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Middle Ages
From Spanking Art
The Middle Ages or mediaeval period is generally regarded as beginning the time from the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The end of the middle ages is much harder to define, with a variety of dates of significant events such as the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Battle of Bosworth Field, 1885 or the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 being used in different places and fields of art and study.
Often in British thinking this broader period is divided by the coming of William the Conquerer in 1066, when the Anglo-Saxon age ends. Often the term Middle Ages is used to refer to this period of 1066 to 1485.
During the middle ages, society was often structured on a feudal basis, with a strict hierarchy of belonging and ownership, with many people tied to the land they lived and the masters they served.
The middle ages are often romanticised as the time of kings and knights, courtly ladies and monks and abbots. It is a mixture of the romantisization and the broader use of corporal punishment than in later times that makes the middles ages an attractive fantasy setting for corporal punishment scenarios.
[edit] Corporal punishment in the Middle Ages
Life in the Middle Ages is often described as "nasty, brutish and short", and the punishments in use at the time bear out this description. In addition to execution, amputation, branding or burning, the stocks, the pillory and whippings were also used. Imprisonment was far less used as a punishment than in more modern times.
Floggings were frequently public, and frequently imposed. By a thirteenth century English law, all towns and villages were required to have a set of stocks and a whipping post set up and ready for use. Men, women and children were all sentenced to time in the stocks or at the whipping post.
This large quantity of judicial corporal punishment carried itself over into the domestic and scholastic environment. Parents were expected to whip their children if they disobeyed, and by the late Middle Ages, the birch rod was the symbol of a schoolmaster.
The Church was throughout the entire Middle Ages both the guardian and transmitter of learning and culture, and used corporal punishment as part of its means of transmission. Within religious institutions such as monasteries and convents, the lash was used as a means of maintaining discipline. By means of the use of both public and private penance, moral standards were enforced. As the principal source of schooling and education religious houses, and the monks that taught in them, were frequent users of corporal punishment.
Wives were also at this time considered to be totally subject to their husband, who could beat them as he could their children and servants. It was considered acceptable in many cases for a master to have his servant whipped, and at times Peasant status within the feudal system could be little better than slavery.
[edit] Gallery
 Illuminated initial, showing the birching of a boy by a schoolmaster (M/m). |
