Catholic Views On Crimes During The Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, the catholic church views on crime were of low tolerance and extreme. In the middle ages priests would sentence you to death for what we would call today petty crimes. The Catholic church had a very unrepentant view on crimes in their jurisdictions and communities. The church dealt with falsification of currency, written defamations, perjury, usury, and forgery of documents. According to catholicculture.org “widows, orphans and helpless folk in general were protected by the church”. The Catholic church mission was jurisdiction is held at a higher level than sin.
The church punished religious offenses like apostasy, heresy, schism, sorcery, witchcraft, sacrilege, and sexual sins. According to catholicchurch.org “the
People lived in constant fear of being persecuted, humiliated and tortured. The accused were beaten, stretched on a rack, drowned, burned alive and many more horrific punishments. According to the finertimes.com “Roman and Greek laws stated that only slaves could be tortured, eventually the laws changed and free men were tortured and imprisoned for committing crime. Courts and judges were exempt from this type of prosecution. They remained bias and usually already determined the fate of the accused before the case had been heard or a trial had
People were forced to believe that whatever the Pope said or predicted would come true. The townspeople were scared for dear life, and lived their lives in a state of paranoia, of saying, doing or associating themselves with the wrong people. According to bibliotecapaleyades.com “to even establish an accusation against a bishop itself required 72 witnesses; against a deacon was 27; against an inferior dignitary was 7; and for non-members of the clergy 2 was sufficient to convict”. People of the clergy were held at higher regards than non-clergy, accusations upon them would be a threat to your life and your family’s