Putting the Violence Back in the Late Medieval German Feud

Abstract

This paper explains how a sanitized image of the late medieval German feud has come to predominate in contemporary German scholarship and explores its consequences for understanding the social implications of feuding violence. By tracing out the reception of Otto Brunner's seminal Land and Lordship (1939) in post-WWII German feud research, this paper shows how a complex interplay between democratic-liberal sensibilities, Brunner's feud as legal institution model, and his own historical vision of violence resulted in the sanitized model of feuding violence. This model divides feuding violence into categories of rational–functional violence and dysfunctional violence, which, as this article argues, do not map onto the empirical evidence for feuding violence. A series of case studies elucidates the limitations of this model, providing a de-sanitized and de-domesticated image of feuding by vividly demonstrating some overlooked realities of feuding violence: from high rates of interpersonal violence between elites to sexual violence against female non-combatants among others. On the basis of these case studies, this article argues for a fundamental revision of how medieval historians have hitherto approached the topic of violence more broadly.