[MR] medieval punishements (Fwd: Aoife-Links Digest, Vol 9, Issue 3)

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Some cheery info for a bright, sunny day!
Ingvild


This  week's column is all about crime, and how it was handled in the Middle  
Ages. Let me tell you, there are some pretty inventive punishments that  were 
invented in the Middle Ages! And some of the "crimes" would barely be  looked 
at today. In absence of an organized police force, exactly how was  crime 
handled? If you've ever wondered about it, read on to find out how  crime was 
discovered and how punishment was meted out. It's a fascinating  subject 
worthy of the interest of every "Law and Order" fan out  there.

Cheers!

Aoife

Dame Aoife Finn of Ynos Mon
m/k/a  Lisbeth Herr-Gelatt
Riverouge
Endless  Hills
Aethelmearc


Medieval Crime  Museum
http://www.kriminalmuseum.rothenburg.de/Englisch/page1.html
(Site  Excerpt) .Additionally, these exhibits include instruments of torture, 
 
items used in the execution of sentences, costly books, graphic arts,  
documents of emperors, princes, the nobility and towns. Also included are  
coats of arms, seals, crafts, trades and patents of the nobility;  
caricatures of the judiciary, juristic ex libris, schools and their  
punishments, medals of law and justice, and legal symbolisms from seven  
centuries.

Medieval Crime, Violence and Superstition: Symptomatic  Dysfunction By 
Jerrold  Atlas
http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/ja/medcrime.htm
(Site Excerpt)  Seventy-three million people crowded Europe at the start of 
the fourteenth  century; 23 million died or moved during the 1348-1352 
plagues. France (14  million), England (5 million), Germany (11 million), 
Italy (10 million)  and Scandinavia enjoyed the greatest population increase 
while Russia,  Poland, Hungary and the Mediterranean world declined to year 
1000 levels.  Food supplies and agricultural differences were the keys to 
understanding  these differences. Beans and peas returned nitrogen to the 
soil as did  other crop rotations and technologies. Wage labor replacing 
obligatory  serf work also altered the productivity of the expanding land 
under  cultivation.

Medieval Law and  Order
http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/year7links/life/lawandorder.pdf
An  excellent article. Adobe Acrobat required to read. (Site Excerpt) Law and 
 
order was very harsh in Medieval England. It was believed
that people  would only learn how to behave properly if they feared
what would happen to  them if they broke the law. Even the
'smallest' offences had serious  punishments.

Medieval Sourcebook:
The Ecloga on Sexual Crimes (8th  Cent.)
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/ecloga1.html
(Site Excerpt)  3. A person who has carnal knowledge of a nun shall, upon the 
footing that  he is debauching the Church of God, have his nose slit, because 
he  committed wicked adultery with her who belonged to the Church; and she on 
 
her side must take heed lest similar punishment be reserved to her. 4.  
Anyone who, intending to take in marriage a woman who is his goddaughter  in 
Salvation-bringing baptism, has carnal knowledge of her without  marrying 
her, and being found guilty' of' the offence shall, after being  exiled, be 
condemned to the same punishment meted out for other adultery,  that is to 
say, both the man and the woman shall have their noses  slit.

Outlaws and Highwaymen
The History of the Highwaymen
and  their Predecessors,
the Medieval  Outlaws
http://www.outlawsandhighwaymen.com/
(Site Excerpt) The  Dominican preacher John de Bromyard complained that 
England was more  crime-ridden than any other country. Wealthy men surrounded 
themselves  with gangsters and thugs, who acted as their enforcers and 
strongarm men.  The legal system was corrupted by influence and bribery, so 
it was hard to  bring serious criminals to justice.

Medieval  Punishment/Torture
http://www.fidnet.com/~kawlaw/medieval.html
(Site  Excerpt) During the Middle Ages, punishment was the solution to every  
criminal or social offense ranging from stealing to adultery to heresy.  All 
these areas of medieval punishment had there own means of justice,  however 
the most interesting and most controversial would have to be, the  use of 
torture.

Penalties of Shame and Honor (Not error msg. will  always pop-up. No error 
exists. Click OK to  continue)
http://members.tripod.com/~Mr_sedivy/shame.html
(Site Excerpt)  The Kriminal Museum displays Medieval through 18th-century 
forms of  punishment and of shame. The Masks of Shame: Those being punished 
had to  wear these masks for public displays of their shame. There was a 
"Flute of  Shame" for bad musicians, "Swine Mask" for men treating women 
poorly, the  "Hood of Shame" for bad students, and many more masks of shame.

