Guilty: The Court System In The Middle Ages

The court system in the middle ages worked by using the term “guilty until proven innocent” and using trials of ordeal to determine innocence.The courts weren't based on the idea of an accused being innocent until proven guilty as there was no concept to believe the accused was innocent. It was the job of the accused to prove their innocence. The accused could do this by taking an oath to prove their innocence. The accused would also be required bring oath helpers, these helpers would normally know the person very well. The oath helpers swore that they believe the accused is innocent. The oath system worked well as it was very efficient and workable as it was hard for an evil person to be able to gain enough oath helpers to support them and
The ‘Trial by Ordeal’ is meant to test the strength and endurance of the accused. The trials were mentally and physically challenging and would also push the accused to breaking point. There were different types of ordeals for people depending on your accused crime and social status. There would be ministering judges or priests that would declare what ordeal the accused goes through an decides at the end if they had healed, survived or been killed. In most cases, the accused was considered innocent if they escaped injury or if their injuries healed. One example of a ‘Trial by Ordeal’ is an ‘Ordeal by Fire’. As seen in figure 2 an accused person held a hot iron bar and walked three paces. Their hand was then bandaged and left for three days. If it had healed you were determined as innocent but if the wound had not healed you were found guilty of the crime. Another example is ordeal by combat in which nobleman would fight, The accuser would fight the accused. They would fight in combat with each other until a winner was determined. Regularly the loser would be killed in combat and the winner would be innocent or proven right. In many of these ordeals if you were found innocent you still died, or were heavily wounded. These two ordeals were regularly used in the middle ages along with many others. This shows how there were many ways of determining innocence but ‘Trial by
There are many different types of the iron chair, though they all have spikes covering the back, arm-rests, seat, leg-rests, and foot-rests. The number of spikes on each chair varied from 500 spikes to 1500 spikes. The victims wrists would be tied to the chair or bar would be pushed against the arm to inject the spikes into the flesh. In some versions of the chair there were holes at the bottom for the torturer hot coal to add more pain and cause burns. They would also put weight on the victims thighs and legs. As seen in the image you can see the chair has iron spikes that automatically brutal pain when sat on or even touched. This chair was used to punish a victim or to torture the accused to reveal information. This helps us understand crime and punishment better as we find out the pain and torture criminals had to go through in the middle ages. In todays world this would not be acceptable as deaths are quick and lethal whereas in the middle ages people were tortured and killed in public to insert fear whilst dying a slow and painful death. It also shows how for such a small crime criminals were punished brutally and were most of the time had to die a small painful death in front of everyone including their loved ones. This shows how this source is valuable when studying crime and