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Plague and crime: Bologna, 1348–1351

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 December 2015

TREVOR DEAN
TREVOR DEAN*
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities, University of Roehampton, London
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Abstract

The historiography of epidemics and crime suggests that we might find effects of plague on criminal behaviour in the years of the Black Death and its aftermath, yet this question has not been systematically investigated by late medieval historians. For the first time, a continuous series of trial records covering the 1340s – for the city of Bologna – is here analysed, and the issue of a ‘breakdown in law and order’ is addressed. The particular patterns of criminal prosecution are revealed and explained, including unusual and unexpected features of continuity in 1348, and surprising developments in the years following, with changes in political context and judicial procedures outweighing any ongoing effects of plague.

Peste et criminalité à bologne, 1348–1351

L'historiographie concernant épidémies et criminalité suggère que nous pourrions trouver des effets de la peste noire sur le comportement criminel dans les années de contagion et suivantes mais cette question n'a pas été systématiquement étudiée par les historiens de la fin du moyen âge. Pour la première fois, une série continue d'affaires judicaires couvrant les années 1340 et suivantes est ici analysée, pour la ville de Bologne. Il s'agissait bien de cas de «rupture de la loi et de l'ordre ». Les motifs particuliers des poursuites pénales sont révélés et expliqués, y compris des traits inhabituels et inattendus de continuité en 1348. On a aussi noté des développements surprenants dans les années suivantes, qui correspondent à des changements dans le contexte politique et à des procédures judiciaires qui l'emportent sur tous les effets consécutifs à la peste.

Pest und verbrechen: bologna, 1348–1351

Obwohl die Historiographie zu Epidemien und Verbrechen es nahelegt, dass sich in den Jahren des Schwarzen Todes und danach die Auswirkungen der Pest auf das kriminelle Verhalten finden lassen, ist diese Frage bisher von Mittelalterhistorikern noch nicht systematisch untersucht worden. Hier wird erstmals eine zusammenhängende Serie von Gerichtsakten analysiert, die – für die Stadt Bologna – die 1340er Jahre umfasst, um der Frage nachzugehen, ob es zu einem ‘Zusammenbruch von Recht und Ordnung’ kam. Die besonderen Strafanzeigemuster werden aufgezeigt und erläutert, einschließlich der ungewöhnlichen und unerwarteten Kontinuitätslinien bis 1348 sowie der überraschenden Entwicklung in den Folgejahren, wobei sich zeigt, dass die Veränderungen des politischen Kontexts und der gerichtlichen Verfahren schwerer wogen als irgendwelche fortlaufenden Wirkungen der Pest.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , December 2015 , pp. 367 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

ENDNOTES

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24 Bowsky, W. M., ‘The medieval commune and internal violence: police power and public safety in Siena, 1287–1355’, American Historical Review 73, 1 (1967), 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 16.

25 Chronicon monasterii S. Salvatoris Venetiarum auctore Francisco de Gratia (Venice, 1766), 69. Quoted in: M. Munaro, Paolo da Venezia (Milan, 1969), 64–5; R. C. Mueller, ‘Dalla reazione alla prevenzione’, in Venezia e la peste 1348/1797, 2nd edn (Venice, 1980), 77–8.

26 R. Horrox, The Black Death (Manchester, 1994), 20.

27 Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. G. H. McWilliam (Harmondsworth, 1972), 52–4.

28 P. Ziegler, The Black Death (Harmondsworth, 1970), 18, 46, 50; J. Larner, Culture and society in Italy 1290–1420 (London, 1971), 129; G. Zanella, ‘Italia, Francia, Germania: una storiografia a confronto’, in La peste nera: dati di una realtà ed elementi di una interpretazione (Spoleto, 1994), 49–135, here 61–2. For use of Boccaccio's description as a framework for other historical periods: S. Porter, The great plague (Stroud, 1999), 2–4; Slack, Impact of plague, 285–90.

