A charter that reshaped the writing of history

At first glance, the charter dated July 7, 1226, is an unremarkable deed and one of many examples of the donations made to the abbey. Nevertheless, this deed, consisting of no more than eight lines, contains a wealth of interesting information. In terms of content, this document states that Henry, Duke of Limburg and Count of Berg, donated to Kloosterrade Abbey the farmstead of Nieder Ritzerfeld along with all its associated meadows, forests, and fields. This donation was made for the salvation of his parents. It cannot be ruled out that the duke and his close relatives—including his wife and sons, and his younger brother Walram—had votive masses celebrated in the abbey church in memory of their parents in addition to the material donation to the monastery, given the wording “pro remedio anime patris mei et matris mee,” “for the salvation of my father and mother.” Hendrik’s brother Walram, lord of Monschau and Valkenburg, is mentioned in the charter as the first of the witnesses. The parents of Hendrik 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 charter, July 7, 1226, or perhaps the day before, suggests that the immediate cause of the grant was the death of Duke Walram II. As the salutation shows, Hendrik bears the title “duxde Limburgetcomes de Monte,” that is, Duke of Limburg and Count of Berg. From this it can be inferred that at the time the deed was drawn up, Walram was no longer serving as duke and that Hendrik had succeeded his father in that position. That succession had become a reality barely five days earlier when Duke Walram had died in Cremona on July 2, where he was participating in the Reichstag convened by Emperor Frederick II. Duke Hendrik IV’s motive for favoring the abbey with a generous donation for the repose of his deceased father Walram and that of his mother should come as little surprise. In charters and chronicles, the phrase pro remedio anime is a common justification for endowments. On the other hand, the date on which the deed is dated may be considered surprising. In less than a week—within just four or five days—news of Walram’s death reached the town of Limbourg 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, woods, and arable land” to Kloosterrade Abbey via a deed of transfer. Walram is buried in the nave of the Kloosterrade abbey church. The text on the rim of the tombstone praises him for his virtues and mentions his lineage and all his titles; the stone itself depicts Walram as a seasoned knight.

The bond between the Abbey of Kloosterrade and the Ducal House of Limburg, in addition to the influence the abbey gained through its role as a religious center, was one of the factors that contributed to its great prosperity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The relationship dated 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 with her the freehold of Rode, which encompassed Kerkrade and the area west of present-day 's-Hertogenrade up to the small river Worm. Hendrik received the freehold 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 's-Hertogenrade. In 1139, he succeeded his father as Hendrik II, Duke of Limburg, thereby transferring the political power of the Counts of Saffenberg to the Dukes of Limburg.

Early on, the Dukes of Limburg showed a particular fondness for Kloosterrade Abbey. They were the abbey’s patrons par excellence. Six charters from the second half of the twelfth century confirm that they donated many properties, especially 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 that occasion, she also took the monastic habit and lived as a nun in the abbey. Her daughter Margaret followed suit. For the Duchy of Limburg, the abbey church of Kloosterrade became a family monastery where a number of dukes and their wives were laid to rest. The dynastic link between the Land of Rode and the Duchy of Limburg would continue until the end of the eighteenth century.

From a historiographical perspective, this charter from 1226 is worth mentioning in the history of the abbey. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, choirmaster Nicolaas Heyendal was commissioned by his superior, Abbot Johan Bock, to collect and organize all records in the abbey’s archives. Over the past three centuries, the abbey had suffered greatly from war and looting. As a result of this, as well as decay and neglect, the archives had fallen into great disarray. The abbey relied largely on income from rents and tithes. In addition, there were obligations that had to be met. These incomes and expenses were recorded in charters. Many of these agreements had been lost or could no longer be consulted amid the chaos of the archives. In light of the abbey’s income and expenses, it was vital to clarify both its rights and obligations. In Nicholas Heyendal, who had entered the abbey in 1683, Abbot Bock had found a chorister who was the right person for this task. He had grown up in Walhorn, where his father was a registrar. From childhood, he had been surrounded by documents and notarized deeds. Moreover, while studying theology in Leuven later on, he had also attended lectures at the law faculty.

