A feud letter (German : Fehdebrief or Absagebrief) was a document in which a feud was announced, usually with few words, in medieval Europe. The letter had to be issued three days in advance to be legally valid.
To prevent the feud from becoming a case of murder and thus become punishable by law, those involved had to abide by the following rules:
"Wettet, biscop Dierich van Moeres, dat wy den vesten Junker Johan can Cleve lever hebbet alls Juwe, unde wert Juwe hiermit affgesaget"
("Know this, Bishop Dietrich of Moers, that we prefer the steadfast Junker, John of Cleves, to you, and hereby give you notice thereof.")
Soest is a municipality and town in the central Netherlands, in the province of Utrecht. It is about 6 km (4 mi) west of Amersfoort.
Altena is a town in the district of Märkischer Kreis, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The town's castle is the origin for the later Dukes of Berg. Altena is situated on the Lenne river valley, in the northern stretches of the Sauerland.
Soest is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the capital of the Soest district.
Kleve is a town in the Lower Rhine region of northwestern Germany near the Dutch border and the River Rhine. From the 11th century onwards, Cleves was capital of a county and later a duchy. Today, Cleves is the capital of the district of Kleve in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The city is home to one of the campuses of the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences.
The County of Mark was a county and state of the Holy Roman Empire in the Lower Rhenish–Westphalian Circle. It lay south of Lippe river on both sides of the Ruhr river along the Volme and Lenne rivers.
Lippstadt is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the largest town within the district of Soest. Lippstadt is situated about 60 kilometres east of Dortmund, 40 kilometres south of Bielefeld and 30 kilometres west of Paderborn.
Xanten is a town in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the district of Wesel.
In common parlance, the wives of Henry VIII were the six queens consort of King Henry VIII of England between 1509 and his death in 1547. In legal terms, Henry had only three wives, because three of his marriages were annulled by the Church of England. He was never granted an annulment by the Pope, as he desired, however, for Catherine of Aragon, his first wife. Annulments declare that a true marriage never took place, unlike a divorce, in which a married couple end their union. Along with his six wives, Henry took several mistresses.
Werne an der Lippe is a town in the Federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the Unna district in Germany. It is located on the southern edge of the Münsterland region near the Ruhrgebiet. The population of Werne is about 32,000.
Marl is a town and a municipality in the district of Recklinghausen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is situated near the Wesel-Datteln Canal, approx. 10 km north-west of Recklinghausen. It has about 90,000 people.
Rüthen is a town in the district of Soest, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
The Duchy of Westphalia was a historic territory in the Holy Roman Empire, which existed from 1102 to 1803. It was located in the greater region of Westphalia, originally one of the three main regions in the German stem duchy of Saxony and today part of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The duchy was held by the archbishop-electors of Cologne until its secularization in 1803.
The Prince-Bishopric of Münster was a large ecclesiastical principality in the Holy Roman Empire, located in the northern part of today's North Rhine-Westphalia and western Lower Saxony. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, it was often held in personal union with one or more of the nearby ecclesiastical principalities of Cologne, Paderborn, Osnabrück, Hildesheim, and Liège.
John I, Duke of Cleves, Count of Mark. Jean de Belliqueux (warlike), was Duke of Cleves and Count of Mark.
The Goulston Street graffito was a sentence written on a wall beside a clue in the 1888 Whitechapel murders investigation. It has been transcribed as variations on the sentence "The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing". The meaning of the graffito, and its possible connection to the crimes attributed to Jack the Ripper, have been debated for over a century.
Johannes Steinwert von Soest was a German composer, theorist and poet. Most biographical details about his life survive in Johannes' verse autobiography, which was printed in 1811 and has been partially translated into modern English. He was born in Unna and brought up in the nearby town of Soest. As a boy, he sang at the church of St. Patrokli. At one point a juggler almost succeeded in kidnapping him for his beautiful voice, but the plan did not succeed. The boy eventually left Soest when John I, Duke of Cleves hired him as a singer.
Bernard VII of Lippe was the ruler of the Lordship of Lippe from 1429 until his death. Because of the many bloody feuds in which he was involved, he was nicknamed "the Bellicose". He is the longest-ever ruling European monarch.
St. Patrokli is a Roman Catholic parish and church in Soest, Germany. The church is of great significance in the history of architecture as it is the epitome of Romanesque architecture in Westphalia. As a result, it is known as St.-Patrokli-Dom. It holds relics of its patron saint Patroclus of Troyes from 954. It was the church of the canonical foundation of St. Patroclus, which existed from the 10th century until its abolition in 1812. Since 1823 the church has been the parish church of the St. Patrokli parish in the diocese of Paderborn. In 1859 it was promoted to the rank of provost church.
The Soest Feud, or Feud of Soest, was a feud that took place from 1444 to 1449 in which the town of Soest claimed its freedom from Archbishop Dietrich of Cologne (1414–1463), who tried to restore his rule. The town of Soest opposed this attempt on 5 June 1444 by accepting a new suzerain, John I, the Duke of Cleves-Mark, who guaranteed the town its old rights as well as new ones. As a result Emperor Frederick III imposed the imperial ban on the town. The victory of the town meant that Soest had de facto more freedom than a free imperial city until it was annexed by Prussia, but at the same time it had to forfeit its economic power because it was now an enclave within Cologne's territory.
The Münster Diocesan Feud, or simply Münster Feud, was a dispute that took place between 1450 and 1457 over the appointment to the bishop's throne in Münster, and hence the rule of the diocese. The cause was the death of the previous prince-bishop, Henry II of Moers. The opposing candidates were his brother Walram of Moers, Eric of Hoya, and Conrad of Diepholz. They were supported by their families with Count John of Hoya, Archbishop Dietrich II of Moers and Prince-Bishop Rudolf of Diepholz at their respective heads. In addition, there were also external allies. Within the diocese the Stände, namely the cathedral chapter and the town of Münster, played an independent role at times. In the end neither candidate was able to succeed to the office.