29 V. Branca, Boccaccio medievale, 5th edn (Florence, 1981), 381–7. I pass over here the issue of possible classical sources of Boccaccio's description, still unresolved to my mind: Getto, G., ‘La peste del “Decameron” e il problema della fonte Lucreziana’, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 135 (1958), 507–23Google Scholar; Germano, J. E., ‘La fonte letteraria della peste decameroniana’, Italian Quarterly 105 (1986), 21–30Google Scholar; Braccini, G. and Marchesi, S., ‘Livio XXV, 26 e l’“Introduzione” alla prima giornata: di una possibile tessera classica per il “cominciamento” del Decameron’, Italica 80 (2003), 139–46Google Scholar.

30 Tufano, I., ‘La peste del 1348 nelle cronache italiane’, Rassegna europea di letterature italiana 24 (2004), 33–46Google Scholar; Osheim, D. J., ‘Giovanni Sercambi and narratives of the Black Death’, in Hamilton, C. I. and Virga, A. eds., The late medieval and Renaissance Italian city-state and beyond: essays in honour of M. E. Bratchel: Southern African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 22–23 (2012–2013), 91–106Google Scholar, here 93–7.

31 G. A. Brucker, ‘Florence and the Black Death’, in M. Cottino-Jones and E. F. Tuttle eds., Boccaccio: secoli di vita (Ravenna, 1977), 25–9; Wray, S. K., ‘Boccaccio and the doctors: medicine and compassion in the face of the plague’, Journal of Medieval History 30, 3 (2004), 301–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 304; S. K. Wray, Communities and crisis: Bologna during the Black Death (Leiden, 2009), 10, 103–6.

32 Barsella, S., ‘The myth of Prometheus in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron’, in Studia humanitatis: essays in honor of Salvatore Camporeale: Modern Language Notes 119, 1, Special Supplement (2004), 120–141Google Scholar, here 137; Barsella, S., ‘Boccaccio and humanism. A new patristic source of Proemio 14 and the pestilence: Basil the Great's Homily on Psalm 1’, Studi sul Boccaccio 32 (2004), 59–79Google Scholar.

33 S. K. Cohn, The laboring classes in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1980), 275–6, gives figures for a two-year period, 1344–5 (1,628 persons, but with a breakdown by crime only for the 1,019 city crimes, and with 656 ‘contado crimes’ undifferentiated). U. Dorini, Il diritto penale e la delinquenza in Firenze nel secolo XIV (Lucca, n.d.) took a three-year period, 1352–1355 (1,463 persons tried). Comparison is hazardous, as Cohn's data include prosecutions for debt, poaching and trespass, which are not included in Dorini's survey. Taking Dorini's categories and fitting Cohn's data into them (thus excluding 421 cases and the 656 unspecified contado crimes) suggests that crimes against the person fell from 64 per cent to 34 per cent and theft rose from 7 per cent to 15 per cent of the remaining totals between the two periods considered.

34 S. Piasentini, ‘Alla luce della luna’: i furti a Venezia, 1270–1403 (Venice, 1992), 84–6.

35 S. Blanshei, ‘The decline of accusation procedure in the lawcourts of fourteenth-century Bologna’, forthcoming.

36 G. Antonioli, Conservator pacis et iustitie. La signoria di Taddeo Pepoli a Bologna (1337–1347) (Bologna, 2004), 139–41.

37 Maria Ginatempo and Lucia Sandri, L'Italia delle città: il popolamento urbano tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (secoli XIII–XVI) (Florence, 1990), 85; A. L. Trombetti Budriesi, ‘Bologna 1334–1376’, in O. Capitani ed., Storia di Bologna: Bologna nel Medioevo (Bologna, 2007), 799–800; Wray, Bologna during the Black Death, 95.

