Caviness - GIVING THE MIDDLE AGES A BAD NAME BLOOD PUNISHMENTS IN THE SACHSENSPIEGEL AND TOWN LAWBOOKS PDF

Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University through its Medieval Institute
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Trustees of Princeton University
GIVING "THE MIDDLE AGES" A BAD NAME: BLOOD PUNISHMENTS IN THE

"SACHSENSPIEGEL" AND TOWN LAWBOOKS
Author(s): Madeline H. Caviness
Source: Studies in Iconography, Vol. 34 (2013), pp. 175-235
Published by: Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University through its Medieval
Institute Publications and Trustees of Princeton University
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GIVING "THE MIDDLE AGES" A BAD NAME:
BLOOD PUNISHMENTS IN THE SACHSENSPIEGEL
AND TOWN LAWBOOKS
Madeline H. Caviness
Introduction
The four famous law picture books of the Sachsenspiegel (A Mirror for the
Saxons) have images of the violent corporal and capital punishments that have
come to be regarded as "medieval," and even as common sights in medieval towns:
head shearing, flogging, severing hands, hanging, breaking on the wheel, decapita
tion, and burning. These images are supplemented in these books with ordeals by
the hot iron, water, and combat. The list resonates with dreadful practices in the
present era of torture, known through the photographic documentation and the
accounts of victims that are now available to us. This modern discourse may fuel
the imagination when it encounters the verbal and visual allusions in these medi
eval manuscripts, despite extremely sparse representational codes that stop short of
the spectacle of "real" human suffering, and the different purposes of modem tor
ture and that of the medieval era. In this paper I analyze these verbal-visual expres
sions in the fourteenth-century Sachsenspiegel manuscripts and some more violent
and extravagant images in two German books relating to town law in the context
of changing attitudes toward such "blood punishments" on the part of the Christian
church, and the illustrations' effect on the secular judiciary. The images are not as
simple as they seem: I argue that the most brutal ones helped deter the adjudicators
(Schöffen) from risking their souls by condemning a (possibly innocent) human
being to maiming or death. Visual representations have the power to subvert the
declarative statements of a legal text such as the Sachsenspiegel.
Interweaving Theoretical and Contextual Frameworks
A subject that is heavily freighted in our times, the issue of bodily pain
inflicted on humans by others with mastery over them is also the topic of numer
ous turn-of-the-century social, psychological, historical, and cross-cultural stud
ies.1 On the contemporary political front, the death penalty has been abolished
in most European countries and in some US states, and torture is regarded as a
violation of human rights under international law, yet photographic documentation
and the accounts of victims that are now available to us from around the world on
© 2013 by the Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University
176 Madeline H. Caviness
the internet demonstrate other verities. These contradictions and the broad human
and legal issues involved spurred my interest in medieval "blood punishments"

(i.e., ones that killed or drew blood), and assist my formulations here.2 In addition,
legends and images of the torments and martyrdoms of Christian saints and of
people in hell have recently interested medievalists, particularly when viewed in
the framework of women's studies and feminist/queer theory.3 The visual images
in the Sachsenspiegel and two other fourteenth-century German lawbooks exam
ined here mimic or model such scenes, by detailing head shearing, flogging, sever
ing hands, hanging, breaking on the wheel, decapitation, burial alive, and burning,
supplemented with ordeals by hot iron, water, and combat.
As a matter of historical fact we cannot know how "accurately" or consis
tently any of the punishments included in these medieval German lawbooks were
carried out, since there are almost no detailed case studies from the period of the
compilation of these laws, and too few other detailed sources such as chronicles by
which to judge.4 In his historical overview of torture Edward Peters has stressed
that its practice in thirteenth-century Europe is extremely difficult to chart in light
of a divergence on one hand between archival records and legal prescriptions, and
a growing body of theory concerning its use on the other.5 The situation was differ
ent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and on up to the Enlightenment, periods
for which cases and statistics are available.6 There is also an inference that capital
punishment was on the increase in the early modern period, during a transition
from personal vengeance to the wish to eliminate a public wrong.7 This is also the
period in which torture began to be practiced in the modern sense, as a means of
obtaining information and confession before sentencing.8
The same chronological divide applies to visual representations. Images
from the High Middle Ages seldom make the truth claim of being studies from
life; the images belong to the semantic and ideological systems of the period. For
instance, in relation to blood punishments, Mitchell Merback argued in his book
The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel that it was only in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries that "painters learned how to match the pictorial experience of these
penal horrors with the judicial realities with which they lived, to make one reso
nate with the other," thus achieving a degree of continuity between representa
tion and reality.9 The earlier provincial representations I view here scarcely hint
at that continuity, though they have a vivid intensity that is arresting. Indeed,
their rhetorical power and graphic force contribute to the reputation for violent
torture and execution that has long been assigned to "The Middle Ages."10 Mod
ern critics of torture and capital punishment often invoke the "barbaric" treat
ment of criminals that has long been associated with "the Medieval," as Merback
remarked. He illustrated a photomontage by John Heartfield-—"Wie im Mittelal
ter ... so im Dritten Reich," 1934—that offers a searing critique of the then new
Giving "the Middle Ages" a Bad Name 177
Nazi regime's propensity to return to premodern forms of execution: the montage

juxtaposes a sculpture in a late medieval rose window of the collegiate church in
Tübingen of St. George laced through the spokes of a wheel, with a man simi
larly splayed on a swastika.11 Samuel Edgerton went so far as to invoke the cruel
and unusual sentences "prescribed by the local law courts" in the early four
teenth century in order to argue that the Renaissance merely assured the survival
of medieval practices, which had provided models for sixteenth-century pictures
of extraordinary sadism, or even sado-eroticism.12 His misconception helps to
focus on the question of conformity between sentences mandated in lawbooks
and those in actual practice, and to clarify how the representational codes of the
earlier visual images offer symbolic and performative verities. These medieval
representations function very differently from sixteenth-century picture cycles
that often presented the story in paintings or prints of an individual criminal to
public view.13
It is clear that the depiction of these violent corporal and capital blood
punishments in fourteenth-century German lawbooks does not necessarily sup
port the popular view that such scenes were common and ubiquitous spectacles
in real life. Yet, ironically, because documentary evidence of the normal kind is
lacking, legal historians have turned to these scenes as documents, insisting that
they represent real practices—even when those practices are regarded as sym
bolic rituals.14 Some art historians have also assumed that the ways punishments
are mandated and visualized in the fourteenth-century German lawbooks are lit
eral enactments of the real treatment of criminals. Edith Rothe, for instance,
states of the "Zwickau statute book of 1348" that "This codex is of great value
to historians since it not only exemplifies the process of the law in the fourteenth
century but also shows how the sentences were carried out."151 will analyze the
pictures in this manuscript later, but suffice it to say here that they are among the
most gruesome in medieval lawbooks (Figs. 1, 20, 21, 27). My argument against
thinking that such scenes are evidence of widespread use is threefold, based on
the shifting ground of secular jurisdiction and Christian moral teaching in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, on the rhetorical strategies by which the texts
and pictures attempted to persuade readers there were "teeth in the law," and on
pictorial excesses that go far beyond the realm of physical possibility to resonate
with hellish fantasies.
In the medieval European social context, the mere fact that capital punish
ment was decreed for certain crimes actually created a conflict between manda
tory sentencing and the judiciary's willingness to find someone guilty. Crucial to
this line of thinking is a recent study by legal historian James Q. Whitman on the
evolving customs and belief systems that eventually gave rise to the present-day
principle in the British and US legal system that guilt has to be proved in court
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of Zwickau;
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Zwickau,
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Stadtarchiv.)
"without reasonable doubt," to ensure a unanimous verdict.16 His narrative, and

especially the medieval theological texts he invokes, supports my argument that
extreme sentences were not very likely to be carried out in Germany in the four
teenth century with any frequency. When the pictorial lawbooks are also viewed
in the context of verbal and visual discourses, we have to be open to a range of
truth claims, even if they appear to conflict with one another. And if martyrs and
criminals appear to receive the same treatment, hagiography, eschatology, and the
law are not clearly separable pictorial or literary discourses, unless we force them
into the old binary of sacred versus secular, or treat written law as some kind of
privileged text—both of which are theoretical positions I reject. The fundamental
issue I address here is how we can better understand these pictures in theoretical
and contextual terms. I will consider what role the images, as ideological tools and
as sites of ritual atonement and purification, might have played in the courtroom
to force reflection by the judiciary on the consequences of actually applying the
punishments that were mandated under the law.
Unraveling the Performative Authority of Eike's Lawbook
The Sachsenspiegel was among the first vernacular lawbooks written in

Europe and among the earliest long prose texts in German.17 According to one of
the prefaces, its author was Eike von Repgow. His book has been an icon to schol
ars of Germanic language and culture (Germanisten) since the early eighteenth
century, and remains of immense importance in legal history today.18 It is essential
to my project to understand how this lawbook lays claim to authority—and so
effectively that it was consulted, in hundreds of copies, into modern times. The
author himself had no authority to write a custumal for Saxony, which he in fact
did circa 1220-25. As in many medieval texts, in the prefaces to the Sachsenspei
gel the author claims illustrious, even imperial connections. However, the contem
porary ruler Emperor Frederick II Hohenstauffen did not commission Eike, though
the emperor is depicted at the beginning of his own declaration of the Landpeace
of Mainz that serves as one of the prefaces (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-August Biblio
thek, Cod. Guelf. 3.1 Aug. 2°, fol. lr [hereafter W]). In another preface Eike credits
a Saxon lord—Hoyer Count of Falkenstein, whose extant castle is near Halle
an-der-Saale in Saxony-Anhalt—with the idea of making a German "translation,"
implying that there had been an original Latin version.19 In fact, Eike had no more
social or judicial standing than many other quasi-professional lawyers, although he
had considerable learning and appears to have used numerous legal and theologi
cal resources in the library of the Cistercian Altzelle Abbey (near Meissen) in order
to compile his book.20 By supposedly textualizing an oral tradition in a period of
change, he laid claim to a stable tradition of Saxon law; his book apparently proved
immensely useful during the following two hundred years of continuing social
and political change.21 The lawbook's enthusiastic reception is indicated by the
large number of extant manuscripts with the text, and its translation into several
other languages.22 The four Sachsenspiegel picture books are part of the reception
history of the text, in that they range in date from about 1300 to 1370. As with all
elaborately illustrated manuscripts, we have to assume access to them was limited.
They must have served members of the judiciary for consultation, most probably
in the vicinity of the court room, as this was where one later deluxe Sachsenspiegel
is known to have been chained.23
For the sake of clarity I will generally use pictures from the latest of the
Sachsenspiegel books, that in Wolfenbüttel, and unless designated otherwise I cite
the English translation of that text recension, made by Maria Dobozy (Figs. 2-8,
10-15, 17).24 Executed between 1358 and 1362/71, this large book is a very close
copy of one from a few years earlier that is housed in Dresden (hereafter D).251
will refer only in passing to the manuscripts in Heidelberg and Oldenburg (here
after H and O), which carry the sequence of extant Sachsenspiegel picture books
back to circa 1300 (Figs. 9, 16, 31).26 There is some significant variat
H, O, and D/W, but all are related in some way to an earlier pictorial
that might have been formulated in the lifetime of the author, which
esting questions about text-image reciprocity. Spread over time, the
punishments must be viewed against a changing backdrop. For instan
uitous presence of the emperor(s) in text and image belies the lack of
ruler during the period of production of the picture books. And even
ignored certain rulings of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, despite th
influence on the attitudes of the judiciary toward sentencing. Yet the a
his text was such that a hundred years after his death it is viewed in
to the Oldenburg recension as ancestral law, being copied for the duke
young vassals coming up did not know much about the laws of their ancest
many mistakes regarding them."27
A gullible reader of the text and pictures in the Sachsenspiegel m
would easily conclude that the consequences of certain criminal acts a
table. In the pictorial books the staging of the law—the where and h
sonnel—is scarcely referred to by Eike after the introductory pages,
draftsmen who do the work of claiming authority for the court hearin
the book was used. The judge is the principal authority figure, often
sword of justice to hear capital cases or instructing an executioner w
the sword (Figs. 2, 17); he also occasionally has the fact finder who c
court (the Schultheiss) to back him up (as in Fig. 7, register 5). I have
elsewhere how these judges appear like rulers: seated on elaborate
thrones or benches that are often continuous with the ruled lines of the te
it authority by the juxtaposition (literally backing it up); the effect is
the colored initials in the pictures that reference the beginning of the
clause.28 The judge pronounces a verdict immediately, to be followed i
of one short line—in the same breath as it were—by the punishments
the act: such as beheading the Christian who murders a Jew (and the J
a Christian: Fig. 2), and the man who is convicted of a criminal act thr
by combat; and severing the right hand of a man who swore ownersh
(Fig. 3). Hearings are seen to proceed with utmost civility. Bailiffs, c
even executioners are clean-shaven and decorous, as are their Christian
opposed to the Jews, who are bearded and caught off-balance regardl
they are victim or criminal).
Deconstruction and discourse theory serve to relieve cultural pro
the burden of representing reality, and have even persuaded some lega
of the historical contingency of judicial systems that authorize corpora
punishments.29 Warren Brown has also approached violence in the Sa
by cautioning against literal readings: "As with all normative texts, it
Giving "the Middle Ages " a Bad Name 181
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Fig.
Fig.2. Beheading
2. Beheading
of a Jew or a Christian
ofif either
a Jewmurderedor
the other;
a Christian
Jew hung for possession
if of either murdered
aachalice,
chalice,
book or priest's
bookclothingor
withoutpriest's
documented ownership.
clothing Sachsenspiegel
without
3.7; W fol. 43v,
documented ow
registers
registers3-4; ca. 1355-60.
3-4; (Photo:
ca.Herzog-August
1355-60. Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.)Herzog-August Bibliothek
(Photo:
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Fig.
Fig.3. Right3.
handRight
severed for taking
hand a false oath
severed
of ownership; criminal
for who taking
loses an ordealaby false
com oath of ow
bat
batbeheaded
beheaded
(detail). Sachsenspiegel
(detail).
2.16 (17); W fol. Sachsenspiegel
30r, registers 2-3. (Photo: Herzog-August
2.16 (17); W fol
Bibliothek
BibliothekWolfenbüttel.) Wolfenbüttel.)
it entices us to see its provisions as a systematic representation of real

