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‘Not to be tolerated in a city of such high repute’: the prosecution of rape as a window on crime, deviance and social order in late medieval Bruges (1490–1537)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2026

Lieze Bertier Open the ORCID record for Lieze Bertier [Opens in a new window]
Lieze Bertier*
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Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven, Kortrijk, Belgium
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Email: lieze.bertier@kuleuven.be
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Abstract

At the turn of the sixteenth century, the city of Bruges, a considerable trading centre in the County of Flanders, witnessed a noticeable increase in rape prosecutions. Drawing on final judgments by the city magistrates, many of whom imposed the death penalty, this article examines how these prosecutions were shaped by broader concerns for social order and urban prosperity. It argues that deep-rooted anxieties about disorder and deviance among both civic authorities and the wider community fostered a more standardized policy towards sexual violence. This, in turn, enables the reconstruction of the late medieval ‘criminal-rapist’: an outsider associated with brutal and dishonourable violence, deemed particularly intolerable in ‘a city of high repute’.

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Urban History , First View , pp. 1 - 15
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On Wednesday, 9 May 1515, a crowd gathered in the burch, Bruges’ fortified centre of power, to witness the decapitation of Jan van Brelettes. The city magistrates had found him guilty of raping ‘a young daughter’. According to the detailed verdict, ten days earlier, Jan and an accomplice had encountered two young girls in the street, whom they had intended to lead to ‘certain places to do what they pleased with them’. The men pursued the girls for several blocks. When close enough, Jan seized one of the girls by her arm and dragged her by force to one of the city’s brothels. After repeatedly threatening and beating her, he cut open her dress and, brandishing his sword, forced her onto a bed, where he carried out his ‘unlawful and violent will’ with her, ‘in spite of her being unwilling’. Ultimately, the judgment concludes that these acts constituted ‘matters of great force and excess’ and could not be tolerated in ‘a city governed by justice’.Footnote 1

The closing statement of the verdict is particularly revealing: since such violence was perpetrated in what is described as a reputable ‘city of justice’ (also referred to as a ‘city of commerce’ in a similar record), it could not remain unpunished, therefore warranting criminal, even capital, punishment. While this rhetoric follows that of a conventional judicial register, it nonetheless expresses a clear civic necessity to uphold order, exemplarily enforced through public execution. This imperative must be understood against a backdrop of heightened economic and moral crisis in the Low Countries at the end of the fifteenth century.Footnote 2 Scholars have traditionally emphasized the role of statutes and legislation in maintaining urban order and prosperity;Footnote 3 however, legal cases such as Jan’s offer a different perspective. Court records illuminate not only judicial practice but also prevailing values and norms – in this case, the commitment to upholding justice. Hence, a thorough understanding of these values and norms is indispensable for reconstructing perceptions of deviance and the negotiation of social order.Footnote 4 Approached through this lens, the death sentence imposed on Jan van Brelettes emerges as an expression of urban anxiety about deviant and criminal behaviour, rather than merely as a response to sexual transgression.

Indeed, scholarship has long emphasized the importance of social control or, more precisely, social discipline in premodern urban contexts across Europe.Footnote 5 The conditions of late medieval towns, marked by large and socially heterogeneous populations, necessitated pragmatic strategies aimed at safeguarding the common good.Footnote 6 A pervasive fear of crime encouraged communities to report offenders, while urban authorities increasingly embraced their responsibility to maintain public security, condemning particularly threatening offences such as murder, arson, rape, incest and sodomy.Footnote 7 Social control thus operated on two interconnected levels: formal discipline, expressed through judicial systems of repression, and communal norms shaped by notions of gender, honour and neighbourliness.Footnote 8 Within this broad framework, deviance arises as a socially constructed and continually renegotiated as well as re-regulated category.Footnote 9

The city of Bruges, located in the County of Flanders, provides a particularly productive setting for analysing the conceptualization of crime and deviance, through a case study on rape, in late medieval urban society. As a major medieval metropolis, Bruges experienced repeated episodes of revolt, unrest and criminal activity, especially in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.Footnote 10 Although criminal source material from the Middle Ages is limited, several records allow for a reconstruction of patterns of criminality, including the Verluydboec, the city’s criminal sentence book, as well as bailiff accounts, both of which have underpinned earlier scholarship on religious and sexual deviance.Footnote 11 Notably, rape has remained largely overlooked in studies drawing on these primary source materials.Footnote 12 This neglect is unwarranted, as Bruges’ criminal records show a marked increase in rape prosecutions at the end of the fifteenth century. This points to the emergence of a standardized penal policy targeting what may be termed the ‘criminal-rapist’: an offender archetypically portrayed as an outsider responsible for brutal, dishonourable and violent acts.

This article, in its focus on the prosecution of rape in late medieval Bruges, begins by examining the remarkable number of severe prosecutions in this period. The relatively high number of punished rapists, this article argues, should be understood as a reflection of attempts to restore social order, signalling heightened concern with violence and the delineation of acceptable conduct. In this context, rape appears to have been constructed primarily as a form of violent crime rather than as a moral offence. Accordingly, those accused were deemed ‘criminal’ in multiple respects, as rape charges were frequently accompanied by allegations of other deviant behaviour, including blasphemy, vagabondage and burglary. The prosecution of criminal-rapists indicated less a shift in sexual morality (such as that evident in the city’s repression of prostitution and sodomyFootnote 13) than a perceived threat to civic peace, a view shared by both the local authorities and the urban community.

