its own customs and ways of doing things, and resented attempts to interfere with them. While the right of justice is held by many "unique" courts, relatively strong states make it a pillar of their absolutist (re)emergence to establish numerous courts to administer justice in their name in different territorial circumscriptions, such as the royal (high) sheriffs in England, or to impose an appeal (at least unifying the law as such) to a royal court, as to the various French provincial parlements. High justice High justice, also known as ius gladii ("right of the sword") or in German as Blutgerichtsbarkeit, Blutgericht (lit. "blood justice", "blood-court"; sometimes also Halsgericht, lit. "neck-justice", or peinliches Gericht) is the highest penal authority, including capital punishment, as held by a sovereign—the sword of justice and hand of justice are regalia that symbolize it. In the early Holy Roman Empire, high justice was reserved to the king. From the 13th century, it was transferred to the king's vassals along with their fiefs. The first codification of capital punishment was the Halsgerichtsordnung passed by Maximilian I in 1499, followed in 1507 by the Constitutio Criminalis Bambergensis. Both codes formed the basis of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (CCC), passed in 1532 under Charles V. In the Habsburg monarchy, all regional codes were superseded by the Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana in 1768. The Blutbanner ("blood banner") or Blutfahne ("blood flag") was a solid red flag. It was presented to feudal lords as a symbol of their power of high jurisdiction (Blutgerichtsbarkeit) together with the heraldic banner of the fief. Some feudal houses adopted a red field symbolic of the blood banner into their coat of arms, the so-called Regalienfeld. The Talschaft (forest canton) of Schwyz used the blood banner as a war flag from ca. 1240, and was later incorporated into the flag of Schwyz and the flag of Switzerland. Often it is proudly displayed, in the form of relevant status symbols. Thus permanent gallows are often erected in prominent public places; the very word for them in French, potence, is derived from the Latin "potentia" meaning "power". High justice is held by all states and the highest vassals in the European type of feudal society, but may also be acquired by other authorities as part of a high degree of legal autonomy, such as certain cities; which in time often obtained other high privileges originally reserved for high nobility