are not therefore dealing with a literal representation of actual legal
Instead, what we have before us is a text that communicates basic ass
about how the legal world works, about the problems that might arise
the values that should underlie their solution."30 Speech act theory a
explains how Eike von Repgow's text relies heavily on performative u
to establish its own legal standing, and, as demonstrated by Charles N
this is important for his whole project.31 Speech act theory allows me
in greater detail, one utterance or visual sign at a time, how truth claim
statements and images that are themselves performing the actions they
The concept of performatives was first developed within speech act t
philosophers in the 1960s, notably by John L. Austin. Linguists have
duced terms that are quite technical, so I limit my use of them to
tials, but suffice it to say that they provide powerful analytic tools.33
in 1990 Judith Butler engaged with performative theory to voice a f
challenge to sex/gender binaries. As she famously stated, "Gender is
... the substantive effect of gender is performatively produced and c
the regulatory practices of gender coherence"; and, "That the gender
performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the
which constitute its reality."34 "Eike's law" is performative to the exten
is little outside his text to indicate whether it was indeed a mirror of
practices.
To give my own example, which enables us to think about verbal or visual
expressions as "utterances," it is a constative utterance if an observer declares
that "this person is wearing a blue dress" or if an artist paints a portrait from life
of a subject in a blue dress: observer and artist have the standing of witnesses.
Assertions that perform what they say are performatives, or are speech acts with
"illocutionary force." If we assert that "this person is wearing a blue dress with a
pretty floral print," the dress/person becomes pretty in our minds. When a speech
act has a further effect, it is due to its perlocutionary force: if an artist depicts the
person as a woman/female, the dress is performing gender. If Eike had the legal
authority to make law, or decide a capital case alone, his statement that "a thief
shall be hanged" would be a constative, but the conditions are not right for that so it
remains an illocutionary performative.35 The statement gains perlocutionary force
from the accompanying picture of a man on the gallows (Fig. 4). Read in reverse
order, the picture asserts that a man was hanged and the text provides illocution
ary force by giving the reason for the action (he was a thief). Jonathan Culler's
postmodern mantra can also assist our understanding of the lawbooks: "Language
is performative in the sense that it doesn't just transmit information but performs
acts by its repetition of established discursive practices or ways of doing things."36
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Fig.
Fig.4.4.Blood
Blood
punishments.
punishments.
Sachsenspiegel
Sachsenspiegel
2.14; W fol. 29r,
2.14;registers
W fol.3-5.
29r,
(Photo:
registers
Herzog-August
3-5. (Photo: Herzog-August
Bibliothek
Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.)
Wolfenbüttel.)
This is in fact how most medieval texts and picture cycles work most of the time,
but especially those in lawbooks.
Textualizing a large body of traditional law makes claim to immense author
ity, and Eike clearly expected to encounter disagreement; his contemporaries in
the judiciary might have accused him of misstating custom for ideological reasons
or, at the least, of overlooking local variants. He prepared his defense in the first
prologue with a simple illocutionary assertive: "Gott is selber Recht" (God himself
is the law); the accompanying representation shows Eike's authorization by the
Emperors Constantine and Charlemagne and his inspiration by the Holy Spirit,
as God hands the sword of justice to an emperor (Fig. 5).37 And he claims rel
evance outside Saxony in the "Lineage of the Lords" that follows the Land Peace
of Mainz, where he names Swabian and Franconian lords and families of Schöffen,
as well as the Saxon ones he is more familiar with.38 Eike also preempts criticism
by presenting himself as a Christian martyr. Near the end of the book he announces
he has finished his task, a constative utterance: "I have come to the end of the entire
feudal law." This is immediately followed by an assertive: "However, many people
say there are additional investitures But all this is incorrect" (4.84, W fol
The image denigrates the enemies of the law as loutish youths who kick th
Red Book of the Mirror of the Saxons that lies on top of Eike himself and c
God as the word of the law incarnate (Fig. 6).40 Again, the paragraph conti
reasserting that God and the law are one and the same: "A person who speak
in all things wins the anger of many. May the righteous man console himse
this thought for the sake of God and his own honor. This book shall mak
an enemy, for all those who strive against God and Law will be enraged b
it pains them to see that the law is always revealed." Ultimately the Law, n
author (whose name in any case only appears in one of the prefaces that i
present in W), is the enduring object of hatred. But the passage seems to
a warning that just members of the judiciary will make enemies. They sh
comforted that the dead author is definitively replaced by divine authority, but
statement and the image are both performative utterances (the visible aggre
perlocutionary). In this way, the image dramatizes and condemns violence t
quite literally, "against the law."
The draftsmen of the Sachsenspiegel books also reinforced Eike's per
mative assertions from the beginning by demonstrating the authority of th
emanating from the two swords of justice given by God to the emperor a
pope (Fig. 7). Reading down the page, divine rule passed from them thr
hierarchy of ecclesiastic and secular jurisdictions: from the bishop's and a
courts to a civil court presided over by a duke (Graf) with the help of a c
ner and fact-finder (Schultheiss) and Schöffen seated discussing a case. Las
hearing in front of the headmen of the village. The arrangement is repetit
static, asserting powers that are permanently instated under God. Yet the
no reason for secular law to have to appeal to God for authority. For exam
the dignified town father who gave the law to the townsmen of Herford a
at the opening of their lawbook, made between 1368 and 1376.41 On the f
page, in contrast to the Sachsenspiegel where no courtroom is ever ind
is a rather complete three-dimensional rendering of a courtroom within a
hall, with judge and Burgers, and a clerk and a plaintiff at the bench.42 O
the framing of that body of town law is more down to earth than the ritu
ing of Eike's book, and after establishing this secular frame it proceeds w
further pictures to continue to assert its legal authority in simple declara
statements.43
In keeping with the lofty tenor set by the prefaces to the Sachsensp
manuscripts, the pictures that take up half of every page are generally nonviolen
Most of them are prescriptive since Eike's law always states what should h
in an orderly and restrained way, whether that might be peaceful transact
designated punishments.45 Page after page presents emotionless figures th
uctcrftrtterc *
ucfccrftrtftenmtt
fttntt^geidi tÄ
; tmtcutrratirïcr
I Mrt|)CWtt|Cttc.}}0(l|
lu , , ftrtifcltfrtittlc-Hodi
I jf Pft9l|ttl£Cttltté
I'^r "Jfj Wjnltaittrtfc
/ uorfl
„W terete ttttt
ttO(i|tcrv5ttcuKt
mcn^5f6«j&ätt
t« aîleme tntftsctim^vitniclntft
tthafltttic ttuftjgptwt^Dar tltnt virtt
ttfmiMft ancatrttlttttbt
trt) ©ttMfc trfyts
anfatrttitittin trfyis
jgtroaftfetmt ttfc IrgcmeUM mmro i
tiicfm
mcfraumumtttöc«vnbabi«Tjutft tiiä
trntc-vntjabielnufcttuii
' - ' M
yontttfimrii fcaa ft tow nodtrctntcte
_ fintPfaKdjfe
tiori) tnnf fmmfijfmvrijte
wtfihivomwfittcttfal
wtflht vonrafitccttfal ttptlunr xw&*
tttnttât
" "isttjrttttodtjifr. ortt
facz
ars
Fig.
Fig. 5. Eike
5. von
Eike
Repgow
voninspired
Repgow
to write the
inspired
law, and theto
sword
write
of justice
the given
law,
to theand
emperor
the sword of justice giv
(detail).
(detail).Sachsenspiegel
Sachsenspiegel
prologue; W fol. prologue;
9v, registers 1-2.W
(Photo:
fol.Herzog-August
9v, registers
Bibliothek 1-2. (Photo: Herzog-A
Wolfenbüttel).
Wolfenbüttel).
H>i6btidiaaututicr
(jttwmncr rnadic vtmowwanc
îjt
t»\\4 vti ttirô lerne
imbwvtt ttrfitc (Mttvto
twtSletnc mfttc flwtavto
\btmhtfcfflim&t<nmn-wn tn tftfttfks
't^namitCOMaitFUlttfi
mJjcmttn jtofftwatttwm^teCT' '!1F_
u1
f?~%wmcratötttfcwstrftmc ttiÄttc
wmcttujtt tebmjjcrftrat tti^wc
c>
Cfmimaiiitcvnfmnftxtbttrttt%
m ictttni|tc- vti fmttfftotir
m isirriifn
m ôatiùlttmicttdjmttttfcllttttc
ffiifn Ctt
bai?tilitttncti(Lbttttottt&ttiirc ftt
Fig.
Fig. 6. The
6. The
Word Word
of God embodied
of Godin embodied
the Red Book of
inthe
thelaw,Red
with Book
the deadof
author,
the Eike,
law,below
withit. the dead author
Sachsenspiegel
Sachsenspiegel 4.84; W 4.84;
fol. 85r.
W (Photo:
fol. Herzog-August
85r. (Photo: Bibliothek
Herzog-August
Wolfenbüttel.) Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.)
Fig. 7. The two swords and the stratification of church and lay courts. Sachsenspiegel 1.
lOr. (Photo: Herzog-August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.)
more like gesturing signs than dramatis personae.46 Conflict over land holdings
or inheritance seldom appears, since it is preempted by custom, with a well-tuned
legal system to appeal to—text and pictures assert that property changes hands
according to Eike's law. If that were so, decisions would not have to go to court,
and this appears to be the case for many of the passages dealing with family inheri
tance derived from regional law (the Landrecht)\ although judges appear on almost
every opening throughout the Sachsenspiegel, they are absent from these peaceful
transactions (e.g. W fols. 1 lr—12r, 15v-17v). Indeed, the Landrecht, occupying
the first three books of Eike's text, has few violent disruptions, but when they do
appear they are all the more memorable; the only scene more disruptive than the
blood punishments is of animals running amok, inspired by the devil to damage
land (Fig. 17, W 2.63). It is in these books that the blood punishments discussed
here are decided and visually enacted (Figs. 2, 4, 8-12).47
It is notable that when Eike declares mandatory corporal or capital punish
ments for some crimes, the impersonal passive voice removes him—and the judi
ciary—from the decision (Fig. 4). He borrows the voice of a proclamation: "Now
hear about criminal acts [and] the penalties that apply. A thief shall be hanged."
Other death sentences, depicted on the verso, include beheading, for murder,
arson, rape, and adultery; and burning, as further on one reads, "A Christian man
or woman who is without faith and practices magic or mixes potions and is con
victed must be burned on the pyre" (the witch or sorcerer is a woman, the heretic
is male, Fig. 8, register 2). Murderers, thieves who steal a plough or anything from
mills or churches, "murderous arsonists," and corrupt representatives before the
courts are punished by breaking on the wheel (Fig. 4, bottom register). The judge
is notably absent to pronounce these sentences (Fig. 4, registers 1-2). The list is
interrupted by a digression to note that sentencing by village headmen was limited
since they cannot decide capital cases—though the view of a thief on the gallows
might subvert the preemptive gesture of the bailiff here (Fig. 4, upper register).
According to the text, lesser crimes, such as petty theft and cheating on weights
and measures, could be punished in village courts by a hiding and a shaving of the
head, a corporal punishment that is purportedly no more than skin deep (haut und
haar, literally hide and hair, as in Fig. 4, center register); the draftsman shows only
the shaving of this male convict. Elsewhere the law limits the corporal punishment
of a pregnant woman to haut und haar, but the result is not necessarily so benign:
whereas in W a pregnant woman receives the punishment fully clad (3.3, W fol.
42v), in H (fol. lOv) she is stripped to the waist at the pillory, her skin flayed to
produce bleeding wounds (Fig. 9). In a complex play this picture seems to subvert
any intention to protect her condition, yet reverses itself by making the victim look
like Christ being flogged. The contradictions indicate fissures in the certainties
Eike proclaims.
otJiBUDolj Imrr-fimt) maiimroSSmi
|racli®®n\{iim«fal utat^wL
p®Multltl|.tUc obttrnji otiinft twtW
®R2ttfltiMwJ»uiftbi»wwnKtMS^
Infill <iteub imA^Mrfimftcnttu
w .[•nwwMtft&ttt&L
i-mtttanrtsotuh
sbmjiufatiitttc uoAtrrt)
.^Cttf
_ aaLûnvilcilf
bi WllCl(C ittiitts (cltclw,
ttrfïtts (cite
■.tcitinuitntatMi>
tCtttma IcttatMQ fBtljaf. > jcttâc
tOfbttt^nwvu
totbttrdi ctxtarj|cltttint
nor vit cntarljctomt
ûltlc-îiae i|t ctt wn^ndftrbttgctm;
Tctorrn voxijfntijtt
ictotttt vmvn jsçnctitcwtlchcticr
Wtcticr bra* lies*
tUi ctt date
tilJ cttvndate
bitt ticfaij
\m bat Irnr
vmctai tiefte^ bat vwc rat
ttttu
ttttufal nultne
fillbate
mt tmhfva
fine tttlu*
liais tmhtvot min«
IlQflti
Zlftiii itrtjtcCiliirtjfcCii mätmtltt oasiio *
tttii trtcfito oasito"
ft
ftfi plicuwt
fi plicurgt
bt ttta tm4if|lttc
bt itt
tua tmyliltct 2tt
m
aitvfilf tnagf vevtilf
jjcwcttt wjjttt-feui
tttajf tr iv^rtr^Tfaini
ratWS
tot trvfigtlciu tttmcuc eutcuerfttttntttc rati? not
laS tr tègflrztt
btnjt-vncatcanbn
btnjt-tmcalcattbnvdiulf badf-tannfvnnttfönttöhvtnc
ftlctvttnd)
filent tntf)fal ba trntk fiizcnln®
wt-licûlbattnthfiîîcttbtî
basfistui
bas fis ttf da|t
tttt anj^vtttc
ttf vn ttta fa!
da|t anjjcivtttc vu tua fa!
ttttvttMewtfettr
tutvttttcwrftctt- tmucfctmtantn trnncltmttanm
tnaff
tnaj tutan ttttuattr
ttu ttmiattr fmc au fmc>tiôjtl|n«l)m ,!
bitlttfiri^tttAtctnnctof-trmattfcttto
> balte ftrtiau tttbtc vtttctor- | crtuâ ttf m to
ttbmtitr
tcbtwtgt tttâ
ttu ab'taitmt ab'îcit
vmjmtlifc wit totf votjmdifc vtu
lerntet*
Itgrafm* vttdatr
vttilair ttf ttf tnl|ttnti6çnnvatc
tttTje tnn6maM«
vine rtufhal6Qb5|C
vtttc "ura ^totfuctttet
l'tttcljaisûS^c nuts ten totflctrtai
Fig.
Fig.8. Blood
8. punishments,
Blood punishments,
registers 1-2, and trial by
registers
combat, register1-2,
5. Sachsenspiegel
and trial 2.14-15;by
W combat, register 5. Sachsenspiegel
fol.
fol.29v. 29v.
(Photo: Herzog-August
Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.) Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.)
tz>' \
mt entfftor <T&ft2ff>ridja> DnrulTgwuc-Ti lleto

tieuic WtK
HFHIl- Llutk ti Qzm
UU£W iluot
U «HL &mfelti88-1182felraa
" iWULlW"« •
l'utÀouIira'ulîÔPîîiîôuF
putf\oui(iPtpnH IfeiJitanF gtnutip u olgen-W
I*
t* ten ten G Pton
fi hF toidrj^f uften
önidrgptMiü
urtbptiOfihpct-ipnoiii
m^rBKiimien unrpftenliptei Uflrwiime r
aliîjvm^rDoHMipntintu
kemenot-iaafimntRariM^tel&iWigPn¥$'
kmçnnrèHZfimiia^
m wiL'n ^tàQUjônm ui
mfrotitidi
rnfmnudi ime^t&nant
innpiraiffirunwtn mnecjiik-infT
j te!
faf mk^mal&jtotffeenênTi
ra liu&emBlfc mfufe
rtm
l ferne
Akiaemefcn uiöfea ¥ÛJMtom
ûitnirJtmrirefejinfles nnfc
an ~"
Ifccgnffigifoö) anr
«n
Fig. 9. Demolishing
Fig. 9.theDemolishing
house in which a rape was perpetrated,the
and killing house
all the living witnesses;
ina which a r
priest
priestand a Jew losing
and
their protection
a Jew under the king's
losing
peace by carryingtheir
arms; a pregnantprotection
woman un
shorn
shorn and flogged (detail).
and Sachsenspiegel
flogged 3.1-3; Heidelberg, (detail).
Universitätsbibliothek, cpg.
Sachsenspiegel
164, fol.
12v,
12v,registers 4-5;
registers
1295-1304. (Photo: Heidelberg
4-5;
Universitätsbibliothek.)
1295-1304. (Photo: Heid
Passing Around the Blame for B
Eike's declarative statements man

