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Had someone translate this tidbit for me from the city council records of Strasbourg from 1336, regulations for the “schwertag” – the sword day or oath day, when all citizens and residents swore allegiance to the city.
It speaks to bringing arms to this meeting which was a commonplace practice though it does not speak to carrying arms day to day, so it’s of limited relevance here. Still, primary sources are always interesting:
106. Es soll ein yeglicher so vil er süne oder knechte hat fürderlich bestellen und allewegen stetes in seinem hus haben sovil redelicher gewere, es sigen hallen- barten stritaxe oder schwinspies auch Schwerte oder lange messer, die zur gewere gut
sint, also das sin süne und knechte yeglicher domit gerüstet sy, wann es noth thüt, das dan yeglicher mit solichem gewere mit im für des münster gen sol und sollent semlichc süne und knechte ston hinder denen, die harnasch anhaben, und sol yeglicher by sins
hantwerks baner bleyben, er würde dan von dem ammeyster oder sin botschaft anders- wo hin geordet, des sol man auch gehorsam sin by dem eid.Translation:
Everyone should acquire and have in their house as many good weapons as they have servants or sons for defence, such weapons like Iron halberds, war-axes or pig(boar)-spears also swords or long knives are good for defence, so that all of the sons and servants of everyone can therefore be armed if the need arises, that then everyone with such arms should go to the cathedral and have all their sons and servants stand behind those who have armour, and everyone should stay close to their crafts(guild) banner, unless he should be ordered elsewhere by the master or his messages(or herald), then one should honour the Oath.
Ok before I go any further, let me stipulate. When I am speaking somewhat definitively, I am referring to Central Europe, that is to say primarily High or Low German speaking, or West-Slavonic speaking polities very roughly between the Rhine and the Vistula, and I am referring to high to late medieval sources. Once you get back to the Carolingian era or Migration Era my knowledge is pretty limited, as it is more generally for Western Kingdoms such as Scotland, England, France, Aquitaine, Aragon, Castille, Portugal, and so on.
So the earliest Latin document I can find in the German-speaking areas which (apparently) mentions the right to carry a sword dates back to the 10th Century, but I have not been able to find a transcription or translation of the actual law yet.
Prior to that of course we have Germanic, Norse, Slavic, Baltic, Gallic and etc. tribal laws which usually mandated that free men could carry a weapon, but I’ll circle back to that later.
The 10th Century Law was from the Franconian King Heinrich I known in later years as ‘Der Vogler’ (the fowler) for his love of falconry, and who was known chiefly for his successful campaigns against the Magyars in what is now Hungary. All of the Schützenfest clubs in Germany, Austria and Switzerland mention this. The purpose was to arm settled communities against sudden Magyar or Slavic raids to which they were vulnerable, though at this time walled towns were relatively rare, most had a citadel. This is similar to (from what I understand) Alfred the Great’s organization and arming of burhs in Saxon England to help defend against the Vikings.
The next big change in the German speaking areas came about during the great German interregnum which started either 1250, 1254, or 1256 (depending on how you assess it) and ended in 1270. There was a sharp rise in noble feuding, a sharp decline in princely protection and Towns had to suddenly start fending for themselves. They began forming the first really strong medieval town leagues north of the Alps (about 100 years after the Italians here) and began relying more heavily on the artisans and other commoners in their town militia.
For example in the (at the time German-Polish) town of Kraków in Poland, the city was sacked by the Mongols during their big invasion in 1241, though most of the population survived by hiding in the citadel or in the forests. The same thing happened again in 1257. Fortuitously for them, the burghers sided with the Polish prince Leszek the Black in 1282 and 1285 during conflicts among Polish nobles. The burghers hid the princes family in their town citadel while he went to Hungary and got a relieving army. When he got back, he was so grateful he gave them town rights including the right to build a wall.
