South Central Europe (1252–1395 CE)

Late Medieval Consolidation, City Leagues, and Intensified Alpine Trade

This subregion—Liechtenstein, most of Switzerland (excluding the far northwest), the extreme southern parts of Germany (southeastern Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Bavaria), and southwestern Austria—entered the later Middle Ages with strong city economies, expanding confederations, and heightened commercial movement through the Alpine passes.

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Environmental and Agrarian Context

By the mid-13th century, population growth and intensive farming had pushed cultivation into upper valleys. Irrigation systems, terracing, and rotational cropping sustained productivity. Alpine pastures remained central to the export economy—especially for cheese and wool—while lakes and rivers were used extensively for freight transport.

A combination of warmer medieval climate (Medieval Warm Period) and intensive clearance expanded arable land, though by the late 14th century localized overuse, soil depletion, and climatic cooling foreshadowed the Little Ice Age.

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Political and Institutional Developments

• Urban Autonomy: Key cities such as Zürich, Chur, and St. Gallen consolidated privileges, often purchased from or negotiated with imperial or episcopal authorities.

• Confederation Building: The Eidgenossenschaft (Swiss Confederation) began in 1291 with Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden; its alliances with other towns and rural districts reshaped political geography north of the Gotthard Pass.

• Habsburg Influence: The House of Habsburg asserted authority over much of the subregion, especially eastern Switzerland and the Vorarlberg, but faced resistance from both rural communities and urban leagues.

• League Formation: In the east, alliances such as the Grey League in Graubünden began forming by the late 14th century to coordinate defense and trade regulation.

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Economic and Trade Expansion

Pass traffic surged as Lombardy’s markets grew. The Gotthard Pass rose in prominence alongside older routes such as the Great St. Bernard, Julier, and Splügen. Export commodities—cheese, hides, wool, timber, and iron—moved south; imports included salt, wine, spices, fine cloth, and luxury goods.

Merchant guilds organized fairs, and fortified warehouses and customs stations secured toll revenues. The Bodensee–Rhine corridor connected with Hanseatic networks, linking the Alpine world to the North Sea.

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Cultural and Artistic Life

Late Gothic architecture began to appear, especially in urban churches and civic buildings. Monastic scriptoria persisted but were increasingly complemented by urban workshops producing legal documents, chronicles, and devotional texts. Fresco cycles in churches often drew on both Lombard painting traditions and local storytelling.

Cathedrals such as those in Chur and Konstanz became centers of both liturgical art and political ceremony.

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Security and Conflict

The region experienced intermittent local wars, including:

• The Battle of Morgarten (1315) where the Confederates defeated a Habsburg army, strengthening the confederation’s autonomy.

• Feuds between noble houses for control over toll rights and market revenues.

• Cross-border raids during wider imperial and Italian conflicts.

Despite conflicts, fortification of market towns, bridges, and passes generally kept the main trade routes secure.

The three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zürich and Bern city states by 1353 to form the "Old Confederacy" of eight states that will exist until the end of the 15th century.

The expansion leads to increased power and wealth for the confederation.

Bern, a free imperial city since 1218, joins the Swiss Confederacy in 1353, becoming one of the "eight cantons" of the formative period of 1353 to 1481.

Various citizens’ armies of the small Swiss Confederation, experienced resisters of Austrian aggression, oppose the invading Güglers, who mistakenly divide into thirds to contend with the defenders.

The Bernese march in support of the Swiss to overwhelm the Güglers at Fraubrunnen on December 26, 1375.

The Swiss force Coucy’s invaders to battle their way westward across the Jura on their return to France in the spring of 1376.

Argovia or Argowe had been a disputed border region between the duchies of Alamannia and Burgundy in early medieval times.

A line of the von Wetterau (Conradines) had intermittently held the countship of Aargau from 750 until about 1030, when they lost it (having in the meantime taken the name von Tegerfelden).

From the extinction in 1254 of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, the area has been ruled by the Habsburgs.(Many castles from this time still stand; examples include Habsburg, Lenzburg, Tegerfelden, Bobikon, Stin and Wildegg. The Habsburgs had founded a number of monasteries, with some structures enduring, e.g., in Wettingen and Muri, the closing of which by the government in 1841 was a contributing factor to the outbreak of the Swiss civil war—the "Sonderbund War”—in 1847.)

When Frederick IV of Habsburg, Duke of Further Austria, sides with Antipope John XXIII at the Council of Constance, Emperor Sigismund places him under the Imperial ban.

