In late July, I posted a book review on, “A Thing Done”, by Tinney Sue Heath. The book explores the fantastic world of Italian medieval vendetta during the thirteenth century. Here is my interview with this talented and accomplished author.
Abduction and power in late medieval England : petitions to the Court of Chancery, 1389-1515
September 5, 2013 By
This study examines fifty petitions sent to the Court of Chancery between 1389 and 1515 that relate to abduction.
A Cell of their Own: The Incarceration of Women in Late Medieval Italy
September 3, 2013 By
I will then move to sketch the social profile of female inmates, mainly drawing on the records of Le Stinche, the Florentine municipal prison, during its first century of activity, circa 1300–1400.
The Protocol of Vengeance in Viking-age Scandinavia
August 23, 2013 By
Violence, even murder, perpetuated this cycle of revenge. This code of retribution can be broken down further into the following dimensions: the individuals involved, the appropriate actions as deemed by Viking society, and any extenuating circumstances, such as supernatural strength or the wronged party’s reluctance to seek revenge.
Crime and Punishment in Early Irish Law
August 12, 2013 By
Is it possible to tell from the information we have if hanging entered the laws due to the influence of the Church and biblical law, or if it existed as a punishment before the rise of the Church’s influence?
Women on Trial: Piecing Together Women’s Intellectual Worlds from Courtroom Testimony
August 12, 2013 By
To tease out these issues, I would like to offer an analysis of a specific set of criminal records from the city of Toulouse in the later Middle Ages. In recent years, many scholars have attempted to gain access to the lives of women in medieval Languedoc.
The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler
July 26, 2013 By
In 1324, Richard Ledrede, bishop of Ossory, declared that his diocese was a hotbed of devil worshippers. The central figure in this affair was Alice Kyteler, a wealthy Kilkenny woman who stood accused of witchcraft by her stepchildren.
Organized Collective Violence in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Tuscan Countryside: Some Case Studies from Central and North Eastern Tuscany
July 22, 2013 By
Violence is often thought of as a characteristic of all medieval societies. How such societies chose to exercise this violence is therefore a good, and understudied, way into understanding the basic rules about how they worked. Concentrating on twelfth and thirteenth century Tuscany, my intention is to show that a specific form of violence, namely organized collective violence, was not an option available to all social groups within the medieval rural society of northern Italy…
Abortions in Byzantine times (325-1453 AD)
July 18, 2013 By
All legislation of Byzantium from the earliest times also condemned abortions. Consequently, foeticide was considered equal to murder and infanticide and the result was severe punishments for all persons who participated in an abortive technique reliant on drugs or other methods. The punishments could extend to exile, confiscation of property and death.
Inquiring into Adultery and Other Wicked Deeds: Episcopal Justice in Tenth- and Early Eleventh-Century Italy
July 18, 2013 By
This article suggests that Italian bishops often had recourse to spiritual penalties to exercise their coercive authority over serious offences during the tenth and early eleventh centuries.
Murder, Mayhem and a very small Penis
July 14, 2013 By
On a Friday evening in the spring of 1375, William Cantilupe, a knight of the relatively young age of thirty and the great-great-nephew of St Thomas of Hereford, was murdered by members of his household.
Cheapside: commerce and commemoration
July 2, 2013 By
The broad street of Cheapside, Vanessa Harding shows, was a central location in the lives and minds of early modern Londoners. In a crowded city it was a significant open space where public events could be staged and important issues communicated to a wide audience. The everyday reality of shop and market trading — where qualities and values were scrutinized and false dealing punished – enhanced its association with truth and patency. Normally dominated by the authorities, it was on occasion captured by oppositional groups, though their activities tended to reinforce Cheapside’s identity as a place of publicity and validation.
Theft, Homicide and Crime in Late Anglo-Saxon Law
May 27, 2013 By
In order to understand these issues properly we must first consider our own ideas about ‘crime’, a deeply problematic term for the period before the late twelfth century.