A closer examination of rape cases in late medieval Bruges contributes to broader debates on crime, violence and sexuality in urban contexts. This focus is particularly relevant given scholars’ long-standing observation that judicial authorities in medieval Europe often refrained from prosecuting rape, despite its classification as one of the most severe offences in the majority of European normative legal texts.Footnote 14 As Barbara Hanawalt has argued, this reluctance may be explained by the heavy burden of proof placed on female victims, whose testimonies had to persuade an all-male judiciary.Footnote 15 Recent historiography has nevertheless demonstrated that many women did report rape and, in some cases, successfully obtained compensation or justice.Footnote 16 A case study on thirteenth-century Bologna, for example, highlights the active role of working-class women in initiating complaints for sexual violence.Footnote 17 Even so, a broad scholarly consensus maintains that actual rape convictions, despite strict legal frameworks, remained relatively rare, while a substantial number of cases remained unreported or unsuccessful, owing to the complex interplay between notions of consent, intent and force.

The Bruges cases demonstrate that city magistrates, referred to as aldermen, at times did respond to rape and attempted rape with notable severity, challenging assumptions about the leniency of medieval justice in matters of sexual violence. Previous research has already proven that urban authorities in the Southern Low Countries actively regulated gender- and sexuality-related offences.Footnote 18 Whether this heightened intervention extended equally to rape, however, remains an open question. Addressing this gap in the literature, the article first examines how the rise in rape prosecutions aligned with the broader urban policy of the city of Bruges. It then analyses the perception and categorization of criminal-rapists, aggravating circumstances and the role of community involvement. In doing so, this work sheds light on how an urban society defined, judged and negotiated categories of deviant behaviour.

Setting the scene: the ‘civic revival’ of Bruges

From the mid-fifteenth century onwards, the city of Bruges, once celebrated as the ‘cradle of capitalism’,Footnote 19 increasingly faced adverse conditions. The city gradually lost much of its economic power due to rising competition from neighbouring centres producing cheaper cloth, as well as Antwerp’s development into a major hub for international trade, which led to the steady decline of Bruges’ traditional industries.Footnote 20 The failed Flemish Revolt against Archduke Maximilian of Austria further intensified this crisis, placing severe strain on municipal finances and contributing to high mortality through war and famine.Footnote 21 This pervasive ‘sense of crisis’ prompted the city government to intervene. Investments in public infrastructure were made to stimulate traffic and revive commerce and poor relief was reorganized, with magistrates assuming guardianship over hospitals, almshouses and orphan care.Footnote 22 At the same time, the aldermen showed a pronounced interest in religious life and public ceremony, referred to as ‘civic religion’, using ritual and spectacle to advance agendas supportive of urban authority. Princely entries, investments in liturgical services and major processions such as that of the Holy Blood all underscored the centrality of civic identity during a period of profound transformation.Footnote 23

A shifting moral framework can likewise be discerned in the Low Countries between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Contemporary literature produced by the rhetoric guilds points to the rise of a new ‘burgher morality’ centred on ideals of self-discipline, piety and civility.Footnote 24 Within this evolving moral climate, efforts to uphold social order increasingly targeted gender-related offences such as adultery and abduction, practices deemed particularly disruptive to the prevailing patriarchal hierarchy.Footnote 25 These concerns found concrete expression in the actions of urban authorities. The Bruges Verluydboec, which records all criminal verdicts pronounced by the aldermen between 1490 and 1537, clearly illustrates this development: offences classified as crimes ‘against nature’, including infanticide, transvestism and sodomy, were systematically punished with severe corporal punishment. Sodomy, in particular, was perceived as a grave threat to civic order and resulted in an exceptionally high number of convictions, frequently culminating in execution at the stake.Footnote 26

Similarly, Walter Prevenier has argued that, within the Burgundian state, rape was ‘in most cases effectively liable to prosecution and conviction’.Footnote 27 This claim, however, rests on an interpretive approach that frames rape and abduction as intertwined and pardonable offences. A closer examination of urban prosecution patterns in the Southern Low Countries does reveal several successful rape prosecutions, but these follow two tendencies rather than indicating a general pattern. First, banishment and penal pilgrimages were often deemed appropriate responses to (attempted) rape. In Antwerp, for example, perpetrators of rape and attempted rape were generally punished through pilgrimages throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.Footnote 28 Second, the prosecution of rape was often handled by the city bailiff. Urban criminal justice was divided between the local aldermen, who issued final judgments, and the bailiff or the representative of the count, who interrogated suspects, enforced sentences and had the ability to settle offences amicably, without the involvement of the aldermen. Sentencing books from cities such as Brussels, Aalst, Leuven and Malines reveal a striking absence of recorded penalties for sexual assault.Footnote 29 Similarly, in Kortrijk, punishments for rape accounted for less than 1 per cent of all banishments issued between 1459 and 1531.Footnote 30 In many instances, however, bailiffs agreed to halt proceedings in exchange for a financial settlement or ‘composition’.Footnote 31 This practice also extended to rape cases: compositions appear to have been the most commonly applied sanction for sexual violence at the end of the Middle Ages in the Southern Low Countries.Footnote 32

Against this backdrop, the prosecution of rape in Bruges stands out for its severity. The Verluydboec records 18 accused criminal-rapists publicly placed on the scaffold. Eleven were executed by decapitation, while six were subjected to public flogging on their naked bodies, followed by banishment from ‘the land of Flanders’ for several years. One offender, by contrast, was sentenced to remain within the city for seven years and forbidden to leave without the explicit permission of the aldermen.Footnote 33 Overall, rape cases account for 4 per cent of all convictions documented in the Verluydboec. Moreover, the Bruges bailiff accounts, recording annual income and expenditure, mention only a single composition for sexual violence during the entire period from 1490 to 1537.Footnote 34 This striking absence suggests that the Bruges aldermen not only intensified but also standardized punishment, imposing corporal punishment as the exclusive response to rape and attempted rape from 1490 onwards.