Jan Dlugosz says (from page 227 of his Annales, in the entry for AD 1285:
“The rebels are convinced that success depends on their being able to capture Leszek himself, and the whole army is moved up from Sandomierz to Cracow. Leszek is filled with doubt as to what he should do, though common sense indicates that, if he is to keep Cracow as his capital, he must install a strong garrison with a good number of knights in the castle; but this is far from easy, for most of his knights have deserted him. In the end, he has an inspiration: he turns to the citizens of Cracow who are of German origin, entrusts his wife and the castle to them and promises to reward them generously once the enemy has been defeateed. Then, on July 14, he leaves the city with a small retinue and makes as swiftly as he can for Hungary and King Laszlo to seek his help.
The citizens of Cracow, seeing that there is no likelihood of their being able to defend the city with it’s low walls and poor defenses, leave it and crowd with their wives and children into the castle and prepare to defend it against all attacks. So, when Duke Conrad [of Masovia – Laszlo’s nemesis] arrives, he finds the city deserted and quarters himself in it. He sends some courtiers known to the defenders of the castle to tell them that if they will surrender the castle and submit voluntarily to him, whom the other lords and magnates have unanimously elected their duke, he will treat them justly and kindly, granting them immunity for what they have done; but otherwise they will call down upon themselves all the full extent of his wrath.
After a brief discussion, the city fathers tell the Duke that, having already sworn loyalty to Leszek – as have all the magnates and knights of Cracow and Sandomierz – they cannot stain their honor with such a gross breach of faith and, as long as Leszek is alive, they have no right to, and cannot renounce the loyalty they have sworn to him. The Duke vents his anger at their reply on the innocent dwelling houses: fires are started in several places and the whole beautiful city is burned to the ground [Dlugosz himself lived in Krakow during his own life in the 15th Century and loved it]
Leszek is now on his way back from Hungary with an army of Hungarians and Kumans [Steppe nomads] provided by King Lazlo. Conrad wants to force an encounter, for he is convinced that with his superior numbers, he can deal with Laeszek’s army; so he moves on from Cracow and battle is joined on August 2, a pitched battle fought on level ground near the river Raba. Both sides suffer heavy casualties; but when Conrad himself is wounded in the head, victory goes to Leszek and Conrad seeks the safety of his castles in Mazovia.
Leszek rewards his Hungarian helpers and sends them back to Pannonia. He grants their liberty to any of the gentry he has take prisoner and restores those who beg forgiveness to their former state of favour. The defenders of Cracow, whose loyalty preserved the city for him, are granted a number of privileges: they are allowed to ring the city with ditches, ramparts, bastions and walls, and also, despite the protests of the knights and nobles, allows the city itself to be administered exclusively by Germans [This really just means the German speaking burghers, some of whom are actually Poles and Czechs]. Leszek is now of such sympathy for, and liking of the Germans, that he adopts their manners, dress and way of doing their hair.”
This turned out to be a very important development for Kraków, because two years later in 1287 through 1288 the Third Mongol Invasion of Poland (under Nogai Khan and Talabuga) took place. Fortunately for the citizens they not only managed to rebuild some of their town in that two year span, they had very quickly followed up on the new rights granted by Leszek and built some apparently quite formidable defenses, part of which have survived in slightly altered form to this very day. When the Mongols arrived in Kraków again on Christmas they were stymied by the new town walls, lost some men during an attempt to storm the town and had to retreat. Of this Jan Dlugosz (page 230 for his entry on 1287) says only:
“… the Tatars descend like a cloud of locusts on Lublin and Mazovia, moving on to Sandomierz, Sieradz and Cracow, despite severe frost and snow. They burn a number of monasteries, churches and fortresses in which people have taken refuge, but, on the advice of the Ruthenians [Ukranians or Belarussians] accompanying them, refrain from attacking the monastgery of the Holy Cross on Lysa Gora, only to be shamefully defeated after spending a couple of days vainly attacking the town and castle of Sandomierz. They reach Cracow on Christmas Eve and mount an attack, but lose some of their more eminent warriors and, abandoning the attempt, ravage the surrounding country instead. To do this, they scatter, so that it would have been possible to capture and kill some of them at least, had it not been for the heavy snow and the low morale of the Polish knights. Frightened by the situation, and having no confidence in his knights, Leszek takes his wife and some of his court to Hungary, and when the Tatars learn of this from prisoners, they ravage the country as far as the Pannonian alps.”