assert the absolute authority of h
law, the court officials and henchm
the severity of the sentence once t
denly, Eike places all the responsib
cases but announced the decision of
a person for a crime draws upon h
applied to the perpetrator. In addit
judge or support him as law requir
law" (2.14).
Such threats may have seemed necessary to urge the judiciary to the man
datory sentencing imposed by the Sachsenspiegel. However, opposing directives
came from outside the law, including from the same God that Eike had invoked as
his advocate. In the first place, Germanic custom worked against application of the
law: according to Whitman, the judge, jurors, and witnesses may have been afraid
of exercising their authority to give a death sentence, for fear of a vendetta against
them by the family of the criminal, which was the old way of settling accounts.49
In the second place, the judge and jury would have feared divine r
since theologians such as Peter the Chanter and his pupil Innocent III w
concerned about spilling human blood, even doing so indirectly by co
miscreant to mutilation or capital punishment.50 At the time Eike was
laws for the Saxons, Thomas Becket's popular cult at Canterbury was
the belief in his posthumous protection of the ordinary victims of b
ments: in the painted glass cycle that surrounded his shrine, the sain
man's life in an ordeal by battle, and restored the organs of a man con
a thief through ordeal by water who had been castrated and blinded.51
for a judge failing to apply mandatory sentencing was far outweighed
that if he condemned an innocent person he would be himself a mur
suffer in hell.52 During the thirteenth century the spiritual burden w
sively shifted from the judge to the witnesses and jury;53 Eike's desc
the judicial system clearly indicate this situation (3.52-61).54 The
presumably shared this burden, since it was he who tortured and kil
in the Sachsenspiegel text and images there is a good deal of equi
for instance, in the pictures the judge is generally left out on a limb w
Schöffen, even though the accompanying text does not infer anythin
composition of the court; having the lordly judge take sole responsib
suit Eike and his fellow users of the book who qualified to serve a
Additionally, dignified executioners and torturers do not visibly shed
cause pain (Figs. 2, 3, 4, 8).
Much that purports to be literal illustration in the Sachsenspiege
on the level of signing and metaphor. Some dramatic mnemonic devic
to convey legal status and operate elsewhere in the book through inte
The Saxon Mirror has many mirrors within it. The sword, for examp
in numerous contexts and is accumulatively constructed as a heavily f
ritual object. As the sword of justice handed by God to the emper
ing into the hands of the judge, it symbolizes authority to pronounc
penalty (Figs. 5, 7; & e.g. fols. 20r-24r); it is wielded for beheadin
by murderers, and in trial by combat (Figs. 2, 3, 8, 12, 14); it is a met
male inheritance and thus is also a class symbol (Fig. 8, register 3); fu
it is used as a powerful mnemonic sign to indicate an individual w
sent into exile, visualized by a sword piercing the outlaw's neck (
pitchfork at the neck, another metaphor, signifies denial of the renew
(Fig. 11). There are even figures with three or four arms or legs, or
as we would say, wearing two hats, or of two minds (e.g. W fols. 72r
tantly unnatural ciphers of this kind are a warning not to take any of
too literally.
-vrr>
Fig.
Fig. 10.
10. AAsword
swordthrough
throughthethe
neck
neck
signifying
signifying
an outlaw
an outlaw
to the
torealm.
the realm.
Sachsenspiegel
Sachsenspiegel
3.16; W3.16;
fol. 44v,
W fol. 44v,
register
register 5.5.(Photo:
(Photo:Herzog-August
Herzog-AugustBibliothek
Bibliothek
Wolfenbüttel.)
Wolfenbüttel.)
Inn fut tamalf ntaj fi mau to utfHumf

Ht vm iiftptf ttfllwtje««
otmifHHttftwt
WW mttar^tfunc mannt
raatme^lyv
$ur bttrrti cms autm matus da®
pitfcjtt fia tcrlirat unfctt
tentttffttölftrlictto untotubt jewcif
mmpiteit
to<5utt9-&t
tee juto în er uvt&remtetsKmir
cr terns tenta uvt&ttm tswtttit
is-toclUiar
is- tertiär tetter
tetter fttie untraltftut tmaait ustutnotc
usmmcttc
fmpmcftp
Cm jSMC'-zuerliCS ati usaö us tmtcbra
toljitfai teljn faltmtcôm
|t votfmc nutvvnGiI bastetmiijttmc
dfjtkimînjf tnmtcmwd|f votc-tatt
d^ktntbt^t'iCRetuttadjrvote-htttut
^ tcnct vot vu fi dty mcHf ttunttürcnltty
\ tsculruouc tut cdjrttot-
tsmlcnctttc umrbtltwtfcrfo
itn cdjcntrt- uwbrtrtwltrû)
rj euvluferl)tnuliD flrttrtitMtttStat
tttvluftrl)ttut(if- tutor fi tuâtnfi tat
■jmleEmsiiefttiprus Ktmfellttetljttto
ufîtnfon-ynlt
jttf ten fotv vnltvol^f
voljtran
anttnoi
ettttttanîctmfi
antnmli
ttttut) fttt ijtt (hrtnt- oti abl)fflt^®cte;
va kottfroti »wun
votltoufrofi ttnnutate
emGunEmditctmaff
mditcn may
Ijcafi icbt$»|utt& votltotlitcttpis
Fig.
Fig. 11.
11. AA pitchfork
pitchforkatatthe
theneck
neck
signifying
signifying
thatthat
the the
renewal
renewal
of a of
fiefa fief
is denied
is denied
(detail).
(detail).
Sachsenspiegel
Sachsenspiegel
4.46;
4.46; W
W fol.
fol.73v,
73v,registers
registers1-2.
1-2.
(Photo:
(Photo:
Herzog-August
Herzog-August
Bibliothek
Bibliothek
Wolfenbüttel.)
Wolfenbüttel.)
Clinging to Traditional Alternatives to Capital Punishment
Bodies that conform to semiotic types and actions, lacking affect

sive gesture, seem to disavow any anxiety about sentencing. Yet t
of authority was also an uneasy matter at another level: by the se
of the thirteenth century, legal proceedings in courts had long repla
vengeance and vendetta—and supposedly also trial by ordeal, which at
had been administered by priests but was forbidden to all jurisdiction
Lateran Council of 1215.55 Eike seems to conform by stating that
retain their old law as long as it does not conflict with the law of Ch
or correct faith" (1.18), yet he still admitted trial by ordeal. In the o
God who decided (Gottes Urteil)—or demonstrated—the guilt or in
the accused. For instance, they were proved innocent if they could
the hot iron, like the Ottonian Empress St. Cunigund accused of infid
her husband; she is famously represented in a thirteenth-century ha
manuscript being led to her trial by two bishops, while her husband, K
II, sits in judgment; when he is proved wrong, all kneel before his w
eration, but he too is ultimately canonized for his chastity.56 Addition
ordeal mentioned by Eike were to completely immerse the accused in
or plunge an arm into boiling water (Figs. 12 and 13). The scalding iro
ing water were choices for people without legal standing because of p
tions (1.39), but a conflict over rights to a fief could not be decided b
"except where the truth cannot be ascertained by the fact-finding pro
In the pictures of ordeals the priest is no longer present, but nor is
unless Eike emphasizes this exception or where an oath is necessary, a
by combat (Fig. 8, bottom register).
Judging cases without recourse to divine intervention placed a gra
on those called on to make decisions affecting human life, especia
nation to capital punishment; and even deciding inheritance cases mig
bloodshed or generations of strife. Eike preferred to adhere to the olde
but Frederick II banned ordeal by battle in 1231, soon after Eike had
important role to trial by combat in his lawbook (1.43, 63; 3.35; Figs. 8
There had been several advantages to this ordeal. It exonerated the judi
deciding between two factions in a civil case. It also suited wealth
because they had the right to hire professional fighters to represent t
were often condemned criminals who had no legal standing of their ow
they fought to the death, a further "benefit" was to dispatch one or th
vict, but it took the sword of justice out of the judge's hand: "Both s
fully armed before the judge and swear—the one that the accusation m
the defendant has been truthfully made, and the other that he is not guilty
>WHW >VWW»WVVW|W|jm|r
»»V» WHWWWW *vww HW WU| wumjj"
want ttjjc ttgc
tttattc uwj «g&tlaj
uuvj mbtbutud^tiowifnidi
S. hmwttodi
hrnnf vs trslittiroalfMfidn)
tiodj ve trsljitiTOalrabfificiim
Ittfotn
ttfhtnattmnc tttittt- ttriitc-
attmrn efttlithmtEfflti
ghrtictottifctttmac
tibf vndultfmafitcr fflttt
imwag
tat \n1ta5 tnb»tfrvtt
mtte rutycs rut|C& ts-vû
tm ttodio tat tu ttort|S tatMw
rajvotttfltwttt
;tal votmtctwt tdj vntcd vstfa
licftthttnttorh
litftditettnorti zanfobda
zrotfobae rnrggj ttn ttTS t cut
MmtlMtotomti
tnarEtflmltttttticmarattfitin
rr»r»T WT»WW»» »»»»» * w I
ftutcldto ft gctt'tticriic tvfo fm ttrt
ttrtcrtitmr rattlr aorntrmrimiom

ft Cut jjttr tkw ttu tqtwirtS'Wic
tvtn ft J i airt t tntcrf) ntt fc liotc- &asjjjuctttc
ffctt rutwtttc oti tuctttc fptotfcMil at
jnftucme <m tot (Urtogt «ccmhnu^c
v$nr trtiwi'dofrlntfttt
Fig.
Fig. 12.
12. Trial
Trialby
byordeal:
ordeal:innocence
innocence
or or
guilt
guilt
proved
proved
by combat,
by combat,
or byorputting
by putting
an arm
aninarm
boiling
in boiling
water. water.
Sachsenspiegel
Sachsenspiegel1.39;
1.39;WWfol.
fol.
19v,
19v,
registers
registers
1-3.1-3.
(Photo:
(Photo:
Herzog-August
Herzog-August
Bibliothek
Bibliothek
Wolfenbüttel.)
Wolfenbüttel.)
jsP*3 .«III '^êÈSè»r.

Fig.
Fig. 13.
13. Trial
Trialby
byordeal:
ordeal:immersion
immersionin in
water
water
(detail).
(detail).
Sachsenspiegel
Sachsenspiegel
3.21; 3.21;
W fol.W45v,
fol.register
45v, register
1. 1.
(Photo:
Herzog-AugustBibliothek
Bibliothek
Wolfenbüttel.)
Wolfenbüttel.)
*>V,
l|RB tnttrt
wts luunc ai) S anbarzHlangt fof
gnditGltttitiftH votlidHit mtw
totcu mtctucliufr ba ticlidi mnc
m Cu -wcttf ftiiqiliumtt fcntavf
uiacnlAbmsutctttanbtttt vttntC
tfntaalc> urarbcmtibnihttl
tmlirwbdcf rnucffe vtifuhTU
ulttlittttt vmfla zwenc (lc«t vn ft
tictt Mi fec$tn {ttti wtntr tin ttttt
. . wiuritmo ■
ate abhc vm wnbmnttf hatiuritcw
n&Ciltttaondjvte wrnfc ttttftwftotU
au ma ni an bwte ob an route ?
mfo^ratif4hu««cllag0iae maja
lictttirotttttmrurai many
ftf«b.nr _
mffibttchewtt m-Imrralitttitta'tbtc
4«« AM tMM -».» Am I i A A—Ft« SmLa 1
Fig. 14. Trial by combat (detail). Sachsenspiegel 1.63-64; W fol. 26r,

26r, registers
registers 1-3.
1-3. (P
(P
August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.)
God may stand by them in combat" (Fig. 14). The custom had a long Ge
tradition, and it persisted long after the ban on jousts and tournaments
at the Second and Third Lateran Councils (1130 and 1179), and after the
ban on trial by battle in 1215.59 Pope Gregory XI condemned the Sachse
1374 for advocating the ordeal, but the text continued to circulate with
ing passages into modern times, and trial by combat was also included
German town lawbooks of the fifteenth century.60
Payment of wergeld to the family for causing a death or injury wa
tional practice that had long offered an alternative to vendetta killings, a
ordeal, its continuance was a mechanism to relieve the judge and jury
sibility for deciding on a more severe punishment; Eike asserted that
killing was involved, speedy settlement of damages on the family mean
murderer could not be sentenced to death. What the law could spell out c
the exact amount to be paid—determined in proportion to the social va
person, as also were the level of fines paid to the courts (Fig. 15).61 At t
end of the scale, people with diminished legal standing had no wergeld
/TV Vl
Vi Vli(
vin
i>rumr
Twtttj
bapay ts ori) tee tttattce jjcuomwefwf;
mfmitrftmr aortitis mattes rote tsfHtfr
vo its mattes J
baptjfwfis . pi
ma tnmfee frijtlKjc ntbufr vtt czcttpi|ui
5tt vttDCc mue ma tvol htfif ft vrot
lstc-ai)
mwm ma icdltdaif
"W.ywwucwt- &" mum: K dniitmcl
u nutiu: icuiiuuueqa
It'S fa1
;M fit] hilcb
Ittfc nriir V» t>i
d nriir vttitîtvnc
dt %{ply hWi
litff bilarfcftii linffbt burnt vtt vaui tffif
itstvtfc
heuitfe- vtT nt
vn ntjalt Itemhairhfttt
cwf ntîiflâic etas
is < tuiflafcfc
m.i
maort) vmitrcfdirtiigt
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Fig.
Fig.15.
15.Payments
Paymentsof wergeld,
of wergeld,
and a and
rape.a Sachsenspiegel
rape. Sachsenspiegel
3.45—47; W
3.45—47;
fol. 48r. W
(Photo:
fol. Herzog
48r. (Photo: Herzog
August
AugustBibliothek
BibliothekWolfenbüttel.)
Wolfenbüttel.)
if a man raped such a woman or forced himself on his lover he is answerab

may receive the death penalty.62
We see very few crimes being committed in the Sachsenspiegel p
books; we instead begin with the corpse, as in murder mysteries by Agatha
tie or Georges Simenon. The exception is a rape scene tucked at the bottom
wergeld page in W, but the trial and execution of the rapist are not show
though the text states that capital punishment may follow this rape of a
with no legal standing (Fig. 15, register 5). However, when adultery and r
elided into one embracing couple and mentioned as capital offenses togethe
beating or abducting a man, beheading is swift for one or more of these of
(Fig. 8, top register). On this point, the visual representation of rape in O i
explicit (even allowing that a postmedieval hand added facial expressions a
tomical detail) and adds the victim's accusing presence at the scene of exe
(Fig. 16). This is one of many cases where the draftsmen of W and O presen
ferent interpretations of the text. Rape cases were fraught with problems
they demanded vengeance on a male perpetrator on account of a female v
However, some very old customs maintained by Eike stood in the way of f
witnesses to a rape. He states that all living witnesses must be killed, even a
in the pictures a hound and a chicken are being decapitated (3.1, W fol. 42
Fig. 9, H fol. 12v).63 Additionally, the house in which a rape occurred wou
destroyed (see Fig. 20, left). If it was the woman's home, reporting the rap
thus give her pause. So the rapist might well go free, although the next c
allows that people responding to the "hue and cry" by bringing the victim a
accused to court do so without risk to themselves if he is not convicted. Ho
the evidence would depend on the woman's word, and the pictures do not sh
in court, so the outcome seems clear. Eike's equivocations are therefore som
clarified by assertions or omissions in the pictures. Yet contradictions als
mine his frequent references to witnesses in other cases.
In reality, potential witnesses were deterred from testifying by the ri
their bodies or souls. Not long after Eike was writing, Vincent of Beauvai
nized that "the witness may easily run the risk of death."64 To counteract this,
Frederick II abolished the ordeal in 1231, he decreed that witnesses to
must be compelled to testify. In the Sachsenspiegel we learn that in certa
where the defendant may "forfeit rights, life or health" the judge and six
must swear as witnesses before they can pass judgment (1.8); but the bailiff
if needed, counts double, and his wergeld is also doubled—presumably to c
the risk he is taking. In the Sachsenspiegel picture books male witnesses s
on relics that literally bring religious solemnity into the courtroom (Fig. 11
register).65 In the Soest manuscript false witnesses are inspired by the dev
a Schöffe folds his arms in disbelief (Soest Illus. VI).
I *1
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Fig. 16. Blood

