Crime and Punishment in Early Medieval Cities

The Development of Town Law Ensured Security and Grew a Middle Class

Mar 17, 2009

By the 11th Century, Europeans began to charter towns and cities, necessitating a legal system that differed radically from the feudal and post-barbarian legal codes.

By the eleventh century, emerging towns began to separate themselves from the feudal system defined by obligations between lords and vassals, and developed separate “communes” tied to royal charters. These “privileged cities” grew over the next two centuries, defining the trend toward urban culture and community, largely dominated by the Guilds and the merchant classes. Of necessity, cities began to develop new legal traditions.” “Town law” differed vastly from the feudal methods of law still practiced in the countryside. These new legal traditions, separating civil from criminal law, would ultimately reshape urban security.

Cities and the Need for Criminal Law

According to author and historian Henri Pirenne, “City law was characterized no less from the criminal point of view than from the civil.” Municipal tribunals, as part of the governing hierarchy, were charged with maintaining the peace of the community. This meant dealing with thieves, bandits, and the occasional highwayman. A source on everyday life in Paris refers to the notion of “retribution:” it was "…there for all to see. Unfailingly, the Paris gallows displayed a crop of 24 decomposing corpses; each time a fresh criminal was executed, one was cut down…” [1]

The security of the community demanded “rigorous discipline,” according to Pirenne. All punishments were public, whether flogging for minor offenses, putting petty “tricksters” into stocks, or executions. Many towns employed hangmen or other executioners and, according to historian Anne Fremantle, “Executions were enthusiastically attended, and evoked the satisfaction of a rousing morality play.”

Town law not only punished, but strengthened the community ties of unity and solidarity. Further, everyone in the town or city was subject to the same laws whether the person was a burgher of great wealth or a Guild journeyman. Anyone entering the gates of the town was subject to the laws of the commune. Pirenne argues that the uniform status of all townspeople helped to build a fledgling middle class or bourgeoisie.

Severity of Punishments

Although fines, flogging, or the parading of a petty offender through the city streets was part of the normal humiliation ascribed to lesser infractions, more severe punishments abounded. Hanging, castration, decapitation, and the amputation of limbs were common acts of retribution, depending upon the crime. In some cases, these retributions were not carried out on the basis or a communal or even “Christian” sense of morality, but rather to maintain the sanctity of the social order. Writing about sex crimes in Renaissance Venice, author Guido Ruggiero comments that, “Adultery, fornication, rape, homosexuality, and other sexual acts labeled criminal threatened the stability and order of family and community.” [2]

Many of these harsh laws would endure for centuries. Hence, visitors touring Colonial Williamsburg can see the stocks, still used in the American colonial period as objects of public punishment and humiliation. In England, a teenage boy could still be hung for stealing a loaf of bread even as the Enlightenment of later years sought to curb or eliminate corporal punishment. Rothenburg ob der Tauber, one of the few remaining medieval walled towns, features a torture museum that is highly popular with visitors.

Medieval town law was a logical evolution of prevailing feudal law, much of it steeped in the Wehrgeld traditions of pagan Europe. It replaced the ordeal and compurgation, also of pagan origin but incorporated into early Christian legal practices. As civilization in Europe progressed, law came into its own: the first European university at Bologna was dedicated to the study of law. The growth of law, permeating every aspect of life, would help to define early modern European progress.

Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade (Princeton University Press, 1974).

Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (Oxford University Press, 1985) [2] p 9.

What Life Was Like in the Age of Chivalry: Medieval Europe AD 800-1500 (Time-Life Books, 1997).

The copyright of the article Crime and Punishment in Early Medieval Cities in High Middle Ages is owned by Michael Streich. Permission to republish Crime and Punishment in Early Medieval Cities in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.