Danish Penal Law in the Middle Ages: Cases of Homicide and Woundings
May 25, 2013 By
In the provincial laws, a killing was not simply a killing. The penalty imposed on the killer depended on the conditions under which the killing had taken place.
Was the White Ship disaster mass murder?
May 21, 2013 By
It was perhaps the worst maritime disaster of the Middle Ages, not just because it cost 300 lives, but because one of them was the heir to the Anglo-Norman Empire. One scholar has a theory that the sinking of the White Ship on the night of November 25, 1120 was not a tragic accident, rather a case of mass murder.
Expenses Related to Corporal Punishment in France
May 19, 2013 By
How much did the hangman get paid to carry out his deed?
Going Mad in French: Royal Notaries and Charles V’s Translation Project
May 19, 2013 By
This was another interesting paper from the Mental Health in Non-medical Terms session at KZOO on notaries, and how crimes committed under “mental duress” were processed.
Student Violence at the University of Oxford
May 9, 2013 By
My first foray of KZOO 2013 couldn’t have been off to a better start with, “I just don’t want to die without a few scars”: Medieval Fight Clubs, Masculine Identity, and Public (Dis)order. There were only two papers in this session and both were riveting. I felt like I couldn’t type fast enough to get it all in! The first paper was given by Professor Andrew Larsen of Marquette University. Professor Larsen published a book on high and late medieval student violence and the Saint Scholastica’s Day Riot at Oxford university.
The Interrogation of of a Male Transvestite Prostitute in Fourteenth Century London
April 11, 2013 By
Despite the general rule that sexual offenses were matters for the church courts, in some cases the city of London took charge of these offenses. Prostitution and procuring, for example, involved public order; the temporal courts dealt with them for that reason, so that the same people might be prosecuted in both jusrisdictions for the same offense.
Hatred as a Social Institution in Late-Medieval Society
April 8, 2013 By
At some point early in 1355, the laborer Pons Gasin of Marseilles killed a woman named Alazais Borgona. The peace act that arose from this killing does not tell us why. What it does tell us is that the killing marked the birth of a great hatred between Alazais’s kinfolk and Pons.
BOOK REVIEW: “Death Before Compline”
March 1, 2013 By
BOOK REVIEW: Death Before Compline Bagwyn Books (2012) Sharan Newman This short book, DEATH BEFORE COMPLINE is a great collection of murder-mystery stories by Sharan Newman. It features the adventures of Sharan’s popular and much loved heroine, Catherine LeVendeur, a crime solving woman living in twelfth century France. The stories are chronologically ordered, starting from […]
Animals on Trial
February 24, 2013 By
The history of animals in the legal system sketched by Evans is rich and resonant; it provokes profound questions about the evolution of jurisprudential procedure, social and religious organization and notions of culpability and punishment, and funda-mental philosophical questions regarding the place of man within the natural order.
Under the Greenwood Tree : Outlaws in Medieval England and modern medievalist crime novels
January 27, 2013 By
A recurring theme in several medievalist crime novels is the subject of outlaws. They are used to create ambience, they can be the adversary and main threat to the protagonists, they can be cast in somewhat more heroic roles, and they are sometimes essential to the plot.
Perkin Warbeck: Whether my hero was or was not an impostor, he was believed to be the true man by his contemporaries
December 2, 2012 By
So what about the famous confession? By historians in the Tudor tradition this is usually seen as absolute proof that he was an impostor, arguing that “there is nothing in [his] confession which should make us doubt his truthfulness”. Somehow they cannot have looked at it too closely.
The Curious Career and Uncertain Past of Perkin Warbeck
December 2, 2012 By
Was Warbeck just another in a long line of pretenders to the throne of England, or did his appearance in Ireland in 1491 prove the innocence
of Richard III, whom most historians accuse of murdering his nephews, the Princes in the Tower?
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