Page "Vehmic court" Paragraph 14

The secret court, from whose procedure the whole institution has acquired its evil reputation, was closed to all but the initiated, although these were so numerous as to secure quasi-publicity ; any one not a member on being discovered was instantly put to death, and the members present were bound under the same penalty not to disclose what took place.

Crimes of a serious nature, and especially those that were deemed unfit for ordinary judicial investigation, such as heresy and witchcraft, fell within its jurisdiction, as also did appeals by persons condemned in the open courts, and likewise the cases before those tribunals in which the accused had not appeared.

The accused, if a member, could clear himself by his own oath, unless he had revealed the secrets of the Fehme.

If he were one of the uninitiated it was necessary for him to bring forward witnesses to his innocence from among the initiated, whose number varied according to the number on the side of the accuser, but twenty-one in favour of innocence necessarily secured an acquittal.

The only punishment which the secret court could inflict was death.

If the accused appeared, the sentence was carried into execution at once ; if he did not appear, it was quickly made known to the whole body, and the Freischöffe who was the first to meet the condemned was bound to put him to death.

This was usually done by hanging, the nearest tree serving for gallows.

A knife with the mystic letters was left beside the corpse to show that the deed was not a murder.