Clergy and Criminal Violence in Later Medieval England and Wales

Name: Clergy and Criminal Violence in Later Medieval England and Wales
Brand: Cambridge University Press
SKU: 9781108843805
Price: 1387.10 HKD
Availability: InStock
Author: Peter D. Clarke
ISBN: 9781108843805

By Peter D. Clarke

New Arrival Cambridge University Press April 2026

Specifications

ISBN-13: 9781108843805
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication: April 2026
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Countri(es) for reference only

Details

Clergy formed a distinct and privileged group in later medieval society as regarded violent crime. Church law was intended to protect them from it, induce them to avoid it, and exempt them from secular justice following it. But in practice, were the clergy so separate from the violent culture around them and different from the laymen who dominated it? In the first full-length study of this subject in the later medieval period, Peter Clarke shows that clergy accused of violent and other crimes increasingly submitted to secular justice like laymen, seeking clerical immunity only as a last resort. It reveals that church authorities, in providing legal redress for clerical victims of lay violence, sought to heal divisions between laity and clergy, not to deepen them. Additionally, it explores the motives and contexts behind clerical involvement in violent crime, both as perpetrators and victims, revealing that clergy often acted similarly to laymen.

List of tables

Preface

List of abbreviations

Introduction

1. Jurisdiction over violent clergy

2. Protecting clergy from violence

3. Clergy and contexts of criminal violence

4. Clergy as killers

Conclusion

Appendix 1. The Richard Atte Halle case

Appendix 2. Penances imposed by English church courts in Si quis suadente cases

Bibliography