No criminal sources from Bruges prior to 1490 have survived, complicating the reconstruction of earlier prosecution patterns. Nevertheless, the second part of the Verluydboec (1537–1555) indicates a clear shift: sexual crimes are markedly underrepresented, whereas cases of theft dominate the record. Only three rape trials are recorded, all resulting in corporal punishment rather than execution.Footnote 35 The bailiff accounts provide additional insight into the earlier period, however. Before 1490, compositions for (attempted) rape are frequently mentioned,Footnote 36 in sharp contrast to the post-1490 period, when financial settlement virtually disappeared and corporal punishment became dominant. By comparison, bailiff accounts of the Liberty of Bruges, the castellany in Bruges’ hinterland with a separate jurisdiction, record nine compositions for rape and attempted rape between 1490 and 1537.Footnote 37 Taken together, these findings point to a distinct wave of rape prosecution in Bruges around the turn of the sixteenth century, reflecting heightened anxiety about deviance and a deliberate effort to reinforce civic order.

A city regulation, or hallegebod, issued in 1490 provides a key indicator of this renewed attention to sexual violence. The document highlights a troubling pattern: it reports that several women, both those travelling with their husbands as well as women travelling alone, had been ‘accosted and attacked against their will’. In response, the aldermen enacted legislation prohibiting armed and violent breaches of the peace.Footnote 38 As reflected in the Verluydboec, a consistent criminal policy followed, with a steady rate of three to five corporal punishments for rape per decade. These punishments were deliberately staged in public to serve as deterrents, with some perpetrators subjected to additional humiliation. Jan Goossens, convicted for raping ‘a young virgin’, was flogged publicly on a cart drawn through several major market squares.Footnote 39 After attempting to rape three women, the corpse of Pieter Fransois was displayed on a wheel outside the city gate as a warning to passers-by.Footnote 40 These measures were embedded within a well-developed system of extraordinary criminal justice, characterized by secret and ex officio proceedings in which torture was used to extract confessions (or verluyds).Footnote 41 This strongly inquisitorial framework demonstrates that sexual violence featured prominently on the agenda of the Bruges aldermen at the end of the Middle Ages. As discussed in the following sections, judicial intervention was typically reserved for cases in which the perpetrator’s actions were described in terms of brutal, physical and excessive violence.

Recidivists and renowned troublemakers

All 18 verdicts begin by identifying the perpetrator by name, often specifying the father’s name, occupation and place of origin. The latter is particularly significant. The hometown of the convicted individual is specified in roughly half of the cases, which reveals that many prosecuted criminal-rapists were not native to Bruges. Most originated from nearby towns within the County of Flanders. One notable exception is Pieter de Rijobee, who came from the French town of Beaufort-en-Vallée near Angers and may have moved to Bruges as a merchant, as was common among European tradesmen.Footnote 42 Historians have observed that certain social groups were more often associated with (sexual) violence than others; foreigners, in particular, were ascribed as having generally deviant and untrustworthy characters.Footnote 43 Studies on French and English rape cases involving foreign merchants suggest that it was precisely their status as outsiders that created exceptional opportunities for women to persuade authorities and successfully prosecute their assailants.Footnote 44 This dynamic appears equally relevant in the case of Pieter de Rijobee.

In four verdicts, it is explicitly stated that the convicted had previously resided in other cities in the Low Countries, such as Lille, Antwerp or Malines, and had relocated to Bruges following serious misconduct or prosecution in those places. Their profiles closely align with characterizations of vagabonds or vagrants: individuals without stable residence who moved between town and countryside and were frequently associated with disorderly or criminal behaviour.Footnote 45 Jan Hermarijn, for instance, had been banished from Veurne for cohabiting with another woman despite having an ‘honourable wife’. He subsequently moved to Antwerp, where he and his partner operated a brothel. After receiving remission for an attempted abduction on condition of ‘not do[ing] anything wrong again’, he murdered the woman he had been living with, reportedly ‘out of jealousy’, and later fled to Bruges, where he ‘continued in his wild and reckless life’. His verdict concludes with another attempted abduction in Bruges, this time of a married woman, ‘with the intent of sleeping with her’.Footnote 46 Scholarship has shown that local authorities in the Low Countries closely monitored the movements of vagabonds, perceived them negatively and in some cases criminalized vagabondage itself.Footnote 47 Bruges was no exception in this regard.Footnote 48

Other perpetrators’ verdicts, however, present a very different social profile. Eight of the accused are described as married men of respectable standing, sons of urban inhabitants belonging to the city’s middling groups, such as locksmiths and shoemakers, or promising young men apprenticed to guild masters. A comparable pattern has been observed by Didier Lett in late medieval Bologna, where most rapists were settled men of considerable age, often responsible for a household.Footnote 49 Although the Verluydboec never records the age of the perpetrator, occupational markers offer some indication. Gheeraert van Cuuc is identified as a ‘master surgeon’, implying an established position within the craft guild.Footnote 50 By contrast, Andries de Knuts is identified as a cnape employed in a master’s workshop, with a wife and a newborn child at home.Footnote 51