British  National Archives Learning center:
What were the purposes of punishments  given by courts in the Middle  Ages?
http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/candp/punishment/g03/default.htm
(Site  Excerpt) As you can find out in Gallery 2, crime prevention was in the 
 
hands of the local community. Punishments therefore had to be simple and  
generally seen to be fair. It was also, as you can see in Gallery 1, a  
mainly law-abiding time, with a powerful Church which taught a duty to be  
merciful. Fierce, physical punishments like mutilation (cutting off part  of 
the offender's body), common in earlier periods, were now rarely used.  On 
the other hand, there was no police force, so serious offences had to  be 
dealt with firmly and quickly. The death penalty was used quite  often.

Indulgences
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GLOSSARY/INDULGE.HTM
(Site  Excerpt) The logic of indulgences is hard for moderns to understand, 
but  in reality they make a great deal of sense. The whole concept of an  
indulgence is based on the medieval Catholic doctrine that sinners must  not 
only repent of sins that they've committed, they must also confess  these 
sins and pay some sort of retribution. You see, the problem with  repentance 
and confession is that the only evidence you have of repentance  is the 
sinner's claim to be repentant.

Did the Punishment fit the  Crime?
A  Bibliography
http://resources.mhs.vic.edu.au/crimeandpunishment/punishment/resources.htm

History  of Punishment
http://www.crab.rutgers.edu/%7Ejasiegel/chapter2/
A list  of links on the subject

Early Forms of Justice and  Law
http://regentsprep.org/Regents/global/themes/justice/index.cfm
(Site  Excerpt) Most kings knew that for ordinary people to obey a law, they 
had  to understand it, and know the consequence if they broke it.  This was  
true in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and among the ancient Hebrew people. As  a 
result, most ancient codes of law seemed to be a punishment for some  action 
or misbehavior. The harsh punishments of ancient codes make sense  when it is 
understood that ancient peoples thought law was something that  had been 
given to them by God.  So, in their view, if a person broke  a law, they were 
also disobeying God.

Learn History.com
Crime,  Punishment and Protest through  time
http://www.learnhistory.org.uk/cpp/
(Site Excerpt) Why Study  CPP?  You learn what crimes have made the news 
through time - and  what the authorities have tried to do about them!  What 
has made the  people of this island rise up and demand change? You'll study 
the protest  movements from Kett through to the Poll Tax Protests.

About.com  Discipline of the Medieval  Child
http://historymedren.about.com/library/weekly/aa012801c.htm
(Site  Excerpt) The primary guideline followed by medieval parents in 
training  their children was the biblical admonishment: "Spare the rod and 
spoil the  child." Scolding was considered ineffectual, and cursing a child 
was a  terrible thing.1 Centuries before the field of child psychology came 
into  being, medieval parents would have had no use for a "time out," which 
may  have appeared more like a reward than a penalty. Corporal punishment was 
 
undoubtedly the norm.

Medieval  Inquisition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Inquisition
(Site  Excerpt) The medieval inquisitions were in response to growing mass  
heretical movements, in particular the Cathars first noted in the 1140s  and 
the Waldensians starting around 1170. Heretical individuals, for  example 
Peter of Bruis, had always been a challenge for the Church.  However, the 
Cathars were the first mass heretical organization that posed  a serious 
threat to both the authority of the Church and the accepted  teachings of 
Christianity. To counter the threat of heresy the church used  the weapon of 
inquisition.

Medieval Sourcebook: ANGELO CLARENO ON  AN INQUISITORIAL TORTURE  SESSION
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/clareno-inq.html
(Site  Excerpt) Angelo Clareno joined the Franciscan order around 1274, just 
in  time to become involved in the first serious confrontation between  
spiritual Franciscans and their leaders. It was in the province of Ancona,  
and by the 1280s things were bad enough there so that Angelo and others  were 
thrown in prison for several years. They were released when the  
newly-elected minister general, Raymond Geoffroi, came through on an  
inspection tour. Raymond, the only minister general whose sympathies lay  
with the spirituals, ordered Angelo and his colleagues released and,  
realizing he could do little to protect them from their superiors, sent  them 
to Armenia. Eventually they fell out with Franciscan leaders there  too, and 
by 1294 they were back in Italy presenting themselves to the new  pope, 
Celestine V.

Click2History: Instruments of Torture in  Medieval Times (Warning: Strong 
Political  Opinion)
http://www.click2history.com/torture/torture_ch1.htm
(Site  Excerpt)  Sometimes instruments of torture defy human comprehension.  
The links to photographs in this story will allow you to examine actual  
torture devices, gathered together for an exhibit that began in Florence  (in 
1983) and closed in Barcelona (in 1986). Many of these objects of  legal 
tyranny are originals, used as far back as the 1500s. Others are  accurate 
reconstructions. The links to drawings and illustrations depict  how these 
instruments of torment were used.

Medieval Torture  Devices
http://damoo.csun.edu:8888/9670
5 Links on the  subject