Medieval justice is often imagined as brutal and unforgiving, yet the death penalty in the Middle Ages was far rarer than most people think. Across medieval Europe, courts turned to fines, banishment, and royal pardons long before execution became a symbolic last resort.
By Lorris Chevalier
The collective imagination has long associated medieval justice with scenes of cruelty, bodies on the scaffold, fires blazing in market squares, and the “brilliance of the torture” that Michel Foucault famously evoked in Surveiller et Punir. Yet this picture, drawn largely from the political spectacles of the Old Regime, does not accurately reflect the realities of medieval criminal justice. In truth, the death penalty in the Middle Ages was a rare and exceptional punishment, invoked far more often in theory than in practice. It was not the everyday instrument of authority, but rather its ultimate, symbolic manifestation.
From Spectacle to Exception: The Political Use of Death
A 19th-century depiction of the execution of Duke Jacques d’Armagnac in 1477 – Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne de la maison de Valois, 1364-1477 by M. De Barante, Volume 11. Paris: Le Normant, Garnier frères, 1854
Foucault’s vision was grounded in the punishment of crimes of lèse-majesté — treason, rebellion, and heresy — where execution served to magnify the power of the prince. The flaying of the regicide François Ravaillac in 1610, or the quartering of traitors under Louis XI in the 1470s, illustrates this theatrical display of state vengeance. Yet these were exceptional cases, reserved for those who directly challenged royal authority.
During the reign of Louis XI (1461–1483), for instance, political executions did occur, notably that of Jacques d’Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, in 1477, who was accused of treason and beheaded in Paris. But such executions were reserved for the highest nobility and carefully staged as public affirmations of monarchical sovereignty. At the same time, other high-profile traitors, such as the Duke of Alençon, escaped death thanks to royal clemency in 1458, when Jean Juvénal des Ursins successfully urged Charles VII to pardon him. The execution of political criminals thus remained as much a matter of royal spectacle as of legal justice.
The Legal Framework: Theory versus Practice
Harvard MS Typ 479 fol. 22v
Legal theory was far harsher than practice. The Coutumes de Beauvaisis written around 1283 by Philippe de Beaumanoir prescribed death for numerous offences: the murderer, traitor, arsonist, or rapist was to be “drawn and hanged”, the heretic burned, the counterfeiter boiled before hanging. The Grand Coutumier de France (14th century) and the works of Jean Boutillier (c. 1395) repeated these principles.
But the reality in court was dramatically different. Records from the Parlement de Paris, the highest court of appeal in the kingdom, show that between 1387 and 1400, only four out of nearly two hundred criminal cases ended in capital punishment. The majority resulted in fines, banishment, or public penance. Even in the 15th century, the age of François Villon, whose poems are filled with the imagery of the gallows, executions for theft or homicide remained rare and were typically reserved for repeat offenders or those of ill repute.
For instance, in 1396, Baudrain du Hamel, a knight notorious for private wars and violent feuds, was condemned to death for his repeated acts of pillage and rebellion. Similarly, in 1444, a man named Haquinet de Rosières from Tournai was executed only after several violent assaults and open defiance of royal authority. These were exceptional, cumulative cases—violence combined with obstinacy against public order.
Vengeance, Honour, and Reconciliation
Judgement scene from an Italian manuscript – ASL MS.107
One of the main reasons for the rarity of the death penalty lay in the persistence of the logic of vengeance. In a world still ruled by honour and reciprocal obligations, killing a wrongdoer could easily perpetuate a cycle of vendetta rather than end it. Judges, aware of these dynamics, often sought compromise and peace instead.
A common alternative to execution was the amende honorable, a ritualised form of public apology. The guilty party would appear bareheaded, in a simple shirt, holding a torch, and proclaim repentance before the court or in the town square. This form of penance could restore honour to both sides and satisfy the demand for justice without bloodshed. For example, in 1413, during the Cabochien revolt in Paris, several rebels were pardoned on condition that they perform such public acts of repentance rather than face execution.
Even when prosecutors demanded death, it was often only the first step in a rhetorical process that led to lesser sentences, fines, branding, or banishment. The Parlement de Paris frequently substituted these lesser penalties. For instance, in 1402, Henri Bruinant, convicted of forgery, was threatened with hanging but instead received a heavy fine of five hundred livres and permanent exile from the kingdom.
Exemplariness and the Moral Function of Death
The executions that did occur were designed as a moral lesson. Medieval jurists, drawing from Roman law and Christian ethics, saw punishment as both distributive and didactic. As the adage from the Digest put it: ut poena unius sit metus multorum “the punishment of one is the fear of many.” But this logic depended on rarity: if death was to terrify and instruct, it had to be exceptional.
Public executions therefore became occasions of civic instruction. At Épernay in the early 15th century, malefactors were led “in broad daylight before the people”, where they confessed their crimes at the stone of justice and before the gibbet. The people’s presence was essential: the crowd validated the justice of the act and, symbolically, participated in the reaffirmation of order. When executions provoked protest, as at Saint-Quentin in 1406, where townspeople tried to prevent the hanging of a prisoner — the disturbance revealed that judicial consensus, not coercion, was the true foundation of authority.
