Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-17T21:40:23.444Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The politics of reciprocity: urban councils and intercity conflict management in Reval (Tallinn) and Lübeck, c. 1470–1570

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 April 2024

Christian Manger Open the ORCID record for Christian Manger [Opens in a new window]
Christian Manger*
Affiliation:
Department of Public Law and Governance, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands
*
Email: c.manger@tilburguniversity.edu
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Ties of trade, credit and family provided the basis for trading networks between Hanseatic towns. They also, however, contained the seed for conflicts over fraud, debt and inheritance. Such disputes between burghers of different Hanseatic cities presented municipal governments with the particular challenge to balance their role as Hanseatic partners with an obligation of externally representing their own burghers. Focusing on relations between the cities of Lübeck and Reval, this article explores the variety of diplomatic strategies and tactics which city councils employed to preserve the political and economic benefits of intercity co-operation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , First View , pp. 1 - 14
Check for updates
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

In the late medieval city, conflict management was among the most prominent duties of the municipal government.Footnote 1 Keeping the urban peace was considered crucial to promoting craft and trade, and thus legitimized claims to political authority.Footnote 2 However, while the jurisdiction of the council ended at the formal boundaries of the city, its burghers’ conflicts did not. On 22 December 1529, for instance, Dirick Scharhar, a merchant from Lübeck, wrote to his magistrates and demanded support in a conflict with his trading partner from Reval, Hinrick Helwich.Footnote 3 In particular, he asked the municipality to grant him the arrest of Revalian goods in Lübeck or, otherwise, to release him from his oath as a burgher, so that ‘I can seek my justice in other places and by other means.’Footnote 4 With this phrase, Scharhar was announcing his willingness to seek the help of territorial lords and mercenaries and to escalate the conflict by means of force, if necessary. He justified his requests with the partial and uncooperative stance of Reval’s council, which not only had dismissed his accusations of embezzlement without consulting any evidence, but also refused to force Helwich to settle the partnership’s accounts in Lübeck according to Hanseatic ordinances. On 1 January 1530, the magistrates of Lübeck copied Scharhar’s supplication (Supplicationschrifft) and attached it to a letter of their own in which they validated their burgher’s claims and requested the co-operation of their peers in Reval.Footnote 5 To avoid a potential escalation of the conflict, they hoped for a written answer as soon as possible so that they and Scharhar would know how to proceed.

The dispute sketched out above is one of legal boundaries. Trade had produced close ties between the inhabitants of the Hanseatic towns of Lübeck and Reval and relations of family, credit and trade led to conflicts around inheritance, debt and fraud.Footnote 6 And although the council of Reval administered justice according to the laws of Lübeck and accepted the latter city as its court of appeal, it possessed autonomous jurisdiction.Footnote 7 Economic historians have long considered the competing legal orders of medieval Europe as a challenge to premodern long-distance merchants and, in two opposing ways, have tried to explain how traders solved their conflict abroad. One side considers merchants as a driving force behind state formation in an attempt to overcome the fragmentation of law through centralized, sovereign power.Footnote 8 The other side ascribes to them a preference for extrajudicial settlements as a means of avoiding costly and slow court cases.Footnote 9 Both positions, as Albrecht Cordes and Philipp Höhn have noted, view merchants through the lens of modern economic theory and place them outside of their contemporary cultural and social norms.Footnote 10 Rather than settling for one legal forum, they argue, premodern disputants utilized the full scale of legal pluralism to direct the way of conflict in their favour.

Dirick Scharhar’s conflict illustrates how individuals employed such different legal forums but also points to another potential cause for frictions: how did urban councils reconcile their burghers’ choices with their own claims to managing conflict? Altercations between citizens of different Hanseatic towns, this article argues, presented a unique challenge to urban councils, as they exposed a discrepancy between the magistrates’ different political identities.Footnote 11 As urban governments, the councils of Lübeck and Reval legitimized their claims to authority through representing their burghers’ interests.Footnote 12 At the same time, they were members of the Hanse, and at the core of Hanseatic economic and political thought lay the safeguarding of trade and the preservation of the cities’ autonomy through inter-urban collaboration.Footnote 13 Thus, while Lübeck’s council considered itself obligated to support the claims of its burgher Dirick Scharhar, his request for the confiscation of his opponent’s goods could strain relations with Reval. Even worse, his intention to seek help beyond the city’s walls threatened to endanger trade in the forms of reprisal and the involvement of princes and nobles.

This article examines how the councils of Lübeck and Reval provided support to burghers involved in conflicts that crossed the two towns’ legal boundaries while at the same time maintaining amicable relations with each other. Altercations between the inhabitants of Hanseatic cities, I argue, required magistrates to engage in a particular form of intercity diplomacy due to the shared notion of a Hanseatic common good. Since this undertaking requires analysing the process of conflicts, I will draw on the application of conflict management as a concept introduced to Hanseatic legal and economic history by Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz. Rather than uniquely focusing on how and whether conflicts were resolved, she suggests, it is also fruitful to pay attention to tactics of prevention, escalation, de-escalation or the maintenance of the status quo.Footnote 14 This approach corresponds well with the findings of several recent studies of late medieval urban conflict in England, the Low Countries and Italy which have demonstrated that peace as understood by municipalities and citizens did not imply the absence of conflict, but rather its containment to avoid a major disruption of the political order.Footnote 15 As the article will show, Hanseatic city councils were indeed much more concerned with preventing, containing and de-escalating conflict than in finding quick resolutions. To bridge legal boundaries, they employed practices of intercity diplomacy which were based on common political thought, specifically the notion of reciprocity.

As a first step, I will explain how practices of arrest and reprisal in the Baltic in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries influenced the decision-making of urban councils, as these posed a constant danger not only to the security of trade but also to the autonomy of urban jurisdiction.Footnote 16 Therefore, as the second section will demonstrate, councils developed different tactics of conflict management, mainly aimed at limiting or at least controlling altercations between their burghers. To reconcile their responsibilities as an urban government with their duties towards their Hanseatic peers, the magistrates of Lübeck and Reval employed measures of law and intercity diplomacy. In the final section, I will suggest that these measures rested on a common ideological basis. Concentrating on a specific form of diplomatic correspondence – intercessions and supplications (vorbede/vorsprake and supplication) – I argue that the councils’ conflict management was based on a common Hanseatic notion of political reciprocity. Due to the significance of intercity diplomacy in crossing legal boundaries, the main source base for this article is not provided by legal records but by the correspondence between the councils of Reval and Lübeck, mainly in the form of the collected incoming letters in the City Archive of Tallinn for the years c. 1470–1570.Footnote 17 The number of letters preserved in this collection is unusually high in comparison to other urban archives in the Baltic and can thus provide insight into a broader urban culture of writing and conflict management.

