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7 - Conflict and Justice

from Part II - The Laity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2022

Warren C. Brown
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology
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Summary

Many of the formulas dealing with conflict highlight formal courts and judicial processes. Others represent extrajudicial settlements. In this respect they match, though in an entirely lay context, the picture of early medieval dispute settlement visible in other sources. They make particularly clear, however, that judicial and extrajudicial settlements were points on a complex and intertwined continuum. They also tell us that people – both litigants and authority figures – could manipulate and abuse judicial processes for their own purposes. The formulas are particularly interested in interpersonal violence. We find men assaulting each other on the road and taking each other’s property. We find men killing others for a variety of reasons. Those who committed homicide not only negotiated the payment of the required blood price, but actually paid it – and had their payment recorded in a security that protected them from any further trouble. Women too are accused of homicide, sometimes by poison or sorcery but sometimes by more active means. In the end, the formulas suggest that a culture assuming a right to personal violence was alive and well in the Carolingian period, despite strenuous efforts especially by Charlemagne and Louis the Pious to regulate it.

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Beyond the Monastery Walls
Lay Men and Women in Early Medieval Legal Formularies
, pp. 216 - 251
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Conflict and Justice
  • Warren C. Brown, California Institute of Technology
  • Book: Beyond the Monastery Walls
  • Online publication: 09 December 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108855426.009
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  • Conflict and Justice
  • Warren C. Brown, California Institute of Technology
  • Book: Beyond the Monastery Walls
  • Online publication: 09 December 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108855426.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conflict and Justice
  • Warren C. Brown, California Institute of Technology
  • Book: Beyond the Monastery Walls
  • Online publication: 09 December 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108855426.009
Available formats
×