[HN Gopher] A pig and a locust get into trouble with the law: On...
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A pig and a locust get into trouble with the law: On justice in
medieval Europe
Author : benbreen
Score : 35 points
Date : 2022-08-13 15:36 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lithub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lithub.com)
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| >If the creatures could be physically transported to the
| courtroom for the hearing, then they usually were. This may sound
| utterly insane to our modern minds...
|
| Of course, nowadays we're so much more advanced than these
| medieval bumpkins. We've figured out how to have court cases
| against animals without the hassle of physically placing them in
| the court room. Such was the case in the 1987 trial of US vs.
| 2,507 live canary winged parakeets (the parakeets lost, probably
| to the benefit of their species)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That isn't a similar situation. Modern trials with titles of
| _State v. Object_ are very common, but they do not allege that
| the object committed any offense. They are a way of
| confiscating the object from its owner without allowing the
| owner to defend himself in court (because he 's not being
| penalized, the object is).
| raincom wrote:
| Legal transformations wrought by the Church abolished "trial by
| ordeal". What replaced "trial by ordeal"? In the continental
| Europe, "confession under inquisition"; in England, "jury trail"
|
| "Between 1050 and 1250, a 200-year stretch in the Common Era, the
| European legal system underwent a remarkable transformation. In
| continental Europe, trial by ordeal was replaced by confession
| under inquisition; in England, it was the beginning of the jury
| trial. In the first case, the judge could appeal to the precise
| and procedural nature of the law, which 'dictated' his judgement;
| in the second case, the judge could refer to peer judgement to
| defend his own decision. In both cases, the reasons that led to
| the transformation were the same: the reluctant witness, who
| refused to come forth and testify against persons suspected of
| committing a crime.
|
| Let us first get a better grip on this issue. In order to accuse
| a person of some crime, one or several witnesses were needed; the
| judge (whether a civil magistrate or an ecclesiastical authority)
| could then appeal to legal provisions to pronounce a sentence.
| But the problem the judges faced was the reluctance of witnesses
| to come forth and do what was required. There were, to be sure,
| many reasons for this state of affairs--one chief reason being a
| scriptural injunction. Being a witness, one risked either lying
| ('perjury'), an act forbidden by Scripture ('thou shalt not bear
| false witness') whose violation would send the believer on his
| way to hell; or one risked blood guilt, that is, carrying the
| blood of another human being on one's hands. Despite many subtle
| attempts by theologians to solve this dilemma, it remained a huge
| concern; continental Europe and England took different routes to
| solve this problem." (p.110 of SN Balagangadhara's "Cultures
| Differ Differently" (Routledge, 2022).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What replaced "trial by ordeal"? In the continental Europe,
| "confession under inquisition"; in England, "jury trail"_
|
| Rome had juries. They were an improvement on Athenian trial-by-
| mob. The Magna Carta secured trial by jury around the time the
| Church abolished trial by ordeal, but the jury system was
| already being assembled before that by AEthelred the Unready
| and Henry II. It's unclear if juries replaced ordeals in
| England versus both being driven by the same legalising trend.
| justin66 wrote:
| Sometimes it's readily apparent that an author is getting paid by
| the word.
| neaden wrote:
| There is a tendency to look back on midevil punishments as
| barbaric, but it's worth noting that they probably would consider
| our practice of locking people up for years, sometimes alone for
| 23 hours a day, as bizarre and cruel.
| t_mann wrote:
| They also did lock people up, no worries.
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| I think in your example it is more likely that infrastructure
| was really expensive back in the day. It was expensive to build
| dungeons. And often only prominent prisoners were locked up
| ghaff wrote:
| That is almost certainly true. People were fined, put in
| stocks, had body parts cut off--or executed. Yes, they'd
| probably be shocked at how many people are imprisoned today
| but likely mostly because they'd consider it a very
| inefficient use of resources given the much cheaper ways to
| punish people.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| > a very inefficient use of resources
|
| I wish we would consider prison a very inefficient use of
| resources.
|
| We put non-violent people in prison and fine the tax
| payers. It's a lose-lose for both parties.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| At least some types of non-violent criminals belong
| behind the bars, I would say.
