We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
View all Google Scholar citations for this article.
Here the worldling now all bound in fetters lies starts to fear his God, his tears flow from his eyes Justice comes along, with gallows, wheel and sword: God tells the pious man to enter Heaven's door.
Across medieval Western Europe, those who committed serious wrongs, such as homicide, arson, treason, and rape were subject to a wide range of capital punishments that were seemingly brutal, frequently bloody, and at times spectacular. Grisly images of an executioner dismembering a condemned's limbs from his torso, smashing his chest cavity, gouging his eyes, or piercing his body with hot pokers are the common stuff of scaffold art in the high Middle Ages. Such images attest to the critical role of pain in medieval capital punishment. Whereas in our day all attempts are made to render penal death painless, in the high and late Middle Ages, the tie between pain and death is not only tolerated but, at times, purposefully exacerbated.
1. Anon., Des bekannten Diebes, Morders und Raubers Lip Tullians, und seiner Complicen Leben und Ubelthaten … (Dresden 1716) (trans. in Evans, Richard, Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany 97 (Oxford U. Press 1996)).
2. Puppi, Lionello, Torment in Art: Pain, Violence and Martyrdom 1–50 (Rizzoli 1991); L'Engle, Susan, Justice in the Margins: Punishments in Medieval Toulouse, 33 Viator 133–165 (2002).
3. Dean, Trevor, Crime in Medieval Europe 1200-1550, at 118–144 (Longman 2001).
4. Pugh, Ralph, Imprisonment in Medieval England (Cambridge U. Press 1968); Dunbabin, Jean, Captivity and Imprisonment in Medieval Europe (Palgrave Macmillan 2002) providing good overviews of medieval imprisonment. Confinement in the period was rarely used for punitive purposes by the temporal power though Ecclesiastical imprisonment for wayward monks or nuns functioned as an accepted practice within the monasteries by the beginning of the eleventh century. Pugh, , Imprisonment 5–9; Dunbabin, , Captivity 100.
5. In America, Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain hit the Academy like a storm, demanding the attention of scholars in medieval legal history, medieval literature, philosophy and law and society to name but four disciplines. Scarry, Elaine, The Body in Pain 13 (Oxford U. Press 1985); see Pain, Death and the Law (Sarat, Austin ed., U. Mich. Press 2001); Kirkpatrick, Robin, Dante and the Body, in Framing Medieval Bodies 236–254 (Kay, Sarah & Rubin, Miri eds., Manchester U. Press 1994); Glucklich, Ariel, Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul 42–44 (Oxford U. Press 2001).
6. Here too, scholars have worked behind the backdrop of an earlier work. See Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Sheridan, Alan trans., Vintage Books 1979). See also Friedland, Paul, Beyond Deterrence: Cadavers, Effigies, Animals and the Logic of Executions in Premodern France, 29 Hist. Reflections 295 (2003); Royer, Katherine, The Body in Parts: Reading the Execution Ritual in Late Medieval England, 29 Hist. Reflections 319–339 (2003). Egmond, Florike, Execution, Dissection, Pain and Infamy—A Morphological Investigation, in Bodily Extremities: Preoccupations with the Human Body in Early Modern European Culture 92–128 (Egmond, F. & Zwijnenberg, R. eds., Ashgate 2003).
7. Scarry, supra n. 5, at 13.
8. Rey, Roselyne, The History of Pain 4–5 (Harv. U. Press 1995).
9. Morris, David B, The Culture of Pain 29 (U. Cal. Press 1993).
10. Dean, supra n. 3, at 126. However, a few historians suggest that in the late Middle Ages, instead of deterrence, extravagant punishments were tied to a symbolic vocabulary of dishonoring, or toward communal cleansing. Egmond, supra n. 6, at 92-96; Friedland, supra n. 6, at 295-317.
11. Egmond, supra n. 6, at 108. Treating the dividing line between the pre-modern and early modern as all-encompassing, Norbert Elias has argued that such acts were tolerated by an age of cruelty that slowly yielded over time to the progressive happening of civilization. Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation (Jephcott, E. trans., Blackwell 1994).
12. See e.g. Green, Richard Firth, A Crisis of Truth 81–83 (U. Pa. Press 1999); Hyams, Paul, Trial By Ordeal: The Key to Proof in the Early Common Law, in On the Laws and Customs of England: Essays in Honor of Samuel Thome 98 (Thorne, Samuel E. & Arnold, Morris S. eds., U. N.C. Press 1981); Clanchy, Michael, Law and Love in the Middle Ages, in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West (Bossy, John ed., Cambridge U. Press 1983); Olson, Trisha, Of Enchantment: The Passing of the Ordeals and the Rise of the Jury Trial, 50 Syracuse L. Rev. 109, 138–141 (2000); Kuehn, T., Arbitration and Law in Renaissance Florence, 23 Renaissance & Reformation 289–292 (1987).
13. Green, Thomas A, Verdict According to Conscience 1–30 (U. Chi. Press 1985) (on jury nullification); Hurnard, Naomi, The King's Pardon for Homicide Before A.D. 1307 (Clarendon Press 1969) (the only full treatment of the prerogative in English from this period). For the Tudor period, see Kesselring, K.J., Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State (Cambridge U. Press 2003). For France, see Gauvard, Claude, “De Grace Especial,“ Crime, etat et Societe en France a la fin du Moyen Age (Publications de la Sorbonne 1991). On sanctuary, see Olson, Trisha, Of the Worshipful Warrior: Sanctuary and Punishment in the Middle Ages, 16 St. Thomas L. Rev. 473, 494–496 (2004).
14. Rey, supra n. 8, at 49.
15. In art history, some work has been done on the redemptive meaning spectators attached to the execution, though the place of pain in this understanding has not been explored. See Merback, Mitchell B., The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe 155–156 (U. Chi. Press 1999); Edgerton, Samuel, Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution During the Florentine Renaissance (Cornell U. Press 1985). For work in a little later period, see Bee, Michel, la Spectacle de l'execution dans la France d'Ancien Regime, XXXVIII Annales 843–862 (1983); Prosperi, Adriano, Il sangue e l'anima ricerche sulle compagnie di giustizia in Italia, 51 Quaderni Storici 959–999 ( 1982).
16. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women 7 (U. Cal. Press 1987).
17. The transition from private wrong to public crime first occurs in England where, by the time of Henry II, serious offenses such as homicide, larceny, robbery, arson, and rape had become pleas of the Crown and were punishable by death or mutilation. Green, supra n. 13, at 9, 30; Maitland, Frederic & Pollock, F., The History of English Law vol. 2, 446 (Cambridge U. Press 1968). Patrick Wormald has argued that this movement occurred earlier than Henry II's reforms. He argues that in late Anglo-Saxon law, there was already a move from compensation to penalty by the King's hand. Wormald, Patrick, Frederic William Maitland and the Earliest English Law, 16 L. & Hist. Rev. 1, 16 (1998). There existed no well-developed state in twelfth-century France. The blood feud remained rampant, and private courts dotted the landscape as a result of the Carolingian age's granting of immunities that gave lords jurisdiction over their fiefs and manors. Accusation during this period continued to be a matter of private law with negotiated peace remaining the norm. Goebel, Julius, Felony and Misdemeanor: A Study in the History of English Criminal Procedure 229, 237 (Commonwealth Fund 1937); Geary, Patrick J., Living With Conflict in Stateless France, in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages 149–151 (Cornell U. Press 1994); White, Stephen D., Feuding and Peacemaking in the Touraine Around the Year 1100, 42 Traditio 195, 197 (1986). Yet, through the rule of strong kings such as Philip II and Louis IX, the Crown soon established its authority and concomitantly its role as a guardian of justice. The Holy Roman Empire in the thirteenth century lacked effective royal courts and feuding continued to be a dominant method of dispute resolution for serious wrong. Still, the Saxon Mirror of c. 1225 indicates that, notwithstanding the multiplicity of jurisdictions that existed within the empire, there was by the thirteenth century a developing sense that all judicial authority came from the Emperor. The Saxon Mirror 17 (Dobozy, Maria trans., U. Pa. Press 1999). Similarly, in the Italian city states, beginning in the late thirteenth century, one can trace the movement away from a conception of serious wrongdoing as a personal matter between the wrongdoer and his victim toward a public conception of wrong as against “honorem et bonum statum comunis” (Siena 1236). Blanshei, Sara Rubin, Crime and Law Enforcement in Medieval Bologna, 16 J. Soc. Hist. 121–138 (1982); Jones, P.J., The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria 377–379 (Clarendon Press 1997); Ruggiero, Guido, Violence in Early Renaissance Venice (Rutgers U. Press 1980).