A dichotomous image thus emerges: some criminal-rapists are framed as disruptive outsiders; others appear as integrated and respected members of the (economic) community, both young and old. Interestingly, before detailing the circumstances of the sexual violence, scribes frequently included remarks on the perpetrator’s reputation, underscoring his notoriety. In the verdict of Adriaen Ysenbaert, his nickname quade nete, or ‘evil curse’, is mentioned, indicating that he was regarded as a bad influence, to be cursed as it were.Footnote 52 Similarly, Marijn vander Halle is described as being ‘famous for his many acts of nocturnal violence’,Footnote 53 while Jan van Brelettes is identified as a bastard,Footnote 54 marking them both as socially marginal. Moreover, although corporal punishments were mostly carried out within days of the offence, some verdicts note crimes committed long before punishment was imposed. Frenchman Pieter de Rijobee, for example, was said to have assaulted several virgins ‘within a period of six years’,Footnote 55 while surgeon Gheeraert van Cuuc had raped multiple girls ‘years ago’.Footnote 56 In late medieval cities, reputation and honour were of paramount importance: information spread quickly and communal memory played a key role in shaping judicial intervention.Footnote 57

While some rapists were framed as outsiders or vagabonds, it was ultimately a negative reputation that most decisively shaped criminal profiles in Bruges, marking these individuals as threats to the community. Overall, criminal-rapists are consistently portrayed as persistent and well-known troublemakers. Men identified as foreigners, vagabonds or recidivists were subjected to scrutiny by urban authorities. Even more strikingly, formerly respected individuals who had ‘fallen’ from social grace due to reputational damage appear to have been monitored just as carefully by both magistrates and the wider urban community.

Repetition, intoxication and other aggravating arguments

The Middle Dutch term vrauwecrachte highlights a defining feature of premodern sexual assault: rape was conceptualized not primarily as sexual intercourse, but as an act of male force (crachte). Classification as rape therefore required clear evidence of violence before and/or during the sexual act, demonstrating its non-consensual nature.Footnote 58 The term vrauwecrachte itself does not occur in the verdicts examined, yet numerous formulations emphasize the violent conduct of the perpetrators, confirming that these cases concerned (attempted) rape. Jan vander Haghe, for instance, is described as having committed ‘so many acts of violence that he knew her carnally’, which presents sexual assault as the culmination of physical aggression.Footnote 59 More implicit expressions, such as ‘craving’ or ‘lust’ (appetijt), also appear in the records, signalling the perpetrators’ intent to use force.Footnote 60

The physical violence described in the verdicts is often extreme, closely resembling attempted murder. Mahouche le Maire and three accomplices brutally assaulted a woman, punching her until she bled heavily, stabbing her from behind and repeatedly forcing her under water in a canal.Footnote 61 In another case, Hendric Ysac stabbed his victim below the collarbone, cut so deeply into her jaw that it required stitching and wounded her hands so severely that ‘one finger almost fell off’ as she attempted to defend herself.Footnote 62

Not all cases are documented in such detail, but acts of beating, wounding, threatening and coercion recur throughout the verdicts. Notably, the language used avoids explicitly portraying perpetrators as monstrous or diabolical figures, a trope found in rape trials elsewhere in Europe, where sexual violence against young girls was framed as a transgression against sanctity or morality.Footnote 63 In Bruges, by contrast, sexual violence was attributed to men’s inability to control their instincts; therefore, they were perceived as threats to public order and patriarchal stability. The violent nature of these cases seems to reflect a broader shift in attitudes towards deviance rather than an intensified moral or religious condemnation of sexual sin. Offenders were labelled criminals, agitators who disturbed civic peace, rather than immoral monsters. This interpretation is reinforced by the prominence of aggravating factors not inherently linked to rape, such as recidivism, premeditation, accomplices, intoxication and the use of weapons.

Indeed, several verdicts enumerate additional offences committed before or after the sexual assault, including spousal abuse, blasphemy, burglary, assault, murder and multiple (attempted) rapes.Footnote 64 Judicial officers consistently recorded all crimes, as repetition constituted an aggravating circumstance during the Middle Ages.Footnote 65 Nevertheless, only seven cases explicitly mention multiple offences, or recidivism, indicating that violent rape alone was considered sufficiently serious to warrant corporal punishment.

Furthermore, the verdicts frequently stress the intentions of the perpetrators, employing phrases such as ‘with a set goal in mind’Footnote 66 or ‘without any cause or reason’.Footnote 67 All victims are described as strangers to their assailants, reinforcing the sense of premeditation and arbitrariness; any woman might have sufficed. Perpetrators are portrayed as actively pursuing, deceiving and attacking women to achieve their aim. Two verdicts even suggest a conscious awareness of loss of control: Jan van Brelettes reportedly vowed that ‘that night he would do as he pleased in spite of the whole world, even if it cost him his neck’, as did Jan Hermarijn.Footnote 68 Overpowering a victim alone was often difficult: in roughly half the cases, perpetrators received assistance from one or more accomplices, who typically withdrew once the victim was subdued. One exceptional case involves the aforementioned Mahouche le Maire, who, although not the individual who committed the sexual act, was executed as the ringleader. After the group of men had decided by drawing lots who could ‘have her’, Mahouche stood guard while another man raped the victim.Footnote 69 His execution reflects the authorities’ focus on leadership in cases of assault and organized violence as threats to the city.Footnote 70

