The early modern period of Europe was an extremely brutal time in human history, but it also saw a distinct difference in how the condemned were treated according to their gender. All of human history has seen brutal punishments for their criminals, but this era of Europe is cemented in numerous primary sources recounting the public executions of the time. In these accounts, we see depictions of gruesome public violence for a litany of different crimes, ranging from minor infractions to sexual assaults and murder. The public elements of these rituals served as methods of crowd control and the maintaining of societal expectations of the community, while still managing to heavily favor the male role in the society. The sources that will be explored today are a glimpse into a gruesome time in Europe’s history, prioritizing excessive and public punishments in order to keep the citizens of the community submissive to the ruling power. Violence was a fact of life in the early modern period and while it was prescribed to any petty criminal, state violence was heavily bias towards punishing women rather than men in household disputes.
Hall and Malcolm’s piece focuses on the violence within the households of early modern Europe, specifically how domestic abuse and sexually related crimes were dealt within the era. Ultimately, “family violence in Europe between 1500 and 1800 must be understood within the contemporary household structure?” (Hall, Malcolm, 275) with the male being considered the patriarch of the family and upholding a “moral authority to employ violence in disciplining people occupying positions beneath him” (Hall, Malcom). Punishing those who were subservient to you was seen as a necessary part of upholding the societal hierarchy within the home and your social standing within the community. If a man failed in his duty to control his wife or the individuals within the household, his societal standing would slip. Consequently, if men used excessive force when punishing their wives or children or servants in their employ, the men themselves were subject to prosecution. A notable example of this dates back to 1579 where a Lord was sentenced to pay a sum of money for beating his wife and daughter. “The court found these assaults to be reprehensible…because the motivation behind the punishment was to injure rather than to correct” (Hall, Malcolm, 276). This shows that husbands could be put on trial if they were accused of beating other members of the household excessively, but a conviction would rarely be successful. These assaults were within legal boundaries so long as the supposed intention was to correct undesirable behavior. The injuries of the mother and daughter were severe enough to call into question the Lord’s motives, yet these actions were only brought to light because of his political activities.
The social protocol of the time dictated that couples and their dependents stayed together for the survival of the economy. Some methods of doing this included the public shaming of men who beat their wives. Public shaming events were held to punish behavior the community deemed unmoral, although the efficiency of the ‘youth abbeys’ is difficult to measure. “What they do demonstrate is that violence by husbands against wives was recognized…[as] one that could also threaten the well-being of the broader community” (Hall, Malcolm, 279). Shaming rituals were part of a system designed to perpetuate the continued prosperity of the community. By berating abusive husbands, the townspeople could send a humiliating message that this behavior is reprehensible and would threaten the wellbeing of the state. That’s not to say that women were highly regarded in the early modern period, quite the opposite is true. Women suffered a similar fate to their husbands, with the community shaming them for being a dominating wife and disrupting the household order. While men were seen as weak for going beyond the required violence it took to keep order in the household, the wives were shamed for acting in a dominating behavior that would force a man to act reprehensibly.
The legal avenues available to sexual violence survivors was lacking, prioritizing successful prosecutions to young unmarried elites over working-class women. Punishing sexual violence was varied widely across Europe, but a general consensus was that the woman had to prove the violent encounter was non-consensual. This was often difficult to prove in court and would rely on the victim’s behavior directly after the attack. The courts assumed that a woman could fight off a man if she tried and finding witnesses to attest her being overpowered seldom yielded results. A pregnancy as a result of a sexual assault would hinder the chances of charging a perpetrator of the crime, since “medical and legal opinion of the time were in agreement that conception could only result if a woman consented to sexual intercourse” (Hall, Malcolm, 284). However, a legal loophole was to charge the perpetrator with a civil action, as cases like that required much less evidence. An important item to note is that while this approach had the chance to uphold one’s social reputation, the option was likely exclusive to families of means. Furthermore, if a woman lost the rape prosecution, a marriage was arranged with the rapist thereby “guaranteeing her a continuing and productive role as a wife within the community” (Hall, Malcolm, 284). While there were some legal options available to wealthy women to prosecute their rapists, the process of this was heavily biased in favor of the perpetrator. Even after a trivial and humiliating court process, there was a chance that women would be married off to their rapist for the perceived good of the community.
It’s been discussed in Hall and Malcolm’s study of Family and Sexual Violence how the two are both utilized to oppress the women of the time. A woman was expected to withstand an abusive husband and the threat of sexual assault yet can seek little help from the state. The limited court avenues that a woman did have access to only served to humiliate and punish the victims that chose to come forward. Ultimately the goal of those in power was to keep the household in working order for the benefit of the state, and ideally “under a male head license to employ appropriate violence in regulating the economic, religious and also sexual lives of his subordinates” (Hall, Malcolm, 290). Violence, in this context, was a means to perpetuate women’s submissiveness to a male dominated society, categorizing women as pieces of property that required violence to uphold the patriarchal status quo.
