Introduction

Abstract

This chapter discusses the aims and objectives of the study, a short historiography, a justification of the study’s delimitations and the book’s structure.

On 3 November 1478 Derick Sael, his wife and their daughter Schele (cross-eyed) Lubbe were sentenced conditionally by the court of the Dutch town of Kampen: they were forbidden to draw or sell any more beer or keep an inn (‘herberge holden’) in their house. Ignoring this ban would result in their expulsion from the town. It is unclear in what way exactly Derick Sael and his family had offended, but judging by the threat of banishment, it is likely that their house had become a place where immoral behaviour thrived, be it gaming, adultery or prostitution. The phraseology used in the verdict, and in many others which concerned banishment, is meaningful: ‘Deden sie dair enthegen soe en wilmen sie hier in der stat niet lijden’ (‘If they go against this they will no longer be tolerated in this town’).¹ Such language offers important insights into the values of the late medieval Kampen magistrates, values which appear to have been largely shared by the wider population. In fact, ‘neighbours’ were often the instigators of legal actions against individuals behaving immorally, and they expected the court to take action. The specific legal character of the medieval town as an entity juridically separate from its surroundings meant, moreover, that anyone who would not conform to the town community’s legal and moral codes could be ousted from it, either temporarily or for life. The phrase ‘soe en wilmen sie in der stat niet lijden’ and variations on it are mainly found in cases of immoral behaviour by Kampen inhabitants. Such behaviour consisted of adultery, facilitating prostitution or illegal sexual acts, or generally offensive conduct.² In such cases the culprits were either given a warning that they would be banished if they would misbehave again or banished directly.

As will become clear in the following, however, many more people were ousted from Kampen, probably often in absentia, as a result of unpaid fines (and some debts), either because they failed to appear in court or because they were unable to pay these fines. Overall, 26–27 people were banished from Kampen each year. The main aim of this book is to analyse what the practices around the various forms of banishment, but also around the redemption of exiles in Kampen, tell us about the values of late medieval urban society concerning morally acceptable behaviour. Is there, for example, evidence of a similar intolerance towards public debtors or violent offenders as there was towards people displaying immoral behaviour, and is there evidence of a change in value in the second half of the fifteenth century? In addition, this book seeks to show how the town magistrates, in collaboration with the town community, aimed to maintain peace and social order, and to apply authority within Kampen through the use of banishment and other penal practices. Did these practices, for example, target specific groups in society, is there evidence of public support for them, and did the magistrates utilize rituals and ceremonies to display their power both when banishing and when redeeming offenders?

Banishment was one of the most common punishments in late medieval and early modern Europe. Because of its nature, it also had a lasting impact on medieval society. When exiled individuals were forced to leave their communities, temporarily or permanently removing them from the environment in which they had been causing trouble, society as a whole still had to incorporate these individuals. Removed from their homes, families and social networks, they might be forced into a life on the road, potentially causing even more problems in the town’s hinterland, or in other regions and cities. As such, banishment not so much removed the problem, but it moved it or, arguably, made it worse as exiles were potentially pushed into a life of vagabondage or crime.³ In their turn, the original communities perhaps lost productive members, as well as receiving exiles from other places. Nonetheless, banishment continued to be a popular punishment into the early modern period, especially in the context of urban communities. These communities could police their borders, in the shape of walls, more effectively than other polities.

Yet, despite this ubiquitousness, medieval banishment has so far received relatively little specific attention, especially in English-language publications.⁴ The only monograph on the topic, the wide-ranging Les bannis au Moyen Âge by Hanna Zaremska (originally written in Polish), was published in 1996. Since then, some valuable case studies have appeared in French and German concerning French, German, Swiss and Polish towns.⁵ It will be one of the objectives of this book to make the findings of these studies more widely available. In addition, Napran and Van Houts edited a volume on exile, which focused on elite individuals and their experience of exile, either forced or voluntary between about 900 and 1300.⁶ Early modern banishment is better served in the English language. Jason Coy’s book Strangers and Misfits analyses in detail the use of banishment by sixteenth-century Ulm magistrates in maintaining public order after the Reformation.⁷ Other authors have conducted smaller-scale studies on sixteenth-century Scotland, seventeenth-century Turku and early modern Augsburg.⁸ Otherwise, banishment regularly appears in studies on medieval and early modern crime and punishment. In these, the treatment of banishment varies depending on the source material and the aims of the author. Peter Schuster, in his study of late medieval Konstanz, is able to offer a relatively thorough analysis which provided useful comparative material for this study. In Konstanz, like in Kampen, a detailed administration of the financial arrangements between the town and those unable to pay fines is extant.⁹ General studies also exist concerning the Low Countries, for example, on Amsterdam, Utrecht and Leiden, as well as a history of medieval criminal law in Flanders by Van Caenegem.¹⁰ A specific study on banishment in the pre-modern Netherlands is, however, lacking. In addition, most studies of banishment focus on exclusion, and much less on inclusion—on gaining re-entry into urban society, which is an important aspect of this study. As such, this book fills two important gaps in research. By focusing almost exclusively on banishment instead of on crime and punishment more generally, this study is also able to offer more detail concerning various aspects of the topic than previous studies.