When carrying out their predetermined schemes, most criminal-rapists also committed acts recognized as aggravating circumstances under contemporary law. First, half of the accused used prohibited weapons to threaten and assault their victims.Footnote 71 Urban ordinances repeatedly regulated weapon-bearing; a December 1490 hallegebod, for instance, prohibited the public carrying of uncovered knives, swords and daggers exceeding three palms in length.Footnote 72 In the verdicts, rapists are described drawing ‘long swords’ or ‘long knives’ from their sheaths. Second, seven of the recorded assaults involved forced entry into houses, either to abduct victims or to assault them in their own homes. Burglary was considered particularly intolerable, since every woman was ‘supposed to be free’ within her own household.Footnote 73 Third, nearly all (attempted) rapes occurred at night, another aggravating circumstance. Night-time burglary, in particular, was regarded as a serious offence, as it disrupted the residents’ sleep and sense of security.Footnote 74

The perpetrators’ fondness for drinking and gambling is also repeatedly mentioned. Sixteenth-century legislation considered drunkenness an aggravating factor – both Charles V and Philip II issued edicts prescribing harsher punishment for intoxicated offenders – though in practice it could also be treated as a mitigating factor.Footnote 75 Several verdicts describe groups of men who, after drinking or gambling in taverns, identified a potential victim and pursued her. For instance, Christiaen van Heerdsroode and his companions deceived a maid into letting them into a house, after which they barricaded the doors, forced her to fetch two jugs of beer and wine and later raped her while drunk.Footnote 76 Interestingly, intoxication not only facilitated sexual violence but was sometimes deliberately used to make victims more vulnerable, as in the cases of Heyndric de Cammere and Jan van Brelettes, both of whom forced their victims to drink against their will in order to overpower them.Footnote 77 The frequent emphasis on intoxication suggests that Bruges aldermen viewed such behaviour as exacerbating the threat of unrest.

In short, extreme violence and the presence of aggravating circumstances were decisive in classifying an offence as rape in late medieval Bruges. The crime was therefore deemed closer to assault and attempted murder than to sex-related offences. Criminal-rapists were constructed as criminals who endangered civic order, rather than as immoral figures driven by deviant sexuality: a distinction that sets rape apart from sodomy in the Bruges criminal records.

Community responses to rape

In addition to official judicial processes, a crucial second dimension of social control lay in community involvement. Premodern urban communities were deeply shaped by ideals of self-government and solidarity, with neighbours as agents of social discipline actively monitoring one another.Footnote 78 Witnesses, neighbours and local networks were therefore not passive observers but moral arbiters who evaluated behaviour and character, a dynamic particularly evident in rape prosecutions.Footnote 79 Numerous scholars have shown that victims’ efforts, their kin and witnesses were indispensable in such trials, driven by neighbourly values of prosperity, order and patriarchy.Footnote 80 This sense of social obligation also entailed offering assistance at the moment of the offence.Footnote 81 Although the expansion of urban governmental authority gradually limited local autonomy in the sixteenth century, an active and participatory street culture persisted, sustaining collective identity.Footnote 82 As Mireille Pardon has noted, crowds in the towns of the Low Countries played a vital role in maintaining urban peace through rumours, testimony and participation in public executions, revealing the close interaction between official justice and communal enforcement.Footnote 83

The Bruges verdicts equally underscore the importance of community intervention in preventing rape. In all cases, some form of communal response is evident: women assaulted in their homes often escaped by fleeing to their neighbours, husbands rushed to defend their wives and the hue and cry was often raised. Moreover, most cases mention taverns, bathhouses and brothels, which were highly public and accessible spaces in medieval cities. These settings functioned both as sites of crime and as spaces of crime organization.Footnote 84 Innkeepers even had an official obligation to report misconduct occurring on their premises,Footnote 85 as illustrated in a case from Brussels: a taverner who had failed to intervene in a rape out of fear of the assailant was fined by the aldermen for his negligence.Footnote 86 In Bruges too, innkeepers appear to have borne a particular moral duty to act, as five cases explicitly mention their intervention. In the case of Jan van Brelettes, an innkeeper refused to prepare a bed and repeatedly pleaded for the victim’s release, despite being threatened herself.Footnote 87 In another case, an innkeeper interrupted an assault after being alerted by concerns raised by other guests.Footnote 88 These examples illustrate how tavern keepers, especially women, could decisively intervene, acting out of civic responsibility.

What, then, prompted communities to perceive certain behaviour as a threat to social peace, finding it so intolerable that they were driven to intervene? Above all, it was the public nature of the violence. Most assaults occurred in highly visible locations, such as in brothels or on the city ramparts, and were often preceded by public pursuits or abductions in the streets. Offenders also carried weapons and broke into houses, actions regarded by both magistrates and the wider community as grave threats to security. Public space held particular significance in the Middle Ages: crimes committed there were considered a matter of collective concern, a principle embodied in the hue and cry. This mechanism, often described as essential in proving non-consent, required bystanders to pursue offenders and bring them before the court.Footnote 89 Six verdicts describe victims screaming ‘help’ or shouting ‘murder’, thereby drawing attention and causing a disturbance (in one instance by causing a dog to barkFootnote 90). The mechanism is exemplarily illustrated in the case of Mahouche le Maire, whose violent acts are described in detail in the previous section. The verdict further emphasizes that the victim screamed for help twice and continually resisted her assailants. Following the rape, a tavern owner rallied others in response to her cries, leading to the perpetrators’ capture.Footnote 91