18. Caenegem, R.C. Van, Law and Power in Twelfth Century Flanders, in Cultures of Power 149, 162 (Bisson, Thomas N. ed., U. Pa. Press 1995).
19. The Eyre of Kent: 6 & 7 Edward II, A.D. 1313-1314, at 134 (Maitland, F.W., Harcourt, L.W. Vernon & Bolland, W.C. eds., Seiden Socy. 1909).
20. Summerson, Henry, Attitudes to Capital Punishment in England, in Thirteenth Century England VIII 124 (Prestwich, Michael, Britnell, Richard & Frame, Robin eds., Boydell Press 2001).
21. Lewis, Suzanne, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora 235 (U. Cal. Press with Corpus Christi College 1987); Summerson, id. at 120-134. There were exceptions to hanging. Britton tells us that burning was the penalty for arson, sodomy, sorcery, and heresy. Britton vol. 1, 41–42 (Nicois, Francis M. ed., W.W. Gaunt 1983) (originally published 1865).
22. Recueil des Chroniques par Jehan de Waurin vol. 2, 41–43 (William, & Hardy, Edward L. C.P. eds. & trans., London, 2 vols. 5 Longman 1864–1891).
23. Westminster Chronicle 323 (Hector, L.C. & Harvey, Barbara eds. & trans., Oxford U. Press 1982) (speaking of sentence of Elizabeth Wanton burnt for aiding in death of her husband in 1388).
24. The Saxon Mirror, supra n. 17, at bk. II, § 3.
25. Id. at bk. II, § 14.
26. Beaumanoir, Phillipe de Remi, Coutumes de Beauvaisis of Philippe de Beaumanoir ch. 30, § 824 (Akehurst, F.R.P. trans., U. Pa. Press 1992) [hereinafter Beaumanoir].
27. Id. at § 304.
28. Id. at § 826.
29. Blanshei, supra n. 17, at 122-123.
30. Jones, supra n. 17, at 376-377.
31. Id. at 379.
32. The Chronicles of Lanercost 1272-1346, at 35 (SirMaxwell, Herbert trans., J. Maclehose & Sons 1913).
33. Fraher, Richard, Preventing Crime in the High Middle Ages: The Medieval Lawyer's Search for Deterrence, in Popes, Teachers, and Canon Law in the Middle Ages 229 (Sweeney, James Ross & Chodorow, Stanley eds., Cornell U. Press 1989).
34. Id. at 221; Fraher, Richard M., The Theoretical Justification for the New Criminal Law in the High Middle Ages: Rei Publicae Interest, Ne Crimina Remaneant Impunita, Ill. L. Rev. 584 (1984).
35. Hostiensis, , Lectura in quinque Gregorii Noni decretalium libros 5.39.35 (Turin 1965) (originally published Venice 1581).
36. Durand, Guillaume, Speculum iudiciale vol. 2, bk. 3, preface (Scientia 1975) (originally published Basel 1574).
37. Albertus de Gandino, Tractatus de maleficiis, Kantorowicz, Hermann, Albertus Gandinus und das Strafrecht der Scholastik vol. 2, 52 (J. Guttentag 1907–1926).
38. Ullmann, Walter, The Medieval Idea of Law as Represented by Lucas de Penna 147–149 (Methune & Co., Ltd. 1946).
39. Quoted in Zorzi, A., Rituali e cerimoniali penali nelle città italiane (secc. XIII-XVI), Riti e rituali nelle società medievali 144 (Chiffoleau, J. & Martines, L. eds., Spoleto Centro Italiano di Studi Sull'Atto Medioeuo 1994).
40. Mercanti scrittori: ricordi nella Fierenze Ira Medioevo e Rinascimento 23–24 (Branca, V. ed., Rusconi la ed. 1986).
41. Dean, supra n. 3, at 126.
42. Puppi, supra n. 2, at 14.
43. Quoted in Ziegler, Vickie L., Trial by Fire and Battle in Medieval German Literature 71–72 (Camden House 2004).
44. Id. at 80.
45. McCune, Patricia, The Ideology of Mercy in the Law and Literature of the Middle Ages (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, U. Mich. 1989). Thomas Green observes that the very inaccessibility of the language of mercy to the modern may lead the historian to “underestimate its pervasiveness and importance” to the Middle Ages. A Retrospective on the Criminal Jury Trial 1200-1800, in Twelve Good Men and True: The Criminal Jury Trial in England 1200-1800, at 358-400, 387 (Green, Thomas & Cockburn, J. eds., Princeton U. Press 1988) [hereinafter Twelve Good Men and True]; Olson, supra n. 12, at 182-183.
46. Leges Henrici Primi 143 c. 36, 2, 2a (Dower, L.J. trans., Clarendon Press 1972).
47. Id.
48. Id. at 291, c. 92, 92, 15.
49. The quote is from an eleventh-century poem which Hyams concludes found its model in a bestiary text. Hyams, Paul, Rancor and Reconciliation 129 (Cornell U. Press 2003); White, Stephen D, Feuding and Peace-Making in the Touraine around the Year 1100, 42 Traditio 195–163 (1986).
50. Klerman, Daniel, Settlement and the Decline of Private Prosecution in Thirteenth-Century England, 19 L. & Hist. Rev. 1, 16 (2002). Note that 17% is the lowest possible number for cases settled in Klerman's data base if one assumes that settlements were always recorded. Id. That all settlements were recorded, however, seems doubtful.
51. Landucci, Luca, A Florentine Diary from 1450-1516, at 77 (Arno Press 1969); Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence: the Diaries of Buonaccorso Pitti and Gregorio Dati 52–53 (Buckner, Gene ed., Martines, Julia trans., Harper & Row 1967).
52. Lenman, B. & Parker, G., The state, the community and criminal law in early modern Europe, in Crime and the Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe Since 1500, at 23 (Gatrell, V.A.C., Lenman, B. & Parker, G. eds., Europa Publications 1980); Powell, Edward, Kingship, Law and Society: Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V 82, 91 (Clarendon Press 1989).
53. Zorzi, A., The judicial system in Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in Crime Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy 55–56 (Dean, T. & Lowe, K.J.P. eds., Cambridge U. Press 1994).
54. Rosser, Gervase, Sanctuary and Social Negotiation in Medieval England, in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey 63 (Harvey, B., Blair, J. & Golding, B. eds., Clarendon Press 1996); Olson, Trisha, Of the Worshipful Warrior: Sanctuary and Punishment in the Middle Ages, 16 St. Thomas L. Rev. 473–549 (2004).
55. Green, supra n. 13, at 22; Bellamy, John, Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages 124 (Routledge & Kegan Paul 1973) [hereinafter Bellamy, Crime]; Bellamy, J.G., The Criminal Trial in Later Medieval England 97–98 (U. Toronto Press 1998) [hereinafter Bellamy, Criminal Trial].
