Sanctuary with Shannon McSheffrey
In the Middle Ages, a person could claim sanctuary to delay or avoid punishment for a serious crime. But what were the rules? This week on The Medieval Podcast, Danièle interviews Dr. Shannon McSheffrey to find out how and why medieval people sought sanctuary, and whether or not a convicted heretic could expect the church to save his life.
Vi et Armis: Londoners and Violent Trespass Before the Common Pleas in the Fifteenth Century
The Londoners who entered pleadings in this court between 1405 and 1415 have left a fascinating glimpse into both interpersonal violence and the world of savvy litigators.
More than Mothers: Juries of Matrons and Pleas of the Belly in Medieval England
Common law was an all-male system, with one glaring exception: juries of matrons.
Prisons and Punishments in Late Medieval London
In the history of crime and punishment the prisons of medieval London have generally been overlooked.
The Standing Contest between King Charles and Redbad
Can win a medieval kingdom by being able to stand very still (and with just a little bit of scheming)?
How Medieval Europe thought of Justice
It was in this division of earthly and spiritual justice that the very notion itself encountered its first major challenge as an institution in medieval society.
Criminalising Animals in Medieval France: Insights from Records of Executions
This article explores compelling and specific cases from France during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in which animals were formally executed for crimes.
Wages of sin: The financial operations of a medieval church court
An overwhelming number of the criminal charges made in the Consistory from the second half of the fourteenth century until the last quarter of the fifteenth, the period for which records are most complete, were sexual in nature.
Familia inquisitionis: a study on the inquisitors’ entourage (XIII-XIV centuries)
It is inquisitors that sell, these days: marketing builds upon visual imagination and curiosity, but is also driven by some sort of fascination with these controversial and ultimately incomprehensible individuals who pursued religious non-conformity as a crime.
An Annotated Edition and Translation of The Older Law of Västergötland: The Rightless Code
The Older Law of Västergötland is the oldest surviving text in Old Swedish and marks the beginning of parchment manuscripts written in the vernacular in Sweden.
Proving Facts in Njáls saga
Clover uncovers the seemingly inadequate evidence-finding process in Njáls saga and discusses how the legal process can be transmitted to the saga’s narrative structure.
Medieval Geopolitics: The Medieval “Judicial Revolution”
During the early medieval era, judicial power and authority – the right and ability to adjudicate legal disputes and enforce the law – had hemorrhaged from the public authorities of the Carolingian empire into the hands first of great magnates and then lesser lords.
How Law Was Taught at a Medieval University
Jason A. Brown focus on a medieval manuscript to show how law was taught in medieval universities.
Spoliation and disseisin: possession under threat and its protection before and after 1215
Each of the two great law-making events of 1215, Magna Carta and the Fourth Lateran Council, included provisions relating to dispossession (spoliation, disseisin) and how to remedy some of its previous deficiencies.
Justinian and the Corpus Iuris: An Overview
Justinian’s codification is the bridge that links Antiquity, the Byzantine Empire, and Europe. It is also the link between civil law and common law, and between canon law and civil law.
Anglo-Saxon Punishments: The Price of a Pinky
Recognizing that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, medieval lawmakers believed that justice could be satisfied by aggressors making financial compensation to victims.
Property, Power and Patriarchy: The Decline of Women’s Property Right in England After the Black Death
The social and governmental response to the Black Death in England undermined the social strength of women’s property rights and created a late-medieval patriarchal structure qualitatively different from that of the earlier fourteenth century.
‘To Avoide All Envye, Malys, Grudge and Displeasure’: Sociability and Social Networking at the London Wardmote Inquest, c.1470–1540
‘To Avoide All Envye, Malys, Grudge and Displeasure’: Sociability and Social Networking at the London Wardmote Inquest, c.1470–1540 By Charlotte Berry The London Journal,…
The Courts Christian in Medieval England
This article examines the structure and jurisdiction of the pre-Reformation ecclesiastical courts in England to determine their effect on the Reformation.
Mutilation and the Law in Early Medieval Europe and India: A Comparative Study
Such penalties, the rhetoric surrounding their use, and the circumstances in which they were prescribed sound very familiar to a historian of early medieval Europe, where the language and targets of such precepts were similar to those set out in the Indian material.
A Lifeʼs Worth: Reexamining Wergild in the Anglo-Saxon Royal Law Codes (c. 600-1035)
In the wide and growing world of Anglo-Saxon scholarship, wergild has an at once ubiquitous and spectral presence.
Trial by Combat: The Bloody Business of Justice
As a community of the faithful, medieval people believed that no matter how evenly or unevenly matched the fighters were, the one who was innocent would prevail, but trial by combat was not often a black-and-white thing.
Medieval Executions: The View from the Scaffold
Let’s take a brief look at what judicial execution was really like in the Middle Ages.
The mark of the Devil: medical proof in witchcraft trials
This thesis will analyze the intersection between medical and religious beliefs in the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries to evaluate the importance placed upon medical evidence by secular and ecclesiastical courts.
