The Medieval Blood Sanction and the Divine Beneficence of Pain: 1100-1450

Abstract

Here the worldling now all bound in fetters liesstarts to fear his God, his tears flow from his eyesJustice comes along, with gallows, wheel and sword:God tells the pious man to enter Heaven's door.Across medieval Western Europe, those who committed serious wrongs, such as homicide, arson, treason, and rape were subject to a wide range of capital punishments that were seemingly brutal, frequently bloody, and at times spectacular. Grisly images of an executioner dismembering a condemned's limbs from his torso, smashing his chest cavity, gouging his eyes, or piercing his body with hot pokers are the common stuff of scaffold art in the high Middle Ages. Such images attest to the critical role of pain in medieval capital punishment. Whereas in our day all attempts are made to render penal death painless, in the high and late Middle Ages, the tie between pain and death is not only tolerated but, at times, purposefully exacerbated.