The significant aspect of this for our discussion is who built and manned the town walls, and in particular the defensive towers of Kraków. This is the main gate of Kraków, known as St. Florians Gate. The roof and the little copper ceiling were added in late medieval and Baroque times respectively, but the main tower itself was part of the original 13th Century stone walls.
The tower is also called ‘The Furriers gate’ because it was built and manned by the “Furriers guild”, or I think more properly, the Furriers craft. Each of the 47 other towers which were in the original town wall were built by one of of the craft-guilds of the town: the Carpenters tower, the lacemakers tower, the joiners tower, and so on.
The prominence of the Furriers in manning the main gate of the city (this is the gate which is on the royal road) and of the other crafts in manning most of the other 49 towers, is a reflection of their importance to the town militia. They staged a series of risings against either patrician (wealthy merchants on the town council) or Seignorial (the King or his Vogt in the Krakow castle) in 1257, 1288, 1291 and 1297. They won an expanding series of rights in the aftermath of these incidents, and it’s not a coincidence that when the town charter was revised in 1313 the craft guilds were made part of the city council.
According to Leonard Lepszy in his book “Cracow, the royal capital of ancient Poland: It’s history and antiquities” the crafts celebrated their victory in the last 13th century town uprising in an annual march on Corpus Christi Day in June, in which they proceeded not only carrying swords but with the blades drawn:
““At religious processions, like that on Corpus Christi Day, all craft guilds displayed extraordinary splendour; the members appeared corporately, in holiday clothes, and armed. The seniors, with badges and maces, marched ahead, followed by the brethren of the guild, in closed ranks, with ensigns spread and swords drawn.
There was a great parade of the craft guilds on the occasion of the coronation of a king, or a marriage in the royal family, or the triumphant entry of some victorious general. The guilds, marching in arms, gave quite the appearance of a well equipped body of troops ready for fight- thus reminding the spectators of the important part they had played in the past in defending the city from enemies*. For in those times they were the proper defenders of the town walls, providing the bastions with ammunition and implements of war; they all belonged to the rifle company and practiced shooting at the municipal range. The fortified walls of the town had gates, which are mentioned by name in the very oldest book of records: St. Florian’s Gate, the Slawkow Gate, St Stepehn’s, the Shoemakers, the Vistula, and St. Nicholas’ or the Butchers Gate; …Of the towers, the first one, at the outlet of Hospital Street to the east, is perhaps the richest and most graceful. It belonged to the lace-makers guild. ….”
According to the Balthasar Behem Codex, the first mention of a law in Krakow against drawing (as sharply distinct from carrying) a sword was in 1379. I got the Gassman’s to help me out with a rough translation of the relevant passage for my second Acta paper in 2013 – this is the translation:
It is decided with agreement worthy of blessing, of all the elders to hold fast. Here being, he who draws, or has drawn sword or knife, wherever it is drawn, in street or house or hall of the city, shall give half a mark in fines to the city. He who does not pay the fine shall be confined to a tower for eight days and the armament that is drawn shall be taken by the lord, as according to the privileges about which are given.
You can find this passage in Latin in the Balthasar Behem Codex, the transcription I used was Bucher, B, 1505/ 1889 Balthasar Behem Codex (Die Alten Zunft Und verkehrs ordnungen dr Stadt krakau nach Balthasar Behem’s Codex picturatus in der K. k. Jagellonischen Bibliothek, Vienna 1889)
So this puts the first law against drawing a sword in Kraków at 1379. This is in fact how violence was controlled, with laws like this.
Now this is just one town but I’ll add some more as I have (indirect) access to the records of some Alsatian and Swiss towns, and I may have some for several Hanseatic cities as well. Stand by for more.
