Cultures of Suicide?: Suicide Verdicts and the“Community” in Thirteenth‐and Fourteenth‐Century England
2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 69; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1540-6563.2007.00186.x
ISSN1540-6563
Autores Tópico(s)Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. Barbara A. Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict in English Communities 1300–1348 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); J. Ambrose Raftis, Peasant Economic Development Within the English Manorial System (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1996); Sherri Olson, A Chronicle of All That Happens: Voices From the Village Court in Medieval England (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1996). 2. Anne Reiber Dewindt, “Redefining the Peasant Community in Medieval England: The Regional Perspective,” Journal of British Studies 26 (1987): 163; 3. Christopher Dyer, “The English Medieval Village Community and Its Decline,” Journal of British Studies 33 (1994): 407–29; 4. Marjorie Keniston McIntosh, Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370–1600 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 5. Shannon Mcsheffrey, “Jurors, Respectable Masculinity, and Christian Morality: A Comment on Marjorie McIntosh's Controlling Misbehavior,” Journal of British Studies 37.3 (1998): 270. 6. A. J. Pollard, “The Characteristics of the Fifteenth‐Century North,” in Government, Religion and Society in Northern England 1000–1700, ed. John Appelby and Paul Dalton (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1997), 139. 7. Keith Stringer, “Identities in Thirteenth‐Century England: Frontier Society in the Far North,” in Social and Political Identities in Western History, ed. Claus Bjorn and Alexander Grant (Copenhagen, Denmark: Academic Press, 1994), 28–66. 8. For an example of the geographical and chronological span of legal historians, see the work of T. A. Green. Green began as a medievalist, but his interest in the trial jury has brought him from medieval England (Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury 1200–1800[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985]) to twentieth‐century America (Freedom and Criminal Responsibility in American Legal Thought[New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming]). Daniel Klerman provides another example of a legal historian who has published on the medieval, early modern, and modern juries in both England and America. See his A Look at California Juries: Participation, Shortcomings, and Recommendations (Washington D.C.: American Tort Reform Association, 2002); (with Paul Mahoney) “The Value of Judicial Independence: Evidence from Eighteenth‐Century England,” American Law and Economics Review 7.1 (2005): 1–27; and 9. For example, see Noël James Menuge, ed., Medieval Women and the Law (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2000). 10. See Leonard W. Levy, Palladium of Justice: Origins of Trial by Jury (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999). 11. Green, Verdict According to Conscience, 28–64; J. G. Bellamy, The Criminal Trial in Later Medieval England: Felony Before the Courts From Edward I to the Sixteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), passim. 12. For example, collective values dictated the outcome of a case of homicide when there was general knowledge of and discomfort with the deceitful nature of the crime. A jury's verdict in a gruesome case of wife murder was infinitely more meaningful than in the case of petty theft. Sara M. Butler, The Language of Abuse: Marital Violence in Later Medieval England (Leiden: Brill, 2007), chap. 5. 13. For a fuller discussion of the social context of the law, see Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict, chap. 2. 14. Coroners’ rolls record the verdicts of coroners’ inquest juries. Together with the coroner, this group of men was granted the task of examining the body of the deceased and interrogating neighbors and witnesses regarding any unnatural or suspicious deaths. The National Archives, Kew, Surrey (hereafter abbreviated as “TNA”) JUST 2. 15. Eyre or assize rolls document the visitations of royal justices into the counties to hold trials for all manner of pleas, civil and criminal. For the purposes of this study, only criminal pleas were taken into consideration. TNA JUST 1. 16. In all likelihood, a comparison is made here with a thief taken with the mainour, that is, with the stolen goods on his person. The stolen goods act as a confession, and thus a trial is unnecessary. 