How far did medieval society recognise lesbianism in this period?
There are countless practical issues surrounding the study of women and their sexuality during the Middle Ages. An unfortunate fact is that the majority of contemporary sources available from this period were written, compiled or transcribed by men. It can, as such, be incredibly difficult to detect the medieval women’s voice.
Legal Centralization and the Birth of the Secular State
This paper investigates the relationship between the historical process of legal centralization and increased religious toleration by the state. We develop a model in which legal centralization leads to the criminalization of the religious beliefs of a large proportion of the population.
Warriors and warfare: ideal and reality in early insular texts
This thesis investigates several key aspects of warfare and its participants in the Viking Age insular world via a comparison of the image which warriors occupy in heroic literature to their concomitant depiction in sources which are primarily nonliterary in character, such as histories, annalistic records, and law codes.
Sodomy and the Knights Templar
In this article, I will analyze testimony relevant to the charges of the Inquisition that members of the order of Knights Templar throughout Christendom practiced homosexual acts of various sorts from illicit kisses to sodomy.
Women Healers and the Medical Marketplace of 16th-Century Lyon
Women Healers and the Medical Marketplace of 16th-Century Lyon Alison Klairmont-Lingo Dynamis: Vol.19 (1999) Abstract Although women’s legal and marital status make them…
Organizing the Greed for Gain. Alfonso X of Spain’s Law on Gambling Houses
The “Ordenamiento de las tafurerias” is a law code about gambling, established by a certain Maestre Roldan in 1276 or 1277 CE (1314 / 1315 era hisp.)by command of King Alfonso X of Castile. It represents the most detailed and exhaustive regulation of gambling from the Middle Ages, providing useful information about the practice of gambling, the presumed or real problems connected to it, and the measures taken by authorities.
Lay Preaching and the Lollards of Norwich Diocese, 1428-1431
The following case-study of Lollards in Norwich diocese is in two parts. The basis for the study is a collection of records of heresy trials in the diocese of Norwich from 2 1428 to 1431.
The Inner Exiles: Outlaws and Scapegoating Process in Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar and Gísla saga Súrssonar
Was Icelandic outlawry exceptional? The legal and historical aspect of Icelandic outlawry has been widely studied and commented by scholars (Spoelstra, 1938), either by following indications from the Grágás or through the use of literary examples spread in the sagas.
Corruption at Court? Crisis and the theme of Luxuria in England and France, c. 1340-1422
Why was the behaviour of courtiers such a concern in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries? Historians often take contemporary remarks about the excesses of the court and the immorality of its members as simple observations of fact.
Criminal Behaviour by Pilgrims in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
In the early and high Middle Ages, an introspective religiosity was predominant and supported by Benedictine and Cistercian monks; thus, pil- grimages to holy places were neither as popular nor practiced as they were in the period from the late Middle Ages onwards.
Legal Competition in the Medieval World
Legal Competition in the Medieval World Aaron L. Bodoh-Creed (Cornell University) Cornell University: Working Paper, June 30 (2009) Abstract We develop a model of competition…
Society and the Supernatural: A Medieval Change
The supernatural has become what Renan said it was: ‘The way in which the ideal makes its appearance in human affairs.’
Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History
Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History G. Geltner (Department of History, University of Amsterdam) Urban History: 40,…
Why Roman Law Did Not Succeed in England
England is the only European country whose legal system is not based on the Code of Emperor Justinian I
Judging Female Judges: Sir John Fortescue’s Vision of Women as Judges in De Natura Legis Naturae
Judging Female Judges: Sir John Fortescue’s Vision of Women as Judges in De Natura Legis Naturae Emma Hawkes Limina, Volume 8, (2002) Abstract The…
Gower’s “Confessio” and the “Nova statuta Angliae”: royal lessons in English law
In the following discussion, I will explore some hitherto unexamined links between the Confessio Amantis and one of these legal texts, the Nova Statuta Angliae or New Statutes of England, which circulated among professional and non-professional readers in the 1380s and 1390s and which Richard II received in a manuscript now in Cambridge: St. John’s College MS A.7.
The Role of Woman in Medieval Sweden on the Evidence of the Earliest Legal Texts
Legal texts are aimed at maintaining order and defining what is legal in a given society. In the Middle Ages they often take the form of descriptions of situations and cases representing the conditions for the application of various rules.
Capital Punishment: The Curious History of its Privileged Place in Christendom
The Death Penalty and war have long been linked as practices that present special problems for any professedly Christian ethic.
Trial by Battle
This paper defends trial by battle. It examines trial by battle in England as judges used it to decide property disputes from the Norman Conquest to 1179. I argue that judicial combat was sensible and effective.
Ordeals
No one alive today believes ordeals were a good way to decide defendants’ guilt. But maybe they should.
A Tale of the Rise of Law: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain is a tale of the rise of law, suggesting that there can be no Britain without law – indeed, that Britain, like all nation-state constructs, was law or at least a complex network of interrelated processes and procedures that we might call law.
Medieval Animal Trials
Why were animals put on trial – for murder or for eating crops – in the Middle Ages?
Abduction and power in late medieval England : petitions to the Court of Chancery, 1389-1515
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
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.