Blood punishments,
punishments, including
including aa rapist
rapist arrested
arrestedand
andbeheaded.
beheaded.Sachsenspiegel
Sachsenspiegel
2.13; Oldenburg, Landesbibliothek,
Landesbibliothek, CIMCIM 1I 410, fol. 44r,
44r, registers
registers 3-4;
3-4; 1336.
1336. (Photo:
(Photo:
With permission
permission from
from Oldenburger
Oldenburger Sachsenspiegel,
Sachsenspiegel, Faksimile-Edition
Faksimile-Editionder derAkade
Akade
mische Druck- u.u. Verlagsanstalt,
Verlagsanstalt, [Graz:
[Graz: Akademische
Akademische Druck-
Druck-u.u.Verlagsanstalt,
Verlagsanstalt,1995].)
1995].)
Yet another impediment to hearing rape cases and imposing the d

alty is that Eike appeals to ancient precedent to assert that women can
their own case before a judge, because a certain Calefiirnia showed ang
emperor when he ruled against her. Eike says she misbehaved, but other
of the story claim that she showed her hinde schame (literally her hind
shown as a discrete tail in the picture, where she also wags her finger a
rial judge; Fig. 17, 4th register).66 Lacking witnesses (of course), a rape
must raise a hue and cry and immediately present herself in court bearin
evidence—her torn clothing, which is seen immediately below (2.65
scription is negated by the memory of Calefurnia just above her and the
that no court would be in session at the time. And as a general principle
good standing could be cleared of charges by six others who would tes
good reputation under oath (Fig. 11; and e.g., W fol. 27v). The cumulat
dictions surrounding rape cases not only protected witnesses and rapists
the judge and Schöffen who might have had to pronounce a death senten
members of the judiciary had to do was find the right page to cite in th
tome of the Sachsenspiegel, and the pictures would help in the process o
ing them from pronouncing the mandated sentence: they obfuscate the t
Pictures that Challenge Legal Mandates
The nonviolent character of the Sachsenspiegel pictures is very app

comparison with the sets of fourteenth-century pictures accompanying
that belong to the towns of Soest and Zwickau. Other than the Sachsensp
are the only surviving medieval manuscripts of German civil law with s
pictorial cycles. Each manuscript has a different approach to administe
ishments. Very varied representational codes are used in these fourteent
books, as seen in three beheadings (Figs. 1, 2, 18). The executioners belo
ferent social worlds: baby-faced youths in the Sachsenspiegel, uncouth h
with pug noses in Soest, demonic creatures in Zwickau. It also is worth
ing the lacunae in each set: no Schöffen and little violence in the Sachs
no text of the law preserved with the Soest pictures; no court hearings o
in sight to authorize the gruesome acts in Zwickau.67
The Soest Nequam Book is named for the Latin register of "vile an
less" individuals who were outlawed over a period of time, but this has n
do with the pictures even though one shows a forced exile (Fig. 19).68
script is well known to both legal and art historians; and it has been pub
its entirety, including all of the thirteen paintings that were perhaps made f
such register around 1315, tipped into the present book about 1341, and
bound in a different order.69 There is no mention of the law in the Neq
& ttctutbuditagnt
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Fig.
Fig. 17. Wilding:
17. Wilding:
animals run amok;
animals
Calefurnia
runmoons
amok;
the judge;Calefurnia
rape reported withmoons
a hue and athe
cry. judge; rape re
Sachsenspiegel
Sachsenspiegel2.61-64; W fol.
2.61-64;
40v. (Photo:W
Herzog-August
fol. 40v. Bibliothek
(Photo:Wolfenbüttel.)
Herzog-August Bibliothek
and the narratives are now contained in single scenes, since the origina
been lost. The first three pictures as presently bound illustrate some of the
who have judicial powers (archbishop, marshal, town justice). Two of t
pictures show a judge hearing cases, and two other scenes show the crim
thieving and cheating at a board game. Six of the thirteen scenes are
punishments, and ordinary townsmen are frequent observers. The expu
is very different from the symbolic treatment of outlaws in the Sachsenspi
bailiffs kick and push two men into exile beyond the town gate (Figs.
10). Despite the elegant figures and sophisticated painting style that asse
ration of "real" events, there are ciphers in the Soest book that dramatiz
conflict between good and evil in religious terms, such as demons whi
the ears of false witnesses and receiving the exiles (Fig. 19). Supernatu
scarcely appear in the Sachsenspiegel after the first set of pictures, whe
is at Eike's ear and, at the bottom of the page, the serpent tempts Adam, th
a veiy tame devil causes animals to run amok (Figs. 5, 17).70
Less well known to art historians is the Red Book preserved in the
library of Zwickau, a miscellany with city statutes in Latin and Germa
the date 1348 on the first folio, 1353 on the second, and many breaks a
of hand, indicating that it too was written over a period of time.71 Th
little sign of use, though the text is marked for reading aloud. There a
pictures, grouped on both sides of a single folio (Figs. 1, 20, 21, 27). T
panying text has an extract from the familiar Sachsenspiegel passage
with blood punishments for crimes such as rape, adultery, murder, and
other sentences are supplied from imperial or regional law, the tone o
more equivocal than Eike's illocutionary performatives.72 However, in t
in this book both hearing and sentencing are left out, and we have only
application of mandatory punishments, with some embellishment.
The Soest and Zwickau images reach a level of violence scarcely hi
in the Sachsenspiegel, but their perlocutionary force is so extreme that
a challenge to authority, one that threatens to subvert the right to pun
brutal ways. The Soest pictures appeal to the emotions of their viewer
invited to identify with the condemned criminal or with distraught bystand
as the one at the beheading (Fig. 18). On the contrary, the gruesome de
the town lawbook of Zwickau seem calculated to instill fear of the executioner
more than pity for the condemned (Figs. 1, 20, 21, 27). I do not claim these as uni
tary readings, but the actions represented in the Soest and Zwickau picture cycles
create their own verities by a limited range of artistic devices. Most of all, the
cycles could scarcely persuade a learned judiciary to overcome their reluctance to
convict in capital cases.
Fig. 18. Beheading (with penitent convict and a distraught bystander). Soest Nequambuch; Soest
(Westfalia), Stadtarchiv und Wissenschaftliches Stadtbibliothek, MS XI Nr. 107, illus. V; ca. 1315.
(Photo: With permission of Soest Stadtarchiv.)
-2T
C.
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Fig.
Fig.19. Exile.
19. Soest
Exile.
Nequambuch;
SoestSoest Nequambuch\
(Westfalia), StadtarchivSoest
und Wissenschaftliches
(Westfalia), Stadtbi
Stadtarchiv und Wissen
bliothek,
bliothek,MS XI Nr.
MS 107,XI
illus.Nr.
XII. (Photo:
107, With
illus.
permission
XII.of (Photo:
Soest Stadtarchiv.)
With permission of Soest Stadtarch
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Fig.
Fig.20.
20.Capital
Capital
punishments.
punishments.Red Book Red
of Book
Zwickau;
ofZwickau,
Zwickau; Stadt
Zwickau,
und Kreisarchiv,
Stadt und
Codex
Kreisarchiv,
Statu Codex
torumZviccavensium,
torum Zviccavensium, Sign.
Sign. III x 1, III
Nr.x141b,
1, Nr.
fol. 141b, fol. Zwickau,
72r. (Photo: 12t. (Photo: Zwickau, Stadtarchiv.)
Stadtarchiv.)
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Fig.
Fig.21. Capital
21. punishments.
Capital punishments.
Red Book of Zwickau; Zwickau,
RedStadtBook
und Kreisarchiv,
of Zwickau;
Codex Statu Zwickau, Stadt und Kreisarc
torum
torum Zviccavensium,
Zviccavensium,
Sign. III x 1, Nr. 141b,
Sign.
fol. 72v.III
(Photo:
x Zwickau,
1, Nr. Stadtarchiv.)
141b, fol. 72v. (Photo: Zwickau, Stadtarchi
Torture and Purification: The Transformative Power of Suffering
Although the "Middle Ages" invented in the colonial period was notorious
for cruel punishments and torture, the dramatic visual depictions of such actions
occur far more often in sacred Christian contexts than in legal manuscripts.73 On
first sight, it is even possible to confuse some representations of criminals con
demned to torture and capital punishment with representations of the torture and
martyrdom of Christ or the saints who imitated his Passion (as we saw with the
woman beaten in H, Fig. 9). A subtext in these pious images is the Christian doc
trine of purification and atonement by suffering.74
Even alchemy dramatized the concept of purification by "torment." One
writer described purified metals as having been speared, hung, beheaded, and tor
tured on the wheel, while interweaving his commentary with Christological and
Mariological allegories (Figs. 22, 23).75 This theosophical work, known as The
Book of the Holy Trinity and composed in German about 1415-19 by a Franciscan
monk called Ulmannus, blames all impurity on the unchaste behavior of Adam
and Eve. Since the Fall, all metals have been impure, and it follows that they have
to be mortified, just as Christ was killed to take away the sins of the world. In an
image that occurs in two fifteenth-century copies of Ulmannus's book, the woman
headed serpent, who mirrors Eve, pierces the side of Adam in conjunction with
scenes of torture on the wheel and a beheading (Fig. 23).76 Eve (who represents
gold) purifies Adam (silver) by a lance that signifies fire, thus reversing the damage
she inflicted at the Temptation. Adam's side wound must also recall to the viewer
that of Christ (the new Adam), a typological reversal of evil and good, fall and
redemption. Such reverse associations destabilize simple polar readings of good
and evil, martyr and tyrant. Ulmannus justifies violent punishments not only in
relation to the first disobedience but as ritual cleansings. Human suffering embod
ies the purification of metals, much as the punishments inflicted on human bodies
in the lawbooks ensure a society that is purged of evil.
Another place to look for horrific physical punishments is in purgatory and
hell, where the wicked are tortured by the wicked, yet it is God who has judged
them. Suffering in purgatory before the Last Judgment holds out the hope of
salvation by atonement. The visual resonances between legal, hagiographical,
and alchemical images inflect our perception of the visual representations in
the lawbooks, and could therefore have influenced court judgments—but not
unequivocally in the direction of applying corporal punishment. I will engage
with these intervisualities in unraveling the multivalence of the images in the
legal manuscripts.
Beheadings in the Soest Nequam Book and the Zwickau lawbook are dif
ferent enough to raise the question, where is the sword of justice to fall (Figs. 1,
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22. Metals tormented to purify
22. them. Book of the
Metals
Ffoly Trinity; Munich, Bayerische Staatsbiblio
to
thek,
thek,
MS cgm 598, fol. lv; late fifteenth century.
MS (Photo: Munich,
cgmBayerische Staatsbibliothek.)59
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Fig.
Fig.23.23.
Metals
Metals
tormented:
tonnented:
Eve (gold) piercing
Eve (gold)
Adam'spiercing
side (silver).Adam's
Book of the
sideHoly
(silver).
Trinity; Book
Nurem of the Holy Trinity;
berg,
berg, Germanisches
Germanisches
Nationalmuseum,
Nationalmuseum,
MS 80061, fol. 2vb;
MSca. 80061,
1430. (Photo:
fol. Germanisches
2vb; ca. 1430.National
(Photo: Germanisches N
museum.)
18)? The hagiographical resonance in the Soest picture evokes a cry fo

