom’ emerged.

The German chronicler Adam of Bremen (second half of the eleventh century) was the first to speak of liberty – in the singular form – with reference to the Frisians: ‘soon afterwards the barbaric tribe [the Frisians], inflamed with a terrible rage, rushed for weapons to defend its liberty.’²³ This formulation, however, is based on a line in Virgil's Aeneid (VIII: 648),²⁴ and should not, therefore, have too much significance assigned to it. The first direct evidence linking the singular form to the Frisians is to be found in texts from the first half of the thirteenth century. A West Frisian chronicle from Mariengaarde Abbey, c.1230, mentions ‘the liberty of the Frisians that thus far they have had since the time of the Roman emperor Charlemagne’.²⁵ The status of this quotation is not entirely undisputed, however, as some scholars regard it as a fifteenth-century interpolation.²⁶ Nevertheless, a passage from another and only slightly later Frisian monastic chronicle, of Bloemhof Abbey, east of the Lauwers, has the same phrasing. In this case, the text, referring to an event in the year 1247, reads: ‘lord Sicco, dean of Farmsum, and the noblemen of the terra, courageously standing for the liberty of the Frisians’.²⁷ This formulation was used later as well, for example, in a charter of 1338, issued by arbitrators in a dispute between the Frisians and the town of Groningen: ‘Furthermore, the inhabitants of Groningen, together with the Frisians, shall protect the liberty of the Frisians against any lords.’²⁸ A coin from about 1350, recently found in Frisia, has the legend ‘MONETA FRISIE LIBERTATIS’ (‘Coin of Friesland's liberty’),²⁹ thus linking libertas not to the people, but to the land.

The Latin Frisonica libertas occurs very rarely: it first appears in 1338. In a letter to Philip, king of France, the judges and communitates of all Frisian lands declared themselves to be ‘mindful of the most beneficial gift of Frisian freedom, … conceded to us by Charlemagne, king of the Romans … , in perpetuity’.³⁰ Next, there are two references in the charter of a league of several Frisian terrae and the town of Groningen of 1361: ‘we … , for the benefit of Frisian freedom … gathered in Groningen’, and ‘if any evident coercion by oppression or attack, to the detriment of Frisian freedom … , should befall to threaten any “sealand” … ’.³¹ Beyond this there is only one, rather curious, example from the fifteenth century. This occurs in a sentence in the colophon of a codex of Frisian legal texts copied in 1475 by Siidzo Uningha: ‘pray for him [the copyist] one Paternoster and one Ave Maria, for the sake of God and Frisian freedom’.³²

In texts written in the Frisian vernacular, the designation ‘Frisian freedom’ (fresiska/freeska fridom) is also rare. The first occurrence is found in a rather puzzling law book of uncertain date (c.1295?) called ‘Emperor Rudolph's Book’.³³ It opens with a poem which states that if the Frisians accompanied the emperor on his military expeditions, which they would only be obliged to do in a few specified cases, he would do them justice ‘in honour of Frisian freedom’.³⁴

In vernacular texts from the early fifteenth century there is a new way of styling Frisian freedom, which appears to have acquired considerable popularity, perhaps because it could be used as a battle cry as well: fry (ende) freesk. This alliterative pair, literally ‘free (and) Frisian’, consists of two adjectives – the conjunction ende had a tendency to be omitted – but functions as a noun, which is quite remarkable.³⁵ It is first mentioned in a text of 1415, and disappeared from use in the early sixteenth century, shortly after the demise of Frisian freedom. In 1489, for example, in a covenant relating to two West Frisian terrae, it is stated: ‘how we in God's honour … and for the sake of free and Frisian [Frisian freedom] have agreed’.³⁶ This appellation may have developed from the earlier designation ‘free Frisian’ (fri fresa), where ‘Frisian’ is not an adjective, but a noun designating ethnicity. As fri fresa already appears in Frisian legal sources pre-dating the emergence of the political freedom, it most likely will have denoted, at least originally, those Frisians who were personally free.³⁷

Eventually only the phrase ‘Frisian freedom’ survived. It regained popularity after 1580, when, in the context of the Dutch Revolt, the province of Friesland (the former western part of Friesland) successfully rebelled against its Habsburg ruler, King Philip II of Spain, an event that was seen in Friesland as the restoration of the former Frisian freedom.³⁸ It was extolled in the writings of Friesland's most outstanding historiographer of the time, the strongly republican-minded Calvinist Ubbo Emmius (1547–1625),³⁹ who proudly called himself ‘a most ardent … lover of freedom and inimical to all servitude’.⁴⁰

How did medieval Frisians view their liberty?

The most informative document in assessing the meaning of liberty to medieval Frisians is the spurious charter of Charlemagne. As noted above, it explicitly confirmed the Frisians’ freedom from both servitude and princely rule.

And moreover, by royal authority, we [Charlemagne] have granted that they [the Frisians] shall remain free, with all their progeny, born and yet to be born, in perpetuity, and be fully absolved from personal servitude. We also decree that no one will rule them, except if this happens by their own volition or consent.⁴¹

In the chronicle Quedam narracio, which was written as early as 1232–3, supposedly by a Frisian cleric in the entourage of the bishop of Utrecht, the status of the Frisians is explained in the same fashion, except that the possibility of princely rule by consent remains unmentioned: ‘as they [the Frisians] are free men, and released from any yoke of servitude or anyone's oppressive rule’.⁴² The spectre of the yoke of servitude, a metaphor that almost certainly derives from the New Testament (Galatians 5:1),⁴³ returns in the Latin version of the first article of the so-called Upstalsboom Laws (1323), another key document:

If any prince, secular or ecclesiastical, … shall have assailed us, Frisians, or any of us, wanting to subject us to the yoke of servitude, then together, through a joint call-up and by force of arms, we shall protect our liberty.⁴⁴

A direct link between servitude and princely rule is likewise expressed in a chronicle written during the late fifteenth century at Aduard Abbey, east of the Lauwers: ‘For they [the Frisians] utterly abhorred the state of servitude for reason of the severity of the princes, as they had experienced earlier.’⁴⁵

There is only one instance in which freedom from servitude is explicitly stressed in a fifteenth-century document not belonging to the chronicle tradition. This concerns a league of a number of East Frisian communitates terrae and a few haedlingen from one of those lands, founded in 1430 and generally referred to in historiography as the ‘Freedom league’. This alliance rallied to bring an end to the sole rule of haedlingen in that particular part of Friesland. The parties agreed to protect, with God's help, Frisian freedom – fry freesch – as well as to hold onto the law of their ancestors as given by Charlemagne, and ‘henceforth to tolerate no servitude’.⁴⁶ This document evidently associates servitude with the rule of haedlingen.⁴⁷

Ten years earlier, Ocko tom Brok and Sibet of Riustring, the two most powerful haedlingen in roughly the same area, had forged an alliance in which they committed themselves to protect ‘our Frisian frontiers and liberty … against the supremacy and violence of all Teutonic lords or towns’.⁴⁸ They remained silent about servitude, but they adhered to the idea of ‘Frisian freedom’, interpreting it solely as a political freedom that had to be defended against foreign rulers, be they lords or towns.