The Notion of Incorrigibility
Hangings depicted in this BNF manuscript
By the late 14th century, the idea of incorrigibility (incorrigibilis) emerged as a key justification for the death penalty. Borrowed from monastic and canonical law, it described those beyond moral recovery, habitual offenders, obstinate sinners, or those whose conduct threatened the social fabric.
The Parlement de Paris applied this concept in 1396 to the aforementioned Baudrain du Hamel, declaring him incorrigible after multiple previous sentences had failed to reform him. By 1484, a judge from Fontenay-le-Comte used the same reasoning to justify the hanging of a thief described as “obstinate in his wicked will”. These men were not merely criminals; they were seen as morally corrupted, incapable of amendment, and therefore dangerous to the moral health of society.
A Justice of Mercy and Mediation
British Library MS Royal 20 C VII fol. 134v
Despite the presence of gibbets on the outskirts of medieval towns, execution remained rare and selective. The king’s justice, though sovereign in theory, lacked the bureaucratic machinery to impose coercion on a large scale. Instead, it relied on negotiation, mediation, and, increasingly after 1330, on royal letters of remission, formal pardons that restored peace between offender and victim. Thousands of such letters survive from the 14th and 15th centuries, revealing a justice system more concerned with restoring harmony than exacting vengeance.
Execution, when it occurred, served to remind subjects of the king’s ultimate authority — his right to grant life or death. But this authority was most effective when tempered by clemency. The royal power to pardon was as crucial as the power to punish. Together, they formed the two faces of medieval justice: ira et gratia, wrath and grace.
Death as Symbol, Not as a System
In the end, the death penalty in the Middle Ages was a symbolic cornerstone of justice rather than its daily instrument. It expressed, through rare and solemn ceremonies, the moral and political unity of society under the king. But most medieval judges sought reconciliation, not annihilation; peace, not terror.
Dr Lorris Chevalier, who has a Ph.D. in medieval literature, is a historical advisor for movies, including The Last Duel and Napoleon. Click here to view his website.
Peter Lewis, “Justification and Theory of the Death Penalty at the Parlement of Paris in Late Middle Ages,” War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France, ed. C. Allmand, Liverpool, 2000, p. 190-208.
Medieval justice is often imagined as brutal and unforgiving, yet the death penalty in the Middle Ages was far rarer than most people think. Across medieval Europe, courts turned to fines, banishment, and royal pardons long before execution became a symbolic last resort.
By Lorris Chevalier
The collective imagination has long associated medieval justice with scenes of cruelty, bodies on the scaffold, fires blazing in market squares, and the “brilliance of the torture” that Michel Foucault famously evoked in Surveiller et Punir. Yet this picture, drawn largely from the political spectacles of the Old Regime, does not accurately reflect the realities of medieval criminal justice. In truth, the death penalty in the Middle Ages was a rare and exceptional punishment, invoked far more often in theory than in practice. It was not the everyday instrument of authority, but rather its ultimate, symbolic manifestation.
From Spectacle to Exception: The Political Use of Death
Foucault’s vision was grounded in the punishment of crimes of lèse-majesté — treason, rebellion, and heresy — where execution served to magnify the power of the prince. The flaying of the regicide François Ravaillac in 1610, or the quartering of traitors under Louis XI in the 1470s, illustrates this theatrical display of state vengeance. Yet these were exceptional cases, reserved for those who directly challenged royal authority.
During the reign of Louis XI (1461–1483), for instance, political executions did occur, notably that of Jacques d’Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, in 1477, who was accused of treason and beheaded in Paris. But such executions were reserved for the highest nobility and carefully staged as public affirmations of monarchical sovereignty. At the same time, other high-profile traitors, such as the Duke of Alençon, escaped death thanks to royal clemency in 1458, when Jean Juvénal des Ursins successfully urged Charles VII to pardon him. The execution of political criminals thus remained as much a matter of royal spectacle as of legal justice.
The Legal Framework: Theory versus Practice
Legal theory was far harsher than practice. The Coutumes de Beauvaisis written around 1283 by Philippe de Beaumanoir prescribed death for numerous offences: the murderer, traitor, arsonist, or rapist was to be “drawn and hanged”, the heretic burned, the counterfeiter boiled before hanging. The Grand Coutumier de France (14th century) and the works of Jean Boutillier (c. 1395) repeated these principles.
But the reality in court was dramatically different. Records from the Parlement de Paris, the highest court of appeal in the kingdom, show that between 1387 and 1400, only four out of nearly two hundred criminal cases ended in capital punishment. The majority resulted in fines, banishment, or public penance. Even in the 15th century, the age of François Villon, whose poems are filled with the imagery of the gallows, executions for theft or homicide remained rare and were typically reserved for repeat offenders or those of ill repute.
