medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Rowin --
As I'm sure you know, there was no such thing as "medieval law" but many
different legal regimes. The sort of thing you're talking about sounds like
it would be a local response to the problem of extramarital sexuality. I'm
assuming, giving your vernacular quotation, that you're talking about
England or possibly Scotland: although I wouldn't say that it never
happened, given the variety of responses to the issue in different
jurisdictions, condemning a fornicator to death would not have been at all
common. Judging by the number of people in a city like London charged with
sexual offences before various authorities, both civic and ecclesiastical,
the hangman would have been pretty busy: Richard Wunderli has statistics
indicating that in some years in the fifteenth century between 600 and 700
people per year were charged in one court alone (by no means the only court
that heard such cases). In many jurisdictions, especially in ecclesiastical
courts, the penalties for sexual misbehaviour were relatively mild (often
payment of small fine in lieu of or in addition to penance). Local secular
courts were somewhat more severe, but the worst penalties usually involved
eviction from the town.
Good places to look for literature would be Ruth Mazo Karras, *Common
Women*; James Brundage, *Law, Sex, and Christian Society*; Marjorie K.
McIntosh, *Controlling Misbehavior*. If your text is Scottish, look at
*Women in Scotland : c.1100 - c.1750*, ed. Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen M.
Meikle, where I think there might be an essay on prostitution.
Shannon McSheffrey
Associate Professor of History
Concordia University
LB-601, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Montreal, QC Canada H3G 1M8
[log in to unmask]
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~shannon
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