Page 605 - Het middeleeuwse kastelenlandschap van het Oversticht - Diana Spiekhout

the King, we discovered that he only began acting as a prince-bishop since the reign of King Henry IV. His changing role coincided with general developments in the German Empire. From the mid-eleventh century, wealthy landowners began rebuilding their territorial power. Various factors, such as the increasing dynastic consciousness of noblemen, the economic growth of cities and the countryside, reclamations and the establishment of farms, convents and cities, promoted the creation of principalities.
Concurrently with these changes, the first castles appeared in the bishopric of Utrecht. Insofar as we can observe from a historic point of view, the bishop used the castles to secure his claims to secular rights and goods. Because the King and the bishop had a harmonious relationship at the time, it is even conceivable that the King was involved in the construction of those castles. For the two oldest castles in Oversticht, Hunenborg and Schulenborg, we were able to show that the commissioner had a clear preference for a choice of location. He had them constructed on a coversand ridge in a fairly inaccessible area of wilderness. The reason was twofold. Firstly, they were so inaccessible thanks to their location and positioning that an army would not easily be able to overthrow them. Secondly, from a regional perspective, their location was highly favourable – the centre of the province of Twente – that from here, it was possible to cover the entire area with armourbearers on horseback. These were likely bases protected by a battalion of castle soldiers with access to horses.
Although the Schulenborg and Hunenborg were still in operation in the twelfth century, the bishop did not build any similar ringworks after 1140. Instead, he commissioned the construction of castles at strategic points in the landscape that were important for securing traffic routes and border defence, so they functioned as gateways. Castle Vollenhove, that may also have been built as a ringwork, was also built in this type of location. The bishop commissioned the construction of this castle along the shipping route that he and likely many others would take when they travelled from Utrecht across the Zuiderzee to the Oversticht region. When, in the course of the twelfth century, bog erosion opened up a waterway near Kuinre, the bishop commissioned the construction of a motte castle to close it, called Kuinre-I. We may need to view the Goor castle, then located next to an important passage through a marshy area bordering Diepenheim, as a similar type of bishop’s castle. We should also be aware that at the time, the city of Groningen functioned as a castle, as it was located at an intersection of roads and waterways. There, an episcopal burgrave was stationed. The city of Deventer probably served as the gateway to the Oversticht area via the IJssel river. Deventer also boasted a bishop’s palace, which performed a similar supporting role at the time. In the eastern part of this territory, the conquered castle of Bentheim offered protection, located along an important east-to-west route.
For the operation of his castles, the bishop of Utrecht appointed burgraves whose posts granted to them in fealty and could be inherited. The military garrison at the time probably already consisted of castle soldiers, who were also called borgmannen. They were permanently present at the castle and were expected to protect it. In the twelfth century, as far as we know, there were no castle builders other than the bishop in the region that later became known as Oversticht. At Diepenheim, the eponymous free noble family lived in a castle at that time, not under the secular authority of the bishop.
Hunenborg and Schulenborg were decommissioned in the thirteenth century. A study into the
local castle landscape of Hunenborg (in chapter four) shows that, at the time, the landscape S around this castle became wetter as a result of the cultivation happening upstream and the associated major drainage of surface water. The water damage became so considerable that
a raised access route had to be constructed to reach Hunenborg. It is possible that this
change in the landscape had a negative impact on the usability of the two castles. Another
reason that may have contributed to this was the idea that remote castles were no longer functional in this period. This is shown by the fact that no local castle builder undertook
such a project after 1200. As the bishop of Utrecht gained more awareness of the borders of
his territory in the thirteenth century, it became more appealing to him to construct border
castles.
Summary
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