vendette

The ordinance abolishing vendetta runs thus—“Whereas, in Montenegro and Brda there exists a custom of vendetta, by which vengeance falls not only on the murderer or guilty individual, but also on his innocent relatives, these vendette are rigorously prohibited.[…]”

1862, I. M., “Christmas in Montenegro”, in Francis Galton, editor, Vacation Tourists and Notes of Travel in 1861, Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. and […] London, page 404

The Judges themselves were “tosspots, strikers, deceivers of maidens, and rogues ingrane”; and, what the masterless men (a very mixed stock and addicted to vendette) were, under such governors, it may be useless to describe. […] Two further statutes respectively subordinated Civil to Canon Law so far as the clergy were concerned, and prescribed police regulations prohibiting family feuds, private wars, and vendette,—all very excellent from the theoretical point of view: but, in practice, the armed hand rather of a Feudal Lord than of a Shepherd of the People was required to enforce them.

1907, C[harles] H[arry] C[linton] Pirie-Gordon, Innocent the Great: An Essay on His Life and Times, London; New York, N.Y.; Bombay; Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Co., […], pages 155 and 160–161

Considering that no convincing alternative explanation for the 19th century’s great vendette has been put forward, it seems worthwhile not to dismiss the focus on mentality but rather to take it seriously: […] Colomba Bartoli, in the most famous of all Corsican vendette let her son be killed for the Bartoli cause, though she was herself born a Carabelli and was now a widow and master of her own fortress in the village of Fozzano (Valéry 1837, I:202). […] Vendette were ritually marked by an initial declaration of war, often accompanying the first murder or else coming immediately after it, and by a conclusive treaty of peace after ‘a suitable lapse of time’ and preferably while “le point d’honneur parait sauf et le nombre des morts s’équilibre sensiblement” (Dominique 1982:309).

1985, Folk, pages 68, 75, and 76