38 Wray, Communities and crisis, 3, 10. S. Cohn, K. comments that Wray overstates this phenomenon by making no allowance for higher-than-normal intestacy rates in 1348: review in Speculum 86 (2011), 1136–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Wray, Communities and crisis, 109–10, though noting that previous authors had dated the arrival of plague in Bologna to March; Corpus chronicorum bononiensium, ii, 585.

40 Wray, Bologna during the Black Death, 109, 116–17, 119–20, 151–6.

41 On these methodological issues, see T. Dean, Crime and justice in late medieval Italy (Cambridge, 2007), 17–31.

42 C. Gauvard, ‘Les sources judiciaires de la fin du Moyen Age peuvent-ils permettre une approche statistique du crime?’, in P. Contamine, T. Dutour and B. Schnerb eds., Commerce, finances et société: recueil de travaux d'histoire médiévale offert as M. le Professeur Henri Dubois (Paris, 1993), 470–3.

43 Ibid.

44 Archivio di Stato, Bologna, Curia del podestà, Inquisitiones (hereafter Inquisitiones), buste 168 and 168bis. The total of eight registers was the correct administrative number: one per semester for each of the city's quarters. All future archival references are to the Archivio di Stato, Bologna (State Archives, Bologna).

45 Archivio di Stato, Bologna, Curia del podestà, Accusationes (hereafter Accusationes), busta 50b, regs. 21–2.

46 G. Calvi, Histories of a plague year: the social and the imaginary in Baroque Florence (Berkeley, 1989), 9–12.

47 See note 18.

48 G. Albini, Guerra, fame, peste: crisi di mortalità e sistema sanitario nella Lombardia tardomedievale (Bologna, 1982), 124–5.

49 Bowsky, ‘Impact of the Black Death’, 32–3.

50 Ibid., 20, 24, 27.

51 Archivio di Stato, Bologna, Comune, Governo (hereafter Comune, Governo), busta 246 (Signoria Pepoli, Provvigioni cartacee), reg. II. 38 (register of salary payments for 1348); Wray, Bologna during the Black Death, 153–6.

52 C. M. Cipolla, Cristofano and the plague: a study in the history of public health in the age of Galileo (Berkeley, 1973), 107–8.

53 Thus, in 1345, 68 per cent of the trials were initiated January–March and the lowest number of trials started in May (four); and, in 1346, 62 per cent were initiated January–March and the lowest number started in June (five).

54 Inquisitiones, busta 168, reg. 2, fos. 26, 42, 50.

55 Six men and six women from Muglio, with two other men, were tried for attacking six men from the same village, killing two of them, and wounding a third: Inquisitiones, busta 168, reg. 2, fo. 56.

56 Inquisitiones, busta 168, reg. 1, fos. 2, 21, 24; reg. 2, fos. 24, 32.

57 Inquisitiones, busta 168, reg. 2, fo. 39.

58 Inquisitiones, busta 168, reg. 1, fo.18; reg. 2, fo. 64.

59 Inquisitiones, busta 168, reg. 1, fo. 15.

60 Inquisitiones, busta 168, reg. 1, fos. 12–13; reg. 2, fos. 15v, 17–18.

61 Inquisitiones, busta 168bis, reg. 1, fos. 13, 22, 25; reg. 3, fo. 11; reg. 5, fo. 1.

62 Inquisitiones, busta 168, reg. 2, fo. 5.

63 Inquisitiones, busta 168bis, reg. 1, fo. 16; reg. 7, fo. 7.

64 Inquisitiones, busta 168bis, reg. 1, fo. 19.

65 Inquisitiones, busta 168bis, reg. 1, fo. 8; reg. 3, fo. 5.

66 S. K. Cohn, Popular protest in late medieval Europe: Italy, France and Flanders (Manchester, 2004), 87; S. K. Cohn, Lust for liberty: the politics of social protest in medieval Europe, 1200–1425 (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 211–12 (with urban focus); S. K. Cohn, Creating the Florentine state: peasants and rebellion, 1348–1434 (Cambridge, UK, 1999), 139–40 (by implication).

