Carolingian foundations: the royal fisc, the Grossmünster and the Fraumünster

The Fiskus Zürich

The Frankish kings incorporated the region of the Alamanni into their kingdom during the sixth century, but it was under the Carolingians that Zurich regained a significance comparable to that of the Roman period. The Historisches Lexikon describes the town in the eighth and ninth centuries as the centre of an extensive Carolingian royal estate complex. Around 760 a “Fiskus Zürich” was formed, an administrative organisation which, in the words of the Lexikon, took up functions of the old castellum settlement. To this belonged the royal estate, which included among other things the Albis forest and possessions in Uri, and whose economic centre was the Stadelhof.¹ The cantonal article adds that this organisation arose under King Pippin and that Zurich is described as a royal place (locus regius) in documents of 806/810.²

A royal fisc in the Carolingian sense was a complex of lands, rights and dependent people administered for the benefit of the king. It produced agricultural revenues, provided lodging and supplies for the itinerant court, and served as a base for the exercise of royal authority in the region. The name Stadelhof survives today in the Stadelhofen railway station on the right bank. The possessions in Uri deserve attention. They connected the Zurich fisc with the upper Reuss valley, which in the thirteenth century would become the approach to the Gotthard pass. Although the Carolingian kings could not know that, the institutional link between Zurich and Uri, established in the ninth century, would echo in the alliances of the fourteenth.

The Grossmünster

On the right bank of the Limmat, at the presumed grave of Felix and Regula, a religious community existed by the eighth century at the latest. Later tradition attributed its foundation to Charlemagne himself: the Emperor, hunting in the area, was said to have followed a stag to the spot where his horse knelt over the martyrs’ tombs. The Historisches Lexikon reports the tradition that Charlemagne founded a chapter of canons in 810.³ Historians regard the legend as a later construction, possibly conflating Charlemagne with his great-grandson Charles III (“the Fat”), who around 870 is thought to have converted the existing community into a chapter of secular canons.⁴ The legend nevertheless mattered. It served the canons of the Grossmünster in their long rivalry with the nuns of the Fraumünster, founded by Charlemagne’s grandson, by claiming for their church the greater antiquity and the more illustrious founder.⁵ A seated statue of Charlemagne still looks out from the south tower of the Grossmünster.⁶

The Grossmünster was a chapter of secular canons, a community of clerics living from individual prebends and serving the church. From 1218 until 1523 it comprised twenty-four canonries, with dignitaries that included the provost, the cantor, the custos and the scholasticus. Its patrons were Felix and Regula and, from 1264, Exuperantius, a servant said to have shared their martyrdom.⁷ The present Romanesque church, a three-aisled pillar basilica with a twin-towered façade and a hall crypt, was built in six phases between about 1100 and 1230, replacing a ninth-century predecessor.⁸ Its school, later known as the Carolinum in memory of the supposed founder, would become one of the roots of the University of Zurich established in 1833.⁹ For the purposes of this book, the Grossmünster is also significant as the church in which Huldrych Zwingli began his ministry as people’s priest on 1 January 1519, the event with which Part B opens.¹⁰

The foundation of the Fraumünster in 853

The single most important document of early Zurich history is the charter by which King Louis the German, grandson of Charlemagne and ruler of the East Frankish kingdom, established the Fraumünster. It was issued at Regensburg on 21 July 853 and is the oldest original document preserved in the Staatsarchiv des Kantons Zürich.¹¹ By this act the king gave to a convent “situated in the place Zurich, where the martyrs Felix and Regula rest” the royal court of Zurich with its appurtenances, the royal lands in the valley of Uri and the Albis forest, and entrusted it to his daughter Hildegard as its first abbess. The convent was to follow the Benedictine Rule, was placed under royal protection and received immunity, which meant that it was answerable in law only to the king.¹² The charter is sealed with a wax seal showing an antique emperor’s head and bearing the legend “May Christ protect King Louis”. In the custody of the canton since 1803, it is kept today in the archive building near the Irchel campus of the University of Zurich.¹³ The more detailed list of the endowment in the secondary literature adds the Sihlwald and properties at Horgen, Langnau and in the Reppischtal.¹⁴