|
| A very specific example are the fraudsters. Bernie Madoff
| type. There is something almost devilish about their
| combination of persuasion, charisma and utter disregard
| for consequences. And they tend to run new frauds if they
| have a possibility to do so, so it isn't very safe to let
| them walk.
| dionidium wrote:
| The extent to which this is true is often exaggerated.
| Violent criminals are the largest share of the state
| prison population [0], followed by serious property
| crimes, such as theft and burglary. The modal state
| prisoner is a violent repeat offender who is overwhelming
| likely to re-offend upon release. Even once you get down
| to the "drugs" and "public order" categories, quite a
| large share of these guys have plead down from more
| serious charges of which they're almost certainly guilty,
| and those who really are in for "drugs" are not guilty of
| mere possession (they're dealers, distributors, etc).
|
| Source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html
|
| [0] Local jails are full mostly of people awaiting trial.
| That's a whole separate conversation. Federal prisons,
| too, are best thought of as a different topic, since the
| federal authorities are in pursuit of a particular set of
| criminals and the population skews heavily toward
| offenders who aren't representative of the broader prison
| population.
| swatcoder wrote:
| You take a source that only indicates about 750,000 of 2M
| detained people have been convicted of violent crime,
| then toss in property crime because you think that's
| equally justified too, then volunteer an unsubstantiated
| dismissal of the remainder as "plead down".
|
| I mean, it's cool that you included a foot note and a
| link here, since it makes it looks like you cited
| something, but the substance of your comment isn't really
| informed by it, so it feels a little disingenuous.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _You take a source that only indicates about 750,000 of
| 2M detained people have been convicted of violent crime_
|
| I anticipated this objection and addressed it explicitly
| in the footnote. You might not find my argument
| _persuasive_ ; that's fine, but I directly engaged with
| this response already.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Why should only non-violent criminals be shielded from
| the consequences of their actions? Non-violent criminals
| are often responsible for multiple orders of magnitude
| more damage than violent ones. The guy who stole my house
| shouldn't be less punished than the guy who slapped me.
|
| It makes sense under the theory that we put people in
| prison to protect the public, but when we put dangerous,
| violent people in prison, we make them far more dangerous
| and violent, then let them out of prison largely
| unemployable and with no means of support. That's
| generally funny to us; we feel that it's even more
| punishment, and more punishment is good.
|
| Drug people shouldn't be in prison because taking drugs
| shouldn't be a crime, not because it is a non-violent
| one.
| ghaff wrote:
| People found guilty are routinely fined as well. Perhaps
| even fewer people guilty of non-violent crimes should be
| put in prison as opposed to just being given house arrest
| or community service. (As many are today.) Though I
| suspect that a lot of people would see that as leniency
| for what are often "white collar" criminals.
| site-packages1 wrote:
| Really good read enjoyable prose, if not a bit "much" at times.
|
| This was thought provoking, particularly the second sentence:
|
| "Do not forget that medieval England was one of the most devoutly
| Catholic nations in Europe and one should never underestimate the
| ability of the pertinaciously pious to behave irrationally. A
| medieval person's moral and world views were so intensely bound
| up with those of the Church that he would have had no doubt that
| these trials by ordeal were entirely genuine. It would never have
| crossed the mind of most medieval citizens that being tied up and
| lobbed into the local lake was not an effective method of proving
| guilt; shockingly, fluid dynamics and gravity weren't
| particularly common topics of study in the thirteenth century. A
| person's logic was interchangeable with that of the Church or the
| ramblings of the one-eyed crackpot codger at the local tavern."
|
| Was this true, did people really not question anything? I always
| assumed people went along with it for fear of punishment but
| probably thought it was a little ridiculous. Are we this, forgive
| me--stupid--today? I would like to think not, but I also see some
| of the things happening in my own country in places like Florida
| and think maybe this is just human nature to want to put down our
| sense of curiosity and willingness to question and give it over
| to another entity.
| kingkawn wrote:
| the history of peasant rebellion is proof that people were not
| compliant
| unknownaccount wrote:
| Most people still don't question anything and blindly accept
| whatever the authority figure on TV tells them.
| swatcoder wrote:
| > Was this true, did people really not question anything?
