King's ban

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title: "King's ban" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["medieval-law", "german-feudalism", "law-of-the-holy-roman-empire"] description: "Exercise of royal jurisdiction" topic_path: "law" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_ban" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Exercise of royal jurisdiction ::

Königsbann, literally king's ban (, more rarely bannum, from the OHG: ban), was the exercise of royal jurisdiction in the Holy Roman Empire.

A specific ban (German: Bann) identified:

• the actual order or prohibition
• the penalties for contravening the ban
• the region to which the ban applied

The king's ban in the legal history of the Holy Roman Empire was divided into several distinct types depending on their function:

• Heerbann, the right to raise an army,
• Blutbann (blood courts; high jurisdiction which included capital punishment),
• Friedensbann (special royal protection of people and property),
• Verordnungsbann (the authority to decide legal standards) and
• Verwaltungsbann (the force to be used).

The king used a so-called Bannleihe ("ban investiture") to transfer (invest) the ban, especially the Blutbann, to counts or advocates to exercise.

Literature

• Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch, I 1967, Sp. 1341 - 1348 s.v. bannus
• Heinrich Mitteis; Heinz Lieberich, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte. Ein Studienbuch. Munich, 1974 u.ö.

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