Violence and the Family

St Augustine's formulation of just war theory set the standard for the medieval world's use of violence: violence was legitimate when it was carried out by a figure of authority against a social inferior for the purpose of moral correction.

Homiletic exempla, once again, played a key role in the dissemination of a strong masculine ideal, teaching husbands to rely on coercion instead of reason. ‘A Roper's False Wife' offers an instructive example of the threaten­ing behaviour sermon stories permitted a husband in the name of moral correction. Fearing rightly that his wife was engaged in an adulterous affair, the roper hired a physician prior to breaking his wife's legs. His goal was to keep her housebound and thus prevent her from continuing to see her lover. When even her crippled state failed to stop the lecherous woman's immoral activities, the roper caught his wife and her lover in flagrante, stabbing them through with a knife so that they were fixed to the marriage bed they desecrated with their lust. Rather than arrest the roper for homicide, his neighbours (and so, too, the priest recounting the story to his rapt parishi­oners) lauded the man for his swift action and moral integrity.^[635]

Justification for violent resolution lay in scripture.

Not only wives but also children needed to be governed vigorously. Youth was not a shield from violence. In the monastic environment, St Benedict argued that ‘bold, hard, proud and disobedient characters' should be taught ‘by stripes and other bodily punishments', citing the popular proverb ‘Beat your son with the rod and you will deliver his soul from death.'^[637] St Anselm also advocated the beating of children by parents and teachers as a necessary and pious endeavour, although he reserved the most rigorous discipline for the strongest souls, observing that violence benefits the soul only when one is spiritually ready for it. Given the endorsement of two influential church authorities, it should come as no surprise that historians looking for child abuse in the medieval records have had little success in finding it, implying that what passes for abuse today then was simply a matter of discipline. In the absence of child abuse, Richard Helmholz has found instead a multitude of instances of ‘parent abuse', indicating just how deeply the medieval world respected the fourth commandment.

While both church and state recognised the value of a firm hand in maintaining an orderly household and state, violence was not without limits. While well-meaning discipline was laudatory, abuse fuelled by anger and revenge, especially when enacted in a public space, was evidence of failed masculinity, an inability to govern one's household appropriately. Informal arbitration and/or ritual shaming by family and friends were the two usual solutions to the problem, reminding us that marriage was a much more public institution in the Middle Ages than it is today. Jewish communities in the kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire imposed the most stringent limitations on a man's behaviour, advocating corporal punishment for abusive husbands. In Christian society, a woman's right to sue her husband for abuse was greatly constrained. In the north, where coverture held sway, a wife could not sue her husband because, once married, her legal personage merged with his: effectively, a suit against her husband was a suit against herself. More generally, Europeans viewed women as legal minors; as such, the law prohibited a woman from pursuing a suit without the permis­sion and support of her husband as guardian.

At the very least, a husband's right to beat his wife was counterbalanced by a wife's right to seek a judicial separation (divorcium a mensa et thoro) from the church on the grounds of cruelty (saevitia). A judicial separation authorised a wife to live separately from her husband, although the marital union techni­cally remained intact. The lawyer-pope Innocent III proffered useful advice for determining what constitutes documentable evidence of cruelty. He wrote, ‘if a husband were so cruel to his wife that no security would permit her to live with him without fear, the wife would be justified in living separately from her spouse'.^[638] Consequently, wives who sued their husbands for a separation typically alleged multiple unsuccessful attempts at homicide. Even so, the church rarely awarded judicial separations on these grounds. With the exception of those cases of adultery mentioned above, husbands did not hold the right to life over their wives. If a man participated in uxoricide, his actions were deemed felonious. Similarly, the Gregorian Decretals limited a father's right to discipline his children ‘in a reasonable manner'. Homicide of one's children was not permissible. Even death resulting from parental negligence found its way into the church courts; while the state did not consider neglect a felonious act, the church and the communities in which those parents lived pursued a programme of public humiliation intended to prevent such abuses from recurring. Further, some parents were prepared to

launch suits against teachers, priests and neighbours who exercised excessive violence against their children.