Produced by deaurider, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) PENAL METHODS OF THE MIDDLE AGES ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PENAL METHODS OF THE MIDDLE AGES CRIMINALS, WITCHES, LUNATICS BY GEORGE IVES, M.A. PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION 1910 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE PENAL METHODS OF THE MIDDLE AGES 1 CHAPTER II THE WITCH TRIALS 107 CHAPTER III TREATMENT OF THE INSANE 142 FOOTNOTES FOR ALL CHAPTERS 179 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER I PENAL METHODS OF THE MIDDLE AGES Prisons as places of detention are very ancient institutions. As soon as men had learned the way to build, in stone, as in Egypt, or with bricks, as in Mesopotamia, when kings had many-towered fortresses, and the great barons castles on the crags, there would be cells and dungeons in the citadels.[1] But prisons as places for the reception of “ordinary” (as distinct from state or political) criminals for definite terms only evolved in England many centuries afterwards[2]; whilst imprisonment as a punishment in itself,[3] to be endured under rules made expressly punitive and distressful, may be described as essentially modern, and reached its worst phase in the nineteenth century.[4] The Teutonic Tribes of the bays and forests were fierce and free. They exemplified, in fact, the theory of Nietzsche, that liberty cannot be granted but must be taken.[5] They had not cowered before Oriental superstitions,[6] and as they lived in widely scattered hordes a central government could not impose its yoke upon the savage warriors. With the wild clansmen of the fierce Norse nations, where every man was always ready armed[7] and boys received their weapons at fifteen,[8] the great desideratum was the maintenance of peace.