What laws did medieval peasants have to follow?

Answer 1

There were many crimes considered bad like:

-disobeying the 10 commandments

-witchcraft

-theft

-murder

-working on Sundays

There is a link below to a related question with a more comprehensive answer.

Answer 2

the laws people needed to follow were the ones set by the king. such as be loyal to the king, not steal and the other obvious crimes. If these laws were disobeyed trial by ordeal would be performed

Answer 3

Byzantine law was mostly a continuation and evolution of Roman law.

In Western Europe the laws were built on a combination of Roman law, which was traditionally written, and Germanic law, which was traditionally memorized. They were put into written form at varying times in different countries, with the written laws of the Visigoths being earliest, starting in about 471 AD. By 800 AD nearly all Germanic kingdoms had written legal codes.

Unifying the legal codes took a long time. Initially, it was done differently in different places. The Visigoths applied Roman law to their Roman (native) populations, and Visigoth law to those of Visigoth descent. There was strict segregation between the two groups in terms of family ties; marriage between people of different origins was absolutely prohibited. The Franks, by contrast, applied Frankish law to the Frankish homelands in what are now northern France, and Roman law elsewhere.

There was no division between criminal law and civil law in those times, and the laws tended to be rather simple. One thing that is surprising, perhaps, was that the punishments for crimes were mostly fines. Everything from treating a woman with disrespect by raising her hat or veil to expose her hair to assassination of a king was punishable with a fine. There were a few things not punishable with a fine, and possibly the most important was failure to pay a fine, which could result in a person being enslaved, exiled, or executed. In some places, certain crimes were punished by simply declaring a person to be an outlaw, which meant that person was no longer protected by the laws, making his life rather subject to the mercy of those around him, who were definitively people who consort with outlaws.

It was a characteristic of the laws of the Early Middle Ages that the laws were intended at restitution. This meant that the fines paid for crimes went mostly to the victim, with a quarter or less going to the court to cover costs. The fine for theft was a multiple of the value of the thing stolen. The fine for murder was based on the victim's expected income. The fine for rape was very close to that for murder of a peasant, about three years' wages for a working man. The fine for murder depended on the social rank of the person murdered. The fine for murder of a woman ranged from half to double the fine for a man of the same rank. If a criminal could not pay a fine for theft or rape, the perpetrator could conceivably wind up being the slave of the victim.

With the passage of time, the laws were changed by the kings and, eventually, parliaments that came along. Punishments were changed, rights were changed, and laws pertaining to ownership changed. This happened differently in different countries.

In England, the Anglo saxon and Danish Viking laws prevailed until the coming of William the Conqueror. William introduced feudalism, which was a governing structure not having much to do with laws, but he also changed a number of laws. For one thing, he made slave traffic illegal, an act shortly followed when his son, Henry I, made slavery itself illegal. The new system relied less on fines and more on other forms of punishment, which had already been introduced, including execution. A number of crimes became capital offenses under the law, including murder, treason, arson, and rape. Prisons were not normally used for punishment, but corporal punishments became more commonly used.

After the Magna Carta, the prosecution of freemen was guaranteed to be done by jury. Serfs, who were not slaves, but were also not technically free, had a different system of manorial courts, in which the security of the estate and its tenants was the responsibility of tenants themselves. They met in the manorial courts and tried certain types of complaints and disputes locally. There were Courts Baron, which were rather like civil courts, and in some places there were Courts Leet, that had the right to try people accused of certain crimes. Higher crimes went to royal courts. Local juries decided local issues, and if there were local criminal proceedings, they were tried by local juries, which had the right to decide on appropriate punishments.

Complicating things further was the presence of the Church. It had its own courts, and clergy were usually exempt from trial by secular courts, even those of the king. The ecclesiastical courts had their own systems and their own punishments, which were aimed more at the salvation of the soul than punishment, and the punishments were more lenient than those of secular courts.

Part of the problem of ecclesiastical courts was that it was very hard to tell the clergy from other people. Early on, the distinction was made based on how a person dressed and kept his hair, but that was too easy to fake. Later, the application of a simple test was sufficient: clergy consisted of anyone who could read. Every educated person, including nobles, merchants, and students, qualified for benefit of clergy under the law, and could appeal to ecclesiastical courts.

