Under the law of the

Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...

, a ''Landfrieden'' or ''Landfriede'' (

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

: ''constitutio pacis'', ''pax instituta'' or ''pax jurata'', variously translated as "land peace", or "public peace") was a contractual waiver of the use of legitimate force, by rulers of specified territories, to assert their own legal claims. This especially affected the right of

feud A feud , also known in more extreme cases as a blood feud, vendetta, faida, clan war, gang war, private war, or mob war, is a long-running argument or fight, often between social groups of people, especially family, families or clans. Feuds begin ...

ing.

Scope

''Landfrieden'' agreements formed the political basis for pursuing claims without resorting to the private use of violence. They also often regulated the

jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' and 'speech' or 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, the concept of jurisdiction applies at multiple level ...

and thus allowed the settlement of disputes through judgements based on a common set of rules. Offences or violations of the public peace were liable to severe punishment. For example, objects or buildings (such as churches, homes, mills, agricultural implements, bridges, and especially

imperial road In medieval times, imperial roads () were designated routes in the Holy Roman Empire that afforded protection to travellers in return for tolls collected for the emperor. The ''Reichsstraßen'' came under royal jurisdiction ('' Königsbann'') a ...

s) and people (priests, pilgrims, merchants, women, even farmers, hunters and fishermen in carrying out their work) could be placed under protection. The ''Landfrieden'' created a type of

martial law Martial law is the replacement of civilian government by military rule and the suspension of civilian legal processes for military powers. Martial law can continue for a specified amount of time, or indefinitely, and standard civil liberties ...

, as well as special courts, the ''Landfriedensgerichte''. Some scholars have argued that the concept of ''Landfrieden'' applied both to peace-keeping associations and to the late medieval and early modern laws and ordinances which sought to restrict feuding and violence across large parts of the Holy Roman Empire, or the Empire as a whole. The historian Duncan Hardy has interpreted ''Landfrieden'' as a discursive strategy, marked out by appeals to widely used concepts of peace, justice, and honor and the defense of travelers in a shared locality and on the imperial roads. Political actors ranging from the kings and emperors of the Romans to local German nobles and towns might employ this discourse to legitimize themselves and signal their belonging to an imperial layer of governance within the Holy Roman Empire.

Development

In the

High Middle Ages The High Middle Ages, or High Medieval Period, was the periodization, period of European history between and ; it was preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which ended according to historiographical convention ...

, from the 11th century onwards, the Landfrieden movement strove to extend the so-called

Peace and Truce of God The Peace and Truce of God () was a movement in the Middle Ages led by the Catholic Church and was one of the most influential mass peace movements in history. The goal of both the ''Pax Dei'' and the ''Treuga Dei'' was to limit the violence o ...

(''Gottesfrieden''). The first imperial Landfriede was established by Emperor Henry IV in 1103 for a term of four years and was known as the First Imperial Peace of Mainz (''Erster Mainzer Reichslandfriede''). It followed the Mainz Peace and Truce of God (''Mainzer Gottesfrieden''), which he had already proclaimed in 1085. In 1152,

Frederick Barbarossa Frederick Barbarossa (December 1122 – 10 June 1190), also known as Frederick I (; ), was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 until his death in 1190. He was elected King of Germany in Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March 115 ...

proclaimed the Great Imperial Peace (''Großer Reichslandfrieden''), which extended to the whole Empire. This act of constitution brought into effect a time-limited alliance of ruling princes. It was established in 1186 that a feud had to be announced in

feud letter A feud letter ( 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 ...

issued three days in advance. Originating from the law schools in

Bologna Bologna ( , , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the List of cities in Italy, seventh most populous city in Italy, with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its M ...

and

Pavia Pavia ( , ; ; ; ; ) is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy, in Northern Italy, south of Milan on the lower Ticino (river), Ticino near its confluence with the Po (river), Po. It has a population of c. 73,086. The city was a major polit ...

, the concepts of

medieval Roman law Medieval Roman law is the continuation and development of ancient Roman law that developed in the European Late Middle Ages. Based on the ancient text of Roman law, '' Corpus iuris civilis'', it added many new concepts, and formed the basis of the ...

(''

Corpus Juris Civilis The ''Corpus Juris'' (or ''Iuris'') ''Civilis'' ("Body of Civil Law") is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, enacted from 529 to 534 by order of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. It is also sometimes referred ...

'') started to dominate the legal profession under Barbarossa's rule. The crucial Imperial Peace of Mainz (', also ''Mainzer Reichslandfrieden'') announced by

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (, , , ; 26 December 1194 – 13 December 1250) was King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 and King of Jerusalem from 1225. He was the son of Emperor Henry VI, Holy Roman ...

at the Imperial Diet of 1235 was more like a legal decree and had less of the character of an alliance. Already in 1231, Frederick had issued the

Constitutions of Melfi The Constitutions of Melfi, or ''Liber Augustalis'',Also called the ''Liber Constitutionum Regni Siciliae'' or ''Constitutiones Melphitanae'', from which its informal name, Constitutions of Melfi, derives. The name Liber Augustalis was invented by ...

, a book of codified law and

inquisitorial system An inquisitorial system is a legal system in which the court, or a part of the court, is actively involved in investigating the facts of the case. This is distinct from an adversarial system, in which the role of the court is primarily that of an ...

applying to his

Kingdom of Sicily The Kingdom of Sicily (; ; ) was a state that existed in Sicily and the southern Italian peninsula, Italian Peninsula as well as, for a time, in Kingdom of Africa, Northern Africa, from its founding by Roger II of Sicily in 1130 until 1816. It was ...

