Page 610 - Het middeleeuwse kastelenlandschap van het Oversticht - Diana Spiekhout

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Summary
of Diepenheim, this occurred in 1331, when the bishop purchased the castle, the seigneury and the associated land and structures.
We were able to show that the owners of the three oldest castles, Goor, Diepenheim-I and Diepenheim-II, were involved to a great degree in the design of the landscape. In order to dewater this wilderness, which contained no natural waterways, the lords of Goor and Diepenheim commissioned the creation of artificial streams. During the existence of the castles, these streams were dug out and changed multiple times for the purpose of dewatering, for shipping and for the use of watermills. Furthermore, the occupants of Diepenheim castle were also involved in the religious landscape. For example, they ensured that Diepenheim was given its own parish and was separated ecclesiastically from the parish of Markelo, in which the castle chapel was given the status of church with the right to baptise and bury. Both in Goor and Diepenheim, the settlement pattern as a result of the presence of the castles changed. Where farms were first spread across the coversand landscape, residential units with a pre-urban character began to crop up. In the case of Goor, this happened after the bishop granted the settlement Het Schild city rights, after which large-scale excavation work was performed for planned additions. Whether or not this also applies to Diepenheim is unknown due to a lack of written sources: the question is whether or not this happened before or after the purchase of the castle and the seigneury in 1331.
When the bishop obtained ownership of the Goor and Diepenheim castles, there was no longer any territorial development in the area around the castles as there were no longer any lords who used them as ancestral castles. Instead, the castles functioned as military, legal, administrative and economic support structures and as border castles for the Oversticht. Diepenheim replaced Goor as a border castle from 1331 because, due to the seigneury, the border of the diocese moved south. However, the castle was decommissioned in the second half of the fourteenth century.
The borgmannen of the Goor and Diepenheim castles served near the castle in order to protect it. From the mid-fourteenth century, the bishop stopped appointing individuals to positions of fealty. This effectively ended the function of borgmannen as the protectors of castles. Although existing borgmannen retained their status, mercenaries who reported to the removable castellan now protected the castles.
Just like other nobles in the Oversticht, these borgmannen also wanted to construct their own residences, preferably with defensive architecture. From the fourteenth and mainly around the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, these borgman residences turned into noble homes. In the same manner as the actions of the free noble castle lords, the occupants of these residences began collecting goods and rights in their immediate surroundings, albeit at a smaller scale. In the new era, these locations would become the basis for the various country houses and landed estates that still dominate the landscape in southwest Twente to this day.
In chapter six, we compared the research results to castle development in the Nedersticht Utrecht and the Sticht Munster. For Nedersticht, the results are largely comparable. A different kind of development can be observed in two areas, namely the construction of fortifications by parties in Drenthe and the Gorecht area, and episcopal castle politics between 1350 and 1450. The Sticht of Munster, on the other hand, underwent a different development as the bishop of Munster only began building his secular kingdom around the mid-twelfth century. From the fourteenth century, episcopal castle development between both territories showed developments; first, a weakening of the episcopal power resulting in a high debt burden and next, the cities in the Sticht aided the bishop in restoring his authority and consolidating his power.
Finally, we have discussed how the model of the castle landscape introduced in this dissertation contributes to academic debate. Its application at the territorial level turned out to be the most important link to understand castles, as it was possible to reconstruct castle development through time based on the commissioner’s point of view, the political