Hildegard, born in 828, had been abbess of Münsterschwarzach in Franconia before she came to Zurich. She died in 856, or according to some sources in 859, and was succeeded by her sister Berta, who governed the convent until 877.¹⁵ A later legend related that the two princesses, living at the castle of Baldern on the Albis, were led every night by a stag with shining antlers to the bank of the Limmat, where they recognised a divine command to build a church.¹⁶ The historical core of the foundation is political. As the Historisches Lexikon observes, the appointment of two royal daughters as successive abbesses illustrates the close binding of the convent to the Carolingian house.¹⁷ The foundation placed a substantial part of the royal fisc in the hands of a religious house governed by a member of the dynasty. The king thereby secured the revenues of the Zurich estate for his family, anchored his presence in a region of strategic importance on the border between his kingdom and the lands of his brothers, and created a centre of prayer for the salvation of the dynasty.

In the following decades the Fraumünster became the principal repository of the relics of Felix and Regula. The church of the convent was consecrated in 874, possibly in connection with the transfer of the relics from the right bank.¹⁸ The earliest documented church of the Fraumünster was, according to the Historisches Lexikon, a large ninth-century building with a transept and three apses.¹⁹ The church of St. Peter, first mentioned in 857 and attested as a parish church from the twelfth century, completed an ensemble which the Lexikon calls an exceptional sacred landscape shaped by the local martyr cult: by the tenth century the convents of the Fraumünster and the Grossmünster formed, together with the Wasserkirche and the parish churches of St. Peter and St. Stephan, a religious topography of a density unusual for a place of Zurich’s size.²⁰

The topography of medieval Zurich thus crystallised around three poles: the royal centre on the Lindenhof, the chapter of canons on the right bank and the royal convent on the left bank, with the parish church of St. Peter close by. Between them lay the river crossing, the landing places and, in time, the market. Each pole possessed rights over land, people and revenues. From the ninth to the fourteenth century, the history of the town is to a large extent the history of how these rights were exercised, contested and eventually drawn together by the civic community.