The dynamics of conflict

For medieval merchants, options of conflict management included seizures and the – often carefully dosed – use of violence. Conflicting parties in Hanseatic cities thus requested that their town council arrest their opponent’s goods or enforce their interests on their own by means of reprisal.Footnote 18 Both options entailed a considerable risk of collateral damage and larger-scale escalation. The council’s permission to arrest the goods of one of the disputants could, in an act of collective liability, lead to the indiscriminate confiscation of merchandise from the opponent’s town.Footnote 19 Furthermore, the confiscation of each party’s wares might only amplify the mutual contempt as, for instance, in the dispute around the inheritance of Reval’s burgher Jasper Bomhower in 1536.Footnote 20 While such measures strained intercity relations, they at least to some extent took place under the control of the council. However, when parties announced their intention to ‘seek justice in other places and by other means’, they threatened to obviate this control and find allies outside the city walls.Footnote 21 Burghers turned to kings, princes and local gentry who provided support in the form of letters of reprisal and allowed them to recruit mercenaries and sell prizes in their harbours.Footnote 22 As the ships captured in these conflicts usually carried the goods of multiple merchants and towns, collateral damage was a common occurrence. ‘Hostile ship shall make hostile goods’, a privateering order from Bremen in 1446 declared, and the phrase was still referred to as ‘maritime law of old custom’ in Lübeck as late as 1539.Footnote 23 Especially when the burghers’ disputes became intertwined with large-scale conflicts, the fallout could seriously disrupt trade in the Baltic. In the 1480s, for example, the political ambitions of the bailiff of Gotland made him a popular enforcer of private interests in conflicts between Hanseatic burghers. Not only did he capture several merchant ships, but the constant threat caused traders in Lübeck and Reval to hire expensive security for their merchandise and ships.Footnote 24

Councils were highly aware of the potential fallout of confiscations and reprisal. ‘Thus, it usually happens that when your goods are confiscated…those of our [burghers] not long after go missing’, Lübeck’s council complained about arrests between their burghers in a letter to Reval in 1492.Footnote 25 Magistrates could refuse to approve confiscations but, as Dirick Scharhar’s letter has shown, in doing so they risked conflicting parties seeking support outside the city, undermining their authority and escalating the conflict beyond their control.Footnote 26 To limit their burghers’ choices, Hanseatic town councils sought to criminalize reprisal as piracy – an approach shared with political authorities all over late medieval Europe.Footnote 27 Thus, the library of Lübeck’s council contained a copy of Bartolus de Saxoferrato’s De Represaliis which designed clear conditions for the legitimacy of reprisal. Only when plaintiffs had suffered protraction or denial of justice (justitia denegata) and had exhausted the full course of appeal, might they request reprisal from the proper authority.Footnote 28 In the sixteenth century, burghers of Lübeck and Reval appear to have been familiar with this concept to some degree since they justified the involvement of outside forces with claims of refused justice.Footnote 29 In practice, however, the legitimacy of reprisal remained something to be negotiated in each individual case. Claims to have suffered denial of justice were difficult to disprove and rulers like Swedish King Gustav Vasa (1523–60) considered it a limitation of their sovereign power when an urban council contested their right to intervene on behalf of a petitioner.Footnote 30 Moreover, urban magistrates themselves acted far from consistently, branding opponents as pirates while granting their own burghers arrests and reprisals. Still in 1539, for instance, Lübeck’s syndic Johan Rudel defended the legitimacy of prize-taking based on customary practice against a legal opinion by Leipzig’s faculty of law.Footnote 31 We have to keep in mind that councillors themselves were merchants and were thus probably not too keen to limit their own options of conflict management. In 1544, for example, Bodt Schroder was burgomaster of Reval when he threatened to give his case ‘into other people’s hands’, exemplifying the potential conflict between self-interest and common good faced by the members of the municipal government.Footnote 32

To the council, inter-urban disputes remained a regular threat to the judicial autonomy of the city but also to trade and shipping far into the sixteenth century. Even if only a small number of conflicts actually escalated to the extent of a transregional crisis, each individual dispute contained the possibility of such an escalation and councils thus reminded each other of the ‘further hinderance, work and unnecessary costs’ that could arise from them if left disregarded.Footnote 33 Since law alone did not provide a reliable prevention of escalation, councils instead focused on prevention, de-escalation and protraction of conflicts through other means.

Managing conflicts

One way of preventing the spread of conflict was to confine it to a single city. It speaks to the shared awareness of this issue that urban municipalities addressed it on a Hanseatic level. When an influential diet of towns in 1447 collected ordinances to design a set of common rules for the Hanse, the list included paragraphs on inter-urban conflicts.Footnote 34 These articles stated that debts should only be claimed before urban courts, and debtors were prohibited from resettling in another city.Footnote 35 If a merchant died abroad, the respective city council was to collect the deceased’s possessions and safeguard them in order to first hear and verify all claims and thus avoid later demands and lawsuits.Footnote 36 Finally, the ordinances instructed merchants to dissolve their partnerships in the same city in which they had begun them.Footnote 37 Since Hanseatic trading partnerships were intended to last over months and years, the rekenschop, the settlement of accounts in which partners were supposed to compare ledgers, provided a common cause for conflict.Footnote 38 The fact that this paragraph proved to be one of the very few Hanseatic regulations referred to by individual merchants in practice attests to the centrality of the issue.Footnote 39 In sum, the diet’s rulings addressed the inter-urban character of conflicts: disputes should be made the responsibility of a single council or at least be contained to a single location. Hanseatic norm and merchant practice, however, could differ substantially, as Ester Zoomer in this issue also demonstrates for conflicts in non-Hanseatic cities. The legislative and executive powers of Hanseatic diets were limited and decisions about appliance and enforcement rested with the individual city.Footnote 40

Efforts aimed at prevention and containment, therefore, also marked the co-operation between the magistrates of Reval and Lübeck independently of Hanseatic institutions. Councils provided burghers with letters of procuration which verified their claims to inheritances and debts and invested their carriers with the right to collect the respective goods and money abroad.Footnote 41 Furthermore, in so-called toversichtsbrefen (letters of expectation), councils gave guarantees to not support any rivalling or additional demands to their burghers’ claims.Footnote 42 This guarantee was particularly significant as contesting claims of families, trading partners and creditors were a source of intricate conflict, especially when merchants died abroad.Footnote 43 On the one hand, the significance of these documents can be inferred from the council’s decision not only to record them in town books but also to preserve the original letters in their archives, even after matters had apparently been settled.Footnote 44 On the other hand, individual cases can give us insight into the importance councils attached to these guarantees. For example, after the death of Jacob Vrese, a wealthy merchant and councillor of Reval, in 1455, the city’s council safeguarded his inheritance and led a 55-year-long conflict against the different heirs in the cities of Stockholm and Åbo (Turku) over the lack of ‘guarantees against additional claims’.Footnote 45 This conflict was an extreme case, but it illustrates the lengths a city’s governing body was willing to go to secure themselves against dangerous precedents and the contingency of future claims.