clad in a penitent's shirt, the condemned man kneels submissively
bystander tears his hair like Mary Magdalene at the Entombment of C
boys look down from a tree as they did at Christ entering Jerusalem
crucifixion (Fig. 18). On the contrary, the victim in the beheading in
resonates with satanic figures in hell, and his sentence is all the more v
his hands are bound behind him so that he cannot pray, his upper body
to show an emaciated spine, his half-severed neck spouts and drips blo
1,21). Yet both henchmen are demonized—the pug-nosed face in So
hook-nosed profile in Zwickau are both types normally given to t
tors of Christ and the saints.77 On the page in Zwickau the same figu
above in the guise of the criminal, as if the two classes are indisti
Apparently in these books the torture and punishment of people is no
lofty exercise. Alchemy is different: a fitting civility prevails in the
cal beheadings in the Book of the Holy Trinity that are being carr
elegantly dressed executioners, and the "criminal" in the later copy is
dressed (Figs. 22, 23).
Yet, as in the alchemical "tortures," the beheadings in the Sachsen
pictures are drained of emotion, as if they are ineluctable events. A p
separation of the head from the body symbolically performs the affirm
of the text without any staging to convince the viewer of a real actio
8). This representational code has an equivalent in the hagiographical m
I have characterized as "relicizing," as when St. Agatha's severed breast
a separate identity with the label "mamella" in the late twelfth-century
Bible.78 The same code is applied to a severed hand in the Sachsens
denotes a punishment for grand larceny (3.51, W fol. 48v; also Fig. 3):
hand that stole (or swore falsely on relics) is a condign punishment, rev
criminal act and excising the guilty member. This kind of symbolic m
common in European legal discourses up to modern times.79 The sever
convicts, which could be exhibited as warnings, are counterimages of
of saints and of ex-voto models of cured body parts that were hung in
Condign punishments are heavily freighted, giving them a solemnity t
discourage too-frequent application.
The use of the wheel as an instrument of slow and painful death
seen to stand as a metonymy for "medieval" torture, as it does in Heart
tomontage. Yet it, too, figures in the legends of saints. For example, it
attribute of St. Catherine, along with the sword that ultimately martyre
though the wheel miraculously broke before she could be stretched on
users of the Sachsenspiegel were spared the sight of an actual condem
broken on the wheel; instead, the instrument of torture, held aloft by
men like a shield, is less notable and usable than the wheels of the plow and the
mill on the same page, machines that had been hampered by theft (Fig. 4). The
draftsman seems to overlook the fact that under the law this crime was in the cat
egory of breaking the king's peace, punishable, like murder, by death (2.66). Even
the more "realistic" Soest image of a convict on the wheel with broken and bleed
ing extremities, suspended between sympathetic onlookers on his right and the
henchman to his left, has an allegorical aspect in that the composition resembles
the Crucifixion, with Christ's mockers on one side and his followers on the other
(Fig. 24). In more literal terms the image reenacts the torture of early Christian
saints, such as that of SS. Savinus and Cyprian pictured in the twelfth-century
frescoes of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, or St. George from a thirteenth-century
cycle at Chartres.80
In the Zwickau Red Book, the hack artist (forgive the pun) showed the
convict's legs almost severed, so that they could be threaded on the spokes of
the wheel, as shown behind him (Fig. 21). There are no lay people or priests to
comfort this victim pleading for mercy, and his physiognomy is not of a kind
that would easily draw sympathy from upper-class Schöffen. We have already
encountered his type immediately below as a henchman, but the victim's red
tunic, large nose, and beard were typical marks in the prevalent Christian dis
course of a Jew, including the Sachsenspiegel picture books, though he of course
lacks the conical hat that would securely identify him as such (Figs. 2, 9).81
The demonic hair and beard—and red tunic—appear again on the same page,
in the huge flagellant who draws blood administering the corporal punishment
of haut und haar, while his associate shears the criminal's head. The scene also
is marked by vicarious brutality, the abject victim cudgeled to the ground with
blood spurting from his wounds, without the Christological dignity that I noted
in the pregnant women at the pillory in H, though with some pathos perhaps (Fig.
9). In the Red Book of Zwickau the hanged man in the adjacent frame reverts to a
subhuman caricature. Overall, the images on this page destabilize the notions of
law and order that are asserted by the pictures in W by offering sporadic compas
sion, but more often by placing in question the humanity of both henchmen and
convicts. From the hand of a maladroit draftsman, the repetitions and distortions
of a limited range of physiognomies have a riveting and therefore mnemonic
effect on the viewer.
Old Testament punishments play a less ambiguous role as models for the
draftsmen than do the martyrdoms of saints; some punishments were mandated
by God and others conform to the Old Law, yet they all present another conun
drum through occasional visual echoes with the medieval lawbooks. For instance,
it is impossible to be sure whether depictions of the expulsion of Adam and Eve,
such as on a twelfth-century sculpted capital in Notre-Dame of Clermont, owe
HZ
Fig.
Fig.24.
24.Breaking
Breakingon the
on wheel.
the wheel.
Soest Nequambuch;
Soest Nequambuch;
Soest (Westfalia),
Soest Stadtarchiv
(Westfalia),
undStadtarchiv
Wissenschaftund
liches
lichesStadtbibliothek,
Stadtbibliothek,
MS XI
MSNr.XI107,
Nr.illus.
107,VIII.
illus.
(Photo:
VIII.
With
(Photo:
permission
Withofpermission
Soest Stadtarchiv.)
of Soest Sta
their violent gestures to real scenes;82 this raises the question of whether the Soest
artist drew on biblical imagery more than on events he saw in order to narrate con
victs being thrown into prison and miscreants expelled from the city (Figs. 26,19,
25). In either case, as a consequence of the biblical typology, a punishment often
blandly stated in texts is justified by visual association with divine punishments
in the Old Testament; the resemblance condones the vehemence with which the
bailiffs kick one prisoner and pull his hair, while the other prisoner pulls his own
hair in grief. On one side is violent anger, on the other, extreme contrition—
performatives that assert justice. Even so, the artist adds one equivocation: Paul
Pieper 's commentary on the Soest scene reminds us that a tower with three win
dows would be associated by a medieval audience with the one in which St. Bar
bara was incarcerated by her father to punish her for her Christian belief.83 More
straightforward associations are apparent between those hanged or decapitated
in the lawbooks and evildoers punished under the Old Law. For the paradigm of
hanging as a just punishment, a medieval audience could turn to the episode in
the book of Esther where Ashuerus had Haman sentenced for plotting against the
Jews; or Joshua's sentence on the five kings who had held Gabaon against him, as
seen in a mid-thirteenth-century book that may have instructed French princes.84
The text of Joshua 10 decrees that the evildoers were to be struck down first, and
their bodies then hanged on trees until evening. This dual sentence was given in
France in the fourteenth century, and there is also plenty of chronicle evidence
throughout Europe to indicate that hanging was the commonest form of capital
punishment inflicted on condemned men of the lower classes, and the gallows
outside most townships provided an ongoing spectacle as a deterrent.85
Cruel and Unusual Punishments
The other page with pictures in the Zwickau book plunges us back into a
hellish imaginary world. The most gruesome, shameful, and bizarre death
reserved for an adulterous couple (Fig. 27).86 The accompanying text explains a
fitting punishment: "Whoever robs another of his honor with his wife [and if] o
catches them both in the actual act and if someone wishes to go to court about th
it would be right that one bury them both alive, and one should put two bunch
of thorns, one over them and one under them, and drive a stake through them a
then throw them into the grave."87 The couple is buried together with their ey
open, and positioned as if copulating, thus a condign punishment. The draftsm
emphasizes their sexual union by a stake that is driven through the man's loin
to penetrate the woman's pelvic area. However, such extreme effort to imagin
a punishment that fits the crime so literally places the reality of the punishme
in question, and the string of prerequisites (if x, and if x, and if x) undermines
t
t
! i
Fig.
Fig. 25.
25.Incarceration.
Incarceration.Soest
Soest
Nequambuch;
Nequambuch;
SoestSoest
(Westfalia),
(Westfalia),
Stadtarchiv
Stadtarchiv
und Wissenschaftliches
und Wissenschaftli
Stadtbibliothek,
Stadtbibliothek,MS
MSXIXI
Nr.
Nr.
107,
107,
illus.
illus.
X. (Photo:
X. (Photo:
WithWith
permission
permission
of Soest
ofStadtarchiv.)
Soest Stadtarchiv.)
"K
W^mm
Fig.
Fig.26. Expulsion
26. Expulsion
of Adam and Eve from
of paradise.
Adam Capital and
in the choir,
Eve Notre-Dame-du-Port,
from paradise. Cler Cap
mont-Ferrand,
mont-Ferrand, France; first half France;
of the 12th century.
first (Photo:
half
Foto Marburg/Art
of the Resource,
12th NY.) century. (Phot
un ivuur
ivuur
)\>cr ten
tyertm antcm
antcm Imfmbtt
imfuibrt1
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Fig.
Fig. 27.
27.Adulterous
Adulterouslovers
lovers
coupled
coupled
on aon
stake
a stake
and burie
and
alive
alive (detail).
(detail).Red
RedBook
Book
of of
Zwickau;
Zwickau;
Stadtarchiv,
Stadtarchiv,
Codex
Statutorum
StatutorumZviccavensium,
Zviccavensium,
Sign.
Sign.
Ill xIll
1, x
Nr.
1, 141b,
Nr. 141
fol
72r.
72r. (Photo:
(Photo:Zwickau,
Zwickau,Stadtarchiv.)
Stadtarchiv.)
probability. There are no simple declaratives, such

ing this punishment. Its perlocutionary force dep
the horrific scene, since reasoned assessment sugg
a thick stake through two spines at the pelvic gir
plunged us into a degree of vicarious abjection t
the whole system of legally sanctioned torture.
century descriptions cited by Michel Foucault at t
a man in Paris found guilty of attempted regicide
expiatory torture, including having molten meta
remaining conscious while being drawn and quarte
event, such enhanced descriptions, presumably in
public, were used during the Revolution to suppo
effective, and swift machine for executions.
Two images of a similar punishment, dating f
biblical text may have inspired the scene in Zwick
"Pamplona Bibles" illustrates an event in Num
ished the people of Israel for turning to the Mid
A mixed Israeli-Midianite couple, whose liaison o
elders, was pinned right through in locis genitali
were copulating, by Phineas, son of Eleazor, son of Aaron. God then curtailed the
plague in recognition of this purging.89 The full-page image in the Bible (now in
Augsburg) that was probably made for a woman shows a bearded Phineas (hie
est Phinees) triumphantly carrying the naked couple balanced horizontally on his
upright spear like war trophies, with the approbation of the elders of Israel (Fig.
28a).90 This image demonstrates how visualization of this horrific punishment can
be justificatory if the executioner is calm and authoritative, more in the manner
of the Sachsenspiegel. Some of that authority is drained from the half-page repre
sentation in the twin Bible (now in Amiens) owned by King Sancho of Navarre,
which shows Aaron's grandson as a young man, semi-kneeling to support the
loaded spear, without the accolade of the elders (Fig. 28b). Even so, this dimin
ished henchman has in tum been struck by a sword, evidently added by a viewer
angered at Phineas's action; François Bucher supposes the king could not tolerate
condemnation of his own non-Christian liaisons.
The vehemence of the punishment of the lovers in Zwickau is even more at

odds with prevailing contemporary views of love outside marriage. Churchmen
regarded adultery much like any other venal sin, even though the discourse of
civil law took adultery very seriously as a challenge to patriliny. The discourses
of sacred and civil law were rapidly diverging over the issue of the death penalty,
as we also saw with the ordeal. These divergences are underlined by a case that was
close to home: In 1256 Louis II, Duke of Bavaria, summarily had his wife, Marie
of Brabant, executed on suspicion of adultery, an action that earned him the name
Ludwig der Strenge, "the Harsh." He had to atone for his murderous revenge by
founding the Cistercian Fürstenfeld Abbey, near Munich. But his evil repute lived
on, and in some accounts he was accused of acting in a rage and even of killing other
women with his wife.91 Memory of that event might explain the frenzied appearance
of the henchmen who go about their work with such energy, the dominant figures in
the scene due to their immense size and ferocity.92 Fear of the hangman might influ
ence the behaviors of local observers, but it would hardly aid jurors if they were
mandated to pronounce a death sentence, especially if it was as gruesome as this
one. Pictures have the power to overwrite text. The artist seems to be reacting
ambiguously to the contemporary discourse of "courtly love," in which poems and
songs of the period glorified love outside marriage and thus refused to condemn
adulterous love. Among famous illustrations to this genre are the lyrical images of
courting in an early fourteenth-century collection of German poems known as the
Manesse Codex (Fig. 29).93 Some contemporary poets, notably the Spruchdichter
(poet-singer) Stolle, lamented the unjust death of Marie of Brabant as that of an
innocent victim and modeled her life on that of a martyred saint.94 In keeping with
that sentiment, the lovers in Zwickau are not visibly demonized; they are fashion
ably dressed, with pale complexion, and the woman has an elaborate veil (Fig. 27).
Nj»cuuiMffc
':o?cu fimtff fih^dcATAn. filqAAro ui&i
lacions futtvv Ac mc
4io <Jio
tnîriaiîtiifrt yüyone ittqnfi*
mtti c pft- uirû tfaM
% ft vk_ !
\ y—i V /TT\
--
U' \ lV>ÇP«nflr^'
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, ï/<i I
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.&\\"fffW
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1
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-Si-:Tv •& !
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a MWS^ \
Mb
j te,,Hup4''.iArV'-H
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lupA'tam^^îrAit)Wf.itiru fcilicer -x muhctv îl
t^r>i £j\Ifbd i__ .
Fig. 28a. A mixed Jewish/Mideonite

Fig. couple speared through their genitals by Phineas (detail). Pam 28a. A m
plona Bible, 1194-1212:plona
Augsburg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS Cod.I.2.4.15 (formerly in Harburg), Bible, 1
fol. 78r. (Photo: Augsburg
fol. Universitätsbibliothek). 78r. (Phot
MM . » I "
i/
iijttp tnttt
i^tartr ifit^tt?: ~ijp£>»tr .wbf %m4 MtriTfatp
ill u.
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Fig.
Fig. 28b.
28b.
A mixed
A mixed
Jewish/Mideonite
Jewish/Mideonite
couple speared through
couple their
sp
plona
plona Bible,
Bible,
1194—1212:
1194—1212:
King Sancho's
King
Bible;
Sancho's
Amiens, Bibliothèqu
Bible;
65r.
65r. (Photo:
(Photo:
Amiens,
Amiens,
Bibliothèque
Bibliothèque
Municipale.) Municipale.
Even in Christian art, love outside ma

sculpted tympanum from a church in
lovers Pyramus and Thisbe is rendered
the same sword, as in the narrative, demo
love (Fig. 30).95
We are again confronted with mixe
the draftsman condemns the execution
tortures depicted extend beyond what
how many of these "medieval" punishm
that the courts might hand out or adm
could gossips and sexual offenders be s
in condign punishments that defy natu
of the Last Judgement such as Giotto
that Edgerton took those as real punish
:h
♦w
1i«4)U£ ôAvcrbeuwig'.
l')cr1-)Ug' S>o AYcrbtmvAgt
Fig. 29. Hugo von Werbenweg, amorous couple. Manesse Codex poetry book; Heidelberg Un
bibliothek, MS cpg 848, fol. 252r; upper Rhine ca. 1310. (Photo: Heidelberg Universitätsbib
Fig.
Fig. 30.
30.Suicides
Suicidesofof
Pyramus
Pyramus
and and
Thisbe.
Thisbe.
Tympanum
Tympanum
from the
from the
church
churchof ofSaint-Géry-au-Mont-des-Boeufs,
Saint-Géry-au-Mont-des-Boeufs, Cambrai; ca. 1180.
Cambrai; ca. 1180.
Now
Now atatthe
theMusée
Musée de de
Cambrai,
Cambrai,
Cambrai.
Cambrai.
(Photo:
(Photo:
Hugo Maertens,
Hugo Maertens,
Bruges.)
imagination of the judiciary. In O—the North German recension of the Sachsen

spiegel, dated 1336 and written in the Monastery of Rastede—Eike appears as in
W, with his book and the Holy Spirit. But the Almighty indicates the jaws of hell
on his left, as though divine punishment is the counterpart of the sword of justice
he hands to the emperor (Fig. 31). And hell seems to be the right place for us to
look for the demonization of the wicked and their tormentors.97 In a fifteenth
century French manuscript of the Compendion ystorial, two heterosexual couples
are bound together face to face and roasted on a spit, next to the familiar gallows
(Fig. 32).98 These punishments resonate with the Zwickau pages, but the tortures
in hell postpone capital punishment for eternity. There is a continuity between the
body language of the hideous, overly zealous henchmen who are barely human (as
in Zwickau), and these energetic persecuting demons with flame-like hair and hir
sute limbs. Yet I suggest the inspiration goes the other way, from imaginings of hell
to images of earthly punishment that perform the actions they describe. The role
Nr f%»
o i * "■
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reto Octfthcne.
"tramrtt.îarüttltiu
"tramrttDar ntciic aftictot tok nidit af ne
fyndit. natfcuat nattditc to fee
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Den
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irmcfo setraht m
ftnnt. fo scrmftt
weten.
wetrn.l)nn ttdttr ncftil neman
"ban h
trditr ncfirt neman
,,nrtofat leutnodi left, torn

netmfen nod) V
leue.nod) leto. torn nod?
Ij ^ • ' '
Srfr.
*.k 0 ot is feilten trgt Dar "
grft- ob is f
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H * umme
* is erne itgt Icf. to öat ßn S
ummc ts cmrirgt
ft
fcftd) alle note, tenfidi
en gîte ruhte Jp allctioie.ttn
ttantan gotrs
gotes haltten teuolm ft.oar W Rnlncn
fcalftndtten.alft
fe gotes ton toi ft
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* ftngtntRtc gmetthken otter Ihr
fingtritRtt gmcW
pninodje.
gait motije. s oD te Dar ta üc £ oO
::
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temaUete
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orten
FigFig.
. 31. Eike inspir31.
ed to write Eike
the law; and the sword
inspired
of justice given to the emperor,
to wiwrite
th the law; and the sword of justice given to the emperor, with
helhell
l to God's left. to
SachsenspiGod's
egel prologue; Oldenburg,
left. Landesbibliothek,
Sachsenspiegel
CIM I 410, fol. prologue; Oldenburg, Landesbibliothek, CIM I 410, fol.
6r;6r;
1336. (Photo:1336.
With permission from
(Photo:
Oldenburger SachsenspiWith
egel, Faksimile-Editpermission
ion der from Oldenburger Sachsenspiegel, Faksimile-Edition der
Akademi
Akademische
sche Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt [Graz: AkademiDruck-
sche Druck- u. Verlagsanstal
u.t, 1995]Verlagsanstalt
.) [Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1995].)
Fig.
Fig. 32.
32.Scene
Sceneininhell
hell
(detail).
(detail).
Compendion
Compendion
ystorial;
ystorial;
Paris, Paris,
Bibliothèque
Bibliothèque
nationalenationale
de de
France,
France,MS MSfr.
fr.9186,
9186,fol.fol.
298v.
298v.
(Photo:
(Photo:
Bibliothèque
Bibliothèque
nationale
nationale
de France.)
de France.)
of these henchmen is not for the viewer to identify with their anger, but for their
cruel actions and uncontrollable rage to terrify the adjudicators into leniency. The
henchmen warn about excess and possible injustice by presenting a counterimage
of the normative demeanor of professional executioners.
The demonic appearance of the executioners in the Zwickau book is even
more apparent if we look at earlier depictions of demons that were anatomically
human, with wide grimacing features and often flame-like hair. Two such winged
devils hang Judas Iscariot on an early twelfth-century capital in St.-Lazare of Autun.
They resemble earlier depictions of Ira in Psychomachia manuscripts, a resonance
that also applies to the fourteenth-century executioners." A chained devil in a copy
of the late twelfth-century Rhenish Hortus Deliciarum has an only slightly less
aggressive grimace, perhaps bordering on despair.100 The diabolic body language
of the henchmen in the lawbook would have reminded conventional viewers that
such creatures were sure to await the criminal in the afterlife, but this attitude
changed in the course of the fourteenth century.
Between Ordeal and Torture: the New Role of Repentance
Two of the Soest pictures provide a vivid insight into changing attitudes to
justice, salvation, and punishment as the fourteenth century went on. Revisionary
inscriptions were added to each at different times. One picture has a shorn prisoner
being ducked—literally flung—into the large town pond from a seesaw