56. Green's work on the disjunction between what fourteenth-century juries and the common law thought about the level of blame that should attach to what we today call manslaughter is path-breaking. Green, supra n. 13, at 1-34.
57. Quoted in Owst, G.R., Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England 340 (2d ed., Basil Blackwell 1966).
58. Statutes of the Realm 1275-1713, 1 Record Commission 26 (12 vols., London 1810–1828).
59. Powell, Edward, Settlement of Disputes by Arbitration in Fifteenth Century England, 2 L. & Hist. Rev. 21, 27–28 (1984).
60. Bernard W. McLane, Juror Attitudes towards Local Disorder: The Evidence of the 1328 Lincolnshire Trailbaston Proceeding, in Twelve Good Men and True, supra n. 45, at 59, 61 n. 80.
61. Musson, Anthony, Twelve Good Men and True? The Character of the Early Fourteenth-Century Juries, 15 L. & Hist. Rev. 115, 138 (1997).
62. Green, supra n. 13, at 64.
63. Bellamy, Criminal Trial, supra n. 55, at 97.
64. Alan of Lille, The Art of Preaching 80, 83 (Evans, Gillian R. trans., Cistercian Publications 1981).
65. Id. at 82-83.
66. Leges Henric Primi, supra n. 46, at 115, c. II, 16a.
67. Saint Louis 'Advice to His Son, in Medieval Civilization 366–375 (Munro, Dana & Sellery, George Clarke trans. & ed., Century Co. 1907).
68. The III Considerations Right Necesserye to the Good Governaunce of A Prince, in Four English Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages 200, 199–200 (Genet, Jean-Philippe ed., Offices Royal Hist. Socy., U. College London 1977).
69. Hoccleve, Thomas, Regement of Princes, in Hoccleve's Works ll. 3319–3346 (Furnivall, Frederick ed., Early English Text Socy. 1997).
70. Calendar of Close Rolls 1409-1413, 47 vols. (PRO), at 375; Calendar of Patent. Rolls, 1446-1452, (PRO) at 68; id., at 461; id. at 1334-1338, p. 159. See also Gauvard, supra n. 13, at 914-927.
71. The Westminster Chronicle, supra n. 23, at 96-97. Richard II frequently employed his prerogative even in circumstances where Parliament had excepted a man from pardon, as in the case of John Awedyn of Essex who had participated in the rebellion of 1381. Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1381-1385, p. 239.
72. Cuttler, S.H., The Law of Treason and Treason Trials in Later Medieval France 135–137 (Cambridge U. Press 1981). On the pardon in medieval France, generally see Brissaud, Yves-Bernard, Le Droit de grace à la fin du moyen âge (Poitiers, Thesis of law 1971).
73. Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, of 1377, pp. 361-316.
74. Ormrod, W.M., Edward III, 52 Hist. Today 20–26 (2002).
75. Supra n. 73.
76. Ormrod, supra n. 74, at 20-26.
77. Cal. Pat. Rolls. 1381-1385, p. 187.
78. The Statutes of the Realm, 10 Edw. 3, c. 2, vol. 1 (London 1810–1828); The Westminster Chronicle, supra n. 23, at 417 (complaint of parliament in 1390). In the 14th century, the English Parliament also complained in 1310 and 1347 that pardons enabled thieves and robbers to wander about the land. Hurnard, supra n. 13, at 25; Bellamy, Crime and Public Order, supra n. 55, at 195; Jusserand, J.J., English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages 166 (Smith, Lucy Toulmin trans., Ernest Benn Ltd. 1950) (originally published 1891). But see also Lacey, H., ‘Mercy and Truth Preserve the king': Richard II's use of the Royal Pardon’, (unpublished paper, Intl. Medieval Cong., Leeds 2004); Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster 210–216 (Barrie & Rockcliff 1966).
79. Decretum Gratiani (Friedberg, Emil ed., A. Edelmann 1876).
80. Id. at C. XXIII, q. 4, post. c. 15.
81. Id. at Dist. 45, C. 9.
82. Id. at Dist. 45, C. 15.
83. Helyar, Linda, Justice and Grace 10–35 (Ph.D. dissertation, U. Cal., Berkeley 1991).
84. Though C. XXIII-CXXVII has been unofficially designated the causae haereticorum in recognition that Gratian's discussion of the blood sanction occurs against the backdrop of his confrontation with the problem of heresy, Sally Scully points out that subsequent commentators treat heresy peripherally when explicating C. XXIII treating instead the question of whether judicial killing is ever justified as the primary topic of the causa. Scully, Sally Anne, Killing ex officio: The Teachings of 12th and 13th century Canon Lawyers on the Right to Kill 22 (Ph.D. dissertation, Harv. U. 1975).
85. Decretum, supra n. 79, at C. 23, q. 4.
86. Goff, Jacques Le, The Birth of Purgatory 212 (Goldhammer, Arthur trans., U. Chi. Press 1984); le Bras, Gabriel, Le Liber de misericordia et iustitia d'Alger de Liege, 45 Nouvella Revue Historique de Droit Francais et Etranger 80–118 (1921).
87. Decretum. supra n. 79, at C XXIII, q. 4., c. 51.
88. Id. at C XXIII, q. 5.
89. Id. at C. XXIII, q. 4, c. 35 (Homini est miserendum, peccatori est irascendum).
90. Id. at C. XXIII, q. 4, c. 51. Gratian quotes directly here from Augustine's Sermon on the Mount.
91. Id.
92. Jones, supra n. 17, at 377.
93. Bracton, Henry, On the Laws and Customs of England vol. 2, 402, n. 3 (Thorne, S. trans., Harv. U. Press 1968).
94. Decretales Gregoru IX, X 5.39.35, Corpus Iuris Canonici (Friedberg, A. ed. 1879). In the context of prosecution of theft, Bracton again insists on the importance of punishment even when the items taken are trivial, for to pardon the convicted man is to encourage his offending again. Id. at. 427. On English judges borrowing from the canon law in the context of rejecting private settlement of felonies, see Klerman, supra n. 50, at 47-49.
95. See discussion and citation infra n. 223, at 61.
96. For example, in 1272 the English bench was almost entirely clerical. By 1307, the balance shifted to a little less than half clerics. Plucknett, Theodore F.T., A Concise History of the Common Law 236 (Little, Brown 1956).
97. Evans, G.R., Law and Theology in the Middle Ages 12–13 (Routledge 2002).
98. Gauvard, supra n. 13, at 926; Groebner, Valentin, Defaced: The Visual Culture of Violence in the Late Middle Ages 108 (Selwyn, Pamela trans., Zone Books 2004) contains a reprint of Diebold Schilling's 1513 drawing of such an event in his Chronicle from Lucerne.
99. von Bar, Ludwig, A History of Continental Criminal Law 147 (John Murray 1913); Zaremska, Hanna, Douchy, Therese & Gauvard, Claude, Le Bannis au Moyen Age 111–114 (Aubier Montaigne 1996).
100. Shoemaker, Karl, The Problem of Pain in Punishment, in Pain, Death and the Law 30 (U. Mich. Press 2001).
101. Cohen, Esther, The Animated Pain of the Body, 105 Am. Hist. Rev. 36, 42 (2000); Morris, supra n. 9, at 152-173.
102. Mowbray, D.C., The Development of Ideas About Pain and Suffering in the Works of Thirteenth Century Masters of Theology at Paris: 1230-1300, at 41 (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, U. Bristol 1999).
103. However, in her article Towards a History of European Physical Sensibility: Pain in the Later Middle Ages, Cohen recognizes that in the late Middle Ages, the human body as God's creation also was an “expression of divine will …. Philopassoanism was [] predicated on a perception allowing for no dichotomy of body and soul.” Cohen, Esther, Towards a History of European Physical Sensibility: Pain in the Later Middle Ages, 8 Sci. in Context 47, 57 (1995). Thus it is unclear why in Cohen's discussion of pain, she asserts that theologians saw it as a function of the soul independent from physical sensation. Cohen, supra n. 101, at 42.