For instance, in 1396, Baudrain du Hamel, a knight notorious for private wars and violent feuds, was condemned to death for his repeated acts of pillage and rebellion. Similarly, in 1444, a man named Haquinet de Rosières from Tournai was executed only after several violent assaults and open defiance of royal authority. These were exceptional, cumulative cases—violence combined with obstinacy against public order.
Vengeance, Honour, and Reconciliation
One of the main reasons for the rarity of the death penalty lay in the persistence of the logic of vengeance. In a world still ruled by honour and reciprocal obligations, killing a wrongdoer could easily perpetuate a cycle of vendetta rather than end it. Judges, aware of these dynamics, often sought compromise and peace instead.
A common alternative to execution was the amende honorable, a ritualised form of public apology. The guilty party would appear bareheaded, in a simple shirt, holding a torch, and proclaim repentance before the court or in the town square. This form of penance could restore honour to both sides and satisfy the demand for justice without bloodshed. For example, in 1413, during the Cabochien revolt in Paris, several rebels were pardoned on condition that they perform such public acts of repentance rather than face execution.
Even when prosecutors demanded death, it was often only the first step in a rhetorical process that led to lesser sentences, fines, branding, or banishment. The Parlement de Paris frequently substituted these lesser penalties. For instance, in 1402, Henri Bruinant, convicted of forgery, was threatened with hanging but instead received a heavy fine of five hundred livres and permanent exile from the kingdom.
Exemplariness and the Moral Function of Death
The executions that did occur were designed as a moral lesson. Medieval jurists, drawing from Roman law and Christian ethics, saw punishment as both distributive and didactic. As the adage from the Digest put it: ut poena unius sit metus multorum “the punishment of one is the fear of many.” But this logic depended on rarity: if death was to terrify and instruct, it had to be exceptional.
Public executions therefore became occasions of civic instruction. At Épernay in the early 15th century, malefactors were led “in broad daylight before the people”, where they confessed their crimes at the stone of justice and before the gibbet. The people’s presence was essential: the crowd validated the justice of the act and, symbolically, participated in the reaffirmation of order. When executions provoked protest, as at Saint-Quentin in 1406, where townspeople tried to prevent the hanging of a prisoner — the disturbance revealed that judicial consensus, not coercion, was the true foundation of authority.
The Notion of Incorrigibility
By the late 14th century, the idea of incorrigibility (incorrigibilis) emerged as a key justification for the death penalty. Borrowed from monastic and canonical law, it described those beyond moral recovery, habitual offenders, obstinate sinners, or those whose conduct threatened the social fabric.
The Parlement de Paris applied this concept in 1396 to the aforementioned Baudrain du Hamel, declaring him incorrigible after multiple previous sentences had failed to reform him. By 1484, a judge from Fontenay-le-Comte used the same reasoning to justify the hanging of a thief described as “obstinate in his wicked will”. These men were not merely criminals; they were seen as morally corrupted, incapable of amendment, and therefore dangerous to the moral health of society.
A Justice of Mercy and Mediation
Despite the presence of gibbets on the outskirts of medieval towns, execution remained rare and selective. The king’s justice, though sovereign in theory, lacked the bureaucratic machinery to impose coercion on a large scale. Instead, it relied on negotiation, mediation, and, increasingly after 1330, on royal letters of remission, formal pardons that restored peace between offender and victim. Thousands of such letters survive from the 14th and 15th centuries, revealing a justice system more concerned with restoring harmony than exacting vengeance.
Execution, when it occurred, served to remind subjects of the king’s ultimate authority — his right to grant life or death. But this authority was most effective when tempered by clemency. The royal power to pardon was as crucial as the power to punish. Together, they formed the two faces of medieval justice: ira et gratia, wrath and grace.
Death as Symbol, Not as a System
In the end, the death penalty in the Middle Ages was a symbolic cornerstone of justice rather than its daily instrument. It expressed, through rare and solemn ceremonies, the moral and political unity of society under the king. But most medieval judges sought reconciliation, not annihilation; peace, not terror.
Dr Lorris Chevalier, who has a Ph.D. in medieval literature, is a historical advisor for movies, including The Last Duel and Napoleon. Click here to view his website.
Click here to read more from Lorris Chevalier
Further Readings:
Peter Lewis, “Justification and Theory of the Death Penalty at the Parlement of Paris in Late Middle Ages,” War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France, ed. C. Allmand, Liverpool, 2000, p. 190-208.
M. Foucault, Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison, Paris, 1975, chapitre 2, p. 62.
Gauvard, Claude, “La peine de mort en France à la fin du Moyen Âge: esquisse d’un bilan,” Le pouvoir au Moyen Âge, eds. Claude Carozzi and Huguette Taviani-Carozzi, Presses universitaires de Provence, 2007.
Top Image: Badische Landesbibliothek Donaueschingen 79 fol. 89r
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