The commitment to protect the existing (Frisian) freedom from the intrusions of foreign lords was a recurring theme in alliances and other agreements of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Frisia. An early instance can be found in the charter of 1338 that obliged the inhabitants of the town of Groningen to join the Frisians in protecting their freedom, noted above. It also appears prominently in the internal peace treaties that were concluded in the western part of Friesland when two subsequent dukes of Burgundy – first (1456) Philip the Good and later (1473) Charles the Bold – threatened Frisian freedom: ‘that all [of us] together shall protect free and Frisian [Frisian freedom] with [our] life and property against all sovereign lords’.⁴⁹ The importance of protecting Frisian freedom is stated nowhere more clearly than in a letter from the government of the town of Sneek (in the western part of Friesland) in 1491: ‘in order to protect our free Frisian freedom, which we are all obliged to guard like our Christian faith’.⁵⁰

Some sources emphasise yet another aspect of freedom: the election of judges by the Frisians themselves occasionally described as having taken place on an annual basis. The spurious charter of Charlemagne decreed that ‘they [the Frisians] choose from among themselves “consuls” … , who in secular matters … shall be their judges’.⁵¹ Much later Ubbo Emmius would proclaim exactly this element as the crown jewel of Frisian freedom: ‘The principal element of this liberty is undoubtedly the election of the magistrates, without which liberty would not be liberty.’⁵²

A fourth aspect of Frisian freedom, albeit one that is rarely mentioned in the sources, is freedom from taxation. This mostly applies specifically to the huslotha, the annual tax the Frisians of old owed – but never actually paid – to the emperor/king of the Romans as Charlemagne's successor. However, in a charter of 1438 that specifies the conditions of an agreement between the communitas of a part of the terra of Riustring on one side and two powerful haedlingen on the other, this freedom, which exempted all Frisians from having to pay the tribute, had been converted into a freedom from taxation of a totally different kind. Indeed, one provision of the agreement amounts to an explicit ban on any taxation imposed by the two haedlingen, who had to pledge in this context to let every man live ‘by the liberty the high prince, King Charles, has given us’.⁵³ Referring to this stipulation, the German historian Ernst Schubert has argued that in fifteenth-century Friesland freedom simply meant the freedom from taxation,⁵⁴ but that certainly is too limited a view.

It is interesting to note that Bartholomaeus Anglicus – a foreigner no less – was able to list, in the mid-thirteenth century, the three elements the Frisians themselves saw as the essentials of their freedom: freedom from princely rule, freedom from servitude and the election of judges by the Frisians themselves.

The nation [of the Frisians] is in fact free outside its own nation, not subject to anyone else's rule. They hazard their life for liberty and prefer death to being oppressed by the yoke of servitude … They are subject, however, to judges, whom they choose annually from among themselves, and who order and arrange public affairs on their own.⁵⁵

These findings contradict the vision presented by Algra, who – on the basis of two instances of the phrase ‘free and Frisian’⁵⁶ – argued that Frisian freedom stood for freedom from princely rule only. This does not preclude, however, that, presumably sometime around the middle of the fourteenth century, the phrase ‘Frisian freedom’ in fact became restricted to this form of freedom alone. This shift was probably caused by the growth of the power of the class of haedlingen, a development that must have made matters such as personal freedom and the annual election of judges seem out-dated.

Frisian freedom and the communal movement

To understand better the essence of Frisian freedom, one has to consider the profound significance that the communal movement had for society during the later Middle Ages. Starting around 1050 in the cities of northern Italy, this movement subsequently spread across wide sections of Europe. An essential feature of the communes was the combination of personal freedom and political participation, or even political autonomy – values that were markedly antagonistic to feudalism. As the main purpose of a commune was to secure the liberties of its members, chiefly against feudal lords, it is not surprising that communes developed most strongly in those areas where central authority was the weakest.⁵⁷ It should be stressed, though, that such communes arose not only in urban environments, but were a rural phenomenon as well.⁵⁸

There can be no doubt that Frisian freedom was a manifestation of this communal movement. This is demonstrated by the simple fact that all Frisian territories, at least in the period when Frisian freedom was in its prime, were organised in communes. Obviously, Friesland fits in seamlessly with what Peter Blickle has called the ‘communal belt’ of Europe, which stretched from the middle of Italy to the northernmost part of Germany (Dithmarschen).⁵⁹

To create a typology of the communal order in Europe, Blickle introduced the term ‘communalism’, stressing the importance of the commune as a constituent structural element in especially late medieval and early modern Europe. As his frame of reference, he used the region with which he was most familiar: Upper Germany, that is, the southern part of Germany, the western part of Austria and the eastern part of Switzerland. Blickle applied the term to politically constituted communes, which were equipped with legislative, jurisdictional and penal authority, and found expression in communal institutions such as the communal assembly and court.⁶⁰ As they naturally had to operate in a mainly feudal environment, communes were not intrinsically hostile to the territorial state and normally avoided entering into conflict with the power triangle consisting of the seigneurial lord, the territorial prince and the emperor.

Yet, within the framework of the Holy Roman Empire, some communes managed to eliminate the power of their territorial prince, a phenomenon that Blickle has dubbed ‘republicanisation’.⁶¹ This was mostly the case with urban communes, but a few rural ones succeeded in attaining this status as well. To Blickle, two of the founding cantons of the Swiss Confederation ‒ Uri and Schwyz ‒ served as the prototype of ‘republicanised’ rural communes,⁶² while another example from Upper Germany was the tiny village of Eglofs in the Allgäu region, remarkable because of its size.⁶³ Heinz Schilling has stressed that rural communalism was strong in the northern part of the Empire too, referring to Friesland and Dithmarschen as examples,⁶⁴ regions that apparently failed to attract Blickle's attention.⁶⁵

Friesland is an interesting case.⁶⁶ Indeed, one could say that a rural form of communalism had emerged here, in a society where the development of seigneurial dominion had in fact come to a halt at an early stage. Moreover, the Frisian territories had precluded their respective counts from establishing territorial rule, eventually completely disregarding their rights. They were most decidedly ‘republicanised’ from an early date, around 1100 in the eastern part of Friesland. Only imperial rule remained, but as that had been so distant for such a long time, it hardly amounted to anything. In fact, the Frisians pretended to a kind of imperial liberty, a position which, lacking the appropriate imperial privileges, they ascribed to Charlemagne. However, when they were eventually granted imperial liberty in 1417, they quickly ignored it altogether, as they felt, to their chagrin, that this liberty was aimed at strengthening imperial authority in their region.⁶⁷ This makes it abundantly clear that Frisian freedom, even after 1417, was hardly based on imperial privileges. It also distinguishes Frisian freedom from the autonomy of the Swiss Confederation, to which it is sometimes compared,⁶⁸ as liberty for the Swiss meant simply liberty through and within the Empire, that is, imperial liberty.⁶⁹ Even the first theoretician of Swiss autonomy, Josias Simler, whose De republica Helvetiorum was printed in 1576, still adhered scrupulously to this view.⁷⁰

In the end, the communal institutions in Friesland were not strong enough to hold their own. They had been fatally weakened by the growing power of the class of haedlingen who, in a number of Frisian terrae, had succeeded in destroying the communal system. What remained of communalism, after Friesland, in 1464 and 1498, succumbed to princely power, was a strong presence by owners of farmsteads within the representative institutions of the princely territories that were then established on Frisian soil.

In his works on communalism, Blickle paid scant attention to the significance of the term ‘liberty’, limiting it to the opposite of servitude.⁷¹ Yet, in urban communalism it clearly occupied a special place, foremost in the city-states of northern Italy. The city of Lucca even established a Feast of Liberty, erecting a special altar in that connection in its cathedral, in 1370. It also inscribed the word Libertas on its banners and arms.⁷² Florence, which considered itself the leader of the free city-states of Italy, followed suit, circulating among its allies in 1375 a banner bearing the term Libertas and then displaying it on the battlefield.⁷³ In these cases, the concept of liberty is no less connected to self-government than to freedom from servitude.

At a later stage, the use of the word ‘liberty’ as a slogan was to gain wide popularity among the rebellious peasants during the Peasants’ War in Upper Germany (1525). To these peasants, it evidently meant nothing more than freedom from servitude. Curiously enough, their concept of liberty was a misinterpretation of Martin Luther's theological view of freedom as laid down in his Von der Freyheith eines Christenmenschen (‘On the Freedom of a Christian’) published in 1520.⁷⁴ As a slogan it was depicted in a satirical vein in the image of a puffed up ensign-bearer wielding an impressive banner showing the word Frijheit (‘Liberty’).⁷⁵

The Frisians’ widespread use of the singular ‘liberty’ is quite remarkable, since any parallels in other rural regions where a ‘republicanised’ form of communalism had triumphed (Dithmarschen included) are lacking. One possible explanation is that it was due – as was the case with the north Italian city-states – to the influence of classical authors referring to the liberty of the Romans or to Roman law,⁷⁶ thus to inspiration from ‘learned’ sources. We will explore this idea in the next section.