While these measures show an attempt by councils to monopolize the conflict management of their burghers, in practice parties attempted to resolve their disagreements on their own before turning to official institutions. In their reports to the council, burghers explained having attempted to resolve disputes ‘orally through my friends but also by way of my letters sent’, or having sent their apprentices and trading partners to negotiate a resolution.Footnote 46 Councils accepted these practices, but over the course of the fifteenth century they began to institutionalize and control mediation and arbitration as well. In Lübeck and Reval, magistrates assigned their members as arbiters and mediators, and the cities’ courts urged conflicting parties to agree to an amicable settlement before filing a suit.Footnote 47 These provisions strengthened the council as an institution of conflict management and decreased the potential for escalation. Ultimately, however, they did not solve the issues of jurisdiction and enforcement. Like court cases, mediation and arbitration required both parties to be present in the same location – in person or represented by a procurator – as well as willing to make concessions.Footnote 48 However, burghers like Hinrick Helwich refused to make the long journey between Lübeck and Reval because of the costs and dangers, sickness or simply because they did not consider themselves accountable.Footnote 49

When conflicts stalled and communication between parties stopped or became deadlocked, burghers finally requested their council’s intervention in their opponent’s city. In March 1526, Hans Wegener, a merchant from Lübeck, complained that his former apprentice had become a burgher of Reval and after repeated requests over a period of three years still had not paid him out according to their contract.Footnote 50 Similarly, Laurens Isermann in 1538 lamented that his partner Herman Boleman had stalled his representative in Reval for nearly a year, while Boleman’s own ‘servant who daily walks the streets of Lübeck in the open, does not bother at all to finally give me notice from his master’ as regards his open debts.Footnote 51 Around 1500, the councils of Lübeck and Reval developed a particular form of correspondence to address such demands for intervention in other towns. As a first step, a party in dispute handed in a written supplication to his or her own council which usually encompassed a request for support and intervention as well as an account of the conflict’s history. At times, conflicting parties also directed their accusations against their opponent’s council itself, when they considered it acting in a biased way or denying them justice in favour of its own burghers.Footnote 52 Supplications were not meant for internal use but to be copied and forwarded to the opponent’s municipality, attached to a letter of intercession (vorbede/vorsprake).Footnote 53 These missives usually did not aim to immediately resolve disputes but to break the deadlock between parties by renewing a dialogue, or to facilitate a solution mediated by their council. The stress lay on swift communication so that the conflict would not cause further damage or escalation and, thus, in their letters councillors and burgomasters urged their peers to ‘answer us on behalf of our [burghers]…with the first [ships]’ or admonish their respective burgher earnestly to appear before the court to settle accounts as quickly as possible.Footnote 54

The terminology of intercessions and supplications evokes associations with the petitions of the same name, in which subjects requested mercy from authorities all over Europe.Footnote 55 Other than these bottom-up pleas, however, the cities’ practice did not imply a hierarchy but remained a communication between equals. And although intercessions could refer to the legal grounds for the supplicants’ claims, they were themselves neither based on law nor did they solve the aforementioned issues of conflicting jurisdiction.Footnote 56 Still, supplicants like Lübeck’s burgher Magnus Bruns asked explicitly to forward their writings and in the council’s ‘attached letter amicably request [Reval’s councillors] to act accordingly in this matter as they undoubtedly will do’.Footnote 57 Burghers consciously made use of supplications and – aware of the procedure – invested trust in the intervention of their magistrates. This use of intercessions and supplications, I will argue in the following section, relied on urban political thought and a shared notion of Hanseatic reciprocity.

A politics of reciprocity

When the Hanse over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had turned into a political association of towns, the urban elites who constituted its formal political echelon had transferred elements of urban political thought to the Hanse as a whole. At its centre stood the shared notion of a Hanseatic common good (ghemene beste), which encompassed the maintenance of the cities’ privileges abroad, the safety of the travelling merchant and the autonomy of the cities.Footnote 58 Just like the common good of the city, the common good of the Hanse was an object of constant negotiation, as in practice the interests of individual towns proved hardly compatible.Footnote 59 Nevertheless, as an overarching ideal, it provided Hanseatic city councils with a familiar common language of diplomacy and a constant reminder of the need to co-operate if they wanted to compete with kings, princes and states. Even though intercessions hardly included any direct references to the Hanse, they were infused with this idea of intercity co-operation.

When Lübeck’s councillors forwarded supplications, they expected their peers’ co-operation since they, in return, ‘would be willingly indebted to you’.Footnote 60 Though varying in length and content, nearly all letters of intercession and tovorsicht that arrived in Reval ended with this promise of debt (boschulden) and reciprocity. In a missive from 1528, Lübeck’s council made the reciprocal relation even clearer: Reval’s councillors might act the same ‘as you would like us to act and proceed’.Footnote 61 While their frequent use makes it tempting to frame the promise of indebtedness as rhetorical ornamentation, Michael Jucker has suggested that we should avoid passing over elements like forms of address in letters as ‘empty formulas’. In the diplomatic relations between Swiss cities, he argued, ‘the reciprocal offer of service in interstate relationships worked to reduce conflict and to build trust’.Footnote 62 Likewise, Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz has pointed out that constant affirmation of mutual trust in the language of Hanseatic communication was a condition for managing conflict between members of the Hanse, be it economic, political or juridical.Footnote 63 The language of debt used in the letters of intercession made clear that this was no unconditional trust built on common properties and interests alone but the result of constant practice and fostering.Footnote 64 Considering the many conflicts between their burghers, the addressed council had to expect facing a similar situation in the near future.

The mutual assurance of political values or the exchange of intercessions alone, however, could not provide an easy solution to conflicts, as reciprocity also affected the relation between urban governments and their burghers. The former declared that they could not refuse their citizens’ requests to intervene in disputes and the latter promised that they were ‘obligated, willing and tireless to earn’ and repay the intercession on their behalf.Footnote 65 In conflicts between burghers of different cities, this obligation applied to both councils which, therefore, could not just force their subjects to comply with the wishes of the respective opponent. Instead, they answered the incoming supplications and intercessions with counter-intercessions and counter-supplications.Footnote 66 While not all of these answers were constructive – some parties used supplication to accuse each other of lies and insults – a dialogue mediated by the magistrates took place.Footnote 67 The exchange of intercessions did not resolve the conflicts immediately but maintained the peace and provoked a break of the deadlocked state of non-communication, allowing the council to fulfil the duties of inter-urban co-operation and still represent its own burghers’ interests.

