Late Medieval Era (1200 CE to 1450 CE) *

Introduction *

The Spirit of the Time *

The Myth of the Ship of Fools *

The Beginnings of the Resurgence of Condemnation of Witchcraft *

Gender and Sexuality *

Children *

Bodily Functional Difference *

Mental Difference - Mental Disorder *

Mental Difference - Mental Impairment *

Belief Difference *

Forensic Difference *

Social Difference *

Ethnic Difference *

Financial Difference *

The Aged *

Late Medieval Era (1200 CE to 1450 CE)

NOTE TAKE FROM ZIEGLER THE BLACK DEATH AND KIPLE PLAGUE POX AND PESTILENCE

NOTE TAKE FROM Elaine Clark Social Welfare and Mutual Aid in the Medieval Countryside

Introduction

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The Spirit of the Time

Spirit of the Time

Leprosy brought back from the Crusades- ?Source

From Rosen:

‘Numerous students of the period have commented on the feeling of melancholic and pessimism which marked the declining middle ages. "If one period deserves the name of the "state of anxiety,"" writes Paul Tillich "so it is the Pre-reformation and reformation" (Paul Tillich The Courage To Be, New Haven, Yale University Press 1952 p48.) Stadelmann refers to the "morbid psyche" of the disintegrating medieval period. (Rudolph Stadelmann, Vom Geist des ausgehenden Mittelalters, Halle-Saaale, Max Niemayer Verlag, 1929, p7). A general sense of impending doom hung over men and women, aggravated by an obsession that the world was coming to an end. (Will-Erich Peuckert, Die Grosses Wende: das Apokalyptische Saeculum and Luther, Hamburg, Classen & Goverts 1948, pp103-106, 148-151, 152-191)

‘Nor was this feeling unjustified. A world was indeed falling apart, and in its midst a new order, of which the outlines could be seen but dimly, was struggling to emerge. The all-absorbing medieval Christian commonwealth, fashioned and guided by the Church of Rome, was wracked by dissension, hatred and violence. The feudal order was giving way to political absolutism and the nation state. Similarly, abuses in the Church led to a desire to return it to its original state, to give it a new birth of life. New social groups of urban origin had arisen. The origins of these developments lie in the changes that feudal Europe experienced in the tenth and succeeding centuries.’ (Friedrich Heer, Aufgang Europas: Eine Studie zu den Zusammenhangen zwischen politischer Religiositat, Frommigkeitstil und dem Werden Europas im 12 Jahrhundert, Wien-Zurich, Europa Verlag, 1949, pp 384-575)

Rosen :

‘Between the close of the eleventh and the middle of the seventeenth century, it occurred repeatedly in Europe that the desire of the poor, the uprooted and the discontented to improve the conditions of their lives became transfused with expectations of an earthly paradise, a world purged of suffering and sin, a Kingdom of Saints. ... Apocalyptic thinkers and propagandists expected that God would destroy the world and substitute a new one for the old.’

Winzer:

‘Primarily an Italian experience, the Renaissance began in the 14th century and reached its height in the 15th and 16th centuries. With the movement arose in your interest in humanistic principles, individuality, and learning, and the secular arts. Humanism in art led to a more intense focus on the human body and so to the development of more and more sophisticated surgery and medical practices.'

Winzer:

'The experience of disabled people in medieval times was not a tale of unmitigated hardships, deprivation, isolation, and a gruesome witch hunts. Even as some fanatics pursued the swarms of witches they imagined were polluting daily and ecclesiastical life, others, following more humanistic impulses, pursued ideas more in tune with emerging Renaissance thought.’

Allderidge notes that The Book of Foundation of St Bartholomew’s Church records St Bartholomew’s healing powers for the deaf, dumb, blind, palsied, crippled and insanity. Also that a series of early 13th Century windows in the Trinity Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral shows miracles wrought at the tomb of Thomas a Becket- dealing with large and swollen feet, epilepsy, fever, wounds, leprosy, congenital lameness, dropsy, blindness, death by drowning and insanity.

Porter notes in The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: ‘Public concern in the medieval west was split between leprosy, plague and insanity.’

Winzer:

' Medieval life was further disrupted in the 14th century by the appearance of the Black Death, also called the pestilence of the Great Mortality. Beginning in Central Asia, the plague spread outward to reach the heart of Europe around 1348. This was not the first or only plague to attack Europe, but it was one the most virulent. It is estimated that between 1347 and 1351 in the whole of Europe, 25 million persons, as much as one-third of the population, were lost. (Slack, 1985, Zinsser 1935)

Winzer:

' .. in 1150, the Church embraced the doctrine of original sin (Durant, 1950 p820), which meant that from then on Christians viewed themselves and all humans as inherently evil, saved only by the grace of the Good God.'

Mora re Italy in early Renaissance:

‘No matter how enlightening and pioneering these views were, they were an expression of a limited cultural elite. The great majority of the population was still subjected to all sorts of abuses on the part of the rulers, as well as physical and emotional hardship related to the various social factors mentioned above. There is also evidence, however, that there was plenty of warmth and mutual support in the context of the feudal world, where roles and functions were rigidly imposed at birth and transmitted to offspring. It is likely that a number of mentally ill who were not tolerated as ‘characters’ in their own towns found a socially acceptable escape from the strictures of that world into crusades, pilgrimages, wars, or in a religious retreat.’

The Myth of the Ship of Fools

RE-DO WHOLE SECTION

Foucault in Madness and Civilisation- A History Of Insanity In The Age Of Reason discusses the rise of ‘Reason’ and attempts to show that the worship of reason over other human attributes led to a change in the social view of what it was to suffer from unreason, and indeed what unreason was. Much of this argument is of great value to an understanding of our subject- the social reaction to difference, but Foucault’s methods, use of discourse and his language (and that of his translators) means that we must treat certain of his ‘findings’ as quaetionable.

Foucault himself (WHERE) talks of his method being one of ‘genealogy’- looking for the descent of an idea through belief through the ages. INVESTIGATE AND SUBSTANTIATE

Of particular concern to us is Foucault’s promotion of the idea of the ‘Ship of Fools’ as a real metod of disposal of the mentally disordered in the middle ages.

This is particularly well known to followers of Social Role Valorisation and Wolfensberger through his 1975 paper A Reflection on Foucault’s Insights (CHECK TITLE) SUMMARISE

Notes from Chapter 1 Stultifera Navis (Ship of Fools) of Foucault 1975:

Towards the end of the middle ages leprosy disappeared in the western world. These people had been cast to the margins of society both literally and metaphorically. Until this date the gates and margins of the city had contained these people, at least those who were not confined in the leprosauria set up by governments. Mathieu Paris says that there were 19 000 throughout Christendom. These lazar houses were controlled and regulated by authority as they had immense assets due to endowments. The houses were set to treating poor noblemen and crippled soldiers.

COMPLETE NOTE TAKING

Scull in Most Solitary notes that Foucault overstates the case for Leprosaria.

Scull Most Solitary: re Foucault:

‘…one must acknowledge that heuristically, at least, the intellectual challenges that he threw down three decades ago have directly or indirectly been the stimulus for much of the best recent work in the history of psychiatry. Still, his analysis, provocative though it may be, rests on the shakiest of scholarly foundations’

Scull Most Solitary: He refers to his paper Scull 1992 NOTE TAKE

Scull Most Solitary: He refers to Foucault’s portrait of the middle ages as a counterpart to Merrie Old England with fools suffering no social restraint, and the result of the enlightenment being a sudden great confinement.

Scull Most Solitary: He points out the existence of similar Ships Ship of Princes, Ship of Virtuous Ladies, Ship of Health in the literature of the age.

Jones and Fowles: Foucault: The Carceral City. Criticised for being poor history- dates, places etc. not referenced- only interested in social archaeology- as much myth as fact.

‘Until the end of the Middle Ages the outcast of Western society was the leper. Leprosy, brought home from the Middle east by the crusades was a symbol of the strange and unacceptable. When it finally waned leprasaria were used for the confinement of "poor vagabonds, criminals and "deranged minds" the cities of the damned had found a new population."’ QUERY QUOTE FROM FOUCAULT OR FROM JONES AND FOWLES

Jones and Fowles: Stultiferia Navis has little foundation in reality. Those ships that existed were mainly social outcasts, not madmen. Foucault’s use of this is better seen as metaphor.

Jones and Fowles: Move from exclusion to confinement

Jones and Fowles: Problems: Mediaeval leprasaria were very small- half a dozen lepers outside a town. Brant’s Narrenschyff- source for ship of fools- is about vice and not madness. Kittrie (see later) and Wolfensberger both use these passages for support of medieval ‘ritual exclusion’. Dear and Taylor also take this literally. Winifred Barbara Maher and Brendan Maher investigated the alleged practice of enshipping the madmen, going back to Foucault’s assumed sources in Uppsala ; they conclude that ‘the current references to ships of fools as part of the treatment of the mentally ill are wholly without foundation’.

Jones and Fowles: NOTE THAT SCULL DEBUNKS the great confinement in Britain if not in France in Most Solitary. See p7 et seq.