|
| No, it's not. This is what an YouTube entertainer writes to get
| viewers, playing into gossipy, naive folk history to reinforce
| the narrative they want to tell.
|
| There's no shortage of primary sources and modern academic
| history that show, very plainly, wide exercise of skepticism,
| logic, critical thought, diversity of thought and (of course)
| disinterest with abstract concepts altogether. Yes, there were
| times when one epistemic regime or another dominated public
| discourse, just like there is now, but it turns out people suck
| at conformance with those regimes and have their own private
| experiences independent of the public discourse, just like they
| do now.
|
| Private and subculture beliefs are, and have always been, all
| over the place.
| andrepd wrote:
| > There's no shortage of primary sources and modern academic
| history that show, very plainly, wide exercise of skepticism,
| logic, critical thought, diversity of thought and (of course)
| disinterest with abstract concepts altogether.
|
| But we're not talking about educated people here, a very
| small elite of mostly clergymen, we're talking about an
| average peasant.
| swatcoder wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow.
|
| If you're saying we can't have insight into the experience
| of an average peasant from primary sources and modern
| analysis, then we can't draw the conclusions suggested in
| the article either, right?
|
| But if you accept that those sources may speak to the
| experience, the point is that the article's supposition
| runs counter to them.
|
| The article's story just articulates an ahistorical, folksy
| ideology where historical people (and others) are more one-
| dimensional and uniform than enlightened "modern" people.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| Ah yes, the famous 'every past generation was ignorant and
| every future generation is lazy'
|
| I honestly struggle to understand the writings of common
| authors of the past and think this is where people confuse
| intelligence with knowledge. We have more knowledge now, but
| are we truly more intelligent than people 400 years ago? 1000
| years ago?
| rm445 wrote:
| The implication, though it's still quite conspiracy-minded,
| is that we're just as credulous today about things that fit
| within our worldview, the current paradigm. And utterly blind
| to what those things are, they just seem to be how the world
| works. Yet future generations will boggle at the the things
| we believed.
|
| I'm not sure that's necessarily fully true - most likely
| we're more rational than medieval peasants were, while they
| were probably more pragmatic than typically believed. But it
| is thought-provoking.
| jlawson wrote:
| We may be more intelligent. It depends on whether you're
| willing to believe that certain phases of society has a
| eugenic effect on intelligence.
|
| For example, in the medieval era, the upper classes has more
| surviving children than the lower classes. Without any
| economic growth (because the economy was tied to land, not
| capital or innovation, and thus the size of the economy was
| basically fixed), this creates a constant flow of _downward_
| social mobility, where the ten children of a wealthy couple
| must compete with each other to be among the two who get to
| inherit their parents ' slot in society.
|
| If you think that intelligence could improve someone's chance
| of rising to the top of such a society, and staying there,
| then yes, you'd logically think that people in the past were
| dumber.
|
| Evolution is slow when creating new features. But evolution
| is very fast when it's just changing the proportions of
| existing features. It's not hard to see how the above trend
| would cause a 2 point IQ gain per century, which would mean
| 10 points in 500 years. There's a big difference between 90
| and 100 IQ.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| About the ten children: let's assume half were boys and
| half girls. That leaves three boys fighting it out to
| inherit. The girls get married off.
|
| One son goes into the army. One goes into the clergy. I'm
| not sure about the third, if there even were five boys. Two
| or three is probably more common.
| HabibJorgenson wrote:
| >I always assumed people went along with it for fear of
| punishment but probably thought it was a little ridiculous.
|
| Sounds eerily similar to what we do day to day in the
| postmodern West, isn't it?
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| I'm ready for the article that unearths the actual statistics,
| not the grim examples. Similar to Steven Pinker's deep research
| on the actual prevalence of violence in medieval times vs. modern
| times.
|
| Like, I wonder how often in daily life these things happened? As
| opposed to events that did _not_ make the written histories, like
| "Alfred is accused of theft of apples. The local noble questions
| him and warns him not to do it again. He denies it, but no more
| apples are stolen." Would a historian know about that, or bother
| to write about it if he did?
