Criminal Price List
October 26, 2025 at 10:46 AM
"Medieval laws" is a common term used today to describe harsh laws. But during the Early Middle Ages (roughly from the late fifth to the eleventh century), laws weren't actually that harsh - for example, the death penalty for murder wasn't in use.
The Early Middle Ages were marked by global cooling, and Europe's population declined. Furthermore, the collapse of the centralized Roman legal system led to the rise of blood feuds. Local rulers, rightly believing that the "eye for an eye" principle would leave the whole world blind the entire country without taxpayers, banned blood feuds and introduced price systems for murder and mutilation. Of course, if you killed an aristocrat, this entertainment would cost you (and your family) dearly, but still, execution was out of the question.
During the High Middle Ages, the authorities apparently decided that the population had multiplied enough, and this principle gradually fell out of use.
