Treaty of Ribe - The Treaty

The Treaty

The proclamation was issued in 1460 and established that the King of Denmark should also be Duke of Schleswig and Count of Holstein. Another clause gave the nobility the right to revolt should the king break the agreement (a feature of several medieval coronation charters). The agreement was most straightforward regarding the future of the Holstein, since King Christian I merely added the title as count to his existing title. He was forbidden from annexing Holstein to Denmark and Holstein retained its independence and its position as a subfief of Saxony and subsequently Saxe-Lauenburg, indirectly under the Holy Roman Emperor.

Regarding the future of Schleswig, the agreement at first seems to be contradictionary in itself; the Danish king became Duke of Schleswig, a Danish fief, in effect becoming his own vassal. This arrangement should be seen as a guarantee against too strong Danish domination in the new union, and a safeguard against e.g. a partitioning of Holstein among Danish nobles.

The most obvious result of this distinction was the exclusion of Schleswig in subsequent Danish laws, although the medieval Danish Code of Jutland (Danish: Jyske Lov) was retained as Schleswig's legal code. Another important, but much later, development was the gradual introduction of German-speaking administrators in the duchy resulting in a gradual but permanent Germanisation of the southern part of the province. German culture first spread in the cities, most probably as a result of the presence of merchants from the Hanseatic League. The process was greatly accelerated following the Lutheran Reformation, which introduced German liturgy in the churches in southern Schleswig - although the vernacular in most of this area was Danish. The major breakthrough of the process of Germanisation, however, did not occur until the end of the eighteenth century.