[PDF] Medieval Crime And Social Control eBook

Author : Barbara Hanawalt
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 28,14 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780816631681

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Crime is a matter of interpretation, and never was this truer than in the Middle Ages, when societies faced with new ideas and pressures were continually forced to rethink what a crime was -- and what was a crime. This collection undertakes a thorough exploration of shifting definitions of crime and changing attitudes toward social control in medieval Europe. These essays reveal how various forces in medieval society interacted and competed in interpreting and influencing mechanisms for social control. Drawing on a wide range of historical and literary sources -- legal treatises, court cases, statutes, poems, romances, and comic tales -- the contributors consider topics including fear of crime, rape and violence against women, revenge and condemnations of crime, learned dispute about crime and social control, and legal and political struggles over hunting rights.

Author : Barbara Hanawalt
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 48,52 MB
Release : 1999
Category : History
ISBN : 9780816631698

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Crime is a matter of interpretation, and never was this truer than in he Middle Ages, when societies faced with new ideas and pressures were continually forced to rethink what a crime was -- and what was a crime. This collection undertakes a thorough exploration of shifting definitions of crime and changing attitudes toward social control in medieval Europe. These essays reveal how various forces in medieval society interacted and competed in interpreting and influencing mechanisms for social control. Drawing on a wide range of historical and literary sources -- legal treatises, court cases, statutes, poems, romances, and comic tales -- the contributors consider topics including fear of crime, rape and violence against women, revenge and condemnations of crime, learned dispute about crime and social control, and legal and political struggles over hunting rights.

Author : Barbara A. Hanawalt
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 29,69 MB
Release : 1998-02-12
Category : History
ISBN : 0198026927

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To be labeled "of ill repute" in medieval society implied that a person had committed a violation of accepted standards and had stepped beyond the bounds of permissible behavior. To have a reputation "of good repute", however, was so powerful as to help a person accused of a crime be acquitted by his or her fellow peers. Labeling a person in medieval times was a complex matter. Often, unwritten codes of behavior determined who was of good repute and who was not. Members of the nobility committing a "fur-collar crime" might have considerable leeway to oppress their neighbors with violence and legal violations; however, a woman caught without appropriate attire and without the proper escort hazarded the label of a "woman of ill repute." Gender, class, social statutes, wealth, connections, bribes, friends, and the community all played a role in how quickly or how permanently a person's reputation was damaged. 'Of Good and Ill Repute' examines the complex social regulations and stigmatizations that medieval society used to arrive at its decisions about condemnation and exoneration. In eleven interrelated essays, including three previously unpublished works, Hanawalt explores how social control was maintained in Medieval England in the later Middle Ages. Focusing on gender, criminal behavior, law enforcement, arbitration, and cultural rituals of inclusion and exclusion, 'Of Good and Ill Repute' reflects the most current scholarship on medieval legal history, cultural history, and gender studies. It looks at the medieval sermons, advice books, manuals of penance, popular poetry, laws, legal treatises, court records, and city and guild ordinances that drew the lines between good and bad behavior. Written in a lively, accessible, and jargon-free style, this text is essential for upper level undergraduate history courses on medieval history and women's history as well as for English courses on medieval literature.

Author : Karl Shoemaker
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 36,37 MB
Release : 2011
Category : History
ISBN : 0823232689

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Sanctuary law has not received very much scholarly attention. According to the prevailing explanation among earlier generations of legal historians, sanctuary was an impediment to effective criminal law and social control but was made necessary by rampant violence and weak political order in the medieval world. Contrary to the conclusions of the relatively scant literature on the topic, Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages, 400-1500 argues that the practice of sanctuary was not simply an instrumental device intended as a response to weak and splintered medieval political authority. Nor can sanctuary laws be explained as simple ameliorative responses to harsh medieval punishments and the specter of uncontrolled blood-feuds. --

Author : Albrecht Classen
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 612 pages
File Size : 17,96 MB
Release : 2012-10-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 3110294583

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All societies are constructed, based on specific rules, norms, and laws. Hence, all ethics and morality are predicated on perceived right or wrong behavior, and much of human culture proves to be the result of a larger discourse on vices and virtues, transgression and ideals, right and wrong. The topics covered in this volume, addressing fundamental concerns of the premodern world, deal with allegedly criminal, or simply wrong behavior which demanded punishment. Sometimes this affected whole groups of people, such as the innocently persecuted Jews, sometimes individuals, such as violent and evil princes. The issue at stake here embraces all of society since it can only survive if a general framework is observed that is based in some way on justice and peace. But literature and the visual arts provide many examples of open and public protests against wrongdoings, ill-conceived ideas and concepts, and stark crimes, such as theft, rape, and murder. In fact, poetic statements or paintings could carry significant potentials against those who deliberately transgressed moral and ethical norms, or who even targeted themselves.