The Frisians use of the phrase ‘Frisian freedom’ is absolutely exceptional. Only one other instance of the name of a particular people, country or city being linked to the concept of liberty can be adduced from medieval times: Libertas Italiae (‘the liberty of Italy’), which was first used by the Lombard cities in their struggle against Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.⁷⁷ The designation Florentina libertas, denoting the medieval liberty of the city of Florence, was a much later invention.⁷⁸

Learned justifications of Frisian freedom

During the entire time that the Frisians enjoyed their freedom, there was no theoretical discussion of that liberty. Apparently, they continued to view the alleged bestowal of freedom by Charlemagne as a strong enough weapon. Eventually, though, it was supplemented by a new, still more intriguing argument: the comparison of Friesland to Israel. This can be found especially in a series of interrelated Frisian chronicles, which draw a parallel between the Frisians and the Israelites as evidence that the former were likewise a chosen people who enjoyed God's particular protection.⁷⁹

The question now must be raised whether, in addition to this, up to 1500, the Frisians ever referred to classical authors or to Roman law in connection with their liberty. Not much is known about medieval Frisians’ familiarity with classical authors, yet their works must have been available in the libraries of at least some of Friesland's many monasteries. This is confirmed by an entry in the chronicle of a West Frisian monastery (Lidlum Abbey), which states that, c.1230, the works of Virgil, Ovid, Sallust, Cicero, Terence and Horace were in use in the adjoining grammar school.⁸⁰ Knowledge of Roman law must have spread considerably in Frisian territories from the late twelfth century, when the first Frisian students began studying law at European universities.⁸¹

Yet, very few relevant learned references can be adduced. The most significant is the Latin text that was once written beneath a depiction of Charlemagne on the wall of a parish church of the town of Groningen (Our Lady of the Ae): ‘Charlemagne endowed Friesland with invaluable liberty, which no honourable man should give up but with his life itself.’⁸² The inscription is undated, but its text was probably drafted in 1361, when the city government of Groningen made a serious attempt not only to revive the so-called Upstalsboom League of Frisian lands, but also to lead it.⁸³

At first glance, this may appear to be just another instance of the celebration of Charlemagne as the one and only source of Frisian freedom. But there is more to it, as in this case the obligatory reference to Charlemagne is followed by a quotation from Sallust: ‘But we aim neither at power nor at wealth, for the sake of which all wars and combats under mortals are being waged, but at liberty, which no honourable man gives up but with his life itself’ (De Catilinae coniuratione, XXXIII: 4).⁸⁴ What is of further interest is the connection of the term ‘liberty’ to the adjective inaestimabilis, ‘invaluable, priceless’. It can hardly be coincidental that the author of the first part of the chronicle of Bloemhof Abbey, the learned abbot Emo,⁸⁵ similarly refers to liberty – one of the many outstanding qualities of Friesland that he enumerates in his narrative – as being inaestimabilis: ‘liberty, which is an invaluable matter’.⁸⁶ In fact, these words underlining the high value of liberty are derived from the Digest, the principal part of the Codex of Roman law, which succinctly states: ‘Liberty is an invaluable matter’ (Book 50, Title 17, Article 106).⁸⁷

Another statement, though written shortly after 1500, is valid for the present investigation because its author, the West Frisian chronicler Worp van Thabor (c.1475–1538), who wrote between 1517 and the time of his death, had personally experienced the latter days of Frisian freedom.⁸⁸ When describing the events of 1514, Worp allowed himself a short reflection on Frisian freedom, in order to explain why so many Frisians deserted the duke of Saxony after another ruler, the duke of Guelders, had invaded Friesland,⁸⁹ shrewdly making use in his propaganda of the still popular slogan ‘free (and) Frisian’.⁹⁰ The West Frisians had been free for over 700 years, Worp writes, and did not recognise any lord aside from the emperor. Due to internal discord, however, they had often been subject to the lords of adjacent territories ‒ but never for long. Worp then muses: ‘that all men are born with a natural inclination for liberty, for Tullius [that is, Marcus Tullius Cicero] says that all servitude is loathsome or miserable, but to those who have tasted the sweetness of freedom, it is most loathsome.’⁹¹ The reference to the loathsomeness of all servitude must be derived from Cicero's Philippics III: XIV: 36: ‘Nothing is more odious than disgrace, nothing more loathsome than servitude.’⁹² Cicero continues: ‘For honour and for liberty are we born’,⁹³ which recalls Worp's reference to the natural inclination for liberty, though the element ‘natural’ is missing in this quotation. The sweetness of liberty is a turn of phrase that can be traced back to Cicero's In Catilinam (IV: 16): ‘liberty, that which is most sweet’.⁹⁴ The conclusion that servitude is most loathsome to those who have tasted the sweetness of freedom probably originates from Worp himself. Cicero, for that matter, not only called servitude loathsome, but even argued: ‘Death is preferable to servitude and disgrace’ (De officiis I: 81),⁹⁵ a maxim Bartholomaeus Anglicus may have had in mind when suggesting that the Frisians preferred death to oppression by the yoke of servitude.⁹⁶

The freedom-loving Frisians were not the only ones to use these references. Sallust's eulogy of liberty, for instance, also appears in the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), in which close to 40 Scottish earls and barons beseech the pope to acknowledge Scottish independence from the English king.⁹⁷ However, it was above all the north Italian city-states that had appealed to classical authors and Roman law to justify their form of government. Initially, the chief authority they invoked for that purpose was the Digest.⁹⁸ Especially valuable was the opposition between liberty and servitude as presented in this milestone of Roman jurisprudence, where the concept of liberty was defined by contrasting it to the condition of slavery – a slave being a person who, because he is in the power of someone else, lacks personal liberty.⁹⁹ At a later stage, from c.1230, writers attempting to defend the liberty of the communes of urban citizens came to invoke the authority of two classical authors in particular, Sallust and Cicero,¹⁰⁰ the same apologists of the ancient Roman republic that had emerged in Friesland.

The examples from Friesland are, however, extremely scarce. Yet, the inscription in the church in Groningen must be considered an ideological statement of major importance. After all, it was not a personal musing, like Worp's reflection, but an apparently official attempt to provide the prevailing Frisian freedom ideology with a broader base by displaying in public a quotation from one of the most impressive eulogies to liberty ever written by a classical author. However, this evidence is far too thin to hypothesise that the popularity of the singular form ‘liberty’ among the Frisians should be attributed to the influence of classical authors or Roman law, even though this possibility cannot be excluded. So, for the time being, this question must remain unsettled.

Frisian freedom and the office of potestas

In 1498 Maximilian, as king of the Romans, created the office of ‘potestas of Friesland’. However, the idea of instituting this office had been introduced to Friesland much earlier, and in an unorthodox way, by its inclusion in the spurious charter of Charlemagne. It is mentioned in a most intriguing provision of this document, immediately after the one concerning the election of ‘consuls’:

We [Charlemagne] also decree that these consuls, according to the custom of the Romans, shall annually elect a suitable and righteous person, under whose government, rule and power the whole of Friesland shall be disposed and subjected [and] whom they shall be obliged to obey, in all and in every respect, as their true lord, within the time limit allotted him by them, which person ought to be called the potestas of Friesland.¹⁰¹

In the next provision of the charter it was established that the potestas should knight any wealthy (substantiam habens) consul who wished to receive the status of knighthood. He was to order them to be armed like the knights of the king of France. From the hands of the potestas they were to receive a shield, on which, as a sign of their liberty, as conceded by Charlemagne, the imperial crown was to be depicted.