If revivified communication failed to resolve the conflict and rather extended it, intercessions provided magistrates with an indirect option of enforcement. By choosing to forward supplications which contained threats like that of Dirick Scharhar, a council invested them with an implied institutional backing and took responsibility for their content. To legitimate this provocation and violation of inter-urban solidarity, the councils of Lübeck and Reval accused one another of failing to co-operate or respond to intercession, and thus, of a breach of reciprocity. In 1531 and 1542, for example, the council of Lübeck sent urgent reminders to answer their letters in order to avoid an escalation.Footnote 68 The intercession accompanying Dirick Scharhar’s supplication in 1530 warned that Reval’s council would have to ‘consider that it is not on us or in our power to guarantee safety and Your Honourables will, therefore, see to it that such and other troubles in this matter will be prevented’.Footnote 69 Similarly, in 1538, the councillors of Lübeck asked their peers in Reval to finally pressure Herman Bolemann to appear before them in order ‘to not give our burgher a reason’ to make true threats of arrests or reprisal.Footnote 70 Only co-operation according to custom would prevent merchants ‘to act in other places and with other means to claim their damages from you…hoping Your Honourables will not let it come that far’.Footnote 71 Responsibility, according to these intercessions, lay exclusively with Reval’s council, which had failed to act according to reciprocity, violating the Hanseatic common good.

Still, choosing the frame of supplication and intercession left open the continuation of communication and lowered the risk of an immediate and irrevocable escalation. Forwarding confrontational supplications at least left the councils some control over the conflict, while burghers who left the city to seek the support of nobles and mercenaries on their own would have presented a potential threat to all trade. Intercessions always contained another offer of dialogue but the accompanying threats signalled the need for urgency, and made clear that the council considered the supplicant’s threats as legitimate. Parties who attempted to bypass the council’s conflict management therefore risked punishment. In 1545, for instance, Lübeck’s burgher Hermann Sonnenschein boasted of having 60 men under his command, as well as the backing of the Danish king and the duke of Mecklenburg, to reclaim a debt from a Revalian merchant.Footnote 72 After Reval’s council had sent copies of his announcements to Lübeck, the city’s magistrates threatened Sonnenschein with banishment, hoping that their peers in Reval ‘in others and such cases against us will remember this and act accordingly’.Footnote 73

Reciprocity constituted an important factor in the attempts of the magistrates to balance the common good of the Hanse with that of the city, by allowing individual conflicting parties to pursue their interest while at the same time reducing the risk of escalation. It speaks to the significance of practices of reciprocity that they even outlasted major political crises. From the 1530s on, economic conflicts strained the relations between Reval and Lübeck, until, finally, the two towns ended up on different sides in the Northern Seven Years’ War (1563–70). Furthermore, in the long run, Reval’s subjection to the Swedish king in 1561 severed the city’s connection to the Hanse.Footnote 74 Still, not only did Lübeck’s council intervene in the case of Sonnenschein despite major disagreements about the treatment of Hanseatic merchants in Reval, but preliminary samples of later correspondence also suggest that the two councils took up the exchange of intercessions again in the 1570s.Footnote 75

Conclusions

In January 1531, a full year after his last letter in his conflict with Hinrick Helwich, Dirick Scharhar wrote another supplication. He thanked the council of Lübeck for having shown him his opponent’s answer and the intercession attached by Reval’s magistrate. The letters’ content, however, deeply dissatisfied him. When comparing the two parties’ supplications, Scharhar complained, one might notice that Helwich had not answered a single accusation and that his words were nothing but ‘clouds without rain through which the matter is obscured but never washed clean’.Footnote 76 He therefore renewed his accusations and threats of the previous year. Again, the council of Reval answered and continued to defend Helwich’s position, claiming that Scharhar’s threats went against the association of the common Hanseatic cities (gemeyne Anse stede voreyniginge) and he should be punished for disregarding the council’s offers of settling the conflict.Footnote 77 Despite these mutual threats, in 1533, the council of Lübeck announced they had convinced Scharhar ‘under great difficulties’ to bring his case before the magistrate of Reval again.Footnote 78 Here, the case fades from the councils’ correspondence. While it thus remains unclear if the two merchants ever found a solution, their magistrates had avoided an escalation of the conflict.

For the councils of Reval and Lübeck, crossing legal boundaries was part and parcel of their work. The disputes between their subjects around inheritance, debt and trade added complexity to urban conflict management, but the councillors did not perceive them as a fundamental breach of order. While the two towns’ magistrates made some attempts at streamlining conflicts along the principles of learned law, most prominently by criminalizing reprisal as piracy, these efforts mainly served as a tactic to avert interventions by kings and princes rather than aspiring to a monopoly on violence. Instead, councils tried to make themselves the central forum of conflict management through intercity diplomacy and co-operation. The shared concept of reciprocity – expressed in terms of indebtment – allowed them to balance their political identities as urban governments and as members of the Hanse when bridging legal boundaries on behalf of their burghers. The exchange of intercessions and supplications helped to avoid dangerously deadlocked conflicts because ignoring them would have meant the violation of common norms. This also explains why councils could forward their burghers’ threats without defying Hanseatic ideas of inter-urban solidarity. Although the council thus succeeded in extending its control over its subjects’ conflicts, cases like that of Dirick Scharhar show that conflict management across legal boundaries remained a negotiation between magistrates, their burghers and their peers in other Hanseatic towns.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to the editors of this special issue Edda Frankot and Miriam Tveit as well as the participants of the Leeds International Medieval Congress panel ‘Crossing Legal Boundaries in Northern Europe’ for the constructive and pleasant collaboration. Furthermore, I would like to thank Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz, Guy Geltner and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Funding statement

Research for this publication has been funded by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) under Grant number 276-50-009 as part of the project ‘Managing Multi-Level Conflicts in Commercial Cities in Northern Europe (c.1350–1570)’.

Competing interests

The author declares none.

References

1 Höhn, P., Kaufleute in Konflikt. Rechtspluralismus, Kredit und Gewalt im spätmittelalterlichen Lübeck (Frankfurt and New York, 2020), 115–49Google Scholar; Kämpf, T., Das Revaler Ratsurteilsbuch. Grundsätze und Regeln des Prozessverfahrens in der frühneuzeitlichen Hansestadt (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Rogge, J., ‘Pax urbana. The use of law for the achievement of political goals’, in Armstrong, J.W. and Frankot, E. (eds.), Cultures of Law in Urban Northern Europe. Scotland and Its Neighbours, c. 1350 – c. 1650 (Abingdon, 2021), 139–53, at 140 Google Scholar; Isenmann, E., ‘Gesetzgebung und Gesetzgebungsrecht spätmittelalterlicher deutscher Städte: 1. Teil’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, 28 (2001), 1–94 Google Scholar.

