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Bastards in the German Nobility in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries: Evidence ofthe "Zimmerische Chronik"Author(s): Judith J. HurwichSource: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Fall, 2003), pp. 701-727

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Sixteenth Century Journal

XXXIV/3 (2003)

Bastards in the German Nobility

in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries:

Evidence of the Zimmerische Chronik

Judith J.Hurwich

School of theHoly Child, Rye, New York

Many scholars have stressed the favor shown to the bastard sons of noblemen, partic

ularly in the "golden age of noble bastards" in the fifteenth century This article exam

ines the position of noble bastards in Southwest Germany, using the Zimmerische

Chronik (written in the 1560s) and regional studies of counts and barons in Swabia

and Franconia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The legal position of noble bas

tards in Germanywas inferior to that in France, where bastards were

presumed to

inherit their fathers noble status, or in Italy and Iberia, where illegitimatesons were

often legitimatedas heirs. Few German bastards established themselves as nobles, and

their opportunities for secular and ecclesiastical careers weredeclining long before the

Reformation. The causes were not somuch religiousor

political factors as social fac

tors, especially the German definition of nobility and the increasing lineagecon

sciousness of German nobles.

"Would the estimate be too high, if oneregarded

a third of the populationin

the lateMiddle Ages as of illegitimate birth?" asksRolf Sprandel, after looking at

wills and personal chronicles that suggest that "the lateMiddle Ages teemed with

illegitimate children," especiallyin the upper classes.1 Neithard Bulst says, "It

appears that in Germany neither thenobility

nor the urban patriciate had a uni

formly negative attitude toward illegitimate children. Here, too, family chronicles

are full of bastards."2

One of the German family chronicles "full of bastards" is the Zimmerische

Chronik, or Chronicle of theCounts ofZimmern, written in the 1560s by the Swabian

Count Froben

Christoph

von Zimmern

(1516-56/7).3

This article examines the

position of noble bastards in Southwest Germany (Swabia and Franconia) in the

period 1400?1550, drawing primarilyon my research on the Zimmerische Chronik.

Aboutthree-quarters

of the chronicle is devoted to theperiod from the 1480s to

the 1560s, coveringin great detail three generations of the Zimmern family. Much

^olf Sprandel, "Die Diskriminierung der unehelichen Kinder imMittelalter," in Zur Socialgeschichte derKindheit, ed. Jochen Martin and August Nitsche (Freiburg:Verlag Karl Alber, 1986), 487.

2Neithard Bulst, "Illegitime Kinder: Viele oder wenige? Quantitative Aspekte der Illegitimit?t im

sp?tmittelalterischen Europa," in Illegitimit?t im Sp?tmittelalter, ed. Ludwig Schmugge (Munich: Olden

bourg, 1995), 37.

3Karl Barack, ed., Zimmerische Chronik, 4 vols., Bibliothek des literarisches Verein von Stuttgart,

vols. 91-94 (T?bingen, 1869). The best guide to the chronicle is Beat Jenny, Graf Froben Christoph von

Zimmern?Geschichtsschreiber?Erz?hler?Landesherr (Lindau: Jan Thorbecke, 1959), which contains an

extensive bibliography.Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the chronicle aremy own.

701



702 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIV/3 (2003)

of the material in the chronicle isautobiographical

or is based on oral transmission

from otherfamily members, giving insights into

personal behavior?including

extramarital affairs and treatment ofillegitimate children?which are rare in

family

chronicles.The author also tells many anecdotes aboutacquaintances and retells sto

ries fromliterary

sources orpopular culture. Many of these stories must be

regarded

aspartially

orwholly fictitious, but they shed

lighton the

assumptions that the

authorexpected

his audience to share on thesubject

of extramaritalsexuality and

illegitimate children. Although this chronicle cannot be taken asrepresentative of

the views of all German nobles, it offers aunique commentary

on these topics by

one nobleman who iswriting not as a Christian moralist or a jurist but as an ordi

nary layman.

The article will place the evidence from the chronicle in the context of anal

yses offamily relationships among the counts and barons of Southwest Germany in

the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially the work of Karl-Heinz Spiesson

the nonprincely high nobility of theMainz region (some of whom intermarried

with the Zimmern) and that of Karl Heinz Burmeister on the counts of Montfort,

one of the mostpowerful

noble families of Swabia.4 It will also compare the evi

dence available for Southwest German counts and barons with that on other con

tinental nobilities, particularlythose of France and the Iberian

kingdoms.

Customary law regarding inheritance and family relationshipsdiffered from

regionto

regionwithin the Holy Roman Empire; moreover, the inheritance prac

tices of nobles often differed from those prescribed by the customary law of the

region. In the absence of evidence from other regions, it isimpossible

to tell

whether the attitudes and behavior of Swabian and Franconian nobles towards their

illegitimate children weretypical

of other German nobles. Similarproblems

arise

indiscussing the status of noble bastards in other European countries such as France,

where customary law and the actual practices of nobles also varied fromregion

to

region and fromfamily

tofamily. Nevertheless, both early modern French theorists

ofnobility

and modern French scholars assert that the attitudes of German nobles

toward m?salliance and bastardy differed from those of French nobles, and that these

differences were based on the differing "German" and "French" definitions of

nobility. The German system of reckoning nobility "by quarters" required that both

parents be nobles, whereas the "French" system?like that of most otherEuropean

nobilities?reckoned noble descent throughthe father alone.5 Evidence on

4Karl-Heinz Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft im deutschen Hochadel des Sp?tmittelalters: 13. bis

Anfang des 16.Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1993); Karl Heinz Burmeister,"Illegitime Adelsspr?sslingeaus dem Hause Montfort," in idem, Die Grafen

vonMontfort: Geschichte, Recht, Kultur. Festgabe

zum 60.

Geburtstag, ed. Alois Niederst?tter (Constance: Universit?tsverlag Konstanz, 1996), 103-16.

^Modern French writers on nobility comment on the strictness of the German definition of nobil

ity: e.g. Jean-Pierre Labatut, Les noblesses europ?ennes de lafin du XVe si?cle ? lafin du XVIIIe si?cle (Paris:

Presses Universitaires de France, 1978), 79-81; Philippe Contamines, La noblesse au royaume de France de

Philippe le Bel ? Louis XII (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991), 57. In his treatise on nobility,

the seventeenth-century theorist Thirrat commented on the inferior legal position of German noble

bastards ascompared to the bastards of French noblemen: Florentine de Thirrat, Trois traictez, savoir de la

noblesse de race, de la noblesse civile, des immunit?s des ignobles (Paris, 1606), cited in Mikhael Harsgor,



Hurwich / Bastards in theGerman Nobility 703

Swabian and Franconian nobles canhelp

show whether such generalizationsabout

unique "German" attitudes are valid.

A Golden Age of Noble Bastards?

The fifteenth century has been called thegolden age for noble bastards in western

Europe,one in which

illegitimatesons of noblemen were

recognizedas nobles,

brought up in their fathers' households, and accorded prominent roles at court, in

the army, and in estate administration. Accordingto

Ludwig Schmugge,"Children

begottenoutside of marriage

seem to have been considered aluxury

of male aris

tocrats' in France. In noble circles here and elsewhere in Europe, illegitimacy was

... notgrounds

for social discrimination against parentsor children."6 Mikhael

Harsgor speaks of the "flourishingof noble bastards" at the courts of France and

Burgundy in the second half of the fifteenth century7 J. P.Cooper finds a similar

phenomenonin Castile and concludes, "A

generalif

superficial impression is that

bastards were more numerous and had amorerecognized place

in noble societies

of fifteenth-century Europethan in those of

post-Tridentine Europe."8In all of

these countries, illegitimatesons served a vital social function for the nobility by

holding offices in church and state that enhanced the power and influence of their

fathers' families, while the marriages ofillegitimate

sons and daughters helpedto

extend dynastic alliances and patron-clientnetworks. Moreover, the legitimation

of bastards (acommon

practicein the Iberian kingdoms and in

Italy)was a

method of creating male heirs in the absence ofadoption.9

"L'essor des b?tards nobles au XVe si?cle," Revue Historique 253, no. 2 (1975): 328. For the argument

that the so-called Germanie concept of nobility led to a greater condemnation of m?salliances than did

the so-called French concept, see Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Jean-Fran?ois Fitou, "Hypergamief?minine et population saint-simonienne,"^4??a/e5 ESC 46, no. 1 (1991): 145.

6Ludwig Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren: P?pstliche Dispense von der unehelichen Geburt im Sp?tmittelalter

(Zurich:Artemis &Winkler,

1995),25?27.The

quotation"a

luxuryof male aristocrats" comes

from Marie-Th?r?se Lorcin, Vivre et mourir en Lyonnais ? lafin du moyen ?ge (Paris: CNRS, 1981), 95.

On the concept of a golden age of bastards, see Harsgor, "Lessor des b?tards nobles," 319?54; J. P.Coo

per, "Patterns of Inheritance and Settlement by Great Landowners from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth

Centuries," in Family and Inheritance: Rural Society inWestern Europe 1200?1800, ed. Jack Goody, Joan

Thirsk, and E. P.Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 236 n. 144, 302; Her

mann Winterer, Die rechtliche Stellung der Bastarde in Italien von 800 bis 1500, M?nchner Beitr?ge zur

Medi?vistik und Renaissance-Forschung (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1978), 28:112; Hermann Win

terer,Die rechtlicheStellung der Bastarde in Spanien imMittelalter, M?nchner Beitr?ge zurMedi?vistik und

Renaissance-Forschung (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1981), 31:117.

7Harsgor, "Lessor des b?tards nobles," 319.

8Cooper, "Patterns of Inheritance and Settlement," 238 n. 144, 302 n. 320.

9Harsgor, "L'essor des b?tards nobles," 335-46. Cooper, "Patterns of Inheritance and Settlement,"

302, describes the

recognition

of bastard sons as a solution to the

problem

of female heirs in an increas

ingly patrilineal society. However, legitimated sons were not usually allowed to exclude legitimate

daughters from the succession: seeMarie-Th?r?se Caron, La noblesse dans le duch? de Bourgogne 1315

1411 (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1987), 234;Thomas Kuehn, Law, Family andWomen: Toward

a Legal Anthropology ofRenaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 190; Isabel Beceiro

Pita and Ricardo C?rdoba de la Llave, Parentesco, poder y mentalidad: La nobleza castellana siglosXII?XV

(Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones cient?ficas, 1990), 248.