67 Inquisitiones, busta 168bis, reg. 1, fos. 5, 16; reg. 3, fos. 11, 17, 22; reg. 7, fo. 2.

68 Compare with Florence: A. Zorzi, L'amministrazione della giustizia penale nella repubblica fiorentina: aspetti e problemi (Florence, 1988), 54–5; idem, ‘The judicial system in Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, in T. Dean and K .J .P. Lowe eds., Crime, society and the law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, UK, 1994), 40–58, here 45–6.

69 Smail, D. L., ‘Violence and predation in late medieval Mediterranean Europe’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 54 (2012), 7–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 12–13.

70 Inquisitiones, busta 241, reg. 1, fo. 155; reg. 2, fos. 140, 154; reg. 5, fo. 32; busta 242, reg. 2, fos. 127, 138; reg. 3, fos. 145, 150, 164; reg. 4, fo. 4; reg. 5, fos. 54, 157.

71 Bowsky, ‘Impact of the Black Death’, 24, 27.

72 Ibid., 20.

73 Inquisitiones, busta 168bis, regs. 1–7.

74 Inquisitiones, busta 168, reg. 4, fos. 4v–6 for the thief.

75 Accusationes, busta 50/B, files 21–2.

76 Inquisitiones, busta 168, reg. 2, fo. 52 (denunciation in April); Archivio di Stato, Bologna, Curia del podestà, Carte di corredo (hereafter Carte di corredo), busta 103 (denunciation in August).

77 Comune, Governo, busta 245, Signoria Pepoli, Provvigioni cartacee, reg 36, fos. 49, 54v, 68v, 75, 76v, 82v, 83, 85, 87, 90, 92v, 93, 95, 96, 98v, 99v, 101v, 102v, 103, 105v, 108v, 113, 115–15v, 116–16v, 119, 127, 130, 134v, 136v–7, 139–40, 141v–2, 144. For the reports from the bandit office: Comune Governo, busta 274, Signoria Pepoli, Atti del vicario.

78 Comune, Governo, busta 273, reg. 2; Riformagioni e provvigioni, 1351, reg. 6, fos. 8v–9v.

79 Corpus chronicorum bononiensium, iii, 169–70.

80 Comune, Governo, busta 75, Consigli ed ufficiali del comume, Elezioni ‘ad brevia’: 45 substitutions in the second semester, as contrasted to 4 in the first.

81 Comune, Governo, busta 245, reg. 36, fos. 1, 131, 143, 168.

82 Ibid., regs. 34 and 36. For July–August 1348, 30 decrees; for July–August 1347, 21. A total of 396 decrees were issued in 1348 (177 of them March–September) as against 318 in 347 (145).

83 Ibid., reg. 36, fo. 179 (7th November 1348).

84 Ibid., fos. 133v (20th August), 142v (4th September), 169v (31st October).

85 The list for 1348 is in Archivio di Stato, Bologna, Curia del podestà, Ufficio corone ed armi, busta 36, register for 1348, fos. 5–8v.

86 This was the case in at least one-quarter of the city: Comune, Governo, busta 114, Ministrali delle cappelle, Porta Ravegnana. Documentary survival for elections may be related to the new regime's hostility to this method of appointment: G. Lorenzoni, Conquistare e governare la città: forme di potere e istituzioni nel primo anno della signoria viscontea a Bologna (ottobre 1350–novembre 1351) (Bologna, 2008), 81, 93–4. There are no records for the election of massari between 1335 and 1363: Comune, Governo, busta 124.

87 Pini, A. I. and Greci, R., ‘Una fonte per la demografia storica medievale: le “venticinquine” bolognesi (1247–1404)’, Rassegna degli archivi di stato 36 (1976), 337–417Google Scholar, here 380.

88 Carte di corredo, busta 102. Denunciations submitted on 30th April, 2nd May, 20th May, 21st September, 5th October, 14th December and an unstated day in December resulted in trials in Inquisitiones, busta 169, reg. 1, fos. 9, 11v, 14v; busta 170, reg. 1, fos. 46, 50, 58, 63.