Shortly thereafter in 1415, Bern and the rest of the Swiss Confederation use the ban as a pretext to invade Aargau.

The Confederation is able to quickly conquer the towns of Aarau, Lenzburg, Brugg and Zofingen along with most of the Habsburg castles.

Bern keeps the southwest portion (Zofingen, Aarburg, Aarau, Lenzburg, and Brugg).

Some districts, named the Freie Ämter (free bailiwicks) – Mellingen, Muri, Villmergen, and Bremgarten), with the countship of Baden – are governed as "subject lands" by all or some of the Confederates.

The rest of the Freie Ämter are collectively administered as subject territories by the rest of the Confederation.

Muri Amt is assigned to Zurich, Lucerne, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug and Glarus, while the Ämter of Meienberg, Richensee and Villmergen are first given to Lucerne alone.

Bern had expanded and become a major city-state north of the Alps by the fifteenth Century.

To celebrate the city’s growing power and wealth, plans have been made to build a new and larger church.

On March 11, 1421 construction begins on the cathedral under the direction of the Strasbourg master builder Matthäus Ensinger, who has already built three other cathedrals.

During construction, services will be held in the old chapel while the new cathedral is built up around it.

The first church on the site of the present Bern Minster probably was a small chapel built during the founding of Bern (1191).

The first church of Bern was a romanesque building which was probably built between 1155-1160, but is first mentioned in 1224.

This church is outside the city walls, near what is now Kreuzgasse.

The nave of this first church was about 16.5 meters (fifty-four feet) long by six meters (twenty feet) wide.

Bern had broken away from the parish of Köniz in 1276 to become an independent parish.

For this new role, a larger church would have been necessary.

It appears likely that construction on the second church began immediately.

However, it isn't mentioned until 1289 in writings of Bishop Benvenutus von Eugubio.

This new church was a three nave building, with a length of 29.5 meters (ninety-seven feet), a width of 24.5 m (eighty feet) of which the middle nave was 11.1 m (thirty-six feet) wide.

The bell tower was located in the middle of the northern side nave, and filled part of the central nave.

An earthquake on October 18, 1356, caused extensive damage to the church walls, arches and tower.

Repairs proceeded slowly.

The choir was rebuilt in 1359 and the roof was rebuilt in 1378-80.

During the early stages of construction of the Minster, this church is still being used.

The nave will finally be demolished between 1449–51 and the tower will remain until 1493.

The notable Nydegg Church, the second-oldest church building in the city of Bern, had been built with a flèche between 1341 and 1346 to replace the castle of Nydegg built by Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen, in 1190.

From 1480 to 1483, a tower had been added and the nave is reconstructed from 1493 to 1504.

The Eidgenossen, or Swiss Confederation, when asked in 1488 by Emperor Frederick to also join the Swabian League, had flatly refused: they had seen no reason to join an alliance designed to further Habsburg interests, and they are wary of this new, relatively closely knit and powerful alliance that has arisen on their northern frontier.

Furthermore, they resent the strong aristocratic element in the Swabian League, so different from their own organization, which has grown over the last two hundred years liberating themselves from precisely such an aristocratic rule.

The independence and freedom of the Eidgenossen is a powerful and attractive role model for the common people in Swabia.

Many a baron in southern Swabia fears that his own subjects might revolt and seek adherence to the Swiss Confederacy.

These fears are not entirely without foundation: the Swiss had begun to form alliances north of the Rhine river, concluding a first treaty with Schaffhausen in 1454 and then also treaties with cities as far away as Rottweil in 1463 and Mulhouse in 1466.

The city of Constance and its bishop are caught in the middle between these two blocks: they hold possessions in Swabia, but the city also still exercises the high justice over the Thurgau, where the Swiss had assumed the low justice since the annexation in 1460.

The foundation of the Swabian League had prompted the Swiss city states of Zürich and Bern to propose accepting Constance into the Swiss Confederacy.

The negotiations had failed, though, due to the opposition of the founding cantons of the Confederacy and Uri in particular.

The split jurisdiction over the Thurgau has been the cause of many quarrels between the city and the Confederacy.

In 1495, one such disagreement is answered by a punitive expedition of soldiers of Uri and the city has to pay the sum of three thousand guilders to make them retreat and cease their plundering. (The Thurgau is a condominium of the Swiss Confederacy, and Uri is one of the cantons involved in its administration.)