"Concubines?"
"Wives, really. Instead of living in little monastic cells, seventy-five years ago the chapter monks mostly lived in their own houses in town with their wives and children. Not that it was legal for them to have wives, of course, which is why they were called concubines by the reformers."
"Didn't Catholics get a bit uptight about married monks?"
"The laity? No more than they did about married priests in general, really. Not as long as they did the rest of their work okay. It's the hierarchy that disapproves of clerical matrimony, mainly, not the people. At the time of Trent, even the dukes of Bavaria tried hard to get the pope and cardinals to accept married priests."
Wes shook his head.
"The part that is properly in Franconia is called the 'Rhön and Werra' canton of the imperial knights." Urban von Boyneburg looked at the up-timers and pointed to the wall map.
Derek Utt had made a blown-up map on a dozen pieces of paper taped together, from a little one in a down-time atlas. Ortelius, it was called. Ed Piazza had ordered a dozen copies of the atlas and distributed them around. It wasn't a very good map and the original had been made fifty years ago, so it was out of date, but it was better than any other map of Fulda that they had.
"That's basically over here. You do know what an imperial knight is? And where the Werra River runs?"
Wes Jenkins nodded.
Boyneburg continued. "Most of the Franconian imperial knights are Protestant—Lutheran, in fact. Their families accepted that confession almost a century ago and they have been able to maintain it in spite of pressure from the bishops. So are the ones here in the Fulda region, in what we called the Buchenland or, in Latin, Buchonia. Most of the abbot's own family is Protestant, for that matter."
"What's a 'Buchen'?" Fred Pence asked.
Boyneburg looked blank. He could point to a Buchen if they asked him to, but . . .
"A beech tree," Orville said in English. "This region is heavily wooded with beech trees."
Boyneburg resumed the lecture. "In October 1631, right after the battle of Breitenfeld, the imperial knights of the Fulda region had a meeting right here in the city and decided that they would like to join with the Franconian knights as the 'Buchen Quarter.' Since then, they have negotiated with the king of Sweden. He has been willing to recognize them as immediate, with no territorial lord standing between them and him, as long as they pay him tribute. Which is plenty, by the way. The Ebersburgs are expected to come up with twenty imperial Thaler monthly, the von Schlitz have to pay forty Thaler a month. Even the Buchenau family, which isn't very prominent or prosperous, is being assessed thirteen Thaler monthly by the Swedes, to support the Protestant cause."
"Where does Hesse-Kassel stand on this?" Derek Utt asked.
"Well, you must know that Hesse does not have any imperial knights within its lands. The lower nobility of Hesse, its Ritterschaft, is subject to the landgrave. Not reichsfrei. They are landsässig, vassals of the landgrave rather than of the emperor. Or of the king of Sweden, since he has now put himself in the emperor's place, for all practical purposes."
Wes Jenkins nodded.
Boyneburg went on. "I'm afraid that my lord the landgrave rather alienated the imperial knights of the Buchen Quarter last year, by moving to make them landsässig in Fulda. That was before your town's arrival of course, when he hoped to be able to attach Fulda as one of his permanent possessions. Of course, the abbot of Fulda would also like to make the knights within his territory his vassals. Any territorial ruler would, naturally. It's just that Hesse and Württemberg have been more successful at mediatizing them—well, at mediatizing us, since I am a member of the Hessian nobility—than most other principalities."
He paused. "The imperial knights of Buchen, ah, resist the idea of giving up their freedom and liberties to become the subjects of a territorial ruler very strongly."
"So, at the moment, they are still classified as free knights, but they are paying through the nose for the privilege. A lot more than their taxes would be if they were subjects of the abbot," Wes Jenkins summed up.
Boyneburg nodded his agreement.
"Clara, since the NUS is sitting in the former chair of the abbot as Fulda's head of state or civil government, where do you think we stand as far as our relations with these guys are concerned?"
"These knights in the Buchen are in a little different position than those in Hesse. They do, most of them, have some lands that are allods. That is, lands that they own in their own right and for which they do not owe any feudal dues. Just taxes to the emperor. Or, now, to King Gustavus Adolphus. But most of them also hold other lands as fiefs from Fulda. So the New United States is, I think, their feudal lord, their Lehensherr, for those lands, as well as being their Landesherr."