Were the Middle Ages lawless and violent?
Zain Tahir
Many people believed that the middle ages were lawless and violent, whereas others believe that there was law and justice in the middle ages. In this short essay I will evaluate both sides of the argument and by using an array sources, come to my own conclusion about the whether or not the middle ages were lawless and violent.
The middle ages are considered to be lawless and violent for a range of different reasons. The punishments of the time were cruel and horrid. Many women were suspected of witchcraft, this was because of the significance of religion in daily life. People believed that due witchcraft, their crops failed or some other tragedy happened. In the late Middle Ages a law was passed calling witchcraft a crime and the punishment was to be burnt at stake. This cruel and tortures punishment was used widely through Europe in the middle ages. Another reasons why the middle ages were deemed violent, was the fact that murder was the second most common crime at 18.2% of all crimes committed. 51% of the murders were because of an argument. This confirms that the Middle Ages were violent as people resorted to violence over petty issues. There were also the crusades which were a series of military campaigns during the time of Medieval England against the Muslims of the Middle East. In 1076, the Muslims had captured Jerusalem - the most holy of holy place in Christianity so Pope Urban II with the aid of French and Italian Knights started a series of military campaigns to capture the Holy Land. There were nine crusades which cost Christendom several millions of lives (from 2,000,000 to 6,000,000 according to different estimates). Also the struggle for power between nations caused a lot of war because more land meant more power, and gaining land meant invasions.