3 Tallinna Linnaarhiiv (Tallinn City Archives) (TLA), 230–1, B.B.40/VIII, fols. 104r–105v.

4 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VIII, fol. 105v: ‘vmme myn recht Jn anderen orden vnde wegen tho soken’.

5 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VIII, fol. 106r.

6 On the networks of family and trade, see C. Jahnke, ‘Netzwerke in Handel und Kommunikation an der Wende vom 15. zum 16. Jahrhundert am Beispiel zweier Revaler Kaufleute’, University of Kiel habilitation thesis, 2003. On inheritances as a cause for conflict in Baltic cities, see J. Wubs-Mrozewicz, ‘Conflicts about property: ships and inheritances in Danzig and in the Hanse area (15th–16th centuries)’, in Armstrong and Frankot (eds.), Cultures of Law in Urban Northern Europe, 192–205.

7 Kala, T., ‘Das Geschriebene und das Mündliche: das lübische Recht und die alltägliche Rechtspflege im mittelalterlichen Reval’, in Cordes, A. (ed.), Hansisches und hansestädtisches Recht (Trier, 2008), 91–112 Google Scholar.

8 North, D.C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Greif, A., Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy. Lessons from Medieval Trade (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Representative of the vast amount of literature concerned with mercantile contract enforcement, see Gelderblom, O., Cities of Commerce. The Institutional Foundations of International Trade in the Low Countries, 1250–1650 (Princeton, 2013), 102–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the contributions in Merchants and Commercial Conflicts in Europe, 1250–1600, special issue of Continuity and Change, 32/1 (2017). On the special category of maritime law, see Frankot, E., ‘ Of Laws of Ships and Shipmen ’. Medieval Maritime Law and Its Practice in Urban Northern Europe (Edinburgh, 2012)Google Scholar.

10 Höhn, Kaufleute in Konflikt, 31–46; Cordes, A. and Höhn, P., ‘Extra-legal and legal conflict management among long-distance traders (1250–1650)’, in Pihlajamäki, H., Dubber, M.D. and Godfrey, M. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of European Legal History (Oxford, 2018), 509–27Google Scholar.

11 Recent discussion has focused predominantly on merchants handling conflicts in foreign regions and non-Hanseatic towns; see Baur, K., Freunde und Feinde: Niederdeutsche, Dänen und die Hanse im Spätmittelalter (1376–1513) (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wijffels, A., ‘Krieg, Diplomatie und Recht: Die englisch-hansischen Konflikte 1468–1603’, in Cordes, A. and Auer, A.M. (eds.), Mit Freundschaft oder mit Recht? Inner- und außergerichtliche Alternativen zur kontroversen Streitentscheidung im 15.–19. Jahrhundert (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2015), 85–100 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cordes, A., ‘Die Erwartungen mittelalterlicher Kaufleute an Gerichtsverfahren: hansische Privilegien als Indikator’, in Cordes, A. and Dauchy, S. (eds.), Eine Grenze in Bewegung: Private und öffentliche Konfliktlösung im Handels- und Seerecht (Munich, 2013), 39–64 Google Scholar; J. Wubs-Mrozewicz, Traders, Ties and Tensions. The Interaction of Lübeckers, Overijsslers and Hollanders in Late Medieval Bergen (Hilversum, 2008)Google Scholar.

12 Pitz, E., Bürgereinung und Städteeinung . Studien zur Verfassungsgeschichte der Hansestädte und der deutschen Hanse (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2001), 312–13Google Scholar; Isenmann, E., ‘The notion of the common good, the concept of politics, and practical policies in late medieval and early modern German cities’, in Lecuppre-Desjardin, E. and Van Bruaene, A.-L. (eds.), De bono communi. The Discourse and Practice of the Common Good in the European City (13th–16th c.) (Turnhout, 2010), 107–48, at 130–45Google Scholar.

13 Hammel-Kiesow, R., ‘Die Politik des Hansetags. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen gemeinsamer Politik am Beispiel des Nordatlantikhandels’, in Hammel-Kiesow, R. and Selzer, S. (eds.), Hansischer Handel im Strukturwandel (Trier, 2016), 183–208 Google Scholar; Jenks, S., ‘Friedensvorstellungen der Hanse (1356–1474)’, in Fried, J. (ed.), Träger und Instrumentarien des Friedens im hohen und späten Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1996), 405–39Google Scholar. On the Hanse in general, see R. Hammel-Kiesow, Die Hanse. Fünfte aktualisierte Auflage (Munich, 2014); Wubs-Mrozewicz, J., ‘The Hanse in medieval and early modern Europe: an introduction’, in Wubs-Mrozewicz, J. and Jenks, S. (eds.), The Hanse in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 2013), 1–35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Wubs-Mrozewicz, J., ‘Conflict management and interdisciplinary history. Presentation of a new project and an analytical model’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 15 (2018), 89–107, at 102–3Google Scholar.

15 L. Caravaggi, ‘Keeping the peace in a late-medieval polity. Conflict and collaboration in Bologna in the age of Dante (13th–14th centuries)’, University of Oxford Ph.D. thesis, 2020; Liddy, C.D., Contesting the City . The Politics of Citizenship in English Towns, 1250–1350 (Oxford, 2017), 7–17 Google Scholar; Lantschner, P., The Logic of Political Conflict in Medieval Cities. Italy and the Southern Low Countries , 1370–1440 (Oxford, 2015), 1–1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar0.

16 Ester Zoomer’s contribution to this special issue examines similar frictions between the Hanseatic Kontor’s ambition to contain and control conflicts and the tactics employed by Hanseatic merchants in non-Hanseatic cities.

17 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/II–XIV. The respective but less substantial collection of letters from Reval to Lübeck is stored in the Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck (Lübeck City Archives) (AHL), ASA Externa, Livonica.

18 On the dynamics of maritime violence in the Baltic, see Rohmann, G., ‘Jenseits von Piraterie und Kaperfahrt. Für einen Paradigmenwechsel in der Geschichte der Gewalt im maritimen Spätmittelalter’, Historische Zeitschrift, 304 (2017), 1–49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A European perspective is provided by the contributions in T. Heebøll-Holm, P. Höhn and G. Rohmann (eds.), Merchants, Pirates and Smugglers. Criminalization, Economics, and the Transformation of the Maritime World (1200–1600) (Frankfurt and New York, 2019)Google Scholar.