. The Mainz ''Landfriede'', now applicable indefinitely, was a constitutional act and became one of the

basic law A basic law is either a codified constitution, or in countries with uncodified constitutions, a law designed to have the effect of a constitution. The term ''basic law'' is used in some places as an alternative to "constitution" and may be inte ...

s that applied to the whole Empire. For the first time, this document was bilingually drafted in Latin and

Middle High German Middle High German (MHG; or ; , shortened as ''Mhdt.'' or ''Mhd.'') is the term for the form of High German, High German language, German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High ...

. Subsequently, numerous regional and local Landfrieden alliances such as city leagues () arose during the 13th and 14th centuries. The 1235 Peace of Mainz was renewed at the

diet of Würzburg Diet may refer to: Food * Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group * Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake ** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...

in 1287 and again in 1290, 1298 and 1354.Peter H. Wilson (2016), ''Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire'' (Belknap Press), p. 622. It was superseded by the

Ewiger Landfriede The ''Ewiger Landfriede'' ("everlasting '' Landfriede''", variously translated as "Perpetual Peace", "Eternal Peace", "Perpetual Public Peace") of 1495, passed by Maximilian I, German king and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was the definitive ...

"Perpetual Public Peace" passed by

Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (22 March 1459 – 12 January 1519) was King of the Romans from 1486 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death in 1519. He was never crowned by the Pope, as the journey to Rome was blocked by the Venetians. He proclaimed hi ...

in 1495, which outlawed any feuds and constituted a permanent Landfriede for the Holy Roman Empire, including the establishment of the

Reichskammergericht The ; ; ) was one of the two highest judicial institutions in the Holy Roman Empire, the other one being the Aulic Council in Vienna. It was founded in 1495 by the Imperial Diet in Worms. All legal proceedings in the Holy Roman Empire could be ...

"Imperial Chamber Court".

Modern forms

Up to today a breach of the ''Landfrieden'' (''Landfriedensbruch'') by involvement in violent

riot A riot or mob violence is a form of civil disorder commonly characterized by a group lashing out in a violent public disturbance against authority, property, or people. Riots typically involve destruction of property, public or private. The p ...

s is a criminal offence according to German criminal law
§ 125 StGB
and the Austrian
§ 274 StGB
and

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

Art. 260 CH-StGB
equivalents. The preservation of the ''Landfrieden'' in the sense of public law and order – i.e. the ban on jungle law (''Faustrecht'') and frontier justice (''Selbstjustiz'') – by giving the state authorities a

monopoly on violence In political philosophy, a monopoly on violence or monopoly on the legal use of force is the property of a polity that is the only entity in its jurisdiction to legitimately use force, and thus the supreme authority of that area. While the mon ...

, is the basis of all modern

legal code A code of law, also called a law code or legal code, is a systematic collection of statutes. It is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the co ...

References

Literature

* Heinz Angermeier: ''Königtum und Landfriede im deutschen Spätmittelalter''. Munich, 1966. * Joachim Bumke: ''Höfische Kultur. Literatur und Gesellschaft im hohen Mittelalter'' (= ''dtv'' 30170). 11th edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich, 2005, . * Arno Buschmann, Elmar Wadle (ed.): ''Landfrieden. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit'' (= ''Rechts- und staatswissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Görres-Gesellschaft.'' NF Vol. 98). Schöningh, Paderborn etc., 2002, . * Mattias G. Fischer: ''Reichsreform und „Ewiger Landfrieden“. Über die Entwicklung des Fehderechts im 15. Jahrhundert bis zum absoluten Fehdeverbot von 1495'' (= ''Untersuchungen zur deutschen Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte.'' NF Vol. 34). Scientia, Aalen, 2007, (Also: Göttingen, University, Dissertation, 2002). * Joachim Gernhuber: ''Die Landfriedensbewegung in Deutschland bis zum Mainzer Reichslandfrieden von 1235'' (= ''Bonner rechtswissenschaftliche Abhandlungen.'' H. 44, ). Röhrscheid, Bonn, 1952. * Duncan Hardy: ''Landfrieden''. In: Irene Dingel, Michael Rohrschneider, Inken Schmidt-Voges, Siegrid Westphal and Joachim Whaley (eds.), ''Handbuch Frieden im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit / Handbook of Peace in Early Modern Europe.'' Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021, pp. 151–169. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110591316-008/html?lang=en * Duncan Hardy: ''Between Regional Alliances and Imperial Assemblies: Landfrieden as a Political Concept and Discursive Strategy in the Holy Roman Empire, c. 1350-1520''. In: Hendrik Baumbach and Horst Carl (eds.), ''Landfrieden – epochenübergreifend. Neue Perspektiven der Landfriedensforschung auf Verfassung, Recht, Konflikt'' (=''Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung. Beihefte. 54''.) Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2018, pp. 85–120. * Guido Komatsu: ''Landfriedensbünde im 16. Jahrhundert. Ein typologischer Vergleich.'' Dissertation, University of Göttingen, 2001
Volltext
. * Elmar Wadle: ''Landfrieden, Strafe, Recht. Zwölf Studien zum Mittelalter'' (= ''Schriften zur europäischen Rechts- und Verfassungsgeschichte.'' Vol. 37). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 2001, .

External links