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Contumacy, Defense Strategy, and Criminal Law in Late Medieval Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2011

Joanna Carraway
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It is easy to imagine that on this early morning in 1395, Antonius, realizing the magnitude of his actions, had little time to fabricate a defense or construct a plan. In late fourteenth-century Reggio Emilia, flight was often the most desirable path open to those suspected of perpetrating felonies. Subsequent witnesses in this murder investigation speculated that Antonius fled the territory of the Villa de Vetto before the first light of day less to evade the law than to avoid the wrath of Caterina's relatives. Propelled by the need to escape retribution, Antonius, like almost half the defendants cited by the criminal court of Reggio Emilia, fled rather than appear before the criminal judge.

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Law and History Review , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 99 - 132
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Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2011

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References

1. Archivio di Stato di Reggio Emilia, Giudiziario, Atti e processi, May 30, 1395 (hereafter ASRe, Atti e processi).

“Dominica … mater superscriptorum Antonii … interrogata … quid scit de morte dicte Caterine suo sacramento dixit quod vidit eam mortuam et cum illamet nocte surgeret indilucullo diei dictus Antonius venit ad eam dicendo ego interfeci Caterinam et ipsa respondit proditor tu consumpsisti me et incontinenti exivit ex hostium dictus Antonius et vocavit … eius fratres et dixit eis quod interfecerat Caterinam et afugerunt de dicta villa et dicta testis … ivit ad domum cuiusdam vicini sui nomine Beltrame compater surgatis quia Antonius interfecit Caterinam surgatis adcedatis ad aptinentes suos et dicatis eisdem de morte Caterine et incontinenti suressit et vocavit duos aptinentes et incontinenti persecuti fuerunt dictum Antonium tamen reperire non potuerunt.”

For archival material from Reggio, especially the “Libri delle denuncie” and the “Atti e processi,” I preferred in this essay to follow the citation system by date instead of by folio numbers, as, for example, used by Natale Grimaldi and Andrea Gamberini (Grimaldi, Natale, La signoria di Barnabò Visconti e Regina della Scala in Reggio, 1371–1385: Contributo alla storia delle signorie (Reggio Emilia: Cooperativa fra Laboranti Tipografi, 1921), 93Google Scholar; Gamberini, Andrea, La città assediata:poteri e identità politiche a Reggio in età viscontea (Rome: Viella, 2003)Google Scholar. This system is more practical in this context, because folio numbers are not always consistent in these fondi, and citing by date proves more efficient and reliable in these sources.

2. Gamberini, La città assediata.

3. Grimaldi, La signoria di Barnabò Visconti, 93.

4. This figure is based on a sample of 900 trial records from 1371 to 1409. At Reggio Emilia for this period, twenty one trial registers survive, constituting approximately 1,240 cases. These registers are not concurrent and have large lacunae.

5. These samples are taken from two registers: Archivio di Stato di Bologna, Curia del podestà, Giudici ad maleficia, Libri inquisitionum et testium, b. 264, 1393, and b. 214, 1372. The 1393 register allows a sample of outcomes for 70 defendants, whereas the 1372 sample is of 88 defendants.

6. Stern, Laura Ikins, The Criminal Law System of Medieval and Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 229Google Scholar. Stern found contumacy rates of 58.3% from 1352 to 1355, and 55.6% from 1380 to 1383. The numbers in the early fifteenth century were lower: a sample from 1425 to 1428 showed a reduction to 42.4%, which Stern attributes in part to a more effective criminal justice system and a more effective police force (ibid., 210).

7. Dean, Trevor and Chambers, David, Clean Hands and Rough Justice: an Investigating Magistrate in Renaissance Italy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 65Google Scholar.

8. Vallerani, Massimo, “Pace e processo nel sistema giudiziario. L'esempio di Perugia” in La giustizia pubblica medievale (Bologna: il Mulino, 2005), 173Google Scholar.

9. Smail, Daniel, The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264–1423 (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2003), 173Google Scholar.