104. Bonaventure, , De assumptione B. Virginis Mariae, sermon 1, § 2, vol. 9 S. Bonaventurae Opera omnia 690 (Bonaventurae, Collegium S. ed., 10 vols., Quarrachi 1882–1902). See also Aquinas, , Summa Contra Gentiles bk. 4, ch. 79, vol. 15, 249 (Pegis, A.C., Anderson, J.F., Bourke, V.J. & O'Neil, C.J. trans., 4 vols., U. Notre Dame Press 1975) where Aquinas asserts that Plato's idea that the soul is happiest without the body cannot be right, for the soul is more like God when it is united to the body because then it is more perfect.
105. Thomas Aquinas, id. at ii. 69.
106. Aquinas, Thomas, The Summa Theological 3a, q. 15, art. 4 (Fathers of the English Dominican Province trans., 22 vols., Burns, Oates, Washbourne 1912–1936) [hereinafter ST].
107. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Fragmentation and Redemption 235 (Zone Books 1991).
108. Lombardi, Petri, Sententia in IV Libris Distinctae vol. 2, bk. 3, dist. 15, ch. 1, 2, pp. 92–94 (2 vols., Grottaferrata 1981) (author translations unless indicated otherwise).
109. Augustine, , The City of God Against the Pagans bk. XXI, ch. 3, 1046 (Dyson, R.E. ed. & trans., Cambridge U. Press 1998).
110. Id. at 1047.
111. Id.
112. Id.
113. Cohen, supra n. 101, at 43.
114. ST, supra n. 106. See generally Weisheipl, James A., Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Works 219 (Oxford 1975). Aquinas did not begin his Summa until 1266. Weisheipl judges that the earliest date the second part could have been begun was 1270. Id. at 222. Aquinas never completed Part III. He ceased writing in 1273 leaving his discussion of Penance unfinished.
115. ST, supra n. 106, at 1a2ae, q. 35, art. 1, Reply 2.
116. Id. at 1a2ae, q., 35, art. 2, Reply.
117. Id. at art. 8, Reply; q. 37, art., 4, ad. 1, 2.
118. Siraisi, Nancy, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils 224 (Princeton U. Press 1981).
119. Id. at 65, 227; Salmon, Fernando, Academic Discourse and Pain in Medieval Scholasticism, in Medicine and Medical Ethics in Medieval and Early Modern Spain: An Intercultural Approach 142–143 (Kottek, S. & Garcia-Ballester, Luis eds., Magnes Press 1996).
120. Siraisi, supra n. 117, at 227.
121. Langbein, John, Torture and the Law of Proof 1–25 (U. Chi. Press 1977).
122. Cohen, supra n. 101, at 50.
123. Id.
124. Id.
125. Fiorelli, Piero, La Tortura giudiziaria nel diritto comune vol. 1, 186–189 (2 vols., Giuffrè 1953–1954).
126. Repetito super materia quaestionum sive toturarum, attributed to Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Omnia quar extant opera (11 vols., Venice 1615), 10, fol. 250 cited in Cohen, supra n. 121, at 51.
127. ST, supra n. 106, at 2a2ea, q. 19, a. 3, Reply.
128. Id.
129. Id.
130. Id. at 1a2ea, q. 35, art. 7, Reply.
131. Merback, supra n. 15, at 155-156.
132. ST, supra n. 106, at Supplement, q. 90, art. 3, Reply.
133. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Why all the Fuss About the Body? A Medieval Perspective, 22 Critical Inquiry 14–15 (1985).
134. Id.; Le Goff, supra n. 86, at 14-21.
135. Southern, R.W., The Making of the Middle Ages 231–240 (Yale U. Press 1959). On the importance of the Eucharist and the way in which imagery of Christ's wounds dominated host salutations, see Rubin, Miri, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture 1-25, 303 (Cambridge U. Press 1991).
136. Margery, Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe ch. 35, 86–89 (Staley, Lynn trans., Norton 2001).
137. Bynum, supra n. 16, at 246.
138. Angela of Foligno, Le Livre de l'experience des vrais fidèles: Texte latin publié d'après le manuscrit d'Assise (Ferré, M-J and Baudry, L. ed. & trans., Droz 1927).
139. Duby, Georges, The Age of the Cathedrals: Art and Society 980-1420, at 107–108 (Levieux, Eleanor & Tompson, Barbara trans., U. Chi. Press 1981).
140. Examples are abundant. The Man of Sorrows, ca. 1430, by Meister Francke, now in Hamburg, is a startling beautiful image of the suffering Christ, who appears as judge, lover, and sacrificial victim. Hamburger, Jeffrey, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany 375 (N.Y. 1998). On the extent to which Passion narratives, which informed painting, reached a large lay audience, see Bestul, Thomas, Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society 7–10 (Phila. 1996).
141. Gougaud, L., Devotional and Ascetic Practices in the Middle Ages 80–91 (Bateman, G.C. trans., Burns, Oates & Washburn 1927); Gray, D., The Five Wounds of Christ, 208 Notes & Queries 84–87 (1963); Rubin, supra n. 135, at 302-304; Kieckhefer, Richard, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth Century Saints and Their Religions Milieu 14-15, 122–137 (U. Chi. Press 1984).
142. Gougaud, id. at 82-83.
143. Bynum, supra n. 16, at 246. Recently historians and theologians have turned to biology and neurology to explain (and make sense of) the heightened spiritual condition and visions of saints and mystics who inflicted severe pain upon their bodies. See e.g. Glucklich, supra n. 5; Kroll, Jerome & Bachrach, Bernard, The Mystic Mind (Routledge 2005). Others explain the act of sel immolation in terms of various sub-conscious motives such as the internalization of social repressions of the body. Yet to wash any religious or cultural history with the water of the subconscious is to distort the meaning of conduct that is given to it by the particular ethos and array of beliefs of the culture in which the conduct occurs. The same can be said of explaining religious raptures by recourse to the mechanistic operations of the nervous system.
144. Id. at 251.
145. Julian of Norwich, Showings 126 (Walsh, James trans., London 1878). All references to Julian's Long Text are from this translation [hereinafter LT].
146. Bynum, supra n. 16, at 246.
147. Alighieri, Dante, De Vulgari Eloquentia I, 3, 1–2 (Howell, A.G. Ferrers trans., Rebel Press 1973).
148. Lindhein, Nancy, Body, Soul and Immortality: Some Readings in Dante's Commedia, 105 Modern Lang. Notes 14 (1990).
149. The way in which reflections upon pain necessarily lead one to theodicy is not lost upon modern scholars. See e.g. Lewis, C.S., The Problem of Pain (London 1950); Glucklich, supra n. 5, at 40; Shoemaker, supra n. 100, at 29. In our period, Aquinas readily acknowledged that punitive pain (and death) partook, in some respect, of evil. Aquinas, Thomas, On Evil (Regan, Richard trans., Oxford 2003).
150. Anselm of Canterbury, The Fall of the Devil, in Three Philosophical Dialogues (Williams, Thomas trans., Cambridge 2002).
151. Aquinas, supra n. 149, at A. 3.
152. Id. at 14.
153. Id. at A. 3, Response, 28-30.
154. Id. at A. 1, Response 6; Reply 20, p. 10.
155. Augustine, , Confessions and Enchiridion (Outler, A.C. trans., 1955) Enchiridion ch. 11: For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils … namely, the disease and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance but a defect in the fleshy substance.
