The Reichskirche, Clerical Mobility and the Making of the Ottonian World: The Case of Saint Wolfgang of Regensburg (c. 934-994). Medieval Worlds|Moving Jobs: Occupational Identity and Motility in the Middle Ages & Cultural Brokers in European and Asian Contexts. Investigating a Concept - Volume 20. 2024 medieval worlds Volume 20. 2024|

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In his 1982 article »The ›imperial church system‹ of the Ottonian and Salian rulers: a reconsideration «, Timothy Reuter challenged a conception of the »imperial church« as a coherent, consciously wielded instrument of royal control. Noting instances of local resistance or collaboration or royal apathy, he argued for a more ad hoc and decentered conception of the relationship between secular power and the church. While this reorientation was valuable in many ways and has been pursued in subsequent scholarship, such an approach neglected the elements of social and cultural connection that connected the diverse regions of the empire. Using the career of the late Ottonian bishop Wolfgang of Regensburg (972-994), this article will examine the role of clerical movement across the German Empire and within discrete regions as an essential mechanism to create and maintain connectivity and coherence. Much attention has been paid to the royal Hofkapelle as the dominant context for the creation of a shared ethos, ideology and loyalties to king and colleagues. A close analysis of Wolfgang’s vita, however, suggests that each episcopal court and cathedral school offered similar opportunities to cultivate shared identities and knowledge and to create strands of social networks that helped to bind the disparate regions of the empire together. Wolfgang’s life also bears witness to the role of mobility in creating shared identity at the local level as well, signaling that mobility could contribute not only to the cultural cohesion of the empire across regions but also help to equip localities with at least the essentials of an »imagined community«, whether of empire or diocese. In this way, the essay suggests that, though Reuter’s reservations about the Reichskirche as a system of royal control remain valid, it retains value when understood as a Kulturgebiet or rather, as a set of discrete Kulturgebiete that could begin to form, at various moments through the movement of individual prelates as they advanced their careers, pursued their duties and brought their knowledge and connections, a more comprehensive community.