Philologus, give me a couple of days and I’ll get you some more specific data on precisely when these laws came into effect in a few more specific places. I’ve already got a few things sourced, but I want to track down a few more. Getting into this level of granularity (individual as opposed to corporate rights) takes a bit more doing, and I’ve got a lot going on right now. But it’s worth exploring seriously, it’s just not something that has come up in about ten years.
What is true in one part of Europe was not true in all of Europe. What was true in 400 BCE in Athens, or 2020 in London, wasn’t necessarily true in Hamburg in 1400.
I think your confusion here, as I have pointed out before, is because you are more focused on other regions where there was more control over the citizenry.
In German speaking towns, the various factions of citizens simply did not trust anyone other than themselves to be in charge of their security. The citizens had to be armed so that the town would not be sold by someone who was not invested in it’s freedom. One of the incidents in the lecture where armed journeymen on their way for an after work beer came to the rescue of the captain of the town guard illustrates quite well why they had these laws. In the medieval world carrying arms was equated with knowing how to use them (rightly or wrongly) and being ready to protect the Stadtfrieden.
The northern Italian towns started out the same way, certainly in the era of the Lombard League and for a while after, but they were worn down by vendettas and the Guelf-Ghibelline conflicts, and rivalries between one another, and eventually gave over their security to contractors who eventually took most of them over. Venice was the exception to the rule as they had an abnormally stable government and a more cautious foreign policy.
South of Lombardy and Tuscany though (Rome and the Kingdom of Naples) things were more typically Feudal in Italy, and therefore more like France or Spain.
England of course was it’s own world. I remember reading a bit about some of the towns which were linked to the Hanse, like London, York, Boston and so on, but beyond that I really never focused on it, and that was a long time ago. My understanding is that those towns were reigned in during the 1390’s. The German Hanseatic Kontor in London (called the Steelyard) was self-administered and when the King tried to curtail their rights and rob some of them in the 1470s it lead to a war between England and just a few of the Hanse cities, which was won by the Hanse. They left them alone after that until the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
Imperial city is a modern technical term for cities which go down the path that Babylon and Athens and Carthage and Rome went down of conquering their neighbours. Many cities in medieval Italy did this on a small scale (Florence and Sienna and Pisa Prato).
Venice’s empire in Crete, Cyprus, and at one point most of the Peloponnese (not to mention the terrafirma and Dalmatia) was not just a snack! I think they got into a big fight with Maximillian in the Alps.
“Imperial city” in the middle ages though means something completely different. It means a city which has Imperial Immediacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_imperial_city
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_immediacy
I don’t mean to be rude but this is pretty basic stuff.
Venice had some territory under their influence but they did not seek out to conquer the world and break all their rivals the way Rome did. Their territory in Dalmatia and Crete and Cyprus were all part of their trading network. Their main rival was the other trading city of Genoa. The goal was to keep the silk and pepper flowing from the Silk Road and the gold and silver flowing from all over Latin Europe and the Middle East.
However both Venice and Genoa were true City States and were not truly within the Immperial system – the HRE extended some power South of the Alps but after Legnano nobody was in fear of the Emperor.
Most towns with an artisan or partially artisan government had pretty liberal weapon laws for citizens. Again, this is because the citizens made up the bulk of the town watch and the militia.
That does not follow at all. A very common solution, in the country I was born in and others, is requiring people to own weapons and keep them at home but sharply restricting how and where they can be carried. People usually pass these laws themselves because they are tired of armed people making trouble.
Though it may not make sense to you on a personal level, it is the historical reality and it is the result of the political compromise between the corporative bodies which made up the city. It is just how the German speaking towns, and before that most of the Latinized European communes all around Europe, decided to handle it. The Germans were somewhat unique in their emphasis on laws intended to control violent behavior among armed men.
The talk had some great details I had not heard before, but it made some broad claims about weapons in daily life and then supported them with evidence which was overwhelmingly from the 16th century. Maybe it was delivered for someone like the Meyer Freifechter folks who are focused on the 16th century, but the sixteenth century is not medieval! Everyone agrees that swords and weapons are much more visible in everyday urban life in 16th century Europe than 14th century Europe, so we can’t just extrapolate back from the 16th century any more than we can extrapolate forwards from those early medieval law codes about every free man having to carry their spear and shield to the assembly.
