Urbaria from the holdings of the Bayerische Hauptstaatsarchiv

After the tradition books and cartularies, the urbaria, often also called "Salbücher" or, in south-western Germany, "Lagerbücher", are the oldest type of official book developed in the medieval administrations of ecclesiastical and secular rulers. As early as the 9th century, we sometimes find records from urbaria interspersed in the tradition books of ecclesiastical landed estates. It was obvious that a book, which records legal titles for the acquisitions of farms, land and dependent people, should include records about this usable property and the regular income from it. The censual lists in tradition books can be evaluated as a first approach to own bookkeeping, which were finally developed into own censual books at the episcopal churches. They documented the annual interest to be paid by semi-independent workers on the basis of their personal legal status, usually a sum of money, occasionally also a certain amount of beeswax. When, in the High Middle Ages, churches and monasteries, but also the nobility, largely abandoned their own cultivation of their landed property with the help of servants and distributed it to dependent peasants in return for annual taxes in kind and money, it was obvious to systematically record the regular income derived from the legal title of superiority over peasant estates in their own official books. The compilation of such inventories of property and income began at the end of the 12th century, whereby, in addition to larger ecclesiastical landed estates, the sovereigns took precedence, for whom this is at the same time a characteristic of the consolidation of statehood in the course of the formation of territorial principalities.

Since the entirety of the estates and plots of land subject to a landlord’s superiority is referred to as his "Urbargut", the term "Urbarbuch" (urbarium) has largely prevailed in historiography over the contemporary, often used, but less unambiguous "Salbuch" in German. However, a strict restriction to manorial income is often not yet given in the urbaria’s entries from the Middle Ages. Income from usable regalia (sovereign rights) is also still entered there, for example for levies on those entitled to use forests, on customs sites or on income from the salt and mining rights.

• The Objects of the collection "Urbaria from the holdings of the Bayerische Hauptstaatsarchiv" available on bavarikon

The part collections of the collection "Urbaria from the holdings of the Bayerische Hauptstaatsarchiv" available on bavarikon

• Bishopric of Freising urbaria
• Duchy of Bavaria urbaria

>> This collection is part of the holdings of the of the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (Bavarian Main State Archive) and the Generaldirektion der Staatlichen Archive Bayerns (Directorate General of the Bavarian State Archives).

Literature:

• Wilhelm Volkert, Die älteren bayerischen Herzogsurbare, in: Blätter für oberdeutsche Namenforschung 7 (1966) , S. 1-32
• Ludwig Schnurrer, Urkundenwesen, Kanzlei und Regierungssystem der Herzöge von Niederbayern 1255-1340, Kallmünz 1972 (Münchener historische Studien, Abteilung Geschichtl. Hilfswissenschaften, Band VIII), S. 298-323.