Although the traditional royal and aristocratic powers made manifest through counties and duchies had atrophied by the end of the eleventh century, the titles themselves continued as part of the German aristocratic apparatus, being valued very highly for the prestige and honour which they conferred upon dynasties and certain cathedral churches. Associated with the new types of princely jurisdiction characteristic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the titles were remoulded to suit the political transmutation of the German regions. The titles adorned and in part justified the autonomous powers of dynasties based upon their holdings in land. They also adorned the local jurisdications which were no longer royal commissions except for the overriding purpose of enforcing the Landfrieden. And the titles continued to justify aristocratic military command now so dependent upon building stone castles and enfeoffing personal retinues of vassals and ministeriales. In the great majority of cases the twelfth-century comitatus was the hereditary and allodial possession of a dynasty called after a castle. In their written or spoken meaning all the secular titles of the German princes signified some official, judicial, or military function, and continued to do so; but now they were subordinate to dynastic succession, honour, and authority.

Four further titles more or less equivalent to count were affected by the same processes in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries: margrave, count-palatine, burgrave, and landgrave. In September 1151, for example, we find them together at the royal court held in Würzburg which was attended by the margraves of Meissen and Brandenburg, the landgrave of Thuringia, the burgraves of Mainz, Wiirzburg, and Bamberg, and the count-palatine of Bavaria.

After 1100 we have seen the dukedoms reduced from wide military commands and senior representation of the German gentes into the personal exercise of power by prominent ecclesiastical and secular princes over their own possessions. Amongst the princes there was only a handful of dukes even after Frederick Barbarossa's generosity with the title. The typical designation for the aristocrats who were the lords in the regions was count. This title was also changing its meaning by 1100, releasing it from its previous association with public justice exercised under the crown, to apply instead to the cluster of hereditary rights which the dynasty in question exercised, although a comital title was by no means a precondition for this kind of authority. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there were many families which enjoyed no title beyond the description nobilis vir or nobleman, and dominus or lord, and yet held jurisdiction over their possessions in the same mode as the dynasties of counts.

Although the changing meaning of ducal titles after 1098 is relatively clear to follow, the technicalities and uses made of comes for count and comitatus for the exercise of his powers had a much more complicated history. It is convenient to divide it into three phases, recognizing that modern scholarship is far from exhibiting consensus about the issues raised. These phases are, firstly, the foundation of comital powers in the Frankish era when they were most closely associated with the king and his fiscal, military, and judicial policy and duties.

The recasting of aristocratic titles (chapters 5 to 7), the establishment of dynastic lineage (chapter 8), and the onset of internal and external colonization (chapter 9) were phenomena whose related effect was to bring forward the regional authority of the princes to such an extent that the amalgamation of their powers into what we can with hindsight discern as territorial principalities was beginning to be made possible in Germany. But the conscious task of the princes was the reform of regional jurisdictions, in part because there was no realistic distinction between justice and administration in medieval times. In addressing the problems of legal reform, we can once more perceive the vigour and inventiveness of the German aristocratic order, its preference for well-conducted legal procedures, its determination to make good use of the royal court and, where necessary, to establish its local claims by force.

In 1186 a charter issued by Margrave Otto of Meissen magniloquently set out the acceptable motives of princes in the sphere of law and government:

This is more than rhetoric. It is the programme which justified princely rule in Germany.

This book is essentially addressed to a single question arising from the intricate political history of the medieval western Empire: why did Germany evolve into a multiplicity of autonomous states under secular dynasties, urban authorities, and prince-bishops, becoming a species of aristocratic congeries in which the crown enjoyed enormous prestige but minimal authority? In my view, one answer to this is to be found not in the realm of high politics, but in the vigorous consolidation of princely jurisdictions in the German regions, a complex process which took significant new directions between the later eleventh and the earlier fourteenth centuries. The aim of the book is to examine those directions, and to try to uncover the causes for them. This pursuit involves the study of Germany's political and juridical institutions in the Middle Ages, but the threatening aridity of such an approach is, I hope, tempered by delineations of the princes and dynasties, churchmen, and kings whose careers actually gave life to those institutions. It has clearly to be stated that there is no intention of serving up a ‘total history’ of the medieval German aristocracy. The material to be presented concerns aristocratic politics, princely and episcopal territories, and highly placed persons. There is nothing here about the cultural background and achievements of the German princes and their courts as centres of patronage and creativity in many of the arts, a huge subject with rich sources of its own. There is not much social and economic history of the nobility as a class or order either, although the changing structure of their families is discussed in chapter 8 and the economic foundations of their regional power is outlined in chapter 9.

Throughout the substantial modifications to the relationship between the imperial crown, the German Church, and the secular princes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the German aristocracy continued to cling to conflict as one solution to their complex political needs. In permanent possession of retinues, fortifications, and other resources of war, and continually alert to the necessity of defence against their aggressive neighbours in the regions, the princes turned to violence when other means failed them. This tradition is plain to see in the history of the East Frankish realm of the tenth century. In the eleventh, it is vividly outlined by Wipo in his biography of Conrad II, through Duke Ernest of Swabia's struggles with his neighbours and with the emperor; and by Adam of Bremen in his account of Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen's political ambitions. It reached a new climax in the virulence of the Saxon War and the subsequent War of Investitures. The sources emanating from both sides tend to agree upon the bitterness of these conflicts. The tradition runs on through the wrangles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries for possession of the crown, for ducal and other titles, and for lands in dispute between the princes themselves. The ascription of violence to the German nobility was a literary commonplace based in part upon a classical model. But Teutonicus furor was sometimes remarked upon by the Germans themselves, and had a realistic function in contributing to princely success and survival. Regional history is punctuated by innumerable wars and rumours of them.