Wallis and Henderson transmit the ‘Ship of Fools’ myth as fact:: pp3-4

‘In early history up to the eighteenth century there was anotherform of brutality towards handicapped people that thrived on religious myths and folk tales; that of the ‘Ship of Fools’. These ships really existed, they would be loaded with handicapped people, or ‘’fools’, and cast out to sea forever. These ‘Ships of Fools’ would sail around Europe, docking occasionally for supplies, and then setting off again to continue their nightmare journeys to nowhere across cold dark seas. The public loved this idea, they convinced themselves that the ‘sea air is good for them’ to cleanse mind, body and soul, and laughed at the free ‘freak’ show as it sailed past.’

The Beginnings of the Resurgence of Condemnation of Witchcraft

FOLLOW UP ERGOT POISONING FROM CHANNEL 4 DOCUMENTARY AUG2000

CATHERINE FINDS THIS SECTION BELOW CONFUSING

The belief in Witchcraft is ancient and enduring. REFERENCES. Throughout history it has been used as a method of blaming, projection, scapegoating and social control. ADD

However, the social treatment of people suspected of witchcraft or similar activities was not extreme and dominating in any earlier age.

The severe negative sanctioning of witchcraft reached its height in the full bloom of the Renaissance and afterwards, but the seeds of the reaction and its first effects were felt during this era.

Rosen notes that given the spirit of the age- Apocalyptic thinking- it was necessary to destroy the Antichrist to enable the achievement of the millennium. During the dark ages various heretical groups flourished as Christianity sought to find its path and define what was seen as orthodox and what was heresy. The millenarian movement now required heterodoxy to be stigmatised and destroyed. This background provided fertile soil for the growth of an atmosphere of fear of the heterodox. Heretics became seen as agents of the Devil. The early inquisition was directed against clearly schismatic influences within or around the Church: Cathars, Waldensians, Knights Templar etc. The Scholastics provided a ‘scientific’ rationale for such beliefs. EXPLAIN SCHOLASTICS

‘At first the Inquisition had been directed expressly against heretics, but by the second half of the thirteenth century inquisitors had begun to arrest magicians and fortune-tellers. Then in 1326, Pope John XXII issued a bull, "Super illius specula" in which he equated magicians and wizards with heretics, thus subjecting them to the procedures and courts of the Inquisition.’

Rosen notes:

‘In 1484, Innocent VIII declared open war on witches with the promulgation of his bull "Summis desiderantes". Interestingly enough, at this time, witches were considered a sect of very recent origin.’ TO NEXT SECTION

Rosen notes that with the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum:

‘Thenceforth, torture and ideology employed on the basis of accusations derived from sexual antagonisms, family stresses, social conflict, cupidity, suggestion, hallucinations and mental illness created an empire of darkness which spread under its own momentum.’

TO NEXT SECTION

Rosen notes:

‘... in Spain the inquisition as early as 1537 recognized that alleged witches might be insane, and there are several cases on record where such individuals were transferred to hospitals’

Referenced to HC Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, New York, Macmillan Company, 1907 vol III pp58-63. TO NEXT SECTION

NOTE TAKE FROM Witchcraft: The History and Mythology

Gender and Sexuality

Note take on Mate Chapter 3 The late middle ages 1250-1530

WRITE

Rosen notes:

‘Most of those accused of being witches were women. In the light of the official doctrine that the witches were an organized sect, bent on subverting the social order, it is worth noting that many of the accused were old women, ignorant peasants, who could not possibly have performed the evil deeds ascribed to them. Furthermore, the whole campaign against witches is permeated with the spirit of aversion towards women. According to the Malleus, crimes of witchcraft are committed predominantly by women, whose primary motive is carnal lust.’

Children

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de Mause notes:

‘Children, of course, have always been identified with their excrements; newborn infants were called ecrême, and the Latin merda, excrement was the source of the French merdeaux, little child.’

de Mause notes:

‘Of over two hundred statements of advice on child-rearing prior to the eighteenth century which I have examined, most approved of beating children severely, and all allowed beating in varying circumstances except three, Plutarch, Palmieri, and Sadoleto., and these were addressed to fathers and teachers and did not mention mothers. Of the seventy children prior to the eighteenth century which I have examined, all were beaten except one…’

de Mause notes:

‘Beating instruments included whips of all kinds, including the cat-o’-nine-tails, shovels, canes, iron and wooden rods, bundles of sticks, the discipline (a whip made of small chains), and special school instruments like the flapper, which had a pear-shaped end and a round hole to raise blisters.’

de Mause notes:

‘Since infants who were not swaddled were in particular subjected to hardening practices, perhaps one function of swaddling was to reduce the parent’s propensity for child abuse.’

de Mause notes:

‘One thirteenth-century law brought child-beating into the public domain: "If one beats a child until it bleeds, then it will remember, but if one beats it to death, the law applies. (Peiper, Chronik, pp302-345).’

Walker notes using Bracton:

‘For if a child committed a felony the question was whether he had reached the age of discretion, which in the thirteenth century was not seven but twelve; and the usual test for his ability to count up to twelve pence, or perform tasks involved in his father’s occupation…. It was not until the time of Spigurnel, Edward II’s judge, that it became the practice to ask whether the child could tell good from evil, and children of seven – the crucial age in Roman Law – were in danger of being hanged or burned.’

Bodily Functional Difference

Scheerenberger notes:

‘The program at Gheel, which began in the thirteenth cebntury, placed mentally ill and mentally retarded persons in family settings. Residents had their own bedrooms, ate meals with the family, and engaged in various community activities. Many were given responsibilities, such as baby-sitiing and other family chores.’

Scheerenberger notes:

‘…the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem in London [was] established in 1247 and converted to a mental asylum in 1377, [it] was popularly known as Bedlam, a corruption of Bethlehem and a word that soon entered the language as a synonym for madness and despair. And for good reason: An inventory of 1398 revealed 4 pairs of manacles, 11 chains or irons, 6 locks and keys, and 2 stocks – all for 20 patients!

‘The conditions at Bedlam were atrocious, but not unique. The notion of confining the mentally afflicted in dark dungeons, keeping them in chains and in a state of fear, was prevalent in almost every institution or facility for such individuals at the time. Violent remedies were "always popular and easy application, equally efficacious, to, whether regarded as punishment for violent acts, or a means of thrashing out the supposed demon lurking in the body" (Tuke 1882 p43). Mental illness and mental retardation were considered synonymous, and it was believed that persons so afflicted did not suffer hunger, cold, or pain.’

Winzer notes:

'Of all the afflictions attributed to witchcraft, none was more common among adults than disturbances of the mind; the next largest category among children and adults was lameness with chronic wasting away of the body or limbs that boded permanent disability and probable death (Sawyer, 1989). When the onset of the disorder was sudden and unexpected, or when naturalistic medicine offered little or no relief, then witchcraft might well have seemed an unavoidable alternative.'

Mental Difference - Mental Disorder

Volkan notes:

‘In 1470 they [the Turks] opened a hospital for the exclusive use of the mentally ill in Istanbul.’

Howells notes:

‘It was well understood that abnormal behaviour could be due to emotional or to physical causes and that treatment had to be appropriately directed to correct the damaged feelings or the disordered physical parts. This is demonstrated by the most popular treatise of the Middle Ages, De proprietatibus rerum (c 1250), written by an English Franciscan monk, Bartholomeus Anglicus. He was not a physician, but a professor of theology, who collected what information was available at the time, and thus his work is a valuable witness of medieval attitudes. He dedicated part of his book to mental disorders and retained the classification of previous writers. Hence he recognized: "melancholie," which included what we would call "emotional disorders"; "madness" or mania; "gawrynge and forgetfulness," or stupor and dementia; "frensie" or delirium caused by a diseased brain and distinguished from febrile delirium called "parafenesi" (Hunter and MacAlpine 1963)’

Howells notes:

‘The Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem (O’Donoghue EG 1914 The Story of Bethlehem Hospital London: Unwin) was founded in London in 1247; at first it was a place of rest for visiting clergy, and then it became a hospital, which, probably like most other hospitals, cared for a certain number of mental patients amongst others. Records show that in 1402, of its 14 patients, six were mente capti, or insane. St Bartholomew’s Hospital also gave shelter to patients suffering from a multitude of difficulties, including mental disorders. Another hospital may have existed in London for the care of the mentally ill, including members of the clergy, for in 1369, Robert Denton, a chaplain, applied and obtained a license to establish a hospital at All Hallows, Barking, for "priests and others, men and women who suddenly fell into a frenzy and lost their memories until such time they recover"; but there is no proof that the projected hospital was actually founded. In 1414, the Rolls of Parliament refer to "hospitals…to maintain men and women who had lost their wits and memory." Salisbury was renowned for its hospital, Holy Trinity, which again did not segregate the mentally ill but cared for the physically sick as well as for the "furiosi", or insane persons (Clay RM 1909 The Medieval Hospitals of England London: Methuen). It is likely that each small community was provided with some kind of hospital attached to the local monastery. As in previous centuries, the richer classes paid religious orders to look after their deranged members, either in monastic establishments, or in special quarters set aside in castles belonging to the family.’

Clarke notes:

‘A comprehensive chronicle of the ramifications of medical thought on mental disorder in Britain during the later Middle Ages does not seem possible yet, but outlines can be sought by sampling some received texts through the period, even without there being enough context to weight their respective influences very accurately. One general point about them which can be emphasised is the firmness with which mental disorder – or what we would consider mental disorder from the descriptions – was kept within the framework of a rational pathology.’