17. See J. B. Post, “Jury Lists and Juries in the Late Fourteenth‐Century,” in Twelve Good Men and True: The Criminal Trial Jury in England, 1200–1800, ed. J. S. Cockburn and T. A. Green (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 65–77. In the same volume, see also Edward Powell, “Jury Trial at Gaol Delivery in the Late Middle Ages: The Midland Circuit, 1400–1429,” 78–116. 18. For a discussion of the status of grand jurors, see B. W. McLane, “Juror Attitudes Towards Local Disorder: The Evidence of the 1328 Lincolnshire Trailbaston Proceedings,” in Ibid., 36–64. 19. John Bellamy postulates that the crown may even have encouraged indicting jurors to participate in the actual trial as jurors in an effort to increase the chances of the accused being convicted. See Bellamy, The Criminal Trial in Later Medieval England, 27–29. 20. For a fuller discussion of the process, see Gwen Seabourne and Alice Seabourne, “The Law on Suicide in Medieval England,” The Journal of Legal History 21.1 (2000): 21–48.21. Henry de Bracton, Bracton: De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, trans. Samuel E. Thorne, ed. George Woodbine, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1968), 2: 424. 22. Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict, 102; Michael MacDonald and Terence R. Murphy, Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 23. 23. Sara M. Butler, “Degrees of Culpability: Suicide Verdicts, Mercy, and the Jury in Medieval England,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 36 (2006): 263–90. Obviously, confiscation of goods was a concern in all cases of felony. However, where suicide differs from other felonies is that the felon has already been executed (admittedly by his own hand); thus, the verdict was more a formality and did not commence a legal process.24. St. Augustine, The City of God, Books I‐IV, trans. Demetrius B. Zema and Gerald G. Walsh (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1950), bk. 1, chap. 26, 61. 25. Alexander Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages: Volume Two: The Curse on Self‐Murder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), chap. 10. For examples of suicide in sermon stories, see J. Klapper, ed., Erzählungen des Mittelalters. Wort und Brauch, 12 (Breslau: M. and H. Marcus, 1914), no. 141; J. A. Herbert, ed., Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol. 3 (London: British Museum, 1910), 3: 683, no. 24. 26. Georges Minois, History of Suicide: Voluntary Death in Western Culture, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 34. 27. A “bederoll” is a list of the dead in a parish to be prayed for on the anniversary of their deaths. See Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England 1066–1550 (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 13. 28. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 313–27. 29. R. C. Finucane, Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural History of Ghosts (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1984), 43, 49, 59. 30. Nancy Caciola, “Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture,” Past and Present 152 (1996): 10. 31. D. L. D’Avray, Medieval Marriage Sermons: Mass Communication in a Culture Without Print (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 14. Joan Young Gregg also emphasizes the power of exempla in influencing popular belief. See Joan Young Gregg, ed., Devils, Women and Jews: Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 13. 32. Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, 7.3–4, ed. Josef Strange, 2 vols. (Cologne: J.M. Heberle and H. Lempertz, 1851), 2: 317; as cited in Caciola, “Wraiths,” 28. For a further discussion of the difference between “official” and “unofficial” Christianity, see Carl Watkins, “‘Folklore’ and ‘Popular Religion’ in Britain during the Middle Ages,” Folklore 115 (2004): 140–50.33. MacDonald and Murphy, Sleepless Souls, 18–19; Minois, History of Suicide, 36. 34. The earliest recorded example of a burial of this nature dates to the death of Robert Browner in Suffolk, 1510, who apparently hanged himself because of “fiscal incompetence.”Robert Halliday, “Wayside Graves and Crossroads Burials,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 84 (1996 for 1995): 113–18. Archaeological evidence, the most reliable proof to document burial practices, suggests that a tradition of exclusion and mutilation of the corpse extends from the Anglo‐Saxon era well into the eleventh century, and may have taken on the peculiar stake and crossroads variation during the late fifteenth century. Andrew Reynolds, “Burials, Boundaries and Charters in Anglo‐Saxon England: A Reassessment,” in Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, ed. Sam Lucy and Andrew Reynolds (London: Maney Publishing, 2002), 171–94. Christopher Daniell notes that the staking of the body at a crossroads was “only rigorously enforced from the late fifteenth century onwards.” See his Death and Burial, 106. See also R. Merrifield, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (London: New Amsterdam Books, 1987), 71–76; Martin Carver, Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings? (London: British Museum Press, 1998), 137–44.35. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, v. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), chap. 4; Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, ed. M. R. James (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914), chap. 22. 36. William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, v. 22 in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. Richard Howlett, 4 vols. (Rolls Ser., London, 1884–9), 2: 475. The four “ghost stories” appear on 476–82. 37. William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, 476. 38. Cited in Jacqueline Simpson, “Repentant Soul or Walking Corpse? Debatable Apparitions in Medieval England,” Folklore 114 (2003): 390.39. Ibid. 40. M. R. James, “Twelve Medieval Ghost Stories,” English Historical Review 37 (1922): 413–22. 41. Simpson, “Repentant Soul,” 396. C. S. Watkins also finds a common connection between demons and the undead in his exploration of Anglo‐Norman ghost tales. See his “Sin, Penance and Purgatory in the Anglo‐Norman Realm: The Evidence of Visions and Ghost Stories,” Past and Present 175 (2002): 3–33. 42. Caciola, “Wraiths,” 19. 43. The miracles of King Henry VI include several examples of violent demoniacs. See Basil Clarke, Mental Disorders in Earlier Britain: Exploratory Studies (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1975), chap. 6. 44. Barbara Newman, “Possessed by the Spirit: Devout Women, Demoniacs, and the Apostolic Life in the Thirteenth Century,” Speculum 73 (1998): 733–70. 45. All population estimates are drawn from Josiah Cox Russell, British Medieval Population (Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1948), 132–33. Russell bases these estimates on the Poll Tax returns of 1377. It should be noted, that for the thirteenth century (preplague), the populations were probably higher, although we do not have tax records in order to provide trustworthy estimates for this period. These population figures are offered in order to give the reader a sense of the size of each county. Unfortunately, there is no enrolment in the tax records for the county of Durham. 46. The possibility of concealment has been raised before by a good number of historians. See Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict, 102; S. J. Stevenson, “The Rise of Suicide Verdicts in South‐east England, 1530–1590: The Legal Process,” Continuity and Change 2 (1987): 57–65. Juries may often have concealed evidence of sudden and unnatural deaths. See R. F. Hunnisett, The Medieval Coroner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 12.47. JUST 1/1022, m. 32; TNA JUST 1/1025, m. 20; TNA JUST 1/1025, m. 14; TNA JUST 2/258, m. 1. 48. Emile Durkheim has argued that the close‐knit village environment of the medieval era was more capable of assisting the depressed and thus preventing suicides. It is entirely possible that Durkheim's thesis holds some validity for the medieval period, although it does not explain the wide variation in suicide totals across England. See Hanawalt's discussion of Durkheim in her Crime and Conflict, 102. 49. This map of medieval counties and judicial assizes post‐1328 was reprinted from Anthony Musson, Public Order and Law Enforcement: The Local Administration of Criminal Justice, 1294–1350 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1996), xiv, and altered in order to highlight high‐reporting counties. The maps that appear toward the end of this article are drawn from the same source and similarly altered. Many thanks to Boydell and Brewer for permission to reprint this map. 50. These figures are based on an analysis of coroners’ and eyre/assize rolls. Cases are drawn from the following eyre/assize rolls (TNA JUST 1) (Please note: the dates of the eyres or assizes appear in parentheses): Beds. 24 (1330–33), 26 (1330–31); Berks. 36 (1224–25), 44 (1284); Bucks. 55 (1241), 63 (1286); Cambs. 86 (1286), 95 (1299); Cornwall 111 (1284), 118 (1302); Cumberland 133 (1278–79), 135 (1292–93); Derby 148 (1281), 166 (1330–31); Devon 175 (1244), 181 (1281–82); Dorset 204 (1289), 213 (1288); Co. Durham 223 (1242); Essex 238 (1272), 242 (1285); Glos. 274 (1248), 278 (1287); Hants. 780 (1272), 787 (1280–81); Hereford 300C (1255), 302 (1292); Herts. 318 (1248), 325 (1287); Hunts. 343 (1261), 345 (1286); Kent 369 (1279), 374 (1293–94); Lancs. 409 (1292); Lancaster 436 (1355–57), 437 (1356–59); Leics. 455 (1247), 461 (1284); Lincs. 480 (1206–07), 488 (1281–84); Middlesex 538 (1274); Norfolk 568 (1257), 573 (1286); Northants. 