Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/584

 534 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE ries. Germany came to be composed of two or three hundred little states. There were ecclesiastical principalities ruled by archbishops, bishops, and abbots ; there were dukes and counts and margraves and landgraves. There were sim- ple knights with perhaps a solitary castle and not enough lands and subjects to support them, so that some resorted to plunder and private warfare and were hence known as "robber knights." But even such nobles often claimed to be independent sovereigns. Then there were the free or imperial cities which also undertook to govern themselves and recognized only the vague authority of the emperor over them. The territories of these lords and states, great and small, wound in and out among one another, and their jurisdictions overlapped and conflicted in a way to make the preservation of peace and order practically impossible, and feud and neighborhood war practically certain. And it was easy for criminals and outlaws and fugitive serfs to escape across the frontier of one petty state into the territory of another. This defect was to some extent remedied by an organiza- tion whose members in the fourteenth century existed in all Courts of parts of Germany and which is known as the theVehm Vehm or Fehm. This society had grown out of earlier local courts among the people in Westphalia. Some of its meetings were open to the general public, but others were secret, especially those concerned with criminal justice and with witchcraft or heresy. It was these secret tribunals that were of the most importance in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The penalty for any outsider who in- truded at one of these secret sessions was death. Any free- man, however, who was of honest birth and character was qualified to apply for membership and be initiated into the mysteries of the organization. Such an initiate took a sol- emn oath to assist his associates in serving summonses on accused persons and in executing the sentences of the Vehmic courts, and was then informed of the passwords and secret signs by which the Wissendi of the Vehm recognized one another.