What sort of crimes were people punished for in medieval times?

Answer 1

Punishment was very severe in the Middle Ages.

Here are 2 punishments:

Tie your hands and feet up and then drop you into a river if you sunk then you were innocent but if you floated then you were guilty

OR

Make you hold onto a burning iron bar and if the wound hadn't began to heal within 3 days then you were guilty

As you can see many innocent people would have died

Hope this Helps

Answer 2

The peasants and poor classes of people were punished at the whim of their land lords and over seers, they could be punished for stealing bread, being impolite to the "lord of the manor" etc. it was a miserable time for poor people.

Answer 3

The variation in what was considered crime and what the punishments were was huge. There is no one way to characterize what things were considered crimes or how they were punished in the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages lasted a thousand years, there was a huge number of legal codes, not all legal codes were written down, and most of what was written down has been lost.

In the Early Middle Ages, Roman law was still operative in most of the area of the Roman Empire. Germanic kingdoms were starting up, but the kings found it easiest to have people live by laws they already understood. At the same time, Germanic laws were used, and the way of doing this varied. In Spain, the Visigoths segregated the earlier Roman population from their own, and applied Roman law or Germanic law, depending on who they were applying it to. In France, the distinction was made by geographical area, with northern areas having Germanic law, and southern areas Roman. Also, the East Roman Empire was still going (now called the Byzantine Empire). So Roman law was still operative in large parts of Europe.

Germanic law introduced some new elements, and these were often surprising. If a person killed someone, he had to pay that person's family weregeld, a price that depended on the social position of the person killed. One law provided 60 solidi for killing a landless peasant, 300 for a priest, or 400 if the priest was saying mass at the time he was killed, 1200 for a nobleman, 15000 for a king. In some countries, the weregeld for a woman was half that for a man, and in some countries it was double.

If a criminal could not pay the fine, he could be sold into slavery and the money from the sale used to cover the fine. The criminal who could not pay a fine could potentially be given to the victim as a slave, to deal with as they pleased.

Rape was also punished under these old Germanic codes with a fine, 60 solidi for a married woman and slightly less for an unmarried woman. Under Roman law, and laws of many later medieval countries, rape was a capital offense. In some medieval countries, rape was punished by allowing the family of the victim to execute the rapist, and laws of the early 14th century in England allowed the victim to mutilate the rapist in whatever manner she wished, including castration and blinding.

Abuse of women also carried a fine; for example, there were fines for exposing various parts of women's bodies to public view against their will; if you lifted her hat to expose her hair against her will, that might cost 5 solidi, but if you exposed her legs, it was much more. Since a solidus was twelve pence, and a penny could be a day's wages, this was not inconsiderable.

In the Early Middle Ages, various kingdoms, France and Lombardy both being included, made killing witches illegal unless it could be proven they had actually killed someone with a curse. In fact in some countries it was illegal to believe in witchcraft.

Laws were derived from Christian teachings, and they were also derived from other places. The law of Saxony made it a capital offence to break a Lenten fast with meat. We should bear in mind that Sundays are always feast days, even if they are in Lent, so maybe people could get out of this on Sundays. On the other hand, there were places, such as Frisia, where a woman could not be prosecuted for killing her newborn infant. I have seen this credited as a throwback to pagan times, but I wonder whether it was a merciful consideration for what we call post partum depression.

There were places where theft was punished by cutting off the thief's hand. More commonly, there were others where a thief had to pay a fine based on the value of what he had stolen. The laws of King Alfred prescribed a repayment three fold for most theft, nine fold if the theft was of something owned by the king.

As time passed, the legal codes came all to be written. Roman law had long been written, but Germanic laws were traditionally very carefully memorized by judges in many places. Nations began to form, and laws began to cover more such things as interest rates and contracts. The Magna Carta has provisions for interest to be charged under certain circumstances; only Jews were permitted to charge interest rates, so the lenders were simply referred to as Jews. An example provision was that if a person died owing money at interest, the heir was not required to pay interest until he achieved majority. And of course, there were punishments for infringements on such laws, including confiscation of property.

Among the worst crimes was treason, and this was punished with the worst punishments. Treason might include all sorts of things in those days. For example to say something bad about the king might be treason. Certainly the law under which Henry VIII executed Anne Boleyn was medieval, and it interpreted adultery as an act of treason for a queen. Punishments ranged from simple decapitation, as in the case of Anne Boleyn, to torture and death, as in the case of anyone hanged, drawn and quartered. The head of the executed person might be put up in a public place for all to see, and body parts were sometimes shipped across the country to provide similar examples to people.

Even in one time and place, punishments for crimes varied with the type of court. There were civil courts, and there were ecclesiastical courts, which gave milder punishments and were not allowed to apply torture. Many people had a right to be tried in ecclesiastical court; in the beginning this applied to clergy, but since it was hard to gauge who were clergy and who were not, the distinction came to be based on an ability to read. A standard text was used as a test, so if you could read the 51st Psalm, you got a better deal.

The standards of the courts were different in those days. Under the Magna Carta, a jury was supposed to be made up of a person's peers, so the trials of nobles had juries of nobles, and the trials of commoners had juries of commoners. In addition, the jury was supposed to be made up, if possible, of people who had knowledge of the events, people who would be excluded in modern times. In some times and places, if a person who was accused was willing to swear an oath that he was innocent, and could find twelve people who were willing to swear they believed his oath was true, it was considered a valid defense unless there was strong evidence to the contrary.

Answer 4

The crimes that were considered a serious crime was such as a highway robbery, stealing livestock, treason, or murder, they will be hanged or burned at the stake. The punishments for lesser crimes were fined or put in stocks. Stocks were a wooden frame with holes for the person's leg and sometimes arms. Being left in the stocks for hours or days was both painful and humilliating.

Answer 5

The same sort of crimes we have today were also committed during the middle ages. These included:

• murder
• assault
• theft
• robbery
• fraud

Answer 6

A common crime was a crime that happens daily like stealing or poaching. The punishment for stealing if your caught they would chop your hands off.

Answer 7

usually imprisonment for life in the castle dungeon or death commonly by hanging.

Answer 8

Trial by Combat and Trial by Ordeal - highly irrational and superstitious.

Also the stocks for anti-social young men, and the ducking-stool for nagging wives.