These generalizationsare based primarily

on the bastards of great nobles; even

Harsgor acknowledges that "theambiguity

of the socialposition of the natural chil

dren of nobles increased to the extent that the socialimportance

of their fathers

decreased. Among the nobles withonly

oneseigneurie,

or even less than that ... bas

tards were much less esteemed" than in thehigh nobility.10

Bastards werealways

eco

nomically inferior to their legitimate kin; they formed part of the large body of

servants, clients, poor relations, and otherdependents

for whom the head of a noble

family took responsibility^

Nevertheless, most studies of social classes below the high

nobility emphasizethe favored treatment

givento bastards and the affectionate ties

that often existed between nobles and their illegitimate offspringor half

siblings.12

The political and legal position of the illegitimate children of noblemen dete

riorated in all continental European countriesby the mid-sixteenth century. This

changeismost often attributed to the influence of the Protestant and Catholic Ref

ormations, as both ecclesiastical and secular authorities took amore hostile attitude

toward extramarital sexuality and toward the illegitimate children who were its

products. However, Harsgoralso attributes the

decliningstatus of noble bastards in

partto the centralization of power in the hands of the French

monarchy,which

strove to reduce the numbers and the power of the nobility. Coopernotes that the

increasing reluctance torecognize bastards as

inheritingtheir fathers' noble status

may be seen aspart of the process of lineal consolidation, by which great landown

ers tried to concentrateproperty in the hands of a

single patriline.This "process of

restricting the number of families and kin" reduced the inheritancerights

notonly

ofillegitimate

children but also of legitimate daughters and younger sons.

10Harsgor, "L'essor des b?tards nobles," 346.11

Caron, though writing of the same region and time period asHarsgor, emphasizes the marginal

position of the bastards of provincial nobles in France: "The illegitimate child ... never had anything

other than a secondary position; he could not make his birth forgotten... or attain the same standard

of living [as a legitimate child]_Even in the best case, when he lived close to nobles recognized as

such, the situation of the noble bastard was inferior if not downright wretched; he was treated in his

father's

family

"like a servant"; Caron, La noblesse dans le duch? de Bourgogne, 224, 230, 233. Nassiet takes

amore positive view of the status of noble bastards in France, but states that the best they could hope

for was to insert themselves as "auxiliaries, adjuncts, [or] clients" in a network of relationships with col

laterals;Michel Nassiet, Parent?, noblesse et ?tats dynastiques XVe?XVIe si?cles (Paris: Editions de l'Ecole

des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2000), 83.

In latemedieval and early modern Spain, many illegitimate children fell into the ambiguous cat

egory of" criado" or "reared one" (a term used for a servant but also for a foster child) or became clients

of the household head; see James Casey, Early Modern Spain: A Social History (London: Routledge, 1999),

209; Marie-Claude Gerbet, Les noblesses espagnolesau moyen ?ge:Xle?XVe si?cle (Paris:Armand Colin,

1994), 207.

12Shahar remarks that throughout Europe, "[b]astard sons sometimes became the particularcon

fidants of their fathers, on whose mercies they depended, and served as their faithful assistants and emis

saries"; Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate: A History ofWomen in theMiddle Ages (London: Methuen,

1983),116. Both Lorcin in her

studyof wills of the

Lyonnais regionand Nassiet in his

studyof the

pettynobles of Brittany in the lateMiddle Ages stress the close ties of affection between nobles and their ille

gitimatesons or half brothers; Lorcin, Vivre et mourir en Lyonnais, 97?99; Nassiet, Parent?, noblesse et ?tats

dynastiques, 83. Grimmer does the same in his study of the petty nobility of the Auvergnat in the seven

teenth century; Claude Grimmer, "Les b?tards de la noblesse auvergnate au XVIIe si?cle," XVIIe Si?cle

117 (1977): 48.

13Harsgor, "L'essor des b?tards nobles," 352; Cooper, "Patterns of Inheritance and Settlement," 302.




Recent research suggests that opportunities for noble bastards were more lim

ited in the HolyRoman

Empirethan in other western

Europeancountries even in

the fifteenth century, and that a deterioration in theirlegal, political, and social

positionwas evident

long before the Reformation. In hisanalysis of illegitimacy

in

the lateMiddle Ages, Schmugge says, "The [German] nobles acknowledged their

natural children, it is true, but they did not climb nearly so high as in France." 14

Noillegitimate

sons succeeded to the thrones of Germanprincely

states in an era

when they often did so in Italy.Emperor Frederick III objected to elevating Borso

d'Est? to the rank of duke of Ferrara in 1454 on the grounds that "because Borso

was not born in a proper marriage, itwould be unseemly to place him higher than

the sons born in wedlock."15 Such reluctance suggests that Frederick was not accus

tomed toplacing

noble bastards inprominent positions

at the imperialcourt.

Opportunities for noble bastards in the ecclesiasticalsphere

were also more limited

than in other European countries; Schmuggenotes that "in the

Empire,canonries

in cathedralchapters

orbishoprics

were almost unobtainable even for bastards from

noble families," whereas noble bastards in France and Spain frequentlyentered

cathedralchapters

and becamebishops

and abbots.16

Scholars differ, however, on the reasons for the less-favoredposition

of noble

bastards in German lands.Sprandel argues that German nobles were more affected

than those in other Europeancountries

by the church's norms on extramarital sex

uality.He cites in

particular the regulations for a tournament heldby

the prince

bishop ofW?rzburg in 1479, which excluded from participation all publiclyknown adulterers, person living

inconcubinage,

and persons born out of wedlock.

Thus "ecclesiastical social policy reached asphere

in whichillegitimate persons had

previously had relatively free range [i.e., thenobility]."17 However, Karl Borchardt

interprets the regulationsas

showingthe

knights'determination to maintain the

exclusivity of their social order. Tournaments, like cathedral chapters, required

proofthat both the mother and the father of the

applicantwere of noble descent;

the exclusion of bastards was thusmerely

aby-product

of the exclusion of all those

whose mothers were nonnoble.18

*4Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren, 27.

15Sprandel,"Die Diskriminierung der unehelichen Kinder," 494.

16Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren, 27, 221?22.

17Sprandel,"Die Diskriminierung der unehelichen Kinder," 491.

18Karl Borchardt, "Illegitimate in den Di?zen W?rzburg, Bamberg und Eichstatt," in Schmugge,

Illegitimit?t, 270. Some of the other provisions of the invitation clearly reflected a desire for social exclu

sivity rather than concerns about morality; e.g., nobles who married outside the nobility were to be

excluded unless the nonnoble bride broughta

particularly rich dowry.The exclusion of bastards from cathedral chapters after themid-fifteenth century may be a similar

by-product

of the exclusion of those who lacked nobleancestry

on both sides rather than aregulation

specifically aimed against illegitimacy. The Zimmerische Chronik draws a direct analogy between the rules

for participation in tournaments and those for membership in cathedral chapters.When Johann Chris

toph von Zimmern was sworn in as amember of the chapter atStrassburg in 1531, he was

required to

prove that "fourteen ancestors of his father and fourteen ancestors of his mother wereprinces, counts,

or barons" and that none of his ancestors were of lower rank. "It wasjust like a tournament ... where

each had to prove his rank and descent"; Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 3:206.




Borchardt's argument suggests that in addition to the factors common to other

European countries, we need to consider social and legal factorsunique

to the

German nobility.In most other western

European aristocracies, thelegitimate (and

sometimes even theillegitimate)

children of a nobleman were nobles regardlessof

the status of their mother. In the empire, however, noble statusrequired noble

descent on both thepaternal

and maternal sides. Therequirement

ofEbenb?rtigkeit

(equalityof birth)

meant that even thelegitimate offspring of a

marriage between

a nobleman and a nonnoble woman did not inherit the rank and estate of their

father.19 Theillegitimate offspring

of a nobleman and a nonnoble womanobviously

had even less claim to noble status than did children born of an "unequal" marriage.

Numbers of Illegitimate Children

Sprandel's impressionisticestimate that a third of the European population

in the

lateMiddle Ages was of illegitimate birth is certainly too high for the general pop

ulation.20 After a review ofquantitative

studies of wills, birth registers,and tax reg

isters, Bulst concludes that the trueillegitimacy

rate was well under 10 percent;

Schmuggeestimates that

illegitimatechildren made up 3 to 5 percent of the Euro

pean populationin the late fifteenth

century.21

However, research on wills and other demographicsources indicates that ille

gitimatechildren were more numerous in the

nobilityand the urban elite than in

thepopulation

as a whole.22 The family system of the nobility encouragedextra

marital sexual relationships: "The husband who emotionallynever

acceptedthe

wife chosen for him byhis family;

the widower who did not wish to remarry after

his wife's death and burden the estate with morelegitimate heirs; the lay younger

son forbidden by his family tomarry; the clerical son compelled to celibacy by the

church: all begot illegitimate children."23

The Zimmerische Chronik and the records of the counts of Montfort suggest that

Southwest German countsproduced

at least as many illegitimate children as did

otherEuropean

noblemen. In theperiod 1342?1515, illegitimate

children madeup

at least 38 percent of the surviving offspringof the house of Bourbon, one of the

19On "inequality of birth" of spouses and its legal consequences, see "Ebenb?rtigkeit" and "Mis

sheirat" inHandw?rterbuch zur deutschen Rechtesgeschichte, ed. Adalbert Erler and Ekkehard Kaufmann, 5

vols. (Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1971-1998), hereafter cited asHRG.

20Sprandel, "Die Diskriminierung der unehelichen Kinder," 487.21

Bulst, "Illegitime KinderViele oder wenige?" 30-31; Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren, 8.

22Lorcin found in her study of wills in Lyon that bastard children of the testator were mentioned

in 1 out of every 12.1 wills by nobles, ascompared

to 1 out of every 23.2 wills by citizens of Lyon, 1

out of 29 wills by clergy, and 1 out of 52.2 wills by testators in the surrounding region; Lorcin, Vivre et

mourir en Lyonnais, 96.The illegitimate children reported in Florentine tax registers in the fifteenth cen

turywere concentrated in the wealthier half of

taxpaying households,and fathers who

openedaccounts

for their illegitimate daughters in the dowry fund of Florence were more likely to come from high-status

lineages than were investors in the fund as awhole; David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Tus

cans and Their Families: A Study of theFlorentine Castato of 1421 (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1985;

original French edition, 1978), 245; Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence (Cam

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 279, 284.

23Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 381.




greatest families of the Frenchnobility.24 Legitimated

bastards made up 13 percent

of all the recorded offspring who survived to adulthood intwenty-five lineages

of

Portuguese high aristocracyin the

period 1380-1580, and 21 percent of the

recorded offspring of the men of highest rank.25 Since bastards wererarely legiti

matedby

men who had surviving children from theirmarriages,

the true propor

tion of bastards among the offspring of the Portuguese high nobility must have been

considerably higher.26In Swabia, Burmeister s

studyof the counts of Montfort identifies twenty-four

illegitimate sons and three illegitimate daughters from the middle of the fourteenth

to the middle of the sixteenth century. The Montfort genealogies record seventy

threelegitimate

children(including forty-seven sons) who survived to adulthood

in the period1350-1550.The known illegitimate children thus made up a

quarter

to a third of the total offspring; the known illegitimate sonsmade up a third of all

sons.27 The Zimmerische Chronik indicates that in the period 1440?1570, the ten

adult male members of four generations of barons or counts of Zimmern included

at least five fathers of bastards, as shown in thefollowing

table.

Fathers of Bastards in the Zimmerische Chronik

Father Known Illegitimate Children

Legitimate Children

Surviving to Age 15

WernerVIII (d. 1483) 1 son (Hans Schilling) 1 son(JohannWerner I)

Gottfried (d. 1508)

(unmarried)

2 sons (Hans, Heinrich) and

at least 4 daughters (unnamed)

Johann Werner I

(1444-1496)1 son (Hans)

4 sons (VeitWerner, JohannWerner II,Gottfried Werner,

Wilhelm Werner) and

4 daughters (Anna, Katharina,

Margarethe, Barbara)

Johann Werner II

(1480-1548)

3 sons (Christoph, Hans

Christoph, Philip Christoph

and 1 daughter (Barbara)

3 sons (Johann Christoph,Froben Christoph, Gottfried

Christoph)

Gottfried Werner

(1484-1554)

2 sons (Gottfried, Martin)

and 6 daughters (unnamed)2 daughters (Anna, Barbara)

These men fathered at least twenty illegitimate children, comparedto twenty

threelegitimate

children who survived to adulthood, so that almost half their

surviving offspring were illegitimate. Sprandel's impression that a third of the

24Harsgor, "L'essor des b?tards nobles," 354, tables 2 and 3.

25James

L. Boone III, "Parental Investment and EliteFamily

Structure in Preindustrial States: A

Case Study of Late Medieval-Early Modern Portuguese Genealogies,':'American Anthropologist 88 (1986):863.

26Marie-Claude Gerbet, La noblesse dans le royaume de Castille: ?tude sur ses structures sociales en

Estr?madure (1454-1516) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1974), 199.

27Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 103. The statistics on legitimate children are derived

from the genealogies in Burmeister, Grafen vonMontfort, 307-12.




populationwas of

illegitimatebirth may thus not be far off the mark when it comes

to the children of noblemen.

Bastards in the Zimmerische Chronik

If a bastard does good, it's amiracle;

If he does evil, he isacting according

to his nature.

The chronicler FrobenChristoph

von Zimmern cites several variations on this

"old proverb"or "French rhyme" and asserts that the bastard who turns out well is

as rare as awhite raven or black swan.28 His attitude reflects the social norms evi

dent inlegislation

of the mid-sixteenth century, butthey

also reflect his ownper

sonality.According to his biographer Beat Jenny, Froben Christoph von Zimmern

wasonly

an observer, not aparticipant,

in the boisterous life ofhunting, drinking,

gambling,and

wenchingthat characterized much of noble society

in Southern

Germany andwhich he portrayed vividly in the Zimmerische Chronik.29 Although

FrobenChristoph

is reticent about the emotionalrelationship

between himself and

his wife Kunigundevon Eberstein (who bore him ten

daughters and oneson), there

is no evidence of extramarital affairs; the chronicle does not mention any mistresses,

bastard children, or venereal disease.30

Froben Christophvon Zimmern was not

particularly devout.31 From the point

of view of the modern reader, it isparticularly interesting that his criticisms of extra

maritalsexuality

and of bastards are based onpsychological

and pragmatic arguments

rather than on Christian morality.He was

deeplyaffected

bythe separation of his

parents due to his father's maintenance of a concubine; his fantasies ofavenging

the

insult to his mother led to his permanent estrangement from his father. In the chron

icle, he condemns extramarital affairs on thegrounds

thatthey

cause emotional

damageto the wives: "Their wives had to see it, live with it, and

keep quiet,even if

it stabbed them to the heart."32 In addition, he complains that lavish provision for

illegitimate children deprives the legitimate children of the attention and affection

they deserve and injures the patrimony and the prestige of the lineage.

The chronicler's views on the proper treatment of bastards are set forth in great

detail in three "case studies" of bastards in the Zimmern family in the late fifteenth

and early sixteenth centuries. The bachelor Gottfried III (d. 1508) succeeded in

establishing his son "Junker Heinrich" (Squire Henry) at least temporarily in the

nobility. Two generations later, Gottfried Werner (1484-1554) also attempted to

have hisillegitimate

sonsaccepted

as nobles, whereas his brotherJohann

Werner II

28Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 2:172, 311.

29Jenny, Graf Froben Christophvon Zimmern, 103.

30Jenny, Graf Froben Christophvon Zimmern, 193-94.

31Jenny, Graf Froben Christoph von Zimmern, 195. Jenny characterizes the religious views of Froben

Christophas a largely political Catholicism; he took little interest in doctrinal questions

or movements

for personal spirituality.

32Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 3:389.




(1480?1548) provided only sufficient financial support to establish his illegitimate

sons as clerics orburghers.

JunkerHeinrich was the son of Gottfried III von Zimmern, a younger son

who inherited the small estate of Herrenzimmern while his elder brother held the

mainfamily

estate atMesskirch. Gottfried, who never married, had several daugh

ters and one other son, but Heinrich wasclearly

his favorite. Heinrich was unusu

ally brightand ambitious; even the hostile chronicler acknowledged that "he grew

up to be eloquent, intelligent,and very quick, and used his mind well." His father

gave him a seat in the ancestral castle at Herrenzimmern and the office of Ober

amtmann vor Wald. Heinrich became wealthy; according to the chronicle, he did

soby embezzling

revenues from the estate. Since his father "gave himeverything

he wanted" and his office provided him with a nobleman's income, he was able to

live in noblestyle.

Hepurchased castles and

villages,and in 1500 he secured his own

legitimationand a coat of arms from Emperor Maximilian. Thenceforth he

styled

himself "von Herrenzimmern" after the estate which his father made over to him.

He married a woman of noble birth, a vonHegelback,

who bore him several sons

and daughters; after her death he married another wife from the lowernobility,

a

member of the vonWeitingen family.33

However, Heinrich squandered money and soon amassed debts, which he

tried to cover by selling off estates and by secretly borrowing money in his father s

name. With grim satisfaction, the chronicler quotes theproverb,

"111 gotten gains

won't last three generations." After his father's death, Junker Heinrich was forced to

sell his remainingestates to the legitimate branch of the Zimmern

family."The

estates he hadacquired

at the expense of the Zimmern weredissipated

in his life

time," and he finally died "in great poverty andhunger."34

His sonJakob

bore the

surname "Zimmerle," indicating that he was notregarded

as a nobleman. Without

economic resources sufficient to maintain a noble style of life, Junker Heinrich s son

could not maintain the position in the lower nobility that his father had acquired

during his lifetime.35The chronicler, who

regards the downfall of Junker Heinrich as theappropri

atepunishment for an overambitious bastard, seethes with

indignationas he

describes the favor shown by Gottfried Werner von Zimmern to hisillegitimate

sons. The chronicler condemns both thepsychological damage

done to Gottfried

Werner'slegitimate daughters by their father's emotional attachment to his bastards

and the damage to the wealth and prestige of the Zimmern lineage that would

result fromallowing bastards to be recognized

as nobles.

Gottfried Werner von Zimmern, whose wife, Apolloniavon

Henneberg,bore

him two daughters but no sons, had a total of eight illegitimate children (two sons

33Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 2:166-70.


35Jakob Zimmerle enlisted the help of his kinsman Johann Werner II von Zimmern in negotiatinghis marriage; Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 3:481.This suggests that the legitimate and illegitimatebranches of the Zimmern family maintained a

patron/client relationship.




and sixdaughters) by

two different concubines. At one time, Gottfried Werner had

hoped tomarry his concubine Anna Fritz after his wife's death and thus legitimatetheir natural son, Gottfried, as his heir. "However, God did not ordain it so: she

finally married a forester."36

AlthoughGottfried Werner is

portrayed elsewhere in the chronicle as an indul

gent father to hislegitimate daughters, the chronicler here says that his bastard chil

dren "unhinged his mind so that he had an unbelievable love for them but paid little

attention to and took little interest in his daughters by the Countess von Henne

berg." He boasted about his children, "saying theywere

illegitimate, yet theywere

held in great respect inforeign nations, just

as if theywere

legitimate. He said that

the law(juditia)

and human inclination were not inagreement." His conviction that

illegitimatechildren were the victims of unfair discrimination led him to have a

"speciallove and affection for all bastards; whenever he could, he favored and

advanced them inpreference

to otherpeople.

It seems to me that at one time the

majority of his male and female servants were ofillegitimate

birth.... Many people

said bastards were so favored at Messkirch that if one werehanging

from thesky

and had to fall, he should choose noplace

other than Messkirch."37

The chronicle does not record the names of Gottfried Werner s sixillegitimate

daughters

and saysnothing

about them except that all the children were

given

dow

ries orportions (ausgesteuert). However, it gives

a detailed account of Gottfried

Werner's attemptsto have his two bastard sons treated as nobles. He allowed them

"duringhis lifetime to bear a coat of arms ... with a tournament helm. By his order

and permission theywere allowed to

sign themselves 'von Zimmern' asJunker

Heinrich had done, althoughthis was not done with the consent of the agnates. He

spenta

great deal of money on them for universities (hochen Schulen)!'^It is not

clear what careers Gottfried Werner intended his sons to follow; possibly theywere

tostudy law as

preparation for enteringthe service of a

prince.

However, Gottfried Werner's efforts met with little success. His elder son,

Gottfried, apparently died during his student days; the chronicle reports with satisfaction that "he died miserably,

aftersquandering everything

."The other son, Mar

tin, was still alive at the time the chronicle was written in the 1560s, living "on the

annual pension assignedto him out of the estate." Martin

apparentlynever married,

and there is no mention of hisoccupation.

