Feuding, late medieval and early modern Germany, nobility

IN LANDT HOCHVERBOTTEN – ENMITIES AMONG NOBILITY IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY STYRIA, CARNIOLA AND ISTRIA OR ON CONFLICT RESOLUTION BETWEEN THE CUSTOM OF VENGEANCE AND EARLY MODERN CRIMINAL LAW

Conflict resolution among nobility in historically Slovene lands, including Carniola, Styria, and Istria, remained much the same in the seventeenth century as it had during the previous centuries. Notwithstanding the increased monopolisation of law and violence by the early modern State, the strengthened implementation of Roman law and the publishing of new criminal codes, social and legal practice was, until the end of the Ancien Régime, permeated by the ancient and universal social norm or customary system of conflict resolution: vengeance. Following the social principle of exchange, vengeance demanded satisfaction (countergift) for a suffered injustice (gift). If satisfaction was not acquired peacefully, according to the culture of honour injury could be requited by violent retaliation. Violence was envisioned as the sanction for those refusing peaceful conflict resolution. In the Medieval, and even in the early modern, period, it was deemed equally inappropriate to respond to injustice with either violence or lawsuit without previously exhausting all means of peaceful settlement. In customary conflict resolution, the stage that allowed for the use of limited retaliatory violence was enmity or, originating from an Old Germanic word for it, feud. Enmity had to be declared publicly and appropriately (i.e. in time), so that the threat of violence could already force the offending party to give satisfaction. Satisfaction settled the conflict by allowing truce and lasting peace to be made. As was the objective of the custom of vengeance, lasting peace (re-)established concord and peace among parties to the conflict, and restored social equilibrium in the community. Appropriate retaliation meant that violence in vengeance was, as a rule (and ideally), limited. Medieval limitations of violence in enmity, which for the most part persevered into the early modern period, were dictated by the culture of honour, the Church, and customary law, and this created temporal, spatial, and personal immunities. Hostilities were to be suspended on Sundays and the most important Church holidays, and the custom was always adverse to violent retaliation in sacred spaces (e.g. churches) and areas of certain sacral value, such as homes, settlements, fora, and residences of authority. Moreover, communal production facilities and agricultural means of production were not to be damaged. Vengeance upon women, children, the elderly, the ordained, and other segments of society generally prohibited from carrying arms, was also highly inappropriate and dishonourable. Except in blood feud (for homicide, grave insults or severe wounds) the killing of an enemy was also generally inappropriate. Violence upon an enemy's property, mostly by raiding or robbery and arson, was always appropriate. Lawsuits were also an instrument of enmity, especially in the early modern period, even though the judicial path was regarded as less honourable. While customary limitations of enmity were already partially codified in the Early Middle Ages, the codification of the custom of vengeance into law was concluded in the High Middle Ages, especially its key rituals of truce and peace. In the Holy Roman Empire the codification included the declaration of enmity as a distinctive feature of the Imperial and Provincial peace legislation, which at the same time codified limitations of enmity in more detail than the legislation in the rest of Europe. Due to these features, historiography often interpreted the German word for enmity or feud, Fehde, as a distinctive "German" custom of vengeance. A few conflicts among nobility in seventeenth-century Slovene lands also attest to the survival of the custom of vengeance and role of enmity therein. The conflicts of the Lordship of Radovljica with those of Škofja Loka and Bled in (Upper) Carniola, as well as the conflicts of the Styrian Lordships of Slivnica and Vurberk with those of Fram and Ravno polje respectively, attest to the custom's adaptation to social, political, and legal changes in the early modern period. Despite the implementation of criminal codes based on Roman law, the cases presented in this article are proof of the custom's survival into early modernity in Slovene lands. While public declarations of enmity disappeared, the use of limited violence for the defence of one's rights or the acquisition of new ones had, to a degree, remained legitimate. Likewise, so too did blood feud, as is attested by the conflicts between the Moscons and Qualandros in Ptuj, and of the del Taccos with the del Bellos and the marquis Gravisis in Koper/Capodistria. The reactions of the Habsburg princely and the Venetian highest legal authorities show that enmity had remained part of social practice, while only regarded as legal when proven to be a case of self-defence. Although authorities in the seventeenth century still strived for conflict resolution based on the custom of vengeance and the culture of honour on the local level, the State's new attitude towards conflict resolution was already visible on the horizon. As indicated in the case from Koper/Capodistria, by the end of the early modern period the State had established itself as the only avenger or punisher of injustice.

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Errata:

- Roman law instead of Roman canon law on pp. 119-120