Additionally, the perceived respectability and conduct of the victim played a decisive role in communal judgment. More than age, virginity or marital status, female honour was central. One verdict explicitly describes the victim as ‘a good, old and honourable’ widow ‘who is loved and known’.Footnote 92 Moreover, verdicts systematically stress women’s appropriate behaviour at the time of the offence: victims are portrayed as being accompanied by respectable men, responding politely to advances, invoking their marital status or clearly refusing. These descriptions thus affirm the acts as rape. In the attempted rape of two sisters by Marijn vander Halle, the scene is framed as ‘an evening of recreation’, with men and women walking peacefully through the streets while ‘playing the lute’. This pleasant evening was suddenly disturbed by the violence of Marijn and his companions, ‘who wanted to have and take these women’.Footnote 93 Similarly, in the case of Pieter Fransois, a maid politely refused his demands and threats to accompany him, explaining that she was working and thus was not allowed to go anywhere.Footnote 94 The sharp contrast between male aggression and female propriety is powerfully (over)stated: women adhered to accepted norms of behaviour, while men transgressed them, reinforcing communal condemnation of the assault.Footnote 95

Conclusion

In the city of Bruges, a trading centre located in the County of Flanders, the transition from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century witnessed a notable surge in rape prosecutions. This increase is documented in the Verluydboec (1490–1537), which records 18 convictions for rape or attempted rape, each resulting in corporal punishment: execution, public flogging and body display. Such strict judicial responses must be understood within the context of Bruges’ economic decline following the downturn of the traditional cloth industry. At the same time, civic authorities harboured deep anxieties of political disorder: fears of uprisings, gang formation, gambling networks, organized crime and the potential damage to the city’s reputation all loomed large.

This article has argued that the measures taken against sexual assault in the city reflect a broader concern for social order and prosperity, shared by both urban authorities and the wider community. Prosecution focused primarily on cases that were exceptionally brutal, supported by substantial evidence and regarded as actions that could not be tolerated in a city keen to preserve its ‘high repute’. All convicted criminal-rapists were portrayed as notorious troublemakers: vagrants wandering the streets, well-known criminals with extensive records or recidivists. The violent nature of their acts is deliberately emphasized in the final verdicts. Assaults typically involved threats, physical force, premeditated victim selection, the use of weapons, night-time burglary and intoxication. Moreover, these sexual assaults occurred in public spaces and in the presence of neighbours, acquaintances and bystanders who felt compelled to intervene when the violence escalated beyond what was deemed bearable.

An urban history approach has proven particularly fruitful in this case study, as it reveals how the regulation of rape was profoundly shaped by local contexts. Whereas previous scholarship has tended to examine medieval rape primarily through the lenses of gender studies or criminal justice, this article demonstrates the close ties between contemporary understandings of sexual violence and the maintenance of civic order. The framing of rapists as violent criminals illustrates the city’s inclination to criminalize and exclude behaviours perceived as threats to urban stability. This, however, also implies that only cases meeting strict evidentiary thresholds were pursued in court, leaving instances of rape within households or familial settings largely unrecorded. While the studied final judgments reveal much about attitudes towards sexual violence, they also highlight the need for further research to develop a more comprehensive understanding of sexual deviancy in the late medieval Low Countries.

Competing interests

The author declares none.

References

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8 Spierenburg, ‘Social control and history’, 7–10. Historians of crime widely acknowledge that social control was exercised through a broad spectrum of formal and informal institutions, including secular courts, ecclesiastical courts, guilds and neighbourhoods. Sharpe and Walker, in particular, emphasize that the household functioned as a key arena of social control as well: Sharpe, J., ‘Social control in early modern England: the need for a broad perspective’, in Spierenburg, and Roodenburg, (eds.), Social Control in Europe, 37–54 Google Scholar; Walker, G., Crime, Gender, and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2003)10.1017/CBO9780511496110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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12 Mariann Naessens did previously examine the imposition of (capital) penalties for rape in the criminal records of Bruges as part of a broader study on sexual and religious deviance. While she addressed rape cases explicitly, her analysis focused primarily on prospects of ‘social promotion’, or the potential anticipation of marriage between perpetrator and young victim, a dynamic frequently observed in cases of abduction, but apparently far less common in prosecutions for rape. M. Naessens, ‘De beteugeling van seksueel en religieus deviant gedrag door de stadsschepenbanken van Kortrijk en Brugge, 1459–1537: een onderzoek naar het civilisatieproces vanuit gerechtelijke bronnen’, KU Leuven, Master’s thesis, 1998.

13 Both Roelens and Dupont have noted a strict enforcement of moral offences, respectively sodomy and prostitution, in late medieval Bruges. Rape, by contrast, appears to diverge from these broader moral concerns that dominated urban regulation. Roelens, Citizens and Sodomites; Dupont, G., Maagdenverleidsters, Hoeren en Speculanten: Prostitutie in Brugge tijdens de Bourgondische Periode (1385–1515) (Bruges, 1996)Google Scholar.