The chronicle presents the storyas an

objectlesson in the

importanceof

keepingbastards in their proper place: "posterity

should take care not to allow peoplewho by ecclesiastical law are entitled only

to

food and supportto inherit the use of the family

name and tosign themselves 'von

Zimmern.'"39

Johann Werner II, who had three survivingsons from his marriage

to Katha

rina von Erbach, did not make such generous provision for the four children born








of his liaison withMargreth

Hutler. However, he took great painsto ensure that his

concubine and illegitimate children would be provided for, and that his legitimatesons would not cheat them out of their inheritance. A year before his death, he pur

chased civic rightsin Rottweil for Margreth Hutler and her children. Johann

Werner also requiredhis three

legitimatesons to

signa

pledgeto pay the concubine

and her children 200gulden apiece within amonth after his death.40 Froben Chri

stoph,the heir to the estate, grudgingly carried out these provisions

eventhough

he suspected "the Hutler woman" of stealing the family silver and of using JohannWerner s seal to

forgedocuments while the old man

lay dying.Public

opinionwas

evidentlyon the side of the concubine and her children, for the chronicler sounds

distinctly defensive in his assertions thatMargreth Hutler was treated

fairlyand that

"all the children wereprovided

for and lacked fornothing."41

After their father's

death in 1548, the four illegitimate children purchased a rescript of legitimationfrom the emperor. However, they

made noattempt to

purchase grants ofnobility

asJunker Heinrich had done a half century earlier.

All of the sons received educations with theexpectation that they would sup

port themselvesthrough ecclesiastical careers. The eldest son, Christoph,

was the

onlyone who

actuallyentered the church; he became a

parish priestin

Breisgau

instead of amonk as he had

originally

intended. The second son, Hans

Christoph,was

supposedto become an

organista but instead "married a woman well known to

many honest men's sons, and moved with her here and there in great poverty. He

became thecity clerk at

Hornbergand died there." The youngest son, Philip

Chri

stoph,was the one who showed the greatest intellectual promise

in hisyouth.

He

wanted to become aclergyman,

and his uncle Wilhelm Werner von Zimmern

wrote letters of recommendation for him to two abbots. "He had the best prospects,

but asthey say, 'still waters run

deep.' He wasexpected

to take holy orders but mar

ried the daughter of aburgher of Rottweil. Neither he nor his wife had much

money, butthey

were content with what they had."42 Clearly this modest bour

geois existence was what Froben Christoph von Zimmern regarded as appropriate

for the bastards even of the high nobilityin the middle of the sixteenth century.

These three casessupport the

hypothesis thatopportunities

for German noble

bastards weredeclining by

the early sixteenth century. The chronicle does not sug

gest thatreligious factors

played any role in the treatment of bastards in the Zim

mernfamily.

The mostsignificant factor was the presence

or absence oflegitimate

heirs aswell as agrowing

sense oflineage loyalty which mandated the concentration

40Similar suspicions are evident in the story of the fifteenth-century duke of Bavaria who feared

that his legitimate son would thwart his intentions to leave 10,000 guldento a favorite bastard son; the

father deposited themoney in three imperial cities outside of Bavaria; Sprandel, "Die Diskriminierung

der unehelichen Kinder," 493.41Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 4:87-88, 93. A capital sum of 200 gulden would have provided

each of Johann Werner's illegitimate sons with a pension of about 10 gulden a year in addition to his

income from an ecclesiastical benefice or a secular occupation. The bequest of 200 gulden to his daughter Barbara presumably represented her dowry, even

though she married during her father's lifetime. It

was not unusual for dowries to be paid only upon the father's death.





of property in thelegitimate male line of descent. The bachelor Gottfried III estab

lished his illegitimate son Junker Heinrich on his estate rather than let it pass to his

nephew and grandnephews,an act which the chronicler censures as

showing lack

of commitment to the interests of the Zimmernlineage.43

Twogenerations later,

Gottfried Werner, who haddaughters

but no sonsby

hismarriage, attempted

to

have his twoillegitimate

sonsaccepted

as nobles but did notgive them estates of

their own. His reluctance tobequeath

real propertyto his bastard sons was

undoubtedlyrelated to his

larger commitment tokeeping the Zimmern estates

intact: he designated his brother instead of his daughter as his heir so that his estates

would remain in the Zimmernlineage.44 Johann

Werner II,who had three surviv

ing legitimate sons, made noattempt

to obtain noble status for his threeillegitimate

sons and provided themonly

with small pensions that would not constitute asig

nificant burden on the estate of thelegitimate

heir.

The chronicler FrobenChristoph

von Zimmern maintains that bastards should

not be considered part of their father's lineage: they should not be allowed to use

thefamily name, and

theyshould not be recognized

as nobles. He criticizes his

uncle Gottfried Werner forallowing

his twoillegitimate

sons to bear the Zimmern

coat of arms and use the name "von Zimmern" without the consent of the agnates

(members

of the male line of

descent).45

He

evidently

conceives of the

right

to use

the name and arms of thelineage

as aproperty right analogous

to real property,

which inGerman law could not be bequeathed to an illegitimate child without the

consent of the nearest heirs.46 The indiscriminate extension of thisright

to those

who were not "real" members of thelineage

would diminish the value of the prop

erty of the "real" members.

This raises thequestion:

to what extent did German nobles consider their bas

tards to be part of their lineage? What did theysee as their obligations toward their

illegitimate children, and how common was it for them to raise the children in their

own households? Were noble bastards generally considered to be nobles and allowed

to usethe

nameand

armsof their father's lineage? How often did they succeed in

establishing themselves in the nobility? And last, how did the position of German

noble bastards compare in these respects with those in other continental nobilities?

Obligations towards Illegitimate Children

Despitehis

personalsexual restraint, Froben

Christophvon Zimmern

regards

concubinageand bastardy

as inevitable aspects of aristocratic life and does not

43Gottfrieds action violated the contract he had signed in 1444 when he divided the Zimmern

estates with his brother Werner VIII: each had promised that if he had no legitimate male heir, his estate

would goto

his brotheror to

the latters

descendants; Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack,1:314-15. Gott

fried's legitimate heir, his nephew Johann Werner I,was unable to challenge the disposition of the estate

since he was in exile and his estates were under sequestration.



46"Bankert," HRG; C[arl] Fjriedrich] Dieck, Beitr?ge zur Lehre von der Legitimation durch nachfol

gende Ehe (Halle, 1832), 5-6.




condemn them aslong

as the men involved are unmarried. He refers to Gottfried

III von Zimmern as aparticularly pious

man eventhough

"he never married but

was blessed with many children" and was still conducting love affairs in his old

age.47He does not criticize the cathedral canons among his kinsmen for

having

concubines and illegitimatechildren. For

example,his respect for Thomas von

Rieneck, a canon of Strassburg whohelped

oversee his education, was not

diminished by the fact that Rieneck "had agreat many bastards, for most of whom

he made appropriate provision long before his death."48

The chronicler clearly regardsit as a

disgracefor a nobleman to refuse to sup

port hisillegitimate children, those born of casual liaisons as well as those born of

long-term concubinage.He recounts an anecdote about a woman who came to the

imperialcourt to accuse a certain young duke of refusing

topay support for her

child, which she claimed was the offspring of their brief affair.Many of the cour

tiersthought

that the man she wasaccusing

was Wilhelm Werner von Zimmern,

and one of his friends chided him, "Cousin, what kind of household do you keep,

with your childrenbeing

carried around in the streets?"Clearly

the mother was

countingon social pressure from other courtiers to force the duke to meet her

demands.49

Froben

Christoph

von Zimmern never

questions

the

obligation

of all fathers

torecognize and provide

for their illegitimate children. Strictly speaking, ecclesias

tical law and customary German law granted child support onlyto "natural chil

dren" (the offspringof an unmarried man and an unmarried woman), and denied

it to children born of "forbiddenrelationships" (adultery, incest, or clerical concu

binage).50 Nevertheless, the chronicler assumes that even married men and clerics

have anobligation

toprovide

for theiroffspring. However, he

disapproves,as we

have seen, of fathers who give themanything

more than "food and shelter as

required byecclesiastical law."51

In someEuropean aristocracies, it is said that

illegitimate children?especially

sons?were regarded as members of the family and were often brought up in their

father's household alongside thelegitimate

children. This wasparticularly

true of

Italy,where both princes and members of urban elites "accepted them into their

households, started sons in careers, arranged marriages for daughters, and ...pro

vided for the in testaments"; a widow wasexpected

to care for her husband's


4i'Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 3:235.


50In Germany and France, only natural children were entitled to child support: Hans Conrad Ell

richshausen, Die unehelicheM?tterschaft im alt?sterreichischen Polizeirecht des 16. bis 18.Jahrhunderts (Berlin:

Duncker &Humblot, 1988), 114-15;V?ronique Demars-Sion, Femmes s?duites et abandonn?es

au18e si?

cle:L'exemple du Cambr?sis (Paris: L'Espace Juridique, 1991), 9. In Spain, only natural children were enti

tled by law to child support, but the father or his kin could grant support to other illegitimate children

as amatter of equity; Winterer, Rechtliche Stellung der Bastarde in Spanien, 108. In Italy all illegitimatechildren were entitled to child support, even those born of forbidden relationships; Winterer, Rechtliche

Stellung derBastarde in Italien, 52.51Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 3:443.




illegitimate offspringafter hid death.52 Similar practices

are found among nobles in

late medieval andearly

modern Spain and France, and among the sixteenth-century

Dutchgentry.53

Such apractice doe not

necessarilymean that

illegitimatechildren resided in

their father's household from birth. Evidence fromItaly, France, and

Spainshows

that the bastard children of noblemen often resided with their mother in aseparate

household, particularlywhen the children were young. Some noble bastards

entered their father's householdonly

after being orphaned; others, usually sons,

were sent there for their education in much the same way thatlegitimate

children

were fostered out to the household of an uncle or of a greater lord.54

There is little evidence that bringing up illegitimate children in their father's

household was a commonpractice

inGermany

at any social level.55 The Zim

merische Chronik gives the impression that the bastard children of a German noble

man wereunlikely

to live with their father unless he was unmarried (or separated

from his wife) andmaintained a household with his concubine. The four children

ofJohann

Werner II von Zimmern andMargreth

Hutler werebrought up in the

"strange household at Falkenstein" which soenraged

the chronicler.56 However,

the concubine of a married man wasusually installed in her own house, often in

the town outside the castle, and her children resided there with her.

It wasevidently

the norm for the legitimatehalf brothers or other male rela

tives of the father to become guardians of his illegitimate children after his death,

for the chronicler thinks it necessary togive

anexplanation

for his father's decision

not to name his legitimatesons as

guardians for their illegitimate halfsiblings.57

As

we shall see, Karl von Zollern acted asguardian for his illegitimate half sister Anna

Zollerer, and Jos Nielas von Zollern assumed guardianshipof Anna, the

daughter

52Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and Their Families, 146; James S. Grubb, Provincial Families

in theRenaissance: Private and Public Life in theV?neto (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996),

39.