156. ST, supra n. 106, at 1a, q. 5, a. 48, 3.
157. Anselm of Canterbury, supra n. 151, ch. IX, 69.
158. Baker, Denise Nowakowski, Julian of Norwich's Showings 3 (Princeton 1994).
159. Id. at 7-8.
160. Id. at 10-15.
161. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of divine love, translated from British Library Additional MS 37790 (Beer, Frances trans., Rochester, NY 1998). All citation to the Short Text is from this translation [hereinafter Short Text].
162. LT, supra n. 145, at 125-127.
163. Short Text, supra n. 162, at 23; LT, supra n. 145, ch. 3, 11.197-198.
164. Russell, Jeffrey, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages 194-197, 286–287 (Ithaca 1984).
165. Aquinas, supra n. 152, at A.2, Response 13; Lombard, supra n. 108, at II, d. 34, c. 4, n. 1-2.
166. Id.
167. ST, supra n. 106, at 1a2a, q., 35, art. 6, Reply.
168. LT, supra n. 145, at ch. 14, 53.
169. Aquinas, supra n. 152, at A. 2, Response 15.
170. LT, supra n. 145, at ch. 14, 63.
171. ST, supra n. 106, at 2a2ae, q. 87, a. 6, ad. 3.
172. LT, supra n. 145, at ch. 14, 51.
173. ST, supra n. 106, at 1a2ae, q. 35, Reply.
174. Catherine of Siena, Dialouges 20 (Noffke, Suzanne trans., N.Y. 1980).
175. Id.
176. LT, supra n. 145, at ch. 13, 39.
177. Id.
178. Id. at ch. 14, 61.
179. Id. at ch. 13, 27.
180. Aquinas, supra n. 152, at q. I, a. I, ad I.
181. ST, supra n. 106, at 2a2ae q. 43, a, 7, ad. 1; Aquinas, supra n. 104, at Bk III, c. 144, n. 9.
182. Aquinas, id. at Bk III, c. 144, n. 9.
183. ST, supra n. 106, at 2a2ae, q. 25 a. 6 ad 2; 2a2ae q. 83 a. 8 ad 3.
184. See Finnis, John, Aquinas 211, at 211 (Oxford U. Press 1998).
185. ST, supra n. 106, at 2a2ae, q. 43, a. 7, ad 1; q. 66, a.6, ad. 2.
186. Finnis, supra n. 185, at 212.
187. ST, supra n. 106, at 1a2ae, q. 64, a. 2, ad. 3.
188. Id.
189. Id. at 1a2ae, q. 87, a. 7, Reply.
190. Id. at 2a2ae, q. 25, a. 6, ad. 1.
191. Id. at la2ae, q. 87, a. 8, ad. 2.
192. Id. at la2ae, q. 87, a. 1, ad2.
193. Aquinas, supra n. 152, at A. 5, Response 36 (“nothing should have that of which it is undeserving.”).
194. ST, supra n. 106, at 1a, q. 21, a. 4.
195. Id. at 1a2ae, q. 87, a. 6.
196. Cheyette, Frederic L, Beyond Western Civilization: Rebuilding the Survey, 10 Hist. Teacher 535 (1977); Mazzeo, Joseph, Some Interpretations of the History of Ideas, J. Hist. Ideas 379–394 (1972).
197. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri 11 (Sinclair, John D. trans., Princeton 1970) 1961. Alighieri, Dante, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri vol. 1, 15 (Durling, Robert M. ed. & trans., 2 vols., N.Y. 1996). Citation of the Inferno and Purgatory is to this translation. Citation to Paradise is to the Sinclair translation.
198. Id.
199. Latham, Charles Sterrett, A Translation of Dante's Eleven Letters with Explanatory Notes and Historical Comments 195 (Carpenter, George Rice ed., Houghton Mifflin 1891).
200. Id.
201. Smith, Michael E., Punishment in the Divine Comedy, 25 Cumb. L. Rev. 533 ( 1995).
202. Inf. Canto 28, 1. 142, Canto 9, 1. 88-90, Canto 14, 1. 16-18.
203. Purg. Canto 10, 1. 106-108, canto 11, 1. 88, canto 23, 1. 14-15.
204. Armour, Peter, Dante's Contrapasso: Contexts and Texts, 55 Italian Stud. 1 (2000). Inf. Canto 28, 142.
205. Lindheim, Nancy, Body, Soul, and Immortality: Some Readings in Dante's Commedia, 105 Modern Lang. Notes 1, 14 (1990). Purg. Canto XXV.
206. Par. Canto IV, 1. 60-64.
207. Lindheim, supra n. 205, at 15. Purg. Canto XXX, LL. 46-48.
208. Gross, Kenneth, Infernal Metamorphoses: An Interpretation of Dante's “Counterpass” 100 Modern Lang. Notes 42, 44 (1985).
209. Inf. Canto 3, ll 121-126.
210. Inf. Canto VII, ll 115-126.
211. Smith, supra n. 201, at 553; Sayers, Dorothy, Introductory Papers on Dante 68–70 (Barnes & Noble 1954); Mazzeo, Joseph Anthony, Dante's Conception of Love, 18 J. Hist. Ideas 147 (1957).
212. Smith, supra n. 201, at 554.
213. Inf. Canto 3, ll. 17-18.
214. Purg. Canto 17, ll 127-129.
215. Purg. Canto X, ll. 127-130, Par. Canto IX, ll 10-12.
216. ST, supra n. 106, at 1a2ae, q. 87, a. 4, Reply.
217. Smith, supra n. 201, at 573.
218. Id. at 564.
219. Id.
220. Purg. Canto 11, ll. 58-60.
221. Par. Canto VII, l. 139.
222. Latham, supra n. 199, at 202.
223. Indeed, the execution, rural and urban, occurred within communities familiar with the thought that suffering aided the soul in its realization of the Good. See e.g. Ross, Ellen M., The Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England 1–25 (Oxford U. Press 1997) and her discussion of English sermon literature in the late Middle Ages. In Whanne hic se on rode the poet writes:
Ihesu cryst, myn leman swete
That for me deye-des on rode tre
Wiht al myn herte I the bi-seke
For thi wndes to and thre
That al so faste in myn herte
Thi love roted mute be
As was the spere in-to thi side
When thow suffredis ded for me
Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century 52 (Brown, Carleton ed., Oxford U. Press 1924). The poet expresses not only Christ's deep love for mankind, but the mediator's strong response, whereby his love for the Son transfixes his heart like a spear. Other lyrics speak of the desire to be clad in Christ's suffering skin and of the pain of longing all signifying that with love comes anguish. Id. at 83, 79, 71. So too, the idea of evil as absence and lack is translated into the public spectacles of the Devil in the mystery plays. There he is consistently portrayed as a fool, easily tricked, and empty-headed as in the N-town cycle play Temptation, the Devil is tricked by Christ. Collins, Patrick J., The N-Town Plays and Medieval Picture Cycles 32 (Medieval Inst. Publications 1979). In many respects, the Devil is impotent in these narratives, embodying the idea of powerlessness and inertia that is the opposite of the power and energy that comprises being. Always, he is presented as a corruption. In the York Cycle of Mystery Plays, he elects to go up to Eden and determines to “take a virgin's face and the body and feet of a serpent.” The York Plays 23 (Beadle, Richard ed., Edward Arnold 1982). In The Castle of Perseverance, explosive burst from his backside making him comically grotesque. The Castle of Perseverance, in The Macro Plays: The Castle of Perseverance, Wisdom, Mankind 1 (Eccles, Mark ed., Oxford U. Press 1969).
224. See Pickering, F.P., Notes on Late Medieval German Tales in Praise of Docta Ignorantia, 24 Bull. John Ryland Lib. 121 (1940); for Cusa, see Cusanus, Nicolas, Of Learned Ignorance (Heron, Germain trans., Yale U. Press 1954); Rice, Eugene F. Jr., Nicholas of Cusa's Idea of Wisdom, 13 Traditio: Stud. in Ancient & Medieval Hist., Thought & Religion 345 (1957).
