Introduction

In this seminar we continue our investigation of different forms of crime in early modern Europe. This week, we are discussing violent crimes. These crimes have been the focus of extensive research by scholars. We will divide into groups looking at homicide, infanticide, and suicide; assault and sex crimes; and blasphemy and insult.

Seminar Questions

• To what extent did the forms and natures of violent crimes vary across early modern Europe?
• What were contemporary attitudes and responses to these crimes?

Required Reading

• Each student should read the documents relevant to the crimes they are investigating in Andrew Barrett and Christopher Harrison, eds, Crime and Punishment in England: A SourcebookLink opens in a new window (London, 1999), The crimes are listed under offenses in the index. Insults are listed as slander.
• Each student should also choose and read two relevant items below for the crimes they are investigating. Your choice of texts should cover more than one country.

Homicide, Infanticide, and Suicide

Barahona, Renato, Sex Crimes, Honour, and the Law in Early Modern Spain: Vizcaya, 1528-1735 (Toronto, 2003)

Barrett, Andrew, and Christopher Harrison, Crime and Punishment in England: A Sourcebook (London, 1999)

Billingham, Josephine, Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England (Amsterdam, 2019)

Brundage, James A., Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987), Chapters Ten and Eleven.

Carroll, Stuart, 'Revenge and Reconciliation in Early Modern ItalyLink opens in a new window', Past and Present 233/1 (2016), 101-142.

Cohen, Thomas V., and Elizabeth S. Cohen, Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials Before the Papal Magistrates (Toronto, 1993), Chapter One.

Coudert, Allison P., 'The Ultimate Crime: Cannibalism in Early Modern Minds and Imaginations' in Abrecht Classen and Connie Scarborough, eds, Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Mental-Historical Investigations of Basic Human Problems and Social Responses (Berlin, 2012), pp. 521-554.

The Court of Chivalry 1634-1640Link opens in a new window [This project provides abstracts, calendars and transcript of the surviving material relating to 738 cases heard in the Court of Chivalry (otherwise known as the Court of Honour or the Earl Marshal’s Court) between 1634 and 1640]

Dean, Trevor, Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge, 2007), Chapter Eight.

Dean, Trevor, and K. J. P. Lowe, eds, Murder in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 2017)

Hanlon, Gregory, 'Routine Infanticide in the West 1500-1800Link opens in a new window', History Compass 14/11 (2016), 535-548

Heijden, Manon van der, Women and Crime in Early Modern Holland, trans. David McKay (Leiden, 2016), Chapter Three.

Kilday, Anne-Marie, A History of Infanticide in Britain, c. 1600 to the Present (London, 2013)

Kilday, Anne-Marie, Crime in Scotland 1660-1960: The Violent North? (London, 2018), Chapter One.

Krogh, Tyge, A Lutheran Plague: Murdering to Die in the Eighteenth Century (Leiden, 2012)

Luef, Evelyne, 'Punishment Post Mortem – The Crime of Suicide in Early Modern Austria and Sweden' in Abrecht Classen and Connie Scarborough, eds, Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Mental-Historical Investigations of Basic Human Problems and Social Responses (Berlin, 2012), pp. 555-576.

McKenzie, Andrea 'The Prosecutorial Passions. An Emotional History of Petty Treason and Parricide in England, 1674–1790', in David Lemmings and Allyson N. May, eds, Criminal Justice During the Long Eighteenth Century: Theatre, Representation and Emotion (Abingdon, 2018), pp. 41-61.

Mantecón, Tomás A., 'The Patterns of Violence in Early Modern SpainLink opens in a new window', trans. Edward Behrend‐Martínez, Journal of The Historical Society 7 (2007), 229-264.

Martin, Randall, Women, Murder, and Equity in Early Modern England (Abingdon, 2008)

Morrissey, Susan K., Suicide and the Body Politic in Imperial Russia (Cambridge, 2006)

Rose, Colin, A Renaissance of Violence: Homicide in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 2019)

Schwerhoff, Gerd, 'Criminalized Violence and the Process of Civilization: A ReappraisalLink opens in a new window', Crime, History & Societies 6/2 (2002), 103-126.

Schwerhoff, Gerd, Benjamin Seebröker, Alexander Kästner, and Wiebke Voigt, 'Hard Numbers? The Long-term Decline in Violence Reassessed. Empirical Objections and Fresh PerspectivesLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window', Continuity and Change 36 (2021), 1-32.

Sharpe, J. A., and J.R. Dickinson, 'Revisiting the "Violence We Have Lost": Homicide in Seventeenth-Century CheshireLink opens in a new window', The English Historical Review 131 (2016), 293–323.

Walker, Garthine, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2003), Chapter Four.

