The Mediaeval Journal

Compurgation was a mode of proof in which the defendant in a legal case could disprove and reject accusations against them if they swore and oath, usually supported by other people functioning as so-called oath helpers. Using evidence from medieval Norwegian law books, this article argues that compurgation was a more nuanced and differentiated institution than what previous scholarship has suggested. By applying Cathrine Bell’s theory of ritualization to rules governing the compurgation ritual in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century law books, it becomes apparent that oaths of compurgation were functionally and qualitatively different from one another, depending on the cases to which they were applied, the number of oath helpers required and the degree to which their execution was ritualized.

For the past century or more, commentators have rarely doubted that in England the ordeal was a widespread and perhaps central feature of pre-Conquest legal practice from the beginning to the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. Both anthropological assumptions and textual evidence (slender but ingeniously interpreted) have appeared supportive of the view just described. As we will see, however, this consensus owes its existence almost entirely to arguments first made by the great editor Felix Liebermann over a century ago; arguments that, while they have been occasionally murmured against, have yet to see much in the way of critical revaluation. It is just such a reappraisal that this essay attempts before suggesting what may be more profitable avenues for understanding the ordeal.

Taking the sanctification c. 1100 of King Knud IV of Denmark as a case study, this article explores contrasting and overlapping ways sainthood could be made, used, and contested before the emergence of a papally controlled, juridified canonisation process. Arguing that St Knud’s martyrdom was established at the intersection of miracle (local ritual ordeal) and mandate (papal authorisation), the article analyses the use of sacred fire for making truth in a critical religio-political context; discusses the importance of the ordeal vis-à-vis formal papal recognition in the building of Knud’s cult; and reflects on how both certifying acts were received, remembered, or imagined later on when papal canonisation procedures were firmly established.

This article focuses on inter-ruler relations across Europe in the tenth to twelfth centuries through an examination of treaties involving the East Frankish, and later German, king. This reveals that individual circumstances attendant upon the political situation shape how law and ritual relate to each other. The examination further highlights that there was a decline in written and normatively-shaped treaties of alliance between the tenth and twelfth centuries, and rituals therefore had an important place and role in shaping the form and substance of treaties of alliance.

This article investigates the relationship between law and ritual through an analysis of Sverris saga’s account of a conflict between King Sverrir Sigurðarson of Norway and the Orcadian Earl Haraldr Maddaðarson. The case was adjudicated in a court trial in 1195 but it can also be interpreted as a ritual playing on a spectre of other norms and expectations. First, it invoked a religious vocabulary of repentance and supplication. Second, it played on notions of honour and vengeance. Finally, I discuss the sentence pronounced by King Sverrir in this instance, not as a king not tolerating disobedience, but rather as an expression of the necessity of medieval kings to draw on the whole palette from ira et malevolentia to pax et custodia in leading their realms.

This article uses a comparative approach to investigate the extent to which contemporary ideas regarding kingship influenced how monarchs in high medieval Europe dealt with those who took up arms against them before such behaviour became explicitly proscribed in legal texts. It compares two high medieval kingdoms in which there was some divergence in contemporary ideas regarding the position of kings and how they were expected to rule, namely Norway and England. This article argues that contemporary perceptions of the authority and power invested in kings, both individually and as a category, affected their ability to punish those who took up arms against them in a consistent manner. A monarch’s authority and power might therefore to some extent be understood in terms of their ability to punish rebellious opponents.

In 1449 the criminal court in Gouda delivered a sentence against a man who had disrupted the legal proceedings of the court by entering the council chambers without permission and causing a ruckus. The verdict highlights normative frameworks of judicial space and its boundaries, including how access to that space was regulated. By investigating the relationship between people and space, and how this relationship both shapes and is shaped by legal procedure, this article aims to advance the study of law and ritual beyond the performances of legal actors and towards the construction of the ritual stage itself. This approach highlights that the distinction between law and ritual is less clear than scholars often acknowledge since the built environment is intrinsic to the construction of the legal sphere itself.

Scholars investigating the medieval thing, the public assembly in Scandinavia, have focused primarily on its legal and political function. From such studies, an image has been created of the orderly and well-functioning assembly, concerned with testimonies of legal negotiations, political decisions, and public announcements. Narrative sources of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the legislation from the early sixteenth century onwards, paints a different picture, of the assembly as a place also for drinking and quarrelling. By examining sources that reveal both legal and public behaviour at the Danish assemblies in the Middle Ages, as well as regulations against such practices and behaviour in the century following the Lutheran Reformation, we consider how the function of the assembly may be better understood in both a legal-ritualised and a social context.

Judicial institutions in eleventh- and twelfth-century western France often used force or the threat thereof to compel litigants’ attendance at court. he use of force, known as distraint, invites questions about the relationship between law and power. Adopting a cultural approach to law, focus is on the pecuniary fines that courts imposed on individuals found guilty of the commission of violent acts. Yet these fines were sometimes pardoned by those who claimed the authority to make judicial decisions, presenting historians with an apparent paradox. Further, pardoning fines was sometimes embedded within a complex set of ritual practices centred on ideas of penance and mercy. Taking the phenomenon of pardoning fines as a point of departure, it is suggested that the apparent forgiveness of a disputant’s violent acts through the forgiveness of fines is intrinsically connected to the distraint exercised by court-holders who went on to impose pecuniary fines on disputants in the first place. It argues that pardoning fines may often have come at no material loss to those granting forgiveness because of gains court-holders made through the processes of distraint.