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18 Some of the most recent publications include: Blockmans, W. and Neijzen, T., ‘Functions of fiction: fighting spouses around 1500’, in Blockmans, W. and Janse, A. (eds.), Showing Status: Representations of Social Positions in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 1999), 265–76Google Scholar; Prevenier, W., ‘Violence against women in fifteenth-century France and the Burgundian state’, in Hanawalt, and Wallace, (eds.), Medieval Crime and Social Control, 186–203 10.5749/9780816689255-010CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Naessens, ‘Judicial authorities’ views of women’s roles’; Delameillieure, C., Abduction, Marriage, and Consent in the Late Medieval Low Countries (Amsterdam, 2024 Google Scholar); Roelens, Citizens and Sodomites; Feys, E., ‘“A hot-tempered, capricious, jealous and compassionless wife”: marital conflicts and homicide in pardon letters of Burgundy and the Low Countries (1450–1535)’, Journal of Family History, 50 (2025), 425–4310.1177/03631990251347897CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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20 Van Uytven, R., ‘Stages of economic decline: late medieval Bruges’, in Van Uytven, R. (ed.), Production and Consumption in the Low Countries, 13th–16th Centuries (London, 2001), 259–69Google Scholar; Brulez, W., ‘Brugge en Antwerpen in de 15e en 16e eeuw: een tegenstelling?’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 83 (1970), 15–37 Google Scholar.

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22 Deneweth, H., ‘Brugge zoekt en vindt alternatieven’, in Vermeersch, V. et al. (eds.), Brugge (Antwerp, 2002), 86–99 Google Scholar.

23 Brown, A., Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges c. 1300–1520 (Cambridge, 2011)10.1017/CBO9780511933882CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Several key publications have addressed this intellectual climate, including: Pleij, H., De Sneeuwpoppen van 1511: Literatuur en Stadscultuur tussen Middeleeuwen en Moderne Tijd (Amsterdam, 1988)Google Scholar; Pleij, H., Op Belofte van Profijt: Stadsliteratuur en Burgermoraal in de Nederlandse Letterkunde van de Middeleeuwen (Amsterdam, 1991)Google Scholar; van Bruaene, A., Om Beters Wille: Rederijkerskamers en de Stedelijke Cultuur in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden 1400–1650 (Cambridge, 2008)10.5117/9789053565612CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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26 Roelens, Citizens and Sodomites, 83–89.

27 Prevenier, ‘Violence against women’, 195.

28 A. Tierssoone, ‘Vrouwen, criminaliteit en vrouwencriminaliteit in Antwerpen in de vijftiende en zestiende eeuw’, University of Ghent, Master’s thesis, 1998, 89–94.

29 City Archives of Brussels, Historisch Archief, no. XVI: Witcorrectieboeck (1420–1516); C. Swiggers, ‘“Gevioleert ende met fortsen tegen hueren wille ende danck vercrecht”. Een onderzoek naar verkrachting en seksuele toestemming in de laatmiddeleeuwse steden Aalst en Leuven’, KU Leuven, Master’s thesis, 2024, 9; L. Maes, Vijf Eeuwen Stedelijk Strafrecht: Bijdrage tot de Rechts- en Cultuurgeschiedenis der Nederlanden (Antwerp, 1947), 225–8; City Archives of Leuven, Oud Archief, no. 584: Dbedevaertboeck (1398–1422).

30 M. Marien, ‘Vrouwen voor het gerecht. Gender en criminaliteitspatronen in het laatmiddeleeuwse Kortrijk’, KU Leuven, Master’s thesis, 2025, 54–6.

31 Van Rompaey, J., ‘Het compositierecht in Vlaanderen van de veertiende tot de achttiende eeuw’, Tijdschrift Voor Rechtsgeschiedenis, 1 (1961), 43–79 10.1163/157181961X00038CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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33 CAB, Verluydboec, fols. 199v–200r.

34 General State Archives Brussels (Algemeen Rijksarchief; hereafter AR), Chamber of Accounts: Account of the Bailiff of Bruges no. 13782, Dec. 1493–Jul. 1495, fol. 12v. Jaques Mesdach was imprisoned after being accused of ‘wanting to rape multiple women’.

35 Roelens, Citizens and Sodomites, 84. The severe punishment of sodomy in Bruges also decreased noticeably after 1535.

36 For two examples, see Dupont, Maagdenverleidsters, 70–1.

37 AR, Chamber of Accounts: Account of the Bailiff of the Liberty of Bruges nos. 13710–13715, Jan. 1490–May 1537.

38 CAB, Series 120, no. 1: Hallegeboden (1490–1499), fols. 65r–66v.

39 CAB, Verluydboec, fols. 234r–v.

40 Ibid., fols. 98r–99v.

41 Monballyu, J., ‘De hoofdlijnen van de criminele strafprocedure in het graafschap Vlaanderen (16de tot 18de eeuw)’, in Stevens, F. and van Rhee, C. H. (eds.), Voortschrijdend Procesrecht: Een Historische Verkenning (Leuven, 2001), 69–74 Google Scholar. The same is highlighted in Klemettilä’s study on late medieval executions: Klemettilä, H., Epitomes of Evil: Representation of Executioners in Northern France and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2006), 35–610.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.106327CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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43 Seabourne, ‘Rape and law’, 349; Skoda, H., Medieval Violence: Physical Brutality in Northern France, 1270–1330 (Oxford, 2013), 62–810.1093/acprof:oso/9780199670833.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coomans, J., ‘Policing itinerant poor in the Northern Low Countries, 1450–1570’, BMGN: Low Countries Historical Review, 138 (2023), 3–31 10.51769/bmgn-lchr.11116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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45 Coomans, ‘Policing itinerant poor’, 13.

46 CAB, Verluydboec, fols. 177r–178v.

47 Coomans, ‘Policing itinerant poor’, 7; Vanhemelryck, F., Marginalen in de Geschiedenis: Over Beulen, Joden, Hoeren, Zigeuners en Andere Zondebokken (Leuven, 2004), 15–28 Google Scholar.