19 On the mechanisms of confiscation, see Cordes and Höhn, ‘Extra-legal and legal conflict management’, 525; Rohmann, G., ‘Wegnehmen, Verhandeln, Erstatten. Politischer Alltag im Hanseraum um 1400’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 9 (2014), 574–85, at 583Google Scholar. A similar conflict between protecting its burghers’ property rights and the city’s economy was faced by the town council of fourteenth-century Marseilles which chose to suspend letters of marque against foreigners when the risk of having their goods confiscated discouraged merchants from entering the city. See C. Beck, ‘Common good and private justice: letters of marque and the utilitas publica in fourteenth-century Marseilles’, Journal of Medieval History, 41 (2015), 88–106.

20 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/X, fols. 40v and 42r. For a similar case between Reval and Danzig, see TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VIII, fol. 9r.

21 See n. 4. Similar announcements can be found in AHL, ASA Externa, Livonia 104; TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IV, fols. 14r, 16r and 32r; VI, fol. 62r; VIII, fol. 105v; IX, fols. 40r and 69r; XI, fol. 29r–v; XII, fols. 8r–9r, 11r–12r, 40r–43r.

22 See, for example, the letter of reprisal issued by the duke of Mecklenburg for Gottschalck Remlingrad in 1538: AHL, ASA, Externa, Anglicana, 702, fols. 21r–22v. Letters of marque were, however, far less established in the Baltic than in the Mediterranean and Western Europe; see Rohmann, ‘Jenseits von Piraterie’, 25. For the development in the European north-west, see Sicking, L. and Wink, J., ‘Reprisal and diplomacy: conflict resolution within the context of Anglo-Dutch commercial relations c. 1300 – c. 1415’, Comparative Legal History, 5 (2017), 53–71 Google Scholar.

23 A.E. Hofmeister and A. Röpcke (eds.), Bremisches Urkundenbuch, vol. VII (Bremen, 1993), no. 389, p. 397, ‘Ok scal vigende bodeme vigende gud maken.’ AHL, ASA Externa, Anglicana, 702, fol. 28, ‘alt herbracht Seerecht’. On the concept of neutrality, see Wubs-Mrozewicz, J., ‘Neutrality before Grotius: a city, a state and seven salt ships in the Baltic (1564–1567)’, Journal of Early Modern History, 22 (2018), 446–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Hansisches Urkundenbuch (HUB), vol. X, ed. W. Stein (Leipzig, 1907), nos. 23 and 1224; TLA.230–1, B.B.40/III, fols. 36r, 81r and 82r.

25 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IV, fol. 19r, ‘So gerbort id gemeynliken dat der Juwen gudern werden beslagen dat der vnsen dar nicht verne plegen afftowesende des de vnse denne ock schaden nemen.’

26 For a refusal of arrest, see TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VI, fol. 37r.

27 Rohmann, ‘Jenseits von Piraterie’, 32–3; T. Heebøll-Holm, P. Höhn and G. Rohmann, ‘Introduction’, in Heebøll-Holm, Höhn and Rohmann (eds.), Merchants, Pirates and Smugglers, 9–30.

28 Van den Brande, P.C., ‘“Remedium repraesaliarum”: the medieval and early modern practice and theory of reprisal within the just war doctrine’, Grotiana, 41 (2020), 305–29, at 313CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the terminology and the fluid borders between denial and protraction of justice in the Holy Roman Empire, see P. Oestmann, ‘Rechtsverweigerung im Alten Reich’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Germanistische Abteilung, 127 (2010), 51–141, at 57–60. For the inventory of Lübeck’s library, see U. Simon and R. Schweitzer, ‘“Boeke, gude unde böse…”. Die Bibliothek des Lübecker Syndikus Simon Batz von Homburg. Rekonstruktionsversuch anhand seines Testaments und der Nachweis aus dem Bestand der ehemaligen Ratsbibliothek in der Stadtbibliothek Lübeck’, in R. Hammel-Kiesow and M. Hundt (eds.), Das Gedächtnis der Hansestadt Lübeck. Festschrift für Antjekathrin Graßmann zum 65. Geburtstag (Lübeck, 2005), 127–58, at 143.

29 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IV, fol. 14r; VI, fol. 15r; VIII, fols. 63r–64v; IX, fols. 3r–4r; TLA 230–1, A.a.21, fol. 139r–v. A Hanseatic diet in 1489 explicitly prohibited burghers to involve nobles and lords in conflicts with other Hansards as long as they had ‘not been denied justice’. Hanserecesse (HR), ser. 2, vol. III, ed. G. von der Ropp (Leipzig, 1881), no. 160 §344, ‘in deme rechtes is nicht geweygert’.

30 Konung Gustaf den förstes registratur (1546–1547), vol. XVIII, ed. V. Granlund (Stockholm, 1900), 160–2. For Reval’s claims to jurisdiction, see TLA 230–1, A.a.21, fols. 155r and 237v.

31 AHL, ASA Externa, Anglicana 702, fol. 26r.

32 AHL, ASA Externa, Livonica 104, ‘Damith ich obgedachten vorsegelden kopbreff in frombde hande tho bringende nicht vororsacht werde.’

33 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IV, fol. 14r, ‘dar vth forder kroth arbeidt vnde vnnute koste mochten erwassen’. For other examples, see TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IV, fols. 14r, 33r and 83r; VI, fol. 10r; VIII, fol. 106r. For conflicts escalating on a large scale, see G.A. Donner, Striden om arvet efter köpmannen Jakob Frese, 1455–1510 (Helsingfors, 1930); Höhn, ‘Pluralismus statt Homogenität’, 277–82; Manger, C., ‘Behind the scenes: urban secretaries as managers of legal and diplomatic conflicts in the Baltic region, c. 1470–1540’, Journal of Medieval History, 48 (2022), 571–86, at 575–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 HR, ser. 2, vol. III, no. 288 §21.

35 Ibid., §§39 and 48.

36 Ibid., §66.

37 Ibid., §41.

38 On the practices of Hanseatic trade, see A. Cordes, Spätmittelalterlicher Gesellschaftshandel im Hanseraum (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 1998).

39 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/V, fols. 4r–5r; VI, fol. 15r; VII, fol. 24r; VIII, fol. 89r; IX, fols. 3r–4r, 9r–10r; XI, fol. 11v; XII, fols. 4r–7r.