Please show me where “everyone agrees” to this? Lol!!!
That one specific lecture focused on 16th Century sources because it was derived primarily from Professor Tlusty’s book as I stated pretty clearly in the beginning of the lecture, and she only deals with Early Modern sources for the most part (though she extends Early Modern to the 1450’s)
However the notion that everyone across 1,000 years of European history made the decisions that you and Thucydides think made sense is somewhat ludicrous. The existence of the laws against drawing (as opposed to carrying) swords go back to the 13th Century in most towns under German Town Law, and this is hardly a secret. It also affected fencing masters and other famous people.
Johannes Paulus Kal for example was fined the standard 3 gulden for drawing his sword during an altercation in Nuremberg on 17 March 1449. You can read about it here. It’s worth noting that Kal was not a noble, but was rather an artisan.
““Item meister Paulus Schirmeister von des fridpruchs wegen zwey teil widergeben und von werzuckens wegen gar nemen.” Master Paulus breaking the peace by drawing his arms. (10)”
The famous Pirate Störtebeker was similarly fined 3 gulden and exiled from Wismar in 1380 for drawing his sword and breaking a mans bone with it. This was recorded in the Liber proscriptorum (“fortification book”) of Wismar though I don’t remember the page.
These kinds of incidents, and those specific laws, are found all over the Holy Roman Empire and in all the regions around it where towns followed German town law, including Poland, Livonia, Sweden, Finland, Bohemia, Silesia, Lusatia, Austria, Hungary, the Swiss Confederation, the Rhineland, and to a large extent, the Low Countries.
To get more specific than what I just outlined you just have to go through the town charters, and all of the changes to the charters, of each individual town. There are some strong similarities, because many towns copied the same charter. For example there were 29 different cities which adopted the Lübeck Law charter before the 15th Century. But each town went through it’s own pattern of when each specific right was won, or added to the charter, which was a process that may have taken 200 years or more. Many started out as more or less territorial towns and ended up Free or Free Imperial cities, then lost the rights again gradually in the Early Modern period.
As an example of such a source, you can read the charters of a few dozen Slovak towns here, mostly in Slovak, but you can use auto-translation.
http://forumhistoriae.sk/documents/10180/71257/Lexikon-stredovekych-miest.pdf
You do realize Imperial City in the Classical era of Athens, Sparta or Rome and “Imperial City” in the medieval period mean two completely different things, right? Even Venice had relatively little interest in conquering other cities – what they wanted to do was secure their trade routes and supply lines. Imperial or Royal cities in Central Europe just meant they had Imperial immediacy, meaning no prince had any authority over them except the Emperor or King, and in the case of the HRE, that basically meant Laissez Faire.
I don’t think it actually is an open question at all. It’s a recognizable process. Jurg Gassmann and I found a bunch of records a few years ago which described the process in Bologna – regulations for their Armed Societies in the years between mid 12th century through the early 13th. I believed he published something on it though the emphasis was on the use of urban cavalry in the militia not so much on individual citizens rights, but they were also in those records.
It was simply a matter of when the larger part of the population, usually meaning the artisans, became a substantial part of the city government. In most places this took place in roughly that same time period, in some a little earlier, in others a bit later. For example in Flanders the biggest changes took place after the big victory at the Battle of Courtrai in 1302. The craft artisans played a major role in the war so they demanded great rights in the town government.
Most towns went through a phase where they became independent, usually ruled by their merchant class or so-called ‘patriciains’, then they went through a second phase where the artisans other middle or working class estates took some power in the government, typically in the high medieval period.
By the late medieval period, towns which still had autonomy, mostly in Central and Northern Europe, had some kind of mixed or hybrid government which involved some representation by the crafts and some by the patricians and wealthier merchants.
For example Strasbourg had a Senate consisting of 300 craft alderman, a council of thirteen (for defense) a council of fifteen (for finance) and a council of twenty (for guild laws). The first two were split between craftsmen and patricians, the last was patrician only. It was a shared power arrangement which was agreed to after the craftsmen had won a series of successful uprisings.