48 Brown, Civic Ceremony, 303–4.

49 Lett, D., ‘Women victims of sexual assault and rape: evidence from the criminal records of Bologna (fourteenth–fifteenth centuries)’, Clio (English ed.), 52 (2020), 48–9Google Scholar.

50 CAB, Verluydboec, fol. 227v.

51 Ibid., fol. 54v.

52 CAB, Verluydboec, fols. 268v–269r.

53 Ibid., fols. 94v–95r.

54 CAB, Verluydboec, fols. 89v–90r. For an overview of the characteristics ascribed to illegitimate children, see C. Avignon (ed.), Bâtards et Bâtardises dans l’Europe Médiévale et Moderne (Rennes, 2017).

55 CAB, Verluydboec, fols. 98r–99v.

56 Ibid., fol. 227v.

57 For more information on the role of reputation in the Middle Ages, see Fenster, T. and Smail, D. L. (eds.), Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 2003)10.7591/9781501718106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 G. Walker, ‘Everyman or a monster? The rapist in early modern England, c. 1600–1750’, History Workshop Journal, 76 (2013), 20; Lett, ‘Women victims’, 54–56; Lansing, ‘Opportunities to charge rape’, 90.

59 CAB, Verluydboec, fol. 5v.

60 Ibid., fol. 18v.

61 Ibid., fols. 13v–15r.

62 Ibid., fol. 18v.

63 Walker, ‘Everyman or a monster?’, 18; Lett, ‘Women victims’, 52.

64 In the sources, the term ‘item’ is used to indicate separate crimes. Notably, the rape of multiple victims is often listed as one crime, even though such cases could be considered individual incidents in their own right.

65 Maes, Vijf Eeuwen Stedelijk Strafrecht, 491.

66 CAB, Verluydboec, fol. 18v.

67 Ibid., fols. 199v–200r.

68 Ibid., fols. 89v–90r; 177r–178v.

69 Ibid., fols. 13v–15r.

70 Collective action was a defining feature of medieval Flemish revolts and political life. See, for instance, Dumolyn, J. and Haemers, J., ‘Patterns of urban rebellion in medieval Flanders’, Journal of Medieval History, 31 (2005), 370–110.1016/j.jmedhist.2005.08.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Maes, Vijf Eeuwen Stedelijk Strafrecht, 491.

72 CAB, Hallegeboden, fol. 88r.

73 CAB, Verluydboec, fols. 18v, 43v; 94r–95v. Interestingly, Maëliss Nouvel has identified the household as the most common site of rape in late medieval France: M. Nouvel, ‘Violer la femme, violer la maison: une reconfiguration des rapports de genre dans l’espace urbain français de la fin du Moyen Âge’, Genre & Histoire, 35 (2025), https://doi.org/10.4000/149ul.

74 Van Caenegem, R., Geschiedenis van het Strafrecht in Vlaanderen van de XIe tot de XIVe Eeuw (Brussels, 1954), 64 Google Scholar.

75 Maes, Vijf Eeuwen Stedelijk Strafrecht, 486.

76 CAB, Verluydboec, fol. 43v.

77 Ibid., fol. 142v; fols. 89r–89v. A similar discourse of intoxication and force is identified in other cases of sexual assault: Seabourne, G., ‘Drugs, deceit and damage in thirteenth-century Herefordshire: new perspectives on medieval surgery, sex and the law’, Social History of Medicine, 30 (2017), 255–76Google Scholar; Harris, C., ‘A drunken cunt hath no porter: medieval histories of intoxication and consent’, Medieval Feminist Forum, 54 (2018), 109–3410.17077/1536-8742.2134CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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81 Buntinx, J., ‘Verkrachting en hulpgeroep in het Oud-Vlaams recht’, in Handelingen der Zuidnederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis, vol. IX (Oudenaarde, 1955), 15–21 Google Scholar.

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85 Hermesdorf, B., De Herberg in de Nederlanden: Een Blik in de Beschavingsgeschiedenis (Arnhem, 1977), 215–27Google Scholar; Hell, M., De Amsterdamse Herberg 1450–1800: Geestrijk Centrum van het Openbare Leven (Nijmegen, 2017), 28–34 Google Scholar.

86 Vanhemelryck, De Criminaliteit in de Ammanie van Brussel, 151.

87 CAB, Verluydboec, fols. 89v–90r.

88 Ibid., fol. 54v.

89 Buntinx, ‘Verkrachting en hulpgeroep’, 16–17.

90 CAB, Verluydboec, fols. 94r–95v.

91 Ibid., fols. 13v–15r.

92 Ibid., fol. 54v.

93 Ibid., fols. 94r–95v.

94 Ibid., fols. 98r–99v.

95 Similar ‘cultural scripts’ have been noticed in other studies on female litigation in medieval Europe, for instance, by , McDonough and McDonough, Youngs. S., ‘Mothers and daughters and sons, in the law: family conflict, legal stories, and women’s litigation in late medieval Marseille’, in Phipps, T. and , D. (eds.), Litigating Women: Gender and Justice in Europe, c.1300–c.1800 (Routledge, 2022), 14–31 Google Scholar; Youngs, D., ‘“She hym fresshely folowed and pursued”: women and Star Chamber in early Tudor Wales’, in Kane, B. and Williamson, F. (eds.), Women, Agency and the Law, 1300–1700 (London, 2013), 73–85 Google Scholar.