Vendetta has even been found in English since the 19th century, when it was first used to refer to quarrels between different clans or families. Later, it extended in its sense to actions known to occur in quarrels of all kinds. English speakers borrowed vendetta, spelling and everything from Italian where it means “revenge”. It finally goes back to the Latin verb vindicta, which has the same meaning. This Latin word is also in the pedigree of many other English terms that refer to balance, including revenge, revenge, revenge, justification and revenge. Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article on Vendetta It is disputed whether the blood dispute was legal under German or Anglo-Saxon law. During Alfred`s reign in the ninth century, a quarrel could legitimately begin only after an attempt to claim the price of a life. The price, called weregild, also applied to other cruel personal offenses and was paid partly to the monarch for the loss of a subject, partly to the lord for the loss of a vassal, and partly to the next of kin of the wounded. In Anglo-Saxon law, the amount of compensation, called angylde, was set by law and varied according to the status of the person killed.
Joshua Stamper`s 2006©New Jerusalem Music/ASCAP theme borrowed from Italian, “Retribution, Revenge, Blood Feud”, back to Latin vindicta – more to Vindictive A private quarrel, a blonde quarrel in which a loved one is injured or killed and revenge is sought. Revenge for the wrongful death of a person`s loved ones by killing the murderer or compensating for the murderer`s possession. For more encyclopedia articles, see: Crime and Law Enforcement The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2022, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. The Catholic Church exerted much influence to avenge a death by paying compensation, not by further violence, but the bloody quarrel continued throughout England until after the Norman conquest (1066). In the Middle Ages, all European nations had similar customs regarding the murder of their inhabitants. The next of kin of a person who died illegally at the hands of another person had the primary duty to take revenge on the murderer.
This obligation was subject to certain laws and customs relating to the nature of the permissible revenge, the amount of compensation from which compensation could be claimed, the place where compensation was to be paid and the circumstances in which compensation was not required. For example, a blood quarrel was not punished if the person killed was a convicted thief or if the person who committed the murder did so in defence of his master or a female close family member. The idea of imprisoning a person who had committed murder was unknown to history at that time.