These provisions come as a surprise for more than one reason. Firstly, at the time the spurious charter appeared (1297 × 1319), the office of potestas did not exist and had never existed in any part of Friesland. The same holds for the status of knighthood (Schubert, for one, presents the freedom from the sareda riddere, the ‘armed knight’, as the first manifestation of Frisian freedom).¹⁰² The idea that Frisian knights should be armed like those of the king of France indicates a French orientation in the Frisian conception of Charlemagne's empire.¹⁰³ On the other hand, the prescribed depiction of the imperial crown on the shields of the Frisian knights is a clear reference to the Holy Roman Empire.

Of course, it could be argued that in the essentially leaderless Frisian society, where feuds among the leading families were the order of the day,¹⁰⁴ there was a real need for a single individual to whom executive power could be transferred for a limited term. Something similar was felt in the towns in the western part of Friesland, some of which decided to elect a suitable person, mostly a haedling, to serve as president of the city council and also as chief executive magistrate and military leader. This urban officeholder was called an alderman, however, and not a potestas. The first mention of such an urban alderman dates from 1298 or 1299.¹⁰⁵ Apparently the potestas was meant to be a kind of super-alderman for the whole of Friesland.

The potestas (podestà) was a distinctly Italian phenomenon. The office can be traced back to 1151, when officials bearing the title of podestà were mentioned almost simultaneously in four cities: Bologna, Verona, Ferrara and Siena.¹⁰⁶ These officials were elected by the commune. For a limited period of time, usually a year, the executive, military and judicial powers were transferred from the city council to this functionary, thus temporarily taking power away from a collective body and giving it to a single individual. The early holders of the office were mostly native sons, chosen from noble families. Even if Emperor Frederick Barbarossa imposed a podestà in some Italian cities under his control, the podesteria can be considered a phenomenon that arose from the commune itself. Moreover, it was a new institution, not a revival of an office from the ancient Roman republic.

By the first half of the thirteenth century, the podesteria had become the prevailing form of government in Italian cities. In its classic form, the holder of the office was no longer a podestà citadino, someone taken from the commune itself, but a podestà forestiero, someone who came from outside. There was a simple reason for this: this functionary should transcend the inevitable rivalries of the city's leading families, and the risk of getting involved in their habitual discords and internecine strife would be considerably smaller for an outsider. Moreover, in order to safeguard his neutrality as much as possible, the podestà was not allowed to entertain private contact with the citizens. As a further guarantee, he had to bring along his own household and live in a special palazzo. In many later cases, the podestà was no longer elected by the commune, but instead designated by arbitrators or even by the emperor, the pope or a friendly commune. Normally he was not immediately re-eligible for office in the same city.¹⁰⁷

There is evidence that there was at least some knowledge of this Italian institution in thirteenth-century Friesland, as there are two references to a podestà in the chronicle of Bloemhof Abbey.¹⁰⁸ The first is in a description of the vicissitudes of Frisian participants in the Crusade to Acre (1217–18), which has been inserted into this chronicle. This narrative relates how the podestà of Corneto (now Tarquinia) gave a eulogy in honour of a contingent of Frisian Crusaders after they had spent the winter in this Latian city, upon their departure. The second reference is of less value, as in this case no Frisians were involved. It regards an event in Italy in 1248 in which the podestà of the city of Parma played a prominent role.

Philipp Heck was the first to refer to the story of over-wintering at Corneto,¹⁰⁹ and since then it has generally been assumed that the Frisian Crusaders were the connection with the idea of having a potestas in Friesland. It is true that nearly every time a crusade was organised, many Frisians, from all parts of Friesland, participated.¹¹⁰ It is doubtful, however, whether the Italian podestà can have made more than a superficial impression on the Frisian participants of the Crusades, as they will have spent relatively little time in Italian cities ‒ over-wintering was exceptional. Moreover, the spurious charter of Charlemagne – as we now know – only emerged at a later date. It is much more likely that the idea of having a potestas was brought to Friesland by Frisians who had spent at least some years in an Italian city governed by a podestà. In this regard, there is only one group of individuals that comes into serious consideration: university students.

Bologna was an important centre for the study of both Roman law and medicine in the thirteenth century – and it attracted a remarkably large number of students from Friesland. Nearly all of them, 43 in total, matriculated there during a period of only 12 years, from 1290 through to 1301.¹¹¹ Regrettably, none of them can be identified, as only their first names are given. We may nevertheless assume that many of them will have returned to their native Friesland, bringing with them fresh ideas acquired during their stay in Bologna. In this city, which still boasts an impressive Palazzo del podestà (built around 1200), they must have had a good opportunity to gain a proper idea of how a podestà functioned and, moreover, what the general idea was that lay behind the office. Since the notion of the Frisians electing a potestas occupies a prominent place in the spurious charter of Charlemagne, a case could be made for this document having been devised by one or more of the Frisian students who had spent part of their lives in Bologna at the end of the thirteenth century. It may even have been written there and taken to Friesland afterwards.¹¹²

One element of the description of the office of potestas in the spurious charter is not derived from the Italian example. This is the idea of the potestas having the authority to knight those consuls who owned enough property to be eligible for this honour. Heinrich Schmidt calls this provision ‘a “weed” that had ripened in “the air of the Crusades”’.¹¹³ The latter is, however, less certain than it may seem at first sight. Schmidt still assumed that the charter was a product of the thirteenth rather than the early fourteenth century. The later date for the fabrication of the charter, in combination with the explicit mention of the knights of the king of France, might be an argument that the splendour of French chivalry at the end of the thirteenth and start of the fourteenth century played a more important role than any impression the demeanour of knighthood will have made on the Frisian participants of the Crusades. The reference to the annual election of a potestas as a custom of the Romans seems no more than an oblique remark, but is highly interesting nonetheless. It could be a mistaken reference to the election of consuls, rather than potestates. But it could also reflect a lack of knowledge about the origin of the office of podestà in the Italian city-states.

The notion of having the judges elect a potestas, it turns out, was utterly wasted on Friesland, as for a long time no one was thus designated. Surprisingly, the idea was taken up at a later time by a foreign ruler who was trying to assert his authority in at least part of Friesland: Duke Charles the Bold. In the course of negotiations that took place in 1470, his representatives proposed the election of a potestas by the West Frisians who, in the name of this prince as lord of Friesland, would supervise their judges as well as collect the annual tribute and the fines he claimed from the West Frisians. The latter refused to do homage to the duke, however, and nothing came of it.¹¹⁴

Subsequently, the idea was adopted by Maximilian, but in a more artful way, as he explicitly included the election of a potestas in the privilege he bestowed on the West Frisians in 1493.¹¹⁵ This was just the first part of his scheme, moreover, for it was also stated that if they failed to do so, the emperor or king of the Romans would have the right to impose a candidate of his own choice, albeit on a temporary basis. Though it was established that during the period of office of the potestas the judges would continue to govern their districts as usual, the West Frisians were alert to the prospect of a foreigner being designated to this office. They now proceeded to elect a potestas from their own ranks, a prominent representative of the class of haedlingen named Juw Dekema, on New Year's Day, 1494. Due to internal dissension, however, the potestas-elect never took office.¹¹⁶

When Maximilian, in 1498, conferred the title of gubernator (governor) and potestas of Friesland on duke Albrecht of Saxony, he made the office hereditary. In doing so, he violated both the letter and the spirit of the privilege he had only recently granted to the West Frisians. So, paradoxically, the essentially communal notion of an elected potestas, which was intended to strengthen liberty, was taken advantage of by a monarch to put an end to precisely the same liberty. Within two years, moreover, the Saxon duke, after suppressing a widespread rebellion of the West Frisians, was to drop the title of potestas, as it recalled the notion of the Frisians’ liberty.¹¹⁷ This marks the real end of Frisian freedom.

Conclusion

The Frisians of the later Middle Ages must have been well aware of their anomalous position. At some stage, possibly in the first half of the thirteenth century, they gave their ‘exceptionalism’ a name: liberty. By the close of the thirteenth century it was termed more succinctly ‘Frisian freedom’ and, latterly, from the early fifteenth century, ‘free (and) Frisian’.

