Blood Court (German: Blutgericht) or high justice in the Holy Roman Empire referred to the right of a Vogt (a reeve) to hold a criminal court inflicting bodily punishment, including the death penalty.
Not every Vogt held the blood court. Up to the 18th century, for example, the blood court of much of what is now the canton of Zürich lay with Kyburg, even in the territory ruled by the counts of Greifensee. The self-administration of the blood court was an important factor of Imperial immediacy.
The Blood banner (Blutfahne or Blutbanner) was a solid red flag. It was presented to feudal lords as a symbol of their power of high jurisdiction (Blutgerichtsbarkeit) together with the heraldic banner of the fief. Some feudal houses adopted a red field symbolic of the blood banner into their coat of arms, the so-called Regalienfeld. The Talschaft (forest canton) of Schwyz used the blood banner as a war flag from ca. 1240 (see flag of Schwyz, flag of Switzerland).
Famous quotes containing the words blood and/or court:
“And though all streams flow from a single course to cleanse the blood from polluted hand, they hasten on their course in vain.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)
“Fortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)