One man against a city
In 1424 and early 1425 the city council of Basel conducted several witness hearings to investigate what an old enemy, a man called Konrad Lyriman, had been up to and what the recent ruckus surrounding him was about.[1]
What did Lyriman do to be considered an enemy to an entire city and how did the people of Basel perceive him? These question can be answered by looking at the aforementioned witness statements. But first, a brief introduction to Konrad Lyriman and his accomplice Grymmenstein.
Konrad Lyriman was born and lived in Bern, but by the time of the testimonies he had been banished from the confines of this town.[2] We know very little about Lyriman’s social and economic background. He was a commoner, but did not belong to the urban social or financial elite.[3] He might have been a merchant, but there is no direct proof to that.[4] What we know is that in 1415 he started a feud with Basel. How exactly this conflict started has been lost to history – it had something to do with an animosity between Lyriman and a merchant from Basel about money business.[5]
His accomplice was a man called Grymmenstein. We know even less about him, not even his first name. He certainly was also a commoner – even though there are two castles called Grimmenstein in today’s Switzerland – as seen in the lack of any formal address in the witness statements. He seems to have been a scribe and he may have been from the Habsburg ruled town of Waldshut (today Waldshut-Tiengen).[6] Looking at the testimonies, Grymmenstein was more than a mere sidekick but had an active part in designing Lyrimans vendetta against Basel.
The efforts of Lyriman and Grymmenstein
The witness statements are recorded in a book called the liber diversarum rerum.[7] True to its name, the book contains a multitude of different sources stemming from the city council of Basel and collected between 1417 and 1463. A good deal of them concern security aspects of the town, including our witness testimonies. There were four witnesses giving their statements on three different dates, stretching from May 1424 to January 1425. The four witnesses were all men. Their relationships to Lyriman or Grymmenstein remain largely unclear, with the exception of a certain Klaus Holder. In early May 1424, Lyriman’s allies had kidnapped Holder, a carter and citizen of Kleinbasel (lesser Basel), in the vicinity of the towns Fribourg in what was clearly an attack against Basel.[8] This kidnapping transformed the long-standing but mostly uneventful animosities between Lyriman and Basel into an open conflict and was probably the reason that the Basel authorities summoned these witnesses and started questioning them later that month.
The witnesses spoke of a ‘war’ that Lyriman wanted to wage against Basel and how he and Grymmenstein had tried to win allies for this war. We learn that Lyriman had gone to the ‘welschen Landen’ (here meaning the French speaking part of today’s Switzerland), where he had hoped to find help for his feud against Basel. At the same time and with the same goal, Grymmenstein had gone east into the neighbouring Habsburg territory. Because of Basel’s constant conflict with Habsburg and their lieges, he probably had felt confident to find allies there. We also learn how Lyriman had prepared for his trip to the French speaking land by writing down his complaints against Basel and having them transcribed into Latin.
There are elements that point towards an organised action, but the results show that the situation was not favourable to Lyriman and his henchman. Nobody joined forces with them.
Grymmenstein had asked two noblemen, both of whom held their own ill will against Basel. Walter von Münchwiler had ultimately refused to join the feud after some initial consideration, even though his wife had already loaned Lyriman money. To Georg von Ende, Grymmenstein had promised to send saltpetre[9] ‘und anders’ [and more] for his castle, if he would become Lyriman’s ally. But Ende had declined upon hearing that it was Lyriman who was leading the feud. Grymmenstein had also tried to win over the people of the small Habsburg town of Waldshut for Lyrimans cause, but again he had found no support.
Lyriman and Grymmenstein had even tried to garner the support of the city council of Bern with the argument that Lyriman was a Bern citizen, but Bern had clearly refused to be in any way a part of the plan.
We are not able to determine what all this sought-after support would have actually entailed, but it is likely that the two culprits were looking for actual manpower and not just financial support. The witness statements paint a bleak picture for Lyriman, his accomplice Grymmenstein and their ‘war’ against Basel. None of the parties the had addressed wanted to help them their endeavor, and on his own Lyriman was not a serious threat to Basel. The members of the city council, who had conducted the hearings, were certainly glad to hear that.
Conclusion
In contrast to popular belief, feuds were by no means a prerogative of the nobility.[10] Lyriman’s feud was one of many cases where commoners fought (or attempted to do so) to defend their rights, when they felt that other ways had not served them justice. However, to go against an entire city was ambitious to say the least. His henchman Grymmenstein was right in seeking allies, even it is, to us, not surprising that they did not succeed in finding meaningful support. Who would risk their standing and security for someone without being able to expect social or financial benefits? Nevertheless, Basel did not treat the matter as a mere curiosity. On the contrary, Lyriman’s feud is an example of the various ways in which the security of a city was endangered, and even though serious harm was improbable, the city council had to stay alert.
After these last fruitless attempts, Lyriman seemed to have given up on his vendetta for good. Apart from having great financial difficulties, we do not know how he spent his life after that. He died sometime after 1439.[11]
[1] Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt, Ratsbücher A 7, Liber diversarum rerum, 1417–1463, Von Lyrimans wegen, fol. 45r–48r.
[2] Roth, Hansjörg, «Von Lyrimans wegen». Spuren einer Privatfehde gegen die Stadt Basel im frühen 15. Jahrhundert, Basel [Lizentiatsarbeit] 1992, p. 45.
[3] Roth, Lyrimans, pp. 23–24.
[4] Roth, Lyrimans, pp. 17–18.
[5] Roth, Lyrimans, pp. 32–33, p. 75.
[6] Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt, Ratsbücher A 7, Liber diversarum rerum, 1417–1463, Von Lyrimans wegen, fol. 45r–48r.; see also Roth, Lyrimans, p. 48, p. 103.
[7] Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt, Ratsbücher A 7, Liber diversarum rerum, 1417–1463.
[8] Roth, Lyrimans, pp. 59–61.
[9] For the production of gunpowder.
[10] For feuds outside of the nobility see Christine Reinle, Bauernfehden. Studien zur Fehdeführung Nichtadliger im spätmittelalterlichen römisch-deutschen Reich, besonders in den bayerischen Herzogtümern (Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Beiheft 170), Stuttgart 2003.
[11] Roth, Lyrimans, p. 17, pp. 74–76.
