Thirteenth-century knight was a murder victim, researchers believe
The remains of a thirteenth-century skeleton discovered buried at Norton Priory in western England were likely of a knight who was murdered by a sword cut to his upper back.
Social Deviancy: A Medieval Approach
Why bother with the weakest members of society by allocating substantial resources for keeping them alive and well in designated spaces?
Nomadic Violence in the First Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Military Orders
That the threat posed by bands of marauders was taken seriously by the early crusader settlers can be seen by some of the barons’ brutal reactions to it.
The King’s Mercy. An Attribute of Later Medieval English Monarchy
Modern assumptions about medieval justice still tend to see this process of amelioration as merely occasional and exceptional: mercy needed to be applied only where special circumstances made it inappropriate to apply the full rigours of the law. This, however, is seriously to misunderstand both the purpose and the pervasiveness of mercy in the operation of medieval justice.
A Medieval Murder – Interview with Frederik Pedersen
Frederik Pedersen, Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, talks with Medievalists.net about the murder of William Cantilupe on March 23, 1375.
Homicidal Pigs and the Antisemitic Imagination
This is not parody. It is not carnival. It is not a bestiary. The case of the black-snouted sow of Senlis is an actual legal document – one of upwards of thirty-five such cases known-in which various beasts were tried, convicted, and punished for criminal acts of brutality.
The Outlaws of Medieval England
In reality, the outlaws of medieval England had much more in common with a modern Mafiaso than they did with the gallant hero of Anglo-Saxon legend.
Arboriculture and the Environment in Manosque, 1341-1404
This thesis uses records of criminal inquisitions from 1341 to 1404 to take up the question of medieval environmental consciousness.
Of the Thief on the Cross: The Problem of Pain in Punishment
Legal and social historians assume that once a state structure became involved in the punishment of crimes, the aim of punishment was obviously deterrence. The spectacle of hanging or of broken bodies hoisted on the wheel served that end.
Wergeld: Crime and the compensation culture in medieval England
Wergeld is the payment demanded of a person who has killed someone. That is, until the 9th century when it was replaced by capital punishment. The history of ‘compensation culture’ is older than some might think.
First Catch Your Toad: Medieval Attitudes to Ordeal and Battle
Emma, the mother of Edward the Confessor, had walked over hot iron ploughshares to disprove an allegation of intimacy with Alwyn Bishop of Winchester, while Curthose, the Conqueror’s son, is reputed to have undergone the ordeal to prove his paternity.
The Roman De La Rose and the Thirteenth Century Prohibitions of Homosexuality
This paper, a tentative approach by someone who is not an expert in this area or on this text, argues that Guillaume de Lorris offers a veiled description of a male to male love relationship.
The Court of Beast and Bough: Contesting the Medieval English Forest in the Early Robin Hood Ballads
The medieval English forest has long been a space of contested legal meanings. After King William I first created the 75,000-acre New Forest, the English monarchy sought to define the vert, both legally and ideologically, as a multiplicity of sites in which the king’s rights were vigorously enforced.
The Stealing of the “Apple of Eve” from the 13th century Synagogue of Winchester
In January 1252, King Henry III sent a remarkable writ to the sheriff of Hampshire.
The Harsh Life on the 15th Century Croatia-Ottoman Empire Military Border: Analyzing and Identifying the Reasons for the Massacre in Cepin
Turkish intrusions into what is today the continental part of Croatia began in 1391 and continued throughout the 15th, and the beginning of the 16th century when a large part of continental Croatia was incorporated into the Turkish Empire.
Medieval Prostitution in Secular Law: The Sex Trade in Late Medieval London, Paris, and Toulouse
In order to understand the regulations that were put into place to deal with prostitutes and their trade in medieval England and France, it is important to have an understanding of what the legislators were trying to regulate. Who were these prostitutes? What acts constituted prostitution? What actions made a person a procurer, pimp, or bawd?
State power and illicit sexuality: the persecution of sodomy in late medieval Bruges
The study of marginal groups in the late medieval Low Countries is much neglected. The issues of when, where and how homosexuals came to be marginalized, to be regarded as a danger to social order, have not been specifically investigated in this part of Europe.
Be My Medieval Valentine?: Five Fabulous Books on Love!
Five fabulous books to enjoy with your Abelard or Heloise! Happy Valentine’s Day Medievalverse!
The Rectitudines singularum personarum: A Pre- and Post-Conquest Text
The most important extant document for our understanding of Anglo-Saxon manorial social structure is a text scholars call the Rectitudines singularum personarum
Torture and Plea Bargaining
Under certain circumstancesthe law permitted the criminal courts to employ physical coercionagainst suspected criminalsin orderto induce them to confess. The law went to great lengths to limit this technique of extorting confessions to cases in which it was thought that the accused was highly likely to be guilty…
Review: The Countess
The Countess is a 2009 film about Elizabeth Báthory. It is the Julie Delpy’s third directorial effort. Julia casts her self in the starring role as Erzsébet Báthory.
Feuding in Viking Age Iceland’s Great Village
My premise is that we come closest to understanding early Icelanders through a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, by focusing on their well-documented perception of themselves as a community and, on theother hand, through anthropological and historical analyses of the forces that shaped this perception.
Early Irish Law, Annals, and Computer Science
What I propose to do is establish the approximate number of people who died during the fighting by feeding the rules of Early Irish law into a computer program.
Child sexual abuse: historical cases in the Byzantine empire (324-1453 A.D.)
Our research into the original texts of Byzantine historians and chroniclers indicates that child sexual abuse flourished even in a religious mediaeval society such as that of Byzantium, a state which comprised the rational continuation of the Roman empire and which was the most important state in the known world for 11 centuries (324 –1453 A.D.).