53On France, see Lorcin, Vivre et mourir en Lyonnais, 99?100; Caron, La noblesse dans le duch? de

Bourgogne, 229?34; Grimmer, "Les b?tards de la noblesse auvergnate," 38-39; Demars-Sion, Femmes

s?duites et abandonn?es, 12. On Spain,see Beceiro Pita and C?rdoba de la Llave, Parentesco, poder y men

talidad, 220?24, and Gerbet, Noblesse dans le royaume de Castille, 199. On Holland, see Sherrin Marshall,

The Dutch Gentry, 1500-1650: Family, Faith and Fortune (NewYork: Greenwood Press, 1987), 5-6.

54The chances of illegitimate children being brought up in their father's household dependedto

some extent on the status of their mother. Only the bastards of Italian Renaissance princes by noble

mothers were educated in the palace. Similarly, the bastard sons born to petty nobles of the Lyon region

by peasant womenalways remained in their mothers' villages, whereas some of those whose mothers

were of higher status werebrought up in their fathers' households. Helen S. Ettlinger,

"Visibilis et Invi

sibilis:The Mistress in Italian Renaissance Court Society," Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1994): 777-78; Lor

cin, Vivre et mourir en Lyonnais, 99-100.

55In awell-known German case, one of the five children born to the merchant Lucas Rem by a

woman inAntwerp

was

brought upin his household in

Augsburg; Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren,194. At a lower social level, a court inMemmingen in 1531 ordered a father to bring up his bastard child

in his own household, if he was married and had a household of his own. However, German courts

usually ordered a father to pay child support to amother who brought up the child in her own house

hold; Ellrichshausen, Uneheliche M?tterschaft, 114.






of his cousin ChristophFriedrich von Zollern. However, guardianship

did not nec

essarilyentail taking the illegitimate

children into one's own household, especially

if their mother was still alive. Spiesss

analysis of the provisions for bastards in wills

of counts and barons of the Mainz region does notsuggest that widows were

expectedto undertake the

upbringingof their husbands' illegitimate children.58

In only four cases does the Zimmerische Chronik imply that an illegitimate child

wasbrought up in a close

relationshipwith his

legitimate kin, andonly

one of these

cases involved a son. While livingin exile in Switzerland, Johannes

Werner I von

Zimmernbrought

his illegitimateson Hans from Swabia. Hans was fostered out to

the household of Count Georgvon

Werdenberg-Sargans, actingas a

companionto

hislegitimate

half brother Wilhelm Werner. However, the chronicle describes Hans

as a "coarse hateful rogue" who alienated Werdenberg'swife

by persistently addressing

her with the familiar "du."59 Such behavior strongly suggests that he had notprevi

ouslyresided in a noble household, where he would have been taught

better manners.

In three other cases, illegitimate daughters may have been brought up in or

near their father's household. LeonoraWerdenberger,

thedaughter

of CountHugo

vonWerdenberg,

wasbrought up at

Sigmaringen, possiblyin the household of her

father or uncle. After the breakdown of her marriageto a furrier, she became the

mistress of two of her

legitimatecousins, Counts Felix and

Christoph

von

Werdenberg.60

Anna, the daughter of Count Christoph Friedrich von Zollern (d. 1536) and

theAugsburg patrician

AnnaRehlinger, may not have been

illegitimate,for her

mother claimed that a clandestine marriage had taken place. However, her father's

family refused toacknowledge

the marriage and forced Anna to renounce the use

of the Zollern name. Anna's guardian, her father's cousin Jos Niclas von Zollern, is

said to have cheated her out of most of the money she should have inherited from

her mother and to have acted unjustly by forcing her to marryone of his clerks,

eventhough

she hadalready

formed an attachment to another suitor.61

Anna Zollerer, an illegitimate daughter of Count Eitelfriedrich von Zollern,

evidently had a close relationshipwith her half sister

Johannavon Zollern. The

widowed Johannainvited Anna to reside with her and tried to

persuadeher brother

Karl (Anna's guardian)to consent to Anna's marriage

toJakob Zimmerle. Karl von

Zollern initially opposed thematch, perhaps because he begrudged paying Anna's

dowry.The

marriage finallytook

placeafter

Johann Werner II von Zimmern inter

vened on behalf of his kinsman; however, it ended unhappily when Jakob, Anna,

andJohanna

became involved in am?nage ? trois, which caused a

major public

scandal.62

58Spiess,Familie und

Verwandtschaft,381-89.

59Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 1:540.The translation is from Erica Bastress-Dukehart, "Familyof Honor, Family of Fortune: Aristocratic Strategies for Survival in the House of Zimmern" (Ph.D. dis

sertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1997), 211.

60]Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 2:311-12.61

Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 2:467.





It isnoteworthy that most of these cases in Zimmerische Chronik involved

daughters, whereas evidence for otherEuropean aristocracies suggests that sons

were more likely than daughters to be brought up in their fathers' households and

to have closepersonal relationships

with theirlegitimate kin. The chronicle does

notgive the impression that

illegitimate daughterswere treated

generously.Both

LeonoraWerdenberger

and thedaughter

of AnnaRehlinger

seem to have been

exploited rather than protected by their legitimate kin, and Anna Z ollerer's half

brother was reluctant tospend the money for her

dowry The sexualrelationships

in two of these casesimply

that LeonoraWerdenberger and Anna Zollerer were not

considered "real" members of their noblefamily:

a sexualrelationship

with one's

legitimatefirst cousin or the husband of one's

legitimatesister would have been

considered incestuous.63

Were Bastards Considered Nobles?

Thelegal

status of noble bastards variedgreatly

in different westernEuropean

countries, and actualpractice in all countries differed from the letter of the law.

While the bastards ofkings

and great nobles wererecognized

as noble, the status of

those whose fathers were of less exalted rank was moreambiguous.

In some continental aristocracies, bastards of noblemen were

legally

consid

ered noblesonly

ifthey

werelegitimated. Legitimation could be

acquiredin one

of two ways. "Natural children" (those born of two unmarriedparents) could be

legitimated by thesubsequent marriage of their parents; such children were known

as "mantle-children" from the custom of placing them under theirparents' cloak

duringthe marriage ceremony. Both "natural children" and children born of "for

bidden relationships" could be legitimated by "rescript (order) of the prince,"

granted either by the popeor

bysecular authorities.64 In

practice almost all legiti

mations wereby rescript

of theprince;

these could be obtained either by the father

or(more commonly) by the children themselves after

reachingadulthood.

Except

in England, which did not acknowledge legitimation in any form, both methodsof

legitimationconferred some inheritance

rightsin secular law. However, mantle

children had more inheritance rights than other legitimated children, and in the

Holy RomanEmpire only they

wereeligible

to inherit real estate.65

63Counts and barons in the Mainz region avoided marriages between first cousins; Spiess, Familie

undVerwandtschaft, 47. German laws on incest did not distinguish between relatives by blood and relatives

by marriage;a case of awoman executed for incest with her brother-in-law is cited in Joel F.Harrington,

Reordering Marriage and Society inReformation Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),

257.

64On the development of legitimation in canon law and French law, see R. G?nestal, Histoire de

la l?gitimation des enfants naturels en droit canonique (Paris: E. Leroux, 1905), 91-226; on continental

Europe in general and Germany in particular,see

Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren, 70?79.65On the superior inheritance rights of mantle-children, seeWinterer, Rechtliche Stellung der

Bastarde in Italien, 84,95,102; "Mantelkind," HRG. Mantle-children of German nobles were sometimes

even allowed to inherit fiefs, despite prohibitions in imperial law;Dieck, Beitr?ge zur Lehre von derLegi

timation durch nachfolgende Ehe, 113-18. Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren, 74-75, contrasts the limited

inheritance rights conferred by legitimation by rescript of the prince in the Holy Roman Empire with

the broader rights it conferred in other countries.




Legitimationwas much more common in the lands of Roman law (for

exam

ple, compare Italy and the Iberian kingdoms) than in lands of customary law (e.g.,

northern France and the HolyRoman

Empire).In

Italy,"whetherthe

illegitimate

offspring of a noble could inherit his father's nobilitywas debated but generally

denied onprinciple"; if legitimated, the child theoretically inherited only the status

of lowernobility.66 However, Italian nobles and

patricians legitimatedtheir chil

dren in large numbers and atearly ages,67

and it is clear from thehistory

of fif

teenth-centuryItalian

princelyhouses that the bastards of great nobles were in

practice regarded as inheriting their father's rank in the high nobility.68 Philip de

Commines made the famous remark that in his day "in...

Italy.. .no distinction at

all was made between a bastard and alegitimate child."69

In parts of the Iberian Peninsula, customary lawrecognized the natural chil

dren of noblemen (thoughnot those born of "forbidden

relationships")as them

selves noble, and allowed them to bear their father's arms.70 However, from the,

mid-fifteenth century onward, strong centralizing monarchs in Castile and Portugal

demanded documentary prooffrom noble bastards who claimed noble rank and

thereby exemption from direct taxation.71 Fifteenth-centuryCastilian nobles made

considerable use oflegitimation by rescript of the prince

to increase the number of

male heirs,72 and thepractice

remainedwidespread

in Iberian nobilities in the

66Winterer, Rechtliche Stellung der Bastarde in Italien, 60 and n. 152. However, other authorities state

that in Italy as in France, nobility (including the right to bear coats of arms) descended to recognizedbastards even without legitimation; "Uneheliche," HRG.

67Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren, 74. The frequency and early age of legitimation in Italy is

implied by the Florentine castato of 1480, which permitted bastards to be claimed as tax deductions onlyif they

werelegitimated. About 1 percent of all the children claimed as

dependents in this castato were

listed as illegitimate (andwere therefore, presumably, legitimated bastards) at a time when the birth reg

ister of 1451 suggests that 3 to 6 percent of the births in Florence were illegitimate. See Molho, Marriage

Alliance, 277 n. 52; Bulst, "Illegitime Kinder:Viele oder wenige?" 30.

68Burckhardt comments, "[T]he public indifference to legitimate birth which to foreigners?for

example to Commines?appearedso remarkable_In Italy

... there no longer existed aprincely house

where, even in the direct line of descent, bastards were notpatiently tolerated." See Jacob Burckhardt,

The Civilization of theRenaissance in Italy (New York: Harper & Row, 1958; original German edition,

1860), 1:38. On the succession of illegitimately born sons in the states of Rimini, Ferrara, and Urbino,

see Ettlinger, "Visibilis et Invisibilis," 781?83. For a detailed discussion of the Este family of Ferrara,

where five illegitimately born men came to the throne in succession in the period 1308?1450, see JaneBestor Fair, "Bastardy and Legitimacy in the Formation of a

Regional State in Italy:The Est?nse Suc

cession," Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 38 (July 1996): 549?85.

