⌚ Crime And Punishment In Medieval Times

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Crime And Punishment In Medieval Times



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They were also profoundly unequal cultures, characterised — particularly from the 14th century — by high levels of social unrest. Sociologists and historians have been able to demonstrate a correlation between levels of inequality and levels of violence, which is particularly compelling for late medieval Europe. Homicides varied from premeditated attacks to tavern brawls that ended in disaster. Often these were over-exuberant episodes gone horribly wrong.

In , for example, one Gerlach de Wetslaria, provost of a church in the diocese of Salzburg, applied for a pardon for killing a fellow student many years earlier when a playful sword fight had ended in tragedy. This sense of fraternity characterises a group of men led by Robert Stafford. It is much rarer to find women perpetrating violent crime; more often they were the victims. It is very difficult to assess levels of rape, because the offence was subject to changing definitions, most of which would appear far too narrow to our modern eyes. Women had to be able to physically demonstrate their lack of consent, and risked their reputations and punishment themselves in doing so.

The odds were loaded against them. Cases that were eventually reported tended to be particularly brutal. In , one Thomas Elam attacked Margaret Perman. The case came to court because she died from her wounds. Elam was condemned to be hanged. Definitions of domestic violence were also radically different in the later Middle Ages. Most acts of aggression that we would deem to be criminal were then thought of simply as acceptable discipline.

If a wife disobeyed her husband, it was thought right and proper that she should be punished. Domestic violence does, though, sometimes appear in the records of ecclesiastical courts when a wife sued for divorce, or in criminal records when the violence resulted in permanent maiming, miscarriage, or death. However, in reality, discussions were more sophisticated and less conclusive than this. In in Paris, one Colin le Barbier hit his wife with a billiard stick so hard that she died. He was tried in a criminal court and found guilty of murder.

However, he appealed and claimed that his wife deserved her suffering because she had nagged him so relentlessly in public. His subsequent acquittal tells us a lot about attitudes in this period. Homicide, rape and domestic violence could be found across the social spectrum. However, some kinds of violence were more common in certain milieux. Violent theft was most often perpetrated by people on the economic margins of society, who stole out of desperation. It peaked during periods of particular deprivation, such as the horrific famine of the s in which as much as 25 per cent of the population died.

England in the 14th and 15th centuries was also notorious for the prevalence of frightening gangs, often comprising gentry or even noblemen. These marauded around the countryside, plundering and leaving a trail of blood in their wake. In , for example, the Folville gang was accused of kidnapping a royal official; they had already killed a baron of the exchequer. These were young men who quite literally thought themselves to be beyond the law, often involved in feuds and vendettas, and for whom honour was a key concept.

Honour-driven violence was also prevalent at the top of the social tree. During periods of weak kingship, violence by noblemen could reach terrifying levels. Things were not much rosier for the English. In the second half of the 15th century, the weakness of the reigning monarch, Henry VI , and the accumulation of huge retinues by hostile aristocrats were, at least in large part, responsible for the Wars of the Roses. The lines between interpersonal violence, civil war and full-blown war were indistinct. At the other end of the social spectrum, in the later Middle Ages the growing structural inequalities created by rapid commercialisation and urbanisation, as well as competing forms of government, generated a series of riots and revolts.

Plotted on a map, these are concentrated along the main trading belt of Europe, from London to Paris and the Netherlands through the markets of Champagne to the commercial heartlands of northern Italy. Revolts along social lines sometimes overlapped with violence driven by religion. Famously, medieval Europe was marked by waves of popular religious persecution, with anti-Semitism rearing its ugly head with depressing frequency.

Yet perhaps the most violent dimension of medieval life was that of the law, which carried out its own gruesome rituals. Punishment was intended to be spectacular. Most serious crimes were punishable by hanging, but plenty more imaginative ways of disposing of criminals were employed. In many areas of Europe, those found guilty of forging money were boiled alive. This obsession with providing a spectacle of violence — to emphasise the guilt of the accused, and to deter and awe observers — led to some almost farcical episodes. An old man questioned in the s remembered how, when he was young, he saw a man hanged for murder.

The body was cut down from the gibbet by a competing jurisdiction and rehanged — only for the original jurisdiction to construct a straw effigy that they hanged. There is, though, a flip side to all of this. The evidence suggests that, though violence was common, people were not simply inured to it. On the contrary — they really cared about it. This is not to say that violence was simply deemed to be wrong: rather, it was a problem about which people worried and talked. The ethos of chivalry represents one way in which attempts were made to channel violence. Chivalric custom suggested that one should fight only with certain kinds of weapons; that one should seek only worthy opponents; and that one should exercise mercy and generosity.

The most important clue that people worried about violence is the fact that they wrote about it. The details of this oath varied from one land to another, but included the responsibility to keep the peace, to administer justice and to uphold the law. The oath of kingship was one way to remind new kings of their official responsibilities. Newly crowned English kings swore to defend the Catholic Church, maintain peace in the realm, oversee the administration of justice and to uphold any laws chosen by the kingdom. Newly crowned Swedish kings swore to defend the law, rule justly, maintain the peace and serve as the protectors of the poor. The responsibility to maintain the peace and uphold the law eventually led to the development of centralized government and the modern nation-state, but it was a long process.

Kingship in medieval Europe was a very different institution from a modern government, because there was no such thing as an uncontested central authority with power to govern an entire nation. Powerful feudal nobles waged wars and vendettas with each other. Protracted struggles such as the Viking invasions of England and the Hundred Years War between England and France disrupted social order.

A king's most important responsibility was to establish order and keep the peace, by force if necessary. This included the duty to fight foreign invaders, to keep the nobles from fighting each other when possible, and to suppress crime and banditry. The king was responsible for administering justice by resolving disputes between noblemen, appointing officials and presiding personally over major court cases. The king's role in administering justice was so important in medieval society that law and order began to fall apart whenever the king was away from his own land for a long period of time.

The nobles relied on the king to resolve their disagreements, because he was the only person they could accept a judgment from without losing face. Therefore, the king's responsibility for administering justice was also part of his responsibility for keeping the peace, notes Nigel Saul in The Three Richards. Throughout medieval Europe, the king was responsible for upholding the law even when he was not bound by it personally. In countries such as France, where the legal system was based on that of ancient Rome, kings were considered the source of all law -- its maker as well as defender -- and were not bound by the law like ordinary mortals.

In countries such as England and Sweden, kings were expected to observe established legal practices, such as the Common Law in England, and could not simply create new laws or have subjects arrested on a whim.

Transportation seemed to have many advantages:. Crime and punishment in medieval times common types of employee crime exist: embezzlement and crime and punishment in medieval times theft. Regan, Richard J. In Millbank Penitentiary opened crime and punishment in medieval times the banks of the Thames where the Tate The Most Dangerous Game Mood Analysis museum stands today. Daily Life.

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