The present investigation shows that until about the middle of the fourteenth century, the Frisians themselves considered freedom from servitude the essential part of their liberty, with the free election of judges as another important aspect. It was not until the fifteenth century that they viewed their liberty mainly, or even exclusively, as freedom from princely rule. This shift may be explained by the growing power of the class of haedlingen, a process that will certainly have reduced the personal freedom of most Frisians.

Frisian freedom is undoubtedly a manifestation of the communal movement. It constitutes a strong example of rural communalism that transformed into ‘republicanism’ (following Blickle's terminology). It could even be argued that the case of Friesland, where the growth of sovereign rule, at least in the eastern territories, had broken down early on, is more prototypical of rural ‘republicanism’ than that of Uri and Schwyz, where the power of the territorial princes was eliminated at a much later stage. Moreover, in Friesland the development of seigneurial dominion had come to a halt before the process of ‘republicanisation’ came about, and not the other way around.

Unlike the autonomy of the Swiss, the political freedom of the Frisians was not founded on imperial privileges. They were in fact granted charters containing such rights, but only at a late stage. Moreover, these failed to acquire any significance in their ideology of freedom. Pivotal to the Frisians, at least from the first half of the fourteenth century, was a forged charter of Charlemagne, befitting the Frisians’ long-standing cult of this legendary king as the source of their liberty.

There are no more than a few examples of attempts to ground freedom in the Frisian polity on the authority of classical authors or the Digest. These instances pale into insignificance when compared to the abundance of references to Charlemagne as the source of the Frisians’ freedom: until 1500, the Frisians preferred to adhere to their traditional and markedly archaic mode of justifying their liberty.

An idea that would haunt the final years of Frisian freedom was that of creating the office of potestas. It is suggested here that it may have derived, c.1300, from one or more of the Frisian students at the university in Bologna, who then tried to introduce it in Friesland by including it in a forged document: the spurious charter that confirmed freedom in Charlemagne's name. However, as this idea, unlike the charter itself, failed to gain any popularity among the Frisians, it cannot be said that the example of the north Italian city-states had any real influence on Frisian freedom.

Additional information

Oebele Vries taught Old Frisian Philology and Frisian History at the University of Groningen until his retirement in 2012. At present he is an honorary research fellow at the Fryske Akademy, Leeuwarden. The late Richard Vaughan was, in 1986, his PhD supervisor.

Notes

1 B. Schneidmüller, ‘Constructing the Past by Means of the Present. Historiographical Foundations of Medieval Institutions, Dynasties, Peoples, and Communities’, in Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, eds. G. Althoff, J. Fried and P.J. Geary (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 2002), 167–92 (181).

2 See, for a summary of descriptions of Friesland by medieval cosmographers, J. Stracke, ‘Was sagen mittelalterliche Kosmographen in ihren Werken über Friesland aus’, Frysk Jierboek 1967 = Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst und Vaterländische Altertümer zu Emden 47 (1967): 15–34. For an example of an invective against the Frisian love of freedom, A. Crantzius (c.1450‒1517), Saxonia et metropolis (Cologne: Gerwinus Calenius, 1574), 731: ‘the Frisians … , a haughty kind of men, and much boast about liberty’ (‘Phrisij … , superbum genus hominum, et quod sibi multum arrogat de libertate’).

3 G.L. Lint and others, eds., Papers of John Adams, vol. 12, October 1781 – April 1782 (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 309 (letter to Robert R. Livingston, 11 March 1782).

4 G.H. de Mirabeau, Aux Bataves sur le Stadhoudérat (London: [no publisher given], 1788), 9: ‘un chêne robuste à qui la sève de la liberté conserve sa force et sa verdure’.

5 This even holds for modern studies of the concept of liberty in the Netherlands: there is one short mention in M. van Gelderen and W. Blockmans, ‘Het klassieke en middeleeuwse erfgoed: politieke vrijheid van de Romeinse Republiek tot de Bourgondische Nederlanden’, in Vrijheid. Een geschiedenis van de vijftiende tot de twintigste eeuw, eds. E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier and W.R.E. Velema (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999), 11–25 (21–2). It is completely absent in J.I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), in sharp contrast to the statement on the Frisians made by J.L. Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic: a History, vol. 1 (London: Dent, 1906), 42: ‘this most republican tribe of Netherlanders, or of Europeans’.

6 I. Schöffer, ‘The Batavian Myth during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Britain and the Netherlands, vol. 5, eds. J.S. Bromley and E.H. Kossmann (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1975), 78–101. Hugo Grotius, for a time the main propagandist of this myth, ranked the liberty of the Batavians over Frisian freedom as the ancient Frisians, unlike the Batavians, had reputedly been subject to the rule of the Romans. See E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier, ‘Het begrip “vrijheid” in de Nederlandse geschiedschrijving van de zeventiende tot de negentiende eeuw’, in Vrijheid. Een geschiedenis van de vijftiende tot de twintigste eeuw, eds. Haitsma Mulier and Velema, 213–31 (218).

7 ‘Frisian freedom’ is the expression in general use.

8 N.E. Algra, Ein. Enkele rechtshistorische aspecten van de grondeigendom in Westerlauwers Friesland (Groningen: Noordhoff, 1966), 99–102. Cf. J.R.G. Schuur, ‘De middeleeuwse Friese vrijheid. Een sociaal of een politiek verschijnsel?’, It Beaken 67 (2005): 17–30.

9 For example H. Aubin, ‘Rechtsgeschichtliche Betrachtungen zum Nordseeraum’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, GA 72 (1955): 1–33 (22), reprinted in idem, Grundlagen und Perspektiven geschichtlicher Kulturraumforschung und Kulturmorphologie. Aufsätze zur vergleichenden Landes- und Volksgeschichte aus viereinhalb Jahrzehnten anläßlich der Vollendung des 80. Lebensjahres des Verfassers (Bonn: Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für geschichtliche Landeskunde der Rheinlande an der Universität Bonn, 1965), 369–90 (383). Algra (note 8 above) held this to be representative of the traditional view.

10 For brief accounts of the medieval history of Friesland, O. Vries, ‘Geschichte der Friesen im Mittelalter: Ost- und Westfriesland’, in Handbuch des Friesischen. Handbook of Frisian Studies, ed. H.H. Munske (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001), 538–50; idem, ‘Friesland‘, in Medieval Germany: an Encyclopedia, ed. J.M. Jeep (New York: Garland, 2001), 252–6. For East Friesland in particular: H. Schmidt and E. Schubert, ‘Geschichte Ostfrieslands im Mittelalter’, in Geschichte Niedersachsens, vol. 2, part 1, ed. E. Schubert (Hanover: Hahn, 1997), 905‒1038. Where, in this section, no further references are given, information has been derived from these publications.

11 Old West Frisian: haedlingen; Old East Frisian: haudlingar; Middle Low German: hovetlingen; Latin: capitales or capitanei; German: ‘Häuptlinge’; Dutch: ‘hoofdelingen’.

12 See, on this discussion, Vries, ‘Geschichte der Friesen im Mittelalter’, 544–5. The latest contribution is P. Noomen, ‘Eigenerfd of edel? Naar aanleiding van de afkomst van de Aytta's’, It Beaken 75 (2012): 257–301 (265–74).

13 R. Folz, Le souvenir et la légende de Charlemagne dans l'Empire germanique médiéval (Paris: Société d’Édition Les Belles Lettres, 1950), especially 171–6; T.S.B. Johnston, ‘Old Frisian Law and the Frisian Freedom Ideology: Text and Manuscript Composition as a Marketing Device’, in Approaches to Old Frisian Philology, eds. R.H. Bremmer, Jr., T.S.B. Johnston and O. Vries. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 49 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), 179–214 (181–2); Schneidmüller, ‘Constructing the Past’, 181–8; H. Schmidt, ‘Zur “Ideologie” der Friesischen Freiheit im Mittelalter’, in Die Friesische Freiheit – Leben und Legende, ed. H. van Lengen (Aurich: Ostfriesische Landschaft, 2003), 318–45 (323–5), reprinted in H. Schmidt, Ostfriesland und Oldenburg. Gesammelte Beiträge zur norddeutschen Landesgeschichte (Aurich: Ostfriesische Landschaft, 2008), 441–60 (443–5).

