A charter that rewrote historiography

At first glance, the charter dated 7 July 1226 is an unremarkable deed and one of many examples of the donations that fell to the abbey. Nevertheless, this deed considting of no more than eight lines, houses a quantity of interesting data. In terms of content, this document mentions that Hendrik, Duke of Limburg and Count of Berg, donated to Kloosterrade Abbey the farmstead of Nieder Ritzerfeld with all that belongs to it in terms of meadows, forests and fields. This donation is 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, 7 July 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 "dux deLimburget comes de Monte", so duke of Limburg and count of Berg. From this it can be inferred that at the time the deed was made, Walram was no longer in office as duke and that Hendrik had succeeded his father in that position. That succession had become a fact barely five days earlier when Duke Walram had died in Cremona on 2 July, where he participated in the Reichstag convened by Emperor Frederick II. Duke Hendrik IV's motive in favouring the abbey by a generous donation for the repose of his deceased father Walram and for that of his mother should come as little surprise. In charters and chronicles, the formula pro remedio anime used is a regular justification for endowments. On the other hand, the day on which the deed is dated may be considered surprising. In less than a week, within only four or five days, the news of Walram's death reached the town of Limbourg from northern Italy, and the new duke was able to take the necessary measures to officially donate "farm Nieder-Ritzerfeld 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 in the rim of the tombstone praises him for his virtues and mentions his lineage and all his titles, the stone itself shows Walram as a hardened knight.

The bond between the abbey of Kloosterrade and the ducal house of Limburg, in addition to the influence acquired by the abbey through its religious centre function, was one of the elements that contributed to its great prosperity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The relationship dated from 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 was lord of the core area that in the course of time would develop into the land of Rode or 's-Hertogenrade. In 1139 he succeeded his father as Hendrik II, Duke of Limburg, with which the political power of the Saffenberg counts passed to the dukes of Limburg.

 Early on the dukes of Limburg showed a certain 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 possessions, especially in 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 over the church of Lommersum. On that occasion she also assumed 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 received a final resting place. The dynastic link between the Land of Rode and the Duchy of Limburg would continue until the end of the eighteenth century.

For the historiography of the abbey this charter from 1226 is worth mentioning from a historiographical point of view. Toward the end of the seventeenth century choirmaster Nicolaas Heyendal was commissioned by his superior Abbot Johan Bock to collect and organise all records in the abbey's archives. During 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. For its income, the abbey was largely dependent 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 in the chaos of archives. In view of income and expenses, it was vital to clarify both the rights and obligations of the abbey. 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 knew himself to be surrounded by documents and notarised deeds. Moreover, while studying theology in Leuven later, he had also attended lectures at the faculty of law.

The task assigned by the abbot to Heyendal limited the scope of his work to the rooms in which the records were kept. He tackled this job systematically and started to arrange all the registers, charters and documents he found in chronological order from the origin of the abbey. He made a copy of each document, which he collected in a register in order to obtain, first of all, 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 history of the abbey. This observation must have given him the idea of writing down the story of Kloosterrade from the moment 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 see all the documents present at the time. This had far-reaching consequences for the creation of the Continuatio that forced Heyendal to make a drastic decision. The origin can be traced back to the charter of 1171 in which Duke Hendrik III, grandson of Duke Walram I, grants permission for the sale of a fief 'prope villam Rode', close to the village of Kerkrade, to Abbot Erpo. By the same document Hendrik 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 senior persons. Later, this astonishment turns to doubt. From a note added afterwards 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 after December 1700, he realized from newly obtained information that his interpretation of persons and events had not been correct. 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. Thus, a new, second version of the Continuatio of the Annales Rodenses emerged in the early eighteenth century. This second version is not only a revision in which the correct account of events in the history of Kloosterrade Abbey is given, but in many places the text has also been supplemented and new text has been added. This indicates that he did new research into the abbey's past and was able to consult new sources. One of these sources was the charter of 7 July 1226, which made it clear to him that he had misidentified the person buried in the centre 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. During work on the floor in 1687 it was damaged. 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 rests equally on a concurrence of curious circumstances. In the 1850s, when Edouard Lavalleye, 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 after the dissolution of the abbey. After Ernst's death in 1817 it stayed in the presbytery of Afden, where Ernst had been priest. When Canon Ernst's estate was offered 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.