In Robert Schneider’s piece The Ceremonial City, he explores the purpose and regularity of public executions in the French city of Toulouse, relying on the diary of Barthès to act as a through line. Schneider uses the diary as a guidebook for the time period and acknowledges the limitations in basing one’s assumptions on a limited primary source. However, Schneider brings together additional sources to complement Barthès’s diary and fill in the gaps in knowledge. As it turns out, Barthès is in a prime location to be the documentarian of Toulouse executions, but that’s not to say Toulouse was exceptionally crime ridden. Toulouse was the destination of most executions for that region of France, since the parliament reviewed the area’s capital sentences. Although the punishments brought to certain crimes varied depending on social class, the overall reason for public humiliation was to “be prolonged and dramatized in order to convey a particular message to the populace” (Schneider, 79). That message was to keep the social order where the state desired and to demolish any whispers of insurrection amid civil unrest. Not only was this used to punish criminals of their misdeeds, but the public aspect of this retribution was also to discourage any copy-cat offenders and to effectively threaten the populace with the same fate. A particularly interesting example of the state attempting to kill an idea came when writings were deemed scandalous and were given parallel punishments. The authors of these works were considered convicted criminals and although they were missing a body to mutilate, “…the law did not halt his ritual execution, the burning or hanging of effigies, with all the solemnity and formality of a real execution was still practiced” (Schneider, 85-86). On one occasion, the master printer was hanged in an effigy as a result of scandalous material being printed. By employing a public punishment based judicial system, the Parliament of Toulouse was attempting to psychologically oppress the community through regular exposure to public shaming rituals to maintain the social hierarchy of the region.
Family and Sexual Violence examines violence perpetrated against women through a broad lens across early modern Europe, and it seems that Toulouse was no exception when violently punishing sexually related crimes. The crime of sleeping with royal soldiers brought with it a brutal public punishment that disproportionately affected women. If a woman was caught with a royal guard, she would be stripped and beaten before an audience. Furthermore, it is unclear what the soldiers’ fates were for their parts in the crime, however it can be implied that they suffered much less severe punishments within patriarchal societies than women convicted. “Shame and humiliation, in addition to the obvious pain inflicted . . . were clearly an important component[s] of public punishment” (Schneider, 82). The goals of the medieval justice system were not necessarily to maintain law and order within communities, although it was a byproduct. Instead, early modern judiciary practices encouraged the humiliation and public spectacle of punishing minor and major offenses alike. The reason for this is to control the populace to stay under the state’s thumb and to discourage behaviors and ideals that would conflict with those in charge. By employing a brutal and public spectacle for all to see, the state was able to use the community’s fear to keep them in line and to implant to consequences of any minor crime into the minds of their constituents.
Both authors see a shift in how violence changes as Europe enters the modern period, although Schneider focuses on how ceremonial executions undergo a shift around the middle of the 18th century. Prior to a shift in Barthès’s accounts around 1760, the execution ritual consisted of a procession where the condemned are to walk through the streets towards a desired spot. The punishment of walking to your end, while getting beaten during the process “points to the centrality of the body, both real and symbolic” (Schneider, 82) where the perpetrator’s march is compared to Christ’s journey to the crucifixion. After 1760, however, the procession was phased out in favor of a central spot to punish the criminal. The humiliation ordeal was still intact, but the journey to the spot of execution was shortened. Hall and Malcolm acknowledge the shift into the modern period by disclosing the difference in terminologies when defining crimes. Domestic violence is seen as strictly heterosexual and against female partners, while the term in early modern Europe could encompass the violence perpetrated by the male head of the household against anyone below him, including servants and children. Where Hall and Malcolm discuss the discrepancies between the terminologies of then and now, Schieder explores how the style of the public execution shifted after the mid 1700s.
The function of violence in the early modern period served as avenues for the government to perpetuate routine executions, to demoralize the free thinking of the populace, and to limit the legal options women had to prosecute male perpetrators of sexual crimes. While some of the condemned seized their last moments as opportunities to speak to the masses gathered at their execution, the effectiveness of this act was likely dimmed by the position of the condemned. In order to further perpetuate the narrative that executions were done to uphold the social order, the government would utilize guards to patrol the ceremony to curb potential rioting that could result from killing a member of the community. The guards’ roles were to enforce the state’s control of the populace through fear and intimidation. Both the execution rituals and the guards patrolling them, served as tools to oppress the working-class and to maintain the social hierarchy. Furthermore, the judicial system of the time was bias towards male testimony regarding sexual violence against women, effectively making it difficult for women to prove any wrongdoing on a male’s part. The authors are in consensus that the methods of medieval shaming ceremonies were a product of the time while serving the social hierarchy.
Works Cited
Schneider, Robert A. The Ceremonial City: Toulouse Observed, 1738-1780. Princeton University Press, 1996.
Hall, Dianne, and Elizabeth Malcolm. "Sexual and Family Violence in Europe." (2020): 274-291.
Comments