Most authors agree that banishment is a severe punishment which cuts people from their familiar social environment.¹¹ Riita Laitinen, for example, stresses that being part of a community was a ‘prerequisite for a good life’. In everyday life, honour and reputation were vital, and when these were no longer available because a person was thrown into different surroundings where people did not know them, the results could be disastrous.¹² Claude Gauvard, too, stated that when medieval man chose to settle in a place, he would be protected by the ties to parish, church and family that were woven around him.¹³ Moreover, as Andreas Blauert has pointed out, a town provided access to legal protection. Being cast out meant that this protection was gone and that exiles were left in relative insecurity and lawlessness.¹⁴ On the other hand, banishments were also easily reversible and in general left people’s honour intact. As a result, exiles could reintegrate relatively easily, when provided the opportunity.¹⁵

Marginalisation has been a hot topic in recent decades, discussing how medieval and early modern communities have excluded different groups from taking part in society fully on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sex or reputation.¹⁶ Reputations might be affected negatively by a person’s behaviour or activities, be they professional as in the case of executioners or sex workers, or other, such as criminal. At the same time, the exclusion or rejection of others could form the basis of connections within a community. According to Gauvard, in the preface to Zaremska’s book, the functioning of the social body was based on exclusion. By excluding unwanted elements, a community could maintain purity and social peace.¹⁷ Banishment is arguably the epitome of marginalisation.

Zaremska, too, stresses that exclusion is the most radical means by which a community indicates that a person’s transgressions are considered severe. This exclusion can be imprisonment, banishment and even death. She points out that social ostracism is well known by sociologists and ethnologists studying small communities, normally originally without the interference of an official justice system. Later, the ostracism usually becomes institutionalised.¹⁸ By studying banishment, then, we can study the type of behaviour that a community or society considered to be so severe that it temporarily or permanently excluded the person guilty of this behaviour.

Instead of the marginalisation processes within society, this study focuses specifically on the physical exclusion from the community and what this tells us about ideas and perceptions of desired and undesired behaviour. Similarly, the readmittance of exiles can reveal when and why a person might have been considered worthy of redemption. As J. Jeffery Tyler has also usefully concluded, practices of exclusion can show us the social and religious values of an urban community.¹⁹ In contrast to the community in his study (which is post-Reformation Protestant Augsburg), however, the Kampen magistrates and population focused mostly on behaviour, and much less on people’s views or beliefs. Both may have sought to eliminate any threats to their civic order and godly society, but following the Reformation the perceived threats to such a godly society had changed from the merely immoral or sinful to the more dangerous heretical. Coy confirms a new post-1550 severity in Ulm as a result of the Reformation, combined with a worsening political and economic situation.²⁰ In late medieval Kampen, banishment practices reveal certain social norms concerning what was considered moral and immoral behaviour, norms that continued to be prevalent in post-Reformation society, but there is little evidence yet of similar norms regarding ideas and beliefs.

Recent interpretations of the limitations of pre-modern political authority have stressed that public power relied on the collaboration between the governing elite and the rest of society. Lacking a police force and with few public officials, urban authorities were unable to govern or administer justice effectively without the cooperation and consensus of the population.²¹ At the same time, courts have been shown to be actively used by the general populace (as ‘consumers of justice’) to solve their conflicts, or at least to publicize them and their viewpoints in relation to them.²² Similarly, through denunciation, members of the public could convey their disapproval of the behaviour of their fellows. As Suzannah Lipscomb (studying the Protestant consistory courts of the Languedoc) has already suggested, through a denunciation a denouncer communicated to others the limits of acceptable behaviour.²³ It was then up to the magistrates to decide whether or not to take action against transgressors or even introduce new regulations. At the same time, denunciations signalled to others in medieval society that certain behaviour was now considered to be undesirable. With this in mind, it would be a misrepresentation to focus on the urban authorities in isolation in this study. Instead, public power is considered taking into account the role of the magistrates and that of the population.

The main focus of this book is Kampen, one of the main trading towns in the northern Netherlands in the later middle ages. It was largely autonomous, administering all justice within its own walls. As a result, it boasts an archive with a wide variety of sources, ranging from civil and criminal court records, and witness testimonies, to various financial records, which together paint a multi-faceted picture of late medieval life, including the legal culture around banishment. Where possible and relevant, this book also offers comparisons with regulations and practices elsewhere in Europe in order to establish to what extent Kampen’s practices are representative and to investigate whether or not there was a shared legal culture when it came to banishment. I have chosen to limit myself mostly to the second half of the fifteenth century. This is the earliest period in Kampen history for which a range of sources survives (including the unique Digestum Vetus register with its pen drawings, which will be used to illustrate aspects of medieval urban society in this book). Because there is an approximate 10-year gap concerning some of these sources in the final years of the fifteenth and the first years of the sixteenth century, and an exponential rise in available material after that, it makes sense to limit the focus to the period up to about 1500. The second half of the fifteenth century is, moreover, a period of flux when it comes to the perception and treatment of immoral behaviour. Developments in Kampen were part of an urban reform movement which affected many parts of Europe. As such, this book’s findings are likely to have relevance more widely. It would be worthwhile to eventually compare the results of the current study with those from a later period, especially as the Reformation started to take effect in the final decades of the sixteenth century, but that is beyond the scope of this book.

The study will firstly set the legal context of banishments in late medieval Kampen by briefly discussing the town’s history, administration and sources (including the illustrations in the Digestum Vetus), before providing an overview of the development of laws and by-laws in the Low Countries in general and Kampen in particular. In Chap. 3, punishment practices in Kampen as a whole are analysed, while banishment as a punitive and coercive measure is the subject of Chap. 4. In this chapter, different aspects of Kampen banishment practices will be discussed. Firstly, the chapter focuses on typologies and quantitative aspects. It will then discuss the question of whether exile was used as a punitive or coercive measure, before moving onto the distance and duration of banishments, and onto the roles of gender and social class, and those of ceremony and symbolism. The final section discusses the question whether or not an ‘army of exiles’ existed outside of Kampen’s walls.²⁴ Finally, Chap. 5 analyses the practical and ideological issues around the reintegration of exiles into the town community, with a particular focus on the financial arrangements between town and exiles.