10. Blanshei, Sarah, “Crime and Law Enforcement in Medieval Bologna,” The Journal of Social History 16 (1) (Fall, 1982):121–38;CrossRefGoogle Scholar see also Blanshei, Sarah, “Criminal Law and Politics in Medieval Bologna,” Criminal Justice History: An International Review 2 (1981): 1–30Google Scholar; and Blanshei, , “Criminal Justice in Medieval Perugia and Bologna,” Law and History Review 1 (1983): 251–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Dean, Trevor, “Criminal Justice in Mid-Fifteenth Century Bologna,” in Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, eds. Dean, Trevor and Lowe, Kate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 38–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Vallerani, Massimo, “Procedura e giustizia nelle città italiane del Basso Medioevo (XII–XIV Secolo),” in La giustizia pubblica medievale (Bologna: il Mulino, 2005), 42–45Google Scholar.

13. Sbriccoli, Mario, “Giustizia negoziata, giustizia egemonica: riflessioni su una nuova fase degli studi di storia della giustizia criminale,” in Criminalità e Giustizia in Germania e in Italia: pratiche giudiziarie e linguaggi giuridici tra tardo medioevo ed età moderna (Bologna: il Mulino, 2001), 345–64Google Scholar.

14. Andrea Zorzi, “Conflits et pratiques infrajudiciaires dans le formations politiques Italiennes du XIIe au XVe Siècle,” in L'infrajudiciaire du Moyen Age a l'époque contemporaine: Actes du Colloque de Dijon 5–6 Octobre 1995 (Dijon: Publications de l'Universite de Bourgogne), 20.

15. Sbriccoli, Mario, “Legislation, Justice and Political Power in Italian Cities, 1200–1400,” in Legislation and Justice, ed. Padoa-Schioppa, Antonio (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 43Google Scholar.

16. Dean, Trevor, Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. Dean, Crime and Justice, 51.

18. ASRe, Giudiziario, Libri delle denunzie e querele, delle inquisizioni, degli indizi, dei costituti, delle difese e d'altri atti criminali, November 10, 1389 (hereafter ASRe, Giudiziario, Libri delle denunzie).

19. ASRe, Comune, Statuti, 1335, 13v. Complete redactions of the statutes are preserved from 1335 to 1386, 1392 and 1411; ASRe, Comune, Statuti, Statuti del 1335 con posteriori aggiunte d'altri statuti, di provvigioni e decreti, e d'istrumenti fino al 1386 (hereafter ASRe, Comune, Statuti, 1335); ASRe, Comune, Statuti, Statuti del 1392 (hereafter ASRE, Comune, 1392). The statutes were redacted again in 1411, this time including a full revision of the criminal statutes (Biblioteca del Senato della Republica, Statuti, mss. 77, hereafter BSR.) A manuscript of the 1411 redaction is held at the Archivio di Stato, but the book of criminal law is badly damaged. (ASRe, Comune, Statuti, 10). The rubrics of Reggio's statutes have been published, with a useful introduction (Campanini, Antonella, I Rubricari degli statuti comunali di Reggio Emilia (Secoli XIII––XVI), Fonti e Saggi di Storia Regionale 7 (Bologna: Università degli Studi di Bologna, Dipartimento di Paleografia e Medievistica, 1997)Google Scholar.

20. ASRe, Comune, Statuti, 1335, 18r, and ASRe, Comune, Statuti, 1392, 144v.

21. Santoro, Caterina, Gli offici del comune di Milano e del dominio Visconteo-Sforzesco, 1216–1515 (Milan: A. Giuffrè, 1968), 227Google Scholar.

22. Zorzi, Andrea, “The Judicial System in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in Crime Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, eds. Dean, Trevor and Lowe, Kate (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994), 49Google Scholar.

