Court battle
The court martial or judicial duel ( lat. Duellum ) was a legal institution in the Middle Ages and served to clarify non-releasable in a different form disputes, primarily among knights and free citizens. In principle, the decision has long been viewed as the judgment of God . The court battle was the legal precursor to duels between the 17th and 19th centuries.
Origins and general
The origin of the knightly court battle lies in the Holmgang , the judicial duel among free, which was common among various Germanic tribes as a means of dispute settlement. This legal custom spread throughout Europe during the Great Migration Period . The fight was not a mere law of the thumb , it was rather a procedural means within the framework of a more or less regulated judicial procedure. The opponents or the prosecutor went to the judge and asked him to let the judicial battle take place.
In particular, such a duel could also serve as an intermediate procedure to clarify the question of truth in the event of contradicting evidence. After the matter had been clarified in this way, the actual process could continue. In this form the function of the duel is described in a capitular of Emperor Ludwig the Pious from the year 816, the earliest written evidence of a court settlement. It says:
- If ... (in court) the testimony of both parties contradicts one another and neither party wants to give way to the other, then two from their midst, i.e. H. one from each party to be chosen to fight with shields and sticks ( cum scutis et fustibus ) on the battlefield. And the defeated fighter is said to lose his right hand because of the perjury he has committed. The other witnesses but the same party may trigger their hand (by payment of money) ... .
Two or more fighters who then came together to form opposing parties could be involved in the fight . There were also professional fighters, so-called champions or "fighters", who represented one of the participants in judicial duels for a certain reward. Women, children and the elderly in particular had the right to deploy representatives in the fight.
For a long time, the outcome of the struggle, which was perceived as fateful , had the character of a divine judgment (i.e. two-sided, i.e. fought against each other by two parties) , since those seeking justice and the public assumed at least the principle that God stood by the fighter on whose side the law was founded is located.
The high medieval court battle in the Sachsenspiegel
The judicial duel is presented in more detail in the Sachsenspiegel from around 1230. The basic constellation is in turn the case that the defendant's oath of denial and the plaintiff's counter- oath contradict one another, i.e. testimony stands against testimony and a fight should clarify who is telling the truth and who is lying. In principle, the fight could therefore serve as a means of decision-making in any type of adversarial legal dispute if both parties insisted on their testimony and the claim could not be settled otherwise. As a weapon , the sword had now taken the place of the sticks previously used. The aim of the fight was not death, but the opponent's incapacity to fight .
While the Sachsenspiegel is usually characterized by its concise and polished language, it becomes unusually long-winded when describing the duel for pages; the duel is celebrated as a venerable ritual.
As in the later private duel , the question of equality also plays a certain role in judicial duels . It is said: Every man can refuse duel to those who are born lower than he is; But whoever was born better, the lower-born cannot reject him because of his better birth if the latter challenges him (Ldr. I / 63,3).
The lawsuit
The Sachsenspiegel assumes the case that a man has suffered violence and later sees the perpetrator again at a regular court meeting. In this case he should behave as follows: If someone wants to call out one of his peers in a fighting manner, he must ask the judge that he may rightly seize the peacebreaker he sees ... So he must accuse him (because of this), that he had broken the peace on him, either on the king's road or in a village ... So, secondly, he accused him of having wounded him and of having done him violence, which he could prove (by showing wounds or scars) ... So he (but) continues to complain that he has robbed him of his property ... He is supposed to complain about these three crimes at once .
This is how he continues: There I saw him myself and called him with the emergency call ... So the (defendant) asks for a guarantee (ie a guarantee from the plaintiff, which falls to the defendant if the suit should fail) ... If the guarantee is given, then that (defendant) offers his proof of innocence, that is an oath and a legitimate duel (Ldr. I / 63,2).
Prepare for the fight
The judge should also put a shield and a sword to the one who is accused (if he needs it) ... He should give two messengers, each of those who are to fight, who see that they are prepared for the right habit. You can wear leather and linen as much as you want. Their heads and feet are bare in front, and on their hands they should have nothing but thin gloves; a bare sword in hand and one girdled around or two, that is their choice; a round shield in the other hand, with nothing but wood and leather on it except the hump, it can be iron ... Both of them should go armed before the judge and swear, one of them: that the guilt is true, that's why he is suing him Has; and the other (should swear) that he is innocent, that God might help them in their fight .
The fight
Peace should be given to the battle ring by the neck, so that no one should prevent it from fighting. The judge should give each of them a man to carry his rod. He shouldn't hinder them in anything, except that he put the pole between them if one of them falls or if he is wounded or asks for the pole; he is not allowed to do this, because he has permission from the judge ... If the one against whom one complains is overcome, one judges him; if he wins, that (plaintiff) lets him drive with a fine (to the court) and with a fine (to the defendant personally, Ldr. I / 63.4) .
So it was quite conceivable that a man would be only slightly wounded in a duel and then condemned to death by the court as a peace-breaker.
Late period and decline
According to Hermann Nottarp, the judicial duel in later centuries in Germany, France, England, Spain, Italy, Bohemia and Hungary was limited to the royal court and some privileged state courts. The fight rules regulated the fight with a lot of fuss, so that it finally fluttered into nothing but formality . A special case of the court battle was the battle of seven against seven fought in front of the Reichstag for scolding the verdict .
The extinction of the judicial duel, forbidden by the church as early as the 13th century, at the level of the ordinary courts - “mostly through custom and less as a result of legal prohibitions”, as Hans Fehr notes - coincided with the gradual spread of torture as a judicial method of establishing the truth together since the 14th century.
The modern duel later developed from the court battle , in which a number of ideas from the Middle Ages lived on. As the duel was shifted from legal life to the private sphere, the fateful-religious dimension of decision-making was increasingly lost and was replaced by the corporate concept of honor .
Various types and techniques of late medieval court warfare were described by Hans Talhoffer .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Capitulare regum Frankorum I / 2, No. 134, ed. v. Alfred Boretius, p. 268 (MGH, Leges Vol. VIII)
- ^ Karl von Amira, Grundriss des Germanischen Rechts, Strassburg 1913, p. 276
- ↑ Hermann Nottarp, who investigated the judicial duel in Europe, confirms that the weapons were shield and fighting stick according to Carolingian imperial law, but adds: The duel on horseback appears as a new form (since 820) under Ludwig the Pious ... Hence fought later in France and Spain knights generally on horseback, and sword and lance are now the weapons of the noble in duels; Citizens and farmers, and especially the fighters, only have shields and fighting sticks , God's judgment studies, Munich 1956, p. 284
- ^ Hermann Nottarp: God judgment studies , Munich 1956, p. 306.
- ↑ Hans Fehr, Der Zweikampf, Berlin 1908, p. 14.
- ↑ Thott 290 2º - Master Hans Talhoffers old armature and ring art ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