tion (die Wippe) (Fig. 33). A ducking such as this is enacted every year
for fun, but in medieval times it might be less certain that a real misc
swim.101 Legal historians are aware of the custom of punishing tradesm
for selling short, especially bakers.102 The practice bears a nebulous rela
other judicial immersions: As we saw, trials by ordeal were no longer
by the church after the Lateran Council of 1215, but long before then
had Christianized ordeals, such as having someone "walk the plank"—
or not they could swim. Whatever it meant at the time of painting this
cursive Latin inscription above the frame is an addition, and another ha
a Lambertus Sanikelenhovet inscribed within the frame.103 The Latin
tion from Revelation 14:13: "Opera enim illorum secuntur [for sequun
(For their works follow them)—whether to cleansing water or to hell,
the downward motion of the accused, whose head has already been shor
aggressive gestures of the crowd. Yet if we expand the biblical text, we
voice from heaven says, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. Fro
forth now, sayeth the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors. For the
follow them." The message there is that those who die prayerfully will
the next life, but abbreviation of the scriptural passage leaves the accus
the balance—as it would be in a trial by ordeal; yet whatever the outcom
inscription offers the possibility of forgiveness.
The other scene in the Soest Nequam Book that has an added in
shows a man about to be beheaded who is garbed as a penitent (Fig. 18
invisibly scrawled on the blue ground over him is "Sprich ein Ave Ma
Rose, damit meine Seele Erlösung finde" (Say a Hail Mary, to the pure
by it bring about the salvation of my soul); from his mouth comes "A
The convict's penitential humility is of course an essential aspect of th
composition of circa 1315, and reflects new attitudes to prisoners on de
1312 Pope Clement V had forbidden the denial of penitence to the cond
it was customarily given in the Rhineland; Esther Cohen reports that "S
had two special chapels for this purpose, one near the gallows and anoth
bridge from which drownings took place." By the late fifteenth centu
von Keiserberg demanded that the condemned also receive the Sacrame
inscription may have been added to emphasize that the condemned
hope for the salvation of his soul: he professes his faith as if he goes to
dom. One male onlooker is none the less distraught, although 1 have alr
that his gesture resonates with Mary Magdalene's at the entombment
The notion of spiritual reprieve could free the judiciary of the burden
convicts to hell without confession or sacrament, since their sufferin
seen as atonement.
' t ~YVf
c ' Yw *
i n,.
, hi\< tpnrr
tp^r *r
<t .g.
r
^ U «. - #■ to g •
ouui CJWW
£^0"4 AW ',,'"c'1
uU^ n U,
f^Xdâ)iuf"
Fig.
Fig.33. Ducking.
33. SoestDucking.
Nequambuck, Soest (Westfalia),
Soest Stadtarchiv
Nequambuck,
und Wissenschaftliches Stadtbi
Soest (Wes
bliothek,
bliothek,MS XI Nr. 107, illus.
MS XIII. XI
(Photo: Nr.
With permission
107, of Soest
illus.
Stadtarchiv.)
XIII. (Photo: With
Ideally, in the symbolic realm of the Mirror of the Saxons, vengefu

are placed in question by the Christian teleology of purification through
Victims, perpetrators, and audience are expected to play their roles in
fication as a consensual community. The ideological work of the legal
to cement the connection between civil law and that higher right, dem
collusion of jailer and victim in a system that maintained social order. R
reflections of events taking place in the three recognized ritual spaces o
room, the street, and the gallows, the pictures provided a fourth site of
ritual exchange without demanding action. Alternatively, scenes of gr
lence of the sort seen in the Soest and Zwickau lawbooks could subvert the ideol
ogy of lawfulness by highlighting societal anxieties, especially those surrounding
the taking of human life.105
On close analysis, the images of blood punishments reviewed here are nota
ble for their complexity, even in the interplay between text and image. Eike's own
assertions are often contradicted by him later or by the pictures—as was the case
for rape trials. Confused identities are compounded in Zwickau (and occasionally
in Soest) by indiscriminately negative images of both convicts and henchmen. At
times, in the context of the lawbook the pictures question the wisdom and moral
ity of severe sentences. Yet the criminal is no saint (with the exception of some in
Soest). Henchmen may be equally churlish, even demonic, regardless whether they
flagellate Christ or a miscreant, and some convicts have a calm and passive affect,
a sign of sanctity.106 These escatological associations appear to stage an inversion
of good and evil that was a major focus of my previous thinking.107 Where, I pon
dered, is God's justice if virtuous saints and wicked criminals receive the same
treatment? How can the viewer know when to sympathize with the tormented and
when to triumph with the tormentor? Some years ago I devised a wheel diagram
that makes the point that a scene of the good king or judge ordering the execution
of a criminal is almost indistinguishable from the wicked Roman emperor order
ing the torture and martyrdom of a saint; the pairs balance each other on diagonal
spokes, with good up and bad down (Fig. 34, left).
Viewed now within a postcolonial framework, my wheel was an arbitrary
construct that endeavored to press the moral axes of condemnation into binary
polarities.108 When I deconstruct the polarities by extracting the spokes of the
wheel from the diagram, the distinctions collapse (Fig. 34, right). It is precisely the
lack of a structuring principle in the cultural legacies and legal situations we have
been looking at that caused anxiety and confusion. The judiciary had to fear divine
(and possibly human) retaliation if they wrongly condemned a man to death, but
they could also be punished for not sentencing the guilty. They turned on the rim
Good Ruler
or
Bad Ruler
Tortures and/or Kills
Criminal
or
Saint
Criminal
Criminal ' Bad
" Bad âint
Punished Ruler
Fig.
Fig.34. The wicked
34. torturing
Theandwicked
killing the good, and good judges ordering blood
torturing and
punishments
punishmentsfor the wicked. Binaryfor
construction,
the left (Drawing:
wicked. Author, 2002);
Binary
decon
structed,
structed,right (Drawing: Author
right 2009.) (Drawing: Author 20
of the wheel as if it were fortu

images that sometimes support t
times subvert both. Legal and th
ciary, and the conduct of the co
uncertainties continued during t
already expressed doubts about t
cium Dei: "As everyone knows,
whereas good people are not per
wars and legal judgments. This i
to man to understand."109
It has taken me years to unra
of this body of fourteenth-centur
from insights gained through le
ized reading that allows for am
few certainties in this material
noticed in these purportedly sec
beliefs and practices. Oral tradi
fundamental changes, ones that
the Sachsenspiegel (it is too, too
plunge the viewer into a living he
from ordeals, Schöffen were exp
a fellow human to death, and t
The moral burden of the secular judiciary was only slightly alleviate
theologians decided that condemned people could save their souls by
before their execution. I do not doubt that capital punishment was carr
think it is because images that were informed by anxiety and uncertain
taken literally that "the Middle Ages" gained such a bad reputation f
and cruelty.
NOTES
This paper is dedicated to Pamela Sheingorn in recognition of her scholarly achievements a

