The bifurcation of Maastricht

The St. Servaas Chapter has a number of charters from before 1300 in which emperors and Roman catholic kings of the German Empire placed the church and chapter under their special protection. This interest in St. Servaas goes back as far as the early Middle Ages. Frankish kings who regularly stayed in Maastricht regarded St. Servaas as their "house saint" and his burial church more or less as their property. At the same time the emperors and kings also exercised authority over the settlement, with the Roman castellum at its core, which had developed between the church and the bridge over the river Meuse. Lying inside the city walls, there was also the Church of Our Lady, once the cathedral of the bishops of Maastricht as successors of St. Servaas. After the relocation of the bishop's seat to Liege around 718, however, the bishops here still held authority over some of Maastricht's inhabitants, a group referred to as the "familia" of the bishop and the Church of Our Lady. This is why a form of government known as "bicameralism" emerged in Maastricht and existed until 1795. The first written traces of this form of government date from a charter known as a transcript from 1132, when it was argued that this system had existed for "three hundred years". It speaks of parishioners of St. Servaas, falling under the authority of the king/emperor and the "familia" of Our Lady and St. Lambert, referring to the bishop of Liege. As a result, both the emperor and the bishop each had their own legal "familia", scattered around the city. The question which "familia" a person belonged to was determined by the "familia" of the mother. At the same time the emperor and bishop exercised joint and undivided authority over the land where these people lived, roughly the area of Maastricht within the first enclosure of 1229. The Maastricht expression for this system of simultaneously joint and separate authority was "One lord no lord, two lords one lord". Although bicameralism developed over the centuries into a complicated system of sometimes joint and sometimes shared administration and jurisdiction, its principles persisted until 1795.

Between 1202 and 1204 Duke Hendrik I of Brabant was invested with authority over Maastricht and the chapter of St. Servaas by both Roman catholic King Otto IV and his rival Philip of Swabia. Thus, the duke also became the first protector of the chapter. This transition, by the way, did not mean the end of imperial interference with the Chapter of St. Servaas, for until the beginning of the 16th century the highest authorities within the German Empire confirmed its privileges.

Also among the charters of the chapter of St. Servaas, there are two copies where this duality is discussed. For example, in 1227 there is a declaration by bailiffs, aldermen and the citizens of Maastricht, both the bishop's and the duke's men, that from now on they would always respect the rights of the chapter of St. Servaas (charter no. 14). So it is two parties acting jointly. The second example concerns a charter from 1285 in which Duke Jan of Brabant orders that according to ancient rights, granted by emperors and kings, "his" subjects must have their mills ground at the mill of "his" St. Servaas church and therefore  not at the mill for the bishop's subjects, although it is not explicitly stated in so many words (charter no. 53). This system of separate mills also existed until 1795. Reminders of this are the bishop's mill in Koestraat and the gable stone of the duke's mill Achter de Molens (= Behind the Mills).