23. Gamberini, La città assediata, 32–34.

24. Gamberini, La città assediata, 33.

25. ASRe, Comune, Provvigioni, December 18, 1385, Piacenza, “…concedentes sibi auctoritatem jurisdictionem et baylam quoscumque homicidas robatores stratarum assassinos et malandrinos qui in partibus predictis infraganti crimine reperirentur prosequendi et capiendi ac prosequi et capi faciendi nec non capiendi quoscumque qui baniti sunt ab anno curso milletrecenteximooctagento citra qui in dictis districtibus et burgis reperientur et de ipsis faciendi iusticie complementum et habito prius bono conscilio ac matura deliberatione cum vestris jurisperitis.”

26. Pazzaglini, Peter Raymond, The Criminal Ban of the Sienese Commune, 1225–1310 (Milan: A. Giuffrè, 1979), 22Google Scholar.

27. BSR, mss. 77, 52r. “De modo citandi illos contra quos proceditur.”

28. See particularly Pazzaglini, Criminal Ban of the Sienese Commune, ch.2. “Citation, Contumacy and Conviction.”

29. Cavalca, Desiderio, Il bando nella prassi e nella dottrina giuridica medievale (Milan: A. Giuffrè, 1978), 168–69Google Scholar.

30. Cavalca, Il bando nella prassi, 173.

31. ASRe, Giudiziario, Libri delle denunzie, Dec.7, 1373. “… et ibi publice et alta voce sono tube voceque premisso citet et requirat superscriptum Egen superius inquisitum quatenus hic ad octo dies proxima futurum coram dicto domino iudice malleficorum indicio legiptime debeat comparere …”

32. ASRe, Comune, Statuti, 1335, f.29v., “De pena illius qui tenuerit aliquem bapnitum communis pro maleficio vel rebelle communis in domo sua.”

33. The 1411 redaction codifies the increasing allowance to judicial discretion that grew in the latter half of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries in northern Italy. That judicial discretion became more allowable in the late middle ages, see Mayali, Laurent, “The Concept of Discretionary Punishment in Medieval Jurisprudence,” in Studia in Honorem Eminentissimi Cardinalis Alphonsi M. Stickler, ed. Iosephius, Rosalius (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1992)Google Scholar; Vallerani, Massimo, “Come si costruisce l'inquisizione: ‘Arbitrium’ e potere a Perugia,” in La Giustizia Pubblica Medievale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005)Google Scholar; Fraher, Richard, “Conviction According to Conscience: The Medieval Jurists' Debate Concerning Judicial Discretion and the Law of Proof,” Law and History Review 7 (1) (1989): 23–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. BSR, mss.77, 57r.

35. ASRe, Giudiziario, Libri delle denunzie, February 10, 1397. “… quod superscripti Petrus et Johannes scientes quod Antonius Ciesse calzarolus civis Regii fuerat et erat denunciatus et inculpatus de quodam furto … quod dicti domini potestas et vicarius procurabant et intendebant ipsum capi fecere ipsi Petrus et Johannes… ipsum Antonium solicitaverunt et eidem persuaxerunt ut fugam faceret de civitate Regii ne veniret in forciam dicti domini potestatis…”

36. The trial has been lost but the charge was restated in the record of his condemnation. ASRe, Giudiziario, Podestà, Giudici, Governatore: sentenze e condanne corporali e pecuniarie, no date but 1400, reg.7, f.11 (hereafter ASRe, Giudiziario, sentenze e condanne): “… dictus Andriolus scienter loco et tempore in inquisitione contentis receptavit Antoninum de veto bannitum communis Regii de vita ut apparet et libris condempationum dicti communis in domo sua et eidem dedit cibum et potum. Item quod loco et tempore in dicta inquisitione contentis dictus Andriolus receptavit in dicta domo scienter Bartoninum de Gombia bannitum dicti comunis de vita ut apparet in libris predictis et ibidem stetit per aliquantulum temporis. Item, loco et tempore inquisitione contenente quod dictus Andriolus pluries et pluries diversis temporibus et diebus receptavit scienter in dicta domo Jacobinum dictum Cafirum de Carpineto et Antonium de Veto insimul bannitos de vita dicti communis Regii ut apparet in libris predictis et eisdem dedit cibum et potum. Comitendo predicta contra formam iuris et decretorum serenissimi domini nostri prelibati.”