Clarke notes that Gilbertus Anglicus , author of the Compendium Medicine (c.1230) recommended the following treatment for mental illnesses seen as being caused by corrupt matter:

‘…clysters, bloodletting (qualified), cautery at the occiput or on top of the head (between front and middle cells), supported by a regime of solitude and comforts – pleasnat surroundings,wine, sleep, sex, exercise and baths (with a nice soft towel, cum mapa subtili et molli).’

Clarke notes on Epilepsy and Gilbertus Anglicus:

‘He recorded numerous receipts and many of the superstitious specifics (without clearly endorsing any of them): they included human bone ash, testicles (various), the rib of an hanged man, a coral necklace, periapts of other kinds, charms and the burying of various things.’

Clarke notes of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, author of De Proprietatibus Rerum, Book 7 (c. 1260):

‘Treatment was to include reassurance, and a mild regime and music; if purges and other medicine were ineffective, recourse was to be had to surgery, but this is left without detail.

‘One of the treatments mentions drops of blood from the shoulder, to be administered to the patients with a raven’s egg…’

Clarke notes of Bernard de Gordon, author of Lilium Medicine (c. 1305) that there is reference to the use of a hot iron for mental illness.

Clarke notes of John of Gaddesden, author of Rosa Anglica (c. 1315):

‘Among the many treatments noted, use of the stone celidonius occurred: it was attributed to Dioscorides and this refers to its supposed connection with swallows. de Gordon had mentioed briefly that powdered cuckoo was used: it was evidently one of Gaddesden’s special interests as treatment and prophylaxis.’

Clarke notes John Mirfield author of Brevarium Bartholomaei, (c. 1400)

Clarke notes John Aderne author of De Arte Phisicali (c.1412): recipes based on lettuce (a mild sedative), evacuation using rhubarb, herbs and eggs, plus superstitious remedies.

Clarke notes:

‘…there had been a long period in the thirteenth century, spreading into the next, when the church, for its own purposes and without any primary medical intentions, tried to effect a difference in the in the psychological climate among large sections of the population within Britain in ways which now would seem very relevant to the handling of many psychiatric conditions as well as to the way individuals met their more tolerable worries and times of stress.’

Clarke notes:

‘The most obvious cases in ordinary medical practice for referral to a priest would be those where the diagnosis was epilepsy or where uncontrollable behaviour and signs of alienation suggested possession.’

Clarke notes that there was along-standing belief from Anglo-Saxon times of the reality of devils and elves (elf-shot as an explanation for illness) and that these marginal traditional beliefs were subsumed by Christian superstitions. Exorcism was common. Belief in the healing power of springs, shrines and relics were common.

Clarke notes:

‘Applications at shrines sometimes seem to be genuine attempts to invoke what is believed to be a personified spirit, normally a saint, to cure directly or to cure by intercession; and this attempt could still be personal in quality when made by a pious group as on pilgrimages. But sometimes the application seems more mechanical, as when large numbers with a particular disability were applying during a ‘craze’ for a particular shrine.’

IS THERE ANYTHING ON EXORCISM??

Clarke notes that the use of shrines for physical illness was usually voluntary, and may have been useful because of the patient’s frame of mind and belief in the efficacy of the intervention, however:

‘When a mental patient was brought to a shrine under pressure, no deliberate intention can be assumed, and the severe forms of alienation deny it.’

Clarke notes:

‘Little seems known before the sixteenth century of the activities of local ‘wise-women’ using traditional rather than rational herbal or other remedies. Their existence may be implied by, for example, the presence of such cures for head-illness in the standard texts, though these texts had international sources of some complexity.

Clarke notes:

‘There was a considerable number of hermits and recluses, especially in England, who had their local and wider reputations and could become informal therapists though not in anything approaching medical terms.’

Clarke notes:

‘

For Animal Imagery it is useful to quote Walker p33 where he says of Bracton: The comparison between insane and animals was so influential in the course of the next six centuries that it would be interesting to trace it to its original source. It is unlikely that it was Bracton’s own inspiration, and not merely because he was not given to inspirations of this kind. He makes the comparison twice, in exactly the same words (once in the passage quoted [Bracton De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, Woodbine ed. (Yale 1915 n20 IV, 308) and again when discussing suicide by the insane: op cit II p424), which suggests that it was a traditional argument. Moreover, it can be found in Continental jurists who, though later than Bracton, are unlikely to have been influenced by him: for example Matthaeus (Antonius Matthaeus (second of the name) De Criminibus ad lib. XLVII et XLVIII Dig. Commentarius, Amsterdam 1644 in ch8, n3).

Richard Neugebauer considers the history of Mental Handicap (in Chapter 2 of Wright and Digby - From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency) the chapter being entitled ‘Mental Handicap in Medieval and Early Modern England: Criteria, Measurement and Care’

Neugebauer’s argument is that presentations of the history of psychiatry is skewed to show that historic interventions were negative and by comparison, modern interventions are positive.

He bases his analysis on a review of contemporary legal records.

Neugebauer : ‘The early history of psychiatry is often viewed with a mixture of intense curiosity and dismay. Historical works produced by physicians generally assume that the period from the Middle Ages down to the seventeenth century was dominated by demonological beliefs about the etiology of brain disorders, with concomitant abuse and persecution or simple neglect of the insane

Neugebauer :quotes Colp:

‘In the 1000 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, 400-1400AD…there was a prevalence of religious beliefs in the understanding and treatment of mental illness … Renaissance views of the mentally ill were influenced by a pervasive fear of witchcraft, which began in 1486 with the publication of the book Malleus Maleficarum (Witches’ Hammer) … The Malleus … suggested that almost any mental or physical affliction of a male or female could be a sign of witchcraft, and it prescribed inquisitorial procedures of mental or physical torture.’

Neugebauer quotes Szymanski and Crocker:

‘mental illness and mental retardation (which were lumped together) were attributed to supernatural causes and considered in the province of priests and philosophers. Although a few retarded persons did have a career as ‘court fools’, others were exploited, persecuted and exorcised. The foundations of modern care of retarded people were laid in the nineteenth century.’

Neugebauer says:

‘This emphasis on demonology and persecution is often introduced to magnify further twentieth-century advances in psychobiology and humane treatment of mental disorders.’

Neugebauer notes:

‘However, by a wonderful sleight of a rhetorical hand, these same putative beliefs and practices have also been used to indict twentieth-century psychiatry, as Szasz and his epigones have done, by seeing them as documenting the early ancestry of modern psychiatry’s scapegoating and persecution of deviants.’

Neugebauer explains his source material:

‘The present chapter summarises findings from research conducted over the past twenty years on the history of … functional and organic psychiatric disorder in pre-industrial England. This account is based on records generated from the thirteenth-century onwards by the Crown’s legal incompetency jurisdiction, the records of which survive largely in manuscript form only, has enjoyed a virtually uninterrupted administrative history from the late thirteenth century until the present.’

Neugebauer notes:

‘Records from the medieval and early modern period afford an entirely different picture of early European ideas and attitudes towards psychiatric illness from that advanced by Colp, Szymanski and Crocker and others. These documents provide incontrovertible evidence that medieval Englishmen employed naturalistic criteria in evaluating persons thought to be mentally ill or learning disabled.’

Neugebauer notes:

‘Medieval English society was based on the preservation and stable transmission of landed wealth. … Prerogativa Regis, the first extant document pertaining to this issue, dates from the second half of the thirteenth-century. … (in it) (T)he mentally disabled are divided into two categories: Natural fools or idiots; and persons non compis mentis. Prerogativa Regis carefully differentiated these two categories both in terms of symptoms and mental functioning, and as regards royal responsibilities and fiscal claims. Section 11 read in part as follows:

‘The king shall have the custody of the lands of natural fools taking profits of them without waste or destruction and shall find them their necessaries … And after the death of such idiots he shall render it to their rightful heirs, so that such idiots shall not alien nor their heirs … be disinherited.’ (A. Luders et al Statutes of the Realm, vol 1, p226.)

According to a thirteenth-century legal document, a ‘fool’ was an individual of retarded intellectual development whose mental capacities never progressed beyond that of a child. (J. Whittaker (ed) The Mirror of Justices: Selden Society, London 1895 vol 7, p138) The more restrictive term ‘natural fool’ or ‘idiot’ referred specifically to persons congenitally handicapped… (J. Cowell, ‘Ideot’ in The Interpreter of Words and Termes, London 1701) and … their deficiencies were considered permanent. Natural, meaning from birth, contrasted on the one hand, with types of natural impairment arising postnatally, for example, impairments developing with age, (Whittaker) and with disorders caused by ‘accidents'. In legal writing, ‘accidents’ included such things as sickness and grief. (E. Coke, The First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England: or a Commentary on Littleton (19th Edition), F. Hargreave and C. Butler (eds) London 1832 f.117).’

Neugebauer notes:

‘The term non compis mentis was more inclusive than ‘natural fool’; all types of serious mental disabilities, except for congenital disorders, appear to have been subsumed under this rubric. Persons non compis mentis might have periods of temporary remission- lucid intervals- or experience complete recovery. By the fifteenth century the term ‘lunatic’ eplace the phrase non compis mentis in legal discussion … ‘

Neugebauer notes:

‘This legal incompetency jurisdiction was created for the protection of property. As a consequence, only disabled individuals with personal or real estate were brought to the attention of the (law)’

This is a potential flaw- propertied classes treated as ‘ill’, unpropertied as ‘mad’??

