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By Jean Dunbabin

This book explores the growing importance of prisons, both lay and ecclesiastical, in western Europe between 1000 and 1300. It attempts to explain what captors hoped to achieve by restricting the liberty of others, the means of confinement available to them, and why there was an increasingly close link between captivity and suspected criminal activity. It discusses conditions within prisons, the means of release open to some captives, and writing in or about prison.

Springer, Oct 23, 2002, 207 pages

By Edda Frankot

This open access book analyses the practice of banishment and what it can tell us about the values of late medieval society concerning morally acceptable behaviour. It focuses on the Dutch town of Kampen and considers the exclusion of offenders through banishment and the redemption of individuals after their exile. Banishment was a common punishment in late medieval Europe, especially for sexual offences. In Kampen it was also meted out as a consequence of the non-payment of fines, after which people could arrange repayment schemes which allowed them to return. The book firstly considers the legal context of the practice of banishment, before discussing punishment in Kampen more generally. In the third chapter the legal practice of banishment as a punitive and coercive measure is discussed. The final chapter focuses on the redemption of exiles, either because their punishment was completed, or because they arranged for the payment of outstanding fines.

Bern: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 140p.