14 Cf. H. van Lengen, ‘Karl der Große, Jungfrau Maria und andere Heilsbringer als Garanten und Patrone Friesischer Freiheit. Zu den Siegeln der Landesgemeinden Frieslands im Mittelalter’, in Die Friesische Freiheit – Leben und Legende, ed. Van Lengen, 90–133 (92–5).

15 For a discussion of the background to this legend, A. Janse, ‘Graaf Willem II van Holland en de Friese vrijheidslegende’, in Negen eeuwen Friesland‒Holland. Geschiedenis van een haat-liefdeverhouding, eds. P.H. Breuker and A. Janse (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1997), 77–86.

16 The approximate date of its confection has been convincingly established by A. Janse, ‘De waarheid van een falsum. Op zoek naar de politieke context van het Karelsprivilege’, De Vrije Fries 71 (1991): 7–28 (11–12).

17 Schneidmüller, ‘Constructing the Past’, 183–4.

18 In this paper the inhabitants of the western territories of Friesland, between the Zuider Zee and the river Lauwers, are referred to as West Frisians.

19 Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch. Wörterbuch der älteren deutschen Rechtssprache. 10 vols. (Heidelberg: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1914‒99), s.v. ²Freiheit.

20 Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics, vol. 2, Renaissance Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 29–30.

21 D. Hägermann, Studien zum Urkundenwesen Wilhelms von Holland. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Königsurkunde im 13. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1977), 366: ‘omnia iura, libertates et privilegia concessa Frisonibus universis a Karolo magno imperatore’.

22 O. Vries, Het Heilige Roomse Rijk en de Friese vrijheid (Leeuwarden: De Tille, 1986), 251: ‘gratias libertates immunitates franchesias iura privilegia’.

23 W. Trillmich and R. Buchner, eds., Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der Hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961), 380: ‘mox barbara gens, nimio furore succensa, in ferrum pro libertate ruebat’.

24 Virgil, Aeneid. 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000) 2: 104: ‘Aeneadae in ferrum pro libertate ruebant’.

25 H.T.M. Lambooij and J.A. Mol, eds., Vitae abbatum Orti Sancte Marie. Vijf abtenlevens van het klooster Mariëngaarde in Friesland (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001), 38: ‘libertatis Frisonum eatenus a temporibus Karoli Magni Imperatoris Romani habite’.

26 A. Janse, Grenzen aan de macht. De Friese oorlog van de Hollandse graven omstreeks 1400 (’s-Gravenhage: Stichting Hollandse Historische Reeks, 1993), 42.

27 H.P.H. Jansen and A. Janse, eds., Kroniek van het klooster Bloemhof te Wittewierum (Hilversum: Verloren, 1991), 360: ‘domnus Sicco decanus de Fermesum et nobiles terre, pro libertate Fresonum viriliter stantes’.

28 E. Friedländer, ed., Ostfriesisches Urkundenbuch. 2 vols. (Emden: Haynel, 1878–81), 1: no. 57: ‘Item libertatem Frisonum Gronienses cum Frisonibus contra quoscunque dominos communiter tueantur’.

29 H. Jacobi and B.J. van der Veen, ‘Een munt van het vrije Friesland’, Fryslân 4, vol. 4 (1998): 17–21.

30 F. Kern, ‘Analekten zur Geschichte des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts. V. Frankreich und die Friesen’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 31 (1910): 76–87 (86): ‘non obliti maximi beneficii libertatis Frisonice … a Karolo Magno rege Romanorum … in perpetuum nobis concesse’.

31 Friedländer, ed., Ostfriesisches Urkundenbuch, 1: no. 94: ‘nos … pro utilitate Frisonice libertatis cum prelatis et clericis nostris in Groningge congregati’; ‘si alicui zelandie … aliqua evidens necessitas gravatione vel inpugnatione, in preiudicium Frisonice libertatis … contigerit imminere’. In documents like this concerning Frisian freedom no references to terrae are made. The term used here is ‘sealand’. The number of ‘sealands’ supposedly was confined to seven.

32 Codex Unia, Apographa, f. 75r. Electronic edition by J. Sytsema at http://tdb.fryske-akademy.eu/tdb/index-unia.html (Accessed 25 June 2014): ‘Orate pro eo unum pater noster et unum ave Maria causa dei et Frisonice libertatis’.

33 For the date, see F. Bock, ‘Friesland und das Reich’, Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst und Vaterländische Altertümer zu Emden 33 (1953): 5–35 (23). This source is often erroneously dated to the first half of the thirteenth century.

34 W.J. Buma and W. Ebel, eds., Westerlauwerssches Recht I. Jus Municipale Frisonum. Altfriesische Rechtsquellen 6 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), 350: ‘om dae era dis fresiska fridomes’.

35 O. Vries, ‘De Aldfryske pearformule fry ende freesk’, Us Wurk 35 (1986): 75–84, reprinted in idem, De taal van recht en vrijheid. Studies over middeleeuws Friesland (Gorredijk: Bornmeer, 2012), 67–77. The expression is reminiscent of a parallel one in Dutch ‒ vry (ende) vranck ‒ which, however, lacks the political connotation and seems only to have come into use during the second half of the fifteenth century: E. Verwijs and J. Verdam, Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek. 11 vols. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1885–1952), s.v. vranc. Cf. French libre et franc.

36 P. Sipma, ed., Oudfriesche oorkonden. 3 vols. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1927–41), 2: no. 175: ‘hoe wy to der era Godis … ende om fry ende freesck sint wr een commen’.

37 This explanation is nevertheless rejected by J.R.G. Schuur, ‘De “vrije Fries”’, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 69 (2001): 139–44. A thorough study of the term is still lacking (Schuur's article is no more than a comment). It seems in the end to have developed into a kind of honorary title. Siidzo Uningha, for one, exclaims in his colophon (note 32): ‘I am a free Frisian in every way’ (‘sum Friso per omnia liber’).

38 O. Vries, ‘Staatsvorming in Zwitserland en Friesland in de late middeleeuwen. Een vergelijking’, in Fryslân, staat en macht 1450–1650. Bijdragen aan het historisch congres te Leeuwarden van 3 tot 5 juni 1998, eds. J. Frieswijk and others (Hilversum: Verloren, 1999), 26–42 (26–7), reprinted in idem, De taal van recht en vrijheid, 78–98 (78–9).

39 J.J. Boer, Ubbo Emmius en Oost-Friesland (Groningen: Wolters, 1935), 117–31.

40 H. Brugmans and F. Wachter, eds., Briefwechsel des Ubbo Emmius. 2 vols. (Aurich: Dunkmann, 1911–23), 1: no. 196 (4 June 1606): ‘amator libertatis … quam maximus, et omnis servitutis inimicus’.

41 E. Mühlbacher, ed., Die Urkunden der Karolinger, Band I: Die Urkunden Pippins, Karlmanns und Karls des Großen. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Diplomata Karolinorum, 1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1906), no. 269: ‘Et preterea auctoritate regia indulsimus eisdem, ut cum omni prole sua nata vel nascitura in perpetuum liberi permaneant et a servitute proprietaria penitus absoluti. Statuimus etiam, ne quis eis dominetur, nisi sit ex eorum bona voluntate seu consensu’.

42 H. van Rij, ed., Een verhaal over Groningen, Drente, Coevorden en allerlei andere zaken onder verschillende Utrechtse bisschoppen (Hilversum: Verloren, 1989), 78–9: ‘cum sint homines liberi et ab omni iugo servitutis vel cuiuslibet prementis dominii exuti’.

43 ‘In the freedom, then, with which Christ did make you free – stand ye, and be not held fast again by a yoke of servitude’.

44 H.D. Meijering, De Willekeuren van de Opstalsboom (1323). Een filologisch-historische monografie (Groningen: V.R.B. Offsetdrukkerij, 1974), 95: ‘Si aliquis princeps secularis vel spiritualis … nos Frisones vel aliquos ex nostris impugnaverit, volens nos iugo subiicere servitutis, communi concursu et armata manu, nostram libertatem mutuo tueamur’.