Most towns with an artisan or partially artisan government had pretty liberal weapon laws for citizens. Again, this is because the citizens made up the bulk of the town watch and the militia. That’s the difference between north and south of the Alps. The Italian towns were getting worn out by war and invasions and gradually gave over control of their militias to military contractors, who eventually took over, ala the Sforza and Visconti in Milan.
In France and England the monarchies were much stronger, and the same eventually became the case in the Iberian kingdoms. But all of the dynamism in the High to Late medieval period was in North-Italy, Flanders and the Holy Roman Empire in roughly that order. You really don’t see that much great art or literature coming out of France or England compared to the more urbanized regions of Europe in this period. Their heyday was later, with the opening of the Atlantic in the Early Modern Period.
Yes, and it was the city which over and over bans the carrying of arms. When people live scattered across the land and there are few recognized authorities, its often customary for men to carry arms, partially because they usually have weapons in reach for hunting or field work anyways, and partially to assert their claim to be free men who can enforce their rights in an uncertain world. These societies usually present the keeping of arms in individualistic terms, like honour, or as a way to enforce hierarchies within society: rich over poor, men over women, free over unfree, and community members over resident foreigners.
When large numbers of people start living together in close quarters and seeing many strangers come and go, they usually notice that carrying arms leads to many woundings, robberies, and bullyings and start to restrict it and push other means of settling disputes. These are the societies which usually present the keeping of arms in civic terms: the community against its neighbours, against wannabe one-man rulers, or against kings. That is the logic behind the Athenian customs which Thucydides describes and the Roman customs which Cicero, the canonical gospels, and Petronius take for granted.
It sounds like in the 16th century some of the German towns had a hybrid of the individualistic and the civic approaches that depended on special customs around violence.
This would be incorrect if you are trying to imply that it was a new situation in the 16th Century. To the contrary, it was probably beginning to decline by the 16th Century in many places as the religious wars started up and some towns lost their rights and autonomy.
City self-management was not ever a ‘one size fits all’ situation. What may have seemed obvious to Thucydides or in Athens did not necessarily make sense in Strasbourg or to the citizens of Wroclaw.
Part of what makes the medieval period so interesting is that there was such variegation in governmental and legal systems. In Central Europe, the approach taken to the issue of an armed citizenry was to manage the violent actions not the carrying of the weapon. This was quite a conscious decision, they wanted to keep the citizenry actively involved in the defense of the town rather than follow the model of so many Italian towns and turn it over to the Condottieri. Machiavelli commented on this quite a bit, noting “German cities are completely independent, don’t have much territory around them and obey the emperor only when it suits. They are not afraid of him, nor any other powerful rulers in the area. This is because these towns are so well fortified that everyone realizes what an arduous wearisome business it would be to attack them. They all have properly sized moats and walls;
they have the necessary artillery; they have public warehouses with food, drink and firewood for a year; what’s more, to keep people well fed without draining the public purse, they stock
materials for a year’s worth of work in whatever trades are the lifeblood of the city and whatever jobs the common folk earn their keep with. They hold military exercises in high regard and make all kinds of arrangements to make sure they are routinely practiced.””Athens was a slave state with a strict hierarchy. Towns like Zurich or Hamburg were quite a bit more republican in their outlook and more democratic in their system of management. Not to say they had Universal Suffrage or anything, but the rulers ruled at the sufferance of the governed and were routinely overthrown.
Ah ok I see you are coming with a full frontal assault here!
Ok we have two separate issues to resolve here which are getting mixed together somewhat dangerously. 1) Did citizens in Central Europe have the right to carry arms on their person – I think maybe we agree this was in place in towns in German speaking areas by the 16th Century but I am not sure. And 2) When and how did this right arise? We need to keep these somewhat separate.
I also think it is problematic when trying to understand anything in the medieval world to mix and match eras and especially regions when talking about this type of thing. What is true in any part of England in 1399 is certainly not going to be true in Augsburg or Krakow in the same period, let alone in the 15th Century.