Summarising the above Neugebauer says of these records:

‘While serving as a useful corrective to earlier histories of psychiatry, these records give rise to a variety of new, unsolved historical mysteries. Two may be mentioned. First, if both natural and supernatural explanations of bizarre conduct and ideation were available to medieval and early modern Englishmen, what factors, intrinsic to the behaviour or contextual in nature, determined the etiologic choice? Second, in this process of etiologic triage that went on in these centuries, roughly what proportion of mentally disabled individuals were judged incompetent owing entirely to natural causes? The incompetency archives do not provide answers or any hint of answers to either question.’

Prins notes:

‘Henry de Bracton, author of one of the first major treatises on English law, stated that ‘Furiosus non intelligit quod agit et anima et ratione caret, et non multumdistas a brutis’ – ‘an insane person is one who does not know what he is doing, is lacking in mind and reason and is not far from the brutes’ (quoted in Walker 1968:33)

Walker notes:

‘What sorts and degrees of disorder were recognised as justifications for exemption [from the criminal process]? In the recorded cases the accused is usually described in terms suggesting mental illness (‘furiosus’, ‘frenetico passione detentus’, ‘insanus’, ‘demes’, ‘de non saine memoire’) rather than mental defect which would be represented by such terms as ‘fatuitas’. It is possible that … ‘amentia’ was ‘witlessness’, but ’amens et extra sensorum’ may well mean ‘out of his normal wits and senses’. As for the degree of mental illness required, Bracton explains … that the terms he uses (‘furiosus vel non sanae mentis’) mean a total lack of ‘discretion’ and ‘understanding’, an animal-like state.

‘What sort of behaviour was likely to qualify for this description? Nothing can be inferred from Bracton’s use of the word ‘brutus’, for although this was later translated into ‘the wild beast test’ it meant no more than ‘dumb animal’ would to us – a creature lacking rationality. Nor does ‘frenetico passione detentus’ help us much, for it means n more than ‘seized by a mad disorder’ Nevertheless, the constantly recurring word ‘furiosis’ suggests violent, excited behaviour, and could fairly be translated ‘raving mad’.’

Walker notes that in 1226 it was probably possible for a lunatic to be indefinitely confined according to Bracton’s notebook:

‘… out of his wits and senses, for in his state he killed a man and came before the justices and confessed that he had killed him … and he is in prison, and will be for ever so long as he shall live, by order of the justices for that death.’

Walker notes from the Plea Rolls:

‘In 1280 a Nottingham jury had to deal with a man who had hanged his daughter in a frenetic state. The jury certified that the ‘did as aforesaid, and not feloniously or through malice aforethought. … The King’s orders were eventually that he should be handed over to the custody of ‘manucaptores’ to be brought before the king’s bench in case anyone wanted to proceed against him. His goods and lands were to be seized; but he was to be allowed sustenance from them, and the persons charged with their management were not to commit any waste.’

Walker notes that two cases in 1292 from the record of the Eyre of Cumberland are of interest:

‘A lunatic who had burned a man’s house was convicted by the justices but released on their authority; and in the following year they were fined for taking this step without consulting the king. …a coroner was gaoled for overstepping himself by countenancing a false finding, to the effect that a man was ‘lunatic and had set fire to a house in his frenzy, and not with malice aforethought.’

Walker notes that referral of cases of insane felons to the King may have been to allow imprisonment rather than release, or imprisonment rather than execution- the records are not clear why the referrals were made.

Walker notes that the requirement to refer up to the King:

‘… represented a compromise between a legal system founded on strict liability and the ecclesiastical insistence on the importance of mens rea. On the one hand the harm done must be acknowledged by the legal process; on the other hand, the legal process could not be carried to its grim conclusion if the harm was unintentional.’

Walker notes that the decision about whether or not to apply criminal processes to acts caused by insanity may have been taken informally and locally:

‘It is quite conceivable that … the petty jury who ‘found’ that the accused had been mad at the time of his act were simply doing what the hundredors had done. Whether a man was an idiot or a madman was a matter of local knowledge, and they were therefore the obvious people to ask.’

Walker notes:

‘The insanity of the accused was not the only circumstance that obliged the justices to consult the king. A royal pardon was needed if he had killed by accident or self-defence, or if he was an infant. But whereas the chattels of the accused seem to have been forfeit in those cases, this does not seem to be so if he was insane’

Walker notes:

‘The Statute on the King’s Prerogative (which was drawn up between 1255 and 1290) makes it clear that:

"The King has custody of the lands of natural fools (fatuorum naturalium), taking their profits without waste, finding them their necessaries … and after their death must return them to their rightful heirs …. He must also see to it that when anyone who formerly had memory and understanding is no longer in his right mind (compos mentis suae) – as some may be between lucid intervals – their lands and tenements are safely kept without waste or destruction; that they and their families live and are maintained from the profits; and that what is left from maintaining them is reasonably kept for their use when they have recovered their memories…. The king shall take nothing to his own use, and if the person dies in that state shall distribute the remainder for his soul by the advice of the Ordinary."

‘It is noticeable that by this time idiocy and madness are distinguished. … The estates of idiots continued to be a source of royal income until the eighteenth century.’

Walker notes:

‘The period during which it became regular practice to acquit the insane accused instead of leaving him to be pardoned by the king cannot be identified with certainty. … the earliest clear case of acquittal which I have found belongs to 1505:

"A man was accused of the murder of an infant. It was found that at the time of the murder the felon was of unsound mind (de non saine memoire). Wherefore it was decided that he should go free (qu’il ira quite). To be noted"’

Walker notes:

‘What seems almost certain is that when Bracton compiled his treatise On the Laws and Customs of England in the middle of the thirteenth century it was not yet the practice of courts to acquit the insane offender as they later did.’

Walker notes in summary:

‘I suggest that the preNnorman practice in dealing with serious offences by the insane, such as homicide, was to make the offender’s family pay and look after him, and that this was done without presenting him formally for trial: local knowledge of his insanity settled the matter without the necessity for that. … the transition to a more modern procedure began when juries were substituted for the ordeal as a method of trial.’

Walker notes on Bracton that there seems to be a transcription error that has led to misunderstanding. Bracton remarks that Bracton’s reference to the ‘misfortune of his deed’ (infelicitas facti) when talking of madmen’s felonies was quoting Modestinus more or less verbatim, but Modestinus talked of infelictas fati- the misfortune of his fate. This was then copied on by Fleta and others. Walker notes that Modestinus was using one of the justifications of Roman Law- that his madness was punishment enough (satis furore ipso punitur).

Rosen notes that he believes that not many mentally ill people were condemned for witchcraft. He quotes Otto Snell, a German Psychiatrist who studied a number of witchcraft trials from a psychological point of view. Rosen suggests that mentally ill people may have more often acted as a stimulus to discover the witch who had. caused their affliction. I find this somewhat unconvincing given the tenuous nature of mental illness and ‘oddness’ in the society of the time, and the difficulty with determining ‘symptomatology’ from historical sources. Given modern notes on the talk and behaviour of people with various psychoses, it seems unlikely that such acts and speech would not have been interpreted as witchcraft at the time.

Walker notes:

‘Finally, what can be said about the disposal and treatment of the insane offender in Saxon and Norman times? As we have seen, it was the family’s duty to keep him under control. Indeed, who else could have been made responsible in a society whose few solid buildings were for defence against a much greater danger from without, the ever present possibility of invasion. Even Plato, when he drafted his Utopian Laws, could not propose a better arrangement: ‘if anyone be insane, let him note be seen openly in the town, but let his kinsfolk watch over him as best they may, under penalty of a fine (Plato, The Laws, XI, 934). This cannot have been an easy matter in times when the ordinary dwelling was built of wood and wattle. Madmen sometimes had to be tied to one of the roof-props or kept among cattle. Perhaps because of faith in their healing powers , but more probably because hey were solid, churches were sometimes used as what modern legislators would call ‘places of safety’: in 1286 a Suffolk jury certified that a man who had killed a woman while ‘furiosus’ was lying bound in the Church of St Nicholas at Yarmouth. When the first prisons began to be provided – usually in fortresses or bishop’s palaces – they were an obvious place for the violent lunatic …’

Mora notes on Islam:

‘Between the 8th and 13th centuries, a number of asylums exclusively for the mentally ill were founded in Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo, Fez, and elsewhere. Reports by later travelers indicated that the methods of treatment employed in these very attractive and tranquil institutions were quite enlightened, and consisted of special diets, baths, drugs, perfumes and concerts. (Stahelin JE 1975 in German). Perhaps not foreign to this permissive attitude was the Moslem belief, stated by the Prophet, that the insane person enjoys a particular relationship with God and that he is chosen by Him to tell the truth.’ (Schipperges H 1961 in German

Wallis and Henderson reference Middleton:

‘In the middle ages ‘madmen’ or ‘insane persons’ were seen by the church as being obscene, evil and blasphemous. The theory behind ‘insane persons’ was that they were possessed by demons, who had taken over their mind and souls. The ‘treatment’ for this ‘state of mind’ was exorcism by the priest. If this method failed, and the ‘insane-mania’ persisted, the blame would lie with the ‘madmen’s’ obstinacy, the next step would be for the ‘madmen’ to have his wrists and ankles clasped by irons and chains, the punishment would continue as the ‘madmen’ would be whipped, beaten and starved into submission in the name of the Lord and in the hope that this would cure his supposed ‘mind disease’. In Europe all so-called ‘madmen’ were looked down upon as wild beasts and were to be ridiculed, disciplined and controlled as seen fit by the local people. Every day of a ‘madman’s’ life would be pain, torture and agony. ‘Madmen/Insane Persons’ would be constantly abused and punished. In the 16th century if an ‘insane person’ was caught begging for money or food they would have a ‘V’ branded on his or her cheek so people would recognise them as ‘idle vagabonds’ or the ‘loathsomely idle’. If a person with disabilities was caught stealing food to survive they would be hung, burnt, boiled to death and in some cases the accused would have their tongues ripped out or they would be locked in large wooden stocks in the streets of England, where passers-by would throw old rotten food, excrement or urine on the individual in need.’