45 J. van Moolenbroek and J.A. Mol, eds., De abtenkroniek van Aduard. Studies, editie en vertaling (Hilversum: Verloren, 2010), 280, 282: ‘Nam servilem conditionem nimis exhorrebant propter sevitiam principum quam antea experti fuerant’.

46 Friedländer, ed., Ostfriesisches Urkundenbuch, 1: no. 390: ‘nhu lenger gene egendoeme tho lidende’.

47 For more examples, see H. Schmidt, ‘Häuptlingsmacht, Freiheitsideologie und bäuerliche Sozialstruktur im spätmittelalterlichen Friesland’, in Zwischen Nicht-Adel und Adel, eds. K. Andermann and P. Johanek. Vorträge und Forschungen, Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte 53 (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2001), 285–309 (295–6), reprinted in Schmidt, Ostfriesland und Oldenburg, 627–50 (637–8).

48 Friedländer, ed., Ostfriesisches Urkundenbuch, 1: no. 280: ‘unse Vreske palen unde vrydom … voer aller Dudeschen heren ofte steden overmacht unde ghewalt’.

49 Sipma, ed., Oudfriesche oorkonden, 2: no. 41 (1456): ‘dat elck myt oderem fry ende Freesck by scherme myt lyf ende gued to jenst alle lands heren’. The same formula is found in 2: no. 73 (1473).

50 M. Oosterhout, ed., Snitser Recesboeken 1490–1517 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1960), no. 50: ‘om wse frye freeska frydom toe beschirmen deer ws allen is befellen toe halden lick ws cristena lauwa’. Note that the words used to designate Frisian freedom here are a combination of fry freesk and freeska frydom.

51 Mühlbacher, ed., Die Urkunden der Karolinger, 1: no. 269: ‘statuimus, ut ex suis eligant consules … , qui in causis secularibus … iudices eorum existant’.

52 Boer, Ubbo Emmius, 117, n. 1: ‘Libertatis autem huius primum caput est sine dubio magistratuum electio sine qua libertas non fuerit libertas’.

53 G. Rüthning, ed., Urkundenbuch von Jever und Kniphausen. Oldenburgisches Urkundenbuch 6 (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1932), no. 143: ‘by der vryheit, de uns de hoge vorste koning Karolus heft gegeven’. See for another example, Schmidt, ‘Häuptlingsmacht, Freiheitsideologie und bäuerliche Sozialstruktur’, 301 (idem, Ostfriesland und Oldenburg, 643).

54 E. Schubert, ‘Die Friesische Freiheit im europäischen Vergleich: Island, Schweiz, Siebenbürgen und Schottland’, in Die Friesische Freiheit – Leben und Legende, ed. Van Lengen, 294–317 (299).

55 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum (Cologne: Johannes Koelhoff, 1483), XV: 16: ‘Gens quidem est libera extra gentem suam alterius dominio non subiecta. morti se exponunt gratia libertatis et potius mortem diligunt quam iugo opprimi servitutis … subsunt tamen iudicibus quos annuatim de seipsis eligunt qui rempublicam inter ipsos ordinant et disponunt’.

56 Quoted above (note 49).

57 Cf. K. Schulz, ‘Denn sie lieben die Freiheit so sehr … ’. Kommunale Aufstände und Entstehung des europäischen Bürgertums im Hochmittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992); S.A. Epstein, ‘Communes, 1200–1500’, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. W.C. Jordan. Supplement 1 (New York: Scribners, 2004) 132–7.

58 Schulz, ‘Denn sie liebten die Freiheit’, 6.

59 P. Blickle, Kommunalismus. Skizzen einer gesellschaftlichen Organisationsform. 2 vols. (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2000), 2: 72.

60 P. Blickle, ‘Communalism as a Concept’, in New Approaches to the History of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. T. Dahlerup and P. Ingesman (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2009), 60–75.

61 Blickle, Kommunalismus, 2: 86 (cf. 1: 178).

62 For a description of the ‘republicanisation’ of Uri and Schwyz, see Blickle, Kommunalismus, 2: 86–91.

63 Blickle, Kommunalismus, 1: 62–7.

64 H. Schilling, Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society: Essays in German and Dutch History (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 193. This author assigns the term ‘republicanism’ to urban communalism (197).

65 Cf. Blickle, Kommunalismus.

66 This holds no less for Dithmarschen, a region that is, however, left aside in this paper.

67 On imperial policy with regard to the Frisians, especially during the fifteenth century, see Vries, Het Heilige Roomse Rijk en de Friese vrijheid; idem, ‘Die Friesische Freiheit: ein Randproblem des Reiches’, in Die Friesische Freiheit – Leben und Legende, ed. Van Lengen, 266–93, reprinted in Vries, De taal van recht en vrijheid, 43–66.

68 M.P. van Buijtenen, ‘Friezen en Zwitsers’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 76 (1963): 319–24; Vries, ‘Staatsvorming in Zwitserland en Friesland in de late middeleeuwen’ (comparison of state-building only); Schubert, ‘Die Friesische Freiheit im europäischen Vergleich’, 302–7.

69 F. Graus, ‘“Freiheit” als soziale Forderung. Die Bauernbewegungen im Spätmittelalter’, in Die abendländische Freiheit vom 10. bis zum 14. Jahrhundert. Der Wirkungszusammenhang von Idee und Wirklichkeit im europäischen Vergleich, ed. J. Fried (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1991), 409–33 (427–8); T. Maissen, Die Geburt der Republic. Staatsverständnis und Repräsentation in der frühen neuzeitlichen Eidgenossenschaft (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006); idem, ‘Inventing the Sovereign Republic: Imperial Structures, French Challenges, Dutch Models and the Early Modern Swiss Confederation’, in The Republican Alternative: the Netherlands and Switzerland compared, eds. A. Holenstein, T. Maissen and M. Prak (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 125–50.

70 Maissen, ‘Inventing the Sovereign Republic’, 126–7. The Latin word respublica at the time was still generally understood in the sense of a ‘state’ or ‘commonwealth’ (126).

71 Blickle, Kommunalismus, 1: 116–28.

72 P. Jones, The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 333.

73 S. Ferente, ‘Guelphs! Factions, Liberty and Sovereignty: Inquiries about the Quattrocento’, History of Political Thought 28 (2007): 571–98 (580).

74 P. Blickle, Der Bauernkrieg. Die Revolution des Gemeinen Mannes (Munich: Beck, 2012), 55–69; cf. Graus, ‘“Freiheit” als soziale Forderung’.

75 First published in Thomas Murner, Von dem grossen Lutherischen Narren (Strasbourg: [no publisher given], 1522), 120.

76 Cf. Skinner, Visions of Politics, 2: 13–18.

77 R.L. Benson, ‘Libertas in Italy (1152–1226)’, in La notion de liberté au moyen âge: Islam, Byzance, Occident, ed. G. Makdisi (Paris: Société d’Édition Les Belles Lettres, 1985), 191–213.

78 N. Rubinstein, ‘Florentina Libertas’, Rinascimento. Rivista dell'Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento 26 (1986): 3–26.

79 J.A. Mol and J. Smithuis, ‘De Friezen als uitverkoren volk. Religieus-patriottische geschiedschrijving in vijftiende-eeuws Friesland’, Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis 11 (2008): 165–204.

80 H.T.M. Lambooij, ed., Sibrandus Leo en zijn abtenkronieken van de Friese premonstratenzerkloosters Lidlum en Mariëngaarde. Een nadere studie, editie en vertaling (Hilversum: Verloren, 2008), 412.

81 P. Gerbenzon, Emo van Huizinge, een vroege decretalist (Groningen: Wolters, 1965), 7.

82 C. Kempius, De origine, situ, qualitate et quantitate Frisiae, et rebus a Frisiis olim praeclarè gestis, libri tres (Cologne: Gosvinus Cholinus, 1588), 140: ‘Carolus Magnus Frisiam libertate inæstimabili donavit, quam nemo bonus nisi cum anima simul amittet’. There is no other known reference to this text.