My understanding is that English towns had basically the same rights as Continental ones prior to the last ten or twenty years of the 14th century, but England is not my area of interest and as a relatively strong monarchy, does not follow the same laws as Central Europe.
When it comes to towns in Central Europe, they come in four types: 1) Free Cities, for example Lübeck or Gdansk / Danzig (basically city states without even a nominal overlord) 2) Free Imperial or Royal Cities like Cologne, Bern, Zurich, Nuremberg, Frankfurt am Main, Krakow, Buda (essentially city states but with nominal fealty to a King or Emperor) 3) Semi-autonomous Territorial Towns like Brunswick, Stockholm or Rostock (cities at least partly ruled by the Burgrave of a prince but which also have a town council and burgomeisters) and Mediatized Territorial Towns like Trier, Stuttgart or Munich, such as the “residence” of a major prince.
Most of the towns everyone has heard of in Central Europe were of type 2, a few of type 1 and a few of type 3 or 4. Pretty much all of the towns in France or England after the 1390s were of type 3 or 4.
The distinction for something like an armed citizenry is something like when the local prince grants autonomy to the citizens to have the right of self-management. So for example in 1261 King Štefan V granted the town of Košice “exempted the inhabitants of the locality from military duty, exempted them from the jurisdiction , the freedom to follow their own freedoms and customs.”
Professor Tlusty traces the origins of the right of free men to be armed to the Sachsenspeigel. She covers the laws on weapons mainly in chapter 3 of her book “Negotiating Armed power”
Some examples she gives are the law of 13th Century Freiburg which specified “all citizens and merchants, poor and rich” can carry “any kind of weapons that they have including swords, bows, crossbows and pikes. She notes that these kinds of laws were common – citing “Das Wehrhafte Freiburg” page 216, Kunzberg, Messerbrauche. She also notes that Nordlingen’s regulations against carrying swords only applied to non-residents (which she sources from the Nordlinger stadrechte, p. 577, and Burgerliche Gesellschaft by Kaisling, pp 94-95.
Some towns did, usually as the result of unrest, pass laws restricting the size of swords people could carry, such as one law passed in Frankfurt Am Main in 1511 stating that “on account of the riots, hereafter no master or journeyman belonging to the shoemakers’ guild shall carry a sword or dagger longer than that which was designated on the Roemer.” But this is just for the shoemakers guild.
More common were laws such as those passed by Augsburg in the 13th Century forbidding the drawing of a sword, the revealing of a sword hilt during a fight (like by opening the coat), or scraping the sword on the cobblestones to make sparks.
Most Free or Imperial cities in Central Europe. had these kinds of laws on the books by the 14th Century. Which would seem pretty superfluous if they didn’t have the right to carry swords.
Well, I told you where it comes from (at least in Central Europe), it is in the town charter. I didn’t see where you had made the distinction between ubiquitous in the 16th century and unheard of in the 14th.
I guess before going to look for primary sources (?) for the 14th Century I would counter your question with another – once the towns had walls and militia, who was going to dictate to them whether or not their citizens could bear arms or anything else? Seeing as they routinely defied kings and emperors on any number of policies (right up to and including fighting pitched battles against them), and were governed by their own citizens, the only thing which could prevent citizens from bearing arms or exercising any other rights would be a very strong internal monarchy or dictatorship of some kind. So far as I know these were pretty rare north of the Alps, though in Italy you did have some Condottieri taking over towns. This is how the citizens of Milan lost many of their rights for example.
Give me a bit and I’ll find some sources, it’s been a while since the idea of armed burghers was an issue in any discussion I’ve had, I’ll have to find some old stuff.
The only exceptions (per above) were towns which had been through civil wars in which the artisans were defeated, like Nuremberg, in which case there were some limitations such as how long a sword could be or how much gunpowder they could keep in their house. But they were still armed and could still walk around with sidearms, in fact they were expected to do so except when at work or at the baths or something like that. They even went to church armed.