37. Pazzaglini, Criminal Ban of the Sienese Commune, 3–4.

38. Blanshei, “Crime and Law Enforcement,” 124.

39. ASRe, Giudiziario, Libri delle denunzie, September 24, 1386; ASRe, Giudiziario, sentenze e condanne, no date, Reg.1 1385–1387, f.19r-v.

40. Digest 48,17,1–4. “De requirendis vel absentibus damnandis. Rubrica. Marcianus libro secundo publicorum. Divi Severi et Antonini Magni rescriptum est, ne quis absens puniatur: et hoc iure utimur, ne absentes damnentur: neque enim inaudita causa quemquam damnari aequitatis ratio patitur.” The foregoing translation, and all translations of the Digest in this article, are those of Alan Watson in the 1985 publication of Mommsen's edition. The Digest of Justinian, vol. 2, ed. Mommsen, Theodor and Kreuger, Paul, trans. Watson, Alan (Philadephia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1985)Google Scholar, 839.

41. Dean, Crime and Justice, 92, citing Gandinus. Gandinus here is attempting to resolve the question of whether one accused of homicide or highway robbery (strata robata) should be executed if caught: “Aliquis fuit accusatus de homicidio vel strata robata, et quia non comparuit, positus fuit in banno perpetuo, et deinde extitit condemnatus, eo habito pro confesso, et quod, si quo tempore venerit in fortiam communis, quod debeat decapitari vel furca suspendi; postea tractu temporis iste malefactor venit in fortiam communis, potestas intendit eum decapitari facere. Queritur, quid iuris?” [Gandinus, Albertus, Tractatus de maleficiis, Albertus Gandinus und das Strafrecht der Scholastik, ed. Kantorowicz, Hermann U., vol.2 (Berlin, 1926)Google Scholar, 226.] Gandinus presents first the argument that the defendant must be heard, because an absent person according to the Digest cannot be condemned to death and then he presents as an argument contra, that the defendant should not be heard and the death penalty should be imposed because, as the defendant was “inobediens et contumax,” his contumacy should be treated as a confession (“quoniam fuit inobediens et contumax, unde pro confesso debet haberi…”) Ultimately Gandinus concludes that “… nisi maleficium probetur, condemnari non debet nec puniri, cum absens ultra penam relegationis non possit damnari …”

42. Baldus, quoted and discussed in Cavalca, Il Bando nella Prassi, 178–80. “… ex sola contumacia non potest infligi poena mortis, nec valet da [sic] iure communi condemnatio ad mortem, sed captus ad hoc se defendere potest.”

43. BSR, mss. 77, 52r. “… si non comparverit habebitur pro confesso et convicto vere et legitime…”

44. BSR, mss.77, 52r. “De modo citandi illos contra quos proceditur.”

45. BSR, mss.77, 52r. “… tamquam confessus et convictus de dellicto de quo inculpatur.”

46. Dean, Crime and Justice, 92.

47. Stern, Criminal Law System, 210.

48. In his study of exile, Randolf Starn observed that the interdictio aquae et igni was “not such a punishment as a confirmation of the right to evade it,” as it allowed both the state to warn the malefactor and also allowed patrician malefactors to reestablish themselves outside the courts' jurisdiction. It appears that medieval contumacy and criminal ban could operate in this way as well. Starn, Randolf, Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 19Google Scholar.

49. The interdict was pronounced against those defendants who entered into “voluntary exile” before sentence was handed down in their case, and it effectively outlawed the defendant, allowing him or her to be offended with impunity and also carrying with it a loss of property and the status of citizenship. Adolf Berger, The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law. The Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 43, part 2 (new series), 1953 (reprint 1991) s.v. Interdicere aqua et igni. See also Pazzaglini, Criminal Ban of the Sienese Commune, 16.