Scull quotes Bethlem as the only example of a madhouse until the seventeenth century: 1403-4 six insane and three sane, 1632- 27, 1642- 44.

Scull uses Clay as a source and Scull says: ‘The insane who were a threat to social order and lacked friends and family: ‘were likely to find themselves, along with the ‘sick, aged, bedridden, diseased, wayfaring men, diseased soldiers and honest folk fallen into poverty’ cared and provided for within the walls of one of the many small medieval ‘hospitals’.

Porter notes: The Greatest Benefit Galen’s authority was use to divide madness into four categories- frenzy, mania, melancholy and fatuity- humoural imbalance.

Porter notes: Folklore believed the moon caused lunacy- luna

Porter notes: Theology saw it as a consequence of diabolical possession

Porter notes: Some viewed it as divine inspiration- gift of tongues

Porter notes: Troubadours sang of tragic love-madness

Porter notes: Treatment- drugs and bleeding, shock- throwing a lunatic into a river, exorcism.

Porter notes: Certain saints had the power to cure madness- St Mathurin at Larchant, St Acairus at Haspres (both in Northern France, and St Dymphna at Geel in Flanders- colony founded there to house the mentally ill in ?? date. Lodging in community households- I HAVE PAPER ON THIS SOMEWHERE.- ALSO IN SCULL (ED)

Porter: The Greatest Benefit Public attitudes:

Porter notes: ‘German municipalities sometimes expelled idiots or insane persons, whipping them out of town- though the ‘ship of fools’ is not a reality but a literary conceit, symbolizing humanity’s follies.’ P127

Porter notes:

‘The insane were cared for in monasteries; various towns madmen’s towers (Narrenturme); in Paris, special cells were set aside at the Hotel Dieu; and the Teutonic Knights’ Hospital at Elbing had a madhouse (Tollhaus). Specialized hospitals began to appear, notably under the influence of Islam in Spain: Granada (1365), Valencia (1407), Zaragoza (1425), Seville (1436), Barcelona (1481) and Toledo (1483). The priory of St Mary of Bethlehem in London, founded in 1247, was by 1403 housing six men ‘deprived of reason’; it dveloped into the notorious Bedlam. Such moves towards incarceration were counterbalanced by the image of the mad person as a holy fool, while in the ‘feast of fools’ medieval society came to terms with mental alienation through the carnival notion of the world turned upside down- madness as dionysian release’ pp127-128

Porter notes: Note on Islam: Hospitals common under Islam from before 12th century and by then every large town had a hospital. Separate hospitals for the insane were set up- the Koran demanded humane care of the insane. The first institutions for the insane maristans were set up in Islamic controlled areas. European travellers marvelled at the humanity shown to the insane in these institutions. The first European institution for the insane was built in Granada in 1365. P105

Porter notes: Linking madness to witchcraft

Masters: Grosse Hospital in Erfurt Germany- ‘mad-hut’ built for locking away the insane 1385 p25

Masters: Georgshospital at Elbing- a ‘mad-house’ built 1326 p25

Masters: At Hotel-Dieu c1325 insane patients were restrained to beds or kept in individual isolation units.

Masters: Anyone insane and away from their place of birth could be returned- often after a whipping- Germany early 14th century p25

Masters: He notes that 13th and 14th century practice lay with the Church while early medical men concentrated on physical illness. p26

Masters: Publication in 1487 of the Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer) (authored by Sprenger and Kraemer )started directly the persecution of ‘witches’ and indirectly the mass persecution of the insane. P27

Masters:

‘Malleus Maleficarum 1488 Although demoniacal possession and the effect of witchcraft were put forward as the nature and cause of mental illness at various times from the beginning of history, it was the publication of this book, The Witches Hammer, which unleashed a widespread persecution of the mentally ill, the eccentric, and the unfortunate throughout Europe. The authors were Heinrich Kramer and Jacon Sprenger, two Dominican theologians of Cologne. Not all accused of being witches and sorcerers were mentally ill but nearly all the mentally ill were considered to be so, or bewitched. The book went through 19 editions in three centuries. It provided guidance for the Inquisition and its influence was still active in the Salem Witch Hunt in the seventeenth century.’ P140

Masters notes that:

‘The recent invention of the printing press was to bring education within the reach of many, the invention of gunpowder was creating instability in the feudal system, and the plague had killed almost half the population of Europe. A scapegoat was necessary; although there were already severe pogroms against the Jews, this vengeful mass-killing was inadequate. It was essential for the Church, the feudal overlords and the monarchies to band together to prevent social breakdown and eventual overthrow.’ P27-28. This led to the use of the Malleus Maleficarum

Masters: According to this if the doctor was not able to explain the insanity or cure it with ‘drugs’ (?) then the disease must have been caused by the devil.

Masters: notes the authors hatred of women: ‘All witchcraft comes from carnal lust which is in women insatiable’

Masters: Up to 100,000 people, mostly women were executed during this inquisition. P28

Allderidge notes that: The Book of Foundation of St Bartholomew’s Church records St Bartholomew’s healing powers for the deaf, dumb, blind, palsied, crippled and insanity. Also that a series of early 13th Century windows in the Trinity Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral shows miracles wrought at the tomb of Thomas a Becket- dealing with large and swollen feet, epilepsy, fever, wounds, leprosy, congenital lameness, dropsy, blindness, death by drowning and insanity. Two items of insanity.

Allderidge notes that: Previous histories had implied that madness was only seen as possession by devils but this is not supported by the facts.

Allderidge notes that: Foundation Deed of Holy Trinity Hospital, Salisbury probably dating from mid 14th Century provides 30 beds where’ The hungry are fed, the thirsty have drink, the naked are clothed, the sick are comforted, the dead are buried, the mad are kept safe until they are restored to reason….’

Allderidge notes that: A petition in 1414 for the reformation of hospitals states that they already existed for those who had lost their wits. The existence of embargoes against the insane at some alms houses (Croydon, Ewelme and Coventry) suggests at hat they would be admitted at others.

Allderidge notes that: Bedlam as the only hospital solely for the insane- only London being big enough to require this. Founded 1247

Mental Difference - Mental Impairment

Insert from Chapter 2 of Wright and Digby- Mental Handicap in Medieval and Early Modern England

Porter: The Greatest Benefit: Innocence of the village idiot praised

Winzer:

'John Calvin preached that mentally retarded persons are possessed by Satan; Martin Luther was of the opinion that a mentally retarded child is merely a mass of flesh (massa carnis) with no soul (Kanner, 1964). Luther further subscribed to the belief that the devil is the father the idiots; he denounced the mentally handicapped as "filled with Satan" (Barr, 1904/1913 page 26) and even suggested that one child betaken to the nearest river and drowned (Kanner1964)‘ DATE OF JOHN CALVIN

Winzer:

In sixteenth-century Hamburg, in Germany, for example, mentally retarded individuals were confined in a tower in the City wall, and appropriately named the idiots cage." (Burdett, 1891) p94 TO NEXT SECTION

Winzer:

'Of all the afflictions attributed to witchcraft, none was more common among adults than disturbances of the mind; the next largest category among children and adults was lameness with chronic wasting away of the body or limbs that boded permanent disability and probable death (Sawyer, 1989). When the onset of the disorder was sudden and unexpected, or when naturalistic medicine offered little or no relief, then witchcraft might well have seemed an unavoidable alternative.' p95 TO NEXT SECTION

Winzer:

‘In the early days of the Black Death, mental derangement was obvious and the behaviour of those belonging to the sects of flagellants and those in some parts of central Europe who were caught up in the dancing manias. All who were deranged, whether as a consequence of the disease itself or of the terror inspired, were prime candidates for the witch hunters who were just beginning to fan out on their grisly search across the Continent.’ P93

Wallis and Henderson say: p3

‘Religion has historically, played a major role in the identification and treatment of handicapped children and adults. The humanity of so-called ‘cretins’ and ‘imbeciles’ was questioned by Christianity and the Church which played a leading role in society before and up to the nineteenth century which portrayed strict religious and moral standards. The Church held a great amount of authority over the people and general decision making within the Community, therefore the Church was looked upon to come up with answers and solutions to the ever increasing ‘problem’ of the birth of handicapped children. The early voice of Christianity saw handicapped children as evils of mankind, born with dead souls, they were seen as punishment from God for the sins and greediness of mankind. Parents who had the ‘misfortune’ to produce a ‘cretin’ child were targeted by the Church and people. Early folk tales tell the story of ‘cretin’ children being born to evil human mothers whose offspring were stolen by the devil and replaced by a ‘cretin’ or ‘sub-human’ child’

They reference Ryan and Thomas 1987 for this information.

