A charter that draws a line under the writing of history

At first glance, the document, dated July 7, 1226, appears unremarkable and is one of many examples of donations made to the abbey. Nevertheless, this document, which is only eight lines long, contains a wealth of interesting information. In terms of content, the document mentions that Henry, Duke of Limburg and Count of Berg, donated the Nieder Ritzerfeld farmstead, along with all its meadows, forests, and fields, to Kloosterrade Abbey. This donation was made for the salvation of his parents’ souls. It cannot be ruled out that the Duke and his close relatives, including his wife and sons, as well as his younger brother Walram, in view of the wording “pro remedio anime patris mei et matris mee,” “for the salvation of my father and my mother,” had votive masses celebrated in the abbey church in memory of their parents, in addition to the material donation to the monastery. Henry’s brother Walram, Lord of Monschau and Valkenburg, is named first among the witnesses in the document. The parents of Henry and Walram were Duke Walram II of Limburg and Kunigonde, daughter of the Duke of Upper Lorraine. Kunigonde had died in 1214. The date of this document, July 7, 1226, or perhaps the day before, suggests that the death of Duke Walram II was the immediate occasion for the grant. As the title indicates, Heinrich bears the title “duxde Limburgetcomes de Monte,” Duke of Limburg and Count of Berg. From this, it can be inferred that Walram was no longer in office as Duke at the time of the document and that Henry had succeeded his father. This succession had become a reality barely five days earlier, when Duke Walram died on July 2 in Cremona, where he was attending the Imperial Diet convened by Emperor Frederick II. Duke Henry IV’s motive for benefiting the abbey with a generous donation for the burial of his late father Walram and his mother is therefore hardly surprising. In documents and chronicles, the phrase pro remedio anime is a common justification for donations. The date on which the document is dated, however, can be considered surprising. In less than a week—within just four or five days—news of Walram’s death reached the city of Limburg from northern Italy, and the new duke was able to take the necessary steps to officially donate the “Nieder-Ritzerfeld estate with all its appurtenances, meadows, forests, and farmland” to the Abbey of Kloosterrade by means of a deed of transfer. Walram is buried in the nave of the Kloosterrade abbey church. The text on the border of the tombstone praises him for his virtues and mentions his lineage and all his titles; the stone itself depicts Walram as a knight in armor.

The connection between Kloosterrade Abbey and the House of Limburg was, alongside the influence the abbey gained through its role as a religious center, one of the factors that led to its great prosperity in the 12th and 13th centuries. The relationship dates back to the year 1136, when Mathilde of Saffenberg married Hendrik, the eldest son of Duke Walram I of Limburg. As a wedding gift, Mathilde brought the manorial estate of Rode, which encompassed Kerkrade and the area west of present-day Herzogenrath up to the Worm River. Hendrik received the manorial estate of Afden from his father Walram. Through this union, Hendrik became lord of the core area that would eventually develop into the Land of Rode or Herzogenrath. In 1139, he succeeded his father as Henry II, Duke of Limburg, thereby transferring political power from the Counts of Saffenberg to the Dukes of Limburg.

From an early stage, the Dukes of Limburg showed a certain fondness for Kloosterrade Abbey. They were the abbey’s foremost patrons. Six documents from the second half of the 12th century attest that they donated numerous properties, particularly during this period. Under the year 1151, the Annales Rodenses mention that Duchess Jutta, the widow of Duke Walram I of Limburg, donated the property rights to the church of Lommersum. On this occasion, she also took the monastic habit and lived as a laywoman in the abbey. Her daughter Margaret followed this example. For the Duchy of Limburg, the abbey church of Kloosterrade became a family monastery where several dukes and their wives found their final resting place. The dynastic connection between the Land of Rode and the Duchy of Limburg was to endure until the end of the 18th century.

From a historiographical perspective, this document from the year 1226 is noteworthy for the history of the abbey. Toward the end of the 17th century, the choirmaster Nicolaas Heyendal was commissioned by his superior, Abbot Johan Bock, to collect and organize all the registers in the abbey’s archives. The abbey had suffered greatly from wars and looting over the past three centuries. As a result, and due to decay and neglect, the archives were in a state of disrepair. The abbey’s income came largely from lease and tithe revenues; in addition, there were obligations that had to be fulfilled. These revenues and expenditures were recorded in documents. Many of these contracts had been lost or could no longer be accessed amid the chaos of the archives. Given the revenues and expenditures, it was essential to clarify both the rights and the obligations of the abbey. In Nicholas Heyendal, who had entered the abbey in 1683, Abbot Bock found a canon who was well-suited for this task. He had grown up in Walhorn, where his father was head of the chancellery. From childhood, he had been surrounded by documents and notarial deeds. In addition, later on, while studying theology in Leuven, he had also attended lectures at the law school.