89 There is a lacuna of 40 folios in one register for the first semester, and no case from the quarter of Porta Ravegnana for the same semester.

90 Lorenzoni, Conquistare e governare la città, 101.

91 Inquisitiones, busta 153, regs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 10.

92 Inquisitiones, busta 153, reg. 3, fos. 72–77.

93 Inquisitiones, busta 153, reg. 2, fo. 35: Sibilla of Poggio Rosso confessed to smothering and burying a baby girl immediately on giving birth, and to two other similar offences in the previous six years. Three Pistoiese peasants were hanged for killing and robbing a man and woman at Rocca Pitigliano: busta 153, reg. 2, fo. 29.

94 Inquisitiones, busta 153, reg. 2, fos. 36, 49, 52, 63; reg. 2, fo. 50; reg. 7, fos. 30, 109.

95 Inquisitiones, busta 153, reg. 7, fo. 79.

96 Inquisitiones, busta 153, reg. 4, fo. 136: A man from Castignole Maggiore held a man captive for two days, demanding money and threatening ‘torment’.

97 Inquisitiones, busta 153, reg. 1, fo. 145.

98 Inquisitiones, busta 153, reg. 1, fo. 49 (acquitted as the witnesses reported only hearsay).

99 Inquisitiones, busta 153, reg. 1, fo. 47; reg. 5, fo. 2; reg. 7, fo. 126.

100 Inquisitiones, busta 153, reg. 2, fo. 59: three brothers, accused of abducting a married woman, ‘occaxione cognoscendi eam carnaliter’, were acquitted as the witnesses offered only hearsay evidence.

101 For a thief from Venice, a fraudster from Cremona and two assailants from Burgundy (‘Bregogna’): Inquisitiones, busta 153, reg. 2, fo. 15; reg. 5, fo. 100; reg. 7, fo. 121.

102 For example: Inquisitiones, busta 162, reg. 1, fos. 6, 10, 15, 19, 43, 54, 59.

103 One wife killing: Inquisitiones, busta 162, reg. 1, fo. 49; and the assassination of a woman who had married against a man's wishes: busta 163, reg. 3, fos. 35–6. On the high rate of wife killing in Bologna, see Dean, T., ‘Domestic violence in late-medieval Bologna’, Renaissance Studies 18 (2004), 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. ‘Alegranza’, the former concubine of a city goldsmith, poisoned him to death when he took another woman as his wife: Inquisitiones, busta 162, reg. 3, fo. 16.

104 Inquisitiones, busta 162, reg. 2, fo. 7; and reg. 3, fo. 15.

105 Inquisitiones, busta 162, reg. 6, fo. 48.

106 Inquisitiones, busta 162, reg. 2, fo. 18; reg. 3, fos. 10, 12, 30; reg. 4, fo. 24v; busta 163, reg. 2, fo. 10; reg. 7, fo. 30; reg. 8, fo. 24.

107 A rural bigamist: Inquisitiones, busta 161, reg. 2, fo. 4.

108 Inquisitiones, busta 164, reg. 2, fo. 45 (attempted rape of an unmarried female); busta 3, fo. 15 (rape of an unmarried female); busta 165, reg. 2, fo. 2 (attempted rape of a married woman); reg. 4, fo. 16 (attempted rape of a girl, ‘virginem et puellam’); reg. 4, fo. 43 (rape of an unmarried woman).