The task assigned by the abbot to Heyendal limited the scope of his work to the rooms where the records were kept. He approached this task systematically and began arranging 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 compiled in a register in order to gain, first and foremost, an overview of the abbey’s income and expenses, as well as its rights and duties. The cartulary thus created, however, offered more. It became, as it were, a reflection of the abbey’s history. This observation must have given him the idea of writing down the story of Kloosterrade from the point where the twelfth-century chronicle ended. The result is his *Continuatio Annalium Rodensium*, the Continuation of the Chronicle of Kloosterrade. Heyendal prefaced this *Continuatio* with the text of the *Annales Rodenses*.

The disarray of the archives was to blame for Heyendal’s failure 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 can be traced back to the charter of 1171 in which Duke Henry III, grandson of Duke Walram I, grants permission for the sale of a fief “prope villam Rode,” near the village of Kerkrade, to Abbot Erpo. In the same document, Henry himself donates forest and agricultural land to the abbey, as well as the right to graze cattle, sheep, goats, and horses. Upon reading this charter, Heyendal writes in the Continuatio that he marveled that the chronicler had neglected to mention by the year 1139 that Walram, Hendrik’s grandfather, had died and had been buried in the nave of the abbey church. Heyendal’s astonishment is understandable. After all, the medieval chronicle, which continues up to and including the year 1157, also mentions the deaths of quite a few less prominent figures. Later, this astonishment turns to doubt. From a note added afterward as a footnote to the year 1171 in the manuscript of the Continuatio, he writes that the tomb in the aisle might belong to another Walram. He mentions Duke Walram being present at the coronation of the Roman Emperor in Aachen in 1257, but in the same footnote he says that this does not seem plausible to him either. Apparently, Heyendal did not have a good understanding of the genealogical relationships of the dukes of Limburg when writing the history of Kloosterrade.

Later, only after completing his historiography following December 1700, he realized from newly obtained information that his interpretation of people and events had been incorrect. In order to correct his error, he saw that he had no choice but to rewrite the entire work. In several places in the manuscript, he crossed out parts of the text, indicating that they needed to be rewritten. Consequently, a new, second version of the Continuatio of the Annales Rodenses emerged in the early 18th century. This second version is not only a revision that provides the correct account of events in the history of Kloosterrade Abbey, but in many places the text has also been expanded and new material has been 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 charter of July 7, 1226, which made it clear to him that he had misidentified the person buried in the central aisle of the abbey church. Curiously, that charter has always been present in the abbey. Heyendal saw Walram’s tomb when he was choir lord there. It was damaged during work on the floor in 1687. During his abbacy, Heyendal had the inscription “obiit anno 1226” (=died in 1226) placed there.

The fact that the first, inaccurate, and less complete version of the Continuatio nevertheless appeared in print in 1856 is due in equal measure to a series of curious circumstances. In the 1850s, when Edouard Lavalleye—who was responsible for the publication of Canon Simon Pieter Ernst’s *Histoire du Limbourg*—prepared an edition of the *Annales Rodenses* together with a number of philologist friends, the original manuscript was no longer available to him. The medieval manuscript had long been in the possession of Simon Pieter Ernst, who had been in charge of it following the dissolution of the abbey. After Ernst’s death in 1817, it remained in the rectory of Afden, where Ernst had served as priest. When Canon Ernst’s estate was put up for sale in 1848, the Royal Library in Berlin made the highest bid, and Lavalleye no longer had access to it. After some wandering, the first version of the Continuatio, containing the completed text of the old Annales Rodenses, ended up in the library of the seminary at Sint-Truiden. Lavalleye used this copy for his desired edition of the medieval chronicle. He added to it the version of the Continuatio rejected by Heyendal himself and gave it the title Continuatio Annalium Rodensium. Together, the Annales Rodenses and the flawed version of the Continuatio form the contents of the last and seventh volume of the Histoire du Limbourg. An edition of the revised version of the Continuatio is currently in preparation.