50. Anthony Mooney's 1976 dissertation explored this problem and demonstrated the originality of Nellus' approach. Anthony Michael Christopher Mooney, “The Legal Ban in Florentine Statutory Law and the De Bannitis of Nello da San Gimignano (1373–1430)” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1976). On the origins of the practice of ban (political and civil as well as criminal), see Cavalca, Il bando nella prassi, ch.1, and for the development of the ban in medieval jurisprudence, especially 78–90.

51. Cavalca, Il bando nella prassi, 185–87.

52. Nellus da San Gimignano, De bannitis, in Tractatus Universi Iuris (Venice>, 1584), XI, pt.1, ff. 357r.

“In civitatibus Italiae communiter reperiuntur statuta aedita contra bannitos pro maleficio, crimine, vel delicto disponentia interdum quod non audiantur interdum exprimitur quod possint occidi, interdumque possunt offendi interdum quod possint impune offendi certo omni offensionis genere, interdum etiam offendentibus sive capientibus eos praemia statuuntur, interdum etiam contrahere prohibentur. Quandoque etiam in ipsorum favorem aliqua statuuntur, propter quae statuta et alia ordinamenta saepissime, ut notissimum est, orta fuerunt, et quotidie oriuntur variae et diversae subtilitates et ponderosae quaestiones, quarum multae sparsim in commentis et extra commenta doctorum iuris canonici et civilis, interdum bene ordinatae, interdum corruptae, et aliquando non perfectae, quandoque in argumentis adductae reperiuntur, aliquando etiam occurrunt. Occurruntque a nemine aut tactae aut examinatae.”

53. Martines, Lauro, Lawyers and Statecraft in Renaissance Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 408–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54. Mooney, “Legal Ban in Florentine Statutory Law,” 204–5.

55. Nellus da San Gimignano, De bannitis, in Tractatus Universi Iuris (Venice: 1584), XI, pt.1, ff. 357–406. Jacobus de Arena's tract on the ban was also included in the Tractatus, but interestingly, Bartolus' was not. Mooney attributes this to the novel approach of Nellus and to the abstract nature of Bartolus' study (Mooney, Legal Ban in Florentine Statutory Law, 206.)

56. Digest 2.3.1. “Omnibus magistratibus … secundum ius potestatis suae concessum est iurisdictionem suam defendere poenali iudicio.”

57. Dig. 2.5.2. “Ex quacumque causa ad praetorem vel alios, qui iurisdictioni praesunt, in ius vocatus venire debet, ut hoc ipsum sciatur, an iurisdictio eius sit. Si quis in ius vocatus non ierit, ex causa a competenti iudice multa pro iurisdictione iudicis damnabitur: rusticitati enim hominis parcendum erit …”

58. Dig.48.22.4 “Exilium triplex est: aut certorum locorum interdictio, aut lata fuga, ut omnium locorum interdicatur praeter certum locum, aut insulae vinculum, id est relegatio in insulam.”

59. Pazzaglini, Criminal Ban of the Sienese Commune, 3.

60. Baldus, quoted in Cavalca, Il bando nella prassi 178–80: “… ex sola contumacia non potest infligi poena mortis, nec valet da [sic] iure communi condemnatio ad mortem, sed captus ad hoc se defendere potest.”

61. Cavalca, Il bando nella prassi, 177.

62. Nellus, De bannitis, prologue, f.357r. “Et ut huius materia opusculi clarius dignoscatur, praemittendum putavi; plures esse species bannitorum, hoc nomine generaliter assumpto, de quibus tangam quae occurrunt non omnia iura et loca in quibus habentur inserendo, sed aliqua potiora ex quibus alia inveniri poterunt applicabo.”

63. Jacobus de Arena, De banniti, in Tractatus Universi Iuris (Venice, 1584), XI, pt.1, 4 and 5, ff. 355v.

64. Bartolus, cited as the argument sic in Nellus (De bannitis 2,1,q.45). Mooney observed that whereas Bartolus still relied on reduction to Roman law categories to discuss the ban, his comparison with hostes and transfugae were instrumental in justifying the practice of allowing banniti to be offended with impunity (Mooney, “Legal Ban in Florentine Statutory Law” 72–73.) Bartolus' assertion that the banned person is an enemy of his or her own city is also discussed in Cavalca, 42–3.