Even the poor and illiterate benefited from the influence of the Church. They could gain refuge in a church or monastery, and stay there, out of reach of the otherwise long arm of the law. Depending on the the time, the place, and the crime committed, they might be able to stay in the sanctuary of a monastery permanently, or just for as long as it took to contemplate their offense, confess, and prepare for the future, a period that might take six weeks. This was not insignificant; one woman who tried to poison a king of France was permitted to live out her life in the safety of a convent where she had taken refuge.

Of course much of the law pertained to such things as who would inherit property, what the rights of women and men were, control of quality of merchandise, and regulation of tradesmen and guilds. These laws varied enormously from one place to another. In many places, the guilds actually controlled the laws and legal processes.

There are links below.

Answer 4

1st Answer:

The peasant really had no freedoms and were required to follow any law that was decided upon. They had to give 80% of their work time to the lord of whose land they lived. They had to attend church services and to pay taxes to the church and the lord for whom they worked. If a war broke out they were required to fight and if they died they owed a death tax. It was regulated what colors of clothing they could wear and what, if any, jewelry they could own. Poaching, killing animals on the land of the estate, could bring death so could saying anything against the king or queen. The peasant was required to show respect for "their betters" and not to look them in the face until they were told they could.

2nd Answer:

Medieval peasants had to obey the laws of the land in which they lived. In many places, they also had to obey the local laws which were enacted by members of the local nobility, but these were not usually complicated and could not be contrary to the laws of the land. In England, there were manorial courts, which decided local complaints and disputes, and the peasants were subject to these, unless they were accused of serious crimes. The manorial courts had locally raised juries, which could be raised out of the peasants themselves.

In many cases, such as assignment of fields or assignment of work, the rules were made on an ad hoc basis by a person called a reeve. The reeve was usually either a serf appointed to the job by the lord of the manor, or was elected by the serfs, subject to the lord's approval. The reeve also was the person through whom communications between the lord and the serfs were conducted.

There is a link below to a related question on the rights of serfs.

Answer 5

It depended on time and place.

In most of Europe for most of the Middle Ages, the laws were made by the monarchs - kings and queens regnant. Most of the monarchs were advised by high ranking lords, and in later times by parliaments.

In some places, there were no monarchs, and the form of government was republican. Venice is one example, but there are many others. The head of this government might be an autocrat or dictator, or might be merely the chairman of a council of guild representatives. In such a case, the laws were made in ways ranging from decree to democracy.

Answer 6

Common law is a system of justice based on judicial decisions which were discussed by panels of judges, recorded, and cataloged in order that the law be applied uniformly. It was not based on legislation, but decisions of the courts. It was referred to by later courts in order that a similar set of circumstances produced a similar result, so the courts were not acting arbitrarily.

The system was introduced by Henry II, and was part of his dispute with Thomas Becket.

The link below is to a Wikipedia article on common law.

Answer 7

Every country and sometimes each region had its own laws, which in most cases were imposed by the king himself or by regional officials acting on his behalf. There is therefore no such thing as a generic "medieval law". There were different laws in Germany than in Spain, different laws in Scotland to those in Ireland, Wales or England and so on.

Some of the stranger laws were those applied in Wales, based on traditional regulations developed over many hundreds of years. Welsh medieval law makes a fascinating area for study all on its own, particularly those written down in a manuscript of about 1150. Some of its regulations are:

• A freeman's wife may give away her dress and her cloak and her veil and her shoes and her flour and cheese and butter and milk without her husband's permission; she may also lend all the household utensils if she wishes. The wife of a villein may not give away anything without her husband's permission except her veil; she cannot lend anything except her sieve and riddle - and those only as far as her shout can be heard when her foot is placed on the threshold of her doorway.
• If an adult woman elopes with a man and is then violated and let go, she must prove her chastity by this means: a bull of 3 years old has its tail shaved and smeared with fat, then the tail is thrust through a sheep fence (hurdle); the woman must stand with one foot on her threshold and take the tail in her hands - then two men goad the bull. If she can hold it back she keeps the bull as compensation, if not she may keep as much fat as sticks to her hands.

Answer 8

the kings and queens.