Author : Eric Arthur Johnson
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 18,54 MB
Release : 1996
Category : History
ISBN : 9780252065460

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Along with most of the rest of Western culture, has crime itself become more "civilized"? This book exposes as myths the beliefs that society has become more violent than it has been in the past and that violence is more likely to occur in cities than in rural areas. The product of years of study by scholars from North America and Europe, The Civilization of Crime shows that, however violent some large cities may be now, both rural and urban communities in Sweden, Holland, England, and other countries were far more violent during the late Middle Ages than any cities are today. Contributors show that the dramatic change is due, in part, to the fact that violence was often tolerated or even accepted as a form of dispute settlement in village-dominated premodern society. Interpersonal violence declined in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as dispute resolution was taken over by courts and other state institutions and the church became increasingly intolerant of it. The book also challenges a number of other historical-sociological theories, among them that contemporary organized crime is new, and addresses continuing debate about the meaning and usefulness of crime statistics. CONTRIBUTORS: Esther Cohen, Herman Diederiks, Florike Egmond, Eric A. Johnson, Michele Mancino, Eric H. Monkkonen, Eva Österberg, James A. Sharpe, Pieter Spierenburg, Jan Sundin, Barbara Weinberger

Author :
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 14,52 MB
Release : 2013-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1526112833

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This book provides an accessible collection of translated legal sources through which the exploits of criminals and developments in the English criminal justice system (c.1215–1485) can be studied. Drawing on the wealth of archival material and an array of contemporary literary texts, it guides readers towards an understanding of prevailing notions of law and justice and expectations of the law and legal institutions. Tensions are shown emerging between theoretical ideals of justice and the practical realities of administering the law during an era profoundly affected by periodic bouts of war, political in-fighting, social dislocation and economic disaster. Introductions and notes provide both the specific and wider legal, social and political contexts in addition to offering an overview of the existing secondary literature and historiographical trends. This collection affords a valuable insight into the character of medieval governance as well as revealing the complex nexus of interests, attitudes and relationships prevailing in society during the later Middle Ages.

Author : Karl Shoemaker
Publisher :
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 13,22 MB
Release : 2022
Category :
ISBN : 9780823292523

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Sanctuary and Crime rethinks the history of sanctuary protections in the Western legal tradition. Until the sixteenth century, every major medieval legal tradition afforded protections to fugitive criminals who took sanctuary in churches. Sanctuary-seeking criminals might have been required to perform penance or go into exile, but they were guaranteed, at least in principle, immunity from corporal and capital punishment. In the sixteenth century, sanctuary protections were abolished throughout Europe, uprooting an ancient tradition and raising a new set of juridical arguments about law, crime and the power to punish. Sanctuary law has not received very much scholarly attention. According to the prevailing explanation among earlier generations of legal historians, sanctuary was an impediment to effective criminal law and social control, but was made necessary by rampant violence and weak political order in the medieval world. Contrary to the conclusions of the relatively scant literature on the topic, Sanctuary and Crime argues that the practice of sanctuary was not simply an instrumental device intended as a response to weak and splintered medieval political authority. Nor can sanctuary laws be explained as simple ameliorative responses to harsh medieval punishments and the specter of uncontrolled blood-feuds. This book seeks to integrate the history of sanctuary law with the history of criminal law in medieval Europe. It does so by first situating sanctuary law within the early Christian traditions of intercession and penance as well as late-imperial Roman law. The book then traces the transmission of Romano-Christian sanctuary legislation into the feuding traditions of early medieval Europe, showing how sanctuary law was an important emblem of Christian kingship and was integrated into a broad range of social, legal, ecclesiastical and political practices. By the late twelfth-century, sanctuary had been domesticated within the procedures of royal law in England. Unmoored from its taproots in penitential and intercessory practices, sanctuary became a central feature of the emergent law of felony in the early English common law. While sanctuary was widely recognized throughout late medieval Europe, medieval English records provide rich accounts of sanctuary in everyday medieval life and the book reflects the prominence of the English sources. The book concludes by examining the legal arguments in both English and Roman-canonical legal traditions that led to the restriction and abolition of sanctuary privileges in the sixteenth-century and which ushered in a new age of criminal law grounded in deterrence and a state-centered view of punishment and social control.