65. Nellus, De bannitis 2.1,q.45.

66. Nellus, De bannitis 2.1,q.45. “… quantum pertinet ad sui favorem perdat civilitatem, quantum vero ad sui odium illam non perdit maxime si est civis origine, sunt enim de iure gentium distinctae gentes, et sic civilitates ordinate.”

67. Durandus also holds this distinction, commenting that a banned person can testify only if the reason for the ban is levis, which he equates with a pecuniary ban: “Quid de bannito? Dic quod si bannitus est propter levis causam, puta pecuniam, potest testari. Si propter criminalem, puta propter aliquod maleficium: ex quo olim deportabatur, bannitus est in perpetuum, non potest.” In the same way, an excommunicate cannot testify until he or she is absolved. Durandus, Speculum iuris, Lib. II Partic.II., De instrumentorum editione, §11 (compendiose), No.5. (Venice, 1566), 496.

68. Durandus, Speculum iuris, Lib. II Partic.II., De instrumentorum editione, §11 (compendiose), No. 5, cited in Nellus, De bannitis,2,1,q.11, 366r.

69. “Et scias, quod etiam in relegatione bona adimi possunt expresse, sed tacite nunquam dicuntur adempta …” Johannes Andreae, gloss after “relegati,” in Durandus, Speculum iuris, Lib.II Partic.II., De instrumentorum editione, §11 (compendiose), No.5, 507.

70. Nellus, De bannitis, 2,1,q.11, 366r.

71. BSR, mss.77, 53r-v.

72. In Florence, the goods of contumacious criminals could be confiscated up to the sum of the penalty (Stern, Criminal Law System, 32). It is unclear from surviving records whether this was common practice at Reggio.

73. Nellus, De bannitis, 2,1,q.1. f.364v. “Concludens quod cum tale statutum fiat ad publicam utilitatem, tum ut homines a delinquendo terreantur, scientes se postea posse impune occidi, tum ut maleficia non remaneant impunita …”

74. ASRe, Comune, Registri dei Decreti, reg.1385–1425, f.17r-v.

75. Ibid., “ad describendum bona illius qui inculpabiliter de crimine predicto …”

76. ASRe, Giudiziario, Libri delle denunzie, October 20, 1393. “Infrascripta sunt bona reperta et descripta in domo habitatori Symonis Forzani patris Geminiani Forzani inculpati de homicidio … qui Symon dicit dicta bona esse sua et dictum eius filium non stetisse cum eo plurime octo annis elapsis ….”

77. The process of estimation and the appointing of procurators in the Genoese courts is examined in Jamie Smith, “Navigating Absence: Law and the Family in Genoa, 1380–1420” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2007).

78. ASRe, Giudiziario, Atti e processi, n.d. but 1393, 251r–56v.

79. There is an important body of literature on women's legal rights and dowry restitution that is too large to mention here. I would like to refer especially to Kirshner, Julius, “Wives' Claims against Insolvent Husbands in Late Medieval Italy,” in Women of the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of John H. Mundy, eds. Kirshner, Julius and Wemple, Suzanne F. (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 256–303Google Scholar.

80. Smail, Consumption of Justice, 203.

81. Smith, “Navigating Absence,” 233.

82. BSR, 60r.

83. Kuehn, Thomas, Heirs, Kin and Creditors in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 43, 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84. Ibid., 189.

85. For a full discussion of this problem, see Bellomo, Manlio, Problemi di diritto familiare nell'età dei Comuni: beni paterni e ‘Pars Filii’. (Milan: A. Giuffrè, 1968)Google Scholar, especially 111–53.