Notes

1. HLS, “Zürich (Gemeinde)”, section “Stadt der Könige und Herzöge (8.–12. Jahrhundert)” (Andreas Motschi), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/000171/2015-01-25/: “Mit dem um 760 gebildeten Fiskus Zürich entstand eine Verwaltungsorganisation, die an Funktionen des alten Kastellorts anknüpfte. Dazu gehörte der Königshof, der unter anderem den Albisforst und Besitz in Uri umfasste und dessen wirtschaftliches Zentrum der Stadelhof war.” ↩
2. HLS, “Zürich (Kanton)”, section on the Carolingian period (Renata Windler), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/007381/2017-08-24/, referring to “königlicher Ort (806/810)”. ↩
3. HLS, “Grossmünster” (Andreas Meyer), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D12123.php: “Karl der Grosse gründete 810 ein Kanonikerstift”, reported as tradition; “Grossmünster”, Wikipedia (English), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grossm%C3%BCnster, on the legend of Charlemagne’s horse kneeling over the tombs of Felix, Regula and Exuperantius. ↩
4. “Geschichte der Stadt Zürich”, Wikipedia (German), https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte_der_Stadt_Z%C3%BCrich, suggesting a conversion into a collegiate chapter by Charles III around 870 and a conflation of Charlemagne with his great-grandson in the later legend. ↩
5. “Grossmünster”, Wikipedia (English), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grossm%C3%BCnster, noting that the legend helped establish the church’s claim of seniority over the Fraumünster. ↩
6. “Grossmünster”, Wikipedia (German), https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grossm%C3%BCnster, on the seated figure of Charlemagne on the tower facing the Limmat and on the original of the figure from the south tower, now deposited in the crypt. ↩
7. HLS, “Grossmünster” (Andreas Meyer), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D12123.php: “Patrone waren die Heiligen Felix und Regula, seit 1264 auch Exuperantius”; 24 canonical prebends from 1218 to 1523. ↩
8. HLS, “Grossmünster” (Andreas Meyer), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D12123.php. ↩
9. HLS, “Grossmünster” (Andreas Meyer), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D12123.php, noting that the name Carolinum is attested from the seventeenth century and that the institution was transformed in 1832 into the cantonal school and university. The University of Zurich opened in 1833. ↩
10. “Huldrych Zwingli”, Wikipedia (English), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huldrych_Zwingli (“On 1 January 1519, Zwingli gave his first sermon in Zurich”); “Huldrych Zwingli”, Wikipedia (German), https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huldrych_Zwingli, on the post “das er am 1. Januar 1519 antrat”; see Part B. The HLS article “Grossmünster” lists Zwingli as a canon from 1521 to 1531. ↩
11. Kanton Zürich, press release “Älteste Zürcher Urkunde wird 1150 Jahre alt” (July 2003), https://www.zh.ch/de/news-uebersicht/medienmitteilungen/2003/07/abt.html; “Fraumünster”, Wikipedia (German), https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraum%C3%BCnster, describing the charter, issued in the royal chancery at Regensburg, as the oldest written document in the Zurich State Archives. ↩
12. Kanton Zürich, press release of July 2003 (above), https://www.zh.ch/de/news-uebersicht/medienmitteilungen/2003/07/abt.html; HLS, “Fraumünster” (Judith Steinmann), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/011612/2006-11-09/, citing the grant of “den Königshof Zürich, das Ländchen Uri und den Albisforst” and the conferment of immunity. ↩
13. Kanton Zürich, press release of July 2003, https://www.zh.ch/de/news-uebersicht/medienmitteilungen/2003/07/abt.html. ↩
14. “Fraumünster”, Wikipedia (German), https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraum%C3%BCnster. ↩
15. “Hildegard (abbess of Fraumünster)”, Wikipedia (English), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_(abbess_of_Fraum%C3%BCnster); “Fraumünster”, Wikipedia (German), https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraum%C3%BCnster (Hildegard 853–856/59; Bertha 857–877). The HLS article “Zürich (Gemeinde)” refers to the two daughters as abbesses and emphasises the close binding of the convent to the royal house. ↩
16. “Hildegard (abbess of Fraumünster)”, Wikipedia (English), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_(abbess_of_Fraum%C3%BCnster), recounting the legend of the deer with lighted antlers. The reference to the castle of Baldern is part of the standard form of the legend and is not stated in this source. ↩
17. HLS, “Zürich (Gemeinde)”, section “Stadt der Könige und Herzöge” (Andreas Motschi), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/000171/2015-01-25/. ↩
18. “Geschichte der Stadt Zürich”, Wikipedia (German), https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte_der_Stadt_Z%C3%BCrich, referring to the newly consecrated (874) Fraumünster and a probable transfer of major relics. ↩
19. HLS, “Zürich (Gemeinde)”, section on the early Middle Ages (Andreas Motschi), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/000171/2015-01-25/. ↩
20. HLS, “Zürich (Gemeinde)” (Andreas Motschi), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/000171/2015-01-25/: “Die 857 erstmals erwähnte Kirche St. Peter ist ab dem 12. Jahrhundert als Pfarrkirche bezeugt”; “Die Konvente Fraumünster und Grossmünster bildeten im 10. Jahrhundert mit der Wasserkirche und den Pfarrkirchen St. Peter und St. Stephan eine aussergewöhnliche, vom lokalen Märtyrerkult um Felix und Regula geprägte Sakrallandschaft.” ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.