623 (1285), 635 (1329–30); Northumberland 642 (1256), 653 (1293); Notts. 664 (1280–81), 683 (1229–30); Oxon. 700 (1247), 705 (1285); Rutland 722 (1286), 725 (1286); Shrops. 737 (1272), 739 (1292); Somerset 756 (1243), 759 (1280); Staffs 802 (1272), 806 (1293); Suffolk 818 (1240), 827 (1286–87); Surrey 872 (1255), 876 (1279); Sussex 915 (1279), 930 (1288); Warwick 951A (1232), 956 (1285); Westmorland 982 (1278–9), 986 (1292); Wilts. 996 (1249), 1005 Pt. 2 (1281); Worcs. 1022 (1255), 1025 (1275); Yorks. 1078 (1279–81), 1101 (1279–81). Cases are drawn also from an examination in entirety of the surviving coroners’ rolls (TNA JUST 2), covering the years 1228–1426. 51. Richard Barrie Dobson, “Mendicant Ideal and Practice in Late Medieval York,” in Archaeological Papers from York Presented to M.W. Barley, ed. D. V. Addyman and V. E. Black (York: York Archaeological Trust, 1984), 109–22. 52. Julia Barrows, “How the Twelfth‐Century Monks of Worcester Perceived Their Past,” in The Perception of the Past in Twelfth‐Century Europe, ed. Paul Magdalino (London: Hambledon Press, 1992), 53–76. 53. Cynthia J. Neville, “The Law of Treason in the English Border Counties in the Later Middle Ages,” Law and History Review 9 (1991): 1–30. 54. Jonathan Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1988), 299. In fact, Jonathan Hughes notes that a year's worth of offerings at the tomb of Archbishop Richard Scrope amounted to roughly £2,000, “higher than the amounts at Becket's shrine during the height of the cult.” Ibid., 325. 55. Ibid., 305. 56. It was not uncommon for localities to worship saints that the church never recognized. For a discussion of the evolution of the cult of saints and changes in the process of canonization, see Barbara Abou‐El‐Hajn, The Medieval Cult of Saints: Formations and Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pt. 1. 57. Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries, 325–26, 339–41. 58. Simpson, “Repentant Soul,” 390; Caciola, “Wraiths,” 28. For a discussion of living corpses in Icelandic literature, see Hilda R. Ellis Davidson, “The Restless Dead: An Icelandic Ghost Story,” in The Folklore of Ghosts, ed. Hilda R. Ellis Davidson and W. M. S. Russell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 155–75, 256–59; Juha Pentikäinen, “The Dead Without Status,” in Nordic Folklore: Recent Studies, ed. Reimund Kvideland and Henning K. Sehmsdorf (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989), 128–34. 59. Simpson, “Repentant Soul,” 390. 60. Cases of diabolical temptation appearing in areas of the Danelaw are noted specifically for Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Middlesex, Norfolk, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, and Yorkshire. The only two cases of diabolical temptation to fall outside the region appear in Oxford and Shropshire—both in close proximity to the boundaries of the Danelaw. See: TNA JUST 2/59, m. 3 (Leics.), death of Joanna wife of William Styward; TNA JUST 2/58, m. 8d (Leics.), death of John Scot; TNA JUST 2/67, m. 23 (Lincs.), death of Agnes de Goyton; TNA JUST 2/64, m. 4 (Lincs.), death of Ralph de Newkirke of Stamford; TNA JUST 2/96, m. 1d (Middlesex), death of Marion wife of Simon Rat of Ryslip; TNA JUST 2/104, m. 17 (Norf.), death of Agnes de Kirketon; TNA JUST 2/138, m. 5 (Oxon.), death of Katherine wife of Nicholas Pew; TNA JUST 2/146, m. 5d (Shrops.), death of Alice daughter of John, son of John of Grenehill; TNA JUST 2/159, m. 1 (Staff.), death of Nicholas son of William Godwine; TNA JUST 2/215, mm. 3 and 4 (Yorks.), death of Alice wife of John Horner; TNA JUST 2/221, m. 2 (Yorks.), death of Maud wife of Thomas of Rothwell; TNA JUST 2/211, m. 18d (Yorks.), death of Stephen (. . .). 61. McIntosh, Controlling Misbehavior, 173. 62. Ibid., 191. 63. For example, a Nottinghamshire jury classified a woman who inadvertently killed herself while attempting to abort her child as a suicide. See Sara M. Butler, “Women, Suicide, and the Jury in Later Medieval England,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 32.1 (2006): 156–58.64. Trevor Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe 1200–1550 (London: Longman, 2001), chap. 3. See also Valentin Groebner, “Losing Face, Saving Face: Noses and Honour in the Late Medieval Town,” History Workshop Journal 40 (1995): 1–15.65. MacDonald and Murphy, Sleepless Souls, 16. 66. Robin Frame, “ ‘Les Engleys Nees en Irlande’: The English Political Identity in Medieval Ireland,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 3 (1993): 103. Additional informationNotes on contributorsSara M. ButlerSara M. Butler is an assistant professor in the History Department and chair of Medieval Studies at Loyola University New Orleans.
Referência(s)