gratitude for her critiques and discussions over the years. An earlier version was given in "Lim
Spaces: A Symposium in Honor of Pamela Sheingorn" at Princeton University in October 2009.1
beholden to Mitchell Merback's generous and critical reading for many improvements in this te
Emily Monty and Orsolya Mednyänszky for help with texts and images, and to Volker Schier
helped me obtain images from German libraries.
1. My late long-time colleague Charles G. Nelson contributed much to the ideas and te
readings I give here, which were in preparation for a jointly authored book. Also, in addit
works cited below, my thinking was influenced by: Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The M
and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Lisa Silverman, Tor
Subjects: Pain, Truth, and the Body in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago
2001); Hunt Janin, Medieval Justice: Cases and Laws in France, England and Germany, 500
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004); and Bruce B. Lawrence and Aisha Karim, eds., On Violen
Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), especially the essay by Walter Benjamin
tique of Violence," 268-85 (originally in his Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographica
ings [New York: Schocken Books, 2007]). An outstanding, thick history of condemnation to dea
the US is Daniel R. Williams, Executing Justice: An Inside Account of the Case of Mumia Abu-J
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001).
2.1 use the term blood punishment to include the severe corporal and capital punishments
were decided in the high lay courts under the rubrics "peinliche Gerichtsbarkeit" and "Blut
tsbarkeit"; see F. Metzbacher, "Hochgerichtsbarkeit," in Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rec
schichte, ed. Adalbert Erler and Ekkehart Kaufmann, vol. 2 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1978), 1
Theoretically "sentences of blood" were not given in the church courts; see Peter Clarke, "The
eval Clergy and Violence: An Historical Introduction," in Violence and the Medieval Clergy
Gerhard Jaritz and Ana Marinkovic, CEU Medievalia 16 (Budapest, New York: Central Euro
University Press, 2011), 3-16, at 9.
3. For instance: Cristelle L. Baskins, "Gender Trouble in Italian Renaissance Art Histo
Two Case Studies," Studies in Iconography 16 (1994): 1-36; Ariel Glucklich, Sacred Pain: Hu
the Body for the Sake of the Soul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Amanda Rose
Luyster, "The 'Femme-aux-Serpents' at Moissac: Luxuria (Lust) or a Bad Mother?," in Be
Magic and Religion, ed. Sulochana R. Asirvatnam, Corinne Ondine Pache, and John Wa
(Oxford: Rowmon and Littlefield, 2001), 165-91; Robert Mills, "A Man is Being Beaten,"
Medieval Literatures 5 (2002): 115-53; Anke Bernau, "A Christian Corpus: Virginity, Violenc
Knowledge in the Life of St Katherine of Alexandria," in St Katherine of Alexandria: Text
Contexts in Western Medieval Europe, ed. Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis (Turn
2003), 109-30; Mitchell B. Merback, "The Living Image of Pity: Mimetic Violence, Peac
ing and Salvific Spectacle in the Flagellant Processions of the Later Middle Ages," in Imag
Medieval Sanctity: Essays in Honour of Gary Dickson, ed. Debra Higgs Strickland, Visua
the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 135-84; Robert Mills, "Can the Virgin Martyr Speak?
Medieval Virginities, ed. Anke Bernau, Truth Evans, and Sarah Salih (Cardiff: 2003), 187-213;
Stavroula Constantinou, Female Corporeal Performances: Reading the Body in Byzantine Pas
sions and Lives of Holy Women, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia, 9
(Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2005), 109-30; David Frankfurter, "Martyrology and the Prurient
Gaze," Journal of Early Christian Studies 17 (2009): 215-45. Fuller consideration in relation to
"gaze theory," with extensive bibliography, is in: Madeline H. Caviness, Visualizing Women in
the Middle Ages: Sight, Spectacle, and Scopic Economy, ed. Ruth Mazo Karras, The Middle Ages
Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 83-133 and 216-19, esp. chap. 2:
"Sado-Erotic Spectacles, Breast Envy, and the Bodies of Martyrs."
4. This situation is in marked contrast with English law, which always operated in a case law
system, without a written code. Anthony Musson, "Crossing Boundaries: Attitudes to Rape in Late
Medieval Europe" (in Boundaries of the Law: Geography, Gender, and Jurisdiction in Medieval and
Early Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Musson [Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2005], 84-101, at 85-86), warns that chronicle and literary texts are unlikely to be reliable reflections
of "how the law operates internally as a system"; and further, in interpreting penalties, "juries may be
taking their own view of the case." Robert Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial
Ordeal offers the same caution concerning the disjuncture between the law and practice ([Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1986], 62).
5. Edward Peters, Torture, exp. ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 54.
What is certain is that torture was little used in the twelfth century and had enormously increased in
severity and sheer cruelty by the time of the sixteenth-century inquisitions.
6. Richard van Dülmen, Theater of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany,
trans. Elisabeth Neu (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990); Esther Cohen, The Crossroads of Justice: Law
and Culture in Late Medieval France, ed. A. J. Vanderjagt et al., Brill's Studies in Intellectual History
36 (Leiden, New York and Köln: E. J. Brill, 1993).
7. Trisha Olson, "The Medieval Blood Sanction and the Divine Beneficence of Pain: 1100—
1450," Journal of Law and Religion 22 (2006/2007): 63-129, at 63-64. She goes on to argue, based
on a wealth of theological sources, that the painful death of the convict had a conciliatory role in late
medieval society.
8. Merback, "Living Image of Pity," 135-80.
9. Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punish
ment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 104, citing
Leon Wieseltier's definition of realism.
10. Even now we find Thomas Carlisle's famous formula used to introduce the theme of vio
lence: "It is a commonplace that the Middle Ages were violent. Life then was demonstrably 'nasty,
brutish and short.' In medieval society war was a frequent event, and violence, or the threat of it, was
often used to resolve disputes." The author goes on to discuss warfare and crime, including blood
punishments: Clarke, "Medieval Clergy and Violence," 3.
11. Merback, The Thief, 305-6 and fig. 119. To the left of the figure in Tübingen is the shield of
St. George.
12. Samuel Y. Edgerton, Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Punishment in the Floren
tine Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 27. He does not cite specific lawbooks or
records, but the reference must be to the town books of Soest and or Zwickau.
13. Merback, The Thief, illustrated two scenes of death on the wheel by Diebold Schilling in the
Luzerner Chronik of 1509-13 (figs. 45,46), one of which shows the murderer Duckeli, who had died in
1492. In Florence a series of paintings made for the Bargello record the crime, trial, and hanging in 1501
of a young man called Rinaldesci, who had thrown horse dung at a statue of the Virgin Mary: William
J. Connell and Giles Constable, Sacrilege and Redemption in Renaissance Florence: The Case of Anto
nio Rinaldeschi, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler, Publications of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance
Studies, Essays and Studies 8 (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2005).
14. This is not the place for more than a critical glance at that literature. Among ear
were Karl von Amira, Die germanischen Todesstrafen: Untersuchungen zur Rechts- und
schichte, Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-p
und historische Klasse 31, no. 3 (München: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der W
1922); and Hans Fehr, Das Recht im Bilde (Erlenbach-Zurich, Munich, Leipzig: Eugen
lag, 1923). Guido Kisch, The "Jewish Execution " in Mediaeval Germany and the Recept
Law (ed. A. Giuffè, vol. 2, Estrato dagli studi in memoria di Paolo Koshaker "L'Europ
Romano" [Milano: Multa Paucis, 1954]) and the editors of the Sachsenspiegel manuscr
the tradition of regarding the pictures as more or less accurate illustrations of something r
the text. Friedrich Scheele, Di sal man alle radebrechen: Todeswürdige Delikte und ih
in Text und Bild der Codices picturati des Sachsenspiegels ([Oldenburg: Isensee, 1
discusses other possible functions of the pictures, but generally believes in their veracit
of real executions. One historian attributes a medieval taste for gruesome punishments
uncivilized state as compared with ours; see Wolfgang Schild, "Das Problem der Grausam
Gerichtsbarkeit, ed. Wolfgang Schild (Munich: Callwey, 1980), 92-101.
15. Edith Rothe, Medieval Book Illumination in Europe: The Collections of the Ge
cratic Republic, trans. Mary Whittall (New York: Norton, 1968), 214, pi. 59.
16. James Q. Whitman, The Origins of Reasonable Doubt (New Haven, CT: Yale
Press, 2008). His thesis concerning medieval attitudes to "moral comfort" in deciding g
ishment is presented in chaps. 1-4.
17. Maria Dobozy, The Saxon Mirror: A Sachsenspiegel of the Fourteenth Centur
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999], 1-33), offers a useful introduction to th
18. Numerous editions and studies of the text have been compiled by Kisch and
Guido Kisch, "Sachsenspiegel-Bibliographie," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftungfür Recht
Germanistische Abteilung 90 (1973): 73-100; and Hiram Kümper, Sachsenspiegel: Ein
phie—mit einer Einleitung zu Überlieferung, Wirkung und Forschung, Bibliographische
der Deutschen Bibliothek (Nordhausen: Verlag Traugott Bautz, 2004).
19. This is not the place to debate the issue of the prior existence of a Latin vers
suffice it to say that no such original text has been found, and even if it did exist in a few
copies, it evidently had little influence. The pictures were clearly created for the middle
since they incorporate the initial letters of that version.
20. Eike (Eckhart) was of a line of hereditary jurors (Schöffenbare) of the lesser no
lis); Schöffen formed the body that heard and decided cases. He held the rank of minis
Count of Anhalt, who would have presided as judge over his own court; see Karl Aug
Sachsenspiegel, vol. 4, Eikes von Repchow und Hoyer von Falkenstein, ed. Historische
Werralandes, Germanenrechte Neue Folge, Land- und Lehnrechtsbücher (Hannover:
sche Buchhandlung, 1966), 25. Eike also witnessed charters for Hoyer and for the abbot
For details of his career and learning, see Peter Landau, "Der Entstehungsort des Sa
Eike von Repgow, Altzelle und die anglo-normannische Kanonistik," Deutsches Archiv f
ung des Mittelalters 61 (2005): 73-101.
21. Dobozy, Saxon Mirror, 6 and n. 8. She cites modern scholars who have reached
sion regarding some of the changes around the time Eike was writing.
22. Some 460 extant manuscripts testify to its spread west, south, and to the n
speaking East; see Heiner Lück, Über den Sachsenspiegel: Entstehung, Inhalt und W
Rechtbuches, mit einem Beitrag zu den Grafen von Falkenstein im Mittelalter von J
malla, ed. Boja Schmuhl, 2nd ed., Veröffentlichungen der Stiftung Schlösser, Bergen
des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt (Dössel, Germany: Janos Stekovics, 2005), 23. A great num
were cataloged by Ulrich-Dieter Oppitz in Deutsche Rechtsbücher des Mittelalters,
der Rechtsbücher, vol. 1 (Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, 1990-92), 3.
23.1 have made this point in relation to the townhall of Lüneburg in Madeline H. C
Law (En)acted: Performative Space in the Town Hall of Lüneburg," in Glas, Malerei, Forschung:
Internationale Studien zu Ehren von Rüdiger Becksmann, ed. Hartmut Scholz, Ivo Rauch, and Daniel
Hess (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 2004), 181-90; and I expand on that thesis in
a book in preparation.
24. Dobozy, Saxon Mirror.
25. W is available online: "Sachsenspiegel Online," Herzog-August Bibliothek, http://www.
sachsenspiegel-online.de/export/index.html. A complete print facsimile is also available: Eike Von
Repgow, Sachsenspiegel: Die Wolfenbütteler Bilderhandschrift Cod. Guelf. 3.1 Aug. 2°; Faksimile
band (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993). The Dresden manuscript (D: 1295-1363) was published in
black and white and more recently in color, although it was severely water damaged following World
War II; see Karl von Amira et al., Die Dresdener Bilderhandschrift des Sachsenspiegels, vol. 1.1,
Facsimile der Handschrift (Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann, 1902; repr. Osnabrück 1962); and Heiner
Lück, ed. Die Dresdener Bilderhandschrift des Sachsenspiegels: Interimskommentar (Graz, Austria:
Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 2002).
26. All four books are conventionally named for the locations of the libraries where they are now
preserved: Heidelberg (H), 1295-1304; and Oldenburg (O), 1336. H is online at: "Cod. Pal. germ.
164, Heidelberger Sachsensdpiegel," Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, http://diglit.ub.uni
heidelberg.de/diglit/cpgl 64/; see also Walter Koschorreck, Der Sachsenspiegel: Die Heidelberger
Bilderhandschrift cod.pal.germ. 164 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Insel Verlag, 1989). O is in facsimile:
Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, ed., Der Oldenburger Sachsenspiegel: Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe im
Originalformat des Codex picturatus Oldenburgensis CIM1410 der Landesbibliothek Oldenburg, 3
vols. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995-96); available online at http://digital.lb-oldenburg.de/ssp/nav/
classification/137692. A Tufls University Faculty Research Award in the summer of 1999 allowed
Charles Nelson and me a period of study in Germany to examine the manuscripts discussed here.
27. "Ita quod per absenciam illorum iura parentum suorum fuerunt iuve / nibus militaribus tunc
existentibus multum incognita et in ipsis sepius claudicabant," fols. 133v-134r; Schmidt-Wiegand,
ed., Der Oldenburger Sachsenspiegel, vol. 2, pp. 331-32. I am grateful to Steven Marrone for help
with the translation.
28. Madeline H. Caviness, "Putting the Judge in his P(a)lace: Pictorial Authority in the Sachsen
spiegel," Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege (Festschrift für Ernst Bacher) 54
(2000): 308-20.
29. For example, Günter Jerouschek, "Busse, Strafe und Ehre im frühen Mittelalter: Ein Beitrag
zur Entstehung und Begründung peinlichen Strafens," in Karl von Amira zum Gedächtnis, ed. Peter
Landau, Hermann Nehlsen, and Mathias Schmoeckel, Rechtshistorische Reihe 206 (Frankfurt a.M.:
Peter Lang, 1999), 231-44.
30. Warren C. Brown, "A Saxon Mirror," in Violence in Medieval Europe, ed. Warren C. Brown,
The Medieval World (Harlow, UK: Longman, 2011), 222-53, at 232. The author cites the example
of an outlaw who can only reverse his status if he "fights a joust before the emperor's retinue and
prevails over a foreign king"—the stuff of romance.
31.1 have benefitted from Charles Nelson's long-standing interest in speech act theory and
especially linguistic performatives; several conference papers he gave in the 1980s used linguis
tics as a way of examining cultural norms and belief systems that are imbedded in the great Ger
man epics. I recall a paper on Parzival that he gave at Kalamazoo for which he studied speech
act theory with a member of the Philosophy Department at Tufts University, and he published
some more recent reflections; see Charles G. Nelson, "Hrotsvit von Gandersheim: Madwoman
in the Abbey," in Women as Protagonists and Poets in the German Middle Ages: An Anthology
of Feminist Approaches to Middle High German Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen, Göppinger
Arbeiten zur Germanistik 528 (Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1991), 43-55; Charles G. Nelson,
"Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Reflections on the Performance of Authority in Eike von Repgow's
Sachsenspiegel," in The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Imagery in Honor of
Madeline Harrison Caviness, ed. Elizabeth Carson Pastan, Evelyn Staudinger L

Shortell (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 367-81; and Charles G. Nelson, "Are We Be
Yet? Innocents Abroad and Sachsenspiegel Scholarship," Different Visions 1 (2008
differentvisions.org/issuelPDFs/Nelson.pdf.
32. At a conference in the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University in
Sheingorn commented on one of our early papers on the representation of women in
gel, published as Madeline H. Caviness and Charles G. Nelson, "Silent Witnesses, A
and the Law Courts in Medieval Germany," in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Repu
eval Europe, ed. Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca: Cornell University
47-72. She suggested that we consider performativity in relation to the images. Shein
published major explorative studies of visual images in relation to performative
ing how the illustrations lead the reader through the textual experience of a drama;
Flanigan, Kathleen Ashley, and Pamela Sheingorn, "Liturgy as Social Performance:
Definitions," in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan a
ter (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001), 695-714; and Robert
Pamela Sheingorn, "Performative Reading: The Illustrated Manuscripts of Arnoul Gré
de la Passion,'" European Medieval Drama 6 (2002): 129-54.
33. The standard sources from philosophers of language include J. L. Austin, How
With Words, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962); John Sear
An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
explicators Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (New York:
sity Press, 1997), 24-26, 71-74, and 90-104; and Sandy Petrey, Speech Acts and Li
(New York, London: Routledge, 1990), 3^11. For a more complete recent bibliograp
Gu, "The Impasse of Perlocution," Humanities: Chinese Academy of Social Science
171-201, at 199-200.
34. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New
ledge, 1990), 24-25, 136, 39-41.
35. To quote Charles Nelson: "When [Eike] describes a law, custom, or judicial p
with diminished legal capacity have no wergeld' his utterance becomes the perform
that. . .')," Nelson, "Are We Being Theoretical Yet?", 7.
36. Culler, Literary Theory, 94.
37. Dobozy's translation "God is Law itself' is plausible though I prefer the em
himself: Dobozy, Saxon Mirror, pi. 2, pp. 66-67.
38. Ibid., 49. Schöffen served the court by hearing and deciding cases. They had m
bility than modem jurors, whereas the medieval judge only presided and announced t
39. Since it is very easy to find any place in Dobozy's translation of W, I will ref
book and section of the law in the main text and captions (e.g., 3.1).
40. An image of the Christ-Child cradled in an imposing leather-bound book, d
that the Word became flesh, is in the Rohan Hours of ca. 1430-35 (Paris, Bibliothèq
France, MS lat. 9471, fol. 133r). See Lesley Smith, "Scriba, Femina: Medieval Depict
Writing," in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. Lesley Smith
Taylor (London: The British Library; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 20—
2.1 owe my introduction to this image to Ron Akehurst, but I have not found an earli
41. Herford, Kommunalarchiv, MS Msc. 1, fol. Iv. As Charles Nelson noted, th
"cites, elaborates on, and interprets Cicero, Cato, and Aristotle on the virtues city fa
nities of citizens, and the advantages of city life, all for the purpose of legitimizing
See Madeline H. Caviness and Charles G. Nelson, "Women's Bodies, Women's Pro
Ownership under the Law; In the Aidekman Arts Center, Tufts University, Novem
ber 15, 1998," http://dca.tufts.edu/features/law/ (with images). The lawbook is re
entirety in Theodor Helmert-Corvey, ed., Rechtsbuch der Stadt Herford: Faksim
Originaformat der illuminierten Handschrift aus dem 14. Jahrhundert, Kommentarband (Bielefeld:
Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 1989). The preface, with the references to classical authors, is on fol.
IVr; it is analyzed by Eckhard Freise, "Biographisches zum Verfasser der Herforder Rechtsbuchs," in
Helmert-Corvey, Rechtsbuch der Stadt Herford, 226-34.
42. A detailed description, and interpretation in light of the text is in Ulrike Lade-Meserschmied,
"Die Miniaturen des Rechtsbuches der Stadt Herford," in Helmert-Corvey, Rechtsbuch der Stadt
Herford, 198-207.
43. However, the author frequently cites (twenty-seven times in all) the "Saxon law" as an authori
tative source—e.g., fol. 11 v; see Helmert-Corvey, Rechtsbuch der Stadt Herford, 50-51, 74—77, 226.
Some citations are not identified by the author; see Dagmar Hüpper, "Sachsenspiegelrezeption im
Rechtsbuch der Stadt Herford," in Helmert-Corvey, Rechtsbuch der Stadt Herford, 160-81.
44. Norbert H. Ott commented on the calm mood in "Vorläufige Bemerkungen zur 'Sachsen
spiegel'-Ikonographie," in Text-Bild-Interpretation: Untersuchungen zu den Bilderhandschriften des
Sachsenspiegels, ed. Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand (Munich: Fink, 1986), 33-43, at 41.
45. Of the text, 44% is concerned with procedures and only 26% with crimes, according to
Dobozy, Saxon Mirror, 16.
46. Charles G. Nelson, "The Face(s) of the Law in the Sachsenspiegel," paper presented at
the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, England, July 12, 2006. It has long been recognized
that hand gestures are systematically encoded; see Karl von Amira, Die Handgebärden in den Bil
derhandschriften des Sachsenspiegels, Abhandlungen der Königlichen Bayerischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, I. Kl. 23, no. 2 (Munich: Verlag der Königlichen Bayerischen Akademie der Wis
senschaften, 1905). See also Lade-Meserschmied, "Miniaturen," 185-200.
47. The Lehnrecht (Lnr) in book 4, incorporating feudal law affecting the gentry, frequently
shows armies being mustered, but no violent individual crimes and punishments.
48. Augustine exonerated the judge since it is the law that kills, not he; Whitman, Reasonable
Doubt, 39.
49. Ibid., 10-11.
50. Ibid., 89-90, 110.
51. Madeline H. Caviness, The Windows of Christ Church Cathedral, Canterbury, Corpus Vit
rearum Medii Aevi, Great Britain 2 (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy,
1981), 176, 89-91, figs. 241- 42, 79-85.
52. Whitman, Reasonable Doubt, 110.
53. Ibid., chaps. 4 and 5, pp. 91-157.
54. For a more detailed overview of the various jurisdictions, see Dobozy, Saxon Mirror, 18-20.
55. Whitman, Reasonable Doubt, 10-11, 17, 48, 52-53.
56. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS R.B. Msc. 120, fol. 32v; see Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Mar
riage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 119—
20, 28-31.
57. Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water, 76, 123-24.
58. Ibid., 112.
59. Ibid., 103^4. An overview of the tradition, its proponents, and its critics is given by Mathias
Schmoeckel, "Glaube und Glaubwürdigkeit vor Gericht: Ordale im Spannungsfeld von Recht und
Gesellschaft," in Landau, Nehlsen, and Schmoeckel, Karl von Amira zum Gedächtnis, 291-308.
60. Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water, 130-31.
61. Gold and silver coin had to be paid for rulers and Schöffen, grain or tools for workers, hay
for illegitimate children, and "minstrels and all those who have given themselves into bondage are
awarded the shadow of a man. Champions and their children receive in compensation the reflection
of a shield against the sun" (3.45-47, W fol. 48r). People who have lost their legal rights by stealing
receive two brooms and a pair of scissors, no doubt referring to haut und haar, illegitimate people
receive almost nothing.
62. These people are termed rechtlos. A list includes champions and their children,
people of illegitimate birth, and outlaws (1.38, W fol. 19r); those who cannot have a gu
to court also include the illegitimate, convicted felons, and some cripples (1.48, W fol.
those who cannot inherit land are the feebleminded, dwarfs, cripples and the handicappe
and lepers (1.3-4, W fol. llv).
63. On executing animals, see Karl von Amira, Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse
1891); and E. Kaufmann, "Tierstrafen," in Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsge
Adalbert Erler, Ekkehard Kaufmann, and Dieter Werkmüller, vol. 5 (Berlin: Erich
lag, 1998), 238^42, with bibliography. Dobozy, Saxon Mirror, doubts the practicabili
the deterrent to reporting the crime (229n2-3). Killing human witnesses resonates with
11:7, where the two witnesses that came to prophesy were killed by "the beast that ha
the abyss." In addition to the custom's cautionary effect, I incline to interpret the "acti
cleansings symbolically enacted in the pictures.
64. Whitman, Reasonable Doubt, 10-11, 94-95, citing the Bibliotheca Mundi
Maioris, bk. 9, chap. 103.
65. Caviness and Nelson, "Silent Witnesses," 51, figs. 7, 8, 12.
66. The tradition goes back to the Digest of Justinian, 3.1.1.5; see Landau, "Der Ent
des Sachsenspiegels," 96.
67. However, there is at least one passage that is concerned with the roles of the ju
Schöffen in deciding capital cases; see Günther Ullrich, Das Zwickauer Rechtsbuch,
Rechte, Neue Folge, Abteilung Stadtrechtsbücher (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf
224-25.
68. Soest (Westfalia), Stadtarchiv und Wissenschaftliches Stadtbibliothek, MS XI Nr. 107; see
Wilhelm Kohl, ed., Das Soester Nequambuch: Neuausgabe des Acht- und Schwurbuchs der Stadt
Soest, vol. 14 (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1980). I am grateful to Dirk Elbert and Gerhard
Köhn for help during our visit to the library, and for the gift of a set of color plates. Names were
recorded between 1315 and 1421; the text is in Latin (11-16). Some miscreants were sent out of
the city, while others lost their rights but remained in it. The category of "rechtlos" was defined in
the Sachsenspiegel and other such compilations of the period to include people who lost their legal
rights, but it also included some groups born into a state of reduced protection under civil law, such
as cripples, who of course do not figure in the Nequam Book (see n. 63 above).
69. Paul Pieper, "Die Miniaturen des Nequambuches" (in Kohl, Das Soester Nequambuch,
17-79), convincingly rejected an earlier dating and suggested ca. 1315 on the basis of stylistic com
parison with other works from Soest.
70. One exception is the demon that drives animals to run amok and cause their owners to pay
reparations and to corral them (Fig. 17).
71. Zwickau, Stadtarchiv, Codex statutorum Zwiccaviensium, MS III xl, Nr. 141b; see Ulrich
Dieter Oppitz, Deutsche Rechtsbücher des Mittelalters, Beschreibung der Handschriften, vol. 2
(Cologne, Vienna: Böhlau, 1990), 888-89, #1637; Rothe, Medieval Book Illumination, 214, fig. 59.
The text has been edited and rendered in modern German by Ullrich in Das Zwickauer Rechtsbuch.
I am grateful to Frau Schmidt of the Stadtarchiv for accommodating our needs as best she could in
1990 and for providing some photographs; also to Kornelia Tischer for new digital images in 2012.
The town also owns a three-volume copy of the Landrecht with commentary, dated 1472; see Oppitz,
Deutsche Rechtsbücher, vol. 2, p. 889, #1636.
72. For instance, on fol. 71v, in Charles Nelson's literal translation: "Whatever man rapes [a
woman] if he is brought to court with hue and cry and if the two alarm givers are unsullied in legal
competence, that person shall be buried alive following imperial law. For this reason this person is
brought to court only with two men because no one wants to commit rape in front of a lot of people.
I'm speaking of a rape that took place in the fields." Ullrich, Das Zwickauer Rechtsbuch, 248—49,28.
73. Merback, The Thief, chap. 1.
74. Thomas H. Bestul, Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society,
ed. Ruth Mazo Karras, Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996);
Caroline Walker Bynum, "Violent Imagery in Late Medieval Piety," Bulletin of the German Histori
cal Institute, Washington, D.C. 30 (Spring, 2002): 3-36.
75. The Buch der Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit, the text of which is transcribed in Uwe Junker, Das
"Buch der Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit" in seiner zweiten, alchimistischen Fassung (Kadolzburg 1433),
ed. Marielene Putscher, Kölner medizinische Beiträge 40 (Cologne: C.-E. Kohlhauer, 1986).
76. Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, MS 80061 (illustrated here, Fig. 23); see Hella
Frühmorgen-Voss and Norbert H. Ott, Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften
des Mittelalters, vol. 1, Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters
der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (München: C. H. Beck, 1991 ), 37-39, Nr. 2.1.7. And
Munich, Bayerische Staastbibliothek, MS cgm 598, fol. 2ra; see Frühmorgen-Voss and Ott, Katalog,
vol. 1, pp. 35-37; and Karin Schneider, Die deutschen Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbiblio
thek München, vol. 6 of Catalogus codicum manu scriptorum Bibliothecae Monacensis, ed. Bayer
ische Staatsbibliothek (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1978), 223-24. Both catalogs are available online
through http://www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/.
77. For instance, in the late thirteenth-century northern French Book of Madame Marie—see
Alison Stones, Le livre d'images de Madame Marie: Reproduction intégrale du manuscrit Nou
velles acquisitions françaises 16251 de la Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris: Editions du
Cerf, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1997), fols. 24v, 37v, 38r, 76r, 86v; and in the early four
teenth-century English Taymouth Hours, London, British Library, Yates Thompson MS 13, fols.
119r, 186r—see Madeline H. Caviness, "Reframing Medieval Art: Difference, Margins, Bound
aries" in Reframing Medieval Art: Difference, Margins, and Boundaries (Medford: Tufts Uni
versity, 2001), chap. 4, figs. 8-9, http://dca.lib.tufts.edu/Caviness. Hagiographical images also
resonate with the Passion of Christ; see Wolfgang Schild, Alte Gerichtsbarkeit (Munich: Callwey,
1980), pis. 402-8.
78. Caviness, Visualizing Women, 100, 28-29, 57, fig. 42.
79. Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison, Bibliothèque des Histoires
(Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1975), 55-56.
80. Otto Demus and Max Hirmer, Romanesque Mural Painting (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
1970), 422, pl. 142; Elizabeth Pastan and Mary B. Shepard, "The Torture of Saint George Medallion
from Chartres Cathedral in Princeton," Record of The Art Museum, Princeton University 56 (1997):
11-34.
81. E.g., W fols. 27v, 41r, 42v, 43v. I am grateful to Laura Tillery for tabulating the appearance
of Jews in the W and D manuscripts.
82. Jean Wirth, L'image à l'époque romane ([Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1999], 321-27), de
scribes and illustrates the choir capitals.
83. Pieper, "Die Miniaturen des Nequambuches," 47.
84. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 338, fol. llv; see Sydney C. Cockerell and John
Plummer, Old Testament Miniatures: A Medieval Picture Book with 283 paintings from the Creation
to the Story of David (New York: G. Braziller, 1975), 68-69.
85. For instance, the body of Enguerrand de Marigny, a wealthy courtier who fell out of favor
with Phillip the Fair, was condemned to be displayed outside Paris for a period of two years; see Dor
othy Gillerman, Enguerran de Marigny and the Church of Notre-Dame at Ecouis: Art and Patronage
in the Reign of Philip the Fair (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 159.
Cohen, Crossroads of Justice, comments on the practice of beheading noblemen, unless humiliation
was intended (187).
86. Schild, Alte Gerichtsbarkeit, pl. 198.
87. Fol. 72r under a new section "Schwer den anderen"; see Ullrich, Das Zwickauer Rechts
buch, 248-50. The translation is that of Charles Nelson.
88. Foucault, Surveiller et punir, 9-12.