40 Huang, A. and Kypta, U., ‘Ein neues Haus auf altem Fundament. Neue Trends in der Hanseforschung und die Nutzbarkeit der Rezesseditionen’, Hansische Geschichtsblätter, 129 (2011), 213–29, at 218–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; U. Schäfer, ‘Hanserezesse als Quelle hansischen Recht’, in Cordes (ed.), Hansisches und hansestädtisches Recht, 1–14. At least for the cities of Lübeck and Reval, the ordinances of 1447 mostly put into writing already existing customs or adopted paragraphs of the town law of Lübeck, W. Ebel, Lübisches Recht. Erster Band (Lübeck, 1971), 403.

41 Just for the years 1515–20, see TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VI, fols. 57r, 60r, 65r, 74r; VII, fols. 3r, 5r, 6r, 7r, 8r, 11r, 42r, 45r, 46r, 54r, 59r, 60r, 72r, 75r, 84r and 87r. On letters of procuration, see Ulla Kypta’s contribution in this special issue.

42 von Seggern, H., Quellenkunde als Methode: Zum Aussagewert der Lübecker Niederstadtbücher des 15. Jahrhunderts (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2016), 172–81Google Scholar.

43 Such conflict, for instance, stemmed from the deaths of Hans Krusebecker (1516) and Hans Karell (1532). TLA 230–1, B.B.40/ VII, fol. 7r; IX, fol. 34r.

44 For the archive as the result of conscious decision-making, see M. Mostert and A. Adamska, ‘Introduction’, in M. Mostert and A. Adamska (eds.), Writing and the Administration of Medieval Towns: Medieval Urban Literacy 1 (Turnhout, 2014), 1–10, at 6; Head, R.C., Making Archives in Early Modern Europe. Proof, Information, and Political Record-Keeping, 1400–1700 (Cambridge, 2019), 10–11 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 HUB, vol. X, no. 1224, p. 736, ‘soverne de unsen van der stad Stoxholme offte Abo vorsekeringe vor namaninge irlangen mogen’; Finlands medeltidsurkunder, vol. V, ed. R. Hausen (Helsingfors, 1928), no. 3958.

46 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VIII, fol. 59v, ‘durch myne frunde munthlick vnnd sust vormyddelst mynenn thogeschicktenn breven’. See also Wubs-Mrozewicz, J., ‘The late medieval and early modern Hanse as an institution of conflict management’, Continuity and Change, 32 (2017), 59–84, at 67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baur, Freunde und Feinde, 139.

47 Kämpf, Ratsurteilsbuch, 96–9; Höhn, Kaufleute in Konflikt, 137–43.

48 von Seggern, H., ‘Zur Tätigkeit der Prokuratoren vor dem Lübecker Rat gegen Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts’, Hansische Geschichtsblätter, 131 (2013), 195–227 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the contribution by Ulla Kypta in this special issue.

49 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/V, fol. 81; XI, fols. 98r–99r; B.B.48/VII, fol. 301v.

50 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VIII, fol. 59v.

51 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/XI, fol. 9v, ‘synenn dener hir bynnen lubeck dagelichs apennbar vp der strathen gande, de sick mith alle nichts beflitet, my vann sines herenn wegenn entlick boschedt tho doende’.

52 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/X, fol. 46r.

53 The first forwarded supplication preserved in the archive of Tallinn dates from 1489 (TLA 230–1, B.B.40/III, fol. 102r–v), but only from 1501 on do we observe these documents becoming a regular part of the correspondence. TLA 230–1, B.B.40/V (1501–10), fols. 4r–6r, 66r–v/76r, 68r–69r, 72r–73r, 81r–82r; VI (1511–15), fols. 7r–8r, 20r/23r, 48r/54r, 61r–62r, 66r–68r; VII (1516–20), fols. 9r–10v, 30r/34r, 47r–50r, 62r–64r; VIII (1521–30), fols. 4r, 26r–27r, 31r–v/34r, 32r–33v, 59r–62r, 63r–65r, 79r–80v, 99r–101r, 104r–106r; IX (1531–4), fols. 2r–4r, 8r–9v, 22r–24r, 27r–28r, 33r–34v, 39r–40v, 44r–46v, 56r–58r, 66r–67v, 68r–70r, 77r–78v, 79r–80r; X (1535–7), fols. 36r/40r–42v, 45r–v/61r, 48r–50r; XI (1538–41), fols. 1r–3r, 4r–6r, 9r–13r, 15r–17v, 29r–31r, 34r–36r, 39r–41r, 52r–v/55r, 57r–59r, 78r–80r, 98r–100r; XII (1542–5), fols. 4r–7r, 8r–10r, 11r–13r, 19r–21r, 36r–38r, 40r–44r, 53r–56r, 58r–61r, 62r–64r/68r, 76r–78r, 90r–92r; XIII (1546–50), fols. 22r–24v, 28r–30r, 34r–35v, 65r–66v; XIV (1551–60), fols. 22r–25v, 48r–49v, 114r–116r, 129r–132r, 156r–158v, 168r–171r, 174r–177r, 179r–181v, 184r/189r–190r, 205r–208r. Some intercessions referred to supplications which are now lost, pointing at the incompleteness of the collection. TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VIII, fol. 42r; IX, fol. 41r; X, fol. 70r; XII, fol. 45r; XIII, fols. 39r, 74r; XIV, fols. 6r, 40r, 100r, 133r–136r, 186r, 203r–204r.

54 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IX, fol. 39r, ‘Darumme bidden wy fruntlikes vlites Jwe Er W willen vnns tho behoff der vnsenn Wo sie Jn orer Jnliggenden schrifft bidden mit den ersten wedderumme beantworden.’

55 A. Würgler, ‘Bitten und Begehren: Suppliken und Gravamina in der deutschsprachigen Frühneuzeitforschung’, in C. Nubola and A. Würgler (eds.), Bittschriften und Gravamina. Politik, Verwaltung und Justiz in Europa (14.–18. Jahrhundert) (Berlin, 2005), 17–52; Dodd, G. and Petit-Renaud, S., ‘Grace and favour: the petition and its mechanisms’, in Fletcher, C.D., Genet, J.-P. and Watts, J.L. (eds.), Government and Political Life in England and France, c. 1300 – c. 1500 (Cambridge, 2015), 240–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Intercessions referred to Hanseatic ordinances or the law of Lübeck when arguing for the legitimacy of the supplicants’ cases. TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VI, fol. 15r; VII, fol. 50r; XI, fols. 55r, 59r and 80r.

57 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/V, fols. 4v–5r, ‘vnde durch Juwer Ersamheyt bischryffte fruntlick bidden sick in dusser sake so se doch vngetwivelt woll don werden geborlick ertogen’.

