Breakin' the Law
Introduction
This essay is about law and lawbreakers, crime, trial and punishment. More generally, it about the sources of authority in the Middle Ages, how it was administered, the forms it took, and any changes that occurred during the later Middle Ages.
This provides us with another way to look at medieval society. The usual approach is hierarchical—who was on top of the ladder, who was at the bottom. If you have read the other essays on medieval society, you'll know that there was no ladder and that a purely hierarchical view is misleading.
Another way to approach the topic is insiders and outsiders. In any society there are the "respectable" folk, regardless of their wealth or status, and then there are those who are not respectable. One of these groups are criminals and those whom society deems as criminals. Before we can talk about criminals, though, we need to look at the nature of crime (and therefore at the nature of law) and the varieties of punishment. A close look at the outsiders can tell us a great deal about the insiders as well.