The maintenance of urban peace (pax urbana, or fride, vrede in low German) was an important goal for the inhabitants and citizens1 of towns, and for the members of town councils during the later middle ages.2
Peace keeping within the town walls was a necessity for the communal living of all town inhabitants. However, it was not always easy for the urban authorities to uphold the peace because the city space was divided into several quarters and parishes.
Braunschweig for example had five independent districts (�Weichbilde’); the districts had their own rights and administration with separate councils.3 There were special areas of peace in the towns, which did not belong to the pax urbana secured by the city council but were under the legal administration of different clerical institutions like churches, monasteries, chapels or even graveyards.4 Furthermore, the citizens and inhabitants of German towns in the north-western parts of the Empire were members of different guilds, associations of craftsmen and/or fraternities.5 All of these institutions had specific rights and claimed juridical authority over their members. Therefore, it was necessary to find a way to establish a sense of community to give citizens and inhabitants the idea of a shared purpose and mutual obligation. The goal for the town council and its members was to strengthen the unity of the people and the civic accord inside the city walls in order to defend it against encroachments.6In the first part of the chapter I will discuss the means by which city councils created and maintained urban peace inside the city walls. It will be shown that in this respect, urban peace formed the basis for security in the city and the foundation for the most important vested interest of the citizens as well as of all inhabitants: the undisturbed and wide-ranging pursuit of their economic objectives. The second part of the chapter focuses on conflicts between largely autonomous towns and their town lords, who, in the last third of the fifteenth century, tried to regain control over the cities’ administrations and courts of law. I aim to show that upholding the peace was a paramount feature of urban legal culture. By looking at the means and practices used by the towns’ authorities to reach this goal, we can learn more about how law �works’ in a society.