58 For a similar approach to a Hanseatic common good in conflict management, see the contribution by Ester Zoomer in this special issue. Despite its ubiquity in Hanseatic communication, the common good in the political language and thought of the Hanse has been neglected by historians. For an important first step, see Höhn, P., ‘Entscheidungsfindung und Entscheidungsvermeidung in der Hanse. Das Beispiel der Sunddurchfahrt um 1440’, in Wagner, W.E. (ed.), Entscheidungsfindung in spätmittelalterlichen Gemeinschaften (Göttingen, 2022), 91–137 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and P. Höhn, ‘La “lutte contre les pirates” comme paradigme. Conflit, concurrence et criminalisation à Lübeck et dans le commerce nord-européen aux XVe et XVIe siècles’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 77 (2022), 293–327. On the origins of Hanseatic political thought and terminology, see also T. Boestad, Pour le profit du commun marchand. La genèse de la Hanse (XIIe siècle – milieu du XIVe siècle) (Geneva, 2022), in particular 319–69. On the common good in political associative culture, see Hardy, D., Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire. Upper Germany, 1346–1521 (Oxford, 2018), 150–3Google Scholar. On the centrality of the common good for political thought in premodernity, see the contributions collected in Lecuppre-Desjardin and Van Bruaene (eds.), De bono communi; H. Münkler and H. Blum (eds.), Gemeinwohl und Gemeinsinn. Historische Semantiken politischer Leitbegriffe (Berlin, 2001).

59 Hammel-Kiesow, ‘Politik des Hansetags’, 202–6.

60 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VIII, fol. 62r.

61 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VII, fol. 64r, ‘dar Jnne Juwe Er. der gestalt alsz se Jm geliken van vns hebbenn willen, handelen vnnd vortfaren werden’. On the central role of reciprocity in sociation, see O.G. Oexle, ‘Konflikt und Konsens. Über gemeinschaftsrelevantes Handeln in der vormodernen Gesellschaft’, in Münkler and Blum (eds.), Gemeinwohl und Gemeinsinn, 65–83, at 71–2; M. Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago, 1972), 219–20.

62 M. Jucker, ‘Trust and mistrust in letters: late medieval diplomacy and its communication practice’, in P. Schulte, M. Mostert and I. van Renswoude (eds.), Strategies of Writing. Studies on Text and Trust in the Middle Ages: Papers from ‘Trust in Writing in the Middle Ages’ (Turnhout, 2008), 213–36, at 232–3. See also Dumolyn, J., ‘Urban ideologies in later medieval Flanders: towards a grid of analysis’, in Gamberini, A., Genet, J.-P. and Zorzi, A. (eds.), The Languages of Political Society. Western Europe, 14th–17th Centuries (Milan, 2011), 69–96, at 81–2Google Scholar.

63 Wubs-Mrozewicz, J., ‘The concept of language of trust and trustworthiness: (why) history matters’, Journal of Trust Research, 10 (2020), 91–107, at 96–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 For criticism on a naive concept of trust, see Forrest, I. and Haour, A., ‘Trust in long-distance relationships, 1000–1600 CE’, Past & Present, 238/Suppl. 13 (2018), 190–213 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VIII, fol. 61r, ‘Dath bynn yck vmme Jwe Ge: vnnd Erb: W: myt vnderdenigen gehorsam thouordenenn plichtich, wyllich, vnnd vnuordraten.’ For further examples, see TLA 230–1, B.B.40/X, fol. 35r; XI, fols. 50r and 59r.

66 Due to the different states of archival preservation, usually only Lübeck’s side of this exchange has survived but several supplications started by thanking the council for having read or shown the letters of their opponent. See, for instance, TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IX, fol. 3r; X, fols. 40r and 70r; XI, fols. 9r and 36r. For examples of supplications and intercessions from Reval preserved in Lübeck’s archive, see AHL, ASA Externa, Livonia 104 and 108, nos. 122–3.

67 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IX, fol. 9r.

68 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IX, fols. 5r and 41r; XII, fol. 14r.

69 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/VIII, fol. 106r, ‘hebben Juwe er. toermeten dat denne nicht by vns, noch in vnser macht, fellichs togewerende vnd werden darumme Juwe er: Jn der sache also sehen dat sollichs vnd mer ander widerunge vorbliuen moghe’. See also TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IX, fols. 5r and 56r.

70 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/XI, fol. 13r, ‘vnd dem vnsernn keyne orsake gegeuenn werde, vp de gearresterdenn gudere wyder ym rechte vorth thofarenn’.

71 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IX, fol. 39r, ‘Darmith se nicht vororsaket wurden anders wor vnd Jnn ander weghe (Welck se ores seggendes wol weten tobekamen:) tho Jnforderinge ores schadens tiegen Jwe Er W tohandelenn…Vorhapens Jwe Er W werdent darhenn nicht kamen latenn.’

72 The communication in the conflict of Sonnenschein is preserved in AHL, ASA Externa, Livonica 88 and 89.

73 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/XIII, fol. 7r, ‘Der thouorsicht J: Er: w: werdenn sollichenn vnnsen fruntlichenn wyllenn, vnnd thoneginghe Jn anderenn, vnnd derghelickenn fellenn, gegenn vnnse weddervmme Jnghedenck synn, vnnd dermathen erzeigenn, vp dath wy J: er: w: gelick gesynnt, vnnd gemotet, weddervmme sporenn, vnnd befyndenn moghen.’ We learn of the threat of banishment through a supplication of Sonnenschein’s wife. AHL, ASA Externa, Livonica 89, letter dated 19–08–1545. While we do not possess many sources on execution of such threats, councils appear to have considered banishment a fitting punishment for involving kings and nobles in urban conflicts, see HR, ser. 3, vol. II, no. 160 §344.

74 Kivimäe, J., ‘Zwischen Reval und Lübeck. Die Narva-Frage in der Handelspolitik der späten Hansezeit’, in Sarnowsky, (ed.), ‘Hansisch’ oder ‘nicht hansisch’. Das Beispiel der kleinen Städte und Livlands in der Hanse (Wismar, 2019), 57–74 Google Scholar; Angermann, N., ‘Die livländischen Städte und die Hanse’, Hansische Geschichtsblätter, 113 (1995), 111–25, at 124–5Google Scholar.

75 For a sample of intercessions and supplications post-1570, see TLA 230–1, B.B.40/XV, fols. 25r–27r, 29r–32r, 38r–42r, 43r–46r.

76 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IX, fol. 3r, ‘wolckenn one regen, darmit de sake vordustert wert, vnnd doch nicht reyne gewasket kann werdenn’.

77 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IX, fols. 57r–58r.

78 TLA 230–1, B.B.40/IX, fol. 56r, ‘wowoll mit groter swerrheit’.