44 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
Swiss even contemplated buying Gottlieben outright from the bishop.250 The
bishop’s attempts to buttress his authority by incorporating the abbey of Reichenau
into his secular territory between 1508 and 1516 met with mixed fortunes. King
Maximilian granted the Reichenau to the bishop in 1510, much to the chagrin of
Konstanz, which feared encirclement, but the transfer was not completed.251 In 1516
Bshop Hugo finally abandoned his claim in return for compensation of 6000 fl,
which the abbey itself had to pay!252 Only in 1540 was the abbey finally incorpor-
ated into the bishopric, but the bishops only exercised lower jurisdiction: capital
jurisdiction meted out in the territorial court had long passed to the Swiss.253
That leaves Zürich, ostensibly the most expansionist of the VII cantons. Yet it
fought doggedly to preserve its own rights in two Thurgau villages, Stammheim
and Nussbaumen, against the authority of the Swiss territorial bailiwick. Its obdur-
acy, first expressed in 1501, proved hard to overcome,254 evident in its refusal up
to 1503 regularly to attend Confederal diets.255 Efforts at mediation led nowhere
until it was proposed that the Luzern magistrate should personally intervene.256
The outcome was that Zürich had to accept the authority of the territorial court,
but was allowed to retain lesser jurisdiction.257 By contrast, Zürich showed itself
more conciliatory when it came to the Klettgau. Collective occupation of the
Klettgau in the Swiss War put an end to any independent outthrust, so that the city
contented itself with rebuilding its strained relations with the counts of Sulz; the
city’s Burgrechte with the counts were regularly renewed.258 Any lingering hopes of
incorporating the Klettgau in any case evaporated once Zürich had embraced the
Reformation.259 Even so, a final determination of the border between Zürich,
Schaffhausen, and the Klettgau had to wait until the mid-seventeenth century.260
250 EA III, 2, 600–1 (no. 430: k) (1512). 251 Maurer, Konstanz im Mittelalter, 267–8.
252 Wolfgang Dobras, ‘Konstanz zur Zeit der Reformation’, in Martin Burkhardt, Wolfgang
Dobras, and Wolfgang Zimmermann, Konstanz in der frühen Neuzeit (Geschichte der Stadt Konstanz,
3) (Konstanz, 1991), 11–146, here at 29–32.
253 Werner Kundert, ‘Herrschaften und Besitz in der Eidgenossenschaft’, in Elmar L. Kuhn, Eva
Moser, Rudolf Reinhardt, and Petra Sachs (eds), Die Bischöfe von Konstanz, 1: Geschichte (Friedrichshafen,
1988), 301–21, here at 310.
254 EA III, 2, 109–10 (no. 51: a) (1501). 255 Bütikofer, ‘Zur Funktion’, 20.
256 EA III, 2, 201–2 (no. 110: i) (1503); 234–5 (no. 139: n) (1503).
257 HLS, s.v. Stammheim. 258 Niederhäuser, ‘Zwischen Konkurrenz’, 94.
259 Niederhäuser, ‘Kampf ums Überleben’, 63.
260 Niederhäuser, ‘Kampf ums Überleben’, 64.