Assault and Sex Crimes

Brizio, Elena, 'Sexual Violence in the Sienese State Before and After the Fall of the Republic', in Jacqueline Murray and Nicholas Terpstra, eds, Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance ItalyLink opens in a new window (London, 2019), pp.35-52.

Carroll, Stuart, 'Revenge and Reconciliation in Early Modern ItalyLink opens in a new window', Past and Present 233/1 (2016), 101-142.

Cohen, Thomas V., and Elizabeth S. Cohen, Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials Before the Papal Magistrates (Toronto, 1993), Chapters Three, and Four.

The Court of Chivalry 1634-1640Link opens in a new window [This project provides abstracts, calendars and transcript of the surviving material relating to 738 cases heard in the Court of Chivalry (otherwise known as the Court of Honour or the Earl Marshal’s Court) between 1634 and 1640]

Davidson, Nicholas, 'Theology, Nature and the Law: Sexual Sin and Sexual Crime in Italy from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century' in Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe, eds, Crime, Society, and the Law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 74-98.

Dean, Trevor, Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge, 2007), Chapters Seven and Nine.

Dean, Trevor, 'Sodomy in Renaissance Bologna', Renaissance Studies 31/3 (2017), 426-43.

Fasano Guarini, Elena, 'The Prince, the Judges and the Law: Cosimo I and Sexual Violence, 1558' in Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe, eds, Crime, Society, and the Law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 121-141.

Heijden, Manon van der, Women and Crime in Early Modern Holland, trans. David McKay (Leiden, 2016), Chapters Five and Eight.

Ingram, Martin, Carnal Knowledge: Regulating Sex in England, 1470-1600 (Cambridge, 2017)

Kilday, Anne-Marie, Crime in Scotland 1660-1960: The Violent North? (London, 2018), Chapters Two and Three.

Mantecón, Tomás A., 'The Patterns of Violence in Early Modern SpainLink opens in a new window', trans. Edward Behrend‐Martínez, Journal of The Historical Society 7 (2007), 229-264.

Riisoy, Anne Irene, Sexuality, Law and Legal Practice and the Reformation in Norway (Leiden, 2009), Introduction and Chapter One.

Rosenthal, Laura J., Infamous Commerce : Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and CultureLink opens in a new window (Ithaca, NY, 2015), Introduction

Walker, Garthine, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2003), Chapters Two and Three.

Blasphemy and Insult

Carroll, Stuart, 'Revenge and Reconciliation in Early Modern ItalyLink opens in a new window', Past and Present 233/1 (2016), 101-142.

Cohen, Thomas V., 'The Lay Liturgy of Affront in Sixteenth-Century Rome', Journal of Social History 25.4 (1992), 857-877.

The Court of Chivalry 1634-1640Link opens in a new window [This project provides abstracts, calendars and transcript of the surviving material relating to 738 cases heard in the Court of Chivalry (otherwise known as the Court of Honour or the Earl Marshal’s Court) between 1634 and 1640]

Cressy, David, Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-modern EnglandLink opens in a new window (Oxford, 2010)

Dean, Trevor, Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge, 2007), Chapter Six.

Dumolyn, Jan, and Jelle Haemers, '"A Bad Chicken was Brooding": Subversive Speech in Late Medieval Flanders', Past & Present 214/1 (2012), 45–86.

Gowing, Laura, 'Gender and the Language of Insult in Early Modern London', History Workshop 35 (1993), 1–21.

Horodowich, Elizabeth, Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice (Cambridge, 2008), Chapters Two and Three.

Loetz, Francisca, Dealings with God: From Blasphemers in Early Modern Zurich to a Cultural History of Religiousness (London, 2016)

Mantecón, Tomás A., 'The Patterns of Violence in Early Modern SpainLink opens in a new window', trans. Edward Behrend‐Martínez, Journal of The Historical Society 7 (2007), 229-264.

Shoemaker, Robert B., 'The Decline of Public Insult in London 1660-1800', Past & Present 169 (2000), 97-131.

Weinstein, Donald, 'Fighting or Flyting? Verbal Duelling in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Italy', in Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe, eds, Crime, Society, and the Law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 204-220.

Further Reading

Burke, Peter, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 1987), Chapter Eight.

Gray, Drew D., Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1660-1914 (London, 2016), Chapter Three.

Howard, Sharon, Law and Disorder in Early Modern Wales: Crime and Authority in the Denbighshire Courts, c.1660-1730 (Cardiff, 2008), Chapter Two.

Rublack Ulinka, The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany (Oxford, 1999), Chapters Four, Five, and Seven.

Symonds, Deborah A., Weep Not For Me: Women, Ballads and Infanticide in Early Modern Scotland (Pennslyvania, 1997)

E-resource

Johnston, Hannah, A Sexual Tour of Venice: Mapping a Sixteenth-Century Catalogue of CourtesansLink opens in a new window