86. Bellomo, Problemi di diritto, 135.

87. Pazzaglini, Criminal Ban of the Sienese Commune, 60, and Jacobus de Arena, De banniti, Tractatus, 16 and 17.

88. Pazzaglini, Criminal Ban of the Sienese Commune, 60.

89. Nellus, 2,1,q.1. f.364v. “Primo ergo quaero, an valeat statutum quo cavetur bannitum pro maleficio posse impune occidi. Haec quaestio est multum nota, et trita, et propterea in ea non instabo. Concludens quod cum tale statutum fiat ad publicam utilitatem, tum ut homines a delinquendo terreantur, scientes se postea posse impune occidi, tum ut maleficia non remaneant impunita … dicendum est tale statutum valere.”

90. Fraher, Richard, “The Theoretical Justification for the New Criminal Law of the High Middle Ages: ‘rei publicae interest, ne crimina remaneant impunita,’” University of Illinois Law Review (1984): 577–95Google Scholar.

91. Dean, Crime and Justice, 105–6.

92. Dean, Crime and Justice, 105.

93. Cozzi, Gaetano, “Authority and the Law in Renaissance Venice,” in Renaissance Venice, ed. Hale, John (London: Faber and Faber 1973), 319Google Scholar.

94. A statute concerning the same issue appears in the second book (which primarily concerns the offices of the commune) of the 1335 redaction (ASRe, Comune, Statuti 1335, 21v.) and the first book of the 1392 redaction (ASRe, Comune, Statuti 1392, 146r.) and was moved to Book Three on the criminal law in the 1411 redaction (BSR, mss. 77, 17v.)

95. BSR, mss.77, 17v.

96. ASRe, Giudiziario, Libri delle denunzie, January 15, 1385. “Condempnatus fuit in libra quinquaginta rexanorum solvendo in decem dies… Quas si non solvit sibi pedes amputent.”

97. ASRe, Giudiziario, Libri delle denunzie, Oct. 30, 1386.

98. ASRe, Giudiziario, Libri delle denunzie, April 6, 1388. “Notarius, procurator … ac amicus benevolus et deffensor Christofori …”

99. ASRe, Giudiziario, Libri delle denunzie, April 6, 1388, and following days, “non potestis nec debetis procedere contra predictum Christoforum occaxione dicti homicidam commissam personam dicti Roffeli pro eo quod dictus Roffelus erat bampnitus et condempnatus communis regii propter homicidam comissum … quod evidenter apparet in condempnatoribus et bampnus … latis et datis per tunc dictum potestatem Regii quas condempnationes … Antonius … produxit et producti coram vobis … Item, producit coram vobis statuta communis Regii maxime quoddam statutum dicti communis ponitum et scriptum in volumine statutorum dicti comunis in libro secondo capitulo xxxii sub rubrica quod bampniti et condempnati commuis regii in persona possint impune offendi personaliter et in avere …”

100. Nellus, De bannitis, 2,2,q.11. f.379r.

101. ASRe, Comune, Registri dei decreti, reg. 1372–1375, April 2, 1373.

102. Massimo Vallerani, “Pace e processo,” 173.

103. Ibid., 174.

104. Milani, Giuliano, “Prime note su disciplina e pratica del bando a Bologna attorno alla metà del XIII secolo,” Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps Moderns 109 (2) (1997): 511Google Scholar. Interestingly, Milani found that in 1250, of 89 cancelled bans, only 3 were justified by the payment of the penalty and the peace agreement; almost half of the cancellations were justified by consilia that claimed procedural violations, whereas the rest were based on consilia that mentioned a peace agreement but stated, without further explanation, that the penalty was not owed. (Milani, 511–13.)

105. Smail, Consumption of Justice, 173.

106. Stern, Criminal Law System, 27.

107. Vallerani, “Pace e processo,” 175.

108. Verga, Ettore, “Le sentenze criminali dei podestà Milanesi,” Archivio Storico Lombardo 28 (1901): 123Google Scholar.

109. Vallerani, “Pace e processo,” 170.

110. Dean, Trevor, “Violence, Vendetta, and Peacemaking in Late Medieval Bologna,” Criminal Justice History 17 (2002): 10Google Scholar.

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