83 On Groningen's attempt to revive the Upstalsboom League, see Meijering, De Willekeuren, 283–4.

84 K. Vretska, ed., C. Sallustius Crispus, De Catilinae coniuratione (Heidelberg: Winter, 1976), 405: ‘At nos non imperium neque divitias petimus, quarum rerum causa bella atque certamina omnia inter mortalis sunt, sed libertatem, quam nemo bonus nisi cum anima simul amittit’.

85 As ‘Emo of Friesland’, today celebrated as the first known foreign student of Oxford University: www.ox.ac.uk/about/organisation/history (Accessed 25 June 2014).

86 Jansen and Janse, eds., Kroniek van het klooster Bloemhof, 122: ‘libertate que res est inestimabilis’.

87 P. Bonfante and others, eds., Digesta Iustiniani Augusti (Milan: Formis Societatis Editricis Librariae, 1960), 1559: ‘Libertas inaestimabilis res est.’

88 On Worp's attitude towards Frisian freedom, see E.H. Waterbolk, Twee eeuwen Friese geschiedschrijving. Opkomst, bloei en verval van de Friese historiografie in de zestiende en zeventiende eeuw (Groningen: Wolters, 1952), 30–1.

89 Worp Tyaerda van Rinsumageest, Vijfde boek der kronijken van Friesland, bevattende de geschiedenis van het begin der zestiende eeuw (Leeuwarden: Suringar, 1871), 130–1. Waterbolk (note 88) fails to take this reference into account.

90 In a letter to the duke of Saxony, this ruler's regents in Friesland reported the use of the battle cry ‘free Frisian’ by the rebelling Frisians: ‘that the enemies cried free Frisian’ (‘das die feynde freije friesse gerueffenn’). Dresden, Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Loc. 8183, Friesländische Sachen 1514–15, f. 26 (24 November 1514).

91 Worp Tyaerda van Rinsumageest, Vijfde boek der kronijken van Friesland, 130–1: ‘dat alle menschen wt dye natuer geneicht tot vryheit syn geboeren, want Tullius secht dat alle eygendom onsalich ofte elendich is, maer dyegene dye de soetticheit des vrydoms gesmaket hebben, is sy al der onsalichste.’

92 Cicero, Philippics (London: Heinemann, 1957), 224: ‘Nihil est detestabilius dedecore, nihil foedius servitute.’

93 Cicero, Philippics, 224: ‘Ad decus et ad libertatem nati sumus’.

94 Cicero, In Catilinam I‒IV. Pro Murena. Pro Sulla. Pro Flacco (London: Heinemann, 1977), 156: ‘Libertas ea quae dulcissima est’. Another instance, from De re publica (I: 31: 47), is: ‘liberty … ; most certainly nothing can be sweeter than this (‘libertas … ; qua quidem certe nihil potest esse dulcius’): Cicero, De re publica De legibus (London: Heinemann, 1951), 72. However, this latter quotation cannot have been available to Worp, as the part of the manuscript containing this phrase was discovered subsequently.

95 M. Tullius Cicero, De officiis libri tres (Philadelphia: Hogan & Thompson, 1833), 73: ‘Mors servituti turpitudinique anteponenda’. There is a striking similarity between this statement and Friedrich Schiller's formulation of the Rütlischwur, the legendary oath sworn by Swiss freedom fighters, in his drama Wilhelm Tell (Tübingen: Cotta, 1804), 101: ‘We want to be free, like the fathers were, preferring death to living in servitude’ (‘Wir wollen frey seyn wie die Väter waren, Eher den Tod, als in der Knechtschaft leben’).

96 No source for Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ pregnant statement is given by R. Bülck, ‘“Lewer duad üs Slaw”. Geschichte eines politischen Schlagwortes’, Jahrbuch des Vereins für Niederdeutsche Sprachforschung 74 (1951): 99–126 (100–1).

97 E.J. Cowan, ‘For Freedom Alone’: the Declaration of Arbroath, 1320 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2003), 57–60.

98 Skinner, Visions of Politics, 2: 13.

99 Q. Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 38–41.

100 Skinner, Visions of Politics, 2: 17–8.

101 Mühlbacher, ed., Die Urkunden der Karolinger, 1: no. 269: ‘Statuimus etiam, ut iidem consules singulis annis secundum consuetudinem Romanorum eligant personam ydoneam et discretam, sub cuius regimine, dominio et potestate Frisia tota sit constituta et subiecta, cui in omnibus et per omnia tamquam suo vero domino infra terminum sibi ab ipsis deputatum teneantur obedire, que persona potestas Frisie debeat appellari’.

102 Schubert, ‘Die Friesische Freiheit im europäischen Vergleich’, 296.

103 H. Schmidt, ‘Studien zur Geschichte der friesischen Freiheit’, Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst und Vaterländische Altertümer zu Emden 43 (1963): 5–78 (71).

104 P.N. Noomen, ‘De Friese vetemaatschappij: sociale structuur en machtsbases’, in Fryslân, staat en macht 1450–1650, eds. Frieswijk and others, 42‒64.

105 J.R.G. Schuur, Leeuwarden voor 1435. Een poging tot reconstructie van de oudste stadsgeschiedenis (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1979), 142. A thorough study on the office of an urban alderman is still lacking.

106 On the earliest holders of the office of podestà in Italy, see C. Ludwig, Untersuchungen über die frühesten ‘Podestaten’ italienischer Städte (Vienna: Verband der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften Österreichs, 1973).

107 Ludwig, Untersuchungen über die frühesten ‘Podestaten’, 2–8; D. Waley, The Italian City-Republics (London: Longman, 1988), 40–5; Jones, Italian City-State, 408–9, 583–5.

108 Jansen and Janse, eds., Kroniek van het klooster Bloemhof, 78, 370.

109 P. Heck, Die altfriesische Gerichtsverfassung (Weimar: Böhlau, 1894), 441–3.

110 J.A. Mol, ‘Frisian Fighters and the Crusade’, Crusades 1 (2002): 89–110.

111 G.C. Knod, Deutsche Studenten in Bologna (1289–1562). Biographischer Index zu den Acta nationis Germanicae universitatis Bononiensis (Berlin: Schenck, 1899), 138–40.

112 The most recent attempts to establish the provenance of the charter of Charlemagne are W. Ehbrecht, ‘Vorstellungen Friesischer Freiheit im Mittelalter. Bemerkungen zum Pseudo-Carolinum (MGH D Karol I No. 269)’, in Tota Frisia in Teilansichten. Hajo van Lengen zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. H. Schmidt, W. Schwarz and M. Tielke (Aurich: Ostfriesische Landschaft, 2005), 199–222; and J.R.G. Schuur, ‘De herkomst van het Karelsprivilege’, It Beaken 67 (2005): 53–78. Their assumptions are not consistent with mine.

113 H. Schmidt, ‘Friesische Freiheitsüberlieferungen im hohen Mittelalter’, in Festschrift für Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag am 19. September 1971, vol. 3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), 518–45 (541), reprinted in Schmidt, Ostfriesland und Oldenburg, 287–309 (303–4): ‘ein in der “Luft der Kreuzzüge” gereiftes “Gewächs”’. The first to use this formulation was Bock, ‘Friesland und das Reich’, 7, although he characterised the charter as a whole in this way.

114 Vries, Het Heilige Roomse Rijk, 80–1.

115 Vries, Het Heilige Roomse Rijk, 125–6.

116 Vries, Het Heilige Roomse Rijk, 128‒33.

117 P. Baks, ‘Albrecht der Beherzte als erblicher Gubernator und Potestat Frieslands. Beweggründe und Verlauf seines friesischen “Abenteuers”’, in Herzog Albrecht der Beherzte (1443–1500). Ein sächsischer Fürst im Reich und in Europa, ed. A. Thieme (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2002), 103–41 (138–9).