Wallis and Henderson say: p3

‘Women who gave birth to handicapped children were seen as unfit mothers who were individually targeted so God had punished them by giving them a so-called sub-human child. The sins that Mothers were accused of were such as blasphemy, promiscuity, alcoholism, giving birth to an illegitimate child, and even having sex with the devil himself, the male parent of the ‘cretin’ child would also reject mother and child and would deny to being the father so as to escape being victimized by the community’

Un-referenced

Wallis and Henderson quote Edwards (AH Edwards, Shaws Guide to Mental Health Services, NO PUBLISHER: p4

‘Mental Deficiency…was at times regarded as an offence and little is known of the fate of the unfortunate sufferers. This leads to the assumption that in ancient times they did not often survive. Less severely sub-normal people could be tolerated so long as the general pattern of life was not unduly disturbed, but this toleration was tinged with contempt and ridicule!’

Winzer:

'Throughout medieval times varied attitudes to mentally retarded persons are evident. Some observers interpret the mutterings of mentally retarded persons with (sic) dialogues with the Devils, but others held them to be mysteriously connected with the unknown and their talk as evidence of divine inspiration (Barr [1904b] 1913; Burdett 1891).' p92

Winzer:

' In some societies a house into which an imbecile was born was considered blessed by God' (Barr 1904/1913) p92

Winzer:

' ... but exploitation and ridicule was common. Following the tradition of the Romans, some Lords granted mentally retarded people the freedom of the castles to serve as household fools. Pope Leo X was said to have retained a number of mentally retarded dwarfs to serve as entertainment.' (Hibbert, 1975). DATE OF POPE LEO X

Belief Difference

Forensic Difference

Peters

‘The Institutes and Code of Justinian were known in Europe from 554 on. But the Digest, the key to late Roman jurisprudence, was not. Late in the eleventh century a single manuscript of the Digest surfaced in northern Italy, and from then on, Roman law was taught at a number of schools, especially at the great law university of Bologna. From the twelfth century on, learned law became the most popular subject of study in Europe, partly because it also served the needs of rulers.’

Peters notes:

‘Learned law did not necessarily become identical with Roman law in France, Italy, the Iberian peninsula, and England, but these places too increasingly invoked the principles of learned law. A mixture of Roman law and local learned law shaped what legal historians call the ius commune, the ‘common learned law’, of early modern Europe…’

Peters notes that gradually from the thirteenth century until 1520, there were introduced:

‘… 180 imprisonable offences in the common law. A significant number of these new offences dealt with vagrancy, breaking the peace, infamy, illegal bearing of arms, morals offences, and other similar acts. Besides the proliferation of imprisonable offenses, there also occurred in the thirteenth century a restriction of those devices that permitted an offender to stay out of prison – bail, frankpledge, and property attachment. There was an corresponding increase in offenses for which no bail could be obtained – treason, arson, jail-breaking, and arrest by direct order of the king or the king’s chief justice.

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Christian Influence:

Adams notes:

‘In the Middle Ages, the Papal Inquisition was set up by Innocent III in a papal Bull in AD 1199. This took the power of the Bishops for investigating heresy into the Vatican. Subsequently, the Vatican administered the process of the Inquisition. In 1204 the first investigation began with the campaign against the Albigenses in Southern France and Northern Italy. For the next five centuries, the Inquisition spread throughout Europe. By the fourteenth century, the activities of the Inquisition were extended to cover not only heretics but also witches and sorcerers. In 1252 Innocent IV approved the use of torture in a Papal Bull, as the last resort in extracting confessions. After confession, the offender was usually executed by the minions of the state. Following torture, the offender was usually required to repeat the confession without being tortured. In 1479 the Spanish Inquisition was set up. It was suspended in 1808 and recommenced its activities in 1814, finally finishing in 1834. The Spanish Inquisition was separately administered from the Papal Inquisition which was run from Rome. The Spanish Inquisition was set up by Ferdinand and Isabella as a Spanish remedy for sorcery.’ P40

‘The most common forms of torture involved the use of the pulley, the rack and fire. Additionally, flagellation was used, often for offences such as talking, singing, whistling, and insolence to jailers while awaiting trial.’ P 41 (Referenced to RG Van Yelyr 1941 The Whip and the Rod: An account of corporal punishment among all nations and for all purposes, Gerald G Swan p 32)

Secular Punishment

Adams notes:

‘In 1426, the law proscribed vagrancy, punishable with three days in the stocks for the first offence. Within a few years, this punishment was relaxed. In the sixteenth century, in the reign of Henry VIII, the law decreed that beggars and vagrants could be whipped and returned to their parish of origin. Second-time offenders would have their ears cropped and for a third offence the person could be hanged.’ P41 (Referenced to Byrne 1992 p70)

‘The application and removal of irons was a matter of commercial profit for the gaolers of Newgate in the fifteenth century’ (Referenced to Byrne 1992 p27)

‘Houses of Correction were adopted in 1574 to try to curb the swelling tide of pauperism.’ (Referenced to Byrne 1992 p70)

Get Adams 1998 again from Plymouth University Library and note-take for punishment practices at later times. Also has section on pp75-76 on brainwashing. Also section on Electric Shocks as therapy pp89-96

Peters in Morris and Rothman;

Note take pp 30-41

Spierenburg in Morris and Rothman

Note take pp45-

Social Difference

WRITE

Ethnic Difference

WRITE

Financial Difference

Dyer notes:

‘Poverty was experienced at many social levels in the later middle ages, frequently for smallholders and wage-earners, and occasionally among the urban artisans and middle-ranking peasants. Most people were vulnerable to deprivation in old age and as parents of young children. They also felt the effects of long-term economic cycles and short-term slumps. Everyone was prone to fall victim to the ill-fortune which visited medieval people more often than ourselves, and from which recovery was more difficult- illness, accidents, premature death of breadwinners, fire, robbery, pillage in war, natural disasters and bad weather.

‘Poverty, defined as life-threatening deprivation, seems to have been a permanent condition for some and a periodic problem for many, and yet not all its victims went to an early grave, or otherwise the population could not have grown in the thirteenth century, or maintained its numbers in the fifteenth. A possible answer to the question of ‘How did the poor survive?’ could lie in the abundance of charity …’

Dyer notes:

‘No-one expected a remedy for poverty, just some amelioration. … The poor were seen as a natural part of the social scene. They received sympathy, but did not create much anguish. They were valued by the rich, because alms giving, an act of justice and mercy, wiped away sin, and the poor, for all their low status on earth, kept the gates of heaven.’

Dyer notes:

‘There were many strands of thinking about poverty…. One approach had been to stress the sin and guilt associated with the possession of riches. Christ had used the analogy of a camel passing trough the eye of a needle to convey the difficulty of a rich man gaining salvation. A much retold biblical parable was that of Dives and Lazarus, in which the rich man feasted while his dogs licked the sores of the beggar at his gates. In eternity the positions were reversed, and while the pauper lay in the bosom of Abraham the wealthy man suffered the torments of hell.’

Dyer notes:

‘In the view of the clergy, the rich and poor could be bound together in a complementary relationship, in which the rich exhibited mercy and pity by their gifts, and the poor reciprocated with gratitude and prayers. A social contract was thus advocated …’

Dyer notes:

‘A socially conservative thinker of the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas, contemplated the proposition that the poor were entitled to steal in times of famine…’

Dyer notes:

‘The reception into Christian thinking of views ultimately deriving from ancient Greek philosophers allowed property and power a legitimate role in the world. Without property, how could the virtue of alms-giving be practiced.’

Dyer notes:

‘There was some criticism of the poor. Poverty could be an ugly sight, bringing shame to the pauper, and might have resulted from his own sinful actions. Lepers, for example, although worthy of receiving alms, we segregated from the rest of society not just because of the supposedly contagious nature of their disease, but also because they were thought to be morally tainted. It was believed that they possessed unquenchable sexual appetites, and were given to malice towards the uninfected world.’

cf. Witchcraft and AIDS

Dyer notes:

‘Some beggars deserved sympathy more than others. Pope Gregory the Great had distinguished between public beggars and modest paupers, giving more to the latter, and thirteenth-century writers preferred to give to the ‘shame-faced poor’ (M Rubin, Charity and Community in medieval Cambridge (Cambridge 1987)). Such phrases anticipate the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor, and the notion of discriminatory charity. Donors were advised that they should give alms while taking into account their own resources, the qualities and needs of the recipients, and the effect of the gift on the pauper. Too much charity might encourage begging – as a Victorian would put it, pauperize those receiving relief – or be squandered on luxuries.’

