Two high-profile US criminal cases have some surprising similarities to medieval ideas of justice. The first involves the killing of Jordan Neely by former Marine Daniel Penny; the second, the assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, apparently by 26-year-old Luigi Mangione.
At first glance, the two examples seem to have little in common, other than that they took place in Manhattan. Penny placed Jordan Neely, a homeless man suffering from mental illness, in a chokehold after the latter began acting violently on a subway car. Mangione, on the other hand, apparently carried out an elaborate and premeditated plan to stalk, then shoot Thompson. The one killing was of one of society’s most privileged; the other, one of its most vulnerable.
The common thread between them is widespread approbation for the actions of these two young men. Undoubtedly, gun violence is not going to accomplish healthcare reform, nor will vigilantism solve the mental-health crisis in American cities. However, on the Internet at large—in comments sections of such liberal newspapers as The New York Times, on Reddit, in the comments thread for a YouTube video of Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good”—both killings were praised.
Security camera footage of the shooting of Brian Thompson – Wikimedia Commons
Another common thread running between both of these deaths—besides the killers’ movie-star good looks—is a clear failing of both the state and the social contract it represents. In the case of Thompson’s shooting, the problems with American healthcare have long been criticized, but the normal channels of our political system have been unable to enact reform: “It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play,” as Mangione reportedly wrote in his notebook. In Penny’s case, most commenters blamed not Neely himself, but a transit system that feels unsafe to many and a society that seems unwilling or unable to care for the troubled and potentially violent.
The idea of extrajudicial killing as being somehow licit has counterparts in both folk and academic traditions stretching back to the Middle Ages, when the organs of state power were weak and often corrupted for private ends. In the original Robin Hood ballads, the Merry Men mercilessly dispatched hypocritical clergy and hated royal officials such as the Sheriff of Nottingham. However, the first recorded Robin Hood stories are only from the fifteenth century; other literary examples long predated him. These include the story of Girart de Vienne, a nobleman who rebels against Charlemagne, written by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube c. 1170-1224 and popular for centuries thereafter; Eustace the Monk, who lived in the late twelfth century, supposedly left the monastery to fight a judicial duel, and became the subject of later epic poetry; and Hereward the Wake, a Saxon who resisted the Normans and whose story is attested in a single thirteenth-century manuscript but who later became the subject of much later speculation and perhaps inspired Scott’s Ivanhoe.
Hereward the Wake drawn by John Cassell in 1865 – Wikimedia Commons
Such noble outlaws were probably more the stuff of fiction than reality. Real-life outlaws such as Adam the Leper were ruthless criminals, while the Beati Paoli and Vendicatori, secret societies that supposedly resisted Norman rule in Sicily, are ill-documented. Other “medieval” outlaws, such as the Welsh Twm Sion Cati, may have been based on fact, but their romantic legends are decidedly post-medieval. So, too, are our modern exemplars not so clear-cut: Mangione was born into a well-off family and attended an Ivy League university, while Thompson was born into a working-class family and went to a state university. However, as archetypes, the stories remain powerful.
The social historian Eric Hobsbawm called these sorts of stories examples of the “social bandit” trope. Being a Marxist, Hobsbawm thought that the “social bandit” was a phenomenon that properly belongs to agricultural societies, but it’s easy to see that it lives on both in popular media and in activism. Such stories follow similar outlines: The “social bandit” becomes radicalized as a victim of injustice (in Mangione’s case, his mother’s and his own experience of chronic pain; in Penny’s case, arguably, a system unable to restrain disorder). They right wrongs, killing either in self-defense (Penny) or for what they perceive as justified vengeance (Mangione). They rob from the rich to give to the poor (Mangione’s targeting of an insurance company CEO certainly aligns with this trope). They cannot be caught because of their mastery of terrain and disguise and the help of the common people (Mangione’s flight is an obvious parallel, but Penny was initially questioned and released by the police and then only arrested ten days later after a public outcry). They are pardoned for their misdeeds by the ultimate arbiter of justice and reintegrated into society (Penny was exonerated by a jury, though it seems unlikely Mangione will escape a long prison term). Finally, their final downfall comes from betrayal (in Mangione’s case, he was arrested because a McDonald’s employee recognized him).
Informal or subcontracted justice could take many forms in the Middle Ages. For instance, Mediterranean city-states such as Marseilles might issue letters of marque for merchants to recover losses. The Vehm of Germany were secret law courts with the power of life and death that operated in the interstices of feudal law. Charivari, a form of informal mob justice, was used to uphold social norms. What all of these had in common with both the literary trope of the “social bandit” and the killings of Thompson and of Neely was the failing of a weak central state to redress wrongs, thus necessitating justice be taken into private hands.
Furthermore, in both Penny and Mangione’s cases, the failure is that of our collective obligation to provide for the sick and vulnerable, with predictable, if tragic, results. Whether or not these two men are truly laudable is a matter for each individual’s conscience. However, the popular lionization of Penny and of Mangione is indicative of a larger problem and should serve as a warning to those in power.