The assignment given to Abbot Heyendal limited the work to the rooms where the records were kept. He approached this task systematically and arranged all the registers, charters, and documents he found in chronological order, starting from the abbey’s founding. He made a copy of each document, which he collected in a register to first gain an overview of the abbey’s income and expenses as well as its rights and obligations. The resulting cartulary, however, offered even more. It became, in a sense, a reflection of the abbey’s history. This observation must have given him the idea to write the history of Kloosterrade, starting from where the 12th-century chronicle ended. The result is his *Continuatio Annalium Rodensium*, the continuation of the Kloosterrade chronicle. Heyendal prefaced this continuation with the text of the *Annales Rodenses *.

The disorganization of the archives was the reason Heyendal was unable to examine all the documents available at the time. This had far-reaching consequences for the creation of the Continuatio, forcing Heyendal to make a drastic decision. The origin dates back to a charter from the year 1171, in which Duke Henry III, grandson of Duke Walram I, grants Abbot Erpo permission to sell a fief “prope villam Rode” near the village of Kerkrade. In the same document, Henry himself donates forest and arable land as well as grazing rights to the abbey so that cattle, sheep, goats, and horses may graze there. Upon reading this document, Heyendal expressed , as he writes in the Continuatio , his surprise that the chronicler had not mentioned until the year 1139 that Walram, Henry’s grandfather, had died and been buried in the nave of the abbey. Heyendal’s surprise is understandable, for the medieval chronicle, which extends to the year 1157, also mentions the deaths of a few high-ranking individuals. Later, this astonishment turned into doubt. In a note added retrospectively as a footnote to the year 1171 in the manuscript of the Continuatio , he writes that the grave in the side aisle might belong to another Walram. He mentions that Duke Walram was present at the coronation of the Roman Emperor in Aachen in 1257, but states in the same footnote that this, too, does not seem plausible to him. Heyendal apparently had no good knowledge of the genealogical relationships of the Dukes of Limburg when he wrote the history of Kloosterrade.

Later, after completing his historical work in December 1700, he realized—based on newly acquired information—that his interpretation of people and events had been incorrect; he therefore concluded that, in order to correct his mistake, he had no choice but to rewrite the entire work. In various places in the manuscript, he crossed out parts of the text to indicate that they needed to be rewritten. Thus, at the beginning of the 18th century, a new, second version of the continuation of the Annales Rodenses was created. This second version is not merely a revision in which the events in the history of Kloosterrade Abbey are accurately recounted; in many places, the text was also expanded and new text added. This suggests that he conducted new research into the abbey’s past and was able to consult new sources. One of these sources was the document dated July 7, 1226, which made it clear to him that he had misidentified the person buried in the nave of the abbey church. Strangely enough, this document had always been kept at the abbey. Heyendal saw Walram’s grave when he was a canon there. It was damaged during work on the floor in 1687. During his time as abbot, Heyendal had the inscription “obiit anno 1226,” “died 1226,” added.

The fact that the first, inaccurate, and less complete version of the sequel was nevertheless published in 1856 is also due to a confluence of curious circumstances. When Edouard Lavalleye, who was responsible for the publication of the Histoire du Limbourg by Canon Simon Pieter Ernst, was preparing an edition of the Annales Rodenses in the 1850s together with some philologist friends, he no longer had access to the original manuscript. The medieval manuscript had long been in the possession of Simon Pieter Ernst, who had managed it after the dissolution of the abbey. After Ernst’s death in 1817, it had been left behind in the rectory of Afden, where Ernst had been the parish priest. When Canon Ernst’s estate was put up for sale in 1848, the Royal Library in Berlin won the bid, and Lavalleye no longer had access to it. The first version of the Continuatio, which contained the outdated text of the old Annales Rodenses, had found its way, through various channels, into the library of the seminary in Sint-Truiden. Lavalleye used this copy for his intended edition of the medieval chronicle. He added the version of the Continuatio that Heyendal himself had rejected and gave it the title Continuatio Annalium Rodensium. The Annales Rodenses and the incomplete version of the Continuatio together form the content of the final and seventh volume of the Histoire du Limbourg. An edition of the revised version of the Continuatio is currently in preparation.