Dyer notes:

‘A practical guide to charitable discrimination was provided in the model account-book of the Cistercian monastery of Beaulieu in Hampshire, compiled in 1269-70 (SF Hockey (ed.) The account-book of Beaulieu Abbey (Camden Soc., 4th ser., 16, 1975), pp. 172-82, 269-81). The rules decreed that the porter (gate-keeper) give thirty pairs of new shoes and the monk’s old clothes to ‘lepers and paupers’, and to distribute left-over bread on three days of the week. At harvest time, when there was plenty of work for the poor, alms should not be given except to pilgrims, old people, children and those incapable of work. Women who were suspected of being prostitutes should be given alms only in times of great famine. The number of paupers to be maintained by the porter and guest-house, thirteen, is that commonly chosen in the administration of medieval charity, and derives from the number present at the Last Supper. Strict limits were set at Beaulieu on the quantity and quality of charity; in the lay infirmary the poor sick were to be aided to recovery by being fed the meat of animals that had died of disease. In the guest-house, once the quota of poor had been accommodated, preference was to be given to aristocratic visitors. The attention to economy, the discrimination and the distrust of the poor would not have been out of place among the zealous administrators of the new Poor Law in the nineteenth century.’

Dyer notes:

‘In the early fourteenth century, the admirers of poverty were losing the argument within the church. … Fitzralph, and Englishman holding an Irish bishopric … wrote a great deal about poverty in the 1350s. He believed that property could be found in Paradise, and that poverty, not wealth, was a product of sin. He saw labour as an alternative to poverty, and he was beginning to develop a ‘work ethic’: ‘He who will not work, neither shall he eat.’ The same idea was advocated by the poet William Langland, writing in the 1370s and 1380s. He idealized the working peasant, and criticized the greed and idleness of the mendicant orders and secular beggars, whom he believed should be disciplined into work by Hunger.’

Dyer notes:

‘The roads seemed full of sinister vagabonds and criminals, who mingled with wage earners tramping between jobs. The bonds of society seemed to be breaking and respectable people felt threatened. The poor provoked a ‘moral panic’, not unlike the hysterical reactions to Jews, lepers and heretics in earlier times, and the surge of witchcraft accusations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.’

Dyer notes:

‘The poor, in the eyes of the wealthy, were now sharply divided between the idlers and criminals who deserved no charity, and the real poor, those incapable of work and who had fallen on hard times after a period of respectability..

Dyer notes:

‘… much monastic charity served liturgical purposes, one aim being to assemble a large crowd on a saint’s day….

Dyer notes:

‘The needs of the poor came rather a long way down the list of monastic priorities, and is shown by Bolton Priory’s cut in charity during the famine of 1315-18, from £10 in cash before 1314 (about 2 per cent of money income) down to £1 3s 0d in 1317-8’

Dyer notes:

‘Because of [almshouses’] modest endowment, they were more dependent than most church institutions on casual income from entry fees and gifts. They often sheltered a (symbolic) thirteen paupers…’

Dyer notes:

‘Hospitals were supervised by a variety of external authorities, such as bishops, monasteries or town governments. Within a hospital, a disciplinary system depended on the master or warden. The rules usually stressed that the hospital should have a communal life, and a large hall often served as the living accommodation. The inmates ate together, and wore a badge or livery. They were expected to take part in religious observances, and t behave in a seemly fashion, avoiding alehouses, gambling and the company of the opposite sex. Rules of conduct were especially strict in the leper houses, to the point that the prior of the hospital of Sherburn (Co. Durham) was provided under the early fourteenth-century rules with a stick for beating the disobedient, ‘and to encourage the faithless and negligent’.’

Dyer notes:

‘Hospitals were primarily religious institutions, and often lacked any medical function. Even leper hospitals had constitutions, like those of Sherburn, which began with arrangements for priests, altars and masses, though they also stressed the importance of a healthy environment, such as a fresh water supply. Some hospitals specialized in the care of those with particular health problems, such as pregnant women or the insane, but often the intended inmates were defined in religious and social terms. In early hospitals pilgrims, converted Jews and retired clergy were named as groups to be helped. Indeed, some hospitals specifically excluded those with serious illnesses: St John’s Cambridge would not admit lepers, the insane, pregnant women or people suffering from wounds, and St John’s Oxford regarded as ineligible those with paralysis, dropsy, epilepsy or ulcers.’

Dyer notes:

‘Almshouses attached to colleges or fraternities with an educational role might house scholars who were ‘poor’ only in a relative sense. Hospitals also cared for people who were well above any poverty line that we might draw, as is shown by the entry fees, of £5 at Dover for example …. Many hospitals accepted corridians, who gave a substantial endowment of land or cash in exchange for their keep for the rest of their lives. A few hospitals served as soft havens for masters and brethren, and luxurious rest-homes for decayed aristocrats’

Dyer notes that in the arrangements for one almshouse:

‘One can detect… the influence not just of piety, charity and local loyalty but also social solidarity among the rich that left many poor people out in the cold. The labourer with many children, who may sometimes have drunk too much and who engaged in petty crime, would never gain access to this narrowly defined charity, while the widow of a leading trader might well have been eligible.

Dyer notes:

‘The laity may have been more effective organizers of charity than the clergy. They participated in customs like the ‘holy loaf’ by which the congregation brought bread to church for eventual distribution, and some form of discreet charity may have been practiced at the church alses wheeby the poor were given drink and food normally offered for sale.’

Dyer notes:

If we take as an example a community well supplied with charitable institutions, the city of Worcester in the fifteenth century, we find that the two hospitals (of St Oswald and St Wulfstan) contained about thirty inmates, and the main fraternity, the Trinity Guild, had twenty-four almshouses capable of holding forty-eight people. The cathedral almonry fed about twenty paupers each day. The clergy of the eleven parish churches and the bequests in wills can be guessed to have maintained another twenty people at most, assuming that a pauper needed a penny a day on which to live. It seems reasonable, therefore, to estimate that the formal charities of the city could provide for 120 people or 3 per cent of the population of 4000. This figure must represent a fraction of the poor. In contemporary Tuscany, 9.5 per cent of the population were aged sixty-five or over, and Worcester’s elderly should not have been any less numerous. In addition were the disabled, the sick, orphans and widows. … Worcester’s poor were not adequately served by charitable institutions, even when all the gifts are added up.

Geremek notes:

‘The age of great expansion and blossoming for charitable institutions in Western countries of the Christian world came in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; most hospitals in the Paris region, for instance, were founded between 1175 and 1300.’

Geremek notes:

‘The social scope of charitable activity, as well as the selection of those for whom it was intended, left no doubt as to the marked class character of the theory and practice of charity in the late Middle Ages. Italian charity of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries openly privileged the ‘shame faced poor’ … [their] noble origins which naturally made them ‘ashamed’ of their poverty and prevented them from stooping to begging also seemed to endow them with exceptional moral qualities.’

Geremek notes:

‘… as Richard Trexler has observed, the ideal of Christian ‘fraternity’ was in practice marked by a spirit of class solidarity and singled out for special privileges the impoverished members of the social elite.’

Geremek notes:

‘From the twelfth century onwards the theological doctrine of charity begins to distinguish between two categories of poverty. … the ‘poor with Peter’ (pauperes cum Petro) and the ‘poor with Lazarus’ (pauperes cum Lazaro). Among the former we find, first and foremost, the clergy, whose poverty ought to be their distinctive feature, inherent in their condition… . St Lazarus, on the other hand, represents the other category of poverty. The pauper Lazarus of the gospels is a model of secular and material poverty (paupertas quae est in penuria); the poor in this category are treated not as active subjects but rather as objects of help provided by the church and its faithful.’

Geremek notes:

‘The view that the egalitarian model of charity must be rejected in favour of one which introduces distinctions between different kinds of poor is not an invention of modern welfare: as Brian Tierney has shown, it first found expression in Gratian’s Decree and in the writings of the decretists in the twelfth century. Their interpretation of the teachings of the Church fathers, especially of St Ambrose and St John Chrysostom, tried to show that beggars fell into two categories, the ‘honest’ and the ‘dishonest’, as Ruffin of Bologna put it. The dishonest beggars are those who, although able to work, prefer to beg or steal.’

Geremek notes:

‘Theological debates of the time also reveal that theft, when committed in a situation of ‘extreme necessity’, is not a crime but the exercise of a right. As a result, the starving (and the social history of the first centuries of our millenium shows that this was no mere rhetorical turn of phrase, but had a firm basis in reality) were able to enjoy the same status as widows, orphans, prisoners and madmen, all of whom could claim support in any situation.’

Geremek notes that during the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, material poverty is increasingly associated with social inferiority:

‘Gratian [fl. 1139ce] evokes the distinction between hopitalitas and liberalitas, which we may interpret, in modern terms, as the distinction between alms-giving and welfare. According to Stephen of Tournai, one of the 12th century decretists, hospitalitas is unconditional: its principle is that ‘we provide for all those for whom it is in our power to provide’. Liberalitas, on the other hand, must distinguish between the ‘honest’ and the ‘dishonest’, ‘kin’ and ‘strangers’, ‘old’ and ‘young’, ‘humble’ and ‘arrogant’, and provide aid to the first in each of these categories.’

NOTE- Hutchinson Chronology of World History- 1139 Gratian of Bologna , Concordia discordantium canonium (better known as the Decretum; it founded the codification of the Canon Law)

Geremek notes a gradual move from exaltation of all poverty to the construction of poverty as a negative social state unless acrively sought out and accepted (mendicancy etc.) or forced on people against their will and not because of their acts (widowhood, abject poverty, disablement etc.) and accepted with the proper attitude (humility and thankfulness). This process was a gradual one from the 12th to the fourteenth century.