225. For a somewhat like view of the execution in a little later period, see Bee, supra n. 15.
226. Groebner, supra n. 98, at 68-73.
227. Friedberg, Emil Albert & Richter, Aemilius Ludwig, Corpus Iuris Canonici (Bernhardi Tauchnitz 1879), 1, dist. 49, c. 1. On the extraordinarily permeable and fluid boundary that existed between bodily disease and spiritual corruption in this period, see Park, Katharine, Doctors and Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence 50–52 (Princeton U. Press 1985). One of the most well-known examples, perhaps, is leprosy which in the late Middle Ages is increasingly associated with uncleanliness which in turn is assumed to be a manifestation of inner corruption. Moore, R.I., The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250, at 45–65 (Blackwell 1987).
228. For examples of attaint, see Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1452, at 514; id. at 1451, at 508 (1446-1452) (HMSO 1906). On the law of treason in England, see Bellamy, J.G., The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages 191–195 (Cambridge U. Press 1970); Lander, J.R., Attainder and Forfeiture, 1453 to 1509, 4 Hist. J. 119 (1961); Cuttler, supra n. 72, at 120-133.
229. Though the ritual of auto de fe (public penance) during the Spanish Inquisition, first recorded in 1481, indicates the complexity of the available theological teachings on the link between blood-letting and salvation, the formal Church's insistence that the religious not directly shed blood would seem to undermine the argument that the execution represented a salvific drama. Because the auto de fe has its heyday a bit after our period, it has not been discussed. Discussion of heresy too has been avoided, for the focus here has been primarily upon the secular jurisdiction. For a general history of the auto de fe, see Lea, Henry Charles, A History of the Inquisition of Spain (4 vols., Macmillan 1906–1907).
230. Merback, supra n. 15, at 137.
231. Beaumanoir, supra n. 26, § 883, ch. 1, 446; Calisse, Carlo, A History of Italian Law 175 (Rothman Reprints 1969).
232. Chronicle, supra n. 23, at 517.
233. For example, in 1470 Amiens, the following sentence was handed down against a man and a mare who had engaged in an unnatural act:
having seen the deposition and confession of said Simon, messeigneurs condemned him to be consumed by flames and burned … until death and that he should be burned and consumed by flame into dust and also order that said mare be consumed by flame … so that never shall there be memory of said Simon nor of said Mare.
Dubois, A., Justice et bourreaux à Amiensdans XV et XVIe siècles 12–13 (Amiens 1860).
234. Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys Contenant le Règne de Charles VI de 1380 à 1422 vol. 2, 662–669 (Bellaguet, L. ed. & trans., Imprimerie Nationale 1839–1852).
235. Il Costituto del Comune di Siena vol. 2, 402 (Tip. E Lit. Sordmuti di L. Lazzeri 1903).
236. Merback, supra n. 15, at 147.
237. Landucci, supra n. 51, at 176.
238. Chronique parisienne anonyme 50-53.
239. Although occurring a little after our period, the accounts of the crowd's insatiable rage at Ravaillac, (who had murdered Henry IV of France) and its treatment of the corpse of Concino Concini, (who was accused in the great public Declaration et Proestation of 1617 of “usurping] in the name of the king … an absolute authority in the realm” and whom Louis XIII thus felt compelled to assassinate) vividly illustrate the popular view of such men as unredeemable demons whose bodies must be annihilated in order to free the community from their pollution. Mousnier, Roland, L'assassinat d'Henri IV: 14 Mai 1610, 32 (Gallimard 1964); Lindsay, Robert O. & Neu, John, French Political Pamphlets, 1547-1648: A Catalog of Major Collections in American Libraries 239 (U. Wis. Press 1969) (Pamphlet No. 3858: L'enterrement, obsequies et funerailles de Conchine, mareschal d'Ancre); Ranum, Orest, The French Ritual of Tyrannicide in the Late Sixteenth Century, 11 Sixteenth Cent. J. 63, 71 (1980).
240. See e.g. Paris, Matthew, Matthew Paris's English History From the Year 1235 to 1273, vol. 1, 176, 409 (Giles, J.A. trans., Henry G. Bohn 1852).
241. Merback, supra n. 15, at 153.
242. As a caveat, there is of course the argument that the discourses and practices discussed here were mere pretext that obscured darker and less spiritual attitudes or motivations on the part of the condemned, the spectators, or the judicial authority. Yet, the fact that an actor has a motive never tells us anything about the coherence, cogency, or intelligibility of the belief system he espouses. Moreover, an actor's choice of specific sets of practices and discourse as pretext tells us something about what the actor's community thinks is good, true, and legitimate. On these issues generally, see Jenkins, Keith, Introduction: On Being Open About Our Closures, in The Postmodern History Reader 1 (Jenkins, Keith ed., Routledge 1997).
243. Translated portions of these quotes are in Ziegler, supra n. 43, at 70-71.
244. The thinker who best clarifies the way in which deterrence and redemptive punishment depended upon a radically different understanding of the constitutive nature of man is the early nineteenth-century thinker, Friedrich Hegel. He writes that to base punishment upon the idea of threat “presupposes that a man is not free, and its aim is to coerce him by the idea of an evil.”Hegel's Philosophy of Right n. 62, 246 (Knox, T.M. trans., Oxford U. Press 1967). He continues, “To base a justification of punishment on threat is to liken it to the act of a man who lifts his stick to a dog. It is 0 treat a man like a dog instead of with the freedom and respect due to him as a man.” Id.
245. Purg. Canto X, ll. 127-130.
246. Catherine of Siena, Letters, vol. 2, 695.
247. Edgerton, supra n. 15, at 139.
248. Id.
249. Summerson, supra n. 20, at 120.
250. Paris, supra n. 240, at vol. 1, 176; vol. II, 296.
251. Chronique parisienne anonyme du XIV siècle 53, 127, 167 (Hellot, A. ed., Nogent-le-Rotrou 1884); Landucci, supra n. 51, at 204; Dubois, supra n. 233, at 12-13 (6000 were reported to witness the execution of Simon and his mare in 1470).
252. Vitalis, Orderic, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis: Volume II, Books III and IV, at 323 (Chibnall, Majorie ed. & trans., Oxford U. Press 1969). The execution is also mentioned in The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester with the Two Continuations (Forester, Thomas ed. & trans., AMS Press 1968). However, no mention is made of Norman fear of the people.
253. de Roye, Jean, Journal de Jean de Roye, connu sous le nom de Chronique Scandaleuse, 1460-1483 vol. 1, 361 (de Mandrot, Bernard Èdouard ed., Librairie Renouard 1894).
254. Duby, supra n. 139, at 164.
255. Dean, supra n. 3, at 136. On the Queen as intercessor, see Strohm, Paul, Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts 101 (Princeton U. Press 1992).
256. Basin, Thomas, Histoire des Règnes de Charles VII et Louis XI vol. 2, 376–377 (Quicherat, Jules Ètienne Joseph ed., J. Renouard et Cie 1855–1859); Mégret, Jacques, Journal dun Bourgeois de Paris de 1405 a 1449: Texte Français Moderne de Jacques Megret 250 (Mégret, Jacques ed., Horizons de France 1944); Cohen, Esther, The Crossroads of Justice: Law and Culture in Late Medieval France 193, n. 40 (Brill, E.J. 1993). This custom is first recorded in 1274 in France and lasts into the sixteenth century. Id. at 194.
257. Castan, Nicole, Summary Justice, in Deviants and the Abandoned in French Society: Selections from the Annales Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 111 (Forster, Robert & Ranum, Orest eds., Forster, Elborg & Ranum, Patricia M. trans., Johns Hopkins U. Press 1978).