"^Burckhardt, Civilization of theRenaissance in Italy, 1:38, cites this statementby Commines as evi

dence of the contrast in attitudes between Italy and northern Europe: It should be noted that Commines

had served at the Burgundian and French courts during the "flourishing of noble bastards" described by

Harsgor.

70Winterer, Rechtliche Stellung der Bastarde in Spanien, 92-93,110; Cooper, "Patterns of Inheritance

and Settlement," 302. The customs of Aragon, Catalonia, and Navarre recognized the natural sons of

nobles as themselves noble. In Castile, bastards

theoretically

had to be

legitimated

in order to receive

these rights, but in practice recognition by the father often sufficed during the High Middle Ages.7

Gerbet, Noblesse dans le royaume de Castille, 199.

72Legitimations for the purposes of succession wereparticularly

common among members of the

religious military orders, who were required to remain unmarried; Cooper, "Patterns of Inheritance and

Settlement," 302. The Portuguese high aristocracy not only legitimated large numbers of bastards but

recorded them in their genealogies alongside their legitimate children; Boone, "Parental Investment and

Elite Family Structure," 861.




sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.73

In France before 1600, children of noble fathers were noble even without

legitimation, though theyhad no inheritance

rights unless theywere

legitimated.74

Writing in 1606, the French theorist Florentine de Thirrat drew a categorical dis

tinction between the"usage

of theempire" by

which bastards of noble fathers

remained inprinciple "incapable of all

nobility, natural or civil," and the "usage of

France" by which the illegitimate child kept the name, nobility, and arms of his

father.75 The realityin France was more

complex, for customary law differed from

regionto

region.76 Moreover, even in the fifteenth century onlythose

illegitimate

sons who "lived

nobly"

were

socially

and

legally accepted

as nobles and were

exempt frompaying

the taille."Living nobly" implied

the possession of at least a

small fief, or ofmilitary

orpolitical

office providing sufficient revenue to maintain

a noblestyle

of life.77 Until 1600, French noble bastards were successful inwinning

lawsuitsconfirming

their noble status andexemption from the taille. However, their

statuswas altered by an edict of Henry IV in 1600 which provided that bastards of

noble fathers were nobleonly

ifthey secured

legitimationand letters of ennoble

ment from theking.78 Despite

this edict, legitimations and ennoblements of noble

bastards remained rare in France in theearly

seventeenthcentury.79

In the Holy Roman Empire, bastards of nobles theoretically did not inherit

their father's noble status or the right to bear arms unless they were legitimated.80

However, few German noblessought

tolegitimate

their children, probably because

of the restrictive inheritance laws; few bastards qualified forlegitimation by

subse

73In the single year 1626, sixty-five of the approximately 600 noble families ofValencia petitionedthe cortesfor legitimation of offspring for the purposes of inheritance; Casey, Early Modern Spain, 214.

74Contamines characterizes the French system of nobility, which normally depended on the status

of the father alone, as "lax" in comparison to the German system of reckoning nobility by quarters. In

general, "the children of a noble father were nobles, whatever the status of the mother," a rule that also

extended to noble bastards; Contamines, Noblesse au royaume de France, 57, 61. On the inability of bas

tards to inherit unless legitimated,see Lorcin, Vivre et mourir en Lyonnais, 97; Grimmer, "Les b?tards de

la noblesse auvergnate," 40; Nassiet, Parent?, noblesse et ?tats dynastiques, 85-86.

75Thirrat, Trois traictez, cited inHarsgor, "L'essor des b?tards nobles,"328.

76The custom of Artois held that "bastards born of nobles are reputed noble and enjoy the privi

leges of nobility." Inwestern France, the customs of Tours, Anjou, andMaine stated that the succession

to a noble bastard did not pass as that of a noble but as that of a commoner; Harsgor, "L'essor des b?tards

nobles," 332. In the Franche-Comt?, only sons (not daughters) inherited their father's noble status; J.

Heers, Le clanfamilialau moyen ?ge (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974), 98; cited in Cooper,

"Patterns of Inheritance and Settlement," 238 n. 144.

77Contamines, Noblesse au royaume de France, 61; Lorcin, Vivre et mourir en Lyonnais, 99.

78The edict of Henri IV is discussed in Fran?oise P. Levy, L'Amour nomade: La m?re et l'enfant hors

mariage XVIe-XX si?cle (Paris: Seuil, 1981), 177-79; Nassiet, Parent?, noblesse et ?tats dynastiques, 85-86;

and Grimmer, "Les b?tards de la noblesse auvergnate," 41, 46. Grimmer, ibid., 41, quotes Charles

Loy seau,Trait?s des ordres et simples dignit?s (1666) as saying that the edict went against the ancient custom

of France, and that it should not extend to bastards of seigneurs. Loyseau argued that bastards should be

considered to be "one degree below [the legitimate children], so that bastards of kings are princes, those

of princes are noblemen (seigneurs), those of noblemen are gentlemen (gentilshommes), and those of gen

tlemen are commoners (roturiers)."This view is remarkably similar to that held by German nobles in the

Middle Ages and the sixteenth century.

79Louis XIII granted only nineteen legitimations and ennoblements of noble bastards in his reign

from 1610 to 1643, making up 11 percent of the total of 165 ennoblements granted in his reign; Grim

mer, "Les b?tards de la noblesse auvergnate," 41.




quent marriage of their parents, and legitimation by rescript of the prince did not

confer the rightto inherit land. Spiess

states that "the status and theprovision

for

illegitimate offspringof counts and barons was determined by the fact that even in

the case of eventual legitimation, theywere

grantedno share in the lordship

(Herrschaft)and had no claim to the

paternal inheritance."81

The Zimmerische Chronik reports severalcases?including

that of Gottfried

Werner von Zimmern?-in which noblemen consideredmarrying

their concu

bines in order tolegitimate

a "natural" son as heir.82

However, onlyone man is

reportedto have

actuallydone so: Hans von

Weitingen,a bachelor from the lower

nobility, who saved his lineage from extinction by marrying his concubine on his

deathbed.83 The widowerChristoph

vonWerdenberg,

whose twolegitimate

sons

had died, is said to have seriously considered marrying his concubine after she bore

him a son. "The oldgentleman

took such ajoy

in this thatpeople

were sure he

would have married her in order to maintain his lineage" if it had not been for the

opposition of his legitimate heirs.84

German nobles sometimessought legitimation by rescript

of theprince

in

connection with the grant of noble status and coats of arms to theirillegitimate

children.85 However, onlyone

possiblecase of

legitimation occurred in the Mont

fort family in two hundred years, and Spiess finds only two cases in his fifteen fam

ilies of counts and barons in theMainz region in the period 1300-1500.86 The two

legitimations mentioned in the Zimmerische Chronik (those of Junker Heinrich and

of the four children of JohannWerner II von Zimmern) were both obtained by the

children rather than the father. It isnoteworthy

that Gottfried Werner did notlegit

imate his bastard sons, despite his indulgenttreatment of them and his desire to have

themrecognized

as nobles.

80"Uneheliche," HRG. This also held true in the Netherlands, which were still part of the HolyRoman Empire; in the sixteenth cetury,"the bastards of the Holland nobles were not reckoned among

the

nobility,"

at least not in law.H. F. K. van

Nierop,

The

Nobility of

Holland: From

Knights

to

Regents,1500-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 53.

81Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 381.



84Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 3:129. Objections were raised by Christophs brother Felix

(who stood to inherit his fiefs) and his son-in-law Friedrich vonF?rstenberg (whose wife Anna stood

to inherit her father's allodial estates). Since F?rstenberg was counting on theWerdenberg inheritance

to pay his debts (ibid., 3:137), he would certainly have mounted alegal challenge ifChristoph had tried

to make his illegitimateson his heir. However, the question was rendered moot by the early death of

the concubine and her son.

85Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren, 74-75: Duke Eberhard the Bearded ofW?rttemberg "had

two sonslegitimated and raised to the nobility by Emperor Maximilian in 1494"; Count Adolf von

Nassau was

legitimated by King

Frederick III in 1442 and allowed to

carryhis father's arms with a

"signof bastardy."

86Count Hugo XVII ofMontfort-Bregenz had three children raised to the nobility by EmperorCharles V in 1536; this presumably also involved their legitimation; Burmeister, "Illegitime

Adelsspr?sslinge," 115. Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 381 and n. 334, mentions the case of Adolf of

Nassau and one in which a bastard daughter of Count Eberhard von Katzenelnbogen was legitimated

by King Ruprecht in 1408.




Very few German noble bastards thusqualified for noble status

accordingto

the letter of the law. Nevertheless, sources from the late Middle Ages and the six

teenth century show that inpractice

some German nobles wereregarded

asbelong

ing?even without legitimation?to the social order onestep below that of their

fathers.Spiess says that in the Mainz

regionin the fourteenth and fifteenth centu

ries "the route to the lower nobility (Ritteradel) lay open to the illegitimate children

of counts and barons_This pattern ofrelationships

in whichillegitimate children

are established onestep below their father's order (Stand)

is encountered as well

among the princes, for the latterattempted

toplace

theirillegitimate offspring

in

the order of counts."87 Nobles in the Zimmerische Chronik in the mid-sixteenth cen

tury continued to hold the view that the bastard of amember of the high nobility

(countor

baron) ranked as amember of the lowernobility (a Junker

orsquire). The

chroniclercomplains

that bastards of counts and barons claim noble status: "These

people usuallythink themselves great squires and have a

high opinion of them

selves." He quotes Georg Truchsess vonWaldburg

assaying of his bastard son Hans

Muffler, "Lord Hans is too much, butSquire

Hans isright

andfitting."88

Therelationship

ofillegitimate

children to their father'slineage

wasalways

problematical. Nevertheless, mostillegitimate

children of counts and barons in the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries identified themselves with their father's family by

usingsome form of their father's surname; they

were alsogiven Christian names

traditional in their father'slineage.89

Some illegitimatesons used the

familyname

with the nobleparticle

"von" and bore their father's arms, thus claiming the status

of nobles: we have seen that. Gottfried Werner von Zimmern allowed his bastard

sons tostyle themselves "von Zimmern" and to bear the family arms.90

In most cases, bastards used a form of their father's surname without the noble

particle "von," indicatingthat they

were notregarded

as nobles. Bastards of the

counts of Montfort wereusually

surnamed "Montfort" (without the "von")or

87Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 389. The view that bastards belonged to the order one step

below their father's was also prevalent among Salzburg nobles in the High Middle Ages: "The natural

son of aking became a count; a noble's son, aministerial; aministerial's son, a

knight"; John Freed,

Noble Bondsmen: Ministerial Marriages in theArchdiocese of Salzburg 1100-1343 (Ithaca: Cornell University

Press, 1996), 126-27.


89Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 106. This contrasts with the practice described by

Freed in Salzburg in the High Middle Ages, inwhich bastards wereusually given names uncommon in

the lineage in order to distinguish them from their legitimate kin.The difference may be due to the use

of surnames in the later period. Freed, Noble Bondsmen, 127.

90In other cases, sons of counts established themselves asmembers of the lower nobility under

names differing from their father's; these were often taken from a family castle. Sons of the fourteenth

century Count Johann II vonSponheim

were known as Simon vonArgenschwang, Johann von

Kreuznach,andWalrab von

Koppelstein; Spiess,

Familie und

Verwandtschaft,

383-86.

Only

two

illegitimate daughtersare specifically identified as nobles in the records: the "mulier nobilis" Christina von Fal

kenstein (who used the particle "von" with her father's surname) andMaria vonFlugberg,

one of the

three children of Count Hugo XVII von Monfort raised to the nobility by Charles V. Georg Wieland,

"R?mische Dispense 'de defectu natalium' fur Antragsstelleraus der Di?zese Konstanz (1449-1533):

Fallstudie an dispensierten Klerikern aus dem Bistum Konstanz," in Schmugge, Illegitimit?t, 294; Bur

meister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 115.




"Montforter," while those of the Zimmernfamily

areusually referred to as "Zim

merer" or "Zimmerle." Some bastards, though obviously acknowledged by their

fathers, were known by their mother's name: forexample,

HansSchilling,

the son

ofWernerVIII von Zimmern.91

There is no clear patternto the use of surnames. Those who used the noble

particle"von" and the family

arms did notalways

maintain a noble styleof life: the

four bastards who styled themselves "von Montfort" included twoparish priests and

twoburghers

ofSpeyer.92

Some bastards appearedboth with the

particle"von" and

without it. Others appeared both under the name of their father and the name of

their mother: for example, Hans, the son of Gottfried III von Zimmern, who

received adispensation under the name

Johannes Hirligack but appears inparish

records under the names "Zimmern" and "Zimmerer."93 Children knownby

their

mother's name were notnecessarily

lower in status than those who bore the father's

name:Georg Truchsess von

Waldburg called his son Hans Muffler asquire, and two

of themost successful bastards in theMontfort family were Heinrich andWilhelm

Gabler, the sons of Count Wilhelm V von Montfort.94

Provision for Illegitimate Children

The perception that noble bastards had agood chance of

establishing themselves as

nobles is due inlarge part

to the fact that children who did so were morelikely

to

appear in the records than those who sank to lower social status. AsSpiess points out,

itwasonly

thelucky

ones among theillegitimate

children of counts and barons who

succeeded inestablishing

themselves in the nobilityone

step below the rank of their

fathers. Their social positionwas

dependenton the financial provision their father

made for them and the interest he took infurthering

their careers.They could

become members of the lower nobility only if their fathers provided them with

resources sufficient to maintain a noble style of life. For a son, this usuallymeant a

castle and/or the income from estate offices; for adaughter,

adowry sufficient to

marryinto the lower

nobility.Children who did not receive such

provisionwould

not be regardedas nobles. In such cases, sons were educated for the church or

given

cash pensions; daughterswere

occasionally placed in convents, but wereusually

married off with dowries too small to secure a husband of noble rank.95

The provision that a noble father made for hisillegitimate

sons may have

dependedto some extent on the status of the mother, but the most

significant factor

was the presenceor absence of

legitimatechildren and of collateral heirs who

91Bastards of the counts of Montfort also bore the surnames Gabler, Stadler, Ziegler, Bechrer, and

Rot; Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 106.

92Burmeister,"Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 114-15; the twoburghers had two other brothers who

used the surname Montforter.

93Wieland, "R?mische Dispense 'de defectu natalium,'" 295.

94Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 107-9, speculates that the cleric Wilhelm Gabler

wished to conceal his illegitimate birth and, therefore, avoided using the name and arms of theMontfort

family. However, his brother Heinrich also used the name Gabler, eventhough he was

proud of his con

nection to the Montforts and bore on his seal theMontfort arms with amark of bastardy.

95Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 383, 389.




would be likelyto

challenge substantial bequests. Under German law, bastards

could not inheritbequests

of real estate without the consent of the other heirs.96

Bastard sons assumed greater importanceto men who were either unmarried or

had no male heirs from their marriages,as we have seen in the cases of Gottfried

III and Gottfried Werner von Zimmern. From thepoint

of view of noble fathers,

establishing their bastard sons either in secular or in ecclesiastical careers secured for

them"loyal

followers to whom the goals offamily policy

were moreimportant than

anythingelse."

97Spiess regards the granting of fiefs (castles and offices) to bastard

sons asadvantageous

to both the father and the sons.Using bastard sons as officials,

counselors, castellans, or servants provided the father with employees who were

moretrustworthy

than nonkinsmen and who could beexpected

to administer the

estates in the interests of thefamily.

The income from these offices and fiefs allowed

the sons to live in the style of the lower nobility without placing any additional

burden on the family'seconomic resources. Sometimes these illegitimate

sons con

tinued to hold office after their father's death, and a few founded families which

ranked as members of the lowernobility.

98

One of the most successful of theillegitimate

sons of the Swabian nobilitywas

Heinrich Gabler (fl. 1424, d. 1452). He was the son of Count Wilhelm V ofMont

fort-Tettnang,who had been a

parish priestbefore

succeeding unexpectedlyto the

Montfort estates.Though

Count Wilhelm now married a noblewoman andbegot

legitimate children, he wasdiligent

infurthering the careers of the sons born to him

earlierby

a concubine. Burmeister sumsup the career of Heinrich Gabler as fol

lows: "He served Duke Friedrich of Tyrolas governor at Bludenz and

Werdenberg.

As counselor of the counts ofTettnang,

he climbed to the peak of the Montforts'

administration. As aJunker

and the holder of a castle, which was a fief of the counts

ofMontfort, he founded at a lower level of nobility the new family of Gabler von

Rosenharz."99 This was the sort of career to which Gottfried III von Zimmern

aspired?thoughon a lesser scale?for his son

Junker Heinrich.

Similar stories of bastard sons

employed

as estate officials are told in the Zim

merische Chronik. In a passage which grudginglyconcedes that a few bastards do

turn out well, the chronicler cites past examplesof paragons of

loyaltywho were

willingto put the family's

financial interests ahead of their own. Forexample,

Adam

von Rosenstein, the bastard son of a count of Eberstein, became an official of the

Eberstein family and "stood by his lord faithfully in time of greatest need. The son

did not marry, so his movable and other goods would fall to his lord after his

death."100 However, the chronicler does not believe that bastards in modern times

can be trusted to be soloyal; he cites

JunkerHeinrich as an

exampleof a bastard

96Spiess,Familie und

Verwandtschaft,383-85. Count

JohannII von

Sponheim,when

making provision for his illegitimate

son Simon von Argenschwang in 1335, had the document signed by all the

secular counts of Sponheim in order to prevent any future challenges.

97Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 13.

98Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 383-85.

"Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 108-11.





who damaged the interests of his legitimate kin by attempting to establish himself

in the nobility.

Even Junker Heinrich failed tomaintain his position in the nobility after his

father's death. The available quantitative evidence suggests that few bastards of

German counts and baronsactually

achieved noble status, much less succeeded in

pasingit on to their children. In his

studyof fifteen noble families over the period

1300?1500, Spiess mentions only eleven illegitimatesons who were

clearly

regardedas nobles, and only

three who established enduringlines in the lower

nobility.101 Burmeister notes that illegitimate children of the Montfort family

rarely founded new lineages and in general did not establish "a lasting connection

with the family of counts."102 Of the twenty-seven illegitimate children of the

counts of Montfort recorded in theperiod 1350?1575, only

seven oreight could

be considered nobles or"equal

to nobles," and only Heinrich Gabler succeeded in

establishing himself and his descendants in the lower nobility.103For

illegitimatesons who were not

given fiefs and offices, the next best form

ofprovision

was an education. Thisnormally

served aspreparation for an ecclesias

tical career, but in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries some educated sons

pursued secular careers aslawyers

or bureaucrats.

In order to takeholy orders, it was necessary for a bastard son to secure a dis

pensation from the defect ofillegitimate

birth.Schmugge's analysis

ofpetitions

to

the Papal Curia in the period 1449-1553 shows that nobles made up the largest

group of laymen who petitionedfor such

dispensations.In the diocese of Con

stance, where the Zimmern lived, over 13 percent of all petitionerswere members

of the nobility. They included the counts (later dukes) ofW?rttemberg and many

of the Swabian noble families mentioned in the Zimmerische Chronik, including the

counts of F?rstenberg, Lupfen, Montfort, Werdenberg, Zollern, and the Zimmern

themselves.104

"The church accepted many of the illegitimate children of the nobility of the

High and Late Middle Ages into the ranks of her clergy, though very few reacheda

bishop's see," notesSchmugge. However, "in the course of the fifteenth century

it became increasingly difficult for illegitimatesons to obtain prebends and other

benefices despite their noble birth and respectable academicdegrees,

as cathedral

101In the families studied by Spiess, only four noble bastards received castles or offices in the fif

teenth century and clearly ranked as nobles. In the fourteenth century, the counts of Sponheim had

granted castles and offices to seven of their illegitimate sons, three of whom founded the houses of Kop

penstein and AUenbach in the lower nobility. In addition, Spiess mentions three illegitimate daughtersin these fifteen families who received dowries large enough tomarry into the lower nobility; they pre

sumably

were considered noblewomenthemselves; Spiess,

Familie undVerwandtschaft, 383-86,

389.


103The children who could be considered "noble orequal to nobles" include two holders of fiefs,

two cathedral canons, and the three children of Hugo XVII von Montfort who were ennobled byCharles V. One parish priest who styled himself "von Montfort" and used the family sealmight possiblybe considered noble.

104Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 112?13; Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren, 240?41.




chapters became increasingly closed" bythe requirement of proof of the noble birth

of bothparents.105

Two of theillegitimate

sons of counts of Montfort did succeed inobtaining

cathedral canonries in the early fifteenth century.Wilhelm Gabler (fl. 1419?49), the

son of Count Wilhelm V, followed atypical

career for a successful cleric: he secured

"at least fifteen benefices, mostly very rich ones, due to the constant influence of

his family," particularly of his father's connections with the king and with the

bishopof Trent.106 Since

membershipin cathedral

chapterswas closed to those of

illegitimate birth by the late fifteenth century, most noble bastards who followed

careers in the church had to settle for positions as a parish priest or amonk. Many

of them owed theirappointment

to their father or to hisfamily;

forexample, Hans,

the son of Gottfried III von Zimmern, became achaplain

at Messkirch and also

held a living in the gift of the Zimmern family atOberndorf.107 Of the nine bastard

sons of the counts of Montfort who entered the church, six "were content to

receive their incomes as mereparish priests and carry on their lives without anyone

hearing anything specialabout them_Adequate financial provision

was made for

all of these individuals, but careers and achievements for thefamily

were absent."108

Like other sons of noblemen who entered the church, noble bastards usually

studied law, nottheology; many used their education to serve their families as

estate officials orlegal

advisers. The moststriking example

is that ofJohannes Hugo

(d. 1505), the son of Count Hugo XIII of Montfort. After studying atVienna,

Bologna, Rome, and Basel, he became thelegal

adviser to the counts of Montfort,

frequently representing the family in cases before theReichstag.109

At a humbler

level, the three illegitimatesons of Johann

Werner II von Zimmern wereprovided

with educations toprepare them for ecclesiastical careers; this training enabled one

of them to follow a career as a town clerk when he failed to obtain aposition

in

the church.

Sons who neither held fiefs and offices nor received auniversity

education

typicallywere

bequeathed onlysmall annuities that would not

supporteven a

bachelor in a noblestyle

of life. Spiessdescribes a

typical bequest around the year

1500 as acapital

sum of 400 to 500 gulden, which would yield a pension of only

20 to 25gulden

ayear.110

Some illegitimatesons who received these small pensions

105Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren, 239.

106The other canon, the Greek-born Vincenz von Montfort (fl. 1420-80), made his career in Italy

as a scholar and medical doctor without assistance from his German kinsmen. In his old age, he made

contact with the counts of Montfort-Tettnang, who granted him the right to use the title "comes zu

Montfort" and theMontfort coat of arms. This was the onlycase inwhich an

illegitimate member of

the family was allowed to style himself "Count of Montfort." Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge,"

104,107-8,113.

107Zimmerische Chronik,ed.

Barack,1:416.


109Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 112-13. For other examples, see Schmugge, Kirche,

Kinder, Karrieren, 240; Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 384.

110Spiess,Familie und Verwandtschaft, 386-87. Even the wealthy counts of Nassau bequeathed pen

sions of only 15 gulden a year to several illegitimatesons in the fifteenth century; one of these became

aHeckenreuter or highway robber.




probablybecame retainers to other noblemen in their neighborhood, while others

entered militaryservice at the courts of more distant princes.

Burmeister mentions

twoillegitimate

sons of the counts of Montfort who entered the service of Austria,

and generalizes that"[m]any illegitimatesons ... were shoved off into the military...

thusthey

wereprovided for, without any great cost to the

family."111 However,

most of theillegitimate

sons in the Montfort and Zimmern families who remained

laymen did not follow militarycareers. Three out of the six Zimmern bastards

whose occupationis known were

burghers,as were six sons of the counts of

Montfort. One of theillegitimate

sons of the counts of Montfort was a baker in

Feldkirch.112

Far less information is available aboutillegitimate daughters

of noblemen than

aboutillegitimate

sons. It has been argued that among westernEuropean elites, the

"defect" ofillegitimate

birth was considered sufficient reason to send agirl

into a

nunnery instead ofarranging

amarriage for her.113 However, German counts and

barons seem to haveplaced relatively

fewillegitimate daughters

in convents.

Although "several daughters" of the bachelor Gottfried III von Zimmern became

nuns, no other cases ofillegitimate daughters entering

convents are mentioned in

the Zimmerische Chronik.114

Spiess findsonly

one case among fifteen families of

counts and barons in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; Burmeister also finds

onlyone case in the Montfort

family from the mid-fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth

century.115

Illegitimate daughtersof Southwest German counts and barons received much

smaller dowries than theirlegitimate half sisters and had to marry far below their

father's status.Spiess finds that counts and barons in the Mainz region usually gave

dowries of 100 to 600 gulden to illegitimate daughters in the fifteenth century,

equalto a tenth (or

even less than atenth) of the amount

givento

legitimate daugh

ters in the same families.116 A fewillegitimate daughters

with dowries of 400 to

800gulden

were able to marry members of the lowernobility. However, two

^Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge" 114-15.

112Hans Schilling, the son ofWernerVIII von Zimmern, resided at Bregenz and served as an estate

official to Johann Werner II.He helped his Zimmern kin plead their case before the emperor for the

restoration of their estates, but it is not known whether he had any formal legal training; Zimmerische

Chronik, ed. Barack, 2:41, 151-52, 163. Hans Christoph, son of Johann Werner II, became town clerk

at Hornberg after failing to find a position in the church; his brother Philip Christoph married the

daughter of aburgher of Rottweil; Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 4:93. Six of the twenty-four ille

gitimate sons of the counts of Montfort were burghers; Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 115.

113E.g., Shahar, Fourth Estate, 41; Julius Kirschner and Anthony Molho, "The Dowry Fund and

theMarriage Market in Early Quattrocento Florence," Journal ofModern History 50, no. 3 (1978): 424

25. However, a statistical study of women enrolled in the dowry fund of Florence is inconclusive.

According

to Kirschner and Molho, ibid., 426,illegitimate daughters

were more

likelythan

legitimatedaughters to enter convents in the first half of the fifteenth century; but over the entire duration of the

dowry fund (1425?1525) the percentage of illegitimate daughters who married (78 percent) was iden

tical to that of legitimate daughters;seeMolho, Marriage Alliances, 211, 306.


115Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 389; Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 114.

116Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 365, 380.




women who received about 100gulden apiece married men-at-arms

(Reitknechte),

and a woman who receivedonly

a house andvineyard married a

burgher.117

The marriages ofillegitimate daughters

in the Zimmerische Chronik are consis

tent with theexamples given by Spiess.The largest dowry mentioned in the chron

icle is that of 800 gulden for Anna, the daughter of Christoph Friedrich von

Zollern, who was forcedby

her guardianto marry

one of his clerks. Anna'sdowry

wasequivalent

to those given by many knightsand urban patricians. However, this

was anexceptional case, for the

dowrywas

paidout of her inheritance from her

mother, theAugsburg patrician

AnnaRehlinger.118

Moretypical

is the case of Bar

bara (Berbelin), thedaughter

of Johann Werner II von Zimmern, who received 200

guldenas her

portion. She married "Reuterhans," aman-at-arms who served as her

father's bailiff at Seedorf.119 One of the illegitimate daughters of Gottfried III von

Zimmern married Lorenz M?nzer, whorepresented

her father and his kin in their

suit to the emperor to restore the confiscated Zimmern lands.120 Thus the mar

riages ofillegitimate daughters

were used to bind retainers morefirmly

to the inter

ests of the family, justas

illegitimatesons were

employedto serve the family

interests

as estate managers. However, the chronicle also records somemarriages

of illegiti

matedaughters

to men who were not in their father's service: for example, Leonora

Werdenberger,

who married a furrier, and Anna Zollerer, who married

Jakob

Zim

merle, the son of Junker Heinrich.

Conclusion: Bastards' Position in Germany

The evidence of the Zimmerische Chronik, togetherwith Burmeister's study of the

counts of Montfort and Spiess's research on the counts and barons of the Mainz

region, supports the theory put forward by Schmuggeand

Sprandel: the opportu

nities for noble bastards inGermany

were more limited than those in other Euro

pean elites, and theywere

declining by the mid-fifteenth century, long before the

Reformation.The causes seem not so much to be religiousor

politicalfactors as to

be social factors, especially the German definition of nobility and the increasing

lineageconsciousness of German nobles.

To be sure, the concept of a"golden age of noble bastards" applies mainly

to

princely courts, and we should not overromanticize the positionof the bastards of

provincialnobles in other countries in the late fifteenth century. Nevertheless, the

legal position of noble bastards inGermany

was inferior to that in other continental

aristocracies. In contrast to France, theillegitimate

children of German noblemen

were notpresumed

to inherit their father's noble status; in contrast toItaly

and Ibe

ria, theywere almost never

legitimatedas heirs. At best, some German noble bas

tards had the opportunityto achieve the social rank one level below that of their

117Spiess, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 382, 385, 388-89.


119'Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, 2:413-14.

120]ZimmerischeChronik, ed. Barack, 1:416, 2:41.




father. However, onlya few actually achieved noble status, and those who did so

were likely to be the offspring of fathers who had no legitimate sons.

Ingeneral,

Burmeister characterizes theopportunities open

toillegitimate

sons of the counts of Montfort as "careers at the middle level,"121 and even these

werealready becoming

scarcerby

the mid-fifteenth century. Spiess finds fewer

noble bastards receiving grants of castles and offices in the fifteenth century than in

the fourteenth. Burmeister attributes thedeclining opportunities

for noble bastards

togreater exclusivity and lineage consciousness among the

nobility.Cathedral

chapters required proofof noble ancestry

on both sides. Asuniversity education

became a prerequisite for high office at princely courts, nobles increasingly invested

in education for theirlegitimate

sons rather than for their bastards.122 "With the

passage of time,... the

positionsavailable to

illegitimatechildren

steadily declined

inquality:

instead of cathedral canonries there were nowonly parish churches,

chaplaincies,or a

placein a

monastery. He who became a bailiff (Vogt)in the fif

teenth century became in the sixteenth century onlya forester or a clerk."123

The Zimmerische Chronik makes it clear that generous provision for illegitimatesons met with

disapproval by the middle of the sixteenth century. The attempt of

Junker Heinrich to achieve noble status, whichmight

not have seemed remarkable

in the fifteenth century, ispresented

as amorality tale of greed and ambition. Gott

fried Werner's efforts to have his sonsaccepted

as nobles and members of the Zim

mernlineage

aredepicted

as thequixotic fantasy

of a man"unhinged" by

his

irrational affection for bastards.Although

the chronicler's outlook may beidiosyn

cratic, he clearly expects his audience tosympathize

with his views that bastards are

evilby nature, that their existence

injuresthe

legitimatewife and children

psycho

logicallyas well as

financially,and above all, that

they posea threat to the patrimony

and to theprestige

of thelineage. By

the mid-sixteenth century, the values of the

church and oflineage

consciousness both agreed that noble bastards must bekept

in their proper place:Theywere entitled to

acknowledgment and to basic financial

support, but they shouldnot

be allowedto

share thename or

the noble status oftheir father's lineage.

121Burmeister, "Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 114-16.

122"After the lateMiddle Ages, careers [for bastards] became more difficult because suddenly the

legitimate sonsbegan to study. Education was no longer left to illegitimate or clerical sons"; Burmeister,

"Illegitime Adelsspr?sslinge," 114.


Documents

Hurwich, Bastards