The Diet of Worms declares “Eternal Peace”
The late medieval minor nobility felt that it was being squeezed between power-hungry princes and the rising urban bourgeoisie. Seeking to bolster their financial position, individual knights launched a number of feuds, fighting each other in the remote German countryside. The instability that this produced, along with the robbery carried out under the cover of the feuds, was designed to make travellers feel unsafe and compel them to request protection – for a fee – from the very people who had caused the problem.
Seeking to improve security in their territories, the imperial princes and cities persuaded King (later Emperor) Maximilian I to attend to this problem. After a number of attempts, Maximilian finally banned feuding at the Diet of Worms on 7 August 1495, proclaiming “Eternal Peace”. Although the ban took decades to enforce, the move towards “Eternal Peace” set in motion a process aimed at establishing a state monopoly on violence and ensuring that disputes could only be settled by legal procedure. Accordingly, the delegates at the Diet of Worms also decided on the establishment of the Reichskammergericht, a supreme court for the Holy Roman Empire to enforce the rule of law.
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