Stans, Diet of

▪ Swiss history

      (Dec. 22, 1481), agreement whereby civil war among the member states of the Swiss Confederation was averted. When the five rural cantons of the federation—Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, and Glarus—concluded a treaty of common citizenship between themselves and the bishopric of Constance (1477), the three other, urban cantons—Luzern, Bern, and Zürich—retorted by concluding a similar treaty for themselves with two other cities, Fribourg and Solothurn. The rural cantons objected to this, chiefly because it seemed to portend the admission of two new cities in the federation and so to upset the existing five-to-three majority of the rural districts over the urban. The ensuing controversy threatened to disrupt the confederation. A conference at Stans, in the Nidwalden subdivision of Unterwalden, in November 1481 failed to achieve anything until a pious hermit of Obwalden, Niklaus von Flüe (Bruder Klaus (Nicholas of Flüe, Saint)), was asked to mediate. On his advice, both the five and the three denounced their controversial treaties; and all eight made a new alliance with Fribourg and Solothurn, which thus entered the confederacy on the understanding that they were to make no separate alliances of their own without the approval of a majority among the eight. The result was a positive strengthening of the federal union, which was to be sworn formally every five years; and the admission of French-speaking Fribourg to a federation that had hitherto been exclusively a German-speaking one was highly significant for the future development of Switzerland.

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