258. Landucci, supra n. 51, at 204.
259. Gauvard, supra n. 13, at 180.
260. Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1381-1385, at 373.
261. Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1354-1358, at 529. McKenzie, Andrea, ‘This death some strong and stout hearted man doth choose’: the Practice of Peine Forte et Dure in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England, 23 L. & Hist. Rev. 300 (2005).
262. Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1446-1452, at 68. Id. at 1441-1446, at 278.
263. Merback, supra n. 15, at 149.
264. Acta Clementis PP.V (1303-1314) p. 95, no. 62 (1312) (Delorme, Ferdinand M & Tautu, Aloysius L. eds., Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis 1955).
265. Placita Corone or La Corone Pledee devant Justices 17 (Kaye, J.M. ed. & trans., Seiden Socy. 1966); The Court Baron: Together with Select Pleas from the Bishop of Ely's Court of Littleport 64 (Maitland, Frederic William & Baildon, William Paley eds., Bernard Quaritch 1891).
266. Summerson, supra n. 20, at 131 (footnote omitted).
267. de Roye, supra n. 253, at vol. 2, 349, 358-361; Basin, supra n. 256, at vol. 2, 377.
268. Edgerton, supra n. 15, at 141.
269. Id. at 194.
270. Cohen, supra n. 256, at 198-201.
271. Though the giving of the sacrament was never popular in France, quasi-sacramental ceremonies occurred. For example, the constable of St. Pol was permitted to hear Mass and to consume blessed water and bread before his death, de Roye, supra n. 253, at vol. 2, 358.
272. The more institutionalized “dying speech” is associated by historians with the early modern period. Spierenburg, Pieter, The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience 63 (Cambridge U. Press 1984). However, the difference in quantity in the sources between the two periods is, at least in part, due to the advent of printing. What can be said with certainty is that the chronicles reveal that the condemned and spectators engaged in a dialogue, however informal, that foreshadowed the meaning to be given to his experience of pain and death.
273. Id. at 53 (who dismisses its spiritual significance). Both Richard Evans and Richard van Dülmen see this ritual as tied to the ars moriendi. Evans, supra n. 1, at 83; van Dülmen, Richard. Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany 99–124 (Neu, Elisabeth trans., Polity Press 1990).
274. Bellamy, supra n. 55, at 189.
275. Paris, supra n. 240, at vol. I, 409.
276. de Trokelowe, John, Blaneford, Henry & Riley, Henry T., Johannis de Trokelowe, et Henrici de Blaneforde, Monachorum S. Albani, Necnon Quorundam Anonymorum, Chronica et Annales, Regnantibus Henrico Tertio, Edwardo Primo, Edwardo Secundo, Ricardo Secundo, et Henrico Quarto 328 (Riley, Henry Thomas ed., Longmans, Green, Reader, & Dyer 1866); de Roye, supra n. 253, at vol. 2, 349, 358-361 Basin, supra n. 256, at vol. 2, 377.
277. Chronicle, supra n. 23, at 497.
278. Id.
279. Id. at 315. For another similar account of Brembre's execution, see Howell, Thomas Bayly, Howell, Thomas Jones, Cobbett, William & Jardine, David, Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors from the Earliest Period [1163] to the Present Time [1820] vol. 1, cols. 118-119 (R. Bagshaw 1809). The Westminster Chronicle offers a similar account of Thomas Usk's execution in 1388, writing that he “met his death with great contriteness of heart and supreme penitence, reciting with the upmost piety, as he was drawn to the gallows, the Placebo and Dirige ….” Chronicle, supra n. 23, at 315.
280. Froissait, John, Froissart's Chronicles 20 (Jolliffe, John ed. & trans., Modern Lib. 1968).
281. Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I. and Edward II., Vol. I: Annales Londonienses and Annales Paulini 319–320 (Stubbs, William ed., Longman 1965).
282. Chronicle, supra n. 23, at 315-317.
283. Van Dülmen, supra n. 273, at 120.
284. Basin, supra n. 256, at vol. 2, 53; Mégret, supra n. 256, at 33; Chronique supra n. 234, at vol. 5, 76. See for example the quote by Bartolomeo d'Angelo from his Ricordo del ben morire, located in Edgerton, supra n. 15, at n. 7, 131.
285. Chronicon Angliae, Ab Annon Domini 1326 Usque Ad Annum 1388, Auctore Monache Quodam Sancii Albani 309–310 (Thompson, Edward Maunde ed., Longman 1874).
286. Die Chronik des Heinrich Deichsler, 11Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte (Leizig 1892), passim; Monk of Malmesbury, The Life of Edward the Second 26 (Denholm-Young, N. trans., Thomas Nelson & Sons 1957) (execution of Piers Gaveston, favorite of Edward II).
287. Friedland, supra n. 6, at 299.
288. See for example the description of a particular moving execution in 1760, when the crowd and the dying man engage in singing the Veni Creator, with the condemned man and the crowd alternating verses. Bee, supra n. 15, at 106-107. Though this happened much later than our period, there is no reason to think it is not representative of medieval practice.
289. Prosperi, supra n. 15, at 959-960.
290. Caparozzi, Domenico, Compendio per conforto de' rei condennati alla morte …, in Viterbo, , appresso Girolamo Discepolo 56–57 (1613).
291. Huizinga, Johan, The Autumn of the Middle Ages 4 (Payton, Rodney J. & Mammitzsch, Ulrich trans., U. Chi. Press 1996).
292. Mégret supra n. 256, at 22.
293. An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV., Henry V., and Henry VI. Written Before the Year 1471, at 150 (Davies, John Silvester ed., Camden Socy. 1856).
294. Edgerton, supra n. 15, at 126.
295. ST, supra n. 106, at 1a, q. 21, Reply.
296. Vespasiano: Renaissances Princes, Popes, and Prelates: The Vespasiano Memoirs: Lives of Illustrious Men of the XVth Century 337 (George, William & Waters, Emily trans., Harper Torchbooks 1963).
297. Id.
298. Puppi, supra n. 2, at 17.
299. Id. passim.
300. Robin, Gerald D., The Executioner: His Place in English Society, 15 British J. Sociology 234 (1964).
301. Edgerton, supra n. 15, at 134.
302. Id. at 135.
303. Bonaventura, Saint, The Mind's Road to God 25 (Boas, George trans., Macmillan 1985).
304. Harbison, Craig, Visions and Meditations in Early Flemish Painting, 15 Simiolus 87, 90 (1985); Schiller, Gertrud, Iconography of Christian Art: Volume 2, The Passion of Jesus Christ 184–198 (Seligman, Janet trans., N.Y. Graphic Socy. 1972); Lewis, Flora, The Wound in Christ's Side and the Instruments of the Passion: Gendered Experience and Response, in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence 204 (Smith, Lesley & Taylor, Jane H.M. eds., British Lib. 1996).
305. Binski, Paul, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation 41–46 (Cornell U. Press 1996).
306. Hampe, Theodor, Crime and Punishment in Germany: As Illustrated by the Nuremberg Malefactors' Booh 78 (Letts, Malcolm trans., George Routledge & Sons 1929).
307. Annales Ricardi Secundi, in Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland During the Middle Ages 328 (Nendeln, repr. 1964).
308. The Brut or the Chronicles of England vol. 2, 476, App. F (Brie, Friedrich W.D. ed., Keagan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. 1906–1908).
309. Diario ferrarese dall'anno 1409 sino al 1502 di autori incerti, in Rerum italicarum scrptores vol. 24, pt. 7, 162, 175 (Pardi, G. ed., Bologna 1928–1938).
310. Holinshed, Raphaell, Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland vol. 1, 310 (J. Johnson 1807). Sir Thomas Smith said much the same. “In no place shal you see malefactors go more constantly, more assuredly, and with lesse lamentation to their death than in England.” Smith, Thomas, De Republica Anglorum: A Discourse on the Commonwealth of England 105 (Alston, L. ed., Cambridge U. Press 1906).