89. François Bûcher, The Pamplona Bibles: A Facsimile Compiled from Two
with Martyrologies Commissioned by King Sancho el Fuerte ofNavarra (1194-123
Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pi. 159.
90. Bucher, The Pamplona Bibles, 1:38—40, 221-22, fig. 125b.
91. Claudia Brinker, "Die Stellung der Frau: Ideal und Wirklichkeit," in Edele frou
man: Die Manessische Liederhandschrift in Zürich (Ausstellungskatalog), ed. Claud
Dione Flühler-Kreis (Zürich: Schweizerisches Landesmuseum Zürich, 1991), 132-
helm Stürmer, "Ludwig II. der Strenge," in Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 15, ed
(Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1987), 357-60.
92. They bring to mind an anecdote in the autobiography of Guibert of Nogent: h
fear inspired in the north European community of Laon in 1112 by an immense
pian hangman in the service of Bishop Gaudri; see Gude Suckale-Redlefsen, Maurit
Mohr; The Black Saint Maurice (Houston and Munich: Menil Foundation and Sch
1987), 21. She illustrates the executioner of John the Baptist in the Great Canter
1190-1210—Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat 8846, fol. 2v. Also, t
black flagellants of Christ, as in the Psalter of Henry of Winchester, and the Sens C
Samaritan window.
93. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS cpg 848: Ingo F. Walther and Gisela Siebert, eds.,
Codex Manesse: Die Miniaturen der Großen Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (Frankfurt am Main:
Insel, 1988), pis. 11, 12, 17, 23, 26, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 43, 46, 48, 52, 55, 56, 57, 59, 80, 81, 82, 86,
87, 88, 91, 98,103, 106. Common topoi are the lover climbing to his lady's window, the lady placing
a floral wreath on his head (signifying her openness to lovemaking), lovers with horses (signifying
passion), lovers reclining or caressing against rose vines, and the common sign of wooing with a chin
chuck.
94. Ulrich Müller, Untersuchungen zur politischen Lyrik des deutschen Mittelalters, Göppinger
Arbeiten zur Germanistik, n.s., 55/56 (Göppingen: A. Kümmerle, 1974), 140-41, 350. Rumelant's
work is also mentioned (137).
95. Michael Camille, The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire (New York:
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998), 21, pi. 12. Camille oddly misidentifies the gender of the couple—Pyra
mus, the first to kill himself (when he mistook Thisbe for dead), has the short hair and tunic of a man;
Thisbe, who falls forward on top of him on the same sword, has long hair, sleeves, and gown. The
male figure pointing at them from a tree wears the leafy crown of the god of venal love.
96. Edgerton, Pictures and Punishment, claims that "acts of obscene humiliation often accom
panied these sentences in real life, which Giotto and Fra Angelico also reflected. In Giotto's fresco,
two sinners in hell are shown hanging upside down, a man by a rope attached to his penis and a
woman by a hook in her vagina" (27, fig. 3). See also Robert Mills, Suspended Animation: Pain,
Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture (London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), figs. 42,
47, 48.
97. Mills, Suspended Animation, has argued that in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance,
scenes in hell resonate with accounts of the prosecution and punishment of sodomites and other
sexual offenders by creating condign punishments in hell (85-105).
98. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 9186: Alexandre de Laborde, Les manuscrits
à peintures de la Cité de Dieu de Saint Augustin (Paris: E. Rahir, pour la Société des bibliophiles
françois, 1909), pl. LXI. Related figures in hell appear in several French copies of St. Augustine's
City of God: for instance, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 19, dated 1473 (Laborde,
Les manuscrits, pl. LXVII); and Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS français 246, ca. 1475
(Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages [Ithaca and London: Cornell Univer
sity Press, 1984], 109).
99. For Ira with flame-like hair and grimace (though often in profile), see the tenth- and
eleventh-century personifications in manuscripts of Prudentius's Psychomachaea, illustrated by

Richard Stettiner, Die illustrierten Prudentiushandschriften: Tafelband (Berlin: Grote, 1905), pis.
51.7, 17,18; and 90.9, 10,12.
100. A. Straub and G. Keller, Herrad of Landsberg: Hortus Deliciarum (Garden of Delights)
(New Rochelle, NY: Caratzas Bros., 1977), pl. LXXII, fol. 252r. Rosalie Green et al., Herrad of
Hohenbourg: Hortus Deliciarum, 2 vols. (London: Warburg Institute; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979), 429
# 858, pi. 143. A similar facial expression can denote despair; see Charles T. Little and Clark Maines,
"Introduction: Contemporary Encounters with the 'Medieval Face,'" Gesta 46, no. 2 (2007): 83-90,
at 107, and 18n67, fig. 5.
101. "Wippen in den Großen Teich," Gesellschaft fur Wirtschaftsforderung Soest mbH, http://
www.gfwsoest.de/veranstaltungen/highlights/wippen-in-den-grossen-teich/. I am grateful to Dirk
Elbert of the Stadtarchiv for this information. See also http://www.youtube.com watch?v=pHSL
KyakiWU.
102. Wolfgang Schild, "Wippe; Wippen," in Erler, Kaufmann, and Werkmüller, Handwörter
buch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, 1447-^49. A ducking stool or cage, suspended on rope, was
more common than a tipping mechanism.
103. Pieper, "Die Miniaturen des Nequambuches," 53.
104. Cohen, Crossroads of Justice, 198-200.
105. Ibid., 2.
106. Katherine O'Brien O'Keefe, "Body and Law in Late Anglo-Saxon England," Anglo-Saxon
England 21 (1998): 209-32; Caviness, Visualizing Women, chap. 2.
107. Similarly, Merback, The Thief, noted a number of ritual inversions for the later period that
trace a "continuum through . .. religious devotion, public spectacle, punitive justice and art" (129).
108. I owe this perception to Katherine O'Brian O'Keefe, in her discussion of a paper that
Charles Nelson and I gave at the Thirty-Seventh International Conference on Medieval Studies,
Kalamazoo, MI, May 4, 2002, in the session "Postcolonial Framings of Medieval Visual Culture,"
organized by Rachel Dressier and Janice Mann.
109. As cited by Whitman, Reasonable Doubt, 28. The passage from De Divinis sententiis con
tra iudicium Dei is discussed by Schmoeckel, "Glaude," 301. He used the edition in L. van Acker, ed.
Aghobardi Lugdunensis Opera omnia, CCM 52 (Tournhout: Brepols, 1981).

Caviness - GIVING THE MIDDLE AGES A BAD NAME BLOOD PUNISHMENTS IN THE SACHSENSPIEGEL AND TOWN LAWBOOKS PDF

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Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University through its Medieval Institute

GIVING "THE MIDDLE AGES" A BAD NAME: BLOOD PUNISHMENTS IN THE

Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University through its Medieval Institute

Interweaving Theoretical and Contextual Frameworks

© 2013 by the Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University

and legal issues involved spurred my interest in medieval "blood punishments"

Nazi regime's propensity to return to premodern forms of execution: the montage

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"without reasonable doubt," to ensure a unanimous verdict.16 His narrative, and

Unraveling the Performative Authority of Eike's Lawbook

The Sachsenspiegel was among the first vernacular lawbooks written in

it entices us to see its provisions as a systematic representation of real

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Clinging to Traditional Alternatives to Capital Punishment

Bodies that conform to semiotic types and actions, lacking affect

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if a man raped such a woman or forced himself on his lover he is answerab

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Fig. 16. Blood

Yet another impediment to hearing rape cases and imposing the d

Pictures that Challenge Legal Mandates

The nonviolent character of the Sachsenspiegel pictures is very app

Torture and Purification: The Transformative Power of Suffering

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18)? The hagiographical resonance in the Soest picture evokes a cry fo

Cruel and Unusual Punishments

probability. There are no simple declaratives, such

The vehemence of the punishment of the lovers in Zwickau is even more at

Fig. 28a. A mixed Jewish/Mideonite

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imagination of the judiciary. In O—the North German recension of the Sachsen

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Between Ordeal and Torture: the New Role of Repentance

being ducked—literally flung—into the large town pond from a seesaw

Ideally, in the symbolic realm of the Mirror of the Saxons, vengefu

Tortures and/or Kills

of the wheel as if it were fortu

This paper is dedicated to Pamela Sheingorn in recognition of her scholarly achievements a

Madeline Harrison Caviness, ed. Elizabeth Carson Pastan, Evelyn Staudinger L

88. Foucault, Surveiller et punir, 9-12.

eleventh-century personifications in manuscripts of Prudentius's Psychomachaea, illustrated by

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