Benjamin Arnold
Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 1999 (reprint of 1985 edition).
cloth, dj.
Book Number 21549
The medieval German empire founded by Otto the Great in the tenth century was led by emperors committed to pursuing martial glory abroad, and comprised a large number of autogenous and aggressive regional powers engaged in constant feuding at home. Huge retinues of armed men were maintained, by emperor and magnates to sustain this level of military conflict. These men that made up the retinues, the ministeriales, were for the most part unfree knights, born into the service of their lord and rewarded with fiefs which sustained them as a hereditary landowning order.