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Now and again someone proposes the idea that strict medieval criminal justice selected against violent behavior in Europeans. But old courts were actually remarkably soft on crime; only 7% of murderers hanged, so "to kill someone appears to have been a safe thing to do" in 1200:pic.twitter.com/xR61DdN2jv
About 1/5th of murders in this 13th century English sample were committed by unknown assailants, so the actual percentage of those hanged was <7%. Those put to death were usually those who had shown some kind premeditation, as in poisoning.
All across Europe before about 1500 people had a "boys will be boys" attitude to people being murdered in drunken brawls. After all, with poor medical care many homicides weren't actually intended as such: "I only meant to stab him a little!"
"Of 169 cases of homicide in the provinces of Ostrobothnia and Finland proper between 1540 and 1620, the death penalty is known with certainty to have been carried in three or four instances."
Usually the murderer paid a large fine to the victim's family, who then chose to forego their legal prerogative to have him executed. Life long vengeance quests are something mostly from storybooks, in reality people got over their relatives' deaths with surprising speed.
7pct of murderers hanged seems like a lot over the millennia. And some who weren't hanged no doubt had inclusive fitness reduced (incarceration, exile, poverty)
The fundamental point is that the penalties of killing someone, primarily social, were not much greater in 1200 Europe than in 1200 Papua New Guinea. I think you would have substantially more likely to be killed by angry relatives in a hunter gatherer society than in 1200 England
I wouldn't call it "soft on crime," medieval legal systems were just much less formalized and far from efficient. Outlawry (41.4%) is effectively a death sentence in absentia, and was used because the person accused could not be compelled to appear in court.
cc: @jollyheretic
As another commenter noted, perhaps the ~40% outlawry rate was sufficient to reduce inclusive fitness.
If this is English data, you could only be outlawed by pleading benefit of the clergy (literate) and you could only survive it if you were rich/connected and had a retinue to look after you
yeah, justice didn't get really harsh until the 1500-1600s. during the tudor period in england, people who stole loaves of bread were sometimes executed. the selection pressures against violent behavior were very strong in the early part of the early modern period, not medieval.
here we go. from The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society (https://books.google.com/books?id=bwvH5ce94eIC …):pic.twitter.com/ThZ2avNsL7
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