109 Agnolla of Verona, convicted and burned to death for selling her 7-year-old daughter to a German soldier for sexual purposes: Inquisitiones, busta 171, reg. 2, fo. 60; ‘Malgarita’ of Bologna, hanged for homicide and theft: busta 172, reg. 6, fo. 3; Margarita of Naples, a soldier's mistress, banned for hitting another woman in the face with a ‘planella’: busta 171, reg. 8, fo. 14; ‘Pavexina’, a prostitute from Pavia, fined 100 lire for hitting a man on the forehead with a stone: busta 172, reg. 12, fo. 16; Guidoncina of Monte San Pietro, whipped for bigamy: busta 172, reg. 9, fo. 22; ‘Zanna’, the wife of Floriano, accused of punching another woman in the face: busta 172, reg. 14, fo. 14; a former servant who participated in a theft of valuables from her employer's house: busta 171, reg. 6, fo. 7; and other women prosecuted for brawling, pushing or punching: busta 171, reg. 7, fo. 11; reg. 8, fo. 40; reg. 9, fo. 27; reg. 12, fo. 14; busta 172, reg. 12, fo. 98.

110 Albini, Guerra, fame, peste, 152.

111 S. K. Cohn, The Black Death transformed, 126–30.

112 J. L. Bolton, ‘Looking for Yersinia pestis: scientists, historians and the plague’, in L. Clark and C. Rawcliffe eds., Society in an age of plague (Woodbridge, 2013), 15–38, here 36.

113 Inquisitiones, busta 171, reg. 1, fo. 67; reg. 2, fo. 43; reg. 6, fos. 2, 12; reg. 7, fos. 10, 11, 20, 28, 34, 38, 40, 50, 71, 75; reg. 8, fos. 36, 14, 17, 25, 40, 46; reg. 9, fos. 15, 24, 27; reg. 10, fos. 45, 50; reg. 12, fos. 14, 23; busta 172, reg. 2, fo. 19; reg. 3, fo. 8, 11, 16; reg. 5, fo. 17, 19, 22; reg. 7, fos. 6, 15; reg. 6, fos. 12, 14; reg. 8, fo. 38; reg. 9, fos. 3, 6, 12, 41, 46; reg. 10, fos. 3, 41, 49, 63, 60; reg. 12, fos. 8, 58, 68, 87, 90, 98; reg. 13, fo. 3, 12, 22, 25.

114 Inquisitiones, busta 171, reg. 1, fo. 48; reg. 2, fo. 55; reg. 3, fos. 84, 86; reg. 6, fos. 31, 41, 43; reg. 7, fos. 2, 5, 14, 17, 31, 37, 40, 42, 48, 73, 79; reg. 8, fo. 51; reg. 9, fos. 24, 31, 35, 39, 60, 63, 68, 75, 77; reg. 10, fos. 41, 45, 48, 53; reg. 12, fos. 3, 17, 25, 30; busta 172, reg. 2, fos. 6, 16, 32, 47; reg. 3, fo. 16; reg. 5, fo. 33; reg. 6, fos. 24, 28; reg. 7, fos. 18, 21, 55, 61, 63; reg. 9, fos. 6, 9, 12, 23, 27, 34, 39; reg. 10, fos. 3, 10, 20, 41, 55, 58; reg. 11, fos. 42, 45; reg. 12, fos. 13, 25, 41, 49, 74, 76, 79, 92; reg. 13, fo. 5; reg. 14, fos. 3, 12. For Taddeo Pepoli's use of foreign mercenaries to ensure military control of the city: Antonioli, La signoria di Taddeo Pepoli, 147.

115 Lorenzoni, Conquistare e governare la città, 42–9.

116 Inquisitiones, busta 172, reg. 2, fos. 24, 34, 38, 40.

117 Inquisitiones, busta 172, fos. 29, 39.

118 Inquisitiones, busta 172, reg. 9, fos. 18, 19.

119 Inquisitiones, busta 172, reg. 10, fos. 26, 30, 34; reg. 11, fo. 17.

120 Comune, Governo, 272, Signoria Pepoli, Atti del vicario, regs. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 and 10.

