Noble Lineages, Hausklöster, and Monastic Advocacy in the Twelfth Century: The Garsten Vogtweistum in its Dynastic Context

Monastic advocacy is no longer as prominent a strand of medieval historical research as it was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The lack of recent engagement with this subject is unfortunate, because there is a wealth of evidence across many source genres for monastic advocates and their activities in the Empire during the central Middle Ages. This article aims to show how combining older scholarly traditions with more recent methodologies might revitalize this topic and point toward new avenues of research. By investigating the causa scribendi of the so-called Garsten Vogtweistum within a broad comparative framework, it demonstrates how the study of monastic advocacy can provide fresh insights into noble Hausklöster, territorial lordship, and monastic communities’ responses to violent local lords