The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread that discusses and is focused upon crime and violence in the medieval ages.

Medieval Life and Death Festival: Hannah Skoda on crime and violence in the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages are often stereotyped as brutal and gruesomely violent. Certainly, levels of violence – ranging from domestic to military – were terrifyingly high. This talk reveals the complexity and sophistication of medieval responses to violence, from admiration to horror and fear.

Hannah Skoda is Fellow and Tutor in Medieval History at St John’s College, Oxford.

Link: https://youtu.be/EP_PiC-_oVA

Source: BBC

Violence in Medieval Europe

by Warren C. Brown (no photo)

Synopsis:

The European Middle Ages have long attracted popular interest as an era characterised by violence, whether a reflection of societal brutality and lawlessness or part of a romantic vision of chivalry. Violence in Medieval Europe engages with current scholarly debate about the degree to which medieval European society was in fact shaped by such forces.

Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources, Warren Brown examines the norms governing violence within medieval societies from the sixth to the fourteenth century, over an area covering the Romance and the Germanic-speaking regions of the continent as well as England. Scholars have often told the story of violence and power in the Middle Ages as one in which 'private' violence threatened and sometimes destroyed 'public' order. Yet academics are now asking to what degree violence that we might call private, in contrast to the violence wielded by a central authority, might have been an effective social tool. Here, Brown looks at how private individuals exercised violence in defence of their rights or in vengeance for wrongs within a set of clearly understood social rules, and how over the course of this period, kings began to claim the exclusive right to regulate the violence of their subjects as part of their duty to uphold God's order on earth.

Violence in Medieval Europe provides both an original take on the subject and an illuminating synthesis of recent and classic scholarship. It will be invaluable to students and scholars of history, medieval studies and related areas, for the light it casts not just on violence, but on the evolution of the medieval political order.

War, Justice, and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages

by Richard W. Kaeuper (no photo)

Synopsis:

Ranging broadly between the years 1000 and 1400, Richard Kaeuper assesses the impact of war and lawmaking on the evolution of the royal governments of England and France. From the economic and political costs of war and the development of royal justice, to the crown's attempts to control private violence and the relationship between public opinion and government action, his book provides thorough coverage of issues of central importance in late medieval history.