121 Ibid., reg. 7, fo. 10 (1348); reg. 8, 18th February 1349.

122 ‘Non procedatur quia produxit instrumentum pacis et imo circumdatur mandato domini vicarii’: reg. 7, fo. 11. Of the 97 trials, 11 end ‘circumvented’ by the production of an instrument of peace, and a further 7 ‘by order of the lord’, a formula that could conceal petition, pacification or political intervention. For the role of pacification in judicial trials: Vallerani, M., ‘Pace e processo nel sistema giudiziario di Perugia’, Quaderni storici 101 (1999), 315–59Google Scholar; Dean, T., ‘Violence, vendetta and peacemaking in late-medieval Bologna’, in Criminal Justice History 17 (2002), 1–17Google Scholar; K. L. Jansen, ‘Peacemaking in the Oltrarno, 1287–1297’, in F. Andrews, C. Egger and C. M. Rousseau eds., Pope, church and city: essays in honour of Brenda M. Bolton (Leiden, 2004), 327–44.

123 Lorenzoni, Conquistare e governare la città, 102–3.

124 A soldier from Parma assaulted a Trevisan furrier living in Bologna, cutting off his nose and part of his lip: he denied the charge, but the witnesses only saw him using a stick to prevent the victim escaping: reg. 4, 5th April 1347. And a German servant of a German cavalryman denied the charge of hitting a woman with a stick, and the trial was halted (no record of witnesses being summoned): ‘Non est processum quia legiptimam excussationem fecit’: reg. 1, 7th August 1342.

125 Examples: Inquisitiones, busta 160, reg. 1, fos. 3 (homicide), 30 (homicide), 41 (near fatal assault); reg. 2 fos. 14v (homicide), 18 (homicide), 21v (criminal damage), 28 (homicide), 31 (assault), 36 (homicide); reg. 3, fo. 71v (homicide); reg. 5, fos. 49 (homicide), 58 (homicide), 66v (homicide).

126 Inquisitiones, busta 171, reg. 7, fo. 11, 34, 50, 57; reg. 9, fo. 20; reg. 12, fo. 36, 39; busta 172, reg. 5, fo. 22; reg. 8, fos. 9, 14; reg. 9, fo. 12; reg. 12, fo. 61. Also see T. Dean, Crime and justice, 22.

127 Ibid., 26; Nakaya, S., ‘La giustizia civile a Lucca nella prima metà del XIV secolo’, Archivio storico italiano 169 (2011), 657–68Google Scholar.

128 On a handful of occasions, a ‘procurator’ or notary (not a qualified lawyer) attended the court to deny a charge of assault on behalf of the suspect, entering the single ‘exception’ that the victim was a bandit and therefore legitimately liable to violence: Inquisitiones, busta 161, reg. 3, fo. 32 (1344); busta 162, reg. 4, fos. 14v and 44; busta 162, reg. 6, fo. 6 (1345); busta 163, reg. 5, fo. 31; busta 164, reg. 2, fo. 36 (1346). In only one case – of alleged illegal harvesting of grapes – did a notary produce extended lists of counter-claims backed up by witness statements for the defence (so turning a charge of robbery into an inheritance dispute): busta 163, reg. 7, fos. 30–52.

129 Fraher, R. M., ‘Conviction according to conscience: the medieval jurists’ debate concerning judicial discretion and the law of proof’, Law and History Review 7, 1 (1989), 27–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

130 For the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, see Vallerani, M., ‘I processi accusatori a Bologna fra due e trecento’, Società e storia 78 (1997), 741–88Google Scholar; and for the fourteenth century, S. Blanshei, ‘Decline of accusation procedure’.

131 M. Vallerani, La giustizia pubblica medievale (Bologna, 2005), 124–5.

132 Accusationes, busta 50/a.

133 Accusationes, busta 50/b, regs. 21 and 22.

134 Accusationes, busta 51/a; Vallerani, La giustizia pubblica, 120.

135 Dean, Crime and justice, 168–9.

136 On this issue, see Schwerhoff, G., ‘Criminalized violence and the process of civilization: a reappraisal’, Crime, histoire et sociétés 6 (2002), 103–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.