Faide

The faide was in the Germanic companies of the Early middle ages (Francs, Burgondes, Lombards, etc) a system of revenge opposing two enemy family groups. It approaches by many features the vendetta known in the Mediterranean islands (Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily) up to one recent time.

Extremely codified, the recourse to the faide was often result of a verdict returned by the local judges and their assessors in the assembled public ones (these assemblies in general bore the Latin name of Mallus publicus ).
Cette faide thus had a strongly collective dimension. If for example, a free man had offended the family of another and that he was considered to be guilty by it by the courts, the injured family had a right of faide on the first. Concretely, a murder could involve of it another (not inevitably that of the murderer himself: any member of its family group could be aimed). He could be the same about it for an offense as the fire or the vol. the faide thus represents a kind of " privatization" justice and punishment: in this system, it is not the public power which punishes the crimes and the offenses, but they are the injured individuals and groups who " make justice them-mêmes". The role of the public power is limited to grant to legitimate the recourse to violence on behalf of the group injured against the group found guilty of aggression.

This vision of the law and this practice " barbare" disappeared little by little under the influence from the Roman law, then thanks to the action of the Carolingiens: legitimate violence, under their direction, became little by little the monopoly of the public power. The Mérovingiens like the Carolingians developed also compensation systems: the recourse to the faide could be replaced by the payment of an amount of money, whose amount was fixed by the law. The " Salic law " testify to this effort of rationalization and pacification in the use of the faide.

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