| dionidium wrote:
| I've wondered about stuff like this, often:
|
| > _Gruesomely, it is believed the person would often still be
| conscious during this. The genitals would also be cut off and
| burnt in full view of the crowds and the victim. Talk about
| adding insult to injury. Only once the final stage was reached
| would the poor soul succumb to death, since before quartering
| he was usually beheaded. If you were wondering, "quartering"
| quite literally meant chopping the torso into four parts,
| generally with a huge axe. As this punishment was enacted less
| often than its more genteel counterparts, it would attract
| particularly large crowds._
|
| This sort of defies any understanding I have of human beings.
| This isn't like, "how could they think hats like that looked
| good?" or, "They really lived in such small huts?" No, this
| suggests a fundamentally different kind of creature, one that
| could derive enjoyment from something that would make my
| stomach turn. You might as well tell me they thought human shit
| was a delicacy.
|
| As I understand it, this stuff wasn't actually that common, in
| other words.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| Yes. Something I read once stuck with me:
|
| _Simple minds are interested in the extraordinary; great
| minds, in the commonplace._
| dmitriid wrote:
| People were much more accustomed to violence, both casual and
| premeditated. Additionally, harm to humans and animals was
| commonplace. You didn't have OSHA in medieval times.
|
| On top of that, for a largely mundane life the execution of a
| criminal was a huge event.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| > harm to humans and animals was commonplace
|
| Again, "commonplace" is kinda misused here. You can find
| examples of cruelty in the historical record, not so many
| of the opposite. Because no one kept statistics.
| samatman wrote:
| It is not misused in the slightest, particularly where
| animals are concerned.
|
| This article talks about medieval England in particular,
| which has excellent survival of detailed records of many
| things, including the bloodsports which were popular
| occurrences everywhere in the kingdom.
|
| It doesn't sit right with me that watching roosters and
| dogs maul each other, often to death, was among the most
| popular of entertainments in the era. But it was.
| dionidium wrote:
| Ultimately, this squares the circle, because what's
| happening, I think, is that human beings are pretty good
| at defining other creatures to be outside of their circle
| of empathy. Historically, animals were obviously right
| out, but so were foreigners and surely criminals, too.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| > It is not misused in the slightest, particularly where
| animals are concerned
|
| Mandatory disclaimer: I'm not, in any way, shape, or form
| defending mistreatment of animals or humans, in this era
| or any other.
|
| With that out of the way: yes, it IS misused. What you
| are saying is "it happened a lot."
|
| But "commonplace" would means it happened _all the time,
| everywhere_. There are records of it happening, as you
| said, but there are no records, or very few, of it NOT
| happening: criminal acts which were not severely
| punished, say. Here 's an example of what I mean:
|
| If you look at "murders in Chicago" you find a lot,
| typically hundreds per month. Yet if you ask the random
| Chicago resident "How many people did you know who were
| murdered?" they might have one, or none. (Unless they
| live in certain neighborhoods.) I actually knew three,
| but that was over the course of an entire childhood.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This sort of defies any understanding I have of human
| beings. This isn't like, "how could they think hats like that
| looked good?" or, "They really lived in such small huts?" No,
| this suggests a fundamentally different kind of creature,
| once that could derive enjoyment from something that would
| make my stomach turn.
|
| Humans in intense conflict are...different. Read up one what
| has gone in the context of almost any war, ever.
|
| > As I understand it, the fact is that this stuff wasn't
| actually that common, in other words.
|
| Hanging, drawing, and quartering wasn't very common in the
| long period it was a criminal punishment (in part because the
| kind of things that it was a punishment for often ended up
| with the accused being killed before facing judicial
| punishment - and were the kind of things that would have been
| true of even without the added pressure of the particular
| punishment that awaited them.)
|
| Though the mid-16th through the 17th Centuries were
| an...interesting...period in that regard.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_hanged,_drawn_a.
| ..
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Go to any Reddit forum that follows videos from the Ukrainian
| war and look at the comments. Even today, some people are
| absolutely savage about other people getting killed, if they
| believe that they deserve it.
|
| There isn't much difference between a real crowd cheering
| someone's execution and a virtual crowd cheering someone
| being blown up.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| Most of the comments objecting to this are along the lines of
| "yes, it did happen!"
|
| No one's saying it didn't. The question is "what were your
| chances of it happening to _you_ , if you committed some
| crime?"
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