Crime and Punishment

            

 Crime and punishment in the Medieval times were complete nonsense from the view of Modern day. A lot of crimes were involved with the church and the feudal system. Numbering, one was heresy( saying things against the church) and the other is working on Sundays and holidays which aren’t considered as crime in these days. Other crimes that are not crimes were: bakers baking faulty bread, drunkenness, nagging one’s husband, swearing, telling lies, caught not working hard enough, breaking curfew and hunting in nobleman’s forest. However, they had ideas of serious crimes like murdering or poisoning people but those were treated with a much violently.

 The most common form of punishment were fines, shaming, mutation (cutting off a part of the body) or death but those were also involved in the feudal system. If a peasant was killed, the murderer received a fine of 200 shilling but if a noble man was killed, the murderer had to pay 60 times finer, 12000 shilling.

Some of the medieval torture device and how it was used are:
-Brank: humiliate women for gossiping
-Pillory: head and arm stuck
-Drunkards Cloak: wear a barrel
-Head crusher: slowly crushes the head
-Foot board: stand on nails
which are too cruel and would damage the human rights in the modern days.

But torturing was an easy way to make people afraid and obey as well as to punish people who did the wrong things or obtain information needed. 

I think the punishment in the Middle Ages were so brutal as there was no idea of human rights, especially for peasant who were the lowest of the feudal system and were considered as slaves or animals. The punishments were committed by the name of the gods which made people felt less guilty. Moreover, the people in the Medieval times had no idea of what was wrong or what was right because they were never taught to not to do the wrong things or crimes. Also, people had gone through many wars, which made them have the urge to survive in such a bad condition, even through crimes.