311. Annales Ricardi Secundi, supra n. 307, at 328.
312. Merback, supra n. 15, at 153.
313. Gauvard, C., Pendre et dependre a la fin du Moyen Age: les exigences d'un rituel judiciaire, in Riti e rituali nelle società medievali 204–205 (Chiffoleau, J. ed., Spoleto 1994).
314. Dean, supra n. 3, at 137.
315. Cohen, supra n. 256, at 187; Pastoureau, Michel, Les couleurs medievales: Systemes de valeurs et modes de sensibilite, in Figures et couleurs: Études sur la symbolique et la sensibilité médiévales 35–49 (Léopard d'or 1986).
316. Catherine of Siena, The Letters of Catherine of Siena vol. 1, 86 (Noffke, Suzane trans., Ariz. Ctr. Medieval & Renaissance Stud. 2000).
317. Catherine of Siena, Les Lettres de Sainte Catherine de Sienne 886–891 (Cartier, E. trans., Poussielgue 1886).
318. Catherine of Siena, supra n. 316, at 88 (footnote omitted).
319. Id. How deep was the idea of the atonement as a show of love rather than as an act of satisfaction in medieval Christendom is hinted at by Clutterbuck's, Charlotte recent Encounters with God in Medieval and Early Modern English Poetry (Ashgate Pub. Co. 2005). She argues that the English anonymous Crucifixion lyrics tacitly adopted Abelard's exemplarist theory of the Atonement which sees the Redemption as depending solely on Christ's example of love which evokes man's love in return rather than upon Augustine's juridical understanding of God tricking the Devil into a loss of his rights or of Anselm's understanding of satisfaction. Id. at 32-33. Within this understanding then, human punishment, as an imitation of Divine justice, is something other than a simple reflection of retribution.
320. Catherine of Siena, supra n. 316, at 88.
321. Id. at n. 31.
322. Paglia, Vincenzo, La morte confortata: Riti della paura e mentalità religiosa a Roma nell'età moderna 84 (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura 1982).
323. Lea, Henry C., Superstition and Force: Essay on the Wager of Law—The Wager of Battle—The Ordeal—Torture 284 (1866).
324. For artistic expression of the same idea in the fifteenth century, see Tenenti, Alberto, La vie et la mort à travers l'art du XVe siècle 30–48 (Colin, A. 1952); Gerson, Jean, Six sermons français inédits: Étude doctrinale et littéraire suivie de l'édition critique et de remarques linguistiques 81, 446, 462 (Mourin, Louis ed., J. Vrin 1946) (imagery of sinners as false traitors, cut throats; hell is a gibbet and the devil its hangman); pp. 219-244 (sermon equating purgatory as prison and hell as death sentence).
325. Though the idea of the body as providing a locus of opportunity to encounter the Divine is most obvious in the practices of the fourteenth-century mystics and saints, the same idea hovers in the work of scholastic theologians such as Aquinas, who affirms the idea that the soul cannot understand anything without assistance from the body. Aquinas, Thomas, Questiones de Anima Q. 15. Though he confirmed that by virtue of being attached to a body, the human soul is not gifted with immediate understanding of the sacred, the soul is still able to acquire partial understanding of universal truth through the aid of the senses. S.T., supra n. 106, at 1a, q. 76, art. 5. See also Flynn, Maureen, The Spiritual Uses of Pain in Spanish Mysticism, 64 J. Am. Acad. Religion 257, 264–265 (1996).
326. Rubin, supra n. 135, at 348.
327. Ranum, supra n. 239, at 72.
328. Prosperi, supra n. 15, at 965. For the persistence of this practice in the seventeenth century, see Evans, supra n. 1, at 95.
329. On the belief in the healing properties contained in the redeemed offender's body parts and fluids, see Camporesi, Piero, The Incorruptible Flesh: Bodily Mutation and Mortification in Religion and Folklore 19 (Cambridge U. Press 1988); Heckscher, William S., Rembrandt's Anatomy of Dr. Nicolaos Tulp n. 180, 164 (N.Y. U. Press 1958).
330. Prosperi, supra n. 15, at 994, n. 8.
331. On the belief that the penitent wrongdoer could attain heaven, rather than purgatory, as a result of his suffering, a representative example comes from a 1504 pamphlet by the Nuremberg poet Kunz Has. He writes of the execution of a baker's assistant who has brutally killed five people.
[A]fter having all ten fingers chopped off, the murderer, who had confessed to his crimes, was tortured with red-hot pincers … before finally being impaled. He had given the executioner precise instructions on how to treat him so that his torment (marter) might last as long as possible …. Thus the murderer had died among the entire crowd's tears and prayers of intercession. His head had inclined to the right side, a sign, the poet explained that he had been forgiven and accepted into Heaven.
Groebner, supra n. 98, at 103-104.
332. Catherine of Siena, supra n. 316, at 88. On reported miracles occurring at executions, see Walsingham, Thomas, Quondam Monachi S. Albani, Historia Anglicana 266, 270–271, 31, 32 (Riley, Henry Thomas ed., Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green 1863–1864).
333. An excellent discussion of this painting occurs in Merback, supra n. 15, at 218-220.
334. Id. at 153.
335. Roberti, M., Il libro dei giustiziati di Ferrara a 1441-1557, 66 Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 834 n. 2, pp. 829–840 (1906–1907).
336. Id.
337. Edgerton, supra n. 15, at 57.
338. Puppi, L., Il mito e la trasgressione Liturgia urbana delle esecuzioni capitali a Venezia tra XIV e XVIII secolo, 15 Studi Veneziani 107–130, 113, n. 11 (1989); Prosperi, supra n. 15, at 962-963.
339. However this is not always the case. For example, in 1584, the assassin of William of Orange, Balthasar Gerard, suffered a most horrible death being tortured for over eighteen days. Finally, the prison Lieutenant was asked to finish him off by strangling him so that “his soul should not despair and be damned.” Brantôme, , Mémoires: La Vie des hommes illustres, II, 191–192 (1722).
340. Aquinas, supra n. 152, at A.2, Response 13; ST, supra n. 106, at 1a2a, q. 35, art. 6, Reply.
341. Inf. Canto 3, ll. 17-18.
342. Smith, supra n. 201, at 573.
343. Id.
344. Foucault, supra n. 6, at 46.
345. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Conversion, in Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works 65 (Evans, G.R. trans., Paulist Press 1987).
346. de Cantimpré, Thomas, The Life of Christina of Saint Trond 28 (King, Margot H. trans., Peregrina Pubig. Co. 1986); see also Bynum, Caroline Walker, The Power in the Blood: Sacrifice, Satisfaction, and Substitution in Late Medieval Soteriology, in The Redemption: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Christ as Redeemer 177 (Davis, Stephen T., Kendall, Daniel & O'Collins, Gerald eds., Oxford U. Press 2004).
347. Bynum, supra n. 346, at 177.
* Ph.D. candidate, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Department of History; visiting Associate Professor of Law, Albany Law School (2004-05); Yale Law School, 1991. I owe all gratitude to my daughter Alena Alma Marie. Much thanks is also owed to Professors Peter Biller, Daniel KJerman, Timothy Lytton and Dr. Richard Fraher for their invaluable thoughts and criticisms of an earlier draft of this article.
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this journal to your organisation's collection.
Full text views reflects the number of PDF downloads, PDFs sent to Google Drive, Dropbox and Kindle and HTML full text views.
Loading metrics...
Abstract views reflect the number of visits to the article landing page.
Loading metrics...
* Views captured on Cambridge Core between September 2016 - 12th June 2018. This data will be updated every 24 hours.