Throughout Medieval
Europe, violent duels were
a common method of
resolving legal conflicts
Y
ou stand in your armour, sword and shield at
your side. Across from you is your opponent- similarly dressed and awaiting the moment
when your duel will begin. Perhaps you are
professional ‘champions’, thugs hired to defend
your employers’ rights on the battlefield. Perhaps it’s your
rights you are protecting, facing your enemy yourself while
the eyes of the court and even God look on. Or maybe you
are standing in a hole, defending yourself with a club while
your wife chucks rocks at you to settle a marital dispute. For
centuries, these scenarios were very real ways through which
a variety of legal cases were solved, from land disputes to
accusations of theft and even rape. ‘Trial by combat’ or ‘Judicial
Duels’ were used throughout Europe, particularly during the
Middle Ages where they saw something of a ‘golden age’.
Trials by combat had ancient origins and had been practised
prior to their proliferation in the Middle Ages. In particular,
Ancient Greece was known to favour single combat to solve
disputes, as A MacC Armstrong of the Classical Association
noted in a 1950 paper on the subject: “The Heroic age of Greece,
like the heroic age of western Europe, practised trial by combat.
For a combat to be judicial it must be single combat, it must
be of numinous imports, as evidenced among the Greeks by
a connexion with divination in the form of oracle or prophecy
and there must be a dispute the issue of which is to depend on
the result of the combat.”
TRIAL
BY
COMBAT
Written by
Callum McKelvie