By Ken Mondschein
Two high-profile US criminal cases have some surprising similarities to medieval ideas of justice. The first involves the killing of Jordan Neely by former Marine Daniel Penny; the second, the assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, apparently by 26-year-old Luigi Mangione.
At first glance, the two examples seem to have little in common, other than that they took place in Manhattan. Penny placed Jordan Neely, a homeless man suffering from mental illness, in a chokehold after the latter began acting violently on a subway car. Mangione, on the other hand, apparently carried out an elaborate and premeditated plan to stalk, then shoot Thompson. The one killing was of one of society’s most privileged; the other, one of its most vulnerable.
The common thread between them is widespread approbation for the actions of these two young men. Undoubtedly, gun violence is not going to accomplish healthcare reform, nor will vigilantism solve the mental-health crisis in American cities. However, on the Internet at large—in comments sections of such liberal newspapers as The New York Times, on Reddit, in the comments thread for a YouTube video of Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good”—both killings were praised.
Another common thread running between both of these deaths—besides the killers’ movie-star good looks—is a clear failing of both the state and the social contract it represents. In the case of Thompson’s shooting, the problems with American healthcare have long been criticized, but the normal channels of our political system have been unable to enact reform: “It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play,” as Mangione reportedly wrote in his notebook. In Penny’s case, most commenters blamed not Neely himself, but a transit system that feels unsafe to many and a society that seems unwilling or unable to care for the troubled and potentially violent.
The idea of extrajudicial killing as being somehow licit has counterparts in both folk and academic traditions stretching back to the Middle Ages, when the organs of state power were weak and often corrupted for private ends. In the original Robin Hood ballads, the Merry Men mercilessly dispatched hypocritical clergy and hated royal officials such as the Sheriff of Nottingham. However, the first recorded Robin Hood stories are only from the fifteenth century; other literary examples long predated him. These include the story of Girart de Vienne, a nobleman who rebels against Charlemagne, written by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube c. 1170-1224 and popular for centuries thereafter; Eustace the Monk, who lived in the late twelfth century, supposedly left the monastery to fight a judicial duel, and became the subject of later epic poetry; and Hereward the Wake, a Saxon who resisted the Normans and whose story is attested in a single thirteenth-century manuscript but who later became the subject of much later speculation and perhaps inspired Scott’s Ivanhoe.
Such noble outlaws were probably more the stuff of fiction than reality. Real-life outlaws such as Adam the Leper were ruthless criminals, while the Beati Paoli and Vendicatori, secret societies that supposedly resisted Norman rule in Sicily, are ill-documented. Other “medieval” outlaws, such as the Welsh Twm Sion Cati, may have been based on fact, but their romantic legends are decidedly post-medieval. So, too, are our modern exemplars not so clear-cut: Mangione was born into a well-off family and attended an Ivy League university, while Thompson was born into a working-class family and went to a state university. However, as archetypes, the stories remain powerful.
The social historian Eric Hobsbawm called these sorts of stories examples of the “social bandit” trope. Being a Marxist, Hobsbawm thought that the “social bandit” was a phenomenon that properly belongs to agricultural societies, but it’s easy to see that it lives on both in popular media and in activism. Such stories follow similar outlines: The “social bandit” becomes radicalized as a victim of injustice (in Mangione’s case, his mother’s and his own experience of chronic pain; in Penny’s case, arguably, a system unable to restrain disorder). They right wrongs, killing either in self-defense (Penny) or for what they perceive as justified vengeance (Mangione). They rob from the rich to give to the poor (Mangione’s targeting of an insurance company CEO certainly aligns with this trope). They cannot be caught because of their mastery of terrain and disguise and the help of the common people (Mangione’s flight is an obvious parallel, but Penny was initially questioned and released by the police and then only arrested ten days later after a public outcry). They are pardoned for their misdeeds by the ultimate arbiter of justice and reintegrated into society (Penny was exonerated by a jury, though it seems unlikely Mangione will escape a long prison term). Finally, their final downfall comes from betrayal (in Mangione’s case, he was arrested because a McDonald’s employee recognized him).
Informal or subcontracted justice could take many forms in the Middle Ages. For instance, Mediterranean city-states such as Marseilles might issue letters of marque for merchants to recover losses. The Vehm of Germany were secret law courts with the power of life and death that operated in the interstices of feudal law. Charivari, a form of informal mob justice, was used to uphold social norms. What all of these had in common with both the literary trope of the “social bandit” and the killings of Thompson and of Neely was the failing of a weak central state to redress wrongs, thus necessitating justice be taken into private hands.
Furthermore, in both Penny and Mangione’s cases, the failure is that of our collective obligation to provide for the sick and vulnerable, with predictable, if tragic, results. Whether or not these two men are truly laudable is a matter for each individual’s conscience. However, the popular lionization of Penny and of Mangione is indicative of a larger problem and should serve as a warning to those in power.
Ken Mondschein is a scholar, writer, college professor, fencing master, and occasional jouster. Ken’s latest book is On Time: A History of Western Timekeeping. Click here to visit his website.
Click here to read more from Ken Mondschein
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