Recent work by British and American researchers are lifting the veil on daily brutality of the Middle Ages, far from romantic clichés. By meticulously mapping 355 homicides between 1296 and 1398 in London, Oxford and York, they highlighted a real geography of urban violence, where trade, daily life and settling of accounts are intertwined, details the American online media Gizmodo.
The rate of Homicides in Oxford is three to four times higher than that observed in London or York, a statistical anomaly which is explained … by the famous University of the City. The establishment attracted young men aged 14 to 21, often very far from their home, living in packs and armed. Organized by region of origin, in rival “nations”, these students did not hesitate to compete, especially during conflicts between northerners And Southerners. What we imagine to be a studious city was in fact the scene of real street battles.
Paradoxically, students benefited from a special status that placed them above ordinary laws. The homicides concentrated around the university district and were as much the fact of arguments between students as between academics and inhabitants. This relative impunity had a climate of aggressiveness and permanent tension.
London was not a haven of peace either and had its areas to avoid, like Westcheap, commercial heart and ceremonial, theater of rivalries between guilds and various attacks, or the quay of Thames Street, conflict zone between sailors and traders. In York, it was the main doors of the city and prestigious streets like Stonegate that concentrated homicides, illustrating that wealth and visibility attracted violence.
Don’t go out on Sunday
What strikes in the three English cities studied is the frequency of murders committed in symbolic and very frequented places. The homicides took the entertainment value: they watched the reputation of an individual or publicly adjusted accounts. Conversely, the poor and peripheral districts recorded fewer surveys for murder, perhaps for lack of social or judicial pressure.
Sunday was statistically the deadliest day, especially around the curfew. The typical sequence: morning mass followed by drinking, sports games … and bloody fights. Proof that the sacredness of the day did not in any way led to the brutality of urban traditions. Thanks to the minutes of the juries, the researchers were able to precisely locate the bodies, identify the weapons used and, sometimes, the patterns. The market, squares, ceremonial spaces stand out as privileged places for clashes, as much as access to cities and animated neighborhoods.
If medieval violence seems omnipresent, the study also questions the slow decrease in the rate of homicides over the centuries. The authors suggest that the transformation of governance methods and the spatial organization of cities played a major role in this reflux, thanks to better surveillance, a restructuring of spaces and the development of more effective justice.
Far from the fantasized medieval account that we can all have in mind, this autopsy of urban violence shows structured societies around conflict management and the preservation of honor – which is to shed blood in the full market with fish or the gates of the city. If the medieval era is often associated with barbarism, it is also that where the foundations of collective regulation and living together have arisen.
