MANAGEMENT BY MONKS OR BY LAYMEN?
Whether the monastery's outlying estates should be administered
by monks or by laymen was a matter of debate
and widely varying practice. In 812 the monks of Fulda
protested before the emperor against the increasing administrative
fragmentation of the holdings of their abbey, declaring
themselves in favor of a single and common manorial
entity (commune ministerium)—managed by the monastery
as a whole through its leading representatives, the deans
and the prior[189]
—as preferable to watching their holdings
being surrendered to the "selfish interest of laymen" or to
"malicious serfs."[190]
But at the synod of Aachen held in 816,
the assembled bishops and abbots of the empire ruled that
the outlying estates should henceforward be managed by
laymen exclusively. The monks who had been entrusted
with their supervision were ordered to return to the mother
house, and the abbots were admonished to reduce the number
of their visits to the outlying manors to the absolute
minimum.[191]
The capitulary of Louis the Pious which
promulgated these resolutions consolidated them into
imperial laws.[192]
