FEUD. - From the German Fehde, it was known in the Lombard laws by the term inimicitia or elsewhere by the expression vindicta parentum. It represents the struggle of one family group against another family group to remove the offenses done to one of its own members. The f. [faida] was opened with a process within the avenging group, which deliberated on the gravity of the offense and of the injury, and which bound all the members of that group until the vengeance had been materially carried out or an indemnity had been obtained.
Regulated first by custom, legislation tolerated and recognized it, but gradually restricted it with the progress of the idea of the power of the State, excluding offenses of minimal gravity, which were resolved judicially by the public declaration of the indemnity (compositio), down to those of maximum gravity (offenses against the security of the State), the latter of which expanded by absorbing an ever greater number of private offenses. Public offenses were held to be offenses against the entire people. It followed that the author of the offense was placed under ban and left unpunished to the offense of anyone.
In private crimes Lombard legislation left the alternative of either judicially requesting the composition fixed by law or resorting to vengeance. The incontrando sought to limit as far as possible the use of private vengeance, recognizing in effect, however, the difficulty of overcoming the custom of his people. But Emperor Charlemagne did even more, who expressly appealed to the sentiment of Christian fraternity where he decreed (Cap. Aquieg. 802, 32): «ne peccatum accrescat, ut inimicitia maxima inter christianos non fiat, uti suadentes (sic) diabulo homicidia contingens, statumus ad suam emendationem recurrat, totaque celeritate perpetratum malum ad propinquos extincti, digna composizione emendet».
The Church had repeatedly provided for the forgiveness of private offenses, for the suspension of vendettas, with the institution of the truces of God and of the peaces, and with the establishment of places of refuge (churches and monasteries) in which the guilty or presumed [guilty] party could take shelter (v. ASILO, DIRITTO di). It worked at the same time through the clergy and the bishops for the investigation of the actual responsibilities, and, once these were ascertained, it invited the offended party and his family to accept the composition in place of private vengeance.
So that it is especially to the Church and to its work of moral persuasion that we owe it if the deeply rooted Germanic use of private vengeance was slowly removed from customs.