Geremek notes:

‘Beggars were constantly on the move, their movements guided by a particular sort of calendar composed of days on which alms were distributed. These distributions took place mostly in monasteries; the dates were often fixed and known in advance, and beggars often travelled long distances to be at the right monastery on the appointed day. This wandering from monastery to monastery made up the substance of their lives…’

Geremek notes:

‘At the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century, the revenues of the abbey of Saint-Denis, near Paris, amounted to thirty-three thousand Parisian pounds, of which a little under one thousand was spent on assistance to the poor; this modest three per cent of the budget hardly reinforces the image of the monastery as a mediator between generous benefactors and the poor…’

Geremek notes that some people were accepted into permanent assistance in monasteries and palaces, and total care was given, but further notes that this was largely symbolic and ritualised, rather than an attempt to meet the needs of the most poverty stricken or otherwise needy. It was more to do with redemption of the souls of the givers rather than with delivery of aid to the needy.

Geremek notes:

‘… it should be noted that various types of … [hospitals] existed … syndochium, which gave shelter to pilgrims and to the poor; the procotrophium, where the poor were fed; the gerontocomium which sheltered the old; the orphanotrophium, or orphanage; the brephotrophium, which provided food for children; and a number of others.’

Geremek notes that there was an increasing drift towards the regulation, restriction and limiting of the methods of relief:

‘Already in the fourteenth century, a municipal ordinance at Nurmeberg restricted begging to those in possession of a metal token. A special functionary (Bettelherr) was appointed by the municipal authorities to control begars, distribute tokens to those genuinely in need, keep a register of beggars and, twice a year, look into their stuation. Non-local beggars who came to Nuremberg might stop there for no longer than three days.’

Geremek makes some observations on the image of beggars: medieval ionography shows beggears as barefoot and in rags; images of St Martin offering his clothes to beggars they are often naked. Common accesories of the wandering beggar- staff and sack- functional and symbolic. Body crippled and racked with illness, old age or poverty. Small children often used to improve image.

Geremek notes that during the Carolingian DATE period the term pauperes referred to free men as opposed to serfs- it did not designate the lowest elements of the social hierarchy. However, the meaning shifted over time and pauperes came to mean someone who was unable to support himself or his family. Eric Hobsbawm defines the term pauperization as meaning a category of people who are incapable of procuring for themselves even the minimum necessary means of subsistence without external aid.

Geremek notes:

‘Because of the very limited yields from medieval agriculture, the peasant masses lived in permanent fear of hunger. Attempts to revise this gloomy picture have succeeded in refuting the ‘black legend’ of peasant life in the early Middle Ages, but without taking into account periods of crisis: a small farm with few reserves could not survive a bad harvest, especially if this was repeated year after year.’

Geremek notes:

‘…peasant solidarity in ‘normal’ times seems to have been sufficiently strong to prevent the extreme impoverishment which certain families would have suffered.’

Geremek notes that transition between freedom and serfdom was reversible- people might sign themselves into serfdom as unable to meet their needs, and thus give their services to a Lord in exchange for the necessities of life, and might at another time try to buy back their free status.

Note take on Geremek Chapter 2- The Disintegration of Medieval Society

Notes from Christopher Dyer Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages Social Change in England c.1200-1520

SOME OF THIS TO NEXT SECTION

Dyer References Thorold Rogers‘s opimistic view of all medieval wage earners is not totally supported, but he says that the view that the fifteenth century was the ‘golden age of the English labourer’ was a valuable insight.

Dyer: Between the Norman Conquest and the Industrial Revolution there were three stages of expansion: in the century or two before 1300, in the sixteenth century, and in the eighteenth. In between these periods of increase were two lengthy episodes of decline or stagnation., from c.1300 to c.1520prevent, and in the seventeenth century’

Dyer quotes Postan (The Medieval Economy and Society ON MY SHELVES):

‘Postan developed the idea that population expansion in the thirteenth century created an excess of people, and that nature punished man for his prodigal use of resources by reducing numbers drastically in the fourteenth century. The argument rested on the assumption that in a peasant society, the crucial determinant of all other changes was the relationship between the people and the land, peasants being holders of ‘family farms’, which provided the subsistence needs of the household, using mainly family labour. Too many people led not just to a reduction in the amount of land per head, and a diminution in the size of holdings, but also to damage to the earth itself: the area of pasture and the numbers of animals were reduced by the extension of arable land, and there was consequently a shortage of manure.’

Dyer on the social structure of medieval England: p13 et seq

‘Because of England’s linguistic peculiarities, the names of social groups appear in three languages - Latin, French and English.. They varied from region to region and over time.’

He looks at three samples at approximately 100 year intervals- 1279, 1379 and the late fifteenth century:

1279 in the Oxford village of Ducklington:

There was a lord (dominus)... (and)... subordinates...listed under three headings: ‘free tenants’ (liberi tenentes) (16),...’serfs’ (servi)(12), and Cottars (cottari)(5).’

1379 from a parliamentary schedule on poll tax (Statutes of the realm (11 volumes, Record Commission, 1810-28, vol.1, p.380):

‘A relatively new title, that of duke, headed the list. ... Earls and Barons followed.... A new group... the knights, the esquires, (appears). ....Below the esquires lay a miscellaneous collection of ‘farmers of manors’, sergeants and franklins....’ but Dyer notes that there are no lists of lower orders as they all paid the same poll tax. He notes that names of social rank varied from area to area and were descriptive of roles carried out: Cultivators (cultores), farmers (agricolae), labourers (laboratores), servants (famuli).

Late fifteenth century: ‘...legal records...provide...social descriptions because of the insistence of the Statute of Additions in 1413 that anyone coming before the courts must always be identified by his or her ‘estate, mystery or degree’.

‘...the title ‘lord’ had changed. ...reserved for the peerage.... A second extension of the social vocabulary had produced the word ‘gentleman’ to describe those of some standing who fell below the knights and esquires. ...knights, esquires and gentlemen. Thirdly at the lower end of rural society, vestiges remained of the old free/unfree vocabulary, but these were obsolescent. Instead, the economic classification that had begun to develop at the time of the poll taxes had achieved universal acceptance with the adoption of the triple terminology of ‘yeoman’, ‘husbandman’, and ‘labourers’. Again, the individual was assigned to one category or another depending on the amount of land held. ...Craftsmen and traders, both in the town and country tended to be known by their occupations (or ‘mystery’, to use the language of the 1413 statute). Some occupations, such as that of ‘merchant’, could imply higher status than others, and membership of the upper strata of London society was indicated by such a title as ‘citizen and draper.’

NOTES FROM PP16, 25

Dyer p16: ‘Many influential contemporaries believed that their society could be divided into three orders or estates. This was an old notion going back at least to the early middle ages and was revived in the early fourteenth century. The three orders, those that prayed (the clergy), those who fought (the secular aristocracy) and those who worked (the rest of society, but especially the peasants) were held to have mutual rights and obligations- the clergy prayed on behalf of the other two orders, and in exchange could expect to be protected by the aristocrats and supported by the labour of the peasants. In theory this made for an harmonious and cohesive society...’

Dyer p25: ‘In towns in particular, but also in the countryside, lived an unknown number of people who cannot be accommodated into any system of social analysis based on considerations of either status or class. These were the vagabonds, beggars, street entertainers, prostitutes and professional criminals, who are usually described as marginals. They may not have contributed much to the economy, but contemporaries were fully aware of them, occasionally valuing them (friars, who were clerical beggars, attracted much admiration), and more often being alarmed by their numbers. Their failure to fit into any neat social pigeon-hole should not lead us to ignore them.’

Dyer p25: ‘Women tended to derive their social status from that of their fathers and husbands, and enjoyed most independence as young servants, or as widows, when they might continue with the cultivation of their husband’s holding or follow his trade or craft. Both women and children were socially disadvantaged, but for male children at least, their position often improved progressively from beginning full time work or training at the age of twelve or fourteen, and certainly with their acceptance into the adult world in their twenties.’

Dyer p25: COPY OUT FULL SUMMARY pp25-26 FROM ‘To sum up...’

Dyer: P6 ‘The inequalities of the middle ages were not an incidental by-product of economic activity, but an inherent feature of society. The great wealth of the aristocracy derived from their military, political and judicial domination of the subordinate peasantry. Services, goods and cash flowed upwards from the peasants to the lords. At an early stage of its development the pervading feudal principle had been that tenure of land was dependent on the performance of service, whether military or administrative service in the case of the aristocracy, or labour for the peasant. In the later middle ages the services were turned into money rents, but this did not lead to any sudden transformation in the power structures of society. The manor, the administrative organization through which the lords collected rents, continued to function, and indeed was given a new lease of life in the thirteenth century when the growth of the market enabled the lord’s own reserve of land, the demesne, to be run for profit, and the peasants were expected to produce a flow of cash payments. In exploring the consumption patterns of the aristocracy, often at a level of considerable luxury, we are revealing the raison-d’être of a feudal society. The whole purpose of manors and estates was to concentrate wealth into the hands of the few, who were then expected not to hoard or save , but to redistribute the goods among their followers and supporters in generous acts of giving. We may also be exposing one of the great weaknesses of the feudal economy, and one of the sources of its backwardness, because the rest of society was deprived of resources by the constant demands of the lords. It is scarcely surprising to find that such a consumption-oriented society lacked investment capital.’

Note take on Dyer p234 Chapter 9

The Aged